The red-haired woman and the man with the gun both made a grab for her. Two tall blond—rock stars, Andrew thought, for lack of a better term—appeared in the stall and grabbed the man with the gun without pausing for a second.
They threw him. Picked him up, and threw him over the stall door.
Odd. The blond bimbo looked like a rock star and dressed like a rock star, but she had pointed ears.
Andrew tried to use the chance to escape, and found himself unable to move. So, apparently, did the battered red-haired woman. She writhed in place, but her feet seemed to be rooted to the ground.
The blond man, who also had those odd pointed ears, walked over and lifted him easily. Andrew found himself slung across the man's shoulders, completely helpless, unable to move at all against the man's unnatural strength. He didn't bother resisting after the initial attempt. It wouldn't change the outcome any.
Andrew thumbed the lighter, felt the straw ignite . . . and he opened his hand.
There was an instant when he wasn't certain it would work—but then the gasoline he'd poured around the inside of the barn caught, and with a satisfying "whump," the inside of the building blossomed into flame.
Horses shrieked, the pale man and the pale woman started in dismay, and Andrew knew he'd won after all.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Fire licked within inches of them. The entire barn was in flames, there were strange people and guns and elves all over. None of it mattered—they were all together. Alice, Abbey, Cethlenn—and Anne. Alice and Abbey wiped tears from their eyes, and hugged her with illusory arms.
:Anne,: Alice said with real joy, :you came back, you really came back! You aren't bad, you're good, you were right, I was wrong, you're good and you're strong, and—:
Anne's lip quivered as she interrupted her sister. :H-h-h-he killed . . . Mommy.:
Abbey nodded solemnly and put her own arms around her sister, ignoring the flames that crept closer. :He said so. He was glad about it. We hate him. Are you going to feed him to your monsters?:
Anne shook her head slowly from side to side. :N-n-no more m-m-m-monsters. That was bad. Th-th-they hurt lots of people, and nobody deserved it. I'm s-s-sorry about the monsters.:
Alice crossed her snowy arms in front of her chest and pouted. :But Father is very, very bad. Bad people deserve to be eaten by monsters.:
Cethlenn rested her hand on Alice's shoulder. :I don't think Anne wants to be the one to feed people to the monsters anymore. She hurts inside from all the pain the monsters caused.:
Anne gave the witch a grateful look. :Yes,: she said simply.
The flames crackled and reached for the ceiling; horses screamed, including the strange elf-horses. That got their attention, and suddenly Abbey and Alice shrank against Cethlenn in fear. :Are we all going to die in the fire?: Abbey asked.
:No.: Anne looked at her sisters, and smiled. It was the first time any of them had seen her smile. :I'm w-w-with you . . . now. We're g-g-going to g-g-g-get better.:
* * *
Belinda backed away from the flames, but there was nowhere to escape. She was really trapped this time, with no place to run, no place to hide. She wasn't alone, but that was no comfort. Even with an escort to Valhalla like this one—Mac Lynn, Miss Teach Lianne, the little girl, her disgusting father, Mel-the-bastard, millions of dollars worth of horses—it was no comfort at all.
All of them trapped in a burning barn, and not one of them had a way out.
So much for noble intentions, Belinda thought, looking at the little girl; for some obscure reason, tears clouded her eyes. I would have saved you if I could have, kid. But now we're all going to die—because of that shitcan father of yours.
All of them—including the racecar driver. Nice to know, after all her hard work, that he was finally going to cross the Great Divide. Where the hell did he get the Spock ears, anyway? He looked like some Hollywood director's idea of an elf. How is he still alive after I put that bullet in his heart? And how did he pick up Mel and throw him like a baseball?
She was perversely glad that Mel Tanbridge was going to get what was coming to him. She just wished she didn't have to go with him.
The smoke thickened, wreathing around her and making her cough, and she knelt down, sucking for air. Maybe it would be easier to stand and inhale the thick, acrid smoke into her lungs. Get it over with quicker.
I just really don't want to die, she thought, as her eyes streamed tears and her skin started feeling as if she was getting a bad sunburn. Only this sunburn was going to be a real bitch. . . .
* * *
Mac stared helplessly at the sudden eruption of flames that penned them in. Lianne grabbed his arm and looked up at him, trusting him to do some wonderful trick to rescue them. But Maclyn had been too badly hurt—he didn't have enough energy left to work the simplest spell, much less create a Gate. When he'd been shot, the energy he'd been using to maintain the Gate in Lianne's apartment had snapped and drained off. That, as much as the bullet, had pushed him near death. Now he was fresh out of tricks.
Felouen, he knew, was no better off; she had drained herself to absolute exhaustion in order to heal the others, and had to borrow power from Rhellen to heal him. She told him with her eyes that she would be no help.
The old wood of the building burned like kindling.
Wait a moment—
There was a chance, Mac thought, looking frantically around, as his eyes lit on the terrified elvensteeds. The elvensteeds weren't immune to fire. But they might be able to transform, to take their riders out, shielded inside them. They probably wouldn't survive—but maybe humans and elves would. He grabbed Rhellen's mane and tried to communicate what he wanted to the terrified beast.
