Surreptitiously I studied the elderly, yet still powerfully-built man behind the massive desk, striving to get some sort of feel for him. Several moments later I found myself trying to suppress a blush when I realized from the twinkle in his ice-blue eyes that he knew exactly what I was doing and was studying me just as thoroughly. All the while, his second-in-command kept talking, oblivious to the silent interplay. "After discussing it with Will over in MIS, I think we should go with his recommendations, unless there are any objections?" He looked about to the other occupants of the room, then finally to the iron-haired man behind the desk, who shook his head slightly and turned to me. "All right, then. Have you given any thoughts as to salary?"
I allowed myself a slight smile. "Well, sir, I'm afraid I have very little idea as to the type of pay that one could fairly ask for out here in the civilian sector; perhaps you could make a suggestion?"
The man behind the desk smiled, the twinkle growing brighter as he neatly avoided my little test but granted me the slight edge I'd hoped for by naming a fair but low figure. I respectfully countered, and we settled back for several minutes of pleasant haggling.
Stefan was once again waiting for me in the main lobby downstairs. "I should assume you have found your, ah, employment, my Lord?" he asked, noting the smile on my face.
I felt my smile grow broader, and I nodded. "That you may, Stefan. Pay isn't half-bad either." I didn't bother to mention the 'half-bad' pay was very nearly double what I'd earned in my best year in the Army, for perhaps one-third the amount of work. "I think I'll enjoy working here; head honcho's a retired flag officer." I grinned at the ex-agent. "Air Force, true; but we can't all be perfect, now can we?"
"Indeed, my Lord, and it certainly could have been worse." Stefan replied with a slight smile, smoothly picking up the inside joke. "He could have been Navy."
We both chuckled quietly as we headed out the lobby door and headed for the parking garage via the shopping mall. No day-mares this time, thankfully. As if our path had jarred his memory, Stefan glanced at me, almost apologetically. "My Lord, we've found her."
I nodded silently, my eyes reflexively scanning the corridor we traversed, not bothering to ask who her was. "Where?"
"Several hundred kilometers from here, there is an old warehouse Ksstha has used in the past. She was not in very good health. Evidently she had hidden herself in that place, without food, for a considerable period of time."
I grunted, a small humorless smile curving my lips. "Bad planning. Didn't leave herself a back door if things went wrong, either." I glanced at Stefan. "How does someone live so long, making mistakes like that?"
Stefan frowned thoughtfully, studied the marble floor as it passed beneath our feet. "I cannot say, my Lord," he replied at last "perhaps there simply wasn't time to plan." Pause. "Or, perhaps the results of her previous encounter with you had left her, ah, mentally off-balance."
I gave a slight shrug, let the matter drop. "Where is she now?"
"Lady Dithra had her moved, lest Ksstha come upon her. She has been placed in the garage behind Lady Dithra's quarters." He shook his head at my expression. "No, my Lord, I do not believe that she is a threat any longer. There's. . .nothing there." Stefan rubbed a hand across the edge of his jaw, a strangely apprehensive gesture for him. "It is as if that which was Niata has departed, leaving behind something that breathes, eats when food is placed before it, but little else." Dithra's agent looked at me, the disquiet plain in his eyes. "My Lord, did you truly. . . ."
On a strange whim, I let my human-half answer the unspoken question. My head turned to Stefan, my lips pulling back into an icy smile, my gaze distant. Cold. "Oh, yes," came the soft reply. I felt that cruel smile widen slightly as I watched Stefan swallow, a faint hint of something that could have been fear coming into his eyes. I jerked that gaze away from him, shame filling me as I pretended to study a nearby display case. "You've been holding out on me, haven't you, Stefan?" I asked abruptly, changing the subject.
There was a confused pause behind me. "My Lord?"
"Over at Dithra's place. You took enough of those darts to OD a regiment and shrugged it off, then grabbed that merc and lifted him up with one hand." I turned to grin at him. "That time in Baltimore, you could've mopped the floor with me any time you wanted, couldn't you?"
Stefan took a deep breath, then let it out. "I am sorry, my Lord; I did not have your measure as of yet, and. . .I have found in the past that people can be easier to manipulate when they think they control the situation."
I stared at him, then suddenly broke into laughter. "Well, you had me going, I'll tell you that much." We resumed our walk, heading for the stairs down to the garage. "What's Dithra going to do with her?"
"My Lady has some thoughts towards using her as an example. Let agents of our opposition come to see her. Perhaps we can at last put an end to these attacks."
"Well, it'll shake them up at the very least," I replied. Ruthless? Yes; but maybe a little ruthlessness was what was needed if I wanted my existence to stop being one long continuous string of battles. I fell silent then, musing on other things as we headed down the stairs.
I'd left that glowing sphere of power back in the cavern after my visit to that strange, horrible land Niata had drawn me to. The thing was profoundly disturbing to be around for any great length of time, and the feeling I got of someone looking over my shoulders whenever I used it gave me the willies. The sphere evidently gave both Stefan and Dithra quite a turn as well, and if it's what it took to keep the fear out of their eyes, the thing could stay down there forever. And whose voice did I hear when I had first touched the sphere, and what did it mean, bequeath to thee stewardship? I was beginning to get the very bad feeling that I had evaded Niata's chains only to fall into a servitude very nearly as profound, with no idea whatsoever as to what I was supposed to do, and doubtless little time to figure it out. Speaking of willies, I retrieved Dithra's sword from beneath the icefall and returned it to her. With any luck, that demonic blade will remain locked up in one of her display cases, untouched until the end of time. . . .
We reached the BMW, and once again I found myself sinking into the leather seats as Dithra's agent piloted the heavy vehicle out onto the city streets, Stefan considerately remaining quiet as my thoughts continued to churn.
Then there's Pasqual. What was she doing there, under my bedroom window? Had she come to warn me, or had she been leading that imported mercenary squad to me? I very much wanted to believe the former, but all my training insisted that I assume the latter until proven otherwise. She was the mother of my children, wherever they were, and yet I had to agonize over the very real possibility that someday I might have no choice but to kill her. Damn. As usual, so many questions, too blasted few answers.
It took a few minutes for Stefan to work his way through the usual downtown traffic snarls, but eventually we managed to untangle ourselves and Stefan pointed our car's gleaming snout towards home. Home? Hardly. If there's one thing I do know for sure, it's that I'm moving my armored ass back to my little bungalow next to the railroad tracks. Dithra's place was a nice place to visit, but living there was just a little too hard on my nerves. After that, I was going to call Schmoo. With a little luck, maybe he could sneak away from his wife long enough for us to tie one on.
The machined threads of the heavy steel bolt gleamed softly in the harsh glare of the overhead fluorescent lights as I carefully worked the gooey, lead-gray anti-seize compound into them with a small acid brush. I eyed the coating for any thin spots, then gently threaded the bolt into its proper hole in the cylinder head. A moment to peer inside the grease-smudged technical manual that lay upon the workbench, then I dialed the proper setting into the torque wrench and set its socket firmly upon the bolt head and began to turn. Several seconds later I heard a quiet click. I backed the bolt out about a quarter-turn, tightened it back down. I felt my lips curve upwards into a slight smile as the bolt traveled almost a half-turn further than before by the time the click came again.
Perfect.
I straightened, grimacing as my back told me in no uncertain terms what it thought of people who spent hours hunched like Quasimodo over greasy lumps of cold metal. I stretched, then wiped my hands on a bit of an old undershirt as I turned to survey the web-like mass of wiring that spread itself across the majority of the garage floor. Well, I could work on that for awhile, I supposed, but my poor sore back wasn't going to thank me for it.
Heck with it; I earned some goof-off time. I stumped my way out of the attached garage and into my little bungalow proper. After a more serious scrubbing-up at the kitchen sink, I glanced at the old mechanical clock set beneath the 1957-vintage electric wall oven, decided it was close enough to noon to justify some lunch for myself.
A baloney and lettuce sandwich washed down with a cup of coffee later, I was cleaning my dishes when I heard the clunk of the day's mail arriving. Wiping off my hands, I wandered over to where the various reincarnations of dead trees lay heaped upon the floor beneath the mail slot, picked the mess up, and commenced to sort.
I hummed an anonymous little tune as I flipped most of the stuff into the gaping maw of the boxy little wood stove I'd installed in the corner nearest the mail slot (might as well get some use out of junk mail), the remainder onto the seat of the old wing-back easy chair I had placed next to the little stove. My sorting done, I tossed a few bits of kindling in after the junk, followed by a burning match. Soon, I had a nice little rumble going within the stove that quickly chased the chill out of the room. I settled back in my favorite chair with a sigh, propping my moccasined feet up to soak up the heat as I began to read the remainder of my mail.
Nice way to spend a Saturday morning. . . .
Bill . . . bill . . . a letter from one of the few charities I considered worth a damn. . . . Hey! A postcard from one of my Army buddies. The usual how're-you-doing and write-soon sort of thing, but still I felt a broad smile working its way across my face as a warm feeling that had nothing to do with the stove filled me.
I gazed at the card for awhile, then with a regretful sigh I got up and went over to a sheet of corkboard I'd mounted on the wall across from my chair. A thumbtack, and the card joined the half-dozen others from various places around the world. I looked at them for a long moment, that twinge of regret that I felt at least once a day going through me, as I thought of good people whom I'd quite probably never see again.
