Angelfire

FOUR

COLLEEN

Damned idiot took more than a leak. He took a freakin’ hike. It was a good five minutes before I realized what he’d done. Fortunately, he wasn’t trying to cover his tracks.

When I caught up with him, he was shuffling along in the wake of some guitar-playing Pied Piper with a gaggle of other music lovers. I swear, except for the guitar, it looked like something right out of an old grade-B zombie movie.

Okay, there was another difference-these folks all looked blissed, as if whatever this guy was singing was laced with eighty proof Jamaican rum. Don’t get me wrong, it was pretty music, and the guy was massively attractive in a Rastafarian sort of way, but I didn’t get why everybody was so gaga over it.

I followed along, listening and inching my way over to Goldman, when the tune changed. I’m not much into music, but I recognized the song; it was the one Goldman had been singing earlier-the “huddled masses” thing.

My scalp tingled. I looked again at the faces of Goldie’s fellow travelers. The tingle turned to a chill. These people were dazzled. Enchanted. Bewitched. This guy was hypnotizing them and leading them away to God-knows-where.

I was pissed. First, I tried to distract everybody by yelling and jumping up and down. They didn’t even hear me. Then I concentrated on Goldman. I walked right up in front of him, but he just stepped around me, staring at the Pied Piper like he was having some sort of religious experience.

Only force made sense at that point. I grabbed Goldman by the collar of his flea-bit buckskin coat and threw him into the bushes. He landed hard, but when he came up I had his attention.

“What was that? Dammit, Colleen, I need to find out where they’re going!” He clambered up and started after the parade.

I kicked his feet out from under him and brought him down again. “You’re bewitched, you idiot! The music that guy is playing is magic or something. Don’t listen!”

“Jeez, Colleen, of course it’s magic. That’s why I’m following him. That music has power.” He tried to rise.

“No shit.” I yanked him back. “Come on, Goldman, show some cojones here. Fight it. Don’t let him get to you.”

He was shaking his head. “No, no, no, no, no. You don’t get it. I’m not bewitched, Colleen-at least not the way you think. I see what he’s doing. What she’s doing. Either they’re working together, covering each other somehow, or he’s drawn her in with the rest of them.”

“What the hell are you babbling about? She, who? Who’s working together?”

“Them-the two of them. The Bluesman and the flare.”

I jerked my head up for a glance down the trail after the Pied Piper and his fans. Shit, I thought, he’s hallucinating. Doc hadn’t prepared me to deal with this. I had not clue one about how to deal with this.

I took a firm grip on his shoulders. “Look, Goldie. There is no flare. There’s just a guy with a guitar, hypnotizing people. Hypnotizing you. You’re seeing things.”

He blinked at me, looking confused for a few seconds while his wheels spun and whirred. Then he said, “You’re wrong, Colleen. I’m not seeing things. There is a flare. She’s hovering over the guy’s head. She’s creating some kind of- of aura around him. Don’t you get it? Somehow the Source hasn’t found her-hasn’t taken her.”

He tried to move again and I tried to hold him. It wasn’t easy. Goldman is tall, built like a big, lanky cat, and is about as hard to pin down. He struggled half to his feet and dragged me about a yard while I fought to make him hear me.

“There’s no flare, Goldie! Listen to me-there is no flare!”

“I can see her. Why can’t you?” He twisted and pulled himself half loose. “Come with me. I’ll show you.”

“That’s part of his power,” I panted, digging in my heels. “Maybe he … he makes people see whatever they want to see-whatever will make them follow him.” Sounded good, anyway. I wondered if I dared risk concussing him with a swift kick to the head.

He stopped struggling, catching me off guard. I could hear the wheels again-whir, click, whir. “Now that almost makes sense,” he admitted, “except for one thing. I didn’t want to see a flare. I wanted to see Tina. This isn’t Tina. This is someone very different. Someone I’ve never seen before.”

“Then why can’t I see her?”

He rolled his eyes and laughed. “Why can’t penguins fly? They’re birds. Birds fly; penguins can’t fly. Does that mean penguins aren’t birds?”

