“You think we should continue?”
Ha’kan’ta shook her head. Her hands moved up his face to massage his temples.
“Let us leave such talk for another time. I would rather share another dance with you, Kieranfoy. We have journeyed far this evening, part of the way together. Our spirits are close at this moment. There is a dance amongst my people that is danced under blankets. Do you know its steps?”
She took her hands from his face and began to undo her braids. When she shook her hair free and leaned down once more, it fell about their faces in a dark cloud of curls. Her lips brushed against his.
Kieran pulled her down to him. Part of his soul still sang the song of the high winds and feathered flight. It reached out to her, merged into a dusky memory of fur and strength. She moved to lie on top of him and he felt her smile against his cheek.
Chapter Seven
“Cold. So cold.”
Thomas Hengwr’s eyes were open, but unfocused. Whatever he saw, it was not what those gathered about his sickbed saw. His was the look of one who was experiencing his own private vision of hell. While he trembled from an inner cold, his forehead was slick with perspiration. All Tucker could get out of him were those two words. Cold. So cold.
“Jesus!” he said, lifting his gaze to catch Traupman’s. “What’s the matter with him?”
Traupman shrugged. “Severe shock, I’d say. Trauma caused by the severity of his injury, though . . .”
His voice trailed off and Tucker nodded. The scars on Hengwr’s face looked about two weeks old.
“How long has he been like this?” Traupman asked.
“About fifteen minutes,” Sally replied. “I didn’t want to come down right away, but then . . . Well, he just kept getting worse. I got him another blanket and then I didn’t know what to do.”
She shot a glance at Jamie who smiled encouragingly. “You did the right thing,” he said.
“Maybe I should get him a hot water bottle.”
“I’ll get it,” Blue said.
“When we found him,” Jamie said, “just after you left, Inspector, those scars were open wounds. You could see them healing.”
“Self-healing or not,” Traupman said, rising from the side of the bed, “we have to get this man to a hospital.”
As though that was the key to bringing him back, Tom stirred. Tucker saw the glazed look leave the old man’s eyes. There was pain in them, but for the first time since they’d come into the room, Tom appeared to be aware of them.
“No . . . no hospital,” he said.
Those were the eyes of a frightened man, Tucker thought.
“You’re a sick man,” Traupman told Tom, returning to sit on the bed. “You need medical attention.”
“What is . . . wrong with me . . . no doctor can mend.” His eyes clouded over and a violent tremor ran the length of his body. Fighting back the pain, he forced himself to continue speaking, his voice no more than a husky whisper. “I need . . . time. That is all. Time to drive it from me. The . . . shadow. . . .”
“Shadow?” Tucker knelt by the bed, his face near the old man’s. “What shadow?”
“Death’s shadow. Left a . . . shard of darkness . . . in me. The . . . the House is all that . . . that protects me now. Soon even it . . . won’t be enough. If you take its . . . protection from me now . . . I . . . I won’t survive the night. . . .”
“What’s he talking about?” Tucker demanded.
Traupman shrugged and looked at Jamie.
“I told you,” Jamie said. “He thinks the Welsh bard Taliesin is trying to kill him. The long-dead Welsh bard. You know. Like in Williams’s ‘Through Logres’ and that sort of thing? That’s all I know.”
“That’s what the Inspector told me,” Traupman said. “But it doesn’t make any—”
“No,” Tom said weakly. “Not . . . not the bard. I was wrong. My foe is more . . . more terrible still. He almost slew me in . . . the Otherworld. Caught me off . . . guard. Would have killed me then had I not . . . not willed myself here. I left a changeling in my place. A thing of mud and twigs . . . made up in my shape, but it won’t . . . it won’t hold him long. Cold. So cold. . . .”
“Then who is it?” Tucker demanded. “Who did this to you? Tell me and we’ll bring him in.”
Were it not for the pain, Tom would have laughed. He tried to explain what it was that hunted him, but the words grew tangled with the cold and the pain. He could only repeat himself.
