robert Charrette - Arthur 02 - A King Beneath the Mountain Read online

  "If it's not a disease, then what's going on?"

  Hagen mumbled something so softly that Pamela wasn't sure that the man had actually spoken, although it sounded as if he said, "Evil."

  Nakaguchi snorted. "The sleeper awakes."

  He had been slow, locked in the sluggishness of sleep. He was still slow, torpid from the time of deep dreams. He could feel the hummingbird lights flitting about him. He wanted their heat, needed it, but he was slow and they so quick, so vital.

  What he needed fluttered just out of his sluggish reach, as yet unattainable. The hummingbirds danced near, tantalizing him, then flitted away out of reach. He ached with frustration, thwarted by their confounding speed.

  He needed.

  He waited.

  He hungered.

  He waited, preparing himself.

  One of the hummingbirds approached him. Slowing its rushing flight, it lingered. He felt its feathery touch upon his paper-dry skin. The touch was enough.

  He struck as the viper strikes, uncoiling with unexpected speed.

  The little bird crumpled at his touch. His first taste of the warmth tingled, exciting him. Ravenously, he pulled harder until the heat flooded him. He almost heard the hummingbird's cries. He drained it dry. His hunger was barely slaked, but he was stronger than he had been in—

  Centuries!

  How could it have been so long?

  Frightened by what he had done, the hummingbirds dragged the husk of their companion away. They were still too quick for him. The strength he'd gained was greater than any he'd had from the little fires that had sustained him for so long, but he was still weak and slow. Still half-adream.

  He knew how to wait.

  In time—not so much as before but strangely seemingly longer—they returned. They had armored themselves against him. Foolishly so. They used dead, flimsy stuff that barely covered the beckoning light of themselves.

  He took the first to present itself.

  The hummingbird sang, a warbling song that had little of intelligence about it, but did occasionally strike a familiar chord. A mistake, it seemed to be saying. He wasn't sure what it was saying; its language was strange.

  Had so much time passed that language itself had changed?

  What did it matter? The little bird's struggles grew feeble. He felt stronger as the fire infused his veins. His sense of the surroundings grew clearer.

  The hummingbird was pleading, promising. What? More than it could deliver certainly.

  Was he making a mistake? Perhaps. It wouldn't be the first time.

  Strength first, subtlety at leisure. It was an excellent paradigm to impress; it had served him well in the past. It had served best when applied in accordance with current circumstances. But what were current circumstances? In so much time, much was sure to have changed.

  Reluctantly, he ceased draining the little bird. Its light flickered, but did not gutter and go out. Satisfactory. Before he released it, he put his mark on it, to keep it true. He didn't have enough strength to make the mark truly effective, but this one was weak. What he had done would serve for now.

  He opened his eyes to gaze upon the first of his new servants.

  Pamela gasped when the mummy opened its eyes. She stared in frozen horror as it reached out a withered hand to lay upon the brow of the technician slumped against the table. Gaunt-faced, the technician rose unsteadily to his feet.

  "Joel, you okay?" one of the others asked.

  Joel didn't answer her. Instead he said, "Bring in the first subject."

  The technicians looked to one another in consternation and confusion. A few looked to the observation window.

  "Do as he says," Nakaguchi ordered.

  A few minutes later, the "first subject" arrived. By the look of him he'd be one of the homeless derelicts Chemogenics sometimes used in medical testing. He would have been required to sign a consent form, releasing Chemogenics, and the whole Mitsutomo Keiretsu from all responsibility should there be some unfortunate occurrence during the unspecified medical experiments in which he agreed to take part. From the way the derelict turned his head around and grinned idiotically, she doubted he had the competence to understand what he'd been told, let alone make a voluntary decision. His two attendants wheeled the chair up beside the examining table. The derelict grinned at the mummy and said, "Howd'ya do, pal. Ya sign up too?"

  The attendants backed away with unseemly haste when the mummy's dark hand rose quivering.

