by P. R. Frost
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Epilogue
P. R. FROST’S
Tess Noncoiré Novels:
HOUNDING THE MOON
MOON IN THE MIRROR
FAERY MOON
Copyright © 2009 by Phyllis Irene Radford.
All Rights Reserved.
DAW Book Collectors No. 1478.
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DEDICATION:
For all the mothers out there who dedicate themselves to raising their children to have manners and coping skills so they can go out there and achieve what they need to do to live life to the fullest.
In Memoriam
Miriam Elizabeth Bentley Radford
2/14/1915-8/28/2004
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Gwen Knighton for permission to use the lyrics of her song “Fairytale” from her CD “Box of Fairies.” Please visit her at www.gwenknighton.com for a full list of lyrics, more music, and a glimpse into her life as a harpist. Interesting how our lives have connected through this piece of music. Almost every song on the CD would have fit for Tess, Gollum, and Donovan and their journey. I had a hard time choosing. In the end, “My Fairytale” seemed the right choice.
I’m always amazed at how many memories I can trigger with just a snippet of a song. I hope you’ve enjoyed my trips backward in time with the featured songs in “Faery Moon.”
The history and full lyrics of “Mairzy Doats” can be found at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mairzy_Doats. I’m glad I looked up this interesting and favorite memory from my childhood.
And for “Three Little Fishes” and other camp songs, please visit www.backyardgardener.com/loowit/song/song193.html. Another favorite from Girl Scouts.
Many thanks to Deborah Dixon, her sister Pam, and niece Tonya for their gracious hospitality and help in researching the Las Vegas landscape and history. Without them, I might never have gotten it right. Any errors are mine, not theirs.
I highly recommend a side trip to the Valley of Fire Nevada State Park next time you happen to visit Las Vegas. The landscape is an awesome contrast to the city. The park employees patiently answered my questions and directed me to great research texts. And check out Cirque du Soleil’s production of “Mystere” at the Treasure Island to find my inspiration for “Fairy Moon.” I found “Las Vegas Trivia” by John Gollehon invaluable as a resource about the city and its culture.
My long-suffering and special friends who read early drafts of my feeble attempts at this book deserve a favored place in heaven. Without Lea Day, Deborah Dixon, and Jessica Groeller, I’d never have whipped those stumbling paragraphs into a real book. I cannot forget my editor Sheila Gilbert for her untiring excavation of my manuscript to separate the true gems from the dross and help me make them shine bright and true.
Last but not least, I need to thank my mom for . . . well for being My Mom.
Prologue
WHILE MY DAHLING Tess flies from here to there on a big mechanical machine that makes so much noise it hurts my tender little ears and smells too ripe, I’m wandering around the chat room looking for something to do.
The vast whiteness that stretches on and on, broken only by an occasional door to another dimension is strangely quiet today. I can’t even find the demons that are supposed to be on guard duty. They keep beings inside their home dimension, only allowing passage to a privileged or wily few.
I’m one of the few. Imps may go anywhere. Convincing the guard demons of that is another issue altogether.
I stumble across a round stone door I haven’t noticed before. It smells odd. My pug nose wiggles overtime trying to discover what lurks behind before I open it.
Stone, copper, dust, and sage.
I’ve smelled that before.
Instantly wary, I tug on the handle until it squeals in protest on rusty hinges.
I freeze—waiting, assessing.
No one comes to pummel me into submission or back where I came from.
So, like a good little imp, I poke my nose inside the scant inches between the round stone door and the arched stone jamb.
“Gargoyles!” I chortle. “Gargoyles in their natural form.” Translucent spirits flit about. The smallest have hardly any features at all, just amorphous wispy forms. The larger ones begin to show signs of eyes, nose, and mouth. Nothing individual about any of them.
They all play tag with inanimate cutouts of demons, practicing pushing over bad guys with only the power of their aura. Some are better than others.
They are all good enough to keep me out. I can only watch from the doorway.
An old guy, his wrinkled and threadbare robes made of smoke sagging around his potbellied form, follows the youngsters about with a clipboard. He peers over half glasses at the antics of one particularly talented child. The twisted grimace on his face appears carved out of stone. He’s lived long enough to develop features and a personality. A grim one from the way he frowns.
The kid he concentrates on can’t be more than two or three centuries old. He won’t stand still long enough to get a bead on his developing features. I get hints of bat wings.
“Report,” the old guy barks, quill pen poised over his notes.
