by John Meaney
*Come on, Laura. He was going to kill the diva.*
“I know. But he's not Black Circle. Just a lone sicko.”
*My point*—the words seemed to float on wind—*precisely.*
The woman, Laura, looked down at the injured man once more. “Shoulda stuck to beating off with your fist. You know, been a harmless pervert.”
Then she walked away and, after a moment, the disturbance in the darkness floated after her.
Donal woke at five twenty-three, seven minutes before his alarm was due to go off. In the tag end of his nightmare, swirling out of memory like fluid down a drain, he imagined a fading scream. Then it was gone.
He used the facilities, drank brackish water from the faucet—at least it was working—pulled on his old black running suit, and left the apartment. No one moved on the street, not this early.
A hundred feet overhead, a department scanbat moved in a straight line, and Donal gave it a wave. Perhaps later one of the surveillance mages, absorbing the bat's memories, would recognize Donal.
At the stone pillar on the corner, Donal did the usual thing with his police badge, and the door scraped open. He descended the spiraling stone steps.
Do you feel it?
Donal stopped, shuddering, and then told himself to stop being stupid. This place was empty. He continued going down, until he reached the catacombs.
There, he began to jog along the ancient stone floor.
Do you feel the song?
Coldness raked Donal's skin as he ran, forcing the pace before his muscles were warmed up. Then he was into the chamber where sarcophagi stood melded into the earth.
Do you hear?
Donal pushed himself to run faster, while talons that were pure imagination raked at his nerves, dragged like hooks through his body.
Do you hear the bones?
Donal's arms were shaking by the time he returned to the stone steps, and the big muscles of his thighs felt soft as he ascended, fearing he might fall at any time. The door opened partway, then jammed momentarily before freeing itself, and a sensation of dread swept downward through his body.
He staggered onto the sidewalk, heading for home.
Donal made time in the afternoon for a nap in the back of a cruiser. There was no opportunity to practice in the range at HQ, so after he woke, before opening his eyes, Donal sent himself into a trance.
He visualized a training session where he fired straight into the target's vital points. Then, with a long, deep, shuddering breath, he returned to reality.
“Hey, Lieutenant. Need coffee?”
“Only if there's doughnuts.”
“We can manage that.”
The two uniforms, Belden and O'Grady, had left him alone in the car while he slept, staying within earshot of the radio in case it squawked for them. Now they got back in and drove out of the alleyway. They pulled up on the ultraviolet no-parking lines in front of a Fat'n'Sugar. Belden went inside.
“He prefers Tarantula Creams,” muttered O'Grady. “Make your teeth black.”
“Wonderful.”
But Belden brought back plain and redberry, just what Donal would have ordered, and big snakeskin cups filled with coffee that was so-so. Volume over taste.
“You getting cultured, Lieutenant?” Belden, in the front passenger seat, pulled back the little snake-mouth opening on his coffee-cup lid. “All that opera and all?”
“Absolutely, my good man. Getting cultured up the wazoo.”
“Hear that diva's a real honey.” O'Grady, sitting behind the wheel, took a mouthful of doughnut and a large slug of coffee, and commenced chewing. “She as gorgeous as they say?”
“Oh, yeah.” Donal's voice went soft, and he put his coffee down. “She is that.”
The second performance bettered the first. The audience, affluent but not the city's most influential folk, were less restrained in their applause. That triumphant mood fed back to the opera company, raising them to a new level.
Not just the diva but everyone sang their hearts out. Several of the soloists reduced the audience to tears, capturing that ability to entrance the listener and weave patterns with their soul.
This time, the Brodowski Brothers were stationed backstage—it turned out they'd had a word with Levison—and after the performance, Al Brodowski pulled Donal aside.
“Hades, Lieutenant. You were right. Twenty bare bods, big tit-ties everywhere. Bud's had to lie down.”
“Er . . . glad you were paying attention.”
Then Brodowski left, leaving Donal to wonder whether they really had seen twenty naked women or whether they were torturing him in revenge.
“Hey,” said Levison. “What's up? You were staring into space.”
“Thinking strategic thoughts. Have Petrov and Duquesne got her car ready?”
Her meant the diva.
“All set. She still going to the Five Seasons?”
“Yeah. Seven-course meal.” Donal and the others would get to stand around and watch. “All the trimmings.”
Levison said, “You managed to eat already?”
“Sure. You?”
“Brought a bean-sprout sandwich in with me. Tilly made it last night. What about you?”
“Two redberry doughnuts and a Fat'n'Sugar max-size coffee. With Belden and O'Grady.”
“Fat'n'Sugar?” Levison sighed. “Lucky bastard.”
The diva left shortly afterward, trailing a cloud of hangers-on and admirers. Donal wondered if she ever grew sick of it.
Sitting in the back of Belden and O'Grady's cruiser, Donal watched the streets, his stomach sour, not from the bad coffee but the knowledge that a killer could be anywhere.
Once more the team had deployed to vantage points. That included three men who had spent the day at the Five Seasons, getting in the head chef's way, or trying not to get noticed by diners. Donal roved around the positions and the streets outside, watching for anything out of the ordinary, anything to break the pattern, finding nothing.
