by Holly Lisle
The man shrugged. "Not for thinking, I guess. Woman trouble—that seems to be available in all sorts of weather."
Pete laughed a little. "Paisan!"
"Ah. A fellow sufferer. Want a seat? A smoke?"
Pete took the offered seat on the steps, out of the rain. "Don't smoke," he said.
"You'll live longer that way," the man said.
Pete snorted. "Maybe I ought to take it up, then." He turned to study the man—someone he didn't know. That happened from time to time. Following the virulent magic-spawned flu that had killed more than a tenth of Cat Creek's population, and millions worldwide, there'd been a lot of houses on the market in Cat Creek, which lowered their value, and the recession had pushed values even lower, and interest rates were down. So suddenly new families were finding the Cat Creek bargains and moving in.
Pete held out a hand. "Pete Stark."
"Hahlen Nottingham," the man said, shaking hands. "Call me Hal."
Pete stared out from under the eaves. The front porch was comfortable, the company of Hal was oddly soothing, and for a while he just sat there, watching the rain and feeling the cold without being inconvenienced by it—and catching the occasional scent of Hal's tobacco, which was smooth and laced with a hint of…cherries? Not a typical cigarette smell.
Hal seemed content to just sit, too. The silence was companionable, not awkward, and when Hal finally spoke, that wasn't awkward, either.
"So after looking for longer than I can even describe, I found the perfect woman for me," Hal said, finishing his cigarette and dropping the butt on the worn step and grinding it out with his heel. "Only she doesn't see it that way. She's dark and light all rolled into one. She fits me. And part of the time she's pulled to me as much as I'm pulled to her, and part of the time she can't stand the sight of me." He shook his head. "I've twisted myself up over this until I don't know if I'm coming or going."
Pete grinned at him. "Neither at the moment, if that helps."
Hal managed a thin chuckle.
"I'm sorry," Pete said. "I shouldn't joke. And I'm the last guy in the world to offer suggestions, but I'm definitely sorry."
"So what's your story?" Hal asked.
"She's a widow. He was a better guy than I'll ever be."
"Tells you that a lot, does she?"
"Never said it once. He really was a better guy than I'll ever be. She's finally starting to realize that I'm there, but I'm not him and never will be, and that's pretty plain to both of us. It was always pretty plain to her." Pete shrugged. "So she approaches, she retreats, she approaches, she retreats. She likes me, she wants me, she feels guilty for wanting me, and she goes away."
Hal laughed. "That sounds like a fun game. Mine's more along the lines of she wants me, she hates me, she wants to kill me. Also great fun. I see everything I ever hoped to find in her eyes. I can feel how perfect she is in her mind. She's smart, she's talented…she's dangerous." He sat there for a second, and said, "I have a real thing for dangerous women."
"That might not end happily," Pete said. "I've watched the forensics guys picking bone fragments out of residential walls more times than I care to think about."
Hal gave a noncommittal grunt.
Pete could have taken that as Hal's changing the subject, but he didn't. He could have bowed out, too, and resumed his solitary slog. But he found Hal easy to talk to. Soothing. Hal didn't add any weight to Pete's thoughts, and sitting there talking to him, Pete realized that Hal almost seemed to buffer the screaming masses. He wrapped silence around himself like a blanket…and he seemed willing to share the blanket. So Pete said, "How dangerous is she?"
Hal laughed. "You want a beer?"
"I'd love a beer."
"I don't have any. But if you know a place where we can get some, I'm buying."
Pete thought for a minute. "Nice place? Ratty place?"
"Close place with good beer."
"All right. Long as you don't mind driving to South Carolina, I know a place that'll do."
"I'll get my car."
CHAPTER 20
Fort Bragg, North Carolina—Baanraak of Beginner's Gold
BAANRAAK ROSE FROM his vantage point atop the sand hill, and stretched one wing at a time, and arched his back. Darkness came, and it favored him. He inhaled, mouth partly open, and tasted the dangers that stood between him and his objectives, and found them considerable but not impassable. Old gods guarded her, but he had dealt with old gods before. He fought for stillness, but it still eluded him, so he satisfied himself with a shield and blended himself with the world as best he could.
Then, heart pounding with desire and fury, gut tight with nerves, he caught the air with his wings and bunched like a cat and leapt upward, launching himself toward Molly. Toward resolution.
Night Watch Control Hub, Barâd Island, Oria
Rekkathav, finally finished calling in all the deployed teams from Earth, approached the new Master of the Night Watch and bowed. His stomach twitched nervously, and he dreaded shaming himself again, which did not improve his odds of avoiding doing that very thing. "The agents to Earth are all gathered in the arena as you requested, Master Baanraak."
The rrôn grinned at Rekkathav, and Rekkathav cringed inwardly. Working for Baanraak the rrôn was worse than working for Aril the keth had ever been, he thought. The keth knew no loyalty, valued no one but himself, and destroyed those around him out of capriciousness as often as out of need. Yet in the entire time Rekkathav had worked for Aril, he'd never gotten the impression that the Master was studying him and imagining how he would taste with a keg of wine and some greens on the side. Every time Baanraak looked at him, Rekkathav felt like an appetizer.
