Changer's Daughter (49 page)

Tommy chuckles. “That’s sweet. Give me the cue, and I’m gone to do what I can do.”

“Count four measures,” Lil says. “That is all I need.”

Lovern nods. Her fingers in his hand feel as fragile as blown glass straws. She has been pushed even harder than he has been, for she has been searching for the satyrs for over twenty-four hours. Yes, she has slept and he has not, but he doubts that even with Tommy’s magic she is very well rested.

Together they build the spell far more quickly than either of them could have alone. Yet, only the fact that both of them are tremendously talented and that both are draining power from reserves normally left untapped establishes the spell in the promised four measures. Lovern would have preferred to take longer, but he is not about to argue with Lilith, not here, at least, and not over this.

Tommy announces his arrival with a crescendo of Spanish-sounding guitar chords. He drums on the door with his boot toe.

“Hey, guys. Let me come in.”

A strained voice, male, but otherwise most unlike the boisterous tones of Georgios the satyr, replies:

“And if we don’t what’ll you do? Huff and puff and blow the door down?”

Tommy waves his hand and vines sprout from the mouths of the wine bottles on the room-service carts. They grow rapidly, thick green cables unfolding leaves, and dragging bunches of grapes behind them.

“I don’t think I need to do that,” Tommy says mildly. “Do you know who I am?”

The door opens and a satyr tumbles out, flinging himself prostrate before the young man with the guitar.

“You are the Great God Dionysus,” Georgios gasps. “And I am your slave.”

“Not mine,” Tommy laughs, turning the satyr over with the toe of his boot. He does so effortlessly, as if the bulky theriomorph is a child. “His, perhaps.” The boot toe indicates the satyr’s limp penis, “but not mine. A slave of mine would be better behaved. He would know that I give both joy and sorrow, both pleasure and pain.”

The other two satyrs have joined in the groveling. The six whores, all in various states of undress, are huddled against a back wall of the room. Vine leaves invade here as well, and heavy bunches of grapes spill from the vine-covered ceiling.

“It’s Tommy Thunderburst!” shrieks a black woman dressed in nothing but a single fishnet stocking. “I got his album.”

“I hope you like it,” Tommy says.

“I do,” the woman says. “I gotta get the new one.”

“I’ll give you one,” he promises, “but first you must do me a favor.”

“Anything!” she says. “I won’t even charge.”

Tommy reaches up and plucks a bunch of grapes. He presses them between his fingers and the juice runs free.

“This is my blood, the mark of my covenant with you,” he says, his voice a caress, “drink it and all will be well between us.”

The black woman looks shocked for a moment, but doubtless dallying with satyrs has expanded her idea of what is and is not possible. Extending her tongue, she licks the juice from his long musician’s fingers.

Tommy crushes other grapes, extends his hands to the other women. Already under his spell, they move forward, lick the juice where it drips from his fingers, down his wrists, where it spots his trousers.

Lovern, watching from where he sits with Lil, mutters softly, “That’s the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen.”

“He is,” Lil agrees, her tone both proprietary and sad. “My Tommy. They will remember nothing now, nothing but a wonder, like maenads, though without the madness. It is the gift of the vine. One he can rarely give.”

When he has finished with the women, Tommy smiles sadly. “Now, my dearest ones, have you been paid?”

The black woman who had spoken first nods. A smile has transformed her face, making its tired charms radiant.

“Georgie-boy gave us lots of cash from a cash machine. We’re set there.”

“Dress then and go forth.”

“Master, what shall we do?” asks the little Asian girl, pulling on her blouse. “How shall we follow your way?”

Tommy shakes his head. “I have no way, not even for myself. If you would honor me, try to give more joy than pain. Sing more than you weep and when you must weep, weep well.”

This seems to satisfy them. Tommy gives them time to redon their tatty finery, to brush their hair, to reapply the cosmetics that are their pride of office. To each he gives a copy of the
Pan
album and a kiss on the brow. Then he directs them out by the back gate. Twilight is falling now and seems to embrace them as they walk back toward the glow of the Strip and the lives they have made there.

Through all of this, the satyrs have crouched naked and unmoving on the stoop outside of the bungalow. Tommy studies them before raising each onto his hooves.

“Personally,” Tommy says, his voice still mild, “I feel more sorrow than anger, but I don’t think everyone feels that way. Do you, Lilith?”

Lil merely smiles, but the satyrs blanch beneath their olive complexions at that smile.

“Get your belongings,” Tommy orders. He waves his hand, and the vines begin to wither, the grapes—all but one bunch he gathers in his hand—to shrivel and dry. “I will check you out over the telephone.”

“Master,” Georgios whimpers. “Protect us!”

“From Lil?” Tommy laughs. “Why? I cannot protect myself from her! How should I protect you? Still, ready yourselves, and I will do what I can to sweeten her.”

As the satyrs hurry to oblige him, Tommy saunters from the bungalow to where the wizards sit, still clasping hands.

“That room smells like a stable and a winery crossed with a brothel and a...” Tommy shrugs, smiles his gentle, infectious smile. “Man, I can’t tell you how it smells. Stay here, and I’ll handle them.”

When Lil starts to protest, he presses a grape, round, blue-black, and ripe between her lips. She sighs with pure happiness.

