Edge of Dawn

by Melinda Snodgrass

  “How you know that, Granddad?” one of the younger men scoffed.

  The old man was offended. “Worked a few digs in my time. Learned some things. You should try it.”

  Richard took back the conversation. “This archaeologist suggested I use TCP—

  “What’s that mean?” Calderón interrupted.

  The old man broke in again. “Traditional cultural property.”

  Calderón glanced at him, then looked back to Richard. “And I repeat, what the fuck does that actually mean?”

  Richard hesitated, certain he didn’t want to directly quote Allistaire. “Basically, I need you to find a shrine or a sacred area in this subdivision and force a change in the design and layout.”

  “Why?” Suspicion made the word sharp as ice.

  This time there was no hesitation. Richard knew what was at stake and he didn’t hold back.

  “The layout of the buildings and streets forms a rune. If it’s completed, it will tear a hole in reality and allow monsters to enter our world. I intend to keep that from happening.” A ring of carefully bland faces was all the response he got.

  If this had been three years ago, the people in the room would have decided he was nuts, but the events in Virginia and around the world had removed that worry.

  “Is this more of that crap that went on back east?” Johnny asked.

  “Yes.”

  The man’s eyes raked Richard up and down. Richard tried to stand a little taller. He knew what Calderón saw—a short man who was a little too thin and looked younger than he was.

  “And you’re going to handle that, huh?” Doubt and amusement laced the words.

  Richard’s spine stiffened and his jaw tightened. “Your help will make this easier, but with or without you I’m going to stop them.”

  There were more looks around the room. Then the old woman left her chair, walked over to him, and took his chin in one gnarled hand. She smelled of dust and the sweet scent of cornhusk. She turned his face from side to side. Richard allowed it “You’re that boy,” she finally said, “the one in the papers.”

  “Yes,” he said simply, though he wasn’t thrilled at being called a boy. He would be thirty in December.

  “Make up a god,” said the old woman.

  A few people shifted uneasily. Calderón shook his head. “It’s not good to piss off the gods.”

  “This made-up god won’t care. The white men won’t know.” She pinned the listeners with a glance as fierce as a hawk’s. “There are only a handful of us left. They killed us and our traditions. Let them pay.” She paused and looked down into Richard’s face. “Starting with this one.” She released his chin and hobbled back to her chair.

  * * *

  After leaving Tecolote, Richard decided to check out Gilead. Driving down the twisting streets, he tried to get a sense of the shape of the magical rune formed by the streets and houses. It had been so obvious when he’d viewed the satellite photo of the subdivision, but from ground level it just seemed like winding roads lined with palm trees. He wondered what each twist and turn signified to the Old Ones who were trying to enter through this five-square-mile rune. That raised a new worry. Were the Old Ones pressing close to the boundaries of human reality able to sense the weapon nestled at his back? If yes, would they inform the human quislings who did their bidding by building this gateway?

  Rays from the setting sun glinted on a glass lens. Richard frowned and realized that the palm tree was a clever fake and that it sported a CCTV camera in place of a coconut. As the son of a federal court judge and the brother of a former defense attorney, he found such intrusions on privacy disturbing. As a police officer, he loved the cameras and wished every American city was surveilled as closely as London. Though in this community, Richard had a feeling that it had less to do with preventing crime and more to do with monitoring behavior.

  The last of the newly planted real and fake palm trees petered out along with the pavement. Richard negotiated the final sharp curve, and there were the three houses straggling out toward graded ground waiting for the next house to be built. Plowed-in roads formed Nazca plain–like patterns, and fire hydrants stuck up like yellow teeth from brown gums.

  He stopped on the side of the bladed-in road, pushed his sunglasses up onto his forehead, and contemplated the parched landscape. A sudden breeze lifted dust into a spiral. Richard’s gut clenched. Sometimes there was a change in air pressure when a rent opened. But this wasn’t a tear in reality. It was just a normal wind in drought-stricken earth.

