Nosferatu

20

After a two-hour trek through the midday sun, their nerves were seriously on edge. They gripped their guns in slippery hands, while the sweat poured off the rest of their bodies. For Kristen, the most important thing was whether she'd be able to keep the weapon when all this was over. Having a gun would be a real edge back home. Getting enough money to eat was always a problem; only the boss gangs were able to afford guns.

"Smoke, look," Michael said, pointing ahead, above the treeline. "That's where we're headed to."

A cry of frustration went up from the scouts slithering through the trees and bush cover. Everyone broke into a run to catch up with them.

The buildings were by now mostly smoking ruins. There was no sign of life, and a pall of thin smoke hung over the whole scene. From the look of things, the torching must have occurred at least a day ago.

"We're a little late," Michael said drily. "I doubt we'll find anything here. But it's quite a coincidence, don't you think? The owners must have known someone might come calling."

"But who are they?" Serrin wondered.

"I'll find out when we get back to New Hlobane," Michael said determinedly.

Shakala strode up before them, anger on his face. "You come, and then this place is burned down. Is that just a coincidence?"

"I hardly think so," Michael said. "But do you not think, Prince, that if someone went to all this trouble to destroy the place it must be because it was important? Because they feared what you might find?" he used the title without mockery. The elf seemed placated, or at least to be thinking it over.

A sudden wailing cry rose up from somewhere ahead in the smoke haze. Two of Shakala's men came running up to him, one whispering in his ear with cupped hands to prevent the visitors hearing. Shakala uttered one word and gestured for them to follow.

"What did he say?" Serrin asked Kristen, whose reaction of surprise indicated that she must have gotten the gist of things.

"He said 'dead man.' No, wait, not dead… How would you say it amp;?" She searched for the word, found it. "Zombies."

The Zulus dragged the two figures they had found before Shakala. They were Zulu men, thin as rakes, clad in rags, and the reactions of the scouts said they weren't local people. The men had visible sores on their bodies, and the leg of one showed a ghastly patch of gangrene.

"That's no zombie," Michael whispered to Serrin. "Not any kind I've ever heard of."

"So, now you're an expert on zombies?". "No, but " Michael's reply was cut short by Shakala's taking the head of one of the men in his hands and shaking it violently. The wretch offered no resistance, and except for the grimace on his face, showed no reaction at all. Shakala released him, uncertain.

"Do you know anything of this?" he demanded of Tom. "He is not possessed by any spirit." The troll shook his head.

"He has no soul," the elf stated. "But the body it is alive. He is not undead. He has a disease and will perish."

The pathetic man fell to his knees and sobbed. "Master, master, tell me what to do. I do not know what to do. I have not been told." It would have been pure bathos but for the ghastliness of the man's appearance. Flies buzzed hungrily around the rotting flesh of his leg.

"Your Prince commands you to tell him what you have been doing," Shakala said, without even the slightest trace of pity.

"Gathering the flowers, as I was told."

"Where do you come from? Where do you live?"

"But here," the man said, plainly confused. "I live here."

"Where did you live before?" the shaman demanded. The man fell mute. Either he didn't understand the question or he simply couldn't give an answer. He fell to sobbing again.

Serrin turned away from the sight. "It must be some kind of drug," he mumbled to Michael. "Something from the plants. Alkaloids or something. I don't know much about that kind of thing."

"Neither do I. But have you noticed how defoliant's been sprayed everywhere?"

Serrin turned back, looking at the red soil all around. There were no telltale stains, but now that Michael mentioned it, he could see that the grass around the spot stopped at a definite line. Someone had sprayed the area precisely and exactly.

"Why? Because of us? They're scared of us? Michael, if I know how to do one thing well, it's watch my back once I've been warned. My watcher spirits would have told me if we were being followed. And Shakala would have known it, too. That elf's primed with power. He'd have known if anyone was tracking us here."

"Maybe they took their cue simply from us coming to the Zulu Nation," Michael reasoned. "They needn't have followed us all the way here. Besides, are you so sure your own watchers are that good?"

"By all the spirits," Serrin suddenly cried out, abruptly breaking the thread of their talk. "Are we idiots?"

Michael looked askance at him, waiting to hear the reasoning behind the outburst.

"You said a nosferatu? Don't creatures like that have pawns they control? Zombies, more or less? Some of them, at least."

