by Lionel Fenn
Tag sat by the elevator door and grumbled until he fell asleep with his arms folded over his chest. Lain proposed a series of watches, said that he was still wide awake and would take the first one if it was all right with the assembled company. The assembled company curled up against Red, and watched the night sky grow more stars, another moon, and a crop of bitterly cold gusts that swept across the rooftops every hour on the hour.
I think, Gideon thought, maybe we should go inside before we freeze to death.
I think, he thought an hour later, my ass is frozen to the roof.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Gideon sat by the elevator door and watched the sun rise over Thazbinn. The temperature had risen considerably, but he was still shivering in spite of Red's protection, and was still annoyed that it had taken him nearly twenty minutes to get himself unstuck from the roof. Tuesday had suggested he just slip out of his jeans, but the thought of exposing a fair portion of himself to a female duck, in a strange city, even if one was his sister and the other didn't know he was there, stalled him until the denim pulled loose.
"Oh, honestly," she'd said with a look to the sky. "I'm family, for crying out loud."
"You're a duck," he'd answered flatly, looking at the sky because he couldn't look anywhere else, being on his back the way he was and some of his hair being also frozen to the roof.
"You're embarrassed to show your shorts to a duck?"
"What are shorts?" Tag asked.
"I am not embarrassed," he'd said sharply. "But I can't very well get caught with my pants literally down, now can I? You'd never let me live it down. If I lived."
"So you can fight better that way?"
"What are shorts?" asked Tag.
Gideon drew his bat and swished it around a few times.
"Wonderful," she'd said to Lain. "He can cut them off at the kneecaps."
"What are shorts?" Tag begged, and blushed when Tuesday blew him a kiss and suggested they meet after this was over, and she'd tell him all about them.
Then he had sent Vorden and the boy down the steps to get some food from the alley while Tuesday, on her own, took off on a planned brief flight over the immediate neighborhood.
That had been an hour ago.
No one had yet returned.
"Red," he said, "am I too far off in left field in thinking that all is not right here?"
The lorra bobbed his head.
The immediate reference was to the empty streets. After the mass crowding the day before, he fully expected the same now, on what was probably a business day in spite of the fighting; but no one was there. The stalls were closed, the shops locked, the windows without light or movement, and the street itself was filled with nothing but dust devils, with only other dust devils for company.
The greenman hadn't known what it meant, since, as he explained apologetically, he was more in tune with the trees than the workings of a community that lived behind stone. "I might say, however, that it is not beyond the realm of the impossible to imagine that some sort of national emergency arose whilst we slept, and the good townsfolk went out to aid their leader."
"But who's their leader?" Gideon had said. "Agnes, or Lu?"
"Who fell in the hole?" Lain countered.
Tag, after examining the streets carefully and testing the direction of the wind, had guessed it was some sort of natural disaster that had passed them by since they were on the roof and couldn't know about it to be done in by it.
"That doesn't make sense," Gideon said.
"Take it or leave it," the boy said. "I found the elevator."
Gideon had left it, had sent them off on their errands; and asked the lorra now if there wasn't something he had missed. When he received nothing but a stare in return, he pushed himself to his feet, walked to the front and looked down.
Nothing.
Left and right, and there was nothing.
The rooftops were empty as well, and the only animation was the drifting formations of clouds, high and ridged and tipped with dark grey, which came out of the east, threatening a monstrous storm.
"I have a feeling," he said then, "that our answer lies yonder." And he nodded toward the towers not all that far away.
In full light they were not quite as daunting as they had been the night before, but they were still four times larger than any other building he'd been able to spot. They had no windows that he could see, and their tops were split into five separate sections that reached for the clouds like twisted bone. Though he stared until his eyes watered, he was unable to spot any guards, or anything that might conceivably be a guard, which would indicate that someone distrustful resided or worked within.
He sighed.
He walked to the alley and looked down, and saw no one.
"Damn."
He checked the skies and saw nary a feather.
"Damn."
He looked at the elevator door and saw Agnes.
"Oh... nuts."
—|—
Though the bat was in his hand, he knew it was useless. This, of all the Wamchu wives of which only she remained, was the most dangerous, the most immune to physical threat, the most cunning, and the most vicious. If she were a jungle animal, she would be a panther; if she were of the forest, she'd be a lynx; if she were a bird, she'd be a hawk; and if she were of the sea, she'd be a manta ray.
He had never much liked zoos anyway, and so was not surprised when he shook his head at her beckoning finger.
Agnes stepped into the light.
Red, who had backed hastily to the wall, pawed at the stone and scampered down the steps into the alley, a look over his shoulder telling Gideon not to worry, he wasn't running away but only going after help, hold the fort, he'd be back in a few minutes.
Gideon waved to him; it was the only polite thing he could do when he considered the alternatives that sprang instantly and bitterly to mind. Then, hating himself for not trusting the beast, he walked over to the wall, leaned out, and looked down.
Red was already halfway to the bend, and the way he bulled through the mounds and piles and stacks and pillars, it was obvious he wasn't looking very hard for the greenman and the boy.
