He strained at his bonds, but they held fast. Besides the ropes, Eric's hands were shackled. The restraints were big, heavy things, like something out of an old pirate movie, and they looked like silver, not iron.
More kink.
When Magnus shook his own wrists he didn't feel a similar weight. He guessed the shackles must have something to do with magick.
He'd tried to wake Eric then, but Eric was out cold. He didn't look very good either—not bleeding or anything, but just not good. The way his head lolled was wrong, and he wasn't sleeping, he was stone cold out, and in a bad way. Magnus bet that if he could see clearly, Eric would be really pale.
Like a drug overdose. Like the way Jaycie had looked there, towards the end, when he was mostly unconscious from all that cola and chocolate.
For a brief moment, Magnus tried to convince himself that this was an ordinary kidnapping, that they'd both been drugged, that whoever had drugged them had just given Eric too much. But he couldn't manage it. Even if an armful of tranqs would work on an Ascended Jedi Master, or whatever the hell Eric thought he was, there were still those wolves. And those weird guys in Mrs. Castillo's office. And the kinky silver handcuffs.
And the fact that he was pretty sure the chairs were silver, too.
Who the hell would make a whole chair out of silver?
They were in real trouble. It was magick everywhere, and magick was the one thing he didn't know how to MacGyver himself out of.
He wondered if getting those cuffs off Eric would help. Maybe if he could get his chair over to Eric's, he could do something about them.
But when he tried to rock the chair, it didn't move at all. Like it was welded to the floor.
Magnus took a deep breath, forcing himself not to panic. He'd been in trouble before. He was still here. They'd get out of this. And then someone would be in deep, serious trouble.
"Eric?" he called. "Eric? Hey, stupid, wake up! Eric, wake up!"
* * *
"—up. Eric, wake up."
Eric forced his eyes open with a shudder and a gasp.
Grey. Everything was grey.
"Are you all right?" His voice was a croak. But it was Magnus's voice that had awakened him, so Magnus was still alive, and, presumably, still with throat uncut. So they were that much ahead of the game.
"Better than you are."
For all Magnus's bravado, Eric could hear the undercurrent of fear in his brother's voice.
He tried a little bravado of his own. "No . . . I'm good."
But he wasn't. He was awake, and that was a definite improvement, but his wrists . . . burned. He tried to summon up his magick, but every time he tried, it wouldn't come clear in his mind. Something was stopping it.
"Eric? We're going to get out of here, aren't we?" Magnus demanded.
"One way or another," Eric said firmly. He wasn't going to lie to Magnus, but there was no reason not to share what hope he had. "Greystone knows there's a problem. If we've both gone missing, he'll call in the cavalry." Ria. Toni and the other Guardians.
"You can't get us out of here, can you? Because of those things on your wrists?" Magnus said flatly.
"That's probably the reason," Eric said, doing his best to sound calm. "I think it's some kind of Binding Spell. I can probably overload it, given enough time. Meanwhile, tell me what you know."
Magnus's tale was quickly told, and Eric shared what he knew about his own capture as well, but it made no sense to him. For Prince Gabrevys to attack a Bard of the Bright Court would not just mean war between Elfhame Bete Noir and Elfhame Misthold—it would mean swift punishment from Oberon himself.
And if Eric was Gabrevys's target, why involve Magnus at all? There'd certainly been ways to capture Eric without involving his brother. And if Gabrevys meant to kill Eric, it would have made more sense simply to not let him wake up at all . . . because once he was awake, he had the potential, at least, to cause trouble. There was some piece of this that was missing, but the sense of it, even the shape of it, eluded him.
Missing pieces—better tell Magnus everything he knew. Shielding him wouldn't help, and might hurt. "Look, Magnus. There's something you don't know about all this," Eric said.
Magnus snorted eloquently.
"The Sidhe Lord who's got his hands on us . . . he's Jaycie's father. And I'm pretty sure he blames me for the fact that Jaycie's at Misthold."
There was a long silence.
"So he's just like Mom," Magnus said at last, bitterness in his voice. "Jaycie's happy now, and he'd rather be dead than go home, but this guy doesn't care."
