“They are prowling through the House—mostly on the ground floor.”
“How close?”
“There are many in the corridor below.”
Tucker stared down the stairs, listening hard. He could hear them now, shuffling around down there. Maggie moved aside and he picked up his gun. He glanced back at Jamie. Something had happened to Tams that was more than just getting beaten up by Gannon. It was weird how all these “powers” kept popping up out of the woodwork. Was Blue going to sprout wings next? Christ, was he?
“Hold it,” Tucker said suddenly. “There’s something on the stairs.”
Blue was on his feet and across the room in an instant, the gun he’d given Sally in his big hand. The stock of the Weatherby had been broken earlier and he hadn’t gotten around to rigging something else to fit it yet.
“That’s no monster,” he said. “It’s Thomas Hengwr!”
Kieran arose, his pulse drumming. Blue was down the stairs, helping the old man up. His clothes hung in ribbons from his back and were wet with sweat and blood, and his eyes had a haunted look to them. But at least he was alive, Kieran thought. He helped Tom up the last few steps and settled him on the couch beside Sally. Ha’kan’ta and Ur’wen’ta exchanged glances as they watched the old man enter. They’d reached out with their sen’fer’sa, but there was nothing there to touch.
“How else could he escape Mal’ek’a’s detection?” Ur’wen’ta murmured, but he looked troubled.
Tom looked around the room. “Kieran?” he asked as his gaze touched his apprentice’s face. “Is it truly you? Thank all the gods that live, you’re unharmed!”
“What happened to you?” Blue asked. “You’ve been out cold for about two days.”
“Two days?”
Blue nodded. “You showed up all bloody and battered in Jamie’s study two days ago and were dead to the world except for muttering a few words now and again. What gives?”
“Never mind that,” Tucker said. “Can you kill him?”
“Kill . . . ?”
“Mal’ek’a,” Kieran said.
“What is it anyway?” Blue asked.
Tom sighed. He passed a hand across his brow and seemed to grow smaller as he sat there on the couch.
“He is evil incarnate. And no, I cannot kill him. I am too weak. There is not enough power in this room to even. . . .” His voice trailed off as his gaze lit on Sara. He looked down at her hand. Taliesin’s ring glittered, gold and beckoning. “Gods!” he cried. “There is hope! We have the bard’s ring.”
Sara looked up as though just aware of Tom’s presence. She recognized him from his infrequent visits to The Merry Dancers, and more recently from the photograph that Tucker had shown her. With an effort, she lifted her thoughts from her sorrow and reached across to Kieran’s mentor with her taw—an automatic gesture now, she realized. She met the same nothingness that the rathe’wen’a had experienced when Tom first entered the room.
“What are you?” she asked. “I can see you with my eyes, but there’s nothing there for my taw to touch.”
Tom looked taken aback for a moment, then nodded with understanding.
“I cannot let my defenses slip for a moment,” he explained. “Mal’ek’a is hunting me. If I let my guard down, he will be upon us in moments. We need time to plan our attack, to prepare. For with the ring, we have a chance.”
“Let your guard down for a minute. Mal’ek’a’s clear across the House.”
Oh, Christ! Blue thought. Don’t start being difficult again. He tried to catch Ur’wen’ta’s eye, succeeded, signed:
Help me convince her not to be a hindrance.
“Are you mad?” Tom said. “We have a chance. Would you throw it away?”
“I don’t trust you,” Sara said.
Blue’s heart sank at that, sank further when Ur’wen’ta indicated that he would not help him in this.
“Sara,” Blue began.
“What do we know about him?” Sara asked, turning to the biker. “He’s the reason we’re in this mess in the first place.”
Tom’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.
“All he’s done,” Sara continued, “is bring harm to everything I care for. Jesus Christ, Blue! For all I know he is the problem. All I’m asking is for him to show a little faith—that’s all.”
“You don’t understand,” Tucker said, taking a step towards her.
Sara turned to the rathe’wen’a. “What do you feel when you reach out to him?” she asked Ha’kan’ta.
“Nothing, Little-Otter.”
