Landslayer's Law (37 page)

“I know what you’re thinkin’,” Aikin dared, in defiance of David’s ban. “You’re wonderin’ whether this is Cal’s doing or LaWanda’s or Lugh’s.”

“I’d
prefer
it was natural,” David growled, downshifting as the Mustang found the first hairpin of the several that heralded the approach to Franks Gap. Once over that, he was home free—or in it.

“Feel better, don’t you?” Aikin persisted. “Now that somebody’s actually named what you fear.”

“What I wish,” David retorted, “is that Scott’d had more to say.”

Aikin rolled his eyes—barely visible in the Mustang’s mirror. “I told you what I knew—I mean, gimme a break, man, it’s not hard to remember four lines.
‘Aik! Thank God! Hell’s broke loose up here. I don’t know what good you can do, but get your ass up here. I’m at Dale’s. Something’s—’
And that was it. I never got to find out what
something
was ’cause the phone went out. Tried to call back and couldn’t get anybody. Called my folks in MacTyrie, just to see if it was all over up there, or only at the Cove. Couldn’t get them either.”

“All of which we knew,” Alec remarked. “All of which you’re repeating just to hear your head rattle.”

Aikin bared his teeth at him and retreated to the seat’s farthest corner. David was sorry for him—he was generally a quiet, unassuming guy. Easy to underestimate. He only ran on at the mouth when he was nervous. He only repeated himself when he was scared out of his skin.

The road steepened. Water slid across his lane in thick black runnels, but the sky ahead showed the first hints of a dull and soggy dawn. More rock flashed by to the right, and he glimpsed the gleam of headlights in his mirror. Good: Myra had caught up again, and was soldiering right along in her new minivan. And with her were Piper, Brock, and Fionchadd.

That last still freaked him too. The decision to head north immediately, in response to Scott’s summons, had not been difficult, but posed certain problems nonetheless, principal among them being the fact that Fionchadd still wore the substance of Faerie, which would render it impossible for him to ride in a car.

Trouble was, his assorted exertions of the last few days, plus his loss of blood—and attendant Power—during his mysterious friend’s arrow-ploy, had left him—he admitted under pressure—very weak indeed, and certainly frail for his kind. Clearly too weak to face what he might encounter should he brave the Tracks again and return to Tir-Nan-Og. He had enough strength left to change substance, but that was all. Until he could rest for a time, he was scarcely more powerful than an ordinary human, and that both galled him and frightened him half to death. “I do not wish to be weak among mortals,” he’d confided to David. That he’d risked that handicap anyway was proof of how fried he was. Or how loyal. Nuada, David recalled, had told the Faery youth to guard them with his life. He hoped Finno didn’t take that pledge too literally.

A sudden pitiful yowl from the back seat made David jump—and almost wreck the car in the process, as a reflexive tug on the wheel set the back wheels sliding for the shoulder. Another tortured scream ensued, and though David recognized the source, it still chilled him to the bone. No creature should sound like that, mortal
or
Faery.

“Sorry,” Alec murmured. “That’s why I was asking about the time. It’s, like, dawn; and you know what happens then. And we’re in a car—”

David bit his lip—hard. “Yeah, I know,” he acknowledged, “but we don’t have time to stop so she can get out, and there’s nowhere
to
stop anyway, for—
What the hell?”

Something had just struck his neck, where it rose above the seatback. And close on that initial impact came teeth and claws, as a suddenly panicked Aife sought to claw her way out of the car by the straightest route, which lay through David’s head.

He braked frantically—stupidly, part of him advised—but managed to navigate the latest switchback, just as the enfield—for so she mostly was now—scratched/kicked/pushed her way into the space between his left shoulder, the window, and the armrest. And lodged there, screaming like she was being skinned alive. David tried to extract her with his nonsteering hand, but got raked raw for his trouble, and swore vividly when a second attempt got him raked again. “Aife, fuck it—!” he spat, as he tried to subdue her. “Alec, can’t you get your effing—”

“Stuck,” Alec and Aikin chorused as one.

“Damn!”

David had almost got the car stopped by then, and still had sufficient presence of mind to pray that Myra would see his erratic driving and slow herself. Being rear-ended by a Caravan with a carload of friends on the way to a World-shaking emergency on a rainy night was not his idea of a gay old time.

