ELGIN By M.A. Harris Copyright 2011 M.A. Harris Smashwords Edition Discover other titles by M.A.Harris and other authors at Smashwords.com Smashwords, License Notes This eBook is licensed for your personal use only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given to another person. If you would like to share this eBook with another person please go to Smashwords.com and purchase another copy for each additional recipient. If you are reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author <<>> Elgin’s First Life Elgin was born in Beauty, Wyoming, a tiny out of the way town the suited its name. The name on his birth certificate was Elgin Campbell Chalmers IV, though there were no Elgin’s, Campbell’s or for that matter Chalmers in his family history. His father, who had reasons not to remember his own name, thought it was a great joke, Elgin’s mother accepted it as she accepted other things. He grew up wild in some ways, spending time outside when I could have, should have, been studying but he got by. But then, sometime after his twelfth birthday Elgin’s mother simply wasn’t there any more. And while there was a flurry of concern once it was decided that she had not simply walked out on the two ‘boys,’ she was never seen again. After that the pair lived in the 1970’s vintage 24 foot Airstream trailer that had been the ‘cabin’ out on the CircleSbarS ranch where Elgin’s father worked as a cowboy. During the summer the Airstream was set up on the ranch, and in the cold months they moved it to the edge of Beauty, the local ‘big town’ on the end of Black Sky lake. Elgin’s father claimed to have always been a cowboy though no knew where he’d come from before he’s arrived and wooed the fair Jessica Beauty. He claimed that he was a member of the local tribe, that he’d actually been borne in Beauty, though he had no proof. He claimed to be one half Native American and a member of the local tribe, again with no proof. His winter pass time after his wife vanished was a long term campaign to get ‘his’ cut of the tribe’s take from the local casino and tourist industry, spending many hours writing long rambling letters to various people, papers, officials and offices about his terrible plight. Never to any avail. His sixteenth birthday fell on an early fall school-day Thursday. Elgin left his father on the lean-to porch leading to the Airstreams door, kicked back on a rickety old chair had looked like it was about to collapse with the coffee on his belly streaming steam in the cool dry air. The two had exchanged glances and no more before the already wide shouldered boy walked out to catch the bus. That evening Elgin returned to find his father still kicked back in the old chair, the coffee cup in the same position but empty eyes closed, face peaceful. The flakes of snow in the air were settling on the older man’s body, already the same temperature as the cold evening air. It was at the burial that Elgin found out that his father had been a week less than forty. After that Elgin was taken care of by an until then unsuspected, network of cousins among the locals. Quite a few of whom were or at least looked like they were, full blooded Indians. The blond blue-eyed Elgin often looked out-of-place among his cousins, but he didn’t complain when he had to play the bad white guy again and again. He was never much trouble though he often hung around with the local hooligans. And though a ‘good looking boy’ and reasonably ‘common sensed’ he was never a good student or a hard worker, with his school work, though neither lazy nor dishonest. He drifted into adult life with no plan and no ambition. At twenty nine Elgin still lived in the Airstream and worked at the ranch job he’d ‘inherited’ from his father. He wasn’t exactly a drunk, or a pot head, but he wasn’t sober much of the time away from the ranch. His only companion was a huge cat called Humphrey. From a distance Humph looked like his Siamese mother, down to the brilliant blue eyes, but he was the size of a medium weight dog, some said his father had been a mountain lion. Humph certainly had the hunting instincts and grumpy disposition of a mountain lion. And it was a good thing that he was very good at hiding, and that Elgin was willing to stand up for him, particularly when small irritating local pets vanished under mysterious circumstances. Elgin knew he was a waste of oxygen most days and a disappointment to some in his extended family, such as it was. He didn’t let it bother him, unless he had a really bad drunk. But every once in a while he’d get drunk and do stupid things. The November of his twenty-ninth year, in the grips of a particularly bad ‘skinful,’ though few who didn’t know him well would have been able to tell, he saddled up an old pack horse and rode up into the mountains on a Friday afternoon, ignoring the oncoming wall of clouds that promised an early snowstorm. Saturday, half-frozen and still drunk Elgin drove his horse out of the safety of the camp in a deep cove in a rock wall, a hide he’d used many times, out into the snow and ice. An hour later the horse slipped and threw Elgin down a rocky precipice into a shallow stream. Unconscious, with one arm and both legs broken Elgin drowned in six inches of ice-cold water. It was only then that things started looking up. <<>> Chapter 1 In which our protagonist meets an enigmatic old man and a girl who could just eat him up Elgin woke up with a splitting headache and various other aches, not the least his back and butt, which appeared to be resting on a slab of ice cold rock. He opened his eyes without realizing it at first, it was dark, very, very dark. His nose told him he might be in a cave of some kind, which would explain the lack of light and what he was laying on. Then his nose also caught a whiff of burning wood and his eyes caught the faintest tint of firelight on the ceiling, light that had not been there an instant before. A roll of the head on the hard stone located the fire, across some kind of cavern, behind a rock reflector. On the other side of the fire a figure sat upright, very still, the firelight bronzing a bare chest and grimly hawk-like face. The beaky nose lifted to point at Elgin, eyes with fire glitter highlights fixed the cowboy, a small smile crooked the thin lipped mouth, “Ah, my young friend, recovered from your little tumble have you?” And Elgin was filled with a whole body memory. His stomach sour with the buzzard piss whisky he’d bought at Bounty Liquor, his head swimming as the horse swayed and slipped under him. The wet snow of the early fall snow lashed at them both, he was almost certain that he’d taken a wrong turn but the path was too narrow for the horse to turn around. He could hear the rush of water nearby, the streams hadn’t frozen over yet, and a lot of the heavy snow was melting and rushing down the mountain. The weather was at that deadly tipping point between winter and fall where the ground could be slicker than snot. And as if that thought had been a trigger the horse’s front hooves slipped, in an instinctive move that saved the horse’s life it dug it’s rear hooves in and flinched it’s weight back. Unfortunately this tossed the loosely seated Elgin out into space. The first break in his fall was a solid rock wall that snapped his arm and dislocated his shoulder, a leg caught in a dead bush’s gnarled remains and snapped, the other was broken over a rocky knob as he flipped over and down. Elgin’s skull met a flat section of rock and he did a good imitation of a dead man flop into the bottom of the rock gully, landing face down, blocking an icy rush of water. He was a cork in a bottle, or rather, a not very good dam. In a few seconds Elgin was underwater, covered with water that would have frozen if it had stopped moving. Not that he cared; Elgin was already, to all intents and purposes, dead. Elgin yelped as he slammed his shoulder into another rocky spur, this one in the fire lit cavern. Staggering, flailing, whimpering a little, he tried to make sense of what he remembered, and what he felt now, and he didn’t like any of it because he was naked, and his right arm, both legs and side of his skull all hurt, though more in the healing bruise sense than shattering, killing blows, sense. “Hey boy, you should be careful, you’ll hurt yourself. By the way it’s a lot warmer over here by the fire.” The man’s voice was a very pleasant baritone, faintly foreign, or at least educated to Elgin’s ear. “What did you do to me?” Elgin looked around, there was no sign of an exit, nor of his clothes. Or of the other man’s clothes, other than the leather breechcloth held up by a leather thong around skinny hips, The stranger, who was rather short and slight, bronzed with a beaky nose he didn’t look much like the Amerinds Elgin had spent his life around. Elgin forced himself to stand straight and face the other man, who nodded, with that irritating hint of a smile, “I, or rather a, uh friend of mine, saved your life.” “How? I was dead, man!” He ran a shaking left hand over his right arm, could feel the bump of a healed break where there had not been one before. “I was drowned, my skull cracked, the water covered me.” Grinding his teeth he fought back unmanly tears. The beaky nosed man’s effeminately fine eyebrow had risen in interest, “Really? You remember being dead?” “I remember.....rem..?” Suddenly it struck Elgin as very peculiar, how does one remember being dead? But it hadn’t been a nightmare, had it? “It is interesting that you much at all of that incident. I suppose its not surprising since Eldest directed me to you.” The old man stopped, waved Elgin forward, “Come, sit with your back against the reflector, it will warm you more quickly.” He also moved to a small leather satchel that had been hidden behind a rock, he pulled out another breechcloth, this one of a fine cloth, even the belt and tossed it to Elgin. Elgin put the cover on and settled down in front of the fire warmed rock, the fire had warmed the surface of the rock at his back and it felt wonderful on his chilled skin. “I am sure you are wondering who I am?” “And your friends?” Elgin glanced around, still unable to see an exit to the rock chamber. “Ah…my…friend,” he emphasized the singular but also made it sound like a question. “I suppose that was a misstatement. I should rather say a relative of an acquaintance of long standing…who was out and about when she shouldn’t have been.” The beak nosed man grimaced, “She’ll be back soon.” “Uh, a woman?” Elgin squeaked. “Don’t worry about your state of dress, she won’t.” the strange man’s eyes were hooded as he looked into the fire. Elgin bit back a hot retort, straightened his shoulders; objectively he knew he wasn’t bad looking, with or without clothes, but he had never had enough experience with women to get over his shyness. “I find it interesting that you are certain that you were dead.” The other man said into the fire, “You see that makes two of us.” “Dead?” Elgin squeaked, but then frowned; the man didn’t look like a zombie or vampire. And that was all crazy fantasy stuff anyway. But he couldn’t shake that memory of the water rushing, its gurgling giggle as it filled in around him, covering him. “For a very long time actually.” Elgin heard the other man whisper. Suddenly there was a rush of cold air and light, Elgin twisted, bright cold light illuminated the shelf of rock he had woken up on. A hidden door had opened across from it, around the corner from the alcove with the old man and his fire. Abruptly the light dimmed as a shadow blocked most of the entrance. “Uh-oh, she’s back for her banquet quicker than I anticipated.” The beak nosed man who claimed to be dead said with a sigh. The shadow took form and then someone, a long legged, shapely someone; stepped into the cavern, standing in the flood of sunlight she was starkly black and white. Stark naked had never been as appropriate a term. There was a hiss of indrawn breath from the woman, no girl was built that way, and she took a long step forward. The light blinked off as abruptly as it had come on. Leaving Elgin blinking, but still able to see the visitor, who appeared to notice the fire and the two men only now. She was even more stunning from the front, a teenager’s dream, red glinting dark hair and a pale oval face filled by huge green eyes and a pouty mouth and a body that would have made a teenager forget the face. And now Elgin saw she wasn’t naked, oddly given the weather outside, she was wearing a strangely old fashioned looking swimsuit that started about midline on her breasts and ended high on her thighs. Old fashioned in form, but utterly new age in material, Elgin couldn’t help staring at other things than her face, the swimsuit’s material was skin tight, he could see details of her feminine anatomy that made him jerk his gaze upward, the material was weird, almost scaled. The woman-girl was staring at Elgin, then seemed to search beyond him as if she couldn’t see the beak nosed man who claimed to be dead. She was licking her lips with a pink tongue tip, in a seductive way, though her face was a blank, her eyes oddly flat. Elgin heard the other man whisper near his ear, or did he hear it inside his head? “Don’t be fooled boy, she’s not human, not even a she really. She can sense you right now but not see you, she can scent you, that’s why the tongue, the nose is just for show, she can sense your bodies heat, knows you’re near but also senses a fire she cannot see. Don’t hate her for what she, it, but do fear her. She did d save your life, but only because her kind likes its prey alive and screaming when they take it.” The girl moved, relaxed, smiled, “What are you afraid of handsome?” her voice was throaty, welcoming, she rested a hand on one shot hip but she wasn’t, quite, looking Elgin’s way. It was more than any man-boy could take, it was not Elgin’s cerebellum that answered, “Uh, nothing ma’am.” He stood before he remembered his own near nakedness and breechcloth, as he realized how nearly naked he was, he felt a shaky shiver of excitement. Not that it mattered, in the blink of an eye she had crouched and launched herself at him, her mouth suddenly open to reveal the rending teeth of a shark rather than a human, anything even vaguely human. She was only halfway to him when Elgin’s world-perception flinched, stopped. -o- He was uncomfortable, his sleeping bag was resting on rock with his old insulator pad not doing a good job of padding the knob that was digging into his hip. He could smell the old and not particularly frequently washed liner. There was also the smell of horse, in more ways than one. Elgin opened his eyes. Daylight lit the cove in the rock he had ridden out of to his doom. The fire in the semi natural pit in the rock had burnt down to hot ashes. There was a pile of wood lying next to it. Across the fire, in the depths of ‘his’ secret camping hollow the old pack horse was dozing, one leg folded up, a shoulder propped against the rock. Despite his occupation Elgin wasn’t a morning person, or a person to get out of bed at all unless he had good reason to. But now he couldn’t just lay and drowse, instead he wriggled out, tossed some kindling and sticks on the fire then slipped into his insulated riding pants and shirt as the fire caught. As he fed the fire up to coffee and breakfast size he looked around. Beyond the lip of the overhang the world was white, gray, brilliant blue, and white gray again. The angle of the sun told him it was morning, nine-ish, the sky and wind said that the weather had settled into a pretty but dangerous cycle of snow showers and blowing snow, with temperatures probably slipping down not going up. The old mare gave Elgin a jaundiced look as he approached, he rubbed her shoulder, “Sorry old girl, I’m an idiot, a drunken idiot.” He checked his saddlebags, and found one filled with horse feed and a collapsible watering bucket, so that was the first job, the horse seemed a little surprised by all the attention, but ready to accept it as her due. By the time the horse was dealt with the coffee was burping happily in the old black percolator and the fire pack meal had popped its seal to say it was done. Elgin sighed, poured himself some coffee, spooned in far too much brown sugar and settled back to eat the breakfast meat pie and think about his situation. Coffee scented steam spurted as he stated the impossible, “Yesterday I died.” He stared into the snow that had begun to fall again. He could see the icy underlayment that yesterday’s wet fall had left behind. “Maybe twice?” His stomach clenched as he remembered the horror leaping at him, he remembered the pointy ears revealed when her hair had streamed behind her in mid leap. Like nightmare she had turned from seductive coed into a monster in the blink of an eye, without even having to grow hair or fangs. It had all been there, hidden, just out of sight. He was utterly sure that both events were real memories, but why? He’d been drinking heavily and even taken a few recreational chemicals, a new low, he’d been hallucinating, had to have been. But the memories of waking up yesterday afternoon, staggering out into the snow to puke his guts up, saddling the hungry and cold mare and starting out into the storm, those memories were rock hard real. Even though now Elgin could hardly believe the stupidity of then Elgin. Finishing the ready cooked breakfast he put it down to deal with in a few and walked around the low stone wall that provided a weather break and fire reflector. A few yards outside he crouched down and brushed aside the snow. He hissed in soft resignation when he found the disgusting evidence of then Elgin. A few moments later, a second cup of syrupy coffee cupped in his hands he glanced around, at the rock, the reflector he’d built himself when he was younger, the ledge next to the mare. He hadn’t recognized it yesterday but the beak nosed man had been sitting on the rock to his left, new risen Elgin had been sitting with his back to the reflector a few feet from where he sat now. That campfire had been this campfire except it had seemed enclosed, or had it, had the girl-monster stepped through some other worldly door? He shook his head, rubbed a sore spot, his arm and legs ached, and he didn’t like to think what the side of his face looked like. He had been dead, or as good as, and he’d been healed in hours, not days, not weeks it should have taken to get to this point, if he hadn’t died. Elgin closed his eyes. “Boy there is much more to this world than your civilization knows.” The old man was sitting propped up against the reflector, in jeans and a thick farmer’s plaid shirt, a cup of coffee steaming between his hands. Almost jumping up Elgin’s eyes flew open. And he was alone with the weather once more. Except for the silent chuckle that came from where the old man was, just out of sight, hidden by the light. Sitting down, taking a sip of his coffee syrup, Elgin closed his eyes. The old man grinned, “Very good, boy.” “I’m twenty nine, I’m not a boy,” was all Elgin could think to say. “I’m something like five thousand, you’ll always be young to me.” The beaky nosed man took a sip of the coffee, nodded, “This is good.” Elgin studied the man, realized that if one wrapped him in a turban and let his beard grow in scraggly gray black, the other man might stand in for Osama Bin Laden in a bad TV movie, “You from the Middle East?” “It was the center of the world in those days boy, and much of it a paradise you would not recognize today. I was born on the edge of the burning desert and died there from youthful stupidity, just like you. But when the Iffrit found me in my moment of death, I wasn’t stuck head down in a rocky stream, plugging up the flow. The old one didn’t need the help of the Basik to salvage my carcass, he just waited for me to wake up alive, after being stabbed and flung off a cliff.” “Stabbed?” “My father said she was a sand asp interested only in gold. Turns out he was right, he was very surprised when I went back to admit he had been, it was a bit late for me.” Elgin nodded, opened his eyes, the beak nosed man was gone. Finishing the coffee Elgin made his plans. The weather was not going to get any better, and he didn’t have the supplies to last out a storm, he wasn’t really that far from help. Just far enough to make it unlikely that anyone would find him, if they bothered to realize he was missing in the first place. Restless for some reason he looked out into the weather, bright white, gray and blue right now, though the wind was whipping the snow around and biting at Elgin’s face when he poked it out of the wind shield his niche in the rock provided. Turning this way and that he finally settled on west, something west bothered him, not the Basik nest, that was west and north, their rift resealed behind its twist in space-time. Elgin’s internal soliloquy stopped, how did he know that? What did ‘behind its twist in space-time’ mean? Elgin didn’t know, not quite, but a mind that was almost part of him knew, somewhere, somehow. West, what was west, and not that far west? This was fabulous hiking country in good weather, good rock climbing country as well. But it was lethal in the winter, everyone went elsewhere to ski and snowboard in the winter. People did come here late in the season sometimes, drawn by the raw beauty stripped of the soft green of the warm months. Backpackers? Not horse or mule riders, none of the guides would have brought their animals into this danger, unlike stupid thenElgin. He went back into his niche, pulled on his tawny duster and Stetson, kicked his boots into the cleats he’d found with the horse bucket and feed. He checked the mare, made sure she had some warmed water and a few mouthfuls of feed, she seemed utterly shocked at his behavior, nudging him in horsey worship. He scratched her behind the ear, “Keep your ears open for any trouble, would you kid?” Elgin went into the weather without really thinking about it. He knew these hills and mountains as well as anyone and he wasn’t half drunk, wholly hung over, or riding a horse this time. Making two turns by instinct he found himself on the top of a low ridge that faired into a more massive one in a big fall of rocks, now covered with snow. When he saw that he knew he’d found his target. A few minutes later he cupped his hands and called, “Anyone there?” His voice boomed out across the rocks and echoed back off ridge and snow. Elgin checked to make sure that there weren’t any dangerous slopes that might let lose with an avalanche. He was about to yell again when he saw a movement, an arm waving, a colorful bobble hat, a white face with a wide smile, a moment later another bobble hat and big smile, man and woman. In a moment he slid that back to boy and girl in their late teens, probably a couple. “Oh My God, you found us!” The girl screamed as she flailed through the snow towards him. “I thought that we were toast when my iPhone gave up the ghost!” The boy, he looked like a geek to Elgin. “Hey lady, slow down, STOP. You don’t know what’s under the snow!” Elgin bellowed in his best imitation drill sergeant voice. She dutifully froze, “Oh Crap! Not Again.” She almost screamed looking around her feet in horror. Elgin sighed, then, “Hey, my name’s Elgin, what’s yours?” The “Lacie!” and “Chad!” he got back seemed almost inevitable. “Well Lacie, let me walk over to you, then we can walk back over here.” Elgin walked, not straight towards her, he was almost certain there was a narrow cleft in the ridge top a few feet in front of her and he knew he was walking on the main path. His mind’s eye was overlaying his location with the many memories of coming this way in the past. Lacie and Chad, though excitable and apparently spoiling for (stupid) adventures, were also used to following adult’s orders so they cheerfully waited for him to get them onto ground he knew was safe. They both looked at him with big eyes, “You the Snow Patrol or something?” Chad asked. Elgin smiled, “Nah, just a cowboy out for a ride, didn’t mind the weather too well. What happened to you two?” They colored up and exchanged somewhat shamefaced looks, Lacie kicked the ground, “Kinda the same, but worse, I wanted to go to Snowbird for the skiing, but dad said its still crap snow cover and he needed to work, too high at the Bird, gives him headaches. So we came to Beauty for a cheap and quiet stay. He’s been holed up with his laptop the whole time writing his blog and mom’s been on her laptop and cell running the show back home remotely.” Chad finished, “We heard it was going to snow, but it wasn’t supposed to be too bad, figured it would be really pretty up here in the snow. But we got turned around and my iPhone’s not a good compass without a cell net, and I forgot to turn it off, burned through the battery. I figured the Sommers would call out the National Guard when they realized that Lacie and I were missing.” “Sure they did. This isn’t good country for finding folks on the ground in bad weather, and they can’t fly in these conditions.” Elgin waved at the rockfall, “the weather’s not going to get better any time soon, get your things, and we’ll go.” The pair had high tech backpacks with all the modern conveniences including emergency food. Stuck out here two nights and days they’d done pretty well, very well, considering. They were dressed for the weather and as soon as they were packed he had them following him at as fast a clip as reasonable. They made it back to the niche in the rock and the mare nickered her welcome and gave the two colorful additions a jaundiced eye before accepting another handful of feed from Elgin. Lacie, of course, was horse crazy and made a fuss of the old work horse, who seemed to enjoy the attention. Elgin finished packing, tied the kid’s two backpacks to the saddle and had his little pack train heading downhill in less than half an hour, the mare trailing them head down but uncomplaining. It was coming up on noon and he figured it could take the rest of the daylight hours to get off the hills. Then the clouds he had been watching finally blotted out the sun, and the snow settled in. And then the wind kicked up, cutting visibility to about nil. Elgin was glad he’d linked them together with a length of climbing rope. “Hey mister Elgin, shouldn’t we stop?” Chad called from behind Lacie, who was a few yards behind Elgin. Normally Elgin would have said, yes, but he was certain that they would be in real trouble if they stopped. And now Elgin could see...or was it sense? where he was, and memory told him where to go, almost where to plant each step. He called back, "I know this path well enough, if it gets too much worse I know some safe places further down, where a search party’s more likely to find us.” -o- Caitlin SweetBear had been sheriff of Black Bear Lake County for almost fifteen years, every one of those years she'd had to call out the Winter Rescue Team at least once, but never this early or to such poor results. The Sommer's daughter and foster son had combined typical adolescent heedless behavior with the great bad luck of getting trapped in the little Rockies badlands by one of the nastiest storms she had ever experienced. And there was a rumor that Elgin Chalmers, the town tragedy waiting to happen, had gotten drunk and headed into the hills again. She sighed, she liked Elgin, almost everyone who knew him did, and almost as many worried about the boy, man-boy really, and the pointless path no one had been able to get him off. This was the sort of weather that killed even experienced people like Elgin, and well equipped semi-competent people like the Sommer kids. Normally even in deepest winter she'd be able to call in air spotters and choppers for a few hours at a time. Not this time, the weather report said they'd be lucky if the weather cleared in two more days. The Rescue Team had been hampered, then driven back by the nature of the storm, the icy slush of the first day had bogged them down in mud and behind overflowing streams, then as they got higher in the evening one of the squad leads had slipped on the ice and broken an arm and given herself a concussion. Today the alternating heavy snow, howling wind and bright sunlight had made progress even slower. Caitlin had called around for some support, a couple of more squads would be here very late in the day. The Black Bear Lake County Forest abutted the federally managed badlands and the reservation lands. The park office was a sprawling historic ranch house that had once been rented by Teddy Roosevelt, today it was Rescue Team base camp. The great room ran front to back and at the back massive picture windows bracketed the vast native rock fireplace. Caitlin stood staring out at the mountainside behind the hills, the view softened by the dozens of eight by eight glass panes that made up the century and a half old window. It was already beginning to dim down here in the flatlands and the search squads would have to establish camp soon. The latest snow shower ended in a blustery slap at the window and suddenly the sky was blue though the shadows were getting long and everything was getting that darker coloring that said evening was coming fast. "Uh, sheriff!" Deputy Smitts called, Caitlin looked the way the young man was pointing. Emerging from the tree line was a small string of figures, a tall man in a Stetson and heavy riding coat, two gaily dressed hikers and a horse with big hikers backpacks slung over the saddle. Caitlin was sure she knew the figure in the lead, she blew her cheeks out, “Elgin, you lucky, glorious fool, thank God you found them!” She was outside waiting for them when they reached the rammed snow platform around the park office. Elgin pulled off his hat, looking around at the cars of the rescue team, then back at her, his expression abashed “Ma’am sheriff, hope this wasn’t ‘cause of me?” The two Sommer kids were looking around with wide eyed delight. Caitlin pointed her chin at them, “Fraid not El, you’re being missing was just a rumor, those two were a national emergency in their family’s eyes. They’ll be here in a few, you’ll be their hero.” His handsomely craggy face twitched a little, it was mainly around the brilliant blue eyes that you could see the horror he was feeling. “Oh no, no, wasn’t anything special. They were up there, I brought ‘em back. The weather’s set to be really bad for a while and you know it’s hard finding anything a’tall back in the badlands.” A big expensive black SUV came up the trail from the main road far too fast and fishtailed to a stop not far away. With cries of delight the Sommer family was reunited, the two news vans that had been trailing the Bimmer disgorged their loads of trouble and Caitlin went to do her best to keep it all going in the right direction, not least because the next election was only a year away now. After the first flurry of kisses, hugs, cries of eternal love, then remonstrations of foolish risk taking and apology, the focus shifted to finding and thanking the hero of the moment. However Elgin and the old mare were nowhere to be found. The Sommers quickly gave up, loaded up the car and headed for the hotel, a good meal and a good night’s sleep, the newsmen trailed off to see if they could find where Elgin lived, since Caitlin had smilingly ignored their questions on the topic. Caitlin found Elgin where she had figured the cowboy would be, in the old house’s stable, behind a rather nondescript door. He was cleaning his tack, having dried and brushed the old mare. The old horse, contentedly eating feed, gave the sheriff a careful once over before going back to the food. The Sheriff leaned against a post and watched Elgin’s spare, long practiced motions. The tow headed cowboy was slim hipped and broad shouldered, with long faintly bow legs and long strong arms and hands, she had never seen him without a tan. In fact some said he wasn’t tanned at all, perhaps the only indication of the fact that he was at least quarter blood Amerind. At last he looked up, his blue eyes crinkled with amusement, “Ma’am sheriff, thank you for not telling them where I was.” “You’re welcome Elgin, least I could do since you saved those two, you helped the whole county look heroic.” He cocked his head, the smile a little more evident, “I ‘spose that’s how the newsies ‘ll spin it won’t they?” He went back to rubbing the tack down. Pointed at the phone on the end wall, “Called Charley Calhoun, told him I’d bring the mare back in a day or so, I’ll borrow LittleWolve’s old horse transport. I’ll leave her here till then, if I might?” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Of course Elgin,” she answered, then hesitated before going on, “Elgin the two kids say you appeared out of the snow on foot, walking towards them as if you knew they were there. How’d you know they were there?” The story had sounded odd to her, if no one else. Elgin shrugged, “Was drunk the first night of the storm, spent a time wandering around up there, I think I must have seen them and then forgotten, only thing I can think of.” He was frowning at his tack. It sounded thin to the Sheriff, but possible, his mother had been almost uncannily observant and Elgin had a similar reputation, though everyone made fun of it rather than almost fearing it as they had in Jess Beauty. “You need to be more careful Elgin, a little bird came to talk to me yesterday, told me that perhaps you’d had more than whiskey the night before. There was some fear that perhaps you might have gotten more than anyone had bargained for. A couple of kids ended up in the emergency room after taking some over strength crap.” One of her informers had told her that Elgin had bought some peyote and Quaaludes and the payload had been a lot more potent than the seller had expected. Elgin hung up the bit he had been polishing and turned to pick up his long buff riding coat, holding it up to see if it needed seeing to. Caitlin wondered if he was going to ignore her roundabout question but at last he glanced at her, “I’ll be more careful sheriff. In that way at least, I think my partying days are done.” “Not a day too early if they are Elgin. We’re a small community, folks care for each other, even the ne’er do wells.” He grinned at her, “I know ma’am, thanks.” She made to turn around, then turned back, “And Elgin, keep that mountain lion you call a cat close to home. Festus Pauls called to complain about it again, claims it took one of his prize hens.” Suddenly he was brooding, dangerous looking, “Festus Pauls prize hens my butt. His wife has those free range cacklers ‘cause she thinks the eggs are more healthy. And Humph doesn’t range that far, if he ate a hen it was off Festus’ land.” That was a fib at the very least but Caitlin let it slide, “OK, but you know Festus, once he takes an idea into his head he’s not likely to give it up and he hates that saber tooth Siamese of yours.” Elgin nodded, “Understood, thanks for the warning, I’ll see what I can do.” Caitlin left him alone with the horse. She wondered if he’d been serious about the giving up on the booze, she hoped so. But she was almost certain that part of his problem had always been boredom and unless he found something else to do with himself he wasn’t likely to stay sober even if he was serious. <<>> Chapter 2 In which something saves his cat and he resists temptations of several different kinds. Elgin waved to Emmit Smith as the older man’s battered old F-350 pulled away with a mellow diesel rumble. He clambered over the plow pile that blocked the entrance to the little plot of land that his home sat on and then waded through the foot plus of snow to the free standing front porch in front of the 1960’s vintage Airstream trailer. He cleaned the porch off with the snow shovel hanging from one of the posts before opening the door. Once inside he froze, he could smell something very wrong. Blood and worse, he flicked the lights on. Near the ‘cat trap’ he’d built into the floor in one corner of the tiny central kitchen lay a pile of tawny fur, too much of which was matted down with blood. “Oh Humph!” Elgin went on his knees next to his friend and companion. Humphrey had been borne to a pure bred Siamese mother, who had gotten out of her well appointed home at the wrong time. No one was sure what the father was, one of the suggestions, was mountain lion, though biologically that was supposedly impossible. All three of the kittens had been big to begin with, two of them had grown into large if unremarkable tabbies, the third, the only one who had his mothers coloration, had grown, and grown, and then grown some more. He was bigger than any house cat anyone had ever seen. With his immensely long tail and lanky build he was often mistaken for bigger than he was. But from a distance he could easily be mistaken for a normal Siamese, down to the beautiful blue eyes. The eyes flicked open, and Humph glared at Elgin for a moment then he let his head loll again, with a little yowl. A quick and gentle examination showed that someone had tried very hard to kill the big cat. There were gunshot wounds, probably buckshot in his shoulder and side, and then something heavy and sharp had smashed his hip. Elgin was crying as he carefully tried to make his friend more comfortable. How Humph had dragged himself back to the trailer and inside was almost beyond imagining. It was obvious that the cat should be dead in the snow but instead he was still stubbornly alive, having dragged himself back into the warmth. Any vet would tell him that Humph was beyond help, that the only thing to do was to ease his passage into a better world. Maybe if Elgin had been rich and this had been a big city there would be a pet hospital that could do something for the cat, but not here. He closed his eyes and the beaky nosed man was with him, looking down at Humph, his face grim, but thoughtful, “Boy the cat may survive, but he’ll be a cripple. Do you really want that?” Elgin shook his head, “But I can’t just put him down, it’s just not right. He’s my friend.” He didn’t say only friend, though in some sad ways it was true. *Ah,* rumbled a voice from some other place. The world hiccupped again. -o- Elgin woke up to the sound of wind whipping around the old Airstream’s hull. Rattling the plates on the kitchen shelf, sending a faint gust of cooler air puffing from some surface or another. The thin insulation of the old aluminum shelled RV was hardly worth the name. But Elgin or his father had sealed it up fairly well over the years, and neither worried about keeping it particularly warm in the winter or cool in the summer. Suddenly an image flashed, of Humph laying there almost dead, his beautiful fur matted by his own blood. Elgin rolled to upright his feet hitting the cold floor with a thump; which made Humph emit a grumpy “Wrowwr,” from his bed on top of the bookcase by the door. The bookcase was only a step away from the bed, in the big wooden crate turned cat bed Humph lay stretched out, paws hanging over the side, looking like they were casually crossed, his prehensile tale draped down the side of the bookcase almost to the floor, its red brown tip twitching from some giant Siamese cat dream. There was no blood, no terrible wound, no bullet wounds. He looked like he always did after a successful night doing whatever it was he did in the night. Elgin reached out and stroked the smooth warm fur, Humph, opened one blue orb and gave the cowboy a once over before letting the lid droop and beginning to purr, a bit like a medium truck diesel idling. “Damn it you big fool, I thought I was going to have to kill you!” Elgin whispered. Humph, ‘Humfed’, at that, stretched a little letting his huge claws unsheathe for a moment, but kept purring. Closing his eyes just made the world go dark, no beaky nosed man, not knowing what else to do Elgin sighed and spoke into the room in general, “Thank you old man, thanks for saving Humph.” Now it was time to check his supplies and figure out what to do next. A quick check showed that, as usual, they were only a couple of days from starvation if you only counted civilized food. Of course both of them were hunters and Elgin was a good gatherer and scrounger as well. He started some quick rice with powdered milk and eggs to make a reinforced custard. Then he found some dry cat food and scrap meats and meat stock to make up a good bowl of Humph chow. As Elgin set the big bowl down there was a thud, Humph announcing his arrival since he could come off his bed as silently as a feather if he wanted to. The big head with its red-brown mask brushed Elgin’s hand aside as he pushed his muzzle into the food and started to eat hungrily, “You’re welcome, greedy guts.” Elgin said with a smile and a stroke of the long tawny back. Humph lifted his head for a, “RrrUuurR,” of friendly agreement then went back to feeding. Elgin drank a pot of coffee, ate his custard and thought about the future, he had a sum total of fifty six dollars and seventy six cents in his bank account. The Airstream was his and he had a twenty year old Chevy pickup to haul it, but it wasn’t really legal since he didn’t have it insured except when he was redoing the tags. He had no health insurance, no retirement account, nothing except what he could reach out and touch. He finished the coffee and cleaned up, listing things that he needed to do and to buy as he did. It was a daunting list, but then he had all the time in the world, the only demand on his time was at the CircledSBarS ranch and during the winter when the herd was in the home pastures he only ‘worked’ two days a week plus any fixup work that came his way. He turned to the tiny old TV with its stack of adapters that let it receive the four channels of broadcasting in the lake region. The storm had settled into bitter cold, wind and snow showers. Elgin went outside, cleaned the porch, then dug out his pickup and the lane to the road. Including hacking a passage through the now five foot high snow and ice berm along the road. It was lunchtime when he went back inside and made himself another flan and put down some dry food and water for Humph, who was deep asleep and twitching with Siamese dreams, or nightmares. It was Monday afternoon, Griffith TwoShoes would be at his gas station. -o- Griffith TwoShoes looked like an Amerind shaman, not the razor sharp businessman he was, he liked letting others fall into traps of their own making. In his twenties and thirties he’d been an accountant and auditor for the Federal Reserve, he probably could have gone far in the federal service but he’d never been willing to use his genetic heritage as a lever, he was a natural republican, small business sub genre, at heart. The gas station on the north end of Beauty was his smallest business but his best loved since it had been his first investment and the basis of his little empire. Business was slow on a snowy Monday with the wind blowing the snow sideways. It gave him time to work on the books behind the counter, the last ‘inside customer’ had come in an hour ago and he’d only had two gas and goes since then. But the station had already covered expenses for today so he was happy enough. The doorbell rattled without the car arrival buzzer going off, Griffith looked up to see Elgin Chalmers knocking the snow off his Stetson and boots. “Hey Elgin, hear you’re a hero!” he called out. The young cowboy grinned, a matter of faint crinkles around the eyes and mouth, “So I’m told, wasn’t a lot to it Griff.” “Never is, townies make a whodoo out of not much all the time. What can I do for you today?” Elgin had opened his buff longcoat and was holding his Stetson somewhat defensively in front of himself. “Uh, well I didn’t know if you were lookin’ for some help around here. I need something more to do than winter at the ranch, need something nearby. Thought of you and the station.” In truth Griffith had more help than he needed, at times it seemed as if half his extended family worked for him, mostly part time. But a good half of those who did were about as reliable as the weather, and Elgin had the reputation of being very reliable once he commited to something, though he had never worked in a store or restaurant, inside work, in his life. Griffith pulled at his neckpiece of woven porcupine quills, “You serious El?” Elgin bobbed his head, “Yes sir.” He sound very young and uncertain, a little disconcerting coming from a man who looked like he should be commanding armies. “Hear you’re a pretty good mechanic?” Griffith was a bit surprised at the direction of his thoughts but also felt pleased with himself. The question made Elgin blink, shrug very slightly, “Can find my way around mostly, never had any practice with real modern chippers and the electrics though,.” He glanced around, “Thought you’d need a clerk, the Wiggins have most of the garage work and you have your cousins at the old Muffler and Shocks Shop?” “Wiggins have it mostly ‘cause my cousin’s ain’t worth a damn and I was fool enough to sell them the business. =The new TiresAndMore at Winston gap is pulling a lot of business, there are five or six shady tree mechanics doin stuff on the cheap as well. There’s work to be had, I need bodies willing to get the jobs done on time and for pennies on the dollar that the Wiggins’ charge. If you’re interested in a mix of store and garage work; say twenty hours a week to start, we can see how it works out.” “Uh, Griff, during the warm months...” “You’ll want to punch cows again? Why it’s a hard life, for not a lot of money.” Elgin looked away from Griffith, towards the window and the mountains beyond, hidden by a near whiteout right this instant, “Yeah, well the open sky pulls at me, you know.” Griffith shrugged, “Despite what I dress up as El I’m a modern man, I love my people and the land but I love a warm bed and my wife’s arms every night even better.” The cowboy’s faint smile took a faint twist, “A terrible admission that Griff.” The smile faded to a thoughtful look, “Tell you what, I know part time part year ain’t attractive. But I don’t cowpunch full time cept a few weeks a year. I know some of the shady tree mechanic’s and I think they’d be interested in having some hours here. And if the business is there I think I could get the coverage, and some of those folks are a lot better with modern chipped cars and other stuff.” “Deal.” Griffith held out his hand. They shook on it and after a few more words Elgin took off his coat, hung it up and went to check out the garage bays that had been locked up for some years. In a few minutes Griffith heard things starting to be moved around. The offer, and the final deal had caught him completely off guard, but he felt good about it. -o- After work Elgin got a ride home with a great grandmother of someone related to him on his mother’s side. The snow had half buried his lane again but it was only half an hour’s work to clear the fluffy blown snow away. Tracks in the snow from under the porch showed that Humph had been out but had returned not long ago. Inside Elgin microwaved the meal Griffith had given him ‘as a signing bonus.’ While it cooked he checked the Humph out, who had returned to exactly where he’d been when Elgin had left. Cat’s generally didn’t fiddle with things that worked for them. The big cat growled grumpily as Elgin checked him out, but didn’t resist, snap or bat with half extended claws, he looked back with half lidded sapphire blue eyes. He did protest a bit when Elgin manipulated the hip that had been crushed the night before, “Still hurts a bit does it?” He rubbed the side of his face, it still felt bruised, but despite what he had expected it didn’t look like much at all, a faint abrasion, probably not noticeable unless you looked closely. Humph’s breath told Elgin that the big cat had eaten meat recently, “Need to get you a mouth wash boy, hope whatever it was hadn’t been dead too long.” The big blue eyes opened in anger at that, almost as if the cat understood the insult. With a sniff Humph thumped his head down on his pad and closed his eyes, as if ignoring his human friend. After that Elgin moved around his little metal cabin picking up and neatening things, brushing, this, trashing that. He took his stash of hard liquor and moved it to an out of the way cabinet. A check of the refrigerator showed ten white cans with Beer printed on the outside, making him shake his head, how had he sunk that low? The cans went into the trash with a thump that made Humph growl irritably. -o- The next morning was one of Elgin’s days at the ranch, first he hitched a ride to pick up the horse van as he had arranged, and picked up the mare at the Park office and returned her to the outfitters and then took the horse van back and hitched out to the ranch. He arrived late, but as usual Mitch, the manager, was still in bed and wouldn’t have noticed if Elgin had lied about when he arrived. But Elgin had never found lying to be worth the effort. He simply got down to work mucking out the horse barn then moving new bales of hay into the empty storage bins. Late in the morning he drove the tractor out to the far lot with a double trailer of hay for the cattle. He broke the ice on the water trough and filled the feed bins. A quick check of the cattle and a scan of their radio frequency ear tags said that they were all present and accounted for. Lunch was a warm meal at the old farm hand’s bunk house, now Mitch’s bungalow, his live in girlfriend, a hard faced woman with a liking for tight black leather and tattoos, was an ok cook who seemed to do her best on the days Elgin was working. She also smiled at him a lot, when Mitch wasn’t looking. The invitation was quite flagrant, and she hadn’t lost hope at his stubborn refusal to show the slightest sign of understanding the signals she was sending. The afternoon was Mitch and Elgin doing the two much larger, and closer in lots. It was getting towards dusk when Mitch drove Elgin home. The lane and porch needed some snow removal and then he went in to cook some dinner for himself and prepare a snack for the absent Humph. -o- Elgin woke in the middle of the night knowing that there was trouble. Once more he couldn’t explain how he knew but he did, and this time he knew the trouble involved Humph. And the stink of trouble came from the direction of Festus Pauls’ house. Elgin groaned but he was out of his bed before he was finished breathing in again; dressed for the night and carrying his big flashlight he stepped into the chill stillness of the night. A seemingly huge crescent moon was low in the sky lighting everything silver or coal black. The modern snowshoes he kept for moving in the winter let Elgin fly over the fluffy snow heading for the woodline that separated the little sliver of land that a cousin let Elgin squat on, and the ultra modern faux ranch Festus Pauls maintained with its fabulous views of the lake and mountains. He had the big metal flashlight to help in the forest but as he reached it Elgin realized he didn’t need it, it was dim, dim but clear under the canopy of mixed evergreen needles and deciduous sticks. That was obviously different, but he’d come to expect different and kept going. The first shot came as a surprise, Elgin flinched. He turned in some indescribable way and the world went quiet, and took on an almost cartoonish aspect, in color tones that seemed orange. He dived to the side, for a knot of rocks and trees that would provide good cover. As he reached it the world returned to normal and he froze next to an evergreen brush. Someone screamed, “You son of a bitch cat, I killed you once, I can do it again!” the crack of a rifle shot punctuated the words. The voice was definitely Festus Pauls’…it wasn’t particularly sane. “Wrrrowr, hummf,” Humph growled from next to Elgin, having appeared from nowhere. “You know I told you to leave him alone,” Elgin muttered back, trying to lock Humph in was impossible, he’d hoped the big cat was smart enough to avoid Pauls after almost dying at the psychos hands. Humph sneezed in contempt at that. And Elgin was fairly sure that the big cat had a reason for his apparently suicidal incursions. Elgin looked around the rock, saw a figure in snow overalls, snow shoes and a rifle with a large sight mounted, which Festus was using to scan his surroundings. Elgin guessed a light amplification night scope. Festus was a bit overweight and out of shape but he moved with the assurance of someone who’d done this before. And Elgin remembered that the rumor was that Festus had retired from the army before making a bundle in some kind of real estate swindle and retiring early. The scope swept over their hiding spot and froze, the crack of a shot came the instant after the muzzle flash, Elgin felt the round hiss through the air a few inches right of his skull. “Festus you idiot, you almost blew my head off!” Elgin roared out letting the shock and fear feed his voice. “Who, who’s there?” The voice was a bit quivery, which Elgin thought was only right since the idiot had come close to murdering a bystander. “Its Elgin Chalmers, Festus, damnit what the blazes are you doing?” Elgin strode out from behind the rocks, “I dodged behind the rocks when you fired a minute ago and then you almost take my head off, what the hell is going on?” “Chalmers? ELGIN!, your damned, your devil cat! It’s been in my chickens again!” Ignoring the threat of the semi auto rifle only half lowered Elgin kept on the offensive, “Festus, don’t lie to me. If Humph finds a chicken in the woods he’d probably eat the fool thing, but he won’t come up to your house and steal them out of your wire cage and coup. He sure as hell won’t dig his way in, that’d be a fox or coyote. Now why are you trying to kill my cat?” “It’s not a natural cat Chalmers.” “He’s big for his type I’ll agree but he’s natural enough.” “I killed that damned cat...he got to Prett... the....I, he was after.... Damn it, the thing was dead, I’m sure I hit it with the shotgun, then I hit it with the plow!” which explained the chopping, crushing wound to Humph’s hind quarters. Elgin stared at Pauls, he should have been feeling rage, and he was angry but he also understood what was going on and the urge to laugh was all but choking him, “The Sheriff told me you had complained about Humph eating your prize hens, and we both know that Kitty keeps those hens because of the eggs. She also said you hate cats, but Kitty has a cat, I saw it at fair last summer, a really beautiful Siamese, Shewon the blue ribbon for best of breed. Is it possible that it’s Miss Pretty Paws that Humph is so interested in and has you in such a rage?” “You’re not listening, I killed that cat! And today it was back! I don’t know how that monster gets in but there it was, licking Pretty like he owned her!” Elgin sighed, “Look I’m sorry Humph’s taken a liking to Pretty, but its hardly a shooting offense.” “Her kittens are worth a thousand a piece you oaf, but not if the kittens are sired by that freak of nature.” Humph took objection to that and his yowl of outrage was deep throated, nearly a roar, certainly aggressive and startling. Pauls jerked around, his rifle coming up. Elgin lost patience, a flicker of cartoonish orange and he was twisting the big gun up and out of Pauls hands, a back kick behind the knee sent the older man to into the snow. Having gotten that close he could smell the stink of whisky on the man’s breath, which explained a fair amount. His gold digger of a wife Kitty probably explained the rest. “Festus, its illegal to hunt in populated areas, especially at night, and drunk, and to shoot at domesticated animals. I’d have to imagine this scope is pretty illegal for hunting as well. So right now I hold a lot of cards. But I’d like to make a deal.” “Go to hell, you freak! How did you do that? One moment you were twenty feet away, the next you’re hitting me!?” “You’re drunk Festus, I was walking towards you the whole time we were talking, you just didn’t realize it because of the booze.” Elgin reached down, “Take my hand, lets get you home.” Festus stared at the hand for a long moment then took it, and let himself be pulled to his feet. He looked around, squinted at Elgin, “It is you Chalmers.” He sounded a bit dazed, looked around again, “Damn it, which way is the house? Can’t see a thing.” Elgin turned him around, “Come on this way, Kitty’s probably worried about you.” Kitty wasn’t, she was far too mellow for worry, apparently wine and some time in the hot tub had loosened the uptight society gold digger he’d seen before. In a terry towel wrap over nothing much, she gave Elgin a long slow once over when he brought her husband inside. “Well, aren’t you quite the catch. Fess never said anything about a neighbor like you?” With her hair down and no makeup she was even younger than he’d thought, a trophy wife for sure. By this time Elgin was half supporting Festus and he was very tired, “Sorry to intrude Mrs. Pauls but your husband’s in no condition to be in the woods with a gun. I guess my cat’s been causing you some trouble.” At that point Miss Pretty Paws herself jumped onto the back of the white leather couch Kitty had been curled up in. Mrs Pauls picked the cat up, “Oh Fess said that big bad boy was from someplace close, he’s yours?” The big brown eyes ran up and down Elgin’s form again. “Humph lets me serve him when he’s in the mood. I’m sorry he took a fancy to your cat.” She rubbed the cats head, “Oh that’s okay, he’s got remarkably beautiful markings for such a sport.” “It’s been said.” Elgin said over his should as he guided Festus to the couch and lay him down. “Keep an eye on him, he must have drunk a lot to be this out of it.” “He’s a lightweight with his booze, and he was squealing about a demon cat.” She waved her hand dismissively, “And after shooting that damned shotgun off last night.” Elgin tried to ignore her, he went back to the door for the rifle, he quickly unloaded it and even stripped the receiver out just to be sure it was disarmed for now. He felt a warm hand stroking his neck, “You are one fine example of Wyoming manhood, what did you say your name was again?” He turned, his face already heating, she was close, her lips curled in a smile, her eyes heavy lidded with promise, the front of her wrap had come loose, showing that she wasn’t wearing even a bikini. He pulled the front of the wrap together, “It was a pleasure meeting you Mrs. Pauls.” He smiled at her, turned and left. -o- Next morning he was at the gas station cleaning up the garage area again. It had been used for general trash for a long time and cleaning it was turning out to be a bigger job than anticipated. Griffith had sent over a couple of his younger cousins and a small diesel dump truck to haul the trash off. Among other surprises it turned out the old garage had a pit rather than a lift for working under cars and the pit had been used as a trash receptacle for decades. The younger of the two nephews lipped off to Elgin once too many times and found himself digging out the pit as Elgin and the other boy transferred trash to the dump truck’s bed. Both of the boys seemed rather distraught that famously easygoing and ‘soft’ El was a bit of a hard ass and more than a little intimidating when provoked. But neither could bitch because he worked harder than the two of them put together. “Hey Elgin, you’ve got visitors,” Winifred, another of Griffith’s extended family called through the door. Elgin sighed, he suspected that he knew who the visitors were, had hoped they’d just send a letter or something. Wiping his hands and brushing himself off as best he could, he glanced in the piece of broken mirror hung by the door into the shop, he’d brushed his hair this morning but it had returned to its natural tousled look but he had shaved so overall he didn’t look too much like the perennial drifter through life he was. Stepping into the even more crowded than usual shop section he found the Sommer clan waiting for him, he was greeted with, “Hey Elgin!” and wide smiles from the two younger members, and he returned their smiles, they were good kids, good troopers, having never complained or questioned him on the walk out of the hills. “Hey yourselves, Chad, Lacie,” He looked at the tall slim couple behind the kids, so obviously upper class professionals, “you must be Mr. and Mrs. Sommer, you have a couple of great kids, here. Few more years and a little more common sense and they’ll be even better.” At which Lacie and Chad looked rather abashed. -o- Samuel Sommer was a professor of psychology and a clinician as well as a writer of books both nonfiction and fiction. From a well off family he’d rarely had to deal with people who were not peers, students, patients or servants, he was not used to dealing with people from different intellectual strata as equals. So it was Belle Sommer who replied, “Mr. Chalmers, it’s a pleasure to meet you at last,” she said smiling and holding out a hand, “I’m Belle Sommer, this is my husband Sam.” Belle Sommer had gone to university with Samuel and had a similar degree but she ran a temping agency for professional and semi professional services, and she was used to dealing with all sorts. She had taken her daughter’s starry eyed description of the pair’s cowboy savior with a large grain of salt, now she had to retract those mental reservations. The young man who stepped into the store was six foot while both slim and powerfully built, his face was weather worn but obviously youthful, the eyes an astonishing blue, the hair movie star rumpled blond, the jaw strong, nose sharp cut Nordic. He had a warm understated grin and a voice that should be on radio telling jokes. He was dressed in grease marked patched old jeans and a tartan pattern flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up to show muscular arms, also marked with grease. The tall man ducked his head as he took her hand, “Good to meet you ma’am,” he said it without much of a pause between words, but it was still somehow warm, he let her hand go and turned to Sam, who had taken a step and held out his hand, the two men shook once, “Good to meet you sir.” “We’re heading for the airport and wanted to make one more attempt to meet you Mr. Chalmers, I must say you are the first person in a long time who does not appear to have a cell, even a regular phone, you are very hard to get a hold of.” Belle said smiling up at him. He shrugged, “Prepaid don’t work in the hills, not much else either, not worth the money.” He glanced at the kids, “Something to remember in future, hear they have satellite phones, or emergency messaging systems, if you want to take a risk again. Few places that are still wild are totally safe.” “My wife and I have been hiking our whole lives, our children as well Mr. Chalmer. We understand the risks, pack for them, it was just freak weather,” Sam responded sharply. “Never seen its like for sure,” the cowboy replied easily, though the smile was gone. “We’d like to thank you in some concrete way Mr. Chalmer,” Belle rushed in, she suspected her husband had no idea how rude he’d sounded. “We thought about simply mailing you a check and a letter of thanks but felt we should speak with you.” She almost shivered as the blue eyes came back to focus on her, he wasn’t angry but he was what one might call cross, with both of them, then she saw a glint of humor and a softening of the line of his jaw, “Well. That’s very kind, but not necessary, I was up in the hills because of my own damn foolishness, excuse the curse, and it cost me nothing to bring them down with me, in fact they helped me, kept me focused, otherwise I might of gotten to feelin’ sorry for myself,” his lips had curled into an understated, attractive grin. Lacie spoke up, “Mr. Chalmers, can you tell me the name of your mare, she was simply fabulous carrying the gear, anchoring the line, always following us in line. I wanted to see if mummy and daddy could buy her!” This got Lacie a long considering look, “Not my horse Lacie girl, I have a deal with the local outfitters to pick from his string. I’m afraid I didn’t even record her ear tag number when I picked her up. You could check with the ostler, but they don’t usually bother this time of year. She was a good horse, pack trained, did what she was taught to do. Doubt she’d be happy away from her herd for any time though. Horses are social animals, humans are okay but not the same.” Lacie looked very deflated, but also thoughtful, he’d deflated her opinion of him a little and made her think about the downside of her want, all in a couple of sentences. And Belle was certain he’d done both on purpose. Sam was looking impatient, he’d taken a dislike to the cowboy, probably based on an erratic mixture of jealousy and slighted arrogance, Elgin stubbornly refused to take any money for what he’d done and finally begged off, saying he had two men cleaning up and he needed to get back to the job. Belle sat looking out at the lake as Sam pulled the bimmer out onto the road and headed for the airport. “Typical yokel arrogance,” he muttered out of the side of his mouth to Belle, the kids both already had headsets on, connected to their smartphones. “Whatever do you mean Sam, he was very pleasant.” “You bought the cowboy hero shtick, like the kids?” “No, I saw a young and somewhat bashful young man stand up for his principles against what must have been a very tempting offer Sam. He’s poor, from what we heard one place and another he’s always been poor, but he has the right instincts. I think he should have taken the money but I can admire him for not doing so and it was not a slam at us, it was more a faintly self flagellating gesture of social solidarity, in your favorite lingo.” Which shut Sam up for most of the rest of the drive. <<>> Chapter 3 In which our hero walks the shadow realm and discovers magic is more than wands and wishes The stars burnt down out of a midnight sky, in numbers that seemed uncountable, the Milky Way a streak across the heavens. Elgin stretched his legs as the ground rose, in times past he would have been drunk but since thenElgin’s death he hadn’t touched a drop of the hard stuff, though he’d had a beer with Griffith TwoShoes on Christmas eve and a little cheap Champagne at the Beauty American Legion New Year’s party. This Sunday night he was walking to try and tire himself out, to wear out the faint but gnawing sense of hunger that never went away and a restlessness that no amount of work could fulfill. He’d done everything around the garage he could, until Winifred had shooed him out only half joking when she threatened him with a broom. He’d cleaned and neatened the Airstream until Humph had left with an embittered yowl of frustration. He’d even worked on the plans he’d started for a complete refit of the Airstream and rebuild of the porch his father had built twenty years before and that Elgin had been patching ever since his father’s death. Vincent Walker, the name his father had died under, had been a good carpenter and mechanic like his son, but he’d never really seen the need to do more than the minimum, and often left jobs undone. And thenElgin had followed in his footsteps, but nowElgin found that he simply could not, or would not work, live, that way. But today nothing had worked and at last he’d had to leave the Airstream and walk towards Indian Bluff, the closest spur of the foothills to his aluminum Twinkie. A fairly typical late January thaw and quick freeze had left the ground hard with patches of black ice, but the snow was gone on the flat ground, not untypical of this time of year. With no snow he should have been nearly blind even with the glory of stars above, but he could see quite clearly, his footing as sure in the darkness as during the day. His big magnum light was hooked to his belt just in case, like he had some other survival gear. There was an odd fuzziness to what he saw, and a faint orange tint to the edges but it was more an impression than anything else. Reaching the knob of rock at the edge of the tribal lands Elgin stopped to look around again. What he saw made him frown, the lights of Beauty curving around the end of the lake were dim and red rather than sodium orange with a few old mercury green ones still in evidence. There was a faint breeze but the lake surface was so smooth that it reflected the stars, looking like a second sky below his feet. The distant mountains instead of just blacking out the stars were distinctly visible, silvery, with just the very faintest hint of orange. Strangest of all, far as he could see were tiny flickering lights, just like distant campfires, but not a handful, not a few dozen, not a hundred, but thousands upon thousands of them. Fading into the distance, but still pin pricks on the sides of the distant mountains. Not far away, in a little group of trees, he could see one, and reflecting its light he could see a seated figure draped in a blanket. Elgin walked towards the fire, towards the man, an Amerind with long gray and black braids falling from each side of his head. The man was staring into the fire his eyes blinking every once in a while. At last Elgin recognized him and came to a stop, the sitting man was Chief RunningElk, the chief of the local tribes, until he’d died from a heart attack the winter before, in the bed of his rather attractive secretary, not his wife of forty years. “Come closer whoever you are,” RunningElk said, in the local Amerind dialect. Elgin walked forward and settled cross kneed across from the other ghost. The chief looked at Elgin now, with eyes that had no white, no iris, no pupil, just black holes that opened onto a vista of distant stars. “You’re Jess’s boy.” “Jess?” Elgin repeated, confused. “My niece Jessica Beauty was your mother.” The star filled eyes went back to the fire, an gnarled hand extended out to the fire, the old man sighed. Elgin opened his mouth, then shut it. He’d only heard his mother referred to as ‘her,’ or ‘that bitch,’ by his father. And occasionally Beauty by his other relatives, he’d no idea that she had been related to the old chief, no idea she had a first name. “Your Pa wasn’t worth spit except on very rare occasions, your ma was everything he wasn’t, except she could never be at peace, somehow she thought that the combination would make something much greater than the sum. Damn white eye schooling, filled her head with silliness.” “Why did she leave us?” “No one knows, its not clear that she did, she was last seen walking home from work. Some folks think a serial killer got her. Others that she hitched a ride out of town on a passing rig. Others suggest it was both. Me? I wonder if your Pa had something to do with it.” Elgin rubbed his hands on his coat, held them out to the fire, which gave off an oddly attenuated heat. “Where are we?” “The happy hunting grounds, where else?” the old Amerind grinned at Elgin the stars in his eyes rolling and bouncing as the leathery old cheeks crinkled with the expression, which rapidly faded. “Is the hunting good, there are a lot of you?” though from here he could only see a few of the myriad fires he’d seen earlier. “A lot of us?” the old chief smiled, “Perhaps, but the happy hunting ground is as big as it needs to be. It is as big as my memories, as my life and encompasses all I need.” Elgin realized that it wasn’t only RunningElk’s eye’s that he could see the stars through, but also his body, in fact the stars seemed to dominate the view. He tried to focus, then understand what he was seeing. When couldn’t he realized that the blanket over the old man’s shoulders was gone. So was RunningElk, instead the beaky nosed man sat, bare chested once more. “What’s your name?” Elgin asked, ignoring the shock of the change. The ghost rubbed his nose, “Well literally, spear throwing son of the mayor of the cedar groved town with a big wall, but it’s a bit of a mouthful, I was usually called Cutter by those who knew me.” “Cutter works. You’re inside of me so you know my name!” This got him a grimace, “I do now, but I didn’t, you don’t think of yourself as Elgin Campbell Chalmers the fourth or even Elgin at least not unless you are thinking in terms of writing things down.” “Where did RunningElk go?” “Away, you were boring him, ghosts tend to be pretty flighty.” Elgin got up and as he turned away the fire he’d been sitting by dwindled to nothing. He could tell the beak nosed ghost was still there, “Why is he out here, and you’re in me?” “We’re not really the same sort of thing at all. He was a free man tied to the land by his love and life. I lived vastly longer as part of Oldest until the trap killed the physical me, leaving only Oldest’s memory of me. I don’t think that I am a ghost in the same sense as the old chief.” The semi-physical presence of the other man had faded, leaving only his voice in Elgin’s head as he resumed his walk into the hills, the restlessness and gnawing hunger were still with him. *You are not feeling your own physical and psychic needs, but those of oldest, at his most basic level. That is why you walked into the shadowlands, the happy hunting ground as it were. The Iffrit needs to stretch and to hunt.* Elgin was trotting forward, his legs eating up the ground, trying to run from the voice in his head. *You are running from the destruction of your old worldview not from anything physical. You cannot outrun what you are now Elgin Campbell Chalmers the fourth.* The world had gone very dark, and then ground in front of Elgin vanished and he was falling. The unfolding wasn’t painful, just a shock, for a moment he was blind, then his eyes saw the world in black and white with far sharper detail than he had ever seen before, he was deaf to his own scream for a moment then he could hear the rocks creaking as they chilled in the night, his arms and legs were numb, then folded up against his body, his great claws sheathed but ready, his wings caught the wind with the crack of leather catching a gale and the silent scream of steel hawser muscles working against alloy tough bones. The great flying creature that had been Elgin Chalmers dived for airspeed before curving away from the cliff as the ground rushed up. Then with a the clap of wings that sounded like a regatta of racing yachts tacking as one he flapped his wings, and his huge body shot up and away. Head thrust forward he swept out over the great lake, eyes swept the shoreline and the mountains, searching for thermals to be taken advantage of, but in the cold night there were none. With a grumble, he set to work, wings the length of a small airliner’s flapped, accelerating and lifting tons of body higher and higher in a hunting gyre. Now he searched for a meal that would fill his grumbling belly. He spotted cars and trucks on the roads that circled the great lake, but dismissed them, as he dismissed the metal tube far above his own flight level. He did not eat, did not even kill, conscious beings, except in the most exceptional of circumstances. Then he saw the distant blots of heat against the ground, not people, a herd of some kind. A part of the Iffrit giggled as an idealized topographic representation of the land hereabouts came to mind. But the giggle did not say hold and wings folded into the diving position. The distant memory of the taste and texture of raw beef made his teeth ache and his mouth water. He ignored the flittering tickling touch of low frequency emanations coming from across the lake as he accelerated for the kill -o- Elgin woke up fully dressed, down to his boots and long coat, on his bed with the light shining in through the blinds. Humph was half lying on Elgin’s chest, which given the cat’s weight was enough to make breathing a little difficult. There was an insistent buzzing nearby, which Elgin realized after a few seconds was his new pre paid cell phone. Humph was watching Elgin’s face with blue eyes intentness, and showed no sign of moving so Elgin reached for the phone and flipped it to life. “Chalmers.” “Damn it Elgin I need you over here, two of the steers are missing out of paddock two, I need you to track them down.” It was Mitch from the CircleSBarS. Rubbing his faintly aching head Elgin frowned, “The fence was firm the last time I did the circuit.” “There ain’t a hole, I did the circuit, someone must have let them out, maybe rustlers.” Elgin sighed, rustlers did still exist but not in these closed ranges in the mountains. It didn’t pay up here, though there were thieves who stole the occasional few beeves to stock their larder. Then he sat bolt upright, catching the yowling Humph in his arms. Memories flooded back from the night before. He knew exactly what had happened to those two steers. As the memories of ‘his’ teeth crunching through the doomed beasts body he catapulted out of bed and to the toilet where he lost most of his previous night dinner, a ham sandwich, lots of lettuce and a bowl of tomato bisque soup, not two steers, hooves, horns, RFID tags and all. An hour later he was trotting down the lane to the ranch buildings, having been dropped off at the road by an accommodating passer by. Mitch was roaring back from the paddocks on his big ATV. He came across the graveled circle in front of the main house and out through the main gate at an excessive speed braking to a four wheel skid stop a few yards in front of Elgin. The big black bearded man had a furious expression, “Took your damned time Chalmers.” “Sorry boss caught me unprepared.” Elgin hopped on the back of the ATV and Mitch spun the four-wheeler around and had it screaming across the ranch in the next second, almost leaving Elgin behind in his dust and spitting rock chips. There was no real evidence to look at. The paddock had four gates, three generally for equipment access. All Elgin could see at any of them were the tracks of Mitch’s ATV and of past equipment and steer traffic. Nothing in between, which didn’t surprise him, since the steers had departed ‘by air’ not on the ground but he was not, ever, going to mention that option to Mitch. The only one that might be mistaken for having any indication of other traffic was the main entrance. Mainly because there were so many it was really impossible to make any sense of them. On foot Elgin spent the rest of the day tracking set after set of markings, blanking his mind to the fact that it was utterly pointless. What he wanted to know was what had happened to the two steer who’d been a comfortable warm lump in the flying monsters tummy the last he could remember. Had they folded away with the monster when the sun had come up? Was he some kind of were-monster, except the moon had been down and it was not full even if it had been up. It was nightfall when he knocked on Mitch’s door and the girlfriend opened it, and gave Elgin the usual ‘come hither’ smile. “Hey Elgin, you ready for some grub?” she was chewing gum enthusiastically as she spoke. “Thanks Betty,” he would have liked to refuse but didn’t want to piss her off, “Sure could do with a little something. Is Mitch back?” She nearly sneered jerked her head back into the bungalow, “Back? He never went anywhere, he knows if you can’t figure it out he sure as fuck cain’t.” She did have the sense not to say that very loudly. “I’m here Chalmers, you find something, I hope!?” Mitch bellowed, heaving himself out of the worn recliner in front of the fire and big screen TV that was showing a basketball game. Betty moved back and Elgin slipped inside, his hat in his hands, “Fraid not boss, best I can make out is that they may have gone north and exited on the lane from the old quarry. But that’s more guess than anything, there are no clear signs anywhere, the ground’s real hard, especially at night, and if they had the tires deflated for max traction they wouldn’t leave much in the way of markings. By using the more heavily used tracks there’s no sign of them.” “Damn injuns!” Mitch snarled. “Could have been anyone boss, the Amerind’s aren’t that poor around here and a lot of them don’t like beef all that much.” Elgin replied quietly. “Could’ve been anyone Boss!” Mitch whined back at Elgin, “Damn it you sound like a pansy PC fed.” “I’m a cowboy Mitch, and about two thirds Amerind.” Elgin replied flatly. The big man looked taken aback then sneered, “Found some papers that let you in on the tribal gravy train ehe?” “Never taken a cent, Mitch.” Elgin ground out, Mitch took a part step back. Reigning in his anger Elgin continued much more quietly, “Let’s talk about the steers, and the owners.” “They died in the winter, what’s to say.” Mitch drew in a breath, jerked his head at the door, “OK, well I suppose you did what you could, I’ll draw a check for your hours and you can pick it up tomorrow.” Elgin turned, gave Betty a small smile of sympathy and left. Outside he jammed his Stetson on and started to walk. The owners would want a vet’s death certificate on the lost beeves, but undoubtedly Mitch had some forged versions around. He’d forge a vet bill as well, and probably the checks to several nonexistent searchers as well. The manager didn’t let much get past him without shedding some dollars. Flicking his phone open he called Griffith, “Mr TwoShoes, its Elgin Chalmers.” “I’ve got caller ID Elgin, wouldn’t have picked up if it hadn’t been someone I wanted to talk to.” Elgin grinned into the dimness, “OK Griff, hey sorry about today, Mr. Carpenter lost a couple of steer, wanted me to track em.” “Any joy?” “No, clean away, like they sprouted wings and flew off,” Elgin couldn’t help grinning at his own private joke. “Eh, well maybe Lake Side spotted them.” Griffith chuckled at his own ‘in joke.’ “UH, don’t follow you Griff?” “UFO sightings late last night, out over the lake. You know there’re idiot rumors about folks using floatplanes to land drugs on the lake. The feds set up a radar at the airport, it tracked something taking off from the lake last night. They tried to get a track on it but it headed off fast and low.” Elgin’s mouth was dry, every little piece of evidence he picked up pointed to what might have just been a dream-nightmare being something, impossibly, that had really happened. “Anyway that wasn’t what you called about, don’t worry about missing today, you had the garage well covered. You going to make it Wed?” “Sure am, I’ll also drop in this evening to check up on the paperwork. But that wasn’t all. You remember we talked about what I’ll be doing during the warm months?” Griff sighed, “Sure I do, I’d guess you’re telling me you’ll be elsewhere till next winter?” “No Sir, I was going to tell you that I’ll either be arranging part time with the CircleSBarS or looking for other work, I want to continue managing the garage, though over time I plan on letting Ted, Stan and Sam take some managing load as well as the grease monkey work.” Now Griffith laughed, “Damn, I have no idea what happened to you in those hills El but it’s great to be on the receiving end of the result. You got it, just keep me up on the plan eh?” Elgin smiled, “Yes sir, certainly will.” “Have a good night El.” “You too sir.” Elgin flipped the phone shut and walked on into the cold wind with a smile. -o- Elgin had started visiting Beauty’s tiny public library most Sundays during its brief open period which had rather shocked the Sunday Librarian, Miss Wilkerson, who was also an English teacher at the Black Bear Lake County East High School. She had been Elgin’s teacher several times. Seeing him reading shook her head. He started with the car repair section, even going to the length of checking several books out. Then he started stopping in periodicals, first reading some car magazines. Then she caught him reading the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, when he checked out a book of Economist back issues she almost couldn’t resist asking him what had gotten into him. Then he started to read science and technology magazines, and to use one or other of the computer terminals, though he had a painfully slow hunt and peck style. One day she passed him and couldn’t stop herself, “Elgin, you know there are better ways than hunt and peck to enter data.” He turned to her, smiled, “Hey Miss Wilkerson, I know, but I don’t know how to get started, and its not fair to take up the terminal any more than I do already.” “I know, but we have a computer lab at the high school that’s open to the public after hours Monday through Thursday, they have typing tutor programs and some adult classes in the common applications. Its all free, I know you don’t have a lot of money. I guess I should have minded my own business but it just makes my head ache seeing you make such rough a time of it, when you’re obviously trying so hard.” He looked abashed, thankful, “Hey thanks Miss Wilkerson, I should have thought to ask, guess I’m too used to us being the back of the behind of everything, didn’t figure we’d have stuff like that.” “The tribes done a lot of good things for the town and we’re attracting some folks with money and a few of them have kids or at least some of the other folks who are coming to provide services for those folks, have kids, and they want at least basic schools. And better schools attract more folk, which makes the schools easier to support. Elgin smiled, “A virtuous circle as it were.” “Elgin Chalmers! my word, you were listening!” His smile twisted, “A lot more than it appeared at least Miss Wilkerson, and thanks for never giving up on any of us. We didn’t give you a lot of joy but you did make an impression. However small sometimes.” She smiled and patted his shoulder as she walked away, hiding the fact that her eyes were damp. -o- Elgin sat on the saddle of the old Norton Commando and kicked the engine starter, the old motor grumbled to life with alacrity, the old British monster having absorbed a month of his spare time, Elgin felt some satisfaction. Motorcycles were rather looked down on by most Wyoming natives, they were impractical given the long winters, but they were popular with ‘immigrants’ who came to live here. This beast had been the prize possession of an older immigrant who had died without ever riding it after unpacking it. And it had spent the last fifteen years in storage. It had looked a real wreck when it came up for auction, but its basic core had been almost pristine. He’d gotten it for a song and it hadn’t taken all that much in the way of money to get it back in running order. He could have done similar things with more modern bikes but the old twin was so simple and so common he could do almost everything himself if he needed to. The cold months hadn’t ended yet but the snow had melted off the roadways so he could take a ride. The bike snarled away from the garage and accelerated for west and the main road, clicking up through the gears he was soon far beyond the legal speed, the wind chilling and invigorating at the same time. But at Great Bears Den bay, he slowed to a stop and pulled off at the state sponsored parking crescent with its view of the water, there was a coffee truck pulled off and Elgin swung off his bike, rubbing his reddened hands. The coffee was good, he sipped it as he looked into the den, a nearly perfectly circular pool of water with a narrow opening to the main lake, The two arms surrounding the den rose steeply from the water, the rock and thin soil supporting a surprisingly thick forest on both side. The Den was one of the most contentious piece of property on the lake as well as one of the most spectacular. The west ridge was owned by Collin Conkling who had made his fortune in the semiconductor business fighting Intel, his company had lost but he’d retired fabulously wealthy. His house was built into the north face of the outer curve, hidden from the land. The east ridge was owned, or rather squatted on by the Evil Eagles Claw biker gang. The chieftain of the EEC was a half blood Indian and he had claimed the property as inheritance from a aunt by marriage. No one had been able to prove that the claim was false and the club paid the property taxes on time, giving the county very little to work with. The EEC was well known to run most of the criminal enterprises in Beauty from their lakeside camp. The tribe claimed the whole of the den as tribal property and wanted to build a casino and resort here. Collin Conkling had bought his property and had a deed for it but the deed essentially dated back to the bad old days in the 1800’s when a series of Bureau of Indian Affairs secretaries had appropriated property from the tribes and sold it, Conkling had bought the title fair and square even though the last owner had at one time agreed to sign the property back to the tribe at the end of his life. Elgin wasn’t that thrilled about the casino and resort but he figured that the tribe had the right to do what they wanted with the land and the plans he’d seen had looked spectacular. But they depended on controlling the Den and the tribe didn’t right now. The ride back to the garage was just as exhilarating as the ride to the den had been and he was a little saddened at having to wheel the bike inside and lock it up, but it was really an extravagance not a practical vehicle. The evening was drawing in and he was hungry, Elgin’s eyes narrowed, every time he felt hunger, he wondered if it was all him. And there was something about this hunger that was more than just a human need for food. He wasn’t sure it was hunger in the sense of a need to eat, there was a sense of concern, a restlessness, a need to be elsewhere. Tom was still there, he could close up with Winifred’s supervision. Elgin needed to go. Ten minutes later he was walking down the road, waiting for someone to give him a ride if at all possible. But as he walked into the darkening dusk he realized the land around him was shifting subtly, the moon on the horizon had an orange rim and its markings were indecipherable, almost as if they were constantly changing. There were no cars on the road and there were campfires by the thousands in every direction, each with its own still figure. The unfolding still caught him unaware, the ground fell away and that personality that was Elgin slipped from the singular to an odd sense of multiplicity, with the central element a thing of knife sharp senses, knowledge and decisions. A couple of running steps as the great wings unfurled lead to a leap no natural creature could have made and the monster that had been Elgin was in the air, a couple of shallow flaps to get altitude then the wings began to row the air powerfully, driving the creature higher and faster at every beat. Then the flapping stopped and the wings were held out, slanted forward but they were still accelerating and climbing. Elgin felt energy flowing, saw the lines of force and resistance. The air that met the wing, compressed, and flowed across the wing, and then received a tiny pulse of energy, as it began to expand, providing a pulse of thrust before becoming part of the wake. *The Iffrit is not a creature of flesh and blood as you and I think of it.* Cutter said softly from somewhere nearby, somewhere in the creatures skull. *Iffrit, do you mean Afrit, the Arabic demon, winged monster, dragon.* Elgin had tried to figure out how the word was spelled, and the Arabic term had made the most sense. *The oldest has been called many things, dragon is certainly one of them.* *But dragons, iffrits, afrits are mythical magical monsters and there is no such thing as magic.* But then again, he had spoken with ghosts, had almost been eaten by the Basik, had died and been brought back to life. *There is no magic, in the sense of a set of special extra forces in the universe or a god plane with supernatural forces at play. But the world can be manipulated in magical ways, and can support mythical, magical creatures. The universe we live in is only linear and logical on the surface, providing a substrate on which greater actors can play. Rock, wind, fire, the stars, plants, and simple animals are things of brute physics, but once you reach self awareness and the ability to plan and understand you start to have the ability to manipulate the world and its underlayment, in more than physical ways, this is magic. Oldest has been mankind’s protector and guide, suppressing major breakouts of magic, because it almost invariably leads to the rapid development and equally rapid destruction of the species. If you do not understand the underlying physics of the universe magic is a tool that can more easily enslave than free, and destroy more easily than create. For the last couple of thousand years human magic has been suppressed by the same device that killed my physical body and trapped oldest. But recently the device cycled to its destruction and magic has become accessible again, your world will not be the same.* They were already descending towards their goal, the stench of Basik made the Iffrits lips curl back even at this distance and through the iris of the fold that locked their rift from the rest of the world. *Why are we going back to the Basik’s lair?* In answer an image flickered in his mind, a small aircraft flying in the cold calm air of the late afternoon, suddenly smoke trailing from it and the prop stuttering to a stop. A desperate call by the man at the controls as he tried to make sure his wife and children were buckled in, and search for some kind of safe landing ground at the same time. There was a strange shifting uncertainty to the rocks and trees below as he tried to find and line up for a glide into a relatively flat spot. Then nothing. That discontinuity was below them when Elgin’s Iffrit body turned, both physically, and otherwise. Then the sky was faintly green the moon huge and distinctly green. Below them was a deep dark rift valley with steep, almost cliff like, sides and something like a city built into those steep rock slopes. Deep in the rift a river roared and sprayed from pool to pool. Strangely there was more light in the rift than in the sky above, and in that light Elgin could see the neat white cruciform shape of a light plane sitting on a ledge about halfway down the cliff. The Iffrit banked into a steep descending spiral, wings fully extended and angled so that they were in something between a glide and a controlled plummet. Elgin would have screamed in mixed fear and exhilaration if he’d had a throat and mouth to do so. Then the wings snapped out to their full and beat down and forward as the muscular torso reared up and the massive clawed rear feet touched down with almost dainty precision, the forebody settled down onto the forelegs and the great wings furled. A roar of challenge thundered from the Iffrit’s throat, filling the misty green tinted rift with a booming call for attention and obedience. Other than the distant dumb rumble of water tumbling rocks there was no reply as eyes twisted, searching, with uncanny speed and precision, everything flowing into the great beasts memories and nothing being forgotten. Still scanning the Iffrit stalked towards to the little plane, it smelt hot and smoky, greasy, but there were no breathing, or dead, humans in it. There were signs of struggle, the door torn off its hinges, a seat torn from its anchor and tossed a dozen feet away, spots of blood. The scent of the humans, a man, woman, a boy and a girl, were there, along with the much less distinct musk of several Basik warrior cast who had taken the humans. The Iffrit walked toward the massive opening carved into the mountain side, surrounded by complex carving in a style reminiscent of the Inca or Aztec empires. Elgin was getting used to not being in control of his body or his senses, particularly since ‘his memory’ was good enough to replay things like a sporting event. As he looked around he got a feeling of vast age and somehow of isolation. There was also a sense of abandonment, and unfinishedness, as well as decrepit old age all at once. Some of the carvings were unfinished but were covered with moss and degraded by the weather as if they had been unfinished for thousands of years, other areas had obviously been worked on again and again, till what might nave been a impressive piece had been nibbled to near nothing. “That’s pretty troubling.” Elgin ‘muttered’ to himself. Cutter grunted and then continued, *The Basik have never recovered from the shock of their arrival. They came from some distant star with the intention of recreating the Earth as a new hunting preserve. They had not anticipated Oldest’s presence. Most of their ships were destroyed before they landed and the survivors were strewn across most of this continent. Oldest and one of the previous avatars hunted them like the vermin they are. It was only the last few, the smartest, and least violent, who accepted imprisonment here. Their species is effectively insane by most people’s measures. But Oldest is prohibited from destroying that which is in his remit to make safe and save. So the Basik have been trapped in this rift in space for something more than twenty thousand years.* A cold stern voice rolled into Elgin’s mind, *They are not what they were, whether better or worse is a judgment I am not allowed to make, but they are more tractable, less insanely aggressive, insensately hungry for more of everything, which was the intention. The young one should not have tried to attack you in the cave, it had been instructed otherwise, but lost control. I find it even more troubling that they were able to draw that man and his family into their trap. Obviously the queen has forgotten her promises.* They entered the great chamber behind the over and un-finished entrance. The cavern inside was a circular chamber with a domed ceiling, with thousands of pinpoint lights providing a clear and normal seeming light. The floor was polished white veined blue stone. The walls intricately carved, though again with the bizarre mix of over done and unfinished work intermixed in random fashion. There was a flash of something like purple light for a moment a spinning hemisphere of light and then three figures. They might have been triplet red headed bombshells in skin tight suits but Elgin knew that behind those pretty pursed mouths with their cute pink tongues were rows of jagged teeth. The three each carried a cylinder which they were pointing at Elgin, or rather the Iffrit. They stood feet spread, what were obviously weapons pointed unwaveringly at the winged creature. “Go away old bat, you were never welcome here, now you are banished.” The leader spoke, her voice clear and unaccented, a bit like a TV news reporter’s in fact. “You know the result of killing me expendable, you are old enough to understand that the Queen cannot really intend my death. You are simply the price of my entrance, her entertainment, what was it that you did that upset your brood mother, that she would have me roast and eat you who have lived for hundreds, if not thousands of slow rift years?” The Basik didn’t answer, she just triggered her weapon, some kind of laser that fired a beam of violet light at the Iffrit’s head. The other two fired an instant later, at the Ifritt’s chest, and throat. The room blazed with light and rocked with the concussions, as the three Basik almost women were blown to smoking shreds when their weapons exploded. *Well that was new.* The Iffrit said thoughtfully, *Elgin, you are up I am afraid, remember I am always with you.* Then the world folded in/around Elgin and he found himself in his own body and, apparently, alone in his mind. The room stank of burnt meat and hot metal, the pieces of the Basik mostly looked inhuman, but the gracefully proportioned leg lying a few feet away made his stomach want to rebel. Turning away Elgin walked resolutely towards the only other doorway, an image in his head, an overlay of them from past visits showed it as the entrance to a tunnel that stretched a few hundred feet further into the mountainside. It was dim and dank in the tunnel, and Elgin could hear and faintly see, things moving, skittering away from under his feet. At the other end of the tunnel was the chamber he was expecting, a chamber that was neither dark nor dank. Against the far wall a semicircular platform held a lounger, behind which rose a mural that reached the ceiling at least sixty feet up. On the day bed sprawled another Basik, this one’s face that of an Amerind beauty, with silky dark hair rippling to the floor. But while her face was human colored, and her form feminine, the almost reptilian skin of the Basik started at the base of her throat and only her hands and feet were human like. Instead of a human’s two mammaries she had four. Around the room were several of the Basik he’d seen before, though all looked younger, and running around between the legs, playing games with balls and sticks, were a flurry of children, naked children. The only sign that they were other than human, a strip of Basik skin up the middle of their backs. “Eyes of the old one, see the work you set us to goes apace.” The Queen had a very sexy voice and a killer smile, a curving of the lips that hid the predator teeth behind them. Elgin looked around, finally seeing the humans he had come to rescue, mother, father, son and daughter, sitting on the floor, knees drawn up to their chins, eyes closed. “I came for those you took, Queen of the Basik.” He said pointing. The Basik Queen’s mouth pouted. “Always so abrupt, and after I let you destroy the hasty one and its followers. I was never aware of its ventures beyond the crèche or the attempt to catch some meals on the wing.” “All knowing Queen of the Basik, it saddens me to hear that your powers decay so with age; to the extent that one senior offspring gets beyond the rift and another rediscovers the technology of your foremothers without your knowledge. I fear I will eat at your passing banquet all too soon.” Elgin wasn’t quite sure what all that meant, it sounded sarcastic. The Queen seemed to hiss, but did not answer, just staring back unblinkingly, as she waved at the human family. Elgin walked to the four, who had sat still with their eyes closed the whole time. He pulled the father, mother and son to their feet and turned them towards the tunnel entrance. They moved when he pulled and pushed but did nothing on their own, their eyes were closed, and their breathing was regular, it was as if they were asleep on their feet. Then he went to stand over the girl, “You, go get the girl.” The child sat unmoving arms wrapped around her legs, chin on knees. “It’s not going to work, I know what you are, and I am not taking a changeling into the outer world, however good a mimic you are. Angry green eyes glared up at him, “I am as human as she is.” The Basik crèchling snarled at him, her teeth were certainly close enough to human to pass given natural human variation. “But you are not her, and while you might get by outside, she will not survive another day in here. Begone with you and put her clothes back on her. The fake girl leapt to her feet and ran for a low door halfway down the wall. Elgin stood and waited, the younglings were various sizes but they were as far as he could see, clones of each other. After a few minutes several of the older, or at least bigger, ones formed a little line a few yards away, their tongues tasting the air, their unblinking green eyes focused on him, he could almost hear them wonder how he would taste. Another few minutes and another naked crèchling lead a brown haired girl to Elgin. The Basik stared up at him, “I will hunt beyond the rift.” “You can live beyond the rift if you prove you can do so in peace with the humans, whose world this is. You can hunt as well as long as it is the dumb beasts allowed to roam for that purpose. But first you have to prove that your elders’ instincts have been suppressed for good. And that is going to take some time.” “The flow has returned to reality, your rift trap will no longer hold us like it has for so long. You cannot stop us.” The little girl sounded more like the queen than the possibly ten year old meat eating monster she was. “Perhaps not, but I can still destroy you all. And that has been enough for a very long time, if it is no longer enough then I and you will have failed, and you will become extinct.” The little girl snarled and backed away, but there was something in her face other than pure rage. Perhaps it was something like respect, something like excitement, she had been told that there was a chance she would one day get to hunt beyond the rift. Hopefully that was enough to keep her and her brood sisters from breaking out. Elgin led the family party back out and across the entry chamber, carefully walking wide of the indescribable mess in the middle of the floor. He led the family back to the airplane. *Get them inside and seated as best you can, the Iffrit will get them out of here and to a place they can be found,* Cutter’s voice directed quietly. <<>> Chapter 4 Our hero detects that all may not be well Spring came to Black Bear Lake County, Wyoming early and late, earlier than many other places in the state and later than most civilized places. But it did come. Elgin rode his ‘cycle most places, it was cheap to run and fun, even in the rain, though folks thought he was nuts. One sunny Saturday, he rode sedately over the rise and down into Beauty proper, with Humph riding pillion behind him. Humph liked riding the motorcycle, sitting backwards, looking where they had come from with his tail wrapped pretty much all the way around himself he seemed both utterly stable and content. Several people got quite severe shocks when what they thought was a ‘seat pack’ shaped like a cat, turned out to be a real, live and very large cat, who didn’t take kindly to being stroked by strangers. In the period of just seven months since thenElgin got himself killed, nowElgin had turned his life around. He was still poor and living in a 1968 Airstream twenty four foot Tradewind, had a 1994 Chevy pickup and lived on a parcel of land he didn’t own. But now he had a couple of weeks’ worth of savings, and a cell phone, the trailer was polished inside and out and he was working on the insulation heating and cooling. The pickup was just as rusty as ever but its engine was tuned, its frame and suspension solid and he had it both tagged and insured, if at the minimum. He also had the Norton, which he enjoyed and lavished more time on than he should. TwoShoes Garage was a flourishing success and Griffith was talking about modernizing and expanding the building. And somehow Elgin had ended up working part time (Sunday morning, extended hours) at the library, which gave him access to it after hours all through the week, which was more than fine with him. Of course there was the downside of not being sure if he was human or alive, any longer. There was also the chatting with ghosts, having to face down two legged human eating snake girls, turning into a good approximation of a dragon every once in a while and eating large game animals whole things that kept him awake lat into the night sometimes. Cutter had said that magic was loose in the world again, the Basik girl had said pretty much the same thing. Elgin had been reading the papers to see if he could detect the changes they had promised. So far nothing, at least not in the regular press, the Inquirer, Star and that ilk did appear to be picking up some signs, as were some fringe bloggers and the like. The most telling sign might be that what one might have called the more conservative mainstream witch and demon worshipping organizations had suddenly gotten very quiet. Beauty had a very cute arts and crafts district in the lake front, all of which Elgin usually avoided like the tourist plague spot it was, but today he had a target. Miss Katherine’s New Age Wiccan Arts store. The web page was mostly about new age and art stuff, but the stores page had links to the American Association of Professional Wiccans and that had piqued his interest. Pulling up to one of the few stop lights in town he found himself next to Sherriff SweetBear, who grinned at him from the rolled down window of her cruiser. He tipped his hat “Afternoon Sheriff.” “Good to see you Elgin, hear you’ve made Griffith TwoShoes a very happy man.” Elgin grinned, “He’s happy when he’s making money, and we seem to have hit the mother lode.” “Yes you did, but be careful, the Wiggins don’t like competition much and they have friends in low places.” She waved a little salute as the light turned green and she drove off. After a moment deep in thought Elgin let in the clutch and made the turn he’d been waiting for. Parking was easy this time of year, a lot of the stores were seasonal, some changed hands each season in fact, and it was still too early for many tourists. Elgin parked in the lot behind the row of shops that contained Katherine’s and walked around the front, leaving Humph to scare off any would be bike-nappers. The store was bright and airy, no Halloween witches or the like here, lots of crystal, ethereal wind chimes, pictures and plastic statues of wolves and beautiful Amerind maidens staring soulfully into the distance, etc, etc. The air was heavy with incense, enough to clog up Elgin’s nose almost instantly, and the constant faint tinkle of metal, ceramic and crystal chimes killed any aural sense as well. But there was a feeling of power emanating from the store, more precisely from under his feet. The power didn’t feel dangerous, just powerful, and it stirred something that seemed to spend most of its time folded away in a distant recess of his mind. “Well, what a surprise, Mr. Chalmers, you’re not someone I’d have expected to find in my little store.” The woman’s voice was familiar, and unfamiliar, Elgin turned, to find himself facing Mrs. Kitty Pauls, or rather Mrs. Katherine Pauls, the ultra sophisticated version he’d seen at the cat show. Now he knew what to look for he could see through the makeup, hairstyle and clothes, to the girl probably not long out of college, but she was still a testament to style. “Kitty, you’re not the woman I would have placed as Miss Katherine.” She blinked, the artificial smile stuttered then became more real, warming her eyes, “We’re all full of surprises, Elgin.” He nodded, “I was walking, saw the store, just stepped in to look around. You have a lot of very nice work.” She studied him thoughtfully, “I have some nice works but a lot of tourist dreck as well. Are you looking for something in particular, a gift for a relative, or a girlfriend?” This last was a little arch. Elgin felt himself color, “No, I was just wandering.” Out of the corner of his eyes he saw one of the crystals hanging nearby apparently randomly begin to spin. Except it wasn’t random, he could feel the wisp of otherness tying it to him and the rest of the universe, it was a lie detector. And Kitty knew it was a lie detector, she glanced at it and back at him, her smile a little more artificial. Elgin ignored it and moved on. “Fess pointed out your trailer the other day, you keep it very neat, were you looking for something to brighten it up now spring is finally here?” She was in saleswoman mode now, he’d lied to her, decreased his value as a human in doing so. Now he knew what to ‘look’ for he could see that there were little lie detector crystals hanging from the ceiling at several points. There were other things here as well, darker things than lie detecting ‘spells,’ things that slumbered now but would be more active when the store was empty and dark. A few minutes later he exited the store with a set of wind chimes to hang somewhere in the trailer. He’d proved his hypothesis correct, some of the more dedicated magic believers had discovered the return and were moving quickly to make use of it. Cutter pontificated as he walked back towards the ‘cycle, *One of the problems always was the attraction of power, especially for those with ability and patience. Today machines are generally going to provide more consistent and better results, and anyone can use a machine. The crystals give her an edge, the frighteners allow her to avoid paying for a burglar alarm but she would have to work very hard to make someone buy something expensive they did not want, harder than the ‘take’ would be worth.* Coming around the end of the row of shops Elgin could see his bike, now blocked in by three other bikes, big choppers, and their six riders, three burly men and their matching ‘old ladies.’ Humph was up and striding back and forth possessively along the top of the bike. His tail seeming to float through the air after him. The Bikers were laughing at Humph, one of the men made a shooing motion, and got yowled at, a baritone brother to a roar. The big man on the other side made the mistake of thinking that Humph not looking at him meant the cat didn’t know exactly what he was doing. He reached out to shove the cat off the bike, and got bitten, hard, for his trouble. Cursing the big man leapt back, “Fucking monster bit me!” he yelled sucking at his wound. “Hey, guys, the cat’s just protecting my property.” Elgin called out, not sure if he was going to be able to disarm this situation now. Six pairs of eyes swiveled to look him up and down. Elgin was glad he wasn’t five eight and a hundred and fifty pounds, the stares alone would have knocked him over. “Your fucking mountain lion bit me, I’ll have it put down.” Snarled the man with the bloody knuckles. “He’s had all his shots, and he’s just a big Siamese, I’m sorry he bit you. Hey I work at the gas station on the south west edge of town, bring your bike down there and I’ll fill it up for free. Some juice for your juice as it were.” Elgin smiled, friendly and relaxed, but projecting concern as well. The big man sucked his knuckle again, staring at Elgin over his dirty fist and dirtier mustache, “Okay, but it’s all three bikes, mine, Chunkers, and Gilly here.” Elgin nodded at the other two men, Gilly a skeletal ferret faced man with no front teeth, and Chunkers, a broad rather short man hiding behind a frizzy beard and a mustache with the tips tied in knots. “Fair enough.” One of the women, pointed at Elgins bike, “That a real Norton, not a knock off?” “1975 Commando 850, got it at auction for a song and been working on it all winter.” Elgin replied easily. “Told yeh,” she sniffed at Chunkers, who seemed to be ‘her man.’ “Kay,” he said equitably from behind the hair. The bikers circled the bike, Elgin stepped in and lifted Humph off the seat and set him down on the ground a few yards away, where he sat down with a loud sniff and began to talk at him and the others in typical Siamese fashion, a low grumbling yowl. Two of the women went to try and make friends with him, and, after a show of indifference, he let them rub his ears, then stroke his fur. Finally a cop car drifted by, a deputy looking them over, the bikers got quiet and hostile, and then got back on their bikes, giving Elgin friendly enough waves as they roared off. Elgin sighed, “Humph, intimidate, yowl, dodge, don’t bite, that could have gotten ugly.” The cat yowlped at him, ears at half mast, looking almost abashed. Elgin rubbed his friend’s head, “Okay, no bones broken, let’s go home.” -o- Elgin slowly braked his old Chevy and the Airstream to a stop outside the CircleSBarS ranch’s trailer park. It was time to start moving the cattle out of the paddocks, though it would be a month before they started drifting them up into the summer range. The Smith-Sampson’s of S bar S fame, had hired Elgin for the summer and let him set up on the ranch trailer park even though he was only going to work three days a week most of the time. Mitch, the manager, had grumbled about that, to himself and Elgin, not the Smith-Sampsons. He’d wanted to hire another full timer, but times were hard all over and the couple liked Elgin and figured that his reduced pay and ready help would help keep costs down. There were two other trailers already set up in the small neatly fenced grass covered glade with its shade trees in light green spring foliage. Elgin backed his trailer onto one of the pads between a couple of older trees, well shaded and out of the way and shut the Chevy off. An hour later the Airstream was off its tires, cabled down and hooked up to water, sewage and electricity, he didn’t bother with the cable or phone line. Juan Garcia, his wife Juanita and their three black haired hooligans (male and female) were outside the largest of the trailers, the gray haired vaquero was cooking dinner on a barbecue and waved Elgin over. “Hey man, grab a beer.” Juan pointed at a cooler set up in the shadow of the sagging, UV fadeded aluminum shell he called home during the northern hemisphere’s summer. Juan was from Argentina, in the Northern winter he was down there herding sheep, llamas, or cattle, in the northern summer he was up at the CircleSBarS herding cows. He claimed to hate snow and the cold, and Elgin had never seen any reason to disbelieve the older man. Elgin grabbed a Corona and flipped the lid, toasting his host, “Welcome back to the US of A Juan,” He turned and smiled at the graying Juanita, “You as well ma’am, the offspring behaving themselves?” he waved at the three children, each a year apart, each more trouble prone than the last, especially the daughter, eldest, and a doe eyed devil child. Juanita replied in a fast paced Spanish, which Elgin mostly understood but never attempted to speak. The gist of it was that Juan III had done well in school, learning his alphabet, but had forgotten all his English over the winter, Josef had apparently become a mathematical prodigy and little Duena had spent most of the summer either somewhere other than school or in truant detention, devil child that she was. The target of this pithy opinion stood and smiled up at Elgin with her hands behind her, she never looked like trouble, devils rarely did. He ended up eating a hamburger and salad with the Garcia’s getting them up to speed on the various happenings. Births, deaths, marriages, divorces, assaults, drunk and disorderlies. The Garcias were outgoing and warm, everyone’s friends, they seemed to know just about everyone in Beauty, certainly more than Elgin. As the sun went down Elgin sipped his second Corona. Juan pointed at it, “Going easy I see my friend.” Elgin held the bottle up, “Almost got myself killed last winter, decided I needed to change course. I won’t be herding full time this year, I have a job, a couple of them actually, in town.” “Noticed your little metal bubble was all shined up and the truck sounds real smooth. A man who’s not burning his hours with the bottle can do a lot of things.” Which was something that Juan had said a couple of times a year to Elgin ever since they had met. This time it was said in approval, not as a warning. “So I’ve noticed.” Elgin agreed, saluting his friend with the bottle. -o- Elgin didn’t have a lot of free Saturday evenings, spending most of them with the herd but this week Juan and one of the ‘cowgirls’ was watching the herd and he was sitting on a rock set up for the purpose to look down and across Beauty. His ‘other nature’ had been quiet for several weeks now, after the Iffrit had hunted down and eaten a couple of wild steers in the badlands. But he had a bad feeling about today that had nothing to do with Elgin Chalmers instincts. The sky in the west was still ablaze, clouds catching the sun’s rays in a red orange glory. Above him the brighter stars twinkled. The street lights, store signs and lights, house lights and car headlamps washed out what might have been visible but it was still a beautiful scene. With the newly launched sailing and power yachts rocking at the marina, the scene spread out onto the lake. There was a feeling of expectancy in the air, one of the tribal festivals was tonight and Cutter had warned him to be prepared. With real magic loose, customs thousands of years old, that had once had real meaning but lost them when the magic flickered out, might now trigger unintended occurrences. He turned to look around, behind the thin shroud of here and now he saw the shadow realms, the happy hunting ground with its myriad campfires and beyond that into other places. In some there was jungle here, in others a sun shone down from a pitiless black sky. There were as many alternate universes as campfires and they overlapped in the shadow realms. It was the shadow realms that had been folded flat, hidden, during the unmagical time, now they were there again, if you could see them. A big bonfire had been lit in the main square, and figures circled it, some in traditional garb, others in street clothes, some in costumes of one sort or another. Elgin could hear music, and particularly the heavy thump of the tom toms. In realms the dancers could not see Elgin could see loops of smoke and light, bursting flowers of energy and more, but it was chaos and self healing, come and gone in the same instant. From behind him he felt something darker and more coherent forming, he stood to look. The tribal compound was in the direction of his foreboding, and he was nearly certain that something bad was already on its way. The shadow realm engulfed him as the Iffrit unfolded, and in a few moments the great wings were raising a storm as they lifted his mass into the sky. The tribal compound was empty when Elgin landed with a rush of wind that made the bonfire bloom and roar with renewed fury. There were cars parked on the grass on the other side of the big lodge but he had seen no sign of movement, no bodies, nothing indicating human presence as he glided in on owl silent wings. An instant after touchdown Elgin found himself standing on two legs on the broad flat meeting circle that surrounded the bonfire. The only sound was that of the fire and the wind, no animal sounds, no people sounds, and no sign of the people. There had to be, or should be, at least a hundred, probably half again that many. But there was no one. Off to one side he saw a tripod with a black box, he trotted over, a video camera, one of several set up to catch the proceedings. The built in screen showed that the device was working, he backed the film up a minute. There in the edge of the view he saw something massive touch down, a great clawed foreleg for an instant then pixilated smoke and an instant later Elgin Chalmers walked into view, looking around with a worried expression. He ran the memory back till he saw people, then forward, he saw smiling laughing people, relatives and friends, people who had fought for many years to get what should have been theirs, and who had succeeded in getting at least enough for the tribe to finally start moving forward. Then he saw something, a small group, “Someone wasn’t happy?” The man with his back to the camera turned, Elgin saw the grim face and swore, “Blast it, that’s Griffith.” Cutter whispered in his mind, *He is protesting the use of a certain ritual, the dance and music, saying that they were evil things, and should not be just treated as white skin entertainment.” As with most disasters everything appeared normal, right up to the moment that it wasn’t, there was a surge of people, some laughing, some frightened, first towards the fire, then away, then they were running, and fading, gone. “They were pulled into the shadow realms?” Elgin whispered, staring into the little screen. For an instant he saw something, something large that looked like a pile of twigs shaped roughly like a man, striding with a broad sweeping gait across the gravel circle and out of the camera’s view. “And something came the other way.” Cutter ‘sounded’ tense, *The Sasqual will not linger here long, or it will die, the humans in the shadow realm will fall back when they fall asleep, but they could stumble into realms further away and there they will almost surely die.* Elgin almost put the camera down, then he looked at the controls, and carefully erased the memory. Setting it down he trotted to the next and did the same. Finished with that bit of sabotage he glanced around, not quite sure how to start till he knew more. Then, turning, twisting physically and in another way, he was standing in the orange twighlight and not far away from him he saw several dozen people huddled up against the dark shape of the lodge, but here the lodge’s roof was gone and the door was sagging off its hinges. “Elgin!” A familiar voice barked. He turned with a relieved smile, Griffith TwoShoes was trotting towards him. “Hey Griff, I was worried for a moment.” The businessman stopped, frowning, “Elgin, where did you come from?” “Here, or rather the original here, where you all came from, this is just a shadow of our world, a shadow of might be’s.” The Indian’s dark eyes opened wide, “You know what’s going on?” “Somewhat, do you have a nose count Griff? This is not a healthy place to hang for long, we need to get people back into the real world as fast as we can.” Another familiar figure was approaching, Caitlin SweetBear, she had her hand on her pistol, “Elgin, what are you doing here?” “Helping Sheriff, if you’ll let me. I need to know how many folks may have left the area, the shadow realm isn’t stable, you can walk from here into a far more dangerous one without realizing.” “This have something to do with the change you underwent last fall?” She stared at him, eyes hard and questioning. “Yes, and no, they are related, but what happened here had nothing to do with me.” Elgin waved at Griffith, “TwoShoes tried to warn you, old music, old rituals are not things to be fooled around with anymore, the world is changing becoming less forgiving of certain types of mistakes.” Someone, a woman came running out of the woods, screaming, sobbing, one of the men jumped up to catch her, and there was a fast paced exchange in the tribal dialect, Caitlin turned back grim faced, “She says she spoke to her grandfather, dead for twenty years, he told her we are all in the happy hunting ground, have all died.” Elgin shook his head, “No, this is just a shadow world, it’s adjacent to the happy hunting ground but we’re not dead.” He grimaced, this was taking too long. He stepped across the ground separating him from Caitlin. The Sheriff jumped back with a yelp, he’d been far too far away to just step up to her. He grasped her shoulder and turned, then let her go. The bonfire burnt in the dark, a log snapped and shifted sending a shower of sparks into the sky, the breeze blew, a coyote howled and an owl hooted. The Sheriff’s knees gave away and she sank down, to touch the gravel. She whispered some words in a language that seemed like it should be familiar. Her shoulders rose as she drew in a deep, deep breath then let it out. She half turned but did not look up, “Sorry Elgin, I guess you were telling the truth, get me back there and I’ll get ‘em organized, and start figuring out who’s lost.” She said it without looking back at him, he was fairly sure she was too frightened to look at him. An hour later the Sheriff, Griffith and Chief BlackHawk were alone in the shadow realm. Alone except for between four and seven who were unaccounted for. The chief was ex army, he’d, perhaps not oddly, flown Blackhawk choppers for the Army before he’d commanded a regiment of them in Afghanistan. Few felt any reservation in calling him chief, colonel, or sir. “How long do they have?” “If someone’s unlucky they can get killed almost instantly, some of the other shadow realms are fatal to human life. But other than that, probably a couple of days, nothing here is edible, there is no water.” “We need aerial reconnaissance or search parties,” The chief said flatly. Elgin nodded his head, “Aerial reconnaissance we have, search parties just raise the odds of someone getting killed.” “Don’t see an airport round about.” The chief looked at Elgin with hostile eyes, he had hidden his biases well as a US Army officer but he didn’t like whites. Didn’t trust this prototypical WASP for all that he was supposedly almost as much Amerind blood as the chief. Elgin smiled, “You’re standing on it.” He said, and unfolded. The three humans threw themselves away from the smoky distortion in the air that firmed into a winged nightmare, before they could scramble away, huge clawed fore limbs scooped them up. “Sorry about this but you need to go home for the night.” And he ‘placed’ them back in the real world. Alone at last Elgin leapt into the air with a powerful downbeat of his wings and was spiraling up and out in seconds. He spotted two of the refugees within moments, one more in a few minutes and five in less than ten, but there were no more that he could see, and he could ‘taste’ the residue of at least one more, who was no longer in this shadow realm. It took another two hours for Elgin to lead the strays back into the real world where their cell phones worked again and they could call for rescue. A man again he stood in a thicket of trees a few hundred yards from where the tribal council circle existed in the anchor realm. Here the trail of a man and woman simply ended. They had been running in fear when they crossed the edge of the circle and into some other realm. *We would need the queen of doors to find them, if they are still alive.* Elgin blinked, it wasn’t Cutter speaking in his head but the Iffrit this time. “The queen of doors?” *There is a human mistress of your world’s shadow realms, to whom nothing is locked away and hidden if she knows to want to know it. She could find them but the queen is still in hiding and the likelihood of the pair being alive even now is vanishingly small.* Elgin could taste the sadness in the Iffrit’s mind, the Iffrit was as near immortal as any physical being could be but it had seen death, pointless, too early, death, far too often. *I thought you were the Oldest, the most powerful being on earth?* Elgin protested, not wanting to believe that two people were simply gone. *I am both of those things, but that does not mean I am omnipotent. I am a being, just a different, older, more powerful one designed to guide peoples, such as yours, to your potential point.* *Designed?* *Designed. Far away, long ago, in a universe that died to birth this one.* Elgin didn’t know what to say after that. *We should go.* “Yeah. What should I do when I get back? I guess our secret’s out, eh?” Elgin spoke aloud this time, he almost felt good that his secret was out. The Iffrit’s soundless chuckle tickled disturbingly, *Those without the right experience and knowledge have a hard time holding onto things that happen in the shadow realms, Elgin. A few minutes and it will get fuzzy and fragmented, the first time they sleep their memories will fade and others will tend to take their place. They will be very confused for hours. Then they will all go home, go to sleep and tomorrow they will be chatting about what went wrong and a new narrative will string itself through the memories and they will forget it quickly. The two we lost will be the focus, they may turn up dead or never be found, but the narrative will somehow weave itself about their passing. A few, those with the basic ability to manipulate magic, may hold onto more, and they may remember us having something to do with what happened. We shall just have to see what the morrow brings.* Elgin was glad that the Iffrit had said, we and not you. <<>> Chapter 5 The biker gang, the garage and the Piggy Wiggys Elgin woke with the sun gleaming through the blinds of the window over his bed. He’d gone to bed late and Sundays at home were lazy. He had to be at the Library to open up by noon but before that it was ‘make and mend.’ Humph was sprawled over the undersized cat bed, snoring, which had never seemed a very ‘cat’ thing to do. As Elgin started to move around the cat woke up and viewed him through slitted blue eyes, youwlped a complaint and then snuggled back, satisfied that Elgin would set out breakfast and fresh water. There were a pair of jeans to sew up and a shirt to replace a button on, socks to repair holes in and a pile of laundry to sort, he’d run a couple of loads at the Laundromat after he closed the library at four. Mail got read, checkbook balanced, an experience that still seemed new and a little wrong somehow, having money in savings felt even more wrong but the occasional urge to splurge on something was usually easily quashed by nowElgin. By the time he was ready to leave his aluminum shell the sun had been replaced by drizzling rain and he left the Norton in its shelter and took the Chevy instead. It was eleven, he hesitated, then flipped on the radio, “This is WBUT the voice of Beauty, Wyoming and the East Black Bear Lake Region. In the news, two locals were killed by what is thought to be a rabid bear that broke up the annual tribal council spring meeting last night. Cherry Smith and her uncle Will Jones were killed by the animal after chasing them into the woods. Their dismembered and partially eaten bodies were discovered early this morning,” the announcer put just the right amount of vaguely ghoulish regret in the words, “about a half dozen others were lost in the woods after fleeing the council compound in panic. Everyone else is safe; multiple, cuts, sprains, bruises and abrasions as well as several cases of shock were treated and released overnight at the LittleWolf Hospital Clinic. Search parties are beating the woods to find and kill the crazed animals.” This was followed by more normal reports, a none fatal wreck on the north lakeside road, an arrest for drunken driving and a fight at the Ludwig, “More bizarre, several people on East Roaring Creek Lane reported a woodpile on fire in the middle of the road. The fire department was called out and put out what appears to have been a compost heap fire, set in the middle of the road...a trail of crushed and smoldering debris leading back to a bonfire in the rear of Mrs Elsa Elsinore’s home, seemed to show that someone had dragged the pile several hundred feet before leaving it in the middle of the road. The fire department is investigating it as an arson attempt.” Elgin flipped the radio off. Two people dead and who knew what the mobile trash heap would have done if it hadn’t wandered into someone’s bonfire. He pulled up outside of TwoShoes Garage & QikMart, of which he was the semi official manager now. Duval, one of Griff’s cousins, was just leaving, his niece Nancy Jones was just taking over and Dan the swing shift dogs body was pressure spraying the concrete. They were beginning to get the rotting trash smell the place had built up over the years, under control. As he chatted with Duval there was a growing rumble from the west, Duval looked over Elgin’s shoulder, “Damn Bikers.” Elgin shrugged tolerantly. But instead of passing by as they had both expected four stuttering choppers rolled onto the little gas station plaza and stopped. The hair on the back of Elgin’s neck was standing on end, as he turned with a smile, the bikes were parked neatly enough in a row in front of the storefront, six big black clad figures swinging down. Four men, all well over Elgin’s six foot, two women, who were probably almost that tall, lots of tanned and tattooed skin, a Mohawk, two greasy ponytails one with shaved sideboards and one gleaming dome, all semi anonymous behind wrap around sunglasses. They gave Elgin, Duval and Dan emotionless, dismissive glances as they moved to the door and went inside. As Duval made to follow them Elgin waved him back, saying “Call the sheriff if something looks wrong Duval,” he wanted to support Nancy but limit any provocation. The bikers had dispersed quickly, one of the women and one of the men were out of sight, probably in the restrooms, one was by the self serve coffee, another by the self serve cold drinks, another looking over the selection of beer in the cooler another walking the aisles of food and sundries. The bald one, the apparent leader had pulled a full cup of coffee from an urn, now he took a swig, and sprayed it out “Faugh, fuck that! This place used to be half decent before they let the grease monkeys in! What now? You reusing the oil in the coffee?” he emptied the thirty ounce super size coffee into the drain, spraying more coffee over the counter. There was a crash from the aisle, “Damn it, can’t you worthless assholes keep the aisles clear? Just about broke my ankle! The woman in the aisles said, having taken down a display of cell phone recharges, calling cards and other cell phone paraphernalia. “I should sue.” The woman’s lavatory door opened with a crash,, “What a pigsty, I’m going to call the county health department,” called out the harpy who came out, smiling as she pranced down the aisle. The men’s door opened, “Piss all over the damn floor, toilet plugged and overflowing, litter all over the place, it’s a disgusting disgrace!” The cooler door crashed shut, and the glass crazed, “Damn, don’t keep their stock up.” Snarled the man with a Mohawk, carrying two twelve packs of Coors towards the checkout counter. By the self serve cold drinks ice was piled high in the drain channel and all over the floor. The grinning thug with a huge mug of apparently mixed sodas, dropped something into it and stepped back, an instant later the cup geysered brown foam to the ceiling. While all this had been going on Nancy had been standing with her back to the tobacco rack, hand over her mouth, eyes huge. Elgin had calmly walked around the end of the counter and stood behind the cash register, watching the show. There was no point starting a fight he was bound to loose. Mohawk slammed the beer down on the counter, “I guess I’ll buy this, and some chaw,” He sneered at Elgin, his breath reeking, his teeth a dentists despair, yellowed, decayed, blackened and broken. “The case has a sign saying no Sunday sales I’m afraid. State and county law, the sheriff would revoke my license and arrest you if I sold it.” He hooked his thumb over his shoulder whith a shrug, “What’ kind of chewing tobacco can I get for you.” He ignored the two women in the aisles picking items up, glancing at them and dropping them on the floor, then stepping on them. He was fighting very hard to let it all simply slide off his back, having gotten to this point there was little he could do short of physical violence to stop this and he’d either get beaten to a pulp or end up killing, and maybe eating, all of them, and he suspected they’d disagree with even the Iffrit’s cast iron stomach. “I don’t care about the bitch sheriff, I said I wanted to be a good citizen and buy this beer.” The other five were looking towards the stupid confrontation at the front of the store. Elgin smiled, “I can give you a note, and you can come in tomorrow and pick them up, heck what if I say you can have four twelve packs for the price of two, tomorrow? For your trouble as it were.” Elgin looked levelly past the glasses into the others muddy, bloodshot eyes. He knew he was supposed to be looking down, showing submission, but he wasn’t going to sell the beer and all the submissive act would do is stretch the game out a few more moments. The big thug, probably nearing three hundred pounds, and very little of it fat, leaned forward, “Mister baby blue eyes, I am going to buy this beer, today, here.” “No mister bad breath and worse attitude, you aren’t.” Elgin replied with a cheerful smile, which confused the other man for several seconds. Then Mohawk moved with startling quickness, his fist, encased in a fingerless leather glove, with rounded studs over his knuckles, came up from his hip, in an upper cut at Elgin’s chin. Elgin leaned back out of the other man’s reach. Held up his hands, “look, I don’t want any trouble, the sheriff is on her way by now, you leave and I doubt she’ll be bothered with my having to clean up the mess.” The shaven headed man looked at him, “You think you’re a hero or something Chalmers?” Elgin smiled, “I’m just a guy trying to get by Mr. Greer. And I understand that you’re delivering a ‘message,’ which will be followed up with some demand. I’m not going to fight you unless you attack me or Nancy, there’s no reason to get beaten to a pulp just because you’re trashing my place of employment and trying to put me out of a job. I like my teeth just where they are thank you.” He smiled gently, letting them see that he had all of his The result of having too little money to buy sweets when he was young, combined with good genes. “You smug son of a b...” Mohawk made to jump over the counter and mess Elgin up. “No Hawk, we’re done here.” The shaven headed man snapped coolly. Out of the corner of his eye Elgin saw a sheriff’s cruiser draw up outside. The man dropped the second cup of coffee he’d made on the floor, “All of you, mount up, we’re out of this pig sty.” The others left, leaving the bald man holding the door, staring at Elgin from behind mirrored glasses, “How’d you know my name Chalmers?” Elgin had no idea, but the Iffrit replied in his voice, “Your reputation precedes you Mr. Charles Greer. Beard and long hair or clean shaven, it’s hard to miss that you’re the man in charge and you’re not Claw.” “You’ve got a smart mouth and poor attitude Chalmers. Remember a sheep gets sheared by the farmer or eaten by a wolf. Smart mouthed sheep tend to get eaten because they think too much of themselves, or put down because they’re too much damn trouble.” He turned away and walked to his bike, the four bikes started with a synchronized blatting roar, and the clumsy machines taxied slowly out to the road and roared away. “Oh my God Mr. Elgin, I couldn’t believe it, you stood them off.” Nancy was white and shaking. Elgin, patted her arm, “I just did what I needed to do, I didn’t stand them off, I just didn’t let them make things worse. Now, how are you feeling?” He checked her more carefully, she was obviously angry and shaken. The door opened, letting in Duval, Ben and a female deputy. She wasn’t familiar which was a bit surprising, but then the Sheriff might be hiring from outside the county. She wasn’t particularly tall or broad. As far as Elgin was a judge either of the biker chicks would have broken her over their knee with ease. Except of course for the baton, Tazer and Glock 20, the great equalizer, sometimes. Duval and Dan looked around in horror, “How the hell did they do all this in ten minutes?” Duval said. “They’re professional wreckers.” Elgin replied, quietly. “Dan, Nancy, we’re closing the store till it’s fixed up again. We’ll sell gas of course, use the night pass through so cash customers don’t have to come indoors. Give directions to three or four places for toilets, and the stuff they could pick up here. Duval, if you could, can you stay around and help with the clean up?” The Deputy had taken out a smart phone and started snapping pictures and muttering into it. A few minutes later she came back to Elgin who was just hanging up after telling an apoplectic Griffith TwoShoes what had happened, big brown eyes looked him up and down thoughtfully, “You going to press charges Mr. Chalmers?” “For aggravated littering and nasty personal cleanliness habits?” Elgin asked a bit bitterly. “Destruction of property, public threats, that sort of thing,” She smiled, “The judge would love to convict on the nasty personal cleanliness habits though.” “Can you put the report in, say that I’m not pressing charges due to cost of trying to litigate, but keep filed in case something worse happens. Also can you send me a copy of the report and photos, for the insurance you know?” Elgin grinned. She nodded her head, “Certainly can.” She looked around, “They wouldn’t have done this for the fun of it, it wouldn’t have been Movie Star if that was all it was.” “The sheriff warned me that the Wiggins don’t like having anybody around who might grow into competition for their happy little monopoly.” The deputy nodded, “Makes sense, the Piggy Wiggys see everything as a threat, or an opportunity.” So maybe she was a local, Piggy Wiggys was the local, very secret nickname for the Wiggins, secret because the whole Wiggins clan was pathologically vindictive. -o- The four hours at the library next to the old Catholic church and school had become an interesting experience in a different world for Elgin, it was rarely busy, or it hadn’t been in the three months he’d been there. He enjoyed looking books up for kids, having the Dewey Decimal System explained to him by ten year olds. He actually had a couple of helpers who came in to help the poor dweeb Miss Wilkerson had suckered into opening the library on Sundays. He also met a lot of people looking for this or that and interacted with the few intellectual souls who lived in the extremely earthy, anti-intellectual Beauty. Today the four hours stretched out, he had almost called in and canceled but in the end couldn’t convince himself he had a good reason to do so. The bikers weren’t going to do anything else yet. He was worried about the longer term, he, and maybe more than just Elgin, had sensed something truly evil about this morning’s bikers, unlike the ones he’d run into in town, who were dangerous, nasty, unpleasant, but who were at bottom just spoiled children. MovieStar Greer and his coterie were destroyers, give them the power and they would wage war on the world for the fun of it. The garage was in the town limits but beyond the last small housing development. It had a phone line and was in cell range, a silent alarm system was already in the planning. But a single Molotov cocktail would send the old building up in flames before the local volunteer fire brigade could get there. A drive by shooting could do a lot of damage, and there was a chance more thugs would just be sent to mess the place up. There was a pause in the foot traffic and he lost himself looking at the computer screen that still showed the searches he’d been doing on the Evil Eagle’s Claw Club. Not much public commentary, the gang was at once too small and remote and too feared for much to make it into the public record. He thought about how to protect the building and the employees, and as he did the Iffrit started to build a plan. “That’s a rather nasty grin Mr. Chalmers,” The feminine voice was amused rather than chiding. Elgin jumped, Katherine Pauls was dressed in Sunday finery, the pink dress with jacket and even a little pink hat with swirls of netting, were utterly modern and 1950’s at the same time. He blinked, “Uh, Mrs. Pauls, you really ought to warn a man before appearing like an apparition from above, I was kinda wondering if my time was up.” She dimpled very prettily, “Well I declare, that was a very nice compliment Mr. Chalmers!” Then the smile became less coquettish and more real, “I see the rumors of your subjugation are true, Elgin Chalmers, cowboy librarian!” “Six shooter and rifle at hand, he kept an eye out for coyotes and renegades while the wimminfolk and children studied.” Elgin said in his best Lorne Greene, holding a noble, distant expression, his gaze fixed, for a moment, on some imagined horizon. Then he looked at her, “Or I just let my High School English teacher bribe me into it. I have a key now so I can come in and look things up when I want to, which is usually after normal closing time, given the hours the library has to run these days.” “And this would be a prize for the cowboy Elgin Chalmers because?” she asked a bit archly. But her eyes were thoughtfully questioning. “I guess I’m interested in the world these days, guess I had an epiphany back at the beginning of the winter, decided that I was going to have to do something with my life or I was going to waste it.” He shrugged, feeling his face warm a little. Her eyes were even more thoughtful now, a little frown creased her smooth brow, “Well it appears to have been quite a shock to quite a few folks.” She smiled wickedly, “Not all of the old biddies, female and male, are taking it well. I guess they liked having a ne’er do well to point to as an example of all that was wrong with the world.” Elgin chuckled, “Can’t please all the folks all the time Kitty.” “No, no you can’t.” She replied with an odd smile, “Well I’m going to go see if there are any good, silly romances, out that I haven’t read.” She walked away, the sway of her hips in the tight dress pink dress utterly hypnotizing. -o- It was midnight and Elgin rode his bike to the garage. Winifred was the night clerk with another cousin of Griffiths dozing in the corner behind the counter, with a well kept lever action rifle across his lap. Elgin checked around again, the damage and ruining that the bikers had accomplished had been made good and the debris packed away for the insurance company to claim. The claims adjuster had already been out to review the damage, the evidence, and talk to the deputy about what had happened. The insurance adjuster was grumbling about it but there was a riot clause in the coverage that Griffith had paid for and was invoking. Once outside Elgin walked around the garage, looking inwards the first time, outward the second time and down the third time. As he walked the ground under him changed, a tiny amount most places, but quite a lot in others. Done with the outer defenses he walked back to the building, which had a new glass and aluminum front, but a core of glazed tile blocks from the 1940’s when this had been the main road through the mountains and the garage the only full service station in several hundred miles. He walked around the building and in his mind the shadow realm version, a half eroded; open topped shell took on a near reality. He hoped he was just being paranoid but was not betting on it. -o- Monday morning Elgin read the local newspaper, the ‘bear maulings’ filled the most of the column space. He was depressed as he saw the pictures of the man and woman who had died. But he kept reading, the police and forestry service were confused but not admitting it, there was no sign of the bear everyone claimed to have seen. The bodies, had been terribly mutilated, partly eaten, by something ‘like a very large bear.’ but there was no blood at the site they had been found and no sign of the bodies being dragged from elsewhere. Tracking dogs brought in to help figure out what had happened were not finding anything. In fact there was a little tag piece that indicated that the dogs were refusing to go into the forest around the council lodge. Elgin read it all and rubbed his eyes, something was probably in the forest, and he’d thought, hoped, the rubbish pile monster burning in the middle of the street had been the end of that. He ate breakfast and strolled towards the old bunkhouse. There was a light on in the main house, and a small car tucked up in the covered parking spot round the side. He’d heard that the Smith-Samson’s were going to be moving up for the summer in the next week or so, maybe the housekeeping staff was getting an early start. He stepped onto the porch and into the front room, glancing around at the other three people already there, drinking coffee. He exchanged nods and smiles with the two men and the woman waiting for Mitch. The ranch had a ‘crew’ of six, eight if you included Mitch and Betty, but Mitch rarely left the paddock area and Elgin wasn’t sure that Betty could ride, though a lot of ‘cowboy’ work was done in wheeled vehicles these days anyway. While a horse was better in some small number of situations, they required vastly more care and ate all the time, not just when running. The horse was on the way out except on boutique ranches run more for show than money, but then many modest sized ranches in the US fit that description, even the CircleSBarS. Mitch came in from the residence part of the building, he shot a Elgin a darkling look, he hadn’t gotten over Elgin going over his head to the Smith-Samson’s. “OK, all here I guess.” He sniffed, “Emma, you and Pedro, no change, you’re to relieve Juan and Donna, out in the main grazing.” He glanced at Elgin, “Tomorrow you go out for two nights, since Juan did two for you this weekend, right!” Elgin bobbed his head, “Yes sir.” “I’ve got a pick up for you at the Franking yard, you can drive over there in the ranch van, after lunch.” He looked at the slender youngster who was new this year, “Winters, you and I are working running up to the highland to check the auto watering system.” He glanced back at Elgin, “You’ll have the ranch card for the pickup, don’t lose it.” “Yes sir.” Elgin replied with a bob of the head, but he wondered what was going on, normally it would be Elgin going with Winters, Mitch doing the pickup at the ranch supply depot in town. And letting anyone else have the card was almost unheard of, he figured anyone who got their hands on it would charge personal items to it which, as everyone knew, Mitch did regularly. There was always work to do around a ranch, the small stable to muck out, the herb garden in the back to till, a gutter to fix, etc, etc. So Elgin just went about those jobs. At some point the small car he’d seen parked in the family section was gone, and a little later a WyoMaids car appeared, so apparently the other car had been someone else. The old Ford panel truck started after a bit of a struggle, Elgin filled up with diesel and checked all the fluid levels, which all needed topping off. He put an oil and filter change, along with a belt tightening and all round greasing of the old iron on his list of things to do. The pair of them happily rumbled through town, towards Winston Gap, Just past Wiggins Motors he swung the big white truck with its gold CircleSBarS brand on the side into Franking Farm and Ranch Supplies. A warning bell went off when he saw two choppers parked by the ‘store’ and a grimy gray and rust truck pulled up at the far end of the dock. He’d seen the truck before, sometimes escorted by Evil Eagle Claw Club bikers. But he had a job to do and maybe this was just coincidence, deep in his mind he heard two ancient cynics snort in amusement. He dropped down from the truck and walked to one of the rickety wooden steps up to the dock. The main yard was closed off by a chain link fence and a motorized chain link gate, controlled from the little shack tacked onto the side of the main building. Hands tucked into his pockets, Stetson pulled down he strolled towards the shack. He had the order number and packing list in his jacket pocket along with the ranch credit card. A big man stepped out of the office, and glanced around, elaborately play acting to the crowd of none. In black leather pants, jacket and wrap around mirrored glasses, Mohawk, or Hawk, was dressed just as he had been at TwoShoes. Elgin suspected he smelled just as rank as well. The sleek mirrored shades swung his way as Elgin approached, a theatrical start of recognition, “Oh look, it’s mister clean cut cowboy.” Hawk’s voice was almost cheerful, a very bad sign. Elgin touched the brim of his Stetson in a silent, polite greeting and aimed to go around the bigger man. But Hawk swung around and into Elgin’s path, “Say, don’t I know you, tall skinny and stupid?” The smile was unpleasant, not the least because it showed the yellowed, broken and rotten teeth. Elgin came to a stop, “We’ve met before, Mohawk.” He would not start anything but neither was he going to back down, he was almost certain it wouldn’t do any good and it wasn’t in his nature anyway. A big greasy hand had reached up to rub the distinctive hairdo, “Like it cowboy? when I was a kid I liked playing cowboys and Indians, I was always the Indian and I liked beating the crap out of the snots who wanted to be cowboys.” “It’s at least as good as a name tag Mohawk.” Elgin replied flatly, “I grew up around here, wanted to play the Indian, but everyone made me play the cowboy because I look like one. There were always a lot more Indians than Cowboys, so I got the crap knocked out of me a lot, but then so did the Indians.” “Still mouthy aren’t you.” Elgin grinned, “You bring it out.” The big biker took a long stride forward, reaching out to grab Elgin, obviously planning on a little shaking, followed by throwing the smaller man to the ground and the application of the huge and heavy steel toed boots he was wearing. Hawk was fast for such a big man, fast and unhesitating, still smilingly confident of his power, speed and ruthlessness. Elgin was already moving by the time the other man had started to lean forward for the step, pushing off backwards and swinging to Hawk’s off side. Hawk recovered quickly, obviously surprised at how quick his opponent had been. “You dance like a cowgirl.” “You’re big Hawk and I’ve no reason to let you get hold of me. Just remember that a little guy like me is going to have to play rough if it really comes down to it.” Hawk’s face split in a genuine smile, “Play rough, you’re going to have to play rough?” He laughed, but it didn’t stop him lunging at Elgin, with a driving punch aimed low, which Elgin step-spun away from again. This time Hawk had anticipated the counter and let his punch spin him as he dropped to launch a savage side kick that would have either broken a knee or taken Elgin’s legs out from under him if it had connected. Elgin hopped over the scything kick and jumped back even further. But not too far, Hawk had him trapped against the lip of the dock with its four foot drop. The biker swirled back to his feet and danced forward, a manic grin on his face. He was showing Elgin that he was a practiced and dangerous multi martial art fighter and was only just getting started. “You’re quick for a pretty faced cowboy, but it’s not going to help you.” Elgin’s reply was a flickering attack aimed at his opponent’s genitals, an attempt to end this with one kick. But a moment later he was rolling away his left foot tingling from hitting the discrete metal codpiece Hawk wore under his leathers. Elgin rolled to his feet, no longer with his back to the drop off. Hawk stagger spun to keep facing Elgin, his smile frozen from astonishment, the blow had hurt, even with the codpiece, and it had been powerful enough to almost knock him over, but more than either of those was the speed, one instant Elgin had been out of reach and then there was a savage low blow. The biker shook himself and dropped into more of a wrestling posture as he sneered, “Well I guess there are never going to be any little cowboys in your future are there?” Elgin’s second blow smashed into the side of Hawk’s jaw with the power of his first attack. And the fight was over. Hawk twist-crashed into the ground his jaw broken and several teeth flying away, the big man lay where he had fallen, unconscious. Without checking the black clad lump out Elgin simply turned and continued his walk to the gatehouse. As he did a woman in black leather, including stiletto heeled lace up leather boots, that put her a couple of inches over Elgin’s six foot plus, stalked past him, her expression poisonous as she looked at Elgin, but she wasn’t even trying to run to the assistance of ‘her man.’ Another couple of leather clad figures were walking towards the dock from the store. One was ‘Gilly’ and the other one of the thugs from the incident at the garage, they ignored Elgin and walked towards Hawk’s slumped figure. The clerk, probably the kid of an ‘immigrant’ was standing behind the counter and away from the bow window that had a view of the gate and dock area. His eyes bugged out as Elgin stepped in and took off his hat, “You Chalmers?” “I am.” “Uh...I...,” he pointed at the phone, “you need to call the police?” Police? Definitely an immigrant, “I’ll tell the sheriff the next time I meet her. She has enough to worry about right now.” The boy nodded, his eyes huge, “Uh, you’re here for the CircleSBarS pickup?” Elgin pulled the packing list out of his pocket, “Yep.” The order was ready and the boy called for one of the yardmen to bring it to Elgin’s truck. When Elgin went back outside the two bikes and the grimy truck were both gone. And the tires on his truck had been slashed. Which just made Elgin shake his head and go back inside to make another call. -o- Elgin sat and drank a coffee as the sun went down, there was a muted mutter of an engine and the sweep of headlights. A car pulled into the covered parking next to the house, where he’d seen the compact this morning. Someone was staying there apparently. The new kid Winters had taken the pad just beyond the group of trees Elgin camped under. The young cowboy didn’t have a camper, he was actually living in a biggish army surplus tent, while he made out to be a somewhat seasoned hand Elgin was fairly certain he was a city kid, possibly a college drop out with some dude ranch holiday time in his past. It didn’t matter to him, the kid was a hard worker, did what he was told, and knew which end of a horse did what, the rest was just experience. Winters looked up as Elgin wandered over, he smiled shyly, “You and the Boss don’t get on well do you.” “A perspicacious observation my young padawan,” Elgin smiled as he perched on a rock. The younger man started to get up, “Uh, I can get another chair?” Elgin waved him down, “No need, comfortable here, sat here a lot of times in the past.” “Yeah, I guess, uh, thank’s for making this easy for me, you guys are great, I hear all sorts of stories about hazing upstarts.” “What college did you drop out of to join the jolly brother-sisterhood of cowpokes Winters?” The other man opened his mouth to deny the charge, then shut it, shrugged, “Cal Tech.” “Good school I hear, couldn’t decide what you wanted to do with your life?” “I was spending all that money and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be a bio engineer. My parents were so proud, all my relatives, I got a scholarship, but it was still so expensive, and the school wouldn’t let me put off starting till I’d figured out what I wanted to do. I thought about the Army or the Air Force but with the draw downs it would have been a year or so before I got into boot camp.” “Spent some time on a dude ranch over the years?” “Yeah, well actually summer camp, three years and then worked on a dude ranch in high school, in Colorado, figured I might like the real thing better.” “Talk to me about that after the first thunderstorm out with the herd,” Elgin smiled. “I hope your parents know where you are?” “You sound like my sister,” he said it with a smile, “And yes, through sis, I can’t say no to them like she can.” Elgin grinned, “OK, sounds like a good family.” “We’re tight, too tight maybe.” “Doesn’t seem possible, but I wouldn’t know.” “Your mother and father divorced?” Elgin swirled his coffee, “My father died on my sixteenth birthday, my mother left when I was twelve and no one has heard from her since, so she’s probably dead as well.” “Damn, I’m sorry sir.” “Nothing to be sorry about, just facts, but it makes me wonder what a regular family would have been like.” Looking for something the boy went back to the first comment, “I thought you and Mitch must be pretty tight, you both being long term and all. But he kept muttering about what a trouble maker you are. Then he swore a blue streak about you after he got a text as we were coming down from the high range.” Mitch wasn’t being particularly discreet, but then the big manager had never had to be. He got by, on being reasonably good at his job, only moderately corrupt and having an imposing presence when he wanted to. Elgin sipped his coffee with a faint smile. <<>> Chapter 6 Our hero saves a life and the Bikers bite off more than they can chew It was Thursday evening when the young female deputy found Elgin under a Mustang working on a transmission linkage. The first he knew of her presence was a gentle kick on the ankle, “Mr. Chalmers, it’s Deputy Michaels.” Elgin slid out on the glider, “Good evening Deputy Michaels, is there something I can do?” he said coming to his feet, wiping his hand on a rag. “You, uh, have grease on your chin...Mr. Chalmers.” Elgin rubbed his chin, smiled into the dark brown eyes, “Thanks, its Elgin by the way, if you would like.” She ignored that, “The sheriff thought I should come around and talk to you. Its about Tony Deaton.” “I’m afraid I don’t know a Tony Deaton,” but he had a sinking feeling that he did. “You might know him as Hawk, you and he had a fight at the supply depot the other day.” That confirmed his concern, “He was one of the men who trashed the garage on Sunday. He was already at the depot when I arrived. He felt he had a grudge and pushed, attacked me, I tried to just retreat but he made it clear he wasn’t going to accept a standoff. I responded and left him for his friends to take care of.” The deputy jotted some notes down on her pad, the pretty mouth twisted into a moue of disapproval. “Citizens are not supposed to take these things into their own hands Mr. Chalmers, you should have retreated and called the sheriff’s office.” “Deputy, I hear from your accent that you’re an easterner. Don’t know what the Sheriff has told you, but out here running from a fight is not a good idea. Folks figure that if you’ll run from a fight you’ll run out on other things.” She ignored his somewhat exasperated explanation, “Did you know you’d broken Mr. Deaton’s jaw and knocked out four of his teeth?” “Didn’t check to see, not surprised, hit him pretty hard in the jaw, almost impossible to kill a man, hitting him in the jaw.” The big brown eyes darted up in shock at that last then back to her book. “Mr. Deaton is in hospital, he was admitted yesterday, his jaw is badly infected, apparently infection already in his jaw got into the break. There is a very real possibility that he’s going to die. While he will not press charges on your assault, if he dies it will be up to the district attorney and you will be facing manslaughter charges at the very least.” “And here I was thinking that I was saving the thug some dental expenses.” Elgin replied flatly. Her pad and pen snapped down and she glared at him fiercely, “You may have killed a man, in a terrible and painful way and you joke about it!?” “A thug attacked me twice, apparently confident he could get away with beating me to a pulp. And it’s me who gets in trouble because he has mouth full of rotten teeth that were going to kill him soon anyway?” He snapped back. She jammed the pen and pad away, “I’ve done what the sheriff asked, and I hope its me she sends to arrest you, you red neck jackass when that poor man dies.” He had to say that her departure was very much in the ‘flouncing’ style, without the long dress. After he left he rubbed his neck, “Now why the devil did I set out to upset her like that?” There was no good answer he could think of, and the snickering coming from the back of his mind didn’t help. -o- The Little Wolf Hospital-Clinic was in Winston Gap, the new part of Beauty, where the new northern lake highway split from the old southern route. The old Clinic, a stone and log building had been gutted and was now admitting and office space, the modern brick and glass building behind it was very sleek and well integrated with the rocky land. Elgin had never been inside before, his various sprains and breaks had been minor enough to be dealt with by a nurse, or ignored till the pain went away, he didn’t like how the hospital smelled. He found his way up to the ward without asking anyone directions, smiling at the nurses, doctors and visitors as he passed. They were mostly immigrant types, relatively few local tribesmen and women, none he knew. Outside the one of the doors he saw a woman in jeans and a sweater and moderately heeled boots sitting slumped, her feet stuck out straight in front of her. Her face was wind and sun browned, but without the heavy makeup he’d seen before she looked younger and less hard. “You Mrs. Deaton?” Elgin asked quietly. She had been dozing, she woke with a jerk and looked up puzzled then almost frightened, “You?” “I hear Hawk’s not doing too well.” She stood, and even in regular boots she was only a little shorter than Elgin. He had completely surprised her, she tried to decide what her response was supposed to be, anger, outrage, accusation, disgusted contempt. She seemed to try them all but couldn’t hold any of them, she looked tired, defeated, angry, but not at him. “What do you want, to gloat?” “Just to see him, to say I’m sorry it came to this. I certainly meant to stop, to hurt him, not kill him.” “Oh.” She shrank a little, “You know he’d have laughed if the boot were on the other foot.” “I understand that, but it’s not my way.” She rocked her head at the door which was only partly open, “He’s in there all hooked up to this that and the other, they say he’ll be dead by tomorrow, he’s probably out of it, they keep him sedated.” Elgin nodded, stepped inside, despite what the woman thought Mohawk, now shaven headed was awake, his muddy eyes glared at Elgin as the cowboy approached. His jaw was wired and taped up, the dressings were an ugly color and there was more than a whiff of corruption in the air. “No need to get up Mohawk, the missus tells me you’re down for the count,” Elgin said. The others eyes looked daggers at Elgin, hate almost seemed to flow off the man and reach out for Elgin’s throat. Elgin stopped by the bedside, the man’s arms were strapped down, the hands balled into fists, there was one of the self medicate buttons near his hand but Deaton was ignoring it. The man hated the world and himself so much that he wanted to go out suffering. “Tony Deaton, or Hawk if you want, I’m sorry that you’re going through this. Not that I hit you, not that I broke your jaw or extracted some of those rotten teeth. But I am sorry that the infection got into the wound and is causing you such pain, as it kills you. None of that last did I intend or would have inflicted if I had known.” The eyes now looked puzzled, but also a little vague. Elgin pulled a hand out of his pocket, earlier Cutter and Iffrit had done something with a couple of apple seeds. Now the seeds were fine powder in a tube. He tapped the tube and the dust flowed, floated out and sank onto, into, Tony Deaton’s face. “I’m told that this should stop me from feeling too guilty about smashing your jaw. Sleep well.” Deaton’s eyes were already closed. He stepped out of the room, took a breath of the chemically tainted air in the hall. The tall woman-girl was still there, her eyes haunted. “He hated you for making him look like a fool in front of MovieStar, he was out for revenge. It was personal, not business.” Elgin shrugged, “I’m sorry I needed to make a point and Hawk was the only tool available.” “Your not afraid of them at all are you.” She whispered. “Of course I am, but I can’t let fear rule what I do.” He didn’t say that he was mainly afraid for others since personally he was already dead and it was unlikely he could die twice. “You moved like nothing I’ve ever seen, so fast, so terribly fast, I always thought Hawk was fast, you, you were so fast I couldn’t hardly see you move.” “He gave me no choice, he’s a big, tough, fast man, I was never going to stand toe to toe and slug it out, or wrestle him, and win.” She looked down at her hands, “I’m Mary, Tony’s girlfriend, thanks for coming, I guess. I’m sorry but if he dies, the Claw will call for your blood, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” That made him laugh, “And that is different from right now how, Mary?” He sighed, “Try and get some sleep, maybe he’ll be improving in the morning, that sort of thing does happen.” -o- It was Friday and his full day at the garage, late in the morning he was finishing up the Mustang, which had turned out to have had more wrong with it than a bad shift linkage. The owner was a local tribal elder who’d owned the thing since his youth, it had spent a lot of years up on blocks under a tarp and was in remarkably good shape because of that. Now the old man wanted to use some of his new income to regain some youth, including the Mustang. “Mr. Chalmers, a lady on the phone for you.” The clerk called through the door. Elgin went to the extension, punched the blinking button, “Elgin.” “I don’t know how you knew, but he’s going to live,” a long silence, “Thank you for coming last night.” Then Mary hung up. *What did you make out of those apple seeds?