by P. R. Frost
“Tess, don’t shut me out.” Donovan knelt in front of me. He tried to take my hands.
I slapped him away.
“Go,” I croaked.
“I suppose you’re going to call Van der Hoyden-Smythe to comfort you in this new knowledge,” he sneered.
“Just go.”
I rocked and rocked some more, trapped in my own revulsion of him.
I barely heard the door snick closed behind him.
My mom wasn’t there to help me through the tears.
Shaking with the knowledge of the power within the ring, and the horror of trapping an imp inside it for all time, I sneak back to the chat room.
There is a blackness within me. I could so easily have shared a similar fate with the black imp.
TRAPPED, held hostage, no way out. Forced to face his crimes day in and day out without respite.
With that much imp’s bane in his system, and the magic of the diamond holding it in him, he’d probably forgotten how to open a portal even if he broke through. He has to be directed by the wearer of the ring.
If I had not found Tess and guided her to the Citadel, the one place that could save us both, I would have been banished from impkind, maybe given to the faeries so they could trap me, too.
I saved Tess from grief at the untimely death (murder) of her beloved husband Dill. Her anguish bordered on suicide.
She saved me from punishment for doing what I had to do to survive. According to imp law, I had no right to survive.
I probe deeper into the side corridor of the chat room.
The next window the ring takes me to is Earth. Medieval France to be specific. Another blacksmith. But this is no ordinary blacksmith. He plays with metal combinations and chemical formulae, seeking the Philosopher’s Stone—that which will turn iron into gold, that which will answer all the questions of the Universe. Had he taken the route of a cleric and book learning, they’d have called him an alchemist.
By either name, he seeks to remove impurities from the ordinary to make it divine.
But he does not believe in the Church’s teaching. He believes he can find God within iron and turn it to gold.
At this time and place, faith and religion are not separated. So they call him Noncoiré, the unbeliever.
I know all this the moment I see him. His blood sings with the essence of Tess. I read him as well as I read my dahling.
What is this? He gathers arcane herbs in the woodland, seeking poisons that will eat away at the metal, alter it, purify it, force it to transmute. In his primitive learning he believes that gold is pure. Iron is not. The concept of elements (the periodic table kind, not Earth, Air, Fire, and Water) has not surfaced.
His cat—a black male of course—that has become his familiar, stalks insects, tiny lizards, and mice. It bounds back to him with each new treasure. Monsieur Noncoiré exclaims with pleasure and caresses the cat with long and firm strokes.
I hate that cat already. I know it will do something awful. I just know it. Cats are only capable of inflicting horrible torture on other beings. And they purr while they do it.
But this is no ordinary woodland. The colors are a little too bright. Outlines and images just a bit too well defined.
I smell Faery.
Sure enough, just as this blaclzsmith yanks a mandrake out of the dirt by its roots, the plant screams. The preternatural screech obscures the sound of a faery popping into this dimension.
I don’t need to hear it. I can smell it. Lilze cinnamon and lavender and warm comfort.
The cat smells it also and pounces. It comes up with a tiny white-and-gold faery in its mouth.
“Now, now, Balthazar,” the man says in his ancient French. “Let the poor beastie go. You won’t like the taste of him.”
Gently, he pries the cat’s mouth open and catches the wounded faery as it tumbles free.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here?”
“You have a king of the faeries, and I command you to release me!” the imperious little squirt says. He makes a big show of straightening his expensive clothes. They look a bit ragged and slimy from the ravages of the cat’s mouth.
“I could let you go, inside my hungry cat.”
“No, no, no. You don’t want to do that.” Kingy sounds scared. He’s probably new to the job and hasn’t learned how to outsmart a cat. (It ain’t easy, friend.)
“Or I could let you go where you can get safely back to your own home before the cat nabs you.”
Ah, Noncoiré is smart, or he’s had dealings with faeries before. He knows how to bargain with them.
