“Yes, Valin, I am most well.” He rose and stretched. “Do you have any idea where we are?”
Valin sniffed the air judiciously. “Vandescard,” he said, “I believe.” He sniffed again. “Definitely Vandescard.”
Ian was reminded of an old joke about a little old Jewish woman and a Long Island duckling, but it would’ve taken too long to explain, and besides, Valin probably wouldn’t have gotten it anyway.
How many dwarves does it take to screw in a lightbulb? One to hold the bulb and the rest to turn the universe?
“How can you tell?” Ian asked.
“It… smells like Vandescard. There is an acrid note in the pine scent that you only get near the Gilfi—the river the Vandestish call the Tennes—but there’s no hint of sunbaked snow, which there would be were we nearer to the Dominions.” He sniffed again, and his thick face wrinkled into a coarse frown. “No. I must be wrong. I smell an old oak, and there’s…” The dwarf spread his hands, helplessly. “This one is sorry, friend of the friend of the Father of Vestri. I don’t know where we are.”
Well, figuring that out was the first order of business.
Ian belted Giantkiller around his waist, and slung his rucksack over his right shoulder, book-bag style. Valin shrugged into one rucksack, then slung the other backwards, hanging down in front of his chest, which looked strange but probably made sense.
“I’m told,” Ian said, “that vestri are great pathfinders—can you lead us to somewhere where we can figure out where we are?”
Valin bowed his head. “It would be this one’s great honor.”
Chapter Ten
Lake Calhoun
Jeff Bjerke leaned back under the hot water and scrubbed hard enough to hurt. There was a faint scent of patchouli in the bathroom, although, thankfully, it was only faint.
There was a knock on the door. “Your clothes are clean and dry, Jeff,” Billy’s voice came floating through the door. “They’re on the chair just outside of the bathroom.”
Jeff glanced down at his wrist. 11:23. He gave his watch a heavy scrubbing, then rubbed the plastic scrub pad hard against the bar of Dial, then harder against his chest.
At home, Jeff was an Ivory soap kind of guy—the way he saw it, deodorant was what you put on after a shower, not what you slathered yourself off with. In hunting season, of course, that wouldn’t do—any soap smell shouted human—and he always did this same routine with Scentkiller.
But here in the city, a human who didn’t smell at all might be suspicious. It would be best not to take any chances on that.
Waiting tables not only paid better in the city than it did at the Dine-a-mite in Hardwood but it apparently paid pretty well indeed—Billy had the fluffiest towels that Jeff had ever seen. He dried himself quickly, but thoroughly—among the stupidest things you could do in winter was to go outside wet at all—then he wrapped the towel around his waist tightly before he unlocked and opened the door.
His clothes had been folded neatly on the chair—even the socks—and were still warm to the touch. He dressed quickly, enjoying the feel.
There was an uncharacteristically loud rattling of pots from the kitchen.
“There’s a spare key at the bottom of the candy dish on the coffee table,” Billy said. He emerged from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dishtowel.
He had exchanged his white shirt for another one, and there was a shiny black stripe down the outer seam of the pants that probably would have broken perfectly if he had been wearing the shiny black shoes that stood under the coatrack next to the door. Billy’s hair was slicked back and wet-looking and, as always, he looked freshly shaved.
“Thanks,” Jeff said. He had left his gun and handcuffs in the liquor cabinet; he retrieved them and unlocked the cuffs from around the topstrap.
“Really, Jeff.” Billy’s laugh hadn’t changed, still more of a snort than a real chuckle. “Is there some reason you snapped the cuffs on your, err, ‘piece’?”
Jeff decided to give him the straight answer. “It’s just basic handgun safety. If it’s not under your control, you have to lock it up.”
But Billy knew that. While Jeff didn’t know whether or not the Olson family had kept a handgun or two around, Billy’s father and his older brother were both hunters, and Gresh Olson had always been as much of a bear for gun safety as anybody else. Open the cylinder and snap a cuff over the topstrap, or behind the trigger, and what you had was a hunk of neutral metal, not a gun.