Three hours later it was back to the Exemplar.
Donal was technically off duty now but could not resist wandering through the corridors and facilities. He chatted briefly with Shaunovan, the Exemplar's house detective who never slept or—it seemed—left the building.
It was late when Donal finally went home.
Next morning, he rose at seven, itching to go for a run. Although traffic was beginning to take over the streets at this hour, he chose to run along the sidewalks, not the catacombs. Nothing whispered to him at ground level.
Donal showered—in hot water that lasted as long as he wanted—had scrambled eggs for breakfast, and pulled on a clean shirt and his other suit. He'd had the suit steam-cleaned at Fozzy's Rags.
Today felt like a good day.
There was a matinee performance, which drew a different crowd: children accompanying their parents. They sobbed and laughed at the right places, though the plot surely had to be beyond them.
Donal was finally getting the hang of the intricacies of the story, which mixed innocence with ambition, social justice with revenge. He had learned to be in the deepest shadow when the diva sang that final aria over the body of the dead Prince Turol. That was when Donal's professional instincts failed and unearthly grief poured through him.
Afterward, the diva returned to the hotel to rest, and while she remained there, Donal walked the streets around the Exemplar. Once he saw a dark Vixen among the purple cabs and remembered the automobile that had been parked near the Energy Authority complex that time, more than a week ago.
It was an unusual vehicle but not unique, and by the time he drew near, the lights had changed. Donal saw nothing of the driver as the Vixen drove off.
After darkness fell, it was time for the diva to return to the Théâtre du Loup Mort. Once again the limo, bracketed by two unmarked cars and two cruisers, made its way across midtown.
At this hour the traffic was heavy, and Donal had insisted that Levison and Duquesne—the department's finest shot
in close conditions—ride in the limo with the diva. She had been furious, calming only when Levison asked her about what breathing techniques she used to hold such a range of tones.
To Donal, the change of subject seemed forced and obvious, but something in the way Levison did it—as always—let the conversation flow the way he wanted. Perhaps it was just that Lev was so focused. You knew he absolutely wanted to learn the answers to his questions.
The Brodowski Brothers were out front tonight—“We had to change position, Lieutenant. All that flesh, we couldn't concentrate.” Donal went through the drill, checking the windows in the opposite buildings, scanning the crowds for unusual body language.
This was the third night in a row. It was beginning to feel like routine.
Dangerously like routine.
To the family who had seats in the top-right box, plush and comfortable, Donal pretended he was part of the theater management, here to see that everything was just right for valued guests. The husband preened, his chest swelling as he told his boys that influence was what life was all about.
His wife nodded quietly, absorbing everything, but there might have been an amused sparkle in her eyes as the family took their seats. The children looked more like her, which Donal could only think of as a good thing.
The lights dimmed.
Drums rolled, and the orchestra began the overture.
The first two acts proceeded with the same magic as before. During the intermission, Donal walked around the auditorium and went backstage. Everything looked clear.
No. Check again.
Because he felt as if he were going through the motions. This was serious. So Donal backtracked, checking every stagehand and performer he walked past. He checked the overhead scaffolding and the spaces behind curtains. He went back out into the auditorium, using the internal staircase, taking a tour of all the boxes.
Still clear.
Intermission over, the audience filed back into their seats. Donal remained at ground level, standing by the door with one of the ushers. When the third act commenced, Donal remained in the shadows, captivated as before by the diva's performance.
He applauded along with everybody else, and when the fourth act proceeded to Prince Turol's inevitable death, he was even more stricken than before. With the prince's body draped across the stone bench where he had declared his love to Lady Arla, the diva stood and faced the audience.
Hands spread wide, she commenced the aria, and that was when it happened.
Something black moved through the air, and every member of the audience sat rigid.
Donal did not react.
The small group of singers onstage, the prince's erstwhile allies who had betrayed him, were frozen like statues . . . but the diva continued to sing, not realizing anything was wrong.
But a second later, the first three rows of spectators stood up in exact unison, as if they were a single body. Donal could do nothing but watch, frozen as all the rest. The front row took a step forward, and the next two rows began to file out into the aisles, their footsteps in time.
A note faltered in the aria.
Trance. Have to—
When all the standing people were free of their seats, the entire aggregate, some hundred men and women, took a single step forward. And another.
Like the start of some macabre dance.
—break it.
Ensorcelled, the hundred people advanced, blankness in their eyes. The music died and the diva's voice trailed away. She stood paralyzed: not by a spell but by fear.
This was what had happened in the other theaters. Some part of Donal's captured mind realized that every report and article he had read in preparation had been a lie. Any power great enough to ensorcell a hundred people in public had enough capability to alter the memories of everyone here.
Something clicked inside Donal.
NO.
It felt like a sound, a wooden click inside his head as the trance training broke in, and sheets of ice seemed to slide away from his body, and then he was free.
Move.
Donal crouched, scanning the auditorium, but everyone—even his officers, even Petrov, who was in theory trance-shielded—was frozen in place.
