His socks soaked up the rain water like wicks. The hem of his wizard robe and cloak dragged slightly. Soon they had absorbed a weight of mud and water that slapped unpleasantly against his ankles. He squelched along, feeling uncomfortable and slightly foolish. It was either very late or very early. Traffic was less than sparse, and the vehicles that did pass did not slow at the sight of him. He settled his wizard’s hat more firmly onto his head.
Cassie’s words replayed endlessly in his mind. and he fancied for an instant that he could still feel the warmth of her touch on his skin. She had left her scent upon him, like the colors of a high-born lady on her knight-errant. There had been a few precious moments when he had fancied himself in the garden she had mentioned. He had felt the grass and fragrant leaf mold under his palms, and a summer sun warmed his naked back. Her mouth had smiled beneath his. Never had he felt so full of a woman.
Or so clear in his mind of what he must face now. He was going to his death, Cassie’s certainty of his magic notwithstanding. He wished he had been able to make her understand before he left her. He could tell her what he had done and felt, but he couldn’t make her feel what he had. Did she think he hadn’t tried to reclaim his magic? Could she imagine that he didn’t ache for it? Gone and beyond him now. Despite her calm certainty, he was sure he knew more of Mir than she did. Mir had touched him; had already bent him to its will. He shuddered with the knowledge. It had touched him as intimately as she had. It would again.
“But when?” he asked aloud of the watching city, flinging the challenge to the night. Nothing answered it. He passed gray parking meters with empty faces, reviewing the cold and passionless troops of the streets. Faces in the brick alleys and the black storefront windows changed and stretched as he passed them, peered after him until he was out of their sight. He felt no heaviness of evil in the air. Where was Mir hiding? The wind kept the night clear of the gray fog he had come to associate with its wickedness. A reckless boldness settled on him. So he was going to defeat, was he? Gray Mir wasn’t making it easy for him to meet his fate. He shrugged his shoulders and drew his cloak more closely around himself. It was warmer. than he expected it to be, and for an instant he imagined he felt a rippling of power through it. But it was only the wind tugging at the blue cloth. He paced on.
He could always run away. He tempted himself with possibilities. He could hide from it, could leave the city on foot and take to the woods. It would have to come and hunt him down. He shook his head. He had been hunted before and remembered it only too well. He would meet it face to face in the night, not be dragged out from behind some dumpster in an alley.
He had been walking without thinking, but his feet had led him well. He stood at the mouth of his old alley. It was littered with charred rubbish from the fire. Well, why not here? He had felt it here more often than any other place. He ventured into the alley and turned his eyes up to his fire escape. There was a terrible smell here, of wet charred wood and melted plastics. It was the burned odor of ruin and decay. No heat remained of the fire that had gutted the upper stories of the building. All was silent and dark. More than hours had passed since the fire. A day and most of a night, he guessed. That would fit in with the lightheaded weariness he felt. He was running on nerves and adrenalin, his reserve energy long spent.
He wouldn’t last much longer. It seemed to him that his strength had been slowly leeching away from him since the day Estrella had warned him. When Mir chose to attack, it would find him no adversary at all, crushable as a dried-out eggshell.
“Where are you?” he called out bravely into the darkness, but the alley swallowed his challenge without an echo.
He crouched beneath his fire escape, tensing himself for the spring. Then he straightened slowly and shook his head. Not up there, on charred floorboards, if any remained at all. Not before the burned specter of a foodlocker, if it had survived.
No. He would not be hunted, but he would not be lured into ambush either. He turned soundlessly and let his body do what it had been clamoring to do. He opened it to the night. His senses expanded and he walked as one with the darkness. No magic this; a skill learned in a night that had shrilled with insect noises and screamed with sudden silences. An easy awareness spread out around him, searching as any light of flare. It had guided him alive through trees and vines and grasses. Could brick and steel and glass be any worse? He moved with slow grace, in no hurry at all. Let it come to him.
He could not have told what made him turn and look up.
