Angelfire

EIGHT

COLLEEN

I’ve seen Goldman do some pretty surprising shit, but this took the biscuit. I had time to shout “Sonofabitch! Goldman!” (as if it helped) and make a grab at his coat. I grazed my knuckles on solid rock. The raw pain was enough to push me over the edge of a line I hadn’t even known I was hugging. I let out a roar and threw myself at the wall, beating my fists against it.

Cal broke into my raging, grabbing my shoulder and shaking me, hard. “Colleen! Come on. This isn’t accomplishing anything.”

“What d’you propose I do, Cal?” I asked sarcastically. “Say ‘Open sesame’?” I gave the wall a vicious kick. “Sure. Why not? Open-fucking-sesame! Oh, look-nothing happened. Now what? Now what, Cal? You’re the college grad. Got any bright ideas?”

Running off at the mouth, Mom called it. I did it whenever I got thrown for a loop. Whatever I was feeling went straight to my mouth without passing through my brain. Right now I was furious and scared and, dammit, I wanted Cal to be as furious and scared as I was. Now I bit my tongue-way too late.

Cal had closed his eyes. Counting to ten, no doubt. Now he opened them and asked, “Did the kick help?”

“No, damn it! It didn’t do shit! Stupid question.”

“Here is another: What has happened that you two are shouting at each other?” Doc had come over to hover outside the cave.

I straightened. “Oh, nothing much. Our friend Goldman just pulled the ultimate disappearing act, is all. He walked through that wall.” I pointed.

Doc shot me a sharp glance, then edged into the little space. Cal stepped outside and I followed him.

“Look,” I said. “I’m … I’m sorry I lost it. It’s just … I feel so helpless when stuff like this happens. I hate feeling helpless.”

He turned to look at me, his eyes already forgiving me for the ridiculous outburst. “No shit.”

I took a deep breath of the moist, chill air. Cleared my head a little. “So, what do we do now?”

Cal glanced back into the dark little doorway. “What goes in must come out. And when it does, we get in.”

“So we just sit out here and wait? What if he never comes out? What if there are a thousand ways into the Preserve, each as… picky about who gets in as this one?”

“And what if the sky falls, Chicken Little?” He was laughing at me, but gently-giving me the space to pull on a wry grin and turn my anger inside out.

“News flash, smartass-it already has.”

“That doorway could open again at any moment, Colleen. I think the best thing we can do is make sure we’re ready to go through when it does. Let’s saddle the horses and pack up.” He was digging around in his pockets.

“What’re you looking for?

“Map.”

“A map? What the hell good is a map?”

He cast me a glance out of the corner of his eye. “You forget, I don’t read maps like the average guy.”

Something hopelike stirred in my chest.

“Intiryesneh,” said Doc.

“Huh?” I swiveled my head to peer back into the dark recess where Doc was on his knees, checking out the wall.

He gestured at it. “Interesting. It seems … blurry to the eye and …” He pressed the palm of his hand against the rock. “… it feels very strange, too. Almost, em … fuzzy.”

He glanced up at Cal, who left off looking for the map and got down next to him on all fours. “I’ll be damned. You’re right. This does seem less than solid, doesn’t it?”

Looked perfectly solid to me.

Doc nodded. “Yes, exactly. It seems like real earth and stone, but…” He pushed at the rock. “Less than solid, as you say. Goldie went through here?”

Cal nodded. “If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

“Then I suppose we must wait until he comes out again. There is breakfast to be eaten.” His eyes grazed mine as he rose. “Patience, like most virtues, is easier on a full stomach.”

We saddled the horses and packed first, then ate quickly, our eyes on the little cave. I suspect each of us was rehearsing what we were going to say to Herman Goldman when he came back up from the underworld. (Jeez, who names their kid Herman, anyway?) Of course, the longer we waited, the louder and nastier the rehearsals got. Damn Goldman. By the time he got here we’d have all run out of mad.

As it happened, we didn’t so much run out of mad as had it scared out of us.

Cal had gone back to the cave. I could hear him tapping at the wall with something heavy and metallic. (That’s no way to treat a good sword.) Doc and I were sandwiched between a couple of horses, packing up the last of the kitchen items, when Doc yelped and leapt back, bumping me and knocking me face first into a bag of drying mushrooms that was dangling from a pack saddle.

