Magic Time: Angelfire (47 page)

She smiled and fetched the thing out of the front of her shirt. She had cut a hole into it and hung it on the chain that bore her father’s dog tags. She laid the charm and tags in my hand. They still carried the warmth of her body. I felt a soft tingle of something more from the strange chip of leather.

“I’m taking all my good luck into that place.” Her smile became lopsided, eyeing me. “Well, almost all.”

Around my own neck, I wore a silver cross. Nurya had made up the fable that reformed vampires haunted the blood bank at the hospital and that the cross would protect me if one of them should “fall off the wagon,” as the Americans say. I pulled the chain off over my head and draped it around Colleen’s neck, then returned the charms to their place.

Her smile was gone. She grasped my hand and held it over her heart for an instant before we turned and went after the others.

I
n the
H
ouse

of
S
uddhoo

A stone’s throw out on either hand From that well-ordered road we tread, And all the world is wild and strange: Churel and ghoul and Djinn and sprite Shall bear us company tonight, For we have reached the Oldest Land Wherein the Powers of Darkness range.

—
In the House of Suddhoo
by Rudyard Kipling

“Balbo Market,” said Howard, apparently catching my curiosity about the busy clumps of tents, stalls, and makeshift wagons. “People gotta eat, and they gotta have stuff, y’know, so …” He waved an arm at the small but bustling throng.

I slowed my pace a little to watch the patrons of Balbo Market interact. I saw haggling, items changing hands, hands being shaken in accord. Adaptation passing for normalcy.

“Life finds a way,” murmured Goldie.

I focused my attention on the cluttered path ahead. I couldn’t yet see the Black Tower through the combination of fey red haze and smoke, but the closer we got to it, the tighter my nerves twisted.

I distracted them with a study of Howard Russo. Who was this guy, really? Was he the victim of circumstance who bravely allowed Enid and others to escape Primal’s grasp, or was he the weasel who sold out flares and a handful of musicians to save his own hide? Was he both? Was there any way to find out before we walked into Primal’s fortress? Was there any way to find out what Primal was?

“Howard, the devas that Primal keeps—are they his allies or his slaves?”

Howard glanced up at me from inside his hood, his mirror lenses nearly blinding me. “I didn’t sell those people.”

“Chill, Howie,” said Colleen. “Cal’s just trying to get at the truth.”

“Is Primal a group of flares?” I asked bluntly.

The lenses flashed at me again. “Primal is Primal. But it
likes
the devas.”

“Why? What does ‘it’ want with them?”

“Not sure,” Howard said.

“Maybe the question is backward,” suggested Colleen. “Maybe the question is: What do the flares want with Primal?”

I shook my head. “We’ve never known flares to be devious or dangerous.”

“But they could be, couldn’t they? I mean, look at the pull the Source has on them. Alice, Faun.”

The memory of losing Faun raised an ache in my heart. It carried its own freight of agony, on top of reminding me of what I’d gone through with Tina. “Faun and Alice weren’t…” I hesitated.

“I think
evil
is the word you’re searching for,” Goldie said baldly.

“They weren’t evil. They were tortured, pulled between opposing forces. Look, this conversation is pointless.”

“Is it?” Colleen asked. “If we knew how the flares figured in this, we’d have a lot better idea what to expect once we’re inside. What d’you think they’re gonna do, Cal? Give us a hero’s welcome?”

I guess I had expected that—or at least that we’d be viewed as a rescue party.

“Colleen may be right,” said Doc. “What if this is the way these flares protect themselves from the Source? Might they not take us as a threat?”

I turned my attention back to Howard. “Is Primal protecting the flares, Howard?”

He considered it, his mouth puckering. “They’re safe there. Safer than they’d be anywhere else.”

“And what does Primal get out of it?”

“Shit.” Colleen gripped my arm so tightly I knew I’d bruise. “We’re forgetting something.
Primal’s a tweak
. Maybe even a flare. He’d have to have some way of protecting himself from the Source.”

One Voice in front of many
. A mutual protection society, very much like Enid and Magritte’s. We wouldn’t be heroes; we’d be invaders.

“Tweak?” echoed Howard.

“Like you,” said Goldie, “or Magritte.”

“Primal’s not like any of us,” Howard said, and my blood congealed in my veins.

“Shit,” Colleen said again. “This sucks.”

She could hear the flare voices, but only faintly. And she could drive them almost completely from her head if she kept one of Enid’s songs in mind. Enid, wrapped in Magritte’s flare shielding, heard nothing. He sweated the situation anyway.

“This doesn’t seem right—me hangin’ while you get into this up to your armpits. If I went in with you—”

Cal was adamant. “You can’t. If you went in, you might never come out.” He glanced at Magritte. “Either of you. We don’t know what might happen if you went in there before your contract is voided. I’d rather not find out.”