Brain freeze. Goldman used my paralysis to break free. I didn’t react in time and ended up on my keester. While he ran for the trail, I was trying to drag myself out of the shrubbery.

Cursing, I lit out after him. He was faster than I expected and seemed to have a homing beacon on the blues dude. He cheated-cut corners, crashed boonies. This made him easy to track, but harder to keep up with.

By the time I caught up again, he was right back in the pack, as close to the guy as he could get, staring at the empty air over his head like there really was a flare up there. And all the while, Mr. Blues kept serenading his audience, wrapping his music and his voice and his words all around them, trussing them up like holiday turkeys.

I flashed on a dream I’d had last night-the one that had kept me from sleeping. I was a marionette. We were all marionettes. Off to the west, this faceless puppet master stood at the top of a dark, glittering tower with our strings in his hands and made us dance toward the sunset. In my dream I was hungry to go west. Awake, I knew that if we didn’t go west, we’d never find Tina, or have a hope of understanding what was happening to our world, or have a chance to undo it or fight it.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Suddenly, I was pissed again. Who was this guy and where was he taking these people? And why? What did he have to gain by hypnotizing Goldman, or that woman and her little boy, or that girl? The only answer I could think of made me even more pissed: he was a slaver. It was the only thing that made any sense.

I spent a moment swamped in a hateful, sticky confusion. I had to do something, but I didn’t know what. There were half a dozen people here; I couldn’t exactly run up and knock them all senseless. I had to cut the strings at the source. I pulled my machete, gave a wild-eyed whoop and launched myself at the Pied Piper.

It was like slamming into an electrically charged rubber wall. Something absorbed my attack, then kicked back like a mule. Fireworks went off behind my eyes. Lights flashed, chased, spun. I was spinning, too-through the air-head over heels over head.

I slammed upside down and backward into the trunk of an evergreen. Pain-bright, sharp, shattering pain-shot up and down my right side. I roared aloud and waited for a fall that never came. I was stuck to the trunk of that tree like a damned fly in sap; only it wasn’t sap that held me. My legs and feet were tangled in a network of branches, and something held me tight against the trunk.

Looking up along my right side, I bit back a whimper. A broken limb had pierced that side of my jacket from the back and gone through the sweater and camisole underneath, knitting fabric to flesh. The shattered point stuck out through the jacket just above my waist, stained with blood.

Panic galloped from one end of my body to the other. It took me a long, crazy moment to rein it in. I was still breathing, I told myself. I hadn’t punctured a lung. I wasn’t dying; I was just stuck and hurt… and alone in a forest where feral shadows roamed.

And I was alone. The music was gone. Goldie’s blues guy had blown me six ways from Sunday and strolled off, singing, into the sunset.

I took a calming breath and tried to figure out which was holding more of my weight-the network of twigs or the broken branch. My money was on the branch.

I pulled my chin almost to my chest, trying to see. Pain flared, making the sparks of light behind my eyes dance and twirl. I reached up and felt along the branch stub. Maybe I could somehow wriggle out of my jacket and get free. Tilting my head back, I peered at the ground. It was a lot farther than I’d hoped. Okay, maybe I could just fall a dozen feet onto my head and break my neck.

I looked back up at the limbs and branches at my feet, hoping to see something sturdy. There was nothing within reach that would hold my weight.

I jerked my left leg. It came free in a shower of pine needles. The world tilted dangerously and my side screamed.

Whatever I did, I had to do it fast, before I passed out. I closed my eyes, took as deep a breath as I could, and grabbed the stub with both hands. I’d count to three, then I’d try to get my other leg free.

“Don’t move.” Strong hands gripped my shoulders.

I felt weak enough to weep. “Damn it, Goldman. I thought you’d gone south.”

“West, actually, but no. I heard you screaming.”

“I didn’t scream. Not out loud, at least.”

“Really? Well, then you have very loud angst.”

I opened my eyes and looked down toward the ground.

He was looking up at me through those strange redwood eyes, his hands still on my shoulders.

