Nosferatu s-14 Page 21

  Michael prepared to jack back in. He wasn't going to wait for Serrin and Tom to return. Confronting HKB's defenses would at least let him do what he was good at. Then, cursing himself for his stupidity, he retired to his bedroom and made the call to London.

  "Geraint, old boy, can we get an encrypted line?"

  "Sure." The Welshman's rich voice greeted him with the old familiarity. "How's it going?"

  "You owe me a fortune, term. Wait until you see my bill."

  Geraint sighed, running the fingers of one hand through his dark hair. "Is it finished, then? You're through?"

  "Not quite. Listen, old friend, I need some help."

  "Fire away."

  "You're not going to like this," Michael warned him.

  "So?"

  "I mean, you're really not going to like this," Michael stressed. Geraint waited, his face on the screen expressionless. "I've got to find out something about corporate ownership of a certain subsidiary. HKB is handling it through the corporate licensing division."

  "I can't do that," Geraint said. "Everything's traced. Not a chance."

  "You don't have to deck into their system to do it. There are records, hard copy. You're a director, after all. This little corp is obscure and poses absolutely no threat to HKB's interests. The information wouldn't be sensitive in any way."

  "I'm afraid, old boy, that everything in those files is sensitive information. If it wasn't, people wouldn't pay us to handle anonymous ownerships," Geraint said drily. "They pay us precisely to make sure that no one finds out."

  "Geraint, we're on to something big. To borrow an old line of the Dame's, this ain't rock and roll, this is genocide." Michael then gave his friend a rundown of what they'd learned and seen.

  Geraint had finished his first cigarette and was halfway through a second, lit from the first, by the time Michael fell silent.

  "We don't know exactly what this elf is up to. Except that he's concocting some kind of drug, and it wipes humans out. That's you and me, old boy. Fancy turning into a zombie?"

  "You don't know that for sure," Geraint said nervously, but sounded dubious about his own statement. "Strath, this is more than my own life's worth. Decking into HKB records."

  "But you can do it," Michael insisted.

  "I need four hours. I've got to cover my butt somehow," Geraint said. His face had turned very pale now.

  "You've got my number."

  Michael wouldn't need the double-check on the Squeeze connection now. Which saved him a double-dip into the 1C.

  The telecom beeped at half-past two, then the image of Geraint's face came on the screen glowering at Michael.

  "I'm going to Hong Kong for a few days on business," the Welshman said quietly. "I've fixed it so someone else will take the rap on this one. I don't want to be around when it happens."

  "Well?" Michael urged him.

  "The company's registered in Vienna. You'll have to deal with the Viennese matrix; I wasn't going to try to find out who owns the damn thing from the HKB files," Geraint muttered, and gave him the address. He didn't even wait for thanks or goodbye, breaking the connection as soon as Michael had written down the details.

  The Englishman was about to jack into his deck when Serrin and Tom came into the room, back from their visit with Julia Richards.

  "We've got two possibles," the elf said urgently. "One in the Ukraine and one outside Regensburg. Julia's got a friend who's still scoping it for us."

  "The company that owns Amalgamated Photosynthetics is based outside Vienna," Michael told them. "I'm about to go hunting for the owners. If we get a match to a name, or a location, then we know."

  "Then what are we going to do?" Kristen asked.

  "That's a bloody good question," Michael told her. "We'll be damned lucky if we can come up with an answer."

  Luther rampaged through the corridors, bellowing like a minotaur, smashing everything around him with inhuman strength as Martin watched him on the closed circuits. Luther had foreseen this, of course; he had sealed the laboratory behind himself to make sure he didn't destroy his precious work. Now he was wholly out of control, blood raging in a torrent of fire through his body. When he was done smashing the serried ranks of statuettes and busts, he finally caught sight of the young mage.

  Luther threw himself onto the young man, like a hyena pouncing on a fallen member of the herd. Jaws clamped like a vice on his throat, one clawed hand gripped for the ribs, the other for the mage's chest, over his heart. The man screamed, writhing, unable to bring his hands up to defend himself. They twitched in their bonds at his back. Luther's canines struck the carotid and salty blood filled his mouth, running down over his chin as he sucked greedily at the warmth of it. He drew his face away from the man's throat and gazed into his eyes.

