In Your Dreams (21 page)

‘Dietrich,' said Monika smugly. But Paul thought,
That can't be right, the Door doesn't make a noise, or at least I can't remember anything like that.
On the other hand, he'd never been in a place into which the Door opened, he'd always been the one going through it. So maybe—

The noise was very loud now; painfully loud, in fact, though whether it was the volume or the pitch that was making his head swim, Paul wasn't sure and didn't really care. He started shuffling on his backside away from the wall. That turned out to be a smart move a few seconds later, when it imploded.

Paul had no idea what hit him, though his best guess would have been either a brick or a chunk of stone. Whatever it was, it connected with the point of his left elbow, and it packed a solid punch. He couldn't hear himself scream over the clatter and thump of flying masonry, but he was fairly sure he had, and why not? If God hadn't meant us to scream, he wouldn't have given us horrendous pain.

Then the noise stopped, and there was a moment of intense, eerie silence. It was still as dark as a bag, even though the wall had been taken out; there was absolutely nothing to see apart from the faint glimmer of a pair of red eyes—

‘Dietrich?' Monika said nervously. ‘
Bist du da?
'

Red eyes
, Paul thought; then someone sniggered.

If Paul had had a pound for every time he'd heard that snigger, he could've afforded to quit work and join his parents in sunny Florida. In the past it had always been profoundly annoying and mostly at his expense. This time, though, it was the loveliest sound he could possibly imagine.

‘Mrs Ta— Rosie?' he called out. ‘Is that you?'

Repeat snigger; the sound of a heavenly choir telling dirty jokes behind the celestial tabernacle. ‘Well, it's not that soft git Ricky Wurmtoter,' said Mr Tanner's mum. ‘Heroes,' she added scornfully. ‘Couldn't bust their way into a bunny hutch with dynamite and jackhammers.'

For a moment Paul thought Monika was going to start a fight (which was probably, Paul reckoned, why Mr Tanner's mum had said it in the first place). But she confined herself to ‘Dietrich is not with you?'

‘Hell as like. Here, will one of you cop hold of this stupid dog? It's just peed all down my arm.'

Paul felt something wriggly and wet kicking against his chest. Fortunately, he overrode his instincts and grabbed it. It bit him. Thrice, simultaneously.

‘How does this thing—?' he shouted, as a snowstorm of white light caught him up and spun him away.

Paul opened his eyes. Then someone smacked him round the face.

He was getting used to that, so he didn't let it get to him. Besides, his attacker had also snatched the dog out of his arms, and that was definitely a good thing. The light hurt worse than the smack or the dog bites.

Meanwhile, someone was calling him various names. ‘Did the horrible man hurt mummy's baby, then?' she was saying. ‘Nasty man.' He looked up and saw the woman whose house the portal was in. She was scowling at him and holding the little three-headed Yorkie, which was twisting and writhing in her arms, clearly frantic to get at him and bite him some more. Not that he minded.

Bugger me
, he thought,
I escaped. I—

Bad pronoun. Not I, we. Where are the others?
‘Sorry,' he said. ‘Um, have you seen my friends? A short bloke and a—' The woman wasn't paying attention. Paul looked round the room, which seemed to be pretty much the same as when he'd left it; wagon-wheel table, straw donkey, steel and canvas chair, even the empty mug he'd drunk from (except that the writing on it had changed from
World's Best Grandad
to
Dog-Hating Bastard
). But there was nobody else in it apart from himself, the woman and the dog.

Hell
, Paul thought. ‘Excuse me,' he said, over the dog's low growling, ‘but I've got to go back. My friends, you see. They should've—'

But the woman shook her head. ‘Portal's closed,' she snapped. ‘Doesn't open again till nine tomorrow morning. And
you
' re not using it again, not after what you did to Twinkle.'

There didn't seem to be any point in arguing. Even if he kicked up a fuss or (unthinkable) tried to use force, he didn't know how the stupid thing worked, so hijacking it was out of the question, and the woman didn't look the sort who'd be amenable to sweet reason or pathetic pleading. Also, he'd had about as much of the woman and her horrible little dog as he could take. Nothing for it but to go back to the office in the morning and hope that somebody there would know what to do. He felt awful about it, but at least failure was something he understood. He stood up, mumbled a further, unheeded apology, and left.