“No hospital,” he said. “I . . . feel him near. Soon he will come and . . . nothing will protect me. So cold. Kieran . . . tell him. . . .”
Tucker stood up.
“So what do we do, Dick?” he asked.
Traupman pulled at his earlobe. Looking from the Inspector to Tom, he came to a decision.
“Leave him here,” he said. “For now at least.”
“You’re buying this mumbo-jumbo, then?”
“I’m keeping an open mind.” To Jamie, he added: “Are we going to be in the way? I’d like to stay right here with him until we can bring him around.”
“Mind?” Jamie said. “God, no! It’s all in your hands.”
He moved closer to the head of the bed and leaned towards Tom.
“Did you find Sara, Tom?” he asked. “Where’s Sara?”
For a moment there was no response. Then Tom shut his eyes fiercely as though blocking out some terrible sight.
“Where’s Sara?” Jamie demanded, grabbing Tom’s shoulder.
“Leave him be!” Tucker said.
“But he knows—”
“The Wren,” Tom said suddenly, his voice strong for a moment. “She is with . . . tell her to beware of . . . of the . . . cold. . . .”
His voice drifted off again.
“Come on,” Tucker said, pulling Jamie gently but firmly away from the bed. The Inspector looked down at Tom’s anguished features and could only shake his head and ask, “What the hell do you think he sees?”
“He knows where Sara is,” Jamie tried to explain. “We’ve got to find out what he’s done with her.”
“Now’s not the time,” Traupman said. He moved between Jamie and Tucker and drew Jamie to a chair. “He’s delirious. All you’re going to get from him are snatches of whatever nightmares he’s experiencing.”
Jamie opened his mouth, then shut it. Resignedly, he stared at Tom’s face and let out a long raspy sigh.
“What did he mean about the House protecting him?” Traupman asked.
Jamie blinked, looked away from Tom to focus on Traupman’s features. There was something very calming about Dick Traupman.
“We told the Inspector,” he said wearily. “Something attacked the House this morning. I guess it was whoever did that to Tom. It must have known he was here—even if we didn’t—and was trying to finish off the job, I suppose. The only thing that kept it out was . . . well, I can’t really explain it. It was as though the House itself was keeping it out. As though there was some sort of psychic shield or barrier that kept it at bay.”
“I wish we could know for certain what it was,” Traupman said, “if there is something in the House that can stop this—this evil, I suppose we should call it, for want of a better term. If we can find out what it is that stops it, perhaps we can use it to defeat it.” He held up a placating hand to forestall Tucker’s protest. “No, John. I’ve not gone off the deep end as you think the rest of them have. You might dissemble, but I know that’s what you are thinking.”
“I think we’re all nuts,” Tucker said.
“Be that as it may, there is still something here—something I can almost put my finger on—that lends credence to all the impossible things we’ve been told thus far. And I’ll tell you this, John: If there is some Otherworldly monster coming, we’d damn well better be prepared for it when it comes.”
“Jesus H. Christ!” Tucker shook his head. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
Traupman shrugged. “I’m open to s
uggestions, John. What would you have us do?”
“I’d . . .”
Tucker looked at their faces. He read the seriousness in Traupman’s and the fear that clouded Jamie and Sally’s. He knew what Traupman meant. He could feel it too. There was something in the air—like the heaviness that preceded a storm. Something was coming and he couldn’t say what. He didn’t even want to think about it, except that it was his job and the sooner he got it wrapped up, the happier he’d be. If only it didn’t seem so . . . plausible. Last night, talking to Maggie, he seemed to have gotten the whole thing into some sort of rational perspective. Now . . . Well, now he just didn’t know.
He tried to frame that into a sentence that he could say without coming off sounding like he’d commited himself to this insanity, but the words weren’t there. Then Blue returned with the hot-water bottle and the moment was gone.
“Someone’s here to see you,” Blue told Tucker. “Door on Patterson side—about halfway down.”
“To see me?”
“Yeah. A woman. Says her name’s Margaret Finch and that you’re expecting her. Nice-looking lady.” Blue handed Sally the hot-water bottle and added, “You want me to show you the way?”
