Wolf and Raven

IV

I got back into my Fenris and punched in the ignition code. The scream of an ambulance siren started the Old One howling triumphantly in my head. I pulled away from the curb and got off the road before the Doc Wagon careened around the corner, lights blazing. It headed for the alley into which Boniface had plunged while I started down Fifth Avenue.

The meeting with Roberts left me angry and not a little puzzled. I had hoped that explaining to him that the kids didn't want his help and assuring him they would be taken care of would be enough to deflect him. Raven had dealt with other "do-gooders" in that manner, and they were usually content to let shadowfolk take care of their own.

I had believed I could accomplish my mission until Roberts asked the stopper question: "Do you believe in God?" I'd known other preachers and found them all quite capable of rational thought and logical analysis of a problem. Like Roberts, however, when a discussion took them into a realm where they had no expertise or facts to bolster their argument, they resorted to the divine shield. For them, and for him, the ultimate refuge boils down to this: "We might not understand it, but it is part of God's plan and we must do what we can to empower it or Satan will win."

I was willing to grant Roberts his supposition that Satan had taken over the Earth in 2011, when magic made its return to the world. At the risk of being seen as a heretic, I also acknowledged that the reemergence of magic in the world had done virtually nothing to change the lot in life for most folks. Yes, the few lucky ones who could wield magic were able to turn that talent into a career, but it did nothing for those who were magic-blind. Giant corps still controlled the economy, and most of them controlled cadres of spellgrubs as well.

I recognized that my mental discussion was doing several undesirable things. First, I had half a mind to turn around and defoliate Roberts' boutonniere with 9mm weed-killer. I realized that particular half of my mind had been taken over by the Old One, so I tucked the Homicide Hound back into his little box. I also saw that I was heading south toward the Barrens and I knew I'd not feel good unless I was sure the kids were safe. While Roberts seemed very earnest and directed in his Christianity, the theatrical bits layered on top of it still made me uneasy.

More than any of that, though, it dawned on me that I was hungry. I scanned the street and slid the Fenris into a parking place just up the block from a Dominion pizza joint. Even with an armed escort, the place would never consider delivering to the Barrens, so I went in and ordered five pizzas, including two vegetarian specials just in case Kyrie was not a carnivore.

While waiting for my order I decided to call the office. Valerie Valkyrie answered and got Raven for me immediately.

"How did it go, Wolf?"

"I discovered that Roberts' bodyguard can't fly." I grimaced and chewed on my lower lip for a second. "Roberts appreciates our concern, but he says he's made the kids into a centerpiece for a drive to encourage his flock in helping the disadvantaged. He sounds sincere, but something deep down inside me doesn't like him, and I agree."

Raven asked some pointed questions and I reported the meeting back to him as completely as I could. He sounded most interested in the Bible, its inscription, and the sigils, but my momentary glance at them made the information I gave him fairly useless. I promised I'd try to duplicate the symbols for him when I returned to headquarters and told him I was taking some food to the kids.

"Good idea, Wolf. Valerie has turned up some interesting information on Roberts, but we've yet to find anything truly sinister. I'll have her working on this Tina and Andrew Cole. Maybe we'll have something when you get back here."

"Good. I'll be back early, I think."

I hung up and discovered, to my surprise, that my order was ready. I took the pizzas out to the Fenris and belted the stack of boxes into the passenger seat. As I got the car on the road, my stomach growled more fiercely than the Old One had ever managed.

Kid Stealth would have questioned the wisdom of bringing my Fenris within a nautical mile of the Barrens, but then he thinks he's traveling in a kiddie-kar unless the vehicle is armored and has a.50 caliber machine-gun mounted in a turret on top. I parked right in front of the crib that had been my temporary home and set the anti-theft system on "maim." With a stack of pizzas precariously balanced on my left hand, I used the other to knock on the door of the ramshackle townhouse.

Kyrie answered the door and didn't recognize me by what little of my face showed over the top box. "You've got the wrong place. We didn't order any pizza."

I lowered the boxes and smiled at her. "Not to worry. This is Dominion's new service. We drop pizza off and you pay for what you eat. You're a test market."

She laughed lightly and I saw true happiness in her face for the first time. "Smile like that more often, Kyrie, and I think you could convince Dominion this service is more than worth it."

