Cruel Zinc Melodies (35 page)

That little lump actually shut up. The others did, too. Amazing. Some of the ugliest pustules on the body politic ever. Walking nightmares to us down on the mundane streets. Apparently mostly related and all just worried parents.

Dierber sputtered suddenly, unable to control something that had to get out. The gist being that the disrespect shown him by the Bellman had been so egregious that the only possible response had to be orchestrated atrocities.

Schnook Avery tried to calm him down.

So Dierber had asked for trouble, had gotten it, had gotten the worst of it, and had carried a murderous grudge ever since. He wasn’t the sort to sleep in a bed of his own making without complaining.

His spite had been such that the Bellman faked his own death and went underground.

I asked the Windwalker, “Who is Belle Chimes?”

“Link’s brother. Half brother, actually. Link hates him because their mother always favored Belle. Link’s father didn’t ask permission before he got her with child.”

More family nutso stuff. I’d fallen into the weirdest dream ever.

I was premature when I concluded that the ghosts weren’t interested in Shadowslinger. It just took them a while to find her and connect with her secret self.

A phantom laid hands on. It took plain form once it did. Not a human form, but close. It had a face like an ape, but less dark. Its eyes rolled up in ecstasy.

Link Dierber shut up. Aghast. He stared at the creature enjoying Shadowslinger. Which changed slightly, I presume to resemble what he thought his father looked like.

I tried to ask Furious Tide of Light.

She made a whimpering noise. A couple of ghosts were snuggling her up again.

Shadowslinger suddenly cackled like she was auditioning for wicked witch.

Furious Tide of Light reclaimed her self-control. She shoved one of her ectoplasmic suitors away. She had that spook so blue-balled it didn’t care who it mated. It clamped on to Shadowslinger, too. The witch loosed a startled, long groan filled with undertones of abiding amazement.

Schnook Avery, beset by ghosts of his own and definitely not in an erotic zone, began to ooze around Shadowslinger’s left flank. I don’t know what he thought he saw but he had blood in his eye. He didn’t have family matters on his mind. He looked like he expected to have a whole lot of fun playing games in which the Windwalker or I would do a lot of screaming.

“Not good. The monster has taken over.” Furious Tide of Light startled me by wrapping her right arm firmly around my waist. Then she skewered her remaining randy specter with Heather Soames’s silver hat pin.

That got results. Loud results. The rattle and volume were overwhelming. The ghosts on Shadowslinger didn’t fade, though. They didn’t stop. They didn’t give up. And they didn’t run away.

Distracted by that horror show, I didn’t notice that I was dancing on air until I realized that I was looking down at a troop of panicking sorcerers.

“Stop wiggling,” the Windwalker told me. “You don’t want to fall.”

No. I for sure didn’t want to do that.

“Don’t tense up, either. Just relax.”

Easy for her to say. This was what she did.

“If you don’t relax it’s harder for me to lift you.”

We reached the high balcony used for managing the upper vents. The Windwalker released a long sigh. “That was hard work. You’re big.”

She didn’t turn loose right away.

Me being me, I didn’t get it till after the fact. Till after we’d both had a good look at what was happening forty-some feet below, where everybody but us was getting a great big “Love you long time.” To thunderous, chaotic metal music.

The show changed. It became the horror fest I would expect to see with people like those down there. With Furious Tide of Light off the floor the ghosts lost interest in love play. Shadowslinger howled in the clutches of things that filled her with terror. Blood and gobbets of flesh flew but didn’t discolor the floor or pile up the way Rocky’s bug scraps had. Nor did any real damage accrue to the ugly people inside the scarlet whirlwind.

The sorcerers fought back. Against creatures of their own consciences. They danced with their nightmares. More or less.

To do the wicked things they do, Hill folk have to have their consciences and souls pretty well tamed.

Furious Tide of Light whispered, “Can you climb through this window?” Her eyes were a warm, inviting brown.

Two or three of her could do so at the same time. Easily.

“Yeah. But why?”

“We’re making our getaway.” With eyes gone an amused, very pale blue. “Schnook has lost it. You’re an outsider. You don’t want to be where he can see you for the next several minutes.”

