Gatefather (2 page)

“Good to see you,” said Stone cheerfully. He turned to the men. “I'm so sorry, but I do believe our time is up. I have to deal with some of my guests.”

“What are you running here, a hotel?” asked one of the men, pretending it was a joke.

“A hospitable home,” said Stone with a smile. “You'll see, someday.”

“I hope not,” said the other man. “He makes a terrible houseguest.”

Stone took Pat firmly by the hand and led her out of the kitchen and up the stairs. He bounded upward with surprising speed and agility, for someone who looked to be middle-aged. But then, he had passed through a Great Gate too. He was in perfect health.

After the third-floor landing, he spoke to her softly. “What kind of mage are you?” he asked.

“Mage?” she replied.

“Whatever you've got,” said Stone, “it's strong. Scary strong. I thought Danny's friends were all drowthers.”

“That's why he passed us through the gate in Maine ahead of everyone else,” said Pat. “Nobody knows about me.”

“I'll keep your secret.” Then he hesitated a moment. “Wind, I'm betting.”

“You win,” said Pat.

“How many of you are coming? Anyone in pursuit?”

“All of us,” said Pat, “and no.”

“Why are you here, then?” asked Stone. “If this is just a field trip to the nation's capital, I'm not in favor of it. There are buses and trains.”

“There's something wrong with Danny, and I want you to hear about it along with the others.”

Stone didn't ask any more questions. Most adults would have demanded that she tell more, right then. But he actually heard her request that he hear her story along with the others. He respected her decision and complied with her plan, undoubting. What other adult did
that
?

They were all sitting on the cot or the rickety old chairs, except Sin, who sat on the floor. “Hello, Mr. Stone,” said Laurette.

“Not ‘mister,'” said Stone. “Just ‘Stone.'”

“My mother would kill me,” said Laurette. “I was raised with manners.”

“An admirable skill, manners,” said Stone. He gently pushed Wheeler off the firmest chair and sat on it himself. So his respect for teenagers didn't extend to everybody. Maybe it only extended to fellow mages.

Wheeler didn't protest. He just sat on the floor and gathered his legs and arms into a position that Pat knew would leave him aching in only a few minutes.

But it was her meeting, and it was time to start. “Danny's changed,” said Pat. “And it's enough of a change that I'm afraid he might already have been possessed by Set. By the Belgod.”

Everyone became attentive.

“It's going to sound stupid and vain,” said Pat, “but I think it's important.”

“Instead of discussing the merits of ‘it,'” said Stone, “please just tell us, straight out, what ‘it' is.”

Pat realized that Stone was right, she was talking around her observation because there was so much potential for embarrassment. But embarrassment didn't matter if Danny was in danger. “Every one of us girls made a play for Danny,” she said, though she loathed comparing what
she
had done with the way the others had flirted and teased. “And he turned us all down.”

“Hard to understand,” said Stone. Pat wondered if any of the others knew he was being ironic.

“It's just a fact,” said Pat. “He told us all he was interested, he liked girls, but he wasn't going to make any bastards or be the kind of god who went around having sex with … drowthers.”

Stone nodded. “That was a wise policy, and I'm not surprised Danny had the strength to stick to it.”

“Not surprised because you don't think we're all that attractive?” asked Xena, her ear always attuned to the possibility that she had been insulted.

“Stick to the point, Xena,” said Pat.

“I don't know the point, you haven't told us,” said Xena.

“The point is this. Nicki Lieder—the coach's daughter—she came to me this morning during lunch and told me, very quietly, that she was pregnant, and Danny was the only possible father.”

“That little mouse?” said Laurette disdainfully.

“Mouse?” said Hal. “Have you
seen
her since she came back to school?”

“What does she have that we don't have?” said Xena.

Wheeler looked as if he wouldn't mind making a list for her, so Pat forestalled him. “That's my point,” said Pat. “Why would he sleep with her, but not us?”

“She raped him,” said Hal.

