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take it. With a quick backhanded slap, I stopped the gillette's strugglings, then rolled off his chest and sat with my back to the wall. I had control for the moment, but I could feel the Old One gathering his strength to contest me, and the stink of blood helped him. Thumperwas dead, and part of me cried out for revenge, but that was too simple for the situation that killed him. Somewhere in the dark passageway back into the stadium I heard athwok, then the razorgirl came tumbling back into the small enclosure. A half-second later Jimmy entered the enclosure, a bat in his hands. "Wolf? Thumper?" I tried to answer him, but the Old One growled. Jimmy turned toward the shadows, raising the bat. The Old One took that as a threat and tried to make me lunge at him. I gritted my teeth, locking my jaw shut, and refused. "Go. Away. Jimmy." My voice came in a harsh croak, with lots of growl worked in and around it. "Go." He, too, is unnatural, Longtooth. He is as bad as this place. But he is my friend.I shaped my will into a stick and poked it at the Old One.You tried to play at man's games, and you lost. It will not always be so, Longtooth. One game at a time. Jimmy lowered his head slightly, trying to pierce the darkness that shrouded me. "Wolf, is that you? Are you okay?" "It's me, Jimmy. I need you to go away." I had to force the words out through my throat. "Call security. Thumper is hurt bad. Dead, I think. These two did it. Go. Now. Please." "Are you hurt?" Jimmy took a half-step toward me. "You look . . . different." His eyes have been done, he can probably see me.I didn't know if his optical mods included low-light vision, but the shadows would only hide me if he stayed back. "I'm going to be fine.Please, just go. I'll catch up and explain. Get Thumper help." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html He nodded. " 'Kay, if that's what you want." "Thanks." Jimmy turned and ran away down the passage, and the Old One relinquished his grip on me. I felt all the agonies of my body returning to normal, but I refused to cry out. Torturing me that way was beneath him, but the Old One had been thwarted so he didn't care. Grumbling like some guttercur, he retreated inside me and lurked like a hangover. I shivered, then stood unsteadily. I might have been deep in the bowels of a building that mocked nature, covered in the blood of people who had denied their own nature, but at least I was myself again. And, for the moment, that was a win. III As wins went, though, it was rather costly. Thumper's death nearly gut-shot the team. His enthusiasm had kept everyone loose, his gentle words had dispelled the negativism that could prolong a slump, and his sense of humor reminded everyone that since baseball was really a game, they should have fun out there. To have him killed stunned everyone, and at such a crucial point in the year, that could easily have spelled doom for the team. Oddly enough, Ken Wilson helped turn that sentiment around. Against doctor's orders he left the hospital and came to the team meeting after Thumper's death. He looked around at those gathered and delivered a succinct and powerful eulogy. "Each of us," he said, "knows who we are inside. I'm not Babe Ruth, you're not Matt Williams or Pee Wee Reese. When we step away from the game, when we retire our statsofts, we will be someone outside the game. Thumper devoted his whole life to baseball and became a person who literally lived for it. And now he's died for it. He died making sure everything would be perfect for us, for our game against the Jaguars tomorrow. Our duty, our debt to him demands that we make that game as perfect as he made this place for that game. You know, you all know, he's still here, watching us. Well, I'm not gonna let him down." As Ken spoke I felt an upswelling of emotion and could see the same shining from the eyes of the other players. I knew they bought into it wholly and completely, but that's because they didn't have a full understanding of how Thumper had died. Palmer Clark had taken immediate charge of the investigation and had clamped a lid on things very quickly. All the media learned was that Thumper had been engaged in some routine maintenance duties when he'd had an accident, struck his head, and died. The truth was not nearly so neat. There was no denying that the two gillettes had killed him, but there was nothing to connect them with the team's sub-par statistical performance. I was not a party to any interrogations, but from what Clark told me, the two of them were being fairly tight-lipped. They had a history of catting burgling various and sundry corporate apartments or places where VIPs installed their extramarital lovers. They hit spots where they figured folks would not want much attention paid and would have valuable items hidden. Clark figured they had been hiding out preparatory to breaking into the Dome's luxury boxes, Thumper surprised them, and died in the ensuing struggle. I couldn't dispute that idea, and cautioned myself against trying to make a pattern where none existed. It seemed to me, though, that if Thumper had found them hiding, they could have made up some excuse and gotten out of there. Moreover, they were wired and skilled enough to have taken Thumper down without killing him. The only reason they had for killing him was if he'd seen something he wasn't Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html supposed to see. Though he might have been killed accidently, they should have vacated the area the moment he went down, not hung around. Still, the security force and I looked around and couldn't find anything out of the ordinary. I didn't like it, but the accidental death theory seemed to be the easiest one to explain all that was happening. Normally that's enough for me, but I was pretty sure there were some dots that weren't getting connected and that if I could find them, I'd be able to figure out what was really going on. My general feeling of uneasiness had been heightened by a bit of distance between Jimmy and me. He definitely was putting his game face on during practice, concentrating a great deal. He told me that he'd just wanted to help that night, and had come looking for me when I'd not been in the locker room after his media conference. He'd headed for the Scoreboard area because that's where he thought Thumper would be. He literally ran into the woman as she fled, swatted her back into the battlefield, and then wanted to help me. As he told me this I could hear the hurt in his voice that I had asked him to leave. I really wanted to tell himwhy I'd asked him to go, but letting someone know you've gone feral and are likely to tear his throat out is really not the way to seal a friendship. I explained to him that with bodies and the like, I was trying to protect him from scandal or anything that would hurt the team. Thatwas my job there, after all. He seemed to accept that explanation, which isn't to say he believed it. After that we drifted apart able to share jokes and all, but it wasn't the same as before. Given all the other pressures on him, I didn't see any reason to make an issue out of it. And explaining things would have required me telling him my secret. While I knew I could trust him with it, learning it was something that had already killed too many [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |