Moonheart (27 page)

Tucker sighed and stared at the ceiling. Time to up and about. Throwing back the covers, he padded into the kitchen and poured himself a mug of black coffee and took it back to the bedroom while he dressed.

"How are you feeling, Tucker?"

"Better." He was sitting on the edge of the bed admiring her. "Why don't we both play hookey today?"

Maggie smiled. "No can do. But I'm not booked for the weekend."

"You're on."

He ran his fingers over the stubble on his chin.

"Top shelf, on the right," Maggie said. "I never did get around to throwing them out."

Tucker headed for the bathroom and found his razor and shaving cream where she said they'd be. He had his face lathered and was about to start shaving, when Maggie slipped in between him and the mirror to put on her eyeshadow. Looking over her shoulder, he grinned and started on one cheek.

"What are you going to do today?" Maggie asked.

"Hit the office first. See if anything's up. Then I guess I'll take a run 'round to the Tamson House. I've got a better perspective on the whole thing now... thanks to you."

"You're welcome. What you should do is keep an open mind."

"An open mind? About werewolves? Or wizards?"

"Not
that
open a mind. But you've a tendency to see things one way."

She paused and lying unspoken between them was: such as why she sometimes defended people she knew were guilty.

"From all you've told me," she added, "it doesn't seem that you're dealing with the common criminal element here."

"Yeah. Only what the hell
am
I dealing with?"

Maggie shook her head and stepped out of his way. "I don't know, Tucker. It scares me to think there could be people out there with those kinds of... abilities." She regarded him earnestly. "What would they be like? Would they even be human? They probably wouldn't even think like you or me. Good and bad might not have any meaning for them."

"Yeah. I know. It scares me too." He rinsed the remaining lather off his face and ran his fingers through his hair. "You want a lift to Nicholas?"

"Sure. But no sirens, okay?"

Jamie awoke from a nightmare of clawing shadows and monstrous shifting faces. He sat up, his nightshirt clinging to his sweaty skin, and stared out the window of his bedroom. The clock by his bed read eight-thirty and the sky was a bright blue. He thought for a moment of lying down again, then decided he couldn't face another nightmare. Swinging his feet out of bed, he arose and dressed. He met Blue and Sally in the Silkwater Kitchen where Tuck was raising his usual fuss to be fed.

Sally offered him some coffee which he accepted gratefully.

"We were thinking of having some apple pancakes," Blue said. "Ohio-style— whatever that is. You want some?"

Sally laughed. "I take it by 'Ohio-style,' you want me to make them?"

"Did I, or did I not serve up the most delicious tacos you ever tasted last night?"

"That you did. And most humbly too, I must admit,"

"I rest my case, dear lady."

Sally regarded him with exaggerated amazement. "Humble
and
polite!"

"House-trained, too."

Jamie smiled weakly, appreciating their attempt at levity. He was about to get up and head for the Postman's Room and his studies, when he noticed the fading light outside, as though the sky had suddenly grown overcast.

"Anyone hear a weather forecast for today?" he asked.

"Yeah. Clear skies and..." Blue's voice trailed off as he too looked out the window. "What the...?"

The light continued to fail until it was as dark outside as though the day had never come. Leaving the table, Blue fumbled until he found the light switch. The overhead light in the kitchen's ceiling blossomed. Blue opened the door that led out into the garden and stared at the sky. The dark was absolute. No stars. No clouds visible. If it was a storm, it had come without wind and it was going to be a real mother. The air was charged with static.

Blue stepped back into the kitchen and met Jamie's gaze. The skin between his shoulder blades prickled and he knew Jamie was thinking of the same thing he was: last night's strange guest and his story.

"It's not natural," Sally said.

Then she paused as she too remembered. She'd pooh-poohed it last night, but now a chill skittered up her spine and she shivered.

"Let's check the other side of the House," Blue said.

As they started for the O'Connor side of the House, a huge bang came from the side that faced Patterson on the North. The floor trembled underfoot and they looked at each other with mounting fear.

"What the hell was that?" Blue muttered, then led off in that direction.

