MORTAL COILS (79 page)

Eliot
played faster, and his fingers moved over blurred strings until they were
blurs, too.

He
operated on instinct, feeling the musical notes, then seeing them in his mind
as they had been on the pavement.

The
song became a wild thing he barely contained.

Around
him the air moved in gusts—this way and that. Sand stung his face. Clouds
obscured the moonlight. He smelled the ocean and seaweed and heard cries in the
dark that were not human voices.

And
in the back of his mind was the singing:

   
Running through life chasing dreams. Nothing’s ever what it seems. Meaning lost
and never found. Damned souls wander round and round.

The
violin’s vibrations layered upon themselves and echoes hung in the thickening
air. It sounded as if an entire row of violins accompanied Eliot, all playing
furiously.

He
saw the next section of the symphony in his thoughts. It was more complex. The
finger positioning stretched to impossible lengths.

And
the melody turned darker: a weave of shadow and pain.

He
wouldn’t play it; it scared him.

This
would have to do.

He
stopped . . . or rather he tried to stop. The music had a mind of its own,
though, and he continued to play; minor keys and deeper notes that dragged his
fingers along.

This
wasn’t the way it was supposed to work. He was the player. Not the instrument.

He
fought, stiffening his fingers, pressing harder to make them hold fast.

Lady
Dawn flexed as pressure built within her body. Eliot felt tiny cracklings
within the wood.

He
pressed harder, though. He had to be in control.

A
string snapped and cut his finger.

Eliot
immediately pulled the violin off his shoulder. He stuck his index finger into
his mouth to suck the blood.

Fiona
moved closer to him and whispered, “What have you done?”

Enveloping
them was fog and swirling sand suspended in the air and shimmering with
moonlight.

It
wasn’t a cloud. Layers were moving over layers. When Eliot tilted his head, he
saw passages through the mists . . . like the mirror maze they had run through
at the carnival. Only these walls undulated, pulled apart, and closed again.

“There
were words that went with the symphony,” he whispered back to her. “They talk
about wandering forever . . . through this stuff, I think.”

“Nice
going,” she hissed back. “I asked for a little cover to hide in. Not something
that would get us stuck, too.”

Lights
appeared in the silent storm: indistinct blobs of color, what might have been
headlights—several of which moved toward them. Men called out to one another,
obviously lost in the stuff.

“They’re
close,” Fiona whispered, “but I don’t think they can see us.”

Eliot
squinted at the vapors. He thought he saw the outline of someone . . . but it
twisted, becoming bones and a grinning skull that peered back.

60

He
blinked, but the image didn’t vanish in a puff of smoke as he’d hoped it would.
Instead more things appeared in the mist: claws and eyes and one large moving
silhouette that might have been the shadow of some great extinct dinosaur.

Eliot
was scared, terrified, actually . . . but somehow he forced himself to think.

This
was only water vapor and dust. They could plow right through the stuff—Eliot
was sure of that. But he was also sure that he could hear distant screams. Real
screams.

Stepping
into the stuff would be easy. It was getting out once inside that he wasn’t
certain about.

But
he had made this. He should be able to unmake it, too.

He
slid a fingernail along Lady Dawn’s remaining strings, producing a scratchy
sound. A slender passage parted before them, the mist on either side boiling.

“This
way,” he said, and walked ahead of Fiona.

As
in the fun-house maze, Eliot kept his eyes on the ground, only looking up when
absolutely necessary. Fiona stayed on his heels.

They
emerged on top of a low hill. Behind them was a sea of mist, rippling under the
moonlight and lapping at the hillside. In the middle of this he saw flashing
lights and heard distant gunshots.

“What’s
happening back in there?” Fiona asked. “I thought I saw . . . things.”

It
had been a long time since Eliot had seen his sister scared, but she looked
scared now.

“I
don’t know,” Eliot admitted. “Something tried to take over my music. I fought
it, but not before . . . I don’t know . . . not before I brought it all here.”

He
hoped it was just a smoke-and-mirrors trick. That no one was getting hurt
inside the fog he’d conjured.

60.
“Conjure thrice-damned sea of mists. Be upon sand or fjord or pasture pristine.
Evil’s taint come to thee. Spirits lost only vengeance find.” From “Contritions
of the Rose-Mired Witch,” in Father Sildas Pious, Mythica Improbiba (translated
version), c. thirteenth century.

But
he wasn’t about to go back inside to find out.

Fiona
chewed her lower lip. “Okay, maybe you better not do that again. How’s your
finger?”

It
was a simple cut, deep, but not bleeding. It hurt like crazy as Eliot flexed
it, though. “I’ll live.”

Ahead
of them lay the outer boundary of the air force base. A double fence was topped
with concertina wire. Guard towers stood ominously along the perimeter. Beyond
were buildings and aircraft hangars. Jeeps and Humvees raced out the front gate,
but none moved in their direction.

