“Gentlemen, please!” she said, extracting her elbows.
“Sorry, ma’am, but it’s very urgent,” one of them said, as they escorted her down to one of the lowest levels in the building, and left her at an office door.
She shrugged, knocked, and walked inside.
And stopped short, seeing her boss and Warden Blair seated in front of her. Together.
“Ah, Dr. Sheffield,” Blair said, looking up from a stack of papers. “We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow morning. Good, we can talk now.”
“We’re making some changes in the project,” O’Neill said awkwardly. “Because we’re so shorthanded now as a result of last night’s ... incident, Dr. Blair is going to be supervising the project, as well as bringing some of his own personnel onto our team.”
She was speechless for a moment, then found her voice again. “He’s what? You can’t do that, Bossman!”
“I don’t think you understand, Dr. Sheffield.” Blair gave her a cold smile. “I’m your boss now. I will be supervising this project, with Colonel O’Neill’s assistance.”
She frowned, and decided to dig her heels in. “Like hell you are. There’s no paperwork on this, no clearance from DoD, nothing. I’m not handing anything over to you, mister, not without the correct paperwork.”
“Susan.” That was Steve, in the conciliatory tone she remembered from too many late night arguments. “The paperwork will follow in a few days. But since we’re so close to getting some genuine results on the project, I thought it best to bring Dr. Blair in immediately.”
“We have genuine results already, Steve! We don’t need this idiot to help us!” She leaned forward, speaking earnestly. “Steve, don’t do this to me, please. It’s been our project, ever since Day One. This—whatever else he is—he’s not a geologist or a geophysicist, he’s a psychiatrist. He not only doesn’t have the authority, he doesn’t know the Richter scale from a musical scale! Why don’t you just bring in Jane Goodall to supervise us, while you’re at it?”
“I don’t have any control over this situation,” Steve said, not meeting her eyes.
Who’s jerking your chain, Colonel? she thought bitterly. “I won’t be a part of this, Steve. I’ll quit. And I’m not bluffing, you know I’ll do it.” She looked up into Blair’s eyes, wanting nothing more than to slap that contemptuous look on his face, and suddenly remembered…
…recoiling at the look in his eyes, knowing there was nothing human there, a corpse without emotion… stepping back, though the music still tugged her forward. Those inhuman eyes, lit with a strange hunger…
This is insane, she thought. He’s just a scientist, not a demon. There are no such things as demons, and I’m not sitting across from one.
But inside, deep down in her gut, she knew. “You’re one of them,” she whispered, more to herself than out loud.
“One of what, doctor?” Blair’s eyes followed her intently.
“Excuse me,” she said, hoping she could get out of the room without being physically ill. Now she could see it clearly, the shadow behind his eyes, the emptiness where a human being’s mind should have been. She made it to the door, but Blair’s voice stopped her.
“Think about your job security,” he said. “Think about your clearance. Think about that story the colonel taped about the floating shadow-monsters, Dr. Sheffield. I found that story of yours to be absolutely fascinating, and I’m sure the State Board of Mental Health will, too. If you quit this project, I’ll make sure they hear of it.”
“Go screw yourself,” she said with dignity, so angry that she was fighting back tears, and slammed the door behind her.
Two cups of coffee later, the problem wasn’t any easier to solve. She had considered assault and battery, intent to cause grievous bodily harm, aggravated assault, assault with a deadly weapon, and various other physical options. She’d also considered exorcism, remembering the emptiness looking back at her from within Warden Blair’s eyes. She’d also considered just saying the hell with it and running away, so far that they couldn’t find her, and never coming back. Or just leaving, period. She dismissed the threat of siccing the Mental Health Board on her; they didn’t have time to chase after one middle-aged scientist, no matter who Blair thought he knew. They were too busy with child-abusers and serial killers. With her credentials, she could be back in work in a European lab within days. Or better yet, the Japanese; they had a vested interest in this, and they had lots and lots of lovely multicolored yen to spend on it. If she wanted to run away.
