Drakon (36 page)

Rough and hasty, but pleasant.
Very pleasant,
she thought, growling contentedly into his ear as she rocked.

His scent was heavy with fear and arousal, his sweat tasting of it; the sound of his heartbeat speeded to a frenzy. The gold earring dangled before her eyes; she lipped it and then bit the gold circlet through, spitting out the severed half. Her tongue explored his ear, and his whole body shuddered. His eyes were rolled half up into their sockets.

"Put your hands on my hips," she said. He obeyed, fumbling and then gripping with a strength that would have bruised a human. "Move to me. That's a good pony, rhythm now, rhythm."

Ah.
It was a pity she had to hurry. A
long time since I took it this way.
Not since the killsweeps right after the War.
Now.

Gwen quickened her movements. The boy's buttocks slapped against the brick wall behind him.

Then she froze for a long instant, her only movement the heavy internal tug of orgasm. Clenched between her legs and body and the wall, the youth squealed like a dying rabbit and bucked in her grasp. Then he stilled too, gasping harshly, limp.

Gwen sighed, a throaty sound, and stepped back. The boy slid down the wall and lay half-fainting.

She crouched beside him, tugging the remnants of his T-shirt free and wiping herself with it. Then she stroked his hair, turning his face around to meet hers. Conscious thought was returning to him, like something floating up through dark water. Thought, and fear.

"Sweet but brief, our little encounter," she said. "I'd like to spend more time riding you, but duty calls. The police will be here soon, and you'd better go. Understand?"

She stood and stepped into her underwear, smoothing down her skirt. The young mugger slid along the wall away from her in a crablike scuttle, then rose. The remains of his jeans pooled around his ankles and nearly tripped him; he kicked free and ran, throwing his shredded leather jacket behind him. Gwen smiled at the winking buttocks and flashing legs, then turned and walked quickly northward.

***

"Mmmmm." Henry Carmaggio muttered in his sleep, turning.

Jennifer woke and stretched, sliding out from under his arm. The bedroom was dim, but there was enough of the usual New York night glow from the window to see the pleasantly craggy contours of his face. She sat for a moment on the edge of the bed, smiling down at him.

"You
really
are
a nice guy,
" she said very softly, before getting up and padding out to the bathroom.

It had been so long she'd forgotten about some of the messier details.
I feel good, though,
she thought.
Reassured, to start with.
The Bahamas just hadn't been like her. It was nice to know her wiring hadn't somehow gotten crossed up at this late date. Not to mention how nice it was just to be with someone again; and to know that he was just as happy about it.
Gwen didn't count. Put it down to happenstance.

She turned off the bathroom light and eased back into the bedroom, her feet moving in an experienced scuffle—when you owned a black cat that liked to lie in the middle of the way, you learned that. Despite her care, Henry woke when she eased back into the bed.

"Hey, cold feet," he said as they snuggled close. She wrapped them around his. "Hey!"

"Warmth is a good thing," she said into the angle of his neck. "So share some."

"Damn, I find the woman of my dreams and she wants to use me as a heating pad," he grumbled, stroking her back.

After a moment she giggled. "Oh, so it's
true
what they say about Italians! Or are you just happy to see me again?"

"Damn," he said mildly, sounding surprised himself. "Must be something about having a beautiful naked woman in my arms. Even at four in the morning it—"

"Shut
up
and . . . oh, yeah."

***

Ten minutes later, the pager in his pants pocket went off. Carmaggio muttered a curse into Jennifer's hair. "Ignore it," she said.
Damned right,
he thought muzzily. He tried, although after a moment he noticed that they were moving in rhythm to the
neep . . . neep.
That ended in a moment of gasping that collapsed into laughter.

"Now you know why so many cops get divorced," he said, kissing her and disentangling himself.

He rooted through the clothes scattered on the floor until he found the instrument, then stumbled to the phone. "This had better be important."

"Yeah, Jesus?" He listened for a moment. "You
sure?"
A resigned sigh. "Yeah, that sounds like it."

He turned to the bed. "Gotta go."

