by Kim Harrison
19
The early-morning news was on in the living room of Kal’s uptown apartment, muted to a pleasant murmur that almost hid the thread of panic stringing the woman’s words together. Kal had felt domestic this morning, and since sleep had eluded him, he had decided to make his own breakfast even before the sun had come up. It was unlikely that Lilly, his housekeeper, would be in today. The instructions on the box of blueberry muffins had said it would make twelve, but he must have done something wrong because he’d filled all the tins and had some batter left over.
Kal came up from the oven, having peeked in at the rising muffins. Throwing the empty box away, he stood in the apartment’s tiny kitchen and watched the woman reporter from across the room. “Muffins from a box. Amazing,” he said as he ate the leftover batter with a spoon.
Sacramento was currently under Accidental Release Protocol, which was very much like a voluntary martial law without the military. The story was that Global Genetics had undergone an accidental release due to yesterday’s fire. Residents within the drift area had been advised to stock up, sit tight, and boil their water. Hanging a towel in a front window would bring help, as the phone lines were no longer working. People were being asked not to come into the hospital, as care was likely better at home. Red Cross wasn’t expected until later today, but government troops were setting up outside the perimeter and would start a door-to-door sweep at sunup. Employees of Global Genetics had been told to remain home and wait for instructions until it was better understood what had been released. Incidences of sickness had popped up in Nevada as well as San Francisco, and even Las Vegas, but so far, only Sacramento was under quarantine.
Licking the last of the batter from the spoon, Kal checked his baking again. “Ten minutes?” he guessed aloud, setting the bowl in the sink and taking his coffee into the living room. There was a toy horse on the coffee table, and he shifted it to make room for his feet. He’d bought it for the boy downstairs, currently under house quarantine with the mumps and bored out of his little-boy mind. Kal could sympathize, having endured a childhood that often had him in the hospital and away from friends. It was a strong, dark, mane-flaring horse, and he hoped DJ liked it.
His smile widened when Orchid slipped in through a side window, her wings clattering and a faint yellow dust slipping from her as she stopped short upon seeing him. “You’re up early,” she said as he settled in front of the TV. “It’s not even sunup yet.”
“No need to adhere to a human clock today,” he said, marveling at her wings as she carefully cleaned the dew from them. There was a basket of clean laundry at his feet, his clothes from yesterday washed and dried in the communal laundry downstairs. It was unlikely that his laundry service would be functioning anytime soon, and letting them molder about with decayed tomato and accelerant hadn’t been an option. He’d left them for Lilly to iron and fold.
I should probably at least fold them.
Orchid landed on the rim of the basket, and his eyes shifted to the TV. It was black and white. He missed his color TV. “So,” the small woman prompted, “whatcha doing today?”
Her disapproval was obvious in her sickly green dust and in how her hands were set on her hips. “Taking DJ that toy horse I bought him,” he said, his lip twitching as he remembered Rick’s twisted body, moving even as he burned. “Waiting it out,” he added, his eyebrows rising when he noticed the announcer had a rash, badly hidden under pancake makeup.
Orchid rose up, shifting to his shoulder. “It’s spreading fast,” she said, her dust turning yellow as she saw the rash as well.
Kal nodded, taking a last sip of his coffee before he set it aside and pulled the basket closer. Orchid darted off, but she didn’t go far. “Faster than I’d expect,” he admitted. His clothes smelled pleasingly clean, and he searched out the socks, making a pile on the couch to fold last.
“You think it’s airborne?” Orchid asked, and he shrugged, setting his shirt aside to iron.
“Perhaps.” He frowned in thought, remembering George’s clean skin. “Not everyone in Global Genetics seems to have caught it. But it’s popping up in odd places.”
“Like Carson City.” The pixy dropped to the basket, tugging until one of his socks came free and she ferried it to the pile on the couch.
“Trisk could have taken it there,” he admitted. “But San Francisco?” Kal’s brow furrowed. It was as if healthy tomatoes, those picked weeks ago, had been exposed to the virus and suddenly become toxic. Had he erred in using the hairs as a connection point? Was the virus attacking the picked fruit as well as the plant? Fruit that could then acquire the virus while it sat on produce shelves or a truck driving through town? “And Las Vegas?” he questioned softly as the reporter was replaced with a map of the western U.S., ominous red dots showing where signs of the virus were now appearing.
