The Shape Stealer (18 page)

Will nodded vaguely, and the doctor smiled politely but still gazed with puzzlement at him. Then our dishes arrived and we all dug in with relish, smoothing out the awkwardness for the moment.

“In any event, I think vegetarianism is silly,” the doctor elaborated, “so no aspersions on the young man’s carnivorous choice or anyone else’s. I choose the ravioli only because it’s a favorite, extraordinarily well done under your direction, Madame La Pieuvre.” He smiled at her, and she beamed.

“Silly? How so?” Kepler asked. “It seems like an extension of Christianity to me, not that I have the discipline or stoicism for it. Moving on from ‘love your neighbor’ to ‘love
all
life.’ What’s wrong with that?”

“I have studied the human species all the way back to its predecessors
Homo erectus
,
Homo habilis
,
Australopithecus
, and so on,” Frank told him—pompously, I thought. “Six million years and counting. Studied them as a man of science, not as a priest. We’ve never been anything other than a killer bunch from the beginning, partaking of bloody flesh like air.
Homo sapiens
killed off the Neanderthal, if you ask me, about thirty thousand years ago in Europe; the final remnant fled pathetically to the Iberian Peninsula before being massacred as well. And now that we’ve run out of alternate species to destroy, we’re getting ready to do ourselves in. Give twenty nations nukes and we won’t make it through another century.”

An ominous statement, if there was any truth to it. I wondered if Frank was fey; if so, had he been around for the Neanderthal demise? (Had Octavia, for that matter?) He certainly seemed to speak with authority about it. If he had witnessed their massacre, that could explain why he was still upset about it.

“All of what you say may be so,” Kepler replied. “It’s not my field, but no doubt Mr. Darwin has brought fresh points of view to all of us. But don’t you think we might strive to rise above our violent origins, if the history is as sad as you say? Isn’t it Christian to suppress the evil thoughts and try to be filled with good ones?”

“Sounds great, but I don’t see any sign of us rising above anything. The centrality of ‘Thou shalt not kill’ in Judaism and Christianity shows you how far back, and deep, the problem goes. Must have been a lot of killing going on for that commandment to be so important. I’d settle, as I say, for us not exterminating ourselves anytime soon. That’d be a fine outcome. Believe me, it’s a long shot.”

Kepler put his hands together on the table and made an arch with his fingers. “Well,” was all he said.

“This is one of the misguided goals of the Malefactors,” Jules said.

“What is?” I asked.

“To go back in time and correct the problem of violence. To alter the genes that have historically contributed to savagery. Or even to try to see to it that one of the less aggressive competing species—such as the Neanderthal—wins out instead of us.”

“Would that really be so bad?” Annick countered. “Look at the violence we’ve encountered in just the last few days! We didn’t have to be like this. Gorillas aren’t the killers chimps are. Fate just threw the dice this way.”

“How can you even suggest such a mad attempt at reversal, Annick?” Jules asked, appalled. “We of the Knights Temporal are charged with preserving the time line—what you so blithely call a
roll of the dice
.”

“Evolutionary selection
indeed
threw the dice if anything ever did,” the doctor responded, attempting to diffuse the tension between Annick and Jules. “But that’s beyond human control.”

Just then we heard a commotion from the front of the apartment. “Sir, you can’t go any further,” a high-pitched male voice cried out, and then came a crash as of some object tumbling to the ground. It sounded like it could have been a vase shattering. Then there was a muffled sound, like a shot fired with a silencer, then another and a third.

Even as we got to our feet and the quicker ones among us—Jules, Annick, and Kepler—started toward the front of the room, a man I recognized as Cosimo Ruggieri burst in, waving a large-caliber handgun at all of us. We slipped, shocked, back into our seats. Maybe if we’d rushed him in unison we could have overcome him, but he looked crazed, and at least a couple of us could have been shot en route to subduing him. He was followed into the dining room by three of the slenderest beings I’d ever seen, clad in black, with black ski masks over their faces. They were so slender as to suggest they rode the boundary between existence and nonexistence. Malefactors, I guessed, sliding through some crack in time.

