Lackey, Mercedes - Serrated Edge 04 - When The Bough Breaks

by When The Bough Breaks [lit]

  "Cozier than the ancestral pile back home, don't you know?" the ersatz noblewoman offered about halfway through the tour. "You wouldn't believe the chilling effect suits of armor have on one if one happens to be wandering about the place in the wee hours. But nobody will let me change the bloody decorating scheme. National Trust, don't you know."

  Prices for each of the two horses were discussed and agreed upon in between rooms—there was no dickering. This appeared to hearten the seller greatly.

  The two women parted with "Bits" promising to make up her mind in the next day or so, and ring back with her decision. Both women were smiling as they went their separate ways.

  * * *

  Lianne skimmed the abuse texts first, and was surprised to find that they were more help than she'd anticipated. They outlined signs and symptoms of abuse that went farther than just noting bruises with regular outlines, or a high incidence of broken bones, E.R. visits, or days absent from school. They also outlined personality traits—from constant timidity, clinging behavior, or a desperate search for anyone's approval, to erratic school performances.

  One book focused almost exclusively on child sexual abuse, and Lianne was surprised to find that sexual abuse of children did not have to include intercourse. Inappropriate touching or kissing, verbal abuse with sexual overtones, and some forms of humiliation were all forms of sexual abuse. She was appalled to find that a shocking number of children were sexually abused—statistics varied slightly, but according to her books, by the time they reached adulthood, roughly one out of every five girls and one out of every nine boys would have encountered sexual abuse. Most sexual abusers were also alcoholics, and almost all of them were men.

  Abuse of all kinds ran in families, with a high percentage of abused children growing up to be abusers. It was agreed in all of her sources that the biggest hope for eliminating child abuse of any kind was to treat the children who had been abused, soon, so that they in turn would not continue the cycle.

  Lianne curled on the couch, lost in the horror of the raw numbers. The odds were that Amanda was being sexually abused—she fit many of the characteristics of abused kids, though not all at the same time. Even worse, the odds were incredibly high that Amanda not only wasn't the first abused child Lianne had in her class, but that she wasn't the only abused kid in her class right then.

  I didn't know, Lianne thought. She felt sick. Dammit, I just didn't know.

  There had to be something she could do. Maybe I could lobby to have some sort of abuse-detection program added to our curriculum. Let the kids who are being abused know that abuse is not their fault—never their fault—and find some way to tell them that they aren't alone. The books had said that children felt—or were told until they believed it—that they had somehow caused the abuse. It also said kids thought such things had never happened to anyone but them. And sometimes—this made her gorge rise—they thought it was normal. That things like this did happen to everyone else, and that there would be no reason why anyone would help them. They were often told no one would believe what the children said. Those were apparently the biggest reasons why kids didn't go to someone for help.

  Another was that they were afraid that something bad would happen to their parents. They didn't realize that the abuse was as bad for their parents as it was for them—that their parents needed help, too.

  They could come to me, Lianne thought. And there are always a few teachers in any school that the kids know they can trust. Those are the people they should tell.

  Lianne stretched out on the couch, staring out the glass doors of her apartment at the quad and the faintly greening trees, and the few bits of dull gray sky that showed around the other apartment buildings. Someone would listen—someone would believe them. And then they would get help.

  She felt emotionally depleted, but she picked up the Truddi Chase biography anyway, and was drawn into it almost immediately.

  When she finally put it down, hours later, it was dark outside, and the wind had picked up again. She shuddered and drew the curtains across the glass doors.

  That Truddi Chase had managed to survive her ordeal in any form whatsoever spoke for the strength of the human spirit. That she had gone on to make a life for herself left Lianne feeling very weak and insignificant in comparison. I feel almost guilty that I had such an easy life.

  Lianne had a bad moment when she realized she could see similarities in things she read about Truddi Chase and things she saw in Amanda. Changes in personality, in abilities, in attitudes toward her and other teachers and the girl's classmates—she'd seen all of them.

  Could Amanda be a multiple personality case? It seemed more than a little farfetched. But if she was, what sort of life could have fractured her into those multiples?

  The door rang, and Lianne sighed with relief. He's found something, then. Good. After reading When Rabbit Howls, she wasn't as eager to spend the night by herself as she had been.

  She opened the door with a grateful smile on her face.

  "Hi!" a masked stranger said, and wedged her riding boot into the door. "I saw your boyfriend wasn't here, so I thought I'd pay you a visit."

  She shoved her way inside with her gun aimed at Lianne's midsection the whole time, and closed the door before Lianne had any time to react.

  "Just us girls together," the intruder said cheerfully, and pulled back the hammer with an ominous click.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Feeling guilty is not the best way to start the day, Mac told himself, driving slowly toward Lianne's. He worried about telling her how out of hand his comforting of Felouen had gotten, then rationalized that hang-ups about monogamy were a mostly human obsession. But then he reminded himself that he had known about that human quirk before he started dating a human—

  Finally he made up his mind that he would just pretend nothing had happened unless Lianne accidentally found out otherwise.

