Terri Windling

by Borderland

  Lubin crept up to Stick, sniffing at where his wounds had been, then put her nose up against Manda’s cheek. She whined, but there was no response from either of them.

  Bramble pulled up in front of the museum and parked her bike beside Stick’s. She put it on its kickstand, disconnected her spell-box and walked up to the big front door. There she hammered on the broad wooden beams for what seemed like the longest time. There was no reply.

  “Aw, shit,” she said.

  She knew Stick was here—or at least his bike was. But what were the chances he’d take Manda in even if she had come knocking on his door? Thinking of what Stick was like, Bramble realized that it wasn’t bloody likely.

  Okay, so where else might she have gone? Back to the Horn Dance’s house? Even more unlikely. So what did that leave? The streets.

  Bramble tried the door again, waited, then sighed. Heading back to her bike, she kicked it into life. It looked like she was in for a night of cruising the streets. But she wasn’t going to leave the poor kid out there on her own—not feeling as messed up as she’d obviously been when she’d fled The Factory.

  She revved the throttle a couple of times, then took off, heading for Soho’s club district.

  The sound of Bramble’s engine as she drove off roused Suck from a dream of a warm soft place. He’d felt as though he’d been lying somewhere with a beautiful earth goddess, his whole body nestled between her generous breasts. When he opened his eyes to find himself lying in the alley, it took him a few moments to realize where he was and how he’d come to be here.

  Bloods. Bashing a kid. Who’d turned out to be a Blood. Part of a trap. And he’d gone charging in, like an asshole, and got himself shot—

  He lifted a hand to his shoulder. His jacket had a hole in it and it was sticky with blood, but there was no wound there. He peered down and looked at his thigh. Same story. Only there he could see the scar. How the . . . ?

  Then he remembered. The kid he’d helped last night—the halfling. She’d been here. It was then that he saw her lying beside him, all curled up in a ball. Half elf—with an elfs healing ability. That’s what it had to have been. He had a dim recollection of her facing down the Bloods. Somehow she’d got hold of Fineagh’s gun and sent the whole crew packing.

  “You’re really something, kid,” he said.

  He saw the gun lying just beyond her. Reaching over, he hefted it thoughtfully, then pocketed it. Lubin nuzzled his hand.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, ruffling her fur. “I remember you going one-on-one with Fineagh. Got myself a regular pair of guardian angels, don’t I?”

  He got slowly to his feet, marvelling that he was still alive. Retrieving his staff, he broke it down and replaced it in its sheath. Then he picked up the girl and headed for home.

  “This is getting to be a habit,” he said, talking to himself more than to her, for she was still unconscious.

  “Only this time I’m taking care of you myself—I figure I owe you that much.”

  . Not to mention that Fineagh wasn't likely to forget this. Stick knew that both he and the girl were looking to be in some deep shit and it was going to be coming down all too soon.

  Stick awoke, stiff from a night on the sofa. He groaned as he sat up and swung his legs to the floor. Hell, he told himself. Don’t complain. It sure beats lying dead in an alleyway with a couple of bullets in the old bod.

  Putting on his jeans, he padded across the room to the doorway of his bedroom. His guest was already up and gone. Finding a shirt, he went to see if she’d left the museum or was just exploring. He found her on the ground floor, gazing with awe at a full-size skeleton display of a brontosaurus.

  “Jeez,” she said as he approached her. “This place is really something.”

  “How’re you feeling?”

  “Okay. A good night’s sleep is all I usually need to recover from something like last night.”

  “Yeah,” Stick said. “About last night. Thanks.” Manda grinned. “Hey, I owed you one.” She looked back at the display. “Do you really have this whole place to yourself?”

  From the outside, the five-story museum looked like a castle. Inside, the first four floors held natural history displays, everything from dinosaurs to contemporary wildlife—contemporary to the world outside, at least, for there were no examples of the strange elfish creatures that now inhabited the borderlands. All the natural sciences were represented. Geology, zoology, anthropology. Manda had spent the morning wandering from floor to floor, captivated by everything she saw. Her favorites, so far, were the Native American displays and the dinosaurs.

