Tannim slid into the driver's seat of his beloved Mustang, shut the door, and simply leaned back in the familiar surroundings. He had never been quite as happy to see any material object as he'd been to see his Mustang still waiting there in the middle of the amber room. The journey to reach it had been a harrowing one in terms of all the strange and menacing slices of Underhill they'd had to traverse. He was still astonished at Shar's ability to pick her way across all of those Gates. She must have an incredible memory. . . .
But they made it, and without any opposition to speak of. For the first time since he'd come Underhill, he felt relatively safe. There was Cold Iron between him and any enemies now, and lots of it. There were spells of protection and defense built into the very sheet metal. He had reserves of magical energy stored here as well; energies that he badly needed.
And his magic-imbued crowbar, his weapon of choice in any confrontation with the Unseleighe, was right under the seat where he could grab it.
The other door opened and closed as Shar slipped into the passenger's side and shut the door as soon as she was seated. He noted that she locked it, too, and did the same on his side. She fumbled for a moment with the controls on her seat before getting the hang of it and sliding it back as far as it would go.
Shar. Now, there was a mystery wrapped in an enigma: half-kitsune, half-dragon, all perplexing—
And one I'd better figure out before she turns around and stabs me in the back.
Chinthliss himself hadn't known where she stood but had assumed she was not on the side of truth, justice, and apple pie. Tannim had been so happy to see her, though, back in that Rubik's Prison, that he hadn't given a thought to what Chinthliss had said about her. Or, frankly, a fat damn about her motives in cracking him out of there. Her motives didn't matter, as long as she was getting him free. If she was leading him into another and different trap, well, maybe it would be easier to escape or talk his way out of than the last. The important thing was that he was buying a little more time, and in an uncertain universe, every moment counted. It gave him a little more opportunity to think things through. Something unexpected might happen.
So far, so good.
"All right, we made it. Now what? Aren't Madoc and his Merry Men going to come straight here as soon as they get over fighting with each other?" he asked, opening his eyes and blinking them wearily. How long had he gone without rest? Long enough; his eyes felt puffy and swollen, very heavy.
He looked over at Shar's lovely profile; she smiled a little and shook her head. "No," she said with a ghost of a chuckle. "No, I put a lot of masking spells on your car to deaden the effect of so much Cold Iron here—then I told them that I'd moved it to a safer place. Madoc won't go anywhere in person if he has the choice. The spells work like that silk sheet we put in the trunk; your Mach I is insulated from the energies Underhill now—which means that they are not going to be able to detect it by its effect on the world around it. They have absolutely no reason to think I left it here. I don't believe any of the Unseleighe Madoc's got know these masking spells are even possible, so they're going to take me at my word if they don't see Death-Metal effects here. And scrying is so costly in terms of time and energy that I don't think they'll make the attempt. They'd have to have something of yours, mine, or the vehicle's for scrying to find it anyway. We can actually afford to get a little rest, then be on our way."
"How?" he asked skeptically. "Drive out of here?"
To his surprise, she nodded. "This place was meant for creatures larger than this vehicle; the doors and hallways will all accommodate it, and this room is on the ground floor. We can drive it out into the garden; there is a Gate there as well as the one in here. We will have to take our chances on where it goes, though; the only setting that I know of would land us in a fairly unpleasant and unfriendly place. I can see how many other settings there are, and you can pick one, and we'll hope it takes us somewhere familiar."
He nodded. She turned to him then, pulling her hair away from her face and looking at him rather wistfully. "I don't suppose you have anything in the way of food in here, do you? I'm awfully hungry. I could get something from the garden, but I'd rather not leave the car, frankly. This is about the first time I've felt safe outside of my—my own place."
He lifted an eyebrow at her, quite well aware of gnawing hunger in his own innards. "You mean our gracious host didn't offer you dinner?"
She made a little face. "You saw the kitchen; you saw what was in it. Would you eat anything prepared there?"
He had to grin, just a little, and reached behind the seat. "Here—" he said, handing her one of the high-energy sports-bars he kept back there. "I fool my body into thinking this is food all the time. It's not exactly cordon bleu, but it'll keep you going." He looked back around the side of the seat. "I've got crackers and Spraycheeze back there too, if you'd rather."
"This will be fine," she responded, unwrapping the bar and nibbling on it.
There were dented drink-boxes of Gatorade back behind the seat as well; he fished out a pair and handed her one. She nibbled at the bar daintily, but not as if she disliked the taste. He wondered what a kitsune normally ate; not sushi, surely. Somehow she didn't seem to be the sushi type.
He made short work of his own share and reclined the seat to its fullest. After sitting in that cube for hours, the car seat felt as luxurious as a featherbed. He was going to have to get some sleep; this seemed to be the safest place for it.
But worries swarmed through his mind, preventing any relaxation. How long, real-time, had he been Underhill? Time often moved very differently here; by the chronology of his own world, he could have been down here a few minutes, or a few months. His folks would be frantic—
I hope somebody thought of a story to tell them.
Chinthliss had obviously lost the link to the Mustang; he might be able to reach back to the human world with a Gate, but only at the price of expending everything he had and leaving himself open to any attacker.
That might be just what Shar was waiting for, in fact. Just because she'd been chummy with him so far today, that didn't mean she was on his side. She could be waiting to catch him in a moment of vulnerability.
Yeah, like asleep in this car.