“Bozhyeh moy!” he said, and I sneezed and came back with “Sonofabitch!”

I turned to see what he was bozhyeh moying about. Over the rear end of the packhorse I saw a guy peering at us from the trees at the edge of the camp, about twenty-five feet away. At least, it looked like a guy at first glance. Young.

I stepped out from between the horses, hand on my knife. “Hey! Either get lost or come out here where I can see you.”

He smiled. That’s when I realized this was not a normal guy. If you were to mix everything you’d ever seen that was dangerous, dizzying, vile, putrid, and charming into a smile, this would be it.

Smiling Jack chose option number one, leaving nothing but a bobbing tree branch to mark where he’d been. He didn’t reappear. Imagine my relief.

We moved the horses up to the cave and gave the camp and clearing a thorough last look. Then Doc and I went to hover outside the cave, where we watched Cal in silence for a while.

“Anything?” I asked finally.

He made a negative noise and shook his head.

I gave the area around the mouth of the cave a nervous once-over. Tree limbs shivered in a chill breeze and a mist was caught like cotton wadding in the branches.

Great. Another soggy day.

I beckoned to Doc and we moved to secure the horses on their grazing line, strung out along the perimeter of the mound.

“So what does that mean,” I asked as we worked our way back toward the cave from the end of the line of horses. “Boshuh … bozeh…”

“Bozhyeh moy? It means ‘my God.’ ”

At the end of the line I squatted down, my back against the steep berm of the mound. “You a religious man, Doc?”

He seemed surprised by the question and answered slowly as if he had to look at each word as it came out. “Yes. Yes, I am a religious man. An anomaly, yes?”

“An anomaly,” I repeated. “I’m not quite sure how to answer that.” In fact, I didn’t have a clue what the word meant, but I wasn’t about to admit it.

He shrugged, glancing down at me. “I merely mean that, with all that has happened, it may seem… foolish to believe in a God.”

“Hey, no, really,” I protested. “I wasn’t thinking that at all. Although, I gotta say, the whole idea of evil is sort of weird. I mean, why would God invent a devil? What-He didn’t think life had enough challenges?”

He smiled, his eyes straying out over the clearing to the billows of fog that pressed into it. “Perhaps God did not invent evil. Perhaps all He did was invent man.”

“Yeah, but He gave us the tools for evil. Look at the Source. All that power. Look what they did with it. What it’s become.”

“Tools, Colleen, are neutral. They are neither good nor evil. Good and evil are in the using.”

He reached down, picked up a rock, and held it out to me in the palm of his hand. It was river-worn, a flattened oval of reddish brown. The sort of stone that would skip well.

“Is this a weapon or a tool? Hmm? Does not the answer depend only upon whether I choose to hit you in the head with it, grind corn with it, or skip it across a quiet pond?”

I laughed because he had seemed to read my thoughts. “Okay. Good point. I heard somebody say that about fire once: in the hands of a wise man, it warms the house-”

“In the hands of a fool, it burns it to the ground.” He turned the rock in his fingers. “In the hands of a fool …” he repeated softly.

“Catholic?”

“Russian Orthodox.”

“Ah.” Like I knew the difference.

He was still smiling at me, still balancing the rock in his hand, when my alarms went off. So did the horses’. They whickered nervously and yanked on their tether. The fog was practically lapping at their butts, and something dark swam through it.

I tried to stand, but my feet slipped out from under me, landing me on my ass. Doc immediately knelt to help me up, and it was while we were in that awkward position that

I saw Smiling Jack again over Doc’s shoulder. He was much, much closer, seeming to ride the crest of the fog.

“Shit!” I flung myself up, using Doc’s shoulder for leverage, and just managed to get my knife free of its sheath.

Jack wasn’t alone. There were four more guys just about like him, only less guylike. They were all young and recognizably human, but there was something wrong about them. Their features seemed distorted-like I was looking at them through a warped window and a thick mist.

Doc turned, saw them, and moved to shield me. This was absolutely the wrong time for that chivalry crap. I shoved him roughly toward the mouth of the cave, which was about eight feet farther to our left along the mound. Our mounts were tethered on the far side. My crossbow hung from the pommel of my saddle, for all the good it did me.

I brought my attention firmly back to our friends. “What d’you want?” I demanded.

“Want?” repeated Jack.

