Page 9 (1/2)

Six or seven hundred olves on the loose, in the hands of a ue with Lord Loss Nice! Demons rarely have time to kill many people because they can only stay on this world for a few h reroups of ten or twelve, set free in dozens of cities around the globe

If each only killed five people, I make that three and a half thousand fatalities But it&039;s more likely they&039;d kill ten times that number, maybe more

We&039;re in Antoine&039;s office on the eleventh floor It used to be Prae Athie rooht fit Nobody&039;s said anything since we cah photos of the speci the data that he has on file

I know fro and fast I felt like an Oly But I&039; I never knew they were this advanced

I shouldn&039;t let it matter The Shadowthe deh, the world will fall The da in conore the possibility of tens of thousands of deaths? Beranabus could He&039;s half-de his human impulses We&039;re statistics to him He&039;d take the line that a few thousand lives don&039;t s, that we have to focus on the millions and billions-real numbers

I can&039;t do that Even if we find out that the attack in Carcery Vale has nothing to do with the demon assault at the hospital, that Prae Athi with Lord Loss, I have to try and stop her I won&039;t let thousands of people die if I can prevent it Especially not when the killers are relatives of mine

Perhaps crazily, I still think of the olves as kin, even those bred in cages They&039;re part of the Grady clan That makes it personal

"We have to find the to All heads in the office bob up and everybody stares at e s, the city spread out behind me Any of the people on the streets, eleven floors down, could fall victim to the olves if Prae Athiet to

"Maybe there&039;s nothing to stop," Meera says unconvincingly "Maybe Prae was telling the truth about a new disease and took them to dispose of safely Perhaps the feere sent to attack Dervish were si used to settle an old score, and were then executed along with the rest"

"Bull!" Shark snorts "If she&039;d wanted to kill thees It would have been a lot sihs "I was just saying uess she&039;ll drop them off in a city somewhere," Shark replies "Let them run wild Maybe collect them at the end and take them on somewhere else"

"But why?" Marian frowns "Why not build bombs, poison a city&039;s water supply or develop che hundreds of olves to use as crazed assassins it&039;s like so out of a Batman comic!"

"Crazy people don&039;t think the e do," Meera says glumly "They have all sorts of warped ideas and plans, and if they gain enough power, they get to inflict their mad schemes on others"

"Like Davida Haym in Slawter," I note

"There&039;s another possibility," Terry says "She ht have done this for humane reasons Maybe she suffered athese creatures Took them somewhere isolated, to set them free"

"Unlikely," Antoine says with a cynical s the breakouts Many ood Samaritan"

"I&039;ve seen fanatics who think animals are nobler than humans," Terry says "They&039;d happily kill a hu or cat frohts activist," Antoine says firmly "I refuse to entertain the notion that she did this to free the speci them off as they returned to the wilds, happy tears in her eyes"

"He&039;s right," Shark says "We have to assu maximum havoc"

"So let&039;s track her down and stop her," I snarl "We can&039;t just sit here and talk about it We have to to" I throw my hands up, frustrated

"We all kno you feel," Meera says sympathetically "But until shewe can do The world&039;s a big place You could hide seven hundred olves just about anywhere We can&039;t-"

"I could find them," Timas interrupts "If I had access to yourat Antoine

"I told you-the records have been wiped," Antoine scowls

"It&039;s virtually impossible to wipe a mainframe completely clean," Timas says "That&039;s one of the reasons I was surprised you still used one I can perform at the very least a partial restore"

"We&039;ve had experts working on it for the last six weeks," Antoine says sharply

"I&039;m sure you&039;ve employed some of the best people in the business," Timas says earnestly "But I&039; you could restore it," Shark rumbles, "hoould that help us? She&039;s unlikely to have outlined her secret plans on a work computer"

"You can&039;ta trail," Timas says "If I find out more about the creatures, I can use that information to fish for clues on the web"

"What do you es," Ties of their own Once I knohat the cages are made from, I can search for companies who specialise in this type of construction and find out if they&039;ve filled any large orders recently If they have, I&039;ll learn where they delivered the cages to

"If I can determine how the olves were tranquilised, I can track the drugs back to where they were h delivery records

"How did they transport the creatures-aeroplanes, articulated trucks, trains, boats? I&039; they moved at least some of them across international borders There will be a trail of red tape, no matter how surreptitiously they went about it I&039;ve followed such trails before and enjoyed a largeor shall I get started?" Timas addresses this question to Antoine Horwitzer

Antoine&039;s torn "Is he really that good?" he asks Shark

"Yes"

"If he can do what he says he will have access to confidential inforn a privacy clause We need absolute affirmation that he&039;d never reveal-"

"You present the forles with the idea for a couple of seconds, then sighs "Very well I&039;ll log you in and provide you with the relevant security codes"

"No need," Ti on to Antoine&039;s plush leather chair "I can crack the will it take?" Shark asks as Tiers dance across the keyboard

"A few days, I iet a lucky break Longer if she&039;s hidden her trail artfully I&039;ll need complete privacy And my equipment from the helicopter"

"I&039;ll have it sent down," Shark says and ushers us out

"Perhaps I should stay and keep an eye on him," Antoine says nervously

"No chance," Shark responds fir his spluttering protests

Some of the rooms on the upper cots Mes owned by the Lambs Given the secretive nature of their business, they often prefer to stay onsite rather than check into hotels

I&039; a room with Spenser and James They don&039;t speak to me ic and demons, but they&039;ve had little first-hand experience of that They find it hard to think of e but otherwise unreer I&039;m not too bothered I find -weapons, planes, helicopters, war, battle tactics I&039;, testing my powers I don&039;t knoon this world, in the absence of y I want to find out what my limits are, so as not to exceed the objects Size doesn&039;t seem to matter-I can slide a heavy oak wardrobe across the floor as easily as a telephone I spend a couple of hours s around I&039;m pretty beat by the end, and not back to full fitness until the next e, but worrying that it takes so long once I&039;ve been drained

Other hten my senses-to eavesdrop on a conversation, or view a scene from a few kilometres away-but that takes a lot of effort and quickly eats into e shape, but I can make myself partially invisible for a very short tiain those deical energy, but I&039; for hours afterwards

There are all sorts of co spells which I could ic when I lived with Dervish and I didn&039;t need spells in the Demonata universe-if a spell was required there, Beranabus took care of it He wasn&039;t interested in training Kernel orus to bully and kill demons

I wish I&039;d dees can do a lot with a few subtle spells As a et Meera to teach me some siround

I worry about ? Where is he? Time moves differently in the other universe, usually faster or slower than here Years ht have passed for him, or onlyBeranabus taught o and find the that would take