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 his skin, driving him to retreat. Sam’s earliest manifestation of shamanic power had been a spontaneous protection from fire, but this was an inferno he was not safe from. He howled in frustration, a frighteningly animal sound.
The Man of Light laughed.
Sam fled the laughter all the way to wakefulness. The room he had been sleeping in 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 fingers 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 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 he 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.
The water from the sink didn’t flow very quickly. His fingers were numb from its frigid touch before he had gathered enough to splash into his face. The shock was bracing and cleared his head a bit. He ran his damp hands through his hair and beard, smoothing them into place. Trying to put his night fears behind him, he dressed.
“Hoi, Twist,” Willie greeted him as he entered the room where the dwarf woman was engaged with her hardware. “Kaf on the plate.”
“Thanks,” he mumbled. He got some juice out of the refrigerator. “Working?”
“Just testing my eyes and ears.”
“Hart say where she was going?”
“Neg.”
“How about when she’d be back?”
“Neg.”
Great.
“Null the glum, chummer Twist. Let me give you a little something for your other set of brains. Stayed around after you meatfeet left the squat with the bods and watched the badges. They didn’t spend a lot of time, but they did mess up the scene and didn’t take any evidence. In fact, it looked to me like they were deliberately destroying some. So I got suspicious and followed them. They met with Inspector Burnside. He didn’t seem very surprised by their report, and that got me really suspicious.” She waited for Sam’s reaction, and shrugged when he had none. “That didn’t add, Twist. Burnside’s a copper’s cop, straight as they come. The whole shadow world knows he’s a hard-nosed, real believer in justice that don’t bend the law. But those jokers reporting to him had done just that. And he just listened. I tell ya, Twist, it don’t add.”
“Maybe he’s changed.”
“Burnside’s immutable.”
“Maybe somebody’s blackmailing him.”
“Possible, but unlikely. Even if he’d done something wrong that your somebody could hold over his head, Burnside would more than likely bring them up on charges, even if he took a fall himself.”
“I wish we knew more. Dodger could deck into his files, but he’s not here. I don’t suppose you could do it, Willie.”
“Why don’t you do it yourself? You’ve got a jack.”
“I don’t deck anymore.”
Willie gave him a look that told him she thought his mind was short-circuited. In her world, nobody ever gave it up until they died or brain-fried. “I suppose I could, since your elf buddy is still busy. If you’ve got access to a good enough deck. No guarantees, though. It’s not my line. A rig may look like a deck, but it’s completely different where it counts.”
“I understand. I’ll see what I can do.”
It took Sam less than an hour to make a deal with a fixer he had met through Hart. The negotiation wasn’t easy, and Sam came away owing more than he cared. He also came away with the cyberdeck he needed.
A few hours later, Willie jacked out and said, “Don’t that beat it.”
“What?”
“Burnside is the officer in charge of the Bone Boy Murders investigation. Has been since the third batch of skeletons turned up. Direct transfer from on high.”
“Who?”
“Been taking a course in interrogatives, Twist?” Willie’s laugh would have been a giggle if it had been higher pitched. “Well, there are the usual official orders, but they’re not quite right. Wrong incept codes. It took a little doing, but I found a trail that leads right on up to the Ministry of the Interior.”
“The government’s involved.” Rogue druids, megalomaniac corporates, and fanatical aristocrats weren’t enough.
“Part of it, anyway.” Willie positioned the soles of her boots against the edge of the table and rocked her chair back. “What now, Twist?”
“Let’s start with the police. Check Burnside’s duty roster and compare it with that of the two officers you followed last night. See where they coincide. We’ll want to know how wide the conspiracy is. And see if there are any shifts from a regular schedule. Back check it, too.”
Willie grumbled, but she went back to work.
When she jacked out again, Sam said, “I’ll bet you came up with a correlation between sudden duty for Burnside and his friends and the dates and times of Bone Boy hits. Or at least a correspondence with the discovery of the bodies.”
“So why did I have to do all this work?”
“I was just guessing. We can’t afford to guess.”
