Dark Duets

by Christopher Golden

  Even so, she punched the switches until the rear of the limo went dark, and they passed the semi. She sorted through the heaped jeans, cami, and sweater until she found her panties.

  “Can you answer a question?”

  “I can try.”

  “I . . . just went with that guy. That elf or whatever. I went with him. I let him touch me. I took my fucking clothes off for him. I don’t do that. A guy tries to grab my ass I kick the piss out of him. I’m not a victim, damn it, and I’m not anyone’s casual piece of ass.”

  “No,” Rhymer agreed.

  “Well, you seem to understand this madness, so can you tell me why I did this?”

  In the rearview mirror she saw him grin again. It changed his face from one of lupine harshness to something else. When he smiled, his face was gentle. Sad . . . but gentle.

  “If I tell ye that this is all glamour and magic, will you hit me in the back of the head with your shoe?”

  “Why . . . is that the sort of thing you’re likely to say?”

  “Well . . . elves and all . . .”

  “Bollocks,” she said, but mostly to herself. An admission that they were no longer driving through a sane landscape.

  She pulled on her clothes. “So, what, I have to stay hidden till after Halloween?”

  “Well, that’s where we get into the long version of things. Normally, they would be hunting you for about a year.”

  “A year?” She did almost whack him with her shoe then.

  “It’s a question of relational temporalities. A day in Yvagddu lasts a year in our world. But they got cocky about things, figured to haul you over and dispose of you just like that, so they waited—”

  “Just tell me for fuck’s sake!”

  “Thirty more hours, more or less.”

  She fell back against the seat. “I have to call Carrie. I need to know she got back to the flat okay.”

  “Right. Here.” He handed her a cell phone. “It’s a burner. You don’t want to use your own.”

  She stared from the phone to him. “Elves can track cell-phone calls?”

  For the first time he gave her a genuine and open grin. “Aye, the universe is totally daft like that.”

  “But . . . why the secrecy? Why not go south? We could go down to London; nobody can find anybody there.”

  He shrugged. “You’re lucky you don’t have a family,” he said. “If ye had folks, children, it’d be far worse. They could substitute them on account of your blood.”

  “If I had kids and a family,” she fired back, “I wouldn’t ’a been clubbing with Carrie in the first place. Pish.”

  Quite suddenly, Rhymer spoke in a peculiar singsong.

  No cause to trust eyes of promise,

  Eyes so golden, eyes that burn, down into your darkest soul.

  When you fall, and all unbinds

  The last of you will scream out for the first.

  Despite the words, his singing voice was beautiful. In the strangest way, the sound of his voice comforted her, removing splinters of fear from her mind.

  Rhymer fell silent again and drove on as if nothing odd had occurred.

  She stared at him, his face bluish like a ghost’s in the dawn light. Rhymer—what in hell kind of name was that? Like something out of an old folk song.

  6

  Stacey had assumed they would be pulling into, at the very least, a lay-by. They weren’t all that far from where they’d begun, maybe ten kilometers.

  Instead, Rhymer turned the behemoth of a limo onto another dirt track that led into the darkness of another wood. He shut off the engine but left the headlamps glowing onto a clearing among the trees.

  When she climbed out after him, she spotted the nose of a blue Fiat Punto backed in on the left. She remained where she was while he headed to the other car. He didn’t seem to realize she wasn’t following him until he had crossed the clearing.

  He met her gaze over the limo. “I don’t blame you,” he said. “I’d be contemplating scarpering, too, wondering how hard it can be to lose me in the woods. I’ll save you the trouble of breaking your ankle on a root—I’ll not chase you. You go as you choose. Whatever you do, though, don’t wait here. It’ll like as not take them the whole morning, but they’ll find it.”

  She took a wobbling step away from the limousine door. “Will they all be like him? Because I didn’t have any choice with him . . .” She felt her face burn as she said that. It felt like admitting something bad, something dirty.

  “What, you mean his glamour? Oh, they’ll be sleekit but none of them’s cowrin or timorous beasties.”