“Six Damiri lurking behind that pillar,” the kid nods toward a Gothic column I hadn’t seen before he pointed it out. Maybe it didn’t exist before he mentioned it.
“Check. What else.”
“Two Cthulhus in the
moat, reluctant to come out. And a pair of Windago hunting innocents who enter the forest trying to find sanctuary.”
“Very good. We have an emergency vacancy,” the old guy intones. “You are young yet, but you are the best student we’ve had in three centuries. Go now. Replace the ancient one who fell asleep. His corner is a vitally strategic post. We need younger energy to fill the gap.”
The kid salutes, bouncing up and down in his enthusiasm. Then his misty body trails off and escapes through the door I left partly open for my own escape.
The venerable gargoyle tutor makes a check mark on his clipboard and moves on to supervise another pupil.
The distinctive smell of stone, copper, dust, and sage shifts. Now I get granite, moss, and clay tiles.
So that’s how they do it! The spirit form of the gargoyle inhabits the stone or metal body which gives them definition. Their magic exists only in their apotropaic ability to repel demons away from the edifice they protect.
Hmmm. I wonder if the kid’s smell is unique to him, or merely his type. I know that scent. I do not trust the man who cannot mask it behind a musky aftershave.
This is info my babe may need.
Time to check on her. She should have changed planes and started on the final leg of her journey.
Chapter 1
Gambling became legal in Nevada in 1931, the same year the divorce laws were relaxed.
“TESS, MY DARLING.” Donovan Estevez cupped my face in his long-fingered hand. His thumbs rubbed circles against my cheekbones. The rasp of his calluses on my skin awakened nerve endings and sent flaring signals of welcome to my fevered brain. Then he traced my scar from temple to chin, trailing kisses along the ridge.
“I find this scar very sexy.” He feathered more kisses behind his fingers’ trail. “I can’t see it, but I know it’s there. Clouded with mystery and promises.”
I waited, willing him to move closer, linger, and savor. Magnetic tingles drew our mouths closer. He held back.
“Are you certain?” he whispered. His warm breath drifted across me like the softest of spring breezes.
A new face appeared in my vision. Gollum peered at me from behind Donovan’s shoulder, a stern frown of disapproval and . . . aching pain marring his lean face. He pushed his glasses up to hide his eyes.
I tried to banish the image of my friend and mentor; my Gollum. I could never think of him as Guilford Van der Hoyden-Smythe, PhD.
“Yes,” I said to Donovan, doing my best to ignore my misgivings.
Our bodies pressed against each other in an explosion of sensation, bonding us together. Our mouths blended and molded, opened. Our tongues entwined in an eternal dance, mimicking a more intimate joining.
Clothing disappeared without seeming to have ever been worn.
I stood on tiptoe, stretching to feel as much of him as I could. His hands ran the length of my back and lifted me higher by my bottom.
I nestled my face into his shoulder and inhaled his unique scent of copper, sage, and hot dust, enhanced by a dry cologne. A sigh rose, constricting my chest with anticipation. I belonged here. We fit. We were meant to be together.
“No, you don’t,” Gollum said, the erudite scholar, not a lover or a friend. “You belong with me.”
A sharp pain in my neck wrenched me awake, out of my pretty dream. My head jerked forward and back against the airplane seat. The jet engine grated on my ears and my nerves. My balance skewed to the left.
I automatically keyed my laptop to save, and a back up to a flash drive.
One night. I’d had one wonderful, erotic, special night with Donovan.
Then I had three comfortable nights sleeping on Gollum’s sofa, the only intimacies between us on the level of dear friends.
One friggin’ night with Donovan. Not enough, part of me screamed.
Never again, my common sense replied. Not until he honestly told me of his past and his current agenda.
“Tess Noncoiré, you snore in a most unladylike manner,” Mom said with a delicate sniff. Then she turned her lost and fragile gaze back to contemplating the agricultural patterns of the Midwest thirty-five thousand feet below us.
“Where are we?” I asked on a yawn. I scrubbed my face with my hands, trying desperately to banish the dream, the wanting, the need for a man I could not trust.
“We’re somewhere south of Chicago,” Mom replied. She played with her pearl necklace, more out of habit than nervousness.
Well, duh. I looked at my watch. An hour and a half after we’d lifted off from O’Hare. About another hour to Las Vegas.
