Greenmantle (27 page)

Yeah, he thought. She’d believe it. But it’d never be him with her. He had too much unfinished business hanging over his head and what the hell would someone like her want with the kind of guy he was anyway? She’d already gone through all that shit with Earl Shaw, fercrissakes.

He was surprised at how much that hurt—that he felt like that about Frankie in the first place, that it hurt so much that there was never going to be anything between them.

What kind of a guy made a living the way he had anyway? And for what? As soon as they had no more use for you, the
pezzi di merda
just dumped you. Didn’t matter how loyal you’d been. Didn’t matter what kind of shit you’d done for them.

The music played, a jiglike tune that only exaggerated his regret. Not for what had been, but for what might have been. For all the things he’d lost because of the business he’d been born into. He’d trade all that shit—the money, the respect, everything—just to have a kid like Ali to call his own. A woman like her mother to call his wife. He’d work as a fucking ditch-digger, fercrissakes, he didn’t care.

But it was too late. He’d been what he’d been and now the debts were being called in. The Magaddinos were going to get him, one way or another. Either they’d kill him or they’d keep him boxed up in a life where he was always looking over his shoulder, where he could never get close to anyone because he’d never know when the
bastardi
would be there just waiting to get him.

The music seemed to hold a personal message for him. Go ahead, he thought it was saying. Feel sorry for yourself, regret the things you’ve done and the things you’ll never get to do. But just remember that you aren’t what you were, but what you are now.

Sure, he thought. Tell that to whoever the new
padrone
’s sending after me. But the music wouldn’t let him hold on to that. It drew his gaze to the dancers, his heart to the music. The fires inside him muttered and burned, but danced in time to the piping notes.

* * *

Of the three of them, it was Ali who first spotted the stag soft-stepping from the forest behind Tommy’s shoulder. It towered over the boy like a twin to the old stone, eyes gleaming, antlers smooth, head lifted high as it gazed into the glade.

Ali faltered in her steps. She dropped Lily’s hand and stood still, staring at the enormous beast. She thought of everything that Lewis had told them, but realized as she looked into the stag’s liquid eyes that none of it mattered. It didn’t matter who or what the stag was, or where it had come from. All that mattered was that it existed. But still, she could understand the legends and myths that had grown up around this majestic being.

It was no longer a stag, the longer she watched it, but a man. He stood as tall, his antlers branching high into the sky, but on two cloven hooves now, not four. A cloak was draped over his shoulder, matted with leaves and burrs and twigs, some green and growing, some dried to an autumn brown. His face was angular like a roughly-chiselled statue—a wise face and a sad one, but there was joy in it, too, and a sense of wildness, a sense of humor and fun. Only the eyes stayed entirely the same, dark and liquid.

Ali took a step toward him and then he changed again. Now the antlers were a ram’s horns, lifting from his brow in two ridged sweeps. The cloak fell to the grass to become a carpet of mulch that he trod on with goat legs. His chest was hairy and muscular, his face a triangular shape accentuated by the tuft of a goat’s beard that dangled from his chin.

Pan, Ali thought. She wanted to speak his name, but her muscles were too numb, her throat too tight to shape its sound. The music dipped and soared around her as she took a second and a third step, drawing ever closer to the magical apparition. And then she heard the other sound—distant at first, but growing louder. It was like the baying of dogs on the hunt, the howling of wolves. She remembered what Lewis had said about the Hunt and shook her head. They couldn’t have him. Not this being.

The sound of the Hunt grew louder now, cutting across the music. The other dancers faltered. The goatman grew indistinct around the edges. He was the stag-man again, taller, broad-chested, and then the stag. He pawed the ground with a hard hoof, spraying grass and clods of dirt. The dogs became louder still.

“N-no,” Ali said.

She started to turn around. She’d stop them. She’d give the mystery time to escape. But then a familiar figure was at her side, floppy hat covering the tangled and matted hair, teeth showing white as she grinned.

