by Tom Deitz
Fionchadd padded up beside him in the prow, even as they others likewise gathered round. “What happened to the Track?” David demanded, pointing across the river to the night-wrapped woods on the right. “Isn’t it somewhere over there?”
The Faery grinned. “This close, in this vessel, we could…do a little sidestep.”
“Hope nobody sees us,” Liz grumbled.
“Silverhand’s got spin doctors if they do,” Alec snorted, but even he was smiling. In point of fact, he looked as relieved as David had ever seen him. Piper wasn’t the only one who hated forays into Faerie.
“Far shore,” Fionchadd advised, and trotted back to the tiller. An instant later, the ship began to angle toward the bank opposite that upon which, among other, more public facilities, Aikin’s cabin stood. Soon enough, it navigated one final curve, and the dam hove into view: a low bar of white beneath what was clearly a waning moon. And then, before anyone truly expected it, the keel nosed into a sandbar a bare ten yards shy of the terminus of the dam, and they were back in the Lands of Men.
David wasted no time climbing atop the rail in the shoulder of the dragonhead, from which he leapt down to the warm, soft sand. He couldn’t resist rolling in it. “Here!” Alec called from the deck. “Catch.” He tossed down a large floppy bundle. His clothes, David realized, as he sought to right himself; he’d forgotten to change out of the far more comfortable Faery togs. “Thanks!” he grunted, as Brock hit the ground beside him, followed by Liz, then Piper, then Myra. Alec came last, bar Fionchadd.
No sooner had the Faery touched ground than he strode toward the ship’s prow, stroking his silver ring. The ensuing spark glimmered like a lost star in the night. An instant later, the ship was aflame—
—and shrinking quickly indeed, as whatever odd Fire bound it together dispersed, its eerie blue flickers barely brightening the looming woods. In no more than ten breaths time, Fionchadd stooped down to retrieve their former craft. He passed it to Brock with a grin. “Here,” he teased. “You’re the only one here who looks as though he ought to play with toys.”
Brock bared his teeth at him, but accepted the prize.
David was first back in mundane dress, first on the dam, first off it, first up the steep brushy bank between the river and the road, and first to the parking lot in front of Aikin’s cabin.
He halted there, out of breath and shaken. This was weird—a little too weird, actually. It was as if time had coiled around itself and restored them to where this latest round of weirdness had begun. It was the same place, the same moon—the expected cars in the parking lot (and a good thing, too, that latter).
Only…something had changed. The moon had waned: he’d already noted that. And—right: Sandy’s Explorer was gone entirely, and Aik’s truck wasn’t where he’d left it when they’d picked him up before the Tracking Party. Which in turn reminded him, not for the first time, that Piper, LaWanda, and Cal were surely on somebody’s shit list, given that at least one of them had clearly been elsewhere than Athens when they were supposed to be performing at the Earth Rights Festival there.
Which damned sure wasn’t his problem. His most imminent concern at present was getting Aikin’s attention without rousing his other roomies—two of whom, by their trademark vehicles, were still in residence, probably anticipating imminent graduation.
Alec, for a wonder, seemed to read his mind. “Aife,” he adjured the cat meandering through the bushes behind them, “go find Aikin.”
The cat blinked yellow eyes at him—then trotted back down the bank to where the rear deck of the cabin jutted into space. She melted among the shadows beneath that overhang, only to reemerge soon after atop it. Fortunately, one of Aikin’s windows faced the back. A light was on in there.
Which meant he was likely up; odd, now David considered it, given the probable hour. Even so, it took three plaintive yowls and a set of meows to lure their friend outside—in full woodman’s kit: cammo fatigues, khaki vest, and purposeful-looking boots—but minus his glasses, which made him squint into the gloom. “Aik!” David hissed. “Down here!”
Aikin eased over to the rail and knelt, peering through the uprights like a newly awakened mole. “Dave?”
“Among others. What gives?”
“Plenty,” Aikin panted without preamble. “Scott called five minutes ago. All hell’s breakin’ loose up there.”
