Broken (Otherworld 6)

"Here," Clay said, heaving to his feet and walking over to it. He took off the top. "Recently emptied."

"Damn. What about the recycling box? He could have put the pieces in there."

"Or burned them in the fireplace," Jeremy said.

Clay nodded. "Or stuffed them in the garbage."

"Everyone can check out the place they suggested," I said.

"Excellent idea," Jeremy said, and headed off to the fireplace as I grabbed the recycling box.

Clay looked over at me and at Jeremy's quickly retreating back, then stalked out, grumbling.

Marked

IF SHANAHAN HAD SHREDDED THE FILE, HE'D TAKEN THE pieces with him. By the time we'd confirmed that, it was late enough to hunt down the second portal escapee.

When we left Shanahan's house, I checked my voice mail and learned that Robert had called while we'd been inside. We called him back from the hands-free setup in the Explorer.

"I believe I have some good news for you," Robert said.

"You know how to close the portal," I said.

"You were already on the right track and halfway there. To close a dimensional portal involving human sacrifice, all you need to do is return the sacrificed souls to the other side."

"In other words, kill the zombies."

"Precisely. Better yet, you aren't even doing them a disservice. Instead of returning to that dimensional portal, they'll go to their normal afterlife."

"That one we dispatched earlier today might not be so happy about that, considering he seemed pretty handy with that knife of his. He probably didn't much like where he ended up."

A light laugh. "True enough. But I'm sure this other poor woman will go someplace better."

"So that's what happened last time--someone killed the zombie and the portal closed?"

"Well...not exactly. In that case, the portal was opened shortly after it was created. That meant that the sorcerer who created it was still alive and had control of the zombie. To kill the zombie, they needed to kill the controller."

"Like with one raised by a necromancer?"

"Somewhat. Both types, if under someone's control, cannot be killed. Had yours been raised by a necromancer, a lethal blow simply wouldn't have been lethal."

"Like in the movies. You keep hacking, they keep walking."

"Precisely. But dimensional zombies with a controller--" He stopped and gave a small laugh. "Sorry. Talia's making faces, telling me that I'm veering far from the topic and probably confusing you. You don't need to know about controlled zombies, because that clearly isn't what you have. To contain zombies from the nineteenth century, your portal had to have been made around the time the letter was written. Only a sorcerer can create a portal, and they have normal life spans, meaning whoever made this one is long dead."

"Hence any connection is already severed," Jeremy said.

Clay nodded. "So all we need to do is kill the second zombie."

"Thereby returning the portal to a balanced state," Robert said. "Opening the portal allowed those souls to cross dimensions. That causes imbalance. Return them to the other side, and anyone who wandered into the portal will be released. Balance is restored. The portal closes."

We were counting on the woman being easy to find and at the end of an unbroken scent trail. Even after twenty-four hours, that wasn't as improbable as it might seem. She was from another century, and unlikely to have hopped on a GO train and headed for the suburbs.

The bowler-hatted man had adjusted to modern transportation quickly enough, but carjacking was probably little different from commandeering a horse or buggy, and I suspected he'd had some experience at that. He'd figured out that cars were the modern equivalent of a coach-and-four, grabbed one and let the driver do the tricky part.

As for how he'd tracked us, we assumed it had something to do with the letter. As for why he'd wanted it--that puzzled even Robert. He could only guess that he'd tracked us like a domestic dog following a rabbit's scent--only because instinct told him to. To avoid the problem this time we'd left the letter in the car, hidden in a place that would require werewolf strength--or a hydraulic jack--to access.

We began the hunt in human form, starting a block from the portal site where I'd picked up the woman's scent earlier that day. I tracked it for five blocks.