The Crimson Sky

by Joel Rosenberg

  Aarsted chuckled. “Hope she roasted an extra chicken, and baked another pie.” Sven’s appetite was legendary. And then he nodded. “But that’s a good idea.”

  Sven was probably the most accomplished hunter in Hardwood, and was one of the few who made a habit of tracking deer, rather than finding a good place for a stand and waiting for game to come by. That was a risky proposition for most people, but Jeff had never heard of Sven failing to get his deer.

  “At sunrise, he’s going to take the north side of town while I take the south side.” There was no point in staggering around in the dark, even if there was no danger out there. And it was a particularly good idea not to be staggering around in the dark if there was danger out there.

  “No. Not good enough.” Ian Silverstein stood, unsteadily, in the doorway.

  He was dressed in an old gray terry cloth robe, ragged at the hem, tied at the waist with a preposterously bright red sash. His left arm was concealed in the robe, and the opening at the chest showed that it had been bound to his side by some sort of stretch bandage.

  Hosea, moving quickly, was at his side. “Ian, you should be resting.”

  Ian shook his head. “No, not now.” His face was pale and wan. “You didn’t hear Valin. I did.”

  Jeff nodded. “Yes, but—”

  “He didn’t say that the Sons were after Thorian. He said that they were after his blood.”

  So? It-Shit. He should have seen it. “Torrie.”

  Thorian Thorsen had already picked up the wall phone, and was dialing a number.

  It was a long time before he shook his head.

  “No answer.”

  Shit. Thorsen turned to Ian and muttered something, then carefully clapped his hand to Ian’s good shoulder before turning back toward the council.

  Thorian Thorsen drew himself up straight. “By your leave,” he said. His voice had a formal tone in it that Jeff had never heard before.

  Double shit. Thorsen was just going to walk out and drive to Minneapolis. He could almost get away with doing that, too—Jeff wasn’t sure exactly what the Thorsens kept in the emergency kits they had in their car, but between that and a credit card or two, Thorsen really could be ready to leave for an extended trip at a moment’s notice, or without any notice at all.

  But hell, Thorian Thorsen left the Hardwood area only very rarely and reluctantly, and he would be like a fish out of water in the big city.

  “Just you wait a minute, Thorian Thorsen,” Minnie Hansen said. “You’re braver than you are smart. Which wouldn’t be all that difficult.”

  “She’s right, Thorian.” Sherve nodded. “You’re going to need some help.”

  Bob Aarsted looked over at Jeff and nodded. He’d worked it out, too.

  “Yeah.” Jeff rose from his chair. “It’s going to have to be me.”

  Thorsen wouldn’t obey posted speed limits, not in this situation, but Jeff’s badge would get them out of any of that sort of problem—particularly if he was driving. Town cop didn’t pay awfully well, but there were a few side benefits, and no speeding tickets was one of them.

  And if they were going to try to track a Son through city streets, Thorsen would need not only some help but also somebody who could, at least possibly, get them out of at least minor trouble with the local authorities.

  Thorsen couldn’t stand a search; Jeff could. In practice, if not in theory, his badge and ID would work as a carry permit pretty much everywhere, but if Thorsen was caught carrying a gun, his North Dakota permit wouldn’t keep him out of a Minnesota jail.

  Thorsen nodded. “Very well. We leave in five minutes.” He turned and left the room. His footsteps made no sound at all as he walked quickly out of sight.

  Bob Aarsted held up his right hand. “I’ll cover for you with your wife, son,” he said, anticipating the question Jeff was about to ask.

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d get her to move in with you and Ellen while I’m gone.” He was going to have to worry enough about his own back; worrying about Kathy sitting alone in their house with wolves maybe prowling around town again, well, that didn’t have any appeal at all.

  “Done. And I can be spared from the store for a while—better deputize me.”

  That would do for the moment, at least. Jeff would have to get on the phone to the Staties, and get it made official, just in case Bob would have to do anything official.

