Doc Sidhe

by Aaron Allston

  Then she spotted him. He expected her broad, welcoming smile, but all she did was wave. He crossed the street and joined her.

  She looked at his battered face and winced, then stretched up on tiptoe to give him a quick kiss. "How'd it go?"

  "Well, you'd know if you'd been there."

  "Yes, I know. I'm sorry. Let's go in, I'm starved."

  He held the door open for her. "So, what were you up to today?"

  "Tell you later."

  He ordered shrimp fried rice; she just asked for a cup of wonton soup. When the waitress left, he said, "I thought you were starving."

  "I am. Well, sort of starving." She looked uncomfortable and shut up.

  He let the silence hang between them for a moment. "Well, I've got some news," he said, just as she said, "I need to talk about something."

  They both smiled at the awkwardness.

  Harris didn't feel like smiling. Maybe she wanted to move in together. He didn't think he was ready for that. Maybe she even wanted to set a date. Oh, God; maybe, in spite of their precautions, she was pregnant. "You go first," he said.

  "No, you."

  "No, you."

  "Okay." She took a deep breath. "Harris, I think maybe we . . . ought to kind of go our separate ways."

  He put his head down on the table.

  "Harris?"

  "What?"

  "Did you understand me?"

  "I don't think so." He straightened up. Maybe she was speaking the same language as the referee earlier tonight. Taken apart, the words were English; put together, they made no sense.

  "Harris, it's not working."

  "What's not working?"

  "We're not working. Out. Working out."

  "The hell we're not. How are we not working out? We hardly ever fight."

  "I know we don't. You're one of the nicest men I've ever met."

  "Am I lousing up your career? Did your parents forget to tell me that they hate me?"

  "Nothing like that."

  "Is there another guy?"

  "No."

  "Another girl?"

  She almost smiled. "Harris."

  "Look, if it's my career choice, let me tell you, I just went through a big change."

  "No."

  "Gaby, I love you." There they were, the magic words. He'd never had any problem saying them. He meant them.

  He waited, but this time she didn't say them back. She just gave him a look full of hurtful sympathy.

  "Oh, Jesus." He slumped back in his chair. "When did this happen?"

  "Harris." She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, he knew she'd found the words. "I think the world of you. I don't want to lose you as a friend. But . . . well, this is my fault. I keep expecting you to be something you're not."

  "Which is what? Just where exactly do I fall short?" He searched her face for a clue.

  She moved like a butterfly impaled on a pin, struggling with words that didn't seem to want to come out. "I don't think I can describe it."

  "Try." His voice fell to a whisper. "I can change."

  It was the wrong thing to say. He'd never known he could sound so pathetic. Suddenly he knew why she was doing this. He'd become a neighborhood dog and she was the woman he'd followed home.

  He wouldn't want a dog, either.

  Her next words were the rocks thrown to drive him off. "I think I need my keys back." She set down his own apartment key beside his silverware, then wiped at the tear that threatened to roll down her cheek.

  He looked at the key. She didn't even want to come out to his doghouse anymore. He almost laughed.

  He pulled out his keychain and wrestled her building and apartment keys off the metal coil. He set them down in front of her.

  She put them in her fanny pack and zipped it up. Her voice was low, pained. "Good-bye, Harris." And she left.

  Harris watched the door swing closed behind her. "Zeb should've put you in the ring tonight," he said. "You would've pounded Sonny flat."

  The waitress set Gaby's soup down in front of him.

  What the hell. His life wasn't over. He had a great bowl of wonton soup and a pair of well-tied shoes.

  Chapter Two

  Phipps looked up as Gaby come out of the restaurant.

  An interesting change. Before, she'd been alert. Now she walked with her head down, hands stuffed into her jeans pockets. A more likely target for a mugger. Phipps might actually have to protect her. The irony amused him.

  The guy in the jeans jacket, the one who'd met her at the door, didn't come out with her. Phipps liked that. One less complication, assuming that she didn't hook up with him again later.