  Besides, he told himself in an attempt to soothe his aching conscience, Felouen really needed me there last night. It made her so happy to see that I'd accepted the Ring's geas. She looked at me the way human women do when I've just won a race. And after Gwaryon's death, she needed comforting.

  And since when does "comforting" include jumping the bereaved's bones? his conscience snapped back.

  So much for that approach. He dragged his feet as he walked away from Rhellen, heading as slowly as he could up the walk to the apartment. And he knew immediately that there was something very odd.

  She's left the door standing open, he thought when he stepped into the apartment entryway. The heavy gray door stood about an inch ajar. He could see that the chain lock wasn't on, either. Considering the day she had yesterday, I'm surprised she doesn't have the whole apartment locked and barred. What did she do, just go collapse on the couch? Or maybe—maybe she left it open for me this morning. So I'd just come straight in. He shook his head, puzzled, and knocked.

  "Hey, Lianne!" There was no answer. He pushed the door all the way open, and looked inside.

  Fear overwhelmed puzzlement.

  He stared at the living room. It had been thoroughly and expertly trashed.

  Oh, gods, he thought, oh, shit! With inhuman strength, he clamped down hard on the doorknob; it broke off in his hand. Before him, two living-room chairs lay on their sides with books scattered across them. The shattered television lay on the floor, one of the shoes he had last seen Lianne wearing resting in the debris. In the connecting kitchen, shards from broken glasses and dishes sparkled in the light of one errant sunbeam. A Rorschach blot of blood traced obscene patterns down one wall.

  "Lianne! Lianne! Where are you?" he shouted. He ran from room to room. Beyond the living room and the kitchen, nothing had been disturbed. Lianne's jewelry was intact, her stereo and her computer were where they belonged, her clothes still hung neatly in the closet.

  Only Lianne was gone.

  In the sinister hush of the empty apartment, his sharp, irregular breaths and the tick of the
kitchen clock were the only sounds. He stretched his psychic feelers—and came up empty. No magic had touched this room except his own. No demon creatures from the Unformed Plane had stolen Lianne away.

  Scenes from a hundred TV cop shows played in his memory. Robbery wasn't the motive—and it wasn't magic, either Unseleighe or human. Rape? Kidnapping? Worse? Mac started looking for a message, a note, anything—going room to room and searching inch by inch.

  When the phone rang right next to his ear, Mac jumped. "Gods, let it be her," he whispered. "Let this be some stupid mistake."

  He picked up the handset and held it to his ear. "Lianne?" he asked.

  "Not a chance, babe. It's Jewelene. I've got her." The voice on the other end of the line was muffled, the laughter in his ear was coarse and vicious. "You owe me. You owe me big time, baby—and you're going to pay. You know what?"

  A dull ache gripped Mac's chest. "What?"

  "You stole my car and slashed the tires. So I stole your girl. You don't want to know what I've slashed." The voice was laughing again.

  Belinda Ciucci.

  "What do you want?" Mac whispered.

  The voice was full of obscene gloating. "I'm going to kill her. And I'm going to enjoy every long second of it."

  Think, fool! What can you bargain for her? "You don't want her."

  Belinda made a tsking sound. "Sure I do, babe. You know what they say about a bird in the hand and all that."

  Convince her. Somehow convince her. "You want me. Not her."

  Deep breathing for a moment, as his heart raced and fear clogged his throat. "Yeah, but I've got her. Right now, pal, I just want to hurt somebody. She put up a fight—I've already hurt her a little. She's not as pretty as she used to be."

  Gods, Lianne. What in hell have I done to you? Mac thought. What did I get you into? How can I get you out again? "You tell me what you want me to do, and I'll do it. Just let her go. Don't hurt her anymore."

  "Damn shame you didn't have that attitude a day or two ago. Everybody would have been a lot happier." Maclyn twisted a butter knife lying on the counter into a knot. Damn Belinda Ciucci,. he thought. I should have wiped her memories instead of playing games with her.

  The woman cleared her throat. "First, don't call the police. I'll kill her at the first sign that you've involved them. For now, you get to wait. You're going to meet me somewhere, but I haven't decided where yet. Stay by the phone. I'll call you back when I make up my mind."

  Mac clenched his hand on the handset. This woman was not sane. "When?"

  Belinda laughed, and the note in her voice confirmed that she was not sane. "Who knows?"

  "Let me talk to her," he pleaded.

  "Nope." There was a click. The woman had hung up.

  Mac refrained from smashing the handset to shreds. Instead, he set it gently back in the receiver. Then he put his fist through the wall. "Dammit! Dammit, I should have been here, dammit! I should have been here. Not with Felouen. Here. If I'd been here, none of this would have happened."

  He stared at the phone, his only link with Lianne. He hadn't thought through the possible consequences of angering Belinda, then leaving her to her own devices. He could have taken care of her by himself earlier—that would have been the end of it. No one would have suffered. Now he needed help, and needed it badly.

