Lackey, Mercedes - Serrated Edge 04 - When The Bough Breaks

by When The Bough Breaks [lit]

  "Of course I remember," said Maclyn, who remembered no such thing.

  "So where's the movie? You forgot it, didn't you?"

  "I just forgot to bring it in with me. It's in the car. I didn't forget to rent it."

  Like hell, I didn't forget, he thought while he trudged back to Rhellen. What in Oberon's name was I thinking this morning?—I burned breakfast, I fixed something else, we rolled around on the bed awhile, we took a shower, we ran out the door—I still don't remember anything about a movie. At least, he mused, I promised one I've already seen. Be a bitch to pull it out of thin air if I hadn't.

  He opened Rhellen's door, concentrating hard, and a VCR cassette in a clear plastic cover appeared on the seat. He picked it up and returned to the apartment.

  Lianne's expression as he handed her the tape was decidedly weird. He started to ask her what was wrong, then thought better of it.

  She walked over to the VCR without a word, and pushed the eject button. A movie popped out. She opened the plastic case of the tape he'd provided for her, and turned her back to him.

  She stood silently for a long moment, while Mac grew more and more tense. "Jesus, that's a neat trick," she said finally, and turned around. "Who are you—really?"

  Maclyn hedged. "Why do you ask?"

  She smiled. "You were very close with this. Your label is almost perfect, except you're missing the copyright date, and there's only a gray box where the small print would be—if I hadn't had an original here to compare, I bet I never would have noticed the difference."

  He nodded, maintaining a calm exterior while his brain raced wildly. In her hands she held two copies of The Man With One Red Shoe. One of them had been obtained from a video rental store. The other—well, it hadn't. He felt the tempo of his pulse increase. "Maybe the copy I picked up was pirated."

  "Oh, I'm sure of it," she said with a wry smile. "Out of thin-fucking-air. We never said anything about movies this morning, Mac. I only said that to see what you would do—because there is something very odd about things that have happened in my life since you showed up. It strikes me as uncanny, for example, that neither of us said a word about you picking up this movie, and yet, when I asked you about it, you happened to have it in your car. Wherever this came from, Mac Lynn, it wasn't a rental place."

  He stalled for time, trying to think, but unable to make his mind work. This wasn't the way it was supposed to happen—it wasn't supposed to happen at all, actually. "I see. So I was correct in thinking I hadn't said anything about movies in our rush this morning? How interesting. You see, I have an imperfect memory for minutiae. It usually isn't a problem."

  Her arms were crossed in front of her chest. "Perhaps more of a problem than you realize. There is, of course, the silver tray—real silver, of incredible quality, with no maker's mark. I don't buy it. There are the out-of-season cherries. And of course we can't forget your willingness to believe that papers were indeed flying around my classroom of their own accord." She took a step toward him. "You are very interesting, Mac Lynn. You are charming, you are handsome, and you are great in bed. But you are not what you seem to be. Now I want an answer on this, and I want it right now. Who—or what—are you?"

  * * *

  Finally, she was getting somewhere.

  From her position behind the shrubs outside of the apartment window, Belinda stared through the slatted mini-blinds at Mac Lynn and his girlfriend. She recognized the girl—had seen her before, in connection with Mac Lynn. She frowned, determined to remember where she had seen that face, and suddenly she recalled the girl striding across a parking lot—

  Bingo! She's one of the teachers at Loyd E. Auman. I followed him there that one time—and that explains why he was over there in the first place. That's where his piece of ass works.

  Belinda's face lit up with a beatific smile. His girlfriend could give him to her. Just grab her and stash her someplace, then tell him his girlfriend was dead unless he did exactly what she said, and have him follow instructions that would deliver him voluntarily to Mel's doorstep.

  Voila, she thought, a nice paycheck for me and a well-earned vacation that doesn't involve chasing spookies—preferably someplace far away, with mountains and ocean and deferential waiters.

  Cozumel, she decided, or maybe Greece.

  They appeared to be arguing. That was good from Belinda's point of view. He might stomp out, leaving her alone tonight. In which case, I'll just knock on the door and grab her when she answers it, thinking he's come back to apologize. If he stays the night, of course, I'll just pick up Little Miss Teacher sometime tomorrow—or after school Monday.

  That seemed like a good, sound, workable plan, and much less complicated than trying to drug him again. It also meant she didn't need to sit in the damp shrubbery catching a cold. Belinda stood up and headed back to her new rental car. Stake-outs were much more pleasant when accompanied by Perrier, Bach, and croissants.

  She moved into the area of darker shadow that lay between the teacher's apartment and the parking lot, and noticed two disturbing things as she did. The first was that Mac's car wasn't in the parking lot anymore.

  The second was that what had seemed, out of the corner of her eye, to be laundry hanging out between the apartments, wasn't. It was a big, light-colored horse.

  And no sooner had she identified the horse for what it was than it had her jacket between its teeth, and she was flailing through the air to land on the beast's back. She reached for her gun, the creature bucked, she grabbed the beast's mane to keep from hitting the ground—

  And things got a little hazy from there.