Outside, as he'd expected and dreaded, there was no sign of a maroon Volkswagen Polo. Paul stood for a while staring at the place where it had been, then started to walk. He didn't know the way, of course; he had a rotten sense of direction, and Monika had done all the map-reading to get them there. He knew that there was a railway station in High Wycombe, but not where it was. Taxis, presumably, didn't happen out here. Some hero he'd turned out to be.

‘Want a lift?'

She hadn't been there a moment ago. This time, just for a change, she was a drop-dead gorgeous redhead (usually she was a blonde or a brunette) and she was sitting in the driver's seat of a fireapple-red Porsche convertible. In spite of that, Paul was overjoyed to see her. ‘You're all right,' he shouted. ‘I thought—'

She grinned; and although her eyes were a bewitching emerald green, Paul realised that he much preferred them red. ‘You do a lot of that,' she said. ‘Just as well I'm always there to save your arse. You want a lift or not?'

He stayed where he was. ‘The others,' he said. ‘Benny and Monika. What happened? Where are they?'

Her eyes chilled a little. ‘Three guesses,' she said. ‘I had my work cut out getting you past the defences, and I've only got one pair of claws. And before you say it, no, I'm not going back.'

‘But you've got to.'

‘No, I fucking haven't. I haven't
got
to do anything – I'm a goblin, we're shallow and self-centred. Also,' she added, ‘we're not bloody
heroes
.' She made the word sound faintly obscene. ‘Have you got the faintest idea where you've just been?'

Still Paul didn't move. ‘We can't just leave them there,' he said.

She scowled, and the beautiful girl turned into a goblin. Even the Porsche turned into a Lada, albeit a Lada convertible. ‘You ungrateful little shit,' she said. ‘For two pins I'd let you go back, only the portal's shut, so you can't. Where you've just been—' Her green skin paled to khaki. ‘I don't even like thinking about it, and I'm a fucking
goblin
. You can get in, or you can walk home. Doesn't matter to me.'

It occurred to Paul that he was being truly obnoxious. ‘Sorry,' he said. ‘And, um, thanks. It was really—'

‘Nice of me?' She leered at him. ‘Just enlightened self-interest, that's all. Because one of these days—'

Paul managed to keep the shudder from showing, and opened the car door, glancing swiftly at the fuel gauge as he did so. The old running-out-of-petrol-in-the-middle-ofnowhere trick was hardly subtle, but neither was she. ‘Thanks, anyway,' he said. Time to change the subject. ‘So where was that? That place.'

Mr Tanner's mum started the engine and drove off. ‘I guess it's something of an honour,' she said. ‘Not many people end up in the dungeons of the castle of Grendel's Aunt. And nobody gets out again, ever. Except you.'

‘Grendel's—?'

She nodded, and turned into a platinum blonde; probably absent-mindedness, though Paul knew she never gave up trying. ‘Like in
Beowulf
, yes. Grendel's mum's sister, the only one of the family that's left now, apart from a couple of distant cousins in Canada somewhere. Presumably she's got a name of her own, but everybody just calls her Grendel's Aunt. Must be really annoying for her.'

Quite
, Paul reflected; like being thought of as Mr Tanner's mum. ‘But how does she come into it? Why was Ricky Wurmtoter—?'

She shrugged. ‘Hero stuff, I suppose. Don't ask me. Maybe it's something to do with this stupid Fey civil war thing, or maybe it was just business. Nobody tells me anything, and I can't be arsed to find out. Now, how about stopping off somewhere for dinner? I know this really nice pub just outside Beaconsfield—'

‘No,' Paul said quickly. ‘Thanks,' he added. ‘But really, I'd just like to get home, if that's all right. I'm really tired, and—'

‘And you've got a headache coming on,' said Mr Tanner's mum. ‘Yeah, right. Why do I get the idea that you just don't trust me?'

‘Because I don't trust you,' Paul said. ‘Sorry.'

She grinned. ‘You're a fool to yourself, you,' she said. ‘But that's all right. When you get to my age, there's nothing gets the juices flowing like a challenge. Besides,' she added, ‘you could probably do with an early night. After all, you'll have to explain to our Dennis in the morning how you managed to lose a company car.'