“All roads lead to Vegas,” a bitter, masculine voice intoned, and Orchid darted into the air, inking a bright red in shock.
Kal spun, rising to his feet when he saw the shadow of a man in his front entry. “Saladan,” he blurted, recognizing the unmoving figure in his black suit and white shirt.
“I’m sorry, Kal,” Orchid gushed, clearly embarrassed. “I didn’t hear him come in.”
Saladan removed his sunglasses and dropped them in a shirt pocket with a pointed slowness. “I didn’t want you to.”
The faint purple glow about his fingers was mirrored on the door handle and lock, and incensed, Kal felt his eyes narrow. “You broke my lock with magic—” Kal yelped, dropping to the floor when Saladan flicked an aura-laced ball of energy at him.
“Hey!” Orchid shouted, the tiny woman pulling her garden sword and hovering over Kal. “You got a problem, stinky britches?”
“Not with you,” Saladan said, and Kal froze when a room-wide bubble snapped into place. It shrank even as Kal sat up, slithering over him with an icy feeling. Orchid darted up, then to the left, then down as the bubble condensed until she was trapped in a globe the size of a beach ball. It was an incredible show of finesse, and Kal’s jaw dropped.
“Let me out!” Orchid demanded, her dust pooling up to show the bottom of the sphere as it slowly drifted.
“What do you want?” Kal said as he got to his feet, then blanched when Saladan turned to him. Anger etched the witch’s face, his fingers hazed from the energy from the ley line he was channeling. Seeing Saladan’s shoulders hunched in anger, Kal suddenly realized that in trashing Trisk’s reputation, he’d utterly destroyed the man’s product—the one that Saladan had mortgaged his entire family’s wealth on.
Thin lips pressed into a line, the tall, dark witch pointed at Kal. “Tell me why.”
Power dripped in sparkling purple threads from Saladan’s fingers, and Kal retreated deeper into his living room, forced back as Saladan came farther in. “It was Trisk,” he lied. “She holds a grudge longer than any person I’ve ever seen, and she was tired of you trying to weasel out of the patent transfer.”
“You blame your failed schemes on a woman?” Saladan exclaimed. “You coward!”
A flicker of anger in his eyes gave Kal bare warning, and he dove to the side as Saladan sent a hissing, tangling curse at him. The black threads cored with purple twisted and writhed like dying snakes until one touched the leg of the couch. With a soul-stealing keening, the arms of the spell fell upon the couch and tightened. There was a crack of breaking wood, and in three seconds, his couch was twisted into a shredded pile of upholstery, wire, and wood.
Holy shit. He knows black magic. Aghast, Kal backed up, hands raised even as he tapped the nearest ley line. Energy limped into him, slippery from the frequent quakes. I can’t best black magic, he thought, his eyes wide as he deflected another ball of energy. The two forces struck, and Saladan’s spell pinwheeled onto the table where Kal’s orchids were set to catch the morning sun. With an ugly, wet splat and snapping, his entire body of work was gone, reduced to torn blooms and wet bark. Anger flashed through Kal, smothered by the
fear of self-preservation. It could have been him.
“Was this a personal vendetta for you, Kalamack?” Saladan said as he came in another step, fingers twitching in another ley line spell. “Or is destroying my family something the enclave wants?”
Still angry, Kal held a hand out, trying to reason with him. “Do you honestly think I’d hang around here if I was trying to swindle you? For God’s sake, Saladan, I gain nothing by your downfall.”
The older man’s lip twitched. “Neither does Trisk,” he almost growled. “But the enclave might. You are the enclave’s representative. You signed off on the patent. Everything I own was tied up in those damned tomatoes, and my fields are nothing but black goo and my workers dead in the field. And I will know why!”
“I don’t know,” Kal said, then, gasping, flung up a protection circle around himself as Saladan threw another spell at him. “Will you stop it!” he exclaimed as a purple haze coated his circle, trying to eat its way in. “That tomato was perfect. If there’d been a problem, I would have seen it. She changed it to bring me down by framing me for gross negligence. If you want revenge, get it from her!”
