by Simon Hawke
They left a stunned Agent Leary in the interrogation room and Loomis walked her out to the front desk.
"Ben," he said to the desk sergeant, "there's been a mistake. Do me a favor and have somebody give this young lady a ride home, okay?"
"Sure thing, Lieutenant."
Loomis took Kira by the arm and led her away from the desk. "You're one of them, aren't you?" he said. "You and Modred."
She glanced at him with surprise.
"He told me," Loomis said. "Only I know he didn't tell me everything. He didn't tell me about you, for instance."
"How did you know?" asked Kira.
"Leary tried a spell of compulsion on you and you resisted. Now I'm no expert on magic, but it doesn't take a genius to figure it out. Unless you've been practicing necromancy and rejuvenating yourself, you're much too young to be an advanced adept. And only a sorceress of the same level as Leary or higher could have successfully resisted her spell." He took her hand in his. "I noticed you wearing this last night," he said, referring to her fingerless black glove. "Now it could be a fashion statement, but unless they're kinky, most people don't make fashion statements in bed. You made a point of apologizing for not being dressed when you came down, but you also made a point of being very unself-conscious about greeting visitors wearing only a T-shirt and a pair of panties. Ginny came to the conclusion you wanted both of us to come to. Paul's got himself an uninhibited young girlfriend. But Ginny's not a cop and cops tend to notice little details. Like the fact that you didn't shake our hands. And the wrist strap on your glove wasn't fastened, as if you'd pulled it on in a hurry."
He turned her gloved hand palm up and felt in the center of her palm with his thumb. He felt the hardness of the runestone.
"That's what I thought," he said.
"Not much gets past you, does it?" Kira said with a smile.
"I have a feeling that not much gets past Leary, either," he replied. "You don't get to be a ninth-level sorceress without being pretty sharp. She's got a real attitude problem, but she's not stupid. She'll be on you like a fox on a duck, so watch yourself."
"Thanks."
"You just get that murdering animal and leave Leary to me," he said. "I'll try to keep her off your backs." He took a deep breath. "And now, if you'll excuse me, it seems I've got a very miffed Bureau agent on my hands. It looks like I'm not going to get any sleep, after all."
The morning paper's front page was devoted to the story of the previous night's events. The banner headline read, "Demon Killer Claims Four Lives!" Wulfgar smiled as he read the story. All the stories in the newspaper and on television were now referring to him as either the "Demon Killer" or the "Necromancer," the latter chosen, no doubt, to resonate with the popular series of films that had started out as lurid, low-budget features and whose box-office success had led to multimillion-dollar sequels, all with the word "Necromancer" in the title and featuring lavish and spectacularly gory thaumaturgic special effects. In many respects, thought Wulfgar, the humans hadn't evolved very much at all.
The story mentioned that in addition to the killer's two victims, two police officers had been killed. Pity, Wulfgar thought. He hated to see life energy wasted. Still, he was getting stronger. Claiming two victims in one night meant that his energies would be less depleted by the spells. Still, he felt tired. As his own strength grew, so did the strength of his subconscious, which meant that the demon entity was growing stronger too and becoming more difficult to control. It had taken all his strength and concentration, all his willpower, to allow the spell to dissipate last night. The demon had been full of bloodlust and Wulfgar had felt it raging through him like a powerful stimulant. He had wanted to stay and fight, to kill them all, but the arrival of those two riders had snapped him out of his killing frenzy like a plunge into ice-cold water.
He had known who they were at once. He had recognized them in that brief glimpse he had of them as they came galloping toward him down the alley. The girl he had seen before. She was one of those who had been at the pit and had formed the Living Triangle. One of the avatars the cursed runestones had chosen. He had felt the power of the runestone flowing from her. The boy he had never seen before, but he sensed the life force of Ambrosius strong within him. So, he thought, the spirit of the half-breed mage had found another host. And, as he had suspected, he had joined with the avatars. If they were here, together, then the other two stones had to be nearby, as well.
They had come, as he had known they would. Now it was time to escalate the game. And it would be a deadly game, a real challenge. Wulfgar felt excited. It had been a long time since he had tried himself against worthy adversaries. In the runestones, he would be meeting his ancient enemies once more, the spirits of the Council of the White. And in the boy, he would once more be facing the spirit of Merlin Ambrosius. He had a score to settle with that miserable half-breed.
The story in the paper told him that the police were being aided in their investigation by a sorcerer named Professor Paul Ramirez, Dean of the College of Sorcerers and head of the Santa Fe office of the Bureau of Thaumaturgy. Ramirez, said the paper, was a former student of the late Merlin Ambrosius, and had graduated with honors to become his teaching assistant and later a full professor at the College of Sorcerers in Cambridge. He had founded the program of thaumaturgical studies at the university in Santa Fe and had trained a great many of the local adepts. His involvement in the investigation was considered "invaluable" by the police and the mayor expressed "full confidence" that with Professor Ramirez directing the investigation, the killer would soon be brought to justice.
