Out of the Black - Lee Doty [78]
Issak didn't like the sound of that. Pressure built around him. It increased as if he were sinking into deep water. Something was pressing in on him. The pressure became pain.
"I come in peace. I come seeking knowledge. Where is this place?" Issak hoped this was a misunderstanding that could be resolved with a little diplomacy.
Dry laughter surrounded him, sinister and slow. "My exile has ended." The power in the words grated across Issak's soul, scraping across the surface, looking for purchase. This thing seemed to be pushing in on him from everywhere, trying to get inside.
"Where you are is me." The dry voice boomed. "Where I go is you. You are the door between the rooms." The words jittered through his flesh, stabbing inward like dull butter knives.
Nice. Time to go.
***
"Anne, if you don't let us in, we can't help you." Hawthorne's voice didn't hold a hint of frustration. She was good at this.
"The body you found on Franklin yesterday- I was there." No turning back now.
There was a moment of barely perceptible confusion in Hawthorne's eyes. "Please continue."
"I was coming home from work, when this man falls out of the sky in a shower of broken glass. First I thought he was dead, but then he's apologizing... grabbing me. Then there's this pain..." she realized she was touching her neck, "The kind without a bottom, you know?"
Hawthorne's face was intent but unreadable.
"I lose consciousness, and when I come to, he's really dead. That's why I look like I do in the picture... cuts from the glass on the ground, his blood all over me. And the nuclear hickey."
There was a pause, so Anne continued, "Vampire, right?" Her forced laugh seemed well... forced.
Mendez was shaking his head. The good-joke smile caught on his face was held back only by a force of will from blossoming into the full belly laugh he was feeling.
"Who was he?"
"Who?"
"The fallen man. The guy you guys found on the street."
The agent prodded her tablet several times, examined, prodded some more. Finally she looked up. "Anne, we didn't find any crushed body on Franklin... or anywhere else."
"Broken glass? Destroyed car? Any window washers report a missing window?"
More tapping with her stylus, then "No."
Maybe she needed the rubber room after all. "But there are two dead Harms and lots of destruction downstairs, right?"
More clicking, then a look of surprise. "No."
Mendez's amusement subsided, replaced by concern. He pushed away from the counter and approached Hawthorne from behind. He leaned over her shoulder, trying to verify her results, Slim Quick shake still in his hand.
"All electronic records... camera logs, police reports... they can't all be gone," she said, clearly confused. "Even my preliminary notes are missing."
"No. There's no way..." Mendez started.
There was a loud crash as the door burst open and slammed against the wall. Three men in suits burst in, guns drawn.
***
Ping opened the door and crossed back into the bedroom. The bed was still rumpled, his clothes still in pieces by the nightstand. It was the same yet different. Now this place held a quiet significance, the peace of the tomb of the revered dead. Now it was a piece of a larger monument to a fallen giant. If you believed Dek, and Ping did, then this room's last occupant had been born before Ping's great great grandparents... and had lived until two days ago. Now the dead giant's sword rested in Ping's jacket pocket.
It seemed somehow quieter, though he was sure it had been perfectly quiet before.
Ping approached the bed. He knelt and looked beneath. Like a hotel bed, the frame went from the bottom of the mattress directly to the floor, not allowing anything to be slid beneath. He rose and followed the edge of the bed around to the other side. There he knelt again. This time he was rewarded by a recessed handle and a keypad built into the base of the bed.
He entered the code Dek had given