"If he shows up here don't tell him that," Eric begged. "In fact, don't say anything to him if you can manage it. And don't believe anything he says—no matter how much you want to. Remember that the Dark Sidhe lie as easily as breathing. Easier. They love deception. They live on lies. They'll do and say whatever they can to cause the most pain; it's like a drug to them." He wracked his brain, trying to think of every possible thing he could warn his brother about while there was still time.
"Jaycie used to cry at night—and scream," Magnus said grimly. "When he was asleep."
Elves don't sleep, Eric thought, but then remembered that when Magnus had known him, Jaycie had been lost in Dreaming most of the time.
"If you see—" Eric began, but just then there was the sound of a door opening.
There was the sound of two sets of footsteps behind them, faintly muffled as if they moved over a rubbery surface.
They walked around and into Eric's field of vision: a tall man in a dark suit, accompanied by a dark-haired boy about Magnus's age. The boy had a pleasant, open expression, but there was something terribly wrong with him.
Hosea had always said that people with the Gift seemed to be more vividly there than people without it. At its simplest, Talent was human creativity, and everyone had it to some degree. What Eric was seeing now was something he had not thought could exist: a human with no spark of that most essential element of humanity, and it was painful to see.
The tall man smiled. "This is Devon Mesier. Say hello, Devon."
"Hello," Devon said pleasantly. He seemed completely uninterested in the fact that there were two people tied to chairs in front of him. It seemed to have no impact at all on him.
As for his escort, well, Eric might not know who he was, but he certainly knew what he was. The man tilted his head to the side. "What, Sieur Eric? No pleas for mercy for your brother? No haughty reminders of your inviolate status as a Bard of Misthold? Would that you had showed as much wisdom when you stole my son from me!"
Oh shit. Though the man before him remained cloaked in human seeming, Eric knew who he was now. And the excrement had definitely hit the rotating blades.
"I did not steal him," Eric answered evenly. "I offered Sanctuary to Prince Jachiel and his Protector, Prince Gabrevys, as you well know. He fled your Domain and would not return, and his Protector will not force him. Go and ask him yourself. Prince Arvin has offered you safe-passage."
Gabrevys smiled hollowly. "Oh, I shall . . . when I bring to Prince Arvin the tragic news of what has befallen you. Then shall the Law be my shield, for do I not act at the behest of blood? I shall not harm one hair of your head, nor spill one drop of your blood, nor do one thing that I have not been commanded to by the woman who bore you and the man who sired you. Aye, Bard Eric—if you can act within the Law, so can I!" Gabrevys threw back his head and roared with laughter.
Eric stared at him, stunned. His parents? His parents had made a pact with Prince Gabrevys? They couldn't have had any idea of what they were doing.
But that didn't matter, he realized with a sinking heart. It didn't matter what Gabrevys had done to trick them into it. They were his parents. By the Law of the Sidhe, Gabrevys's actions would be legal. He was following the request of Eric's own parents, the only way he could work against a Bard and get away with it.
"Let Magnus go," Eric said, desperately, now.
Gabrevys cocked his
head. "Not so haughty now, eh, Bard Eric? And how shall I do that, when the bargain was for both of you? Return to me both my sons, the woman said. Make them my dutiful loving children once again, she begged. And so I shall. Come the dawn, you both shall be as young Devon here—obedient and compliant to her every whim. Alas, those gifts and talents she prizes in you will be gone, ravished away by my Soul-eaters, but she asked only for your obedience, my word upon that. No longer will you meddle in the affairs of your betters—nor will you remember them, or care."
Oh, this was bad. He might not be able to cast a spell, but Eric still knew truth when he heard it. Prince Gabrevys was telling the truth.
"Think carefully before you do this," Eric said. He forced himself to speak calmly. "You'll be acting within the Law, it's true. But you'll make a lot of enemies. And not all of them are bound by Sidhe law." Ria Llewellyn, just for starters, who'd never met a law she couldn't turn into a pretzel when it suited her. Beth. The Guardians? Possibly. Beth and Kory had allies that they could call on, too.
"Ah, do you pin your hopes on your foolish apprentice? Alas for you, that he will be dead by tomorrow's sunset," Gabrevys purred.
