"What?"
"What happened?" the stranger's voice demanded.
"It's four o'clock in the morning. What do you mean, what happened?"
"The Watchers. They made the national news. More than three thousand people presumed dead, though no one will ever have a body count because your monsters only left bodies until they could go back to eat them. By now, there won't be anything but a few blood smears on the wall, will there?"
"You're…"
"I'm your friend from Glenraven."
Callion sighed, relieved. "Of course. Why are you calling?"
"You chose a bad time to take your monsters on a hunting trip. My group is about ready to come for you. They found your house today; evidently you live right across the street from the site of the unfortunate accident."
"That's right."
"I need to know what we're going to do when my people come after you. I need a plan."
The timing couldn't have been worse. Callion needed to get the Devourers back and contained in something stronger—something that would hold them. He didn't need them going off on any wild forays on their own again. He certainly didn't need them causing panics. But he had a problem. They weren't back yet. His control spells should bring them back, but he still didn't know what had gotten into them to begin with. They were out there somewhere, and he couldn't find them. He didn't know if they were at the mall, or if they'd gone elsewhere—a gate into one of the Alternates…back to the Rift…or to another city here in the Machine World…
But he said, "This is our plan. I've decided I want to go back to Glenraven. I want your friends to take me in…as a prisoner. I want them to take me before the Watchmistress, so that she can try me. When she and the rest of the important people in this new government are assembled, you'll kill the Watchmistress and release the Devourers. They'll destroy the most effective of our opposition. When we've eliminated them, we'll put the Devourers into the Rift and seal it." He forced his voice to sound cheerful and optimistic. "And then you and I will settle in to make Glenraven the sort of place we want to live in."
The traitor laughed. "Very good. Then you'll only put up a token resistance when they come for you?"
"Yes. I'll make it look good, of course. What weapons do they have?"
"The wizards have some magic, but I can nullify it. The human is magic-blind, but can draw power from a source I can't identify and can't reach. It's something big and powerful, totally outside of my experience. The Machnan can't find it either, though, and the human can't actually use it. She's learned to pass this power over to the Machnan. Meanwhile, I've been blocking the Machnan from using the obvious sources; she thinks something makes it impossible for her to use those sources. From what I can tell, almost all human-based magic is entirely defensive. They have a…um…a shotgun—"
"That could be bad."
"I'll make sure it doesn't work. I've been doing some research on weapons as I've been able; I think I've figured out a way to disable the thing."
"Good. Then you make sure the gun doesn't work. As long as I know they're coming, I feel I can handle their magic, no matter how odd it is. And if you're right and it is defensive, the only thing I'll have to do is figure out a way to make them look like they beat me on their own, without my help."
"What about the Watchers…I mean the Devourers?"
"They'll be contained when you arrive. I would have had to do this anyway, after they got away from me today. They need a lesson in discipline."
"Rhiana said when she and Kate found your house, she felt them trying to escape."
Callion frowned. The two wizards must have been outside of his door when the damned Devourers had started their silent pyrotechnics.
"Yes," he said. "They became quite agitated earlier today. Very odd. I'm still not entirely certain what came over them. They communicate only when they choose and in the manner they choose. While sometimes they are quite…talkative…and sometimes they are demanding, they have never been particularly cooperative." He sighed. "And they say nothing about themselves at all. Nothing. They never have. Perhaps they sought a mate. Perhaps they intended to spawn. Perhaps some shift of the planets or some phase of the moon drove them to temporary madness. I have no way of knowing. I'm left thinking perhaps I haven't been feeding them enough."
The traitor laughed. "If that's the case, then I think they made up for it."
"Yes. My intent is to ensure that they don't make up for it again in the coming days. I want them dependent on me for their meals. Anything else could make them more dangerous than they already are."
The traitor was quiet for a moment. "Now there's a wonderful thought," he said at last, softly.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
For Kate, Monday morning followed hard on the heels of a restless, nightmare-ridden night. The lost dead cried out to her, begging her to avenge them, while in the center of darkness a cloud of brilliant many-hued lights followed the direction of the faceless Aregen she hunted. And always she could feel eyes watching her and hear the whispers of a voice she knew but couldn't place, saying, "We'll kill her soon. Soon."
She showered quickly and woke Rhiana, who had been lost in nightmares of her own. "Up," she said. "I need to get out of here for a while. The walls feel like they're starting to close in on me."
Rhiana didn't argue.
They left without telling the other three they were going—just blew out the door and down to the van as quickly as they could.
"What's bothering you?" Rhiana asked.
"A problem occurred to me while I was having nightmares," she said. "And we are going to drive until we find someplace private and we are going to work this out."
"What problem?"
Traffic already crowded the main thoroughfares. Kate passed a fender-bender in an intersection, moved around it, turned off on a side road, and saw a park up ahead. "Great. Someplace where we can talk and where no one will bother us." She pulled in and jumped out of the van. The parking lot was long, the park large, with four soccer fields in a quad over to one side, and a playground, and palm trees that waved their grassy fronds beneath a white-blue sky and light so pure and intense it seemed to have both weight and form. The park was empty. She and Rhiana picked out a picnic table well away from the parking lot and nestled beneath several large trees of a variety Kate didn't recognize.
