Book 1 - The Man With the Golden Torc Read Free Page B

a good agent: always
keep them guessing. All I had to do now was wait for things to calm down a
little, and then I’d just ease out of here and walk past the security forces in
full stealth mode, and they’d never even know I was there. The room’s light
snapped on, and I spun around, startled. The room’s patient was sitting bolt
upright in bed and staring straight at me.
    Which wasn’t supposed to be possible. All right, Mr. President
saw me, but that was only because he had a demon in him. Twice in one night was
unprecedented. I moved quickly over to the bed, raising one golden fist in
warning, and the patient took his hand away from the call button. I stopped
abruptly as I finally recognised the patient. Behind my golden mask, I was
gaping. No wonder he was able to see me. The man in the bed was the Karma
Catechist.
    A living legend, the Karma Catechist knew all there was to know
about magic systems, rituals, and forms of power. He was the living embodiment
of every mystic source, every forbidden book, every obscure and secret treatise
on how to do terrible things to other people in seven easy steps. He’d been
designed that way while still in the womb, shaped by terrible wills, his form
and function and fate decided in advance by powerful sorceries and arcane
mathematics. He knew it all, from the Kaballah to the Necronomicon, from the
Book of Judas to the Herod Canticles. Every spell, every working, every concept.
    My family had been trying to get their hands on him for years,
but no one had set eyes on him for decades. He’d been passed back and forth by
every group that ever dreamed of power, stolen and abducted and traded, because
no one group could hold on to him for long. The problem was, he knew too much;
and you had to know the right questions to get the answers you needed. A living
encyclopedia of appalling knowledge, but no index. And now he was in my grasp.
If I could just get him out of here with me…No. Too much trouble. His very
nature would interfere with my armour’s stealth mode. He’d get me noticed, slow
me down…No; I’d just pass on word that he was here and let the family decide
what to do next.
    If it was up to me, I’d hit Harley Street with a tactical nuke,
just to be sure of getting him. There is such a thing as too much knowledge. The
Karma Catechist knew a hundred ways to end the world or disrupt reality itself.
But the family would never sanction a hit on such a valuable asset as this. They
wanted the information he held within him, just like everyone else did.
    I would have killed him myself, and to hell with the
consequences, but…he didn’t look so terrible, close up. He was just a small,
middle-aged man who’d already lost most of his hair. He had a soft, kind face,
vague eyes, and a diffident smile. He was wearing old-fashioned striped pajamas,
with the jacket drooping open to reveal a tuft of white chest hair. He looked
tired and sad and very vulnerable. It was easy to feel sorry for him; he hadn’t
had much of a life, and hardly any of it his own choice. It wasn’t his fault he
was a living doomsday device.
    "Don’t hurt me," he said, looking at me with almost childlike
detachment.
    "Hush," I said. "You just keep quiet, and I’ll be on my way in a
minute. What are you in here for, anyway?"
    "Because I can’t keep quiet," he said sadly. "I’ve been
conditioned, reprogrammed, my working parameters altered; and it all went
horribly wrong. Now if anyone asks me a question, I have to answer them, whether
they know the right passwords or not. I’ve become a security risk." His eyes
widened suddenly, alarm filling his face. "They’ll know I talked to you! They’ll
think you asked me about what’s coming! I won’t tell you! I won’t!"
    He gritted his teeth, and I heard a distinct crunch. He
convulsed, his back arching up from the bed, his eyes bulging from their
sockets, and then he was limp and still, his last breath a