Ron Thompson paced along the Maidan with the slow, rolling gait of a cop on the beat—on his beat, in the rain, on a bad day, after an argument with the sergeant, during a gang war. With one eye, he kept tabs on the Asp in point position. With the other eye, he watched Hesha and Elizabeth strolling ahead of him. They seemed, despite all sense, to be enjoying themselves. Over the open circuit of his phone, he caught a steady stream of muttering curses. Mercurio, not content to express his disgust with mere body language, vented his spleen into the ether.
Hesha Ruhadze walked between his men. He chose to ignore them; he carried a huge golf umbrella with a ridiculous pink-and-white canopy. His attention centered entirely on the girl by his side. She wore a thin black dress and a thin black raincoat. Elizabeth’s sandals flowed with the Hooghly’s water, but the tears that had threatened since they came to Calcutta were dry at last. They wandered into the Maidan grounds, and the Friday-night carnival air swept around them despite the rain. The snake charmers, beggars, flower sellers, and street performers gave him a thousand scenes to show her, and enough things to talk about that avoided…unpleasantness.
A bead-seller, draped with hundreds of strings of his own wares, approached them, hawking his cheap glass fervently at the lady. The Asp closed in, and Hesha felt Thompson’s lingering resentment step nearer. Elizabeth listened to the man’s pitch and smiled, but shook her head. “Na, dhonyabad.”
Hesha chuckled, and moved her along. “Your Bengali pronunciation is very interesting.”
“Why doesn’t that sound like a compliment?”
“I am sure the man was flattered that you made the attempt. Most Americans don’t.” They turned, passed out of the little pavilion village, and struck out toward the city lights again. “Didn’t you want any souvenirs?
Cheap beads? I can buy the same kind in New York…if I ever get back to New York.” She frowned up at him.
“You’ll go back to New York.” Hesha assured her. He switched his grip on the umbrella and clasped her hand. “I promise.” Elizabeth, neither satisfied nor seeking to argue about it, let him keep hold of her hand as they walked. “Let’s go up to the bazaars and take a look. The shops may be closing, but I’ll find you a souvenir worth having. Something nice for your apartment? A rug? A handmade leather desk set for Sleipnir? Do you,” he asked seriously, “care at all for brass?”
“Brass?”
“India is very good for brass….” He led her north through a maze of little streets, and they came out on a wider avenue lined with shops. As they went, the Asp scouted ahead of them. Thompson checked their trail to be sure they were not followed. Hesha kept his own eyes open. And Elizabeth, without thinking about them much, noticed two things: First, that the signs over the stores and on the billboards used a little less Sanskrit and English type and more Arabic letters; second, that Hesha, whom she had never seen wearing jewelry anywhere but around his neck, had on a string bracelet. As they walked hand in hand, their wrists rubbed against each other, and the beads knotted into the bracelet chafed her skin.
They made their way up the little bazaar, taking a last look around establishments closing for the night, window-shopping at the Muslim stores that had shut at sundown for the holy day. Then Elizabeth, at first content to follow where her companion led, started choosing their path. To begin with, her side-trips made sense—an antique store, a sari weaver’s, a stall parting with the last of its sweet pa’an desserts—but gradually, any little thing could catch her eye and send them down an alley and up the next street without explanation.
Hesha gave her sightseeing full rein, even when the excursions lost reason and Elizabeth seemed to wonder, herself, why this building or that intersection was so interesting. She came to a halt near an old, ill-kept mosque, made a comment on the architecture, and suddenly decided to duck into a tiny passage nearby. The Setite joined her in splashing down the sidewalk—acting, to Elizabeth, as if a wild dash through the dark gap between two old houses was normal. The tiny lane bent halfway through, where the tenements facing one street met, crookedly, the backs of those facing the other way.
And in an instant, Elizabeth felt Hesha’s hand leave hers. By the time her eyes could find him again, his arms held writhing darkness. Thompson and the Asp’s strangely subdued flashlights drove the shadows back, and Liz saw in horror that Hesha’s changing hands clutched a child.
