Nosferatu

11

Kristen slept long, almost until ten, her body craving sleep to recoup from the exhaustion of her injuries and the strain of all that had happened the night before. Waking up stiff and groggy, she raised an arm to rub her eyes, then groaned at the pain in her ribs now that the effects of the sedative had worn off. She blinked and looked around, at first not remembering where she was. Then it all came back to her. This was Indra's place, though Kristen was surprised the Indian woman hadn't turfed her out by now. She fumbled her way out of the unfamiliar surroundings of the bedroom and tottered downstairs.

The club was not yet open for its midday business, and Kristen found Indra and her girls breakfasting. The girls looked haggard, even in their gaudy robes and wrappers, and an eerie red light permeated the dingy interior of the club, which reeked of last night's smoke and sweaty dancing. It was the kind of place where anyone without a hangover would wonder why on earth he didn't have one.

"Come and eat," Indra commanded. Kristen wouldn't have been able to face the rich food on Indra's plate, but there were also poached and scrambled eggs and toast and pitchers of orange juice and pots of soykaf on the table. She didn't need a second invitation.

"We found them," Indra told her, with grim satisfaction. "The boy in yellow Netzer knew him. And we've evened the score. I am pleased that you came to me."

Kristen hardly remembered blurting out her description of the gap-toothed kid who'd chased her up the stairs of Manoj's shop. That yellow jacket had probably been the one thing of style or worth the kid could call his own after he'd blown his money on booze and dagga and street

girls. His only possession of value had been his death warrant, and not in the usual way of Cape Town's streets. Indra would have been able to call on a hundred family members to deal with the tsotsis. It was the reason no one ever tried to rob the club.

"Eat all you want. When you're healed up, I could take you on," Indra offered.

Not wanting to offend this powerful woman, Kristen chose her words carefully. "Thank you, Indra. I'll keep that in mind," she said. "But maybe you can help me in another way. Do you know someone who might be able to do me a favor? I can pay." It was the necessary underlining to any request for help.

Indra's black-lined eyes narrowed a little. She knew it was the girl's clever way of asking her for help, and she was wary.

"What is it you want, girl?"

"I just need to make a call. To someone with a fax machine. I want to leave a message for him to phone me, and I need a number where he can call me back."

"Who is it?" Indra asked suspiciously.

When Kristen answered, "An American," the Indian woman looked even more suspicious. Kristen couldn't think of any clever way of justifying the request, except for the one ace she had to play.

"I called him from Manoj's last night. Manoj said it was all right to use his number for the return call. Now I can't do that anymore. I need another number."

Indra looked uncertain. If it had been chill with Manoj, maybe it wasn't so great a risk. Then, suddenly, she smiled.

"All right, girl. Netzer, he's got one of those hand phones. Picked it up from some drunk causing trouble, beating up on one of the girls." Which meant the ork had in turn beaten the slag senseless and taken everything he had, including the phone. "I'm sure he wouldn't mind your borrowing it for a while."

Indra was obviously amused at the prospect of ruffling the ork. Maybe Netzer had got on her bad side for some reason. Kristen didn't care as long as they gave her what

she wanted. That Indra also allowed her to use her fax was just a bonus.

Serrin was awakened by the bleeper in the middle of the night. He'd reprogrammed the unit to alert him whenever an incoming fax was received, and quickly got out of bed to lock the unit into Michael's fax units. The message chuntered out. This time there was a number to call and a name. It hadn't come exactly twenty-four hours later, but then he hadn't expected to hear anything at all. Manoj Gavakar was dead, after all.

He tapped in the telecom code, but when he connected, got only a girl's voice, not her image. Excited and breathless, she spoke with an African intonation that made her dark-skinned in his imagination. He had to ask her to calm down and speak slower.

"You're in danger. Someone is trying to kill you," Kristen said more quietly.

"Kill me?" he said, thinking she must have misunderstood something. It was a snatch, not a hit, that he feared. But maybe she'd heard or seen something more. And that list she'd mentioned, he wanted to find out what was on it.

"The names," he went on. "Can you read them to me?"

There was a pause. "Just a moment," she said uncertainly, somebody else will have to read them to you. After a short delay another woman's voice came over the line. She reeled off half a dozen names, which Serrin frantically scribbled down. It was the fifth one that sent ice down his spine. Shakala, the Zulu mage.

"Kristen, this is important. Do you hear me?" he said urgently when she was back on the line. "Tell me what you saw."

She gave him the story of the kidnapping and he realized that she'd gotten confused. She'd thought the man who'd been shot was the target. The crucial thing to Serrin was the man who'd been snatched. She remembered his name from the news, and it was one of those on the list. Serrin underlined it.

"Can you come here?" she said simply. Serrin paused; he hadn't even contemplated that possibility.

"Kristen, why are you doing this?" he asked, suddenly suspicious again.

"I saw your picture in the paper," she said. That was no explanation. Not, at least, one with any logic behind it. Michael would certainly have sniffed at it.

