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Chapter Four

About five minutes after I left Tho the rearview nized the quiet tension that had begun to flow throughme that I&039;d picked up a tail

Granted, it was only an intuition, but hey Wizard, over here My instincts had earned enough credibility to make me pay attention to theme, it wasn&039;t necessarily connected to the current situation with Morgan I ht? But I hadn&039;t survived a ton of ugly furballs by being thick all of the time Generally, maybe, but not all the time, and I&039;d be an idiot to assuan

I took a few turns purely for fun, but I couldn&039;t spot any vehicles following ood surveillance teaet all but invisibly, especially at night, when every car on the road looked pretty hts Just because I couldn&039;t see them didn&039;t mean that they weren&039;t there

The hairs on the back of hter with each passing streetlight

What if ination proed horrors, soaring silently on batlike wings just above the level of the a to dive down upon the Blue Beetle and tear it into strips of sheet metal The streets were busy, as they almost alere in this part of town It was one hell of a public location for a hit, but that didn&039;t automatically preclude the possibility It had happened to ht I couldn&039;t go back to my apartment until I was sure that I had shaken the tail To do that, I&039;d have to spot hih the next two days without taking soet started

I drew in a deep breath, focused hts, and blinked slowly, once When I openedwith theht, his ability to perceive the world around hi forces, is a dangerous gift Whether it&039;s called spirit vision, or inner sight, or the Third Eye, it lets you perceive things you&039;d otherwise never be able to interact with It shows you the world the way it really is, ic The Sight can show you beauty that would els weep humble tears, and terrors that the Black-Goat-with-a-Thousand-Young wouldn&039;t dare use for its kids&039; bedtiood, the bad, the insanity-inducing-it sticks with you forever You can&039;t ever forget it, and time doesn&039;t blur the memories It&039;s yours Perht willy-nilly wind up bonkers

My Third Eye showed ht I had been teleported to Vegas Energy ran through the streets, the buildings, the people, appearing to ht that ran this way and that, plunging into solid objects and out the other side without interruption The energies coursing through the grand old buildings had a solid and un stability about them, as did the city streets-but the rest of it, the randoht million people, was completely unplanned and coursed everywhere in frenetic, haphazard, garish color

Clouds of e caht rolled slowly beneath blazing, dancing ge to surfaces, staining theile bubbles of dreams floated blissfully toward kaleidoscope stars

Holy crap I could barely see the lines on the road through all of that

I checked overeach occupant of the cars behind me clearly, as brilliantly lit shapes of white that skittered with other colors that changed with thoughts, moods, and personalities If I&039;d been closer to them, I&039;d have been able to see h they would be subject to h, I could tell that they were all mortals

That was a relief, in soh to be one of the Wardens If whoever was pursuing me was a norht up to Morgan yet

I checked up above ine the stench of rottenof a corpse filled with ine the scent of stale body odoracross a chalkboard, the taste of rotten ine that your eyes can experience those things, all at once, in excruciating detail

That&039;s what I saw: a stohthouse beacon upon one of the buildings above uelyto peer through raage I couldn&039;t get any details through the haze of absolute wrongness that surrounded it as it bounded fro h to keep pace with me

Someone screamed, and I di that made it shriek in protest It jounced hard up and doham I&039;d drifted into the curb I felt the front wheels shi wheel, and I slaht to closeI knew, car horns were blaring an i in the driver&039;s seat, gripping the wheel untilfro-unless I&039;d started foa at the mouth, which, I reflected, was a distinct possibility

Stars and stones What on God&039;s green earth was that thing?

Even brushing against the subject inback to me in all its hideous terror I flinched and squeezedwheel I could feel htwas the sa down, I couldn&039;t afford to let the cops take me into custody for a DWI, but that&039;s exactly ould happen if I didn&039;t start driving again, assu I didn&039;t actually wreck the car first I took a deep breath and willed myself not to think of the apparition-

I saw it again

When I caue, and my throat felt raw I shook even harder

There was no way I could drive Not like this One stray thought and I could get somebody killed in a collision But I couldn&039;t remain there, either

I pulled the Beetle up onto the sidewalk, where it would be out of the street at least Then I got out of the car and started walking away The city would tow me in about three point five et arrested

I stu that my pursuer, the apparition, wasn&039;t-

When I looked up again, I was curled into a ball on the ground,wide around lances I felt so weak that I wasn&039;t sure I could stand