But he didn't want to think about that. He didn't even want to consider it. He wanted to hear that she had somehow seen what her former allies really were like and had rejected them.
I want to find out that she's turned into a good guy, darn it. I want—hell, might as well admit it. I want her to be the girl in my dreams.
Well, there was another objection to opening up a Gate on his own. He was no Chinthliss; he would need quite a bit of time to establish that Gate, and such a huge expenditure of power would signal his presence as effectively as a Las Vegas-style neon sign.
Yeah. "Good Eats Here." Bad. Very bad.
So how was he going to get home again? Drive cross-Underhill? What was that going to do to the Mustang? He could create small planes of force, like magical ramps, all day long. They weren't too tough to make. He could even create those from inside the car, while it was in motion, so that should take care of stairs, lumps, and small ravines.
And where in heck are the gas stations down here, anyway?
Where did Shar figure into all this? What was she all about? Was she friend, foe, or neither?
"So," he said carefully, staring through the windshield at the throne at the other end of the room. "Why don't you start with some explanations? Like, how come you're suddenly my friend?"
She stiffened a little, then wrapped both hands around her drink-box, propping it on her knee. "You know who I am," she stated. "Who my father is." Her voice was completely neutral, and he nodded just as neutrally.
"Your name is Shar, your father is a dragon named Charcoal. He is an enemy of my mentor, Chinthliss, and an ally of the Unseleighe." He waited for her response; it was a curt nod. "I'm assuming you are, or were, an ally of the Unseleighe yourself. Your mother is a kitsune; Charcoal and Chinthliss both courted her, and Chinthliss won her, temporarily at least. That's basically all I know."
"My blood-father is a manipulative control freak," Shar replied bitterly. "I was raised supposedly as your opposite number. I was supposed to be everything you are not. Fortunately, Mother made certain that Charcoal wasn't the only creature with a hand in my upbringing. I parted company with him some time ago; our parting was less than friendly and he has forgiven neither Mother nor myself."
She glanced at him to see how he was taking this; he kept his expression neutral, but nodded.
"Unfortunately I was taught by Unseleighe and spent a lot of time in several of their domains. I began severing as many ties with his old allies as I deemed feasible, but—much as it galls me to admit this—there were some I didn't dare cut off completely. If I had, they would have been mortally offended." She bit her lip, and looked at her hands.
"And offending an Unseleighe prince can have very permanent results," Tannim commented. He could understand that; heck, he lived it. "They hate everybody, and it's only when they want something out of you that you can trust them within limited bounds. It's just a good thing that there are rules even they don't dare break."
"Exactly." She blinked rapidly, and rubbed her eyes. "I was still supposed to be your opposite; I went on studying you, partly because it didn't do any harm, and partly because if Father wanted me to be your opposite, I wanted to see what I was supposed to be the opposite of. You posed something of a challenge, actually, trying to come up with things I could do to match your skills. I've been watching you, on and off, for years. Since you were in high school, in fact."
She'd been studying him? For years? He couldn't conceal his shock and surprise—and it was that shock that made him blurt out what he would not otherwise have revealed. "Did you dream about me the way I—"
She brought her head up like a startled deer and stared directly into his eyes, her pupils wide with shock and surprise. "You dreamed about me? When?"
Good one, Tannim. You really stepped on your dick that time. Well, it was too late now; might as well fess up. "At least once a month, sometimes as often as every other night, for years. Since Chinthliss first came across to my side of the Hill, anyway." He couldn't help himself; he felt his ears turning hot as he flushed. Would she guess just what some of those dreams had been about?
But she averted her eyes, and pink crept over her cheeks. "I—dreamed too, about you. I thought it was just because I was studying you."
Quick, get the subject back on track before you really stick your foot in your mouth. Don't ask what she dreamed about! "Right," he said more harshly than he intended. "So—now what? How do you figure into this mess? Besides challenging me, I mean; I suppose that was on this Madoc Skean's orders. Why'd you get me out of that prison?"
"I caused it," she said in a very small voice. Her blush deepened to a painful crimson, and she stared fixedly at her clenched hands crushing her empty drink-box. "It's my fault you're Underhill in the first place. I was the one who brought your car here."
So that's why—! Damn it—
"I didn't expect you to follow it so fast!" she continued, an edge of desperation in her voice, as she finally turned to meet his accusing gaze. "I was—oh, I was under pressure from Madoc Skean. I didn't know what to do, I mean, I really got a rush out of challenging you, but he kept pushing for me to—"
"To get rid of me," he supplied, flatly. "So?"
"So I was trying to buy time for both of us! I couldn't risk a direct confrontation with Madoc Skean, I didn't want to actually consummate the challenge, and I was trying to buy us both time!" Her hands tightened on the drink-box. "I thought—I thought you'd follow the car in a few days at best, and by then, I'd have some idea of how to put Madoc off further, or I'd have managed to create a rift among his other allies, or you'd have gotten in touch with your Seleighe friends. And I had no idea this car was going to make such a huge disturbance when it came across!" The muscles of her throat looked tight, and there was a line of strain between her brows. "Madoc had a lot of ideas; he thought that without the Mach I you might choose something other than `racing' as your weapon. And in case you decided to go chasing after it, he expected to use the car as bait in a trap, and I was the only one that could bring it Underhill for him. My plan was to keep the fact that I actually had it hidden from Madoc until I could talk to you. . . ."
