“Saying food is preferable to starvation is not high praise,” I said.
“No,” said Corvus. “Which way should we go?”
I shrugged and pointed at the pipes. “Let’s follow the hot water.”
We started forward, making our way down the utility corridor. My running shoes made no sound against the floor. Corvus wore gleaming dress shoes, but somehow he walked in silence as well. That was a neat trick.
“Out of curiosity,” I said, “are you a vampire?”
He rolled his eyes. “There are no such things as vampires. You’ve seen me in the sunlight. Some of the shrimp puffs I ate had a lot of garlic in them. I didn’t bite your neck and suck out your blood while we were alone.” He opened one of the buttons of his shirt and reached inside, drawing out a slender silver chain. A little golden cross hung from the end of it. “And if I remember my popular fiction correctly, vampires burn at the touch of these.”
“It was resting against your undershirt,” I said.
He snorted and tapped his finger against the cross, and failed to burst into flames.
“So you believe in God?” I said.
“Yes. Not all in my family do, but I do.”
“Peculiar thing for people in our line of work,” I said. The corridor stretched on without any doors, though I did see a corner coming up.
“You do not?” said Corvus.
“If God is supposed to be good,” I said, “then why is the world full of people like Paul McCade?”
“Perhaps it is our task to improve the world,” said Corvus in a quiet voice, “to cut out the evil from among its peoples as a surgeon cuts out a cancer.”
“What a peculiar thing to say,” I said. “Do you know a spell that can sense anyone nearby?”
“No,” said Corvus. “Do you?”
I shook my head. “I can detect magic, but that’s all.”
“I don’t think anyone is around that corner,” said Corvus. “I would hear them otherwise.”
“Really,” I said. “Your hearing is that good?”
“At night, yes,” said Corvus.
I frowned, working through the implications of that. Did that mean he could hear my heartbeat? Just as well that I had Cloaked when running from him at Niles Ringer’s office, though I wondered if his senses were duller in the sunlight. Corvus struck me as a man who had a practical reason for everything that he did, and he wouldn’t have worn those big sunglasses simply because he liked the way they looked. It was another piece of the puzzle. Maybe if I gathered together enough pieces I could figure out who he was…or what he was.
“Right,” I said. “Let’s put that to the test.”
Corvus gestured, and I peered around the corner. The corridor continued, deserted as before, though I saw a metal door about fifty feet further down the hallway. The hallway ended in a concrete wall perhaps another sixty feet past the metal door.
“That door,” I said. “Our best bet. We should have a look around.”
“Agreed,” said Corvus. “I think…wait.”
He frowned and stooped, peering at the polished concrete floor. For a moment I thought he had dropped his wallet or something, but I didn’t see anything. His head swiveled back and forth.
“What is it?” I said.
“Look at that,” said Corvus, pointing at the floor. “What does that look like to you?”
I shrugged. “It doesn’t look like anything. I think…”
I fell silent as I saw what he had noticed. There were scratches on the concrete, lots and lots of scratches. At first I thought that they had been left by wheels, by a pallet jack or a forklift or something, but they were too long and slender for that.
“You see?” said Corvus. “What does it look like to you?”
“Like…claw marks,” I said. “Like something with claws was running through the hallway.” I frowned. “Does McCade have animals? Like, a private zoo, or a kennel or something?” It seemed exceedingly odd for a rich man to build himself a secret zoo inside his mansion, but I had seen weirder things tonight.
“A kennel?” murmured Corvus. “Maybe. But they would be big dogs. Look at how far apart the clusters of scratches are.”
I shrugged. “So?”
“I see you are a city girl,” he said with just a hint of amusement.
I let out an exasperated sound. “There’s nothing valuable to steal in the countryside. Stop being all clever and mysterious and tell me what the problem is.”
“Those claw marks,” said Corvus, spreading the fingers of his right hand. “Look at how far apart they are. Something with big paws made them. Something big and heavy.” He scraped his shoe against the floor. “This kind of concrete doesn’t scratch easily…”
“Then a really big dog?” I said. “Or…maybe a bear? He has a bear back here?” That seemed weird. I suppose a hungry bear might make a decent security measure, but locks and cameras would be less likely to eat their owner.
