Doc Sidhe (24 page)

Jean-Pierre dodged traffic to cross the street, then trotted up the stoop of the office building and knocked loudly.

There was no immediate response. Harris saw him stand there, slouching, the bill of his cap drawn low, as relaxed and indifferent as though he weren't flanked by two people carrying dangerous weapons.

Harris saw a little rectangle of light appear in the doorway at about face-level. A small panel, like Harris had seen in movies about speakeasies. A face appeared in the opening.

Cars roared by and Harris couldn't hear any of Jean-Pierre's words. He could see Jean-Pierre offering the package, gesturing with the clipboard, shaking his head.

The little panel closed. Jean-Pierre froze.

Doc swung around and put his fist through the panel. Harris heard a crack of wood. Doc jammed his arm in the hole, almost to the shoulder, then pulled. He yanked the man's head through the hole, splintering wood above and below. The man squealed, harsh and loud as an angry wildcat.

Harris moved forward to kneel behind the nearest car. He set one of the pistols down beside him, brought the other one up in a two-handed grip, and readied himself to kill.

Across the street, Doc shoved the guard, then yanked hard. The guard's head, now bloody, emerged a second time. This time he didn't scream. But the door didn't budge.

Jean-Pierre pulled out his pistol and fired it at the lock, two quick shots. Harris saw one of the passing cars swerve at the sudden noise. Doc yanked again and the head of the guard bobbed, but the door still didn't move. Harris thought he saw Doc curse.

The shutters above and to the right of the stoop swung open. Harris saw two men lean out into the light. One held an autogun.

"Shit, shit,
shit
!" Harris aimed at the window and squeezed off a fast shot. He saw the man in the window flinch. It was too dark to line up the gun's sights; he thumbed the hammer back and aimed as best he could for the second shot, the third, the fourth, the gun kicking in his hand.

The men in the window dropped back out of sight. Harris cocked the revolver again and sighted in on the window, waiting.

Across the side street, Alastair opened fire with the autogun; Harris flinched at its jackhammer roar. The doctor hosed down the left wall of the inset. There had to be a window there, too, and it must have opened.

There was gunfire from the far side of the office building. Harris saw Doc curse again. The building's door still stood resolutely closed. The thing had to be massively reinforced.

The man with the autogun appeared in the window. Harris fired. This time he saw the man jerk and drop back. The autogun fell; Jean-Pierre, his attention on the windows, caught the weapon before it hit concrete. He swung around and, like Alastair, directed gunfire against the window Harris couldn't see.

A quick exchange between Doc and Noriko. Harris saw her draw her blade, a silvery line glinting in moonlight. Doc released the guard; the man hung in the doorway. Doc stooped and cupped his hands.

Noriko stepped into the stirrup his fingers made. Doc straightened, swinging his arms up. Suddenly Noriko was flying, leaping up to the window Harris was covering. She got one hand on the pane and came down with her knee on the sill; Harris saw her face twist in pain. Then she slashed at something beyond the window and scrambled in, disappearing from sight.

A blur of pink to Harris' right. He glanced that way and saw Joseph charging toward the front of the office.

Joseph ran like a child, with tottering, off-balance steps, his arms waving awkwardly out in front of him. He didn't pause for traffic. A gleaming green Hutchen swerved to miss him; the driver honked and kept driving.

Joseph hurtled up the stairs. Doc and Jean-Pierre leaned out of his way.

The clay man hit the door like an awkward football lineman in full charge. The door didn't slow him; it just broke with a noise like a gunshot and was instantly gone. Harris didn't want to think about what had become of the guard behind it.

Jean-Pierre charged in after him, the autogun pointed high, and Doc followed.

Alastair emerged from cover and crossed the four-lane, dodging traffic. He paused at the corner of the inset, scanning the entrance and the window he'd fired on. Then he scrambled up the stairs and disappeared into the office building.

And then there was nothing but muffled gunshots. Shouting that Harris couldn't make out.

He concentrated on his breathing again.

How many shots had he fired? He broke open the gun in his hand, ejected the brass. One cartridge was still unfired. He replaced it in the cylinder, then reloaded the weapon from the ammunition in his pocket.

