Dreamseeker's Road (15 page)

“Anything…special about her?”

“Like what?”

“Never mind.”

“So what's the big deal, then?”

“Nothing, really. She just…reminds me of somebody.”

Mark grimaced thoughtfully. “Could be a grad student, if that helps. Maybe history, or something. Usually when I see her she's reading history books.”

“So why isn't the 'Watt her style?”

“I dunno. Maybe just 'cause she looks so serious and intense all the time. Preoccupied, you know. Not the partying type.”

David nodded curtly, tacitly rendering the conversation just one more sound bite. “Catch you later,” Mark grunted, and ambled away.

“Who was that?” Liz asked, over his shoulder, having just that moment returned. She handed him a cup of water and kept one for herself.

“Used to live next to me in the dorm.”

“Think you oughta check on Mr. Dream?”

“I suppose,” David replied, and pushed through the crowd toward the men's room.

He met Alec coming out as he was going in, and spun around to pace him. “Jesus Christ,” he snapped. “What were you
doin'
in there? Transcribing
Origin of Species
in piss on the floor?”

Alec bared his teeth in a snarly grin. “It was
A Brief History of Time,
and I had to wait for the guy ahead of me to finish
Paradise Lost.
And we used the wall.”

Together they worked their way toward where Liz had managed to co-opt a table. “So why aren't you guys—” Alec began. And broke off in mid-sentence. His hand shot out and grabbed David's biceps so fiercely David skidded and almost toppled backward. Alec had frozen in his tracks. The grip tightened into genuine pain.

“Shit fire, McLean! What—?”

“It's
her
!” Alec gasped softly, though David heard him even above the deafening rendition of “Wild Man” that was rattling the walls and setting the floor to quaking.

“Who…?” But David already knew.

Alec dipped his head toward the white-faced woman in gray, green, and black, the blatantly exotic Faery woman whose very presence had apparently prompted her fellow de Danaan to leave.

“Eva! It's Eva!”

David squinted through a drift of cigarette smoke that further confounded the already uncertain light. “No way!”

“Well, it's her goddamned
sister
then!”

“Did she
have
one?”

“I dunno.”

David clamped his free hand on Alec's wrist—noting as he did that his friend was trembling. Alec's grip on
his
arm was actually making his fingers go numb. “Cool it,” he hissed. “Eva's dead. You saw her die!”

“And we both know the Sidhe don't stay dead!”

“Yeah, but resurrection involves startin' over from scratch, from the womb… It could take years.”

“
Usually
involves!” Alec corrected vehemently. “If they're strong enough, their spirits can build new bodies almost instantly. It just hurts like hell.”

“Was Eva that strong?”

Alec was still staring at the woman, his eyes squeezed to tearful slits. “Maybe not,” he gritted.

—And wrenched free of David and fled.

*

“I'm sorry,” Alec choked two minutes later. “I really am sorry, guys, but I just can't go back in there!”

Stripped to a black tank top, boots, and jeans, he was slumped on the knee-high brick rim of a planter in the building-sized minipark a block up the street from the 'Watt, with his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees. Dream's wig was a blot of silver-shot blackness amid the dying flowers behind him. David and Liz flanked him, David with an arm across his shoulders.

“Don't you think you're kinda overreacting?” David murmured. “I mean,
think
about it, man. No way it could've been Eva. And you said yourself it didn't
really
look like her.”

“No, but it reminded me of her like a kick in the guts can remind you there's a half-ton animal attached to that horseshoe you just found. Or— Never mind,” he finished sloppily. “I'm not makin' any sense.”

“You've just had a few too many,” David chuckled sympathetically. “'Course I have too…”

Alec slapped a hand on David's knee, where it rested, heavy and unnerved. “If I go back, she'll be in there, Dave. And that'll remind me too much of…all that. And I just can't
deal
with that!”

“So don't look at her!” Liz snorted.

David scowled at her across Alec's head, wondering why someone who was usually the soul of diplomacy had decided to play bitch-queen now. Of course, she hadn't
seen
those two women, either. Maybe that was it: the fact that he hadn't reported them
instantly
…

“I can't
help
but look!” Alec protested.

