Authors: Laura Anne Gilman
The irony amused Ian. He did not think it would amuse his
partner. So he allowed Pietr to stay within sight, even as he sensed his
attackers drawing near again.
The scrabble of claws was his first warning. Then the beasts
were on him, with barely enough time to throw up a current-wall of
protection.
*stay back* he warned Pietr. *do not interfere* At best, the
boy would get hurt. At worst, he might actually damage the beasts before they
could finish taking payment.
That was his last thought, before a claw reached through the
current and struck him a blow across the back of his head.
Chapter 15
“A what?”
“I swear, boss, I don’t know. They came out of nowhere, I
swear, the air was clear and then suddenly they were on him.”
“That’s why you didn’t fight back,” I said. “They knew you
wouldn’t risk hurting them.”
Venec looked at me, then back at Stosser, not used to being
outside the loop. “What were they?”
I didn’t answer, staring at Stosser, who had somehow managed to
avoid getting cut open this time, although he had a serious goose egg swelling
on the back of his head and a nasty bruise on his face where he’d hit the
pavement. Enough time had passed between the attack and when Pietr had knocked
on the door, Ian in tow and Sharon hurrying down the hallway, that the colors
had come out nicely.
“Bonnie?” Venec, dangerously close to annoyance, although the
worry and anger of before had disappeared. My acceptance of Ian’s reluctance to
strike back was enough to make him accept it, too.
“Why is this your debt, Ian?” It was none of my business…but I
was the only one who knew to ask.
“Blood money. It seemed…appropriate.”
I was utterly confused, and then things started to unravel, a
little. “You’re an idiot.”
Big Dog didn’t disagree with me. “It was my only option.”
“Bonnie?”
“They’re winglets,” I said.
“Wing-baby dragons?” Pietr blinked at that.
“Not exactly. Cave dragons don’t give birth—they’re too ornery
to even have a mating season, much less raise another creature. They…spawn.
Split. Shake off winglets. Most of them get eaten, but if they can prove
useful…they get to live.”
I’d done research, after running into a loan-shark dragon
myself, when I was younger. They were the loan sharks of the
Cosa Nostradamus,
and winglets were their collection
agents.
Ben turned and looked at his partner. “They want your blood.
Literally.”
“Somewhat dramatic, Ben. They’re merely…reminding me. If I
can’t give gold, they take blood.”
“Any particular amount, or all of it?”
“I’m not sure. So far, they seem to be satisfied with small
amounts. But they may decide to claw me dry and call the debt done.” He wasn’t,
in my opinion, anywhere near worried enough about that possibility.
“You really need to find out the terms of repayment before you
sign the contract, boss.” I was trying for nonchalant, too, and not quite
pulling it off.
“Wait—someone is repaying something with Ian’s blood?” Pietr
was utterly lost.
“Or Ian owes them something. That’s it, isn’t it?” Sharon was
staring at Stosser as though she’d never seen him before. “You owe
them…what?”
“The startup money. For us. Goddammit, Ian!” Ben was back to
furious.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time. My life’s work, given
surety by my life’s blood, if it didn’t work.”
“But it is working. We’re making money. Why—”
“Because it takes money to keep us going,” I said. “You put it
back into the offices, into hiring new people, not paying back the original
debt. And now the time’s up.”
“How much, Ben?”
“Two hundred.”
“Thousand?” Pietr’s voice almost squeaked.
“Is that the original loan, or—”
“All in. Two years’ grace. I was supposed to start repayment
last month.”
Last month, when we’d hired new people to handle the workload,
instead.
“All right.” My voice was weirdly calm: I think Pietr was doing
all the freak-out for all of us, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open in a
way that would be funny if it wasn’t so serious. “We can do that.”
“We can?” My fellow pups were clearly wondering where we’d lay
hands on that sort of cash. So was I. But we’d manage it.
“No, Bonnie—”
“Shut up, Ian.” Venec cut him off with a voice like ice. “We
need you here, not bleeding out a week at a time, always waiting for the next
attack. Dragons are stringent but not unreasonable, as loan sharks go, and it
won’t care where the repayment comes from, so long as it’s made.”
