3 Blood Lines (21 page)

Then he frowned at the two women hovering an arm’s length away. “There was a third . . .”

“Merely a visitor, Mr. Tawfik. No one for
you
to concern yourself about.”

“I shall be the judge of that.” Even in his distress her ka had held a certain familiarity, A flavor he had not quite been able to identify. “Her name?”

“Nelson,” the younger woman offered. “Victoria Nelson. Mr. Zottie knew her from when she was on the police force.”

No. Her name meant nothing to him. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that he had touched her ka before.

“May I inform Mr. Zottie that you’ve arrived?”

“You may.” He had made it very clear, right from the beginning, that the Solicitor General was not to be called until he had completely recovered. Control must come from strength and a personal weakness would weaken the whole. The women of this culture were trained to nurture weakness, not despise it, and, while in theory he disapproved, he would, in practice, use the attitude. By the time George Zottie had hurried out to the reception area, anxious to escort his newest adviser into the inner sanctum, he had all but recovered from the effects of the elevator. The mild nausea that remained could not be seen, so it did not matter.

Leading the way toward the double doors, he could feel the heat of the younger woman’s gaze. She had created her desire from the merest brush across her ka, intended only to ensure her loyalty; he had not placed it there nor did he welcome it. If truth be told, he found the whole concept vaguely distasteful and had found it so for centuries before he’d been interred. The older woman had responded to a show of power—
that
he understood.

His plans for the Solicitor General had required a more thorough remaking.

Once they were alone inside the office with the doors tightly closed behind them, he held out his hand. Zottie, with remarkable grace for a man of his bulk, dropped to one knee and touched his lips to the knuckles. When he rose again, his expression had become almost beatifically calm.

The scribe—the press secretary—had given him the key to Zottie and fifteen hundred years of dealing with bureaucracy had enabled him to use it. He had gone to their first meeting with a spell of confusion ready on his palm. He had passed it through the ceremonial touching, activated it, and with it gained access to the ka. In the past, a man with this much power would have had powerful protections, would have most likely kept a wizard in his employ solely to prevent exactly this sort of manipulation. At times, he still found it difficult to believe that it could be so easy.

There wasn’t much of George Zottie left.

With Zottie, he could go one by one to the others he needed to build a base for his power but, with Zottie, that was no longer necessary; they would come to him.

“Has it been done?”

“As you commanded.” The Solicitor General lifted a handwritten list off his desk and offered it with a slight bow. “These are the ones who will be in attendance. In spite of the short notice, most of those invited have agreed to come. Shall I
reinvite
the others?”

“No. I can acquire them later.” He scanned the list. Only a few of the titles were familiar. That would not do.

“I need a man, an elderly man, one who has spent his life in government but not as a politician. One who knows not only the rules and regulations, but one who knows . . .” The first ka he had taken supplied a phrase and he smiled as he used it. “. . . where the bodies are buried.”

“Then you need Brian Morton. There isn’t anything or anyone around Queen’s Park he doesn’t know.”

“Take me to him.”

 

“. . . an unfortunate occurrence at Queen’s Park this afternoon as senior official Brian Morton was found dead at his desk of a heart attack. Morton had been employed by the Ontario Government for forty-two years. Solicitor General George Zottie, in whose ministry Morton was serving at the time of his death, said that he had been an inspiration to younger men and that his knowledge and experience will be missed. Morton’s widow expressed the belief that her husband had not been looking forward to his retirement in less than a year and, if given a choice, he would have preferred to die, as he did, with his boots on. Funeral services will be held Monday at Our Lady of the Redeemer Church in Scarborough.

And now, here’s Elaine with the weather.”

Vicki frowned and switched off the television. Reid Ellis and Dr. Rax had died of heart failure at the museum. The mummy had come from the museum. Brian Morton died of a heart attack while in the employ of the Solicitor General. She believed the mummy was using the Solicitor General to gain control of the police and build its own private army. Morton was an older man, his death could be coincidence. She didn’t think so.

