by D. D. Barant
“He’s organized. He stages elaborate scenes and leaves few traces behind. The killings appear almost dispassionate, with little evidence of frenzy or anger—Transe was killed by a single well-placed thrust. The staging of the scenes is important to him, but Eisfanger hasn’t been able to find any trace of magic energy that would suggest this is part of some elaborate spell. The comic book references point to a number of different concepts: alternate universes, transformation, the interface between the imaginary and the real.”
My voice is steady, the words coming almost without conscious thought. This is my own ritual, my way of connecting to the case when my brain is crammed full of facts and frustration. Some part of me already knows the answer; I just have to let it find its voice. “He’s intelligent. Driven. The crime scenes are messages in a language only he speaks, full of symbols he thinks are deeply relevant.”
“What’s the point to that? A message that can’t be understood?”
I open my eyes, annoyed, the spell broken. “He wants to be understood—but on his own terms, in his own world. I’ve seen this before; the killer believes that if he can just make us view the universe the way he does, we’ll agree with him. In his eyes, he’s completely justified—we’re the ones who aren’t sane.”
“And he thinks he can do that with cryptic messages?”
“Our language shapes how we think. The position of a verb relative to a noun, the way we use pronouns or assign gender to some words and not to others. He may be the only one who speaks his language, but understand it and you understand how he thinks. The problem is that he’s clearly immersed himself in a subculture I have virtually no access to.”
“The Four Color Club contact didn’t work out?”
“Sure, if I want to spend all my time asleep—and it’s all secondary information, anyway. I need to dig through this stuff on my own, do hands-on research where I can physically connect with the material.”
“Sounds very old-fashioned.”
“Well, I’d settle for a cross-universe high-speed broadband portal with full archival access to every comic book database in existence, but nobody’s offered me one.”
“Sorry. Cross-universe magic tends to be highly specific, very dangerous, and extremely limited. Not exactly what you need.”
I sigh. “No. I guess I’ll have to settle for whatever information I can collect on this side. Tell me about the African Queen.”
“She’s an actual queen, and she’s from Africa.”
“Great, thanks for filling me in.”
“I thought I should start with the essentials. Her name is Catharine Shaka, and she’s Zulu royalty—in fact, some would argue her bloodline places her on the throne itself. Politics in her country tend to be bloodthirsty, a mix of warring thrope tribes and shamanistic intrigues. She herself was the victim of an assassination attempt at an early age, which led to her being raised in secret by a powerful witch doctor.”
“Which doctor?”
He gives me a look. “Anyway, the shaman taught her how to be a powerful warrior and gave her the sky-shield, a magical artifact that lets her fly and protects anyone using it from all harm. She’s one of the best archers in the world, and a master of the thrope martial art isilwane ukulwa.”
“If she’s African royalty, what’s she doing here?”
“Living in exile. The current faction in power is not exactly friendly to her family or her politics—which is why she keeps her true identity a secret.”
“What are her politics?”
“She’s a revolutionary. She’d like to raise an army, overthrow the ruling military junta, and establish a democracy.”
“And how does the NSA feel about that?”
“Ambivalent. The White House would like to see a democracy in place, but they’re not willing to commit significant military or political resources.”
“Maybe she’s decided to gather a few of her own.”
“A possibility,” he admits. “Though my sources haven’t heard anything about preparations for a military action.”
“The Brigade’s weapons might be all the preparation she needs.” I think about it as we drive into the darkening twilight. A one-woman coup—a single warrior taking on an entire country. Is it possible? Not in my world, but here it just might be. Even if the idea is crazy, that doesn’t eliminate Shaka as a suspect.
In fact, it makes her a more viable one. The place Shaka is using as her retreat is called the Serengeti Safari Reserve. It’s a game park for thropes, where they can experience the firsthand thrill of pulling down an antelope, gazelle, or zebra, either solo or as part of a group. Cassius tells me it’s popular as a corporate team-building exercise.