Ramirez was clearly an important man in Santa Fe, one in whom the authorities had a great deal of confidence. And he was a former pupil of that half-breed, Ambrosius, to boot. If something were to happen to him, the effect on the people of the city would be devastating. Their leading sorcerer, their most powerful adept, struck down by the very killer he had set out to bring to justice. Wulfgar smiled. Justice would be served, he thought. Justice for those who had died before they could escape the pit, for those who had seen the light of freedom before their eyes after centuries of dark confinement, only to perish before they could reach it. And justice for those who had been relentlessly pursued and hunted down while trying to reclaim their birthright.
In truth, Wulfgar did not grieve for them. In the days prior to the war, he had sought desperately to unite them. He had told them that their combined strength, united under one general, himself, would produce an army of necromancers that the Council, with their proportionately weaker power derived from their ludicrous white magic, would be unable to withstand. But the fools hadn't listened and they had paid the price for their intransigence. They had fought singly and in small groups, with stronger adepts bending the weaker ones to their will, competing against each other even while they fought the Council, and their reward for their stupidity had been ignominious defeat.
Nor had they learned anything from that defeat. When the human adept, Al Hassan, had stumbled upon the place of their confinement, they had, for a brief time, united their weakened powers to bring him under their influence and orchestrate their escape, but afterward, those of them who had managed to elude the avatars had fled in all directions.
Instead of making an organized retreat to find a sanctuary where, together, they could renew their strength and marshal their powers, they had scattered, each hoping that the avatars would be occupied with seeking out the others while they, themselves, remained in hiding and gradually built up their strength until they could defeat the power of the runestones.
Wulfgar labored under no illusions when it came to that. He knew that the odds were great against any one of them becoming powerful enough to prevail against the united strength of the spirits of the Council. In order for one to prevail against many, that one had to gain the strength of many and that meant that the life energy of a large number of humans would have to be consumed. The laws of magic were immutable. The amount of power generated was in
direct proportion to the amount of energy expended.
There were three possible ways of defeating the power of the runestones. One was to build up power gradually and circumspectly, claiming one or two human lives at a time with a minimum of energy expenditure and doing it in such a way that the bodies could never be recovered to alert the avatars by the manner of their death. This Wulfgar had done, always choosing his victims with care, disposing of their remains, and constantly moving from one location to another, so as not to establish a pattern of killings that would give away his presence.
The second way was to unite with other necromancers, so that the combined strength of their power could defeat the runestones. Only it would take more than two or three adepts working together in order to accomplish this, unless all of those adepts had greatly augmented their powers by following the first method. Wulfgar had rejected this option as impractical. He knew that power gained through necromancy, while potentially far greater than the power that white magic could produce, could be highly addictive and corruptive. It was what had happened to the others. Driven by their greed, by their ambition, and by their fear of being discovered by the avatars before they had sufficiently built up their strength, they had been impatient and incautious.
Now they were dead, having survived ages of imprisonment only to be destroyed within a short while of having gained a taste of freedom. Wulfgar did not intend to join them.
The third method of defeating the power of the runestones was the one that the others had all tried and failed at, the quickest means of gaining power, a spell designed to consume the life energies of many humans at one time and redirect that energy at the avatars. Only in addition to being the shortest, quickest way to power, it was also the riskiest, because it meant the necromancer would be acting as a channel through which immense amounts of energy would flow, being expended as quickly as it was acquired, and if the slightest thing went wrong, the necromancer would be left weakened and vulnerable, unable to recuperate in time.
That was a mistake that Wulfgar was not about to make. As great as the temptation was to gorge himself on human energy and strike out at his enemies—and that temptation grew with each new victim, like a gnawing hunger—he would not give in to it.
The avatars would know about the fiesta, of course, and that was when they would expect him to make his move against them. That was when they would be especially on their guard, for having failed to stop him before the start of the fiesta, they would be together, alert for the first emanations of an immensely powerful spell being cast. The trace emanations from such a spell would immediately give him away and if he could not complete the spell in time, turning its full force against them, he would be destroyed, as the others had been.
Only that was not what Wulfgar planned. He would strike before then. And instead of summoning up a spell meant to slaughter a great number of humans at once, at the same time producing thaumaturgic emanations that the avatars could follow like a beacon, he would single out just one of them for destruction. And he would do the last thing they expected.
Instead of going back at once to see Megan Leary, Loomis went up to the squad room for a couple of jelly doughnuts and a cup of coffee, which he brought down to his small office. Then he called the desk sergeant and asked him to send someone in to tell Agent Leary that he was waiting for her in his office. As soon as he hung up the phone, he took out the only other chair in the office besides his own, so that she would be forced to stand. When she came storming into his office several moments later, Loomis was seated at his desk with his feet up, calmly having breakfast.
"Mister," she said, her face white with fury, "I am going to have your badge for what you just did in there."
He picked up a napkin and wiped some powdered sugar from his fingers. Then he reached into his pocket, took out the slim wallet containing his badge and ID, and casually tossed it on the desk.
"There it is," he said. "This job's got lousy hours, anyway. When the commissioner and the mayor and the city council members call to find out how we're coming on the case, you can tell 'em that you took it on yourself to relieve me of my job. Me, I'm not gonna argue, but I'm sure they'll want to know where you got the authority."