  But in the interim … he pulled his keys out of his pocket and tossed them to Aarsted. “There’s a couple of spare badges in my top right-hand desk drawer.”

  He thought for a moment, took his holstered pistol down from the bookshelf, and handed it, holster and all, to Aarsted, then pulled a speedloader out of his pocket and gave him that, too. Aarsted removed the pistol from the holster, opened the cylinder to make sure it was loaded, then closed it gently—not flicking it shut like they always did on TV—before he slid it back into the holster.

  Doc Sherve raised an eyebrow. “You don’t think you’ll need a gun?”

  Minnie Hansen sniffed. “Thorian Thorsen is probably loading half of Smith & Wesson’s catalog into a bag right now.”

  “I’ll call when I know something,” Jeff said, and went to get his coat.

  Chapter Five

  Scent Of A Son

  The trouble with any sort of construction project, big or small, was that there was always more to it than appeared at first blush. Anybody except Uncle Hosea quickly learned to allow—at the very least—a full day for an easy half-day job, and God Forbid you should plan a Saturday project without leaving Sunday open and hoping and praying that you’d be done before Monday.

  So while Torrie had guessed that they would be able to finish the disassembly last night, he wasn’t really surprised to find himself flat on his back, a chisel in his hand, the next morning.

  What the hell; he wasn’t complaining. He always slept better after sex, and he slept better with Maggie than alone, as though the back of his mind was more willing to shut down and rest when he wasn’t alone, and if there was a better way to wake up in the morning than with Maggie in his arms and the smell of hot coffee in his nose, well, it was probably illegal.

  Stickley buffets were put together like jigsaw puzzles, pieces joined with interlocking grooves that required only the smallest amount of glue to hold them together, solidly, forever. They’d been built to last, not just to hold together until they’d been bumped into a couple of times.

  Too bad that nobody had thought to build them with some miracle varnish that would repel three goddamn layers of goddamn paint applied by some goddamn drooling idiot during the goddamn ‘50s who thought that old dark mahogany would look so much goddamn better if only it was the color of some goddamn shade of yellow plastic.

  What was it with the ‘50s, anyway? Those were supposed to be lighthearted times, like on Happy Days. Why couldn’t anybody build anything right then? And it was worse than that—not only had those idiots not built anything worth building but in addition they had screwed up things that had been done right.

  Torrie wasn’t at all sure he believed that If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all, but he was sure he believed in If you can’t make it better, don’t fuck with it. Something that the idiot who had painted over this clearly didn’t.

  What a pain in the ass. You had to scrape with exquisite care around the joints, because you didn’t want to damage the wood any more than necessary, and you really didn’t want to do anything to the wood that would show worse than a thin scratch that could easily be sanded out.

  The idea was to restore the woodwork, not to rebuild it, after all. You couldn’t get old-growth wood any more, and while there was a beauty to the new stuff, it looked different.

  He was lying on his back, having squirmed his torso halfway into the built-in so he could get at a troublesome joint, when the dog started barking outside.

  The landlord had a dog, a Welsh corgi with short little legs that made it look like it would be
a normal dog if ever it stood up, but it was a reasonably quiet animal, and not all that yappy the way little dogs all too often were.

  “Torrie?” Maggie had heard it, too.

  “Yeah,” he said. He had spent too long in the city; if he’d been home, he would have been on his feet, already checking it out.

  “Give me a hand, eh?” he asked, accepting Maggie’s help out and up. She was, he had long since discovered, stronger than she looked.

  He hooked his arms around her waist and pulled her to him, intending a quick kiss and grope—there should be time enough for that, after all. She didn’t quite push him away, but she just gave him a quick pat. “Later. Let’s go see what Eustis is yapping about.”

  He followed her into the kitchen and to the back door overlooking the porch. From there, he could see out into the backyard, although there wasn’t much to see. The high wooden fence was probably pretty when it was all ivy-covered in summer, but now it just looked like it had loose string scattered all over it. And the flowerbeds and planters were covered with snow, as was the ground.

