Who Hunts the Hunter (29 page)

“She had an auditor with her.”

“Yes, so you said.” Phalen smiles, then leans against the control console, gazing at the central display."What are we calling our new matrix?”

“Germaine suggested ‘Striper.’ ”

“Alluding to the subject’s eccentric coloration?”

“It seems appropriate.”

“Oh, I quite agree. I’m particularly keen, Ben, to see how this Striper compares metagenetically to her offspring. This could have implications that extend far beyond the immediate focus of our work.” Phalen pauses to smile, then says, “Shall we begin?”

Ben turns to the console keyboard and taps in several commands. On the display screen, the dark queen is up on her feet and roaring, as if she hears the tapping of the keys and somehow guesses their import. Above her, hidden ducts are now opening and discharging a gas that is both odorless and colorless.

Five seconds later, Striper lies on her side, unmoving except to breathe. Telltales on the control console indicate she is asleep."No immunity,” Phalen says."Now we wonder whether the Were’s fabled regenerative ability will foster the rise of a tolerance.”

“Err on the side of caution, Doctor.”

“Certainly, Ben.”

Life signs remain stable. The dark queen sleeps. They set a research assistant to monitoring the console and go into the next room to prepare for the next step. A small metasurgical team is ready and waiting. A technician helps Ben into a gown and gloves and then an air mask. Phalen suits up similarly.

Ben turns to the two elves, the bountyman Tang and his female associate."Dr. Phalen prefers that you wait here while we’re conducting the procedure,” he says.

“It’s your show, Doctor,” Tang replies."I’ll warn you again that the gas is not always effective, and the tigress is very fast. If she awakens, she could have you in seconds.” Ben’s stomach churns some more. He doesn’t want to be inside the dark queen’s cell when she wakes. Tang’s weapons seem feeble compared to Striper’s massive fangs and claws."You’re sure you can control her?”

“We got her here, didn’t we?” Tang says quietly.

Before Ben can decide how to answer that, Phalen announces he’s ready, then they’re all turning, moving through the door and into the dark queen’s den.

“All right, my good people. Take your places. Quiet, please.”

And then they’re beginning the procedure to remove metaphysically preserved blood and tissue samples.

52

Candles gleam through a haze of incense slowly curling, rising into the dark. Bandit sits cross-legged, gazing into the astral from the center of his medicine lodge. He has been many hours considering what he will do, trying to anticipate what will come, and making preparations. The time has come for him to begin. He rises with the incense, drifting free of his physical flesh, beyond the boundaries of his lodge, then through the dark fabric of the building around him. He emerges, still seated cross-legged, hovering a few meters above the ground, into the astral twilight at the rear of the building.

People speak of cities as living organisms, but that is deceiving. On the astral plane, the energies of life are clearly perceptible, but the city itself—the crete, the structures—are all dead. The buildings look like computer-generated pics: flat, artificial, illusory.

Yet, every building gleams with the life energies of the thousands of people within it. The astral landscape pulses with that energy, sometimes brightly, sometimes only dimly. Even here, in the heart of the Bronx, amid all these concrete and plastic coffins, nature lives.

Bandit assenses a change in the flowing, fluctuating pulsations of energy, and turns.

A familiar figure emerges from the dark shade of an alleyway. No neophyte’s idealized self-image, but rather the astral form of a portly man wearing a black beret and an old green army jacket with many pockets. He calls himself Pug. He follows Dog. He possesses great power. Bandit descends to face him.

“You go to confront a mage?” Pug says.

Bandit nods."I seek no confrontation. Only information.”

“And if you must fight?”

Bandit knows what answer he must give, but hesitates before one as knowing as Pug. Lion is the willing warrior, as is Wolf. Raccoon is not. Bandit forces the words out."Raccoon fights when he must.”

“For what purpose?”

“For blood. For my sister.”

“You speak like Wolf.”

Bandit shakes his head."Even solitary Raccoon will turn and fight when his own are threatened. It is in the way of things.”

Pug smiles, but the smile quickly fades."You grow sure in your steps, young shaman. That is well. There is much evil in the plex and you walk a dangerous path. Take care.”

“I will.”

Pug nods and waits. It is Bandit who must turn to go. Dog never turns from a friend, or even the friend of a friend. It is part of Dog’s nature.

Bandit turns and soars high across the skyline. The astral terrain becomes a blur, but he knows where his path leads. He notes the position of the Van Cortlandt Industrial Park and the Hurley-Cooper lab building, then the highway leading north through the sprawl, more or less parallel to the broad expanse of the Hudson River.

An instant passes and then he’s hovering just above a dull gray road in front of a large dull gray building, reverberating with primitive violence, radiant and seething with colors of hatred, treachery, and death. Oddly, the sign in front of the building is pale with apathy and indifference. Bandit puzzles, and abruptly realizes he’s hovering before the prison for the criminally insane, located in Ossining, just north of Tarrytown.

Too far.

Movement through the astral can be tricky.

The world blurs. Bandit streaks back along his path and stops a hundred meters above a highway interchange. This is where he went wrong. He zips down through the interchange to an exit ramp to local roads that stream toward him in a blur as he rushes ahead, then slow to show him the main entrance to the Riverside Corporate Community, located in Dobb’s Ferry. Now he’s got it right.

The complex is unusual, flush with the energies of life, an oasis of parkland amid the squalor of the sprawl. Tree-lined streets lead past large houses surrounded by lush lawns. The gleam of life from within the houses is so soft that no more than a very few could dwell within. Only a dean among scientists or a daimyo among suits could rate highly enough to live in a place like this. Amy says that Dr. Liron Phalen has been living here for many years. KFK International provided this place for him as part of the incentive bringing him to Hurley-Cooper Laboratories.