Amanda appeared at his side.
She put her hand on his, and he looked down at her, startled at the upwelling of power from the child. Her green eyes looked up into his. No more hate there, and no more fear. No insanity. He sensed that there were several people, still, inside her little head—but they were all together now, working as one.
"I know—the trick," she said. She pressed the green bead at her wrist between her fingers, her eyes closing in concentration—
In front of them, with a rush of energy, a Gate appeared.
The panicked elvensteeds dove into it. Lianne followed, with Felouen dragging Amanda's father, and Amanda holding back to maintain the Gate so that Maclyn and Belinda could escape as well. He reached for the child to pull her through.
Belinda suddenly shrieked "No!" and whirled to face them.
Mac froze. Belinda held a gun, leveled at him. "Let the kid go through, but you stay! You aren't getting away again," she shrieked, eyes glittering with madness. He opened his hands to reach for her; she was close enough—when a shape loomed out of the smoke and flames. It was the balding man they'd thrown, and he had a gun, too.
"Nobody move," he shouted. Mac and Belinda saw him aim the weapon at the child. "She's mine," he screamed. "You won't have her! Nobody gets her but me!"
* * *
Flames roared and circled them; Belinda's eyes flicked from Mac to that son-of-a-bitch Mel. Why isn't he dead? she wondered. He should have been. He was going to kill the rest of them—
Including the kid.
The kid didn't deserve it. The kid deserved to go live in fairyland after what had happened to her. Not to die in a goddamn fire.
She bit her lip. Sweat streamed down her face, and she squinted against the worsening smoke.
Dammit. One bullet—why did I leave everything in the car when I got ready to shoot Racer-Boy? One damned bullet—
She could shoot Mac. Or she could save the kid. She couldn't do both.
Belinda made her decision.
"Go!" she yelled to Mac, and the gun in her hands spit fire and bucked—and Mel staggered back, as a crimson dot appeared on his forehead.
* * *
:I couldn't hold the door anymore,: Anne said sadly, drooping with weariness. :I couldn't get the
lady out. I tried, but I was too tired.:
Cethlenn looked around the charred remains of Elfhame Outremer, and said softly, :You did the best you could, Anne. We all know that. I think you've made up for what happened to the elves.:
Abbey hugged her, then Alice, trying to reassure her. :You're our sister,: Alice whispered. :We aren't mad at you anymore. You did the right things, and you tried to keep us safe. You saved all of us!:
:I'm really glad you came back,: Abbey added shyly. :We need you.:
Anne smiled slowly, as if trying out the feeling for the first time. :I need you, too.:
* * *
Maclyn shuddered and took in huge gasps of clean, cool air. Behind them, the crashes of falling timbers, the roar of flames, and the anguished screams of horses echoed, even after the Gate snapped shut.
He could hardly believe their narrow escape. And that all of it had been caused by—or for—one small girl . . . that was the least believable of all.
Belinda hadn't made it. Mac straightened and stood in the forest of Elfhame Outremer, his eyes fixed on the place where the Gate had been. On the other side of it, she was dying horribly. She had saved Amanda's life at the last minute, Mac realized after a moment, and spared his. He still had no idea why she'd wanted to kill him in the first place, and he certainly couldn't fathom why she had saved him in the end. Or had it really been Amanda she was saving? He wondered if it was the only selfless thing she'd ever done—or if once she had been someone who had been worth knowing.
He turned away, saddened by the waste of her life.
* * *
Andrew Kendrick figured that he was probably insane. He should have died—but a blond bimbo with special-effects ears and eyes had pulled him through a hole in the air. At first, he'd thought it was some kind of new firefighting technique, and then he'd thought it was an hallucination.
He blacked out, and came to surrounded by a crowd of strangers; he thought then that he might be able to get away—the only witnesses to what he'd done to Amanda were dead, except for Amanda herself, and who'd believe a kid? But all the strangers had those weird ears and eyes, and wherever he was, it wasn't North Carolina.
He was wrestled to his feet with no consideration for his injuries before he could say a thing and hustled off into captivity. Since then, he'd been kept in a tiny cell, given sparse food and brackish water at odd intervals, and otherwise ignored. He was in some bizarre tree-world, and his cell had been the inside of a tree. That was when he figured he had gone insane, and there was no point in worrying about things.
The tall blond people—Sidhe, elves, he'd been told, and he'd stared at the speaker with disbelief, then laughed at him—had avoided him entirely until several hours ago, when two of them came and told him he was to be tried. He'd laughed at that, too, at the absurdity of it. But they'd hauled him away, and gradually he had to admit that whether or not he was insane, someone had him in their power, and that same someone had plans for him that he probably wasn't going to like.
Now he sat in a high-arching hall whose ceiling had recently been blasted open to the elements. The walls were scarred and pitted and burned. He'd noted that with a sort of detached interest as he'd been led into the hall. He wondered why the place was such a dump. What could possibly have happened here? It looked like a war zone.
