Here is power indeed. Aerune basked in its presence as the mortal might bask in the warmth of a fire. It purged the Sidhe’s cold bones of the ache of Cold Iron all around him, and fed Aerune’s resolve with the siren song of power ripe for the taking.
It was a simple thing for one of the Dark Court to drain the vital essence of a mortal, though few of them had enough Power to make it worthwhile. This one was different. Aerune bent his head low and sealed the mortal’s doom with a kiss. Spin for me, little Singer. Weave the web of your race’s doom.
The veil between the worlds began to thin, and the lattice that would anchor Aerune’s Nexus began to take shape on the midnight air. First the pattern must be completed, then the veil itself pierced, and then Aerune and his Court would be able to call up the power of Elfhame into the World of Iron with no more than a thought. The power poured through him from its mortal wellspring: intoxicating, vast. . . .
And then it stopped.
Aerune roared his displeasure, turning on the mortal in a fury. But the man was dead beneath his hands, his body wasted away, his skin and bones crackling like a handful of autumn leaves in Aerune’s grip.
Dead. And of no more use to me, Aerune realized, choking back his rage. The mortal alchemist’s elixir gave them access to their Power, he realized, but no way to replenish it from Underhill’s eternal wellspring, and so they burned out quickly, their bodies feeding on their own life-force.
The ghost of the Gateway, less than a shimmer on the winter air even to Aerune’s Sight, mocked him with its incompletion. But there are others. They are mine of right, and I will have them. Aerete, beloved, soon they will repay your death in the last full measure!
He whistled for his mount and was away again, in a clatter of hoofbeats so swift they sounded like one long drum roll.
Four of the containment cells in the underground warren at Threshold were full. It had been a busy—and potentially profitable—Saturday night, and Jeanette felt an excitement that had little to do with Robert’s glorious future.
Her drug was working. Not as well as she’d hoped, but working. She’d tweaked the last batch a little, hoping to shorten the time the subjects spent unconscious, and that yielded a kind of sorting mechanism. Ninety percent of those who received T-Stroke still died, two-thirds of them instantly. The thirty percent of the Survivors that were going to manifest berserker rage came up out of the drug within minutes. But the ones who were going to manifest some kind of useful Talent slept for an hour or so, and Jeanette had decided that the deep sleep was necessary to allow the neural pathways for handling the Gift to be reconfigured without the interference of outside stimulus.
And we have four: telepathy, teleportation, psychokinesis, and I wonder what this one is going to be?
Intently, she watched the monitors for the containment cells. The telepath, Vicky Moon, had been the first to awaken, screaming at the voices inside her head and begging them to stop. Jeanette had her lightly sedated, and at least the screaming had stopped, though she doubted the voices had. The PK and the teleport—Plummer and Langford—were less trouble. Langford had gotten out of his cell four times before they figured out what he could do, but he hadn’t been able to ’port far and the effort had left him exhausted. He was sleeping now; no action there.
Jeanette watched in fascination as Plummer played with the test objects in her cell, a set of child’s building blocks. Lost in a world of her own imagination, the PK talent made the brightly-colored cubes swoop and dance through the air like a flock of strange butterflies, perfectly content.
The alarm began to beep as the fourth subject returned to consciousness, and Jeanette waited to see what he’d do, her mind wandering over the evening’s harvest. Four, out of how many doses handed out in Soho and the East Village tonight? At least two hundred, and even assuming the sweepers missed half of them, there should be ten bodies down here in the cells, not four. She knew she’d been generalizing from pitifully inadequate data—was her viability rate closer to 5% than 10%?
Or were the others going . . . somewhere else?
Just then a scream riveted her attention on Cell Four, and Jeanette uttered a startled yelp of disbelief at what the monitors showed her.
There were things in the cell with Hancock. Coiling, horrible, impossible things. Things that glowed with their own light. Things that dripped blood. Things that moaned and mewed in the voices of tortured children, pressing up against the door and beginning to flow under it as if they had no bones.