“If anyone finds out…” It would be a sign of weakness we
couldn’t afford, bad PR to kill all the good we’d done. Using a dragon’s
loan…defaulting on a dragon’s loan? Even my father hadn’t been idiot enough to
do that, although the man who killed him had made it seem that way.
Had this been why I’d been dreaming of dragons? It made sense,
but it didn’t feel quite right. Not entirely.
Remember,
that fire-dry voice had whispered. But remember what?
Something I had seen…but it was gone now, faded the way all kennings did.
Venec, meanwhile, was still lashing into his partner. “You’d
rather bleed out than accept help? Don’t be more of an idiot than you’ve already
managed.”
Stosser refused to look abashed—I don’t think it was in his
genetic makeup—but he nodded once and stopped protesting.
“Fine. We’ll find the money and get them off your
back—literally. We have something else to worry about right now,” Venec went on,
still radiating disgust at his partner’s stubbornness. “Bonnie’s figured out why
our killer is doing what he does.”
Everyone turned to look at me, even Stosser, dragons and debt
not forgotten, but tabled for now. “Maybe,” I said, switching gears, practically
hearing everything go click. “I’m not a hundred percent sure, not even ninety
percent. But it makes sense.”
I outlined the basics, starting with the kids in Central Park
and their charismatic, possibly Talented leader, the current trendy-if-contested
theory of current-handling and genetics, and skipped over anything Venec had
told me about Chicago, finishing with my thoughts about the knife, and saw the
lights go on in everyone’s eyes before I’d reached my conclusion.
“So we’re looking for someone who knows about Talent, maybe is
a low-level…?” I could see Pietr’s brain-wheels turning.
“Or is high-res and wants more,” Sharon said. “No way to
tell.”
“Logic. Think about the victims.” I could visualize them all in
my head, all the stats from the files, but knew the others lacked my particular
recall. “None of the victims were particularly high-res themselves. I can’t see
him intentionally looking for low-end subjects, not if he wanted to gather more
power to himself, or even just to see what made them strong. But he wouldn’t go
after anyone he wasn’t sure he could take down. And since we already know that
he’s got to be at least forty, and probably older, unless he’s a bodybuilder his
physical strength isn’t enough, so odds are he’s low- or middling-res, but
smart. And—”
“And not acting alone.”
“What?” I stopped to look at Venec, who had broken into my
presentation in a way he hadn’t since I was a rookie.
“I just realized that was what I was seeing, with the knife,
the restraints, the way the killer was moving—he kept going around in a
three-quarter pattern, not a full circle. As though there was someone else at
the head of the table, holding the victim down, keeping him calm. We’re not
looking for one killer, children. We’re looking for two.”
Sharon pretty much summed it up best, in her own ever-ladylike
manner.
“Oh, fuck.”
* * *
Stosser made the decision to call in part of the team
back in New York on this, full-time. Sharon, Pietr, and I stayed down in Philly,
going over the physical files, while Lou and Nicky back in New York handled the
research aspect, specifically Nicky doing some current-hacking on our past
victims in San Diego and Montreal. Nifty, meanwhile, stepped up to handle the
trainees, poor bastard. Although he seemed to enjoy it. I wondered if Farshad
would still be in the office when we got back, and hoped so.
Part of me was curious about what Nick was up to; the other
part remembered the few times I’ve been around when he worked his mojo, and was
just as happy to avoid that particular headache.
Overall, I thought we’d gotten the better assignment. At least
for the first three hours, until the photos and text started to swim in front of
my eyes, and I was pretty sure I’d see that damn flashing knife in my dreams,
even though I’d dismantled the display the night before.
“Come with me.”
Ian appeared in the doorway of our makeshift office and crooked
a finger, making it clear who he wanted. I was just as happy to get up and
stretch my legs—and rest my eyes—a bit.
“What have you discovered?”
“Nothing.” It burned to have to admit it. We were under a
massive time-hammer: every hour that went by increased the risk that we’d have
another body on our hands. “The ten-every-ten suggests that our perps have some
kind of psychological fixation that’s limiting them—or it could be a ritualistic
thing. Lou is going over records to see if we have anything similar in the
database.”
A Null organization could have a computer that would sort and
spit out this information in minutes. We had an old-fashioned, if incredibly
complete, series of filing cabinets.
