Stealth and I retreated deeper into the alley as the morgue van arrived. The attendants zipped Albion into a body bag glistening with rain. Harry supervised and handed the driver a card. Then he got into his car and followed the van away, taking his headlights with him and leaving us in the dark.
I turned to Kid Stealth. "He's gone. Give me what you've got because I know you're dying to have me show him up."
Stealth answered me in a flat monotone. "Doc Raven will be back from Tokyo tomorrow night. We can give him the scan, let him decide what to do about this."
"Stealth, let me do some legwork first." I pointed to the place where the rain had begun to darken the lighter outline of Albion's body. "The trail will get cold."
"The killer will be back." The red lights in Stealth's eyes bloated and shrank. "He's a thrill killer."
"What?"
"This is his recreation." Stealth looked at me for a moment, looked away, then nodded. "The bullets you use in your Viper1…"
"Silver, drilled and patched with a silver-nitrate solution to make them explosive."
"Why?"
I hesitated. Kid Stealth hadn't been around during the Full Moon Slashings so he didn't know what Raven and I had run into back then. I'd developed the bullets to deal with that mess and I'd kept using them since, just in case. I sensed in his question, however, not so much a desire to know the history of my bullets as to understand the thinking that went into producing them.
"I had them done that way so they would maximize shock and destruction. Bullets are meant to kill and I wanted mine to do the job well."
Stealth studied me for a moment before answering. "The bullet used on Albion was designed to make him
1The nice thing about carrying around and using a gun as old as the Beretta Viper 14 was that under most current laws, antiques weren't really considered "weapons" for concealment purposes. Me, I never saw the allure of these newfangled guns full of computer components and all. Go ahead, rely on Windows Sniper 4.0 if you want to, but I prefer not to need software patches when I'm in a firefight. die.Back before the Awakening, before magic came back to the world, there were people who would test their hunting skills by using a bow and arrow to take wildlife." Stealth held his hands before him as if visualizing what he was describing. "Bows are uncertain. Because an arrow might not cause enough damage, innovative arrowhead designs were created. One type had three or four razored edges that spiraled around the arrowhead like the edges on a drill-bit. It was called a bleeder and was designed to chew up as much of the animal's insides as it could, while leaving a blood trail for the hunter to follow."
The Old One howled angrily in the back of my mind. "Stealth, you mentioned a stressed copper jacket with a light bullet and light charge. You're saying Albion was shot with the ballistic equivalent of a bleeder?"
"His wound was non-midline."
1frowned. "It still killed him."
"No. The rifle used was more than capable of putting a shot through someone's eye at a range of at least two hundred-fifty meters. Albion was wounded by design."
"What killed him, then?"
"He drowned in his own blood. He was coursed to death."
"Coursed?"
Stealth nodded and-wonder of wonders-for once the Old One agreed with him. Unbidden, the Wolf spirit lent me his heightened senses. The night vision made everything much clearer in the alley, but that wasn't the sense the Old One wanted me to use. My nostrils twitched and, amid the noxious odors of rotting garbage and thrice-scorched radiator fluid, I caught a very sharp scent.
The Old One forced me to savor it.A large canine, Longtooth. It was here and marked the territory of its kill. It did as its master commanded. It is much like the Murder Machine to whom you speak.
"A cyberpup ran Albion down?" Stealth nodded. "Foot spurs scraped the wall over there when it lifted its leg to mark its hunting ground."
"Custom rifle, custom dog. This guy must have some serious nuyen to be dropping on his pastime." I shook my head. "If what Braxen said is accurate, he's dusted four. Not likely to stop-as you said, a thrill killer."
"A dilettante." Stealth looked hard at me. "You will pursue this before Raven returns?"
A lingering sense of guilt concerning Albion slowly stole over my mind. He'd been angry when I last saw him and had stalked off into the night alone. That had been months ago, but part of me thought his death was my fault. I knew, realistically, that was nonsense, but I couldn't shake the feeling.
"I knew him. It's personal."
Stealth extended his left hand, the metal one, toward me. "Give me some cab fare."
"I'll drop you at Raven's before I head out."
