Landslayer's Law

by Tom Deitz

  And with that he leapt to his feet and sauntered toward the garden. Alec looked briefly stunned, then sighed and likewise rose. He padded over to poke the dozing Darrell with a toe. “You want M-Gang history, Runnerman? You want the Gang to have one last hurrah? Get your fuzzy butt up and out there. You too, G-Man. ’Dippin’s the oldest ritual we’ve got—’cept for the Vow.”

  “Vow?” Brock echoed, puzzled. “What…? Yiiiii!”

  For Aikin had grabbed him around the waist and in one deft sweep (he was surprisingly strong for his size) flung the boy across his shoulder. “Vow!” Brock insisted stubbornly, through a veil of hair. “Vow!”

  “Never to lie to another member of the Gang,” Aikin recited. “Always to give straight answers to questions sincerely asked.”

  “But only to other members of the wretched Gang,” Myra grumbled, in their wake. She eyed Darrell speculatively. “Is it incest to skinny-dip with your baby brother?”

  “Long as you don’t pee in the water,” he retorted, then looked puzzled, as though he wasn’t at all certain that what he’d said made any sense, which, in large part, it hadn’t.

  David, meanwhile, had reached the pool. It was beautiful out there: warm, but with a silky wind that brought precisely the right amount of welcomed coolness. The water was dark and inviting, the only light coming from the stars and a series of piercework balls set on slender silver columns around the rim. The pool itself was round. A pile of white robes were stacked nearby—obviously someone, probably Finno, had anticipated them. Not caring who saw—most of ’em had anyway—he shucked his clothes: fatigues, sweatshirt, and the tightie-whities he ruthlessly retained in spite of fashion.

  He was in the water before anyone else arrived.

  It was wonderful. Like that final few minutes on the Tracks, and the wine he’d consumed during Lugh’s rant, the pool seemed to hold a subtle effervescence, as though a million unseen bubbles popped against his skin. And God, but it was relaxing! How long had it been, anyway, since he’d gone swimming in any form, never mind skinny-dipping? UGA had all kinds of pools, but folks raised their eyebrows there if you dropped your drawers. Shoot, the last time he’d actually ’dipped must’ve been back in October, after his and Aikin’s ritual hunt.

  Without thinking about it, he dived, seeking a bottom that seemed long in coming, out near the middle, where he’d wound up. Once his toes finally brushed stone, though, he lingered, poised in stasis just above the…mosaic, he suspected, by the way it felt when he probed it with a foot. Perhaps, since this was Faerie, he could remain there forever. Then he wouldn’t have to deal—again—with all this Faery bullshit, nor suspend his life to protect his friends, and now, it seemed, the very land that had begot him.

  He drifted in place twenty feet down until flashes seared his eyes and his lungs felt nigh on bursting. When at last he broke surface again, it was just in time to receive a face full of spray that had to be someone cannonballing. An instant later, Gary emerged beside him. David was waiting. He set one hand firmly atop his brawny buddy’s head and forced him under, then slipped casually sideways to avoid the wrestling hold he knew without doubt would follow. And dived, and rose again, closer to the shallows. Hair streamed in his eyes; he flung it back as he felt his feet touch bottom. Eventually his vision cleared enough to determine that every one of his comrades had joined him, and most had shed every stitch. It was no big deal with the guys; he’d ’dipped with ’em all before, save Piper, who was, by report, even less body shy than he. Women were usually coyer. Only…Sandy, and to his surprise, LaWanda, were both calmly undressing on the edge. In spite of her earlier comment, Myra also had a rep as being prudish—odd, when one considered how much she liked to paint nudes—yet there she was as well, shapely breasts floating in the water. Liz had always been the most modest, though, and had never shucked out around any guy but him. She had now; he wondered if that was significant.

  “Don’t say a word,” she warned, as she swam up behind him and wrapped her arms around his chest. “You’ve been bugging me about this as long as we’ve been together; now you get your wish.”

  “I’m not gonna ask.” He twisted around to nuzzle her cheek. “But don’t you think Finno was right, back there on the Track? Doesn’t this…. Don’t you feel kinda melancholy? As if we all know everything’ll be different after this, no matter what? Myra’s had a sense of foreboding for days.”

