by P. R. Frost
"TESS, WHAT IS happening?” MoonFeather stared at the elongating staff that suddenly materialized in my hands. Then her eyes shifted to my face. “When did you get that scar?”
“Later,” I snapped at my aunt. Damn, the scar pulsed and burned as if it were a newly opened wound. Maybe something about Scrap transforming and the presence of an enemy brought it into the real world.
I twirled the shaft, giving Scrap centrifugal force to continue his transformation. Between one eye blink and the next, mirror-image, half-moon blades extruded from the ends. Metal spikes grew out of the outside curves. They mimicked a special configuration in the sky when the Milky Way touched the top of a waxing quarter moon and revealed the face of the Goddess Kynthia.
The music on the stereo kicked up a notch. Throbbing drums, rousing pipes, a husky alto singing/snarling:
“Axes flash, broadsword swing
Shining armor’s piercing ring
Horses run with polished shield
Fight those bastards till they yield
Midnight mare and blood-red roan,
Fight to keep this land your own
Sound the horn and call the cry,
How Many Of Them Can We Make Die!”
“Stand back, MoonFeather.”
The mudroom door burst open. A gush of frigid air blew at me along with a ravening horde of tiny beings, all gnashing their nasty sharp teeth.
The first wave lunged for my bare ankles.
I swept the blade down and sideways. Three were caught up in the curve, swinging from the blade. They clung with their gnarly fists, using my weapon as a swing. One of them laughed at me.
I hadn’t cut a single one of them.
Then I backhanded and impaled two more on the spikes. They died instantly, spewing black blood and a ghastly smell.
Holding back my gag reflex, I flipped the blade and attacked again with the spines.
Caught another one! Scrap chortled.
“Bloodthirsty imp,” I growled. A little bit of relief washed through the tension in my shoulders and in my gut. These guys could hurt and die. I had a chance.
“Follow orders as you’re told,
Make their yellow blood run cold
Fight until you die or drop
A force like ours is hard to stop
Close your mind to stress and pain
Fight till you’re no longer sane
Let not one damn cur pass by
How Many Of Them Can We Make Die!”
The second wave of invading gnomes backed off. They stared at their fallen comrades, then up at me. Clearly, they were reconsidering their attack—or their strategy. I had surprised them. They didn’t know who they faced.
A screech of pain came from behind me.
I whirled, flashing the blade right and left.
MoonFeather stood atop the round table in the nook. She fended off a gnome with my dagger-length dragon-grip letter opener.
As I watched, a gnome grabbed the blade in his fist and grinned. No blood oozed from his grip. With a laugh that welled up from the depths of hell and reverberated around my kitchen, he yanked the dagger away from MoonFeather.
Damn, these guys were hard to kill.
MoonFeather retaliated with a frying pan, flattening the little guy with quiet efficiency. But another one clung to her calf with its teeth. As I watched, it tore a chunk of flesh out of one of my aunt’s gorgeous legs and spat it out. Blood gushed everywhere.
She cried out in shock and pain as her leg crumpled beneath her weight.
“Guard your women and children well,
Send these bastards back to hell
We’ll teach them the ways of war.
They won’t come here anymore
Use your shield and use your head,
Fight till every one is dead
Raise the flag up to the sky,
How Many Of Them Can We Make Die!”
I stomped my feet in rhythm with the drums and bag-pipe and swung my blade in time with the lyrics. Then I dispatched the offending tiny monster attacking MoonFeather with a clean sweep and spun again to make sure no others slipped by my guard.
“Perhaps we should talk.” A little man held up his hand, palm out. He had a nose that met an elongated chin Jay Leno might envy, and a few scraggly whiskers. His equally ugly fellows cowered behind him.
“Talk about what? Maiming my aunt—my favorite person in the world?” I swept the blade back and forth between us.
MoonFeather whimpered something behind me.
I gave her half a glance, not daring to take my eyes off the enemy.
“Dawn has broke, the time has come,
Move your feet to a marching drum
We’ll win the war and pay the toll,
We’ll fight as one in heart and soul
Midnight mare and blood-red roan
Fight to keep this land your own
Sound the horn and call the cry,
How Many Of Them Can We Make Die!”