"Give me ten nuyen."
I dug my hand into my pocket. Could Guinness ever check it out, Kid Stealth would surely make its datachip of World Records in ten different categories-all of them lumped under the Homicide heading. I pulled a credstick from my jeans pocket and handed it to him.
"I want to see a receipt and my change back," I added. Stealth might have had more unsolved murders to his credit than Elvis had imitators, but if I didn't give him a hard time he'd be insufferable.
Stealth took the stick and disappeared it into a pocket. "Wolf, this one plays at death."
I nodded. That was about as close as Stealth would ever get to telling me to be careful. He ascribes a lot to the "a word to the wise is sufficient" school of caring for other folks. Given that the last time he tried to show concern over my fate he shot me in the back, the verbal message did seem more friendly. "I'll keep you posted, I promise."
Without so much as a nod, Stealth turned and withdrew into the alleyway. I didn't turn to watch him be- cause the Old One tries to make me laugh at Stealth's cyberbunny hopping gait. In terms of lethality, doing that strongly resembles sucking on twenty packs of nikostix a day for longer than I've been alive. The other reason I didn't watch him is that Stealth was likely to cut up and over to Seventh by using those miracle claws of his to scale a building. Getting my knuckles bloody as the Old One tries to prove we can do that too is really annoying.
The Old One's sensory gifts did come in handy as I directed them back toward the street. As I walked in the general direction of where I'd left the Fenris parked in another alley, I heard someone sobbing. Tears aren't all that uncommon in the sprawl, and more than one Samaritan has been lured into a headache by thinking he was rescuing a woman in distress. In this case, however, the sob wasn't coming from a voxsynth chip, but from the throat of a little gamin of a girl slumped against the alley wall.
The rain had soaked her hair and made it clump into stringy tendrils about as skinny as her arms and legs. She wore a clear plastic raincoat that ended somewhere between her neon green hot pants and her argyle knee socks. Her blouse matched the shorts in color and ended just below her breasts to show off a flat stomach. It also showed off her ribs. As she looked up at me with hollow, red-rimmed eyes I wondered if she was an anorexia poster-child.
I gave her a smile I hoped wouldn't threaten her. "How long have you known Albion?"
She blinked as I said his name. "You knew him?"
I nodded. Looking up the street I spotted a diner where I'd eaten before without dying. "C'mon, let's get out of the rain." I reached for her arm, but she retreated away from me.
"No way, chummer. I may be griefin', but I'm no flatliner."
I held my hands up and kept them open. "Okay, bad start. My name is Wolfgang Kies. I knew Albion and I'm going to find out what happened to him. If you want to help, it'll make my job easier."
She watched me warily, then nodded. " 'Kay. Albie mentioned you. I'm Cutty."
I pointed to the diner and she nodded. "How long you and Albion been together, Cutty?"
She cut across the street like a zombie hungering for a bumper-kiss. She never noticed the squealing brakes nor did she acknowledge the curses shouted at her. I let the Old One growl at anyone who vented his wrath on me and that generally calmed things. Once across Blan-chard, Cutty headed into the diner and dropped into a booth like a rag doll suddenly stuffed with lead shot.
The waitress frowned at her, but I gave her one of my "this could be your lucky day, darling" smiles and she relented. "Soykaf for me. Milk and some soup or something for her, okay?" The waitress snapped her gum, then turned and sang out our order to the ork working the kitchen.
"Third time is the charm. Cutty, how long had you been playing house with Albion?"
Her head came up and I saw a spark of life in her brown eyes. "A month, I guess." She blinked twice, then frowned. "This is October, right?"
"November, but who's counting?"
"Oh, two months, then."
"Gotcha." I'd last seen Albion on a very warm July night, which put him with her within six weeks of leaving his friends in the Barrens. "He was cool during that time? No problems?"
Cutty nodded. "Like ice. Did some boosting, you know? His thing was fixing stuff, though, and he used to patch decks together before folks would fence them. Made him sort of legit, you know? Then folks started recommending him and he fixed lots of stuff."
