A Gathering Evil

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Marit smiled impishly. "I just do my job and collect information, rumors and lies that I funnel to Coyote. Then, when he needs me to do something, I do it."

  "Like help me?"

  "Exactly."

  I squeezed her hand. "Jytte seems rather different. What is her story?"

  Marit shrugged uncomfortably. "Jytte is very private, but she has told me something. Do you mind if I don't violate her confidence?"

  I shook my head. "I'd be upset if you did. I just want to put her into perspective. She's clearly had body augmentation surgery. I gather it did not go well."

  Marit took a sip from her drink. "Every so often you hear rumors about someone or something that gets tagged with the name Pygmalion."

  "Like the sculptor from Greek mythology."

  "Right. It's said he likes bringing beauty to life. He kidnaps people who are not beautiful and changes them. I think this would be a good thing, if he actually asked the people he worked on if they minded."

  I nodded. "From the job done on Jytte, this Pygmalion could make a great deal of money with his skills."

  "Ah, but that would necessitate two things: his doing what the client wants and his willingness to let his clients leave. Jytte escaped and, in the process, has blanked out much of what she endured at his hands. She has no idea who Pygmalion is. There are other times when a beautiful corpse gets dumped in Drac City or Boxton and Eclipsers just assume it is one of Pygmalion's failures. Most of those are suicides. I guess some folks can't stand being made pets."

  "I can't blame them."

  "Nor can I." Marit smiled. "Jytte is slowly coming to terms with herself, but she feels much more at home with her machines. I can't remember when I last saw her outside the meeting place."

  We spent the rest of the meal eating in relative silence because the tables filled up around us. In many ways I think we would have run out of things to talk about anyway because Marit was better at getting information out of people than she was sharing it. Despite her having been open about what had happened to her, she had been detail-vague, so that I would have had to work hard to attach names with people. I suspected that might be a natural defense mechanism, especially after having been up so far and then having fallen so low, but I also felt Coyote would have encouraged that tendency in her.

  Of course, had the discussion turned to me, it would have ended soon enough. So far in the day I had discovered I could read Japanese, could quote the Bible and had excellent taste in weapons of individual destruction. I doubted those revelations would have made for good table conversation. That went double for my excursion with the Reapers.

  I paid the bill and tipped well, but left the money on Marit's side of the table so the waitress would remember her and not the boy-toy escort she'd had. Marit noticed what I had done and laughed loudly enough to draw attention to herself, and that triggered a host of whispers that covered me with anonymity as we left the restaurant.

  Marit led me all the way around the mall to the elevator bays between the Goddard Towers. One stood not as tall as the other and she, naturally, pressed the button for the larger, grander of the pair. "Where are we going now?"

  "You'll see."

  A bit uneasy about venturing off to a mystery destination, I let myself take solace in the fact that in the briefcase I had enough hardware to hold off almost anything this side of a heavy weapons squad of security guards. As the elevator doors closed, Marit inserted a coded card into a slot on the wall.

  "27th floor selected. Thank you, Ms. Fisk," the elevator intoned.

  "Cute."

  She smiled. "It gets better."

  She was right. The elevator took off swiftly enough to put a bend in my knees. "Thanks for the warning."

  "De nada."

  As we reached the 27th floor, the back of the elevator opened, and we stepped into another box. Marit pushed the "Close Door" button. The cage shut itself up, then sent us hurtling along sideways. It eventually slowed and moved to the left before stopping. When it did, the front of the cage opened up, revealing the foyer of a sprawling apartment.

  "Welcome to my home."

  I stepped from the transversor box, and the doors clicked shut behind me. The foyer, which was easily the size of Estefan's living room, opened on to a living room and dining area that could have accommodated his whole house. The wall I faced, which looked out to the south, had a full view of the Sumitomo-Dial corporate citadel and, beyond it, to South Mountain Park. With nightfall all I could see was the black outline of the mountain against the stars and the red beacons atop the broadcasting towers there.