“I hope so,” said Corvus.
I blinked. “Why? What’s the alternative that makes a bear seems like the better possibility?”
“Are you familiar with summoning spells?” said Corvus.
“McCade has been trying to summon creatures from the Shadowlands?” I said. “That’s illegal. Like, get-beheaded-on-Punishment-Day-illegal. It doesn’t matter if he’s friends with the Duke, the Inquisition would kill him for that.”
“Half the things we have seen here tonight have been illegal,” said Corvus, “and if my suspicions about his book are correct…no matter. Further speculation gains us nothing. I suggest we press onward, but with caution. If there is a wild animal back here, or some creature from the Shadowlands, we will need to be on our guard.”
I nodded, and we walked in silence down the hall and stopped before the steel door. It was an impressive, solid security door, designed to keep intruders out…or wild animals within. There were no cameras over the door, and I cast the spell to detect magic. Again I felt the same buzzing auras of power I had sensed earlier, but there were no wards or magical alarms upon the door.
“Say,” I said. “Since you apparently have good ears, can you hear anything behind that door?”
Corvus nodded and leaned against the door for a moment. “Some machinery. A large refrigerator or a freezer unit, I believe. Nothing else.”
Another thought came to me. “You can cast spells, right? How good are you with the spell to detect magic?”
Corvus grimaced. “I am not particularly proficient with it. I can detect auras, and discern their natures, but I cannot focus the spell more than that.”
“Ah, well,” I said. “I suppose the only way we’ll find out what’s behind that door is by opening it.”
“Profound,” said Corvus. “Perhaps you could write greeting cards.”
I looked at him. He kept a straight face.
“You’re not as funny as you think you are,” I said, and turned my attention to the door as I cast another spell. It was complex and demanded a great deal of focus, merging earth magic with psychokinetic force. I held my concentration, focusing the spell, and the door’s lock released with a click.
“Impressive,” said Corvus.
“Thanks,” I said. I reached into my bag and pulled out a pair of black gloves, since we had reached the point where I didn’t want to leave any fingerprints. Corvus followed suit, drawing the gloves from the pockets of his coat, and I pushed the door open.
The faint smell of rotting meat came to my nostrils at once.
I found myself in a large industrial kitchen. A row of stoves and ovens covered one wall, next to the humming walk-in freezer Corvus had overheard. A counter ran the length of the room, and an overflowing trash can stood next to the counter, generating the foul smell. In the opposite wall stood four niches the size of large closets, all of them sealed with sturdy steel bars. It looked like a row of prison cells, or…
Or exhibits at a zoo.
“Weird,” I muttered.
�
�Truly,” said Corvus.
I shook my head and took a few steps into the room, examining the trash can. It was full of white foam trays, the kind that grocery stores used to hold cuts of steak and pork. Likely the smell came from various bits of raw meat that had fallen into the can. I crossed to the stoves and pulled one of the ovens open. A thin layer of dust covered the burners, and the interior of the oven looked pretty clean. I had spent the last several weeks helping to clean the ovens at Duncan Catering Company’s kitchen, so I knew what a well-used oven looked like, and this wasn’t it.
“I don’t think these have been used for a long time,” I said.
“No,” said Corvus. “Whatever was in those cages preferred to eat raw meat.”
“Right,” I said “So. Why are the cages empty now?”
Corvus shrugged. “Maybe McCade let them circulate among the guests.”
“Wouldn’t a thing that eats raw meat be a little obvious in a room full of rich jerks and Homeland Security officers?” I said.
Corvus shrugged again. “They’re predators. I assume another kind of predator would fit right in.”
“I can’t tell if that was a joke or not,” I said. There was another steel door at the far end of the. I cast the spell to sense the presence of magic again. There were no spells or magical traps upon the door, but the auras of power I had sensed before felt closer. “Whatever magical items McCade has hidden away are close. We should…”
Corvus took three quick steps back.
