"My grandmother," said Ish in a whisper, "had a special recipe for traitors like Fergus. She would boil them alive in lime juice, with cuts in their flesh so they would feel what was flavoring them—"
Alastair snorted. "First, I've met your grandmother, and she is a nice old lady who would never do something like that. Second, your people aren't cannibals—"
"Oh, no, we would never eat such a stew . . ."
They sat in Noriko's car with the lights out and stared at the Fairwings factory. It was a dark mound of brick, an irregular artificial hill whose windows had been replaced by brick of a lighter hue. Zeb couldn't detect any straight lines in its walls; everything was curved, rounded. The wooden fence surrounding the property had fallen in places and the grounds were overgrown.
Noriko returned to the car where it sat on Lancers' Lane a hundred yards away from the property. "I found fresh car tracks where one section of fence was down," she said. "Many tracks; someone has been driving back and forth. The front and side doors are nailed to, but the rear door is new; it has merely been painted to look old."
Harris said, "All the windows bricked up?"
"Yes."
"Okay," Harris said. "Gaby, I want you at an angle to cover the front and side doors. Alastair, Ish, Noriko and I will go in the back. Zeb, you want to wait here?"
"And let you get into trouble all alone? Nope."
"Then you stick close to me."
The car's trunk turned out to be a mobile armory; it was packed with cases and racks that yielded long arms, handguns, and ammunition. Alastair took what looked like a bronzed Thompson submachine gun and struggled into a barrel-like vest that Zeb assumed to be approximately bulletproof. Gaby selected a bolt-action rifle. Harris and Noriko took paired revolvers; Ixyail, a double-barreled shotgun.
Zeb, at Harris's gesture of invitation, took up a rifle like Gaby's and a large pistol shaped like an oversized Army-issue semiauto. He checked to see whether they were loaded and quickly familiarized himself with them.
Zeb saw Noriko whisper something to Harris. Harris nodded and murmured something about the Army. That rankled Zeb; Noriko was obviously checking to make sure he was fit to carry a weapon.
He decided to let it pass. He'd earned marksman's qualification in the Army. But it was true that when it actually came down to a live fire situation—the kind these people obviously expected they might face—he'd never been put to the test. Harris had no proof to offer Noriko about Zeb's reliability in such a situation.
Harris quietly closed the trunk. "Let's move out."
Noriko twisted the handful of picks inserted into the lock and was rewarded with a satisfying clunk. Quietly, she pocketed her tools and pulled the door open, sniffing.
She smelled old oil, aging rubber, freshly-spilled fuel, and something else: the faint odor of ozone, often given off by Doc's electrical devices. There was also something her grimworld friends could probably not detect, the disquieting smell of rusting steel; the fairworlders would need to be careful within. She gestured to the others, took a thin pair of gloves from her belt, and put them on. Alastair and Ish followed suit. The dusky grimworlder looked confused; she saw Harris lean in and whisper to him, mentioning the fairworlders' deadly allergy to ferrous metals.
Then, inside. She advanced cautiously into the darkness, letting her eyes adjust. But there was not even the faintest light for them to adjust to. She reluctantly brought out her torch and snapped it on, revealing her position to whomever might wait within.
The beam illuminated a huge open area; the light did not reach the far wall. The ceiling was supported by rusting steel framework. Everywhere were chains and hooks hanging from overhead winches, sagging conveyor belts, partially disassembled machinery lying in huge, collapsed piles. From the ceiling supports and their crossbeams hung tires and inner tubes ranging in size from those appropriate to cars to giant things suited to tractors.
Behind Noriko the others snapped on their torches and advanced. "Alastair with Noriko," said Harris. "Zeb, with me. Ish, stay at the door."
Ish grimaced. "I hate door duty."
"It's your turn."
Alastair joined Noriko and they moved straight ahead, along the main corridor between piles and supports, while Harris and Zeb circled around clockwise.
Noriko saw Alastair close his left eye, peering only through his right—his Gifted eye. "There's been devising hereabouts, recently," he said. "And something straight ahead—"
Noriko's torch beam fell on the massive table set up near the center of the factory—and on the pale figure atop it. A tingle of fear rose within her. She sprinted forward, knowing that Alastair would cover her advance.
