Sleight of Hand (17 page)

I changed and wandered into the main training area.

It smelled of the oil Master Leung used on the wooden floor. And sweat of course. This was a place of hard physical work. Application. That’s certainly what I was looking for— something cathartic to flush away the frustrations of the day.

Master Leung’s class was assembling. It was formed mainly of guys and girls who’d left work early, with a sprinkling of energetic housewives. Hey, maybe even the odd househusband. Most of them were a bit serious about it all.

I bowed to Master Leung and nodded to the others. I might have some time with him afterwards, but I couldn’t guarantee it. Master Leung was happy that I came in to practice on my own most of the time. I certainly didn’t need his class. All the forms they would be doing I had wired into my muscles. Worse, the class might pair off and do some sparring, which wouldn’t be good for my partner.

My stupid grin turned into a grimace as I reviewed what had just gone through my mind. What the hell was I thinking? This wasn’t the way you approached martial arts. I stopped myself, returned to the front of the class and bowed to them. They bowed back. They didn’t have a clue what was happening or why I did it, but that wasn’t important. I did. It made a difference to me.

As well as being a very pragmatic martial arts instructor, Master Leung was a stickler about respect for others and that was one of the reasons why I studied with him.

I went and knelt in the practice area and tried to clear my mind of the sour arrogance that had filled it. What was going on with me? Why was everything getting to me so much lately? And why was I reacting like that? Was this something to do with the infection? Was it just stress?

No answers came, so I sighed and started stretching. Going through some light exercises seemed to clear me out. My mind engaged with the sensation in my muscles, the feel of a body doing what it was designed to do. I relished these moments.

By the time I was ready for some real work, I was relaxed and limber. I pulled on some light practice saps and squared up with the punch bag. My chi clicked up a notch and I focused.

I got going on straight punches at head level, concentrating on speed and balance, random combinations. Then I fed in body punches, closing with the bag and putting my weight behind them. Sweat sprang up on my forehead and my muscles burned. God, it felt good!

I switched styles: Karate, boxing, Kung Fu, Thai boxing, back again. Step off, side kicks, close in, punch combinations. I was lost in the moment; time blurred.

Somewhere in the pleasant haze of effort a stray thought brushed across my mind. I would put a better combination together if it were Campbell Carter there. Rage flared in my belly; my vision screwed down till I could only see the bag and it had his face.
You’ll never get work as an investigator again in this town
. My leg snapped out and there was a satisfying thud as I connected with the bag, imagining Carter taking the blow in his side. Three more, hard and fast as I could make them, low and high alternating. Lieutenant Henry freaking Krantz.
You never made private, let alone sergeant.
I slammed a right-left combination of punches into Krantz, kicked and then closed for a blizzard of jabs and body punches which would leave him shattered. I switched stance and hammered a three-punch combination to his head, finished off with a Karate
kiai
shout. And then I realized I was visualizing Kathleen’s face on the bag—
I can’t help you on this case
—and I stopped.

There was a complete and utter silence in the kwan behind me.

My chest was heaving, my hands heavy beside me, rivers of sweat running down my face. The bag was just a bag, for God’s sake. And how could I want to hurt my sister like this?

The touch on my shoulder was very gentle. I swung around. The class was watching me, open-mouthed. Shit, I must have put on quite a show. Unfortunately, of all the wrong things. Some of the looks were just plain scared.

Liu rested his open hand on my chest. His eyes sought out and held mine.

“We have spoken of this, Amber.”

I nodded. It was as much as I could manage.

“There is a terrible anger, inside, here,” he pressed against my chest, “and here.” He put his hand on my stomach. I flinched. “An old anger. It must come out. But this is not the way. This is not the time. And this is not the place.”

“I’m so sorry, Shi Fu.” I bowed, the sweat stinging my eyes. Just sweat. Keep it formal. “I’ve shamed you.”

“No, Amber, you have not.” He smiled. “But Mr. Bag will need some time to recover. Now, go and practice the forms we worked on to promote balance and harmony. In silence.” He turned back to his class. “Strive only for peace and control of the form.” It might have been a general comment, but I knew it was intended for me.

I looked at the floor. “Yes, Shi Fu,” I whispered. If I hadn’t been red-faced from exertion, it would have been from shame. Liu’s art and teaching were all about control and balance, not wild-ass kicking and thumping and screaming. I felt like a complete idiot. The ability to hit something or someone really hard is not such a great skill, and not to be admired in itself, even if it is handy sometimes. Liu said the ability to not hit someone is the true art. And even worse, the thing that Liu couldn’t see—I had been so angry with my sister that I had visualized hurting her.

However it had happened, the anger cleared my mind. I returned to the practice mat and began the forms. For another hour my world comprised movements mirroring the rivers, the seas and clouds. It brought a sense of peace. Tired, sweaty peace.

I left before Master Liu finished the next class. I didn’t want to talk about old angers. Bad things had happened to me, but I had buried them. They were history. None of them should be affecting me like this. And especially I didn’t want him involved if this was a sign that the vampire prions were taking control.

I went back to the office and checked my prion level again. It was still at 0.43, which wasn’t the highest it had ever been, but was still higher than the average over the last year or so. I sat and looked uneasily at the machine for a while. There was nothing I could think of that was causing the rise. Besides becoming a vampire. I packed it away. Maybe the stress of monitoring the prion level so frequently was sending it up.

I would never get guns into the rave, so I left them in the safe and locked up the office.

At the car, I swapped Jen’s beautiful jacket for an old denim one out of the trunk and walked down to the Light Rail station. There was a feeling of being watched, but I put it down to paranoia. I couldn’t jump at every shadow.

I had a rave to go to.

Chapter 21

I arrived at the rave late enough for it to be pumping. Even outside, I could feel the music through my boots. Trailered generators were lined up down the side of the old mall, running to provide electricity for the event.

I went through the doors and down the steps, and I was in a maelstrom of light and sound. In addition to the spinning lasers and tumbling searchlights, they had a burning wall set up—a huge array of plasma screens, which was providing most of the light to the dance floor. It was running a lava-sim and looked like the mouth of an angry volcano. The opposite wall was a matching array of screens flickering between video captures of the actual dancers on the floor and prerecorded dancers synchronized to the music. I hated that; it had bad associations for me.

I pushed those memories back into the dark and slid along the edge of the area until I had the video screen behind me. I stood and watched the dancers for a while.

The dance floor was roughly split between Shuffle on the left and Tecktonic on the right. Where the styles met in the middle was a heaving mass of bodies just swaying and bouncing in time.

Electric Breath was in full flow. They were two goth girls who took turns sharing the DJ work and stoking the floor with their dance routines. Beat Gear were responsible for the light show. I’d already spotted ZK handling the security. They’d gotten someone to supply drinks from a couple of bars set up at each end.

The crowd mixed goth and hardcore dance types, with a dash of bikers for contrast. The place was packed and everyone seemed to be having a good time. I relaxed and breathed deeply.

Hot bodies, sweat, dope, cigarettes, drink and perfume. A chemical edge that could have been harder drugs. A lot of people enjoying themselves on a Friday night. At some raves, breathing would get you stoned, but this was mainly the hardcore dance crowd. I shifted around the edge. Another time I might have enjoyed myself, but I was a bit strung out, even after the session at the kwan, and itchy with my paranoia. And I wanted to get to bed at a reasonable time. After all the late nights, I felt like a zombie. No, scratch that. I didn’t know what a zombie felt like and I didn’t want to know.

The bracelet wasn’t tingling either, but I wasn’t about to draw any conclusions from that until I’d spoken to Mary. I didn’t know if it was a one-time warning or something that would work all the time. And what was the definition of harm for a magic bracelet? Better to not rely on it.

I tried one last pass, forcing myself to dance my way through the middle of the floor, bouncing off people. It was kinda fun, but my heart wasn’t into it tonight. There was nothing new till I got to the other side. I had emerged next to the bar area and dozens of ZK members were slouching against the wall. They’d claim to be providing security, but they were just checking out the dancers. I’d lay odds they were selling too. They were the old style ZK, bikers with tattoos and colors. They weren’t vampires, but there was a hint in the air. Maybe they’d been around vampires recently. I couldn’t see any with obvious bites, but then, it was dark. I drifted closer, pretending to look around.