Jennifer wormed her way down farther under the covers, then threw them off and reached for her bathrobe. "Tell me about it tomorrow."

Not if it's like the usual,
Henry thought. There were some details nobody was really interested in.

"I'll give you a call."

***

There were none of the exterior iron stairways so common here at the rear of Jennifer Feinberg's apartment. That was a minor inconvenience; Gwen reached up and clamped her gloved fingers onto the gaps between the bricks, pulled herself up and took a second handhold, and climbed straight up the wall.

The ancient, dirty brick was a little tricky, since she had to be careful not to crumble it beneath her grip. It took her a full two minutes to reach the level of the bathroom window. She bent her ear nearer the window, and sucked air in through nostrils and open mouth.

Ah, probably not a good moment to drop by.
Panting, creaking from the bed, and then a series of cries—interrupted by a shrill beeping sound.

"Ignore it." Jennifer's voice, sounding understandably aggrieved. Gwen grinned in the darkness as the sounds began again, to the counterpoint of the electronic signal.

The male eventually got up and turned the instrument off, then moved to the phone. This time Gwen's ears pricked forward in unconscious reflex.

Fast work,
Gwen thought, as she listened to the telephone conversation; half with her ears, half with the transponders electronic eavesdropping.
They must have found the bodies already.

She shifted her fingers' grip on the wet brick outside the bathroom window of the human woman's apartment and hooked the edge of one foot onto the windowsill, still invisible to anyone who didn't put a head outside and look to the right. A trickle of command through her transducer, and a bug walked out of her sleeve onto her palm. Another, and it marched into the sill and began burrowing through a joint. She cocked her ears forward and checked the sound: not really audible to human-range hearing, but she commanded it to go more slowly anyway.

Why was this policeman concerned about Jennifer's business with IngolfTech? He couldn't
know
anything, or if he did he'd been very careful about saying it where anything electronic was listening. He had a reason to be concerned with Jennifer herself, of course: mating instinct. She rather approved of that—a healthy, eugenically sound emotion. Which left the essential question of whether anyone but the government agencies had any notion she was connected with the warehouse killings. The government itself was no great problem, since the dribble of miracles she was feeding them kept them far too greedy to risk killing the golden goose—at least, not for long enough that she could finish the Project.

Still, it was best to be sure. The Samothracian might be interfering.

surveillance,
she commanded.
following parameters.

Also best to be discreet. Public attention was something she did
not
need, or anything that might scare off the investment community. She needed more of their resources to complete the beacon; several hundred million, and about four to six months of time.

The bug had its way with the ancient dried wood of the frame. Gwen closed her eyes for a moment, linking with its rudimentary senses; organic compound eyes for sight, a rudimentary tympanum for sensing air vibrations. Vision scuttled across walls and floors; a protesting hiss sounded as she passed a cat.

The animal leaped back, and her 270 degrees of vision surged up a wall and settled on the top of a doorframe. She watched the two humans saying farewell at the doorway with amusement. Such a sentimental species, particularly this culture-group. Although—she inhaled to check the scent—they'd evidently been having a
very
good time.

The bug settled in. Jennifer stood by her bed, then hugged herself and did a little dance of pleasure; she picked up a large stuffed animal which had been turned face to the wall, kissed it and set it down looking out over her bedroom. Then she yawned. Gwen waited until her breathing and heartbeat settled to regularity before she leapt. Two stories' fall, with her jacket billowing out behind her; she landed on outstretched hands and feet, cushioning the blow until her chin rapped on the pavement, not too hard. The
smack
echoed slightly from the surrounding walls, but a moments frozen alertness showed nobody had noticed.

She rose and began to trot south.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

"This one shot himself?"

Mary Chen moved the corpses hand, fingers sure and oddly gentle in their thin-film gloves. There was no stiffness to them; each digit was as limp as a rubber tube filled with slush.

"Not unless he managed to break all the bones in his hand while he did it," she replied. "There's powder burn all around the entry wound under the chin, yes, and there's distortion of the tissues where they flowed away from the pressure."

