Part I Part 130 (1/2)

But what if I didn't tell her anything? What if I just pointed her toward information she'd find sooner or later in any case?

”Look, Murph. I specifically agreed to confidentiality for this client. But...if I were going to talk to you, I'd tell you to check out the murder of a Frenchman named LaRouche with Interpol.”

Murphy blinked and then looked up at me. ”Interpol?”

I nodded. ”If I were going to talk.”

”Right,” she said. ”If you'd said anything. You tight-lipped b.a.s.t.a.r.d.”

One corner of my mouth tugged up into a grin. ”Meanwhile, I'll see if I can't find out anything about that tattoo.”

She nodded. ”You figure we're dealing with another sorcerer type?”

I shrugged. ”Maybe. But if you give someone a disease with magic, it's usually so that you make it look like they haven't haven't been murdered. Natural causes. This kind of mishmash...I don't know. Maybe it's something a demon would do.” been murdered. Natural causes. This kind of mishmash...I don't know. Maybe it's something a demon would do.”

”A real demon? Like Exorcist Exorcist demon?” demon?”

I shook my head. ”Those are the Fallen. The former angels. Not the same thing.”

”Why not?”

”Demons are just intelligent beings from somewhere in the Nevernever. Mostly they don't care about the mortal world, if they notice it at all. The ones who do are usually the hungry types, or the mean types that someone calls up to do thug work. Like that thing Leonid Kravos had called up.”

Murphy s.h.i.+vered. ”I remember. And the Fallen?”

”They're very interested in our world. But they aren't free to act, like demons are.”

”Why not?”

I shrugged. ”Depends on who you talk to. I've heard everything from advanced magical resonance theory to 'because G.o.d said so.' One of the Fallen couldn't do this unless it had permission to.”

”Right. And how many people would give permission to be infected and then tortured to death,” Murphy said.

”Yeah, exactly.”

She shook her head. ”Going to be a busy week. Half a dozen professional hitters for the outfit are in town. The county morgue is doing double business. City Hall is telling us to bend over backward for some bigwig from Europe or somewhere. And now some kind of plague monster is leaving unidentifiable, mutilated corpses on the side of the road.”

”That's why they pay you the big bucks, Murph.”

Murphy snorted. b.u.t.ters came back in, and I made my good-byes. My eyes were getting heavy and I had aches in places where I hadn't known I had places. Sleep sounded like a great idea, and with so many things going on, the smart option was to get lots of rest in order to be as capably paranoid as possible.

I walked the long route back out of the hospital, but found a hall blocked by a patient on some kind of life-support machinery being moved on a gurney from one room to another. I wound up heading out through the empty cafeteria, into an alley not far from the emergency room exit.

A cold chill started at the base of my spine and slithered up over my neck. I stopped and looked around me, reaching for my blasting rod. I extended my magical senses as best I could, tasting the air to see what had given me the s.h.i.+vers.

I found nothing, and the eerie sensation eased away. I started down the alley, toward a parking garage half a block from the hospital, and tried to look in every direction at once as I went. I pa.s.sed a little old homeless man, hobbling along heavily on a thick wooden cane. A while farther on, I pa.s.sed a tall young black man, dressed in an old overcoat and tattered and too-small suit, clutching an open bottle of vodka in one heavy-knuckled hand. He glowered at me, and I moved on past him. Chicago nightlife.

I kept on moving toward my car, and heard footsteps growing closer, behind me. I told myself not to be too jumpy. Maybe it was just some other frightened, endangered, paranoid, sleep-deprived consultant who had been called to the morgue in the middle of the night.

Okay. Maybe not.

The steady tread of the footsteps behind me s.h.i.+fted, becoming louder and unsteady. I spun to face the person following me, raising the blasting rod in my right hand as I did.

I turned around in time to see a bear, a freaking grizzly bear, fall to all four feet and charge. I had already begun preparing a magical strike with the rod, and the tip burst into incandescent light. Shadows fell harshly back from the scarlet fire of the rod, and I saw the details of the thing coming at me.

It wasn't a bear. Not unless a bear can have six legs and a pair of curling ram's horns wrapping around the sides of its head. Not unless bears can somehow get an extra pair of eyes, right over the first set, one pair glowing with faint orange light and one with green. Not unless bears have started getting luminous tattoos of swirling runes on their foreheads and started sprouting twin rows of serrated, slime-coated teeth.

