"Then, it's not ghouls," Sam said. "Not their pattern," O'Connor confirmed. "They might have taken the meat, but if they were organ eaters, they would have taken the rest as well."
"The kills were physical, but there is residual spell energy," Estios said.
"It isn't random violence," Hart said.
"Did you seriously think for a minute that it was?"
Estios asked sneeringly.
Sam didn't like it when Estios talked to Hart that way. His anger leaked heat into his voice. "Why couldn't it be? There are senseless killings every day. The sprawls are full of crazies and people who would kill for any one of a thousand reasons, including the thrill. Some of them even use magic."
"Why, then?" Hart asked Estios as if Sam had never spoken.
"Isn't it obvious?" Estios replied. "It's a ritual killing."
"The Hidden Circle?" Sam didn't really want an affirmative answer.
"Insufficient data." Hart's brow furrowed as she thought, "The timing of the Bone Boy spree is suggestive. Our having lost Glover even more so. If he had help, there would have been more than enough time for this atrocity."
"There was help. Marks in the blood show at least a half dozen individuals," O'Connor said.
Sam was distracted from the continuing evaluation of the evidence by the receiver he wore tucked in his ear. Its insistent tone told him that Willie had spotted somebody. The coding of the tone said police.
"Badges coming," he told the others nervously.
"We'd better get out of here.
Estios cast a spell to clean their shoes and garments as they left the massacre room. They would leave no tracks of blood. It was only a short walk to a tube station, where they buried their trail in the crush of humanity.
Eyes of molten gold stripped away her soul. Janice was as she had been, a human woman. She was weak, powerless. She could not lie to those eyes. They knew when she lied.
The man with the golden eyes had been asking her questions. It seemed as if her whole existence had been a cycle of questions and answers. He asked and she answered, but somehow her answers didn't satisfy him. The truth, her father had said, would set her free. She had told the truth and remained shackled.
''What is your importance to them?'' the man asked.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she replied.
"Denial will not save you," he said sternly.
Pain.
Her muscles spasmed as the fiery agony shot through her. What had she done to deserve this? She had told the truth. Why wasn't she free?
"Tell me."
"I don't know!"
Tears streamed down her face. He touched her shoulder and she flinched. His touch was a spider crawling along her neck and onto her face. She tried to flinch away, but her limbs would not obey her. Something held her in place. She looked down to see dark bands encircling her wrists and ankles. Had the restraints been mere iron, she would had struggled to break them, but her bonds were hard chitinous bands, alien things from which there was no escape.
"Do not resist."
Fear seized her. No longer able to endure the horror at his touch, she screamed. Despite the hopelessness, she threw her head from side to side and wrenched at the restraints. She wanted to be free. She had to be satisfied with dislodging the hand which caressed her faff
"Remarkable."
The next words were distant, lacking in the obscene clarity of the previous ones. It was as if someone else spoke in a language that she did not understand.
"It is as you say."
More bodiless voices murmured to the man and he spoke back. His comments and questions melded with the susurrus of the distant voices until at last he said, "She shall at least be useful."
A new face rose before her eyes. It was masked and hooded, swathed in cloth of pale green. Dark eyes regarded her without emotion. She might have been a bench. An impossible mouth opened in the masked face, its teeth a glittering array of hypodermic needles. The mouth drew nearer and she screamed again. And again. Unable to move, unable to even turn her head, she stared in deadly fascination as the obscene visage drew closer. Closer. The violator's lips touched hers and her mouth went numb.
Her vision fogged and star-shot darkness swirled around her. She felt detached as the violator's face lifted from hers. The needles were gone. There were only dark, lustrous, slightly slanted eyes behind the green mask. Then the mask melted away and she beheld the face of Hugh Glass. His fine elven features were as beautiful as ever.
How had he come to be here? He had rescued her from Yomi, promising to take her to safety. Had he come to take her away again? But she had been an ork when she had met Hugh. Now she was human. She reached out, longing to convince herself that he was real. She so desperately wanted the nightmare with the golden-eyed man to be over that she was happy to see even Hugh. She looked at the hand she was lifting to touch his face. It was furred and taloned. She wasn't human anymore. She would never be human again.
Hugh smiled at her. His lips parted as his grin grew, and the perfect white teeth that she remembered were not there. In their place was a writhing mass of corruption. He laughed as she screamed.
She clawed at him, feeling grim satisfaction as she felt flesh tear under her talons. Then her arm was restrained again with a harsh, hot pressure around her wrist. But she smelled blood. It was good. It was real.
She awoke.
Her wrist was held by Dan's strong hand. Bright Wood welled from scratches in the dark skin of his face, but his expression was not one of anger. His eyes were full of concern; for her, she realized. As soon as he understood that she was fully awake, he released his grip. She started to shake and he embraced her, murmuring soft reassurances.
In her dream, she had seen him as Hugh and struck out. But he was not Hugh. He would never be Hugh. Hugh would have struck her back. Dan was always gentle with her, a kind spirit in a bestial body, the exact opposite of the handsome Hugh.
Teary-eyed, she examined the wound she had caused. It was already healing. She sniffed and gave him a weak smile.
"It's all right," he said.
And it was. She felt safe, secure. Shiroi's love was real, unlike the false promises of Hugh. If she had harbored any remaining doubts, his patient, caring reaction to her violence banished them. Shiroi's love was no sham, no ploy to use her for his purposes. She knew Shiroi loved her for herself. How could she not love him back?
The man of Light confronted Sam again, blazing with the intensity of the sun. Sam could not look at him, could not stand before him. The heat scorched Sam's skin, driving him to retreat. Sam's earliest manifestation of shamanic power had been a spontaneous protection from fire, but this was a fire from which he was not safe. He howled in frustration, a frighteningly animal sound.
The Man of Light laughed.
Sam fled the laughter all the way to wakefulness. The room in which he had been sleeping was cold, but the sheets were soaked with sweat. Seeking comfort, he reached out for Hart and found she was gone. He was alone in the twilight gloom.
Through the open door he could hear the tapping of ringers on a keyboard in the next room. The rhythm wasn't Dodger's; there were odd patterns in the tapping, so it must be Willie rigging. There were no voices. Most likely, the technomancer was alone. Sam wondered where Hart had gone.
Sam threw back the clammy sheets and got out of bed. He was shaking, and he knew that it was from more than a chill in the room. Every time he even thought about the Man of Light, he felt the terror rise.
He didn't know where the Man had come from. It seemed to Sam that He hadn't always been there, blocking the way to the shamanic planes. But Sam wasn't sure. Sam had never been comfortable with the idea of being a shaman. Perhaps the Man of Light was only a manifestation of his own fears. The Man might simply be a symbolic representation of his own reluctance to practice the shamanic powers.