by Holly Lisle
Lauren nodded. "I can do that. I don't know any of the codes, though."
"You don't need to. When we get out there, we'll see what we've got, and I'll put you on the Laurinburg dispatcher frequency. You tell the dispatcher you have an officer requesting assistance, and the only other thing you'll have to tell them is where you are."
"Okay."
He was pointing her toward the door. "We don't have time to stop by your place for your weapons. You're going to have to make do with one of our shotguns."
Lauren nodded and finished tugging Jake's jacket on him, and swung him up to her hip. "I'm ready."
Pete gave her a thin smile. "You're all right."
* * *
"If the damned deputy is coming instead of him, we might as well just kill all of these and go on through," Tom said. "We get the same reward whether we give them everyone or just a few—and it will be easier to transport just a few."
Deever said, "I figure that's what we ought to do anyway. Would have been convenient to be able to hold them hostage and make him give us the access codes, but there's no way of knowing he would have given us the right codes anyway."
"You want to just kill them, then?"
"Ah, shit." Deever snorted, and Eric heard him walk away from the window. "I hate that sort of mess."
"It's less to drag with us, Deever."
Back door, Eric decided. And fast. The covered porch looked pretty solid, and the door's hinges didn't look that rusty. If he could time it so that Deever and Tom were talking, their conversation—and the fact that they figured he was chasing down cows nearly five miles away—might give him the element of surprise. He'd roll a tear-gas grenade into the living room from the kitchen, run in behind it and cuff Deever first, then Tom. He tightened his mask and swung onto the porch. He moved as fast as he could while keeping quiet, almost not daring to breathe. His assessment of the back porch had been sound, though. He made no noise at all.
And the back door was unlocked. Sweet. He squeezed into the kitchen, only making the slightest of squeaks. One door in the kitchen led to other rooms—probably the dining room, he thought, and through that most likely the downstairs bedrooms, if there were any. The other went into the living room, where the hostages and their captors waited.
He pulled the pin on the tear-gas grenade, tossed it into the living room, crouched, and jumped into the room behind it shouting, "Hands up, drop your weapons and don't move or I'll shoot."
Deever and Tom were coughing. Through the yellow haze, he saw their hands go into the air. Tom dropped his gun, doubled over coughing, and started to hobble for the door. Deever, swearing and yelling, beat him to it. Eric ran after them.
He only half heard another door open behind him. Only had a hundredth of a second to realize that there had been a third conspirator. "Son of a bitch," he heard Willie Locklear say. Then he simultaneously heard the sound of the gun and felt the fire in his back, his spine, his lungs—the impact threw him forward and then he was falling, and the world turned red and then gray, and his vision behind the gas mask telescoped, and everything started to sound like it was happening underwater. And then he felt wonderfully warm and buoyant and surrounded by fluffy white cotton, and nothing had any sound at all.
CHAPTER 12
Graywinds, Ballahara
RESTLESS DREAMS—she was bathed in green fire; a delicate, winged woman in a glittering gold dress fleeing down the hallway of Graywinds, and turning at the end of the hall, she flung up her arms to ward off the blows of…
Flash forward…
She lay in the dark, strong and feminine and sated, nestled next to a man whose body was as familiar as breath itself, seeped in warmth and the wondrous smells of soap and sun and the promise of sex, with the fire crackling in the hearth, when out of the darkest corner of the room a shadow bathed in shadows stepped forward, and dry scales rattled and something hissed…
Flash forward…
A glade, dappled sunlight on tall grass and wildflowers, and she was a child playing behind her mother, and overhead a dark shadow soared. Her mother screamed and picked up her baby brother, her younger sister, and screamed her name, and all the while she stood in the heart of a shadow that grew larger like a black sun exploding…
* * *
Molly, throat dry and tight from trying to scream, fought free of the nightmares into terrified wakefulness and the sensation of purring—heavy and catlike—vibrating her chest. She struggled to sit, and tried to shove away the thing on her chest, and discovered that nothing held her down. She needed a moment to orient herself; she lay in the bed in Graywinds, dressed in the too-big pajamas she'd put on the night before and still wearing the medallion Seolar had given her. Silence held the house in thrall, and blackness at the windows told her she had woke before the rising of the sun. Her fire had died down to embers. Her door, when she padded across the cold wood floor in her bare feet to check, was still locked from the inside, as she had left it.
At her window, a sudden soft, erratic scratching.
Her heart clogged in her throat and she suddenly couldn't breathe. She jumped across the room to land on the floor beside her bed, belly down, and crawled under it.
More soft scratching, and now that she listened carefully, the sound of the wind, too. She felt a tiny draft of it down the flue of the chimney—sharp cold that made her wish she was safely tucked in her blankets.
