Edge of Dawn (9 page)

“You oughta put this stuff in storage. Bring in your own stuff,” Cross said with uncanny perspicacity. “It's been almost two years. Stop living like a permanent houseguest.”

Richard shook his head. “I can't. This is Kenntnis's place. I wouldn't feel comfortable changing a thing.”

“Yeah, but I don't think Kenntnis is coming back. Oh, the body may hang around, but Kenntnis, the Kenntnis we knew, he's gone.”

“That's horribly depressing,” Richard said quietly, and pushed away his plate, no longer hungry.

“Hey, how do you think I feel? He found me in 923
A.D
. trying to kill myself, and offered me the deal. Now he's never going to pay off.” Cross's expression brightened considerably. “But you could. One touch of the sword and I'm toast.”

“I'm not going to kill you. I know you; it would feel like murder. And I need you. Like tonight. You can see magic, and you're looking for more paladins. How's that coming, by the way?”

“If you haven't noticed, there are a shit load of you monkeys crawling on the surface of the planet right now, and I have to look at each and every one of them to see if any of them have your mutation. It takes a little while.”

“I know, but if I die, we've got to have someone to replace me.”

“We did okay with only one paladin in the twentieth century.”

“What? Wait! You and Kenntnis told me there hadn't been a paladin for years.”

Cross shrugged. He left the couch and snagged Richard's abandoned plate. “We lied. Also the last one came to a pretty horrible end, and we didn't want to discourage you.” Cross finished off the quiche in a few quick bites. “I'll be in my box. I want to prepare. Come get me when you're ready,” Cross said and left.

Richard realized he still hadn't called Calder
ó
n.

He paused in the master bedroom to shrug into a shoulder holster and slid a Browning .40 caliber into it. He reassured himself that the sword was in the holster at the small of his back. On his way back through the bedroom, he plucked a set of car keys out of a drawer of the dresser. He then chose the stairs over the elevator, feeling the need to move after hours sitting at the airport and being cramped on a plane.

He stopped at his office and rang the tribe leader.

“Hello?” The man's voice was heavy and hoarse.

“This is Richard Oort. I had an emergency and had to head back to Albuquerque.”

“An emergency like realizing you didn't want to give money to some Indians?” The hoarseness was intensified, and anger snapped and whined around the edges of the words.

“No. I will be back in California in a couple of days. I give you my word.”

“Yeah, that's worth exactly nothing.”

Richard drew a breath, held it, and pushed down his desire to react with anger. He forced himself to assume the flat delivery that every cop learned to use when in court and was faced with a hostile defense attorney.

“A young Navajo boy went nuts and killed almost everyone in his family. Only his sister escaped. The man who built the subdivision was behind this too.” It was a stretch, but Richard didn't feel that he owed Calder
ó
n more. “I'm dealing with that. You'll get your money as long as I get my sacred site.”

“Okay. You've got two days. You fuck us, and I'll go to the people at the subdivision and tell them about you.”

Richard almost said,
I'll be back
, but he couldn't bring himself to utter the Terminator's catchphrase. He bit back the words and said instead, “I promise I will return.”

That task resolved, Richard clattered down the rest of the steps to the bottom floor. There he entered the security code on the keypad and pushed open the heavy steel door that let out on the back of the building. A large wood and cardboard crate sheltered by a battered green tarp rested against the building. The warm golden light of a Coleman lantern spilled onto the asphalt and made the mica flecks in the granite boulders at the foot of the mountain sparkle. There was also the distinctive smell of a hot dog being roasted. Cross had pulled back the curtain that served as a door. He sat on a wire spool, a wiener skewered on a toasting fork, the skin bubbling, darkening, and cracking as he turned it over the flames of a camp stove. On one side of the box was a cot with an orange crate as a bedside table.

“You're eating again?” Richard asked.

“Yeah, so sue me. You ready?”

“Yes.”

Cross turned off the propane gas to the stove and crammed the entire hot dog in his mouth. “Muu unm phing?”

