Nosferatu

As he cast the spell, hellfire lit up the roofs above and a curtain of flame roared around the gunman, ruining his second shot. The man screamed and toppled, his burning body hitting the cobbled streets with a ghastly thud. The rifle that fell from his hands clattered along the street, and a cascade of ammunition also rattled down the rooftops and onto the street. Serrin heard voices in the distance and someone shouting, "Polizei! Bitte, polizei!" The second man was a meter away from him. Serrin could see hand razors snaking from his fingers, discolored blades glittering even in the faint light around him. Jerking himself backward, he found himself suddenly backed up against a wall.

The man gri

The razor claws ripped the mage's arm just as Serrin hit his assailant with a mana bolt, pushing hard with the force of it at the man's psyche and being. His attacker grunted and doubled over as if someone had just kicked him in the guts, but Serrin knew the force he'd put into the spell should have done a lot more than that. He leapt past the man and ran like the wind for the Haupstrasse. Just as he as about to round the corner, the sound of ru

through his veins, Serrin felt weak and drowsy, a sign that he was burning up far too much magical energy. Half a dozen drunken students teemed past him, advancing on where Serrin had just left his assailant.

Waiting frantically for them to pass, he noticed something small and metallic gleaming faintly on the ground. He picked it up, thinking he'd dropped it. Then came the wail of sirens from the west of the town, and Serrin had to wait for them to pass before tottering unsteadily back to his hotel. His arm stung like crazy, although there was little blood on his jacket. The wound was barely a scratch. Spirits, he thought, the bastard poisoned me!

He barely made it back to his room, he couldn't call BuMoNa, because he hadn't bought any health care coverage upon arriving. Neither did he want to call the German police, who were sure to wonder about poisoned wounds and blazing bodies in the streets of peaceful Heidelberg. The elf cut a strip of cloth from a spare shirt and bound his left arm with a tourniquet so tight the arm was white within seconds. Then he stuffed everything he could into his suitcase and called a cab. He knew this was crazy, that he was taking an absurd chance with his life, but with the venom making him unable to think straight, his actions were born out of sweating, pallorous fear.

"Hauptbahnhof, danke," Serrin managed to say to the taxi driver, waving enough nuyen in the man's face to buy himself salvation from the sirens, or so he hoped. He got lucky; the ork just grunted, and the car began to slip quietly along the riverside, left through the Bismarck Platz and west into Bergheimerstrasse, leaving the flash of blue lights behind.

Arriving at the train station, Serrin stumbled out of the cab, hoping the driver would take him for just another drunken tourist. Dragging one foot after another, he approached the big board showing the train schedules, and studied it briefly before slotting his credstick into the automatic ticket dispenser. His brain raced: Get the Essen express, change at Mainz for Frankfurt or go through to Bo

its misanthropy for the day because it finally coughed up his ticket without any of the usual harassment.

Serrin just barely managed to get into the first class car before finally passing out. The wound burned like fire and his throat was dry as dust. Horribly, he felt his muscles stiffening, his breath ragged and gasping. Spirits, he thought, I'm having a seizure. They stuck me with some fragging paralyzing neurotoxic or something. He tried to get to the door of the car and shout for help, realizing too late that death wasn't the smartest way of avoiding the German police, but his leaden limbs refused to obey his brain and he slumped helplessly into the corner seat. His eyes rolled backward in his head and he collapsed.

Serrin was awakened by the conductor as the express pulled out of Koblenz. His arm throbbed and his mouth felt like a parakeet had been living in it, but his heartbeat seemed normal and the only other lingering symptom of the attack was a tight, knotted stiffness in the muscles of his arms and legs. While fumbling in his pockets for the ticket, Serrin's hand rattled something metal and he hurriedly coughed to cover up the sound. Once the conductor finished looking at the ticket as if it were something he'd been unlucky enough to step in, the elf waited for the man to move on up the aisle before pulling the metal object from his pocket. It was a cartridge, the kind used for medical injections. Empty now.

Trank shot, Serrin thought. Odd that I don't remember picking it up, but it explains why I only feel as stiff as hell. Those claws must have been full of tranquilizer too. That means they wanted me alive.

Though the thought should have been reassuring, Serrin found it even more terrifying than someone wanting him dead.

He stared wretchedly at the oncoming glare of the glittering Rhine-Ruhr megaplex and wondered who the hell could be after him. His head swam with images from dozens of Z-grade movies of killers on trains, but his spell lock wasn't giving him any warnings of immediate danger. He tried to figure out what someone might now expect him to do, to second-guess anyone trying to track him. With a start, he remembered the scarred man from JFK and realized that the hit must have been ordered while he was still in New York; from there they'd followed him to Heidelberg. That had taken some doing,

surely; tracing him to Frankfurt would have been easy, but on to the university city?

It has to be a magician, he thought. Someone who could trace me astrally. A magician who wants me alive. The thought hit him like an ice-cold shower.

He got off the train at Bo

"Yeah?" The screen showed the face of a sleepy blonde rubbing her face and peering back at her caller's gaunt visage. She didn't like the look of him at all.

"Is Geraint there?" he pleaded.

"Hey, whoever you are, term, it's five in the morning and "

"It's urgent. Tell him it's Serrin."

"He's not here," she said smugly. "He's in Hong Kong on business. He'll be back in two days. Can I take a message?"

"I'll call back," the elf said curtly and hit the Disco