The Edge of Ruin (12 page)

They left the last of the buildings behind and went winding up a curving driveway toward the building.
Lumina.
He had seen the building many times in photos. This was the first time in person. The one time Grenier had led a crusade in New Mexico, he’d stayed well south of Albuquerque and Kenntnis. Grenier had been a true sorcerer, and it was rumored that Kenntnis could sense magic. In fact it had been Cross, but the humans serving the Old Ones hadn’t known that until Rhiana had been placed on the inside, close to Kenntnis.

There were cars in the parking lot, mostly hybrids and small, fuel-efficient vehicles, but it was relatively few cars when compared to the size of the building. As Syd eased them into a couple of parking spaces, Grenier saw the front door of the building burst open. A woman came running out.

She was frantically hopping and hobbling, and he realized she’d broken the heel on one of her boots. She stopped at the bottom of the steps that led up to the building’s entrance, unzipped and yanked off her boot. She focused on the still rolling RV and came running toward them, waving her arms over her head.

“Help! Help, please.”

Grenier and Syd exchanged glances, and the FBI agent opened his door. The woman jumped onto the first step and hung on to the hand grip, gasping for air.

“Please …” pant. “I need …” pant, pant. “A ride,” pant. “Please.” She had a slight German accent.

“Okay, ma’am, just calm down—” Syd began, but the woman interrupted.

“No time. I must get away!”

Syd stood up, the woman retreated back down the step, and Syd jumped down and caught her by the shoulders. “Whoa, whoa, why do you have to get away? What have you done?” His tone was sharp and suspicious.

It must be the nature of cops of every kind, in every place
, Grenier thought as he moved to get out of the RV. His belly gave a monstrous growl, and he belched. The gust of air across the back of his tongue carried the scent and faint taste of his last packet of peanut butter and cheese crackers.

The woman leaned back, trying to pull free. She looked angry. “I haven’t done a damn thing. It’s my boss … former boss. He’s quite mad. He’s got a sword—”

Syd’s expression cleared and he smiled with relief. He squeezed past Grenier, who was exiting the RV. “Honey, Sam, he’s here. Come on, you’ve gotta come out now.”

Sam crept to the opening between the cab and the cabin, and peeked around with the air of a timid deer gazing fearfully into an open meadow. Tears welled up in her brown eyes and slowly spilled down her cheeks. “Come on, sweetie. You’re going to be okay now,” Syd said, ever so gently.

The woman standing barefoot on the cold asphalt was frowning up at the father and daughter. “Pardon me,” Grenier said. She hurriedly stepped aside, and he stepped down with a grunt.

Syd had his arm around his daughter’s waist now and was gently urging her toward the door of the RV. The German woman’s eyes widened when she saw the large rifle that Sam cradled in her arms. The woman slumped and shook her head.

“First swords and now guns. Okay, the insanity seems to be spreading. Would someone please tell me what the hell is going on?”

But Syd ignored the question. Instead he was hurriedly walking Sam toward the building. His head was bent solicitously over hers, and Grenier heard the soothing murmur of endearments and encouragement. “It’s okay, honey. We’re almost there. You’re going to be fine now.”

The German stared in bemusement after them. Grenier cleared his throat. She turned to face him. “So, it looks like Richard didn’t do a very good job of show-and-tell with the sword.”

“Does everybody know about this fucking sword but me?” she burst out.

“A select few, and some of us have a more intimate knowledge than others.” Grenier lifted his maimed arm, and smiled as he watched the woman move to the logical conclusion—he had lost his hand to that sword.

“Okay, I am definitely out of here,” the woman said and started to walk away.

It suddenly dawned on Grenier that if Richard had wanted to touch this woman with the sword she must have some importance. He grabbed her by the upper arm, digging his fingers deep into her biceps.

“Four months ago I would have done everything in my power to hurry you on your way, but now, well, let’s just say that if you give Richard an advantage in the coming battles, then you are going to stay.” Grenier dropped his maimed arm over her shoulders and frog-marched her back toward the front doors.

* * *

Pamela hung up the phone and looked over at her father. “That was Sydney in the front lobby. Dagmar went running through like the hounds of Hell were after her. It looks like Richard messed things up.”