I spun. “What is it? Is…”
A sheet of white mist rolled across the floor, splitting into two separate flows. I feared that we had triggered some kind of trap, that poison gas was pouring into the kitchen. Except gas didn’t act like that. The stream of mist split into two columns that seemed to thicken and harden and solidify. It was a bit like watching winter sleet condense into ice.
“Brace yourself,” said Corvus. “Do you have any weapons?”
“Weapons?” I said. “No. Why? What’s…”
The mist vanished, and it its place appeared…
I blinked.
Two creatures out of a nightmare appeared in the place of the mist.
They looked vaguely like wolves, albeit larger and far more muscular than normal wolves. Strange bony armor covered their long bodies and their heads, making it look as if they wore a second skeleton over their hides. Their fur was ragged and stringy, and their eyes burned with a peculiar intelligence.
“Wraithwolves,” I said. “Goddamn it, he summoned wraithwolves.”
I had never seen a wraithwolf before, but I knew what they were. The creatures were things of the Shadowlands, the strange parallel realm that connected the worlds, the home to the Warded Ways that the High Queen and her Elven nobles had used to leave their homeworld and reach Earth. When the High Queen’s human armies fought against her various enemies in the misty realms of the Shadowlands, the wraithwolves prowled after the carnage of the battlefield, feasting upon the wounded and the stragglers.
James sometimes told me about the things he had seen in the battles of the Shadowlands. But he had only told me of the wraithwolves once during one of our late-night cigarettes, how they had had hunted him after he had taken his leg wound, how he had barely escaped. After telling that story he had smoked four cigarettes and gone to bed, and he had never spoken of the wraithwolves again. I don’t think he had even told Lucy that story.
Seeing the wraithwolves up close, their rank, rotting smell filling my nostrils, their glowing eyes digging into me, I understood why James never wanted to speak of them.
“Have you ever fought a wraithwolf?” murmured Corvus in a quiet voice. The wraithwolf to my left looked him, its eyes unblinking.
“Never even seen them,” I said. “Heard of them, though. They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?”
“They’ll try,” he said. “McCade must have summoned them and bound them as guardians. They’re from the Shadowlands, so bullets won’t hurt them.”
“I don’t have a gun,” I said. I wondered why the wraithwolves hadn’t attacked yet.
“Neither do I,” said Corvus, opening and closing his right fist. “We need…”
The creatures shot forward in a blur. Corvus thrust out his left hand, and a brilliant ball of crackling blue-white lightning shot from his palm and struck the nearest wraithwolf in the chest. The creature rocked back with a tearing howl of pain as fingers of lightning stabbed up and down its limbs.
The second wraithwolf pivoted towards me, every muscle tensing as it prepared to spring. I didn’t have any weapons. I didn’t have any spells with the power of the lightning globe Corvus had just cast into the other wraithwolf.
But I could Cloak, so I did that instead.
I had the distinct pleasure of seeing the wraithwolf come to a halt, something like confusion come over its hideous face. The creature’s eyes jerked back and forth, its nostrils flaring as it tried to pick up my scent, but the Cloak would baffle its sense of smell.
It hesitated for an instant, and then wheeled, springing towards Corvus in a smooth arc. I couldn’t warn him, couldn’t even move without releasing my Cloak. Fortunately, Corvus had no need of any warning. He dodged the wraithwolf’s lunge, looking as calm and relaxed as he had upon the dance floor, but his eyes had turned solid black again.
He flicked his right wrist, his fingers opening…and suddenly a sword appeared in his hand.
At least, it resembled a sword. If shadows could have been collected and gathered into a blade, they would have looked like the weapon that Corvus had called into existence. It was a shaft of utter darkness that extended three feet from his hand, its edges flickering and gauzy. Even as the wraithwolf turned, Corvus wheeled, slashing the sword of shadows across the creature’s flank. The dark sword parted hide and muscle as easily as if they had been paper, and the wraithwolf staggered with a scream of pain. Corvus brought the sword down, and his next stroke severed the wraithwolf’s head, its black blood spurting across the concrete floor.
