Who Hunts the Hunter (39 page)

Bandit opens his palms, and whispers.

The figure that appears beside him is about the size and shape of a dwarf. It appears to wear natural tan leather, from its heavy, fringed shirt to its beaded moccasins. A raccoon cap sits on its head. Its long gray beard gives its face an aged character, which seems highly appropriate for a venerable being like a hearth spirit.

“Let spirits contest with spirits,” Bandit murmurs.

“Yessireee.” The hearth spirit thrusts out an arm, forefinger extended. Power surges across the astral.

“
Master
!” Vorteria exclaims.

But by then Vorteria has dropped the shield protecting Phalen in order to protect herself. Life energy flashes and crackles. Hearth spirit and familiar spirit wage war with the very life force of their own existence, and the contest promises to drag out long, for the two seem evenly matched.

Bandit darts around the familiar in order to face Phalen directly, and moves directly into the path of the spell Phalen has been preparing.

Not good.

The power hits him like a floodtide, surrounding him, weighing in on him, particularly in the area of his head. At once, his head begins to feel like it’s being attacked by twelve mad dwarfs swinging warhammers. It’s very distracting. The spell seems intended to confuse his mind or possibly to crush his will. It’s powerful, too. Bandit guesses that Phalen isn’t familiar with any of the explosive, fireballing, shock-wave-producing, pyrotechnical spells one sometimes encounters in the streets. Good thing.

Bandit staggers back a few steps. The weight of the spell is making it hard to think. Hard to figure what to do. He must know some way of countering this spell. Something clever. Quick.

Before time runs out.

77

The maze of tunnels comes to an end at a narrow passage that seems chopped out of bedrock, and that passage ends after about twenty meters. Brian exhales heavily, guessing this is finally the end, wondering if he and Art are lost, but then he notices Art looking up.

“Here we are, kid,” Art says.

“Yeah? Where’s here?”

“I’ll give you one guess.”

The rocky ceiling is less than a meter overhead. Directly above Art’s head, chopped out of the rock, is a squarish recess containing a squarish door or hatch.

Art pulls something from his pack, and turns to face Brian."Know how to set one of these?”

The item in Art’s hand is saucer-shaped, twenty centimeters in diameter. The broken block lettering along the rim, reads, ARMTECH SAD-190. There’s also a warning about explosives being the province of qualified personnel. Brian asks, “You got a detonator?”

Art pulls one from a pocket. It’s about the size of a pack of cigs. Armtech DD-7 preset for thirty-second delay.

“Just lemme ask you one question.”

Art compresses his lips, frowning, then says, “Sure, kid. One question. Shoot.”

“These creatures we’re blasting. I don’t know what the frag they are, and maybe I don’t wanna know. That’s not my point. My point is that I’m working for the Department of Water and Wastewater Management, and I ain’t seen a water main in at least a couple of hours. I’m not even sure if we’re still in Manhattan. What I wanna know is ... how do you figure these things with the red monster eyes pose some kinda threat to the metroplex’s water supply?”

Art scowls, then jabs a finger at Brian’s face."You got any idea, kid, how those creatures got the way they are?"

"Not a fraggin’ clue.”

Art jabs the finger a little closer."Let’s suppose they’re infectious. Suppose they make new ones by infecting ordinary people. Now suppose they infected everybody in the plex? What then?”

Brian wonders about that, and says, “Then I guess it wouldn’t matter if they fragged with the water supply or not.”

“Exactly,” Art says."There’d be no water supply. There’d be nobody left to keep it running.”

Brian hesitates."Then we’d be out of a job.”

Still scowling, Art nods.

“Does the union know about this?”

Art glares, hands Brian the Armtech shaped-charge and detonator, then makes a cradle of his hands. Brian slings his weapon, gives Art his foot and thrusts upward, lifting one knee onto Art’s shoulder. The Armtech charge comes with a gelatin base that sticks to almost anything. Brian strips the plastic shield off the gelatin, positions the charge on the hatch just above his head, then presses the charge into place. The detonator sticks to the charge by a similar gelatin base.

