Warstalker's Track (40 page)

“A man’s got some rights,” his dad had said, staring his mom in the eye. That was what he’d been saying when he and Uncle Dale returned from a lightning raid on Hardees. “And one right a man’s got most of all is the right to say when and where he’ll die if he knows he’s dyin’. I don’t
know
I am, but I
think
I am, and something else has a pretty good idea that could happen too. Now help me or go away, ’cause I’ve said what I’m gonna do.”

They were doing it now, though later than his dad had wanted by about two hours, ’cause it
had
been after hours, and there were some things hospitals had to bend the law to do. But home wasn’t far now, maybe ten miles, and they’d have been there long since if not for the incessant rain.

Little Billy wondered what he’d find there. That Elyyoth guy, who’d been from Faerie and told him tales of wonder when fretting over Davy threatened to drive him crazy? Maybe. Water? That was for sure; but what else? War, somehow, some way, and likely fought with magic. Shoot, if he was a little older, he’d be in there, too, Mom or no. Christ, Brock wasn’t but a couple years older’n him, and he’d been in the thick of things. On the other hand, fighting meant you might die, and he didn’t think his mom could stand it if him, or Davy, or even Dale, died too.

Which sounded like he’d given up on his dad, which he hadn’t. Without thinking about it, he did something he’d never done in his life. He reached over and grasped his father’s hand.

Chapter XIX: Life’s Blood

(Lookout Rock, Georgia—Sunday, June 29—midnight)

David wished he had a better view of what was going on behind him, where Aife, Finno, and Elyyoth stood knee-deep in what had always been, to him, sacred water, beginning to work their spell. He dared not turn full around, however; not while he was on guard. Against
what,
he didn’t know; though it was absurd to assume they could actually pull this off without a glitch. Well, perhaps in a perfect world, but they’d surely blown their luck quota by now, and they’d
need
luck in spades to avoid detection.

Or simply to stay alive. All he knew about Turinne was that he was ambitious, didn’t think along traditional Faery lines, and was far more ruthless than Lugh; witness his execution of poor Oisin. Opposing him wasn’t good odds.

Their best chance lay in the rebels’ getting close enough to have at them with something besides magic. Bullets, they’d already proven, could put serious hurt on Faery bodies: smashing joints, breaking bones, and disrupting senses, if not slaying outright; plus those injuries took Power to heal, which was Power the injured couldn’t access in a fight. Steel shot was even better, because not only did it hurt but the Sidhe actually feared it. David’s concern was that Turinne might be canny enough to pit them against ordinary people.

Best not think about that, he decided, as he turned just in time to catch the flash of obsidian as Fionchadd slashed one palm, then shifted the blade to the other and sliced the free one in turn. Blood dripped into the pool: an offering of Power to the water, as he offered the knife to Aife, who followed suit. Elyyoth would as well, but Elyyoth was out of view.

For himself, Brock was to his right, Sandy to his left, Alec and Liz behind and to the left: them and the wind and the rain and the night and what was still, and forever, a magnificent view. And so he stood and waited; poised, but not tense; no longer tired, or beyond it; shotgun in hand, Beretta at belt, odd lots here and there; black fatigues, black sweatshirt, brown sleeveless jacket bristling with pockets; an ugly green boonie hat that fended the rain from his eyes.

And, he suddenly realized, an iron medallion around his neck whose origin he still didn’t know. He fingered the chain and looked down at Brock, whose gift it was, the boy dressed more or less as he, but bareheaded, and with his flag of hair twitching in the wind and Alec’s atasi held two-handed before him like a battle-ax. “I haven’t forgotten,” he murmured, nudging Brock with his elbow. “The medallion, I mean.”

“Woman gave it to me,” Brock mumbled. “Like I said. Supposed to be protection against the Sidhe.”

“Thought you bought it.”

Brock shook his head, took a deep breath. “Gave it to me for a tumble—my first, actually. I don’t think she was human. Said she needed a mortal’s first seed for her own conceiving.”

Christ!
David thought,
dead Sidhe sometimes had to link their souls to a new conception.
“Did this woman have a name?”

“Neman,” Brock replied, barely audible. “She said I was to give that to you to settle a debt. She said it was interest on a death.”