Settled on the picnic table, she said, "This is the problem. As long as the traitor knows that neither you nor I can do anything magically without each other, he can stop both of us by interfering with just one of us. We have to figure out a way for one of us to do something alone. I don't even think it matters which one. But if whoever it is thinks that he can stop both of us by stopping one of us—"
Rhiana held up a hand. "I can see what you're getting at. Mostly, you're right. We have to have something we can do alone, and it has to be something none of the three others know about. But it can't be just one of us. Both of us have to have something."
"Both? I thought just as a diversionary measure, or—"
"But what if the one the traitor stops or blocks is the one who had the second trick?"
"Right." Kate said, "This is so much more serious than I thought it was going to be, Rhiana. I don't think I considered that I could die when all of this started."
"I don't think you did. I think you were looking at the magic and feeling amazed at what you could do."
Kate cringed inwardly at that. She'd been thinking the same thing, but she hadn't realized anyone else might have noticed. "Seeing what the Watchers did yesterday…"
"Now you're wondering how we can hope to go up against something that can do that."
"Yes."
"So am I."
"But we can't leave them here."
"No. They were killing Glenraven. You have many more people here than we have in my world, but your people have no protection. They have no magic, and I don't think anything but magic can stop the Watchers." Rhiana's eyes shifted so that she was looking s
uddenly past Kate's shoulder.
Kate turned and watched several young men get out of a car at the other end of the park.
"So we need to come up with some form of attack each of us can do alone, and we need to find a spell that will eliminate the Watchers as a threat to us." Kate felt nervous; she'd heard about packs of young men in big cities and how dangerous they were. She'd read the crime statistics about Miami and South Florida and she wondered if these were some of those young men. "And I think we ought to go somewhere else to finish our talk," she said.
Rhiana had already stood. "Yes."
"You have a bad feeling?"
"Only of being outnumbered."
"That's bad enough." Kate swung her legs over the picnic table and rose. She walked back to the car, keeping an eye on the men from out of the corner of an eye. They were watching her and Rhiana. They didn't seem to be doing anything else. She kept hoping she would see them get skateboards out of their car, or a radio, or something. But they just stood there watching.
She didn't let herself walk faster; Rhiana matched her pace. Rhiana looked perfectly unafraid and somewhat predatory.
The young men were saying something to each other. Two of them began walking across the park, toward the table where Kate and Rhiana had sat. Two more still stood by their car and watched. The rest were getting something out of the battered old Taurus station wagon. She wondered if they were getting drugs. Weapons. Maybe something worse. Kate's mouth went dry. There were, she guessed, eight or nine of them. Too many to fight off, too many to outrun. The car wasn't all that far away, but she wished she and Rhiana had picked a closer table instead of choosing the one that had the deepest shade. Had they done so, they could have been in the car and gone already.
"They're still watching us," Rhiana said.
"If we have to, we use the magic—the explosion."
"Yes. I'm ready."
"Me too."
One of the young men who had been staring at them suddenly shouted, "Hey, you!" Neither Rhiana nor Kate looked at him. He yelled again. "Hey! I saw your bumper stickers. I read those books, too!"
His friends came bumping out from the other side of their car with an enormous cooler and a grill, and two cases of Pepsi, and a soccer ball. Both boys who'd been staring ran over to help with the stuff. They started hauling it across the deep, heavy carpet of grass.
I read those books, too.
Kate felt like an idiot. She waved, the boy waved back, and then she and Rhiana reached the van.
Inside, with the doors locked, Rhiana asked, "Do you think they would have hurt us?"
"No."
"Nor do I. I feel foolish, but at the same time, after what happened to us when we were leaving your saddle shop, I think we did the right thing."
Kate nodded. "It's very pleasant to think the world is a safe place and people are friendly, but it isn't, and sometimes they aren't. The easiest way someone can get close to you to hurt you is to act friendly. The second easiest way is to act like someone who needs help. Most people want to be kind, they want to feel good, and so they become victims of those who use their better instincts."
"It's the same in Glenraven," Rhiana admitted. "Thieves and murderers don't lurk by the side of the road and come rushing out to waylay travelers. They sit in the inns and tell stories around the fire so that they can find out who has money and where they might be heading. Then they say, 'Well, I'm going that way, too, and won't we be safer if we go together?' And sometimes they're just who they seem to be, and sometimes soldiers will find the bodies of missing travelers after a few days, robbed of everything, stripped and hidden in the deep forest. Sometimes," she said softly, "they never find them at all."
Kate pulled out of the parking lot. For a long while, driving beneath the amazing Florida sun, beneath tiled houses of a dozen pastel colors that all managed to look, in the brilliant light, like different hues of white, she was silent. Rhiana seemed content to look out the window. But they couldn't just keep riding and looking. They had to come to rest somewhere. They had to figure out what they were going to do. At last she said, "You said it was hopeless teaching me magic."