Hesha pinned the tiny girl to a cracked stucco wall, and the skinny, charcoal-colored waif let out a thin cry. Doubling up her little body, the child got her knees beneath her and leaped out. The plaster shattered, but the force of her stick-thin legs was enough to propel herself and the Setite across the alley. They slammed against brick stairs on the other side. The child, her head down and fastened like a tick to Hesha’s forearm, pushed away again. The wrestlers swung round against a softer surface—Elizabeth—and hurled the mortal woman into the wreckage of the first wall.
The lights moved in, wavering, and then stopped abruptly. Liz felt the Asp beside her and found a hand reaching down to lift her to her feet. Standing again, she looked toward the battle. The smaller figure, despite the warm lights, was only gray-brown, barely visible. The taller figure stood over his enemy on weirdly jointed legs and struck at her with scaled talons. He tore wounds across the child’s naked skin with a whip-like, forked tongue two feet long.
Elizabeth drew breath to scream, but the Asp was faster—his arm curled about her neck and his callused palm covered her mouth before the sound escaped her. She choked, tried to bite him, but stopped. Pressure on her nostrils warned that he could suffocate her as easily as silence. In his other fist, she saw the silhouette of a gun, changing aim with almost mechanical precision as the fighters moved back and forth. When it stopped, when the furious spray from the whirling monsters died down, Mercurio shoved her forward, and Liz saw that the fight was over.
“Gloves,” ordered Hesha.
He dropped the body of his enemy into the water beneath him. It twitched, and the Setite walked onto it with his thick-soled sandals. One heel ground the child’s chin into the pavement. Elizabeth flinched. The victor rinsed his claws off in the stream, and Thompson stepped forward, snapping latex gloves onto his master’s re-forming hands. Hesha immediately threw down his blood-stained raincoat, peeled out of his shirt and trousers and let them fall into the rushing flood. He checked himself over and carefully washed away the red-black ichor from his wounds.
“Clean, sir.” Thompson confirmed.
Elizabeth shuddered. Hesha’s scaly hide had begun to seal itself; the gashes and bites inflicted by the creature under his foot closed up. None of them had bled. The scales melted away, and with the change in his skin, the odd joints and height disappeared. Ron signaled to the Asp. Raphael took aim on a spot under the water. Thompson slipped out of his own coat, draped it over his boss, and returned to the staircase and a steady, two-fisted grip on his pistol.
Protected by the gloves, Hesha reached down, seized the girl by the forehead and jaw, and pinned her against the brick steps. Her infant muscles worked terribly against the pressure, and half-formed sounds fought their way through clenched teeth. Without warning, the Setite released his grip on her chin and the child’s mouth flew open. Faster than the watching mortals could see, his fingers darted in and came out holding a gray, flapping piece of dead tissue: her tongue. He threw it into the gutter, clamped down on her skull again, and looked into her eyes. She shut them quickly.
“Thompson. Give me a gun and silencer. And pry her eyes open.” Ron said something beneath his breath, but Hesha caught it. “Cut the lids off, then.”
The old cop moved in. He fit the weapon together and laid it on the step below Hesha’s hand; he took a small knife from his sleeve and bent over the child’s head. The Setite leaned closer to the gray face and spoke short words, commanding words, at the girl. Her lips still formed the beginnings of syllables. He shouted Arabic at her, whispered it, searched the ruined eyes for signs of obedience or uncertainty. “
Quiet,” he tried in English.
“Hold her head,” he said shortly. Again, he let her jaw free. With a crack, the little girl’s jaw disintegrated as the bullet passed through, and when the blur of movement stopped, a quarter of her face lay splattered on the plaster wall across the alley. Hesha tried his commands again. Finally, as her captor concentrated on overpowering her will, the small, determined creature on the steps managed to make a sound.
Hesha jabbed at her with a careless, impatient claw. He regretted it instantly—there had not been enough left of the girl to take the ragged cut. She shrieked, shriveled up, and dried to powder on the spot.
In the empty moment afterward, there was hardly any noise in the alley.
