Wild Ride (16 page)

“You need another beer,” Joe said, and went to get her one.

She drank the rest of her second beer while he was gone, trying to anesthetize herself, but it didn't work. She looked to see where he was and saw him talking to Ashley, scowling at her as she leaned close, and then he came back to the table.

He put the beer in front of her, and she said, “Look, I know it's crazy, I don't think there are demons, but it's still screwing up my work. I'm distracted. I mean, you showed up to get me, and I forgot to bring
my hat
.” She touched her bare head, feeling naked. “That's the second time today I've left it behind. I don't have any
light
without my hat.”

“Drink,” Joe said, and she did and achieved that Zen state that three beers took her to. “Now, listen to me,” he said. “You are staring so hard at so many problems that you can't see any answers. You have to let go, and the answers will appear.”

“If you call me grasshopper, I'm hitting you with my fourth beer,” Mab said.

“You don't have a fourth beer,” Joe said.

“I know,” Mab said. “It's tragic.”

Joe got her another beer while she knocked back her third, surveying the Pavilion, seeing familiar faces there, people like Ray, showing people some kind of coin, and Carl Whack-A-Mole talking seriously with Harold Ferris Wheel, and at the next table, Skinny and Quentin working their way through hot dogs again, Skinny getting vehement about condiments—“I don't care if salsa sells more than ketchup, ketchup is the king of condiments, that's what I think”—and two tables down, the guy in the Coke-bottle glasses writing in his notebook, endearingly dorky, his beer untouched in front of him.

People
, Mab thought, and somehow found them less annoying than usual.

Joe came back, handed over her beer, and when she'd made good inroads into it, he said, “You need to let go of your problem and relax.”

“Relax,” Mab said. “I should relax, that's what you think.”

“Yep,” Joe said. “Let's go ride the Tunnel of Love.”

He smiled at her, and she lost her breath again. Whatever it was that he had—charm, charisma—he had it in spades.

And she wanted it, wanted to feel the way he made her feel, wanted to be part of that glow. . . .

“Okay,” Mab said, then knocked back the rest of her beer and followed him out of the Pavilion.

 

O
nce in the Tunnel, Ethan looked at the people clustered around him and didn't feel particularly confident. An old psychic, a young comedian, an almost deaf ride pusher, and his mother. Not exactly the “tip of the spear,” as his teams in Special Operations had been called.

“There's Ashley,” Young Fred said, sounding excited now as he spotted her outside, waiting in line for the ride.

Action. Ethan felt his own blood stir. He peered at Ashley. She had a coat on that she hadn't been wearing before.
Covering the wound
, he thought.

“And of course the sap is wearing a wedding ring,” Glenda said, looking at the guy who had his hand on Ashley's butt.

Ethan spotted Mab and Joe in line in front of Ashley and her sap, waiting for the car that had just pulled up to the platform. Just what he needed: an audience. “What now?”

Glenda nodded to Young Fred. “You're up.”

Young Fred nodded and sauntered out to the line, walking by everyone waiting as if they couldn't see him.

Evidently, they couldn't.

“When it's your turn, Ethan,” Glenda said, “when Delpha shows you the spirit flash, you say, ‘Capio!' Can you remember that?”

“Capio,” Ethan said, watching Young Fred. “Got it.”

Delpha spoke up, Frankie moving from foot to foot on her shoulder. “When the demon is getting ready to jump, her eyes will change. If the demon is Tura, the flash will be blue-green.”

Ethan nodded, his brain still muddled from the alcohol. If it hadn't been for that blue-green light in Ashley's eyes just before he blacked out, and the dead guy with the mark on his chest the other night, he'd have told them they were all crazy and headed for the Beer Pavilion. He pulled out his flask and unscrewed the top but stopped when Glenda said in a low voice only he could hear: “
Ethan.
You're
demon-hunting
.”

With a sigh, Ethan slid the flask back into his combat vest. He noted that Ashley and her sap were next to get on the ride, and Young Fred was right behind them. “We better get moving.”