“I’d prefer the latter, sir.” Kingy sounds scared.
“But my cat is hungry and I’ve naught to feed him. Except you.”
The cat looks very sleek and well fed to me. Good thing there is a barrier of time between it and me, or I’d be sneezing my tail off by now. Funny how well-fed cats give off more allergens than skinny, stinky, mangy ones. At least for imps.
“Um ... I could give you something valuable. You could sell it to buy food for the monster.”
“Well, that would be nice. But even the village idiot knows that faery gold turns to dross the moment it leaves faery hands. No, no, I’d better just feed you to the cat.”
“I have something else. Something more valuable than all the gold in France.” Kingy is desperate now.
“And what would that be? I’ll have to see it, hold it, and know it’s not going to disappear before I can let you go.”
Kingy frowns and drops his head. Then slowly he draws a ring from his finger and drops it into Noncoire’s hand. It grows to human size as it falls, landing solidly against the palm.
The stone winks and scintillates in the dappled sunshine. I hear a tiny crack in the Universe. The transfer of ownership of the ring has created a flaw in the diamond. A bit of the black imp’s essence sends out a greedy probe.
Noncoiré gasps and opens his palm a bit to get a better look. A cunning smile replaces his astonishment. The power within the ring calls to him. But he doesn’t know how to use it.
The faery flits away—on a drunken path because his wings are a bit tom—then pops back into Faery a whisker’s width away from the cat’s nose. He’s lost the ring, he can’t go anywhere but home, and only by the portal he came in on.
Maybe he didn’t know the power of the ring. A long time has passed since its making. I’m thinking Kingy thought it was a symbol of his authority, sort of like the crown. Just part of the regalia.
So now the ring is in human hands. And no one knows what it can do. And then I hear something else, the tiniest of sounds. Like a crack in the Universe opening. Just a little one. But enough for me to hear the black imp’s scream of mental anguish. I must save him.
Chapter 29
As of 2000, because of the buffet, Circus Circus serves more meals than any other hotel in the world, 13,000 per day.
AFTER DONOVAN LEFT, I made my way back to the quiet bar and drank three more Scotches. The alcohol barely made a dent in my inner pain and turmoil.
At some point I must have moved on autopilot to brush my teeth, change to a nightgown, and crawl into bed. Scrap nudged me awake in time to shower and gather my supplies for classes and workshops.
By the time I joined my fellow writers at the breakfast buffet, I’d recovered enough to smile and reply politely to random comments. Mostly, I was numb. Numb in body and mind. Not even a hangover.
Gollum showed up as I pushed my scrambled eggs and ham around the plate, pretending to eat. He pulled an extra chair up to the round table filled with eager conference attendees. He straddled it and grabbed my toast off my plate.
“I had a productive evening after I left you,” he said quietly. “Answers to a bunch of queries. You find anything interesting?”
“Oh, are you a writer, too?” one of the perky and eager writers at the table gushed. I’d forgotten her name. She had a couple of short fiction credits and her entry in the critique workshop for a full-lengt
h fantasy novel showed promise.
“Only academic papers,” Gollum replied seriously. “Very boring stuff. Mostly I do research for Tess.”
This set off a discussion on the value of research to the writer. I let the conversation flow around me, still avoiding thinking, avoiding eating, avoiding the fact that sooner or later I’d have to face Donovan again.
“Would you check to see if any gargoyles broke or fell from Lincoln Cathedral about fifty years ago?” I whispered.
Gollum’s eyebrows shot nearly to his hairline.
Miss Perky heard me. “Oooooh, are you going to have gargoyles in your next book?”
“Maybe the book after the current work in progress.” I hadn’t thought about it, but yes, I could work gargoyles into my post apocalyptic fantasy novels involving a version of the Sisterhood of the Celestial Blade Warriors.
