CVU2

Chapter 21: Part 6

6

She wasn't keen to advertise their location by talking to anyone psychically, even if the tutelaries were vowed not to tell the vogelfrei where they were (so long as they didn't move, which felt like a rotten deal the more Tzaraa thought about it, frowning down at Kudlak's sleeping carefree face). She'd adopted ten different poses around him, ranging from intimate to standoff-ish to disrespectful.

Did she dare try talking to any bikers? That golem would be moving day or night, on and off the Sabbath, and Malad City was only two hours away by road. If the vogelfrei found out another way, perhaps with a drone noticing a brand new RV and modern pickup truck parked in a ghost town abandoned in the 1930s ...

Shortly before midnight at the end of the 9th, Tzaraa tried finding one of Calxor's crew rolling on I-80. It took her a while, but she was recognized and believed at once when she found her guy. She put her voice in the biker's head smoothly: this kind of remote two-way vision was dead simple.

"I'll be reporting your facts to my Lord-to-be. What's the news, starting with Malad City?"

The Triple-S goon she'd found was a hybrid, mostly estrie, with a Texan accent.

"The walkers got it worse than us. They call it the White Doll because it's like one of those department store mannequins. But larger. Stuffed with extra gears and motors for power, with copper eyepieces. Now everyone knows: rock beats estrie, scissors cut Highlander if they're steel ... and plastic hurts the walkers. We knew down south about that trick, but we liked to hold on to knowin' it. Gave us a special edge with the walkers."

The Texan vampire paused, as if expecting a reprimand.

"Go on," Tzaraa said.

"Well, the first one that ran to the Comprachicos girl was being talked about up north a bit - it certainly left a lot of witnesses after Winnipeg and Minnesota - and they're saying that the designs don't match. That first one was glowin' red, but this one was glowin' blue. Can't say I'm a technical fellow, so I couldn't hope to guess why. Sorry ma'am."

Tzaraa asked the Texan to 'pass the phone' if he found someone who knew a bit more about the golem than the color of its internal glowing, though she was polite about it. She collected the expected news from the rest of what the Texan had to say - there was no major mortal business like a school shooting nearby, and no change in the tutelaries holding hands around the city. He signed off with a psionic nod.

Two hours later she got a call. Another road warrior, farther east and north in Wyoming. But sounding more Californian.

"You Grando's peeper?"

Tzaraa liked this one a little less.

"Yes. Or his secretary. He's busy now and-"

"Sure, sure. You wanted Silicon Valley talk, so they 'passed the phone' to me. Here's the deal, honey-"

Tzaraa liked this one a little less than seconds before.

"We had a sawbone treat the boys who got fried in Malad City, and he figured out what the blue glow is. The red glow in the first one was from blood diamonds, but the White Doll isn't mind-blasting everyone it touches with screaming spooks. It's smarter, can pick and choose. He says it's got a sunstone."

Tzaraa grimaced, bared her teeth at Kudlak silently, and then asked, "What's that?"

"Heh," the biker chuckled, transmitting the chuckle telepathically across the cold night with every bit of smug superiority delivered. Tzaraa didn't perceive his face - she didn't care to check - but she was confident that he had a pretentious beard.

"So school isn't all that, huh?"

Tzaraa made herself sound bored. "Just tell me, sir."

"The Vikings used them. A mortal can look through a sunstone to find the sun, even when it's really low on the horizon or the sky is overcast. Not sure how, some refraction trick. But they tend to 'gather' like the blood diamonds after a while. The gathering from those hardcore exploring motherfuckers is strong but a bit less crazy than what a blood diamond has. The White Doll can't speak, but I'm guessing that if it could it would sound Norse."

So that was where the golem minds came from, Tzaraa realized. The bastard was animating these practice golems with soul-burdened rocks; a sunstone lifted from a forgotten Viking settlement in the far north might be less cursed and horrible than a blood diamond, which made for a saner golem.

"What can a sunstone do to us? Since you're in an educating mood."

"Heh. A sunstone that was put to a lot of use would light up and burn a draugr, and those poor bastards in Idaho just learned that it isn't picky. The Doll can open wide and burn any of us - the crew up there was a mix, none walked free. One friend of mine said it was kind of shiny inside when it opened up, so maybe that means there are mirrors. There's a solar farm near me that concentrates the light, maybe it's like that. It's much worse than a sundog."

"Okay, where is it?"

"No one knows." Before Tzaraa could hiss or tell him how much help that was, the biker added, "But one of the walkers was dragged off intact. So it will be delivering the poor witch to Salt Lake City and to the Hard Ringer."

And this was how Tzaraa learned that the vogelfrei known to guardians as Angry Son had accumulated yet another nickname among the poor commoners who had to deal with his new toys, this one a little less dismissive.