  He could still hear the dog, but he couldn’t see him, or her or it. But it wasn’t happy.

  Probably directly underneath.

  “I’ll go check it out,” he said, and tapped a finger against the wall phone. “In case anything interesting happens, call 911.”

  “You don’t want me to come with?” Her face was impassive, no trace of accusation on it. She was deferring to him, and she didn’t usually do that.

  “No,” he said, deciding. “If there’s a problem …”

  “I call 911. And I shout out the window that I’m calling 911.”

  “Good.”

  There wasn’t a stairway going down the back, just a chain-link fire ladder in a box bolted to the wall. But the back stairs led to a door that opened on the backyard.

  Torrie closed the apartment’s back door behind him and waited until he heard the dead bolt slide home. He dug his knife out of his pocket as he walked down the stairs and held it in his right hand.

  It was probably paranoid, but what the heck, sometimes paranoids run into trouble, too. And besides, the knife concealed in his hand just fine, and while its spring-loaded blade was probably technically illegal—what were the local laws on automatic knives? Torrie had never bothered to find out—a hidden catch could disable the spring, permitting it to be opened conventionally, too.

  But right now, all it would take would be a thumb press on the hidden release, and four inches of steel would spring out faster than the eye could follow. He snicked the blade open once, to test, then closed it.

  And if that seemed paranoid, well, so be it. At least it didn’t look as paranoid as carrying his sword would.

  The door to the yard was still properly dead-bolted, although with the window right there in the middle of the door all it would take would be a quick rap of the butt of a flashlight to shatter the glass and let some burglar reach a hand in and open the dead bolt.

  It was amazing how much you could find wrong with an apartment building’s security when you didn’t want your girlfriend living there.

  He unbolted the door and turned the knob. It rattled, loose in its collar, then gave. But the door was stuck, frozen shut; it took his shoulder against the door, just inside the glass, to break it free.

  It swung out easily, and Torrie came out with it, his feet sliding on the packed snow.

  The calf-high dog ran up to him, its little feet sliding on the snowy ground, and then it dashed into the building, leaving behind nothing but skittering noises and wet footprints on the concrete basement floor. Torrie was alone in the garden.

  He stepped out to where Maggie could see him, and waved.

  Nothing.

  Whatever had frightened Eustis—and it had clearly frightened the shit out of the little dog—was gone, leaving behind nothing.

  Well, maybe not frightened the shit out of it—there was no fresh dog turd in the back, but the dog had pissed in its tear and flight; the doorpost of the gate leading out into the alley was steaming.

  No, wait. That didn’t make any sense.

  Firstly, Torrie was pretty sure that the dog was female, and bitches didn’t mark their territory with a lifted leg; and besides, they weren’t built for it. And secondly, an animal fleeing in terror wouldn’t stop to mark its domain at all. It would have had to—

  Torrie sniffed the air. The smell was there again, this time stronger and more distinctive.

  He squatted down in front of the gate, rubbed his finger on it, and sniffed it.

  Holy shit.

  He backed away from the gate, wishing that he had eyes in the back of his head, and turned, scanning the enclosed backyard.

  No, he was alone. There was an old closet door leaning up against the north side of the fence, but nothing of any size could be hiding in there.

  To the dog, it probably smelled like wolf urine, which would frighten any dog to all hell. But there was an extra acrid note, one that Torrie remembered all too well.

  It wasn’t a dog. It was a Son.

  Holy shit.

  He didn’t remember when he had pressed the release on the knife, but it felt small and ineffectual in his hand as he walked backwards, toward the door, then closed and dead-bolted it behind him.

  Holy shit.

  He ran up the stairs and knocked on the door twice, then twice again; the bolt slid back instantly.

  Her eyes went wide when she saw his expression and the open knife in his hand. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  “We’ve got a problem,” he said.

