"I didn't burn her like that. Maab did."
The changeling screamed out and charged at me again but something stopped it. A flash of blue-white light and the thing was popped back against the tree. "Your fault…how were we supposed to know you weren't human? Not Sentinel but you smell like one. Not Planar but you have such power…"
"What did you tell Maab?"
"Nothing!" The thing shrieked. "She not listen! So I bring you back to her. I show her you isn't right. She used me to see you. She knows you…" It laughed softly, and sounded eerily like a little girl. "But she can't remember you. Magic…so much magic in you…" She reached out with fingers half burned to the bone. "You could fix us."
"Fix you?"
"You can heal us. I can smell the indecision." She laughed and turned her head toward Sam. "You think the queen is your enemy and yet you work along side…" She turned her eye-less face to me. "Death."
I stood and backed away. "I am not death."
"Four choices! Four roads!" She pointed at me with a finger missing most of its flesh. "I see you now. Hidden inside this man's flesh. You think you can hide from all of them and live as a normal person. The day will come when you will be feared most among all creatures, in all worlds, and no place, no one will give you sanctuary."
"Stop it." I didn't know why her words terrified me, but they did. "Stop saying that."
"Dags—"
Brendi Monster laughed again. "You will choose the wrong road!"
"No I won't!"
"You already have!"
I held up my hand and thought the word this time. To my surprise my right hand caught fire…but it didn't burn. I heard the whisper of pages turning, felt the flutter in my chest. The book knew a spell…but a spell for what?
The changeling howled and tried to climb the tree to escape what it saw. "Guardian! Harbinger! Sentinel! Alal! Ina Alal alaka!"
"Taru Anna Epru." The words flowed easily enough. The fire flamed up before it zeroed in on the changeling. It moved through Sam's barrier as if it wasn't there and consumed the screaming creature.
"Wait!" Mike moved forward. "We could've kept questioning it."
"No." I lowered my hand as the fire evaporated and the remaining husk became ash. "It didn't know anything else. It only knew what Maab wanted it to." I didn't want to tell him what I suspected, that I would make a better bargaining chip than the mantle.
It wasn't that I was afraid Mike would betray me and use me that way. I kept quiet because I wanted to keep that knowledge as my own, in case I had to use it myself. That and the changeling had spoken Sumerian at the end. I was pretty sure it sounded like jabber to Mike and Sam, but to me…
Ina Alal alaka. The Destroyer comes.
Mike frowned at me and I could see the war in his eyes. He didn't believe me, but he wanted to trust me. I didn't wait for him to say anything else before I headed back down the road off the footpath and Grey bounded out in front of me, back the way we came. "Don't forget to shut the door."
I really wanted a burger.
THE SPELL
We got back to the townhouse just before eleven. We made the deadline for the three-day dead requirement. I jogged upstairs to change out of my now destroyed t-shirt and take a quick shower. I still had blood all over me, even though the wounds were gone. Grey was resting on my bed when I stepped back in from the bathroom.
Why did she call you the Destroyer?
After I closed the door, I looked at her. "I don't know." I rubbed at my hair with a towel. "Why don't you want them to know you can talk? Did you make me forget earlier?"
Yes. I will change your memory again if you try to tell them.
"Why?"
It's not necessary they know I can talk.
I stood in the middle of the room, towel around my waist, one in my hand, talking to a wolf. "You're Fae?"
Laugher in my mind. It tickled. Hardly. But I am now a part of that world.
"Now a part of it? You weren't before?"
No. I was like you once. Not a Guardian, but a Sentinel. You're looking at what Maab does to the Sentinels she traps and tries to force to do her bidding.
Son of a bitch. "She turns you into wolves?"
She put her head down between her outstretched paws. She has six of us total. But I'm the only one that found my way out of her world.
I sat on the bed beside her, mindful my towel stayed in place. "Then you know for sure if Brendi's with Maab, or in a Cairn?"
Grey turned her face away. I know where she is.
"She's alive?"
