Whisper Of A Moment

By Aadler

Part I

He’s up on the stage, strutting and grinning, and the women are just going nuts. I don’t get it myself, and I keep looking him over, checking moves and form, trying to understand the appeal. Skinny, gawky, uncoordinated, decent muscle tone but not that much muscle, and the skateboard routine is way beyond lame. He’s not in the same class as the beefcake delights that came before, so why are the women so crazy over him?

No inspiration, so I give up studying the guy and start scanning the audience, hoping I can learn something from their behavior. It’s a cross-section, all ages and classes and even a few non-Caucasians (still having trouble getting used to seeing this many white faces all together), but they seem pretty unanimous in their response: crazy for the geek, go figure. One at a table by herself, dressed with a kind of understated class that to me screams trust-fund baby or professor type, she’s watching him with a little smile and one eyebrow tilting up, and I can see she’s enjoying the crowd reaction as much as the show. Two together, young brunette and older redhead (mother and daughter, maybe?), the brunette is whooping it up and grabbing at Mom’s purse for dollar bills, and her mother or aunt or whatever is fending her off and trying to look embarrassed, but she can’t keep her own eyes off the stage. Table of five, four Anglo and one Chicana but all of them classic Valley Girls, slamming back Blue Lagoons and mai tais and speculating loudly about what they might do if they decided to take Skateboard Guy home with them. Two of the larger tables shoved together, close to a dozen women, late thirties to early forties, PTA clear down to the toes; some are acting like the Valley Girls, but most are like redheaded Mom, nodding and smiling and having a high old time without getting intense about it. One in the corner, hanging back …

Danger prickles the skin on my arms and neck and I continue the scan, not letting it linger on the woman in the corner, suddenly understanding what’s going on even while I wish I hadn’t put off scrounging a weapon. Snapshot glimpse: pale hair, long and drawn back, pale eyebrows, dark haunted eyes, old-fashioned clothes that look stylish without being expensive. She’s riveted on Skateboard Guy like he’s an antelope and she’s a cheetah, or maybe the other way around, but she’s not enjoying herself, and that explains what I’ve been seeing till now. He’s having fun, and it shows, and they’re having fun watching him, and it just loops from them to him and back again, every female in the place except for me and that one.

This was supposed to be a side-trip, a little personal extra worked in while I was dealing with the main job. So how come all of a sudden I feel like I’m standing in a shooting gallery, trying not to go quack?

I’m already in motion, automatically seeking some spot where I can sink below her notice … but she’s moving, too, and not in response to me, her eyes are still locked on the stage, it’s more like she recovered from some solid shock and decided to make herself absent. Reassuring, at least a little, but I’m not letting it go, I shift my course to match hers at a position that should be just outside her peripheral vision. Even if this won’t pose an immediate problem for me, I still want to get some idea of what currents are flowing right now.

I’ve been making the rounds of anarch-raves since I was twelve, so a light crowd like this shouldn’t pose the least challenge … and it doesn’t, but the pale woman still beats me to the exit with a bigger lead than she had at the beginning. She’s not even hurrying, just gliding straight ahead in a way that somehow never intersects any of the people in her path. Maybe I could have kept up without attracting attention, but it ticks me that I should even have to try; whoever this woman is, she’s better than me in at least one area of physical capability, and I’m just not used to that at all.

My pride carries a price tag: by the time I hit the parking lot, there’s no sign of the woman. There are others here and there, leaning against various vehicles, talking and laughing and piping in particulate carcinogens for relaxation. Plenty of places for my target to be hiding, too, the poled lamps provide lots of light but also lots of shadows, hidden areas, blind spots between parked vehicles … but somehow I don’t think so, her body language said she was running but not from me, and I don’t know any way she could have spotted me. And, even if she did, I still want to know the shape of things here.

The Fabulous Ladies Night Club sits by itself just off the highway a few miles outside Oxnard, but there’s a mini-mart/ coffee shop about a hundred feet up the road, close enough that the pale woman might have gotten there and slipped from sight if she’d increased her speed when she got outdoors. I quickfoot across the scrubby grass intervening and transition to the crushed rock of the shop-mart parking lot. I’ve come up on the back of the building, and I swing around the east side to emerge at the front, eyes sweeping the bright-lit lot and the highway beyond for some glimpse of my unexpectedly elusive quarry …

A low chuckle ghosts from the shadows behind me, and I jump like a tasered ferret, spinning and cursing myself for a dozen different kinds of idiot, amateur, slackwit, disgrace, waste of living space … Okay, so it’s not quite that bad, I should be wiped for stupidity but this isn’t a trap, just a momentary annoyance. A piece of the side wall juts out past the face of the main building, and tucked back into the semi-alcove it forms is a parked motorcycle, and the no-doubt-owner coming to his feet with a lazy menace that I can tell is really supposed to impress me. Young, lean, hard muscle and tattoos and scars and leather and chrome … I truly don’t know whether to yawn or laugh. Make no mistake, I can see at a glance that this specimen is perfectly willing to carry me off by force, terrorize me and rape me and maybe snap my neck in the mellow afterglow and tootle on his way musing happily on how grand life can be; I just have trouble taking him seriously.

“Hey, there, sweet cheeks,” he says with the mandatory leer, making a show of stripping me with his eyes. “Wanna straddle my hog?”

The material has a smitch of originality, but he loses points for the delivery. “ ‘Hog?’ ” I repeat, and punctuate it with a phtt! of derision. “ ‘Little piggy’ would be more my guess.” I swivel to head back across the grass, adding, “Go knot yourself, nadless.”

As expected, his hand is on my shoulder before I finish the first step, and his voice is ugly with anger. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, cu–”

I follow the direction he started when he pulled me around, continuing across the front of the shop-mart and letting my eyes register the interior — no sign of the woman — without actually turning my head to look. Behind me Little Piggy croaks and thrashes on the ground, which can’t be doing his leathers any good. I’m not in the best mood right now, but I behaved myself; I didn’t quite blind him, he’ll be able to resume breathing in another minute, and the thumb will probably be usable again after a few weeks in a cast. (He may or may not need surgery on that knee, though.) Damn it, where could the woman have gone? There are two possibilities here, and I don’t know which thought pleases me less: that she could have picked up on me despite my care, or that she could have vanished so thoroughly and effortlessly without even knowing I was there.

I don’t like mysteries and I’m not exactly long on patience, but I give myself a mental smack and head back across the grass to FLN. It’s time to get myself under control; I’m here on a mission, stopping by to see the geek was an indulgence already and I’ve compounded it by honing in some weird woman watching him. The thick-neck at the door doesn’t ask to see the little stamp on my hand, just steps out of my way, maybe he remembers me or maybe some of the kick-the-crap-out-of-somebody frustration I’m feeling shows in my face. For that thought, I apply another internal smack: Pull it together, togglehead!

I can’t have been outside for more than a minute or two; up on the stage, Geekboy is winding up his routine, so many bills stuffed into his jock he looks like he’s wearing shrubbery. What is it with this guy? The files told me where I’d be able to find him about now, but there were no reports of him being stalked by some nameless, mysterious female …

Oh. Right.

I sit at the only empty spot immediately in view, the second chair at the little table occupied by the woman I marked down as a college professor. I don’t look at her, I keep my face toward the stage and let my face settle into the open, happy smile I see all around me. Basic camouflage, I’ve got my bearings back and now I’m just staying under the radar while I sort out the last of it.

‘Nothing in the files’, oh yeah. Which of the files don’t have one supernatural woman or another fixating on him? This boy is the Bermuda Triangle of normal relationships, a moving centerpoint of perpetual chaos. If the pale woman is undocumented it’s because she’s not significant, just one more piece of wreckage rolling in his wake. I can relate, but it doesn’t mean I care, I’m light as long as her agenda doesn’t cause any complication or inconvenience for me.

The music flares as he leaves the stage with a grin and a wave and one last exaggerated grind of the hips, and a lot of happy satisfied women sit back and call to have their liquor replenished. There’s one mystery settled, then: just going by his yearbook photo, I couldn’t figure how a dweeb like that could be so popular at a place like the Fabulous Ladies Night Club. Now I know, some freaky personality chemistry between him and the audience, probably the first time in his life he ever got anything from female onlookers besides groans and snickers. Still a lot of questions up in the air, but a fair return for a spur-of-the-moment recon.

A glance at the clock over by the bar reminds me that I have actual business scheduled for the evening. No real crunch, still twenty minutes before we’re due to meet, but it won’t hurt to check in. I flip open the little StarTac and punch in the contact number I set into the speed dial earlier today. Hold the receiver to my ear, half-turn to signal one of the servers for a drink …

Two feet away, Professor Jane is pulling a cell phone from the small, classy handbag in front of her, and through the festive chatter around us I can hear the thin breeep! of the ring. She pauses for a second as our eyes meet, takes in the phone I’m holding, and then presses the TALK button on hers. Through the StarTac and across the table she says, “Harry Doyle.”

“Right,” I say into the phone. “I was going to confirm our meeting, but I’m guessing that won’t be an issue here.” I break the connection and fold away the little cellular. “Wasn’t expecting to run into you in this joint, but then nobody told me Harry was a gal’s name on the West Coast.”

“It probably wasn’t until I got here.” Her phone goes back into the handbag, and she favors me with a serene little smile. “This looked like a fun place to wait until we were due to meet … and you have to admit, the show was entertaining.”

“Skateboard Guy?” I snort at that. “Yeah, he’s running some juice, but I’m damned if I can say just what makes it work.” I nod at her instead of offering my hand; this is a professional meeting, even if the setting is casual. “I’m Dina Musci, but I’d say you know that already.” I pronounce it Mew-see; don’t want to get too close to the actual word, she’s one who might recognize it.

Her return nod is equally brisk, as if to say, Okay, we can keep this impersonal, if that’s how you want it. Fine, because I do. “Your e-mail inquiry intrigued me, Ms Musci. Not many people know of my area of study.”

“Word gets around,” I reply. “And the word is that you bring a new perspective to cataloguing demons.”

“It’s true that I don’t quite follow the traditional track,” she agrees. “I’m more concerned with learning the ways different demon species have adapted to the modern world, than with studying old histories and battle reports in hopes of finding new techniques for killing them.”

I keep a sympathetic, approving expression on my face, like I agree that killing demons is gauche behavior. “So what can you tell me about Skira’ads, in general?”

She considers the question, and me, with level eyes and no particular hurry. It would be easy to underestimate this woman; behind the pleasant features and fine bone structure is a methodical mind that weighs each step before taking it. “What precisely is your interest in this matter, Ms Musci? Ethno-demonology is a small and rather insular field; we don’t get many outside inquiries, so we generally want to know the asker’s agenda before we start reeling off data.”

That brings a smile. “Afraid I’m a stringer for the Weekly News of the Warped? Sorry, I don’t do the Ames-and-Paris thing.” As a stab at humor, I could have managed better. She’ll have already checked out the credentials I formulated so meticulously, so it’ll be my motives that she’ll want to clarify.

“Lurid publicity would be unwelcome,” she acknowledges, that level expression not shifting by a thousandth of an inch. “But I was actually thinking more in terms of exploitation. I don’t want to be reviving myths about demon-derived aphrodisiacs, rejuvenation serums, cursing fluids or undetectable poisons, and I don’t want to offer aid or encouragement to anyone seeking such ridiculous and wasteful trivia.”

Quietly as she says it, I can still see I won’t be able to dodge here. She’ll get an answer that satisfies her, or she won’t play. “There’s a research group in Australia’s Northern Territory,” I tell her. “They’ve been running a biosphere study for close on three years now, tracking how some of the lesser … ‘non-mundane life forms’, they call them … interact with terrestrial flora and fauna in a sealed ecology. They’ve gotten some indications that a Skira’ad might be settling in nearby in the next few months, and naturally there’s some interest in whether they can set up wards and keep the environment uncontaminated, or if they’ll need to relocate. That’s why your name came up: you’re more likely than most to give us a reliable forecast on the thing’s probable behavior.”

“I heard of something like that,” she says. “Is Dr. Pearson still project coordinator?”

“Pearson keeps up the staff inoculations,” I say, letting myself sound annoyed. “Overhardt is the guy making most of the decisions. Look, I don’t blame you for being cautious, Dr. Doyle —”

“Just Harry,” she says.

“Okay, then, Harry. Careful is good, I’m fine with careful. But think about what I’m asking here: I’m not pumping you for weaknesses, habitats, physio-glandular makeup, any of that. I just want to get your read on whether the Skira’ad is likely to disrupt the operation. Will it be aggressive, intrusive, easily provoked, territorial, what? I want to know what kind of behavior they may have to deal with. That’s all.”

She gives me another nod, of considered acceptance, and I chalk up a score for advance prep. You always want to mix in as much truth as you can, which means knowing the facts and keeping them straight. Besides, I didn’t actually say I worked for Overhardt’s bunch.

“I don’t suppose it really matters,” she answers at last. “It’s impossible to predict these things with complete certainty, Ms Musci, but offhand I don’t foresee any problems for your project. Skira’ad are typically quite gregarious, for demons. Not with each other — unless it’s their mating cycle, and that’s only three weeks every twelve years — but they’re totally captivated by the intricacies and contradictions and irrationality of human social behaviors. As a rule they’d be uninterested in the kind of remote location you’re describing; if one did show up there, it would probably be because he was deliberately seeking solitude, which means he’d shy away from the area once he discovered it was occupied.”

“Huh.” I weigh the information. “They like human contact?”

“In much the same way some humans like origami or video games or model trains.” She smiles at the blank look I can feel on my face. “Skira’ad enjoy playing at human conventions, which makes it easy to think of them in human terms; but we have to recognize and respect that they’re not human, never will be, and don’t really want to be. When I’m studying any demon culture, I keep telling myself over and over, Their ways are not our ways. Partly for safety, but mostly so I look at what’s actually there instead of attributing what I see to some familiar human motivation.” Her face is animated as she warms to the subject. “For Skira’ad, the closest parallel, and still a clumsy one, would be those stereotypical English squires that live only for their dogs and horses. It’s more than a hobby to them, almost a mania, but it’s still only a small aspect of their total nature. They’re them, we’re us, and we may have some things in common but we’ll never be the same.”

“Okay,” I say. Her obvious enthusiasm makes me suspect I might be able to coax more out of her. “With that kind of difference, I have to wonder how they go about satisfying this urge to mix with the pink primates.”

She shakes her head. “Skira’ad have developed a knack for making themselves useful, and there are always going to be people who don’t care about the species of who they’re doing business with, as long as the transaction is advantageous. Real tolerance is rare, mostly there’s a profit motive in there somewhere. As a result, the kinds of humans that typically associate with them … well, let’s say they’re not exactly exemplars of polite society.”

Makes sense; cocktail parties aren’t really designed for seven-foot, mustard-colored warty anteaters. “So, basically, one of these things would be more comfortable in a semi-urban area, and he’d be mixing with some pretty unconventional citizenry?”

Her manner cools by a degree or two; I’m not asking quite the right questions for what I’m supposed to be. “Not many demon species can pass for human, even briefly. One that wants to deal with humans must, by necessity, focus on those that aren’t too choosy about the company they keep.” She stands, picking up the handbag. “I hope I’ve satisfied your concerns, Ms Musci. Now if you’ll excuse me …”

“Yeah, sure, thanks.” I should be peeved — I had hoped to get a little more from her, and it’s not good that I let my character slip when I should be focused — but I can’t really make myself care. She’s not my only source, and I have other things on my mind, and the more time I spend with her the less I feel like extending the experience. “You’ve been a big help. I’ll pass the news. If I need to reach you again for anything, will that number still be good?”

She nods without pausing, and is headed for the door in the next second. I’m definitely winning friends and influencing people tonight; my game is way off, and worse, it doesn’t bother me near as much as I know it should. I’d never have sold my people on sending me here if I’d done this poorly in mission prep; something is messing me up tonight, and I really can’t say what it might be.

I should work on figuring that out. Really, I should.

Instead I start drinking. Even in a regular bar I wouldn’t have any trouble being served; I look older than I am (one reason Harry Doyle was ready to accept me as a globe-trotting trouble-shooter, plus I had already dressed professional casual in anticipation of the meeting), and I paid for top-quality work in my ID. Here, with the pre-screening at the door and the crush of festive women inside, it’s dead easy to keep ’em coming. I’m no connoisseur and I’m not too butch for girlie drinks, I go for the fruity frozen kind — margarita, melon margarita, piña colada, strawberry daiquiri — in quick succession, guzzling all four in not much more time than it takes to mix them.

By the time I finish the last one, I have the mother of all brain-freezes and I’m battling an urgent impulse to leap up onto the stage and start singing. (Something from the Morisette oeuvre, maybe, or Etheridge after she hit the skids and turned bitchy.) This isn’t what I was aiming for, I wanted to get looped but now my head is clanging and my belly is churning and I’m feeling surlier instead of tranked. Whatever is eating at me, hooch isn’t the route to burying it. Time to bring all this fun to a halt and call it a night.

I’d thought the cooler night air outside might help clear my head, but that’s not how it works, there’s a heavy, humid wallop to it that almost makes me gag. I move away from the building and off to the side, trying to get enough distance that I can maybe find a little breeze. Not in the cards. I hear the words — “There, that’s the bitch!” — and swing to face the sound, and maybe things are finally looking up.

Little Piggy is back with reinforcements, two sweaty meatsacks in almost exactly the same outfit he’s wearing: one has a brushy beard and one wears a big gold hoop earring, but otherwise they’re cookie-cutter identical. “ ’S’matter, boys?” I throw some extra slur into the words, and act like I’m just managing not to stagger. “Zookeeper run outta bananas or somethin’?”

Piggy uses a word I don’t recognize, then to the others he says, “Look at her, drunk off her ass. We’ll never get anything out of her like this.”

“So we’ll use her ass for somethin’ else till she sobers up.” This is the bearded one, and instantly I know he’s the one to watch. Piggy has his hand splinted with duct tape and what looks like corrugated cardboard, he still sounds raspy from the shuto to the throat and he’s keeping his weight off the leg I damaged; he won’t be much of a problem, and Earring is waiting with the vibrating eagerness of a born follower. No, Brushyface is the alpha here, his next words more like passing sentence than giving orders. “We’ll work her slow, soften her up and have some yucks while we’re at it. Time we’re done, she’ll be cryin’ to give up her boyfriend, count on it.”

That one throws me for a second. “ ‘Boyfriend?’ You guys dipped or something?” Then I get it, and the laugh bubbles out of me. Little Piggy would never admit a woman painted the pavement with him, so he invented some bruiser I’d sicked on him. Which also means his buddies won’t be remotely prepared for what I can do, so that’s how I play it. “I’m unescorted at the moment, boys, but that don’t mean I’m looking for your charming faces.”

Even before he moves I know how it’s going to happen, I’ve read their postures and attitudes and I already have it planned. Brushyface starts for me with his face clouding into a scowl and I quickshift to my right to keep him between me and Earring, then slam a raking kick down his shin with the edge of my shoe, hardly any structural damage but the unexpected pain will paralyze most men for a second or two. Before he can recover I nail him at the hinge of the jaw with a foreknuckle strike, Earring is still trying to dance around his falling leader and I vault straight over Brushyface to take out the second banana before he can set himself, and Piggy’s on his own now and he’s just starting to realize what kind of deep goo he’s standing in —

That’s the theory, anyhow. What actually happens is this:

Brushyface starts for me with the predicted scowl, I start the right shift, and something crashes into him at an angle from the rear. He’s jolted straight into me while I’m still trying to correct my original motion, and all three of us go down — me, Brushyface, and whatever lunatic decided to deal himself into this scenario. My balance was headed somewhere else, I’m not ready, I lose all my air and damn near crack ribs when I hit the pavement, bodies tumbling over and off me. I’ve been trained hard, though, I bull through the pain and surprise and I’m back up on my feet, and again I’m shoved off balance, and a shaky voice is saying, “Stay behind me. It’ll be okay, I promise —”

Oh my God. It’s the geek.

Crap. Crap. Crap.


Part II

I check the mirror in the morning, and it’s official: I look like hell. Sunken eyes, dry lips, an oblong bruise down my left cheek (don’t remember getting that one, must have caught an elbow during the debacle at FLN) … my skin has a gray tinge, and my whole face looks pinched. I feel just about as bad, too much stress and too little sleep, the ribs don’t catch when I move but they still ache, and there’s a throbbing in the back of my skull where the leads were inserted. (All through my training and acclimation the techies kept telling me that had to be psychosomatic. Either way, it still hurts.) I need forced hydration, two pounds of raw meat, and a day at a spa.