“Yeah, well. Did you guess there’s a pattern to the Bone Boy killings?”
“What kind of pattern?”
“A nasty one. There’s a few breaks in the first set, but it’s pretty clear, anyway. The second set confirms it.”
“Confirms what, Willie?”
“The pattern. The number of bodies goes one on the first night, two the next time, three after that, and so on until there are seven victims. Then it starts again.”
“Seven? Not nine?”
“Affirm.”
“There were nine druids in the Circle.”
“And two of them croaked on the Solstice.”
“They might have restored their number. That would be the smart thing for a magical circle to do. Maybe the Bone Boy killers aren’t the Circle.”
“Whoever’s doing the killing, they’re methodical. Seven days between the first and second killings. Six between the second and third, and on down to two between body count six and seven, Just one day, then a single Bone Boy kill. Seven days later, a double. And so on. Three days ago, we got five bodies. Get the picture?”
“Very methodical. Tonight should be a six-victim killing. Whether it’s the Hidden Circle or not, this is a ritual spree.”
Willie and Sam progressed from arguing the possible connection to the druids to using Willie’s spy drone to monitor the progress of the police. If they followed the pattern, the Bone Boys would be active tonight, and if the police were involved, the runners might lead the watchers to the site in time to determine the nature of the perpetrators. At the very least, they might be able to rule out police collusion. Willie’s drone headed for Burnside’s stationhouse, and they only had to wait a half-hour before he left. He was joined by the two detectives the runners had previously almost encountered. Willie and Sam watched the trio set up a tail on an individual who emerged from a fancy townhouse in Regent’s Park. They were hunched over the receptor screen when Hart returned.
“What’s going down?” she asked.
“We’re waiting for something to happen,” Sam replied abstractedly.
Hart squinted at the display screen. “That’s Burnside!”
“Uh-huh.”
“What’s going on?”
Sam explained what he and Willie had found out and the theories the data had spawned. Hart joined them at the screen.
Willie’s drone was focused on Burnside and the two officers who accompanied him. All were dressed for undercover work and blended in with the street crowd. The only thing which set them apart was their apparent nervousness. After some minutes, Burnside sent his two officers away. Willie sent the drone flitting after them and discovered they were taking up independent surveillance positions around the building the man had entered. The policemen had set up an old-fashioned stakeout. They could have used a drone similar to Willie’s, but they didn’t—a sure indication the operation wasn’t official, since police use of remote pilot machines needed to be recorded.
Willie sent the drone higher to cover the whole block. It was another hour before anything happened. Then Hart spotted someone leaving the building and directed Willie to send the drone in for a closer look. Careful to keep her machine out of sight, Willie positioned it for a zoom-in shot of the persons exiting the building. A woman led a pack of three men, who struggled with plastic sacks. None were familiar, but Willie recorded their images.
The drone returned to station in time to catch a second group almost vanishing from its camera range. The sacks on the backs of that group’s laggards prompted a quick pursuit. This time, the runners were rewarded.
“Glover,” Sam said quietly.
There was no doubt about his identity; Sam knew the face too well. Willie recorded the images of the strangers accompanying the druid.
“Back to station, Willie,” Hart ordered. “They’re leaving in small groups, and we don’t want to miss any. If the pattern holds, my guess is that all but one were present tonight.”
“Roger.”
The drone flitted back. It swooped four more times to record the passage of furtive groups leaving the scene. When the last group had left, the policemen began to move in. Taking a risk that the badges would spot the drone, Willie sent it in ahead of them for a fast pass to confirm the contents of the building. Deep in its heart lay six skeletons, already being attacked by scavengers.
“Do we tell Estios?” Willie asked.
“Not just yet. Let’s run down the images first,” Hart suggested.
“It’s your call, Twist,” Willie said.
Sam sighed. “We’d better identify them first.”
“Roger,” Willie responded. She dumped the recordings to the cyberdeck and began the process of image enhancement and correlation.
Sam hoped it wouldn’t take long. If the pattern held, and he had no reason to believe it wouldn’t, seven more innocents would die in less than forty-eight hours.