  “Maybe,” Liz murmured. “But frankly I don’t wanta think about it now. In fact, I’m done thinking!” And with that she released him, sank to her neck, and glided away.

  “Dave?” someone ventured from the other side. He shifted around to find himself confronting a thoroughly sodden Brock, whose flag of hair was plastered to his back. Really long hair, he noted absently, when the kid lost his balance and fell; it went clear down to the cleft of his buttocks. No tan lines, either. Odd, for someone fresh from England.

  “Dave?” Brock repeated, when he righted himself. “I, uh, wanted to catch you solo but never got the chance, and now…who knows? Anyway, I…I wanted to give you something.”

  And with that he reached to his throat and lifted the fine silver chain that lay there, and with it the quarter-sized disk of bright metal that had rested between the boy’s scanty pecs.

  David had seen the chain before but never truly noticed it. The rest had been obscured first by clothes, then by distance. But as Brock wriggled out of it (it required navigating quite a lot of hair), David got a closer look. It was a medallion, wrought of stainless steel or something similar, with the chain running through a loop cast into the top. A boar’s head showed on either side, worked in high relief.

  “The Sullivan crest,” Brock explained. “I found it in an antique store in York and thought—uh, somebody told me I oughta buy it. Didn’t cost much, so I did.”

  David accepted the medallion with a grin but resisted another urge to ruffle the kid’s hair. He probably got more than enough of that, and surely didn’t need it from—he feared—one of his heroes. “Thanks,” he replied instead, checking the chain for a catch, finding none, and sliding it over his head and around his neck. It thumped against his chest: bright metal against dark-tanned skin. Almost, he thought, it glowed with its own light. Oh well, the kid had reportedly had a couple of sessions with Uki in Galunlati. Maybe he’d picked up some mojo there. Not wise to ask, though. Not now, where maybe even water had ears. Besides, he’d had enough magic.

  “Sure,” Brock grunted after an expectant pause, then executed a neat backflip and stroked toward the edge, where he heaved himself out, retrieved a robe, and padded nonchalantly toward the softly gleaming arcade. Only then did David realize that there were still no towers visible—from any direction. They’d climbed stairs, true, to reach the suite, but nowhere near enough to have gained the top of one of those skyscraper pinnacles. And all of them had pointed tops, not the open ones a spread like this implied.

  But did it really matter? All he cared about now was getting himself out of here before he zoned out in the water (when had he gotten so sleepy?) and locating a nice soft bed.

  “Coming?” he queried Liz, as others likewise began to depart. He waited a moment longer, then waded toward the steps at the shallow end, close enough behind Calvin to observe, yet again, the faded stooping falcon tattoo that adorned his friend’s right “cheek.”

  “Hand me a robe,” Liz called from the lowest step. “Please.”

  David rolled his eyes, but complied. An instant later, he’d claimed a robe of his own, retrieved his civvies, and was following Brock’s soggy footprints toward the suite.

  It didn’t completely encircle the garden as he’d first surmised. Rather, smaller chambers flanked the entry salon, two to a side, which meant they’d have to double up. Sandy and Calvin already had. Alec and the rest of the Gang were batching it next door—conveniently in a room with four narrow pads that looked remarkably like futons. Piper and LaWanda would surely prefer some privacy, but likely be willing to share w
ith Myra, who’d known them nearly as long as he’d known Alec, Aikin, and Liz. Which assumed Piper and LaWanda actually went to bed; last he’d seen of ’em, they were locked in an embrace, waist deep in water. If LaWanda was as bold and opportunistic as she projected, he doubted they’d sleep much tonight. After all, when would she get another chance to do the wild thing in Tir-Nan-Og?

  As for him, Liz, and that possibility…it seemed unlikely, given that the one remaining room was occupied by a large empty bed—and Brock, curled up on something between a futon and a sofa, fast asleep like a loyal puppy.

  David dropped his civvies atop a fabulously thick rug patterned with interlaced winged serpents—how odd the worn black cotton looked against that elaborate richness—flung off the robe, and leapt onto the bed. Liz joined him. Together, they tunneled beneath an enormous fur coverlet striped in black, gold, and gray. And before they could do more than stroke each other wistfully and utter dreamy goodnights, they slept.