  Forcing the mage down to his knees and then prone onto the floor, he crouched over him. The young elf's face was distorted into a living death mask, his eyes wild and unfocused. Luther knelt over the body and drank in his victim's terror and fear as eagerly as he had the blood. The man's deathly fear and panic excited him, fed him as surely as the blood did; he loved the leeching away of a living soul, drew power from it.

  Luther struggled to hold back the ravenous beast inside, savoring every second of exultation and pleasure the dying gave him. Then the hunger burst like a disintegrating dam and he tore the elf's throat apart, hands clutching

  either side of the lolling head. He fastened himself to the neck, the blood saturating his hands and chest. The rich crimson flood held the last of the agonies of the dying mage, life-blood filled with death-fear, the delight of it overwhelming him. Luther's body spasmed like a huge, pallid leech rippling with peristalsis as it gorged itself.

  Martin came to him as he lay whimpering beside the corpse, wiping great smears of sticky blood from his face and hands. Luther's hands shook uncontrollably. Martin took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and tended to him as lovingly as any mother to her newborn.

  "I knew, Your Grace," he said softly. "I knew it would be necessary. Now all will be well."

  Luther looked at him with a momentary incomprehension. He coughed, a choking heave from the back of his throat, and his eyes glazed over. He vomited dark, sticky blood onto the floor, retching horribly. Martin put his hands under the other elf's arms and dragged him to his feet, holding him upright until he could stand on his own again.

  "Ah, Martin." Luther was calm again, or at least in control of himself. "You always provide."

  "Will you bathe, Your Grace?"

  "There is no time," Luther said, irritably picking at the clotting viscosities on his sleeves and collar. "It is so very close. Perhaps by noon. The first batches after nightfall. The helicopters should be here by dawn tomorrow. We can begin distribution then."

  He looked down at the ruined corpse. "Who was he?"

  "A local mage, Your Grace. I know that it was risky taking him, living so close to us," Martin said, answering the look in Luther's eyes. "But time is so short, Master, and we couldn't get any of the others in time."

  Luther walked away. He hated what had happened. He was used to coldness, rare feeding, years without the hunger. And when he fed he usually indulged in slow torture, protracted suffering, extracting all the terror possible. He loathed the coarseness of this new burning within him, felt soiled and disgusted by the bestiality of what it forced him to do.

  The consolation, of course, was that he was less than

  twenty hours away from forever eliminating useless humanity from the face of this beautiful world.

  Michael could scarcely believe his senses as the octopus icon happily stuffed data packets into his bag. Of course; he relied on the HKB link to preserve the anonymity. The security was given to stopping anyone linked to the Azanian company. His registration here in Vienna was absolutely open. Bioenergetica Archival. Vienna address. Check it out in the public database.

  He whipped through the dataline junctions and past the SAN, sleazing his way past as he
so loved to do, racing onward, his analyze program plunging into the street directory. Now, let's get out and download, he thought, jacking out almost before he'd put the frame to work.

  "That's a message forwarding number if ever I've seen one," he growled as the paper managed to make it out of the printer without being torn in half by his eager fingers. "It hardly matters, though. Here's our name. Luther von Hayek."

  "Bingo," Serrin said. "The Regensburg name."

  "What did your lady friend's friend give you on him?"

  "Luther von Hayek, born seventeen November twenty-ten, son of Luther and Mathilde von Hayek in Miinchen, at a private medical clinic. Educated privately in Regensburg. His mother died in twenty-eleven."

  "Very convenient, that," Michael commented.

  "Father died in twenty twenty-eight. Luther Junior was privately educated by home tutors. No university education recorded. No existing photographs. Luther is believed to be elven, though any details of UGE or goblinization are lacking. Birth certificate doesn't record any metatype, but that isn't unusual, given the date. Interestingly, his birth certificate states that his father was born in Kralovice on 4.11.1956. Unfortunately, a fire destroyed all records there in twenty-twelve. Most convenient again, isn't it?"