I make do with a shower. That eases away some of the stiffness but doesn’t accomplish much else. While I’m toweling out my hair I glance at the laptop on the little desk next to the draped windows, and can’t help shuddering. Duty or no, a girl can handle only so much on a morning like this. Same for the blinking “MESSAGES WAITING” light on the hotel phone: later.

Breakfast is a Denver omelet and nearly a quart of tomato juice. While I’m rinsing that down with lots of ice water, I review my situation. I’ve established a base of operations, a cash store, transportation, all of the necessary equipment, and a few extras. I’ve met with one of the reference sources I was supposed to consult, and a second is scheduled for this afternoon. During my surfing safaris I’ve cruised the real estate listings, police reports, zoning requests and rulings, commercial licenses and tax records, I’m methodically building the picture that will consolidate into a latticework of facts and inferences. I’ve been here ten days, with another thirteen left in the event window, and so far it seems to be proceeding as planned.

The downside is disturbing but not really definite. I’ve gotten in bad with some local leather crew, which was good for momentary diversion but could be an increasing distraction as things continue to develop. Too much of my online activity — both jacked and manual — has been devoted to personal interests as opposed to professional: more police reports, medical records, various news agency digests, community bulletin boards and chat rooms … cralphet, I even ran a facial recognition search to see if I could find a match for the pale woman from the club. (No luck. Closest hit was on someone from a Prince video in the Eighties, and how likely is that?) My behavior last night is alarming in just too many ways, and like it or not I can’t help but recognize the reason.

The geek. Even knowing what I do, even with all the reasons not to, I’ve let him get under my skin. He’s disaster in sneakers, that boy. Looks younger than I expected, too …

The door at the waffle place dingles as it opens; I chose a booth in the back with a clear line of vision through all the windows, but the newcomer came out of the sun and my first sight of him is as he steps inside. Three guesses who.

Okay, number one on today’s schedule: get a gun.

He aims straight for where I’m sitting, his head thrust forward like a giraffe’s and Adam’s apple bobbing in time with his steps. I do a quick internal check and, no, the omelet won’t be forcing its way up any time soon … but jeez, this is what the future of humanity rides on? Book me a flight to Venus already.

“I know you don’t want to be talking to me right now,” he’s saying in a rush as he draws level with my booth. “But I couldn’t let you just —” Words and body jar to a stop as he gets his first close view of my face. “Whoa. Um, you’ve probably picked up on this, what with me babbling it repeatedly, but have I mentioned I’m sorry?”

He thinks my visible condition is from last night’s dustup, rather than from me going etherhappy after I got back to the hotel and plugged in. Fine, let him stew. “Sorry for what?” I keep my voice flat to crush the slam of adrenaline his appearance called up. “Nearly breaking my frigging neck so you could act out your White Knight fantasies, or souring my breakfast with your lame-assed pickup lines?”

“Gee, I’ll have to go with door number one on that one. I …” He stops, sighs. “As the official West Coast distributor for Screwing Up Royally, I should be used to this by now, but, hey, somehow the exhilarating jolt of guilt and humiliation just keeps on perking away.” He sits down, uninvited, eyes earnest and intense. “Are you okay? I didn’t really have time to check, after —”

“After the bouncer yelled that the cops were on the way? Which, incidentally, is all that kept me from mashing your face with a brick.” I don’t try to hide my disdain; if anything, I ramp it up. “Did I ask for your help? Why do you men think a woman can’t possibly take care of herself?”

“It wasn’t yourself that worried me, it was the three sloping foreheads lining up to do the hokey-pokey on your skull.” Even though he fired that one right back at me, both face and voice are defensive, and I file the fact for future examination: with all his history, he still isn’t really brimming with confidence. “I mean, sure, you don’t exactly have that helpless vibe going for you, but three-to-one is pretty sweatworthy unless you’re …”

Now he hesitates. “A man?” I finish grimly.

“Uh, no, I was actually thinking ‘bionic’.” His grin is lopsided and almost convincing, and I have no doubt that he was thinking something else entirely. “I have the whole Y-chromosome thing down pat, and I wouldn’t be dumb enough to face odds like that.”

It’s too easy; I don’t say a word, just raise my eyebrows and wait. The grin flattens into something rueful, and he says, “Okay, I stand corrected, I’m every bit that dumb. So, what, if I truly respected you I’d think you’re just as brain-dead as I am?”

The laugh surprises me, but he seems to have expected it. I stuff it back down, I’m not going to be won over that easy. “You don’t know anything about me, anything at all. What made that throwdown last night any of your business?”

“To which I say again, three to one.” He has his balance back, this boy clearly has considerable experience dealing with verbal hostility. Maybe I should add some knuckles. “Look, I just wanted to give you a decent apology. I mean, I came looking for you because I know I stuck my foot in it last night. I hope you’ll let me make it up to you.”

“Yeah?” I clench my hands under the table, nails biting into my palms. “How?”

That brings him up short where accusation just made him dig in. “I didn’t … I’m, uh, I’m not … All right, so I didn’t work out the total concept in advance.” His shoulders slump a little, and this time the smile is uncertain. “If you had any stables to shovel out, would that be suitably humble?”

He’s saying all the right things, so I don’t have justification to go off on him. I stand with enough suddenness to make him jerk, but I manage to keep my voice (and fists) under control. “We’ll call it even with the apology, okay? We’re square, you get on with your plans and I’ll take care of mine.”

“Okay.” He stands, too, starts to hold out his hand and then seems to think better of it. Smart boy. “I’m, I’m Xander. Xander Harris.”

I know. “I’m thrilled,” I say, and slap a ten on the table so I can get out before I explode.

I’m not ready for this, whatever is happening to me is coming in on my blind side, but I manage to hold it together. I don’t assault anyone, I don’t destroy anything, I don’t peel the skin from my face or scream my throat raw. I go back to the room, shower till the hot water runs out, then flop down bare and dripping on top of the bed covers and sleep for another three hours.

By the time I wake up and get dressed, I’m finally ready to check the messages recorded at the front desk. Three of them: two from Harris (how the hell did he find me so quick?), the last from my second consultant, confirming this afternoon’s appointment. Good enough. I have a leisurely sumptuous lunch at a seafood house, and leave feeling mostly back to human.

I did some basic scouting of Oxnard and the surrounding area when I first arrived, but that was just to provide a reference framework while I learned more. Now, after a week of gathering information, it’s time to put it into context. I crank up my motorcycle — Honda 650, not one of the monster chrome stallions favored by Piggy and his ilk — and spend a couple of hours cruising town, integrating what I learned online with what I can see of the city, letting myself get a feel for the staging area.

Twice I see other cyclists wearing the colors of Piggy’s crew, a pair at a traffic light and three more at a small truck stop half a mile further on, drinking beer in the parking lot while their machines rest next to half a dozen others, the riders doubtless inside making the staff nervous. None of the men I see are among the three I fought last night, but I maintain a discreet distance anyhow; I don’t need additional hassle just now, and I may be a bad bitch but I’m not invincible. (Damn near, but not quite.) In fact, the numbers I’m seeing make some contingency planning look like a good idea, so I do a spot of shopping at pharmacies and health food stores, returning my purchases to the hotel room. There, after I’ve sorted and arranged various ingredients, I jack in for twenty minutes and plant some useful subroutines in the city utilities grid. That done, I check my appearance, do some touch-up with the rudimentary cosmetics available here, and head out to my afternoon appointment.

First sight of him is less than reassuring. Our meeting spot is a little outdoor café; I’ve parked the Honda around the corner to allow a more conventional approach, and he’s facing half-away from me as I come up the sidewalk. I know his record, and I was even able to get access to a couple of photos, but they don’t match what’s in front of me. Dark hair, wire-framed specs, lean features, conservative suit: all that checks, but then things start to go downhill. He’s … wispy, somehow. Thinner than I expected, but it’s more than that; his clothes are good quality, and neatly pressed, but they just don’t hang on him right, so that they look rumpled even though they’re not. His features sag, as if he’s exhausted at three in the afternoon, and one hand dangles off the edge of the glass-topped table in a position that can’t be comfortable but doesn’t seem to catch his notice. Depressed, despondent, lost … limp, like a dog that’s been kicked so many times it doesn’t bother to dodge anymore.

Sunk into some interior mopefest, he isn’t aware of me until I’m already seating myself at his table, and his lagging perceptions trigger a quick flurry of abortive responses — stand up, sit back, nod, speak, extend a hand — either stifled as too late or tangled in the trailing impulses as he struggles to catch up. At last he surrenders and stays where he is, primness falling over him like a too-thin armor. “Good afternoon,” he says with threadbare dignity. “I hope I may assume you are the person I was to meet at this hour. Whether or no, I am Wesley Wyndham-Pryce.”

“Dina Musci,” I acknowledge, crisp enough to match his attempt at formality but with a little smile to reassure and relax him. “I’ve been looking forward to consulting with you, Mr. —”

Uh-oh. His eyes sharpened as I introduced myself, and he tilts his head to take me in with a sudden attentive curiosity a long way from what I wanted from him. “Really?” he says, the single word easy and dry and coming from an entirely different man. “I was aware of your name, of course, from our brief correspondence, but to hear it pronounced …” He reflects for a moment, his eyes still holding mine, and says, “I shall presume, as a courtesy, that you’re not simply having me on.”

With a sigh I settle back in my own chair. “Nope, it’s the real deal. Not many people catch it, so it’s been awhile since I had to explain.”

“Indeed.” He’s looking less rumpled by the second, calculation flitting behind now-steady eyes. “Your parents are, perhaps, academics, or botanical professionals?”

“I wouldn’t know.” I’ve been doing some calculation of my own, and fast; my single slip, giving my name its proper pronunciation, has changed the tenor of this encounter. Not a disaster, maybe, or even necessarily a disadvantage, but I will have to alter my approach. “I never knew my parents,” I continue. “But when I finally got my records unsealed, my official name at birth genuinely was Dionaea Muscipula.” I give it a beat, then inject just the precise shade of bitterness. “No surname, and no mother or father listed. Just that.”

“Ah.” As I intended, the unsought confidence has made him a touch uncomfortable. “All the same, the choice of name would indicate some possibilities regarding your parents.”

Forget it, Wesley, you’re staying on the hook awhile. “Yeah, if either one of them had anything to do with it.” I lean across the table, encroaching on his space. “I’ve had time to give this matter some thought, Mr. Wyndham-Pryce. Whoever farmed me out for adoption put a lot of work into covering up everything about where — or who — I came from. Not a professional job, but more thorough than most professionals would have done it. There are two reasons to go at it like that: to protect someone, or to cut them off totally from their little ‘mistake’.” I show some teeth. “The cover-up went deeper than it had to. Overkill. That, and the name, tell me it was personal for whoever did it, but at the same time there’s a kind of detached distaste about it. Whoever did this didn’t much like me, or maybe just what I represented.”

“The, um …” He’s beginning to lose his recent returned poise, which was the idea; another minute and I’ll be able to steer him without any problems. He clears his throat and begins again. “The name is of course … provocative … but not overtly hostile —”

“Oh, give me a break!” I glare at him. “You knew what it was, even with my little personalized reduction: Latin for ‘Venus flytrap’. What kind of bent mind names a baby for a frigging plant — and a carnivorous plant, at that — in a language nobody speaks anymore?”

He’s down to a dither; he swallows several times, eyes darting in a near-panic at this unwelcome intimacy. A shame, almost, his scholarly confidence was a lot more attractive than the kicked-beagle look, I just didn’t need it lasering in on me. “So how’s your demonology?” I say with forced jocularity: obviously changing the subject, and he should be so eager to cooperate that he’ll leap ahead without further wondering about my background and, by extension, my motives.

Bull’s-eye, he’s on it with pathetic desperation. “I would say I have a solid grounding,” he rushes to assure me. “There are many with greater knowledge, naturally, and several with more practical experience, but I like to believe I am one of a rather small number who’ve had the opportunity to acquire both.”

“Good to hear.” I’m back in the pilot’s seat, this meeting is now mine to command. “Had any practical experience with Skira’ads?”

He ponders it, again clearly shuttling through facts and implications. “None direct, but there’s a substantial amount of data available on them.” He essays a nervous little smile. “It’s paradoxical, but their comparative harmlessness makes it markedly easier to learn about them than about more dangerous species.”

“I know they’re fairly sociable,” I prompt him. “And I’ve heard they’re fairly short-lived, for demons: what, a hundred and fifty years?”

“I believe one hundred, eighty-one to be the known record,” he says, nodding, “but one hundred, fifty would be a fair average.”

“Right. I know what they look like, and it’s said that your typical Skira’ad is about as strong as a really strong human, a little slower than human norm, and has ‘phenomenal’ endurance. Does that match your info?”

“Yes, basically,” he says after weighing it for a second. “The …” He cuts it off as a waitress stops at our table (I order a cappuccino, always wanted to see what those things tasted like, and Wesley just asks to have his tea topped off), then picks up the sentence again when she leaves. “The observation about endurance is ambiguous, but probably pertains to their ability to perform at full function without sleep for almost three weeks.”

“Mmn. Handy.”

“And costly,” he says, fussily precise. “As they approach that limit they become preternaturally intelligent and violently paranoiac. The combination has proven … problematic.” A thin smile. “Fortunately, they themselves seem to find the experience disagreeable. Otherwise they would hardly have such an innocuous reputation.”

“Okay, good, so far I’m in the field.” I lean forward again, this time engaging him without being intrusive. “But what are they like? What’s their basic nature? The essentials, I mean, the things that make them what they are?”

“Essentials,” he repeats. He steeples his fingers. “Well, to begin, Skira’ad are biphasic. Those that appear in this dimension are either better able to tolerate a linear chronology, or less bound to multiplanar temporality, than are their homebound kindred. There are theories —”

“Brake and loop back,” I tell him. “You lost me at ‘biphasic’.”

“Oh. My apologies.” For a second he seems ready to wilt, but apparently decides that explanation is a challenge he can meet. “Skira’ad originate in a reality not only separate from our own but differently structured. Some believe they might be an offshoot of the Rwasundi; like that species, their home dimension has time-flows far more intricate and far more prone to twists and intersections than our more prosaic experience with straight-line progression. Rwasundi, however, cannot visit this dimension without inducing localized chronal eddies, whereas the presence of Skira’ad produces no such distorting effects. In most cases, at any rate.”

“That makes a little more sense, thanks. Only, not criticizing here, what does it matter to us, as long as they leave their own habits behind?”

“That is quite the point.” He actually beams at me. “The most interesting characteristic of Skira’ad is that they can divorce themselves from their origins, so that their xenotemporal nature doesn’t manifest itself to us.” He tilts his head at a new thought. “Of course, it does mean they can’t be imprisoned.”

Really? “That sounds juicy. How do you mean?”

“Well, as best we can determine, Skira’ad remain in our segment of reality by suppressing some aspect of their biphasic nature. A deliberate act, at first, though it seems eventually to become automatic. A, um, a mundane comparison would be to human bladder control.” He shoots me a nervous sideways look, maybe afraid I’ll take offense at the indelicate reference. “At any rate, if a Skira’ad loses this control, or chooses to relax it, he is immediately drawn back to his home dimension. This makes it effectively impossible to hold one captive.”

The waitress returns with my cappuccino and Wesley’s refill, interjecting a natural pause into the conversation and giving me time to reflect. Not doing bad so far: from Harry Doyle I got a general sense of Skira’ad personality and behavior, and now Wesley’s given me a beginning sketch of their overall nature and how it operates on this plane. The part about them being unjailable rules out one possibility; some of the reports from this locale floated a faint suggestion that the demon in question might have been acting under coercion, but how do you strong-arm something that can blip straight back to home and Mommie the moment it stops choosing to remain? That narrows things down a bit, and soon all the uncertainties will have been checked and dismissed, and I’ll have a framework of solid facts.

Woops, 1999 to Dina: Wesley is asking a question, and I just barely catch the tail end of it. “–sity regarding your interest in this matter?” Some of the steadiness has come back into his tone, and I make a note that this guy may be a wet noodle when it comes to personal issues, but put a problem in front of him and the bloodhound starts creeping in. “My experience has been that the occult attracts four basic types of person: academic, dilettante, power-seeker, and entrepreneur.” He regards me with an expression that somehow blends a small smile and a slight frown. “Your credentials are reassuring — this assuming that they’re genuine —” (whoa, don’t show the jolt) “— but you seem a bit too practical for a dilettante, and rather young for an academic.”

He stops there, letting it hang and waiting to see how I’ll respond, and on the fly I decide to alter my legend. I’m not sure why, just seems like the thing to do, and I go with it. “The background you have on me is solid,” I tell him with the proper note of irritated confidence, “but yes, it’s a few months behind the curve when it comes to my current activities.”

“Which are …?” he prompts gently.

“Demon hunter,” I shoot back. “Freelance.” Wherever the idea came from, it’s taking hold on me, and on the whole fits me a lot better than the cover I was given. “See, your little industry summary left out a category: cleanup crew. Somebody has to go around mopping up little messes before they turn into big ones. I got tired of running support for departmental types, and decided it was more appealing to be my own boss.”

“Independent demon hunter,” he muses, trying out the sound of it. “I must say, I would hardly think a Skira’ad would be worth your attention.”

I let out a heavy sigh. “Yeah, I’m starting to think that, myself. I had reports of a Skira’ad, and it seemed worth checking out. From what I’m hearing, though, they don’t really swing the needle on the threat meter. That’s why I do research, so I don’t throw away my time on things that don’t matter that much.”

“Minor disturbances,” he says in apparent agreement, sinking into a contemplation that immediately shifts toward melancholia. “Unimportant ripples that can be safely ignored. Pleasant, I would think, to have the luxury of choosing your battles.”

I bite back a savage retort, surprised at having to and not sure what caused it. Even if I stifled the words in time, though, something must show in my face, because Wesley is right there. “Yes?” he says.

I shake it off. “Not my business,” I tell him. “And I’ve already used up enough of your time.”

He makes a little gesture to indicate our surroundings and his presence in them. “As it happens, my afternoon is free.”

I stood up during my last comment, ready to leave, and now I sit again. “I take it back,” I say. “It may be personal, I can’t really say, but it is my business, because I don’t know if what you’ve been telling me is worth a plated pockhorn.” I fix my eyes on his, forcing all the belligerence I can project, and demand, “What the hell is eating you?”

He stiffens like I just dipped him in shellac. “I beg your pardon?”

“Look, I arranged to meet you because I needed background info, and you have a good reputation as a researcher. But then I come here, and I can’t tell if I’m dealing with a competent authority on the supernatural, or a ruptured basset hound. You fade in and out from one moment to the next.” A third time I lean across the table toward him, and this one is direct challenge. “Whatever your problem is, I want to know about it. Give me a reason not to write you off as a waste.”

The rigid air of affront goes right out of him, and he slumps in the wrought iron chair. “A waste,” he repeats, ghost-soft. “Yes, that would be a fair assessment, I’d say.”

I’m not having it. “Talking to yourself, there, Wes. News flash: I’m the one who’s waiting for an explanation.”

Someone should advise him against taking up poker as a career: I can see him measuring the words it would take to chop me off cold, and I can see the moment he decides the effort isn’t worth it. He looks to me through gray sadness and, his voice quiet but firmly under control, says to me, “Your question is … not impertinent, I will grant you. You may find the circumstances of my present funk somewhat tedious, but I will explain them if you truly wish it.”

“I wish it.” I let some of the hard edge go out of my own face and voice, and add, “You don’t have to do a raw data dump, just lay out the broad outlines and I’ll let you know if I need more detail.”

“Very well.” He puts his hands on the table top, studying them with vague curiosity while he sorts his thoughts, then begins. “I am, in fact, well acquainted with what you termed the ‘cleanup’ role; as it happens, I was carefully trained to serve in a support capacity for just such persons, and for the past several months it was my responsibility to do so.” He raises his eyes to mine, and I’m surprised to see steel there as well as the expected raw wounds. “I made a poor beginning, and steadily worsened matters as I proceeded. I alienated those who were my primary charges, disregarded or underestimated others whose abilities or experience could have proven invaluable, and systematically made the wrong decision at every possible occasion.”

“Bummer.” I turn in my chair so I can lean back and stretch out my legs in front of me. “Kill anybody?”

He doesn’t react to the cheerful brutality of the question, which tells me something in itself. “People died,” he replies evenly. “I don’t believe myself to have been … directly responsible, for any of it, but there is no knowing what could have been prevented, had I proven sufficient to the task.” He pauses, mouth twisting in some flash of pain or regret, then continues with stubborn resolution. “You must understand, I spent my entire life preparing for this responsibility. It was more than a duty: it was a privilege, not only far exceeding my own deserving, but beyond any opportunity that had ever before existed. I was to have two Slayers in my charge, and on an active Hellmouth —” He looks to me. “You, erm, you know the essential facts regarding Slayers …?”

