A Gathering Evil

  I also had the fact of Nerys' animosity toward Marit to deal with. That appeared to explain Leich's attack on us at Danny's place. His tie to Nerys had been firmly established by his being my escort to her home. I still wondered if he was in some way related to the Reaper I had shot. I knew it was impossible for anyone to have survived the damage I did to him in my escape, but after visiting an alternate reality and seeing how hard Draolings were to kill, my resolve on that point was beginning to erode.

  The fact of a traitor in our midst was one of the toughest to deal with. Because everyone in the cell knew about the meet Hal had arranged, anyone could have played Judas. Handing out restricted information was the only way to determine who the spy was, and, despite the odd stuff that had happened in Sedona, Rock Pell looked like a good candidate on that count. We had not been ambushed by any predetermined setup, and he had not known we were going.

  Still, that was negative evidence and provided a direction for further inquiry, not proof of guilt.

  Somewhere in the middle of trying to organize different tasks for different people I drifted off to sleep. My subconscious mind kept gnawing on that difficulty, which manifested itself as a strange dream. It was set at a posh cocktail party, and in it everyone I had met appeared to be animated, but, as I moved around, they turned out to be paper-thin cutouts. On one side I saw them as they appeared to be on the surface, but from the other I saw them at their worst. Rock, for example, counted 30 silver coins over and over again while wearing a Nazi uniform.

  Weirdest of all, Coyote appeared as a white silhouette that always kept his back to a wall. I could not get anything from him except an occasional nod of approval. While I found that chilling, the one time I stepped in front of a mirror I saw a blank image staring back at me. In my mind, then, Coyote and I were one and I found that idea unsettling for reasons I could not figure out.

  A black shadow entered my dream. I looked for and found the familiar gold ring. "El Espectro. Are you really here, or are you part of my dream?"

  The shadow turned a circle, showing itself to be more substantial than the other denizens of my dream. "Here, in the, ah, flesh."

  "You've spoken with Loring?"

  The shadow man nodded. "I have communicated with him, and I found it disturbingly easy. I am afraid he has ventured into realms where he is not equipped to go."

  "Meaning?"

  El Espectro motioned with his right hand as if he were wiping the fog from a mirror. Ashe did so the background of my dream went away. I saw through the opening he had wiped and found myself staring out at a reddish plain with a dark bowl of sky and twinkling stars. He stepped through the streak he had created, and I followed him. As I looked back I saw my dreamworld contract down to a pinprick of light, then soar up to become the third star in the belt of Orion the Hunter.

  "What you and I have just done is shift from one frame of reality to another. One mark of this ability, for example, is being able to dream in color instead of black and white. That is your conscious mind being able to accept and deal with a vast array of input. Some people are blind to that input, others cannot process it—without help, that is."

  "I'm not certain I understand what you're telling me." I shrugged my shoulders. "For as long as I can remember, which is not long at all, I have been able to dream in color."

  "You and I are among the gifted few of humanity. We are what charlatans and psychics have called sensitive. We have a natural ability to pull in and deal with more sensory input than others. It is a form of empathy, really, and is roughly akin to being able to see in the ultraviolet or infrared ranges of electromagnetic radiation. We know insects can do the former and some snakes the latter. For us, until we are educated and equipped with skills, our empathy may be little more than feeling uneasy in a bad situation, or getting uncomfortable feelings from another."

  I smiled. "Whereas you, who have studied and refined your skill, can read minds and perform other miracles."

  El Espectro inclined his head in a concession to my point. "True, though my miracles are really little more than parlor tricks. Telekinesis, pyrokinesis, telepathy, psychometry, clairvoyance—all of these are branches of this thing that makes us different. We are still human, but we are adept where others are blind."

  "And Nero Loring is one of the blind."

  "Exactly. And unfortunately. He is, as a creative person, one of the most brilliant I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. His mind works so quickly and in such a complex manner that I can do no more than pick off stray surface thoughts. I could more easily read War and Peace in Inuit than I could fathom his mind. Yet, for all that, had he been with us in the proto-dimension yesterday, he would have found himself in a world of gray-flannel Jell-O. He would have seen nothing but us, and would have been helpless if we chose to abandon him."

