Chasing the Dragon (5 page)

"I am. Every day," she assured him. "As is Teazle Sikarza, I'm sure.
I can barely imagine the thrill of his existence, living under a Legal Execution Order back home in Bathshebat. And I understand he's got
you to thank for that. Was that a plan to halve the demon population
on your part? Pretty clever if it was. Pretty dumb if it wasn't. He'll be
pissed when he finds out, and since he got back from Faeryland he's
been a bit ... hasty in his judgement." She wondered where Malachi
was and hoped he had the brains to stay out of it.

In her head the machine whispered to itself, flipping digits,
switching charges. She wondered if the others heard it too. Maybe they
knew every word ... word was not the right word ... maybe they
understood what it was saying. Perhaps it was telling them her secrets.
If it did, they showed no sign.

She shook her head and found Greer looking at her with widened,
angry eyes because she'd been zoning out in what, for him, must be an
important moment.

She shrugged. "Do your guys hear all the background chatter, or is
that just me?" She waved her finger in circles next to her ear to illustrate and glanced around at the various androids with a questioning
face and an encouraging smile.

"Your business isn't asking the questions," Greer said flatly.
"Answering them is."

"Oh, because I thought maybe the more advanced a machine you
became the more it might make sense. At least, I got that impression
off the rogues who approached me. I have to say, they weren't too much
friendlier than you. Y'all gotta work on your people skills, geekfiends."
Lila let her smile stay airy and uncomplicated. "Anyway, as long as you
don't mind the fact that pretty much everything you use to protect the
homeland security is in constant communication with unknown entities at unspecified places, I guess I can live with the mystery."

Greer actually looked uncomfortable for a second. Lila wasn't sure
exactly why, but it was good enough for her. She held out her wrists
together in front of her. "Better cuff me then. Or do you want to talk
about ghosts and stuff? The news these days is full of such scary stories."

His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. He made the smallest
motion of his head left and right and said quietly, "Get out."

The room emptied, bodies flowing through doors like water down
a plughole. Within a few seconds they were alone. A moment or two
later she heard a soft padding in the hall, and Malachi appeared,
slinking with a deliberate, insouciant slowness. Greer glanced at him
with a scowl as he came through the doorway.

"Shut the door."

Malachi pushed it closed and stood, folding his hands in front of
him. He'd taken off his sunglasses, and his orange eyes blazed, their cat
pupils wide, his expression a combination of grim and bored that made
Lila want to smile. She turned her gaze back to Greer with pleasant
expectation to let him know he could dig his own hole now and bury
himself in it.

To her surprise the man relaxed, his stiff posture and bullish pose
softening as he released his arms from their brace position and loosened
his big shoulders. He opened his jacket, flicked the sides back, and
stuffed his hands into his pockets. His head tilted slightly to one side
and he made a show of loosening his jaw. "The trouble is, Black, you're
right and I'm right and the world is a wrong, sorry place to be right in."

"Is this good cop?" she asked. The corner of Malachi's mouth
twitched in a grin as Greer looked back over his shoulder at him and
then gazed back at Lila.

"Temple Greer is a man of distinction among humans," Malachi
said to her. "He is straight about his lies." He made the faintest nod.

She tilted her head too, to show she was still listening.

"What I told Malachi to tell you was to bring you here," Greer said
easily. "It's true too, but that's just a sideline. We could play cat-andmouse games another month or two and piss each other off some more,
but you're fifty years late and time's running out for all of us so I hope
you'll overlook the methods. I know there's nothing holding you to the
agency now, if there ever was. I don't approve of what happened here in the past"-he glanced over her, managing to convey that he was
referring to her machine alterations without making it look sleazy"but it's ancient history now. Here you are. Here they are. Here they
are ..." And he jerked his head in Malachi's direction. "And whatever
the government likes to say to the press about human security, we both
know that's a horse that ran out of the barn a long time gone. So I'm
not looking to bolt any doors here. We used to do that in your day.
Now we're more of a ..." He hesitated and looked back at Malachi,
for all the world as if they were some kind of tag team.