Saladan made a quick, almost unnoticed motion with his left hand, and the sizzling evil eating its way into Kal’s circle crawled into itself and vanished. Relieved, Kal darted a glance at his demolished orchids, then met the man’s eyes in the new quiet. “I don’t believe you,” Saladan said softly, and Kal pulled himself to his full height, anger buoying him up.
But the witch had stopped trying to kill him, and Kal let his protection circle drop even as he continued to pull ley line energy into himself. “I’m making muffins and watching TV,” Kal said, glancing at the kitchen. Orchid’s bubble had drifted into it, and the pixy was doggedly trying to pierce her way out of the floating sphere, her dust an angry black. “Trisk has fled the city and is under suspicion for murder. I have nothing to do with it. Any of it.”
Saladan’s expression blanked. “How do you know she’s fled the city?” he said.
Kal’s eyes widened. “Ah . . .” He scrambled for a reason, but they all sounded false.
“The demons were right,” Saladan said, the glow strengthening around his hands. “You should all die. Down to the last pointy-eared newborn.”
“Saladan,” Kal started, then backpedaled. “Hey!” he shouted as an icy thread of purple-cored blackness spun through the air toward him. Fast from panic, Kal marshaled his energy into his hand, narrowly throwing the unfocused energy at the incoming spell. The twin powers hit, and the black coil writhed, overcome by the gold haze. Kal took a relieved breath and looked up.
Saladan was on him.
In a tangle of legs and arms, they hit the floor. Long, thin fingers twined around Kal’s throat, choking him. Kal dug at him, his nails going slick with blood. Panic was an icy wash, and he lashed out, hitting hard flesh.
“No one swindles me, Kalamack,” the old witch said through his gritted teeth, his bloodshot eyes inches from Kal’s. “And not some upstart elven whelp from a dying line.”
“Get . . . off . . .” Kal rasped, flooding them both with ley line energy.
Saladan’s fingers twitched, and Kal got in one good breath before the more experienced ley line practitioner flipped the polarity and it all rushed back into Kal in an agonizing flood. He couldn’t scream, couldn’t breathe. Racked with pain, he felt himself begin to fall unconscious. Trisk is going to laugh her ass off, he thought.
And then Saladan was gone, his fingers ripped from Kal an instant before the flood of ley line energy flickered and died.
Retching for air, Kal knelt on the floor, trying not to throw up as the sound of something heavy hitting the wall echoed in the small apartment. Still gasping, Kal wiped the spittle from himself and looked to see a vampire, his hundred-dollar dress shoes set firmly amid the remnants of the couch. With the casual indifference of the undead, the man watched Saladan slip down the wall and fall into a heap of black cloth and pale limbs.
“Mr. Niles,” Kal rasped as he recognized Sacramento’s master vampire. “Thank you,” he said as he sat up, hands still on his neck. “I can’t thank you enough. He’s off his rocker.”
The well-dressed, unconcerned man turned from Saladan. “That remains to be seen,” he said in his slight brogue.
Shaky, Kal got to his feet, not knowing if Niles was talking about Saladan being off his rocker or Kal being unable to thank him enough. Maybe he meant both.
“Kal. Kal! Let me out!” Orchid demanded. “You touch one hair on his head, and I’ll lobotomize you in your sleep, I promise you!” she threatened Niles.
Kal’s reach to break the bubble hesitated. She was safer in there. Uneasy, he looked at Saladan. It took a tremendous amount of skill to hold a circle while unconscious. Kal was lucky to be alive. He looked at the blood under his fingernails and hid them in a fist. So far . . .
“I have no quarrel with you, winged warrior,” Niles said to Orchid. “But I will talk to your charge before sunup.”
Shit. Something’s gone wrong. Pasting a pleasant smile on his face, Kal tried to slow his pulse. He knew Niles could sense it, and fear would only encourage the vampire to act. “You got my message, then?” Kal asked, his head hurting when he tried to tap a line and found his synapses were singed. With a grimace, Kal let the line go. He had nothing if he had to defend himself again. And though the sun would be up soon, Niles wouldn’t be standing in his front room if he didn’t have enough time to get belowground. It was likely his apartment building had an opening to Sacramento’s vast underground, dug out by a generation of Asian immigrants. Son of a bitch, I should have checked for those.