I became aware of how crowded we were. And of the effect she was having on me. Which was too reminiscent of her impact on everyone else who got close to her, living or ghost.

Her green eyes offered an invitation. For after we were safe.

No cold bath being handy, I practiced my multiplication tables. Eight times seven is what? I can’t ever remember. What’s seven times eight?

I swear, that chit could read my mind. “I don’t get many chances to be on my own.”

Danger! Danger, Garrett! Deadly danger!

Disappointment. Abiding disappointment. I got no chance to test my ability to resist a temptation so fierce.

“Damn!” she swore, as I was worming my way out onto the roof. “How did he get done so fast?”

I didn’t spot Barate Algarda right away. I was busy surviving a barrage of furious looks from my special redhead, who had escaped the custody of the honey pack and had returned.

“Some other time,” the Windwalker told me. With promise like a forest fire.

“Yeah. Like you said. Damn!”

And thus I saved me the fury of a Furious Tide of Light scorned.

Still, she gave me a look that would haunt me.

And said, “Stand up. We’re going to jump.”

I didn’t want to stand up. The World was shaking like it was warming up to star in an earthquake. And the roof slates were slick. But I did as I was told. Ever pliable me.

The Windwalker wrapped an arm around me. “This would be easier if I wrapped everything around you.” We floated off the roof, began a slow descent. “Think about the possibilities in that.”

That would haunt me, too.

I’ve got a pretty good imagination.

How come I got to grow up?

72

“You got a guilty look on you, Malsquando.”

“Because you’re determined to make me feel guilty about something. Including getting away from bad people.”

“I saw the way she was hanging on to you.”

“Because I’d fall like a rock if she didn’t. And I don’t have the spring in my legs that I did when I was a Marine.” Then, for no reason that I can recall, I added, “She’s left-handed.”

“Well, of course she is. Her kind always are.” Tinnie didn’t expand on that.

Elsewhere, though nothing but the music had happened, the human population had gotten thin. The workmen were gone. Saucerhead’s team had decided they’d better keep an eye on the workmen. Tharpe hadn’t gone along. But he wanted to. Badly.

Barate Algarda was having a discussion with the Windwalker much like mine with Tinnie. But less intense, and, like Tinnie, reserving all the suspicion for me.

Furious Tide of Light had turned into the deathly shy wallflower. She kept trying to change the subject to the Bellman and bad behavior by cousin Link, and Schnook Avery getting “taken over by the beast.”

It didn’t take her long to get Algarda focused on business.

“Tinnie, godsdamnit, enough! This shit isn’t about you!”

Miss Tate looked like some zombie horror had just come prancing out of an awful night. And he was me. And I felt like one. Almost.

The redhead is nothing if not flexible. She adapted quick as a snap, with an absolute unspoken reservation. If Garrett was blowing smoke!...

The racket from inside the World took on a sudden new, darker note. Everything capable of flying took sudden wing, getting the flock out of the neighborhood. I was amazed by how many sparrows there were.

Panic even flushed a brace of giant beetles. They should’ve stayed hunkered down. They didn’t make thirty yards horizontally before they enjoyed a fatal encounter with the cobblestones.

“And that’s that,” I said. “I hope.”

The chaos inside tumbled into public. In the form of half a dozen high and mighties clearly stunned stupid and humbled, and all the worse for wear. Even from where I stood, poised to set a record in the quarter-mile dash to safety, it was clear that Shadowslinger had been bitten off by something that hadn’t seen her as more than it could chew. She was all torn up, at least on the outside.

Link Dierber owed his pal Schnook a big kiss in a special place for having dragged his wicked ass outside. Schnook was sane again.

The rest crawled and dragged one another into the weather, not a one grinning over a prank well played.

What the hell? They had suffered a serious, collective ass-kicking. How? “I can’t claim those ghosts never hurt anybody anymore.”

After half a minute of silence the zinc melody pounded out a few bars of a sinister-sounding march that faded into dark echoes.

What appeared to be a young ghost, defined to the point where warts, freckles, and zits were individually obvious, leaped out of the World. It lugged a six-foot length of floor planking, six inches wide and two inches thick. It applied that to Link Dierber, then went after Schnook Avery? while bashing any of the others who got in its way. It stayed only a matter of seconds, then abandoned the board and fled into the World.