“Okay,” David sighed. “No big deal.”

“It's just too hard, man.”

“Have some water,” Liz offered guiltily, having brought her cup along. Alec took it and swallowed sloppily. He poured the remainder over his head. “Thanks,” he mumbled. “Hey, thanks to both you guys.”

David could only nod helplessly. Alec was right: seeing the woman again
would
do more harm than good; though the sooner he came to terms with his lost love, the better for all concerned. On the other hand, he'd all but decided to confront her himself, before this crisis had derailed him. Now, though—well, he frankly wasn't sure he had the balls.

“Oh shit!” Alec gulped, slapping his hand over his mouth as he twisted around—and was violently sick into the planter. David held him until he stopped heaving, and used a corner of Dream's cloak to wipe his face. Liz produced a second cup of water.

“You gonna be okay?” David asked seriously, as he steadied his roomie. “I mean, Jesus, what happened? It hit you all at once?”

“Guess so,” Alec mumbled. “But Dave?”

“Yeah.”

“Take me home.”

David hesitated the briefest instant. Then, “Sure. Like I said, it's no big deal. We got what we came for—mostly.”

“You think he'll be all right by himself?” Liz whispered.

—Not softly enough, evidently, for Alec stiffened. “You're not stayin'
home
?”

A longer hesitation, as David and Liz exchanged resigned glances. He'd hoped to find Aikin and have him nursemaid Alec while he spent the night at Liz's. But maybe that wasn't such a good idea—especially since Aik hadn't resurfaced. And looking at Alec's sudden pallor, his set jaw and wild, worried eyes, he knew that tonight friendship had to come first.

“Yeah,” he said gently, urging Alec to his feet. “I can do that. C'mon, man, let's go.”

“I hate 'er,” Alec slurred, as he let himself be steered along. “I hate 'er 'cause I love 'er! And I gotta find out if she loves me.”

“Alec—”

“They've got 'er,” Alec interrupted. “I know they have. I know!”

“Sure,” David agreed. “Here, watch your step.”

Alec froze in place, and was therefore well-nigh immovable. “I've gotta find 'er, Dave,” he wailed. “I've
got
to!”

“Fine,” David told him, a little shortly. “So what d' you say you start lookin' at home?”

“Home…” Alec repeated dully.

“Yeah, man, home. You can start lookin' tomorrow.”

“Home,” Alec said again. “Don't let me be alone tonight, Dave.”

A deep, uncertain breath. “I won't, man, I promise.” Then, above his nodding head: “Uh, Liz, can you help me here?”

“Home,” Alec mumbled, as his friends urged him along. “Home, home, home…”

“Home,” David echoed. “Yeah, right, let's get you home.”

“Gotta find 'er!” Alec screamed at the stars. “Gotta find 'er!”

And Death could only glare at Dream and wish for dawn.

Chapter IX: On Track

(Athens, Georgia—Friday, October 30—night)

The last light on Milledge Avenue flicked from red to green and Aikin stomped the gas. The S-10's tires chirped obligingly, but with rather less conviction and far harsher tones than a certain
other
something chirped—when it didn't whistle or trill. He grinned in anticipation, and cranked the radio up loud. WUOG-FM had just replaced Michelle Malone's “Has Anybody Seen My Monster?” (transparent homage to Halloween), with the Cranberries' “Zombie”—which was more his speed.

And speed was of the essence, as midnight approached. Why it
had
to be then, he wasn't sure, save that it was one of the “between” times, and, more to the point, the particular “between” time when he was least likely to be observed. Roomies tended to be about at dusk and dawn, and he had to play boy-student at noon. Last night's witching hour had simply been
too
soon—he'd still been checking out the enfield then, never mind the study session already locked in with Cammie, who was sufficiently insecure about whatever was evolving between the two of them to be tolerant of temporal caprice. But tonight, Whitehall Forest would for all intents be deserted. Tonight was Aikin's own. Probably just as well, too—for even Mighty Hunters were skittish about
certain
things on genuine Halloween. Sighing, he shifted his hands on the wheel and relaxed into the backrest, noting absently how the scanty suburb past where Milledge Avenue ducked beneath the bypass to become Whitehall Road had lapsed into pastures under starlit skies. Actually, he corrected, there was mostly sky glow from Athens, the heart of which lay two miles back; but a few of the first magnitude sparklers were visible anyway—and, now he looked, a ghosting of clouds like the shadow of Alec's Dream cloak. More prosaic by far were the barns and service buildings of the Agricultural Research Stations that claimed most of the open land to either side. Ahead lay woods—and research of another kind.

