Susan stretched, not wanting to open her eyes. What an awful dream, she thought, remembering her nightmare. Wish I’d gotten more sleep. It’s going to be hell, trying to run the computer data on that test run, if I’m half-asleep and can’t think straight…
She switched on the light on the nightstand, and heard a strange noise from the kitchen. She sat up abruptly.
Burglars!
She reached for her bathrobe, then suddenly realized that she was still wearing her clothes from the day before, the lab coat and skirt and blouse and pantyhose, sans her lab shoes. Quietly, she moved through the hall way, pausing to pick up a heavy marble bookend from the table near the window.
She took a deep breath, hefted the reassuring weight of the bookend in her hand, and looked into the kitchen.
A handsome dark-haired young man stood in her kitchen, staring in perplexity at her espresso machine, which was currently spraying hot water into the air.
The man from my nightmare last night…
“I’m really sorry,” the young man said, gesturing at the hot water on the countertop and floor. “I didn’t mean to wake you up or make all this mess, I just wanted some coffee before I went home.”
“This machine is very temperamental,” she said, recovering enough from her surprise to grab a potholder and use it to twist the machine’s spigot several times. The flow of hot water ceased, and a stream of fresh coffee began to pour sedately into the waiting pot. “Give it a few seconds, and it’ll be ready.”
“I’m sorry if I startled you,” he said after an awkward silence. “I would’ve left last night, but by the time we got to your place, I’d already missed the last BART home. I slept on your couch… I hope you don’t mind.”
No, not at all, I love having figments of my imagination stay over for breakfast.
Not imagination. That wasn’t a dream last night. It was real, all of it was real…
Either that, or I’ve gone mad.
He took down a mug from the shelf above the espresso machine, and poured himself a cup of coffee, as Susan stared at him.
“Okay, kid,” she said in her best lab manager’s voice, the one that worked so well on the obnoxious young interns from Cal Berkeley. “I want some answers, right now. What happened last night at the labs?”
“It was ... it was a mistake,” he said, staring at his coffee mug. “I shouldn’t have done it, I know that now, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do, and I thought Kory was dying… I could’ve lost control of them, and not banished them all… Christ knows what those things would’ve done if that had happened.”
Her voice sharpened. “What did you do?”
He looked up at her, an odd expression in his eyes. “I called them. You saw them, you were right there on the lawn. I brought them there, and let them go. What happened in there?”
This kid… he thinks he caused what happened last night, whatever that force… those creatures… were, that came into the Labs. And maybe he’s right, because I saw them gathering around him in the parking lot, as though he was calling them back.
She heard herself describing what she had seen in a calm, detached voice, the one she used to read papers at conferences. “Those things… killed a lot of people in the Labs. I don’t know how many. But Frank is dead, and that boy, and God knows how many other people.”
“Excuse me, please,” he said faintly, and made a dash for the bathroom down the hall. Through the open door, she could hear him being quickly and violently ill.
She stood there alone, trying to gather her thoughts. She felt unnaturally calm, distant from this insanity that had suddenly engulfed her life. It’s called shock, Susan, she thought.
Several minutes later, he returned to the kitchen, and took a quick swallow of coffee. There was a different look in his eyes, something she couldn’t identify.
“Who are you? What’s your name?” she asked.
He glanced up at her, a wary expression in his eyes. “Maybe… maybe I’d better leave now.”
She stood between him and the only door out. “Not until you answer my questions, kid.”
He looked as if he was going to say something else, then shook his head, pursed his lips, and whistled a brief sequence of notes, something she recognized as the beginnings of an Irish tune called “Whiskey Before Breakfast,” and…
… and she blinked at the sudden bright sunlight pouring through the kitchen window. Her back was aching, as though she’d been standing on her feet too long; she looked over at the clock above the espresso machine, and blinked again.
Ten a.m.? I’ve been standing here like this for two hours?
And she realized something else: she was alone in the kitchen. There was no sign of the strange young man, or where he’d gone, only a half-filled coffee mug left on the kitchen counter.
The choice was to go home or call home; he only had change for one. Eric sat on the BART bench, staring at his clenched hands in his lap. He could see it now, in his mind’s eye… the Nightflyers gliding into the building, leaving nothing alive behind them. He knew he could’ve seen it before it had happened, if he’d bothered to think about the consequences of his actions.
What did they do? How many people did they kill, when I let them into that complex?
Something small and shadowy whispered in the back of his mind: We will tell you, if you let us come back… Bring us back, bring us back…
“No!” he said violently, loudly enough that the other passengers on the subway looked up at him. He leaned his head against the glass, closing his eyes to shut out the rest of the world.
No, I won’t bring you back, he silently said in the direction of that shadowy voice. No dice. I know what you are now, and I’ll never do that again, never.
The image of the Nightflyer bowing to him in the ruined streets of San Francisco hit him like a fist, a mental sending that was as clear and sharp as a memory.
You have/will/are helping us, the voice continued. Help us again. Lead us, bring us back…
With a sudden clarity, Eric saw the Nightflyers, poised around him, but just beyond reach… just beyond a veil, thin and shimmering, that was all that stood between the waking world and the realm of nightmares. He understood their way of thinking in all times at once, past/future/present, and how they hungered for all things human and living. And how they needed him, needed someone or something to break through that thin veil and bring them into the real world. He could feel their slow and patient thoughts, simmering evil that was completely inhuman, and how they had watched him—since he was a child, they’d known he would be a Bard someday (if he lived that long) and would be able to aid them… waiting for a moment, a Breakthrough, when the Special Ones could get through.
Well, you’re going to be waiting a hell of a lot longer than that! He thought to the waiting throng. Because I’m not doing it!
Not evil, not us, the voice said quietly across the void between the two worlds. But different, and in need of your masses of humanity to survive… we need you, as you needed us…
Eric reached out blindly with his thoughts and shoved, hard, until he no longer heard the voice, and he was alone again in his own head, with no whispering evil by his side. Like a sleepwalker, he left the BART train at the Powell Street Station to change to a Metro bus, and then to step down from the bus and walk up the hill to their house. Even from the end of the street, he saw the two motorcycles parked in the driveway, and felt a weight, that he hadn’t known he was carrying, lift away from him. Knowing that Beth and Kory were home, knowing that they were all right, he couldn’t keep a smile from his face. Until he remembered again what he had done to bring them home.
The front door was unlocked, and he let himself in, hanging his jacket from one of the hooks near the door. He heard someone in the kitchen, and his nose filled with the smell of fresh sausage and eggs frying. The smell awoke the sour taste in his mouth again, and the twisting sensation in his stomach. He decided that maybe he’d skip breakfast, just fo
r today.
Kayla walked quickly out of the kitchen, carrying a plate of food and a glass of milk—she stopped short at seeing Eric in the hallway, a strange expression on her face. After a split-second, Eric recognized it as fear.
She gave him a lopsided smile. “Hey, Bard! Glad to see you made it home all right. You sure look terrible.”
He swallowed hard. “Kayla, is everyone okay? Where are Beth and Kory?”
“Kory’s fine,” Kayla said. “But you’d better talk to my boss about Bethany. Everyone’s upstairs right now.”
She looked fine last night… well, maybe not fine, but okay. Not bleeding or anything. What could’ve happened after they left for San Francisco?
The exhaustion finally hit him, as Eric started up the stairs. An accumulation of terror, too much magic, too little sleep, and no food… the world began to turn white around him, and he grabbed the bannister for support. Kayla caught him and helped him sit down; everything was too blurry, moving too fast around him.
“You’re not in very great shape, either,” the young healer observed clinically.