Sara blinked, hearing Mayis’s pet name for her on Ha’kan’ta’s lips. Then she nodded. Why not? Ha’kan’ta was Mayis’s granddaughter. “Will you stand by me?” she asked.
“What’re they saying?” Tucker asked Kieran.
Kieran shook his head. He waited to hear what Ha’kan’ta would say.
“No one will force you to give up your ring against your will,” the rathe’wen’a said.
Kieran opened his mouth to protest, then paused. He looked from Tom to Ha’kan’ta. Suddenly his loyalties were being divided. He loved them both. But Tom had been wrong—so very wrong—once already.
“What’s so important about the ring?” he asked Tom.
“With it, Mal’ek’a will be unstoppable. Used against him—used properly against him—and it will be the means of his defeat.”
Sara swallowed. What if she was wrong? She was running on tension now, following her intuition. She had no reason to suspect Tom of anything. On the other hand, she suspected him of everything. He’d spent the better part of his life hunting down the man she’d come to love. But if the ring had to be used against Mal’ek’a. . . .
“I’ll use it against him,” she said.
“Don’t play the fool,” Tom said sharply. “It must be wielded by one who understands its use. Please.” He turned to the others. “Convince her. It is our only hope. With the ring I can defeat Mal’ek’a. Without it we are doomed.”
“Give him the ring,” Tucker said.
Blue frowned. He wanted to stand by Sara, but she’d proved that she wasn’t running on all cylinders. Though that wasn’t quite fair. He was judging her recent actions by the person he’d known. Not by who she was now. She was changed now, older somehow. Stronger. And the Sara he’d known hadn’t been able to call up fire with her hands either.
“Ease up,” he told Tucker.
“Ease up? For Christ’s sake, Blue! We’re running out of time. Now she either gives him the ring, or we take it from her and give it to him ourselves.”
Blue looked from Tucker to Sara. He saw her jaw tighten, glanced at her fingers for a telltale trace of flickering. Her hands were balled up into fists. And—was that magefire or the ring glinting?
“Kieran!” Ha’kan’ta said suddenly. “Why do we argue amongst ourselves when we have a common foe?”
Before he could reply, Blue turned to Tom and asked:
“How come you’re okay all of a sudden when a few hours ago you were out like a light? We couldn’t’ve roused you if we’d let a bomb off under you.”
Tom closed his eyes wearily, then opened them to look directly into Blue’s. “Do I look ‘all right’ to you?”
“I’m tired of screwing around,” Tucker said. “We’ve got a chance to hit the enemy. Let’s use it. Or else . . .”
“Or else what?” Blue demanded.
Tucker started to lift his gun and Blue mirrored the action with his own weapon. Before either of them could bring their guns to bear, Ur’wen’ta loosed a pale light from his hands that knocked the weapons to the floor. The two turned to face the old shaman—a threat plain in Tucker’s face, Blue’s features uncertain. The old Indian shook his head and reached for Sara’s shoulder.
“If you will allow me to speak through you?” he asked in the language of the rathe’wen’a.
Sara hesitated, then reached out with her taw. The old shaman’s sen’fer’sa, his o
wn taw, met hers openly. She heard the drumming that never stilled inside him, knew that this was somebody she could trust. She reached out with her hand and the old man spoke through her, taw to taw, the words coming from her mouth.
“My name is Ur’wen’ta and I am of the drummers-of-the-bear. Will any here deny me my right to speak?” He paused for a moment, then continued. “The test that is asked for is not asked lightly. I, and my people, demand the same, else we will leave you now. You,” he said to Tom, “have nothing to fear. We will shield your presence from Mal’ek’a. He need never sense you. We are drummers—not children who play at the craft.”
For a long moment there was silence, then Tom sighed.
“I agree to the test,” he said. “I have nothing to hide from you. I fear only that your cloak of hiding will fail to shield me from Mal’ek’a’s gaze. But if a test is needed that we might save ourselves, then I agree to it. Only in this do I warn you: Mal’ek’a is more powerful than you might imagine. I truly fear that he will strike at you through me when I let my defenses fall.”