  He glanced at his watch. Three hours until midnight. All he had to do was keep near her for a couple more hours and everything would be all right. He gathered up his newspaper and blended in with the sidewalk traffic as he followed her.

  There was still some of the Stolichnaya in his cabinet. Harris uncapped it and carried it to his sagging couch. Gaby would be annoyed with him for treating the expensive vodka like common booze. He looked forward to that.

  On the end table was the file full of newspaper clippings his mother had sent him over the years. He groaned when he saw it. That's a call he didn't want to make. Hi, Mom, Dad. You know all that money you spent to support me while I beat people up in New York? Uncle Charlie was right: you wasted it.

  He picked up the folder and shuffled through the clippings.

  Some of it was college paper stuff about the theater productions he'd been involved with: a picture of him onstage in Death of a Salesman, another of him backstage doing his own makeup for Ethan Frome. But the majority of stories were about tae kwon do.

  So many tournaments, competitions, demonstrations. His home-town newspaper had glowingly reported his Olympic career. It even made his first-round loss in Seoul sound like a moral victory. It wasn't; he'd just gone out there and gotten clobbered.

  Harris looked at the pictures of the happy, cocky, eager kid he used to be. Dark hair, features that looked brooding even when he was happy. "A soap opera hero face," Gaby had said a long time ago. "You ought to go over to NBC and try out for a part. Put that theater major to some good use for once."

  He tipped the bottle up and took a pull on it, felt the liquor burn down his throat. Maybe he'd do that now. They'd hire him to be the next bare-chested hunk. Gaby would be channel-surfing and would spot him licking the tonsils of some soap opera sweetheart. She'd drop her teeth.

  The thought warmed him. Or maybe that was the vodka. He took another swallow.

  Later, when the bottle barely sloshed as he set it down, it occurred to Harris that it was time to talk some sense into her. He needed to get out of the apartment anyway; ever since it had started rocking he'd felt seasick. Fresh air would help.

  Down on the sidewalk, he tried to take another drink, but lifted a wad of newsprint to his mouth.

  He stared accusingly at his hand. It had brought the wrong stuff. It failed him even when he wasn't throwing a backfist with it.

  He smoothed out the wad of paper and smiled down at the expectation and hope he saw in his own younger face.

  Then, with meticulous care, he tore the first article's headline free and let it flutter to the sidewalk. That felt good. Half a dozen words he no longer had to live up to.

  Walking toward Gaby's home, he ripped loose another strip of words.

  Gaby got her apartment door closed and threw the three deadbolts on it.

  Her feet hurt. She must have walked for two hours after she left Harris.

  And she still hadn't eaten. Small wonder. That talk had killed her appetite. She wondered if she'd be hungry again before summer.

  Someone knocked on the front door, startling her. Her visitor must have come up the stairs right behind her. Gaby put her eye to the peephole.

  Her visitor was an old man, elegantly dressed, his face merry—the perfect grandfather, obviously rich and good-natured. It had to be one of the other te
nants; she hadn't buzzed anyone into the building. She'd never seen him before. "Who is it?" she asked.

  "Miss, ah, Gabriela Donohue?"

  "That's right." She waited patiently; no need to unlock the door, no matter how innocuous he looked, until he satisfied her that she had a reason to.

  "Thank you," he said. Then he stepped away from the door, out of sight.

  Someone moved in to take his place. It was a man in a dark overcoat, so tall that she could not see above the knot of his gray necktie, so wide that he seemed to match the door in breadth. Gaby took an involuntary step back.

  There was a sharp bang! and the door crashed down, its locks and hinges shattered; it fell against Gaby and staggered her. Beyond, the huge man was striding forward, and the old man and another intruder came close behind. . . .

  Gaby felt icy terror grip her stomach. She turned and ran. She had to reach her bedroom, the fire escape outside her window—

  The huge man caught up to her before she reached the door to her room. He hit her like someone might swat a puppy. The blow took her on the hip and spun her to the floor, sent her rolling into the corner with her TV.

