The Otherworld

by Mercedes Lackey

  He left carefully, feeling that he had missed something important, but having absolutely no idea what that something might have been.

  On his way to his next stop, Peterkin's hotel, he puzzled over the scene and came up completely empty. The room was a blank—there was nothing incriminating, nothing that gave him a clue to what might have happened to his employee.

  He hoped for better luck at Peterkin's place.

  His hopes fell with his first sight of the place. Stevens' hotel had been bland—but Peterkin's was positively tacky. It was one of those "adult" motels with twenty-four-hour hot and cold running movies and beds that wiggled for a quarter—no doubt so the rented rubber dummy would feel like it had a bit of life to it, Mel thought with disgust. While he might have more luck bribing the help, he doubted that he would find anything useful in a dump like the one in front of him. Then again, he thought, I doubt they ever sweep under the beds here. I might find something useful.

  He obtained the room number from the blowsy, rumpled tub of a woman who sat at the front desk. He went back to his car and watched until no one was on the breezeway. Then he slipped up the steps and, ignoring the "Do Not Disturb" sign hung on the door, used one of the little tricks he'd learned from the burglar he kept on staff. He broke in without so much as a sound.

  He closed the door quietly behind himself and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. When they did, he wished they hadn't.

  "Christ!" he yelped. Peterkin and Stevens were in the middle of something he would never have credited them with having the imagination for—or rather, he noted, as their silence and stillness caught his attention, they had been.

  The moment that he took a deep breath, he knew that they were dead. What had caused their deaths seemed pretty evident, too. Drug paraphernalia was laid out on the dresser, and they didn't have any visible wounds—

  He walked through the room, careful not to touch anything until he'd taken a towel from the bathroom. He used that to open drawers and look over the IDs lying on the dresser. They were false ones, he noted, but not the same false ones Stevens and Peterkin had left California with. Interesting, he thought. Those are the ones Belinda had on hand for emergencies.

  There were only a few low-denomination bills and some change in the room, and Mel left all of the money. It wouldn't do to make this look like they'd been robbed. He left the false ID's, too. They were very good and very solid—he even had a couple of "widows" who would be only too happy to collect the insurance on their late "husbands." Best of all, they wouldn't be traced back to him.

  Mel backed out of the room and closed the door behind him. He heard the lock click into place. Immediately, he began beating on the door and yelling, "I know you're in there, Kraft! I want my money, dammit! Open the door! You owe me eight hundred bucks, you flake! Pay up!"

  Hotel management, in the form of the overweight woman, appeared at the foot of the stairs. "Sheddup or ah'll call the cops," she yelled. "Don' you go raisin' hell aroun' my place."

  Mel took on a menacing air. "Lady, that S.O.B. owes my company eight hundred bucks—and he skipped town to keep from paying it. I'm the collector—I tracked him down here, and now I want my money. You see these papers?" He waved several sheets of paper at her from his safe spot at the top of the steps; papers that were actually contracts with his brochure printer back in California. "These say I have a right to collect that money, and if I don't get it, I'm going to call the cops and have them raid this dive."

  The woman studied him from the foot of the stairs, her bright black eyes nearly hidden in the rolls of fat. She grimaced and mumbled, "Aw, shee-it. Ah don' need that again." She waddled back toward the office, muttering over her massive shoulder-pads, "Jes' wait a dam' minute while ah git my keys."

  After she returned and moved her vast bulk up the narrow cement staircase, Mel took his expectant place half a step behind her.

  He waited, feigning impatience while she pounded on the door, then fumbled with the keys when she got no answer. He pretended not to watch her closely as she opened the door and flipped on the light. He noted, however, her absolute lack of shock as her eyes took in the room, its inhabitants, and the attendant sex toys and drugs.

  "Oh, my," she whispered, her eyes gleaming with vicarious pleasure. "Oh my, oh my! Will you jes' look at that! Imagine them doin' that in mah nice clean mo-tel!"

  "Dammit," Mel said, making sure she heard him. "There goes my eight hundred dollars."