“Yeah, I know about Slayers.” Do I ever. “And your curriculum vitae made it pretty obvious you were with the Watchers.” I let my gaze dissect him with open appraisal. “Can’t say I knew you’d been the Watcher of the moment, or that you’d let the whole show go tits-up. How’d that happen?”

The last was a test, and again he doesn’t react; my man is so immersed in his own sense of shame, outside condemnation doesn’t really register. “I was sent in originally because the Council felt the situation had unacceptably deteriorated. I was to rectify that. It was made clear to me that I must exert a firm hand from the outset, stressing proper protocols and unswervingly adhering to official guidelines.” He looks into a distance that my own eyes can’t reach. “You must understand that the Council are superb in those areas where they function best. They regulate every aspect of training, of education, of introductory experience, of preparation for duties ahead. Nothing is left to chance, no smallest detail unanticipated or unguided. They have been doing this for … millennia, perhaps, and they have refined it to a scalpel edge of effectiveness. Not unexpected, then, that they might fail to emphasize that practise in the external world is … sloppier, less exact, more intuitive, all too dissimilar to the controlled circumstances that characterised every aspect of my preparation.”

Bogging down here, and I show just enough of a yawn to make the point. “I’m still with you.”

His jaw firms. “Very well. To summarise, I failed. Badly, repeatedly, and with demoralising thoroughness.” A tiny wrinkle appears between his eyes, the smallest possible visible evidence of a frown. “My very first experience in the … field of battle, if you will … set the tone for all that would follow. A colleague and I were captured; I tried to bargain, to play for time, to secure our survival until we could be rescued or find the means to effect our own escape.” Again he brings his eyes to mine; no apologies there, no excuses, just bitter self-acceptance. “I told myself that it was a ploy, no more: to exaggerate my terror, the extent to which developments had overwhelmed me, my desperation to hang onto life. It gained us a few moments, but I fear my colleague was far more convinced than were our captors.” He looks once more to his hands on the table top, withdrawing into some deep and shadowed place. “Any respect he might have been willing to grant me, vanished in those minutes of babbling pleas; nor can I be certain he was mistaken. I will never truly know how much I would have told, had the knowledge been mine to reveal. I know only that I never recovered; ever after, I questioned my fitness for the position, and at every juncture following I found that whatever attribute was needed at a given time — be it courage, judgment, leadership, or even the competence to carry out simple tasks — was one I lacked.”

Right. He’s adequately explained the gloom and listlessness, and all I want now is to leave. All the same I search for some rudimentary transition, if only as practice for a time when smooth interpersonal function might be important. “You had a bad run, I won’t argue.” I stand preliminary to departure. “I don’t see any reason to trashcan your info on the Skira’ad, though. You may need some time to pull your act together, but you’ve still got the right tools for the job.”

He actually sniffs at that. “I could debate the point, but it’s irrelevant. The Council sacked me after my disastrous showing, so the matter is no longer in my hands.”

It makes me mad, which is nothing new, everything is setting me off these days. Sometimes I swallow it, sometimes it’s too much to hold in, and sometimes — like now — I don’t bother to try. “Look, Wes, you screwed up. Big time, sounds like. And you know what? I don’t care. Wallow in it, get over it, but either way do it on your own time, because I’m busy here.”

He goes away behind those eyes. “Of course. I apologise for troubling you with my difficulties. It’s none of your concern.”

“Screw this.” I toss some bills onto the table to cover my drink. “You don’t like your life? Change it. Do something, and if that doesn’t work, do something else. At least it’ll get you moving, ’cause you sure as hell won’t accomplish anything by sitting here weeping into your crappy tea. As for me, I’m outta here.” I proceed to turn the exit line into reality.

And, forty seconds later, I’m back at the table. He refuses to show any surprise or puzzlement, and I’m equally damned if I’ll look apologetic. “What did you mean, ‘most of the time’?” I demand.

That brings an expression, a kind of lofty tolerance that doesn’t sit at all well with me. “I’m sorry, you’ll have to be somewhat more specific,” he responds.

“A little while back, you were saying something about Skira’ads being able to ramble around in our neck of the woods without their foreign origins messing up the environment. And then, like there was an i you hadn’t dotted yet, you said …” I pause to call back the exact phrase. “You said, ‘In most cases, at any rate.’ ”

“Ah. Yes, indeed.” He reflects on the words. “As I observed earlier, we have quite an amount of information and observation available regarding Skira’ad, so that a relatively rare occurrence nonetheless has substantial supporting documentation. Upon occasion, certain Skira’ad individuals have shown a tendency for their nature to exert a temporary destabilizing effect upon their immediate surroundings. Rare, as I said, but there has been speculation that the folklore regarding gremlins might have sprung from this fact.”

Gremlins. And I almost missed it. “Go on. What kind of effects, how long do they last, how bad can it get, and how would somebody make it stop?”

Now is when he could get starchy with me, after the way I talked to him before. If the thought occurs to him, it doesn’t show. “Those that do manifest this disruption faculty, seem to serve as catalysts. It isn’t a deliberate act, their very presence alters the probability ratios in their vicinity. They cannot themselves ‘turn it off’, nor to my knowledge can anyone else. Severity of results varies with individuals and circumstances, and only their departure from this plane will bring about the cessation of the phenomenon.”

“Got it. Send ’em packing to wipe out the negative vibes.” I consider what he’s told me. “Probability ratios, you said, and you mentioned gremlins. So, basically, the ones with the inline whammy cause bad luck wherever they go?”

“Not precisely.” His expression is showing something now, and I think I can read it: he’s evaluating me, weighing the fact that I can ream him out one minute and be back pumping him for more data the next. (Good luck figuring me out, Wes, the success rate on that is zero so far.) “They make the normal ‘laws of chance’ far more fluid, so that the unlikely becomes less so. It can just as easily result in good luck as bad, however; and of course, fortune for one might mean something far different for another. The effects are unpredictable, chaotic.”

I nod at the words; a big puzzle chunk just fell into place, and now I have a lot better idea what to be looking for. Wesley, I see, is watching me without expectation. Not on edge, not hyped or bummed or anything, just waiting to see what comes next.

Me, I’ve got no answers. “That should be about it,” I say. “Much obliged.” I turn, stop, sigh, turn back. “You’ve got a pretty good brain there, Wes. Ought to figure out some way to use it. None of my business, I’m just saying.”

“Thank you,” he replies, even and grave. “I shall take it under advisement.”

Fine, maybe I should have just told him to get a hobby. I give him a curt nod, and again I walk away. This time nothing calls me back.


Part III

I’m itching to get back to the hotel and start following up my latest information, but I stick to discipline, continuing my tour of the city. Not exactly a dreary task, I can soak up general impressions while I let my mind sift through what I’ve learned. The visible demographic doesn’t quite match the official information: Oxnard’s population is just under 180,000 people, 66% of it Hispanic, but as I cruise the city center I’m seeing almost as many pale faces as brown, the ratio closer to half-and-half than two-to-one; maybe most of the Latinos congregate elsewhere, or maybe this is the wrong time of day. Twice I see South Coast Area Transit buses, and the passenger mix seems to cut across all classes, not like the mass transit nightmare I’ve heard about for the larger cities. There are also more men in uniform than I had expected. The Naval base at Point Mugu only has 9,000 military staff, but somehow their presence is more widespread than their numbers would suggest; I see men in Navy whites situated all through the downtown area, taking in the sights and window shopping and indicating by word and gesture their approval of any nearby females. I draw a few whistles and invitations myself, which doesn’t really move me one way or another, but at least shows I’ll be in the running if I ever get in the mood for a relationship. The last is only an idle thought in passing, the majority of my attention is on the final tidbit I just got from Wesley.

I wasn’t given as much pre-briefing on this job as on most. I understand the reasons (steering clear of causality loops is one of the first things they drum into you), and it was a small cost for the chance to follow out my own plans, though I did a certain amount of grousing for form’s sake; but the bottom line is that I was dropped in here with only the sketchiest of instructions. Find out what I could about Skira’ads as a class. Locate the Skira’ad situated here. Learn as much as possible about that particular individual without making myself known or setting up interference patterns. More data than that, it was suggested, would pose too big a risk of priming me for upline disruption, and they’re really ticky about that kind of thing. I had my own agenda, so I accepted the terms with a small show of disgruntlement.

Now the picture is settling into shape. I’ll bet a year’s rec credit that the Skira’ad I’m supposed to track turns out to be one of the tiny minority that stirs up trouble just by walking down the street: a natural generator of exactly the type of disturbance my people are so hell-bent on making sure we never create. That would certainly explain why a minor demon would be worth the hassle and expense of setting up even such a carefully restricted operation.

I’m no slacker. I always planned to do the job while I checked out my personal sideline issues. I’m half a dozen steps closer to that now, and the third consultant I arranged, just as a backup, all of a sudden looks a lot more promising. It took me time to get moving — that’s how it works, establishing an identity and infiltrating the system and building a cash fund for social and professional lubrication (hell, just finding clothes once I was dropped on that beach!) are all things that have to be seen to before the real work can start — but I’m building up momentum maybe a couple of cycles ahead of schedule.

I swing the Honda over to the curb and pull the StarTac out of its belt clip. I already have the appointment set for tomorrow, but now that he’s no longer an afterthought I’m feeling the need to reinforce the scheduling. This could be really important, and his file doesn’t exactly depict him as one of the most reliable —

Peripheral vision is fuzzy on detail but extra-sensitive to motion. The flash I catch in the corner of my eye is guaranteed to lock my attention: jerky, urgent, well short of panic but clear over the line into agitated. I don’t look, don’t make any quick moves that would pull notice my way; I sit exactly where I am, holding the StarTac but not dialing, and in three or four seconds the subject in question has moved into my direct line of view.

Right. Had to be him. I’m not even surprised at not being surprised.

He’s moving down the sidewalk in fast, jittery strides, the whites of his eyes easily visible as he darts furtive glances toward the street. Pacing him there, in a loose triangle with its base toward him, are three members of Piggy’s crew, two riding Harleys or pretty solid imitations, the third on a cycle whose make I can’t identify but that roughly matches the others in size and style and apparent power. The engines are running barely above an idle, the deep throbbing grumble of a lion that’s not inclined to move but wants you to know he’s watching you; the riders are grinning to each other and to the geek on the sidewalk, they’re not ready to land on him yet (too much fun to watch him sweat for awhile), but they’re making it clear that he’s not getting away without the kind of hard time that usually means long-term rehab.

Two thoughts hit me at once. The first, springing both from my training and from my own preferences, is, I really don’t need this. The second is that I don’t have a choice. The CroMags wouldn’t be on him if I hadn’t inserted myself into a process already in motion; which means, at the professional level, that I’ve initiated an aberration I have to correct, and on the personal side, I owe him some help whether I like it or not.

I only wanted to see him, damn it, get a look and move on. Repeated interaction was not on my agenda. There’s no helping it, though, calling the police would bring in too many new variables. Somehow I have to pull events back into line, which means direct action.

I truly don’t like him. And I’m starting to get tired of this city, too.

That whole sequence of thought takes something like two seconds. I use another two to extrapolate their likely course for the next several minutes, then I’m parking the bike and crossing the street to the nearest automatic teller machine, pulling the card connecter from the slung handbag even as I arrive. I poke the key card into the slot and catch the leads on the trailing wires; quick glance to be sure I’m not being observed, then I position the leads in the proper spots at the base of my skull, and push.

Like always, I flinch as the metal points puncture the thickened pads culture-grown just under the surface of the skin. It doesn’t hurt, the sensory neurons there have been permanently deadened, but there’s a wrongness to the crunch of gristle being penetrated that never lessens for me no matter how many times I go through it. Unwelcome, but necessary, and a small price: in the next instant, infinity opens up to me, and I’m back where I belong.

I damp down on the euphoric rush of entry, there’s no time, I keep the channel narrow and center on the immediate task. It only takes a few moments; the ATM lets me into the bank computer, and from there I can reach out to anywhere, and I’m not really thinking at lightspeed (the data flow still has to pass through a pitiful, plodding organic brain) but the synergy between my neural network and the microchip embedded there accelerates my thought processes a thousandfold. Most of what I needed, I had set up in advance and just have to trigger; the few extra commands are instituted as quickly as I can think of them, and then it’s time to pull back, pull out, let go and get moving.

It’s jumping off a supersonic transport and landing on sandpaper skis pointing uphill, which means I take longer on the transition than I did doing my work in virtual space. Even so, before Harris and the Pig Posse finish making the corner at the end of the block I’m back on the Honda, kicking over the engine and heading out.

Away from them.

In any conflict, whatever the type, there’s one guideline you have to follow: never play fair. ‘Fair’ means by the rules, and rules means it’s a game, not a fight … but the silly fact is that most fights do have rules, inherent or taken for granted, so if you can recognize the rules, you can figure which ones to break for best advantage.

The Posse, probably without thinking of it in those terms, is following two sets of rules right now. The first is contained in their pack hierarchy: somebody messes with one of yours, you seriously mess with him. A subset of this prescribed behavior deals with the style of retribution, which in some circumstances would be an excruciating bloody spectator sport, but here and now means they’re going to drag it out, let him stew in his own helplessness while they herd him through the center of a well-populated city, only a few yards from aid and safety but unable to access either one.

The second set of rules is dictated by the immediate physical and social situation. As soon as I recognized that I might find myself back at odds with these losers, I did a fast online sweep for info on motorcycle gangs in general, with particular attention to this specific outfit. I found that, in the main, groups like this work hard at looking tough. They may occasionally tangle with outnumbered civilians (or less frequently with rival crews), but the whole mythos about them rolling into a town and riding roughshod over the citizenry is strictly movie stuff; any bunch that tried that would have everybody from the county constable to the National Guard lining the highways to hose them down with bullets. The Pig Posse’s behavior runs in subconscious acknowledgment of this need to keep a relatively low profile. They want to be noticed, and feared, but they can’t afford to cross from potential threat to immediate danger; so, they’ll chivvy the geek away from the public eye before starting in with boots and chains.

All of that gives me time, opportunity, and the beginnings of a strategy.

The Posse and their target are moving at brisk walking speed, so I easily cover two faces of the block while they’re completing one on the opposite side. I’m in no rush, I’m gauging traffic flows and patterns, measuring it against the pace of the others and the optimum timing window; in fact, I slow just a bit so Harris and I will reach the second corner more or less simultaneously. He checks for a second at the sight of yet another motorcycle about to cut across his path, then continues on toward me as I turn my face his way for a second to give him a clear look at me.

Okay: the geek, the Posse, the traffic signal, the vehicles passing through at the cross street … this is the best I’ll have to work with, so I’ll have to make it count. I pitch my voice to a level that should reach him without carrying to his pursuers, and say conversationally, “Jump on when I give the signal.”

His mouth tightens. Not looking directly my way, he gives me a half-inch nod, and steadies his steps. I’m coasting now; when I’m almost at the cross street and he’s almost at the curb, I say, “Now,” and hit the throttle.

No hesitation, you have to give the boy credit. He lands in the saddle behind me as the Honda surges forward, and we zip through the intersection at the exact moment the light facing us turns green. We caught the Posse off guard, they’ll be able to hang a right onto the street behind us as soon as a gap opens, but for now we should have a solid six-second lead. I make the most of it, jinking around the cars ahead of us and jamming the RPMs to redline.

The boy behind me hangs on with a desperate disregard that I could take personally if either of us had time to pay attention. “Oh, man,” he moans, his mouth about three inches from my ear. “Are you gonna be able to outrun ’em?”

I don’t answer in words, but my laugh is a hard bark that cuts through the scream of the motor. Your standard Harley has an 1800cc engine (I looked it up), almost three times the capacity of what I’m riding; if it was just a matter of speed, we’d be cooked before we started. My bike accelerates faster, though, and it’s a lot more agile, and I have a clear picture in my head of the city grid for this section and a feel for the traffic rhythms. That’s the hand I’m playing.

He starts to say something else, yelps and grabs tighter as I nearly cut out from under him in a hard left. It’s not fast enough to keep the Pig Posse from seeing where we went, I get a shutter-blink glimpse of them in the side mirror before we’re through the turn, but again they’ll have to find a break in the vehicle flow before they can follow. “Shut up!” I call back to him. “Hang on, keep your balance over the centerline, and shut up!”

I don’t have a hope of losing them, but I put on a show anyhow, all frantic swerves and rubber-smoking cutovers, the geek clinging to me like a lamprey and whimpering at intervals. The Posse trails me happily, so gleeful at our inability to shake them that they don’t notice we’re managing to hold our lead. Or don’t care, maybe; they have the advantage in numbers and machinery, it’s all a matter of steering us to a place where a) we can no longer dodge effectively, and b) there are no witnesses.

I’m ready for things to go wrong, I have three different contingency strategies in reserve, but the operation stays routine. By the time they notice the sirens, the sound is really close; I go straight for it, with a contemptuous little wave down my backtrail. One by one they peel off and zoom away, vanishing from my mirrors, but I don’t let up till we meet the two police cars, tearing past with lights and sound going full-blast. Then I tuck into a side street, cruise to a stop, and say flatly, “Off. Crisis over, free gropes now off the menu.”

His hands fly away from me fast as magnetic repulsion, and half a second later he’s standing away from the bike. “Okay, that was a nice, gulpalicious few minutes,” he observes. “Glad my taxes are giving our local law enforcement plenty of zippy caffeine to wash down all those doughnuts.” He tilts his head a little and looks me over. “Coincidence, right? Or did you drop a dime?”

“I’m pretty sure they were on their way to something else,” I say, looking back where we came from. (A silent alarm going off without any visible reason, for instance.) “If anybody had put in a call, it would have been about the way we were streaking through traffic, but it didn’t look like the super troopers were interested in us. Our lucky break for the day.”

“I’ll make a note to sacrifice another Twinkie to the gods of the Lucky Break,” he says, nodding agreement. Then his face settles into an exaggerated severity, and he adds, “So-o-oo, isn’t this where I chew you out for leaping to my rescue without being invited?”

As a dig it’s pretty mild, but it still increases my regard for him, just a little. I show it by curling my lip in blistering disdain. “What, you’re gonna file a complaint? I hadn’t come along, those scuzzwipes would’ve chopped you into wussy lasagna.”

“Just pointing out the oh-so-subtle parallels,” he says in return. “What is it with you women? Do you just assume a guy can’t handle himself?” There’s no heat behind the words; he’s enjoying himself, watching to see if he can get under my skin.

No chance. “Wait, don’t tell me,” I say. “I know the next part: something about three to one, wasn’t it?”

He shakes his head, easy and amiable. “Well, how about that?” he says. “You remember the line. And there I thought you were too busy troweling on the righteous indignation to pay any attention to my incisive reasoning.”

“I didn’t give it much credit, but I did notice,” I fire back. “Just like I notice you’re trying to slide away from the fact that I pulled you out of crap soup while you were wishing you could scream loud enough for your daddy to hear you.”

Something jerks in his eyes when I say “daddy” (most people wouldn’t notice, but hey, I’ve got issues of my own), but smile and voice don’t carry whatever it is. “Could be,” he says gently. “But ya never knows, does ya? I’ve been up against gang members before; I’m still here, and they …” Disarming grin, calculated twinkle in the eye. “They took up horticulture.”

He’s got tone and tempo perfect, so out of respect I give him the line. “Horticulture?”

“Intensive study of root systems,” he says, straight-faced. “From underneath.”

It’s a damned good turn of phrase, but I act like my laugh is in reaction to the attached claim. “You took out a gang, on your own? What, were they standing over a trapdoor?”

“Fast moving and clean living,” he tells me. “One was strategy, one was luck, one was pure terror and adrenaline, and the last one, the leader, I stared him down and convinced him to take his nefarious evilness to somebody else’s playground.”

I can feel my face harden; this story is new to me, but it has an authentic feel to it, and I’m damned if I’ll be impressed. “Hip-hip for you,” I sneer. “Bet you trot the story out for your best buddies whenever life makes you its butt-monkey.”

He regards me with raised eyebrows. “ ‘Butt-monkey?’ No, I’ve never told anybody about that.” He frowns. “I don’t even know why I told you. There’s just something …” He stops, seconds from death; if he says, There’s something special about you, I absolutely will rip out his windpipe. Oblivious, he gives his head a sharp shake. “It’s weird. You really seem familiar. I mean, sure, we never met before yesterday, but I feel like I ought to know you, I just can’t say why.”

“Women don’t stick in your memory that long, huh?” I can’t help myself; the antagonism is genuine, but once again it’s outside my control.