“Are we so much weaker than you, Toma’heng’ar? We are four—five if we include your craftson. Shall we fail where you succeed?”
“I have warned you,” Tom said. “If you fail, we are all dead.”
“Jesus Christ!” Tucker said. “We don’t have time to play these games. Blue, use a little common sense. Help me!”
Blue looked pointedly down at their guns. Maggie took the Inspector’s arm, felt his tension.
“It’s out of your hands,” she said softly. “You’re not in charge, Tucker. You’re not responsible for what happens here anymore. No more than any of us are. I say let them test him.”
That was the problem, Tucker realized as she said it. He was used to being in charge, being responsible. But here, he was out of his depth. He didn’t even have Traupman to help him make sense of it all. Traupman. Christ! “Okay,” he said, moving aside. “Do what you want.”
Tom nodded and stood, offering his hand. The rathe’wen’a moved forward. One stood by the door, looking down the stairs, but was joined with her drum-kin through their sen’fer’sa. The other three surrounded Sara and Tom.
“Kieran?” Ha’kan’ta asked.
He wanted to refuse, to have nothing to do with this test of his mentor, but knew he couldn’t. He stepped forward, let his taw join their sen’fer’sa. Drums appeared at the belts of the rathe’wen’a and their sound filled the room with a resonating rhythm. Sara suppressed a shiver and reached out with her right hand. Tom shook his head.
“The hand of your heart,” he said.
She let the one hand fall and lifted the other. She remembered what had happened when she’d touched Kieran. It wasn’t the same with the rathe’wen’a or Taliesin. They followed a different path, she supposed. She wasn’t sure she could stand sharing taws with this strange little man. He had been her enemy—or at least her lover’s enemy. She didn’t know if she could bear what she’d find inside him. Then Tom’s hand closed around her own, closed around her ring hand, around Taliesin’s ring, and she felt a darkness come swelling across her mind.
“Now it is mine,” a gravelly voice said through Tom’s lips, and a hiss of amusement followed the words.
The blood in Sara’s veins went cold. She stared at Tom, but it was no longer Kieran’s mentor that stood there. This was a darker Thomas Hengwr, a shadow that wore the shape of the monster from her dream. She tried to cry out, but her voice had died, had been stolen away. She pulled at her hand, but the muscles of her arm would no longer obey her commands.
“I needed only its touch,” Mal’ek’a said. “I will wear your hand about my neck in memory of this gift you have given me.”
Chapter Two
It took Jean-Paul the better part of fifteen minutes to reach home. He parked his VW and hurried back to Bank Street on foot. The situation was worse than it had appeared on the TV. Crowds blocked the traffic on Bank trying to get a glimpse, sirens and police loudspeakers roared, and there was a general hubbub that fluttered between panic and confusion. It took him another ten minutes to work his way through the mass. When he finally reached the makeshift barriers that were set up along the entrance to the park, he had to vie with television and newspaper news crews for attention from the guards.
He finally caught a city policeman’s eye. He flashed his government ID—just enough to let the patrolman think that he was here on official business. “I’m here to see RCMP Special Inspector John Tucker,” he shouted.
“Wait here.”
The officer returned with a tall man in corduroys and a windbreaker. His right hand was wrapped in bandages. His left held a cigarette. “My name’s Constable Dan Collins,” he said. “Who did you want to see?”
“Inspector Tucker. John Tu—” Before Jean-Paul could finish, Collins had turned aside to the policeman.
“Let him through,” he said. “If you’ll come with me, Mr . . . ?”
“Gagnon. What exactly is going on here, Constable?”
“Maybe you could tell me what you’re doing here first.”
Collins recognized Jean-Paul’s name, but made no mention of it.
“I was at a friend’s home when I saw all of . . . this on the television. C’est incroyable!”
“And what made you think the Inspector would be here?”
“He was investigating a case that he thought might have some connection with Tamson House, n’est-ce pas? When I saw this chaos on the news bulletin, I had to come.”
They reached the part of the park that faced the gap blown out of the side of the house. Three men were having an animated discussion that stopped abruptly as they came up to them.