My best writing happens when my life sucks. I work through my inner pain by pushing it all onto my characters. That way I can examine it from all sides, find a compromise, dismiss it, whatever I need to do. Yes, I needed to work some very nasty gargoyles into my fiction.
Feeling began to return to my mind and my body. Good feeling, a need to work and be active again.
Maybe it was the fourth cup of coffee.
“Gramps got a line on the ring,” Gollum said. “Go do your classes. I’ll meet you in the lobby at two.” He pulled out his ever-present laptop and logged onto the Internet.
“Any word from Mickey?”
“Not yet. But I think he’ll be on time. He really wants to see that show.” He let out a low whistle and clicked through several links.
“What have you found?”
“No record of a gargoyle falling at Lincoln Cathedral.”
“Hmm, so he told another lie.”
“Who?”
“Donovan.” I had to change the subject here and now before my table mates asked too many awkward questions. “Any legends about the Valley of Fire and vision quests show up on your radar?”
No, Tess. Don’t do it. Don’t even think about going there. Scrap jumped off his perch on top of my head and flew an agitated pattern from one light fixture to the next.
“Strangely enough, very little. Mostly academic explanations of the petroglyphs. Very PC and mundane. If there are local legends of a more spiritual nature, no one repeats them to outsiders,” Gollum said, following his gargoyle links around the Internet.
“Keep looking.” I shoved my chair back and collected my folders of papers.
“Mind if I finish your breakfast first?” Gollum asked, only half joking.
“Be my guest.”
“Never known you to turn away from food before,” he muttered, grabbing clean cutlery from an empty table.
I grumbled something and left him to my leavings.
A thought hit me square in the middle of my chest, strong enough to rob me of breath. Gollum deserved better.
His tongue loosened by alcohol, he’d confessed to loving me.
He deserved more of me than just friendship.
My first husband had died over three years ago, after a whirlwind courtship of four days and three months of marriage. I’d banished his ghost for good last month. Part of me knew I needed to move on. Part of me still felt attached to Dill.
A part of my heart had broken off last night when I sent Donovan packing. I felt betrayed; leery of trusting my heart again.
Was there anything left for Gollum? Could I give him, or any man, more than friendship right now?
I really needed to talk to my mom.
Strange, I’d never wanted to turn to her with my emotional problems when she hovered around me like an overprotective mother hen. For nearly two decades she’d tried to live her life through me. But now that she’d flown the coop to find a life of her own, the one person who’d understand my dilemma wasn’t there. Talking to her by phone wasn’t enough.
Junior showed up at my morning class. “Is It Love Or Just Sex” was about the very fine line dividing a sensuous romance from erotica, and keeping either from slipping into porn. If Junior did indeed want to write a romance involving the inner workings of Las Vegas, he might need this workshop.
I spent a lot of time emphasizing verbs and emotions. A couple of men in the group wanted more graphic details. I pointed out the difference between experiencing love and reading an engineering text. I had more than a few memories of my night with Donovan to remind me.
“Some people get off on observing from a distance,” I said, toward the end of the two-hour period. That idea came from my visualization of Donovan as a hideous bat gargoyle sitting silently and watching the sordid details of life for eight hundred years.
“The modern reader of genre fiction,” and Donovan too, “wants to experience the emotions as well as the sensations. If we want anatomical details, we can get a vibrator and rent some porn.”
Donovan had the experiencing sensations down pat. I doubted he had mastered allowing emotions into the equations. One or the other, but not both at the same time. His humanity was incomplete. He hadn’t spent enough time with Dill.
Neither had I.
Feeling better about myself and a lot of other things from this weekend, I dismissed the class to their lunches.
Junior lingered behind, grabbing me as I passed him to leave the room. I stared at his tight grip on my upper arm with all of the disdain I could muster.
Scrap landed on top of my head, glowing hot pink. He blew smoke into Mr. Twitchy’s face.
Belatedly, Junior removed his hand, wiping it on his slacks as if stained or soiled. Maybe just sweaty. He looked as nervous as ever.
