Free Whispering Nickel Idols by Glen Cook Page A

the kitchen. “You stay here,” I told Belinda. “Where are your bodyguards?”
    “Good question. I mean to ask.”
    “I’ll find them.” It was a puzzle, them vanishing. They should’ve surrounded Belinda the instant the excitement started.
    The baby cats headed back into the big hall.
    Belinda seized my arm, for one moment a scared little girl. Which is one way she manipulates me. Then the woman who ran the Outfit reemerged. She snagged a butcher knife. “Be careful.”
    “Watch out. Don’t leave unless you have to. There’s some kind of excitement going on outside.” I followed my kitties.
    Fires still pranced and murmured in a dozen places. Only the little blazes had been slain. The excitement up front had ended. A few bold fellows had turned back to help, though the effort looked hopeless. The remaining fires weren’t going to let mere mortals push them around.
    I found Belinda’s bodyguards. They’d gone down where they were posted. They hadn’t bailed on her at all. Two were smoldering and dead. One was just plain dead. Two more were smoldering but alive, unconscious, in desperate need of help.
    I discovered several more goombahs in like condition, alive but unconscious. “Morley! Over here! Problems bigger than those fires.” The goombahs were burning like that woman had. “How do we get them out?”
    Dotes barked, “Theodore! Take Beans up front. See if you can’t get some help in here.” He bounced over beside me. “This is ugly, Garrett. Really ugly. Smells like sorcery.” Thugs crackled and popped.
    “I don’t know. Grab his legs.” We huffed and puffed and dragged a man out to the ice bath. I reminded
    Morley about my meeting with Harvester Temisk.
    “It had something to do with all this?”
    “Maybe. But I don’t know where he’d fit. Cause or effect? Symptom or disease? On three. One. Two. Three.”
    Ice water splashed. A kitten protested getting its feet wet. It strutted off indignantly, shaking each paw as it came off the floor.
    The cat led us back into the main hall, where it bounded into the pail I’d used to bring the litter aboard. That pail was full of cats already, all with paws on the rim, watching anxiously. I shouted, “Just find somebody who’s breathing and get him out of here!”
    Morley told me, “Grab your cats and go, Garrett. I’ll get these guys out. Hell! This one is gone now. Sharps! Give me a hand with this.”
    Melondie Kadare appeared, wobbling worse than ever. “Help,” she whimpered. “I’m too ripped …”
    “What’re you doing back inside?”
    She squeaked. “I need to get my people out.”
    “How many are in here? It’s going up.”
    “What was I going to tell you? Shit. It’s hard to think straight when you’re fucked-up. Oh. Yeah. You need to get away from here. The Watch are coming. Because of the fighting.”
    “What fighting?”
    “Outside … it went all to shit. I need to get out of here. But I’m ripped.”
    “Hang on to me, then.”
    Morley and his guys got out, carrying the last surviving bodyguard to the ice bath. I warned him, “Get going. Relway is coming.”
    Where had Relway been? Belinda would’ve arranged a diversion. Something blatantly political. Deal
    Relway loves racialists less than gangsters.
    Me and my pail roared through the back door. It was every-man-for-himself time. The coaches were gone. The parking area retained nothing but a dusting of large, ugly men who were either unconscious or dead. They had no friends to help them get away.
    Morley faded into the night with his men, disappointed because their efforts had been wasted. Both bodyguards had died in the ice bath.
    I made like the good shepherd myself, wondering about a batch of baby cats who would get together so their staff could lug them out of danger more easily.
    Melondie Kadare started snoring. Brutally. I tucked her into a chest pocket.
     
     

17
    It didn’t take long to realize that somebody was following me. Somebody either very