“Who’s this?” Madison demanded.
“Jean-Paul Gagnon,” Collins said. “He’s looking for the Inspector.”
Madison regarded Jean-Paul for a few moments. “We think he’s in there, Mr. Gagnon,” he said finally. “Do you have some information for him?”
“No. I saw this on the news and. . . . My friend—Kieran Foy. The Inspector wanted him for questioning and I thought they might both be here.”
Madison recalled Tucker’s report. Gagnon had been very cooperative, but he didn’t need civilians cluttering up the landscape.
“I appreciate your coming down, Mr. Gagnon, but if you have no information for us, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to stand clear with the other spectators.” He said the word as though it was a disease. “What we’ve got here is so far off the wall. . . .” He turned to Collins. “Did you get a preliminary report back from the morgue yet?”
“Yeah. But they’ve got nothing definite yet. They pulled in a couple of experts from Agriculture Canada and the National Museum—biologists and a couple of hotshot naturalist experts.”
“And?”
“They won’t be quoted on this, but their initial probes show that these things are literally not of this world. They’re sending one of their men down here and asked if we could ‘refrain from killing any more of them.’ ”
“Jesus!” Madison turned to Jean-Paul. “Do you see what we’re dealing with?”
“Mon dieu! It is as John said then? You are dealing with des sorciers?”
“We don’t know what we’re dealing with. But we’re going to find out. We’re just getting ready to send a team in through that hole—specialists from our anti-terrorist squad. Now, if you’ll excuse us, Mr. Gagnon?”
Jean-Paul nodded and backed away. The men immediately fell into a discussion as to their best method of operation and he found himself unobserved. That was fine. He would stay out of their way, but close enough to watch the proceedings. If they brought Kieran out, he would make sure that he wasn’t spirited away to some hidden detention center for questioning. If Kieran was involved in this, he would need a friend.
Dismissing Gagnon from his mind, Madison returned to his briefing. The two men with him were Corporal Karl Holger, RCMP Anti-Terrorist Squad, and Lieutenant Tom De
verell of the Ottawa City Police Department. Madison had already been in touch with his superiors and been given the go-ahead.
“Your men ready, Corporal?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tom, can you get your men to clear a few more blocks? Once the squad goes in there’s no telling what they’ll stir up. We don’t know how many of those things are in there. If they break out through the cordon. . . .”
“We’re working on it, Wally. But we’re walking a thin line now between the normal gawkers and outright panic. Bad enough the TV crews got shots of those monsters of yours. We’re playing it like you asked—terrorists in monkey suits. They tried to hit the Embassy over on O’Connor, failed, and took refuge in this House of yours. The media’s not buying it, but they’re willing to play it our way for now.”
“I don’t care about the media,” Madison said. “Not right now. I’m just worried about what’ll happen if more of these monsters break free of the cordon and get into that crowd.”
“We’re doing what we can.”
“Okay.”
Madison looked up at the House. Already the gap was starting to look smaller. It hadn’t closed up as quick as the windows, but it was still closing. Sooner or later someone was going to notice. And when word of this leaked out, there’d be hell to pay.
“Take your men in, Corporal,” he said. “And watch yourselves. I don’t know what they’ve got those walls pumped up with, but you take a bad burn off of them.”
Holger tipped a finger to his forehead and crossed the grass to where his squad was waiting for him. They were dressed in dark khaki and bullet-proof vests, with combat helmets that had gridded face-guards that could be snapped down in place. Each man carried an SMG—standard military issue, 9mm, with twenty rounds per magazine. They had folding stocks to extend the carabine’s closed length and spare magazines clipped to their belts. The squad would have preferred Israeli UZIs.
“Hey, Holger,” a big black man asked the Corporal. “Are we going in?”
“You got it, Wilson.”
“ ’Bout time.”
Madison and Collins watched the squad make their approach. Two ladders slapped against the edges of the gap and men were going up them almost before they were in place. Three of the squad had remained behind, standing well back from the ladders, carbines aimed at the hole. When the last of their comrades had entered, they followed suit.
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