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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] The body language s all wrong, for one thing. Tanaka stood and moved with a grace that suggested a panther more than a wolf; this guy is more hunched over, less certain on two feet. He s big, though must mass nearly as much as Charlie. Looks like he s wearing some kind of sleeveless vest and dark pants no shoes, of course. The rain is no more than a drizzle now, what native Seattlites don t even consider actual precipitation they just say the air s a little damp. Little beads of moisture sparkle in his black-and- gray fur, making it look like someone sprinkled him with industrial-strength fairy dust. I m carrying the Ruger, but if they rush me I m in trouble pires and thropes are scary fast, and my gun has zero ability to instill fear in this world. If they attack, I ll have to kill each and every one of them before they reach me. Not good. I sign back, Who the hell are you? You can call me Tair. He signs each letter of his name, then punctuates it with a sign that encapsulates the whole thing. What do you want? To warn you. About? He chuckles. It s a sound that s more familiar than it is menacing, but I ll be damned if I can remember where I ve heard it before. A mutual acquaintance Dr. Peter Adams. Why? Is he in danger? Maybe. Maybe he is the danger. That throws me. Dr. Pete is probably the most decent, ethical person I ve met since I came to this world. You ve got to be kidding. He s not the person you think he is, Jace. What do you know about him, really? Let s see. He s got a big family that loves him, he heals people for a living, he risked his own life to save mine That s not his family. I don t have to bother signing What? The look on my face does it for me. Do a little checking into the Adams family. You ll be surprised at what you come up with. Why have you been hanging around the clinic? Keeping an eye on the good doctor. Wouldn t want him to suddenly vanish without a trace. Threatening him is really not a good idea, I say, and suddenly the gun is in my hand. I know it won t impress any of them, but it makes me feel better. Wasn t threatening him. Was threatening you. He growls to underline the remark, a deep rumble that practically makes my bones vibrate. Oh. That s different. Go right ahead, everyone else does. Dr. Adams has a way of leaving town with unfinished business. That makes the people I work for very unhappy. Oh dear. Unhappy people, I hate those. They re scary. He chuckles again. You ve got it wrong again. Being scary is my job. He motions with his muzzle, and his group glides forward. Not a pack, though they re pires, not thropes. Interesting. There are a lot of thrope gangs the pack structure is a natural fit but that doesn t mean there aren t any pires doing the same thing. The Bloods out of LA are all pires, and their leaders trace their roots all the way back to Egypt which may explain their fetish for gold jewelry. Ankhs on thick yellow chains, rings with tiny gold pyramids instead of gemstones, bracelets embossed with hieroglyphs; more Tomb Raider than LA Raiders. But the style doesn t stop at the bling. Pires who want to do their gangbanging during daylight hours have to cover up just like all the other blood drinkers but instead of a nice face mask and hoodie from Abercrombie & Fitch, they wind strips of designer fabric around every exposed inch of flesh. Call themselves wrappers. Yeah, it s kind of ridiculous. But so are baggy pants that ride so low they show off your underwear, and the reason that trend started was purely practical, too it made it easier to hide a gun. The wrappers, for all their Invisible Man/King Tut vibe, have more than style on their minds. Other pires don t go masked at night, but these guys do; wrapping is an excuse to hide and sometimes swap their identities whenever they want. I won t bore you with a long description of every variation I see standing in front of me; let s just say it looks like someone set off a car bomb in the alleyway between a jewelry outlet and a bandage factory, and leave it at that. They don t carry guns, of course. But they re large and mean and undead, and that s all they really need. Yeah, real frightening, I say. You guys look like the remains of a bad ski trip. Don t you have a pyramid you should be guarding or something? Bitch thinks she s tough, one of them says. Must be tough, she sure ain t smart. Can t count, anyway, another says. Must be that shiny thing she holdin so tight. Got some major mojo goin on. That what she want us to think, anyways. I sigh. I ve had special bullets made since I got here, but I had to provide the gunpowder from my one box of ammo; I don t have a proper recipe for the stuff, and I hate wasting it educating morons like this. Yeah, yeah, it s my magical splatwand. I point it at you and you go splat. Wanna see? Tair spreads both his hands wide in an abrupt slicing motion. Enough. Tell me, Jace, how do Dr. Adams and your enforcer get along? Charlie? What s he got to do with this? He s a golem. I would have thought the doctor would show some . . . professional interest. That makes no sense at all. Dr. Pete s specialty is human beings, not golems not that lems have doctors, anyway. The closest thing they seem to have are repairmen. Human beings are only the doctor s hobby, you know; his true interests lie in humanoid animism. And he wasn t always that particular where and how he got to practice. My eyes narrow. I know what he s talking about now the Gray Market, the underground trade in illegal lem manufacture. Dr. Pete s not involved in anything like that. Maybe not now. But he was and the people he worked for aren t very happy with him. Sooner or later he s going to have settle accounts with them. The biggest wrapper in the group, a guy almost as wide as he is tall, slams a fist into his open palm suggestively. It d be more menacing if his thick fingers weren t bound in tartan fabric it s like watching a Scottish mummy warm up for sumo. C mon, then, y wee fat man! I ll make ye squeal like the pipes at sunup! What are you smiling at? Nothing, I mutter. Stupid brain. Most of the pires are standing very still, but one of them seems a little twitchy. He s skinny or maybe just seems that way because he s standing next to Mr. Sumo and favors strips of powder-blue suede wrapped around his bony frame. I mentally christen him Anorexic Vampire Elvis Mummy, and notice that he s fingering a pire crucifix on a cord around his neck. Crosses aren t much use against vampires in this world. Maybe it s because the supernatural races outnumber humans a hundred to one, maybe it s because the Catholic Church is now dominated by werewolves; whatever the reason, waving a cross in a pire s face won t do much more than annoy him. They even have their own version, what they call the Blood Cross. It s a crucifix with two vertical bars [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |