Worlds Apart (4 page)

~~

The road was less than optimal,
and Clive had to fight the wheel to keep the tires on the smoothest
part of the path. He fought it with fierce concentration, welcoming
the distraction from the bitterness that sliced into him, and from
the treacherous desire to run back to Green Roads and beg Tina to
forgive him. To promise he'd stay.

As if I had the freedom to make
that choice.

The sky had been clearing over the
town, but this deep in the mountains, the rain still fell, and a
mist clung to the trees. Mud spattered the windows, adding poor
visibility to the danger of his speed. The GPS had long since given
up trying to pin the location, but Clive had detailed directions.
Anyway, there was nowhere else to go—it was this road or
nothing.

He could have found it even
without directions. The house he was looking for was just half a
mile from the portal, and he could find
that
in his sleep.
He'd felt its pull even in town.

The house appeared as if by magic,
just beyond a hairpin curve that made his tires slide. It was a log
cabin, with three steps leading up to a small porch, a window on
each side of the ornately designed door. Even from a distance,
Clive could tell the design was a rune of protection and
concealment. Smoke rose from a chimney on the right side of the
house, but there was no other sign anyone lived here.

He stopped the truck in the
clearing a few feet from the porch and took a deep breath. He had
work to do, and mooning over a woman was a distraction.
So knock
it off.
He flipped up the hood of his jacket and hauled himself
to the ground. A
click
made him pause just before he slammed
the truck door.

“Stay right there, Mister,” a
rough voice commanded. “Put your hands up.”

Clive did as he was told, turning
to observe the figure in the doorway. The man was old, as the voice
had hinted, tall, but stoop-shouldered. Still powerful though, as
the rifle aimed at his heart never wavered. The old man's gaze was
sharp and Clive was not tempted to test his eyesight.

“I'm Clive Winslow,” he said.
“From the Bureau. We have an appointment.”

“I know who you are,” the old man
said. He didn't lower the rifle. “Know
what
you are, too.
Don't care what your job is. I know better than to trust a
werewolf.”

“It's a new moon,” Clive pointed
out.

“Yep, that it is. So I'll talk to
you about the problem, and you can be on your way.”

Clive sighed. “Mr. Ruth, it's
raining. It's cold. I'm here on official Bureau business,
at
your request.
I'd like to solve your problem for you, but
you're going to have to meet me halfway. At least let me come on
the porch.”

Sebastian Ruth took another minute
to look Clive over, then nodded. “Come inside,” he said and
disappeared into the cabin.

Clive's eyebrows shot to his
hairline, but he slammed the truck door closed and approached the
house. He made his step on the porch hard and loud, hoping to give
Ruth plenty of warning that he was close. He paused in the doorway,
taking in the scene.

A bear rug covered most of the
floor, with just a few chairs and a coffee table in the center.
Sebastian Ruth sat in a chair facing the door, the rifle resting
across his lap. To Clive’s right, at the end of the room, a fire
crackled behind a grate, casting moving shadows against the floor
and walls. A lamp near Ruth's chair provided localized
light.

Ruth gestured with the rifle.
“Pour yourself some coffee and sit.”

Clive nodded, moving toward the
back of the house as the rifle had indicated. A kitchen stood off
the main room, a spot of floor with a stove and sink, and few
cabinets. A cup stood next to the coffee pot, along with bowls of
cream and sugar. Clive filled his cup and ignored the rest, turning
to lift the pot in Ruth's direction.

The old man shook his head. “I've
got mine.”

Clive chose a chair at some
distance from his host, his movements deliberate. “Why don't you
tell me what's been happening, Mr. Ruth? Your report mentioned
increased activity at the portal.”

“That's the way of it,” Ruth said.
“Last couple of weeks, nearly every night, something's come across.
Goblins, mostly, but a few pixies, too.”

“Pixies?”
Clive gripped the
cup, thinking of Tina and the other people in the tavern last
night.
Damn.

