by P. N. Elrod
The accidental intrusion did serve to remind me that Kyler would probably be upstairs away from the … uh … entertainment areas. I pushed up through the ceiling and drifted around enough to guess that I was in a long hall. Invisibility had its drawbacks, with no vision and limited hearing. I could be methodical and start at the back, checking out each room, which would only take half the night. Nuts to that.
Calloway and Baker would certainly be talking to Kyler by now. I floated softly along, alert for any voices, and eventually found them. The confused verbal blur sharpened into speech as I slipped into a room.
Bingo. I recognized Baker’s voice.
I brushed by several people, creating a momentary chill for each… hard to tell how many were scattered around the room and any of them could have been Kyler. No one moved as they listened to Baker giving his story. It was very interesting to hear things from another point of view; the facts were essentially the same, except for me being larger and more ferocious, and the fight, such as it was, lasting longer.
“The next thing I know is Galloway telling me to get up,” he concluded.
“Gordy and Fleming got away?” Kyler’s voice. I surged toward him.
“Yeah, boss.”
“And you came all the way out here just to tell me that?”
“It was Galloway’s idea.”
“I figured you’d want to see us personally,” Galloway added from across the room.
Kyler took a while before speaking again, either to think, grind his teeth, or to make them sweat or all three. “Use the phone in the future. You could have been followed.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Otherwise you saw what Baker saw?”
“What do you mean?”
“About Fleming.”
“I couldn’t really say. Things were jumping and I was busy with Gordy … but it was him and he said he wanted to see you.”
“Did he say why?”
“Baker interrupted before he could tell.”
I had a mental picture of Baker squirming before Kyler’s unblinking eyes.
“Calloway, you may leave. Better luck next time.”
“You still want Gordy hit?”
“Yes, but you’re off of it. We’ll have to try something else.”
“But I—”
“You’ll get your usual payment, but without the bonus since you were unable to complete the job. I think that’s fair enough.”
“Yes, sir.” Calloway sounded relieved. There was some shuffling and the door opened and closed.
Kyler lowered his voice, concentrating it. “All right, Baker, I want an exact account of Fleming’s attack on you.”
“It’s just what I said. He was fast. I hardly seen him coming.”
“Hardly, or did not? Give me more detail.”
“I guess I must have blinked. It was like he wasn’t there for a second. He was fast.”
“Almost as though he vanished and reappeared again?”
Baker hesitated. “Yeah … but that can’t be right. Can it?”
Kyler didn’t answer that one. “You may go, too. Change out of that uniform before you frighten away the customers.”
“Yeah, boss.” More shuffling and door noises. I made a fast, blind sweep of the place. Only two men were left. The odds were getting better for me.
“Well?” said Kyler.
Chaven’s voice: “We still don’t know how he does it. Is it mass hypnosis, like those Indian guys with the rope trick, or what?”
“The method is not so important as the fact that he is capable ol doing it.”
“Great, so how do we deal with something like that? If he can turn it on and off like a light bulb …”
“Light bulbs can be broken.”
“When you can see to hit ’em. How you going to hit this guy? How you going to keep him from hitting you?”
“By being prepared. We must also prepare against Gordy.”
“He’ll be on guard himself, thanks to those assholes screwing up.”
“No doubt.”
“What about that stuff about Gordy not being behind getting Red and his boys? And what happened to Vic? If Gordy didn’t get ’em, who did?”
“There are others who have the means to do it, but they would know better than to try. We’ll find out for certain later. As for Gordy, we’d have had to deal with him eventually. This business only caused us to move a little faster.”
“But are you ready to take on him and his backers in New York?”
“I’ll have to be.”
“How?”
“By hitting him again, before he can hit back. This time we make sure it works. We move in and offer New York a five-percent increase on the profits. Taking over Gordy’s territory will increase our present income by about four hundred percent. That will make the expenditure of the extra five worth it.”
“First you gotta find him,” Chaven pointed out.
“Give it to Deiter. Where is he?”
“Downstairs someplace.”
“Get him.”
Chaven left. The odds would never be better: one to one and no witnesses. I went solid.
The room was on a level with the rest of the place: opulent with its velvet curtains, grass-thick rug, and overstuffed furniture. All the comforts and then some, though I’d halfway expected him to have at least a few crosses and a garland or two of garlic up in his sanctum.
Kyler had his expensively dressed back to me. He looked smaller without his vicuna overcoat, but snakes can come in all sizes and still pack enough poison to kill. He stood before a well-appointed bar. The usual mirror behind the bottles was missing, replaced by a wall of tufted black patent leather. Too bad, I could have used it to keep an eye on the door. I moved to one side to cover it. Kyler heard the shift of my clothes and whipped around, a gun ready in his hand. It was Escort’s Webley. Though not fatal to me, it hurt like hell to get shot, and the .45 bullets this weapon could spit were nearly half an inch in diameter. I decided not to provoke him into anything I might regret.
“So you did follow Galloway,” Kyler said after the first surprise wore off. “What do you want?”