"Very funny," she said. "I'll also be sure to tell them that you released a suspect who was caught red-handed breaking into a Bureau field office, and who compromised the security of the entire Bureau operation on this case."
"A case the Bureau took its sweet time getting around to," Loomis said, calmly chewing on his doughnut. "Something they're frankly not too thrilled about. And while you're at it, make sure you tell them that you neglected to inform the suspect of her rights, failed to book her, denied her legal counsel, failed to follow proper interrogation procedures, and violated her constitutional rights. But then, I guess all that will be in my report, so you probably don't need to bother."
Her eyes were cold. "Now you listen to me, Loomis. No rednecked, small-town cop is going to tell me how to do my job. I—"
Loomis interrupted her. "Lady, I was a lieutenant of detectives in Chicago while you were still wearing a training bra, so don't give me that provincial big-city crap, okay? You came into the game late and you went off half-cocked and made a total ass of yourself. Now you want to pull strings at the Bureau and try to make life tough for me, you go right ahead. But I have a feeling that the Bureau district chief, Paul Ramirez, who happens to be a friend of mine, won't take too kindly to your treatment of the woman he shares his home with. Now he's going to be calling here and I can either tell him that it was all an honest mistake, or that some hot-shot field agent from New York exceeded her authority, jumped the gun, and made a false arrest before she even bothered to find out all the details. And then threatened to put a spell on the woman he happens to be in love with. If you're lucky, you may wind up a records clerk in someplace like Barstow or Altoona. Now it's up to you, Ms. Leary. I either try to cover your ass or I sit back and watch it burn."
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "All right. Maybe I made a mistake," she said, sounding as if she were going to choke on the words. "I guess we got off on the wrong foot."
"I guess we did," said Loomis. He stood up. "Why don't we start all over?" He offered her his hand. "My name's Joe Loomis."
"Megan Leary," she said, taking his hand, stify.
"I'll get you a chair," said Loomis, coming around the desk.
"Don't trouble yourself."
"Oh, it's no trouble." He went outside and came back a moment later with the chair he'd taken out of his office before. He held it for her as she sat down.
"Thank you."
"You're welcome. Would you like some coffee?"
"No. Thank you just the same. I'd rather get right down to the case at hand. I heard two of your men were killed last night. I'm sorry."
Loomis nodded.
"What happened?"
"Well, I imagine Paul Ramirez will want to brief you himself and I'm sure you're anxious to touch base with him, but we've been up all night working on this case and he went home to get some sleep. He's exhausted and I wouldn't want you to disturb him just now. In the meantime, I can give you a quick rundown on what we're up against here . . ."
"That was a very foolish thing to do," said Paul angrily. "You're lucky Loomis was there to cover for you."
"Well, it wasn't all Loomis, you know," Kira replied defensively. "I thought I handled it pretty well, all things considered."
"That's just the trouble," Paul said. "You didn't consider all things. You didn't consider my feelings in this matter. You're a guest in my own home and I've gone to a great deal of trouble to help you. Willingly, to be sure, but then you pay me back by violating my trust. And to make matters worse, you've only complicated things for both Loomis and myself with Agent Leary."
"She's a jerk," said Kira. "And what's worse, she's stupid."
"Be that as it may, I'm going to have to work with her," said Paul. "And frankly, I don't think I'd call anyone
who has attained the rank of ninth-level sorceress stupid. You should have at least pretended to fall under her spell of compulsion, instead of allowing your ego to get in the way and challenging her."
"He's right, you know," said Wyrdrune. "Now she knows you're a lot more than you appear to be and she won't let up until she finds out why. Your cover as Paul's 'girlfriend' is very thin, at best. If she starts checking around, and you can bet she will, she'll find out that none of his friends or coworkers has ever heard of you. That won't prove anything by itself, but it will make her even more suspicious."
"All right, so I screwed up," said Kira. "But at least I did find out two things. I found out that she sure as hell isn't someone we can trust and I found out about the Bureau's undercover team."
"Only you didn't get the list," Wyrdrune reminded her. "And I don't suppose you happened to have memorized it."
She looked down. "No. I didn't have a chance. But I might be able to remember a couple of the names."
"Terrific," Wyrdrune said.
"Damn it, I was only trying to help!" she said.
"I know," said Wyrdrune. "But you had us real worried."
"I'm sorry."
"Hey, what's everybody looking so down at the mouth for?" Gomez said as he sauntered into the room. "This thing hasn't got us licked yet."
"Gomez!" said Paul. "Where the hell have you been?"
"Out taking care of business, Paulie."
"Yes, I heard about your business," Paul replied. He sighed. "Look, old friend, it isn't that I don't appreciate what you're trying to do, but you're only complicating things for us. Every person in this town who owns a thaumagene is screaming that Joe and I have mobilized them for some kind of animal vigilante force. I know you and your friends are only trying to help, but—"
"Relax, Paulie, I've got the whole thing figured," Gomez said, sitting back on his haunches and winking his turquoise eye.