* Elgin asked. *What your scientists would call nanobots, a variety of them, some replicated and attacked the infection directly, others were analyzers and modifiers, they sought out the agents of infection and then created normal antibodies for the infection, others were reconstructors, undoing some of the damage done by the infection. By the time they clock out and flush from his system he’ll be a reasonably healthy thug again. Hopefully you won’t end up having to kill him and waste all that work.* Cutter – Iffrit replied in the back of his head as he backed the Mustang out. -o- That night he got a call just as he was getting ready for bed, “Uh Elgin, it’s Duval.” Elgin sat upright, “Something wrong Du?” “Something weird, heard a flock of those choppers come by a while ago, and then come back and stop, in the empty lot next door. I hit the silent alarm, I think someone’s fixed it, no one ever responded, but the Bikers never appeared. I tried to call 911, neither my cell nor the land line were working, computer as well. After half an hour there was nothing, I left Willy inside and went to have a look, there are half a dozen bikes parked on the gravel next door, there is no sign of anyone. I went over and had look, one of the bikes had this electronic gear on it, all blinking blue lights, I pulled the plug and now everything’s working again.” Elgin was already getting dressed, “I’ll be there in a while, get back inside and stay there.” “Yes sir, figured you should know.” “Thanks Du, just keep calm, we’ll figure it out.” However it wasn’t Elgin the human that made the trip. The Iffrit settled to the ground in the Shadow Realm on silent wings. In the anchor world side he’d scanned the whole area coming in, there was no sign of the bikers. Here he had seen six humans, one was sprawled on the gravel in front of him, the hole in his chest still bleeding sluggishly. Then the body was gone. The corpse would be lying near one of the bikes. There was a cold breeze here, but the air had only the faintest hint of life in it. He leapt into the air, glided west along the road, two more figures were making their way towards the Den, one supporting the other, who was loosing blood fast from a wound in his leg. Elgin dropped out of the sky, something tipped the two off, the one supporting the other, let his companion fall, spun and fired, he would have missed a human target but the Iffrit was the size of a private jet, the huge bullets slammed into the Iffrit’s chest and belly at near point blank range with searing needle thrusts of pain. Great clawed hands closed around both and thrust them into the anchor world. Then Elgin fell back with a roar of pain, the wounds burnt like wasp stings. After a few moments to get control of himself, he turned and leapt into the air again. The other three bikers were walking by the beam of a flashlight, which they swung this way and that, obviously completely panicked by the distorted normality they found themselves in. He’d never sneak up on them and he didn’t feel like facing three handguns, they wouldn’t kill him but it could certainly sting, a lot. Then things went from bad to worse, a rippling discontinuity rose out of nowhere and like a gust front rippled over the three, and Elgin. An orange sun blazed down out of a pitiless black sky, a huge disc bulged over the horizon, great swirls of blue and brown green and yellow, even some reds. The Iffrit’s throat slammed shut and membranes sealed his eyes as he plummeted out of the suddenly airless sky. The ground was made up of gravel and dust, and he landed feet first and rolled to absorb the energy, bones tougher than airframe alloy took the shock with no problem, though muscles complained. The three humans were down, screaming soundlessly as they found no air to pull in. Elgin reached them in three huge bounding leaps, he could see horror in their faces as he saw him coming, all they knew was that a horrible monster was coming to eat them and they couldn’t breathe. Two somehow started scrabbling for dropped guns, but he got there first. Scooping two up in one hand and one in the other, he turned and thrust himself back into ‘his’ world. Suddenly he was standing in the middle of the highway, with a car and a semi bearing down on him. Again he leaped, straight up, his wings beating frantically. The car was swerving back and forth as it’s brakes locked up in panic, the semi’s horn was bellowing and smoke was jetting from under it’s nearly locked-up tires. Then the scene was behind him, he arched backwards hard, twisted, then he was sliding down to the lot of parked choppers. He touched down, dropped the three humans gasping for blessed, life giving air and leapt for the sky again. A few minutes later Elgin walked into the shop, “Hey Duval, Willy, any new trouble?” The two men grinned in relief, shaking their heads, “Nah, but I did call in the parking lot.” Duval pointed east, where a glow marked the spot on the road Elgin had left in a hurry a few minutes before. “Any idea what that is? Looks like some kind of wreck, probably what’s keeping a deputy from getting here.” Then they heard the blatting roar of a V twin starting, then another, and another. Three machines screamed away, something of fear in the desperate acceleration to get as far away from there as quickly as possible. A few minutes later a sheriff’s car pulled up, and out stepped Deputy Michaels. She looked around, with her hands on her hips, then walked to the property line and around the fence into the empty lot. She was gone a few moments then walked quickly back to her cruiser, talking into her microphone. She glanced at the garage, saw the three faces looking out at her. She pointed at them and opened her palm to indicate they were to stay there. Elgin saluted, and looked at the other two, “Something not good.” Duval shook his head, “Just the bikes there when I looked.” “She saw something else.” -o- “There weren’t any body lying out there when I went to look, just the bikes, six bikes one with a whole crapload of ee-lectrical gear tied down on it. All I did was switch the gear off then. Got. The. Hell. Out. Of. Dodge.” Duval bit the last words off, he’d said them three or four times already. Sheriff SweetBear was looking like a bear with a sore tooth right now, her young female deputy stood behind and to one side taking notes, recordings and pictures. Three sheriff’s cruisers, the emergency trailer, and four state trooper’s cars were parked in the gas station, and the neighboring, not quite empty lot. The sheriff glanced at Elgin, “And you just happened to arrive a few minutes before Deputy Micheals.?” “Duval called me, I came to check up.” She stared hard at Elgin, “You see anything on your way here?” Elgin blinked innocently, “Such as? Sheriff.” “Oh I don’t know, a UFO, a freaking low flying aircraft, a Chinese attack helicopter. Take your pick.” “Uh, no, ma’am,” so the Iffrit had been seen by more than a couple of people. How much did the Sheriff remember of her experience with it? “Huh, didn’t figure you would have.” The sheriff replied, getting ready to leave. “What did the deputy find that turned out the barracks, sheriff?” Elgin had asked before, and been ignored. The sheriff gave him another dark, under the eyebrows look, “It’ll be in the pap....” There was series of bleeps from the Deputy, she tapped a button and listened, glanced at the Sheriff, “They found two more about a mile up the road, looks like they were walking when the other three came up on them.” Her face was grim. The sheriff said a very bad word under her breath then looked back at Elgin and the others, “You three are free to go, but don’t go out of town without checking with my office for the next couple of weeks, or I tell you otherwise. And Willy, at least make an effort to hide that damn antique when I’m here or I’ll arrest you, cousin or not.” The door closed with a thump behind the two women. Elgin sighed, “Damned Claws, damn the Piggly Wigglys for that matter. This is spinning out of control.” “I never heard anything, never saw anything, what the hell happened?” Duval frowned. Elgin shrugged. He had a reasonable guess but he wasn’t going to tell the pair that the six thugs had been going to stage some kind of major ‘accident’ at the garage and been caught by the trap Elgin had set expecting one, or at most two, attackers. Thrown into the shadow realm the six had panicked, started shooting at shadows, then each other, then, possibly because of some pre existing schism had broken into two groups. Then when it should have been over the nearly asphyxiated threesome had still had enough rage to gun down the other two escapees when they crossed paths again. “Who know’s, guess I’ll be heading back, I might still get a couple of hours of sleep.” He walked away from the island of light and bustling activity and onto the edge of the road, walking on the lake side so he was facing what oncoming traffic there was, he’d never had time to go back and pick up his truck or ‘cycle and he was not going to raise more questions by asking for a ride. Elgin was near his winter ‘camping’ spot when he saw high intensity headlights sweep over him and the hum of tires on the narrow lane. The car slowed as it approached, he felt no need to turn or to leap for cover so he just kept walking until the long silver Mercedes slid to a stop next to him, Katherine Pauls smiled from the driver’s side window. Her hair was done up and she had expensive looking jewelry on in all the normal places. “Well fancy meeting you here at this time of night Mr. Cowboy Chalmers, someone rustle your horse?” It could have been snide but the smile and tone took any sting out, making it a jibe between friends. He smiled back, “You’re looking mighty fine tonight Mrs. Pauls, and I think it’s early morning, and not as early as I’d like. I got a lift down to the garage, left it late to get one on the way back.” “Okay,” She waved him to the car, “I’ll give a lift the rest of the way.” “Won’t Mr. Pauls be waiting for you?” She made a moue, “He’s back in the city, has a meeting later this morning, we attended the opera and had dinner last evening with acquaintances.” A lift would save him another forty five minutes, “Thanks then.” She let him in and then smoothly accelerated away from the stop, she rubbed one of the jewels hanging from her ear, another of her charms. “I didn’t want to leave Miss Pretty Paws for a whole night, she’s very near to delivery.” She grinned, “Fess swears he’ll hunt down your cat and shoot it if they turn out to be bitzas rather than purebreds, he thinks the Siamese tom we had in was the father but he’s just a teensy bit worried.” Elgin sighed, “Let’s hope he’s worrying for nothing then.” He glanced around, took a sniff, “Nice car ma’am never been in a Mercedes before, well other than Friar Gosslin’s old oil burner.” She chuckled, “He ought to let you have a look at it, I hear you do good work at the garage.” “Good to hear our reputation’s getting out there,” He kept his reservations to himself. In Beauty there was such a thing as being too good at certain things. Her hands on the wheel, eyes front she focused on driving but still shot out another question, “You studying anything in particular at the library?” “This and that, but a lot of business, and world events mostly, figure I’ll have some money to start a retirement account sometime, need to do it myself like most folks around here.” He glanced at her, “I didn’t know there was an opera house in the city?” “The university has a theater set up for symphony, ballet, opera and plays, it’s hosting a traveling opera company, out of New York some friends to Fess’ had tickets and invited us. It brought back memories.” “You must miss that sort of thing out here in the sticks.” “Only a little, a little goes a long way for me,” She smiled, “I grew up in LA, but spent more time in the saddle than in a tutu. Father was one of the last holdouts to sell up to the big developers.” She almost said more but the entrance to the CircleSBarS, appeared, “And here we are.” She swung in and rolled down the lane, through the gates and swung to park in front of the Airstream. “Must be nice to just hook up your life and roll from place to place without having to pack.” Elgin chuckled, “And yet I’ve never been more than a hundred miles from Beauty and that on a school outing.” Kitty leaned back, “You’re kidding!” “No ma’am, unless it was when I was a baby, the City’s it.” “Wow, that’s a pity.” “Why? Never had a need or a yen to travel further ma’am, and what I want to know I can read or see on the computer. I imagine one of these days I’ll have the money and reason to travel but it don’t bother me none.” “A content man, you’re the nearest thing to Forest Gump I’ve ever heard of.” Having seen the movie Elgin wasn’t quite sure how to take that, but she hadn’t said it with any indication of pity or meanness. He reached for the door, “Uh, thanks for the ride Mrs Pauls.” “Not going to invite me in for a nightcap cowboy?” she was smiling, the voice a purr. Elgin almost froze up, hearing the invitation in her voice, but he knew it was a very bad idea, and she probably did too, “Uh, nothing to make a nightcap with ma’am, can make you some coffee if you’d like that, but it’ll keep you awake. If you want I can brew some and we can sit outside, the stars are pretty tonight.” Kitty looked at him, “Coffee. Under the stars.” She chuckled, “It sounds good to me, I’m not going to get much sleep anyway.” Which was how they ended up sitting watching the first hint of dawn, sipping a third or fourth coffee and talking about this and that in a lazy, slow, old friends, way. Sometime in the darkness Elgin heard a door creak, voices speak, a door close, then another one and silence. At last she sighed and hopped down from the fence, “OK, now I have to go start the new day.” Elgin stepped down next to her, “It was kind of you to drop me off, and I’ve enjoyed our talk ma’am.” “So did I Elgin and call me Kitty, or Kat if you have to.” They reached the car, Elgin took the empty coffee mug from her, reached out to shake her hand, she laughed and reached in to hug him and peck him on the cheek. “Take care of yourself Elgin. See you soon.” She climbed in the car and drove away, leaving Elgin standing on the gravel staring into the dawn reddened dust the tires lifted. “Wow, some catch there Elgin.” Winters called out from his tent. Elgin turned back to his trailer with a grin, “Little do you know about it youngster. Want some coffee?” <<>> Chapter 7 Our Hero sees some positive signs, gains an ally and the Smith-Samsons return with a surprise Two weeks passed without any more ‘events’, the sheriff arrested two of the EEC members and the three dead ones vanished to wherever such men went. Stories of black helicopters and spec ops teams operating in the area to find a terrorist cell, or a major drug smuggling operation, or a secret drug factory, or a network of child pornographers, or.... the list went on and on regarding what people thought was going on. Most were silly, a few plausible but most people figured it was a case of mass hysteria. The third Sunday of the run started out well, with but the one hiccup, and it was a pleasant one, hopefully,. Kitty ‘accidently’ running into him as he left the library Sunday afternoon invited him to her favorite ‘bistro.’ He’d let her buy him a couple of coffees and they’d talked about the latest mess congress was making of the budgeting process and the Europeans were making of the implosion of another ex colony in Africa. Deputy Michael’s cruiser happened to drift past not long after they sat down and he was saddened by her irritated frown when she saw him. He’d like to get to know her better but they hadn’t exactly met on his better days so far. Kitty pointed at a temporary sign outside one of the less desirable storefronts across the street. It read, Great Bear’s Den Planning Committee. “The Claws are really worried this time, the tribe finally dug up, in one case literally, the document trail that shows the Bear’s Den was forfeit for back taxes about fifty years ago and the tribe paid the lien and should own the property. Claw’s going to fight it but it’s pretty cut and dried. Conkling has said he’s willing to trade a court battle for the property his house is on, access and the tribe making most of the outer faces into park like the plan shows.” “Wow, after all these years?” “Yeah the tribe hired some big shot Eastern Law firm and then Claw got distracted by that gunfight among his thugs. The lawyers got to someone before he did for a change and that was all they needed.” “Happy days, I guess, be nice to be rid of the EEC, they’ll have to find some other place for cooking up their meth.” He said it without thinking, it was a common assumption around the Lake. “The sheriff got an excuse to shake em down pretty thoroughly after the blood bath, nothing or next to nothing. I hear the feds went in with her and came up with nothing either.” “Big guns for little Black Bear Lake,” She nodded, she twirled the little crystal hanging from her earlobe. Looked down, then back up, and out of nowhere asked, “Do you believe in Magic, Elgin?” Elgin had been about to take a sip of his coffee, thick with luxurious brown sugar. He hesitated, then took a slow sip. She smiled, “Sorry, shouldn’t have asked, sounds crazy I know.” Deep in his mind Cutter-Iffrit spoke musingly, *She is a magic user, we came here because the unfolding of the shadow realms is strongest here. You, we, will have to gather associates, companions and friends as time goes on. We will talk with her.* “Your charms started to work recently, didn’t they?” Elgin replied quietly at last. She jumped when she understood what he had said. Her eyes were huge, “Uh, Charms?” He reached out and touched the little sliver of rock crystal hanging from her ear. The tips of his fingers tingled, and the ‘charm’ or perhaps rather, ‘algorithm’ impressed on it became clear to him, “Very nice work, a lie detector, a general threat detector and a magic detector all in one. It started tingling when I got in the car the other night.” She pulled back, protesting, “You’re not supposed to be able to do that!” “What, I’m not supposed to be able to, or in general it’s not supposed to be possible?” She was too flustered to answer, “Well neither is true is it? Generally, reading an imprinted charm without destroying it is difficult, but rarely impossible.” Biting her lip to get a hold of herself she gave him a straight look, “How, who are you?” “Elgin Chalmers, you’ve known me for years Kitty, at least seen me. How? That’s hard to say, rather differently than you did. I have a hard time understanding how you could keep practicing the old arts, through all those years when they did nothing and cost so much if others found you trying.” “They did work, some of them, a little, some of the time.” She replied stubbornly. “I suppose the collapse of the shadow realms wouldn’t have completely stopped the lowest level works,” the Iffrit mused out loud, “But they would have been next to, sometimes worse than, useless.” Kitty was white, “You, you sound like Elgin, but not quite.” Her lips were thin her eyes frightened. “I’m not a demon.” Elgin protested then stopped, in fact that was exactly what an Iffrit was in Middle Eastern mythology, not necessarily evil, but demons. Smoke demons that could appear as men or winged monsters, a pretty good description of one Elgin Campbell Chalmers the fourth these days. “Some very strange things have been happening,” Kitty replied, she was trying to sit but still be as far away from him as possible. “And I’ve been involved with all, or most of them, but only because of things others did, I didn’t start any of it.” He couldn’t help but grin, “Now I sound like I’m explaining why I clocked Miller Estay for fondling Mary FourDoe in High School.” He shook his head, “There’s nothing I can do to prove I’m not a threat to you or anyone else Kitty, you’ll either have to take my word for it or not.” She had relaxed a little at the smile and reference to High School. “Are you an apprentice to one of the old ones, the ancient mages?” Elgin sat back, Iffrit-Cutter were stumped, but now he had questions, “Katherine, the device that shut down what we think of as magic on Earth was triggered in about 200BC. No human, even one of the great ancient magic users could live that long in the ‘darkness.’ Your ancient mages, did they date from that period?” “Device, what we think of as magic, are you making fun of me?” She was flustered, uncertain and anger was a protective reaction to his attack on her world view. He glanced around, picked up a knife, and ran his thumb along the blade, impressing a simple temporary change, The blunt, faintly serrated edge flowed to a razor edge as he finished, what had been a dinner knife was suddenly a razor sharp dagger. He picked up a napkin, and sliced through it with almost frictionless ease. Then the ‘charm’ faded and the knife was as it had been, but the napkin fluttered in two pieces till he put it down. “What we call magic is real, but it’s not a supernatural force, it’s just that the ‘natural world’ is a self regulating self consistent substrate on which the conscious mind can impress its will under certain circumstances. It can be used to do things that we can also do with our hands, and with our tools made from the substrate. It can also do things that are hard to do ‘naturally,’ though usually quite small things.” She reached out, touched the napkin, then the knife, jumping when she touched it, She touched the crystal earring. “That was intense! I guess it had to be to make a physical change like that.” “But it was a one time change, not a permanent one, the usefulness of which is very limited. For a tool I’d be much better off getting a honing stone and spending a couple of hours working in a real edge.” She opened her mouth then closed it, frowned and then went on, “Was that why the device you mentioned was built, to force humans to depend on the material world, on material tools, and figure out technology, science that sort of thing?” “Got it in one.” It was her turn to sit in frowning silence, then she glanced up, “To answer your question about the Mages, they are not Roman era, they were all renaissance and early enlightenment.” At least they hadn’t claimed to be from the ancient world, maybe they wouldn’t have even if they were, superstition being what it was in those times. “Sometime I’d like to look at the records your association has. To make your magic as effective as it is the knowledge has to extend back to the time before the device.” “Why do you say that?” She frowned. “The guardians you have set in your store, parts of them could not work when the device was operating.” She frowned thoughtfully, “There are sections of many spells that have no apparent use but they are so integral that no one had ever been able to unweave them, some thought them spacers of some kind, or secret messages of some kind.” Elgin glanced at the sun, “I have some jobs to do around the Ranch Kitty, thanks for the coffee and the conversation.” Kitty looked at him oddly, “You are a mage, and I think a great deal more, but you work as a cowboy and a garage mechanic and a librarian, and probably only just make ends meet. Why not more, why here?” “Ask your friends, their charms and spells are more reliable and more powerful now, but not like yours. I was chosen because I’ve no ambition to be more than me. I want to be the best Elgin Chalmers I can be, to do my best by folks, but I don’t feel a need for more.” He stood up as he finished. She stood up as well, “Thank you for telling me this, for trusting me.” “You’re welcome ma’am, but don’t be too quick with the thanks. I did it because I know you are a magic user, and I may need help as time goes by.” She nodded, stepped around the table to give him a quick hug and peck on the cheek, “I understand that as well, and thank you for it as well. Have a good day Elgin.” With which she turned away and walked up the street towards the silver Mercedes. -o- When Elgin rolled up to the main ranch building he saw the Smith-Samson motor home pulled up next to the main building, already up on its jacks with the pull outs extended. They lived and entertained in the main building but kept the RV as a spare bedroom, in the years before their daughter left home for good, she’d used it as her retreat and bedroom. There were two cars in the carport now, the compact he’d gotten used to seeing fairly frequently and the Smith-Samson’s tow modified hybrid Acura SUV. Hopping off the bike he checked his mailbox for Saturday mail. On top of the sales cards, a couple of bills and a letter from Fidelity regarding his retirement account, was a small card envelope with his name hand written on it. The Smith-Samsons always invited the crew over for a cookout when they arrived. The card was for this evening, and it only gave him half an hour to get ready, but for Elgin that was about twenty five minutes more than he needed. A change of shirt to a cotton solid, his newest jeans, his newer riding boots and a bolo tie with a simple clip, and he was in his going to church, a wedding, a funeral or a party clothes. Sally and Xanda Smith-Samson were from second or third generation wealth, Xanda’s parents had bought the ranch as an investment and vacation getaway when Xanda was in his teens and had been back at least once a year ever since. He often said that he’d live here full time if it didn’t take a day to get to anyplace. They certainly planned to retire here, like his father had, before the original Mrs. Smith-Samson had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, which in the end had killed both of them, her from the side effects, him from grief and exhaustion. In their late fifties the pair looked the part of high powered east coast apparachniks relaxing with ‘their ranch hands,’ Xanda was dressed a lot like Elgin, Sally in an ankle length blue on white print ranchers wife dress. Xanda had a cook’s apron on and was already in the process of cooking something on the huge gas range built into the patio wall, Sally was speaking with Juan, Josephine and Pedro in fluent Spanish. Juan’s three little hellions were running around in the garden out back playing some form of cowboys and Indians. The whole crew was there, Mitch and Betty were in the uniform of jeans, ‘western’ shirt and riding boots. Then Elgin realized there was one more person here than he could account for, next to Xanda a slender dark haired woman in mid calf plain skirt cinched by a broad ‘cowboy belt’ and topped by a silky creamy gold shirt, form fitting but with puffy sleeves. She was standing very close to Xanda, their heads were almost touching. Elgin realized it must by their daughter Zephyr, who he hadn’t seen in something like fifteen years, when she was seventeen and he’d been thirteen and still hurting from his mother vanishing. While outgoing on the surface the Smith-Samsons were also quite private and other than saying that Zephy was doing well at university they’d never said much about her. She had to be about thirty two now, Elgin was surprised there was no sign of a husband. And then he frowned, the only other car in the carport was the compact he’d seen here since the beginning of spring, was that hers? Had the daughter been hiding out here, or maybe holed up writing the next great American novel or blockbuster screen play? The she turned and he stopped, it was Deputy Michaels, not Zephyr Smith-Samson. She caught him staring dumb struck at her and hesitated, frowning at him, before making what looked like a little, shushing sign and moved on to talk to her Sally. And Elgin realized she had to be Zephyr Smith-Samson when Sally gave Deputy Michaels a peck on the cheek as she took the tray of appetizers. Though the name was wrong, the face, though unfamiliar in detail, had familiar features, her mother’s hair and her father’s eyes and nose, her mother’s poise, her father’s unwavering gaze. But she was apparently living off her parents, or renting off them, called Michaels, driving a nondescript compact, working as a poorly paid country deputy; none of those connected to the arrogant, gawky and somewhat spotty Zephyr Smith-Samson he’d last met. But then a lot happened between leaving for college and your thirtieth birthday. Elgin shrugged it off, he’d learn more as the evening went on. Sally and Xanda did introduce Zephyr as their daughter, who was staying in Beauty for a while, and how excited they were to be able to spend time with her, but that was it. He had a beer and some wonderful appetizers, then a fabulous steak with a baked sweet potato and a small side salad and then several different tiny desserts someone had whipped up, or brought in from someplace Elgin didn’t know about. The coffee was good after he put in six packs of the good brown sugar, which earned him his second frown of the evening from Deputy Michaels. At ten the party broke up, all of the crew offered to help clean up, Elgin ended up doing the dishes in the outside sink, with Zephyr Michaels nee Smith-Samson drying. The others had finished up and trailed out leaving Elgin and the deputy with the last pots pans and silverwear. Elgin, seeing that the drying board was full, pulled his hands out of the suds and walked around the deputy, drying his hands on a towel, which he flipped over his shoulder and he started transferring the glassware back to the cabinet it spent most of its life in. “Good of your parents to have this cookout every year.” “They like to meet everyone. They like people. But it’s not all Ma and Pa stuff.” She laughed, “I used to get into really bad arguments with dad about it, its almost like they feel it's a Laird’s duty to do this for the ‘little people.’ Not in a bad way but there’s arrogance in it as well as kindness.” “Nothing in this life is pure Deputy Michaels, even a baby’s love is driven by self preservation.” “Now that is cold Mr. Chalmers.” She hesitated, “And Mr. Chalmers I would really prefer it if you wouldn’t call me that here, Deputy I mean,” Another pause, “Uh, my parents think I’m up here writing, taking a break from the East Coast for a while.” “As you will ma’am,” he put the last of the glasses away and moved back to the tub. “Thank you.” “But the Michaels thing is okay?” “Its my name now, I haven’t applied to have it changed back yet.” She rubbed rather savagely at a spot on a pot and put it on the rack. “Sorry to hear that.” “Not as sorry as I am to have lived it,” she replied bitterly. She obviously wanted to talk about it, “He cheat on you ma’am?” This got a snort, “Just about everyone in the world but me Elgin. We lived a good life, a life I thought we were earning with our hard work and smarts. Him at a private bank, me at the partnership, though it was going to be years before I made partner.” “Then one evening the FBI came calling,” She sighed, “I just stopped the coward from taking a swan dive from the fortieth floor and killing some poor schmuck on the street below.” There was not a shred of concern for the man that apparently she’d loved up until that moment, “He’d been skimming client accounts to the tune of hundreds of thousands a year, when he got caught by some unsavory types, they blackmailed him into running a money laundering scheme. That was why the FBI were there, to flip him and use him in a sting, in exchange, we could go into witness protection when it was all over.” “And you weren’t interested.” “It’s not like on TV, you don’t really get a lot of choices. He saved me and probably others a lot of trouble by succeeding in killing himself the next day.” “Sorry to hear that ma’am,” he said for the second time in a few minutes. “Meh, it’s over, was over quickly.” She dried several more pans, glanced his way, “Call me Zephy, El. I promise not to call you Eel like I did when we were kids. “Uh, thanks, that stuck you know.” It had hurt a lot too. “Sorry.” She touched his arm in apology. “Worse things in life, now only my friends call me by it, the others learnt the errors of their ways.” “Ohh, mister tough cowboy man!” she said in a friendly mocking tone of voice. “That’s me.” He picked up the griddles and put them in the soapy water, “Almost done.” They finished the washing up and he said goodnight and walked back to his trailer. <<>> Chapter 8 Our hero finds that there are Unknown Unknowns in every life ‘Somebody’ threw a pair of Molotov cocktails at the garage Monday night. Elgin heard the two shattering thumps on the glass of the store and got outside to hear the fading rumble of a chopper. He got drenched as a thick mist filled the air, damping the streams of fire dribbling down the side of the building. The puddles streamed away from the building and into the storm drain, setting off a nasty smelling sewer fire until the gasoline burnt out. He called the attack in to the sheriff’s office, a male deputy came out to take a look, he also took photos and audio notes with his cell phone as well as jotting notes on its cramped screen. “Some tough glass you got there mister,” he pointed at the soot stained but otherwise unmarred glass, “And the sprinkler system did a fine job as well.” Then he went back to chewing his gum and drifting aimlessly about. The next morning Elgin walked into the Sheriff’s office. As befitted one of the senior elected officials of the county it was quite up to date with a public side and a miscreant side. Elgin had actually called the sheriff’s office and told Caitlin’s flustered secretary that he’d be there at nine to talk to the Sheriff in person and hung up. The sheriff was propped up in the entrance to a hallway behind the receptionist. She touched the younger woman’s shoulder, “This is Mr. Chalmers, my nine o’clock Beth,” then waved Elgin in. She walked around her desk and sat down, “You have a complaint Mr. Chalmers?” “Sheriff, ma’am, if the Claw and the Piggly Wigglys aren’t reigned in someone’s else is gonna get hurt. I don’t like that you sent that halfwit to respond to the attempted firebombing of my, of TwoShoes, garage, they may try again with better luck next time, or maybe they’ll start going after individuals.” “Do you want police protection Mr. Chalmers?” The sheriff asked carefully. “No, but maybe TwoShoes should have it. What are you going to do about this? The Claw’s not out to get us for his jollies, it’s the Wiggins who are putting him up to it. Are they such a power in town, in the county, that they can tell you to step back?” Her jaw went tight at that insult, “I’m an officer of the county Elgin, the Wiggins know better than to try and bribe or threaten me. But there are bigger things in play than TwoShoes garage, and if something set off another really big stink right now those plans might go bust. So I will have someone keep an eye on you and Two Shoes and we’ll have a cruiser run past the garage every half hour or so till things quiet down again. How’s that?” He studied her, “Which is what you’ve been doing anyway, right?” The sheriff shrugged, “Perhaps I’m not as blind to the problems as you appear to think I am.” He sighed and settled back, “I’m sorry I insulted you ma’am, I am worried about m...the folks that work there. They don’t make a lot of money, have no insurance, they’d get something for getting hurt on the job but not enough to help their families.” “Understood Elgin, and I admire you for your concern and the guts it took to come and face me like this.” There was an odd flicker of emotion on her face, as if she were trying to remember something else, but she shook herself and smiled faintly, “We all hope this mess is going to be sorted out within a couple of weeks.?” Elgin stood up, “Thanks for seeing me sheriff, let me know if there’s anything you need?” The sheriff nodded, then pursed her lips, “Zephy told me you finally saw her at home, know who she is, you’ll keep that under your hat won’t you?” He smiled across the desk as she stood up, “I will ma’am, sorry to hear she’s had such a rough go of it.” “Uh, yeah, well this is a change for her, she spent a gig in the Stan a few years ago with her National Guard unit. That and the law degree made her a good fit here, though it pays squat.” “Good to know she knows how to use the Glock, hopefully she won’t ever have to, except on a rabid raccoon or such.” “Here’s hoping.” The Sheriff replied, but she didn’t sound too confident. -o- Elgin stood up in the stirrups to give himself a bit better view of the herd from his vantage point. He scanned the herd and a number popped up, four hundred thirty two, two short of the number of cattle that should be out there. Juan and Pedro had run the herd through the counting gate this morning so the two had gone missing recently. There was no sign of a predator attack, and there were no breaks in the fence line that kept this grazing range separate from the next one. A tan streak moved through the long grass not far away and the old mare shied a little then snorted in disgust as Humph bounded out of the undergrowth and onto a nearby rock. The big cat had occasionally come out onto the range with him in the past but had been doing so more and more frequently recently. What was much more startling was that the cat was pretty good at herding cattle. If anything the cattle were too afraid of the lithe shape with its sharp nipping teeth and rolling wrowr. But generally Humph just got them stopped and moving in the right direction. Seeming to take his cues from what Elgin or the other cowboy was doing. He tapped talk on his radio, “Winters, we’ve got a couple of strays, probably up in one of the gulches to the west.” “I hear you.” The kid sounded a little dour, he was terminally bored with the work, which was a mixture of boring, back breaking, exhausting and putting up with rough living conditions. He’d probably have quit except that he had a contract with a significant end of season bonus that would keep him here for the duration but he’d not be coming back. There were ranches that used a lot of technology to do what cowboys did on the CircleSBarS but the technology was only affordable on relatively flat land with good grazing, certainly not here. Elgin chivvied the mare into movement, trotting, walking, trotting, he covered the ground to the first of the valleys in half an hour. The stream running down the center was full of rocks, and the sides of the gulch were a mixture of scrub, rock and not particularly stable dirt, there was no visible trail up, except along the stream. But he knew that there were ways that cattle found up to a flat section just around the turn, out of sight, where there was very good grazing. Some old cow probably had been led there by her mother as a calf and had led her calf there to pass the knowledge along. He gave the mare a feed bag and hobbled her so she couldn’t run too far but could defend herself if need be and set off up the stream, trying to see if he could see hoof prints or some sign of a path the cattle used. Humph played among the rocks and scrub higher up the sides of the mini valley. His search finally picked out what looked like a game trail winding along on the right side of the valley, it hardly looked safe but animals didn’t view things the same as humans. He got to the natural damn that had formed the silt bed that had become such a succulent grazing ground. It was a pity it was so hard to get to because it would make a really nice homestead. The cattle, a cow and a calf as he’d suspected, were grazing contentedly near the center of the grassy rectangle. He saw Humph stalking something off to his left, belly low to the ground, sinuously slipping towards some brush around the aspen trees and evergreens that had grown up in the rockier soil near the narrower part of the valley that opened into the glade from higher up. He walked a few feet back from the drop off, towards where he thought the game trail had to exit. He was enjoying the smell of the plants as he walked. There was a loud flat ‘thunk’ from his left. Turning towards the sound something hit him high in the chest, just under his shoulder, the blow was like the kick of a horse and it took him totally by surprise. He staggered, tripped and realized he was going over the edge of the artificial dam. There was a scream as free fall started, but it wasn’t coming from his throat. He felt the unfolding, and he hit the ground with four clawed legs that were still more smoke than solid. His human image was undamaged, he must have been hit by a bean bag or so called rubber bullet. There were odd sounds, crashing and yelling, and snarling yowlps of an enraged super sized Siamese coming from the glade above, mixed in with the confused and panicked bellowing of the cow and her calf. Then things turned serious again as the assassin opened fire with a pistol, screaming, “Take that you fucking freak of nature!” The Iffrit lifted his upper body and hopped up the cliff to the top of the dam. The cows caught the motion, took one look at the fifty foot winged predator and bolted for the exit blatting their horror. Festus Pauls stood with his back to the dam, pistol out swinging, waiting for Humph to show himself. The other hand was pressed against the side of his face, blood leaking between his fingers. “Don’t think you can get away from me this time, I killed you twice last time, this time I’ll finish off the other seven damned lives.” Then Festus Pauls was grasped firmly by a huge clawed hand, and felt the world shred around him. When he was released, he staggered and fell to one knee in a world where the sun was dimmer and there was a reek in the air that seemed unnatural. Twisting, bringing his pistol up, he tried to find a target, some distance away he saw movement, impossibly it was that bastard Eglin Chalmers, Stetson, jeans, cowboy boots, open necked shirt, young, virile, everything his sort was supposed to be. Except dead. Festus had seem him go over the edge of the cliff, just before that fucking monster cat had attacked him. Festus didn’t even hesitate, he lined up the sights and pulled the trigger, twice, the gun bucked, the slide went back, he saw the brass spinning away. He couldn’t have missed but the cowboy just stood there, expressionless, thumbs hooked into his belt loops. Eyes piercingly direct under lowered brows, “Festus, why do you want to kill me?” Festus pulled the trigger three more times, the last time the slide locked back on an empty magazine. He fumbled, ejecting the empty, pulling a full one out of his tactical belt. “However many bullets you fire, they’ll never reach me, you and I are in two different universes. And you are not in one that’s safe to make a lot of noise in.” Backing away from the madman, Festus looked around, they were no longer on the grassy glade, now they were in an open spot in some kind of forest, the trees loomed huge on every side, not far away a small stream flowed through a reed bed before vanishing into the blackness between the trees. The cowboy did appear to be standing somehow elsewhere, there was a ripple around him, behind him a view of rocks like the Wyoming badlands overlaid on the giant trees. “Festus, put the gun down and talk to me. Why were you trying to kill me.” That meant the gun was dangerous to Chalmers, Festus tightened his grip on it. “Do you think I wouldn’t catch on to the fact that not content with your freak screwing my prize Siamese, you were making out with my wife behind my back!” He sneered at the other man’s startled expression, “Think you’re smart the pair of you. I have a tracker on my wife’s car, she spent a night with you in that filthy hovel of yours. And she visits you at the Library, she buys you coffee, I have a picture of her kissing you at that fucking coffee whore house she loves.” Now Chalmers hands were up, almost supplicating, “Festus, Mr. Pauls, I have never touched your wife other than for shaking hands or a peck goodbye. She picked me up one night and took me home, we were both too wired to sleep, we just sat and talked out on the fence line. The kiss at the library, we’d been discussing something that had her pretty upset, she was just saying thank you.” “So you say, you damned redneck,” He pulled the trigger again and again, walking in towards Chalmers as he fired. If he could get across the threshold he’d probably blow the idiots brains all over the landscape, not quite the engineered accident he’d intended, but he’d say that the redneck attacked him when confronted with the evidence about his sleeping with Kitty. There was a crashing sound behind him, Festus turned, and out of the forest stalked a two legged horror, something out of CG spectacular, something as big as a dinosaur but feathered and beaked, though the beak had teeth. The creature took one look at him lowered its head and lumbered into a run, a hissing screech warning of its coming. Festus took the stance and fired for effect, one, two, three, four, five, lock back. The Dino-Birds beak drove into the ground and the still pumping legs vaulted it into a flip that ended up with its ass five feet in front of Festus, the huge drumsticks still spastically pumping. Another change of magazines and he spun back to face the cowboy. But there was no cowboy, instead there was another monster, this one four legged. The foreleg was almost as long as Festus was tall, the huge wolfish head had lynx ears and those had to be wings folded against the slender trunk behind massive shoulders, ahead of hugely muscled and clawed rear legs. Pauls raised the gun in shaking hands, aiming for the eyes, those astonishingly brilliant blue eyes. “I don’t believe you Mr. Pauls,” the great beast said flatly. Festus whimpered, backing away, “Don’t believe me about what?” “That you want to kill Elgin because you suspect him of having sex with your wife. She has her own car, you send her home from the opera alone, you leave her alone in the house for days on end. You sleep around, you like whores because they do things for you, that she will not. Humph begetting some bastards on Miss Pretty Paws might get you upset but somehow your wife isn’t that important to you. So why were you hiding in the brush waiting to kill Elgin in a way that would be deemed accidental. And who led you up here, set up the trap? You would not have known of this place or created this trap by yourself.” “You come any closer and I’ll kill you!” Festus screamed, firing two shots at the disturbingly human eyes. “You tell me what I want to know and I’ll let you live.” Countered the huge beast, it sat down and a long prehensile tail with a white tip came round to rest on the fore claws, which looked almost like hands. He had nothing to lose, Festus walked forward pistol steady on the great blue eye closest to him. As he got closer the scale of the thing became ever more daunting, it made the Dino-bird look like a game hen. And as he got closer he had to hold his gun up higher, his only hope was that the range was so short the hollow point would hit somewhere in the eye socket and bounce around. There was a sound and a curse, he start....then blackness. He woke on his stomach, his back and one leg were on fire and numb at the same time, he could taste blood, smell blood, his own. Then he saw a hint of red, of firelight, and he saw a figure sitting feeding twigs into a campfire “Hey, you, stranger, what happened?” The figure seemed to take forever to respond to his call, he tried to remember what had happened, first he had flashes of monsters, things out of pre history, or mythology, those must have been delirium. Where was he, the Stan, Iraq, some mission had gone south, oh, no he was out wasn’t he? Was it that hit in Nigeria? No, no that had gone off smooth as silk. It was only the damned real estate business that had blown up, and he couldn’t fix that with a bullet or two. But he’d shown them all in the end, gotten out with his money safe and his unedited co-conspirators all safely off the hook. Then he’d fixed it so the punk DA had an asymptomatic heart arrhythmia and croaked in public. The stranger was there, except it wasn’t a stranger, it was Elgin Chalmers, “Well Mr. Pauls you are the stubborn one, I expected you to be dead before I killed the wing runner. I know it hurts right now but you’ll be feeling better soon.” “You saved me?” “Wasn’t going to let you get eaten in front of me, especially since you hadn’t answered my questions yet,” the cowboy replied dryly. “Where are we?” “Currently, in a shadow realm, a semi complete universe at an angle from our universe. A multidimensional branch that touches but does not intersect our universe; everything of any permanence is mirrored here, often with rather troubling differences that must reflect some high probability alternate timeline.” “You’re not Elgin Chalmers.” Festus whispered. “I am and I’m not, thenElgin managed to get himself killed, nowElgin is a rather different proposition, what Elgin would have been if he’d had half a chance.” Festus laughed, “You talk like that sphinx thing,” then he blanched in horror. “Very good Mr. Pauls, you have guessed that Elgin and the sphinx thing, the Iffrit, are one and the same in some impossible way.” Festus giggled, “Those stupid bastards have no idea how much trouble they’re in.” “If you refer to the stupid bastards I think you do, then they don’t though if they had open minds they’d have started worrying some time ago. Now who hired you to kill me, and who led you up to that glade and helped set that little trap?” “You know it’s funny, first hit I ever screw up and it was one I was almost too proud to take?” “Irony does have a way of making its way into everyone’s life Mr. Pauls.” “Don’t know who Wiggins knows but he contacted me, wanted me to kill you and make it look like an accident, but he wanted it done quick. Put me in contact with your ranch manager, he showed me the spot, said you’d be there almost exactly when you appeared.” “Apparently I’m getting predictable in my old age,” The sphinx’s voice said thoughtfully. “Never be predictable when someone’s out for you, change it up, sometimes you can make it such a pain they make a mistake, get caught, or miss, or have to turn in the card.” Festus was feeling very light headed. “So you have told me what I wanted to know and I have saved your life. You’re going to go to sleep in a few moments Mr. Pauls, when you wake up, I imagine you’ll be in hospital. You’ll remember none of this conversation, or the events leading up to it, or who you are, who you were. You’ll have most of your basic education and motor skills, but other than that you’ll be a blank slate. Hopefully you’ll make use of this second chance to grow into someone a lot more pleasant than this last incarnation. Goodbye Festus.” And the lights went out. <<>> Chapter 9 Our hero returns with doubts and questions, sees a werewolf and is almost swallowed by a spider Elgin stared down at the sleeping man, the worst of Festus’ wounds were healed and his clothes repaired by the useful little nano bugs the Iffrit could conjure up apparently almost at will. The sun was on heading for the canyon wall. He pulled the radio from his belt, “Chalmers here, can you hear me Winters?” The yellow and black device hissed at him, out of range in the gulch, he decided, but was going to try again when there was a hiss, “That you Chalmers? You done?” “Yeah, look do you have line of sight to the cell tower on Dwights Dome? Over.” “Uh, yeah, I got signal on my iPhone.” “Good, I need you to call the sheriff, get a rescue chopper up here. I’ve got a man down and I need some deputies as well as an EMT. Over.” “What the hell you up to? Uh over.” “Call the sheriff and we can discuss the details later. I’ll be on the emergency frequency. Chalmers out.” The sun was below the rim of the gulch before the chopper arrived. There was plenty of space for it to land on the glade once he’d guided them in. Deputy Michaels and the gum chewer hopped out and walked after the two EMT’s who ran to the limp and bloody form of Festus Pauls. The Deputy Michaels looked at the pistol on the ground not far from Festus then back at Elgin, “You know him?” “Neighbor during the winter, Festus Pauls, got the big house where GreatFox used to have his farm.” “You kill him?” One of the EMT’s answered speaking into her microphone, “We have a white male, fifties, unconscious and none responsive, head and body trauma, looks like a concussion.” “Did you knock him out?” the deputy continued without missing a beat. “Yep, after he tried to kill me and make it look like an accident then unloaded half a clip at my cat and another at me.” Her slim eyebrow went up, “Your cat? Care to explain what the hell went on?” “Get out your trusty iPhone and follow me.” As he turned Humph exited the greenery, tail high, tip lashing, one foot in front of the other, looking very dangerous. Deputy Gum went for his pistol, Michaels reached out and stopped him, “Its Chalmers’ cat, don’t shoot it, it just pisses them both off.” Elgin grinned, and continued for the treeline. He gave her an edited, abbreviated version without magic, the Iffrit, Elgin going over the cliff, Festus getting savaged by a mutant lizard bird, which the Iffrit had found a rather tasty snack actually. He showed her were he’d been hit, and the baton round that had knocked him down and the launcher Festus had used. The empty magazine and the empty shell casings and rather tattered tree and bullet pocked rocks that Humph had used as cover then the horse, hidden in the narrow gulch that opened onto the glade. “So you say that Mr. Pauls accused you, innocent young lad that you are, of messing around with his wife. But that was after he tried to send you over the cliff, your cat had nearly taken his eye out and he’d all but emptied his pistol on the tree line?” Elgin thought about it, “Yep, pretty much, don’t believe him though.” “Why not? I saw you with his wife the other day, not in bed but obviously quite comfortable together,” Deputy Michaels said frostily. “He doesn’t really care about things like that, he cares about my cat getting his pure bred pregnant because of the value of the kittens. I uh, found him drunk in the woods one night, with a semi auto and a night scope, drunk as the devil. Took him home, Ki...his wife just about threw herself at me with Festus still there. He takes her to town for the Opera, sends her home alone for ‘business.’ I think they have what is called, an open marriage.” “That sort of thing’s led to murder in the past.” “No denyin’ that,” Elgin waved, “who helped him set up the ambush? And why would cuckolded husband Festus ask for help in setting it up and there’s no way he could have set the trap up himself. Someone who knows my habits and this range knew that eventually I’d come up here looking for those cattle, and present a perfect target to be knocked over the cliff.” Gum chewer, had wandered over to the drop off, “Whooee, you gone down there, you’d be all busted to hell.” Zephyr Micheals flicked a disgusted look at the other deputy’s back, “Thanks for the technical analysis Dewey. Go cuff Mr. Pauls to the gurney would you, and read him his rights, even if he can’t hear you.” The pilot of the chopper trotted over as the lanky deputy sauntered off, “Deputy Michaels we need to get out of here before it gets much darker.” She nodded, glanced around, “You need a ride Mr. Chalmers?” “No, I can still walk out, what should I do about Pauls’s horse?” She humphed, looked around, “Damned if I know, can you lead it out?” “Not the way I came, but it knows the way it came in, and once out on the plateau I can get back to the camp site for the night.” She sighed, “I guess, don’t open the saddle bags.” “Understood.” It was slow going, the horse didn’t like moving in the dim evening light, but at last it found its way to the side gully and up onto the plateau. Elgin’s Iffrit enhanced eyesight allowed him to locate himself and then he steered them both back to the campsite. It was ten by the time he had made his way back to the camp site. Then Winters pestered him about what had happened. And after Elgin begged fatigue and went to bed he saw the glow in the other sleeping bag that indicated the young man was frantically tapping the whole thing onto his blog, FaceBook page or Twitter account. Elgin closed his eyes and went to sleep. -o- The following day they were relieved early and went back to the ranch. Where the sheriff’s department horse trailer was waiting for Festus’ horse and the sheriff was waiting for Elgin. The Smith-Samson’s were horrified by what had occurred, and were very solicitous, while Mitch glowered from the background, Elgin took it as long as he could then smilingly begged off to talk to the sheriff. “Festus wake up yet?” he asked as he approached. She shook her head, “Not yet, they say he’s past any danger point, should be awake later today. We had enough evidence to search his house. His wife was very upset about the whole thing, not sure if she was more worried about you or her husband.” Caitlin snorted, “went to the hospital in the end but she had a very strange expression on her face.” A shake of the head, “Anyway we found a bunch of stuff in his gun cabinets and office that to me indicate that our Mr. Pauls career extended well beyond real estate, and that he’s not been retired these last five years, despite what he’s been telling everyone.” She jerked her chin at the mare being loaded onto the transporter, “Maybe she’ll tell us some more. Michaels told me about your theory, sounds right to me, and there aren’t that many around here who fit the profile.” Her eyes slid off to the side, towards the manager’s quarters. “He still have his RV pulled up behind the bunk house?” “Yes?” “Always wondered what he does in that old death trap.” Elgin decided he was feeling extremely dumb, he’d known that Mitch had set him up for a beating at the Depot, he was fairly sure it had been Mitch who helped set the ambush up. But he’d never thought to wonder what other things the manager might be doing out here, in the middle of the pure as driven snow Smith Samson Ranch, all but untouchable. “There’s something else Elgin. TwoShoes asked me to tell you, he says there’s something very bad in the old Catholic cemetery next to the church.” She looked away, her face troubled.. “Uh, he say why?” “Asked that, said you’d either know or not know,” She sighed, shrugged, “he’s gone all shaman on us since the incident up at the council lodge.” “Ah.” “Sorry they almost got you El, thought they’d go after easier targets.” “They probably thought I was easy after they saw your watchdogs.” “Yeah, I don’t like how cocky they seem to be.” “Hopefully you’ll shut that down soon enough ma’am.” “I hope the same thing, have a good one Elgin.” She patted him on the arm and jumped into the dually pulling the horse trailer. -o- The Norton burped and stopped when Elgin turned the ignition key off and Huff sprang to the top of the van next to them and sat down to have a look around from the vantage point. Swinging off Elgin stuffed his gloves and goggles in his helmet and pulled his Stetson off his back and put it on. He’d called TwoShoes but Griff’s wife said he was out meditating or something. So he’d come down town to see what he could see. But before he went to the church he turned the other way and walked around to Katherine’s. The store was open and a young woman with a nose ring and eyebrow ring smiled at him as he looked in. He tipped his hat and went on. The season wasn’t started yet but most of the stores were open now and there were more people about, early birds, or transients. He walked to the lake front and looked down onto the rocky bottom through the still cold crystal clear water. He saw some motion farther out, deeper, but nothing near the land. He looked out, around, nobody, “What am I not asking, what are you not telling me? Magic or something like Magic is returning to the world, what does that really mean?” He spoke out loud to the lake, but with his focus inward. *Strange place and time to ask that my young friend,* Cutter replied, apparently from right next to Elgin. “Always wanted to go sailing on one of the big yachts,” he glanced at the white fiberglass shells sitting at the pier under the Beauty Best West Lodge, Casino and Marina. The biggest and oldest of the tribe run hotels though not the swankiest. “Never been out on the lake even on a fishing boat.” *Water can be very calming, but it can hide a lot of danger.* Cutter replied, as distinct from the Iffrit as he had been when Elgin had first met the five thousand year dead ghost. “What am I, what were you Cutter, just a way for the Iffrit to move around and spy?” *We are his humanity Elgin, or you are, I was; the Iffrit has almost none of the mechanisms of emotion or feeling that a human has, it has something like principles but it’s mostly logic and probability. It melds with a human to be able to relate to the creatures he was sent to guard and guide. And we are the Iffrit as much as it is us.* “You said the magic is strongest here, Kitty can do her little charms, we can do our little making and unmaking tricks, but what does it mean that the magic has returned, the shadow realms unfolding again. A lot of little potions and charms, or lots of flying monsters and flesh eating snake cuties?” *Both; there are creatures like the Basik who were not originally of this world, who came both from other stars, and other realms. There are also things that magic helped create on this world. Look at the man walking along the hotel promenade.* Elgin turned, the figure was half a mile away but the silhouette was familiar, a tall, stoop shouldered man in an old solid olive drab army jacket shambling along. Though Elgin couldn’t see it from here, the man would have a slightly vacant look, salt and pepper hair and beard. “That’s Hobo Hobson.” *Look deeper.* The world lost its sharp edges as he focused but Hobson gained a misty-dark outer shape, a massive shape, that was struggling to pull away from its real world anchor. The shape seemed to sense his observation, and a head turned, to reveal pinpoint yellow eyes and as if from a great distance Elgin heard the roar of a predator challenging a possible competitor. “What the heyyy,” Elgin gulped. *That is what some would call a werewolf.* “Hobson? I’ve known him my whole life, not saying he’s harmless, but a werewolf? Since when?” *Probably most of his life, at some point he must have been near the Basik rift, there would have been enough leakage there for it to happen, but as long as he stayed away from the rift he could live a normal life. Now, now he is a potential danger to all around him.* “How does the full moon thing work?” *It doesn’t, its night and sleep that can release the creature. Sometimes they are harmless, really only interested in running in the forest, most are predators, dangerous because they will kill and eat whatever they comes upon first, be it human or a deer, others are insane, man eaters by preference.* “What happens if Hobson gets killed?” *They are really one creature, so the wolf dies if the man dies. But he is a lot tougher, stronger, faster than any human now, he probably doesn’t know it yet.* “Do I need to stock up on silver bullets?” *Regular large caliber hollow point hunting rounds will do, if you’re lucky.* Hobo vanished into a building and Elgin sighed, “Damn it I’d hate to have to kill him.” *Sorry, it’s an indiscriminate curse, but rare once the danger is understood.* “So, what about this ‘evil’ TwoShoes says is up at the church? Ghouls, Zombies, Vampires?” *The equivalent of any of those could exist. But unlike the werewolf none of them are travelers, they tend to be tied to a specific location, and they are what they are, they are not two natured and they require magic just to exist. So anything here is a new arrival and I doubt it would be one of the undead.* “You doubt?” ^The interregnum should have destroyed any outside of one of the rifts. But if Hobson contracted the curse outside of a rift it’s possible one of the undead could have survived in the penumbra of a rift as well.* “Crap, I was hoping you were going to say they were just fantasies. I hate monster movies, I ain’t going to like the real thing any better.” There wasn’t much for Cutter to say so he remained silent as Elgin walked up the sloped street to the old cemetery, only two buildings down from the old stone and brick library. The town was open here, small ranch and cape cod type homes on lots that ran one into the other with few fences and enough trees to provide shade and protection from the wind. This was ‘New Beauty’ the old residential center had burnt down in the sixties and been rebuilt with proper municipal services like water, sewer, electricity and telephone. Most of the folks here were at least part blood Amerind, and this was where Elgin had finished growing up from sixteen to nineteen, the best years of his youth. The cemetery was surrounded by a hip high stone wall with wrought iron pickets between massive stone pillars set every sixteen feet or so. The wrought iron needed a new coat of black Rustoleum and the stonework a lot of repointing; there were a few places where quite large stones had partially fallen out. But the grass inside was freshly mown with only a few saucy weeds showing. He could feel a coldness like a draft coming from somewhere, and as he looked around he realized there was a haze that made things vaguely surreal even on the other side of the street. *Look to your left and focus on what you can’t see.* Cutter said somewhat unhelpfully. Elgin did as he was told, there was a mausoleum with a Madonna standing with her face in her hands in grief on it, and what he ‘couldn’t see’ was that the mausoleum door had two surfaces, one that simply lead into the crypt, another that seemed to lead someplace, other. “Great.” *That’s a very subtle construct so it’s not an undead. The creatures you’d call vampires are magic but their manipulation of it tends to the rough and ready.* “So what now?” Elgin wasn’t sure what he wanted to ‘hear,’ he wasn’t exactly afraid but neither was he exactly not-afraid either. *We knock and walk in, it’s either an invitation or a trap and we won’t know which till we know.* The voice in his mind sounded more like Iffrit now. So he walked up the frost heaved stone steps into the cemetery and across the grass to the mausoleum. As he did the sun dimmed, the cold that seemed to swirl around his ankles rose up his legs and the misty distortion drew in till he stood in a cotton cocoon, the green streaked rough gray of the crypt smelled damp and musty, the crying Madonna seemed to be peeking down at him with eyes that promised malice. The twin narrow doors were verdigris green and looked like they had been sealed an age ago. But for all the omens of doom Elgin felt almost comfortable as he reached out and pushed in, on a door that had obviously been designed to be pulled out. And in the little universe he and the pseudo crypt inhabited the door and frame slipped in slightly then fell down till it thumped to a stop, revealing a set of well kept, well lit stone steps. He stepped over the door block and started down the steps, the walls were stone block, arching up to a barrel ceiling and the light came from a glowing strip down the center of the vault, an interesting mix of ancient and modern. Not making any effort to be particularly quiet, he was as watchful and careful as he could be. He counted almost forty steps, something more than thirty feet below ground level when he stepped into a groin vaulted stone vestibule, three wooden doors, and the steps all faced into the center of a square space. As he walked down he’d felt connected to his world, the anchor world, but now he felt chaos all around, this apparently solid room was an electron diameter thick shell of almost reality between him and raw chaos. Iffrit - Cutter were close now, looking out of his eyes but also ‘seeing’ in ways that didn’t require eyes. *A hiding place,* The Iffrit said in satisfaction. *His hiding place,* Cutter agreed “It looks like a puzzle to me guys, and a trap.” *It is anything its maker wants it to be. Close your eyes and focus on the division between in and out.* A little irritated Elgin closed his eyes, and found that he was standing next to Cutter, who was wearing a three piece white suit and a planter’s straw hat. With his boney beak of a nose and sharp cheek bones and chin he looked like the villain in a cheap noir movie. Cutter frowned, “Ouch that hurts, I thought I looked rather good.” Elgin blushed, shrugged, “Sorry, I’m a jeans and flannel sort myself.” then he opened his eyes and he was alone in the vestibule. Focusing he closed them again Now Cutter was wearing boots, jeans and a flannel shirt, and a mulish expression, “Better?” “Eh, sorry, you caught me by surprise.” *Enough.* the Iffrit commanded, *Focus Elgin, on the surface between the reality bubble and the void beyond. What do you see?* His eyes closed, but still seeing, Elgin frowned, looked to his right, the door was a skin, beyond a nothing that sucked at his mind. Pulling back he looked at the door in front, the door was still a skin, but a skin with two sides, and beyond something like the space he, they, stood in now. To the left, a skin and the chaos of nothingness. He opened his eyes stepped forward, opened the door and stepped into a rather nicely appointed sitting room, three walls were apparently glass and outside rain fell from dark gray clouds and gray green sea broke in white foam on a stony beach. In each corner, between the walls of glass, field stone fireplaces danced with warm fires in counterpoint to the chill scene outside. “Do come in old friend.” The man standing facing him from the other side of a cream leather couch lifted a wine glass with something straw pale in it, in salute Elgin closed his eyes, then opened them again, it was better to look at the mirage man rather than the roughly man shaped bundle of stick thin limbs surrounding a pale blue bulb. In that more ‘real’ version the room was a simple blank box. “Yes Mr. Chalmers, a little illusion sometimes makes things easier.” Here he was a slim man in a shirt and pants. He was actually very like Cutter in general appearance, though perhaps a little thinner and even more sharply boney. “You’re one of the aliens.” “Indeed I am. One of the oldest, I came to claim this rock ball for my people when your ancestors were pond scum. But oldest was already here enforcing his hegemony.” That was disturbing, “Why did you stay?” “This was my target, my world, I was made for this world, it for me, I came to claim it, and I will have it, if it takes waiting till you pitiful bone sacks are extinct, until the sun swells to embrace this world in its body, I will claim this world as mine.” “If you don’t care what shape the world’s in why not go claim Venus, Mars, Jupiter?” “Because this is a world where life unlocked the underlayment of space and time, even at the beginning so was the promise of now, and now the promise of so much more.” His unoccupied hand was clenched, as was his jaw, he vibrated with emotions; the wine was threatening to slop out of his glass. He took a sip from his wine glass, the thin crystal chattering on his teeth till he had taken a long shallow sip. The Iffrit spoke through Elgin, “My oldest friend and enemy, I am glad to see that one of your nodes survived.” “Glad so that you can see me suffer more oh most ancient of monsters, were you afraid that you had put me out of my misery?” “Just glad that we may have a chance to meet again in one of your saner period’s oldest enemy and friend.” The creature waved his hand at the room, “You like this illusion old monster?” “It has the mixture of warmth and dourness we both enjoy in your good times.” “You admire this? It is finer than any work I have wrought for millenia, perhaps ever.” “When there were just human mages working with crippled magic there was little audience for such old friend and enemy.” “The last such was the crystal cave oldest, you remember the crystal cave don’t you?” “My prison for three millenia, I remember it well oldest enemy and friend.” “You don’t fear that this is another such?” “No.” “No?” “Why are you here old friend and enemy, why warn me of your existence, for I could have gone on for centuries thinking you destroyed.” “Why oh why oh why?” the creature chortled, as he faded out of existence. The fires guttered out, the light faded away and the gray scene outside became just gray rock walls. Elgin turned, the door he had come through was gone. He closed his eyes, chaos was rushing in on every side, though the illusory walls were keeping it away. The door was still there and Cutter had it open, was waving him to the bottom of the stairs. Eyes still closed, he broke into a sprint, at the bottom of the stairs he almost slipped on their worn mossy surfaces. As he went up every lift was a different height, every run a different depth, the surfaces were heaved and broken, mossy and wet. Mist and rain hammered down the stairwell from a storm that crashed and hammered in a world above. Then Elgin burst out of the mausoleum’s entrance and was on warm dry grass, a couple of kids over the street stared at him in shock as he came to a flailing stop and spun around. The mausoleum was sealed and untouched, he could sense no opening behind the doors, no evil, no coldness. “Well, not sure what that meant,” Elgin muttered hands on his hips. *I may have been wrong about your Mr. Hobson, it’s possible that the Djin was the cause of his affliction. If it was here long it may have done more, in its insane phase it likes to play games.* the Iffrit sounded worried. “Why haven’t you killed it or locked it away forever if it’s such a pain in the ass?” Elgin was feeling more than a little irritated. *The Djin is insane because it is the last of its species; having killed all of its brother-sisters before fleeing to earth. It did that because it is the greatest, most noble member of its race to have ever lived. In its sane mode it understood that as a species the Djin were creatures of irredeemable evil, made that way by the magic they learned how to manipulate before they understood the dangers of what they were doing. The Djin species came close to following the path of my creators.* “So you feel pity for it and let it live, threatening to kill all of humanity if you slip up one time too many?” *If I could, I would have killed the Djin, out of pity, eons ago Elgin. But I can only defend myself and it has been careful to not attack me directly. And when it is in its sane phase I have no desire to kill it at all. It is, after all, the only creature I can talk to who is even a measurable fraction of the age I am.* “Damn, this is making me feel old.” Elgin muttered as he walked back towards his bike. <<>> Chapter 10 Biker werewolves causing trouble, our hero meets a relative and saves a damsel in distress That night Elgin left the garage and drove west. As he approached the Bears Den he ‘saw’ rippling distortion around the bikers’ club, the ripples limned faintly orange, purple, red, blue, green. But as he got closer the distortion faded away and then it was just a few glowing dots and rectangles buried in the blacker black of the forested rise. The road twisted away from the lake for a little way to climb to the top of the den and then swooped about halfway down to the overlook. Elgin stopped and walked to the rock wall and looked down. The Den was the fossilized remains of a small volcano. Before an uplift had damned the river to form the lake, the river had run down the side of the Den, and a breach in the outer wall had let in current that over hundreds of thousands of years had hollowed out the sandstone interior. Today the steep inner slope above the water continued almost vertically underwater to a smooth sandstone bottom just slightly lower than the lake outside. Once the den had been a dumping ground for old cars and other trash but today it was pretty much back to what it had been before the intrusion of the white man. *This was a powerful locus,*Cutter-Iffrit whispered. “You’ve been here before?” *Many times Elgin, once this was the meeting place of the tribes for this whole region, a holy area that they mostly shunned,* something like a sigh interrupted the words, *I and the Basik were responsible, the Basik hunted men when they could and I set guardians here to harry hunters when they intruded too deeply.” “So over time the tribes came to believe it was a powerful locus because people got eaten and shadows chased them if they got too close?” *There is some of that, but human intent has an effect on the fabric of the universe. The elders and shamans came together here to talk of war and peace, the future and the past, hunting rights and herd management. They traded knowledge and goods, girls and boys to strengthen bloodlines. It became a powerful locus and place where the shadow realms almost touched the anchor realm. The unwary could walk from one to the other without realizing it. At its peak visitors from the jungle nations far to the south visited and treated here.* Elgin muttered, “And the white man came, debased and destroyed it all.” It was a common refrain to many things Amerind. *No, it fell apart thousands of years ago, before the heyday of Greece. One year plague killed many who visited here and then those who came in contact with those who had come here and survived. It was decades before the next meeting, but it was a shadow of what it had been, the links were mostly broken, and never had a chance to reconnect. The smaller meets went on every few years for decades, gradually growing in size, then fighting broke out at one, precipitating a war that lasted generations. This place was considered cursed, and a place of evil, avoided by all, and over time the power here sank deep into slumber.* Elgin closed his eyes, it was like he was standing in dim twilight, he could see bats and night birds flitting on the hunt. Cutter looked very natural in the leathers of a mountain Indian. He was looking pensively down into the crater pool. He glanced at Elgin, “Did you see the Claws’ club compound?” “Several sources of magic close together?” Cutter nodded, pointed down and around, “The last time I was here there were hundreds of tribesmen and women here, where a hundred years before there had been thousands. When I closed my eyes every crack and crevice glowed with its own light. The shamans could see or sense it and were afraid of it instead of reveling in it like their forefathers and foremothers had. They spoke of evil spirits, evil tidings, and it was their fear that set off the war that followed.” He sighed, “Humans.” Now Elgin ‘looked’ down and around, he didn’t see the glow from every crack and crevice but there was a brooding sense of something underlying soil and surface rock. “Would it all go away or would it just become less, obvious, over time?” “You sense something,” Cutter looked interested, frowning he looked around. “Something, a presence almost, all around, under everything we see, I guess I’d say brooding, maybe asleep.” “Things can become imbued with magic intentionally, and unintentionally. This place was important for a long time, the magic changed the very structure of the rock to hold what might be called, natural spells.” “You and Iffrit can’t see it?” Cutter shook his head, “I only see what you or Iffrit sees, just less clearly. When disincarnate Iffrit can see things you cannot, but something very subtle and almost of your world, might well be invisible.” Elgin opened his eyes, his night vision had fully returned and the Den was almost as clear with his eyes open as with them closed. But the sense of brooding underlayment was just a whisper now. “Did the Djin give something to the Claw do you think? Is that why you gave me the idea of riding out here?” Elgin asked. *Almost without a doubt. And it was your intuition that brought you here, not my pondering, unless the connection was at a level below intentional thought.