Music to My Sorrow

by Mercedes Lackey

  He didn't make the mistake of assuming it was helpless. Too many good field agents had died making exactly that mistake. He moved quickly, rolling it over and cuffing its hands behind its back—ordinary handcuffs, but oddly enough, just the thing for a Spookie—and then rolling it up in the capture net. The net had locks, allowing its contents to be body-bagged for easy transportation. Like the cuffs, it was steel, not iron, but steel was nearly as effective against Spookies and a great deal stronger.

  It was curious that while the Spookies looked more or less like humans, wherever the net and the handcuffs touched the creature's bare flesh, it actually blistered. It was an odd chemical reaction that they'd never gotten a chance to study thoroughly at the PDI, and now, of course, he lacked the equipment and resources. It was an unfortunate loss to the cause of science.

  The creature was bleeding heavily from its wounds and, cuffed and wrapped in steel and with a half-dozen iron bolts in its chest, was no longer able to put up much of a fight. Wheatley dragged it into the elevator and punched the button for one of the still-unoccupied floors. He'd find some place to stash the thing, out of the way, until he could add it to his public captures.

  Now that he had time to take a better look at what it was wearing, he was fairly sure that it was—or had been impersonating—Gabriel Horn, and the knowledge both cheered and chilled him. Had there ever been a real Gabriel Horn? Or had the Spookie infiltration of Billy Fairchild's organization been at the highest levels all along?

  It didn't matter. He could question the Horn-thing later, if it survived. He was reasonably sure it would; Spookies were tough, and he was fairly sure he'd missed the heart. And even if it didn't, he'd have the other four as live captures. It was far more important to neutralize one of Them that was so close to the center of power.

  And there won't be any more turf-war going on. Fairchild will be mine, by God!

  The elevator stopped again on the unoccupied floor. Wheatley pressed the button that would hold the doors open and dragged his prisoner into the hall. The Spookie groaned in pain as the steel meshes bit into its flesh, but Wheatley didn't care. Right now he had to get it to a secure place as quickly as possible, and then go after the others.

  Fortunately the unoccupied floors hadn't been completely finished. There was vinyl, not carpeting, on the floors. That made dragging his burden considerably easier, for Wheatley was not a young man, and had always left the physical side of the PDI's operations to his carefully handpicked cadre of field agents.

  He wondered where they were now, his muscle-squad. They'd been good; smart enough to improvise, smart enough not to ask questions that none of them wanted the answer to, incurious, and closemouthed. After today, he'd certainly have the money to hire at least some of them into the private sector, if they weren't there already.

  He opened the first door he found and dragged the Spookie inside. He would have left it in the hallway, except for the fear that it would cry out, and someone might hear, and stop to help it before realizing what it was.

  He removed his glasses to check. It was clear that it no longer had the power to maintain the illusion of human form that the creatures so loved to mock humanity with, but its flesh was so burned and swollen by contact with the steel netting that its inhumanity was not instantly recognizable. Only the long pointed ears betrayed it.

  "By the Morrigan, you will die a thousand deaths for this," it whispered faintly. It coughed, and spat blood, writhing as it futilely sought some position that would keep its head and body from coming into contact with the mesh of the capture net.

  "But not today," Wheatley said, with a satisfaction so deep he wasn't even inclined to gloat. "Today belongs to the human race, 'Mr. Horn.'"

  * * *

  Eric could actually see the clashing magicks boiling over each other like oil over water.

  And their side was winning. He'd hardly dared believe it at first, but they were. What was it that Dharniel had said?

  "The difference between the Light and the Shadow is that when the Light illuminates what is in the Shadow, there turns out to be nothing there after all but illusion and fear, but even when the Shadow overwhelms the Light, there still exists the rock of courage and the spark of hope. . . ."

  They ripped into their third number with the force of a freight train that had lost its brakes, playing as if they'd gigged together for years. I just wish Bethie was here to hear this, Eric thought wistfully.

