Blood Lines

the bathroom and reached for his jacket. "I'm on stakeout for the next few nights, so I won't be around, but when this is over you and I have to talk."
    'What about?"
    He reached over and with one finger, gently slid her glasses up her nose. "What do you think?" The same finger dropped down to trace the line of her jaw.
    'Mike, you know…"
    'I know." He moved out into the hall. "But we're still going to talk."
    The door closed behind him and Vicki collapsed against it, fumbling for the lock. For the next few hours, all she wanted was a chance to sleep. For the next few days, she'd concentrate on stopping the mummy. And after that…
    'Oh, hell," she stumbled into the bedroom, yanking her sweatshirt off over her head. "After that, maybe something'll come up…"
    He wanted the dawns he remembered where a great golden disk rose into an azure sky, burning the shadows away from the desert until each individual grain of sand blazed with light. He wanted to feel the heat lapping against his shoulders and the stone still cool from the darkness against the soles of his feet. This northern dawn was a pallid imitation, a pale circle of a sun barely showing through a leaden sky. He shivered and walked in off the balcony.
    Soon he would have to deal with the woman his god had chosen. Over the next few days he would use the key to her ka that he had been given and lift the manner of her despair off the surface of her mind.
    His lord never demanded death, feeding instead on the lesser, self-perpetuating energies generated by the darker aspects of life. In time, of course, the chosen ones usually prayed for an ending. Occasionally, they achieved it.
    Chapter Nine
    Those outside of political circles who thought about the Ontario government at all, thought only of Queen's Park, the massive red sandstone, copper-roofed building anchoring the north end of University Avenue. Although it was the building where the provincial parliament actually sat, the real work got done in the blocks of office towers to the east.
    At 25 Grosvenor Street, between Bay and Yonge, the Office of the Solicitor General was about as far east as the government went.
    Vicki squinted up at the building with distaste. It wasn't that she disliked the pink concrete tower-even though from the east or west it looked like it had been extruded from a Play-Doh modern architecture toy set-it was just that the three extra blocks from Queen's Park, while not far enough to take transit, had been long enough for her right foot to find a puddle and get soaked.
    'Toronto in October. Christ. Any mummy in its right mind would hop the first Air Egyptian flight home." She sighed as she passed the sculpture outside the main entrance. It looked like a set of giant, aluminum prison bars, bent out of shape, and she'd never understood the symbolism.
    Nodding at the special constable on duty at the information desk, she crossed the lobby to the cul de sac that held the elevators. Of the half dozen spotlights in the ceiling, only two were working, dropping the area into an amber-hued twilight. As far as Vicki was concerned, they might as well all have been off.
    Some fair-haired wunderkind probably thought this up as a way of saving money-just before his monthly rais e. She dragged her hand along the marble facing on the wall, across the stainless steel door, and finally to the plastic plate that held the call button. Let's hope they left the lights on inside the cars or I'll never know when one arrives .
    They had. Although her eyes watered violently in the sudden glare, the reaction was preferable to groping her way into an elevator shaft. Besides, after a ten-block walk in pissing rain, she was already wet.
    The Solicitor General's suite was on the eleventh floor and, as government offices went, bordered on palatial. Power colors and a conservative,'modern design were intended to both offend the least number of voters and impress the most. Vicki recognized symbolic decorating when she saw it and knew full well that behind closed doors on this floor and others, utilitarian cubicles carried the workload.
    'Can I help?"
    The young woman at the desk served the same function as the decor-to impress and reassure. Vicki, who hated being pleasant to strangers, wouldn't have had her job for twice the money. "I hope so. My name is Nelson, I have an appointment with Mr. Zottie at one-thirty." She checked her watch. "I'm a little early."
    'No problem, Ms. Nelson. Please, go on in."
    She's good ,