Death Blows: The Bloodhound Files-2 (10 page)

The situations I encounter in my job can produce the most eclectic combination of emotions, and Charlie’s statement is a prime example: I feel touched by his loyalty but a little afraid of the controlled fury in his voice. I forget sometimes that Charlie is more than my partner; he’s my enforcer, a living weapon whose job is to protect me and damage anyone who gets in my way. Having Charlie around is like being shadowed by a hit man with a chip on his shoulder and a crush on you.

“Easy, sandman. The pire in question won’t be hurling anything for a while, not unless he’s ambidextrous.”

“Details.”

I give him the rundown on the confrontation and what Tair told me about Dr. Pete, ending with the appearance of the Solar Centurion.

Charlie frowns. “He was following you.”

“Unless those wrappers actually worship Ra the sun god, I’m inclined to agree. But he intervened on my behalf—not the actions of a guilty man trying to impede an investigation.”

“Unless he’s trying to mislead you.”

“Could be. If and when he shows up again, I’ll ask him. In the meantime we have a skip tracer to trace.”

“Maybe we should look into Dr. Pete first.”

I narrow my eyes. “No. We have an active case, and that’s the priority. My accidental involvement with some half-assed gangsters spouting a wild story is not important. Now—where are we off to?”

Charlie’s stubborn, but he knows better than to lock horns with me. “Granite Falls. It’s about an hour away, in the foothills of the Cascades.”

“Okay. Why is Silverado there—got a cabin in the woods or something?”

“He’s working. On the trail of a guy named Helmut Wiebe, indicted for running a Cloven lab. Wiebe’s from the area and is supposedly hiding out there.”

“Got it. Let’s go—I’ll get Gretch to forward me the files while we’re on the road.” I slap my laptop closed, trying not to wince as I do so. Charlie watches me carefully, but doesn’t say anything.

Granite Falls is a foothills town of about thirty thousand people. It’s also the site of the Tsubaki Grand Shrine School, a major Shinto center where acolytes go to study. Like any college town, it has a drug problem, and since Shinto seems to attract pires that drug is Cloven, or Devil’s Hoof: methamphetamine cut with garlic, just as nasty and addictive as good old regular meth is in my world. The difference between a hoofer and a crankhead is that a wired hemovore is just as likely to disembowel you to play with your intestines as he is to go into a laughing jag at the sight of his own.

Wiebe’s file indicates he was a fairly major player in the area, cooking up high-quality product for the local market and even a little for export. He got into trouble when one of his rivals informed on him, shutting down his operation at a time he was financially overextended; he was forced to use a bail bondsman to get out of jail, then decided it was cheaper to forfeit the bond than risk going to prison.

Gretchen dug up plenty on Wiebe, but the pickings are extremely slim on Silverado. Licensed bail enforcement agent, but his license doesn’t list his date of birth—or in a lem’s case, date of activation. His home address is a post office box, his phone number a cell. Obviously, Mr. Silverado is a golem who appreciates his privacy; our best chance of tracking him down is to track down Wiebe first.

Which could be tricky. Wiebe is from Granite Falls, and his brother, Julian, is one of the priests at Tsubaki. If Julian is protecting his brother, we could be in for some major headaches, both political and supernatural. A Shinto priest is Gandalfian on the wizard scale.

Granite Falls lies at the beginning of the Mountain Loop Highway, a scenic route that winds through the Western Cascades and over the Barlow Pass to Darlington—too bad we’re not going that way. We get on the I-5 to Everett and go east, taking Highway 2 then switching to the 204. The landscape is nice, lots of tall green pine and spruce lining the roads. After we pass through West Lake Stevens the countryside becomes a little more rural, cattle ranches or the occasional farm interrupting the tree line. A row of black Angus beef-on-the-hoof stare at me blankly as we drive past, chewing their cuds and thinking moody cow thoughts. I know how they feel.

At Frontier Village we head north on Highway 9, then onto the Granite Falls Highway. We turn off at Crooked Man Road, which leads to the massive red
tori
, the distinctive Japanese portal, of the school’s entrance. We’ve timed our arrival to coincide with sunset—the school’s alumni are mainly pires, and this is the beginning of their day.

The school is large and sprawling, the layout very organic and non-institutional. We find a parking lot almost completely hidden by trees and get out of the car.

