Rudolph! (25 page)

"These ones do," Henrik said.

"Do what?" Franklin said. His face was getting flushed, and the color was rising all the way to the top of his shaved head.

"Talk," Henrik said. "I heard them."

"There are no reindeer," Franklin said, his voice becoming calm again. "You're just imagining it. We're really close here. I just need a few more minutes with Rosewood. Okay? Can you hold it together for a few more minutes?" He held out his hand. "Give me the gun. We'll go outside and talk. This'll all be over soon."

There was a glint in his eye that I didn't like. Franklin had done dinner theater. There wasn't going to be any talking.

Henrik wasn't fooled either. "Stay away from me," he said, pointing the gun at Franklin. The tip of the barrel wiggled slightly, but otherwise the pistol was steady.

Something banged against the closed door, rattling it in its frame, and Henrik flinched. The gun went off, noisy in the small room, and Franklin was shoved up against the wall. He clutched at his left shoulder, blood running over his fingers.

"Oh," Henrik said. "Oh, dear. Oh, dear." He lowered the gun and appeared to be on the verge of tears. "Oh, Franklin. I'm sorry. This isn't—I didn't mean to—"

Howling, Franklin launched himself from the wall, his bloody hand reaching for Henrik and the gun. Henrik started to raise the gun again, but Franklin slammed into him, and they went to the floor. Something hit the door again, but neither man paid it any attention. They kicked and clawed at one another, rolling back and forth on the ground. Even though I had the best seat in the house, I couldn't tell who was winning.

The two men bumped into me, and I tried kicking, but the ropes around my legs didn't provide much range of movement. Henrik reared up, his hand still on the gun, and Franklin followed, clawing at the choreographer's arm. They slammed into me, and I squeaked as they knocked my chair over. My shoulder hurt as I hit the floor, but I managed to keep my head from smacking the concrete.

The gun went off again, and I froze. They were behind me now, and I held my breath for a second, waiting to feel something. Waiting to find out if the bullet had hit me.

The door cracked, a large splinter of wood breaking off and falling to the floor.

I heard someone moving behind me, and I tried to scoot myself toward the half-broken door. Someone grabbed the back of the chair, halting my incremental progress. I looked over my shoulder, and saw the face of the musical's leading man. There was blood on his face and neck. "The code," he coughed. "Give me the access code."

With a lot of effort, he hauled himself around the chair and slumped against me, his head nearly in my lap. I couldn't squirm away; his weight was holding me in place. He had the pistol, and the tip of the barrel dragged across the floor as he struggled to lift the gun. I could only watch as his arm quivered with the effort.

"Thou . . ." His teeth were clenched, and his head was shining with sweat. "Thou are slain," he said. The pistol barrel lifted slowly. "No medicine in the world can do thee good—"

The door shattered, and a tall, antlered figure bounded into the room. The reindeer was lanky and had a splotch of white fur on his flank that looked like the imprint of a hand.

Franklin raised his head, gasped half a word, and then collapsed. The pistol slipped from his hand and clattered against the floor.

The reindeer skipped to a stop and bent his head to look sideways at me. "Wow," he said, examining the room. "What happened here?"

"Too much Shakespeare," I said, and only then did I pass out.

December 9th

I
woke in a hospital bed. My eyes felt like they had been stapled shut,
ripped open, and then stapled shut again. My mouth was moist for a change, and there was a distinct tang of iron riding on the back of my tongue. I lifted my head carefully and wiggled my toes. The heavy sheet moved slightly at the other end of the bed.

I was in a private room. There was a half-open door on my left that led to a closet-sized bathroom, another door just behind, and on my right there was a small desk tucked under a large set of curtains. On the desk were several vases filled with colorful flowers. I couldn't tell if there were any cards.

There was an IV in my arm, and a cuff on my finger was keeping track of all the important stuff going on inside: oxygen content, blood flow, heart rate. I squinted up at the plastic bag hanging at the head of the bed. They were dripping me full of saline and nutrients.

I was alive then, which is more than could be said of some.

That had been Ring at the end, just before I passed out. I hadn't recognized him at first. He looked like a real reindeer now, but he still had the scar from Satan's burn. The fur had grown back, but it was white.

Little Ring. All grown up.

That made me sad for some reason, and when the door opened a few minutes later and a nurse came in, I hastily swiped at my cheeks.

"Good morning," she said cheerfully. "How are we doing today?" She bustled about the bed, checking the drip, fluffing the pillow behind my head, retucking the blanket in at the foot of the bed. She was a little whirlwind of efficiency. "Are you hungry?" she asked. "Do you need to make a bowel movement?"

The proximity of those two questions confounded me for a minute, and she hurried on with her litany of questions. "Do you have dry mouth? How's your bladder feeling? Would you like oatmeal or fruit? Or both? Are you feeling nauseated?"

I thought about just saying
yes
once and letting her figure out which question I was answering.

"How about some sunlight?" she continued. "Shall we see how beautiful a day it is going to be?" She bustled over to the curtains and yanked on the string. The curtains opened in a rush, flooding the room with sunlight, and the nurse shrieked.

At first, I thought that she—like me—had had her eyeballs scorched out by the sudden light, but when I could see again, I realized she was reacting to the pair of reindeer parked on the narrow ledge outside the window. Their fur was matted and wet, and they did not look amused. The one wearing the black librarian glasses tapped on the widow with a hoof.

"Open the window," he said, his voice muted by the glass.

The nurse was half on the bed. Half on my leg too. "Wh—wh—what are they?" she stuttered.

"Reindeer," I said. I extricated my leg and sat up. I was a little light-headed, and the sunlight was giving me a headache, but everything else seemed to be working correctly. The IV tried to tangle itself around me as I got out of bed, but I managed to escape its coil. My knees were a little wobbly, and I was slightly out of breath by the time I figured out how the window latch worked.

It was so nice to breath cold winter air.

"Morning," Ring said, nodding at the still-stunned nurse. "Sorry to surprise you." He tilted his head and tapped an antler tip against the wire screen separating him from me. "Does this come out?" he asked.

I glanced at the corners, trying to figure out how the screen was attached. "Not exact—"

He twitched his head, spearing a couple of antler tips through the wire and yanked the whole screen off. "Come on," he said. "We've been waiting all night."

"Wait, what? Waiting? Why?"

Blitzen shuffled around on the ledge. One of his hooves slipped free as he tried to turn around on the narrow beam. "We're cramped and tired, Bernie. Can you ask questions later? We've got work to do still."

"The show?" I asked.

"Later," Ring said. "We've got more important things to do first."

I stared at the IV in the back of my hand, and with a minimum of fuss, I yanked the needle out. The nurse made a noise like a fish surfacing for water bugs when I slipped off the finger cuff, and the monitor over the bed started making funny noises.

"What things?" I asked.

"California," Ring said.

"What's in California?" I asked.

Blitzen clued me in. "Rudolph. They're going to scramble him."

They
were the Psychiatric Board of the Beverly Hills Sanitarium. Actually, the tasteful sign out front said
The Beverly Hills Bed and Breakfast
, and it was a lovely estate up on Coldwater Canyon with a rambling house tucked away behind a high wall and several thick rows of aspen and poplar trees. On the inside, though, word was it was all padded rooms, rubber sheets, and straitjackets.

"Why is he here?" I asked, munching on a drumstick.

We were sequestered on the roof of a house up the road that offered a fairly unobstructed view of the lush lawn at the back of the BHBB house. The reindeer had gotten take-out from Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles, which was much better than oatmeal or fruit in a cup, thank you very much.

"They've got one of the best anger management programs in the world," Blitzen explained. "And they do pet treatments."

"Pets," I said. "Like pets of the stars?"

He nodded. Beyond him, Ring gobbled down a whole waffle in two bites. The way the kid was eating, he was going to be bigger than Donner.

"Cats are always angry," Blitzen said.

"So what do they do?" I asked, curious in spite of myself. "To the pets."

"Behavioral modification," Blizten said. "Chemical therapies. In some cases, aversion training."

"Aversion training? Is that what I think it is?"

"Shock therapy?" Blitzen nodded. "Yep."

I saw movement in the yard at the BHBB and raised the binoculars that Blitzen had brought along. I zoomed in, and my heart skipped in my chest as I focused on the four-legged shape of a wobbly reindeer. "He's there," I said. I watched him shy away from the shadow of a palm tree. "He's doped up. Really badly." There was dried drool flecking Rudolph's chin.

Blitzen had laid the story out for me on the flight down. Rudolph had returned to the Pole with Santa and had submitted to the NPC's decree of anger management sessions. At first, it had only been outpatient appointments at Cedar Sinai, and Rudolph was supposed to check in four times a week. He lasted three sessions before he wrecked the office and tossed his therapist out the window, which unfortunately only proved the point everyone was worried about.

Someone in the NPC suggested a rather permanent solution to the problem, which had not gone over very well with Santa and Mrs. C, and the NPC backed down quickly, realizing they had overstepped themselves. A compromise was reached before Rudolph found out about the closed-door meeting, and he checked in at the BHBB. A week passed, and the only reports coming out of the BHBB were that Rudolph was responding well to the treatments.