“Wait,” Glenda said, and watched Young Fred step up as his features shifted, turning into the image of the sap as he shoved the guy away. It all happened so fast, Ethan wasn't sure he could trust his eyes, and neither could the sap when he turned to yell and saw himself. Or whatever it was he saw that made him back away horrified.
Young Fred can be anything
, Ethan remembered.

Ashley and Young-Fred-as-the-Sap got in the boat behind Mab and Joe, and began to float into the tunnel.

“Now,” Glenda said, and led them behind the tunnel and into a service door.

The dioramas had some kind of scrim mesh behind them, newly repainted as backdrops, that let them see what was happening beyond the brightly lit scenes. When they were behind Adam and Eve, the prow of the next boat appeared and Ethan spotted Ashley and Young Fred lip-locked. She was all over him, one hand behind his head, the other on his chest.
How the hell is he supposed to see when her eyes change?
Ethan thought. He moved on, faster than the boats, the rest trailing him until they reached Antony and Cleopatra, where he moved through a break in the scrim and into the diorama, ducking behind the Antony statue as the next swan boat came round the bend. He saw Mab and Joe, her finally without her miner's hat, him holding her close as he whispered in her ear. She laughed, her hand on his cheek, and leaned in to kiss him, and Ethan thought,
Must be love
, and poked his head out to see better, bumping into Antony and making him rock dangerously over Cleo. Mab turned at the sound and then her eyes widened as she spotted him and Ethan gave her a thumbs-up. She pulled away from Joe, craning to see him, and then their boat went around the curve and they were out of sight.

Ethan turned his attention the other way. The next swan boat appeared. This time it was Ashley, one hand in Young Fred's crotch, the other tight behind his head. She was kissing him, and it was a good thing she had her eyes closed, because Fred kept losing his morph, flickering between his real face and that of the sap. He saw Ethan in the diorama and looked disappointed, but he said, “Hey,” and Ashley looked surprised, and then he turned back into Young Fred and she pulled back, shocked, her eyes glinting blue-green.

“Frustro,” Young Fred said sadly, and then her eyes really lit up, glowing like a demon, as Delpha moved to the front of the diorama.

“Specto!” Delpha said, throwing her fist toward Ashley, and Tura's spirit leapt into the air, a blue-green mermaid, as Ethan stepped into the boat and said, “Uh, capio?”

 

J
oe pulled Mab out of the boat at the next diorama and onto the narrow walkway beside the water.

“What are you doing?” she said, flushed from fooling around. “What's Ethan doing—?”

“Come on.” He pulled her through the tunnel, and she shut up so she could concentrate on moving fast without falling into the water—
Dark ride
, she thought,
they weren't kidding—
and then they were out into the orange-lit night, the midway now obscured by orange clouds from the fog machines and crowded with local people dressed up like the undead, offering plastic brains on plates to shrieking teenagers. The music from the carousel piped out over the laughter, and the lights from the rides glittered green and yellow and orange in the navy blue sky, and Mab looked back at the Tunnel and said, “What was that about?”

Joe led her around the bend in the midway to the front of the carousel, and stopped by one of the steel-drum fires set to take the chill off the night. “I want you,” he said, the light from the fire flickering in his eyes.

“I saw Ethan,” Mab said, stepping closer. “I think something bad is happening—”

“Something bad is always happening,” Joe said. “Do you want tonight with me?” He stared at her, and she saw how much he wanted her, and she lost her breath.

“Yes,” Mab said.

“Then take me home,” Joe said.

She led him down the midway, around to the back of the Dream Cream, past Ray's RV office and up the back stairs to her bedroom, making a detour to the bathroom to hit Cindy's condom stash. When she shut her bedroom door, Joe let out his breath, as if he'd been waiting for somebody to stop them.

She took off her paint coat, and he put his arms around her and said, “I didn't think I'd ever get you alone,” and she laughed and said, “You only waited two days,” and he said, “It felt like months,” and kissed her, and her heart lifted, the way it always did when she was with him, and she laughed again because she was so glad he was there. “Come here,” he said,
and pulled her down onto the bed with him, and she rolled close to him, wanting to be part of him and yet. . . .