Ruth nodded. “Yes, sir. They stay
for a few hours, then go back. They're warding their movements, so
I can't trace what they're doing. But I can sense 'em.” His eyes
narrowed into a glare. “Couple days ago, a werewolf came through.
He hung around for almost twenty-four hours, doin' something out
there. Never tried to come near the house. It's warded, you
know.”

Clive nodded. That's what the rune
was for. The only reason he'd been able to see the house at all was
because Ruth had requested a Bureau investigation. Without Ruth's
specific invitation to enter, the ward would have kept him outside
even more than the rifle.

“Dammed inconvenient, though,”
Ruth said. “I had to stay inside all day.”

“Did you look around after he went
back?” Clive asked, sipping his coffee.

“Hell yeah, I looked. Lost his
trail a couple hundred feet from the portal.” The rifle shifted as
Ruth shrugged. “I'm gettin' old. Can't see as far as I used to.”
His gaze was intense and thoughtful as he looked Clive over. “But I
can see your aura's awful calm for a werewolf. Unusual.”

Clive's lips twitched as he gazed
into his cup, allowing himself a moment of memory. A soft touch, a
brief scent. That was how to get through it, he decided. Keep the
memory of her in small doses, just once in a while.

“There's a certain young woman to
thank for that,” Clive said. “Nothing mysterious about
it.”

“Too old for that, too.” Ruth
snorted. “Enjoy it while you can.”

Clive laughed, but he stayed
alert, leery of Ruth's sudden camaraderie.

The fire reflected a touch of
sadness in Ruth's face. “You tell your boss that I'm not going to
be useful here much longer.” His eyes glinted dark in the
firelight. “I've got cancer in my lungs. Healers have taken it out
three times, but it’s back again.”

Clive set his cup on the table.
“I'm sorry, Mr. Ruth.”

“I'd like to go home,” Ruth
whispered, not looking at Clive anymore. The rifle lay loose on his
lap. “I've watched this portal for goin' on sixty years. I want to
die in Kaarmanesh. You tell 'em that for me.”

“I will,” Clive promised. “You
must know we appreciate your service.”

The dark gaze returned to Ruth’s
face, with another tiny snort. “The Bureau appreciates it if they
think of it, Mr. Winslow.”

“I'll see they get your message,”
Clive said. He stood, noticing Ruth's hands return to the gun. But
the hands just rested there while Ruth watched. Clive tilted his
head toward the door. “I'll look around out there and see what I
can find. I'll check in with you before I leave.”

Ruth nodded. “You do that, Mr.
Winslow. I'll be waitin'.”

Tina glanced at her watch as she
paused next to the reception desk to add notes to her patient’s
chart. There was one more patient before lunch, when she could
answer the siren call of a sandwich from Eddie’s. Sharon had
ordered them thirty minutes ago.

Sharon glanced up from her
computer. “We’ve had three calls about stomach problems
today.

“Oh dear.” Tina’s foreboding of
yesterday came back in full score. “That's five
families.”

“Charlotte Gehrig was the last to
call, a few minutes ago. I gave her the usual spiel, but she wants
you to call her anyway,” Sharon said.

“Soon as I've finished here. In
the meantime, will you call the other families and start a list of
what they ate for the day or two before they got sick? We'll need
to investigate this. I'll get information from Charlotte when I
talk to her.”

The next patient was Mrs. Schultz,
who required one-on-one training on giving herself insulin.
Afterward, Tina slipped into her office and placed a call to
Charlotte Gehrig.

“Don't know what caused it, Doc,”
Charlotte told her after describing their symptoms. Her voice had
weakened as they talked, and Tina strained to listen. “I know I
cooked the meat long enough, and the only other thing we had was
vegetables from the garden. But I'm sure it was last night's
dinner. It hit all of us about the same time this
morning.”

“Tell me exactly what you had,”
Tina said. “A few other people are having problems too, and I'd
like to see if there are any similarities.” She typed it all into
the computer as Charlotte named everything. She went over the care
instructions that Sharon had already provided, told Charlotte to
call if anyone got worse, and hung up.

