III

The Shadow knows...

"Lamont, darling," Margo purred, "Come back to bed."

Lamont turned away from the brightly lit window through which he could gaze down on downtown Manhattan. With preternatural grace he moved to Margo's side of the bed and sat down beside her. "I have much to do this morning," he explained.

"Does it have to do with that man we saw last night?" she asked.

"Yes, I remember seeing him in New York many years ago. He goes by the name of Angel. Back then he was merely a vampire cursed with a soul who had no direction, except to go mad from the memories of the lives he had destroyed. I have heard that in the intervening years since then he has found his sanity and a purpose. He has been involved in several important battles against major supernatural agents of evil in California, including an alliance with a vampire slayer," Lamont explained.

"So why do you think he's in New York?"

"I don't know. We are far from the hell mouth in California where the supernatural is at its strongest. Yet that does not mean that supernatural evil is entirely quiescent here, just far less powerful. Perhaps this souled Vampire is a harbinger of a surfacing of some new, more dangerous evil."

"Or they could merely be on vacation," Margo suggested helpfully.

"That is something I intend to find out."

"But can't it wait until later?" Margo teased alluringly as she walked her fingers up his naked arm.

Lamont smiled as he gently moved a stray strand of hair of his wife's face. "Evil does not wait for late risers," he said.

"Oh, pooh," she pouted, "I bet you don't see Shiwan Khan leaving a nice warm bed to greet the rising sun."

"That's because his type make their evil plans even while they sleep. I must do what I can to keep ahead of them." He kissed her gently on the forehead. "Besides it's not that early."

Margo pulled him closer. "Then what's few more minutes?" she breathed.







Lamont smiled as he spotted the Shrevvie's taxi pull up to the curb. The taxi driver had the uncanny ability to know exactly when he was needed.

"Where to, Boss?" he asked.

"The Sanctum," was Lamont's brief reply.

"Damn cold this morning," Shrevvie ventured.

"Not as cold as in Tibet," Lamont answered.

"Oh..." Shrevvie said, noticing that Lamont was not in the mood for small talk.

The big Cord easily negotiated the heavy traffic, slipping through any hole that opened up even though it barely seemed wide enough for a bicyclist to squeeze through. Traffic lights always seemed to turn green the moment Cord approached. Quickly they arrived at the opposite side of town, the location of the Shadow's Inner Sanctum. While it might have been more convenient to have the Sanctum located in the Cranston home, it would also have been more dangerous. Lamont preferred to keep his activities as the Shadow well separated from his life as a wealthy man about town.

The neighborhood near the Inner Sanctum had seen a number of transitions throughout the years; from seedy to trendy then back again. Now it was back up on the upswing. Boutiques and costly cafes were starting to take over from the careworn bars and strip clubs. It was hard to tell which was better for the Shadow's secret activities. Luckily, no matter what the income bracket, New Yorkers tended to keep to their own business, not prying into those of others unless it directly involved them.

Leaving the taxi a few blocks away from the location of the Inner Sanctum, Lamont walked purposely through the bitter cold until he reached an alleyway between a sidewalk cafe and a vintage boutique. With a quick glance to make sure no one was watching, Lamont ducked quickly into the alley. He moved past trash cans overflowing with plastics bags and boxes stacked into precarious towers. A small, wry smile played across Lamont's thin lips. No matter the part of town, alleys were all still the same. Some were just filled with pricier garbage than others. Garbage is garbage, just as evil is evil, whether mortal or supernatural, the Shadow reflected.

At the dead end of the alley was a fire escape, but Lamont ignored it, instead placing a light hand on one of the brackets securing the fire escape to the wall. In response to his touch a part of the back wall started sliding up as part of a drainage grate next to the wall folded accordion-wise into the ground, forming a doorway and steps barely high enough or wide enough for a man to pass through.

The Inner Sanctum had changed in some ways over the years. Gone were the massive hydraulics, the heavy gears and pulleys that moved the thick brick doorway and metallic stairs. Instead everything was quietly electronic. Tiny, but powerful motors whispered and hissed as hidden mechanisms came into play. Other hidden electronics made sure that no one could enter the Shadow's sanctum sanctorum. If any intruder ever did manage to penetrate the sanctum's defenses, there were others that insure he would never escape, becoming a prisoner instead.