He caught my mood change when it hit, I could see it in the little muscles around his eyes and mouth, the shift and squaring of his shoulders; now he just gives it up, and sighs. “Always thought it was the other way around, myself. Anyway, thanks for helping. You didn’t have to, and I really appreciate it. In, you know, a manly way.”

He keeps doing that, and it just makes me more angry: why can’t he act in a manner that’ll let me hate him properly? Moving chaos, I called him before, and his effect on me has my emotions caroming in every direction like an overcharged pinball. I tell him to go stuff it, except what comes out is, “Which way were you headed before those leather-jockeys picked you up?” He looks confused at the sudden switchback (join the club, Harris!), and I add defensively, “It’s just a ride, okay? It doesn’t have to mean we’re engaged.”

This time he sits an extra inch back of me as I drive, resting his hands on my shoulders rather than hanging on normally. We don’t talk. I follow a route that won’t cross the path we took here, swinging wide of where I figure we’d be most likely to run into the Posse again, so the return trip is substantially longer. When I’m roughly parallel to where I first saw him, I ask, “Where from here?”

“Um, right at the light there, straight for four-five blocks, then bear right again at the little cul-de-sac. That’ll put me close enough.”

Either from sheer contrariness or from some impulse I can’t trace, I keep going once I reach the designated point, asking, “Which one?”

He indicates a two-story house halfway down the block: older style, modest but based on what was in vogue just before the 20th century came piling in. He’s off the bike the moment I ease to a stop, again steering well away from unnecessary touch. “Decent digs,” I observe. (What, am I trying to stretch out the interaction here? That would be just too pathetic, so I add a barb to the next words.) “I had you figured for a basement somewhere.”

“I wish,” he says with a shake of his head. “I get a room at a weekly rate that leaves my wallet bleeding but not quite dead, and I’m supposed to keep any showers to five minutes or less.” Some of the open, ironic smile is back. “Be it ever so humble, you can always find someplace humbler.”

The humor that comes so easily to him is insidious and dangerous; I don’t want to like this character, and I can’t afford to let myself start. “SoCal has a mild climate,” I point out. “You can always find a heating grate to sleep on, and a trash bag to keep the rain off.”

“And don’t think that doesn’t feature heavily in my long-term retirement plan,” he replies with unruffled cheer. “Along with a big sign that says WILL WORK FOR CHEET-OHS.”

Okay, that’s it, I’ll never be able to hold my own in verbal sparring while the crazy stuff inside me keeps clipping me at the ankles. I’m about to cut it off fast, make an exit and find a nice thick tree to brain myself against, when a sharp bang! makes me spin and drop. Overreaction, it’s just a backfire from an antique Saturn passing at the start of the block, I place the sound in a fifth of a second and am already straightening up when Harris grabs me, once again trying to shove me behind him in that automatic protective reflex. I throw him back in a spasm of total blind fury, snarling, “Hands off, Zeppo Boy —!”

Quick as it happens, it’s still like some awful slow-motion rail smash. I can feel the words before they leave my lips, and I know I can’t say them, but the part of me that talks is on an entirely different track from the part that thinks, and I’m helpless to stop it from coming out. Still, though it’s nothing like my jacked-in speed, my mind is running at a rate that only barely corresponds to thought as we know it: not a linear process, but huge chunks of raw concept slamming through like freight trucks. Even as I’m smacking him away, I realize three things in instant slipstream succession.

First, I’ve stuck my head in it up to the shoulders, there’s no remotely normal explanation for my possessing the trivial, arcane knowledge contained in the single pejorative reference. Second, he probably won’t catch it if I talk quick enough and produce a sufficient volume of masking diversion, he’s not stupid but his is not the most focused brain on the continent. Third, I can’t risk it, my idiot mouth has created a problem I’ll have to attack pre-emptively.

I’ve screwed up. I have to do something to fix it. It has to be now.

Realization and act are simultaneous. I stagger, yanking my hand away from his (our first skin-to-skin contact, I think I can use that as a selling point), and stare at him like he just sprouted horns. “Vampires?” I say, breathing the word as if I can barely get it out. “Freaking vampires? And … zombies, witches, werewolves, mummies —?” It would be good if my face were white, but I can’t actually control my autonomic reactions, so I bug out my eyes and let my jaw sag and shrink back away from him. “I thought I’d seen some weird-assed stuff in Philly, but this … godamighty, what are you?” I ‘pull myself together’, narrowing my eyes and making a show of reestablishing control. “And … and just what the hell is a Slayer, anyway?”

He takes it blank-faced; either he’s slow on the uptake, or nothing shows until he’s ready to let it out. “Okay, that wasn’t what I was expecting,” he murmurs at last. “Let’s see: Christopher Walken, Dead Zone, vision flashes whenever he touched somebody …” His gaze sharpens. “You’re psychic?”

I shake my head, the perfect figure of anger and embarrassment. “I don’t know, I just see things sometimes. Not very often, and nowhere near as strong as that one.” I glare at him, tough chick trying to use aggression to grab back the initiative. “All that mess I saw, was it the real deal, or do you just do drugs by the boatload?”

He grins at that. “I come from a town that, if you read the local news, would have to be the PCP capital of North America. But no, none for me, unless you count pizza as a mind-altering substance.”

“Yeah, right. Look, I gotta go.” I back away, making a show of avoiding further contact. “Nothing personal, I just … I gotta go.”

He doesn’t say anything as I remount the bike and pull out, he just stands watching. Once I’ve put a couple of blocks between us, I do a fast respool of my goof and instant repair, and all my judgment tells me I covered myself solid.

It doesn’t change the seriousness of my blunder. I’m out of control where he’s concerned, a disaster in process. I can’t afford any more of that, it’s gone too far already. I have to cut all my links to him: no more, ever, under any circumstances. Done, gone, over, finito.

Should be easy, right? I never wanted to deal with him one-on-one in the first place.

No problem. No problem. I’m good now.


Part IV

I’m enchanted by the gulls. Not many where I come from, and the few I’ve seen were sad, bedraggled scavengers, nothing like the keening flock that surrounds me now. They can almost hover, I didn’t know that, they bob in the air around me like a huge heaving swarm of squalling gnats, and snatch crackers from my fingers until the last of the packet is gone.

My lunch companion watches with amusement and interest as I return to the little table we’ve taken at the wharf, three or four hopefuls still following on the off-chance of further largesse. “You’re subverting them, you know,” he says mildly. “Disrupting their natural patterns, making them dependent on a rather recent bobble in the evolutionary progression.”

“All that?” I answer, and resume my seat across from him. “And here I thought I was just giving them some crackers.”

“No disapproval intended,” he says, and takes a long pull from the imported ale I’m paying for. “I’m all for shaking the tree now and then; I simply like to be aware of the status, effects and implications.” He studies the inch of ale remaining in the thick-walled glass mug, and favors me with a somewhat oily smile that no doubt is supposed to be ingratiating. “Are you sure I can’t persuade you …?”

“Not a chance.” I keep my voice firm. “That’s two for you; if you want more, you can cover it yourself. And if you suck down enough that it cuts the quality of the info you’re providing, it could affect your fee.”

“Take more than this to get me properly pissed,” he says, and drains that last inch. “But I do appreciate a businesslike attitude.”

Now, this probably says a lot about me, if I could just figure out what it means: where Harry Doyle and I subtly rubbed each other the wrong way, and Wesley Wyndham-Pryce left me annoyed and impatient, I’ve been taking real pleasure from Ethan Rayne’s company since the moment he arrived at the little dockside restaurant. He has the most honest face I’ve ever seen on a human being; it’s fascinating, every line, crease and fold marking out a detailed map of dissipation, debauchery, happy embrace of every possible form of dissolute pleasure. Looking at that face is like studying the murals at Pompeii, the ones they won’t let children see on the public tours. Not even the dimmest mind could mistake this for a nice man, but he’s unquestionably distinctive.

His personality is just as striking. The man is totally suited to his chosen role: in the same way a shark is a perfect predator, or a mole a perfect burrower, Ethan Rayne is a perfect cheerful amoral unrepentant scoundrel. “Rotter,” he’d call it, and with pride. It’s refreshing and entertaining and even relaxing in a way, so long as I don’t trust him for a fraction of a second.

Also, and here’s where it starts to get strange, there definitely has been a subtext running through our conversation so far. I don’t know if he just does it automatically with every woman who crosses his path, or if he picked up on something that made him think I might be approachable, but Ethan has been making a run on me — low-key, indirect, but unmistakable — ever since we identified ourselves to one another; and I, while not sending out any green-light signals, haven’t been shutting him down, either. Okay, sure, to some extent I’m getting a kick out of it as just a contributing element in the overall routine, but it’s still unusual for me.

Maybe his attitude explains some of it. Where I come from, getting-acquainted patter usually starts off, “Het, les, or bi?” It’s a great time-saver, as is my standard answer: “Nil.” (Which isn’t entirely accurate. I have a keen interest in sex, I’m just not about to let anybody get too close; and, if you’ve already ruled out any kind of personal connection, what makes people preferable to utensils?) Ethan, though, is unhesitatingly and unabashedly willing to trot in little circles trailing one wing, lay a pebble at my feet, whatever it takes to improve his chances, and there really is something insidiously flattering about having such total, single-minded attention aimed in my direction.

“Raises an intriguing point, though,” Ethan is continuing, eyes crinkled with amusement. “One is supposed to bridle when asked to subjugate his art to the crass demands of commercial necessity; I wonder where the line is to be drawn when it’s a matter of cash versus appetite?” He shoves the mug away with a sigh. “Prickly question. I suppose I should err on the side of caution till I work it out. Shall we proceed, then?”

“If you’re ready.” Originally I had meant to have him available as a general resource, an alternative perspective if one was needed, but recent developments have shifted my aim. “I understand you’re a worshipper of chaos.”

His lips purse while he runs the statement through his mind. “ ‘Worship’ is a bit strong, I would think. A withered, cynical soul such as mine could hardly dredge up so much fervor. But, yes, chaos is an ideal for which I have a pronounced affinity.”

“Nice to have that clarified.” His hand has been oh so carefully drifting toward me across the table, and I withdraw mine with callous deliberation. Flattering or no, this is business. “As an idealist, maybe you can tell me what’s the appeal, exactly.”

“Appeal,” Ethan repeats, and now his thoughtfulness seems to go deeper than affectation. “Part of it’s sheer contrariness, I suppose. People persist in seeing chaos as a negative; one tires of repeatedly pointing out its beneficial aspects.”

He looks to me expectantly, so I play along. “Humor me,” I say. “Explain it just one more time.”

“Very well.” He gathers himself in his chair, ready to launch into what is clearly a favorite subject, his earlier claim notwithstanding. “In casual minds, there’s a tendency to believe chaos is the same as entropy. Not at all; entropy is the gradual sinking of the universe into an undifferentiated state, lukewarm and bland and thoroughly uninteresting. It’s an overall trend, present wherever you look … until you bring in Life, large L. Organic processes run counter to this humdrum winding-down; Life persists in becoming more rather than less complex, bumping upslope in little evolutionary jolts. Not without some reluctance, however: entropy opposes these upstarts, and it requires constant stimulation — radiation, climate changes, ecological upheaval, competition from other sources — to keep them moving.

“When intelligence enters the picture, the complexity takes another spike. Organizational trends outstrip biological processes by quantum levels, but you can still see the same dynamic at work. A group will grow to a certain point and then stabilize, not only ceasing progress but actively resisting any change in its status.”

He rubs his hands, beaming at me out of that wrecked face. “That’s where I come in, myself and lesser lights in the same constellation. Biology or sociology, it doesn’t matter, these evolutionary bumps don’t simply occur on their own, they come about in response to outside stimulus, they change only when change is imposed on them. Without us, life and society would stultify, ossify, stagnate, fall in on itself. The function we serve isn’t just useful, it’s necessary.”

I’m halfway convinced even though I’m ready to break out laughing. Ethan may be a hell of an actor — probably is — but I think he genuinely does believe what he’s saying. Just enough of a smile behind the words to make it seem like he’s trying to con me and I’m not buying, I prompt, “So you’re a public benefactor.”

His return smile is immediate and apparently spontaneous. “Only by coincidence,” he tells me with villainous relish. “I do it because I enjoy it. I’d do it if I was destroying civilization instead of helping it advance, because it’s the best fun there is.”

I do something with my eyebrows. “Really? Sweet-talk a girl, why don’t you.”

He laughs and rubs a finger along his cheek, his eyes on mine. “No discourtesy intended, poppet. It’s just … there’s a game the vulgarian Gates folds in with all those elephantine operating systems bundles of his: FreeCell, they call it, child’s play in terms of technique and strategy. You know the one I mean?”

I don’t, but I’m not about to admit it. “Go on.”

I tried to mask my impatience, but he must have felt it, the same way I feel his amusement deepen. “Well, I’ve played it out of boredom, when I was utterly desperate for diversion and no other activity was at hand. Child’s play, as I said … but you know, there’s an internal structure that does pique some tiny twinge of aesthetics. I’ll find myself delaying what could be a winning sequence of moves, shifting and arranging the files of cards on the screen to construct a particular setup, so that at the proper moment I can set the whole thing collapsing in on itself at once with a single touch.” His smile now is reminiscent, almost dreamy, and not slightly alarming to someone who knows any of his history. “Chaos is far more vigorous than that, far less structured, but the same principle pertains. Wherever I find myself, I watch constantly for that needle-fine pivot point in the flow of mundane events, that whisper of a moment, when a single strategic nudge can explode the orderly processes and produce something entirely new, unpredictable, pregnant with promise and possibility.”

I already knew the man had to be complex, even contradictory, but I still wasn’t expecting anything like this. “You construct this elaborate organization of facts and events, just so you can tear it down.”

He narrows one eye, thinking, and says, “No, more a matter of shifting and reworking existing structures. But the end point is the same, I grant you: push a button, and bang! Down she comes.” He leers at me. “Dismayed?”

“No, just really surprised.” Sometime in the last minute or so his hand has come to rest over mine; I let him keep it there, maybe if his attention is divided it’ll take him longer to start lying to me just for the hell of it. “I never expected someone in your line of work to be so frapping methodical.”

“That’s because you still have a pedestrian understanding of the subject,” he says, turning my hand over and stroking my palm with his forefinger. “Chaos is more than mere randomness, it’s vibrant disorder. Putting it in motion takes time and attention; do it right, and you get all kinds of clash and clangor and pretty sparks …” His voice trails off, and his gaze is suddenly hard and keen. “Hullo, what’s this, then?”

I’ve heard that sound before, it comes when I’ve screwed things clear through, but for the life of me I can’t figure where this one springs from. “Excuse me? Do we have a bugtrack here?”

“Your lifeline,” he tells me, and now his finger is deliberately tracing across my palm instead of searching for some obscure erogenous zone. “It’s snarled, as if it’s trying to loop back in on itself. That just doesn’t bloody happen.” His eyes come up to mine, and the magnetism I felt before has quintupled, but with a flavor of the same intellectual excitement I got from Wesley. “I’ve seen something like this before, once only, when I was performing a spot of unsolicited body art a couple of years back. Didn’t know what it meant, and still don’t, but if you’re anything like the freak case she was —”

Forget it. I pull my hand back, sharpening my voice. “We’re losing our place here, aren’t we? The deal was, I pay, you talk.”

“Indeed it was.” His smile is speculative, like a wolf studying a caribou and trying to decide does he want flank steak or rack o’ ribs. “Emphasis on was. I’m not above rustling up the odd bit of boodle in an idle hour, but now you’ve tweaked my professional interest. Where do you come from, my girl?”

I’m already on my feet. “Enjoy your beer, Rayne. Drown in it, in fact.”

He flutters negligent fingers at me. “Temperance, O fierce beauty. I know I’ve no hold on you, but I do still have something you want.” The smile deepens, becoming enormously more attractive and dangerous. “What do you say, hmm? Quid pro quo?”

I can actually feel my eyes glaze over. “Which who huh?”

A corner of his mouth tightens, but the eyes remain gently amused. “Even trade, sweetling. I answer one of your questions, you answer one of mine. Back and forth, tit for tat. Need I explain further?”

Instinct tells me to throw him off the wharf and leg it for the horizon, but I push that back. I don’t really need much from him, and there’s no way he can learn anything substantive from just a couple of questions. I sit back down, and say, “Fine. But I get the first question, and if I think you’re dancing around the answer, you’ll get exactly the same kind of runaround from me. Tat for tit.”

“And we have a bargain.” He sits back, all too satisfied for my comfort. “If you’re to be first, then, choose your question.”

Normally I would edge around the subject, but I’m not about to lose any ammunition when I have a solid target. “You’re talking about fomenting disorder as a personal thrill, almost an achievement in aesthetics. What if there were such a thing as a random chaos generator? How would you, or somebody like you, react to that?”

He’s frowning now, as if I just said something blasphemous. “Not very well, I’m afraid, not if they share my sensibilities.” He measures me with crinkled brow, and I know he’s calculating how much he has to say if he wants to get good info when it’s his turn. “It’d be like cheating at Solitaire: not something I’d object to in principle, but it takes all the fun out of the game, you only do it if there’s something other — and larger — to be gained.” A tilt of his head. “Acceptable answer?”

It is, actually; I don’t want to let him loose easy, but I can’t think of anything reasonably contained in the question that he didn’t cover. “It’ll do. So, your turn: what do you want to know?”

“Ah, here you have the advantage of me.” His tone is rueful, though everything else about him still projects unrelenting focus. “You’ve had time to think through your major points of interest, and had already acquired valuable data from me before we reached an agreement. I, on the other hand, am confronted with a cloud of mystery, and must expend my currency carefully. Where to begin?” His eyes sweep over me. “Best, I fancy, to first evaluate the facts at my disposal. Across the table from me is what appears to be a Caucasian female of good health and considerable fitness.” He stops, weighs that, and corrects himself. “No, make that a high degree of fitness, I would wager there are several Olympic athletes she might make uneasy. Continuing: her physiognomy, mannerisms, and style of dress suggest an age in the mid-twenties, certainly no more than twenty-six and probably nearer twenty-four …” Again the measured pause, and his smile broadens. “But, you know, there is a je ne sais quois about her, an indefinable hint of someone trying to seem older. Given skin firmness and the vein patterns on the backs of her hands, I believe I’m looking at a young lady of perhaps nineteen years.”

He has me and we both know it, but I’m not giving anything away for free. “What, you want to see my ID?”

Voice and expression are bland, smug. “Well, now, I wonder if I should count that as one of her questions. It would put me two up on her … but no, I believe scrupulous fairness will serve me better just now.” He’s scored again, and again I don’t let it show, and again he knows anyhow. “So. Her speech is colloquial American, but I can’t pin down the accent, and some of the turns of phrasing ring a bit queer. Makes me consider that she might be some other nationality entirely, indoctrinated with sufficient thoroughness to allow her to pass as a native …” This time, when he pauses, I realize what’s happening: he’s tossing out prompts, and reading my reactions. I’m no soft touch, but some people are so sensitive to subliminal cues that it’s impossible to hide much from them. Looks like Ethan is a practiced example, or maybe he’s just on my wavelength somehow. “No, I think not,” he’s saying. “Not even the Australians can project that particular marriage of arrogance and naiveté, though they come closer than anyone else. I’ll mark her down as American, but there’s still a difference to be considered.”

“Sooner or later you have to actually ask something,” I say flatly, toning down the belligerence and being careful to make it a statement. He hasn’t hit anything important, but his insight is still unnerving.

“In time,” he agrees cheerfully, and then goes right back on track. “She handles her business negotiations with a casual firmness that indicates she has no wish to waste money, but also no hesitation in paying what something truly is worth. At the same time, I see nothing of the inbred insouciance that comes from growing up with no shortage of cash. The young lady has more than sufficient funds, then, but she wasn’t born to it. So either she’s being bankrolled — meaning she isn’t so independent as she wishes people to believe — or she’s acquired it herself. If the latter, her tender years and aggressive demeanor would move me to suspect some unconventional means of personal financing. Criminal, most likely.”

Another bull’s-eye, and all I can do is yawn and look at my watch. Yes, there are some Ukrainian Mafiosi who will be deeply pissed if their accountants ever manage to trace through the spaghetti-tangle of transfer codes I ran through their offshore accounts. If I didn’t know Ethan’s capabilities, I’d think there was actual mind-reading going on here. He can’t keep it up forever, though, eventually he has to run dry. “Still waiting for that question.”