But I don’t want to run. I want someone to explain what in the hell happened last night at the labs, and I want someone to pay for it, whoever caused the deaths of all of those people. I don’t believe in mass hallucination, or the food poisoning theory. I want to know that those creatures can’t exist, and that there’s a logical explanation for all of this, so I can go home and fall asleep without being terrified of dreaming.
And I want to know why Blair’s eyes make my skin crawl…
She took the scrap of paper out of her purse, with the few words written on it: “Eric, Beth, Kory. Geary and Broderick.” And a phone number with it. She considered the piece of paper, and also considered a third cup of coffee, but decided that it was too much of a good thing.
“I could find them,” she said out loud. “I could.”
She thought about it, and wondered whether she was just going to escape from the tigers by leaping off the cliff. Blair terrified her, but at least he hadn’t killed anyone, at least not in front of her. The long-haired boy, he’d controlled those creatures. At least, he said he controlled them.
But then she remembered his shy awkwardness in her apartment that morning, and thought: A mass murderer shouldn’t blush because he’s spilling hot water on a counter.
Maybe he could explain all of this to her, help her find the answers. She wanted that more than anything—to know, to understand.
To find out for certain that she wasn’t insane.
And she thought about San Francisco, and the layout of the streets. On Geary and Broderick, there wouldn’t be that many houses to check. She could find them, just by walking the area.
She left a dollar on the counter for the coffee, and headed back to her car. During that hour-long drive, she contemplated the insanity that had taken over her life. And beneath it all was the tiny doubt… what if it really was just a hallucination? Or insanity?
Or what if it all was real?
It was early evening, and the last light was fading as the fog slowly rolled in over the city. Eric had been up in the window seat, trying to read a book, or at least had stared at the first ten pages for the last several hours, but without any success. It was too difficult to push the dark thoughts from his mind.
It had all happened too fast, much too fast. One day he’d just been Eric Banyon, comfortable in his old life, and then all of this Bard insanity had begun. Suddenly he was a Bard, and had more magic at his disposal than he ever could have imagined in his dreams. A lot of magic—sometimes he could sense it within him, a waiting pool of pure light, and he knew that he’d only touched the edges of it, that there was so much further he could go. Summoning the Nightflyers had been so easy, he could’ve called thousands more of them without straining himself. He’d frozen that scientist lady in her tracks without even thinking about it, just a reflexive grab for magic with a quick whistled musical phrase.
It was too easy, and too powerful. He remembered how high he’d been, summoning his demon army, drunk on the raw power of it.
How am I supposed to live with this? He thought about the other example of overwhelming magical power he’d seen, the insane elvenmage Perenor. And his sorceress daughter, Ria. No, Ria hadn’t been in sane—somehow she’d learned to live with her abilities, at least to the point of not being a physical menace to the city she lived in. He was sure she’d never lost control… well, except for maybe that one argument we had, back at her house in Beverly Hills. But she was really angry at t
he time…
How had she managed that level of control? How did anyone manage it, when you had the raw power singing inside you, calling out to be used?
If that lady wasn’t catatonic in a hospital in L.A., I might want to ask her about that, Eric thought. The idea of asking Ria Liewellyn for anything appalled him, but it made sense, in a strange way. In a way, she was the
only one who could understand what was happening to him, this terror of the sheer magnitude of his magical abilities. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and I’ve got a damn near infinite supply of absolute power, he thought grimly.
“Hey, Eric.”
He looked up instantly, to see Beth smiling faintly at him from the waterbed. He was at her side a moment later. “How are you feeling?”
She had a kind of fragile look to her, and an odd expression in the back of her eyes he didn’t like. “Okay, I guess. Kinda thirsty. Is there anything to drink around here?”
“I’ll get you a glass of water.” He was halfway to the door when a scream ripped through the air.
Beth was staring at her hands, then looked up wildly at him. “Eric, my hands, they’re bloody, they’re covered with blood!”
