Ysabel (25 page)

He’d been quiet, had taken the back seat so Ned could navigate. Ned was impressed with him, and grateful: Greg had been a lot easier than Steve about accepting their story. He wondered about that, too. What made some people inclined to believe you and others to react with anger or shock? He realized he didn’t know a whole lot about Greg or Steve. Or Melanie, for that matter.

The headlight beams, on bright, picked out the closed gates and the parking lot to the left of them. Kim swung into the lot. The van was alone there.

They all got out. Greg punched his remote and the doors of the van unlocked. Kim opened the passenger side.

“Her bag’s here.”

“Figured. Okay, let’s go,” Greg said, going around to the driver’s side. “I’ve got the creeps here, big time.”

Ned heard him, but he found himself walking the other way, towards the gates. They were locked, but could be climbed pretty easily. Kate had said the security guy came just to open them and lock up. Ned looked through, saw the wide path that led east to the entrance.

Trees mostly hid the northern wall of the site from here, but he knew it was there, and what was on the other side. The wind had pretty much died down now.

“Ned, come on!” Greg called.

He heard his aunt’s footsteps coming over.

“They’re probably still in there,” he said, not looking back. “She told them to give her all night. Not to start looking till morning.”

She sighed. “If I had any real power, dear, I’d go in with you, see what we could do. But I don’t, Ned. We won’t get her back by getting killed there on Beltaine.”

“Would they do that?”

She sighed again. He looked at her.

“I’ve no idea,” she said. “I wasn’t here. If they thought we were going to interfere, from what you’ve told us . . .”

“Yeah,” he said. “If they thought that, some of them might.”

“And we are,” Aunt Kim said. “We are going to try to interfere.”

“How?”

He saw her shake her head. “No idea.”

“Come on!” Greg shouted again. They heard him start the engine.

“He’s right. We don’t want to see them tonight. Or have them see us. You two head straight home,” Kimberly said. “I’ll meet you there. I’m just going to stop at the hotel for my things.”

Ned was still looking through the gates towards that other world beyond. Greg honked the horn. It sounded shockingly loud, intrusive. Ned turned and walked back and got in the van and they drove away.

He and Greg didn’t say much to each other. Aunt Kim was ahead of them on the way back to Aix and
halfway around the ring road before she pulled into a hotel driveway. Greg stopped by the side of the road until a doorman opened the car door for her and she went into the lobby. Then—still not speaking—he pulled back into traffic and continued around the ring to the road east.

He took the now-familiar left after the bakery and grocery store and the small aqueduct, and then swung right onto their upward-slanting lane. Ned had his window down, for the cool air. Country road, a mild night, the risen moon ahead of them above the trees.

Greg swore violently and slammed on the brakes. The van skidded, throwing Ned against his shoulder belt. They stopped.

Ned saw the boar in the road, facing them.

We don’t want to see them tonight.

We don’t always have a choice
, he thought.

“Melanie will kill me if I hit an animal,” Greg said. “Maybe it’ll scoot if I go slow, or honk.”

“It won’t,” Ned said quietly. “Hold on, Greg.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“I’ve seen this one.”

“Ned, what the hell . . . ?”

“Look at it.”

Scoot
wasn’t a word you would ever really apply to what they were looking at. The boar was enormous, even more obviously so than before, seen this close. It was standing—waiting—with arrogant, unnatural confidence squarely in the middle of the roadway. There were a few high, widely spaced streetlights along the lane, half
hidden by leaves, and the van’s headlights were on it. The rough, pale grey coat showed as nearly white, the tusks gleamed. It was looking straight at them.

They really
weren’t
supposed to have good eyesight.

Someone parted the bushes to the right and stepped into the road.

“Oh, Jesus!” Greg said. “Ned, do I gun it?”

“No,” said Ned.

He unlocked his door and got out.

He wasn’t sure why, but he did know he didn’t want to run, and he didn’t want to face this sitting down inside the van.

He’d also recognized who had come. He swung the door closed, heard the
chunk
sound. Loud, because there were no other noises, really. No birdsong after darkfall. Barely a rustle in the leaves, with the wind almost gone. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stood beside the van, waiting.

