by C. E. Murphy
“Or there’s a roadblock.” Exhaustion burned away, leaving Lara’s spine tense. “We’re a hundred and thirty miles from Boston. They can’t possibly be putting up blocks this far out.” Hope, not truth, ran through her words.
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. How far are we from the mountains?” They looked close, but they dominated the horizon, making her perspective uncertain.
“Ten, maybe fifteen miles before we’re really in them. We could walk it,” Kelly said dubiously.
Lara lifted her feet a few inches, displaying the heeled sandals she wore. “I didn’t know when I got dressed yesterday that I’d be going on the lam or I’d have worn hiking boots.”
“You don’t even own hiking boots. Okay, so we ca—” Kelly broke off to stare at Lara. “You don’t own hiking boots.”
“I know. I was kidding.”
“You don’t kid like that.”
Lara caught a protest behind her teeth and held it there, looking at Kelly in astonishment. She was right: it wasn’t the kind of joke Lara made, its inaccuracy lying too close to falsehood for her comfort. But there’d been no twinge of dissonant music, no out-of-tune keys played as she’d spoken. They were more distressing in their absence than their presence ever could have been, and her voice went light and heady. “It didn’t feel like a lie.”
“Holy crap.” Kelly sat up more enthusiastically than Lara liked. “Does that mean you’re losing your power?”
“Impossible,” Dafydd murmured from the backseat. Both women twisted to look at him. He looked worse again, the vehicle sapping his strength for all that he still held the staff. “Lara’s magic is mortal. Even if the Barrow-lands are closed away forever, her talent will never fade. At most it’s only changing. Maturing.”
Truth rang clear and reassuring in Lara’s mind, relaxing her shoulders a little. “I thought developing it would make hearing, and telling, lies worse. But it’s like, what’s the phrase? ‘Close enough for government work.’ It didn’t matter that I wasn’t perfectly truthful. It was like it understood nuance.”
“Lara!” Kelly caught Lara’s hand, expression bright as she put away their troubles for a moment. “Lara, does this mean you might develop a sense of humor?”
Lara, injured, said, “I have one. It’s just not very—”
“Nuanced?” Kelly suggested happily. “Seriously, Lar, this is great. Think how much less hideous it’ll be if your wacky talent doesn’t make you turn green when somebody gives the polite answer instead of the truth.”
Dafydd, far more gently, said, “I’ve never known a mortal truthseeker, or even one of the Seelie talents. You can already do more than you could—”
“Three weeks ago?” Lara asked wryly. “A year and a half ago? I honestly don’t know which way to count it. Either way, though, you’re right. I can do more than I could, and for the first time I’m wondering if maybe I could learn to turn it on and off.” The idea sent a shock through her, relief tangled with fear, and she unwound to gaze out the windshield at the mountains again. On one level, the idea of turning the truth sense off seemed like casually removing her arm. The idea also made her aware, as she’d never been before, how tiring it was to always be on guard against falsehood.
She heard herself say, “It doesn’t matter right now,” and ached with the weary truth running through it. “We’re going to have to keep going, Kel. I can’t walk ten miles in these shoes, and maybe all that’s up there is a dead deer.”
“If I were stronger,” Dafydd said from the backseat, his voice low and frustrated.
Lara shook her head. “If wishes were horses.” Chills ran down her spine, this time from awareness that her talent didn’t object to the phrase. “I’ve never said that before. I’ve heard it, but it just made me uncomfortable. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. I never would have said that. It’s too improbable. It’s not true.”
“It’s true enough,” Dafydd said. “If wishes were horses, beggars probably would ride.”
“But wouldn’t a beggar be more likely to wish for a house and food and clothes?”
“It doesn’t say if wishes came true, only if they were horses.”
“Will you two shut up already? Ye gods.” Kelly put the car back in drive. “If I’d known you were going to start deconstructing axioms I’d have left you to sleep.”
“No.” Lara smiled, unexpectedly cheerful. “You wouldn’t have.”