  The fifth floor was where Stick lived. It had originally contained the museum’s offices and research labs. Now most of the rooms stored the vast library that Stick had accumulated—books, records, videotapes; a wealth of pre-Elfland knowledge unmatched this side of the Border. A few rooms served as his living quarters.

  “Except for Lubin,” Stick said, “I’ve pretty much got the place to myself.”

  “Well, now I know why you know so much about the old days,” Manda said. “But it does seem kind of decadent.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, there’s all this neat stuff in here. It doesn’t seem right to just keep it all to yourself.”

  “So what do you think I should do—open it to the public?”

  “Sure.”

  Stick shook his head. “It wouldn’t work.”

  “I know lots of folks who’d die to see this stuff.” “Sure. And when they got bored? They’d probably trash the place.”

  Manda gave him a funny look, then thought about what was left of the various pre-Elfland galleries and the like that she’d seen. “I guess you’re right.” She ran a hand along a smooth phalanx of the brontosaurus. “It seems a shame, though.”

  “Oh, this place had a use,” Stick said. “This is where the Bloods that wanted to go into the outside world used to come. It was a place where they could learn a thing or two about the way things work out there so that they could fit in smoothly—if they didn’t want to be noticed.”

  “Really?”

  “Um-hmm. That’s why I’ve got power—there’s a generator that runs off a big spell-box that they left—and a lot of technological stuff works in here where it wouldn’t work out on the street.”

  “You mean those TV sets and stereos and things up on the top floor really work?”

  Stick nodded.

  “Wow. I’d love to check out some of that stuff. I’ve only read about them before.”

  “Come on,” Stick said. “I’ll show you how they work.” He bent down and held out his arm so that Lubin could slip into its crook, then led the way upstairs.

  “Jeez, look at this stuff!” Manda cried in the music room. She pulled records from the big bookshelf racks that lined the walls. “Jimi Hendrix. David Bowie. Storm-trooper. The Nazgul.” She looked up. “Is this stuff really as good as it’s supposed to be?”

  “Better.”

  Manda’s mouth formed a silent “Wow.”

  “Listen,” Stick asked as he turned the stereo on. “Have you got a place you can stay—some place out of the way, I mean, like away from Bordertown?”

  «IJ M

  Well what had she been thinking anyway, Manda asked herself. That she was just going to be able to move in here or something? Jeez, it was really time that she grew up.

  Stick saw the disappointment cross her face. “I’m not throwing you out,” he said. “You seem like an okay kid and I owe you.”

  “That’s okay. I can go. But not away from Bordertown. . . . This is my home.”

  “You’re taking this wrong. See, the thing is—Fineagh— you know Fineagh?”

  Manda nodded. “Sure. At least I’ve heard of him. He’s the Bloods’ latest leader.”

  “He’s also the guy you put down last night.”

  Manda blanched. “Oh, shit.”

  “Right. So the problem is, he’s going to come looking for us, and this ti
me he’ll bring every frigging Blood he can lay his hands on. I’ve got a feeling that they’re going to bust into this place, and that it’s going to be today.”

  “Can . . . can they get in?” Manda asked. She thought of what the museum looked like from the outside—an impregnable fortress.

  “Well, the place’s got a certain amount of built in security, left behind by the elves who used it, but there’s no way it could stand up to a concentrated assault.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  Stick smiled. “Well, I want to get you to someplace safe for starters.”

  “No way.”

  “Listen, you don’t know what’s going to be coming down when—”

  “I did pretty good last night, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, sure. But—”

  “And besides,” Manda added, “I really want to hear some of this stuff.”

  “Listen, kid, you—”

  “Manda.”

  “What?”

  “My name’s Manda.”