  Pure Blood was giving it everything they had—Eric couldn't hear them, though he could see them on the monitors—but the audience just wasn't buying what they were selling today. The crowd had all moved away from the main stage, clearing the road and the area around the casino and cathedral, and now Eric could see the flashing lights of emergency vehicles moving up the main road. The Bomb Squad had arrived.

  He knew he was singing better than he ever had before in his life, his tenor and Hosea's rich baritone automatically finding the harmony to support Ace's soaring bell-clear soprano. It was as if the five of them were one performer now, acting together without thought, without flaw. Even Molly's yips and barks contributed to the music.

  Down below people were crying, were hugging each other, were kissing. It might not last, but right here, right now, everything was—was Light. Peace was right. Love was right. No one even thought about hating anyone else right now. This was the way the world should be.

  Then he saw Parker Wheatley.

  The man was impossible to miss in a bright green suit, his image twelve feet high on two giant screens. He'd climbed up on the stage, moving toward Judah Galilee, holding something in his hand that Eric couldn't quite make out, even with the magnification the big screen provided.

  But Judah didn't react. None of the members of Pure Blood reacted, although Wheatley walked right past the drummer, in plain sight of him. It was as if they couldn't see him at all.

  Green suit—Beth told me—it makes them invisible to Sidhe, or nearly—

  His immediate impulse was to warn Judah, but before he could think of how to do it—never mind whether or not Judah would believe him—Judah recoiled and fell.

  * * *

  All his spells, all his arts, his carefully crafted songs—worthless! The fickle human sheep had chosen another master this day, and no matter how much he raged, Jormin ap Galever could do nothing to change that. He might summon levin-bolts and burn them all to ash, but against the power the Bright Bard had summoned—in the Morrigan's Name, how?—he and his minions were helpless to bend the humans' wills.

  And that spell, that loathsome tainted groveling love, was like a web of Cold Iron laid upon his skin. . . .

  Suddenly he howled in stark agony, as a bolt of the metal itself pierced his skin. He fell to the floor—where was his attacker? Who dared?

  "Stay back, all of you. I have more of these."

  And with a clangor of discordances, the music, their music, stuttered to a halt and died.

  * * *

  Judah writhed upon the stage, clawing at his back, but the human's bolt had gone too deep for him to draw it out. He could feel it eating at him from within, boiling his flesh away.

  "All of you. Over there. With him."

  Abidan and Jakan slowly moved to obey, lifting the straps of their guitars over their necks and beginning to move toward Judah, their postures the picture of dejected defeat. Their instruments dangled from their hands as if they had suddenly forgotten their use. Coz stood up from behind the drums and began to move forward as well.

  "Keep your hands where I can see them. And don't bother trying any of your tricks. This suit I'm wearing will protect me from anything you can possibly do."

  "Ae, e'en this, maister?" Abidan snarled. Suddenly he straightened, tossing off his pose of subjugation, his guitar spinning in his hands as if it were a battle-axe, not an instrument. He brought it down on the man's arm hard enough to break the bone, then swung it again at the back of his head.

  The stranger in the green suit crumpl
ed to the ground with a surprised bleat.

  * * *

  On the rooftop opposite, they saw it all. Ace stopped singing and stared at the scene on the monitor in horror, then looked back at Eric. Behind her, the playing of the others straggled to a stop. First Jormin/Judah went down—then Wheatley, hammered by one of Judah's band!

  Now what were they supposed to do?

  Eric understood her confusion all too well. Certainly Judah and the others were the enemy by any rubber yardstick you chose to use—but then, so was Wheatley. And no matter what, it wasn't right for them to simply stand by and let two sets of Bad Guys tear each other to shreds. But they shouldn't help Wheatley, not after what he'd done to Kory and Beth, and to all those other people. And they wouldn't help Jormin!

  What could they do?

  But the Unseleighe band weren't pressing their attack against Wheatley. The other three had gathered around their leader, lifting Judah up and carrying him from the stage.