Her voice faltered and died, and she licked her lips unhappily. But she did not avert her gaze, and she seemed sincere. He looked into her eyes and saw no falsehood there.
Could he believe her?
Ah, hell, why not?
"Okay," he said into the thick, leaden silence. "Okay, I'll accept that. Now, why are you helping me?"
She dropped her eyes for a moment, then looked up again, with a spark of defiance in her expression. "Because I got you into this," she said. "The scales have to be balanced before we decide on anything else; that's kitsune law and custom. I got you into this, but now I've gotten you out of this. You have to release me from that debt."
But he shook his head slightly. She was not going to get off the hook that easily. He was still Underhill, and so was the Mach I; springing him from Madoc Skean's little reception didn't even things out. "Sorry," he told her. "I can't do that. I'm not out of this yet, I'm only out of Madoc's clutches, and that may just be temporarily. I can't release you from your debt until I'm back in my world, and my car, too."
She flinched, but she nodded; she obviously saw the justice of his demand. Her cheeks were so pale that he longed to touch her and reassure her.
He wanted to do more than just touch her, if it came down to that. Unbidden dream-memories told him of any number of ways this could go—
But this wasn't a dream. He couldn't make that kind of assumption.
He tore his gaze away from hers and stared out the windshield again, trying to calm the chaos of his mind and heart.
He just wasn't certain how to act—did he behave as if she was a stranger, or as if she really was the person he had dreamed about? This was as confusing as all hell; it felt as if he knew her, as if he had known her intimately for years! It was all those damned dreams, where she'd figured as his lover. They'd had a solid feeling, a reality to them, that made the current situation positively schizoid. He didn't know her in any sense; they'd never met before she'd nailed that glove to his Mustang. Yet at the same time, all the little things she did, the tiny quirks of behavior, the ways she reacted, the bits of body language, were all exactly the way he "remembered."
"I hate to ask you what your dreams were about, if they were anything like mine," she whispered across his confusion.
"If you knew," he replied, trying desperately to make a joke about it, "you'd slap me into next week."
"Oh, I don't know about that," she said, which was exactly what he would have expected her to say if this was a dream, and not at all what he had rationally expected to hear. He looked over at her in startlement to find her smiling wanly at him. "After all, I am half-kitsune. We have a certain reputation; one that's been known to attract even dragons."
His body reacted in a predictable manner before his mind took over and gathered up all the reins firmly. This isn't the time or the place, he told his galloping libido firmly. We're surrounded by potential enemies, we're exhausted—and on top of that, the front seat of a '69 Mustang is absolutely impossible. These are bucket seats. The backseat is practically nonexistent. You'd have to be a contortionist.
"Trust me," he said firmly. "You'd smack me so hard I'd lose teeth."
He closed his eyes for a moment—just for a few seconds—
It was long enough; she struck as swiftly as a cobra. Before he could open them again, she'd writhed around in her seat, leaning over the center console, and planted her mouth firmly on his. One hand snuck around behind the back of his head, holding him so he couldn't jerk away.
Not that he wanted to!
Without the use of anything as confusing as words, she was letting him know that her dreams had probably been along the same lines as his own. And in no uncertain terms, she was telling him that she had enjoyed those dreams.
When she'd succeeded in setting every nerve afire and causing a complete meltdown of his brain, she let him go, returning to her seat with a teasing smile on her lips. "I don't think I would smack you, if those dreams were like mine—unless you asked nicely," was all she said.
"I—guess not." He blinked and tried to make his frontal lobes function again, after having the blood supply to his brain rush off elsewhere. Should he follow up on this?
If I do, I could get into more trouble than I can handle right now. If I don't, it could still be trouble, but not as complicated.
"This isn't a—a good time to get into anything—ah—distracting," he ventured. "We aren't really safe here, just safer for the moment than a lot of other places." He hoped she understood; the lover who had shared more than just his bed would have.
"You don't like it dangerous?" she purred.
"No, and you wouldn't, either."
She nodded; reluctantly, he thought, but in agreement. "Damn. You're right. I'm not happy about it, though." She smiled weakly. "I shouldn't have done that, but I couldn't resist. Let's just call that a—a promissory note, a raincheck, until a better time."
Jeez, some raincheck! Makes me want to call Fighting Eagle for a thunder-dance! He yawned, exaggerating it a little. "Look, Shar, I'm not capable of thinking or much of anything at the moment. I am beat, and I need some rest badly. Can you stay awake long enough for me to catch a couple of hours of sleep? Once I can think straight, we can make some plans, but right now, I wouldn't want to make any kind of decisions. I'm two burritos short of a combination plate when I'm this tired."
She nodded, and to his relief, she did not seem put out by the fact that he didn't follow through on her tacit invitation. But the Shar I know—knew—think I know would understand. "Get some rest, then," she said with surprising gentleness. "I'll keep watch."
Could he trust her?
Did it matter?
Not really. If he couldn't trust her, he was already doomed, and he might as well get some sleep. And if he could trust her—
—he might as well get some sleep.
"Thanks, Shar," he said, and smiled. He reached out and squeezed her hand. "Thanks a lot. It's nice to have somebody watching at my back in this."
Her reaction—blinking as if such a thing had never occurred to her—made him wonder about her past. Living with the Unseleighe would only teach you that there could be no such thing as a partner. But someone or something had to teach her that it was possible.