Yes.
"That's great! Then why can't I tell Mike? He needs to know she's at least alive."
You can't.
"Why all the secrecy? And if I hadn't of been in the Cairn and not been able to hear you—"
Then you wouldn't have to keep my secret either.
"The secret that you can talk? That you were human once?"
Finally she lifted her head and looked at me. And for the first time I saw her eyes weren't that of a wolf's, but a human's. A single tear slid down her eye and she put a paw on my thigh. You can't tell them, Darren Gregory. If you do, I'll die.
First I was surprised she knew my middle name. I rarely ever confessed to that one, be it my dad's name or not. But the dying thing? "I don't understand. How does that work? I mean I know you're not really a wolf. Why can't they?"
Close your eyes.
I did as she asked and felt a pressure in the room. My ears popped and I smelled something sweet, like floral perfume.
Orange blossoms.
"Open your eyes."
That time I heard Grey's voice in my ears and not my mind. I opened them and immediately jumped off the bed because there wasn't a wolf there anymore, but a woman. A naked woman. Her hair was the color of Grey's white undercoat and the roots of it were gray like her upper coat. But the eyes…the eyes told me so much more. This woman was the wolf. "You're…"
"Remember how I said I escaped Maab's land? I did this by making a bargain with the queen's jailor. He has possession of my true form. What you see before you is only illusion, Darren. I am still a wolf with the mind of a woman."
As if to test this for myself, I reached out and touched her arm. My fingers felt soft fur. "Is this who you were?"
"Yes. But now the jailor keeps my physical likeness in a jar on his shelf. He has many of them in his collection. I can only show you an illlusion."
"So… how does it work if we tell Sam and Mike…"
"Because that's the price. I can walk in the Material world, interact as a beast, only as long as no one knows my true form. If you tell them I can speak, that I was human, my wolf will shatter like a mirror."
"But I know what you are."
"You're not fully human. And you've been inside a Cairn."
I didn't really ignore the comment about my not being fully human. It just wasn't news to me. Nona had said as much. Hell, the fact I had a physical book inside of me and wasn't dead attested to the fact my physiology wasn't exactly normal by Grey's Anatomy. I licked my lips and lowered my hand. "So why Sam and Mike? Why are you hanging around them?"
"Hey Dags! We're ready to get this ritual started!" Sam called up from downstairs. I glanced over at the clock on the nightstand. It was eleven forty.
I clutched at my towel, waiting on an answer.
The woman looked down and in that gesture I saw it. It wasn't obvious at first, and if I hadn't of spent time with Sam, I wouldn't have seen it now. The resemblance nearly took my breath away. "You're Sam's mother."
"Yes."
I put a hand to my face. "Oh hell this sucks. So you can be around your daughter but you can't tell her you're alive?"
"She still believes I abandoned her and her father twenty years ago. She was such a small child then. I knew what she would grow up to be and I sheltered her as best as I could. But a Faerie ring grew out of sight in our garden and before the queen's Fae could take her, I went in her stead. And I've been under the qu
een's service ever since."
"Then won't the queen be mad to know you're here?"
"Do you really think she cares, Darren? The queen is little more than a child herself; a very spoiled child whose station and existence are an afterthought of an idea, born out of a drunken stupor. The queen cares for very little, except for a way to move about on the Physical plane, in our world. It's her obsession. And she believes using a Sentinel is the only way to make that happen."
"But why?"
"Why? Because in the outer worlds, you can't feel." She frowned up at me. "Didn't you know this? There is no real physical anything. Emotions are little more than balls tossed about to pass the time. Sensations are merely echoes. But the legends of the things experienced in our world, the material one, are a mighty force, Darren. They're a treasure any planar creature desires," she smiled. "And so far, the only Planars who've successfully integrated themselves into our world are the Revenants. But even they have to give up so much of their own power to do this. And giving up power is not something any creature from Alfheim is willing to do."