  Belinda decided pretty promptly that she must have fallen off the horse anyway and knocked herself silly and wandered around a bit. It was the only explanation that made any sense. Otherwise, she would have had to admit that the horse had turned into a car that drove itself, and that it had driven her onto the street in front of the old abandoned Fox Drive-In, and dumped her by the side of the road before cruising off into the night. It would have implied that the car had chosen to abandon her where hookers plied their trade and G.I.'s and out-of-town businessmen and restless locals went looking for action.

  It would have implied that the fight Belinda got into with the pimp and the big buxom blonde and the transvestite and the two horny guys in the red Camaro was the fault of a goddamned '57 Chevy.

  And no matter how spooky things got, Belinda wasn't ready to admit that.

  * * *

  Mac faced Lianne, and swallowed hard. Humans weren't anywhere near as gullible as they'd once been—at least some of them weren't, he decided. The room felt uncomfortably warm.

  "I'm a racecar driver," he said with an ingenuous smile.

  Lianne nodded, her expression grave. "A racecar driver is the least of what you are, Mac Lynn. I've always made it a point to date within my species before this, but I think I've not even managed to live up to that one simple rule this time. Have I?"

  Maclyn stood, studying her, thinking fast.

  Lianne saw the evasion coming and headed it off. "Mac, I'm to the point where I won't believe anything but the truth. And please give me credit for being able to tell the truth from a lie—remember, I deal with ten-year-olds on a daily basis." She smiled wryly. "Besides, I doubt that the truth is going to be anywhere near as ludicrous as what I've suspected."

  "Wanna bet?" Mac muttered.

  Lianne heard him. "No," she said. "But lay out your cards anyway and let me take a look."

  "Okay." He took a deep breath and studied her. "You've heard of Faerie, of course."

  "One of my best friends is one."

  "Not that kind of fairy."

  "I was being facetious. I've heard of Faerie. Up to this point I've found its purported existence likely to be the product of hallucination and overdoses of wheat-smut, but I'm a logical soul. Presented with sufficient proof, I'll believe just about anything. I suppose you're going to tell me you're the elf-king of Fairyland or something."

 
Mac's right eyebrow arched up. "I'm an elf. Not `or something.' And I'm fairly high up in the line of succession, but I'm not the king, or even the prince."

  Lianne sighed and said to whatever higher powers inhabited the ceiling, "I'm taking this rather well, aren't I?" She studied Mac for a long, silent moment, then said, "Granted I've already seen enough to convince me that you aren't normal—but would it be too much to ask for some proof that you are what you say you are? Seeing that we've been sleeping together and all?"

  Maclyn gave her a very Gallic shrug—and his human seeming faded away. He presented himself to her in his full elvish glory, from the gold circlet on his head to the sweeping white folds of his ermine cloak, to the rich white-on-white textures of his silk-embroidered tunic and velvet leggings. He showed her himself, pointed ears, pale green slit-pupilled eyes, and inhuman smile.

  "My lady," he said, inclining his head with courtly grace. "Is this sufficient proof?"

  Lianne sat down sharply on the coffee table. Her eyes went round and she whistled softly. "I'll be damned," she whispered. "An elf. A damned sexy one."

  She cocked her head to one side and studied him closely. "A question, then."

  "I'll answer it if I can."

  "What are you doing hanging around me?"

  And isn't that just the question? Maclyn thought. I wish to hell I knew the answer.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Andrew Kendrick heard the first sounds from the barn just as he was locking up the house for the night. He ran to the window and stared out at the hellish red glow in the dark that held the stable area. It was clearly coming from the pony barn. At first his mind couldn't recognize the disaster for what it was—but then he shook himself out of his paralysis and reacted.

  "Fire!" he shouted to Merryl. "There's a fire down in the pony barn! Call the fire department, now!"

  He pulled on boots and sprinted out the back door. If anything, it looked and sounded worse now that he was outside. He could barely hear the terrified whinnies of the pony above the roar that came from within the shed.

  He goaded himself into a run, heading down to the barn, wondering if he would be able to get into the secret storeroom and thinking of the money that was going up in smoke in there. Thinking of all the—special things—that were going to be destroyed, and that were going to be even more difficult to procure the second time than they had been when he'd first obtained them.

  Merryl passed him on the path, flew to the right and to her own barn, full of pedigreed mares and foals, her prize stud, her champion filly—the objects of her real passion and her love. Andrew heard her throwing open her barn doors, chasing the horses out into the pasture and away from the impending disaster. He clenched his fingers into tight fists, outraged at her care for the animals and her indifference toward him.

  He watched her working frantically, momentarily distracted from his goal. She has a lot of nerve, ignoring me. Amanda's mother learned what happens to people who ignore me. I've been too easy on Merryl. He fumed with smoldering rage as he raced towards the pony barn, wondering if he could save anything without Merryl seeing it. He wasn't really thinking about the barn, nor about the fire—not, at least, until was he nearly at the structure.

