Landslayer's Law (21 page)

“He tried to kill you!” Brock gaped from where he’d landed after his part in thwarting the attack.

“Yeah,” David panted, “he did.”

“But why?”

“Didn’t like me, I guess.” David fumbled for the robe he’d discarded upon retiring and found his fatigues instead, which were better.

“Go get the others,” Liz directed, searching for her own clothes.

“It worked!” Brock crowed, for no obvious reason.

David blinked at him. “What did?”

“The medallion. Iron. Woman who sold it to me said it had a charm of protection on it: protection against the Sidhe. I thought she was lying. Guess she wasn’t.”

“Good thing, too,” David added, though something told him the boy had not told all the truth.

“The others,” Liz repeated. “Surprised they’re not here already, what with all that racket and the fact that these rooms are open on one side.”

“Faery soundproofing?” David offered absently. “Good a guess as any. And— Oh shit!” He sprang up from the bed.

“What?”

“What’s to say we were the only ones bein’ attacked? Oh, Christ, we gotta hurry!”

He had taken two steps of the ten needed to cross the room when something moved before him. Light on the rug, he assumed: a flicker of firelight on an impossibly intricate design.

But then the rug came alive. A coil of interlace spiraled out of it, altering as it rose into another bat-winged serpent, this one much larger than the other—easily ten feet long: the size of a good-sized boa or python. Even as its tail was still unwinding, the winged forepart hurled itself at David. He tried to dodge, but found escape blocked by an outthrust coil, which then whipped suddenly toward him and knocked him down. “Shit!” he gasped, as he tried to roll away.

“Fucker!” someone roared in turn, and for the second time in less than a minute, David saw battle joined, this time by Calvin, who stood framed in the entrance for a fraction of a second—a swarthy blot against an inky sky—then, like Brock before him, hurled himself into the fray. He was Calvin when he lunged, anyway; when he landed he was a tawny Florida panther. Cougar. Catamount.
Felis concolar.
Whatever. The important thing was that he was holding his own against his scaled opponent. Even now claws had pinned the forepart, while fanged jaws sought to get a grip behind the monster’s head.

That head snapped wildly, too; each bite narrowly missing, but nevertheless growing closer, as Calvin found his hundred-sixty pounds of black clawed, white fanged mass unequal to easily that much sharp-tipped scale and squirming muscle. Somehow David managed to regain his feet, saw Brock scampering past—hopefully to warn the others—but could find no way to assist. A wrong blow could injure his friend—or put himself back in peril of fangs and who knew what else? Or—

“Cal! Watch out!” Brock shrieked. The tail had finally freed itself from the carpet in which it had hidden and arched above the knotted combatants. Something gleamed there, at the end of the spine. Something that dripped a viscous, steaming liquid.

“Stinger!” David shouted in turn.

Calvin’s human reflexes were already fast, and in cat shape they were equivalently quicker. With one twisting heave, he wrested himself free of the coils that sought to bind him and rolled away. The stinger struck the floor—and dug in.

The serpent-thing wasted the merest instant trying to extricate itself, before its shape began to waver. For a heartbeat it became a man—Faery male, anyway: young as the other, and similarly dark-haired—and then it altered again. Not to any living shape, however; rather, it seemed to lapse back into the woven pattern in which it had lain in wait—save that it now lay upon bare stone floor, no thicker than the other shadows there.

“Get it!” David bellowed. But the thing was faster in that form than he could ever have expected, and shimmer-slither-slid into the arcade and thence into the salon, aiming for the suite’s single door.

David ran. Calvin loped in a tawny blur. Liz and Brock were slower shapes behind them.

“Shit!” Brock yelped, for the thing was accelerating—had become a shadow in truth—and moving fast as a shadow in shifting light had managed to gain the entrance. Calvin chased it desperately; indeed, ran so hard he slammed into that unyielding portal. Too late.

David skidded to a halt beside him. The thing was gone, but had not escaped entirely. A rag of black hung from Calvin’s claws. A rag that, as they stared in mute amazement, slowly became a long shard of what looked sickeningly like the thick red muscles of a human thigh.

“Fuck!” David gasped, swallowing hard, leaning on the door.
“Fuck!”

