Wait for it, wait for it.
"There it is,"—a faint mutter, followed by the click of the latch, and light so bright it hurt.
Now!
Lianne stabbed with the tire iron and hit the woman in the throat, pumped full of adrenalin and with her attention focused someplace where the pain wasn't. The woman gagged, one hand flying to her throat as she staggered back a step, her expression one of shock.
If Lianne had a little more strength, it might have ended then and there. Instead, she only stunned the woman long enough to get the upper hand.
Lianne loosed a banshee scream, the accumulation of her rage and pain and fear tied into that savage howl, and tumbled out of the trunk. Her grip shifted slightly, and she backhanded the tire iron across the woman's face, then with both hands brought it down on the top of her head. The handcuff that dangled from her right wrist swung staccato accompaniment against the metal of the tire iron.
The woman threw her hands over her face and head to protect them, and Lianne staggered toward her, the tire iron held like a quarterstaff in front of her. Then she swung again, overbalanced, and fell forward, catching the woman across the chest with the tire iron. They tumbled to the ground together.
Lianne screamed with the pain of her broken ribs, but she forced herself to sit up, forced herself to hit the other woman until the bitch stopped struggling and her arms dropped to her sides and she lay still.
It was a pity, she reflected, as she sat on the ground and panted with pain, that she was so weak that it had been the weight of the tire iron that had done most of the damage. The woman lay like a lump in the weeds, a red welt rising on her cheek—but she was breathing, Lianne noted, with mingled disappointment and relief. She was still breathing just fine. Lianne poked her in the side once with the pointed end of the tire iron. She didn't move.
"I wish I was the kind of person who could do to you what you did to me. I'd beat your face in with your gun and kick you in the ribs." Lianne was so angry she shook, as conflicting emotions warred within her. Damn, I wish I could do that!
She looked down at the woman, lying unconscious and helpless. Well, I can't. She sighed, her adrenaline fading away. Time to get out of here—wherever here is.
Lianne went through the woman's pockets. She came up with the keys to the car, but none for the handcuffs. She toyed with the idea of taking the gun, then decided against it. At least she could take the clip out of the gun—leave her without bullets. That would work. When the police found the woman, Lianne wanted them to find plenty of evidence that would make it easy for them to throw her into a cell forever.
With the keys in hand, she pushed herself shakily to her feet and surveyed her escape route. She would have to retrace the other woman's path, which would mean backing the car down the long, overgrown drive to the road. She would have to twist around in the seat to back the car, which ought to hurt like hell, considering her broken ribs. She looked at the redhead, lying in the track broken down by the T-Bird, and sighed.
"I ought to just back over you, dammit. I really ought to."
But she didn't. She pulled the woman out of the middle of the drive, swearing with every step. An instant of weakness and the opportunity for revenge overcame her, though, and she dragged the woman over to the edge of a huge blackberry thicket, rolling her as far into it as she could, without getting caught in the vines herself. Limping over to the car, still suffering, Lianne wore the smile of the vindicated on her face.
She shoved the trunk down with difficulty, and leaned against the car itself to keep herself from falling as she stumbled over creepers and vines and fallen branches toward the driver's side door. She opened the door, leaned forward, wheezing; doubled over at the sudden stab of pain in her side, and fell onto the seat. Falling saved her life.
She heard the crack of the other woman's gun, a surprisingly unimpressive noise, at the same time that the driver's side window, in the precise spot where her head had been, flowered into an array of tiny concentric cracks.
Damn! Another clip? That's what I get for not killing you, isn't it! I should have taken the gun, she thought, pulling her legs in quickly, and closing the door as fast as she could.
Better yet, I should have left you where I could run over you. She shoved the keys in the ignition and curled low on the seat. The car started easily, and she slipped it into reverse and pushed lightly on the gas. She sprawled across the bench, as low as she could get and still reach the pedals, facing the rear of the car, her left hand clutching beneath the headrest of the passenger seat for balance, her right steering the car. Thank God the thing's not a stick, anyway.
She curved the car around the side of the house and aimed toward the road, praying like a gift-wrapped nun at the devil's birthday party. The car wallowed over a bump at the same instant that a bullet hole appeared in the front passenger window, and Lianne's foot slid farther down onto the gas pedal. The T-Bird accelerated wildly.
"Shit, shit, shit—oh, shit!" Lianne wailed, as various small trees and other obstacles loomed in the rear window, vanished at high speed and were replaced by others. She swerved and kept right on going. I wish I could close my eyes, she thought. I doubt it would make much difference in my—oh, shit!—she dodged another tree—driving!
She heard two sharp pings in the windshield behind her head. Two more of the bitch's bullets. When is she gonna run out? Lianne didn't dare look back. As long as she was still alive, anything else could wait.
The car bounced again, and a small tree splintered across the rear bumper. Oh hell, Lianne thought for some reason, it's only a rental. She didn't even remember the joke that punchline was from.