Chapter XIX: Storm Wrack
(Sullivan Cove, Georgia—Thursday, June 26—dawn)
“How much longer?” Alec inquired with absolute sincerity, leaning forward from the Mustang’s back seat, in which, for nearly two hours, he, along with Aikin, had been ensconced. He sounded anxious too, and frightened.
David didn’t reply—and not only because he was too tired to respond with the requisite snappy comeback and too worried about both the situation that had prevailed when they’d left the Lands of Men and that into which they were returning.
No, at the moment, he was simply concerned about keeping a thirty-year-old car with dubious tires and a light back end on the road in what was surely the world’s ultimate downpour. The wipers weren’t up to even half this much precipitation, nor were the headlights; and he wasn’t sure his nerves were either, when the odds weren’t anywhere near his preference regarding what this monsoon-from-hell portended.
“Oughta know by now,” Aikin chided Alec. “You’ve come this way a thousand times,” he went on relentlessly, with more sarcasm than David deemed necessary, but also venting the frustration he was still trying hard to keep in check.
“David! Slow down!” Liz gasped from the front passenger seat. She grabbed at the dash pad with one hand and the side of her seat with the other, as the Mustang plowed into a particularly long, deep puddle.
David felt the steering go numb and held his breath, fighting the urge to apply the brakes, which could spell disaster. As it was, the rocky bank to their right loomed alarmingly nearer. Any closer, and— Well, that would solve several problems and create dozens of others.
“Dammit!” David snapped, when traction returned. “Will you guys just shut up? One of you wants me to hurry; one wants me to slow down. I…just wanta arrive.”
Liz nodded mutely. David tried to regain control. It hadn’t been that bad a trip, so far—until the rain had kicked in, and that had only been at Helen, ten miles back down the road. They didn’t have that much further to go, either, to Sullivan Cove; and, as Aikin had observed, he could drive that road blindfolded or in his sleep. Presuming, of course, there was still actual pavement beneath that solid sheet of water.
“I know what you’re thinkin’,” Aikin dared, in defiance of David’s ban. “You’re wonderin’ whether this is Cal’s doing or LaWanda’s or Lugh’s.”
“I’d prefer it was natural,” David growled, downshifting as the Mustang found the first hairpin of the several that heralded the approach to Franks Gap. Once over that, he was home free—or in it.
“Feel better, don’t you?” Aikin persisted. “Now that somebody’s actually named what you fear.”
“What I wish,” David retorted, “is that Scott’d had more to say.”
Aikin rolled his eyes—barely visible in the Mustang’s mirror. “I told you what I knew—I mean, gimme a break, man, it’s not hard to remember four lines. ‘Aik! Thank God! Hell’s broke loose up here. I don’t know what good you can do, but get your ass up here. I’m at Dale’s. Something’s—’ And that was it. I never got to find out what something was ’cause the phone went out. Tried to call back and couldn’t get anybody. Called my folks in MacTyrie, just to see if it was all over up there, or only at the Cove. Couldn’t get them either.”
“All of which we knew,” Alec remarked. “All of which you’re repeating just to hear your head rattle.”
Aikin bared his teeth at him and retreated to the seat’s farthest corner. David was sorry for him—he was generally a quiet, unassuming guy. Easy to underestimate. He only ran on at the mouth when he was nervous. He only repeated hims
elf when he was scared out of his skin.
The road steepened. Water slid across his lane in thick black runnels, but the sky ahead showed the first hints of a dull and soggy dawn. More rock flashed by to the right, and he glimpsed the gleam of headlights in his mirror. Good: Myra had caught up again, and was soldiering right along in her new minivan. And with her were Piper, Brock, and Fionchadd.
That last still freaked him too. The decision to head north immediately, in response to Scott’s summons, had not been difficult, but posed certain problems nonetheless, principal among them being the fact that Fionchadd still wore the substance of Faerie, which would render it impossible for him to ride in a car.