Move now.
The orchestra remained unmoving. But a hundred people were advancing as Donal sprinted across the intervening space and leaped into the orchestra pit, heading for the stage.
It was like some sort of signal: every musician's head swiveled toward Donal, eyes dead. Hands reached for him, but he elbowed a cellist in the temple, thrust-kicked a woman violinist out of his way, and grabbed the edge of the stage.
He pulled himself up, kicked out at grasping hands, and rolled up into a crouch.
“Come on! Maria!”
The use of her first name seemed to break the diva's stasis. She whipped her gaze from side to side, breathing fast in panic, and backed away with shuffling steps. Behind her, the prince sat up, and the other performers took a synchronized step forward.
Shit.
Donal ran to the diva, grabbed her around the waist, and said, “We have to run. Do you understand?”
“Yes . . .”
He wanted to tell her to stop taking shallow breaths, but then something, perhaps her singer's training, made the diva take a single deep, calming breath as she kicked off her shoes.
“Which way?”
“Left.”
Donal kept his arm around the diva's waist as they ran to the side of the stage and through the wing, where a stagehand reached out and Donal whipped an uppercut elbow under the man's chin. Then they were sprinting past, clattering down the steps, and reaching a fire exit. Donal kicked the bar mechanism open.
There was a dark alleyway outside, but three men reached out from behind them—spear-holders from the previous scene—and grabbed the diva's gown.
Donal spun, throwing a hard overhead left into the side of the nearest man's neck—got it—and that man was down, but more were advancing in the shadows. Donal kicked the second man in the knee, collapsing the leg, then grabbed hold of the man's head and twisted him aside.
The diva was struggling with the last man, but Donal whipped his Magnus from his shoulder holster and hammered the butt into the back of the man's neck, dropping him.
“Come on.”
A hand reached from the floor—one of the fallen men—but Donal stamped down, heard a liquid crunch, and then he was pulling the diva through the exit.
Out in the alley, he crouched. A man at the corner, who had been walking by, now shivered and took a stiff step into the alleyway.
Ensorcelled.
Thanatos. How far can one spell spread?
“This way.”
Donal ran, around the back of the theater with the diva keeping pace. The ground was cold and hard, and she was in bare feet. They skirted shards of broken glass, remnants of a dropped beer bottle that sparkled with reflected light.
In front of them was another alleyway: too narrow for them to walk side by side, and one hell of a potential trap, but there was no choice. Donal ran first, dragging the diva along.
Then they were out onto the sidewalk of 92nd Street.
Bright lights, moving cars, and a crowd of passersby: for maybe twenty seconds it seemed as though they were safe. Donal was starting to flag down a purple cab when he saw a group of Zurinese tourists, cameras in hand, shudder and grow blank-eyed.
The ensorcelled tourists turned their attention on the diva.
She's the locus.
Wherever they went, the trancing spell would coalesce and fall upon anyone who could see her. It was like some kind of infection. Donal batted aside a tourist's grasping hands and tugged the diva—“Ow!”—into motion.
Her ivory gown had slipped and Donal caught a peek of her breast—Hades, there was no time for this—and then he spotted a stone pillar wider than a man, across the street on Hoardway.
Donal reholstered his gun, took hold of the diva's left wrist, and ducked under. He
straightened up with her weight across his shoulders in a fireman's carry.
“Hold on.”
Then he ran.
Horns blared and someone shouted, then two cars crunched together in a shower of broken glass as ensorcelled drivers turned their attention to the fleeing pair. But Donal had run every day for twenty years, and a kind of joy flared through him as he dodged the vehicles, leaped up onto the opposite sidewalk, kicked out—hard, despite the diva's weight on his shoulders—and a heavy man fell.
Twenty more yards, then Donal crouched down, almost throwing the diva off him as he felt for his wallet, got it, and pulled out his badge. He slammed it against the stone slot.
The metal door moved, revealing steps leading down.
“You first.” Donal pushed the diva inside. “Hurry.”
Blood shimmered on the diva's bare foot. She might slip, but there was no choice. Donal pushed her again, but gently, then followed her inside and worked the door mechanism. Dozens of people were advancing, and the door was slow—
Shit shit shit.
—but it closed in time. For now they were clear.
“They're going to—to—”
“No. Keep moving. Distance and stone will shield us.”
It was the only thing that would stop the ensorcellment: getting clear of people.
“Where to?”
“Just keep going.”
It took maybe two minutes to reach the rough-carved tunnel at the foot of the stairs.
“Is this—where are we, Detective? The catacombs?”
“Call me Donal. And, yeah, this is the catacombs.”
They moved along at something between a fast walk and a jog. Donal would have preferred to move faster, but the diva couldn't maintain the pace.
Sound . . .
Donal stopped dead.
“What's wrong, De—Donal?”
A distant rumble emanated from somewhere up ahead.
“We need to go back the other way. Now.”
“Oh. . .”
The diva broke into a stumbling half jog as he pulled her back along the tunnel and took a turn to the right. After a moment she pulled away from him but continued staggering forward.
“Don't you even know your way around?”
