Canyons of Night

Chapter 26

THIS WOULD BE A DAMN STUPID WAY TO GO OUT, SLADE thought. He could see the note in his Bureau file, Agent Slade Attridge assassinated by large doll.

He was still on his knees confronting Sylvester, the snarling Rex pressed close to his side. It was as if they were trying to give each other some psychical support through physical contact. And maybe that was what was happening.

Charlotte.

This time he said it in his head, not aloud, but it had the same steadying effect. It helped him focus and that was what he needed most in that moment. He summoned the full force of his will, the same will that he used to control his talent, and slammed his senses into the hot zone.

He entered the stormlight region of his talent. For an instant the gale of energy threatened to disorient him but he powered through the disruptive currents until he found the eerie calm at the center.

The energy storm flashed around him in multicolored lightning strikes. It was an astonishingly simple, wholly intuitive process to identify the wavelengths he required to neutralize the energy of the Sylvester toy. The pressure of the cold, killing radiation lessened quickly but it took everything he had to maintain the dampening currents. He could not move. It was all he could do to take another breath. All of his energy had to be focused on countering the lethal currents. He knew he would not be able to hold on for long.

The clockwork device, on the other hand, seemed to be able to generate an endless stream of energy. It showed no signs of weakening. Every time he eased off the counterpoint currents, the energy from the Sylvester doll intensified immediately. He had to find a way to shut it down and quickly, before he exhausted his senses. If he did not show up at the station this morning, Myrna would send someone to look for him, Devin, maybe. Whoever walked through the front door to see what had happened to him would fall victim to Sylvester.

He tightened his grip on Rex, willing the dust bunny to understand.

“Fetch,” he said. It was all he could do to get the single word past his lips.

He took his hand off Rex. The steady blast of energy from the doll got a little hotter. He responded by pulling more stormlight. He dampened the currents as far as he could to give Rex a chance.

Rex flew at the machine, moving like the sleek, fast predator he was. He bounded up toward Sylvester’s throat and struck the device with a thud. The force of his momentum toppled the doll. The device crashed backward onto the floor. The mechanical arms and legs thrashed angrily but helplessly.

Slade was suddenly free from the paralyzing energy of the automaton’s eyes. He could breathe easily again. His heart rate slowed.

Sylvester stared up at the ceiling, glass eyes rattling in their sockets as the doll tried to find a new focus. Rex snapped and snarled and tried to sink his teeth into the automaton’s wooden throat.

“Rex, that’s enough.” Slade got to his feet and went forward. “He’s not worth breaking a tooth.”

Rex backed away from the thrashing doll, still snarling. Slade moved closer and crouched, careful to keep out of range of the glass eyes. He rolled Sylvester facedown and began searching for an access panel. There had to be some way to de-rez the gadget.

He found the panel on the back under the robes. He got it open and surveyed the elegantly engineered clockwork mechanism inside. There was a small, old-fashioned metal key. He removed it carefully. The doll went still.

He was still in the narrow hall studying the clockwork Sylvester and working through possible scenarios when he heard Charlotte’s car roar down the driveway.

“Damn.” He grabbed his cell phone, saw the missed call, and punched in her number.

The shades were drawn across all of his windows but he stayed low so as not to risk casting any shadows as he made his way across the living room. Rex watched him from the hallway, sensing that the hunt was not yet over.

Slade hunkered down against the wall and peered through a crack in the blinds. He watched Charlotte bring her small vehicle to a halt in the drive.

She must have been clutching the phone because she answered immediately. At the same time she popped open the car door.

“Slade,” she gasped, rushing toward the front steps. “Are you okay? I got this awful feeling a few minutes ago.”

“I’m fine but I’ve got a situation here. I do not want you walking into it.”

“Oh, my God, what’s wrong?”

