Music to My Sorrow

by Mercedes Lackey

  At least with all this new business—the Crusade, the upcoming concert, he was spending less time than ever at home, so that was a blessing. He'd had a late meeting with some of the commissioners about some casino business, and some last-minute details about the concert. Hand-holding, really, and nothing Billy hadn't been doing one way or another since he'd cut his wisdom teeth. It had all gone without a hitch. Now he was headed back to the Cathedral and Casino of Prayer to see Gabriel. Gabe had said he had a few more last-minute ideas about the concert himself, and Billy had to admit that Gabriel's ideas were usually good ones. Just about as good as his, in fact.

  He met Gabriel in the elevator, and they rode up to Billy's office together.

  * * *

  She'd just started to search Daddy's desk—it was going to take longer; he wasn't nearly as organized as Mrs. Granger—when Ace saw light flare under the door and heard voices in the outer room.

  Someone was here.

  And she was trapped.

  * * *

  Billy opened the door of his office and flicked on the lights.

  "—went real easy. All they want to know is that they aren't gonna have another Woodstock or Altamont on their hands. Well, I told them that this is good Christian music we're going to be playing, and besides, we'll be hiring plenty of professional security to handle the crowds, none of these Hell's Angels or anything like that. Showed 'em the contracts we already have with the firm that handles the casino business, and told 'em we were gonna bring on more people just for this concert."

  Billy sat down behind his desk, his hands stroking the smooth grain of the polished wood as if it were a beloved pet.

  Gabriel smiled. "Of course. That was very wise of you. Now, on the whole, I thought we ought to go one step better for the concert venue itself. I've brought in a special private security team. They're professionals, experienced with crowds and concerts. There won't be any unexpected trouble. Of course, that's what I wanted to talk to you about."

  He went to the sideboard and poured them both drinks. He passed one to Billy and sat down in the chair across from the desk. The office was a complex interweaving of spells, his own glamouries and those of the other Sidhe who had infiltrated Billy's organization over the last few years; everywhere his eye rested, he noted the subtle nets of persuasions and compulsions that he had woven around Billy Fairchild. There was a certain danger in this, of course. Another Sidhe would sense it at once. Fortunately, after Friday, there would be nothing to sense. . . .

  Time to bring up the next step in the plan. "As you know, publicity thrives on controversy. And your . . . bold . . . stance has gathered its share of protest."

  "Let the heathen rage," Billy said, sipping his drink and grinning with foolish triumph. "I'm not the man to back down from a little controversy."

  "Precisely," Gabriel said approvingly. "In fact, the more they object, the more it proves that you're right to take the position you have, both on America's enemies, and in the way you promote the Gospel. And so, I think the faithful deserve to see a palpable demonstration of the rightness of your cause. A passion play, as it were. And as we both know, a passion play requires a sacrifice, or at least the appearance that one might be forthcoming, in order to have any impact."

  Fairchild wasn't entirely stupid. "Go on," Billy said, leaning forward intently.

  Gabriel waved his hand in the air. "You know that you receive hundreds of threats every week. And so far, thanks to our own care and foresight, nothing has ever come of any of them. What if—during the concert, when the media is here, not to mention our own camera crews—there were a bombing attempt on the Casino and Cathedral of Heavenly Grace? The main stage is going to be set up right outside. If a bomb were to go off there, the carnage would be incredible."

  "But it won't go off," Billy said cautiously.

  "Oh, of course not," Gabriel said soothingly. "We can arrange for the bomb to be so badly constructed that there's no possibility of its actually exploding. We might time the discovery of it near the end of the concert, so it doesn't disrupt things too much. But its presence will underscore a higher truth: that your Ministry is surrounded by those who wish to destroy it. That there is a Great Evil willing to kill perfectly innocent victims in order to get at you. In fact, seen that way, a bomb isn't really a hoax: it's just a tangible symbol of a greater truth."

  Billy sat back in his chair. "'A greater truth,'" Billy said admiringly. "I like that! Gabe, you've got a good head on your shoulders. Now, I don't want to know anything more about this. I've got to be able to act natural when the time comes, you see."

  And to convince yourself that you knew nothing about it, you pompous canting fool—!

  "Don't worry," Gabriel said. "I'll take care of everything."

  * * *

  Crouched behind the half-open door to Billy's private study, Ace heard every word. Her blood turned to ice in her veins, and she felt the hair on the back of her arms lifting in horror.

  She could easily believe that Gabriel Horn would do something so awful, but what she couldn't believe was that her father was going along with it.

  It was true that he'd said a lot of things in the past that weren't quite true, but that was worlds away from something like this. Setting up a bomb scare was not only cruel and self-serving, it was far from harmless. From everything she'd heard, there were going to be at least a couple of thousand people out there Friday morning listening to this Judah Galilee, and when the discovery of the bomb was announced, they weren't all going to relax. They were all going to riot. People would be hurt, trampled, even killed. And that wouldn't be the end of it, either. People would start pointing fingers, looking for someone who could have planted a bomb, making accusations, maybe even taking the law into their own hands when they thought they'd found the perpetrator. And all the time the people responsible for it would be watching and saying it was out of their hands....