He thumbed the six cartridges into the cylinder, and pocketed the two spare speedloaders.
“Silvertips, eh?” Billy said.
“Sure,” Jeff said, lying.
No, they weren’t Winchester Silvertips. Winchester Silvertips were fine commercial loadings, and a good number of the hunters Jeff knew who didn’t handload preferred them, but on the Night of the Sons, Jeff had seen more than once that a normal bullet, no matter how good, would do little more to a Son than slow it down.
These bullets were silver. Thorian Thorsen had cast them, and then loaded them into new brass on the Dillon 550 in his basement.
Wait a minute. “I thought you don’t know anything about guns.”
“Well…” Billy shrugged. “Oh, if you’re not careful you pick up a little bit of everything, here and there.” His grin was just this side of an insult. “Me, I’m careful—but I still pick up a little bit of everything.”
“And you’ve always liked putting your friends on.”
“My friends?” Billy’s smile didn’t even flicker. “I had to put everybody on. At least I used to. After a while, it becomes a habit,” he said, his voice light and jovial, “and you forget you can turn it off.” He glanced down at the Rolex on his wrist. How could Billy afford a Rolex? “But if I spend any more time chatting with you, pleasant as that is, there will be a hole in the air where the town’s best waiter is supposed to be, and tables of people wondering out loud what ceviche could possibly be with nobody to tell them that it’s scallops soaked in lime juice, with some finely diced bell pepper, scallions, Guajillos chiles from New Mehico, garlic, extra virgin olive oil, a hint of coriander and the veriest suggestion of cumin. But, of course, you knew that,” he said, as he pulled a gray woolen coat down from the coatrack and put it on.
A quick pat at his pocket to jingle his keys, and he opened the door, then closed it, and turned back to Jeff.
“I… don’t need to know anything more than you want to tell me,” he said, all trace of lightness and joviality gone from his voice as he knelt to put on his shoes, “but if there’s anything you ever want to tell me, or you need to tell me, well…” His smile returned. “You know where I live, don’t you?”
He stepped out the door, and then he was gone.
Jeff wondered what that had been all about, but it was probably just Billy being Billy, and while many things in the world would and could change, Billy being Billy wasn’t one of them.
He wondered why that didn’t bother him as much as it used to, then he dismissed the thought. It didn’t much matter, did it?
There was a phone on the end table next to the overstuffed sofa. He picked it up and punched a number.
Thorsen answered on the first ring. “Yes.”
“It’s me. I’ll be outside the apartment in maybe fifteen minutes,” Jeff said.
Thorsen was silent for a moment. “It should be me.”
They had been over this for what felt like a thousand times, but probably was only ten. “And what are you doing in Minneapolis? If it smells you, it’s going to be a lot more alert, and you know …”
“I understand.” Thorsen was silent for a moment, and then hung up without saying goodbye.
Jeff shook his head. Thorsen knew as well as he did that even with surprise on their side, taking on a Son was by no means a sure thing. What were they going to do—call the MPD for backup?
No. A Thorsen was needed for bait, and Torrie was the right choice this time. Of course, since they were dealing with a Son,
and they didn’t know what the Son was really after except for Thorsen blood, leaving Maggie alone would be just asking for trouble. And Thorian Thorsen would be as useful there as anybody else.
Jeff Bjerke walked out into the night, his hands in his pocket, the right one holding the gun, with his finger very deliberately slipped inside the trigger guard, behind the trigger. That way, if he slipped on the ice and fell, there would be no way that it could go off by accident. That would be hard to explain.
It would, of course, be hard to explain him standing with a smoking pistol over what appeared to be a dead wolf, but his badge should be able to get him out of that without too much fuss.
And if not, it was unlikely that shooting a wild wolf within Minneapolis city limits was something that would be heavily punished. More likely, it would be something that would be hushed up. People panicked at the thought of wolves.
