Drakon (42 page)

samothracian patterns,
the instrument said.

"Damn," she said mildly, cutting her link with the creatures inside the building above.

It wouldn't do at all to have her transducer open like that when Citizen Lafarge showed up. A pity; it would have been satisfying to finish them all off, but she'd made a good start.

The Draka pushed off from the wall of the police station and strode away down the street, whistling quietly and enjoying the mild spring air. For once New York didn't stink quite so badly, which was a relief.
I think I'll take a turn in Central Park.
Not too far away, and a place to rest her eyes.

At the corner she looked over her shoulder and smiled. They were probably
quite
unhappy, back in there.

***

For one long second the crawling things hesitated. Then they turned and retreated; through the spreading film of blood from Laureano's corpse, into the baseboards, down through cracks in the flooring.

Carmaggio staggered as the vise released his chest; he felt an insane giggle forcing its way up his throat.

He straightened up out of his crouch and tried to reholster his pistol. That took several tries. Jesus was still glaring and waving his, with his hand dripping onto the floor half-covered with the prisoners blood and fluids.

"I think they've stopped," Henry said.

He still jumped at a rustle, but it was only a fragment of tape going
thack
against the ruined recording machine as it spun. When the door burst open he jumped again, then stopped stock still with his hands in plain sight.

Captain McLeish was there, with half a dozen uniforms. They all had their automatics out, trained on him and Jesus.

"Freeze! Freeze right there!" McLeish bellowed. His gun jerked to follow Jesus's movements, and the younger detective laid his own weapon down with elaborate care.

McLeish looked down at Laureano's body. "Shit on fire, Carmaggio," he said softly. "I didn't think even
you
would pull something like this right in the precinct house."

***

"Yessir."

Henry watched Laureano die again, watched Jesus and his own image dance around the interrogation room while the body flopped like a gaffed fish. His mouth felt papery dry at the sight, at the memory that came flooding back like a great wave crashing over a seawall and sweeping away men and the works of men. The grainy image was too coarse to show the
thing
crawling out on the dead man's tongue. That was something to be thankful for.

"That and the autopsy. So you didn't shoot the little spic. Not unless one of your bullets has teeth and burrowed from his asshole out his throat, chewing its way along. But you did it somehow. I've known for years there's something weird about your and your faithful fucking Tonto too. If Internal Affairs doesn't pin this on you, I will—one way or another."

At any other time, that might have been a serious threat. Carmaggio stared sightlessly at the pictures on the Captain's walls. The words bellowed at him were no more real,
less
real than the politicians and their smiles.

"You're on suspension—your badge and gun stay
here,
motherfucker. And that goes for your partner, when they let him out of the hospital. Don't think you can go whining to the union. You had a suspect die on your hands. Don't try the press, either, or you'll regret it even more."

"No, sir," Henry said tonelessly.

Badges belonged to the old world, where metallic insects didn't burrow through men's flesh, eating them out from the inside. Right now that was the least of his worries. A gun he could get anytime he needed one. Last night he'd half-seriously considered putting one in his mouth, just for an instant.

"Get out of here, and don't come back until we call you. Get out of this building, get out of my life."

"Yessir."

He walked numbly out of the office, over to his own, went through the motions of getting the essentials out of his desk and responding to the bewildered sympathy of his friends.

Then his hands stopped.
Jenny.
Christ, it'd been bad enough before. And she was
working
with the thing who'd sent the . . . things.

"I've got to get her away from there."

"What's the matter with you, Henry? You'd think I was taking you to an execution, not a party."

"Yeah, well . . . I've been sort of nervous lately."

"I know," Jennifer said quietly, and put a hand on his arm.

He'd told her that Laureano died in a fit. The papers had that much; what was more, she'd believed him without a moment's hesitation. The
Post
was hinting darkly at conspiracies . . . .

If they only knew,
he thought, as the taxi passed 61st and pulled up in front of the hotel. A doorman hustled out with an umbrella.

