Tales of the Unquiet Gods (8 page)

"The pretty lady should dance." The weird voice - full of strange harmonics - ran a shiver up Anne's spine and sent a jolt of adrenaline through her. An eddy in the crowd revealed the voice's owner. Anne's hand clenched hard around the "lucky" coin Mike slipped into her pocket.

Smooth cheeks swept up from a pointed jaw and framed a sensuous mouth whose full lips bent upward in something that approximated a smile. Prominent cheekbones rode on either side of a straight, puckish nose that flipped up at the end. The owner him - her? no, him - self looked far too young to be in any club, let alone one as new, and therefore exclusive, as Under Hill.

Until she looked him in the eyes.

Old eyes, empty eyes, eyes of no color she'd ever seen. The lights from downstairs flickered in those eyes, giving the lie to the smile on his androgynously beautiful mouth. A cruelty Anne intuited she wasn't supposed to see flared bright in those eyes like uncut gemstones. He nodded toward the downward yawning portal.

"Dance, lady," he repeated. The false smile widened, revealing square, even teeth that Anne utterly failed to trust. That voice - a voice that sounded as though it should have come from multiple throats - betrayed hunger. Hunger Anne was again certain she shouldn't have felt. The press of humanity pushed between them and hid the speaker once again.

It was time and past time to find Chelley and leave. With difficulty, Anne forced herself to relax, and let the flow of mesmerized youth hide the disquieting club owner and draw her down the steps. The smell of damp earth and herbs swirled thickly here, and the coppery scent was a foul taste on the back of her tongue.

The steps descended into a short tunnel that opened into an enormous room made up to look like a cross between a natural cavern and a forest glade. Walls that looked like rough-hewn stone were studded here and there with what seemed to be the boles of enormous trees. Anne looked up and saw the source of the multicolored light she'd seen above.

Globes of brilliant green, blue, yellow and white glowed here and there near what she presumed was the ceiling. The lights shifted through a range of colors and shone through leaves. Enormous leaves - each far larger than her own hand - though otherwise faithful to nature. She recognized oak, maple and alder, among several species for which she had no reference. She couldn't see an actual ceiling for the foliage.

The fortune this place represented set her head spinning. Live musicians clustered here and there, eyes screwed shut, bodies held rigid by the frenzied force of their art. Somehow, they all managed to play together. After a moment of intent focus, Anne realized it wasn't so much that they played together, as their disparate melodies blended perfectly to create that wild, haunting harmony she'd heard above.

A formless unease wrapped itself around Anne's heart. The music was as beautiful as the setting. A part of her longed to throw caution to the wind and embrace the savage magnificence she'd found. She could feel the desire, the yearning toward unlimited freedom Under Hill seemed to represent. To pour out her soul; to give up the pain of life. For a moment, she ached to release her hold on herself and simply become part of the magic.

The guarded, pragmatic steel that had held Anne together when her family had fractured and come apart held her back. Anne ground her teeth, feeling the old anger stirring. She drew back from the metaphysical precipice step by shuddering step. She opened eyes she didn't realize were closed, and happened to look at the face of one of the musicians.

A young man, maybe nineteen or twenty, slim and lanky in the half-starved manner of dedicated musicians stood rooted, caught in the grip of the music. Sweat beaded on his forehead and soaked the black shirt he wore. His fingers blurred on the neck of his violin. Threads of his bow had snapped and whistled through the air as he played, a testament to his fury.

But there was no joy in his face: only slavish concentration. His body strained, pouring forth melody in a torrent, but without a hint of the pleasure he should have evinced. Desperate hunger and something beyond pain etched lines into his face as she watched.

The tiny disc clenched in her fist grew hot, and jumped. Anne's vision shivered, as though all she saw was the rippling surface of a pond. All but the fiddler locked in song before her eyes. She still saw the man as he was, but strangely laid over - or just inside - his features, Anne saw a ghostly, ethereal copy of him. The replica moved just out of time with the physical reality, and pulsed rapidly in a beat that mirrored his racing heart.