“I’m going to climb up onto the branch behind you there.” He pointed up toward my feet. “Then I’m going to grab your legs. I want you to try to ease yourself off that … snag. Don’t worry about falling. I won’t let you fall. I promise.”

I hated that I felt reassured. “Shit, Goldman, don’t be maudlin. Can you even climb a tree?”

“Never tried. But I figure if I can climb a steam pipe, I can climb a pine. Hold on,” he added, and disappeared from my line of sight.

There was some scratching and scuffling behind me, then I was hit by a shower of pine needles and bark. I prayed there were no loose pinecones up there. A moment later he had a tight hold on my ankles.

I dared to look up at him. All I could tell was that he had somehow woven himself into the branches behind me and wrapped his arms around my legs.

“Okay,” he grunted, “now, see if you can’t get your clothes free of that snag.”

“Problem. My clothes aren’t all that’s caught.”

He was silent for a moment, then murmured something under his breath. “What can I do, Colleen?”

“A knife,” I said. “Mine’s in my boot. Little hard to reach just now. If I cut the jacket away from the branch, might help.”

“Okay, hang on.”

The branches creaked and groaned, I felt him fumble with my boot. A moment later something hit the ground.

“Shit,” he said, then, “Sorry. I guess you’ll have to make do with mine. Reach up toward me. I’m going to slip the knife into your hand, hilt first.”

I reached. He got his knife into my palm without cutting either of us. It was smaller than mine-lighter. The handle was held together with duct tape. I prayed the tape would hold. I slipped the blade into the torn fabric at my waist and sliced.

The fabric slit so easily it caught me by surprise. I shot downward-only a few inches. There was a muffled snap and pain shot around my rib cage. I went cold all the way to the bone. It couldn’t be a broken rib-it couldn’t.

“Colleen?”

“It’s okay,” I panted, chasing the quivering, icy feeling out of my chest with hot determination. “I just slipped.”

“I’ve got you,” he said. “I won’t let you fall. Try to get free.”

I bit my lip and started hacking at the jacket. Finally, it slit all the way to the hem and fell away from the snag. I pushed gently on the broken branch; something tugged and my side shrieked.

“Oh, shit,” Goldie said.

I didn’t want to look. I had to look.

“I can’t see,” I said. Stars danced in front of my eyes; I fought blackness.

“Don’t look. You’ve got a splinter in your side.”

I almost laughed. A splinter. How mundane. I pulled my head up so I could see. I was a mess. The good news was that I hadn’t impaled myself on the main branch, but on a shard about two fingers thick. I could see the bloodied tip angling out over my ribs. The bad news was that the other end was still attached to the branch.

“Give me the knife,” Goldie said.

“Goldman, if I give you the knife, how are you going to hold onto me?”

“Good point.” He shifted his grasp on my legs.

I shuddered as the splinter twisted in my side.

“Damn! Sorry. Okay, now give me the knife.” I felt him take careful hold of the blade. “Let go.”

I did, and gladly.

“This will no doubt hurt like hell,” he informed me. “Are you ready?”

“Jeez, Goldman-what a question. No, I’m not ready. Cut the damn thing.”

A kitchen knife is crappy for sawing wood. It took him several agonizing minutes to saw through the thing. I bit my lip, ground my teeth, growled, and panted like a dog. The splinter broke free of the tree in one final twist of agony.

Oh, God, I thought, as the swirling specks of light gathered behind my eyes, I’m going to pass out. But I didn’t pass out-not just then. I passed out when Goldman, having lowered me as far as he could without falling, let go of my feet. I came down on my back in a shower of needles and bark and an explosion of pain.

When I woke, there was icy water dribbling into my face. “Drink,” he said.

I obeyed, taking the squeeze bottle out of his hands. As I guzzled water, he said, “I thought about trying to extract that thing while you were out, but I couldn’t tell how bad it was.”

“You’re not a doctor, so I’d just as soon you didn’t try to play one.”