  Billy Fairchild had always been greedy and selfish, and Lord knew he wasn't any kind of a good Christian, but three years ago, if someone had suggested doing something like this, he would have said no. He'd known better then. He wouldn't have set up innocent people to get hurt so that he could look like a martyr.

  He sure wouldn't have sat there and gloated about it, and said he didn't want to know any more details so he could act innocent!

  Tears gathered in her eyes, and she fought to remain silent. Gabriel Horn was the Devil Incarnate, she was sure of that now. She and Hosea had to get rid of him—send him back Underhill, if Jeanette was right about him.

  And they had to stop the concert, or the bomb scare, or both.

  Finally Daddy and Mr. Horn got up and left, but for a long time she couldn't bring herself to move, though Billy's office was dark and silent once more. She knew Hosea would be worrying about her, and at last the fear that he would try to come into the building after her gave her the will to get to her feet.

  * * *

  This time she found what she was looking for immediately: Parker Wheatley's employment application, and a bunch of pamphlets and clippings about something called the "Satanic Defense Initiative." The address on the application was the Maryland address from Mrs. Granger's Rolodex, but there was a note on a Post-It, scrawled in Billy's handwriting, with a local hotel address. He was probably living in a hotel until he could find an apartment.

  She copied the address on a piece of paper and stuffed it into her jeans. Riffling through the file further—the pages were in no particular order—she found the memo from Ben about the offices he'd assigned Mr. Wheatley to. So now she knew where to find him in the building—and any Sidhe-hunting tricks he might have, too.

  It was time to go. Definitely. She had the feeling she was already pressing her luck.

  * * *

  She was pretty sure that Daddy had left the building, but now that she'd seen Gabriel Horn again, and knew that he lived in the building, she was afraid to take the elevator, for fear she might see him.

  Fortunately sh
e doubted he'd be on the stairs. She couldn't for one minute imagine him doing anything that would raise a sweat.

  The fire door with the glowing green exit sign over it opened noiselessly, and she closed the door behind her slowly and with painstaking care. The stairs were in stark contrast to the offices; bare concrete walls, rough concrete stairs, industrial metal railings. Any sound made in here would be amplified. She moved carefully, trying to keep her steps from echoing, glad she'd worn her sneakers. Fifteen flights, and then she'd be down on the ground floor and out of here. She'd get back to Hosea, they could leave, they'd call Ria and tell her everything, she'd stop Gabriel Horn from setting the bomb, they could go to Parker Wheatley tomorrow and tell him whatever they liked. . . .

  And she'd be on her way back to New York. She never thought she would ever have thought of New York City as being "safe," but it was a sure sight safer than this place.

  Voices in the hall beyond the stair-landing caught her attention when she'd only gone a few flights. She flattened herself against the wall beside the door, heart hammering.

  "—and now, my child, let us go and visit a Bard. Yes, a true Bard. His name is Eric Banyon, and in a few hours we are going to destroy him, but it is only proper that we give him time to relish his fate first."

  She recognized Gabriel's voice and risked a glance through the window set into the metal fire-door. Gabriel Horn was walking down the hall, along with someone she didn't know. His back was to her. She watched as he opened a door and stepped through it.

  Eric? Eric was here? She stepped back and pressed herself against the wall again, breathing deeply.

  This was worse than bad. Kayla had said he and Magnus had been kidnapped. Hosea thought they might have just gone Underhill, but he was wrong. They were here. And if they were in Gabriel Horn's hands, they were in the worst of trouble.

  She pulled out her phone and dialed Hosea's cellphone.

  She thought it connected, but she wasn't sure, and she didn't hear anything but static. After a moment, she closed the phone in frustration.

  Think, stupid!

  She couldn't go back inside and use any of the phones in one of the offices. The switchboard was shut down for the night, and if she tried to get a line out, it would light up on the Security desk. Whoever was down there on duty would know that somebody was where they weren't supposed to be, and come looking. Even if she did take the risk, Hosea couldn't get in without the elevator codes.

  And what was she going to do alone? Hit Horn with her shoe? She'd told Hosea she could sing her way out, but that had been when she'd only thought she was going to run into ordinary people. Not Gabriel Horn. This wasn't a television show; she wasn't Buffy, to run in there and rescue them before the commercial break. She didn't even have a brick she could use as a weapon.

  She hated the thought of leaving Eric here, but from what she'd overheard, Gabriel Horn wasn't going to do anything to him yet. No, if this was a television show, she had to be smart. She needed to be Lassie, not Buffy.

  Run and get help, girl!

  That was the smart thing to do. Run and get help. She could get Hosea—they'd come back in.

  She ran down the stairs. Now that she knew where Gabriel was, she wasn't as worried about being heard, though she still struggled to compromise between speed and silence. She couldn't afford to be stopped now.

  She was gasping and breathless when she reached the bottom of the stairs, and had to force herself to stop and look before she opened the door to the lobby.

  Empty. With a shaky breath of relief, she eased open the door and stepped through it.

  She'd just reached for the keypad to the outer door to unlock it when a heavy hand came down on her shoulder.

  She let out a faint gasp, too shocked to scream.