On the table lay Doc. He stared straight up, unseeing, but moved a little as she reached him. His arms and legs were chained by links of bronze to the corners of the table. He was naked. "I have him!" she called. "Doc, are you well?"
"Noriko?" His eyes moved but he did not seem to be able to find her.
"Yes." She examined the cuffs on his wrists. Heavy, well-machined restraints. Their chains were bolted to the hardwood table's sides.
"Find Ish," Doc said. "She's here somewhere . . ."
"She's at the door. She is well."
Alastair joined her. "Good evening, Doc. I see you've been up to some fun."
Harris and Zeb heard Noriko's call. Harris shook his head and the two of them kept along their circular path, alert for other surprises the factory might have waiting for them. They moved along tight-packed aisles of junked machinery and piles of tires.
Zeb kept his voice low: "Was Ish serious about boiling Fergus?"
"No. She talks like a bomb-throwing anarchist, but it's really just part of her act. She's extremely recognizable the way you've seen her . . . but she can put on normal street clothes, drop that Castilian accent to zero, and when you run into her you'd never recognize her."
"Protective coloration."
"You got it."
"You've mentioned that steel thing twice now. Were you serious?"
"Oh, yeah." Harris nodded. "I've seen some fairworlders who, if they just touch ferrous metal, their skin blisters. If it's held to them for just a few minutes, they get sick, poisoned. It can kill them."
"Man."
They reached a wide cross-aisle. Their torch beams fell on scrapes on the floor, piles of small cuttings of rubber. "Something used to be set up here," Harris said. "Maybe where they made your rubber friend."
Zeb heard a rustle like a bird in the rafters; he shone his torch upward. The light played up a support beam and to the roof, but he could see nothing moving.
Now, that was odd. The light had crossed an unusual-looking lump, a shapeless brown mass about the size of a backpack, tied off to the support beam about a dozen feet up. Zeb returned the light to the lump. "What's that?"
Harris looked up. "Unknown," he said. "I hate unknowns. Here, hold this." He passed Zeb his torch and began climbing—a difficult task, since the support, shaped much like the I-beams Zeb was familiar with, offered little in the way of handholds. Harris had to climb through sheer grip strength. He made slow progress and began swearing.
"You're really out of shape, Harris."
"Shut up." Harris got his hands on the crossbeam directly above the brown lump. He pulled himself up to peer at the mass. "Some sort of rucksack. The flap's partly open." He wrapped his legs around the support beam and held out his hand. "Throw me the torch."
Zeb did so.
Harris shone his light into the partly-open backpack and sucked in a breath. His voice, when he finally spoke, was quiet. "One regulation alarm clock and a lot of sticks of what look like dynamite." He swung free of the support beam, hanging for an instant by one hand, and then dropped to land in a crouch beside Zeb. "C'mon." He sprinted back the way they'd come.
Zeb kept up. "Shouldn't we do something about the bomb?"
"No. We have no bomb experts here. And that one bomb wouldn't necessarily bring down the ceiling or kill Doc. So there are bound to be more."
They reached Doc's table, where Alastair peered into Doc's eyes and Noriko worked with her picks at the cuff on one wrist. Their torches were tied off to support beams, aimed more or less at Doc's table, granting some dim light to the whole area, while Alastair used a much smaller torch to examine Doc.
Harris said, "We've got dynamite, uh, magnacendiaries here on a kitchen timer. Half a chime left! That's about five minutes, Zeb. Ish!"
Her voice came, faint and distant. "I hear you."
"Call `fall back'!"
Zeb heard her cry out, an odd series of yips and yowls.
Harris continued, "And the timer has only been going four or five minutes. We've been on the property that long, so the guy who set it is still here, or set it and left when he first heard us. Noriko, can you get him out of those in a quarter chime?"
She shook her head, not looking up.
