Dominion, Fred Saberhagen [uplifting book club books TXT] 📗

he had that vampire, the stalking butcher, in front of him for just five seconds now. He wished he had that smirking, contemptuous kidnapper, Carados.

   Now if he were to go and collect Carados somehow, and deliver him to the cops, that would get the cops off his own tail. But Hawk didn’t really want to go after Carados, because…

   Because if he did…

   Because, because. He just got a train of thought going, starting to make sense, and then it stalled. Every time. There had to be, there had to be, a damned good reason.

   He had the feeling that his life was being steered, controlled, by some will not his own, to some hostile purpose. It was not a good feeling to have.

   At one o’clock in the morning, with his mental state increasingly perturbed, the man who now called himself Hawk (and how long would that name be usable?) was leaning against a streetlight not two blocks from where Carados had picked him up. He craved wine, there was no doubt of that. But somehow while he was off Skid Row the craving, like so much else, had altered. The animal urge to drunken oblivion had become entangled with older and nobler things—wine as symbol of elegance, wine as rare privilege, wine as a way to spiritual (no pun intended here) enjoyment.

   And even as Hawk thought of wine, and of how he might provide himself with some, he was gazing at a half-dead wino stretched in the gutter just a few paces away, and he knew in his heart without having to argue the point with himself that there was no way in the goddam world he was ever going back to being that. God, how could he ever have—?

   Just because, that’s why. Why he’d been condemned to spend most of his life lying in a gutter. A thousand years of gutter, just because. And he mustn’t ever try to find the underlying reason, because—

   This because was hammering him to death, with every mental step he tried to take. He couldn’t move an inch now without colliding with it, and at the same time he knew he had to move. What made his situation all the more desperate was the fact that until this moment it had never come really clear to him what bad shape he was in.

   Looking up into the starless city sky, Hawk gasped a few deep breaths. He clung fiercely to the thought that he was making progress against… against whatever was oppressing him, whatever had kept him in the gutter for a millennium. At least he now understood that there was a fundamental question that cried out to be answered. And experience assured him that when something like this had a man in its grip, when a life was totally screwed up as his was, for no visible reason, then the invisible reason most likely involved…

   It involved…

   It had to do with…

   He couldn’t make it. He could grunt and groan, struggle any way he liked, but he could not complete that simple thought. He was gasping, on the point of fainting, ready to kill someone for just one drink. But he wasn’t going to drink. So, if he couldn’t go after Carados, then how about the vampire? That would be fine, that would be fun. Already he had tentatively planned on bouncing the bloodsucker around from one century to another, as long as that game could be kept going; but that was more prank than serious punishment. And sooner or later the victim of the game was more likely than not to wind up back in present time. Where Hawk would be able to get at him in earnest… or, indeed, where he would be able to get at Hawk.

   That thought was enough to somewhat curb Hawk’s yearning for a drink. Not that the prospect inspired him with anything like the terror it would have a few days ago; Hawk no longer felt particularly afraid of anyone or anything. Still the probability of being confronted by an angry vampire, one as tough and smart as that old one had been, tended to clear the mind and concentrate the attention.

   Before he could really concentrate, though, there were other nagging questions to be thought about. Example: That young cop, hopelessly mundane if anyone ever was, had asked Hawk if the castle contained a sword. Imagine a question like that, just asked out of the blue. Where would a mundane young Chicagoan have got hold of that idea?

   Until now, Hawk had managed to keep himself from thinking about the Sword at all. It wasn’t forbidden him to do so, it was just too painful, it was rooted in memories that he didn’t dare stir up for fear of the anguish they would inflict upon him. But it was possible to think about the Sword, at least as an alternative to that subject about which he could not think at all.

   And once he had allowed himself to start to think about the Sword, why then he knew right away just where it had to be, at least its general location. It was right in Nimue’s way, interfering with whatever it was that she was offering blood sacrifices to accomplish.

   In his mind’s eye, now probing his own dark future to the extent that he was able, Hawk could see himself beginning to be surrounded by swords. From them flowed danger, and breathtaking opportunity too, possibilities not quite visible as yet…

   First a small plastic blade, held in the unknowing fingers of Carados, juxtaposed unwittingly with the clear liquid held up inside a vodka glass, so that the hilt seemed to project above the surface ready to be grasped. By one who dared… and then the other Sword, the great iron cross-hilt held up in a dream, throbbing out of concealment with a beneficence of power…

   Swords… and there were pentagrams too in the future to weight