  She said, “What?”

  Rhymer took a breath and continued, but Stacey noticed that he dialed down his accent. It seemed to take effort for him to speak in a normal, modern way. So weird, she thought. Rhymer said, “The glamoured ones all gleam like that. They’ll have a harder time now on account of you’re not wide open, d’ye see? So you stand a chance there; you can get away before they snare you again. It’s the skinwalkers you likely won’t see coming.”

  “What are skinwalkers?”

  He glanced into the darkness behind the limo. “We should have this conversation while in motion, not waiting for them to catch us up.”

  “But you took their transportation.”

  He shook his head. “It’s hardly the only way they travel. Even on foot I get from here to there. They won’t be on foot.” He sighed. “I had to leave a bonny little motorcycle back there, but I couldnae see driving off on that with you starkers on the back.”

  “Uh . . . no.”

  He nodded to the Punto. “This piece of junk will do for now. It’s faster than it looks, and it’s the kind of thing no one pays attention to.”

  “Nondescript ain’t in it,” she agreed.

  Suddenly something whooshed above the trees. It might have been an owl, she thought, but Rhymer immediately climbed into the Punto and started the engine. Stacey pulled off her shoes again and walked, limped, cursed her way across the clearing toward the compact Fiat. The second she was in, he took off. They swung around the limousine and back up the dark rutted track, then back onto the A68 again.

  A stripe of gray dawn painted the eastern horizon. She tossed her shoes into the back, noticing as she did the curving lines of some device laid across the rear seats.

  Her inner voice couldn’t seem to settle between rage and terror. The urge to yell at him compelled her, but she couldn’t identify what for. He had saved her life, and she was reacting as though she resented it. All meaningful questions went unspoken while she asked herself what in hell was wrong with her.

  Finally, she prompted, “Skinwalkers . . . ?”

  “Mmm.” He glanced at her sidelong. “People taken over by the Yvag. Mostly people in positions of power.”

  “What, like kings?”

  Rhymer’s features stiffened as if he could see something terrible on the road ahead. She couldn’t help looking. But then he sang in the same soft voice as before. It was almost spoken-word but flowed with an elusive interior melody.

  Never kings, but always kingdoms.

  Never thrones but always ears.

  Crucial words, spoke in whispers,

  from our hands put power in theirs.

  “Goddamn it, what is that? You got like some fucking Tourette’s you can’t help?”

  “What?” He blinked at her, perplexed. “What did I say?”

  She repeated the lyrics more or less, then asked, “You don’t know when you do that?”

  Rhymer took a moment answering that. “I don’t, actually, strange as that sounds. I . . . know it’s happening, but I’m lost while it happens. It’s like something is talking through me.”

  “Oh, fuck me. You’re telling me you’re possessed?”

  “No,” he said quickly. “It’s not that at all. I don’t know how to explain it, though.”

  “But you do know what it means—what you said?”

  “Aye.”

  When he
didn’t offer more than that, she said, “Well? How about we both know, since it’s my arse they want, not yours.”

  “It’s my head they want.”

  “I thought they wanted me.”

  “And now I’ve interfered, you’re a pathway to me.”

  “The fuck I am.”

  Rhymer shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

  “So’s algebra. Try me anyway.”

  But he didn’t.

  She ground her teeth. “Okay, then what about the other thing? Tell me about those skinwalker things. Otherwise, you’re taking me the hell back to Edinburgh right now, and sod you and your elves.”

  “Right.” Rhymer rubbed his eyes. “So, the Yvag, they’re ancient, like more ancient than the earth itself.”

  “How’s that possible?”

  “Where they live, it’s a space between universes, ours and others. There are lots of others, I gather.”

  “A multiverse?”

  He cut her a sharp look. “Now how do ye know that word?”

  “I have every episode of Doctor Who DVRed. Keep talking.”