  "Where's Kralovice?" Michael asked. "Poland?"

  "No. That's Katowice, isn't it? Our place is in the west of the Czech Republic. Just across the border."

  "So, no records for Daddy then."

  "No. Explains the name, though; it's Czech rather than German, except for that 'von.' Mind you, Julia's chum-mer has tabs on a Luther Hayek, citizen of Zvolen in Slovakia circa eighteen-ten. The most interesting thing about him is a privately published pamphlet, author one Jesuit of the parish if Jesuits have parishes accusing him of necromancy and vampirism. No firm evidence of a link. The name isn't that unusual. It could be just a coincidence."

  "So why's she got our Luther down as a bloodsucker?" Michael asked. "I mean, it can't be common knowledge, that's for sure. I can't imagine the Marienbad Council has an entry in their local tax office saying, 'Make sure we get the full dollar from the vampire up the road next week'."

  "Look, the woman who gave Julia this stuff needed a lot of calming down before she was willing to give it up. It also cost me a hefty cred transfer. And you should have seen how scared Julia looked to be passing it. Julia's contact asked her three times whether we had her name or ID. One time of telling her no wasn't enough," Serrin said. "That lady was definitely not lying." "I'll go along with that," the troll added. Michael looked at them and shrugged. "Look, she gave us the name. You confirmed it. It sounds like she did her homework properly," Serrin said. "And we know exactly where this Luther is?" "Owns a monastery outside of Schwandorf. Just up the road from Regensburg."

  "So, we've got our man. Or our nosferatu, rather. Now we've got to analyze what we think we know." Michael took a deep breath and ruffled a wad of virginally white vellum, reaching for a pen. "Let's go through it one step at a time."

  They mulled over all that had happened, every piece of the jigsaw they'd gathered together. It took less time than Michael would have expected. It was what they were going to do with it all that worried him. One possibility, especially, sent a chill of fear down his spine, "If this is the same guy amp; " Michael mused. "What do you mean?" Tom asked.

  "I mean, what if there's only been one Luther all this time. From what little we have it looks like our modern-day Luther Junior was hardly ever seen private tutors, all that stuff. Sounds like it could be the same Luther."

  "If he's a nosferatu, why not?" Serrin pondered.

  "Well, if he really is an elf that must mean that he was born one. Back at the tail end of the nineteenth century, or even earlier, in Slovakia. It's possible, I gather; we know about spike births, but it would have required the mana at an incredible level for such an early birth. It's not going to be a picnic if his magician's talents reflect that fact."

  They were silent for a moment or two.

  It was Michael who broke the silence. "Now, exactly what did Magellan say about Luther's little surprise?" he asked Serrin.

  "I can't remember the precise words. Something about it being in the genes. A permanent fix."

  "So, not drugs then," Michael said. "A genetic fix. But how could that be done? He can't go around rewiring the DNA of every human being individually."

  "There'd have to be some kind of vector," Serrin suggested.

  Michael went white. He hadn't any background in molecular biology, but he'd helped Geraint with some of his work in it when they were at the university. Enough had rubbed off on him to know the language of the discipline.

  "A virus. A retrovirus," Michael managed to say. "Works back into the DNA. He's got a viral fixer. Something that won't affect metatypes."

  The printer chattered behind him as he was mulling all this over. He almost didn't bother to look, but, stymied in his thoughts, he ripped off the paper for something to do. His eyes widened as he read the text.

  "Tracey's been busy. I should have checked her out earlier. Three more kidnappings of mages have been reported while we were running around the globe. One in Beijing, suspected gang involvement. One in Atlanta, suspected corporate involvement. One in Regensburg, motive unknown. Yesterday. Well, well."

  "I'd say there's absolutely no doubt at all now," Serrin muttered.

  "This Luther is getting hungrier. But that doesn't fit the nosferatu pattern," Michael said, having read through Serrin's scribbled notes on the undead. "They feed only rarely. The last six kidnappings that seem connected have occurred within a period of seven weeks. Why don't you call Julia and ask her to talk to her friend again and find out what that could mean?"