“How many times do I have to tell you you’re not supposed to do that?” Kelly shot her a scolding glance. “You better hope it’s a dead deer, or I might just turn you over to the cops.”
“No,” Lara said again, and smiled at the road. “You won’t.”
Kelly said “Oh, be quiet” without rancor, and both women laughed. It was better that way, Lara thought. Better, certainly, than the tension that slowly ebbed their laughter away as they made their way down the road.
She wasn’t, she realized, afraid of being arrested herself. She could employ the newly acquired knack of making people hear the truth in her voice if she must, though it was still an unpalatable solution. One that would probably end, as Kelly had suggested, in straitjackets and padded walls. And prison was hardly preferable, though there at least she’d be less likely to face psychotropic drugs meant to ameliorate the insanity of claiming to have been attacked by fairy-tale monsters. There would be a chance of parole from prison, as well, should she be convicted of manslaughter or murder. Aggravated assault, a more hopeful part of her suggested, or attempted manslaughter; those were lighter sentences, and there was no word yet on whether Detective Washington had survived his injuries.
Anxiety relaxed its knotted hold in her belly, loosened by faint curiosity. Lara had never thought of herself as particularly brave, but she recognized the pattern of her thoughts: she was looking for ways to accept all blame herself. None of them had done anything wrong, beyond being caught up in extraordinary events, but if the worst should come to pass, there was no reason for both Kelly and Dickon to suffer.
It would be easier if she had a weapon, so she could claim she’d forced Kelly to help her at gunpoint. But the true voice might help there, if she could vocalize a command that even authorities might find impossible to ignore. Two weeks ago she never would have imagined her talents might stretch that far, but now, watching the mountains come closer, she was certain there were innumerable aspects to her truthseeking, and that in time she would learn to use them all.
Lights flashed in the distance, a curve in the road hinting at a hollow and the interference the oncoming driver had warned of. Lara squinted, trying to see more clearly. “If it goes badly, we’ll need a distraction. Something to let Dafydd get into the forest.”
“I could always take my shirt off,” Kelly offered.
Lara blinked rapidly at her friend. “You could what?”
“To distract them while Dafydd makes his getaway. You said we’d need a distraction.”
“Oh. Oh! I didn’t think I’d said that out loud. I was just thinking. They won’t be able to find you if you get into the trees, will they, Dafydd?”
He said “No” with utter confidence. “I’m surprised you were able to find me earlier.”
“I can see through your glamour,” Lara reminded him. “I should be able to see you when you’re not hiding behind it.”
“Okay, guys, here we go. Dafydd, lie back down, put your seat belt on, cover yourself as much as you can with your coat. I’ll tell them you’re sleeping if we get pulled over.”
Dafydd did as he was told as the road straightened, leading down into the hollow they’d glimpsed. Four vehicles, three of them emergency vehicles, were spread across the road. The fourth, a compact car bleached of color in the oncoming sunrise, was half off the road, a black, indistinguishable shape of an animal sprawled across its hood. Kelly slowed the car, then slowed further, almost coming to a stop as Lara muttered, “I said they couldn’t possibly have roadblocks up this far out.”<
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“Your triumph,” Kelly said sourly, “is misplaced. It doesn’t really matter if it’s technically not a roadblock when it’s effectively blocking the road. God, what’d they hit?”
“I can’t tell.” Lara leaned forward, but shook her head. It was large, at least deer-sized, but early-morning shadows and the flashing lights from the emergency vehicles made it impossible to recognize. “Ambulance, forest ranger, state trooper. Two out of three ain’t bad.”
Kelly shot her another sharp look. “I’m not handling you using idioms very well, Lara. Can you go back to being your usual literal self until we’re out of this mess?”
“Sorry,” Lara whispered, and meant it. “I feel like someone’s taken a rubber band from around my thoughts. I never would have even thought to say ‘two out of three ain’t bad’ before now.”
“Well, it’s not usually true. Crap, here comes the cop. Did it have to be the cop?” Kelly put the emergency brake on and rolled down the window as Lara put her elbows on the dashboard, supporting her chin with her hands as she looked out the windshield. She could see almost nothing, gaze unfocused while her heartbeat soared, but she hoped her fingers would help obscure her features. The ranger would have been less likely to have seen their images, but she was kneeling intently by the dead animal.
