Dreamsongs. Volume II

by George R. R. Martin

  Willie blinked, and wiped the blood away with his good hand. His old raincoat was underneath him, blood-soaked and covered with ground glass and shards of mirror. Steven stood over him, staring down. Behind him was a mirror. Or was it a door?

  “You missed one,” Steven said flatly.

  Something hard was digging into his gut, Willie realized. His hand fumbled around beneath him, slid into the pocket of his raincoat, closed on cold metal.

  “Skinner’s coming for you now,” Steven said.

  Willie couldn’t see. The blood had filled his eyes again. But he could still feel. He got his fingers through the loops and rolled and brought his hand up fast and hard, with all the strength he had left, and put Mr. Scissors right through the meat of Steven’s groin.

  The last thing he heard was a scream, and the sound of breaking glass.

  CALM, RANDI THOUGHT, CALM, BUT THE DREAD THAT FILLED HER was more than simple fear. Blood matted his jaws, and his eyes stared at her through the windshield, glowing that hideous baleful red. She looked away quickly, tried to chamber a bullet. Her hands shook, and it slid out of her grip, onto the floor of the car. She ignored it, tried again.

  The wolf howled, turned, fled. For a moment she lost sight of him. Randi craned her head around, peering nervously out through the darkness. She glanced into the rearview mirror, but it was fogged up, useless. She shivered, as much from cold as from fear. Where was he? she thought wildly.

  Then she saw him, running toward the car.

  Randi looked down, chambered a bullet, and had a second in her fingers when he came flying over the hood and smashed against the glass. Cracks spiderwebbed out from the center of the windshield. The wolf snarled at her. Slaver and blood smeared the glass. Then he hit the glass again. Again. Again. Randi jumped with every impact. The windshield cracked and cracked again, then a big section in the center went milky and opaque.

  She had the second bullet in the cylinder. She slid in a third. It was freezing inside the car. She looked out into the darkness through a haze of cracks and blood smears, loaded a fourth bullet, and was closing the cylinder when he hit the windshield again and it all caved in on her.

  One moment she had the gun and the next it was gone. The weight was on her chest and the safety glass, broken into a million milky pieces but still clinging together, fell across her face like a shroud. Then it ripped away, and the blood-soaked jaws and hot red eyes were right there in front of her.

  The wolf opened his mouth and she was feeling the furnace heat of his breath, smelling awful carnivore stench.

  “You fucker!” she screamed, and almost laughed, because it wasn’t much as last words go.

  Something sharp and silvery bright came sliding down through the back of his throat.

  It went so quickly Randi didn’t understand what was happening, no more than he did. Suddenly the bloodlust went out of the dark red eyes, and they were full of pain and shock and finally fear, and she saw more silver knives sliding through his throat before his mouth filled with blood. And then the great black-furred body shuddered, and struggled, as something pulled it back off her, front paws beating a tattoo against the seat. There was a smell of burning hair in the air. When the wolf began to scream, it sounded almost human.

  Randi choked back her own pain, slammed her shoulder against the door, and knocked what was left of Joe Urquhart aside. Halfway out the door, she glanced back.

  The hand was twisted and cruel, and its fingers were long bright silver razors, pale and cold and sharp as sin. Like five long jointed knives the fingers had sunk through the back of the wolf’s neck, and grabbed hold, and pulled, and the blood was coming out between his teeth in great gouts now and his legs were kicking feebly. It yanked at him then, and she heard a sickening wet crunching as the thing began to pull the wolf through the rearview mirror with inexorable, unimaginable force, to whatever was on the other side. The great black-furred body seemed to waver and shift for a second, and the wolf’s face took on an almost human cast.

  When his eyes met hers, the red light had gone out of them; there was nothing there but pain and pleading.

  His first name was Mike, she remembered.

  Randi looked down. Her gun was on the floor.

  She picked it up, checked the cylinder, closed it, jammed the barrel up against his head, and fired four times.