They started firing on Joseph the moment he crashed through the door: two autoguns, pistols he couldn't number. He dimly felt impacts before he plowed through the line of gunmen, cracking limbs and ribcages, scattering them.

It was sad. But perhaps if he broke them now no one would have to shoot them later.

Ahead, more men were rolling a metal door into place, blocking the opening into the warehouse beyond. Joseph picked up speed.

He hit the metal door as hard as he'd ever hit anything. He heard its scream of protest, felt it buckling under his mass as though it were a light roasting pan. It tore free from its housing and crumpled around him as he drove it before him; he went off balance and tripped, skidding across the concrete on his malformed metal sled, scattering more men.

Harris watched as, across the street, one of the sections of concrete sidewalk levered open. It was just like the hidden door at Duncan's Wickhollow house. He came alert, closed his pistol, aimed it across the hood of the car.

A man's head rose from the hole and looked around; he didn't spot Harris. He climbed out of the hole. In his hand was something that looked like a sawed-off shotgun. It was Eamon Moon, now dressed in what looked like a scarlet silk robe.

Harris let him get completely out from the hole. Moon took a couple of furtive steps toward the open office door. His intention was obvious: sneak up on the Sidhe Foundation people from behind. Harris shouted, "Don't move!"

Moon turned and yanked the trigger.

Harris felt blind fear as he saw a gout of fire emerge from the weapon barrel. The other side of the car he crouched behind screamed and crumpled in protest.

Harris fired. Moon jerked as if punched in the gut and stared stupidly at Harris.

Then he aimed the gun again.

Harris fired a second time. Moon took a staggering step back toward the hole and fell to the concrete. Harris stared at his unmoving body.

He'd just shot a man. He paused, expecting . . . expecting he didn't know what. Nothing happened except he found that his mouth was dry.

What now? If men came pouring out of that hole, Harris wouldn't be able to stop all of them. They'd be able to hit Doc and the others from behind.

He half turned. "Gaby, get up here!"

"I hear you." Her voice, coming from right behind him, made him start. He craned his neck to look back. She was standing where he'd been just a few moments ago, at the corner of the building; all he could see was some of her rifle's barrel, protruding beyond the corner, and a little of her silhouette behind the building edge.

"I have to go block that hole." He grabbed his second handgun and sprinted across the street, stuttering a step to avoid running in the path of a northbound limousine. Once past the brick roadway, he moved cautiously up toward the dark hole, both guns out in front of him.

Concrete steps leading down into darkness. If he got close enough, anyone down below would be able to see him.

The thought of somebody lurking at the bottom of the steps, a shotgun ready, drove all the air out of his lungs. He circled around the hole, coming up on it from behind the tilted slab of concrete. That put him right beside Eamon Moon. He took a soccer-style kick at Moon's gun, clattering it up against the side of the building, then put his shoulder to the slab and shoved. It obligingly keeled over and fell back into place, making an enormous hollow boom and stinging his feet through the leather soles of his shoes.

Situation under control . . . for now. He picked up Moon's gun and trotted back across the street, keeping the slab, the dead man, and the bottom of the stoop in view. He knelt down behind the cover of the car. There were more shots from inside the building.

Harris could see Moon's eyes staring up at the stars, unblinking. He had the uneasy feeling that if he stared long enough, Moon would look up with a hurt expression and point an accusing finger at him.

Well, let him. Harris couldn't afford to worry about it now. He kept his aim on the building.

Noriko found a second-story window, allowing her to look into the cargo house. Immediately below her were enormous shelves piled with wooden crates and cardboard boxes. Below and to the left was the doorway into the office building; Alastair and Jean-Pierre held it, firing short bursts into the cargo house, keeping the Changeling's men under cover. She could see Doc and Joseph, the former leaping clean through a set of shelves to open fire on defenders on the other side, the latter advancing on gunmen with a mangled metal sheet held before him as cover.

Gunfire sounded from the far side of the building. That had to be the men defending at the exterior door, in battle with Lieutenant Athelstane's soldiers.