Soft scratching. She stared up at the windows, willing her eyes to make out what was there.
A thin, crooked shadow. The line of a branch from a shrub or small tree that evidently grew beneath the window, then. The wind had given it movement, and her mind, still shaken by nightmares, made the sound a threat.
She didn't laugh at herself—she was still too shaky for that—but she did climb gratefully out from under the bed. She placed small sticks and a couple of logs on the embers in the fireplace, and smiled a little as the fire came back to life. And she crawled back into bed, and pulled the covers over her head, and ignored the sound of the branch against the glass.
Eventually she found her way into sleep again, and this time she found nothing there but rest.
* * *
The evil that followed Molly could not touch her—that was thanks to the magic of the amulet she wore. But it followed her nonetheless; it waited for opportunity; it waited patiently, unable just this time to create its own opportunity. It was old—very old—and luck had always fallen its way eventually.
Seolar, standing outside the window of Molly's room, stared at the single iridescent scale that lay atop the snowdrift, and with trembling fingers reached out and picked it up. He had known when she told him of her dream and of the branch that had so frightened her. She had laughed, and he had managed to smile as if he were amused, but he had known—for within the walls of Graywinds there were no trees, no shrubs, not even any tall plants. The ground was kept clear to provide a clear field of fire should the keep's inhabitants find themselves under attack. Trees and bushes would provide shelter to the enemy.
Molly did not know. Nor would anyone tell her—this secret Seolar would keep to himself alone. The rrôn could not touch her; but if they frightened her, she might insist on going back to Earth. And then the rrôn would win, and the cities of the veyâr would fall to them—and after them, the cities and lands of the rest of Oria's people.
"There aren't any bushes or branches outside my window," Molly said from right behind him.
He jumped and turned, dropped the scale, and stepped on it quickly so that she would not see it.
"You—startled me," he said, and laughed. His laughter sounded false in his own ears; he hoped she did not know him so well that she would catch the falseness.
She smiled. "I noticed that."
"Well—I only came outside to see if we could travel today…but you can see that we've had far too much snow…"
She raised a hand to stop him, shook her head. "Seolar. I've picked up a few things in my life. A few bits of wisdom
, if you will. First, don't confuse adversaries and enemies. You and I are, I suspect, adversaries. There's something you want from me that you're not telling me, something that I have the power to withhold, that you think I'll want to withhold—and that's putting us on opposite sides of a big fence. But I'm not the enemy. I'm not the one you hide things from. And second, just because they're out to get you doesn't mean they're always out to get you. Whatever you're hiding under your foot there might be nothing of any real importance."
He said, "I'm not hiding—"
She cut him off again. "Lying doesn't improve your negotiating position." She shoved her hands inside her jacket and held them under her armpits to warm them, and only then did he realize that she'd come out without a hat or gloves or even with her coat properly buttoned. "I'm going to be honest with you. I like you. I like the veyâr, I like this world, and I'm a hell of a lot happier here than I ever was on Earth. I even think there may be some…some chemistry between you and me, though I've got a few issues to work through where that's concerned. My first instinct is to stay here, to help you, to do whatever it is that my parents planned for me."
He started to smile at her, but she shook her head.
"That's my first instinct. But," she said, "you're hiding things. Big things. There's something going on with this necklace you gave me, there's something going on with that thing under your foot, and there's a reason why you decided to go riding on a day when the weather turned so nasty—and a reason why you took us away from Copper House in the storm instead of toward it. Graywinds was farther. Wasn't it?"
He stared at her, trying to find a corner to duck into—an evasion that would let him keep the truth from her without outright lying to her. Nothing presented itself. So he nodded. "It was a great deal farther."
"Thank you. I thought so. I think you owe me the truth."
"I suppose I do." He glanced up at the sky, nervous, but nothing moved there except for clouds. Still, he would be happier under a roof. A copper-lined roof. "Walk with me," he said, and led her toward the barn. As they trudged through the snow, he said, "I don't really know where to begin."
"This necklace," she told him. "It's been giving me nightmares. And daymares, too."
He sighed. "I'll tell you what I know. One of the Old Gods created it for a child that she had with a man of my people—about seven thousand years ago, from all accounts. I don't know precisely when; I don't think anyone does, except perhaps for others of the Old Gods, and they certainly won't tell."
"A long time ago, in a universe far, far away…" she muttered. "Got it. Go on."
"It protected her. While she wore it, the Old Gods could not kill her, or hurt her, or work any sort of magic against her. And so long as she wore it, it would always bring her safely back to Oria."
Molly said, "She was like me? Half veyâr and half something else?"