“Yo! Bitch! Find what you’re looking for?” one shouted over the music.

“Yo! Bitch! No,” my little demon shouted back at him. He lurched off the wall, but one of his friends grabbed his arm and he subsided.

Oooh. They were on good behavior tonight. No messing with the clients.

I’d had enough. I left the basement and headed for the fresh air.

Emerging up into the cold and quieter lobby area, I saw a group standing, sharing cigarettes, talking and laughing. I recognized one of them, a mechanic who helped me work on my car when I could afford it. We had met at a couple of raves before. He was okay. I gave him a wave and he drifted over.

“Hey, Rom! You good?”

“Amber! Whoa. Yeah. Looking good. You not staying?” We clasped arms. I used the excuse to swing around and look back where I’d come from, through the group of ZK bouncers at the doors. Nothing.

“No. Don’t feel the mood tonight. Thought I wanted to dance and I don’t.” I stuck my hands in my jacket pockets and hunched my shoulders, looking left and right.

“That’s bad, man. Tight sounds, Electric Breath.”

“They are that. Go on—enjoy.” I clapped him on the shoulder and started walking.

As soon as I had cleared the basement I knew I was being watched again. The familiar itch was getting worse and worse. People were still arriving at the rave, but some were leaving as well. I couldn’t tell if there was a watcher in that group. I’d gotten a good look around, talking to Rom, but no one seemed out of place.

I needed my HK from the office safe. The office keys were in my car and my car was at the office. Crap. Time to haul ass.

Chapter 22

I walked towards the station. About a dozen people from the rave were going in the same direction. Clearly, I wasn’t the only person who had decided not to drive. They were a mixture of everyday folk mainly, heading home after a party. From the sound of it, some younger girls were bringing up the rear. The real dancers were still going at it in the basement and would be till the morning.

The night had turned colder, and it felt damp enough that I turned my collar up. That was all I needed, some atmospheric fog to set me off even more. At the station the loose group came apart like smoke and we drifted onto the north and southbound platforms to wait.

I called Morales and spoke in Spanish when he answered.

“Hello, darling.”

“Are you drunk, Farrell?”

“I missed you tonight, babe, you would have loved it, there were so many of Guy’s friends there.”

“Guy as in Guy Windler? ZK at the rave? Enough to warrant pulling some in?”

“Yeah, loads and loads. Y’know the place—the old mall at Dry Creek. I guess you’ll want to catch up with them there later.”

“Okay, I’ll pull them in for holding the rave when they start to close it down and people are out of the way. We’ll see what falls out.” He sighed. “It’s not as if I have a pile of normal police work to do or anything.”

“I love you too, babe,” I said and closed the cell.

When the train pulled in, I moved up to the front of the second car and sat facing the back. The train was brightly lit and warm. I tried to sit still and look calm, but whatever it was that had me jumpy was going into overdrive now.

A man got into the car in front and sat alone with his back to me. I twisted around to check him out. He was wearing a dark ski jacket, ideal for hiding a gun. He was a big man and he moved smoothly, like an athlete. His jacket collar was flipped up and above that I could see his sandy hair was cut short. He wore loose jeans and running shoes. Other than me, he was the only person who got on alone.
Him?

Two extraordinary girls got into my car in a haze of cheap perfume and dope. The blonde looked dazed, her eyes half closed beneath her snake’s nest hairstyle. She wore tall black boots and a leather trench coat, with a raised collar like a fan behind her head. Her friend was Asian, Vietnamese at a guess, and if I had to guess any further, her parents’ despair. She wore a black Victorian corset, baring her neck and shoulders and showing they were tattooed with leopard skin spots. Below a leather skirt, her legs were in fishnets and she wore black combat boots. Both of them wore thick black lipstick and eyeshadow that made them look like sleepy raccoons. The Vietnamese girl had blood trickles drawn from the corners of her mouth. Seeing me looking, she stood up straight, all perky, and gave me a goofy smile and wave.