  A comet of ill-omens streaked across the heavens. "I sense danger in your use of the word 'unfortunately.'"

  "Quite a bit of it, in fact. About four years ago, as I piece it together now, he started to see clues of some very disturbing things. At the very least he began to suspect the existence of dimensions other than the one in which Earth exists. He began to toy with a device that would allow him to detect signs of that universe. He thought,of it as a radio-telescope for looking through dimensions. It was something that was akin to the dimensional gateway I used to send you and Ms. Fisk back to Eclipse.

  "This he did on his own time. Apparently, about four months ago, he discovered something that deeply shocked him. His daughter ousted him from the company two months later and tried to have him put away. Company loyalists managed to hide him."

  "And I was brought in to kill him."

  El Espectro's head came up. "Conjecture, or you know this for a fact?"

  "Solid conjecture. The signs are there." I folded my arms. "I have since suffered from amnesia, so I am not certain about anything. Nerys acts as if that was my mission, and she was quite disturbed when I told her I had gone to Sedona on the track of a rumor about her father."

  "This could complicate things." The shadow man thought for a moment, the shook his head. "You will have to proceed very carefully."

  "I intend to. Now, bring me up to speed on Nero."

  "Ah, yes. When Loring was ousted, he lost access to his machine. He spent much of his time on the run studying certain mystical texts which describe other dimensions, other creatures and the like. I do not think he ascribed to any one in particular, but was looking for something that matched what he had discovered by using his dimension scope. He found it in a work of fiction—a collection of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe.

  "Nero chose to believe the pernicious slander about Poe promulgated by Rufus W. Griswold."

  "Namely that Poe was an opium addict?" inquired Tycho.

  "Correct, or, rather, incorrect. Poe may have been, as are you and I, a very creative empath who was able to peer into other dimensions. Nero, starting from that point, has secluded himself in a place where he can obtain and use psychotropic drugs to free his mind to roam where he was able to go using his dimensionscope."

  "And it won't work?"

  "This is the rough equivalent of a man who has studied an atlas jumping on a raft and waiting for Brownian motion to carry him from New York to Europe. He may get there, but he has no control over his travel. He is destroying his mind with these things—and for nothing." Anxiety filled El Espectro's words. "Whatever he thinks is so urgent he is unable to handle in any event."

  "What do you need from me?"

  "The wound I suffered was a bit more debilitating than I had imagined. I cannot fetch him and dry him out. I need you to do that for me. Once you get him, I want you to leave him with friends of mine in Eclipse."

  "A cutout?"

  "More for your protection than mine, Mr. Caine." El Espectro reached out and pressed his left hand to my forehead. I felt a tingle run over my scalp and instantly I knew the route I was to drive both to find Loring and to bring him to El Espectro's people. "
There, that should help you. I wish you Godspeed and suggest, unless you know who your traitor is, you travel alone."

  El Espectro's image faded with his voice. Through where he had been, the sun began to rise over the edge of the planet, and I shielded my eyes against the light. As I turned away from it, I felt sheets twist around my legs, and I opened my eyes. Letting my arm fall, I saw the sun dawning from the reflective face of the Sumitomo-Dial citadel.

  I smelled coffee and looked over at the doorway. Marit stood there in a loosely belted silk robe, the color of blue in a housefly's body. As she leaned against the door-jamb, the gap in the robe ran from her throat, down between her breasts, across her flat belly and down to trace the line of her hip and right leg. She clutched the steaming mug right below her face and seemed more intent on inhaling it than actually drinking it.

  I smiled. "If coffee tasted half as good as it smells, it would be a winner."

  She took in a deep sniff, then smiled. "I needed it to wake up. I had a nightmare."

  "Oh?"

  "Yes, I dreamed I woke up and you weren't in bed beside me."

  "Sorry, I didn't want to disturb your sleep last night."