Well, at least he could talk. “Yeah, want. If you’ve got your eyes on our food, fine. We’ll share, but that’s about all we’re good for.”

He smiled, his weird, amber eyes sweeping me up and down. “Not all you’re good for. Huh-huh-huh.”

I realized that was supposed to be a laugh. The rest of them picked it up: “Huh-huh-huh.” My skin tried to crawl off and hide.

“You with him, huh?” Smiling Jack was facing me, but his eyes were on the mouth of the cave.

“Him? Cal?” I glanced at Doc, whose face was so rigid it might’ve been cut from stone. “Yeah, we’re with him. Why?” “He did this,” Jack informed me.

I shook my head. “Did? What-did what?”

“This!” He snarled the word, pounding himself on the chest with a clenched fist, his lips drawn back over sharp, uneven teeth. There was pain in his eyes.

“I don’t get it, Jack. How could Cal have done… whatever you think he’s done? He doesn’t know you. He’s never even seen you.”

His face twisted into something not even half human. “Jerry!” he shrieked. “My name’s JERRY! He don’t know us, ’cause we can’t touch him.” The smile came back (oh, how I wish it hadn’t) and the other guy-things echoed it. “Can touch you.”

They all took a floating step toward us, in perfect unison. Doc clamped a hand on my upper arm so hard it hurt. “Whoa! Whoa! What? How did he do anything to you?

How?” I flashed my knife and was embarrassed at the way

my hand shook.

Jerry-Jack’s head swiveled strangely on his shoulders like he was trying to shrug off a yoke. He opened his mouth-and the other Jacks opened theirs-and they all let out this sound. It made my stomach heave and my eyes water because I knew I’d heard it before and-oh, God-I never wanted to hear it again.

Doc murmured something in Russian and took a step toward the cave, pulling me with him.

Jerry’s head made another roll. “Mu-u-usic! Damned mu-usic. Burns.” He brought his face forward, eyes wide and feral and almost glowing with hateful and familiar red light. “He play. You pay.”

Enid. He had to be talking about Enid. Before I could even take that in, they flickered and half faded into the mist. Then they moved-smooth as smoke. I was only half ready, but Doc was fully primed. He let loose with his rock, catching Jerry-Jack in his nearly invisible head.

The tweak went solid again and dropped, distracting the others and giving me time to cut the horses’ tether. They bolted in all directions, covering our dash for the cave. Fog and tweaks roiled and danced, and a crossbow bolt shot from the cave to bring another one down.

Cal yanked both of us into the cave with him.

“Thanks,” I panted. “How’d you get the bow?” Damn, but I was glad I’d taught him how to use that thing.

Cal slipped a second bolt home. “They were focused on you. I was able to get to your horse before it spooked.” “Great. Give me the bow and some bolts.”

He grimaced. “Last one. I couldn’t get the quiver free before they attacked.”

He handed me the bow anyway and drew his sword. Awkward, with us all crammed into this rocky closet, but it came free of the scabbard with a deadly whisper.

The tweaks had stopped circling their floundering buddy and were moving on us again, like smart ground mist. Cal raised his sword; I held up the crossbow, threatening. They stopped, eyes gleaming, and faded into the mist.

The clearing was silent except for the wounded one’s muffled keening. We listened to our own breathing. We counted seconds. They weren’t done with us.

“Are these the same tweaks we saw before?” Cal murmured.

Saw? “Hell, how could we tell? But there’s four of them. That’s how many there were left.”

When they reappeared, they’d armed themselves with rocks. They didn’t hesitate to use them. I took the first one in the thigh. I heard another strike with a soft thud and Doc cried out. I fired the crossbow, but another stone smacked my shoulder and the bolt flew away into the fog. I pressed myself into the rubble, gritting my teeth against the pain and disappointment. Except for my knife and know-how, I was defenseless… unless I could bludgeon one of them to death with my crossbow. Cal’s body quivered against mine, dread and adrenaline racing between us like an electrical current.

Rock rang on steel, thudded on bone. Doc moaned and slumped, falling across Cal, who only just pulled his sword out of the way before it did damage.

I jerked forward to stop Doc’s fall, but a stone grazed my temple and then I was falling, too. A haze of sparks rose up to swallow me and the sound of a vast crowd roared in my ears.

Something had me. It jerked me off my feet and sucked me backward into the roaring darkness.

Hate to admit it, but I think I screamed.