Richard assumed the mutter was a question as to how they were traveling. “Yes, I'm driving.”

They reentered the building and took the elevator down to the parking garage. He had pulled the keys for the Ferrari. Probably not the most subtle choice, but he loved to drive both it and the Lamborghini. “You're not likely to splinter, are you?” Richard asked, a hand on the door handle of the sleek sports car.

“Nah, I'm feelin' very together right now,” Cross replied.

“Okay.”

The automatic gate slid open at their approach, and then they were flying down Montgomery, headed for the freeway.

*   *   *

Haskell paced back and forth in front of the bank of elevators, his heels beating out a tattoo on the stone floor. He was a burly man with buzz-cut brown hair and gray that Richard didn't remember. The frown, Richard did remember. Even at this late hour, Haskell was still wearing the de facto regulation FBI uniform—cheap dark suit, narrow tie, and white shirt. He and Richard shook hands, and then Jay looked Cross up and down.

“Well, at least he doesn't look totally like a bum tonight. Maybe when they check the security footage in the morning, they won't wonder if I've gone totally nuts.”

“I think you totally say totally too much,” Cross said.

Jay opened his mouth to retort. Richard gave an internal sigh and held up an admonishing finger. “Don't,” he said, and mustered up a glare at both of them. They rode the elevator up to Jay's office in silence.

“I pulled the computer out of the evidence room,” the agent said as he opened the door for them. “I was worried it would be trashed or stolen or sold as seized property since nobody thought it was relevant to the investigation.”

The laptop lay in the center of the agent's desk. The plastic case was a dark purple. Cross checked just past the threshold and stared at it. He then circled the desk like a terrier at a rat hole.

Cross touched it lightly with his fingertips. “Yeah, it's buzzing with magic. When we're done, you better zap it with the sword,” he said to Richard. He opened the lid and studied the screen and the keyboard. “Nothing on the outside. Must be in the guts.” Cross took a butterfly knife out of his pocket and ratcheted it open with a flick of his wrist. He then pried the back off to reveal the motherboard.

Dirty fingernails traced across the circuits. “Yeah, here it is. It's a rune, a dandy one formed by the wires and chips.”

“What does that mean?” Jay asked.

“That when the kids are logged on, they ain't just talkin' to pals on Facebook or Snapchat. Something else is on the line, and eventually it starts looking back out at them.” He flipped the computer back over and tilted the screen so it flashed at the two humans. “Our kind likes mirrors, but this is a tolerable substitute.”

Jay dropped down into his chair. “How many of these things are out there?” he asked.

Richard shook his head. “No idea. The articles I found indicated Gaia/Titchen had been selling them cheap. Maybe even giving them away. The question is, can an Old One move from a computer infected with the rune to one without a rune? If yes, we've got a big fucking problem,” Richard said, worry and weariness driving him to an uncommon burst of obscenity.

A fingernail tapped against Cross's front teeth as he considered. “That would be big magic. My guess is no, but we need to get these little time bombs swept up, melted down, and thrown away.”

“And keep Gaia from making any more,” Richard added. “They also need to be shut down.” Richard sat down too. “Oh, they're going to love that.”

“Who? What?” Jay asked.

“The officers of my company.” Richard waved him off. “Never mind.” Standing, Richard pulled the hilt from its holster and drew the sword. As the chord and overtones vibrated in the air, a horrifying, twisted visage floated up in the screen.

“Shit!” Jay jumped out of the chair, caught his heel on the carpet, and fell heavily against the desk. Cross grabbed up the computer and spat grotesque words in an unknown language at the face on the screen.

Even the indistinct image of the Old One was enough to set Richard's guts and knees to quivering. He lunged, tapped the computer with the tip of the sword, and it reduced itself to a black sludge that ran down Cross's hands and dripped onto the desk. The stench tore at their throats.

“Oh, gross,” Jay said, gagging. “How am I going to get that stink out of my office? The damn windows don't open. And worse, how do I explain it?” he added mournfully.