Still for all the advancements, the hideaway appeared much the same. Thick over-stuffed chairs faced a fireplace that whooshed into life at Lamont's entrance. The dark wood paneling the walls on which old masters hung and the ancient thick piled oriental carpets covering the mahogany parquet floors all spoke of Lamont's sophisticated, masculine taste. Lamont tossed his hat at the wooden hat rack across the room, ringing one of the brass hooks handily. Then he pulled off his coat as he poured himself a large snifter of brandy. Lamont enjoyed the warm afterglow of the brandy as he contemplated the fire. Like Shrevvy had said, it was damn cold outside. Could get even colder. Could even become a cold day in hell.

Shaking himself out of his gloomy thoughts, Lamont tossed what was left of the brandy into fire. The sudden flare up pleased him. That was the way to fight the cold. He strode over to the far wall and pressed a button invisible in the dark paneling. A wide part of the wall slid soundlessly up, revealing a dim blue lit room. It bore a close resemblance to a conventional modern office with fax machines, copiers and even a stock market ticker running in red dot lights high in the wall near the ceiling. The one anomaly was a wall filled with televison screens on which news programs from around the world were playing in a multitude of languages; all of them understood by the Shadow. Also unlike most conventional offices, all lines leading in and out were totally shielded from electronic eavesdropping even from the most sophisticated of the world's intelligence organizations.

This was the brain center of the Shadow's organization. His agents were people tied together not by national interest, but through personal loyalty to the Shadow. At one time or the other, they all owed him their lives or their reputations. The only sign of their membership in this exclusive group was a ring bearing a girasol, a fire opal of the finest water, matching the one that the Shadow himself wore. Each agent was carefully selected, rarely called to do the Shadow's work except to keep watch and to relay information about strange or unusual crimes. All of that information was interpreted, correlated and then relayed to the Shadow through one man. A man who never slept, whose eyes and ears were always open, always at the Shadow's service. He responded instantaneously to Lamont's order.

"Burbank, report." Lamont said as he settled into a chair in front of a computer.

"Burbank, here," came the response from the man who appeared on the computer screen. He was very ordinary looking, brown hair, brown eyes, not slender, not heavy; so ordinary looking that no one ever noticed or remembered him, not even his fellow agents. "All normal," Burbank reported, "However there may be the beginnings of trouble forming in central Manhattan. There is slight increase in crime, not abnormally so, but it is of an unusual character."

"How so? Details." Lamont prompted.

"A Salvation Army Santa Claus was killed Another, a few blocks away, was robbed and his kettle savagely destroyed. An outdoor nativity scene at a church was ferociously vandalized and a store a few doors down from the church was also broken into. Only the section specializing in Christmas decorations suffered any loss. And that loss was total. Nothing salvageable was left in the intruder's wake."

"Correlation," Lamont said even though he could make a guess of it himself.

"Correlation. All crimes were related to Christmas. All happened within a four block area. And in all instances the damage done pointed to a massive amount of anger. The murdered Santa Claus was apparently sliced to death."

"Sliced," Lamont echoed thoughtfully. "Explain."

"According to the agent's report, the victim was killed by multiple wounds from a bladed weapon. The weapon, not yet identified, is described as being too long to be a knife, yet too short and narrow to be sword, even a Japanese short sword or a Roman sword."

"Does the weapon correlate with any other reports?"

"Yes. A similar weapon appears to have been used in the damage in the other Santa Claus attack as well as the vandalism attacks."

"Any suspects?"

"None, however the robbery victim describes his assailant as approximately 24 to 25 inches tall and dressed in a red elf costume. An individual meeting that description was also caught on a surveillance tape from the store."

"Interesting," Lamont said. "Any other reports?"

"None."

"Very good. Transmit all pertinent details plus locations of the attacks. Continue to monitor," Lamont ordered.

"Yes, sir. Burbank out."

The fax machine chattered out several pages of details, including a map of where the attacks had happened. As Lamont had expected, the apartment building where he had seen the vampire going into was at the center of all the activities. Whether the man was vacation or not was not going to matter one iota. His vacation, if that was what it was, was at an end.