Summoned to Tourney (30 page)

He blushed. “Well, yes.”

“It sure beats watching Elizabet go back into that place,” the kid said, apparently thinking out loud. “I don’t want her to go back there, ever. Not after…” Her voice wavered a little. “Not after what those bastards did to Bethany Kentraine. I don’t want to risk that happening to Elizabet.”

He licked dry lips and considered the other half of the unlikely pairing. “You two go really far back, don’t you?”

Kayla gave him a little half-smile. “She saved my life, and then gave me a real life, off the streets. And a future. I’m not going to let some monster outtake from the movie
Aliens
play with her mind, no way.” She rubbed her hands together. “So, Bard, what’s the plan? Go there ahead of the crowd tomorrow, beat the rush?”

“Yeah, we’d have to. Probably leave here in the middle of the morning, so we don’t have to fight the traffic, too.”

“Good plan, good plan.” Kayla stretched again, and stood up. “I probably should go get some sleep, if we’re going to do this tomorrow for sure. G’night, Bard.”

One moment an ancient, the next moment a kid. “Good night, Kayla.”

The kid left the room. Eric turned back to the window and the view of the street beyond.
It could work, he thought. It could work, and I wouldn’t have to watch Beth and Kory die, like in my nightmare
.

He much preferred risking only his own life, not others. Though taking a seventeen-year-old kid along was an idea that still made him twitch… he needed her, though. If only to make sure that he didn’t go nuts and kill off most of the city.

He could feel them in the back corners of his mind, a shadow of drifting blackness. The faint whispering, the voices calling to him…

:Do you hear us, Bard?:

:Go to hell,:
he thought at them.
:Get lost. Get out of my brain. Take a hike.:
He mentally pushed them away, with about as much success as someone trying to push a shadow with their hands. The whispering drew closer, echoing in his mind. He shoved at them again, feeling the creatures drift through his mental hands again.

Then, annoyed, he closed his eyes and called light, surrounding and filling himself with incandescent illumination. The world seemed to explode with light, searing the inside of his eyelids. It was too bright to see, but still he increased the light, filling his thoughts with it, pouring it into every corner of his mind. “Chew on that, scum,” he whispered to himself, hoping it would work. If it didn’t, he’d probably have to get used to having this evil Greek Chorus lurking in his brain—an awful thought, that. He crossed his fingers and held onto that image of pure light within his mind.

The whispering Nightflyers scattered with a strange skittering noise, vanishing off… somewhere, he didn’t know where. But they were gone, which was a relief. He grinned, feeling a little more confident for the first time in days.

Still smiling, he headed downstairs to join the others.

Kayla rolled over on the sofa bed, pulling the blanket tighter over her to ward off the chill of the attic room. Sleep was a great idea, but somehow it didn’t seem to be in the cards, at least not for tonight. Too many thoughts, plans, running through her mind… too many memories.

Hey, I already saw a war…

No magic in that war, not like this—no elves in bright armor, no Wiccans, no cheerful Bard Eric with a simmering magical presence that she could sense from miles away. None of that magical stuff, just a darkened room in Los Angeles with half a dozen dying boys lying on the torn mattresses and the bare floor…

I don’t want to think about this, I don’t…

The smell of blood as she worked, trying to save one boy’s life, then another… the colors of pain and terror, knowing that if she failed, she’d probably die as well… Carlos standing in the doorway, watching her with that terrifying cold gaze of his, watching as she tried to work harder and faster, as everything blurred around her and she couldn’t stop, couldn’t escape from the pain, feeling her own life fading away with each passing moment…

Don’t think about it, don’t torture yourself It’s over, you survived, it won’t happen again
.

Unless she lost control again. What if they went into the Labs tomorrow and all hell broke loose? She wasn’t worried about catching a bullet her self—there were ways to avoid that, if you knew the bullet was coming— but she envisioned a hallway of wounded people, herself moving from person to person, caught up again in that nightmare of not being able to stop, not being able to disengage, to pull herself back and keep a little life energy for herself, watching her own life drain away into the bodies of those she healed.

She thought about warning Eric, telling him that this could happen. That she didn’t know any way of stopping it, once it started, unless someone else intervened. The first time, the intervention had been because Ramon didn’t know not to touch her when she was working, and that had cast her out of the endless cycle, kept her from killing herself. Next time, she might not be so lucky.

And she had been lucky, so far. Just the fact that Elizabet had found her, and had helped her escape from Carlos, that had been pure luck. If Elizabet hadn’t been in the neighborhood, close enough to sense Kayla’s near brush with death, she would never have returned to try and track down the “little powerhouse” she’d detected.

In another lifetime, without that luck, Kayla probably would’ve stayed with Carlos and his gang, stayed until one day when Carlos couldn’t protect her anymore and someone else had tried to “acquire” her instead. And that she probably wouldn’t have survived. Not with Carlos having made it very clear that he’d rather kill her than lose her.

But that’s over with, over and done. I don’t have to worry about Carlos, not anymore. Now we have some other minor problems to deal with…

Eric wasn’t talking about it, but she knew something was wrong. He wasn’t quite as… obvious… about his problems as Bethany, but there was something going on there, under the surface. She’d considered trying to “read” him without letting him detect it, and decided it was too risky. After a stunt like that, he’d never trust her again, and with good reason. It had taken Elizabet several months, but she’d finally convinced Kayla that listening in on people’s thoughts without their knowledge was unethical. Tacky, like peeping through someone’s window blinds.

So she hadn’t taken the direct approach of just looking to see what was bothering the Bard. But she could tell it was something. There was that way that he’d look away, as if listening to something that no one else could hear. Very strange, and rather disturbing.

Still, he’s my best chance for solving this situation without Elizabet getting killed. I don’t think he’s going to completely “lose it,” at least not in the next few days. After that, though, all bets are off.

Beth was the one that Kayla didn’t want to trust right now. She knew how fragile that “patch” was, the only thing that was keeping Bethany Kentraine from a long downward slide into insanity. What that bastard Blair had done—Kayla’s fingers tightened into a fist, remembering—was inhuman. To deliberately try to break another person’s mind…

They’d stop him. They would. He wouldn’t be allowed to do that to another human being, ever. Whatever was animating his body, Nightflyer or otherwise, Eric would get rid of it. She wasn’t too certain how that would happen, but she did have confidence in Eric on that count.

She just hoped that Elizabet would understand. Sure, this was dangerous, what they were planning to do, but it was something that had to be done. And Eric was right—better two people, alone, than a whole army trying to infiltrate that security complex. A neat, clean surgical operation.

But Elizabet would be very… angry… when she found out that they’d gone off on their own. Kayla reconsidered; maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, after all…

What the hell. She’d survived life on the street, and Carlos, and a street war in Los Angeles… she’d survive this, just fine.

She smiled, clutching that thought to her like the warm blankets, and drifted off to sleep.

Korendil, Champion of Elffiame Sun-Descending, Knight of Elfhame Mist-Hold, sat in the living-room of his San Francisco home and tried to pay attention to the conversation around him, without much luck. His thoughts were elsewhere, not on the war council that he had called and that he should be concentrating upon.

“Kory, what do you think about the main entrance? Should we try to draw the guards out with a distraction, or just have Eric go in and do some kind of mass hallucination on them? Kory?”

He shook himself out of his reverie, and nodded at Beth. “A distraction is best, milady,” he said.

Distractions were all he could think of now. Once, he’d known exactly what his life should be, the life of a near-immortal elven warrior, but then he’d been distracted—distracted by a lovely dark-haired woman named Beth, and a handsome young man with all the powers of an ancient Bard. Because of them, his life had changed, and he had changed, into someone that he would not have recognized many years ago.

They were mortal. That thought could never leave him a moment’s peace now. Dharinel had asked him that, in a quiet moment tonight when they were alone in the kitchen, refilling their glasses with dark red wine. “Why do you care so much for these humans?”

Kory had only smiled, knowing there was no answer he could give to the elven lord that the other would understand.

