Dance By Midnight (5 page)

My knees gave out from under me and I went down on my ass. The man in the top hat grabbed at my shoulders and I winced when he pressed against the damaged one. I saw stars and he apologized. "Damn boy…I needs you to look at me. Can you do that?"

I nodded as I pushed past the wall of pain and folded my arms over my chest, tucking my wrists and hands under my arms. "Yeah…"

"Good. Now, did you eat anything?"

Eat?
"Uh no…no."

"Did you get any black dust on you?"

"No. I ran. I got free and I ran."

He shook his head and put two fingers to my neck. "Yeah, you got a pulse. Meaning you got free. But mind you, Maab's not going to like it you weren't taken. She don't take too kindly to those what get out. Must have done pissed her off for her to take you down that way." He nodded to the stone wall to my left—

And that's what it was. A
plain
stone wall. There was no circular opening, no grate. Nothing.

"You ain't gonna see it now, boy," he said, either reading my expression or knowing I'd be shocked. "You free and untainted. But you can't stay here. You live close by?"

I nodded. I started shivering and didn't know why. "M-madison Square." I gave him Mike's house number. I remembered it from looking back at the house right before I saw Monster Brendi.

"Come on. Get up. The shake's is coming from the difference in places. Cairn and here don't really go together." He helped me to my feet. My ankles, thighs, chest, wrists, shoulder, everything felt as if it were on fire. I'd managed to burn myself and I didn't really want to see how badly.

Damn I suck at magic.

I tumbled into his carriage. He waved away a couple as they approached and said in a gentle voice, "Gotta take this boy home. He been down on the street a while. But you kind folk have a nice night, and look up old Thomas Rhymer when you come back by."

i WAS GONE HOW LONG?!

I didn't remember anything from the moment Tommy started the carriage to when we arrived at Mike's. What I did remember was thinking the bus driver must've called ahead 'cause Mike was out the door the minute the carriage stopped. I could see him from my prone position in the back but I couldn't really answer him.

Sam helped him get me out and then I was up in his arms in seconds. Did I mention Mike's a big guy?

And I'm not?

Time sort of did this little hide and seek trick after that, from nightmares of seeing those sharp teeth to some dark presence that surrounded me in the street. I wasn't sure if I was reliving what happened when I first saw the changeling Brendi or my imagination was on overdrive.

Then everything snapped into place and I sat up, once again naked, once again in the same bedroom.

My wrists and chest were bandaged and my shoulder—

Was smooth. I had to contort my neck into an uncomfortable position but I couldn't see any bandages. I got out of bed and stopped. No dizziness. No need to rush to the bathroom. In fact, I felt better than I had in weeks. I walked to the dresser and examined my shoulder in the mirror. It was whole. Not a mark.

So…had her shredding it been my imagination?

No it was messed up pretty bad. But Sam fixed it. She concentrated on it instead of the smaller stuff. That's why everything else is healing slowly.

That voice had been in my head. And it was a girl's voice. But it wasn't one I'd heard in that tunnel. In the mirror I saw the wolf step into the doorway and sit, looking up at me.

I narrowed my eyes at its reflection. No…couldn't be.

Could it?

Yeah, it's me. You can hear me now. You've been in a Cairn. In fact, you've been in
her
Cairn.

I turned to face the talking wolf. "Who?"

Maab. You're lucky you got out. Sam and Mike are downstairs. You guys really need to talk.
With that, the wolf got up and loped off.

I braced myself against the dresser and took a deep breath.

I just heard a wolf talk to me.

Yep, the Easter Bunny is real.

* * *

I smelled heaven the moment I stepped into the hall and all thoughts of a talking wolf disappeared.

Food
.

My stomach roared. The craving nearly bent me over. My bags were in the closet; everything from my hotel room in Garden City was there. The gym bag that'd carried the Big Book of Everything was there, but the book wasn't inside. I hoped to hell the Brendi Monster hadn't taken it when she took me.

