corporate sector. He’s never been confronted with a homicide

before, much less a serial killer. I have a feeling he won’t be on the

case much longer. With all the media pressure on the Bureau,

they’re going to need a fall guy and Akiro’s the obvious choice. He’d

been ducking the reporters, but they finally caught up with him the

other day. I saw the interview. It was pathetic. The poor bastard

was totally intimidated. He doesn’t know how to handle the media

at all. He came off looking like an idiot.”

“Is he an idiot?” asked Kira.

“No, ” said Fugisawa, shaking his head, “He’s just a bu-reaucrat

who’s in over his head.”

“In that case, it would probably be best to keep him out of it, ”

said Modred. “That was my first instinct all along. A man who is

easily intimidated by reporters could easily let some-thing slip and

public knowledge of the Dark Ones would cause a worldwide panic.”

“Katayama is not the type to let things slip. But who’d believe it,

anyway?” asked Fugisawa. “I still find the whole thing very difficult

to accept.”

“That’s probably their greatest strength, ” said Wyrdrune. “It’s

like the old legends about vampires. All the stories always used to

say that the single greatest strength of the vampire was that no

one will believe in his existence. And, ironically, all those stories,

the folklore about vampires, witches, werewolves, and the like, had

their origins with the Dark Ones.”

“How many of them do you think there are?” asked Fugisawa.

“Unfortunately, we really have no way of knowing, ” said

Wyrdrune.

“Can’t you ask the runestones? You said they were alive.”

“In a sense, they are, ” Wyrdrune replied, “but it’s not life the

way we understand it. They don’t possess discrete personalities and

we can’t really communicate with them in any traditional sense.

The only runestone that actually has what you might call an

individual personality is Billy’s.”

“The enchanted ring?” said Fugisawa, glancing at the fire opal on

Billy’s finger.