"I don't know if I can," he said slowly. "I have friends trying to help me find out what's going on. They have a lot of searching to do. I don't know where we're going next."

"Oh," she said, conveying a world of disappointment in that one small syllable.

"Can I call you again at this number?" he asked. "1 don't think so. It's a friend's phone. I don't have one," the voice came back. "It's not easy."

"Is there somewhere I can find you if we do come over?" Serrin asked. She gave him the name and address of Indra's club and told him to ask for her there.

"Look, I'm grateful for this," he said. "Really grateful. I'd like to reward you in some '

"I don't want your money," she said angrily. "That's not why I called. I want to see you." Then the line went dead.

Serrin cupped his fingers around his nose and breathed hard into his hands. He didn't know what to make of this. Michael had joined him by now, looking ready for work once more. Serrin told him about the call, and gave him the list of names.

"She got this from some kind of pocket computer?" Michael asked.

"Sounds a bit dubious, doesn't it?" Serrin said. "People get careless. One of the kidnappers could have dropped it in the struggle. These things happen. I could probably find out a lot if I could get hold of the list. Why didn't you ask her about it?" Michael complained.

"I didn't think. Frag it, it's the middle of the night and this came out of the blue. Gimme a break," the elf grumbled.

Michael pored over the list once again, then began to thumb through the printouts from his many trawlings of the world's electronic databases. He yelped with delight when he found the first match.

"Hey! Got one. Two, with Shakala. This one's from Banska Bystrica."

"Where the frag "

"Slovakia. Don't even ask me to pronounce his name, because I can't. We'll start digging with him. She's got something. She must have seen the people who tried to get you. Did you ask her about Scarface?"

The elf looked guilty.

"Oh, term, you are one dozy dweeb," Michael growled. "Call her back."

"I can't," Serrin explained.

"Great," Michael said. "You don't find out anything that really matters and we can't get back to our mystery girl. Just brilliant."

"I got the names," Serrin countered.

Michael rubbed his face. It wasn't quite early enough for a shave, but late enough to feel just a little uncomfortable without one. "Okay. Sorry. It's just that if I

"I know. But we can't all be bloody perfect," Serrin said, annoyed with the man. "Especially two minutes after waking up."

Michael's expression changed. "I'm sorry, Serrin. You're absolutely right. My humble apologies. Do we have any way of contacting her?"

"An address," Serrin offered.

"Then either we send someone or we go there ourselves," Michael said. "You've been to Azania before, haven't you? So Geraint's bio said."

"I spent three months in Joburg when I was nine years old because my parents were working there," Serrin told him. "I can't remember much about it except that it was as thoroughly unpleasant as any big UCAS city."

"And nothing like Cape Town. Or Umfolozi, for that matter. Oh well. But what about Tom? Would he go?" Michael's tone of voice changed a little. Serrin didn't think the Englishman regarded the troll as anything but an accessory.

"We can only ask," Serrin replied. "Let's sleep on it and decide in the morning."

"After I've done some more homework," Michael grinned. "Lots of lovely databases to rifle." He prepared

to jack in, rubbing his hands at the prospect. "Come to me, my little data packets, I'm not going to hurt you."

"Just don't get brain fried," Serrin said lightly, though it was no jest.

"Zero sweat. If I get into anything unpleasant, I'll call," Michael assured him. As the Englishman tuned into the chatter and imagery of the matrix, Serrin returned to his dreamless sleep. In the corner, Tom snored on.

While Serrin was dropping into sleep again on one side of the Atlantic, another elf gazed out at the gray eastern waters of the same ocean on a beautiful morning. The long grass, the slate rocks and hard stone, the trees struggling to survive the whipping winds, glowed with life under the brilliant sun on such a day. He lay back to luxuriate in it.

He could not risk putting any watcher spirits close to the mage even though he wanted to know if Serrin had been actively pursuing the people who'd tried to kidnap him. He had other priorities. The mage's flight to New York, and the company he was keeping, said that he intended to do something. Niall guessed that he'd found the right pawn after all. Having Mathanas leave the message had been crude, but perhaps effective.

What he did learn from his watchers was that Luther was not pursuing his quarry any further. He'd done the same thing in Azania. Once things got botched, he simply disposed of his own pawns. Niall didn't know exactly how Luther was selecting his victims, but he could make an educated guess. Protecting the next in line wasn't something he could concern himself with, painful though it was to think of what would happen to them. Luther's hunger had grown to extreme levels, and that was simply unknown for one of his kind. It meant he was almost burning up with the intensity of what he was doing.

It was the thought of what Luther was doing that suddenly made Niall shiver even on such a warm and magnificent morning as this that, and the fact that if he revealed his interest by making any overt moves he'd be destroyed out of hand by his own flesh and blood. Almost all his magical energies, and those of his allies, were directed at keeping him hidden. To turn against the will of the Danaan-mor, the real power in the land of Tir na n6g, was heresy, treason, a betrayal of infinite and eternal proportions. It just happened to be the only right thing to do.