The flattened one, now looking more like a two-dimensional cartoon than the menace I knew him to be, slid off the table and sidled along the wall until he could meld into the pack of miniscule invaders.
With a popping sound he puffed out and filled normal space again.
What would it take to off these guys?
“You have felled several of Our subjects. We do not forgive easily,” the leader said.
Was that the royal “We”? The little fellow did sport a tiny bit of gold around the rim of his peaked cap and a golden feather stuck jauntily into the folds of red fabric.
“You’re the king of garden gnomes, so what?” I sneered. “You invaded my home without provocation. Aren’t there rules against that?”
“You attacked us first.”
“Because you were menacing my friend. A police-woman doing her job!”
“We sympathize with the one you call Allie. We respect her duty. But we have a mission. You stand in our way.”
“You’re in the wrong dimension to be dictating anything. ”
“You harbor an escaped prisoner.”
I raised my eyebrows at that. “You look like something an escapee from a lunatic asylum might dream up.”
“You know better than that, Teresa Louise Noncoiré, Warrior of the Celestial Blade.”
The Blade vibrated in my hands. Scrap had something to say but was having trouble communicating in this form.
“So you know my name. What’s yours, and why are you crossing my threshold without an invitation?” I dredged up a fragment of a folk memory. “Homes are sacred. Invitations and hospitality a requirement.” Out of doors was where the battles took place.
Only outside today was a frozen hell for both of us.
I kept the blade moving, not daring to give these guys an opening.
“Names are a source of power. Not to be given lightly.”
WindScribe had wandered all around that subject.
MoonFeather moaned again. I hoped she’d managed to find a dish towel or a place mat to staunch the flow of blood.
“You forfeited your right to secrecy the moment you crossed my threshold, you little piece of trailer trash.” I increased the arc of the blade, coming within a hair’s breadth of the gnome king’s chest.
“Yeep!” He jumped back, plowing into the crowd of his minions like a ball and ninepins. Among much jostling and staggering and muttering of curses in an oddly fluid language, the king righted himself and faced me once more.
“Give us the dangerous prisoner and we will depart your presence, never to bother you again,” he offered. But his eyes wouldn’t meet mine. I also suspected he crossed his fingers behind his back.
Tricky little bastard.
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” I lied.
“Windscribe,” he said, slowly.
"WindScribe? Dangerous? She’s a ditzy hippy.” She was also human, one of my tribe. I wasn’t about to give her up without a fight.
The king advan
ced one step. “You do not know the dangers you court. We will have the prisoner.”
I gave him a taste of my blade.
The entire horde popped out with a whoosh.
The vacuum resulting from their departure brought a ringing to my ears and a new rush of arctic air into my kitchen.
The music faded to a poignant ballad.
My bloodlust died with the music.
“Oh, my,” MoonFeather groaned. “I think I need more than a poultice on this wound.”
No amazement. No protestations of the unreal. No questions about Scrap becoming the Celestial Blade.
That’s my Aunt MoonFeather.
Nasty little beasties. Nasty. Nasty. They taste worse than their blood smells.
My babe needs answers. Like little Mr.-more-important-than-Ghod’s name, rank, and serial number.
We need help. Help Tess won’t ask for until she’s desperate. Just once I wish she’d put aside her stubborn independence and ask. Gollum is nearby. But will she call him?
No.
Will she even think about it?
No.
Instead, she’ll moon over that stinky Donovan. That man does not smell right. Old dust and sage and copper. Not fully human, but not a demon either. What is he?
Old. He’s old. I can smell that much. But how old is old when one hops dimensions? Time is just another dimension.
I don’t think my babe wants to know what he is. Then she’ll have to feel even more guilty for sleeping with him.
Now if she’d just use a little common sense and hook up with Gollum . . .
I need a bath.
I need some mold and a nap.
Chapter 8
"YOU AGAIN?” a tired orderly in the ER asked. “What have you got this time, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?”
I grabbed the wheelchair from him and dashed back to the still running SUV. "My aunt is ensanguining while you malign my veracity!” I deliberately used words I didn’t think he knew.
WindScribe dozed in the backseat, tranked to the gills. And hadn’t I had a lovely time getting her back into the car. But I didn’t dare leave her alone in a strange house.