The rain rattled and plonked over the wreckage. It had before; it would again. In Calcutta, in July, the sky falls on the city. Rain fell on the dust that had been an Assamite and turned it to mud.
Elizabeth, still the Asp’s prisoner, sobbed in terrible, heart-broken gasps. Her breath hurt her; the water on her face was not the rain. Her full and stinging eyes flickered slowly around the circle of light. She feared what lay outside it, and she feared the three men standing in it with her. Hesha moved toward the Asp, and behind him Thompson gathered up the tools of the gruesome surgery. Liz’s gaze retreated; she would not look at either of them.
“Let her go,” said Hesha. “Let her go.”
Released, she staggered, and the monster caught her by the arms. Gently, he turned her down the alley, away from the fast-eroding corpse on the steps, and started the long walk back to the hotel.
Saturday, 24 July 1999, 2:24 AM
The Oberoi Grand Hotel
Calcutta, West Bengal
Elizabeth, bending over the sink, looked up from the drain to the faucet. A dark-brown hand held a wet washcloth out to her—her eyes flickered up to the mirror and saw Hesha standing behind her. She was sick again, and he held her shoulders while her body fought to void an already empty stomach. The acid trickled into the running water. The damp cloth moved coolly across her forehead. Her convulsions stopped, and he waited while the woman rinsed the bile from her mouth.
“Don’t touch me!” She wrenched violently away from the creature’s unresisting hands.
Hesha stayed where he was and let her put the whole length of the room between them.
“She was just a baby. A baby!” Elizabeth shrieked the last word.
“No,” said Hesha.
“You killed a little girl,” she spat at him, “a child. You tortured a baby girl to death.”
“No,” repeated the monster, calmly. “This is part of the nightmare you had earlier.”
“Goddamn you! Goddamn you, this was real. I saw you do it.” She burst into tears. “Why did you kill her?!” Hesha stepped forward, carefully. He stopped at a finely chosen point—exactly the distance she would allow. “This is part of the nightmare. Your Red King under the mountain. The Monkey-woman, sent to kill the wizard. Nothing in the nightmare is what it looks like.”
“I saw you kill her,” Elizabeth whispered dangerously. “And I saw you.” She swallowed against the churning of her guts, and trembled. “What are you?”
The Setite shook his head. “Another part of the nightmare.”
“No!” Her hands, clenched into white fists, beat against her legs in frustration. “Truth! What are you? What are you? What are you?”
He closed the space between them and gathered her into his embrace. They stood there for perhaps five minutes—the mortal woman shaking, shrinking from him, arms wrapped tightly around her body to protect herself from him, but crying on his shoulder just the same. Hesha said nothing, yet he held her together against the wracking sobs. They slowed, the anguished cries subsided into weeping, and when he knew she was mistress of herself again, he released her.
Elizabeth tried to retreat without having any place to go. She collapsed onto the carpet in the corner, and said dully, “Leave me alone.”
Hesha knelt on the floor, just out of arm’s reach. He was aware, suddenly, of the warmth left on his skin by her body and of the hot, damp tears soaked into his shirt. Under the sound of the woman’s ragged breath, he began to notice her heartbeat. He shook off the rhythm of her blood and broke the silence.
“I killed that creature,” said the Setite evenly, “because she had tasted my blood, and she had endangered my mission and my people, and because she killed Michel.” He spaced the words out, let them fall on her slowly. “Who was Michel to you?”
“The wizard. And she was the Monkey-woman sent to destroy him. She—it—was not a child; not a baby girl for you to cry over. She might have been a child, a century ago. But my enemies took that child, trained her, killed her, and turned her into an assassin under their control.” He paused. “A tool for killing.”
From where his heart used to be, there came a whisper: What kind of tool will you turn Elizabeth into?
“I told you I keep buried dangers from coming into the wrong hands. I came to Calcutta because one of the worst of them is loose in the world. The Red Star that terrifies you in your dreams.” He looked at her. She was listening, at least. The mention of the star struck her, and she might be prepared, finally, to believe in what he had come for. “Michel would have found its source for me. Together we could have learned enough, I think, to stop the Eye—the star—if it were being used for harm.” His voice hardened. “The assassin put an end to that hope. More people will suffer because of that girl and whoever paid her to kill my friend. They destroyed him to keep him from talking to me.” He wondered as he said it if that might even be fact.
