Coven (22 page)

Was it Zyro? Lois’ paralysis only allowed
her to raise her sight an inch. In a moment, though, a shadow
wobbled into view.

It must be someone
crippled,
she thought. The shadow hobbled,
like a limping man, and with it came an irregular ticking.
A limping man?
she
wondered. What kind of dream was this?

A tingling spread like sparks, describing
the intricacies of her ribs, her spine, even her skull. What’s
more, her state of arousal crested to waves of hot, knifelike
flashes through breast and loin. Her sex visibly thumped.

Before the dark light, the limping man
bumbled forward. The sharp ticking drew close, and at last Lois was
able to glimpse her new and mysterious suitor…

For shit’s sake!
she thought.

One look and she’d had enough of this
nightmare. The limping man was no man at all, but a preposterous
parody. It appeared more insectoid than anything, a broad humped
shell encircled by tiny clicking legs. It stood upright, however,
on a pair of stout, jointed appendages with points. If it bore any
semblance to humanity at all, that humanity was fanfare. This was
no dream lover. It was a bug.

But it was a
big
bug, big as a man.
Lois wondered what could be more disgusting than a man sized
cockroach. It seemed to have a face, or facsimile thereof. Clusters
of blinking ocelli gazed at her, above a beaked enclosure that
could only be a mouth. Something akin to a tongue lolled within the
aperture, to lick plated lips. The thing reminded Lois of the Kafka
story, where a man named Gregor turned into a big beetle. Zyro had
deftly described the piece as an “axiological allegory symbolizing
the transmogrification of modern man within the continuum of
corporate bureaucracies bent on the total alienation of
individuality.” As far as Lois was concerned, it was nothing more
than a story about a silly man named Gregor who turned into a bug.
But who cared what the story meant? This was supposed to be a sex
dream, not some Kafkaesque joke. Nevertheless, here was Gregor,
hobbling to meet her.

And again the question
came:
What could be more disgusting than a
man sized cockroach?

Answer: A man sized cockroach with a
penis.

For shit’s sake!
Lois thought again.
I’m
about to get fucked by a bug!

Gregor’s works
bloomed,
a steadily
distending, meaty pink mound betwixt its walking joints. She could
almost hear herself say: Hey, Gregor, is that twenty five
pounds of hamburger in your pants or are you just happy to see me?
Well, Gregor was happy indeed. The mound swelled forward, showing a
puckered hole. Eventually something popped out and slapped to the
floor—a slack pink tube with a fleshy nozzle. It drooped like loose
hose.

Gregor crawled daintily over her, as if
great care were utmost on its mind. But did this thing even have a
mind? Vivificated breaths whistled through multiple spiracles along
its shell, and she could see horny passion in its compound eyes.
Dollops of green goo dropped from its irised mandibles onto her
bare belly. Lois was revolted, yet her physical excitement,
somehow, refused to wane. Gregor lay fully atop her now. The
nozzled glans snuffled fanatically, and at last the pink cannula
found her sex. Lois’ orgasms unwound in spastic quakes. The cannula
throbbed, passing jets of warm bug-sperm into her cervical canal as
Gregor muttered sweet insectoid nothings into her ear.

“
For shit’s sake!” Lois was
finally able to exclaim.

Gregor’s armored face inched up to hers. The
mandibles opened to fullness, revealing soft lips and tongue, and
more than a modest portion of the opaque green saliva, which
dribbled liberally into Lois Hartley’s aghast mouth.

««—»»

In this business you were one of two things.
You were either legit, or you were dirty. And if you were legit,
you were also something else:

You were poor.

Czanek was dirty.