"So, they have pawns. Like these men. Then why does he need a place like this, meddling with drugs maybe, to make them if he can create them anyway? What does he even need them for, out here?" Michael asked.

"Slot me if I know," Serrin said miserably.

Michael was about to speak, but froze at the shrill scream coming from one of the men they'd found. He was reacting to Shakala's probing of his mind, or what was left of it, by magic.

"I don't think he's going to get anywhere with that," Michael said. "We can pick through the ruins if you want, but I'll bet you a thousand nuyen to a button spider's rear end that we won't find anything.

"But now we know more. Whoever came for Shakala also came for you. They must have had the information on his blood group, and they must have had access to this place probably even owned it for it to have been torched like this. I'm going to find out who did own it. And you've always got your lady reporter friend back in New York to asic about things that suck blood in the night." Suddenly, the Englishman's face broke into a half-crazy grin and he snapped his fingers in triumph.

"And I just realized what's been bothering me ever since we got here. One of the names on the list was from the Squeeze, back in London. There's no official data on people there, either. But there's corporate data. And there's only one corp that goes into the Squeeze for its workers.

"Now all I have to do is find out who's got a stake in this place and has access to the database of British Industrial's workers. It's a double verification. We can pin it down exactly. I can get some help from Geraint amp; " His voice trailed off. "Oh, drek," he concluded.

"The bugger's a junior director of the company these days," he said wretchedly. He already guessed who must be handling the ownership rights, and he also knew that trying to deck into their system would be more or less equivalent to personally signing his own death warrant.

Magellan had made it to New Hlobane well before Serrin and the others went sifting through the ruins at Babanango, but it took time for him to catch up with their trail. Finally, enough money spread around found them. He also learned that the Englishman's cyberdeck was still stashed at the Imperial. He'd surely come back for it, which meant Magellan had no need to traipse into the veldt after them. But once he learned where they were headed, he was sure they'd find the plant. What he didn't know was that Luther had ordered its destruction before they ever got there.

The elf almost panicked. They'd find the evidence; the plants, the drugs, the zombies. The research files. It was unthinkable. Hoping against hope that none of it had yet 'lappened, he called the number from his own hotel room. "That number has been disconnected," the robotic voice informed him. Magellan looked askance at the telecom screen and sat back, staring at it dumbly for a moment. He knew the number wasn't in any directory. Jenna had her own ways of finding it, but disconnected? He tried the operator and told her, in the smoothest voice he could muster, that it was an emergency and he had to get through to the number.

"I'm sorry, sir, but the number has been disconnected," the voice came back with a firm insistence. Magellan slammed his fist on the table and cursed loudly. Then he called up the trid news pages, but found nothing about the Babanango facility there.

Had Luther already wrapped things up there? he wondered. Surely that wasn't possible. Unless, unless amp; unless he's got everything he needs.

Magellan felt shock ripple through him. Jenna hadn't believed Luther to be that close. Neither had he.

Was there anything left, he fretted, any kind of evidence? Sutherland will trace Luther. He's good enough. He'll find out who owned the place. Luther's got to be stopped.

He'd been thinking of calling Jenna until he discovered that Luther had already abandoned the research facility.

Now he had other calls to make, a trap to spring.

Niall had slept almost twenty-four hours straight, sweating feverishly, moaning as he lay tossing and turning. He woke with dark circles under his eyes, unrested by his tormented sleep. His mage's senses showed him his ally spirit, unmanifested to mundane eyes, at the entrance to the cave.

"Where am I? How long have I been here?" he groaned.

"A day and a night," Mathanas told him. "You are safe enough here. We have not been followed. No more than usual, at least. We are well concealed. You need not fear."

"What do the watchers say?" Niall asked him. They were his own summonings, but the spirit's powers concealed them even as it was able to see what they saw, learn what they knew.

"They are still in Africa. I sensed a strong shamanic presence with them. The watchers did not follow," the spirit said. "It was too dangerous. They would have been discovered. The group was at Liitair's research plant, but they have left now. The place has been destroyed. Not even the aura remains."

"Lutair would not have done that because of them," the elf mused. "He doesn't know about them. I'm sure of it." Mathanas said nothing.

"He must be very close now," Niall went on. "He must have destroyed the place because he no longer has need of it. All the research has been done. It may be that we have no more than a few days left. Less, perhaps. We must be gone."

