Chasing the Dragon (14 page)

There was a tense pause.

"Ma'am, could I come inside for a moment?" Lila asked, suddenly
sure something important lay behind the door, in the house.

"No!" The chains and locks were checked, firmed. The soft furl of
faint colour that accompanied faery charms glowed briefly along the
lintel. "Not so close to night and not today. Another time perhaps.
Later. Yes. Much later. Go away now." The voice had a cornered, desperate edge to it.

"All right." Lila gave up. She had no legal course to take her inside
and could think of nothing to say, but at the last moment something
prompted her. At her back Malachi's Cadillac was humming. She
walked to the passenger door and leaned in.

"Paper," she said, looking around the pristine interior.

Malachi reached into his inner coat pocket and produced a small
moleskin notebook. He meticulously tore a page out and handed it
over.

"Thanks." She hooked the pen out and wrote on it: Lila Black, then
had no idea what else to put-friend, agent, safe person? The ink dried
and went matte. She capped the pen and put it away. That would do.
It was probably deeply unwise, but she felt she must leave something
for the person behind the door. The house was terrible, the ship worse;
nobody should be there alone.

She folded the paper and tried to find a place to slide it, but the
only gap was where the charm had glowed and eventually she was
reduced to fiddling it through the smallest of spaces at the top, feeling the thin paper catch and bend on the rough brush of an insulating
tape. It was the best she could do. Silence greeted her efforts.

They drove out of the dip listening to the slow climbing notes of
the engine as it built and changed gear, built and climbed over the
hills and through the forest until they were back on the highway.

"Who's in that house?" Lila asked as they turned away from the
city and took a route inland. "Is it a faery?"

"No, not really," Mal said. "Like I said earlier, some people you
ought to meet. They'll explain it better."

"I like you explaining it."

He sighed. "Hunter's Legacy. They keep them out of sight whenever they find them, unless the community is one of those advanced
kinds with a lot of Woken in it. There are two kinds of them. The
Hunter's Chosen-those that he picked to be his while he was here. The
Hunter's Children-that explains itself. The first sort were born
humans but they ended up different, depending on how they were used.
The second lot are part fey, but the form of the Hunter you unleashed
here is one of the oldest and they share his old ways. It's not like with
me, in my modern guises, and the others of us who are here and now."

"It ... he ... wasn't even material," Lila said, remembering.

"He had forms," Malachi shuddered. "But as you say, not very
material ones. Nothing fixed. Some of the Children look human. Some
don't. They all have powers that are feylike. That hasn't made them
popular since he left."

They were driving farther and farther into the country, passing out
of the suburbs and into farmland and the rocky hills where wineries
and health spas battled for supremacy. Lila knew he must be taking her
to a place where these people were living.

"How many of them are there?" She kept herself to the point.

"Of the Chosen most have died. The ride killed a lot early. Just a
few left now, but they're the strongest. Majority died of exhaustion and
he left them where they fell. Some got killed on the hunt. Some he took a dislike to and killed himself. Some he liked and left them after
just a short time. They were the ones who made it to forty and more
years. Now the remaining ones are the ones he gave something to. Like
Dar changed you, he changed them." His hands had gone tight on the
wheel.

"Are they ... ?"

"Some live with the Children at the Solace Place," he said quickly.
"Where we're going. They guard them, keep everything nice and
quiet. Just one or two out there alone now. They don't need protection." His eyes narrowed. "More like extermination."

Lila blinked in surprise. She didn't think she'd ever heard him say
anything like that before. "Why?"

"Just check the crime records for the Bay City area over the last
fifty."

She flicked through them. The machine buzz increased as she
amplified her sensitivity to the Al part of herself. She listened to it for
a second, then dimmed its rush and looked over the more prosaic information about her hometown's seedier side. "That's a lot of bodies in the
woods."

"Ours just kills them, we think. Over on the East Coast they have
one that eats the victims."

"You think?"

