Heart of a Dragon (8 page)

"It will cure them?"

"It will test them," Anya said flatly.
 
"If they are strong, it will bring them back to you.
 
If they fail to meet its challenge?
 
They will die.
 
It is the only way."

Hector swallowed again, and then nodded.
 
He turned and started across the room.

"Do not forget," Anya called after him.
 
"Two nights from now … in the yard."

The curtains at the far side of the room parted.
 
This time it was the girl, Kim.
 
Hector wondered vaguely how she'd gotten ahead of him and into the passageway.
 
He hadn't seen her pass, and he hadn't heard the telltale jingle of the ornaments in her hair – yet there she was.
 
He followed her into the gloom without looking back, the waxy, disturbing figurines clutched tightly in one fist, and the bottle in the other. As he walked, finally, his erection loosened, and he began to breathe more steadily.

The farther Martinez walked from the Barrio, the more he stood out among those he passed.
 
They took no notice of him as he slid from aging prophet into the guise of a homeless vagrant by traveling only a few city blocks.
 
There were cities within cities in San Valencez.
 
The inhabitants of one seldom crossed the border into the next.
 
It was comfortable that way.
 
No one had to act to protect a border that wasn't threatened, and what was there
 
in the Barrio that would tempt the well-tailored suits of downtown into the squalor of the Latin quarter?

Martinez kept one hand in his pocket, where he turned a small parchment around and around in his fingers.
 
He had been saving it against just such a day as this.
 
He intended it as a gift, but the gift would be more of a peace offering, and a bribe.
 
It had been many years since he'd stepped foot in the home of Donovan DeChance
 
There were reasons for that long absence, and he wasn't certain that even the gift in his pocket would bridge that particular gap. It didn't matter; he had to try.

DeChance collected information.
 
There was nowhere in the world more likely to yield a lost
tome
, or a forgotten manuscript than the townhouse in downtown San Valencez.
 
Martinez hadn't seen for himself, but his sources told him that much of the information had been scanned and catalogued digitally – that the arcane knowledge of the world was being organized for the first time on computer memory banks
 
and protected more carefully than the gold in Fort Knox.
  
Martinez had no use for telephones, or computers, pagers or stereos.
 
He was born of a different age, and he clung to what he knew best.
 
It didn't mean he wouldn't take advantage of sources as they presented themselves.
 
If DeChance had what he needed, he'd have to find a way to convince the man to share.

The sun was low in the sky when he finally climbed the steps up into the building that held DeChance's townhouse.
  
There was no doorman, just a series of buzzers in an ornamental brass panel.
 
Martinez smiled as he pressed the number thirteen and waited.
 
He heard a metallic buzz, and a moment later DeChance's voice grated through the small speaker.

"It has been a long time," he said.

Martinez smiled.
 
He'd had no illusions about arriving unnoticed.

"Too long, I think," he replied.
 
"And without the apology I should have offered long ago."

The speaker was silent, but a second and louder metallic buzz announced that the lock barring Martinez from entering had been disengaged.
 
The old man pressed through and entered the foyer.
 
He knew the way to the elevators, but they made him claustrophobic, and in any case they would be of no help.
 
Most buildings in the older part of San Valencez – those that climbed higher than a dozen floors - skipped the number thirteen.
 
The elevator in DeChance's building was no different, except that the elusive thirteenth floor actually existed.
 
Martinez took the stairs slowly, resting often.
 
He knew DeChance would be patient.
 
He only hoped he would also be forgiving.

The climb gave him time to think – and to remember.
 
The rift between himself and DeChance was entirely his own fault, and he realized that he could have fixed it any time –on
 
any given day.
 
He could have come here, as he was coming here tonight, and made things right.
 
It had never been important until now, and that meant that it became important only when he needed something.
 
Donovan would see that too…and yet, as he trudged up the stairs toward the thirteenth, Martinez found that he was suddenly and honestly sorry it had come to this.

He rested at each level.
 
He was an old man.
 
He'd been an old man for a very long time, and before that he was middle aged, and young for equally long times.
 
He had seen things and known things – so many things – that he'd managed to forget which were important, and why.
  
He waited an extra moment on the twelfth landing, and then climbed the last set of stairs and pushed through the dusty door to the thirteenth floor.

There should have been doors lining the hall, but there were not.
 
He knew that if the doorman, or a health inspector, were to somehow make it to where he stood they would see that line of doors on either side of the hall.
 
None of them would open onto Donovan's quarters.
 
He wasn't exactly sure how it had been done, but it was similar to how he kept the temperature in his home at a constant level and stored far more than his simple four walls could possibly hold.
 
There are many sets of rules governing the universe; Martinez knew more than one.
 
Donovan DeChance had been gathering the knowledge of the ages almost as long as Martinez had been reading the future in piles of animal bones and mixing potions.
  
They walked through two different worlds, but occasionally, their roads crossed.
 
All roads cross; regardless of the theories of Euclid.

The door opened slowly as he approached.
 
There was no one standing there to greet him, as he'd known there would not be.
 