  "I know, but with the news about Hal, I was worried."

  I sat up in bed and held my arms out to her. She set her cup on the nightstand, then crawled into bed beside me and I held her. "I didn't know you knew about Hal."

  "Jytte called last night with the news. She said Candy didn't make it."

  I felt a shiver run through her. "No, she didn't. We do, however, have a lead that Jytte and Bat should be following up."

  "Really? Can I help?"

  I shook my head. "Not with that, but you can help by spending one more day in bed."

  She snuggled in more tightly to my chest. "With you here too?"

  "Don't I wish." I tipped her chin up with my left hand and kissed her on the lips. "I have to head out and do something on the reservation. If you can call down and have your Ariel ready for me to use, I would be very appreciative."

  "I can call for you. How soon do you want it?"

  "An hour?"

  "An hour?" With the pout on her face and the tortured tone in her voice, she made it sound like a nanosecond. She rolled over onto my chest, pinning me to the bed. "Make it two hours, Mr. Caine, and give me a down payment on the appreciation, and you have a deal."

  "My pleasure, Ms. Fisk."

  "I'm counting on that, Mr. Caine."

  Having left bed well after I was awake, I showered quickly and dressed in very casual clothes. Marit offered to wash my back for me, but I reminded her she had to call about the car. She went to do that, but she noted that she expected the other 90% of my appreciation to be paid when I returned. I offered to sign a note, but she agreed to take me at my word.

  Feeling a bit paranoid, I not only packed my Colt Krait, but I also brought the one I had taken from the Reapers and my sniper rifle—though I did leave it in the case. Given that I was headed out into the trackless wastes of the Salt River Indian Reservation, I assumed having a long-distance weapon would be a good idea.

  Marit concurred in this thinking. "If you are right in thinking that the Witch hired you to kill her father, taking along as much artillery as you can carry to retrieve him is not a bad idea at all. I can still ride backup."

  I shook my head. "No. I want you to take one more day to recover. I want you ready in case anything we learn from Loring demands action."

  She reluctantly agreed to stay home and had Juanita pack me a lunch. I accepted the brown bag from the Hispanic woman, then Marit gave me a kiss as if she were a housewife sending her husband off to the office. "Be careful."

  "As always." I winked at her. "Oh, look, don't tell anyone else about this, okay? Hal doesn't need the burden, and it might not pan out."

  "Right."

  I took the elevator down to Level Five and picked the Ariel up near the McDowell car transport area. The attendant directed me toward the "hellavator," which is resident slang for the car elevator that takes vehicles straight down to ground level if that is quicker than picking up one of the freeways out of City Center. Because I wanted to head directly out McDowell toward the reservation, I decided that was the best way to work things.

  I guess, in the back of my mind, I had expected to pick up a tail, but I never expected it to be so blatantly obvious. I spotted it first at 16th and McDowell and confirmed it by the time I shot under the Squaw Peak Parkway

  . Streetlights strobed across the hood of the car as I hit the accelerator and started to run. My tail, knowing they had been made, picked up speed as well.

  I eased the Krait from my shoulder holster and laid it on the seat beside me. Hitting the switch to roll down my driver's-side window, I kept an eye on my rearview mirror and the pickup truck with two Aryans in the cockpit and one in the back. The man in the back raised a rifle, and I saw a muzzle flash a second before the back window shattered and blew back out in a jagged ice storm.

  So intent was I on making my car a tough target to hit that I almost didn't notice the new danger. All traps require bait and a sting. I had mistaken the pickup for the sting, but it fulfilled all the requirements of bait: It caught my attention. It didn't allow me to notice the hammer until almost too late.

  The Harley came out of a side street, crossed traffic and pulled up along side me with a blond-haired, bare-chested Aryan riding it. He wore mirrored sunglasses, but beneath the left lens I saw the hint of a star scar. On his chest, as he twisted to smile at me, I saw two other roundish scars that looked so old they couldn't have been from the shooting a week ago. In his gloved left hand he held the pistol grip of a double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun.