Has she ever had someone she could depend on? Her mother, maybe.
"I can see that it would be," she replied wistfully. Then she shook her head and became her usual, confident self. "You get that sleep; I probably need a lot less than you do, anyway. When you wake again, we'll make some plans."
"Right." He smiled again, and closed his eyes firmly. Having her so close was such a temptation—
Go to sleep, Tannim. And—jeez, if you can help it, don't dream about Shar.
Joe padded up to the old barn a little more than two hours after he'd left it, sweating, but not even close to being winded. It had felt good to run full-out like that, with the cool night air all around him and the drone of cicadas coming from all directions. When he was doing something like running, he didn't have to think so much about things. Like how all of this was more than a little crazy.
He'd let himself into the Drake's house and had left a note propped on the kitchen table, explaining pretty much what he'd suggested to Chinthliss. Kansas City was far enough away that the Drakes would not expect to hear anything for at least a couple of days, especially since this was supposed to be an emergency. And if they weren't back with Tannim in a couple of days, then things really would have gone seriously wrong.
To lend credence to the note, Joe had rummaged through Tannim's room and his own, making it look as if some things, but not all, had been taken. Then he had gotten what he'd come for from its hiding place up inside the boxsprings of his bed. A .45 automatic, basically the same handgun as the military surplus he'd trained with. Pity that it wasn't an M-16 or some other fully automatic assault rifle, but—well, it wasn't supposed to have been a bullet-hose for all-out attacks but something to defend himself from one or more of the Chosen Ones until the real law showed up. He had to keep reminding himself that he was supposed to be a civilian now. Most civvies didn't even have this much firepower, when it came right down to it. They saw guys like Dirty Harry in the movies, and that was about the extent of their gun knowledge.
Which was why, of course, whenever one of them did get scared over something and get himself a weapon, the people who usually got hurt or killed by it were people in his own family. Frank had once remarked that for a bunch of paranoid nut cases, the Chosen Ones had the best gun-safety classes he'd ever heard of. Joe had not only taken those classes, he'd taught them to the Junior Guard.
He had strapped on the shoulder holster, and slung extra pouches of ammo on their web-belts around his waist. They were heavy, but you never knew. . . . Better take all he had; there probably weren't any gun shops where he was going.
He was used to running with full pack and kit; this had been nothing, really, no kind of weight at all. He had let himself out of the house, moving so quietly he didn't even make the floor creak, and took off back the way he had come.
He was halfway afraid that Chinthliss had used his acquiescence as a ruse, or had changed his mind, and that when he got back to the barn he would find the other two gone. Then what would he do?
Call Keighvin at Fairgrove, he supposed, and let him know what had happened. And hope that he didn't let anything slip to Mr. and Mrs. Drake when they asked him where their son was.
But the glow of heavy shields over the barn told him that Chinthliss and Fox were still there, and as he ran back up the track through the tall grass, intermittent flashes of bright white light beneath the golden glow indicated that they were up to something. None of this was visible if he did that little mental trick and turned what Tannim had called his "mage-sight" off. This other kind of sight—it was so strange, seeing colored glows around people, and the occasional figure that he knew wasn't "really" there for the rest of the world. It had started when he'd seen Sarah for the first time, and thanks to the training Bob and Al had given him, it was getting stronger all the time. Every time he used it, he saw more. Was this how everyone at Fairgrove saw the world, bathed in extra colors and populated by more creatures than anyone else knew existed? Or was this something only a few people could do?
Well, he'd find all that out later, if he made it through this.
If.
He had to think of it in those terms. He had no illusions that this was going to be some romp through Wonderland; Fox was terrified, and even though Chinthliss tried to seem glib about the situation, Tannim's mentor was worried. There was danger here, much more real than the "danger" his father had prophesied.
He was about to get into something he hadn't really wanted to deal with, and something he wasn't really prepared for. Magic. What the hell did he know about magic, really? Not much when push came to shove. Not enough to use it as a weapon, probably not enough to put up an adequate defense of his own.
But Tannim, in the short time that Joe had known him, had become a "big brother," just as Jamie was his "little brother." Not a blood relationship, but one that went far deeper than blood and bone and genes. Tannim was family. You stood by your family. When they were in trouble, you helped them.
Fox stood beside the gap in the wall that had once been the doorway, his tails swishing nervously. Joe trotted up. The tall grass resisted him a little and caught on his jeans. Chinthliss stood in the center of the barn, as Tannim had stood not that long ago. He didn't seem to be doing anything, but Joe knew better than to assume that nothing was going on.
"What's up?" he whispered to Fox, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his arm.
"He's building a Gate," Fox whispered back. "The whole thing; all the Gates where we want to go are booked up and unless we build our own, we can't get there from here. I gave him all the oomph I had to spare, so now he's channeling in everything he can get from outside. It's not that easy, building a Gate in your world; magic runs thinner here. We're just lucky that it hasn't been tapped around here much."
Just as he finished that last sentence, Chinthliss exclaimed in satisfaction, and a tiny glowing dot appeared in the air in front of him, at just about eye-level. Chinthliss cupped his hands before him, catching the spark for a moment so that his hands glowed and the bones showed through the translucent flesh. Then Chinthliss slowly spread his hands wide; the dot became a glowing ring, which grew as he spread his hands, until it was a circle of light taller than he and broader than his outstretched arms. A dark haze filled it, a haze you couldn't see through, and which made Joe shiver for reasons he didn't quite understand.