  * * *

  David awoke abruptly, to the sound of a nerve-wrenching yowl—

  —Loud, protracted, and at fearfully close range.

  There was also a rattly hiss.

  He sat up, every nerve tautly alive and tingly, as the sour taste of adrenaline flooded his mouth. Before he even knew he’d so chosen, he flung himself out of bed, squinting into the half-light of the shrouded room. A wind had picked up, stirring the silk hangings into phantoms and false shadows—which didn’t help. He was still peering vainly about in search of the uproar when it thrust itself upon him in the form of a fighting, spitting cat rolling across the floor to tumble across his bare feet, then move on, even as he skipped aside.

  A cat locked in desperate battle with something he couldn’t make out, save that it had the long sensuous body of a snake and leathery wings like a bat. Quetzalcoatl, he concluded automatically, without the feathers. And then had no more time to gawk, because the serpent-thing managed to free itself from Aife’s determined grasp long enough to launch itself at him like a striking diamondback. He danced backward, slammed into the bed before he expected to, and sat down abruptly. By which time Liz was scrambling across the cover toward him. “David, what—?” she mumbled through a yawn.

  “Hell if I know,” he panted, regaining his feet and fumbling about for something with which to swat the serpent—which was clearly up to no good—without damaging the vulnerable kitty.

  Silk grazed his hand, and he grabbed the topmost swath of bedding and heaved the wad toward the rolling, hissing mass of fur, wings, and scales.

  It missed—or the target moved—but he had no time to locate more, for the serpent-thing tore itself free again and once more lunged toward him. He batted at it from pure reflex, but connected badly. The thing sailed by, then swung around, flying quickly but clumsily with what might be a damaged wing. David backed away, ducking frantically—felt something dense and furry tangle with his feet, and fell—hard—winding himself on the floor.

  The thing was on him in an instant—he had barely time to register a gaping red mouth and a thousand fine white teeth before it hit. He beat at it again, twisting wildly, but that only served to skew the impact. And then suddenly, it was no quasi-reptile there, but a man—man-shaped, anyway: a naked Faery male crouching over him with a wickedly gleaming dagger poised in one upraised fist. “Die—human!” that one shrieked. And stabbed—straight at David’s heart.

  David flinched and closed his eyes, even as he tried to wrench away from an impossibly complex grip that prisoned both his legs and shoulder. This was it. He was gonna die. He was gonna—

  “David!“

  Liz…? Or someone else? He opened his eyes just in time to see the blade flash down—and his would-be assassin dragged back by a furious, black-haired shape that flung itself atop him from the rear.

  Not fast enough, however, or with sufficient force to divert the blow.

  The dagger hit—

  —And the world exploded into light.

  David felt a wash of heat across his chest, and closed his eyes, but even so saw afterimages. He also felt the weight that pinned him shift away, and rolled in the opposite direction, to fetch up short against the bed—which sent lights of a different kind exploding through his skull. Awkwardly, dizzily, he tried to rise.

  “David, what happened?” Liz breathed, scrambling up beside him.

  He stared dazedly around the room, still half in shock. “I dunno—’cept I think Aife intercepted that snake-thing in here—that’s what it was, anyway.” He pointed to what sprawled motionless on the floor: a young Faery male; dead, evidently, or dying—flat on his back, with one knee raised and a shocked expression on his far-too-perfect features. That latter surely was due in part to the fact that his right arm no longer existed below the elbow, nor, as far as David could tell, did the dagger it had held to work its near-fatal mischief. There was no blood.

  “He tried to kill you!” Brock gaped from where he’d landed after his part in thwarting the attack.

  “Yeah,” David panted, “he did.”

  “But why?”

  “Didn’t like me, I guess.” David fumbled for the robe he’d discarded upon retiring and found his fatigues instead, which were better.

  “Go get the others,” Liz directed, searching for her own clothes.

  “It worked!” Brock crowed, for no obvious reason.

  David blinked at him. “What did?”

  “The medallion. Iron. Woman who sold it to me said it had a charm of protection on it: protection against the Sidhe. I thought she was lying. Guess she wasn’t.”

