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

The cop’s mumbled obscenities conveyed mingled exasperation and relief.  “Come on. I want to get you into a car. There are things besides Carados that we have to talk about.”

   Like how I walked out of jail so easy, thought Falcon. Now the cop had him on his feet. Which car were they going to get into, though? Two, three more were braking to a halt, brakes squealing, sirens silent. Here came the—what the hell did they call it? the Mash team?—the men with fancy helmets and body armor, cradling firearms of elegantly devious design. In a sudden near-silence Falcon could hear their little handheld radios rasping at each other cryptically. Another single shot sounded, and someone yelled, hit. Carados was contemptuously pushing his— no, it wasn’t luck at all. There were bursts of activity as uniformed men scrambled this way and that, climbing buildings, ducking in and out of doorways. Joe—Falcon suddenly recalled the name, from their long interrogation session—pulled his charge back into the sheltering mouth of another alley.

   This alley proved to have unpleasant occupants.

   The plump hand of Arnaud, at the moment sporting neither fur nor claws, closed gently but firmly on Falcon’s right wrist. “Nimue bids you come with us,” Arnaud chided softly.  “It is her command, and you have no choice.”

   Carados stood just a few feet distant, aiming his gun point-blank at Joe; Falcon saw the young policeman turn pale to his lips. The promise of death was very plain.

   Joe started to say something, and at the same moment he reached quickly for his own gun, inside his coat. Carados deliberately tilted his aim slightly to one side and shot Joe through the right arm. Joe’s gun, half-drawn, fell to the alley floor.

   “Come on!” urged Arnaud softly. Ten feet now from where Carados and Joe were locked in a hideous confrontation, Arnaud tugged almost tentatively—as if he were wary of being rough—at Falcon’s wrist.

   “You can’t do that,” Falcon muttered under his breath. He was speaking to Carados, even if Carados couldn’t hear him, wasn’t paying him the least attention. When Arnaud tugged again, this time growling lightly in his throat, the fingers of Falcon’s held hand made a small gesture, as if he were spinning away a little top. An image of Falcon separated itself from Falcon, like a detachable shadow, as Falcon himself simultaneously became invisible. The image, head down and shuffling, moved off down the alley, one wrist gripped by its captor who appeared to be quite satisfied.

   Carados had backed off another step or two from Joe, teasing, as if he might really be willing to walk off and leave a live cop looking at him. In the streetlight Falcon could see the harmless bullet-tears in the dark man’s clothing. Joe stood in shock, holding his shot arm, swaying a little as if he were continually trying to brace himself against the next bullet, the one that it seemed must hit him with every passing second.

   If Falcon was not completely invisible to both of them now, he might as well have been. He felt choked up. He groped for words that just were not available. If Nimue herself had been here… but she wasn’t. So something ought to be, had to be, possible. Falcon could fight her helpers. He could try at least, he could…

   “Just reach for it, pig,” said Carados softly, backing away one more slow step. “Or don’t, I don’t care. It’s good night either way.”

   A police radio rasped; it was half a block away, and it might as well have been on the moon for all the help it was going to be. Outside the alley the teams were going into action with professional care, all facing in the wrong direction. From deeper down the alley, Arnaud’s voice called impatiently for Carados to come on.

   “In just a second,” Carados called back in a low voice.

   Falcon tried to think of, come up with, what he needed; grunting aloud with the effort. He couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t smash Carados down, not directly anyway. Nimue’s grip, like some network of ancient ropes, still bound him too tightly for that.

   Joe’s body started to bend in several places. Then he fell to his knees. Obviously having to summon all the control he could, struggling just to stay conscious, he reached left-handed for the gun.

   “Beautiful, pig, that’s beautiful. Just the way I want you.” Carados started to make a slow, careful aim, then paused. “I’ll even give you the first shot. Fair?”

   Falcon’s right hand, unseen by anyone but him, pointed in a double-fingered gesture toward Joe’s pistol, as the policeman fumbled the weapon up from the alley floor. The old man muttered half-forgotten words. He had to strain hideously against the constraints that Nimue had laid on him an age ago. But he got out the words:  “…balle de plomb… le balle argent…”

   Joe’s arm lifted suddenly, and sharp bursts of thunder filled the alley. Falcon hunched down, cursing himself for having let his protective spell lapse in the concentration of his other effort. The gun-explosions seemed to go on past any reasonable number, echoing, reverberating. At the end there came a crashing as of hollow armor, and from down the alley a howl as of a hurt wolf.

   Cautiously, his own defenses once more in order, the man whose public name had once been Ambrosius lifted his head to look. Joe was on his feet again, looking dazed, gun swinging in his left hand. There was movement at the other side of the alley too; one dangling arm, pistol hanging by one finger through the guard. The body of Carados lay across a row of garbage cans, where it had been flung by silver bullets.

TWENTY-FOUR

   Simon was fifteen years old when he stumbled away from Vivian and her stone table, and started back down the bluff, blindly following the trail. After taking only about twenty steps—or so it seemed to