I’d swear that the robot’s eyebrows lifted in surprise in the split second before my improvised weapon connected with his head. Moving at nearly fifty miles per hour, the concrete crushed the robot’s iron skull, sending parts flying, and in a shower of sparks, the machine crumpled to the ground. The ground that was going to turn me into mush if I had gotten this—
“Whooooo!” I yelled as I struck the floor, rebounded high into the air, and pinwheeled my arms. I’d employed an oft-used memory of bouncing on a trampoline as a kid to keep from splatting. Unfortunately, I was now soaring back up, nearly twenty feet into the air. Aww…crap. I’d planned on holding onto the trampoline trick for my landing, but I’d come off at an angle and was careening toward a pillar. A lesser man would have had no chance of saving himself, and a better man might have avoided getting into this mess altogether. I was in my sweet spot.
Whether in the Dreamscape or reality, I could usually only call forth an effect that I had experienced. Airbag? Fine for the pillar, not so much for the fall to the floor. Parachute? Good for the fall, not so much for the pillar. Pillar coming! Oh, why not? I pictured my hoped-for salvation and pushed. An instant later, I learned how a bug felt when it hit a windshield, and I think that I must have passed out for a few seconds; the next thing I knew, I was on my back, shoulder pads cushioning the floor, staring up into Dana’s hazel eyes through the bars of my facemask.
My wife shook her head sadly and sighed. “Really? The Green Bay Packers? Aren’t we a little full of ourselves today, Mr. Third String High School Safety?”
“Ugh…”
“Do you want me to ask Mia to come over here before you pass out?”
“Ugh.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Dana replied, demonstrating that special bond that married couples develop when one is a genius and the other is me.
Dana was good to her word; a few moments later, Mia’s impassive, unlined face looked down at me. “Well, Mr. Adler,” she started, and I gritted my teeth at the formality, which indicated some displeasure. “I will admit that was a ‘unique’ method of dispatching my construct. I’m also impressed that you managed to use your abilities twice in one session – albeit with my presence stretching the fabric of reality.” She gestured for Christian to come over, and the stocky man dragged me into a sitting position against the pillar. “So I’ll continue with what I know about your mother.”
I shook my head, and the helmet scraped against the concrete annoyingly. I released my concentration, and the padding disappeared. “I need to know everything that you do about the Sigilum Dei Aemath.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Mia said, shrugging.
Shit. “Did you get Paula’s report on the vampire?” I asked.
“We’re looking into those unsubstantiated claims. I’ll get back to you on that. Might you want to ask me questions in regard to topics on which I am a known expert? Thaumaturgy? Manipulation of extradimensional energy?” Mia asked, her voice unfailingly polite.
Aw hell. I looked at Dana frantically. I only had a few minutes at most before I passed out. She shrugged and shook her head. Then I thought about Mia’s task. “I know what you want me to do. I need you to tell me why.” Mia’s eyebrows lifted. “I went into danger yesterday without understanding what was going on.” The auditor nodded. “But I’m not going to do it again without understanding what I’m meant to accomplish.”
For just an instant, Mia looked very unwell, and then she recovered her composure. I’d apparently touched on a subject that was dear to her because she took a deep, full breath and sat up straighter, and her gray eyes flashed. She motioned for Christian to leave, and the Afrikaner nodded once and headed for the door. “I made a promise to you. I should have been clearer about the limits, but I’ll keep my word. For the why…now, what can I tell you about those spineless, clueless, gutless fools in the upper echelons of the Sons? I can tell you that after your mother left in the way she did, the anti-attuned factions gained strength. I can tell you that was the platform that the current Chapter Master campaigned on. I can tell you that twenty years ago there were a lot more attuned in our ranks, and a lot fewer people, both innocents and agents, dying.”
I’d used a huge amount of extradimensional energy today, so after only half a minute, I already felt my consciousness fading. I sat up and looked Mia in the eyes. “I don’t need to know about the past. I need to know what’s going on now: how Henry will help you help us,” I said, at least seventy-five percent sure that my last sentence had made sense.
Dana snorted. “Not helping,” I said.
