The Summoning (21 page)

Honey never knew what hit him.

I sprang from where I was, and I felt myself grow huge as I went. I get big when I’m angry, but never before had I grown so monstrously, my cold fury tinged with red and gold unleashed at last. It must have something to do with being flung into a mirror a couple of times. Or because I wanted Richard back. Now.

I knocked him flat and picked him up in my teeth without breaking the skin, as though he were a blind puppy, light as a feather. I crossed the street in a bound with my prey in my jaws, leaped on a car roof parked by a dumpster, onto the dumpster, one leg on the fence, another hop, and I was on the roof of the two-story building opposite Honey’s. I was really huge. I cast around, made two roof-top jumps to a taller building, then one long one to a building around the corner that was empty, and high enough that it was out of sight of any building around us. A quiet place to talk. I dropped Honey sort of gently on the rubble-strewn roof, and prepared to wait.

I was exhilarated. I was enormous. I was powerful in ways I’d never felt before. I should go home and tear up every guy that ever looked sideways at me. I should go home and kill my stepbrothers, rip my stepdad apart and strew his limbs at my mom’s feet and say…

Honey uttered a groan and sat up. I came and sat very near him. He had to look up and up to look in my face. He was terrified. I could smell it all over him. But he reached out with his mind and tried to connect with his fellows. I nosed him flat, and changed.

“None of that.”

He got up and came at me fast. I changed, picked him up in my jaws by the head and upper body and shook him. I put him down, scraped him over a few times, nosed him once, stared down at him. He lay quite still, staring up at me in horror. He was covered with drool. I resisted the urge to give him another lick for good measure. It’s just too damn bad wolves can’t talk. It was obvious he had much less respect for me in my human nature. Oh, well. I could go on teaching him to respect me for hours, if need be. I had time. I wasn’t going anywhere.

I changed, and told him as much. This time he just lay there and heard me out. “Now, listen. I’m not planning to kill you tonight. I want information.” I leaned closer to him and smiled. “If you give it to me, then we can both go home, all right?”

He nodded, but added, “I don’t know that I can tell you anything—”

I put a hand on him, and he shut up. “Just answer the questions. What time did Richard get to the dance studio yesterday with Marlin?”

His eyes flickered as he registered the question and tried to think of the answer. “I don’t know,” he said at last. When I moved in protest, his voice rose, as though a higher register would convince me he was telling the truth. “I don’t—I got there after Marlin did. Richard was already there.”

I liked it so much better when he didn’t call me “honey.” I told him so.

He sat up in fury. “Is that what this is about, because if it is—”

I knocked him flat. I didn’t even bother to change to do it. “What time did you get to the studio yesterday?”

A pause while he thought. “About four-fifteen. We’re supposed to meet at four, but my bus was late.”

“All right. What time did Marlin take Richard away?”

He thought again. “About seven. He said…” He stopped, as though he suddenly wasn’t sure he wanted to tell me something.

“Yes?” I asked sweetly.

He continued, “He said Stan—Richard—was only on loan, and there was somewhere else he had to be.”

Honey had the most enormously long lashes. They were dark, like his hair and eyes. His eyes were large and expressive, especially now that he was so scared.

I thought about what he had said. “So Marlin took Richard away at about seven. What time did Marlin come back?”

“Arthur brought him back—”

“Yes. What time?”

“That would be…” He thought about it. “About eight-thirty? I think? Look, I’m not sure. We finished—what we were doing—at eight, and Arthur brought Marlin back after that.”

I thought about that. Between seven and eight-thirty Marlin had had time to go to whatever place he had dropped Richard off, have whatever it was happen to him, get lost and get found on the street by their guy Arthur. So probably Richard was within half an hour’s drive of the dance studio. Maybe forty minutes at the outside.

What kind of power did it take to contain a demon that didn’t want to be there? I thought about the chain Richard had had on his wrist, which Marlin said made him do whatever they wanted.

Honey had sat up while I thought. I looked at him and he lay back down again. Finally, some respect! I said, “That bracelet Marlin put on Richard. Have you ever seen that before? Is that something Marlin does?”

