Napier's Bones (14 page)

Dom nodded. “As
good as can be expected,” he said as they walked back to the room with the safe
deposit boxes.

This bank didn’t
have a separate room for viewing what was in the box, so the manager unlocked
Dom’s, pulled it halfway out, and then excused himself. Dom waited until the
door was shut and then he pulled it the rest of the way out.

“Big on sports,
aren’t you?” said Billy as Dom pulled out the baseball.

Dom shrugged.
“You take it where you can get it.” He was going to say more when another safe
deposit box jumped out from its locked and secure location and bumped hard
against his hip. Jenna squealed in surprise, and Dom almost dropped the ball to
the floor. He stepped back and the box slid out further, until only the
smallest possible edge kept it from falling to the floor.

“Something wants
to be looked at,” said Billy.

Dom
nodded. Rubbing the ball to keep the mojo working for him, he stepped
cautiously forward and opened the box, peered inside. A small box sat there,
wrapped in aged brown paper covered with formulae written by at least a dozen
different hands.

“What is it?”
whispered Jenna.

Dom shook his
head. “I don’t know. The numbers on the paper seem to be set there to protect
the box inside.” He reached down to tear away the paper. “Maybe if I—ow!” He
pulled back his hands and put his right index finger to his mouth. “Fuckin’
thing shocked me!”

“Maybe it
doesn’t want to be opened right now,” said Billy. He took control and reached
down to try again, this time lifting the package out of the safe deposit box
without any trouble. The drawer slid shut on its own, a gentle current of
numbers flowing from the wrapper, almost invisible to them.

Looking around
to make sure he wasn’t being watched, Dom tucked the ball in one pocket and the
wrapped box in another. Putting on his best innocent face, he opened the door
and walked out, briefly thanking the banker on the way by.

“Where to now?”
asked Jenna as they approached the car.

Dom didn’t have
time to answer. A sharp pain exploded in his skull, and everything was black.

. . .
unskilfull and slothfull men have always purued [Mathematickes] with mot cruell
hatred . . . you hall (even in this regard onely) encourage me that am now almot
pent with icknee, hortly to attempt other mattters, perhaps greater than thee,
and more worthy o great a Prince.

He awoke to the
smell of tobacco, the somewhat less pungent aroma of Canadian cigarettes.
“Dom?” It took a few seconds of painful searching to recognize the voice as
Jenna’s. He managed to squint his eyes open, saw her looking down at him,
concern written on her face.

“What the fuck
happened?” His voice was a croak, harsh and distant.

“My apologies,
Dom,” came another voice. “My helpers got a little carried away bringing you to
meet with me.”

“Take
this,” said Jenna, holding out a plastic cup of water and two Tylenols.

Dom grabbed and
swallowed the pills and tossed back the water. Then he turned to see who had
spoken.

The man was
small, balding, with black-rimmed glasses and a greying moustache and goatee.
He wore a brown leather jacket zipped up high to his throat, and faded jeans. A
pack of Du Maurier cigarettes sat on the small wooden table beside him, as well
as the mysterious package and Dom’s puck and ball.

“Who the hell is
this? Someone else after us that you didn’t tell me about?” asked Dom.

Billy shook his
head, which sent a sharp pain radiating out in all directions from the base of
his skull. “No. Never seen him before,” he croaked, sounding as bad as Dom
felt, which was of course no surprise.

“You’re talking
about your adversary,” said the little man, stubbing out his smoke and smiling.
“I’m pleased to be able to tell you that I am not a confederate of that person.
Big lump on the back of your head to the contrary, Dom, I’m actually a friend.”

“Some way of
showing it.”

The man pursed
his lips. “As I noted, my helpers got a bit carried away, but they were only
trying to be careful. You were walking out of that bank with a rather big prize
for the wrong sort of person, and we wanted to make sure you were chosen for
the right reasons. And they didn’t want you hauling off and throwing numbers at
them, since neither one is numerate.”

“Why didn’t you
just ask?”

Jenna sat down
on the cot beside Dom and took his hand. “Because we’re being chased, Dom, and
because even if we weren’t, you don’t much trust other people.” She looked over
at the man. “Father Thomas has explained quite a bit to me while you were
unconscious.”

