Mad Maudlin

by Mercedes Lackey

  "Hold on," Melody warned.

  They hit the security barrier with a jarring impact as the Navigator accelerated. Ria and Marley were flung back and forth jarringly against the seats as the Navigator bounced over the debris and out into the street, still accelerating.

  It had just begun to turn when the explosion shook the night.

  "Never lie, Ria. It causes wrinkles," Michael had told her once. The grenade had been live, just as he'd said.

  Goodbye, Michael. I'm sorry you didn't get to see Greece again.

  "Drive for your life," Ria said harshly.

  * * *

  "Where is he?" Beth Kentraine demanded.

  Apparently the e-mail servers to Underhill were working just dandy at the moment. Two hours after Kayla had sent her e-mail—worded as tactfully as she could, under the circumstances—both Beth and Kory had shown up on her doorstep—or rather, Eric's doorstep.

  They walked in—a tall blond man and a shorter, red-headed woman, holding motorcycle helmets beneath their arms. Beth Kentraine's hair had originally been black, Kayla remembered, but the elves had changed it for one of her disguises, and Beth had never changed it back. Both were wearing dark maroon motorcycle leathers, having ridden here from the Everforest Gate on their elvensteeds.

  "I don't know," Kayla said miserably, opening the door wider to let Beth and Kory enter Eric's apartment. "Nobody knows. Except maybe his ride, and she ain't talking."

  "I will go see what I may discover there," Kory said, turning to leave again. As he left, he rested a hand on Beth's shoulder. Kayla could feel the unspoken communication flow between them.

  "You want tea?" Kayla asked.

  "I want to know where Eric is," Beth said tightly. "You didn't say much in your e-mail, other than that he'd disappeared suddenly and—"

  "Well, so does everybody else," Kayla snapped, interrupting what promised to be a Beth Kentraine special. "Want to know. An' all I know after three days is that he's probably not dead and probably not in Underhill. And how are you folks?"

  "Why did you wait so long to tell us?" Beth half-wailed, sinking down onto the couch. "Eric doesn't just—disappear. We could have helped."

  I'm sitting in a building full of magicians with a talking gargoyle on top, and none of them could do jack, Kayla thought crossly. But she couldn't be mad at Beth. Of everyone whose life had been disrupted by Elven magic, Beth's had been the most deeply affected. For the rest of her life, Beth could only be a visitor to the World Above, and not only because every Alphabet Agency there was would be looking for her till the end of time because of her supposed involvement in the Poseidon Project mess.

  There was Kory to think of, as well as baby Maeve. Kayla knew that Beth and Kory were bonded together far more closely than any pair of human lovers, but Beth Kentraine was still human, and Korendil . . . wasn't.

  Underhill it didn't matter. Here in the Real World, it did. And according to Eric, if Beth spent enough time in Underhill, she'd reach a point where she couldn't come out, ever, not even for visits because, unless she was shielded by massive protection spells, she'd automatically attain her true age, the age she would have been if she'd been living outside of Underhill all along. And once enough time had passed, that would mean instant death. So Beth could only make the briefest of visits to the World Above, and pretty soon, not even that.

  Beth had the happiness she'd always dreamed of—a loving husband and a child. But—just like in a fairy tale—there was a price to pay.

  "That's why I called you guys, Beth," Kayla said. "I do need help. I've been trying to get through to Ria, but Anita says she's tied up with an emergency down in Washington. Hosea's good, but he's still an Apprentice Bard, and he's already looked for Eric and can't find him. Dr. Dunaway thinks Eric might be in a hospital somewhere, shielded so Lady Day can't sense him, and unconscious so he can't give his name. So . . . either Kory's magic can help, or you can hire me a private detective to start checking the local hospitals for John Doe admissions, because they're not going to listen to a college student who's not related to the guy, and hiring help's gotta be faster than doing it ourselves. You know how many hospitals there are in the New York area?"

  And what if he isn't in any of them? Let's hope she doesn't bring that up, because I don't have any good answers for that one.

  Beth raised an eyebrow in an expression familiar to Kayla from a thousand Star Trek re-runs, but Kayla's list seemed to have convinced her that Kayla hadn't just been sitting around.

  "So. Tea?" Beth said at last.

  * * *

  The tea was steeping by the time Kory returned. His doleful expression told them he'd had little success.

  "She knows he went to the Park, and there he became . . . lost to her," Kory reported, coming into the kitchen.

  "Lost?" Beth demanded.

  "How lost?" Kayla echoed.

  " 'Lost' " is the only word she has for what she experienced," Kory answered grimly, lifting the lid of the teapot and staring down into it as if the answers he didn't have might be there.

  Kayla stared at him, fascinated as always, despite the seriousness of the situation. She knew he didn't really look like what she was seeing. Kory was an elf—pointy ears, cat's eyes, and all—but the glamourie he cast showed her a normal—if stunningly beautiful—man. Slender, taller than average, long wavy blond hair flowing over his shoulders and green eyes to die for, the kind that model bookers would chase down the street waving contracts at, but still human.

  "Not dead, not kidnapped Underhill. Only . . . lost," Kory said, sounding puzzled. "And that should not be."

  "Where in the Park?" Beth demanded. "What was he doing there?"

  "I can take you there," Kayla said. "Or anyway, Lady Day can. Eric said he was going to 'make an interdimensional phone call.' That's what he said exactly. So for a while I thought . . ." You thought he'd gone Underhill to make arrangements for someone to take care of Magnus, and that's why you didn't worry until it was way too late for worrying.

  Should she tell them about Eric's brother? Kayla hesitated. Maybe she'd tell Kory, if she could get him alone, but Beth didn't look like someone who needed additional stress right now. Come down to it, neither did Kayla. She still hadn't made up her mind whether she was going to try to go back up to The Place again tonight. Not going felt a lot like running out on Eric when he needed her—there wasn't anybody else to keep an eye on Magnus. But right now Magnus wasn't going anywhere. At least she hoped he wasn't. And Eric might need her help more than Magnus did.

  "Earth to Kayla?" Beth said.

  Kayla blinked, startled out of her thoughts. What had she been saying a moment before? Running on four hours sleep a night—if that—wasn't doing her brain a lot of good.

  "You were saying that you thought Eric had gone Underhill," Kory prompted her, pouring tea.

  "Yeah," Kayla said, relieved. "But then, when Lady Day got all upset, it looked like not."

  Kory regarded her soberly. Beth might have missed everything she'd left out of that explanation, but it didn't look like her little elf buddy had. Kayla bit her lip, praying he wouldn't ask the next obvious question, because right now she was too tired to come up with a really convincing lie.

  "Well," Beth said, "let's finish this and go up to the Park and see what we can see."

  * * *

  "See?" Kayla said. "Nothing here."

  Beth looked around, wrinkling her nose. "Not a really nice place. I bet a lot of muggings happen up here."

  The three of them stood in the same clearing that Lady Day had brought Kayla and Hosea to three days before. Except for the addition of a few more bits of garbage, it was unchanged.

  "Probably," Kayla said. "But we should be pretty safe." There were three of them, after all, and the 'steeds could get them out of here at the first sign of trouble. Plus the fact that Kory could probably turn into an Elven Knight at the drop of a hat and pull a sword or something and scare the heck out of anybody who looked at them funny.


  "Forgive me for asking," Kory said, "but how did you look, when you were here last?"

  Kayla thought back. "Hosea had his banjo with him. He used Jeanette to look around."

  "And Jeanette is a disembodied human spirit?" Kory asked.

  "Yeah," Kayla said. My homie, the Ozark Bard with the haunted banjo. "She said he wasn't here and he wasn't dead."

  "But perhaps she did not see all there was to see," Kory said. "My power is not great—and in this place it is far less than otherwise—but perhaps it can tell us more."

  "Be careful," Beth said.

  Kory smiled at her. "With you and Maeve to think of, how could I be less than careful? Yet Eric is our true friend, and I will do no less than all I can for him as well."

  Elves. By the time you figure out what they've actually said, they've made off with the keys to the Mint, Kayla thought in irritable fascination. But she was complaining mostly to distract herself, she knew. If Kory could find Eric, or at least find out what had happened to him . . .

  Then maybe at least we'll know where to look for you, Banyon.

  Kory kissed Beth lightly on the cheek and walked away from the two of them, until he was standing in the middle of the open space. A trampled track of grass, not quite a path, showed where most people crossed through here, and Kory stood just to one side of that. He slipped off his leather gauntlets and set them gently aside on the ground. For several moments, his hands sketched patterns in the air.

  At first there was no result, and Kory frowned. He seemed to push against something, and the glamourie around him faded away as he funneled all his power into the spell, so that now Kayla could see his long pointed ears, pale skin, and slanted brows clearly.

  The patterns in the air seemed to take on more solidity now, becoming faintly glowing shapes, though they sparked and faded away almost at once. Kayla got the impression they weren't supposed to do that, because Kory swore and muttered under his breath, his frown becoming even more thunderous.

  But at last they steadied, the pattern burning steadily with a pale blue-green light, hanging in the air before him like disembodied neon.

  "I cannot hold it for long," Kory said, sounding a little breathless. "Let us pray that it shows us what we need to see."

  And Eric came walking through the Park.

  He looked subtly unreal, like bad CGI, but it was Eric, dressed as Kayla had seen him last. He was staggering, exhausted, carrying his flute in his fist. Around him the light was different; though it was late afternoon in the here and now, Eric walked through the light of early morning, adding to the strange sense of disconnection for his watchers.

  "Eric?" Beth's voice was a symphony of distress. "Oh, Blessed Lady, what's happened to him?"

  "This is okay," Kayla said quickly. "He meant to look that way. I'll explain later." She put a hand on Beth's arm. Only the fact that she couldn't sense anything from the Eric image kept her from running over to him. But this wasn't Eric. This was a movie of Eric, from three days ago.

  But she couldn't stifle a groan of dismay as Eric walked, oblivious, right into the midst of five punks lurking in the underbrush. Didn't he see them?

  There was no sound, only images, but it wasn't hard to guess what they were saying. "Give us all your money," or something like that.

  She watched as he dropped the flute, as one of them hit him from behind with what looked like a length of pipe wrapped in electrical tape, as he fell to the ground and all five of them kept on hitting him. One of them had a baseball bat.

  The image vanished.

  "I'm sorry," Kory said, staggering back and gasping slightly. "I could not hold the spell any longer. But now we know what happened to him." He shook his head, as if slightly dazed, and Kayla could see—and feel—what the spell had cost him.

  "I'll kill them," Beth vowed, in a shaking voice. "I'll find them and I'll kill them all."

  Freaks, Kayla thought numbly. Just an ordinary mugging by ordinary freaks. It could happen to anyone.

  But it shouldn't happen to Eric. Eric was a streetwise New Yorker by now. He knew better than to go wandering through this part of the Park—through any part of the Park—as if he were half-asleep. And what had happened to him just before this? He'd looked like death on toast. Even without his flute, he should have been able to stop them.

  But he hadn't.

  Kory gathered Beth into his arms and held her close. "We do not know that what this appeared to be was all this was. My spell could show nothing more than the external images of things. But now we know this much. And surely someone must have found him and given him succor," Kory said, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world.

  "Which is the closest hospital?" Beth demanded.

  * * *

  Gotham General Hospital covered several city blocks. It was the largest hospital in the city, and it had one of the best burn trauma units on the East Coast. Jimmie Youngblood had died here.

  I never wanted to come back here, Kayla thought, walking up to the information desk. She was just as glad she'd cleaned up and gotten respectable on the off-chance that Beth and Kory might be showing up. Her story wasn't going to make a lot of sense as it was.

  "I wondered if you could help me," Kayla said. "I'm looking for my brother."

  The woman behind the desk smiled. "Is he a patient here?"

  "That's the thing," Kayla said. It wasn't hard to look nervous, frightened, or scared—all those emotions were right below the surface, and she let them well up and spill over. "I don't know. I think he might have been mugged up in Central Park Tuesday morning. Is he here?"

  * * *

  A short time later, the three of them were seated in an office across a desk from one of the hospital's many administrators.