“We ready to blow?”

“Do it,” Art growls.

Brian pulls on the timer cord, then hops back to ground. He and Art jog back along the passage. The explosion is deafening.

When they return, there’s a hole in the ceiling about a meter across and no sign of the hatch. Brian gives Art a boost up through the hole. Art turns back and pulls him up.

That puts them in a dark, dry, dusty place that looks like a basement. Lots of crates and boxes piled around in stacks. Cobweb-laden shelves divide the space into aisles. Brian gets a sort of hinky feeling creeping up the back of his neck that maybe he and Art aren’t alone anymore. Is that rustling noise he hears the sound of his own breathing, or is something moving in here, moving all around the basement, maybe inside some of those crates?

Art signals mil-style. Grenades. There, there and there. Five-minute delay. Brian gestures in reply. Interrogative.
Negative!
Art answers with a stabbing motion of his hand.
Just
do
it!

Well, all right.

Brian pulls three grenades from his web harness and sets them beside the crates Art indicated. Five-minute delay. When he looks up, Art’s motioning him forward, across the basement, around a corner, then up a flight of stairs.

The stairs lead into the ground floor of a richly furnished house. Brian realizes it’s a house and not a condo as he and Art move rapidly from room to room, as he gets glimpses through exterior windows, as he realizes the spaces here are bigger than in any condo he’s ever seen, except on
Corporate
Lifestyles
. Maybe the creatures they’re hunting have infected some big wiz corporate exec. It’d have to be a real prime mover for the slag to afford an actual house.

Another flight of stairs leads them to a pair of ornate wooden doors. Art pauses in front of them, then turns down the upstairs hallway. He signals.
Action
imminent!

The door at the end of the hall swings open. They dart into a bedroom like a Victorian hologram: cascading drapes, onyx furnishings, huge canopied bed. Next to the bad stands a tall elf woman in a white medtech uniform. In the bed lies something inhuman.

It’s like a dead man, or a dead woman. The skull is totally bare of hair and any of the fleshy features that make a human face. It’s like a skull with sunken eyes, a hole for a nose, blackened teeth, no lips. The arms and hands lying on the bedcover are skeleton-thin and as white as bone. The sunken eyes glare a fiery red.

“Shick!” Brian shouts.

“NOW, KID!” Art hollers.

They open up on full auto. The elf medtech seems to faint. The thing in the bed twitches and jerks and screams and then everything flashes white.

78

The scream of terror and pain comes to him clearly across the astral terrain and instills in Liron Phalen a horror that shakes his consciousness to the core.

Watcher spirits come streaking toward him.

“
Master
!” they cry."
Intruders
!”

“Vorteria!” Liron exclaims."My wife!
GO
!”

Vorteria must rescue his wife. He himself must remain here in his office because the shaman must be defeated or everything will be lost. He must concentrate intensely, focus all his power and skills. The intricate construct of his spell is rapidly devolving, nearing the brink of collapse. He must not permit that to happen.

79

Phalen’s spell weakens. His familiar streaks out of sight. Bandit isn’t really sure why and he doesn’t have time to worry about it. His hearth spirit vanishes, its service complete, which leaves him facing Phalen by himself.

“Deezle,” he blurts.

A watcher in raccoon-like form appears directly beside Phalen’s head and begins screaming,
screaming,
SCREAMING
! as loud as fire alarms and air horns and warning klaxons. Phalen twitches visibly. The force of Phalen’s spell shifts further off-center and Bandit rises from a crouch with one hand extended, exerting his will, deflecting the blazing energies of Phalen’s magic.

Now, he must concentrate. He must become as completely Raccoon as he has ever been. The spell he must use comes to mind. He takes a step toward the rear of the room, toward Phalen. He must get very near Phalen to do what must be done and bring Phalen’s evil to an end.