David’s breath caught.
So that was it!
Neman, the part of the tripart goddess who gloried in what had come to be called friendly fire, had contrived his namesake uncle’s death in Lebanon. He, in turn, had inadvertently precipitated her sister’s doom: Morrigu, Mistress of Battles, who by rights should’ve overseen all that transpired here. Clearly that had shaken Neman, and equally clearly, Morrigu sought rebirth.

And because Morrigu ruled honor and fairness in battle, her sister had felt obliged to honor him in turn and had empowered this talisman made of what to her would’ve been the deadliest metal to shield him from her own kind.

That made as much sense as anything, anyway.

“Thanks,” David murmured, and fell silent, gazing out at the ominous woods. Wondering, as his eyes probed every shifting shadow, how many others had stood like this: forlorn and frightened in the dark, waiting for their deepest fears to manifest. Devlin had, and lost a hand trying to save a friend. David-the-Elder had, and lost more than that in the long run. Dale had, and his father. He was no less than they, no more important in the grand cold scheme of life. And here he was. Waiting. A soldier—almost—in the night.

*

The
words
weren’t there, and then, quite simply, they were.

Aife didn’t know whether her eyes were open or not, though they had been when she’d drawn the knife across her palm and let her blood fall into the pool. Carefully, she’d done that, for she’d known without consciously learning as much that if the pool touched a wound, it could suck you dry. That had been Colin’s doom; that was what had almost destroyed Tir-Gat. He’d been Powerful, too; more Powerful than herself, Fionchadd, and Elyyoth together. But his had been the need for stealth, to steal a little at a time from Alberon: a hill, a tree, every third stone in a mountain. Such subtlety was useless now; what she needed was control and direction. But first she had to find a Silver Track.

And so they’d fed blood to sacred water and sent it questing. Blood to awaken water, to wake more water, to touch all water and be aware. Even the water in the air, perhaps, for she could feel the touch of Power in it as it fell.

And so she watched with her inner eye, feeling the water around her feet, and through it, all water everywhere; all the while recalling the touch of the Silver Tracks Colin had so carefully described in
words
no mortal could ever translate.

Nothing…Nothing…Farther and farther, down near Athens now; and then she
touched
one, and more of Colin’s
words
awoke, and she began to summon it
here.

* * *

Alec stared at the ulunsuti and tried not to think of the crimson septum that divided the oracular stone as a metaphor for the barrier he sensed rising between him and Aife.

Barriers…human and Faery. Mortal and Sidhe. Blood from the Lands of Men and an organic jewel from a monster from Galunlati.

Blood.

His hand glistened where he’d sliced it to prime the stone before passing his knife on to Liz, who’d passed it to Piper, thence to Myra, and so back to him. They were watching him, too, which he hated. “Okay,” he whispered, so as not to disturb Aife’s spell, “let your blood drip on the stone, no more than a drop or two until we get a sense of it. Yeah, that’s right. C’mon, Piper, you too.”

Piper’s face was white as snow; the poor guy was actually trembling. Alec was beyond sorry for him. He hated this stuff because it disrupted his life and what he’d grown up assuming were the universe’s givens. Piper hated it because it scared him to death. At least Myra was here: Piper’s most tenured friend, that bond as old as the one ’twixt himself and Liz, if the two of them even
were
friends.

Scratch that; they were. She was getting anxious, though; he could tell. And so he took a deep breath and reached out to clasp the hands of those nearest. Liz’s were soft and silky, Myra’s competent and hard. “Okay, like I’ve told you, it works best if you just worry at it. Think about threats, but not specific threats. Keep your eyes open as long as you can and stare at the septum. Pretty soon it’ll take over.”

“Been there, done that,” Myra affirmed. “Don’t worry.”

Alec didn’t reply. Years of much-begrudged experience had made him more facile at scrying than he imagined, and before he knew it, the septum had become the whole world, and he was flying.

There was no
other way
to describe the sensation, though he had no sense of giddiness, only of cool observation. Nor could he tell precisely what he saw, save that it seemed to be their own World. Which made sense, given that Liz or Myra could be directing as easily as he. Christ, both of ’em were stronger-willed than he was!

