Dark Duets

by Christopher Golden

  They arrived in Marfield on Creightontown Road, first passing a small hotel and café called the Rowan, and then shortly as they crawled along the main street of the village, a shoe shop. He pulled over and parked across from it. She got out, ran barefoot across the road.

  The shop seemed to specialize in Doc Martens, but she found a pair of red sneakers that fit. Rhymer paid, producing a thick wad of bills from his pocket. When he caught her staring at the money, he leaned close and said, “Picking the pocket of a skinwalker isn’t actually theft.”

  “Jeez,” she said. Then her stomach grumbled again, much louder this time. “If I don’t eat soon, they won’t need that effing sigil to find me. They’ll just follow the hunger pangs.”

  He rubbed his eyes and then nodded as if accepting a sentence to be flogged. “Very well,” he groused. “We’ll get some food.”

  They left the car there and walked back down the road to the Rowan.

  They sat by the front window, giving him a view of the street outside. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in a year.

  “When we’re done here,” Stacey said, “let me drive.”

  He started to protest, but his words were interrupted by a jaw-creaking yawn.

  “That’s settled then,” she said.

  A waitress came—the only one in the place. Stacey ordered an American-style burger and a Coke. Rhymer had the shepherd’s pie and coffee. “I’ve acquired a taste for it,” he explained, though she hadn’t asked.

  “Do you think we’re safe?”

  He shook his head. “No way to tell. I don’t have an elf detector.”

  “Hilarious. But they have a tithe detector, don’t they?” She meant it to sound light, but it fell over them like a bucket of cold water. “How do they choose? How did they pick me over everyone else in that shite club?”

  “You must have made eye contact at the right moment—from his point of view, I mean. It could as easily have been your friend if you’d switched seats.”

  She chewed her burger, ate some chips, and meanwhile sorted through all that had happened to her, the beautiful monster who had snared her, this strange, slight man who seemed to be some kind of immortal in his own right. Unless, of course, he was barking mad, but then if he was, so was she. “What started you—I mean, ten bloody centuries, you were here for the Davidian Revolution for fuck’s sake. I can’t wrap my mind around it.”

  “Me, either,” said Rhymer. “Davidian? I think I missed that one.”

  “What made you pit yourself against them?”

  He took a forkful of meat and mashed potato. “The short version is—”

  “Does everything have two versions with you?”

  “Everything in life does,” he said. “Though rarely only two.”

  She bit her burger.

  “Anyway . . . it was the Yvag who set me on this path. Everything that’s happened was because of them. Is because of them.” He ate, and his eyes slid past her, focused upon the street as if something had caught his attention. But it soon became apparent that he was looking deep into the cavern of his own memories. Gray clouds seemed to drift across his face, deepening the sadness in his eyes.

  “What’s the long version?” she asked gently.

  Without looking her way, he answered, “They chose unwisely.” His voice was distant, pale, and filled with ice.

  She set down her burger. “That’s the long version?”

  He came back to the moment, then his blue eyes closed for a moment. When he opened them, he gave her a hard, grim smile. But he didn’t answer. His reluctance was palpable. She found herself reaching across the table to close her hand over his. He twitched at her touch. Human contact was that alien to him?

  “It’s fine,” she said. “You don’t have to.”

  “It’s not that. I don’t know quite where to start. Tell me, have you ever heard of the ballad of Thomas the Rhymer?”

  “Rhymer?” She smiled. “He a relative?”

  “Have you ever heard of it?”

  “Sure. We read something in school. Let me see . . . ‘True Thomas sat on Huntlie bank?’ ”

  He nodded.

  It took her almost twenty seconds.

  “Jesus H. Christ!” she gasped.

  “Shhh,” he cautioned.

  “You’re going to sit there and tell me that you’re Thomas the fucking Rhymer?”

  “What . . . after everything else it’s that you can’t believe?”

