The Shape Stealer (29 page)

They would start with one hundred million each and see how it went. They sealed their agreement with a handshake.

Afterward Will returned to his five-bedroom San Francisco apartment. (He used it mostly to store the US financial records of Green Hills Partners, as the San Francisco office was too small for that.) It comprised the entire third floor of the white brick 1920s walkup at 891 Post Street, where
Maltese Falcon
author Dashiell Hammett had once lived on the fourth floor. There he slept a few hours. Nocturnal sleep was still a novelty, though he was getting more accustomed to it. He awoke with a start around two a.m., partly from the irregularity involved in new sleeping habits but more from the high-pitched screech of a car braking on nearby Polk Street.

He felt right away that something was wrong. And then he recollected the urgent nighttime task he had assigned himself: he had to revisit the crash site and make sure no remnants of Marduk stained the ground, remains that could turn … troublesome. Will was confident Marduk’s soul had gone straight to Babylonian hell—he’d seen fire in Marduk’s empty eye sockets, reflected along his skull, after his heart had been annihilated—but Will had learned the hard way over four hundred years lived twice that he didn’t know everything about the world of the supernatural. His hybrid state, though liberating in many ways, made him feel a little insecure about his ability to handle Marduk’s possible remnants, but he felt obliged to try.

Will had a car in San Francisco and a driver on five minutes’ call, but he wanted to drive to the Presidio alone. He retrieved his midnight blue Jaguar XKE from a garage across the street, drove a block west to Larkin and made a right, took Larkin all the way down to Bay Street where he made a left. Bay angled southwest and turned into Cervantes, which went into Marina Boulevard, disrupted by construction even in the middle of the night. Will went west as far as he could go and parked in one of the small lots alongside the harbor. He’d enjoyed cruising the empty streets, the salty harbor air refreshing him when he rolled his window down. Right next to the water, though, the air was foggier and seemed gloomier as he began the long walk toward the crash site. The bridge was invisible. A few blurred searchlights serrated the moonless dimness, one from each shrouded bridge tower and one from Alcatraz.

At first, as he finally approached the crash site, he attributed his inability to make out the wreckage to the night’s obscurity. A hundred feet away he slowed, trying not to become agitated. As he came to within twenty feet, reconstructing the crash location by using the bench as a landmark, he could not help but be unnerved: nothing was there. No sentry standing guard, no yellow tape, no charred chassis of a boat, nothing. Just white sand, that empty bench behind him now, and dark waves lapping the shore. As if nothing had happened. No trace of the conflagration: no smear of ash, twist of metal, seared plank, or vampire remains. Between the searchlights and the streetlamps along the Promenade, he could see enough to reach his conclusion, which he augmented with a flashlight. Nothing was there.

Will paced in a fretful circle, gazing out at the fog-sheathed water, as if his motion might unlock the secret of the emptiness. He was a hundred percent certain the mess couldn’t have been cleared away this quickly, given the big-city bureaucracies of San Francisco—police and fire inspectors, shore patrol, coroner, district attorney’s office, and so on—and he was more than a hundred percent certain the crash had happened: he had a witness in Barnes.

He tried to reassure himself that the disappearance might not mean much, but he knew it hinted at the presence of a supernatural force. And Will couldn’t be certain as to what kind of force. He’d heard tales of a colony of ghouls living deep in the cellars of the “Big Rock,” Alcatraz, congregating there in anticipation of some great demon returning from the mists of history. They might have been no more than rumors that lifers had made up before the prison was closed, but they had seeped into San Francisco society—at least, into the portion of it aware there was a supernatural—and stayed there for years. Invisible behind the dense fog, Alcatraz gave off a creepy sensation to him. He really wasn’t worried about local demons, though, and the thought of them tidying up a harbor crash seemed far-fetched, even if the motive was to eat the sentries. No, he fretted more about the possible intervention of a demon on a grander scale, given Marduk’s Babylonian heritage, which transcended Dee’s affiliation with warped alchemy and sixteenth-century conjurers. As Will paced the wasteland of sand, he tried to tell himself that such a grand intervention was improbable, and he finally took the first step or two to depart.