"Go on guard, then." Harris moved around to the table side opposite the door by which they'd entered the factory. He set his shoulder against it and heaved. The massive table slid forward a couple of inches. "Zeb, give me a hand here."
"There's a big rolling cart back the way we came," Zeb said. "Under some sheet rubber."
"Get it!"
Zeb began to turn. Then he was hit, a blow from above as if someone had dropped a bowling ball on his shoulders from one floor up. The impact slammed him to the concrete floor; his face hit the floor hard. He saw tiny dots of light swirling before his eyes and felt blood run from his nose.
Then teeth, like a small animal trap whose edges were made up of needles and broken shards of glass, closed on his shoulder, cutting through his shirt, slicing through his skin.
Zeb roared, a noise made up of pain and sudden fear, and came upright, despite the weight hanging from his shoulder.
There were children around him, five or six of them, advancing on him—
No, not children. They were no more than three feet tall, but had squat and powerful builds. Their eyes were large, their mouths broad and half-open, revealing rows of teeth that were crooked but long and sharp. Their skins, in the dim light cast by Zeb's dropped flashlight, seemed to be blue or gray or some hue in between. They wore crude sleeveless shirts that hung to their knees, leather gloves protecting hands and forearms nearly to the elbow, and leather wrappings lashed to their feet and lower legs.
And they carried weapons—wooden handles with stone heads lashed to them by hide strips. They raised those weapons as they came at Zeb.
Zeb jammed his hand into the face of the one that had bit him, sought the eyes, shoved his thumb into an eye socket when he found it. He thought he hit eyelid rather than eyeball, but the creature cried out, a gratifying squawk, and dropped away from him—but carried Zeb's rifle away with it. There were other noises, now—curses from Zeb's other companions, sounds of struggle, words he did not understand from the attackers.
Zeb stood. The nearest attacker came at him, swinging its stone club at his groin. Zeb struck just as it began its attack, his knifehand blow hitting it just beneath the wrist. He didn't feel the wrist break, but the attacker dropped its club and withdrew, howling, holding its injured hand. As it dropped back into proper range, Zeb took it in the chest with a snapkick, his blow sending it tumbling back into the darkness.
The others—Zeb thought there were six, but couldn't afford the time to count—surged toward him. He spun and leaped clean over one charging him from behind, its stone club passing between his legs, and he landed on the lip of the table that held Doc.
Noriko, Alastair, and Harris were down, each with three or four of the attackers on them. Alastair's eyes were closed and a stream of red ran across his temple. Another club-wielder stood on the table with Zeb, straddling Doc's chest, his club held high, a moment from bringing its stone head down on Doc's skull.
And for Zeb, the world went red.
It had happened before, sometimes late in a fight, sometimes when he'd taken a shot to the nose. All the colors would change, as if someone had put a reddish filter across his eyes, and the ability to think—beyond figuring out what it took to break his opponent into pieces—was washed away by pure rage.
Zeb hit the dwarfish man, a spearhand blow that took him in the throat and crushed his trachea. The clubman staggered back, pain and fear crossing his features, and Zeb kicked him clean past Doc's feet and off the end of the table.
Zeb leaped across Doc to land on the far edge of the table. He felt the impacts of stone heads hitting where he'd just stood.
His tactical sense undiminished, Zeb knew he needed help. He couldn't kill every one of these little bastards himself, much as he wanted to. He dropped behind the ring of four clubmen that had Harris pinned down. Three of them saw him and hesitated, each trying to figure out whether to continue to hold Harris or to rise and deal with this new threat. The fourth, his back to Zeb, remained unaware of the danger long enough for Zeb to reach around him. Zeb took his chin in one hand, the back of his head with the other, and twisted. It was surprisingly simple, as one instructor had told him it would be. The clubman's neck made a gruesome snapping noise and it dropped to the floor, nerveless as a puppet.
And Zeb turned his war-face to the other three. These little men didn't surge toward him. Their eyes grew wide.
Harris, flat on his back, his arms held by two of the attackers but his legs now free, brought his right knee to his chest and then lashed out, taking one of the attackers beneath the chin. Zeb heard the attacker's teeth crack, saw its jaw deform. It staggered back. His left arm now free, Harris drove his fist into the crotch of his other holder.
