by Tanya Huff
Evan nodded. “Daru is right, you have strengthened.”
Roland spread his hands. “I survived.”
“You came to terms with yourself.” The blue-gray eyes pleaded for understanding as he added, “I would have come for you if I could.” His voice had roughened and Roland suddenly realized that the decision had hurt Evan almost as much as it had hurt him. Maybe more; Evan was supposed to be the white knight, riding to the rescue was his job.
“Hey, don’t worry. I do understand.” And he did. Finally. He clasped Evan’s shoulder lightly and the Adept looked at him in surprise, sensing the new lack of restraint.
“You’ve come to terms with that as well?” he asked, a small smile beginning to form.
Roland returned it. “Yes,” he said. “I have.” He spun Evan lightly about and pushed him toward the bed alcove. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
“Good night, Roland.”
“Good night, Evan.”
“That piece goes there.”
“This piece goes here.”
“Is that the last of the dirt?”
“I think so.”
“Bread cooker goes back on the cold box.”
“Plant is busted.”
“So fix.”
“Can’t fix plant.”
Roland wasn’t entirely certain he was awake. He could feel the couch beneath him and the sheet draped across his legs, but the high-pitched voices drifting in and out of his head seemed more like a dream. He supposed he could open his eyes and find out one way or another, but it just didn’t seem worth the bother.
“Brush floor.”
“Polish bread cooker.”
“Polish everything.”
“Sparkly clean now.”
He had a vision of a horde of tiny people all dressed like Errol Flynn in Robin Hood. “… but the shoemaker and his wife never saw the little folk again,” he muttered.
“What is Bard muttering about?”
“Bard stuff. Get back to work.”
Chapter Twelve
“Roland? That you?”
“Yeah, it’s me, Uncle Tony.” Roland went up the four stairs from the door to the landing and rounded the corner into the kitchen. “What are you doing home? Shop closed today?”
“Nah. Your aunt’s back went out again last night and I’m driving her to the doctor’s at eleven. You got yourself a new girlfriend? I notice you haven’t been home for a couple of nights.”
Green eyes and ebony hair and a lithely muscled body wrapped in satin. “No. It’s just that job I told you about.”
Tony frowned and closed the paperback he’d been reading, tapping the ends of blunt fingers on the cover. “You aren’t mixed up in anything illegal, are you?”
“Nothing illegal, Uncle Tony.” Roland felt his lips curl up into something that was not quite a grin as, unable to resist, he added, “You can definitely say I’m on the side of the Light with this one.”
“Side of the light,” Tony snorted. He peered at his nephew through narrowed eyes. “Still, it seems to be doing you good, settling you down some.”
Roland sighed. He couldn’t see it. The tiny mirror in his bathroom had shown him the same face it always had, albeit with a new nick from paying more attention to his profile than to his shaving. He was also getting a little tired of people telling him how much he’d matured, not having considered himself particularly childish before. “I’d better be going. I just dropped by to change clothes.”
“Wait a minute.” Tony tilted his chair back and plucked an envelope off the counter. “This came for you yesterday. Looks like it’s from that singer friend of yours.” He held it out.
“Looks like,” Roland agreed, glancing at the Tulsa, Oklahoma postmark as he shoved the narrow envelope in the back pocket of his jeans. “Tell Aunt Sylvia I hope her back feels better.”
“You coming home tonight?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, try to get some sleep. You look like hell.”
Roland paused halfway down the stairs and leaned back around the corner. “I thought you said it looked like this job was doing me some good?”
“What’s inside a man has nothing to do with the amount of sleep he’s getting.”
A platitude worthy of Evan, Roland thought, and said, “You sound like you’ve been talking to a friend of mine.” He waved and headed for the door.
“Sounds like you’re getting smarter friends,” Tony called after him.
Roland laughed and was still smiling as he got on the subway and headed back downtown.
“Daru must be still out in the city somewhere.” Roland hung up the phone and shook his head. “I talked to her answering machine this time instead of her secretary, but the message was the same. She’ll call when she gets in. It’s nine seventeen. I’m beginning to think that woman does nothing but work.”
“Her work is important,” Evan pointed out. “She fights the Darkness constantly, and today she can only be more successful than we were.”
The day had brought them no closer to finding out where the Dark Adept intended to open the gate. It had been long and frustrating and they’d accomplished absolutely nothing.
“Well, maybe we can guard the sacrifice.” Roland picked up one of the pineapple muffins Rebecca had brought home from work and then put it back down. He didn’t really feel hungry and his mind kept playing word association games. Sacrifice. Victim. Corpse.
“How?” Evan demanded, both hands working through his hair because they wouldn’t lie idle at his sides. “He can choose from a city full of people. His only criteria is innocence.” Both men turned to look at Rebecca, who puttered around the tiny kitchen making tea. “She is the only one I know I can protect,” he added in a softer voice.
“So all we can do is wait?”
“Wait until he begins and hope I can stop him before he finishes. Yes.”
“Will you be able to save …” Roland’s voice trailed off at the look of pain in Evan’s eyes.