Henry thought the mummy might be feeding. It had been free for a week now; how often did it have to feed?

She pulled the papers for the last week off the “to be recycled” pile to the left of her desk and sat down on her weight bench to read them.
Sudden deaths in public places . . . makes sense to check the tabloid first.

It took her less than ten minutes to find the first article. Two inches square on the bottom right-hand corner of page twenty-two, it would have been easy to miss except for the headline. “BOY DIES MYSTERIOUSLY ON SUBWAY.” The body had been removed from the University Subway line at Osgoode Station, Queen Street, and had been pronounced dead on arrival at Sick Children’s Hospital. Cause of death, heart failure. Osgoode was three stops south of Museum. The date was October 20th. The time, nine forty-five. Only hours after Dr. Rax had died and everyone began declaring that the coffin was and always had been empty.

Vicki’s hands closed into fists and her fingers punched through the newsprint. The boy had been twelve years old. Teeth clenched, she clipped the article, then slowly and methodically ripped the paper into a thousand tiny pieces.

It was almost three a.m. before she found the second death buried in a story about child care facilities under investigation. On Thursday, October 22nd, a three-year-old had plunged off the top of a play structure at the Sunnyview Co-op Daycare and, according to the autopsy, had been dead before hitting the ground. Only one long block along Bloor Street separated the Sunnyview Co-op Daycare from the museum.

Tuesday afternoon, after seeing Henry safely into the day and catching a few hours of sleep, Vicki stood with one hand resting on the chain link fence that surrounded the Daycare Center where the second child had died.
Not much of a barrier,
she thought, rubbing at a wire pebbled with rust.
Not when you add a reanimated evil to all the other dangers of the city.
Although the sky was gray and heavy with moisture, no rain fell and the playground seethed with small people. Here, half a dozen assaulted a tower made of wood and tires and rope while its four defenders shrieked defiance. There, two used the empty cement wading pool as the perfect racetrack. Here, one squatted in rapt contemplation of a puddle. There, three argued the rights of a slide. And through it all, in the spaces between the scenes where Vicki’s limited vision couldn’t take her, children ran and jumped and played.

There should be one more.
She followed the fence up the driveway and, lips tight, entered the building.

 

“. . . all right, the death of a child under her care might drive the rest of the day out of her mind—I’ll give her that, I’ve seen it happen before—but it’s the
way
she didn’t remember things, Henry. It just didn’t ring true.”

Henry looked up from the pair of clippings, his face expressionless. “So what do you think happened?”

“She was in the playground, not ten feet from where the child fell. I think she saw it. I think she saw it and it wiped the memory from her mind, just like it did at the museum.”

“By
it
you mean . . . ?”

“The mummy, Henry.” Vicki finished stamping down another length of the living room and whirled around to start back. “I mean the goddamned mummy!”

“Don’t you think you’re jumping to conclusions?” He asked the question as neutrally as he could, but even so, it brought her shoulders up and her brows down.

“What the hell do you mean?”

“I mean, children die. For all sorts of reasons. It’s sad and it’s horrible, but it happens. I was the only one of my mother’s children to make it out of early childhood.”

“That was the fifteenth century!”

“And in this century children have stopped dying?”

She sighed and her shoulders dropped. “No. Of course not. But Henry . . .” A half dozen quick strides took her across the room to his chair where she dropped to her knees and laid her hands over his. “. . . these two were taken by the mummy. I know that. I don’t know how I know it, but I know. Look, cops are trained to observe. We, they, do it all the time, everywhere. They may not consciously recognize everything they see or hear as important, but the subconscious is constantly filtering information until all the bits and pieces add up to a whole.” She tightened her grip and lifted her eyes to meet his. “I
know
the mummy took out these two kids.”

He held her gaze until her eyes began to water. She felt naked, vulnerable—worth the price if he believed her.

“Perhaps,” Henry said thoughtfully at last, finally allowing her to look away, “there are those few who take observing one step further, who can see to the truth. . . .”