* “What could the Djin have given them?” *Almost anything, but knowing the Djin, it came with a price, the Djin loves to play games with lives.* “How much do you think the Djin told them about uh, you, me...us.” *Nothing, as I said the Djin loves to play games and in its insane phase it is no one’s ally.* There was a buzz from his jacket pocket, he pulled out his phone, “Kitty?” “Elgin get downtown right away, something bad happened. The Great Bear Den planning committee building is on fire and so is one of the sheriff’s cruisers. There was shooting before it all went up. And there was magic involved, I felt it from the hospital, my stores a wreck, my guardians destroyed, the cauldron gone. You need to get here.” -o- The volunteer fire department had the fires out by the time Elgin reached the downtown. Most of it was blocked off by sheriffs cars, fire trucks or ambulances. He motored around till he found his way to Kitty’s storefront and parked. Kitty was looking distraught, from outside nothing was wrong inside the pattern of destruction was strange, the truth seeing crystals had apparently blown up like little grenades, their crystal fragments, shredding or marring whatever had been nearby . In the four corners of the main space there were burn and blast marks, where much larger articles had come apart in much the same way. Kitty waved him in, “This way.” He followed her along a trail of damaged displays and deep scores in the wooden floor to a doorway leading to a basement. She stopped at the top of the stairs, the heavy center and sides supported two by ten treads, splintered and bowed, nearly broken, “What did this?” she whispered. “What cauldron?” Elgin asked as he looked at the steps. Whatever had come up those steps had weighed tons. “Something found here when the first white men came, up near the Great Bear’s Den, a cauldron chipped out of solid stone. No one had ever seen its like before. When the town was built someone moved it down here, then a rather intolerant pastor though it was some heathen object and had it buried. A decade or so later an occultist had it dug up and it’s been in ‘our’ keeping since.” An image floated into Elgin’s mind, men and women milling on a rocky ledge looking down over the Den’s crater. Bronze faced, black haired and eyed, men and women in leathers and complex beadwork, bright and cheerful, a few young men stalking about, their pride hot on their faces but their weapons bound by peace thongs to their belts. Game hung from trees, hides were argued over, in the center of the scene was a large piece of carved and polished black rock. Three legs stood it above the fire, and the hollow had to be three feet across. A couple of women kept watch over it, tossing herbs, vegetables, chunks of meat in, doling stew out into hollow dried gourds. *It was a powerful thing, as powerful as the whole Den in its way. Its being portable is a great advantage,” Cutter-Iffrit sighed. “So what does it do?” Elgin asked frowning. Kitty, thinking he was speaking to her, replied, “It’s one of the focus objects, the magi told of them, that there are twenty one objects that enhance charm forming, stabilize spells. My Association has four of them, we know of twelve others, five are either being hidden or have never been found.” Cutter-Iffrit ‘spoke,’ *During the interregnum that was certainly true, even now a new user would have better success and a magi could create more complex constructs with it nearby. Essentially the object exists in all of the realms at the same time. If you are trapped in the deep shadow realms finding and touching one of these objects will return you to your anchor realm.* “So a useful thing to have around if you have a bunch of new magic users to train,” Elgin muttered. “It weighs tons, what could have carried it out of here and gotten away?” Kitty whispered, her eyes wide with fear. An image of a huge cross between a bear, wolf and man flickered in his minds eye. Elgin looked around, he could see claw marks on the floor, and on one of the knocked over displays he saw a tag of dark fur. He pulled it off the sharp edge that had caught it. His touch made it smoke oddly, and he hurriedly dropped it on a pad of paper on the counter where it lay looking innocuous. But the air reeked of burnt hair with a vinegary undertone. Kitty had pulled a crystal on a thin chain from around her neck and extended it to the fur. As the crystal touched it the fur began to smoke again and the reek grew stronger. But in the air above the hank an image of the werewolf formed, then vanished as the hair evaporated into smoke and stink that set them both coughing. “Oh spirits! What was that?” “A werewolf,” Elgin replied bluntly, deep in thought, had it been Hobson, or another werewolf the Djin had created? “Werewolf?” She whimpered. “A local shaman told me that an evil spirit had set up shop here in town recently. He was right, it was no spirit but it was evil, very ancient evil. It’s gone but it will have left behind some really nasty surprises, including at least one werewolf. Did you feel something off, wrong the last few days?” She swallowed, nodded, “We felt something cold, distorted, but when we did a dousing, the bone needle just spun in place. A sign of confusion.” “Or that you are too close to a source for the affect to be localized, and the greater the power the larger the zone of confusion.” Cutter-Iffrit said through Elgin. “Oh.” She looked frightened, “We meant to do another but then the sheriff called about Festus,” Kitty rubbed her forehead. “You said we, who is we, you and Festus?” She looked horrified, “Fess?! Spirits no! No, its me and Phoebe, my shop assistant and trainee in the arts who I did the dousing with.” Elgin looked around, “This happened after hours, right, she was home, safe?” Kitty nodded, “I spoke to her on the phone, she lives with her husband on a bit of land down valley.” He walked to the door, could see the reflection of fire in the building south and east a block or so. It must be stubborn to still be burning, but then the local fire fighting equipment was far from big city standards. “We need to go see what’s going on over there.” Kitty followed him, leaving the door, “Something bad, I felt two pulses, one sharp, I think the break in to the store and as I left the hospital a second, longer, but less pointed.” Elgin nodded, thinking, then glanced at her, “How’s Festus?” “Confused,” She hesitated, “what did you do to him? I can sense that something was done, something profound, but I don’t know what.” “He tried to kill me, several times and kept on trying after I had told him to cease and desist or die. But in the end he told me what I wanted to know. So I let him live, he just won’t remember ever being Festus, while he retains most of the academic and practical learning.” She swallowed, “That’s....very scary Elgin.” ”Sorry, but I guess I think it was fair.” She was silent for a few steps, “Fair enough...the sheriff tells me that the evidence points to Festus being a hit man of some kind.” “I think he was, but we didn’t get into that, he did admit killing me was a job, though I think he was happy enough to hurt you by killing me.” “Sounds like Fess,” Festus’ wife sounded resigned, not bitter. “Everyone assumes you’re a trophy wife to his sugar daddy Kitty, but that’s not it is it?” “You know that I’m a practitioner, a witch, we’re not exactly thick on the ground. My aunt had the cauldron in her keeping here, she’d moved here in the sixties, and made a life for herself. Her journals say Beauty did not live up to its name in those days. But she was an out doors type, she found a partner and they lived happily enough until her partner died of cancer in the nineties. Then my aunt died seven years ago. I was sent out to claim the cauldron and the store five years ago. I was lonely and bored, I got involved in some immigrant activities, the dog show the cat show, the rodeo. Festus had Miss Pretty Paws, and he swept me off my feet.” This was said with some amount of bitterness. “Ah, guess I never ran into you during the pre Festus days.” “I did not mingle much, except with the immigrants. I was doing my duty, but I hated it up here most of the time.” “Does Festus know you’re a practitioner?” “He thinks I’m a new age hippie with a hot body and an upper crust upbringing. It took a while for me to realize that he cares about the body on a functional level, and the upbringing on a business level. He wanted an escort on call, in every sense of the word, not a wife, but he’s a Catholic of the most Roman type. Our pre nup says I will go to church and act as if I’m Catholic as well. Not hard since strangely enough that’s what I grew up as. Festus loves the store though he’s never been in it, it keeps me out of his hair, and it irritates Father Wiggins, who Festus hates. The Father is always counseling me, about dabbling in the arcane, but I’m a better bible scholar than he is.” “Father Wiggins!” Elgin had forgotten that the Wiggins brothers had an uncle who’d gone to seminary then come back to lead the local flock, a little island of Catholicism in a sea of protestant and evangelicals. By this time they were at the barrier of emergency vehicles. There was a ‘taste’ to the air, or was it to just the area, that stank of something unearthly. Without really thinking about it Elgin ducked under the tape and walked around the state police van, one of the troopers started to move their way, he sensed Kitty make a pass, felt a sense of rightness and familiarity in his mind, the trooper hesitated then jerked his head for them to go on and turned back to watching the rest of the strangely small crowd that had gathered. The Committee storefront had been the end shop of a row of three story brick shops originally with owner quarters, offices, or apartments above. This had been part of the original single street downtown of Beauty during one of its heydays in the early twentieth century. It was still in the process of rebuilding, or had been, now all five ‘bays’ of the structure showed damage, though the end one, the Committee’s storefront, was the most damaged, to the point of having collapsed. In front of the building the utterly fire consumed shell of a car steamed and smoked. The melted frame of the police light unit on the car’s roof was the only sign that it had been a sheriff’s cruiser. Elgin saw the Sheriff and Griffith TwoShoes talking to Chief BlackHawk and a tall gray haired man in state trooper uniform and a woman in a rather unusual, for Beauty, business pant suit. He glanced around and saw two unmarked cars nearby, white not black like in the movies. TwoShoes seemed to sense something, turned to look at Elgin and Kitty, his eyes widened “Elgin, thank the spirits, I was going to call you.” BlackHawk glanced at Elgin, his brows lowering, “Why would you call the troublemaker Griff?” “It’s me whose the troublemaker, Walt, Elgin’s just my point man.” TwoShoes replied sharply. Caitlin glanced beyond Elgin, “Mrs. Pauls?” She shot a look at Elgin. “My store was trashed about the same time this happened Sheriff SweetBear.” “The Cauldron?” TwoShoes snapped. Kitty gaped at the shaman, then recovered, “Gone.” “What? What is this cauldron?” It was the woman, probably a fed Elgin decided, since her accent was distinctly eastern. “An ancient artifact that was found in the den when the white man first came. It’s been in Mrs. Pauls’ birth family’s care for more than a century. How did they steal it?” TwoShoes replied ending looking at Elgin. “Something very large and very strong went down the stairs and carried it out Griff. I’ve no idea, maybe someone drove a BobCat down there,” Elgin lifted his hands. The fed was shaking her head, TwoShoes was looking ill, BlackHawk and the sheriff went back to talking to the tall gray haired man. Kitty had one of her crystals in her hand, she was muttering something under her breath and Elgin could ‘see’ her focus changing reality in a small way in the crystal. Which she pointed at the burnt out car and Committee office. TwoShoes looked at her, “What do you sense Witch.” He spoke softly, and used the old word like one would say Doctor. “No humans died here recently, the fire was the result of a fight, the destruction was not intentional.” She replied a little breathlessly. The Sheriff suddenly barked, “Then find her damn it Dewey, what the hell are you playing at? I asked you an hour ago to get everyone located. You said everyone was accounted for!” in the firelight she was obviously enraged, speaking into her microphone, now listening to her ear bug, “What do you mean she didn’t answer her phone but it was still pinging, I said talk to everyone damn it? Where does the GPS show her phone?” Another silence as her face grew grimmer, “Get that phone back to the station and get Charley to give me a track back. I want it ten fucking minutes ago or you are going to be on snow plow inspection and mosquito eradication detail for the rest of your natural damned life!” “What?” the Chief asked gruffly. “Deputy Michaels didn’t answer her phone. My idiot assistant figured it was okay because it was showing her at her home, even though she’s supposed to be on duty.” Everyone looked at the burnt out cruiser. Elgin was glad that he knew that no one had died here. But the three officials were looking grim, even a little sick, could he, should he tell them? TwoShoes saved him the trouble, “The spirits tell me that no one died here tonight Sheriff, but that does not mean she isn’t in danger.” BlackHawk looked blankly at TwoShoes then at the female fed, “It’s unlikely that it was a coincidence that it was Michaels, Agent Smith. It’s got to have been them.” “Did she carry any of the paperwork on her?” The gray haired trooper asked quietly. “Of course not, but she knows where all of it is.” “So do several other people.” The fed said. Caitlin shook her head, “But the only one who they knew had to know was Zephy, if they found out what she was really doing here.” Zephyr Michaels nee Smith-Samson hadn’t given up her law career. She’d been here working on the ownership of the Great Bears Den. She had been the one who’d outmaneuvered the Claw, and that in itself would have put her on their enemies list, even if she hadn’t had information they wanted. “We have no record of traffic too or from the club compound in the window, as far as the spotters can tell none of them have left the peninsula since nightfall.” The gray haired trooper said in frustration. Elgin frowned, then interrupted, “Can you ask them if they saw a single motorcycle run up to the crater overlook then come back here less than an hour ago? I was up there taking a breath of fresh air before heading to bed.” The Trooper frowned, “Uh sir, please don’t interrupt, this is official bus....” The sheriff shot Elgin a look, then turned to the trooper, “Ralph please do what Mr. Chalmers asks, it’ll only take a moment.” The trooper looked irritated, pointed at the van Elgin had walked past, “Ask lieutenant Bridges to show you the feed.” Elgin trotted over to the truck, inside it was a lot more Spartan than one would have expected but two large monitors and two bolted down seats with one young woman in blue overalls drinking a coffee and watching the screens. “Lieutenant Bridges?” The woman, girl almost, turned and smilingly looked Elgin over, “Sure, that’s what dad calls me, you can call me Cheryl.” “You have a video of South Lake Road, past the Claws’ camp to the lookout” “You got a need to know handsome?” She said around her gum, the smile still there but the eyes assessing, he could see the gun in a shoulder holster. “I rode my bike up there and then back just over the period when all this went down. You should be able to see me coming and going.” She frowned at him, “What?” “I was out for a...” “I heard you the first time,” She almost snapped, turned to her keyboard and started typing, “give me times.” Thinking back and checking his watch he gave her the best window he could. The monitors flickered and he saw numbers rolling, three windows popped up, showing the Lake road from three observation points, one obviously some kind of aircraft, or more likely a video drone over the lake. One of the screens showed ghostly reverse images, an infrared image, the others were the grainy white of high power optics and light amplification. Elgin watched the screen, Kitty and TwoShoes at his shoulder, it was TwoShoes who spoke first, “There is too much traffic, not that much traffic on a Thursday night.” “No motorcycles.” The girl snapped apparently ignoring the old businessman-shaman. “Do you have something looking at the road into town, the gas station garage a few hundred yards past the last light pole.” Another clatter of keys, and suddenly he could see the garage, and the numbers flowed, traffic flickered past, and then there was a single streak, joining the flow and flashing away westward. A hiccup and then the single light flashed back. And now Lieutenant Cheryl Bridges was swearing. She looked around, her face drawn, “Tell Da....Colonel Bridges that someone’s compromised the observation feeds, I think we’re looped, I’ll get hold of the other techs, see if we can rescue anything. “Sorry, I guess you were right.” she shot at Elgin as she went back to the console. Elgin almost ran back to the group, Caitlin looked at him grimly, “Nothing good makes you run El.” He looked at the trooper and the fed, “Your video systems were compromised, showing loops of some kind. No way of knowing what was going on.” The fed ducked away, suddenly whispering to her minions someplace not too far away, the Trooper broke into a run for the van. The sheriff closed her eyes, “Damn it.” “You know that they did this, and took down your video, can’t you use that as probable cause?” TwoShoes asked urgently. “No, no the judge would never give us a warrant on those grounds. The Claws have made life hell for any judge who goes after them. Without ironclad proof that we’ll pull their teeth no one will give us a warrant.” She turned away, moving off to talk to a knot of her deputies. As Elgin turned to go TwoShoes touched his arm, “What do you intend to do?” “Go visit the Claw, see if I can talk to him nephew to uncle.” Kitty’s jaw dropped. TwoShoes grunted, “Always wondered if you knew that dirty little secret.” “Dad and Uncle Eugene always drank a beer to the memory of their parents on the anniversary of the day they were killed in that auto accident. Uncle would turn up sometime in the evening with a beer and sit down at the table, dad would sit opposite, they’d open the beers and drink then, glaring at each other in silence. When Uncle was done he’d slam the empty down on the table, get up and walk out. I don’t ever remember him speaking, only reason I know his name is Eugene is because my mother would call him that and offer him a coffee or bit to eat. He’d always shake his head.” “Do you think the familial bond will get you anywhere with the Claw?’ “He was willing enough to have his thugs beat me up, threaten me, even chance killing me. I don’t know about the hit; that may have been the Wiggins. All I expect is that it’ll get me an audience with him. I want to get inside and I’ve never been good at sneaking and their lodge is very hard to sneak up on anyway.” “Do you want help?” “Not with me, TwoShoes. If you could go to the garage till I return, I may have a tail and it would be good for someone to call in the cavalry.” He looked at Kitty, “My inner mage, has an idea but it’s kind of creepy, he wants to use you as a beacon, to distract them while I approach, the thing is we want to make it ‘feel’ like its both you and I doing a powerful douse to find Zeph” “And there’s some blood involved to imprint your pattern.” “That’s the idea.” “Done something like it before, lets get it over with, I’ll call Phoebe, she’ll kill me if I don’t let her watch.” -o- The moon glowed over the lake as the Norton slowed at the turn in to the Claws access lane. It was almost two a.m. the only change to his plan had been the presence of Humph on the Norton’s seat when he came out to start. The cat had simply given him a disgusted look when ordered to stay behind. But now as he made the turn, he felt a lurch and saw a tawny streak vanish into the forest. Humph, unlike his human friend, was very good at sneaking. The lane was wide and paved, the club was not poor and didn’t try to hide it. He burbled down the road until he saw a wall and gate, and in front of the gate a big man with his arms crossed. Around the man loomed a shadow, this was another werewolf, which seemed a bit clichéd. Elgin flipped the headlight off and let the bike glide to a stop, “Hello again Chunkers.” The man looked confused, let his folded arms drop, “Eh...who, who are you?” “Elgin Chalmers, we met in town a while back, my cat scratched you.” “Uh? Oh the big bastard, yeah.” A frown, “Chalmers, that’s not a good name to have round here these days. You best go back the way you came.” “Chunkers, I need to speak with the Claw and I am sure he and Movie Star are still up.” Big fists flexed and the confusion faded, “I said you best go back the way you came.” “I think that the Claw will want to see me, tell him it’s his nephew Elgin.” “Uh, what?” Back to confusion. Elgin started patiently, “Call the Claw....” There was a crackle and a voice spoke out of the air, “Let my nephew in Chunkers. It’ll be good to talk over old times with little El.” There was a snap pop as the speaker was disconnected. Chunkers was poker faced as he moved to the side and turned a switch. Rattling and squeaking the gates slid out of the way and Elgin rode on. The club lodge was a quadrangle of two story log buildings, with broad verandas. There were at least fifty bikes parked on the scuffed oily concrete that made up the plaza in the center. The designs of the structures varied from plain to almost opulent but it all had a rundown feel even in the artificial light. The newest, biggest and fanciest of the buildings was lit up on the inside, the sound of music and loud voices escaped to fill the quadrangle. Elgin swung his leg off his bike and walked towards the front door. He almost didn’t see his attacker, who uncoiled out of the dark like a billow of smoke. The man was taller than Elgin but probably weighed less, the brass knuckles on his fist gleamed as he aimed for the side of Elgin’s head. Elgin wasn’t where he’d been when the attack started. Then he was next to his over extended attacker, sticking a foot out to trip the other man, who went down but recovered and was on his feet like in a flash, teeth and brass knuckles gleaming gold. His focus on the first attacker the second attacker assumed Elgin wouldn’t sense the attack, the heavy leather cosh swung at Elgin’s head, but once more Elgin was gone and then back, he grabbed the woman’s arm, accelerating the move, kicking her feet out from underneath her, rolling her off his hip to roll spin at her companion who had to leap or get knocked over. There was a slow clap from not far away, “Very good, I think adequate proof that you’re a lot more dangerous than you look.” Elgin turned to face Movie Star, “Mr. Greer, good to see you again.” He could sense the man and woman team behind him gathering themselves for another try, Greer made a dismissing motion, “Valery, Malc, enough for now. Go have a beer.” “I should have realized there was more to you than what can be seen on the surface the first time we met Mr. Chalmers. And it was inexcusable to miss it until our nose was rubbed in it. All I can say is that I thought it was the old Shaman.” Bulking around Movie Star was the shadow of another werewolf, its hot yellow eyes seeming like two stars in the firmament above the handsome thugs head. “You may not realize it but the Djin never gives without reason and never without certainty that he will get more than he gives Mr. Greer.” “Oh, so you’re not just some stray piece who wandered into the game, Mr. Chalmers.” The other man squinted, Elgin felt the coarse probe, the other man was trying to see if he was dual natured, in the sense of a werewolf, “You did well against the assassins but you have no second nature, you are nothing more than a mage, thief or assassin, and given the situation we find ourselves in, you are at the most basic level.” “You’ve been reading up on your Dungeons and Dragons Mr. Greer but you really need to go back to the much older sources, in the Greek, Roman or better yet Assyrian or Egyptian, the older texts are the most accurate but they are hard to interpret without the more literate vernacular of the Greeks and Romans.” “You’re just a cowboy who copped lucky cards, boy. Don’t make yourself out to be more than you are.” Greer growled fiercely, his wolf struggling to break free to rend and tear. Elgin held up his hands, “As you say Movie Star; can I see my uncle now?” “Why?” “Because I want to make sure that things don’t spin out of control. Your raid on the town has stirred things up, and your using magic to carry it out will have put some strange ideas in people’s heads.” Greer sneered, “Who cares, they have no probable cause. Even if they come they will find nothing, and we’ll make their lives not worth living. And they don’t believe in, don’t know magic.” “For now.” “Now’s all that matters boy.” “Can I see my uncle Mr. Greer?” Without another word Movie Star spun and marched towards the end of the main building. The room they entered was more like a throne room than anything that Elgin had expected, he immediately recognized his uncle, startled to realize how much the older man’s face resembled the one he saw in the mirror most mornings. Eugene Walker, AKA Claw of the Evil Eagle Claw Motorcycle Club wasn’t huge by the standards of his minions but he was big, taller and much more heavily built than Elgin, also overweight. He sat in a big wingback chair on a raised area that had probably been intended as a dining niche with a fabulous view over the lake. He was wearing dark red brown leathers, with Indian beadwork and some feather amulets here and there. Leaning against the big leather chair were two striking women, one dark haired and dark skinned wearing buckskin leathers with lots of cutouts to show smooth tanned flesh, the other a platinum blonde in black leather with similar cutouts showing pale skin. Beside the two women and Claw and Movie Star there were six others, four huge men who looked like their arms were as thick as Elgin’s thighs and the two, tiny in this company, assassins who’d taken a crack at him in the courtyard. “So Vincent’s boy finally decides to pay his respects, at a very strange hour, on a very strange day,” Eugene Walker’s voice was well modulated, still bearing the stamp of the Ivy League education he’d received. “Sorry for the delay Uncle Eugene, time just got away from me I guess.” There was a ripple around Claw that denoted that he somehow held in himself a great knot of shadow realm, the sign of a mage master of the most destructive type. Raw power of that sort was necessary only for great works, and for construction the power could be layered in a little at a time over a long period, in fact the results were far better that way. A mage knot like Claws was only good for destruction; the Djin had given Claw the one tool that would enable him to rule a clan of werewolves. For everyone else in the room beside the two assassins, Eugene and Elgin were werewolves. “What do the sheep want boy?” Eugene said flatly, a little unsettled by the calm gaze of his nephew. “What your wolves stole uncle, the papers and the woman.” There was a rustle and the wolves all smiled, the Indian princess licked her lips. “What if we told you we already ate her?” Her voice was a nasty hiss, almost Basik like. Elgin looked at her coldly, she was more important than her position bespoke and she was even more of a destroyer than Greer, she was probably clinically insane, “I’d call you a liar, you’ve not had time to figure out what to do with her yet, you need the knowledge she has, but you know that if you try and torture it out of her your beast will unfold and kill and eat her, which would rather defeat the purpose of capturing her.” He pointed at the Assassins, “They could do the job but you could never trust them with the information and if you were in the room with them the result would be the same.” “You have a solution for us, little boy,” the white blond asked huskily. Elgin lifted his hands, shrugged, “Sorry, ain’t that smart ma’am. I’m just here giving you the opportunity to get out from under. The feds and the state cops have this place under twenty four hour observation, it’s useless to you as a base. Give it up; let me take the papers and the girl back, offer to sell the land to the tribe for the cost of litigation. It’ll give you the money and freedom to find another base of operations and pull the rug out from under the police investigation.” “You’re magic boy, but the rest of the sheep are still blind to it. They have no probable cause to invade my domain, and if they do I will be very nice to them and let them look where they please for what they please till my lawyers have enough to sue Beauty, maybe the whole fucking state of Wyoming, into bankruptcy.” Eugene replied flatly. Elgin felt sweat trickling down his neck, he was almost out of time, and though he wasn’t personally afraid of what might happen he was desperately afraid of what might happen to others he cared for. -o- Zephyr SueAnna Michaels nee Smith-Samson, woke in darkness with a serious case of dragon mouth and a worse headache. “Oh crap I have got to knock it off with the Margaritas.” She almost whimpered, trying to lift a hand to her hot forehead. It was then that she found that she was bound to the frame of whatever it was she was lying on. Bound hand and foot, her boots were gone, the ropes were digging into the flesh of her ankles. Her jacket, belt and other gear were gone as well, but she was still in shirt and pants, not down to her panty and bra. Or less. She was lying on a bed of some kind, thin mattress over old metal sprung frame like in a dorm room. An all pervading oil and gasoline stink with an undertone of human sweat, pee, excrement and sickness, she was glad of the machine stink, it was probably helping make the other odors less noticeable. From some distance away she could hear the almost sea shore mutter of many loud human voices and the high points, sonically, of a heavy metal band. Her lethargic mind tried to piece together the shattered pieces of her memory. She had been on patrol, which had meant one domestic argument, broken up by the appearance of a green patrol car. A junior shoplifter to scare into tears then release with the nodded agreement of the store owner. Two speeders to ticket, one of them got a little something extra to pay for making a graphic but apparently serious pass at her. Then what? After a struggle it came back to her, she had done the outer loop, stopped for her break at the little deli on Lakeside drive. Then gone up to the gap and around to Northton and the loop through the immigrant mansions out that way, a ticket for an idiot running a red light and almost plowing into her. Then it had been ten, pretty much everything closed on a weekday in Beauty, Wyoming and her shift ended at ten thirty. She’d done what her trainer had usually done, slid the cruiser into one of the unlit parking spots on Fifth Street with a view of the lake and downtown and worked on her log before taking the cruiser back to the garage. She had looked up to see a gray panel truck, one she was pretty sure she recognized pull up beside the offices of the Bear’s Den Committee. Two figures had leapt down from the truck which had driven away leaving the scene apparently unchanged. Nominally she was off the clock, having filed her log for the day, but she wasn’t a clock watcher. She called Dewey that she was investigating a possible break in and put the cruiser in gear. There had been no sign of anyone about when she came up alongside the building or when she turned the cruiser and parked it in front of the Committee office. Maybe she had just seen a couple of locals being let off by a buddy after a few too many at Matilda’s. But she didn’t like the fact that the panel van had been just like the one the Claws ran. Sliding out of the cruiser she had for the first time in her short career with the Sheriffs department unlocked the riot gun from its clips. The twelve gauge with its load of buckshot was a comfort in her hands as she walked forward up to the door and looked inside. There were no obvious signs of forced entry and the door was solidly locked, there were no lights on in the front section, which was mostly a conference and meeting area, the offices were in the back. Moving calmly but quickly she had made her way along the blank brick side around to the back. There were three doors in back, one into the basement, one into the main level and a fire escape that went to the third floor with a platform and door on the second. The first floor door was still locked and firm but a cursory look told her that the basement door had been forced and pushed closed, it was ajar and there was a faint sliver of light visible, a light that was moving back and forth, the owner was still looking for something. Reporting her status to Dewey and asking for backup she carefully went down the stairs. The door swung open at the touch of her toe. Showing the basement storage room the committee had been using for their historical research and the three large fire proof storage lockers that held the majority of the important documents. A skinny man in an old Army green coat was kneeling in front working on the lock, a massive man in leathers, with a greasy ponytail and no other hair was pawing through the contents of one of the sheet metal lockers used for normal correspondence. Two shadows, two miscreants. Score. She coughed, “Gentlemen, would you be so good as to put your hands up where I can see them?” Neither of them froze or did what she had asked, instead both turned to glare at her. She stood her ground the round hole in the end of the leveled shotgun telling them that they had few options. “Little girl, you oughta just turn around and get your cute little ass outa here before someone takes your toy away and spanks you.” The big man had a lot of gold in his mouth and the rest of his teeth looked like they’d be going the same way soon. Hobo Hobson looked at her his eyes big and sad. “Put your hands up Mr. Big Greasy Ugly, and you too Hobo.” She’d seen Hobo around enough to know him, he was a local character, and maybe that made sense for an agent of the Claw. Gold teeth was grinning, “Oh you are a fun one!” He giggled, and suddenly he was smoke she could see through for an instant, and she got a sense of unfolding and solidifiying, and instead of a man she was facing something like a bear sized bipedal wolf with bright yellow eyes with horizontally slit pupils and a mouth full of teeth. Massive clawed hands rose and it screamed as it made ready to leap. The safety snapped under her thumb and then the gun lit the dimness with a tongue of yellow white fire, slamming the butt painfully against her hip. The creature took the full load in the chest and crashed back into the flimsy tin cabinet in a tangle of arms and legs, red fountaining out of the ruined ribcage. Mind wanting to scream, run and hide, but her body operating per training Zeph jacked a new round into the breach and rounded on Hobo, who was still crouched with his long fingers locked onto the old fashioned dual combination look. He swallowed, “Now honey, don’t do nothing hasty, its just me, old Hobo Hobson, you’ve known me on an off a lot of years now.” “Get up, hands where I can see them,” he complied, “Turn your back to me and interlace your fingers behind your head.” There was a scrabbling sound from the cabinet, one of the creatures hands was clawing at the floor. Blood had stooped gushing, she had assumed it was dead, but now she realized that the wound in the furry chest was mostly healed, and visibly sealing over. The thing was an honest to god werewolf! Without thinking she turned bringing the shotgun up to point between the things eyes, which opened to glare at her just as she pulled the trigger. But as she pulled the trigger, a huge hairy, clawed hand yanked the gun out off her hands as the other slapped her, sending her crashing into the cheap folding tables and chairs the researchers used. The gun crashed and there was a scream of pain and fury. The wounded were thrashed, a hand held over one side of its face, but it was up somehow and flailing with its other clawed appendage at the slighter, paler werewolf that had been Hobo Hobson. Feeling broken Zephyr knew she had no chance with these two monsters up. Her pistol was a poor second compared to the riot gun but it had lots of shots and she wasn’t going to miss at this range. The Glock’s sights centered on the bigger monster’s head and she pumped three rounds into the awkwardly shaped but disturbingly large skull. The Hobson were didn’t even hesitate as its attacker went down. It turned to leap at Zeph, who put a quartet of rounds right through its heart, and another through an eye before it had finished crashing into the tangle of distorted folding chairs. She was up and over staggering around the wreckage, the riot gun lay against the big document locker, its receiver smashed beyond redemption by the Hobson were’s inhuman strength. With a sob she ejected and pocketed the partial magazine and reloaded with a fresh one, she only had two more. Tapping the radio control and mike at her shoulder, “Control this is Micheals. ETA on backup, and tell them to come in heavy, we’ve got terrorists or something.” Her radio bleeped cheerfully at her, then tinged and a telltale went red, she’d been locked out of the net. She stared at the red dot, “Dewey, you traitorous, murderous bastard, I will shoot you myself.” She finished with a whispered, “if I survive this,” which wasn’t looking too hopeful, the bigger were was moving again. She got close and put three more rounds into its skull at close range. Whatever it used for bone was tough and thick, the bullets punched in and gore spattered but the skull remained intact and the holes began to fill in almost immediately. The Hobson Were snarled, “Naughrrty gurrl, Naughrrty, Naughrr...” She silenced it with three shots to the head, it fell back, long tongue lolling out the side of its mouth, single remaining yellow eye staring at the ceiling. Another voice growling growing louder as its owner came down the stairs, “What the fuck is going on Gung, I told you to fucking leave this place a....uh?” A shadow in the doorway, a massive figure, a face she didn’t know. She was far past rules of engagement now, she aimed for the center of mass and pulled the trigger. There was a flash that made her leap aside as the cabinet behind her exploded in fire. Zeph ran for it, trying to cover her retreat with an unaimed flurry of shots. She made it to the first floor and slammed the door, which blew apart in flaming flinders an instant later. She dropped the empty magazine, slammed another one home as she dodged behind the brick center wall. The doorframe exploded in fire and splinters as she spun out of the way, then the brick wall at her back suddenly got warm. Instead of running across the open area that had once been the sales floor she sprinted to the door that was marked ‘Restro....’ Slamming around the corner she was looking down a hallway open to the center corridor. As she took a shooting stance a figure appeared in her sights. She fired, once, twice, three times and threw herself sideways, fire belching through the doorway she had abandoned an instant before. Now she ran for the front shooting out the big plate glass window and jumping through, knowing that she was riding the edge of death. She landed on the sidewalk in a roll that would have made her parachuting instructor in the Army proud and she ran for the cruiser, keying the trunk open where there was a rifle and more ammo. Then the car blew up, throwing her back in a blast of heat and light. The next thing she remembered was a furious face, blue, blue eyes, a face scarred by too many hard years and more hard fists, and stinking breath, “Bitch., you awake bitch?” His face, his voice, there was something about them. A voice, gravelly, old, “Don’t mess her up yet Claw, it’s the Smith-Samson girl, the one I and Mitch told you about, the lawyer spy.” She was looking up into killers eyes and he smiled, “Oh, is that who this is? How convenient,” he let go of her shirt front, her head hit the pavement and the lights went out. -o- Zephyr felt sick, had she been hallucinating? Had she swallowed some kind of drug, had she gone nuts shooting, killing people, was that why she was bound up like a rabid animal? Her fathers dry sanity came to her rescue, “You’d either be in jail or hospital, not tied up in someone’s garage.” A new noise interrupted her painful analysis of her situation. An engine approaching, a motorcycle she was pretty sure, not one of the Claws’ choppers though. The engine stopped and nothing for a few moments, then a voice calling out, harsh and trying to be amused, another voice replied, the second one softer and relaxed. She couldn’t make out what was being said, it wasn’t a long conversation. Then the voices faded and were adsorbed by the party noises. A few moments later she heard a scratching and bumping nearby. Then a skitter of little clawed feet. Mice, or more likely rats or the like, she felt even worse, began to shake. She hated bugs, especially in the dark and she was blind, or as good as. Her subconscious knew that she was surrounded by cobwebs and big spiders, and cockroaches were probably crawling around, along with flees and bedbugs. But then again, those things were understood fears, almost homey besides the otherworldly monsters she had shot again and again but that had still kept on getting up, and the man who had thrown bolts of flaming explosive like he was some kind of human raygun. There was a batting sound, a scrape and thud, then silence, though she had the sense of something big outside, trying to get in. She had to start working on a plan to escape before they got back around to her or something wild came in to snack on her. Then she felt a breeze heard the faintest whisper of sound, something nearby. She whimpered as something a little damp and a little furry pressed against her leg bindings. An instant later the same sensation against her wrist. She felt the tickle of whiskers, some kind of dog had gotten in, dog or wolf. Then she felt-heard it shift and an instant later she ‘oohffed’ as a considerable weight settled on her belly and chest, something big, soft, almost boneless and very warm. The sensation at her other wrist, the beasts nose. She realized that she was making whimpering noises now. And then something firm, warm and furry pressed against her cheek and her whole body vibrated with an almost subsonic purr. Now she whimpered in relief, a cat, a big fricking cat! But this cat was huge, was it a mountain lion, a lynx or something, and she’d heard that hungry housecats sometimes ate their dead owners if not fed. “Uh, nice kitty?” The rumbling purr felt like it was going to rupture her spleen or something. The cat caressed her cheek again, then pressed against her chin, as if to say, ‘shut up,’ before shifting, leaning down. She felt the hard dampness of teeth against her wrist and had to struggle mightily to keep from screaming. There was a tensing of powerful jaw muscles, and the binding on her wrist let go. An instant later the cat was on the floor and she felt its teeth closing on the other binding, and again the powerful surge and the teeth sheered through the second binding. “Oh my god ,” Zephyr whispered as she jackknifed up, then lay back as her world spun, and her hands began to throb with renewed circulation. A few moments later, as she lay there almost helpless her feet were freed. Then the cats fore paws were on the frame and its sandpaper tongue scratched her cheek, the soft “Yorrowp,” was the first vocalization it had made. “Okay, okay, I know I need to get up. Is there something in here I can use to bash in the head of the first werewolf who comes in?” She slowly rolled to a sitting position, then the cat grabbed her hand gently, in its teeth and pulled. She moaned, “Okay, okay I’m coming.” It turned, and suddenly an incredibly silky soft tail wrapped around her hand and pulled. This time she came to her feet. There was a sliver of a different darkness ahead, and the faintest breath of fresh air. The cat nosed the darkness and it spread, showing itself to be a door to the outside. Stunned beyond words, hand in tail she was lead away from the sound and light. -o- Elgin knew it was time to leave, his uncle had offered him a beer, and Elgin had accepted, the huge man had shambled down off his throne surrogate and opened a fridge to pull out two Dos Equis which they had drunk in silence, watching each other across the table. Now his bottle was empty. He put it down near the center of the table. “Can I assume your answer is no uncle?” The other man sneered, “Why did you come punk?” “Because I had to try.” Eugene slammed his bottle down, “What you try is my patience.” He stood. Movie star clapped his hands, “Valery, Malc, you can teach a the whelp a lesson, then trash his candy ass ‘cycle and haul both pieces of trash to the town line.” They all turned to sneer at Elgin. But he was gone. Everyone scanned around, convinced he had to be in the room. Then the Norton crackled to life and snarled away. Only the two assassins made it around the corner quickly enough to see the taillights vanish around the first turn. Then they were brushed aside by six huge loping werewolves, the Claw was last to the corner, “Don’t kill him, just hurt him real bad,” he screamed after his furry minions. Elgin wasn’t sure why he wasn’t surprised to see his cat sitting calmly by the side of the track with a very mussed but apparently whole Zephyr Michaels. He brought the bike to a skidding stop. “Get on, the wolves are on my ass.” Looking back his enhanced sight could make them out coming around the corner on all fours, running like cheetahs. Humph was on the tank in front of him and Zephyr was hugged tight against his back, the bike’s rear tire bit the tarmac and hurled them forward with a rising scream. Cycling through the gears he was at an insane speed when he saw the closed gate, and the slavering monster that was Chunkers. He braked hard and was moving at little more than a running pace when the world flickered from darkness to a dim orange twilight. The road was a potholed track, the trees were almost abstracts, with an impression of leaves and needles, the wall was a tumbledown wooden split rail fence and the gate a rotting line of mulch on the ground. They crossed with a thump and he accelerated to a near crazy twenty miles an hour. He didn’t return to the Anchor realm till he was ready to turn onto the main road. With a pulse of brilliant light and thump of air a semi rushed past almost as soon as the world dimmed from faint orange to black. “He’s doing at least thirty over the speed limit, where’s my ticket pad when I need it?” Zeph almost giggled into his shoulder. “Hold on he’s not the only one who’s going to be speeding, I think I hear chopper town starting up.” Elgin let the clutch in and fed in the gas, the big Norton roared up onto the road and accelerated. He was extremely aware of her warmth pressed against his back, her cheek on his shoulder, her breasts warm patches he had a hard time not thinking about. He was doing a hundred at the Beauty city line, but was down to a sedate thirty five as they whirled through the center of town. Then they were on the incline down to the sheriff’s department, an island of light and bustling activity at four thirty in the morning. <<>> Chapter 11 Creepy Crawlies of all sorts and our hero finds that dreams are just that, even for heroes Elgin sat with Humph sprawled over his lap blissfully asleep making sleeping cat noises, Elgin’s hand caressed the silky smooth fur over the cats shoulder as he stared up at the dark blue of the pre dawn sky. The officials had almost mobbed his bike when he brought it to a stop with Zephyr Michaels asleep on his shoulder. They’d carried the unconscious deputy away and he hadn’t seen her since. He’d then been ‘interviewed’ by agents of the nation, state, and county, one by one, each asking pretty much the same questions, which may have been cross checking, but he suspected was simply bureaucracy at work. He’d told them that he’d found her on the lane coming out of the Claws lodge, he’d explained he’d gone to talk to his uncle about the occurrences of the night. The fact that he was a relative of Eugene Walker AKA Claw, apparently put him on the State Troopers’ and feds’ suspect list, but Caitlin had obviously known. Elgin had half expected the Claws to arrive a few minutes after he did and a full scale battle to ensue, but nothing of the sort happened. The night had remained quiet except for the island of light and bustle around the sheriff’s building. As the first blue had appeared in the east a whole convoy of vehicles had formed up and driven off, leaving the parking lot almost empty except for a few deputies. One of the deputies was the lanky gum chewer he’d met a few times. The sandy haired man had a bad case of freckles which seemed extremely prominent today and his pale green eyes red rimmed. He, like the other deputies, had a riot gun slung over his shoulder, the strap stuffed with extra rounds for the weapon. There was something about the man that made Elgin uncomfortable, unlike the others, this one kept glancing at Elgin, and almost as frequently he glanced at the wing of the office building with the red cross on the door, where Zeph was hopefully resting peacefully. After a while Humph woke up and rolled off Elgin’s lap, his eyes wide and dark, ears and nose twitching. The big cat was hungry and smelt something he considered edible nearby. Hopefully it wasn’t somebody’s Chihuahua or prized Cockatoo. Elgin took the opportunity to lie down on the bench and close his eyes. Jake Dewey was almost beside himself by the time the cowboy decided to take a nap. He had almost bolted when he saw Michaels on the back of the redneck’s bike. He’d held on while doing his best to stay in the shadows, as far as he could tell the girl was still unconscious and no one had spotted anything wrong with the comm records from last evening. Dewey was pretty good at cracking systems so he was pretty sure it would take a very thorough check of the system to find what he had hidden, but the feds, if not the state criminal investigation unit, had the firepower to do the job if they decided to look Dewey had been the Wiggins ‘inside man’ for several years now, they’d hired him to come and take the job of a Deputy here in Beauty, and he’d been drawing double pay ever since, a sweet deal. Especially since he’d been able to make some nice scores of his own off data he trolled out of the county system. In Beauty the sheriff was not only the chief law enforcement officer but also the highest elected official in the county, essentially the chief executive. She ran the court, the office of deeds and chaired the county council which dealt with infrastructure etc. With a finger in every pie the sheriff had access to all the county IT systems, such as they were, and what the sheriff had access to, Jake Dewey had access to. All of this was threatening to fall in on his head because of the fucking bikers and their fucking peninsula. He understood the lodge was a near perfect base of operations, giving them access by land, water and even air. But it was only a piece of land and it would have only been a short term setback if they had just let go. Jake Dewey could have stayed as agent in place for them and the Wiggins and they would have owned the whole damned county in another few years, including the damned luxury resort the Tribe wanted to build in the Den. Earlier, just after the cowboy arrived, he’d called the Wiggins, told them what was going on, that he was getting ready to bug out. The Wiggins had told him to hold on, and that they’d be back in touch. He was a criminal but he had his ethics so he’d waited. Now it was getting late and he was almost beyond waiting. Then he saw a familiar figure strolling towards him, Sally Wiggins was supposedly ‘the good girl,’ in the Wiggins clan, and supposedly Jake’s girlfriend. She was a good looking girl, ex cheerleader, ex captain of the high school debating society, a friend to all, etc, etc. But Jake had found that she was as cold as her brothers and much less obviously devious, he was sure that in the long run it would be Sally who ran the Wiggins empire. She smiled sweetly, “Hey Jake, glad to see you up and around, all sorts of rumors flyin round town.” Grabbing his arm she rubbed herself against him and gave him a peck on the cheek, all very Norman Rockwell. He felt a package being pushed into his hand. She rubbed her breasts against his arm again and stepped back, giving him an under the eyelashes look, pitching her voice to be heard by others, “You goin to be UP, to telling me what its all about later?” The smile was sweet, the eyes cold and she finished quietly, “Drop the package in the girls room and leave, and keep your cool you moron, we have this.” Another sweet smile, “I gotta go, morning shift at the Buffalo Cafe.” She blew him a kiss as she walked away. Dewey stared after her until she was out of sight. He really wanted her body, badly, but he was frightened spit-less by the mind behind the sweet oval face and soft brown eyes. In his funk of confusion and sleep deprivation he almost forgot and dropped the package she had pressed into his hand. Jerking back to now when it started to slip, he almost cried out, then tried to make the jerk into a stretch and yawn, ending with him sliding what felt like a paper wrapped marble into his pocket. The cowboy was asleep, Dewey walked around the perimeter of the sheriff’s compound, told one of the others he needed to pee and went indoors through a door that led into the changing rooms. He did his business and was getting ready to do what he’d been told to do when curiosity finally burrowed through worry and fatigue. What felt like a candy looked like one at first glance, white wax paper over something hard and round, about the size of one of the GobStopper chewing gums he’d gotten for a dime out of the machine when he was a kid. He untwisted the paper, and nearly dropped the thing, it was no unlikely bright fruit color, instead it was a reddish brown and segmented, like a huge pill bug. As light and fresh air touched it, antenna’s unfurled and started to wave. With a squeak Jake re-wrapped the little horror, now utterly sure he didn’t want anything more to do with Sally Wiggins than he had to. Still shaking a little he moved to the end of the changing room and looked out, the bland tan painted hallway was empty and he heard nothing. He exited and walked towards the dispensary. Another turn and he was walking towards the cluster of doors that represented the sheriff department’s health and human services. The end left door was the two bed ward. Between him and the door the cowboys overgrown housecat sat as still as a statue, its tail curled around so the red brown tip tapping the floor almost like a man tapping his finger in impatience. Two huge blue eyes seemed to stare right through him. Dewey put the ‘package’ in his pocket and pulled the Tazer from its holster. It was a contact weapon, not one of the fancy dart throwing jobs but for a cat, even a huge cat, it should do the job. He walked forward, the cat showed its teeth in silence, something that seemed very uncatlike. And the teeth were fearsome, he’d forgotten that a cats main weapon was its mouth. There was a rumble in the hallway, Dewey realized that the cat was growling, but the growl was so deep and so powerful it sounded like a big diesel idling nearby. Now the cat came to its feet, its tail lashing. Jake knew that he couldn’t shoot the cat, and now the Tazer seemed like far too flimsy a defense. What to do, then he realized the door to the room with the girl in it was open, all he had to do was toss the package in. He held up his hands, started backing up, “Wooow, guard kitty, wooow, I’m going, its just Jake, old uncle Jake leaving.” He said in a singsong, sliding the Tazer away as he backed up slowly, the cat sat back down but the tail was still lashing, the body tense and the huge eyes narrowed and watchful. The package almost made him scream, it was squirming now, he pulled it out, and he focused, he’d been a very good pitcher in high school and a better rock thrower in a series of anarchist riots during the years his parents thought he was at college. He focused, wound up and threw, he hardly saw the cat uncurl, reach up and bat the white ball back at him. Instinct made Jake duck and it cracked against the closet doorframe a few feet behind him. He had the shotgun in his hand and had racked a round before he remembered he couldn’t shoot the cat. There was a hissing sound behind him, the whatever it was had unwrapped to a multi legged, armored millipede with massive pinchers on the front. Antenna waving it advanced on him, accelerating at a ridiculous rate. The shotgun roared and kicked like a mule, tearing itself out of his hands. Staggering back, fumbling for the weapon, he saw a red and green smear on the floor around where the horror had been an instant before, the linoleum, wall, door and frame were all chewed by the avalanche of pellets but the little horror was gone. “What the hell!” Dewey spun. Zeph Michaels stood in the door of the ward staring at him, the cat was crouched ready to charge. It was all far to much for Jake Dewey, he had the riot gun back in his hand, he brought it up, around, racking it as he did, and the weapon roared again, blowing a huge chunk out of the doorframe and the closing door. The cat was airborne and hit him with five weapons simultaneously, Dewey screamed as he fell back under the massive animal’s attack, with the riot gun held like a baton he slammed the animal in the gut then levered it off. With a wild cat scream it twisted off him and leapt away, Jake racked another round and fired. But the cat was gone. All logic and control gone, he rolled back and charged for the ward door. From the short hall to the outside he heard the door crash open, heard, “Dewey?” Dewey twisted and fired, sending the other deputy crashing back through the door, blocking the advance of two others. His boot hit the lock of the ward door and it splintered inwards. Cool morning wind blew in through a window that gaped wide. He charged for the window, saw a fleeting figure, fired, racked, fired, and then started to climb through the window. A powerful hand grabbed him by the shirt front and pulled. Jake’s face met an iron hard fist coming the other way and the world went black. -o- Zeph woke up warm and floating in softness, behind her eyelids she could see light and she could hear music and voices nearby but not too nearby. She could smell horses and dust and cows, then heard the clop of hooves and the whinny of a horse. The basso rumble of the natural gas powered forklift used for moving feed bales. The sounds of the ranch, so normal so natural. She tried to move and some of the goodness and light fled as every muscle and joint she tried to flex cried out. Relaxing, she tried to regain that sense of floating peacefulness and almost succeeded, almost. But in her minds eye memories replayed like a movie, a man turning to smoke and then a nightmare creature. The look of utter horror on Jake Dewey’s face as he looked at something on the floor he’d just blown to scraps, then the glittering hate as he brought the riot gun around to point at her. Jumping, falling out that window in nothing more than a damned hospital gown, the rocky soil tearing at her feet as she ran, the flash boom of Dewey shooting at her naked butt running for the trees. “No, steady girl, steady,” She whispered to herself, then remembered the old de-stressing mantra she’d been taught, “Be. Here. Now.” Trying to push thought and image aside, “Be. Here. Now.” And she focused her thoughts on her body, on her smallest toe first then piece by piece the rest. At the end she was almost relaxed, but now her body was beginning to make demands. Opening her eyes she let the familiarity of her bedroom absorb some of her attention. There was a knock on the door, “Miss Zeph, you awake?” very softly. “Yes Hong.” The little Taiwanese valet poked his head around the door, “You want something to drink, a tea maybe, a couple of biscuits?” “I feel like I could down a gallon of Gatorade and couple of pots of horse meat gumbo Hong, but tea and biscuits sounds like a good start.” She tried to smile. He bobbed his head, “Dinner in an hour?” “Sounds divine, can I get a shower while you make the tea?” Hong bobbed again, “Certainly Miss Zeph.” He turned to go. Zeph frowned realizing something, “Hong, what are you doing here?” The Valet usually either stayed with the big apartment in Manhattan or took the chance to visit relatives on Taipei during ‘Ranch Season,’ “Mr. Smith sent for me a few days ago Miss Zeph, Mrs. Smith is feeling poorly and Mr. Smith wanted her to rest.” He smiled slightly, bowed and left. Zeph groaned, one more thing to worry about, mother never got sick, or at least never admitted to it. Getting to the shower was something of an ordeal, but the shower itself was a relaxing delight. She sat down on the seat in the shower and peeled off the outer dressings on the various cuts and abrasions. Any of the deeper wounds had been bio glued and clear sealed, the worst abrasions just bio coated and clear sealed, wonders of modern medicine. Out of the shower she took a couple of pain tabs and put protective outer bandages on the few spots that needed additional buffering. Underwear, silk shirt, jeans, flats and she was ready for, something. Hong had the tea setup in the tiny hallway nook outside her room with its view of the mountains out the big bow window that filled the hallway with light. She sat down and poured herself a cup of tea like a civilized human being, the aches more easily ignored. The tea was strong and hot and with just the right amount of sugar and milk it was a heavenly buffer against the darkness she had lived through. “How’re you doing Wind,” Her father asked as he came from the great room and offices. “Well, thank you Dad,” She shot him a look, “What’s wrong with Mother?” He shrugged, smiled, “No one thing, age, trying to act like she was still thirty two not sixty two, running her little business, going to this that and the other party. She ended up with walking pneumonia and I called in Hong.” So, nothing profound, just the natural sadness of the human condition. Zeph nodded and took another sip of tea, waved at the second chair, “Have a seat, have some tea?” He took the seat waved the tea aside, he was looking serious, “The sheriff called to ask how you were doing.” Zeph looked at her nano’s clock face, “I’ll check in after dinner.” She blinked, realizing that it was Saturday not Friday like she had thought. “Uh, I guess I lost a day.” He looked a little concerned, “The doctor was in a couple of times yesterday and this morning, you don’t remember talking to him, or to the sheriff?” She frowned, realized she did remember, hazily, fatigue, pain and pain medication had made the experiences surreal, dreamlike. “Ugh, I guess I do, just didn’t want to.” “Oh, well I suppose that’s natural enough.” He looked away, then up, “Look I know you thought this undercover job was a bit of a lark, a change after the Derrick fiasco, but I never liked it and now I want you to put it behind you. Your mother was in hysterics when the sheriff told us you were missing, and again when they brought you home, telling us some lunatic had tried to kill you at the sheriff’s office.” He swallowed, “You’re a lawyer Zeph, a good one, at a good firm, this is not the way a good lawyer gets ahead. The National Guard thing was bad enough but I could understand that if you ever want to get into politics. But we hire private investigators for this sort of horse shit.” It was a sign of how upset he was that he used that crude term. Zeph closed her eyes, “Okay dad.” He was silent, “Okay?” “Dad I was getting bored before this last blow up, I just wanted to see if the feds could actually nail the Claws once and for all.” She leaned back, tried to look relaxed as she slid her hands into her lap so he couldn’t see that her hands were shaking. “Oh.” He seemed shrink a little as the relief flooded his face. They sat in silent companionship soaking the warm sun in. “Did the Sheriff just want me to call?” she asked at last, nibbling on one of the biscuits Hong had left for her. “Uh! Oh no, she wanted to see how you were doing, nothing else, said you could call on Monday if you want.” Zeph nodded smiled. Then Hong appeared, “Dinner is served, sir, miss.” -o- Elgin stood up as the door of the holding cell opened and the sheriff stepped in. Standing facing each other neither of them let their faces reflect their true feelings. Which in Elgin’s case was irritation and sympathy, and in the sheriff’s case was irritation, confusion and a desire, utterly illogical as far as she could tell, to ask Elgin what the hell was going on. “You’ve not called for a lawyer Mr. Chalmers.” “I’m not going to ask for one until I know what the problem is Caitlin. The Deputy who insisted that I come down here mentioned manslaughter or second degree murder, but wouldn’t say of whom. Have to guess it’s the man I knocked out.” She rubbed her eyes, “Dewey died this morning, the doctor is still trying to figure out of what.” “I’d guess he never explained why he cut Deputy Michaels off or tried to kill her later.” “He told us to get stuffed and to call his lawyer, a high power, expensive shyster from Salt Lake City.” “Uhm.” “Indeed, I think this explains some things that have been puzzling me lately. The Wiggins and their cronies have been making some very smart land deals and winning some contracts I’d have sworn should have gone to other contractors. Because I have a finger in so many pies, someone in my office has a lot of access, Dewey was a godsend when he turned up. Turns out he was too good to be true.” “I saw him talking to Sally Wiggins, a little while before the incident, she made it pretty evident they were intimate.” The sheriff snorted, “‘Sweet Sally?’ she’s kept her nose clean but I wouldn’t trust her as far as I could shot-put her sweet little ass. Her grandmother was a real beauty but was convicted of poisoning five men and hung back in the fifties.” “I can’t imagine Dewey went in intending to kill Zephyr with his shotgun. But you didn’t find anything like a syringe or some other way of delivering poison.” Elgin was frowning. “No, but there are some real strange bits to the crime scene.” Elgin lifted an eyebrow in polite enquiry, and she continued, “His first shot appears to have been at the floor next to a closet, and the forensics team says there’s bits from some kind of big bug. And Zeph says he looked completely freaked out by something the first time she saw him, after that first shot.” “Did anyone visit Dewey in the jail infirmary?” “He shouldn’t have had any visitors,” She snapped, but her expression was grim as she pulled out her cell phone. She stabbed at it like she wanted to drive her finger through the screen, “Yeah, its Caitlin, did anyone visit Dewey last night, I know it’s against policy, but I know the drill?” Her face went a bit gray and her eyes narrowed but all she said was, “Thanks.” She slipped the phone away, and looked at Elgin, “Sally talked her way in, it was Dewey who called the nurse to have the girl shown out. He was visibly distraught for several minutes after the visit.” “Then he died.” “A couple of hours later, but yes.” The sheriff waved Elgin forward, “Come on, I’ll get you a ride back to the ranch.” -o- It was after seven when Zephyr sat down in the big old wingback in her room and put her feet up on the ottoman. She tapped the face of her watch, “ZeeZee, call Caitlin.” “The sheriff left a message for you to call her at the office Zeph,” the phone replied. “Put me through ZeeZee.” “That you Zeph?” The sheriff’s voice was gruff. “Yes Caitlin, you called?” “Was getting a bit worried girlfriend, doc said you were still out of it this morning.” “Just needed sleep, lots of sleep apparently, I’m still aching but things seem to be on the mend. But I’ve been out of it for two days. I wasn’t going to upset Dad by grilling him about what’s been going on. So? What’s been happening?” Zeph could almost feel Caitlin rubbing her eyes, “Yeah, two days, two nights, you’ve been sleeping, while I’ve been mostly awake.” “Sorry,” Zeph said with true contrition. “Not your fault kid.” A pause, “Well, to the good, the Evil Eagle Claw Motorcycle Club is gone. We took Chalmers testimony to the judge and he gave us a search warrant. By the time we arrived, they were gone, a couple of the buildings were on fire; we can tell they destroyed a lot of evidence but that’s about it. They didn’t have enough time to do a clean sweep, so the feds got some juicy stuff, but its all just part of a bigger puzzle, I doubt it’ll be enough to nail anyone.” “What about the Den, they were breaking into the lock boxes when I turned up, did they get a chance to finish the job?” “One of the boxes was opened, we can’t tell what they took or what got burnt up, but none of it was important, the other two were complete and of course the most important pieces aren’t there anyway. The Claws abandonment means we can move more quickly than planned. One of the things I wanted to ask about was how quickly you would be ready to head back east and go back to lawyering.” Everyone wanted her to go back to her real job, she felt a flicker of stubborn pride, she thought she’d done pretty well overall. And the sheriff seemed to be avoiding some topics. “Uh Caitlin, what about RonJon, I heard Dewey shot him?” “Grumpy, but recovering, thanks to his flack vest.” “What about Dewey, last I remember he was being hauled off in a gurney.” A long silence. “Caitlin?” “He died yesterday morning Zeph, I was thinking I was going to have to arrest Elgin for manslaughter. Then the we found out that he’d been killed by some kind of neurotoxin - something bit him.” Zeph remembered her view of Dewey in the hallway after the blast of his riot gun had catapulted her out of bed. “There was something in the hallway that freaked him out; I think it’s what gave him away.” “Traces of the toxin have been found there, along with what appear to be parts of a large millipede like bug.” “Ugh.” Zeph shivered, “I guess that was supposed to be my fate then.” “Yeah, the bastard got a taste of his own poison.” The sheriff replied, her own voice a little shaky. There was a long silence, then “Zeph, what the hell happened in that building. The state fire inspector and FBI forensics team say someone blew it apart from the inside with a grenade launcher and flame thrower. Zeph wanted to say something, found tears trickling down her cheeks but could not find the words for the bizarreness that had wrapped itself around her two nights before. The sheriff spoke again, “Zeph, please, we’re friends as well as allies. We need each other and we need to know who else to trust.” That broke the logjam in her head, “Caitlin, you told me about a friend of yours a witch doctor type who said there was something evil in town?” “Griffith TwoShoes, Elgin Chalmers boss?” “Yeah, we need to talk to him and to Elgin and I think Kitty Pauls, I think they all know more than they are saying.” The sheriff didn’t hesitate, “Okay, look Zeph, right now I don’t trust my office, or equipment completely, can we meet up at you pa’s place? This evening.” “Say eight thirty?” “Done.” -o- Elgin was packing up the camper getting ready to move, when the owner’s daughter knocked on the door of the Airstream. “Mr. Chalmers.” He thumped his head as he pulled back out of the storage cupboard. So he was rubbing the back of his head when he stepped into the kitchen and could look out to see Zeph being greeted with some enthusiasm by Humph. She was smiling, stroking him as he wound around her legs, as big as he was she had to brace herself to keep from getting knocked down and this made her giggle. It only emphasized how pretty she was, how striking in an understated way. “Miss Zephyr.” She was in ranch casual, jeans, open neck shirt, simple slip on shoes instead of boots. She’d obviously just walked over from the main building. He’d have called her Deputy Michaels if she’d been in uniform. She looked up the smile on her lips and in her eyes still bright, filling his rather gray day with a sparkle he needed. “Hello Mr. Chalmers,” she waved at the parts of the veranda in the back of the Chevy which was pulled up near the hitch. “What’s going on?” He shrugged, “The Boss let me go, never did like the part time deal. Then the sheriff hauled me in on suspicion of manslaughter and he had to send some out to the high range, he figures I’m not worth the trouble.” Elgin wasn’t happy but he wasn’t upset about it. “That’s not fair, he’s got no right, you need to talk to dad!” she looked angry. Elgin shrugged, “You’re a lawyer Miss Zephyr, the employment contract is clear cut about missing a shift for any reason other than sickness or injury. He’s the Boss and he’s got the right to run his crew the way he wants to.” She didn’t protest that, instead she frowned up at him, “You don’t seem upset by this.” “All that would do would satisfy Mitch some and waste energy, there are other spreads I can go talk to. I’d like to stay close by but in the end I’ll go where I’m needed.” If things unfolded as he expected he’d have to spend most of his time other places in the coming years. Cutter-Iffrit had never had a settled home. “What about the garage, can’t you do that full time?” She seemed more upset about this than he was, which gave him a warm feeling. He waved at the horizon, “Probably, but I need to be out and about under the sky, I’ll certainly talk to TwoShoes about the garage.” She shook her head, with a cross expression, “Oh, I got distracted, actually you’ll be able to talk to him in a half hour or so, he’s coming up with the sheriff to talk about the last few days.” “Okay,” He felt a twinge of concern from his interior compatriots. He frowned at the sudden urge to unfold and make an aerial reconnaissance. He found his eyes locked on the old bunk house and realized that there was nothing to stop Mitch from having bugged the Smith-Samson ranch. “What’s the matter Elgin.” He blinked, looked down at her, grimaced, “Mitch has connections to the Claws, and it’s likely that he’s been using the ranch for something to do with them. The sheriff can’t do anything about him because she has nothing but suspicion and your father is feared as a lawyer as well as liked and respected as a local resident.” She made a little oh, “Why didn’t she talk to me?” Elgin shrugged, “Probably because our sheriff tends to focus on one thing at a time. She may have hoped solving the problem with the Claw would sweep him up as well.” “Dad thinks the tribe’s been sold a bill of goods by the developers who are pushing the Den resort and that while the Claws are criminals it’s the town and tribe that are causing the trouble.” “Needless to say he wasn’t happy about your latest career choice?” “Uh, no,.” and she glanced down, scuffed her foot, then looked at him, “But not because of the career piece. I’m not a deputy. Well I am on the books and drawing salary, but it’s a special deal with the Sheriff, I’m on sabbatical from Petters, Petters, Faulken and Christchurch, the law firm that the tribe hired to get the title to the den cleared.” “Ah,” Elgin sighed inside but went on, “I see. That was why Dewey was after you. Was it you who found the piece of the puzzle that knocked their claim into the ditch?” She nodded her head, “This area was under federal control before it was returned to the Indian tribes. The feds deeded several pieces out before the tribal area was declared. The feds grandfathered the deeds, let the living tenant live out their life but at death the land reverted to the tribe. All of the parcels except the ones dealing with the den. There are records of records that the feds did the same thing but the family who owned those parcels were all ex confederate supporters and hated the fed, and the Indians for that matter. They apparently succeeded in finding and destroying the documents. Leaving them holding the land under the original federal parcel deeds.” “Okay,” Elgin nodded, “So what did you do, go back in time and rescue them?” She smiled, “I suppose in a sense. Even in those days they had copies and back copies, and while the private investigator the Walkers hired did a good job, they did not do an outstanding job. I found the copies in the Library of Congress, uncatalogued except for a date and a bureau number.” Elgin blinked, “The Walkers?” She nodded, “The family who owned the Den and the land behind it. The head was a Confederate General who moved out here after the war to start fresh. He’d come from plantation money and the family was ruined by the war and reconstruction.” “Did Eugene inherit the property?” She blinked, smiled faintly, “Eugene Walker you mean,” at his nod she shrugged, “He and his brother Victor Walker were disinherited by their mother, who had inherited the deed. She sent a letter to the tribe telling them that they would receive the deeds to the property when she died. There was a will, but it vanished from her lawyer’s safety deposit box. He had accessed the box a few days before his death. That was when the tribe hired Petters.” Elgin wondered if he should point out that he was a Walker by blood if not by name. That Eugene was his uncle. But at that moment the sheriffs brown SUV came into sight. <<>> Chapter 12 In which a evil man departs in a smoking arc When Xander Smith-Samson found out that his daughter had some important guests he couldn’t be stopped from inviting them into the main part of the house. Elgin faded into the background before they had gone through the front door. He stood on the gravel turnaround in front of the ranch house and the old bunk house and thought. “Mrow?” Humph enquired as he sat down, the tip of his tail over his head, rocking back and forth restlessly. Elgin reached down to stroke his friends head. The door of the bunkhouse opened, after a pause Mitch’s live in girlfriend appeared, dressed for biking, carrying a backpack, she looked around, seeing nothing she relaxed slightly and headed for the side where she kept her ruby red Kawasaki. The simple, quiet, “Hey Betty,” almost made Betty Jones scream. She spun to find Elgin a few feet away his dusty old tan Stetson in place, one boot braced on the boardwalk that ran the width of the old bunkhouse. He couldn’t have snuck up on her, but he hadn’t been there a moment before? “Uh, hi Elgin,” She knew her voice was shaky and her smile false, she was also shaking, “You, uh, startled me, I, uh was heading for town, to uh take in a movie.” “Where’s Mitch?” “Uh? Mitch...he’s...out somewhere.” She waved towards the paddocks, away from where he was, at the ‘factory’ trying to get the last batch cooked up before all hell broke loose. Betty was bugging out now, not in a little while. The Claw wasn’t known for discrimination. Legend had it that he’d spent time south of the border in one of the drug cartels, rising to the level of major enforcer before being caught up in a gang war that had left his organization too crippled to protect itself from the Federales. He’d gone underground for years before reappearing in Beauty at the head of the biker gang. When Mitch had called the Claw to tell him that the main authors of his setback would be here the Claw had told Mitch to get any product he had finished packed up and out of there and had hung up. The silence had stretched uncomfortably long and she was afraid she could hear something approaching. “Uh Elgin, I’ve gotta go.” “I hear them too Betty, how many?” She shook her head, “I don’t know.” “They’re coming overland, if you take the main road you’ll be clear. Don’t come back.” She felt a rising horror, there was something elemental, implacable about Elgin, nothing left of the easy going ne’er do well she’d made the center piece of many daydreams. The black clad figure crouched low over the red rocket vanished into the dying daylight leaving a trail of dust and bouncing stones. “Hey Elgin!” It was Zeph, “Who was that.” “Betty, getting the hell out of Dodge City, the Claw’s coming and I doubt it’s for a cup of tea. Tell the Sheriff, clean out her truck, get indoors, if any of those guns in the great room are workable and have ammo get them out.” She froze, “Elgin, its no use, they’re werewolves, you can’t kill them.” “Separate the brain from the lower gut and the wolf will die, blow the head completely apart or chop it off, blow it in half with a grenade. They and the human die then. Move Zeph.” He ran for the trailer park, but as he’d hoped it was empty, those not up on the high pasture were in town. That left Mitch, who knew the ranch too well for Elgin’s comfort. “Elgin!” It was the sheriff, she had body armor thrown over her shoulder, two M14 carbines in her arms and boxes of ammo, she jerked her head at the back of the van, “A riot gun and ammo in there, I assume you can use it?” Nodding Elgin trotted over, “Thanks. You call in?” “We’re jammed and cut off.” “Okay, I’m going to round up Mitch, I don’t want him outside with us inside.” “Wait.” “I know the ranch, I’ll be quick, get everyone inside and get them behind something solid. And listen to Zeph, she fought the Claws before.” He took off at a trot, heading for the ‘processing’ building. The ranch had once had its own butchering operation, which had been converted to house a composting system that provided methane gas for heat and power to the ranch. The building was a partial dugout behind a ripple in the ground that hid it completely from the ranch. There were four doors two big ones, one for bringing in the cow manure and other material at the start and another for the sludge truck that sucked out the essentially sterile output. There was an access door into the ‘engineering spaces,’ and finally a plain unmarked door at the other end. In front of that door one of the ranch trucks was parked, its engine running. Elgin turned the truck off and pocketed the keys. Turning he walked at the door, just before touching it he ‘turned’ slightly and the world was faintly orange, the structure was only an impression the door a haze he stepped through before turning back into the anchor realm. It was faintly red inside, and the air stank of methane and other compost gasses, but with a hint of other chemicals. There were several large suitcases by the door, one open and half full of packages. Ahead a crude light baffle had been formed from stacked cardboard boxes with the names of various chemical companies on them. “Huh, not particularly discrete Mitch,” Elgin muttered to himself. He had slung the gun over his shoulder, he hadn’t wanted to tell the sheriff that he didn’t like guns and while he’d fired just about every type his father could beg borrow or steal at one time or another he hadn’t touched one since his father had died twelve years before. Soft footed Elgin passed around the light baffle, on the other side there was a long bench with a confusing jumble of gear, mostly reminiscent of a mad scientists lab that had