“As am I.” He’s in his element, and it strikes me that this is an inversion of my conversation with Wesley: different personalities, different techniques, but he’s taken control and I’m stuck with reacting. “Now, the subject is quite poised, and her confidence seems genuine and unforced. There’s something bristly about her, though, an edginess at odds with her obvious competence. There may or may not be some insecurity underlying that, but there definitely is a strong current of anger: deep, black, volcanic anger, mostly under control but the control is intermittent and uncertain. From whence such smoldering rage could originate … ah, now there is a matter of deep interest, the answer to which could answer much else.” He leans toward me across the table. “My question, then: why are you so angry?”

Right now the reason is, because I can’t break your neck without violating the terms of the bargain. I inhale and exhale three times, slow, and when I’m sure I can trust myself I say, “That’s a big question. A big one. It’s worth a lot more than you gave me.”

“Truly?” He’s pleased, and it has to be more because he knows he has me than from the seriousness of the matter itself; it can’t mean as much to him as it does to me. “I think we both recognize that you have more honor than I do, so I’ll leave it to you to determine. Ask me more, and decide for yourself when you’ve got value to equal what you’ll be called on to provide.”

I am so screwed. He has me cold: he’s played me perfectly, read my personality and sucked me in past the point where I can get out, left me no options, and even knowing it doesn’t allow me to change it. I underestimated him big-time, invited a low-level trickster to lunch and found myself snared by a master manipulator. Putting it back to me was the final perfect touch, as long as I get enough from him to match what I don’t want to tell, I have to deliver.

I try anyhow. “Wouldn’t you rather just have more money?” I ask him, and all the calm I can muster doesn’t make it any less a plea. “I guarantee, my personal issues won’t really mean anything to you. And right now I’d fork over a lot to not have to answer.”

A true sadist would never cut someone loose once he had them hooked, but Ethan actually thinks about it. “You make a telling argument,” he says at length. “And it’s quite tempting. But if you’ll recall, it isn’t your ‘issues’ that caught my notice, but the enigma of what brought you here under such odd portents. For one of my calling, this is a prize not to be relinquished. I sincerely regret what distress it may cause you, but I must know. That’s the rubber.”

Even as a turndown, it shows me an avenue of relief. “We’ll switch it around, then,” I say. “I’ll start telling you things — not my private stuff, but whatever might go along with the weirdness you think you see in me — and you decide when you’ve got enough to cover what you’ve told me.”

Nothing changes in his face, or eyes, or sitting body alignment, but all the same I know I’ve hit my mark. “Neatly done,” he murmurs finally. “I thought I had you wrapped and tapped, but … very neatly done, indeed.” There is real pleasure in the smile he gives me, but no diminishing of his determination. “Be assured, I’ll make certain I get payment in full.”

Okay. The game is as dangerous as ever, but it just became less painful. “I’ve been sent here as an investigator,” I tell him. “I can’t say who — not my secret to give — but all they want is information. I’m supposed to find out what I can about a developing situation and report back. I have training and tools that probably nobody else on this planet can bring to bear, but I’m essentially human. I’m on a mission, pretty routine as far as it goes, and when it’s over I’m supposed to zip right back to where I came from.” Now I’m the one to reach out for his hand. “If you see some crazy destiny in my lifeline, then you know more than I do. I’m just a girl doing a job. Get past the odd fringe items, that’s all it is.”

He’s stroking my hand again, simultaneously ruminating on the palm creases that set him off in the first place, and working the unexpected connection he’s managed to establish with me despite all my wariness and wishes. I’ve judged it pretty nicely, I think; without going into detail that would fatally compromise security, I’ve actually given him more than he gave me. We’re even now, and if he tries to push it, I’m back in a position of strength.

“Where were you born?” he asks me, and there’s a musing acceptance behind the words that tells me he knows he’s lost his leverage; he’s asking out of plain curiosity, and to see what I’ll say.

“Best I can figure, within a hundred miles of where we’re sitting.” I didn’t have to reply at all, but I’m grateful to him for allowing me the out. “Raised elsewhere, like you guessed, but officially I’m a native.”

“And I’ve spent almost as much of my life here as in my own homeland,” he says in return. “You’re back where you don’t truly belong, and I find myself more comfortable in a place that isn’t truly mine.”

“Wow, that’s really sensitive and perceptive of you,” I say. “As long as you’re tossing it out as an observation, that is, and not trying to slide back in for more information.”

“Not for information, no,” he says, and damned if he hasn’t found some sensitive spot in my palm. “I’m trying to remember if I was anywhere near this area, oh, twenty years ago. Can’t say for sure, some of those years were blurred by various recreational chemicals.”

I don’t get it at first, and then I let out the kind of belly laugh I never would have dreamed I had in me. “Oh, that’s rich,” I gasp, wiping my eyes with my free hand. “Is that scruples I’m hearing? Wouldn’t have expected it from you.”

“No, no,” he says, waving it away with mock severity. “Insult me however else you wish, but don’t accuse me of conscience.” Suddenly there’s a lot less distance between us at the table, and his eyes are locked to mine with a force I can’t break. “Whether I would let it stop me has never been tested,” he tells me, straight up without dodging or shading it. “But one does like to know these things.”

The charm this man can bring to bear is frighteningly potent; I actually feel regret at telling him, “Sorry to puncture your fantasies, sport, but you strike out on two fronts.” I count them off. “First, I know exactly who my father is, DNA match and everything, and you’re not him. Second, you’ve got no chance with me regardless. Ever. Period. Full stop.”

He nods, unsurprised. “You wound me,” he sighs. “But why so vehement? I can be quite entertaining in the short run, and I’m told I have some versatility in that most diverting of pastimes.”

“Doesn’t matter.” I shake my head, and for once I don’t try to guard my voice. “You’ll never touch me because you scare me too bad. You got closer to me than I thought anybody could, and you did it in minutes, and that’s where all the shutters come down.”

Neither of us speaks for some time, and his hand rests on mine with no further pseudoerotic ministrations. At last he asks, “What of your mother?”

I’m back in control, I don’t stiffen or freeze or jerk away, but to someone this adept at people-reading it doesn’t matter. I carefully detach my hand, and say, “Why do you ask?”

“You mentioned DNA confirmation regarding your paternity,” he points out. “And before that there was a comment that could have indicated uncertainty regarding your birthplace.” He doesn’t try to reach out again, hand or voice or eyes; he regards me with something that might be mistaken for gentleness. “Do you even know your mother’s identity?”

I stand up, unhurried and unflustered. This has gone too far. “I think I’m done here,” I say.

“It’s possible,” he says, “that I might actually be able to help you.”

“It’s possible,” I shoot back, “that you could get enough inside dope to really start screwing with my head.”

“Yes,” he says. “It is.”

And leaves it there.

And I’m sitting down again.

I don’t know how he knows, but he knows not to say anything. We watch one another across the table, and after almost five minutes I’m the one to break the silence. “No, I don’t know who my mother is. And I’d give almost anything to find out.”

“As I’m sure you will, now or later.” He lets the physical distance stand between us; we’re past the point of his frivolous (if earnest) little mating dance. “You’re a most determined young woman. So near to the place of your birth, and on a mission … such an opportune turn intimates that you might have arranged these circumstances.” A little quirk of his lips shows that he’s read my affirmation in the response I can’t even feel. “You’ve been doing dual duty here, then, seeing to your assigned task while pursuing your own ends in the meantime. Tell me, have you made any inroads in your search?”

I no longer have the spirit to resist, and I’m not sure it would make any difference if I did. With some sense of relief I give him a fast summary of what I told Wesley about the arrangements to erase the facts surrounding my entry into this world. I wind it up, “Whoever it was covered all the bases. I’ve done everything I could to backtrack from the stuff about me that couldn’t be wiped out, but the only real lead I got was an accident, and it didn’t tell me much.”

“Ah, but it told you something.” He tents his fingers. “Go on, fill in the picture.”

“Not much to tell,” I say. “My birth records are all gone, like I’ve already said, and false ones left in their place. But, a record that wasn’t mine, at the county courthouse … well, it was a photostat, and the original document got folded over so that part of the one that had been behind it got copied, and it ties in with just enough that I know it had to be my mother.” I shrug. “It was only a corner showing, really. All I got was the file identifier — a file that no longer exists anywhere else — and my mother’s initials.”

Ethan’s eyes are distant as the mind behind them flits through facts and tangents in a way my own brain never could, microchip or not. “County courthouse,” he repeats. “But you said within a hundred miles, so it’s not this county, is it? And you couldn’t know it was your mother’s file unless you had ruled out all other possibilities and it was the only one left.” He rubs his upper lip without much enthusiasm. “The sheer drudgery it would entail makes me shudder, but surely you could work your way through old population and residence and tax records until you encountered a name that would match the single fragment you recovered.”

“I’ve tried.” I force my clenched fists to relax. “I’ve tried. But if there’s anybody anywhere in that area who falls within the right parameters and ever had the initials DNR, I haven’t spotted it yet —”

“What?” His head comes up, nostrils flaring. “DNR, you say?”

“Yeah, that was it.” The swiftness of his response makes my heart jump, but I push that away. It’s impossible, there’s no way he could know …

“The small corner you saw,” he says. “On the miscopied photostat. Was it from a medical record?”

I don’t want to let it happen, but even so I’m beginning to hope. “I can’t say for sure, but I think it must have been. It doesn’t match the layout format of anything else.”

His fingers drum on the tabletop. “I’m afraid I may have bad news for you, poppet. No certainty, but …” He frowns. “Sometimes, between projects, I’ll fill the hours by immersing myself in American television. Horrid drivel, most of it, but one can acquire a stupendous store of arcane and mostly useless minutiae that way. If you’ve screened the pool of candidates and found no possibilities, it’s likely those weren’t your mother’s initials after all. DNR is a common medical abbreviation, you see: Do Not Resuscitate.” His hand is covering mine again, squeezing it as if to impart strength. “If this was your mother’s file, as you seem certain it was, then she will have had a terminal illness or dreadful injury, or perhaps been in a comatose state, and instructions were given that no ‘heroic measures’ were to be used to revive her if her heart stopped.” One last squeeze, and he withdraws his hand. “I’m sorry to be the one to say it, but very probably she’s dead now.”

I came to terms with that possibility a long time ago, but it still amazes me that he could zero in so quickly on a vital clue that’s eluded me for years. “I don’t believe you,” I say, regarding him with wonder. “You’re not real. How can you keep coming up with these things?”

He laughs, the old roguishness oozing back into his expression. “Non-linear thinking, sweet child, that and years of experience at rascality. Oh, my old grandmother used to insist I had a touch of the Sight … but then, Gran ate Marmite straight from the tin, so there you are.” He twinkles at me, knowing it’s wasted but enjoying the effect anyhow. “You know, I believe I’m entitled to another pass at that ale, after all.”

“You’ll get it,” I tell him. “And a bonus on top of that.” I stand up, opening my purse and pulling out all my ready cash — hell with it, I can always get more — and drop it on the table in front of him. Four wrapped packets of twenties, and worth every note of it. “You’ve earned it, and I’m grateful.”

He’s quick; the packets are gone as soon as they touch the table, and he’s smiling amiably up at me. “And deeply appreciated it is. But are you certain I can’t interest you in anything else?” The smile deepens, as does the subcurrent running between us. “I did note, you know, that it wasn’t my little insinuation of possible paternity that had you marking me off — girl after my own heart, you are, never let principles interfere with pleasure — and I know this little procedure with lotions, some silk scarves, and a spirit lamp …”

“Why do you even try?” I’m smiling, too, even though my resolve is firm. “I already told you why that area is off limits, you have to know you can’t change my mind.”

“Indeed I can’t,” he replies, languid satisfaction velveting every word. “But I can leave you speculating on just what you’ll have missed.”

And I’ll be damned if he hasn’t done exactly that.

I’m well away from the marina before it fully sinks in that he also got most of what I was so desperate to keep to myself.

If I can’t do better than this, I’m headed for a major splash and burn.


Part V

I’m back at my hotel room at a speed that can’t be topped without rocket assist, and jacked in as fast as my fingers can make the connection. I’m on fire to start chasing down the opening I’ve been given, but my first act is to run a little autonomic subroutine to strip away the tension built up during my lunch with Ethan. I don’t use that one very often (I’m more hands-on by inclination), but if you need to relax and get your head clear, “–?3O” will do the trick in quick order. One cycle and I’m back on balance; another minute to let my breathing steady, then I set myself and dive into the data stream.

Ever since the first time I sat down to an optical interface, I’ve been stumped by the same problem: no matter how deep I dug, no matter how wide I cast or how many gigahertz/ terabytes I allocated to the task, the search was hopeless. The best I could do was build a shadow-picture around the outline of what wasn’t there, because no amount of power or thoroughness or guile could unearth records that had ceased to exist long before the search began.

Tweaking the options on this mission so it would begin here, and now, was supposed to get me past that roadblock. Technically it had, only to leave me with a problem almost as formidable: finding the traces of something that was only just now in the formative stages. I didn’t have anything to catch hold of, I just had to keep questing in likely directions and hope to spot something that would provide a starting point.

All that has changed now.

Forget obstetricians, counseling services, free clinics, pharmacies, “family planning” centers (in case she checked out other possibilities before deciding to let me live). Forget all the reasonable avenues, even the ones that still apply have already come up dry. Shift the parameters, look for trauma centers and emergency rooms, hospices, oncology wards, diagnostic clinics, long-term care facilities. Sift through powers of attorney, living wills, organ donor registrations; backtrace through police and EMT reports, run a slider through the CDC, watch for any shift from medication A to medication B because A is contraindicated during pregnancy. Court records of cases fighting for or against termination of life support. Grass-roots volunteers gathering donations for poor Lula Sue who’s been plugged into the Vegematic ever since that tragic inadvertent combination of Midol and Everclear …

No good. No good. I keep being led back to the same place, the same person, and that one is a stark impossibility. Oh, everything matches on the surface: timing, contact reports, event histories, even blood type, it’s perfectly plausible. It simply can’t be. There are too many agencies and organizations involved — hell, even prophecies! — there’s just no way this could have happened the way it’s been laid out without someone knowing about it.

It’s a setup. I’m dealing with a layered defense here: delete everything that can be accessed, and then start laying down false trails to deflect an adept and determined searcher from the few facts that might remain. There may even be more below that: viruses, partitional traps, logic bombs … the organic/ cybernetic synergy built into my system has been a priceless advantage up to now, but it makes me a lot more vulnerable than the run-of-the-mill hacker to code-level triplines.

Who would do this? Who would have the skill, the motivation, the foresight, the pure paranoia to do such a comprehensive, meticulous, triple-overkill job of concealment on such a mundane matter? My birth is important to me, but I can’t imagine why anyone else would care so much. With the resources at my disposal I should be able to punch past any shields, sniff out any hidey-holes, shuffle through and null off any amount of masking chaff. Someone, somehow, built up a structure capable of stonewalling technology that shouldn’t exist in this century. It’s an impressive achievement: impressive, and mystifying.

Many times I’ve speculated about the mind behind it all. As I told Wesley, this isn’t professional work; there’s artistry here, and even passion, but it doesn’t have the benchmarks of formal preparation. I’m looking at the results of a rare talent, combined with an imaginative, fanatical thoroughness. More than concealment, more than obfuscation; it’s as if the decision was made to obliterate every trace that I had ever come into existence, and all approaches dug out, seeded with mines, paved over, and misleading street signs put up on top of them. The utter totality of it makes me feel lucky that the author of it didn’t feel that wiping me out would make the task even more complete. But, no, steps were taken to shield and protect me … and all the while, the formation, the underlying configuration, makes it clear that my welfare was incidental, the central focus was to protect someone else.

I learned my father’s identity by gene matching, and finding it was a one in eight billion shot. My mother’s DNA profile wasn’t on record anywhere. Result of her being dead before such records became widespread? Another coup by the master eraser? Or just happenstance, a stroke of bad luck to balance the lucky breaks I’ve picked up over the past ten years?

Or, once again, the question I’ve turned over in my head thousands of times: could it be my mother herself who did all this?

I don’t think so. I don’t know why, there’s no reason, just a feeling. The possible explanation of “DNR” makes it seem even less likely; steps were taken to blur the backtrail after I was born and taken away, and it’s improbable that someone under terminal care would be able to carry out something like that.

No, I’m a guilty secret … and, since something that more than one person knows sooner or later turns into something that everyone knows, the fact that it stayed secret for so long means that probably it never got past the person who put on the lid.

In all likelihood, my father himself doesn’t know of my existence.

I pull back, disappointed and frustrated and angry. I thought I had it this time, I was sure I was finally going to learn … Squash that. Let it go, back away, find something else to hold my attention until I can deal with this. Focus on the mission, the reason I was able to come here in the first place.

Five seconds’ worth of local sweep provides plenty to distract me.

The Pig Posse shows up in numerous complaints, but none serious enough to prompt official action. Two signatures at a motel a couple of stars below mine match to DMV photos under the name of “Thorson”, and they’re the brunette/ redhead pair I saw at FLN, on a trip for the family business. Two other names at higher-level establishments trip a pattern match, and a third name on the appointment list at a biotech outlet rounds it out: “Evelyse Haarwold”, “Shaley Woldevare”, and “Veresa Day Howell” are all anagrams of each other — or of something else — and I’ll bet solid cash this is the pale woman who tripped my alarms and then vanished.

Then there are the unrelated reports of just plain strangeness. A couple of citizens in a rough neighborhood get into an argument, exchange shots, and all their bullets collide with each other. Three women from three different cities are stranded together in a department store elevator, and in the passing-the-time chatter that follows they discover they’re all married to the same man. A cat coughs up a hairball containing an emerald ring; an eel wriggles out of the vent system of a teenager’s Miata; a mom-and-pop restaurant closes in the middle of the day and then calls the police to tell them that all of its salt shakers seem somehow to have gotten filled with high-grade Colombian flake.

Random chaos generator? Damn sure looks like it.

Everything else is routine. Vandalism, traffic accidents, truancy, the occasional missing person. Overall violent crime is down a hair, but that’s long-term and statistically null; auto theft, which had trended drastically up for several weeks, has dropped back to its pre-spike levels, and what little numbers racket there was has faded to nothing. Peace and contentment and mounting oddness settle over Oxnard …

My first alert kicks in, one of an escalating series of protective programs to keep the cyberlinked expansion of awareness and acceleration of thought from turning into an addiction. I could override it easily (I did, night before last), or even go in and rewrite the source code, I’ve exceeded specs in ways the techies would never have dreamed when they were designing their go-to girl. I don’t, though. This is a safeguard I welcome even while I resent it; as long as I can walk away whenever the prompt comes, I’m still in charge. Besides, staying jacked in too long puts a drain on my physical shell that I can’t afford as long as I still want to operate in the solid world.

I’m out, reality is flat and slow and drab, and I go through the standard routine to work the pins and needles from my extremities. It doesn’t help to have bitter disappointment augmenting the washed-out feeling that comes from transitioning out of total connection to every point of awareness; I shouldn’t have let myself get my hopes up, it’s never been easy and it never will be. Life is pain, and you get used to it fast because there’s always more where that came from.

Room service could provide me with a selection of liquors, and I give it serious consideration, but ultimately I don’t feel like waiting and I want to mix some cathartic action with self-anesthesia. I grab the little handbag and head for the door, maybe my mind will change before I find trouble and maybe not, I really don’t give a —

There’s someone there when I yank the door open, and control slides back over me like a coolsuit skin as I recognize the pale woman from FLN. She stands calmly in the hallway, seeming not at all startled by the explosiveness of my appearance. “Good afternoon,” she says. “I believe it’s time we talked.”

“Really?” I look her over, not bothering to make it a polite inspection. “Can’t say I remember meeting you. You selling something?”

“You’ve been quite active the last several days,” she says, ignoring the question exactly as I would. “Among other things, you’ve taken an interest in my own movements and identity. I wouldn’t mind knowing why.” She nods at the open door. “May I come in?”

Seen close, she’s even more pale than she appeared under club lights two nights ago, and there’s a bloodlessness to that pallor that I’ve never seen but have heard described. “ ‘May you’?” I repeat. “I’d say a better question is, can you?”

Nothing shows in her face. “Would you be reassured if I were standing in sunlight?” she asks without surprise or annoyance.

“Maybe,” I shoot back. “But you’re not, so I’m not.”

She steps forward, and I move back to give her room to cross the threshold. “That should settle your first concern,” she tells me. “You have yet to satisfy any of mine.”

“And I should apologize?” I give her the sneering grin that will rattle or enrage anyone with the least smidge of self-doubt. “You can walk in without being invited, but that doesn’t change the fact that you weren’t invited. Why should I tell you anything?”

“You want something,” she replies. “If I know what it is, we might be able to act to mutual advantage. At the least, we’ll learn whether our goals conflict.”

Her hands have been in view all the time we’ve been speaking: empty, and no weapons I can see, but I’ll be on her the instant she makes a move I don’t like. “You might have a point,” I admit. I gesture to the armchair. “Take a seat, and tell me about yourself.”