Mrs. C didn't buy it. It was all too pat. Something was off, and she only got more concerned when she tried to contact me, and I didn't answer. She called up some of the team—Ring and Blitzen flew to Seattle, and Donner and Cupid headed for LA. I was already in the basement by then, and Donner and Cupid found Rudolph so doped up he didn't recognize his flight buddies.

The quartet was under strict orders to do what needed to be done. If they reported back to Mrs. C, it was likely the NPC would find out and everything would grind to a complete halt. There would be calls for meetings and committee studies. Santa would probably threaten to quit. He might even do it publicly, which would be an epic PR disaster, which meant the NPC would gag him as soon as possible if they got any wind that he was thinking of stomping off. No, it was easier if the reindeer solved the problem all on their own.

But they knew they needed help, and so finding me had been the priority. And while they had been tracking me down, Cupid found out that the Board at the BHBB had decided to scramble Rudolph's brain the old fashioned way.

The procedure was scheduled for tomorrow morning, which was why we were doing recon and carbing up. It was going to be a busy night.

We came in through the veranda. Some of the more tractable patients were having dinner at wicker tables, sitting out beneath heat lamps and canvas umbrellas. We dropped from the dark sky like meteors, landing on the grass, and tromping through the beds of daisies that ringed the patio. A white-jacketed employee tried to stop us, but Donner scooped him aside with a simple flip of his rack. Blitzen bit down on the tie of the first doctor we found and dragged him along as we went room to room until we found Rudolph.

Blitzen spat out the mouthful of silk tie, and the doctor sagged to his knees, struggling to breathe. "Get the door open," I said to the others, while I stared daggers at the cringing doctor.

It took Cupid and Donner less than ten seconds to break down the door. Rudolph was on the far side of the room, staring up at the night sky through the tiny window set high above the floor. "Hello," he said, his voice a drugged slur. "Is it time for my bath yet?"

"What's he on?" Blitzen snapped at the doctor.

The man loosened his tie. "I . . . I don't know. He's not my patient."

"Wrong answer." Blitzen stamped his hoof. "Try again."

Ring was reading the clipboard attached to the wall. "What's REBT?" he asked.

I glared at the doctor, who pretended not to know.

"Rational emotive behavior therapy," Blitzen supplied.

"Can I see that chart?" I asked Ring, who grabbed the board with his teeth and brought it over

Rudolph was busy sniffing Donner's flank. The bulky reindeer was a little uncomfortable with the attention, but he held his ground as Rudolph explored with his flat nose. Cupid was back in the hall, moving towards a point position.

I checked Rudolph's chart, trying to decipher the cryptic handwriting. "Let's see . . . Lodopin. Zyprexa. Serdolect. Haldol. Thorazine. Wow, that's a lot of anti-psychotics."

"That's a lot of reindeer," the doctor pointed out. Ring clipped him on the shin.

I kept reading. "Prozac and Darvoset in the morning, and a mega dose of Wellbutrin in the afternoon. To keep him
docile
." I added the emphasis.

"He's definitely docile," Donner noted as Rudolph started licking his ear.

"Can he fly?" I asked.

"Definitely not—hey!" Blitzen broke off as the doctor made a run for it. Ring darted after him, but the man made it to the end of the hall and slammed the door shut behind him.

"Let him go," I said. "We got what we came for."

"Sort of," Blizten said. "We're going to have to wait for all of those chemicals to wear off. It could take hours. Maybe a day or two."

"We haven't got a day or two," I pointed out. "Can't we shoot him full of amphetamines or something?"

"You're welcome to try," Blitzen said. "But I don't want to be anywhere near him when you do."

"Why?"

He nodded toward Rudolph who was drooping on Donner like a soft watch. "How much are you going to give him? Too little, and you'll want to try again. Too much, and it'll probably make his brain explode."

"Good point," I said, thinking about the last time I had drugged Rudolph. I had been hoping to keep him knocked out well past midnight, but he had woken up nearly early enough to spoil things.

"What if we burn it out of him?" Cupid asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Things catch on fire when he glows, right? That means he's hot on the inside too. All we have to do is make him, you know . . ." Cupid trailed off.

"Angry?" I supplied.

Blizten stared at him. Hard. Cupid shrugged his shoulders in response. "You got a better idea?"

Blitzen swiveled his head to look at me.

"I suppose he's right," I said. "It can't hurt to try. What's the worst that could happen?"

Blitzen didn't even bother to answer that question.

"What about that thing in Seattle?" Ring asked. "You know. The one you're working on. With the singing and dancing."