There’s a double-gated entryway through a high razor-wire-topped chain link fence. Once we’re in, there are no signs warning us to stay inside the vehicle or not to roll down our windows; we’re the predators here. I let in some of the night air, and to my surprise it smells dry, dusty, and much warmer than I expected for Oregon at this time of year.
“Magic,” Cassius tells me. “They use animism to convince the entire area and everything in it—plants, earth, insects, air—that they’re on another continent. Adds to the realism.”
“Must be expensive.” Charlie’s voice from the backseat makes me jump a little. He’s so still at times it’s easy to forget he’s even there. “The people who come here don’t care much about money. They’re after something else.”
“True,” Cassius says. “They want to experience life as it used to be—or at least how they think it used to be. The thrill of the hunt.”
“Commercialized and romanticized,” Charlie growls. “I tried it once. Didn’t do much for me.” I sometimes forget that the life force that animates Charlie is that of a seven-ton carnivore that last walked the Earth sixty-five million years ago; when I do, he does something to remind me.
“Commercialized is right,” I mutter as we get to the parking lot. It looks more like Disneyland in high season than a nature park—there are hundreds of vehicles here and a steady stream of people coming and going, mostly groups of young men but some families and couples, too. We park, get out, and join the lineup. Everything’s lit by torches—gas or propane, though something’s been added to make it smell like wood smoke—and the atmosphere’s both quieter and more charged than I expected. It takes me a second to recognize the feeling—it’s like lining up for a haunted-house ride on Halloween, that same combination of nervous excitement and morbid celebration, candy coating over a heart of darkness. Grinning in the face of death, and realizing he’s grinning right back.
Even with Cassius and Charlie beside me, I don’t feel at ease here. I don’t even eat meat—well, the occasional piece of sushi—and this place more or less worships the practice of killing and eating animals. Not that I have a moral leg to stand on, of course; thropes are carnivores, pure and simple, and I can no more condemn them for that than I can pires for drinking blood. As long as it’s not my own.
But I still feel like a cashew in a room full of squirrels, and hope I remembered to apply enough fake wolf pheromone this morning. I have visions of being taken down by an overenthusiastic family from Des Moines who didn’t read the brochure. “Look, Martha! They got free-range humans here!”
I expect Cassius to flash his NSA credentials and bypass the line, but that doesn’t happen—I guess he wants to keep as low a profile as possible. Instead, he pays for a deluxe package for all three of us, and specifies the guide he wants.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the woman at the wicket says. “Cath’s booked solid right now, she won’t be available for at least a week. If you’d like to try one of our other guides—”
“Tell her it’s Ray Burnwell,” Cassius says. “I have a standing reservation.”
The woman frowns, but checks her computer. Her expression changes immediately. “Ah, Mr. Burnwell. I’m so sorry about the mixup. I’ll have her meet you in the Hunter’s Lodge right away—she’s out in the field, but ca
n be back here in about, say, twenty minutes?”
“That’ll be fine.”
The Hunter’s Lodge is one of those thatched-roof long-house affairs, with more torch lighting, a bamboo and rattan bar, and lots of wicker seating for lounging around on and fanning yourself with your pith helmet. We get a couple of beers from the bar and sit down, Charlie picking a very solid-looking wingback chair made from oak.
I glance around the room. Almost exclusively thropes, most already in half-were form and gesturing excitedly to one another in sign language, but there are a few pires here, too—I’m getting better and better at spotting the difference at first sight. It’s a combination of things: subliminal cues like posture or gestures, more overt signals like paleness of skin or thickness of hair. And of course, the size of incisors versus canines.
There are even a pair of lems present, both the obsidian color that identifies enforcers. They study us from across the room with flat, evaluating stares, but don’t approach us. Just as well—we don’t need any extra attention. I wonder who they are, though; a couple of cops from the big city, maybe, trying to fuel the needs of the Kodiak engine growling deep inside the black sand of their bodies? Plastic-skinned army men on leave, trying to scratch an itch that push-button warfare doesn’t satisfy, feeding a ghost hunger haunting a belly packed with dirt?