The druid, he saw, was still wearing white—as he had been among the ruins when he’d caught the bull’s blood in a stone bowl.

Ned knew it was a druid. He remembered Kate asking Phelan if his enemy—Cadell—was one, and Phelan’s horror at the very thought. Druids were the magic-wielders. This was the one, he was almost sure, who’d shaped the summons that had claimed Melanie, turned her into Ysabel. Cadell had been waiting for tonight, for this man to perform the rite. So had Phelan, for that matter.

It was necessary to remind himself that he was
looking at a spirit, someone almost certainly dead a really long time, taking shape now only because it was Beltaine.

He was also pretty certain this particular spirit could kill him if it decided to. He wondered how far behind them his aunt was, if she’d taken the time to check out of the hotel or just grabbed her stuff and followed.

The druid was a small figure, not young, stooped a little, salt-and-pepper beard, seamed face, long grey hair, a woven belt around the ankle-length robe. He wore sandals, no jewellery. No obvious weapon. Ned thought they were supposed to carry a sickle or something and hunt for mistletoe . . . but he might have gotten that from an Asterix comic book, and he wasn’t too sure how much to rely on that source.

You could laugh at that, if you wanted to.

He said, in French, “Is the boar yours? Watching us?”

“Where has the woman gone?”

A thin, edgy voice, angry, controlling, accustomed to being obeyed.

Ned heard the other van door open and slam shut.

“That’s a real good question,” he heard Greg say. “Way I get this, you answer it for
us
. Where the hell is Melanie? Tell, then you can crawl back into your dumpster.”

“Easy, Greg,” he murmured, more afraid by the minute.

“There is no person of such a name any more,” the druid said. “Not since she walked between needfires. I
require you to say where Ysabel has gone. You will not be harmed if you do.”

Ned lifted a hand quickly, before Greg could speak again.

“Couple of things,” he said, working really hard to stay calm. “One, I heard her say you were to stay up there tonight
and
that the two guys were to search alone. Any comments?”

The man looked almost comically startled. “You were there? During the rite?”

“Damn straight I was. So, like, I know the book on this.”

“You understand you can be killed for that?”

“Nope. I understand that the woman—Ysabel—laid down the rules. You hurt us here, we go missing, you think Phelan’s not gonna know about it, and
tell
her? You want to ruin this for Cadell? Think he’ll be happy?”

He heard the bravado in his own voice and wondered where it came from. But he was
not
going to show fear to this guy. He didn’t seem to be the same person, dealing with these people. Fifteen wasn’t a kid in their world. Maybe that was part of it. And it still seemed to him he was seeing too clearly in the darkness, as if everything was
sharper
tonight.

The druid was staring, saying nothing. Ned cleared his throat. “He’s your boss, isn’t he? Your chief? Whatever. So what are you doing here, screwing things up for him?”

“You are ignorant, whatever else you are,” the figure
in front of him said. His eyes were deep-set under thick eyebrows.

“Maybe, but why do
you
care which one of them wins her? You’re dead again by morning, aren’t you?”

He didn’t know if that was so, actually. He hoped it was.

Another silence, and then: “She was one of us. The world began to change when she made her choice and left.” The druid lifted his voice. “She
belongs
among us. Changes can be undone. This is not just about the three of them.”

He looked briefly towards the trees, then back.

Ned had a thought, hearing that raised voice. On impulse, he tried the inward searching he’d used before to find Phelan twice, and his aunt by the tower.

Something registered, a glow within. Not the druid.

Ned smiled thinly. It was
really
weird, but though he was scared to the point that his hands were trembling, he also felt excited, alive, charged with something,
by
something, that he couldn’t explain.

The boar had gone now—off the road, back into the dark field or the woods beyond. It had been here to stop them; it had done that, and departed.

Ned said, “I had two questions, remember? Here’s the other one. You say you didn’t know I was up there before. What are you doing
here
then? Why did you think I’d have a clue about this? How did you know me at all, or how to find me?”

He knew the answers, but wanted to see what the other guy did.