Jeff didn’t particularly blame them.
Of course, something like half of the Sons were humans that could turn into wolves and half were wolves that could turn into humans, and that meant a fifty percent chance that this Son would, in death, turn into an incredibly inconvenient naked human corpse, but if Jeff didn’t get caught, he wouldn’t have to try to explain it to anybody.
He never liked nights in the city. Even where it was dark there was too much light pollution. You could see only the brightest stars, never any sign of the Milky Way, as a dark and distant creamy band across the sky. And the stars lost all their colors, and the redness of the hissing and spitting neon light over the pool hall across the street from Maggie’s apartment was no substitute. Torrie walked quickly but tentatively down the steps of the fourplex, looking past Jeff as though he wasn’t there. His overcoat was belted loosely around his waist, and if you didn’t know to look you wouldn’t see the bulge at the back of his neck where the hilt of his sword pushed out against the dark cloth.
At least, Jeff hoped nobody would notice. Particularly the MPD. He didn’t know the details of Minnesota law about concealed weapons, but he bet that you weren’t allowed to go walking down the street carrying a sword.
As they had planned, Torrie took a left on Lake Street and headed toward Uptown, Jeff following across the street, lagging behind.
It would have been convenient if some dark shape had detached itself from the shadows to follow Torrie, but if life had suddenly decided to arrange itself for somebody’s convenience, it wasn’t for Jeff Bjerke’s.
Lake Street to Uptown, where yuppies chatted over noise and drinks at Figlios, or over coffees flavored any of a thousand strange ways, while bands of leather-clad punk types hung out on street corners and in the malls, pretending that it wasn’t too cold to be hanging out on street corners or in malls in just leather jackets and ripped jeans, although maybe, through some strange process, piercing your nose or eyebrow or tongue or God-knew-what kept you warm.
Jeff was skeptical, although some of his Norski ancestors had done stupider things.
Probably.
City people had a strange attitude about their tiny lakes; they were always walking or running or jogging or bicycling or skating around them.
Hell, if you put a leaky pail of water in a field in the city, you’d probably get a dozen city people walking around it before the water drained out.
Probably it was because they didn’t get enough real work. Even on a cold evening, you could see them, some in street clothes, some in their exercise clothes—always those plastic things; never a set of unfashionable sweats—walking or running around their lakes.
Not that Jeff was complaining. After all, that was what he was doing, at the moment.
Torrie picked up the pace as he crossed the Parkway and joined the few dozen brave and foolish souls still out walking. Jeff swore quietly under his breath, but he forced himself not to break into a jog in order to keep up with Torrie. If he looked like he was trying to keep up with Torrie, he would be easy to spot.
Would the Son be looking for a trap?
Good question. Jeff didn’t have an answer.
He had let Torrie get too far ahead, so he picked up the pace carefully. As long as he kept narrowing the gap, it should be all right, although the heaviness of his breathing was beginning to remind him that Torrie spent a lot of time working out in the gym that Jeff spent driving around in his patrol car, sitting on his butt.
There had been a time when he could have walked almost anybody he knew into the ground, but, without some effort, that time would be gone again.
By the time Torrie was halfway around the lake, Jeff had halved the gap between them. He was sweating under his coat, and the sweat was freezing. A hot shower was definitely in his future, as soon as he got back to Billy’s. It would have been sensible to leave his towel draped over the radiator; the thought of a warm, dry, fluffy towel was almost erotic.
Nails clicked on the tarmac behind him.
Yes! His finger had almost frozen inside the trigger guard; it twinged as he pulled it out—
—and he spun around as a pretty blond girl in a jogging suit, not even having the decency to pant as she jogged after her German shepherd, ran by him, smiling a quick apology for the disturbance.
Her jogging suit was skintight, but her nicely rounded buttocks—the jogging suit made it clear that her buttocks were plural, not singular—barely jiggled.
There was such a thing as being too fit.