He was bound to them, by choice and by love. He could not imagine living without Beth’s warm laugh, or the slow smile that often lighted Eric’s face.

And how will I live without them, a scant hundred years from now?

That was the thought that terrified him, that he would have to watch them grow old, as humans do. It was a thought that he had not shared with either of them, not knowing what he could say.

There were answers, of course. He could ask them to join him Underhill, journeying across the veil between worlds into the elven realms where time moved slowly, if at all. But somehow, he didn’t think they would accept that offer. Life in Faerie was a quiet and unchanging existence, nothing like the unpredictable life in the human world. He wasn’t certain that he, himself, could return Underhill without longing for the human realms. That was why so many of his kind had chosen to live here, among the mortals. Beth had once described his inability to sit still as being “stir crazy”—somehow, he suspected that phrase also described how he would feel after several years of life in Faerie.

Until these last two days, the thought of his friends’ mortality had not haunted him so. But seeing Beth so ill, with a human malady unknown to elvenkind, had brought home the differences between himself and his friends. Without warning, without explanation, they could be taken from him, simply because of their nature: they were human.

Then again, all of us could die tomorrow, fighting this demon-creature that wishes to destroy this entire city.

Worry about this in another ten years, Korendil
, he told himself.

For tomorrow, you concentrate on surviving a battle.

“Korendil, do you have any opinion on that?”

He looked up, realizing that everyone was watching him, waiting for a reply, and shrugged. “Decide as you see fit,” he said, and stood. “I will be back shortly.”

Outside the house, standing in the garden, he breathed in the night air, letting the moonlight wash over him. Through the open door, he could hear the arguments over strategy and tactics continuing.

Beth yawned again, and rubbed at her aching eyes.
Enough already.
“Guys, I can’t keep my eyes open anymore; I’m going to call it a night. Susan, we’ve set up the other bed in the office for you, whenever you want to get some sleep.”

Susan Sheffield also looked exhausted, but she only nodded. “Not just yet,” she said. “I’m used to late nights at the office ... but I probably ought to get some sleep soon.”

“I’ll probably be up in a little while,” Eric said.

Beth headed wearily up the stairs. It had been a very strange, surreal evening—long discussions of magic and battle, the best methods for infiltrating the complex, and how to link with the Mount Tam witches. Throughout the evening, Eric had been strangely quiet, not contributing much to the discussion.

Probably still in shock over what’s happened in the last few days.

She hoped he’d get over it, and quickly. Their plans depended on him, and his Bardic abilities. If he couldn’t do the job…

She stripped off her shirt and jeans, and pulled on an old caftan, climbing into the large waterbed. The bed squished beneath her, rocking slightly, a gentle rhythm…

…the floor tilting beneath her, everything vibrating and shaking as long cracks zigzagged down the walls, plaster falling onto her…

Beth grabbed onto the edge of the bed for support, fingers whitening. She felt as though she was teetering on the edge of a dark chasm, hearing the screams of lost souls echoing up from below her.
That way lies madness.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing slowly in through her nose, out through her mouth. The whirlwinds caught at her, trying to pull her down, but she held on tightly to the bed, refusing to let go.

After a long moment, the storm died away, leaving her alone again on the bed with only an echo of distant noise in her head.

She buried her face in her hands, as the tears silently leaked from her eyes. She wanted to scream from terror and frustration, and bit her lip instead.

She’d never thought this could happen to her. She’d always thought of herself as tough, independent, able to deal with anything. Except that it wasn’t true—now she knew that it had never been true. Now she knew just how fragile her reality was, and what lurked out beyond the edges of sanity.

There was no way to understand this, to guess when she’d recover from it. Maybe she’d linger on this line between madness and waking for years. Maybe she’d never recover. That thought was the most terrifying of all—to continue this nightmare existence for the rest of her life. She remembered Ria Liewellyn’s face after that terrible morning at Griffith Park, the awful blankness of a body without a mind, someone lost in the depths of insanity that now threatened her. She couldn’t imagine herself that way, alive but not living. Trapped within her own mind, her own nightmares. It was inconceivable.