I needed help

I looked up at the street signs on the nearest corner and stared at theeled brain finally worked out where I was standing

I rose, forced to lean on ht, and hobbled forward as quickly as I could I started calculating pri on the process as intently as I would any spell

"One," I h clenched teeth "Two Three Five Seven Eleven Thirteen"

And I staggered through the night, literally too terrified to think about whatafter me

Chapter Five

By the time I&039;d reached twenty-two hundred and thirty-nine, I&039;d arrived at Billy and Georgia&039;s place

Life had changed for the young olves since Billy had graduated and started pulling in serious ineer, but they hadn&039;t ia was still in school, learning so for a house Good thing for me I wouldn&039;t have been able to walk to the suburbs

Georgia answered the door She was a tall wo shorts, she looked smarter than she did pretty

"My God," she said, when she saw ia," I said "Twenty-two hundred and uh Forty-three I need a dark, quiet room"

She blinked at me "What?"

"Twenty-two hundred and fifty-one," I responded, seriously "And send up the wolf-signal You want the gang here Twenty-two hundred and, uh sixty seven"

She stepped back fro the door open forabout?"

I came inside "Twenty-two hundred and sixty not divisible by three, sixty-nine I need a dark roo after you?" Georgia said

Even with the help of Eratosthenes, when Georgia asked the question and e of that thing frohts, and it drove me to my knees and would have sent ht uy, maybe five six, but he had the upper body of a professional wrestler and moved with the speed and precision of a predator

"Dark roo Hurry"

"Do it," Georgia said, her voice low and urgent She shut the door and locked it, then slammed down a heavy wooden beam the size of a picnic table&039;s bench that they had installed themselves "Get him into our room I&039;ll make the calls"

"Got it," Billy said He pickedas he did He carried me down the hall and into a dark bedroom He laid me down on a bed, then crossed to the -and pulled and locked a heavy steel security curtain over it, evidently another custoia had installed

"What do you need, Harry?" Billy asked

"Dark Quiet Explain it later"

He put a hand on ht" Then he padded out of the room and shut the door

It left hts-which is where I needed to be

"Come on, Harry," I muttered to ht about the thing I&039;d Seen

It hurt But when I caain

Yes, I&039;d Seen so horrible Yes, it was a hideous terror But I&039;d Seen other things, too

I called up those memories, too, all of the uponin ic I&039;d Seen the true selves of ood and bad, Seen people kill-and die I&039;d Seen the Queens of Faerie as they prepared for battle, drawing all their awful power around the to roll over for onefrom one rooftop to another

"Come on, punk," I snarled at the memory "Next to those others, you&039;re a bad yearbook picture"

And I hitI had ever Seen-and as I did, I focused on what I had bloody well done about it I res I&039;d battled and destroyed I rehtates I&039;d kicked down I remembered the faces of prisoners I&039;d freed, and the funerals of those I&039;d been too late to save I rehter, the joy of loved ones reunited, the tears of the lost and bereaved

There are bad things in the world There&039;s no getting away fro can be done about them You can&039;t abandon life just because it&039;s scary, and just because so hurt like hell-but pain wasn&039;t anything special or new I&039;d lived with it before, and would do it again It wasn&039;t the first thing I&039;d Seen, and it wouldn&039;t be the last

I was not going to roll over and die

Sledgehammers of perfect memory pounded me down into blackness

When I pulled s folded Indian-style My pal was slow and rhythht My head pounded painfully, but not cripplingly so

I looked up and around the rooh forunder the door I could see ht and relaxed I&039;d takena black T-shirt that read "PRE-FECTIONIST" in small white letters, backward in the mirror A thin, dark runnel of blood had strea on my upper lip I could taste blood in ue earlier

I thought of eslowly and steadily

That was the upside of being hu Certainly, I&039;d never be able to get rid of s I&039;d Seen-so if the et used to seeing that kind of horror, enough to see it and yet re Better an had

I shivered again, and not because of any memory It was because I knehat it could s like that It changed you Maybe not all at once Maybe it didn&039;t turn you into a monster But I&039;d been scarred and I knew it

Howlike this need to happen before I started bendingfor a wizard Where would I be after decades or centuries of refusing to look away?

Ask Morgan

I got up and went into the bathroohts, and winced as they raked at my eyes I washed the blood from my face, and cleaned the sink of it carefully In my business, you don&039;t leave your blood where anyone can find it

Then I put my coat back on and left the bedroo room Billy was at thethat led out to the tiny balcony Georgia was on the phone

"I&039; out here," Billy said "Is he sure?"

