Authors: Simon R. Green

Drinking Midnight Wine (38 page)

BOOK: Drinking Midnight Wine

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Luna sniffed, fixed the unmoving fog with a hard look, and then thrust one very pale hand into the blue-green mists. The fog churned violently about her hand, as though in pain, and bright lights flared suddenly, deep in the mists, and were followed by the sound of distant explosions. Leo could feel his jaw dropping as he listened to the Hob’s defensive spells detonating under the pressure of Luna’s will. So much power, linked to a mind of fluctuating sanity . . . Leo didn’t even want to think about what might happen if Luna ever turned such a gaze upon him, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. He felt very much like whimpering, and did actually jump just a bit when Luna nodded once, sharply, withdrew her hand and spoke to him.

“Come along, Leo.”

All he could do was nod, and say, “Yes, ma’am.”

She walked into the fog with her head held imperiously high, and Leo slunk in after her. He felt a sharp sinking sensation in his stomach as the thick, oily blue-green mists swallowed him up, like the maw of some hungry beast. His skin crawled at their touch, and all his hair stood on end. He glared about him, tensed and ready for any form of attack, but there were only the dead trees, like dark smudges in the fog. Leo considered turning wolf, and then thought better of it. This place was upsetting enough to his merely human senses. He glanced at Luna and wasn’t surprised to find she’d changed again. She was dressed in chased silver armor now, from shimmering helm to dainty boot, the shining metal traced with frost despite the heat, and scored all over with marks in a language Leo didn’t even recognize.

I know it,
said his Brother Under The Hill, sounding distinctly unhappy.
No one uses it anymore. It’s Enochian, a language for speaking with angels.

“Be quiet,” said Luna. “Your chattering distracts me.”

Listen to me,
the Brother said stubbornly.
There are others in there with you, powerful presences. Not Hob or Angel.

“Oh, shit,” said Leo. “It’s going wrong already, isn’t it? Maybe we should come back later?”

Too late.

Suddenly a whole gang of mice came charging out of the fog, racing around and past Luna and Leo, laughing and whooping. Dead men came stumbling determinedly after them and the Mice chased and pestered them mercilessly, taking turns to see who could get the closest to the grasping dead hands and still escape untouched. The dead stubbornly pursued the Mice, who led them off into the wood again until all of them were gone, swallowed by the fog. The last Mouse to go was Sweetie, who paused just long enough to drop Leo a saucy wink.

“Friend of yours?” said Luna.

Oh, tell me you didn’t . . . ,
said his Brother.

“Today just keeps getting worse and worse,” said Leo.

That was when the dead hands burst up and out of the ash-covered ground all around them, grasping blindly for Luna and Leo’s ankles: dead men and women, buried in the dead ground, hidden from view as another line of defense. Cold fingers dug deep into Leo’s ankles and feet, tearing the skin and crushing flesh and bone with horrid, implacable strength. Leo yelled, from shock as much as pain, and tried to change, but the pain distracted his thinking, preventing him from concentrating. He fought to keep his balance, knowing that if he fell, the rotting hands protruding from the ashes, opening and closing like bear-traps, would tear him apart in moments.

But where the hands touched Luna’s cold armor they recoiled in a moment, seared and twisted, as though blasted by some unseen force. They could not bear the touch of her. Luna glared about her, and wherever she looked the hands sank quickly back into the broken ground, driven away by the awful power of her will. Some of the more slowly retreating hands actually withered under the pressure of her gaze and fell apart. The ground itself rippled and roiled as the hidden dead tried to dig themselves deeper into the earth, to get away from her. It took Leo a moment to realize that his ankles were free, too, now that she’d looked in his direction, and he quickly knelt down to press his tattered ankles together with his hands, to speed up the healing. And so he wouldn’t have to look at Luna, and perhaps meet her terrible gaze.

“That was Hob,” Luna said calmly. “My son, working through the dead. Now he knows I’m here. Good. I want him to know. And to worry.”