She squeezed through the window and, catlike, dropped to the nearly empty top of the shelving below. The impact made her bruised knee smart more. Thin board bent beneath her feet but did not give way. The shelves themselves, massive and rock-solid, stood firm against the impact.

She raced forward along the shelf-top, toward the broad center aisle between the ranks of shelving, and gauged her leap. It was fifteen feet, a distance she should easily manage—on an unimpeded dirt track, on an unhurt leg. If she failed, she'd crash into the shelves on the far side.

She picked up speed in the spare few steps before the end . . . and then she was airborne, flailing the sword in her right hand and the sheath in the left for balance. She heard the whistle of a bullet inches from her head.

Noriko came down on the far shelf-top with two feet to spare, but stumbled as her hurt knee gave way. She fell forward, slamming down on the cheap wood of the shelf, knocking the wind from her. She heard her sheath clatter to the concrete floor before she realized she'd lost it. But she was up in a second, ignoring the pain in her chest and leg, and leaped for the top of the next set of shelves over, a much shorter jump than her first one.

Two more bounds and she was at the shelf next to the side door. Below, two men with autoguns stood at the door, firing out through slits cut in the wall. Beside them, two cars, a hardtop sedan and a canvas-topped red roadster, waited—escape vehicles for the Changeling's men. She saw no one through their windows; they hadn't yet decided to retreat.

She stepped off the top of the shelf and dropped more than a dozen feet, landing on her back on the canvas top of the roadster. It held up against the impact, threw her a pace back up into the air; she rolled, coming down in a crouch beside the car. Her knee held.

One of the autogunners saw her just in time to turn and take her sword-thrust in the chest. He fell back against the wall. The other didn't have time to turn; her bloody sword-point pricked at his throat just as he realized something was horribly wrong. He stiffened.

"Drop the gun," she suggested. "Open the door. Or join your friend in your next life."

Out front, the concrete slab levered open again.

Harris glanced back at Gaby, saw her rifle barrel still protruding from the corner. He brought his revolver up, aimed at the hole again, and sucked in a lungful of air for another shout.

Alastair's head popped up. The doctor turned for a quick look around, caught sight of Harris, and flinched back out of sight.

The halls of Aremorcy Waterways were frantic with activity. Blue-uniformed members of the Novimagos Guard hustled captured gangsters through the tile-walled halls. Other guardsmen, guns drawn, burst into darkened offices to ferret out gangsters who might be hiding. Doc's associates collected in the cargo house, prowling among the shelves and stacks of wares, using crowbars to pry open interesting-looking containers.

Harris walked through the confusion, glancing numbly at the arrests and the searches. Novimagos guardsmen passed him in the hallways, not seeing him. It was as though he were a ghost. Maybe he was close enough to death that all he needed to do was squint to see the spirit of the man he'd killed.

He passed through the door out of the offices and into the cargo house. Noriko spotted him at once and came to him, favoring her left leg. Something about his expression must have told a story; she asked, "Are you hurt?"

"I killed a man, Noriko."

She nodded, sympathy briefly evident in her eyes. "And it feels bad."

"No, that's just it. It doesn't feel at all. I keep waiting for it to hit." He shrugged. "Isn't it supposed to?"

"If you hadn't shot him, he would have shot all three of us. I don't think Alastair could see him from his corner. It was the right thing. We owe you our lives, Harris."

He frowned. "I don't get you."

"The man with the Klapper."

"No, the man on the sidewalk—oh." Harris sagged. "You mean I got the guy in the window, too. I shot
two
men to death tonight." He took a deep breath and waited. Maybe now something would happen to him, some blast of guilt like a lightning bolt from the hand of Zeus.

Nothing did.

Doc called, "Noriko? Tell me what you think of this."

She gave Harris an apologetic look and headed Doc's way. The investigation wasn't waiting for the lightning bolt of Zeus.

An unaccustomed weight in his coat pocket reminded him that he was still carrying the dead man's gun. He pulled it out to look at it.

It was strange. It was as long as a sawed-off shotgun, but with a single barrel and a large cylinder like a revolver's. It had a swing-out cylinder like his small revolver. He pressed the catch for it and popped the cylinder out. It held four shotgun shells. He closed the weapon.