  "Sing," Eric said urgently to Ace. "We're not done yet, not even close! There's still the bomb. We've still got all those people out there and we can't let them turn back into a mob."

  Ace lifted the microphone again.

  This time it wasn't a bouncy rock song or a piece of retro bubblegum fluff. She returned to the music she knew best, and the pure soaring strains of her own namesake song, "Amazing Grace," echoed through the now-silent parking-lot, as the crowd gathered below them in hushed and reverent silence and the emergency vehicles clustered ever-deeper around the Cathedral and Casino of Prayer.

  This time her song held sadness.

  Sadness for every lost opportunity, every unkind word, every chance at reconciliation turned away through pride or anger. She might sing that she had been "lost but now was found," but beneath her words was the aching sorrow for all those who still were lost in the Shadow, who were still blind, who still turned away from love to seek hate, who still could not see the Grace that could save them. Because they'd won now, Eric realized: he could see it and so could she, and that meant they'd both have to face their families, and try to deal with the aftermath of all the terrible things that had happened here.

  Things that had happened out of a kind of love. Not the sort from Ecclesiastes, the love that was "faithful and kind, does not insist on its own way," but love of the worst and most toxic sort—twisted and wrong-headed and not love by any reasonable definition. But it thought of itself as being love; and it was still something that had started out to be—once, long ago—real love.

  And so tears glistened in Ace's eyes as she sang, and a lump formed in Eric's throat as he played—for the families, for the parents they both could have had, if a thousand things had gone differently.

  And down there below—down there, those thousands of listeners looked in the mirror of her song, and saw themselves. Saw that they were cut from the same cloth as Billy Fairchild, as the elder Banyons. Saw, at least in this moment; and at least in this moment, realized all the pain they were creating. Realized that the Grace that had sacrificed itself for them, had done so in vain, because in their hate, their fear, and their rejection of everything that was just a little different from them, they had turned away from that Grace, and into the Shadow.

  And they cried. By ones and twos and entire groups, they fell to their knees, or they stood with their faces turned up to the sky, and they wept. Wept as they had probably never wept in their whole lives. Wept for guilt, wept for fear, but most of all, wept for the rest of the message that Ace's song gave them.

  But it's never too late to heal, the music seemed to say. Let the anger pass when the time for it is done, and leave the hate behind forever. . . . You have stood in the Shadow, now come to the Light, for the Light will still, ever and always, welcome you, forgive you, want you still. Flawed and ugly as your hearts and souls are, the Light wants you to come home and be made beautiful again.

  And so, most of all, as the Bomb Squad moved in, and they stood beneath the roof, oblivious to everything else around them, they wept for hope.

  Chapter 11:

  After The Thunder

  They played for another half hour, watching the evacuation of the casino and the quiet removal of the crowd they had gathered along the back roads of the business park by the efficient security people that Ria had summoned. An ambulance had come for Wheatley. He was a problem—and probably not Eric's—for another day.

  The concert audience hadn't left the business park, of course—it would take hours to move that many people out of here—but they were now at a much safer distance from the explosion—if there was going to be one.

  Nobody noticed the five of them—though a rock band playing at full amplification ought to have been hard to miss. But what they were playing wasn't truly meant to be heard, only felt. After that last outpouring of grief-stricken weeping, Ace had sung lullabies, sending the crowd into an exhausted half trance. Old songs.

  "Hush little baby, don't say a word, Papa's gonna buy you a mocking bird. . . . "

  At last Eric saw two figures in Bomb Squad armor come walking out of the casino carrying a large chest between them. They loaded it into a van, which drove slowly away.

  He caught Hosea's eye. The big man nodded, looking satisfied.

  Looks like they got it.

  Eric gave the others the high sign, and they wrapped it up in a soft sigh of chords.

  It was over.

  And it was only now beginning.

  * * *

  Ace lowered her microphone and switched it off.

