Paradigms Lost

by Ryk E. Spoor

  Somewhere in the distance, I thought I heard gunshots. Too far away to make any difference now though . . .

  Around the corner, trying to find another stairwell. Oh, Christ, I’d found the pediatric wing!

  A young girl with dark hair in two ponytails blinked bright blue eyes at me in surprise as I raced past her wheelchair, her attention on her late-night sundae momentarily distracted. With horror I recognized her: Star Hashima, Sky’s daughter, just recovering from double surgery. Virigar skidded around the corner after me, growling in a grotesquely cheerful way. I faltered momentarily, realizing that the monster was already trailing blood; he wouldn’t hesitate to kill again.

  Her face paled, but at the same time I could swear there was an almost interested expression in her face as she saw the huge thing bearing down on her. Star calmly and accurately pitched her sundae into the King Wolf’s face.

  The laughter in its growl transformed instantly into startled rage and agony; blinded, Virigar stumbled and cannonballed into a wall, smashing a hole halfway through and clawing at his face. Star spun her chair around and rolled into one of the rooms, slamming the door behind her.

  Virigar roared again, shaking the floor. “Bitch! I’ll have your soul for that!”

  I ran, praying this was the right decision. Would Virigar waste time taking care of Star right now, or would he chase me first because of what I knew? And what in the name of God had that girl done? As I half-ran, half-fell down the back stairs, I suddenly recalled a faint sparkle from the ice-cream bowl. Silver-coated decorations.

  No, Virigar couldn’t afford to waste time now. If I got out to Mjölnir, I could draw him off, outrun him probably, and then too many people would know too much. I shoved open a door, ran out.

  Oh no. I’d come down one floor too many. This was the basement! Ammonia and other chemical smells from the labs filled the air. Above me, I heard the stairwell door smash open.

  I ran.

  Technicians and maintenance workers gaped at me. Signs flashed by: Hematology, Micro Lab, Urinalysis, Radiology . . .

  At Radiology, I screeched to a halt, dove inside. A last-chance plan was forming. Behind me, screams sounded as Virigar charged after me.

  I shoved the technician there aside. “Get the hell out of here!”

  Hearing the screams, and the approaching snarls, the tech didn’t argue. I ducked into the next room, grabbing a bucket that stood nearby, slammed and locked the door. I worked fast.

  Heavy breathing suddenly sounded from the other side of the door. “Dear me, Jason; you seem to have cornered yourself.”

  I didn’t have to fake terror; I knew my chances were hanging by a thread.

  The door disappeared, ripped to splinters. “It’s over, Mr. Wood!” Virigar leapt for me.

  That leap almost finished me, but the door had slowed him just enough. With all the strength in my arms, I slung the contents of the pail straight into Virigar’s open mouth. The sharp-smelling liquid splashed down the monster’s throat, over his face, across his body, soaking the fur. Even as that pailful struck, I was plunging the bucket into the tank for a second load.

  Virigar bellowed, a ragged-sounding gurgling noise of equal parts incredulity and agony. He was still moving too fast to stop; one shaggy arm brushed me as I leapt aside and he smashed into the tank itself, tripping and falling to his knees, one arm plunging into the liquid. The metal bent, but then tore as he scrambled blindly and disgorged the tank’s remaining contents in a wave across his thighs and lower legs. Behind him, I doused him with my second pailful, soaking him from head to toe.

  The Werewolf King’s second scream was a steam-whistle shriek that pierced my head, but lacked the awesome force of the roar that had shivered hospital windows to splinters. Foul vapors like smoke were pouring from him, obscuring the hideous bubbling, dissolving effects the liquid was causing. The monstrous form staggered past me, mewling and screaming. Incredibly, I felt the earth itself heave as Virigar wailed wetly, and a flash of yellow-green light followed. Lamplight poured in through a ragged gap in the far wall and was momentary eclipsed by the horrific silhouette of something half-eaten as Virigar clawed his way to the outside . . . and disappeared into the night.

