The Summoning (3 page)

He nodded. “There was an earthquake, some months ago, in November.”

“I remember.” My first night in my new apartment. My skin had been tingling all day, and I couldn’t sleep that night. I was not surprised early the next morning when I heard the rumbling begin, and then felt the quake jump beneath me, and roll on by. I didn’t have anything breakable. I went out onto the landing above the steps down to the street. In the predawn darkness, my neighbors emerged, some of them yelling and screaming. My building is across the street from the Whittier College campus. It’s old and ramshackle, and relatively cheap, but I chose it mostly because lots of students live along here. It gives me more cover. You could tell how recently my neighbors had come to California by how much noise they made, while we watched the showers of sparks as the transformers on the power poles flamed out. The power came back on the next day.

“And what has that to do with the World Snake?”

His eyes widened at my ignorance. “Herakleitos? Thrace? Helike?”

I shook my head.

“Those are some of the cities she’s swallowed before. Atlantis?”

“Oh, yeah, right.”

He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter if you believe me. The power raisers know it. That’s why they’re working deflection and protection all around this basin, from the Primrose Dragons down in Irvine, to the Black Robes out in Claremont, to the Thunder Mountain Boys up in West Hollywood, and all the diviners and lone shaman with their backyard altars in between. I’ve been to some of them, for help. Help I can give, and…” He fingered the napkin. “Help I need myself. Well, not the Thunder Mountain Boys. They think they own something like me.” He met my eyes briefly, and I couldn’t tell again if he was young or old. Either way, he’d seen more trouble and care than he was good for.

I leaned back in my chair, folded my arms. “So this city is going under. No one’s going to be surprised. Why not head for Colorado?”

He shrugged. “I can’t. I’m bound here.” He glanced at me again.

“Oh, yeah? Well, I’m not.”

“What they don’t know, but I know, is what comes before.” He leaned forward now, speaking in earnest, the donut pushed aside.

“Before the World Snake?”

“Yes.” He didn’t like to hear the name, anymore than he liked saying it. He lowered his voice again, and I had to listen sharply to hear his words. “Before her, in her bow wave, will come the Eater of Souls.” He eyed me now with a whole world of trouble in him. “That’s what I’m afraid of. And I don’t think they know, or they wouldn’t be calling so openly. But they won’t—they won’t listen to something like me. I can’t even get near most of them.” He smiled a little, tightly, and opened his hand. “Somehow they don’t trust me.”

“And you think I will?”

He looked straight at me. “I am not allowed to lie to you.”

My turn to smile. “Uh huh. And why do you say that?”

He avoided my gaze again, and looked down at the table. He turned the donut on its napkin once more, pushed it away. “You don’t believe me.”

“No, I don’t.”

“But you saw what I am.”

The memory raised the hair on my neck again. “I saw,” I told him, “what I want no further part in. Namely, you, whatever you may be. Thank you for your information. I’m sure it will be a big help. Now, I want you out of this town, out of my territory, and out of my sight.” I got up to loom over him, but he scrambled to his feet as I stood. “Do you understand me? Good.”

I left him there and went home at a jog trot. When I got out of the shower, my alarm clock was already screaming. My kind don’t generally need much sleep, but I was not pleased at having had none.

I rolled my black Honda Civic out of the carport and turned down the alley that led to the street. Damned if that guy wasn’t leaning against the side of the building by the dumpster! I saw red for a minute, and took my foot off the gas. I was going to get out and chase him out of town right then. After a couple of heartbeats, I thought, All right, he didn’t believe my implied threat; we’re even. I didn’t believe almost anything he said. Then I thought, what the hell. I can always run him off later if he bothers me. There’s a lot to be said for having a secret identity.

I slogged through the traffic to the 605, hopped on the freeway, drove along the River Where the World Was Made—according to the original inhabitants—and down to La Mirada. I clocked in at Arches Auditorium only ten minutes late, got a bucket and a handful of cloths, and joined Brad, Marcus, Tepio, and Yvette on the scaffold in the second-story lobby.