80

Amy lifts her head from the cradle of her crossed arms to find herself sitting at a small rectangular table in a room cluttered with filing cabinets, bookshelves, and what she takes to be castoff computer equipment. She sits back, pushes her hair out of her eyes, and wonders what’s happened. She feels ... Peculiar. Weak, a little shaky, like she fainted or something. Her stomach feels strangely empty, like she’s just finished being sick, coughing up her lunch. Only she doesn’t remember having lunch or being sick.

What day is it? Where is she and what is she doing here? Her watch shows the hour’s approaching noon. Why isn’t she in her office?

She feels wrung out.

The room has two doors. She gets to her feet and steps toward the nearest one. It slips aside. She gets as far as the doorway before realizing where she is and seeing what’s going on.

The room before her is Dr. Phalen’s office. Phalen is standing behind his desk and making arcane gestures in the air. The desk and the floor around him are littered with window fragments and books. At the other end of the room, now looking at her, is someone resembling Scottie, wearing Scottie’s long dark coat, carrying his flute, only his face and head look less like the face and head of a human being than that of an animal, like a raccoon.

Amy gapes."
Scottie
?”

Patches of air shimmer and fade. Both men gesture arcanely. Dr. Phalen seems to straighten up, grow fuller, stronger. The other man seems diminished somehow, smaller, weaker. As if being forced back into a corner. For an instant, the resemblance to a raccoon diminishes and she sees that it really is Scottie facing off with Phalen, and she gasps.

What are they doing? What’s happening?

“Go away, my dear,” Dr. Phalen says."You’re in danger.”

A voice whispers into her ear. It’s Scottie’s voice."Do something,” he says."He’s killing my will.”

Amy exclaims, “What?
Do
what?
!”

“Phalen’s evil must be stopped.”

The room wavers and blurs, her head pounds, and suddenly all Amy can see is Dr. Phalen, but he is not Dr. Phalen. He is a horror, a grotesque skeletal creature with a skull for a face and claws for fingers. Amy’s first response is shock. She cries out, but even as the shock resounds, vibrating through her body, she remembers—the cup of tea, the crashing weight of Phalen’s will. He tried to use her in some way, used his powers on her. Forced her to speak. To lure Kurushima here. She realizes that she must have been wrong about Scottie’s warning, and wrong about Phalen right from the start.

The air shimmers around Scottie’s head. The likeness of the raccoon diminishes."Oh, god!” Amy exclaims."What should I do?”

Scottie whispers, “Distract him.”

How? Amy looks around frantically.

How does she do that?

81

Amy’s sudden appearance comes as a shock.

“Distract him,” Bandit whispers, and by the time he says that the balance of power has shifted once again. Phalen’s spell has gathered weight and power, now pressing him back like a tide of air too thick and heavy to stand against. The assault on his will becomes almost invincible. His hand and arm begin quaking with the effort of maintaining his shield. He strains to move another step forward, but finds his feet will not cooperate.

Phalen chuckles. His voice comes soft and complacent to Bandit’s ears."You are strong, my dear shaman, a worthy adversary, but I have gained too much through my fraternity with the transcendental.”

Then, suddenly, Amy is beside Phalen, shouting, and swinging a large tome like a club, striking Phalen across the head.

Phalen sways and grunts. The cosmetic mask covering his face shifts and falls away, baring the horrific features below. Phalen shouts in outrage and the weight of his magic slackens. Bandit thrusts his flute up over his head and forces his foot ahead a whole step and the final contest begins. His special spell begins unfolding, gathering power, assuming the astral form of an enormous furry Raccoon, rising like a shadow to stand erect on two legs behind Phalen’s back.

Phalen seems to assense the power gathering behind him and begins to turn around, but then the spell strikes.

The giant Raccoon claps its paws over Phalen’s face, and tugs, and disappears. Phalen’s shrill scream of agony rises high and loud. He lifts his hands to the bloody gashes of his eyes and staggers.