  And Dierdre and Felouen and all of his other potential sources of help were currently Underhill gearing up to wipe out golems. In fact, he should have been going straight from Lianne's place back to Elfhame Outremer. Instead, he was locked in place in the apartment.

  He would have to construct a Gate in the apartment, he decided—one that he could leave up and use to shuttle back and forth between Underhill and Lianne's telephone. The energy drain would be bad, worse since his resources were already low. He was tired, he was needed by both his own people and a seriously disturbed child, he'd just lost a friend and had another seriously hurt—and now Lianne was a hostage somewhere. He was pulled in too many directions.

  Which is exactly when people get careless and get themselves killed, he told himself. Not that my state of readiness matters. There's no looking back. He started pulling in the energy that would form the Gate.

  * * *

  Amanda-Anne sat like a spider in her web, centered in the Unformed Plane, singing loudly and off-key, making monsters.

  She had started to vary them—somewhere along the line, she had gotten tired of the stick-men. She made a few two-headed stick-men, but even that was too boring. She made some things with four legs and long, spiky tails and huge teeth, and she rather liked those. She made a few more, similar but with wings. When the first of her winged monsters flew through the air, she laughed and clapped her hands—and began adding wings to everything she made from then on. Her monsters started getting bigger. One had dozens of legs and three heads on long, snake-like necks; it flew with less grace than a winged tank might have, but it did fly.

  No one bothered her in the Unformed's nothingness. The Father couldn't find her. The nasty things that lived there were more afraid of her than she was of them. Nothing could touch her, nothing could hurt her. She had never had so much fun in her life. She had never had so many friends, either.

  She rubbed the green bead strung on her wrist. "My m-m-magic door," she whispered. "J-j-j-just like the g-g-genie's lamp." She crowed with delight. To have been so weak, to be so strong—it was wonderful.

  And the best thing was that her magic door could take her back into the elf's world. She thought about this as she worked on her current creation, an eight-legged nightmare with hundreds of eyes and a fanged mouth that ran the length of its belly. If it weren't for the goody-two-shoes elves, that place would have been perfect. The Father and the Step-Mother couldn't get there. In among all those trees, with all that magic, she would be safe. She could hide there forever—if it weren't for the stupid elves, who would make her go home.

  She thought yearningly of how nice this place would be without bossy elves, about how much she would like to hide here forever.

  She sang to herself and made another monster.

  * * *

  Lianne woke to a blaze of pain, with the tang of blood and a filthy rag in her mouth, bathed in the stench of car exhaust and gasoline. She felt as if she was lying on a bed of nails, with another one slowly descending on her. Her head throbbed, her eyes would not open, her face burned horribly and screamed with pain. Her ribs crunched ominously against hard cold metal and stinking carpet when she rolled off to the left. She felt the bones of her face shift relative to each other when she moved, and white-hot searing agony shot through her skull. She sobbed, and the movement of her rib cage stabbed fire along her nerves.

  What have I done? she wondered. Where am I?

  She fought to retrieve foggy memory.

  She remembered elves fighting the monsters—or was that a true memory? She remembered magic, too—and Maclyn doing magic. And that was crazy. Absolutely crazy. Impossible. Everyone knew that magic couldn't exist.

  Mac Lynn. Not Maclyn. He's a racecar driver. Not an elf. Something has happened to my mind—amnesia or something—to make me think of magic. However I got hurt like this—it's confused me.

  But that wasn't so, was it? Maclyn, not Mac Lynn, wasn't human. She'd figured that out all by herself, using logic, using reason—and she'd caught him out. So the elves were real. That meant the monsters were real, too. The elves had won their fight with the monsters. Because of her. I'm a hero—whoopee. Look where it got me.

  What happened next?

  She remembered books. Child abuse books—she'd been reading, and she'd just figured out something about Amanda. Yes. It was coming back. She remembered the knock at her door, but it wasn't Mac waiting on the other side.

  It had been a strange woman with a gun.

  The woman had barged in—but Lianne hadn't reacted the way she'd expected. Lianne had grabbed a heavy ashtray and bashed the intruder in the face—God knows where the courage for that trick
came from, or how I managed it—and blood had spurted down the inside of the pantyhose mask the bitch wore. A second bash, this time to the gun-hand, and the gun had flown across the room.

  I got first licks in—but she had obviously had training. Lots of it.

  Lianne was starting to remember the other things, as well. Very unpleasant things. The woman was good at hand-to-hand combat—she'd probably used it on other people, given the way she acted. When she dove at Lianne, she took her down and flipped her on her stomach, slapped handcuffs on her—what the hell was she doing with handcuffs?—and then started kicking.

  Lianne knew she had broken ribs. She remembered hearing them crack when the woman's riding boots struck, and she could feel them now, hurting more than she'd ever thought she could hurt, screaming with pain with every breath. Her nose was broken, too, and probably her jaw and her left cheekbone—those injuries had occurred after the woman retrieved her gun, when she started beating Lianne in the face with it.