He shook his head. “Ours is thunder magic. We’re air-raisers, air changers and wielders. Didn’t you know?”

My turn to shake my head. “Never heard of it,” I said, because I thought it would piss him off.

“You don’t know much, then, do you?” he said.

I reached out and patted him gently on the cheek. “Just answer the questions.”

“We don’t put magic into things. It’s not what we do,” he insisted.

“Where did Marlin get that thing, then?” I asked.

He shook his head, and however many more times I asked, he insisted he’d never seen it before.

“How’s Marlin now?” I asked finally.

His face fell. “He’s no different. We’ve been sitting with him in turns ever since.” He sat up again, put out his hands, and said earnestly, “Do you know anything we should be doing? It’s said the wolves have special wisdom and are known to be great healers. If you know anything that can bring Marlin back—the way he was—we’ll do anything, I swear.”

Great healers? Special wisdom? First I’d heard of it. “I’ll tell you, if anything comes to mind. Meanwhile, I’ve glad we’ve had this little chat. I’ll check in with you again, in case anything else occurs to you.” I stepped back and changed and jumped off the roof.

Idiot! I’d calmed down quite a bit. I’d been counting on that huge size coming with the change. I fell off the building into empty space, had to reach out and claw for the neighboring rooftop. I changed as soon as I realized I needed hands
right now
and was able to find a foothold and swing myself up. This building was occupied, and fortunately, the door to the roof was on latch. I let myself in just as Honey came to the edge of the roof up above and cast around looking for me and calling, asking how he was supposed to get down. I hadn’t a clue.

I walked down two flights of stairs nursing my hands, which I’d scraped on the concrete edge. Damn. I’d almost killed myself. The cold fury was still in me, I could feel it, strong and comforting. It just hadn’t manifested that time when I’d changed. I needed more practice. But what I needed even more was information. In the meantime, I’d start with a map.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A
ll right, what I did next was not too bright. But lucky improbable chances are possible. I believe in coincidence. I believe in blind luck. I guess you can’t make blind luck happen to you by getting a big map of the Hollywood area, drawing a circle with the dance studio in the middle, about thirty or so miles’ distance in every direction, picking a sector, parking, and walking around trying to scent Richard, or Marlin, or both. That’s how I spent half the next day. I didn’t even bother calling in sick to work. I drove back out to Hollywood so early the next morning I didn’t even hit traffic to speak of. I spent the whole morning with that map in one hand, trolling up and down streets with my window open, getting out and walking when I thought it would help. After five or six hours of this, I came up with nothing but a huge thirst and the overwhelming need for a lot of meat
now
. But I kept hoping. I kept thinking that around the next corner, or just across the street, or just over there, I’d sense him, that my feelings for him would guide me to him. But they didn’t.

In a greasy spoon on Pico, standing in line for my food, I realized this was a stupid way to hunt. You don’t try and find one rabbit in rabbit city. That’s exactly why I chose Los Angeles in the first place. Was it love that made me stupid? Was I in love? With Richard?

But how could I not love Richard, when his every look, his every action, was designed to please me. I knew that, just as I knew it was how he was made. But that hadn’t made me love him. He’d tried that on me, in the beginning, and it just pissed me off. It was not Richard’s scent memory that stuck in the back of my throat. No, what made me love Richard was finding his wolf. I loved the man, however much of him was a man, because I loved his wolf. But he came forth a wolf, because I called it up. So was it Richard that I loved, or the Richard that I had called into being? And was that how he was made, right from the beginning? To become whatever the one he was with desired? Or was it how Richard, with whatever powers were left to him, stuck here for so long, ensured his survival by becoming whatever his master wished? So how could that be love? Or is some part of love simply naming something you liked
mine
, and then not letting go. But if you lost your possession, you didn’t go hunting it with a map and a belief in coincidence.

As I stood outside, devouring my first hamburger, I thought of someone who might have a better way of finding Richard than I did. I ate my other hamburger and the onion rings in the car as I sprinted down the 10 away from downtown. There were two accidents. It only took two and a half hours to get back to Whittier. I crept along with my window open, just in case Richard had passed by this way. Really, really stupid, but just in case.

