Back From the Undead (36 page)

It’s not a crippling blow, but it must hurt like hell. Enough that the shock and surprise of it freeze Isamu for all of an instant. A pire’s inhuman reflexes make that instant a lot shorter than a human’s, though—call it half a second.

All the time Stoker needs.

Did I say two unarmed humans? My mistake—and Isamu’s. Having missed the conversation on etiquette, Stoker’s brought a little insurance with him—as I strongly suspected he would. Looks like my three of flubs might turn out to be a trump card after all. He’s got a short plastic tube jammed under Isamu’s chin before the pire can even twitch.

“Don’t move,” Stoker growls. “You’re a flinch away from six inches of sharpened teak, sitting on top of a cocked steel spring with a hair trigger. It’ll ram that stake through your chin, your soft palate, and your cerebrum without even slowing down, and probably punch through the roof of your skull. You’ll be a drooling idiot for all of a second or so, and then you’ll be something the maid sweeps up.”

Isamu’s fangs have gotten a lot longer, and his eyes are that vivid scarlet a pire’s eyes turn when they succumb to bloodlust. His hands seem to be trembling, but I think it’s more out of suppressed rage than fear. He knows Stoker isn’t bluffing.

“Jace?” Stoker says. “Do me a favor and retrieve the gentleman’s cell phone, will you?”

I go through Isamu’s pockets. Every nerve I have is on high alert, but Isamu doesn’t try anything. Maybe that trembling is fear, after all.

“Got it,” I say. “Let’s see, who should we call … hey, I’ve got an idea. Let’s ring up our old friend Mizagi at Hemo, shall we? I’m guessing he’s on speed dial. Isamu?”

“Why should I cooperate with you? You will kill me regardless.”

“No, we won’t. I’m an agent of law enforcement, remember? Unlike you, I don’t condone outright assassination. You play nice, I guarantee you’ll survive this.”

“Your associate is hardly on the side of the law.”

“Maybe not,” says Stoker, “but, like you, I understand the value of alliances. I don’t care about your life at all, but I value Jace’s trust. If she gives you her word, then I’ll give her mine: Do what she asks, and I won’t kill you.”

“Awww,” I say. “I’m misting up. Group hug? No? Then how about that number?”

“Two,” he hisses.

“Thanks. Let’s hope he’s not out to lunch or something … hello, Mr. Miyagi? Jace Valchek. Yes, I imagine you are very busy at the moment, what with Hereafter Two-Point-Oh suddenly going offline. Do I have your attention? Listen very, very carefully, and don’t interrupt.

“Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to send a team of technicians into Yomi, and you’re going to release the pire kids you’re holding. You’re going to take them out of Yomi and escort them to the front doors of your building. Then you’re going to let them go. I’ll have people watching, so they’d better all be present and healthy. Are we clear so far?

“Why should you do this? You know, I think your boss can explain it better than me.” I hold the phone to Isamu’s ear.

“Yes,” he snarls. “Yes! Just do it, and do it now! Or I’ll have your head atop a spike on my front gate!”

I take the phone back. “Okay? Terrific. Pleasure doing business with you—I look forward to our future dealings. Buh-bye.” I snap the phone shut and meet Isamu’s eyes. “Good boy. Now, what should we do with you?”

“Release me. I have kept my part of the bargain.”

“Hold on there, speedy—I didn’t say anything about releasing you. I said we wouldn’t
kill
you, and we won’t. Your freedom, on the other hand, is not on the table.”

His eyes flicker from me to Stoker. The red in his eyes is fading, and his hands aren’t shaking anymore. He’s calming down and thinking, which isn’t good.

I’m starting to realize we’re in an untenable situation. At this precise moment Isamu’s a hostage, but I have nothing to charge him with and he’s got the local cops in his pocket, anyway. If Stoker’s focus wanders for even a millisecond, Isamu’s still capable of overpowering both of us. I need to get Charlie in here—

“On your feet,” Stoker says. He grabs Isamu’s shirt with his free hand and yanks him off the table, keeping the switchstake at his throat. “Time for a change of scenery.”

“Good idea,” I say. “Let’s get him out of here, anyway.”