been jumbled up with an upper crust cooking store. There was a big open vat with a vent hood at the far end of the room, Mitch was crouched over the furthest end with a gas mask on. Elgin unslung the riot gun, figuring it would make more of an impression in his hands than on his shoulder. Mitch was utterly oblivious in the view restricting mask, as he did obscure things to something in the vat. “Mitch, times up.” Elgin called out. The big man jerked to look at Elgin, looking like some alien or bad science fiction super soldier. He dropped something, ducked and scrabbled for it, the vat buffed a cloud of foul looking smoke, most of which got sucked into the vent, but enough reached Elgin to make him gag and his head spin. He backed up, his hand gripping the riot gun, not totally sure that the drop had been an accident. He couldn’t see the big man through the column of smoke going up the flue now. Elgin held his breath, backed towards the cardboard boxes, Mitch stepped out from around the column of smoke, a stubby black shape in his hand, he was looking down, expecting Elgin to be down. He recovered quickly, the machinegun stuttered and he leapt behind the smoke again. Elgin felt a tug at his shirt but the burst missed. Now he worked the slide on the riot gun, “Mitch don’t make this worse than it already is.” The response to which was a sustained burst of gunfire at waist level pivoting from one side of the long narrow room to the other, fancy pots, pans, glass retorts and tubes danced and exploded and the stink of chemicals got infinitely worse. Elgin had dodged behind the concrete based heavy wooden support column which adsorbed the pistol caliber rounds with ease. He brought the riot gun around and fired, There was a muffled scream from the wounded man. “Mitch this is not going to end well for you.” Fire was already running along the workbench and he knew he was out of time. “Damn it Mitch, I’m getting out, run for it!” A wild burst of gunfire pursued Elgin as he ducked through the piles of cardboard, and then out into the darkness and fresh air. He was still running hard when he was lifted off his feet by a massive explosion, followed a few seconds later by a second, even larger one, as the methane storage tanks blew. A string of follow up crumps hammered the air as other things exploded one after the other. Half stunned, lying on his back Elgin saw the fireballs open the metal sheathed post and beam building up like a toy, and various bits of burning debris arching this way and that. One particularly big object pin-wheeled as it arced through the sky leaving a trail of fire and sparks, finally falling behind the rise, somewhere near the Ranch house. On his feet again Elgin ran for the Ranch house, he was going up the rise when two lupine shapes appeared, yellow eyes blazing, fanged mouths gaping, the first took a full load of buckshot in the mouth , blowing the lower back of the skull apart, separating it from the rest of the body. As the wolf collapsed into a flailing doll it dissolved in a bright flash of orange leaving the nearly headless body of a heavily tattooed man behind. Elgin rolled under the leaping lunge of the second wolf, working the slide he fired, the buckshot ruined the right hind leg of the monster which went down with a screaming snarl. But it was spinning on its three good legs, coming back at him. He fired again and it went down with most of its head gone. A third shot separated the regenerating head from the body and an instant later the body of another headless biker lay in the dirt. He ran towards the crackle of gunfire and the hissing crash of mage fire. There were four powerful all terrain vehicles parked behind the main barn, that would indicate eight Claws, scratch two, that meant six. Something hammered into his back and he staggered, flopped forward, his legs suddenly no longer part of his body. A harsh scream of victory, not from a were, but a human throat. Somehow Elgin twisted his body, and the riot gun around, his attacker had thought him done. She died surprised, head flopping over sideways, her spine and right shoulder blown away, the assassin flopped backwards like a piece of meat. Now it was Elgin’s turn to lay his head in the dirt, his eyes were closed. Then the Iffrit was looking down at the dead assassin and an abandoned riot gun, the pain in its back faded, and was gone as repair mechanisms dealt with the wound and routed any critical power and control circuits around the damage. One of the hairy opposition came charging around the corner of the barn. Seeing the Iffrit it fell on its haunches, scrabbling with its front claws to stop and get away. It was far too slow, the Iffrit bit it in half and swallowed it in two gulps, it tasted awful, but it was at least something and the Iffrit was hungry. An annoying little bit of the Iffrit’s mind giggled, and counted down, “Four down, Four to go.” The Iffrit let out a call to battle, the thunder of its voice echoing off the hills and more distant mountains. Then it came to its full height, wings mantling, ready to take flight if need be. But there was a roar of sound and something boxy raced away from the housing structure, taking with it the stink of living enemy. The front of the housing structure was a ruin, and much of it in flames, he could smell two more of the enemies, dead ones, one burning, the other just beginning to spoil. There was a big water tank next to the house, the Iffrit dipped its head into the tank and drew it down more than a quarter of the way, sucking the liquid into what were primarily air sacs, a powerful contraction blew a powerful mist of water into the fire,two more great huffs and the fire was gone. An instant later Elgin was standing over the riot gun he had dropped. The whippet thin woman who’d attacked him at the Claws compound, Valery, if he remembered correctly, lay nearby, sprawled in death, her expression more surprised than pained. He leaned down to scoop up the riot gun. At his feet he saw something very nasty looking, heavy bladed, razor sharp, he realized that it was some kind of throwing axe, one that had chopped through his spine. He hadn’t sensed her until he was already dead, she’d been a skilled assassin. He turned and walked towards the house, still lit by the outside lights powered from the grid now the recycling plant and the backup diesel genset had been blown to hell. He walked around the back, which was disturbingly undisturbed compared to the front of the building. “Hello the house, anyone hear me?” -o- “Damn it dad, get it through your head that these people will not be coming for a conversation.” Zeph snapped at her father as she strapped on a flack jacket. TwoShoes was struggling with another set when Hong came up and started helping. “Zephyr, this is Wyoming!” Her mother protested. Caitlin clattered in with a third load of weapons and ammo, “Zeph, you’re going to have to explain what Elgin meant when he said that the you’d fought the Claws before.” Zeph nodded, looked at Hong, “Did you lock all the windows?” He nodded, Zeph saw TwoShoes looking rather dubious, “The windows are all armor glass, in metal frames, the insurance company insisted.” They were in the great room that essentially ran from the front to the back of the house. With a half story drop between the front and back half. The wings were accessed through an archway on either side of the great room. Choke points that should be easy to hold.. In the middle of the lower back section there was a big local rock fireplace facing the back yard which was well lit. Hong had gone and unlocked the gun cabinet, he had two hunting rifles and a big hunting revolver as well as two Beretta nine millimeters all gleaming clean and loaded. He handed one of the rifles to Zephs mother and the other to TwoShoes, the pistol was her father’s. Hong kept the two automatics, one in his waistband. Zeph took a deep breath, “Okay, look they will come at us and they will not stop, they may shoot a volley or so but I think they will blow in the door with a grenade launcher and then charge us. They’re hard to stop, I shot a couple of them several times and they kept coming. But they will go down if you hit them hard enough and frequently enough. I think they will come in the front door.” She pointed out back, “Otherwise they have to approach over the lighted lawn. The front looks stronger but they have cover up to the last few feet. And my experience is that they aren’t subtle.” There was a growing mutter that exploded into a roar as whatever it was came out from behind cover, then the silence. Hong was looking at a tablet, “Four vehicles, eight intruders, Uh....what just happened?” he sounded shaken. Zeph, pointed at the TV, “Show us Hong.” The screen flicked, suddenly they were looking at the end of the barn, four low four wheeled shapes skidded to a stop and figures leapt out, four of them took several steps and the screen stuttered, and now there were four massive, lanky shapes loping towards the building. “Oh, I guess I should have mentioned that some of them are likely to be werewolves.” Zeph said into the dead silence, and jacked a buckshot into the breach of her riot gun. “If you get a chance, blow their heads off or cut them off, that way they won’t get up again, otherwise you just keep wasting rounds on them.” The figures on the ground started firing at the house, and the front windows began to craze and shiver in their frames, dust blew out of the heavy logs and bullets blew out chunks of the caulking between the massive yellow pine logs that made up the wall. Everyone was crouched down now, guns in hands pointing generally at the front. Zeph tapped Hong and her mother on their shoulders and pointed to the back and the rock fireplace, in case there were more coming from the back, though the bullet proof glass made it as impossible to shoot out as it did to shoot in. On the big monitor one of the human figures made an odd pushing movement, an instant later a bolt of yellow white fire split the night. The front door shuddered and flame spurted through the central decorative glass pane and all around the periphery. An instant later the scene outside lit up as something exploded, and a moment later the ground and the air shook with a series of massive blasts, the first burst of light had been white, the next more green, the last and longest lit the night red yellow. A light had turned red on the wall under the monitor and a warning buzzer had started to sound. “What the hell was that? They weren’t expecting it, look some of them have split off to check it out.” Caitlin said, her eyes fixed on the monitor. There was a little scream and a yelp from the rear. Zeph spun, “What, mom? What did you see.” “Something on fire fell into the flower bed near the grill, sorry dear, just startled me.” Hong was nodding in agreement. Zeph’s father was crouched by the house system console, “That was our composting system and generator system blowing up,” he ground out, white with fury, “What the dickens did they do that for?” “They didn’t, they weren’t expecting it.” The sheriff pointed out. There was another flash on the screen and one of the bay windows flanking the door blew in spraying splinters and flame across the entry way. A shape appeared in the frame and was blown backwards as Caitlin’s M14 stuttered on full auto and TwoShoes hunting rifle spoke with massive authority, as fast as he could work the bolt. There was another house shaking crack, as something hit one of the bedroom wings. An instant later the other bay window blew in and a massive shape seemed to explode out of the spinning flaming debris. Zeph’s riot gun had a ‘death dot’ sight she lined it up and fired, hitting it in the chest, staggering it to a stop. She cycled and aimed for the head, her fathers huge fifty caliber pistol roared, her shotgun hammered once and again. The creature was a headless trunk staggering forward, then it was a swelling swirl of orange sparks, then a headless man in tattoos and leather flopping forward to bleed out on the already ruined carpet. The front door blew in, the thick steel reinforced panel flipping and spinning to slam to a stop against the kitchen counter. The panel was followed by another werewolf. It was in and leaping at them before they had a chance to reset after the first attack. The sheriff’s M14 was cycling rounds and TwoShoes gun roared, Zeph pumped buckshot at the blur. If anything hit the werewolf it didn’t seem to notice, but it dropped behind the kitchen counter, out of the line of fire. Then there was the blast of a horn, and the creature leapt from cover, this time heading out, but everyone had a bead on it this time, it was hurled against the wall by a hail of hot metal, and a few seconds later a headless ragdoll figure lay in a pool of blood. In the fury of the fight Zeph hadn’t noticed that the whole front part of the ranch was now ablaze. And then there was a weird heavy spray of something, of water falling, spraying onto the front of the house, the fire sizzled and sputtered, then flickered out. “Nothing out back Miss Zephyr” Hong called into the sudden quiet. One of the monitors showed the four dune buggy like vehicles still there. A body sprawled in front of the storage shed. A single figure moved at the edge of one of the monitors, the Stetson and riot gun showed it was Elgin. “Damn it, they stole my truck.” The sheriff snarled. From outside Elgin called, “Hello the house, can anybody hear me?” -o- Elgin saw a figure wave from behind the glass curtain and then the glass panels folded back, “Come on, we think they’re all gone but there might be stragglers.” Sally Smith-Samson called, she was holding a hunting rifle, next to her was a small asian man who Elgin had seen a few times before, some kind of butler, general factotum for the family. Currently carrying a Beretta in one hand with another stuffed in his waist band. “They’re all gone or dead Ma’am, mostly dead.” He walked over the putting green smooth back ‘yard,’ onto the flagstone patio, jarringly normal, and into the house, which stank of expended propellant, fire, blood, and other things. Most of the front room was a smoking ruim. Walking up the steps he had to search for the two sprawled headless bodies among the ruins of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of furniture and artwork. He sighed, sensing Cutter-Iffrits feeling of loss and anger at the useless destruction. “So Elgin Chalmers, how is it that you know so much about our biker werewolves from hell?” Zeph asked, pointing at one of the corpses. “They are a little bit like you aren’t they?” TwoShoes was looking at him with a frown, peering as if trying to see something just a little too far away to make out. Elgin shrugged, “In some ways yes, in most ways no. They are creatures of the shadow realms, alternate ‘what could have beens’ buy like my other aspect the wolves remain folded away most of the time.” “Your’re a were of some kind?” The sheriff asked gruffly, fingering the M14 hanging from its tactical strap. “Of some kind, but unlike the wolves my other nature is not only stronger, faster and more capable, but also smarter, infinitely more knowledgeable and more civilized than I am.” Elgin smiled slightly. “None of those things say that you’re safe to be around or have our best interest at heart.” Xandar Smith-Samson pointed out from the low wall that separated upper and lower spaces, he was there with his arm around his wife. Elgin turned a little to face him, “I’m still Elgin Chalmers, most of the time and the reason I’m this way is to provide that human element and human understanding for my second nature. Its powerful and not particularly empathic.” He raised his hands, “Questions will have to wait, we need to do something about this mess.” He glanced around, then at the wall clock, “The rest of the crew will be back in an hour or so, but someone has got to have heard or seen the methane plant blow up.” Caitlin looked broodingly at the two corpses, “We’re going to have a hard time explaining them being blown to pieces with no sign of them carrying any weapons.” “They blew the front of my house to wreckage and tried to burn us out.” Xander protested. The Sheriff shrugged, “Ain’t going to matter when people see the pictures.” “Can’t we say they were killed by their own side, by accident?” Sally asked. “The forensics would prove that bogus in the first few seconds.” Elgin walked through the wreckage he collected up a selection of debris, deep in his mind he could feel the Iffrit ‘doing’ things. His palms were sweating and he rubbed them across the wreckage he had picked up. The heat seemed to be sucked out of them and out of him, he stepped back onto the relatively clear area where the others stood and dropped the pieces in a line along the edge of the main debris fans. The pieces dissolved into gray dust falls before touching the ground, spreading as it fell, falling and spreading faster than simple gravity or air movement could explain. The air in the room started to chill down, Elgin turned to the middle aged asian who had been watching all of this with a bland face and enigmatic eyes, “Turn up the heat would you, the thermal balance is going to get upset.” “What are you doing? those are priceless antiques!” Xander cried out as he saw the iridescent gray cloud spreading, enveloping the floor, the rugs, the furniture....the nearest body. “Think of them as the clean up and repair crew Mr. Smith-Samson, the fight at the house is never going to have happened.” Elgin said flatly. The nano machines, from the size of a virus, all the way up to the size of spider mites, spread out, mapping this, disassembling that, creating more of their own, many of which were simply moving material from one place to another, only to be broken down for rebuilding as something else. In a minute the thick gray fog was spreading quickly, flowing to envelope the whole front of the great room. As the shocked fighters watched it touched the wall and swept up covering the walls, the glass and the fire damaged ceiling before slowing and finally stopping. For a few moments the gray mist thickened, swirling and rippling with an eerie life. Then the first of the bodies, discreetly, thankfully, draped in swirling gray cotton wool settled into the floor and flowed away. The big mahogany table flipped on its side, also draped in gray, collapsed, then its ghostly shape reformed where it had originally stood, first in wisps of gray then in dense gray as if the table were covered by a gray drop cloth. Then the mist flowed back leaving the apparently untouched table in all its red black glory behind. The empty holes where there had been windows filled in with gray mist that solidified to almost black before flowing away leaving gleaming glass and polished wood. The fire damaged rafters were enveloped and then a few moments later the mist seemed to adsorb into gleaming aged yellow pine beams. There was silence as they all looked at the apparently untouched front half of the great room. The only sign of what had gone before the bright cylinders of spent shell casings and the droop shouldered humans. “I’m going to go police up a few other things.” Elgin said into the deep silence, “I think the story is that the Claws came to get whatever drugs Mitch was cooking in the methane plant and possibly shoot up the ranch. Betty, Mitch’s live in, tipped us off which is why we forted up, something went wrong with the drug pickup and the plant blew up and for some reason the survivors stole your truck for their getaway.” Everyone looked at him as if he was an alien, he shrugged, “Just my suggestion anyway.” He walked to the front door, as he started to close it he found Zephyr right behind him, carrying her riot gun. He bobbed his head and let her close the door behind her and strode into the night. In the near distance he could see lights on the road that led mainly to the CircleSBarS ranch and flashing lights as well. “Here come the cavalry.” The female assassin sprawled in ugly death her eyes now coated with dust giving her an unreal look. Zeph looked down at her, “Never saw her before.” Elgin leaned down and picked up the throwing axe that had split his spine. “You ever see one of these before?” there was red blood on the blade and haft, his blood. Zeph frowned, “That’s nasty looking, and looks like it did some damage to someone.” Elgin grunted, he tossed the weapon to land with a thud on the assassin’s body, the gray mist welled up from the weapon to envelope her as they turned away. She followed him, she watched as he picked up spent shotgun shell cases and dropped them on the two bodies on the slope by the smoldering ruin of the methane power plant. By the time they started to walk back the bodies were fading wisps of almost smoke. “I’ve read and seen science fiction and fantasy. That’s not pixie dust, its some kind of nano bot cloud. And I thought there was a lot of concern about letting nano bots loose in the environment?” “They can be devastating, but most of the time they’re more susceptible to the natural environment than the other way around. The ones here are extremely limited in purpose and functional life.” She looked away, hugged herself as if a cool breeze had sprung up, “That was the other part of you speaking, wasn’t it Elgin?” “Yes. It’s his knowledge.” By the time they got back to the front of the house two of the crew’s cars were parked by the trailer park, an ambulance, two sheriff’s cars and the local fire marshal’s truck were all parked out front and people were milling around. The sheriff had her deputies start a search ‘to make sure the rascals were gone.’ The fire marshal was climbing into his truck with Xandar Smith-Samson to go look at the methane plant. Elgin was sitting on a stool in the ranch munching on a sandwich produced by the newly introduced Hong when there was something like a scream from out back. He wasn’t quite sure how he made it out into the garden, but he and Hong were the first and second persons on the scene as one of the younger deputies lost his dinner in the dahlias. The object of the deputy’s distress was sprawled at the edge of the flower bed. Naked, hairless, skin blackened and with the rubber and plastic of the breathing mask melted to his face Mitch was something out of a bad horror movie. Fortunately for all he was quite dead, had undoubtedly been dead when Elgin saw his burning body pin-wheeling through the air right after the blast. Hong uncocked his pistol, “That the crew boss, Mitch?” Elgin checked to make sure he hadn’t chambered a round in the riot gun, it was safe, “Yep, I always figured he was a bit of a shooting star.” Which he knew was cruel, but Hong found it quite funny. <<>> Chapter 13 Our hero finds himself heading east Elgin sat in the dim orange dusk of the shadow realm’s night and looked at the myriad fires of the departed souls waiting out this eternity. The Iffrit’s creators had understood the afterlife in a scientific way that Elgin found comprehensible but cold. Self aware and self directing entities like humans altered the universe in subtle but real ways that created a ‘wake’ and ‘inertia’ that the failure of the physical body did not erase. In this closest and least substantial of shadow worlds that wake and inertia expressed itself in a form that the individual’s conscious matrix made semi real. In the long run these personal ‘knots’ merged and melded into the semi illusion, strengthening it. There was a rustle nearby and Griffith TwoShoes appeared out of the dimness. He had a long ‘peace pipe’ in his hand, with various talismans attached to it. He settled down on a log across from Elgin, picked up a stick and poked the fire. “Thank you for guiding me through the veil Oldest.” He spoke to the fire, through the fire, to the mind he knew lived behind Elgin’s eyes. “And you too Elgin,” There was a flicker of white teeth. “Always ready to oblige a friend Griff, do you feel you can make it here on your own now?” This was the third time they had walked up away from Beauty and made the strange ‘turn’ that took them into the shadow realm. “I don’t know, I will try to return to the anchor first.” Elgin nodded, “Smart thing to do, and you need to be sure not to let yourself be lead astray, it is too easy to step into the more distant shadow worlds....” “...And some of them will kill you in an instant.” TwoShoes finished for him. “Okay, I guess I’ll let that go for awhile.” “Thank you oh wise one,” the older man mocked Elgin with a smile. They sat in silence for some time, “Can’t believe it’s already getting on for fall. These last few years have gone quick but this one, whooowhee,” The Indian shook his head, his gray ponytail flipping from shoulder to shoulder. “It has been an interesting year,” Elgin replied, looking up at the sky where the stars seemed to ripple and wave in great unstable sheets. “At least the Claw’s gone and the whole mess with the Den’s pretty much history.” “Maybe,” Elgin continued to stare into the fire with a frown. “Don’t believe that they have given up?” The younger man sighed, “I don’t know Griff.” There was a faint rustle and a large tawny shape appeared from the grass nearby, stropped Griff’s then Elgin’s legs and lay down with a yawn, Humph rolled over so his belly got the heat from the fire and closed his eyes. Humph had started following Elgin into the shadow realm a few months ago, at first Elgin had thought the cat was somehow ‘tagging’ along with him, but that didn’t last, it was obvious that Humph could enter and exit the shadow realms as easily as Elgin could, and also that the cat knew some trick that let him cover extraordinary distances in a very short time. But Humph wasn’t talking and though Cutter-Iffrit seemed to have some idea of what was happening they hadn’t let Elgin in on it yet. Though they seemed to share a mind it often seemed that the Iffrit wanted Elgin to learn on his own, or at least at his own pace. A minute later the last person of the little club arrived, “Hey guys.” Kitty Pauls was wearing a long fur coat and fur lined boots and a very fetching fur hat. She had a ‘shooting stick’ walking stick that she unfolded and sat on after giving the logs the two men were sitting on a rather disdainful look. “Should I call to order the Beauty, Wyoming, magic users association weekly meeting?” She asked with a smile. Elgin waved his hand for her to go on, “Sure, but I forgot to type up the notes again, and Griff used all the dues for some special beans someone was hawking at the trading post.” She grinned, “That’s okay I’m sure membership director Humph did his best to bite, scratch or eat the favorite pet of every potential new member.” “Rowr,” Humph agreed from behind closed eyes. She smiled, rubbed her mittened hands together, “I got a letter from the Mother General of my Association yesterday, a reply to the letter I sent with your note ‘explaining,’” she air quoted the word, “the situation over the last six months. Apparently the unfolding has progressed far enough to be perceptible most places, and some of the surviving focus artifacts are becoming much more powerful. She wasn’t happy with your explanation but she was able to test it like you suggested and the results were repeatable, which didn’t make her any happier but proved you knew what you’re talking about.” TwoShoes grunted, “I spoke to a couple of the elders in my circle, they also are ambivalent. They feel the world is complicated enough as it is without the old magic re-emerging, too much of what we remember is evil.” Elgin had started back to whittling on a piece of wood with his belt knife, something he’d do when he needed to think. He was currently working on a shape that was vaguely birdlike. Cutter spoke through him, “It could be used in everyday life to heal, to make, to build, but it was too easily used for evil. It was like giving a five year old a very sharp knife with the ability to turn into almost any sort of tool or weapon. The five year old could use it for doing some wonderful things but it was so easy to turn the knife to evil and the five year old didn’t have the mental tools to build on the constructive things and mitigate the evil.” The shaman businessman grunted, in disgusted “And we’re any better today?” Cutter-Elgin grinned bitterly, “As much as you may despise our specie’s current condition it was vastly worse ten thousand, a hundred thousand, years ago. The Iffrit agrees that the world could have done with a bit more seasoning and a more gradual technological ramp up, but as bad as we are we could be much worse. And technology has a large advantage, it can be easily replicated, copied and spread, magic is tied to the magic user and relatively few humans are magic users. It will allow things currently thought impossible but it’s not going to supplant technology.” “The Mother General says that there are some high energy physics experiments being carried out that have suddenly started showing anomalous results. Anomalous in regards to past results, but results that actually correlate well with cosmological observations that have puzzled researchers on Earth for some time.” Elgin peeled a miniscule sliver off the wing of his work piece, “That sounds like a good thing.” “Probably.” TwoShoes watched the distant flicker of the souls dreaming the night away, “On another topic you know that the final papers for the Great Bear’s Den Resort are being worked up at Zeph’s law firm in New York, Elgin?” “I’d heard,” he let his hand relax a little, turning the wood in his hand, Zephyr, now Zephyr Smith-Samson again, had gone back to New York and her job as a high power lawyer. In the month after the fight at the CircleSBarS they’d talked almost every day. Especially after her traumatized parents had retreated to New York with Hong, leaving her to arrange things at the Ranch, which she had largely left to Elgin. He’d had coffee with her, they’d laughed at a few jokes together, he’d seen a gleam of something in her eyes when she looked at him every once in a while. But one day she was packed and the next day she was gone, with a smile and a card with her cell phone number and e-mail. “The original developer backed out when they ran into some issues raising the money. There are two developers interested, both with money, one is pretty much a shoestring operation. The other, Wilcox, Bram and Chekov is a big international name and has big international backing. They do this kind of thing across the world but this would be pretty small for them.” “Sounds like things are going okay then?” “That’s the story the committee lets out. Truth is the negotiations are stalled, the original developer is suing for a place at the table, the other two are playing hard to get and the seed money we raised is evaporating like a puddle in the desert. And I don’t like it.” Elgin looked at TwoShoes, “One of your fetishes giving off a bad vibe?” The shaman shot him a disgusted look, “Something is not right and I don’t like it. I’ve reviewed the documents, the money, had accountants look at it, other lawyers I trust, they all say that I’m paranoid. I probably am, but it just feels wrong.” The knife tip worried at a detail as Elgin thought, Cutter-Iffrit didn’t rise to make a comment. “TwoShoes, Phoebe and I did some dousing yesterday, the only danger we sense is the Basik rift and something far to the east.” Kitty added. Elgin nodded, “What do you two want me to do?” “Go East, meet these people, be the tribe’s representative.” TwoShoes replied. “What?” Elgin almost laughed out loud. “Caitlin’s been out once for a few days, BlackHawk was there last week, Thomas Jones, Wendy Doe have been out there. Zephyr treats us well and tries to make us feel at home and provide us with support but the rest of them see us as stone age drunkards. That makes it hard for us to see if they are screwing us or trying to help us.” “And they’re going to see me, an uneducated hick, red neck cowboy part breed, any differently?” Elgin snorted. “Maybe not, but despite your own lack of confidence, you look more like a model in a men’s magazine than a cowboy and while you can speak hick with the best of us you can sound like just about anyone you like, it was your only socially redeeming quality when you were drunk,” TwoShoes shot back. “Ouch.” Elgin said, then looked pleadingly at Kitty, “Tell him I’m a hick and they’ll trample all over me.” She smiled sweetly, “Hope they do, then you’ll eat them for lunch and ask for more.” Elgin grimaced, given the Iffrits penchant for eating stray irritants when hungry it was possible that lawyer might be on the menu. He went back to removing wood from his work piece. Kitty eyed him for a moment then grinned at TwoShoes, “I take that as a sulky yes.” -o- Elgin looked down at the approaching tapestry of roads and buildings and decided for the hundredth time that he much preferred flying on his own wings. “There, there young man, nothing to be worried about, flying is the safest way to travel, I’ve been flying all my life and never been in an accident, and landing’s about the safest part of the trip.” The nun in the seat next to him patted his hand comfortingly. Her name was Teresa McGovern, she’d become a nun after raising a family and losing her husband of thirty years. Now she was Sister Mercy, and she ran a small nunnery and free school in Harlem, as well as a broader teaching ministry for teen girls with children. She was eighty five and energetic as a teenager, but she was dying, though she didn’t know it. Elgin knew it was a toss up as to whether the leukemia or the brain tumor got her first. He smiled at her, “Thanks Sister Mercy.” He patted her hand, leaving her with what he hoped was a gift. He hoped a longer life would let her do more good, and enjoy the blossoming of that good, but sometimes it could mean the reverse. There was a momentary sinking feeling, then a jar and chirp, the nose rotated down and then the thrust reversers roared, and they were wrapped in mist for a few seconds. Then the rain was leaving individual streaks on the window. “Welcome to LaGuardia International Airport where the local time is five forty six, please remain in your seat with your personal items stowed, we will be taxiing for the next few minutes, now we have landed please feel free to use your cell phones....” The pretty stewardess far down the cabin smiled into the microphone. He helped the nun with her carry on then pulled down his pack roll and the heavy brown mass of his leather coat. The airport felt like it held more people than he’d ever met in his whole life, and a lot of them gave him an odd look as he strolled from the gate and followed the ‘exit’ and ‘ground transportation’ signs. “Hey cowboy, you got a little time for a lady?” Zephyr was dressed in a long buckskin skirt and with a heavy red shirt tucked in but open down the front to show off a cream silk camisole. Elgin couldn’t help the smile that split his face, that hurt his cheeks, “Hey Deputy, I’ve always got time for a particular lady.” Then he blushed. She smiled back, a warm smile as she strolled up to him and hugged him, then stepped back with a sigh, “Wow, I hadn’t realized.” “Realized what,” he almost said my dear but bit it off, “Uh Zeph?” “How much I missed Beauty.” He leaned back, “Well, I’m one up then, I knew I missed you.” He wanted to lean down and kiss her but he resisted. He wasn’t sure what thoughts were flowing behind those beautiful brown eyes, but he was fairly sure he’d find out eventually. She pointed at the bag he’d dropped at their feet, “The rest of your luggage downstairs?” He shook his head with a smile, “Ah, no, I’m just a poor cowboy, clean tidy whities a spare pair of jeans and two shirts, a razor, toothbrush and comb.” “Uh, yeah.” She swallowed, looked at him doubtfully, “Elgin, that’s not normal business wear in New York.” “I’m certain it isn’t but I don’t have the money to buy some fancy suits.” He held up his hand, “Yeah the council offered to pay for them but I figured if my duds are fine for Beauty they’d be good enough for New York.” She blinked at his sudden descent into hick, but she looked into his face and saw glittering anger, directed at something behind her. He stepped back and scooped up the bag and the rolled up coat. “You goin’t take me to my hotel?” The limo accelerated away from the curb, Elgin ran his hands over the rich leather then looked at Zeph broodingly, “I assume that at least one of the tracking devices in this thing are part of a security system, what about the three recorders, one with video, and the two audio transmitters, over and above the ones in the chauffeurs compartment, and what about the man with a directional mike observing us from the balcony level.” She went stiff, opened her mouth then closed it and leaned back with a frown, “I called for a limo from the service that the team’s been using for the last several months. I’ve no idea why someone would be spying on us.” “May not be us, but I think it is. We need to find a new service and make sure they aren’t being paid to spy on us.” That was Cutter more than Elgin speaking, if Elgin was uncertain about the situation Cutter wasn’t, he did not like it at all. Zephyr nodded, “I’ll have my assistant take care of it first thing in the morning.” Then her lips curved in a cruel smile, “oh damn, are you going to screw with their minds.” -o- The fiftieth floor offices of Petters, Petters, Faulken and Christchurch was quietly bustling, a background murmur, warm to the touch but chill to the eye since the glass walls looked out into gray green rain and the bellies of clouds a few stories above. Paralegal Gretchen Greenmantle called GeeGee by almost everyone waited for the express elevator with barely restrained impatience. Guy Venture, the second most glamorous litigator in the firm, and certainly the best looking bachelor in his age/worth bracket had called for her to come down. There was a ‘ting’ and the elevator doors opened. Gretchen almost catapulted forward, but froze at the strange apparition standing in the elevator car. A long light tan leather coat, cut loose, with caped shoulders, and slits up the side, a western hat shadowing eyes above a face that looked like it had been chiseled with an axe out of some exotic wood, deepset blue eyes with corner creases formed by squinting into the sun for hours at a time. The coat and hat were both beaded with rain as if the man had just stepped inside. As the tall man stepped out of the elevator he took off the hat and smiled at GeeGee, and his whole face changed, now he was boyish and a bit bashful, the short cut blonde hair a little disheveled. “Ma’am, you look like you have places to go.” He made a sweeping gesture to the car, which he was holding in place with his hat over the door sensor. GeeGee looked up into the cheerful blue eyes and fell in lust, which she did quite frequently and usually to good if eventually disappointing effect. “GeeGee are you going down or what?” Trish at the front desk asked sweetly from behind. The paralegal jumped, smiled, “Uh yeah, thank you sir.” “You’re welcome ma’am.” Elgin said, as the door closed on the flustered young woman he turned to the tall dark skinned woman standing behind the desk fronting the lobby area. Before he could say anything, she said, “You must be Mr. Chalmers.” She wore a small professional smile well. Elgin bowed slightly, “Elgin Chalmers, Ms Brown?” He’d seen the small name plate on the desk as he scanned the surroundings. The smile became a bit warmer, “Teresa Brown, I’m the office manager, please call me Teresa.” She came around the desk and held out her hand He shook it lightly, “Good to meet you Ma’am, I mean Teresa, please call me Elgin.” She tipped her head in polite acceptance and turned, “Ms Smith-Samson has arranged for you to use one of the small conference rooms during your stay. She said to make you at home if you arrived before she returned, she had a court appointment early this morning.” The ‘small conference room’ was well inside and though not exactly shabby it was stark. There were a couple of laptops and tablets set up on charger stands, and boxes of paper. One chair had a stack of paper in front of it, the side of the stack a rainbow of tabs in different forms, colors and sizes. Elgin flipped his Stetson onto the stark aluminum coat rack and swung off the leather coat. Under it he was wearing a simple red lumberjack shirt and his one and only bolo tie, his best jeans, his good riding boots and the belt buckle he’d won, almost by accident, at the Beauty Rodeo a few years before. He saw his worth tick down another notch with every item ticked off some inner checklist in Teresa’s head, but he didn’t hold it against her. “These are the briefing papers we have put together for the various interested parties, with background documents, the various proposals, the proposed contracts and the case law in regards to the various discussion points, you can use a tablet or laptop if you need to do any background research of your own,” He could almost hear the rest of the last sentence she’d almost said, ‘Or check out some porn sites, you redneck hick.’ Elgin smiled, “This looks good, can you show me where I can get coffee, and the necessary room, and I should be fine Teresa.” When he returned with a hot mug of coffee he set it down on a coaster on the table and pulled a device out of a pocket in the range coat. It had started life as a cheap video player, now it was a good video player and a better snoop detector and spoofer. He already knew there were three bugs in this room over and above two recording systems that were supposed to be there. He made sure the little device could spot them as he played with it for a few minutes, as if trying to figure out how to use a new toy. Eventually he set it aside and started in on the pile of paper. The first dozen pages were actually explanations of all the different colored and shaped tabs. He read that in some detail, Cutter made snoring noises in the back of his mind while Iffrit and Elgin organized the information, he had already read most of the material and Iffrit had already largely digested and analyzed the meanings of what was down in black and white and a lot more that lay hidden in the minds of the men and women who had written it. He flipped through the stack checking to see if there was anything new or missing, ending with the original documents, the deeds and leases that had cost several people their lives. He drained the last of the now cold coffee and got up to wander back to the coffee mess. Here he found gathered some of the great young legal minds of New York, junior associates in their expensive but slightly ‘off’ suits and the paralegals in their carefully not too dressy non uniform uniforms. There hadn’t been many of them earlier, Teresa had perceptibly cleared the halls as she advanced with the ‘hick’ in tow and only a couple of braver, or more senior than average, associates had remained in the coffee room when they’d arrived. He got a lot of flickering looks, some faint smiles, a few gently pitying looks and sensed more sneers behind his back. The cup in his hand was redbrown with the company initials and crest in gold. One of the senior female associates, a statuesque, green eyed blond was leaning against the counter. She smiled sweetly, “Y’all look pretty country there sugar.” The accent was laid on, but cutting through the layers and the years it wasn’t far from her original bayou brogue. “Why thank you Miss James, you dress up that counter right well yourself.” He replied with a smile that was more amused than anything else. The blonde jumped, “Uh, how?” “Did I know your name? You’re Zephyr’s assistant, you arranged for the new limo service this morning, the driver was very impressed and described you quite well.” Elgin poured himself a cup of coffee now that the girl had moved out of the way. “Wow Barb, got you in one.” One of the young bucks grinned widely at the girl’s discomfiture. Then there was a stir in the school of young chum and one of the sharks appeared, a smiling man, in a slightly darker suit, his smile belying cold blue eyes under dark brows and hair slicked down in a style that had been popular in the middle of the last century. “Ah, you must be Mister Chalmers!” The smile broadened and developed some teeth as he advanced with a hand held out, “Good to meet you, I’m Charles Chester Petters-Smith, one of the executive partners. We are so glad that the tribe chose our company to assist in this business! Are you assisting on some technical matter, since you’re not from the tribe?” Elgin shook hands with a smile, “Appearances can be deceiving, genetics can be strange, I’ve got a higher percentage of Indian ancestors than either Caitlin or Griffith, I guess all my Amerind heritage is down deep, the wild bare back pony riding, arrow shooting, scalp taking bits, you know.” He let some teeth show in his smile. He went on, “The tribe appreciates Petters, Petters, Faulken and Christchurch taking our business, the Smith-Samson’s are well known and respected, since Xander’s no longer practicing we came to his daughter. We know that the business is probably a bit on the small and common side for you, so we do appreciate your taking us under your wing as it were.” The round faced man’s smile was still there but his eyes were narrowed, he’d heard loud and clear that the tribe understood the situation and that Elgin wasn’t quite what he looked. “There you are Elgin, oh hey Charles.” Zephyr said distractedly from the other archway. The slow exodus of associates became a near stampede now that there were two big beasts in the room. Elgin turned with a smile, “Good morning Zeph.” She glanced at her watch, “Almost afternoon, the developers are going to be here in half an hour.” She looked up at him closely, “Do you feel like you’re ready?” “Ready, Zephy, really? Mr. Chalmers is the client! I’d be more worried about how ready you were.” It was said with a jolly smile for the newb but the sharks dead flat eyes raked Zeph. Charles Petters-Smith, did not like Zephyr Smith-Samson one little bit, the pair smiled and then Charles turned and left. Zephyr got a cup of coffee and waved Elgin to the entrance she had come in through. Instead of the conference room she lead him to an office, it was modern and neat, had a glass wall that faced the main ring corridor, on the other side was another, bigger office, with a vast expanse of window on the outside. Zeph’s office door was in an alcove, where Barbara James sat resolutely focused on something on a computer monitor. Elgin pulled out the ex-MP3 player and tapped on it a couple of times as he looked around, finally coming to lean against the desk Zeph had sat down behind. “Seems like a bad omen to be on the outs with an executive partner like Mr. Petters-Smith.” She smiled faintly, “Executive partner only because he’s a barracuda the senior executive partners like to let loose on cases where they want the other side to pay in blood. But he’s an insecure, vindictive sadist at heart and everyone knows it. Some of the associates love him because he’s so funny and he gives out presents like candy, but they don’t threaten him and having them around him puffs up his importance, at least in his own eyes.” Elgin nodded thoughtfully, “You’re a Junior Partner correct?” “One step up from senior associate yes, the most important step,” she added a little defensively. “ Most of the lawyers who join the company never make partner, most will move on for one reason or another before they’re ‘on the bubble’ for partner. But once you’ve been ‘on the bubble’ a couple of times, and been passed over, it’s time to move on.” “A ruthless business.” This got a shrug, “Supposedly one of the last bastions of pure meritocracy outside of the hard sciences.” Elgin folded himself into a seat, “What went wrong?” She blinked, “Wrong?” “You had a court date early this morning, which you didn’t know about last night, and it was supposed to be done quickly and yet it’s almost lunchtime before you get back and you’re obviously upset. So. What went wrong?” After a moment of hesitation and thought she shrugged and explained, “We all have to do some pro bono work, I help out with the lawyer work for a free clinic and try and help out with some of their patients in trouble with the law. I’ve been working with a couple of Chechen girls, prostitutes, who were beaten nearly to death by their pimp for trying to run away. Of course they’re illegals, their parents sold them to the white slavers who shipped them here in a container and they figure that they’ll be worse off if they go to the government and get deported.” Rubbing her eyes she went on, “I thought I had them on the straight and narrow, got them into a shelter got them jobs, helped set them up to apply for refugee status.” Now she shrugged, the corners of her mouth drooping sadly, “The younger one called this morning, her cousin, Olga, wanted some more pretty things and decided to turn some tricks to make the money. Third john was an undercover cop and she was in the lock up. I got there and got her out but one of the other girls they picked up knew Olga and I’m pretty sure I saw the pimp, Bruno. I tried to make sure we couldn’t be followed which took time, then when I’d gotten Olga back to the co-op, I sat the pair of them down and had a heart to heart. And then it took forever to get back here.” She spread her hands out on the desk, “Damn it, I am worried about them, I hope to God the other girl doesn’t tell Bruno. He’s a monster, worse than a wolf, at least you can see they’re monsters, Bruno just quit caring about anybody but himself a long time ago.” “Any way to have the police take care of him?” “I talked to a friend on the force, but...” she shrugged, grimaced, “He’s part of what they call the Russian Mafia, they do the real dirty work for the old guard mafia, Irish mobs, even Jamaican and Chinese international gangs. They’re far from untouchable but when it comes to an illegal alien prostitute? Meh.” She closed her eyes. She sat staring at her hands for a while and Elgin sipped his coffee with cold alien thoughts trickling through the back of his head. At last she looked up, “The three developers and the lawyers for the main money interests are coming today to discuss the situation, see if there is a way to settle the thing amicably.” Elgin looked into his coffee, then up, “I have a suggestion.” “Shoot.” She looked interested. He explained and she listened, asked a few questions, listened some more, made a suggestion or two and then listened as he wove one of them into the plan and shot the other down. She had started jotting down notes on her pad after a while and then quickly started to scribble out the plan. Finally she looked at the clock, “They will be here in ten minutes, no way to have this typed up, proofed and ready today. We’ll have to stall for today, even see if we can get them to postpone until tomorrow.” “What if we put the suggestion on the table today in rough form, let them critique it and then work it up tomorrow or even the next couple of days?” She rubbed her neck, frowned at him, “Sounds good.” “Except you don’t like the idea.” “I don’t know, I think I’m just getting superstitious about this, it seems like every time something starts to go well something goes sideways.” She smiled crookedly, “And these days I’m not quite as dismissive of superstition as I used to be.” “I think we should propose it, but there is one thing you need to do for me.” Elgin said easily. She blinked, “Uh, yes?” “There is a clause in the contract that puts a lien on the Den if there are delays in construction, outfitting or opening. It’s fair enough on its face, basically means the tribe can’t sell the land out from under the development. But in conjunction with one of the other clauses it essentially gives the financiers the ability to seize the property . If the project fell behind for any number of non-financial reasons the lien kicks in and if the financiers refuse to continue funding they essentially own the land and can force renegotiation on whatever terms they care to make.” “What?” He leaned over her desk, tapped up the current working documents and highlighted a couple of clauses, separated by several dozen pages and apparently completely unrelated to each other. “Shit!” she swore savagely after reading the two clauses. “Not your fault Zeph, I’m not sure it was on purpose,” But he suspected it had been. “It’s my job to see that sort of thing Elgin!” There was a knock on the door, and Barbara opened it, “Everyone has arrived Mz. Smith-Samson.” Her eyes flickered between Elgin and her boss uncertainly, she’d been watching the interaction between the two and it had been totally different than what she had seen with the other ‘Indians’ or indeed some of her really important clients. When the door was closed Zeph stood, “You know as well as I do that those clauses are written the way they are for exactly the reason you spotted. I need to find out how they got that way and who was responsible. But for now...even more reason to see if we can postpone.” Elgin shook his head, “Better to go ahead and have the discussion today, rewrite those two clauses so they don’t have that toxic effect and move on. It’s not clear we’ll find the culprit looking back, lets see if any wolves pop up after we shake the tree more thoroughly.” “And me without me without my Glock and a concealed carry license.” Zeph sighed. -o- Zeph leaned back and watched Elgin finish off his steak, it hadn’t been a he man steak, but as good a fillet as one could get in New York, which was as good as they came these days. They’d had salads along with the fillet he’d ordered along with Brussels-sprouts, asparagus and a baked potato. He was visibly enjoying all of them. He had met her at the restaurant’s entrance, appearing out of the rain and darkness as if walking between the raindrops. Since he was dry and knowing a little about what he was, she figured that was at least possible. The sometime cowboy was dressed in pretty much what he’d worn to the office except he’d added a very nice soft leather sports jacket. He’d certainly lit a fire in the heart of the little minx of a greeter out front. At last he finished his meal and set the knife and fork down with a sigh. He looked at her, and smiled at her expression of enquiry, “It was all excellent.” “I’d have thought you’d have had some of the seafood, it’s much better here than in Wyoming.” He shrugged, “Later.” Iffrit was getting hungry and raw fish was going to be on the menu. She swirled the merlot in her glass, “That was an interesting session today. I would not have expected them to agree to the suggestion to break the work up like that.” “HCD had been working with the tribe for years, they know the most about the land and the opportunity, everyone likes their layout, their problem was the secondary infrastructure and infrastructure as much as money. Wilkes-Barns is more used to big public works, the access improvements along the highway and working with the airport in the city gives them an in there with a lot of legs since Wyoming is booming these days. Johnson and Sons are really builders with the chops to develop projects, they’re used to working in the mountain west, know the ins and outs better than HCD ever could. So Wilkes-Barnes does the infrastructure, Johnson and Sons do the secondary infrastructure and foundations, HCD builds the superstructure and then moves into outfit and startup with Wilkes-Barnes providing management support. They each get to do what they do best and this way Wilkes-Barnes gets to use Johnson and Son’s local connections, and HCD gets to use Wilkes-Barnes supplier network.” “And its win, win, win all the way around.” She said with a teasing grin. Elgin winced, “So I got a bit carried away with my own eloquence. But you were part of it.” Zeph laughed, “It was brilliant, you just kept asking innocent questions, pointing things out, let people talk then I’d chime in and walk them a few steps forward, you’d defuse an argument with your guileless blue eyes and we’d start the cycle again. Most of them will have decided it was a setup by the next meeting.” “One person did realized what was going on,” Elgin said quietly, “Dmitri Andropov with the Twin Eagles and he didn’t like it at all. Did you find anything strange about Twin Eagle Financial’s team?” “It was big, don’t know why they brought the two associates unless they were there to listen and learn. The girl’s going to have to learn to dress a bit more conservatively, I think she may be new to the States, some of the women from euro Russia tend to dress flashy.” Elgin shook his head, “I think the two older guys were the associates, the younger pair were bodyguards.” She almost protested then shut her mouth, “You could be right, Twin Eagles is a bit of an enigma. It’s a pretty small operation with a few secretive principles, and Dmitri might be one of them. They are spreading money around the US, mostly on good solid money making bets with a few fliers.” “We a good bet or a flier?” “Good bet.” She smiled cheerfully. “So you think the Russian’s who back Twin Eagles are just looking for safe returns?” Her mouth twisted, “I’m rather sorry to say that while I’ve met a lot of nice Russians, and honest Russians, and quite a few rich Russians, I’ve never met a nice honest rich Russian, not by our standards anyway.” He nodded, “Which explains why that little clause trap snuck in after they got involved.” “Well one clause was added by Wilkes-Barnes, the other was a modification of an existing clause but yeah, it was after Twin Eagles came to the table.” She watched him frown at the table, “Something else is bothering you!” Elgin glanced up and smiled, “Two things, first, what used to be Russia, the steppes, forest and tundra have been a breeding ground of magic and barbarism for a very long time. Second, it’s Djins favorite hiding place in his mad times. Before the start of human history its magic users, shamans, witch doctors, fire witches, ice witches, wind witches, monster makers and monster killers, were a constant thorn in Iffrits side.” “So when a mysterious Russian turns up, the Iffrit’s hackles rise.” Elgin shrugged, “You could say that. But I’m also worried, New York should be magically dead, but it’s not, there are several very strong foci here and some of them have been here a long time.” “So you can do magic here?” He shrugged, “Iffrit, like Djin, could have done magic here anyway, but human magic users can also work powerful effects here..” She sighed, “I’ve got to go see the girls this evening before going to bed. Make sure they are settled down. I’ll be in the office early tomorrow to start cutting and pasting the contract based on the plan we hammered out this afternoon. Should be ready for a review later in the afternoon.” “You’re sure there’s nothing I can do to help?” Zeph shook her head, “Its grungy lawyer and paralegal work, it would drive you nuts and you’d drive us nuts, best to go out and tour the city till four or so.” He didn’t press, she paid for the meal and was pleased that he didn’t even protest once she pointed out it was a business expense. He helped her with her jacket and then went and fetched her coat and hat. He offered to get her a taxi, she was going to take the subway, he offered to escort her to the station and she accepted. As they walked through the cold rain, she noticed the rain hitting his Stetson and rolling off onto the leather jacket, beading on it and rolling off as if the surface were hydrophobic treated glass rather than fabric. It was subtle and effective, just like Elgin. They came to the subway entrance, and he stood aside to let her go, she smiled, “Good night cowboy.” And then she turned quickly and went down the stairs. <<>> Chapter 14 The Iffrit dines out and our hero finds the night life of New York isn’t to his taste Elgin walked towards the end of Manhattan island as evening life swirled around him. He’d seen these images a thousand times on TV, but the flickering color images had never really meant much to a country boy who’s experience with crowds was limited to the yearly rodeo. The impression had only occasionally given an inkling of the reality, the kinetics of the bodies, the constantly changing smell, the gabbling, hissing, growl of the human, architectural, machine gestalt that was the city. He walked to the twin towers memorial park, feeling the somber power of the place. He had been a child grieving for his vanished mother when the towers had fallen and his nightmares had long combined her disappearance and the fiery punctuation of the 20th century. He walked south towards Battery Park, his senses became overloaded to the point of numbness, with the glow of the sodium lights he had to look at the intense detail of his surrounding to convince himself that he hadn’t slipped into the shadow realm. The park was lit but had plenty of dark corners, and he walked out of one of those patches into the dim orange twilight of shadow realm night. He looked around and the park was almost unchanged, looking back he was surprised to see the city rising in orange limned silver and black. Lights flickered and drifted behind the vast vertical planes of glass, making firefly random patterns. It made sense he realized, so many souls lived here, knew it intimately, they prevented the erratic decay he was more used to. Smiling he turned and started to run, the universe unfolded within and around him and the Iffrit was racing across the park like a cheetah, at the very last moment before reaching the esplanade he made one huge bound, unfolding his wings and he was airborne, with slow powerful flaps he accelerated out over the harbor climbing as he went. Senses scanning, the Iffrit mapped the city and part of the quantum computer that was its core matched what could be seen in the shadow realm compared to what the anchor realm map databases said. Tired of the thin drabness of the shadow realm the Iffrit twisted back into the anchor realm after he had passed over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and started to fly roughly parallel to the shore of Long Island. His skin absorbed electromagnetic waves leaving him a black hole in the night sky. He let his muscles do the work, soaring on a few sluggish thermals and beating his wings only as he needed to. By the time he was level with the end of Long Island, he began a long glide exercising the natural senses of a predator attuned to prey. He honed in on an area quite quickly, there were ships, boats, one brightly lit, the others dark, fishing. They were taking in fish and there were some reasonable sized sharks as well as some warm blooded sea hunters. It had been an age since he had hunted the sea and Elgin - Iffrit couldn’t help himself, with a siren scream of joy he rolled over and furled his wings and fell straight down. Air rushed past as the dive accelerated, halfway down his wings opened a little as he started to line up on the shark that was foolishly drifting towards the surface. -o- Calvin Dorsey was out in the Atlantic on a cold fall night because he liked being at sea and loved being paid. The pair of scientists had chartered the Sea Rider for three nights of trolling with their electronic gear during what was normally a dead season. Their gear was pretty conventional, four yellow metal and plastic fish that formed some kind of hydrophone array set to listen for aquatic mammal sounds, whale song. They had been doing this every three weeks for the past year, trying to create some kind of ‘profile’ of marine mammal activity. Why what they were doing was different from a hundred other projects Dorsey had heard over the years was beyond him, and the pair spent a lot of their time together in the cabin or cuddled up together on the fantail, laughing and giggling, but their checks went through so he didn’t care. He checked the radar, shipping to the south, over the horizon, he could make out the rain that was falling on New York proper, but it was moving more north than east and they should stay dry. The sky above him had some clouds but also a silvery full moon and all the stars one would ever want to try and count. Then he caught a flicker of movement in the sky, for a moment silhouetted against the silver white of a cloud he saw a winged shape, birdlike and yet subtly not. Then it was gone, and he frowned confused, the shape had seemed to be a long way away and very high, but the silhouette had been big. And he didn’t know of birds that flew at night over the Atlantic, particularly going north in the fall. Calvin grabbed his pair of night vision goggles. The world was shades of green, including the sky, the moon was impossibly bright. He scanned the sky, nothing. Had he been dreaming? From above, and roughly in the direction of the apparition, he heard a sound he could only think of a a mix between a roar and basso coyote howl. He twisted and there was a shadow, black against the sparkling green of the sky. It grew terrifyingly quickly, then wings extended and it passed with ripping hiss. The sea split as the fast moving flyer hit the sea and then it was beating the air hard and something wet, fishy and huge hung from the creature’s clawed feet, then quite clearly he saw it reach down and pull the shark around to face the direction of flight, reaching back with fore legs. Then fisher and catch were accelerating away from him and it faded into the green sparkles of the background. He put the night vision goggles down with shaking hands, he’d seen that maneuver before, an osprey or other fishing eagle ‘hitting’ a surface basking fish. He’d never imagined he’d see something that could pull a ten foot or better shark out of the sea and fly away with it. “Hey Mr. Dorsey what the hell was that all about?” It was the girl scientist, Trisha, Dr. Trisha something, her cuddle bunny another PhD, Dr.Denny something or other, was on the steps his head pushed up under her arm. Calvin shook his head, “Damned if I know, did you see anything?” Trish shook her head, “We heard something like a sealion roar or the like, then you were yelling, and something flew past really low, at least that’s what it sounded like, then something hit the sea, there was some other noises then nothing. Whatever it was that hit the sea was close enough that we got some spray. Was it some kind of plane? Do we need to go back and look for survivors?” Still numb and dumb Calvin stared at the pair, and shook his head, and finally got out, “Wasn’t a plane.” Denny pointed at Calvin’s hand resting on his goggles, “You had your goggles on, you see anything? The camera catch anything?” Calvin grabbed it up with a jerk, “Blast it, I’d forgotten about that, let’s see.” He checked the radar and autopilot and then dodged down into the cabin, the pair of scientists met him. He plugged the camera, mounted so it ‘looked’ down the right eye piece, into the display screen. The big flat-screen lit up green, jiggling and rolling, blooming and sparkling as the tube caught the moon, a bright star or a distant ship light. Then it firmed up on a blot of pure black that grew quickly. He slowed the frame rate, the shape was just that at first, a blackness against the dark green, a hole in the night. It was just a rounded something falling more than approaching, then it sprouted stubby wings and began its approach, the blackness had no texture not interior details, but it gave the impression of a great bird of prey. Then it snapped past and for an instant it was in profile. “Oh Jesus God protect us, that’s no bird.” The profile of the head might have passed, the wings were birdlike, but the two sets of limbs and the tail had not the faintest resemblance to any bird. The creatures legs, all four of them unfolded just before it hit the water, the sea exploded around it and then its great wings were beating the air hard. The shape in the black monsters claws was silvery green, its tail and form identifying it as a shark, and one of the bigger ones. “That was a dragon, a fishing dragon?” Denny whispered. Trish ran the video back, “Look at the head? I think it’s got a beak, and the body, just as it was about to strike it looked like a cat, I think it’s a Gryphon.” Denny, who was the real geek of the pair was looking troubled, “There’s something damn strange about it though, don’t you see it’s black, all black?” “Yeah, a black Gryphon, so?” Trish sounded possessive. The boy scientist shook his shaggy head, “No, the amplifiers don’t see color, just photons, the more photons hit the detector the brighter the image. Look at the sky, even the sky glows green, a few photons reflected by the air. But your Gryphon is black, it’s a silhouette of what’s not there, there’s not the faintest trace of reflected light. We can see it because it’s silhouetted against the noise in the background. It’s as if we’re looking at a hole in the universe.” -o- Elgin stood in the shadows of the riverside park and tried to settle his stomach. The Iffrit had eaten two sharks, apparently enjoying them but Elgin hadn’t gotten used to eating his meat raw, he’d blanked out the first few times the Iffrit had fed but not recently. He’d enjoyed the steak with Zeph because it was good, it was great to spend time with her, and because he hadn’t eaten beef in six weeks, since the last time the Iffrit’s hunger drove him into the mountains to hunt elk. He’d landed further north on the island, near Chinatown, his hotel was on the far edge of Chinatown. A nice mid-priced establishment, that charged more per night than Elgin made in week. Standing there he ‘felt’ the distortion in the realms that indicated that a significant talisman was nearby and active, it had an ancient, familiar ‘feel’ to the Iffrit. Elgin started to walk, a winding path towards the source. The eerie familiarity was joined by others, the spices and nastier odors weren’t that different from what Cutter-Iffrit had smelt when he traveled China in past millennia. Even now, well after midnight there was a bustle, some of the shops and restaurants were still open serving the warehouses and work houses that still hung on here. He walked down one street and suddenly found himself in a very different area, decrepit and no longer trying to put a faintly oriental gloss on raw brick and concrete. The talisman focus was nearby, below ground and ‘it’ was unhappy, inasmuch as a piece of man shaped matter imbued with emanations of many thousands of human souls could be said to ‘be’ anything. Elgin could feel both electronic and human watchers as he walked down the street towards the next cross road. From that direction he could hear music, and see a faint wash of flickering colors. The five story building had a covered walk in front, and in front of that an oddly old fashioned, out of place, chevroned row of parking slots, most of them filled. Down the street in a bulldozed building lot, two big rigs sat idling and some more cars, smaller, much older ones, were huddled across the street in the shadow of another abandoned building. The brick front rose up, the shadows made complex by the long gone bricklayers artistry. The windows were mostly dark except for a glint here and a crack there. But they all glowed in the frequencies of heat and blurs moved in inscrutable ways behind the glass and thick curtains. The bottom level had two entrances, one boarded up, the other glowing with garish flashing lights that said Bar, Saloon, Speak Easy, Pub and the equivalent in a rainbow of scripts and ideograms. There was also the neon tube outline of a naked woman shaking what she had. After studying the front Elgin turned to continue his walk, he knew what the place was and the probable source of the talisman’s discontent but there was nothing he could do right now. As he was about to turn the next corner he twisted slightly to look at the building out of the corner of his eye. It stood tall, alone, dark, brooding, nothing to attract one’s attention, in fact it was actively shunning his attention. When he turned the corner he found that his human mind could no longer remember what he had seen, but had no desire to figure out what it was he had forgotten. It felt odd to ‘see’ that he had forgotten something, to sense the manipulation. The talisman’s magic was being used, someone with the ability to manipulate magic was involved. The place had a sense of permanence, the surrounding streets a sense of outward pressure that said the bordello had been there for a long time. It was almost a rift realm without the spacial distortion. “Didn’t anybody tell you it’s not safe to walk the streets at night cowboy?” the relatively well dressed thug who stepped out of the doorway to block the sidewalk asked in rather poor Mandarin. “I was a little lost, just trying to return to my hotel.” Elgin replied in the same language. He wasn’t surprised that he knew the language, it came with what he was now. There was another man standing a little behind the first one and there were two behind him. They were all armed with guns, knives and weapons for simple beatings, including steel toed boots. Elgin’s fist balled and relaxed, the air around him began to imperceptibly thicken space distorted and swirling swarms of nanos formed up. “You looking for something? It certainly looked like you were looking for something.” The thug continued to stroll forward. “Should I have been? As I said I’m on my way to my hotel.” He pointed, “A couple of blocks that way and then a bit north.” “What brings you to New York, cowboy.” The question was pointed, hostile even in Mandarin. “Family business,” Elgin replied quietly. “Long way from home for family business.” Elgin shrugged, “This is where the lawyers are.” The well dressed thug smiled, “Isn’t that the truth.” He started to walk casually forward, waving the man behind him forward, “You speak Mandarin very well for a round eye.” “Thank you, a business necessity these days,” Elgin smiled just as falsely. The thug patted Elgin on the back as he passed, “Take care of yourself cowboy, don’t come back, this can be a dangerous neighborhood.” The nanites told Elgin that the other man’s pat had attached a tracking bug to his jacket. Elgin let it stay and continued his walk. A few streets over the pseudo oriental gloss returned along with a little more bustle and life. He picked up a shish kabob of dumplings and stood eating them slowly. There was something about the bug. *Its not just electronic, it is linked back to something in the brothel, unlike the electronic bug it has an almost unlimited range though it will wear off in a few hours, still, longer than the bug is likely to last,* Cutter-Iffrit whispered, *It will track you whether or not you remove the electronic bug.* Elgin mulled this over, he did not like the idea of giving away his identity. Cutter silently agreed with him. It was lucky that he had the Iffrit and his cell phone, the two were much better than any tablet or laptop, in five minutes he was walking towards a new destination. -o- Wu Tao, or Fenton Tao Wu as his driving license said, prowled the richly furnished parlor of his apartment in his formal coat, ankle length, heavy silk with real gold embroidery. He was upset but not quite sure about what. He stopped in the middle of the room and stared at his totem, a carving of white jade older than history. In his eyes the totem glowed faintly, a green tinted white, and there was slow swirl of something looping inside. No one else saw the glow or the internal swirl. Right now the totem appeared to be about two feet high, a detail-less statue of a cloaked and hooded, faintly feminine figure. But if he looked away and then back it would be some other shape, still glowing white jade, still feminine, but it might be a foot high stone age totem, with bulging belly, sagging dugs and other details. It had never been the same shape twice since he had become the Keeper. No one else saw the changes, photos of the totem always showed a faintly detailed smiling goddess with a bulging belly, about eighteen inches high, the way he had seen it when he first arrived. He had been the keeper of the statue for most of his life. He had been borne to a poor rural family he didn’t remember. He remembered some traveling troop of entertainers arriving at his village, making life fun for a few days, and then they had left. A few nights later he had found himself bound and gagged in the back of one of their rattle trap pony carts and he had never seen his home or family again. For a year his home, along with a half dozen other ‘stolen boys’ had been an ancient hill fort in the desert interior and there he had been schooled in magic. Or at least tested for the aptitude and schooled in the basic mind discipline required. Tao had been a quick learner and he’d been rated highly, for what the masters wanted. None of the other boys had done as well, and two had simply vanished, one at a time, never to be mentioned again. At eight years old he’d found himself on his way to the US to be the helper of the last keeper. The keeper had been old when Tao arrived, a little old man tottering around in his sub basement warren with his thousands of books and magazines. The old man had hated Tao from the beginning, because, unlike the dried up old stick, Toa had reveled in the debauchery that was the specialty of the Ugly Palace of Lonely Doves. The old man did what he did under protest. Every time a new girl was brought to be bound the old man looked like he would cry like a girl, Tao heard him being sick sometimes after a disposal and when he had to send out the hunting pack the old man would be useless for days afterward. The old man had made himself suffer by living in a dirty dusty warren under the first basement, so he could not hear what went on above so clearly. The old man had held back on Tao’s training, he had made no bones about despising Tao, and Tao had reciprocated. The house master and the Madam had taken Tao under their wing, seeing in him a kindred spirit. What Tao had undergone under their tutelage could be called abuse of the most heinous and obscene kind, but he had given as much as he got from the very first. At fifteen Tao had been sick of the old man’s constant harangues, of his dribbles of magical lore. But for all that the Keeper hated Tao he had hated his duties worse, and the Keeper had taught his apprentice the binding, and the opening, how to set the hunting pack loose. Only towards the end had the old one taught his apprentice the basics of the glamour that hid the house from eyes that would seek it in disapproval, and the wards that blew dust in the eyes of those who did not need to see. There was always the one thing that he had kept back, had kept hidden, had hated almost more than anything else but would not teach Tao, his apprentice, the secret of the disposal. A few months before his sixteenth birthday there was a very rare argument between the keeper and the house master. The group the house master hated more than any other was journalists, crusading journalists even more, and female crusading journalists worst of all. Ballie Briant had been the master’s worst nightmare. A lean half African, half Asian, American with the energy of a ferret and the nose of a bloodhound. How she learnt of the Palace’s existence was a mystery and how she had found out so much about it even more so, the woman had even been inside the Palace at least once. Ballie was always secretive, but when getting ready for her new ‘scoop’ she made a mistake, and word got back to the master. Of course he had gone to the Keeper in a rage, and beaten out of the old man an admission that he had ‘seen’ Ballie for months as a threat, but had hidden it, knowing the measures the master would take. The house master had beaten the old man half to death before commanding Tao to send the hunting pack to pick up Ballie. Tao had hidden after carrying out the house masters instructions, knowing that in his rage the huge thug might beat him on general principle. He’d found a hiding place in the rafters not far from the figurine of the goddess, the totem they drew magic from. From his hiding spot he could see the back half of the room. So it was that he had been there when the hunting pack had dragged a bloodied and bruised but still defiant Ballie Briant down to the basement. There they had stripped her naked and left her huddled on the floor in front of the house master and the old keeper. That day Tao had found out that humans can withstand torture, powerful drugs, and the equivalents in magic, used to try and pry the truth out, if they are stubborn enough, but the cost to body and soul were horrific.. At the very end, the house master had dragged the bloody rag doll of Ballie Briant to the back of the main room, into the odd ceramic tiled shower room and left the woman in a bleeding pile in one corner. “Dispose of her.” Had been his order as he stalked, thwarted, up the basement steps. The old man had gone to a chest that Tao had never seen opened before and opened it. Had taken out what looked like a spear, with a blunt tip. From another section of the case he had opened another small box and extracted something small and green, which fitted on the end of the little spear giving it a sharp green tip. As the keeper had approached the naked Ballie, the woman had looked up with the one eye that could still open, “Old man, why you doing this? You hate this, why keep on?” She lifted a hand in supplication. “I’ll help you if you help me, get the police here and that bastard will never see the light of day again.” He kept shuffling forward as he spoke, almost intoned, “I am too steeped in evil to be saved, and I know nothing but what I know. Beyond this basement is a world unknown. All I have is my books and my goddess. May she receive your soul gently.” Ballie made one last try, her hand trying to slap the spear aside, but the old man had done this so terribly many times before, he dodged the strike and pressed the tip against the woman’s bare chest and then stepped back. The journalist had looked down at the green dot on her chest, “Why that didn’t ev....” and she slumped over, dead. The keeper pulled back, slammed the door closed and flipped up a valve. Tao had heard that sequence before, from down below. The old man had stood in front of the shower door listening to the hiss of the water for a while then he had turned and returned the spear to its chest but left it open. Then he had looked up directly at Tao. “You can come down now rat. I have a lesson for you.” The old man’s voice had been stronger than it had been in a long while, even though the bruises of the earlier beating were making themselves seen and there was dried blood on his brow, lips and beard. Tao had dropped neatly to the floor, some of the girls were gymnasts, there was even a little gymnasium at the back of the Palace and he practiced there and got them to show him how to do it. “It’s a pretty rat, but a rat nonetheless.” The old man smiled, showing a bloody mouth with a newly missing tooth. “You’ve always wanted to know the secret of the disposal, well there you have it rat. It’s not magic, or at least not directly. The Green Fang is almost certainly magical in some way but it does not take magic to use it.” “It’s just a quick poison, why is it called the disposal old man?” Tao waved at the shower, “That’s just water, cold water, and there’s no pit under it, the drain goes to the old sewer. What do you do with the bodies.” The old man grinned like a bloody deaths head and stepped back to the door, “See for yourself rat.” It was the one time in his life that Tao remembered screaming in horror. The slumping, melting thing in the chamber still looked far too human even if the very bones were beginning to turn to jelly the hair and skin was mostly liquefied and gone leaving raw meat, tendons and bulging organs. The stench was not of rot, but of something far, far worse. The old keeper was gagging by the time he slammed the door closed again. “So rat, that is the fate of most of us who exist in this decaying pile of parasitic crap in the center of the city that never sleeps.” The next morning the old man had sent Tao to ‘neaten’ the stall. He turned the water off and gingerly opened the door. There was no residual smell, no residual anything, except for a few pieces of metal in the corner where Ballie had died. Tao had crouched down to look. The ceramic, metal and enamel of a bridge and the metal of two fillings, a shining metal surgical pin that had been used to heal some bone break, one plastic sack with some kind of liquid inside. A breast implant he realized at last. The only things left of Ballie were those parts that had not been ‘natural.’ Tao had carefully picked up the seven items that had once been part of Ballie and put them in a small box as a memento. Later that day he had opened the Green Fang box, inside were eight items. A small crossbow and two tiny quarrels, their tips ready for fangs. A sword, a saber but with a place at the tip for a fang. A dagger with place for a fang in a recess in the hilt, the shield spring loaded so if you drove the pommel into your opponent they would get the fang. The spear like weapon the old man had used and the box with the Green Fangs themselves. The box opened to show a felt lined interior, the fangs in individual slots, they looked artificial at first, deep green cones with tips that seemed to fade to black, about the size of medium almonds. The only thing that showed their natural origin was a faint veining of red in the green. That evening old man had gone upstairs to the bar and come back with a huge margarita with salt crystals on the rim. He had eaten his usual sparse meal of rice and fish soup with some vegetables, sipping the margarita all the while. He watched Tao over the rim with eyes that seemed to look through the apprentice and into some far distant land. “Rat,” the old man’s voice had been soft, mocking, “You are well fitted for this place. I never was. The keeper I apprenticed with was like you, he reveled in the debauchery, degradation and death that this place embodies. When I first learnt what this place was I tried to run away, but there was no escaping the keeper. When I was older I tried to help the girls, but they came and they went or they died just the same, I just made their time worse by giving them a little bit of hope. Older yet and I conceived an infatuation with one of the femmes de hotel, one of the beauties who go to the men instead of serving them here. I tried to make her run away with me. She told the House master and laughed as I was beaten. A year later she tried to escape with one of her beau’s. The hunting pack brought her back, stripped her of all her finery and pushed her into the stall. She was sobbing, begging for her life, pleading with the master, the keeper, with me. And she was so surprised when I pushed in the fang. I screamed and screamed and screamed until I coughed up blood as I watched her melt away and flush down the drain.” The old keeper’s face had never lost its slight smile as he told the tale. Tao had a hard time understanding what the old man was trying to say and the old man saw how little Tao understood and his smile had grown slightly. The old keeper had taken a last sip, licked a last crystal of salt off the rim with a wistful smile then gotten up from the table with a faint wobble, he’d drunk most of the margarita by then. “Woo, oh that’s just about right.” He steadied himself, grinned at Tao, “Well rat, I would wish down curses on your head and destroy you and this place if I could but I am a tool first and a tool always.” He’d walked towards the stall, he’d shrugged his skinny shoulders and suddenly he was naked except for the fanged dagger. He’d stepped into the stall, smiled at Tao, “Rot in hell rat,” and pressed the hilt against his chest. He’d collapsed, dead the next second. The corpse was already beginning to liquefy before Tao reached the stall door. All he could do was slam it shut and turn on the water to flush the old man away. There had been no mementos in the stall for Tao to keep. So Tao had gotten rid of everything that the old man had ever treasured...except of course the totem, the old man’s goddess. Fenton-Tao rubbed his face, why had that old memory come back he wondered.... There was a knock at the door, “Come.” The exquisite little greeter in her sheer silk over jacket and harem pants opened the door and bowed, “Lord the Mistress of the house and your Runner.” She bowed herself out. Deborah O’Hara or Debohorror was a dominatrix and looked the part, almost six foot in stocking feet, she was impressive on her preferred platform heels, not particularly pretty, she was striking, particularly with metallic red hair cut in a modified pageboy. Right now she was dressed as what she was, a businesswoman, the house mistress, Fenton’s second in command. She looked tired, but then it was nearly the end of the Palace’s long ‘business day.’ “Damn it Fenton, that monster Franks killed another of my girls,” she was white lipped. The evidence of the crime was brought in on a stained sheet and silently carried to the stall and rolled onto the tiles like a piece of meat instead of a blonde girl who had never seen her twentieth birthday. “I hope it wasn’t one of our earners?” Tao replied calmly. “He’s brain dead, not me Fenton, it was one of the Chechen chits from Boris’s latest container.” Tao sniffed, he’d threatened to dispose of Boris if he ever delivered such a clutch of ugly, face, pocked foundlings again. No loss there. “Franks is an important customer Debs, and he pays for his play.” “He’s a monster, none of the girls will go with him voluntarily, I had to drug this one.” “Then drug them.” Fenton gave the house mistress a straight look, and her full lips pressed together hard, which emphasized the lines her thick makeup tried to hide. Nguyn, Tao’s runner, or head of security, lounged against the door frame, “Not much to report, we did have an odd one, a big round eyes, in cowboy get up mind you, wandered past, first time I’ve seen a pedestrian on Fong Drive in pretty much forever.” Tao spun, “When?” “About one thirty. We braced him and put a trace on him. He seemed a bit confused, maybe drunk but he wasn’t really tottering.” The younger man shrugged. That wasn’t when the totem had begun to ‘feel’ strange, but it might be about the time the strangeness had begun to relax. “Hey Fenton, like what you did with big belly gal there.” Deb said, pulling out a cigarette and lighting up. Tao turned to look at the totem, to his eyes it glowed as usual, this time it was a naked dancer, head thrown back, arms wide, legs caught in mid kick, for all its detail-less smoothness it was incredibly expressive and wildly free. “Ah, what Deb?” He turned back with an enquiring smile. She looked at him as if he was crazy, “All lit up like that, you got a little lava lamp stuck up her ass or something?” “Oh the lighting, its been there all along, I just got around to fixing it,” Tao lied easily. Nguyn was frowning, his eyes flicking from totem to Tao to Deb, it was fairly obvious that he didn’t see any glow emanating from the figurine. The old Keeper had warned him that his ‘goddess’ loved women more than men and to never let a woman touch it. Tao turned away from his two senior managers and walked to the chest by the stall. He pulled out the spear and one of the fangs, applied it to the already dead girl without looking at her, shut the door and turned on the water. He put the spear back and locked the chest. When he looked at the totem it was looking back at him, a kneeling mother with a babe suckling at her breast, the detail-less face still seemed to be staring straight at him, determined as ever to carry on, whatever the burden. “Guy, get the others, I want to talk to your cowboy.” Tao began to run the lines of the pack summoning through his head. “Bit late, people will start to be moving in a couple of hours” “Now Guy, just be quick.” He turned away muttered the first passage of the raising, letting the words guide his mind through the flow. Deb had turned and left at the first touch of rising magic, Tao had noticed she was sensitive before, but it was getting stronger, maybe it was long term exposure to him? He’d have to explore that possibility. -o- Elgin lay on the bed fully clothed except for his jacket and boots and watched the TV on the wall. The room in the down market hotel, just above what might be called a flop house, had been about what he expected, dingy, not exactly dirty, but not clean, the wallpaper faintly gray and distinctly faded where sunlight had hit it for too many years, the carpet a lot grayer than it had looked when new, where there weren’t cigarette burns, odd discolorations and the occasional slab of ground in chewing gum. It had probably been a good thing that no one had barged into the room for the first half hour of his occupancy, they would have left screaming, sure that some demonic fungus had spawned here and was getting ready for world conquest. But once the nanites had finished the room was transformed. Mostly back to what it might have looked like when it was new and well cared for, creams and light teal, gleaming gold finished fittings and highly polished light oak furniture, though the big flat panel TV on the wall that had replaced the incredibly old vacuum tube model on a dresser, would have been a revelation to the original staff. Among other things Elgin debated before he drifted off to sleep was whether he would leave the room like this or return it to its original near filth. -o- Alpha, known most of the time as Ho-Wu Nguyn or Guy to most who knew him, moved with the loose limbed grace of a dancer, his mind a kaleidoscope of images and sensations, almost as if he had eight pairs of eyes, ears, nostrils, instead of just one. The Alpha reveled in the sensation, in the utterly sublime now, no distractions of self, future, or past, however hard his quarry ran or fought, he always felt rested. The dingy hall flowed back around him and the door he was waiting for appeared. The door had an old mechanical lock, no matter, the tool worked on any lock. He pressed the glistening black sphere against the lock and heard the soft click. He was a little surprised when a quick check showed that the security latch hadn’t been flipped into action. The cowboy was a real country bumpkin. His nose twitched, the air in the room was warm and it smelt odd, and the light he could see inside had an odd quality. But the Alpha was not one for introspection, he pressed in, striding past the closet sized bathroom, his backup on his heels. The cowboy jerked up and quick began a quick roll, when Guy’s tazer hit him, turning the roll into a spastic thrash. Then Roj was on him with the contact tazer and its built in tranquilizer. It was then that Alpha looked around at the room and blinked, it was utterly out of place here, neat, clean, sparkling new, the low energy light fixtures providing a warm glow and the air fresh and smelling faintly crisp. It was wrong but Guy the Alpha wasn’t interested in things outside his pack and its needs, the pack master had ordered the cowboy be brought back to the palace, that was what mattered. Roj slung the unconscious man over his shoulder as if he weighed nothing, Guy swept the room picking up jacket, boots, wallet and cell phone, carefully pulling the battery out of the phone before pocketing it. He switched the lights off as he stepped out into the dingy gray and faintly moldy smelling hall. The two pack members outside told him it was still clear, the pair in the lobby had made sure the manager wasn’t paying attention to the video feeds from the upper floors and the two on the stairwells had disabled the cables to this floor. By the time Guy and Roj reached the ground floor the nondescript midsized car was waiting for them. The first car was already driving slowly back, the follower pulled out a few hundred feet behind Guy’s vehicle. The pack was always cautious, but they had carried out this operation a thousand times before, and just like every other time, they left no physical trace of their presence other than by what was missing. By the time they reached the palace their prisoner was awake but silent. Guy had a creepy feeling that the cowboy was almost amused, he also felt faintly itchy as well, which made him irritable. The small convoy all turned into the old factory building across the alley from the Palace and parked. Roj was not gentle hauling their cuffed and manacled prisoner out of the back seat of the dirty brown car. They went to the hatch that opened to reveal the stairs down to the tunnel that crossed to the Palace. At the far end of the dank and dark tunnel a heavy steel door with a brick facing swung in giving them access to the foyer to the masters rooms. There one of the master’s little receptionists was waiting, big sad eyes and emaciated body barely hidden by the sheer silk jacket over the pantaloons. “The master has retired for the night, the prisoner is to be put in the hole and then you are freed of the master’s enchantment.” She rushed through the words and tapped a big Tibetan cylinder bell with a leather headed hammer. The sound seemed to ring down to Guy’s bones. Roj pulled the unresisting cowboy back into the tunnel, and then down the low, stinking brick tunnel slanting down. There instead of fighting with the cowboy about what came next Roj simply taz-tranked him again. -o- Elgin woke up irritated, his head ached, he could feel the sore spots where he’d been tazer-tranqued and he could feel several areas of abrasion bruising he could not account for. The world beyond his closed eyelids was dark, there was an odd dullness to the air he breathed in, but someone had laid him on something like a feather bed. *Stop feeling sorry for yourself, you knew you weren’t in any danger.* Cutter-Iffrit chuckled into the back of his mind. *And you could not be more wrong.* He opened his eyes fully and found it was utterly dark, the air he was breathing was cold, damp and rank, his body was cool and he could sense the rough cut lumber he was lying on, lumber that was soaked with the water that covered the stone and dirt floor of the brick cavern he was being held in. *They took my clothes!* Elgin almost shrieked that out loud, “You bastards let them knock me out and they stripped me!?* He struggled to sit up, the odd feeling of being wrapped in a down sleeping bag continued, he could sense he was almost touching the damp, rotting wood, almost but not quite. *Calm down, settle down, rest, they weren’t interested in you’re body...much, this is just one of their ways of breaking prisoners.* Elgin sensed Cutter holding back some much cruder comments. Giving up the struggle Elgin let himself slump back to the wooden pallet, and the sense of warm softness intensified, the stink of the air faded and he could sense the room though he couldn’t ‘see’ it in the normal sense. All brick, relatively rough work this had been some kind of storage room ,like the building that was currently a bordello it had been built more than a century before. *“I suppose this was your way of getting inside without having to go through the front door?* he sub-vocalized at the voices in his head. *There is something very badly wrong here Elgin. I didn’t know that they’d come after you so directly but it was too good a chance to miss, at least that was the decision when the pack broke into the room.* *How did they get that close, I thought that you had set up some kind of warning device?* Cutter-Iffrit grunted, *“I set a simple physical scan and a simpler ward, the pack just walked past them.* *The pack, as in a werewolf pack?* *No, a hunting pack, it’s an old magic and very powerful in its way. It ties a group of humans, usually of the same sex and general disposition together into a meta entity. It suppresses the most of the individuals ‘self’ and individuality, but links awareness and senses so that what one is aware of, all are aware of and they act as one, and because individuals have no sense of self preservation they are very fast, utterly fearless and ruthless, a very frightening combination. A pack will trigger instinctual responses in other humans, people will tend to avoid looking in the direction of the pack and to walk away from the pack, without realizing what they are doing.* *So was it the pack what worried you?* *No, the pack is neither good nor bad in itself, and I sense a token of great age and great goodness tied to all this but there is something that is utterly evil as well, utterly evil and very, very new. Nearby.* *Can you, we, use some kind of spell to find it, uhh, why can’t we just shift into the shadow realm and go looking?* Elgin found that he didn’t like laying naked in the darkness of an enemy’s jail cell, he wanted to be up and doing something. *The magic user would detect us as soon as we started manipulating the realms. The totem would react as well and they might know enough to come after us.* *Uh, aren’t we using magic, manipulating the realms, right now?* *No, or at least only a tiny and very diffuse amount, you’ve read enough to know that futurists are talking about nano technology, that’s what we’re using right now.* Elgin really wanted to do something other than lay in his insubstantial down wrapper, *Even if they came after us we could just go into the shadow realm, get to the surface, manifest the Iffrit and take them down!* *And kill everybody in the building, and probably leave some very obvious traces of our presence here Elgin.* *I’m pretty sure whoever was on that fishing boat saw us at the sushi take out last night!* Elgin snapped in irritation. Another sigh, *That’s secondary, yes, but there are innocents in the building, I doubt if the women are all complicit in what is happening here. I rather suspect they are its primary victims. Young women Elgin, many still teens, some who have never been outside of this building since arriving in America, America the Free!* Cutter’s irony was thick and sharp. Elgin stiffened in anger, then grinned faintly at himself, getting angry at the voices in his head was probably not going to get him any relief. And part of his anger was at himself for not caring, for a moment, about the ‘collateral damage’ a stand up fight would cause. *Okay, point taken, you have some little nano spies poking around?* *Better than that, the piping and wiring of the building all pass nearby and I’ve grown a data network though the whole building and have thousands of tiny ears listening and eyes seeing, and recording everything.* Cutter-Iffrit sounded smug. It took Elgin a while to ask the next question, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know, or if he wanted to see, particularly since he wasn’t sure how his body would react to some things. *So, uh, whats going on?* *It’s mid morning Elgin, many are still asleep, the core staff, the administrators and enforcers are up but the girls, and the few boys are asleep. There are a couple of ‘clients’ being serviced, in the normal way. And someone special has arrived, an older and more senior member of the local arm of the Chinese mob, along with a woman who appears to be his arm candy but is not and five enforcers. Three outside with the car which is both heavily armored and armed.* -o- Tao looked at the totem with some frustration, the old keeper’s goddess seemed to look back at him from under jutting brows over a nose and a mouth that seemed almost chimp like. The sagging breasts and bulging belly were quite typical. Most of the features were impressions given by smooth curves, knobs and divots but he felt his soul being inspected and found wanting for the many thousandth time. He bared his teeth at the hunk of jade, “you’re in there, and you do what I tell you, I’m out here and I’m in charge,” he whispered and turned his back on the stone. He felt his mind and body fill with power, he was in charge, whatever the doddering old fool Wo Ping thought, whatever the ‘House’ back in Hong Kong thought. Guy had reported the arrival of new enforcers from over the Pacific a few days ago and it had only been a matter of time before Ping came to call Tao to heel. The monitor showed that the new enforcers looked tough and competent, moving with oiled smoothness, obviously armed, probably wearing light body armor and the car was probably next best thing to a tank. The video also showed that Ping had gotten himself a new mistress. The last one had developed a conscience, which had earned her space in a tiny box in Tao’s storage room. He hadn’t had time or warning to form the pack but that wasn’t an issue, the Palace was his home ground, his fortress. Guy had snipers in the buildings overlooking all four sides of the building. If Ping thought he could muscle Tao in the palace the old man was very much mistaken. A knock and little Jaata bowed, “The honorable Wo Ping of the Mother House enters your presence my master.” The first enforcer was already through the door sniffing the room before she was halfway through the ritual speech, Wo Ping was through before she was done. And the little whore staggered back as one of the two bruisers cuffed her, lightly, back through the door which he closed and locked before turning to stand watching in front of it. Fenton, the man, rather than Tao master and magician, scanned the old man’s new mistress up and down with a appreciation. She was slightly taller than Ping and exquisitely beautiful, porcelain smooth skin, eyebrows that arched perfectly over her wide but still oriental eyes. Her mouth a sweet bow painted a pink that was both becoming and unnatural. Her body was slim but curved and even generous in the right places, her throat tall and straight, her head held proud and her black hair disciplined and stretched to form what looked like a lacquered ebony helmet. She stared back at him calmly then turned to look at Ping, her face calm and untroubled. Tao’s magicians senses told him that the woman was nervous, despite her poise, but she was also confident and ready, though ready for what was impossible to tell. The two gunmen were just calm and hair trigger ready but not actively hostile, they were weapons, nothing more. Tao stared at Ping, “Wo Ping, you honor me today,” He said it in English, a subtle insult. The old man looked poised but he was equal parts angry and afraid. Angry at his masters and at Tao, afraid of his masters and Tao, and the older man hated being either angry or afraid of anything. “I’m here for what is owed the Mother House Fenton. And the Mother House wants to know what has happened to William Pi,” Ping made a small smile at his companion, “My beautiful Alicia’s cousin.” That was going to be a bit complicated Tao decided, but he hid the little worry that triggered, “I have sent the Mother House innumerable gifts, why in the last few days I believe my accountant transferred something like a million Euros to the laundry line.” “The price of the special goods you purchase, nothing more Fenton. Fenton you seem to forget that the Palace is the property of the Mother House, you are the Palace’s Master and Keeper only. You have tens of millions in cash and investments that are the Mother House’s not yours.” Tao didn’t let his smile slip, he’d sensed that someone was probing the accounts a long time ago. He’d thought the breach had been sealed. “There are the house accounts of course but they are there to make sure I have all expenses covered with cash, that is standard practice. The amount of money flowing back to the Mother House has never been higher, I find it hard to believe that the cost of the goods have gone up that much, if so I should purchase more of them here, sometimes the sluts walk in the door and ask for the work.” The girl’s beautiful brown eyes pinned him for a moment, there was no change in expression but inside she was angry. Then she looked away, looking around, then behind Tao, at the totem and her eyes widened slightly. “You have managed your money well Fenton, it took some careful checking to find out that the Palace has been making a lot more money than you let on, for a long time.” Ping’s lips thinned, “William Pi was the investigator, he and some of the clerks and accountants he was using all vanished about the same time.” There was a chirp from Tao’s earpiece, “Boss we have a problem, stations two and three aren’t reporting and there are delivery vans one street over on each side of us, with heavies. I think Ping’s suckered us.” Guy sounded near panic. Tao, saw a glimmer of a smile on the girls lips as she looked at nothing in particular, and a flash of realization hit. He had her relationship with Ping reversed, the old man was her sock puppet. She was the one in control, he saw her fingers tap and felt a coolness, his hackles rose as he realized she was also a magic user and he’d let her into his inner sanctum. Turning away, but opening his awareness, readying his defenses he decided to play for time. “I did notice some attempt at tapping the accounts some time ago. I suppose I should have investigated further. I know that the accounts have been growing very well, but I assumed that the Mother House would be happy with the rather princely, and steadily increasing sums I was sending home.” “But the special product you make such liberal use of is very hard to acquire.” Ping said quietly. Tao looked at the woman, “I have made the Palace more secure and more profitable every year, and I have sent more money back every year.” She looked back at him, her lips curved in a smile, “You are not the obtuse shut in my cousin made out Keeper.” He bowed slightly, ignoring the now stiffly immobile Ping, Tao had no idea what she had done to the old fool and that worried him. “I take it that the Mother House wants a bigger cut?” The sorceress tapped a finger on the wide gold buckle of the belt that wrapped her slender waist. “The old ones think that you should bow to their bidding and turn over all the accounts to the Mother House. But the new blood see things differently, and yes a bigger cut, either a straight yearly amount, or if you are willing to open your books, a percentage that might be less onerous overall?” “Not going down the usual laundry line of course?” She bent her head, “Of course, we have a new one setup.” “And you will provide cover with the ‘old ones’ in the Mother House.” “Of course, as long as that is needed,” her tone indicated that the period would not be long. Tao bowed, “Then we have the bones of an agreement my lady.” “I thought we would.” She opened the little clasp bag she had been carrying and pulled out an envelope, “Here are the terms of the agreement. We can have House lawyers argue our sides over the next few days.” The faint smile left her face as he took the envelope, “I know enough of you to know that my cousin did not survive your discovery of his meddling, regrettable but unavoidable. However his ghost should be carried back to its home. You will return what little remained after the Green Fang had its way with him.” Tao bowed slightly, he found it interesting that he’d never put the memento box in the storage room with the others. He walked to the table with the goddess’ glass case, the figure he saw out of the corner of his eyes was a hooded woman, with her folded hands over a gently curving belly. He picked up the small carved box and returned to the woman, noticing that Ping was still stiff, his face disapproving, with a trickle of drool coming from the corner of his mouth. Extending the box he bowed, “My regrets for the misunderstanding. Of course I will pay the normal blood price.” She took the box, opened the lid to look at the colored contact lenses, pearly white caps and the pin from a repaired leg. Her lips twitched as she snapped the lid closed. “His mistress was paid off and his parents were presented with the normal stipend, your new contributions will be enough.” All he could do in the face of that suspicious magnanimity was bow again. The Sorceress was staring at his goddess again, and now Tao sensed a faint hunger in her gaze. She shook her head sharply, turned to look at him, “My lawyers will be contacting your lawyers after I leave and the negotiations shall begin.” Tao bowed and smiled. Twenty minutes later Guy and Barb were sitting with him drinking a couple of stiff morning pick me ups. “My men never knew the bastards were there till they were down. Descriptions the same, commando ninja gear, knives, pistols, ammo, comm stuff, all in flex webbing over light combat armor, complete professionals. My rat pack tells me that there had to be at least twenty of the fuckers, five per van. Their own little army! What the hell are they planning on doing? That sort of talent and gear ain’t cheap.” Guy swilled his scotch with a grimace. “Ping’s not going to be satisfied with a cut, he’ll let this settle in then he’ll squeeze us some more.” Barb spat, then took a slug of her gin and tonic. “It’s not Ping, it’s the woman, she’s in charge, Ping’s just a puppet now.” Tao let his mouth curl up, Barb tried not to believe in magic and telling her that Ping was little more than a mindless puppet now would just overset her, she’d spend the rest of the day trying to drown all her uncomfortable memories of this place in gin. “They’ll still wring us dry now they have the muscle to make it stick.” Barb took another stiff sip of the concoction, her hand was shaking, she loved dealing out pain but she was a coward at heart. “I doubt Miss Pi really wants to bother with us, she has other fish to cook. As Guy says, that kind of mini army isn’t cheap. If she was going to do that she’d have sent it in without warning and the cleaners would be cleaning up our bloodstains. I don’t know what she’s after but I think I want to be part of it.” Guy grunted, “Times getting away from us, Boss, we have that cowboy in cold storage, you wanted to talk to him?” -o- As the limo pulled away from the dingy bordello Alicia Pi leaned over to check that Wo Ping was sleeping comfortably. She patted his shoulder gently as she leaned back, the old man would wake up with a mix of his own and her memories of the meeting, but he’d ‘remember’ being awake and facing down the half mad sorcerer in his man made cave. The human mind was wonderfully adaptable, Ping’s would accept her memories as being his own, anything else would be unsane. The man sitting across from her looked away from the window, “Why did you call off the attack?” Jason Ho wasn’t the bodyguard he looked like, he was more her equal and partner, though he wasn’t a sorcerer, except with modern technology. She hadn’t lied to the mad one, she did represent a new circle of power but her purpose here wasn’t to redirect money from the old circle. The inner circle, the old circle, had ordered the new circle, the newly powerful sorcerers and sorceresses owing allegiance to the house, to clean up ‘That Mess in New York.’ They had let her bring a significant part of its paramilitary wing to help. She looked down at the tiny wooden box in her lap, she hadn’t known her cousin well, but he’d seemed nice and he’d had a wife and a young son. She looked up at the patiently waiting Jason, “The Goddess told me that we were too late and that we should leave, I should leave the mad one to the justice of the Oldest.” “You sure it wasn’t a spoof of some kind, he’s wily and he was half expecting us. The Black only surprised a few of his watchers. We’re not likely to get back inside his sanctuary again, that was the whole purpose of the bit with Wu Ping and you as arm candy.” She shivered, feeling something terrible rushing towards them. Twisting in her seat she saw the sky behind them was full of rapidly approaching dark gray clouds and her sorcerer’s sight pierced that veil and the veil of near future time to see a raging fire where they had been a few minute’s before. “What’s the matter,” Jason asked, his eyes fixed on her, then flicking to look out the back window, which was filled with the bustle of a New York city street. Alicia swallowed, “Get on the phone, tell your cyber team to get those transfers going, Fenton Wu is not going to have any use for them soon.” She lifted her hand, saw it shaking like leaf. She wanted to scream at the driver to put his foot down and just keep going as fast and as far from that hell hole as it was possible to get. <<>> Chapter 14 The Iffrit does serious damage to New York’s Chinatown and our hero’s day is not done Guy wasn’t feeling good about what had just gone down but he also knew that there wasn’t a great deal he could do about it, especially since he hadn’t a clue what ‘it’ was. Roj and Barb preceded him down the brick tunnel with its barrel vault ceiling, a sign he’d been told that this tunnel was over a hundred years old. Which someone had thought impressive, it just meant it was small dank and dirty as far as Guy could see. Barb had volunteered to help collect the poor bastard who’d attracted the boss’s attention. She loved seeing men cower, or try and bluff her, when they were naked. She was carrying a tazer and a whip, the whip was attached to another tazer circuit, a few lashes and Guy had seen big tough men break down and cry. Roj carried his tranqzer and Guy his silenced forty five revolver. The door to the storage closet opened and Barb ducked inside, “Waky, Waky, lover boy!” She sounded so sweet and jolly. A scrape, then the snap of her lash and a grunt of agony, “Good boy, you got up, so I only gave you one, now get out there and remember I’m the nice one.” She chuckled, or was it a giggle? The tall blond ducked into the hallway, squinting against the light. He didn’t cower, he just stood there. Like most round eyes he was disgustingly hairy, legs and arms not quite matted but heavily furred. Most of his lower torso was covered with red blond fur as well, but it was thin enough to show that he was perfectly fit, muscles well defined under smooth pale skin. Guy looked into the blue eyes and found cool appraisal rather than fear, shame or any of the more typical emotions he saw in prisoners. Guy looked past the cowboy to Barb, who’s expression was unreadable, he turned calling over his shoulder, “Okay, the boss is waiting.” After the sharp snap of Barb’s goad and the gasp from its recipient there was silence. They exited into the foyer, Jaata studiously ignored them as she typed something on the computer set up on her desk. From the side with the light behind it the filmy silk top hid nothing of her slender but ripe body, she had to know that but she was far past caring any longer. The ‘office’ was empty. The huge mahogany desk was bare except for a few neat rectangles of white indicating work in progress. The mahogany stand with the ancient white jade statue of a fertility goddess was at the corner of the desk. There was a round table and matching chairs on the opposite side in a kind of cove in the wall. In the centre of the wall facing the desk was a plain shiny metal door with a faucet on the wall by the handle. Guy knew that bodies or living human’s went into that porcelain shower stall and nothing ever came out, and that the Green Fang poison darts were involved but that was about all. The naked cowboy looked around, “Bit dark down here don’t ya think?” He asked almost conversationally. Barb smiled as she drew her arm back, the cowboy looked at her, “Don’t.” And amazingly, shockingly, her arm dropped. There was a flash of light from the other corner of the room. Guy turned, the goddess was glowing white with a hint of green and flecks of gold, and the figure was no longer the squatting shape, now it was a tall figure, still obviously pregnant but also armored and armed for battle. Barb screamed, her eyes fixed on the glowing statue, the lash and tazer dropped out of her hands as she backed away. Then the boss stepped through the door from the lower level, he had a small crossbow in his hand, the thwok of the steel bow hurling the tiny green tipped dart was very clear. It should have taken the blond man in the stomach, but he was no longer there when the dart passed through that particular section of space and time. Instead it drove into Roj’s left forearm. He lifted the arm to stare at it, then at Guy, he opened his mouth “...”and collapsed, dead. Tao was screaming something at the top of his lungs, not far away the cowboy reappeared, nearer the back wall and the cubicle door. He looked both surprised and a bit irritated, but what shocked Guy was that the blond man was no longer naked, now he was wearing what looked like his normal working clothes, shirt, jeans and riding boots. The bastard was also very quick, turning and diving for cover in the instant of realization that he was no longer invisible. Guy swung his revolver onto target and pulled the trigger, the snap of the ‘suppresed’ shot sounded harmless, but the tall man staggered, however he kept going rolling behind the heavy credenza that held the Green Fang reloads. There was a rushing sound and a flash of white heat and the center of the credenza blew out with a ‘WHOOSH’ of hot gritty air and then started to burn. “Damn him, he’s gone again.” Tao screamed pulling up short of the now flaming piece of furniture. There was an odd yellow smoke coiling out of the fire and the Sorcerer started backing up staring at the burning cabinet, obviously only now realizing what he’d done. “Fuck, damn him, damn him to all the possible hells.” He turned saw Guy, “Get out you fool, you get a whiff of the yellow smoke and your lungs will melt like his, ” Tao pointed down. Guy almost screamed when he saw the ruin of the man who had been his trusted companion and near friend for five years. The arm was already gone and the shoulder and face were collapsing, skin and hair sloughing off, liquefying. Then he was running, Tao turned and slammed the door almost in Guy’s face. The two men stood panting on the other side of the door. The fire alarm was toning and Guy could hear the water hammer sound of the sectionalized water sprinkler operating. Jaata was crouched behind her desk. “What the hell happened?” Guy forced past his almost frozen vocal cords, what should have been a howl of fury was a growling whisper. “Another fucking sorcerer, two in one day, incredible, I would have said impossible, are they breeding like flies these days?” Tao turned made a reaching motion, fingers moving and he spoke some words, and the goddess appeared on the desk next to Jaata, who screamed and fainted. Tao pulled something out of his pocket, a Glock pocket nine millimeter, “You traitorous bitch.” He pointed the gun and fired three times in quick succession at the statue. Which turned out to be a bad idea, the first shot should have shattered the jade, instead it careened off as if the jade were armor steel, all three bullets became screaming richochets making both Guy and Tao duck. The statue glowed white green again, a glow with gold glints that swelled to enclose Jaata. And then the goddess and Jaata were gone. The building shook slightly and the fire alarm took on a new intensity. There were shots from upstairs and women’s screams, perhaps a few men’s as well. “No, No, NO...you won’t take it from me!” Tao screamed, and brandishing the Glock he raced for the stairs. Two of the women from the upstairs barracks stopped dead in their tracks, threw down the bundles they were carrying and threw up their hands as Tao burst through the main bar, but he ignored them as he ran for the stairs with Guy in pursuit, Guy couldn’t formulate any other plan than follow his boss. At the top of the stairs Tao stopped, almost sending Guy tumbling back down. The sorcerer spun and put his hand in the middle of Guy’s chest, Tao’s eyes were filled with a mad light, his voice was hoarse as he chanted something that seemed familiar, with a shock Guy recognized the Pack Summoning, for the first time in his life he pulled back, “Oh, no, no, no you....” but he couldn’t finish the words, could no longer even finish the thought or conceive of having ever thought about rejecting his master. The pack was hurt, two of the eight were dead, but something about the summoning had been different, and others were pulled into the gestalt, their selves shattering against the raw out pouring of power from the sorcerer and the implacable will of the Alpha and his pack. Now there were seventeen, some who were odd to the Alpha but he spent no time worrying about the difference, instead he sent the pack questing for the usurper. -o- Elgin felt his body healing the gunshot wound in his side as he made his way up through the building’s dimly orange shadow. Below and behind he felt the ancient fetish with its kindly but creepily alien sentience slip away and fade into the distance. It left behind a raging hunger and a knot of near absolute blackness. The shadow realm dimmed and chilled as if the ancient goddess had been all that had warmed this place. Near the top of the stairs Elgin popped back into existence, the small man with his back to Elgin and the stairs was pointing a gun at a group of scantily clad blonde girls huddled in a dingy hall. The girls eyes widened when they saw Elgin, and the guard spun, to meet a palm strike in the side of the jaw, Elgin stripped the gun out of the staggering thugs hand and sent him tumbling down the stairs. The fire alarm was still braying, “Get out of here, there’s a fire,” he yelled it in a language he’d never heard before, as he waved the girls to the stairs. Their eyes bulged and then they were running, screaming, crying, sobbing their thanks in that foreign language as they went. He saw that most of them had bundles of clothes, and shoes in their hands. There were some more squeals as the girls got to the bottom of the stairs, one pretty clear, “The bastards dead, the big one broke the yellow bastard’s neck.” Elgin moved towards the main front to back hallway then ducked back as a burst of gunfire riddled the plasterwork at torso level. Risking a quick transit through the now almost unbearably cold shadow realm he pushed through a ghostly door and leapt across a room and out another door, diving for the floor he twisted back into the real world. Finding himself lined up on a harsh faced older woman with a stubby machine pistol, he didn’t give her a chance to point it at him, the cheap nine millimeter he’d taken off the other thug jammed after the second shot but the guard went down, leaving a bloody streak on the wall. The machine pistol was a MP5, with all the mod cons, tac light, laser and holographic tactical sight. Elgin felt sick rolling the dead woman over to get at the spare magazines in her pocket but he had no choice. There was a call from the stairwell, a questioning voice, another woman. She was asking her mother, or a woman knicknamed mother, what was going on. But the other woman’s voice was oddly cadenced as well as being harsh. The world around him went flat and lost some of its color, but behind the optical he had a sense of the space around him above and below. It was also oddly quiet, the sounds distorted, he could hear the soft sounds of stealthy footsteps coming up the stairs, but the fire alarm and other sounds were almost imperceptible. Iffrit-Cutter were clearly in his head letting him track the shockingly coordinated and quick movements of the thugs as they came for him. It had to be a pack or more than one, Cutter had never seen a single pack this size. As he pulled back from the stairs there was a rush of figures coming up the stairs and the hallway thundered with gunfire. Elgin danced back and sideways, moving for a door and trying not to be a stationary target while putting the three shot bursts where they had to go. A black haired girl with a machine pistol pitched over her chest a ruin, knocking the bare chested man with a shot gun off target, the next burst took him down as well. Elgin felt a punch in the gut and a burning stroke over his ribs. His next burst blew a blond woman’s head into red mist, the next burst took down a man in a three piece suit who was firing his pistol from a combat stance. The world misted and he fell through the door, and onto the floor inside the room, the brief instant in the shadow world had nearly given him frost bite and his teeth ached as he gasped at the suddenly muggy warm, sickeningly over perfumed air of the room. A quick glance showed that it was a ‘working room’ a big four poster bed with fancy drapes and Victorian look, a place for sex games. The door shuddered and started to splinter under the onslaught of many more than one gun. “I need something new here guys.” Elgin whispered as he rolled painfully way from the disintegrating wood panel. He could feel the bullet wound in his gut healing, the burn on his side healing but he’d be blown to hamburger if the pack got him in their sights, there were at least six at the door, three more getting ready to use a demolition charge to come in through the wall to his left. “Are most of the girl’s out?” Elgin pointed the machine pistol at the wall behind which he could ‘see’ the demolition team and pulled the trigger back to full auto, sending all three tumbling. The wall belched dust and fire anyway. The three bombers getting the worst of it, none of them remained alive or in one piece after the blast. Elgin regained awareness lying on the floor half propped up against the wall under a window that had blown out and was letting a spatter of cold rain in. Two figures appeared in the dust and the MP5 sputtered twice, putting both out of the fight but igniting a storm of fire from the doorway, blind fire through the thick dust. In Elgin’s mind the world narrowed to a small compass, then something ‘grasped’ the dust and imprinted its will on it. The dust rippled from the gray white of plaster dust to the dancing iridescence of a nanite cloud that rushed the doorway. Bullets that should have hit Elgin hit the wall all around him instead, then the guns made odd coughing noises, and the doorway was full of cries of surprise and pain, muzzles suddenly jammed the four surviving gunners weapons all had breach failures in the same instant, then the nanites reached human flesh and the screams turned to gurgles and then heavy thumps. The air in the room almost magically cleared, as the nanites formed into thick silvery blankets over the four stilled but breathing figures. Then one of the remaining panes of glass in the window above Elgin blew in with the crack of a passing sniper round and someone just out of Elgin’s line of sight cried out. An instant later a silvery lance of nano stuff snapped over his head, on its way to deal with the sniper. Elgin sensed that the pack had pulled back, even a pack took losses of over fifty percent seriously. There were six of them on the floor below, covering all the staircases. Further away he could sense individuals moving away from the bordello in every direction. Then there were the Sorcerer and the hunger, one on the ground floor and the other somehow deep underground, staring up at him with a million soulless eyes, sniffing him with a thousand noses and trying to get a taste of him with a hundred hungry mouths. “What the hell is that thing?” Elgin squeaked, pulling his mind away from the almost imaginary horror. *The evil fool has murdered hundreds, maybe thousands with the Green Fang, their liquefied bodies washed down the drain into a sewer. Before the magic returned it was just poison diluted to nothing by the flow of water and time. With the return it has somehow created then fed that thing.* Iffrit-Cutter replied silently, *We are lucky its still a mindless hunger, in time it would have become much worse, and much bigger. It’s what the fool sorcerer is using to de energize the shadow space, the thing is sucking the energy from this section of the shadow realm, but to do that its heating itself up.* That last piece had a thoughtful tone. -o- The Alpha was sweating, it had lost more than half the pack in a few minutes against one person. The deaths didn’t worry the Alpha but the tactical situation did, this was all so very wrong. There was a sound at the stairway, a figure moving down, the Alpha held his fire, until he saw the cowboy’s smiling blue eyes. This was utterly wrong, the Alpha fired. And things were different, his gun was pointing at a decrepit staircase, peeling wallpaper, a window where there shouldn’t have been one, the curtain rod bracket at one side had given way, letting the rotting curtains drape on the floor, a faint breeze curled through the broken window. But Guy only noticed this after a few moments, what he first sensed was a biting cold, and his breath forming a thick icy fog in front of his face. Ice stabbed up from his feet, clawed at his hand, his nose, ears. All of the remaining pack members felt the same pain reinforcing his. He screamed and fell thrashing. But the pain started to fade almost as soon as it had reached an unbearable peak, there was a breath of warm air, the sucking coldness snapped off, leaving Guy shocked and very human once more. He started to cough and gag, as the rotting dust that had once been a carpet got into his nose and throat. Rolling to his feet he scanned the hallway, the half familiar hallway, the only light came in through the window that shouldn’t be there and it was sodium orange. He flicked on the tac light on his pistol and scanned again. Every wall had peeling wallpaper and saging plaster ceiling. The light fixture above him hung at an angle and dropped wires, the wall sconce standing proud of a hole in the plaster was attached to heavy gas pipes. Who used gas for light, who had ever mixed gas and electricity? He saw Roj slumped against the wall, then with a flicker of pain he remembered it wasn’t Roj, but the younger Hen, and across the hall lay a blonde whore he didn’t know the name of, with a Uzi resting in her lap. He knew she’d been part of his pack, but he’d never heard of a mixed male female pack before, Crazy Tao was getting frighteningly powerful, as well as seriously deranged. Guy moved to Hen and tapped him in the rips with his sharp toed shoe, the big man started to thrash and gasp as Guy hopped back out of the way. He turned to the girl but she was awake, her grip on the machine pistol indicated she knew what it was and felt much more comfortable with it in her hand. She looked at him with naked hate, the hard iron of the gun putting steel in her backbone. Pushing herself up the wall she kept the weapon carefully pointed down but also lined up with him. Once on her feet she backed down the hall towards the other staircase. She reached the corner, her weapon pointed at Guy now, there was a flat crack and the girl pitched forward and lay unmoving on the floor, her body rippled, then faded leaving the Uzi and a pool of blood. Van came around the corner, bending to scoop up the Uzi as he came, “Hey boss, what the hell, you left me with a bitch and a boy bitch, had to break both of their necks.” Guy grunted, they were down to three then, but Van, though tiny and frail looking, was as just attested, a stone cold killer of frightening efficiency and Hen was a good steady man with a gun. He moved to the stairs and went up to look out the window. The sky was gray except for an odd band of faint orange that lit the world. The rest of the view was a disorienting mix of familiar and utterly strange. The buildings across from the window were the about right, except they showed signs of having been in use much more recently than they should. He could even see the remains of awnings and signs, but it was as if the owners had just walked away to let them rot. If he craned to look east it was worse, the towers of the business district were there sort of, but they were worn down. Then in horror he saw that the towers were in the process of dissolving before his eyes. Leaning out to get a better view he pressed on the seemingly solid wall. Or at least it was solid at first, until it wasn’t, he felt it wobbling, crumbling just in time and lunged back, staggering down a couple of steps, the banister on the other side crumpled as he brushed against it. The wall under the window was crumbling, dissolving. And from above he could hear a hissing rush as of sand falling down a crack. The wall higher up the staircase began to dissolve. First cracking then crumbling, beginning to fall, but falling apart even as it fell, to pebbles, then granules, dust, and then...nothing. “What, what happened boss?” Hen was on his feet his big magnum revolver out and waving around, his eyes wild with fear. “Some kind of trap Hen, keep it together man.” Van snapped from not far away. Then the little man shook his head in irritation, looked up, just in time to be crushed as a whole section of the floor above came down on him. When the section finished disolving to nothing in front of them there were just the Uzi and Van’s personal SigSauer silver plate. Guy turned down the stairs “Come on.” He yelled at Hen as he ran down the stairs.All around them he now he could hear creaks and moans as the building came apart. Dust showered down on him, but vanished leaving a cold prickling sensation behind, he hit the landing and spun for the next flight, Hen on his heals. Above them the roof fell in, they both ducked and yelled, but all that reached them was another shower of evaporating dust. Now as they spiraled down the sky seemed to be pursing them, the walls falling faster and faster as the instants passed. Guy almost screamed in frustration and horror as he made a last turn and found that the stair ended on a piece of rocky ground, his momentum carried him down, onto the dirt and into the wall of the stairwell, which gave way in a burst of dust and pebbles, he tripped and went sprawling into the dirt as the walls of the bordello dissolved around him. There had never been any sound other than their own thundering steps, ragged breathing occasional shouts and the rushing hiss of disintegration. Now there was a faint rattle of a breeze through leaves and the faintest smell of pine and dirt, mixed with car fumes and other things. Guy pushed himself up, recovered his pistol and looked around. Hen was curled up in the dirt a few feet away, head covered, pistol lying forgotten in the dirt. Guy understood how he felt. He was standing in a pine forest, on a gentle slope down to a river or lake. The tree cover was open enough that he could see the other shore, another pine forest rising up to low hills and then in the far distance snow covered mountains. There was a snuffling sound behind, him, he turned slowly and found himself facing something like a furry crocodile. Big nostrils flared as it snuffled short sightedly at him, it seemed confused. Guy flashed his tac light in the things eyes, it jerked back with a snort and waddled away, having decided they were more trouble than it needed. “Not all the creatures of this world are that easy going.” The cowboy said conversationally from a distance. The blonde man was sitting on a flat topped rock, hat on, jacket open to let the gentle breeze keep him cool. Guy lined his pistol up triggering the targeting laser and centering it on the other mans chest, “Get me out of here.” “You can get out of here any time you want, where’s your friend?” A quick check showed that Hen was gone like the others, his prized pistol still lay near the disturbed patch of dirt he had been curled up on. Guy focused back on the cowboy, “What did you do?” “Nothing, his brain just overloaded and he fainted, unconscious he fell back into his anchor realm, your home, he hadn’t been here long enough to anchor here. All you have to do is lay down, relax and go to sleep and you’ll be home.” He looked around, “Though I’d probably take a few steps north, I think you’re in the middle of the street right now. Hopefully your friend won’t get run over.” Guy had been pushed beyond the edge, he couldn’t help pulling the trigger. The crack of the pistol round was satisfyingly sharp. The cowboy didn’t even flinch as the bullet blew bark off a tree a few feet to his left. So now the enforcer started to move forward. The Cowboy smiled, “You really don’t want to do that, as you’ve already noticed I’m not what I seem. And what you’ve experienced so far is the least of it.” Guy almost pulled the trigger again, but some instinct of self preservation still existed and he let the gun arm fall to his side. “What do you want?” “How long has that mad man been killing people with the Green Fangs?” That one was easy, “Tao has been Keeper for twenty two years.” “And the Keeper before him?” “More than fifty, the Palace has had a keeper since it was first established. A hundred and ten years ago.” Once he’d said something Guy found he didn’t want to shut up, “But the early Keepers didn’t use the fang more than a few times a decade. The Keeper before Tao only used it a couple of times a month, Tao has disposed of hundreds in the last year alone, mostly undocumented, many of them whores killed by rough sex or suicides.” The Cowboy looked almost sad, “You are a piece of work, you know that. You don’t seem to care that your boss probably killed more people than some wars have and in the process created something that could kill thousands and destroy a city.” Guy was backing away now, the Cowboy said all he had to do was go to sleep to escape this fantasy land. Well he’d rather take his chances with that than the Cowboy, another drooling fool of a round eye. He took his eye off the Cowboy to look around. “Head east, the point of the island’s a big rock, not much wildlife there, you may survive till you can catch a nap ride home.” The big blond fool called out cheerfully, when Guy turned back to shoot the asshole between the eyes the forest was empty. Guy turned around, the forest was very real and he could no longer smell the engine fumes of a city. The ground was very rocky, the trees growing out of cracks in the rock where dirt had collected where they could get roots down for anchors and probably deep down into the acquifer. There was a thicker clump of bushes a bit higher up the sloop, a low lying cactus like plant growing out of the rocks like the trees. He looked up at the sky, made a guess as to what direction was east and started to walk. A few moments later he heard a bellowing snarl from someplace nearby and spun, catching his foot his ankle gave way with a nasty popping sound and he collapsed with a curse, almost loosing his pistol Gasping with with the waves of pain coming up his leg he almost forgot the bellow. But now he saw the owner. Some kind of dinosaur, striped and colored like a great tiger its huge orange eyes fixed on him, it was walking towards him, its mouth half agape, it seemed to be laughing at him. Pushing his gun deep into a pocket Guy put his hands down and pushed himself back away from the slow moving monster. It stopped and cocked its head to one side, a curiously birdlike movement, as if it was having a hard time believing he was trying to retreat. If he could just get into the clump of cactus like plants he might have a chance. He smelt a rather pleasant perfume, risking a glance back he realized he was nearly in there. The dinosaur, because that was what it had to be, took another step, as if expecting him to stop and wait for it. He was almost delirious with the pain from his ankle but kept pushing himself backwards. Then he was in the sweet smelling embrace of the rather ugly looking plant which was very like a cactus. He saw that the outer flatter sections of the plant had thorns like a cactus, big green thorns. He jerked and there was s stab of pain in the palm of his hand. One of the thorns had fallen to the ground and he’d put his hand on it. He stared at it in horror for the last few seconds of his life, then slumped back to lay in the shade of the Green Fang bush. He would provide the bush with a good year or so’s sustenance. The dinosaur grunted in disgust at the waste of a perfectly good snack on a plant then turned away in search of a more sensible victim. -o- The Palace was doomed, fire blooming out of the lower two stories’ windows, the upper stories’ billowing smoke. Elgin stood alone on the empty road. The network of ancient spells that had almost completely hidden this block of buildings for the last century and a bit were beginning to unwind now the goddess totem was gone and the sorcerer wasn’t there to rebind the energy of the unfolding that would have sustained them. In fact Iffrit-Cutter suspected that the evil fool wouldn’t have known how to anyway. The evil one was still alive, and still inside his blazing palace, somehow protecting himself from the fire in a sub basement. The hunger was wailing and thrashing in its catacomb deep beneath the burning shell. Both had to be dealt with soon. The Iffrit unfolded in the crossroads, its nose filled with the stink of corruption that even the hot flames could not destroy. His creators had designed the Iffrit’s with vast powers but strict limits, one of which was a very limited ability to do damage instantly across any distance. But they had not prevented him from carrying such. With a drawing motion the Iffrit pulled a slim brown and tan shape out of nowhere. The pods thin aluminum shell was dinged and dented, but the undershot slit at the front showed two muzzles, relatively small only compared to the Iffrit. *Uh...what...where...uh forget it.* Elgin picked up an image of a delta winged jet spinning out of the sky with its belly ripped off. The airplane had been a lot more fragile than the Iffrit had anticipated. But the jet had been going down anyway, the pilot having ejected in terror when he found himself facing a flying monster in the night sky over the Persian desert. The GSh-6-23 six barrel gas powered Gatling gun in its pod form was a lot of weapon. And the Iffrit liked it, a lot. It was a bit hot though, it would blow through all two hundred plus rounds in the magazine in a second or so. The Iffrit brought the weapon up in a steady two clawed grip, his vision overlaying his target and the probabilistic path of the semi armor piercing 23mm rounds. The cannon roared for well under a second and the Iffrit was slammed back by tons of recoil force. A small section of the Palace’s wall blew in, then a section of an inside wall, and the floor of the basement. Tao had a fraction of a second of warning, before he was shredded by Russian steel and explosives. But Tao didn’t die quite quickly enough or completely. He had finally recognized the existence of the vast hunger under the building and had been in the process of communicating with it when his body was blown apart by a torrent of incoming semi armor piercing rounds. The Iffrit swore to itself in a million languages and leapt skyward, avoiding by millimeters the lethal lash of an armored tentacle that punched up through a sewer grating and snapped down where the ancient war machine’s neck had been an instant before. The sky above the bordello was black with rain clouds, though the sky over most of the city was clear. The mist of rain that had been coming down changed to a torrent as the huge winged creature went up on hard beating wings, the cannon burped once, twice, three times, blowing tentacles apart each time, but it was pointless, two, three, more appeared in their place. The Iffrit put the weapon away in its intra-dimensional holster. Looking down as he climbed the Iffrit saw the Hunger’s red, armor plated tentacles reaching up out of a dozen drains and manhole covers, lashing in pain at the abrupt death of its creator but reaching, searching in ravening hunger for something living to feed on. In its insentient appetite the hunger had eaten the very rock away under the Palace, creating a vast hollow hundreds of feet deep. The cap that the Palace sat on was perhaps fifty feet thick, the Iffrit contemplated its options, but it decided it had only one sure way of opening the poisonous abscess to the air and sunlight of the real world. For a moment the Iffrit flashed into the orange half light of the shadow realm then back into the real world, for an instant a cone of orange surrounded him, a sheet of the shadow realm wrapping him and and the bordello. The sheet was gone in an instant, then the Iffrit folded its wings plunging down, following the Palace as it sank into the ground with a shrieking moan of displaced air. Rain lashed down out of a coal black sky and lightning began to dance from ground to cloud, from cloud to ground, and between any protuberance or peak on the buildings around the gaping pit that was now filled with a roar of rage, of agony and of shattering masonry and stone. The Iffrit plunged into the hole. A hundred armored red tentacles lashed up and at him each with its own dim and raging intelligence. This time the Iffrit could not dodge and it bellowed with pain as the tentacles struck home, slicing, smashing, bending. Far away, just above the surface of the sun an odd three dimensional hole appeared, a black sink the shape of an agonized and writhing Iffrit. The pit lit up with sunfire, a searing shaft punched up into the black clouds as water laden air super heated in a fraction of a second. The sunfire snapped off as suddenly as it had appeared but it had served its purpose. The pit was dark for only an instant before filling with blue white flame. The pit vomited a column of chemical flame a thousand feet long, an upside down rocket motor trying to push the island of Manhattan into the Earth, the whole of the island shuddered with the thunder of the motor,, the building closest to the column were blown to brick dust by the sound alone. -o- Section Chief Desmond Lee clapped his hands over his ear protectors as a roar filled the world, making everything, including his entrails shudder and shake. The brilliant white light of a few seconds ago, that he had seen from behind the shelter of an intervening building was replaced by a red orange light as the pumper went around the corner of the oddly desolate section of New York on what felt like two wheels. Ahead he saw a tapering column of fire emerging from the ground, one couldn’t really call it a fire really, it was more like the deflagration of explosives like he’d seen in Iraq and the ‘Stan more times than he cared to remember. There was a pit in the ground that the column of flame emerged from but the fire was ripping the pit wider and wider, he could see chunks of pavement and earth being hurled into the sky. It took a moment or so for him to realize that what goes up, must come down, he punched the ‘PubAddrs’ button on his mik, “Everyone, get under cover, get indoors, under a car, in a hole, Incoming!” He couldn’t even hear his own voice against the all encompassing roar. Then rocks and other debris began to fall all around, mostly small stuff at first, it was eerie to see it bouncing windows smashing, know it was hitting the roof above him but not be able to hear it over that world ending roar. Now came heavier stuff, Desmond saw a block the size of an office desk smash a car into the ground, fortunately the car had been up on cinder blocks longer than Desmond had been a fireman by the looks of it. The sound itself was having an effect, roof tiles were falling, windows were breaking, buildings were swaying and shedding dust as the sonic attack began to powder concrete and brick. The road ahead was rippling and bucking, manhole covers were popping off with billows of evil green flame. Then the flame sputtered like a vast Bunsen burner running out of fuel, the flame shortened, bloomed, snapped tall again and then bloomed and fizzled to a shimmer over the mouth of the pit. Then it bloomed with a final gut shaking WHOMP and went out. Debris continued to shower down as the the pumper bumped to a stop. Desmond tapped on the drivers shoulder, pointed forward. None of them could hear a thing over the roar of over stimulated aural nerves. As the truck jerked forward there was a hard crash and a piece of a building the size of a Smart Car broke apart on the shell behind the cab, if it had landed on the cab it might have killed them all. The shower seemed to last forever, only a few large pieces came down, then it was small rocks, pebbles and then dust. The now pumpless pumper continued to creep forward until the roadway was too badly damaged and then Desmond hopped down followed by the rest of the crew. He found himself on a new plaza on the bad edge of Chinatown, a huge hole in the center of the plaza surrounded by what looked like roadbed and old building bricks ground into urban grunge mulch. Every building surrounding the plaza was collapsed, their bricks partially pulverized, the structure behind the collapse obviously fatally weakened. He started giving hand commands to the crew, get the danger do not cross tape up now, make sure no one was trapped in the buildings, check for fires. He saw other crews at other entrances to the plaza doing the same thing, the police starting to fan out in support. Grabbing a Haul-Back rope and clipping it to his belt Desmond carefully made his way toward the vast pit. He had his cell phone out and was videoing the scene for the record back at the fire house. His ears were beginning to recover and he could hear the sounds of a bustling disaster scene, if softly against the left over hiss. Desmond stopped at the edge of the pit and looked in. Something like awe hit him, the pit went down, and down and down. Across from him he saw a water main gushing water into the cavern, he followed the water down but it vanished into the darkness. A fairly major gas main and been sheered as well, it burnt with a fitful blue then yellow flame. Electrical and phone cables hung down into the abyss, a couple of them sparking and writhing. The black clouds that had come up so suddenly were almost gone and the sun finally broke through, sending a shaft of light down into the pit. Desmond inched forward until finally he could see the bottom. There was water down there like you’d expect but it was crystal clear, and through the water he could see tumbled rock and brick of a building that must have fallen into the pit when its roof caved in. The walls of the pit were ridged like he’d seen in water carved caves, though he couldn’t even begin to imagine where the water to have made this huge cavern would have come from. His phone rang, he tapped answer, “Lee.” “What the hell is it?” The voice was that of Fire Chief Lemond, calling from his office down town. “Some kind of huge sink hole sir. I think it must have been filling up with gas and oil and when the roof finally gave way it let in oxygen and a cable break sparked it, blew it to hell and gone.” “Jesus Desmond, I’ve been watching the video you and the others are sending, it’s a fucking nightmare. I’ve got Homeland Security screaming about a nuclear explosion, the FBI asking about al-Qaida sleeper cells, the Israeli consulate asking about an Iranian plot, the Iranian’s claiming the Israeli’s bombarded their consulate with bricks...shit!” Having vented the chief hung up. Desmond started his careful way back. Halfway there he stopped and stared at something off to the side. Lying half buried in the rock and asphalt mulch was what looked like a red arm, an arm with too many joints and some kind of shell like a lobsters. It was utterly alien to look at, and it stank worse than anything the SubChief had ever smelt, it was already rotting away as he watched. He made a move to get out his iPhone again. But stopped the impulse and the movement, instead he looked away and steadfastly, carefully plodded back to his crew. There were going to be enough crazy rumors about this cluster fuck, no need to add that to the stew. -o- “Hey you, I’m talking to you,” the young cop lightly kicked the well dressed vagrant’s boot. The sleeping vagrant groaned and opened a bloodshot blue eye, “Yes officer?” the accent was pleasantly western and if not friendly, neither was it surly. “There’s a public emergency we want everyone off the street and out of the parks, you need to move.” The young policeman was a little less assured with the bloodshot eye fixed on him. With a groan Elgin climbed to his feet, he ached all over. “Okay, heard the boom, hope nobody was hurt?” The policeman grimaced, “A lot of people hit by debris and flying glass, a few killed I’m afraid.” Elgin closed his eyes, he had known that was going to be the answer but he had hoped for a miracle. “Thanks, try and have a good day officer....uh,” He glanced at the name tag, tried to smile, “Manners.” The policeman had no idea how much willpower it took for Elgin to start moving, he hurt all over and had several miles to walk, since he had no cash on him. *You could easily fabricate some* Cutter pointed out, *It’s just colored paper and the bills you had with you last night are gone forever, it would be just recompense.* Ignoring the logical argument Elgin tried to pick up his walking pace from the crippled dawdle he’d started at. At least he didn’t look as bad as he felt, but for the first time in a long time he felt like having a drink, or finding some weed. He didn’t remember much after talking to the thug in the mirror realm forest. He remembered the battering the Hunger had delivered to the Iffrit in a few seconds, before the burst of raw sun ignited it. How the Iffrit had known that the goo that was the Hunger’s physical manifestation would burn like that was something he would have to ask, some other day. The Iffrit had been hurled out of the crater on the leading edge of the blast wave and flipped into the shadow realm before crashing through a shadow realm sky scraper and coming to rest in the ruins of a half block of decaying brownstones. The damages to the Iffrits body were no less real for having been done to a machine that could fold itself into the spaces between universes. So Elgin was dealing with the aches of his own abused body and some leakage from wherever the Iffrit existed between appearances. Elgin looked to the south, the sudden intense squall that had covered the battle was long gone and a half dozen helicopters were circling the site of the vanished bordello like vultures over a fresh carcass. There were going to be a lot of rumors and theories about the end of the Palace, hopefully one of these days he’d be able to tell someone what had really happened, but for now the ‘sink hole full of gas’ theory he’d heard on the news feed was good to go as far as he was concerned. -o- It was evening, Alicia Pi reclined on the settee in panties, bra and diaphanous jacket, her thick, silky, jet black hair loose and flowing. She flicked the news feed off the screen of her iPad and brought up the e-mail. She was being congratulated for the destruction of Fenton Wu, little though she’d had to do with it or claimed to have. The near hundred million they had pulled out of the madman’s accounts probably had a lot to do with that. There was a knock and then the door to her suite opened and Jason entered, looking every inch the new oriental stud that he was. He was sweating from the workout, he grinned at her, got a better view of her attire and leered at her, “Alicia” drawing out the last syllable into something like the end of ‘delicious.’ She smiled back, “You look pleased with yourself, a new personal best on the bar bells?” “No, just going over the accounts again, who’d have known that bent bastard had so much built up. If he’d kept his spending under control he’d have been a billionaire.” “Maybe, but it takes a lot of something to hide the fact you are killing hundreds of people a year.” She grimaced, “You know that if the change continues sorcery isn’t going to stay secret for long, and eventually the House will loose its advantage over the rest of humanity. And being one of the arms of a secret society that makes its living off human misery is not going to go over well. Even today, if they knew we existed they could overwhelm and exterminate us, if they had to.” He dropped into a seat across from her, his smile fading, “Oh, and here I was thinking you were only thinking about my return.” “Oh I was lover boy but, as big a subject as you are,” she purred. “I still have cycles for other concerns.” Her smile was wicked. Jason tapped his leg looking troubled, “You looked over the reconciliation of accounts?” A little shrug, “Skimmed, I’m no accountant, not even an MBA.” “There was one account that we didn’t get. All that came back when the skimmer hit it was an encoded text file, I almost throttled Jess but he insisted that that it wasn’t a joke.” He took out his phone and punched in some codes, “Read the file, it’s addressed to you.” Alicia got a cold feeling, the encrypted e-mail opened and she read: To Alicia Pi and Jason Hu: All of the other accounts are yours to do with as your conscience sees fit or your masters’ command. This account is small recompense for the evil the House of Dragons did to generations of women and men and will be used to try and undo some of the evil done to those still living. Do not try and re ensnare those who escaped the Ugly Palace of Lost Doves. Do not mistake mercy for weakness for I destroyed the mad one and his creation. I know your purpose here but that does not mean I will forgive future transgressions. Alicia Pi you have the soul for your calling but you have trodden far from the road of righteousness, do not ever believe it is too late to turn aside, do not ever think that you are alone. There was no signature or from line but at the bottom of the note there was a little black graphic, of a four footed eagle winged creature with one long clawed foreleg upraised. Staring blankly at Jason, she asked “How much?” not that she cared but it was an obvious question and it might matter if the House got wind of this. “Something north of ten million, that was how much was in it the last time my team pinged it. The bank says that its been empty except for that note for almost a week, but the ping was the day before yesterday, so something got to the bank’s core database.” Alicia bit her lip and curled a thick lock of hair around her fingers, her eyes blank, wrinkles between her eyebrows, she glanced up, “Jason, you know I’m loyal to the house, right? I didn’t have anything to do with this.” She appeared to have no idea how devastatingly desirable she was sitting there, Jason wondered if she realized how guilty it made her look at this moment, but he knew Alicia well, probably better than she did herself and he understood the message in the griffins letter even if she didn’t. He got up and lifted her legs so he could sit by her, she passively let him lift her legs then put them down and as he began to massage her feet her eyes opened in shock and delight and her back arched gently, “Oh that feels good.” “I’m glad,” he paused, then went on, “Alicia, you and I work you know that.” She opened her eyes a slit, “We do a lot of work together,” she said, teasing and testing him. He sighed, “Alicia, I love you, have for years, do you think I follow you around like a puppy just because you’re a powerful sorceress and a very good lay?” He rolled his thumbs up the arch of her left foot. She gasp sighed and shivered, but didn’t reply, her face in fact was very still, her eyes closed. He began to wonder if he’d misjudged her, or the moment. Then she moved, bounced so suddenly she was sitting in his lap and her lips were very close to his. She smiled wickedly, “Oh my! Hey mister, are you glad to see me or is that your Glock down there?” then she kissed him fiercely, possessively. <<>> Chapter 15 In which our hero meets a ‘pretty lady’ and saves a heroine It was mid afternoon when a still aching Elgin reached his original hotel, got a new room key and the message that Petters, Petters, Faulken and Christchurch, like most companies in downtown New York had closed for the day after the Chinatown Fire Pit Disaster as it was now being called. Mid evening he found himself staring blearily at his third beer, the alcohol had dulled the aches, in both body and conscience, though he knew that he’d pay for it later one way or another. The extremely svelte blonde girl in a ‘little red thing,’ who slid onto the stool next to him gave him a coolly friendly smile and ordered a martini, when the barman delivered it Elgin raised his finger, “put that on my tab Peter.” The graying drink slinger smiled and nodded. The girl looked at Elgin, the smile a lot warmer now, “Why thank you sir.” Elgin winced, “Do I really look like a ‘sir’ to you, ma’am?” She gave him a lingering looking over, “You look like a gentleman and you certainly aren’t a local, so yes, at least until we’re introduced, sir.” The smile was coquettish now, “And I’m Loretta, not ma’am, that’s what I call my mother when she’s telling me that I need to go to church.” “Nice to meet you Loretta, my name’s Elgin. Call me El if you want.” Her nose crinkled prettily revealing the sprinkle of freckles under the makeup, “Elgin, that’s unusual.” “Yeah, named after a town my father visited once, he thought it a hoot.” “You didn’t change it?” Elgin blinked at her, then grinned, “To be honest I never thought about changing it, and I guess you’re the first person to suggest it. But I’ve grown to like it.” Loretta smiled, “Cool,” she sipped her martini, her eyes, a pretty dark brown, swept the room before settling back on him with a gratifying focus. A lot of indicators that he once would have missed told him that a lot of thinking was going on behind the pretty façade, and the smile was mostly artificial, however warm it appeared. She had decided he was probably the best available target for her wiles. Peter the bar man had probably told someone there was a lonely out of towner at the bar. Elgin contemplated his options rather coldly and sadly. In the back of his head, *You really want to know kid?* Cutter was picking up the vernacular very well. Elgin subvocalized, *Hit me.* *Real name Elena Novikov, born nineteen years ago in Moscow, mother and father both deceased, they were young lawyers working for a non governmental organization and were killed in a road accident that was probably an assassination. Her Aunt sold the girl to one of the human trafficking gangs when she was fifteen, she was brought to the United States last year and has been working for one of the higher end prostitution rings. She’s pretty expensive, 400 for an hour, a thousand for a night.* The silence had gone on a bit longer than she liked, the smile, “You in town on business?” “Yeah, representing an Indian Tribe in some land negotiations,” He smiled, “And no I’m not a lawyer, I’m just a cowboy, but they trust me and the blue eyed blond bit lets me blend in a bit when I want to.” Her eyes widened, “A cowboy, really?” She touched his arm, stroked it as if to see if he was real. Elgin chuckled, “A real live cowboy, though it’s not the life you’ve seen in John Ford movies, those days are long gone.” “But you ride a horse, sleep under the stars, go to rodeos?” she sounded honestly interested. “Sure....” and he told her about the life of a modern cowboy, focusing on the funny stories, particularly the ones where he’d made a fool of himself. She sipped at her martini, he drank the beer, but realized the buzz he’d felt before had been mostly self delusion and fatigue, *You know that could be considered a rotten trick,* he subvocalized at Cutter. *You don’t want to be drunk, she’s got a derringer in her bag and a knife in the lining of her dress, I’m doing some more checking, it’s a lot harder than it should be.