  Joel stepped forward and released the restraining strap on the derelict's right arm. He brought the man's hand up into the path of the mummy's groping fingers. The derelict started to squirm as soon as the gnarled fingers closed over his wrist. He began to struggle, bucking in his chair and tugging against the iron grip. Within seconds he was panting. He slumped, exhausted. Pamela could see the sweat coating the derelict's face as he rocked his head back, mouth open to scream. Only a tortured moan emerged. The old man's head slid to the side, turning his face from her view. For several minutes nothing visible occurred, then it was over.

  Pamela wasn't sure how she knew, but she knew.

  The mummy opened its hand and let the derelict's limp arm fall. Hitting the arm of the wheelchair, it made a sound like a dry stick hitting metal. Pamela half expected the limb to shatter; it merely fell, lifeless, into the dead man's lap.

  "Another," Joel ordered.

  By her side Nakaguchi chuckled.

  "You see, Ms. Martinez. It is possible to deal effectively with sleepers. All you have to do is keep them happy."

  Pamela forced herself to maintain a neutral expression. Nakaguchi had gone beyond the boundary by bringing this monster to life, but now was not the time to challenge them. She would have to marshal her resources and wait for the best chance. She didn't think she'd get more than one try.

  Charley Gordon pulled up the collar of his coat and managed to shut out the drizzle of icy rainwater that was worming its way down his back. A Chrysler Compel™ entering the parking structure hit a puddle and splashed him as it took the turn. He gave it the finger. There was no telling who was behind the opaqued windows of the car, but he didn't care. The bum probably hadn't even seen Charley.

  He walked down the lane between the Sobanski Rezcom and its parking garage. The Sobanski was one of the first of its kind in the Attleboro District. Like a lot of the district, it was pretty run-down. Pulverized curb crunched under his shoes as he turned into the service alley. It was the third one he tried. Jimmy Kravatz hadn't said which alley in the message he'd left.

  Kravatz was one of Charley's best ears in the Foxboro District. If the word was on the streets, Kravatz heard it. The ear was spooked about something, meaning that whatever he wanted to talk to Charley about might actually be important.

  The recording Kravatz had left on Charley's box said he needed to see Charley right away. He'd left an address, too: the service alley behind the Sobanski Rezcom. He hadn't said there was more than one. Still, it was a Kravatz kind of address, but it was a little out of his usual territory.

  He found the ear huddled in the lee of a dumpster and stinking of booze. He roused Kravatz with a boot in the leg.

  "What is it, Jimmy? What's so important I gotta come down here in this shit?"

  Kravatz scrambled to his feet, polluting Charley's space with his breath. "It's Marabeth, Officer Charley. She's been taken away."

  Charley hadn't been just an officer since he'd transferred to the special crimes unit, but there were some things you put up with rather than queer an arrangement with a good ear.

  "This Marabeth, she got a last name?"

  Kravatz had to think about that for a while. "Lankster, I think. We don't use them kind of names much."

  "I'll check on her." Charley reached under his coat and punched in a request for status on Marabeth Lankster, spelling optional.

  "Ya won't find nuthin'," Kravatz told him. "They got her."

  A truck turned into the alley, sweeping them with its lights.
They had to huddle behind the dumpster as it ground its way down the pavement. The trash container screeched as the vehicle scraped it. Kravatz cowered behind Charley, howling in accompaniment to the sound. Charley shouted at him to shut up. For a change, he did. Too well. For several minutes after the truck had passed, Kravatz just shivered, unwilling to talk.

  Charley's belt unit beeped that it had a response to his request. He pulled it out, shielding the screen from the rain so he could read it. The list was short. The closest name was a Marabeth Lancaster with a status on file of Unregistered, Criminal. That was likely the one. Just like Kravatz, an outcast from the system on every count except criminal. Lancaster's rap sheet was an assortment of drug charges, a welter of Vagrancies, a couple of Solicitings, and a single count of felony Harassment. She wasn't unusual for a streeter.

  "This Marabeth, she a close friend of yours?"

  "We—she and me—I mean, we kinda know each other from way long time ago. Two years maybe."

  "You say she was taken away?"

  Nodding furiously, Kravatz said, "Snatched! Right outa her

  box!"