  When she got out of the car and put her weight on her ankle, the pain washed over her in great waves. Randi collapsed to her hands and knees. She was throwing up when she heard the sirens.

  “…SOME KIND OF ANIMAL,” SHE SAID.

  The detective gave her a long, sour look, and closed his notebook. “That’s all you can tell me?” he said. “That Chief Urquhart was killed by some kind of animal?”

  Randi wanted to say something sharp, but she was all fucked up on painkillers. They’d had to put two pins in her and it still hurt like hell, and the doctors said she’d have to stay another week. “What do you want me to tell you?” she said weakly. “That’s what I saw, some kind of animal. A wolf.”

  The detective shook his head. “Fine. So the chief was killed by some kind of animal, probably a wolf. So where’s Rogoff? His car was there, his blood was all over the inside of the chief’s car, so tell me…where the fuck is Rogoff?”

  Randi closed her eyes, and pretended it was the pain. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “I’ll be back,” the detective said when he left.

  She lay with her eyes closed for a moment, thinking maybe she could drift back to sleep, until she heard the door open and close. “He won’t be,” a soft voice told her. “We’ll see to it.”

  Randi opened her eyes. At the foot of the bed was an old man with long white hair leaning on a gold wolf’s head cane. He wore a black suit, a mourning suit, and his hair fell to his shoulders. “My name is Jonathan Harmon,” he said.

  “I’ve seen your picture. I know who you are. And what you are.” Her voice was hoarse. “A lycanthrope.”

  “Please,” he said. “A werewolf.”

  “Willie…what happened to Willie?”

  “Steven is dead,” Jonathan Harmon said.

  “Good,” Randi spat. “Steven and Roy, they were doing it together, Willie said. For the skins. Steven hated the others, because they could work the change and he couldn’t. But once your son had his skin, he didn’t need Helander anymore, did he?”

  “I can’t say I will mourn greatly. To be frank, Steven was never the sort of heir I might have wished for.” He went to the window, opened the curtains, and looked out. “This was once a great city, you know, a city of blood and iron. Now it’s all turned to rust.”

  “Fuck your city,” Randi said. “What about Willie?”

  “It was a pity about Zoe, but once the skinner has been summoned, it keeps hunting until it takes a skin, from mirror to mirror to mirror. It knows our scent, but it doesn’t like to wander far from its gates. I don’t know how your mongrel friend managed to evade it twice, but he did…to Zoe’s misfortune, and Michael’s.” He turned and looked at her. “You will not be so lucky. Don’t congratulate yourself too vigorously, child. The pack takes care of its own. The doctor who writes your next prescription, the pharmacist who fills it, the boy who delivers it…any of them could be one of us. We don’t forget our enemies, Miss Wade. Your family would do well to remember that.”

  “You were the one,” she said with a certainty. “In the stockyards, the night my father…”

  Jonathan nodded curtly. “He was a crack shot, I’ll grant him that. He put six bullets in me. My war wounds, I call them. They still show up on X-rays, but my doctors have learned not to be curious.”

  “I’ll kill you,” Randi said.

  “I think not.” He leaned over the bed. “Perhaps I’ll come for you myself some night. You ought to see me, Miss Wade. My fur is white now, pale as snow, but the stature, the majesty, the power, those have not left me. Michael was a half-breed, and your Willie, he was hardly more than a dog. The pureb
lood is rather more. We are the dire wolves, the nightmares who haunt your racial memories, the dark shapes circling endlessly beyond the light of your fires.”

  He smiled down at her, then turned and walked away. At the door he paused. “Sleep well,” he said.

  Randi did not sleep at all, not even when night fell and the nurse came in and turned out the lights, despite all her pleading. She lay there in the dark staring up at the ceiling, feeling more alone than she’d ever been. He was dead, she thought. Willie was dead and she’d better start getting used to the idea. Very softly, alone in the darkness of the private room, she began to cry.