The windows they passed all showed the same view: darkness. The sound that had brought them around to the north face of the House wasn't repeated, but the anticipation of a second set them all on edge. "Maybe they're blasting somewhere?" Sally offered in a small voice.

"Yeah," Blue said. "And I guess they threw a sheet over the House so that it wouldn't get dusty."

For all that they were anticipating another bang, they still weren't prepared for the second one. It boomed all around them like a crack of thunder. The doorway they passed rattled in its hinges and a vase toppled over on a sideboard by the wall. The vibration almost knocked them from their feet.

"I don't believe this," Blue said, recovering first. "It's like we're "

"Under siege," Jamie finished, remembering what Thomas Hengwr had told him about the harper Taliesin and his dark strength. If this was the harper attacking them and he was this powerful, how could they possibly hope to hold him off? Where was Tom when they could use him?

"I'm going to have a look," Blue said, starting for the door.

"Wait!" As Blue turned to him, Jamie added: "Tom said— something about the House itself being a protection against Taliesin. What if by opening a door, you leave a breach in whatever it is that's protecting us?"

Blue was about to protest that there had to be a rational explanation for what was going on, when a third crash came, this time knocking them all to the floor. As they started to get to their feet, a succession of crashes rattled the House as though a giant hand was shaking it. Pictures leaped from the walls, their glass shattering as they hit the floor. Vases and knick-knacks bounced from tables and sideboards, adding to the din. The three human inhabitants huddled together on the floor, each trying to cope with the situation as best each could, not one of them willing to accept what was happening, but unable to refute it either.

When the last of the thunder and shaking died away, Blue sat up to take stock. "Anybody hurt?" he asked.

Jamie and Sally shook their heads dully. Jamie started to get up, but Blue waved him back.

"Not yet," he said. "No use in... in just getting knocked down again."

Jesus, he thought. What the fuck was going on? He wanted to put it down to an earthquake— scary enough on its own— but the skies didn't go black when the earth moved. This kind of thing just didn't happen. Except it was happening and, by the faces of his companions, he knew someone had to take charge and it looked like he'd gotten himself elected. It didn't matter that the same fear was thudding in his heart— someone had to stay on top of it.

"Who all's in the House?" he asked.

The question gave them something else to think about.

"Fred," Jamie said. "And Sam."

"No one else?" A weird image came into Blue's head, of Jamie standing behind the desk of a hotel, counting the missing room keys on the hooks behind him.

Jamie shook his head. "Not that I know of."

"Well, first off we've got to get hold of them before one of them tries to go outside. I think you're right, Jamie. Somehow the House is our protection against whatever it is that's trying to get in. Shit, if some fucking monster of Tom Hengwr's can exist, why can't the House have powers too?"

Jamie nodded. Inside the House he felt safe— no matter how furious the blows came from what was attacking them. His bond, that sense of being a part of its walls, of the double-sided eyes of its windows that looked out on a black void now, and in on their terror, seemed to promise security. So long as they stayed inside. Once beyond its walls, the House seemed to warn, and it could no longer protect them.

"Well, you two stay here," Blue said, "and I'll go have a look-see for the others. Okay?"

Neither Sally nor Jamie wanted Blue to go off on his own, but they realized the sense of his plan.

Nodding to them, Blue set off. The halls echoed strangely with his footfalls. The darkness beyond the windows seemed more liquid than gaseous. In his imagination, he could see the windows bulging under the pressure of that darkness, saw shadows seeping and dripping through the cracks where sill met wall. He tried to shake the feeling of dread that hung over him.

"Just hang on," he whispered to the House. "For Christ's sake, don't let whatever's out there in."

The hairs on the back of his neck were prickled. The last time he'd been this close to something that wasn't quite of this world was during the half year or so when he'd stayed with Charlie Nez on the Navajo Reservation near Flagstaff in Arizona. He'd been doing a lot of mescal and mushrooms in those days and sometimes it got a little hard, trying to separate the real from the drug visions.

