BY NOON, RAGGED CLOUDS FLOODED THE SKY. THE world turned dim and hazy, and as Derek and I approached Champion Heights, the lone tower of the apartment building and the ruined city around it seemed little more than a mirage, knitted from fog and shadows.
Derek scowled at the high-rise. "I hate him."
"I know," I said.
We had three leads, of which Saiman was one. The volhvs were the other. The third lead concerned de Harven and the Keepers. Since we could do nothing about the volhvs, Andrea called Rene, notified her of de Harven's possible secret-society whack-job status, and requested the detailed files on all the Red Guardsmen who'd ever worked with de Harven. Rene had a very controlled fit of apoplexy and promised to deliver the files, with a Red Guardsman who would stand over Andrea as she went over them and take them back when she was done. The plan was for me to go and see Saiman on my own and for Derek to help Andrea look for patterns and possible accomplices.
And that was when both Derek and Andrea dug their heels in.
"No." Andrea nodded for emphasis. "Hell no."
"It's not a good idea," Derek confirmed. "I should go with you."
"You despise Saiman. Why in the world would you want to go with me?"
"Because your rabid honey-bunny and Saiman had a giant fight over you." Andrea spoke slowly, as if to a child. "You said yourself, Saiman's ego is so big, he has to rent a separate building for it. Curran made him run away like a scared rabbit. You have no idea how he'll react when he sees you."
"She's right," Derek said. "It's a safety issue. The office is well protected, so Andrea doesn't need me here. You will be out in the open and two is better than one. Besides, you're alpha."
"And that means what?"
"It means that you must be above reproach and avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Saiman's a degenerate pervert. You should bring an escort."
I crossed my arms on my chest. "So I can't be trusted to see him without supervision?"
Andrea shook her head. "Kate, it's not personal. It's protocol and it's common sense. You don't challenge people under you, you don't get to skip formal dinners, and when you go to see an unstable coward who screwed half of Atlanta and propositioned you in public, you bring an escort. Deal with it." "Three weeks ago a woman from the city came to see Curran," Derek said.
"Yes, an attorney about the road. Lydia something." For some reason, Curran had insisted that I needed to attend a boring meeting about the repair of some road owned by the Pack. I hadn't wanted to go, so I'd decided not to cut my workout short. I hadn't realized that he held up the meeting until I deigned to make an appearance, so when I'd walked into the meeting room, almost an hour late, he, Lydia, and the two alphas of Clan Heavy were all patiently waiting for me. Mahon had dosed off, his wife had knitted half a sock, and Lydia had shot me a look of pure hatred. I'd felt like a total moron. The meeting had lasted a total of fifteen minutes and neither I nor the alpha couple of Clan Heavy needed to be there anyway ...
Oh.
The light dawned. "She was one of Curran's ex-girlfriends?"
Derek nodded.
Curran had followed the protocol. I would do the same. "Fine."
Derek nodded again. "I'll get my jacket."
An hour later we stared at Champion Heights, where Saiman made his not-at-all-humble abode. During the magic wave, chunks of the tower would fade into hard red granite, complete with old moss--the result of spells shielding the building from the magic's jaws. Right now it was all brick, mortar, and glass, foreboding and dark.
Neither one of us wanted to go in.
Sitting in the Jeep would accomplish nothing. I parked the vehicle in the tower's parking lot and we climbed the wide concrete stairs to the glass-and-steel entrance. Despite everything that happened, Saiman still hadn't changed the code word. It took us less than a minute to get through security and ride the elevator up to the fifteenth floor. The elevator vomited us up into a hallway lined with criminally luxurious carpet.
Derek's frown had graduated to a full-blown grimace. A furious yellow light sheathed his irises.
"Try to look less disgusted."
He shrugged. "Are you worried I'll offend him?"
"Your eyes are glowing, and your upper lip is trembling like you're about to snarl. I'm worried Saiman will panic, and that door is hard to break. Make an effort to look less deranged and threatening. Think of rainbows and ice cream; it will help."
Derek sighed, but the glow in his eyes dimmed.
I knocked on the door. No answer.
I knocked again.
Nothing.
"He's in there," Derek said. "I can hear him moving."
