Michael Stackpole - Wolf and Raven

I wanted to reach out and take her in my arms just to reassure her, but she held herself back and I instantly knew why. Accepting a hug would have showed weakness, and that she could not allow. Albion styled himself the leader of the little band, and probably did motivate them to get lots of things done, but Kyrie certainly held the group together on a daily basis. If she gave him any opening, he would lead the group to ruin because of his bitterness and anger.

Cooper hopped down off his stool and came over to take her hand. "Don't wowwy, Kywie. Mista Wolf and Hawse will protect us. I pwomise." As if that affirmation had set all right with the world, he smiled and returned to smearing more pizza sauce over his face.

In a quiet voice I asked, "Hawse?"

Kyrie licked her lips. "When we scavenge we sometimes have to leave Cooper here all by himself. Harse is his imaginary friend. He says Harse is guarding the house and it helps keep Cooper calm, so we don't discourage him. Everybody has imaginary friends when they're young. He'll outgrow it."

"Or write simsense scripts about it and get rich. Listen, Raven wants me back at headquarters so we can figure out what we're doing next. I'll take a look around the area just to make sure nothing strange is going down, then I'll take off." I folded one piece of pizza over on another and saluted the assembly with it. "Thanks for sharing my birthday pizza, gang. See you later."

The second I stepped from the slice of multiplex that housed the kids, I knew something was wrong. The Old One kept a growl simmering in the back of my mind and the hackles rose on my neck. The Barrens is, even at the best of times, a lawless battle zone that makes all but the irredeemably insane feel insecure. This time, however, it felt malevolent.

I bit off some pizza and chewed as I started a circuit around the block. I reached inside and demanded that the Old One lend me his heightened senses. He did so, but the garlic in the pizza quickly erased any advantage the Old One's olfactory abilities might have given me. Still, his increased night vision did help me pierce shadows, and his hearing made audible everything from rats scrambling inside walls to lies whispered passionately in one of the upper-floor apartments across the street.

I definitely heard something out of the ordinary. It started with the slushy, muffled, sucking sound that a boot would make when slowly drawn out of mud. Along with that came the crunch of beer-bottle glass being ground against stones and a metallic clinking like links of a chain striking a post. And yet, as clearly as I heard what I have described, I heard much more as those sounds played in concert with others.

Above and beyond that I knew two other things. Had I tried to point those sounds out to anyone without hypersenses they would have thought me crazy. The sound had no rhythm or repetition and thereby it avoided classification. It could have been a figment of my imagination, but given my other realization, I was uncomfortable in dismissing it as much.

It was stalking me.

That's not a conclusion I drew without benefit of experience. I've been stalked by some of the best. Two of the elven High Lord's Paladins had come after me during the Full Moon Slashings. Back before he became one of us, Kid Stealth had done his best to put my head on his trophy wall. Each and every time the uneasy feeling coiling in my guts tells me I'm one rung down on someone's idea of the food chain and I don't like it.

I swallowed and the pizza spiraled into the knot that had once been my stomach.

I turned toward the place from which the sound was coining, but I saw nothing huddled in the piles of debris between two buildings. I tossed the pizza away and drew my Viper. I hunkered down behind the burned-out hulk of a Ford Americar and suddenly found an acrid, bitter odor dissolving the garlic and carnation scents from my nose. Whoever or whatever was coming after me had bizarre ideas about personal hygiene.

Waiting behind cover irritated the Old One no end.Do not slink here like a coward, Longtooth. Let me help you. I will destroy this thing that hunts us. Leave it to me.

I shook my head. Though the scent had grown strong enough to be completely distracting, I concentrated beyond it. I heard a different sound: running feet. They were approaching from my back. I whirled and jammed my Viper toward the car's rear bumper.

Cooper stopped short and looked at me with eyes full of innocent hurt. "Mr. Wolf?"

I swallowed hard. "Cooper! What are you doing out here?"

His smile cracked caked tomato sauce at the corners of his mouth. He extended a newspaper-wrapped bundle bound with string. "Biwfday pwesent."

Somehow, as if his words were a magic spell, the sensation of being hunted vanished. I slid the Viper back into the shoulder holster and accepted the little, pencil-thin package. I carefully tugged the string off it. "Did you wrap this yourself?"

He nodded proudly.

"You did a good job, Cooper. Why, what is this?"

As I peeled the paper away, I knew exactly what his gift was. The slender item was a credstick. They came in one of two flavors. A personal or account credstick has a microchip in it that can be encoded to take care of credits and debits-as convenient as cash and no problem with arguing about whether a corp's scrip is good this month or not.

The second type, of which this was one, is a bearer stick. It has a set amount of credit burned into the chip. When that is transferred into a banking account or into a person's credstick, the chip melts. Some corps mass-produce them for petty funds expenses, but those sticks are generally of low credit value. The chief benefit of the bearer stick is that it can be used to transfer large amounts of funds without their being immediately traceable. Bearer sticks are small, unmarked bills in a much handier package.

The bearer stick Cooper gave me had been broken in half. The break, which rendered it useless, was jagged so I assumed it was an accident. I fingered both halves but couldn't make heads or tails of the coloring scheme on them. I looked up to see an expectant expression on Cooper's face. "Thank you very much, Cooper."

His voice sank into a whisper. "The othews look fo the longa ones, so I decided to give you two of the small ones." He clapped his hands. "You and Hawse will keep us safe."

I tousled his blond hair. "You got that right. Harse will have to watch you right now, because I've got to go talk to Raven. Thanks again for the present."

The little boy beamed, then turned and ran off into the shadows. I noticed he headed straight for the area from which I had earlier heard the sounds, but he disappeared before I could warn him away. Using the Old One's ears, I heard him giggle happily and I envisioned more pizza leftovers peeling off his face.

Hopping into my Fenris, I made a quick circuit of the area, then left the Barrens to ward their own.

The scowl on Valerie's face meant only one of two things. Either the Seadogs were losing, or she'd not been very successful in collecting data concerning the Right Reverend Roberts. "What's the score?"

She shrugged. "Roberts one, me zippo." Her frown darkened her cafe-au-lait skin, but only intensified the azure fire in her eyes. Raven came down the stairs and gave Valerie an encouraging smile. "I'd not say that, Val. You've pulled plenty of data on all the Andrew Coles who've ever lived in Seattle." He tapped the hardcopy report in his hands. "This stuff on the kids is very complete. You've also given us a rundown on Roberts' empire. As soon as your other search knowbots report back, you'll have everything you set out to get."

Val shrugged. "I know, but something is wrong with that report on Roberts. I know it's been tampered with."