“Y’know, when we are flush again—” and it would happen, it had
to happen “—we should think about hiring some trusty Nulls to set up an off-site
database, so we could just call down a request and they could do the research.
Hell of a lot faster, and time…time is the thing we never seem to have enough
of.”
“Nulls?” Stosser was momentarily diverted by the thought, and
not in a good way. “I don’t think that would be such a wise idea.”
“Oh, don’t you start. Not every Null is out to get us or use
us, you know.”
“Not every one, no,” he agreed. “But enough are, and will, for
me to be cautious about our existence spreading too far.”
“Yeah, because no cop ever gossiped outside the
Cosa
.” Sarcasm didn’t so much drip from my words as
gush.
“Gently, Torres. Leave the back talk to Ben. I need you to be
obedient, right now.”
I stopped, suddenly realizing that he had been leading me
toward the elevator. “Where are we going? If you’re taking a walk, boss, you
need someone better in a fight or more—”
“I have a meeting.”
“Boss, I am totally not dressed for a Council meeting.” That
was the only reason why he’d need me to be obedient. And why he was wearing one
of his better suits, the one so plainly cut it had to cost a fortune.
Shit. Suit. The same thing he’d been wearing in Ellen’s vision.
I had the sudden urge to dig my heels in and refuse to go anywhere without
backup—or at least telling everyone where we were going—but I knew that look on
the Big Dog’s face.
I could have reached for Venec, but by the time he got here…
No. Play the cards, Bonnie. But stay ready.
“It’s not formal.” Like that was going to reassure me. “We’re
making a Statement.”
“Oh.” Nope, not reassured. We reached the elevator, and I took
a moment to compose myself. It was only the elevator in the office that gave me
the jeebies, not elevators in general, but I still had a moment of unease
whenever I stepped into one, fully expecting the power to fail and us to plummet
to the bottom of the shaft. Of course, being in the basement of the hotel, it
couldn’t plummet all that far.
“Why do you need me?”
“You’re the one who figured it out. Also, you have a
reputation.”
“I have a reputation?”
Of course I did. I knew that—after two years with PUPI, most of
them out in the field, there were people who knew me, knew what I did. And by
“people” I meant both human and not. But I hadn’t exactly thought how that might
translate to the Council.
Contemplating that, at least, distracted me. There are two
groups in the Talent population. Well, three, actually, but the gypsies side
with lonejacks when they bother to weigh in at all. The lonejacks are
independents, taking care of their own shit, going their own way, and generally
not getting in anyone’s face until they have to. My dad had been a lonejack, and
so were most of the PUPs, including Venec. It was both a philosophy and a
culture, and hard to move from one to the other, what we call crossing the
river.
My mentor had been Council, though, and he’d pretty much raised
me from the time I was eight, Zaki being useless as a parental authority
figure.
Council was all about rules and regulations, order and
authority. Not in a bad way, either, although most lonejacks would disagree.
There was a comfort and protection in being Council, in knowing that you’d never
be left to hang, never abandoned, because there was a safety net underneath
you.
The net came with a price, though: obedience to the seated
Council, the folk who made the rules. Ian Stosser had been close enough to
seated Council to burn himself—and he had burned them, instead. Knowing what I
did now, what Ben had told me…a lot of things about the boss made more sense
now.
He’d started PUPI to ensure that nobody ever escaped paying the
price for crimes committed by magic—had basically told the Council to go fuck
themselves. And they’d been trying to fuck us over ever since, even as they used
our services. That’s why they’d never done more than slap the Bitch’s hand—why
they would never do more.
“You really think they’ll issue a Statement?”
“No.” His voice was flat, and he stared at the elevator door in
front of us, not wasting any of his legendary—and very real—charisma on me. “But
we’ll be on record as having tried.”
A Statement was a warning and an APB and a request for
information all in one, and every Council member who heard it would be bound by
it. I assumed he was going to ask them to come to us with any information
available on any of the murders, which, if they agreed, would be incredibly
useful.
“If you don’t think they will, why are we really going?”
Bastard wouldn’t tell me.
* * *
We took a cab to a part of town I didn’t recognize—not
that I knew much outside of what I’d seen already—to a tiny little street and a
tiny little town house. Ian paid off the cabbie and we got out.