Liz was there beside him, holding him, or bracing him. He could’ve used either just then. And then Calvin rose up beside him: human again, and furious. He shook his hand as though he had seized something utterly foul, even as the other released the
uktena
scale with which he’d effected the change. “Check the others,” he told Brock. “I’m goin’ after that asshole!”

“The others’re fine,” LaWanda assured him, from behind. “Wait a second, I’m goin’ with you.”

“Me too,” Aikin echoed. “Let’s travel.”

Chapter XII: Wising Up

(Tir-Nan-Og—high summer—night)

“We can’t
all
go,” David protested, gazing wildly around the hard-eyed group ranged before the suite’s imposing door—the door beneath which whoever—or whatever—it was that had just attacked him had seconds before made its slithery escape.

LaWanda’s eyes blazed defiance. “You wanta take time to stop me?”

David was already framing a scathing reply when Calvin laid a hand on his shoulder. “She’s right, Dave. Every second we waste, that fucker gets further away. I oughta be able to track ’im—assuming he leaves a blood trail. But we don’t have time to argue.”

David tried the door—massive cast-bronze pulls in the shape of leering demons. “Doesn’t matter anyway; can’t get through.”

Calvin grinned triumphantly. “Watch me!” And with that, he grabbed the scale and clenched his fist around it. His eyelids closed. He took a pair of deep breaths, exhaled another—and
changed.
One minute he was a middle-sized, well-muscled young man; the next, a blot of shadow sliding down the door and through the hair-fine crack at its base.

LaWanda’s eyes were big as saucers. “How’d he—?”

David couldn’t resist a grin of his own. “Short form? The scale’s got mojo. With it, he can turn into anything he’s eaten.”

“He’s
eaten
one of them things?”

A shrug. “Prob’ly got a nip in durin’ the fight. Or—”

He had no time to elaborate, for something snapped in the latch, and the door eased inward. Calvin was standing there, grinning like a fool. And stark naked. “Here, Cal,” Brock hissed, and tossed him David’s discarded robe. LaWanda, David noted, wore another; but Aikin, like himself, was back in fatigues, though shirtless; and everyone—due to the haste with which they’d assembled—was unshod.

Liz fidgeted at the door, looking far more angry than frightened. “I want to go,” she complained, “but somebody’s gotta keep an eye on stuff here—wake everybody up, and tie up that other guy, just in case. Brock—”

The boy scowled. “I was gonna go too!”

David shook his head. “You’ve already been more help than most folks, and frankly I owe you my life twice over. But we can’t afford to argue. The trail’s gettin’ cold.”

“Right,” Calvin agreed. “Us three guys are the stealthiest folks I know, and I’ve got more sense than to fuss with LaWanda. You’ve got some good folks here. My advice? Arm yourselves with whatever steel you’ve got on you, tie that other asshole up proper, and stay in one place where you can see each other.”

“I’m on it,” Brock announced—and fled.

“We’ll knock the old M-Gang cadence,” Aikin advised, as he joined the others in the corridor outside. “That way nobody can sneak up on you. Alec’ll know it. If not, get G-Man or Darrell.”

And with that the panel snicked closed, and lest anyone have second thoughts about following them, David bolted it. He gazed at Calvin expectantly. “Neat trick there, my man.”

A grim chuckle. “Sometimes I amaze myself. God, but that thing tasted awful! And
bein’
it…I dunno, Dave…. I’m not sure I’d do that again if I had it to do over. I mean, I’ve felt some strange instincts in my time, and worked with some screwed-up senses, but that—! Faugh! Gag! Let’s just say it was disgustin’.”

“Any sense of whether it was originally human—Faery, or whatever—or if one of those other forms was its main one?”

A shrug. “Faery—I think.”

“Which means, if you wanted to, you could become duplicate of our assailant?”

Aikin’s mouth dropped open. “You could?”

Another shrug, this time with a sour grimace. “Probably I’ve done that
once.
Don’t recommend it, either. Memories tend to come with it, and instincts. Trouble is, it’s hard enough just bein me; I don’t need competition in my own head. And now,” he concluded irritably, “if you don’
mind
….”

David paused to check out the corridor. Nothing remarkable, really, beyond the fact that it was windowless and curved to the right—and down, describing a gradual spiral around their suite. Otherwise…. Groined arches of black marble supported the ceiling, their piers interspersed with panels of repousséed silver. The floor was beige stone smooth but unpolished. Against it, the trail showed unmistakably in a steady splatter of glistening red, leading to the right.