I dressed in old jeans and a t-shirt and took the steps two at a time down, my nose leading me all the way.

The table was set with meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green beans, carrots, and rolls. Sam was tossing a salad in a large wooden bowl on the far side of the table while Mike sat at the opposite end with my book in front of him. "Oh good…she didn't get the book."

Mike looked up and smiled at me. "You have no idea how good it is to see you."

"Oh?" I walked toward one of the table settings and looked at him and then Sam. "I slept a long time again?"

Sam set the salads forks down and glanced at Mike. He nodded to her. "You've been in bed a day and a half. But that's actually pretty good for someone who's been in a Cairn. The stress of the middle world against ours is hard. Some people slip into comas and never come out of them."

"Really?" The reality of the situation smacked me in the face. I ran a finger through my hair and realized I hadn't put a comb through it. "I guess if I'd have stayed longer, it would be worse? I was gone for what, a few hours maybe?" I ping-ponged between the two of them. "Why the creepy faces?"

"You were gone for two weeks."

Hear that sound? That was my jaw coming unhinged as it hit the ground. I gripped the back of the chair in front of me and had a flash of being tied to one like it. Every moment of what I believed was little more than a few hours had spanned…
two weeks
?

"Dags sit down before you fall down. Thomas said you didn't eat anything while you were in the Cairn, which means you need to eat now." Sam grabbed a plate and started filling it up. "I'm not kidding. Sit or I'll sit you myself."

I nodded absently as I pulled the chair out and sat. She fixed my plate the way my grandmother used to fix it with a large helping of everything on it. Before I could stop myself I grabbed a fork and dove into the food. The meatloaf was perfect, the way it melted in my mouth. The green beans still had a bit of snap to them, and the carrots weren't mushy but firm and lightly coated with cinnamon and butter.

Sam poured me a tall glass of sweet tea and placed it in front of me.

Mike continued staring at me. "Slow down."

"He can't. His body needs everything it can find to flush out that nothingness."

They let me eat in peace until the amount of food I'd been shoving in overwhelmed the true size of my stomach. Sam fixed Mike a plate and then one for herself. After several minutes of clinking silverware and my snarfing food, I sat back and grabbed my stomach. "There's no way I was gone for two weeks."

"For us it was two weeks. But you thought it was a few hours?"

I nodded.

Mike poured himself a glass of tea. "What happened?"

I finished off my tea before I regaled them with the adventurous and torturous tale of heading to the car to get that book and finding myself tied to a chair. When I got to the part about the old man in the top hat I stopped. "I…think you know the rest?"

"It fits with what Thomas told us," Mike said. "He heard you yelling and screaming. You know you were damn lucky he was near the Cairn exit. Out of the population of this town, maybe six people could have heard you or even seen that entrance?"

"How come he could?" I sat back, even though there was still a half plate of food in front of me. "He asked me about eating while I was in that tunnel, and then if I'd been hit with black dust. It's like he knew what
could
have happened."

"That's because he's been there," Sam said. "Not just in the Cairn, but beyond it. He was once the unwitting guest of the Queen of the Faeries, and when he came out of that place, seven years had passed."

I knew that story. Mom had read it to me several times when I was a kid. "You mean he's
the
Thomas the Rhymer?"

"Yep." Sam picked up her glass of tea. "But now he's a prophet, because that was the gift he chose to take from Titania."

"He mentioned Maab, not Titania." I put my hands on the table. "Why does everyone keep using these names? Maab? Titania? It's like the land Shakespeare created."

"He didn't create the names." Mike shrugged. "He just used them. The Courts of the Faerie are pretty much the way we've read them. Only they're called Snow and Obsidian. Titania's Snow—"

"And Maab's Obsidian. Right." I ran my tongue over my teeth. I needed my toothbrush. "Before I went to the car I was researching changelings. Spoke to a guy I've known a few years. He's the one that said Faeries weren't happy little creatures with wings."

"They're not." Mike wiped his mouth with his napkin. "He tell you about real changelings?"

I relayed what Cypher had said and what I'd observed about the Brendi Monster. "I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess you both already knew this?"

"Parts of it." Sam pursed her lips. "Neither of us had seen the changeling to know for sure that's what attacked Teresa, but given my own experience with Maab, it all fit the profile."

"You've dealt with her?" I blinked at Sam. I'd noticed earlier her face seemed brighter and realized she wasn't wearing any makeup. The heart was gone as well. Her hair was up in a ponytail that hung past her shoulders.

"Oh…she and I have a long, nasty history. As a Witch I'm not partial to the Faerie kingdoms."

"Witch? Or a Sentinel…and how does that work, exactly? Maab called
me
a Sentinel, but I figured she assumed that's what I was because you helped me."

"No—Maab didn't assume you were a Sentinel. You
are
a Sentinel. You have the same vibration we all do."

"You lost me."

She sat back, her food barely touched. "We don't have time to go into details, but understand it like this; you know the five planes, right?"

"Yeah."

"And you assume that all these planes are held together by some sort of substance."

I narrowed my eyes at her. "I hadn't really thought of that. I guess I sort of saw them as layers."

"With the Physical on the bottom?"

"Well no, with the Abysmal on the bottom."

"Ah. That's an old religion based map. Truth is it's more of a sphere. Think of a planet with the Physical plane being the core. Add the plates and land mass as the Mental, and then the sky and atmosphere as the Astral. Now that planet is in a solar system that has infinite sides, correct?"

"We haven't mapped it all."

"For the sake of this argument, we'll say yes. But imagine that mass, that void out there as the ever changing and morphing aspect of the Ethereal and Abysmal. Or Heaven and Hell for show. Our kind—Witches
or
Sentinels—call them the Light and Dark Worlds. So…what holds the solar system together? The universe?"

I shook my head. "Glue?"

"Yep. And we call that glue Mother Nature. I take it you've seen personifications of names you've only gathered in history lessons, right?"

"Yes."

"So what if the one thing, the one being, the one Creatrix of creation itself had once taken form for a purpose, but it was a vastly darker purpose than you could imagine. Mother Nature has never been the mature woman in white sitting on a mushroom with a tub of butter in her hand, Dags McConnell. She's infinitely more powerful than that. For illustration, let's say that purpose of hers burned and ripped a hole in the fabric of the order she'd hoped to create. And when she was finished, she was little more than a husk of herself, powerless, and dying."

I glanced at Mike. He was listening but watching me. I cleared my throat and looked back at Sam. "So what was this dark purpose?"

Sam shrugged. "No one's really sure. We have our theories. Dags, all of those planes of existence aren't supposed to mesh. They're not meant to integrate. The Abysmal isn't supposed to spawn here in the Physical plane. You've seen the outcome of that. The First Borns? Revenants? Or as we call them, vampires?"

I swallowed.

"And look what the Ethereals have done by creating their servants? Powers? Possessed humans. Dead humans. And when the Mental bleeds on the Physical and the Astral mixes with the Abysmal… It's not meant to happen. There was a race once, created to stop this and guard those borders."

"You mean the Irin."

"Yes. They were destroyed in a terrible war that no human will ever remember."

I knew this one. "The Bulwark, or the Great Massacre."

"You know a lot more than I assumed you did."

"Well, I was given a few lessons before I left. Basic knowledge my teacher wanted me to know. I'm sort of plugging in the holes." I sat forward. "But you haven't given me the Sentinel and Witches pieces."

"Ever heard the saying Mother Nature abhors a vacuum? With no Irin, or Watchers, the borders were unguarded. No one knows when the God Mother set about on her dark purpose. Our theory is she wanted to create a new race; a new breed of children to patrol and defend those borders. Some call us Witches; others call us devils or demons. But the Planars, the ones that recognize us, call us Sentinels because we stand and guard. We have the blood of Mother Nature, or The God Mother, within us, disseminated throughout mankind at the moment of her fall."