Arches Auditorium was a hundred years old that year. The whole building was being cleaned, refurbished, and repainted from the attic dressing rooms to the tunnels under the stage to the scene shop. We’d started upstairs in the dressing rooms months ago, opening cupboards where things had died and even more nameless things had been stored for decades, until they left nothing but a smear on the walls and floor and the smell of their passing.

I’d gotten the job through the lucky chance of overhearing a conversation in a coffee shop in Whittier. The guy at the next table was telling a friend that he was blowing off his job so he could take an extra class. I went down to Arches the next day and told Pete, who was in charge of our crew, that I was there to take Conner’s place, and Pete took me on that day. I liked earning money. Even more, I liked having something worthwhile to do all week. Days can get pretty long, otherwise.

Today we were in the upstairs lobby, cleaning the section of paneling we could reach from the scaffolding, then applying a first coat of linseed oil to the wood. While that dried, we washed the cornice above, working around the hand-painted watercolors in each panel.

I’d been the first woman hired on the team. Marcus, Brad, and Tom had been the rest of the team then, guys in their twenties who banded up like dogs when I showed up. They did their best, in their stupid, unimaginative way, to make me feel unwelcome. I don’t care if people don’t take to me. I don’t, for the most part, take to people. But I won’t stand for disrespect. Tom was the worst of them, with a big neck and small eyes, mean in the way he worked, and in everything he said. Strangely, the lights went out in the tunnel not many days after I started, while Tom was down there. I chased him up one side and down the other, making the kinds of noises you only think you hear in nightmares, till he tripped and fell flat out in a pool of slimy water. That’s when the lights came back on. He finished the day in the bathroom, and he didn’t come back. After that, the other guys were sweet puppies. Yvette was hired in Tom’s place. She’s big and strong and kind, and she could handle herself. Tepio came a week later. I don’t know where he was from. He was quiet when the others were, and the first to laugh when someone made a joke. He was okay. I listened to their banter all day, and their laughter.

Late in the day as we were cleaning our brushes, Yvette said to me, “Hey, Amber, you hear any drumming last night?”

My I.D. says my name is Elizabeth Beaumont. I still forget to answer to it. I tell people I’m called Amber, which makes it easier. I turned to her. “What’s that?”

“You live in Whittier, right?”

“That’s right.”

“So do I, up on Beverly. You hear drumming in the hills last night?”

“Is that what that was?” I wanted to hear what she would say, but I didn’t want to commit myself.

“Yup. I’ve heard it before. One of these days I’m going to take my drum up there and join the party.” She beat out a rhythm on a couple of paint cans. Tepio, coming into the sink room joined in, clicking with his brush handle against the edge of the sink.

I headed home through the rush hour traffic, ready for a big dinner, a short evening of loafing, and then bed. I parked my car in the carport and turned up the stairs to my apartment.

He got to his feet where he had been sitting on the steps below my landing. I stopped. His fear was flaring. His tension was back. Despite that, he moved with the grace of an animal. I had forgotten how beautiful he was, despite being thin, despite his old clothes. His eyes were haunted, wary, almost desperate. My response to his attractions fed the surge of anger I felt on seeing him. “Do you have some kind of death wish or something? I told you to get out of town.” He was afraid now, no doubt about it. I could smell it. That was good.

“Please. I need to talk to you.”

I stood looking up at him for a long minute, tired and hungry and pissed off. “What if I don’t want to listen?”

He shrugged. “I’ll wait. I’ll wait until you do.” He met my eyes and said levelly, “I have to.”

His outward form was beautiful, but that wasn’t all he was. If he wasn’t human, would it count if I took him out? I mean, would anyone even know? But his blood had been human. I still remembered the taste of it.

I decided that eating took priority. I’d had a hamburger for lunch a long time ago. And in this form, he wasn’t going to take me. “All right,” I said, walking past him. “Come on up.”

He stood near the door while I went into my room and changed out of my paint clothes into some clean ones and used the bathroom. Then I went into the kitchen and pulled the big plastic bin out of the fridge that I keep full of marinade and slabs of meat. I heated up a pan of oil and threw on as many as I felt hungry for. I got out a plate.

“What did you want to talk about?”