Zeb's sense of timing told him he'd been unaware of events behind him for a second or two too long. He spun. One of the club-wielders was sailing through the air at him, its leap carrying it clean over Doc's body. Zeb pushed off from Doc's table, sending him backwards, and the attacker flew past him to land hard on the concrete floor. Zeb kicked, driving his heel into the back of his attacker's neck. He heard and felt vertebrae crack.
Harris was up now, and moving toward Alastair. Zeb turned the other way, toward the knot of creatures holding Noriko.
They had her up off the concrete, stretching her taut and thin, two of them holding her arms and two her legs, as they played tug of war with her. A fifth stood by, its club at the ready, as it watched the contest; there was a wide, uncomplicated smile on its face.
The macabre quality of the scene almost caused Zeb to hesitate, but redness still suffused everything he saw. He stepped up and threw a kidney-punch into the guard's unprotected back before any of them were aware of him. The guard fell, his strangled cry loud enough to hear. The other four dropped Noriko and tugged their clubs from their belts.
The first of them charged Zeb, swinging, a blow fast enough to bring home the fact that these little fellows had to be stronger than they looked. Zeb skipped backward, putting his body just outside the thing's swing, and grabbed his attacker's wrist when its arm was at extension. He twisted, bringing the thing's arm up behind its back, then yanked him into the path of the second clubman's attack. The stone club struck his temporary captive in the sternum. Zeb shoved his captive into that attacker, fouling them both temporarily.
The other two advanced more slowly, moving in tandem, too cautious to make the same mistakes their fellows had. Zeb backed away, glancing around, patting at himself, hoping to find a weapon with which he could block their potentially deadly clubs. . .
There was something metallic and heavy in his pocket. He drew it out. It was the pistol he'd been given, forgotten in the heat of the moment, forgotten because he never carried guns.
The clubmen's eyes widened as they realized their quarry was armed. They lunged forward.
Zeb switched the pistol's safety off and moved rightward, firing as he went. His shot caught the rightmost clubman in the chest and his movement put the injured clubman between him and the other attacker. The uninjured attacker shoved his wounded comrade out of the way; Zeb shot him in the face. That clubman fell, a spray of red matter decorating the support beam behind him.
There were no attackers in front of him. Zeb spun. In addition to the clubmen he'd put down, there was another one on the floor, its head, shoulder, and right arm severed from the rest of his body; Zeb logged that one as no threat and kept going. His sights passed across Noriko, who was standing, her sword in her hands; she was looking at Zeb with an expression he couldn't read, some combination of dismay and caution. Zeb logged her as no immediate threat and kept turning.
Another clubman was coming over Doc's table at him. Zeb gave him a double-tap, a sloppy first shot that had to have taken out its right lung and a more accurate follow-up that was dead center in the chest; as that attacker fell, Zeb continued.
There was Doc, still chained, looking around as if blind and bewildered. No threat; Zeb kept going.
There were a lot of clubman bodies down. Most were utterly still. A few twitched. Zeb ignored them for the moment, though he'd have to look at the twitchers again in a second or two to make sure they weren't getting up.
Alastair was up, bleeding heavily from his scalp wound, the lean to his posture suggesting that he wasn't fully functional. He held his autogun in both hands but wasn't pointing it at Zeb. Potential threat. Zeb kept his aim on Alastair but continued turning his head.
And there was Harris beside him. Harris grabbed his wrist, raised it so Zeb's aim was off Alastair. He was talking. Zeb tried to focus, tried to understand the words.
"—right, Zeb?" Harris waited for a response. "Are you all right?"
The words didn't mean anything, so Zeb worked harder to interpret them. He shook his head and the redness that suffused his vision faded, returning the colors of his surroundings to normal. His hearing, dulled as if he'd been underwater, returned. "I'm fine, man. Let go."
Harris did so. Zeb flipped the pistol's safety and pocketed it again. He felt uneasy, as if there were something he should be remembering. "Who are these little bastards, anyway?"