What was Maggie doing here? Tucker asked himself. He glared at Blue as though the biker was to blame for her showing up. Besides, where did this grease monkey come off, anyway, saying she was nice-looking? What did he know?
Okay, he told himself. Hold it right there. He remembered the message he’d left for her and realized that, rather than calling, she’d probably decided to just come on down. She was probably curious—hell, he knew she was curious—and wanted to have a look for herself.
“Yeah,” he said to Blue politely, trying to suppress the animosity between them. “I could use a guide.”
“The trouble with them,” Traupman remarked as they left, “is that they are too much alike.”
Sally looked up from the bed.
“You know,” she said. “You’re probably right.”
She placed the hot-water bottle under Tom’s feet and wiped his brow with a cloth.
Traupman shrugged.
“What scares me the most,” he said, “is if Thomas Hengwr is all he’s made out to be . . . well, I don’t like to think of how powerful whatever it was that defeated him is.”
“You should have been here this morning,” Jamie said, then realized that what had almost come through the door then had probably been just a scout of some kind. If it had been the monster itself, he doubted that Blue would ever have gotten the door closed again.
Serge Morin rolled a cigar between his fingers as he watched the House. A half-full plastic container of tea was going cold on the dashboard of his Oldsmobile and the newspaper he’d been reading lay discarded on the seat beside him. Leaning his head back against the headrest, he sighed. He was getting old for this line of work. But it wasn’t like the old days anymore. He never used to get bored. Maybe that was what getting old did to you: made you think too much. He was pushing forty-five now. And, sacrement, he just couldn’t stop thinking. Sometimes at night, when he was looking out the window of his apartment, the faces of the men and women he’d killed came floating up out of the darkness. There was no accusation in their faces. That was what bothered him the most. They just looked like they were waiting. For him.
He glanced at his watch. He’d been here three hours already. He wondered when—
As if on cue, he looked in the rearview mirror to see Phillip Gannon’s tan Chevy pull in behind his Olds. Michel Chevier stepped out, and as the Chevy pulled away Gannon raised his hand. Morin nodded to him, then reached across to unlock his own passenger door. Chevier slid in.
“How’s it been?” he whispered.
His odd voice was a reminder of a bullet he’d taken in the throat back when he was running a numbers racket for the Pellier Brothers in Montreal. The bullet had been their way of retiring him. Trouble was, he’d survived. The Pelliers—Jacques, Raymond and Phillipe—hadn’t.
“Quiet,” Morin said. “Tucker showed up with an old guy in tow about forty-five minutes ago. I thought we were moving in before he showed up again.”
“The old guy’ll be Traupman,” Chevier said. “Gannon was expecting him to show up with Tucker. Anybody else?”
“Nothing since then except for this knockout brunette about five minutes ago. She came in a cab and it didn’t wait.”
“Wonder who she is?” Chevier thought aloud.
“I don’t know, but it’s getting congested in there—and people remember faces. What do you know about this place?”
“Not much. But we’ll be finding out. Gannon’s just gone to give Walters a call. Word is we’ll be moving in very soon.”
“What about Tucker?”
Chevier shrugged. He popped a mint in his mouth, offered one to Morin before he put them away. “Word on Tucker is that he’s outlived his usefulness. Walters wanted him played out on a line, but Gannon’s sure that our main target is tucked away in there somewhere, so who needs the horseman now?”
“In there?” Morin asked, indicating the House. “Hengwr’s in there?”
“That’s what Gannon says. Who’s watching the other sides of this place?”
“Bull’s on O’Connor. Mercier’s parked where he can watch Clemow and the park.”
“Five of us, then,” Chevier mused. “Enough for everybody.”
These days Morin was easy to ruffle and something about Chevier’s voice always set his nerves on edge. He figured there were maybe seven or eight people in the House. How many of them were going to be looking back at him through his window tonight? “Should be enough,” he agreed, keeping his voice even.
Chevier smiled. “You got anything besides that toy on you?”
