Chapter 25

Part of the corrupt charm of big cities is their acceptance of the wacky, weird, and outrageous within business as usual. But I doubt there were many other venues that hosted something as unpredictable as Radio Freeform. Format varied wildly from minute to minute; you could be scratching along with an old Bill Broonzy blues tune and smash into a cut from Lunchbox next. Your brain and ears might feel assaulted, but it would hold together. Wygan, the overnight man, had a deft touch with the mix. It was his name Alice had inked at the bottom of the list.

Late-night DJ was a pretty good gig for a vampire, I thought, and a well-known local voice wasn't likely to attack me. I drove to the row of red and white broadcasting towers on top of Queen Anne Hill and parked in the small, deserted lot outside the tiny building. I was glad that this phase of the project was nearly over. I was tired, felt low-level ill and ready to call it quits, no matter how much Alice threatened. I was a little jittery from her threats and too much caffeine, but I figured this one would be easy. Nothing could be as bad as Carlos.

Beside the steel security door was an intercom with a switch. I pushed it. A cautious voice answered. "'Ello?"

I leaned toward the box and spoke. "Hi. My name is Harper Blaine. I'm a private investigator. Alice Liddell told me to contact Wygan. Can I talk to him?"

I heard a guffaw. "Alice sent you to me?" I recognized the soft slurring of Wygan's working-class English accent. "Sure. Why not? Hang on. I'll buzz you through. Just us chickens here tonight." The low electronic burring of the latch cut off any reply.

The corridor beyond the door was painted industrial green. The lighting was poor enough to make the dirt on the linoleum look like a pattern instead of bad housekeeping. I closed the door behind me and walked. The booth was a beacon of red light pouring through Lexan. I wondered why it was red.

I hadn't reached the booth's door before I began feeling queasy. It might have been the way the light strobed and switched to amber, but I was afraid I'd underestimated my mental and physical exhaustion. The Grey was flickering in the corners of my eyes. When I reached it, the door was open a crack and the moans of unhappy electronic instruments leaked out. I peered through the window beside the door.

A lanky, pale man waved at me. "Come on in. Mic's not live."

I stepped in. "You're Wygan?"

Leaning back in his fully gimbaled leather chair, the bony young man shot his arms straight into the air above his blond electroshock hair. "I am the eggman, I am the walrus! Goo goo g'joob!" he caroled. "Alice sent you?"

"Yeah, but I'm really here on behalf of Cameron Shadley." I looked around, trying to hold on to normal. I grasped at the first thing. "What's with the lights?"

"Keeps a certain creature away from me. He doesn't like the changing colors." He peered at me, snickering, as if he was just waiting for the punch line.

I couldn't imagine what would want to come in here. The booth was small and lined floor to ceiling with automated CD racks behind smoked-glass doors. A homemade stand in one corner had three light bulbs arranged across the top of it: red, blue, and amber. They alternated at a slow pace. A narrow strip of white light ran over the top of the horseshoe-shaped control console, which was heavy with switches, sliders, dials, and keyboards as well as several video monitors. One of the monitors was showing old, mute episodes of Lost in Space. Various meters and LED displays flashed or flickered silent information. Every shadow writhed.

"Close the door, would you, love?" he asked, flipping switches. "What good's a soundproof booth with the door standing open, hmm?"

I closed the door and remained standing. I tried to hold it back, but the steamed-mirror world battered against me as I got closer to him.

"You should sit down." He grinned at me, teeth snaggled, yellow, canines pronounced and elongated. His smile was a poleax, and my knees buckled. I thumped down into an empty chair, aware of shadows pooling thicker, like oozing tar, in the corners of the room, exuding a low reek of antiquity and decay. It was an ancient and foul corner of the cold blackness I'd fallen into when I touched Cameron. My stomach flipped and tried to stretch itself around my spine. A thin halo of blue and red wavered around Wygan's head.

He cocked his head back and forth, looking like a hungry velociraptor. "Alice sent you to me about Cameron?" He gave an incredulous snort. "Pull the other one."

I shook my head. "You're not what I was expecting," I confessed, swallowing discomfort. His proximity sent ripples through every sense I had, normal or not. Carlos was a teddy bear by comparison.

"Must be my charming and sophisticated on-air personality," he quipped and brayed hundreds of hot slivers through me. "Hang on a tick—track's almost over."

He held one finger up in the air to me, then spun himself 450 degrees to face his console. His hands darted over the controls like albino spiders as a row of red numerals counted down. Then he flipped a switch and eased a slider down, leaning into the microphone. "Now here's a prezzie from me to you—a whole album side of classic Floyd from Dark Side of the Moon." He flipped off the microphone and leaned back into his seat. The room seemed to roll and shift with his every movement.

He swung the seat back and forth a few times, then spun it to face me. "So Alice sent you to me. About Cameron." An eddy of darkness followed his movements. He pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows in amusement, shrugged. "What of him?"

I found it hard to speak. "He hired me and I'm trying to stir up a little dirt on a vampire named Edward."

His face twisted. "Edward Kammerling," he breathed. "Yes…" The Grey surged around him, lighting his aurora with white lightning strikes and shivering the world between us.

Sudden cold trembled my bones. "You don't like him."

He turned an ophidian gaze on me. "I'll see him to hell… in my own time. If I'm in a very charitable mood, I might not make him eat the parts I dismember him of." He studied me with a baleful stare. I felt like a bird about to be swallowed. "They are as insignificant as fleabites, the lot of them, beside you."

I stammered, "What?" forcing words out as my stomach twisted and my lungs fought air that hung in clouds before me.

He laughed flaying knives and ice. "To think such flyspecks brought you here! I've waited so long for you." He made a motion, as if opening a door. "Why don't you come all the way in and see?" Ambient sound shushed away and a shock wave rolled out from the bright door now standing between us—the door to the Grey. The silence howled over me and shoved me deeper into the chair.

I fought my way up and started for the real door, stumbling on numb legs. This time the dragon-smoke door wouldn't lead to the white place I'd chased Alice into. It reeked of something much worse. "I don't think so," I stated.

"I think otherwise," he barked and launched through the doorway, ripping open the fine seam between normal and Grey, pushing the glowing boundary wide.

Reality split open with a roar as the Grey rushed over us, slamming the breath from my lungs. I thrust back against it and felt my protection shatter and whirl away into the flood. I gasped for air and fought the icy battering of a storm of shadows and boiling silver mist. The world shuddered and the urge to retch wrenched my innards.

White claws dug into my upper arms and held me upright. I sucked in the thick cold, eyes clenched shut, struggling, and began screaming.

Wygan shook me. "Scream! Scream, my delight, my own. There's no one to hear but me. No one, no one," he crooned, his voice moving slow and cold as a half-frozen river, deep under ice, under my skin. "Open your eyes. Open the eyes within and see your pretty new world. See what I am giving you. A gift. A gift so needful."