“Yeah, well, I did manage to pull out some of the little bits and I cleaned around the wound and, um, put sort of a poultice on it. But Doc is going to have to perform the miracle today. I’m plumb out.”

“Getting late,” I observed.

He nodded, looking around at the striping of shadow and sunlight.

“Help me up.”

Getting vertical was hell. Walking was hell. Racing sunset was hell. I did not want to escape the clutches of some stupid pine tree only to become tweak chow.

At first I tried to be stoic and self-reliant, but by the time we reached the outskirts of Grave Creek, shadows were long, the sunlight was a tired red, and Goldman was practically carrying me.

When we reached the water tower, a cart came out to get us. I was so bloody glad to be off my feet, I nearly cried. Once we were settled in the cart, my side didn’t seem to hurt so bad. In fact, it felt sort of tingly. I rolled my head along the rail of the cart to get a look at the wound, wondering what kind of poultice he’d put on it.

Goldman had his hand over it, as if to keep me from seeing how bad it was. The expression on his face was tight and dark. What did he think-that he could pull the damn thing out with his eyes? A snide and indignant order for him to get his hands off me popped into my head, then fizzled. Whatever he was doing, it wasn’t hurting me any. Just felt sort of tingly.

I rolled my head back the other way, gazing out over the rear of the cart toward the blanket of trees. Among the slanting shadows floated several pairs of ruddy embers.

I’d’ve refused a general anesthetic if they’d offered me one. But Doc gave me a local instead, then got to work cleaning and stitching. It was not a painless procedure. I meditated on packing my saddlebags, saddling and bridling my horse, and taking a trail into the Adirondacks. And I wondered what Goldman was telling Cal.

I could just imagine.

When we’d come in, naturally, the first question he asked was, “What happened?” I said, “Long story,” and Goldman said, “Cal, we need to talk.” When Cal seemed to want to follow my gurney into the E.R., Goldman added, “Now.”

“Whatever he tells you,” I warned Cal as the nurses wheeled me away, “don’t listen!”

When the E.R. doors swung shut and cut me off, Goldman was already drawing Cal away toward Dr. Nelson’s office.

A stupid thing to say, I reflected, as I watched Doc bandage my ribs. I really should know by now that any word spoken against his precious Goldie is a word Cal Griffin doesn’t hear.

Doc put me in a wheelchair and started to roll me back to my room.

“I can handle it,” I told him.

“No,” he said, “you cannot. If you try to drive this chair on your own, you will pull out all of my careful work and you will begin to bleed. The wound was both deep and ragged, Colleen; you will not be able to bounce up and run away from this one. Besides, I imagine Dr. Nelson would disapprove of you bleeding on his so-clean floors.”

“I gotta talk to Cal.”

“Then I will take you to him.”

I gritted my teeth all the way to Nelson’s office. When I saw the look on Cal’s face, my heart lurched. He looked like a crusade about to roll off to the Holy Land.

“What’s he been telling you?” I asked, and cringed at how wimpy my voice sounded. “Did he tell you he saw a flare?”

“Of course he told me.” His eyes were bright and the words bubbled out, mixed with laughter. “Why wouldn’t he tell me?”

Behind me Doc repeated, “He saw a flare?”

“No,” I said. “He did not. If Goldie saw a flare it’s because he fantasized one.”

The hope in Cal’s eyes faltered. “What do you mean-he fantasized one?”

“I mean there wasn’t a flare. He only thought-”

Goldman cut me off. “That doesn’t make any sense. I told you before: if I’d been fantasizing, I would have fantasized Tina, not someone I’d never met. This flare was a woman- an adult. She was only generically like Tina.”

In spite of Doc’s magic herbs, I was bone weary and I hurt all over. I didn’t have the energy to argue. But I had to. I couldn’t let Cal break his heart on false hope. Again.

I grasped my wheel rims and pushed myself farther into the room, drawing a cry of protest from both Doc and my stitched ribs. “There was no flare, dammit, Goldie! There was a guy with a guitar and a bunch of sleepwalking zombies. He was a magician or a-a hypnotist, and he made you all see what you wanted to see and hear what you wanted to hear.”