"Centre for Supernatural Crisis Management," Malachi said
around his huge canine teeth as if he were tearing up the words. His
dislike of the term was so obvious it made her grin.

Greer gave a short laugh at what was clearly the office joke, "Yeah.
Anyway, my offer to you stands. You're unique and I need you to help
me do this job. In return I promise you can have the uneasy feelings,
stomach ulcers, and sleepless nights that I enjoy, knowing the world is
no safer nor better for your existence. But you'll be in charge of some
miserable twisted little bit of it, for a while. I can throw in a few
henchmen, offices, labs, access to top-secret information that I probably shouldn't have myself, and an off-peak pass to one of the secondrate hotelino health clubs. What do you say?"

Lila was smiling. "I appreciate your humour. But to my main
point again. Teazle Sikarza didn't murder Madame Des Loupes. I don't
believe she's dead. You're putting it about that he did. Your forensics
helped the demons convict him."

Greer held up his hands in a placatory surrender pose. "Slow it
down some. First of all, we did send out a team to the investigation,
at the request of their chief coroner. Part of one of those itchy-scratchy
back exchanges. We needed help with some things; they wanted independent verification...."

"So they could have an absentee conviction and an immediate sentence," Lila said, folding her arms.

"Yeah. That. Got to love that legal system they have. Sure is efficient." His gaze became dreamy, as if he were contemplating paradise.

"But you weren't interested in him for any other reason? You
didn't want to involve me in something that would be likely to bring
me leaping out of the woodwork into full view."

Greer reached into the top pocket of his jacket and brought out a
small carving on a leather thong. He held it out to her, but she could
see it fine and didn't take it. "You know what this is?"

"It's a Happy Fetish. The demons make them; they sell them at
Annie's jewels and other stores like that. Twenty bucks each." She
quoted the label, "`Likely to encourage good feelings and general zest
for life. Product not guaranteed."'

"Yeah. Ever since they came out they sell like hotcakes. My
daughter got me this one for Father's Day. Kinda ugly, big eyes, too
many tusks, so I don't wear it. And then there's the small problem of
the demon inside it."

This time their gazes met and held for a few seconds.

"You see," Greer said, rewrapping the dead demon in its thong and
slipping it back into his pocket, "we know about this, but we aren't
allowed to say. We know about the moth-touched, the loony luna-people
and their sleep and their dreams. We know about the Woken, thanks to
Zal for those-only took ten years for his efforts to show fruit. And we
know about the Hunter's Chosen, though we can't talk about them. And
we know about the Hunter's Children." He smiled broadly at last as he
saw her real surprise, her puzzlement, her confusion.

She looked at Malachi and saw his serious nod as he answered what
was uppermost in her mind first. "Zal's music made a lot of people
free," he said.

She missed Zal suddenly and so precisely that she could feel the
shape of the emptiness that had taken his place.

"It was the quiet revolution," Greer agreed, his face mild for a
moment, inward-looking on a personal memory with affection. Lila clung to looking at him, waiting for the tears in her eyes to disappear.
"Clear vision. Nothing more." Then his gaze met hers with the acuity
of a laser. "I'm grateful for that. All of us who listened are grateful. But
the Chosen and the Children, well, they're another matter. And the
demons. I wish I knew their game. I wish I knew Teazle's game. I wish
I knew what happened to him in Faeryland."

The last line was an appeal. Lila didn't respond to it directly. She
didn't feel able to, and not just because she couldn't have given him an
answer. "We all changed there," she said, and then it was she and
Malachi who were sharing the look, alone in the room together, worlds
away, lost in time.

Then it was her turn to get sharp. "Which doesn't explain your
interest in his death, Mister Greer. And doesn't excuse your part in
placing me in the position of executioner over my own husband."

Greer frowned congenially. "Do you love him?"

Lila looked at him with a cool and considering stare.

Greer shrugged. "C'mon, we know what he looks like, what he is,
what he does, and for all the add-ons you're still at heart a human girl,
right? I mean, I know the story, Beauty and the Beast, and if you knew
my life you'd be right to think I'm not exactly an expert in relationships but really-do you love him?"

