I really needed to get up right now!
Before Fand recovered enough to have me clapped in chains. Or worse, seeing as how chains hadn't worked the last time . . .
Besides, resting wasn't working. I was so hungry I couldn't relax enough for my muscles to recover. I lay there, feeling like a darkening bruise and wondering if not passing out had been such a good plan after all.
A warm hand touched my cooling forehead.
Opening my eyes seemed to use even more of my dwindling reserves. It was worth it, though: Fand's sylphic sister was sitting on the edge of my bed looking down at me with wide, luminous eyes.
"Thou ailest," she said. Her lips moved in all sorts of interesting ways when she talked and her voice almost sounded . . . regretful.
"I'm tired," I muttered. "Escaping from being chained to a chair is a lot of hard work."
"And yet you returned and repaid my sister's treachery by saving her life."
It didn't seem prudent to point out that my return was prompted by a pack of weres. Or that said return was what knocked Fand overboard in the first place. Or that, in spite of all my thrashing around in the water, someone else had actually pulled her sister out of the river.
Plus I didn't have the strength for a long, drawn-out conversation.
But there were questions that had to be asked.
"What does your sister want with my son?" I demanded. At least it was supposed to be a demand. In my condition it didn't sound very "demandy."
"It's—it's complicated," the so-called goddess of health and beauty stuttered before turning her face aside.
"I think I'm owed something, here," I grumbled. "How about we start with an explanation?"
"You will not accept it."
I stared at her. "So what? Not much on the accepting with the non explanations. Without knowing what this is about, I tend to default to the worst-case-scenario mind set. Which means any explanation—even one I don't like—is bound to be better than my not-so-optimistic assessment of your motivations." Whew. Did that even make sense? I was starting to grow delirious.
Liban turned her face back to mine and took my hands in hers. "Very well." She took a deep breath—which made my head swim in all sorts of interesting ways and I think I lost a moment of linear time.
"Your demon familiar says that you must have blood ere you will die," Liban said, looking at me as if I had just changed color. I got the impression I had missed a sentence or two. "Is this true?"
Thanks a lot, Zotz. Does Jimmy Olsen phone up Lex Luthor and discuss kryptonite?
"Just a little hungry, that's all," I said. "A snack would be nice. I'm a little hypoglycemic . . ."
"Must you have blood? Will other food do?"
I sighed. It was a squeamish subject even for me—and I sure as hell didn't like discussing my dietary requirements with strangers. "Look if there's any of my stuff left on board—"
"Setanta threw them all out," she interrupted. "He says you are a monster and he has seen your eyes fill with blood. He feared it would make you too powerful and monstrous to contain."
"Yeah? Well, tell Billy-Ray it's those Happy Hemoglobin Meals that keep me from turning into a monster. Without them I have to go all snack-attack on someone's neck!"
She stared at me. "I see. I presume that would be the case if you actually had the strength to sit up at all."
Great. Can't fight, can't run, can't even bluff. I was so screwed. "Just let my demon familiar go fetch me some more, okay? That way I won't turn into a monster and everyone will be a lot happier . . ." "Happier" is actually a very difficult word to pronounce: try saying it the next time you go to the dentist and get a face full of Novocaine.
She started to get up. "I'll see if I can find anything else in the galley."
I tried to hold onto both of her hands and was only half successful. "Wait. I want that explanation, first."
"But—"
"I know you want to change the subject. Change it after you answer the question!"
She settled back down on my bunk and took my free hand back in hers. "Very well. There is a Telling. Actually two. Both concern the End of the World as we know it and both, we believe, involve your son and a blood sacrifice . . ."
* * *
Don't ask me questions about elven prophecy—where they get it, how it's handed down, and particularly how it's interpreted. Elves aren't particularly direct in their approach to the mundane so expecting clarity on the subject of their theosophical underpinnings is largely hopeless for us humans-come-lately.