I stopped briefly at my apartment, got back in my car, gassed up just before the freeway, and then headed out ahead of traffic to Pomona.

By the time I reached the counter of the taqueria across from the car wash and the little park, I was hungry again, so I ordered myself a burrito, along with the bag of food for the Rag Man. I went back and sat on that same bench, which was distracting, because Richard’s scent was there. It hadn’t even been a week since he’d laid his greasy hands on the board in front of me. The Rag Man’s food got cold. He didn’t show up. But I wasn’t starting from the empty air with the Rag Man. He had trails running all around this place. I went around to the back of the car wash and changed. I made myself small, went back to the taqueria, chose what seemed to be the most recent of the Rag Man’s trails, and backtracked it.

The Rag Man wandered all around this area. There were traces of him going in every direction. But all the strands of a spider’s web coalesce to the web’s center, and all the trails of the Rag Man collected on one street, in front of a burned-out house. The walls were black, the windows were empty, the roof was gone, and the two floors were in a heap in the shell. I trotted along the chain-link fence that kept people out of the ruins, turned the corner, followed the fence into an alley, and found the place behind some bushes where the fence had been artfully sliced. The gap was scuffed with numerous footprints. I knew whose they were. I slipped inside.

He’d built a lean-to against the house where the porch had fallen in. He was huddled against the wall, holding himself, shaking with chills, though the day wasn’t cold. I changed and sat down in the doorway until he noticed me.

When he stirred, and opened his caked eyes, I said, “I’m looking for Stan.”

“Huh?” He blinked out at me. “Who’s there?”

I came a little closer, so I wasn’t backlit, and he could see me. “I’m Stan’s friend.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah.” He tried to put on that smile of his, but he was ill. “Stan the man. Right. Where is he?”

“I don’t know. I can’t find him. I wondered if you could.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, all right.” He rested his head against the wall and closed his eyes. “In a minute…”

I waited a little, then I told him, “I’ll be back.”

I went back to the taqueria and ordered more food. I got some bottles of water and some other supplies as well. I drove my car back to the burned-out house and parked in the alley. I took out the blanket I kept in the back, shoved it and the food bag through the fence, and pushed my way in after it.

The Rag Man had straightened up. He was sitting with one knee up, stiffly clutching couple of small stones, a rusty nail, and a twig of rosemary. “I’m not seeing anything,” he said as I came in. “I don’t see anything.”

“Here,” I said. “Have some of this.” I handed him the still-warm bag of food, and he opened it delicately, fished out the tacos and made short work of them. He had trouble holding the burrito.

“You’ve hurt your hands,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said through his mouthful. “That’s the way it is.”

He hadn’t quite finished eating before he leaned back against the wall again and closed his eyes. He didn’t move when I slipped the blanket over his shoulders. I gently unwrapped the rags from around each hand. There were new burns on his palms, still suppurating, and crusty black scabs around the edges of his wounds. I poured a little water over them. He made a sound, but did not open his eyes.

“They needed me,” he explained. “The Heiligen guys. Nice folks. I tried to help.” He lifted his hands, to show what had happened to them, and winced.

He didn’t react when I changed. Maybe he thought he was hallucinating. Or maybe he was too sick to be surprised. I lay down by his knees, laid my paw on his wrist to keep his hand still, and licked the wound on one palm and then the other, until the suppurating stopped, and all the stink was gone. Then I changed again, so I could wrap his palms in the gauze I’d bought at the little grocery, and put an ace bandage over each hand.

“Mm,” he said, when I’d finished. “Thanks. Thanks, man. I didn’t see anything. I tried. Sorry.”

“I think that’s because Stan’s a demon,” I told him.

“Huh!” The Rag Man’s eyes opened then. “A demon? You don’t say. That explains a lot.”

“You can’t scry a demon, right?”

“Well,” he said. “That depends. You can’t see him. You might see around him. And that could tell you something.” He pulled himself up and began collecting things from the ground, a nail, a couple of pebbles, a coin.