Odd behavior for one of those ghosts. Who seemed vaguely familiar, on reflection. But it all happened so fast....

Total silence. No talk. No music. The concert had ended. The fat lady had nothing more to say.

Shadowslinger kept trying to get to her feet, kept falling back down. She had taken a truly hearty whack because she’d shown the bad judgment to be between the ghost and Schnook Avery.

Those of us stupidly still in range just plain refused to believe our eyes. This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t have happened. Those people were among the most dreadful of the dire, drear potentates of the Hill. Of all Karenta. Of the whole damned world. They were people who, collectively, the gods ought to fear. But Dierber was down, Avery was on his hands and knees and bleeding, and Shadowslinger looked like she might have lost the use of one arm.

“Oh, Malsquando!” Tinnie gasped. “This just turned into some serious shit.” She doesn’t use that kind of language often. “We'll never get the World finished now!”

That had begun to worry me, too. Max was going to be pissed off. He’d be in no mood to be confused by facts if Hill types started getting themselves dead on his property. That’s never good for business.

Tin whistles tooted. Red tops came out of the woodwork. A few went chasing into the theater but the rest just rolled up, stopped, and stared at the battered sorcerers, unable to believe their own eyes. Not a one had any idea what to do now.

Not good.

They were likely to start hitting and breaking if they couldn’t think of anything more practical.

Barate Algarda and I suffered the same mad impulse at the same moment. We shoved through the crowd, Furious Tide of Light moving in his wake.

For me, the sensible thing would’ve been to stand back, lean on a handy wall, and hope I wouldn’t be noticed. Then maybe drift off somewhere, take an hour to enjoy some artificial courage. Instead, I just had to charge in there to try saving lives. Knowing the fallen, the injured, and the just plain confused, all deserved to be put down like mad dogs. And knowing Mrs. Garrett’s boy would get blamed no matter what.

So here are Garrett, Algarda, and the Windwalker, trying to restore breath to the kind of people I always hoped the lightning would slip loose from heaven and find.

A couple of red tops got into the act, too.

It took only a moment to see that Link Dierber was beyond mundane help. The rest were all breathing. The uninjured three stood around drooling like the smarts bandit had picked their brains clean.

That old black magic.

Schnook Avery would need some repairs but he would live. He needed something for the pain and swelling, plus a few dozen stitches. No bones poked through his skin. Nothing was obviously broken. He offered no work for the bone setters or cast makers.

Shadowslinger still hadn’t been able to get onto her feet. She might be hurt worse than I first thought.

Algarda said, “We need a healer. Fast.” He grabbed a red cap. “You. Take this?”

Furious Tide of Light interrupted. “I'll go. I'll be faster.”

Father considered daughter. “Are you sure?”

“I can do it.”

“All right. Be careful.”

“I promise.”

She floated up. Her soles cleared our heads. She drifted eastward, rising, gathering speed. Her legs worked, taking giant strides. She vanished in half a minute.

I’d seen something similar before. But I remained as slack-jawed as everyone else.

Algarda muttered, “Where did she find the nerve?” Then he looked at me, oddly. “She’s been acting strange all day.”

Tinnie pushed through the crowd. She had an odd expression of her own. But she wasn’t watching the Windwalker. Or me. She was fixed on the bloody two-by-six, lying between Shadowslinger and what was left of Link Dierber. The watermills of her mind were turning.

I began shivering. The excitement had worn off. And a breeze had come up. It swirled and shifted, playing among the buildings. It brought a whiff of potent body odor. As always, I saw nothing when I looked for the source.

Barate Algarda observed, “Let’s not move anybody before the healer gets here. We might do more damage. Schnook. That means you should stay in one place and don’t move.”

Poor kid Slump. He was the only member of the Faction who hadn’t run for it. He couldn’t make up his mind what to do now. Hang with Avery? Cry over Dierber? Schnook made up his mind by grabbing hold and not letting him get near Dierber.

Dierber was alive, after all. But he wasn’t going to last.