Fortunately, the enfield had untangled herself.

If only she’d calm down! David grabbed for her again—only to find her in his lap and questing for his throat with a mouthful of teeth that were really quite alarming viewed at such intimate range. He snatched clumsily for her muzzle, missed, and got vague impressions of three sets of hands not his own flapping every which way around his chest and head, and then something grabbed his neck and tugged.

Not his
neck,
he corrected an instant later: the medallion that hung around his neck: the one Brock had given him. “God, Davy, don’t let her—” Liz shrieked.

But it was too late. With a surprisingly audible
ping
the chain parted beneath David’s ponytail, and with a sort of gagging gulp, the enfield swallowed the attached iron disc. Liz managed to drag the chain free of the jaws, but nothing any longer dangled from it.

By which time David had got the car halted, and the enfield was docile once more.

“Sorry, man! Oh, man, I am so sorry!” Alec wailed, as he reached around to retrieve his pet. “Oh, Jesus, man—”

“Never mind,” David grunted, as he put the car in first and started off again—slowly, since it was raining harder yet. “God, what got into her?”

“Steel around her,” Aikin opined.

David rubbed his throat with his less-injured hand. “Yeah, well, if steel freaks her so much, why’d she swallow my medal?”

“Blind reflex?” Alec offered. “Panic? I dunno. I mean, if she’d wanted to swallow it, she could’ve done it back on the boat. ’Least she’s in the substance of this World; otherwise we’d
really
be in deep shit.”

David didn’t reply, and neither did anyone else, and two minutes later they crested Franks Gap and entered Enotah County. By the time they were halfway down the mountain, Aife was calmly grooming her cat-self as though nothing untoward had occurred.

Sullivan Cove was essentially underwater, and all that in only five days’ time. David’s heart sank as he swung the Mustang onto the long straight that unwound through his folks’ front-forty. A high bank reared above and to the left. Somewhere up there was where he’d first seen the Sidhe on that long-ago summer night. And the cornpatch was up ahead, filling bottomland to left and right—and easily knee-deep in water. The creek was out as well (no surprise), but had not yet invaded the road, and the new culvert seemed likely to remain in place. Which was fortunate, because he had to cross it to enter Sullivan Cove.

More desolation greeted him there. His folks’ drive was a virtual river of mud, and the sorghum patch across the way looked even worse than the cornfield. If this kept up, Lugh would have his way. Unless—awful thought—Lugh really had jumped the gun and was drowning the cove already.

“Cal better
hope
this isn’t his,” David grumbled, as he accelerated past his ancestral home—Big Billy was a famous earlier riser, and it’d be just like him to glance down the hill on his way to the morning chores. As if in reply, water splashed the windshield—muddy water this time, through which he could barely see. A glimmer of headlights showed that Myra had made the turn behind him.

A quarter mile later, they met the wind. It almost stopped the Mustang in its tracks, it was blowing so hard; driving sheets of rain into the windshield like rack after rack of wicked, steel-edged knives. David half expected to see the paint stripped right off, never mind the howling that filled his ears: thunder—and air forced in odd directions with far more fury than was—or could be—normal. Scott had been right: all hell had broken loose, and
that
call had come nearly three hours earlier.

So David was forced to creep along at a nerve-wracking crawl, through ruts that hadn’t been present the last time he’d been that way, through places where he flat out couldn’t see
at all
and had to rely on faith alone. Once through a patch of water so high the alternator light awoke and flickered ominously. A trip into neutral and lots of gas solved that, and first gear put them back on higher ground before the car completely drowned out. A check—risky—out the window showed the sorghum bent absolutely over like medieval supplicants, and the pines up on the ridge curved like ranks of drawn bows. Even as he watched, one broke. He started at that—and jumped again, as he wrenched the wheel to avoid an oak limb that crashed into the road ahead.

Somehow, far too many minutes later, they splashed into the wide muddy torrent that might’ve been Dale Sullivan’s drive.