Her father stood up from behind the desk, ripped off his reading glasses, and tossed them down on the piles of papers. “Come along.”

When they stepped off the elevator in the lobby, a man’s voice was echoing off the black marble and steel panels of the room.

“She went down to Virginia while I was in the hospital.”

Richard was there, leaning on his crutches. There was a bloodstain at thigh height on his bathrobe. Her brother’s entire focus was on the face of the older man who was pouring out words so quickly that it was hard to distinguish between them.

“By the time I figured out what was wrong with her you were gone.” The “her” appeared to be a young woman with chin-length brown hair and wild brown eyes. The man was holding her by the wrist. She bucked and struggled like a hooked fish trying to break the line. Her free hand held a rifle, and that rifle was waving wildly.

“Sir, we need to secure that gun,” said Estevan, one of the security guards. Pamela totally agreed.

“I told you it’s not loaded,” the man snapped. He turned back to Richard. “I really need you to do the thing with the sword. You’ll do it, won’t you?”

At that moment Dagmar and a fat man entered. He had amazing hazel eyes, and it looked like he’d once had good features, though they were now blurred under a layer of fat. His belly strained at the buttons of an expensive dress shirt. He looked vaguely familiar, but Pamela couldn’t place him.

Her brother’s reaction left no doubt that he knew the identity of the man. “You!” he said, and the single word was filled with loathing and an undercurrent of fear.

Pamela looked over at her father, but he was also staring at the man with hatred, at least equal to Richard’s if not greater.

Richard spun on his good leg, putting himself within reach of the bemused security guard, and yanked Estevan’s pistol out of its holster.

A lot of things happened all at once. Dagmar hit the floor. The man with the terrified, rifle-toting woman said, “Huh?” Rifle Girl began to scream. Sydney, the receptionist, joined in. Richard pointed the gun at the fat man.

Estevan said in agonized tones as he shifted nervously from foot to foot, “Sir! Sir! That one
is
loaded, sir!”

“Richard!” She shrieked out her brother’s name. “What are you
doing
?”

The fat man was speaking, the words both furious and contemptuous. “Good God, what do you think I could do, here in your own stronghold? Assault you? I’m here to offer you my
help
.”

“How dare you come here, sir! Leave at once!” Pamela’s father commanded.

Pamela heard the clack of the front door’s bar being depressed. A new voice, a rich contralto, joined the cacophony, “Richard, what are you doing? You’ve opened your wound.”

Angela rushed toward him. Hectic spots of color burned on each cheek, distinguishable despite her rich cocoa-colored skin. She stopped, confused by the sight of the gun, and followed the barrel to the fat man. “Oh shit, Grenier!”

Now Pamela realized who he was. At that point everyone started talking at once and Pamela couldn’t untangle a single sentence.

“Shut up!”

It was Richard. His voice carried above the screaming, crying, and talking.
Guess all those singing lessons were good for something
, Pamela thought.

And, amazingly, everyone did.

T
he furnishings and art in the penthouse were stunning and made Grenier’s possessions look like cheap Walmart crap in comparison. He’d loved the big stone and timber building on his estate in Virginia. The public rooms had been trailer park chic—blue velvet upholstered furniture and thick white pile carpet with bad modern religious art—but his private quarters had been beautiful. He’d collected eighteenth-century English furniture, silver, and paintings. He’d loved the hunting still-lifes, the way each feather on a dead bird had been so perfectly rendered, but his antiques paled in comparison with the objects in this room. Resentment clawed at the back of his throat.
Of course, I’m just a man, a mortal, and had only a few years to amass my fortune and collection. Kenntnis had had eons.

He found himself mourning for his lost home and hating them all. Grenier moved away from the center of the room and took up a position against a bookcase. Resting his shoulders against the case, he watched the people swirling, clotting and breaking apart, like balls on a billiard table. Conversations flared and jumped from person to person without any connection or logic. He hoped Lumina wasn’t always this disorganized. Perhaps it was his arrival that had thrown them into such total disarray, and perversely the thought made him feel better.

“What is this sword?” the German woman was asking.

