Nosferatu

14

The Xhosa shaman stared at Tom; he almost had to crick his neck to look up at the troll, but he kept right on staring. Tom didn't know whether it was a challenge or a ritual, whether it was hostile, friendly, or neutral. But he kept his mouth shut and stayed where he was.

The Xhosa man took something green-yellow and gleaming from a pouch at his belt. Continuing to stare up at the troll, he slipped the impossibly thin snakeskin gloves over his stubby fingers and then touched the troll just below the sternum. As if feeling for some flow of energy, some rhythm of life, his hands were drawn to Tom's ribs and down to his right hand. The shaman hissed, sensing the smartgun link and the muscle replacement, but he did not retreat as he looked down at the huge hand, as big as his own skull. Then the shaman lifted his eyes again, boring into the troll, who stared back.

Tom still didn't say anything. He didn't feel anxious, despite the shaman's disapproving sound. The shaman waved his arm to another Xhosa, who sashayed over to also examine the troll.

The shamans spoke in the Xhosa tongue, then one of them took Tom's arm and led him toward the rope, toward the wildness beyond the paths. They might have been leading him to his death, but the troll wanted to trust them. He could feel the power they carried within themselves. Mutely, he followed.

The brittle, crumbling rock felt like fire beneath his feet. The air seemed to grow hazy and oppressive, humid and hard to breathe. He felt his gait growing unsteady as they took him to the edge of the mountain, rising high over the Atlantic and Indian oceans meeting in the endless azure, infinitely far below. His head swam, and he could feel himself falling.

Loud banging at the door woke Serrin with a start. He jumped up and managed to get his pants on before the banging threatened to turn into a full-scale break-in. It was only Michael.

"Wake up, lazy bones," the Englishman said. "You've had five hours. Any more and you won't sleep tonight, and then you'll feel even worse tomorrow."

"Where's Kristen? Where's Tom?" Serrin yawned.

"Isn't he here?" Michael asked, worried. "Damn it. The mountain can't be that interesting. Kristen's around and about downstairs."

"Get anything from the names?" the mage asked, tugging on a clean shirt.

"Only more consternation, old boy," Michael said. He briefed the elf as he finished dressing. "Three more people. European. One mage, very much unkidnapped. One worker in the Squeeze, of all places, and one doctor somewhere in Saxony. Not one of them has been touched. I'm running some framework on them, but I can't see anything obvious linking them together."

"Hmmm," Serrin grunted.

"I've tried age, race, sex, criminality, social status, occupation, all the obvious things. There's something I'm missing," Michael fretted in a tone that said he wanted to get back to it. Serrin said as much.

"Yes, well, that was the idea," Michael replied. "I think I might stop off at the cable terminus and see if I can find Tom first. There's something you ought to do, too."

"Like what?" the elf asked.

"Take Kristen shopping. Buy her some new clothes. She doesn't have much, and half of it's bloodstained, which'11 only get her stopped by the police. Who would probably add a few new stains in the process.

"Tell her it's by way of thank you for helping us. She's got some pride for a street kid. She'll be angry if she thinks it's a hand-out. And whatever you do, don't offer her any money. She'll never forgive you."

"Do you think it's safe to go out?" Serrin asked anxiously.

"I don't think you're going to get kidnapped in broad daylight in the main shopping plazas. From what I've learned, the kidnappings have almost always taken place at night and/or in some secluded spot. These people aren't taking stupid risks."

In the cab over to the mountain, Michael pored over the lists. The single coding separating some of the names on the list from the others had him baffled. It had to mean something, but he'd yet to discover what it was. The problem was that all the obvious things were getting him nowhere. It was puzzling that only one of the names was a woman's, but that didn't seem to mean too much. Nothing distinguished her from a handful of other ordinary people on the list. And who the hell would want to kidnap someone from the Squeeze, London's most deprived and desperate district? Hell, just trying to get information about such people was almost impossible. Half of them weren't even in the British government's databases. Some of these names ruled out ransom as a motive, but the fact that none of the kidnapped persons had ever been returned already told him that. Not to mention no police records of ransom demands, though that might be due to no one informing the police because of fear. But, no one?

He gave up on it. To his great relief, he saw Tom clambering out of a cable car just as the cab drew up to the terminus. Giving the driver some notes and shouting for him to wait a few minutes, Michael leapt out and approached the ambling troll.

"Hey, you had us worried. Serrin's going to feel better if he gets his bodyguard back," Michael began and then stopped.

The troll continued walking on past as if the Englishman wasn't there. Michael grabbed at his sleeve and, slowly, Tom's head turned. He looked at Michael as if seeing him for the first time, then nodded his head slightly and followed him to the cab.

"Are you all right?" Michael asked anxiously.

"Never better," Tom said imperiously and pulled at the cab door to open it, nearly wrenching it right off its

hinges. He looked down at his hands stupidly, as if not believing that they worked like that.

"If you weren't dried out I'd suggest you get a skinful," Michael said. He was feeling a little nervous. Sharing the back of a cab with a very powerful and apparently disorientated troll might be a little dangerous.

"I don't think so," Tom said quietly. Testing the door with the gentleness he would have given a babe in arms, he opened it very slowly and climbed inside, ignoring the driver's oaths about having to pay for the door if Tom wrecked it.