I live, he thought, for the day when that son of a bitch does what he says he will.
A noise behind him—the scraping of a soft leather slipper over stone that wanted no part of it.
Two stories, he noted when he looked again, was a long way down when you're two stories up. And the confluence of orange peels and cardboard boxes directly below didn't look as if it would enjoy trying to keep him from smashing himself, should he decide to test their give-and-hold attributes.
Jumping is out, boy, he told himself. Turn around and face her like a man.
He turned, paled, and told himself he'd do better the next time.
"You," she said.
He nodded, knowing full well she wasn't attempting to establish his identity.
And for a brief moment, one he would have gladly traded in for a fall from a two-story building, he was transported back to the day they had first confronted each other—in the dungeon holding room of the Hold, the mayor's citadel in Rayn, when the Wamchu had ordered her to fry his brain and several other parts of his body for refusing to reveal the whereabouts of a certain white duck.
She would have done it, had indeed started to do it, when Whale had intervened with one of his little bitty bombs.
Now she was ready to do it again.
"You," she said.
He shrugged, and was suddenly heartily ashamed that, after all she had done to him, all that she stood for, she was still able to cast over him an intangible spell of masculine weakness simply by her presence. It was galling. He shook himself, steeled himself, gripped the bat more tightly and silently dared her to take another step closer. It would do his heart good to test Whale's magic against hers; and as soon as he thought it, he changed his mind.
The bat was Whale's, but the strength behind it had to be his. And as long as she look
ed the way she did, he would find it awkward having to bash in her head.
For she was, despite her sensational aura of palpable evil, despite the vile vibrations that rippled obscenely, a marvelously lovely woman, if you liked the type, which he knew he did when he wasn't thinking about peace of mind afterward. Her features were decidedly Oriental in their cast, her unblemished skin so pale it appeared translucent, her abundant hair an amazing fall of unreflecting black that bobbed on her shoulders in waves a sailor would kill for.
But it was her eyes, not the snug fit of her black-and-gold satin dress; it was her eyes, not the legs so trim and the ankles so well-turned; it was her eyes, not the way her hips volleyed and thundered as she walked; it was her eyes that fascinated him the most—they were blue one moment, green the next. They were brown and black and not always at the same time. They were large, they were enticing, they were focused on his face, and they were telling him they didn't like a single thing they saw.
"You," she said, her voice the sliding skin of a molting rattlesnake.
He nodded.
"You know who I am," she said, stopping in the center of the roof.
"The resemblance to your husband is remarkable," he told her, bringing the bat close to his chest.
She spat. "I spit on him," she sneered. "I have no use for him anymore."
He shrugged, and decided it wasn't meant for him to know where the Wamchu's chute had taken him. He also felt a little queasy when several possibilities came to mind and he couldn't banish their images.
"Well," he said, "I'm here."
"And you have come to stop me before my Day."
"It had crossed my mind," he said.
She laughed, a trilling, delightful laugh that peeled stripes off the walls, and knocked the elevator door off its hinge.
Oh well, he thought.
Suddenly, she raised an arm to the sky, and he looked involuntarily, taking a step back when he saw the drifting clouds begin to speed up, to turn black, to boil and collide and disgorge vast amounts of black lightning, which struck the roof all around him in blinding explosions that sent him reeling to his knees, leaping to his feet, sprawling on his face, staggering to his knees, popping up to his feet where he gripped the edge of the encircling wall and waited for her to complete her demonstration.
And when she did, the sky, and the clouds, returned to normal.
"You have no chance, hero," she said, slinking closer, but stopping just out of the bat's effective arc-range.
"It ain't over until it's over," he quoted stoutly.
"Yogi Berra," she said, "and he got fired. It's over."
"I want Ivy," he said hastily. "The least you can do is take me to Ivy."
Agnes, for the first time, seemed to lose her control—her eyes flashed through their colors, her lower lip trembled with contained agitation, and her right hip jounced as though bouncing a rubber ball against a wall and back.
"Well?" he said, as close to demanding a verbal response as he dared. "I want to see her."
"You can't," she said.
"I can if you let me."
"I couldn't if I wanted to."
"You could if you did."
Her lower lip protruded in a pout. "No, I can't."
"Well, why the hell not?"
"Because..." She grimaced, groaned, tightened her jaw, and said, "Because she has escaped me."
Gideon couldn't help grinning, not even when she filled the air with a strange language evidently based on the baser messages of several countries he'd not yet seen. And though he was pleased that Ivy had slipped out of her clutches, he was on the one hand annoyed that she hadn't waited for him, and on the other suddenly understanding why Agnes was threatening him with death now, and not on her Day, which everyone had agreed was her original plan.
She was, finally, and after all, only human.
"Agnes," he said, "why don't we—"
Her arm came up again, her fingers closed into a delicately large pointing machine, and he tensed, waiting for the bolt of energy that would strike him full in the chest and send him tumbling to his death if he wasn't dead already.