"You're tracking the woman I showed you?" Baanraak asked.
"Yes, Master."
"I have to go to the arena. I may have to…reassign…some of our agents. There is, after all, a question of loyalty. While I'm gone, don't lose sight of her. She's the key to many things." He headed for the door, then turned around. "Where is she now?"
"She has traveled to Earth," Rekkathav said. "She's visiting with her sister and surrounded by an entire nest of immortals."
Baanraak paused, looking thoughtful. "Immortals. On Earth. Fancy that. Can you identify any of them?"
Rekkathav swallowed hard to keep his stomach down. He'd already studied the records, anticipating this very question—and he loathed passing on his findings. "The main one with whom we must concern ourselves is Thor," he said weakly.
But Baanraak didn't respond as Aril would have. Instead, he simply arched an eyerille. "She's made quite the art of falling in with bad company." He sighed. "I'll deal with it later—this isn't the sort of situation that is likely to improve on its own, but I really do have other things to attend to first. Keep track of her until I get back."
"Very well, Master Baanraak."
Baanraak left, and Rekkathav had just enough time to exhale with relief when the new Master poked his head back into Rekkathav's observation room. "By the way," Baanraak said, "I don't see you with wine and a salad at all. You're more of a beer snack."
Cat Creek
Molly stood on Lauren's back porch. The house was a homely thing—broad wraparound porches and old gingerbread in need of repainting and wood stairs worn smooth by the tread of generations of feet. It was the sort of place she had yearned for as a child, and as a young woman. It was the sort of place that had once said "Home" to her. But nothing said "Home" to her anymore.
She touched the ring on her right hand, feeling the connection with Seolar, knowing that he was alive. Safe. She opened the pinhole gate that linked her to him just enough that she could see him for a moment. He was working—bent over a document of some sort, scratching across it with a quill-tipped pen, dipping the pen into an inkwell. He looked haggard—lines in his previously unlined face, grief in his eyes and the set of his shoulders. She had done that to him. She was poison. She returned the gate to its pinhole size and twisted at the ring. Lauren could wea
r it. Lauren could watch over him, make sure he stayed safe. Molly would not be breaking her word to him so long as she made sure he was not abandoned. It wouldn't matter if she was not the one to stand guard over him.
Behind her, the back door opened. Lauren came out and stood beside her, and together they watched twilight shuttering the world around them. Lauren said, "How are you?" and Molly just laughed.
"I think once you've died as many times as I have, not even the prissiest minister ought to consider one suicide to end it all a mortal sin. That's how I am."
Lauren's eyes were dark with worry. "Heyr thinks there's hope."
"Heyr's on the outside looking in. And even he doesn't know how I bear it—and I have to tell you, while he was looking me over, I got a taste of what he's been dealing with for the past half an eternity. I truly can't understand why he hasn't quit."
"Take him up on his offer to make you an old god here," Lauren said. "Maybe it will make things better for you." She sounded so hopeful—so caring. But that was Lauren—the one whose assignment included living and keeping her soul. The one who got to save the world by loving it. The one who got to feel love, and not just remember what it had once been like. Lauren's parents hadn't consigned her even before her conception to an eternity of soulless torture and an undead existence as Molly's parents had. Molly was surprised to discover she could still feel bitterness. Everything else had washed away, but bitterness remained.
Didn't it just figure?
And then she felt a faint stirring in the air, a darkness moving both toward her and away from her. Tugged by instinct, she put her hand to the rrôn scale on the little chain around her neck. She slipped the chain over her head and held the scale firmly in one hand, and she could feel Baanraak. Not shadows of what Baanraak had been—not memories of Baanraak. Baanraak living, when she had killed him, when she had destroyed his resurrection rings, when she had ground them to powder and poured them into running water to scatter the gold. She could feel the invisible thread spun between the two of them catch fire. She could feel him. On this world. Close. Impossible, but he lived.
"Molly?" Lauren said in a loud voice.
Molly started, and looked away from the scale.
"What?"
"You just said 'Baanraak.' Why?"
"He's here."
"You said you destroyed him." Lauren paled and whispered "Jake," and turned toward the house, where Jake and Heyr waited. Then she put a hand on Molly's arm. "Here, Earth?"
"Here, Cat Creek." Molly tried to get a fix on Baanraak, but couldn't. He was so close. So very close, but he'd found a way to scatter his traces so that she couldn't pinpoint him. Even using the link of his scale, she couldn't break through whatever magic he was using. She felt fresh traces of him all around her—strongest in front of her and behind her—but she could not find one single point that she could mark and say "That's where he is right now." He had always been subtle. He had grown even more so since their last meeting.
Heyr appeared, holding Jake, and said, "You're sure it's Baanraak?"
"Yes," Molly said. "No…" She closed her eyes, trying to find the clear picture, the clear intent, but Baanraak, not completely still, not completely hidden, nonetheless left her casting north, then south, then north again, and the shadows she chased refused to resolve into a clear picture. What magic had he discovered that would let him do this?
"He's coming for me," she said after a moment. "And for Lauren. He's done something to make it harder for me to track him—I can't get a clear fix on him even though he's moving and not fully shielded."
"What's he doing?"
"He's…" She shrugged. "He seems to have echoed himself. I read him north of here and south of here."
"But you can't tell which is the real Baanraak and which is the echo?"
"No. Both traces are faint—he's always careful."
"Are both heading in this direction?"
"No. One is coming straight for us, and one is heading away."
Heyr said, "I think it would be a good idea, then, to assume that the shadow coming toward us conceals the real Baanraak, and the one moving away is the decoy."
"For the sake of protecting ourselves, yes," Lauren said. "We have to figure he's coming for us." She looked at Heyr. "I have my knife, but I want one of the good guns."
"Upstairs, in my closet. Stacked along the wall. Spelled, of course—Jake won't be able to touch them. But you will."
Lauren ran upstairs. Molly turned to Heyr. "There's something wrong with this. Tracking Baanraak, it isn't like I'm looking at the same image twice. It's two different images. You've been working with magic a lot longer than I have; do you know how he's doing this?"
Heyr looked at her. "I didn't know how he was doing two identical images. I cannot even begin to imagine what he's doing if the images are different."
Molly said, "Summon the Sentinels. And guard all of us for a few minutes. I need silence for this." She walked past him into the house, and through the kitchen and the hall and past the gate-mirror and the foyer and into the living room, were she lay down on the couch. Eyes closed, body relaxed, she began stilling herself—slowing breath and heartbeat and thought until she became mind without body, suspended, aware, and receptive. She could not send her mind searching in two directions, though, so first she chose the north, the image that moved toward her and Lauren.
She brushed Baanraak, moving slowly and carefully. Molly did not push, did not force anything. She let herself seep into him, not judging, not reacting, simply lying there still and open.
Hunger. She felt it, hard and hot, a sharper and more violent form of the constant ache that filled her. Baanraak wanted to feed, but solid food would not do. He hungered for death, for the high that came from drinking destruction. He'd fed recently, she realized—and feeding had rekindled the hunger, the ache, the addiction to death that the dark gods all shared, even those who had never tasted it. His hunger sharpened her own hunger just by contact, and she realized that staying too close to him for too long would be dangerous, even if he didn't notice her. But she didn't back out yet.
He was hunting—her; Lauren and Jake. He'd escaped his confusion, had come to a decision. He was no longer torn between keeping her and destroying her; he wanted her gone. Well enough. He became easier to deal with when his goals were simpler.
He was angry at what she had done to him. He was angry that he had lost some of his abilities. He wore the shield that she had penetrated because he could not become still inside anymore. He could not become invisible anymore. He blamed her. And he intended to destroy her because of what she had done to him, and then he intended to devour her death, because he was hungry. And then he wanted to destroy the old gods around her, and Lauren and Jake, and drink their deaths, too.
Molly experienced a faint shock at this revelation, and pulled out of him before that shock could betray her presence.
For just an instant she permitted herself to wonder what the hell was going on.
The scale in her hand was Baanraak's scale. The memories in his mind were his. The personality was his. But he didn't know that the old gods around her, including Thor, were immortals. He didn't know, in spite of the fact that he had fought Thor. Twice.
Molly couldn't make sense of this. She had found Baanraak on her first try, but what she had known to be true didn't fit the reality of the moment.
She cast her mind toward the shadow he had created, hoping that if she could find it, she would at least be able to get some sense of what he planned.
And she found, not a decoy, not a trick, but…Baanraak. Wearing different skin, a different face, but beneath a convincing exterior possessed of the same mind she knew. Weighted by doubts, scarred by a startling and unexpected sense of loss, but in full possession of the skills and talents and treacheries of uncounted thousands of years of existence.
Her blood went to ice in her veins, and she shuddered.
No. This second creature could not also be Baanraak.
Cat Creek
Heyr closed his eyes and winnowed out the background noise of the world, seeking the individual members of the Cat Creek Sentinels. He hoped to find one or two who might stand against the dark god that was coming, but the news wasn't good.
He could pull George out of the gate where he was keeping watch, but George was mortal and purely human, and Heyr didn't want to use him against a dark god. He would have gladly put either Raymond Smetty or Louisa Tate into the field against Baanraak, considering their mortality a benefit. But they were both a long way away, and in some sort of incarceration, both feeling very betrayed. Heyr fished through their thoughts as quickly as he could, got the gist of what they'd done, and had to laugh. Bastards—he savored the realization that they were in the process of getting what they'd deserved. He thought it unlikely that they'd be any further problem to the Cat Creek Sentinels.