by DD Barant
Who?
The Impaler.
The name brings a snarl to his lips. Him? Good luck. I’d give him to you if I could, but no one hunts him. He hunts others.
Then you stay in kennel.
I don’t know where he is. No one does. He’s a [something]; he leaves no tracks. He contacts us, we don’t contact him.
I sigh and shake my head. Not a good idea—my skull already aches, and the motion actually makes me nauseous. I mutter, “Then enjoy the obligatory delousing, fleabag,” get up, and leave.
Charlie’s in a room down the hall, sitting in front of a video monitor with Gretchen. “Perhaps he’ll be more forthcoming in a few hours,” she says.
“I doubt it,” Charlie rumbles. “From what I hear, he’s lost more than a few pack members to the Impaler himself. Guy’s the FHR’s main enforcer, after all—if half the stories are true, he’s killed more thropes than Hades Rabies.”
But none of those killings inspired them to yank somebody out of their home dimension. Or am I not the first cross-universe tourist they’ve set on his trail?
The question’s been bugging me more and more lately. I’m not being given the whole picture, and Cassius refuses to answer any of my questions about the McMurdo research station.
And my headaches have been getting worse.
“Got a possible new lead, anyway,” Charlie says, getting to his feet. “If it doesn’t pan out, we can come back here and work out our frustration on our guest.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I say. “We finally locate an FHR cell?”
“I’m afraid not,” Gretchen says. “They’ve gone deep underground—we’re not picking up any chatter at all. But with all the pressure we’ve put on Los Colmillos, other business ventures are attempting to take their place.”
“La Lupo Grigorio,” Charlie says. “The Gray Wolves—and that’s Italian, not Spanish. Old-school Mafioso family, got their claws in all sorts of pies. Looking to move in on the Colmillos turf.”
“And that helps us how?”
“With their regular customers under close scrutiny,” Gretchen says, “the Resistance can’t deal with them. We have intelligence that says the Gray Wolves are negotiating to bring in a rather large shipment of Cloven, and it doesn’t appear to be through their regular sources. It may be coming from the FHR.”
I shrug. “Worth a shot. Eisfanger have anything new to report?”
“I’m afraid not. He’s been unable to pinpoint the source of the quinaxalone; there are simply too many possible avenues of distribution.”
That’s not really a surprise, but you never can tell what’ll break a case open. “Okay. Just give me a second to visit the little agents’ room and we’ll go rattle a few cages.”
“Sure. I’ll get the car.”
In the bathroom I dig out my daily supply of painkillers and swallow four with a handful of water from the tap. Ever since I stopped taking the Urthbone my head’s been pounding like an angry landlord on a deadbeat’s door. Still, it seems to have leveled off—or maybe I’ve just reached the point of self-medicating where I’m successfully managing to mask my symptoms. Either way, I can handle it—
“I’m not so sure you can,” Roger says.
I whirl around—hearing a man’s voice in a woman’s bathroom is bad enough, but hearing your ex is far worse. Especially when that ex is supposedly in another universe.
Except he isn’t. He’s standing right in front of me.
He looks exactly the same as the last time I saw him. Tall, broad-shouldered, slicked-back dark hair, wearing a black business suit that’s practically the FBI uniform. He’s giving me his Serious Look, which I used to find incredibly attractive and now makes me nauseous. And boy, do I feel nauseous. My head feels like it’s about to split open. The world spins, gravity goes sideways, and the floor takes a swing at my shoulder. It connects, too.
Everything dims to a swirling, blurry gray. The last thing I hear Roger say is, “They’re lying to you, Jace. Just like I did.”
And then the gray fades to black.
I wake up next to a puddle of vomit. Pretty sure it’s my own, but I’m not willing to send a sample to Forensics. I’m really getting tired of upchucking; I’ve barfed more since I got to this world than I have since I was in diapers.
I can’t have been out long—I’m still alone in the bathroom. I pull myself together, clean myself up, and get the hell out of there.
Not sure what that was all about. A hallucination, brought on by RDT? Or something else, something supernatural?