  Slowly, a small dot of light approached. The beam of a flashlight found me, then the tank, which had been broken into pieces, leaving its sharp-smelling contents flowing harmlessly across the floor. The light showed me the way out, its beam illuminating the wall just enough to show the sign painted there:

  X-RAY

  DEVELOPER, FIXER, SILVER RECOVERY

  CHAPTER 30

  Endings and Beginnings

  Winthrope waved me past the yellow barricade. I pulled up another one hundred fifty feet, got out, and went around to help Sylvie into the wheelchair. She still looked pale and weak, but it was good to see her out and moving. She smiled at me, then looked up and gave a little gasp. “Verne did that?”

  I felt as awed as she looked. The hundred-foot-long, three-story warehouse was nothing more than a pile of charred boards and twisted steel, still smoking after several days. The last rays of the setting sun covered it with a cast of blood. From the tangled mass of wreckage, two I-beams jutted up, corroded fangs, mute testimony to the power of an ancient vampire’s fury.

  “You still haven’t heard from him, have you?”

  “No. It’s hard to believe, but . . . there were dozens of them in there. Winthrope’s still finding bodies. They must’ve gotten him somehow, maybe by sheer numbers.” I felt stinging in my eyes, blinked it away. “And Renee . . .” This time I couldn’t blink away the tears. Syl said nothing, just held my hand.

  It was hard to believe I’d never see her again. Renee had been found in her house, her body in a chair and her head on the table in front of her.

  “I’m so sorry,” Syl said finally. “When I looked over and saw her, I knew it wasn’t her at all. What about Star?”

  “I got to see her the next day. She made me promise not to say anything about her helping me; her dad was already throwing a fit that she’d even been in the hospital when it happened. She thinks her father is the greatest thing in the world and doesn’t want to worry him. I just hope she’ll be all right. It was quick thinking on her part, but I don’t believe any kid that age could see that monster coming and not have nightmares from it.”

  Syl started to say something, but suddenly choked off; her hand gripped my arm painfully. I turned quickly.

  A man was standing next to Syl. He looked at me.

  I knew that face, with the dark eyebrows, crooked grin, streaky-blond hair, and green eyes. I should know it; it looked at me every day in my mirror.

  I went for my gun, found to my surprise that it wasn’t there. The man before me smiled, his face shifting to the Robert Redford lookalike I remembered all too well. He held up his hand with my gun in it.

  “Good evening, Mr. Wood. I believe we have some unfinished business.”

  “Never mind the dramatics,” I choked out, hoping he’d prolong them. “Finish your business, then. Nothing much I can do.”

  “Dear me. No respect for tradition? I must congratulate you; I haven’t been hurt that badly in centuries. Even our mutual acquaintance, Verne, failed to injure me as grievously. Why, I’m genuinely weakened. A clever, clever improvisation, Mr. Wood. I’m minded to let you live for a while.”

  I blinked. “Umm . . . thanks. But why?”

  The urbane smile shifted to a psychotic snarl. “So you will suffer all the more while everything you value is destroyed before your very eyes!”

  I read the intention in his eyes and leapt hopelessly for his arm; he tossed me aside like a doll. His hand came up and the fingers lengthened, changed to diamond-glittering blades. Sylvie stared upward, immobile with terror.

  Something smashed into Virigar, an impact that flung him a hundred feet to smack with an echoing clang into one of the two standing girders. The girder bent nearly double.

  Virigar snarled in an unknown to
ngue. “Who dares . . .”

  “I dare, Virigar. Will you try me, now that I am prepared?”

  Between us, in a streaming black cloak, stood a tall figure that seemed to have materialized from the gathering shadows of night.

  “Verne!” I heard Sylvie gasp.

  Virigar snarled, wrenching himself from the girder. Then he stopped, straightened, and laughed. “Very well! Far be it from me to argue points with Destiny.” He bowed to Verne, who made no sign of acknowledgment. “You have won a battle against me, Mr. Wood. And your friend here has surprised me. This game is yours. Your souls are still mine, and shall be claimed in time. But for now, I shall leave you. One day, I shall return. But no other of my people shall touch you, for that which is claimed for the King is death for any other who would dare to take it.” He turned and began to stride off.