Her dark eyes glowed with a more mischievous light. "I'm sure Dominion would just love to give me an endorsement contract. We eat pizza fairly often, and it's usually theirs." She stepped back away from the door. "C'mon in before the neighborhood catches a whiff of that stuff."

Albion met us halfway to the kitchen and I dealt him a box off the top. Sine splashed a bucket of water over a soapy collection of plates and glasses in the sink, then wiped her hands off and took a box from me. With one broad swipe of the box, she cleared some old paper plates and styrofoam soyburger cartons from the table and onto the floor. When that earned her a reproving glare from Kyrie, her next pass was less swift and more silent.

Cooper came clumping up the steps from the basement and shut the door behind him. He looked at me and smiled. I presented him a box with all the ceremony of Seattle's governor bestowing a citizenship medal on someone, and his smile broadened to show me all of his teeth. He scrambled up on a stool beside Sine and pried his box open.

I handed Kyrie the next to last box, leaving one for me. "Help yourself. Raven doesn't often cater his jobs, but when he does, the food is good."

She smiled and looked down timidly. She started to say something, but Cooper's surprised shout cut her off. "This isn't pizza!"

"Sure it is, Cooper. I just got it myself from Dominion. Eat it and you'll grow up to be big and strong like Jimmy Mackelroy."

The little guy shook his head adamantly and jammed tiny fists against his hips. "Nope, it's not pizza. It doesn't have pizza stuff on it." He glared at me, his lower lip thrust out defiantly.

I frowned and looked to Kyrie. "Pizza stuff?"

She blushed. "You don't want to know. We do most of our food shopping in dumpsters." She set her pizza down on the kitchen shelf and squatted beside Cooper. "Listen, Coop, this isspecial pizza, that's why it doesn't have pizza stuff on it. You don't have to scrape it off, see?"

Cooper's eyes flashed warily. "Special?"

Kyrie nodded emphatically. "It's birthday pizza. Today is Wolf's birthday and he's sharing his birthday pizza with us."

Electric excitement lit Cooper's face with neon intensity. "Weally? It's yuwa biwfday?"

I tossed him a wink. "You bet. That's why I have this flower on. Now eat your pizza so I'll have a good birthday, okay?"

" 'Kay."

Kyrie walked back over to me and glanced at my lapel. "A carnation. You went to see Roberts, didn't you?"

"Sure did." I started to reach for somepizza, but the worry in her voice cut my hunger. "I tried to explain to him that you wanted to be left alone, but I don't think he got the message. Still, his bodyguard will be recovering from a test of faith so we might have bought some time. Don't worry, you'll be fine."

I wanted to reach out and take her in my arms just to reassure her, but she held herself back and I instantly knew why. Accepting a hug would have showed weakness, and that she could not allow. Albion styled himself the leader of the little band, and probably did motivate them to get lots of things done, but Kyrie certainly held the group together on a daily basis. If she gave him any opening, he would lead the group to ruin because of his bitterness and anger.

Cooper hopped down off his stool and came over to take her hand. "Don't wowwy, Kywie. Mista Wolf and Hawse will protect us. I pwomise." As if that affirmation had set all right with the world, he smiled and returned to smearing more pizza sauce over his face.

In a quiet voice I asked, "Hawse?"

Kyrie licked her lips. "When we scavenge we sometimes have to leave Cooper here all by himself. Harse is his imaginary friend. He says Harse is guarding the house and it helps keep Cooper calm, so we don't discourage him. Everybody has imaginary friends when they're young. He'll outgrow it."

"Or write simsense scripts about it and get rich. Listen, Raven wants me back at headquarters so we can figure out what we're doing next. I'll take a look around the area just to make sure nothing strange is going down, then I'll take off." I folded one piece of pizza over on another and saluted the assembly with it. "Thanks for sharing my birthday pizza, gang. See you later."

The second I stepped from the slice of multiplex that housed the kids, I knew something was wrong. The Old One kept a growl simmering in the back of my mind and the hackles rose on my neck. The Barrens is, even at the best of times, a lawless battle zone that makes all but the irredeemably insane feel insecure. This time, however, it felt malevolent.

