Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 3)

"I was told by the Elders."

"Told? Or paid?"

The man was silent. In a panic he looked to the woman. "Call for help," he said. He looked at Ash. "I said they were to bring you back. What happened was not my doing. The Elders said I was to come here and do what I had to do, at all costs."

Once again, the woman was visibly shocked. "Anton," she said in a whisper. She didn't move to pick up the phone.

"I give you one final chance," said Ash, "to tell me something that will prevent me from killing you." This was a lie. He realized it as soon as the words were out of his mouth, but on the other hand, perhaps the man would say something.

"How dare you!" said the man. "I have but to raise my voice and help will come to me."

"Then do it!" said Ash. "These walls are thick. But you should try it."

"Vera, call for help!" he cried.

"How much did they pay you?" asked Ash.

"You know nothing about it."

"Ah, but I do. You know what I am, but very little else. Your conscience is decrepit and useless. And you're afraid of me. And you lie. Yes, you lie. In all probability you were very easy to corrupt. You were offered advancement and money, and so you cooperated with something you knew to be evil."

He looked at the woman, who was plainly horrified.

"This has happened before in your Order," he said.

"Get out of here!" said the man. He cried out for help, his voice sounding very big in the closed room. He cried again, louder.

"I intend to kill you," said Ash.

The woman cried, "Wait." She had her hands out. "You can't do things this way. There's no need. If some deliberate harm came to Aaron, then we must call the Council immediately. The house is filled this time of year with senior members. Call the Council now. I'll go with you."

"You can call them when I am gone. You are innocent. I don't intend to kill you. But you, Anton, your cooperation was necessary for what took place. You were bought, why don't you admit this to me? Who bought you? Your orders did not come from the Elders."

"Yes, they did."

The man tried to dart away. Ash reached out, easily catching hold of the man due to the uncommon length of his arms, and he wrapped his fingers very tightly around the man's throat, more tightly perhaps than a human being could have done. He began to squeeze the life out of the man, doing it as rapidly as he could, hoping his strength was sufficient to break the man's neck, but it wasn't.

The woman had backed away. She'd snatched up the telephone and was now speaking into it frantically. The man's face was red, eyes bulging. As he lost consciousness, Ash squeezed tighter and tighter until he was very sure the man was dead, and would not rise from the floor gasping for breath, as it sometimes happened. He let the man drop.

The woman dropped the telephone receiver.

"Tell me what happened!" she cried. It was almost a scream. "Tell me what happened to Aaron! Who are you?"

Ash could hear people running in the hallway.

"Quickly, I need the number through which I can reach the Elders."

"I can't give you that," she said. "That's known only to us."

"Madam, don't be foolish. I have just killed this man. Do as I ask you." She didn't move.

"Do it for Aaron," he said, "and for Yuri Stefano." She stared at the desk, her hand rising to her lips, and then she snatched up a pen, wrote something fast on a piece of white paper, and thrust it towards him.

There was a pounding on the double doors.

He looked at the woman. There was no time to talk further.

He turned and opened the doors, to face a large group of men and women who had only just come to a halt, to range round him and look at him.

Here were some who were old and others quite young, five women, four men, and a boy very tall, but still almost beardless. The old gentleman from the library stood among them.

He closed the doors behind him, hoping to delay the woman.

"Do you--any of you--know who I am?" Ash asked. Quickly he looked from face to face, eyes darting back and forth until he was certain he had memorized the features of each person. "Do you know what I am? Answer me, please, if you know."

Not a single one gave him anything but a puzzled expression. He could hear the lady crying inside the room, a thick, heavy sobbing rather like her speaking voice, roughened with age.

Alarm was now spreading through the group. Another young man had arrived.

"We have to go in," said one of the women. "We have to see what's happened inside."

"But do you know me? You!" Ash spoke to the latecomer now. "Do you know what I am and why I might have come here?"

None of them did. None of them knew anything. Yet they were people of the Order, scholars all, not a service person among them. Men and women in the prime of life.

The woman in the room behind him tugged at the knobs of the doors, then flung them open. Ash stepped to the side.

"Aaron Lightner's dead!" she cried. "Aaron's been murdered."