“Come on!” Mally cried as she took Ali’s hand.

“No!” Ali protested. “The Hunt—”

“Stuff the Hunt!” Mally told her. “Tonight we’re going to drink down the moon!”

They were directly in front of the stag now. Mally grasped Ali around the waist with both hands and with a cry of “Ali-oop!” flung her up onto the stag’s back. Ali clung to its neck, stunned as much at where she found herself as at the wild girl’s startling strength. A moment later Mally was up on the stag’s back behind her, straddling the wide girth, her arms around Ali’s waist.

“Run!” Mally cried to the stag. “Let’s show them the night as they’ve never seen it before. We’ll run them into their graves and then run some more. Hoo-hey!”

She kicked her heels against the stag’s sides and it leapt high into the air, over the dancers, circling on prancing hooves in front of Valenti, Bannon and Lewis, then back toward the stone. There was a sound of snarling in the air as the Hunt drew close. The stag jumped toward the stone. Valenti took a few running steps after them before his leg gave out and he stumbled to the ground. He watched the stag leap, its riders clinging to its neck and each other, and then it was gone.

He blinked. For a moment he’d thought it had disappeared right into the stone, but he knew that couldn’t be right. It had entered the forest behind the stone. But why couldn’t he hear it in the underbrush? And Ali… It was taking Ali away!

Bannon was at his side helping him to his feet. Valenti shook off his hand and stared wildly at where the stag had disappeared. It was gone.
With
Ali. Oh, Jesus. What was he going to tell her momma?

“C’mon,” Bannon started to say, but suddenly the glade was filled with dark shapes. The Hunt was all around them.

The dancers had fled to the shelter of the trees with the other villagers. Tommy stood up, back against the stone’s rough surface, his dog Gaffa crouched snarling at his feet. The reed pipes hung from Tommy’s hands. His face was vacuous again, stripped of its inspiration. He stared at the two men and the shapes that surrounded them.

The shapes were dogs, then men, cowled and robed, then animals again. They milled around the circle, snarling. When one of them snapped at Valenti, he dug out his automatic, thumbed the safety off, and fired point-blank into the creature’s face.

The explosion of the gun was loud. A deep silence followed the sound of its sharp report. The beast Valenti had shot didn’t appear to have been affected at all by the bullet, but it backed away from him, as did the rest of the pack. Valenti took aim at the biggest one of them, but Bannon touched his arm.

“No,” he said. “They’re going.”

Still silent, the pack flowed around the pair and ran for the stone. They split up, half passing it on one side, half on the other. Not until they were in the forest did they begin to howl once more.

“Oh, Jesus,” Valenti said. The automatic hung at his side now and he leaned against Bannon. “It took her,” he said. “Ali’s gone. What the Christ are we going to do?”

Bannon turned to look at where they’d left Lewis standing. The old man came out from the shelter of the trees and walked slowly toward them.

“You!” Valenti said, lifting the gun.

“That won’t help,” Bannon said.

Valenti looked at the weapon, then slowly nodded. He flicked the safety back on and thrust it into his pocket. “Where did they go?” he asked Lewis. “Where’s that thing taking her?”

“I don’t know,” Lewis replied. “This has never happened before.”

“Great.” Valenti studied the circle of villagers who were slowly emerging from the trees. They all appeared frightened. He turned to look at Tommy. The boy was still standing by the stone, the reed pipes silent in his hand. “What about the pipes?” Valenti asked. “Can’t you use them to call the stag back?”

“We don’t command him,” Lewis said. “All we do is celebrate him.”

“Yeah. But the pipes call him, right?”

“Sometimes he comes—more often not. And never twice on the same night.”

“Fercrissakes!” Valenti shouted. “Then what’re we going to do?”

Bannon stopped to pick up Valenti’s cane and handed it to him. “We’ll find her,” he said.

“How? Christ, what am I going to tell her momma?”