Bandit approaches Phalen’s house carefully, finding cover among the trees surrounding the property. The house is big, two stories tall with steep roofs and tall chimneys. Watcher spirits wait at the corners of the roofs. These small creatures look a little like sprites, little elves with butterfly wings, but with horns. Bandit summons one of his own, a small spirit in the form of a raccoon that materializes in his lap, looking up at him with big round eyes.

Bandit gestures at the watchers."
Distract
them
."

“
Yes,
Master
." The spirit streaks upward to nearly a hundred meters above the house and begins taunting the watchers, screaming insults, cursing, all the while making a noise like somebody banging with a hammer on an empty metal drum.

The watchers drift upward, exclaiming, gesticulating.

The astral blurs—Bandit reaches the side of the house in an instant. He slips in through the wall. There are alarms in the wall, sophisticated devices, but they have no life and so no significance to anyone on the astral plane. He enters a spacious room like a living room, so-called, filled with all the usual dead furnishings, but also a number of interesting objects. Vases and bowls and other artifacts, like from a museum, scattered across tables and shelves and the fireplace mantel. All show glimmers and gleamings of magical energies. Bandit considers these artifacts briefly. They are as much a part of the room as the many-paned windows and shaggy carpet, and yet, to him, perhaps only to his aesthetic sense, they seem alien, as if originally from some place unknown to him, a place very far away.

There is a strange character about the room, too. An alienness that goes beyond mere decor, beyond artifacts. A strangeness Bandit can’t quite identify. It’s like coming to a foreign land, a place beyond the world of the mundane. Maybe that has to do with the fact that the house is occupied by a mage—one of those hermetic types who try to reduce the magnificent of nature to ridiculous artificial abstractions. Or maybe it’s something more.

Bandit settles down through the floor in search of a basement, but finds only dark, dusty spaces that may have been abandoned for years. He rises again to ground level, passes through an open doorway and enters a broad hall. A stairway leads to the second level. At the top of the stairs is another hallway, extending off to right and left. Directly across from the top of the stairs is a set of double doors that burn with the energy of a powerful ward.

Powerful wards protect great secrets. Here, Bandit decides, he will find Phalen’s special place, his hermetic library, his spell books and scrolls and other arcana.

It’s no surprise when a radiant white figure steps out through the doors. Wards are just one form of defense. This will be Phalen’s familiar or some other allied spirit charged with guarding Phalen’s secrets. Bandit expected this. At first, the spirit takes the form of a woman, a stunning woman in flowing robes, like from out of a fashion vid. Abruptly, though, it transforms into a creature of horror, a monstrous thing with wings and menacing claws, shrieking at him like a bird of prey.

“
You
do
not
belong
here
!”

And then, behind one monster rises a second, a grotesque manifestation like a simsense demon, formed of air and smoke. Bandit feels the force of its magic at once. An elemental spirit. It is clearly a powerful spirit. In fact, both familiar and elemental have much power. The danger is clear.

An ordinary intruder would be doomed.

Bandit draws a handful of herbs and twigs from his pocket and casts it across the hallway, murmuring a single word of power. There is a puff of smoke, a flash of light. The familiar shrieks and grows brighter than before. The elemental swells, expanding toward him like a thriving cloud. Bandit notices the air around him growing thick, constrictive, and then, an instant later, thicker still.

New spells do not always work quite right.

"
Watch
out,
Master
!” his watcher calls out, appearing suddenly at his shoulder."
They’re
attacking
!”

No kidding.

The familiar screams. Perhaps this is some sort of arcane command. The elemental surges forward, swelling rapidly in size to fill most of the hallway. Bandit exerts his will, breaks free of the elemental’s grip and drops down through the floor, into a broad groundfloor hallway.

Inanimate objects like floors and walls have no substance on the astral, but they are an obstacle to vision and all the other senses, including the sixth sense of magically active beings. That makes them an effective barrier to all forms of magical attack.

Unfortunately, such beings as familiars and elementals are just as capable of penetrating floors and walls as the average shaman. They follow instantly, streaking down from the ceiling.

“
Master!
Above
you
!" the watcher cries.

Bandit darts aside, through a wall, into a room like a dining room. He casts a handful of sand across the astral terrain. The magic discharged with the sand attracts swirling streams of vibrant power that instantly coalesce, rising into five near-perfect images of Bandit’s aura, his own astral form.

His pursuers come through the wall even as the phony auras arise.

“
Master
!"

“Quiet.”

The watcher falls silent.

Familiar and elemental both hesitate.

Bandit thrusts his flute out before him like a baton, and says, “Go away.”

And suddenly he’s at the center of a swirling maelstrom of power, a power so potent he feels the hairs standing up along the back of his arms and neck. The familiar’s astral form turns blinding with radiant energy. The elemental swells to fill the entire room. The watcher screams with terror. The familiar shrieks. The elemental wails. The magic swirling ever more furiously around Bandit discharges like a fusillade of thunderbolts crashing down from the heavens, and a howling arises that seems likely to rock the house from its foundations.

And, in another moment, all is silent.

The elemental is gone.

Some spells work as they should.

The familiar hovers near one side of the room, no longer looking like a monstrous bird of prey, but rather like an attractive woman garbed in flowing robes. Looking around the room a bit tentatively, as if maybe a little afraid that she is suddenly all alone.

Great power does not always equal skill in magical conflict.

Bandit has brought with him the Mask of Sassacus, which he now lifts in front of his face. As he speaks, the power of the Mask reaches out and wraps around the familiar like a snake, gripping her tightly, permeating her aura with its influence. The familiar resists, but in the end her struggle is useless."You will obey me.”