The words were much more than they seemed. Niall was referring to abandoning his homeland, everything he loved about the magic and wonder of Tir na n6g, the loss of everything he still had. Mathanas felt the mortal's hurt keenly.

"Not yet. We must be sure that none can follow," he said.

"But we don't have time," Niall protested. He knew Mathanas would want him to spend vital hours on ritual magic, masking himself through a web of deceit and confusion to mislead anyone in pursuit.

"It must be done. You did not venture the storm to take power against Lutair alone," the spirit said soothingly. "That is within the cauldron. What lies around it needs strengthening also."

"Mathanas, will you promise me something?" Niall asked, his voice placatory, allowing the spirit to see his acquiescence. Mathanas waited to hear him out.

"If, when we find him, if he is to take me to the living death he plans, will you kill me first?"

"I am unable," Mathanas replied slowly.

The elf shrugged. He had not really expected any other reply.

"Well, I suppose we'd better get on with it," he said miserably. "Daingit, I need something to eat." The ridiculousness of it struck him, almost making him laugh. "Here we are, with a focus most Awakened on the planet would kill for, and I can't create a bowl of bread and milk to sustain me. That is truly absurd."

The spirit smiled. "I'll see what I can do."

They made it into Babanango in the late afternoon. Shakala said little to any of them, save to Tom. The shamans were still wary of each other, and when they stood together they were like bucks agreeing not to lock antlers, Tom deferring to the elf's ownership of the terrain and Shakala accepting the troll's presence. But a tension still crackled between them, and Serrin wasn't sorry when Shakala left them, assigning a few of his warriors to escort them to the outskirts of town.

By the time they found a cab to take them to the airport, he was feeling fairly drained. Michael had tagged the New Hlobane flight and was busily paying whatever it would take to get them on it. The decker was past fatigue, experiencing a second wind that had him eager to get back to his Fuchi so he could go decking for what they needed. Serrin grabbed a bottle of fruit juice and ran through the gate just in time to board the plane, Kristen close on his heels.

"That was a damn lucky stunt," Michael commented. "If we hadn't made this flight, it would have meant staying overnight. That, or ride all night by bus. We need to get moving on this one, term."

Serrin merely grunted agreement. He was too busy preparing himself for another ordeal aboard another of the flying rustbuckets that constituted local air transport.

"Look, if this place is so rich, how come they can't afford decent aircraft?" he complained above the noise of the engines.

"We're tourists, old boy. You win some, you lose some," Michael replied rather off-puttingly. "Besides, almost no one gets eaten on safari anymore, so maybe this is how you even up the odds, huh? You can't cheat the odds, matey."

"You're frizzed," the elf shouted at him.

"Of course. It runs in the family. Barking mad for generations," Michael yelled back. "I mean, why the hell else would I be here?"

Serrin sat back and didn't say anything more. He dozed off and didn't wake until yet another descent jerked him from sleep with the thump of rubber hitting tarmac. He couldn't keep track of how many times he'd felt that in the last few hectic days and nights. He looked around sleepily at Tom.

The troll sat impassively, a faraway expression on his face. Serrin realized that it had been hard for the shaman to resist attacking Shakala sooner than he had. Bear was vicious when wounded. Serrin had seen it only once, a Cajun woman from his Lafayette days. A soul gentle as any he'd ever met until she went wild after getting slashed in a bar fight. Even a pair of ork samurai had run for their lives.

The weary little group straggled into yet another airport, collecting their baggage and heading for the row of cabs almost robotically. By the time the taxi driver delivered them to the center of town, Serrin felt almost hyper-alert. He was tired, but not sleepy, and he needed some distraction.

"I think I'll hit the town. Michael, what do you think?"

"It should be safe," the Englishman said carefully. "It looks as if our quarry has bolted. We're chasing him now, not the other way around. Just stick to the safe places if you can figure out what they are."

"We did some wandering the other day. Spirits, was it only two days ago? I'm losing track of time."

"Just be sure to be back in bed for your cocoa by half-past ten," Michael chuckled. Ignoring Serrin's injunction that he go slot, the Englishman climbed out of the cab at the entrance to the hotel and paid the driver.

"Can I come with you?" Kristen asked Serrin.