  The rooms themselves looked like layouts from a home decorating magazine. The living room featured white leather couches and chairs, with glass tables and track lighting arranged to illuminate the abstract pictures hanging on the walls. The dining room was a bit more traditional with a cherry wood table and matching chairs that were so polished they all but glowed. A hutch and some smaller wooden pieces contained crystal and china. A gold and crystal chandelier hung over the middle of the table, ready to impale the bowl of fruit that served as a centerpiece.

  Marit pointed to the right and the shorter half of her apartment. "That way is the kitchen. Anything you can find in there you can eat. I don't really know what I have, but Juanita and Anna never seem to complain about the food when they are here during the days."

  Pointing off in the other direction she indicated the doors on the right side of the long paneled hallway. "Those are the guest bedroom, my office and my media room. At the end of the hall is the master bedroom. The doorway on the left is the guest bathroom."

  I frowned and set my briefcase by the wall. "I don't see the things we bought earlier."

  Marit thought for a second, then shrugged. "Roger probably had one of his boys hang the suits in a closet and put the other clothes away for you. We might have given Roger the wrong impression." Her smile slowly grew. "Of course, we do have to figure out where you are going to stay tonight."

  I don't think I'd been making any assumptions, but that question had never occurred to me. Clearly going back to the hotel was as potentially dangerous as retrieving my car—perhaps more so after Paul Gray died trying to kill me. Similarly, returning to Estefan's home would be unwise. Not only would it put him in jeopardy, but it would make me easy to find again. Estefan might like Coyote and feel that he owed him, but that did not mean his neighbors had not seen me or could keep their mouths shut if they had.

  "The hotel and Estefan's place are out." I looked down angrily. "And, without credit cards, all the money in the world will not get me a hotel room."

  Marit shook her head. "You misunderstood me. I always assumed you would spend the night here. I was just trying to determine if you would have the guest room all to yourself or, if, perhaps, you felt adventurous."

  I raised an eyebrow. "Do you mean, Ms. Fisk, you would give me the master bedroom?"

  She came to me and slid her hands up over my chest and around my neck. "I could do that or you can consider this: You can remember, what, the past 48 hours?"

  I brushed her lips with mine. "Approximately."

  "And during all that time people have been trying to kill you?"

  "It seems that way."

  She slipped my jacket off and let it fall to the floor. "Then why don't we spend time tonight ensuring that tomorrow, when you think back on your life, you will have something to smile about."

  Awakening in a dark typhoon, with its deafening winds shrieking, is not a pleasant experience. I sat bolt upright in the bed, clawing the sheets with my right hand to find Marit, but she was gone. Sweat poured off me as if it were blood and my throat had been cut. I tried to swing my legs off the bed, but I met resistance. As I looked down I saw the lower half of my body had been wrapped in a gray silk cocoon.

  When the wind's howls changed from sound so keenly sharp that it made my teeth buzz to colors no less painful or vibrant, I realized I was dreaming. Even so, the knowledge that I was trapped in a dr
eam did not drain the fantasy of its power. Instead the rainbow winds became a vortex that focused itself beyond the window looking east and eclipsed the dawning sun. The whirlwind flashed with crimson and a neon green, then pulsating, electric blue tendrils climbed up through it like ivy assaulting a wall.

  I hate dreams and always have because here my mind creates problems it knows I cannot solve. It confronts me with situations I would avoid. Like an ancient oracle, it poses riddles that it calls answers, then leaves me to agonize over meanings that are trivial at best and drawn from experiences I do not really remember.

  Dreams drain off the mental strain that would drive the sane mad.

  This dream, however, was different, and I recognized it instantly. While it did not surprise me that I might feel this dream alien, given its womb was made of memories I had no way to access, I felt this dream came from outside. This was not a dream of my making, yet it imposed itself on me and used the symbolism I would use. Like a cancer, it masked itself in things I recognized so I could not escape it.