“No, Beth—”
“Everything’s moving ... the walls are cracking… I can feel the floor giving way… Eric, we’ve got to get out of here!” She clutched at his hands. “No, they’re waiting for you outside, they’ll kill you! I can see them, you’ll carry me out the window and they’ll be waiting, waiting…“
Elizabet and Kayla burst into the room. “You’re dead, you’re all dead!” Beth wailed, and burst into tears. A split-second later, Kayla touched her very lightly on the temple. Eric could feel the burst of magic, an electrical crackle across his skin. Beth relaxed back onto the pillows, no longer screaming but still crying softly. Eric looked up as Kory leaped into the room, dripping wet from the hot tub or shower.
Eric wanted to scream himself, or cry. Instead, he moved away to let Elizabet and Kayla get closer to Beth. Kory was staring at Beth with horrified eyes, and Eric knew exactly how he felt.
At that exact moment, someone rang the doorbell downstairs. “I’ll get it,” Eric volunteered, and headed downstairs. He felt he couldn’t take another second of that blank look in Beth’s eyes. What nightmare had she just lived through, hallucinating it right in front of him?
It hit him suddenly, like a brick between the eyes—it was hisnightmare that she’d just seen, the earthquake destroying the house…
His feet continued down the stairway, independent of the turmoil in his mind. The doorbell rang again, and he felt a momentary irritation for whoever it was on the other side of the door—didn’t they know that his world was crashing down around him?
It has to be the door-to-door Bible salesmen. Only they have timing this bad.
Susan reached for the doorbell again. This was the fourteenth house she’d tried—she had been keeping count—and so far no one matched her descriptions. No one even knew anyone fitting the descriptions that was living on this street. She stepped back in surprise as the door opened suddenly.
The long-haired young man from her worst nightmare stood in front of her, blinking.
There was a long moment of total silence, as the young man stared at her.
“Well,” she said at last, impatiently, “aren’t you going to invite me in?”
* * *
CHAPTER 11:
Two Fair Maids
“Bard!” Kory came clattering down the stairs behind him before he could think to do anything, even to slam the door in the woman’s face. “Eric, Elizabet wants—”
Eric turned to stop him, but it was too late. Kory jumped the last couple of steps, and skidded to a halt behind him. He stared at the woman from the labs with his eyes gone big and round with surprise.
Slit-pupiled, green cat-eyes. Situated between pointed ears.
Kory was not wearing his human guise. Of course he wasn’t; he was tired, worried, and among friends on his home ground. He didn’t have to think about keeping up an illusion.
Eric did not need to turn to know that the woman was staring at Kory with the same look of astonishment on her face as Kory was wearing.
Oh shit. As if things weren’t bad enough. Before he could even move, however, she had forced the issue, pushing past him and closing the door. Then she leaned her back against it so that the only way to get her out would be to forcibly pry her off the door, get it open, and then throw her out. No doubt, with her kicking and screaming every step of the way.
He backed up a step. She stared defiantly into his eyes. “I want some answers,” she said firmly, “And I want them now. Who are you, what are you, what did you do back at the labs, why did you do it, and how? And in God’s name, what were those things you called up?” She moved her gaze slightly to meet Kory’s for a moment. “Your type, I know, or at least I think I do. I grew up on Tolkien. I’ve read my Celtic myths. Provided I’m not currently hallucinating all of this, locked up in a little cell. You’re either an elf, or I’m seriously ready for a jacket with extra-long sleeves. I don’t know what the hell you’re doing here, but if I can believe in shadow-monsters that kill people, I can believe in elves, no problem.”
Kory drew himself up to his full height and put on all of his dignity. The loose shirt and jeans he wore somehow became the raiment of a prince, and Eric got the fleeting impression of a coronet encircling his head. “I am Korendil, Champion of Elfhame Sun-Descending, Knight of Elffiame Mist-Hold.” He placed one long hand on Eric’s shoulder. “This is my friend and brother, Bard Eric. If you have aught to challenge him with, you must also challenge me.”