"I'm deciding if I should let you in," Saiman's smooth voice called through the door. "Our meetings never go well, Kate. You'll forgive me if I'm less than enthusiastic."
"Adam Kamen," I said.
The lock clicked and the door swung open. Saiman wore his neutral form, a bald man of slight build and indeterminable age, somewhere between twenty and fifty. He was a blank canvas, hairless, colorless, without any distinguishing features. If you bumped into him on the street and didn't notice the sharp intelligence stabbing through his eyes, you'd never remember him.
Saiman's face wore a martyred expression. "Come in, come in ..."
I stepped inside and froze. Chaos reigned around me. Usually Saiman's apartment was a highly controlled environment of white rugs, stainless steel furniture, and ultramodern curves. Not a single carpet fiber was out of place. Today the couch held a variety of clothes folded into neat stacks. Wooden crates littered the floor, half-filled with books and linens. The door to Saiman's state-of-the-art laboratory stood wide open, and through the doorway I could see more boxes.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm playing golf, Kate. What does it look like I'm doing?"
He was in rare form today. "Why are you packing?"
Saiman rubbed his forehead. "Are we playing the obvious question game? I so apologize, nobody told me the rules. I'm packing, because I intend to move."
"Watch your tone," Derek said.
"Or what?" Saiman spread his arms. "You shall tear me to pieces? Spare me your threats. I assure you, under the present circumstances, they will have no effect."
I glanced at Derek. Let me handle it. Derek nodded very slightly.
I stepped closer to Saiman. The odor of scotch floated to me. "Are you drunk?"
The last time he got drunk I had to drive like a maniac across a snow-strewn city while an enraged Curran chased us across the rooftops. "I'm not drunk. I'm drinking, but I'm not drunk. Kate, stop giving me that look; I've had two inches of scotch in the last two hours. With my metabolism, it's a drop in the bucket. I'm functioning at maximum capacity. The alcohol is merely the grease for my wheels."
"You never told me why you're packing," I said. Saiman was the last person I expected to move. He loved his ridiculously overpriced apartment in the only pre-Shift high-rise still standing in Atlanta. All his business contacts were tied to the city. He had half a dozen aliases, each with his or her fingers in a different pie.
Saiman rocked back on the balls of his feet. "I'm moving because the city is about to die. And I do not intend to go down with the ship."
"MOVE THE CLOTHES IF YOU WANT TO SIT DOWN." Saiman walked to the bar, retrieved a crystal goblet and a thick glass, and splashed amber-colored scotch into it.
Neither Derek nor I moved.
Saiman sipped his drink. "It started with Alfred Dugue. French-Canadian. An unpleasant violent man, very conflicted about his sexuality. His sexual practices were ... odd."
Dear God, what would Saiman find odd? Never mind, I didn't want to know.
Saiman seemed to study his scotch. "I understand that realizing your preferences are in conflict with established norms can be traumatic, but Dugue was engaged in extreme self-loathing. Somehow between bouts of whipping himself and performing bizarre erotic rituals, he managed to build a successful enterprise shipping goods down the Mississippi. I wanted a piece of the action. I assumed the shape consistent with Dugue's type, charmed him, seduced him, and permitted him to take me home. I should've been more thorough in my research."
"Didn't go well, did it?"
Saiman's eyes brimmed with outrage. "He served me poisoned wine. When that failed, he tried to strangle me. I snapped his neck like a toothpick. It was a distasteful affair."
"I'm sure."
"I was going through his papers when I stumbled on his notes on Kamen's research. At first I dismissed it as a pipe dream. However, after running Dugue's operation for a few weeks ..."
Of course. Why was I not surprised?
"You turned into the man you killed?" Derek couldn't keep derision out of his voice.
Saiman shrugged. "He was already dead. He couldn't benefit from his company, and it couldn't be left unsupervised. I'll have you know I've greatly improved on it since it came into my possession. For one, his teamsters are now paid a living wage. Consequently, the incidents of theft are down thirty-seven percent. Soon, I shall simply sell the entire enterprise to myself, eliminating the need to perpetuate the Dugue impersonation. But I digress. I realized that Dugue wasn't fond of bets; if he invested in something, it was a sure thing. Given the obscene amount of money he'd sunk into Kamen, I revisited the matter. I went to see Adam."
"While he was under the Red Guard's supervision?"