  He set the knife down on the kitchen counter and turned on the water, scrubbing hard at his left index finger, where he had touched the urine, as though making the smell go away would make it all go away.

  There was a Son of Fenris in town, and Torrie didn’t believe for a moment that it was coincidence that had made it choose Maggie’s backyard to piss in.

  Damn it all.

  The water was cold, but that wasn’t why Torrie Thorsen found himself shivering.

  Chapter Six

  Night Moves

  The drugs coursing sluggishly through his muddy bloodstream had dragged blurry cobwebs across Ian Silverstein’s mind, but he couldn’t sleep any more. At least not real sleep. He just kept drifting …

  … in and out, waking only occasionally to reach down to the floor next to his bed and feel for Giantkiller’s hilt.

  He lay back in a blank timelessness that distantly reminded him of the Hidden Ways.

  Whatever it was that Doc had given him took more than the edge off the pain in his shoulder—if it wasn’t for the way his arm was Ace-bandaged against his chest and into immobility, he probably would have tried to use it—but it also messed with his time sense. Each eyeblink could last only a second, or for several hours. How long had he been lying here, staring at the ceiling? And when had the blue Depression glass pitcher of water beside his bed been replaced by a plastic one?

  Consciousness doubled back on itself. He was only vaguely aware that he was aware, and only dimly conscious of that. The sheets beneath his back had been damp and clammy from sweat for some time, and his mouth was dry and metal tasting.

  It took more effort than he would have thought it would, but thirst drove him to sit up and sip at the plastic glass of cold water that had just a few slivers of ice in it. When he looked at the old Big Ben alarm clock near the head of his bed, it was just a little past four, and only a sliver of black peeked through the opening in the thick green drapes that covered the window.

  Night came early this time of year.

  Okay, so he had been sleeping most of the previous twenty or so hours, waking only to follow Doc’s instruction to take any pill left on the nightstand. Presumably, Hosea or Karin was coming up every few hours to leave whatever Doc had prescribed.

  But, shit, he had just wrenched his shoulder, not taken a bullet or anything, and he more than half-suspected that Doc Sherve had put him on a
diet of narcotics more to keep him from moving around than anything else.

  He ought to be doing more than just moving around. What he ought to be doing was grabbing Giantkiller and a pack, and then dropping down into the Hidden Way beneath the Thorsen house.

  It stood to reason. If—and it was a big if—Thorsen and Jeff Bjerke could track down the Son or Sons who were stalking Torrie, that only stopped the problem for the moment.

  You don’t stop a snake, after all, by whittling away at the tail. And you don’t stop the Sons of Fenris from sending some of their number after people you cared about without stopping it at the source.

  The source was in Tir Na Nog. But it was too hard to think, what with the warm glow of Demerol, and Vistaril, and Percodan, and God-knew-what in his brain. It was much easier to lie back than it was to think, and it was even easier to drift off than it was to lie back.

  The narcotics interfered with his sense of time, but his kidneys had their own schedule, with his bladder their alarm clock—and it was tight as a drum, painfully so. Moving like he imagined a pregnant woman would, he levered himself out of bed and shivered for a moment in the cold air until he could slip the oversized terry cloth robe over his shoulders and right arm. He held it together like an old dowager clutching a mink stole as he more staggered than padded down the dimly lit hall toward where a band of bright light leaked out at the base of the bathroom door.

  The door was closed, and there were sounds of rushing water inside.

  Now, that was strange. The Thorsen parents each had their own bathroom off the master bedroom, and Hosea had his own downstairs. The only time any of them would need to use this one was when they wanted a bath instead of a shower, and it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that they were shower people and not bath people, because they would have had more than one bathtub in the house if they weren’t. The hot tub in the backyard went largely unused, as such things usually did.

  Stop worrying so much, he told himself. The notion that the Thorsens would have another visitor or guest using the john in the middle of the afternoon should hardly have his hand itching for Giantkiller’s hilt.