“It’s been one hell of a night,” Eric said, hoping that he wasn’t going to be physically sick again. That would’ve been the perfect ending to a thoroughly awful night. And it had started out with such an adrenaline rush as he’d realized just how much power he had as a Bard, how he could summon his own personal army of demons and rescue his friends, and no one could stop him…
And God knows how many people I killed last night, it’s my fault, it’s all my fault…
Kayla’s hand rested on his shoulder, and he felt the dizziness pass, and a wave of… something… wash over him instead, Suddenly he felt a little better, as the nausea faded away. “Thanks,” he said.
“Not a problem,” the kid replied. “That’s what Elizabet calls the Kayla Patented Jump-start, perfect for those bad magical hangover mornings. You kind of overdid it last night, Bard.”
“Don’t you think I know it,” he muttered, his face in his hands.
“Eric!”
He looked up quickly, to see Kory vaulting down the stairs towards him. The blond elf caught him up in a bearhug, then held him at arm’s length, his eyes searching Eric’s face. “You look terrible, my friend.”
“I know, I know. Nothing that some sleep won’t cure.” He stood up slowly, and glanced upstairs. “Is Beth okay?”
Kory’s face fell. “I do not understand this at all. This must be a human thing, because I have never seen an elf suffer from this illness.”
“Is she awake? Is she—” Eric moved past Kory, heading for the bedroom door. He stopped in the open doorway.
Beth was sitting up in bed, wearing her usual sweatshirt, her dark red hair falling loose over her shoulders. Even from the doorway, he could see that something was different, though he couldn’t tell exactly what. It wasn’t just the way she was sitting so quietly, or the tired look in her eyes… it was in the tilt of her head, the way she sat… something was different, and Eric already knew that he didn’t like it.
She looked up and saw him, and her eyes brightened. “You look terrible,” she said softly, smiling at him.
“I know, love.” He sat down on the bed next to her, caught her hand and brought it to his lips. “You look kinda awful yourself.”
“I’m glad to see you back, Eric,” Elizabet’s warm voice spoke from across the room. Eric saw the older woman for the first time, seated in the warm sunlight in the window seat. “We were all worried about you.”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant. Nothing I couldn’t handle… badly, he thought. Nothing I couldn’t handle without getting a lot of people killed.
“Will you be all right without me for a few minutes, Beth?” the healer asked. “I need to talk to Eric.”
“Yeah, sure.” Beth waved away any concerns.
“I’ll send Kayla in to keep you company,” she said, and called down stairs to her apprentice, who ran up the stairs a couple seconds later, giving her mentor a pseudo-military salute before sitting down in the window seat that Elizabet had just vacated.
Eric followed Elizabet out of the room, out into the garden. The woman sat down wearily on the grass. “How are you doing, Eric? You look tired and stressed out, but not too much worse than that.”
“I’m okay,” he said cautiously, sitting down next to her. “What’s going on with Beth?”
Elizabet hesitated. “It’s a little difficult to explain. What do you know about mental illness, Eric?”
“Not much.” Not much more than three years with the expensive shrinks my mother hired could teach me. That I wasn’t nuts, but I had to give them the answers they wanted to hear.
“Well, without knowing exactly what happened to Beth last night, all I can guess is that she’s suffering from an affective disorder of some kind—possibly a variation of post-traumatic stress disorder. In layman’s terms, I’d call it extreme shock and the beginnings of a nervous breakdown. Definitely that… she cried for three hours last night without stopping. But she won’t talk about it—without adequate information, there’s no way to know what’s really going on.” She stretched, rubbing her eyes. “I’ll need to get some sleep soon, or I won’t be much use to anyone.” She sat up, giving Eric a curious look. “Kory said something about how Beth thought she couldn’t breathe, last night in the labs. Do you know anything about that?”
He thought about that for a minute. “No, not really. But… Beth’s claustrophobic. And they were underground; I’m guessing there weren’t any windows down there. Could that have caused this?”