Her fingers danced over the quick
dial for her colleague's office. “Hey Wanda,” she said when the
receptionist answered. “Is Himself available?”

“He's with a patient, but should
be done soon,” Wanda said. “Can I have him call you?”

“I'll hold. That way I'll catch
him while I'm between patients.”

Ignoring the religious piano music
that replaced Wanda, Tina turned to her side wall to contemplate
the area map pinned there. Grabbing some yellow push pins, she
placed them in the areas of reported illness, nodding to herself.
Just what she thought.

The music stopped. “Hi Tina.” Will
Summerlin's voice boomed into her office over the speaker. “Are you
as busy as we are?”

Tina turned to the desk. “You got
food poisoning on your end of town, too?”

“One case Wednesday, two
yesterday, two so far today,” he said. “It's got to be a recent
shipment of something.”

Tina glanced at the map. “Mine are
all rural. People who eat from their gardens a lot.”

She heard papers shuffling. “Mine
are too,” he said. “But I don't know what they've eaten in common.
Wanda's already calling everyone to get a list.”

“We're doing the same. Let's set
up a shared database and see what we get.”

“Sure thing.”

“What are your locations? I'd like
to see what it looks like on the map.” Tina grabbed her blue push
pins to pinpoint Will's cases as he rattled off addresses, nodding
again. “Clusters,” she said.

“So they're all shopping at the
same store?” Will asked.

“That's possible.”

The door to her office creaked
open and Sharon peeked in. “You'll want to take a look at this,
Doc. Damndest thing.” She ducked back out.

“Gotta go, Will. Let me know if
you think of anything else.”

“I'm on it. Good luck.”

Tina hung up and went in search of
Sharon. She found her in the small lab next to the copy
machine.

Sharon's chair squealed as she
propelled herself back from the counter. She waved toward the
microscope. “It's the stool samples from the Brayley's. Not
anything I recognize.”

“Really? All right, let me see.”
Tina moved a chair over and peeked into the scope. “Hmmm.” She made
a few adjustments, watching as the sample went fuzzy, then back to
clear. She turned the slide ninety degrees and looked again,
flummoxed. “Holy shit.”

“Not even close,” Sharon said.
“That's Richard Brayley's sample.”

Tina lost her struggle to not
laugh, but put her eyes on the microscope again. “I don't recognize
it, either. Let's look at the other two and see what we've
got.”

The cultures had been growing
since yesterday. Tina wanted to check for bacteria, or perhaps a
parasite. The critters swimming around in the samples were a
parasite all right, but not one she knew. Still, she was just a
general practitioner, and her lab was equipped for just the basics.
This would have to go higher up the chain. She watched the growing
colony on the slide. “Have we heard from Kathy Brayley today? How
are they doing?”

“She called this morning,
wondering what we'd found,” Sharon said. “I told her you'd call her
by this afternoon.”

“I’ll do that.”

Sharon nodded and went back to the
reception room. Tina printed a report and a picture of the enlarged
bugs, which she took back to her office. Kathy Brayley answered on
the fourth ring and Tina asked her for an update on
symptoms.

“It seems to be running its
course,” Kathy said. Her voice was still shaky, but not as bad as
when Tina first talked to her. “We're all down to just a few
episodes of the runs. Cramping's nearly gone, too. Jenny has it the
worst, I guess because she's young. We're keeping hydrated. Did you
find what it was?”

“I found the culprit, but it's not
one I'm familiar with,” Tina said. “I'm going to send samples up to
Portland so we can track it down. Tell me again what you ate that
night.”

“Just stuff from the garden. I
made a pizza with our onions, the chard, mushrooms, and mozzarella.
I got the cheese from the store. We picked and dried the mushrooms
ourselves, but I've been using them for months without any
problems. The chard and onions I harvested just before cooking. But
I did wash them well.”