Midday, midweek, midtown; the sidewalks were crowded with pedestrians. Magnus shoved through them recklessly, hoping they'd slow down his pursuers as much as they slowed him. He felt his backpack fall and didn't stop to retrieve it.
He got to the corner and plunged into the street, crossing with the light but running dangerously close to the edge of the moving cars, where the human traffic was thinnest. He gained the sidewalk again, and as he did, he heard screaming behind him, mixed with the screech of brakes and the blare of horns.
That was enough to make him look back; there were few things that could make a New Yorker stop and take notice.
Two black wolves the size of ponies were loping along the sidewalk on the other side of the intersection. People were running out into traffic to get away from them.
His nerves screaming with atavistic fear, Magnus turned and ran again. At least the fear was giving him an energy and a speed and strength he hadn't known was in him.
Now he wasn't being even marginally polite about the people he shoved out of his way: when you had monsters chasing you, all the rules changed. He scrabbled in his pocket for his cellphone, not taking his eyes from the sidewalk ahead of him; both Eric and Ria were on his speed-dial, and right now, he didn't care which number he hit.
Just as his fingers closed over it, another giant wolf bounded out in front of him. He didn't see where it had come from—it was just there.
It jumped at him. The people around him shouted and ran. Magnus hit the sidewalk with bruising force, staring up into the impossible red eyes of the wolf, and felt as if his heart was going to explode with terror.
The red eyes seemed to grow larger. . . .
* * *
The sun shone into Eric's bedroom, illuminating the desk in the corner. Music paper was spread out across it, several bars of an unfinished composition jotted down with a music pen.
Although a Bard improvised music as easily as he breathed, and improvisation had always come easily to Eric, at Juilliard he'd also learned the more rigorous discipline of traditional classical composition. There was a certain appeal to writing down a piece of music that would be played the same way—more or less—every time, a piece of music that could be handed on to someone else, and even though it was no longer something he was required to do, Eric liked to keep those skills in practice. Besides, there were very few things he could give his Sidhe friends as presents, but a piece of original music was something a wealthy, nigh-immortal elf couldn't make—or buy—for himself.
He set his pen down for a moment and glanced at the clock. Still too early for any news.
Maybe this weekend they'd all do something—Eric grinned at the unfamiliar concept—fun. Maybe they could go down to Six Flags, or something. Magnus would pretend to hate it, but Eric bet he'd jump at the chance to stuff himself with junk food and ride things guaranteed to subject the human body to more G-force than the average astronaut. And Ace could use a major chance to blow off steam—that kid was wrapped way too tight. Maybe he could even talk Ria into coming along. Provided he could come up with a suitable form of bribery. Although it might take blackmail to get Ria onto the Nitro Mega Coaster. . . .
Just as he was about to pick up his pen again, a sense of unfolding disaster struck him with the force of a physical blow.
Everything had been fine a moment before, but suddenly the room seemed dark and cold, even though nothing had changed. He felt as if a shadow had come into the room and whispered horrors in his ear, and he didn't know what, or why.
All he knew was that there was some warning of danger that had slipped through the wards of Guardian House as if they weren't even there.
"Greystone?" he said aloud. "I got a red alert! What's happening?"
Nothing, the gargoyle's mental voice answered promptly within his mind. If it's a warning, it's one that only you can hear. Be careful, laddybuck.
* * *
Fear was a powerful motivator. Five minutes ago, Eric wouldn't have thought he had the energy to run down the stairs rather than wait for the elevator.
If he was the only one who could hear the warning, if it was something that could pass through the formidable shields that protected Guardian House from harm, then the warning had to be about someone closely connected to him.
And that was a short list, Eric decided, as he ran toward the parking lot to pick up Lady Day.
Greystone had already alerted Toni Hernandez, and there were few things a Guardian couldn't take in stride. Eric didn't know where Kayla was right now—he was pretty sure Columbia was on break—but Toni would track her down and check in with her, just to make sure she was all right. Since Kayla had moved into Guardian House, she'd become something of an unofficial mascot to the Guardians, and they'd keep her from coming to harm.
Ria . . . well, he pitied the trouble that tried to take Ria on, actually.
That left Magnus. Magnus, who was no kind of Mage, and all alone, at school.
Vulnerable.
He flung his leg over Lady Day's saddle. She'd caught his emotional turmoil from several flights away; almost before he'd settled his weight in the bike's saddle, the elvensteed had backed out of her parking spot and was flying down the street toward Magnus's school.
His stomach was a cold knot of dread, as he bent his head against the wind of Lady Day's passing. He'd been worrying about Magnus from the moment he'd known there was a reason to worry. Magnus was a good kid—no, a great kid—but his stubborn insistence on shutting out the uncanny aspects of the world (hard to do, living in Guardian House with a talking gargoyle for a friend, but Magnus managed) was going to get him into trouble some day. Maybe today was the day.
Eric turned Lady Day onto Broadway—it was fastest, even at this time of day—and the elvensteed settled down to making serious time, dodging taxis and pedestrians and ignoring any traffic laws that didn't happen to suit her, such as the speed limit.
They'd only gotten as far as Columbus Circle when suddenly half-a-dozen enormous black shapes came lunging out from among the other cars toward them. After a moment's stunned incredulity, Eric realized what he was seeing.
Wolves.
Wolves—but worse. They were to normal wolves what a birthday candle was to a forest fire—they were all the primeval terrors of night and the ancient forest given fur and fangs and flesh. And what made them so horribly wrong was that they were here, on a New York City street on a raw March day. Their pupilless eyes glowed Unseleighe red, and they seemed to know what he was thinking—and be laughing at him. Fire and ice crawled through his veins as he made eye-contact with them.
He didn't dare start a full-blown duel in the middle of Broadway. And worse, Eric didn't know if they had anything to do with the warning he'd felt, or were just an awful coincidence. Elves didn't do New York. But then, elves didn't attack Bards, either.
He threw a shield around himself and Lady Day just as one of the beasts dodged in, snapping at his foot. Lady Day swerved and tried to evade them, but they herded her—slamming against Eric's magickal shield and dashing in front of the elvensteed—toward Central Park. They couldn't touch him—but they could overset Lady Day by allowing her to hit one of them, and send her and Eric under the wheels of a truck or car.
All around them, brakes screeched and horns blared. Another urban legend in the making? Maybe. Eric didn't have the leisure to think about it.
Lady Day put on a burst of speed, dodging through the oncoming traffic, slamming up over the sidewalk, and bouncing bone-jarringly up over the low wall surrounding the park. The Unseleighe dire-wolves fell back, but only a few paces, letting her run, and as soon as she was headed deep into the park, they closed up again.
There were people in the park, but not as many as there were on Broadway. Now he could fight.
Or better yet—run. He could be in Misthold before they had a chance to—
But suddenly he heard a jangle of disharmonic harpsong, and his shield was ripped away.
Before he could react
, he felt powerful jaws clamp down on his ankle, yanking him from Lady Day's saddle and hurling him to the ground. One of the dire-wolves landed on top of him—it weighed more than Eric did—knocking the breath from him, and beneath it all, the harp played on, like Stravinsky on crack, making it hard to think. He thrashed under the wolf's weight, but it wasn't moving, and every time he tried to take a breath, the wolf got heavier—
He could hear Lady Day fighting, hear the yelps and stifled yips of the other dire-wolves, and beneath those sounds, the sound of a powerful automobile engine approaching.
The dire-wolf sitting on his chest backed off.
Eric rolled to his knees, gasping for breath. He felt strangely weak, and cold all over.
Lady Day—in horse form now—stood like a stag at bay, surrounded by a panting half-circle of dire-wolves. Just beyond her a black limousine stood parked. Eric readied his spells.
The back door of the limousine swung open.