  “Freeze! Hold it right there!” Jeri Winthrope had the Werewolf King in her gunsights, and I had no doubt that, this time, the gun was loaded with silver bullets. Even with the cast on her arm, I was sure she wouldn’t miss.

  Virigar turned his head slightly, but he ignored Jeri and looked at Verne. “My patience is being tried. Tell the child to put her weapon away now.”

  “Do it,” Verne said.

  Jeri glanced at him, startled. “But—”

  “Do it!” Verne’s voice was filled with a mixture of loathing, fury, and a touch of fear.

  Slowly, Winthrope lowered her gun. Virigar smiled, though the expression was barely visible. “Wiser than I thought. Until later.” He turned the corner around a large chunk of warehouse.

  “Why?” Jeri demanded after a moment of silence. “I had him right there!”

  Verne glared at her. “Think you that something as ancient as he didn’t know of your approach? I heard you as soon as you turned from your post. Your bullet would never have found its mark, and he would have killed us all. Even the fact that he spared us was a whim. Something to amuse him,” Verne spat the word out as though he could barely tolerate the taste, “until he devises an artistic way to destroy us.”

  “I thought,” I said, “he spared us because he wasn’t sure he could win against us.”

  Verne shook his head. “If he appeared here, he was ready. Perhaps I could have defeated him.” I noticed that he didn’t say “we.” “But I believe he left because . . .” Verne seemed to be searching for the proper way to describe something “. . . because he had ‘lost the game,’ as he himself put it. This battle, even your injuring him, was to him nothing more than a game. The object was vengeance against me, and then against you once you became an impediment of note. But we managed to meet some . . . standard he set for his opposition. You injured him; I reappeared from the dead. He is as immortal as I, and older; he must find his own amusement where he can. But where I find mine in the elegance of art, in friendship, in more ordinary games, he finds his in the dance of destruction and death, in evil versus good.” Verne shuddered, a movement so uncharacteristic of him that it sent chills down my spine. “Perhaps I could have defeated him,” he repeated softly. “But I very much wish never to find out.”

  Jeri shrugged. “Not my problem now. Okay. We’ll talk later.” She walked off.

  I grasped Verne’s hand, realizing how much it would have meant to lose him, especially after having just lost Renee. “Jesus, it’s good to see you. We thought you were dead!”

  “Hardly, my friend.” He looked even stronger, more assured and powerful than he had ever been. “Though not for want of trying on their part, I assure you. How does it feel to have changed the world?”

  Sylvie spoke up. “Verne, pardon me, but I don’t understand why any of them died in there. I thought—”

  “That only silver could harm them? Quite so, my lady.” He gazed at the wreckage. “Once I knew the werewolves had returned, I laid in a supply of diverse forms of silver—although I must confess,” he bowed slightly to me, “it never occurred to me that preparations—compounds—of silver would be efficacious as well. Part of my armament was a large supply of silver dust, which I hurled into the warehouse from several different points with sufficient force so as to disperse it throughout the interior rather like a gas.”

  I winced at the mental picture. “Instant asthma attack. Ugh.”

  “Precisely. In addition, since nearly all surfaces then had silver upon them, even falling beams became capable of causing harm.”

  “That still doesn’t explain where you’ve been the past few days.”

  “Ah, yes.” He looked somewhat embarrassed. “Well, in the end, the battle degenerated so that I was reduced to physical confrontation. By the time the last of them came for me, I found myself without silver of any kind. Your rings, I am afraid, were not meant for combat. They . . . ah . . . came apart. So when the last one attacked, I was unarmed against her great natural weaponry. I was thus forced to a course of action the results of which I could not foresee.”

  “Well?” I said when he hesitated.

  He coughed and examined the ruby ring studiously. “I . . . drained her.”

  “You mean you bit her? But you said that was fatal!”

  He nodded. “Other vampires had tried it; they all died along with their intended prey. I found out why.” He shook his head slowly. “The power was . . . incredible. No younger vampire could have survived it.”