She reached out and touched my arm. It looked like her fingers were moving over my skin, but I felt the pads of a large wolf instead. "This. Touch. A simple sensation. And taste. Oh how extraordinary things taste in this world of existence."
"Are you saying there's no sensation associated with touch where she's from? That doesn't make sense. How can there be no sensation? I mean…if Maab tortures people, don't they feel it?"
"It's hard to explain if you've never been there, or experienced the difference. But to do that you'd have to become half Faerie like me and that's not a curse I'd wish on my worst enemy. Just try and understand that to be here, to be physical, is one of her strongest fantasies." Grey dipped her head. "And the mantle."
"So she's taken all of you to build a Cairn, and all of you have refused?"
"Yes. But she hasn't given up on Brendi, yet, even though she's refused twice. On the third refusal Maab will change Brendi as well and make her one of us."
I rubbed at my chin.
"Dags?"
"Coming! I need pants!" I hollered back and looked at Grey. "So mantle exists? You mentioned it earlier."
"Yes. And it is one of the things the queen wants. Possibly even more than walking here without turning to ash."
"Why's the mantle so important?"
"Oh Darren…have you never been in love?"
Now that was a loaded question. I stared at her but didn't see her as my memories drifted to the last conversation I'd had with Nona. She'd told me I'd loved her daughter Zoë. And then it had been taken away from me…but not from her. "I did…once. But I don't remember it. It's one of the curses I carry for now. She's moved on, and so have I."
"Then I fear for your sanity if that memory ever returns and you realize you've lost her. Love…makes you do really strange things. Maab loved Oberon above everyone else. When the veil disappeared just after he pledged his love for Titania—Maab accused Oberon of taking it back and cursed him."
"She cursed the king of the Faeries?"
"Oh yes. She's more powerful than Oberon. She turned him into a donkey. And he was stuck that way for over a century, until Titania found the spell to weave him out of it. But he still has some seriously big ears to this day because of it."
I couldn't stop myself from laughing. She laughed as well, and I thought I heard a wolf chuff. We both turned at the sound of someone coming up the stairs and I managed to duck into my closet when the door burst open.
"Dags!" It was Sam.
"Hey, I'm naked!" I grabbed the door of the closet and closed it. My towel fell.
"It's not like I haven't seen it all already, Dags. I took care of you when I first met you."
Oh.
Now that's embarrassing.
"Why's Grey on your bed?"
"We were talking."
"Funny. I'm taking her out for a walk. Be downstairs when I get back."
I listened for the door to shut and then stepped out. I grabbed a pair of clean jeans, another t-shirt and underwear. The socks came on last and I sat on the bed to pull them up. Everything Grey told me felt right. It had this unexplainable ding of truth. Truth as far as she knew the truth to be.
Grey was Sam's mother. I didn't know a thing about her mother. I really didn't know a damn thing about Sam.
And I was pretty sure her mom's name wasn't Grey.
With a last look around the room and a double look at my chest and neck in the mirror over the dresser, I jogged down the steps and into the living room.
The place looked…well…witchy was the best word I could come up with. The coffee table became an altar, and on it she'd placed a silver bowl of sand, a red candle, two white candles, a pinecone and a pair of deer antlers. The whole set up looked a little…primitive.
Mike joined me, a beer in his hand. He nodded to the table. "She told me what each represents, but I don't get it. I figured we'd burn a little incense, light a fire, and chant."
I gave him a sad face. "You watch way too many movies. I can take a guess at each object's meaning, but every practitioner is different. I can't say what's right and what's wrong."
"You talk like you've had some experience at this."
"I have."
He leaned back and looked at me. "When you get your memory back, you're going to have to tell me everything that happened to you. 'Cause it sounds like it was fucked up."
"Deal." I shoved my hands into my pockets. I wanted a beer but figured it was better to keep my head as clear as I could. "So… how much do you know about Sam?"
"Uhm…not a lot. We've sort of gotten to know about each other since we started working together."
"How did that happen?"