"You've come exactly in time, Joe," Chinthliss said without turning around. "We are ready, now. You and I, that is," he amended. "Fox can journey there without the need of a Gate; one of the advantages of being a spirit-form."
"Right. See you at the bandstand?" Fox replied, and vanished without waiting for an answer.
"Will he really be there?" Joe said a bit dubiously, for all that Fox was his old "friend" from childhood. Even his memories painted Fox as something less than reliable and inclined to tricks.
"He'll be there," Chinthliss replied grimly. "If he's not, well, he knows that I will be looking for him when all this is over. Being called `Stumpy' will be the least of his problems."
Joe stepped across the threshold of the barn to join Chinthliss in front of the circle of light. "So what do we do?" he asked bravely, putting the best face he could on all this. "I—I'm afraid I don't know a lot about this kind of thing."
Chinthliss looked down at him, and the dark eyes changed from hard and purposeful to warm and kindly, all in a single moment. "We simply step across," he told Joe. "There will be a moment of disorientation, then you will find yourself in the place we wish to go to. And you are doing very well, young man. You are bearing up under some very strange experiences, and doing so with more composure than many with more years than you."
Joe looked up into those odd, oriental eyes, saw or sensed far more years than he had dreamed, and swallowed. "I don't suppose you have any advice before we do this, do you?"
Chinthliss shook his head. "Nothing that would help. Are you ready?"
Joe took a very deep breath, allowed himself to be conscious for a moment of the weight in his shoulder holster, and remembered with a flush of pride how good a marksman he was. Heck, he wasn't too bad at hand-to-hand, either. Chinthliss had obviously included him in this party because of that expertise. If he simply kept his eyes, ears, and mind open, obeyed his orders, and behaved in a professional manner, everything should be all right, no matter how strange the external circumstances became.
"I'm ready, sir," he said, proud of the fact that his voice did not break or quaver, and that he stood tall, straight, and confidently. "You first, or me?"
In answer, Chinthliss gestured at the circle of light. Joe repressed a shiver when he remembered how Tannim had stepped into an identical circle and vanished. . . .
He took a convulsive grip on his belt and stepped through; his skin tingled all over, as if he'd grasped a live wire, his eyes blurred, the world swirled and spun around him, and he gasped as his stomach lurched, exactly as if he'd gone into free-fall for a moment. He flexed his knees involuntarily.
Then with a shock, he went from night into full day, and his feet landed on soft turf. Since his knees were already flexed to take the strain, he only staggered a little to catch his balance. As he straightened, he saw that he stood in the center of what looked like a city park, with a white bandstand or gazebo in the middle. By the bright light, it had to be just about noon, and where they'd come from, it was around two in the morning.
Overhead, he heard someone whistling.
He looked up in startlement to see a cartoon sun in the middle of a flat, blue sky, staring down at him jovially. You could look right at it without even blinking; lemon-yellow, it had round, fat cheeks, blue eyes, a wide mouth, and a fringe of pointed petal-like rays. It smiled at him as soon as it saw he was looking at it, winked broadly, and waved at him with one of the petals.
Stunned, he waved back automatically. It grinned, and went back to whistling and bobbing a little in time to the song—a real song—that was also being whistled by a vivid blue and red bird perched on the top of the gazebo. Puffy, flat-looking marshmallow clouds sat in the sky with the sun, a sky that was an unshaded, turquoise blue, without any variation from horizon to horizon. The emerald grass under his feet was more like carpet than grass, and did not crush down under his weight. There was no breeze, yet the air smelled fresh and clean. In fact, it smelled exactly like freshly washed sheets.
They also weren't alone. The other creatures were not very near, and they didn't seem to care that a Gate had been opened in the park, although many noticed. There were otters and foxes, though none of the foxes looked like FX. There was a massive cobalt-blue unicorn, and a centaur with a black, d'Artagnan beard. They were having a picnic with what could only be called a foxtaur, and a small golden-colored dragon, and an oddly hunched, very large bird. A white unicorn mare chased playfully after a humanoid, black-horned unicorn wearing black leather and spikes, howling taunts. And overhead, a red-and-umber gryphon with broad coppery wings glided in to join the rest.
He turned as a crackling, sizzling sound beside him startled him again. There was nothing there for a second—then a familiar arm clad in Armani-tailored silk phased into existence, as if the owner was pushing his way through an invisible barrier, exactly like an expensive special effect. The rest of Chinthliss followed shortly as Joe watched in utter fascination. He seemed to arrive suspended a few inches above the plush green lawn and dropped as soon as all of him was "there."
Chinthliss landed with flexed knees, just as Joe had. He straightened, looked around, and nodded with satisfaction.
"Good," he said. "At least we made our transition safely. Now, where is Fox?"
"Right here." Fox strolled up from behind them, although Joe could have sworn that there hadn't been anyone there a moment earlier. He was in the fox-footed, three-tailed James Dean form, the one with the red leather jacket. "Now where?"
"One moment." Chinthliss glanced at Joe. "Young man, would you please grasp our friend?"
Joe didn't understand what Chinthliss was trying to prove—he couldn't touch Fox, he already knew that—but he shrugged, reached out, and made a grab for Fox's arm.
And with a shock, realized that he was holding a very solid, completely real, red-leather clad arm.