  The last time Kravatz had reported a missing person the guy in question had gotten himself wasted and fallen down in the wrong alley. "Bottle fairies again?"

  "Ain't no fairies, Officer. I seen 'em. Ain't fairies at all."

  "Who'd you see, Jimmy?"

  "Trolls. Trolls, they was. Big hulking things."

  Swell. "What did these trolls look like, Jimmy?"

  "I—I didn't get too good a look. They was wearing uniforms. Nice white ones. They looked warm."

  Uniformed trolls? Better and better. "Listen, Jimmy, 1 don't got time for this."

  "I'm telling ya, Officer Charley. Them trolls took Marabeth. Ya gotta get her back. I think they're gonna eat her."

  "You know where these trolls took Marabeth?"

  "They put her in their truck. Honda Losquit™, last year's model. You know, the one right after they dropped the bumper strips."

  Kravatz was a loony but he had a way with vehicles. "You catch the plate?"

  "Naw. Corporate though."

  Uniformed corporate trolls. How nice. "Look, Jimmy. You haven't given me much to go on, but I'll put it in. We'll do what we can, okay?"

  "Ya gotta get her back, Officer Charley. Ya gotta do something."

  "I'll do what I can, Jimmy."

  Charley did what he could. He turned off the recorder on his belt unit and assigned the file number. Opening a line to the station house, he transmitted the MP report and tagged it with a "notify officer." He'd file a full when he got back. Not that there'd be anything else to do with it. Streeters got themselves lost every day; it didn't take trolls, corporate or otherwise. If Marabeth Lancaster was ever heard from again, it'd be a miracle. Charley had given up believing in miracles a long time ago.

  "You take care of yourself, Jimmy. Stay away from those trolls. And if you see them again, you give me a call, okay?"

  "You bet, Officer Charley."

  Not one worth taking, Charley thought as he slouched back to his car. The things you got to put up with to humor your ears.

  Kern a! was a mage.

  Or at least he was going to be. Tonight he was going to prove it. He'd been purifying himself for weeks, getting ready for tonight, and now the time had come. The stars were right, the moon was in the right phase, and he'd gathered everything he needed for the summoning.

  The dagger had been the hardest. He didn't know much about forging but then he didn't have to know all that much; the important part was that he make it himself. He was convinced that was the reason that all his other rituals had failed. Every tool—every one—had to be made by the magician. Just purifying the tools wasn't enough. So he'd done it; he had the scars from handling the hot iron to prove it. The dagger might not be meteoric iron, but the next best thing. The metal was preatomic, reforged from a piece of a Victorian wrought-iron fence he'd cut free from the barrier around an East Side mansion in the dark of the moon.

  The time had come. All his reading, all his studying, all his preparations were going to come to fruition tonight. He started to undress. Naked as the day he had come into the world, he took his place in the circles of power. Slowly, carefully, he closed them and said the proper incantations to activate his protections.

  Was that the power he felt making his skin tingle?

  As he started the summoning, he was sure of it. The power was rising; he could feel it.

  He had teased the name of a still-summonable demon from the ancient texts. He had practiced speaking each syllable of the name, but never the whole name; he wanted to take no chances. Now, he spoke the name of the spirit. There was no response, but he didn't expect one. Yet. He called the name again. For the third time he called the name.

  He waited, growing surer that something was nearby.

  He heard the window to his bedroom slide open. Did demons have to come through the window? Something thumped in his bedroom as he turned his eyes toward the door.

  A figure emerged. It wasn't human; nothing human ever had such a sharp-featured face. The demon was a lot smaller than he expected. Kemal hadn't expected it to be clothed either; none of his grimoires talked about that. This spirit was dressed in studded biker leathers and wearing a stupid Shriner's hat, not what he thought proper demon wear at all.

  "Stand, spirit. I command you in the name of the Lord of Hosts. Stand lest I hurl you into the pit forevermore by the use of His name."

  "Spirit?" His visitor gave Kemal a toothy grin. "Got the wrong number, Chuckles."

  It stepped across the first of his protective barriers.