“Listen to me and do exactly as I say. I’m pretty sure someone is watching the house. You’re here now so we’ll have to make it look good. Knock on my front door. When you don’t get an answer, act like you’ve decided I’m not home. Get back in the car and drive into town. Go to the café. Have coffee. Remain where there are people around you. Don’t tell anyone what is going on. Wait until I call you and give you the all-clear. Got it?”

“I’ll get Officer Wills.”

“No, I don’t want him going up against a couple of hunter-talents. Just do what I said. One more thing. If this doesn’t work out well, get on the phone to Adam Winters, the boss of the Frequency City Guild. Got it? Tell him to call J&J. This is their problem.”

“Got it. But—”

He closed down the phone, not giving her a chance to argue.

Through the crack in the blind he watched her close her own phone. She dropped it into her purse as she went up the steps. She knocked briskly and hesitated a few seconds as though waiting. Then, frowning, she went back down the steps, got into the car, and started the engine. It was a good act, he thought. But he did not breathe deeply again until she was safely out of the drive.

He made his way back into the narrow hall. With great care he picked up the lifeless Sylvester doll and carried it into the bathroom. He set it facedown in the bathtub. He was reasonably confident that the device could not be activated without the key, but when it came to old Arcane legends, you could never be certain. With luck the tub would act as a shield in the unlikely event that the mechanism somehow switched on again.

He went back out into the hall, shut the bathroom door behind him, and then closed the bedroom door. He took the mag-rez out of the holster and checked the load.

Satisfied with his preparations, he got down on his knees and crawled into the living room. Taking care not to throw any shadows on the blinds, he climbed the narrow steps to the sleeping loft. When you hunted, you had to think like your prey. For some reason he had never understood, prey rarely looked up first. People initially prepared for danger from in front, from the side and, if they were very smart, from behind. But they usually checked out the situation overhead last.

He reached the sleeping loft and flattened himself on the floor. Rex vaulted up the steps to join him. A low wooden barrier surrounded the loft but Slade could see around the edge of the staircase opening. From that vantage point he had a clear view of the front door and a portion of the kitchen. He settled down, gun in hand, and prepared to wait.

“They’ll be coming back soon to retrieve Sylvester,” he said to Rex. “They won’t want to take a chance on anyone else getting to it first. These guys have to know that if the Bureau or Arcane or the Guilds get wind of that toy they’ll have more trouble on their hands than they can possibly handle.”

Rex growled a response. All four of his eyes were open.

Slade glanced at his watch. It would not be long. The killers probably had a way to deactivate the mechanism from a safe distance. It was the only explanation that worked.

Ghostly fingertips iced the back of his neck. Not the usual hunting vibes. More like the bad energy he’d picked up shortly before he’d gone into the lab on the island four months ago. His intuition was letting him know that something about the plan was about to go badly wrong. Nearby Rex muttered uneasily.

Charlotte.

Slade knew then beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was in danger. As if on cue, his cell phone rang. He grabbed it off his belt and looked at the screen. The incoming number was Charlotte’s. Of course it was. He went cold.

He contemplated the phone as if it were a snake. Everything in him was urging him to answer the call. It was the only way to make sure that Charlotte was all right. But the hunter in him knew better. It was too late. They had her.

The phone rang again.

You’re supposed to be dead, he reminded himself. They’re making sure. Stick to the plan.

The phone went silent. Slade put it quietly on the floor. He listened to the wind prowling through the trees that surrounded the cabin and forced himself to think.

Charlotte was still alive. The bastards had spotted her coming from the house and decided they couldn’t take any risks. They had grabbed her.

But they would not kill her until they got her into the house. He was sure of that. They would figure that they might need her for a hostage. When they knew for certain that he was dead they would probably try to stage a murder-suicide scene. It was all they had. Given his parapsych history no one in the Bureau or Arcane would be surprised to learn that he had gone crazy and killed his lover and himself.

Rex snarled silently. He was suddenly intent on the kitchen. A few seconds later Slade heard the footsteps on the porch. Three sets, not two. They had Charlotte with them.