It wasn’t Czanek’s dirt; it was other
people’s. He did not feel bad about uncovering the evil of others;
he was just a cog in an inevitable machine. Bug planting was a good
gig; he could pull in twenty large a year from bugs alone.
Industrial espionage paid well too, and sabotage paid even better.
Czanek had once taken ten grand for stealing a composite formula
from a textile factory and fifteen more for burning the records
room and production facilities. By the time they cleaned up the
mess, the other company, Czanek’s client, had already patented the
stolen formula and was in full production. These were examples of
what the trade called “surreptitious entry” or “black bag.” It
involved invading privacy, violating personal rights, and, of
course, breaking the fuck out of the law. If you were good at black
bag, you made lots of money. If you were bad, you lost your license
and went to jail. Though Czanek was small time, he was good at
black bag, perhaps very good. Its diversity challenged him, and it
brought in the cash. Dean Saltenstall, for instance, paid five
hundred dollars per hour for a job. Good work reaped good
money.

Tonight, though, Czanek was working for
free.

Saltenstall was his best client, period. But
if the dean ever found out that one of his bugs was transmitting to
someone else’s, Czanek would lose his professional credibility in
less time than it took to wipe his ass. He may have been the best
dirty P.I. in the state, but he wasn’t the only one. Other dicks
would kill for a client like Saltenstall. Some literally.

He walked up to the third floor of the
sciences center. He wore maintenance overalls and had a phony card
identifying him as Peter Hertz, a campus a/c technician. The
building was empty at this hour, and the security guard wouldn’t be
making his rounds for another forty five minutes. Czanek used
a 2mm tension wrench on Besser’s office lock, applying nominal
downward pressure with his pinky. Each lock had its own feel; too
much pressure seized up the pins, and too little wouldn’t hold them
flush. Czanek stroked the pins twice with his #2 rake, and the
cylinder opened. He was in the office and had the door locked
behind him in four seconds.

He let his eyes adjust, then turned on a
red filtered penlight. His gloved hands snooped a bit first,
an unavoidable professional impulse. He memorized the exact
position of everything on the desk and in the drawers. The bottom
drawer, however, was locked.

It was an old Filex disc tumbler with an
18mm keyway. He used a wider tension wrench and a “doubleball.” The
slide bar slipped open immediately.

What he saw first made little sense—a list
of typed names: L. ERBLING, S. ERBLING, L. HARTLEY, I. PACKER, E.
WHITECHAPEL. L. Hartley’s name had a line through it.

Beneath this lay a stack of
folders stamped with the Exham seal.
Medical files,
Czanek noted. The top
five matched the five names on the list. All the files belonged to
female students. But next was another stack of files, males. A
Qwik Note on the top folder read:
Choose one holotype for Supremate.
And the next line, in red:
Wade St.
John.

Holotype?
Czanek thought.
Supremate? And who’s Wade St. John?

At the back of the drawer was a gun.

Czanek was stumped. The piece was some
offbeat .25 auto. It smelled of cordite. He wrote down the serial
number and put it back.

He didn’t like any of this. Why would Besser
have a gun? Czanek didn’t know what to make of the notes and lists,
but the gun was something else—guns were of his world. Could
Winnifred and Besser really be planning to kill the dean for his
insurance?

At the back of the drawer he spotted another
Qwik Note. Four notations in florid writing, like a
woman’s:

1) Pick holotype. Wade seems best.

2)
2nd vassal in case Tom wears out. Jervis Phillips?

3) Have Tom bury Penelope and Sladder.

Czanek should’ve been alarmed, extremely
alarmed. One note mentioned Jervis Phillips, Czanek’s own client.
Another mentioned burying bodies. But none of that mattered to
Czanek now. He could only stare unbelieving at the fourth and final
notation:

4) Kill Czanek.

Czanek’s eyes jittered.
They knew about him, but how? Had Jervis squealed? There was no
reason, and there was no reason for the dean to turn on him either.
Had Winnifred hired her own dick to watch her back? Had Czanek
actually been
made?

Then the thought toppled like rubble.

The bug.

Holy fucking shit!
he thought.
The
bug!

His gloved hand ran under the inside lip of
the desk front. The bug he’d come here to replace wasn’t there.

I am in some shit,
he thought very slowly.

“
Looking for this, Mr.
Czanek?”

Czanek ducked, doused his light, and pulled
the Charter snub from his ankle holster. The desk lamp flicked on.
Some husky kid in a T shirt and jeans faced him from the desk.
Between the kid’s fingers was Czanek’s tiny 49 MHz transmitter.