  Serrin was back with a reply within minutes. "She says she's not a hundred percent sure, but that this would only happen if the nosferatu was storing, or using, a very high level of power. It would fit Luther, if he's burning the midnight oil over this research, if he's really consumed by it. Oh, and she says don't ask for anything else. She's disconnecting the line for now." Having seen Magellan's near-mania, Serrin thought this fit, and he said so to Michael. The Tir Tairngire elf was apparently not working for Luther, but the two shared a kind of madness that linked them somehow.

  The Englishman nodded wearily. "So, what are we to do?"

  "The authorities?" said Serrin hopefully.

  "Wonderful. Let's go and tell the German police that a dangerous nosferatu is kidnapping mages and concocting a world-killing virus up at the monastery. Do you think we've got enough evidence to substantiate that? We don't have a single hard fact. All we have is our own testimonies. We don't even have any proof that Luther was involved in the kidnappings. Nor can we prove that he's a nosferatu."

  Serrin knew Michael was right. "I can't argue. Well, then, what?"

  "Maybe Magellan was wrong," Michael said hopefully. "You said he was a loony."

  "Luther's doing something extraordinary," Serrin pointed out. "Otherwise, he wouldn't be feeding the way he is."

  "So, then, what do you think?"

  Serrin stared back at Michael, who wore an expression of utter helplessness. He'd built an almost airtight plot,

  but it didn't have an ending. He didn't have a clue how to finish it.

  "Do we have any contacts in Germany?" he asked. He was wracking his own brain.

  "No," Michael said. "Assuming you don't, Tom?"

  The troll smiled. He'd been happy to let the brains do the work so far, but he appreciated Michael's not forgetting that he was there. Then he shook his head.

  "But if we had to go somewhere to raise some dust without any contacts, Germany would probably be the best place in the world," Michael continued, still thinking feverishly. "Berlin. We go to Berlin."

  "Why?" Serrin asked.

  "Because it's a madhouse. Complete anarchy. We won't even need passports to get in; nobody ever checks them. And there'll be plenty of people we can recruit for help. Metahuman policlubs, for one thing. B
ut we've got to have something better than a tall, tall tale." Michael paused as though thinking for a moment.

  "No, we don't," he said suddenly. "We just need a tall, tall amount of money. All we have to do is find the right street shaman. Someone who could come with us and assense Luther's place. Someone who can tell the local samurai that we're right, that there's something really bad there. That might convince a samurai to take the job. Surely. We've got to hope." He went to the telecom and tapped in a code to London.

  "One last thing before you vanish eastward," he said to Geraint when the connection was made. "You'll be getting my bill in due course, but I need a down payment now."

  "How much?" the weary Welsh voice asked.

  "I think a couple of hundred should do it."

  "You're bothering me for two hundred?" Geraint said incredulously.

  "Two hundred thousand, old boy. Nuyen. You can make the transfer to the usual number."

  "What?" Geraint was incredulous. "Ship me the Empire State Building and we'll talk about it." He was about to break the connection when Michael played his ace.

  "We need it. Wouldn't want HKB to know who's been

  into their hard copy and told someone else about a certain ownership, now would we?"

  Geraint looked like thunder. "You slimy fragging bastard! I'll kill you for this."

  "No you won't. Then HKB would definitely get to hear all about it. Come on, you're worth millions. Do it."

  "Serrin, are you there?" Geraint demanded. When he heard the elf's voice, he asked him if this was a stunt.

  "No, old friend, it isn't. I don't know exactly why Michael thinks he needs so much, but we really are in Grade A megadrek here. It's no stunt, believe me."

  The sincerity in Serrin's voice calmed Geraint down a bit. He went back to talking with Michael.

  "All right," he grumbled. "But you'll be working for me six months for this, you little swine, and I won't forget this blackmail until hell freezes over."

  "Call it a mutually advantageous arrangement," Michael said. Then added, "It's a deal," before breaking the connection. Within minutes the money was in one of his accounts, a fact he verified at once.