“I don’t think a present and some Get Well Soon balloons are going to do the trick.” I snorted. “He’s going to be pissed. I cut off his damn hand. Only Darth Vader gets away with shit like that.”
The basement was the same as it was during my last visit, a virtual city of crates and forgotten exhibits. Robin led us through it as easily as he had before, only this time I heard several cries from different directions. The croak of dried vocal cords. There was also the sound of claws tearing at the wood of crates. Those weren’t rats. Great. Hank had gone from homicidal maniac to crazy cat lady. I wasn’t sure which was worse. At least mummified cats didn’t piss. All I smelled was the dust of years and years.
When we finally came across Wahanket’s lair, Robin had gotten bored and was now telling us Brutus hadn’t even been at the forum when Julius Caesar was killed. “A vicious rumor. And he had it all over Octavian, let me tell you. Hung like Pegasus, he was.” It was enough to make you wish for an attack of mummified cats after all.
“You.”
It was a death rattle from beneath the sand. It was Wahanket, and he sounded every bit as pissed as I expected.
“You. Mutilator. Maimer. Auphe.”
Robin’s informants really did know their shit. He knew I was Auphe. And if he knew that . . . “Then you know I came by the maiming hobby honestly,” I said coldly and without remorse. I might hate the Auphe, but I wasn’t above using their reputation if I had to, and why not? Most believed it anyway. “And it’s not like you didn’t deserve it, you withered son of a bitch.” I had my gun, but it was holstered. If I couldn’t use explosive rounds, I had something that would be more effective than the Glock. I held a sword, short and thicker than Niko’s katana, and perfectly capable of taking more than a hand off.
“Why not come out, Wahanket? And we can discuss things without any mutilation.” Niko said. “Perhaps,” he added matter-of-factly.
There was a moment of stillness, then Wahanket stepped into the dim light. The first thing I noticed was he had a new hand. Sort of. It was scaled with wickedly curved black claws. I had a feeling a stuffed Komodo dragon down here somewhere was missing a piece. The rest of him was the same. Blackened flesh, resin-soaked bandages, a pit of a nose, and empty eye sockets that held a faint yellow glow. He wasn’t slow like the mummies in the old black-and-white movies. He was quick when he wanted to be, with the scuttle of a cockroach. A very fast, murderous cockroach—something you definitely didn’t want living under your sink.
Robin raised eyebrows at the “hand,” but said smoothly, “See? That’s not bad at all. Caliban did you a favor. It’s very . . . ah . . . fashionable. Useful as well. A can opener has nothing on you, I’m sure.”
Dark brown teeth clicked as he moved closer. I could see a rib bone sticking through cracked flesh, and something on the claws of the dragon hand . . . brown, crusted—I had no problem figuring out what it was. Maybe we should ask Sangrida if any of her security guards had gone missing.
“What do you seek here?” he hissed with a curled scrap of leathery tongue. “What do you think I would possibly give unto you?”
Like that was fair. Yeah, sure, I had blown off his hand; there was that. But he had started it. Had tried to kill me with a malicious glee, and if you think a mummy is bad, a mummy with a gun is much worse. Luckily, he had lost that along with the hand and it seemed he hadn’t gotten a replacement yet.
“Information per usual,” Robin replied, rocking back on his heels and smothering a yawn. It could’ve been a hangover remnant or his deal-making bullshit extraordinaire. “Remember the good old days, Hank, before you tried to kill us? VCRs, DVD players—who showed you how to connect to the Internet? To the really good porn? At the very least, you owe me, if not them. You are a scholar—when not on a killing rampage. I made life down here bearable for you. And I doubt you can find a replacement for me.” He cocked his head toward a gaunt, furless cat that had clawed its way, slithering like a snake, up to the top of a nearby crate. The same yellow light that dwelled in Wahanket’s eye hollows were in its as well. “Mummifying piss pots for entertainment is going to get old after a while.”
“Or if you don’t want to play ball, asshole, we can start chopping off other parts until you have to stitch yourself together like a goddamn quilt.” I patted the sword against my knee suggestively.
Niko sighed, “Your lack of diplomatic skills are appalling.” He then said to Wahanket, “The sooner you tell us what we want, the sooner we’ll leave you in peace.” He drew his own blade, only more diplomatically, naturally. “And I won’t dismember you and toss the pieces in the river for trying to kill my brother. A reasonable option, don’t you think?”
I really didn’t see how that was any different than what I said, minus my trademark colorful language, but apparently the “in peace” worked. That or the fact that if he hadn’t been a match for me, he wasn’t going to be one for all three of us. Plus, Wahanket seemed to be as tired of looking at us as we were of him. Taking his hand might’ve taken some of the spirit out of him, but I doubted it. The son of a bitch was probably just biding his time. “Very well. Ask and begone.”
Niko described Seamus’s problem, our failure to do much about that problem, and the man he’d tangled with. “He was utterly average. Purposely so, I believe, except for the scar behind his ear. An inch in size, half-moon shape, it was so regular and even that I believe it was self-inflicted.”
“Or inflicted by someone else,” the mummy grunted, curling his one set of claws in demonstration. “I believe I know of what you seek.”
Considering we’d had next to nothing to go on, I was surprised he knew so quickly of what it might be. . . . A remote possibility, he said, the rumor of two-thousand-plus years, but it could be what we’d come across. “I’ve heard of men with this scar before. There is an order called the Vigil. Human. They have existed since several hundred years B.C. Barely.” He dismissed the age with the superiority of a creature that had walked the earth when the first pyramid was built. “I have heard they follow the inhuman, unhuman, the monsters among the world. They seem to have no other desire than to watch on occasion, or so it seems. As to why they do this thing . . .” The hardened upper lip cracked as it revealed the blackened maw in a sneer. “Bring one to me and I shall make him speak the truth.” The claws swiped the air in a decisive, eviscerating curl. “I could do with a companion. One would be amazed at how removing internal organs leads to the most interesting of conversations. Information does flow.” The flesh-encased skull turned toward me, as what passed for his eyes flared with a harsh light. “Perhaps you will be on my table one day. My knife in you, cutting you away. Your liver, stomach, intestines. I will save your heart for last to see how long I can coax it to beat. Perhaps minutes, perhaps an hour. Bound to an agony so total and savage that it will strip you of sanity itself.”
Oh, sure.
Now, who wouldn’t love that?
“Right,” I drawled. “I’ll call and make an appointment for that. Be sure to wait by the phone.”
That was all we got out of Wahanket, and a little more than I wanted to know, because I didn’t have any doubt one day he’d try to make good on his threat.
Get in line.
As we made our way out at about the halfway point, I heard a skittering behind. I didn’t smell anything, but I heard it. And if I heard it, then Niko and Robin had probably heard it before me. “What now?” I asked, starting to turn.
Niko shook his head and gave a dismissive shrug. “Just one of the cats.”
Oh, sure. Just one of the undead mummified cats. No big deal. I grimaced as I heard the croaking cry. That Wahanket was one sick bastard. As we walked on, the croaking got closer until finally Robin jerked and cursed in the gloom between the dim bulbs, “Bast’s bountiful breasts,” and shook his leg. That skinny, zombie-gray, wrinkly fleshed cat from Wahanket’s lair had leapt, hooked its claws into Goodfellow’s pants, and it wasn’t letting go. Flickering jack-o’-lantern eyes looked upward and it croaked again.