Will tripped over a jagged piece of metal lying an inch or so below the sand. As he regained his balance, he felt an electrifying chill go through his body, as if he had brushed up against a current from another world. Electrifying, but not in a good way.

He knelt down, felt cautiously around the metal’s edge in the event it could be sharp enough to cut him. It was jagged and uneven, but he was able to grip it delicately enough to pull it up.

Will recognized the artifact the moment he saw it. It was streaked with sand and other less readily identifiable grime, but the original silver gleamed in patches here and there. Each of the bars of the triangle had miniature, grotesque sculptures on it: a scorpion with a human head, a dog with tusks, a man with a monkey’s head, a lightning bolt stained scarlet by some unidentifiable substance. It was so cold to the touch that he could barely hold it. This was the five-thousand-year-old Babylonian Triangle, a demonic amulet created by the same wizards who had bred Marduk’s bloodline, cross-breeding humans with monsters. The same one the haunted silver box had once held at a New York City auction. The same one that had briefly been shown on the light show screen during the Doors concert.

Nine had been made, but only two had survived from antiquity.

Will had no idea how it had gotten here, or what its connection could be to the wreckage’s disappearance, but he was acquainted with its history and knew what he needed to do with it.

Bury it at sea. It required a water burial.

Perhaps he could drive up onto the bridge with it, stop midspan, and—

Despite its coldness, the amulet suddenly burst into silver flames, molten hot. Will had to hurriedly drop it and step away from it. He watched it for a few minutes; there was no sign of the flames diminishing. Even if he had a way of getting it to the car, it didn’t seem safe to try to drive it up on the bridge. Impulsively, bracing against the pain, he bent toward it, seized it, and in one continuing motion flung it in a low arc more than a hundred feet offshore, where the water was several feet deep. The flames seared his hand, but he had done it all so quickly that they had barely penetrated his flesh, and he felt only an irritation in his skin afterward.

A silver flash exploded from the triangle as it plunged into the water, so powerful a one that the light splashed off the mists shrouding both Alcatraz and the Bridge.

The triangle was still alive. He could go out in the water and try to retrieve it and bury it in much deeper water, but he sensed that he’d need full vampire capacities to attempt something that dangerous. And it wasn’t his priority: Garet was, and for her, the less he was a vampire, the better.

Reluctantly, resignedly, he walked back to his car. Not looking back over his shoulder even once.

36

Break on Through

The Will who rose with me to face the world that morning was no longer
young
Will. I thought of him as
new
Will as he rallied Annick, Jules, and Kepler to get ready for the concert.

“We must protect Garet above all else,” he explained over breakfast. “The Malefactors will try to attack her. She’s the focal point. That’s why they tried to attack her at Père Lachaise. Now that she has the box, they’ll try even harder.”

“I will take up the rear and be on the lookout for any Malefactors who might be following her,” Kepler gallantly offered.

“Annick and I will take the advance guard,” Jules said, falling into line behind Will’s lead with surprising alacrity. I would have thought he’d have balked at Will taking charge, but Will radiated such confidence this morning that even Jules seemed compelled to follow him.

“And I will be by her side,” Will said, squeezing my hand. I saw Annick and Jules exchange a look and Kepler raise an eyebrow at our new intimacy, but I didn’t care. I’d have to sort out my feelings for the two Wills eventually, but not, I decided, today.

*   *   *

We decided to walk to the Fillmore. Becky, Jay, and Fiona had gone on ahead to set up, but Will felt far too keyed up to go in the van. A brisk walk, we all agreed, would do us good. We set out in our agreed upon formation. I carried the silver box in the laptop case strapped across my chest. We walked west to Fillmore Street and then turned south. The street went up at a steep angle for a few more blocks before reaching the top of the hill. We all turned around at the crest of the hill, as if upon an arranged signal, and looked back at the bay. The fog had lifted—or perhaps moved elsewhere—revealing sparkling blue water, the majestic sweep of the Golden Gate Bridge. The only blot on this pristine landscape was a cloud of what looked like smoke lingering in the area around the marina. It had a faded quality to it that made me think it could be several hours old, as if it was incredibly pernicious or had gotten snagged on some polygonal gap in time (as Kepler might think of it).