"Of course."
So much for no visitors. I knew it was a shit job from the start. I knew Rene had denied me information. I could deal with it. But an outright lie went over the line. Strike one against Rene. "Go on."
"We chatted. Kamen was deeply damaged by his wife's death, a genius in his work, but practically nonfunctioning in all other areas of his life. It took me two visits to realize the machine was real. For a brief period I considered using it for my own means, but I've since come to my senses. It has to be destroyed."
I raised my hand. "Saiman, what does it do?"
He stared at me for a long moment. "You don't know?"
"Who is asking obvious questions now?"
Saiman leaned forward. "It destroys magic, Kate."
What? "You can't destroy magic. It's a form of energy--you can convert it, but it doesn't just disappear."
"You can also contain it," Saiman said. "Adam Kamen has built a device that collapses the fabric of magic in on itself. When activated, the device causes the magic around it to implode, converting it into a dense concentrated form. Think of it in terms of gas and liquid; if the magic's normal state in our world is gas, then Kamen's device pressurizes it into a liquid state."
He was crazy. "By what means?"
Saiman sighed. "I don't understand most of it. To be brutally simplistic, the apparatus is basically a cylinder with a reservoir within its core. The device must be permitted to charge during a magic wave for a certain period of time. Once the device is charged, it goes active. The actual process of magic cleansing takes very little time. Kamen's first prototype cleared an area half a mile across under ten minutes.
"The device pulls the magic inside its core, affecting a large radius directly around it. The magic enters the device and passes through a series of chambers. Each successive chamber causes it to implode further and further upon itself, so by the time it reaches the reservoir at the core, the magic is `liquid,' very dense. It occupies a very small volume in this state. When the next magic wave floods, the area affected by the device remains magic-free. I don't know why. I just know that it works."
My brain struggled to digest this. "We were told it was never tested." Saiman shook his head. "Kamen tested a small table model, the very first prototype he built. It was the size of a wine bottle and it cleared the magic in a half-mile radius. There is a spot in Sibley where there is no magic, Kate. I've stood on its edge and walked through it. I can give you the coordinates. The second prototype he had built was supposed to affect an area with a diameter of two point seven miles ..."
If the prototype I had seen in Rene's picture were activated, it could wipe out a small town. "What happens to people caught in the implosion?"
Saiman drained his glass. "I don't know. I can only tell you what Kamen told me, and so far he hasn't been proven wrong. He theorized that during the implosion anything that uses magic dies."
Ice slid down my spine. "Define `anything.' "
"Necromancers, vampires, creatures, your precious shapeshifters, you, me. Anyone with any significant amount of magic. We. All. Die."
Fucking shit. The entire city wiped out. Men, women, children ... By the latest estimates, at least thirty percent of the population used magic or depended on it. If the Lighthouse Keepers had the device, they would use it. It destroyed magic--they would fall over themselves in a rush to activate it and they could strike anywhere. If they turned that thing on near the Keep, Atlanta would be free of shapeshifters. Curran, dead. Julie, dead. Derek, Andrea, Raphael, Ascanio, dead, dead, dead.
I stared at Saiman. "Why would he build something like this?"
"Kamen's wife required dialysis to live," Saiman went on. "Three times a week. When the magic interrupted the process, one of the nurses had to hand-crank the machine to return the blood to the patients. One day the magic wave caused several patients to go into cardiac arrest. While the nurse tended to them, Kamen's wife bled out and died. He wanted to create a small model of the apparatus that would generate a magic-free zone in which technology could work unhindered. And once he did that, he had to build a bigger machine, just to see if he could improve on it."
"You knew what it was and you let him build it? What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"I didn't!" Saiman hurled his glass across the room. It shattered against the wall. "I was too closely supervised to bring in a weapon, so I tried to poison him. He survived. Then I hired half a dozen men, trained, expensive professionals. They were supposed to cut through the Red Guard and destroy everything: Kamen, plans, prototype. Everything. I supplied them with enough plastique to make a crater the size of a football field."
"What happened?"
"They never got to the Red Guard. They were met in the woods by someone and the next morning their heads were delivered to my doorstep in a garbage bag."