“Why?” Cal asked.

“So they’d follow him. You should’ve seen him, Cal.” I nodded at Goldie. “He was… smitten. He was singing the guy’s songs; he was following him like a little lost lamb; he was staring up at him like-”

“Like he had a flare hovering over his head,” said Goldman dryly. Before I could crank out a comeback, he added, “How do you think you ended up in that tree?”

Brain tilt. “He did it-the blues guy.”

“He didn’t even see you coming.”

Yeah, that’s how it had seemed to me, too, at the time. But now it was hard to admit it. “He had a force field of some sort.”

“Oh, you saw it, did you?”

“No, I didn’t see it.”

“Well, I did.” Goldman thumped his chest. “I saw it. And I saw where it was coming from.”

Cal’s eyes were on his face, bright with hope. “The flare?”

Goldman nodded. “She was cloaking him in some way. Not to keep people away from him, I think-there was a little kid holding the hem of his jacket. But when Colleen came flying at him, the flare shot out this… blast of energy. Like a shock wave. Or a-a photon torpedo. That’s what put Colleen in the tree.”

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair for me to be fuzzy and weak when I needed to be sharp and clear and strong. I bit the inside of my lip to keep from snapping and snarling.

Cal knelt by my wheelchair and met me eye-to-eye. “You didn’t see any of this?”

I gave him the most straight-up, confident look I could muster and begged him silently to see in it how sure I was. “No, Cal. I didn’t see anything but the guitar player.”

“Did you feel any desire to follow him?”

“No. Not a bit. I just went along because I wanted Goldman not to follow him.”

“Was it as Colleen said, Goldie?” Doc asked. “Did this man’s music mesmerize you? Did these other people seem mesmerized?”

“I’d say they were.”

I snorted. “Oh, yeah, but you weren’t, right?”

“No, Colleen, I wasn’t.”

He sounded so calm and self-assured and-well, sane- while I knew he was nothing of the sort. Looking at Cal’s face, it was clear the sanity card was one I didn’t dare play right now.

“If I had been mesmerized,” Goldie continued reasonably, “you’d still be hanging upside down in that tree.”

Slam-dunk.

He turned to Cal, his eyes earnest, as if he was a wide-open book begging to be read. “There was a flare, Cal. Colleen couldn’t see her-I could. It’s that simple. Colleen didn’t hear the music at first, either.”

“I heard it,” I protested.

“Sure, after you got within hearing range.” He tapped his ear. “I heard it before that. That’s why I went off on my own-to look for the source of it. And I heard it last night when we brought in the Gossetts and Beechers. The kids and the dog heard it, too. So did Jim. He caught me humming it and thought it was a song he knew. It was one of the Bluesman’s tunes.”

Cal gave him a long, searching look. “Are you saying this is what called off the Shadows?”

“I’m saying… it could be.”

Cal turned back to me. “But you don’t believe him.”

Oh, God, but I wanted to sleep. “Oh, hell. Yeah, okay. I guess I believe him. Goldman was singing something about ‘huddled masses’ and driving me nuts. He wandered off, I followed, and-yeah-our Pied Piper friend turned out to have the song in his repertoire.”

“If he heard what you couldn’t hear, mightn’t he have seen what you couldn’t see?”

Put that way, it sounded reasonable, even to me. I should’ve known better than to argue with a damned lawyer.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, anything’s possible, I guess.” I was wilting. Melting away like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Doc’s hand lit warmly on my shoulder. “Colleen needs rest. Perhaps we can explore the meaning of all this in the morning.”

I could tell that neither Goldie nor Cal wanted to wait that long to explore anything.

“In just a moment,” Cal said. “Let’s assume that there is a musician drawing people into following him. And that there is a flare shielding him in some way-protecting him. Why? Why is he collecting people? Where’s he taking them?”

“And for what purpose?” murmured Doc.

“Well, that’s a no-brainer,” I mumbled.

“And, um, how does he protect the flare?” Goldman was tugging at his lip, talking almost to himself. “How does he keep her from being sucked up by the Megillah? Or maybe the question is, how does he keep the Megillah from finding her?”