Ivy, he thought, forgive me for not being your hero.
Then: Jesus H Christ, Sunday, what the hell was that supposed to mean?
Poised there, she smiled.
Poised here, he thrust out his chin. "I'm not afraid of you, Agnes," he said. "As long as Ivy is away and safe, I am ready to take anything you think you can throw at me. Besides, I'm sorry to have to tell you this isn't your day."
"I know that," she said smugly. "Three days from now is my Day."
"I doubt you'll last that long."
Her arm began to quiver. "Is this your last request—to be able to taunt me, knowing you will not be around for the end of the world as you came to know it?"
"Oh no," he said. "But if you don't watch out, a very big and pissed off lorra is going to either dump you over the edge, or tear out your heart from around your spine."
She laughed, a waterfall of innocence with just a hint of depravity. "Gideon, Gideon," she said. "How can I consider you a worthy opponent when you try an old horse like that?"
"Not horse. Goat."
Her laughter grew, her arm lowered to her side, and her hair flew in many directions when she shook her head in an effort to return calm to her system. "Gideon, how silly, how wonderfully and naively silly you are."
"Suit yourself," he said, and nodded.
She whirled, and blasted the elevator housing with a bolt of pink lightning.
Gideon realized that he had begun taunting her too soon, that she was still too far away for him to be able to reach her before she could turn around and blast him as well. Which left him with only two options, the second of which would mean he'd never have another option again.
So he jumped off the roof.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
If it was not the worst of times, he thought on the way down, it was close enough for jazz; and since he had no great affection for oranges in any form whatsoever, the moment he hit the mound he was scrambling to get off, which motion did him little good since his downward velocity, coupled with his momentum produced by that velocity, carried him through the peels, the boxes, and a few other things he was moving too fast to identify until, as a car puts on the brakes just before it pitches over the edge of the cliff, he stopped.
It hurt a lot, and he was stunned for several seconds, knees and ankles and one elbow letting him know that he should leave the flying to his sister the duck.
Agnes.
Suddenly, he remembered Agnes, and instantly grasped the idea that a garbage pile was not going to offer him much protection against one of her lightning bolts. He scrambled again, arms and bat thrashing, until he fell into the open, jumped to his feet, looked up, and saw Agnes looking down at him.
He ran.
The lightning ran after him.
Pink bolts shattered bricks on his left, green bolts disintegrated a stack of old newspapers on his right. Thick smoke filled the alley as the garbage began to burn, and heat-seeking bolts more often than not only redoubled the fires; when they didn't, they struck the ground or the walls only inches from his body.
He had run to his right, and thanked all the gods when he darted around the bend and realized he was temporarily out of her range. At which point she began a random blasting of the rooftops, hoping to bury him beneath the rubble that exploded and showered and rocketed all around him. He was struck several times on the back and on the backs of his legs, but he didn't fall; he weaved in and out of the piles of garbage as if he were racing for a touchdown, dodging linemen, listening to the crowd, knowing in his heart of hearts that it was only an illusion but a fairly nice one considering the fact that he was only a bolt's breadth from death.
When, at last, he burst into the street, he wasted no time looking for a direction—he ran straight ahead, into another alley, and into another after that.
There was no more lightning.
; That did not mean she wasn't following.
At one point, he forced himself to set aside his fear long enough to lean against a wall and rest, ease his lungs, give his legs the opportunity to let him know that any thought of moving again was going to be met with considerable protest.
He checked behind him, and saw only curls of smoke where the bolts had struck the buildings and the ground, and a larger stream of smoke where the garbage burned. There was no sign of Agnes yet, and neither was there any sign of anyone in the city having heard, seen, or been disturbed by the explosions.
It was as if the entire place had emptied out during the night.
Blowing hard, gulping harder, he pushed off the wall and moved down the alley, a clean one this time with no windows overlooking it and no doors interrupting the surfaces of the walls. He was tempted to call out for his friends, but resisted; he spent as much time checking the line of rooftops as he did the ground beneath him, but still there was no indication that Agnes, having lost him, was attempting to find him.
All right, then, he thought.
At the next street he turned left, passed several alleys, and turned left again. Slower now, listening more carefully, walking more lightly, more apt to jump at shadows and swing his bat at ghosts.
An hour later he reached an avenue that was paved in gold brick, the shops sparkling with diamonds in their walls, and the tower directly across the way waiting for him with a door that stood fully open.
This is a trap, he warned himself.
You will go in there, and the door will close, and you will be trapped until the Day, and then she will do bad things to you that you won't like a bit.
Then he felt the blade of a knife poke him gently in the small of his back.
—|—
If he had learned nothing else during his sojourn in this world, he had learned that there are traps and there are traps: there is the kind like the open door over there, which tempts you because you know damned well it's a trap and is therefore appealing to your innate sense of accepting a challenge that could very well mean your death; and there is the trap like the open door over there, which, because you know it's a trap, makes you pause while you try to figure out if you're going to accept the challenge, which gives the person who set the trap time enough to sneak around behind you and poke a hole in your back.