"Could one of the other investors have done it?" Derek asked. Saiman shook his head. "His other investors are Grady Memorial and the Healthy Child, Bright Future charity fund. They are actually what they pretend to be--do-gooders."
The volhvs wouldn't have dumped the heads at his door. They would've just made the hired muscle disappear. No, that was a terrorist tactic designed to frighten and intimidate. It had to be the Lighthouse Keepers. Killing Saiman would've created too much noise. He maintained damaging files on every prominent person in the city. If he died, they would panic. Every law enforcement agency would be crawling all over his murder. The Keepers didn't want noise, not yet.
"What do you know about the Lighthouse Keepers?"
Saiman's face fell. "That would explain volumes."
Crap.
"What happens if the device is broken?" Derek asked.
"The magic escapes in a huge burst," Saiman said. "Theoretically, if the machine is activated, the people in the immediate area would survive the longest. Those on the perimeter would die first, because the magic would stream from the perimeter toward the device. Standing next to the device would be like standing in the eye of a storm, so it is possible to interrupt its operation. However, the inpiduals who stole it are unlikely to permit any such interruptions. The six heads in the garbage bag testify to their resolve." He paced back and forth. "These people had me monitored, they killed my mercenaries, and they've taken the machine from under the noses of an elite Red Guard unit. This indicates to me that they're both competent and highly motivated. If they are, indeed, the Lighthouse Keepers, they will use the device where it will inflict the most damage. They have to use it. The destruction of magic is the entire purpose for their existence. I need to resume my packing."
I exhaled rage. The entire city was about to die and he was packing. God damn selfish asshole. "Why didn't you come to me? I have fifteen hundred shapeshifters at my disposal."
"I had a perfectly good reason."
"I'm dying to hear it."
"Please, allow me to demonstrate." Saiman turned to the giant flatscreen, plucked a DVD case from the shelf, and slid the disk into the DVD player's slot.
The screen ignited, showing an inside of a large warehouse, filmed in high definition from above. Cars sat in two lines: a Porsche, a Bentley, a Ferrari, a Lamborghini, something sleek I didn't recognize ... I'd never seen so much horsepower crammed into one place.
I glanced at Saiman. "What is this?" "These are the contents of the Merriweather, one of the vessels in my shipping company." Saiman braided his long fingers. "This fleet of cars was purchased in Europe, brought over to Savannah at considerable expense, and then shipped up to Atlanta to one of my warehouses."
We looked at the cars. The cars looked back at us.
"After the events of that unfortunate night at Bernard's, I expected immediate retribution from the Beast Lord. When it didn't come, I called you to check on your well-being. You confirmed that you were in good health. I began to believe that perhaps I had dodged a bullet."
"Let me guess, you didn't dodge?"
"Keep watching," Saiman insisted.
We stared at the cars.
"I don't get it." Derek frowned. "None of them are water-modified. What's the point of having a vehicle that's not drivable during magic?"
"To experience speed," Saiman said. "Have you ever driven a luxury car at a hundred and sixty miles per hour? It's a feeling you never forget."
The door in the wall opposite the camera opened. Curran walked into our view. He moved in an unhurried way, almost relaxed. The camera locked on to him, zooming on his face. His eyes were dark. The digital clock in the corner of the movie said 10:13 a.m. Twelve hours after Saiman had delivered a monumental insult to Curran while the Pack's elite watched. An hour since Saiman had called and Curran listened to our phone call, rolling one of my metal plates into a tube. Forty-five minutes after I refused to go with him to the Keep to announce that we'd been mated and His Furry Majesty had walked out on me in a huff.
Alarm prickled my fingertips.
A large man in a dark uniform approached Curran from the right, brandishing a baton. "Hey, buddy. You can't be here."
Curran kept walking.
"Why a baton?" Derek asked.
"Because I'm not about to give security guards a weapon that could make holes in my merchandise."
"Stop!" the guard barked. A streak of light dashed along the baton's length.
"That's not a baton." I leaned to the screen. "That's a torpere. An electric stun weapon. It was the top of the line in crowd control just before the Shift." "Quite right. A typical stun gun delivers its voltage in short bursts to avoid the death of the target," Saiman said. "This is a modified model. When triggered, it emits a powerful uninterrupted electric current for up to twelve minutes. It has been shown to induce cardiac arrest in two."
