NECROM

"I heard that Necrom will soon be on the move."

"If you knew anything, you wouldn't even mention the name."

The car door closed. Then the window rolled down and Slide fixed Gibson with those alien eyes.

"You should be very careful, Joe. You're ru

The window rolled up and the Hudson squealed away from the curb, laying smoke and rubber. When it reached the top of the hill, something happened to its shape. It seemed to distort and shimmer, and Gibson wasn't sure whether it had disappeared over the hill or just disappeared. He suddenly felt as though a cold, clammy hand had closed over him. The drizzle was noticeably wet.

"I guess we're back in the visible world."

Windemere indicated that the three of them should return to the house. "I think a drink is in order."

Gibson fell into step beside him. "That could have been a lot worse."

Windemere was thoughtful. "I don't think we've seen the last of Yancey Slide."

Cadiz met them at the door. The outline of what looked like a sawed-oflf shotgun was easy to make out through his combat coat. Once, years before, Gibson had been instructed in the lore of the sawed-off shotgun. Backstage at one of the band's concerts at the Wembley soccer stadium, a bodyguard called Big Cyril, who'd been hired on for the tour, had waxed lyrical, claiming that, in his youth, he'd broken legs for the notorious Kray Twins. "What makes the sawn-off shotgun so favorite is that it appeals to the imagination, like. All you got to do is point one at a geezer and he immediately imagines himself splattered all over the wall like a Sam Peckinpah film. Me, I don't hold with killing. I use a gun to avoid killing. I want a gun that so terrifies people they do exactly what you say and no bother. You know what I mean?" Gibson had hastily assured him that he knew what he meant. Big Cyril had later been fired for his violently overzealous handling of teenage fans.

Cadiz looked a little anxious. Within the limitations of his considerable macho, he all but clucked over Windemere. "Are you okay, boss? I didn't like the look of those guys. They had this aura about them. A bad aura, like the yellow light before a storm."

Gibson was amazed that Cadiz-who on the surface seemed little more than a Central American thug who should nave been carrying an Uzi for the Medellin Cartel-talked so matter-of-factly about auras. Then he remembered that, five hundred years ago, his ancestors were probably performing human sacrifices on the tops of pyramids.

Windemere was quick to reassure Cadiz that all was well. "I'm okay. There's no problem."

Gibson wondered about the loyalty that Windemere received from his strange household. There was a great deal more to Gideon Windemere than appeared on the surface. Which was exactly what Yancey Slide had said. Windemere questioned him about this as they took off their coats.

"How do you feel about Slide's parting shot?"

Gibson looked at him guardedly. "You mean about things not being what they might seem."

Windemere nodded. "That one."

Gibson looked unconcerned. "It seemed like a crude attempt to induce a few doubts."

"And did it?"

"I've been around paranoia so long that it now takes more than a minor demon to get me going. UFOs and other dimensions are quite enough. Besides, I'm living proof that things aren't what they appear."

Although he made light of it, Slide had in fact started Gibson thinking. He had no guarantee that these people that he was with were the Good Guys. All he had was their word on it. He'd been quite impressed with Yancey Slide's style and the show that he'd put on, and Nephredana had been something else again. Slide's trio seemed as though they'd be a good deal more entertaining than Smith, Klein, and French.

"What exactly is an idimmu?"

Windemere shook his head. "It'd take too long to explain right now. One thing to remember, though, is never to underestimate them." He started up the stairs to the drawing room. Halfway up, he looked back. "Don't be charmed by them, either."

The sun went down behind the Shepherds Bush high-rise projects, the streetlights came on, and the drizzle continued. After a fairly perfunctory couple of Scotches with Windemere, Gibson found himself left alone. He was aware that things were going on in the rest of the house in which he wasn't being included. Everyone seemed to have private stuff to do and people to talk to after the events of the day, and all he could do was make the most of an evening of comparative peace and quiet.

The high point of being left to himself turned out to be making the acquaintance of another member of Windemere's staff. Rita was a large Jamaican lady who cooked for Windemere and the rest of his household and who served Gibson the best meal that he'd had in a very long time: lamb chops with mint sauce and new potatoes, a bottle of Gui

This suited him down to the ground. He had a great deal of thinking to do and he had always found that he thought most creatively while staring blankly at a TV screen. British TV took a little getting used to, with its impenetrably ma

He didn't imagine that he'd make any real sense of what was happening to him, but he was getting heartily sick of the way that his ignorance was being used to constantly force him into a role of total passivity. Okay, so he was a drunk and a wastrel, and a bunch of stuff that he had never dreamed of in his philosophy was dropping on him like the proverbial shitstorm, but he had to start making his own moves. One of the few constants in the whole sorry business was that everyone he encountered went to some pains to warn him not to trust anyone else. The streamheat didn't trust Windemere, Windemere warned him against the Nine, everyone warned him against Yancey Slide, and Slide played right along with the game by telling him not to trust any of them. Let the circle be unbroken. Unfortunately the circle was wrapped around the outside of his skull and being slowly tightened. His first task was to break out and stop allowing himself to be run from hither to yon like a lab rat in a behavioral study. Independence of action had to be the next item on the agenda.

He wasn't going to achieve independence, though, until he found out why everyone was so interested in him and why the explanations of that interest were so uniformly vague. If he was playing a role in this movie, it was high time he got himself a copy of the script. Enough of all the Shirley MacLaine bullshit about fulcrums, auras, and destiny-if no one was going to tell it to him straight, he was going to have to figure it out for himself. There had to be one among this bunch who knew the score. The streamheat definitely knew a great deal more than they were telling, but he didn't think any one of them was going to get stinking drunk and spill the beans or otherwise let anything slip. He wished that he'd been able to talk to Slide for a while longer. The demon seemed inclined to boast, and after eighteen thousand years, he ought to know a thing or two. In spite of Windemere's warning about not letting himself be charmed, Gibson couldn't shake the feeling that Slide and his bunch were probably fun to be around.