Enid took a deep breath and stared up at the Tower. In the strange gleam of Chicago daylight, its darkened windows and steel frame spat iridescence back at the sun. “Yeah,” he said. “Me neither.”

The front doors of the Chicago Media Group were massive, glass-and-brass revolving mechanisms set in two ranks with a ten-foot windbreak between. We watched them for several minutes from the half-shattered lobby of a building across the street. No one came in or out.

“We go?” Howard asked from beside me.

“No time like the present.” I patted the copy of Enid’s contract I carried in an inside pocket of my jacket and turned to Doc. “You’re our backup contingency plan. If this is a trap, or if something goes wrong, you may be our only way out.”

Doc nodded grimly and worried the hilt of a knife that had never been used for anything but cutting bandages.

Colleen put her hand over his, stopping the nervous clenching of his fingers. “Don’t cut yourself on that thing, Viktor. It’d be pretty embarrassing if I had to patch
you
up.”

He smiled faintly. “I will try not to cut myself. Good luck.”

Colleen smiled and squeezed her odd collection of charms. I noticed there was a silver cross among them now. Funny. I hadn’t thought she was particularly religious. “I’ll see you later,” she answered, and started for the street, leaping nimbly over a fall of broken glass and mortar.

Howard and I followed, leaving Goldie behind to make 
his good-byes. We’d reached the great doors by the time he came loping up behind us. They weren’t guarded, and in my eagerness to get in, I simply put my hand out to give one of them a push.

“No!
No!
” Howard howled, and Colleen threw a body block, bowling me over. When she hauled me upright, she and Howard and Goldie were all talking at once.

“What the hell was that for?” I asked.

“Didn’t you see it?” Colleen flung an arm at the doors. “See what?” asked Goldie, glancing from me to Colleen. “Can’t just walk in,” Howard lectured. “There’s proto -

cols.” He swung away and shuffled over behind a pillar. “See what?” Goldie asked again.

Colleen squinted at the doors. “The … the force field.”

I grabbed her arm and physically moved her out of my way, trying to keep an eye on what Howard was doing. He was peering at a mail slot centered in a brass plate. He poked the end of one finger into the slot, then jumped as if he’d been shocked and stuck the finger in his mouth to suck on it.

Strange. “I don’t see anything,” I said.

Goldie shook his head. “Me neither.”

“Whoa. Well, neither do I now, but a second ago there was this … Well, it looked kind of like a curtain of static electricity. Yellow and green and all …” She made a circular motion with her hand.

“Wax on, wax off?”

She threw Goldie a dirty look. “Staticky.”

Howard had shuffled back to us. “Okay.
Now
we go in.” He led the way, turning the doors as if they were made of balsa wood instead of thick, tempered glass. I will forever be amazed at how much strength is contained in a grunter’s body.

We crossed the windbreak and went through the second door into the foyer. It was a huge, vaulted chamber, harshly lit by sun filtered through the ruby veil. Banks of elevators lay in the semidarkness beyond, useless now; twin escalators, reduced to toothy staircases, led to the second floor.

I looked up as we entered the hall, our footsteps tapping 
out echoes on the gray marble underfoot. The upper floor was dimly lit by globes of light much like the ones Goldie produced. These were the color of dying embers and filled the upper reaches of the building with a dull, red gleam that made me think of volcanoes, lava lamps, and hell.

In the center of the floor the artfully combined letters CMG—apparently the Chicago Media Group logo—were inlaid in solid brass. Howard squatted in the middle of the logo with an expression of resignation on his face. “We wait.”

“You’re kidding,” said Colleen. “Wait for what?”

“For me.”

We glanced up in unison toward the farther of the two escalators. A man was descending. He was dressed in a long, silk Chinese robe, his hands hidden among the billows of fabric in that archetypal pose that probably had little reality outside of Saturday morning cartoons and old Charlie Chan movies. On his head was an extravagantly tall hat of the same fabric and pattern. His face was heavily made up, more like a kabuki dancer than a Chinese noble. He even sported a Fu Manchu mustache. In spite of that, he did not look the least bit Asian.

“Trick or treat,” Howard singsonged. He looked back over his shoulder at me, his mouth wriggling with what I would have said was derision on a fully human face.

The faux Chinaman set foot on the marble and glided to meet us, his feet moving invisibly under the robe. It dragged the floor in a soft whisper. He stopped in front of us. “I am Clay,” he announced, then cocked an eye at Howard. “You’ve brought… friends?”

Howard nodded and pointed at me. “Cal here wants to talk to Primal. Cal’s a lawyer.”

Clay’s eyes wobbled up to meet mine. They were strange eyes. One of them seemed to focus in a different place than its mate. They held an expression of perpetual surprise, probably because of the curved eyebrows penciled in arcs above them. “A lawyer? Why does a lawyer want to see Primal?”