Morin looked down at his cigar. The camouflaged blowgun was his trademark. It was quick, clean and silent. The fléchettes were small enough so that even if you didn’t retrieve them, they were rarely found. All you had to remember was not to inhale when you had the mouthpiece up against your lips.
He felt like asking Chevier if he wanted a drag from the cigar, but only nodded. He opened his jacket and pulled a .32 caliber Margolin target pistol a few inches out of his shoulder holster, then let it drop back into place.
“Nice. Russian training piece?”
“You got it. But I prefer the darts.” He wondered if Hogue’s face was already waiting for him at his window.
Chevier shrugged. He carried a Smith & Wesson .38 Chiefs Special himself. For quiet work, he had a throwing knife strapped to his left wrist and another hanging between his shoulder blades. Morin had worked with him twice before.
“So now . . .” Morin began.
“Now we wait.”
Chevier popped another mint into his mouth and chewed it thoughtfully.
“Maggie, what are you doing here?”
“Come to give my favorite cop some moral support.”
“This isn’t a game,” Tucker said.
“I know,” she replied seriously. “That’s why I’m here. I don’t want to sit at home, waiting to hear about another ‘armed robbery’ on the late news.”
“There’s not going to be any trouble.”
“Then there’s no problem with my being here, is there? Besides, I’d like to meet this Jamie Tams that you’ve been talking about.” Pointedly she looked at Blue.
“Sorry,” Tucker muttered. “This is Glen Far—”
“Blue. Just Blue is fine.” He was sick to death of hearing Glen Farley thrown at him. But he was enjoying the Inspector’s discomfort with his ladyfriend; unfortunately, Tucker had one thing right. “Nice to meet you, ma’am. I’m sure Jamie’d like to say hello too, but the Inspector’s right. This is not a good place to be right now.”
“It’s all for real then, isn’t it?” Maggie asked, looking from one to the other, gauging their reactions with a lawyer’s eye.
“Too real.” Blue glanced out the window. “Anybo
dy got the time?”
“A little after five.”
Blue shook his head. “Well, I hope to hell that it’s just the dusk settling in that’s making it so dark out there. But I’ve got a bad feeling . . .”
Tucker followed Blue’s gaze and frowned. “Let’s go see how our patient’s doing,” he said.
“Sure.” Blue stopped long enough to pick up a large orange tabby that had wandered into the hall. “Nobody feeding you, big fella?” Then he looked from the cat to Tucker and smiled. “Hey, Inspector. Want to meet a namesake? His name’s Tuck.”
Tucker glanced at the cat, then caught Maggie’s grin.
Blue ruffled the cat’s fur, then thought of Sara. The smile on his lips died.
“C’mon,” he said.
Letting the cat down, he headed for the stairs.
“Morin?”
Gannon’s voice sounded thin coming through the Oldsmobile’s cheap speaker grill.
“Yeah?”
“We’re heading in. Leave the car where it is and hoof it down to O’Connor. We’ll meet you there. Got that?”
“Sure thing.”
Switching off the radio, Morin turned to his companion. “You all set?”
Chevier nodded. Morin looked down at the cigar he was still holding and stuck it away in the front pocket of his jacket.
“Then let’s go,” he said.
“Why honey?” Sally asked.
Following Traupman’s instructions, she was heating a large tablespoonful by the light of a fat candle.
“It’s supposed to impart fertility and vigor,” Jamie explained.
Traupman nodded. “The ancients imagined that bees had a parthenogenic origin,” he said, “which made honey an uncontaminated sacred food. We’ll mix it with mistletoe, which was the Golden Bough of the druids and the followers of Aeneas. It’s like we’re getting double our money.”
Jamie had been surprised they’d had any mistletoe lying around. Though the House was liable to have a bit of everything, stored away somewhere in its labyrinth. You just had to know where to look—and it seemed that the House wasn’t above giving you a little nudge in the right direction. He’d gone looking for Fred just now and took a wrong turn that delivered him into the room where the Christmas decorations were stacked in boxes behind a sofa.