The audience wore pointed ears, the jury and judge wore pointed ears—in fact, everyone except his daughter and her damned teacher wore them. The sight of Lianne What's-Her-Name sitting there in the audience stunned him for a moment. Whatever in hell was happening here, she must have a hand in it. Was this the high school drama club's shindig, with the costumes and ears?
He began to think, coldly and with guile. The teacher had him stashed away somewhere. Eventually, he'd get away. Then he'd get her. . . .
As the trial ground on, he was told how this place the "elves" called Elfhame Outremer had come to be destroyed. He was told a litany of dead and injured that made him chuckle in disbelief. He also discovered that the elves maintained that sole responsibility for the damage and all the deaths fell to him.
Even given that these people were loonies, put up to this by Lianne Whatsis, Andrew Kendrick was having some difficulty with that. In the first place, he didn't believe that Amanda had done the things they said she had—if she had been able to make monsters out of thin air, and work "magic" like that, why hadn't she gone after him? Why hadn't she done something about their games?
The memory of what had happened to the pony barn intruded at that moment, but he pushed it resolutely away. Whatever had happened there, Amanda couldn't have been responsible. She was only one little girl, one stupid, sluttish little girl. It must have some rational cause—and surely, surely some adult enemy had done it. Not the brat. Children were helpless, as they should be; property of those who fathered them.
Still, these "elves" insisted that was the truth. It only proved that they were loonies. He didn't know how Lianne Whatever had found them, but she sure fit right in with them.
Even if Amanda had been the cause for the "elves' " injuries, he didn't see how he could be legally held responsible for her insane outbreak. He hadn't conjured monsters or whatever the hell they were saying she'd done. He couldn't have if he tried—they even admitted that. But they were saying he made Amanda do it—and he'd never heard of any charge as crazy as that, not even in the kangaroo courts of Iran and Iraq.
Nuts. They were nutcases, one and all. Maybe Lianne had dragged him off to a nuthouse somehow?
But even nuts responded to some kind of logic, and before he could think about getting away, getting back to Fayetteville, he'd have to convince them that he was innocent. Since Amanda was admittedly as crazy as they were, she must be lying, and he was innocent of whatever they thought he had done. All right, they were trying him as some kind of an accomplice, perhaps. Why should he even have to take the rap for that? The "elves" didn't have any hard evidence. The testimony of a kid the "elves" frankly admitted had serious psychological problems wouldn't have held water for a second back in Fayetteville.
He summoned his best judicial manner and stood up to speak his piece. But when he'd tried his rebuttal, he'd been firmly silenced and told that in Elfhame Outremer, he had no rights. No speech of any kind on his part would be permitted.
At that point, he was just about ready to explode. He kept his mouth shut only by reminding himself that there were other loonies on the "jury," and that even if they convicted him, he'd be able to get away at some point. And then he'd bring the authorities down on all of them. After silencing Amanda first, of course.
The "trial" took place over most of a day. At the end, he sat, chin erect, eyes firm, expression noble and convincingly innocent. He faced his accusers. Most of the people who had been in the burning barn were there. The blond "elf," who was also the local hero racecar driver Mac Lynn; his own daughter, Amanda—who looked at him from time to time and cried; Amanda's teacher, Miss McCormick; and the tall, skinny "elf" bimbo who had dragged him out of the barn. Felouen? What was that, Jamaican or something?
The kangaroo court prepared for the summing-up.
"Your actions were the direct cause of all of this," the bimbo said. She looked at him as if he were a particularly loathsome form of excrement she'd found on the bottom of her shoe. "Because of your abuse of this child, almost half of the people—innocent people—of Elfhame Outremer are lost to us. The city itself is as you see it now because of you—a ruin that will take hundreds of years to heal. Nothing will heal our many dead, nor the hearts of those who loved them and buried them. There is no punishment that we can give you which will mete out justice fully."
Andrew grinned at her. It was true. The worst they could do was kill him, and he'd been ready to do that himself. And if they didn't kill him, he'd get away, and then he'd come back with the law on his side and ready to deal with them all. Lunatics.
"However," the bimbo "Seleighe Court Lady" continued, "the one of our folk who discovered the t
rue nature of your crimes also declared a fitting sentence for you before she died. In deference to her, and because her demand on the course of your life comes as close as possible to achieving justice, her sentence will be carried out."
Sentence? So they weren't going to kill him. Fine. He was smart, he knew things—he'd learned a lot from some of his less respectable clients. He doubted there was any place they could put him that he couldn't get out of, eventually. He discounted the fact that he hadn't been able to find a way out of the hollow tree they'd put him in at first. He just hadn't had time, that was all. He'd show them.
The bimbo kept right on with her pompous speech. God, how he hated women who got any authority at all, even granted by a pack of nutcases! They got so out of hand. . . .
"We know that you were abused as a child. We discovered this from the Oracular Pool—and we regret that we were not there to intervene for you." A flicker of distant pity passed over her face, and he noted it with resentment. How dared she pity him? "However, your adult life was the result of a long series of choices you made of your own free will—and your decision to abuse your own child was one such choice. You never displayed regret and never sought help. Therefore, there are no mitigating circumstances to soften your punishment."
Lackey, Mercedes - Serrated Edge 04 - When The Bough Breaks Page 30