  “Okay. Manda.”

  Before he could go on, Manda laid down the stack of records she’d pulled out and walked over to where he was standing. “I’m not a hero,” she said, “but I can’t just walk away from this.”

  “Sure you can. You just—”

  “Then, why don’t you just leave Bordertown?” Manda couldn’t believe it. Here she was arguing with Stick, for God’s sake, like were they old pals or something. “That’s different,” Stick said. “I’ve got a responsibility.” “To what? To this place that no one ever gets to see? To the people out on the streets who let you help them, but that you never let help you?”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Stick said. But listening to her, hearing the conviction in her voice, he found himself wondering what had ever happened to that sense of rightness he’d felt when he was her age. There was nothing he didn’t have an opinion on back then—and a damn strong opinion at that—but somehow the years had drained it away. Where once his head had been filled with a strong sense of where he was going and what his place in the world was—he was its center, of course—he’d fallen into living by habits. Still doing things, but no longer sure just exactly why he was doing them. Like patrolling the streets like some comic book superhero, for Christ’s sake.

  He was so still, his face squinted in a frown, that Manda figured she’d gone too far. “Listen,” she said. “I didn’t mean to mouth off like that. You can do whatever you want—shit, it’s your place. If you want me to get out of your way, I’ll go back to Soho.”

  Stick shook his head. “No,” he said. “You’re right. Sooner or later you’re going to have to settle this thing between Fineagh and you—same as I do. It might as well be now. But I’ll tell you, Manda, we don’t have a hope in hell of getting out of this in one piece—not if he musters as many Bloods as I think he will.”

  “Do you want to split?” Manda asked.

  “Can’t.”

  She grinned. “Well then, let’s listen to some rock and

  roll.” She held up a record jacket with a full-face photo of a handsome curly-haired man. She was attracted to the group’s name as much as the photo—mostly because of the time she’d just spent downstairs in the dinosaur display. The group was called Tyrannosaurus Rex. “Are they any good?”

  “Yeah. They’re great. Do you want to hear it?”

  Manda nodded. She rubbed her hair nervously, making the mauve spikes stand up at attention. Way down inside, she was scared shitless. What she really needed right now was something to take her mind off what was going to be coming down all too soon. A little time was all she needed. Sure. And then she’d just face down Fineagh and his gang all by herself.

  Music blasted from the speakers then, a mix of electric and acoustic instruments that pushed the immediacy of her fears to the back of her mind. After a short intro, the lead singer’s curiously timbred voice sounded across the instruments, singing about a “Woodlamp Bop”. By the time the second chorus came, she was singing along, Lubin dancing at her feet.

  Stick left them to it while he went to see to some weapons. His staff just wasn’t going to cut it, not with what Fineagh was going to bring down on them.

  Bramble spent a fruitless night, going from club to club, stopping on street corners, asking after Little Maggie Woodsdatter’s younger sister Manda, with no luck. Dawn was just pinking the sky when she ran down a rumor that was just starting to make the rounds of the Soho streets. Hearing it, she headed for home.

  Mary was the only one up when Bramble came into the kitchen.

  “Any luck?” Mary asked.

  Bramble shook her head.

  Mary sighed. “About last night,” she said. “You know what the Hood’s like. He’s just into fulfilling obligations.” “Yeah. I know. But—”

  “Anyway,” Mary broke in. “We won’t be playing there again—not even if we wanted to.”

  “Why not?”

  “After the gig, the Hood collected our bread, then he decked George. ‘That’s for the kid,’ he said. Left him with a beautiful shiner.”

  Bramble smiled. “I wish I’d seen that.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to give you a complete moment-by-moment rundown if you ask.” She eyed Bramble thoughtfully. “So now what are you going to do? Are you still planning to pack it in?”

  “No. Just before I got here, I heard a story that’s making the rounds. Something about Stick and some kid facing down Fineagh and some of the Bloods. Whatever happened, the Bloods are planning a full-scale assault on Stick’s place this afternoon.”