In another part of the dead wood, Toby and Gayle and Jimmy stood together, watching a bright golden gleaming will-o’-the-wisp, as it danced in the mists ahead of them. It was drawing steadily closer, a golden glow bobbing on the air like an unblinking flame. Then suddenly there were two of them, moving paired together, racing forward through the fog. Jimmy hefted his great hammer Mjolnir and braced himself. The golden glowing things became the two golden eyes of a huge dark cat, stalking out of the mists toward them, overpoweringly huge and menacing. It stood easily five feet tall at the shoulder, and was perhaps ten feet long. Thick cords of muscle bulged under the night-dark hide, but for all its size, it wasn’t a panther or a puma or a leopard, or any known species. Instead, it was somehow all cats and none, every kind of cat rolled into one and grown to an impossible size. The abstract, perfect, primal Cat. The ground shook under its tread, as though afraid. It came to a halt disturbingly close to Gayle and Toby and Jimmy and looked at them with calculated insolence.

“Well, hello,” said the Cat, in a slow, self-satisfied drawl that Toby immediately knew was how all cats would sound if they could talk. “You really shouldn’t be here, you know. This is a dangerous place, for the uninvited.”

“Do you know who I am?” said Gayle, her voice perfectly calm and steady.

“You, Lady? Always. I would bow my head to you, in other places. But this place belongs to another, and so I do not bow to you. Soon, everywhere that is will be taken from you, and then I will bow to you no more, Lady.”

“Can we cut to the chase, please?” said Jimmy, in his best commanding, godlike voice. “I haven’t got the time or the patience for the usual veiled threats and insinuations. Who the hell are you?”

“So swift, so uncourteous,” said the Cat. “You would take all the fun out of it, little god. Your ancestors understood the need for civilized banter, a crossing of wits before the slaughter. It is expected of us, as symbols and avatars. But style is going out of the world, along with so many other things. I am the King of the Cats. And the Hob has bound me to him with promises of free reign in the world that is to come, the world that he will bring about. No more pets, no more zoos or sanctuaries. All mankind will be my prey, or all of Humanity that survives the transition. My prey, to run naked and squealing before me, to hunt and kill at my pleasure. Such fun. And all I have to do to earn that joy is to kill fools like you, who intrude where they’re not wanted.”

“You know who I am, and dare to challenge me?” said Jimmy, as calm and collected as the Cat.

“Oh, yes,” said the King of the Cats. “Such a pleasure, to have such notable victims to rend and tear, such godly blood to lick from my claws. I’m going to enjoy running you down, and hear you plead for your little lives. The diluted god, the diminished Lady and the tiny mortal. You will run for me, won’t you? Who knows; I might not chase all of you.”

“Shove it,” said Jimmy Thunder, hefting his hammer in his hand.

The Cat looked at Mjolnir thoughtfully, his great muscles rippling under his fur. He didn’t look especially impressed. If anything, he seemed to be smiling. And then Toby stepped forward, putting himself between Gayle and the Cat.

“So,” he said brightly. “How did you get to be King of the Cats?”

“What?” said the Cat, not looking away from Jimmy Thunder. His tail was lashing slowly behind him. He might have been starting to crouch.

“How did you get to be the King?” said Toby. “Start at the bottom and work your way up? Perform marvelous feats of bravery and derring-do? Or is it a purely constitutional title these days, with no real power and responsibility?”

“What?”
said the Cat, turning his glowing golden eyes on Toby. “What kind of questions are these? I just . . . knew. When the old King died, I became the King, ruler of all the cats, in all the worlds.”

“And that’s it?” said Toby. “No examinations, no discussions, not even a ceremony? You just think you’re the King? Hardly seems likely, does it? I don’t know about this. You could be wrong, you know. Have you checked? How do you know there aren’t other contenders for the Kingship? Some of them might actually be better qualified than you. And isn’t the idea of an absolute monarchy dangerously outdated, in this day and age? Perhaps you’d be better off with a committee, or some form of proportional representation. What are your qualifications to be King?”

“What?”
said the Cat, actually backing away as Toby advanced on him. “The . . . the Voice told me the old King was dead, so I was King. That’s how it works!”