“
Father
Thomas? You a priest?”

“I was.” He lit
another cigarette, inhaled deeply and then blew several smoke rings. “Had a
little trouble and ended up being defrocked. But the Church keeps me around, on
call you might say, in case my special skills are needed.”

“You’re
numerate.”

Father Thomas
nodded. “And still a believer, even after all the trouble. And so I get to have
you here for a little chat.”

“Chat?” Dom
winced. The pain wasn’t going away, which made him worry he’d had a concussion.

Numbers flew from
Father Thomas and swarmed around Dom’s head, piling into him without warning.
Dom tried to react, but the sudden sense of well-being he felt held him back.

“That’s right,”
said the former priest. “Stay still. It looks like my boys smacked you harder than
I’d first thought.”

“What are you
doing?” asked Dom, feeling a goofy smile creep up on his face. “Drugging me?”

“Of course not.
You don’t learn about healing the soul without learning something about healing
the body as well,” replied Father Thomas. “Since I can’t have you wandering
around in a haze from a possible concussion, I’m just putting your head right
again.”

The numbers
dissipated, too quickly for Dom to get a hold of what forms and sequences they
had taken. He rubbed the back of his head, felt the still tender lump there,
but was certainly much better. “Quite the trick. Thanks.”

“Just call it a
laying of the hands. Well, except without the hands,” said the former priest,
taking another puff of his cigarette. He chuckled at his own joke.

“Now that we’re
all friends, perhaps you can say why you dragged us here in such an undignified
fashion,” said Billy, sounding a bit put out.

Father Thomas
smiled and stood, walked over to Dom and knelt down in front of him. “Ah, the
adjunct,” he said, taking another drag of his cigarette. “What’s your name?”

Billy grimaced.
“Billy.”

“Billy. Billy
what?”

Dom’s shoulders
shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

The former
priest stood again and paced around the room, stubbing out his smoke before
sitting back down and facing them. “I thought as much.” He leaned forward and
peered at Dom. “The shadow is a little confused; I’d guess that some of your
memory fractioned away at one time, Billy.”

Father Thomas
finished his latest smoke, stubbed it out in an overflowing ashtray on the
table, then grinned and clapped his hands together once. “Well. Now that we all
know each other, let’s get down to work. What do you say?”

Dom felt at the
receding lump on the back of his head. “What sort of work?”

“Let’s start
with who’s chasing you,” said Father Thomas. “Been causing you trouble, I
imagine.”

“How the hell do
you know all this?”

He grinned
again. The smile was beginning to make Dom feel like he was in the sights of a
predator. “There isn’t much I don’t know,” he replied, “especially when it
comes to the two special adjuncts that are involved with the other side of
this.”

“You used a
plural there,” said Billy. “This woman is carrying more than one shadow?”

“Two. The two
most famous that are out there, I suspect.”

“Jesus.” Dom
blinked his eyes in shock. “Napier and Archimedes? Together? For real?”

“Together for
real.” Father Thomas lit yet another cigarette, took a deep drag and then
coughed violently for a few seconds. He waved the cigarette at them.
“Penitence,” he said. “Smoke myself to death to make up for everything I’ve
done. Or haven’t done.” He half smiled now, but Dom could see the haunted look
in his eyes. “Can’t really stand cigarettes, but suicide is not an option for a
Catholic, even an excommunicated one. Luckily, the amount I smoke really cuts
down on my appetite, which helps since I spend so much on these cancer sticks.”
He took another puff.

Appalled though
he was, Dom shook the images of no longer innocent children that sprang
unwanted to his mind and pushed forward with the conversation he imagined they
were supposed to be having. “You said that Napier and Archimedes were adjuncts
with this woman. How can you be so sure?”

“Because I had
them taken away for safekeeping in the first place. Rather, it wasn’t me, but
it was someone I thought I trusted.” He paused for another deep drag. “You’ll
understand me when I tell you that I couldn’t place the artefact there myself.”