"Kobolde," Alastair said. "Very primitive, too. From the Old Country. The kind you see only in books." He was stanching his scalp wound with a handkerchief. He looked pale and wobbly.
Harris caught his eye. "Zeb?"
"What?"
"Rolling tray?"
"Right." Zeb darted back into the darkness between stacks of supplies and equipment. He looked for more Kobolde, but nothing moved within his sight.
He reached the object he'd seen before and threw tires and sheet rubber off it, revealing the heavy rolling cart beneath, and began pushing it toward Doc's table.
He heard more gunfire, single shots from a handgun, and Harris's voice: "I've got him pinned down. Zeb, keep your eyes open. There are more of them out there."
But nothing sprang at Zeb out of the shadows, and he reached Doc's table and got the cart around in front of it. "C'mere, Harris. Help me lift."
Between them, they got the front end of the table up on the cart, then moved to the other side and strained to lift the other end.
Alastair stayed with them. The handkerchief was around his brow as a bandage now, and he kept his attention on their surroundings. He fired two shots out into the darkness as Zeb and Harris lifted the front of Doc's table, and smoke now rose from the barrel of his submachine gun. "I've seen at least three more," he said.
"Can you talk to them?" Harris asked.
"Maybe. With thousands of tribes you get thousands of dialects."
"When we get near the door, tell them this place is about to blow up, so they'd better run for the hills. For now, brace this cart."
Harris and Zeb returned to the foot end of Doc's table. They heaved and pushed, sliding the table until as much of it as would fit lay across the cart. Harris told Alastair to stand aside. When next they heaved, the table rolled awkwardly forward. Within moments they went from walking to trotting to running, barely keeping up with the table end they had to lift.
Zeb heard Noriko repeat the "fall back" signal, heard Alastair open up with his autogun. Then, in the light from Noriko's torch, he saw ahead the doorway out, saw that it was—
"Too narrow!" Zeb shouted.
Harris picked up his pace. "Push push push!"
They hit the doorway like an express train, more than half a ton of wood and metal and flesh travelling nearly as fast as a man can run, and the two corners of Doc's table blew through the doorjamb and adjacent brick wall as though they were plaster. Zeb felt the impact against his shoulder like the kick of a badly-held shotgun. And suddenly they were outside, their rolling table trying to grind to a halt and fall over as it plowed through gravel and overgrown grass—
The first explosion behind them didn't seem that loud, the rude cough of a giant, followed by shrieking metal within the factory and hammer blows all around them—bricks slamming into the ground. Then came the second explosion, louder, and the third.
Harris heaved against his corner of the table. The opposite corner slid off the cart, bit into gravel, and the table upended. Harris got around it, under it, kept the top side from smashing full into the ground, kept Doc from being crushed.
Zeb joined him, helped Harris strain against the table's massive weight. Alastair and Noriko got around as well. Zeb heard bricks crashing into the other side of their wooden shield. He looked down; Doc hung from his chains at full extension, his head inches from the ground, his expression dazed and quizzical, his eyes unfocused.
There were four more distinct explosions and a further hail of broken bricks. Then there was only the rising roar of fire and scream of bending metal.
Zeb looked around the edge of the table. What had once been a mountainous building was now a broken egg half, still collapsing, flames rising from its interior. There was no likelihood that any of the attackers could have escaped it.
Harris cried, "Gaby!"
No answer. Harris nodded at Alastair. The doctor thumbed the selector switch on the side of his submachine gun and fired two individual shots into the air. He was rewarded with the sound of a shot from the direction of the road. Zeb saw Harris sigh and relax. Closer by, Ixyail broke from a stand of tall grass and ran to the table, her attention on Doc.
As they carefully pushed the table over to set it back on its feet, Noriko said, "Zeb?"
"Yes?"
"You are a priest of Morrigan or Crow-Badb?"
"No."
"Of one of the other war-makers?"
He shook his head. "I'm a manager of fighters. I'm not a priest of anything."
She turned away, her features schooled once again into peaceful unreadability, but Zeb thought he caught for a second time some lingering worry in her eyes.