  She stared up at him and got a good look at what served him as a face.

  The sight froze the breath in her lungs. She sat unmoving as he came at her.

  Harris dropped the last piece of the last article and watched it float off into the darkness.

  There. A paper trail led from his apartment to Gaby's Greenwich Village brownstone. She could find her way back to him now.

  From the corner, he looked up at her fourth-story window, saw that it was still lit. She was awake, obviously waiting for him.

  The main entrance's outer door was unlocked. Not so with the inner door. He stood there fiddling with his keychain for a couple of minutes before he remembered that she'd taken his key.

  Dammit. He'd have to climb the fire escape. On the other hand, she used to like that.

  Would that make him a stalker? He frowned over that one. Maybe he'd follow her around until she got scared and got a restraining order and he did something stupid and they made a TV-movie about him. The thought bothered him.

  He went around to the 11th Street side of the building and looked up at the fire escape. It seemed higher than usual. There was a car, actually a stretch limo, illegally parked near it, and he debated trying a jump from its roof, but decided that was impolite.

  It took him three jumps to catch the bottom of the fire escape, and a greater effort than usual to haul himself up onto its bottom level. He must have gained weight, too, because his exertion set this whole part of the world rocking just like his apartment. He lay there resting while he waited for the world to steady itself.

  Below him, three men in dressy long coats came around the corner and headed for the limo. One was an old man, but the second was big like a football player. The third one, the one with the hat worn low and the big, lumpy duffel bag over his shoulder, was so tall that Harris could have reached down and plucked his hat off, so broad that bodybuilders could have bitten small pieces off him for a steroid fix. It was probably a good thing that Harris hadn't left footprints all over their limo.

  The old man was saying, "—plenty of time to get to the great lawn, but there's no sense in dilly-dallying." Then they were climbing into the limo, slamming doors, driving off.

  Leaving Harris alone.

  Resting was nice, but Gaby was still two stories up. He reluctantly rose and began climbing the narrow, shaky metal steps of the fire escape.

  Gaby floated up into wakefulness. The side of her face still hurt where he—

  She veered away from thinking about him. This wasn't hard. There was plenty to occupy her attention.

  She was folded up in fetal position, wrapped in what felt like heavy linen. The air was so close and warm she found it hard to breathe. She was being jolted up and down, but was up against a hard surface: muscle over bone, someone's back, a very broad back.

  His back. She was being carried.

  She groped around as much as she could—not easy, as she was tightly pinned—and reached over her head. There was a small hole above her, drawn nearly closed by cords; she twisted and looked up through it, seeing nighttime clouds.

  She was in a bag. They'd stuffed her into a duffel bag and were carrying her around like so much laundry.

  Laundry. Fully awake and furious, she shoved up against the hole and shouted, "Hey! Call the police! I'm being kidnapped! Can anyone hear me?"

  He didn't slacken his pace, but Gaby felt a sharp knock against the side of her head. It hurt. She stopped shoving; she rubbed where the blow had landed. "Hey!"

  It was the old man's voice: "If you make any more noise, Miss Donohue, I'm going to have Adonis here let you out of the bag and punish you. It wants to punish you. It will enjoy doing so."

  And she felt a rumbling from the back of the thing carrying her. It sounded like deep, quiet laughter.

  Her stomach went cold. Adonis' face—God, what was he? She didn't want to look at that face again. She didn't want to see it turn angry. And she understood, with crystal certainty, that the moves she'd once learned in self-defense class were not going to impress him.

  She sat still.

  After another minute of walking, Adonis swung her down. She didn't hit the ground hard, but she landed on a sharp rock hard enough to bruise her rear.

  The old man spoke again. "Just relax here for a few minutes and everything will be fine. We don't want to hurt you." His accent sounded strange—as though it were part German, part English.

  She said, "Can I ask you something?"

  "No. Be silent."