Just then Eric heard the sound of the door opening again. Gabrevys looked up and past him. Eric would have been willing to swear that for one moment the Unseleighe Lord looked utterly startled.
"Your reasons?" he snapped.
"She spied upon you, my Prince," another voice said. "Such a thing cannot be allowed. I have not harmed her." Since the door was directly behind Eric, he couldn't see the speaker, but Magnus could, and his face went absolutely white.
Whatever, whoever was behind him, it couldn't be good.
No, he knew from Gabrevys's smile that it wasn't good at all.
"Dear child, is it not entertaining that after so long attempting to avoid my company, you should come and seek me out?" Gabrevys said, his voice velvet over steel.
"I wasn't looking for you, Gabriel Horn," Ace snapped. "If you were drowning, I'd pour water on you. Ow!"
Eric abruptly felt as if someone had hit him in the stomach, and not just because Ace had suddenly been added to the hostage list. Prince Gabrevys was Gabriel Horn?
Everything suddenly made more—and less—sense.
Why Ace had been afraid of him without knowing why. Where Billy's sudden inexplicable wealth had come from. The bizarre dark turn his ministry had taken. The weird twists and turns in Ace's court case.
But why would an Unseleighe Prince be spending so much time on someone like Billy Fairchild? That had started long before Jaycie had run away.
A second Unseleighe—also wearing human glamourie—stepped into Eric's line of vision, dragging a wildly struggling, but now grimly silent Ace with him.
"You leave her alone!" Magnus shouted, thrashing wildly in his chair. "You sick piece of shit—you think Jaycie isn't going to find out about this? Kiss your kid goodbye, Darth Vader."
Eric winced.
"Magnus!" Ace gasped.
"My son is my concern," Prince Gabrevys said, all trace of humor gone from his face. "He will see reason, once the inconvenience that the two of you represent is removed." If not for the terms of his pact, Eric would have feared for his brother's life, but Gabrevys would honor his oath to the letter. They were safe—for now.
But Ace wasn't.
"And what is it that you think you heard, my bold and pretty child?" Gabrevys said, moving forward to where Jormin stood with Ace. She'd stopped struggling now, but her body was tense with hopeless defiance.
Gabrevys cocked his head as if listening, and Eric knew he was reading Ace's thoughts. He'd asked her what she'd overheard, and of course she couldn't help thinking of it now.
Gabrevys smiled, and ruffled Ace's hair, his good humor restored.
"You're thinking of the false bomb meant to be discovered in the late afternoon of tomorrow's concert, and how sad it is that your father has been so corrupted that he will permit such a thing. But allow me to ease your mind. There won't be a false bomb at all. It will be real."
Eric kept his mouth shut, because otherwise it would have dropped open. Bomb? Was there any end to the twists this thing was taking?
"I dislike Parker Wheatley a great deal, you know," Gabrevys continued in conversational tones, "And Billy Fairchild has grown quite inconvenient. It occurred to me that an elegant solution to so many of my trifling difficulties would be reached should both of them die in a very large explosion. I believe I shall frame Wheatley for the deed—the man is obviously unstable—and implicate your leaders in attempting to shut down Fairchild Ministries. The explosion will kill most of the attendees at the Pure Blood concert as well, generating what I believe is called 'a new rock legend,' and best of all, my people will be there to film it all, and carry away the tale, as will assorted members of the rock press—at least those who survive. Many of them will not. As will also be the case with your young disciple, Bard Eric; I'm very much afraid if by luck he will survive the explosion, he will tragically perish soon after, one way or another."
Eric felt his mind reeling. How had all this managed to happen without anyone noticing?
"Then Fairchild Ministries will be mine to do with as I will. It is such a lovely tool with which to sow hate and dissension among the mortals. Why, the footage of the bombing alone should provide a lovely feast of agony for my liegemen every time it is shown—all those dead and maimed children! And not at a distance, either. Close. In detail. Every nuance caught on film. The pleading of the dying, the screams of the injured. What an exquisite thought."
He reached out to cup Ace's chin in his hand, and stared deep into her eyes for a moment. She made faint mewling sounds of distress, but was unable to look away.
