Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

  Brian squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. "You told me to stop. I stopped. You told me to leave. I left. No means no. That isn't rape."

  "If I ever think you're doing it again, I'll kill you!"

  "Maureen . . ."

  "You go to hell, Brian Arthur Albion. You just go straight to hell. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Get the fuck out of my life!"

  She lurched to her feet and drained the dregs of her coffee. Well, that was better than throwing it in his face. And at least she wasn't screaming.

  She had been loud enough to get attention. Not just Jo and David, but a dozen faces turned toward them, curious. He had a sudden idiot's vision of passing the hat for intermission entertainment, like jugglers or a pair of acrobats.

  He watched her retreating back, rigid as a spear with anger. She marched straight for the door and into darkness. He started to go after her, reason with her, and then decided now wasn't the time or place. She wouldn't be capable of listening. Grenades were like that.

  Damned if he knew what she had on her hidden agenda. All he had done was touch her fear of him, soothe her, calm her. Now she was acting as if he was an incubus.

  Her musk lingered behind, heavy even in the crowd-smell of the evening, bypassing his brain. It ignited a war between his body and his mind. "Go away closer." "No means no."

  Women.

  Particularly women of the Blood. Brian damned Fiona. He damned Maureen, and damned Jo with her confident sexuality aimed at her simple straightforward Homo sapiens, and damned Brian Arthur Pendragon Albion while he was at it.

  Sex was such a deadly stew.

  The musicians wandered back through the crowd, and David joined them, leaving a kiss on Jo's hand. The break was over, intermission act and all. The Downeast lobsterman stepped up to the microphone.

  "Well, folks, we've been after the lighter side of Ireland and it's time to get heavy, now. This isn't an IRA song, but rather the contrary. For generations, one of the few ways to support your family in a poor land has been to go for a soldier, to take the King's Shilling and go off to fight in foreign wars. And then you come home again . . . ."

  The bodhrán started to thump a funeral march, and the whistle picked up a slow-paced "Johnny Comes Marching Home." One by one, the other instruments joined, including a caoine wail on the uillean pipes that would have done credit to the best banshee.

  "While going the road to sweet Athy, hurroo, hurroo,

  "While going the road to sweet Athy, hurroo, hurroo,

  "While going the road to sweet Athy

  "A stick in my hand and a drop in my eye

  "A doleful damsel I heard cry

  "'Johnny I hardly knew ye!'

  "With their drums and guns and guns and drums

  "The enemy nearly slew ye.

  "Johnny me dear you look so queer,

  "Johnny I hardly knew ye."

  Brian knew this song. He'd lived it, through long years in the brushfire wars of the death of the British Empire. He settled his head in his hands. Death and maiming, the arts of war--his life stretched back behind him through the Malay jungles, the heat and dust and stink of Oman, the deceptive civilized streets of Belfast and Cyprus.

  Maureen . . . She had no reason to trust him, wouldn't have a reason until it was too late. Just like the young man who marched proudly off to war in his brilliant scarlet uniform, the thousands of young men.

  As he'd told her, the circle of killing lived on its own energy. He hunted Old Ones because he knew they hunted him. They hunted him because they knew he hunted them.

  "Where are your eyes that looked so mild, hurroo, hurroo?

  "Where are your eyes that looked so mild, hurroo, hurroo?

  "Where are your eyes that looked so mild

  "When my poor heart you first beguiled?

  "Oh, why did you run from me and the child?

  "Johnny I hardly knew ye."

  Each side killed because they feared death. They feared death because they killed. For others, it was the Balkans or Kashmir. For Brian, it was the Old Ones.

  One by one, over the years, the war had claimed his friends --Mulvaney had been the last. The enemy had bled just as much. The chess match was a draw. And he couldn't see any way to resign from his current war, any way to negotiate a truce. Nobody trusted enough.

  "You haven't an arm and you haven't a leg, hurroo, hurroo,

  "You haven't an arm and you haven't a leg, hurroo, hurroo,

  "You haven't an arm and you haven't a leg,

  "You're an eyeless, noseless, chickenless egg,

  "You'll have to be put with a bowl to beg.

