Drinking Midnight Wine (39 page)
Read Drinking Midnight Wine Online
Authors: Simon R. Green
“I could say exactly the same to you,” said Gayle. “I can’t protect you here.”
“I have the better right,” said Luna. “He is my son, after all.”
“He’s the Serpent’s Son. When have you ever cared about him, Luna? You didn’t even want to see him after he was born. I had to take him away.”
“Yes,” said Luna. “And we all know how that turned out.”
“All right, I screwed up. Fostering him with the Green Man probably wasn’t the wisest decision I ever made. But I couldn’t just kill him. He won’t listen to you, Luna. Why should he? You’ve never spoken to him before.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” Luna maintained stubbornly. “This is a dead place. You have no power here. It’s outside your nature.”
Gayle smiled slightly. “Looks like we’re both just following our natures. We’re here because we feel we have to be. Duty can be a real bastard sometimes. How are you feeling, Luna?”
“Surprisingly coherent, for a change. I find anger concentrates the mind wonderfully. So, we’re off to see the Hob. Do you have a plan?”
“Do you?”
“I thought not.” Luna looked at Toby interestedly. “You always did have lousy taste in lovers. A focal point! Well, that should complicate things marvelously.”
“Excuse me,” said the King of the Cats diffidently, still up his tree. “Would anyone object if I were to come down now, and perhaps run away? I’d really like to run away, if that’s all right with everyone. There are far too many powers and avatars in one place for my liking. It can only mean that something dreadfully important and significant is about to happen, and I would personally prefer to be incredibly far away when the shit starts hitting the fan.”
“Be quiet,” said Gayle. “Or I’ll let Toby talk to you some more.”
“Shutting up right now,” said the Cat.
And that was when a whole crowd of Mice suddenly came running out of the fog, streaming past the startled group at the foot of the tree without stopping. All twenty-three Mice stampeded past Toby in full flight, not even pausing as he called out to them, their purpose forgotten and abandoned as they headed for the Blackacre boundary with all the speed they could muster. The fog swirled thickly about them, disturbed by their passing. There was no sign of any of the dead, left behind as they ran.
For behind them came Angel.
She came striding out of the fog, walking on the air, as silent as a ghost, as remorseless as revenge. She advanced unhurriedly on the group by the tree, who closed their ranks instinctively, ready for trouble. Angel came to a halt before them, hovering some ten feet above the ground: flesh white as winter, wrapped in black tatters, with bloodred lips and eyes. Even standing still in midair, the fog around her was disturbed, as though by the slow flapping of unseen wings. She smiled down on them, and that smile was a terrible thing to see. Leo was whining softly. Toby felt like doing the same. Gayle and Luna stood shoulder to shoulder, glaring at Angel with cold, implacable faces. But Angel’s attention was all for Jimmy Thunder.
“I knew if I waited long enough, you would come to me,” she said happily. “You, at least, know how to show a girl a good time. Not that I expect this to last long. We’re both far from our beginnings, but here in Mysterie I am more than you’ll ever be. So how about it? Want to dance, little godling? Want to bleed and suffer and die? I almost envy you the sensations you’re about to endure.”
Jimmy Thunder threw Mjolnir at her. The ancient hammer flashed through the fog, too fast for mortal eye to follow, and struck Angel squarely in the gut, folding her over and knocking her out of the air. She dropped to the ashy ground like a wounded bird, making horrid noises as her crushed lungs strained for air, but though Mjolnir struggled to return to Jimmy, she clung grimly to the hammer, refusing to let it go. Jimmy ran forward to take it from her, and she rose up like a demon from the pit to face him.
Luna looked at Leo. “Help the thunder god. Destroy the angel.”
Leo looked back at her. “Are you kidding?”
Don’t you listen to her,
said his Brother.
You wouldn’t stand a chance, Leo.
said his Brother.
You wouldn’t stand a chance, Leo.
“I had worked that out for myself, actually,” replied Leo. “Sorry, Luna. Scary as you undoubtedly are, Angel is a whole different class of homicidal maniac.”
“But you’re a Morn!”
“And I’d very much like to stay one, rather than become a small pile of meaty chunks after they’ve passed through Angel’s digestive system. I know my limitations.”
“You get in there and help the thunder god or I will personally spread your limitations over a very large area,” said Luna sternly.
Leo pouted. “This isn’t at all fair, you know.”
“Now you know how I feel,” said the King of the Cats.
“Shut up,” said Leo. He shook his head and growled. “I should have joined the union when they asked me.”
He stretched and twisted into his wolf form, and raced forward to help the thunder godling, who was currently on the wrong end of an appalling beating.
Jimmy had lost his hammer and was going head to head with Angel, both of them giving and receiving dreadful blows that shook the foggy air like thunderclaps. Any of those terrible blows would have killed a lesser being immediately, but Jimmy Thunder and Angel crashed back and forth through the wood, knocking down or destroying the dead trees when they got in their way, leaving a wide trail of devastation and churned-up ash and earth. Great trees that had stood for centuries, even after they were dead, were now uprooted and set leaning at impossible angles as Jimmy and Angel fought on.
The thunder godling was losing, and he knew it. He was strong and fast and could soak up staggering amounts of punishment, but in the end Angel was just so much more than he was. Blood ran thickly down his pulped face as he gasped for air through a crushed mouth and broken nose, and it was all he could do to see his opponent through his swollen and closing eyes. His back was still straight and his blows were still strong, but he could feel the strength going out of his legs. He’d never fought so hard, for so long, to so little effect. It was like smashing his fists against a mountainside. Angel drove him back, steadily, remorselessly, laughing as she hit and hurt him.