“Ha ha,” said Sin.

“She told
me
,” said Pat, “because he wasn't in school today and she needed to tell him about the pregnancy. She's going to tell her father this afternoon.”

“Coach Lieder's going to kill Danny,” said Hal.

“Not likely,” said Stone.

“She wanted to give Danny a heads-up,” said Pat. “Because she reported the encounter to the police the morning after it happened. She reported it as a rape.”

“She accused Danny?” asked Xena.

“No,” said Pat. “She didn't name names, she said she didn't see his face and couldn't even say what race he was, or how tall or anything. She said she didn't know her assailant.”

“Oh, good,” said Sin. “So I won't have to kill her.”

“The point is that Danny's DNA is out there as a rapist,” said Pat. “I don't imagine Danny's DNA is in any database, but if he's arrested for something else…”

“Gross,” said Laurette. “He left it in her.”

“I thought when you reported rape, they, like, took care of it,” said Xena. “The pregnancy.”

“She didn't let them,” said Pat. “She told them she had a religious objection to anything like abortion.”

“She wanted his baby,” said Xena.

“So did you,” pointed out Wheeler.

“But I wouldn't have pretended he raped me,” said Xena.

“No, you would have bragged it was him,” said Hal. “She reported it as rape so that if she got pregnant, she could give the police report to her father and he wouldn't pester her to find out who the father is.”

“Smart girl,” said Stone. “She was protecting Danny.”

“I haven't told you the important part yet,” said Pat.

They fell silent again.

“Nicki said that it happened at Danny's house. She went there in the middle of the night. It was the same night after he made the gate in … that place. Remember how tired he was?”

“No,” said Laurette, “which makes me think
you
were over there pestering him the same night.”

“Well, you'd be correct,” said Pat.

The other girls made a show of being shocked.

Pat looked Stone straight in the eyes. “Danny and I are in love,” she told him. “I wanted to spend the night with him. To move in with him if I could. He said—and demonstrated—how willing he was. Eager. But he still wouldn't do it. For the same reason as always. He said he wasn't going to be a typical god.”

“That's how he turned us all down,” said Xena.

“But that same night, Nicki says she walked there at two a.m. and just opened his door and went in and there he was, mostly undressed, lying on top of his bed, and … she said he was ready for her. Sexually.” Pat blushed, knowing why Danny was in that state, and then hated herself for blushing, and blushed all the more because of that. Thank heaven the attic was so dark.

“So she was, like, a succubus,” said Wheeler.

“You don't get pregnant from that,” said Xena.

“A succubus is a female demon that comes and has sex with you in the night,” said Hal. “According to ancient lore. The male equivalent is ‘incubus.'”

“Sounds like a medieval attempt to explain wet dreams,” said Wheeler.

“And single girls' babies,” said Hal.

“Well, she wasn't mythical,” said Pat. “She undressed him the rest of the way and she was all over him before he even woke up.”

“How much did she
tell
you?” asked Stone. “Was she trying to cause you pain?”

“No,” said Pat. “She was apologizing. She was explaining. Because it wasn't really her.”

They all looked at her blankly.

“OK, then why is
she
pregnant?” asked Laurette.

Stone knew. He was looking at the floor instead of at her.

“It wasn't her making the decisions,” said Pat. “That's the whole reason we're having this meeting. Nicki has never heard Danny talk about the Belgod and how he possesses people, and how he can jump from one person to another and live forever and all that. But what she tells me, out of the blue, is that
she
was controlled, her
body
was controlled by something else. It would sometimes talk to her, using her own voice. And it would make her do things, strange things, stupid things. Then let her have control of her body for hours. Then make her do something bizarre again.”

“Wheeler does that and
he
isn't possessed,” said Xena.

Stone impatiently held up a hand to signal Xena to stop talking.

“Then right at the moment when Danny … got her pregnant…”

“Orgasmed. Ejaculated,” said Laurette. “Come on, we all had sex education.”