  “Good thing, too,” David added, though something told him the boy had not told all the truth.

  “The others,” Liz repeated. “Surprised they’re not here already, what with all that racket and the fact that these rooms are open on one side.”

  “Faery soundproofing?” David offered absently. “Good a guess as any. And— Oh shit!” He sprang up from the bed.

  “What?”

  “What’s to say we were the only ones bein’ attacked? Oh, Christ, we gotta hurry!”

  He had taken two steps of the ten needed to cross the room when something moved before him. Light on the rug, he assumed: a flicker of firelight on an impossibly intricate design.

  But then the rug came alive. A coil of interlace spiraled out of it, altering as it rose into another bat-winged serpent, this one much larger than the other—easily ten feet long: the size of a good-sized boa or python. Even as its tail was still unwinding, the winged forepart hurled itself at David. He tried to dodge, but found escape blocked by an outthrust coil, which then whipped suddenly toward him and knocked him down. “Shit!” he gasped, as he tried to roll away.

  “Fucker!” someone roared in turn, and for the second time in less than a minute, David saw battle joined, this time by Calvin, who stood framed in the entrance for a fraction of a second—a swarthy blot against an inky sky—then, like Brock before him, hurled himself into the fray. He was Calvin when he lunged, anyway; when he landed he was a tawny Florida panther. Cougar. Catamount. Felis concolar. Whatever. The important thing was that he was holding his own against his scaled opponent. Even now claws had pinned the forepart, while fanged jaws sought to get a grip behind the monster’s head.

  That head snapped wildly, too; each bite narrowly missing, but nevertheless growing closer, as Calvin found his hundred-sixty pounds of black clawed, white fanged mass unequal to easily that much sharp-tipped scale and squirming muscle. Somehow David managed to regain his feet, saw Brock scampering past—hopefully to warn the others—but could find no way to assist. A wrong blow could injure his friend—or put himself back in peril of fangs and who knew what else? Or—

  “Cal! Watch out!” Brock shrieked. The tail had finally freed itself from the carpet in which it had hidden and arched above the knotted combatants. Something gleamed there, at the end of the spine. Something that dripped a viscous, steaming liquid.

  “Stinger!” David shouted in turn. />
  Calvin’s human reflexes were already fast, and in cat shape they were equivalently quicker. With one twisting heave, he wrested himself free of the coils that sought to bind him and rolled away. The stinger struck the floor—and dug in.

  The serpent-thing wasted the merest instant trying to extricate itself, before its shape began to waver. For a heartbeat it became a man—Faery male, anyway: young as the other, and similarly dark-haired—and then it altered again. Not to any living shape, however; rather, it seemed to lapse back into the woven pattern in which it had lain in wait—save that it now lay upon bare stone floor, no thicker than the other shadows there.

  “Get it!” David bellowed. But the thing was faster in that form than he could ever have expected, and shimmer-slither-slid into the arcade and thence into the salon, aiming for the suite’s single door.

  David ran. Calvin loped in a tawny blur. Liz and Brock were slower shapes behind them.

  “Shit!” Brock yelped, for the thing was accelerating—had become a shadow in truth—and moving fast as a shadow in shifting light had managed to gain the entrance. Calvin chased it desperately; indeed, ran so hard he slammed into that unyielding portal. Too late.

  David skidded to a halt beside him. The thing was gone, but had not escaped entirely. A rag of black hung from Calvin’s claws. A rag that, as they stared in mute amazement, slowly became a long shard of what looked sickeningly like the thick red muscles of a human thigh.

  “Fuck!” David gasped, swallowing hard, leaning on the door. “Fuck!”

  Liz was there beside him, holding him, or bracing him. He could’ve used either just then. And then Calvin rose up beside him: human again, and furious. He shook his hand as though he had seized something utterly foul, even as the other released the uktena scale with which he’d effected the change. “Check the others,” he told Brock. “I’m goin’ after that asshole!”

  “The others’re fine,” LaWanda assured him, from behind. “Wait a second, I’m goin’ with you.”

  “Me too,” Aikin echoed. “Let’s travel.”