Kelly pitched her voice in a loud whisper, calling, “Hey,” to the trooper. She made a loose finger-over-the-lips hushing gesture, explaining, “My sister’s sleeping in the backseat. Is everybody okay? Are we gonna be able to get around?”
The trooper’s tense expression faded and he flipped a flashlight on to glance at the backseat without really looking. “We’ve got some people pretty badly banged up. I was able to let the last guy through, but the paramedics just got here. It might be a while.”
“Well, getting hurt people to the hospital is probably more important than getting to Mom’s house for waffles before seven. What’d they hit, a deer?” Kelly’s soft voice sounded perfectly normal: concerned, polite, a little rueful. She’d been right, Lara thought; they’d needed her. Lara would never have been able to sound as casually interested, much less come up with easy lies about the sleeper in the backseat or their destination.
Tension sprang to life in the trooper’s expression, barely visible from the corner of Lara’s eye. “Something big, anyway. Look, you three just sit tight and I’ll wave you through as soon as I can, all right? Keep your windows rolled up. I’ll knock if I need to give you any more information.”
“No problem. Thanks, Officer. I hope everybody’s all right.” Kelly rolled up the window as he walked away, then carefully put her hands on the steering wheel too low for him to see if he glanced back. Her knuckles went white in the dawning light, forearms rigid, though her face remained smooth and pleasant. “I think I’m gonna puke.”
Dafydd, muffled, said, “Please don’t. Being encased in steel is uncomfortable enough. Adding the scent of bile would be a cruelty beyond compare.”
“That was amazing,” Lara whispered. Both she and Kelly slumped in their seats, Kelly flipping her hair over one shoulder to mask her face as she looked at Lara. “Really,” Lara repeated. “I couldn’t have done that. You were perfect.”
“Yeah, but did you see his face when I asked what they hit? ‘Something big’ isn’t an answer. What’s big out here you can hit? Deer? Bears? Maybe a cougar?”
“That’s not a cougar. Cougars are tawny and that thing’s black.” Lara dared a glance toward the damaged car. “I don’t think there are any wolves out here. Maybe it’s a bear.”
“He would have said if it was a bear.”
“You think it’s something from my world.” Dafydd pulled his coat down, the rustling making both women start to turn before they flinched back, remembering the person in the back was supposed to be sleeping.
“I think we’re too far away from any nuclear sites or chemical dumping grounds for animals to mutate into something that a cop won’t identify beyond ‘something big,’” Kelly said. “So, yeah, I think maybe something else came over with you.”
“The nightwings,” Lara said abruptly. Dafydd shifted like he wanted to sit up, and she reached backward without looking, searching for his hand. His fingers, still as cool as they’d been earlier, slid through hers. She squeezed, reassured and reassuring. “But how did they find us?”
Kelly’s gaze fixed forward. “How did they find you at all? Lara, you’ve been home for weeks now. David’s been here all along. How come those things didn’t attack until this afternoon?”
“They wanted us both in the same place,” Dafydd suggested.
Kelly shook her head. “You were in the same place when she visited you in prison.”
“But we didn’t touch,” Lara said with sudden certainty. “When he came out of the courtroom today I hugged him. Maybe that was the trigger. What kind of spell calls the nightwings, Dafydd? Is it like the scrying spell Emyr was trying to cast? One that takes a lot of time and concentration? We were still holding hands when they attacked.”
“Our enemy would have been holding it in preparation,” Dafydd said thoughtfully. “Like I’d done with the worldwalking spell, Lara. It would’ve been much less dramatic if I’d had to spend a few hours concentrating to open that door, so I’d done my preparation earlier, and held it behind the final word of the spell. Our enemy wouldn’t want to risk losing our scent in the time he prepared, so he would have had it waiting.”
“Then why didn’t it attack the moment we touched?”