Hair, gray and lank, lay matted against a scalp that showed through patches. The lines she saw in his physical face carved even deeper, and multiplied again and again. His already spare frame became a nightmarish, emaciated thing of swollen joints and protruding bones, held together by parchment skin. Even his clothes - grown faded, threadbare and moth-eaten - reflected the transformation.

Anne blinked, and tried to swallow through the new-made desert of her throat. The brief vision ended, but Anne could now see the cracks in the grotto. Nothing physical: the club still seemed carved out of living rock and monstrous trees. She saw through whatever magic kept the musicians in harmony, whatever parasitic force lured the young and creative into Under Hill. And proceeded to suck them dry.

With fresh eyes, Anne saw the fiddler's frenetic motion betrayed exhaustion. She was certain he would eventually collapse, alive perhaps, but drained of everything that made him more than a sack of meat. And she had no idea how to stop it, or even if she could.

Anne's eyes widened as she looked around. It wasn't just the musicians. Her stomach roiled as she realized that those who didn't play danced, moving together in swaying, twitching rhythm. Bare heartbeats earlier, it would have been beautiful - in a way, it still was - but now, Anne was disgusted by the impressions she received. Glazed eyes stared at nothing, limbs wove through each other while torsos bent, slid over and across each other. As though one mind controlled them all, moved them as one.

But not perfectly.

The same flaws - if they weren't completely intentional - affected the dancers as well. At random, an arm twitched out of alignment here. There, a foot misstepped. The whole corrected quickly enough, but if you paid attention, you could see the cracks in the facade. If a single mind did guide the movements of all of the erstwhile agents, it had some kind of palsy.

And over it all, Anne still tasted copper and forest.

"Dance, pretty lady."

Anne understood now why the - no appropriate word came to Anne for the strange, androgynous person who'd spoken to her above - polytonal voice sounded so wrong. The words issued from the dozen or so closest throats. Those glazed eyes, staring at some other world, turned as one to her. Jaws moved, lips curled in dread-inducing parodies of human smiles.

"Dance with us."

It was the same voice. Anne's gorge rose as she felt her feet trying to obey and move in rhythm to the music. Horror and rage fought for dominance, rooting Anne to the spot. Part of her desperately wanted to flee, to disappear. Another part - an intransigent, rocky part - roared at Anne to push that rictus in.

The coin in her hand grew hot to the point of pain. It jumped in her fist and pulled her around to her left. Anne's feet skidded on the floor, and when she focused on it to regain her balance, Anne's eyes widened. She stood on grass. Green, living grass. A perverse part of her mind suggested that a turf floor probably didn't meet any kind of regulation; the food service inspector alone would have a fit.

An incongruously graceful motion seen from the corner of her eye brought Anne's head up and drew her gaze to some kind of raised platform. Blocks of polished obsidian jutted broodingly from the trampled lawn. Had this been a normal club, she'd have thought it was a dance floor. With the alien strangeness of Under Hill, the thing reminded her of nothing so much as a sullen sacrificial altar.

Upon the polished surface of which floated Chelle. Her sister spun in a slow turn, one leg stretched out behind her, both arms overhead. Anne had seen her perform the same spin any number of times before, but never so slowly. And never with her eyes screwed shut. Chelle was easily fifty yards away, but Anne could clearly see her expression of ferocious concentration. For all the beauty of the motion, fear froze Anne's heart in her chest: Chelle's face bore the same expression as the violinist.

Chelle spun once more, slowly and in time with the music, and then bent backward over her hips. Her outstretched leg swept down and forward and then up in front of her to rest pointing straight up. Her hands planted on the stone surface behind her foot, Shelley's torso straightened, lifting her foot off the floor, coming up into a handstand and splits. Anne was stunned.

She'd seen her sister work - she'd been seeing her dance for years - but never like this.

