Trapped

Three German Shepherds dashed snarling into view; then they stopped in a doggy double-take. They paid no attention to those of us still within the antiscrying shield: all they saw was a pillar of ghost-smoke flicking around the yard, sweeping past the bare-branched trees, occasionally billowing out over the bluffs before whisking back to the house again. The tube's random swooping soon took it in the dogs' direction… and they backed off, whining in their throats. The smoke didn't touch them-it didn't touch anything, not the house, not the trees, not a single blade of winter-parched grass-but it came within a hair of grazing everything in sight, skimming past my face, darting at the Caryatid's feet, even looping once around Impervia's neck before uncoiling again and careening off. As if it were stalking each of us in turn, trying to make us flinch.

Flinch we did… and the smoke-tail wagged itself happily, heading off to scare the dogs again.

The metallic voice spoke from Dreamsinger's necklace. "Anchor established. Ready for transport to Spark Royal."

"Dear sister, I must go," Dreamsinger told the Caryatid. "Turn off the switch when I'm gone."

The Caryatid nodded. Dreamsinger smiled back, then squatted beside the anchor box. She slid one finger under the tethered end of the smoke-tail, slipping her fingertip into the mouth of the tube… and suddenly her whole body was sucked inside, her bones, her flesh turning as malleable as clay. It looked like something from a comic drawing, a woman's body pulled thin as a garter snake, then rammed into an aperture no bigger than a mouse hole; but there was no humor in seeing such grisly distortion for real. The whole thing lasted less than a second, and made no sound except a soft swish of air-otherwise, I might have been sick on the spot.

The Caryatid, looking equally queasy, forced herself to press the anchor's toggle-switch. Click. Immediately, the smoke-tail slipped free, jerking loose from its tether and bounding high into the sky like a taut rope suddenly cut. It soared halfway to the clouds, dropped down once more to the treetops, then flew straight up out of sight.

Mission accomplished. The tube had removed Dreamsinger to Spark Royal-whence, presumably, she'd ride a similar tube to Niagara Falls. There'd have to be an anchor device somewhere in the Niagara area, ready to catch hold of the tube's tail end… but I suspected there were anchors all over the world, planted in out-of-the-way corners, waiting for the day a Spark Lord needed to get somewhere in a hurry.

There'd been one in Death Hotel-a place the small device could lie undisturbed for centuries. It was probably radio-controlled, ready to activate itself when a signal came…

My train of thought was interrupted by someone behind me seizing my arm. I looked around. Elizabeth Tzekich was there. "The Spark Lord's run off," she said. "Leaving you to my tender mercies." Her eyes flashed. "Now you're going to tell me what's going on."

12: DEMON, DEMON, LOVER

Tzekich pulled me across the parquet littered with glass. I tried not to tread in the blood of the dead… but Knife-Hand Liz walked straight through. When she reached a clean section of floor, she left sticky scarlet slipperprints.

Back at the windowsill, the Caryatid and Impervia climbed inside. Staying loyally with me, even though they could have run off into the night. My friends.

Meanwhile, the surviving bully-boys from the Ring un-holstered their pistols. Behind the enforcers, Xavier broke into a wolfish leer-he must have regarded us all as human punching bags, here to help him forget the humiliation of submitting to a Spark Lord. Lucky for us, Tzekich outranked the old bastard… and she was so irked by Xavier's stupid intransigence, she treated Impervia, the Caryatid, and me with utmost gentility. She obviously wanted to annoy her deputy as much as he'd annoyed her.

"Please sit," Tzekich said, gesturing toward a black leather couch. "Tell me everything you know."

We sat, we talked. The facts, but no interpretation. I didn't recount Chancellor Opal's encounter with the Lucifer, nor did I mention what Dreamsinger whispered to me before she left. I'd have to ponder her words some time soon, but not with Elizabeth Tzekich and two armed guards hovering over me. For now, I just stuck to the bioweapon version of the tale; suddenly changing my story might antagonize Knife-Hand Liz to the point of violence.

She was angry enough as it was-during my recitation, Xavier made a constant nuisance of himself with pointless intrusive questions, aggravating Tzekich to the verge of fury. I couldn't understand why she didn't toss him from the room… or borrow a gun from an enforcer and create a new opening in her organization. But she tolerated Xavier's petty interference with clenched teeth, only once giving him a lethal glare and saying, "I am trying to find out about my daughter."