  Mel slipped back to his car and drove off before the police could arrive. He returned the Lincoln, took the shuttle to the Fayetteville airport, then another to a second car rental agency, where he used an alternate alias to pick up a car as different from the previous one as he could find—a bright blue Geo Metro. He didn't want to be bothered with the police in a town that had the two strikes against it of being military—and Southern.

  Then he drove out toward Belinda's last reported address. The situation so far was not at all what he had anticipated. He didn't think for a minute that Stevens and Peterkin had died in the way they appeared to have. He felt the touch of his favorite redhead stamped all over their dead bodies. But there might be extenuating circumstances. It might be that he wouldn't have to terminate her from his payroll—he chuckled at that euphemism—as soon as he'd anticipated. But he would be careful. After all, she was dangerous—part of her charm—and one never knew.

  * * *

  Mac was as weary as he had ever been. The rain died down to a cold, sullen drizzle, punctuated by cloudburst exclamation points that showered the woods around them. Lianne and Mac trudged through the ugly weather, untouched.

  "That was Amanda's hideout," Mac noted abruptly, breaking a silence that had carried them from the tree to the edge of the woods behind the child's house.

  "Really?" Lianne said, sounding surprised. "How did you—oh."

  Mac did not ask her what the "oh" meant. Perhaps she remembered catching sight of bits of bright junk that had hung on strings from the branches, decorating the tree like treasures in a magpie's nest. Perhaps she simply deduced—correctly—that he had been here before.

  Lianne shuddered. "You don't suppose she was anywhere around those—things—do you?"

  I would bet she had something to do with getting them here, Mac thought, but he didn't say it. There were so many things about the kid that didn't fit. She knew he was an elf, then she didn't. She did magic but didn't believe in it. She walked out of Elfhame Outremer on her own—a pure impossibility. To Lianne, he only said, "I hope not." That at least was the truth.

  He covered the two of them with his "I'm not here" shield, and they moved out of the woods and across the yard.

  "God—the police are here!" Lianne froze, then started backing toward the woods.

  Mac grabbed her arm. "They can't see us," he whispered.

  "Are you really, really sure?"

  He gave her a half-smile. "Well, don't run up and pinch them on the noses to test this—but yes, I'm sure. We still show up on film and video, still leave footprints, but someone looking right at us won't see us. Wonder what they're doing here—"

  "Rummaging through that little barn. Obviously." Lianne started forward. "Come on—let's take a look."

  Maclyn lingered back as Power, twisted and sick, hit him like a board to the front of the head. "Gods," he whispered, "what happened in there?"

  Lianne looked up at him and arched her eyebrows in a silent question.

  "Are you familiar with the human term `bad ju-ju'?" he asked.

  She shrugged. "I've heard it. Means—oh, black magic, or something."

  Mac watched the police with wary eyes. "Or something, actually. Well, bad ju-ju is stamped all over that little barn in glowing letters ten feet high. Something happened here, but not what the police see."

  She shook her head, obviously confused. "The monsters under the tree again?"

  Mac closed his eyes and stood very still, his head tipped to one side. "Funny—" he started to say somethi
ng, then fell silent. Finally, he shook himself and looked at Lianne again. "You are almost right about comparing this to the battle this morning," he told her. "The traces of magic in the barn have some of the same touches as those golems had—but this magic is tied in to someone else as well. It almost feels like some kind of a ritual—group magic, or something involving a group." He wrinkled his nose and walked toward the barn.

  "Bad ju-ju," Lianne snarled behind him, and followed his lead.

  Mac's nerves screamed with every step that drew him nearer to the barn. The little building reeked of power drawn from pain—but the signatures of the magic-wielders and the victims were so tangled that he couldn't get a clear picture. When he glanced inside, his stomach twisted like a knife-pinned snake, and he drew in a breath between clenched teeth. The contents of the structure had been shredded apart fiber by fiber—he had seen the results of a food processor on occasion and had no difficulty imagining that the inside of the barn had been through one. The taint of Unseleighe work reeked through the place. And where, in all of this, did they fit in? So far, his dark kindred hadn't shown so much as a hair.