"What—" he said, startled. "How—but—"
Fox looked at Chinthliss in irritation.
"So what were you trying to prove?" he growled. "You know I'm real here!"
"That's what I was trying to prove," Chinthliss said with ironic satisfaction. "That you were not playing any of your kitsune tricks with me and projecting a spirit-form here as well, rather than risking your real self. Thank you, Joe."
"You're welcome," Joe responded automatically, dropping his hold on Fox's arm and backing up a step. He hadn't expected that. If Fox was real here—was that cartoon sun up above real as well?
He didn't want to think about it.
But then he suddenly realized that he really didn't have to think about it. His part in this mission was very simple. He didn't have to try and figure out what was real and what wasn't; all he really had to do was keep a lookout for trouble and hit it or shoot it if it got too close. And if it turned out that all this was just one big hallucination, well, no problem. He'd wake up from this dream, or in the looney bin, and pick up his life where he'd left off. Right?
Yeah. Sure.
"I think our first logical destination would be the Drunk Tank," Chinthliss continued, unperturbed. "All news comes there, sooner or later—and if any of Tannim's friends are here, that is where they will go."
Fox sighed with resignation, but shrugged. "Suit yourself," he replied. "You know this place as well as I do, and you know Tannim's friends better than I do."
"Are you going to build a Gate again?" Joe asked nervously. He hadn't liked the sensations of crossing into this place, and he wasn't certain that he wanted a repetition of the experience quite so soon.
"Build a Gate?" Chinthliss said. "Here? Good heavens, no."
"Then how are we going to get to this place?" Joe asked, more than a little confused now, since there didn't seem to be anything here except lush grass, a few fairly normal-looking trees, some benches, the gazebo, and the cartoon sky. Literally; the sky appeared to intersect with the ground no more than a few hundred yards away on all sides.
"How?" Chinthliss said, and whistled loudly, waving an arm.
And a fat taxi, bright yellow with black checks, shaped rather like an overgrown VW Bug, pulled up beside them. Joe blinked; he knew that thing hadn't been anywhere near them a moment ago, yet there it was!
A creature like a mannish badger leaned out the window. "Hiya folks!" the thing growled. "Where to?"
"The Drunk Tank," FX told it blandly.
"This is how," Chinthliss said to Joe, opening up the door and gesturing for him and Fox to enter. "We take a taxi, of course. It's too far to walk."
"Of course," Joe echoed in a daze, climbing into the rear seat. "A taxi. Of course."
"Well what else would we use?" Chinthliss retorted, as he wedged himself inside as well, with Fox squeezed between them making Warner Brothers cartoon faces. "A dragon?"
The taxi accelerated toward the flat blue sky, which looked more and more like a wall as they drew nearer. Joe closed his eyes and gripped the seat—they were going to hit! He waited for the impact, his teeth clenched tightly.
But a second later, the taxi screeched to a halt. "Here we are, folks!" came the cheerful voice from the front. "Thanks for riding with me! See you soon!"
The door popped open on its own, and Joe stepped cautiously out onto the pavement.
Real pavement. Real, cracked cement.
The sky above them was dark here, with a haze of light-pollution above the buildings. This looked like any street in any bar-district in any big city he'd ever been in. The street was asphalt, the sidewalk and curb were chipped and eroded concrete with cracks in it, but there were no cigarette butts and other trash scattered around. Dirty brick buildings on both sides of the street stood four or five stories tall, with darkened storefronts on the ground floor, and lighted or darkened windows that might lead into offices or apartments in the stories above. The taxi had pulled up in front of another brick building with a neon sign in a small window, set into a wood panel where a much larger window had once been. The sign flashed The Drunk Tank twice in red, then flashed a green neon caricature of a tipsy tank with a dripping turret the third time. To the right of the building was a parking lot; to the left, a vacant lot with a fence around it. The lot was about half full of the kind of "beater" cars most people of modest means drove in a big city. They were just about in the middle of the block, which seemed to be pretty much deserted. A couple of cars and a panel-truck were parked on the other side of the street, in front of a black-and-silver sign which read Dusty's Furley-Davidson. Below it was what could only be an authentic Springer Softail. With a warning sticker.
The cartoonish taxi did not belong here, but the driver didn't seem to care. It waited until Chinthliss got out, then buzzed off down the street.
Fox still had his fox-feet, but he'd lost the tails somewhere. Chinthliss still looked entirely human.
"Do bullets work here?" Joe whispered to FX as Chinthliss led the way to the red-painted door.
"Oh, yeah," Fox replied, a little grimly. "Yeah, bullets work just fine. You're not in some kind of cartoon, no matter what it looks like. The last bunch of city planners were animation buffs and made the sky and all look like this, but this is real. This may look weird to you right now, but bullets work, knives work, crossbows and darts work, getting hit hurts a lot, and dead is very, very dead. No second chance, no resurrection, no magic spell to bring you back. Keep that in mind if trouble starts."
Joe gulped. "Right."
Fox followed on Chinthliss' heels into the bar; Joe followed on Fox's.