It came charging toward me, several hundred pounds of angry-looking monster, and I did the only thing any reasonable wizard could have done.

I turned around and ran like h.e.l.l.

Chapter Six I'd learned something in several years of professional wizarding. Never walk into a fight when the bad guys are the ones who set it up. Wizards can call down lightning from the heavens, rip apart the earth beneath their enemy's feet, blow them into a neighboring time zone with gale winds, and a million other things even less pleasant-but not if we don't plan things out in advance.

And we're not all that much tougher than regular folks. I mean, if some nasty creature tears my head off my shoulders, I'll die. I might be able to lay out some serious magical pounding when I need to, but I'd made the mistake of tangling with a few things that had prepared to go up against me, and it hadn't been pretty.

This bear-thing, whatever the h.e.l.l it was, had followed me. Hence, it had probably picked its time and place. I could have stood and blasted away at it, but in the close quarters of the alley, if it was able to shrug off my blasts, it would tear me apart before I could try Plan B. So I ran.

One other thing I'd learned. Wheezy wizards aren't all that good at running. That's why I'd been practicing. I took off at a dead sprint and fairly flew down the alley, my duster flapping behind me.

The bear-thing snarled as it came after me, and I could hear it slowly gaining ground. The mouth of the alley loomed into sight and I ran as hard as I could for it. Once I was in the open with room to dodge and put obstacles between me and the creature, I might be able to take a shot at it.

The creature evidently realized that, because it let out a vicious, spitting growl and then leapt. I heard it gather itself for the leap, and turned my head enough to see it out of the corner of my eye. It flew at my back. I threw myself down, sliding and rolling over the asphalt. The creature soared over me, to land at the mouth of the alley, a good twenty feet ahead. I skidded to a stop and went running back down the alley, a growing sense of fear and desperation giving my feet a set of chicken-yellow wings.

I ran for maybe ten seconds, gritting my teeth as the creature took up the pursuit again. I couldn't keep up a full sprint forever. Unless I thought of something else, I was going to have to turn and take my chances.

I all but flattened the tall young black man I'd seen earlier when I leapt over a moldering pile of cardboard boxes. He let out a startled noise, and I answered it with a low curse. ”Come on!” I said, grabbing his arm. ”Move, move, move!”

He looked past me and his eyes widened. I looked back and saw the four glowing eyes of the bear-creature coming at us. I hauled him into motion, and he picked up speed and started running with me.

We ran for a few seconds more before the little old derelict I'd seen earlier came limping along on his cane. He looked up, and the dim light from the distant street glinted on a pair of spectacles.

”Augh,” I shouted. I shoved my running partner past me, toward the old man, and snarled, ”Get him out of here. Both of you run!”

I whirled to face the bear-creature, and swept my blasting rod to point right at it. I ran some force of will down into the energy channels in the rod and with a snarled, ”Fuego!” ”Fuego!” sent a lance of raw fire whipping through the air. sent a lance of raw fire whipping through the air.

The blast slammed into the bear-creature's chest, and it hunched its shoulders, turning its head to one side. Its forward charge faltered, and it slid to a stop, cras.h.i.+ng against a weathered old metal trash can.

”What do you know,” I muttered. ”It worked.” I stepped forward and unleashed another blast at the creature, hoping to either melt it to bits or drive it away. The bear-thing snarled and turned a hateful, murderous gaze at me with its four eyes.

The soulgaze began almost instantly.

When a wizard looks into someone's eyes, he sees more than just what color they are. Eyes are windows to the soul. When I make eye contact for too long, or too intently, I get to peek in through the windows. You can't hide what you are from a wizard's soulgaze. And he can't hide from you. You both see each other for what you are, within, and it's with a clarity so intense that it burns itself into your head.

Looking on someone's soul is something you never forget.

No matter how badly you might want to.

I felt a whirling, gyrating sensation and fell forward, into the bear-thing's eyes. The glowing sigil on its forehead became a blaze of silver light the size of a stadium scoreboard set against a roundish cliffside of dark green and black marble. I expected to see something hideous, but I guess you can't judge a monster by the slime on its scales. What I saw instead was a man of lean middle years dressed in rags. His hair was long and straight, wispy grey that fell down to his chest. He stood in a posture of agony, his wiry body stretched out in an arch, with his hands held up and apart, his legs stretched out. I followed the lines of his arms back and up and saw why he stood that way.