  Mac and Lianne stayed to the shadows and watched the policemen digging through the mess.

  "You find anything?" one of the officers asked.

  "Sawdust," the other answered. "Plenty of sawdust. And I'll tell you something, Sammy—if we rake through this shit till the end of forever, that's all we're going to find."

  The first speaker straightened and groaned. "Yeah. I think you're right. This place gives me the creeps. Feels like something's watching all the damn time."

  Lianne gave Maclyn a worried look. He grimaced and shrugged.

  The cop continued. "Why don't we check outside—maybe we'll find tire marks or something."

  "After all this rain?" the second policeman snorted. But then he grinned. "Hell, walkin' in the rain is a damnsight cozier than pokin' around in here. Let's go." Both policemen headed for the door.

  Lianne heard one mumble as they stepped outside, "Wish to hell I knew what could do that."

  Mac leaned over and whispered in Lianne's ear, "I know what did it—I just wish I knew who'd summoned one up."

  Lianne shuddered under his hand. "So tell me, what does do more damage than Hell's Cuisinart?"

  He almost wished he didn't know. "A banesidhe wind—deadly, borderline intelligent, called up from the lairs of what you might call the Dark Elves. They're pure destructive energy. Pain and hatred born of torture on this plane create them out of the raw stuff of the Unformed Plane—but to `create' one here, to call it out from its Unseleighe hiding place, the magician has to know it, to know that fear, that hate, that pain. And there aren't many magicians strong enough to call one out who are willing to be tortured to make one."

  Outside the barn, they heard Andrew Kendrick talking with the policemen. He was not happy. "You mean to tell me you've spent all morning poking around in my kid's barn, and you still don't know who vandalized it?"

  An unhappy voice answered. "Mister Kendrick—we can't even begin to figure out how they did it. Given a few hours, maybe somebody could wreck things that completely—but not in a few minutes."

  "Dammit," Kendrick snapped. And after a pause, he added, in a voice thick with sarcasm, "I can tell my tax dollars have been well spent on you two."

  It's Amanda's barn. It was Amanda's hideout tree. Her classroom. And the magic signatures in all of these places have been the same. They haven't been Amanda—but they have all been the same! Who is with her doing Unseleighe magic? And why?

  A different man walked into the barn and was framed for an instant in the dreary outdoor light at the doorway. He was tall, with sandy hair and light eyes, broad shoulders and the very early signs of a potbelly to come. He would have been a handsome man, but his expression was ugly, his lips clamped firmly on a smoldering cigarette, his demeanor cold and calculating. The man scanned the interior of the barn, his eyes fixing on Mac and Lianne and flicking quickly past them. Mac felt Lianne jerk once beside him.

  The feel of this man was in the barn, too. His was the second signature present—and Mac would have taken him for the magician and maybe the torturer—but while the man had strong magical potential, it was completely latent. Still, the man carried a store of repressed hatred so deep-burning and all-consuming that the elf felt it as a physical presence.

  Father and daughter in league with the Unseleighe Court? Maybe—but somehow none of the pieces fit—

  Kendrick walked to the back left corner of the gutted building and started digging through the drifts of debris.

  Father and daughter—and torture . . . there has to have been some kind of torture to have conjured the banesidhe wind. Mac clenched his hands and glared at the man across the little barn from him. It's sure that the child didn't torture her father—but there was torment wrought here, and it has his signature on it. But stress has brought out mage-powers in humans before. . . .

  Latent mage torturing developing mage. That matched. He took a deep breath to calm himself and leaned back against the wall.

  There's my proof of abuse.

  * * *

  Belinda walked into her hotel room, and reacted an instant too late as the cold, heavy barrel of a gun was pressed against her ribs, preventing her from backing out of the room. A leather-gloved hand clapped over her mouth.

  "Don't move or you're dead," the voice in her left ear said in an equitable and utterly reasonable tone of voice.

  "Mel?" The word sounded muffled through the heavy padding of the glove.