He grinned and took her hand. "Sure," he said with a mischievous grin. "Let's go and have some fun. Catch you later," he called to Michael and Tom as the cab pulled away with him and Kristen still in the back seat.

Tom looked worried as he and Michael entered the lobby. "Don't like it," the troll fretted. "I'm supposed to be his protection, but I can't go with them. I'd be in the way."

"You could hail a cab and tell the driver to follow them," Michael laughed. "Just like in the trid. Hang easy, chummer. They'll be fine.

"Meanwhile, term, I've got some work to do. After dinner I'm going to track down whoever owned that place. What about you? You can sit in if you want. I don't expect any problems, but I wouldn't mind having you around on the off chance I do run into some bad 1C. I could use someone to pull the plug if steam starts coming out of my ears."

The troll smiled. "Can I get room service?"

"Eat the place out, matey. Be my guest." Michael smiled at him, more at ease with the huge troll now. He guessed that Tom felt he'd done something important by getting them Shakala's help. Perhaps the troll wouldn't be so stand-offish with him now.

"Where's all this going to end up, I wonder?" Tom said in the elevator after Michael had reclaimed his deck from hotel security.

"God knows. Ask Nostradamus," Michael said.

"Who's he?" Tom was truly puzzled.

"Middle linebacker for the Seahawks," Michael replied, laughing at his own joke while the troll looked on, uncomprehending.

"Seriously, Tom," he said. "I haven't got a clue where all this is going to end up. Honestly. But give me a few hours and we'll be another step closer."

Serrin knew he shouldn't have risked the spicy beef strips at the club. He'd been happy enough listening to the music, enjoying a drink, laughing and talking with Kristen, and just generally observing the scene. Now the food wasn't doing his digestion any favors.

'Scuse me, Kristen," he said, getting up from the table. "Be back in a minute." His guts were telling him loud and clear that he needed to get to the men's room fast.

Too busy groaning in discomfort, Serrin didn't register the magical warning from his spell lock fast enough. He'd just entered the cubicle when the door to it was suddenly kicked open and two hard-faced men with Predators stood staring menacingly as he struggled to get his pants up. They gestured him to put his hands on his head, a request with which he wasn't in any position to argue. A gun held to his back, he was led past an astonished group of men at the urinals and out to a back door; not through the bar, but through the back of the building, past the crates of empty bottles littering the rear. Waiting just outside the door were two more men with SMGs.

Slot, Serrin thought, I shouldn't have taken the chance of showing my face in town tonight. Now that they know we've been out to Umfolozi, they're going to dispose of me damn quick.

He considered a suicidal last spell, trying to take out as many of them as possible, when he remembered that Kristen was still in the bar. When he never came back, she'd beat feet to Michael and Tom. Perhaps it wasn't over yet. When he thought of her, the idea of self-immolation lost its appeal anyway.

The pair of muscleboys forced him into a waiting limo at gunpoint and then the auto sped away along the highway.

"Don't try to shout or scream at the robot, no one will hear you. The doors and windows are soundproof as well as bulletproof," said an elven voice coming from the darkness-shrouded figure sitting on one side of Serrin, opposite the gunman who'd forced him into the car.

"Robot? What robot?"

"Sorry, mage. Local term for traffic lights. Guess you haven't had time to pick that one up yet." The elf leant forward to the driver; in the brightness of a passing streetlight Serrin saw the details of his lean face. That red hair wasn't common among American elfs, though his accent was pure Tir Tairngire. Tir Tairngire? The name of that elven enclave had never showed up on Michael's

lists. Serrin suddenly began to wonder about this in a way he wished he'd done a lot sooner.

"So I've got the right blood type," Serrin said very cautiously. The other elf reached for a button with his right hand and a glass barrier hissed upward, separating them from the driver's compartment.

"I think I might enjoy it if you talked a little more," the red-haired elf said, grinning. On his left side, Serrin felt a gun-barrel pressed into his side. "But not here. Later, somewhere else. If you reach into the compartment in front of you, you'll find a small plastic cup with a blue liquid in it. Tastes quite pleasant. I suggest you drink it. It's merely a sedative. Something to make sure you won't be able to remember what route we'll be taking to our destination.

"So be a good boy and drink it," the distinctive elven voice continued with a harder edge. Serrin had no choice. Within two minutes, the street lights seemed to become a dazzling kaleidoscope, and then everything was swallowed in a darkness black as pitch.