"Ha!" Shakala snorted. "He has no power. He is an empty shell."

"Possibly." Tom didn't really want to argue that now. "But he was able to use computers to study the medical histories of the kidnapped people." Then the troll remembered the thing that had puzzled Michael.

"We came also because Michael said that there was no history on you. Nothing on any official computer he checked. He didn't understand how the people could have

found you. How could they have known you had the right kind of blood?"

Shakala was thoughtful, chewing on his meat while Tom felt himself becoming drawn to the elf in spite of himself. The Cat shaman had more power within him than Tom felt he could ever know, and his languorous beauty was unlike anything he had ever seen. It was hard to dislike someone so physically perfect, even after the previous night.

"It could be done by magic," Shakala said slowly. "Perhaps. By ritual magic."

"It could," Tom agreed, "but that would take a very, very long time. And unless they had something of you, it would be virtually impossible. Is there anyone who

He stopped in mid-sentence. He'd been about to ask Shakala whether someone might have a piece of him hair, blood, something that he had once owned and that was precious to him that could be used for ritual magic. But that was like asking someone to reveal their greatest weakness, the means by which they could best be disabled, attacked, killed. It wouldn't be the smartest thing to ask this elf, so he stopped himself from blurting it out. But the elf knew anyway.

"There is something," the elf mused. "Blood. When I was a child, before the Zulu Nation was born, there was an epidemic here. There were not enough Awakened to deal with it. They used drugs to treat it as best they could. They took blood samples to find out whether the drugs could be used safely. The drugs were dangerous; some died from taking them. An allergic reaction," he said, looking slyly at the troll.

It was a neat counterpoint. Tom had touched on a possible vulnerability of the elf, and he had touched on Tom's own. Like all trolls, Tom suffered from a severe allergy in his case, to silver. Like the elf, he would never want anyone else to know the precise details of his weakness.

Looking pleased with himself at the troll's reaction to his barb, Shakala continued. "The blood was returned years later from the old hospital. We Awakened beings could not permit it to remain in the hands of others," he

said, "But perhaps records were kept. That would be the one possibility. That would be one way someone might learn."

"Wouldn't that be on a computer?" Tom asked.

"Somewhere. But which one? Would it be one your friend, this man, has searched?"

"I don't know. Probably not," the troll replied uncertainly. "But I don't know much about computers myself."

"Do we need to know?" Shakala said.

We. It was the first time he'd used that word. Tom felt as if the elf was giving him respect at last. He may be greater and more powerful than I am, the troll thought, but he is still a shaman and he too serves and acknowledges something greater and more powerful, in turn, than himself.

"This hospital. Is it still there?" Tom asked, more relaxed now.

"Yes, but it is now used as a laboratory," Shakala said slowly. "They grow many unusual plants there. It is masked with powerful magic and protected by many warriors. Those who work there are brought from outside the Nation."

"You can tell us where this place is?" Tom asked. He was desperate for the right answer, but the one he got wasn't exactly what he'd hoped for.

"I will take you there. If they have my blood in their machines, and they have used it to try to kill me, then I shall destroy them," the Zulu said, the calmness of his voice making the words even more chilling.

"Ah," the troll said.

"Tom!" Serrin shouted in relief. "Hey, chummer, is it ever good to see you!" He tried his best to embrace the troll, but his arms couldn't quite make it around the huge torso. "Are you all right?"

"We've spoken," Tom said, shrugging off his friend's concern. He didn't have words to waste reassuring the elf that he was healed. It should have been obvious. "Things are going to get complicated." Keeping it brief and to the point, he repeated what he'd learned from Shakala.

"Well, if the information is on a private database, I

wouldn't have got it," Michael said. "I checked governmental sources and medical company databases, and the latter only when I had to. "Depends what kind of hospital, too. If it was a charity, for instance, I wouldn't have checked into it. The same if it's been taken over by a corporation." Something nagged at Michael, something lurking at the back of his mind, refusing to reveal itself. Tom's story certainly explained why information on the Zulu hadn't turned up in his searches. Something else, he thought. Come on, you deckhead, there's something else, what is it amp;

"The problem is that he intends to use his warriors to destroy the place," Tom said, explaining Shakala's logic.

"But there's no point. The same information could have been duplicated elsewhere. His blood-group information could be in half a dozen places around the world by now. It's not going to do him any good to destroy this place. Hell, you can't use blood group data for ritual magic anyway, can you? Don't you need the blood itself?" Michael fretted.

"You're right. Everything you say is rationally true," Tom said with a rueful smile. "But you try telling him that."

"Did he get any ID on the people who came after him? How did the attempted kidnapping even get public? There aren't any media hacks out here. And what

"Hey, slow down, chummer," the troll protested. "The hit team came in a chopper, apparently. He lost two of his people, but his warriors didn't draw any blood so Shakala couldn't use ritual sorcery to track them. He got hit with a trank shot, but enough of his people turned up fast enough to keep the kidnappers from carrying him off. Shakala did get a look at one of them, though. A white man. Guess what? He had a scar on the left side of his chin. Shakala says there was something, something 'wrong' about the guy's aura. He can't be precise because the bullets were flying too fast and heavy for really precise astral perceptions right then."

"So it's the same man, the same outfit," Serrin mused. The description proves it. If you didn't tell him what I saw, that is."

"Come on, I'm not that dumb," the troll protested. "No, he said it right out."

"How did he do that stuff when you grabbed him?" Michael asked. "One minute you had him, the next he's in the trees above you. You ought to learn that trick, Serrin."

"I wish," the elf said fervently. "You said he was a mage. But he looks like a shaman. I see both. Maybe the usual classifications don't apply out here."

"Well, anyway," Tom said, "the reason the incident made the news was because a government minister was in the area at the time. Photo opportunities in the game reserve, tourist stuff. When they heard gunfire, the snoops and photographers with the group lit out after a real story. Just a lucky break."

"Are they going to kill me?" Kristen blurted out at last. She was terrified by the threatening body of Zulu men.

"No, I don't think so," the troll chuckled. "Shakala's happy enough. Seems he took a dislike to the Xhosa shamans putting some kind of mark on me. All that ritual last night was him replacing it with his own."

"Some ritual," Serrin protested.

"Yeah, well. I think I learned something from it," the troll mused.

"I suppose it's a bit like lemurs," Michael said a little uncertainly.

Serrin looked completely dumbfounded by this remark, "Lemurs?"

"Well they scent mark. If it's their territory, they piss on it to say it's theirs. If they come across some intruder, they mask his scent with their own. Sort of." Michael was finally succumbing to the effects of sleeplessness after a restless night, and realized he'd managed to talk himself into trouble.