  The sizzling blue tendrils hooked over the vortex's event horizon as the plane of the dream shifted. I saw the tentacles thicken as whatever they were attached to pulled itself up out of the hole that now lay parallel to the floor. As the thing neared the top, the tentacles lost their suppleness and hardened into a thin blue outline-chitin with spikes and bumps and horns kinking its flesh. The creature itself, to my eyes, became a thing visible only as a thick, smoky-gray translucence that leeched light from the sun it eclipsed.

  Talons and elbows appeared first, with two arms becoming four as it heaved its bulk out of the hole. I could not see its face, but atop its head I saw a crown with seven spires surrounding one grander tower in the center. I could not tell if this was something the creature wore, or was part of it.

  One pair of legs appeared, then another to clutch the edge of the hole. The creature remained perched there like some arachnoid gargoyle watching me from the roof of a church. One arm stretchedout in my direction, each segment of exoskeleton telescoping out like an antenna. Three talons, each set at a 120-degree angle from the other, reached for me, and I heard the chitin click as they met and missed barely a millimeter from my nose.

  "The pet no longer wishez my carez?" The creature spoke in scents and colors, but I heard words form in my brain. "Iz the pet infirm?"

  Behind me, suddenly, where nothing could stand or be, I sensed another presence. When this one spoke, I actually heard the words with my ears. I wanted to turn to look at him, but I found myself held even more rigidly than I had been in the toxin's grasp. This is a dream. Your body is asleep. Not moving is natural.

  Somehow, knowing that, I still panicked.

  "So you use the term pet to define slaves?"

  The creature looked up and focused beyond me. "If your power matched your audacity, you might be ztrong enough make a zlave of me."

  "But never a pet, I think."

  I felt hands on my shoulders. I moved my head enough to glance at my right shoulder and there saw a shadow hand with a golden ring on the appropriate finger. The ring had a design that looked to be, at first, the Egyptian Eye of Horus, but it was different as well. Still, the green eye stared back at me, and my panic began to drain.

  The creature again reached for me, but I managed to jerk back enough to avoid the second swipe. "Do not interfere with my pet! It belongz to me. Give me what is mine."

  "Your pet belongs to himself. He is not yours, nor is this place yours. Be gone."

  Golden lightning played through the blue outline, sparking gold from the crown's spikes. The thing reached back with a hind leg to grasp the far edge of the hole, but missed, and the whole beast swayed as it fought to regain its balance. Throwing all four pairs of arms wide, it braced itself like a huge mechanical crane, but its limbs trembled with the strain.

  "You zmall creaturez zo revel in zuch inzignificant victoriez." Its voice started to distort as if the creature was both close and far at the same time. "Yoooouuuur raze izzzz owwwuuurrrrzzzz to devouuuurrrr aaazzzz we will it." It looked down at me. "Come ttttoooo mmeee, my pet. I willlll rewaaarddd your fiiiiideliteeeeee."

  "Be gone," repeated my guardian.

  "I will come again." The creature struggled against the vortex, then, like a diver who surrenders to gravity in the midst of a dive, it straightened its limbs and slipped from sight. The light at the edge of the hole brightened, but only because the hole itself started shrinking. I sat up taller in bed and saw it tightened down from the size of a truck tunnel to a pinpoint, then it vanished.

  Behind me I heard mild laughter. I turned to look, but only caught a fleeting glimpse of a human silhouette. It evaporated instantly as the sun's rays poured through the master bedroom's unshaded window. I glanced back and felt the light skewer my brain, then my arms collapsed, and I dove nose first into a pillow.

  "Dispénseme, señor."

  Squinting I looked toward the corner of the room just beyond Marit's vanity table. Pretty, despite being a bit heavy, a woman smiled at me. She wore a gray dress— a uniform really—that buttoned up the front and had been trimmed collar and sleeves in white. "Senorita Fisk, she say to let you sleep, but Señor Garrett will be here in a half hour to speak with you."