“Flatulence?” Cross suggested.

“Ha-ha, very funny.”

The smell drove them into the hall. Richard held out his hand. “Thanks, Jay. I owe you. Thanks for catching this.”

“How bad is it? This computer thing?” he asked.

“Real bad.”

*   *   *

The next morning, Richard woke far later than he'd intended because he'd sat up far later than he'd intended. After verifying that the Gaia computers were designed as gateways to other dimensions, Richard paced and wondered how many vicious murders had been perpetrated, how many families torn to pieces, how many children driven mad. It was a grotesque parody of first-world generosity containing a poisoned heart. The modern-day equivalent of smallpox-infected blankets being given to the Cherokees before they were marched along the Trail of Tears.

After a stingingly hot shower, he dressed and headed down to his sister's office. If Pamela hadn't had the blinds in her office drawn tight, it would have offered the same view that Richard saw from his office two floors above—the three extinct volcanoes on the edge of Albuquerque and the blue peak of Mount Taylor floating in the distance seventy miles away. Instead, the atmosphere in the room was decidedly subaqueous. Pamela even had the lights off, which left her a dim shape behind her horseshoe-shaped desk.

“About time you got up. Some of us got to work
before
eight.”

“I was up until three. Cut me some slack.” Richard moved toward the windows, only to be arrested by her shrill command.

“If you touch those blinds I will stab you to death with a letter opener. It's a hundred and two degrees out there—”

“Yeah, but it's a dry heat—” The words had hardly been uttered when a tube of hand cream came flying at him. Richard threw out a hand and snatched it out of the air before it could collide with the wall. He laid it back on her desk but placed it well out of her reach.

“This place has two types of weather,” Pamela said, her tone bitter. “Wind that never stops blowing and leaves you wearing a grit mask, and sun that doesn't shine, it
assaults
you. Lumina has offices all over the world, but we stay here in this godforsaken—”

Richard interrupted. “Because Kenntnis was here…”

“Which means Albuquerque is important,” they finished in concert.

“I know. I know. Though why this dusty, overgrown cow town would be important is beyond me,” Pamela groused.

Richard shrugged. “He's an alien. Who knows why? And we can't ask him now,” he added sadly. He shook off the mood. “But why are you sitting here in the dark?”

“Even the lights make it hotter.”

“Turn up the air-conditioning.”

“Then I'm too cold.”

Richard threw up his hands in defeat. “Okay, let's pretend we're not siblings and try just talking.” He pulled a chair closer to the desk. “But I'd like to see your face.” With a put-upon sigh, Pamela conceded and snapped on the small reading lamp on her desk.

“So, why were you up until three?” she asked.

He told her about the computers, concluding, “We've got to pull back these computers and destroy them, and to do that I think we've got to buy the company, recall the computers, and shut down the assembly line.”

“We're going to buy a company just to destroy it?” Pamela asked.

“Well, I suppose we could get rid of the rune on the motherboards and keep making real and safe computers. It's not a bad business model—inexpensive computers for the developing world,” he said thoughtfully.

Pamela pulled her keyboard closer. “What's the name of the company?”

“Gaia. It's a subsidiary of Wilton Hedge Funds, which is a subsidiary of the Titchen Group.”

“Oh, great, them again,” Pamela said. “Just once, can't we come up against people who are just political and business rivals and not evil sorcerers?”

“That's not our line of work.”

“Which means Titchen has probably heard of us—”

Richard immediately caught her drift. “And they won't want to sell.”

“Or they'll jack up the price,” Pamela said.

“We'll buy it through front companies. You handle that,” Richard ordered.

“I'll look through our subsidiaries to find an appropriate front, and talk to Dagmar and Fujasaki about finding the money. It's going to be expensive. How long are you here for?”

“Not long. After I get back from Shiprock—”

Pamela interrupted. “Where?”

“Shiprock. It's between Gallup and Farmington.”

“And you're going there why?”

“To tell this little girl that she was right,” Richard said.

“I really don't think that's necessary.”