There might have been a rustle of cloth, some scuff of skin against metal. He was in time to see the figure leave the fire escape, see it silhouetted, however briefly, against the far lights of the King Dome. It landed lightly, its legs bending nearly double to take up the shock. He pivoted slowly and silently to meet it. He had not expected a human form, but he sensed it ―an electric prickling along the edges of his perimeter. A chill of readiness ran over him. He smiled in the dark, and when he felt it looking at him, he gave a slow nod of acknowledgment. Mir.
“Oh, there you are!” she cried and rushed at him, her arms held wide. In the next instant she had engulfed him and was covering his face with wet, panting kisses. “My god, I am so glad you’re safe! I saw it in the papers this morning, and it said signs of recent habitation, but no remains discovered yet, and when I read the address I just about collapsed. The first thing that hit me, was, oh, god, he did it on purpose because we didn’t make it last night! and I felt like I had killed you myself. I had to sit down and the boss asked if I was taking my break now, and I couldn’t even talk, all I could do was point at the paper and shake. I guess I really looked bad, because he told me to take a day off, sick time. So I did and I looked for you everywhere. I musta fed those stupid pigeons ten pounds of popcorn, hoping you’d show up, and everyone kept walking by and staring at me; I guess I looked pretty stupid, sitting on a park bench feeding the pigeons and bawling. I am so glad you’re safe.”
As she talked, she kissed, hugged, and shook him at intervals. He could conjure no emotional reaction to her greeting. It reminded him of the noisy greetings of a sheepdog he had known in his childhood, complete with wet tongue and cold nose. He knew he had to feel something for her, but all he could find was a quiet acceptance of her. This was what she was. No more man that, but certainly no less.
“Lynda!” he told her firmly. He put his hands on her shoulders and moved her out to arm’s length. She waggled happily in his arms and tried to move into his embrace, but he held her back. After an instant of struggle, she calmed and looked at him. He tried to catch her eyes, to peer past the dumb devotion and electric lust to see what else might be lurking there. But she focused on his clothing instead and gave a squawk of dismay.
“Have you been running around dressed like that all day? It’s a wonder they didn’t lock you up! Look at your feet! Poor baby! Come on, you’re going home with me.”
There was an energy to her that verged on a natural magic.
She had taken his arm and turned him and was walking him away before he realized that she was taking command. Her tongue was rattling like a pocketful of loose brass, and she plowed down the center of the sidewalk as if nothing in the world could wish her harm. Wariness was impossible with her around. When he tuned in to her words, she was still going on about hot showers and clean sheets. He dug his heels into the sidewalk and brought her around to face him. The look on his face stopped her chatter.
“What is it?” she demanded. “There’s nothing back there to go back for, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
He took a deep breath. “Lynda. There is nothing wrong with liking men, any number of men, as long as you still like yourself.”
Annoyance creased her brow. “What’s that crack supposed to mean? Hey, I’ve been walking around down here all day, crying my eyes out over you, and when I finally find you, you say something like that. What do you think I am? Do you think I’d take in just anyone?”
“That’s not what I me
ant!” he protested.
“Then just what the hell did you mean?” Color was staining her cheeks, and with amazement he realized he had hurt her.
He was surprised at the strength of the remorse he felt. He touched her face quickly, stroking the hair back from her cheek as he might smooth a pigeon’s rumpled feathers. She quieted under he touch. He took a deep breath.
“There’s no way I can explain that you will understand. But I’ll tell you anyway. I’ve got to put the magic back in balance. That means I have to give more than I get, always. There were questions you asked me when we first met. You asked me why you should keep on going, you asked me if you had to live like a nun because your sister thought you should.”
“I don’t remember any of that,” Lynda began, but he put a soft finger over her lips.
“Maybe not in those exact words, but you asked me. And I had things to tell you, but I didn’t answer because I didn’t want to talk to anyone who might endanger me later. I unbalanced things, and I owed you. The more you gave me, the further unbalanced it became. After tonight, there may never be another chance for me to put things back in balance. So I have to do it now.”