She sits with the same unhurried smoothness she demonstrated at FLN, and begins to speak. Her outfit today is a bit more modern but still carries that same impression of antique class; her eyes are hidden by silver-rimmed spectacles with mirrored blue lenses, and around her neck is a cord strung through an oval pendant of flat, featureless jade.

No, not featureless, the surface shifts and shimmers with the vibrations of her smallest motion, and as I watch, the changes settle into a pattern. Ripples, moving inward, ever inward to an endless center. I’m not really following the words, but her voice too has steadied into something soothing, almost musical, rising and falling in soft counterpoint to the captivating rhythm of that jade pulse. Together the two are felt at a level below direct consciousness, taking hold of the roots of awareness and enfolding them in a gentle, enthralling blanket of sensation.

She’s moving, but the pendant is fixed, somehow she’s placed it in front of me so I don’t have to turn to follow it. There’s a brief flare from a cigarette lighter, and a rich odor drifts to me from incense sticks; a sharp unimportant jab at my elbow, then she’s taping something to the inside of my arm. In another moment a whispery chime sounds, so high and faint that it might be insect dreams or imagination, and she’s speaking again.

She asks my name, and I tell her. She has me repeat that, then spell it, before moving on. She asks my age, and I tell her. (I give it in years, some absent smug part of me distantly amused at the thought of her reaction if she’d wanted to know my birth date.) She asks me who’s President, and what’s the name of the Disney mouse, and what address is this hotel, and I answer it all without resistance, wonder or anxiety.

She asks me who I work for, and finally a little corner of who I am takes alarm.

You see it all the time in action stories: hero fights mind dominance, pitting will power and core humanity against telepathy or conditioning or drugs. Take it from me, will power doesn’t figure into it, can you will yourself not to fall when you step off a tower? Some things are under our control, and I have more control than most, but the pale woman has laid out a mosaic of visual, auditory, olfactory and pharmaceutical captivation that’s sidestepped and subverted all normal choice.

On the other hand, waves too big to be resisted can still be ridden.

Here is where my cyberlink experience gives me an edge; I’m accustomed to multilevel processing, to lateral thinking and response, to going with the flow while still choosing my own course. I’ve been locked solid, I have to tell the truth whether I want to or not … but the truth has layers and angles, and enough of me is back now to choose my answers.

All of this slides through my mind in a fraction of the time it takes to express it, but even so she’s about to repeat the question before I settle on an answer. “I don’t have any bosses right now,” I tell her with floating serenity. “I’m on my own.” Truth.

“Why are you here, then?”

“Central location. Digital cable. Good rates.” Taking ‘here’ to mean the hotel.

She’s right back at me, not to be denied. “You came to this city, at this time, for a purpose. What is your purpose?”

I’m getting my tempo now, settling into the balance that will carry me. “I’m tracking a demon.”

She asks for particulars. I supply them. This takes some time, and it’s all safe area. At the end, she says, “Why is this demon important to you?”

It’s not would be a truthful reply, but would raise the question of why I was doing this if it didn’t matter to me. “He could cause trouble,” I say. “If so, I want advance warning.”

“Trouble for whom?”

“For anybody around him.” Truth. “He’s a potential problem, not an actual. If he crosses to actual status, someone will have to stop him.”

“Someone? Who? You?”

“Maybe.” That truth surprises me; why should I care? But I do, if the Skira’ad’s calamity index climbs too high I might feel that I have to take action. “Or I might pass the word to other people, let them do the actual work.”

Oops, careless, that opens up avenues that could lead to uncomfortable places. Instead of following it out, though, she switches track. “Why did you meet with Ethan Rayne?”

I manage to skate through several dozen questions about Ethan without exposing any sensitive aspects of myself or my mission. It’s ticklish work; she clearly doesn’t like the man, and is suspicious about every aspect of my dealings with him. Here, though, the truth is a protection, because my reasons for meeting Ethan were straightforward and don’t need to be hidden. The more personal sidelines somehow never come up, and pulling that off takes all the concentration she doesn’t know I can assemble.

The set of her mouth relaxes almost imperceptibly, and I’m ready to congratulate myself when she says, “What’s your interest in Xander Harris?”

Danger, danger, danger! This is a minefield, there are no safe areas, and the phrasing of the question rules out all the dodges I can think of. Or maybe it’s the guy himself, apparently I lose my bearings just as badly in discussing him as in dealing with him. I’ve got no ideas, and if I hesitate she may realize she’s onto something, it’s a matter of minimizing damage instead of avoiding it and, “He’s a freak,” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean freak. Things happen around him, he does stuff that should be impossible. He’s a key player, even though he doesn’t seem to know it, and I wanted to see for myself.”

“Why?” She’s finding her own rhythm now, moving me along the avenues I open up. “Why did you want to see?”

“Because I can’t figure it out.” This isn’t just truth now, it’s real mystification and frustration speaking here. “I’ve heard the main theory on how he can keep pulling off the things he does, and it’s not enough. There has to be more.”

She mulls on that for a moment; I’m in deep now, no question. “What is the main theory?”

“Kleinfelter’s Syndrome.”

She has me say it again; when repetition brings no improvement, she says, “What does that mean?”

“It’s a chromosomal abnormality. A normal male has one X chromosome, from the mother, and one Y, from the father. Somehow, I didn’t really learn all the specifics, a Kleinfelter’s case is XXY instead of just XY.”

I still can’t see her eyes, but her forehead creases with a trace of frown. “I’ve heard of something like that. I think you must be wrong; men with that kind of genetic scramble have physical deficiencies, subnormal sexual function. There’s no evidence of that with Xander.”

A sly pleasure begins to work through me; it’s oddly refreshing to slap someone else with the contradictions I’ve had to handle. “Sure, it would work that way for most guys. But with Harris, the X that got twinned was special. You see women with these enhanced X, they’re usually hard chargers: physical, tough, aggressive, the best example I know is a Chicago homicide cop in the Eighties, she was so extreme a lot of her colleagues called her Dirty Harriet. Attach that double-X to a man, and the result is something like Harris.”

She thinks on that for a bit. “Are you sure he has this … enhanced double-X, as you put it?”

“I’ve seen his genetic profile. He’s got it.” And it’s still not enough to explain —

Uh-oh, losing focus, this is suddenly more like a conversation than an interrogation. She’s starting another question and I’m trying to gather my equilibrium for the next round, when there’s a knock at the door. She glances that way, back at me. “Are you expecting visitors?”

“No.” Truth, again, without any shading or swerves; a second caller would make two that I wasn’t watching for. “Housekeeping, maybe.”

“Perhaps.” She raises something — an oyster shell, polished to translucent fragility — and strokes the inner surface with a little whisk of feathery wire. I hear another of those insect chimes, and she says, “Wait here.”

Not much doubt of that, what small internal independence I called up doesn’t extend to muscle or volition. I sit, musing on my situation, happily abuzz, while she goes to the door.

She’s back a lot faster than she went; she’s already at the limit of pale, and her eyes are still hidden, but her mouth is stretched in something like terror, and panic shrieks from every line and motion. “No, no,” she moans, and I don’t for a second believe she’s talking to me. “Goddess, no!” She snatches up the pendant and the chiming shell and stuffs them into a knit bag, then yanks the IV needle from my arm — wow, that would hurt if I was here to feel it — and slaps a round bandage over the puncture at the crook of my elbow. She starts to chant then, too fast and frantic for me to follow even if I did speak bastard Romanian. Some little bubble pops inside my head, and she runs, runs into the bathroom and pulls the door shut.

So. That was interesting. I stand up, feeling the shakiness of my legs and the tenuous quality of my consciousness; the spell is gone, but it left a residue, along with whatever drug she used to help the process along. I consider going after her, but I’m in no shape for a confrontation, and there’s another knock at the door and that settles it. I drift that way, pull it open without thinking to check through the peephole.

Harris.

He opens his mouth to say something. I close it for him, and neither of us speaks for a minute or so. I can see now why every so often some woman loses all her sanity over him, the offbeat charisma he carries is subtle but deceptively compelling. I sink into it, lost and falling and not caring, a dreamy floating abandonment that’s almost a continuation of the pale woman’s bewitchery …

… and then my mind snaps back on, and I shove him away and hit him, hard. It’s an open-handed slap, but powered clear from the hips, and he absolutely staggers. Then I’m leaning back against the door frame, legs braced, scrubbing at my mouth with my forearm, and he recovers himself and looks to me with injured eyes, but his voice is light and dry and ironic. “Ah, yes. The pattern continues.”

I want to kill him, I want to run, I want to vomit. Ethan was right about me, I’m an outlaw even against my own will. I knew I was angry, and I was beginning to realize that I had problems, but this is just bent. “What are you doing here?” I manage to get out.

He rubs at his face, the side that’s turning the red of a gene-hyped tomato. “You mean besides getting attacked, right after I was … attacked?” He shakes his head. “I left messages but you didn’t call back, and I needed to talk to you.”

My stomach flips over at the words, but no, I’m projecting, he couldn’t mean it like that. I steady myself and say, with all the control I can bring to bear, “This is not the best time.”

“Yeah, I kinda twigged to that.” He’s serious now, not using that consummate humor either for defense or advantage. “But I’ve got a feeling this may be one of those cases where the time kinda chooses you, y’know?”

I lift my head in a movement that really isn’t anything, just registering that I heard (God, I can still taste him!), then I turn back into the room. I leave the door open, and after a couple of seconds he steps in behind me. “Are you okay?”

“Rough afternoon.” I’m at the bathroom; when I push that door open, the room is empty. Pretty much what I expected, even though I can’t see any way the pale woman could have gotten out. “Really rough afternoon.”

“Can I help?”

I look to him. “Can you drive?”

After our little misadventure with the Pig Posse I dumped the motorcycle (they’d be watching for it now) and got another vehicle: something called a Hyundai, with a white polyfabric top that folds back into the rear when you work the right combination of switches and catches. Harris perches nervously behind the wheel, eyeing any nearby traffic with what seems to be genuine apprehension, but his driving is surprisingly competent. The bright sun and crisp moving breeze help finish brushing the fuzz out of my brain, and after I soak it up for a couple of blocks I say, “So. What was it you wanted from me?”

“Ah, right. Well, you know that deal where you touch things and do the old ‘eenie, meanie, cheery beany’?” I stare at him, completely blank, and he amends, “I mean, where you pull up a psychic impression? ’Cause I was hoping you could do that for me.”

It wouldn’t take a psychic to read the danger steaming off me right now. “I’m nobody’s party entertainment.”

“I know. And I’m not hitting you up for the laugh value, that’s usually my department.” Quick grin, gone as he continues. “Look, there are some funny things going on right now, and I don’t mean Jackie Chan funny or even Carrot-Top funny, I mean off the wall of the variety that turns into squirmy bad nastiness. I’m getting a creepy feeling about all this, but I don’t know if I really need to call in the cavalry or just turn down the thermostat on my imagination. I thought maybe you could help me with that.”

I wasn’t expecting anything like this, even though on the whole it matches his record. “You in the habit of dashing to the rescue?”

“I’m more one to pass the ammo and bar the back doors while the natural-born warrior types do the heavy lifting.” No restraint in the grin this time. “Safer for everybody that way.”

I’m not in the mood to let him skim on anything. “And what if you can’t farm out the rough stuff to someone else?”

“Then I think of the bravest person I know and ask myself, what would She do?” There’s no trace of shame or embarrassment about him as he goes on, “Better if it doesn’t come to that, though. Either way, I’ve got to know. If this is a shootin’ match of the major calibers, I need to be on the phone to Sunnydale as fast as I can. If not, they’ve probably got enough crisises … crisee … enough emergencies of their own already.”

There are a dozen different ways I could beg out of this, not even counting a flat refusal. Every time he and I cross paths it’s a disaster, and I swore I’d do whatever I could to stay clear of him. But I’m starting to recognize that there’s no point. Ever since the first time I saw him on that stage, our lives have kept intersecting despite all my resolve; if the Skira’ad is a chaos generator, Harris is some weird engine of destiny, and right now my destiny isn’t about to turn me loose. Once again it’s ride the wave or go under.

Was any of this in the atypical lifeline Ethan said he saw? If we meet again I’ll have to ask him, assuming I don’t throttle him first.

“I’m thirsty,” I tell Harris. What the hell, head-on into the whirlwind. “Find a place where I can get a keg of beer and a straw, and I’ll hear you out.”


Part VI

Somehow, after that first bolt of revulsion, the insanity in the hallway has bled off some of my edginess and long-simmering fury. Instead of a keg I get a boxed wine cooler with a little plastic outlet valve, and Harris and I drink out of paper cups at a picnic table in the park. This is my first chance to study him as a personality, and there are things I didn’t dare try to ask him, back when just being near him made me want to break his head open. For now, I’ve put him off on the matters he wanted to discuss, insisting that I’ll have to be relaxed before there’s any possibility of psychometric reception. So we sip wine and assess each other without speaking, and finally I’m ready to start dealing again. “You’re out of high school,” I observe.

He nods. “Yep. Spreading my wings after a blowout graduation.” He grins at the memory of something he thinks I don’t know about.

“Going back after this summer?” I ask him. “To the PCP capital of North America?” I know the answer, but I’m interested in how he feels about it.

“Well, sure.” He shrugs. “Everybody I know is there.”

“The ones who are still alive, you mean.”

The grin remains steady. “Some of the dead ones can get pretty frisky, too.”

“So I saw.” I look him over, trying to project puzzlement. “How can you joke about things like that?”

“Doesn’t wear you out as much as crying,” he replies promptly. “And it keeps the brain nimble.”

“So when things go to crap, you toss off a quip and soldier on.”

“Or sometimes I lock myself in my room and OD on Tammy Wynette.” He refills his cup. “One way or another, I get through.”

I let a minute go by without comment, and then I say, “Who’s She?” He looks around for who I might mean, and I clarify. “The bravest person you know.”

“Oh. That’s Buffy.” The smile takes on a different quality: I was just laying groundwork for further inquiry, but now I know something I didn’t, and I push back the slow swell of rage. “Class Protector,” he adds, proud as if he were talking about himself.

“Girlfriend?” I do my best to make it come out casual.

“Alas, no. My love life is the stuff of tragic legend.”

“Nobody special?” That didn’t sound the way I wanted it to, so I modify it. “Ever?”

His eyes show he’s warily remembering our close encounter of half an hour ago, but he answers evenly enough. “I was lucky last year,” he says. “Or unlucky, it came down to the same thing, ’cause I had two women care about me, only at the same time, and I managed to lose them both.”

“Some people aren’t good at sharing.” I keep it light, but the barb sneaks in anyhow.

“It was stupid,” he says. “But, hey, Stupid is my middle name. Along with Danger and Lavelle.” Long swallow from the cup. “It worked out okay, no thanks to me. Wil’s back with Oz, and Cordelia … well, Cordy’s gonna be all right.”

These would be Willow Rosenberg and Cordelia Chase, both known quantities. Likewise Buffy Summers. I’m getting nowhere, and it’s making me surly, and for some reason I don’t want that right now. I allow myself one last attempt. “That’s it, then? No senior year fling, no prom night bonanza, no striking gold at the drive-in?”

He chuckles at that. “Who goes to drive-ins anymore? And my prom date left town after telling me I made her feel nauseous; slow dancing under the mirror ball is as close as we ever got, or ever will.” He leans back against the concrete slab of the table, and the casual posture and tone don’t hide the fact that he’s done with light chatter. “Why is my personal life so important to you?”

“I want to know how seriously to take you.” I toss back the contents of my cup and go for more; I’ve been drinking faster than he has, but with the two of us sharing, there’s nowhere near enough in the box to blunt my capacity. “You’re asking me to merge with some heavy traffic, and I’ve got no idea how much I can believe or trust.”

“Like I’d lie to a psychic?” He spreads his hands. “I’m not asking you to do anything, I just want to know if you can see anything that might help me make up my mind.”

Okay, it’s time to channel all this into neutral space; I’ve had my visit, I’ve learned what I could (nothing), now he wants knowledge I can’t give him. Even if he’s right about goings-on in Oxnard, whatever is happening is supposed to happen, and I’m specifically forbidden to interfere. I shift into stonewall mode, and say, “All right, tell me what you have.”

He lays it out for me, and I’m impressed. He’s picked up on a lot of the same material I have, with nowhere near my resources; either he has top-notch instincts, or experience in a mystical war zone has sharpened his perceptions, maybe some of both. Still, he’s brought nothing new to the table; I won’t have to stall him off, because I really don’t have anything to tell him. “You’re describing some fairly unusual events,” I acknowledge, “but it’s all arbitrary, unconnected. I’m not sure what you’re worried about.”

He nods as if I just made his argument instead of discounting it. “It’s got a familiar feel to it, which is what got me paying attention in the first place, but you’re right, it is all pretty random. There’s three things that make my neck hairs do the fandango, though. First is this little deal here …” He pulls a scrap of newspaper from a cargo pocket, and points to the photo and caption; it’s a reference to one of the bits of graffiti I noted down under miscellaneous vandalism. “See the writing on that window, looks like gang signs with spray paint? Some of it’s smeared, and some of the characters are wrong, but it looks like somebody used the Sumerian alphabet to write out a phrase in Latin —”

“Wait a minute,” I say. “You’re telling me you can read Latin and Sumerian?”

He looks shocked at being accused of knowledge. “No way. I mean, all the research we’ve done, you can’t help picking up a little Latin, but I break into a cold sweat whenever anybody waves a copy of Homer at me. And I don’t know Sumerian at all, but I had Giles teach me the sounds that went with the characters so I could write a limerick in Willow’s yearbook.” His smile is fond, reminiscent. “She liked that.”

“Okay, I got the idea, Latin written in a Sumerian alphabet. So?”

“So, it’s not just scribblings, somebody meant something by it, maybe meant to do something with it. There are other reports, but no pictures; thing is, they tie in with the other weirdies.”

If so, it’s news to me, maybe he was right about dialing down his imagination. “Tie in how, and what ‘other weirdies’?”

Now he seems a little embarrassed. “Okay, I’m stretching on some of this, but I’ve only been working on it a couple of days. Night before last, one of our cashiers didn’t show for work, and no one’s seen her since. She’s not the type to cut out without notice, and when I started asking around, I heard something about one of those spray-can designs being left near her apartment, only it had been painted over by the time I came around.” From the same cargo pocket he extracts a sheet of ruled paper, and unfolds it to reveal a scribbled list. “Dorrie disappeared Monday the 8th, and we have people going missing Saturday the 6th and Tuesday the 2nd. I couldn’t find anybody missing on the 4th, but I’ve tracked down incidents with spray paint or sidewalk chalk on the 2nd and 4th, besides the one at Dorrie’s. If somebody did drop out of sight Thursday the 4th, and I missed it along with missing graffiti on the 6th, then it would make a pattern: even numbered day, someone disappears and a maybe-mystical phrase gets written out; odd-numbered day, something out of Ripley’s Believe-It-or-Not pops out for the next news cycle. And —” This time it’s a city map, and he lays it out on the table. “— the three disappearances were here, here, and here. If the same thing happened Thursday, only here or here, that would make four points of a five-pointed star … and if we take North as Up, that would mean the star’s upside-down, which means pentagram, which means magical, which means stock up on umbrellas ’cause it’s about to start raining demons.” He looks up to me. “Today is the 10th. If I’m right, and there’s another disappearance or kidnapping or whatever tonight, it’ll complete the pentagram. Trust me when I say this would not be a good thing.”

I stare at the list and the map. He’s filled in a lot of blanks with speculation, and what he’s constructed is the kind of makeshift polyglot you might see from a paranoid preschooler who’s seen the entire Creepshow series in one sitting, but there really is the suggestion of an outline there, and the implied picture isn’t pleasant. “You said there were three things that scared you,” I tell him, “but you’ve thrown a lot at me. Which three did you mean?”

“Well, the first was the time pattern: missing person, mystical markings, strange event, on a two-day cycle. Second was the pattern it makes on the map, and seeing that tonight would finish it out. And the third …” He frowns. “Third, on the three disappearances we know about, our old compadres from the crotch-rocket club were somewhere close on two of them.”

That one shakes me; I tracked the activities of the Pig Posse, but had it sidelined as a personal matter so I could avoid them. While I’m still trying to sort it into some kind of sense, he says, “Anyway, that’s what I have. So, can you get any kind of reading from this?” and pushes the newspaper clipping at me, the one with the photo.

“It doesn’t work like that,” I say, sliding easily into plausible evasion and reaching out to shove back the photo. “It has to be something with personal meaning —” I stop.

He’s right on it. “What?”