He kept his hands jammed in his jacket pockets. I could see he was salivating involuntarily at the smell of the frying meat. I was myself, as a matter of fact. I tried not to look at his throat as he swallowed. I wondered if he’d eaten anything since the donuts early that morning.

“There are things you need to understand,” he offered, “about what’s going on.”

“No, I don’t,” I replied, flipping the meat in a hail of spitting oil. “All I need is food, and sleep, and an occasional night out, and to be left alone.”

He ventured another step toward the kitchen, and spoke louder, so I could hear him over the sounds of sizzling. “You are involved in what is going to happen. That’s true. And it remains true, whether you want it to be, or whether you like it or not.”

I smiled at him, showing my teeth. “Didn’t I tell you, I’m moving to Colorado? Probably tomorrow.”

That gave him pause for a moment, but then he shook his head. “No. That isn’t how it works.”

I turned off the gas and speared the meat onto my plate. I got a bottle of cider from the fridge, sat down at the table, and started in on my steak. Yummy. Gods, there’s nothing like meat when you’re hungry. “All right,” I said, over my mouthful. “You tell me how it works.”

He took a few steps forward to stand by the table. I could see his jaw working as he swallowed the saliva in his mouth. I cut myself another big bite, forked it around the plate to soak up all the red juices, and put it in my mouth.

“Go on,” I said around my mouthful. “Tell me all about it.”

“All right.” He swallowed again and looked away. “They had a working. They called for help. And you came. That means you’re involved.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yes. I’m involved already, but what is important—”

I got up, put the pan back on, and put some more meat into it. “Yes? Go on, I’m listening.” I picked up my plate, and kept working on my dinner, as I cooked seconds. I was hungry.

“What is important is that you stepped between me and the sorceress.”

“Okay,” I said. “You’re welcome.”

“Listen. Please. I am not a free agent. I am never a free agent. It’s part of the conditions of my being here. I always belong to someone. That’s the way it works.”

“Uh huh.” I pressed the meat down in the pan, just to hear it sizzle louder. “And now you belong to me? Because the Wiccan lady said so?”

“Not only that.”

I spooned some of the marinade into the pan. The smell was heavenly. I glanced back at him. “All right. What?”

“You claimed me from her. You did.”

I turned to him. For a minute I thought he would step back, but he got hold of himself and held his ground. I said, “The last thing you want on this Earth is to be close to me. That is a promise. You can say your piece, and I’ll listen, but then you go, and you don’t come back. Understand?”

“That isn’t…”

“It’s that or nothing. Understand?”

He raised his hands briefly, I thought, in surrender. He said, “This is what I know. I am bound to the events that are going to come to pass here.”

“The World Snake, and all that?”

His hand went up again, as though to still my voice on that name. I’d said it to see what he would do. He went on after a moment. “Yes. And since last night, I am also bound to you.”

“So you say.” I turned the meat. My kind of cooking never takes long, just enough to put an artistic bit of browning around the edges of the meat.

“Yes. And I’ve been through this enough times… I know how it works. Look.” He took something out of his pocket and held it out to show me.

It was a deck of cards, larger than most, and so old and worn that the pattern on the back had worn off to a pasty white almost everywhere that fingers would normally touch them.

“Cards?” I said. How cute.

He shook his head, turned them over, and fanned them. The other sides weren’t faded at all; they were livid with color, pulsing with life, flaming with symbols, and full of meaning. “It’s a tarot deck.”

“I can see that.” I said.

“It’s how I know,” he said earnestly, “that I’m in service. They don’t work for me. I’m only able to use them on behalf of my master.” He was flushing, the delicate color rising to his cheeks and his ears. He lowered his head in embarrassment, cut the cards, and turned over the one at the top. “Look,” he said. “This is you.”

It was the Moon, and below it a wolf stood, drawn in a Medieval style, with its head back, howling. “Oh yeah?” I said. “That’s me?”

He made an impatient gesture. “It symbolizes you. Your nature—your true nature—is guided by the moon.”

“That’s a myth, you know.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. The moon is your sign because, like the moon, you are changeable. You have more than one aspect.”

“I’ve got lots of aspects,” I said gently, “and most of them you wouldn’t like.”