“I will do all I can, but …” Evan’s voice trailed off in turn.
“There must be something else we can do!” Roland smashed his fist down into the couch. Under the window, the harp buzzed faintly, an echo of his emotion.
Rebecca set the teapot down on the table. “We could ask Mrs. Ruth if there was something else we could do. Mrs. Ruth knows everything.”
Somehow, Roland thought, remembering the bag lady bending over him when he woke in the alley, I don’t doubt that in the least. He threw up his hands. “I’m willing to give her a shot at it. It beats sitting around here waiting.”
“Very well,” Evan agreed, forcing his hands to still with a visible effort. “You will go and speak to Mrs. Ruth, a wisewoman at the very least, it seems, and I will remain here in case the Darkness moves before you receive an answer. For here, in this security, I can best guard my Lady. He will not have her even if I succeed at nothing else. “Will you stay with me, Lady?”
Rebecca looked from Roland to Evan and frowned. She feared that Mrs. Ruth might not talk to Roland if he came alone. Mrs. Ruth could be very rude. But Evan wanted her to stay, needed her to stay even though she didn’t quite understand why. “If Roland remembers the way,” she decided at last.
“I remember, kiddo.” He picked up Patience, told the harp he’d be back—it replied with a mournful sort of a chirp but seemed willing to let him go—and headed for the door.
“Wait!” Rebecca grabbed up a muffin, ran across the room, and pushed it into his hands. “Sometimes Mrs. Ruth is nicer if you bring her things.”
“Thanks, kiddo.” He winked at her, nodded at Evan, and left. There was no need for either of them to tell him to be careful.
Roland took the streetcar to Spadina and the Spadina bus north to Bloor. Three young women got on, laughing and talking, brightening the bus with their presence, and a chubby baby in a carrier smiled beatifically at him. He watched a teenager with a green mohawk give his seat to an old Oriental lady buried
What with traffic tie-ups, he enjoyed it for longer than he’d intended. He could’ve walked the distance just about as fast. Well, now we know why heroes never take public transit, he thought as he joined the surging crowd at the back door. The day had been hot, the people reflected this, and one of the anonymous bodies had a parcel of fresh fish. Next time, I walk. The exhaust fumes on Bloor Street seemed like country breezes by comparison.
Only one bundle buggy stood guard by the lilacs and Roland began to get a bad feeling when he dropped to his knees and stuck his head into the leafy tunnel. It smelled too good under there for Mrs. Ruth to be home.
She wasn’t.
But in the middle of the cleared area where the bag lady usually sat, a peeled stick had been stabbed into the ground and skewered on the tip of it was a trailing gray banner. Roland reached out and plucked it free.
“A Dominion receipt?” he wondered. Then he turned it over.
Written on the back, the pale pencil marks barely visible against the limp and grimy paper, were the words: “Who raised the barriers?”
Who indeed? Roland thought, frowning. He wondered if Mrs. Ruth always left cryptic messages when she went out or if she meant this specifically as an answer to the question he’d come to ask.
What do we do now?
Who raised the barriers?
Not that it was much of an answer, he concluded.
Shoving the paper in his pocket, he crawled out from under the lilacs and stood, ignoring the curious stares from passersby. The traffic crept by on Bloor Street in a steady stream, giving him no reason to assume Spadina had miraculously cleared up since he’d gotten off the bus. He checked his watch and sighed. Ten thirty-three. Why weren’t all these people at home with their families?
I’ll do a quick search through the neighborhood. She can’t have gone far, she left half her worldly possessions behind.
* * *
Daru kept up appearances until the elevator door closed behind her, then she sagged against the graffiti covered wall. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d looked forward to a hot shower with such desperation. Tossing back her braid, she checked the time. Eleven seventeen. Well, that explained it. She shouldn’t have let Mrs. Singh talk her into that third cup of coffee.
As the elevator ground its weary way down the remaining nine floors, she worked out the time it would take to get from where she was in the Jane/Finch corridor to Rebecca’s apartment in the heart of the city. There, at least, the hour would work for her; at this time on a Thursday the parkway should be empty. Though I’ll probably arrive too late to be of any help. Sometimes it seemed like that was her entire life, following behind the Darkness, picking up the pieces, and trying to patch them together again.
She didn’t regret her decision though, continuing with her job rather than throwing all her time in with Evan. People depended on her. Not faceless masses of humanity, but individual people. They needed her and she had no intention of letting them down. The little battles often win the war, as her Uncle Devadas always said.
The elevator wheezed to a stop in the lobby and the door slid open in a series of quivering jerks, burying the legend, “Tony loves Shelley, and Anna, and Rajete, and Grace.”
“Busy boy, that Tony”; Daru noted as she strode across the dimly lit lobby. Half the lights had been smashed again and she made a mental note to call the building manager first thing in the morning. She picked the electrical tape off the lock, restoring its function, and it closed behind her with a satisfying click. All unarrived “boyfriends” could now sleep in the dumpster.
She’d parked her car under the one remaining streetlight in the visitor’s parking, half expecting, as she always did, never to see it again. The underground garage was moderately more secure—provided the door worked at all—but Daru had been staying out of underground garages lately.