“Snipers,” Charlie says, noticing who I’m looking at. “They work for the reserve. Their job is to throw a slug into any ‘uncooperative’ animal’s brain.”
I frown and take a swig of my beer. It tastes coppery, and I quickly spit it back into my glass. Really should know better by now than to sample anything without checking the ingredients first. “I thought the whole idea was to give the customers a firsthand experience.”
Charlie grunts. “Yeah, well, that’s what they think they want. Up close and personal, sometimes they have a change of heart. In that case, someone has to take care of the pissed-off twelve-hundred-pound Cape buffalo with claw marks on its ass.”
“Isn’t that what the guide is for?”
“In most cases. Sometimes they need backup—they hunt some pretty big game here.”
I have a sudden flash of a group of thropes lugging a step-ladder while chasing a giraffe. “Shut up, brain,” I mutter.
“Excuse me?” Cassius says.
“Nothing.”
We sit and pretend to enjoy our overpriced drinks, though I don’t actually consume any of mine. After half an hour or so, a tall, regal-looking black woman marches into the bar, a less-than-happy look on her face. She spots us and strides over, and I take the few seconds before she arrives to give her a quick once-over: Her skin is lighter than I expected, her hair cropped short over a wide but attractive face. She’s dressed in tan cargo shorts and a matching shirt tied in a knot at her chest, her feet bare.
She stops and glares down at Cassius. “Mr. Burnwell, hmm? You’re here to either tell me I’m finally going to get the backing I need, or deport me. Which is it?” Her English is elegant, shaded with a touch of Dutch Afrikaans.
“Neither. Have you heard about the Brigade?”
It turns out she hasn’t. She sits down and joins us, and Cassius fills her in.
“Good Lord,” she murmurs when he’s done. “Saladin and Lucy? It’s hard to believe.”
“I thought I’d come down and warn you myself,” Cassius says. “I understand you’re not exactly in the loop these days.”
She glances at him sharply. “Not in favor, you mean. I know how I’m regarded in Washington. And a phone call would have done just as well, David—except you can’t actually see what I’m up to that way, can you?”
“No. And you’re right—I am checking up on you. So far, all the evidence points to the killer being someone that knows our secrets.”
“In that case, I should think you’re the prime suspect.” She turns and addresses me for the first time. “And who are you? It’s not like David to bring his human playmates into the field.”
I’m not surprised the pheromone didn’t fool her. “I’m Special Agent Jace Valchek, Cath—or do you prefer Your Highness?”
“I prefer to be left alone while I’m working, Ms. Valchek. While I do appreciate the heads-up, I was in the middle of tracking an injured wildebeest when you interrupted my night, and I’d really like to finish it off before it suffers any further.” She gets to her feet. Even without shoes, she must stand six-four.
“I’ve got a few questions for you first,” I say. “And royalty or not, you’re going to answer them.”
“I see. And if I decline?”
“Then you can find another country to be exiled to. You’re a guest here, Ms. Shaka; play nice and so will we.”
By the look on her face, she’s more amused than offended. “Your kitten has claws,” she tells Cassius. “All right, then—what do you wish to know?”
I question her about her whereabouts during the two murders, and she provides me with answers: She was here, working. There are hidden security cameras all over the reserve, so it should be fairly easy to confirm her alibi. She agrees to take me to the monitoring station to check the recordings for the last few days—they keep everything indefinitely, using the data to help track the movements and behaviors of the animals.
Cassius tells me he’ll wait for me in the lodge. I shouldn’t be surprised; he’s simply adapted his strategy to how he thinks I’m going to act ahead of time. I tell Charlie to stay put, too, just to keep Cassius honest.