  Realization that there was something very strange going on stopped him like a stone wall. I don't smell any smoke, he thought. It sounded like there was a war going on down there, and it certainly looked as if the place was being overrun by the fires of hell—wind that screamed like a damned and tortured thing, the crash and thud of heavy objects hitting against the walls, the screech of nails ripping loose from beams—and the terrible red light still gleamed through cracks, but there were no tongues of flame visible and no smoke to smell.

  What the hell—? he wondered.

  A piece of board blew past him, and some unidentifiable bit of shrapnel grazed his cheek—and Andrew watched dumbfounded as gaps appeared, as if something or someone from inside battered away at the barn. The night air was thick with a sense of rage, of hatred so dense and palpable he could feel it brushing against his chilled skin like damp, drowned hands. His heart pounded with fear that was not even his own, and his mouth went dry and his breath came fast in spite of his struggles to control his emotions. He found himself backing away from the barn, and found that he could not stop himself, could not make himself walk back toward it.

  From behind him, he heard the wail of sirens and the squeal of tires turning into the lane. The fire engines' flashing red lights joined the peculiar illumination that came from the barn—the night pulsed red. Blood, he thought, clutching his arms around himself. The world is bleeding.

  The firemen were unrolling their hoses, shouting to each other, pointing out their target. Merryl was still loosing horses out into the field.

  Andrew saw none of it; instead, he had been inadvertently thrown back to his own childhood.

  He saw the little beagle puppy he'd "bought" when he was eleven from the kid down the road—bought with marbles and a brand-new baseball glove and a brand-new football. The puppy he'd smuggled home and made a wonderful soft bed for and hidden under the house because his father had said, "No dogs," but he'd wanted it so bad—

  His puppy, laid out on a board, belly up; its little muzzle wired shut, its eyes wide and staring, its paws nailed into place. And his dad, furious, shouting at him, "Now you'll know to listen to me, won't you, you little bastard! Next time you disobey me, this will be you!" And the knife, in his father's hand, slitting the little beagle's white belly open, and the pup's eyes rolling in terror and pain—

  And the blood pulsing red and redder around his father's fine doctor hands, pulsing like the lights from the fire engines—and again he tasted the anguish and the fear—

  And the red glow in the barn just—went away.

  Thick, suffocating silence crowded in to fill the void and darkness. The firemen paused, and stared. The horrible noises that had been coming from inside had stopped, abruptly, almost as if a switch had been flipped. The terrible feeling of rage and fear made the same abrupt departure.

  Then sounds rushed back and revived the night: the chirping of crickets and the whinnies and stompings of the horses out in pasture, the stamp and crunch of one fireman's boots as he walked, flashlight in hand, down to the barn, and pulled the battered and sagging door open.

  And his voice, awestruck as he aimed his flashlight into the dark recesses of the structure—"Je-e-e-e-ZUS, Johnnie, get a load of this!"

  * * *

  The rippling motion of the border had lulled her into a near-trance. Felouen sat, her back pressed against the smooth rock base of the Oracular Pool, staring into the nothingness, and she worried. Maclyn might come around. He might help against whatever was coming. Then again, enchanted by his other interests, he might leave her to fight and die alone.

  There had been more to the visions of the Oracular Pool than the one brief glimpse it had shown Maclyn. War was coming—a long and savage battle with the outnumbered elvish forces lined up against hordes of Unseleighe unlike anything the Kin had ever seen before. Her friends would fall, and she would fight on, uselessly, would herself be gravely wounded, would flee and be captured, would suffer at the hands of the unstoppable things from the Unformed. And only then would she die. She had seen her own death. It was not a good one.

  She had seen another vision as well, an alternate future in the inscrutable reflections in the Pool. Maclyn would stand at her side, with the battle raging as before—but the enemy would be fewer and weaker, the tide of battle would turn in the Kin's favor, and she would live. So she sat and pondered, staring out into the non-place on the other side of the border with loathing.

  Felouen sensed the change before she saw it.

  A presence born of fear and rage and hatred swirled into being in the Void, reached out and clawed at her from that nothing-world. It sent her to her feet, recoiling from the tentacles that reached with sudden intent directly for her.

  From the Nothing, flickers of
blood-red light began to glow.

  * * *

  ". . . so you see, she was human, and I loved her, and when she died, I thought that everything about me that had mattered had died, too," Mac said. He sat on one side of Lianne's couch, again wearing his human seeming. "Everything about her was so brief and so painfully fleeting, and the harder I tried to stop time, to hold her life in my hands and keep her with me, the faster I saw the years tear her into shreds. She died nearly two hundred years ago, but there are still times when the thought crosses my mind that if I went back to Tellekirk, I'd find her there."

  He locked his hands together, and he stared at his shoes. "In you, I see that same frightening beauty, that same—life—that burns so hot and so fast. I cannot stay away from you. And I find myself longing for your brief, blazing beauty, and wondering how you can burn your life so fast."