“You are really sweet, you know that?” She leaned forward to kiss him again, with no more regard for his words than if they had been empty sweet-talk. She didn’t know the difference, he realized. Had other men tried to reach her mind, only to have her shelve their words as verbal foreplay? He felt pity for her and wondered who had taught her that men and women never really spoke to one another. She was rattling on. “You don’t have to say thank you to me. It’s okay. Let’s get you to my place now and run you through a hot shower and head for beddy-bye, I’ve got to work tomorrow, baby. Hey, it’s already tomorrow, isn’t it? I was going to say we could talk about all this tomorrow, but I guess it’ll have to wait for the next tomorrow. Hey, that sounds funny, doesn’t it?”
“This is the last tomorrow I have,” he told her desperately.
He was selfishly relieved to find that he felt only pity for her. Loving a woman like her would have been hell. She believed all the old myths: Men have no feelings such as women harbor; they can share your home, your bed, and your money, but not your life. She knew all about ‘how men are,’ but she had never really spoken to one. She wasn’t going to let him get through.
He made a final effort. “Lynda. I have things I have to say to you. For my sake, if not for yours, let me. You are a giver, and it brings you joy. Don’t let your sister shame you out of it, for the world would be a barren place without those who give as you do. But it can also be a form of giving when you take. Let them give to you, the men that come into your life. The giving must flow both ways for the bond to be real. All your life, you’ve believed in only one kind of relationship; that in each pair, there is one who is loved, and one who does the loving. It doesn’t have to be that way. Give yourself by taking. Then you’ll find—”
“Can’t we at least walk while we’re talking? I’m freezing, baby, and I’ve got to get home and get some sleep before work. I’m going to be dead on my feet as it is.”
He fell silent, allowing her to take his arm and tow him along. Perhaps the time for him to speak to her had passed, irretrievably. Perhaps the magic granted only that one moment of exchange, when the strange man with the pigeons could have spoken to her and she would have felt his words. Now he was too close. He was just another man to her, to feed and support and screw and, on occasion, when bored, to pester and irritate to the very edge of a violent confrontation. She would never hear him again, and he would never know any more of her than he did at this moment. Why was he going with her?
He stopped abruptly. She rounded on him. “Now what? Baby, I have to—”
“I’m not going home with you, Lynda. We have nothing for one another. There is a thing I have to do tonight, and I have to do it alone. Go along, hurry home to where you’ll be safe. And if you can remember what I said to you, think about my words. I meant them.”
“I don’t believe this! What’s the matter with you, are you crazy or what? You can’t just walk off like that, running off in a Hallowe’en suit with no shoes on! You can’t just walk out on me. You can’t treat me this way! You’ve got no right to treat me like this.”
“I’ve got no right to treat you any other way, either.” She wouldn’t hear him. How can you say good-bye to someone who never even heard you say hello?
For a moment she stared at him, her face an ivory mask in the darkness. Then she burst into tears, stamping her feet on the sidewalk. When he impulsively reached to comfort her, she hammered him with quick, forceless blows of her fists. “Go away, then. Go away! Leave me alone! I knew you would anyway, sooner or later Everyone always leaves me, or makes me throw them out! All men use me! And you’re no different.”
She continued to hammer at him wordlessly. He caught one of her flying wrists and restrained it. With her free hand, she dealt him a slap on the side of the head that clapped his ear painfully and stung his cheek. “Lynda‘” he protested, but she swung again, a backhanded slap that smashed his lips against his teeth. Damn, she was strong. He tasted blood. Anger coursed through him and he squeezed the captured wrist and began to turn it. The night pressed close all around them. Electrically gray―
He let go and sprang back from her so suddenly that she fell. “No!” he told her frenziedly.“No!” He turned and ran from her. She shrieked obscenities after him and the sodden hem of his robe flapped against his ankles as he ran. He fled through the night, a hunted thing. Mir had stalked him well, from a perfect blind. Its raking claws had touched his soul and marked him. It would have him this night.
