Dominion by Fred Saberhagen (best motivational novels txt) 📕

wanted to buy me a drink. I said sure. We had a drink and I passed out, but not just drunk. He drugged me, like I said.”

   Charley was silent for a moment, trying to choose which way to go next. It had to be as obvious to him as it was to Joe that this was not your ordinary wino. But if Hawk wanted to play that part, they would go along with him, for a while at least.

   Joe chimed in: “You’re looking good, Mr. Hawk. Like maybe you’ve been off the booze, resting up for a couple of days?”

   The blue-gray eyes considered him fearlessly. “Like I said, I can’t really remember anything since I passed out in that tavern.”

   “But you could try to remember something. How about this—when you woke up, how were you dressed?”

   Charley flicked the photo. “You don’t want to do this man any favors, do you? After the way he treated you?”

   Hawk was thinking again. They let him take his time. At last Hawk said: “All right, I’ll give it to you for what it’s worth. The way I remember it, I woke up in a castle.”

   “Castle,” repeated Charley. Under the circumstances the flatness in his voice had to be taken as courtesy.

   Joe Keogh’s reaction, was different, fortified as he was with the memory of a certain phone conversation. He took a long shot now. “See any swords in that castle, Mr. Hawk?”

   The old man flared at Joe silently; he’d hit home, though in exactly what way Joe wasn’t sure.

   “Whadda you mean by that?” Hawk demanded at last.

   “Just wondering. Swords, castles, they go together. Describe the place for us.”

   “Don’t think I can,” the witness muttered sullenly.  “About all I remember is the inside of some stone walls.”

   “You mean,” said Charley, “you were in a big house with stone walls when you woke up?”

   “All right, yeah, that’s what I said, a big house. Listen, you guys, can you get me some clothes besides this?”

   “We’re gonna take care of that right away. Did you see Carados in this house? The man who picked you up?”

   “It’s kinda embarrassing, sitting here this way.”

   Joe stuck his head out into the corridor and called. Presently he came back in and shut the door again. “Some clothes are on the way,” he said. “Just jail issue for now, okay? We’ll work out something else later.”

   “Okay.”

   “Now tell us,” said Charley, “some more about Carados.”

   Somehow he never did, although the interrogation session went on for about an hour. There were a lot more sessions planned, Hawk was sure, but meanwhile he was at least dressed in some acceptable clothes again. There had been a time, long ago, when he would have thought nothing of wearing a gaily decorated robe as his sole garment; one adapted to the times one lived in. Unfortunately, in periods of rapid change, one sometimes found one’s learned attitudes lagging by a few decades.

   The face of the little girl who’d kindly given him the absurd robe stuck uncomfortably in his memory, even now after the garment itself was gone. She wasn’t his responsibility, of course. He hadn’t meant her any harm. He couldn’t afford to get involved with her situation.

   So he got through the first session of questioning, playing dumb, then acting weaker and more tired than he felt. It wasn’t that he’d made a decision to tell the police nothing more of substance about Nimue and her friends. The decision had somehow been made for him. He couldn’t tell them anything more, certainly not that Nimue was up to something involving murder, because…

   He had got as far as identifying Carados, his kidnapper, for the police. Beyond that point he could not go, because then Nimue would start to become involved, and… and that was not something Hawk could do.

   In a little while, he thought, alone in his comfortable little cell again, the cops would slacken their vigilance, give him a chance to depart the slammer without being too spectacular about it. Of course as soon as they realized he was gone they’d be out looking for him on the street again. Well, if he had to move on to some other town, okay, he’d move. Sooner or later they’d catch up with their important murderer, or else move on to some other problem, and then no one would want to bother much about Hawk. But catching Carados for them wasn’t Hawk’s job. That coffee-colored one was crazy, badly and sickly crazy, and he was going to have a short life and a miserable one no matter what. No special powers were needed to see that. Hawk wasn’t going to go out of his way for revenge, just to give that crazy one more trouble.

   If he were to go looking for revenge on anyone, it would be that damned insulting vampire. Hawk’s temple was still a little sore. Thinking about the vampire. Hawk started to get angry again. Then he chuckled, imagining the hard time the vampire would have trying to get back to the twentieth century, if he got past Nimue and her bunch back in the sixth.

   Nimue.

   There was a cop posted about two steps from Hawk’s cell door. Hawk was going to wait a while before he decided how to go about trying to get out. To sit in jail for a little while wasn’t really suffering, not in a cell like this one anyway, not in comparison to the kind of life to which he was trying to return.

   He paused in his thoughts to ponder that point. If life on the Street was really so bloody awful, as it undoubtedly was, then why was he… why did he…?

   Just because.

   Hawk’s thoughts wavered, sought a new tack. The coffee-colored madman’s face came again before his imagination. He returned to the idea that if the cops had Carados, they wouldn’t care