  "It's done, then?" she asked.

  She looked tired, but not in a bad way. More as if she'd done a long hard job that had needed doing, and that in setting things right, she'd set things right with herself as well. Something had happened to her, when she'd given herself over to her Talent. As if she'd found just what it was she'd been looking for all her short life.

  As for Eric . . .

  He wanted to sleep for a week. No, make that two weeks. He couldn't think of the last time he'd been involved in casting a spell this long and involved—and powerful. In fact, he thought he'd only heard of things like this being done in the old story-songs he'd studied under Dharniel. Bards working together? Bards and Talents? Perish the thought!

  Magnus!

  Magnus was still sitting slumped over the drumset, his sticks dangling limply from his fingers. Eric walked over to him, and touched him on the shoulder. Magnus looked up, eyes just a little glazed. Not—quite—drunk with exhaustion, but close to it.

  "How're you doing?" Eric asked gently. What he really wanted to do was hug his brother—hard—and reassure himself that he was okay, but he doubted that would go down very well.

  "So that was magick, huh?" the teenager asked, stretching. His hair was as wet as if he'd just stepped out of a shower; he raked it back from his forehead with both hands and shivered, as if he'd only just noticed it was cold up here.

  Eric picked up Magnus's discarded school blazer. The boy's shirt was soaked to the skin as well. After a moment's thought, Eric took off his own leather jacket and draped it over Magnus's shoulders instead.

  "Yeah," Eric said. "That was magick." And magick the likes of which you'll never see again, if we're all very lucky.

  "I don't like it," Magnus said succinctly. "But the music was okay, I guess."

  "Can we get off this roof and maybe go find some coffee?" Kayla said, sounding unconscionably cheerful. "It's freezing up here and it's been way too long since breakfast."

  Of course they couldn't simply leave. For one thing, they still didn't have a car. And for another, they had a lot of unfinished business here.

  Except for Jeanette, they left the instruments where they were. Let someone else wonder what they were doing there. This time, the cleanup could be in someone else's hands.

  As quiet as everything had looked from the rooftop, down on the ground, it was well-organized chaos. More emergency vehicles were arriving all the time, and with them, the press. As much as the p
olice might want to keep the area closed to the press, Eric supposed it would probably take the National Guard to actually seal it off. The recently vacated stage made a perfect backdrop for interviews with shocked survivors and anybody who wanted to grab camera time, and the press wasn't shy about using it.

  "No . . ." Ace said, and began to run toward the stage.

  Eric took a second, closer look at the man currently surrounded by what looked like every reporter in the state: print, radio, and television.

  He looked at Hosea.

  "That's Billy Fairchild," the big man said grimly.

  * * *

  It was very clear that Billy was in his element. The gist of the story was in his mind of course, but he was able to let the words flow, just as he always had in his sermons, unplanned and impromptu, and so, the more genuine, at least in seeming. "—a sorrowful and terrible day for us all here at Fairchild Ministries, but as you all know, I receive hundreds of death threats every week for the message I preach. I'm only sorry that—"

  "Did he tell you that he set this one up?" a new voice shouted, carrying clear and high over the murmur of voices around him.

  Billy stopped as if he'd been stung; he felt more as if he'd been slapped. Because, in a way, he had been. The newscasters, scenting awards, trained their cameras on the intruder. There were scattered flashes, and the whirring sounds of machinery.

  Ace grimly pushed her way through the mob of reporters.

  "Did my Daddy tell you that he and Mr. Gabriel Horn planned to set off a bomb here today?" Ace demanded, walking over to her father. She turned and looked straight into the cameras. "I'm Heavenly Grace Fairchild. Maybe my Daddy's talked about me." Her face, instead of going hard and angry, went soft and vulnerable looking, as if she was about to cry. "He's sure been stalking me, right along with talking about me. You can find that out too, if you go look. He set all this up, but then, he's pretty accustomed to using people."