"Stop!" The guard swung the baton at Curran's back.
Curran whipped about, too fast to see. His hand locked on the baton. Metal crunched, sparks burst, and the crushed mess of metal and electronics fell to the floor.
The guard took a step back. His lower jaw dropped. He looked at the torpere, looked back at Curran, and took off for the door.
Curran turned around.
Behind him a second guard edged outside.
What are you doing, Curran?
The Beast Lord surveyed the cars. His face was calm and cold, as if carved from a glacier. The amount of money tied up in those cars had to be enormous. The warehouse would have to have been well protected from the outside. I wondered how many guards he had chased off.
A muscle in Curran's cheek jerked.
His eyes burst into gold. Curran grabbed the Porsche on his left, ripping the car door off as if it were tissue paper. He grasped the car from the bottom. Monstrous muscles bulged on his arms. The Porsche went airborne. It flew up, flipped over twice, and crashed atop the red Lamborghini. Glass snapped, steel groaned, and a car alarm went off in a sharppitched wail.
Holy shit.
Curran lunged at a silver Bentley. The hood went flying. He thrust his hand into the car. Metal screamed, and Curran jerked a twisted clump out of the hood and smashed it into the nearest car like a club.
"Did he just rip out the engine?" I asked.
"Yes," Saiman said. "And now he's demolishing the Maserati with it."
Ten seconds later Curran hurled the twisted wreck of black and orange that used to be the Maserati into the wall.
The first melodic notes of an old song came from the computer. I glanced at Saiman.
He shrugged. "It begged for a soundtrack."
Curran ripped the remains of a car in two. He raged through the warehouse like a tornado, smashing, crushing, tearing into the metal and plastic, so primal in his fury that he was frightening and hypnotic at the same time. And while we watched him rage, some long-gone man sang about being kissed by a rose at someone's grave.
The song ended and still he kept going. Saiman's face remained passive, but his eyes had lost their usual smugness. I looked into them and saw a shadow of fear hidden deep beneath the surface.
Saiman was terrified of physical pain. I'd seen it firsthand--when injured, he panicked and lashed out with remarkable violence. He had watched the recording, soaked up the full extent of the devastation Curran could unleash, and waited, wondering when the Beast Lord would show up on his doorstep. He'd watched the recording over and over. He'd attached a lyrical soundtrack to it, trying to diminish its impact through the sheer absurdity of it. One glance at his expression told me it hadn't helped: the cold face kept relaxed by sheer will, the haunted eyes, the tense mouth. Curran had made Saiman paranoid, and it wore him down. He would do anything to avoid Curran's wrath.
Curran stopped. He straightened, surveying the heap of tortured metal, ruined plastic, and torn rubber. He turned around. Gray eyes looked directly into the camera. The cuts and gashes on his hands and face knitted closed.
Curran's clear, cold voice rolled through the room. "Don't call her, don't talk to her, don't involve her in your schemes. She doesn't owe you anything. If you hurt her in any way, I'll kill you. If she gets hurt helping you, I'll kill you."
It was about me. This epic devastation was all about me. Curran must've thought Saiman had something on me and was using it to force me to help him, so he'd sent a message.
The Beast Lord walked out of the warehouse. The screen went dark.
My knight in furry armor.
Saiman opened his mouth. "This is why I didn't. Personally, I think your smile is inappropriate."
I caught myself and switched to a scowl. "Give me the recording, and I'll mend this fence."
"At what price?"
"You will tell me everything you know about the device and Adam Kamen. You'll turn over all documents, notes, everything, and you will help us find it."
Saiman braided the fingers of his hands together and rested his chin on his fist, thinking. "That homicidal maniac you're in lust with will want more."
"If he does, then I'm sure the two of you can come to an understanding," I ground out. "In Atlanta, you're a person of substance. Outside it, you're an unknown. You'll have to start over. It's in your best interests to stop the destruction of the city. I will intercede on your behalf with Curran. Take it, Saiman, because that's all I'm offering." Saiman frowned. A long minute passed. He rose, pulled the disk out, slid it into a thin plastic sleeve, and held it out. "Deal."
I took the disk and slipped it into my pocket. "The documents?"
Derek grabbed us and ped to the floor, knocking over the couch.
The door behind us exploded.