  It was important that Calderón not be perceived as a pure opportunist. He and Richard had agreed the man needed to get a job with the construction company working at Gilead so he could see the sacred site. That meant a delay of at least a couple of days while Richard hired away one of the crew and Calderón replaced him.

  Lumina had an L.A. office. Richard could work from there while they got things arranged. Realizing he had probably lingered too long, Richard put the car in gear, turned around, and headed for a freeway going north.

  * * *

  By the time he got off the freeway at the Wilshire Boulevard exit, he was quivering with tension. It had taken him four hours to drive the thirty-some miles between Anaheim and L.A. in bumper-to-bumper traffic. But it wasn’t just the traffic that had his gut roiling. He had been to California only once before, when he’d come to neutralize a deadly enemy. The fact that enemy had been an eighteen-year-old girl, and he had turned her into a vegetable, lay heavy on his heart. He told himself there was no other choice. Half human and half Old One, Rhiana had been a formidable magical talent who had abandoned humanity and thrown in with the monsters. He still didn’t feel good about it, and, to assuage his guilt, Lumina paid for Rhiana’s care. Richard briefly toyed with the idea of calling her adoptive parents to see how she was doing. He shoved away the thought; he knew how she was doing. She was lying in a bed at a long-term care facility being fed through a tube and crapping into a diaper.

  The need to listen to the instructions from the GPS bot-girl helped push Rhiana out of his thoughts. Even with the navigation aid, it was confusing as hell, but eventually he located the office in a ziggurat-shaped building very close to the L.A. art museums. As he drove down the ramp into the underground parking lot, the weight of the multistory building seemed to be pressing down on his head. He prayed that the Big One wouldn’t hit at that instant. Earthquakes were something he found terrifying—unpredictable and they struck without warning. They were like nature’s version of an Old One.

  The lobby continued with the whole Babylonian Hanging Gardens motif. It was festooned with plants, their tendrils stretching up toward the central peak of the ziggurat, which was a large faceted window with thick glass. Pyramid power. Richard knew what Kenntnis would have said about such nonsense. The alien’s scorn wasn’t reserved just for traditional religions but for New Age gibberish too.

  Richard found that the legacy of 9/11 had infested Los Angeles as well. The armed rent-a-cop at the desk demanded to know Richard’s business before he would let him approach the elevators. Of course the security didn’t extend past harassment and security theater. All Richard had to say was he was going up to Lumina Enterprises and he was waved through. It was nearly five o’clock, and he wondered if the assistant who manned the office would still be there. Like so much else with Lumina, Richard kept the L.A. office open because Kenntnis had. Maybe Kenntnis had actually used it.

  He walked into the small office suite and caught sight of a slim, beautiful girl with bobbed red hair and a tiny diamond nose pierce just standing up from the reception desk and pulling on a very high-heeled sling-back shoe.

  “May I help you?” She sounded both surprised and irritated.

  “I’m sorry, I should have called ahead,” he said as he walked forward, hand extended. “I’m Richard Oort.”

  She was a good five inches taller than Richard, and he gave an internal sigh. He had noticed that California grew females tall, or se
emed to attract the tall ones.

  “Okay,” she said in that tone that indicated it was anything but.

  “I’m your boss. Technically.”

  “Oh.” She dropped back into the desk chair. “Nobody told me you were coming.”

  “My fault. I should have had someone call you, but this was a rather sudden trip. Do you think you can get me a hotel reservation?”

  “Sure. How many nights?”

  “Let’s say three. My plans are, shall we say, fluid.”

  “Okay.” She picked up the phone.

  Richard was amused at her single-minded focus on the task at hand. “Do you have a name?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Might I know it?” he prodded. Amusement was threatening to become annoyance.

  “Um, okay. It’s Azura—”

  “No wonder you were hesitant to tell me,” Richard said. “That can’t really be your name.”