There was a crunch of metal and one massive heave—and Lianne felt the smoothness of pavement under the tires, heard the scrape of what must be the entire exhaust system under the car. A quick spin of the wheel, and she backed the rest of the way into the road. To her right were the dilapidated ruins of the house, and the red-haired woman, taking aim yet again. Lianne threw the car into drive and hit the gas. What a persistent snake you are. I hope you enjoy your walk home. She flipped the woman the bird and burned rubber in her acceleration. The rear window blossomed with its own bullet hole.
Well, Dad, she thought. I owe you my life on this one, I think. And if I live long enough to get to a hospital, I'll have a story to tell that rivals even yours.
* * *
When Maclyn heard the alarm through the trees, there was no question of going back to the apartment and waiting for the phone call. Rhellen would have to find him, Lianne would have to fend for herself—he armed himself as he ran toward the center of Elfhame Outremer, from whence the alarm came. Even as he ran, he kept thinking What kind of fool would open a Gate in the heart of an Elfhame?
Beside him, Dierdre on her elvensteed and Hallara on hers launched themselves toward the battle. :This is it!: Dierdre bellowed directly into his brain. :Get Rhellen.:
:I can't! Didn't bring him!:
Dierdre paused long enough to give him a withering look. :Idiot.: She pivoted her mount and leaned down to offer Maclyn an arm up. He took it and swung onto the steed behind Dierdre's saddle.
:I had to leave Rhellen to listen for the phone.:
:Brilliant, oh my son. Riding pillion is not the safest way to go to battle,: his mother said acidly, :but you'd be dead in no time on foot. There's nothing to contain those monsters or slow them down here.:
Dierdre wielded her sword left-handed, Maclyn held his in his right. They charged along the ground paths beneath the singing boughs of the gold-leaved home-trees, past the shimmering curtains of light in the flame-fountains, under the branch-braided arch of the Lover's Trees—and into the melee behind Hallara, who sprayed a broad blanket of machine-gun fire to try to clear them a path. From other sites on the perimeter, reinforcements arrived.
The vortex of a rogue Gate glistened hypnotically from beside the delicate blue-green filigreed sculptures in the Masters' Garden. Three elven mages engaged themse
lves in battling the Gate itself, trying to close it off. They threw containment spells and reversal spells over the maw that spewed the monsters into their midst—to no avail. Amanda-Anne's hastily-constructed Gate had ripped away part of the spell-formed reality of Elfhame Outremer itself. It fed on the energy of the destruction it caused, creating a direct road from the Unformed Planes to the center of the elves' safe haven. Amanda-Anne's nightmares advanced unchecked.
A horde of giggling, tittering stick-men and multi-legged screamers burst through and launched themselves against the scattered elven forces with bared fangs and razored claws. Initially, there was no strategy to the skirmishing. The elves hacked and slashed and shot, and the monsters failed to die. The grim things pressed forward into the elven ranks, pushed from behind by the larger monsters that moved through the Gate at their backs.
Hallara, Dierdre, and Maclyn joined forces with Felouen and a small phalanx of veteran warriors who were covering an elven spellcaster and one of Outremer's adopted human mages. The mages were mildly successful at individually spelling the nightmare things with the same containment spells that had proven useless on the Gate. But the effort required of them was enormous, while the number of horrors shoving through the Gate far exceeded those being contained.
Then Amanda-Anne's winged creatures arrived in force, lurching through the air like medieval stained glass demons and cathedral gargoyles. They dove on the defenders, howling like the damned, belching fire and dripping acid, diving down to pluck hapless elves from their elvensteeds and ascending far above the trees to fling them back to the ground below.
The defenders of Outremer were forced to retreat beneath the sheltering overhangs of the trees.
Then the trees began to burn.
The entire population of Elfhame Outremer—that part of it, at least, that had managed to survive the initial onslaught—fought back desperately. The few elven children lent their magical energy to parents who cast shielding around Outremer's untouched trees. A contingent of mages battled their way toward the Grove and dug in around the heart-tree. Weapons of every variety, human and magical, were leveled against the invaders. The Oracular Pool, the many fountains, and the Vale River that circled the whole of Elfhame Outremer were drained to feed a storm spell. Rain poured from the smoke-filled sky, and the conflagrations in the tree-homes and shelters of the elven haven began to die. And wet wood did not rekindle as easily.
Maclyn and Dierdre were part of the contingent who fought to protect the Grove. Their losses had been huge—more than half of the Grove's trees were charred stumps, with the bodies of their defenders scattered at their bases like fallen branches. Now, the largest of the monsters seemed to be concentrating on destroying the heart-tree itself. The death of the heart-tree would release the spells of thousands of years that had used it as the focus for maintaining Elfhame Outremer. Without the heart-tree, Elfhame Outremer would disappear back into the nothingness of the Unformed Planes. Mac had seen the movies—the battle to guard the heart-tree was a kind of Masada, an Alamo—there was no question of retreat. If the heart-tree went, there would be nothing to retreat to.
Maclyn had discovered that almost nothing slowed the monsters down, but if he cut off a golem's head, it stopped fighting until it could either locate the missing extremity or grow a new one. He'd passed this information on to the other elves, and the ground around them began to look like a croquet lawn designed by head-hunters.
The monsters became warier, and ground-fighting demons began to time their attacks with those of the airborne gargoyles.
