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  I can’t be his pet. He won’t be mine. Where does that leave us?

  Where does that leave ME?

  FIVE:

  GOBLIN FRUIT

  It was cold out here under the highway tonight, but Daniel Carradine tried to ignore it. There was money to be made, and the need to make it. Bobby wanted his money, and Daniel wanted his White Lady, the demanding mistress for whom Daniel had given up everything else.

  Not that there’d been all that much. When home was a decaying Pennsylvania steel town and a father who couldn’t accept that times had changed, even the underside of the West Side Highway on a freezing December night was better.

  The wind came whistling in off the Hudson, cold as memories. If he’d been able to fix before he came out, Daniel wouldn’t have minded the cold, he knew, but Bobby didn’t sell on credit. Still, Daniel told himself hopefully, it might be a good night. He was seventeen, and looked younger, and that was good. It was what the marks liked, the guys who came cruising down here with their Mercedes and their Jags, looking for what Daniel and the others were selling. Goblin fruit, like in the Rossetti poem, where no matter how much you ate, you were always hungry for more.

  A friend of his—Tony—went by, and he smiled and waved. Bobby had come across for Tony before he left the flop tonight—it was obvious in the way Tony strutted, as if he were living in a warm world where the river wind didn’t blow—and for a moment Daniel felt a pang of envy that was shocking in its violence. He quashed the emotion firmly. There was no point. Nothing came free. That was the first lesson growing up in Cartersville had taught him. There was a price for everything, even freedom. And if the only freedom he could buy with the only thing he owned—his body—was the freedom of a derelict flop down in the Bowery that he shared with half a dozen other rentboys, then he’d take it.

  A car cruised by—slowly, on the prowl—and Daniel smiled hopefully, arching his back and shaking his head so that a lock of bleached-blond hair fell down over his eyes. But the car moved on, and Daniel hunched back into himself again, seeking what comfort he could.

  He wanted to get this over with and go find Bobby. He really did.

  From a few feet away, beneath the body of a burnt-out and abandoned car, Urla watched its victim. The redcap had been about to rush out, but the cruising car had stopped it. The Great Lord had said there must be no witnesses, and Aerune’s command sat upon Urla like a geas.

  He had also said that Urla must take no one who would be missed, and Urla knew that nobody would miss this one. Still young and strong, and filled with such self-hatred and despair that the redcap was nearly drunk with it, all laced through with a yearning, a fiery craving for something that was not food or drink or sex. Urla dismissed its own curiosity. It did not matter what the boy hungered for, for he did not hunger as much as Urla did for the bright warmth of the untasted years, the unspent years the boy would have had if Urla had not come hunting here tonight.

  Another car passed, then two more, and each time the boy was assessed and refused. His fear was stronger now, and Urla licked its lips in anticipation. Soon, soon. . . .

  At last the boy stumbled away from the pillar by which he stood and began shuffling up the street, his steps uncoordinated. He shivered, wrapping his thin jacket tighter around his starved body as if the thin cotton had the power to grant him the warmth he lacked. In a few moments more he would pass directly before Urla’s hiding place.

  But the redcap’s anticipated feast was not to be. Another great black chariot turned down the street, its night lamps pinning the boy in their beams. Urla saw its prey stop, hopeful once more, as the car drew level with him, and the door opened. The boy stepped forward, and a mortal—tall, tall, with the stink of Cold Iron about him—rose up out of the car and grabbed Urla’s prey, dragging him into the car as he began, too late, to struggle and cry.

  The door shut. The chariot moved away, more quickly now, belching foul gasses that made Urla cough.

  No! They will not have him! He is mine!

  Snarling its disappointment, the redcap wrapped itself in shadows and began to trot after the black chariot that had taken its prey.

  “I said no alkies, goddammit! Which word don’t you goons understand?”

  The tall dark man with the sleepy eyes blinked at her. Jeanette wished she could kick him, but she didn’t dare, quite. She took a deep breath and tried again, marshalling her hard-won and inadequate social skills.