Especially a skeptic who was holding on to the fringes of consciousness with non-metallic and very dull fingernails. For a change.
Apparently one of their End-of-the-World visions involved what would happen if an elven queen and a human had the bad taste to breed.
I know, I know; Romance literature is populated with references to the "halfelven" and there's cross-species dalliances a-plenty if one knows where to look (and how to read between the florid lines). These affairs generally led to problems, though. If not for the original, hormonally engaged and their git, then somewhere down the line when the consequences tended to hit the fan with all that pent-up karma. The classics are all pretty clear on that particular theme and not-so-many variations.
And if elven royalty were involved it was like swapping out gunpowder for uranium 235 and plutonium. Something in Fand's bloodline was especially volatile in terms of human genetics and any hybrid offspring were going to make Oedipus Rex look like the Nativity by comparison—picture The Omen meets Middle Earth.
Forget rings of power or immortal flowering trees or the next recipe for the perfect Keebler cookie; the biggest quest before the People's Court—Seilie or Unseilie—involved the management of Fand's social life. No wonder she was so testy: everyone had been conspiring to keep her an old maid for at least a thousand years.
"You see," Liban explained, "Setanta is actually—"
"Yeah, I know. Cuchulainn," I said. "The Hound of Ulster. Which explains that whole Brock Samson vibe he's got going on. Somehow Fand got wind of the plot and was able to circumvent it. Or plots, as he's still alive. And long after he should've been dust. But they're still together, as well. Someone should tell Fand's ex he should never wash a magic cloak. It rinses those amnesia spells right out. Dry clean only."
Liban shook her head. "Humans . . . You see nothing unscientific about the invisibility of the hummingbird's wings in flight. The visible light spectrum is but a small portion of what other creatures see and sense. A high-frequency sound is not nonexistent merely because it ranges beyond your human limitations. Telepathy, clairvoyance, telekinesis, clairaudience—all well within acceptable theories of science when you reach the quantum levels. Your many religions teach you to pray to that which you cannot see nor touch, asking it to set aside the laws of physics and medicine and produce anomalies called miracles. Cosmology posits a multidimensional universe, even other universes: a multiverse with an infinite number of worlds, realities, histories occupying the same space." She sighed. "Yet you cannot conceive of creatures who are like and yet unlike yourselves. Whose vibrations are set to a separate frequency and thus do not occupy the same spaces in quite the same ways as you. Who see and sense the spectrum of energies a bit differently. You misname our ability to channel levels and frequencies of q'u'orernen, calling it 'magic,' as if it were something fanciful and without boundaries or law such as the nonsense in Aladdin or Harry Potter.
"We are not impossible merely because we outlive your species. There are sequoias that are over 2,000 years old, bristlecone pines alive today that were two thousand years old before your Christ was born. Both are plants. And yet so many other plants are encoded to sprout, grow, bloom, seed and die, all within a single season. You cannot hold a single measurement of longevity to any species. Are we fantastical because we measure our lives in millennia? Or are humans because you measure yours in decades?
"You laugh and mock your own legends and myths. But m
ost are founded on actual history and passed down in the oral manner with the resultant distortions. Your own historians are constantly redefining recent events for they understand how facts and personal accounts may be altered in the handling of its written records."
"Like the evening news," I said. "So, what are you trying to say here?"
"That, time factors and details aside, you and my sister have a great deal in common."
"What?"
Her lips twitched a smile so sad and so fleeting it was almost imaginary. "You both fell in love with someone who wasn't like yourselves. And a lot of people schemed to keep you both from the ones you love. As a result, you've both been changed, damaged even. You, of all people, should understand her dysfunctional behavior."
"Every time I've crossed paths with her I seem to get the worse of it," I replied. "Seems pretty functional to me."