  I nodded and rolled over on my back. The cocoon I had dreamed enfolding the lower portion of body was, in fact, one of the lavender silk sheets on the bed. It probably ended up being good that I'd wrapped it around myself because—despite having triggered the dream—I was naked beneath it, and it saved me some embarrassment in this encounter. "Juanita o Anna?"

  "Juanita, Senor."

  My stomach growled. "What time is it?"

  "Noon. Senorita Fisk said to fix you breakfast when you woke up." Juanita smiled. "I have put fresh towels in the bathroom for you, and I can make food while you shower."

  "Good. Just a sandwich, I guess."

  "Bueno, señor."

  "Gracias," I said to her retreating back. I freed myself from the sheet and wandered into the bathroom. Shutting the door behind me, I saw myself in the triptych mirrors and realized I'd not shaved for at least three days.

  My beard was coming in black and gave my lean face an edge. Maybe I won't shave it all off.

  Unlike Estefan's home, here I did not need to pump water up to a holding tank. The oval tub was set diagonally across one corner of the room and was almost big enough to have given my ill-fated Lancer a good washing. I stepped in and thought for a moment that I might need a ladder to climb back out again. Pulling the curtain shut, I turned the water on and began washing.

  Freed of any important tasks, my mind started mulling over the dream I'd had. The only vivid symbol, aside from the monster, was the strange design on the shadow man's ring. It had been formed by melding the letter R with the Eye of Horus design. I could not remember having seen it before, but it could have been something floating to the surface from before I lost my memory. I made a mental note to ask Hal about it.

  The presence of the monster and its referring to me as its "pet" did not really surprise me, especially after Marit used that term to describe Pygmalion's victims. I was not in control of my current situation and, in many ways, it did feel like others were toying with me. The shadow man was clearly a metaphor for my hidden identity or Coyote. It seemed obvious to me that the message of the dream is that with help, I would be able to put all of this behind me.

  I smiled. Dreams are never that simple.

  I turned off the water and dried myself off. Using the electric razor in the shaving kit Roger had sent up, I removed all of my beard except for a narrow band running the line of my jaw to my chin and on up as a moustache. While I knew that would be insufficient to fool anyone who was hunting for me, I liked how it made me look.

  Back in the bedroom I scouted around and discovered my clothes had, in fact, been placed in the master bedroom. I matched a blue button-down shirt with my jeans and boots. I wore the vest beneath the shirt and ended up adding a navy blue swe
ater. Marit kept her apartment cold.

  I found Hal waiting for me in the living room. He stood and gave me a warm smile. He wore gray sweats with the Suns logo emblazoned on his chest. "You look better and better each day. How do you feel?"

  "More myself?"

  Garrett laughed, then joined me as we walked toward the dining area. I saw Juanita had set two places and an open beer stood at each one. "Hope you don't mind. Juanita offered, and I can't remember ever having turned down a meal."

  I took the place at the end of the table, facing the windows. "By all means. I'd rather have someone to talk to while I eat."

  Hal sat at my left hand. "Marit is out making some arrangements for a little problem Coyote has to deal with. She will be back in a couple of hours to start getting ready for this evening."

  I nodded to Juanita as she set a plate in front of me. "This problem, it has to do with the Warriors and the Blood Crips?"

  Hal picked up his turkey sandwich and held it in both hands with his elbows on the table. "The Warriors are looking to expand their territory or, at the very least, reclaim some turf they lost two years ago. They are pushing the BCs east, which is backing people right up against Lorica. The BCs don't really want the area the Warriors seem determined to take, so I've been trying to negotiate a solution. It's tough going."

  "I imagine." I crunched a potato chip. "Anything new in my situation?"

  The black man wiped a little mayonnaise from the corner of his mouth." Jytte says you're still dead as far as any official sources are concerned. The funds you gave Roger have been pushed aside into an account named Uriah Thompson just to keep the fiction of your death intact. Roger knows, and the change was made before anything showed up on his computer anyway. We have even dummied an inquiry from San Francisco from a relative of yours inquiring about obtaining your remains from the crash."