He wondered if they'd missed him yet: that trio of excellent friends he'd not so much abandoned as discreetly disengaged from back at the 'Watt. Hopefully they were still boogying till they dropped.
Probably
Dave (the sharpest) had discovered that he'd been dancing like a fiend one minute and was gone the next.
Likely
they'd be pissed, but eventually forgive him—again. Trouble was, while he loved music, the louder and live-er the better, he loathed crowds and the press of humanity, especially mobs as unrestrained as the 40 Watt crew had been. It was just too hard to hang on to your
self,
dammit; he could always feel his edges starting to blur, as though people had magnetic fields that tugged at his personality, and too many would fragment him utterly.

Perhaps that explained the attraction of Faerie: not so much the sheer wonder of the place (though Dave had observed that anyone as curious as Aikin was
had
to be part cat), as because that land was lightly populated (so Dave had also said), with many inhabitants of less-than-human size. Solitude should therefore be more accessible there. And with immortality to spend, there would never be any cause to hurry; so that a guy might actually have time to think and observe and learn and enjoy and…just
be
!
Shoot, on the ride back down here from home Dave had recounted the tale of a Sidhe lord who'd planted an acorn and not moved from that spot while the tree grew, flourished, died, and withered away. And one of Dave's Faery friends—Fionchadd was his name—had once coupled with a woman for a week and never lost his erection. Shape-changing had been involved too, from both participants, and at least one sex shift as well. (“Eternity Outlasts Prudery,” was a popular quote among the more pragmatic Sidhe.)

And speaking of staying power, Whitehall had ended but the Cranberries hadn't.

Aikin paused for the stop sign where his road teed into another. The coast clear, he goosed the gas again and roared across the highway into what looked like a private driveway flanking a tree-studded lawn. The brick Victorian mansion on the right had been a gift, with the adjoining woods, to the Forestry School. He saluted it by killing his lights, thinking (as he always did) how lucky the facility manager who lived there was, and how evocative those turrets and towers were this time of year, especially when cut out against such wild skies as had prevailed earlier in the week. Now it loomed above half-bare trees, guardian to what was in some ways a land as remote to the rank and file as Faerie was to him.

A metal-pipe gate blocked further progress, and he halted by a check-post while he fumbled above the visor for his key-card. That located, he inserted it, heard the mechanism click, and watched as multihundred pounds of steel slowly retracted along a fence.

He was through in a flash and into the woods—pines, mostly, the foliage broken here and there by lab buildings, side roads, and a sign pointing toward the deer pens. Once he jolted over railroad tracks. And then he was home.

Not bothering to lock the pickup, he jogged to the darkened cabin and zipped inside. Twin alcoves faced each other across a common room-kitchen that ran straight across to the deck. He took the left, then turned sharp right into the rearmost of the two bedrooms that flanked that side's bath.

Elmer Fudd's helmet, he flung on the unmade bed, along with the plywood sword. The cardboard armor he unseamed from nave to chaps with one well-placed yank, but the borrowed chain mail beneath (which had been pretty pointless, given how little of it had been visible) took longer, forcing him to bend double and shake to shuck out of it—and at that it claimed his shirt and a selection of hair. The fringed moccasins puddled on the floor, but he hesitated at his sweat-pants, since they were decent warm-weather nightwear, finally exchanging them for his usual cammos, a black sweatshirt, and a multipocketed vest. He also chose duck shoes over Reeboks and added a hat—a nondescript floppy thing Dave kept threatening to burn. Then, shouldering the knapsack he'd packed before leaving for the 'Watt, he slipped back outside, locked the door, and went in search of magic.