The job I'd landed not-all that long ago was going well; already I'd received two raises, if that could be believed, and my bank account was sloshing with more cash than I knew what to do with. I chuckled softly to myself. Lady Dithra had once remarked wryly upon dragons' knack for accumulating money, but I wasn't all-that sure that this was precisely what she'd meant.
At long last I was working to finish that damned college diploma, I had a comfortable home now, and I had even managed to find a replacement engine for my poor little sports car. Still, I was fairly certain just how quickly it would all get chucked into the ditch the moment a more-official piece of correspondence came out of my past, containing, to me, the most important message in the world.
We need you.
Again the corner of my mouth quirked up into a smile, but this time with a touch of bitterness as I stared at the sad little collection of postcards pinned to a piece of corkboard.
Fat chance.
It was all gone, now, and the sooner I put it behind myself, the better off I'd be. I paused on that thought, a certain dark wraith snickering derisively in some shadowy corner of my soul. Really? Or is the only reason you can turn your back on your past the fact that someone else has said those words to you now? I grimaced, then chuckled. Probably right. Pretty pathetic excuse for a sentient being I was, who couldn't even generate his own sense of purpose without it being entwined with someone else's.
I opened a few more letters, eyes blindly scanning their contents, but finally I sighed and tossed the remainder to the floor beside my chair and stood to look out the window. Months had passed and it was autumn now. The leaves on the trees had begun to turn, and there was a definite chill in the air. Winter was just around the corner, and a crow lounging in the pine tree at the far end of the yard was looking distinctly unhappy with that fact.
There hadn't been very much contact between myself and my true kind during this period, save for the occasional call to Stefan, who always responded, regretfully, in the negative. This was the hard part; the part that really got under your skin. The Wait. It was also always the largest part in this sort of thing, both sides holding their positions while their agents and proxies snooped and probed, seeking that one bit of information, that one chink in the opponent's armor that could mean the difference between success and oblivion.
I hated it. Everyone I ever knew hated it. The heart-acing lounging. Frankly, in my most secret of hearts, I had begun to despair of ever seeing my children, let alone rescue them from their fate. . . .
The phone rang.
I jerked slightly, for a brief moment not even recognizing the sound for what it was. Then the instrument rang again, and I sighed. How ironic for the silly thing to erupt just as I was thinking those thoughts. Irked, I was tempted to let it go, let the answering machine take the call. Probably some damned telemarketer, anyway. But, on the third ring I was walking across the room, reaching for the phone's cradle to pick it up.
"Yes?" I asked curtly, fully expecting another sales spiel.
"My Lord? We may have something."
Stefan laid the map upon Dithra's enormous dining room table, unfolding it to reveal a vast metropolitan area. He paused for a brief moment, orienting himself, then a finger stabbed down upon a circle penciled upon the paper. "Here, my Lord."
I stared at the circle, then lifted my gaze to arch a quizzical eyebrow at the ex-Stasi agent. He responded with an apologetic tilt of the head. "We cannot be completely certain, no, my Lord, but I am certain enough to say that this is the place we should go to seek your children."
My children. Could it be that I will finally see them? And if so, will they accept or reject me? I pressed my lips together into a thin flat line as my eyes once again dropped to study the chart, then my expression twisted into a small grimace as I read the map title. "Chicago, south end. I know that area; it's a damned pit. Bad place to raise kids."
Stefan gestured agreement. "Perhaps, my Lord, but I believe that this is the sort of place that Ksstha would seek out; one where there is secure shelter, and the local inhabitants, if any, would ask no questions."
And if anyone did, they could be eliminated with little fear of repercussion, I reflected cynically. "What put you onto this place?"
"Food, my Lord," Stefan replied, a small grim smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "By human standards, dragons eat a very great deal. Children, just out of the shell, consume frightful amounts." The smile flattened out into a slight grimace. "I should have thought of it sooner. The few agents I have managed to get into Ahnkar's camp have never been able to penetrate to the level where they could learn your family's whereabouts, my Lord; Ahnkar is far too cautious with that information. However, he failed to realize he needed to keep his logistics just as secure."
"You followed the groceries." I smiled wickedly, then chuckled as I studied the map. "Classic. Follow the logistics tail, and you'll find your prey at the end of it. Ahnkar isn't the first one to make that mistake, and he probably won't be the last. Cold comfort for him, I'll bet." I looked up at Dithra's agent. "Got any photos of the place?"
"Yes, my Lord." Stefan handed me a disappointingly thin folder. "These were taken rather hurriedly and at a distance. I apologize for the quality, but our people feared giving themselves away."