  She cried for a long time, for Willie and Joan Sorenson and Joe Urquhart and finally, after all this time, for Frank Wade. She ran out of tears and kept crying, her body shaking with dry sobs. She was still shaking when the door opened softly, and a thin knife of light from the hall cut across the room.

  “Who’s there?” she said hoarsely. “Answer, or I’ll scream.”

  The door closed quietly. “Ssssh. Quiet, or they’ll hear.” It was a woman’s voice, young, a little scared. “The nurse said I couldn’t come in, that it was after visiting hours, but he told me to get to you right away.” She moved close to the bed.

  Randi turned on her reading light. Her visitor looked nervously toward the door. She was dark, pretty, no more than twenty, with a spray of freckles across her nose. “I’m Betsy Juddiker,” she whispered. “Willie said I was to give you a message, but it’s all crazy stuff…”

  Randi’s heart skipped a beat. “Willie…tell me! I don’t care how crazy it sounds, just tell me.”

  “He said that he couldn’t phone you hisself because the pack might be listening in, that he got hurt bad but he’s okay, that he’s up north, and he’s found this vet who’s taking care of him good. I know, it sounds funny, but that’s what he said, a vet.”

  “Go on.”

  Betsy nodded. “He sounded hurt on the phone, and he said he couldn’t…couldn’t change right now, except for a few minutes to call, because he was hurt and the pain was always waiting for him, but to say that the vet had gotten most of the glass out and set his leg and he was going to be fine. And then he said that on the night he’d gone, he’d come by my house and left something for you, and I was to find it and bring it here.” She opened her purse and rummaged around. “It was in the bushes by the mailbox, my little boy found it.” She gave it over.

  It was a piece of some broken mirror, Randi saw, a shard as long and slender as her finger. She held it in her hand for a moment, confused and uncertain. The glass was cold to the touch, and it seemed to grow colder as she held it.

  “Careful, it’s real sharp,” Betsy said. “There was one more thing, I don’t understand it at all, but Willie said it was important. He said to tell you that there were no mirrors where he was, not a one, but last he’d seen, there were plenty up in Blackstone.”

  Randi nodded, not quite grasping it, not yet. She ran a finger thoughtfully along the shiny sliver of glass.

  “Oh, look,” Betsy said. “I told you. Now you’ve gone and cut yourself.”

  UNSOUND VARIATIONS

  AFTER THEY SWUNG OFF THE INTERSTATE, THE ROAD BECAME A narrow two-lane that wound a tortuous path through the mountains in a series of switchbacks, each steeper than the last. Peaks rose all around them, pine-covered and crowned by snow and ice, while swift cold waterfalls flashed by, barely seen, on either side. The sky was a bright and brilliant blue. It was exhilarating scenery, but it did nothing to lighten Peter’s mood. He concentrated blindly on the road, losing himself in the mindless reflexes of driving.

  As the mountains grew higher, the radio reception grew poorer, stations fading in and out with every twist in the road, until at last they could get nothing at all. Kathy went from one end of the band to the other, searching, and then back again. Finally she snapped off the radio in disgust. “I guess you’ll just have to talk to me,” she said.

  Peter didn’t need to look at her to hear the sharpness in her tone, the bitter edge of sarcasm that had long ago replaced fondness in her voice. She was looking for an argument, he knew. She was angry about the radio, and she resented him dragging her on this trip, and most of all she resented being married to him. At times, when he was feeling very sorry for himself, he did not even blame her. He had not turned out to be much of a bargain as a husband; a failed writer, failed journalist, failing businessman, depressed and depressing. He was still a lively sparring partner, however. Perhaps that was why she tried to provoke fights so often. After all the blood had been let, one or both of them would start crying, and then they would usually make love, and life would be pleasant for an hour or two. It was about all they had left.

  Not today, though. Peter lacked the energy, and his mind was on other things. “What do you want to talk about?” he asked her. He kept his tone amicable and his eyes on the road.

  “Tell me about these clowns we’re going to visit,” she said.

  “I did. They were my teammates on the chess team, back when I was at Northwestern.”