At any rate, chaos had clarified into Sullivan Cove and that yucky bunch of make-do structures out at B.A. Beach. A shift, and he glimpsed Dale’s Lincoln approaching, though what that portended, he didn’t know. Someone was worrying about the elder Sullivans, though, or concerned about what would happen should David lose his dad.

A jerk, a mental twitch, and they looked on Tir-Nan-Og and Lugh’s palace, now bathed in fading light, which meant time between the Worlds was out of synch again. The place was alive, too, with hundreds of half-seen figures on horseback, afoot, or aloft, all converging on Lugh’s citadel. He hoped Lugh was there as well; that these were warriors come to aid him, not riffraff come to storm the palace or witness the crowning of a mortal-hostile king. And then he saw the ships: two whole armadas aloft, one Arawn’s, one Finvarra’s, likewise intent on the palace. He breathed a sigh at that: whatever they faced here, far more was occurring in Tir-Nan-Og. Maybe with enough distractions there, no one would heed a band of half-mad mortals a World away.

Another shift, and a dark-clad troop appeared from nowhere amid a ruined circle of standing stones and charged straight toward them—in Faerie, of course, but right in their direction. And then golden light flared before them as a Track awakened, and Alec lost them—unfortunately, because at least half those figures, though they wore Turinne’s livery, were men from his own World.

The stone had shown them specifically, too, which meant they were a threat. And then he recalled something that made his bones go chill. Those men had stepped on a Track. Tracks laced through the Worlds like laser light in a room full of mirrors. Two ran close to David’s place: disturbing, but still a fair way from here, plus anyone approaching from them would surely make
some
noise. But there was a third, which no one thought about because it didn’t link to their World directly. He’d been on it exactly once, when they’d sought Ailill’s sister, Fionna; and that Track entered this World from the blank stone behind the waterfall!

Thinking it
showed
it; showed his fears were true. Liz clearly realized it as well: that they’d left one whole flank unguarded. Alec had no idea whose voice it was, Liz’s or his own, that yelled warning.

*

David felt the burning in his eyes the instant he heard Liz scream. Burning meant Power in use, and his eyes had been burning already, from Aife’s spell. But he’d learned to tune that out so that it was no worse than bad eyestrain. Now Power was awake again: close by and with no warning, as though someone had opened a door onto chaos.

Another scream: warning or fear…an oath in the language of Faerie. And then sharp, harsh cracks, like distilled thunder.

Gunshots!

Fucking
gunshots!

More shouts followed, and there was splashing and yelling, someone roundly cursing the weather, and far too human laughter.

David spun instantly, wondering how anyone could possibly have come at them from the back, and then
remembering
how: the Track they’d all forgotten, that opened through solid stone on the unguarded side of the pool.

“Down,” he growled at Brock, diving for cover behind a knee-high boulder, but Brock was already down—and groaning, though his face looked fierce and grim. Around him other wet, dark shapes were ducking for cover as well; at least there were rocks and logs aplenty. His concern was for the unarmed, the folk in the pool, who’d been right in the line of fire; but also Liz, Alec, and the rest, who were off to his right and not in direct view of anyone emerging from the waterfall. Which might buy them time to fumble out the weapons he’d insisted they carry.

But where were their assailants?
The Track terminated behind the falls, but it was narrow; one person at a time was all that could navigate it. Which meant—

Shotgun up! Firing—straight at the shape moving behind the water; at the same time noting that their three Faery allies were nowhere to be seen, which meant, he hoped, that they were underwater.
Wait!
Aife was still standing, though she’d staggered back. And was that blood on her shoulder where there should be no blood, according to the rite? What was she doing, anyway, out there in the middle?

“Oh, Jesus! I’m hit!” And that
was
Alec! David’s heart stopped cold in his chest, though his finger went right on twitching: shooting a dead man who pitched straight out of the waterfall to land in the sacred pool. Two others followed, springing through and fanning out to either side. And the shotgun wasn’t loaded! Fingers fumbled for shells while his frantic gaze found Alec, two yards away, lying on his side, staring at a long red gash along his forearm, while Liz leaned over him, pistol in hand. He glimpsed Piper’s frozen face, and then the shotgun loaded itself, and he was questing for targets. His side were getting their bearings, too, and bullets were flying from every quarter, notably LaWanda, who was pumping ’em out like Dixie—and had just taken out the second foe, who was certainly mortal.