Jeanette’s heart hammered in terror, and for a moment all she could think of was flight. But wherever she ran, these things would find her, find her and hurt her, hurt her, hurt her. . . .
Unable to tear her eyes from the screen, Jeanette fumbled for the row of covered buttons, scrabbling blindly to release the safety cover. More of the things were sliding under the door now, creeping and slithering down the corridor, drooling blood and pus and other, less nameable fluids. They twittered like birds and mewed like kittens, and some of them were speaking words that in moments she was terrified she would begin to understand. Please, God, I have to be right about this, please, please, please. . . .
The guard at the end of the corridor saw them too. His eyes bulged with disbelieving terror, and he dragged at his sidearm, firing wildly and without effect into the mass of nightmare moving toward him as he screamed for mercy.
She found the button for Cell Four and stabbed down at it hard enough to break a nail. The display above it turned from green to red and began to flash; she could see it pulse out of the corner of her eye.
The guard in the corridor shot himself just before the first of the things reached him.
And then the gas with which Jeanette had flooded Hancock’s cell did its work. Hancock slumped to the floor, unconscious, and all the nightmares began to fade away.
I was right. Oh, thank God, I was right. Jeanette blinked back tears, furious with her own weakness as the crippling terror receded. An illusionist, that was all. Some kind of mental projections, and a really sick mind behind them all.
She turned and picked up a handset on one of the other consoles. She needed to clear her throat several times before it would work. “Housekeeping. This is Campbell. I need you down on Level Three to pick up a body. And send Beirkoff down with some euphorics—strong ones.” I want Hancock thinking about nothing but white fleecy clouds and little pink bunnies until the T-Stroke has worn off.
“What are you doing here?” Robert demanded abruptly from behind her.
Jeanette spun her chair around with a strangled shriek, her nerves still raw from the brush with Hancock’s mind.
“My job, Robert,” she said in a harsh voice. “We’ve got three usables from tonight’s trials. Cell Four’s no good unless you want to drop him behind enemy lines to drive the bad guys mad. I’m wondering if my original model is off, though. There should be at least a dozen more Talents from tonight’s sweep.”
Robert grimaced in impatience. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, you stupid bitch. Michael just called in. There’s someone—something—out there that’s stealing our Talents.”
His words dovetailed so neatly with her earlier thoughts that Jeanette was startled. “What? How?” I barely know about this project—how can anyone else have figured it out so fast? Not to mention picking off the Survivors with that kind of accuracy.
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” Robert snarled. “What I do know is, we’re going to catch the bastard and make him sorrier than he’s ever been in his life. Come on.”
Having touched one such Empowered life, Aerune knew the scent of his prey now. He whistled up his pack of red-eared, red-eyed hounds, and set them on the hunt. With each of the Crowned Ones he found and took, his wrath increased, for the power in each of them flickered and guttered in moments, its mortal vehicle consumed by the body’s own fires before the work of building the Gateway to anchor the Nexus could be well begun. Each desiccated shell Aerune cast aside with the oth
ers, filled with a ravening lust for victory, now that victory seemed so close. The night had been long and its rewards meager. It was nearing dawn now, and in his diminished condition, the light of the sun was as much the Unseleighe Sidhe’s enemy as Cold Iron was.
But there was time enough to take one more of the Crowned Ones tonight before retiring to plan his assault upon the stronghold from which that power flowed.
His hounds took the scent and began to give tongue. In the sleeping city around him, animals and even insects fled in terror, and the pent-up hounds of the mortals barked and howled in a frenzy of helpless terror at the presence of their ancient enemy. But no mortal could see him as he rode, unless he wished it.
Somewhere ahead, Aerune sensed several of the Crowned Ones gathered together, but saw only one. His prey sat alone upon a bench in one of the city’s many open spaces, his head bowed in sleep or submission. Aerune whistled his dogs to his side, and dismounted from his elvensteed, dropping his cloak of confusion and shadow. He stepped forward. . . .
And all the world was filled with blinding light.
“Freeze, bastard! We’ve got you covered!” a mortal voice ordered.