The kitchen door opened. Slade watched two men move cautiously into the house, pushing Charlotte ahead of them. Her glasses were gone. Her mouth was covered with a strip of tape. Her hands were bound behind her back. She looked pissed.

“Move, bitch,” one of them said. He shoved her forward. She stumbled and went down on one knee.

The other man jerked her back to her feet.

Slade suppressed the rage that was setting fire to his blood. Emotion of any kind was not a good thing at a time like this. He would be of no use to Charlotte unless he stayed stone cold.

Her captors were dressed in windbreakers, trousers, and boots. One of the men had his hair pulled back into a ponytail. An earring glinted in the ear of the second man. They both wore billed caps, just as Devin and Nate had described.

Slade sincerely hoped the pair would not remove their caps. The bills would tend to block the upward view of the room. Ponytail had his mag-rez out. His gloved fingers were wrapped around Charlotte’s upper arm. The other man held a large, old-fashioned gold pocket watch in one fist. The face of the watch was pointed away from him. As if he’s aiming it, Slade thought.

“The body will be in the living room,” Ponytail said. “That damned doll should have wound down by now but don’t take any chances. Use the watch on it.”

“If you’re so worried about the doll, why don’t you turn it off?” Earring snapped. “I’ll handle the woman.”

Now this was interesting, Slade thought. There was a lot of jittery tension in the room and it wasn’t coming from Charlotte. She was scared as well as furious, but these vibes were different. Ponytail and Earring were nervous about the prospect of dealing with the Sylvester weapon.

“Shut up,” Ponytail said. “We’ve wasted enough time because of the woman. Make sure of that damned doll and double-check to be certain the cop is dead. Move. We need to dump the bodies before someone else comes nosing around.”

“Yeah, sure,” Earring muttered.

They weren’t even going to bother to set up a plausible murder-suicide scenario, Slade realized. Definitely not high-functioning thugs.

Down below the loft, Earring moved gingerly into the living room, careful to keep the watch aimed straight ahead. Two more steps brought him within range of the sleeping loft but Slade let him pass. Earring was not the one with the gun and for the moment, at least, he was completely focused on locating and deactivating the deadly toy.

“I don’t see the cop,” Earring called to his companion. He peeked cautiously down the hall. “Or the doll.”

“Check the bedroom and the bath,” Ponytail ordered. “The cop might have made it that far before he collapsed and the doll might have kept moving for a while before it shut down.”

Earring took a hesitant step into the hall. He was getting more nervous by the second. The pocket watch in his hand shook a little.

“Shit,” he said, backing quickly out of the hall. “This isn’t good. I can’t see the cop or the doll. The door of the bathroom and the bedroom are closed. I know they were open when we set up the doll.”

“Don’t panic.” Ponytail shoved Charlotte ahead of him and followed her out of the kitchen. “The cop probably staggered around before he collapsed. Maybe he made it into the bathroom or the bedroom. Check both rooms.”

“What about the doll?”

“Listen, you idiot, do you hear it?”

“No,” Earring admitted.

“Then it switched itself off like it’s supposed to after a few minutes. Find the body.”

Earring disappeared into the hall. Slade heard the bathroom door open slowly. The light came on inside and spilled out the opening.

There was a short, tense silence. Ponytail pushed Charlotte a couple of steps farther into the living room. He was directly under the sleeping loft now.

“We’ve got a problem,” Earring shouted. “We need to get out of here.”

“What the hell?” Ponytail said.

His attention was focused on the hall. Instinctively, he focused the gun in the same direction. Energy flared in the small space. He had jacked up his talent.

Charlotte looked up and saw Slade. She kicked Ponytail hard in the leg. It was a slick, calculated move that caught Ponytail in the vulnerable spot at the side of his knee. He staggered violently and yelled in fury but he did not go down. His hunter-talent reflexes kept him on his feet.

“Bitch,” he snarled.