Dale’s pickup was there; so was Scott’s old Monarch (evidence there of at least one run to Athens), Calvin’s BMW bike, and Sandy’s muddy Explorer—LaWanda’s suspect Pinto was still where she’d left it: back at Aikin’s place in Athens.

Lights were on at both the house and the trailer, dim in both places too, which implied a power-outage being staved off with kerosene lamps.

David parked as close to the house as he could, and told his friends to stay put while he reconnoitered. Without waiting for reply, he forced the car door open—even here, with the house to break the wind’s full fury, he had to exert a fair bit of muscle—and almost fell, so fierce was the force brought to bear there. A cracking pop behind him made him jump nigh out of his skin for the ten-millionth time that day. But it was only the cedars in the yard, whipping about like rags from some giants’ washing.

He had to use the back steps because the fronts no longer existed, and was more than a little disappointed—as well as being soaked to the skin—to find the place deserted. A quick search produced a note, however. It was Scott’s hand, and very shaky, and simply read,
“Couldn’t stand not knowing any longer. Gone to the lake to check out the lay of the land (sic). Join us there if you find this.”
There was a time notation too: fifteen minutes prior.

A further inspection showed sign of recent habitation, a number of troublesome leaks, something truly appalling in the bathtub, and no sign of Uncle Dale, except for a pot of coffee still warm on a hearth that showed less fire than embers.

David thought of checking the trailer, but a dozen steps up the hill proved the error of that idea, when he slipped and sprawled on all fours in the mud. He was thoroughly soaked—but no longer muddy: the rain came down that hard—when he staggered into the side of the Mustang over a minute later.

Blessedly, he’d had the sense to leave it running, and more blessedly, Myra’d had the sense to remain in her own vehicle as well, but he motioned to her anyway: pointing toward the lake over and over until the shadow-shape in the driver’s seat gave him a thumbs-up and nodded.

Back in the car again, he dabbed at his face with the towel Liz handed him, then reversed out of the drive.

If the first part of the cove had been bad, this last half mile was ten times worse, and he actually had to creep along at slow walking speed to make any progress at all. The road was more water than land now, and most of that land was jagged rocks washed free of gravel: rocks that could do a major number on an unsuspecting Mustang oil pan.

Lightning seared his eyes. Another flash followed in its wake. Another. He had to halt entirely until his vision cleared, and even then could only inch forward, plagued with afterimages. One more curve and they should be there—almost.

More lightning, but they made that turn, and the land opened out before them, and for the first time, they could see Bloody Bald.

See where it was, anyway, for the entire horizon was smoky-dark with roiling clouds, fractured with jagged silver lightning. The world went black, then white, then black again, limning the mountain in eerie high relief, before shrouding it utterly. For an instant David thought a Hole was actually burning through there, for the effect was not unlike that which accompanied them. But then he recalled that Holes were born of his World—more to the point, of concentrations of iron in his World—and that, for the moment, he hoped, they were still in their own place.

No one spoke. Even Aife had fallen silent. The rains came harder yet, and with them, likewise, the wind, which actually shook the car, though it was heavily laden. More lightning, too: flash after flash. David could scarcely see to drive, and yet he pressed slowly onward.

But then something dark loomed ahead, even as the land opened out at the turnaround that marked the southern arc of BA Beach, and they were there. “Town Car,” Alec noted.

David eased in close beside the big sedan, and was relieved to see Myra flanking it on the other. When their front doors were side by side and no more than six inches apart, Liz rolled down the window. The adjoining one likewise whirred down, to reveal a wild-eyed Calvin at the wheel, with everyone else accounted for. “So what’s the deal?” David yelled across Liz’s lap.

In reply, Calvin merely pointed. His face was tight with fear.

“Jesus!” Aikin whispered behind him.

Something new was happening—something besides wind and rain and lightning; besides things that had no color at all of themselves, and washed away all other color save those that arrived with the grim and faded dawn.

This was yellow. Pale at first, and then gaining intensity and strength and going gold. A line—a flickering line, true, but real—blazing to life above the waters of the lake.

“A Track,” Aikin breathed. “Oh, Jesus!”

“There’s no Track there,” David protested.

“Oh yes there is—now!” Liz retorted. “But— Oh, my God, it’s…it just flared once, and now it’s gone!”