Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls - Jane Lindskold [41]
“Then the police come,” Peep says. “We saw it all, ’cause we had stayed out for breakfast at Jerome’s place.”
“Too damn little,” Chocolate mutters angrily. “We too damn little and too damn scared and by the time we get some of the Four it too late. But we run after fast and check that what we hear is true. They take Head Wolf to the nuthouse.”
My pulse is beating too fast. This is too much to be coincidence. My hands start trembling so hard that I slosh the hot, sweet coffee onto the rug. No one but the rug notices.
“Got it!” Abalone growls through bared teeth. “The boys are cool. Head Wolf is in the Home. By the Opened Door that freed me! They have a record on him, an old one.”
“Really old or fabricated, Abalone?” Professor Isabella asks.
Abalone taps and new characters and colors overlay the ones already on the screen. She studies for a moment.
“Really old, I think. Some of these programming commands are outdated. Only a truly paranoid forger”—she grins briefly—“would bother to write a new file in an obscure older mode—especially if all they needed was a reason to grab him.”
“Do you know where they got him?” Peep asks.
“Pretty good idea,” Abalone says, “and I can narrow it down.”
“Good! Then we go, we get the man out of there,” Chocolate says, already on his feet.
“Not yet,” Professor Isabella countermands, pressing him back to his seat. “We need to think on this.”
Abalone raises cold eyes, her hand rests on her shirt, touching the hidden tattoo. The Tail Wolves look guardedly at the older woman. Even I am aware of feeling a sudden flash of hostility.
“We aren’t leaving him there,” Abalone states.
“No, I didn’t expect you would,” Professor Isabella looks stern. “And neither do ‘They’—Brighton Rock failed. Now they’re asking us to bring Sarah to them. Head Wolf is just bait, an engraved invitation.”
Abalone nods impatiently. “I guessed, but we don’t need to bring Sarah. Me, the Four, the boys—we can bust him out. Sarah’ll be safe.”
I squeak indignantly. Professor Isabella smiles coldly.
“Why have they taken him to the Home? Because only Sarah knows it well—even my information, if they even know of me, is dated. My guess is that the only way we will get in is if Sarah is with us.”
“Us?”
“I may be of one blood with no Wolf,” Professor Isabella says with another cold smile, “but even Kaa fought with the Seonee Wolves when his friend was in danger. I’ll help as I can.”
Professor Isabella insists that the Tail Wolves sleep. Agreeing, Abalone arranges for a message to be sent to the Jungle. Later, she will slip out to meet with the Four. Meantime, she calls up files on the Home, on Head Wolf.
“My oh My oh My oh My,” Abalone murmurs. “Shoulda known. Shoulda known this is how they’d see him.”
Her hand covers the picture between her breasts, a picture I suddenly realize was drawn by needle and pain and dye by Head Wolf himself with the same art through which he makes stone into wood and metal into paper. A twinge of envy touches me as I sense an intimacy beyond mere sex between this wild forger and her chosen lawgiver.
Professor Isabella leans over to look at the screen. Her tongue touches her dry lips as she reads the data.
“Ah, yes,” Professor Isabella agrees. “I suspected as much: paranoid with delusions, homicidal. Chemical equalizers unsuccessful. Quite a record here.”
Her musing trails off and she gestures with sudden urgency for Abalone to scroll the data upward.
“Did you see this?” she includes me with a glance. “He was once within the Mental Rehab system, a resident of the Home like both of us. But he was never released; he escaped.”
“Escaped?” Abalone scrolls the data. “Why would he have stayed so close? That’s crazy!”
“Precisely,” Professor Isabella chuckles dryly.
I blush as I recall a monologue, half-forgotten in the drowsy indolence following lovemaking.
“To pull the very whiskers of death,” I say.
Abalone looks at me, “Head Wolf said that to you?”
I nod.
“He got a kick out of it then,” she says, “out of knowing he was hidden right under their eyes and that they