After pumping the gas a few times, just to let the ancient car know she meant business, Daru turned the key in the ignition. Nothing happened.
“Don’t be, ridiculous,” she snapped, trying it again with identical results. “The battery can’t be dead,” She popped the hood and got out to investigate, more because she hated inaction than because she knew what she was looking for.
The battery wasn’t dead. It was missing.
Daru’s father, who clung as tightly as he could to a traditional Hindu lifestyle, had always worried that the manners and morals of the people she worked with would rub off on his daughter. The manners and morals hadn’t, but over the years she’d picked up an extensive vocabulary he would not have approved of. She worked through it now, beginning in English and continuing into French, Hindu, Portuguese, Korean, and the three words she knew in Vietnamese—which were biologically inappropriate to an automobile but made her feel a lot better.
She checked her watch again. Eleven twenty-seven. Transit ran until midnight. Throwing her purse over her shoulder, she locked the car and headed for the bus stop. Just before she reached it, a bus roared by.
She remembered a few words she’d forgotten back by the car and also repeated a few of her favorites under her breath. Then, with ill-grace, she settled down to wait the scheduled twenty minutes between buses.
The night seemed to grow darker.
A week ago Daru would have blamed it on her imagination. Now, she knew better. A warm breeze rubbed against her. Riding on it came a sweet familiar smell. She scanned the area and spotted the red glow at the edge of the shadow cast by the apartment building. The darkness was too deep to penetrate, but as she watched the glow moved two feet to the right, intensified briefly, then moved two feet again.
Three of them.
She could remain perfectly still and assume they hadn’t seen her. But that would be a fool’s assumption for the skin on the back of her neck crawled in response to the menace in their stares.
She could try to make it back to her car, locking the doors and hoping the light in the parking lot would make them wary. Hoping futilely.
If she hadn’t fixed the lobby lock, she could’ve gone back to Mrs. Singh and called for help. But she didn’t regret it for if the lock kept her out, it also kept out the three who watched.
Remaining in the bus shelter only meant she would be easily cornered.
Her back straight, she started down the sidewalk toward the distant lights of a major intersection. She supposed she was frightened, deep down, but anger was the only emotion she was really aware of. Anger that this was even happening. Anger that she couldn’t stand and fight.
“Hey, pretty momma.”
The voice came from just behind her left shoulder. How had they gotten so close? She didn’t waste time wondering. She began to run.
The glow of the streetlights didn’t seem to reach the ground and Daru ran in a kind of twilight zone, the slapping of her leather soles against the concrete almost, but not quite, drowning out the sounds of pursuit. She used all her breath for running; in this neighborhood a scream would bring no response.
Suddenly, almost directly in front of her, a young man held out both hands, his smile a humorless flash of white. “Let’s party,” he purred.
Too close to swerve, she dropped her shoulder, slammed him out of the way, then saw another two approaching out of the darkness. “More?” she panted and risked a quick glance back along her path. The original three seemed to be gaining. Daru knew she should stay on the main road, but she didn’t see how she could. Taking in great lungfuls of the humid air, she put on a fresh burst of speed and darted up the dark alley between two buildings. Maybe she could lose them in the maze of high rises.
Behind her, she heard nasty laughter. “Why run, baby? You know you’ll enjoy it.”
She followed twists and turns and did everything she could, but the pack stayed on her. And grew larger. Echoes bounced about between the buildings and she knew that sooner or later, tired and confused, she’d take a wrong alley and end up …
Chest heaving, she leaned against a concrete wall and tried to catch her breath, ears straining to pick immediate danger out of the sounds of pursuit. That way; coming up the alley from her right. And …
Oh, blessed god, from the left as well!
She straightened and prepared to take a few down with her.
“Yo. Bubba.”
Savagely, she bit back the scream and whirled around. Behind her, a pudgy little bag lady pointed at a bulging bundle buggy.
“Get in.”
“What?”
“In. To the buggy.”
“Mrs. Ruth?”
“Unless you’d like to be on the wrong end of a gangbang?”
Daru got into the buggy. Somehow. The rags and bits of odds and ends that strained at the wire sides were only a thin layer of camouflage, the center was empty. Knees up by her cheeks, arms tight about her shins, Daru peered up at the bag lady’s scowl.
“Why …” she began.
“Quiet, bubba,” Mrs. Ruth said conversationally and piled an armload of rags on Daru’s head.
Footsteps ran by going left.
Footsteps ran by going right.
Protesting shrilly, the bundle buggy began to move.
“Where …” Daru called.
Mrs. Ruth patted the top of the rags firmly. “Quiet, bubba,” she said again.
Rebecca yawned and buried her face in the crook of her arm, squirming into a more comfortable position on the couch.
“Lady.” Evan’s voice seemed to come from very far away. “Why don’t you go to bed.”
“’Cause I’m going to help you,” Rebecca explained, yawning again. She pushed herself up into a sitting position and turned to face Evan who stood at the window. “We’re going to fight the Darkness together.”
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