Mia didn’t look ruffled, though; she just took a sip from a bottle of water and settled back into her chair. “I was never a political person. I left that all to my father. I spent my time studying extradimensional energy manipulation, martial arts, languages. Everything to make me the ultimate agent.”
“Goddammit,” I cursed, and slumped back against the pillar that I’d almost brained myself on.
“But,” Mia added, a tiny smirk touching the edges of her mouth, “I do know that Senior Auditor Brown had leverage over the Chapter Master. That’s how he got to keep his dungeon full of dangerous attuned to study, what gave him the clout to train the ranks of the attuned agents, and why he was even allowed to…to adopt me.”
Okay, that had my interest. In the world of business, a lot of people think, “It’s not what you know, but who you know.” However, the really savvy operators understand that “It’s what you know about who you know” that really matters. I leaned toward Mia, like a fish on a hook.
Mia’s smirk became a full-on smile as she continued, respect for her adoptive father clear in her words. “Yes, the Chapter Master truly loathes the attuned. But thanks to my father’s leverage, we were protected. It wasn’t any mundane piece of information either, Julian. It was a spell, a binding. There wasn’t another sorcerer alive who could have accomplished what he did. But it’s breaking down now that Father is gone…” Her eyes unfocused for a moment, but she shook her head and spoke again, more quietly. “I don’t know how long we have before the Chapter Master makes a more overt move against us.”
“What was it? Can’t we just cast it again?” I asked.
Mia shook her head sadly. “I know enough to reinforce the spell, but…” She blinked and rubbed at her forehead. “There was a trigger word. I don’t have it. But I think that Henry can help us get it back.” She then proceeded to explain the absurd, nigh-on-impossible plan to do so.
“Okay, I understand that…plan. But what kind of spell could really affect the Chapter Master’s behavior over an extended period?” I asked.
Mia looked at me and pursed her lips. “I was really hoping you wouldn’t ask that question. But I’ll answer. The spell…it was a…a…” She screwed her face up, all signs of triumph gone, replaced by a soul-deep effort to form just one more word. I was horrified to see the sudden effort that this was costing her, and I almost asked her to stop. Almost. Mia leaned forward, face flushing dark, arms shaking, and her whole chair vibrating. “It was a…a geas,” she spit out.
“A wha—” I started to ask, but as soon as the unfamiliar word erupted from the auditor’s lips, she went rigid, her knuckles standing out white against the armrests of the chair. Mia’s shapely legs started to kick, and Dana rushed over to her as fast as her heavily pregnant frame would allow, calling for Christian. I tried to rise, but computer said no. And by computer I mean the universe. I slipped to the side, cracking my head on the floor. My rapidly closing eyes took in the sight of Mia’s whole frame convulsing, and then I, too, was gone.
Chapter 13
1000–2300, Saturday, June 18, 2016
As a Dreamwalker, I’ve always found waking up to be a very bittersweet experience. I go from being Superman to Clark Kent in the blink of an eye, and that’s on a good night, when I don’t screw up and give myself a headache or bloody nose by failing to protect the dreamer. Until this moment, the worst thing I’d o
pened my eyes to was a man standing over me with a knife, but as I sat bolt upright in bed, I wished that it was just someone threatening me with a knife. “Julian, oh sweet Mary Mother of God, help!” Dana yelled, her voice high-pitched and panicked.
I sprang out of bed, knees cracking, and noticed that the time was almost ten in the morning—I’d been out nearly twelve hours. Mia would be pissed that I was late after what I’d put her through the night before—if she was even okay yet, but right at that instant I gave less shits than a constipated ghost about Mia. “What’s wrong?” I yelled, a dozen horrible realities springing to mind, with a visit from an angry vampire being at the top of the list. The reality was worse.
Dana was on the kitchen floor, her hands folded over her stomach as blood pooled around her waist. She looked up at me, eyes wide with fear and face pale. “The baby…” I crossed the room in two strides, knelt down next to Dana, and dialed 999.
I maneuvered Dana into a chair over the next couple of minutes and fetched some clean clothes, so that when the ambulance arrived she was good to go.