  “Look, Elkanah.” Was the name on the tag first, last, or even his? Not her problem. “Most of these people are fine. But you see that one in the corner?”

  Jeanette gestured toward the monitor in the Security Room. It showed the space they called Large Primate Containment—a euphemism for the Black Labs and holding cells set up for human experimentation. Just now it was dressed to look like a police holding cell—an environment she was sure all of her guests were more than familiar with. Junkies, rentboys, and hookers, the lot of them, and that was fine with her.

  Except for the man in the corner, the one in the tattered vomit-stained trenchcoat, his face long-unshaven and caved in upon missing teeth and malnutrition. The others gave him a wide berth, and she could imagine why. He probably stank to high heaven.

  “That guy is a juicehead. I can’t use him. His liver’s already shot to hell—drugs process through the liver, Elkanah, did you know that? Alcohol’s legal—by the time a juicehead gets to the street he’s already a walking corpse; all his insides pickled and shot to hell. I told you guys when you went out: no alkies, no crazy street people. Junkies and whores, that’s what I told you to get.”

  The man in the uniform of Threshold Special Security blinked down at her, as impassive as a cigar-store Indian, and for a moment Jeanette didn’t think he’d heard her. Didn’t any of Robert’s hardboys speak English, for God’s sweet sake?

  “So what do you want me to do with him, Ms. Campbell?” Elkanah finally said. His voice was slow and deep and thoughtful, and despite her fury, Jeanette did not for one moment make the mistake of thinking he was stupid. Stupid people did not rise to key positions in Threshold’s Black Ops.

  She took a deep breath.

  “I don’t care what you do with him. Throw him in the East River for all I care. But get rid of him before lights out, because if he’s still there tomorrow when my Judas Goat goes in to offer these losers a trip out of this world, I am going to be seriously pissed. And when I’m pissed, Robert Lintel is pissed. Are we communicating?”

  “Yes, Ms. Campbell. I’m sorry about the confusion.”

  He wasn’t sorry and there’d been no confusion. Jeanette knew that perfectly well. But she’d won, and that was all that mattered.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll be in my office if anyone needs me.”

  She turned away and walked quickly out of Security before this Elkanah person could guess how scared she was. When she’d been running with the Sinner Saints, she could have eaten corporation rent-muscle like Elkanah for breakfast, but it had been years since she’d had to face off anything but chimps and wimp lab technicians, and, unlike riding a Harley, some skills didn’t stay with you forever.

  Security and personnel were Robert’s problem. They always had been. She supplied the science. He supplied the money and muscle. That was the deal. So why did she have to do everything around Threshold herself?

  She reached the safety of her own private lab and closed the airlock behind her gratefully, irritation and a feeling of narrow escape both fading as she surveyed her private kingdom. Nobody would bother her in here. Nobody would dare.

  The room had been cleansed of all traces of the chimps’ occupation, though they were still looking for the one that had vanished. The two that had died instantly had been autopsied, and she’d found about what she’d expected: massive stroke and brain hemorrhage, the inevitable side effect of chemical Russian roulette.

  The other two—the ones that had manifested the bizarre powers—had also died, but several hours later and of
something that looked surprisingly like starvation, though how the old female could have died of starvation with all she’d eaten was an interesting question. She was the one who’d survived the longest, and Jeanette was looking forward to seeing those autopsy results, but right now both bodies were in freezers awaiting their turn. Ramchandra had better work fast, because in a day or so those chimps were going to have a lot of company.

  Jeanette fully expected that the people Robert had gotten for her off the New York streets would die of the drug the same way the chimps had. That was what lab trials were for—to find out what killed them and to try to refine the next batch even more. She’d obviously found the right button to push, the one she’d been looking for ever since she was a teenager.