And then the music swirled into a new, faster tempo. Unseen strings howled, horns blared and drums pounded. It sounded as though some hidden choir had gathered and chanted in unison, just far enough away that Anne couldn't understand the words.

And Chelle exploded into motion. Her legs flashed as she whipped them around and around as though she were some enormous top. And with a twist and a lift, Chelle was back on her feet and whirling about the dais. Now on her hands, now on her feet, occasionally spinning around on her back or head, Chelle's wild dance took Anne's breath away. The beauty of her sister's movements rooted her to the spot, and masked from Anne the desperation in them for a brief moment that felt like an eternity.

And then the coin in her hand flared hot again, sending a spike of genuine pain up Anne's forearm. She tore her fist out of her pocket with a gasp, the pain jerking her gaze away from her sister. Forcing open fingers locked tight from a witch's brew of emotion, Anne stared at the lucky piece in her hand.

The coin glowed with the harsh brilliance of a tiny, golden sun. Further, it spun in place as though someone had driven a nail through its center and into Anne's palm. The pain radiating from the center of her hand felt like someone had done that, as well.

Radiant light blazed up from Anne's open hand, illuminating that part of the crowd nearest her. The glare washed out the soft light from overhead, blasting away at the dusky atmosphere and picking out the lines in the newly gaunt faces. Those closest spun away from the hard incandescence.

Anne's heart thudded against her ribs. Terror for her sister warred with horror at her surroundings, at the sheer alien nature of Under Hill. Both fear and revulsion mixed with a hard fury at whoever sat in the seat of power. Whoever drained brilliant musicians and grace-filled dancers of vitality, reducing them to husks.

Her lips peeled back from her teeth in a feral snarl, Anne started toward where Chelle still danced. Her sister leapt into the air, limbs flaring out as she spun. Chelle landed lightly, collapsing down to one knee and whirling in place on the polished stone like a figure-skater.

As Chelle whirled, Anne stalked forward, her head moving back and forth in small arcs. She was surprised when none of the crowd moved to intercept. Even though the single-minded they did nothing to impede her advance, she could feel the animosity in the air, heavily leavened with amusement. Anger uncoiled in her breast, and galvanized her into a trot.

When she approached the platform, those three half-glimpsed pools of stillness sprang to horrifying life. The one behind the dais vaulted onto it and, for a moment that turned Anne's stomach, whatever it was that went cloaked in mist and smoke danced with Chelle in a bizarre parody of a tango. The occulted figure and her sister slid from opposite sides, coming together in the center of the stone.

Despite Anne's inability to see it clearly, the thing put what had to be arms around Chelle, and the two - one light, one dark - spun about each other. It was graceful, and it would have been beautiful were it not for her certainty that Chelle was under the control of something alien and wrong and in horrible, terrible danger.

The dancing couple - Anne's mind cringed away from the word - leapt apart. Chelle sprang backward onto her hands, while the shadowy something came to rest opposite where it started. The other two shadows moved around the corners to flank the primary, all three blocking her path to Chelle.

Bright golden light from the coin in her open palm stilled the swirling shadow that clothed the figures. The smoky mist faded, revealing creatures with human features. Two eyes, nose, mouth, all set in matching expressions of fury and disgust, but completely void of humanity.

Anne froze, shock stealing will from her mind and volition from her limbs. The creatures confronting her - nothing that looked like that could be human, at least not anymore - were the same ones from her vision in the studio. Right down to the disturbing eyes. In person, Anne could see why she'd been unable to tell their color: the six orbs looking at her from one mind looked to be made things, spheres of some metal polished to a mirror sheen. Those orbs threw back the shifting colors of the cavernous space with a startlingly vivid and painful intensity.

Fear reached up her spine and gripped the base of Anne's skull in fingers that chilled her marrow. She'd been training to fight for years, but she had no illusions: a woman fighting hand-to-hand against most men would lose. Not only were these most men - she didn't know if they even qualified as men despite their appearance - but there were three of them. On top of that, she suspected they'd move as one.