  A delicate snort, and the gun-muzzle didn't move a hair, but the glove moved enough so that she could talk, at least. "In the flesh. That was quite a nice little tableau you left at Peterkin's hotel. Very artistic. I always have liked your style."

  "Why are you here, Mel?" Belinda couldn't feel, in her heart of hearts, any deep urge to be chatty.

  "You haven't brought me my TK yet," he chided gently. "And then Stevens and Peterkin vanished off the face of the planet, and you hadn't called in days—I started feeling a little lonely. And I thought you might have reeled in the TK and then found a higher bidder." His hand tightened over her mouth, and the gun began moving in slow, gentle circles over her side, and the glove covered her mouth again. "You haven't found a higher bidder, have you, dear?"

  Belinda tried to clear her mouth of the glove, and failed. "Foo-fif fiff-feff!" she spat.

  "Beg pardon?" Mel chuckled softly in her ear and lessened the pressure on her mouth.

  "You stupid shithead!" Belinda repeated. "Do I look like I've been rolling in somebody else's money and taking it easy at your expense?"

  Mel said, "Stay still." He released her and moved to one side of her. Now they were both reflected in the mirror across from her. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that the gun was still pointed steadily at her midsection. She kept her hands away from her sides and stared straight into the mirror on the far wall. She could see him taking in the bruises, the bandages on her head, the dark circles under her eyes and the gaunt hollows in her cheeks that hadn't been there when she left California. "Now that you mention it, you look like you've been dancing with trucks. What's been going on?"

  She snorted. "You didn't tell me how dangerous hunting down a telekinetic could be."

  Mel's eyes narrowed. "I didn't know. The racecar driver did all that to you?"

  She shrugged. "Yes he did, in a roundabout fashion I would rather not discuss. I've got you a better prospect. I've found a child who is a sure thing—an even stronger talent than the driver. I'll get her for you—she's bound to be less dangerous to rope in than Mac Lynn. I'm going to kill him after you have the girl." Belinda smiled and rubbed absently at the bandage on her head. "Unless I have the opportunity to do it beforehand."

  "You've really found someone else?" Mel's voice sounded eager.

  Belinda eased into the Naugahyde chair beside the bed. "Just today—a little girl. Lynn led me to her. Probably, oh, eight or ten year
s old. A kid would be very easy to work with, wouldn't she? I figure whatever you have planned, it would be less hassle to do with someone smaller."

  In the mirror, Mel's eyes brightened. "Check her out. TK ability is supposed to show up right around the time puberty strikes, and is supposed to be more common in girls. This kid fits the profile."

  Mel ran one hand along the line of his jaw and stared at a nonexistent point somewhere over Belinda's left shoulder. "A child would be good—very good. Little girls are pliable and agreeable; I could probably obtain her cooperation with a few grand in toys—whereas getting cooperation from an adult male for what I have in mind would require . . . more complicated measures." His voice faded off into nothing, and he refocused on Belinda. "Why did you kill Stevens and Peterkin?"

  She yawned. "They double-crossed me. I don't take that from anyone, especially not from the hired muscle."

  Mel sat on the long dresser that also acted as the motel room's writing desk. He crossed his arms and let the muzzle of the gun dip toward the floor. "The word `double-cross' is open to a wide range of interpretations. Be more specific."

  She spread her hands wide and gave him her most innocent expression—hard to do with all the bruises. "I should have had him on his way to you in a bag yesterday. They withheld a drug that would have knocked Mac Lynn out, then lied to me about it. I can't figure out what they hoped to gain by that maneuver, but there is no doubt that they lied to me. I tested the remainder of the drug on the two of them, just to make sure it wasn't faulty—you found the results, apparently."

  Belinda went into greater detail, stopping only when Mel asked questions. She went over each point until she was sick of talking about it—and finally Mel seemed satisfied.

  Mel lay the gun on the dresser top. "You aren't lying about this. I can always tell." He pulled one knee up to his chin and rested with his arms wrapped around his leg. He looked genuinely bewildered. "Why the hell would they turn traitor on me? They knew what I would do to them if they tried—God knows, they carried out my sentence on a couple of their colleagues."