"I get the picture." And the picture I got was a dismal one. I'd been hoping Albion had gotten himself in solid with some group or gang or specific place that might narrow my area of inquiry. If I had to track every cracked or heisted deck he laid screwdriver to, I'd be looking for his killer long after Kid Stealth rusted away to nothing.
The waitress arrived with our food, and Cutty stared at the clam chowder with the same look of horror you'd expect if the waitress had regurgitated it right there at the table. She looked at the milk as if the waitress was Lucretia Borgia. I compensated for this by regarding the steaming cup of soykaf like it was the Holy Grail and the waitress as if she was the Madonna. Clearly, though, the waitress thought of herself as a different sort of Madonna and I realized the kind of music we could have made together would have beat Gregorian chanting by an ecclesiastical mile.
"Drink, eat. You need the milk to strengthen your bones and the soup will put some meat on them." I appropriated a bit of her milk for my soykaf, which suddenly made her possessive about the food. I feigned offense, which seemed to please her somehow and made her eat. "Albion didn't have any steady killtime, did he? Anything that would have made him a candidate for a toxic lead dump?"
She nodded her head as a droplet of chowder rolled down over her pointed chin. "Just started a caper at the Pacific Northwest Huntsman's Club. Got it through a person he did some fixing for. Steady work that didn't cut into his side biz. Didn't need a SIN for it."
That last bit would draw Albion like a flame draws a moth. Albion fiercely defended his independence and wanted nothing to do with the system. Like all those who scurry in the shadows, he dreamed of being as big as Mercurial some day, but the chances of that were slimmer than Cutty here. What he didn't know, what few of us without SINs did know, is that it's easier for the society to destroy you than it is for them to even notice you.
"That's a place to start. Do you remember who gave him the job?"
Her wet hair flew back and forth as she shook her head. At least I think she shook her head, but I couldn't see any of her face around the edges of the bowl as she tipped it up to drain it. The bowl came back down and a plastic sleeve came away from her face smeared with the last of the chowder. "Don't remember." She looked over toward the counter and licked her lips as she eyed a stack of frosted donuts.
I'd seen bricks with a longer attention span than she had, but I put it down to her being in shock. Our waitress returned and brought with her the donut tray. Cutty selected two big chocolate-frosted fat-pills and I passed, so Cutty took a third in case I reconsidered. I paid the bill and the tip while Cutty watched the credstick vanish almost as hungrily as she'd looked at the donuts.
"With Albion gone, what are you doing for money?"
She smiled at me, her eyes growing vacant. "For fifty nuyen I'll do anything you like."
"Yeah?"
She nodded solemnly. "Anything."
"You got it." I pulled out my slender cash supply- figuring she'd find the bills easier to use than a credstick-and laid down two twenties and a ten. "You said anything, right?"
Cutty licked at the frosting in a way she hoped was suggestively erotic. "You pay, piper, and you call the dance."
"Good." Had I a necrophile's taste for skeletal women, I might have come up with something truly inventive for her to earn my money. As it was, I had a more sinister plan in mind. "For this fifty nuyen you're going to sit here and wait for an elf named Salacia to come see you. She was a friend of Albion's before you knew him-just friends, not lovers. Tell her about him." I got up from the booth. "Stay with her and the rest of Albion's family and let them know what happened to him."
Cutty looked up at me and shook her head. "Albion always said you were a weird chummer, but one he could trust. He didn't trust many." "You'll wait?"
She nodded sadly. "I'll be with Salacia, and then you can tell me how Albion's story ends."
I left Cutty in the diner and made my way back to the Fenris. Though he's not much on technology, even the Old One likes the Fenris. Low and sleek, angled except where the flat black body curves neatly around a wheel well or back around a bumper, the car looks like a wedge sharp enough to split the sky from the planet at the horizon.
Even before rounding the corner of the alley I pulled out the remote for the antitheft system. Because this section of town wasn't that bad, I'd set it for only one chirp, with the defenses on Stun. As the car came into view, I tapped the control and got a single chirp back in response as I deactivated the security system. From behind the car two startled kids jumped up and started running down the alley.