* He looked at the girl, considered her many very attractive features, many of which he wanted to get more closely acquainted with. She looked back, her smile small but warm, the dregs of her martini swirling in the glass. “I’ve had a yen to see the city lights from the observation deck of the Empire State Building, you interested in joining me?” He asked at last, he’d checked to make sure it was open earlier. “Then a late meal back here?” She blinked, her mouth pursed, and a wrinkle appeared between her eyes, which widened. He realized that he’d somehow gotten her distracted, off plan, she’d spent an hour with him already without setting the hook and establishing the terms. She looked at him, then away, “Uh, El...look...” He touched her hand, “Don’t sweat it Loretta, I may be a hick but I’m not a simpleton, I know the gig. Look, tell you what, you spend the evening with me, you get the meal, etc, gratis and I’ll gift you the going rate so you don’t get in trouble.” For some reason her cheeks reddened and she looked about ready to cry or maybe get angry. Then the professional mask slid back into place and she was the perfect companion again, “Why that sounds wonderful El, and well, who knows what the evening will bring.” The smile was wider, but cooler, hardly touching her eyes. Which saddened Elgin as he got up, paid the tab, tipped the barman and walked with Loretta to the ‘cloak room,’ to collect her coat, a neat leather piece. It was nearly midnight when he set his coffee mug down and looked at her profile, she was strikingly attractive. She must have a tough constitution to have remained healthy plying the trade under the control of people who saw her as a depreciating capital asset rather than a human being. Cutter interrupted, *Tough in a lot of ways, she’s no victim, at least not now, she works for the Russian mob, but also for the Russian government, she may be an assassin, she is certainly a spy and an agent provocateur. It’s mostly a cash business so there’s only so much I can find but my guess is that she is being paid to seduce you tonight.* Elgin thought about this, but before he could come up with a plan her cell phone chirped, she jumped a little, she pulled the phone out, “Sorry, my sister, I better see what she wants.” Smiling at Elgin she got up quickly, neatly and strolled towards the lobby. *Lie, it’s a man, a Russian, Viktor Ushakov, a bigshot, she knew it was him, his number is programmed to over-ride the phone’s mute function. Best guess is he’s liaison between the Mob and the spy service. He’s asked her what the status is, she said she’s just finishing a late snack, that you’d done tourist sites, he’s being rude about your manly attributes, she’s defending you as nice.* *Okay, I don’t need a blow by blow, just tell me if he tells her to off me would you?* *He’s told her she can cut you loose for now the customer has another angle. I’ve invaded Viktor’s smart phone, he’s in a room with the Russian from the negotiations. Uptown location old mansion.* *Okay, let me know if they decide to kill me,* he almost slipped and spoke aloud to the voice in his head. *She’s cute and she’s hot but she’s the enemy El. I’m you, and you’re me in some ways, I know you’ve got the hots for her, but could you kill her if she tried to kill you?* *What’s the other hold they have now?* Elgin snapped back, or tried to, its hard to snap when you’re subvocalizing. *I’m trying to find out, these folks are pros nothing much on them, their phones are specials, just phones and when they’re off they’re completely off so no GPS or cell tower traces except when they’re actually talking. They have some kind of satellite based pager built in to switch on the phone for incoming calls.* Loretta/Elena had switched off her phone and was weaving elegantly, even rather sensuously towards ‘their’ table. *So?* Elgin subvocalized. *She said she might still spend the night with you. Her boss told her to ping him if she beds you, having photos of you in a compromising situation would be good, but he’ll only pay the bonus for a good action shot. He was fairly crude and detailed about it, she hung up on him about halfway through.* Though without help he wouldn’t have been able to tell she was still upset, her heart rate and blood pressure up and skin temperature slightly elevated. “Your sister al’right?” Elgin asked. Focused on being calm rather than sounding calm, his ‘cowboy’ came back fairly strongly. A quick smile, “Fine, just checking on me.” “She know’s your line of business?” She flushed and ducked her head, he sensed that it was as much anger as shame. So he subvocalized, *You sure the boss didn’t use a coded phrase for her to kill me?* *Can’t be certain but I don’t think so.* *Glad you’re able to be so calm about it.* “Hey, hey cowboy, yoho, over here,” she was smiling with the crease of a frown between her strongly marked eyebrows, “I’m over here.” “Sorry, punch drunk I guess. Late hours for a cowboy,” he smiled back, letting the other matter drop. He saw something in her face that might have been a mixture of relief and sadness, she looked down at the tiny watch on her wrist, “I guess it is.” She stood, up and he followed suit, he led her to the foyer, and recovered her coat and his jacket. In the elevator she pressed the lobby button and as the door closed she turned to him, slid her arms around his neck pulled their lips together, it was a passionate kiss, greedy and long, the elevator reached the ground floor before they separated. Her hands caressed the back of his neck as she stepped away, leaving her hands pressed on his shoulders, her eyes glittered with unshed tears. “Thank you for a nice evening Elgin and thank you for your offer of earlier, but dinner and your company was more than enough.” He took her right hand and kissed it, “Thank you for a very nice evening as well Loretta.” They walked to the front of the hotel and Elgin slipped her into a taxi and gave the cabbie a fifty and told him to take care of the lady before stepping back and waving goodbye. Elgin walked back into the building, ignoring the pitying eyes of the bell boys, all of whom assumed he’d been completely taken in by the hooker’s line. -o- It was a shock to find Humph lying sprawled on his bed when he opened his room’s door. The big cat rolled to his feet with an irritated and impatient ‘yowwwrr!’ and leapt down to wind around Elgin’s feet, almost knocking his two legged partner off his feet. “What the hell are you doing here?” Elgin looked around to see if there were any humans around to explain but the relatively plain and small room was completely empty. *Cutter?* *Uh, don’t know, neither does the Iffrit, but it does explain a vibration in the membrane we felt earlier, he must have transposed himself between Beauty and here directly, how he did it is beyond the Iffrit, the math to do it cleanly and accurately is almost impossibly complex.* “Does Humph look like he’s been doing math recently for crying out loud?” Elgin muttere out loud. *Uh, no, so there must be some other solution, one he used instinctively. But I think the more immediate question is why did he come now?* But Humph was planning on answering that himself, he stood on his back paws and put his front paws on Elgin’s shoulders and glared at the human for a moment before dropping to four paws and turning away. As he did his tail curled around Elgin’s left hand and pulled. Elgin stepped forward, and he stumbled forward in darkness and stillness, he could not draw in a breath, he could not blow one out, his head was beginning to spin and then he was in the world again and Humph’s tail had unwrapped from around his hand. He found himself in an ugly and oddly cramped but high ceilinged room with dirty windows, several old chairs and a LCD TV mounted on the wall. There was an oddly familiar taint in the air, gunpowder and blood. Then he almost tripped over Zephyr’s body, she was lying on her side, curled up, in a puddle of blood. Her eyes were open, he thought she might be alive at first but then she was none responsive when he touched her. Her skin was still warm to the touch. *She’s not quite gone, her heart just stopped, hold still* Cutter said and Elgin felt as well as saw the flow of nanites falling from his skin and jacket and sinking into her skin. There was a crash and the door smashed inwards, “Police, Hands up!” the black clad swarm that erupted into the room moved with professional precision. Somebody stepped on Humph’s tail or that was what the horrendous yowling scream seemed to indicate as the huge neo Siamese exploded into view and dived under some piece of furniture. In the blink of an eye, when everyone’s attention was distracted, Elgin ‘Twisted’ and he was in silence. His hand on Zeph kept her unconscious body in the shadow realm. An instant later Humph appeared and trotted over to nose Zeph’s face, then lick it with his big rough tongue, before looking up at Elgin with worried eyes. “She’ll be Okay Humph, thanks for finding her.” Elgin rubbed his friend’s head and one of the elegantly pointed ears, Humph closed his eyes and seemed to sigh in relief. There was a little gasp from nearby, Zeph moved, moaned, her eyes, which had closed blinked open, she stared at the cat, “Humph?” it was a thread of a whisper but a relief to both Elgin and Humph, who gently butted her head, then licked her cheek again with a soft, “Mrow.” “Oh my God, it is you Humph!” “He led me to you.” Elgin said quietly, patting her arm gently. She tried to twist but was too weak, “Elgin?” “Yeah Zeph, don’t try and move, you’ll feel better in a few minutes.” “Oh thank God, I thought I was dead Elgin.” “Humph got us here in time.” He decided she didn’t need to know how close run it had been. Her eyes had closed again but her breathing was getting steadier and deeper,*She’s asleep, the serious damage is fixed and the minor but wide spread trauma is being dealt with.* Elgin looked up and around, the shadow room was little different from the one in the real world. Just a lot more decrepit, the windows let in very little of the orange half light. He looked at Humph, “Can you get us back to my room?” feeling almost silly but he was rapidly coming to the conclusion that although Humph was still a cat he understood what was being said at something close to human comprehension level. Humph stood up and extended his tail, Elgin gently shifted Zeph, the holes in her blouse were sealed and the blood was gone. He lifted her, surprised at how light she was, she had so much presence and force it seemed like it should make itself felt by weight. Humph’s tail curled around his hand and pulled and this time Elgin didn’t stumble as he walked into the dark stillness. An instant later he was standing in his Airstream back in Beauty, having crossed the country in something like five steps and fewer seconds. He had meant his hotel room, but Humph’s solution was probably better, he carried Zeph over to the neatly made bed and lay her on the top, he made sure she was comfortable then set about making some coffee and food. -o- “Where are we?” it was getting on for morning in Beauty, two hours ahead of New York, Elgin was sitting with his feet braced on the counter, the chair back on two legs. He let the chair down gently, “Back in Beauty, my trailer.” He replied quietly Her eyes opened wide as she looked around, taking in the reality, “How long?” “It’s only the morning after,” He grinned crookedly at her astonishment, “don’t ask, I don’t understand myself right now.” She sighed leaned back, “Can I have some of that divine smelling coffee, and anything halfway edible in your fridge, I’m starving.” He served her coffee and some eggs and spam he’d made from the long storage life stores he always kept in, in case he got snowed in for a week or two. She wolfed it all down, then leaned back, “Oh, wow, that was wonderful Elgin.” “You’re welcome ma’am,” he replied with a laugh, “Though hunger makes just about anything taste pretty good.” She nodded, leaned back, “Damn it Elgin, I screwed up, I screwed up really badly.” “Okay, tell me what happened, we’ll go from there.” -o- Zeph was leaning back in her chair reviewing the markups on the contract when she saw an unusual hustle in the hallway outside. She was about to call Barb and ask what was going on when Allen Curtis, hot shot lawyer, partner in the firm, frequently seen in the company of a certain Zephyr Smith-Samson, waved from the hall and made a quick pass in sign language saying that there was something really bizarre happening over Chinatown. Her heart began to beat irregularly, and without really thinking she grabbed her cell phone, her heart sank to a new low when the ‘out of service’ message flashed up when she tried to call Elgin. She was beginning to really hate the no tolerance anti gun laws in New York city, however much she understood the feelings driving them. She circled the building and found a small crowd in one of the conference rooms and the ‘sitting room’ - some spare space set up as a holding area or spare discussion space during complex multi-party negotiations. Allen was in the forefront with a couple of other partners. The sky was blue with a few puffy white clouds except for a squall line that seemed to have rolled over Chinatown. The clouds hid any building higher than a couple of stories, and towered into the sky, mushrooming out to a puffy white cap. “Came rolling in getting higher and higher, blacker and blacker like it was aiming for something.” Allen said into her ear. His office was on this side of the building giving him a perfect view. There was a flicker of lightning high up in the dark column and then it lit up and a stroke of lighting danced around the crown of lighting rods on a building a block away, the ripping crash of thunder sent people staggering, covering their ears. The cloud glowed an ugly green, then lit with a weird, and for Zeph far too familiar orange glow, sheet lighting ripped this way and that inside the belly of the cloud, only occasionally letting out a long stroke into the clear. But even the occasional strokes did damage, a transformer in flames on a building top here, and antennas hanging down over the side of a mid rise there. “Damn its almost as if something in Chinatown is keeping the storm cell sitting there!” Allen whispered into her ear. The cloud line did extend beyond but it faded rapidly. Zeph had her arms crossed, rubbing her upper arms, trying to keep the chill of something like fear at bay. She knew that whatever Elgin was these days he was powerful and what was going on out there had to involve him, but the raw power involved here had to be more than just his. There was a yelp, “Hey I saw something in the....” The window lit up as the column of black cloud lit up from inside, turning brilliant, awesome, golden white for an instant, before snapping back to black. “Jesus...” The column of cloud rippled and shivered as if being slashed from the inside. It lit up again this time with a much dimmer yellow green glow that seemed to reach a few hundred feet and then fade away. Under Zeph’s feet the building swayed, glass rattled and then they were hit by an ear stabbing crash followed by an unearthly roar that did not stop. People were yelling and screaming, some running for the emergency exits. Zeph just stood there, knowing that if things were really bad one place was as good as another till you understood the situation. She also prayed for the safety of her friend. Then things began to fall out of the sky, she saw what might have been a block of masonry fall on a building roof not far away and exploded in brick dust, punching down and blowing out windows in the floor below. Then something hit the window nearby with a nasty cracking sound. Now it was time to move, she walked back, away from the window, back to near the core of the building, but still standing where she could see the outside, the tall column of black cloud. A cloud having its guts blown away by a vast jet of superheated gas. The cloud formation was fading fast, loosing cohesion as winds at different levels started to pull it apart. The roar faded, faded...was gone after one final thump. The yellow green glow was gone, the rain of gravel faded and was gone, a last thud, crash tinkle of shattering glass and silence fell. It lasted a few seconds before a hubbub of voices filled the building, seeming louder than the catastrophe they had just observed. An hour later Petters, Petters, Faulken and Christchurch was closed except for a few paralegals and clerks left to man the phones and pass any important messages on to one of the partners. Reports of damage and casualties filled the air, but there had been few deaths reported, at least so far. Elgin’s phone was still off the air and his hotel told her he was not in his room, had apparently not slept there last night. Unable to do anything in that regard, she tapped Rachel and Olga’s number, they should be at the little efficiency. The cell net was clogged so it took her several tries but finally she got through to the land line she had insisted on, there was no answer, neither was there an answer on Olga or Rachel’s cash and call cell phones. By which time Zeph was already in a taxicab. The girls were sharing an efficiency apartment in an old tenement building in a part of town that was relatively safe and completely out of Bruno’s stamping ground. Zeph was subsidizing their meager pay for now, with the hope the girls could get on their feet eventually. She had even contemplated paying for them to move to Beauty, the pay for a good, and good looking, waitress was enough to live reasonably but she wasn’t sure how the girls would adapt to country life. The door to the apartment appeared normal enough until she got close enough to see a scuff on the paint near the lock. The scar of a kick, a kick that wouldn’t have opened a locked door, but might have ripped the security bar off the frame. She knocked, without expecting, or receiving an answer. The door was locked but her passkey opened it. The room inside was dark and still, a lamp lay on the floor along with some books from Rachel’s accounting class and a plastic mug with a damp stain showing it hadn’t been empty when knocked over. On the tiny breakfast bar mounted to the wall by the kitchen alcove were a line of three phones. The land line, its handset shattered, Olga’s pink cell, broken in half, and Rachel’s metallic blue one, set apart with a white note folded like a place setting. Ms. Z.Smith-Samson your meddling is unacceptable. You will receive a call on this phone regarding your future actions regarding the Bear Den Contract negotiations. Remember knowingly harboring illegal aliens can get you disbarred, and their futures depend on your obedience. She blinked at the message, it was not at all what she had been expecting. In some ways this was much worse than Bruno. Elgin’s revelation that the negotiations were under surveillance and someone, probably the Russian financiers, were playing for complete ownership, hadn’t fully sunk in. Now she knew someone was after something and maybe it was for darker reasons than just money...as dark as that could be at times. She pocketed the note and the phone, then, repressing the neatnik instinct to clean up she went back out the door. The landlord had heard nothing, seen nothing, his surveillance cameras had seen nothing, because after the men had passed his desk they had carefully covered each camera before proceeding on, they had removed whatever it was as they had pulled back. All very professional, not at all what she would have expected of Bruno and his hangers on. But Bruno was the only lead she had. Or maybe not quite, there was Dmitri Andropov and Double Eagle financial, who were certainly involved. She went back to her apartment to do some more research on both Bruno the Rumanian and Dmitri the Russian. Despite a couple of hours of work it was human relationship that got her anywhere, and that was only Bruno’s probable location. Allen had introduced her to Mary Goldsmith one of the assistant DA’s on the vice task force and the two had struck up a friendship, Mary gave her the number of a policewoman working on the task group responsible for Bruno’s harem, she told Zeph enough for her to find Bruno’s address. All this took time so it was already ten when she arrived at Bruno’s hang out, what had once been the owners apartment above a bar. The bar was incredibly noisy, the sound making the space uninhabitable for normal living, but nearly ideal for the type of business that Bruno carried out. It was only when she walked up the stairs and came face to face with one of Bruno’s enforcers that she started to have second thoughts about her course of action. Rather typically far too late to change the plan. The thug had obviously never heard of dental hygiene, “You’re a new one, you a specialist? What’s your specialty, hey?” She reached into her clasp bag and if she had had a gun he would have been dead, instead all she had was pepper spray, which would probably just irritate him, and the card she extended, “Zephyr Smith-Samson, attorney, here to see your boss.” He looked at her slack jawed for a moment before taking the card and examining both sides, obviously at a loss as to reading it or interpreting its meaning. So Zeph helped him out, “I’d like to talk to Bruno, I think he’s wading into deeper waters than he intends.” The bruiser looked her over with a frown, “Not sure what your game is girl but Bruno doesn’t like being threatened. He ain’t here, but he will be, you can wait for him, inside.” He pushed the door open, reached out grabbed her arm and all but threw her inside. The room was louder than the hall, the thump of heavy metal, the growl of voices, screams, yells, howls, sometimes all at the same time with the crash of falling furniture and bodies. This was an extremely lively place, she’d heard that the police had been trying out the strategy of allowing a few small self regulating, near free fire zones, because the decreasing crime rate of the Bloomberg years had been going backwards fast recently as the criminal element mutated in the new age. The furniture was old fashioned and dirty except for a big leather recliner, probably Bruno’s throne. She sat down gingerly on the brocade settee, the seat area almost looked like leather, the caked on dirt was so thick. It was after midnight when Bruno burst into the room, he wasn’t what you’d expect of a pimp and human trafficker, a slim balding man with black rimmed glasses, you might mistake him for an accountant, unless you looked into his startlingly yellow eyes and saw the black void behind them. Bruno had her card in one hand and a pistol in the other and he was obviously already enraged. “Where are they you bitch!” He waved the pistol at her, “How dare you come and threaten me...those goddam whores are my property and you are not going to....” He came at her waving the pistol, Zeph had come off the couch the instant the door banged open then closed. She and Bruno were alone, he was in a rage and he was waving a loaded and probably ‘live’ pistol at her. Her reaction was instinctive, as he came at her, she blocked and duck rolled. He still had the gun, but now had a surprised look, that mutated to utter rage, he did not give her another chance, he straightened and fired once, twice. At first she thought he’d missed, then she realized that the numbness, spreading through her body was a bad sign. So was the sudden look of something like fear on Bruno’s face. Her knees failed her and she fell, she didn’t feel the impact of the floor, just saw it come up and the dust puff out of the carpet. She tried to push herself up, but her arms were not working. She was cold, so very, very cold. She rolled over, but it was someone else, pulling her, She looked at Bruno’s point toed shoe, a knee, felt warm fingers on her neck. She realized that if she could she would have begged him not to leave her, not to leave her to the cold and the dark that was creeping into her field of view. She was still breathing, could feel her heart thumping but the heart wasn’t beating right, and the shallow breaths were harder and harder to summon. The fog was drawing in and as it did her thoughts circled around, Oh God, I don’t want to die, not now, not yet. I am so sorry I didn’t save the girls, I’m sorry, sorry I got myself killed like this, mom....dad.... I’m sorry....sorry about the grandkids you wanted. Allen, damnit, Allen, we had plans... She lay there and at some point she was inside her head and the infamous light in the darkness seemed to show the way forward as her memories swirled around her. -o- Zeph sighed, picked up the cup of coffee the quietly attentive Elgin had poured, “So I guess the old, go to the light line has a basis in fact, I was pretty damn close to dying.” “Supposedly there’s a scientific explanation for it,” Elgin agreed, he was leaning against the cabinet by the door and stroking his huge cat’s mocha colored ears. “How did you find me?” “Humph knew something was wrong, and he knew where to lead me, you’re one of his people, he just appeared in my room and led me to you. Don’t ask me how, but it’s a useful talent for a cat.” “Yowp,” Humph agreed sleepily. Having been saved by Humph once before she wasn’t going to argue. She looked at Elgin, “It was you who blew a very large hole in Chinatown yesterday, right?” He frowned, looked down, “I’m afraid so...I wish some other solution had been possible, but the problem was a lot worse than I imagined when I went poking around. The fool had been misusing magic for a long time without understanding what he was doing. Unfortunately instead of just killing himself and a few unfortunates he was on the edge of destroying the city and possibly a large section of the east coast.” He rubbed his face, “I killed a dozen in that damned building, all of whom you could at least say were tainted, the thirty four killed by falling debris were innocents. And all I can cling to is that a hundred thousand could have been killed if that thing had finished developing and gotten loose.” “I’m sorry.” Zeph knew it sounded inadequate, it was inadequate but what else could she say? After a little more silence she spoke again, “I thought that magic wasn’t that powerful?” “It normally isn’t, this was a mix of exo-biotechnology and magic, a very nasty mix.” “Exo?” Zeph squeaked, “As in from outer space?” “Yeah, as close as I can figure, a bit under ten million years ago an alien culture tried to seed Earth with a bio weapon intended to re write Earth’s biosphere. In the anchor world the Iffrit destroyed the carriers but in some of the mirror realms that seeding succeeded to one degree or another. A magician in ancient China found a path through the shadow realm into one of the mirrors where the alien biology took hold and discovered one of the outcomes of that rewriting. A poison thorn, called the Green Fang, it kills almost instantly and then proceeds to turn the victim into a nutritious plant food for the Green Fang plant. The plant food is a bio artifact not natural, it’s lethal poison to anything from the Earth’s natural biosphere, it and the plant’s sap, are an extremely good single element liquid rocket fuel, and it’s a complex protein with some similarity to DNA, it can be used to store information. In large quantities and with the right magical stimulus it can develop into a lifeform...it’s happened before on a smaller scale.” Zeph shook her head, “I’m going to have to think about that one, it’s a lot bizarre.” Elgin grunted, “Yeah,” he chewed his lip for a moment, “So I lost my phone the night before last and forgot to do anything about it till after Humph lead me to you in Bruno’s safe house. That evening I was intercepted by an extremely attractive Russian girl who purported to be a prostitute, probably is one, but also works on the side for the Russian intelligence service.” Zeph looked him over, “A prostitute, Elgin, you don...” He held up his hand, “I was feeling like crap, she was very good looking, I took her to the Empire State Building observation deck and a couple of other tourist traps then had a light snack and sent her home.” “Sorry.” Elgin shrugged, “Why? I don’t know why I did it myself or what I would have done if her boss hadn’t called her off. I think she was a honey trap, with the intent of getting compromising pictures. I was dancing with fire, because I felt like crap about what had happened in Chinatown.” “You said she was Russian? Not Chechen or one of the other Slavic failed states?” “The Iffrit did a background check on her, Russian, parents of the wrong politics, killed in suspicious circumstances, the girl sold to white slavers and apparently picked up by the Russian intelligence service as an agent. She was well armed, considering what she was wearing.” Zeph frowned, “This is really messed up. I screwed up big time. Approaching Bruno was kneejerk idiocy. He wouldn’t have had a clue about the girls being snatched, and he certainly wouldn’t have turned in any of the major actors, he’d be dead the next day if he did.” “And the big boy didn’t know you were dying when he called Loretta, the girl, off of me.” Elgin frowned at the floor, “Will Bruno have told his boss about you?” “About shooting me, yes, he’d be stupid, probably dead, if he didn’t.” Zeph looked at her watch, “Damn its already eight o’clock.” She began searching for her cell phone, Elgin handed it to her from where he’d put it on top of her coat. She smiled her thanks and made a call, “Allen? Hey love, yeah I was busy. Look, I’m in the hole again, there is no way I’m going to be able to make it over to your place later.” She nodded at the phone, “Yeah I know everything’s slipped a day but things are not going well in regards to the Pro Bono case and I probably need to work on the Bears Den case.” She listened for an instant, her cheeks reddening, “No, or rather yes, I will be spending the evening with the blond cowboy hunk, but he’s a friend, more like a brother.” She grinned faintly as she listened to the response to that, “Okay I’ll take you up on that, I doubt I’ll be tied up in the evening beyond the next two. We can spend a calm quiet Friday evening together, maybe the whole weekend.” The smile got wider, “Okay sounds good, love you, bye.” She didn’t look at Elgin as she started another call, “Barb? I’m going to be late. I need you to...” Elgin turned away, the discussion with ‘Allen’ had not come as a big surprise, but it hurt a little, mainly because of the crush he’d had for Zeph when they were kids, rather than their more recent adventures. He turned to look at Humph, “How the heck do I get you to take me back to my hotel room boy?” Blue eyes cracked, “Mrop?” there was not a lot of interest in the cat’s voice. “About what I suspected.” *Cutter?* Elgin subvocalized. *Not a lot of choices, if Humph can’t take us the Iffrit’s going to have to wing it, the trip won’t take long.* Elgin didn’t ask how that was possible, he knew that while the Iffrit ‘flew’ like a soaring raptor on short hops he was not any kind of bird and wasn’t limited to bird aerodynamics, *We need to take Zeph.* *It’s possible. She won’t like it.* -o- Zeph stepped out of the solidity of the old Airstream into the oddly orange dusk of a surreal world of sharper edges and ghostly grass that was there and yet not, tree foliage that was there and yet not. Not far away Elgin was standing waiting. “Okay, lets get this show on the road.” She knew that Elgin was two natured, but she’d never seen his other form, nor the transition, and now supposedly he was going to get her back to New York in a few hours? She believed and doubted at one and the same time. Elgin waved and then he blurred, it was almost as if he were smoke and then the smoke billowed dissipated...and something started to, unfold was the only term she could use, yet it was utterly inadequate. The unfolding spread left, right and up and in a few instants she was looking at something out of ancient myth. The body of an immense lithe cat, huge wings, not quite bird wings, certainly not bat wings, but wings that spread, as the great beast stretched, she felt the breeze of their motion, realized the wings were wider than those of some jets she’d flown on, the body, as well. A long catlike tail lashed and she looked at the head, it was not the head of an Eagle, it was rather more doglike in many ways, or perhaps, faintly, the head of a Chinese dragon. Dinner plate sized blue eyes, swung to pin her, she found herself backing away, it was huge, bigger than any animal she had ever seen, the blazing, but cold intelligence behind the blue eyes was not Elgin, but the Iffrit, the war machine protector of Earth and Humanity. She tripped and fell, could not stop herself from crawling backwards. The Iffrit had no time or patience for human frailty at this point, an immense clawed hand reached out and scooped her up. He ignored her squeal as he brought her close to his chest with the one hand. Falling back on his haunches, his vast wings snapped out and then down as he hurled himself skyward with a surge of massive leg and wing muscles. Beating skyward, the Iffrit’s arm-legs folded to his chest, clawed fingers interlaced over Zeph, holding her in place against the soft fur of the great chest muscles as they climbed away from the cartoonlike version of Beauty Wyoming. The wings were beating faster, thrusting them upwards ever faster and she realized the wings were changing shape as they climbed, shorter now and more pointed as well as angled back. They were climbing almost straight up now, the wings a blur, she felt an increase in acceleration. The wings stilled, now a fraction of their huge initial span, they glowed with a million miniature streaks of lightning and she could almost see the air streaming back from the surfaces. She felt a faint oddness and the sky was black with just the faintest hint of blue and far below her the world was a mottled surface of white, brown, green, gray, and flashes of silver as the sun hit water. The added weight of acceleration faded away and they were falling, the Iffrit’s chest was warm, the fur a cushion against her back, talon-fingers held her gently but firmly. Looking down she could make out the great lakes creeping towards her and in what seemed like a few moments they were slipping past. She could make out the Finger Lakes ahead but she realized that the sky ahead was bluer than it had been, they were already beginning to arch downwards. The Iffrit rolled so she was looking back and then he curled up. She felt weight returning, a buffet that threw her head one way and the other, then muscles flexed and moved. More tossing but gentler now as her weight built up again. -o- A thousand miles away a sergeant checked her radar screen and frowned, reached out and tapped a button, “Hey Gus,” her boss, another if much more senior sergeant, “Check delta black, big bogey and trail moving pretty slow and decelerating.” “See it Chi.” The other sergeant replied after a moment, his voice calm, “A chunk of something.” “The systems not tracking anything but a plasma trail, I don’t get any kind of solid retur....What the hell?” the track simply ended, a fading line that had been extending, curving down as it slowed, just stopped, the fading tail caught up with the head and the track was gone. Gus grunted, “That’s a new one, maybe a piece of ice or foam?” “That would have faded out, decelerated faster and faster as it got smaller, this just...stopped.” She muttered to herself as she logged the sighting and went back to scanning the heavens for traces of a real threat. -o- The Iffrit rolled back to flying attitude and spread his wings, below them in the rather vague orange daylight a city with distinctly ‘fuzzy’ edges spread from horizon to horizon. The Iffrit held a steep but controlled descent, suddenly they were among towering buildings and the great flying creature flexed his wings into a shorter, broader shape to give him room between the walls of dusty glass. Ahead of them she recognized something like the plaza outside the office building she worked in, Wings snapped out, the great feline body tipped up, and the massive clawed feet reached out to grasp the ground and bring them to an almost imperceptible, perfect, landing. An moment later a clawed hand set her on her feet on the crumbling pavement. The Iffrit swirled into smoke and folded away, leaving Elgin standing twenty yards away. He shook himself then turned to walk to her, finger tips shoved into his pockets, arms akimbo. Blue eyes calmly surveying her as he walked up, as if he were wondering if she was going to burst out screaming again. She realized her mouth was utterly, bone dry, it took her several moments to work up enough spit to moisten her lips, “I don’t ever want to do that again.” He shrugged, “Wasn’t much choice Zeph.” “I know, and it should have been amazing, but it wasn’t.” He glanced around, “Now we have to get out of the shadow realm, in a crowd it can be difficult, even a bit dangerous.” He held out a hand and grinned at her look of fearful revulsion, “Don’t worry, we won’t end up inside someone else or in a wall, but you could end up right in front of someone coming the other way or with a bus about to run you over.” His ending “We should be fine,” wasn’t particularly reassuring. Her hand was limp in his, he tugged her into motion, an instant later the world seemed to burst in on her, and a man, head down, reading some document was couple of steps away, Elgin’s tug, her own turn and the man’s last second realization of something wrong swung them out of harms way, the man glared at her and grumbled, “Sorreee.” She followed Elgin up the steps, she glanced at her watch, it was ten to eleven, her chest was sore where she’d been shot last night and she was tired, hungry and thirsty but she was alive and she’d just crossed most of the country in less than an hour in the clutches of what was almost certainly the origin of most of the legends of flying monsters like dragons and griffins. The elevator was remarkably friendly and comforting for all its stainless steel, brass and granite formality. The lobby of Petters, Petters, Faulken and Christchurch was equally settling and welcoming and she crossed it with a quick firm stride with a good humored Elgin in trail. The situation in the conference room was near the boiling point, Dmitri Andropov was obviously beginning to throw his weight around after waiting for twenty minutes. The slender Russian’s eyebrows flew up as he saw her and Elgin, the young woman Elgin thought was a bodyguard looked almost shocked at her appearance. Zeph smiled, “Hello all, so sorry for being late, and for all the delays, I guess we can’t plan for rock falls in the middle of Manhattan can we? She glanced at the table, at the papers in front of each leather bound conference room seat, and smiled at Barbara James, “So you should have had some time to skim over the new version of the contracts that are structured in the way we discussed the other day. Let’s get down to brass tacks shall we?” She moved towards the head of the table, Elgin slipped into his chosen chair by a credenza at the side of the room with a decent view of many of the players. <<>> Chapter 16 The girl finds that she’s in a new world and our hero disposes of a Vampire Elena Novikov, known as Loretta Sanger in New York, sat sipping tea with her feet on the ottoman in her tiny but exquisitely clean and elegantly decorated efficiency apartment. The big screen television on the wall between the two tall double hung windows was showing waves crashing on the shore of a black sand beach overhung with palm trees. Her eyes were focused on the Russian language fashion magazine, though even with its risqué layouts and aggressively nihilist anti government articles it wasn’t making much of an impression. At last she tossed the rag aside and sat sulking, she still couldn’t get the damned cowboy out of her head. He was at least ten years older than her and not her type at all! She liked brooding young intellectuals though she rarely got to pander to her own tastes in men. She might be an illegal, a covert agent of the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki or SVR, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, but her current cover was as high price call girl. A cover she was likely to remain in for some years yet. In New York it was a very useful cover, she was ‘invited’ to a lot of diplomatic parties as one of the party favors. It was a good thing she enjoyed sex, was a great deal tougher than she looked and took a lot of drugs, not the recreational kind, but a powerful cocktail of anti-viral, anti AIDS, and antibiotic drugs that she got through her ‘control’ Viktor Ushakov. She stretched a hand out in front of her, a strong slim hand, nails meticulously manicured. It was hard to believe that that hand had killed three people. The SVR was mainly an intelligence agency focused on economics, politics and social movements, but it was also an anti terrorist organization. And terrorists, particularly the big shots, tended to have high libidos. Jihadists in particular might expound very conservative values concerning women, but they often wanted a blonde whore to prove their manhood on, which had put her in ‘position’ to liquidate several threats over her short career. Her phone buzzed discretely and went silent, a text message from Vanessa, the woman who Loretta had ‘replaced’ in Viktor’s ‘stable.’ Vanessa had moved on to DC, last Elena had heard the woman had been the mistress of a Senator. The message was very brief, friendly, the level they had exchanged every once in awhile, it was an invite to a weekend party in DC. The invite was probably real enough, but there were two character groups that looked like fumble thumb inclusions, but weren’t. The cowboy flushed from her thoughts, Elena got up and walked to the expensive Yamaha electric piano under the big screen TV and started to tinkle on the keys. In her minds eye she saw her parents as she had last seen them. Laid side by side, only white sheets to cover their pale nakedness as they lay forever stilled on the rust spalled white enamel gurneys. She remembered her hefty, stiff, smelly aunt telling her that they hadn’t been NGO lawyers, but Federal Security Service or FSB agents working to break a terrorist plot. That the ‘enemy,’ a cabal of the CIA and Chechen rebels had destroyed her world, her aunt had known someone in the FSB, a week later the fourteen year old orphan was in a special school where she had been immersed in a world she had never imagined. Elena Novikov had been a minor piano prodigy and a brilliant student. The SVR had seen the swimming medals and the rough country survival skills her parents had taught her on their long camping holidays. That along with a near perfect complexion, long legs, huge brown eyes and honey blonde hair had condemned her to training as a whore and killer. As always Elena had excelled, she had earned her the nickname, Killer Kitten. Five years on Elena was a hardened cynic, and a practiced professional in a harsh field. She was almost certain that her Aunt had lied about everything. Her parents certainly hadn’t been FSB. Russian’s were past masters of secrecy and you didn’t use married couples as agents. Her Aunt probably had known someone, who knew someone, but in truth she’d sold her niece into a sort of slavery for a nice chunk of money. The SVR didn’t involve itself with human trafficking directly, but it did turn a blind eye to it unless it was carried out by enemies of the motherland. Individuals like Viktor Ushakov did deal in white slavery, his background in the KGB and then in the FSB had made him a dangerous and ruthless man with contacts in all the wrong sorts of places. He wasn’t a human trafficker in the sense of running a ring but he was a broker between the rings and New York gangs and pimps who needed ‘workers.’ Disgusted by Viktor and the trade, Vanessa had provided tips and leads to local police when she could. Elena had continued where her predecessor had left off. It was the least she could do and it did some good. As a SVR agent she was supposed to cultivate a broad circle of contacts, and Vanessa and now Elena had contacts in the strangest places. She glanced at the message as her fingers rippled across the keys of the piano, Vanessa was warning her that something was ‘up’ at the SVR headquarters in the Embassy on Wisconsin avenue in DC. What did that mean? Vanessa wouldn’t have sent the message unless it at least touched Elena. There was a burble from the disposable phone, Viktor calling, “Loretta?” she answered. “Hey kitten, I have a job for you, you liked the cowboy, I need you to get your hots on and go ride him like he’s a bucking bronco, Vitally will get a couple of good shots and you’re done.” Elena looked at the cell phone, Viktor was crude at the best of times, he’d suddenly reached new heights in lows, and she didn’t like the finality with which he said ‘done.’ Had her little treasons been discovered? Viktor wasn’t really SVR any longer, he’d probably kill her if he found out. She’d lived with that knowledge for some time, it sat in an empty spot in her soul and didn’t matter, though if it came down to it she’d fight, would kill Viktor if she could. But she still loved her motherland, was still loyal to the SVR, and Viktor was an SVR asset...probably. “You hear me girl?” He tried to cover his anger at her delayed answer. “I am not sure he’s the type to pick up a whore Viktor.” “Give it away for free then girl. Just get it done, we need the lever. This is for your mother not the money.” He cut the call. For her mother, in other words for Mother Russia? What was the cowboy involved in? Last night she’d been told to take a run at him but it had seemed like it was a favor for some Russian ex pat big shot. She frowned, wandered back to her sleek little Mac and let her fingers and mind do some wandering using an internet connection she pirated through the coffee shop next door. It only took a little while for her come up with some interesting links. Elgin Chalmers, of Beauty, Wyoming, was in New York as a tribal representative in a land deal negotiation ongoing at one of the mid rank law firms. Only one other player meant anything to her, Dmitri Andropov of Double Eagle Financial, she grinned at the black double headed eagle on the company crest, its outline was all but identical to the gaudy gold red and white crest embossed on her official commissioning letter as an officer of the SVR, folded away in a safe deposit box in Moscow. Then she saw another name she recognized, Zephyr Samson-Smith, a high power lawyer who did pro bono work helping sex workers get a second chance. There was feeling of a presence in her room and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. She pushed back from the bar that the computer sat on and casually put her hand in her pocket, she grabbed the butt of her Glock pocket pistol, wondering what kind of life did she live that she usually carried a gun even in her own appartment, also wondering if she was getting crazy paranoid. She turned and found herself staring into a pair of azure eyes in a coffee brown muzzle with tall mobile ears, ears with long white tassels. The cat’s dark cream body was slim if heavily muscled; his long tail was mostly dark cream with a coffee brown tip like his head and feet. He looked like a classic Siamese, grown the size of a small mountain lion. How the hell had the beautiful monster gotten into her room? With a gentle “Mrowow,” the huge house cat rolled to his feet and walked slowly, elegantly, towards her, he had to weigh almost half what she did, about the same as a large dog breed. He didn’t try to wind around her like his smaller brethren but did brush his length on her leg, as he walked around her, the incredibly long prehensile tail wrapped around her, finally sliding past and tickling her nose. Then he strolled away, exploring her room like a landlord making sure everything was still in order. He vanished into her luxurious bathroom, Elena followed pistol all but forgotten at her side. He inspected everything, making approving mrows every once in a while. Passing her as he left he gave her another body massage, his tail stroking her in an oddly affectionate way. She wasn’t sure what to do with him, she liked cats but pets weren’t a good idea in any of her professions. Should she open the door and just let him out? Was he the pet of someone else in the building? Turning with a smile, “Or I suppose I should I say your pet?” She frowned, the cat was nowhere to be seen, the apartment was empty. Completely empty, there was no sign of the cat or how he had gotten in or out. There was a knock on the door and Elena almost forgot to pocket the gun before opening the door. On the other side was Valery a dark haired ex college student, current call girl, they went to some of the same parties, they’d done a few ‘lesbo’ acts as warm ups before the real action started at a couple of parties. They were friends and confidants, at least that was how Valery saw the relationship. Elena saw it slightly differently but couldn’t help trying to help the other girl. Valery was wide eyed and a bit pale, “Did you hear?” she almost whispered, looking around as if afraid about being overheard. “Hear what?” “About yesterday?” “The big bang, who didn’t?” “It was the HP! Its only getting out now, girls from the HP, they say there was some kind of battle, a magical battle, one says she saw the HP fall into the ground with the flames of hell roaring up around it as it went!” HP was shorthand of the whispered stories about the Horror Palace, a mythical New York bordello where all sorts of horrors abounded. Though a couple of girls Elena had met over the years had claimed they worked out of the ‘Palace, they never said where it was and no one else seemed to know. One of the legends about the ‘Palace was that people who talked too much about the ‘Palace or found it by accident, disappeared never to be seen again. While Elena had no experience with the reality she was Russian enough not to utterly reject stories that delved into black magic. It turned out that Valery didn’t know a whole lot more than she had blurted out in the first seconds. A couple of discreet calls confirmed the story, to the point of certainty. Valery hovered around as Elena did some digging, not liking the rumors that were rippling through the Big Apple’s underbelly. Valery was obviously shaken, but that wasn’t surprising, Valery wasn’t really made for the life of a call girl, what Valery needed was a fiftyish executive in need of a mistress or trophy wife. Valery, was sitting on the ottoman looking at her hands, frowning, she looked up at Elena, “Why are we doing this?” “This?” “Whoring...why did I drop out of college? I had a plan!” Elena blinked, “You ran out of money?” Valery shook her head, “I had a....a grant really from my granddad’s trust. Full ride through college to a PhD if I could make it,” Valery ended in a soft confused whimper, she was shaking like a leaf, tears pouring down her cheeks. As Valery started to slip off the ottoman Elena stepped forward and caught her, letting the older girl slide to the floor. Valery curled up, whimpering, “What have I done?” Elena wanted to slap the girl, instead, “Valery, you said it was unlimited, you just go back, a little older, a whole lot wiser.” Valery seemed to accept this, her sobs eased but she continued to lay there, to stare into some unknowable place, finally she spoke, Elena couldn’t make it out, “What honey?” she asked gently, though she really wanted to give the other girl a good shake. “I worked for the HP, Elena.” “What!?” Elena yelped, shocked that Valery could surprise her like that.. “Yeah, I think, I think it was some kind of drug, or hypnosis. A couple of years ago, during break I went to a party. A real swinging party, lots of sex, there was a man, an oriental in a sharp suit. He hit on me a couple of times, I turned him down. The third time something happened, before I knew what had happened I was naked and getting screwed by a stranger and not minding it. There was this woman who came to me later, she told me what to do, and I did it, no questions asked.” Having gotten it all out Valery shut up, shut her eyes and was asleep almost immediately. Elena stood up, went and got a pillow and a cover, lifted Valery’s head to put it on the pillow and covered the noticeably skinny body. It was possible this had happened just in time to save the girls life. Elena looked at the time, if she was to carry out her orders regarding the cowboy she needed to go. If she wasn’t then she had to figure out what to do instead. -o- Elena arrived at the older and somewhat down market hotel where she had intercepted Elgin the day before. The doorman who’d given her a very old-fashioned look yesterday opened the door with an avuncular smile today, not recognizing her out of her working clothes and paint. Today he saw the teenage daughter of one of the guests, coming back from a shopping trip. She smiled sweetly back and went through into the lobby. She had Elgin’s room number, she’d use the house phone to leave a message and leave. The phone was ringing when the elevator tinged and Elgin strolled out, he was frowning. A woman Elena had noted sitting in a lounge chair stood up with a restrained smile of greeting. Standing together they made a handsome couple, his hair short and bright blonde, hers dark red brown, in modest heels the woman was tall enough to almost look Elgin in the eye. She was mature in the right way for him, probably a few years older, sharp, stable, professional. The phone stopped ringing and the machine told her to leave a message. She hesitated for a moment, then spoke, “Hi, this is Loretta. Look, yesterday was no accident, someone sent me to try and compromise you, you need to know someone is out to get leverage over you, be careful.” She hung up the phone still watching Elgin and the woman, something inside of her numb. She didn’t want to move, leave, she’d have to walk right past Elgin and she suspected, or was it hoped? that he’d recognize her, even out of character. Turning she walked casually to another grouping of lounge chairs nearby, half shielded by some plants in hip high ceramic pots, and sat down as if waiting for someone to come and meet her. Elgin and the woman had moved and were looking at something on a laptop computer the woman had produced, on one of the high bar tables by the front entrance, Elgin was still facing the entrance, looking up every once in a while to scan the lobby as if waiting for something. Elena tried to relax, settled in to wait, then one of the waitresses from the bar area appeared with a glass and bowl of nuts. A few years older than Elena, she smiled in a friendly way, “Hey there, your cute uncle said he’d be with you in a few,” set down the tray and departed. Elena stared at the tray, the drink was lemon sour, no vodka, what she drank at parties most of the time, what she had ordered when they were out the night before. It wasn’t Elgin who came to talk to her first. The tall woman strolled over, bag and coat clipped closed, ready to leave. Elena stood up, no point in trying to act stupider than she felt, “Hi?” The older woman looked Elena up and down, her expression neutral, but her hand came out, “Hello Elena, I’m Zeph Smith-Samson, I’m a lawyer working on a case with Elgin.” Elena felt shock ripple through her body, how did they know her real name?” “...experience with girls in similar situations, if you ever need help please feel free to contact me.” Elena only heard the last part of the offer; she had been staring across the lobby at Elgin, who was studiously ignoring her and Smith-Samson. “Uh, thanks, I’ve heard of what you’ve done for other girls.” Elena, tried to mentally shake herself back into some semblance of her normal self. She straightened her shoulders, looked into the lawyer’s eyes, which she realized were very like those she saw in a mirror. Big, ‘nut’ brown eyes, “In fact we’ve met, I was at the party the Kamaratstan Ambassador put on last year.” The big brown eyes widened, “Oh?” then hardened, “Oh! That son of a bitch of a princeling needs reining in!” Elena couldn’t help smiling, grinning really, “Most definitely.” The grin faded quickly, the son of a bitch had been hosting a terrorist, Loretta’s date, he’d died with his boots on, as the saying went. “I heard about some excitement the following morning?” the lawyer said, her eyes going wide again. “Oh?” Elena said, but she let herself smile faintly in satisfaction. Then her eyes wandered back to Elgin and she felt sad and lost again. Zeph had a very good lawyer expression, the faint smile, hint of condescension while waiting for enlightenment, but her eyes scanned Elena again and then fixed on her face searchingly. Elena tried to respond in kind, but figured she just looked sullen, the sullen adolescent facing off with an older sister. There was an electronic beep and Zeph looked at her watch, “Damn it, I have to go.” She looked back at Elena, her expression kind, “Look, I think you have a crush on Elgin. Us women, the mature sex, are supposed to get over that stage at some point, but I’ve never quite figured out when. I think he likes you more than he lets on, but he’s not exactly well practiced around women. His mother vanished when he was twelve and he’s always been skittish of girls, though he used to moon over the pretty ones when he thought they weren’t aware of him. I’m not his mom, not even a sister, but I care for him even if he frightens me spitless at times. Be gentle and be careful.” Then Zeph almost ran for the door, yelling for a taxi. Leaving Elena speechless and staring, what had Zeph meant by ‘frightens me spitless?’ Americans could be arrogantly loose with their mother tongue but it seemed unlikely a high powered lawyer would be. Elgin seemed to appear out of nowhere, she tried to smile, “Hi.” “Hello.” His face was still, watchful. “Elgin. Look I came to warn you....” He nodded, pointed at the lobby phone, “I heard.” His jaw worked, “Was the plan to call the police and catch me making love to an underage girl?” He growled, his eyes still fixed on her face. She blushed, “I’m not underage, and not the police. But...” She looked away with a shrug, “I’m sorry, I am a...” she stopped with his finger on her lips. He swallowed, grimaced, looked down at her with intensity, “I know what you are, or at least some of it Elena. I am Elgin, I’m a cowboy because of circumstances, it’s not what I am, you work for the SVR as spy and ...call girl, that’s not what you are.” How did he know that? But she realized that somehow it didn’t matter that much to him, that he was looking at her, addressing her, as Elena. The tall young man with the clear blue eyes was looking at her with an intensity that left her shaking. Not with fear but with desire, she wanted to throw herself at him, wrap her arms and legs around him and lose herself in kissing him. He was staring down at his hands, his jaw clenched by some powerful emotion. Not able to help herself, she reached out to touch a hand, strong and long, the skin was rough, hardened by wind and sun, not soft like an intellectuals. It was a shock when his hand turned to cup hers and his thumb came around to stroke across her knuckles, all but making her gasp. “I’m sorry Elgin.” She didn’t know what else to say. He looked at her, “For what Elena? For doing your job, doing what you had to. I know your parents were killed in a hit and run and your aunt lost no time in getting rid of you. My...I...had assumed you were trafficked but that doesn’t feel right.” His thumb ever so gently stroking her knuckles, Elena could hardly think, she said the first thing that came to mind, the truth, “My aunt sold me to the training directorate who are always looking for new cannon fodder. She had told me that my parents had been agents of the FSB, murdered by Chechens and the CIA, and I believed her. At the start I was the perfect conscienceless sex and killing machine the trainers could mold to their will.” His other hand came up to stroke her hair, “Damn her, damn them,” he sighed, “but then I’m sure they went over that cliff long before you.” His voice was soft, gruff, caring. From somewhere deep inside she drew on strength she would have hardly believed possible, slipping her hand from his, stepping back. It was a shock to see disappointment, sadness in his eyes at her rejection, she wanted to step back, step closer, have him wrap her in his arms. She continued to back, “I’m sorry Elgin, I have to go, something is going on and I need to find out what. I’m not an American Elgin, I am an agent, a spy, and worse. If the FBI ever found out I’d never see the light of day again.” Now Elena saw what Zeph had meant when she said Elgin could scare her spitless, his face was no longer sternly gentle, strong but infinitely understanding. Now his eyes were icy slits and his face carved out of some hard, fine grained stone, “Trust me Elena, I would never tell them, and there is nothing on this world that would keep us apart if that were our destiny.” Choking back a laugh, wanting to believe but knowing she had to run, she shook her head, “Elgin, its not that easy, we’re just people, the powers in this world would crush us, crush you.” He smiled faintly, advancing after her, “I am one of the powers in this world Elena. Though few know it, the world is changing, and I and others who have been myth or forgotten for thousands of years walk the Earth again. I had to destroy a monster yesterday and in doing so killed dozens of innocents. The FBI, the ATF, the whole of Homeland Security would try and hunt me down if they knew what I was, what I have done, what I will have to do in the future.” Now he was just saying crazy things! But were they crazy? The Horror Palace had been blown into the stratosphere, Valery said she’d been spelled into becoming a sex toy by someone from the Palace. That monster cat had teleported in and out of her apartment. Elgin stopped her retreat with a gentle hand on the shoulder, but now he was no longer looking at her, instead he was frowning at something behind her. Then his eyes got very round. She started to turn, he shook his head slightly and spoke without moving his lips much, “Don’t turn, look at the desk clerks, the other guests.” The man and woman at the desk were staring in the same direction as Elgin, their eyes wide, faces empty of expression, “What’s happening?” “There’s vampire by the front entrance.” “A vampire?” She wanted to laugh. But in the coffee shop she saw a woman and her three children staring emptily in the same direction. The barista’s foaming tin was frothing all over the place as she stood uncaring, waiting. “The premier predator of humans, fortunately they’re very rare, territorial, solitary and not terribly smart. On the other hand their very presence hypnotizes humans and they can take a lot of damage, unlike werewolves cutting their head off does not slow them down much, a good strong dose of sunlight, a hot fire or getting yanked into the shadow realm by someone else are about the only permanent solutions.” He was talking almost as if to himself. Now she caught a whiff of something rotten and there was a chill that went deeper than just ordinary New York winter cold. She could still hardly believe it, “A vampire, really?” She realized she had reverted to snobbish ‘club gurl’ speech patterns. His grin was faint but real, “Really, a vampire, a very young one fortunately.” “Fortunately?” “You any good with that pistol you have tucked away in the back holster?” She almost denied it, but, “What’s the range? Thirty feet, center of mass from a fast draw eight times in ten.” He looked approving, “I do like girls who are good with guns. Try not to look into its eyes, but you should have time to put it down for a few seconds before it locks onto you. It’s overloaded by all the potential food. Whoever sent it doesn’t understand vampires.” He looked down at her, his face confident and calm, “Go.” Her hand went for her back as she dropped into a crouch and spun to get on target. The massive manlike figure with its pale face and dark, ragged clothes, was unmistakable. She had an impression of glaring red eyes and gleaming white teeth, a hand rising, a body tensing to spring. The Glock 39 was a subcompact 45 caliber weapon with a six round magazine, it wasn’t a lot of shots but each one had the most stopping power available and she hadn’t been boasting when she told Elgin how good a shot she was. The kick was massive, but so was the end effect. The pistol bucked in her hand, once, twice, again, again, again, the vampire had started to lunge her way by the second shot, without seeming to have noticed the first that she was certain had hit. She ejected the magazine and reached for her backup, six rounds it had noticed. As it fell it started to shriek, an inhuman, ear piercing sound that felt like knives driving through her ears deep into her brain. Elgin jumped past her as she fell to her knees, pistol fallen from nerveless fingers, as she clapper her hands over her ears to try and cut some of the pain. The sound stopped, just cut off. Sagging Elena looked up, the thing, the vampire, and Elgin, were nowhere to be seen. People were beginning to shake themselves, look around. She saw her pistol on the tiles, and the empty magazine, she crouched down and scooped it up. There was nothing she could do about the six shell cases though fortunately they had mostly landed in and around the decorative planters. There was a shriek, children crying in fear and pain, the two in the coffee shop were holding their ears. The barista was cursing, trying to figure out what had happened to her machine. The other ten or twelve people in the lobby were looking around, some holding their heads, others with their eyes squeezed shut. Elena jumped when Elgin spoke softly from behind her, “We should get out of here before people start to recover and questions are asked.” She glared at him, there was no way he could have gotten behind her without her seeing him, and what had happened to the monstrous scarecrow figure of the vampire? “Damn it, how did you do that, you related to a big damned Siamese cat?” She almost snarled at him, her heart racing. He blinked, “Humph? How do you know about Humph?” She stared at him, “I don’t know Humph, I do know that a Siamese cat the size of a Labrador Retriever invaded my apartment this afternoon, and then vanished again.” “That’s Humpfrey, my cat, he’s harmless...unless you had a Chihuahua?” There was a gleam of laughter in his eyes now, though his mouth was perfectly serious. He was guiding her rapidly to the elevators. “You sent your cat to spy on me?” “No one sends Humph anywhere, he tends to appear and disappear pretty much as he wants. But he’s a good friend, he’s saved Zeph’s life a couple of times.” Elena was feeling more than a little overwhelmed as he punched his floor number into the elevator’s control panel. It came as a shock a few moments later to realize she was leaning against his warm torso and his arm was draped protectively around her shoulder. “Life’s going to get interesting,” she whispered. “Going to get?” he sighed with a tired smile. The elevator binged and the door opened, he lead her out, still all but tucked under his arm. He was utterly defenseless against her, maybe she should have elbowed him in the short ribs, put him down at least for a few seconds as she made her escape, but as the SVR agent training spooled out the scenario Elena the person snuggled a little closer to the man who spoke about vampires as if they were a standard hazard. His room wasn’t big or particularly well appointed but neither was it tiny. There were two beds, one of which had a large cream and brown lump laid out on it. Humph turned his head to give the couple an approving azure gaze, “Yowrp.” Then he settled back into his interrupted cat nap. “Uh, Elena, you’ve met Humph, Humphrey Chalmers to be formal.” He dropped his arm from around her shoulder, pointed at the lounge chair and desk with chair in the corner, “Have a seat.” He rubbed his brow, suddenly looking tired. “What did you do with that thing downstairs?” “I translated it into the shadow realm,” He grimaced, waved a hand, “A kind of manifold universe that links this one with many similar ones. Though the vampire is actually a creature of the shadow realm it’s very sensitive to the translation, when you hurt it, put it down for a few seconds, I had the chance to drag it through and it disintegrated.” He closed his eyes, grimacing, “Damn it, would you shut up!” it was as if he was speaking to himself. Elena approached, “What’s the matter?” She touched him. Then she was standing somewhere else, a hot gritty wind made her wince, not far away a small brown man, wearing only a sort of white kilt with a gold belt leaned on a spear with a long, sharp bronze head. A little further away a huge creature stood staring at them. A griffin, a griffin with the head that was furred and somewhat doglike, or maybe, Dragon like, its eyes were brilliant blue and the body massively muscled. Spinning around she gasped as she saw a pyramid nearby, a pyramid with polished faces of red rock. People dressed like the small brown man moved around the temples that surrounded the base of the vast structure, some looking and pointing her way. “Elgin!” “He’s not here,” the voice was oddly similar to Elgin’s. She spun to face the brown man, her pistol suddenly in her hand, “Who are you, what have you done with Elgin?” “Elgin calls me Cutter, I’m one of the voices in his head.” The little man had a very beaky nose, and his hair had some white in it and had receded some. “What?” “Elena, a bit more than a year ago Elgin got himself killed.” The man waved at the Griffin, “The Iffrit saved him, brought him back to life, but for a reason and with a purpose. The Iffrit arrived on Earth when there was nothing but cooling oceans with some scum. Oldest is effectively immortal, a creation of a civilization that existed before the current one exploded out of the singularity, he understands and can manipulate the universe at the quantum level. But he’s an alien machine and while he can interact with humans he’s not always good at it without help. Prior to Elgin I was his imago on Earth, an agent, like Elgin I got myself killed in a rather stupid way at an age where I could adapt to being a combination of weak and fallible human and indestructible machine.” She looked at the creature / machine, it stared back at her with blue eyes very similar in color to Elgin’s. “What if I tell you I don’t believe you?” “You are in a simulation Elena, your mind linked to the Iffrit’s he, and I know that you know I’m not lying, though we are holding things back and always must.” “What are we doing here?” “I have been trying to convince Elgin that you are a very bad mistake. The Iffrit’s not the only alien to have arrived on Earth over the eons and while he is effectively their sovereign, many of them are always pushing against his reins. I had more than one concubine over the centuries I served as the Iffrit’s agent and several of them suffered terribly because of the connection. I have been trying to convince him to let you go, to forget you. The Iffrit could wipe any memory of you from Elgin’s mind, so he would not suffer the grief the loss would cause him. But Elgin has refused because we can’t do the same for you, and the thought of loosing you is like a knife in his gut.” “Oh!” Elena said softly, suddenly misty eyed, though she made sure to keep ‘Cutter’ covered by her pistol. The grimace made the beaky nosed man even uglier than before, “Damn hormones! You do know that love, emotions, are programmed into us, are more chemistry than ineffable mystery?” She couldn’t help grinning, “I may know that intellectually, but the emotion says you’re full of crap Cutter.” “The cascade reactions you set off in each other are almost unbelievably strong, the Iffrit calls it a remarkably inconvenient genetic accident.” “Why doesn’t he talk for himself,” She challenged Cutter.. “Because as he say’s, Cutter’s usually better at it,” The voice boomed from the Iffrit, suddenly lying on its stomach less than twenty feet away. Cutter gave the Iffrit the finger then slouched over to sit familiarly on one of the huge forelegs. She studied them, “You said you were one of the voices in Elgin’s head, where are you when you talk to him?” Cutter waved his hand around, “Here Elena, folded away in the interstices between the dimensions of the real world, in a very real sense ‘in’ Elgin’s head.” “Why now, why is this happening now?” she demanded. The Iffrit sighed. “There’s a lot of history even Elgin’s just starting to learn, suffice it to say that around the time of the rise of early Roman civilization one of our enemies trapped me in one of my own creations. That trap shut what you think of as magic away from humanity till it unlocked recently, it also destroyed Cutter’s physical body.” Cutter shrugged, “You don’t look too upset, Elena, that’s a bit cold, but understandable. The Iffrit and I are really two aspects of the same being. I am part of the Iffrit now, but as time goes on Elgin will learn and take up his full burden, he will be the other aspect of Iffrit and I will fade to a passive memory instead as have hundreds before me.” Elena blinked, “I’m sorry, I’m sure Elgin di...” Cutter waved for her to shut up, “It’s not for Elgin to decide, it’s my decision in the end. And let me put it this way, several thousand years of life are enough, the several hundredth time you see a village or city in flames, its inhabitants, every last man, woman and child butchered you tend to want to withdraw from contact with humans forever.” Elena put her pistol away, “So what do you want me to do?” She felt empty, her heart heavy in her chest, “You want to wipe my memories of Elgin so neither of us suffer?” She couldn’t help sounding bitter. Cutter was gone and she was floating in space alone. Far away she could see a blue crescent with a silver white crescent riding off its shoulder, seemingly not that far away a yellow sun roiled as it swung through the void. “You don’t have to do anything. At the end of every argument the fact is that I will do what I feel is best,” the Iffrit sounded distant and bored floating only a few feet away, frighteningly huge. He sounded like an Olympian god, ready to do with humanity what he wanted. She suppressed her fear response and stared the monster in the eye, “That’s not true is it? You have more limitations than you are willing to reveal.” He sighed, “It’s complicated.” An idle flip of a wingtip set him spinning slowly in place. “Four thousand years out of the loop has left you more vulnerable than you’re used to.” “Your people swarm across this world, inventing this and that, and now magic is returning. I thought that I had time to take up the reins slowly, to insert myself in a few places where I could wield the subtle power I would need. A few days in New York have shown me that I was an arrogant fool to believe that. Cutter is right, you are going to be vulnerable and a target if you become Elgin’s partner. At the same time my simulations, or should I say intuition? Tells me that you complete him in ways that I do not fully understand and that you are an asset to me and to humanity. I am going to have to learn to work with humans in many varied ways and you can help. I cannot give you the protection being my agent gives Elgin but I can certainly provide you with protection that none of Cutter’s women would have comprehended, let alone used effectively.” She watched the Iffrit, “Okay I suppose. Can you protect our children if we have them?” A blue eye gleamed at her, “You can be assured that I will protect them with every fiber of my being, I was created to raise the young.” She was standing with her hand on Elgin’s shoulder. He dropped his hand from his head, his frown clearing, he looked at her, “What happened?” “I had an argument with Cutter and convinced the Iffrit to keep out of our relationship.” His eyes widened, then got wider as she wound her arms around his neck and pulled his head down for the kiss she had wanted for some time now. It was just as good as she’d imagined it would be. <<>> Chapter 17 In which our hero wakes up happy only to find matters still in motion Elgin woke up feeling euphoric for a reason he could not at first put his finger on. The he realized that he was lying on one of his room’s two beds with a warm someone else spooned up against him. The headache that Cutter and the Iffrit arguing had given him was gone, the subtle strawberry scent from Elena’s hair filled his nose, her regular breathing gave him a feeling of completeness he’d rarely felt. One arm was under the pillow her head rested on, the other was draped across her waist. They were both fully dressed, the bed cover under them rumpled by their exploratory kisses and gentle stroking. She had been ready, willing to go further, but he needed to show her that there was more to his love than that and Elena had been more than happy to explore with him. *I hate to break up the cutesy little day dream but there is someone on his way up to this floor with a machine pistol and bad intentions,* Cutter was grumpy. *Who?* *Unknown, no electronic devices or ID on him, I’m running his prints through the databases we’ve cracked but it’s slow going.* “What is it?” Elena asked softly, her breathing still deep and even. “Someone on their way up, machine pistol, no electronics or ID.” “Hitman,” she said flatly, “I forgot to call in but Viktor has a tag on my cell, he knows I’m here.” “I thought you said camera, not machine pistol?” “I’ve been naughty, gotten a few of Viktor’s uh, non varsity customers, collared by the cops This may be his two birds with one stone plan.” “Guess that confirms it wasn’t Viktor who sent the vampire.” “Told you, the man’s a complete wuss when it comes to the supernatural, he’d no....” her phone rang with an odd deedle-deedle, she grabbed it and read the number, “That’s odd, its Conney, Constantine Chenyenko, a controller from DC.” She slipped the phone under the heavy fall of honey blonde hair, “Conney?” Elgin heard the rising and falling tones of a man’s voice but didn’t eavesdrop, *Where’s the hitman?* *Coming along the cross corridor, he’ll have a line of sight on this door about...now.* *The door buffered?* *Of course. Do you want a weapon, or are you going depend on the missus?* *Get over it and be nice Cutter.* He heard Elena respond at last, in Russian, “Understood sir.” And she hung up the phone. “Viktor messed up, SVR has evidence he’s mixed up in the elimination of an FSB team in Chechnya that was trying to shut down a terrorist cell that’s also running a white slaving operation. His whole network’s under suspicion, meaning me and six others. They’ve ordered me to kill Viktor.” “Loyalty test and problem solution in one elegant package,” Elgin growled. “It means the hitman could be one of the others, with the same orders, but who thinks I’m Viktor’s pet, a couple of them are sure I sleep with the slimy bastard.” “Oww...they’d do that?” “Give multiple people the same elimination order?” she snorted, “Yes, I’d bet they have. Would they point us at each other and hope we’d succeed in eliminating each other? Possible but unlikely, too many opportunities for ugly loose ends.” “So there’s about to be a Russian gang war in Manhattan?” “Oh yes.” “The hitman’s outside our door, he’s got a passkey. But he’s not doing anything.” Which was puzzling, a hitman wouldn’t wait around. She rolled off the bed, “Can you show me his face?” The door appeared to turn faintly transparent, the man outside was youngish, round faced with round lensed granny glasses and a long dark trench coat. He was leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the hallway, he looked like he was sweating and was hunched a little as if he had a stomach ache. “Oh Vitally, you should stick with a camera, you’re not cut out to be a killer.” She drew her pistol, and walked to the door, “Can you open it?” “Yes.” She brought her pistol up, pointing through the hazy door “Do it.” “On three, one, two, three,” the door simply vanished. “Don’t move Vitally,” Elena snapped. The young man gaped at her, at the missing door, the big hole in the end of the little automatic. He lifted his hands, “Loretta?!” it was a squeak, he was begging for his life, while he’d been given orders to kill, he knew that she was a killer. “Come on in, hands up, don’t do anything stupid and you’ll get to go home and watch porn on your big screen TV again.” Elena beckoned Vitally in. Once he was inside the door reappeared. Elgin pulled the coat off the shaking man, it dropped to the floor revealing the carrying sling - firing brace of the machine pistol that hung under his left arm, the long silencer and extended magazine giving it a menacing presence. In a few more moments the machine pistol was on the lounge chair and Vitally was bound to one of the desk chairs. Elena put her pistol away and sat down on the end of the bed, “Tell me what you thought you were doing Vitally,” she ordered flatly, in Russian. The young man cringed, looked at Elgin, “With him here?” Elgin looked over from where he was inspecting the pistol and webbing, “Things are not always as they appear,” he said flatly in Russian, which made the other cringe and go even whiter. The damn broke, “Washington called me, told me that Viktor has gone rogue and ordering me to eliminate him. Viktor had told me earlier that you were going to be with a mark, that I was to take a photograph. I knew....” he swallowed looked at Elgin, “Thought I knew that you were Viktor’s woman. Viktor’s got those biker bastards he’s taken up with all around him.” “So you figured that while you didn’t have the guts or skills to kill Viktor you could break in here, riddle me, and an innocent man, and offer my scalp as a token of your loyalty?” Elena asked good naturedly, Vitally looked like he was going to be sick. Elgin picked up a piece of paper that had a few seconds before been a request to conserve water by reusing towels, he held the picture out, “Do you recognize this man?” Vitally blanched, “Yes, he’s with Viktor all the time,” then his eyes widened and he looked at Elgin with new fear. Elena took the picture, frowned at it, “Who is he? He does look familiar.” Elgin grinned crookedly, “Not sure I appreciate that, he’s my uncle, usually called Claw these days.” Vitally was shaking like a leaf, “Your uncle....you are with them?” “Last time I saw my uncle he and some of his gang tried to kill me, most of them ended up dead, so, no, I’m not with them.” Elena looked at the picture again, “I’ve never seen this man, or other bikers, where did you see them?” “Some old warehouses near the river.” Elena glanced at Elgin, “Viktor’s always met me at his office up town.” Vitally giggled, “He has the hots for you, wants to impress you. The warehouse is where his real business is, it’s got cages for the stock,” he leered at her There was crack and Vitally’s head rocked back, he’d never even seen Elena start to move. She was in his face, “They’re human beings Vitally, its your sort that make the Viktors of the world possible. I did what I did because its what the SVR needed, not because of Viktor. This business is a cover, not what we are, Viktor chose his side business over his duty and got patriots killed,” she snarled, Vitally ducked his head, hiding his shame and anger. Elena got even closer, “Do you know the address?” Vitally sullenly shook his head, “No, I’m met and taken there, through some tunnels at the end.” “Did they take your cell phone when you met them?” “Yes,” There was a sullen satisfaction in his tone. She glanced around Elgin, “That’s enough?” “More than sufficient,” Elgin replied with a grim smile. -o- It was still ridiculously early when Zeph met Elgin and Elena at a coffee shop not far from the place Vitally’s phone had shown as his rendezvous point with Viktor. A snowstorm had blown in just after midnight with the typically grim results in New York. The doorbell jingled as she opened the door, slipped in and shut it as quickly as possible then she stamped the slush off her boots, waved to the couple and got herself a cup of hot coffee with lots of cream and sugar. Elgin and Elena had called Zeph just after midnight and briefed her on the situation, which was, to say the least, surreal, but then her whole life had been surreal since her stay in Beauty. She looked at Elena who was staring out the window with a pensive expression. Like most girls and women in ‘the profession’ she didn’t look like a hooker when not dressed and made up ‘for work,’ she was just the pretty girl next door. Of course the fact that this ‘girl next door’ was a trained Russian spy and assassin and that Elgin was madly in love with her just made the whole thing another ten levels of messed up. Sitting down she came to the point, “No sign of Rachel or Olga and the police, even my contacts, put on a mask of caring but don’t. They’re still dealing with the fallout from the implosion of the HP.” “They know it was the HP?” Elena asked. “Yes and your friend Valery isn’t the only girl who’s had an epiphany of recovered memory about being drugged or hypnotized. I hear the vice squad is tearing their hair out about it and the FBI and Homeland Security are all over the place because of the big bang and now this.” “Inevitable I suppose,” Elena said, looking at Elgin, “Your compatriots have any ideas?” “Ideas no, information yes. The passage from the parking structure to Viktor’s hideout was easy enough to trace. A clever location, someone wanted to spiffy up an old section of factory and warehouses on the river front, they did a lot of basic bracing and rewiring work throughout the structure and gutted then rebuilt the front section, but have never gotten around to finishing up, the back four fifth’s are almost untouched. Turns out that Viktor’s front office is in the ‘front,’” Elgin air quoted the word, “section and his dirty work goes on in the back.” “Elgin says the Cauldron that was stolen from the witches coven is there.” Elena said it quietly, with an expression that said she was having a hard time believing she was saying the words and believing them. “Now we know where the Claws retreated to, why they vanished, who’d have thought about New York?” “Is Double Eagle a front of some kind then?” Zeph shook her head at her own question, “No, it’s been around, and with the same principles, for a lot longer than this has all been going on.” “It was, and may still be, a front, for the SVR. Whoever started it was pretty arrogant, the company crest outline is identical to the SVR crest.” Elena said with a wry grin, “The FBI has a reputation of being technically adept but very blind in certain ways.” “You didn’t know about it before then?” Zeph checked. Elena shook her head with an almost whimsical grin, “I’m cannon fodder grade, do the job, keep the mouth shut.” “Do your friends have an in at Double Eagle?” “The Iffrit’s gotten bugs in, but Double Eagle’s irritatingly security conscious. They train their people to keep a lot of things in their head and they mulch any hard copy in house. Communication goes through satellite links and they are very good at hiding their data streams. What I know is that most of what they buy is legit, however a lot of the funds that they manage have at least questionable origins. If the Claw is a customer he’s been one for some time. Dmitri Andropov does know Viktor and has visited him in his front office multiple times, not clear if he’s ever been in the back office.” “Did you trace the note I got telling me to back off and let Double Eagle manage the negotiations from today or else?” Or else first Olga and Rachel, then Allen, then her mother and father, and finally Zeph, would pay the ultimate penalty. The note had looked like a formal invitation, thick paper stock, bold embossed letters, reinforcing the message of ruthless arrogance. “Not yet, the Iffrits...” Elgin started. Cutter broke in, *Something just burnt out the nanite infestation in Viktor’s back office. And something is tracking in on you. Very close, a vehicle coming down the street.