  I thought about that for a moment. “Then, in a way, you also drain souls?”

  “Yes and no. There is usually a link and exchange of energies. However, in the case of something like combat, it can become a direct drain, and against a werewolf or something of similar nature, it must be. As it was, my body fell into what you would call a coma for several days as my system adjusted. I was fortunate; we were underground in one of these abandoned buildings’ basements. Had that not been the case, I would have faced the irony of dying in sunshine on the morning of my triumph. But survive I did, and I find that I am stronger for it.” He smiled, the predatory grin of the hunter. “It is fitting that their attempt to destroy me would only strengthen me; it is . . . justice.”

  We nodded, then Sylvie spoke. “What did you mean when you said Jason had changed the world?”

  “Is it not obvious, my lady?” He gestured at the lights of the city, silhouetted against the darkening sky. “For centuries, humanity has wondered if there were others out there, beyond the sky; but always they were secure in their science and civilization, knowing that here, at least, they ruled supreme. The Others—vampires, werewolves, and so on—hid themselves away, not to be found by scientists who sought to chart the limits of reality, and so became known as legend, myth, tales to frighten children and nothing more. On this world, at least, humanity knew that it was the sole and total ruler of all they could survey.

  “But now, they know that is not true; that other beings walk among them. And this is not one of their stories, a book to be read and then closed, to disappear with the morning light.” Verne shot a glance at me. “You recall, my friend, how you spoke about the horror stories, the Kings and Straubs and Koontzes?”

  I thought for a moment, then I remembered the conversation he meant. “I think I see.”

  “Yes. You were disturbed by their stories showing such titanic struggles, and yet no subsequent stories ever referred to them; as though such power could ever be concealed. But this is the true world. The genie cannot be replaced in the bottle. Even your government has realized the futility of a coverup. Winthrope speaks on the news of these events to an incredulous nation, and scientists gather to study that which is left. The world changes; we have changed it. For good or ill, the world shall never be the same.”

  He fell quiet, and we gazed upward; watching as the stars began to spread—like silver dust—across the sky.

  PART IV

  Viewed in a Harsh Light

  June 2000

  CHAPTER 31

  Presentations in High Places

  “This is ridiculous,” I said. “Considering that werewolves weren’t even seri
ously considered to exist until a few weeks ago, how exactly would it be ‘obvious for anyone skilled in the art’ to combine these elements to detect a werewolf?”

  “Hey, I’m on your side, remember?” my patent attorney, John Huffman, said. “The examiner’s pointing to prior art that involves combining infrared and visible to detect living creatures and discriminate them from non-living objects. The argument is that anyone presented with the existence of werewolves and who was skilled in the art would have tried the same thing.”

  I snorted. “So what are our options?”

  “Well, we can try to modify the claims slightly to include some of the dependent claims; he indicates some of the other work might be innovative.”

  “I’m not weakening this basic patent. What’s the other option?”

  “We have to file a formal challenge of his evaluation, specifically obviousness. That’s going to be an uphill battle, though.”

  “I’ve fought uphill battles before; I’m not backing down on this one. It was not ‘obvious.’ I had to get information about them—from sources most people wouldn’t have—and make shrewd deductions or wild-ass guesses, depending on how you look at it, to come up with that design. Either way, it’s not ‘obvious.’”

  He grinned. “I agree. And to be honest, I don’t get to try this kind of fight very often.”

  I saw a blinking light on my desktop monitor. “Okay, John, thanks. Sorry to cut you off, but I’ve got to go catch a plane.”

  I wasn’t unfamiliar with flying, but the VIP treatment—and the fact that someone else was footing the bill—made this flight a little more pleasant. I was disconcerted, however, by seeing a mob of reporters waiting at the gate when I deplaned. I was able to dodge them in Albany—I know the right people—but no chance here.

  I ignored the barrage of questions, which ranged from the inanely obvious “Are you here for the Werewolf Hearings?” to one guy from one of the fringe outlets asking if I’d heard anything from the Vampire Council, and made my way past them.