Trouble was, his assorted exertions of the last few days, plus his loss of blood—and attendant Power—during his mysterious friend’s arrow-ploy, had left him—he admitted under pressure—very weak indeed, and certainly frail for his kind. Clearly too weak to face what he might encounter should he brave the Tracks again and return to Tir-Nan-Og. He had enough strength left to change substance, but that was all. Until he could rest for a time, he was scarcely more powerful than an ordinary human, and that both galled him and frightened him half to death. “I do not wish to be weak among mortals,” he’d confided to David. That he’d risked that handicap anyway was proof of how fried he was. Or how loyal. Nuada, David recalled, had told the Faery youth to guard them with his life. He hoped Finno didn’t take that pledge too literally.
A sudden pitiful yowl from the back seat made David jump—and almost wreck the car in the process, as a reflexive tug on the wheel set the back wheels sliding for the shoulder. Another tortured scream ensued, and though David recognized the source, it still chilled him to the bone. No creature should sound like that, mortal or Faery.
“Sorry,” Alec murmured. “That’s why I was asking about the time. It’s, like, dawn; and you know what happens then. And we’re in a car—”
David bit his lip—hard. “Yeah, I know,” he acknowledged, “but we don’t have time to stop so she can get out, and there’s nowhere to stop anyway, for— What the hell?”
Something had just struck his neck, where it rose above the seatback. And close on that initial impact came teeth and claws, as a suddenly panicked Aife sought to claw her way out of the car by the straightest route, which lay through David’s head.
He braked frantically—stupidly, part of him advised—but managed to navigate the latest switchback, just as the enfield—for so she mostly was now—scratched/kicked/pushed her way into the space between his left shoulder, the window, and the armrest. And lodged there, screaming like she was being skinned alive. David tried to extract her with his nonsteering hand, but got raked raw for his trouble, and swore vividly when a second attempt got him raked again. “Aife, fuck it—!” he spat, as he tried to subdue her. “Alec, can’t you get your effing—”
“Stuck,” Alec and Aikin chorused as one.
“Damn!”
David had almost got the car stopped by then, and still had sufficient presence of mind to pray that Myra would see his erratic driving and slow herself. Being rear-ended by a Caravan with a carload of friends on the way to a World-shaking emergency on a rainy night was not his idea of a gay old time.
Fortunately, the enfield had untangled herself.
If only she’d calm down! David grabbed for her again—only to find her in his lap and questing for his throat with a mouthful of teeth that were really quite alarming viewed at such intimate range. He snatched clumsily for her muzzle, missed, and got vague impressions of three sets of hands not his own flapping every which way around his chest and head, and then something grabbed his neck and tugged.
Not his neck, he corrected an instant later: the medallion that hung around his neck: the one Brock had given him. “God, Davy, don’t let her—” Liz shrieked.
But it was too late. With a surprisingly audible ping the chain parted beneath David’s ponytail, and with a sort of gagging gulp, the enfield swallowed the attached iron disc. Liz managed to drag the chain free of the jaws, but nothing any longer dangled from it.
By which time David had got the car halted, and the enfield was docile once more.
“Sorry, man! Oh, man, I am so sorry!” Alec wailed, as he reached around to retrieve his pet. “Oh, Jesus, man—”
“Never mind,” David grunted, as he put the car in first and started off again—slowly, since it was raining harder yet. “God, what got into her?”
“Steel around her,” Aikin opined.
David rubbed his throat with his less-injured hand. “Yeah, well, if steel freaks her so much, why’d she swallow my medal?”
“Blind reflex?” Alec offered. “Panic? I dunno. I mean, if she’d wanted to swallow it, she could’ve done it back on the boat. ’Least she’s in the substance of this World; otherwise we’d really be in deep shit.”
David didn’t reply, and neither did anyone else, and two minutes later they crested Franks Gap and entered Enotah County. By the time they were halfway down the mountain, Aife was calmly grooming her cat-self as though nothing untoward had occurred.
Sullivan Cove was essentially underwater, and all that in only five days’ time. David’s heart sank as he swung the Mustang onto the long straight that unwound through his folks’ front-forty. A high bank reared above and to the left. Somewhere up there was where he’d first seen the Sidhe on that long-ago summer night. And the cornpatch was up ahead, filling bottomland to left and right—and easily knee-deep in water. The creek was out as well (no surprise), but had not yet invaded the road, and the new culvert seemed likely to remain in place. Which was fortunate, because he had to cross it to enter Sullivan Cove.