“
I found the other ones
too,” the kid said. His face was pale. He was smiling. “The ones in
Besser’s house and Winnie’s office.”

“
Don’t move,” Czanek said.
“I gotta think.”

“
What’s to think? You’re
caught.”

Czanek cocked his piece. “Who the fuck are
you?”

“
The name’s Tom. I used to
be a student, but now I’m a…guess you’d call me a myrmidon. Ever
read Lovecraft?” Tom’s smile stretched to hideous thinness. “I’m a
haunter of the dark.”

“
You’re gonna be the
haunter of the morgue if you don’t start talking. You’re a paid
tail, like me. You work for the dean’s wife, don’t you?”

Tom laughed huskily. “That horny sleaze? No
way. She doesn’t even like me—she calls me ‘the thing.’ I’ll bet
she masturbates fifteen times a day. She’ll do it right in front of
you, she doesn’t care. She can’t help herself. It’s the influence
of the labyrinth.”

“
Who do you work for!”
Czanek demanded.

“
I work for the
Supremate.”

There was that word again. Supremate.
Probably a gang leader. The kid must be burned out on dust; he was
no P.I. “Who tipped you about the bugs I planted? Was it Jervis?
The dean? Who?”

“
It was the sisters,” Tom
explained. “They work for the Supremate too. They’re his daughters,
his children.”

The kid was flaked. What
good would killing him do? These sisters, whoever they were, must
know about Czanek too, along with Besser and Winnie.
If I kill the kid, I gotta kill them
all.

“
You were in the wrong
place at the wrong time, Mr. Czanek.”

Too much was going on at once; Czanek
couldn’t think. Like how did the kid get into the office? It had
been empty, Czanek was sure of that. And he was sure he’d locked
the door behind him.

“
All right,” Czanek said.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. You and me are going to walk out
that door, nice and easy like, and then we’re going for a little
ride.”

“
Wrong,” Tom said. Suddenly
he had something huge in his hands. It looked like a long,
wide bladed ax. “You’re gonna stand there like a good little
boy while I put this through your head. Nice and easy like. Then
I’m going to bury you.”

Now even Czanek spared a laugh. “Where were
you when the brains were handed out? I’ve got a gun. See?”

“
I don’t mind loud noises,”
Tom said. “You can go hard or easy. Your choice, man.”

It had to be drugs, PCP or something. There
was all kinds of shit on the street that made you stone crazy
and fearless as a sewer rat. But Czanek couldn’t stand here all
night. He had to make his move now. “I’m not fooling around here.
If you don’t drop that ax, I’m going to have to kill you.”

“
Oh, it’s not an ax,” Tom
obliged. “It’s called a beam hewer. Colonial guys used them to
cut rafters and shit. And it’ll do a job on a human head too. You
should’ve seen Sladder.”

Jesus,
Czanek realized.
I’m gonna have to
pop this guy.

The blade’s edge glittered. The pitch of
Tom’s voice rumbled down. “Sorry, Mr. Czanek. I’m afraid your time
is up.”

Czanek shouted “Don’t!” as Tom, the
Achillean myrmidon, the haunter of the dark, raised the hewer high
above his head.

Czanek emptied the Charter in five evenly
spaced taps. The impact of the slugs mowed the kid down like a
hinged duck in a shooting gallery.

Czanek stood in grainy, hot silence. Gun
smoke stung his eyes. Unaffected, he stared down at the dead
boy.

Then the dead boy got up.

Tom’s smile never wavered. His clean white
T shirt bore no evidence of blood, just gritty black powder
marks. The grouped slugs had punched a smoking hole in the middle
of his chest. It was a deep hole.

“
Don’t worry,” Tom said. “I
won’t charge you for the shirt.”

Again, Czanek
thought:
I am in some shit.

The empty piece fell out of his hand when
the girl entered the room. There was a strange, resonant hum, and a
shrinking line of light that was black.

But the girl was just a child. She stood
caped in black, a white face in the room’s dark. Her gentle aura
filled Czanek’s head.

—
Hurry up, Tom! We want to
eat, please!