Fear chilled me, worse than what I’d felt in the catacombs. Ruggieri didn’t look half as under control as Dee and Marduk had, and now we were all suddenly being herded, under the threat of the handgun and silver rods the stick-men carried—no doubt weapons of some sort—into a corner of the room. For better crowd control. Hopefully.

Ruggieri continued to wave his gun, a glossy steel Luger with a walnut handle, at all of us. He rotated it a foot or so in front of his chest, sweeping us with the rotation’s circumference, a motion the others imitated with their silver rods, except they held them at shoulder height. But though he threatened us all, he spoke only to me.

“Precious Garet,” he said with a mocking smile. “How I’ve missed our moments together … the breakfast encounter in the garden of that fine hotel … our lovely midnight session in the tower … I’ve longed for them so.”

He was crazy. I’d never spoken to him in the garden, though I had first seen him there (and worse, I had gone up a tower with him, and, far worse, I had briefly been attracted to him, fiend that I didn’t yet know him to be). Horribly, his face seemed to be alternating in its features between the pleasant, ordinary one I’d first seen him with and the decaying death mask that went with the purgatory of immortality he’d been condemned to, that of living forever in the state of his deathbed. His features fluctuated back and forth, turning my stomach with their ghoulish disrepair but even more hateful in their ordinary sneer. I glanced from side to side, trying to glean what the others might be thinking, but couldn’t tell anything. No doubt they were as nervous and filled with dread as I was. Revolting as the face in flux was, I was afraid to close my eyes against it, afraid he’d open fire. Then the anger finally burst out of me.

“I haven’t longed for any moments with you,” I spat out. “Not once I found out in Brittany who and what you were and are.”

“Tsk tsk, precious Garet,” he said, continuing to sneer but without the grin. “I’m so sorry to hear you disapprove of me.” His gun seemed to be trained more on me, the center of the circle coinciding with my chest. “You have a lot to learn, dear. You, a whore traveling without a chaperone, taking up with vampires and who knows what other filth.” He took a step toward me and slapped my cheek with his left hand, hard enough so it stung. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of rubbing the bruise, and quivered back my tears.

“See here, Cosimo,” Kepler said, as if they were acquainted. “Your lack of respect for women is appalling. The girl happens to be a paragon of virtue.”

“Who are you to talk? Former partner of John Dee, of all paragons of virtue.”

“I did not know Dee’s character until recently. The Dee I partnered with was very different from the scoundrel he turned into after too much trifling with the other world.”

Ruggieri took a menacing step toward Kepler, but once again including all of us in the sweep of his gun. “You’re such a genius, you should have known right away.”

Then the dining room window suddenly shattered, affording an even clearer view of the illumined Paris night. My Will Hughes stood in the middle of the vacant frame, outlined fiercely against multiple shadows, myriad twinkling lights, and the vast black sky beyond them.

24

A Perfect Pair

Out on the crumbling front steps, puffed up with his triumph like a balloon with helium, Marduk observed that the street at this hour was more crowded than it had been the night before, and the sky more turbulent. A storm seemed on its way, but the first change was of greater concern. He had in mind to replicate the previous night’s feast, but with two rather than one. It was a delicious challenge. And Lord Marduk, descendent of the Babylonian deity who had once been revered in a diabolical amulet called the Babylonian Triangle, now a stock trader triumphant, had no peers among vampires, or any other entities. Two weren’t much more difficult than one, and he leaned to the view that two females could be especially delicious. But he could not afford the witnesses such a crowded street provided. It could be Will Hughes who wound up being arrested for his crimes, and it would be harder to kill Hughes in jail here than along the open byways of San Francisco. Prudence dictated he move on.

He walked a few blocks southeast, looking for a location that was less crowded, but not so desolate as to be unlikely to offer up a meal. Creature of habit that he sometimes was, he preferred a building that resembled the black pools’. And he found one. The street it was on had reasonable prospects if he was patient and if the storm—which would empty the street—continued to hold off. The clouds were gathering but the wind had slowed, and he still hadn’t seen lightning or heard thunder. He made sure there was a secluded place under the front steps to drag his victims and found that, even better, there was a decrepit small room there, a storage area with nothing but a few cans of motor oil and a pile of grease-streaked rags in it. He licked his lips. Plenty of room to indulge. He left the unlocked wooden door that concealed it from view in place, for now. It wouldn’t be any obstacle when the time came.