A few hours later, I held Dana’s clammy hand as we sat in a couple of low-backed, plastic chairs in the maternity ward of Queen Charlotte’s Hospital in Shepherd’s Bush. “Dana, I’m sorry to ask now, but with what Mia told me, do you think that I really stand any chance of getting the Sons to help us find Olivia?” I asked.
She looked up with tired eyes. “No, not really. I think that Mia has her hands full playing office politics. In any event, she doesn’t have the pull that we need to get an actual operation put in place, and sending out a big search for Ollie would mean admitting that they hadn’t managed to kill your mother all those years ago. The Sons haven’t looked particularly good lately—admitting that they’d been fooled for twenty years wouldn’t help anything.”
Dana had only confirmed what I was already thinking, but it hurt to feel that particular hope recede. It had been very hard to bring myself to work for the Sons, but I’d kept telling myself that I was doing it for Olivia. I couldn’t do that anymore, which just left me caught in the crosshairs of a power struggle that I didn’t know how to extricate myself from. Still, even if Mia couldn’t help with Olivia, I expected the Sons to be able to help deal with the vampire threat, so my time hadn’t been completely wasted. “Do you know what a geas is?”
“It’s a magical command, an imperative to act a certain way. Get a dictionary. Can’t this shit wait?” she snapped, and we lapsed into silence. If the Chapter Master of the Sons of Perseus had been placed under a geas by Senior Auditor Brown, then what had the point been? What new threat did this information shed light on? If I was going to find out more about the Sigilum, vampires, or the inner goings-on of the Sons, I was going to need new sources of information. Maybe a deal with Edward Sloane really was a good idea. An even better idea would be to quit being an ass, pay attention to my unwell wife, and spare a thought for my unborn child.
Cold sweat trickled down my back as the door swung open and the doctor, a small white woman, entered the room carrying a clipboard. “Mrs. Adler?” she asked with a strong French accent. Dana nodded. “Mrs. Adler, I am quite confused. The blurry vision, nausea, and abdominal pain would suggest preeclampsia. This is when the blood vessels to the baby do not develop correctly. However, you say that you did not have this in your first pregnancy, and you have none of the other risk factors. On top of this, the baby seems exceptionally active—I could see it pressing against your belly when we tried, and failed, to get an ultrasound again.”
“But is the baby all right?” I asked, and both women turned to me as though they had only just remembered that I was in the room.
The doctor pivoted back toward Dana, and both women continued the conversation like I hadn’t spoken. “The heartbeat…doesn’t sound quite right. If we could get an ultrasound or any other kind of imaging to work, then maybe we could fix it. For now, without the imaging, the best thing that we can do is give the baby more time inside of you. But”—she put her hand on Dana’s arm—“I’m afraid that the best odds I could give would be fifty-fifty. I’d like you back in here on Monday morning. And come in immediately if anything else happens to you over the weekend,” the doctor said, scribbling in a notebook. Dana nodded, and the two women worked out the rest of the details, with the doctor also telling her to take it easy. I stared at the floor, feeling helpless, worse than helpless; I felt like I was a monster who ruined and corrupted everything that I touched, but I continued to hold my wife’s hand.
Once the women had finished talking, we walked out of the hospital. I was carrying Dana’s emergency hospital bag, and she was carrying a folder full of pregnancy notes. We were almost back to our car when we heard someone yelling, “Stop! There’s been a mix-up!” The dainty Frenchwoman skimmed across the pavement to us, waving a manila folder. “Pardon, but there has been a mistake. I gave you the wrong folder,” she said, huffing and puffing.
Dana flipped open the file and saw that it was indeed another child’s. “Oh. Okay,” Dana said, and the two women exchanged documents. I was just opening the car door when I heard a bang and saw Dana shaking her hand. She swore, and I hoped she hadn’t dented the car.
“I’m a bad mother. I lost my first baby, and there’s something wrong with this one, and I didn’t even notice that I was carrying around the wrong kid’s folder,” she growled. I set the bag in the car, went around the side of the vehicle, and started to wrap my arms around her. Her words penetrated my brain, and suddenly a whole cascade of possibilities whirled through my mind. My arms fell to my side, and Dana looked up at me in hurt puzzlement as I stood nose-to-nose with her.