"She's my sister, Cséjthe! We're both sea goddesses, yet she almost drowned scarce a quarter of an hour ago! She no longer functions in her natural element! And Cuchulainn . . ." Her eyes flickered, went from angry to sad. "His mind is so deeply scarred that he not only has no memory of who he once was, but how they once were. Oh, he bears her much devotion . . . but his much vaunted pride and arrogance are gone."
"Really? Hadn't picked up on that so much."
"You didn't know him then. The Hound of Ulster is a mere puppy now. I believe that two people must see themselves as equals if they are to be great lovers. What my sister was left with is but a shadow of love's glory, crumbs from passion's banquet, mere—"
"Yeah, yeah, okay! I get it! Love among the ruins. But there was this prophecy, I understand? Something about doom and the end of the world?"
"If they were to conceive a child."
"Yeah, well, not that I don't feel the tragedy now that they're all Bobby and Whitney—"
Liban gave me a blank look.
"All Britney and K-Fed," I amended.
Still the look.
"Liz and Dick? The point is, just because the honeymoon's over doesn't mean they don't need major birth control. I mean, they still look pretty cozy to me."
Fand's sister looked rather taken aback. "Conception is not so haphazard among our people," she said slowly. "Our wombs quicken when we choose to bear children. Otherwise our lovers and mates may have no issue with us."
It took a moment for that to sink in. I was still working over the various implications when she continued: "My sister has circumvented the doom of the prophecy by adopting a child one generation in every four. Her needs to motherhood are met and so she may continue with her consort, slaking her desires on both fronts, without combining them in such a way as to fulfill the fate foretold."
"So," I muttered, trying not to slur my words, "you're saying as long as she adopts some kid every couple of hundred years and raises him, she cools the fertility jones that would get her preggers with Cuch. And, as long as they don't produce their own franchise of little Fandchulains, the elves escape their doom?"
"And my sister," Liban clarified, clearly unhappy with my word choice, "escapes judgment with prejudice by the Councils."
I didn't have to ask what "judgment with prejudice" meant. I did have to ask: "Why my kid? I mean, maybe the first attempt but, now that I've put my foot down, it's time for her to move down the list and try some other adoption agencies."
Those green eyes narrowed and turned the color of stormy seas. "My sister is still outlaw for her chosen path. No elf will permit her to raise a child of their own—even those rarely orphaned. It must needs, therefore, be human. And only a very special human child will do."
"Still," I insisted stubbornly, "not going to happen with my kid. If she wants to play Mommy Dearest, she'd better get on with it and down the road from here!" I tried to growl that last part for emphasis and only ended up sounding like I had a touch of congestion.
"It is not only for personal reasons that your son was selected," she said, "but for a separate Telling, as well. One that involves the fate of the rest of the world—the world of men as well as our own."
"Yeah? Do tell." I leaned toward her. "Do."
She stared at me for a long time, her eyes seemingly haunted. "It involves a sacrifice."
I closed my eyes. "Of course it does."
I felt her hand laid along the side of my face. "I am sorry. I am so, so sorry . . ."
"Get out," I whispered. "Tell your sister and her sexecutioner that I want you all off of my boat when I get up or I'll damn well fix that first prophecy myself!"
I didn't have the strength to open my eyes but her hand slipped away and, after a long moment, the door to my cabin opened and closed.
I was such a fool! Playing chicken with the Grim Reaper was a thoughtless and impulsive act, seeking quick and selfish closure. In doing so, I had committed ultimate folly by rescuing one of the creatures who was bent on connecting my son to some inexplicable sacrifice! And, in doing so, I had further damaged my own ability to rescue him by depleting my physical resources.
Apparently the micromachine invasion required large reserves of energy when they got all creative and constructiony. That's why each transformation resulted in my Hunger ramping up to unforeseen levels. If I didn't ante up on the fuel sources via blood-drinking with the resultant iron molecules for spare parts, they would apparently take their pound of flesh via other means.
The good news? Since they were ostensibly programmed to preserve my life, I probably wouldn't expire right away.
