Stackpole, Michael A - Dark Conspiracy 03 (50 page)
Read Stackpole, Michael A - Dark Conspiracy 03 Online
Authors: Evil Triumphant
automatons dying by degrees within the crushed city and on the sand outside it. Though trained as an assassin, I had no love for the ultimate benefactor of my work and did not want to be infected by it. I turned my back on them and returned the smiles of my friends with a genuine warmth.
"I'm very glad Fiddleback did not kill you before he came afterme." 1 smiled atMickey. "Thank you for saving my life."
He nodded somewhat mechanically. "I don't like playing rough."
"I know, but if you had not, many more people would have been hurt." I sensed distress from Rajani, and I frowned. "It's not your fault, Rajani."
"It is, Coyote. When that
thing
came through, Mickey immediately oriented on it."
I smiled as my recollection of the scorpion-man brought with it identification of the face on the tail and the eyes on the body. "Of course, that was a combination of Arrigo El-Leichter and Colonel Nagashita. Mickey had been told to kill the both of them. He had imprinted on them."
"Yes, but just after I sensed the danger and warned you, I plucked a new template, the one that fit the new thing they had become, from Fiddleback's brain." She caressed Mickey's head. "I swapped it out for the templates he had imprinted on. I triggered him and now..." She shrugged helplessly.
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"He wi
ll understand, Rajani, and someday, in the future, he will thank you." I nodded to both her and
Mickey,
hoping
that my prediction would, in fact, come true.
"If there is a future," Sinclair grunted.
"There will be: Fiddleback is dead." I undid the buckles holding my combat harness on and began to shrug out of
it. "I lured him to the dimension where I regenerated from my wounds. The vultures went after him
there."
Sinclair frowned. "He left here in an awful hurry. Why didn't he just haul himself out of there."
I unfastened the web belt and tossed it on the ground, not caring any more if sand got into the holstered Krait's action. "A Dark Lord in a dimension with a similar aspect can block entry or exit, exactly as Pygmalion did here." Plucking the other Krait from its place at the small of my back, I lofted it over to where it dropped on top of its mate. "I had help."
Crowley nodded slowly at my words, then looked over at where Natch searched among the tower's
fragments for something, then picked up a fist-sized diamond. "And she was it? Which one?"
I raised an eyebrow. "I would have thought it obvious to you, Damon. The Empress of Diamonds."
"Of course." He sketched a brief salute, then accepted the Wildey Wolf and shoulder holster from me.
"How long have you known about her?"
I knew he really meant to ask why 1 had not told him about her, but I answered the question he had
asked. "She and my predecessor had an alliance. That's how he, a man as blind in these proto-dimensions as Nero here, was able to know of and anticipate Fiddleback's foray into Phoenix. Her aspect is that of a salvager, so Coyote assumed she was less of a threat than Fiddleback."
The occultist's shadowed head nodded. "And now that Fiddleback is gone, she has much to salvage."
"Correct, Crowley." The Empress returned to my side with her prize. "1 have much to salvage, much to do, but I am not ungrateful to you—all of you—for the part you played in my victory. In the new
cosmology 1 create around myself, you will all be praised for your efforts on my behalf."
Hal frowned. "What's she talking about?"
1 grinned wryly. "She is rather proud of her efforts, and well she should be because she played so many sides against the middle that the chances of her success were, at best, minimal. As Fiddleback said, 'Well played.'"
The Empress painted a falsely modest grin on Match's face. "You are too kind, Coyote."
"Am I? Using Natch as an agent to make contact with and keep tabs on Coyote was brilliant. Through her you were able to direct Coyote toward frustrating the efforts of your rivals to dabble in Earthly things. You even established the Reapers as your power base, but never let them get powerful enough to attract the attention of your rival Dark Lords. If one of them got ambitious, you let Coyote know about his operation and these good
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peopl
e neatly trimmed your organization back for you."
I folded my arms across my chest. "Yes, now it all begins to come together for me. Mr. Leich was the Reaper who picked me up from the ambulance, which would have meant he was a creature in your direct service. 1
wondered what his connection was with Nery s Loring, and now 1 know you were it. The first night I saw her, she wore a large diamond ring. You had managed to turn her, which is how you learned enough of
Fiddleback's plan to alert Coyote."
"Bravo, Coyote, you are very good." She gently rubbed Match's right hand across the surface of the diamond and in its wake left a finished, faceted gemstone. "Your predecessor chose well."
"But not well enough, you're thinking, I bet." I looked beyond her back at the scintillating mound of diamonds. "Let me think. Ah, because Pygmalion did not have a clue about how to create a dimensional gate—neither did Fiddleback or he would have long since made the dead one he had work again—you talked
him into an alliance.
