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

by When The Bough Breaks [lit]

  * * *

  In mid-flight, still spouting flames at the remaining treetops, the three-headed flier popped out of existence. The gothic demons flickered slightly and were gone. Maclyn, fighting a losing battle with a many-legged snake, found himself swinging a rifle-butt at an opponent that had suddenly ceased to exist.

  All over Elfhame Outremer, cries of surprise became shouts of elation. The survivors fell together, hugging each other in disbelief and hysterical joy at the sheer miracle of it.

  Those who were relatively unscathed soon enough began the grim task of sorting dead from dying, of dying from salvageable. They walked from charred body to mangled body, from one still form to the next, struggling to recognize in death some semblance of those they had known in life. Maclyn rid himself of his gloves and heavy armor with a thought and began that dark walk, too, looking into the faces of survivors, hoping to find his own loved ones, and seeing his own disappointment reflected over and over in each face that was not Dierdre, was not Felouen. He knew that for all of those who stared into his eyes and turned away in despair, his own grimed features represented one less chance that the ones they loved still lived.

  He worked his way back to the point where he and Dierdre had become separated. All around him, the Mindshouted calls, the agonized cries for help, the screams of those who recognized the ones they had loved in the features of the dead, blotted out any hope of finding Dierdre or Felouen by Mindcall, or by simple shouting. He kept at his steady examination of each passing face, of each sad corpse, praying to all the gods he'd never believed in that he would recognize his loved ones in those who still stood, and not those who would never stand again.

  Suddenly, across a muddied clearing, he recognized a familiar toss of the head, a quick brush of hand through hair.

  "FELOUEN!" he roared, and was rewarded by a startled jerk of the head in his direction, by a shriek of "Maclyn!" and by the woman's ungraceful two-legged gallop across the field of the dead.

  Felouen threw herself into his arms, careless of her wounds or his, and wept. "By the gods, you're alive. When you fell, I knew I'd lost you, oh, gods I knew—"

  She pressed a suddenly tear-streaked face to his, and Maclyn found to his surprise that his own eyes were not dry. He held her tightly, breathing in the scent of her hair and savoring the warmth of her, the hard-muscled strength of her lean body pressed tightly against his. "Thank all the gods you're alive," he whispered. Then he loosened his grip and looked in her eyes. "Dierdre?" he asked.

  Felouen's face lost its animation. "She sent me to find you."

  Maclyn, ignoring her bleak expression, smiled with relief. "Ha! Then she still lives! I knew she was too tough—"

  "Barely," Felouen interrupted grimly. "She waits by the last of the beasts, the ones held in the containment spells. They didn't vanish with the rest of the monsters. She is summoning their thoughts to see where they came from—and why."

  He sucked in a breath of dismay. "But if she's injured, using magic will only weaken her further."

  She bit her lip, shrugged her helplessness. "Perhaps you can convince her to spare herself—I could not."

  Felouen's elvensteed reached them, and Maclyn noted its burden for the first time. A body was slung across the saddle face-down. "Who—?"

  Felouen's face tightened. "Hallara. She died trying to put out a fire in the heart-tree. She'd run out of ammunition. The pike line around the mages broke, and one of the things took her when she tranced."

  He closed his eyes and fought back despair. "Oh, gods."

  "There will be time to count the dead later, Mac. Let's tend the living while we can." Felouen turned away from him and broke into a flat-out run, heading back toward the spot where the Gate had opened.

  Maclyn followed.

  They found Dierdre propped against one of the contained monsters, her body blood-drenched, her face white with impending shock. But her hands pressed against the thing's skull, and her expression was one of tight concentration.

  "Mother!" Maclyn exclaimed as he saw what she was doing. "Lie down! Save your strength."

  Dierdre opened pale eyes and quelled him with a single glance. "There is a man who must not be allowed to die," she said. Her voice was a hoarse croak, but her speech never faltered. And her expression was one of implacable hate. "These things were made by an aspect of the child, Amanda."

  "What—" Mac was puzzled by her choice of words.

  "The child was tormented until she shattered," Dierdre explained tersely, "like a fragile crystal, dropped by a careless hand. She is no longer one, but many. One of her number learned how to weave magic from you, all unwitting. To protect herself and her other selves, she wove these, monsters—fragments of her pain. They are constructs of her fear—her fear, Maclyn, fear so great they nearly leveled Elfhame Outremer and the magic of three thousand Sidhe with it. We did not win the battle, son of mine. Amanda released her fear, and when she did, our foes vanished."

  He blinked, uncomprehending. "Mother—"

  "Quiet." She pierced him with her eyes. "Do you know what she feared, Maclyn?"

  How could he? "No," he replied carefully. Dierdre in this mood was not to be contradicted.

  "She feared her father—and with reason. He has tortured her," Dierdre said, at last. "He has raped her—yes, you heard aright. For years, he has done unspeakable things to her—he has shattered her into a handful of strange, fragmented children that do not even communicate with each other. The aspect that created these monsters never knew love, or caring, or kindness. It knew only brutality and pain and hatred and fear—until it came here. This was where that aspect of the child thought it could hide and be safe from the horrors it had created—but because no one had ever been good to it, it feared us as well."