Let me at him, Tess. Let me give him a taste of his own violence.
I muttered something.
Scrap faded, still pink, still grumbling, but less ready to transform.
“I’ve got a couple of chapters of my book ready for you to look over,” Junior said.
“I never agreed . . .”
“Doesn’t matter what you agreed to . . .”
“Junior, mind your manners,” Mom said, coming up behind him.
Only Mom could make this guy think about anything but his own self. Yeah for Mom.
“No one invited you, demon whore.”
Mom gasped and reached for her pearls, a talisman.
Scrap turned vermilion and stretched.
Before Junior finished the phrase, I had my hands around his throat and his back against the wall. I didn’t need Scrap for this. I wanted to inflict violence myself.
His skin paled to near perfect sculpted marble, his ears elongated to a point and the slant of his eyes shifted. The exquisite beauty had twisted to something terrible, angry, vengeful, more frightening than Gregbaum’s mutant faeries. And as with those blood-red goons in black leather, I caught an energy signature of wings.
Changeling, Scrap gasped.
An old legend. Faeries are near immortal and rarely have children of their own. But their desire to raise a child and experience the joy of seeing it grow and learn approaches desperation. So they will, upon occasion, substitute one of their own, shape-changed into an infant—for a human child.
I can taste his magic. He set the spell around the faery dancers!
And I bet he was extremely bitter about his exile from Faery. He had to have arranged the kidnapping of the dancers and the enlistment of the mutants. Gregbaum, the mortal magician with no talent was Junior’s puppet and front man.
That was why he had a pass to the show for himself, Breven and . . . and Sister Gert, the woman he called Mom.
As if he’d heard Scrap, Junior snapped back to normal mortal appearance.
“Apologize to my mother, you slimy worm,” I said through gritted teeth. My mind spun with implications. He must be the shadow investor in the show.
“It’s what she is,” he whined. His eyes darted back and forth, lighted briefly above me on Scrap, then returned to face me with something akin to bravado.
“Despite your opini
on, which I do not value at all, my mother brings a lot of customers into this establishment. You should at least respect the money she makes for you and keep your mouth shut!”
He gulped and I felt his Adam’s apple bob beneath my hands.
“Now, are you going to apologize or do I squeeze the life out of your miserable hide.”
This guy needs to go back to Faery, fast, Scrap decided. Too bad the portal is closed. You and I could zip him through the chat room faster than he can think.
“Genevieve signed a contract. I don’t have to . . .”
I squeezed harder until he barely breathed. “Her name is pronounced Jahn-vee-ev.”
Couldn’t do better myself, Scrap chortled. He blew more smoke, making Junior’s breathing even more difficult.
“Tess, you can remember your manners as well. You, at least, had the advantage of a loving mother to beat some sense into you,” Mom said mildly. Almost too much calm in her voice. If she’d been me, I’d start looking for a place to hide.
“His mother abandoned him to relatives when he was a baby,” she continued. “That’s no excuse I realize, but . . . no daughter of mine will stoop to his level of boorishness.”
Now that was the mother I knew and loved. And respected.
“Remember, Junior, verbal abuse is grounds to invalidate that contract. Also grounds to sue you for your shares of stock in this hotel. I think about now that your silent partner would be more than happy to get rid of you.” I eased up on my grip, but kept him pinned with my malevolent gaze.
I’m surprised a silent partner has put up with him this long.
“If you could just get me in to see Lady Lucia . . .”
“If she’s your partner, why do I have to get you in to see her?”
“She stopped taking my calls months ago. She’s trying to leverage me out.”
“Then I’d think you’d bend over backward to be polite to my mother, the woman who is bringing in extra revenue and solidifying your position. And me, since Lady Lucia provided me with VIP tickets to sold-out ‘Fairy Moon,’ invited me to a private party, and wants me to see the show again.”