Who dares to command the Lord of Death and Pain?
Oh, my God, Jeanette thought numbly.
Caught in the blaze of the handheld searchlights was something off the cover of one of the books she’d read in high school.
He was tall and slender, with skin as white as an Anne Rice vampire’s. He was wearing some kind of medieval costume—black chain mail and plate armor that glinted like hematite, and his long black hair was held back by a silver circlet that plainly revealed a pair of long pointed ears. He looked like Frank Langella done up as a Vulcan in a really bad mood.
“Moon!” She pinched the arm of the handcuffed woman standing at her side. “Read his mind! Now!”
The girl whimpered. Jeanette slapped her, hard.
“Aerune. His name is Aerune. He’s—” Moon broke off, moaning. “It hurts!”
“Do it, or I’ll lock you in Bellevue and give you something to whine about!” Jeanette snarled. Moon cringed away from her anger. “The Lord of Death and Pain,” she moaned.
“You!” Robert strode through the ring of armed men toward the . . . elf. Jeanette watched him in horror. Robert had been so convinced that it was the Feds who were hijacking their project that the stranger’s exotic appearance didn’t even slow him down. “Who are you, and just what the hell do you think you’re doing here?”
The stranger—Aerune—drew himself up to his full height. His black cloak billowed in the wind.
“I am the Lord Aerune mac Audelaine of the Dark Court, and this man is mine. Contest with me at your peril, mortal lordling.”
He turned his back on Robert, and reached for Hancock again.
Jeanette saw the glitter of the .45 in Robert’s hand and stifled a cry of warning, though she wasn’t completely sure who she wanted to warn. Robert jammed the barrel into Aerune’s back, and even from where she was, Jeanette could see a curl of smoke rise up from Aerune’s cloak, as if the pistol barrel were red-hot.
“It burns! It burns!” Moon cried, as Aerune whirled around with a roar, his face twisted in an inhuman mask of fury. He lashed out at Robert with a backhand blow.
“You will pay dearly for that insult!” he snarled in a voice like broken music. Robert jumped back, motioning his troops forward to deal with the intruder.
But Aerune wasn’t there.
“Fan out! Find him!” Robert shouted, sounding too furious to be rattled. “I want him alive!”
You won’t find him, Jeanette thought. “Moon,” she said gently. “Moon, what happened? Can you tell me who he is? What he wants?”
The girl looked at her, and now there was something almost serene in her expression. “He’s what you think he is, Jeanette. He’s a lord of the Unseleighe Court. He wants all the Crowned Ones—us—the ones you call Survivors. He needs us. . . .” She sighed, her head lolling on her shoulders as if exhaustion had suddenly overwhelmed her. “He needs us to kill you all.”
Jeanette led her over to the bench and let her sit down beside Hancock. Moon curled up, instantly asleep. Her face looked haggard, and there were dark bruises of exhaustion beneath her eyes.
This one isn’t going to last long either, Jeanette thought clinically. Something about T-Stroke worked like putting a penny in an old-fashioned fusebox: people could access their hidden potential, but it burned them right out within a matter of minutes. She was glad she’d brought Moon along anyway. This was probably as close to a field trial as they were going to be able to manage with any of the Survivors. Their Gifts made them too unpredictable to let out of their cells.
She glanced warily at Hancock, but the projective telepath was still in the Land of Nod, happily quiescent under the influence of the euphorics Beirkoff had given him. That was one good thing out of this whole mess. They didn’t need any Monsters From The Id cluttering up the place.
She sighed, running a hand through her hair. An elf. She’d never believed she’d see one. She’d stopped believing in them years ago—forced herself to stop believing, because it just hurt too damned much. But looking into Aerune’s fallen-angel eyes, skepticism was impossible. He’d been here. He was real. He burned at the touch of Cold Iron, just like all the books said.
And boy, was he mad. Madder than Jeanette had ever seen anyone get, in a serious career devoted to shining people on.
No, she had no problem believing in his reality. She had another problem entirely. Elves were supposed to be magic, and she’d certainly seen Aerune do magic, just now.