I look at the photo, at the streaks and curls of spray paint showing fuzzily on the window of some storefront. “You said this was, what, Latin rendered into Sumerian?”

“No,” he says, “more like if you sound out the characters phonetically — what I think the characters are supposed to be — and say it aloud, it makes what could be a Latin phrase. Something about ‘god in the door’, or it might be ‘way to the gods’.”

Yeah. Or “god of doors”.

I’m on my feet, and he likewise scrambles upright, eyes widening in alarm at whatever my expression must be. I’m thinking, thinking hard and counting back. I got here twelve days ago; little over a day and a half to get clothes, money, ID, a place to live, and then I began to contact my various consultants. Didn’t start meeting them until three days ago, but if one had already been somewhere near when I sent out the invitation — e-mail addresses say nothing about the geographic location of the recipient, best information put him close to Baton Rouge about then but there was a plus-or-minus built into that — he could have arrived here that same day to get an advance view of the territory. And if he found players in place, already trying to manipulate a minor demon with an interesting probability hiccup …

I still can’t figure any way to fit the pale woman into the picture, and we definitely have unfinished business, but for now she’s low on the list. “I have to make a phone call,” I tell him, and start for the bank of pay phones I can see by the bus stop a hundred feet away. He moves as if to come along, and I freeze him with a jabbing finger. “Stay.”

At the phones I follow basic precautions — keep the housing box between us, and my face toward him as I push the leads into the base of my skull — but I suspect we’re past the point where it would matter that much. I slide the card key into the credit card slot, and in seconds I’m into the phone company’s net, and from there anywhere I want. The first five seconds I spend confirming and delving further into everything he’s told me; some of it isn’t there, he may have gotten it word-of-mouth, but he’s not specifically wrong about anything. Then I reach out for deeper intel on the Pig Posse: their actual name is Los Malsuertos, I’m not sharp on my Spanish but it sounds like an attempt to call themselves the Bad Luck Boys or some such. Turns out that unlike most outlaw biker gangs they steer away from drug merchandising or transport; their specialty is the theft and underground wholesaling of high-performance automobiles, and they make it a habit to party at the casinos in Nevada at least four times a year.

People showing a preoccupation with luck, of one kind or another, and auto theft has gone down the last few weeks, so they’ve been busy with something else. Over into police records, tracking sightings and movements, and a patrol observation gets me doing a quick sideline scan elsewhere, and YES. Auto repair center, suspected of doing occasional chop shop work, and Posse members spotted in the vicinity … and an online map check shows its location to be in the precise center of the pentagram Harris sketched.

I pull out and disconnect and look to him, waiting at the picnic table and never taking his eyes from me, and I have a decision to make.

Not whether I should do something, that’s already been established; the strictures against my interfering in the normal flow of events don’t apply here, I’ve created this interference and I have to fix it, and fast. No, the question is whether I should ditch the geek before I get started.

My handlers will be horrified when they learn about this, but to hell with that, they use me because I get results and part of that is picking a course without hesitation and carrying it through quick enough to matter. Where I’m going I’ll be facing who-knows-what, and despite my feelings about him, Harris has a track record in hairy situations. I don’t have time to prepare the way I’d like, and I need a little extra edge just in case, and he’s it.

I beckon him toward me with a hard gesture, and he starts trotting my way, pausing only to grab the wine box. (Good priorities, though misplaced just now.) I’m already in the Hyundai by then, and I pull it around next to the sidewalk so he can hop in. “Better lock your harness,” I warn him, and smoke rubber out into the street while he scrambles to comply.

Right now is when I need the lightning capacity of cyberlinked thought, but I’ll just have to struggle along. The timing of recent events makes me suspect that there’s no time to waste, which means hit like a thunderbolt and use whatever comes to hand. Harris showed disturbingly good judgment in finding and arranging the facts we have, so I ask him, “Someone vanishes every other night, with occult markings to commemorate it, and timed so as to draw out a pentagram. What do you think that means for the people who were taken?”

“Could be a lot of things,” he gulps, grabbing at the door frame to steady himself as I pull a particularly tight turn. “But to me it says sacrifice, that’s why I came looking for you —”

I was on the same ground, so I cut in. “What I want to know is, what are the odds that any of the four — if they don’t have the fifth one already — are still alive?”

He shakes his head. “The day-after looney toons don’t really ring the gong on the strange-o-meter, it’s more like the stage is being set for something else. I think we’d have seen worse, or at least different, if there’d already been four sacrifices, so something tells me they’re being saved for a big show-stoppin’ lollapalooza.”

That would be good; death is one thing, but four deaths that I caused, even unintentionally, would carry some stiff karma. “Okay. Don’t ask me how I know, because I don’t have time to explain, but here’s how it is. We’re on our way to where all this is supposed to go down, and it may have started already. The people who were abducted should be there, if they’re still alive; if so, we have to get them out. There’ll also be a demon, not a really big horrendous one but he’s being amped up for some serious fireworks, and him we’ll probably have to kill.” Harry Doyle definitely wouldn’t approve, but hey, the shortest distance between two points is a head shot. “On top of that, there are the cycle-jerks themselves, maybe forty in all; plus, I have a feeling they’ve brought in outside talent to help them with their little project.”

He’s taking it well; with no warning I’ve switched from doubtful consultant to full-barrel squad leader, but he reacts as if this were a matter of routine. “Right,” he says. “Forty antisocial bruisers with definite sadomasochistic tendencies, one about-to-get-oh-so-much-worse demon, and one or a dozen mercenary wizards.” He rubs at his jaw. “Somehow I’m thinking ‘distraction’, unless you can trump me with ‘machine gun’.”

“I’ll see what I can come up with,” I tell him. “On the distraction, that is. Look, we go in, you do as you’re told, no questions; but if we have to split up, I’m leaving it to you to get the civilians out. You got that? We’ll run it together, if I can swing it, but if the situation starts a deep dive, you grab the victims and go.”

“My accustomed role,” he says, nodding. Then he looks to me with sudden concern. “Except, I’m used to working with superheroes. I can do dazed survivors, but are you up for this?”

I laugh. “Cocked, locked, and ready to rock,” I assure him; then, “What?”

He’s staring at me, eyebrows knit, and he gives his head another hard shake. “Whoa, for a second there you sounded just like … You said you’re from Philadelphia?”

What’s he on about now —? Oh, right, last time we were together I made some throwaway comment about Philly, just chatter to point him in the wrong direction. “Among other places. Okay, here we are.”

I’ve pulled up half a block from the target; if I had a larger vehicle at hand — a tow truck, maybe, or an eighteen-wheeler — I’d drive it straight through the front and let that be our distraction. Lacking one, low profile seems like the better approach. We shell out together, me ordering, “When we get inside, stay close, stay quiet, and do what I say.”

There’s a sign at the front, CLOSED FOR INVENTORY. I bet. Again in keeping with the initial indirect approach, I take us around to a side door, check through the inset window for observers, and then tap in a code at the keypad. The mag-lock releases, and I pull the door open, sliding inside. Harris is right with me, and in a hoarse whisper he asks, “How did you know the code?”

“Got the aura off the keys,” I answer automatically. Actually I added my own code back when I was jacked in, and ran over the building schematics while I was at it. There have probably been modifications since the plans were filed — maybe major ones, this place does have an illegal sideline, which means they’ll want to keep some secrets — but I know the basic layout and structure. We’re in the section where automotive parts and supplies are delivered and stored; next out will be the main bay where cars are hoisted on hydraulic lifts, that’s the largest area and the one where the main activity is likely to be taking place. Out front is the customer section, counters and registers and chairs, through the front windows I could see that it’s partitioned off from the work area. There are offices on the other side, three of them in the schematics but they may have been subdivided or opened out; and in back are toilet facilities, lockers, and a shower stall for the mechanics.

I crack the adjoining door and peek through, then pull it shut again. I was right, the Posse is in full attendance, and it looks like they brought all their bikes inside, too. Competing music blares from slam boxes posted here and there throughout the throng, and I see at least two card games in progress and one with dice, cans and bottles of beer featuring heavily in the proceedings. They’ve all been called together, necessitating the closing of the shop during normal business hours, so clearly something is getting ready to happen; but they’re all lounging and relaxing right now, so just as clearly the big show hasn’t started yet.

More to the point, I didn’t see any sign of distressed kidnap victims, so if they’re still alive they must be posted in areas we can’t reach without crossing the main bay. And that isn’t a place where you can flit from shadow to shadow, it’s one big open space stuffed with unwashed sociopaths bored enough to welcome some vicious action. It’s either go out and hijack an eighteen-wheeler, or …

I survey the space where we’re standing, shelves and bins of different components. Enough of them are electrical or electronic that I could throw together some interesting combinations in quick order, but sometimes low-tech does the job just as well. On a shelf at eye-level, layered with dust, someone has left a pack of cigarettes, with a cheap book of paper matches tabbed into the cellophane. I snag them, then pull over the rolling stepladder that grants access to the higher shelves. Harris watches as I climb to the top of the ladder, stick a cigarette between my lips, and light it; good, the matches haven’t gone mushy with the humidity. I fold the book of matches around the cigarette, leaving the lit end and two inches of unburned tobacco protruding from the side, and look back to Harris. “I forgot, I’ll need something to secure it in place.” He nods, looks around, steps away, and is back in seconds, tossing me a roll of electrical tape. Good, I snap off a strip and use it to tape the improvised fuse next to the heat sensor in the ceiling-mounted sprinkler system.

“We’ve been watching the same movies,” he says approvingly as I descend the ladder. “Cigarette burns down, all the matches flame up at once, sprinklers come on: instant distraction.”

“Better yet, distraction on a time delay.” I cross back to the door. “Now, let’s see how far we can get before the water show starts.”

I ease the door open a fraction at a time, and when there’s enough of a gap we go out on our hands and knees, staying low and avoiding any of the sudden movement that people catch from the corners of their eyes. Within a few feet we’re behind a diagnostic machine of some kind, and can rise to a crouch; from there we move behind a tall red wheeled toolbox, and further on is a set of gas cylinders for an acetylene torch, and then more toolboxes … We get nearly halfway across without detection, the noise and beer and lowbrow amusements holding the gang’s attention, but we’re almost out of things to creep behind —

Water bursts from the ceiling, and the biker bozos erupt into motion and clamor, shouting and swearing and expressing their startlement and displeasure with loud, coarse vigor. No clanging alarm, too bad — anything adding to the confusion would be a plus — but the fire department will be responding sometime soon, and I yank Harris by the elbow, pulling him after me in a dash around the periphery to the door on the far wall, and somehow we’re inside before the motley bunch in the main bay can spot us through the spray and their own surprise.

It’s a narrow interior hallway, a single wall screening the three offices — yes, three of them — from the outer work area, and another door down at the end that has to lead to the toilet/ locker/ shower section. “Go check there,” I order Harris, pointing, and I’m inside the first office without looking to see if he obeyed.

Whang! and a wastebasket caroms off the wall by my head, I dive left and roll, come up again as seven feet of squash-yellow humanoid smashes the glass over a fire extinguisher case, bleating, “Warned me, he warned me about the black suits, three fourteen you won’t take me you won’t you won’t you won’t —!” With an outward wrench of his elbows he simultaneously squeezes and warps the handle on the extinguisher, locking the valve open, and throws the canister at me. I dodge it but it starts spinning as it hits the floor, the CO2 jet whirling it around and throwing up clouds of vapor, and as I cough and blink the Skira’ad is on me through a swirl of mist, clubbing at me with a fist the size of a summer ham.

Block and counterstrike are automatic, but he’s at least twice as strong as I am and moving like a cyclone, strobing in and out of the clouds thrown up by his improvised fog machine, striking and vanishing and whirling out to strike again, all the while yammering his terror and resolve. Preternaturally intelligent and violently paranoiac, that’s what Wesley said, somehow he’s been kept awake (stimulant drugs, probably) as part of the process of keeping him under control. Even under ideal circumstances my chances wouldn’t be good, and with bedlam busting out around me and the odds so obscenely lopsided, it’s time for extreme measures.

I yank up the front of my shirt, tense my belly muscles in exactly the right way, stick my index finger into my navel, and push.

The enzymes hit my system with a neurochemical slam as the implanted capsule is punctured, and time slows; no, speeds up, but I’m moving and thinking even faster and my muscles swell with the surge of energized blood, my ribs creak from the huge draught of air I pull in, and with a shout of challenge and exhilaration I’m on the Skira’ad, chopping and smashing with paranormal power and quickness. The enhanced X that I described to the pale woman? I’ve got it, too, from both parents, and only the absence of a call from the magic lottery kept me from being a Slayer myself; but my people found a way to access that heritage, activate and call it forth, for a little while and to a lesser extent and at a considerable cost. I’m a tiger, I’m a tornado, I’m an unstoppable fury, hammering the warty demon without effort or hesitation or pity.

I feel like I could keep it up forever (though I know better), but then it’s over, the Skira’ad catches a solid punishing roundhouse swing at the jawline far back of his snout, and just like that he wilts and teeters and blinks out of existence before he can begin to fall. Score another for the quality of Wesley’s research: the biphasic gremlin pops back home as soon as he stops choosing to remain. It’s time to find Harris, and instead I spin and slash outward, and the man behind me yelps and drops the crowbar as my bladed hand chops into the meat of his forearm.

Ethan Rayne, just as I expected: devotee of Janus, the Roman god of chaos, the new year … and doors. “Hey, Ethan,” I call cheerfully, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and slamming him back against the wall. “I think I’ll be killing you now.”

A crack runs up the plasterboard wall with the impact; his knees are wobbly and his eyes don’t focus too well, but he still manages to pull up a smile. “Just like her,” he mumbles. “I knew it, same kind of lifeline …”

“Stow it.” He’s talking about the Slayer, the Thriceborn, and that has nothing to do with me. I give him a belt across the mouth for punctuation, and say, “Make it quick, I’m pressed for time. It was you priming the Skira’ad, right? These leather jockeys think you’re working with them, but you’ve been following your own agenda.”

“Marvelous creature,” he slurs in dazed agreement; I must have really rocked his noggin against that wall. “Would you believe, they were trying to harness his potential to aid them in gambling? Magnificent untapped natural resource, and all they can think …” Then his mouth goes slack and his eyes roll up, and I let him fall, I really am on a tight schedule.

As I step back into the little hallway, Harris is coming back down it, herding a knot of people ahead of him: five, so Ethan was getting ready for the ceremony that would have somehow sealed the Skira’ad into a permanent agent of calamity. I ignore them after the first glance, telling Harrris, “You got ’em, good work. And I got our demon, so now out is all that’s left for us.”

He looks to the door we entered through, and all his comic bravado can’t hide the real unease. “Back that way? ’Cause I’m thinking we’ve lost some momentum here …”

We have, but there’s no helping it, there are three ways out but all of them require that we go back into the main bay. “Head for the far wall,” I tell him, “the one with the sliding doors where they bring in cars. You bunch!” I raise my voice, and they blink at me in fear and confusion and hope. “Stick with him, he’ll get you out okay. Let’s move!”

Out and moving fast, there’s no time for delay or planning, I blast straight through three of the Posse within the first few steps, and the rest start for us with a mass roar. I leap to meet them, I have to cover a wide front and only the speed whirling through me now will make that possible. No subtlety, no fancy technique, just smash and move and smash into the next one, throw off all the dampers and pour it on.

I plow through eight of them in three seconds, bodies flying and falling, and then there’s a moment’s space and I turn to yell at Harris, “Get them to the doors!” He’s staring at me with horror, his mouth forms the word Buffy (of course, he just saw me cut loose with Slayer speed and strength, except a Slayer is called only when her predecessor dies) … and then his expression changes to something else, something I can’t read, and his lips shape a different name and

whu

nnnnn

.........

I’M BACK! There’s a huge blank at the back of my head, someone must have landed a really solid hit while I was looking away, booted feet hammer past me and a few pause to leave kicks for souvenirs and it doesn’t matter, I’m down and Harris is on his own and I have to get to him —!

I find sight of him as I make it up onto hands and knees, and the breath catches in my throat. I am seeing the legend in motion.

How many times before this assignment did I go through the records on him, searching for illumination, savage with bafflement and frustration because the records told dick-all? Everywhere I looked it was the same: no training, no preparation, no special abilities or skills, no reason he should still be breathing after his first contact with Sunnydale’s night world. I was serious when I told the pale woman that his XXY status, even with the double protoSlayer-X, wasn’t enough to explain how he could face off against monsters and not only survive but, often as not, win: every eyewitness account (including my own, once I saw him) confirmed the historical consensus that the guy was a doofus, a clown, a goldfish among barracuda.

I’m seeing something else now. Even half-concussed, my synapses are firing triple-speed, the go-juice still rocketing through my system, momentarily melding with my cyberorganic status to pump my awareness to hyperacute levels. Surface appearance has gone transparent, and the truth sears through like a plasma torch.

There are three of him, fighting for dominance in his body, leapfrogging over one another to take turns in tenth-of-a-second spurts of control. One is dark, animal, primal, all instinct and savagery. One is balanced, disciplined, striking out with focused force and deceptively clean technique. The last must be the core essence of the man, something pure and solid and unflinching, the other two work through it but never overrule it, it sits between forces that should tear it apart and forges them into a synergy that can’t exist.

He leaps and staggers and lashes out wildly at the leather-and-denim forest around him, and it’s laughable and pathetic except he’s still on his feet at ten to one odds. His movements are so unpredictable that none of them can really center on him … and it’s no wonder they never know what he’ll do next, he doesn’t know himself, and his disjointed body language scrambles all the cues. He picks up on cues, though, the soldier-mind anticipating every attack and his beast-self twitching him away at the last instant, so that he takes plenty of hits but none of them ever connect quite right; and when he swings back he’s no stronger than any human (less so than most of these characters), but he does it with absolute commitment, every last ounce of what he is thrown totally into the moment.

This is how he dropped a vampire with one punch (okay, it was probably a fledgeling, but still, one punch!) when his other arm was already broken; and, within twenty-four hours, felled another with a blow from the new cast. This is how he went up against William the Bloody twice, barehanded, and lived to whimper about his bruises. This is how a kid with no combat background, no mystical capacity, no unusual attributes that anyone was ever able to chart, could save the world three times that we know of.

He’s a freak. He’s a brother of Slayers. He’s a hero, damn him to everlasting hell, and with all the advantages I’ve bought and bartered and cheated to acquire, I’m still not in his class.

I’m up again and plowing toward him in a sustained burst of bone-breaking fury, and his face goes slack with relief as the bikers turn away from him to react to my renewed assault. I’m blowing past all the margins, I’m redlining and I don’t care, all that matters is I don’t fail where he can see it. “The door!” I yell to him. “Get the switch on the door!”

He has his back to one of the doors, two civilians are down and the others are behind him, he must have swung around to fight a rear guard action. As I boil through the last of the throng separating us, he twists to stab a finger at the green UP button, at the same time shouting at the uninjured ones to grab the fallen ones and drag them.

Behind me I hear a motorcycle kick-start up, and then two more, and oh crap.

I’m with him now and I punch STOP and DOWN, he’s squeezed himself and most of the others through the up-trundling door and I catch up the last one by collar and ankle and heave her through after them as it lurches to a halt and starts down again. “Keep going,” I call through the dwindling gap, and toss him my keys, underhand. “Get them out of here, get them away, I’ve got your back!” Then the door touches down and stops, and I swivel to face the men who remain.

There are now four of them sitting astride their precious machines, revving engines that remain useless as long as the doors stay down. Another seven are still on their feet, murder and uneasiness in their eyes as they look to where I stand. They’ve just watched me go through dozens of their comrades like a threshing machine, they know they’re no match for me … but these are tough, proud, desperate men, any one on his own might back down but under the eyes of their buddies it’s just not possible for them. I’m blocking them from the escaping prisoners, and even as I watch they begin to gather themselves for what they think is a hopeless charge, the sprinklers still hissing spray onto the bleeding, moaning, broken men that litter the concrete between us.

I laugh. I can feel my arms trembling, see the grayness beginning to edge my vision; the enzymes are nearly exhausted, I only have seconds of activity left in me, and then I’ll be done. I’m about to die, and some creepy crazy part of me has never been happier. They flinch at the sound of that laugh, but they keep edging forward, nerving themselves for the final rush.

A wolf’s grin stretches my lips, and a voice I don’t know croons, “C’mon, lickwicks. Show me what you got.”

And they do.


Part VII

Take the worst headache of your life. Triple it. Rub camphor into your eyes, pour hot grease into your ears. Inject Epsom salts into your muscles and ground glass into your joints. Squirt gasoline up your nostrils and gargle with ammonia. Scour your skin with steel wool, and then rinse it off with rubbing alcohol.