We walk along a wood-chip-strewn path lit by flickering torches, foliage rustling softly on either side. It’s hard to believe I’m still in North America—guess their shamans know what they’re doing. From the number of guests, I’d say they can afford the best.
“So,” Shaka says. “Is this the part where just we girls talk?”
“Huh? Ah, actually, I’ve never been very good at the whole girl-talk thing. Not my style.”
“Nor mine. I sense something different about you—other than that scent you wear to mask your humanity.”
“I’m not from around here. ‘Here’ being reality as you know it.”
“Ah. A crossover. Cassius always was willing to go to extraordinary lengths to get what he wanted.”
I’m getting a little tired of the whole ooh, you’re Cassius’s latest blood babe thing. “What he wanted in this case was a specialist. I hunt maniacs—you know, that condition that thropes and pires don’t suffer from? Oh, wait—that’s not true anymore, is it?”
She ignores the jab. “A hunter of the mad. Interesting. I’ve had to put down animals that have been infected with rabies—I’ve even encountered a mystical strain that infects lycanthropes, though it’s rare. I can’t imagine how you could track an intelligent being afflicted with such a condition—wouldn’t its actions be almost entirely random?”
“Only in the most severe cases. I deal largely with those with some ability to conceal their disease.”
She smiles. “The half-mad, then. Does their madness make them easier or harder to catch?”
I find myself starting to like this woman—she asks good questions. “Both. They tend to have a very distorted worldview, which can make their logic hard to follow—but if you can manage it, it sometimes leads you right to them.”
“That’s the secret of successfully tracking any prey—learn to think like them. Know what drives them and you can arrive at their destination before they do.”
“Thinking like a psychopath I can manage; where I come from, there are plenty of examples to study. Vampires, werewolves, and golems, though—not so much.”
“This place must seem very alien to you.”
“Yes and no. Mostly, it’s very similar—cars drive down streets, people walk down sidewalks, shopping malls throttle suburbs. It’s the little things that throw me off—the toothbrushes with multiple attachments, the candy bars with flavors like mutton.”
“The loss of the familiar is a price all exiles must pay,” she says. “I remember when I fi
rst came to this country thinking how strange everything smelled. But as time goes on, it’s what I don’t smell that I miss. The sweetness of the flowers that grew on the riverbank near my village; the rich, spicy stew my mother used to make. Sometimes I think I would give up everything I’ve worked for, everything I care about, just to have those scents fill my nostrils again.”
I sigh. “Butterscotch pudding.”
She smiles. “A childhood treat?”
“An adult vice. I’m not even sure where butterscotch comes from—about all I know is it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with actual butter or scotch. And you don’t seem to have it here.”
She chuckles, and manages to make it sound sad. “I hope one day you will get your butterscotch pudding, Jace Valchek. If I ever hear of such a thing, I will be sure to let you know.”
We reach another building with a thatched roof, though the door seems a lot sturdier than the lounge’s. “This is the security center,” she says. “Though the door shouldn’t be ajar—I must have a word with T’Kwele—”
Her voice is casual, but she puts one hand on my chest and stops me dead. She makes eye contact, flicks a glance at the door and puts a finger to her lips.
And then she dives into a nearby bush and is gone.
I blink. If I hadn’t been watching her, I wouldn’t have known where she went—she made almost no noise at all. What’s going on here? Is she going to teach this T’Kwele a lesson about lax security? Am I supposed to walk in, or just stand here until something happens?
No. The look in her eyes was serious. She’s operating on instinct, and that instinct told her something was wrong. And I’ll bet her instincts are very, very sharp…
I draw my scythes as quietly as I can. Though I can hear distant voices and laughter, there’s no one in this part of the compound. Not that I can see, anyway.
That doesn’t last. The door to the security building opens and half a dozen pires spill out. In this case, identifying them as hemovores isn’t difficult; each of them has oversize fangs, a high widow’s peak of slicked-back dark hair, and a face white with makeup. They’re all dressed identically, in knee-length black dusters with high collars lined in red satin.