I bit off some pizza and chewed as I started a circuit around the block. I reached inside and demanded that the Old One lend me his heightened senses. He did so, but the garlic in the pizza quickly erased any advantage the Old One's olfactory abilities might have given me. Still, his increased night vision did help me pierce shadows, and his hearing made audible everything from rats scrambling inside walls to lies whispered passionately in one of the upper-floor apartments across the street.

I definitely heard something out of the ordinary. It started with the slushy, muffled, sucking sound that a boot would make when slowly drawn out of mud. Along with that came the crunch of beer-bottle glass being ground against stones and a metallic clinking like links of a chain striking a post. And yet, as clearly as I heard what I have described, I heard much more as those sounds played in concert with others.

Above and beyond that I knew two other things. Had I tried to point those sounds out to anyone without hypersenses they would have thought me crazy. The sound had no rhythm or repetition and thereby it avoided classification. It could have been a figment of my imagination, but given my other realization, I was uncomfortable in dismissing it as much.

It was stalking me.

That's not a conclusion I drew without benefit of experience. I've been stalked by some of the best. Two of the elven High Lord's Paladins had come after me during the Full Moon Slashings. Back before he became one of us, Kid Stealth had done his best to put my head on his trophy wall. Each and every time the uneasy feeling coiling in my guts tells me I'm one rung down on someone's idea of the food chain and I don't like it.

I swallowed and the pizza spiraled into the knot that had once been my stomach.

I turned toward the place from which the sound was coining, but I saw nothing huddled in the piles of debris between two buildings. I tossed the pizza away and drew my Viper. I hunkered down behind the burned-out hulk of a Ford Americar and suddenly found an acrid, bitter odor dissolving the garlic and carnation scents from my nose. Whoever or whatever was coming after me had bizarre ideas about personal hygiene.

Waiting behind cover irritated the Old One no end.Do not slink here like a coward, Longtooth. Let me help you. I will destroy this thing that hunts us. Leave it to me.

I shook my head. Though the scent had grown strong enough to be completely distracting, I concentrated beyond it. I heard a different sound: running feet. They were approaching from my back. I whirled and jammed my Viper toward the car's rear bumper.

Cooper stopped short and looked at me with eyes full of innocent hurt. "Mr. Wolf?"

I swallowed hard. "Cooper! What are you doing out here?"

His smile cracked caked tomato sauce at the corners of his mouth. He extended a newspaper-wrapped bundle bound with string. "Biwfday pwesent."

Somehow, as if his words were a magic spell, the sensation of being hunted vanished. I slid the Viper back into the shoulder holster and accepted the little, pencil-thin package. I carefully tugged the string off it. "Did you wrap this yourself?"

He nodded proudly.

"You did a good job, Cooper. Why, what is this?"

As I peeled the paper away, I knew exactly what his gift was. The slender item was a credstick. They came in one of two flavors. A personal or account credstick has a microchip in it that can be encoded to take care of credits and debits-as convenient as cash and no problem with arguing about whether a corp's scrip is good this month or not.

The second type, of which this was one, is a bearer stick. It has a set amount of credit burned into the chip. When that is transferred into a banking account or into a person's credstick, the chip melts. Some corps mass-produce them for petty funds expenses, but those sticks are generally of low credit value. The chief benefit of the bearer stick is that it can be used to transfer large amounts of funds without their being immediately traceable. Bearer sticks are small, unmarked bills in a much handier package.

The bearer stick Cooper gave me had been broken in half. The break, which rendered it useless, was jagged so I assumed it was an accident. I fingered both halves but couldn't make heads or tails of the coloring scheme on them. I looked up to see an expectant expression on Cooper's face. "Thank you very much, Cooper."

His voice sank into a whisper. "The othews look fo the longa ones, so I decided to give you two of the small ones." He clapped his hands. "You and Hawse will keep us safe."

I tousled his blond hair. "You got that right. Harse will have to watch you right now, because I've got to go talk to Raven. Thanks again for the present."

The little boy beamed, then turned and ran off into the shadows. I noticed he headed straight for the area from which I had earlier heard the sounds, but he disappeared before I could warn him away. Using the Old One's ears, I heard him giggle happily and I envisioned more pizza leftovers peeling off his face.

Hopping into my Fenris, I made a quick circuit of the area, then left the Barrens to ward their own.