A Host of Furious Fancies

by Mercedes Lackey

  And then he had waited with Sidhe patience, his dark piper playing, until the prey should walk into his snare. At last he’d caught the scent he sought—the scent of raw untrained Power bleeding flagrantly into the air. This one was more powerful than any he had taken before, and Aerune needed that power to build his Gate.

  And if the mortals should think to set a trap for me, then I will lesson these human upstarts well in the ways of Hunting. . . .

  Drawing his horn, Aerune blew a long, deep note. It blended with the Calling-on Song, making that melody a part of itself, grew and reverberated against the buildings of the city streets, taking on a power and a life of its own, growing until it filled the world.

  Come, my children! Come to your master!

  The hounds came first, and then his hunters on night-black steeds of their own—the lesser Unseleighe lords who did him homage, the Lesser Sidhe to whom his magic was life itself.

  Aerune lowered the horn from his lips, but its call continued to sound, filling the air. He drew his elvensilver sword and swung it in a circle over his head. “We ride!” he roared, spurring his mount.

  Behind him the Hunt followed.

  They’d had to work damned hard to do it in less than a day, but this time his men had prepared the perfect trap, and Robert had the perfect bait. There was no reason to wait any longer. He’d instructed the men thoroughly about what they were to do, and sent Beirkoff and Hancock out with them. When everything was in place, Beirkoff was to give Hancock a second dose of T-Stroke—a bigger dose this time. This Aerune would come after Hancock again as soon as he smelled him. Robert was sure of it. Whatever the guy was, he wanted these Talents as much as Robert did, and Robert was making sure he had a tight grip on the only source. He’d pulled in his field-test operation. There wasn’t any more T-Stroke out on the streets, so little chance of any other random Talents appearing for Aerune to poach. If he wanted what Robert had, Hancock would be his only source.

  Let the games begin. . . .

  “What’re we doing out here?” Angel asked Elkanah.

  “Waiting,” Elkanah answered, out of the boundless well of patience that was (in Angel’s opinion) the senior Threshold operative’s single most irritating quality.

  “Yeah, I know we’re waiting,” Angel echoed sarcastically. “Waiting for some nutcase on a horse to come kidnap our geek. But what’s with the chain mail? The spears? Just because this guy thinks he’s King Arthur doesn’t mean we have to go along with it.”

  Angel twirled the six-foot spear with the steel head back and forth between his fingers as if it were a quarterstaff. When he shifted position, his chain mail jingled slightly. God only knew where the boss had come up with this stuff on such short notice. But he’d worn weirder things in his time.

  “We’ve got orders. This guy shows up, we throw a net over him and switch on the generators,” Elkanah answered. Like Angel, he wore a silvery shirt of chain mail beneath a dark sweater. Even if they were seen, there wasn’t anything to ring warning bells in any civilian mind. And this deep in the Park, this late at night, there was little chance of them being seen at all.

  “Like he’s going to back off because of a steel and copper net and a little electricity,” Angel grumbled, but fell silent.

  There were twenty-four men—all of Threshold’s Black-level security operatives—gathered here, though only eight of them had chain mail shirts. Four of the others were carrying longbows with quivers full of steel-tipped arrows. Most of the men and the trucks they’d come in on were concealed now by heavy camouflage netting. They’d been in place for hours, waiting, told to stay out of sight in case any stray tourists wandered past.

  The bait had come in an hour ago in an unmarked car. The technician with him had shackled him to an iron stake driven deep into the frozen ground. The bait was wearing a straitjacket and a gag, and heavily sedated besides, but he didn’t look like he could be much trouble. A catheter port had been inserted into his neck, and Angel watched as the lab geek stuck a needle full of something into it and rammed the plunger home. Angel was glad he wasn’t the bait.

  A few moments later the night began to shimmer, and Angel looked away from the bait, resting his eyes. Your eyes played funny tricks on you at night, and because of the searchlights mounted on the trucks, they hadn’t been issued night goggles. There’d be plenty of light to see by once the balloon went up. They’d be as visible as a frog on a birthday cake, but Mr. Lintel had been very clear on the fact that this operation wasn’t supposed to take long. They were going after the guy who’d made trouble for Mr. Lintel before, and this time he, whoever he was, was going to be way outgunned. Angel smiled. The hard men were the most fun to crack.

  “Move up! Get into position!” Elkanah whispered urgently.

  “Why? I don’t—” Angel said.

  And chaos came.

  One moment the clearing was empty. The next, it was filled with men on horseback, men with dogs, shouting and screaming and blowing horns. Angel didn’t waste any effort wondering how they’d gotten here. He rushed forward, his spear raised, looking for a target. If they wanted to come in like the U.S. Cavalry, he’d make sure they went out like General Custer.

  A dog leapt at him, and Angel smashed it down with a Kevlar-reinforced glove. It backed off with a yelp and he hefted his spear, looking for a target. There. One of the horses.

  He thrust his spear into its flank, pushing hard. There was a scream—horses screamed just like people—a flash of light, and the horse was rearing and dancing away uncontrollably, its rider shouting and flailing as he fought for control. Angel grinned, and thrust again, no longer caring who these people were or why they were here. He got to hurt them. That was all that mattered. Another rider tried to rush him. He got his spear into the horse’s belly, twisted, and jerked back. Its guts spilled out onto the grass and it screamed and thrashed, adding to the noise of the battle.

  Suddenly the searchlights came up, flooding the clearing with harsh white light. He could see his opponents clearly—men in fantastic armor, carrying shields and wearing swords.

  The man on the horse he’d killed jumped free, dragging at his sword. He was wearing an ornate helmet, like something out of a Conan movie, and beneath it, his eyes glowed red in a bone-white face. So what? All the fancy makeup and special effects in the world wouldn’t save him once Angel got close enough. All around him there were cries and screams, flashes of light when the steel drove home, and a smell in the air like ozone. Angel stepped back, momentarily worried. A heavy sword could slice his spear-haft in two, and it would take him moments he didn’t have to get to his Uzi. But just then there was a hiss, and three arrows appeared in the attacker’s chest. Angel had thought that archers were a dumb idea, but now, seeing the smoke billowing from the screaming man’s chest, he changed his mind. Mr. Lintel had been right as usual. Iron turned these guys into wimps.

  Something struck him full in the chest, burning away his shirt, but the steel mail beneath glittered unharmed. Angel laughed, and moved forward, searching for fresh targets.

  As swiftly as they’d attacked, the riders pulled back. Now he and the other pikemen were between the bait and the horsemen, and the backup troops in the trucks were moving up. In the blinding light of the headlights, Angel could see fantastic armored shapes on horseback, like something out of a bad movie, and around them the turf seemed to flow like water. A mist was rising, making it difficult to see clearly. There was a scream from behind him—one of theirs—and he turned to see someone go down beneath the jaws of a dog the size of a small pony. There was another volley from the archers, and more screams. Hefting his spear, Angel ran to help.

  Elkanah saw Angel run past him, shirt still smoking from one of the lightning-blasts the Bad Guys were using. As the Boss had promised, their chain mail protected them, but God help them the moment these guys figured out how few mail shirts they had. A couple of the men were already down, and there were things out there he didn’t even want to look at. He
’d seen the briefing tapes about what Hancock could do. The Boss had said he’d be on their side. Elkanah wasn’t sure about that.

  A dog leapt at him, taking Elkanah’s spear full in the chest. It howled, smoking like it had just scarfed a doggy-treat full of napalm, no longer a threat. But the force of its attack knocked him to the ground, and its death-agonies jerked the spear out of his hands. He rolled away, fighting to clear his street-sweeper from its harness. Still supine, he yanked it up and fired. It caught one of the armored warriors full in the chest, blowing away armor and flesh with impossible force. For a moment, Elkanah could see the heart beating in the enemy’s chest before he burst into flame, burning with a pale blue light. In the momentary breathing space Elkanah rolled to his feet, looking for his own lines.

  “No order of battle ever survives first contact with the enemy.” Got to hand it to old Clausewitz. The man knew what he was talking about.

  Aerune roared his disapproval, his injured mount dancing and shying beneath him, half-blinded by the harsh white light. Try as he might, the Unseleighe Lord could not break through the ring of steel that surrounded his prey, and his magic seemed to have little effect on the humans who sought to protect it. He’d already lost too many men. There were archers at their back, their death-metal arrows taking a fearsome toll of his Hunt—and worse, the human Mage who had been the bait in the trap was summoning creatures of madness, creatures who preyed on mortal and Sidhe alike. But his attackers were few, and there were other ways to win this battle. He could make the mortals pay for their impertinence.

  And he would.

  “Flank them!” he shouted over the roar of battle. “Let none escape!” In the name of Aerete the Golden, kill them all!

  6Single-Room Occupancies, aka welfare hotels

  TEN:

  FOR ALL THE MARBLES

  “Well, what do you know?” Eric muttered under his breath.

  The summons was coming from within the Park.

  He’d had the brainstorm to summon Lady Day as he jogged uptown, and so had managed the rest of the trip quickly. At the edge of the park he’d dismounted.

  “Go home,” Eric said firmly.

  The elvensteed quivered, her lights flashing in disapproval. She wanted to go with him. “Home!” Eric repeated firmly. “I’ll call you when I need you.”

  It had taken a moment to force his will on the elvensteed, but at last she’d submitted, turning in the direction of home. The good thing about elvensteeds was that they followed orders, most of the time. And at least he wouldn’t have to worry about anything happening to her.

  Hostages to fortune. . . . Something Jimmie had said, about keeping innocents off the fire-line, came back to him now, and he smiled grimly. Now more than ever, he understood what she meant. He was prepared to risk his own life, but not anyone else’s.

  He turned back to the park. It was fully dark now, and the streetlights in the park cast faint cones of illumination around themselves. He wasn’t sure what time it was, but the streets had fewer people on them than before, and the park itself was deserted.

  And something was waiting for him there.

  Eric thought again about turning back, catching a cab and just going home, but sheer stubbornness egged him on. The Guardians didn’t want his help. Ria didn’t want to help him. Underhill didn’t want to get into a fight. Dharinel had told him to stay clear. But Annie’s face was fresh in his mind. Whatever it was that was out there on the streets, he had to stop it.

  So I’ll do it myself, said the Little Red Hen.

  Inside the low stone wall that bordered the Park the call was stronger, and Eric was willing to bet that it was coming from somewhere near the unfinished Nexus point. He headed toward it, more slowly now, wary of ambush from something else that might have answered this Call.

  Suddenly there was a flash of light ahead of him, bright continuous light, and a sudden blast of sound as though someone had suddenly turned the volume on a television all the way up. Eric ran toward it.

  :Man. Mortal man . . . :

  The voice in his head stopped him halfway to the clearing. It sounded like World War Three was going on there, but Eric didn’t dare go on leaving this at his back. He turned toward it.

  A pool of shadow at the base of one of the trees rose up. Eric had the fleeting impression that it wanted to be a woman but didn’t quite know how. It reached out for him yearningly, and Eric felt his teeth begin to chatter at the sudden sub-arctic cold as the creature sucked the last mote of warmth out of the winter air. He raised his flute to his lips, blowing a long steady low note. He let the magic flow up into the sound, caging the creature’s power and letting it drain away.

  She—it—vanished with a thin despairing cry. But there were more like it, heading toward him. Half-finished things that crawled and slithered and flopped along the ground, radiating fear and pain and a kind of magic he’d never sensed before. The woods were alive with them, just like the woods in his vision—filled with gibbering shadowy shapes that were all red eyes and hunger seeking his magic, his soul, and his blood. They weren’t Nightflyers—thank all the odd gods for small favors—but there were more of them than he could count.

  And they all wanted him. Eric summoned his shields, just in time as something like a wolf but six times bigger slung into the clearing, growling. The creature crouched on its haunches, unwilling to attack alone, but still far from foiled. Eric raised his flute to his lips again and blew a quick waterfall of notes. The wolf-thing sprang up onto its hind legs, twisting and howling as the magic tore it into fragments that drifted away on the air like a skirl of autumn leaves.

  But there were more to take its place, an army of darkness seeping up like water out of the ground of this suddenly accursed place.

  I need something to get rid of all of them at once. What? The magic creating them had a source; he could feel it, like cold and deadly sunlight. Slowly Eric began backing toward it, dropping his shields enough to lure them in. He had to stop whoever was making these things, and hope it stopped the creatures as well. They might be a part of whatever fight was going on, but plainly they had no interest in it.

  Inspiration struck. He began playing the slow opening notes of a Bach cantata as the monsters gathered in a ring around him. Come to papa, babies. It’s lunchtime! Bach was cerebral, mathematical, human—the antithesis of the nightmare Unseleighe power that he faced. Eric focused on the music, letting it fill him completely. He had time for one last coherent thought—if any of these gets past me into the City, there’s going to be a bloodbath even the Guardians can’t stop—before he let the music take him, shutting out everything but the battle before him.

  As Aerune’s Hunt eddied about the edges of the human warriors seeking an opening, the Unseleighe Lord suddenly heard a bright waterfall of music—Human magic, Bard magic, a thousand times more powerful than the pitiful flickering about the Crowned One before him. He turned toward the source and saw . . . a Bard.

  The man walked slowly toward the tangle of human and elven warriors as if he saw neither, destroying the nightmares that had taken a heavy toll this night on mortals and Hunt alike. Here in full measure was the power Aerune sought, power to build a thousand Gates. Not crippled and half-complete like the others he’d harvested—no, here was power enough to play all of Aerune’s dark dreams into reality.

  The crazed Crowned One he’d sought was only an annoyance in the face of this greater prize. Raising his hand, Aerune slew him with a gesture. The levin bolt sparked and crackled through the iron the Crowned One wore, arcing and spitting in great wasteful fountains as it seared his flesh into bubbling ruin, consuming him utterly.

  “Take him!” Aerune roared, gesturing toward the Bard. He blew his horn, summoning back his Hounds and lesser creatures.

  The monsters he’d been fighting melted away like ice in a blast furnace and Eric stopped playing, feeling the magic he’d been following simply . . . stop. For the first time he became aware of his surroundings.
/>   Searchlights. Gunfire. Elves on horses. Men with guns.

  What the hell have I stumbled into?

  The bait went up like a roman candle, dead in an instant. When Aerune turned, Elkanah took the break in the stalemate as an opportunity to move his men back toward the trucks. Their iron bodies should provide some cover, and he was still holding in mind the Eleventh Commandment: Don’t Get Caught. They’d lost the bait, they’d lost half a dozen men, but if they could get the net over the guy on the horse, they still might be able to salvage something out of this mess.

  The horsemen were ignoring his guys for the moment, and Elkanah was thankful for small favors. He yanked the net out of the back of one of the trucks, gesturing for those still on their feet to help him. The net hissed along the grass behind him like a metal serpent.

  Then he saw what it was that had made Aerune pull back. An ordinary guy wearing street clothes, with what looked like a flute in his hand. The searchlights made the silver radiate like a chunk of burning phosphorus, but even in the brightness, the guy glowed, a bright blue as deep as the October sky. Instantly, Elkanah made up his mind.

  If Aerune wants this guy, then so do we.

  “Get him!” Elkanah shouted, gesturing toward the flute-player.

  Eric heard sounds behind him and risked looking away from the Unseleighe Lord on the horse. Behind him were half a dozen guys in commando suits. Some of them were wearing chain mail and carrying spears. All of them had guns.

  “Sir? Step this way, please. You’re going to have to come with us,” their leader said with surreal politeness.

  Eric backed away again, trying to keep both sides in sight. He couldn’t imagine why the commandos hadn’t run screaming—he’d never seen elves like these, but he knew what he was seeing—a Wild Hunt.