  “No, it’s just . . . just . . . There are all those legends. And songs. I mean, Steeleye Span did a song. My mum had that album. And that band . . . Alabama 3, they did a song. That’s the damn band that did the theme song for The Sopranos. You want me to believe you’re that Thomas the Rhymer?”

  He spread his hands.

  Stacey tapped the tabletop. “There’s a tower in Earlston that’s supposed to be connected to him. Well, what’s left of a tower. It’s a bleedin’ tourist site.”

  He gave her a lopsided grin. “I know. I took the tour once. Just to see. It’s called the Ercildun Tower. Actually, I never lived in that tower. They built it on top of my cottage a century after I’d gone.”

  “And where were you?”

  “In Yvagddu.” She drew her hand back doubtfully. “I told you I didn’t know where to begin.”

  “You were the tithe?”

  “Not the first time,” he admitted. “The first time, I spied on them carrying off their teind.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “And they caught me watching. They don’t like being observed.”

  Suddenly his sharp eyes unfocused, and she knew he’d been pulled into another of his riddles.

  The friend who is nae what you see,

  The lie not told but in the being.

  They close the circle who come tae ye.

  His eyes cleared. He drew a sharp breath, set down his fork, and pushed his fingertips against his forehead as if massaging a headache.

  “Does it hurt?” she asked.

  “Not more than being kicked in the face,” he muttered. He blinked a few times and leaned back against the cushions. “All right. Tell me what I said.”

  She told him. When she was done, Rhymer glanced out the window again, but with such intensity that she turned her head too. Nothing out of the ordinary caught her eye.

  “We should go,” he said quietly. “If you need to use the loo, this is the time.”

  She got up and walked quickly across the small hotel lobby. At the restroom door, she glanced back. He was peeling bills from his thick roll of dead people’s money.

  She didn’t take long in the toilet stall, but she lingered at the sink, washing her face over and over again as if the soap and hot water would somehow sponge away the day.

  No, that wasn’t it, and she had to study her own haunted eyes until she framed it the right way in her head. She wanted to wash away the reality of all this.

  But she shook her head at that, too.

  Not all of it.

  Not Rhymer.

  She wanted him to be real. He was powerful in ways she didn’t understand, and beautiful in a wolfish fashion. Whether he was truly Thomas the Rhymer in reality, or a madman with some kind of psychic powers, or something else, he was real and this was happening. He’d saved her from humiliation and degradation. That alone made him heroic and even . . . sexy, though it was hard to get all hot and bothered while monsters were hunting you down in order to sacrifice you to hell.

  Hell . . .

  The word smashed into her mind like a fist.

  Hell. You couldn’t say the word enough times for it to lose meaning. Not today. Not after last night.

  Hell.

  It was no longer an abstract place in a Sunday service homily. Not a concept from a horror movie. Not a metaphor.

  It was actual . . . hell.

  She started to turn away from the mirror, from the belief she saw in her reflection, but her knees buckled and she crashed into the wall beside the sink. The floor pu
lled her with unkind gravity, demanding that she collapse into a huddled and quivering ball of tears. Maybe of screams.

  “Fuck!” growled Stacey with all the ferocity of a trapped animal. She slammed the wall with her elbows, propelling herself erect. She looked at the face of the woman in the mirror—the face that was filled with fear and wanted to let the enormity of all this crush her.

  “Fuck you,” she snarled.

  She whirled and banged open the bathroom door.

  8

  She came out of the bathroom and edged past an elderly man who was heading into the men’s room. As she crossed to the table she swiveled her head to check every face. To look for . . . what? The elf thing that had nearly taken her had looked completely human at first. So what did she expect to see?

  “You ready—?” she began as she slid into the booth. The question died unasked.

  Stacey’s heart nearly seized in her chest.

  Rhymer was gone.

  Instead . . . Carrie sat in his seat.

  Carrie was sitting across from her.

  “Oh my Lord, Carrie. You’re okay? God,” she babbled, “did Rhymer tell you to meet us here?”