Georgia murmured into the phone "Yes He&039;s sure it circled this way It should be in sight from where you are"

"It isn&039;t," Billy said He turned his head over his shoulder and said, "Harry Are you all right?"

"I&039;ll survive," I said, and paced over to the"It followed &039;s outside," Billy said "So we&039;ve never run into before It&039;s been playing hide-and-seek with Kirby and Andi for an hour They can&039;t catch it or get a good look at it"

I gave Billy a sharp look There weren&039;ttogether Wolves are just too da Chicago al as I had They kne to handle themselves-and in the past couple ofspells against the olves They&039;d hunted her down in moments, every time

"So whatever&039;s out there, it isn&039;t human," I said "Not if it can stay ahead of Kirby and Andi" I crossed to theand stared out with Billy "And it can veil itself froht"

"What is it?" Billy asked quietly

"I don&039;t know," I said "But it&039;s real bad" I glanced back at Georgia "How long was I down?"

She checked her watch "Eighty-two minutes"

I nodded "It&039;s had plenty of time to try to come in, if that&039;s what it wanted" I felt a nauseated little quiver in ht s with me"

"What?" Billy said

"It&039;s dancing around in front of us out there, under a veil It&039;s daring ht so that I&039;ll be able to spot it"

Froh-pitched, loud enough tolike it before The hair stood up on the back of my neck, a purely instinctive reaction My instincts had been tracking this thing well, so far, so I trusted the-that cry was a statement The hunt was on

An instant later, every light in sight blew out in a shower of sparks, and darkness sed several city blocks

"Tell Andi and Kirby to get back here to the apartrabbed ainst the wall by the door "Billy, you&039;re with ia said, confused

"Now!" I snapped, flinging the bar off the door

By the time I&039;d reached the bottom of the stairs, there was the sound of a heavy, controlled impact, and a ith hair the same dark brown as Billy&039;s hit the floor next to me It was an enormous beast, easily as heavy as Mouse, but taller and leaner-a wolf the world has rarely seen between here and the last ice age I slammed open the door and let Billy out ahead of me He bounded over a parked car-and I thwise-and shot toward the buildings at the back of the complex

Billy had been in contact with Andi and Kirby, and knew their approximate positions I followed hi up my will I wasn&039;t sure as out here, but I wanted to be ready for it

Kirby appeared fro He hurried along with a cell phone pressed to his ear, a lanky, dark-haired young y T-shirt The active phone painted half his face like a ht I checked the southern corner of the building at once, and saw a dark, furry shape trotting around the corner-Andi, like Billy, in her wolf form

Wait a minute

If the whatever-it-was had taken out the local lights, how in the hell had Kirby&039;s cell phone survived the hex? Magic and technology don&039;t get along so well, and the more complex electronic devices tended to fall apart uys in red shirts on old Star Trek: as soon as soo

If the creature, whatever it was, had blown out the lights, it would have gotten the phone, too Unless it hadn&039;t wanted to take the phone out

Kirby was the only clearly lit object in sight-an ideal target

When the attack came, it came fast

There was a ripple in the air, as soht cast by Kirby&039;s phone There was an explosive snarl, and the phone went flying, leaving Kirby hidden in shadow

Billy flung himself forward, even as I ripped the silver pentacle a forth silver-blue wizard light with ht flooded the area between the cos

Kirby was on his back, in the center of a splatter of black that could only be blood Billy was standing crouched over hied forward, teeth ripping, and a distortion of the air in front of hi as if I was running through hip-deep peanut butter I got the i Billy&039;s attack, a raw flicker of vision like so seen out of the very corner of the eye

Then Billy was on his back, slashing with canine claws, ripping savagely with his teeth, while so him down

Andi, a red-furred wolf that was sh the air and tore at the back of the attacker

It screaain, the sound deeper-chested than before, more resonant The creature whirled on Andi, too swiftly to be believed, and a li into a brick wall She hit with a yipping cry of pain and a hideous snapping sound

I raiseddown into the wooden tool, and shouted, "Forzare!"

My will unspooled into a lance of invisible energy and slammed into the creature I&039;ve flipped over cars with blasts of force like that, but the thing barely rocked back, slapping at the air with its foreliainst it in a shower of reddish sparks