Now: imagine wishing you felt anywhere near as good as that.

My head slides off the curb and bounces on the pavement. I barely feel it, but Wesley lets go of my ankles with a little cry of dismay and jumps over to pull me up to a sitting position. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he babbles. “Here, perhaps if I reach under your arms and lift —”

I try to say something, and cough out blood instead. Wesley dabs at my lips with an indecently starched handkerchief, and I give it another shot. “Can’t walk,” I gasp. Pain, pain, dying would hurt less. “And you can’t … carry me. Think of something.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” He lays me down carefully and dashes back into the building. The sirens are closer, along with the occasional heavy freight blast that says fire engine instead of police car. If they’d started that sooner, or been another minute’s distance from us, the remnants of the Pig Posse would have finished kicking me to death before jumping to their getaway. And it would have felt SO good to just stop breathing …

Maybe my luck’s improving, I hear the burring snarl of a big bike cranking up, and if the rider emerges at just the right angle, one of the wheels might break my neck. No, the machine eases out in hesitant little spurts of acceleration, and parks well short of me, and “Here, perhaps this will serve,” Wesley again, and he hauls me up with soft little hands that wrench at my ravaged flesh.

God, this is worse, at least when he was dragging me I could look forward to the chance of unconsciousness. I can only summon the lung control for a half-second’s laugh, but that one carries all the bitterness and hopelessness and derision I can pack into it. I can’t see Wesley’s face but the stiffening is transmitted to me through his hands; he sets me down again, and a moment later he pulls my hands out in front of me, crosses them at the wrists, and ties them together with a couple of quick knots in that crisp handkerchief.

Wes, you dog, I didn’t know you had it in you. That’s what I’d say if I had the voice, or, Wow, does this mean we’re going steady? I’m a real cutup when I’m semiconscious. He lifts my bound wrists and wriggles his head and one shoulder in through the circle of my arms, and then he’s turning and getting his legs under him, and he heaves upright, hoisting me up over his back like some lumpy, aching sling-sack. He gives the impression of puny but he’s muscled like a greyhound, once he’s got a good position and leverage he moves me along readily enough, and the jolt as we start off on the motorcycle is only a small agony.

The next blast of the fire engine almost splits my head open, though, and I feel Wesley cringe at the sound I make. “Hold on, I’ll have you to hospital in a few minutes —”

“No,” I croak. That costs me almost the total of my energy, but I push out just a bit more. “My place.”

“Very well,” he replies, and then I let myself sink into an undifferentiated haze of pain. I don’t pass out, that would be too much to hope for, but for awhile there’s nothing but red ache and roaring.

I’m barely aware of our arrival at the hotel, but enough seeps in that I can tell he skips the main lobby (good call, they’d have to notice one of their guests being carried, bound and bleeding, to the elevators); he uses my card key to get in one of the rear entrances, and then lugs me up the stairs. I’d be impressed if I had the concentration for it; my room is only on the third floor, and even with my increased muscle density I barely top sixty kilos, but I still would have expected Wes to end up prostrate, whinnying and palpitating from the strain of such a task. He bears up, puffing at intervals but never flagging, and then we’re inside my room and it’s time for me to come back for a bit.

“Bag,” I croak to him, rolling my eyes toward the dresser. “Second drawer.”

He extracts the emergency pack I put together a couple of days ago, and begins to pull out supplies. “Which one —?”

“All of ’em,” I say. Again it requires almost all my strength, and again I can call up just barely enough to add, “IV first.”

He laid me out on the bed when we first came in, unknotting the handkerchief and letting me slide off his shoulders with an unWesleylike grunt of relief, and now he hangs the fluid bag from the wall lamp and swabs my arm in preparation for the needle. His movements are fussily precise, but he wastes no time, probably the Watchers run their trainees through a combat medic course. He has to try twice before he catches the vein, but that can be tricky for anyone, then he fastidiously tapes down the line before adjusting the drip rate. The bag is dextrose solution, the highest concentration a human body can tolerate, and he apparently knows how fast that can be fed in because he sets it without asking for guidance.

My bloodstream latches on avidly to the simple sugars, and within a minute I have the energy to say, “Green syringes. One directly into the line, then add one to the bag.” He complies while I recover my breath, and then I proceed to more comprehensive instructions.

Minerals and trace metals, originally in tablet form but crushed to powder for faster absorption; these I wash down with warm Gatorade. Herbal supplements in specific unconventional combinations. B-12 booster into the buttock. Over-the-counter bronchial inhalers, I suck down two and then settle into periodic pulls from a third one, of a different type. Wesley passes over whatever I request, without asking for any explanation and only occasionally for clarification.

These are stopgap measures only; I’ll spend the next two days in bed, bruised and throbbing and miserable, popping Centrum and swilling V-8 and monitoring my ketone and potassium levels while my non-Slayer body recovers from the drain of being run at Slayer speed. My people could have me back at baseline in four hours with the right mix of corticosteroids and compounded glycogenates, but those don’t exist here and I couldn’t bring them with me.

So, one makes do. Suck it up and drive on.

I’ve done all I can, it’s down to maintenance and I’ve got a couple of hours of careful activity before my capacity plummets again. I look to Wesley. I’d rather not, I don’t like owing people, but that doesn’t make it go away. “Thanks,” I say. “I guess it’s pretty obvious I couldn’t have made it without you.”

He waves it off and says, “I took it on faith that you would know better than I what were your most pressing needs, but shouldn’t we do something about your injuries?”

I haven’t forgotten them, but it looks a lot worse than it is, and can’t compare to the total crashdown that hit me when my personal octane boost sputtered out. Bruises fade, cuts heal, bones knit; the trick is staying alive long enough for it to happen. “I’ll be okay,” I tell him. “The double-muffler crew, what was left of them, got spooked by the sirens before they could get down to serious payback.”

He studies me, lips pursed, and at last he sighs. “Very well. Normally I would insist on professional medical care, but I’ve learned that it’s pointless to press against this brand of stubbornness. I’ll do what I can with materials available, and we shall have to hope it will suffice.”

That wasn’t what I meant, or wanted, but it’s easier to accept it than to argue. He’s at once gentle and carefully, distantly clinical, and I lie passive (and in the end, I’ll admit, grateful) as he cleanses and tapes and applies antibacterial ointments. The ribs are a problem, I have to raise myself clear of the mattress so he can get the elastic wrap around my torso, plus the IV line crosses my body and he has to work around that. At last he’s done and I really do feel better, along with being able to breathe without having little knives jab into me.

I’ve also had time to think, and as he steps back, cautiously satisfied, I say, “Wondering about something here, Wes. How exactly did you wind up at that chop shop? It doesn’t strike me as being one of your normal haunts.”

“In that you would be entirely correct,” he says. “If you must know, our conversation piqued my interest, especially when I began noticing little oddities chronicled by the local news outlets.” He essays a small chuckle. “Perhaps I myself have an avocation for this ‘demon hunter’ business.”

Right, like that’s gonna happen. “So you showed up there on your own? You weren’t, say, following me?”

He shakes his head. “Most certainly not. The private occult community here isn’t as extensive as you would find in older or larger cities, but it can be navigated by one with the proper background. I was seeking the Skira’ad of whom we spoke; to find you, in such an alarming state, was unexpected and quite unwelcome.”

“Okay.” I don’t like it, but Oxnard has been brimming with coincidences for the past week or so, and I don’t have the energy to follow it further. “Like I said, it’s a good thing you were there, I was kinda overextended about then.”

“Indeed.” He takes a seat in the armchair — oh, cralphet, Wes, you’ve done your good deed, can’t you just leave? — and gives me a glance that looks like it’s meant to be severe. “Are all your … projects … as strenuous as this has been?”

I’m not up for being chided by the king of wimps, but I’m still in his debt, so I swallow my irritation and say, “Every job has its days. This one was a day and a half.”

“Clearly.” He leans forward. “When we parted, you had been at the edge of believing the Skira’ad was harmless, or largely so. How did you come to feel otherwise?”

Lord love a duck, another interrogation. I waggle my fingers at him, almost catching them on the IV line, and say, “One thing and another, Wes, probably something like the way you landed there yourself.”

“Ah, but I had only just got past the level of opening enquiries.” That scholar-on-the-hunt look is starting to come over his face. “You obviously had progressed further, and how you reached this point is of pronounced interest to me.”

I reach up to let my hand rest over my eyes (a broad hint, but I really am a bit tuckered right now), tchah!-ing with annoyance as I once again have to twist clear of the IV. “There was no single thing, okay? I just kept asking around, and it all started to come togeth–”

I stop, and remove my hand to look at him straight on. He waits, feeling something in the air but apparently willing to let me get to it on my own schedule. I look at my left arm — yep, three-quarter sleeves, just like I remember, going halfway down the forearm — and very softly I say, “Why that arm?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You reached clear across me to put the IV into my right arm, the far arm, instead of taking the closer one. Why’d you do that, Wes?”

If his expression could be trusted, I’d believe he was genuinely puzzled. “At our informal tea the other day, I noted that you were left-handed.” Tolerant, polite tilt of the head. “Most people prefer that injections or infusions be administered to their non-dominant arm.”

“Maybe.” I swing my legs over the side of the bed, sit and then stand. (Whoa, dizzy, don’t let it show.) “Or maybe somebody told you I’d already taken a needle in the other arm. Maybe somebody sent you to do a little follow-through questioning after she came up short.” My legs will barely hold me, but I freight my glare with all the menace I can. “How’d you know my room number, Wes? I’m positive I didn’t tell you. Hell, how’d you know the address of the hotel?”

“I confirmed your location as soon as I arrived in this city,” he says, and is that a thread of nervousness running through the well-bred patience? “Your room number was incorporated into the telephone number you gave me for contact. These are elementary measures, not at all remarkable.”

He has an answer for everything, but I’m not buying it. Wrath and strength are rising together, and I say, “I think we’re done talking here, Wes. I think it’s time for you to step out before I throw you out.”

The threat brings him to his feet. “Please, calm yourself. Your condition is still precarious —”

“Yeah?” I take a step toward him, stretching the IV line; I’ll walk right out of it if I have to. “So imagine how bad it’ll tax my system to have to beat you to death right now.”

The little muscles around his eyes tighten, and he sets his jaw with all the firmness it will hold; maybe he thinks he could take me in my current state. In thin, precise tones he says, “I’ve seen this type of anger before: molten, irrational, uncontrollable. The last young woman who exhibited such a trait, rode it to her own destruction … and if she ever wakes again, I may be forced to order her death.” He stops, seeming a bit surprised at his own words, then forges on. “You exhibit more personal discipline than she, so it is with your own welfare in mind that I say this: learn to hold that inner violence in check. Otherwise it will consume you.”

“So? I got some advice of my own.” I point at the door. “Hit the road. Keep the bike or trade it in or run it off a cliff, I don’t care. Find a new job or beg for your old one back or, hey, walk off that cliff, again not caring. But leave, now, or one of us dies.”

Breath and resolve sigh out of him, and he shakes his head. “Very well. I leave you to such recovery as you may effect.” At the door he stops long enough to say, “Even if you are truly convinced that I somehow conspired against you, please believe that I never intended you harm.” He seems to be searching for something more, but gives it up, and at last he leaves as ordered, dutifully pulling the door closed behind him.

I should go set the dead bolt. I should check to be sure he didn’t palm my card key.

Screw it. I sag back onto the bed, too spent to care. Maybe I overreacted, maybe the entire sudden conviction that the pale woman had recruited Wesley, to finish out what she’d had to leave uncompleted, was just my brain on post-Slayer withdrawal. What does it matter? It’s not like Wesley was someone I needed to handle with care. He wants so badly to amount to something, and he never will. There’s just something missing from the man, an inner vein of steel, and he may crave it but he’ll never find it. Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, born to be mild.

I pull the IV needle from my arm when the last of the spiked dextrose runs in, by which time I’ve exhausted the third inhaler and slugged down four protein shakes. I still feel like death straight from the freezer, but I can actually function with some semblance of normality. Not that I have any use for that capacity, except to prepare myself for forty-some hours of aching, enervated convalescence …

A knock at the door. Naturally.

I could ignore it, I could yell at the caller to puddle off, I could phone the police and report a flasher outside my door. What would be the use? It’s him, it’s always him, there’s just no escaping it. On steady-for-now legs I cross to the door, and pull it open. “Yeah? What?”

Harris, lest there be any last lingering doubt. “Wow. I mean how, how really good it is to see you’re all right.” I watch his eyes take in the bruises, the little strips of tape, but he holds the smile. “I mean, I wasn’t worried or anything, I saw the way you cut loose on those goons, and may I be the first to say good rubbish to bad riddance?” Some of the studied nonchalance slips, and he adds quietly, “You sure everything’s okay?”

“I’m fine.” I remember the look on his face, back in the bay, and go on, “I just need to rest up some. It’s a, a glandular thing, ever since I hit puberty, when the adrenaline really starts pumping I just go crazy, and then I have to spend a couple of days recovering.”

“Good. That’s good.” There’s no mistaking his relief at hearing an explanation that doesn’t involve dead Slayers. “I just, uh, you told me to take off so I did, I figured you knew what you were doing and …” He’s put himself on the defensive, but for once he doesn’t need to worry; after seeing him on his own for the few seconds I was down, I know he didn’t run due to cowardice but because he’s accustomed, in the midst of the fray, to following orders from powerful women. He stumbles to a halt, unaware of my knowledge, and holds up my keys. “Anyway, I brought your car back. Showroom fresh and unbled-on.”

That must have been good; now that I think about it, him and five others squeezing into the Hyundai must have been something out of a Paulie Shore classic. I take the keys, saying, “So the would-be sacrifices all got clear?”

He nods with grinning eagerness. “I got a quick word with Dorrie, asked her to keep mum, and the others didn’t know me, so maybe I won’t have to try to explain everything to the gendarmes. Still, I think it’s about time I pointed myself back to Sunnydale and the ever-so-dysfunctional bosom of my family. I just … first I had to make sure.”

“And return my car.” I lean against the door frame, casually propping myself up. “Look, I’ve been meaning to ask: how did you ever find me in the first place? You tracked me down at that breakfast hutch, and you’d already left messages here before then. We’d only met the night before, how’d you do that?”

“Oh.” Another grin, the one that comes whenever he speaks of certain people. “I called up a friend of mine, she’s a wizard with the old keyboard, she did some kind of online thingy and told me where you were registered.” (Really? That would be some sophisticated work, considering the speed of it, the very few traces I’ve left, and the fact that he wouldn’t even have been able to provide a name; I’d definitely want to know more about this, if I didn’t want even more urgently to wrap a blanket around myself and never wake up.) “And the waffle house, I saw your motorcycle there and it looked like the one you rode away the night of the scuffle, so I peeked in and yeah it was you.”

“Right.” I’m starting to fade again, just a bit, and it undercuts the little politeness I can call up. “Okay, you came, you saw, you handed over the keys. Anything else?”

It comes out sharper than I meant, I won’t pretend to like him but I’m honestly not trying to pick a fight. He draws himself up, something flat and bleak coming into his eyes, and says, “No, that’s all. I came to you for help, and you delivered it in spectacular Sigourney Weaver style, no complaints on that score. There’s something you might tell me, though.” He locks eyes with me. “Why are you always so mad?”

I can’t stop the laugh, but it’s not a happy sound. “Are you serious? We’ve crossed paths four times, and three of them put me in danger of my life. You think I should be grateful?”

“No, I don’t.” He’s still bowed up, even though he’s not actually piling on the aggression. “I’ve messed up big-time in my life, and the last few days weren’t my finest hour, exactly, but that’s not what’s going on and we both know it. You’ve had some kind of grudge against me since the first time we met, and I can’t figure out why. What did I ever do to you?”

I tried, I really did, but now the slow boiling rage is building up in me again, and I feel my muscles tighten with the urge to maim. He’s like some designer disease, this boy … no, you can build up immunity to diseases, he’s an allergic reaction, every recurrence more severe, and this one is ready to blow a blood vessel in my head. “Do? What did you do?” The voice is as alien as the come-kill-me croon of two hours ago, and just as much out of my control. “Nothing, nothing at all. You’ve never done anything.” I stalk forward, and he gives ground, more perplexity in his eyes than fear, and I don’t care, that hard deadly voice is still grating out of me. “Why should you? You don’t know me, you never did, I don’t count for anything. Save the Slayer, sure, go ahead. Save the school, save the city, save the world, you can do all that. But nothing for me, nothing ever for me, I never existed for you, you were never THERE —!!!”

There is no way he could understand any of this, the situation itself is crazy and he’s not dealing with a rational person, but he looks to me with an eerie, impossible understanding, something he can’t even know he knows, and his hands are hanging at his sides and he turns them toward me, palms out, and says, “I’m here now.”

Just like that, I’m gone.

I fly at him in a blind rush, mouth stretched wide, and the sound coming out isn’t a scream or a shout or a snarl or anything, just a huge wordless roaring. I’m going to break the ribs loose from his spine, I’m going to crack his skull open against the walls, I’m going to rip him to pieces and stomp on the bits and screw the future of humanity! He doesn’t step back or dodge, just braces himself and throws his arms around me as I plow into him, still making that vast formless inchoate roaring, and he lets out a hiss of pain as my nails dig into his back but he just squeezes me tighter, pulling me in and clutching me close, smothering a lifetime of fury in the wholeness of himself.

My strength is gone, my voice is gone, mind and will and memory are gone. I’m coming apart, I can’t see through the tears or speak through the sobs, and he holds me up as I cling to him, shaking and howling and broken. Weeping for something I lost without ever having it, needed without ever knowing it, found without ever seeking it.

Safe, finally, in his arms.


Epilogue

I said all that so I could say this: I’m not coming back.

Don’t worry, you have your report, it’s in the attached data file: all the information I gathered since I was dropped here, along with my own observations and interpretation. I may have been working for other goals while I was here, but I’ve made sure to deliver on my end of the deal.

On the whole I’m okay with how things came out, but you might want to ask yourselves: did you all get maybe a little too clever? Did you — and I, working as your extension — contrive to create the threat you sent me to study? (It seems pretty likely that Ethan found out about the Skira’ad because I called him to Oxnard, and Wonder Warthog’s improbability mojo wouldn’t have become near so cataclysmic without Ethan’s contributions.) These are supposed to be basic issues, easily addressed with the right protocols … but, hey, we’re not exactly a properly sanctioned organization, are we? I was always on the operations end, so I can’t say just what thoroughness your planning section put into the prep work, but I’ve seen enough corners cut elsewhere to have my suspicions.

Doesn’t matter. I came here, I finished the assignment, I’m posting the results. Oh, and consider this my resignation.

There are different reasons for me deciding to stay. Part of it, let’s be honest, is I’m not sure there’s anything to go back to. I don’t know if you had some unexpressed agenda for this mission or if you just let endemic overcaution make you play it a little too close, but the result was that I was sent in with inadequate briefing and wound up making some scary mistakes. (Plenty of my own, too, I haven’t tried to hide that.) Events went far enough off the line to make the final consequences a little too iffy, and I’m not about to initiate the callback sequence when there’s a real chance — small, but solid — that I could step off into a big, fat Nothing at the other end.

So, sorry. If I ever get back to you it’ll be the regular way, the slow way. But don’t anybody hold their breath.

Then there’s the personal stuff. I can’t explain that very well, most of it is tied up in feelings I haven’t even started to sort through. For instance, why was I in such a screaming hurry to get to that chop shop? There were things I could have done first, wouldn’t have taken that long and might have made a big difference. Was I really operating off that first instinct, the one warning me that Ethan would rush the sacrifices once he knew my investigations were leading me toward his pet project? Or did I just panic at the realization of how bad my blunders had made things? Was I jumping at the chance to impress Harris? Or — this is a really disturbing thought — did some dark corner of me set it up so he’d leave me to die, thinking that would serve him right?

Too many questions, no real answers, and a lot of that is extraneous clatter I’ll have to sift through when I have time. Short form, I’m staying because I haven’t finished my own mission.

No, I won’t tell him. I can’t say why, I just know I never will. And I also know, with no evidence except that deep sense of destiny, that I won’t have to tell him, he’ll come to it on his own. Eventually.

Meanwhile, there’s a lot to do here. This is a crazy place, full of quests and crises and people that need saving, and Harris and his people can’t catch every apocalypse. I spent too long trying to find out who I was; it’s time, I’d say, to start deciding who I’m going to be. If along the way I do a few things that are worth doing, all the better.

We’re not finished, he and I. There are other chapters to be written, and I have a lot of work ahead of me.

Someday we’ll meet again. Someday he’ll know the truth.

Someday, I’ll make him proud.

~Fin