“Oh, Christ, Henry.” She retrieved the newpaper clippings and stood. “Don’t give me any of that New Age metaphysical bullshit. It’s training and practice, nothing more.”

“If you wish.” Over the centuries he’d seen a number of things that “training and practice” couldn’t have accounted for, but as he doubted Vicki would react well to a discussion of those experiences, he let it drop. “So if you’re right about the mummy and the children,” he spread his hands, “what difference does it make? We’re no closer to finding it.”

“Wrong.” She jabbed the word into the air with a finger. “We know it’s staying around the museum and Queen’s Park. That gives us an area in which to concentrate a search. We know it’s continuing to kill, not just to protect itself from discovery but for other reasons. Feeding, if you wish. We know it’s killing children. And that,” she snarled, “gives us an incentive to find it and stop it. Quickly.”

“Are you going to tell all this to the detective?”

“To Celluci? No.” Vicki leaned her forehead against the glass and stared down at the city. She couldn’t see a damned thing but darkness; since she’d entered Henry’s building, the city might as well have disappeared. “It’s my case now. This’ll only upset him.”

“Very considerate,” Henry said dryly. He saw a muscle in her cheek move and the corner of her mouth twitch up a fraction. Her inability to lie to herself was one of the traits he liked best about her. “What do you want me to do?”

“Find it.”

“How?”

Vicki turned from the window and spread her arms. “We
know
what area to search. You’re the hunter. I thought you got its scent from the coffin.”

“Not one I could use.” The stink of terror and despair had all but obscured any physical signature. Henry hurriedly pushed the memory, and the shadows that flocked behind it, away. “I’m a vampire, Vicki. Not a bloodhound.”

“Well, it’s a magician. Can’t you track power surges and stuff?”

“If I am nearby when it happens, I’ll sense it, yes, as I sensed the demonic summonings last spring. But,” he raised a cautioning hand, “if you’ll remember, I couldn’t track them back to their source either.”

Vicki frowned and began to pace again. “Look,” she said after a moment, “would you know it if you saw it?”

“Would I recognize a creature of ancient Egypt reanimated after being entombed alive for millennia? I think so.” He sighed. “You want me to stake out the area around the museum, don’t you? Just in case it wanders by.”

She stopped pacing and turned to face him. “Yes.”

‘If you’re so sure it’ll be at this party on Saturday night, why can’t we wait until then?”

“Because today’s Tuesday, and in four days who knows how many more children may die.”

 

Henry shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his leather overcoat and sat down on one of the wood and cement benches scattered out in front of the museum. A cold, damp wind skirted the building, dead leaves rising up and performing a dance macabre in the gusts and eddies. The occasional car appeared to be scurrying for cover, fragile contents barely barricaded against the night.

This wasn’t going to work. The odds of him running into the mummy, even in Vicki’s limited search area, because it just happened to be casting a spell as he wandered by were astronomical. He pulled a hand free and checked his watch. Three twelve. He’d still be able to get in a good three hours of writing if he went home now.

Then a wandering breeze brought a familiar scent. He stood and had anyone been watching it would have seemed he disappeared.

A lone figure walked east on Bloor, jacket collar turned up against the cold, chin and elbows tucked in tight, eyes half closed. Ignoring the red light at Queen’s Park Road, he started across the intersection, following the silver plume of his breath.

“Good morning, Tony.”

“Jesus Christ, man.” Tony scrambled to regain his footing as his purely instinctive sideways dive was jerked into a non-event by Henry’s precautionary grip on his arm. “Don’t do that!”

“Sorry. You’re out late.”

“Nan, I’m out early. You’re out late.” They reached the curb and Tony turned to peer at Henry’s face. “You hunting?”

“Not exactly. I’m waiting for a series of incredible coincidences to occur so I can be a hero.”

“This Victory’s idea?”

Henry smiled at the younger man. “How could you tell?”

“Are you kidding?” Tony snickered. “It has Victory written all over it. You’ve got to watch her, Henry. Give her a chance, give any cop a chance—or any ex-cop,” he amended, “and they’ll try to run your life.”