The Shape Stealer (13 page)

“Interesting concept of time,” Kepler commented. “It is quite apparent that they must be atheists.”

“They’ve got a fair share of company on that,” Jules replied. “Especially in the past couple of centuries.”

I shuffled my feet impatiently. We had a big new problem now, and I wasn’t in a mood to listen to an academic or theological dialogue such as might occur at the nearby Sorbonne. “Weird,” was all I could think of to say. And Will looked totally befuddled. At least the alleyway was shady for him.

My eyes swept the end of the alleyway, trying to imagine a force powerful enough to make a place as large as the institute simply vanish as if it had never existed. Then I spied, at the foot of the wall, a crumpled sheet of paper. I opened it up as Kepler, Annick, and Jules rambled on about meaning in the universe, and I saw that it was a poem by a poet named Pui Ying Wong. At the top of the page, using a stamp such as a postal service might employ, the word
portal
had been printed in thick black letters.

Père Lachaise

Uphill, then downhill

deep in the cemetery

greenway crammed with graves

But we have maps, sold

in every flower shop, all

on Rue Gambetta

We veer tomb to tomb

reading names off grime-flecked stones

in plane tree shadow

Statues of weeping

Magdalene, angels with wings

too heavy to fly

Behind the temple

Jim Morrison’s “a white ball

of fire,” wrote a fan

Hear the music, hard

as it punctures and punctures

we keep migrating

Remember hunger

that burns like insomnia

may have led us here.

“Let me take a look at that.” Jules interrupted my reading. He grabbed the paper out of my hand. Annick read over his shoulder, and Kepler joined her in doing so. Will stood aloof; I noted that light from the climbing sun was now starting to filter into the space where they were all standing.

“What could the
PORTAL
stamp possibly mean?” I asked.

“The poem may be a portal map,” Annick suggested. “What else would the phrase ‘we have maps’ refer to? Remember that the institute itself has been a portal, perhaps the most reliable one in all the city of Paris except for a certain bookstore”—she nodded at Kepler, and he smiled slightly—“so perhaps there’s a temporary replacement for the store at the cemetery, Père Lachaise. Or maybe it refers specifically to Jim Morrison’s grave. Or maybe the Rue Gambetta is actually the significant reference.”

“Or the statue of the weeping Magdalene,” Kepler said. “Not everyone, you’ll notice, is an atheist.”

“The first riddle we need to solve,” Jules proclaimed, “is whether this message was left for us by friend or foe. There is no magical certainty in our world regarding the otherworld—some would say, not even on the question of whether it exists or not—so we must rely on our instincts. Père Lachaise could be a portal, or it could be a fatal trap.”

“In that case,” Will spoke up, “I urge that we seek shelter immediately back at the hotel. We can discuss our options there without being exposed like we are right now, so close to the scene of an attack.”

I could tell from his trembling tone how much he feared the impending full daylight.

“The hotel sounds good to me,” I chimed in.

Kepler agreed. “Even if we are going to explore the cemetery as a portal, we can’t do it in the daytime. I have had occasion to visit the graves of the great poet Apollinaire and the astronomer Jérôme Lalande—who measured the distance between the earth and the moon—there. It gets very crowded.”

“Jim Morrison’s more than anyone’s,” Jules agreed.

“The hotel, then,” Annick said. And we all nodded agreement, starting virtually as one back up the alley toward the rue Saint-Jacques. But I stopped suddenly, though the others kept on walking.

I stopped because I’d heard a violent clap of thunder from the sky behind me; some stormclouds must have crept up unnoticed while we lingered in the alley. And for a moment I thought I could smell the seashore, as though this were an Atlantic storm that had retained a trace of its origin while traveling over land. But then a quick glance told me that in fact the Paris sky remained an unbroken blue.

I heard a second peal of thunder, and the world around me seemed to go entirely black. I couldn’t see the rest of the group in front of me, or the alley or the buildings adjacent to it, or anything. I felt physically fine—no dizziness, no unsteadiness, certainly I was quite conscious and alert—so I wasn’t terrified. But I was unnerved. And then, suddenly, I found a compass by which to navigate this crisis.