Cal looked up at him, his eyes intensely bright. “Where’s she from? Maybe she’s not the only one.”

“The Source has Tina, Cal,” I said, sounding surly. “There might be one flare or twenty or even a hundred where this guy is from, but not one of them is Tina.”

“We don’t know that, Colleen. We don’t know where he’s from. For all we know, he may have somehow gotten her away from the Source. She could be a direct link.” Cal rose, looking over my head at Doc, ignoring me. “I want to know where she’s from. And how he’s protecting her.”

“Or enslaving her?” asked Doc.

Cal’s face was grim. “Or enslaving her. Enslaving them.”

I lost track of the murmur of voices. When I came up out of my head-trip, blue and cream tiles were slipping by under the wheels of my chair. I turned my head so I could see who was driving. I recognized Doc’s slender surgeon’s hands and felt a flicker of disappointment.

“Guess I zoned out,” I said. My words came out like mush. “No big deal, though, huh? I didn’t have a whole lot t’offer the discussion anyway.”

“You offered a great deal, Colleen. You do yourself a disservice.”

I shook my head. “What is it about me, Doc? Why am I so damn dense? Why is this shit we’re going through changing everybody but me? I’m like a-a rock. I just sit like a lump while the whole fucking world changes around me. Evolves. Why aren’t I evolving?” Oh, dammit. I was going to cry. What the hell had he given me?

His hand came down on my shoulder, firm and consoling. “Colleen, you are beaten up and exhausted. So, I will ignore what you are now saying and advise you to do the same. Yes, you are, indeed, like a rock in many ways. You are stable, solid, dependable. Whatever happens, you can be relied upon to be where you are most needed. You are… an anchorage that the rest of us need.”

I sniffled. God, I actually sniffled. “Cal doesn’t need me. He just needs me to get out of his way. He makes a decision; I’m the one who’s gotta argue it. He comes up with a plan; I’m the one who’s gotta try to poke holes in it. You saw what happened just now. Shit, why couldn’t I just shut up?”

Doc chuckled. “Because you care. You care that we don’t get distracted-drawn off target, yes? As I said: you keep us focused. Calvin knows this as well as I do.” Something soothing seemed to ooze out of Doc’s voice- out of his fingertips-and fill my veins and arteries with warmth.

“You see, that’s just what I mean,” I complained. “You got this thing you do that just makes everything all right. The sky is falling and the world is crumbling and I hurt like hell and you say something and it’s all okay.”

Now he laughed. It was a free, natural laugh I’d hardly ever heard him use. “And you, Colleen, you have this thing you do, as well.”

“What thing?” I wanted to know. “What thing do I do?”

He didn’t answer me right away. Instead, he wheeled me to the door of my room, propped it open, pushed me inside and rolled the chair over to the bed.

I started to lever myself up out of the chair.

“Nyet!” he said sharply. Then he lifted me onto the bed, pulled a blanket over me, and perched on the edge of the mattress to look at me. His face, always neatly shaven, was all serious, solemn angles, hollowed out beneath the high cheekbones. He looked as weary as I felt, but there was an almost-twinkle in his eyes.

“The thing you do, Colleen, is to make things happen, not as our fears tell us they must, but as our hopes tell us they should. You defy all odds, you ignore all dangers, you acknowledge no defeat. If you did not do this thing you do so very well, neither I, nor Goldie, nor perhaps a single member of the Gossett or Beecher families would be alive tonight.” He put his hand over mine where it lay on the blanket and squeezed it. “Be a rock, Colleen. Because it is a rock we need.”

Tears leapt from my eyes, giving me no chance to call them back. Stupid. Weak.

He watched me for a moment, smiling this warm little smile he usually reserved for injured children. Then he leaned forward and kissed my forehead. “Spatyeh, boi baba.”

“What?” I murmured, already half asleep. “What?” “I said, sleep, tough lady.”

I seemed to have no choice but to close my eyes and let sleep carry away the tears.