Stoker turns Isamu around, marching him backward toward the door. He’s keeping his hostage a little too close to his own jugular for my comfort, but if Stoker pushes him away he’ll have to extend his arms, which makes them more vulnerable to any kind of attack or escape attempt—

And then Stoker does extend one of them. He lets go of Isamu’s shirtfront and shoves him, hard. Isamu stumbles backward.

And right off the edge.

“Oops,” Stoker says.

There’s a high-pitched scream, fading as he falls. It changes to cursing in Japanese before it finally trails off.

I stare at Stoker. “You—”

“Didn’t kill him.”

“Right, the sudden stop at the end will. Not funny.”

“Who says there’s a stop?” Stoker takes two steps forward and peers down. “Looks more or less bottomless, to me. He might get kind of thirsty after a while, though. Or get a little too close to one of those stars.”

“In a few million years or so.”

He shrugs. “Hey, I don’t know what the rules are in this place. Maybe he’ll go into orbit around a nice little asteroid stocked with slow-moving, blood-filled wildlife.”

“That he can see, but not feed on?”

“You don’t make it easy to put a positive spin on things, do you?”

I shake my head. “All right, I guess that—technically—you didn’t kill him. Now let’s get out of here before that door disappears and we’re stuck in the same boat.”

“In a second.” He turns and take another step, and I realize he’s put himself between me and the door. And he’s still armed.

I wonder if I can take him. I’ve got the training, but so does he. Plus size, weight, and a weapon. It doesn’t look promising.

“There’s something else, Jace. See, there’s another deal I have to honor.”

I nod. Shift into a comfortable stance. My best shot is to do the same thing he did to Isamu and throw him off the edge. It’ll work if I can use his weight against him, but he’ll be expecting that.

“You wanted to know how I convinced Zevon to let us out of Yomi. It was simple. All he wanted was whatever I was least willing to give up … so I made him a promise.”

He tosses the switchstake over the edge. I don’t take my eyes off him.

“I told him that once the children were safe, I’d surrender. To you.”

He turns back to the door, grabs the handle. Looks back at me. “I know you probably don’t believe me. But once you and Charlie have me in handcuffs, it’ll start to sink in. You coming?”

EPILOGUE

It doesn’t really hit me, not at first. Not when we cuff him, not during the ride back to the hotel with a stop at Hemo along the way, not when I get the phone call from Eisfanger telling me he can verify that seven pire kids just walked out of the Hemo building looking dazed but intact.

It’s not until I call Gretch, with Charlie standing guard over Stoker in the next room, not until I officially report that Aristotle Stoker, aka the Impaler, is in my custody, that it starts to seem real.

“Be careful,” Gretch says. “Just because he surrendered to you as part of a mystic contract doesn’t mean he’s willing to stay a prisoner.”

“That’s just it, Gretch. Maybe I’m the one who’s crazy, but I believe him. He gave me this whole speech about changing what he’s trying to accomplish, and it’s beginning to sound like he means it.”

“He’s extremely good at manipulation, Jace. He could simply have been laying the groundwork for a false sense of trust he could exploit later.”

“That’s not going to happen. Charlie’s watching him like—well, Charlie. Stoker tries anything, he won’t get far.”

“I’ll start the necessary paperwork to bring him across. Vancouver may be a criminal haven, but the Canadian authorities do tend to respond promptly to anything related to terrorism. We shouldn’t have any problems taking him across the border.”

“Good to know,” I say. “While you’re at it, there’s a little favor I’d like to ask…”

*   *   *

But before I can leave, there are three things that need my attention. One I’m dreading and two I’m looking forward to, so I guess I’m ahead.

Eisfanger helps me with the first. It’s a lot easier to trace someone’s psychic essence when they aren’t being masked by corporate shamans, and I find who I’m looking for beneath an underpass only a few blocks from Hemo’s offices.

Street kids can smell a cop a mile away, but maybe his time as a captive has dulled his instincts. He’s crouched barefoot on the concrete, sucking on an oversize bottle of Beefy Fizz through a straw—I guess it has enough blood in it to give a hemovore some nutrition. He doesn’t look up until I’m a few feet away.

I stop and study him. “Hello, Wendell,” I say.

He studies me right back. The look on his face is wary but not afraid. He appears to be around ten years old, with a child’s slight body and shaggy blond hair. He’s wearing torn jeans and a black T-shirt that’s too big for him. The shirt has a beer logo on it. “Hey,” he says. “How do you know my name?”