Memory.

I’d experienced this particular sensation before.

It was when Will had transmigrated my—and his—atoms back in New York City, first to avoid hitting a tree in the limo and then to bypass traffic chaos so we could get to Van Cortlandt Park. As now, I had been immersed in a total, chilly blackness. And now, as then, I wasn’t dizzy, but I could feel myself slowly spinning, as if I were standing on the nucleus of a gigantic atom at the edge of the universe, a nucleus slower than the whirling electrons around me, but rotating nonetheless. The closest galaxy was moving with my atom, as I could sense rather than see: a galaxy that was a magnificent whirl at the boundary of the universe.

Then all was suddenly still again, and I could open my eyes. I caught a quick glimpse of the group turning left at the entrance to the alley, toward the hotel, all of them oblivious to my delay. My chilliness had vanished. I could only wonder why my atoms had transmigrated again. Could this happen without an outside intervention? Why had I wound up this time exactly where I’d started out? I certainly hadn’t willed it myself.

Then I saw the flash of tiny, whirring green wings. Lol. I recognized her right away. She flew back up over the wall of the alley to my right, retreating as if from checking up on me. She had been there at both transmigrations in New York City also, helping Will out in some way he had never explained to me.

Annick had nailed it. In this “other” world, I had nothing but my instincts to rely on. If Lol had brought us the poetic portal message—and a quivering sense of excitement told me she had—then she had just transmigrated me for emphasis. To make a point. She was tiny, but she had a phenomenal force in her. And I didn’t use the word
phenomenal
lightly.

I blew a kiss in her vanished direction and hurried to catch up with the others.

17

A Swimmer Dives

Marduk slept late. He’d had no intention of staying in bed until eleven in the morning. But it was hard to say what was normal for him now, with Dee’s antidote allowing daytime activity for the first time.

The studio apartment was sunny and bright. In his newfound trans-vampire confidence, he hadn’t bothered to pull the curtains all the way closed before retiring. But his mood upon awakening was dark. He still found it impossible to believe that he had failed at something Will Hughes had succeeded at. And now he was even angrier about it than he had been the night before. But another meal, in daylight—and the possibilities for one were fiendishly infinite—was not going to satisfy this anger the way his meal outside the trading pools had. He could feel that new reality the moment he awoke.

Fact was, there was only one way Will Hughes could have outperformed him at something. And that was by cheating. Marduk needed to figure out a way to take that advantage away.

It seemed late for breakfast, so, after putting on a gray business suit with a black collared shirt and no tie, he decided to go down to the ground floor café, which shared the front of the building with a pair of small apartments, and have an early lunch there. He sat at a secluded table in the corner farthest from the street and ordered a cheese sandwich and a glass of red wine. Someone had left on his table a copy of the sensationalist tabloid
Le Cirque
, in which he read a news story about his meal of the night before while waiting for his order. He was grinning at his exploits, the reading about which was calming him down, when a shrill male voice said from behind him, “Mr. Hughes! What a pleasure! And what a surprise to see you in the middle of the day, you night owl!”

Marduk swiveled around in his chair and tried to smile, wondering how this particular insect could have made out his features from the rear. Perhaps the man had seen him in profile when Marduk first entered the café; a glance toward the front door told him that was possible. The insect was a middle-aged man, freckled and with crewcut blond hair, wearing an open-necked white shirt and a dark blue sports jacket. Marduk clasped the insect’s hand and suppressed the strongest urge he’d felt since arriving in Paris to strangle or better yet decapitate someone. Almost simultaneously, a new idea struck him.

With one Will Hughes imprisoned by daylight, now that Marduk had bit him in the catacombs—and with Hughes’s older self, even if he did turn up in Paris, still a vampire as well—what was to prevent Marduk from impersonating Hughes, albeit briefly and cautiously, in the daytime? Dee had mentioned Hughes’s fund having a Paris office. Assuming it was open during the day—and it probably was—what was to stop him from going there and unlocking Hughes’s trading secrets, the ones that made up his cheating advantage? No doubt the office staff wouldn’t be used to seeing Hughes. But there was always a first time! His face was an unimpeachable ID. And something else was for certain: neither Hughes had access to Dee’s antidote!

