Stagger gaped at him. He looked around, at McCain, at Lucius, who was sitting up unsteadily. "What do you think happens?"
"Hold on to her," Doc said, "take care of her," and he went to see to Mr. Patrise.
Patrise's temperature was normal, his pulse racing, his face back to its usual unhealthy color. He seemed to be recovering, just utterly exhausted. Carmen's face was wet with tears, and Doc could see the bruises developing on her cheeks and forearms where Patrise, in the grip of the tarantelle, had struck her.
Mr. Patrise said, "Not… our… Kitsune."
"No, sir."
"Someone should call Chloe," Carmen said, "and tell her Jolie-Marie isn't missing anymore."
"Whisper," Patrise said. "Can we… find him?"
Stagger Lee had his arms around the dazed Jolie-Marie, a champagne bottle still clenched in each fist. "With both doubles alive, it'll be easy," he said. "But he'll know that."
"Then… we must be quick."
"Pavel," McCain said, "get my gear."
"I'll be right there," Doc said, finishing the dressing on Mr. Patrise's gashed wrist.
Mr. Patrise turned his head, looking Doc directly in the face. They were both still for a second, locked like that, and the room quieted around them, but nothing was said.
Doc stood up. "Let's go."
Patrise said, "Stagger… we'll want the wine. Don't drop it."
3o where are we going?" Doc said to McCain, who was driving one of the big cars. "Back to Hell?"
McCain gave a short laugh. "Not quite so far down this time." He was wearing a leather jacket, bulky with equipment hung beneath it; on the seat between him and Doc was a black steel crossbow with a telescopic sight. There was going to be no question of powder missing fire.
"The next one on the right," Stagger said from the back of the car.
McCain pulled up in front of a ruined office building, tarnished metal and big smashed windows. There was a doorway onto the littered sidewalk, or at least a dark, square opening. From somewhere beyond, there was faint yellow light, pale as piss on the ice and broken glass. "What else are you getting?"
"Could be a few people close together, but there's no crowd."
Doc said, "Could he be alone with her?"
"Depends on what he wants to show his audience," McCain said, with no humor at all. "Like Stagger said: the Fox is alive, so he knows we're on to that, knows we can find him. So he must want to be found. That brings us to the hard part. Who goes in?"
"What do you mean?"
"The elf's crazy, but he's not so crazy not to know the spot he's in. He must want some kind of a deal."
Doc said, "What are the choices?"
"If I go in, I'm going to kill him before I do anything else. You understand that? Whisper goes down, and then we pick up whatever pieces are left." He turned to look at Doc. "You don't look like you like that."
"Okay, that's what happens if you go."
McCain said, "If he sees Stagger first, they'll probably witch it out. You know I'm not Touched, but I know you've gotta concentrate-and I know what I'd do if I had a hostage and I wanted to mess up somebody's concentration."
"Down to me, then." Doc opened the car door. McCain's hand clamped on his arm.
"Don't just walk out on me," he said. "Tell me to wait."
"Line-"
"Just say it."
"I'm going in first," Doc said carefully. "If the Fox doesn't walk out alive, then Whisper doesn't either. Right?"
"Yes, sir." McCain reached down, held out one of his automatics, grip first. "Katie said you did some shooting."
Doc picked up his black bag. "I'll play these."
McCain put the gun away. "You're gonna need more than luck," he said, his voice tight, "but luck anyway."
Doc went through the doorway. The source of the light was a stairway, maybe a hundred feet straight ahead through a glass-and-metal corridor; the stairs curved to the left and down, out of sight.
There was no place else to go.
The stairs ended in a tunnel, less than twenty feet wide, with an arched ceiling. McCain had explained that it was an old freight railroad, built forty feet under the streets to make downtown deliveries. Doc could see grooves on the puddled floor, and streaks of rusty rail. The light came from naked, dim bulbs dangling at twenty-foot intervals along the top of the arch. Cracks in the walls had grown spectacular icicles that twinkled in Doc's flashlight beam as he passed.
The tunnel curved around to the right. Reddish light shone on the wet floor, from somewhere still out of view. Doc got as close to the wall as he could and went on.
The red light came from a side door, framed in old brick. A derelict office desk and a couple of broken crates were to one side. Just beyond the door, the tunnel was blocked by a wooden wall- made of odd pieces of lumber nailed together, but not just piled debris: deliberately made and solid-looking.
The red light shifted, moved from side to side. Doc went to the door.
He was looking down a hallway some twenty feet long. At the far end was the shifting red light.
Hell again after all, Doc thought.
Doc waited a moment. His chest hurt. The tension, the damp and the cold, and the unsteady light were starting to make him sick, and if he waited any longer they surely would. He went down the hall.
A red bulb swung from a cord, throwing shadows back and forth. It did not seem to be an electric bulb, or an oil lamp, just a glass ball full of bloody light.
Kitsune stood just behind the light, her feet on a wooden stool, her arms outstretched. Her hair was brushed down straight, her head at a slight angle. She was wrapped in strips of gauze, spotted with what looked like bloodstains. As the light moved, it flashed on brass wires that came down from darkness overhead. They were twisted into loops around her neck and wrists.
There was a loud heavy flapping, and Whisper Who Dares appeared from the darkness. Instead of the Trueblood-sorcerer bones and charms Doc had seen in the ruined mall, he wore a rather plain black double-breasted suit, dark against darkness so that his face and hands seemed to float. His shining eyes were narrowed, and his face was shadowed below the winglike cheekbones. There was a single heavy silver ring, with a dull black stone, on his right hand.
"Put down your tools and conjures," he said. "Mischiefs abound in the levers of man."
Doc set his bag on the floor.
"You," Whisper said softly, "you are the one who carried death to the gates. And beat upon them. And now you come here, alone. Are you so terrible, then, in your courage? Or so steadfast in your vengeance?"
"All I want is her," Doc said. "After that-"
"You want her?" Whisper laughed, a bubbling hysteria that might have been funny in any kind of decent world. "Was the other a disappointment?"
"After that I don't care about you."
Whisper paused. His face twisted into a marble gargoyle's.
"This is no way to bargain! This of the pair is a trader, and the other goes for a price: what will either of them say to you, if you buy at the first offering?" He reached over to Kitsune. His foot bumped the stool, which wobbled. "Ah, cares, cares. Mortals are blind to beauty, but you appreciate the throat. So delicate, so vulnerable, so tight with wind and blood and nerve. Now. Here." He stood behind her, put his hands on her waist, slid them up to her breasts. "Oh, that's good," he said, and Kitsune's mouth mimed the words. He shook her. She groaned. "Yes, Whisper, again, please."
"Stop it!"
Whisper peeked from around the Fox's body. "Why? She can't stop you. "
Doc thought furiously. There was no useful threat here. Whisper certainly had no shame or guilt to play on. If McCain was right, there was a bargain still to be struck; but there was nothing to bargain with.
There was only nothing.
Doc said, "Because I'm not interested."
"In what? This body? No?" Whisper took a step aside, arm out, showing the woman off like a car salesman praising a $200 beater. "Not even in two such compact and elegant bodies? Joined to do whatever-"