Harris said, "Zeb?"
"What?"
"Did I or did I not tell you this would be dangerous?"
Zeb reached around to touch his shoulder where it was throbbing. His fingers came away wet and he looked at the blood on them. "Yes, you did. But there's hearing it, and then there's experiencing it."
Police and firemen came from three surrounding towns to investigate the explosions. They looked at identification papers Alastair and Gaby offered and became very cooperative.
"That's a trip," said Zeb.
Harris asked, "What is?"
"Cop just asked if I wanted a cup of something. Shock." He moved his shoulder around. His jacket and shirt were now off, and Alastair had applied a bandage to the bite he'd received. It was starting to stiffen.
Gaby smiled. "It's xioc, ex-eye-oh-see. A chocolate drink. More bitter than coffee. What most people drink here instead of coffee."
"My point is, most of the times I've been approached by cops on the real world, they've asked me something different, like whether I'd grope the wall while they patted me down. Or else."
"Any time you're in Novimagos," said Harris, "which is the north part of the Eastern Seaboard, you tell the police—that is, the various city guards—that you're a consultant with the Sidhe Foundation. You'll get cooperation. Maybe after they check out your credentials, but soon."
Gaby shrugged. "At least, it's usually worth a cup of xioc."
Doc, wrapped in a blanket from Noriko's trunk, sat in the passenger seat of her car, the door open, his bare feet on the ground. The movements of his eyes suggested that he could see again, and he seemed to be talking coherently. He was flanked by Alastair and Ish and had been talking to them and to the senior guardsman on site for some time.
Now, finally, Zeb had an opportunity to get a good look at Doc. The man was tall, a couple of inches over Zeb's six foot two, and very pale of complexion. His eyes were sky-blue and his hair, nearly pure white, fell below his shoulders; it was now bound back in a tail. To Zeb's eye, his features and build were a little odd: He seemed to have just a little too much muscle for his swimmer's frame, while his features, handsome and elegant, seemed to belong to a cruel storybook prince somehow softened by experience and compassion.
The senior guardsman finally nodded and withdrew. Doc waved Gaby, Harris, Zeb and Noriko over.
Harris asked, "How're you doing, Doc?"
The tall man shook his head. "My mind is still wooly. But I don't think I'm hurt. And I can focus now." He held out his hand palm upward. A small flame, like one from a cigarette lighter, sprouted from his palm, but did no harm to his skin. Other flames ignited from the tips of each of his fingers. He closed his hand into a fist and the flames were smothered.
Gaby gestured at the ruin of the factory, where firemen still trained water on flames licking through a collapsed wall. "How did you get here?"
"I'm not sure. I was—" Doc paused so long Zeb was sure he'd forgotten he was talking. "This morning, I went out on an errand. It's the anniversary of my father's death. Before dawn, I went to the temple of Longarm Lug to make my respects—my father was a priest of that order.
"As I was leaving, descending the steps, I saw a girl trip and I reached down to steady her. I didn't get a good look at her. Dark hair, worn short and tightly curled. She grabbed at me, I thought for balance—"
"No woman grabs at you just for balance."
"Thank you, Ish. And she had me wrapped up long enough for her confederate to shoot me. I think he was behind a column."
"Shoot you?" said Gaby. "I didn't see a gunshot wound. Alastair, is he—"
"It wasn't a normal gun," Doc said. "It sounded like a small-caliber rifle, but before I blacked out, I looked down and saw the missile. It had struck through my shirt into my chest. It looked like a tiny brass syringe. I have to conclude it was filled with a powerful narcotic."
"Dart-gun," said Harris. "They use them all the time on the grim world, mostly to drug wild animals so they can be tagged and tracked."
Doc managed a wry smile. "Am I tagged?"
Alastair, who had obviously heard this and more already, looked dissatisfied. "So they kidnap you, subject you to erotic dreams—"
"I'd better have been in them," said Ish, her voice a growl.
"You were, dear heart," Doc said.