More desolation greeted him there. His folks’ drive was a virtual river of mud, and the sorghum patch across the way looked even worse than the cornfield. If this kept up, Lugh would have his way. Unless—awful thought—Lugh really had jumped the gun and was drowning the cove already.
“Cal better hope this isn’t his,” David grumbled, as he accelerated past his ancestral home—Big Billy was a famous earlier riser, and it’d be just like him to glance down the hill on his way to the morning chores. As if in reply, water splashed the windshield—muddy water this time, through which he could barely see. A glimmer of headlights showed that Myra had made the turn behind him.
A quarter mile later, they met the wind. It almost stopped the Mustang in its tracks, it was blowing so hard; driving sheets of rain into the windshield like rack after rack of wicked, steel-edged knives. David half expected to see the paint stripped right off, never mind the howling that filled his ears: thunder—and air forced in odd directions with far more fury than was—or could be—normal. Scott had been right: all hell had broken loose, and that call had come nearly three hours earlier.
So David was forced to creep along at a nerve-wracking crawl, through ruts that hadn’t been present the last time he’d been that way, through places where he flat out couldn’t see at all and had to rely on faith alone. Once through a patch of water so high the alternator light awoke and flickered ominously. A trip into neutral and lots of gas solved that, and first gear put them back on higher ground before the car completely drowned out. A check—risky—out the window showed the sorghum bent absolutely over like medieval supplicants, and the pines up on the ridge curved like ranks of drawn bows. Even as he watched, one broke. He started at that—and jumped again, as he wrenched the wheel to avoid an oak limb that crashed into the road ahead.
Somehow, far too many minutes later, they splashed into the wide muddy torrent that might’ve been Dale Sullivan’s drive.
Dale’s pickup was there; so was Scott’s old Monarch (evidence there of at least one run to Athens), Calvin’s BMW bike, and Sandy’s muddy Explorer—LaWanda’s suspect Pinto was still where she’d left it: back at Aikin’s place in Athens.
Lights were on at both the house and the trailer, dim in both places too, which implied a power-outage being staved off with kerosene lamps.
&n
bsp; David parked as close to the house as he could, and told his friends to stay put while he reconnoitered. Without waiting for reply, he forced the car door open—even here, with the house to break the wind’s full fury, he had to exert a fair bit of muscle—and almost fell, so fierce was the force brought to bear there. A cracking pop behind him made him jump nigh out of his skin for the ten-millionth time that day. But it was only the cedars in the yard, whipping about like rags from some giants’ washing.
He had to use the back steps because the fronts no longer existed, and was more than a little disappointed—as well as being soaked to the skin—to find the place deserted. A quick search produced a note, however. It was Scott’s hand, and very shaky, and simply read, “Couldn’t stand not knowing any longer. Gone to the lake to check out the lay of the land (sic). Join us there if you find this.” There was a time notation too: fifteen minutes prior.
A further inspection showed sign of recent habitation, a number of troublesome leaks, something truly appalling in the bathtub, and no sign of Uncle Dale, except for a pot of coffee still warm on a hearth that showed less fire than embers.
David thought of checking the trailer, but a dozen steps up the hill proved the error of that idea, when he slipped and sprawled on all fours in the mud. He was thoroughly soaked—but no longer muddy: the rain came down that hard—when he staggered into the side of the Mustang over a minute later.
Blessedly, he’d had the sense to leave it running, and more blessedly, Myra’d had the sense to remain in her own vehicle as well, but he motioned to her anyway: pointing toward the lake over and over until the shadow-shape in the driver’s seat gave him a thumbs-up and nodded.
Back in the car again, he dabbed at his face with the towel Liz handed him, then reversed out of the drive.
If the first part of the cove had been bad, this last half mile was ten times worse, and he actually had to creep along at slow walking speed to make any progress at all. The road was more water than land now, and most of that land was jagged rocks washed free of gravel: rocks that could do a major number on an unsuspecting Mustang oil pan.