“C’mon, Tony. We’ll—”

“It’s that wild girl,” Valenti said. “She grabbed Ali. She’s going to be the one that pays if anything happens to her.” He swung around to look at the villagers again. “And that goes for all of you—you hear what I’m telling you? Anything happens to Ali, and you’re all paying.”

“Please,” Lewis said. “We meant her no harm. This has never—”

“Happened before,” Valenti finished. “Yeah. I know. I heard you the first time. Well, it’s never going to happen again,
capito?
This
babau
of yours—this bogeyman’s not going to steal another kid, not if I’ve got anything to say about it.”

As Valenti started for the stone Bannon caught him by the arm. “What are you planning to do?” he asked. “Chase after that thing?”

“You got a better idea?”

“The way I see it is, we’ve got two choices. Either we wait for it to come back here, or we head on back to your place. If Ali gets off that thing, I’m betting she’ll head for your place. All we’re going to do if we start running crazy through the bush is get lost ourselves.”

“Yeah. But what if she falls off it somewhere back there? What if she’s lying there hurt?”

“The girl’s with her,” Bannon said.

Valenti shook his head. “I don’t trust that girl.”

“I can’t believe anything bad’s going to happen to Ali,” Bannon said. “Not while she’s with the stag. Didn’t you
feel
anything when it showed up?”

“I’ll stay here—all night if necessary,” Lewis offered, “and if she returns here, I’ll bring her to your house.”

“You’re just a part of all this shit,” Valenti said. “If it wasn’t for you, we’d—”

“C’mon, Tony. You’re talking crazy. No one here wants to hurt Ali. If you’d think for a moment, you’d see that.”

Before Valenti could reply, the sound of the pipes started up again—softly, not a rallying call, or a celebration, just a sad series of notes that didn’t quite make a melody. But it was enough so that Valenti remembered what he’d been feeling when the music had been going full tilt. It was enough to take the sharp edge off his fear for Ali. He turned to look at Tommy as the sound of the pipes faded away, but there was nothing in the boy’s eyes at that moment. Nobody home, Valenti thought. He took a deep breath.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

Bannon nodded. He turned to Lewis, but before he could say anything, Valenti spoke.

“Listen,” he said to the old man. “Maybe I got a little carried away, but I’m worried about the kid, okay? She means a lot to me.”

“I understand,” Lewis said. “If I’d had any way of knowing this would happen, I would never have asked you to come to the stone.”

Valenti nodded.

“If she comes back here, I will bring her to you,” Lewis said.

“Thanks. And we’ll send you word if something breaks on our end.” Valenti glanced at his companion. “Let’s hit the road, Tom.”

Behind them, the piper by the stone began to play once more. The music that came from his reed pipes was not the same as it had been earlier. It sang of regret now, and of things lost, rather than in celebration of the mystery. The sad strains followed the men as they took the path back to Valenti’s house.

12

Frankie was exhausted by the time she turned off the highway to finish the last leg of her drive home. Exhausted and depressed. Funeral homes, hospitals, graveyards—they all left her emotionally drained.

She felt sorry for Bob’s parents, and especially for Joy, but she couldn’t have lasted another minute in the company of any one of the three without screaming. It wasn’t their fault. It was just that the hours in the funeral home, on top of the scare she’d had last night, had not left her in the best of shape. Her nerves were so worn they were ready to snap. All she wanted now was to collapse on her bed and sleep it all away—her fears about Earl, the jangling of her nerves, the depression… Hopefully, everything would look better in the morning.

She drove by the road that went up to Valenti’s house and was about to turn into her own lane when she remembered Ali. God, she was in worse shape than she’d thought. Already slowing down, she suddenly slammed on the brakes when she saw the old pickup truck sitting in her lane. The seatbelt caught her shoulder, then whipped her back against the seat. The car’s engine stalled, but she just turned off the ignition and lights, and stared at the truck.