"—and then leave you to die. I don't get it. Except," the doctor added, "it is the way I'd prefer to die. Perhaps someone thought he was doing you a favor."
"I'll have to thank him," said Doc. "Just before I realign all the bones in his skull."
"I think we're through here," said Harris. "If there are any more leads to be found, we'll have to find them tomorrow. Let's get back to Neckerdam and tuck Doc into bed."
On the drive back, Harris, Zeb and Gaby were piled into the driver's compartment with Noriko. Zeb marveled that with four people in it, it was still fairly comfortable. Even more than before, though, he missed having seat belts available. In the passenger compartment, Doc slumbered, his head in Ish's lap, Alastair on the opposite side of the seat. The window was down between the driver's compartment and passenger compartment.
Harris asked Zeb, "Seen enough?"
"You're joking. I haven't even had the nickel tour."
"Well, then, I'm going to treat you to the best hotel in Neckerdam. Arrange you a native guide so you can see all the sights."
"Wait, wait, wait. And what are you going to be up to?"
Harris shrugged. "Foundation business. My job."
"Yeah, let's talk about that. What is this `She Foundation'?"
"Well, first," Gaby said, "though it's pronounced `she,' it's spelled ess-eye-dee-aitch-ee. You don't hear the word much today on the grim world, except as part of the word `banshee.' Anyway, the Sidhe Foundation solves problems."
Zeb nodded. "You mentioned that before. What sort of problems? I've already gotten the impression you don't just fix flat tires."
Gaby smiled. "No, it's a little more involved than that. We look into strange events. Crimes that make no sense to city guards. Rituals that might do very nasty things to innocent people. Gangland activity that suggests big changes. Anything that could get very dangerous very fast."
"Who pays for all this?"
Harris jerked his thumb toward Doc. "The big guy. He's rich. Mostly from inventions and big engineering jobs. And sometimes grateful rulers will just dump loads of money on us when we've solved one of their little problems."
"But sometimes," Gaby said, "bad eamons—bad guys, I mean—will start something and then say to themselves, `You know, as soon as news of this breaks, Doc Sidhe is going to come after us.' So they start things off by gunning for Doc."
"So that might have been what led to this attack on your boss?"
Gaby nodded. "It's worked that way before."
Zeb gave her a stern look. "So your punch-drunk husband thinks I'm going to let everyone get into trouble while I'm off eating filet mignon?"
"You ought to consider it," she said. "Sidhe Foundation business is sometimes nasty business. And inconvenient—there are times when we jump on a plane and go places for months at a time. Can your business back home stand for you to disappear like that? You don't want to get sucked into it, Zeb."
"Maybe not. But my partner can manage things without me. I chose one who could be independent."
Harris looked dissatisfied. "Just like you." He tried another tack. "Zeb, you insisted on coming tonight, and now you've had to kill men. Little nasty men, sure, but men. Has that dawned on you yet?"
"Yeah." Zeb let out a long, slow breath. "But that was a question I settled in my mind back when I first went into the army. Whether or not I could kill. I decided I could, under the right circumstances. Those circumstances came up tonight and I discovered I was right. If they come up again, I guess I'll do it again. For example, if I see someone using a stone axe to bash in what you laughingly refer to as your brains. You and Gaby are my friends. I don't have very many."
Harris gave him a cold stare. "Neither do I, and I buried two of them just a few months ago. I don't want to bury you, or have to inform your family."
With some heat to his voice, Zeb said, "Regardless of where I die, you don't tell my family. Let them read it in the newspaper. It's none of their business."
Ish said, "Harris, he shoots well and he thinks fast. And you said he was in the army, so he knows what it is to choose a path that he realizes might kill him. If he can follow orders, he is probably suitable."
Zeb offered Harris a victorious grin. "That's right, theater boy, listen to the lady."
Harris glared at Ish. "Thanks for the support. Okay, Zeb. If Ish is willing to have some sorry old fight manager tag along with us, you're in."
"Old, hell. I can whip your ass."
"In your dreams."
"Find us a ring."
They topped a hill and the glittering sea of lights that was Neckerdam rose into view before them.