  “What’s that?”

  The sound of their conversation had woken a few other members of the band. The Hood sat down at the table with them, while Teaser and Johnny Jack fought a mock battle for the tea pot. It was the Hood who’d spoken.

  Bramble gave them what details she’d been able to pick up. By the time she finished, most of the band was up and had joined them.

  “This kid with Stick,” Johnny Jack asked. “You think it’s Manda?”

  Bramble nodded.

  “It makes sense,” Mary added. “She was asking about him yesterday morning.”

  The Hood looked around at the rest of them. “Anybody here not want to get involved?”

  “She seemed like a nice kid,” Oss volunteered.

  “And she is an honorary member of the band still,” Johnny Jack added.

  Mary shook her head. “But what can we do?” she asked. “We’re not fighters.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” the Hood said. “I’ve been known to kick some ass.”

  “You know what I mean,” Mary said. “How could we possibly stand up to the numbers Fineagh can put together?”

  There was a long silence. One by one heads turned to look at the Hood.

  “Hell,” he said after a moment. “It’s simple. We just dance ’em into surrender.”

  “Come on,” Bramble. “This is serious.”

  “I am being serious,” the Hood replied. “The only thing is, we’re going to need a wizard.”

  It was shaping up even worse than Stick had imagined it would.

  “Oh shit,” Manda said, joining him at the window. “What are we going to do?”

  Behind them, the needle lifted from the LP by Big Audio Dynamite and the turntable automatically shut off. Neither of them noticed. All their attention was focused on the street below that fronted the museum.

  Bloods rounded the corner and came down the street like a slow wave. There were easily more than a hundred of them, bedecked in jeans and red leather, silver eyes glittering in the afternoon light. Their hair was a multi-colored forest, ranging from elfin silver through every color of the spectrum. They were armed with knives and cudgels, broken lengths of pipe and chains, traditional elfin bows and arrows. The front ranks had sledgehammers and crowbars. One way or another, they made it obvious that they were cracking the museum open.

  The Bloods alone w
ere bad enough. But word had spread and the various gangs were showing up in force to watch the show. The Pack, in black leather. Dragon’s Fire, down from the Hill, looking soft beside the real street gangs. Scruffy headbangers and Soho Rats, runaways and burn-outs.

  Looking down at the crowd, Stick had visions of the bloodbath that was just a few wrong words away from exploding. He checked the load of his pump shotgun. With a quick snapping motion, he pumped a shell into place. Inside the museum, he had no doubt as to its reliability. But outside, beyond the elfin spells that kept the building and its contents in working order, he knew he’d be lucky if one shot in three fired.

  Manda swallowed hard.

  “Scared?” Stick asked.

  She nodded.

  “Me, too.” When she looked at him in surprise, he added: “It might not be too late to get out the back.”

  “And do what?”

  There was that, Stick thought. No matter where they went, they were going to have to face Fineagh sooner or later. Taking off now just meant the museum was going to get trashed and they’d still have the Blood leader on their ass. Making a stand here—maybe it was just suicide. But there didn’t seem to be any other option.

  “Did you ever get lonely?” Manda asked suddenly. “You know, just being here by yourself all the time?”

  “I went out a lot—and besides, Lubin’s good company.”

  The ferret was crouched on the windowsill in front of them. Manda gave her soft fur a pat.

  “Yeah, but you didn’t exactly hang out a lot when you did go out,” she said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Hey, you’re famous, Stick.”

  He sighed. “That’s the kind of shit that got me into this in the first place. Always being the do-gooder.” He gave her a quick look. “So maybe I got a little lonely from time to time. I guess it just came with the territory.” “You’ve helped an awful lot of people—did you never find one of them you liked well enough to be your friend?”

  “It’s not that simple, Manda. See, I’ve got to keep some distance between myself and the street. Without it, I can’t do my job properly.”