“Ah,” said Toby, nodding interestedly. “Now we’re getting somewhere. How long have you been hearing voices?”

The Cat screamed, turned abruptly, and ran off into the fog.

“How about that?” said Jimmy, lowering his hammer. “He ran away, rather than have to listen to you anymore. Mind you, I often feel the same way.”

The King of the Cats didn’t get far before he ran into Luna and Leo. Still screaming, the Cat took one look at Luna standing tall and imposing in her silver armor and skidded to a halt, his fur standing on end. Leo turned wolf in a flash, and threw himself on the Cat. He’d been looking for someone to take out his grievances on all day. They hit the ground in a cloud of ashes, a hissing, growling mess of teeth and claws and bad temper, tearing savagely at each other. But the Cat was outweighed, outclassed, not to mention already severely demoralized, and besides, Leo could heal all his wounds in a second. Soon the Cat was fighting only to break away and run. Leo pounced, snapping his great wolf jaws shut on the nape of the Cat’s neck. He took a firm grip, braced himself, and shook the huge Cat violently back and forth, ignoring his pitiful howls. Leo then dropped the Cat, bit him fiercely on the arse, and chased him up the nearest tree. Leo sat at the base of the tree, his long red tongue lolling out of the side of his grinning mouth as he peered up, while the Cat clung precariously to the highest branch that would still bear his weight.

Luna came over to stand beside Leo, and stared haughtily up at the treed Cat. “Bad kitty. No more sour cream for you.”

“Oh, God, she’s going to start talking to me now,” said the Cat. “I think I’m going to have one of my turns.”

“A cat may look at a Queen, but even the King of the Cats should know better than to annoy me,” said Luna. “Now come down here and apologize, before I think of something amusing to do to you.”

“I am not coming down while that hairy thing with the thyroid problem is still down there!” said the Cat, trying to hang on to the last vestiges of his dignity. “Your Majesty,” he added, as an afterthought.

“I could go up there and fetch him for you,” growled Leo. “In fact, I could chew him up and spit him out again, and make you a nice pair of slippers out of his hide. If you like.”

“I don’t really think we’ve got time,” said Gayle, behind them. “Besides, they’d clash terribly with that armor.”

Luna and Leo looked round sharply as Toby and Jimmy and Gayle came out of the fog to join them, drawn by the noise of the conflict. Up in the dead tree, the King of the Cats cringed pitifully.

“Please don’t let him start talking again! I can’t stand it! My head hurts. . . .”

Everyone ignored the Cat as the two sisters stared at each other thoughtfully and Toby and Jimmy looked interestedly at the werewolf.

“Thunder god,” said Jimmy. “Jimmy Thunder, God For Hire.”

“Focal point,” said Toby. “Toby Dexter, very confused.”

“Werewolf,” said Leo. “But I think you already guessed that. Hang on while I change into someone less comfortable.” He rose up on his hind legs and quickly became human again. He was actually glad of the excuse. The dead wood was too overpowering and upsetting for his enhanced wolf senses. Toby blinked a few times as he tried to work out where Leo’s clothes had suddenly appeared from, but was otherwise suitably impressed. Leo gave Toby and Jimmy his best friendly smile. “Leo Morn, acting hero, unpaid, under protest. Is that really Gayle?”

“Yes,” said Jimmy. “Do I take it you’re on your way to see Hob, too?”

“Much against my better judgment, but yes. Luna said I was going with her, and you can’t argue with facts like that. I’m here to look after her, watch her back, remember who she is for her, that sort of thing. Of course, now you’re here, I’m sure you could take care of all that better than I ever could, so I’m not really needed here anymore, am I? In fact, I’d probably just get in your way. So I’ll just say Good Luck, and Godspeed, and be sure to let me know how it all turns out. . . .”

“Stand still, that wolf,” said Luna, still looking at Gayle. “You’re not going anywhere, Leo Morn.”

“Oh, bugger,” said Leo miserably.

The two sisters were still staring into each other’s eyes. Neither of them seemed all that pleased to see the other.

“You shouldn’t be here,” said Luna. “Not here, of all places.”

BOOK: Drinking Midnight Wine

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