Niles turned to him, and Kal’s fist tightened, hiding the blood. “I’ve had a disturbing evening,” Niles said, eyes roving over Kal’s apartment. “It’s better now that I’m home, but I don’t like being forced to leave.”
The vampire was here alone. Could be good. Could be bad. Kal’s eyes slid to Saladan and back. “You didn’t find them, then?” Kal asked, trying not to show his fear. If Trisk blabbed, it would be twice as hard to shift the blame for the rogue virus to her or Rick.
“I did.”
Kal exhaled slowly, cursing himself when Niles’s eyes met his, recognizing his relief.
Eyebrows high in thought, Niles went into the kitchen. “They weren’t hard to find. Your suggestion that she was fleeing was correct,” he said as he used a dishtowel to open the oven door. “But before I burned her, she said something that concerns me. I think your baking is done. Let me take them out for you.”
“You burned her?” Kal asked as Niles set the tin on the stove to cool.
“I’m not sure.” Niles breathed deeply of the moist steam, eyes closing. They were pupil black when they opened, and Kal edged around his shattered couch, reaching for a tissue with which to clean under his nails. “Her truck exploded,” the vampire said as he carefully folded the dishtowel and draped it on the oven again. “But she and those with her might have escaped. We had to leave before checking for bodies, and you elves are tricky bastards.” He turned to face Kal, and Kal threw the tissue away with a wary quickness. Sunup couldn’t get here fast enough.
“She said she wasn’t in the lab when my child was burned,” Niles intoned. “She said it with such conviction that I believe her.” The undead vampire looked pointedly at Saladan, still not moving. “Why should I not believe her . . . Kalamack?”
“She’s a good liar,” Kal said, his head nearly exploding as he touched the ley line and filled his chi despite the pain.
Niles hesitated, clearly knowing Kal had teeth. “Tell me, Kal, did you know that the undead—and our living kin, to some degree—are able to see emotion after the person creating it is gone?” His attention shifted behind Kal to the brightening windows. “Your auras leave stains, and though we can’t suck them up like banshees, we can see them, sense them. At least until the sun rises and bleaches them out. It helps us find the vulnerable, the weak, the susceptible. They make
me think she was telling the truth. It’s you, I believe, who is lying.”
Don’t move, Kal told himself, feeling as if he was walking a thin line. “I’m not the one running away,” he said, and Niles lifted a hand and inclined his head in a gesture of acceptance.
“That’s what you told Saladan. Perhaps she still lives and can tell us if she is running away from or running to something.” Steps soundless, Niles moved to the door. “It’s become obvious that you don’t know what is going on, but Dr. Cambri? She knew less. Her confusion was more.” He hesitated. “Is more?” he questioned, grinning as he put Trisk into present tense.
“You think she’s alive?” Kal asked, cursing himself when the vampire’s eyes went black again at his faster pulse. But the sun was threatening, and for Niles to remain aboveground would mean light poisoning and his death.
But still the vampire lingered, his feet spread wide upon Kal’s welcome mat. “I think my attempt to end her life was less than successful,” he said. “And that has become an unexpected pleasure. What’s more, I expect you and the enclave to clean up after yourselves instead of baiting me into doing it for you. If Dr. Cambri is indeed dead, you’ve put yourself in my debt, Dr. Kalamack. Think on that, and perhaps hope that she is alive.”
Kal’s shoulders stiffened. Seeing his understanding, Niles stepped back through the threshold and into the hallway. “If I see the need to call that debt in, I will kill you, Dr. Kalamack. Not fast, and certainly not without pleasure, but I will kill you.”
Saying no more, Niles left, leaving the door open behind him.
Lip curled, Kal strode forward, not daring to look into the hall before he slammed the door shut. His hands were shaking, and with a sigh of frustration, he frowned at Saladan, still unconscious on his floor. “Kal?” Orchid prompted, and with a soft thought that moved his headache to the front of his skull, he broke Saladan’s connection to the ley line and the bubble holding Orchid fell. Saladan shuddered and went still. Kal knew he should check on the man, but frankly, he didn’t care.