Dafydd shifted again. “Time isn’t the same in the Barrow-lands as it is here. From our enemy’s point of view, it could well have been instantaneous.”
Kelly’s gaze dropped to their entwined fingers. She smacked them and Lara loosened hers, first insulted, then alarmed. “Ow. But we’ve touched a lot since this afternoon, Kelly. If the nightwings were using that as a trigger, they’d have found us again by now.”
“No.” Dafydd sat up as he spoke, clearly forgetting he was meant to be sleeping. “It would have been a spell set to trigger once, like the attack when I returned to the Barrow-lands. Setting a cascade of triggers would exhaust anyone, even my father, beyond an ability to pursue anything else. No one would risk it.”
“Well, then what changed? If we’re being tracked by something from your world, what pointed it toward—” Lara broke off, staring at the staff Dafydd still held clenched across his lap. “Oh, no. I broke the glamour on that, and you’ve been clinging to it for hours.”
“There’s so much iron in your world it would be difficult to pinpoint its location,” Dafydd said. “And it’s been in transit. But we’ve been on this road heading south a while now.”
“And that thing came from the south,” Kelly finished as all three fixed gazes on the creature sprawled across the nearby car.
Sudden life twitched through it, and Lara heard her own whisper echoed by the other two: “Oh, shit.”
Thirty-One
Kelly braced herself, hands high on the steering wheel. “Should I rush it? A thousand pounds of metal ought to put it down for the count again, right?”
“You can’t. There are too many people.” Lara got out of the car without thinking and pulled Dafydd’s door open for him. Kelly let go an aggrieved yell and pushed her own door open, half standing in the driver’s well.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I don’t know! Stay in the car!” Lara ran forward, whispering the brief exorcism she knew under her breath. It wouldn’t be enough, and she cursed herself for not having memorized a longer one in the days before Dafydd’s release.
He was at her side, stronger again now that he was no longer trapped in a vehicle and with the staff once again bright in his hand. Still pale, still fragile, but the sunrise did him the favor of lighting his golden eyes to fire. In that light there was no pretense of humanity about him, his hair too fine, his bone structure too delicate. Panic caught Lara under the breastbone and she hissed, “Dafydd, get back in the ca
r! You can’t—”
“I can hardly allow you to face that thing on your own,” he said just as softly. “You have no weapons, no armor—”
“No way to protect you! Get back!”
The trooper had looked up as soon as their car doors opened and came striding toward them in the dawning light. “I’m going to have to ask you to get back into the car—” He broke off, gaping, and an orchestra crashed raw song through Lara’s mind. Too late; it was too late to hide Dafydd or herself, and if she had any doubt, it was belied by the trooper drawing his sidearm as he advanced on them. “Down on the ground, both of you!”
Lara put her hands in the air, slow actions that made her vividly aware how she was disobeying the trooper’s command. She poured conviction into her voice, steeling it with truth and willing the man to hear that truth. “Officer, that thing they hit, it’s dangerous and nobody’s equipped to stop it. You need to get everyone out of here now.”
He wavered, halting his approach but not retreating. “I said on the ground!”
“Get on the ground, Dafydd. Do it,” Lara snapped, when the Seelie prince hesitated. “He’s more likely to shoot you than me. You’re male.” And exotic, she wanted to add, though she suspected the trooper would use the word “weird” instead. The creature twitching on the car hood no doubt verged on too much strangeness already. She didn’t want to add to it, not when it could mean Dafydd’s life.
Dafydd, reluctantly, did as he was told, lying on his belly with his hands out, though he continued to clutch the staff defiantly. The trooper scowled at him, expression barely hiding fear, then leveled his weapon at Lara again. “Both of you!”
“I’m unarmed, Officer. I’m smaller than you, and I’m wearing high heels. I can’t possibly rush you. I’m no danger to you at all. You know I’m telling the truth.” Lara’s throat hurt from the effort of making the words true, so the officer couldn’t doubt them even when he wanted to. That was power, real power: she recognized it even as she struggled to command it. “None of us is a danger to you. That thing over there is, though.”