Inside, the bar looked a lot bigger than it had from the outside. A lot nicer, too—kind of like one of those fancy nightclubs in movies about the Roaring Twenties and the Depression. They stood in a waiting room at the top of a series of descending tiers that held two- or four-person tables. Each table was spread with a spotless white tablecloth, centered with flowers and a candle-lamp. Wall-sconces made of geometric shapes of black metal and mirrors fastened invisibly to the white walls held brilliant white lights. To Joe's left was a check-room with a hat-check girl and the hostess' stand; beyond those was a curving balcony looking out over the tables, with a few doors leading off of it. To his right was the bar, which curved along the wall behind the top tier of tables as one immaculate, unbelievably precise arc of mahogany. Everything else was done in shiny black, chrome, and glass. At the bottom of the tiers was a dance floor with a geometric pattern in black and white marble laid out on it—and somehow lit from below—and behind that a glossy black stage large enough for a complete big-band orchestra. From the stands pushed to one side and the classic grand piano, it often held such a band, but right now there was a combo composed of a keyboard-player, a drummer with a full electronic rig, a guy with an impressive synth-set, and a female vocalist. They were covering "Silk Pajamas" by Thomas Dolby, and those in the crowd who were actually listening seemed to be enjoying it. And singing along.
But Joe had to do another reality check when he looked the crowd over.
Around about half the folks here were human; plenty of them were wearing outfits that would have had them barred at the door in the real world. Said "clothing" ranged everywhere from full military kit to as close to nothing as personal modesty would allow. In the case of some people, that pretty much meant clothing-as-jewelry—or, as Frank had once put it, "gownless evening straps." Joe tried not to stare at the blonde girl in the G-string, fishnets, diamond-choker, and heels; she was centerfold-perfect—and her brawny, saturnine escort could have picked him up with one hand and broken him over his knee without breaking a sweat. He was done up in what looked like medieval chainmail, the real thing. The sword slung along his back was certainly real looking.
Fortunately, both of them were too busy watching the stage and the dancers on the dance floor to notice his stares or his blushes.
The rest of the patrons—including most of those on the dance floor—were definitely not any more human than the creatures he'd seen in the park. The couple drawing the most attention at the moment was a pair of bipedal cat-creatures, one Siamese, the other a vivid red lynx, who were showing off their dance steps. But sharing the floor with them was a female with green hair and wearing what appeared to be a dress made of leaves who was dancing alone, a couple of elves, two fox couples, a pine marten dancing with a large monitor lizard, and a pair of beautiful young sloe-eyed men, dark and graceful, with the hindquarters and horn-buds of young goats, who were dancing together in a sensuous way that made Joe blush as badly as the blonde girl had.
He averted his eyes and fixed them firmly on Chinthliss' back. The dragon was speaking to the hostess—who seemed to have a wonderful personality, if you didn't mind the fact that otherwise she was a dog. She nodded, and wagged the tail that barely showed below her Erté dress. Chinthliss made his own way towards the bar. Joe and Fox followed him.
Chinthliss ordered "yuppie water"; Fox, with a defiant glance at Chinthliss, ordered a rum-and-Coke. Joe waved the bartender away. First of all, he had no idea how he was going to pay for a drink, or in what currency—and secondly, it was a bad idea to have your hands busy with something else if a situation came up.
Chinthliss scanned the crowd, then turned back to the bartender as the man (Arabic-looking, but with pointed ears) brought him his drink and Fox's. "So, Mahmut, have you heard or seen anything of Tannim?" the dragon asked casually, as he pushed what appeared to be a coin made of gold across to the bartender. The being slid it expertly out of sight, as he pretended to polish the bar with a soft cloth. "Not recently, Chinthliss," Mahmut replied, rubbing industriously at a very shiny spot. "Why? Are you looking for him? He never comes here anymore; in fact, as far as I know, he never goes out of the Seleighe Elfhames these days, if he leaves America at all."
Chinthliss sighed, and sipped the bubbling water. The band finished its number to the applause of the dancers and some of the people at the tables. The lights came down, and a pair of women, one very, very pale and in a long, white, high-collared dress, and one with long blond hair right down to the floor, wearing what appeared to be a dress made of glittering green fish scales, took the stage. The one in white sat down at the piano; the blonde took the microphone. A spotlight centered on the blonde, who lowered her eyelids for a moment and smiled sweetly.
The bartender tapped Joe on the shoulder; he jumped. When he turned to see what the man wanted, the fellow was holding out a pair of earplugs.
"You single?" the man asked. Joe flushed, and nodded. "You wouldn't be a virgin, by any chance, would you?" the bartender persisted, this time in a whisper.
This time Joe flushed so badly that he felt as if he was on fire.
"Thought so." The bartender nodded. "You'd better wear these if you don't want to end up following Lorelie around like a lost puppy for the rest of your short life." He held out the earplugs. Joe looked at Fox and Chinthliss, who both nodded.
"We're protected. I wouldn't worry so much about Lorelie, but her friend has appetites you wouldn't want to satisfy," Fox said solemnly. "Lamias are like that."
"Th—them?" Joe stammered.
"Yeah, them," Fox said. "Think of them as the Cocteau Twins gone horribly wrong. The L&L Music Factory, embalming optional."
Lamias? Lorelie? Something about both those names rang a dim and distant bell in his mind, but he couldn't put a finger on what they meant. Still, if not only this bartender but Chinthliss and Fox thought he ought to put in those earplugs—well, maybe he'd better.
He took them gingerly and inserted them. And he discovered, rather to his surprise, that even with them in his ears he could hear perfectly well, if a little distantly.