  Now all I have to do is keep their heads from exploding. A few more hours alone would clean her test subjects out of whatever they’d been using, then another of Robert’s goons would be thrown in with them, the packets of T-6/157 in his pockets looking like any other sample of party dust. He’d say he needed to get rid of it before the police searched him, and if Jeanette knew junkies, they wouldn’t ask too many questions when there was free dust on offer. They’d suck the stuff right down, and then . . .

  Then she’d finally start getting some answers.

  * * *

  Hell couldn’t be worse than this, Daniel thought. And to think, he’d thought his luck had changed when that limo had pulled up.

  He could still feel the shock of anger, almost of betrayal, when the big man had seized him and dragged him into the limo. He and his buddy had tried to make it look like they were vice cops ringing him in on a solicitation bust, but Daniel had been through that mill more than a few times since he’d gotten to New York, and he’d never seen a vice cop that rode around in the back of a fancy car—or that put a hood over your head so you couldn’t see where you were when they dragged you out of it.

  That was weird, and for a while he’d tried to console himself with the fantasy that they were just two kinks looking for a wiggy party, but he couldn’t make himself believe it. He’d never seen a co-ed holding tank, for one thing, and no matter how much this place might look like the Tombs, it just didn’t smell right. And it was way too quiet. In prison there was always somebody screaming, somebody crying, somebody jonesing for a fix that wasn’t going to come any time soon.

  That would be him, in a couple of hours. He needed his White Lady, his beautiful lady who made the world all soft and sweet. He didn’t know about the other eight people stuck in here with him, and he didn’t care. Life on the street was rough enough without caring about other people, and Daniel had jettisoned his emotional baggage early.

  They fed him a couple of times, and once the lights went down low and he’d slept a little, but by the second day he was too sick to care about his breakfast. A lot of the others were just as bad off, and when one of them started screaming and wouldn’t stop, two guys in black almost-a-cop uniforms had come in and dragged her away pretty quickly. The rest of them sat, huddled in silent misery, waiting for the torture to end.

  No lawyers, no bondsmen, no arraignment. This isn’t any bullpen I’ve ever been in. But I ain’t gonna be the one to say it. They’re probably watching everything. Whoever they are.

  The word must have gone out to make up the numbers after the woman disappeared, because a little while after dinner—he’d forced himself to eat, but thrown up again almost instantly—they brought in someone new.

  He was dressed better than they were, but still street. Daniel’s internal radar prickled instantly. He was pretty sure he knew what this guy was, and he was only hoping that the rest of his guess was right as well. The guy was holding. He could smell it. Nobody had searched Daniel when they brought him in. Why should they search any of the others?

  He waited until the lights went out, when everyone was curled up in their bunks. There were twelve bunks—four sets of three tiers each—for nine people, which meant that nearly everyone could have his pick of places to sleep. The New Guy took what was left—a bottom bunk, of course, since anyone with brains wanted a top one.

  Daniel made sure he had the top bunk on the New Guy’s tier. It wasn’t his to begin with, but he got to it first and stared down the woman who’d been sleeping there. She just shook her head bitterly and went to find another bed.

  “Hey,” Daniel called softly. “Hey, New Guy?”

  “That’s me.” The voice came out of the darkness, pleased and mellow and unafraid. “You got a name, pilgrim?”

  “Danny-boy.” It was what Daniel answered to on the street, as if keeping the name he had been called at home a secret could somehow lend him armor against the cruelty of the streets.

  “Well, Danny-boy, you can call me Keith.”

  “Hey, Keith.” Daniel’s voice was ragged with relief. He knew the moves of this dance, and knew he’d been right. The man was holding, and Daniel meant to cut himself a slice of that pie.

  “Now Danny-boy, I got me a problem that maybe you could help me with. I was checking you out earlier, when I came in. You look like an intelligent kind of a guy.”

  “Yeah, that’s me.” He wasn’t entirely successful at keeping the bitterness out of his voice. If he’d been really smart, would he have ended up here?