As quietly as they could, they followed it. Calvin led. Atkin, who hunted a lot and was nearly as quiet as Calvin went second, ahead of David. LaWanda brought up the rear. David caught an occasional soft ping or clink as her braid-beads struck each other. He wondered what Cal thought about such noisy accoutrements. He also wondered if it wouldn’t be wise to keep an eye on the ceiling. After all, their assailants could easily have had accomplices. And even if they were only pursuing
one,
there was no good reason the guy couldn’t shift again and lurk in the vaults’ many shadows—or, barring that, simply sprout wings and fly away in the shape he’d worn earlier, or another.

Unless
there were rules about such things. Cal had wounded this one. And that other guy had remained in his own shape when he died. Maybe injury precluded shifting. Or maybe not. It didn’t work that way with Cal. In fact shapeshifting healed him. Cal now sported a foreskin he hadn’t had when David met him—because the genetic blue print locked in his cells rebuilt him
as designed
after he changed. That was also why his tattoo was fading. It didn’t happen all at once, though, so it was still possible that they might be able to identify the culprit by locating a Faery youth with a limp, or an odd depression in his leg.

Which presupposed they reported this, which didn’t necessarily seem wise.

All at once it struck David like a blow—more of that delayed reaction effect, like the shuttle.
Someone had tried to kill him!
Abruptly, he was shaking—which made it damned hard to stealth. To calm himself, he inventoried his pockets for potential weapons. Slim pickings: car keys, a few bits of change, and a Swiss Army Knife. He slid out the later and opened the longest, thickest blade. Not much, but it was steel. And steel had saved him earlier.

Steel? Or enchantment? His fingers sought the medallion Brock had given him. He preferred the former, but the latter was a better guess—the kid was a pretty straight shooter. Still, something bugged him about the boy. It was just too convenient, dammit. He’d only had the medallion a few hours, and already it had saved his life.

Of course there
were
things that shielded one from the Sidhe—he’d had a ring like that once, until Liz had sacrificed it to resurrect Fionchadd. She wore it now—unmagicked.

And then the thought ambushed him again.
Someone really had tried to kill him!

Which raised the question of who? Lugh’s faction? Well, he didn’t trust them worth a hoot, but it seemed unlikely Lugh would’ve either resorted to such extreme measures or singled him out. Which left the clearly disloyal opposition, who could have any number of motives. God knew Lugh had pointed him out in council as one around whom a storm of options circled. Ridding the world—Worlds, rather—of him would definitely solve a number of problems, if one favored certain alternatives.

Trouble was, that last line of reasoning implied a traitor somewhere: someone who’d attended the council. And since Lugh, Nuada, and Fionchadd had been the only Faeries present, and
he
preferred to trust them all, as far as this situation went, that implied a human double-crosser. Or that someone was masquerading as human but really wasn’t. All at once David found himself wishing he had someone else to bounce this theory off of. Someone sufficiently remote from it to retain a modicum of objectivity. Someone like John Devlin.

Where
was
Devlin, anyway? Shoot, where was anybody?

Likely not together, that was for sure. They’d dispersed when the council had ended, with no time for one-on-one interaction—which (as Finno had admitted) had to be a deliberate ploy. Divide and conquer. So why did Lugh let him and his friends bunk together?

It was all too confusing. And probably not worth debating now, when they were in hot pursuit of someone, who, if apprehended, might possibly provide real answers.

“Shit!” Calvin spat abruptly. He stumbled to a despondent halt and slumped against the wall. David joined him, directed his gaze toward where his friend was pointing.

The trail ended on the sill of a narrow window—one far too narrow for any of the Trackers to squeeze through. Calvin studied it thoughtfully. “Looks like our friend shifted again—or something. I could go after him as a bird, I guess. But that’d leave you guys in the lurch, and I’m not so sure even this little trek was smart, now that my brain’s workin’, ’stead of my adrenal glands.”

Aikin slid down the wall to slouch on the floor, tired-eyed and slack-jawed. “Well,
I
sure can’t change shape!”

“Me neither,” LaWanda echoed. “I ain’t got
that
much mojo.”

David gnawed his lip, looking around anxiously. He feared to speak, yet was desperate to share the notion that had just popped into his head. Fought its way to his lips, rather, given that his mind was threatening to explode with competing speculations.