Their laughter made me believe they'd been up to mischief and little more, but caution made me check the rear of the Fenris. Two big old rats, the fat kind that feast in dumpsters, lay twitching on the ground. The kids had been amusing themselves by catching the rats and tossing them against the Fenris' body. The resulting shock left the rats half-dead, but served as a practical lesson to warn the kids off messing with my ride.
The Fenris whisked me through the Seattle streets. The radar-bane coating Raven had sprayed over the car's surface made it reflect less light than the rain-slicked street. I cruised around, checking my six for folks following me. When I saw it was clear, I made for Raven's place and used the car phone to call Salacia at the house in the Barrens.
Another of the kids who lived at the house answered the call. Sine said she'd get word to Salacia and they'd pick Cutty up quickly.
"Good," I told her. "But the girl's in shock. Maybe you can do for her what none of us could do for Albion."
She agreed and I hung up as I guided the Fenris into Raven's underground parking garage. The automatic door shut behind me and locked tightly. I climbed out of the Fenris and locked it, then put the security on two chirps and set it on Mangle. Anyone stupid enough to break into Raven's place deserved all the surprises he could handle.
I went from the garage straight into the basement computer room. The sanitary white of the walls and tiles is a shocker at the best of times, but it seemed almost dreamlike after the rainy Seattle evening. The same could be said of the room's sole occupant after an evening spent with Braxen and Kid Stealth.
Valerie Valkyrie covered a yawn with a slender-fingered hand. She still looked radiant from having met Jimmy Mackelroy, theenfant terrible of the Seattle Seadogs2. Actually I think the radiance came from helping him through the trauma of Seattle's loss in the series, which beat the hell out of how she'd moped last year until spring training. Though she'd lost her heart to him, she still had a smile for me and I returned one with interest.
"Good morning, Ms. Valkyrie. Are you up early or up late?"
Heavy lids half-hid blue eyes. "After thirty-six hours that sort of question hardly matters." She glanced back at the deck and the datacord that usually fit snugly into the jack behind her left ear. "Another marathon Dementia-Gate session. I could have gone longer, but Lynn said she wanted to leave the game so she could rest up for your date tomorrow night. You getting serious on her, Mr. Kies?"
2 Valerie took it as a personal victory that Jimmy referred to the team as the Seadogs in Matrix chat she set up for him, despite the trouble it could have caused him. Granted, only a few of her closest friends were present, and the one transcript of the chat came bundled with a virus that did nasty things, but it was a victory for her nonetheless. "That date's tonight, Val, after the sun comes up." If it weren't for Valerie's cafe-au-lait complexion coming to her through genetics, she'd have looked as pale as Albion. "You have seen the sun this month, haven't you?"
"Nice dodge, Wolf." She smiled and killed another yawn. "You here from the Committee For the Production of Vitamin D, or have you got a job that's beyond your meager computer talents?"
"Meager?" I frowned as I pulled off my black leather jacket and tossed it onto one of the white leather chairs sitting in a corner. "I know how to turn one of these things on and off, you know. Meager, sheesh."
She gave me an exaggerated nod. "Sure you do. What do you need?"
"The Pacific Northwest Hunting Club lost an employee tonight. You pulled a file on him back when we went after Reverend Roberts. You remember Albion?"
"His file was a null. Burkingmen had some anecdotes about him. He was working at PNHC?"
"So I understand. A member recommended him. I want to know who that was and something about him."
"Is that all?" Valerie rolled her eyes. "Look, Wolf, no jack."
I stuck my tongue out at her, but she'd already started beating out a harsh staccato on her keyboard. I left the room and mounted the stairs to the first floor. In the kitchen I grabbed two cups of kaf and exchanged a series of uninformative grunts with Tom Electric. He had his eyes glued to a Bookman and was doing his best to upload some self-help book into his gray-ROM.
"Annie's coming back to town, eh, Tom?"
Grunt and nod.
I looked at the container that had carried the book chip."All I Need to Know to Understand Women I Learned In Catholic School? Are you sure that will help you, Tom?"
Hopeful grunt and emphatic nod.