Dom nodded, but
Jenna shook her head. “I don’t. Why couldn’t you? You told me something about
Napier before, but I still don’t think I understand.”

“You’re still
new at this, aren’t you?” He grinned again, and this time Dom saw her shudder,
but she nodded her head. “John Napier was probably the most powerful numerate
who ever lived, and during his time many also considered him to be involved in
black magic. He was a Scottish laird, a mathematician, an inventor, and more.
The reason he and Archimedes are so closely connected is that many of his
inventions originally came from the mind of Archimedes, and the fact that their
shadows are together tells us that he lifted them directly from Archimedes’
mind. He’s also the man who invented logarithms, which possibly you’ll remember
back from your days in school.” He stubbed out his latest cigarette and lit up
another; Dom had never seen anyone smoke so much. “The man created more mojo
than anyone else, ever, items that are still being discovered today, and he
probably managed to place his shadow in, at the very least, a dozen artefacts.”

“Most of which
have vanished into myth,” said Billy.

Father Thomas
shook his head. “Most of which are in a safe facility on the other side of the
Atlantic. But this one made it across the ocean, chasing after a very special
artefact, and no matter what we tried, we couldn’t get it back across the
ocean, nor could we get the other artefact across.”

“So why in the
desert?”

“I wish I knew,”
he replied. He wasn’t smiling now. “The artefact couldn’t be destroyed, we knew
that much, but the person I sent out to do the job was supposed to take it to a
place where it would not be found.” He looked at Jenna, shook his head again,
then carried on. “Whatever happened, the artefact wasn’t about to sit around
quietly. It was able to send out discreet signals that Dom picked up.”

“Three people,”
said Dom. “I picked up Billy as backlash from a duel between his original host
and the new host for Napier and Archimedes.”

Father Thomas
raised his eyebrows. “Really. Well, that might explain the damage that resulted
in the lost memory.”

Billy shook
Dom’s head. “I’m pretty sure I didn’t have that memory when I was with my last
host.”

“And yet if you
did, perhaps you wouldn’t remember. Correct?”

Reluctantly,
Billy nodded. Dom could tell that the shadow didn’t like the idea that maybe he
had only just lost who he was in the past few days.

“But
the signal still only went to two, not three. The numerate who took the
artefact to the desert for me disappeared for a long time, fell right off my
radar, and when she came back she had gone to the desert to retrieve the
artefact.”

Jenna fidgeted
in her chair, looking impatient. “You were going to tell me why you couldn’t
take the artefact yourself.”

Father Thomas
raised his eyebrows. “Relax, young lady. As long as you’re with me, the Napier
adjunct is not going to track you down.” He smiled one more time, then said,
“Okay. I couldn’t get involved because I’m Catholic.”

Jenna leaned
back in her chair, looking sceptical now. “Is this a moral thing? Because I
have an idea as to why you were defrocked, and I have to say that besides
creeping me out, it seems to me that morals or spiritual beliefs are not
anything you should be able to fall back on as an excuse right now.”

Father Thomas
snorted with laughter, a laugh that quickly descended into more hacking and
coughing. When he finally got it under control he had tears in his eyes, which
he swiped away with a sleeve. “Alas, dear Jenna, it isn’t any moral stance,
which as you so aptly note, I am truly unqualified to take.” He inhaled, held
the smoke for a few seconds before releasing it as more rings. “No, it is well
and truly just because I am a Catholic. The same would hold true for any person
who is baptized into the Holy Roman Church, whether or not they still
officially belong.”

“To say that
John Napier was rabidly anti-papist would be something of an understatement,”
said Billy.

“Indeed. His
virulent hatred of everything Roman imbued everything he created, most
especially those items of numerate nature. If I so much as touched an item of
his design, it would, at the very least, severely physically injure me.”

“At the least?”
asked Jenna.

He nodded. “More
than likely, though, it would do damage that would cut right to my very soul.
And if I actually tried to use the artefact and its numerate latency, then I
suspect that death would be quick.”

A thought
occurred to Dom, and he groaned inwardly at the idea that it hadn’t come to
mind before. “We’re not here just because we’re being chased, are we?”