  I tapped the brakes and he shot ahead of me. As he shifted the gun from his left hand to right to shoot out my front tire, I jerked the wheel to the left and bumped his bike. As he fought to control it, the shotgun clattering to the ground, I pulled parallel, filled my hand with the Krait and pumped two rounds into him. One hit his hip, the other hit his chest, and his bike swerved into the left-turn lane.

  In one respect he was lucky. The Ford-Revlon Elan was not moving very fast when he hit it square on the nose. Leich vaulted from the bike, slammed into the windscreen, then flew over the top of the car. He landed on his feet, but continued in a somersault that ended with him skidding on his back through the glass, dirt and bits of chrome detailing left behind in the turn lane by other cars.

  His bike, which had completed a cartwheel over the Elan, wobbled along and flopped over on top of him.

  The pickup stopped near the wreckage, and I continued on. My ears rang from the sound of the gun going off in such a confined space, and the cordite left a bitter, dry taste in my mouth. Maybe Marit was right. Perhaps I should have just stayed in bed with her.

  I stopped behind a GDM Trotter for a red light at 36th Street

  . This was a mistake. Off on my left I saw the lower reaches of the Lorica Citadel, which prompted me to try to match up Mr. Leich with both the rider I'd just killed and the Reaper I shot in the first night of my new life. I desperately wanted the job to be difficult, but the three images slid together more easily than bullets slide into a clip. He didn't look like a Draoling...

  I realized the light had lasted longer than it should have just about the same time I saw the pickup truck in the rearview mirror. I cranked the steering wheel to the right and gunned the engined, vaulting me up onto the sidewalk. Sparks shot as the passenger side of the car scraped along the Lorica Citadel wall. Pedestrians leaped out into the street, and I bull's-eyed a metal cart full of groceries. Cans of soup and veggies bumped up and over the Ariel, then I cut back into the street and hit the gas.

  Behind me, having swung wide to get through the intersection, came the pickup. The driver hunched over the wheel and his passenger stuck a pistol out the passenger window. I swerved right in front of the truck, which threw off the passenger's aim, then I cut back as the driver tried to ram me from behind.

 
The truck tried to pull parallel as we shot through the intersection at 40th and on to 44th, but I hogged the whole road and kept them back. Then, just on the other side of 44th, the sniper stood up in the back of the truck and shouldered his rifle again. With deliberate care he wrapped his left forearm in the sling to sharpen his aim. I jerked the wheel to the left and a string of shells ripped through the passenger half of the car.

  I looked in the rearview and shifted into overdrive. The first sniper had not been wearing gloves, I suddenly realized. The wind blew parallel triangles of blood back across the sniper's face from the corners of his mouth. Torn flesh flapped in the wind and one patch on his shoulder showed his deltoid muscle. Worse yet, at hip and flank, I saw bullet wounds.

  That's Leich. That's impossible!

  Two more bullets punched through the passenger seat headrest, then I saw Leich furiously working the rifle's bolt. As we streaked across 52nd Street

  and started up between the Papago Buttes, I pulled my foot off the accelerator and pulled into the right lane. The pickup driver shot ahead, then made to drop in right in front of me so Leich could blaze away to his heart's content.

  As the driver tried to pull the truck in front of me, I punched the accelerator again, catching the pickup exactly behind the right rear passenger wheel. With all of the truck's weight up front, I started it into a skid. I hit it again, then pulled back as it shot off at a 45-degree angle to our previous direction of travel.

  Flying along at roughly 60 miles per hour, the pickup hit the curb and jumped up all of three feet before it hit the low restraining wall on the other side of the bike path. That started it rolling which, in turn, catapulted Mr. Leich and the body of the original sniper from the bed of the truck. The sniper flopped around like a dead thing, but Leich made an attempt to control his flight. He landed on his right leg, with his momentum continuing his backward somersault, and tried to steady himself with the Armalite assault rifle. He went down, of course, leaving patches of flesh on the tarmac, but managed to roll to his feet 10 yards from the crash site.