  Looking vaguely perplexed, Rhymer nodded. “They came from one of the others. It collapsed or something—I’m not entirely clear on the concept and it’s not like they feel as if I ought to be included. Their escape, though, tied them to or was dependent upon some other form of life.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like hell,” he said. “Not your scriptural one exactly, though I expect our version of hell came from them, too.”

  “Hold on . . . Judeo-Christian tradition comes from elves?”

  “I know how it sounds.”

  “Not to a history major, you don’t.”

  “All right, history major, just suppose that a lot of people with influence, advisers to the powers that be, were . . .”

  “What?”

  “Were not really people, d’ye see? Suppose the Yvag had colonized them?”

  “Skinwalkers, that’s what you meant?”

  “Yeah. They move in, take control of certain people—the ones who make laws, the ones who decide for everyone else, almost never the central person, almost always the advisers.”

  “ ‘Never kings but always kingdoms,’ ” she repeated back at him.

  “Exactly. If they were kings, they’d be in view. But manipulating the king? They stay in the shadows.”

  “Was the driver—?”

  “He was one, yeah. I know, he’s not someone in a position of power like, but they need others, too, to do simple tasks, move the glamoured ones around.”

  “Minions?” she said, smiling for the first time.

  “Aye,” agreed Rhymer, “minions is a good word.”

  Jesus, she said to herself, I’m having a conversation in which elves, the multiverse, and minions are serious talking points. And vodka is not involved. She took a breath. “But why did that skinwalker bloke look so . . . so dead?”

  “Because he was dead the instant an Yvag took him. When they move in, they rip the human soul out. Whoever that person was is destroyed. Shredded. From that moment forward, the body is dead and only the Yvag is alive. The corpse maintains the appearance of being alive as long as the Yvag is inside, but once it’s gone then the magic is broken and the body becomes what it really is—dead and rotting flesh. The longer the Yvag occupies you, the faster you turn to dust when it leaves. Understand, this magic is difficult, it requires a lot of energy and sometimes it slips. Every now and then you see a person who looks more dead than alive, and it’s probably an Yvag whose control has slipped. Which is the other reason they choose to keep to the shadows.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sunlight is nae good for dead skin. It speeds the corruption.”

  “Sounds like vampires.”

  He nodded. “What people call vampires are almost always Yvags.”

  “Almost always?”

  Rhymer gave her a crooked grin. “It’s a strange, big universe, lass.”

  “Yeah, yeah, there are more things in heaven and earth . . .” Stacey shook her head, trying to make sense of this. “The driver . . . the Yvag left him?”

  “You could look at it that way.”

  “Which is to say you killed him.”

  “The Yvag, if I’m lucky. The driver . . . wasn’t really there.”

  “Why?”

  Rhymer twitched, ducked his head as if she had finally hit a nerve, a place he couldn’t go or explain. In the end all he said was, “It’s what I do.”

  She squinched up her face. There was something he had said—tossed off so casually it had flown right past. She rewound the conversation, listened, came to the moment when she’d freaked, and there it was. “Ten centuries. What was that about you living for ten centuries?”

  “Well, give or take a decade . . .”

  “Please tell me you’re at least cool enough to be a Time Lord.”

  “A what?”

  “Sigh,” she said aloud.

  “I know it’s impossible tae believe—”

  “No, see, that’s the problem, I completely believe it. I just don’t want to be a part of it!”

  “I’m sorry you are.”

  She chewed her lip for a moment. “The way you fought? What was that? Kung-fu? Judo?”

  “Gutter fighting,” he said. “Bit of this and that.”

  “Nasty.”

  “It’s not supposed to be nice.”

  “So . . . for a thousand years you’ve been messing it up with them, right? Interfering with this—this—”

  “Tithing.”

  “Tithing. How often do they have to do that, pay this tithe to hell?”

  “Part of a cycle. Here, it’s every twenty-eight years.”

  “And you’ve been keeping people like me from getting taken.”

  He had a strangely anxious look on his face now and only nodded.

  “No wonder they want your head. So in all that time, you must have saved like, what, five, six hundred people?”

  He said nothing, staring hard at the road ahead.

