it’s going to affect us, if Venec’s going to start playing favorites, or acting weird, or we’re going to walk in on mad monkey-sex in the conference room.” He looked really pained at that. “Could you maybe warn us if you’re going to do that? A sock on the doorknob or something?”
“I really don’t think that’s going to be an issue, Nicky. But yeah, I promise.” I frowned, distracted. “Did you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
I held up a hand, not to silence him, but to show the current-traces still resting against my skin; to a Talent it looked like 3-D veins, pulsing greenly against my skin.
“I was testing the wild current around here,” I said, almost whispering, although there was no need. Probably. “And then I felt it... can you pick it up?”
I felt him slide into fugue-state next to me, and followed. Stalking current was like trying to move through a room thick-hung with wind chimes; if you brushed one too closely, it would set off a musical chain reaction, scaring away whatever was on the other side of the room.
Or, worse thought, not scaring it away.
Years ago, I’d gone snorkeling in Hawaii, and swum into the huge school of gorgeously colored fish. The front of my brain had been going all ooh and aah, but at the back of my brain the thought had come: what if something was diving into the school from the other side? What if that something had teeth – and wouldn’t mind eating something larger than finger-length fishlings?
That was how I felt right then, even before it grabbed me.
The shark image was all wrong. This was like being nailed by an octopus, an eight-armed thing with tentacles that dug into you and held on like a thousand tiny grappling hooks that stung like antiseptic on an open wound. I could feel Nick’s current-signature flowing over me, surging into where the hooks met magic-skin and melting them away as fast as they were placed, but he was barely keeping up.
Hold.
The thought came, cold and dark and deeper than anything human could manage. Nick ignored it, flowing onto the next series of hooks.
Hold it said again, and the hooks started to untangle themselves. I let out a tiny sigh of relief, resisting the urge to rub my physical – and untouched – arms in reaction.
You are the dogs of the Flame?
The what of the who?
An image came, of current strung out long and bright, the orange-red color a dead giveaway, the magical interpretation of Stosser’s unmistakable ponytail. My first image of him, dressed all in black, his hair loose, had been of a satanic candle, too.
Oh. “Yes,” I told the voice, feeling Nick tense beside me, ready in case that turned out to be a bad answer. “We’re pups.”
We are to exchange.
The voice opened – a door? A drawer? – and the scene flowed out and into our memories.
An overhead view of a large room, lit by a red glow that didn’t seem to come from anywhere in particular. I didn’t recognize it, but there was a sense of familiarity, anyway, as though one or more of the figures below knew it well. The mental camera angle swooped in, and the mike went live.
“They are not objects. They are people. You know this, you helped transform them.” If you knew Stosser, you could tell that he was wildly curious about how the Old One had accomplished that, but knew better than to ask. That was a trap alchemists used to fall into regularly, and the truth was that no human could manage it. Not without paying a price our boss was too smart to offer. I hoped.
The human failed his agreement. They are mine.
The voice that had caught me; it was the same entity that was arguing with Stosser. Okay, I’d known that, I guess, but the knowing sent a cold prickle into every inch of my skin.
“You don’t want them.” Stosser’s voice again, an absolute certainty replacing the curiosity.
The doing was mine. The agreement in my holding. The objects were surety against payment. The human failed to pay.
Stosser’s comprehension became ours: the voice we were dealing with was tied to the rules of the agreement, just the same as Wells. We weren’t dealing with an all-powerful Old One here, not directly. Or it was, but not all of it, an offshoot still tangled with the world, while the rest of it slept? Maybe: it was still old, and powerful, and scary as hell, but not