  “Since when is chess a team sport anyway?” Kathy said. “What’d you do, vote on each move?”

  “No. In chess, a team match is really a bunch of individual matches. Usually four or five boards, at least in college play. There’s no consultation or anything. The team that wins the most individual games wins the match point. The way it works—”

  “I get it,” she said sharply. “I may not be a chess player, but I’m not stupid. So you and these other three were the Northwestern team?”

  “Yes and no,” Peter said. The Toyota was straining; it wasn’t used to grades this steep, and it hadn’t been adjusted for altitude before they took off from Chicago. He drove carefully. They were up high enough now to come across icy patches, and snow drifting across the road.

  “Yes and no,” Kathy said sarcastically. “What does that mean?”

  “Northwestern had a big chess club back then. We played in a lot of tournaments—local, state, national. Sometimes we fielded more than one team, so the line-up was a bit different every tournament. It depended on who could play and who couldn’t, who had a midterm, who’d played in the last match—lots of things. We four were Northwestern’s B team in the North American Intercollegiate Team Championships, ten years ago this week. Northwestern hosted that tournament, and I ran it, as well as playing.”

  “What do you mean B team?”

  Peter cleared his throat and eased the Toyota around a sharp curve, gravel rattling against the underside of the car as one wheel brushed the shoulder. “A school wasn’t limited to just one team,” he said. “If you had the money and a lot of people who wanted to play, you could enter several. Your best four players would make up your A team, the real contender. The second four would be the B team, and so on.” He paused briefly, and continued with a faint note of pride in his voice. “The nationals at Northwestern were the biggest ever held, up to that time, although of course that record has since been broken. We set a second record, though, that still stands. Since the tournament was on our home grounds, we had lots of players on hand. We entered six teams. No other school has ever had more than four in the nationals, before or after.” The record still brought a smile to his face. Maybe it wasn’t much of a record, but it was the only one he had, and it was his. Some people lived and died without ever setting a record of any kind, he reflected silently. Maybe he ought to tell Kathy to put his on his tombstone: HERE LIES PETER K. NORTEN. HE FIELDED SIX TEAMS. He chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing.”

  She didn’t pursue it. “So you ran this tournament, you say?”

  “I was the club president and the chairman of the local committee. I didn’t direct, but I put together the bid that brought the nationals to Evanston, made all the preliminary arrangements. And I organized all six of our teams, decided who would play on each one, appointed the team captains. But during the tournament itself I was only the captain
of the B team.”

  She laughed. “So you were a big deal on the second-string. It figures. The story of your life.”

  Peter bit back a sharp reply, and said nothing. The Toyota swerved around another hairpin, and a vast Colorado mountain panorama opened up in front of them. It left him strangely unmoved.

  After a while Kathy said, “When did you stop playing chess?”

  “I sort of gave it up after college. Not a conscious decision, really. I just kind of drifted out of it. I haven’t played a game of tournament chess in almost nine years. I’m probably pretty rusty by now. But back then I was fairly good.”

  “How good is fairly good?”

  “I was rated as a Class A player, like everyone else on our B team.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means my USCF rating was substantially higher than that of the vast majority of tournament chess players in the country,” he said. “And the tournament players are generally much better than the unrated wood-pushers you encounter in bars and coffeehouses. The ratings went all the way down to Class E. Above Class A you had Experts, and Masters, and Senior Masters at the top, but there weren’t many of them.”

  “Three classes above you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you might say, at your very best, you were a fourth-class chess player.”

  At that Peter did look over at her. She was leaning back in her seat, a faint smirk on her face. “Bitch,” he said. He was suddenly angry.

  “Keep your eyes on the road!” Kathy snapped.

  He wrenched the car around the next turn hard as he could, and pressed down on the gas. She hated it when he drove fast. “I don’t know why the hell I try to talk to you,” he said.

  “My husband, the big deal,” she said. She laughed. “A fourth-class chess player playing on the junior varsity team. And a fifth-rate driver too.”