  The girl’s mouth pouted, but he noted that her eyes were dancing. “Oh, okay. It’s actually Amy, but Azura looks better on a publicity still. Catches the eye, you know?”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Of course, nothing will help if you don’t have the looks.” She scanned his face. “Have you ever thought about acting? You’re really handsome.”

  Richard felt a blush rising into his cheeks. “No. Never.”

  “Too bad. You would totally have the female casting directors creaming themselves.”

  “I think I’m a little a short for a leading man.”

  “Oh, heck no. A lot of the big stars are shrimps. Uh … sorry, that didn’t come out exactly right.”

  Richard hid a smile, glad that Amy’s blush now probably matched his own. “No problem. So I take it working for Lumina isn’t a long-term career path?” Richard asked.

  Amy/Azura made a face, which on her was very cute. “Sorry, no. There was an ad, and this was perfect because it wasn’t full time, and almost nobody calls, so I have plenty of time to study lines and go to auditions. I know it’s stupid. Every girl who’s been in theater or was homecoming queen thinks she can make it in the movies, but I just had to try. Fortunately, my dad’s very big on just going for it. Dream big, he always says—”

  There seemed to be an inexhaustible flow of information. Richard cleared his throat. Azura/Amy wasn’t stupid. She quickly said, “Oh, sorry. You probably want me to get that reservation, don’t you?”

  “I’d like a shower. These freeways are unbelievable.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Richard went off to explore the inner office. It was as sparse and utilitarian as the outer one. He sat down behind the desk and tried to force himself to pick up the phone and call the office back in New Mexico. Then he remembered it was past six there, and he slumped with relief. He could avoid problems and decisions for at least one night.

  Amy/Azura appeared in the door. “I booked you at the Sofitel. It’s just a few blocks away.”

  “Perfect.” Richard rested his hands on the desk, levering himself to his feet. He grimaced as the stitches pulled.

  “Um … do you want to get … dinner?” the girl asked.

  He stared at her, noting the heightened color in her cheeks, and realized this was a not-so-subtle come-on. Beautiful? Yes. Young but not too young? Yes. Interested? No.

  He shook his head. “I’m beat. I’m just going to get room service.”

  “Oh, okay. Rain check, then.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Oh, so you’re coming back in.”

  “For as long as I’m in town.” He added a barb. “I hope that won’t interfere with any plans.”

  She got it, and her jaw gave a defensive thrust. “No, sir. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  * * *

  The next morning, Amy/Azura was at her desk and dressed in young-woman-professional-chic. Richard recognized it because he’d seen both his sisters wearing the exact same look.

  “Good morning, sir.” The greeting made him feel suddenly old. “I talked to the Albuquerque office, and Jeannette forwarded a number of messages.” Richard sighed as he eyed the handful of pink call-back slips Amy/Azura was holding. “Jeannette also said to remind you to inoculate me. That sounds kinky and ominous. Are we going to play doctor?” She touched the tip of her tongue to her upper lip.

  “Nothing that…” Richard groped for a word that wouldn’t encourage the girl or terrify her. “Interesting.”

  “Oh, too bad.” She leaned back in her chair, which accentuated her cleavage, and her knees opened a few inches.

  Richard decided to wait on using the sword on this problematic employee. He needed to figure out a way to explain this particular requirement of employment and also how to defuse the girl’s interest. Of course the pain inflicted by the sword might do the trick, he thought, as he took the handful of slips from her.

  “Oh, and she said to tell you to call the FBI agent first.”

  “Okay.”

  Shuffling through the slips, Richard went through the door into the inner office. He found the one from the FBI agent, and it wasn’t who he expected. He frequently consulted with Bob Franklin; with Samantha, the foul-mouthed sniper; and occasionally with the director himself. But this message was from Jay Haskell.

  Jay hadn’t been a big fan, so Richard was a little surprised he was calling. Jay had been part of the team that assaulted Grenier’s old compound the second time, when Richard had been leading the assault rather than the one needing rescue. The agent had played bullshit macho games all through that effort. It also hadn’t helped that nothing had gone as planned—they’d lost one of their own during the assault, and Angela was already dead.