Pat shuddered, as she had when Nicki told her. “The thing left her body and went into his. Then it used
his
voice to talk to her. But no, I'm telling it out of order. Just before the … transfer … it used
her
mouth to say to
him
, ‘You want me inside you.'”

“And he said yes,” whispered Stone. His face looked like a portrait of despair.

“Yes,” said Pat. “Only she told me it made no sense, because she wasn't inside
him
, it was the other way around. It only makes sense if you think of it as the Belgod asking Danny to let him in. To invite him.”

“And he did,” said Stone.

“So this is true?” asked Hal. “Because I was thinking it was all just a lie Nicki told to explain being pregnant.”

“It might be exactly that,” said Stone, “but then she certainly knows a lot of details that she shouldn't know.”

“That's what I thought,” said Pat. “That's why I thought this was important. Because ever since that night, Danny's been different. Not himself.”

“In what way?” asked Stone. He was asking Pat, but looking at each of the other kids in turn, as if for confirmation.

“He came on to me,” said Pat. “Which would have been fine, only he was weird about it. Came up behind me and cupped my butt with his hand. Right by my locker, with people around.”

“Who cares?” said Xena. “I thought you two were in love.”

“We are,” said Pat. “
Were
, anyway. But he knows I don't like people to just … touch me. Out of the blue. He
knows
that. And the way he talked. He called me ‘baby girl.' Guys who talk like that make me sick.”

“Me too,” said Wheeler.

Stone was nodding, though. “Not Danny's style.”

“Danny knows better than to treat me like that, talk to me like that. He was crude. Like the only thing on his mind was sex. Like he thought he owned me. Like I see other guys act with girls, and they get all fluttery, but not me, and Danny knows that. Knew that.”

“What did you do?” asked Stone.

“Pulled away from him,” said Pat. “And told him it wasn't happening. He kept trying for a minute, and then he gives me a little shove and a tiny slap on the cheek and says, ‘Your loss, baby girl,' and that was it. Walked away.”

Laurette sighed. “You told him no? What else is he going to do?”

“Danny wouldn't have asked. Not that way. Not like he had the
right
. It wasn't Danny, and you all know it.”

“What's your name?” Stone asked Pat. She told him.

“Pat,” he said, “you did right. Not to tell him what you were thinking.”

“I didn't know what the Belmage would do, if he was really in possession of Danny, and I told him I knew he was there.”

“Good thinking,” said Stone. “What about the rest of you? Anybody else notice a change?”

“Yes,” said Hal. “He hardly talks to me and Wheeler anymore. Walks along the corridor at school smiling at people and saying hi to them.”

“He's friendly,” said Laurette.

“Especially girls,” said Wheeler.

“I didn't notice that it was especially girls,” said Hal.

“But it was.”

“I'm not arguing,” said Hal, “I'm just saying what
I
saw. It's like we could hang around if we wanted, but Danny didn't care, and maybe he was even a little annoyed to have us there.”

“Maybe?” said Wheeler. “What about when he told us to get lost while he talked to Rosann?”

“Rosann?” asked Hal.

“You know, Rosann the queen of the universe—”

“I know who Rosann is,” said Hal. “I just don't remember Danny talking to her and—”

“Oh, right,” said Wheeler. “It was after lunch and you had already peeled off to go to—”

Stone interrupted them. “Has anybody seen Danny use a gate?”

“Like, constantly,” said Xena.

“That's just not true,” said Pat. “He hardly ever uses gates these days. He's trying
not
to clutter up the world with gates, remember?”

“I mean specifically
since
he took you through the Great Gate to Westil,” said Stone. “It's been more than a month. In that time, has he ever?”

They were silent.

“This is kind of impossible,” said Sin. “How can we remember what
didn't
happen since a certain day?”

“Since we went through a gate to another planet?” said Pat. “No, Stone, I haven't seen him use a gate since then. Not even to come up to our place.”