So what did an elf want with her retread junkies?
She blinked, blinded by the headlights of the big truck that pulled up, driving across the grass of the park. Robert jumped out of the passenger seat.
“Come on! We’ve got to get back to the lab—and hire some decent help,” Robert added, his voice hoarse with disappointment. “These losers couldn’t find a pig in a one-room schoolhouse. The target gave them all the slip.” For the first time, he seemed to notice Moon. “What did she get? Did she read his mind?” he demanded eagerly.
“Yes, she got something,” Jeanette answered, busy unlocking Hancock’s handcuffs. “And no, you’re not going to like it.” She glanced up at the sky. It was already turning light. She glared back at Robert. “What do you want me to do, carry them? Get me some help here. And once we get back, you and I have got to talk.”
“An elf. Jesus, Campbell, you been sampling your own stuff? Elves! Next you’re going to be telling me the Smurfs are after us.”
Robert paced back and forth in front of Jeanette’s desk in her office down in Threshold’s Black Labs. It was a little after six a.m. Saturday morning. The Talents—the four they’d managed to keep—were all back in their cells sleeping off the last of their T-Stroke, and everything was tidied away before the city was fairly awake. And now Robert was looking for someone to blame for tonight’s fiasco.
“An elf,” Jeanette repeated patiently. “That’s what Vicky Moon said. That’s what Aerune is.” Somehow she thought it was very important to convince Robert of that fact. She’d read a lot about elves when she was a kid. They weren’t the twee little Disneyfied things that Robert seemed to be thinking of. When mankind was still living in caves, they’d ruled the world, until Cold Iron had driven them Underhill. Even then, they were still formidable enemies.
“Or thinks he is,” Robert said, still unconvinced. “Campbell, there’s no such thing as elves, so this guy can’t be one. Q.E.D.” He smiled at her patronizingly. Jeanette sighed.
“Well, he thinks he is. You want to argue with him? What else fits the facts? You burned him. With your gun barrel, because it was steel. Didn’t you see the smoke?”
“It was . . . it could be some kind of psychosomatic reaction. Or an allergy of some kind,” Robert said, floundering just a little.
“The only thing with an allergy to iron is an elf,” Jeanet
te repeated in a dull voice. “And besides, he vanished right in front of us. So either we’ve got ourselves an elf, or David Copperfield is looking for outside work.”
“Yeah, okay, this Aerune’s an elf,” Robert said hastily, unwilling to bother continuing the argument. “If he’s allergic to iron, that’s good. It’ll give us some way of handling him. The important thing is to get him back. He’s obviously found some way to use his psi powers without burning out the way your test subjects keep doing. Do you think there are more of them? There has to be. If we can get our hands on them we could stop wasting our time with these trials and go right to the source.”
Jeanette stared at him blankly. Did Robert actually think Threshold had the faintest chance of controlling someone like Aerune? His voice echoed again through her mind: “I am the Lord Aerune mac Audelaine of the Dark Court—contest with me at your peril.”
The Lord of Death and Pain, Moon had said. Oh, yeah, definitely somebody I want mad at ME.
“And how are you planning to do that, Robert?” she asked, just to be asking.
“We’ll set another trap for him tonight,” Robert said in a crisp managerial style. “If he’s after our Talents, you can shoot them up again so they’ll attract him, and this time we’ll be ready for him. No pointy-eared mutant is going to thumb his nose at me!”
Great. I’m now living in an X-Files LARP. Mutants are so much more realistic than elves, right? Jeanette thought. She made one more attempt to get through to him.
“But we’ve got something he wants, Robert—and he has something we want. We could summon him, yes, but then we could talk to him, strike a bargain. . . .” Elves were always making bargains, Jeanette remembered. It could work. And he could teach them so much. . . .
“We don’t have to bargain. We hold all the high cards, and after tonight, we’ll have this Aerune mac Whasis too. This Highlander reject won’t be so high and mighty once he’s got an iron collar around his neck. In fact, I think he’ll tell me everything I want to know,” Robert gloated.
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