  “Stacey,” said Carrie very quietly, “I need you to listen to me.”

  But Stacey was so happy to see her friend. “I’ve tried to call you, to make sure you’re all right.”

  “Ah,” said Carrie, “that was you. I didn’t recognize the number so I didn’t try calling back. You left your phone in your bag at the club. Here.”

  Carrie pulled Stacey’s small purse up onto the table and pushed it to her.

  Stacey stared at her purse but didn’t take it. “The phone’s off,” she said.

  “Is it?” said Carrie. “It doesn’t matter.”

  The elderly man came out of the men’s room and made his way across the lobby behind Carrie’s shoulder. He paused behind their booth and stared down at the back of Carrie’s head as if contemplating speaking to her. Instead, he turned away for the exit.

  Where was Rhymer? Was he in the loo? Was he getting the car? What was taking him so long?

  “Stacey, I need to tell you something and you have to listen. You have to.” Carrie leaned closer to take Stacey’s hands in hers, holding them firm and giving them small emphatic shakes as she spoke. “Listen to me, the man you’re with is a lunatic. He’s very dangerous. The police told me about him. He’s totally daft. He thinks he’s some sort of savior.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” said Stacey. “The guy I left with was the loony. Rhymer saved me.”

  Carrie shook her head. “No, honey, they have warrants out for him. You’re not the first girl he’s taken. The others . . . well, it’d fair turn your stomach what he’s done with them. He’s a monster. It’s all over the news, the whole country’s looking for you. For him.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Of course I did! When I came to outside the club and you weren’t there, I knew something had happened to you. I reported it right away.”

  “But you don’t understand, Carrie,” insisted Stacey, “he’s not the man who kidnapped me. I got away from the other guy. Rhymer stopped him.”

  Carrie smiled as if having to indulge a slow child. “You only think you got away, Stace. They’re all in it together. See? It’s a trick. They’re working some kind of mindfuck on you. I think they slipped something into your drink, so who knows what you think you saw. The police know the truth.”

  “No, listen—”

  “Stace, you think you’ve been rescued, which is just how he makes girls think they can trust him. Now he’s trying to take you to some secret place. He’ll lie and say that it’s a safe place, that you have to wait there with him for a while. Has he told you that?”

  “I—”

  “That’s where the other girls will be.”

  “What other girls?”

  Carrie shook her head sadly. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He’s collecting girls. Kidnapping them, rounding them up. He’s going to take you to wherever he keeps them. You’ll see . . . they’ll be there. All of them.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Sure it does. It’s a sex trade thing, Stace. That’s what they’re doing, kidnapping women for the sex market. He tells them it’s him who’s saving them from some evil cult or coven or some such bullshit, but that’s just to confuse them. It’s all about sex and money for him. Do you know how much money a good-looking white bird like you is worth to some Arab prince? Or to a brother in Dubai or someplace? All of this . . . all the elaborate steps he’s taken are just to make it work. He uses a lot of money and a lot of tricks because the payoff is huge.”

  “No, Carrie, you’re wrong about him. It’s not like that at all.”

  Carrie ignored her; she gave Stacey’s hands another squeeze. “Now listen, you need to come with me, okay? The police sent me in to get you away from him.”

  Stacey felt like the seat was tilting under her. This made no sense at all. She hadn’t imagined the man who abducted her, who got her to strip naked, who tried to lure her into a wall of shimmering light.

  She could not have imagined it.

  Nor could she have imagined that Rhymer came out of the night to save her.

  It had happened.

  Right?

  Now Carrie was telling her that all of those things were false—lies or the product of some kind of drugs, maybe mind manipulation. Did that make sense?

  Or . . . which made more sense? A coven of evil elves who wanted to tithe her to hell or a manipulative bastard who wanted to sell her to the sex trade?

  Neither seemed to be part of any world Stacey lived in.

  Right?