A frisson of alarm suddenly clawed at my spine from tailbone to nape. I twitched in the too-narrow airplane seat, two seats side by side on our side of the aisle, three across the aisle. The tingles spread down my arms, making my fingers itch to hold a weapon.
The underlying smells of plastic and cleaning fluids combined with stale air, stale coffee, and stale bodies suddenly intensified. My nose is keen. My otherworldly imp’s nose is better. Something was off here.
What?
Beside me, my mother glared at me, mentally ordering me to sit still, just like she used to do in church.
Nervously, I closed my laptop, secured it in the case, and shoved it beneath the seat in front of me. Then I unfastened my seat belt. Once free of my lifeline and slave driver of a novel, though little more existed than an outline and first chapter, I slid into the aisle, stretching and arching my back.
I used the innocuous movement to scan the other Las Vegas-bound passengers. Mostly couples in casual shirts and slacks headed out on vacation. They bubbled with excitement. A constant susurration of sound rose from their discussion of show tickets, excursions, and spa treatments. Discussion of the show “Fairy Moon” flew about more than any other. I hoped to get tickets for me and Mom to the hottest show in Vegas.
When excursions came up in the conversations, more than one mentioned the geological wonder of the Valley of Fire, only an hour north of Vegas. I’d have to think about that one if time allowed, with a full conference schedule and babysitting Mom.
Scattered throughout the nearly full coach seating, I spotted a few intense men and women flying solo. Their garb varied from business suits to jeans and Tees. They had the haunted look of addicts. Gamblers.
Then there were the business people. Suit jackets off, ties loosened, working furiously on their laptops.
No one person stood out in the crowd as different. No one person kept their gaze locked on me.
If I had a stalker, he wasn’t going to be easy to spot. But then that’s what stalkers do. They stay in the shadows and watch. Waiting for the opportunity to lunge. Like a crocodile.
Ambush predators.
I prefer fighting demons. At least with monsters from other dimensions, I know who I’m fighting and why.
“Mom, I’m walking back to the restroom.” I spoke slowly and distinctly, making certain I had her attention before I touched her shoulder.
She nodded and drifted back into the tangled world of her night-mares. Last month she eloped with a demon: Darren Estevez. He was also the foster father of my former lover Donovan Estevez.
Fortunately, an escapee from a pan-universal prison had murdered him thirty-six hours later and Mom only had to endure one night of his inhuman attentions.
She coped. She went about each day’s routine without protest. Darren had drained a vital quality from her. I’d never forgive him for that.
I had a few issues with him over the way he’d manipulated Donovan as well.
I hoped this five-day junket to Vegas would help Mom separate her mind from those horrible days of existing in demon thrall. I could stretch it to a week if I had to. Maybe some natural wonders out in the Valley of Fire would do the trick if all the glitz and neon of Las Vegas didn’t.
A writers’ conference was paying me and covering most of my expenses. For four days I had workshops to present. Up-and-coming writers wanted to pick my brain on breaking out of midlist into best
sellers. New writers wanted my secret formula (there isn’t one) for getting published. But that should only involve a few hours each of four days. The rest of the time I could show my mom the wonders of the oasis of light and noise and frivolity (not to be confused with le frivolité or tatted lace, a pile of which sat tangled and ignored in her lap).
Something, anything, to bring back the twinkle of mischief to her eyes. Normally, she delighted in playing the martyr—especially after Dad moved in with the love of his life, Bill Ikito. Mom had a right to feel used and abused since Darren and should revel in her martyrdom. Now, she lapsed into too-long sessions of silence and depression. No complaints. No trying to make me feel guilty for her problems.
What was worse, she no longer tried to play my sister Cecilia and me against each other. Cecilia with her architect husband, her three children, her PTA meetings and garden clubs, no longer exemplified Mom’s definition of a proper woman. I, the black sheep of the family, who fought demons and dressed up in costumes at Science Fiction /Fantasy conventions, was now her crutch and anchor in life.
No fair. I shouldn’t have to take maternal responsibility for my mom. I was the baby of the family, the one all the others should take care of.
I took my time strolling along the aisle, nodding casually to anyone who looked up. Making myself as skinny as possible and plastering up against a seat back so the flight attendants could move about collecting drink and snack debris—no such thing as meals aboard anymore. Good thing I’d fed Mom in Chicago, not that she ate much.
Nothing out of the ordinary caught my attention. No suddenly averted glances or angry glares. Not even Scrap, my interdimensional imp, showed on my radar.
And now that I was moving about, the sense of danger and foreboding had vanished.