“Where do you want to start?” Charlie asks me.

“Wiebe’s brother is head of the Aikido Department. Let’s go see if he’s in.”

I take a deep breath of air, enjoy the heady aroma of pine. I’m a city gal, but I can appreciate natural—

or in this case, carefully tended—splendor as much as the next person. We stroll through a Japanese garden of elegant plants and night-blooming flowers, over an arched wooden bridge and past clusters of students hurrying to classes. Ages vary widely; I see women with 1940s hair-dos and polka-dot skirts alongside men in kimonos and teenagers wearing jeans and sweatshirts. There are also more thropes than I expected, many of them in full were form, loping along with book bags strapped to their backs. I remark on this to Charlie.

“Not so surprising,” he says. “Lot of hemovores are into Shinto, but the Northwest has more thropes than pires. Lot of thropes from the Midwest come here to study, too. Like the climate, I guess.”

Makes sense. There are plenty of Asian faces, but lots of non-Asian ones, too—Shinto is a global belief system now, vying with African witchcraft for popularity.

We find the Aikido Studies building, a low-slung structure with a pagoda roof. Inside, students in loose-fitting white clothing are paired off, practicing throws, holds, and strikes. Aikido is particularly well suited to pires; much of the art consists of techniques designed to protect the practitioner from cutting blows to the neck or thrusting attacks to the torso. It’s popular in the Shinto movement because of its emphasis on the integration of spirit with nature, of inner harmony. It’s also one of the most peaceful of all martial arts—the intent of most Aikido techniques is to redirect an opponent’s force without harming him.

We stand at the back of the room and watch for a while. A bubble of unexpected sadness rises up in me; I haven’t been to a dojo since I came to this world. The familiarity of the outfits, the atmosphere, makes me nostalgic—but only until I see an actual attack and counter. A black female pire who appears to be in her twenties faces off against an Asian woman of indeterminate age. The flurries of blows, feints, and blocks are so quick they’re only a blur; it reinforces my sadness, making me feel like an exheavyweight being reminded of his glory days. Ridiculous, of course—pires’ reaction times are simply better than a human being’s.

All the more reason to get back to the gym. If I run into a pire—or a thrope, for that matter—with any martial arts training at all, I’m so far past toast even charcoal would consider me burnt. I promise myself I’ll start looking for a dojo when we get back to Seattle.

The melancholy lingers, though. It makes me think of my sensei, a beat-up ex-marine named Duane Dunn; wide grin, thick white handlebar mustache, and more wrinkles than God. His gut makes him look like he spends more time on the couch than the gym, but he’s in better shape than guys I know in their twenties who run marathons. Duane would probably do a lot better here than I am—he loves a challenge more than anything. “The only thing better than winning a fight,” he used to say, “is getting the snot kicked out of you by someone better than you are.”

“I think that’s him,” Charlie says. “The brother.”

I look, but only catch a glimpse of someone in baggy black pants and a loose white top vanishing through a doorway. “Come on.”

We hurry after him. “Did he see us?” I ask.

“Not sure.”

The door leads to a hallway lined with offices. No sign of Julian, and with a pire’s speed he could have reached the end of the hall and turned the corner by now. I curse under my breath and break into a trot.

“Check the offices!” I call back over my shoulder.

Down the hall, around the bend, down another corridor. At the end, right or left? This place is a maze. I go right. More hallway, more offices. I should stop running, this is pointless, I must have lost him by now. Another branch, go right again. Keep going right in a maze and you’ll always find your way out, but what if he isn’t heading for the exit?

And then I see the fire door straight ahead me, just clicking shut.

Doesn’t mean a thing, of course, but I slam into it at full tilt anyway, hitting the bar with my hip and flinging the door open with a bang.

Julian Wiebe glances at me in surprise. He’s dressed in loose black trousers and a wraparound white jacket, his wispy blond hair ruffled by the evening breeze, and he’s in the act of handing an envelope to his brother. Helmut, wearing black jeans just as baggy and a puffy jacket just as white, looks like he’s making fun of his sibling’s fashion sense. The look on his face, though, is closer to angry suspicion than mockery.

“You set me up!” he cries, and bolts down the path.

I give chase, which means running past Julian—except that he grabs me when I get within reach and does something very quick that leaves my arm locked behind my back. Damn it.