He started to straighten up, his eyes still filled with shadow, and the second wraithwolf slammed into him. Its weight drove him to the floor, its forepaws raking at his chest, its jaws clamped around his right forearm. Corvus couldn’t get his sword arm free to strike, and he couldn’t cast a spell of lightning at the creature, since the power would conduct through both of them.
A cold voice in my head pointed out that the time had come to abandon him.
If I fled now, the wraithwolf would kill him. Likely the creature would be too busy devouring his corpse to pursue me. If I was quick, I could enter McCade’s inner sanctum, make off with the tablet, and escape before the wraithwolf finished its meal. If Corvus had been planning to betray me, his death would tie off that loose end nicely. For that matter, if I tried to help him, the wraithwolf might kill me, and if I died Russell would die. Russell’s life mattered far more than Corvus’s.
All this flashed through my mind in a heartbeat.
I prepared to sprint for the door on the far end of the kitchen…and I couldn’t.
I just couldn’t.
To this day I am not entirely sure why. It wasn’t a pang of conscience – I didn’t really have much of one left. Maybe I feared that Russell would one day learn all the illegal things I had done to save his life, and I didn’t want to add leaving a man to die to the list.
Hell. Maybe I’m just an idiot.
I released my Cloak and began another spell, thrusting my hands towards the wraithwolf perched atop Corvus. My magical education had been very specific, with Morvilind focusing on spells he thought I might need as a thief and a general outline of magical theory. He had not given me much training in the elemental forms of magic, and very little in the way of battle spells. Likely he didn’t want to arm me with any spells I might use against him, though compared to his magical power, I was a candle flame next to his inferno.
That said, he had taught me the basics, and I called elemental fire.
&nbs
p; It was a simple spell, but I couldn’t control it well. Someone like Morvilind or a veteran wizard of the Legion could have unleashed a tight sphere of flame that would have shot through the wraithwolf’s skull like a superheated bullet. I only managed a cone of fire that washed over the wraithwolf’s hindquarters. The beast reared back with a startled yip of pain and surprise, and for an absurd moment it sounded like a startled puppy.
The resemblance to a puppy vanished when the wraithwolf whirled to face me, its eyes ablaze with fury. The thing was going to tear me apart. I was a lot smaller than Corvus, and it could bite my head off with one twist of those massive jaws.
The beast started to spring, and I Cloaked again. The wraithwolf stumbled, head jerking back and forth as it tried to find me, and in that moment of hesitation Corvus rolled to one knee and brought his sword down. The blade sliced into the wraithwolf’s neck, and the beast went into a spastic, jerking dance. I dropped my Cloak and dodged as the wraithwolf staggered past me, slammed into the side of the counter, and went limp, black slime pooling beneath it.
I let out a long breath and looked at Corvus.
“Damned things,” muttered Corvus. His white dress shirt had been shredded and stained with blood. “Always hated them. Almost as bad as anthrophages. I…”
He wobbled a bit, the black sword vanishing, and had to put one hand on the nearby freezer to stay upright. I moved closer, peering at his wounds. Trying to save his life might have been a wasted effort. Depending on how badly the wraithwolf had bitten him, he might bleed out right now. If I escaped with the tablet, leaving behind a mauled corpse would definitely complicate things…
As I stepped closer to Corvus, his black eyes fell upon me like a physical weight, and I noticed three things at once.
First, with his shirt shredded, I saw his chest and stomach, and he was…well, let’s just say he was impressively muscled. There was a reason that tuxedo fit him so well. If he ever wanted female attention, he could just take his shirt off and walk about in a confident manner.
Second, he had scars. A lot of scars. Sword scars, and other scars that looked like claw marks. The livid red gashes from the wraithwolf’s claws formed cross-hatches with his old scars. One scar on his belly, just below his ribs, looked as if it had been made by a large-caliber bullet, and I suspected it had left a nasty exit wound in his back.
Cloak Games: Omnibus One Page 10