Either way, whether the message is from my subconscious or the astral plane, something is trying to warn me. Of course, I passed out before any information that might actually be useful was offered. But then, both the subconscious and the supernatural are notoriously cryptic, so I guess I shouldn’t really expect a detailed description of exactly who is lying to me and about what.
But I still want one.
Charlie’s waiting outside in the car. He’s stuck pretty close since the incident on Hokkaido, but he seems to know when to hang back and give me my space, too. He doesn’t ask if I’m all right, though he gives me a long look when I slide into the passenger seat. I ignore it. “So . . . tell me about the Gray Wolves.”
“La Lupo Grigorio,” he says as he pulls into traffic. “Big-time organized crime. Came to national prominence in the twenties, during Prohibition. They’re into loan-sharking, drug-running, hijacking—anything that turns a profit.”
“We call ’em Cosa Nostra where I come from. Pretty much the same deal, but with more guns.”
“Just because they don’t carry glorified peashooters doesn’t mean they don’t use weapons. Knives, swords, throwing axes, javelins, compound bows—these guys are dangerous.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
A twenty-minute drive later we arrive at our destination, a wrecking yard near the airport. The rusted sign on the chain-link fence reads: Salvatore Salvage. A few weeks ago I would have expected guard dogs to greet us as we walk through the entrance and toward the beat-up trailer that houses the office, but I know better now. Even the meanest pit bull doesn’t stand much of a chance against your average thrope or pire—not unless its teeth have been coated with silver.
The door to the trailer is open. Inside, a short man with greasy black hair sits behind a metal desk, watching porn on a portable DVD player that’s balanced on a stack of catalogs. He looks up when we come in, and taps a pause button. How considerate.
“Somethin’ I can do for ya?”
I show him my badge. “NSA. We’ve got a few questions for you.”
He doesn’t look impressed. “NSA? What the hell is that, an insurance company? I ain’t interested.”
“National Security Agency,” Charlie rumbles. “We’re Feds, Sal. Pay attention.”
“Okay, so you’re Feds. What you want?”
“We want your contact in the FHR,” I say. “Give him to us and we’ll forget about the Cloven you’re trying to move.” I don’t have the authority to make a deal like that, but so what? The only thing I care less about than a bunch of pires burning out their neural synapses is violating the trust of their dealer. You can’t do that kind of thing normally, but normal dumped me without a note nearly a month ago. These days, I’ll happily set fire to a bridge the second after I’ve crossed it—I don’t plan on being around for the consequences to catch up with me.
“That’s real generous of you,” Sal snorts. “Not that I got any idea what you’re talking about. So unless you got a warrant—”
“We don’t need a warrant, Sal,” I say. “National. Security. Understand? I can throw your hairy ass in jail until it turns white and your fangs fall out, because I’m looking out for the interests of the country. Your whole blood-latte-sucking, full moon–worshiping, Creature Feature country.”
“Yeah? So go ahead.” He gets to his feet. “I got the best pire lawyer in the state—”
And then he does something I
don’t expect; he grabs the edge of the desk and yanks upward, flipping it over in our direction. He darts through a doorway and slams it shut behind him, a bolt thunking into place a second later.
I curse, loudly and explosively. If I were still on the Urthbone, I would have sensed he was about to rabbit. Charlie leaps the desk and charges the door, hammering at it first with his shoulder, then with kicks. It withstands two before it comes off its hinges.
The other room holds a long table stacked with lumpy white bundles of tightly wrapped plastic. Charlie and I just got very, very lucky.
But it’s not the Cloven we’re after; it’s Salvatore. He’s not there, having escaped through a window while Charlie was knocking down his door. I follow the same route while Charlie sprints for the way we came in.
I spot a hairy form disappearing behind a tower of stacked wrecked cars. Sal’s transformed, which means I’m chasing someone much larger, faster, and stronger than I am—not to mention the sharp bits at five out of six extremities.
That’s all right. I’ve got an actual secret weapon—and I’m not talking about Charlie.