Michael followed him in and looked at the troll intently. Tom just sat their placidly, hands folded into his spacious lap.

"Home, I think," the Englishman said to the driver. "Don't worry. He's harmless. Really."

The cab pulled away from the curb and sped them back to the sprawl of the city.

Kristen was delighted by the suggestion that she get some new clothes with the money Serrin gave her. Shopping was a pleasure she'd never been able to indulge much. Taking care of the practical things first, she bought strong boots and a weatherproof reversible jacket and pants that looked like they'd last more than one winter. Then they ended up among racks and racks of lingerie, which was the only place she could buy any underwear, and Kristen was glad Serrin couldn't see her blush. It was one good thing about not being white.

She touched the silks, with their fabulous softness and sheen, the sheer luxury of them. Useless to her, of course; if she wanted such things, she could always go to work for Indra. Of course that probably wouldn't get her more than some fake-satin substitute; Indra's girls weren't that high-priced.

Glancing up at Serrin, Kristen had a moment of pure panic to find him no longer at her side. Alone in this store, she'd be stopped and searched as a shoplifter simply because of the color of her skin, and she couldn't remember whether she had the receipts for everything in the bag he'd gotten for her. If not, and if he didn't turn

up soon, she could look forward to one hell of a beating for it.

Then Serrin was at her shoulder, bearing a handful of silk squares and scarves.

"They're pretty. I saw you liked silk, and I wanted to get something for you myself," he mumbled. "I know they're not very useful, but they're pretty." He drew out the length of one scarf and held it up against her head to see how it went with her coloring.

She beamed at him. Unable to restrain herself, she hugged him tightly round the waist, not caring that people in the shop were looking at them with angry hatefulness.

What Serrin felt perplexed him. It wasn't the usual fear of losing something he cared about. What really confused him was the feeling that this was safe. If he'd stopped to think about it, he'd have realized the absurdity of the idea, but for once he wasn't thinking. He just put his hand on her head as she tucked it into his chest, feeling the tight wire of her hair through the silk.

Then she backed away and looked around, frightened. "We'd better get out," she said urgently. "People will be upset."

Not understanding, he followed her to the register, where he paid for the silks, attended by a vinegary-faced man who handled the elf's money like it had some disease or other.

When they got outside, she floored him with her words.

"You're going to go. You're leaving," she said sadly. "These things are to say good-bye."

"No, they're not," he said emphatically. "I don't know what comes next, but we're not going anywhere."

He should have said, not yet. But it didn't even enter the picture at the moment. He hailed one of the familiar yellow cabs and headed for the Hilton.

The scene when they arrived there was startling. Tom was sprawled out on the long chaise lounge, staring quietly up at the ceiling. Michael was jacked into his Fuchi, twitching almost maniacally. His hands were screwed so tightly into fists that they were virtually white.

"Yes! YES!!!" He jacked out, his pupils dilated with

the thrill of it all, lips drawn back into a smile any dentist could have used for an advert. He stood up on his chair and sprang into the air, turning a perfect somersault and landing square on his feet. He raised his arms into the air and let out a window-threatening whoop.

Serrin and Kristen looked at each other and broke into uncontrollable laughter.

It was the increasingly familiar mix of despair and exultation that had him in its grip. For one so long used to unfeeling, mastering it had come slowly, learning to hold and focus the energies so that they poured into his mind and brain. He had two, three days of sleeplessness coming, a brilliant flash of utter self-absorption, when he released that energy. Luther also knew he had to hold it for longer than usual, and that irked him.

He had approached disposing of the elf with the same regret and determination as always. Knowing the bad karma this would earn him, he saw it as his own sacrifice when he fastened himself to the screaming body and leeched the life out of it, the hot blood pouring over his face and hands, the last agonies of his victim reverberating around the mausoleum in an echo that would be detectable forever. Luther knew the masking wouldn't last very much longer.

There had simply been too much blood and death here, too many pairs of eyes widening in the realization of a fate worse than death, too much sheer terror and horror for the magical background count not to be building and building beyond even his ability to mask it. Time grew short now. But when the Ascension comes, he thought, I will be a hero to my people. My sacrifice will not have been in vain.

He only half-heard Martin's words by the time he got to the east wing. Everything was here; all the samples he needed. He was desperate to begin his work, but he turned away from them, asking where the other material was.

Martin pointed to the flickering screen. His pawn had done well for him. Two locals, or some wretches drawn from further afield in Bavaria or across the border. A Moroccan, he judged, probably a Marseillais. Martin had done well to use that wretched and forlorn city for the victims he needed; even the Chinese might have come from there. The fate of these victims would be quite different from that of others brought here before them. A dozen of them stood, shackled, helplessly awaiting their fate.

"I could attend to it, Your Grace," Martin offered. "I can bring you the results."

"No," Luther said slowly. "I will be concentrating too strongly to see them then. We should do this together, Martin."

"Thank you, Your Grace. It is an honor," Martin said, feeling both humble and proud at the same moment.

"It is indeed. Poems and songs will be written in honor of this," Luther said, his sense of humor breaking through the blood-filled fire in his head. "Your name will be part of that."

Failing to see through the mockery, Martin took the leather case and began to fill it with some of the samples.

Luther wiped the last clot of blood from the side of his mouth and waited.