I shrugged and carried the dual mugs of soykaf from the room. Tom's ex-wife comes to Seattle every six months or so, whether Tom's recovered from the last visit or not. I wondered at his choice of scanning material because Annie struck me as about the most un-nunlike woman I'd ever met. Then again, I couldn't rule out the possibility that she'd found a convent out there that catered to macrobiotically nourished, politically correct, archeo-feminist, neo-retro splatter-metal enthusiasts with bipolar disorders.
Valerie silently forgave me for taking so long when I handed her the brimming mug. "Got your prey."
"It was thateasyT
"No, love. I'm that good." She shook her head, her thick brown braid flopping from shoulder to shoulder. "What does Lynn see in you?"
"She knows, deep down, I'm just a real sensitive guy." I gave her a crocodile smile, then leaned against a mainframe cabinet. "Who is he?"
"She. Selene Reece is her name. She's a great granddaughter of Harold Reece. He was a newspaper tycoon before the Awakening. He diversified and left everyone a lot of money. She's a black sheep of the family, the illegitimate daughter of a granddaughter who used a lot of recreational chemicals at a time when it was thought LSD could keep one from goblinizing."
I nodded. Orks and trolls usually bred true, but some folks in the general population are tagged with "monster" genes. They tend to kick in around puberty, causing embarrassment somewhat greater than having your voice crack or your face break out. In essence, their whole body breaks out, and they shift from being normal human kids to orks or even worse.
It's not pretty and usually very confusing. There are plenty of orks who don't make it through the transformation with their psyches intact. There are even more con artists making a fortune selling everything from sugar pills to votive candles to prevent kids from undergoing the change. While kids might not fully understand the problem, their parents do and will do just about anything to avoid the humiliation of having a child "run away."
"This Reece recommended Albion to the Club as a hire? I have a hard time placing Albion and his porcupine coiffure in that kind of place."
Val shrugged and sipped her soykaf. "Cheap thrills for the elite without their having to go slumming. The club's computer didn't have any record of his employment, but the tailor who made his uniform still had a copy of the employment record. Selene Reece is listed as his sponsor."
"Checks with what Cutty told me. Where is Reece now?"
"You're expecting a lot in exchange for a kafcup. Tom Electric would have brought me donuts."
"I owe you. Do you know where she is?"
Valerie nodded her head. "According to the club schedule she's up in the Yukon. She won a lottery and is going after a snow moose. Won't be back for a week."
I smiled widely enough that Valerie knew I was getting myself into trouble and wanted her to set it up. "Can you crack back into their computer to confirm a dinner engagement for me with her there, tonight, about six? Make it look like it was on, then got scrubbed by the lottery win."
She looked hard at me. "You're seeing Lynn tonight, Wolf."
"I know, I know." I set the mug on top of the computer. "Set the dinner thing for six. I meet Lynn at eight. I just want a chance to look around. I'll be in and out, fast. I want to reconnoiter so I can report to Doc when he gets back."
Valerie drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "I suppose, but if you stand Lynn up, you'll regret it."
"I wouldn't dream of it, Val, honest."
"Good." She smiled wickedly. "Because if you do I'll make sure you're on every boiler-room investment househot list from now until the collapse of Western civilization." III
This is the part of the story where most narrators would mention that they slept fitfully and had prophetic dreams about the past and future melding together. I'm supposed to tell you all about the dreams, using cryptic terms that will confuse you until things come together later. It's the way you know the stuff you're reading isart.
I've got no dreams to share. That doesn't mean I didn't dream, mind you, but just that I don't want to share the dreams. From the second my head hit the pillow in the spare room Raven has allotted to me, I dreamed of Lynn. The dreams might have been prophetic-in fact, I was hoping they were-which explains why I'm not going to share them.
I had fully intended to sleep until the sun was so far over the yardarm they'd have to use a satellite link to communicate, but Stealth whooshed and creaked on into the room I use. My eyes came instantly open, but my Viper stayed under the pillow. No sense in wasting a bullet on a target that could have taken an Exocet hit without denting his hide.
"No new toys to show me?" I sat up in the bed and let the frivolity drain out of my voice. His armor is better against humor than it is against bullets. "What's up, Stealth?"