"Some of the Chosen have heavy psychic powers. Physical death
could be the least of their work. Across the midstates there are so many
people turning up mindless and zombified we're betting there's at least
one more who just likes the gooey centres. They started out putting
the victims in institutions, but a law got passed fifteen years ago that
allows them to be classified brain-dead, even though they still breathe
and move for themselves. The trouble is-"

But Lila had accessed the records. "They're puppets."

"Yeah. No discernible soul or personality or mind. Tested by
experts on all three. Empty but fully working. Open to suggestion. Can use them for anything. Mostly they just make stuff in factories or
menial labour. They can earn for the families that way. Or-"

"Or you can shoot them."

"Some people prefer that."

"Christ." She closed the files and stared at the road.

"There are others. Touched, they're called."

"People with powers who won't leave their homes and be kicked
out."

"Something like that."

Lila knew about that. The beach kids had told her all about it.

"I thought humans couldn't do magic," she said.

"Not really. It rarely goes well. They're not made for it," he agreed.
They turned off onto an unmarked road. "Just twenty miles or so."

"That woman in the Folly ..."

"If she were our killer I'd be first in there," Malachi said. "I've
thought she might be either of those things, but now I don't know.
There's no bodies found up that way."

"Maybe she doesn't like them in her backyard."

"Did you get the impression she was a serial killer?" He looked at
her candidly.

Lila shrugged. "No, but I'm a dumb human."

He snorted. "Not so dumb. No. She isn't that. The reason there's
no bodies up there is surely because of her, but not because of that.
She's there because of the house."

"But it's a horrible place."

"Maybe. It's a powerful place, that's sure. And some don't mind the
flavour of things."

"As long as they're stronger ..."

"Yeah," he nodded. "You got it in one."

"Is that why Zal rented it?"

"Surely. He'd been here a long time. Starved of aether. What do
you think?"

"There are more wood elementals, and bigger ones, there, than
anywhere I've ever seen."

"Others too," Malachi said, keeping his eyes on the way as they
burred off the hardtop and onto gravel, turning between low hills that
showed no signs of ownership now, not even much vegetation save
scrubby grass and the odd evergreen bush.

"Zal opened a portal there ... or he pulled ... I don't know the
word. He made a circle and turned it into a bit of Zoomenon."

Malachi nearly swerved off the road. "He what? Oh, you mean he
made a circle and called some elementals."

"No," she said.

He pulled over and they were briefly surrounded in a plume of
ochre dust.

"Like I said. He made a circle and went into it and inside it wasn't
Otopia any more, it was Zoomenon. Different sky, different ground,
and lots of elementals. Hundreds. I don't know the name for that. Not
summoning ... or is it?"

"Nah," Malachi said. "There is no name for it. Because people don't
do that. They can't do that."

"I'm telling you, I saw-"

"I believe you."

Lila was puzzled. "You know he did it like ... he must have done
it a lot. He was high on them. We know that. He went there to get a
fix and he got one. It was no more weird than seeing a dealer, I
thought."

"Did you tell anyone about this at the time?"

"No. I mean it was in the downloads that the doctor took off me."

"But human technicians would have looked at that. Sarasilien at
the most? I didn't see it. Or if I did it was in some boring paperwork
thing I don't usually bother with." He looked dissatisfied and puzzled,
his mouth open. "How could he do that and not boast about it or anything?"

"You and he weren't exactly friends."

"Yeah. I know. But even so."

"He treated it as if it was normal."

"Did you ever see him do it again?"

She thought it over. "Um ... we survived a fire attack inside a
circle he cast, but he said something about doing it wrong. It didn't
change worlds. It was just a protective ring."

"Where?"

"Outside the city where the kidnap took place."

"Right." He took the wheel and turned them back onto the road,
thinking. "You're going to take me there when we go back to that
place and show me exactly where it happened."

She shrugged. "Okay, but I have to tell you, I think he really just
did it for the hit. I'd even go so far as to say he might not have realised
what he was doing. He was only fixated on getting charged up. He
could have transported himself to the moon and not cared."