Jeff hurried along, closing the distance. You could keep moving along, even if it made your heart pound, if you had to. It was just like when you were ground-hunting, the way Jeff and his father always had. You couldn’t outrun a deer, and it was stupid to so much as try, but if you were going to make trailing them work, you’d have to go as far as it took, not as far as you felt like. When it worked, it was wonderful. When it didn’t, you envied those folks who picked a spot for a tree stand, then climbed up there and stood, freezing, until a deer wandered underneath, relying on the fact that deer didn’t have any enemies—any other enemies, at least—that attacked them out of trees, and didn’t have looking-up genes.
Of course, the one time that Jeff had ignored Dad’s advice and decided to hunt from a tree stand, he’d stood there freezing and uncomfortable, wishing to God he was on the ground, trailing a deer, and while he did get his first fourteen-point buck that way, somehow the venison never did taste all that good.
It was; so Torrie had said, a measured 3.3 miles around Lake Calhoun, but it felt a lot longer. Still, it was about right. According to Jeff’s watch, it took just a little over an hour for them to make the full circuit.
A cold and boring hour… but the trick was to keep alert, because what was boring could—and likely would—turn dangerous without any warning.
Torrie slacked the pace as they approached the intersection where they had entered the lakeside path, and Jeff caught up with him. Over the engine noise of the passing cars, Torrie muttered, “Anything?”
“No.”
“Shit.”
“Tell me about it.”
Jeff followed Torrie back to Maggie’s apartment, then walked a few blocks beyond before turning around and looping back to Billy’s place.
He barely had closed the door behind him when the phone rang. His first thought was that the last thing he wanted to do was take a message from one of Billy’s boyfriends—or, worse, be mistaken by Billy’s boyfriends for another of Billy’s boyfriends—but his second thought was that there was one of those Caller ID gimmicks on the kitchen phone, and it was on the fifth ring that he was able to read out Maggie’s phone number, and answer the phone.
“Hello,” he said.
“Did you get any hint of anything?” Thorsen asked. Thorian Thorsen wasn’t much for preliminaries. Jeff hoped, for Karin’s sake, that that didn’t apply to their sex life.
“Nothing.” No, that wasn’t quite true. “A woman and a German shepherd ran by, and I practically jumped out of my skin. But nothing useful.”
Thorsen actually laughed. “Perha
ps you’d best get some sleep. I’ll call you tomorrow, after we have taken an opportunity to look things over.”
“Makes sense.”
But first, a shower. The water pressure was high, and the hot water was hot and plentiful, and he stayed under it a long time; by the time that it started to go tepid, Jeff was as wrinkled as a prune.
He lay back on the firm mattress and pillowed his head on his hands. Every few minutes, the distant roar of an overhead jet would remind him that he wasn’t home, as though the rattling of the ancient pipes and the city street sounds didn’t Didn’t the city ever shut up?
A hot bath was supposed to make it easy to go to sleep; maybe he should have taken a bath instead of a shower.
Shit. Tying his robe around him, he padded barefoot into Billy’s living room, and above the collection of more liqueurs than Jeff had ever heard of he found an unopened bottle of Four Roses on the top shelf in the liquor cabinet, apparently stuck as an afterthought between half an almost-empty fifth of sherry-colored Glendronach and a half-full liter of 18-year-old Macallan.
He broke the seal on the bottle and poured three fingers into an oversized shotglass, then drained it in one quick gulp. The harsh whiskey burned its way down to his stomach and set up a nice warm glow.
This was going to be bad.
Chapter Eleven
Marks
Sunlight glared harshly against the thick ice that covered Lake Calhoun. Well, after all this cold, it had better be thick. Every winter some fool walked on the ice too soon, and went into the water, usually dying of hypothermia before he—and it always was a he; this wasn’t the sort of stupidity that women were capable of—could be brought out and warmed up.
Well, it was worse up north. Every winter, one or more fools drove on a lake before it was fully frozen over, and went through the ice with all hands.
The Crimson Sky Page 13