Eric didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or both. Bethie was upstairs falling apart, this crazy woman had tracked him down and wanted to know what he had been doing at the labs—and now Kory was issuing formal challenges. It was just too much.
He blinked away dizziness. “I—” he began, and his throat closed up. Then his mind went blank.
All three of them stood there staring at each other like a cluster of dummies in a store window, until the sound of someone clearing her throat politely from above them made them all turn. Elizabet stood at the head of the stairs, with Kayla perched, a round-eyed gargoyle, at her feet. Both healers were watching all of three of them like Jane Goodall and Dianne Fosse examining a trio of strange primates with unexpected behavior patterns.
“Would someone like to tell me what is going on here?” Elizabet asked.
Before Eric could get his mind and mouth to work, or even his body unfrozen, the lab woman looked up and addressed the healer as the person in charge. “I am Dr. Susan Sheffield,” she said, taking an aggressive stance, feet slightly apart, hands on hips. “I work at Dublin Labs—and last night—”
“All hell broke loose,” Kayla offered brightly. The woman favored the kid with a glare that had even Kayla shrinking back.
“Last night,” the woman repeated tightly, “I watched some kind of shadow thing kill my research assistant and my partner. They told me today that anyone else that didn’t get out when the alarms went off is either dead or crazy.” She half-turned to glare accusingly at Eric. “And he told me it was all his doing.”
She stabbed a finger at Eric, who shrank away from her, wishing he could melt into the wall. Wishing he could undo everything and go back to the night of the party. Back when things were simpler.
Kayla had gone very pale and quiet; Elizabet looked from the woman to Eric and back again, then nodded, as if making up her mind.
“I think we need some tea,” she said, decisively. She descended the stairs like the Queen of England, as Eric repressed the urge to giggle insanely. Instead he followed meekly in her wake, preceded by the lab woman and trailed by Kory and Kayla.
His mind went blank again for a moment. Somehow he found himself sitting at the kitchen table with the rest, a cup of tea in his hands that he did not remember pouring. He sipped it. Chamomile. Just the thing for nerves. He wa
nted a drink… and he knew he didn’t dare get one. One drink wouldn’t be enough, and how many would it take before the Nightflyers started whispering to him again? And how many more before they started to sound like his best friends? Back when he’d been drinking, he’d thought a lot of rotten people were his best friends…
“I think you should know, before you make any more accusations, that two of us were unwilling ‘guests’ in Dublin Labs last night,” Elizabet said, watching Susan Sheffield over the rim of her teacup. The scientist narrowed her eyes, looking skeptical. “There is a third victim of detention asleep upstairs right now, suffering severe post-traumatic stress syndrome. If this were someplace like Iraq or South America, I would have said she’d been tortured.” At the scientist’s look of shock, she added smoothly, “But of course, this is the United States, and nothing like that ever happens here. Does it?”
Susan Sheffield opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it. Elizabet followed up on her advantage. “And of course, since this is the United States, no one kidnaps middle-aged health professionals from conferences on the psychic, ties them up, shoots them full of sodium amatol, and drags them off to a sub-basement at Dublin Labs. Do they?” Elizabet didn’t wait for Dr. Sheffield to answer. She rolled up one of her sleeves with clinical detachment, displaying rope burns around each wrist and a bruise the size of a golf ball on her bicep, a bruise with a needle-mark clearly in the center. “He really was awful, too,” she remarked. “I’m surprised that he didn’t break the needle off in my arm. But then, I wasn’t cooperating.”
“How did you—what did you—”
She rolled her sleeve down again. “I told you I was a health professional; I’m a licensed psychiatric therapist. As it happens, I’ve gotten jabbed with a needle meant for someone else from time to time in the course of my job. I never thought that would turn out to have been such a good thing. Lucky for me, I’ve gotten accidental trank doses so many times that my tolerance is pretty high. Otherwise, when the alarms went off, I might have been one of the ones I had to leave behind in the cells.” “Others?” Susan said sharply. “Cells? What others? What cells?”
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