Jormin ap Galever sat in the back. He was holding Magnus against his chest, with a silver knife to Magnus's throat. Magnus's head lolled limply; he was unconscious, but Eric could see from the rise and fall of his chest that he was still alive.
"Will you join us, Bard?" Jormin called cheerily.
Eric gritted his teeth and got to his feet. He kept his expression as stony as he could, even though his heart felt as if it had stopped, and his thoughts were running in panicked circles like frightened mice. The unspoken message was clear: resist in any way, and Jormin would kill Magnus. And no elven treaties protected Magnus.
"Fine." He turned to Lady Day. "Go home. I'll tell you what to do later." This is not the time to argue about this, girl. . . .
Through the link they shared he felt her reluctant obedience, and felt a pang of relief. He didn't trust Jormin to let her go once Eric's back was turned, and captured elvensteeds were great prizes for the Dark Court. . . .
Lady Day sprang backward, out of the circle of dire-wolves, and galloped away. In seconds the sound of hoof-beats was replaced with the mournful howl of a high-powered motorcycle engine receding in the distance.
Someone yanked his hands behind him. Automatically he started to struggle, but Jormin pressed the knife closer to Magnus's throat, and he stopped.
He felt the touch of something cold and heavy on his wrists. Bracelets?
Cold . . . the cold seemed to seep into his blood, flowing through his veins with every beat of his heart, until it was a struggle to breathe. He felt his knees grow weak, and the day darkened around him.
And then he knew nothing more.
Chapter 6:
Sell It And They Will Come
"I'm always happy to get out God's message any way I can, Mr. Songmaker," Billy Fairchild said, smiling as he welcomed Hosea into his private office, "but I've got to say, I'm a mite puzzled. Isn't Rolling Stone one o' them rock and roll magazines?"
Billy Fairchild didn't look like a man who'd suffered a crushing setback in his personal life only a few hours before, nor like a man who was grieving over the absence of a beloved daughter. For that matter, he didn't look like a crazy religious maniac. He had the practiced charm of a good politician, a way of making whoever he was talking to at the moment feel that they were the most important person in the world. Hosea had seen con-games tried on by experts, but there was a genuineness to Billy that made him almost doubt himself. There was only one explanation for that particular conundrum. Whatever Billy Fairchild happened to be saying at any particular moment, he had the knack of really believing it himself.
Which made him doubly dangerous; a pathological liar of the worst kind. You couldn't tell if he was telling the truth by any signal that he would give you; he'd be able to pass a lie detector test with flying colors. And even Bardic truth-sense was likely to fail in the face of such utter conviction.
And the fetch-bag—Unseleighe magick, he now knew, with Jeanette's help—was gone. His mage-sight detected no sign of it.
"Shore is," Hosea said easily in answer, sitting down in the offered seat beside Billy's polished mahogany desk. "But it also does a lot of stuff it thinks people that listen to rock'n'roll might be interested in—like a preacher that runs a casino. Ah can't say they'll print what I write, y'know, that's the risk a freelancer takes, but they said they were interested. An' heck, if Rolling Stone don't take it, somebody else might. I jest like to try the big dogs first."
"Can't ask for fairer than that," Billy said. "And—well, say, I just got a notion, maybe you can stay a few days—I can get you a free ticket to the concert we've got coming up. If a music magazine is interested in a casino, they ought to be twice as interested in a rock band."
Fairchild made it sound like he'd "just" had that idea, but this time Hosea was able to tell he was being played, that Billy Fairchild had planned this from the time he agreed to the interview. This was a "bait-and-switch" tactic. He was probably planning that Rolling Stone would prefer to cover something about what Hosea assumed was another "Christian Rock" band, and hoped to get the article refocused. Hosea responded as Billy would want, looking surprised and interested. "Cain't say as a preacher bringin' up a rock band seems any more likely than a preacher runnin' a casino."
Billy laughed, deprecatingly. "I don't much care for that kind of music myself, but the Lord Jesus didn't preach to the people in fancy high-toned talk they couldn't understand, you know. He used the words they knew. So if I want to get the Lord's message out to the young, I have to use their music to do it, and that's why I've started Red Nails Music. But Gabriel can tell you more about that—that's his bailiwick. I just pick good people and let them run—at heart I'm just a backwoods country preacher doing what I can. But I expect you know that. From the sound of you, you aren't too long out of the hills your own self."
"Ayah," Hosea agreed shamelessly, taking his microcassette recorder out of his shoulder bag and setting it down on the desk. "Why don't you start with a little of yore early days, an then maybe tell me about how you came to build this place?"
The one thing a certain kind of person was most willing to talk about was themselves, Hosea had found, and Billy was certainly that kind of person. He heard plenty about Billy's humble beginnings as a traveling revivalist preacher, and nothing much about his daughter—except that "the whole family pitched in, of course, to spread God's Word."
"Is yore daughter planning to follow in your footsteps?" Hosea asked, making the question seem as idle as he could possibly manage.
"Of course she is!" Billy said fervently. "My little angel wouldn't have it any other way. Why, she's been a part of my Ministry ever since she could walk! She wouldn't leave me now."
The sad thing was, Hosea reflected, that there was probably a part of Billy that actually believed that was the truth. The trouble was, there was another part of Billy that was determined to make sure that "truth" was what came to pass—regardless of anything Heavenly Grace wanted.
But Billy was going right on, oozing sincerity. "I'd sure like for you to meet her, but she isn't here right now. She should be home soon, though, and maybe if your article isn't done, you can come back and visit with her then."
"I'd like that," Hosea said. As far as he could sense the truth in Billy's words, nothing Billy had said was an outright lie. It was true that Ace wasn't here . . . and for some reason, Billy Fairchild had a strong belief that not only would she be coming back soon, but she'd be happy to talk to reporters.
That was worrying. And Hosea couldn't tell if the belief was because Billy had convinced himself that it would be so—or because Billy other reasons besides that.
Billy, however, was sailing on to other subjects. "But deeds speak louder than words, and I expect you'd be glad of a chance to stretch your legs. Why don't we take a turn around the casino floor, and then I'll bring you back upstairs and introduce you around a bit? I'd love to jaw all day, but Miz Granger, she's got a notion that work ought to get done around here, dear lady, and I suppose I can't blame her," Billy said, grinning co
nspiratorially. "You put in that article of yours that I'd be lost without her, mind. Been with me twenty year."
"Ah surely will," Hosea said.
The two men got to their feet and headed toward the elevators. On the way they passed Mrs. Granger's desk. She glared fiercely at Hosea as he passed, daring him to even think anything uncomplimentary about her boss. Billy's private secretary was a type Hosea was familiar with—the backbone of every church, big and small—determined, efficient, and formidably loyal to her office master. Billy Fairchild could be sacrificing black cats by the dark of the moon and it wouldn't change Mrs. Granger's opinion of him, which had been set in stone long ago.
They took the elevator down to the lobby of the office building—that entrance was on the opposite side of the building from the casino—and then Billy walked over to a door in the wall marked "Employees Only" and pressed a quick series of numbers into a keypad lock before opening the door. He opened the door and ushered Hosea through into the sensory overload of the Heavenly Grace Cathedral and Casino of Prayer.
* * *
Billy's enthusiasm ought to have been infectious. He happily explained to Hosea how he'd taken a personal hand in every aspect of the Casino of Prayer's construction, from the design of the slot machines, to the games offered, to the decoration. The idea to make the House's percentage ten percent—"a real Biblical tithe"—had been his, as had been the free-will love offering boxes scattered freely about the casino. All the gaming tokens used in the machines had Biblical verses stamped on them—that had been Billy's idea, too—so that people could be constantly uplifted and refreshed in spirit while they gambled. Even the decks of cards used at the blackjack and poker tables were specially printed, with the Twelve Apostles replacing the face cards, the Dove of the Holy Spirit replacing the aces, Jesus instead of the Joker, and the Fairchild Ministry logo on the back.
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