"Valerie Valkyrie says you're asking about the Pacific Northwest Hunting Club."
I nodded. "Albion had a job there for the past week. He was recommended by a member. I thought I would check it out this evening."
Stealth remained absolutely still for a moment. He didn't so much as breathe, which he really didn't need to do anyway. To help in the assassination work he used to do before he became claw-abled, Stealth traded a lung lobe for an internal air tank with a slow-release oxygen system. Saved his life once-gave him enough time to free his feet from a block of cement at the bottom of the Sound.
At last the Oracle spoke. "You will be armed?"
Stealth lives by that fragment of wisdom that says "No problem so large that it cannot be solved by the suitable application of plastic explosives." He proved that, both in his professional and private life. In fact, to get out of the cement block, he blew the lower parts of his legs off. That is why, when wedo have casual conversations, I don't tell him about hangnails or hernias.
"Actually I expected this to be a soft recon. I have to meet Lynn later…"
"Ms. Ingold."
"That's the one. She doesn't much like guns-she's still hinky about the grunges who grabbed her, so I thought I would travel light."
"I see." He froze for another second, then turned and started out of the room.
"Hey, Stealth, wait!"
He slowed and looked back over the shoulder at me.
"My change from the cab?"
His Zeiss eyes blinked at me once, then he turned and left.
Stealth's silent departure didn't bother me as much as it might have someone else. He's weird enough that if having him owe me money meant he would try to avoid me, I could live with that. Then again, for all I knew, he had gone off trying to figure how to give me change in bullets of differing calibers.
The Old One gave me a salutary yip as I looked in the mirror at the results of a shower, shave, and the suitable application of sartorial accouterments. I appreciated the sentiment, but I'd wait for Valerie's opinion before deciding whether I was comfortable with my choices. Not that I was that comfortable in the clothes-neckties and nooses have more in common than both starting with the letter N.
Valerie gave me a full 1000-watt smile. "Oh, Wolf, if I had an icebreaker as sharp as you, I'd be in the Aztechnology database and gone running on a kiddie-deck. Double-breasted blazer of blue, good choice, gray slacks, dark socks, white shirt, TAB tie, nice, and the wing-tip shoes." She gave me the hairy-eyeball. "You fixing to make this datereal special?"
I winked at her. "Val, every date with me is special. And the answer is no, I'm not handing her some gold-bound ice. We're having dinner with her great-aunt from St. Louis." I wanted to toss another wisecrack out at her, but the well was dry. Thinking about Lynn and me and the future required so much brainpower that it didn't leave me enough idle cells to keep coming up with smart remarks.
Val gave me a hug and told me to transfer it to Lynn, noting, "You're on your own after that, jack." I gave her a peck on the cheek and specifically told hernot to pass that to Jimmy Mackelroy from me, then headed out into the garage. I disarmed the Fenris from outside its effective range, then took it roaring out into the Seattle night.
The rain had vanished and the dark sky looked clear and a tad crisp. I found the Pacific Northwest Hunting Club on the first try and parked down the block. Two chirps from the remote left it on With Extreme Prejudice, which would be more than enough to keep the local footsponges from mistaking it for a bar, bathroom, or king-size bed.
I managed to wrestle the double-breasted jacket's internal button into its hole by the time I reached the awning extending out over the sidewalk. A doorman waited at the top of the stone steps and opened the door for me without comment. Up another flight of steps and a left turn brought me to the club's foyer, where a large man greeted me with a smile. "Yes, sir?"
"Evening. I'm Wynn Archer. I'm supposed to be dining with Selene Reece." I nervously glanced at my watch. "I'm early."
Dark clouds of confusion spread over the man's face. "Ms. Reece has no dinner reservation tonight, sir. Perhaps you are confused as to the evening?"
I shook my head and let my smile tell him I knew I was right. "Wednesday the twenty-seventh. I've been looking forward to this for two weeks."
He held up a hand. "Just a moment." He disappeared behind a curtain and I heard the clicker-clack of a keyboard. I knew Valerie had managed to mess up his records when the sound of key-pounding got louder.