He was aware that Greg was looking at him, a kind of awe in his face. The van’s headlights were illuminating the road and the white-robed figure. Insects darted through the light.

The druid lifted his head. “By what right do you question me?”

“Oh, fine,” Ned said. “That’s cool. I’ll just wait for your friend to climb out of the bushes and ask him.”

He saw the reaction to that. He turned to his right, towards the trees by the road. “There are mosquitoes up here, man, they must be worse in there. You getting bitten?”

He waited. There was a stirring in the trees.

Out of the darkness beyond the twin arcs of the headlight beams a red-gold figure emerged. Ned’s heart started pounding when he saw him.

Cadell had the stag horns growing from his head again. Ned heard Greg swear softly in disbelief.

“Who are you?” the big Celt said, stepping up onto the roadway.

Where the druid had been angry, Cadell sounded almost amused. His voice was as before: deep, carrying. You could follow that voice into battle, Ned thought.

He needed to be careful, though. It was true, the thought he’d had looking through the barred gates by the parking lot: if these guys thought he and Greg were a problem, they would do something about it.

If they could ignore his questions, he decided, he could do the same with theirs. He said, “Tell me, since this guy won’t, you really think Phelan won’t let her
know you broke the rules? Like, broke them immediately? I heard you swear an oath.”

Cadell said, “It is Beltaine, she said to release them when the night ended.” The voice was still amused, diverted. It hadn’t been, Ned remembered, when Phelan walked up into the site, after Ysabel had come.

“True,” Ned admitted. Beside him, Greg was breathing hard. “But I also heard her say
you
were to stay there, start searching in the morning.”

The big man smiled down at him. His easy manner didn’t feel faked to Ned. “But I’m not looking for her,” he said. “I was looking for you.”

“Cute. You willing to take a chance she’ll buy that? Risk everything on it? Is she the type to be cool with that kind of scam?”

Cadell’s expression did change then, which was kind of satisfying. There was a silence.

Ned nodded his head. “Thought so. And anyhow, why
were
you looking for me?”

“She called your name—the small woman—when she came up, before she went through the fires.”

Oh. Right
, Ned thought.

And Cadell would have known his name, who he was, from by the tower with Aunt Kim. He’d made the connection. If Ned was understanding any of this—which wasn’t a dead certainty—the guy had been alive, on and off, for more than two thousand years. He’d had time to get clever. Learn how to grow stag horns, change into an owl, control wolves and dogs.

Piece a few clues together.

In the middle of the roadway, the druid was muttering to himself, angrily rocking back and forth like some wind-up toy ready to explode. Ned ignored him.

“You saw us come back for the van?” he guessed.

Cadell nodded. “I had someone watching it.”

“Smart of you,” Ned said. “One man against one man, but you get the ghosts?”

“He seems to have you,” Cadell said softly. “Doesn’t he?”

Ned hesitated.

“No one has us,” Greg snapped. He took a step forward. “We have nothing to do with this. We want Melanie back, then you can all go off and screw each other for all we care!”

“An unappealing notion,” Cadell said. He smiled. “What Brys told you is true, the woman you call Melanie doesn’t exist any more. You need to understand that. There is no reason for you
not
to tell us where Ysabel might be, if you know.”

“You bastards!” Greg shouted. His hands were balled into fists. “By what goddamned right do you—”

“Hold it, Greg,” Ned said. He moved over and put a hand on the other man’s arm. “Hold it.”

Ned took a breath. He was pretty upset himself, trying not to let it show. They couldn’t lose control here, though, they needed to
know
too much more.

He said, “Why should we have any idea where she is? Why would you even think that?”

The druid said something swiftly in that other language.

Cadell looked at him and shook his head. Replied curtly in the same tongue, then turned back to Ned.

“You can be told this much. But you must believe I am not your enemy, and Phelan is
not
your friend. Or anyone’s friend.” He paused, as if reaching for words. The druid was still muttering.

That one
, Ned thought,
wants to kill us
.

Cadell said, “Ysabel changes. Each time we return. Each time, she is altered a little by the summoning. She carries something of the woman brought for her.”