* He was sitting side on the to window, he saw a hulking Escalade drive past. “Someone, probably my loving uncle, has tracked me.” It was well past the coffee house when its brake lights lit up and it drew to a stop in the mouth of an alleyway. The rear doors opened and two figures emerged to cross the street. “Crap, now I’ve no idea what’s going on,” Zeph muttered from beside him. “You saw her as well.” He grunted, “So what the hell does it mean that Dmitri Andropov’s bodyguard is involved with magic?” Elena spoke up, “I’m pretty sure the man was one of Viktor’s other operatives, I’ve never met him, but I’ve passed messages to him, he was supposedly in deep cover.” “Maybe he was, both of them are armed and coming this way.” There was a clatter, and when Elena and Zeph glanced back Elgin was gone. In the dusk of the shadow realm Elgin hopped through the window onto a clear street with a haze that almost looked like mist the only indication of snow. He strolled up the street and then turned. The wind was blowing hard from his back, slapping cold pats of snow on his neck. The pair of Russians were a few steps from the entryway when they sensed his approach. The woman turned, her pistol already coming around when he tagged them both. In an instant they were all staggering, on the suddenly dry, if crumbly sidewalk, then Elgin went sprawling into the snow in front of the coffee shop door. Climbing to his feet he brushed himself off, looking back he saw the Escalade still waiting, he turned back and strode into what had turned into a blizzard, he wasn’t going to risk dropping back into the shadow realm here, not with two armed and frightened killers in the immediate area. The driver saw him coming, looked around wildly for the others then gunned it, spinning all four wheels for an instant before the traction control took over and pulled him out of his illegal waiting spot and into the road. A minute later Elgin re-entered the coffee shop, giving the puzzled barista a smile as he came back in and sat down. “So they know I’m not dead and that I’m just as dangerous as ever and they’re down two guns already.” He said staring back at Elena who was glaring at him with pursed lips, “I would have taken you as backup but you can’t translate in and out of the shadow realm and all I did was pop them over there. They may or may not turn back up eventually but it won’t be until this is all over.” Zeph was only half listening, she was at least a little used to Elgin’s…oddities, “What are we going to do about Rachel and Olga, they have to be in Viktor’s back office.” She didn’t say, and neither Elgin nor Elena were going to point out, that there was an equal chance the girls were already dead. Elgin shrugged, “You have those two samples from the girls?” Nodding, Zeph pulled out two small baggies, inside were several hairs, one a light brown the other reddish, “Olga and Rachel.” She identified in turn the hairs she’d gotten from the girl’s hairbrushes at their apartment. Opening one then the other Elgin took a strand from each, he squeezed one between thumb and forefinger, it turned to dust as he opened the pinch, then the other went the same way. He looked up, “Both still alive, both in the general direction, I’m not going to try for more until we’re in position to grab them.” Zeph sighed, “thank God, how though?” “I am going to go in high, drop in on the roof and work my way down, I doubt they’ll expect that and if you have the right uh, tools, going down from floor to floor does not necessarily involve stairs or elevators,” Elgin grinned evilly. “You’ll fly in this weather?” He glanced out, “I, or rather the Iffrit has flown in worse, but most of it will be in the shadow realm, again I doubt they’ll have a lookout on the other side, they’re not used to uh, sorcerous war.” He glanced at Zeph, “And Zeph I need you to be on the outside, back at your firm, waiting for a call.” His eyes flicked to Elena and then away, “Elena can be your bodyguard, I want you both out of the battle zone till its mostly...” Elgin felt a prickling on his neck, outside it seemed to have gotten darker, a car veered off the street and spun onto the sidewalk. Down the middle of the street strode a massive figure, a rolling gait, long black hair blowing in the wind though the snow seemed to swirl away from the long dirty trench coat. “Where the hell are they getting vampires from? There shouldn’t have been two within a hundred miles of each other.” “I thought vampires couldn’t go out when the sun was up?” “They can’t stand the rays of the sun, the high energy UV photons set them on fire, thick storm clouds work as a shield.” He glanced, realized that Elena’s eyes were glazing, though her whole body vibrated with the force of her effort to stay in control. The snow was blinding, a car didn’t see the vampire in time and ran into it, the car crumpled like it was hitting a telephone pole, though the vampire went staggering backwards. Its red slash of a mouth open in a bellow of pain. Regaining its balance it leapt at the car and ripped the roof off. Elgin grabbed the monsters arm and twisted, but the world stayed cold, something anchoring the living dead thing in the real world. Next thing Elgin knew he was flying through the air. The change hit him half way to a crushing collision with a brick wall. The huge black wolf twisted in mid air and met the wall with all four paws and then leapt off it as if it had been the ground. The vampire had forgotten the screaming woman in the car with its roof ripped off like a meat can’s lid, and turned with an inhumanly wide gaping mouth revealing not two fangs, but a mouth filled with daggers. Hitting the ground almost at the vampire’s feet the wolf went for a leg with a mouth equipped with an equally appalling set of fangs. The vampire tried to kick but the black wolf was too quick, its fangs sank in and it let its body, easily as heavy as the mountainous vampire, slide around. Neck muscles straining, teeth embedded to the bone the wolf rolled and twisted, like a shark or a croc, and with a hideous crack and a scream that might have woken the dead, the vampire’s lower leg was ripped off. Flinging its head, sending the hideous trophy sailing a hundred feet down the road, the wolf snarled, its bright blue eyes glittering as it circled for the next strike. The vampire was still squalling, but had somehow not fallen, it was hopping on one foot, the truncated leg dangling in air, a few thin streams of oil black blood dripping down to melt the ice and snow on the roadbed. Judging the vampire’s rather erratic motion well the wolf bounced to the side then drove at his enemy, the vampire flung up an arm, a mistake the wolf had expected. Jaws with the power of a digging machine latched on and the wolf twirled its massive body again, and there was another horrific crack as a joint failed and the unearthly scream came again. An arm, ripped off at the shoulder, went flying down the street. Somewhere, someone who had been funneling power to the vampire weakened, distracted by the reflected pain, nearly sucked dry by the vampire’s futile fight. The wolf grinned, though the expression was perhaps more a snarl of victory, revealing the ranks of fangs. This time the leap was almost puppy like. Wolf and vampire vanished from the ‘real’ world. Elgin wolf rolled through the man shaped cloud of smoldering dust that had been a vampire on the other side and shook himself hard. The individual motes of dust caught fire, one by one, then by the hundreds, and tens of thousands, with a burst of yellow fire and whomp of heated air it was gone, whatever vague remnant of a human mind and soul it had contained, also gone. He looked around, no sign of the two assassins from a few minutes before. Then a bullet hit the wolf in the shoulder, he spun and leapt in one fluid motion. The woman never flinched, firing twice more to no effect, before the wolf tore her head from her shoulders. The body and the head the huge wolf spat out both flickered out of existence as whatever it was that had made her at least nominally human, departed. The other assassin wasn’t made of such stern stuff, he had popped out to take a shot at the wolf and seen the woman torn in two, turning he ran, trying to fire at the wolf as he ran. He was only a few hundred feet away when he stepped across a realm lip and vanished into a mirror realm. Elgin unfolded from the new shape and shook himself, “Okay, that was not nice.” He muttered wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Ah, that memory is going to make me sick when I have time.” He turned, continuing his memory distracting muttering, “Okay so are they going to keep throwing things at me?” Elgin stepped back onto the crumbling sidewalk and then back into the anchor realm. Not far away Elena stood with her pistol in hand but discreetly hidden in a pocket, scanning the street. On the far side of the street a stalwart pedestrian was screaming at the bloody two part horror sprawled on the sidewalk. The woman in the crashed car was punching blindly at her steering wheel under the non existent protection of the half ripped off roof. Elgin couldn’t help himself, he gathered Elena in his arms and hugged her hard, burying his face in her hair for a few blessed seconds. She twisted to put an arm around him, her gun hand came out empty to turn his head, her eyes afraid, “Elgin? Elgin! Are you all right?” He nodded, grimaced, and she kissed him fiercely, then pulled away, “Look, I understand, I’d be in the way. But you have to go. They’re trying to keep you away, to distract you and make it impossible to get to them. You need to go before they fling something else at us.” He nodded, kissed her, “That was what I was coming back to tell you.” “Zeph’s calling her boyfriend for a ride, we’ll wait for you, and call in the cavalry when you’ve taken out the monsters.” Another quick peck and he turned away, into the shadow realm where he could trot to the cross street which had enough room for the Iffrit to unfold. -o- The Iffrit touched down on the roof above Viktor’s back office, folding back into a great pale gray wolf before the roof had to take up the full load. Trotting to one of the stair heads on the roof the Wolf settled down to listen, his color and patterning shifting till he was a pile of snow against the wall. The guards who burst out onto the roof from the stairs didn’t see him, even when one of their powerful flashlight beams passed over him. The three were dressed very roughly; except for the professional way they moved with the rifles they looked like homeless wrecks. After a quick quartering of the roof, and a hand signal that indicated there was another team up here they came to stand by the stairhead. One of them spoke into a microphone hidden in his sleeve “Clear sir,” in perfect Russian, his voice much younger than his face.. “Nothing my arsehole, you fool.” The heavily accented Russian was clear, the voice that of an old woman, puffing and panting, “The Yelbegän is here, so near it will fry your fool brain boy.” “Shut up BabaYaga,” snarled the man who’d reported, “There is no ice dragon up here!” “So you say...” and the old voice rolled into an incantation that Cutter recognized. Elgin launched himself forward just before the wall he’d been leaning against blew apart in a gush of sulfurous smoke and fire. The old-young man saw the wolf and his finger mashed his trigger back to full auto and he hosed the rounds at the half seen shape. Bullets glanced off the almost-wolf’s flank stinging, he shifted into the shadow realm and the floor gave away under him. An instant after he had landed on all four feet in a shower of disintegrating dust he heard cursing in the wheezy old woman’s voice. He had intended to do this soft, but that option had apparently hadn’t been available. The BabaYaga appeared, she looked like a fat old woman but the Iffrit’s memories and senses told him the BabaYaga wasn’t human, she was another remnant of an ancient invasion. Individually her species was worse than the Basik but they were solitary by choice and usually avoided humans, living in the far north forests where the temperatures were more to their liking. The BabaYaga were powerful magic users and this one’s presence probably explained the presence of the vampires, which were also creatures of the cold and dark north. “Yoohoo, Yelbegän is that you?” The thing that looked like a nice fat old granny, sang sweetly in Russian. She was scanning the loft, obviously not able to see him and her magical senses blunted here. She wasn’t very patient, “Hide here will you worm? Got a taste of my power and didn’t like it did you? You will not pass Sister Myyr.” “Myyr, why did you leave your distant cold hole in the rock to join the smelly ones?” Cutter called in her specie’s language, he and the Iffrit had met this creature before. Her mouth opened but no sound came out, as she shuffled backwards, “You are dead, the teller of truths said so.” then she was gone. *You should never believe the Djin, for he will tell you true ninety nine times and then lie you into a grave the one hundredth.* Cutter muttered in their shared mind as the great black wolf loped across the loft area. He found another staircase, but staircases were dangerously unstable in the shadow realm. Twisting back into the real world he went through the door, leaping from one landing to the next at a bound. Three floors down, two above the ground floor, sense and instinct saved him from an ugly encounter when he heard a thump and hiss from below. He leaped at a door, halfway there he twisted back into the shadow realm, and smashed through the door, then twisted back into the real world before hitting the floor on the other side. An instant later the real world door to the stairwell blew off to spin and bound in pursuit of him. Elgin yipped and dodged, the door missed, just, and slid to a stop a couple of dozen feet further away. Flame gushed from the concrete tube for a few seconds before fizzling out. Crouched in the shadows panting the wolf realized that he could hear gunfire from below him, and then a building shaking crump of a significant explosion. Windows on the wall to the east flickered with light and bloomed with the light of another explosion, this one outside. For the first time the Iffrit gathered his power and let it flow out, looking for Olga and Rachel, hoping that they were still alive, trying to spot where everyone else was. He realized that somehow he had gotten himself involved with something like a full scale war. The ground floor and the first basement level were the backdrop for a platoon level gunfight, with four werewolves lurking in the wings. The second basement level had more werewolves, another vampire, a BabaYaga and a half dozen armed humans. There were also eleven unarmed women in a container jail, Olga and Rachel were among them. There was a BabaYaga, Myyr, on the floor above him, with more fighters including two werewolves and something else, a big still something else. She sent a gush of her sulfurous fire his way the instant she detected the sensing sweep. The ceiling above blew down, showering the the black wolf with fragments that would have been death to a flesh and blood creature. Bullets screamed off the concrete column above his head and then slammed into his barrel as he spun and ran. The BabaYaga was directing her infantry like a first rate commander and she was the backup artillery. A heavy bullet caught his leg and sent him staggering, but he was up and then smashing through the window into the cold, snow filled darkness. The Iffrit unfolded with a crack of massive wings, the next instant he landed on a familiar black Escalade, which caved in like a cheap toy. The Iffrit reared up on his rear legs and hurled himself skyward with a great sweep of long golden wings, bullets from several directions impacted with stinging force before he was hidden by the snow. He was extremely angry with quite a few people at this point. A lot of people were already dead and many more were going to die for no purpose. The Djin had woven a wonderful web from disparate strands creating the potential for mass death, and it would be the Iffrit’s fault. He had let the Djin trick him once and he had lost control of that situation. Just like he had lost control of this one. The Iffrit hit the wall on the third floor like a diving bird hitting the water, three sets of claws drove full length into masonry and the wall buckled under the impact. His right true hand slammed through a window in a blizzard of glass fragments to take his target and an instant later he was up and away, his launch ripping down a whole section of wall in a roaring avalanche of brick. One of the cruel talons had driven through Myyr’s body about where a heart would have been if she had been human. In the BabaYaga’s case the Iffrit had pierced her secondary brain, a fatal blow but a cruelly slow one. The BabaYaga Myyr shrieked her rage and clawed weakly at the part of the Griffin she could reach, her magic dead with her second brain. “Myyr, I told you and your sisters and brothers to stay away from human entanglements. I think this is a quite complete abrogation of your promises to me.” The voice that spoke her language was ancient, cold, pitiless. “You were dead...” “There was no clause canceling the agreement if you thought I was dead Myyr. You knew the Djin was my enemy much more than he was my friend, and I cannot believe that you ever believed anything he said regarding a matter of such importance.” “The magic, the realms, it was so hard without...” The Iffrit growled, both Cutter and Elgin were feeling pity for the creature, a creature that had undoubtedly killed and eaten hundreds of their species. “Know something you don’t,” the creature somehow combined a giggle and whimper, and then she shuddered and died. The Iffrit let the creature’s body fall off his claw, vanishing into the snow and mist in its long fall into the river as he banked hard, cursing himself again. *What happened?* Elgin asked. *Soul shed herself, killed herself, it means she had some kind of undead shell ready for animation.* *Another vampire?* *She would not have wasted her soul on a simple vampire.* The flying creature that blasted fire at the Iffrit as he approached was proof that she hadn’t *A Dragon!?* Elgin yelped as the Iffrit snapped past in an vertical turn, flying between buildings; his wingtip not more than ten feet above the traffic that clogged the road below. Cutter muttered something unkind in ancient Aramaic that Elgin chose to ignore. The Iffrit rolled upright and beat wing for altitude, he made an odd summoning motion and suddenly something long, heavy and very beaten up appeared in his hand. He tucked it up under his body. *Uh...is that...uh forget it.* Elgin picked up an image of a delta winged jet spinning out of the sky with its belly ripped off. The airplane had been a lot more fragile than the Iffrit had anticipated. But the jet had been going down anyway, the pilot having ejected in terror when he found himself facing a dragon in the night sky over the Arabian desert. The sky to the west was glowing and the Iffrit popped up over a building to find the Dragon flaming a building, apparently irritated at its own reflection in the mirrored glass. It was systematically burning them out, leaving flaming holes as it worked its way along. The Iffrit banked and lined up, the dragon was a huge legless, armless flying snake with two short sets of wings that beat fast in a complex pattern that allowed it to hover. Spotting the Iffrit it darted backwards. The GSh-6-23 crashed out a burst of twelve, half pound rounds, in a fraction of a second. Most self destructed beyond the dragon but one drilled a gaping hole through one of the fast flapping wings, another grazed a belly plate, a third hit, detonated on the gleaming yellow shell armor on the beast’s ‘neck,’ the section of body between the wing sections and the head. As massive as he was the gun’s recoil impulse was enough to slow the Iffrit. The Dragon streaked backwards and got behind a building, though it didn’t forget to send a stream of white hot rage at its attacker. The bolt of fire left a fading trail of flame hanging in the air, a very showy effect. The Iffrit was far beyond the point at which the stream had been aimed before the relatively slow moving bolt passed through. There was a flash of fire from behind the building as the Iffrit banked steeply to come around at the monster again. This time the dragon had flamed a street full of cars, leaving a fiery holocaust in its wake as it darted away from the Iffrit’s avenging shape. The snow had eased but the clouds were still less than three hundred feet off the ground, so a lot of building vanished into the clouds. The Iffrit and dragon played hide and seek among the buildings, giving thousands of office workers the scare and thrill of their lives. The Dragon was much more maneuverable than the Ifftit and effectively faster most of the time. It probably could have escaped and hidden if it had wanted to. But every time it got clear of the Iffrit it would find a target to blast with fire then dart away before the Iffrit homed in. Four more times this happened, another block of blazing cars and humans, an immolated church, a subway entrance left a blazing crematorium and a parking structure gushing flame from every deck level. It was this last target where Myyr the dragon miscalculated. As she darted up and out of the ramp to the roof of the structure she ran into a stream of explosive shells that caught her in the soft belly armor. Seven hits out of twenty four shells made an end to her. A wing came off as the corpse staggered and twitched, spraying body fluids some of which burst into flame as they fell. The head was a ruin, a shell having entered under the jaw and blown the side of the skull off in a gout of gore. The dragon was turned from deadly threat to ruin in less than a second. Spurting and burning, the body tumbled as it arced down, slamming onto the loading dock area behind a hotel where it flopped to a stop and burnt. -o- The crack of a sniper’s rifle made Elena flinch a little, crouch down a little more behind Allen’s no longer pristine Mercedes. A SWAT team’s armored van had caved in the trunk after someone in the building killed the driver with a single armor piercing bullet. Not far away a blue SWAT assault vehicle belched smoke from every door and hatch, the tires had caught and they burnt with an ugly red sooty flame. Something like ball lightning had rolled and bounced out of the building and latched onto the ugly armored vehicle, blowing every circuit and stopping it cold. The blue green plasma ball had then proceeded to melt its way through a couple of inches of hardened steel. The crew and SWAT team had gotten out just before it got inside, the vehicle had blown up a few seconds later. Things had not gone the way anyone had planned after they had met Allen a block away from the coffee shop. The police had flooded the whole area, apparently warned by video feeds that something very bad had gone down. Allen had only just gotten in before roads were blocked and traffic directed other ways. Zeph had hardly had a chance to introduce Elena to Allen before the reports of shooting from Viktor’s building had started arriving. The police were already almost on top of it. Finding the coffee shop area completely lacking in bad guys the tactical units had moved on, in force, with confidence. The first police units to arrive were pinned down and the higher ups had fed in more, committing a combat command cardinal sin. Of course they hadn’t been thinking of this as combat, not until it was far too late. Zeph and Elena had convinced Allen to follow one of the later police units in. The police had been too distracted to realize that the fools in the Mercedes weren’t supposed to be there. Following a cruiser they had gotten much too close to the building. The car ahead of them had apparently gotten lost or something, when it started taking fire Allen had started to back out. Which was when they’d been rear ended by the careening armored van. Now Allen was laid out with several police officers under the care of a medic who’d run up a few moments before. Zeph was sitting by her boyfriend, her face white with the pain of a broken wrist. Elena had an SR25 semi auto sniper rifle lying on the black hood, the deadly big brother of the M14 carbine. One of the SWAT team had been hit as the team moved forward, she was one of the wounded lying with Allen. Elena had claimed the fallen weapon. It was a lot more comforting than her G39, 45 caliber loads or not. The Mercedes was skewed slightly to the road, its bumper pressed firmly under the rear of a Crown Vic cruiser. A gray haired police officer with the stripes of sergeant was looking over the Vic’s trunk with a pump action shotgun, two other officers were using the same car as cover. Two more were using the Mercedes’ comforting solidness as their protection, though the cabin and trunk weren’t going to provide much protection from the kinds of rounds flying around this morning. The crackle and crash of combat inside and around the building just seemed to stop. After a couple of seconds the sergeant moved to stand up, Elena, on instinct, lunged, pulled him back, “Don’t show yourself, its just a l....” The sniper in the building behind them fired three quick shots. A rapid fire weapon responded, riddling the wall around the offending window in a few seconds. The crown Vic rocked hard as a series of rounds drilled through it, sending the three offices ducking. They all ducked, but none were hit, the metal and plastic of the car had deflected the rounds. The shooting became general again, almost comforting after the few seconds in the focal point of firing. Someone behind them used a battering ram to bash in a door so an EMT could go up to see if the sniper was dead. “Who the hell are you?” The sergeant had finally noticed that he didn’t recognize the blonde woman in civilian clothes who was cradling a big sniper rifle like she knew how to use it. Elena gave him a coldly distant look, “Loretta Sands, Homeland Security, we’ve been watching this building for a while, human trafficking.” The man grimaced, turning to scan the building, “Shit, just what I needed to hear.” Two lean shaggy shapes sprinted out the shadows, racing towards Elena’s little redoubt. She was lucky, she had been cradling the rifle, keeping her face turned away from the policeman. The second were was equally unlucky, almost literally swallowing her round, which continued through its body, rupturing and ripping, tumbling and slashing till it tore out a hunk of hide while exiting. The creature slid to a stop against the Mercedes with a thump. Unfortunately, none of the several other rounds hit the second were, it leapt over the hood of the cruiser, its multi hundred pound mass smashing an officer onto the pavement, cracking his skull. The wolf used the body as a jumping off point, its lithe body twisting so it leapt away from Elena and towards a collection of police and civilians taking cover behind a raised sidewalk. Elena tracked it in the air and fired once, twice, then it landed, dodged, and leapt again, straight into the center of a cluster of men and women in civilian dress. She missed the screams, shouts and gunfire, as a massive shaggy shadow rose snarling over the hood of the car. The were was slow, its hyper fast healing still incomplete, one fore leg was still hanging limp, a nerve bundle sliced by her shot. But it wanted her blood, it wanted her dead. What was horrifying was the pistol in the operable paw-hand, drawn from the webbing wrapping its deep chest. Instinct saved her again, spinning she hurled the heavy sniper rifle at the creatures leg-arm, slamming the pistol hand down; the gun, on auto, stitched a line of holes in the Mercedes hood. Unfortunately the were didn’t drop the pistol, but the wounds and the blow slowed it., slowed it enough that Elena’s G39 was leveled and crashing before it recovered. Then the sergeant’s shotgun was roaring, blowing the creature off the hood. “Shoot it in the throat, the neck, separate the brain from the spine or it will just regenerate” Zeph screamed from the aid station, she was looking around for a weapon of some kind in case the monster got past the front line. Elena had two rounds left, the creature was already going down but she’d seen it regenerate once already, she didn’t need a repeat. Lunging forward she took careful aim and put both rounds through the thing’s neck. As it collapsed the head flopped forward, no longer connected to the spine. The body swelled and burst in a spreading foam of orange fairy dust, that dissipated in an instant, leaving a much smaller, naked human, draped in a ridiculously oversized webbing, to slump into the red slush. “Holy Mother Mary, God in Heaven.” The sergeant nearly whimpered as he turned away, going to kneel by his dead compatriot. The other officer was huddled against the side of the cruiser, head in his hands, utterly overwhelmed. The group the second were had gone after was now triaged. Separated into the dead, the traumatized and the active who were trying to get some semblance of control. There was no sign of the were, it was either dead or escaped, the latter seemed the most likely. There were some yells, some new target spotted, but then an odd lull fell across the firing line. There were yells of challenge and shots, but only one or two then silence. Elena could feel the soul deadening coldness of the vampire’s presence. Resisting looking, her comforting sniper rifle was jammed between the Mercedes and Crown Vic where it had come to rest after being used as a bludgeon. She wouldn’t risk firing it again until she had a chance to check it thoroughly. She reloaded the G39, stuck the empty magazine in her pocket, the pistol was a backup gun, she was down to the last six rounds. “Elena!” Zeph called out, she was climbing down from the back of the SWAT van. She had another SR25 and a webbing with spare magazines. She slid along the side of the truck and Elena duck walked under cover. Zeph glanced into the street and flinched back, swallowed, “It’s coming this way.” She was shaking, “Damn it, I can hardly stop myself from turning back and looking at it.” Then she yelped, as her new friend kicked her legs out from under her. Elena tried to control Zeph’s fall, somehow getting the taller and heavier woman down onto the vans step without jarring her wrist too badly. Zeph smiled, “Thank you.” “De Nada,” Elena smiled in return and hurriedly started checking and loading the rifle. But as she got ready to pop up at take her shot she had a sudden thought, a memory from a story she’d heard or read in her childhood. She glanced up, the van’s big after market rectangular parking mirror was just above her head. She reached up and twisted it around until she could look out over the hood of the van. She saw the vampire, and bit her tongue, ready to fight the urge to just go numb. But nothing happened, the mirror nullified the effect, just like in the story of the medusa. Only the vampire didn’t turn to stone, or even stop, instead it looked her way and strode a little faster. Judging her moment, Elena pivoted and brought the rifle up, the impulse of the shot was almost a shock, she had already begun to submit to the monsters domination. Then there was no compulsion, the thing was staggering backwards squalling in pain. Her second round blew the back of its head off, the third blew the head off and it fell backwards into the snow and lay unmoving. Elena frowned, glanced around, the gunfire didn’t start up again. People were moving, shaking their heads, staring at the prostrate monster, a few were staring her way, not something she was very fond of. There was a distant crackle of gunfire, and cracks that Elena thought were grenades, more shots, but it was all either in the building or on the other side of it. “Elena,” Zeph called, waving. She had moved back to the line of wounded, which had grown longer even as some were hurried away by litter carriers moving through alleyways and buildings to get the wounded back to ambulances away from the fighting. When Elena got to her she pointed, her face grim, the low clouds to the south glowed with red gold reflection of fire. “Shit.” Elena whispered. The sergeant, Childers she saw on his name tag, came to stand beside them, “Reports of some kind of weird helicopter, or dragon, setting fire to things all through the business district. Hundreds more dead.” Elena and Zeph exchanged worried looks, then there were yells and screams, that died away into silence. Elena spun, and found herself trapped by the vampire, the one she had thought she had killed. The thing’s head was a ruin but it was slowly getting to its feet, and its hypnotic power was unaffected by the fact that it only had one eye right now. Elena fought against the power she had felt three times now, realized that she was in fact able to control her body, to move, slowly, some people were moving, had learnt their lesson. But each time someone rose to take a shot they were lost before they could pull the trigger. A staccato roar slapped down from the sky, the pavement around the vampire burst into a fountain of ruptured pavement with ragged pieces of vampire in the mix. An instant later a huge golden brown shape landed with a vast whomp of air trapped in cupped wings. The Ifritt stood on his back legs like the heraldic monster he had been the original inspiration of. The slender brown and gray lozenge he held like a machine pistol, was disconcerting and yet reassuring, especially as the still spinning muzzles of the multi barallel cannon were pointed into the settling crater of pulverized tarmac, concrete and vampire. With an odd sheathing motion the huge weapon was gone and the Iffrit reached for the burning assault vehicle, without obvious effort or pain he grasped the hot metal and rolled it over so it tipped a burning slush of fuel, rubber and plastic onto the pulverized oval that contained the vampire’s remains. There, grotesque flaps and ribbons of flesh were already squirming in an insensate desire to reunite into their original form. Then the burning mash poured over the remains, and they caught fire, after a few moments the fire started to spread like a flashover. The Iffrit jumped backwards and in a second the whole patch was burning with a searing green flame, which faded and was gone, leaving behind a patch of bubbling asphalt with concrete lumps. The Iffrit settled back onto all four legs. In the confined space of the plaza he was still simply mind bogglingly large. Standing he had easily topped the fourth storey of the building, on all fours he was a good storey and a half at the shoulders. But as frightening as he was there was something reassuring about him, the calm grace with which he moved, the lion gold of his fur, the wings that were more eagle than bat, the head that was more dog than dragon. He was so big that it seemed obvious that nothing a human could shoot would hurt him, no one even thought about shooting at him, especially after he had killed the walking horror that had had them entranced. The Iffrit moved back and forth like a searching cat, his head scanning for a few moments. Then he looked over to the line of ruined cars and his voice boomed out “I am sorry this got out of hand, but it is almost over. Not all of the evil ones are dead or withdrawn yet, but there are hostages inside, girls destined for the slave markets.. Do not follow me but stand ready to help or arrest those I send out to you.” With which the Iffrit dissolved into smoke which billowed into a dense fog which quickly faded leaving the plaza empty except for the burning assault vehicle and the police line. <<>> Chapter 18 In which our hero finds out some truths and ends the matter, for now The huge black wolf leapt in through a smashed second storey window before the temporary fog dissipated finding himself in a smoky hell that still echoed with the crack of gunfire from the floors below and above. There were seven dead humans, one who had died as a werewolf, on the mostly open second floor of the old building. There were two large open stairwells bracketing what were now loading docks on the plaza side of building, what had been the front of the building in the war years of the middle twentieth century. The wolf’s nose was in many ways more sensitive than a real wolf’s, more important it was backed by an intelligence and knowledge that was able to discriminate among the almost innumerable chemical traces it found. The were had been one of the men Elgin had met back in Beauty, not a surprise. Three of the dead were wearing modern urban combat gear, including body armor and night vision systems, they were all recent immigrants from the far east, probably Hong Kong. So they were probably Alicia Pi’s men. And he could faintly scent Alicia, maybe a secondary, or maybe she was here, dead or alive was unclear. In the half hour since his first touchdown the Iffrits nanite infestation of the building’s structure had progressed to every floor of the building providing the wolf an almost supernatural ‘vision’ inside and out. The infestation had also found and converted every key structural element of the building, it could be collapsed into a hole in the ground on a few moments notice. But with a dozen innocents at risk Elgin and Cutter would not allow the Iffrit to collapse the building into its basement and then set it on fire which was what the coldly practical war machine would have done. The wolf quartered the second floor, reviewing the tactical situation. The floor above had four humans and a were keeping the police and other forces of human order at bay. Alicia Pi and her watcher - boyfriend Jason Hu along with four surviving ninja’s were barricaded in what had once been an underground garage that took up a quarter of the two storey basement. Cocooned in thick concrete they had managed to survive, and kill at least ten of the defenders, one of them a were. But that left four weres, a vampire and a BabaYaga disguised as a human witch as well as four humans any of whom could be more than they appeared. The BabaYaga or one of the others had set up a suppression around its position, the spherical field was eighty feet in radius, a hemisphere intruding into the second storey where the wolf prowled. It prevented anyone from approaching through the shadow realm, warned the creator of any intruder while also limiting the ‘magic’ available to any user inside its effect. It also had the side effect of destroying any of the more sophisticated, semi magical, nanites that it touched. The suppressor had been established near the center of the basement, so its effect didn’t go outside the walls of the building, which would have potentially given its presence away to a passing magic user. Thinking about that the Iffritt realized that the field had been there for some time, which meant it was tied to some powerful focus...which might well be the Cauldron. The wolf jumped down the open stairwell onto the still tiled loading dock floor and headed for a narrow doorway down into the garage section. As he reached the door the wolf turned to smoke and folded into a human figure. Elgin opened the door and went down, there was no light but he was as sure footed as if the narrow greasy metal steps had been a formal staircase in the daylight. The bottom of the staircase was the final resting place of a ninja and one of Viktor’s thugs, lying in each others arms as if they had been lovers, their blood pooling on the slightly sunken floor. The door had been booby trapped but the nanites had dealt with that and Elgin pushed it open and stepped across the red pond. He could hear the radio whispers of the Ninja’s headsets, the “intruder” warning told him he’d been spotted. “Alicia Pi...we need to talk,” he called out. “Freeze,” one of the ninja’s shone a laser on Elgin’s forehead as another moved forward with a zip strip to bind Elgin’s hands. Essentially simultaneously the laser flickered then went out, the man with the zip strip collapsed unconscious and the walls, ceiling and floor began to glow with a pale but revealing light. The ninja with the carbine pulled the trigger, to the dead click of a firing pin hitting a dead round, his pistol made the same sound, then he collapsed, Elgin having lost patience with him. “Hold your fire, stand down everyone.” Alicia was much the worse for wear, a cut on her cheek, evidence of a bloody nose, a bruise beginning to well around one eye, her hair pulled out of its intricate ‘do’ and held back by a clasp at the nape of her neck. Her leather and fur coat was filthy and her leggings were more ladder, dirt and blood than original material. But the silenced machine pistol and night vision goggles pushed up on her forehead gave her a certain deadly dignity. Jason followed, limping, a bloody rag wrapped around his leg. Alicia stared at Elgin, made a casting pass as her lips moved, a softly glowing ball of light left her hand and flew towards Elgin, it blazed up and died as it passed into the invisible cloud of nanites swirling around him. Her mouth was a thin line, “You are a powerful something sir, I am afraid you have the advantage on me?” Elgin bowed, “I am a bit of a Geek, I could not resist the line, All these worlds are yours to use as you see fit, except Io, Io alone you will not approach or land on....” Alicia paled, “You said you destroyed the Palace?” “I destroyed it and the seeping evil the mad fool had created.” There was a rustle of movement among the other soldiers at this interchange. “How did you get down here?” Jason asked, looking at the door that stood a little ajar now. “Your enemy is no longer holding the upper floor, they are in the process of escaping through the sewers. Or at least they will soon. Their ill luck is that Viktor’s greed has infected them all and he’s wasting time tying up the girls so he can drive them through the sewers like an old slave caravan. I can block the sewer but I would rather let them escape that way, for a little while. But I will need help taking down the guards, the BabaYaga has a sphere of suppression , Viktor will take it with him. That will leave it clear for me to take the BabaYaga, her last vampire and the weres.” “Why shouldn’t we just shoot you and escape up the stairs you say are open now.” Jason Hu challenged. “You will not escape that way, the police, FBI, BATF, Coast Guard and if I’m not mistaken the US Air Force have this building completely blockaded on the surface. They will take you prisoners or kill you for sure. Cooperate with me and I will help you escape, otherwise I suggest you leave your weapons here and walk up the stairs and out the loading dock with your hands up.” “The werewolves are almost impossible to kill, you want us to face them in the open?” The senior ninja asked. “The weres will not be the first out, the humans will be, Viktor among them. The BabaYaga would not be able to control the vampire, perhaps even its own appetites, if it travels with the humans in the sewer. The Alpha has much the same problem with the weres.” “The walls of this parking structure are thick, are they going to be coming this way to get into this sewer you speak of?” The ninja leader asked. An apparently solid tinted glass model of the basement and sewers formed in the air between them. “The old sewer runs next to the building a few yards behind that wall,” Elgin hooked a thumb at the wall behind him. “It’s an open storm drain and it’s partially filled but the main channel isn’t full yet. It runs all the way to Central Park, though bits of it have been modified and there are various lift stations and diverts along the way. Viktor tunneled into it here and into the basement of a row of stores three quarters of a mile from here. Well outside of the police cordon.” Sections of the model flickered as he made his points. As he finished a section of wall faded out existence leaving a dark tunnel, there was pulse of chill damp air from the mouth of the new tunnel, carrying with it the fetid stink of a sewer. The ninja leader, Alicia and Justin had all moved closer to the model, Alicia looked at Elgin, “What’s to stop us simply taking the opportunity to head for Viktor’s escape hole?” Elgin smiled, “Because I trust you don’t want to irritate me that much.” He started to turn, “you have a couple of minutes before Viktor’s caravan starts out, I suggest you move out and get into position a few hundred feet up tunnel from here.” He walked past a couple of the soldiers who moved out of his way; the nano generated light in the old garage began to fade, the shadows drawing in from the far corners. The Chinese gangsters including the ones he’d paralyzed were through the tunnel before Elgin, or rather the huge black wolf, reached the barrier wall. The wolf turned and trotted along the wall and down a ramp into the lower level. Near the back of the garage section a door had been cut between the garage and the main part of the basement, it was sealed with a heavy metal door, and ninjas’ had brought down part of the archway around it to jam the door with heavy slabs of concrete. He was nearing the core of the suppression field, magic was damped here. The BabaYaga knew he was here now, he could feel her drawing and shaping magic, as she called on the vampire and weres to get ready. The vampire was nearby, its psychic power leaking through the thick concrete. The wolf slowed to as stop and bowed his head as the Iffrit summoned memories from a far distant past. Memories from long before Cutter had been his human half, a time when the world had been wild and human hunting clans had been few and far between. He drew up memories of what was now called Great Bear’s Den, of a time when the great carved stone cauldron sat on a ledge high above the almost perfectly circular bay, when it had been the center of important and usually peaceful dealings. Evil usually assumed, or wanted to believe, that the great totems, focal objects, were passive reservoirs of power. They were right in the sense that the totems couldn’t prevent the use of the power they focused for evil, but the objects were often capable of much more than passively siphoning power from the substructure of the universe. But the totems wouldn’t release that additional capability to evil. Now the Iffrit touched the essence of the cauldron, it had been a life icon for humans for ten thousand years. It understood evil, had experienced evil, it understood the nature of the BabaYaga and its ilk. -o- In a chamber on the other side of the blocked door way the BabaYaga had filled the cauldron’s hollow with water and placed a candle between the three stumpy legs as part of a sympathetic magic spell. Now the water began to swirl as if ladles were stirring the water, and it began to steam as if the cauldron had stood in the middle of a wood stoked fire for days. A faint thread of steam rose from the water and curled up and then to the door, seeming to stroke it. Now the air, cold and damp cooled and dried out. The iron door was rusty, now the rust thickened, flakes of rust began to fall from the door, as oxidation ripped through the weaker crystals. The door creaked and great scabs of rust buckled and fell away, the door screamed, buckling, splitting, throwing off showers of oxidized iron. Then the top of the door exploded inwards and a huge black shape landed in a shower of red dust. The vampire, free of the bloodlust confusion of too many walking meals, attacked with a scream of pure delight, it could feel the powerful life force burning in the black shape. The wolf twisted to meet the attack, but it was like moving in thick treacle, the BabaYaga’s contribution. At the same time a wall of weres hurled themselves at him. The vampire sensing threat was fast, it might have been fast enough to get its arms around the wolf’s neck even without its mistress’s help. Fingers as strong as steel pinchers, arms as strong as a backhoe’s grasped the wolf’s thick throat, then the vampire deployed its main weapon, its jaw gaped as if unhinged, its fang filled mouth, like a lampreys grinding sucker, attached itself to the black wolf’s throat. The wolf howled in pain as the vampires jaw began to rip into it’s throat, poisonous, liquefying saliva melting fur and flesh as the fangs worked their way in and the monster sucked, wanting to pull in the flesh, blood and soul of its victim. The werewolves fell on the great black shape with fangs and claws, ripping and tearing, ripping out great slabs of black fur in sprays of red blood. They howled and screamed in victory as the horse sized wolf went to its knees then began to roll over. Then the wolf turned to smoke. The vampire fell back arms grasping gray nothing, sucking mouth pulling smoke into its lungs, the werewolves fell on each other and the vampire, held up by nothing, falling through the smoke, breathing it in. There was the briefest pause. Then vampire and werewolves screamed with one voice. They smoked and then began to burn, flame erupting out of their mouths where they had breathed in the smoke. They tried to rise, tried to crawl, tried and failed, to survive. The flames ate through them like they were sheets of oil soaked paper and in a few seconds they were nothing but swirling smoke. Sot seemed to swirl from the smoke, it gathered and then reformed into a man. Elgin stood in his usual jeans, check shirt, cowboy boots and cowboy belt buckle shiny as if ready for Sunday service. He held his Stetson in his hands, his head bowed as if he was praying, for the souls of those the Iffrit had killed so quickly, so mercilessly. After that moment he looked up, his face was grim, his blue eyes narrow slits of rage. His fingers brushed over the stone cauldron as he walked by, he felt a flash of warm recognition and gratitude. The water swirled and bubbled and the steam rose to curl among the pipes and conduits cluttering the ceiling, miniature clouds forming up into a storm front. There were only four living creatures in the basement now, Elgin, Elgin’s uncle Claw, Claw’s right hand man Movie Star and Dmitri Andropov. There was no sign of the BabaYaga and Viktor was long gone. “Nephew, you continue to surprise me.” Claw said with a smile. Movie Star snarled, the huge fifty caliber revolver in his hand like a prosthesis. “Ah, Mr. Walker, you had not told me that Mr. Chalmers was a relative,” Andropov whined with a very ugly expression. “The son of a bitch is my brother’s get, his mother was the woman my brother took from me, the only thing he ever won from me, fair and square.” He smiled cruelly at Elgin, “If you look in the club cemetery, in the pet section you’ll find a marker, Beauty, Best Bitch Ever, that’s where she ended up.” Elgin stared at his uncle, and realized that his father had known that the Claw had killed his mother all along. And it had been Jess Beauty’s murder that had killed his father as Claw had intended. There was something very wrong with his uncle, but that should have been obvious for a long time. Dmitri Andropov had taken a couple of steps forward, “Mr. Chalmers, you seem a reasonable sorcerer. Except for the unfortunate support of the totem you are essentially cut off from your source of power. We are standing here, three magic users, in our core of power, and the building around you has been wired for destruction. We can all leave, in our different directions and live to perhaps meet another day. Or you can die here and now.” “Where is the BabaYaga?” Elgin asked, there was something wrong, some powerful distortion in this reality at work. “The witch? She left some minutes ago; you know what that sort is like. Flighty and self centered without understanding the power of finance in this new age.” Movie Star was an impatient type, “Fuck this shit,” he snarled, stepping forward he put the muzzle of his pistol to Dmitri’s head and pulled the trigger. Blowing the Russian financiers head apart like an orange cored by a rifle bullet. The headless corpse pitched forward as the big pistol swung to Elgin and roared again. The Cauldron blushed orange and vanished. The building shivered and dust fell from the ceiling. Elgin stood and watched as Movie Star came to the realization that he’d missed and that something much worse had also happened. A pressure wave built up around them, a roar so loud that it was no longer sound, the air filled with dust and falling debris. Movie Star looked up mouth open, eyes bulging, every muscle tense with the knowledge of impending oblivion. The building collapsed on them. When it was all over they stood under a dome of rubble, roughly centered over Dmitri Andropov. Movie Star was on his knees, his hands over his mouth. Claw was still smiling grimly. The headless corpse of Dmitri Andropov climbed to its feet hands seeming unbothered by the bodies headless condition reached and pulled at its shirt. With a rip the shirt, and the skin under it opened as if along a seam. In a moment the BabaYaga, almost as tall as the original Dmitri, and massing several times as much, climbed out of Andropov’s skin. Dropping the skin to the floor she waddled over to the horror frozen Movie Star. She stared down into his terrified eyes for a moment. Then hands that looked pink and puffy except for the four inch claws, grasped him by the back of the head and jaw, and pulled his head off like some movie prop. The fountains of blood attested to the brutal reality of the act. Like her vampire creations her mouth gaped, she popped Movie Star’s head in and swallowed. “I hate being murdered.” She smacked her lips, “and I like a little head every once in a while, especially from a pretty man.” She giggled like a little girl. “Cute,” Elgin said disgustedly. “You’re next pretty boy, I’m fed up with playing with you smelly human sorcerers, Myyr lured me out with promises of lots of good meals, and there, that was the first good snack I’ve had in weeks. Is that fair I ask you?” “What about my delightful uncle,” Elgin asked pointing at his uncle who was still smiling. “He’s a different case, hardly smelly at all and he might be useful.” She made a spell pass and the rubble around them shifted, a passage opened up, leading towards the tunnel to the sewer. “Go, I will deal with your troublesome nephew.” Claw gave Elgin a cruel smile, “Sorry boy, guess I gotta go, I’ll tell your lawyer girl friend that you tried your best.” Above them the rubble was glowing, fire spreading quickly in the pile of wood concrete and brick. Elgin felt the stroke of a soft fur against his hand and looked down at Humph, “I was wondering if you’d turn up, I had a back up plan but it wasn’t as elegant.” Big blue eyes looked up at him reproachfully, “Yowrup?” “Where did that creature come from?” The BabaYaga pointed at Humph, the cat looked back at the creature that looked like a fat old woman and hissed, the hair on his back standing straight up. Claw’s eyes had gone round, he turned to run, but the passage caved in and with a growing roar the bubble of rubble began to collapse inward. Claw came to a halt, hands over his head, and began to stagger backwards in front of the falling rubble. Elgin called out over the growing rumble in the BabaYaga’s language, “Zyyr, you should have remembered that when the cauldron vanished so did your suppression field and core of power. As I told your sister, you really should have hewed to your pledge to me.” The BabaYaga’s eyes bulged, “You are dead!” “That’s what Myyr said. You were both wrong.” Elgin grasped Humphs tail and they walked out of the roar of falling rock, the wave of furnace hot gas. It was black for a moment and then he was standing in the cold and snow, not far from the wreck of a police SWAT team van and what had been a shiny black Mercedes. Elena’s eyes were huge as she looked at him, down at Humph, then across to the fire filled rectangular pit. “You really have to stop collapsing buildings Elgin!” She whispered as tears began to well in her eyes. He stepped forward and swept her into his arms and their lips met. <<>> Chapter 19 Endings, Forgettings, Beginings Zeph stood at the end of the table, “Well we had an eventful week last week,” she smiled around the table, I’m glad to see we’re all here,” she made a little moue, “Except of course for Mr. Andropov, I’m as disappointed as the rest of you in the sudden decision of Double Eagle to withdraw their support.” She smiled across the table at the new faces, “And doubly glad that Golden Dragon of Hong Kong has decided to provide the backing.” Elgin stood in the corner, out of the limelight, today he was wearing an obviously hand tailored suit with ostrich skin cowboy boots, leather suspenders and a bolo tie. The fashionistas of Petters, Petters, Faulken and Christchurch weren’t quite sure what to make of the Elgin who had turned up on the Monday after an extremely weird week. This new Elgin Chalmers was just as easy going as the first, just as self effacing, but they found him impossible to ignore now and now they listened they realized that he understood everything that was going on, possibly better than they did. He glanced at the representatives of the Chinese investment house on the far side of the table. They worked for Alicia Pi indirectly, as far as the Iffrit could tell the Chinese sorceress had the gang she worked for trying to trace down all of the Russian’s connections and found this one interesting because of its connection to Zeph, who had not been able to keep her name out of the news in connection to prostitution and white slaving. “Since Golden Dragon reviewed and accepted the terms that Double Eagle had worked out we have been able to make very quick progress this week.” Zeph smiled around the table, apparently untouched by the strain of the week. Rachel and Olga had fallen on Zeph’s neck crying and laughing the instant they saw her. Begging her to help the other girls who had emerged, traumatized but physically whole from the New York sewers. Their report of black clad special forces troops taking down the slaver gang with a single volley and then leading them to safety had set off a whole set of rumors in certain circles. But of course those rumors were small potatoes beside the spectacular ‘outbreak’ in New York, The world was still in shock regarding the ‘impossible’ things that had happened in the Big Apple. The horrible loss of life, over a hundred and some people still not accounted for, and the physical damage done by the dragon would have been enough to prove something had happened. The burnt out corpse of a bi-winged flying dragon whose structure and biology proved it was not native to Earth was enough to set the world on its head. Rumor had it that the last piece of information alone had set off something very like blood feuds in the halls of science. Then there was the weirdly burnt out ruin of the Police Assault Vehicle. Then the several thousand pictures and short videos of the dragon and Iffrit, some of them showing the Iffrit carrying what had now been identified as a Russian Gatling cannon. The bizarre happening at the Palace were now firmly connected to the Montoray Office Park by the twelve rescued women, six of whom had been from the Palace’s ‘string,’ and had also been trafficked by Viktor’s ring in the first place. The Russians were denying having anything to do with anything that had happened. But with the cannon and the white slaving and prostitution rings Russian connection few people believed the Russians, though what the connection was had everyone scratching their head. Then of course there were the reports, evidence and some pictures of the vampires and of the werewolves, as well as reports of the were’s reconversion to humans after death. The radically twisted DNA of the few scraps of vampire recovered had shown that, while it was probably derived from Earth life, it was related to nothing on Earth directly. The theories varied from the (almost) mundane to the utterly incomprehensible. The mundane ones were generally closer to the mark. “So does anyone have any questions about the basic structure of the plan and the contracts?” Zeph was finished with the greetings, the introductions and basic review of the development plan and the contract. This was mostly for the representatives from the Wyoming state government and the Bureau of Indian Affairs who were hooked in via video conference. Both had long ago given their basic approvals along with their requirements for any contract, they had reviewed the latest version and approved it though in both cases the bureaucrats had been unable to bring themselves to the point of saying the word ‘yes’ at all or ‘approved’ without a paragraph of caveats that had the lawyers and business people around the table rolling their eyes. But this time there were no squawks from over the internet link and Zeph smiled calmly, “Then we should get down to the final budget sheets and the payout schedules and reporting agreements as well as a final review of any major subcontractor contracts your companies will be signing up in the first quarter.” Elgin slipped out of the door, it was all over but the numbers, and if anyone had had any problem with them they would have raised them already, none of what was going to be gone over was new to anyone. That was one of the secrets of negotiations, don’t surprise your counterpart. Big or small, always signal your moves, and if it’s big give the other guy some details and time to digest them. Zeph was a master at negotiations and enjoyed it, she was obviously settling into her life, the interlude in Beauty had been just that. She’d be back west but this was where her career lay. And Allen Curtis was here, currently recuperating from his broken bones and concussion at home under the care of a nurse and one Zephyr Smith-Samson. Elgin went to stand at the window in one of the informal conference and waiting areas. The winter sky was crisp blue today and even the triple e glass of the curtain wall couldn’t keep it all out. He held his hand out idly, feeling the flow of cooled air wrapping around his fingers and palm, in a part of his mind that didn’t exist in this universe he ‘saw’ the flows as vectors, colors, numbers and potentials and if he focused a little a curl of the air wrapped his wrist and then dissipated into an imperceptible plume. “Bored Mr. Chalmers?” Charles Petters-Smith asked from the entrance to the seating area. Elgin turned with a smile, “No, or at least not with what’s going on, but we’re done with what I came for. I am just waiting to say goodbye.” “An eventful few weeks to be in New York,” Charles said, watchful. *He’s fishing,* Cutter muttered. *No kidding,* Elgin replied. Then to Charles, “To us country sorts it’s kinda hard to figure what’s usual and unusual in the Big Apple, Chuck. Heck I’ve seen New York trashed at least a dozen times in the movies.” Petters-Smith’s smile soured a little at the familiar ‘Chuck’ which Elgin knew he hated, Chaz was his preferred familial, ‘Charles’ or better yet “Mr. Petters’ was his preferred mode of address. “Uh, ah...I see, yes well I suppose it’s a bit hard to parse the real and fantasy New York from a little place called Beauty.” “Reality is defined by where you stand Chuck, it’s a bit like relativity, there is a basic underlying truth, but you have to be very close and peering very hard at it, to see it. And it’s a bit like quantum mechanics, the harder you look at the one thing the less you know of other things.” Elgin turned back to the window, watched a jet crossing high above, leaving a puffy contrail. “Profound Elgin, but you know that we’ve seen some very strange happenings this week. And we’re even involved, our Zephyr is involved.” Elgin smiled at the reflection in the window, “I don’t think Zeph chose her pro bono clients with the intent of getting involved with whatever it was Chuck.” Charles managed to ignore the Chuck this time, he moved to stand next to Elgin, “I’ve got some friends very high up in the DA, FBI, Justice Department and Homeland Security. A couple have said that they have very few leads but a man wearing what appeared to be a Stetson and cowboy boots was seen in the general area of both the brothel and the slave pen.” *Not about Zeph,* Cutter muttered in disappointment. *Do we know what he’s referring to?* Elgin responded flatly. *Video pulled from public and public servers. We killed all of the ones that had any shots of your face but its been impossible to kill all of the video that only saw you at a distance. As it is if they go back and do a scan of the holes they are going to spot a pattern, I am backfilling but it’ll be a few days before what I can get to is sanitized.* The whole internal interchange took very little ‘real time’ Charles was still finishing when Elgin’s attention returned to him. “It seemed an odd coincidence?” Elgin tapped his expensive new boots, “There are more cowboy outfitters in New York than in Beauty, Chuck. We have one, I’ve visited two here and heard of more. I’ve had an interesting stay in New York but not that interesting.” “You were missing from your hotel room the night before the Palace blew up. The day the Plaza exploded your room was locked with a do not disturb sign on it all day. There is video of a man approaching your room.” *A lie. The security net has been glitching for a month and those pictures were never stored, or at least that’s what they will find if they ever look. But he obviously got his information from somewhere. The hotel is rather over staffed, I would imagine he had a private investigator poking around,* the Iffrit was irritated with himself, but he was still digesting the facts of modern life. Charles hadn’t stopped, “There is also video of you with a lady friend, a very young, lady friend. You were also seen with a lady, of the evening as it were, the night before, one who is being sought for questioning regarding Viktor Ushakov.” The reference to Elena, or rather Loretta Sanger, had Elgin gritting his teeth, but he managed to keep the smile, “You seem to be very interested in my activities, can’t a guy have some fun when he’s in the big city?” “Elgin, Eel I think your friends used to call you because you were so slippery, I am always interested in things that touch on the firm, the firm that bears the name of two of my relatives.” *It’s not about you, it is Zephyr. He’s looking for an angle to discredit her, he thinks she introduced you to her disreputable friends and that Zeph isn’t the goody two shoes she makes out, that last is from a note on his laptop,* Cutter snorted in relief. Elgin turned, “Chuck, I imagine that you are looking for leverage in your internal political games. Am I right?” Charles lowered his voice, “I think the tribe would be very upset if they heard you’d been having sex with prostitutes on their dime during your big adventure. They will be doubly unhappy to hear that their golden girl lawyer facilitated your adventures and that she’s rather more involved with prostitution in New York than she lets on.” *Isn’t he taking a risk pushing this here, what if I’m recording this?* *I am recording this Elgin, but he’s got a little audio jammer, ultrasonic device that will muck up the microphones in small personal devices. A very nice piece of technology by the way.* The Iffrit said in a somewhat condescending tone. *Thanks,* Elgin thought dryly. “What do you think happened at the Palace and Plaza Charles?” Elgin asked suddenly changing topics and tone of voice. “Eh?” Charles looked at him, looked outside and swallowed; a faint crease between his brows, “I think the Russian mafia blew up the brothel and the Chinese mafia raided the Russian’s hideout. This stuff about aliens and mass hypnotism, death rays, dragons, its all bullshit, mass hysteria, and I think some kind of guerilla marketing ploy gone horribly wrong. Some kind of new Godzilla movie that they wanted to peddle, they waited for some kind of big disturbance and hyped it up and then fed in all sorts of fake pictures, facts, interviews.” He stopped, took a deep breath. Charles really wanted to believe that story, one that was being pushed by players who thought that the public couldn’t handle too much truth. He only believed in what he could touch and feel, maybe see with his own eyes. Things that weren’t grounded in his world view were most likely trickery in his mind. Elgin nodded, “Sounds reasonable, more reasonable than alien flying dragons, vampires and werewolves.” “Exactly....” Charles nodded firmly, almost satisfied. He frowned, then glared at Elgin, “Blast, you were trying to do it to me, no wonder they called you Eel.” “They called me Eel because I was tall and skinny and they kept pushing me into the lake or one of the streams, so I was wet and often slimy with algae. The other explanation came later, much later. After most of them had found out that calling me names and pushing me into very cold and sometimes very rocky, shallow water, wasn’t a good idea,” Elgin recovered his good humor. “Was that a threat Mr. Chalmers?” Charles drew himself up, squared his shoulders he was as tall as Elgin and probably half again as heavy, most of the additional mass weight room muscle. “No, just an observation. Look Charles, I took Loretta Sanger out to tour the town the night after the Palace blew up. Nothing happened, she was a very pleasant companion and she went home, all I paid for was the limo and the food. Elena is a friend, she’s not underage, she just looks it, she’s a nice girl and we talk about camping, her parents used to take her camping. And shooting, her parents also used to take her shooting and she still goes to the range regularly.” “What about the reports in the vicinity of the Palace and Plaza?” “I already answered that Charles. You want dirt on Zeph? Well there is none. And I have to point out that this interview suggests to me that perhaps you feel she has dirty laundry because you have some?” Charles spun on his heel and stalked away. *Is he a threat to Zeph, Elena or me?* Elgin asked the others. *Unknown but unlikely, he’s got nothing concrete, worst he could do is pass on the info and unfortunately correct suppositions about our movements during the periods of interest. However I find that your guess about Mr. Petters-Smith is true. One of the reasons he has an in at the Department of Justice is that he has provided information regarding a company client, not one of his. I would say he has provided information for access several times. I think he has justified it as being in the public interest each time, but its still unethical, even illegal in a certain light.* *So he’s the threat to the company that he made out Zeph to be.* *Correct,* the Iffrit’s voice was firm, *it’s not our problem Elgin. Tell Zeph, she can deal with it. Part of Petters-Smith’s problem is that she is the golden haired girl purely because of ability. He’s where he is because of his genes as much as ability.* Elgin nodded to himself and went back to looking out the window. In the vastly expanded halls of his mind Cutter and the Iffrit continued his education as his body went about being their joint habitat on Earth. -o- Elena took a sip of the very nice Merlot Allen had ordered in with the dinner, she looked at Elgin, “The man’s a slug.” Zeph looked at Elgin in disgust, “He said that?” Elgin nodded, “I can give you an audio file if you like.” Zeph shook her head, “That won’t be necessary.” Elgin looked at Allen who nodded and pointed at Zeph as he finished his last bite, “Zeph’s right, the weasel’s toast. He’s got good instincts, his antenna are telling him that things are shifting under him. If Chas had done it once or twice he would probably have gotten away with it but he did it too often and none of the executive partners are dumb.” “Probably a good thing I didn’t make him disappear, which was one of several impulses. The one of converting him into a large frog seemed a little extreme and would have required a great deal of time though it seemed appropriate.” Elgin swirled the merlot in his glass and took a sip. Allen cocked an eyebrow, “You could turn him into a frog?” “DNA on out, of course a two hundred pound frog would be pretty dangerous and leave a hell of a mess.” “Huh, that’s either pretty profound or the four bottles of wine have taken their toll.” Allen blinked at his glass. “There’s still one left, the desert wine.” Elgin pointed out, for no clear reason. Zeph exchanged looks with Elena Elena smiled, “Have they always been light weights?” Elena asked. “Rumor is that Elgin gets tipsy on a single glass of beer then drinks everyone else under the table.” Zeph replied. Elgin smiled, “Rumor is wrong, Elgin did most of his drinking in private,” the subtle cowboy smile faded, “Like my pa. In public I usually tried to make people think I was drinking more than I was...still do.” Allen grinned, “And I usually can drink everyone under the table, but I took a pain pill and forgot that I wasn’t supposed to drink more than a glass or so.” The women stared at their men and shook their heads, the two men toasted each other, finished up the last of their wine and started to search for the bottle opener with plans to apply it to the last bottle. Elena and Zeph got up to start getting the fruit and cheese cake desert ready. Zeph made a detour to check on Humph who was lying on his side snoring, his dinner plate was empty so she gave him some more beef and fish. He opened one eye slightly, yawned, “Mrow.” “You’re welcome,” She replied. Allen had been telling the truth about his head for drink, though he was very definitely tipsy he still won the light hearted game of bridge they played into night as they talked about this that and the other. Zeph let the conversation flow around her, the wine made her feel warm and cozy, but also a little sad. She had her leg tucked up against Allen’s under the table, a contact that felt good and right. But it opened the distance that she felt towards Elgin even more. Once, as a girl she’d had a crush on Elgin Chalmers and in the months as a simple deputy in the Beauty sheriff’s office she’d felt the attraction again. And it had become something close to unendurable longing after he’d saved her life a couple of times. But that attraction was offset by the mixture of fear and awe she felt for the strangeness that had attached itself to him Allen was safe, brilliant and funny and warm, and normal. And she needed normal, now. Her days of hunting for adventure were over, she never wanted to see a Were again, or to have to endure the nearness of a Vampire. Elena, looking ridiculously clean cut upper crust WASP rather than Slavic femme fatal, was probably; undoubtedly was a better match. She seemed fearless and able to detach herself from the normal world, two attributes anyone who loved Elgin would have to have. Finally the game stuttered to a stop as the discussion of politics, the new space race, the middle east mess etc, took over. And finally Zeph insisted that a bit giggly Allen go to bed. When she came out from tucking him in Elgin and Elena were wearing coasts and Humph was sitting on the floor nearby his tail neatly folded over his paws. Zeph walked over and hugged Elena then Elgin and finally Humph, who nuzzled her cheek in a friendly way. Then she stood back with a smile, “I don’t know, owing my life to each of the three of you is rather strange, but I guess if have to be that accident prone I couldn’t have a better set of guardian angels.” Elgin smiled back, “And if we thank you for all your work for the Tribe and for all the others you help. If I ever need a lawyer I’ll know who to call.” Elena stepped forward and hugged Zeph again, “That’s for being a friend to Elgin when he needed one.” “Mrowwr.” Humph wound around Zeph’s leg then strolled tail high to Elgin and Elena. Elgin grasped Elena’s arm and then Humphs offered tail. Zeph blinked, and they were gone. No sound, no flash, no heat or cold, it was if she had fallen asleep for a few moments. She wrapped her arms around herself and turned back to the bedroom and the warm bed and a warm Allen. Somewhere deep in her mind memories began to fade and delink, in a few weeks much of her adventurous year would be hard for her to remember. And though she would have argued the point, Zeph would be much happier that way. -o- An instant after stepping forward the three travelers were in the Airstream. Outside the wind howled and buffeted the aluminum shell. Elena put down her travel bag. Most of her belongings were locked behind police tape, her apartment under watch by both the FBI and SVR. Though both government services thought she was dead. And though there were things she missed she wanted to stay dead. The faint genetic changes that the Iffrit had wrought, changing fingerprints, iris patterns and her DNA enough to make her a new person as far as all the biometric factors were concerned would only be helped by her not appearing again in her old haunts. Elgin slung his backpack on the bed, knelt down and looked around the insulated blinds. “A good foot of blowing snow on top of the base. Damn, I hope Rich kept my driveway plowed.” Elena looked around and smiled to hide her thoughts. Zeph had told her about Elgin’s home, somehow 26 feet had sounded bigger in the warmth of the lawyer’s New York apartment. But the little space was exquisitely finished and meticulously clean. The bed Elgin was leaning on was big enough for two, the dining area kitchen was bigger than the one her mother had cooked wonderful food in. And after she found a job they’d figure out how to expand. “Mrowwwwrr!” Humph exclaimed from somewhere that sounded rather distant, probably the bathroom. Curious she followed the sound, around the partition at the end of the kitchen, there was an archway, with darkness beyond, an archway that looked like it was cut in stone. Stepping carefully she walked forward, into a sitting room with warm leather and brocade upholstery, the floor of silvery wood radiated warmth, a big slate and stone fireplace with a fire burning merrily. There was a grand piano sitting ready in the corner between floor to ceiling expanses of glass that looked onto a moonlit night scene of scudding clouds and blowing snow flowing over the broad expanse of a frozen lake. “How do you like it?” Elgin’s hands were warm on her shoulders. “It’s unbelievable...is it real? Not that it matters, it feels real.” “I would have answered that question different ways at different times my love. The truth is I don’t really know how it is real but it is. The view s real; what we touch and see is real, there is a structure that could have these views, but it does not, and the house is occupied by a rather unpleasant über geek. Not a cowboy and his lady.” She turned in his arms and slipped her arms around his neck, she smiled up into his face, “Okay, I can deal with that answer. Let me demonstrate how much I like it Cowboy!” She pulled his lips down to hers. THE END ##### If you enjoyed Elgin Then please be on the look out for my other published books, Moon Dreams , Under Siege, Exotic Contraband: Lost Among the Stars, and Exotic Contraband: The Road Past Home with others on the way. Afterword Also if you enjoyed this book please return to where you found it, to Smashwords.com or your favorite eTailer and browse their virtual stacks, there are many fine writers working the ePub trade these days. I hope you liked this book, I certainly enjoyed writing it, and letting others help me with it, most of all, my wife and my dad. I also very much appreciate the folks at Smashwords.com for accelerating the eBook revolution. If you want to learn more about the author take a look at my bio page on Smashwords or my blog at: http://www.ThisWorldandOthers.com. Cheers M.A.Harris