He swung the gun toward Charlotte. But Slade was already falling toward him. The force of the impact took them both to the floor. Slade heard the gun clatter across the floorboards but there was no time to grab it. Ponytail was fast. He twisted with the lithe, wiry energy of a specter-cat and produced a knife.

Slade tried to grab the man’s knife hand. He missed. Ponytail’s eyes blazed with fury and psi. The guy was strong, Slade realized. And cat-fast.

Slade went hotter, flying straight into the stormlight at the end of the spectrum. He did not need any instruction this time. He did not have to run an experiment. With his senses running wide-open he could see the dangerous psychic currents of Ponytail’s talent. He knew exactly what to do. He pulled dark energy and focused it.

Ponytail stiffened as though he had been struck by lightning. An instant later he went limp.

There was no time to comprehend what had happened. The second man was shouting.

“Get it off, get it off,” Earring shrieked.

Slade rolled to his feet in time to see Rex clinging to the back of Earring’s neck, small claws dug into the windbreaker and probably some skin as well.

Frantic, Earring tried to back up against the nearest wall, intending to squash Rex.

“Rex,” Slade said. “That’s enough. I’ve got him.”

Rex leaped nimbly free, twisted in midair, and landed lightly on his feet. He faced Earring, snarling silently.

Earring was clearly traumatized but he produced a gun from under his windbreaker. Oblivious of Slade, he aimed the weapon at Rex.

Slade moved. He caught Earring’s gun arm, jacked up his talent, and reached into the storm.

Earring went limp and collapsed to the floor.

Slade went quickly around the room, collecting weapons. He found two pairs of handcuffs in his desk drawer, FBPI issue, and used them to secure the wrists of the unconscious men.

He went to Charlotte. She watched him with wide, psi-hot eyes as he gently pulled the tape off her mouth.

She gasped, taking in great gulps of air. He dug out his Takashima pocketknife and went to work freeing her wrists.

“Are you okay?” he demanded.

“Yes, sure, never better,” she managed. “Scared to death, though. And they broke my glasses. Bastards.”

“What happened?”

“They were watching the house, like you said. They blocked the entrance of the drive with their car. The creep with the ponytail made it clear he would shoot me through the windshield if I didn’t get out of the car.”

“I knew they would come back for the clockwork gadget,” he said. “They couldn’t afford to leave it at the scene of the murder too long because of the risk that someone would find it.”

“They talked about it on the way down the drive. By then I figured out that you must have already run into the doll and dealt with it. I realized you were probably setting some kind of trap. I also knew that I had screwed things up for you.”

“You had no way of knowing what had happened and there wasn’t time to tell you.” He looked around. “Do you see that gold watch the second man brought along?”

“Sorry,” Charlotte said. “I can’t see very well without my glasses.”

Rex appeared from under the couch, muttering excitedly. He waved the gold pocket watch and rushed across the floor to his clutch bag. He pried open the purse and put the watch inside.

Charlotte squinted. “Did he just put the watch in the clutch?”

“He did,” Slade said grimly.

“Good luck getting it back.”

“Maybe I’ll let Arcane handle that job.” Slade reached for his phone. “I’ll call Willis and have him pick up these two.”

Charlotte frowned. “Hang on. They’re hunter-talents, aren’t they?”

“They were a little above midrange, I think. Not exactly the stuff of legend.”

Charlotte tilted her head ever so slightly to one side. “They were a little above midrange?”

“They’re just normal bad guys now. Willis can handle them.”

Charlotte cleared her throat. “Why are they merely normal?”

He looked at her. “Remember you told me that I probably wouldn’t figure out what I can do with all that stormlight energy until I found myself in a position where I needed to use it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I found out a few minutes ago what I can do with my talent.”

“But what, exactly, did you do?”

“I burned out their para-senses. They’re psiblind.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Permanently?”

“I think so, yes. Can’t be positive because I’ve never done it before but it sure felt like a permanent psi-burn.”