The bad news? Since they were ostensibly programmed to preserve my life, I probably wouldn't expire right away.
The questions were: what biological materials would they consider to be nonessential, and how painful would it be, and how long before permanent damage accrued?
Bad enough.
What was worse: the end of world—some kind of end of the world—was on its way and my children were weeks away from being born, just a few blocks away from what was increasingly looking like Ground Zero. And, if it turned out that Mama Samm had failed on the rooftop of One Shell Square, then we were all smack dab in the middle of a battlefield between the undead legions of a powerful madwoman and an army of cunning, preternatural beasts with one hell of a storm thrown in for good measure!
While I just lay here doing nothing!
Having just failed at selfishly taking the coward's way out.
Could I be any more pathetic and despicable?
They say it's always darkest before the dawn, but suddenly everything got darker. I was sucked down into a hypnogogic undertow and pulled out into the sea of dreams.
* * *
Recipe for a nightmare:
Take one really big, dark gray barrel and cut openings around the middle.
Place dozens of octopi or squid inside barrel so that tentacles emerge from openings all the way around the center. Lots o' tentacles!
Crazy-glue giant yellow starfish to the top of barrel. Paste eyes at the end of each point. Add little red tubes ending in mouths between the points.
Crazy-glue second giant starfish to the bottom of same barrel. Add little red tubes between each of those points for—what? Poop chutes?
Add a half dozen or so batwings, folded up and spaced around the middle between the tentacles.
Altogether the thing was between six and eight feet tall. That was my best guess, based on its proximity to my dream self. And the book it held open before it with two of its five pseudopods. It closed the book with a snap but not before I discerned the image of a crowned elephant riding in a balloon and the title: Le Voyage de Babar.
Three antennae or feelers or eyestalks or something poked out in my direction.
"You cannot look upon its flesh and keep your sanity," intoned the weird Winky Dink voice.
I looked around. Everywhere else was darkness. I looked back at the alien monstrosity. "Yeah? Well, looking right now and not feeling particularly crazy about the view," I shot back. I was really getting homesick for the good ole days when a vam
pire was about the creepiest thing I could ever imagine.
"You cannot travel within its mind and survive," the voice continued.
"What? Bloodwalk? Inside a giant rutabaga? Forget it! I'm on a low alien-carb diet!"
"You must be transformed . . . purged . . . purified . . . so that you may face the apotheosis of fear without reverberation. You must be reprogrammed. . . ."
The monster reached toward me with writhing tentacles and I turned to flee, to fly . . .
And eventually float, drifting down to nestle into an angel's embrace.
Heaven faded out. My cabin faded in. The angel transformed into Liban.
She had an arm around me, raising me from one pillow to another.
"I'm sorry to awaken you," she said, offering a bowl of something pinkish and sweet smelling. "But your familiar seemed to think it important to feed you as soon as possible. 'Tis not your accustomed fare but it seems best to try whatever we can until more human blood can be obtained."
"Across the river," I whispered. "Send Zotz. He knows where to go. What to do."
"Setanta departed with him two hours ago. Under the circumstances, I think it best we delay not ere they return." She propped my head up and brought the bowl to my lips. "Try a draught of this to see if it will sustain thee whilst we wait."
Yeah, that was a good idea. Drink strange concoctions brewed by the people who had held me captive and wanted to birthnap my son. The smart money was on waiting for Zotz to take down the Mullet and return with the real deal from my private stock at the blood bank.
The problem was if Setanta was the Hound of Ulster, I wasn't so sure of Zotz's supremacy in a little one-on-one. Regardless, I didn't think I could wait that long.
Not so much that I was hungry—I'd endured the inside-out, skin-crawling, eye-itching, hair-aching, brain-churning withdrawal pains of the bloodthirst before. It's one thing to go toe-to-toe with the pain when it's your own body throwing a tantrum over not getting what it so desperately wants. This, however, was something a little different.
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