“I’m a federal agent,” I snap. “Let me go,
now
.”

I can’t see Julian’s face, but I can hear the conflict in his voice. “I—he’s my
brother
—”

“Then don’t make things
worse
for him—”

“Too late for that,” a voice says.

Helmut marches back into view up the path. He’s got one arm locked behind him, too, and a gleaming silver knife at his throat. His captor is a golem dressed in black jeans, a fringed brown rawhide jacket, and a battered straw cowboy hat with the brim curled up on the sides. His face is a pockmarked bronze, sculpted into a grim expression and hinged at the jaw.

“Let the lady go,” Silverado says.

“Let my brother go.”

“Don’t think so.”

I still have one arm free. I reach for my gun—and Julian puts just enough pressure on my arm to make me gasp and freeze.

“Looks like we have us a situation,” Silverado says. “ ’Cept you ain’t no killer, Mr. High Priest. And a broken arm don’t mean much to a thrope.”

True, but despite Silverado’s best guess that’s not what I am. Broken arms
do
heal, though . . . I wonder if I should go for my gun anyway. As long as I can ignore the blinding pain, I should be able to shoot him. Of course, I didn’t really come here to turn one of the school’s educators into a pile of smoking dust.

“You don’t know who you’re messing with,” Helmut growls. “
Show
him, Jules.”

“Let. Him.
Go
,” Julian says, and extends one hand, palm up and fingers spread, toward his brother.

The area we’re standing in is a little wooded park, with two benches and a waterfall trickling over a boulder and into a rock-edged pool. At Julian’s gesture, the waterfall’s trickle becomes a gush, a cascade—and then the flow of water
bends
in midair, as if an invisible drainpipe has just been stuck under the flow. It surges toward Julian and Silverado, splashes at their feet, then winds around their legs like a watery anaconda.

“Lems don’t need to breathe any more’n pires do,” Silverado says calmly.

“Water can do more than drown,” Julian answers.

He’s right. The stream of water that’s curling around them redirects itself so that it’s only wrapped around Silverado’s body. Then it condenses, looking more like a silvery blue tube than a torrent of liquid. I hear metal creak, and think of submarines at the bottom of the ocean. I have no doubt Julian has enough power to crush Silverado’s metal shell like an egg.

“And silver can cut more than meat,” the lem says. He slashes downward with the big, bowie-style knife at one of the aquatic loops coiled around him, and cuts it in two.

Julian bellows in pain as the snake bursts like a water balloon, releasing me as he collapses. Helmut, the knife no longer at his throat, breaks free and lunges forward. I try to stop him and get a quick lesson in pire versus human strength, as I go from being one Wiebe’s captive to another. Julian is facedown on the path, knocked out by some kind of psychic backlash.

“I’m not as subtle as my brother,” Helmut snarls. “Let me go or I’ll just rip her head off.” He’s got me around the throat with one arm, his fingers hooked around my upper teeth with the other. I don’t know if he’s actually strong enough to do that, but I smell the acrid stink of Cloven on his fingers and know he’s crazed enough to try.

Silverado holds the knife by the blade, handle up. I can tell from his stance he’s getting ready to throw, and I really don’t think he can take Helmut out with me in the way.

“Don’t do it,” Charlie says.

Helmut whirls to the side, taking me with him. I can taste dirt and nicotine on his fingers. Charlie’s just come through the fire door, and his own throwing arm is cocked. He’s got one of the iron-cored, silver-coated ball bearings he favors in one hand, and I know from experience he can bull’s-eye a beer can at a hundred feet.

The bounty hunter and my partner study each other, me stuck in the middle.
This
should be fun . . .

“Either of you moves,” Helmut warns, “and she goes topless.” He’s standing sideways, Charlie to the left, Silverado to the right.

Both of them ignore him. “Don’t much care about the drug-runner,” Charlie says.

“Don’t much care about the lady,” Silverado replies.

“She’s my partner.”

“He’s my paycheck.”

I pull out my gun and jam it in Helmut’s ribs. “Lef me go, ooh muvvafugga,” I manage. He glances down, but otherwise ignores me. Lovely.

“A shooter,” Silverado says. “Interestin’. Prefer she didn’t use it, though.”

“Understandable. How about we do this so neither of them gets too banged up?”