Trolls in the Hamptons (35 page)

His mouth formed an m. “Muh?”

“I'm sorry, pumpkin, your mother is gone. You know that. We can't bring her back. But we'll find you a family, friends, whatever you want. You don't have to be afraid anymore.”

I was plenty afraid for both of us. Here I was promising the kid a future, when we might not live through the night.

Or our first confrontation with Turley Borsack, the dark-haired man of the most recent photos, smooth-shaven but swarthy.

“Well, I see you've introduced yourselves,” he said, standing over us. “Excellent. The better rapport between you, the better results.” He checked his watch. “We have a few hours to go until full darkness. Perfect.”

The moon was not going to be full; no rainbow was visible in the night. Yet he was smiling in excitement, his dark eyes bright and gleaming and shifting from me to Nicky to the cabin windows to his watch. I decided he was insane, or else high on his own drugs.

“What do you want of us?” I asked.

He gave me a feral grin, full of teeth and gums. “Oh, nothing much, just great riches, infinite power, eternal life. And you two are going to get it for me. As soon as I have the third of my little triumvirate.” He took the pocketbook Vinnie handed him, my pocketbook, and fished in it for my cell phone. He held it out to me. “Here. Call his lordship.”

He must be crazier than I thought. “Who?”

“Lord Grantham. Your lover. The Translator. You thought I was looking for you the whole time, didn't you? You're all as stupid as I counted on. It's him I need. I knew they'd send him if you were in jeopardy.”

Grant was a lordship?

“Dial! I know he'll find you by tracing the call. I'll even give him directions to a boat he can use. Do it now, or I'll drug the brat again. Or shoot the dog.” He opened the suitcase, far away from me, to show vials and syringes and a gun. A real one, I suspected.

So I called the emergency number.

“Willy, is that you? Are you all right?” Grant sounded frantic.

“Why, yes, Lord Grantham, how nice of you to care.”

He paused. “Willy, that has to wait. Where are you? We found the car. And Parker.”

So I told him about the speedboat, the yacht, and Borsack's demand that he come by another boat they'd left for him. Vinnie told me to say that the proper coordinates for the yacht were already programmed into the outboard's steering system. And he had to come alone. If they saw one other boat, a plane, a swimmer, or a suspicious looking seagull, they'd kill me and take the boy away again.

“Your whore isn't half as important to my plans as you and the brat,” Borsack said after he grabbed the phone away from me, “so don't think I won't get rid of her. And don't bother trying to get at me through the lines of power. I have them blocked, if your pet mentalists haven't figured that out yet.” He tossed the phone aside and laughed. “He'll come. He has to.”

“No,” I told him, “Grant will sacrifice me to protect the world from evil monsters like you.”

Borsack slapped me. Then he shoved a pad and pencil at me. “Draw. That's why you're here. All you're good for, except bait for his lordship.”

My cheek burned, another black mark against this black-hearted fiend. I vowed to defeat him somehow.

I knew I could draw Fafhrd safely, because either he was already coming, or he couldn't be reached through the psi-blanket Borsack had cast.

Borsack preempted my plan. “Don't give me the fucking troll. I want the kid's father.”

I was relieved. I'd worried that Borsack might be the man who raped Tiffany Ryland. Nicky was better off with an ogre as sire than this scumbag.

“I don't know who his father is.”

“But you know what he is. The brat is a halfling, that's why he can't survive here, why he can't talk anything but elvish. The father will come get him. They don't procreate easily, the eldritch kind. He'll want his son before the brat dies. He'll come, I say.”

Actually he shouted. The man was demented, horrifyingly so. Nicky made a sound, but I pulled him away before Borsack could strike him.

Borsack glared at both of us. “Lord Grantham can interpret for me, tell him my terms, what I want in exchange for the freak. I'll have it all, then.” He pounded on the pad on the table in front of me. “Draw, Willow Tate, as if your life depended on it. It does.”

“But . . . but I don't know what an elf looks like, much less Nicky's father.”

“He does.” He pointed to Nicky. “That's why I set the mind-block outside the boat. You draw until he tells you to stop.”

“How can I draw with my hands tied together?”

“You really don't want to get on my nerves this way, bitch.” Vinnie handed him a switchblade, which he snapped open without looking at it, showing me a long, curved, deadly knife. I shut my eyes, but all he did was slice through the plastic tie at my wrists. “Now draw. I want it done by the time the linguist gets here. If not, your dog is shark bait. Then you. Then the kid. Understand?”

They both left, loving family that they were, climbing up to the flying bridge, I thought, where they could check radar screens for incoming vessels.

I looked at the pad and the pencil, then at Nicky. “He'll destroy the world, this world, maybe your father's world, if he gets his way. But he'll kill us if I don't give him what he wants.”

Nicky put his hand over mine and said something I couldn't possibly understand. But I did, in pictures in my head, like my imagination, only not mine. “Images of your father?”

He nodded. “D'ref.”

“He's very handsome.”

He nodded again.

“But he won't come for you, will he?”

Nicky smiled, a mischievous little grin I was thrilled to see. “How come?”

I had the image in my head of the incredibly good-looking figure being stripped of his power, of his magic, for the sins he had committed. I already knew he'd trespassed into the humans' world, breaking a millennialong treaty. He'd likely bespelled a human girl and impregnated her. Who knew what evil he'd committed in Unity itself?

“And no one else will come?”

Nicky shook his head, and I saw another beautiful man, this one with a crown, looking sad but determined. “J'omree.”

“It's your grandfather, isn't it? He's king, and he will not, cannot, disobey his own laws.”