  Fuming, she did as she was told.

  Harris trotted along the tree-lined footpath and prayed to God he'd heard right. Prayed that Mr. Crenshaw had done as Harris had asked. But Harris had completed almost an entire circuit around Central Park's Great Lawn and had seen nothing but a pair of tough-looking kids who'd eyed him speculatively as he ran past.

  When he'd reached Gaby's window on the fire escape, he'd looked in and seen a man in a bathrobe—thin, balding Mr. Crenshaw, Gaby's neighbor—talking on the phone in Gaby's bedroom. Crenshaw looked alarmed as he talked, and hung up almost as soon as Harris spotted him.

  Harris knocked on the window, and Crenshaw went from his usual sunless color to nearly true white. Then the man recognized Harris. He threw open the window and started babbling.

  "Someone took her, a really huge son of a bitch. Her door's all over the living room. Thank God they didn't see me. I've called the police . . . "

  Something like an electrical current jolted Harris. All of a sudden he had a hard time breathing. On the other hand, he didn't feel drunk anymore.

  He told Mr. Crenshaw what he'd heard the old man say. "Call the police again, tell them what I saw." Then he ran back down the fire escape.

  Now, as he reached the footpath opposite the Met, the point where he'd started his circuit of the Great Lawn, he had no illusions that he wasn't drunk. Keeping his balance while he ran was an interesting effort, and whenever he stood still, his surroundings spun slowly counterclockwise. At least he was alert.

  No sign of the three guys or Gaby. Maybe the old man was talking about the really great lawn he had in front of his house in Queens or something. Harris cursed and turned off the footpath, crossing through a fringe of trees onto the grass of the Great Lawn itself. It spread out before him, a featureless plain of darkness.

  Please, God, let him find Gaby. And if he couldn't find her right away, please give him a mugger. Someone he could beat and beat in order to release the howling fear and rage he felt building inside him.

  As he was making his second crossing of the lawn he saw them. Three reverse silhouettes off in the darkness, given away by their tan coats. He turned their way and trotted as quietly as he could. In his jeans, jeans jacket, and dark shirt, he thought maybe he wouldn't be spotted too fast.

  When he was a few yards away he was sure it was them,
and he could see the duffel bag resting on the ground several yards from them. It lay on a line of white rocks twenty feet long.

  He was confused. A second line crossed the first at right angles in the middle. The two lines were surrounded by a circle of more white rocks.

  X Marks the Spot. Under other circumstances, he would have laughed.

  The three men were huddled, talking, just outside the circle of stones, and still hadn't seen him. He picked up speed, saw the old man notice his presence and turn.

  He came up off his jumping foot and brought the same leg up before him in extension—a flying side kick he could tell was picture-perfect. It took the biggest man in the side and the impact jarred Harris from foot to gut.

  The huge man felt as though he were made of skin stretched over Jell-O, but he still fell over backwards, hissing out a gasp of air. Harris hit the ground hard but scrambled up instantly. "Gaby?"

  The bag said, "Harris?" and her arm reached out of it.

  The old man merely said, "Mine." He took a step toward Harris and reached under his coat.

  Harris saw the glint of the gun's slide in the moonlight. He threw a hard block, cracking his forearm into the older man's wrist, and the pistol went flying into the darkness.

  The old man stepped back, grabbing at his wrist and frowning. "Phipps, I need this young man removed. Adonis, get up."

  "Gaby, get the hell out of here!"

  The man with the football player's build stood his ground and pulled something out from under his armpit.

  Harris felt fear clutching at him, but he charged and side-kicked just as Phipps got his revolver out into the open. His kick connected, driving the man's arm hard into his chest, cracking something, knocking the man clean off his feet.

  The gun dropped, but Phipps sat up and scrabbled around for it with his good arm. Harris stepped forward again and rotated through a spinning side kick, straight out of tournament demonstrations, and felt a satisfying crack as his foot connected. Phipps flopped back hard, his head banging on the ground.