He passed on several young women because they were alone, and then he began to see lightning over rooftops to the west and faintly hear thunder. He wanted a pair, but now he felt the claw of anxiety, too. A downpour could deprive him of any meal. By the time the storm ended, it could be too late for pedestrians. He’d already conceded that he’d have to settle for the next solo victim when a perfect pair finally strolled into view, at the end of the block. Marduk pressed himself back further into the shadows that concealed him, trembling with excitement.

They contrasted with one another in physique, and variety was the spice of death as well as life, he thought. One was tall, blond, buxom, tightly dressed in blue blouse and blue jeans. He could make out rosy blooms in her cheeks when she passed under streetlamps—a nice detail, he reflected. Her companion was much shorter, with close-cropped black hair and thin, almost hawklike features, and she wore a Cambridge University sweatshirt and gray shorts. At first Marduk thought she might be a male, but closer approach revealed a reassuringly petite bulge. Given the weather, he could have compromised on the gender point if he had to. He began to hear snatches of their conversation, which (despite the sweatshirt) was in French.

Lightning crackled closer.

He carried a weapon, a small-caliber Beretta with a miniature silencer that Dee had provided him with, and had it in his right hand now. Because there were two, he was going to have to be more aggressive than on the previous night. Yes, there were risks. But, thanks to the darkening weather, the street was almost deserted now.

He didn’t even have to speak. He stepped toward the blonde, showed her the gun that glinted in the light from the nearest lamp, and motioned both of them down the stairs. Both women’s eyes went wide as they saw the gun, but they seemed too startled to scream, and they meekly walked down the stairs. The calm expression on Marduk’s face might have helped lull them into submission. No doubt they hoped it was a robbery, not worth getting shot over. He kicked the wooden door aside and shoved them roughly into the storeroom. Then he pushed them both against the wall and ordered them in French to remove their clothing.

“Please,” the blonde whimpered. Her friend began to whimper as well. Neither touched their clothing.

“Undress.” Marduk pointed the gun at the scrawny one, then back at the blonde.

“We have money. We’ll give it to you. Please,” the blonde stammered.

“You try my patience. I’d rather enjoy you alive. But dead will be nearly as good.” He fired a bullet into the wall behind them, just over the blonde’s head. She remained defiant but her friend suddenly fell to her knees, weeping, and began reluctantly pulling at her sweatshirt, to remove it over her head.

Then he heard a slight sound behind him, a scratching. An alley cat? When he turned for just an instant—it wasn’t safe to take his eyes off the women—he caught a glimpse of a single black line, irregular in the semi-dark. It was hardly there. But Marduk, with a disgusted sensation, realized that it was a glimpse of a Malefactor. He cursed under his breath. No doubt they had continued to observe the black pools building somehow even after the sentries appeared to leave, and one had followed him here. One or more. He’d have to give this terrible turn his undivided attention.

He took two steps forward and swiftly knocked both the women unconscious with blows that combined the gun’s handle with his fist. As they slumped to the floor he turned and watched the Malefactor materialize. His, or her, or its, sluggishness in crossing into this time encouraged Marduk. In dealing with these creatures in the past, he knew time transit didn’t always flow so swimmingly for them. It could give him an inside track in a battle.

Indeed, he’d never actually seen one fully in the flesh, though the two that had nearly killed him had materialized sufficiently to do real damage. This one was taking what seemed like forever to materialize. Marduk didn’t mind the thunder starting to boom outside or thick raindrops splattering the stairs, but when the blonde groaned, he realized Malefactor slowness could cost him the pleasures of living flesh. He couldn’t allow the women to be living threats behind him while he grappled with the Malefactor, who didn’t have enough flesh on him for Marduk to attack yet. And he’d foolishly not brought spare ammo with him; bullets in the women’s heads would reduce his store for the main target. Worries were endless in this vale of tears, Marduk reflected.