“What?” He pushed up her T-shirt, tickling her stomach and making her laugh again, and then he stripped off her clothes—she tried to help, but he said, “Let me”—and took off his. When he was close against her again, he pushed her hair back and kissed her, and she put her arms around him, feeling happy and yet vaguely . . . not hot. “Laugh for me,” he said, and then kissed her neck, making her shiver and smile, and then her shoulder, and then he moved down her body with more tickling kisses that made her laugh again, and she fell into all his brightness as his hands and mouth moved over her, expertly building that missing heat in her. She tried to touch him, and he said, “No, let me do it all, I want you happy,” and she lay back, feeling a little rejected and then lost herself in him until he came back to her again.

Then, suffused with heat, she opened her eyes, and he pulled back, staring at her.

“What?” she said, trying to sit up, dizzy and confused.
“What?”

He laughed and said, “You are an amazing woman, Mary Alice Brannigan,” and pushed her back onto the bed, spreading her thighs with his as she arched up to meet him, and then he was inside her, and she let her head fall back, smiling because he felt so good, as he whispered in her ear, “Tell me you're happy,
tell me
,” and she said, “I'm
happy.
” Then he rocked her to her finish and left her gasping and satisfied, laughing as she held him close.

 

T
he blue-green spirit slammed into Ethan, the same blue-green light in his head as before, the same tentacles around his heart, but this time instead of fighting it, he grabbed on to the demon inside him. Ashley collapsed into the boat, dispossessed and unconscious, and Ethan slid away from her, holding that writhing, fluid, fighting turquoise weight in his chest, her furious screams tearing his mind.

He held on to her, the screaming almost unbearable as he crawled out of the boat and fell toward the emergency exit. Then he looked up and saw
his mother standing over him and felt her voice echo with power inside his head:
“Redimio.”

The blue-green exploded from him, and Glenda caught it and bound it and forced it into the chalice, and Ethan's head was quiet again and his heart was free.

But Gus wasn't in place; he was kneeling next to Delpha, who had collapsed on the walkway.

“Gus!”
Glenda screamed, but Ethan could tell Gus couldn't hear.

Glenda slapped the lid on, but it wouldn't seal, and when Gus finally turned and tried to reach for it, it was too late: the blue-green slithered out from under the chalice lid, spiraled down the tunnel, and disappeared into the darkness.

“Delpha,”
Glenda said, and dropped to her knees beside her.

“I thought it was my time,” Delpha said, her voice faint.

“Not yet it isn't,” Glenda said, putting her arm around her. “We can't lose you yet.” She looked down the tunnel after Tura, her face grim.

“Tura—”

“We'll get her the next time.” Glenda stood up. “Ethan, you'll have to carry Delpha home.”

“Sure,” Ethan said, looking after Gus, who was staring down the tunnel, too.

“I'm sorry,” Gus said, turning back to Glenda. “I—”

“We'll get her next time,”
Glenda told him, staring into his eyes. “It's all right. We'll win. We're the Guardia.”

Gus seemed caught for a moment, and then he nodded back, relieved.

We are so screwed
, Ethan thought, and stood up to carry Delpha home.

 

“T
his isn't my fault.” Ray spoke fast as he stood before Kharos's statue. “The Guardia just tried to capture Tura, but they couldn't get her. Ethan was with them. I think Ethan is Guardia. I think their Hunter finally showed up.”

Kharos ran through every Etruscan curse he knew. It took a while, but then he was calm enough to think.
So now the Guardia had a strong Hunter. But not a very good one if Tura escaped.

“It took him long enough to get here,” Ray was saying. “The last one died in July. Three months. He must have walked from—”

THE MINIONS HAVE ARRIVED.

“Yeah,” Ray said without enthusiasm.

SEND THEM TO KILL DELPHA AND THE OLD MAN.

“Gus? Why?”

THEY ARE THE MOST EXPERIENCED GUARDIA. AND THEIR DEATHS WILL DEMORALIZE THE REST.
Kharos smiled, just thinking about the Guardia's grief, the taste of it. So much more delicious than that of regular human cattle.

“Should I send them after Glenda, too?”

GLENDA
. Kharos grew warmer inside his chalice. Glenda had been—