  "Johnny I hardly knew ye!"

  Brian stared down at his cup, finding nothing but coffee. He shook his head.

  He was getting old. His thoughts didn't usually start turning this dark until he was at least halfway through a bottle of the Queen's best rum. He didn't start seeing the dead boys and the ones who wished they'd died until the landlord gave out his last call for the night. That was when he saw the blood soaking out between his fingers without the force of a heartbeat behind it, the death-blood of another child who'd trusted the old soldier to get him safely home again. That was when he sat in a tent at midnight writing letters to the next of kin.

  The grizzled Sergeant-Major was back, whispering in his ear. You're getting old and your brain is turning soft. Why are you so interested in this barmy little bint? Don't give me that crap about her smell. That's animal-talk, dogs following after a bitch in heat. You're only half an animal. What does the rest of you have to say?

  Brian shook his head, slowly, at his inner voice. He saw pain, and he knew considerable about that subject from the inside. When her face opened up with the music, she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. And underneath the pain and anger, he could feel the strength of tempered steel. She didn't even know it was there, but she could be more deadly than Fiona. He didn't want her to ever have to be.

  Speaking of Fiona . . .

  He lifted his head and did his reflex scan of the crowd, of his surroundings, of possible ambushes. Two dark faces sprang out of the shadows, as if they took form before his eyes. Fiona. Sean. His sister winked at him.

  "With their drums and guns and guns and drums

  "The enemy nearly slew ye.

  "Johnny me dear you look so queer,

  "Johnny, I hardly knew ye."

  The instruments dropped off, one by one, until the tin whistle piped a military retreat and the bodhrán finally drummed its funeral cadence into echoing silence.

  Brian cursed himself for relaxing his guard. How long had Fiona been there? Had anybody followed Maureen out the door? A minute, two minutes to finish the song . . .

  He was outside and fading into shadows before the echoes died.

  Chapter Eight

  There were five of them.

  At least five of them, Brian reminded himself. He could get killed making assumptions. The darkness could be hiding twice that many. Those were just the ones he'd seen or heard.

  He added a mental note to never, never, go out in jogging shoes in winter. No matter what he thought he was going to do. Now his damned Reeboks squished icy water between his toes with every step.

  Brian slid along an alley wall, hugging shadows, feeling the grit and grab of brick against the back of his jacket and praying his feet wouldn't find any noisy junk or ankle-breaking potholes under the snow. This frozen maze of alleys could kill him as easily as the squad trying to pin him down.

  There were at least five of them, and they were human. That cut back on his options. Times like this, he really questioned the nobility of unilateral disarmament. Things he could do, things he had done to Liam, just weren't options against humans. He was supposed to defend humans against Old Ones. That was his bloody job.

  There were always rules of engagement.

  It didn't matter if the damned jackals knew these alleys better than a Jesuit knows the Bible. Didn't matter if they'd
sold their souls to Fiona or Dougal, bought and paid for. He couldn't kill them.

  A shadow flickered across the end of the alley, short and skinny against the orange of the streetlights. Street kids, who lived in these alleys night and day. Gang kids, with knives and lengths of pipe and probably guns, being Yanks.

  How had they found him? He wondered for an instant if the music had called Fiona and her lapdog. That one reel belonged to the Summer Country, that was certain. But this wasn't summer. Far from it.

  Kids, he thought, and cursed under his breath.

  He couldn't kill them, and he couldn't even use the powers of the Blood where there were witnesses. Back when he'd thought Maureen was human, she had been alone. If she'd talked about what she saw, there was no evidence--no other witnesses. The cops would smile at each other and do a little spiral with a finger in the general area of their ears. Just another nut.

  He edged deeper into the maze, peeked around a corner, and scanned the shadows for his next move, his next threat. The cheeks of his butt clamped tighter in the ancient response to fear. It didn't matter how many hundreds of times he went into combat; the fear was there. It had better be. When the fear leaves, you die.

  He swallowed metallic spit.