  “Rhymer, goddamn it. How many have you saved?”

  “Counting you, seven.”

  “Seven hundred people? Really?”

  “No,” he said softly. “Just seven.”

  He met her gaze then, and the misery in his look spoke for him.

  Very quietly, she said, “I think I want to go home now.”

  “Ye can’t,” he replied. “Not for twenty-one more hours, or you’re just handing yourself to them.”

  “Oh, really? How’s that different from sticking with you?”

  “Staying with me means you haven’t given up,” said Rhymer. “And when they come for you again, we’re going tae make them pay dearly.”

  A moment later he added under his breath, “For a great many things.”

  7

  Stacey awoke with a jolt.

  She hadn’t even realized that she’d fallen asleep. She sat up, brain muzzy, tongue thick, skin clammy. She had drool on her chin and wiped it away as she glanced at Rhymer. He was watching the road.

  “How long was I asleep?” she asked. She rubbed at her eyes.

  “About three hours. You’ve been through a lot. Magic wears a body out every bit as quickly as exertion.”

  “ ‘Magic,’ ” she echoed. “Right. Not a dream. Damn.”

  Outside, the sky was cloudy, and she didn’t recognize anything in the brown-and-green landscape. They had left the A68 at some point.

  “Are we there yet?”

  “No, we’ve still got a bit to go,” murmured Rhymer. “Sorry, but we couldn’t just keep going straight. They would have come at us from ahead, so I’ve been shifting direction, zigzagging roads to keep them from being able to predict where we’re heading.”

  “Where are we heading? Do we have an actual destination, or are we just going to drive around until these Elvis thingies get bored?”

  “Yvags,” he corrected.

  “Whatever. Where are we
going?”

  “I’ve a place. But going there will only work once, and I want tae make sure they don’t have sight of the car when we turn off.”

  As if to accentuate his point, a car roared up from behind to pass on the straightaway. As it came abreast it seemed to hold for a moment, and the driver gave them a hard stare before accelerating ahead.

  She saw that Rhymer was watching the car, too. She gripped his forearm.

  “Oh, God . . . please don’t tell me that’s one of those bleedin’ skinwalker things?”

  “Can’t tell from here,” he said. “You can bet they have every available one out listening for your sigil.”

  “Listening for it,” she repeated, trying to grasp the concept. Her stomach gurgled. “For fuck’s sake . . . we’re being chased by monsters and here I am starving. I didn’t eat last night. What is it, noon?”

  “We’ll get some food as soon as it’s safe and—”

  “I’m going to need some real shoes, too. Can we stop somewhere, some town center? Just for, like, half an hour?”

  He didn’t look happy at the prospect. “What is it about women and shoes?”

  “Oh, mock me for being a cliché, that’ll help.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I need something I can run in. We are fleeing, right?”

  “Right. We’ll see about getting better shoes, but understand me, lass, we take our lives in our hands every time we stop.”

  “I get that,” she said soberly. “I really do. But if we are stopped—by them I mean—I’m no good running through woods and across fields in heels or bare feet.”

  “Still safer to keep moving,” he said.

  “Look, you can’t seriously expect me to stay in this car for thirty hours! Besides . . . they could run us off the roadway out here and nobody would so much as notice. In a town there are lots of people. Doesn’t that make it harder for them?”

  He looked at her critically. “You were surrounded by a couple of hundred people at that tavern last night.”

  “Club,” she corrected. “That still doesn’t alter the fact that I can’t run through the woods barefoot.”

  Rhymer seemed to weigh that. “All right,” he said, and suddenly turned left, heading, so the sign indicated, for the village of Marfield.

  “Thank you. Can I try Carrie again?”

  He handed her the disposable phone. The signal was lousy, but it rang, dumping her immediately to voice mail. Stacey ended the call as she had done the previous time. Carrie not answering her phone was a bad sign, and Stacey imagined that a car had struck her while she sat stupefied in the parking lot last night. Last night? Christ, it seemed like days ago.