He stepped inside, and it closed behind him with a dull click.
 
There was a fire in the next room.
 
Martinez squared his shoulders and stepped through into Donovan's den, expecting the worst.

~ * ~

Donovan stood by the fire and watched as Martinez entered.
 
The old man looked just as he remembered – like a very old, crazed hippie who'd lost his way from the seventies, or a character in a Carlos Castaneda novel.
 
He knew Martinez had been born somewhere in South America, but there was a point in time before which all stories diverged.
 
Donovan had never asked.
 
It was not his business.

"Too many years have passed since you were last here," Donovan said.

He stepped across the room and held out his hand.
 
Martinez took it without hesitation, and the old man's grip was firm.
 
Their gazes met … just for an instant … and then Martinez glanced away, taking in the lines of boxes, the overflowing shelves, and Cleo, who sat on Donovan's desk, washing one paw and eyeing him suspiciously.
 
Martinez laughed.

"I see you have not found a solution to your predicament," he said.
 
"Things have become more, complicated, since my last visit."

Donovan chuckled.

"I was thinking about that only this afternoon.
 
It seems something intrudes every time I am ready to deal with it.
 
There is a power aligned against me; perhaps it is too ancient, and too powerful."

"Perhaps," Martinez said.

The old man smiled, and Donovan thought the expression looked genuine.
 
This meeting was not going at all as he'd expected.
 
He decided to drive straight through the moment to the heart of the problem.

"Have you seen Luis?" he asked.

The words were spoken softly, almost casually, but Martinez froze.
 
His features went rigid and pale.
 
Donovan stepped to the bar and poured two glasses of bourbon.
 
He didn't look at Martinez.
 
He turned and offered one glass to the old man, who took it and sipped silently.

"I have seen him," Martinez said softly, swirling his drink slowly and staring into it as if it might hold some sort of answers he couldn't find elsewhere in his memory.
 
"Not like that, though – not since that night."

They drank in silence for a while, and Donovan's thoughts shifted back across the years.
  
It had been more than twenty, but his memories were as vivid as if it had happened only hours before.
 
Some memories are more powerful than others.
 
Some never really let go.

~ * ~

The moon was full, and Donovan moved quietly through the streets on the border of the Barrio.
 
He scanned the buildings, watched the rooftops and kept to the darkest shadows.
 
He was in unfamiliar territory, and he knew there were those who would not appreciate his presence.

He had the photo in his pocket.
 
It was of a young girl, Angela.
 
She had smiled for the camera, twisting several strands of dark hair in the fingers of one hand.
 
It was a smile full of potential – a smile with a future and a family.
 
The photograph was of a dead girl, and Donovan intended to find the one responsible.
 
He had promised to do so, and in all the long years of his life, he could honestly say he had never broken a promise.
 
Until now he'd never promised anything he wasn't certain of.

A shadow flitted between two of the small homes and Donovan grew still.
 
He slowed his breath and sank back against the wall of an old warehouse.
 
Whoever it was, whatever it was, it has passed.
 
Donovan moved on.

He pulled a small leather case from his pocket.
 
He opened it to reveal a round leather circle with a brass rim.
 
A flick of his wrist and a lens swiveled into view.
 
It was cut from green crystal, and in the dim light he could see nothing through it.
  
Donovan turned, pressed his back to the wall, and breathed a short incantation.
 
He held the lens up, pressed it to his right eye, and scanned the far side of the street.

The lens glittered and what had been too dark to make out seconds before took on new clarity.
 
Streams of silver wound up toward the sky and disappeared into the clouds.
 
Donovan checked each in turn.
 
They moved, winding in and out of the streets of the Barrio.
 
Each time he found one that was white, or silver, he moved on.
 
To the left of the center of a tall building just across from him, a reddish thread moved rapidly deeper into the dark streets.

Donovan watched a moment longer, marked the track, flipped the lens closed, and returned it to its case.
 
He slid the case into his pocket, and crossed the street.
 
He looked both ways and then plunged down an alley.
 
No one saw him cross that border, but his passing did not go unnoticed.
 
There was another thread, had he continued to look.
 
It was yellow like gold, or sunlight, and it spun down into the center of the small community.
 
As Donovan entered the Barrio, that thread quivered, like the string of a harp that has been stroked.

There weren't many people on the street, and Donovan had taken measures to keep the majority of those who were out from noting his passing.
 
He moved quickly, stopping from time to time to pull out the crystal and scan the skies.
 
He wanted to be in and out as quickly as possible.
 
He knew that he was in danger entering the Barrio unannounced, but there was nothing to be done.
 
A girl had been killed, and the killer was getting away.
 
The trail led into the Barrio, and Donovan believed he would find, when he had the time to look into it, that the trail led out as well.
 
This place belonged to old Martinez, but when the borders of one place leaked death onto the streets of another, action was required.

There was a balance in the city, and sometimes it was as delicate as a single death.
 
Donovan thought he'd caught this one quickly enough, but time was still critical, for his own safety, and for the prevention of more death.