  Dark, odd-shaped lumps could be bags of trash or lurking death. Tracks in the snow could be ten hours old or ten seconds. Blackness at the head of a fire escape might be a sentry or only plywood and ice against the sky.

  A whistle echoed down the alley: a mockingbird singing in February in Maine. Another echoed back. That was all he bloody well needed, a street gang trained as Indian scouts.

  His glance flicked back to the roof edge: something moved against the stars. Damn kids held the high ground.

  Brian slipped from shadow to shadow, crouching behind transformers humming to themselves under the snow, sneaking around rusty package vans that hadn't moved for at least three storms. The moldy back-alley smells of soaked cardboard, garbage, and cat-piss wiped Maureen's fragrance from his memory.

  Welcome to the real world, Brian Albion.

  One of the trash-bags stretched, found a more comfortable place to squat, and returned to sentry duty. So much for that way out. Brian could step around a corner into the Summer Country and escape, but he had a sneaking suspicion he'd find Fiona waiting for him at the gate.

  He still wondered if they were after him or after Maureen. Could be either. Could be both. The kids could just want to help him with the excess weight in his wallet, but he rather doubted that.

  Snow crunched behind him along the way he had come. He thought of gamekeepers driving the grouse to the guns. Which way was the weakest line, the escape from the trap? Which way did they want him to think was weak? Which alleys led out, and which dead-ended against a blank brick wall?

  Brian flipped a mental coin and crept right, uphill. Getting pinned against the river sounded really bad. Railroad yards waited down there, too, wide spaces with nothing higher than steel rails to hide behind. No fun.

  A shadow peeled loose from a doorway and whistled. Brian spun towards the kid, sensed a club, and took it hard on his left arm before a nerve-hold and two spear-handed jabs dumped the brat in the snow. A kick kept him down. Lying there, he was ragged and scrawny, probably no older than fourteen.

  Cannon fodder, Brian thought, as he glanced around for other moving shadows.

  His arm hung limp and tingled from fingertips clear up to his neck. He tried to shake it out and then scratched it off his equipment list for the evening. The odds were rotten: they had more bodies than he had arms and legs.

  Albion's last stand. How does that saying go? Today is a good day for someone else to die?

  More shadows loomed up ahead. Brian glanced around for any good-looking corners to guard his back.

  His chess-brain wondered if this welcoming committee had been hired by Fiona or by Dougal. It made a difference. Fiona probably wouldn't kill him unless jealousy had really pinched her on the ass. Dougal wouldn't think twice about it.

  The shadows split up. There were two of them, not impossible odds. Both swung clubs in the casual way that said they wanted to terrorize him, wanted him to surrender and save them the effort of beating him into pulp. If they were serious, they would have moved by now.

  Probably Fiona, then.

  Bugger this!

  Brian stared the closest one in the eyes. I am not here, he thought. You saw a cat skitter across the alley, you saw melting snow fall from the rusty iron of that fire-escape, you saw shadows from three different things combined by nothing more than your point of view. I am not here.

  The kid's eyes widened in the thin light reflected from the street-lamps. He swung wildly, probing for the ghost that had just faded away before his eyes.

  Brian spun to the second kid, the larger one, turning inside the arc of his club and taking it on his ribs. Something cracked. He managed to tangle the pipe in his useless left arm and hooked an ankle throw. The boy went down, and a heel-kick to the head kept him there.

  Pain whacked his knees from behind, a reminder from the kid he'd spelled. He'd dropped concentration on that one, lost control. Brian went with the blow, falling, rolling, spinning on his back to bring his feet up between himself and his enemy.

  Down isn't dead. Brian's legs scissored the kid's right knee and twisted him down into a snow-bank. Brian rolled along the contact and whipped a kick to the back of the head. Three down. Those ribs are going to be a problem, in half an hour or so. Better move while you still can, old son.

  He continued his roll to bring his feet under him and staggered back upright. His eyes locked on the silver shimmer of a blade held low in front of shadow.

  Shit. He'd left his knife at the hotel. The Cave had a metal-detector at the door--hard to explain needing a kukri for a night of music.