At last he released her, sighing in disappointment.
"I had, of course, hoped that the tragic death of your father would cause you to abandon your bid for freedom and return to your mother's side to comfort her," he said. "But now I see that even if I removed all memory of this evening from your mind and sent you on your way, you would be of little use to me. You have grown far too rebellious to make an appropriate pawn. No, I am afraid you must wait here with the others, meet with my—allies—and give them what they most desire so that they may give me what I require. In the morning, you may give your father a few brief hours of happiness before sharing his fate." If a smile could drop the temperature of a room, his plunged it to freezing. "What a tragedy! Billy Fairchild, newly reunited with his daughter, only to have the two of them perish at the hands of the ungodly!"
"Don't do this," Eric begged. "Prince Gabrevys—"
"Try my patience, Bard Eric, and I can kill her now," Prince Gabrevys snapped. "Her body will be found in the rubble either way. Or perhaps you would prefer I gave her to Jormin for a night's sport? Would you like that, my pretty one?"
"My master is kind," Jormin said softly.
"Choose, Sieur Eric—" Gabrevys began, then paused, his eyes full of unholy shadows. "No. I shall let the boy choose."
He turned those eyes towards Eric's brother. "Come now, young Magnus. Your brother has doomed you to terror and agony and to spend the rest of your life as a creature barely half alive. Shall the girl share your fate? Or shall I give her to Jormin?"
"She'd rather stay here," Magnus said, his voice filled with hate. "And so would I."
Gabrevys shrugged, as if it didn't matter in the least to him. "Very well. Jormin, tie her up."
Jormin flung Ace away from him, sending her sprawling, but before she hit the floor, ropes like those that bound Eric and Magnus appeared around her wrists and ankles, binding her ankles together and tying her hands behind her back. She hit the floor hard.
Gabrevys chuckled appreciatively, then crooked his finger in his minion's direction. "Come, Jormin. We will find you other entertainment. Come, Devon." The two Sidhe and Gabrevys's human victim walked from the room as if the other three had ceased to exist.
* * *
"I'll kill him," Magnus
growled, an undercurrent of frenzied hysteria in his voice. "I'll rip out his heart with my teeth and feed it to him—!"
Eric concentrated on Ace. There was nothing he could do to get through to Magnus right now; in fact he wasn't really sure that Magnus would hear him if he spoke. He'd never seen Magnus so angry—he was completely consumed with rage, and the closest Eric had ever seen to someone who was in classic berserker-mode.
Too bad there was no useful way to employ that much anger.
Ace had rolled to her side and gotten to her knees. Her face was white with shock, and her eyes brimmed with tears, but Eric was glad to see that she seemed to be holding on to her control, if only barely.
"Where are we?" he asked her, perhaps more harshly than he had intended, but he was afraid if he sounded soothing, she'd lose it.
She made a faint sound of surprise. "Welcome to the Heavenly Grace Cathedral and Casino of Prayer in Atlantic City, New Jersey," she said. Her voice wavered, and she took a deep breath. "Magnus, shut up," she added in exasperation.
There was a sudden silence.
"What's going to happen to us?" Ace asked, looking straight at him. "You know, don't you?"
"At dawn—unless I can get these cuffs off and get us out of here—something called Soul-eaters are going to come in here and turn the three of us into zombies like that boy Devon," Eric said flatly. At this point, there didn't seem to be a lot of point in prettying things up.
"Courtesy of Mom and Dad," Magnus added, still sounding furious. "Who expect to get back a pair of musical prodigies, but are going to get a couple of 7-11 clerks instead."
"Apparently they eat Talent," Eric explained reluctantly. "All Talent. Creativity, imagination, will. Spirit. Real emotion. Anything that makes life worth the living."
He tried again to summon a spell—any spell. Nothing. But was it his imagination, or were the cuffs on his wrists not quite as cold as they had been?
"It won't work," Ace said desperately. "Hosea's waiting for me to come back. They think they're facing down a Bard, but he's a Guardian, too. And Ria knows there's something wrong down here—if I go missing, this is the first place she'll look."
Music to My Sorrow Page 21