The junkyard is an acropolis of columns made from crushed vehicles, an open-roofed, jagged-edge maze of twisted metal and fiberglass. Safety glass crunches underfoot as I silently motion Charlie to the left and I take the right. Salvatore’s got two big advantages already—he knows the territory and he can move really fast on all fours. Following him in there would actually be incredibly stupid on our parts.
So, of course, that’s exactly what we do. There’s no time for anything else, and more than likely our furry friend is just going to bolt out the other side while we’re getting turned around and we’ll lose him anyway.
I know Charlie will just charge straight ahead and assume he can handle whatever Sal throws at him. I slow down, take the stealthy approach, try to figure out which way he’ll most likely go. I take the path to the right, leading me between a wrecked Greyhound bus and a two-story-high pile of tires.
I figure out why Salvatore took off like that. He thought I was a thrope—I smell like one, after all—and I had to be picking up on the garlic next door. I wasn’t—even when I ran through the room all I got was a faint whiff—but to his sensitive nose it must have been as obvious as a smoking gun lying on the desk between us. If he had any idea what a gun was, that is, or why it would be smoking.
But I’m not a thrope and I’m not a pire. I can’t see in the dark or tell what you had for lunch from a block away. I’m an evolved ape, and if I want to catch this guy I’m going to have to start thinking like one.
I start climbing.
It’s not that hard. There are plenty of handholds, and I’ve done enough rock-climbing to know a few tricks; I make it to the top of the column in under a minute. Sal could be long gone by now, but I wasn’t going to catch him on foot anyway. I’m hoping he’s more territorial than smart.
My view isn’t as good as I’d hoped—too much junk in the way, too many places to hide. I can see Charlie, though, crouching down and examining something on the ground next to a tall column of stacked metal cubes that look like giant dice. No sign of Sal.
Because I’m not looking in the right place. There’s a twitch of movement and a creak, not from below, but at the same height I am. The column of metal cubes next to Charlie is moving, the top starting to lean like a tree in a high wind. The column is right beside another stack of wrecked vehicles, and I’m not the only one who can climb.
I holler, “Charlie! Timber!” as the column topples, revealing Salvatore in the bed of an old truck on top of the neighboring stack. He’s pushed the cubes over with his feet, bracing himself against the tailgate and hanging on to the bumper, but now he’s wide open.
The Ruger Superhawk is already in my hands. I put a bullet in each of his shoulders.
He gives a howl of anguish and surprise and lets go of the bumper. The fall won’t kill him, of course, but it knocks the wind out of him. I put another bullet in the back of his left knee to make sure he doesn’t run.
I make it to the ground as fast as I can, hoping Charlie’s all right. By the time I reach the bottom I have my answer—he’s already got the cuffs on Sal, who’s started to revert to human form.
“What—what the hell was that?” he says as soon as he has lips again.
“Carved teakwood bullets with silver tips,” I say. “Pack a helluva punch, don’t they?”
“Bullets? What is that, voodoo?”
“Yeah,” Charlie grunts, hauling Sal to his feet. “Angry white girl voodoo. Let’s talk inside, Sal. You can bleed all over your shipment.”
“Hey, how the hell’s a thrope throwing silver without wearing gloves? And what was that thing she pointed at me?”
“Answer a few of our questions,” I say, “and maybe we’ll answer yours.”
We haul him back to the trailer. He’s lost a fair bit of blood and is going into shock, but I can see the bleeding is already slowing. Silver-based wounds can kill a thrope, but I hadn’t hit any vital organs.
“Happy with your new toy?” Charlie asks as we prop Sal up in a chair.
“It’ll do. Think we should get Sal to the hospital?”
“Nah. Easier to just kill him.”
“What?” Sal blurts.
“True,” I admit. “Less paperwork, no chance of a lawsuit. But look—he’s stopped bleeding.”
Charlie draws his short sword. “Easy to fix.”
“You guys are a barrel of laughs.”