  Richard went to the window and looked down at the river of cars flowing past on Wilshire Boulevard. He tried not to fixate on events in the past, on things he couldn’t change, choices he could not undo, but sometimes the guilt and the sense of failure would rise up and crush him with the force of a falling wave. Angela was dead, and Kenntnis, his mentor, perhaps permanently impaired. Richard rested his forehead against the glass.

  He glanced down at the message slip crumpled tightly in his fist. He unclenched his fingers and studied the number. It had a 505 area code. That was most of New Mexico. So what the hell was Jay doing in New Mexico? Last Richard knew, the agent had been in D.C. Had he come to New Mexico specifically to see him? He went to his desk and made the call.

  “Hi, Jay, it’s Richard. And what the heck are you doing in New Mexico?”

  “I got transferred. Don’t know why the hell you were so eager to get back out here. It’s the ass end of nowhere. Place looks like the fuckin’ moon.”

  Richard chuckled. “That was my initial reaction, but don’t stay more than six months. The place gets under your skin, and you’ll find you won’t be able to leave.”

  “Yeah, just watch me. I’m gonna be leaving a dust cloud like the Road Runner in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. Anyway, I’ve got a case…” Jay’s voice trailed away. “I think it’s one of yours.” Richard could hear the reluctance in the man’s voice.

  One of yours. Words Richard had come to dread. He was glad Jay had learned and accepted enough to recognize when something was Richard’s, but it felt like one more giant brick being placed on his chest. They kept clearing incursions. He’d faced down close to a dozen Old Ones, and so far the score was Richard eleven, Old Ones zero. But how long until one of them did more than just score his ribs with a claw and actually rather than almost drag him through a tear between the worlds? Sometimes Richard felt like King Canute, or Sisyphus. He decided to pick a different myth. Those two guys never succeeded in their tasks. Maybe Hercules. At least he finally completed the twelve labors.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Little Navajo girl. She turned up at the rangers’ cabins in Chaco Canyon dressed only in her nightie. She said the witches had taken over her brother and had him kill the whole family. She had blood on the hem of her gown, and the soles of her shoes. One o
f the rangers said he saw a figure, it might have been a boy, staring at the cabins, but when he went out to investigate, the person was gone. Anyway, they called us. You know the FBI has jurisdiction on Indian and BIA land?”

  “Yes. Go on.”

  “I got sent. The rangers had found some clothes that almost fit the kid, and she led us out to the hogan. Sure enough, dead family—mom, dad, granddad. She said the witches appeared to her brother in the computer he’d been given. Faces in the screen is what she said. The rangers thought she was just talking about the Internet, YouTube, that kind of thing, but what she described reminded me of those things we saw in Virginia. So I checked it out, but it just looks like a cheap computer to me.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve been inoculated. They can’t reach you. What about the brother?”

  “We finally found him. Well, his body. He’d just walked off into the canyons and died of thirst and exposure.”

  “Lovely.”

  Jay cleared his throat. “So, how do we tell if this computer thing is real? And if it is, that’s really scary shit. There’s a crap load of computers in the world.”

  “We’ll use Cross. He can sense magic. If the computer is the source of the tear, he’ll know. And yeah, the idea that they can reach through the screens of computers…” It was a nightmare scenario. He continued, “I’m dealing with a potential incursion in California, but the ramifications of this are huge. I think I’ve got to check it out right away. Have you got the computer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Whatever you do, keep control over it. We don’t want it affecting anybody else. And where’s the girl?” Richard asked.

  “With her aunt’s family. Someplace called Shiprock. Why?”

  “She deserves to know she was right.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

  “I’ll get there as soon as I can,” Richard said, and ended the call. The moment he hung up, Richard realized he’d forgotten to ask a critical question. He called Jay back.

  “Yeah?”

  “Who made the computer?”