Hesha leaned back against the heavy curtains, and stretched his legs. Heavily, sadly, he told her, “But you…you shouldn’t have had to see that. It was terrible, and I am sorry that you have come so close to the center of this.” He studied the bedspread, her night stand, the room beyond. After a precise interval, he looked back to the woman in the corner, and held a hand out to her. “Forgive me, Elizabeth,” he pleaded. He shook his head, and said again, “You shouldn’t have had to see that.” Lord, he prayed, you sent me a seer when you knew I had lost Vegel, and I am grateful. But why this woman? And why did she have to see so much so soon?
Hesha felt warm fingers clasp his, and he sighed with what breath he had. He looked to her; he followed her glance to their joined hands; he smiled ruefully.
Elizabeth took his hand in both of hers. The cuff of his shirt lay over the wrist, but she thought, underneath…there it was. A bracelet of knotted hemp and polished white beads. The largest hung low, and she pulled the string around to see it better. Without surprise, she recognized the white eye of the statue.
Neither spoke. The room had been peacefully calm a moment earlier. It was dead calm now, charged for a storm.
“You always,” said Elizabeth, “wear that on a thong around your neck. Why is it on your wrist tonight?” Before he could answer, she pursued the logic. “You put that on your wrist. You took me walking, and you put it up against my wrist.” More slowly, “And after that, I started…going sideways. Going places for no reason.” She closed her eyes and pulled her arms back around her knees. “That was why you were nice to me tonight. So you could hold my hand and put that in it. I was just…the string on the pendulum….
“You used me.”
Hesha grew a claw and cut the bracelet off. He closed his scaled hands around it.
“Yes,” he said.
“To find the girl.”
“No. I didn’t know what you would take me to.” The Setite paused, rubbing the stones in the bracelet against each other. They clicked like the blue prayer beads of his long-lost home. “Given time I could find anything in the world myself. I don’t have time, Elizabeth. I am looking for short cuts. I need fast answers. I put you…in circuit…with the eye stone to trace the source. I did not expect to find the assassin; that is the truth.”
Very quietly, Elizabeth murmured: “But I am still just the string of the pendulum to you.”
“Irreplaceable,” she repeated, laughing low in her throat. Hesha started—her tone had changed completely. From high hysterics, she had descended to a cynical, unpredictable level he wasn’t sure he could reach.
“Why is that funny?” he asked sharply.
“Please,” said Elizabeth, shaking her head. “Go away now. I’m tired.”
The phone rang in the next room. Hesha looked toward the door, reluctantly. She laughed again, and climbed onto the bed.
“Go, Hesha. The rakshasa are calling you, and someone wants me to sleep.”
“Hesha Ruhadze?” It was a man’s voice, heavily accented but speaking English well enough.
“Here.”
“I need to talk to you in person. Right away. I don’t think my name would mean anything to you. But I talked to Michel a few nights ago, and I think you need to talk me at least as much,” said the stranger cockily, “as I need to talk to you.” He let that rest for a moment. “I’m in the Pink Elephant, downstairs. Come in the next ten minutes, or don’t come at all.”
Hesha sidled diffidently into the darkened, music-drowned club. The persistent drumbeat crept up from the wooden floor into the soles of his feet. The smoke and colored, moving lights played tricks on his eyes. He scouted out the bar, called for a whisky and soda, and scanned the room for familiar faces. Relieved to find none, he pretended to sip his drink. With the attitude and expression of a determined late-night drinker, he stalked around the dance floor to a small, empty patch of booths and tables. The Setite sat in the crook of a curved bench, leaned against the wall, and proceeded to make the booze disappear.
After a casual delay, a figure detached itself from a group of girls gyrating in the flashing lights. With swaggering steps, the man approached Hesha’s table and swiveled his hips under the table.
Clan Novel Setite: Book 4 of The Clan Novel Saga Page 20
