Drinking Midnight Wine (32 page)

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Authors: Simon R. Green

BOOK: Drinking Midnight Wine
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The light snapped off and was gone, and Leo was un-surprised to find himself on his knees before Luna. But even as he tried to find a voice to say something, Luna frowned and the whole cottage
shifted
as she translated it out of Veritie and into Mysterie, by sheer act of will. For a moment the living room was full of the ghosts of its previous owners, drifting and flickering through the room, until Luna dismissed them with a wave of her hand. Leo bowed his head, sweating and shuddering, in the presence of something so much greater than himself.
Luna smiled terribly upon him, and then shut down her aspect and became just a woman again. She sat down in her chair, arranged herself comfortably, and smiled sweetly on Leo as he scrambled to his feet and all but collapsed back into his chair.
“I have need of you, Leo Morn,” Luna said, calmly, implacably. “The Morns have always been heroes.”
“But I abdicated!” said Leo, whining.
And of course, you have so many other important things to do. . . .
“Whose side are you on?”
said Leo, feeling outnumbered and distinctly hard-done-by.
Wait a minute. Someone’s here . . . I didn’t see them coming. Why didn’t I see them coming? Hell’s teeth, it’s Angel! She’s found us, now we’re in Mysterie! She’s right outside the front door!
Leo surged up out of his chair and sprinted across the room to lock and bolt the front door.
That won’t stop her. Steel plating won’t stop Angel, if she wants in.
“Then think of something that will!”
“I don’t suppose you have any weapons in this place?” said Luna, rising unhurriedly from her chair. “Arthames, Elder Signs, shaped curses?”
“Never felt the need for any before now.” Leo looked quickly about him. “Come with me. There’s a back door. . . .”
And then they all fell silent as they heard Angel run up the outside wall of the cottage. It was a light, eerie sound, like an insect the size of a man scuttling over the uneven stone. She strode unhurriedly across the roof, her great heavy footsteps crushing the thatching, to let them know where she was. The room shook under the impact of each awful tread and Leo was afraid she might come crashing through the roof at any moment. Luna craned her neck back to look up, seeming more interested than anything. It occurred to Leo that this was his worst nightmare come true: to be trapped between two powerful women who might destroy him in their fight over him. He tried to smile at the thought but there was no humor in him, and anyway his mouth was too dry. Angel had come to kill him, and there was nowhere left to hide.
The heavy footsteps stopped. Leo and Luna looked around them. It was very quiet. And then there was a thud outside the front door as something heavy hit the ground, and even as Leo spun round, Angel smashed through the locked and bolted door in one sudden movement. The solid oak tore like paper, and the hinges flew across the room like shrapnel, torn from the door-jamb. Angel stood framed by the wreckage of the doorway, a menacing figure as pale as a ghost, wrapped in black tatters, grinning fiercely and with glowing, bloodred eyes. Leo made a sound in his throat. Angel took a step forward and laughed happily as he took a step back.
“Little animal, I have sniffed you out,” said Angel, smiling her inhuman smile. “You shouldn’t have come spying to Blackacre. Shouldn’t have made yourself known to us. Nicholas Hob wants to talk to you. I’d just as soon kill you now, but he’s curious. Maybe after he’s finished with you, he’ll let me play with what’s left of you.”
“I don’t play well with other people,” said Leo. He tried to sound calm and composed, even threatening, but Angel didn’t look at all impressed.
“Pretty Angel,” said Luna. Her face had gone all vague, and her eyes were unfocused. Her summery frock had changed to a gypsyish outfit of brightly colored blouse and skirt, and her blond hair now had thick curls in it. The black beret had been replaced by a knotted kerchief. Leo’s heart sank. Luna was drifting again. Being in Veritie had kept her focused, but the move back to Mysterie must have weakened her grip on herself. Angel looked at Luna and frowned.
“I feel I should know you. But it doesn’t matter. Stay out of my way or I’ll kill you.”
Luna giggled and brought one hand up to her rosebud mouth so she could suck on her thumb. Her eyes were very far away now. Angel turned back to Leo.
“Come with me. Come with me now, or I’ll hurt you. I think you’d break very easily.”
“Ah, hell,” said Leo resignedly. “Some days fate just won’t leave you alone.”
He reached deep inside himself, called on his father’s heritage and
changed
. Thick fur burst out all over his body. His legs lengthened. Claws erupted from his feet and hands. His back arched and a tail burst out of his hindquarters. His face shot forward, forming a long muzzle crammed with sharp fangs. His clothes disappeared as he fell forward onto all fours, seven foot long, three hundred pounds, all wolf and angry with it. Like his ancestors before him, Leo Morn was a shape-shifter. A lycanthrope. A
werewolf
.