‘Um.' Paul hadn't thought of that aspect of the matter. ‘He'll understand, though, won't he? I mean, compared with losing Benny and—'

She shook her head. ‘Where it costs the firm money, our Dennis never understands. If you're lucky, he'll just stop it out of your wages; in which case, you might be able to afford a cup of tea some time in the mid-2040s. Or he might get upset about it, you never know with our Dennis. Still, even that's better than being marooned in those dungeons.' She hesitated for a moment. ‘Yup,' she said, ‘on balance it's got to be better. Less cramped, for one thing.'

She was just kidding. Paul fervently hoped she was just kidding. Wasn't she? ‘It'll be all right,' he said firmly. ‘Once they go back and rescue Monika and Benny—'

‘Dream on,' Mr Tanner's mum said. ‘You're hopeless, you are. Probably why I like you,' she added, carelessly missing the gear lever with her hand and finding his knee instead. Paul yelped, and she let go. ‘A romantic, I think the word is. Latin for idiot. No wonder they reckoned you'd make a good hero.'

Paul looked out of the window. ‘That's not what Benny told me,' he said. ‘He told me they chose me because you can't be a hero if anybody'd miss you if you died.'

‘Is that what he said?' Mr Tanner's mum shrugged. ‘I suppose I can see the sense in that. Me, though, I always thought that a real hero's the sort of person who does all the risk-taking and sword-fighting and death-defying because he enjoys it. Part romantic, like you, and part borderline psychopath. Only,' she added, ‘your honest-to-God psycho enjoys killing 'cos he likes the blood or the screams or whatever, and that's not really the case with most of the heroes I've met; and I've met plenty, believe me. There's no real malice in them, no rage or anything like that. They just like the swirly capes and the white stallions and the jewel-hilted swords.'

‘Ah,' Paul said. ‘More in Zorro than in anger, you mean?'

Mr Tanner's mum sighed. ‘You want to walk back to London from here, you carry on. I'm trying to have a serious conversation.'

‘Sorry.'

‘I was trying to explain,' she went on, ‘why I don't think you're really cut out for the hero business; not as a vocation, I mean. But I think you could be up to doing hero-type things, if you absolutely had to. Just not in cold blood, nine to five-thirty, three weeks' holiday a year. I'm sorry I raised the subject, really.'

Paul was quiet for a while; then he said: ‘Benny also told me he knew something really bad. Something about my mum and dad, I think. But he didn't get around to it.'

Mr Tanner's mum frowned. ‘Lucky escape, then.'

‘But if it was something I ought to know—'

She pulled a face. ‘I know a bad thing about your parents. They had a moron for a son. Bloody hell, why would anybody
want
to hear something like that?'

‘Academic, really,' Paul replied. ‘If Benny's stuck in there for good, I guess I'll never know.'

‘Ignorance is bliss,' Mr Tanner's mum said sagely. ‘Actually, I can think of a
lot
of things that're bliss, and ignorance doesn't even make the top one hundred, or even the top one hundred that don't involve live animals and raspberry jelly. Anyhow, the point is, you can pretty well guarantee that you're better off not knowing. Trust me.'

That word again. ‘This civil war business,' he said, as casually as he could manage. ‘You wouldn't happen to know what it's about, would you?'

She laughed. ‘It's the Fey,' she said, ‘they don't need a reason. I'd stay well clear of them, if I were you. Stick to goblins; so maybe we kill a human or two once in a while, and hollow out their skulls for chamber pots. We don't mean anything by it. The Fey, though; it's different with them. It's always
spite
where they're concerned. Jealousy, and not liking that everyone else has got what they reckon they deserve. I heard someone say once that the Fey think insult and injury go together like balti and naan; the one's just not quite right without the other. They give me the creeps, if you want to know.' She shrugged. ‘Like it matters,' she said. ‘If the little fuckers want to have a war, bloody good luck to them, and I hope they wipe each other out.'

‘You don't like them much, then.'

‘Not a lot, no. But hey, there's worse things.'

Paul could believe that, though it wasn't a comforting thought. ‘I just wish,' he said wearily, ‘that I didn't have to get involved, that's all. I've got enough problems as it is— I don't need things like that in my life.'