Malachi nodded and shook his head alternately, muttering to himself. "I bet. I wish I had more of a grip on that stuff. Faeries don't traffic
with the elements. No need, really. They're very demon and elf things.
You know what I mean."

"Not so much, but I'll take your word for it," she said as they
twisted and ground through the last of the road's conniving turns for
a while and began to cross some serious desert.

Apparently it didn't matter because he was quiet for the rest of the
drive. After forty minutes they pulled up in the yard of a sizeable
ranch, dotted with buildings of various kinds, neatly kept, but nobody
in sight.

"Where is everyone?"

"They're here," Malachi said, and got out of the car.

Lila followed him as he walked towards the barn and saw him
make a subtle hand signal that looked as if he might have just been
checking his pocket for something. The air shivered, and the illusion of the ranch, its dusty yards and worn fences, vanished. What lay
behind was not too different. There was a large house, a barn, some
other buildings, but no tired fields of stones, instead a landscaped grass
garden of hardy plants and standing in that garden ready to meet them
a group of people in ordinary clothes. One was walking forwards to
meet Malachi, her hand outstretched.

Lila measured her at six feet five inches tall. She was powerfully
built, without a spare ounce of fat on her. Her hair was soft and long,
a chestnut brown the colour of leaves and rich earth, but that was all
that was soft about her. She moved with deceptive speed and a lightness that only came from a natural ability to spring and long years of
training. Her face was a perfect oval, features strong, brows pronounced. Her pale green eyes lit on Malachi as they shook hands and
seemed briefly too human for words; then she looked past him at Lila.

For an instant Lila was back in the primal forests of Under feeling
the gaze of the Hunter between her shoulder blades, hearing his unvoice of grating branches. These green eyes had the same effect, almost
like a prickly heat where their gaze lit on her. She'd never seen the
Hunter himself. Perhaps he had no eyes. Now her first instinct was to
look away and never let that stare through, but her demon habits were
too strong, and she stared right back into the challenge. Around her
the dragon-patterned suit shifted and slid, glittering marks coming to
life in its weave. The weight of it increased, and it subtly tightened at
her waist, loosened on the legs as if preparing for a fight.

The Chosen halted in her tracks, startled, and set her shoulders at
an off angle, "Who are you?" Her voice was half wild, like a talking
animal might sound. It took Lila a second to realise what she'd said.

"Lila Black," Lila said, not offering a hand as she moved up to
Malachi's shoulder and stepped unwaveringly into the woman's personal space. "And you?"

"This is Tasha," Malachi murmured, quite relaxed but watching
with deceptive acuity as Tasha stared at Lila's suit. "Tasha Baines."

"Chosen," Lila said, to clarify for sure.

Tasha looked up cautiously at Lila once again. "As are you." She
didn't lower her eyes but lowered her chin in a greeting of equals.

Lila glanced at Malachi. "I'm sorry?"

Malachi turned to face her, nodding at Tasha. Lila saw that both of
them were in on something that had just been tried, tested, and confirmed. Something about her. She elbowed Malachi in the ribs, anger
warring with curiosity and gnawing conviction into an unruly pack
inside her. "Spit it out."

"I am Chosen of the Hunter," Tasha said, beauty and the beast all
in one. She must have been over seventy by Lila's reckoning but she
looked not a day past twenty-five. She set her thumbs into the broad
leather belt that held up her jeans and nodded with satisfaction, a grim
smile on her handsome mouth. "You are Chosen of the Wanderer."

"Mal," Lila said. "She means the suit, right?"

"Yeah, she means the suit."

"I thought so."

"You might think it, but you don't understand," Tasha growled. It
was a genuine struggle for her to speak, the voice coming as if she had
to force it out to her mouth. In spite of this she still had a midstates
accent. "I guess that's why you're here, Mal? To explain?"

"That and other reasons," he agreed. "Lila's skipped the last half
century in Under and she doesn't know about you and the Children so
it's an introduction. Also, we have a ghost problem. I wondered if you
were able to shed some light on it."