  "Why, it's little Heavenly Grace, isn't it?" an unfamiliar voice said. "Yes, I'm sure it is. What an unexpected pleasure. For me, of course—not you."

  * * *

  Sleep was one of the many baffling and entertaining things that mortals did, and Jormin had returned to the hotel at a time when he thought his master's two prizes would probably be engaged in that peculiar activity to set his spells deeper in their minds. Mortals could be induced to forget much while they slept, even Gifted mortals, and in their vulnerability, he might have the chance to unriddle the mystery of the strangeness in the apprentice Bard's magick.

  But when he'd arrived, they were not there.

  It did not worry him. They would not have run far, and with his magick upon them, they were easy to follow. It was a merry jest indeed to discover that they had fled directly to his master's feet.

  He saw the apprentice Bard stopped upon the edge of the road in his Cold Iron chariot, and gave him a wide berth; he was not the greater prize, in any event. He followed the girl to the tower, and what he saw in her mind as she emerged made him decide, regretfully, that the little vixen must not be left to run free any longer. The matter must be set before his Prince at once.

  * * *

  Ace spun around. The man she was staring at was elusively familiar, and at last she recognized him. Judah Galilee. Hosea's Black Bard. As if he had stepped right out of one of those posters Hosea had brought back with him.

  "Oh, do try to fight," he said cordially, smiling a cold smile. "Try your arts on me, worldling, and I vow by the Morrigan, I'll turn your bones to water, and believe me, I shall deeply enjoy every moment as much as you will regret it."

  "Oh, please," Ace said hopelessly, pleadingly. "Just let me go. I can't hurt you. I just want—"

  His smile widened, and grew even colder. "Now, pretty child, we both know I cannot, for this night you have seen and heard that which it were far better you had not. You're clever enough to know that—but not clever enough to come willingly, I do vow. So struggle, do, and despair. I shall enjoy that. I shall enjoy that a very great deal."

  Judah looked like a rock star—from his long hair and flashy jewelry to his head-to-foot black leather—but he talked like something out of Masterpiece Theater. Like Jaycie had talked, at the very end, when he'd stopped pretending to be human.

  Jeanette had been right. He was Unseleighe. There was nothing else that he could be. And the Unseleighe knew no mercy.

  Something deeper than fear made her duck under his arm and bolt for the stairs. She knew even as she did that it wouldn't do her any good.

  But she tried. She had to.

  * * *

  Eric struggled slowly toward consciousness. For a very long time all he had was the sense that he ought to be conscious, and a nagging sense of despair and wrongness. Nothing more. As if—when he did finally awaken, it would be to great sorrow.

  But for now, all he could do was drift, barely aware. As if his very self had been stolen away.

  At last, as if he were remembering the punch-line to an old joke, he realized why he should be awake. It all came back to him with a jolt, and all at once.

  He was Eric Banyon, Bard of Elfhame Misthold. He'd received a warning. He'd been going to rescue his brother Magnus—but he'd been too late.

  They were prisoners.

  Of the Unseleighe.

  As he strained toward consciousness, he heard someone calling his name.

  * * *

  "Eric. Eric."

  Magnus didn't know if his brother heard him, but he had to keep trying. He had no intention of giving up. They were going to get out of here, and then somebody was going to hurt. A lot. He didn't know who, yet, but he bet that Eric would be able to tell him.

  He'd awakened a while ago—he thought it was about an hour now—so abruptly that at first he'd been completely disoriented. It had taken him a few seconds to focus on where he was; to realize that whole thing about history class and the giant wolves hadn't been a bad dream, likely as that was, but reality. More of that magic stuff, only at this point even he was able to figure out that trying to deny that magic existed was only going to make things worse. No, he'd just better suck it in and deal with it.


  He remembered nothing between the time the wolf had jumped out of the alleyway and knocked him down, and here.

  He'd woken up tied to a metal chair. His ankles were tied to the legs of the chair with some kind of soft white rope, and his hands were tied behind the back. He had a pretty good idea of what his bonds must look like, because Eric was right there, in another chair set at right angles to his, just a few feet away, and they were probably tied up the same way.

  Kinky.

  This stuff was lots more fun when you saw it in the movies, when you were sure nobody was really getting hurt and besides, the good guys were going to get out okay.

  The one good thing about this was that it was nothing to do with the 'rents. They'd send lawyers. They'd send cops. They wouldn't send giant wolves. Definitely.

  And they wouldn't bother to kidnap Eric too. Why should they? He was about a thousand years old, and there was no way they could make him do anything. No, whoever it was that had decided to grab both of them had some other ideas in mind.

  He looked around the room. Grey. Hard to tell what size, when everything—walls, floor, ceiling—was the same color, and looked sort of like it was coated in Teflon. Magnus shuddered. He wished he hadn't thought of that. Ace was always telling him how easy Teflon was to clean, because everything washed right off it. He didn't like what that made him think of.

  He couldn't see a door, but there had to be one.

  The room was dimly lit, but he couldn't see a light source, either, or where the light was coming from. If Eric and the other chair hadn't been there, it would have been easy to get dizzy in the dimness, but they gave him something to focus on.