Most people didn't realize it, but even the spurt of high-velocity gas from a blank round could kill, at short ranges. That was a familiar story to everyone present; there were a few accidentals that way every year, and people trying to make it look accidental. Chen went on:

"The muzzle was in contact with the flesh when the round went off. Somebody wrapped their hand around his, bent his arm back until the gun touched skin, then clamped down hard enough to shatter the bones and pull the trigger."

Henry Carmaggio stuck another stick of gum in his mouth and walked over to the second body.

"And this one beat out his own brains with the butt of his gun," he said heavily.

"
Si, patron.
After shooting the other victim," Jesus said, pointing down the street with the hand that held a pencil and a 9mm shell casing atop it. "Nice shooting, two hundred yards—in the dark."

The three of them moved unobtrusively aside, amid the crime-scene bustle, the traffic barriers and blinking lights. Carmaggio inhaled the stale cold smell of dawn, fresher than the body odors of violence.

"Not much doubt as to who
this
was," he said. He looked at the body with the dished-in head. "And she's fucking
laughing
at us. This was a message."

Jesus frowned. "Perhaps. Perhaps a chance thing. I do not think there will be fingerprints or blood types, this time."

Carmaggio shrugged. That
would
be asking too much. They all knew it took a good deal more evidence to haul in a multimillionaire than your ordinary punk: fact of life.

"I wonder what would happen if we just checked the hotels for her name and did an arrest?"

The tall blond man had walked up noiselessly, not making any particular effort to sneak but hard to notice all the same. The counterfeit ID hanging from the lapel of his overcoat were the best Carmaggio had ever seen . . . which was to be expected, of course.

"Bail would be made," Lafarge said quietly. "And then
it
would disappear, and we'd have to start all over again." He frowned. "Unless," he said thoughtfully, "I could kill it while you had it in custody."

Carmaggio forced down an instinctive bristling. Suspects had been known to fall down stairs and be shot while attempting to escape, but not on his watch.
On the other hand, this isn't your ordinary
suspect.

Lafarge held out a scrap of stained T-shirt. "I checked this with my moloscanner."

He nodded toward the brick side of a shuttered electronics store. There was a heap of shredded clothing there. Carmaggio hid a smile behind his hand, rubbing his jaw, taking the scrap. It had an odd musky odor, very faint.

"She actually fucked this gangbanger up against the wall?"

Lafarge flushed.
I think they breed them pretty straightlaced where he comes from,
the detective thought.

"The moloscanner reveals traces of human semen and
drakensis . . .
secretions."

"You can do that on site?" Chen asked enviously. Lafarge shrugged.

"Molecular analysis is fairly simple. My machinery is just much more compact."

"It doesn't help us much," Carmaggio said. "Not admissible evidence." Then he snapped his fingers.

"Wait a minute! She left a
witness.
"

"
Si,
but that's going to be one difficult
hijo de puta
to find. No witnesses to the incident; sure, we'll get some names of who the deaders ran with, but . . ."

Carmaggio held up a hand and looked at Lafarge. The . . .
man from Dimension
X, the detective thought . . . reached inside his coat. What he pulled out looked like a sheet of stiff paper. On it appeared an adolescent face; Puerto Rican, Carmaggio thought. The bandanna and earring fit the evidence left over by the wall.

"This is the face that goes with his genes. There may be acquired characteristics; scars, perhaps."

"Damn, but I'd like to have that gadget," Carmaggio said mildly. "How does it . . . never mind.

Jesus, get this down to the office and see if it matches anyone known to run with the Lords. Then do up copies and have it APB'd."

"Grounds?"

"Material witness . . . no, make it assault, attempted murder, whatever. We'll find him and then do a talk-and-walk."

"It will take some heavy pressure to get one of the Lords to admit a
woman
tore off his clothes and screwed him," Jesus chuckled.

"Then we'll lean on him. Get on to it."

He looked down and noticed he was still smelling the rag of T-shirt. That wasn't the only thing that was happening, either.
Good thing I'm not wearing tight pants.
He grimaced and tossed the cloth aside.