Beyond World's End Page 12

  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.

&nbs
p; 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, anyway?"

  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.

  There were others like that one in the grimy yellow building, and Urla comforted itself with fantasies of a gluttonous feeding, one that might slake even the redcap's eternal hunger, for there were many within the yellow building filled with terror and such a burning despair that it made Urla's mouth water. When night came again it took up its watching post once more, though by now it had lost all hope that the prey it had tracked here would emerge once more.

  Its tiny mind had been occupied for several hours with the question of whether it would be better to abandon its waiting and go once more in search of the Bard its dark master had commanded it to find, but instinct told it that this place contained many secrets, and secrets were always good to know.

  The moon rose high and began to set. And then, just before the sky began to lighten and Urla must once more choose whether to retreat into the sewers again or to admit its failure, something happened. The prey-creatures' lives burned in Urla's consciousness like bright candles, but suddenly several of them simply . . . went out.

  Urla crawled forth from its concealment beneath a parked car, leathery brow wrinkling in puzzlement. They had been there a moment before, and now they were not there. It did not sense the tang of death, and sleep alone could not render prey invisible to a redcap's hunger. Urla crept closer to the strange building, wondering.

  The riptide of fury that followed the strange quenching was enough to send the redcap sprawling stunned in the middle of the street, visible to any who might look. After the first shock, Urla dragged itself to concealment again, shaking its head as if to ward off the effects of a mighty blow. The rage still keened through its senses—an unhinged fury worthy of a mighty Unseleighe lord, black and all-devouring.

  It had to know more.

  Forcing itself forward against the tempest of madness, Urla began searching for ways to enter the building.

  * * *

  She'd ordered someone to go out for pizza—one good thing about New York, you could get takeout at any hour—and most of a deluxe pie now sat on the corner of Jeanette's desk, cold and forgotten. Styrofoam cups, half full of cold coffee, studded every available surface within reach. Across the screen the readouts scrolled, changing only slightly from moment to moment.

  The first effects of the drug should be wearing off now, Jeanette thought. It had been four hours, and her psychoactive cocktail was layered, like a fine perfume, to deliver its effects in calculated stages. So at least some of those loser-freaks should be coming around by now. Jeanette ground her teeth in impatience. They couldn't all just die on her!

  Suddenly two of the readouts . . . vanished. Jeanette stared at the screen, galvanized to alertness by the impossibility of it. A moment later she heard the faint hooting of the situation alarm sounding through the building. She pushed herself to her feet and ran.

  * * *

  "What is it?" she shouted, flinging open the Monitor Room door. The technician turned toward her, white-faced and scared. GALLIARD, her nametag said.

  "I was watching them every moment," the tech babbled. "Every moment! They didn't go anywhere, they couldn't have, I locked them in myself—"

  The denials made no sense until Jeanette looked at the screens. Eight were live. Six showed sleeping subjects, lying on the floors of their padded cells.

  Two cells were empty—as in, nobody home.

  Well, Galliard, you're going to wish you'd chosen another career when I get done with you.

  "Where the hell are they?" Jeanette asked in dangerously reasonable tones. She took a step toward the cringing girl.

  A scream from the monitors stopped her. The subjects were awake, going from a comatose sleep to full consciousness in instants. She watched, spellbound, as first one, then another, of her test cases began throwing himself about his cell, violently seeking escape, battering and tearing at the padded walls until streaks and flowers of blood appeared.

  After a timeless moment, Jeanette realized that the technician was staring at her, waiting for her to give orders. Jeanette reached out and turned the master audio contro
l on the console to "Off." It didn't totally shut out the screams, audible even through the soundproofing, but it did make it easier to think as she mulled over what to do next.

  Sedate them? No, with the dose in their systems, that would be a quick ticket to the boneyard, and even if they were doomed, she didn't want to kill them so quickly. Restrain them? Gazing down at the gyrating madmen, Jeanette wasn't sure there was enough money in the world to pay anyone to enter one of those cells. One of the madmen—the display at the bottom said his name was Nelson—cheated of any other outlet for his rage, had turned his fury on himself. He'd gouged out both his eyes and clawed his skin to bleeding ribbons, and was still tearing at himself, howling in a deep voice as he drooled blood from a mouth from which he'd torn his own tongue.

  Galliard was still staring at her, eyes wide and scared.

  "Go find Mr. Lintel. Tell him two of the subjects have escaped. Tell him to find them," Jeanette ordered. That should keep both Robert and this bimbette busy!

  Galliard scuttled out. Jeanette settled down in the vacated chair to watch the show.

  * * *

  Urla was inside the building now, crawling through the ventilation system unseen, making slow progress against the invisible headwind of madness that buffeted it. The presence of Cold Iron was a palpable weight against its bones, but unlike others of the Seleighe kin, the redcap was not affected by its poison. It winced as the first mind was joined by one, two, three others, until the four of them raged in a torment that was almost Power—the rage of a demon lord. What was it the mortals did here to cause such anguish? Urla desperately wished to learn their secret, for it would make the redcap's kind a rich banquet. Some there were among the Unseleighe Court who fed on emotion as Urla fed on lives, and did it own the secret of such cosmic despair, it could trade it to them to its advantage.

  But then something happened that thrust all thought of self-interest from the redcap's mind. For the last of the mortals prisoned here awoke, and the uprush of true Power nearly blinded his Sidhe senses. Here was the power of Bard or Elven mage trapped in mortal flesh—a wellspring of such Power as the dark lord Aerune had sent him to find. It was here, somehow here where it had not been a moment before, in mortals who had not possessed it before this instant.