Leo circled the fight, looking for an opening. He wasn’t sure what he could do. All right, he was a werewolf, but truth be told he wasn’t even in Jimmy Thunder’s class, never mind Angel’s. And then Jimmy Thunder roared with rage and hurt and frustration, and went berserk. Veins popped up all over his body as his muscles distended and all his wounds stopped bleeding. His eyes were wild and fey, everything he was now focused only on attack. He surged forward, shrugging off Angel’s blows, and clasped her in a vicious bear hug, pinning her arms to her sides and crushing the air from her. All her greater strength couldn’t stand against his berserker rage. For a moment Angel was actually helpless, and Leo saw his chance. He launched himself at Angel and, with one vicious snap of his great wolf jaws, tore out her throat.
He hit the ground hard, and spun round impossibly quickly, just in time to see Angel break Jimmy’s hold with one great flex of her arms. She hit him once, throwing him to the ground with such force that all his berserk power was knocked right out of him. Blood ran in a flood from the terrible wound in Angel’s throat and air bubbled in it, but she didn’t fall. The pale flesh closed over, knitting together, and the wound was gone. She laughed at Jimmy lying on the ground before her and stamped on him. Ribs cracked and broke loudly. Angel did it again, and Jimmy cried out in spite of himself. Leo threw himself once more at Angel, and she snatched him out of midair with one hand and threw him thirty feet, to smash against a tree and break it in two. Leo fell limply to the ground.
Jimmy Thunder, last of the Norse gods, last of the line of Thor, drew on the remains of his strength and his heritage and called down a lightning bolt.
The stark and brilliant leven bolt slammed down through the fog, throwing back the night, and grounded itself through Angel. She shrieked like a damned soul, shuddering and shaking, but held in place like a beetle on a pin. All her hair stood out, and her skin blackened and charred. She shook violently, still screaming. The lightning bolt finally snapped off, and Angel’s scream stopped. She fell forward onto her face and lay still, smoke rising from her black and twisted body.
Toby hurried over to the broken, bloody thunder god, and got him back on his feet. His wounds were slowly healing, but his eyes were vague and confused. Leo Morn came limping over to join them, human once again.
“We’d better get moving,” Luna said calmly. “Angel’s down, but not out. Nice try though, Jimmy. Leo, look after him. Toby, you help Gayle. She’s only going to get weaker as we approach the farmhouse. I’ll lead the way, while I can.”
They set off slowly through the fog. Up in his tree, the King of the Cats watched them go. When he was sure it was safe, he climbed carefully down, went over to sniff at Angel’s still smoking body, and then headed resolutely for the Blackacre boundary. Cats know when to cut their losses.
Gayle was leaning more and more heavily on Toby now, and sometimes she didn’t seem to know where she was, or why. According to Luna, they were almost at the farmhouse clearing, but Toby didn’t know how much faith to put in her. She seemed sane and collected enough, but the details of her armor kept changing when he wasn’t looking, and sometimes she addressed him by his own name and sometimes by others, confusing him with lovers from Gayle’s extensive history. Jimmy Thunder looked worn out, and Leo Morn looked frankly dispirited. All in all, they were not much of an army to take on the Serpent’s Son.
Part of Toby wanted just to take Gayle and get the hell out of the dead wood. Blackacre was killing her. He could see it in her growing weakness, in the troubling vagueness of her face and eyes. Somehow the dead wood was sucking all the life out of her. But even if he could drag her out, against her will, he knew she’d only insist on going back in again. She was supposed to be here. So was he. He could feel it, on a level too deep to deny. The focal point was being drawn inexorably to the point and purpose of his existence, whether he liked it or not. The same unknown force that had brought him and Gayle together was now demanding its price, and possibly its pound of flesh. Toby wasn’t as scared of death as he’d once been, not now he’d met her, but still he didn’t want to die. He had so much to live for, with Gayle.
Typical of his luck, really. Finally to gain what he’d always wanted, only so it could be taken away again.
He was so lost in thoughts of fate and destiny, he didn’t notice at first when the dead wood came alive around him. The ancient trees stirred slowly, their long branches bending and twisting and stretching out towards the group as they passed, while dark roots burst up through the broken ground to writhe like dreaming snakes. One by one the group became aware of what was happening, and looked quickly about them as the dead trees rocked and swayed, and tore themselves up out of the ashy ground. They walked on their roots, terrible dead giants with blind, implacable purpose.
“Hob,” said Luna, making the name a curse. “His plan, his will. It’s in everything.”
Gayle raised her head slowly, and recited an old rhyme Toby hadn’t heard since his childhood.
“Ash do grieve, Oak do hate, Willow do follow if ye walk out late.”
The dead trees were tearing themselves free from the earth on all sides now, and the group fell back before them. No one had the strength left to fight them. Jimmy’s hand went to his hammer, back in its holster on his hip, but he didn’t draw it. It was all Leo could do to keep Jimmy on his feet, and both of them knew it. The trees pressed forward, blocking off all routes but one, herding the group toward the clearing, and the farmhouse.
Hob was getting impatient.
They were only a few minutes from the clearing. They stumbled out into the open space, and the fog was suddenly gone. It clung to the edges of the clearing, but would not enter, as though even it was afraid of Nicholas Hob. Toby took his first look at the farmhouse up close and felt sick. There was something foul and unhealthy about the old structure, in its shapes and angles, as though the very stone and timbers had been infected by the evil that lived within it. Gayle’s head came up slowly and she gently pushed herself away from Toby. She didn’t want to appear weak before Hob. She walked steadily forward, across the open clearing, and no one ever knew what that cost her. The others went with her. One by one the farmhouse windows came alight with a harsh bright glare, like eyes opening. Gayle and the others came to the front door, and it opened before them, and there was Nicholas Hob, smiling.
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