“I’m the one that got you released.”

“Oh. Thanks, I guess. That was kind of messed up.”

“I’ll bet.” I hesitate, but I have to know. “What was it like?”

“Not so bad, at first. They fed me, got me new clothes. Let me play some video games. But I guess they gave me drugs or something, because everything got all blurry and there was chanting and stuff. And then…” His eyes go blank, and then he blinks a few times very quickly and gives his head a little shake. “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

I can tell he’s lying, but I don’t push. If he wants to forget, that’s fine by me. “I’ve got something for you,” I say, and hand him the shopping bag I’m carrying.

He takes it—cautiously, like a wild animal you’re trying to feed by hand—and then peers inside. He reaches in and pulls out his baseball glove.

The smile on his face is all too brief, but it makes everything I’ve gone through worth it. This is why I do my job, why I take the chances I do. For that one moment, all is right in my world: The good guys won, the bad guys suffered, justice triumphed.

“It missed you,” I say.

“Thanks,” he says. He tries to sound casual, trying to downplay it, not letting on how much it means to him. You can’t appear to care too much about anything, when you live the way he does. If you do, someone will try to take it away.

Still, he must feel he owes me something, because he frowns for a second and then says, “It was my own fault.”

“What was?”

“Getting snatched like that. I knew better. When something seems too good, too easy, it’s always a scam. But I thought—I guess I thought I could scam
them
. People with money show up down here sometimes, you know? They think they know how everything works, but they don’t. You can usually give them a sob story and get a few bucks, maybe more. I got greedy, that’s all.”

The worst part is that he doesn’t sound bitter or sad, just thoughtful. He’s fitting his new experiences into his worldview. Learning.

After all, that’s what children do.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I say quietly. “None of it. I hope you believe that, someday. For now, though, can you do me a favor?”

His eyes go flat. His survival instincts aren’t that dull, after all. “What?”

“There’s some money tucked inside that glove. Share it with the other kids who got taken, okay?”

He’s already fishing out the roll of bills I stuffed into the thumb. “Yeah, sure.”

He’ll probably keep it all himself, but I don’t have the time or the energy to hunt down the whole group. I tell myself that I’m wrong, that he’ll diligently find all of them and give each one his or her share, and I’m going to keep telling myself that until I believe it.

And then I’m going to get drunk, and pass out in my own warm, safe bed, and try not to feel guilty as all hell.

*   *   *

Gretch is right about the Canadians’ reaction. They’re more than happy to assist in the capture of an international terrorist, less thrilled that it was done by an American working without an official government liaison, and downright nervous about the involvement of corrupt Vancouver police officers with the local branch of the Yakuza. Gretch does some admirable negotiating of her own, and when the dust settles the Canadians get to take a little public credit for the bust in exchange for getting Stoker into American custody.

But part of the deal is that this won’t happen until we’re already across the border. Until then we’ll maintain a low profile, for security reasons. The Free Human Resistance is still out there, and they won’t be too happy that we have their most prominent ex-member in our hands.

It’s never as harrowing crossing a border when you’re returning to your own country—not unless you’re trying to smuggle something in, that is. All we have is an international fugitive, wanted worldwide for acts of mayhem, but at least we’re armed with the proper paperwork.

I let Charlie and Eisfanger take Stoker across. I go alone, on foot, and about an hour before they do.

Officer Delta is working the counter for foot travelers today. What a coincidence. I wait my turn, and then walk up.

“Hi,” I say.

Officer Delta looks at my visa and grunts. “Miss Valchek,” he says. “I see you don’t have any baggage.”

“Oh, I’ve got plenty of baggage—mostly emotional. I thought I’d unload some of it here, actually. You okay with that?”

He frowns at me. “Why don’t you have any baggage?”

“It’s being brought across later, by my associate. He’ll declare everything then. His name is Charlie Aleph.”

Everything by the book. I wait. He studies my paperwork and says, “I can’t let you in.”

“Why not?”

“You’re not a citizen. You arrived in America from somewhere else, then left the country. We have rules about that. If you want to reenter America, you’ll have to apply to Immigration. Next.”

I pretend to look shocked. “Oh, my. But this form I have here is a specific exemption.” I point.