“It looks like there’s been an explosion,” Jules remarked.

“I hope no one was hurt,” Annick said, concern creasing her forehead, and then she turned to walk down the hill.

I sniffed the air, smelling smoke and gasoline on the brisk wind. Attuning myself to the currents of air, I listened to what they carried from the marina. At first I heard sirens and screams but faded and faint, as if from several hours earlier. Then, screening those out, I heard a familiar voice. It was also time-lagged, but it came through stronger.

You had the right key word in your first question.

“Is he all right?” an almost identical voice asked from right beside me.

“Yes,” I said, meeting his eyes. “And I believe he’s destroyed Marduk.”

“Excellent!” Will said, grinning, “I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

*   *   *

I felt a heightened sense of danger as we continued down the hill on Fillmore. Will might have eliminated Marduk, but that would only free the Malefactors to focus on
us
. I scanned the faces on the street anxiously. This part of Fillmore was a fashionable shopping area. Well-dressed men and women strolled along looking in shop windows or lunched at the sidewalk cafés. It was hard to maintain a sense of danger in such a relaxed atmosphere—even Annick was window shopping. She had stopped in front of a boutique and was studying a display of exotic high-heeled boots.

“Really, Annick,” Jules was admonishing her. “Someday your love of shoes is going to—” But Jules’s voice froze as Annick pointed to something in the window. I looked at the window and saw what Annick was pointing to. Reflected in the glass was the sunny street full of tourists and shoppers
and
a menacing dark figure approaching from the other side of the street. I turned away from the window and the figure vanished. It was only visible in the reflection. I turned back to the glass—and saw that the menacing dark figure was right behind me. I screamed, and shoppers near me stopped in their tracks and stared open-mouthed at me. Then I saw that Will was directly behind the Malefactor. He drew out a slender silver blade and plunged it into the dark creature’s back, in a deft and lightning-quick kind of way so that no one near us could see him do it. The Malefactor shrieked and writhed … and then vanished. Will stood looking down at his hands.

“Are you all right?” I said, taking hold of his hands and quickly and surreptitiously sliding the dagger back into the sheath in his jacket pocket.

Will nodded. “I am fine. I am only glad I saw the creature before it could attack you.”

“How
did
you see it?” Jules asked. “You weren’t looking in the glass.”

“No,” Will admitted. “I was looking at Garet. But as soon as it approached her I saw it.”

“Hmm.” Kepler, who had caught up with us, studied Will curiously. “I think that’s because you yourself are beginning to fade into the time stream. You partly share the same dimension that the Malefactors travel within, and so they are visible to you.”

“Ah,” Will said with a wistful smile. “Then there’s an advantage to my fading. We’d better get a move on, though, before I fade entirely.”

He took my hand and we continued down Fillmore Street. I glanced once more into the shop windows to make sure there weren’t any more Malefactors about. There weren’t, but I saw something else that alarmed me. In the glass Will’s reflection had grown as dark and spectral as the Malefactor’s.

*   *   *

We reached the Fillmore without any more incidents. When I saw London Dispersion Force featured on the marquee my heart cheered. I hadn’t heard the band in a long time. I could hardly wait to hear Jay’s new songs.

Annick and Jules presented their tickets at the box office.

“Super!” the girl in the ticket window enthused when she saw the old tickets. “These will get you in, but are you sure you want to use them? I bet you could get a bundle for them on eBay.”

Annick and Jules exchanged a look and Jules answered. “I think we’d better use the tickets—just to be sure.”

Kepler produced his ticket and I took out the ones I was carrying. “You’ve got an extra one,” the ticket seller pointed out.

“Could you hold it here for Will Hughes?” Will asked, smiling at the girl. “He’ll be a handsome fellow who looks just like me—my twin, in fact.”

“Wow, there are two of you? Is your brother single?”

“No,” Will replied, glancing at me. “We’re both taken.”

*   *   *

“That was nice of you, to leave the ticket for Will,” I said as we entered the lobby. “But are you sure he’ll be here?”