This insect had once worked, Marduk gleaned from their awkward conversation, for Hughes’s fund as a trader and had left recently to start his own firm. Once this had been established, Marduk was adroit enough to send the insect on his way, mentioning an imminent meeting he had to attend. Fortunately the creature was not interested in, or comfortable enough to attempt, sitting down with him. There
was
going to be a meeting all right (by telephone). He’d call Dee right now and find out where Hughes’s office was located.

Dee did not answer, and Marduk was not in a mood to leave a voice mail. But he searched “Will Hughes, hedge fund manager” on the smart phone Dee had provided for him (a useful contraption that made him wonder if all the vital energy of these insectlike creatures teeming through the streets had been sucked up by this time period’s technological inventions) and found a Paris address for Green Hills Partners, along with ones for offices in London, New York City, and San Francisco. And off he went, his mood improved.

Sunlight lit up many alluring human delicacies as he strolled through the crowded noontime streets toward 34 rue de Ballanchine. Strong cravings arose, far beyond the appetite he’d felt for the cheese sandwich. But the satisfaction of these fresh cravings, which he reserved for later on that day, would be nothing compared to that breaking into Will Hughes’s computer promised. He was the great Marduk. Hughes was vermin.

Nonetheless, right outside the building, Marduk had a fit of nerves. Unwilling at first to open the door, he stepped away and felt a wild craving for the flesh of every passerby. He wondered if the stakes of Dee’s financial plot were actually too high for him. They seemed to involve the destruction of the world’s economy, followed by Marduk’s rule over this rotting carcass of an Earth (technically both Dee’s and Marduk’s, but Marduk planned to murder Dee the moment the scheme was achieved). In theory it was an imposing, breathtaking ambition, but though Marduk hated the world, he did feed off it, and he feared going hungry if it no longer existed. But after a walk to the end of the block and back to calm himself, he shrugged his shoulders and was ready to move forward. His worries were premature. It was as if something alien had possessed him at the door. Something weakening and … human, if he had to find a sufficiently negative word for it. Something that reminded him of the gnat, Will Hughes.

Now that alien something was gone.

When he arived at the Green Hills office on the eleventh floor, he did not need to be buzzed in. The receptionist, a West African woman in her twenties wearing a rainbow-hued head scarf and matching dress, looked at her boss through the front office window, if with a puzzled expression, and buzzed him in.

“Mr. Hughes, you’re back from lunch so soon,” she said as Marduk passed by the front desk. “And with a suit on instead of your running clothes!” Behind her were impressionistic paintings of a variety of farm animals, in pastel colors, underneath a silk banner with the inscription:
GREEN HILLS PARTNERS: BUILDING A HUMANE WORLD FOR ALL.
”

Marduk did his best not to let his shock show. Will Hughes come into work? Today, in daylight? Had the world gone mad? He mumbled something about having gone home to change.

“Lunch date a dud, sir?” the woman asked him solicitously.

“Something like that,” he grinned, feeling like he might be sliding away from this particular problem. But of comparable concern was that Marduk was not certain which of the half dozen or so closed doors he was confronted with led to the absent Hughes’s office. None had a sign on it. Marduk had imagined a very small setting: after all, the fund had three other offices spread across seven thousand miles—what did this one need lots of rooms for? But, being that he
was
Hughes at the moment, he needed to know which door led to his own office. He was befuddled briefly, as unprepared for this as he was for the shocking fact that Hughes had come to work …
in the daytime
. And, not surprisingly, wearing different clothes than he had on.

Marduk was quick to affix blame for the confusion. It must be the fault of some imbalance between Hughes and that youthful facsimile he had neglected to kill in the catacombs. Neglected because Dee had intervened against it. Turning the youth into a vampire with his bite must have somehow afforded temporary immunity to his older time-twin. Dee might have been a good alchemist, but he was a bumbler in the realm of vampires. So Marduk was now Dee’s victim, standing here embarrassed in Hughes’s office. Dee would pay for it, not far down the road.