He bit back a silent whistle as they went into the lobby.
Upper East Side with a vengeance,
he thought, jarred a little out of his introspection and welcoming the distraction from the icy bile taste of fear.

An Art Deco space, full of evening dress and furs as the guests arrived for the reception in the upper ballroom. Brass, cream-colored marble, and bowing flunkies everywhere.

"Come on, it won't be so bad," Jennifer teased gently.

No, it wouldn't, if it was only social stress anxiety,
he thought. Right now he felt like one of the guys in those old stories, going into a monsters den with only a bronze sword, and smelling the rot of those who'd tried before. There
was
a monster waiting for him. He had backup—the black button deep in his right ear—but it was still as dangerous as anything he'd ever done.

Everything okay?
he asked subvocally, as they walked up the curving staircase.

Standing by,
Lafarge whispered. In theory Ingolfsson shouldn't be able to eavesdrop; the Samothracian's equipment had been designed to evade detection back on her home world, where the Draka had every sort of equipment. That was
some
comfort.

He shook loose his shoulders as they walked into the ballroom; no point in shouting how tense he was. His eyes took in the crowd with a jumping, flickering intensity. Financial types; he'd gotten more familiar with them since he'd become involved with Jenny. Old-fashioned portly ones, often with trophy wives several decades junior. Younger ones, male and female, lean and hungry-looking. Hangers-on from the Wall Street equivalent of the
paparazzi.

"Why, if it isn't Jenny and her new friend," a voice said.

Time seemed to freeze as he turned. The voice was like nothing he'd ever heard, like a musical instrument with an undertone of vibrating bronze. She was taller than him, long-limbed and supple. The face he remembered from the pictures, but
alive,
it seemed to glow somehow from within, more alive than anyone else. Leaf-green eyes narrowed in mocking amusement, full of an ancient, innocent evil. Meeting them was a palpable shock, a physical tingling that ran down to gut and scrotum. Overlaid on it was the memory of insects vomiting out of a dead man's mouth.

He took the offered hand automatically. She smiled as she squeezed. Just enough to hurt a little; it was like having your hand in a velvet-padded clamp of braided metal wires.

"I've been looking forward to meeting you," she said.

"Yeah, I bet you have, Ms. Ingolfsson," Henry said.

"Gwen," she said. "Any friend of Jennifer's . . . And there's every reason we should cooperate to our mutual benefit."

Jennifer was looking from one to the other. "Is there something I should know about?" she said, with a little sharpness in her tone. "Have you met?"

"No, no," Gwen said. "I
have
heard of Mr. Carmaggio, of course. And now I have to run. Enjoy yourselves."

Carmaggio drew a deep breath as she walked away, conscious of how his palms were wet and how sweat was trickling down his flanks.

"A bit overwhelming, isn't she?" Jennifer chuckled.

"You could say that," Henry replied grimly. "Jenny, there is something you should know. My place afterwards?"

"Sure," she said, looking after Gwen with a thoughtful frown.

***

She
had
to go—it was a business reception, when you came right down to it—and she was damned if she was going to look like she was ashamed to be seen with him. Particularly now, with that horrible thing happening to him at work. But he did seem nervous. Even if he looked adorable in a tux.

It was a relief to break out into the ballroom, decorated in a fantasy of peacock feathers and draped silk along the walls. The usual mill-and-swill, with a buffet along one wall, and the other was windows looking out on Central Park to the west. The mood was good, the launch had been a success beyond expectations. She frowned.
Beyond all reasonable expectations.
The way Lather Enterprises had jumped in was ridiculous; they'd had to split two-for-one right in the middle of things.
Talk about
overallotment.

She nibbled at things from the trays, sipped at a glass of Chardonnay, drifted and talked. A hour found her behind a piece of dreadful modern sculpture, out of sight and sound of the rest of the party.

"Well, hello," a voice purred behind her.