He returned with a smile on his face. "There has been a mistake, sir. Ms. Reece apparently did have reservations, but they were canceled when she went out of town on an urgent trip."
"Are you sure? Perhaps I should wait in the lounge until we see if she makes it. I'm sure you understand that she would have canceled with me if she didn't expect to be here."
The host started to tell me the lounge was only for members, but I stuck him on the horns of a dilemma. If he gave me the bum's rush, he could end up embarrassing a member because her plans didn't happen to include informing him of her comings and goings. He took a look at me and must have decided I looked harmless.
"Please, sir, we would be happy if you would wait in the lounge. You do understand, of course, that it is for members only, so…"
I nodded. "I shall wait at the bar and not bother anyone."
His smile told me we had an understanding and I wandered into the bar. Dim and subdued, it featured dark wood panels and rich leather upholstery. Given the identities of the few local celebs I recognized, I figured the club must charge enough in dues that the decorations were probably realthetic. Even the peanuts in the bowl at the bar looked like dirtfruit instead of vat-droppings.
I ordered the house brew, and discovered that a mug of it set me back more than Stealth's cab ride. It tasted pretty good, but notthat good. I consoled myself by looking at what the others were drinking and guessing at the number of digits in their bar tabs.
I ordered a refill from the bartender and tried to begin a conversation with him, but he sped off to deal with other patrons-the ones who looked like big tippers or like they were there with someone else's spouse. Before he could return to the styx where I was sitting, someone tapped me on the shoulder.
"Mr. Archer? I understand we're having dinner together this evening?"
I turned around and found myself looking up at a woman who surprised me in many ways. Had I been standing she would have come within a centimeter of being as tall as me. Powerful shoulders tapered down to a slender waist and shapely legs that indicated a serious interest in athletics as opposed to milder "shaping" workouts. Her face showed signs of an arctic tan and the makeup she used carefully blended away the white flesh around her brown eyes. Her black hair, which was cut boyishly short, hid her ears and aptly bordered a sharply angular face. A pert nose and full lips made her beautiful by anyone's definition, but the fire in her eyes made herchallenging.
I offered her my hand. "Pleased to meet you, Ms. Reece." I figured I could go one of two ways at this point, either making her think we both had been deceived, or I could play it straight. As she took my hand in a firm, dry grip, I decided honesty was the best policy. "But I'm not Wynn Archer. My name's Wolfgang Kies." I gestured to the empty stood beside me. "Please, join me. I can explain the reason for my deception."
She watched me for a moment, reflexively squinting her left eye as if she were sighting down a rifle barrel at me. "I like someone willing to shift tactics when the opening gambit fails. You have five minutes." She released my hand after she slid onto the stool across from me and ordered a gimlet from the bartender.
I remained silent until he had withdrawn, then idly drew an A in the moisture ring on the bar. "A young man you recommended for work here was killed last night."
"The albino, Albion. I heard." She sipped her drink, then set it back on the bar. "I learned about it early this morning when I checked my computer system. I returned from the Yukon immediately. While updating my schedule I saw the dinner notation and came right over. Do you know who killed him?"
I shook my head. "No, but I knew Albion and I know people who will be sorry he died. I want to find out who did him and you're about the only lead I have."
"I see." She dipped a finger in her drink and raised it toward her mouth. A droplet hung from her nail like venom from a scorpion's sting, then she licked it off with a flick of her tongue. "Albion repaired the stereo in my Mako and asked me to mention him to my friends. I did and a couple suggested I get him a job here."
"I guess I'm missing the connection." I popped a peanut into my mouth. "Why would you want a mo-hawked street punk working here?"
Selene crossed her legs. Her outfit, a dark green silk blouse under dark green blazer and tight black skirt, left a lot of leg for me to look at as she did so. "This Club is for individuals who are adventurers. We dare go out and challenge Mother Nature in her wondrous and magical splendor."
She pointed through the doorway back toward where a gallery of holopics showed images of members with creatures they had killed. "The membership thrives on traveling to exotic places, seeing exotic things…"
"And killing them?"
"Among other things." She half-shut her eyes and studied me over the edge of her glass. "We're thrill-seekers."