Mac took a two-handed swipe at a winged demon that dove at him. He missed, and the demon sank its claws into a seam in his armor. Maclyn was ripped off of Dierdre's elvensteed, thigh muscles screaming in pain as he struggled vainly to stay horsed. The monster's screech rang in his ears, its breath blasted into his face, burning at his skin and making his eyes water. Then it dropped him. He lay, stunned, while the tides of the fray shifted.
When he was able to stand and wield his sword again, Dierdre was out of sight, and a new horror lurched at him with a grin on its foul face. He had no time to look for allies. His arms felt like lead, but he forced himself to slash again and again as the beast lunged at him. Three times the elven blade bit deep at the monster, yet it continued to giggle maniacally.
Around him, the elves were being herded into a few remaining pockets of resistance, and the toll of the dead mounted.
* * *
Amanda-Anne huddled in the hollow of a great silver elven-elm, shivering and miserable. This was the only safe place she had known of—this retreat far from the evil Father and the uncaring Step-Mother. This was the place she had thought to come and hide, where no one would hurt her, where nothing could frighten her. She had never thought that her own monsters would follow her—
And when they did, she had been sure that the elves would be able to get rid of them.
She had brought hell from her own world and from the Unformed Planes, and visited it here, in the only completely beautiful place she had ever seen. And she had destroyed it, all by herself; ruined it, made it worse than any place she had ever known, worse, even, than the pony barn. She stared out at the devastation that spread before her. Charred and smoking stumps were all that remained of most of the trees; the bodies of elves—so many beautiful, gentle elves—lay bloody and sprawled in the churned mud. The pretty green grass was gone, the sweet music was drowned in the screams of the dying, the bright pennants that had fluttered so briskly in the warm breeze hung in sodden tatters in the pouring rain.
Amanda-Anne, looking at the havoc she had wrought, felt something she had never felt before. She felt pain and guilt for those she had hurt. She felt regret for her actions. She felt responsibility.
She was as bad as the Father.
* * *
Maclyn shouldered aside a flailing arm as he cleaved another creature's fleshy skull. They came, still they came. One of the human mages had just been overcome by the monsters, his body clamped in the eight-armed thing's jaws as it laid into a second mage's defenses.
One of the Sidhe who had lived in the humans' world was doubled over near him, as if injured. Her lips moved as she concentrated on a Summoning-spell, and the air before her turned dark. Then a stack of wooden boxes materialized, and another, and finally a wooden rack of firearms with handwritten price tags on them. She stood straight again, pulling thick gauntlets on.
Maclyn hacked at his creature a few more times until he dismembered it, kicked its pieces far from each other, then turned to the female.
"Need help?"
"Could use it." She expertly undid the latch on a case and began loading a grenade launcher. "We need to buy some distance."
Maclyn winced at the amount of Cold Iron in the weapon, but decided that the time for desperate measures had come. "They'll be picking steel chips out of the Grove for years, but at least there will be a Grove."
* * *
Amanda-Anne huddled in her hidey-hole, and the first tears she had ever cried came to her eyes, scorching her cheeks, etching hot trails down her face.
"I am sorry," she whispered. "Oh, I am . . . so . . . s-s-sorry."
One of her monsters shuffled toward her hiding place, snuffling and casting its head from side to side, following the scent of the living. It looked down into the hollow where she hid, saw her, and chittered in soprano glee. Its bloodstained talons reached in after her.
"G-g-go away," Amanda-Anne whispered through her tears. "I d-d-don't want you here anymore!"
The monster vanished with a soft "pop."
:Make them all go away, Anne,: a quiet voice whispered in her head. Amanda-Anne closed her eyes and found her sisters, her other selves, facing her with angry or unhappy faces. Cethlenn stood before her, and Alice, and Abbey. Only the first-born, the real Amanda, was absent.
:Make them go away,: Cethlenn repeated. :You are the only one who can. Only you have the power. Only you can work the magic—or unwork it.:
:You must,: Alice added. :You can't leave the people in this place to die. You did it, now you have to undo it. It's all your fault.:
Amanda-Anne felt the hot tears streaking down her cheeks and choking away her breath. :I know.: She hugged her arms tighter around herself, and told the three who watched her, :I'm sorry.:
But "sorry" didn't fix things. She'd have to do that now, before they got worse. Amanda-Anne crawled out of her shelter and stood exposed to the sharp eyes of the monsters, the startled eyes of the elves. "Go away," she screamed, above the roars of explosions and gunfire, above the skin-crawling chittering laughter, above the howls and the prayers and the oaths and the crying. "Go away!" She concentrated on how much she didn't want her monsters, on how much she wished them to disappear. For a moment, there was nothing but silence.
Then the creatures of her imagination vanished, leaving behind only the dead, and the ruin they—she—had caused.
And then, miserable and afraid, fearing what the elves would do to her when they realized what she had done to them, and feeling that she would never deserve safety or beauty again, Amanda-Anne raced for the Gate she'd made. She threw herself through it, pulling it shut behind her.
Lackey, Mercedes - Serrated Edge 04 - When The Bough Breaks Page 25