  Felouen answered for all of them. "Not the child's fault. She had not the experience, could not have known what she did. Fragment or no, she was a child, and to a child, all adults are gods. She must have thought we could banish these creatures as easily as she. It is her father that has brought this upon us, not her—he is the cause that made her create them in the first place. For fear of her father, we have suffered and died."

  "I'll kill her father," Maclyn said softly. "For what he has caused here, for what he has done to you—"

  Dierdre shook her head. "No, Mac. For my revenge—for her revenge—I want something more." She let herself slip down to the frozen monster's feet. Her skin was the color of snow, waxy and translucent, her lips bloodless. Only her eyes looked alive. Mac stared at her rent armor, at the damage that could not be repaired by the greatest healer of the elves, and covered his face with his hands in grief.

  "Listen," she told him.

  He knelt and put his ear to her mouth, to hear his mother's dying wish.

  * * *

  Damn them, Belinda thought. Damn all of them.

  She had never suffered so much or been hurt so badly in pursuit of a target. It seemed as if everything—her target, his feeble girlfriend, even his damned car, for crissakes—had conspired to destroy her. She had been foiled at every turn. She had been made to look like a fool.

  Belinda had been through enough.

  She leaned wearily against the phone booth's wall, searching the out-of-date phone book's battered pages.

  There it is—the Prince Charles! She maneuvered a quarter into the slot and dialed.

  A mechanical, but not electronic voice, answered. "Prince Charles, this is Sharon speaking. May I help you?"

  "Connect me to Mel Tenner's room," she ordered thickly.

  "May I ask who's calling, please?" the polite voice inquired.

  Officious bitch. "This is Belinda, and it's an emergency."

  The voice did not seem impressed. "Hold please, ma'am."

  It was just like that miserable S.O.B. to have his calls screened, Belinda thought. He'd better decide to take mine—I'll kill him if he doesn't. I don't need this s—

  Sharon returned. "I have Mr. Tenner on the line, ma'am."<
br />
  "Fine," she said shortly, reining in her temper.

  A few clicks, and a moment later Mel drawled, "What is it, Belinda?" He sounded supremely bored.

  "Get a pen and some paper," she snarled. "I'm going to give you directions—I want you to come get me. Then we're going to pick up your girl. Bring your gun."

  Mel laughed, as if she had made a joke. "I wouldn't leave home without one."

  Belinda gave him the directions, tersely, keeping her eyes fixed on the phone.

  He made an odd little grunt of surprise. "Belinda, darling, what are you doing at a convenience store out in the middle of nowhere? Slumming?"

  "Working. For you," she replied, hoping he might feel a little responsibility. After all, she was still working for him, as he had so pointedly reminded her. "My car got stolen."

  "Again?" The laughter in his voice was only too obvious, and he wanted her to hear it. Mel was not going to take on any belated responsibility. Not that she really expected him to. Mel believed that everything that happened to anyone was their own fault—including being caught in earthquakes, high-rise fires, and tornadoes.

  She restrained the impulse to scream, and contented herself with shredding the pages of the phone book, one by one. "Sound a little less happy, Mel. I'm having a bad day."

  "Why don't you just tell me where to go pick up my little TK," he suggested, with deceptive mildness, "and then you can get a taxi and go home to rest?"

  And you can take off with the kid and skip paying me, scumball? I don't think so. "Just come get me, Mel," she growled. "And bring your bankbook."

  He sighed, as if with infinite patience. "Fine, sweetheart. If that's what you want. I'll be there in forty-five minutes."

  Click.

  Belinda slammed the receiver home and glared at a slip of paper. It was the schoolteacher's phone number. Belinda debated calling. Maybe the woman had gone straight back to her apartment, or maybe she had called first, on the chance that her boyfriend had shown up and found the place trashed. If she had, Belinda wouldn't be able to fool the race-driver—but if she hadn't . . .

  Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as they say. She dialed, and the phone rang. Once.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  "Come on, shithead," she muttered. "Pick up."

  Four times.

  Five times.

  * * *

  Maclyn was alone at the foot of Dierdre's grave beneath the remains of a giant white willow. The tree had protected his mother's Underhill home since she had come over from the Old Country—it was the part of Elfhame Outremer she had missed most when she was in the world of humans. It was now scarred and burned, and its loving inhabitant had come home forever.

  I'm going to miss you, Mother, even more than you would have believed. Maclyn stood alone as the last smatterings of warm rain soaked into his clothes and ran down his face. Her death had destroyed a part of him. He felt suddenly old, watching the loose earth over the grave falling in on itself as the raindrops struck. He had never really given her cause to be proud of him. Unlike the rest of his colleagues on the racing team, he had not been motivated by any higher goals. The others, the elves and human mages of SERRA, had been raising money to finance shelters for teenage runaways, kid-rescue operations, any number of altruistic causes. He had been a member of SERRA only because he liked to drive fast cars, and because he liked to win. If the money he won went to "worthy causes," well, frankly, he hadn't wanted to have to hear about it.