There were gasps, small cries of dismay and surprise. But all around, there was innocence. The old man from the library looked mortally wounded by this news. Innocent.

It was time to get away.

Ash pushed through the loose gathering quickly and decisively and made for the stairs, going down two by two before anyone followed. The woman screamed for them to stop him, to not let him escape. But he had too good a head start, and his legs were so much longer than theirs.

He reached the side exit before his pursuers found the top of the little stairway.

He went out into the night and walked fast across the wet grass, and then, glancing back, began to run. He ran until he had reached the iron fence, which he easily vaulted, and then he walked up to his car and made a hasty gesture for his driver to open the door for him and then take off out of here.

He sat back as the car moved faster and faster on the open highway.

He read the fax number written by the woman on a piece of paper. It was a number outside of England, and if memory served him right, it was in Amsterdam.

He pulled loose the phone hooked beside him on the wall of the car, and he punched in the number for the long-distance operator.

Yes, Amsterdam.

He memorized the number, or tried to, at least, and then he folded the paper and put it into his pocket.

When he returned to the hotel, he wrote down the fax number, ordered supper, then bathed at once, and watched patiently as the hotel waiters laid out for him a large meal on a linen-draped table. His assistants, including the pretty young Leslie, stood anxiously by.

"You're to find me another place of residence as soon as it's daybreak," he told Leslie. "A hotel as fine as this one, but something much larger. I need an office and several lines. Come back for me only when everything is arranged."

The young Leslie seemed overjoyed to be so commissioned and empowered, and off she went with the others in tow. He dismissed the waiters, and began to consume the meal of sumptuous pasta in cream sauce, lots of cold milk, and the meat of a lobster, which he did not like, but which was, nevertheless, white.

Afterwards he lay on the sofa, quietly listening to the crackling of the fire and hoping perhaps for a gentle rainfall.

He also hoped that Yuri would return. It wasn't likely. But he had insisted they remain here at Claridge's on the chance that Yuri would trust them again.

At last Samuel came in, so drunk that he staggered. His tweed jacket was slung over his shoulder, and his white shirt was rumpled. Only now did Ash see that the shirt was specially made, as the suit had been, to fit Samuel's grotesque body.

Samuel lay down by the fire, awkward as a whale. Ash got up, gathered some soft pillows from the couch, and put them beneath Samuel's head. The dwarf opened his eyes, wider than usual, it seemed. His breath was fragrant from drink. His breath came in snorts, but none of this repelled Ash, who had always loved Samuel.

On the contrary, he might have argued to any

one in the world that Samuel had a rocklike, carven beauty, but what would have been the use?

"Did you find Yuri?" Samuel asked.

"No," said Ash, who remained down on one knee, so that he could speak to Samuel almost in a whisper. "I didn't look for him, Samuel. Where would I begin in all of London?"

"Aye, there is no beginning and no end," said Samuel with a deep and forlorn sigh. "I looked wherever I went. Pub to pub to pub. I fear he'll try to go back. They'll try to kill him."

"He has many allies now," said Ash. "And one of his enemies is dead. The entire Order has been alerted. This must be good for Yuri. I have killed their Superior General."

"Why in the name of God did you do that?" Samuel forced himself up on his elbow and struggled to gain an upright position, but Ash had finally to help him.

Samuel sat there with his knees bent, scowling at Ash.

"Well, I did it because the man was corrupt and a liar. There cannot be corruption in the Talamasca that isn't dangerous. And he knew what I was. He believed me to be Lasher. He pleaded the Elders as his cause when I threatened his life. No loyal member would have mentioned the Elders to anyone outside, or said things that were so defensive and obvious."

"And you killed him."

"With my hands, the way I always do. It was quick. He didn't suffer much, and I saw many others. None of them knew what I was. So what can one say? The corruption is near the top, perhaps at the very top, and has not by any means penetrated to the rank and file. If it has, it has penetrated in some confused form. They do not know a Taltos when they see one, even when given ample opportunity to study the specimen."

"Specimen," said Samuel. "I want to go back to the glen."

"Don't you want to help me, so that the glen remains safe, so that your revolting little friends can dance and play the pipes, and kill unsuspecting humans and boil the fat from their bones in cauldrons?"

"You have a cruel tongue."

"Do I? Perhaps so."