"Half veyâr, half human. The Vodi have all been half veyâr, half human. There have been crosses between the veyâr and others of the Old Gods, and between the Old Gods and others of the True Peoples, but none of them have become Vodi. I don't know why." He shrugged. "It's magic, and of magic I know only the stories."
"So this was created specifically for the first Vodi, by her mother."
"Such is the story. The first Vodi stood as mediator between the veyâr and the Old Gods. She buffered their curses, but she also spoke for the veyâr in their courts and councils."
"And after working as Vodi productively for—what, hundreds of years?—she died in her bed at a ripe old age, having lived a fulfilling and wonderful life."
Glancing over, Seolar caught the narrowing of her eyes and the cynical smile on her lips.
"Not precisely."
"Oh, gee. How did I know?"
They walked into the barn, and Molly picked out a bale of hay and settled on top of it. She glanced at the horses in their stalls, at the guards at the doors, and then at Seolar.
Seolar stood facing her, not willing to sit and face her eye to eye. "Different stories of her death exist. Some say she froze to death, some that she was murdered in the first building that stood on this site, others that she died on a world a long way from home. Most of the stories, though, say that one day she put the necklace in a box, and locked the box, and put it in the deepest storeroom in Copper House, and locked the storeroom, and walked away from it."
"And was never heard of again."
"Not exactly. The stories say that she then walked out into the forest outside of Copper House and was immediately murdered by the…" He glanced around and whispered the word. "…the keth."
"How nice."
"The necklace has been worn by seven other Vodian since then. All seven lived long lives."
He watched Molly run her fingers over the smooth, heavy gold and stare off into space. He prayed that what he had told her would not send her fleeing back to her own world. She didn't know the keth—she didn't understand what being the liaison between the Old Gods and the veyâr would be like. But he knew she would already be figuring out that it wasn't a safe job.
"Any of them die peacefully?" Molly asked at last.
Seolar wanted so much to lie to her. But nothing he could do would keep her if she did not choose to stay—and he felt sure that if he lied to her and she discovered the truth, that would drive her away faster than anything else. "No," he said, and did not elaborate.
"Well." She took her hand away from the necklace and stared down at her feet for a long time. "All right. I have a better idea of what I'm up against now. So…why did you feel it was necessary to drag me away from Copper House with a snowstorm coming on?"
"If you are to stand between the veyâr and the Old Gods, you must stand on equal footing with them. You must know magic—not just how to heal, but how to fight, how to change things, how to undo whatever they may throw at you. If you can stop their magic, they can't intimidate you."
"That makes sense."
"I don't know how magic works, Molly. None of the veyâr know. I know that it is something I would be able to do downworld from Oria. I know it is something you especially are capable of doing here. Since I can't teach you what you have to know, I…acquired…teachers for you."
"And the teachers are coming here?"
"No. The teachers will be going to Copper House."
"Then why are we here instead of there?"
"Because I did not want you anywhere around the people who were bringing your teachers to you. I don't want them to know you exist—and because they're…Old Gods. If you were in residence in Copper House when they arrived, I was afraid they might somehow know you were there."
He felt her staring at him as he talked, but he couldn't meet her eyes.
"That's true as far as it goes, I think," Molly said after a moment of silence. "But you're not telling me everything about the teachers, either, are you?"
He looked up at her and laughed. "I would hate to have my life depend on keeping secrets from you."
"What's the secret?"
"I hired some very bad men to kidnap your teachers from Earth. They're Sentinels—both the men I hired and the people they are bringing to you. I'm ashamed of what I have done—but my people and my world depend on you. You must have teachers who can truly teach you. You cannot be unprepared when you face the worst of the Old Gods. Many Old Gods can be difficult. Some are bad. But the rrôn…and the keth…"
"You're just full of surprises, aren't you?" Molly said. She watched him with eyes he could not read. He wondered what she thought of him. He wondered if she would stay, or if she would be so disgusted by his dishonorable behavior that she would go. He dreaded finding out—but he wouldn't find out anytime soon, because she stood and said, "I think I need lunch and a nap."
Cat Creek
Sitting in the car, clutching the shotgun with one hand and Jake with the other, Lauren watched Pete disappear into the ruined old house. She tried to look everywhere, tried to make sure that no one would be able to come in behind Pete and Eric
and trap them in the house—and that no one would rise up out of the weeds and kill her or Jake. She waited—heartbeat hammering in her ears, scared so bad she wanted to cry. And then the radio in the car came to sudden, panicked life.
"Dispatch! Dispatch! This is Deputy Pete Stark, 10-20 to Tucker Farm, west of Cat Creek on 79. Officer down! Repeat, officer down! Signal 102, CPR in progress. Requesting ambulance and backup." Through that, his voice remained steady. But Lauren heard his calm break with his next words. "Get me some help out here fast!"