The city marked his cowardice and turned on him. He collided with dumpsters in alleys. At an intersection a yellow light winked suddenly green, and a car roaring from nowhere blasted its horn at him. He raced up streets that were all uphill. A passing squad car suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree and squealed a u-turn to pursue him. He darted up a crowded alley, knocking over garbage cans as he fled, then turned left and ran half a block before dropping to roll into hiding beneath a parked truck. He lay flat and still, the front of his robe absorbing an oily puddle of rainwater. He held his breath until he could force himself to breathe silently. He thought of Lynda’s eyes gone huge and gray and hungry in the night. He shuddered.
Cassie had been wrong. It was hiding, not only in the city, but within him. Like was calling to like, and when they united, it would have him. Lynda had come perilously close to letting it out. It had been stalking him all this time.
The cold water met his skin and chilled it painfully. He endured it, lying still until he was sure that the patrol car was far away. Then he rolled from under the truck and stood again in the bitter November wind. There was a heaviness inside him, a sense of carrying as if he bore the seed of a deadly disease. It hid in his chest and in the muscles of his back, questing tentatively into his biceps, probing into his wrists and hands. Waiting. It could materialize in his fingers, or use his feet as its tool. His body was rotten with it. The knowledge disgusted him. It was worse than the idea of internal parasites.
He would have preferred intestines full of tapeworms or the cellular anarchy of cancer, leprosy, or plague. But he had not been given a choice.
“ ‘And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off,’” he muttered.
He laughed bitterly. It was past the stage of a hand or an eye. He would have to cast his whole body aside to be free of it.
Now, how did one go about that? The word was like a snake sliding through dry summer grasses. Suicide. The cold certainty of it settled on him even as he denied it. Cassie would never have sent him out to face it if that were the only way he could win. But, then, Cassie had not known as much as she thought she did. She would not believe that it lurked inside him: not as a figment of his imagination, but as a fragment of himself.
Maybe Estrella had known more than she had been able to tell. The Hanged Man. A helpful suggestion from your frien
dly neighborhood fortune-teller. But it wouldn’t be his foot in the loop. The plan did not please him, but there was a bitter satisfaction in knowing that by losing, he would win.
One detail disturbed him, and it took him a moment to find it. There it was. He did not want anyone weeping over his body. Not Lynda, dramatic in black, not Cassie, shaking her head. A vision came to him, clear and cold as ice. He saw himself standing on one of Seattle’s bridges, the rope looped several times around his throat, simply looped, not a noose at all. He would jump, and the weight of his body at the end of the rope would be enough to break his neck. Then the slow turning of the body at the end of the rope from the natural torque of the woven strands; the rope unwinds itself from the throat, and the body drops neatly down, to be carried away by the moving water. In the morning, an empty rope dangling from a bridge. He was almost positive it would work. If it didn’t, he’d never know. Tidy, he congratulated himself, and tried to ignore the gray chuckling in the back of his mind. As for the rope—had not the dumpsters of the city always provided him with all his needs before? So would they this night. His stride was purposeful.
The scream ripped his decision. It was a strange cry, thin and short, terror with no breath to vent it. He could not decide if it came from deep inside himself or only echoed there. It was a sharp sound, pained and despairing and gray. He crossed his arms on his chest, holding it in and muffling it. He heard three quick scuffs, soles against pavement, and the gong of a heavy body colliding with a dumpster. Then silence. Fear rolled through Wizard. He wanted to stopper his ears and keep walking. He had reached a decision for his gray Mir, and he wanted it to be a final one. He doubted he had the strength to face anything else this night. But his traitorous ears brought him the harsh breathing of a predator on a blood trail. It came from an alley mouth, less than a half a block away.
Wizard kept walking, his steps reflexively silent. He would reach the alley mouth and pass it, search for his rope elsewhere.
Wizard of the Pigeons Page 24