MoonFeather was so absorbed in her own pain and staunching the torrents of blood from her wound she barely noticed the extra person in the car.
“Hey, how many of those pills did she take?” the orderly asked, checking WindScribe’s neck for a pulse and shaking his head at her pale skin.
“I gave her one.” I hadn’t bothered to check the bottle in my hurry to get my aunt to the hospital. I could move faster with four-wheel drive than the local ambulance.
“Looks like she took half the bottle.”
“She’s not the patient! My aunt is bleeding to death.” We’d managed a crude pressure bandage on her leg. Blood saturated it and seeped down her leg.
A nurse appeared, took one look at the blood that spattered both MoonFeather and myself, and started barking orders. Life sped up to fast forward. Medical professionals whisked MoonFeather off to surgery, leaving me with the paperwork and a dreaming WindScribe.
I’d managed to call Josh, MoonFeather’s current significant other, and begun to fill in name and basic information when Allie returned.
“Now what?” she asked.
I shrugged and dredged a few more pieces of vital information out of my tired brain. Date of birth. Current residence. Contact phone number. Had to check the call list on my cell phone for that.
“Hospital said violent wound. I’ve got to investigate,” Allie persisted.
“A raccoon got into the kitchen seeking warmth. It bit MoonFeather before we could evict it.” That sounded more believable than the truth.
“That the truth, Tess?”
I looked her square in the eye. “You want the truth or what sounds logical?”
“Is this day going to get weird again?” She sat down beside me with a sigh. Her long legs stretched into the aisle between chairs, blocking my exit.
The place had mostly cleared out since this morning.
“Probably get weirder yet.” Especially if both Donovan and Gollum came to town. “Weird describes my life.”
“Shit. Do I need to find a new best friend?”
“I’d rather you stuck by this one.”
We grinned at each other and touched fists, knuckle to knuckle, thumbs extended and entwined.
“You want to know how weird this day is?” Allie asked.
I groaned.
“They gave me a rookie for a partner.”
“You don’t usually partner.”
“Didn’t think I needed one. Boss Joe says no one goes out alone anymore.” She shook her head, then jerked it sideways.
I noticed the uniformed man leaning on the reception counter. He didn’t look much bigger than me.
“Rookie, indeed. Still wet behind the ears,” I said. “What is he, twelve?”
As if he heard me, the young man swaggered over, thumbs hooked into his belt. A classic stance of a scared little boy trying to make himself look bigger and older. He’d be almost handsome if he didn’t try so hard.
“Tess, meet Mike Gionelli.” Allie gave no further explanation.
“Pleased to meet you, Mike.” I politely held my hand out to shake.
He grabbed it eagerly and firmly with dry palms. His smile spread from ear to ear and lit his eyes. “I’ve read your books. I’m really looking forward to the next one.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere, young man.”
An hour later I got MoonFeather ensconced in a private room—amazing what good insurance will get you. The hospital wasn’t as full as they pretended.
WindScribe, who had no insurance that we knew of and therefore no hospital bed, dozed in a chair in the corner.
“A garden gnome came to life and bit me with dagger-sharp teeth,” MoonFeather told the intern, keeping a straight face and her eyes wide open in innocence.
“Why that’s . . . that’s . . .” the young man spluttered. He looked cast from the same mold as Mike Gionelli, far too young for the responsibility he wielded. “Must be the pain meds.” He shook his head and left us.
“Did you see his face?” MoonFeather giggled through her intravenous drugs.
I sat on an uncomfortable stool, holding her hand. I told her the raccoon story.
“They’re afraid of rabies. If we don’t come up with a better explanation in the next few hours, the doctor’s going to require shots. They aren’t pleasant.” I tried to keep my voice calm and low. Too many people ran about eavesdropping in this small but well-appointed hospital.
Cape Cod may be small, but we have some of the priciest real estate in the country. Our local billionaires demand state of the art medical care whenever they need it. So the rest of us peons benefit from the facility.
“I can’t lie, Tess.” MoonFeather’s eyes cleared of the drug haze a moment. “Everything we do—good or bad—comes back to us threefold. I won’t lie.”