“I
think I can get us in from here,” Fiona said. “Cutting through the
fence—that’ll be easy, but it might set off alarms.” She glanced back at the
fog. “On the other hand, we can take advantage of the confusion while it
lasts.”

A
small sun appeared in the sky, directly overhead.

Whirlwinds
materialized around Eliot and Fiona, pelting them with sand.

Eliot
looked up, shielding his eyes with both hands from an intense halogen
spotlight.

In
the center of the glare a dark helicopter hovered in silence. Silhouetted men
dropped from it, looking like tiny spiders on silken lines.

“Hold
your position,” boomed a voice over a loudspeaker. “Or we will open fire! Get
on your knees. Hands on your head.”

62

THE
FIRST MORAL CHOICE OF ELIOT POST

Eliot
felt terrible. He and Fiona had failed the third trial. Fiona would be dead
soon. Eliot, too, probably after the Council got done with him. He couldn’t
imagine how things could get any worse.

He
sat in a small room with green walls. His right hand was handcuffed to a steel
table. A large mirror faced him on the opposite wall.

Sitting
next to him was an air force doctor, called Miller. He had sandy hair and laugh
lines radiating from the corners of his eyes.

“Lucky
I got to this,” Miller told him without looking up. “See this red line
spreading up from your finger? That’s a heck of an infection.”

It
couldn’t be an infection; at least no infection Eliot knew of could spread that
far in a matter of minutes.

“Yeah,
I’m lucky,” Eliot replied, his sarcasm barely contained.

He
had been grabbed by military police, zip-tied, hooded, then separated from
Fiona—photographed, fingerprinted, and brought to this place.

While
Eliot had waited in a jail cell for someone to come get him, his finger and
hand swelled. After a minute, a red line had appeared, moving up the cephalic
vein in his arm.

Lady
Dawn’s snapped string had cut his finger. It had only been a tiny wound. Eliot
could’ve kicked himself for sticking his finger into his mouth; that was
probably how this started.

He’d
immediately been moved into this room, and Dr. Miller had come. He’d swabbed
the cut, drawn blood, and injected Eliot with antibiotics and tetanus boosters.

None
of it seemed to be working, though. The red line kept moving higher—almost to
the elbow now.

Eliot
had read Marcellus Masters’s Practical First Aid and Surgical Guide cover to
cover, so he knew infections like this could turn deadly. But severe infections
usually had other symptoms.

“Do
you think it’s septicemia?” Eliot asked Dr. Miller.

Miller
looked up and one eyebrow quirked. “No.” He smiled. “You don’t have any fever.”
He looked back at Eliot’s arm and his smile vanished.

“Bacteremia
then? Or cellulitis?”

Miller
shook his head, then blinked and gave Eliot a funny look. It wasn’t the first
time an adult had been surprised by his vocabulary. “We’re going to get you to
the base hospital. You can ride with the young lady you came in with.”

Fiona
was going to the hospital, too? Was she sick again?

The
door to the tiny room unlocked, opened, and another man entered. His name tag
read freeman.

He
looked angry; his features bunched about two tiny black eyes. He could’ve given
Grandmother a good match in a staring contest. He wore the double-bar insignia
of a captain.

Freeman
set a plastic bag marked evidence on the table. Inside wrapped in individual
plastic bags were Eliot’s pack, his flashlight, and, swaddled in bubble wrap,
his violin and bow.

Eliot
wanted to reach out and touch Lady Dawn, but he resisted that impulse.

“How
is he?” Freeman asked Miller.

“He’ll
be fine. I want to get them both checked into the hospital . . . just in case.”
Miller gave Freeman a tiny shake of his head.

“The
girl?”

“Tox
screen was negative. Can’t keep her blood pressure up, though. Ambulance is on
its way. There have been delays. Busy night.”

Freeman
grunted and then finally looked at Eliot as if just seeing him for the first
time. “You’re staring at me, young man. Do I look funny to you?”

“No,
sir.”

Eliot
started to look away, but he realized that’s what Freeman wanted. It’s what a
“good little boy” would do. This was a contest of wills, and if Eliot dropped
his gaze, he’d be admitting Freeman had the power here.

So
Eliot kept staring and did his best imitation of Robert Farmington, easing back
in his chair.

Freeman
pursed his lips. “Go ahead and play the tough guy. We don’t need you. The girl
told us everything.”

The
coolness drained from Eliot and he sat up straight.

“After
you’re checked out at the infirmary,” Freeman told him, “you’ll be taking a
long bus ride to Nellis Federal Prison Camp.”

Eliot’s
composure crumpled; he opened his mouth to tell Freeman that he and Fiona
hadn’t meant any harm, but they just needed one thing, and that they . . .

But
he stopped himself. Shut his mouth.