  "Why do you think your brother might be here, Ms. Smith?" Mr. Wilson asked.

  It wasn't hard to cry, so Kayla did. "It's the closest," she said around a wad of Kleenex. "He didn't come home Tuesday night. I called the hospitals, but there isn't an 'Eric Banyon,' in any of them."

  "Perhaps he's just—"

  "It isn't going to kill you to check," Beth Kentraine interrupted in a hard voice. "White male, mid-twenties to early thirties, brown hair, brown eyes, no distinguishing marks or scars, admitted unconscious or disoriented and still in that state. Last seen wearing a green raincoat, if that helps. How many of those can you have gotten in here since Tuesday?"

  "In New York, quite a large number," Mr. Wilson said, with a faint sigh. "Ms. . . . ?"

  "Connor. Beth Connor. I'm Eric's ex-wife. This is my husband Kory. Look, if he's here, we want to find him. And you want to bill his insurance company. Let's help each other out."

  Kayla saw Wilson twitch at the mention of the word "insurance"; Beth had struck a nerve there, all right. But he turned to the computer terminal in silence.

  After a few moments he turned back to them.

  "Are you quite sure your brother was in Central Park Tuesday morning?" Mr. Wilson asked.

  Kayla nodded.

  "And would you happen to know his blood type?"

  "Oh, yes," Beth said calmly. "Eric is O Positive."

  Mr. Wilson sighed, sitting back in his chair.

  "Ms. Smith, Mr. and Ms. Connor, we have a patient here who may—only may—be Mr. Banyon. The police brought him in Tuesday afternoon, after he'd been spotted by a jogger. He had no identification on him. He'd been . . . severely beaten. He was unconscious upon arrival, and he hasn't regained consciousness. His condition is . . . very serious. He was just transferred out of ICU this morning."

  Beth clutched Kory's hand, hard. Kayla hugged herself tightly.

  Wilson winced again, though only someone like Kayla would have noticed. "If you'll come with me, I'll take you up to his room so you can make an identification. Please remember, this may not be the man you're looking for."

  Who else could it be? Kayla thought desperately.

  * * *

  It took them several minutes of walking to reach the room, and
Kayla was lost immediately in a bewildering maze of elevators and corridors. All around her, even through her shields, she could sense the litany of pain and damage from the rooms around her. A hospital, she thought wryly, was no place for a Healer.

  But if Eric was here—if it was Eric—it had to be Eric—she could Heal him, get him out of here—

  Mr. Wilson stopped before a closed door.

  "I'd really prefer if only one person went in," he said.

  Beth started forward, but Kory held her back.

  "Kayla will go," Kory said.

  It made sense. She was the Empath, the Healer. No matter how messed up Eric was, conscious or not, she'd be able to reach him. Kayla took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders. "'Kay," she said.

  Mr. Wilson opened the door.

  The room held six beds. Two were empty. Kayla heard the susurrant sound of ventilators, the faint metronomic beeping of heart monitors, the odd bleachy smell of sick-sweat. It reminded her of the last hospital room she'd been in. Jimmie's.

  But no sweet stench of cooking flesh. Not that, at least.

  The curtains were drawn around each bed, concealing the occupants. Mr. Wilson stopped at one and parted the curtains at the foot.

  "Is this your brother?"

  "Gimme a minute." Kayla steeled herself to look, the image of the beating Eric had taken still sharp in her mind.

  She was braced for horrors, so she didn't lose it. Not quite.

  They'd shaved most of his head, and part of it was covered with an odd lopsided bandage. Both his eyes were swollen shut, the flesh around them black and red. His nose had been spectacularly broken, and it looked as if his jaw had, too; it was held in place by a brace. Both arms were splinted, and one leg was suspended at an angle, held up by a traction brace; multiple fractures, she guessed. Tubes snaked beneath the sheets, some led upward to suspended bags. A machine was breathing for him.

  "Eric?" Kayla whispered. Oh, Jesus, ERIC . . .

  She clutched at foot of the bed. It would take days, maybe weeks, to repair all that damage. Where did she start?