De Vries got his answer as the young man, so familiar from the trid images Short Eyes had obtained, opened the door.
Both of the vampires moved, and with a speed no uninfected could even hope to follow. The young man was knocked unconscious and carried across the street.
De Vries slid backward, blending perfectly into the darkness at his back.
The vampires toted the man’s still form to the van, then one of them opened the door.
“We got him, sir.”
De Vries heard the grunt of Marco D’imato from where the crippled vampire sat in the back of the stepvan. “Get him loaded. We don’t have much time to get to Hell’s Kitchen.”
De Vries stiffened at the sound of that voice, a voice he had studied and had begun to know so intimately. Then the van was gone, accelerating up the Street and taking the corner with precision.
Alone now in the darkness, de Vries stepped from the shadows. A moment later he was joined by Short Eyes.
“Your take on what just happened?” he said.
Short Eyes shrugged. “Body snatch, natch. Chum Boy got an invite he couldn’t refuse.”
De Vries nodded. “Sloppy work for someone as sharp as D’imato, unless he planned it that way.”
The two crossed the street and walked up the stairs to the still open doorway of Warren’s doss. Moving silently, de Vries stepped inside.
He let his vision shift into the astral, then gave a low whistle. When viewed in this manner, the entire room seemed to come alive. Small statues glowed with magical light, paintings seemed luminescent.
“Our boy Warren is no ordinary mundane.”
Short Eyes, just a step behind de Vries, giggled like a school girl. “Corner of the eye trick?”
De Vries walked over to the table that dominated the center of the room, splinters of stone crunching beneath his boots.
On the table, the crude form of a demon was taking shape in the marble block. De Vries looked straight at the form, and it seemed like nothing more than a statue, but as he shifted his eyes to the astral, the little demon seemed to move, straining to take flight.
As he studied the rest of the carvings, he noticed they all did that. When looked at directly, they seemed like nothing more than exquisitely carved pieces of art, but when viewed from the astral, the pieces seemed to come alive.
“They’re flip,” said Short Eyes, just a hint of wonder in her voice.
“Yes,” said de Vries, knowing that Short Eyes was seeing only one aspect of the sculptures. “It would seem that our boy has a talent of major proportions. I wonder if his uncle knows about this? I wonder if the boy himself even realizes what he can do? Though someone must have noticed it by now.”
Short Eyes started talking, but suddenly de Vries was no longer listening, no longer able to breathe. In the corner stood a sculpture unlike the others, slightly smaller, but formed with such care and attention to detail that he almost cried out.
Barely aware of his own movement, he crossed the room and stood there in front of the small stone statue.
It was a woman. reclining on a small divan, her arm was stretched out, in a beckoning manner, and the slight smile on her face was half playful, half seductive. She was beauty itself.
“Josephine,” whispered de Vries. “It’s impossible.”
Then Short Eyes was at his back, and he heard her sharp intake of breath.
Short Eyes had never known de Vries’ wife. The woman had been killed before Short Eyes was born, but she’d seen holopics.
“What is…” But de Vries was already past her, moving through the doss, heading for the bedroom. Short Eyes followed.
In the bedroom, de Vries found what he was looking for. A holopic of Warren and the woman who had obviously been the inspiration for the statue.
By the time Short Eyes had caught up with him, he’d flipped the pic over, and was reading the inscription. “Me and Rachel at Lake Washington.” It was dated just a couple of months before.
De Vries flipped it back over and looked at the image closely. In the background, Lake Washington gleamed like a blue-gray crystal. Rachel had her arm around Warren, staring straight into the camera as he kissed her neck.
“She loves him,” whispered de Vries.
Short Eyes sighed. “Changes are a comm’.”
De Vries glanced up at her as if he’d forgotten she was there. “Changes? Yes, this changes things for me.”
“Sensei, plans are laid, and they’re golden. Changes now could shuck us to the bone.”
De Vries looked back at the pic, at the woman who could have been his dead wife’s twin, at the love that was displayed so freely in the image. “You let me worry about that. There’s no way I’m going to let Josephine down again.”
Short Eyes reached out and touched the holopic with one elongated fingernail. “Not Josephine. Rachel. Not the same thing.”
De Vries rubbed a thumb over that perfect face. “Tell that to my heart. We have to make sure that boy doesn’t die.”
In the dust bowl of Hell’s Kitchen, the stepvan plowed along, its headlights cutting through the swirl of volcanic ash that still plagued the area despite the many years since Mount Rainier had last erupted.
The van pulled up to an armored gate, passing the small camp of denizens who were already forming up for the free meal that would be passed out just before dawn.
Marco shifted uncomfortably in his wheelchair and listened as Max and Sonny spoke in the front seat. Max chuckled and looked over at Sonny. “That was us, just a few weeks ago.”
Sonny didn’t seem to find the memory so humorous. “Yeah. and by tomorrow, some of them will have disappeared. I wonder what happens to the ones who don’t turn out?”
Max laughed. “Who gives a frag? The ones who can’t cut it get removed. That’s life. And death.” His own wit caused him to laugh so hard that he almost missed the stop.
Marco was not amused. “Damn you.” he said, as the van skidded to a halt. “Pay attention to what you’re doing, or you’ll find out what happens to fools who think they are immortal.”
Max keyed his window, letting a swirl of gray dust into the van. The speaker, mounted on a thin post, crackled. “Business?” came a thin, distorted voice.
Max leaned out. “Marco, with a special delivery for Wake.”
“See some ID.”
Max slid the ID card into the reader below the speaker.
The armored gate slid backward, and Max pulled the van inside. This was the first of two walled partitions that separated the compound from the outside world. Through the swirling dust, Marco could make out the subtle forms that roamed the fifty meters separating the two walls. Cyberdogs and their handlers. But no ordinary dogs. These were beasts, their thin, cadaverous bodies supporting cyber headgear that made them Look impossibly top-heavy.
They passed the second checkpoint, where the van was sniffed by a small Doberman with a telescoping cybercamera cut into its head, just behind the dog’s ears. Cleared through, they entered the main compound proper. Max backed the van up to the loading bay, then stepped out and set up the ramp for Marco’s wheelchair.