  In his own way, he was as much an escapist as any of the elves who lived Underhill permanently, as any of the dilettantes who idled away their days with music, dancing, gaming, loveplay.

  Maclyn stiffened as he felt Rhellen's sudden presence in the Elfhame. The elvensteed called out in his blunt mind-images as he galloped, searching on the other side of the Gate for his cohort. He answered the elvensteed with a quick whistle, and the golden beast charged to his side. Rhellen saw the fresh dirt beneath the tree and gave a questioning whicker.

  Maclyn shook his head. "Later," he said. "I'll tell you everything later." He sensed the elvensteed's horror at the devastation of Outremer, but there was no time to comfort him, and no time to explain.

  Mac leapt to the elvensteed's back, and Rhellen charged back through the Gate. He skidded to a stop in the kitchen next to the phone, bumping against the sink top. Mac leapt off of Rhellen's back and answered the phone.

  "Hello?" he said, thinking, Please, no more bad news. Please.

  "I just about hung up, fella. You took a long time getting to the phone." The voice was the same one he'd talked to earlier—and, in spite of the muffling, he was certain it was Belinda Ciucci he was talking to.

  "I was busy," he said. "In the bathroom. I got here as fast as I could."

  She snorted. "I don't think calls of nature are as important as my call. Especially since I'm going to let you save your girlfriend's life now."

  He spoke carefully, not loosing any of his anger. "What do you want me to do?"

  "Meet me out in the woods on the right side of the Bal-A-Shar Stables," she said. "I know you know where. I followed you out there yesterday."

  Well, now he had a rendezvous point. "Fine, Belinda. Let me talk to Lianne now."

  "Not a chance, buddy—" Then, suddenly, silence.

  There was a pause—Maclyn realized from the faint wash of emotions he caught over the phone that he had just tipped the woman to the fact that he knew her real name. Dammit, that was going to make things harder. "You're going to meet me in the woods at five P.M., and then I'll let—ah, Lianne—go," Belinda continued.

  "What do you want me to bring?" he asked. "Money?"

  There was a bitter, harsh laugh at the other end of the line. "Sure, why not? Write this down."

  She paused, and Mac pulled out the pen Lianne kept on the clipboard with the notepad and got ready to write.

  Belinda continued. "Bring me a hundred thousand dollars in small, used, non-sequentially marked bills. Pack it all in a little suitcase, drag that with you, and—oh, by the way, don't drive your car. I don't like it. You come in your girlfriend's car—the little yellow Volkswagen convertible. Big racecar stud like you oughta look cute in it. Park in the turn-around next to the dirt road that goes back to the cotton field. Get out of your car, walk along the road until you cross the culvert, and walk across the street and into the woods. I'll have a red ribbon tied around the tree you are to go to. Put the money down beside the tree—when you turn around, you'll see your girlfriend. As long as you follow directions and you're all by yourself, everything will work out fine."

  For you or for me? Mac wondered, but he said, "Okay."

  The line clicked, and Belinda was gone.

  Felouen may come through this Gate, he thought, staring at the dark swirl of energy. She knows about Lianne, and she knows we have to find Amanda—maybe she'll come through in time to help me. She needs to know what I need, and where to meet me.

  He took paper and pencil, and in flowing elvish script, wrote a note and drew a map to Bal-A-Shar Stables. Then he created a large, elegant leather case out of thin air and filled it full of very real-looking counterfeit bills. He would hand Belinda one-hundred thousand dollars in used-looking twenties, with only eight serial numbers between them. And as soon as she took the case, he decided, the faces on all the bills would abruptly sport matching maniacal, toothy grins. Maybe the motto would read, "Gotcha."

  * * *

  Cethlenn woke in Amanda's room, on Amanda's bed. The child's clothes were soaked and filthy. Bits of the elven domain's dirt and greenery still clung to her. In one hand, she found a silver leaf—crumpled and tattered, it was both beautiful and saddening. Inside her, the children huddled in fear and stared out over her shoulders. Poor children—they had been through so much, and a sixth sense told her the worst was yet to come. Downstairs, she could hear Them arguing.

  "Don't you talk to me in that tone of voice! I've been out working with the horses," the Step-Mothe
r yelled. "I haven't had time to watch where your weird kid got to—she was in here with you the last I knew!"

  "She isn't in here now! I've been all over the house looking for her." The Father sounded truly furious. "The little liar said she was going up to her room. She isn't up there now, let me tell you."

  Fury filled the Step-Mother's voice. "I know where my daughter is—and I want to know why the hell she came running out to the barn in tears! What did you do to her, you bastard?"

  A pause, and then the Father countered, a hint of something Cethlenn couldn't read in his voice. "I didn't do anything to her—don't change the subject on me!"

  The Step-Mother snarled at him, "We agreed when we got married that your kid would be your responsibility, and my kid would be mine. You remember that? Huh? Well, that means if you want your daughter, you find her! My daughter and I are going shopping. And from now on, you keep your hands off her!"