"If you can't see it, you can't use it."
"So if we each have to have some additional defense besides our magic, mine is going to have to be something nonmagical."
"Yes."
"Why can't yours be, as well?"
"What are you considering?"
"Two handguns. One for me, one for you. I'll get both of them in my name, since I have identification. Florida gun laws are sensible. Georgia gun laws are easier, but we can have them quickly enough. That will be protection. We'll find a shooting range and show you how to shoot. And then we'll—"
"No." Rhiana frowned. "You have faith in your guns, and having seen what one did to the Rift monster, I can understand why. If you can do it quickly, get one for yourself. But as for me, I will have to find my own answer. And I'll find that answer when I answer another question. Who is the traitor and why is he betraying us?"
"What if you can't find out?"
Rhiana sighed. "I'll do the best I can. If I can't find out, I'll try to create something that will be effective against all three of them." She leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes. "And Callion…and the Watchers…"
"We're doomed, aren't we? Whether we come up with backup plans or not?"
"I think so."
Kate stopped by a gun shop and filled out an application to get a .9mm semiautomatic pistol. She left a number where she could be reached and said she'd stop back in a couple of days if she didn't hear anything. It seemed like a futile gesture, but she didn't know what else to do.
When she and Rhiana got back to the hotel, she could still hear snores from the other room. She decided to call Lisa to see how things were going.
When Lisa heard her voice, her polite telephone voice went icy. "I guess I can understand now why you ran," she said.
Kate frowned at the phone. "Lisa? What's wrong?"
"Wrong? That's an interesting question. Do you want to know about before or after picketers threw a brick through the display window?"
"Picketers?"
"They had a permit. They've been out here since before we opened. Paul and I had to cross a line to get in. They had all these signs that said Don't Support Satanic Businesses and Stand Up for Our Town—things like that. And they shouted at us. Screamed awful things. How we were going to go to hell for working in this place…Awful things," she repeated.
Kate sat on the edge of the bed. She felt her face getting hot. For a moment she became queasy; that changed briefly to lightheadedness, and she realized she'd forgotten to breathe. She forced herself to draw air into her lungs, then let it out slowly.
"Why were people picketing my store?"
"The men the sheriff's department arrested out at your house before you left gave a statement to Madilee Marson at the Trib."
Kate laughed. "People paid attention to something they read in the Tribulation?"
Lisa didn't seem to find anything funny in that, though. "Madilee looked into the records of the three men who were arrested, and did this article on them. Snead is a deacon at his church and a member of the Christian Men's Business Association, and he and his church led a driver that raised over a hundred thousand dollars for the medical bills on little Jessie Lockabee when she had to have a liver transplant up in Chapel Hill. Deputy Sumner saved Jody MacNeally from drowning last summer and has done all these civic things. She also told about how Warren Plonkett came to you for a job, and you refused to hire him because he was a Christian." Her voice grew a little colder, a little more distant.
"That's bullshit, Lisa. I didn't hire him because he didn't know anything about the job and because he thought he could intimidate me into giving it to him. I hired you instead. You were qualified. Did I ask you about your religion? Did I say anything about religion at all when I hired you?"
"No."
"Did you tell Madilee Marson that?"
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Lisa ignored the question. Instead, she said, "And the paper did a write-up about Craig, too. About all the things he did in Peters, and how everyone liked him, and about how he killed himself after he started living with you."
"Is the paper suggesting I caused his death?" Kate asked. She felt sicker by the minute, but also angrier.
"Of course not." Lisa sounded indignant—but not about the obvious bias the Peters Tribune had used to slant its articles. Indignant, instead, that Kate dared to question the integrity of the town's paper. "The paper located your family, too."
Lisa's heart sank. "Oh?"
"Your family said they didn't ever want to hear your name again. That you had turned your back on God and them, and that as far as they were concerned, you weren't their daughter anymore."
"That sounds like my family, all right."
"Your parents confirmed that you practiced witchcraft."
"Did they?" Kate felt like she was standing on the edge of a cliff, and the cliff was not stone, but dirt, and beneath her feet, the dirt was beginning to crumble.
"Paul and I closed up the shop, and we've been working on the things that are in here and answering the out-of-state eight-hundred line, but I only stayed because I didn't want to have eggs and tomatoes thrown at me again."
"What do you mean?"
"I wanted to hear it from you, first, but I figure after what Madilee put in the paper, there probably isn't much you can say."
"So if the paper says it, it must be true?"
"You know if they print something that isn't true, they can be sued for…slander? Libel?"
"I think it's libel if it's in print," Kate said. She felt surreal, answering that question.
"Right. But I thought I would give you a chance first, to tell me your side of the story."
"How decent of you."
Lisa caught the sarcasm in her voice. "You're damned right it is. It sounds to me like the Trib has you dead to rights."
"I'm not a Satan worshipper, Lisa."
"Then why did your family say you were?"
"They didn't. They said I practiced witchcraft."
"And…?"
Marion Zimmer Bradley & Holly Lisle - [Glenraven 02] Page 18