"So bringing a piece of Seattle streetlife into your club is a thrill."
"You are edging toward asking if I think Albion was chosen as prey by a member of our group." She toyed with the stem of her glass, slowly turning it so the light glowed off the liquor's legs. "We live for danger."
I watched her face closely. "And stalking Albion through the concrete world that is his natural habitat wouldn't be dangerous?"
"We may be the ultimate predators, but we're not murderers. Bringing someone like Albion in here is importing some of the danger from the streets, yes. He's not what we normally expect to see here, so he was a curiosity." She clasped her hands together over one knee. "For a while we maintained a cheetah and a Bengal tiger here before certain Creature Liberationists started to threaten us."
The Old One howled in the back of my mind. "I can imagine them seeing this as a Temple of Death, no problem."
"But they do not know what we truly do, for this is also a Sanctuary for Life." She laughed easily. "Between this club and all the animal freedom groups combined, who do you think has spent more money providing habitats for the endangered and threatened species out there?"
"Is this a trick question?" I frowned. "They do."
"No, they donot" The skin tightened around her eyes. "The area where I went hunting a snow moose, for example, is all a private preserve purchased and maintained through this club. Our members, either through the club or on their own, have placed acres and acres of threatened wetlands and forests into park systems, both public and private. Did you realize that since the latter half of the twentieth century it's been the hunters and the licensing fees they pay that has guaranteed wildlife management and, in many cases, actually allowed the animal population to exceed that of colonial times?"
I sat back and did my best to look contrite. "No, I did not realize that."
"It's true." She casually waved her hand toward the other patrons in the bar. "Our membership is also involved in many philanthropic projects right here in Seattle. Part of that is reflected in our willingness to employ someone like Albion."
"Do you think someone took this 'preserve' idea too far with Albion and killed him?"
"I hope not." She leaned forward and I brought my ear close to her mouth. "In a place like this there are always rumors of someone having hunted the most dangerous prey. Liquor dreams and vaporware, but it is possible someone decided to make them real. If they did, I'm responsible because I brought him here."
I leaned back and took a pull on my beer. I knew from Stealth's description of the weapon that killed Albion that commissioning it would have required the sort of money that someone in the Pacific Northwest Hunting Club certainly would possess. It also struck me as absolutely possible that a member could have decided that harvesting a little two-footed quarry in the city beat freezing in Alaska to bag a rack of antlers. Of course, the one thing I knew that she did not was that Albion was only the latest in a series.
"These stories ever center on one person here?"
She looked up and didn't even try to hide her surprise. "No, not that I know of." She took a sip. "This is very disturbing." She concentrated, her dark brows arrowing down toward the bridge of her nose. "Come with me and we will discuss this with the Director."
I glanced at my watch, then shook my head. "Can't. I'm meeting someone. Albion's not going anywhere. This can wait for a day or so."
She nodded, then stared down at her glass and the liquid still left in it. "Are you free tomorrow night? I can arrange for us to meet with the Director then." Her expression sharpened and her nostrils flared as she watched me out of the corner of her eye. "You will be my guest tomorrow evening for dinner."
I waved the offer off. "Not necessary, Ms. Reece, really."
"I insist." Her smile warmed and warmed me. "You intrigue me. You bluff your way in here, then admit your deception. You are different from most."
"Exotic?"
"Challenging, Mr…"
"Kies, Wolfgang Kies."
"Accept, Mr. Kies. Anyone here can tell you that, as a hunter, I am relentless."
"So I am in your sights?"
She eyed me very frankly and the Old One started a low growl in the back of my head. "You are too imaginative to be a literalist, Mr. Kies. I find pursuit more thrilling than a kill, and my taste in men does not run to corpses."
I caught the invitation in her voice, and the warning that whatever happened would be on her terms, and her terms alone. "Seven, here?"
She took up my left hand and gave it a squeeze. "Twenty-four hours, then."
I nodded and gave her a kiss on the cheek. As I walked away from the club, Albion became a ghost. Learning who killed him had become immaterial as a reason for my willingness to meet Selene Reece the next night. She knew it, I knew it.
Wolf season was open.