“Same as before: a truce, but now I don’t trust you to keep your word. Is that something you only reserve for people who can’t threaten you?”
That, as Escott might have said, touched a nerve, but Kyler made an effort to hold his voice even. “I kept my word last night. I was not the one after you. Lieutenant Blair—”
“Was your patsy, yeah, I figured that much.”
“He was having me watched. My hands were tied.”
“So tight that you couldn’t have found a way around him? Never mind, it worked out fine for you. You set me up and got the cops looking someplace else for that girl’s killer and we all had a good laugh.”
“Some of us. You killed Hodge, so that balances things. But I’m out the price of the bracelet.”
“Turning it in got you off the hook with the cops. Cheap at the price as far as you’re concerned.”
He acknowledged the logic with a small nod. “Perhaps, but three more of my men are dead and another’s missing along with little Opal. Where is she?”
“Safe enough. You’re out the bracelet and some soldiers, but you came that close to killing my friends; we could play I-did-you-did all night. What do you want, Kyler?”
He usually kept a poker face, but couldn’t quite suppress a minute glitter from his dark eyes. “You may have noticed that the police still don’t know who you are. I could have told them, but did not. I will continue to be silent.”
I still hadn’t lost my initial revulsion for the man, but it was under control, more or less. He was playing me, but I knew it and was willing to go along. “In exchange for what?”
“Information about yourself.”
Not unexpected. He must be eaten up with curiosity, and the questions he asked would give me a clear idea of how firmly entrenched he might be in old superstitions. “Why do you want to know?”
“I think we can be useful to one another.”
“I thought you wanted me dead.”
“For a situation like this, I can be flexible.”
He got a cautious nod from me on that one and I experimentally paced the room. The Webley never once wavered, but he didn’t try anything, giving me time to think. My real purpose was to get my easy-to-read face turned away from him and orient myself in case I had to leave fast. That’s what I told myself; I was not trying to stall.
Bullshit.
It was that damned wall in my head. I’d gone through a real one not ten minutes ago; time to face the internal one and get down to practicalities. Get through it, get through with it, then get the hell out.
I could easily take away the Webley, but it would be a bad idea to use it against him: too noisy and the thing might be traced to Escott. Maybe we could alibi each other, but he wouldn’t thank me for pulling off any thing so clumsy.
Perhaps I could arrange for Kyler to jump out a window. Better. That way his death would at least look like a suicide. The idea of methodically breaking his neck or stabbing him sickened me. I had no desire to touch him. It’s different in the heat of a fight when the instincts to survive take over and the adrenaline pushes you past thought and over the edge. I might try arranging some kind of confrontation, force him to make the first move….
How? I thought sarcastically. Look him straight in the eye, insult his immediate family, and hope he’ll lose his temper?
“Flexible … ?” I prompted at last.
“I’ll stop the hit on you,” he answered readily.
“And my friends?”
“All included.”
“Cordy as well?”
He didn’t like it, but finally nodded.
“And listening to my life story is worth losing that four-hundred-percent increase in your profits?”
That set him back a bit as he realized I’d been there for his conversation with Chaven, but his eyes continued to glitter. “I would expect it to be instructive.”
I’d been down this road before and wasn’t about to make a second trip. This time I turned away to pace around his desk, looking for an idea, or maybe a blunt instrument. My eyes swept over a single book lying on the blotter. A few seconds later its title impressed itself onto my busy brain with an inner jolt. I kept going as though I hadn’t seen it.
“And along with the truce I am prepared to generously compensate you for your efforts,” he added, inspired, possibly, by the shabby clothes I now wore.
The book changed nothing, but it did explain the dearth of crosses and garlic. Though I’d read the story as a kid, I remembered little of it; the visual impression from seeing the movie three years ago was much stronger. The sight of Claude Rains swiftly unwrapping the bandages from his apparently missing head was not something one could easily forget. Kyler wasn’t chasing after Stoker’s Dracula, but The Invisible Matt of H.C. Wells.
I almost laughed out loud and had to disguise the intake of breath as a heavy sigh. He’d miscalculated this one, but it did make a kind of sense, consiciering he’d only seen me vanishing and coming back, not lurking around the Stockyards for a meal. He was close enough to the truth and deserved a few points for choosing even crazed science over superstition ridden vampirism. But it made no difference. The information he wanted would still be useless to him and as soon as he realized that…
“How much?” I asked, not looking at him.
“Five thousand.”
“Make it ten.”
He hesitated.
“It’s worth it, Kyler.” I let myself fade, moving on ghostly legs until we were closer than before. Eyes filling his face, he renewed his grip on the gun. I faded completely for just a second to drive home the point, then returned. “It’s well worth it.”
He’d had plenty of time to dwell on the potentials in the last day or so. My demonstration only confirmed the beginning of endless advantages. “How?” he whispered.
I said nothing. His own inner arguments would persuade him better and faster than any I could invent.
“Is it a chemical process?”
It should have been Escott standing here; he was the one with an actor’s training and judgment. I had to go on instinct and hope to make it work. “You’ll find that out if and when we make a deal. Call off the hits, leave my friends alone, and ten thousand in cash. In exchange, I’ll show you how to …” I illustrated by vanishing briefly once more, returning that much closer to him.