“What’s wrong?” Dana said, her concern helping to wrestle her emotions under control.
“Dana, my mother’s note,” I said.
“Yes?”
“She said that she was putting us on the path to save her grandchild. But did she ever say which one?” I asked.
Dana looked at me, her eyes going wide and her hands instinctively going over her belly. “Shit.”
We rode home silently in a taxi, both of us overwhelmed by the possibility that I’d raised. As soon as we arrived, Dana lay down to rest, waving me away. I needed to unwind anyhow, so I went down the block to the Drayton Manor Hotel and Pub. The Drayton had the largest beer garden in London, and as I strolled in, I waved at the bartender, Pawel, and ordered a pint of London Pride. I downed a couple of beers and stared at the commentators previewing the South Africa vs. Ireland rugby match on TV. My mind drifted back to my problems. I was seriously starting to suspect that I was wasting my time with Mia. Sloane, on the other hand—he’d pressured me, but I suspected that he’d have insights into the Sigilum, the coming vampire outbreak, and more. He wanted an answer and more information on the Sigilum in just a couple of days, so I needed to get the information. I’d see if I could catch him at work on Monday, maybe get a better read on him, and see if I could find out what the damned Sigilum actually did. Wouldn’t that be great—I get the disk, and then all I can do is poke at it like a monkey with a hand grenade.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and tensed, cursing myself for having that second beer and letting my guard down. I should never leave the house un—
“Beer?” Christian said, smiling broadly. He plonked another pint down in front of me and took a seat. “Springboks are going to win this,” he stated. I wasn’t a big rugby fan, but that seemed plausible. It also was completely irrelevant to the question of why Christian was here.
“Umm…why are you—”
Christian cut me off. “Shh…nothing to worry about. Boss lady called. You were having a bad day. Ordered me here. Turned out very well. Ireland has never won in South Africa. I put a tenner on the Boks with one of the guys at work.”
“But how did you—”
“No worries. The hospital admission. We have people watching these things. We watch the rugby. I ordered chips.” I just nodded as Christian steamrollered my concerns with unescapable
logic and casually let me know that there were eyes on me all the time.
He was the boss, so I chalked it up as team bonding as we worked our way through half a dozen pints and a couple of burgers each over the next few hours. It was the most relaxing afternoon that I’d had in months.
The Boks lost, 20–26.
Christian turned to me on the way out. “Damn. I need to remember. Never bet against someone in the office. Bastard probably literally saw this coming.” I was a ginger in the sun, but his words still made me blanch.
◆◆◆
I opened my eyes. Supertough trench coat? Check. Gladius strapped to my hip? Check. Immediate vicinity clear of monsters, demons, serial killers, or any other form of assorted nightmare fodder? Check. Time to check out the rest of the dream? Ch—, er, yes.
I extended my dream senses, reaching out with my mind to probe at the fabric of this pocket of the Dreamscape. Within about fifteen seconds, I detected the sleeper’s mind and set off in its direction, striding down a tiled hallway with white-painted concrete walls. There were doors on either side, and I guessed that I was in a school or a hospital. I’d had quite enough of hospitals for one day, though, and I didn’t detect any of the astringent smells, bleach and urine, that usually accompanied those institutions. So school it was.
I kept my hand on the hilt of the sword swinging from my hip, but I didn’t draw it. The dream seemed calm at the moment, and waving a weapon around could only trigger the dreamer’s fight-or-flight response.
“No, no, no, leave me alone. Stop. Just stop!” I heard a young man shout, his voice cracking, from three doors down. I double-checked my mental map, confirming that the creator of this slice of quasi-reality was in that room. I slowed down and concentrated on stealth, infusing my movements with just a whisper of willpower to make my tread absolutely silent. Not knowing what was afflicting him, I edged to the doorframe. Slowly, I leaned over to peer through a small window in the door, fingers tensing on the pommel of my sword, ready to skewer whatever was tormenting the young man.
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