I flipped open the folder, scooped out the pictures. Grainy, smudged. Taken in daylight, though, and they'd managed to get three of the four sides of the structure. It was a three-story, flat-roofed affair, mostly brick, some concrete, all ugly. Possibly an old turn-of-the-century factory, long since abandoned to dust, decay, drifters, and dragons. Still fairly solid, from the look of it, and I guessed it would be pretty easy to defend, especially with what surrounded it. "Empty lots all around?"
Stefan sighed. "Yes my Lord, I am afraid so. The area is in very poor condition, and many of the buildings have been taken down. It is one of the reasons we couldn't get closer photos."
I grunted, alternately staring at the map, then the photos. "Defensible, a cleared perimeter, probably booby-trapped to hell and gone, to boot." I sighed. "Well, someone in Ahnkar's camp knows what they're doing. Any info on the interior layout?"
"No, my Lord. When I checked, I discovered that the plans were nowhere to be found. Lost, stolen, or simply never filed, I do not know."
I hmphed to myself, then shrugged. "Probably the last. Place looks old enough." I looked up at Stefan. "Had any thoughts as to how we're going to hit this place?"
Silence. Stefan opened his mouth, closed it, hesitated, then sighed, his eyes dropping. "No, my Lord, I have not. We, and the few that stand with us, do not have the strength to battle our way into such a place as this, assuming it has even a fraction of the defenses it should have, given what it holds." The agent hesitated again, then looked at me sidelong. "Unless. . . .?"
I caught his drift, and for just a moment I was tempted. Finally, though, I shook my head. "I think that. . . ." I paused, chewed my lower lip for a moment before continuing. "That would be a very bad idea, Stefan. I've been working with the sphere, whenever I can get up the nerve, and the level of control I have over the thing is just pathetic," I sighed. "That thing is so complicated, and has so much power, I feel like a brain-damaged infant playing with a nuke." I grimaced, then bowed my head. "If I tried to use the sphere to force our way into the place, it would be just as likely to wipe the whole building right off the face of the earth." Plus there's the fact the damned thing scares the living crap out of me, I added silently. "We have to come up with something else. How about mercenaries? Someone tossed a team at us; I see no reason why we shouldn't return the complement."
Stefan stared pensively at the map, his hands folded behind his back in a strangely familiar parade-rest posture. "We have the financial resources, and I have the proper contacts to possibly put something together," he began slowly. "However, if they do get inside, then there is the strong possibility they will see certain things." He looked up at me, his eyes measuring. "Once their task is done, we would probably have little choice but to eliminate them."
I stared at him silently for several long moments, then turned away, my insides churning. To take a sentient being, even a mercenary, and casually use and discard him like so much toilet paper. . . . Grimacing, I gave my head a short, savage shake. I could be one hard-assed son of a bitch sometimes, but even a snake like me has to find someplace to draw the line. I'm a softhearted fool, and it's going to cost me my children. I rubbed my eyes. "We'll think about that one. In the meantime, what about your agents?"
For a moment, I really thought Stefan was going to say something that we would all live to regret. It was understandable, really; putting together any sort of competent intelligence-gathering apparatus is an incredibly tedious, nerve-wracking, and ofttimes heartbreaking task that I wouldn't wish on anyone. Suggesting the personnel of such a network be expended like so much ammunition in a purely military operation is a surefire way to provoke a violent reaction from any good spymaster.
After more than a few moments Stefan finally found civil words. "My Lord, only a few members of our network are of our kind, and I reserve them for such things as penetrating Ahnkar's camp. The overwhelming majority of our network is human. Eastern Europeans for the most part, whom I placed in this country years ago, when I still pretended to work for the Communists. They are spies, my Lord, not combat personnel. Even if we use them, and somehow succeed in our attempt to take that place. . . ." Stefan paused, then continued, his face carefully neutral ". . . .We would have to deal with them as well."
I stared stonily at him for several long moments, then, reluctantly, dropped my gaze. "Understood," I sighed. "All right, it appears like we'll have to take a look at the mercenary option, unless Dithra can come up with a better idea. Where is Dithra, anyway?"
"My Lady was away on other affairs when this information came in, my Lord. I have contacted her, and she should be here within the next day or two." He paused. "I can well-use that time," Stefan admitted with a trace of wryness "as there are certain difficulties involved in moving such a force into the country. I believe I can arrange adequate transportation, but locating and procuring the equipment I suspect we will need, that may prove a problem."
I thought for a moment. "Let me make a phone call or two, maybe I can help a little with that part," I offered.
"Thank you, my Lord; that would make my task much easier."