She turned, feeling an unaccountable looseness in her knees.
Damn, how does she do that?
Gwen was leaning one arm against the wall.

"I was starting to think you were avoiding me on the 'road show,'" she said. "Three weeks of touring, and hardly a word."

"Ah—" Jennifer hesitated.
I
was
avoiding you, of course.
"Well, we were all so busy."

"Tell me about it," Gwen said. She chuckled. "And then I thought your SEC would
never
declare the registration statement effective, not to mention the problems with the final prospectus. I thought this was a capitalist country?"

"You wouldn't think so, would you, sometimes."

A silence fell, evidently much more comfortable for Gwen than for her. Jennifer felt her skin itch, as if the room had suddenly gone up ten degrees and brought out a sweat.
Oh, God. Nobody else affects
me this way. It's not
fair!

Gwen took a sip from her goblet, breathed the heavy, fruity scent of the brandy. Her head arched to one side slightly, with a play of tendons in her neck.

"All's done, though," she said. "You know, I don't have any murals here, but I do have some fascinating etchings."

Jennifer was excruciatingly conscious of the hangings brushing against her back and calves. She gulped for air. "Ah, that is—God, please—I don't want—"

Gwen swayed back. "Well, there's always tomorrow," she said, not unkindly. "You'll find I'm extremely good at getting my way. Good job on the papers to the bank syndicate." She fished in a small, elegant belt-pouch. "And if you reconsider over the next few days, do drop by—here's the admission code."

Jennifer slumped back against the wall as she left, fighting for calm.
What's
happening
to me?

***

"I place my feet down instead of tapping them the way you humans do," Gwen replied. "Steel can touch steel without sound, if you put them together without enough impact to start harmonics."

Carmaggio began humming soundlessly in his throat, hunching his head down into his shoulders and glaring. Ingolfsson stood hipshot, one hand holding the snifter and the other on her belt. That reminded him painfully of the fact that there was no belt holster at the small of his back. All things considered, it would have been nothing but a security blanket here, but that wasn't to be despised.
God, what a mantrap,
he thought. If you liked jockettes; not an ounce of spare tissue, except the smooth curve of breasts under the creamy silk. She reminded him of the old story about the statue that had come to life; you just couldn't look away from her.
I wonder what the impact would be like without the pheromone blockers Lafarge
gave me?

Her nostrils expanded slightly for an instant. "Ah, I see our mutual Samothracian friend has been taking precautions with you—it dulls your scent.
And
makes life less pleasant than it might be. You people are scent-blind enough, without making it worse."

"I prefer to be my own man, thank you," Henry said quietly, bracing himself against the force of personality that blazed out at him, as he might have against a physical wind. "And this isn't your place."

"Your own? Or the Samothracian's?"

She raised a slim eyebrow, the movement as coolly precise as everything she did. Habits of observation quirked at him.
She's got no tics,
he realized.
No waste movement. Nothing that isn't to a
purpose or deliberate.
It made him feel heavy and clumsy and old, like some dirt-stained
cotadino
in the old country stumbled into a country-house ball.

"Have you," she went on, "ever considered that you might have been sold a bill of goods as to our relative merits? I doubt you'd find Samothracian society very pleasant either, you know."

Henry nodded jerkily. "He isn't trying to take us over. And he hasn't killed anyone here."

"He killed one of my guards, in the Bahamas," Gwen said reasonably. "He'll kill any number of you to get at me. A bit of a fanatic, don't you find? And no sense of humor at all."

Henry thrust down doubts.
She
cannot
read my mind.
"You've left a trail of bodies from the day you arrived. I'm a cop; it's my job to catch people like you—even when they aren't people."

"Will anyone miss Marley Man and his posse?" Gwen asked.

"You're not the courts. And there's Fischer, God knows how many others."

"Ah, well, that's war for you. You had a war of your own, didn't you, Detective Carmaggio? Didn't any bystanders get killed in that one?"