He could remember strange nights out on dry rock plateaus just staring at the stars and listening to stories, or night hunts when they were soft-stepping in a single file— five or six of them— down shallow arroyos, looking for porcupines or kangaroo rats. There was the pinch of sacred pollen that Charlie'd given him to ward off witches, the chanting in the firelight at a Sing (he could still hear that eerie "Ya Ha He Ya Ha He" drifting off into the night), the great green slopes of the Lukachukai Mountains, the puffs of dust that Charlie'd tell him were dust devils— kicked up by one of the Hard Flint Boys to play a trick on the Wind Children. They built sweat baths, looked for turquoise to make totems from, and Charlie'd taught him sign language— finger-speak. "This is how First Man and First Woman talked, when they didn't want Snake to hear what they were saying, Blue."

And always the stories, about Changing Woman and the Sun, about Diving Heron bringing witchcraft and giving some to Snake and how it turned to poison in Snake's mouth, about Coyote and the Hero Twins. They were just stories, except Charlie's eyes never smiled as they did when he was putting you on.

Blue frowned. He didn't like the way his thoughts were going because it made everything that was happening
now
too real. Still, his fingers twitched at his side as he hurried down the halls, shaping a Blessing Way, and he wished he still had that sacred pollen that Charlie'd given him, or even the turquoise toad totem that he'd chipped out himself and carried in his pocket for years.

He found Fred in the west wing, just about to go out into the gardens.

"I've got to go out," the gardener protested as Blue took his arm. "With this storm, the plants will be frantic "

"It's not a storm, Fred."

"What do you mean?"

"There's no time to explain. Just wait for me here and
don't
open a door or a window. Is Sam still staying in the West Library?" There was a small room, more like a large closet really, set off the library that Sam Pattison had laid claim to by the simple expedient of putting in a cot and a chair to pile his clothes on.

Fred shook his head. "I don't know, Blue."

"Well, wait for me here, okay? I'll go have a look."

He found Sam outside the door of his room, trying to staunch an ugly wound on the left side of his head with a shirt. He was sitting on the floor, his back against the wall, and his eyes had a somewhat glazed look to them when he glanced up. His frizzy hair was matted with blood around the wound. The once-white shirt was red.

"You okay?" Blue asked, kneeling beside him.

"I think so." He indicated a small brass figurine of the Cornish piskie Jan Penalurick that lay on the floor nearby. "That bloody thing leaped off the shelf and gave me a good whack on the head. What's going on, Blue? Are we in the middle of an earthquake?"

"Worse."

Brushing aside Sam's hands, Blue investigated the wound. It wasn't as bad as it looked. Tearing two strips from the shirt, he made a pad of one and used the second to tie it in place. They'd get it patched up properly when they had a chance.

"Come on," he said, helping Sam to his feet.

With Sam leaning on his arm, he led the way back to where Fred was waiting. The gardener was staring out a window, trying to make out how his wards were surviving the bizarre weather.

"Just for a moment," he said to Blue, but the biker shook his head.

"No way. Let's go."

Halfway back to the Patterson side of the House where Jamie and Sally were waiting for them, the sudden sharp clamor of thunder heralded another attack. Blue pulled Sam down to the floor. Fred tumbled, the shaking knocking his feet from under him. Under the roar of the attack, they could hear the crash of falling tables, vases smashing, books falling from their shelves. Then the lights went dead, silence fell, and it was as black inside the House as it was outside.

Blue crouched like an animal at bay, his gaze darting left and right, trying to penetrate the stygian dark. He felt utterly helpless. When the sound of scratching— like Tuck's claws on wood only magnified a hundred times— came from the nearest door, he jumped nervously. He turned in the direction he thought the sound was coming from, then blinked, because he could suddenly see again. But the light—

"Jesus!" he murmured.

A vague illumination crept up from the baseboards— a pale blue-green, faint and shimmering, but more than welcome after the empty black that had left him thinking they were in limbo. He reached a hand out towards it, not touching it, just close enough to feel the heat if there was any. It wasn't hot or cold.

The scratching set his teeth on edge. When it finally faded and died, he let out a breath he hadn't been aware of holding. He stared at the weird light. More of the House's power? He didn't even want to think about it.