Pamela, referring to Sam, said, “Can’t somebody shut her up?” Grenier felt like he knew the sister. He’d studied her photo, her education, her cases in the public defender’s office in Newport, her boyfriends and lovers, in his effort to understand Richard and find the key to breaking him.

“Who are you?” Judge Oort was demanding of Syd.

“You will help her, right?” Syd was yelling into Richard’s left ear while Armandariz said into his right ear, “We need to redress your leg.”

Grenier studied the coroner curiously. He had never actually met the woman.
Just nearly killed her when she came between Richard and one of my spells.

Richard waved Armandariz off. “It can wait. We need to deal with …” Richard put a hand in the center of Syd’s chest and pushed him back a step to get the former FBI agent out of his personal space. “What’s her name?” he asked, nodding at the whimpering Sam.

“Sam,” Syd provided.

“Samantha.” Pamela Oort seemed to be testing out the name.

“Yeah, but never call her that. She hates it. The whole
Bewitched
thing,” Syd babbled as he nervously patted his weeping daughter on the back.

Pamela sniffed and took herself off to sit on the piano bench.

Richard pulled the hilt out of the pocket of his bathrobe, swept his hand away from it, and the blade appeared. There was a flare of intense pain from Grenier’s stump as he remembered that blade shearing through his wrist. Rage and tears beat at the back of his throat.

As it was drawn, musical overtones went echoing away into infinity. Sam stopped crying, lifted her head from her father’s shoulder, and turned to face Richard. Richard said something to the young agent, but it was so low that Grenier couldn’t hear the words. Then Richard touched her lightly on the shoulder with the blade. She cried out, shivered, and would have collapsed to the floor except for her father’s supporting arms.

When Sam lifted her head from her father’s shoulders, her eyes were clear, her expression calm, if a little bit defensive. The tears were gone. The German woman who’d tried to commandeer a ride dropped into an armchair. She looked shell-shocked.

Grenier was surprised when Richard limped over to confront him. Grenier had pegged the young paladin as a person who avoided confrontation at all cost.

“Why are you here? What do you want?” There was nothing soft in the delivery, and Richard stared defiantly up at him.

“Sanctuary … since we’re in a medieval frame of mind,” Grenier said, with a gesture from the sword in Richard’s hand back toward Sam. “My former … associates take a dim view of failure.”

“What failure?” Richard asked. “You bound Kenntnis.” Bitterness lay over the words, but Grenier also heard the deeply buried fear and loss.

“Ah, yes, but I failed to deliver the sword. And in trying to deliver the sword I never got around to killing
you
.” The young man before him blanched. It wasn’t easy to hear someone so matter-of-factly discussing your death. “So, here I am. Throwing myself on your mercy because you’re the only person who can protect me. And if the milk of human kindness doesn’t work for you, you can try enlightened self-interest—you might find me useful.”

“Tough! Get the fuck out of here, and I hope they
do
kill you,” Armandariz said. Anger blazed in her brown eyes.

“Angela.” The way Richard said her name demanded silence.

The coroner subsided, and Grenier realized that the young man actually had a commanding presence, but seemed totally unaware of it.

“Taking him in makes a certain degree of sense,” the judge said in his dry, precise way from his position on the sofa. “But only if you can trust him. Do you think you can trust him, Richard?”

“Probably not, sir.” Richard turned back to Grenier. “Still he has knowledge and information that we need. I think we have to take the risk.”

The timid fawn look was back in the blue eyes, as if Richard were already second-guessing his decision. The coroner kept silent, but she still managed to make her feelings known. She threw her hands in the air and stalked away.

Across the room, Sam shook off her father’s embrace. “I’m fine. I’m fine now. Really.” Her tone and expression radiated embarrassed defiance.

The judge stood. “Richard needs to have that wound dressed again. Many of you have been traveling. We can reconvene after you’ve all had something to eat.”

The plan was met with universal approval. Grenier joined the move toward the arch separating dining room and living room. The judge caught him by the sleeve, holding him back.

“Your Honor, so good to see you again,” Grenier said.

The last time they had met, they had been in Grenier’s office at his compound and Grenier had been trying to kill the elder Oort with a series of magical spells. But the remark didn’t elicit a rise. The judge’s control was better than his son’s.