“Cute little puppy,” said Angel. “You are full of surprises, aren’t you? Still, time to go walkies, Leo Morn.”
Leo went for her throat.
His powerful back legs propelled him forward faster than the human eye could follow, his vicious jaws gaping and slavering as he launched himself, but Angel didn’t even fall back a step. She caught him by the throat with one hand and held him fast, absorbing his speed and the impact of his weight as though it were nothing. Leo kicked and scrabbled helplessly as her fingers closed around his windpipe like steel bands. Angel laughed in his changed face and threw him from her. He flew across the width of the living room and smashed into the far wall, hard enough to crack the plaster. He hit the floor already back on his feet again, and went to meet Angel snarling as she advanced on him, her pale fingers crooked like claws. Luna wasn’t even watching.
Leo ducked under Angel’s reaching hands and tore a wide rip across her belly. The blood that flowed was thick and dark, intoxicating in the wolf’s flaring nostrils. He howled, an ancient, primal sound full of rage and defiance and blood lust. He and Angel circled each other for a moment, respectful of each other’s strength, and then Angel lashed out and her more-than-human fist crushed the side of his skull, driving the bone sharply inward. A killing blow, under normal circumstances. Leo grinned widely as the bone popped back out again, and the wound healed in seconds. He was
were,
and only silver could hurt him now.
For God’s sake, Leo!
The Brother Under The Hill was yelling in his mind almost constantly now, forcing his words through the wolf’s killing frenzy.
Grab Luna and get the hell out of there! I’ll think of something to slow Angel down. You can’t beat her! She really is a descended angel!
“What makes you so sure?”
said Leo, allowing some of his human mind to resurface for a moment.
Because I recognize her.
Which was a very interesting statement, and one Leo would have liked to follow up, but Angel came at him again, and the blood lust drove all other thoughts from his mind. They slammed together, pounding and clawing at each other, ignoring the damage they took in their determination to bring the other down. To Leo’s enhanced wolfish senses, Angel seemed more than real, burning bright like a flame at night, elemental and almost pure in her fury. Part of Leo wanted just to curl up at her feet and be petted, but that only made him fight all the more fiercely. His emotions were larger now, more extreme. He could still taste her blood in his mouth, and he wanted more.
He surged forward, ignoring the pale hand that clawed his left eye clean out of its socket, and fastened his jaws around her throat. The flesh actually resisted his fangs, but he bore down, forcing his mouth shut with great wolfish jaw muscles, and blood spurted into his mouth as his teeth sank in. They fell to the floor, tearing at each other like lovers in the heat of a furious passion, and Angel grabbed Leo’s elongated head with both hands and forced his jaws away from her throat. She was bleeding heavily and laughing breathlessly. She brought her knees up sharply, and Leo’s ribs splintered and broke under the impact. He coughed harshly, his own blood flying from his muzzle to spray Angel’s face.
She kicked him away and rose quickly to her feet as he lay scrabbling on the floor, struggling desperately for breath. And then she stepped forward and stamped on his head. The skull fractured, and Angel stamped again and again and again, not allowing the splintering bone to repair itself. Sharp bone fragments were driven deep into Leo’s brain and all he could do was howl like a soul newly damned to Hell.
And then Luna woke up. She stood tall and proud in a long gown of shimmering samite, and light blazed from her face as she took her aspect upon her. The silver light hit Angel like a hammer, forcing her away from Leo. The harsh, implacable light drove Angel back, for all her struggles, and something in that light seemed to diminish her, making her smaller and more human. In the end Angel screamed with rage and turned and fled, rather than face a light and a presence that was so much greater than she was.
Leo lay on his side on the floor, panting hard, listening to the sharp popping sounds in his head as his skull repaired itself. Angel’s blood was still sharp in his mouth, and he surged to his feet, turning his head back and forth as he tracked the sound of Angel’s departing footsteps.
Don’t you dare,
his Brother said firmly.
You were lucky, Leo. For all your heritage, you are not in Angel’s class. Now change back. We need your human mind, your common sense, because we sure as hell aren’t going to get it from Luna.
Leo became a man again, in a series of twists and jerks, his bones cracking loudly as his shape changed. His fur sank back into his skin and his clothes reappeared—a very useful rider spell to the original curse. Luna applauded, her clapping hands a surprisingly soft sound. Leo looked at her carefully. She was back in the summer frock and beret again, but she was at least a foot taller. Leo decided he wouldn’t mention it.
“Well fought, Leo Morn. And now you will take me to Blackacre.”
All Leo could say was, “Yes, ma’am.”
Nine
 