  She stared into Carrie’s eyes, looking for the lie, looking for something that made sense of what her friend was saying. After all, this was her flatmate, her girlfriend for the past three years, the person she trusted with secrets she would not have shared with anyone else. The boyfriends, the bad dates, the skeevy English professor who’d come on to her last year—that’s who this was, holding out a hand with chipped Chancer-red nail lacquer, ready to whisk her away to safety while the police brought down the madman who called himself Rhymer, and the whole network of sex traffickers working with him. Maybe they’d taken him already and that was why he’d vanished.

  Or were the police outside waiting for Rhymer to come out of the bathroom? Were the SWAT team, the Lothian and Borders squad cars all poised to pounce?

  She looked out the window, but there wasn’t anything on the street except a bronze-colored Bentley parked right outside, with two official-looking men in charcoal suits standing beside it, the people on the street glancing as if expecting a celebrity to pop out any moment. Not a policeman in sight. But from here she couldn’t see the Fiat either.

  “I have to get you out of here,” Carrie insisted.

  And then like an echo, Rhymer’s voice seemed to whisper in her ear. A fragment of his last riddle.

  “ . . . the friend who is nae what you see . . .”

  The blood in Stacey’s veins turned to cold slush.

  Carrie sat there, eyes intense, mouth . . .

  Smiling?

  It was so small a thing. Just the tiniest upturn at the corners of Carrie’s full lips.

  A smile.

  Why in the wide blue fuck would Carrie smile?

  And where the hell was Rhymer himself?

  If this was a trap, how had it been laid? Was the hostess one of their kind? Smiling so nicely at everyone?

  Smiling like Carrie.

  “Will you come with me, sweetie?” asked Carrie with that smiling mouth.

  A word rose to Stacey’s lips. It came slowly and reluctantly, and Stacey knew that to speak it would cost her. It would hurt her.

  She said, “Skinwalker.”

  For a tiniest fraction of a second, Carrie’s façade slipped, the brown eyes flickered with a degree of intelligence that had never shone in the girl Stacey knew. It was
weird.

  No, it was alien.

  In that moment, seeing that different mind look out at her through those familiar brown eyes, Stacey knew—as surely as she knew her own name—that Carrie was dead.

  The monsters had come and stolen her friend away. Stolen the light that was Carrie’s light. Stolen her laugh, her dreams, her joy of living. Stolen everything. It was worse than murder. Using her body like this was a new, foul kind of rape.

  “Oh, God, Carrie . . .” Stacey said as she jerked her hands away. Tears threatened to flood her eyes. And she repeated that dreadful word. “Skinwalker. You’re part of that coven.”

  Carrie’s smile blossomed into something overripe, swollen and nasty. She rose and came around the table and clamped a hand on Stacey’s biceps. The pain was immediate and intense. “You need to come with us now.”

  “Why? Why didn’t they just take you or somebody else?”

  Carrie abandoned all pretense of being herself as she jerked Stacey out of the booth.

  “Rules,” she hissed, making that word into something hideous. “Your new boyfriend put the sigil on you. Hell has tasted you. Nobody else will do.”

  Tasted. She shivered.

  God almighty.

  She tried to pull away, but it was hopeless. She twisted around to yell for help, but everyone in the place was already looking at her.

  Every single person was smiling.

  At her.

  Their smiles were wrong. All so wrong.

  Like Carrie’s.

  Stacey sagged against Carrie. “Where’s Rhymer?”

  Carrie—or the thing that had invaded her body—sneered with contempt. “Your savior ran away like the coward he is.”

  “No . . .”

  “He saw us and he fled.”

  “He wouldn’t do that.”

  Carrie laughed. “That’s exactly what he does, you silly little cow. How do you think he’s survived for so many years?”

  “No!”

  Carrie leaned closer. “Why do you think that so many people have died in his stead? Or hasn’t he confessed his failures? His crimes? Thomas the Rhymer is a coward who stole his immortality, and all he does—all he’s capable of doing—is bring pain to those he pretends to protect.”