  That wasn't right. A demon wasn't supposed to do that. It could only do that if Kemal hadn't gotten the protective sigils correct. He had been meticulous. He couldn't have made any mistakes. Could he?

  The demon stepped across the second barrier. It had talons on its hands.

  Kemal turned and ran for the door to the hall. He hadn't gone three steps before he felt its claws in his back.

  CHAPTER

  5

  John woke from the dream with a start. His sudden movement startled a rat prowling the perimeter of the room and sent it scurrying into the wall. John lay still and watched it scamper. Had it really been less than a year since just the thought of a rat in a building had creeped him out? They were just part of the ecosystem here. Admirable in their own way. They'd found themselves a secure niche in the world, a place where they could be what they were and live their lives in their own way. He sort of envied them.

  "Are you all right, John?"

  He felt the feather touch of Faye's invisible presence, a rustling of his skin hairs, little more than a breeze might do. He kicked away the sheet that had wrapped itself around his legs and heaved himself up from the mattress.

  "John?"

  "Yeah, yeah. I'm fine."

  She'd know he was lying. She always knew. But that didn't stop him. It was better to pretend that the dream hadn't upset him, better to pretend that he wasn't frustrated by her untouchable nearness. Maybe she'd pretend, too; they'd played lots of pretend games when he'd been growing up.

  Life just hadn't been what he'd expected after his return from the otherworld. The magical sensitivity he'd felt in the other realm seemed to have deserted him. He felt it in the dream, but it came associated with unpleasant things there. He wished that he could feel it when he was awake and without all that other baggage.

  The dream had terrified him, as usual. His body was slick with sweat that the faint breeze from outside made chill and clammy on him. He shivered, knowing it was from more than the chill. It seemed that he could still hear the guns firing and the screams of the wounded, but what he'd first thought was screaming turned into the howling sirens of cop cars racing along the highway outside. He found himself staring out the window. The guns were real too, but far away. Something nasty was going down out there in old Providence's little corner of the sprawl tonight.

  Up
in his tower in the middle of this little patch of decayed and mostly derelict buildings, he was isolated from the violence out there.

  There were advantages to being isolated from the world.

  And a lot more disadvantages.

  For good or ill, he'd been on his own since his return from the otherworld. He'd spent days waiting for Bear and the ECSS agents to show up where he had. They hadn't, so far as he could tell. He'd spent some time thinking he'd been tricked, but couldn't see any point in it. The Lady of the Lakes had said she'd send them home, and since she transferred John into the Northeast sprawl—probably as close as she could get to John's home—he guessed that she must have sent the others somewhere else closer to their homes.

  Being on his own had frightened John. He'd been too afraid of Mitsutomo to go back to Worcester right away. He'd found himself a slump in an abandoned building and spent weeks living on tricks learned from Trashcan Harry, trying to figure the angles and work up the courage. He'd gone back to the rezcom now, for all the good it had done. He still didn't know what had happened to his mother—foster mother, according to Bennett. But blood relative or not, she was all the mother he'd ever known, and he loved her. Nothing Bennett could say would change that.

  And it wasn't like Bennett had never lied to him.

  At least he'd found Faye again. Sort of. Like him, she wasn't the same as she'd been in the otherworld. They might never have been there for all the trip had changed their lives. They were no better off than when they'd fled Worcester the first lime.

  Except that neither Bear nor Trashcan Harry was here. I larry never would be, and Bear was God knew where. It was just he and Faye. Alone and isolated.

  And different.

  Faye had been corporeal in the otherworld, a woman of unsettling beauty. All their friendly intimacies of his childhood had seemed on the verge of becoming something more. He'd wanted it, but he'd backed away. Believing that he was an elf, and knowing that she was, he had been terrified that they were related somehow. Sister and brother even. They'd grown up together, hadn't they? Wouldn't anything they did together be wrong? He'd feared so, but Faye hadn't seemed bothered by the issue at all. There hadn't been time to wonder why then, and he'd lost her on his return to the real world. Now they were together again, and what did it matter? She was his invisible playmate again.