"She answered an ad I put in the local psychic rag in Atlanta right before I headed down here. She called about a minute later and got in the car that night. When she showed up she said she'd added a wolf-dog and that was that. She's found out more about Brendi's disappearance than anyone else."
"True…but has she ever talked about herself? Like her family?"
"Not really. What little she has shared was just…she's an only child. Mother ran off when she was six and her dad tried to raise her. But he died about ten years after that and when she turned seventeen she struck out on her own. Her dad's buried here in Bonaventure."
That surprised me. "Really?"
"Yeah, her family owns a plot here. Have her show it to you when we can."
I didn't really know much about Bonaventure except that it was old. And I figured there wasn't really a lot of room for more plots to be sold, so most of the new internments were like today's. New bodies in old crypts. I was going to ask him if her family had a mausoleum or a regular plot when the door opened and she and Grey came in.
The wolf made herself comfortable on the sofa and Sam came to us. "Let's get this shit started." Sam pulled the baggie out of her back pocket and placed it on the coffee table. When she went down on her knees so did Mike and I. Mike on her left and I on her right. I watched her light the altar, seeing a pattern in her movements, as well as seeing the astral and mental lights she bent into will.
Once the incense was fired up she took the piece of dress she'd cut out of the baggie and motioned for me to grab the book. I took it off the kitchen table and placed it on the coffee table in front of her. After transcribing it, she'd actually added it to the BBOE like everyone before her. Sam had mad drawing skills and great penmanship.
After she recited the spell in translated English she dropped the piece of cloth on the lit briquette. It ignited almost immediately and sent a burst of purple and white smoke into the air.
The answer was in the smoke and I saw it a second before Sam pointed it out.
She and I both stared at each other when we recognized what and where the mantle was.
Mike didn't see the image in the smoke and looked at each of us. "What? Where is it? Please don't tell me in Alaska. I can afford Portland maybe, bu
t I can't fly to Alaska to get it."
"No, it's not in Alaska." Sam waved at the smoke, which had now filled the townhouse. I got up and went to the front window. It lifted easily and the smoke instantly darted out the opening.
"Where?"
"It's here in Savannah," I said as I grabbed a magazine and fanned the smoke in the direction of the window.
"It is? Well that's a stroke of luck." He paused. "So why do you two look like that?"
"Well," Sam said as she sat back on the floor. "It's more of where it is that has me puzzled."
"Oh?"
"Tell him, Sam," I said as I rejoined them at the coffee table.
She looked at Mike. "You know that sash Thomas has tied around his top hat?"
Mike nodded, then his eyes widened. "No…"
"Yes," Sam and I said together.
"Thomas Rhymer has Maab's mantle."
"'Fraid so. Which means," she said as she looked at me. "We gotta come up with a good thing to trade with him."
Grey yawned on the sofa and smacked her tail on the cushions.
"You don't think he'll give it to us?"
"Dags…what do you know about Thomas the Rhymer?"
"Just what's in the old story about him." I leaned back against the sofa and Grey put a paw on my shoulder. "I know he stumbled or was taken into Fairyland and the Queen, which I assume was Titania, allowed him to stay there for a little while. And when she helped him back home, seven years had passed."
"That's the generic version." Sam picked up the candlesnuffer and put out the flames in the reverse order she lit them. "It's true up to a point, but at the time he arrived, Maab was Oberon's love, and when he was finally released it was because of Titania's kindness. I've never gotten the whole story from Thomas or his version. But if he's kept that veil that close to him over the centuries then I'd be more than a little sure it means something to him."
"I would too," Mike said. "And what if he won't give it to us?"
"Then we're back to square one and running out of options."
THE GRiMOiRE
Heading down to River Street at two in the morning seemed crazy to me. But Sam and Mike wanted to tackle getting the mantle from Thomas as soon as possible. Once we had it in our hands—then the fun would begin. I wasn't really looking forward to confronting a Faerie Queen. My vote was sleep, then we go after her in daylight.
Dance By Midnight Page 7