  “Well, I’ve got this inventory. And I kind of need to hold a fire sale, as it were.”

  Daniel dropped down out of the top bunk, quick as a cat, and squatted beside the bottom bunk. Keith was resting on one elbow—looking toward him, though it was hard to see that in the darkness. A gold ring in the shape of a phoenix glinted in one ear, the brightest thing Daniel could see.

  He’s holding. And he needs to get rid of the stuff before the cops figure that out. Daniel held out his hand.

  Keith dropped the small white packet into it. “There’s plenty for everyone,” he said in his mellow voice, as the other inhabitants of the holding tank began converging on him with a slow tidal movement.

  Daniel backed away, defending his prize. In one pocket, along with other odds and ends, was a chopped off bit of soda straw. He tore open the small glassine packet—carefully, oh so carefully—and dipped the straw end into the white powder. It wasn’t as good as spiking a vein, but it would do, oh, yes. He snorted hard, pulling the powder up into his sinuses, and from there, straight to the bloodstream. He didn’t know what Keith had offered him—coke, horse, one of the new supposed-to-be-legal concoctions—and right now he was too far gone in need to care. Just a little something to quiet the dragon trying to gnaw its way out of his bones.

  He felt it come on almost instantly: a velvet-wrapped pile driver that made his heart race, even while it wrapped him in soft clouds of not-caring. He blinked, forced himself to look up, and saw Keith handing out packets to everyone.

  “Hey,” Daniel croaked. “Save me some for later.” The white tide was rising, carrying him off to a place where nothing hurt and no one was cruel.

  “Don’t worry, Danny-boy.” He heard Keith’s slow rich voice as from a great distance. “This stuff, nobody ever needs two.”

  And the heaven and hell of it was, Daniel heard him. Heard him and didn’t care.

  Five minutes after the last of the meat had gone on the nod, Keith stood up and stretched. The floor of the cell was covered with unconscious junkies. He shivered, looking down at them. Whatever this stuff was, he was sure as hell glad he hadn’t sniffed any of it.

  He looked up at the main security camera in the ceiling.

  “Hey. What are you guys waiting for? An engraved invitation?” he demanded.

  There was no response, but a few minutes later the lights came up in the corridor outside, and technicians in white lab coats wheeling gurneys appeared. The one in the lead opened the cell door, and Keith stepped outside hastily, as if whatever had sent the eight people in the cell off to dreamland might be catching.

  “Everything go all right?” Beirkoff asked.

  “Fine as frog hair. What the hell was that stuff, anywa
y?”

  Beirkoff smiled, and the lights turned the lenses of his tinted glasses silver. “Hey, you know the drill. I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

  Keith growled wordlessly under his breath, and stalked off to report.

  Jeanette had slaved the security cameras to her desktop PC. She could have been down in the security room, where all eight holding cells were being monitored on visual and audio as well as by a whole spectrum of other devices, but she didn’t want to share this moment with some wage slave of a technician. She could see all she needed to from here, anyway. By tapping a few buttons, she could watch as her unconscious subjects were transported to separate holding cells, implanted with transceivers that would monitor their heart and brainwaves. As soon as the pickups were live, she killed the picture and brought up the telemetry. Slow rolling delta waves billowed across her screen like the waves of an ancient ocean.

  What are you feeling? she asked the silent screen. Where are you?

  But the answers, she knew, would have to wait. Until the awakening.

  Beneath the edge of the desk, her hands tightened into fists. Give it to me, she demanded silently. Give me something I can use!

  Outside the building, wrapped in a darkness of its own weaving, Urla watched the metal door through which the car had gone. Day had come and gone while the redcap waited. When the sun rode high in the sky, Urla retreated to the friendly darkness of the city’s sewers, killing rats to amuse itself while it waited. Their tiny deaths were only an appetizer, though, one that left the redcap restless and unsatisfied. Urla hungered for its stolen prey, taken by the men in the black night-wagon, the one that had burned with such painful inner fire.