“Think we’re kidding, Sal?” I ask. “Think about it. That’s a whole lot of Stinkfoot you’ve got here. Worth a lot of money. You die, we take it, who’s going to know?”
That’s not the answer he was expecting. He swallows, then says, “So take it. But don’t kill me—I’ll tell them Los Colmillos took it. They’ll believe that. Takes the pressure off you, right? And injured like this, they got no reason to think I’m lying.”
“Depends on if they believe you,” Charlie says. He puts the point of the sword against Sal’s Adam’s apple, and a little wisp of smoke sizzles up from where the silver edge of the blade makes contact with skin.
“ ’Course they’ll believe me. It’s my pack, they know I won’t betray them. And it won’t be a betrayal, ’cause the Colmillos are our enemies anyway. Just shiftin’ the blame a little—”
“No,” I snap. “That doesn’t work for us. We’re Federal, dimbulb. You think we want to get dragged into some local turf war? The only ones we want between the crosshairs are the FHR—they can get hold of enough product to make this look like the back room of a bootleg pizzeria.”
“I . . . I could tell them the FHR took it. Double-crossed us, took it back and decided to sell it to the Colmillos.”
“Not bad,” Charlie says. “Puts the heat on the Resistance, takes it off us. But not good enough.”
I pick up a bag of Cloven, heft it experimentally. “See, all the pressure in the world doesn’t do any good if we don’t know where they are. We need a contact, Sal. Give us that, give us a point of entry—and once we’re concentrating on him, we’ll forget all about you.”
He thinks about it. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Only it’s a her, not a he; human woman named Selkie, Maureen Selkie. She’s the one we deal with. I got no problem with giving her up, but getting in touch is gonna be tricky—the FHR is real cagey. Usually they get in touch with us, we don’t contact them.”
“Usually?” I say.
“We like to know who we’re doing business with, so after the last meet I had her followed. She’s good, almost gave my guy the slip, but he’s got a nose like you wouldn’t believe. Followed her even after she changed into a bird—”
“A what?”
“A bird—seagull, I think. Finally lost her when she went out over the water, but she made a stop beforehand. Irish pub named the Green Lily in the University District. Lotta ORs hang there.”
“That’s it? The name of a bar?” Charlie asks.
“It’s all I got. I
t’s all anyone’s got—ask around.”
“We have,” I say, “and you’re right.”
“So . . . we’re good?”
“Charlie?”
“I’m fine.”
“Me, too. Thanks for asking. You, though, still don’t look so good.”
“Nah, I’ve had worse. That thing you used on me hurt, but try getting your teeth knocked out with a silver hammer.”
“Ouch.” I pull out my cell phone. “Still, you really should get checked out. I’ll have the radio car bring you to the hospital first.”
“But . . . I mean, how are you—”
“Oh, all this?” I wave my hand at the drugs and then shrug. “Not my department. Local cops will confiscate it, I guess.”
Sal still looks confused. In my experience, wiseguys aren’t all that wise.
The first thing Charlie says to me after the patrol car takes Sal away is, “Crosshairs?”
It takes me a second to catch the reference. “What, you don’t have scopes here? I mean, you’ve got crossbows, right?”
“Never had much use for one, myself.”
“You wouldn’t. And you’re welcome, by the way.”
“For what? Yelling something about lumber? I spotted that falling stack on my own.”
“It’s timber, sandman. And don’t try to tell me you don’t have lumberjacks here.”
“If we did, wouldn’t they be called timberjacks?”
“Good point. I’ll bring that up the next time I talk to Paul Bunyan.”
“No idea who that is. But I do know the name Maureen Selkie.”
So did I. She was a high-ranking FHR member, but little was known about her other than she was an Irish national. Now we knew who our shape-shifter was.
“I know that bar,” Charlie says. “Didn’t think it was an FHR hangout, though—just a human joint.”
“We’ll check it out, but I want to talk to Gretchen first, get the full work-up on Selkie. She’s the best link we have to the Impaler so far, and I don’t want her to know we’re after her until we’re ready to move.”
