The Anubis Gates

The waiter sighed. “Heading for them or more likely just making a break in their direction.”

“And can you remember anything else about the man who shot him?”

“Just what I said, tall and blond. And the guy with him was short and dark and skinny and sick-looking. Now be off home, eh?”

There seemed nothing more to be learned here, so Jacky thanked the man and slouched disconsolately out onto the cobbles of Exchange Alley, where several men were gingerly loading into a wagon the red-pelted corpse of Kenny whatever-his-name-had-been, vacated a week ago by Kenny but only today by Dog-Face Joe.

Damn, Jacky thought. He’s moved on, and now I have no idea at all whose body he may be in.

She stuck her hands deep into the pockets of her oversized coat and, picking her way around the wagon and through the pack of gawking spectators, ambled away down Threadneedle Street.

* * *

Halfway home Doyle started trembling, and when he’d got to his rooftop perch and downed a first quick beer he lowered his face into his hands and breathed very deeply until the shivering stopped. My God, he thought, so that’s what it’s like when the damn things appear. No wonder poor Jacky went a little mad after killing one, so that he believed he saw Colin Lepovre’s soul staring out of the dying creature’s eyes. Or, hell, maybe he did. Doyle poured and drank off another cupful of beer. I sure hope, he thought, that Benner knows what he’s doing. I hope he knows what kind of fire he’s playing with. Doyle put down his cup and let his gaze wander to his left.

And where is he now, Doyle wondered uneasily, and has the fur begun to whisker out like grime on the new body yet, and has he started looking for another one to take?

* * *

On the weathered stone doorstep of a little whitewashed house roughly two thousand miles southeast of Doyle’s roof-top eyrie, a bald-headed old man sat stolidly smoking a long clay-bowled pipe and staring down the slope of dusty yellow grass at the pebbled beach and the water. The warm, dry wind was from the west, coming in with long ripples across the otherwise smooth Gulf of Patras, and in the occasional moments of its abatement he could sometimes hear the quiet clatter of sheep’s bells among the foothills of the Morea behind him.

For the third time during that long afternoon the boy Nicolo ran out of the house, this time actually kicking the doctor’s arm so that he nearly dropped his pipe. And the boy didn’t even apologize. The doctor smiled coldly up at the unhappy boy, promising himself that one more piece of rudeness from this Greek catamite would result in an ugly, painful and prolonged death for his beloved “padrone.”

“Doctor,” gasped Nicolo. “Come now! The padrone, he rolls on the bed and speaks to people who are not in the room! I think he will die!”

He won’t die until I let him, thought the doctor. He looked at the sky—the sun was well down the western side of the cloudless Grecian sky, and he decided that he could proceed now; not that it really mattered anymore at which hour of the day he did it—but old dead laws hang on as superstitions, and just as he wouldn’t dream of pronouncing the name of Set on the twenty-fourth day of the month Pharmuthi, or willingly see a mouse on the twelfth of Tybi, he could not bring himself to perform a work of black magic while Ra the sungod was overhead, and might see.

“Very well,” said the doctor, laying aside his pipe and getting laboriously to his feet. “I’ll go see him.”

“I will come also,” declared Nicolo.

“No. I must be alone with him.”

“I will come also.”

The ridiculous boy had placed his right hand on the hilt of the curved dagger he always carried in his red sash, and the doctor almost laughed. “If you insist. But you will have to leave when I treat him.”

“Why?”

“Because,” said the doctor, knowing that this excuse would sit well with the boy—though it would have set milord anglais, inside, scrabbling for his pistols—”medicine is magic, and the presence of a third soul in the room might change the healing sorceries into malevolent ones.”

The boy looked sulky, but muttered, “Very well.”

“Come along, then.”

They walked into the house and down the hallway to the doorless room at the end, and although the stone walls had kept the inside air cool, the young man lying on the narrow iron bed was drenched with sweat, and his curly black hair was plastered to his forehead. As Nicolo had reported, he was tossing fretfully, and though his eyes were closed he was frowning and muttering.

“You must leave now,” the doctor told the boy.