  So much for finesse. Barehanded against a knife, he was going to get cut. He just hoped he could choose where.

  Brian kicked snow, trying to startle or even blind his enemy. The kid moved in, knife low and slashing, and Brian spun away. One leg wasn't working right, the one the club got. That wasn't good.

  Another slash, another careful crab-scuttle advance. The kid knew what he was doing. No rushes, no stabs, no reaching.

  Time. Concentration. Using Power required both. Brian didn't even try. He just watched the knife and fought with the weapons his body still had.

  The knife started its starlit arc, and Brian moved forward rather than away. He twisted at the waist to throw his useless left arm against the blade. Something thumped against the meat of his forearm and stuck there, tugging, as he spun up along the kid's arm and whipped a back-fist to his head.

  The boy went down, jerking his knife with him as he fell. Brian felt another tug but no pain. If he was extremely lucky, it had only cut his jacket.

  Snow crunched behind him, and Brian ducked. Pain burst across his right shoulder. He half-fell away from it, turning, seeing a blurred form pulling back a club for the finishing blow. Brian's left foot rose by itself, cocked, and snapped out an instep kick. It found the shadowy fork where the shadow's legs converged, and thumped hard enough into the crotch that his other, injured leg shot pain straight up to the base of his skull and collapsed under him.

  Five.

  If there were any more, they had him.

  Brian rolled in the snow, retching. Gasps followed him--the sobbing, choking sounds of a young male kicked so hard in the balls his pelvis cracked. Sometime soon that kid was going to find the breath to scream.

  Club. Brian rolled across one of the clubs, fumbled it into his right hand, and half-crawled across the churned snow of the alley to gently, scientifically tap a skull. The sobs quieted.

  The club served as a brace, as well. He fought his way upright, right hand supporting right leg, left arm dangling useless, blood dripping black into the gray-orange glimmer of the snow.

  Five down. They'd probably all live, although that back-fist to the head could have crushed the templ
e of the kid's skull. Served him right, for pulling a knife. Fiona would have skinned him alive. Or worse.

  Not a tidy fight.

  Any others?

  His blurry eyes sorted shadows and doorways, compared them against the files of recent memory. Nada.

  The pause gave him a chance to survey the damage, and the answer wasn't good. Probable broken ribs. Probable cracked leg-bone, fibula by the feel of it. Something damaged in his shoulder, God only knows what. Unknown bone or nerve or muscle damage to the left arm. It still had enough feeling in it for him to know that was blood flowing down hot to drip off his fingers.

  So much for just cutting the jacket. No light, no time to check it out. Simple pressure bandage. He struggled to force thoughts through the fog.

  Belts. He hobbled to the nearest body, using the club as a cane. He knelt down in jerky stages that edged on collapse. Shaking fingers coiled the kid's belt around the cut arm, outside the jacket and tight like an elastic bandage, pressure on the wound to slow the bleeding.

  More belts. Clubs. He splinted his leg, something to take pressure off his shoulder. That cane trick wasn't going to work more than another five minutes--he didn't have a good arm to use it with.

  With his leg bound straight, Brian crawled to a security grill and used its chain-link mesh as a ladder to haul his wracked body vertical. His head swam, and the stars dropped down to orbit around the alley.

  Sergeant Mulvaney was back. You're pretty well knackered, laddie. Not good at all. A tyke in nappies could toddle up and push you over with one finger. You've got a problem, old son.

  He didn't need phantom voices to tell him he needed help. Hurt, in a foreign land, with no I.D. that'd stand more than a passing glance--and how'd he like some blood tests run, before they gave him a transfusion? Maybe a series of x-rays? "Interesting, Doctor Jones: would you have a look at this? Never seen anything like it . . . ."

  Brian staggered along the alley wall, stiff-legged and one shoulder dragging against the bricks for support. The pain was waking up now, the fire of the knife-cut and the red-hot nails in his ribs stabbing him with every breath and a pounding lump on his right forehead he couldn't connect with anything in the fight. Maybe he'd hit it when he rolled.