Kyler’s greed hadn’t been so obvious before. Moment by moment, I was learning to read him better, and now he seemed hooked. “All right.” His voice was very soft. But the last time I’d heard that tone Chaven had been holding a gun to my head, I was hard put not to glance behind me.
“Deal?”
“Yes. But five thousand down, the balance when I’m able to do what you do.”
“Then we start now,” I told him. “The sooner we start, the sooner I get out of here.”
He had no objections to that. This was his last chance and mine as well. If I couldn’t break through to him he would have to die and I would have to live with that death. He was as vulnerable now as I would ever find him.
“You must listen to me very carefully….”
I put everything I had into it, focusing onto his stony eyes, shutting out all other distractions. The room we stood in, the people at their games and dances in the rest of the house, the stark winter woods surrounding the place all ceased to be. The changes within that frightened me, that I had promised to keep under control, took over and rushed free once more.
“Listen to my voice. …”
The air was very still except for the even thump of his heart.
“You will listen and do what I tell you.”
I concentrated, willing his face to slacken into blankness, quietly demanding that he hear me.
“Do you understand?”
His jaw sagged. I almost mirrored him, surprised by sudden hope. This time it just might work. “You must listen to me.”
His eyelids flickered.
“You must.””
But he drew a steady breath and held it, giving a sharp shake with his head. “Like hell,” he said thickly. “What are you doing?”
Losing the battle. “Kyler …”
But the harder I tried to hold it, the quicker it slipped away. Whatever it was about him that set him apart from other men and repelled me—an especially strong will or carefully controlled insanity—worked in his favor. He was throwing off my influence, waking up, and stubbornly fighting. My own concentration wavered. Details ignored before, but necessary to survival, abruptly intruded on us.
I was aware that Chaven and another man had entered the room. They’d padded in as softly as hunters after any skittish prey. If I hadn’t been so mentally bound to Kyler, I might have had a chance to do something more than just sluggishly notice their presence and start to turn. But that chance came and went like a ghost’s shadow. Chaven’s hand darted into his coat, dragging free his first and final answer to problems like me.
Wide awake now, Kyler looked past me. His face opened with sudden horror; one arm came up in futile protection.
”No!”
But if Kyler had anything more to say, it was lost in the ongoing roar of Chaven’s gun.
8
KYIER yells a last inarticulate denial. His voice blends with my own hoarse cry.
Orange-and-white flames explode from the muzzle. Endless, unbearable thunder clogs my ears to the bursting point. Doubling, tripling, the shocks tear into my side and out again.
He falls back against the bar, nodding with each bullet’s impact on his body. His cold eyes suddenly blaze to life, but it’s an illusion. They turn inward to fix on a place where I cannot look—where I don’t want to look. He slides to the floor.
F stagger away from the dying man. Smoke and bloodsmell overtake me. We merge into nothingness, turning, tumbling, free of gravity, free of thou
ght, free of the first awful crash of agony. I twist and soar high in blind flight.
Chaven circles below. He and the other man cast about with broken questions, curses, and anguish. Drawn by the shots, more people rush in. Like a detached spirit with only vague interest in their little problems, I hover above the confusion. Their voices fade. I seep through a wall, seeking another, more tranquil place, away from their alarms and fears.
Stumbling awkwardly into a pink marble counter, I came back to myself with a stomach-lurching jolt. Gravity reasserted its claim on my body, trying to drag me into, and perhaps through, the floor. I fought it, needing to feel my own solidity, my own movements, needing the instinctive assurance that I still lived. My hands clawed at the cool marble as though it were a life preserver. I stayed and was numbly thankful for the privilege.
I’d wound up in a fancy lounge. A huge mirror over the counter reflected gold walls where brass lamps clung like glowing cicadas. As usual, it missed me, but I had no interest in knowing what I looked like. Turning from its emptiness, I was busy just trying to keep my shaky legs under me. I’d been shot before, but not so many times all at once, not to such a point of shattering, sickening weakness.
The bloodsmell clinging to me was my own. Morbidly, I counted four holes going into the right side of my pea jacket and another four raggedly emerging from the left, the fabric soaked with warm red stains, and my guts still churning sharply from the aftershock. Chaven had made a good grouping—too bad he couldn’t have known they’d go right through me and on to kill Kyler.
He’s dead.
I braced more firmly against the counter, locking my knee joints to offset their tremors. The initial shock threatened to turn into a nauseous disaster, but I gulped it back and sucked stuffy air into my neglected lungs. It shuddered out as soft, nervous laughter that did not want to stop. Some distant part of my brain was aware that it didn’t sound quite right, but the restraints were broken down. It hurt too much to hold back and continued for as long as the air lasted, ugly, mirthless whispers of relief. After too many frantic nights crowded with uncomfortable thoughts, I needed the release badly. It washed over me, a wave of sweet, soothing balm for a troubled soul. It washed over and past, leaving me weary and drained, but at peace.
