Ethical Vampires 03 by Siege Perilous

Author:Siege Perilous
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Toronto, the Present

Richard’s cell phone trilled, jerking him abruptly from what had been a deep, satisfying sleep. Where the hell was he? Bourland’s TV room, the hockey game replaced by a tennis match, the sound low and droning, with Michael on the other couch, twisted around like a pretzel and thoroughly unconscious. Only children ever seemed able to reach that depth of sodden slumber. Memory reasserted itself as Richard noted the late hour on the clock above the television.

He hurriedly checked his cell’s caller ID. Not Bourland’s number, so no problem at the hospital. An unknown in fact.

Who’d be phoning him this late?

One way to find out. “Hallo?”

“Mr. Dun?” The voice seemed distant, but was recognizable: the lovely lady who had interviewed him so much earlier that evening.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry to wake you. The time zones are the same, but it’s still late.”

“Not at all. How’s Cancún?”

“Not a clue. We’ve been on the run since landing. We only just got back from the ruins. We’re staying in Merida.”

The name meant nothing to him; he assumed it was close to their investigation area. “Have you news of Sharon Geary?”

“Sort of. It’s not much, but I thought you’d want a report.”

Well, he’d primed her for exactly this. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing at the moment, we didn’t expect to start until tomorrow, but were told there was some ceremony on tonight, so we got fast transportation out to Chichén Itzá to catch it.”

“Ceremony?”

“It was a kind of summoning to bring back the spirit of their old god. According to one of the elders here, the god was stolen from them, and their holy man murdered by the thief. That’s as much as we could get being outsiders. They wouldn’t let us talk to the shaman—I mean— ahkin. He was busy and still new at the job. His old teacher died early this morning. At the airport.”

“Died? How?”

“The authorities aren’t sure yet. There’s some to-do about the body. His people—the ones claiming he was murdered—want him back, but the doctors want to perform an autopsy. What with the world situation they’re very hyper about biological weapons, and an old peasant man who’s never been more than a mile from his forest village suddenly dying at the airport is suspicious. So far as I can see from a report made at the scene by the ambulance people there was no sign of obvious foul play. The man just collapsed, with bleeding from his nose, eyes, and ears. There are some perfectly normal disorders to account for those symptoms, but combined with other things like your vision, it works out to be odd.”

“Why was he at the airport?”

“According to the elder, he was chasing down the thief. He fought with him and lost. But airport security maintains all was quiet, business as usual when it happened. In fact, the only disturbance was him dropping dead.”

“Could his people describe this thief?”

“Not in concrete terms. Emotional, yes, but nothing the police could track. If I had to make

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