You salvaged part of a dimensional gate and worked it into a prototype model from which he built this
tower. He accepted your alliance as one that would guarantee domination over the Earth and quite
probably co-dominion over the dimensions. He even went so far to adorn the people he worked over with
diamonds in your honor."
"Pygmalion's earlier experience with alien life forms made him especially susceptible to my
blandishments, especially when he was first on the run from Fiddleback." The Empress shrugged
effortlessly. "He proved very willing to help when I explained that 1 could not build beautiful things like he could."
Crowley shook his head. "He never realized that a salvager can only salvage that which has been created and destroyed."
"Which," 1 took over from him, "is why you needed not only a builder, but also someone capable of destroying Pygmalion and his toy. And that means, of course, your victory involves that pile of diamond
dust."
The Empress of Diamonds nodded as she finished her reshaping of the diamond and held it up in the
fingers of Match's left hand. "Very, very good. 1 might actually have underestimated you. You saw it—
you a//saw it—the gold and silver pattern in the stones when the tower was energized. The easiest way
for you to understand what happened is this: That pattern, and what the energy did to fix it in the gems, is roughly equivalent to a computer program and its being burned into a silicon-based chip. In this case, the program has been holographically locked into the diamonds in that mound and, when one of those gems
is set into a piece of jewelry, I will have a direct link into the people wearing it."
She slowly rotated the gem, letting the sunlight spark and flash from the facets. "I got the idea from the faint feed 1 occasionally got from the Hope Diamond. It is an
exquisite stone, and the incredible pain associated with it is sweeter than any wine you can imagine. It
occurred to me that humans everywhere revere and covet these diamonds. They keep them with them during
times of happiness, and surrender them most reluctantly."
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The Empres
s laughed aloud, then looked at Hal Garrett. "Think of it, Hal, think of the diamond you
gave your
wife when
you asked her to marry you. Think of the worry she poured into it when you were injured in ga
mes.
Think of the loneliness for which it became a symbol when you were away on road trips. Think of how it
became a focus for pain and doubt and even her death agony when she knew that because of her marriage to
you, she would die."
Hal held himself back, but his pain became a volcano in the emotional landscape of the dimension. I stepped between her and him. "You've made your point."
"I have, but you still do not grasp the depth of what this truly means. Imagine, just for a second, the volume of angst I will get just from decaying marriages. All the guilt and shame of cheating spouses will become mine. I will possess the heartache of the betrayed, and the grief of those who moum a spouse's death."
She spun away from me, dancing like a little girl in love for the first time. "And if the gem is stolen, so much the better. A thief s fear, as the Hope Diamond will attest, is a nourishing nectar. If the gem is recovered and returned to the owner, so much the better. The paranoia and insecurity of someone who has lost keepsakes and gets them back surpasses even greed in its delicious intensity."
The Empress of Diamonds stopped and waved an idle hand toward the mountain of diamonds to her right.
"Please, partake of them. Be my first worshippers. I will exalt you all. You will not want for pleasures and slaves. You will be first among the multitudes and my vanguard when jealous Dark
Lords
foolishly try to oppose me."
Bat stood up, his fists balled. "Why is it every Dark Lord thinks we would want to toady up to him or her?"
I snapped my fingers, and the Empress looked away from Bat and toward me. "If we refuse?"
"Then the honors I plan for you will have to be awarded posthumously because, collectively, you are a threat. In alliance with Fiddleback, you destroyed Pygmalion." She shined the diamond against the breast of her fatigues like an apple. "You helped me destroy Fiddleback and could, were I to let you live, link up with Baron Someday, Midas Longclaws or even Nimrod Nyet and cause me all manner of difficulty."
"That's it!" Bat started stalking across the sand at her with his fists raised and ready. "I promise this won't hurt."
"Bat, no!" I barked at him. ft came as a warning, not a plea, and he knew I was not warning him about any danger she might pose. "She's mine."
The Empress shook her head when she looked at me. "Fiddleback trained you well. You are good, very
good, at what you do, but, in this case, you are not good enough."
"I wasn't before, but I am now." I reached out and sucked in the misery of Pygmalion's dying warriors like a sponge soaking up water. I took their fear of death and blended it with their hopelessness and
mewing appeals for
a
quick surcease of their pain. I savored the mixture and drank it in. It exploded like 200-proof alcohol in my stomach and spread a supernova warmth throughout my body.
I saw the expression on Match's face shift as the Empress realized what I had done.
«A bold move, Coyote. A
desperate gamble, but one
/
respect This is a draw
—/
will take my booty and leave now»
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I sens
ed her desire to flee and felt her starting to shift, but I shook my head. I did not
want her to leave, so