There were waitresses circulating among the tables, he saw now, and they were handing out more earplugs. But oddly enough, only to the men—or rather, male creatures. The two young men with the goats' legs laughed and waved them away, as did one or two others, including the pine marten and the lizard, but most of the men took them and fitted them into their ears.
Interesting.
The pale girl at the piano began singing as soon as the last of the earplug-girls retired; Joe recognized the song as "Stormy Weather," and after a few bars, Lorelie began to sing.
She had a low, throaty voice, rather than the bell-like and pure tones Joe had half expected; there was no doubt, though, that in his world she'd have a lot of people offering her record contracts. Especially with that face and figure behind the voice. But he couldn't help but wonder what all the fuss was about—and why the earplugs?
Oh, well. When in Rome . . .
He turned his attention back to Chinthliss and the bartender.
". . . and we think he might have bitten off more than he can chew," Chinthliss was saying, as Mahmut listened attentively. "Look, I know you're on the Seleighe side of the fence, so to speak, at least most of the time. You know some of the kid's friends. If any of them show up here, can you pass that information on for me?"
Mahmut nodded gravely. "For a dog of an infidel, that one is a good boy," he replied. "For me, he arranged a lager distributor from America. He has done several of my friends a service or two in the past. For a chance to even the scales, I think that they would do much."
"What kind is his kind?" Joe whispered to Fox. FX shrugged and muttered something that sounded like "gin," although that couldn't possibly be right. It was probably the earplugs. Joe made a move to take them out; Fox grabbed his hand to prevent him—
Just as someone entered the bar, stared at the singer below, and stopped dead in his tracks, as if transfixed.
It was a young man; one with branching antlers rising from his head, but otherwise quite normal-looking. As Joe paused with his hand on the plug in his ear, the newcomer shook his head violently, turned a deathly white, and made a kind of odd moaning noise.
His eyes glazed over, and he stumbled down the stairs between the tiers of tables, ignoring everything and everyone in his path. He staggered across the dance floor towards Lorelie, who ignored his presence completely, and dropped down at her feet in a crouch, gazing up at her with the adoration of a saint at the feet of the Almighty.
If Joe hadn't chanced to look in her direction, he might never have seen the piano player's reaction. If Lorelie was indifferent to her worshipper, the pale girl was not.
She stared at the young man with such pure, naked hunger that the word "hunger" simply did not describe the expression she wore. He might have been a thick, juicy steak, and she suffering starvation. Then she licked her lips and smiled.
Her teeth were all pointed, like a shark's.
"Poor kid," the bartender said distantly. "She got another one." And somehow Joe knew what he meant. Lorelie might have snared the man, but her accompanist was going to devour him somehow. Not just figuratively, either.
Joe rounded on the bartender, suddenly suffused with anger. "So why aren't you doing anything about it?" he hissed, one hand on the Colt. "Why do you let her sing here?"
Mahmut's eyes narrowed dangerously, but his voice remained calm and even. "Look, kid, we have placards in the lobby announcing that Lorelie's singing in here. The hat-check girl would have offered him earplugs. The hostess would have offered him earplugs. How much more do you want us to do? Shove the plugs in his ears? This is a neutral realm; Lorelie's free to sing, we're free to hire her, and he's free to ignore the warnings. Who knows? Maybe he was suicidal. You may not like it, son, but you're not in Kansas anymore, either."
This is a neutral realm. Maybe he was suicidal. They know he's going to die, and no one is going to help him.
Joe felt cold all over. He looked at Mahmut's flat black eyes; looked back down at the bandstand, at Lorelie, at her admirer, at the piano player. He shivered, and briefly considered the ramifications of running down there and trying to save that poor guy—
Then he caught Fox's eyes. The kitsune shook his head slowly. He remembered all of Fox's warnings, shuddered, and turned away.
Mahmut spoke to him again. "Sometimes we get people doing that because there are a lot of ways to drain a man. Those two know most of them. I have been told that many are pleasurable and leave the man more alive than before. Some think the risk is worth it for the experience. The young buck there isn't likely to die—and he might enjoy it."
He still might have tried to think of some way of getting Lorelie's victim free, but he never got the chance.
At that moment, one of the waitresses (a delicate creature like a winged lizard with veil-like wings sprouting from her shoulder blades) came over and tapped Chinthliss on the arm. "Sir," she said, "the lady over there would like you and your friends to join her in the Blue Room."
Chinthliss shook his head impatiently, as the young creature pointed. "I do not have time—" he began, looking in the direction she indicated.
Then he stopped speaking, frozen with shock that even Joe could read. And beside him, Fox went as white as the girl at the piano.
Joe turned to see what they were looking at.
On the other side of the room, behind the last tier of tables where the bar was on this side, there were several doors that presumably led to private dining rooms. There was someone standing in front of one of those doors.
She wore the kimono and elaborate hairstyle of a traditional Japanese woman—Joe could only think "geisha," since he had no idea who else wore the kimonos with the long, trailing sleeves, or the hair pierced through with so many jeweled pins that her head looked like a pincushion. But although the body beneath the gown was that of a human woman, the face was that of a fox.
And behind her, fanned out like the glory of the peacock, was an array of fox tails that clearly belonged to her.
"Oh, shit," FX said weakly. "It's—it's—"
Chinthliss cleared his throat with difficulty.
"Tell the Lady Ako," he managed, after several tries, "that we would be honored to join her."