Nicky gave that little boy grin again.

“So Borsack's plan fails before he begins?”

Nicky managed a “Ys.”

“Good boy.” Red wagged his tail, so I gave him part of the last Oreo. Then I drew. Not the magnificent elven king, but the maggot that'd started this whole mess, D'ref, Nicky's father. I made him beautiful because he was, and I made him sinister, because he was that, too. I made him sneer, because he could not do any more harm.

I was satisfied. The problem was, what would Borsack do when he realized his grand scheme was foiled? He couldn't let us live, not knowing what we did. He couldn't return to his nefarious way of life now that he'd been so well identified. For that matter, I doubted he could escape the forces sure to be gathered in the bay or in the air above. As for Vinnie, shooting Parker, even with tranquilizer darts, put an end to her Hollywood career whether we lived or not. Neither of them seemed to have any great respect for human life.

I'd leave the endgame to Grant. He was the secret agent, the soldier, the blasted British aristocrat!

And he was coming now, walking into certain death.

Oh, hell.

I
HEARD THE FAINT SOUND OF a small outboard engine coming closer and closer. Borsack shouted something to Vinnie, and I saw her pass in front of the cabin door above. She waited, then told Grant to catch the line she was throwing him. A few minutes later, I heard her tell him to throw his gun overboard.

“The other one, too.”

Another
splash
.

“And the jacket that's full of electronic gadgets and wires.”

That didn't make as much noise. Maybe Grant just dropped the jacket onto the floor of the outboard, hoping to get at some of those gadgets later. I sure hoped so, too.

“Now climb up. Then put your hands on your head.”

I imagined she was patting him down. If her hand passed between his legs, she was as good as dead in my mind. If she found the knife he usually had strapped to his ankle, we were all dead.

She told him to walk in front of her, down the steps to the cabin, his hands still up, in plain sight. One wrong move, she told him, and she'd fire her gun. She wouldn't miss at this range.

When they reached the cabin where Nicky and I sat huddled together, Borsack looked at Grant, nodded, and said, “That's him, all right. Shoot him.”

I screamed. Nicky started crying.

Vinnie shot anyway.

My head said it was a tranquilizer dart. They wouldn't drag Grant out here only to kill him. They needed him. That's what Borsack had told me.

My heart wasn't listening. It stopped altogether as Grant fell to the floor.

My eyes paid attention, thank goodness, and saw that Grant brought his hands up before he fell, clutching at his chest. When he landed on the floor, he managed to land on top of a dart in his hands, and he winked at me.

The dart must have hit a Kevlar undershirt Vinnie hadn't noticed, which meant she was as crazy as her father. Or so used to flabby older men she couldn't tell muscle from armor.

No matter. We had a rescuer. He had a plan. Maybe.

Borsack came and hit him over the head with the butt of another gun, just to make certain he was unconscious, and stayed that way. I winced, and turned Nicky's head to my shoulder when I saw the trickle of blood on the back of Grant's skull.

I didn't think that was part of my hero's plan.

“It's safer that way,” Borsack was telling Vinnie. “He's too dangerous otherwise. Now he won't cause any trouble until we need him. Tie him up.”

While she did that, he laughed, like Grandma's chickens used to cackle. “I knew he'd come. He had to.”

I was scared, but I was furious, too. Why did Borsack have to hit Grant when he was already tranquilized—at least as far as Borsack knew? The anger gave me the courage to ask, “What do you mean, he had to come? His job is to study events, not sacrifice himself.”

“He came for you, his mate. Didn't you know that?”

“Know what? We're not married. Not even engaged. I haven't known him a month.”

“I forgot. You refused to learn, didn't you? Stupid sow. You were chosen for him, preordained, preselected, forever.”

A sow, was I? I'd kick Borsack where it hurt. I'd—“No, he came because he had a job to do. And he . . . he loves me. Grant was not forced into anything.”

He laughed again. “He loves you like I loved my wife, because I had to. They chose her, and it was a good choice, I'll give them that. We were a pair. Geniuses, we were, everyone said so. We made great new discoveries in the science of mind and states of consciousness. We opened our own minds until we could see Unity.” He licked his thick lips. “I saw it, I swear.”

“You hallucinated, old man! Those were opium dreams, magic mushroom trips, or whatever psychedelic cocktail you concocted.”

“We were brilliant, I say! My wife saw Unity, too, and it was beautiful. So beautiful that her mind stayed there. She would not come back.
They
enthralled her.” He tried to swing out at Nicky, sitting in my lap, but I pulled the boy aside. The smack landed on my shoulder, shoving me backward. Grant's shoulders tensed, but no one noticed except me.

“My wife stopped talking to me! She was going to lead me there, but she stopped talking to me.”

“So you killed her with more drugs,” Vinnie spat out at her father.

“No, I wanted her to take me with her. We'll go now. The boy's father will take us. We'll be together, and strong, stronger than anyone, ever.” He pulled my pad off the table and thrust it at Nicky.

“Is this your father, boy? And don't lie. I have a trace of that Royce truth-knowing blood in me, too, so I'll know.”

Nicky nodded. “D'ref.”

Borsack stroked the picture. “See, Vinnie? See what I can do? I told you I can bring one of them here!” He checked his watch again. “Soon. Soon.”

I had to know. “What are you waiting for?”

“A surprise. A wonderful, glorious surprise, and more psi power than this area has seen in decades.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Vinnie said, obviously upset at the mention of her dead mother. “I think you should make this D'ref give you more power to control, to rule here. I want to stay. With money and influence, I can be a real star. Who needs magic when I've got talent?”