“A normal claustrophobia attack wouldn’t cause anything this severe. I’d expect to see high anxiety levels, possibly some fairly serious psychosomatic reactions, but not anything like this. It could’ve caused the elevated metabolic levels she was showing last night, but not any of these continuing effects.”
“What about physical damage?” He had to ask. He had to. “Was she raped?”
The healer shook her head. “No, definitely not. Any damage is completely mental and emotional. But something happened to her in those labs which she won’t talk about yet, and that something is what triggered all of this. And it happened before all of those… creatures… showed up at the labs. By the way, I’d like to talk to you about that,” she added, giving him a very penetrating look.
He flushed. “Later,” he said.
“All right.” She accepted that, as she accepted most things, from elves to frightened runaways. “Listen, I need to get some sleep soon. Will you sit with Beth for the next few hours? I don’t want to leave her alone for too long.”
“Is there any particular reason why?” he asked, concerned.
“I’d—I’d rather not say. Just keep an eye on her, all right?”
Without even thinking about it, Eric reached out to touch the woman’s thoughts. Genuine fear for Beth hit him for the first time, reading the thought that was uppermost in the healer’s mind. “Do you think Beth is suicidal?”
Elizabet nodded slowly. “It’s possible. That’s why we’re not going to leave her alone right now. I’d rather not take the risk.”
He felt an icy touch inside, a cold ball of fear that wouldn’t go away. “I’ll stay with her.”
They walked back inside the house. Upstairs, Beth was asleep, the lines of tension no longer visible in her face. He took over Kayla’s place in the window seat, settling down on the pillows. He leaned back against the sun-warmed wood, feeling the terrors from last night washing away, being replaced by new terrors.
He had never expected this, never thought this could happen. Beth had always been the strongest of them all, the most determined, the one who refused to turn away from a fight. He couldn’t imagine a Beth that wasn’t strong-willed and outspoken, vibrant and always laughing. The concept of a Beth who was so quiet and pale, who cried for three hours without stopping; he couldn’t believe that this had happened, that this was real.
He had been so afraid for Kory, knowing that something awful was happening to him, that he might’ve been dying, that he hadn’t even thought that something worse could be happening to Beth. Now Kory was fine, and Beth was the one who had been badly hurt, and hurt in a way that he didn’t understand.
And himself… the only word that he could think of to label himself was monster. Without even thinking of the consequences, he’d summoned the Nightflyers and turned them loose, killing God knows how many people in those labs. He was a monster, as much as any Nightflyer—and they knew it, those strange intelligent shadow-creatures from across the veil of dreams, and they saw him as their leader, one of their demonic horde…
And somewhere in the back of his mind was a strange feeling telling him that now, when there should be nothing left to do but heal, this wasn’t the end of it, a little prescient touch that things were only going to get worse…
* * *
CHAPTER 10:
Off She Goes
“I’m not insane, I’m not expendable, and I’m not going.” Susan sat back with her arms folded, glaring at her boss. “The Poseidon Project is at a critical stage right now, and there’s no way in hell that I’m going off to some FBI summer camp to be grilled by psychiatrists for six weeks. If I go now, with Frank and Dave missing, we’ll lose weeks. If you cart me off, we’ll lose months. Maybe more. With all the cuts going on, we might even lose the budget for the project, and that’s insane.” As an afterthought, and with a glance at the tape recorder on the table, she added, “Sir.”
Colonel Steve O’Neill had an uncharacteristically exasperated look on his face. “Your opinion is noted, Susan,” he said dryly. “But I’m up against a wall right now. The boys Upstairs want to know what happened here last night, and so far you’re the only living witness who can still speak in complete sentences.”
“What about Warden Blair?” she asked, remembering her strange encounter with the scientist in the stairwell. “He was there. I think the cause of it was on his floor. What’s more, he’s just as sane as I am. However sane that is. Why not get him to speak his piece?”
Summoned to Tourney Page 15