Lila turned her head the other way and looked at him from the other
eye and then turned her head straight and deepened the fold of her arms.
"Seeing as you ask so nicely, Mr. Greer, I'll answer as honestly as I can.
If you knew my life you'd be right to think that I'm not exactly an
expert in relationships. Teazle and I were never even friends-we never
had a date, we never went to dinner, we never watched the sun go down
together, we don't share any interests as far as I can tell. I say tomato and
he says how high. The one thing we do is look out for each other's ass. I
don't know how that started exactly. We don't even talk. But if you
think I am going to try and kill him for any reason other than that he
tries to kill me first, then you're making a serious mistake."

Greer smiled and nodded. "You ain't the first woman I've met
who's that difficult to get a straight answer out of on the subject, but
seeing as the first woman I met like that is my wife I'm gonna take
your answer as a yes."

Lila scowled and opened her mouth, but Greer threw his hand up.
"Lemme finish. She's an ex-Mrs. Greer now, though that's not saying
much. My point in asking was because I care about these things and I
know others do to. Most of the time in the past this shitty-ass department treated people like accessories and look what happened. You, the
other androids, the rogues ... It's a mess. Plenty of humans left who
still think that institutions and governments have to be run as if they
were computer programmes, but thanks to your elf man and his record
collection there are plenty that don't. I admit we helped put your
demon up for grabs, but you have to see he was headed there by himself in any case. I was just taking the chance to get an in with the
demons while it was hot. For what it's costing you, I apologise."

Lila narrowed her eyes and nostrils and exhaled slowly. "You are a
beguiling mover, for the head of the most important agency in the
world."

Greer grinned and gave his shoulders a little jaunt. "Think so?"

"Almost fey," she said. "Now what are you going to do about
Teazle?"

"Sweet nothing," he replied, relaxing his weight onto one leg and
glancing at Malachi, who had been observing them with detached cool
from his place near the door. "Hear that? Fey."

Malachi made a noise halfway between a purr and a growl. It rumbled the floor, and both Lila and Greer looked at him with some surprise. "You are the only reason I am still here," he said to Greer. "And
no fey blood in you, though you are susceptible to dust. Just keep listening to the Light Album and you'll do well enough." He was referring to Zal's last musical collection. His tone left no doubt that his
feeling about the humans was merely a hairsbreadth from contempt. "I didn't care for my part in this setup. So let's finish it. You said you had
some ideas worth hearing about Teazle. We want to hear them."

Greer nodded and took a deep breath, let it out, and glanced at the
two of them. "What bothers me about the situation is why the demons
want him dead. I know there's the power angle, but that's not enough to
drive their legal system into a corrupt means of getting rid of him. You
know how much store the demons place in integrity. And I don't see why
they haven't got together to finish him off either, but I hear that's to do
with aetheric power things I don't understand. My point-"

"Your point is that you want to know what it is about him since
he came back from Under," Lila said. "Because you think that must be
what's made him seek power and what's let him keep it against all the
odds. Even though you know that on the day he came here with me
three rogues almost killed him in their first attempt and I had to stop
them from finishing the job. So if it was just about slaying power, that
wouldn't make sense. Three rogues versus fifty demons is a no-brainer,
but fifty demons won't touch Teazle with a barge pole. Mystery. One
with a potentially useful answer."

"Actually I don't see how it's useful, but everything's useful eventually," Greer said, nodding. "And what about Zal?" His gaze bored
into her, betraying the casual manners of the rest of his body.

Malachi shuddered convulsively as if someone walked over his grave.

"Every time I mention it he won't speak," Greer said, nodding at
Malachi, "but he twitches like he's plugged into the mains. I know
it's not protocol to talk about that place, but I want to know what
happened there, and not just for artistic reasons and my chances of
winning any bets concerning a comeback tour for the No Shows. Mal
doesn't say what happened to him, though he seems a lot more shorttempered than reports would indicate. I guess there's more to it, but
it's his business. What happened to you, Black? Where the fuck is Zal
Ahriman?"