“Tommy...”

“Hush, my love, my destroyer,” he purrs. “Take of me and eat. That’s what you always want, isn’t it?”

He breaks off a cluster of about six grapes and gives them to Lovern. “You have exhausted yourself in my service, wizard. Take and eat this small token of my esteem. It will restore your lost energies and prepare you for what lies ahead.”

Lovern accepts mutely, overwhelmed by the honor. The first grape tastes like all the best wines he has ever drunk, sweet but not too sweet, dry without the least trace of acid.

Beside him, Tommy feeds the remaining grapes one at a time to Lil. Visibly she regains her strength, and some of her anger ebbs from her. As Lovern meditates upon the taste of those grapes, the wizard thinks that the satyrs may keep their balls after all.

Checkout completed, grapevines vanished into thin lines of grey powder that the wind sweeps away, the group departs. The prodigal three cower in the backseat of the limousine, casting anxious glances at Lil.

For her part, she contents herself with darting the occasional smoldering glare back at them from where she sits in the front seat. Only Lovern knows how much sham there is in her fury. Her fingers are entwined with Tommy’s, and he hears her hum along when the great god sings.

Shahrazad can’t make herself go past the wolves’ scent mark. Certainly she had done so once, but that was nearly two weeks ago, when she was young, callow, and unsophisticated. Now she understands about wolves and has the wisdom to fear them.

A whimper, low and pathetic, escapes Shahrazad’s throat. Across the deer trail, the unicorn Pearl lifts her head, ears pricked and listening. The young coyote cringes to the ground, bad enough to fear—worse to be detected in that fear.

Pearl looks toward her, those china blue eyes seeming to see the coyote through the brush and bracken in which she hides. There is humor in that pale gaze, humor and a sense of purpose.

Don’t worry little pup, the gaze says, When your elders are present, they deal with problems.

Shahrazad acknowledges this. Isn’t that the way of things? The Changer may not be here, but Pearl is, and she will stop Wayne. The wolves will not harm the unicorn. They hadn’t harmed her on the day that Shahrazad had first encountered them. They won’t harm her now.

Why then, does she feel so shamed?

Dreading what will happen if she crosses the wolf line, but unable to remain in safe territory, especially with her new awareness of the Dance binding her to the wolves, Shahrazad drags herself forward. The first steps are the hardest. By the time she has advanced to where she can smell dead elk cached beneath some bracken, some of her normal cockiness is returning.

Then from the forest steps a stranger.

Everything about him is big and aggressive, from his bristling hair and beard to shoulders and thighs like tree trunks. He wears a flannel shirt, jeans, and boots. A double-bladed axe is slung across his shoulders. The wind that crosses his trail tastes of wolf.

“Who th’ hell are you!” she hears Wayne blurt, the rifle in his hands now swinging up to point at the big man’s chest.

“Lupé will do,” the man answers in a wolf-growl voice. “This is private land. Get off.”

“You work for MacDonald?” Wayne asks casually, not lowering his weapon.

“I help him out,” Lupé says.

Wayne laughs. “You look like Paul Bunyan in that getup.”

“I am not Paul Bunyan.”

“No,” Wayne says, sounding puzzled. “I never said you were.”

Something is happening to his eyes.

He had been talking to a man, but the man has vanished. Where he had stood is an enormous wolf, growling menace. With vision suddenly gone panoramic, Wayne now notices other wolves hiding in the underbrush around him.

Cunning steals into his soul. First, he must kill the one directly in front of him, then swing and shoot the white one just in back of him. He no longer wonders why he had sat up late last night, dipping bullets in molten silver.

Shahrazad listens to the alpha male challenge Wayne. Why doesn’t he just tear out Wayne’s throat? Why doesn’t the unicorn run Wayne through his back?

She is trying to gather the courage to spring when, without the slightest warning, Wayne pulls the trigger of his rifle. Almost as if caused by the rife’s report, rather than by any physical agent, two bright red spots blossom on the werewolf’s chest, neatly clustered over his heart.

Even ears stunned by the loudness of the gunfire hear the wolf pack scattering into deeper cover. Only Shahrazad, paralyzed by shock, does not move. Only Shahrazad sees Wayne wheel to his right and fire two more shots into the unicorn.

Keening in pain, Pearl falls. The shots had been low, but one at least has shattered her left foreleg. Her belly is streaked with red, though from a wound or from splattering Shahrazad cannot tell.

Something rips in Shahrazad’s brain, a searing pain similar to one she had felt once before, a pain she associates with a few terrible chords of music.

This time she is not knocked unconscious by the shock. Instead it focuses, her leaving no room for fear. Fur bristled out like a porcupine’s spikes and lips peeled back from her fangs, Shahrazad leaps.

Compared to a wolf, or even to a full-grown male coyote, she isn’t much, but even so twenty-five pounds of solid, growling coyote is enough to knock Wayne flat on his face. The bullet he had been aiming to finish Pearl plows into a tree trunk. Shahrazad’s jaws clamp on the back of his neck. The man is not a mouse or rabbit, but surely she can bite hard enough that she won’t need to shake. His blood is leaking down her teeth, pooling against her tongue when something like a series of sharp-pointed sticks knocks her away from her prey.