Dead Indoors
 
G
AYLE AND TOBY DEXTER exchanged hardly a dozen words as they headed back, through an increasingly empty town, to Jimmy Thunder’s godly semi-detached, which was probably just as well, as Toby had a lot of hard thinking to do. So far he’d been more or less content to follow where Gayle led, partly because she knew this magical world so much better than he did, and partly because he was so utterly captivated by her; however, he didn’t feel he could do that anymore. He no longer trusted her, not after the death-walkers. Not after what she’d made him do there. But if he couldn’t rely on Gayle, that meant he’d have to take charge himself, and Toby liked that idea even less. He’d never been comfortable about making decisions, for himself or others. He was much happier to stand back and let someone else do all the hard work and shoulder the responsibility.
And if Gayle couldn’t, or wouldn’t, help him discover what the hell he was supposed to do as a focal point (and just possibly as Humanity’s Champion, though he still had strong reservations about that), he was going to have to work it out for himself, unfortunately. Toby had drifted through most of his life, taking it as it came, and the longer he spent in the magical and disturbing world of Mysterie, the more likely it seemed such an attitude was going to get him killed, in any number of appalling ways. Everywhere he went the shadows had teeth, and quite often an agenda. More and more Toby felt he was under threat from all sides, and being backed into a corner, from where he would
have
to do something. And time, as treacherous as always, was running out on him.
There was a part of Toby, the calm and reasonable part, that wanted simply to walk away from Gayle, and go to talk with Nicholas Hob, lay the whole situation out before him and listen to his side of the story. Toby didn’t believe in villains, not in people who were simply evil and nothing else. Surely if he could just sit down and talk with Hob, man to man, they could work something out together. Arrive at a basic compromise, where everyone got something they wanted in return for giving up something else. That’s how the world worked. And then he, Humanity’s bloody Champion, might not have to do anything after all.
But he’d seen Angel, crouching on a rooftop overlooking the Shambles, like some malevolent living gargoyle, and just the sight of her had made his skin crawl. She was a predator in a world of prey, a dark and dangerous force with none of the human weaknesses such as conscience or restraint or sanity. Toby knew, on some level as deep and primal as instinct, that there was no point in being reasonable with Angel. And she was Hob’s creature, his trusted right hand, his supernatural attack dog. Which meant . . . Toby sighed unhappily. This was Mysterie, not Veritie. They did things differently here. Maybe there were villains, here.
Which was a pity because he sure as hell didn’t see himself as any kind of hero. He was just Toby Dexter, shop assistant and wage slave, the man who had turned underachieving into an art form. And for all his journeys through this strangely transformed town, he was no nearer understanding what he could, or should, do. His frown deepened into a scowl as he strode along beside Gayle, thinking hard and long about the problem of Nicholas Hob, and Angel, and Blackacre.

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