Stones Unturned (24 page)

"Zarin," Clay began, turning to look at the madman.

"How do you know that music?" Graves demanded furiously. "If you know nothing of my murder, how do you know —"

"It isn't me!" Zarin protested, staring wide-eyed at his faithful pet. "I'm not doing —"

He broke off into a jag of coughing that sent yellow spittle flying from his mouth.

Solomon bolted toward Zarin, silent save for the slap of his feet on the floor. Unaccompanied by the usual screech of his species, instead carried along by the music playing from that speaker-box.

He leaped into the air.

"No!" Graves shouted, crossing his arms to reach under each arm and pull his phantom guns.

Clay changed shape even as he started after Solomon, turning from Al Kovalik to the towering giant whose cracked, dry, clay-like flesh was his true form. But he was too late. They were both too late.

The orangutan wrapped one impossibly powerful, incredibly long arm around Zarin's throat and twisted. Bones cracked, muscle and skin tore. Had he another moment, he would have torn the lunatic's head completely off.

But Graves fired. Ghost guns barked. Phantom bullets streaked across that room and punched through Solomon's torso. The orangutan was blown back off of the massive iron contraption that held Zarin's body and struck the bank of monitors.

When he hit the ground, Solomon was dead.

Clay ran over to the orangutan, trying not to look at the ruined mess that was Zarin's head.

"What the hell was that?" he said. "Why would the thing go wild like that?"

But even as he asked those questions, he knew there was more to it. He had seen the change in the beast, the cold intelligence there. Either Solomon had not been the simple ape they'd thought, or there had been some other influence here.

"I've got a better question," Graves said. The ghost floated toward the orangutan's broken corpse. "What was this thing? These guns are just as much ghosts as I am, Joe. They shouldn't have hurt an ordinary animal. They only affect the supernatural."

Clay stared at the shattered body. "The impact and the fall did all of the visible damage."

"I agree," Graves said. "But you saw the bullets strike. They shouldn't have touched Solomon's flesh, but they hit
something
."

Clay might have said something more, but claxon alarms began to sound, filling every room. There was banging somewhere nearby, doors being flung open. Any second, Agent Munson and her people would arrive, none too pleased and with a great many questions that Clay and Graves would not feel like answering.

"We're going to need to rent another car," Clay said.

As the ghost shimmered and vanished from the room, Clay ran toward the massive metal apparatus that had become Zarin's coffin. He leaped onto it, crouched, and leaped again, shooting upward.

The ancient shapeshifter crashed through the glass turret, fragments scattering all around him. He came down hard on the roof, but even as he landed his flesh shifted and transformed, and a moment later, a tiny sparrow darted away from the sprawling Victorian manse on that hilltop and flew off across the gray skies of Rochester.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Behind Conan Doyle's brownstone home there lay a small garden courtyard hemmed in on three sides by the house. The brick rear wall of the structure behind the Louisburg Square house made up the fourth side of the courtyard, but it was well hidden in the wild tangle of the garden. Some of the trees were thick and long-limbed, others tall but slender as saplings, exotic things that would have been unfamiliar to local botanists. Indeed, some would have been unfamiliar to human botanists, and the flowers were rarer still, and more varied. The garden thrived with color. Scents of vanilla and orange and lilac hung in the air, mixing with a hundred others.

For this was Ceridwen's garden.

Once the Fey sorceress had decided to remain in the human world, to remain with Arthur, he had insisted she take the suite of rooms on the first floor, at the rear of the house. There were half a dozen tall windows and elegant French doors, all of which looked out into the courtyard. It had been a meager garden, then, but Ceridwen had made it come alive with color and scent.

In the center of the garden she had built a fountain. The stones had been drawn up through the ground and put into place with her elemental magic, and then she had summoned water from deep in the earth. When Ceridwen was not in residence, the fountain was a mere trickle, only enough to give the birds and squirrels and chipmunks something to drink, for this was their paradise as well as hers. Paradise in the midst of urban filth. Yet when Ceridwen entered the garden, the fountain would leap and spray, casting a sheen of moisture across the air and making a million tiny rainbows.

Though the other residents of the house visited from time to time, for the most part the garden afforded her utter privacy. Arthur was her only frequent visitor, and he enjoyed the tranquility it provided as much as Ceridwen. With so much uncertainty in their lives, so much dread as they sensed the darkness encroaching on all sides, this place was the perfect sanctuary. A haven.

Ceridwen sat on the edge of the fountain, water spraying her back, causing her turquoise gown to cling to her skin. She hung her head back and let the spray play across her face. It soothed her, and she let out a long breath.

A pair of sparrows began to sing to one another in the rowan tree that grew beside the fountain. She laughed softly and stood up, swaying with the music of the birdsong. Ceridwen twirled around several times and then paused by a wild lilac bush that had grown taller and thicker than any in this world. Lilacs were out of season, but in her garden such trifles never mattered. Of all of the flowers that grew in the human world, lilacs were her favorite. The scent intoxicated her.

She held a branch and inhaled the aroma of the blossoms. A pleasant feeling passed through her, a contentment difficult to achieve of late. Much as she loved Arthur and enjoyed sharing this with him, there were times when solitude was her only salve.

Her mouth craved something sweet. She ran her tongue out over her lips and glanced about for a bare patch of soil. On the far side of the fountain she saw a perfect spot and she strode to it, letting her fingers touch branches and leaves and flowers in greeting as she passed.

Ceridwen dropped to her knees and plunged her fingers into the soil, the rough earth giving way to her, thirsting for contact. The years had tainted the soil of this world with chemicals, yet she had found that even in the most poisonous of places in the realm of mankind, the soil remembered a purer time, when the connections between it and Faerie were many and strong.

The ground trembled a bit, and then a sprig of wood burst from the soil. Ceridwen shuddered with pleasure as the sprig grew to a sapling and then to a tree, bursting with blossoms. The blossoms darkened and grew heavy, and a cascade of seconds passed before they had become fat, ripe cherries.

She rose and plucked a bunch of cherries from a branch, then popped one into her mouth. With her tongue and teeth she stripped its sweet meat from around the pit, and then she swallowed even that hard seed. Like water and fire, earth and air, the garden was a part of her.

"It's beautiful," a voice came from behind her.

She knew at once it did not belong to anyone human. The tranquility of her garden had been shattered by the arrival of an intruder, and the dread that had infected all of the realms in every dimension shuddered through her once more.

"What is your name?" she asked without turning.

"I did not think beauty was possible in the Blight," the voice replied.

Ceridwen ate another cherry, but its sweetness was lost on her. She dropped the rest and spun on one heel, standing in the shadow of the cherry tree. The sorceress raised her chin and glared imperiously at the intruder.

"I am a princess of Faerie, gnat. You'd do well to take care how you address me."

The emissary from her uncle's court was clad in the colors of stream and leaf, but over those clothes he wore a cloak of purest black that was like a velvet slash across the beauty of the garden. At his side hung a silver sword, its scabbard gleaming against the cloak. His thin features were the same pale hue as her own, tinted with a hint of blue.

Her words caused him to flinch.

His bright green eyes widened and then he lowered his gaze. The emissary drew back his hood to reveal rich brown hair.

"In harsh times, we are wont to become harsh ourselves," the emissary said. "Forgive me, majesty. It is unlike me to be so brusque and unseemly for a messenger from your uncle's court."

"I asked your name," she said curtly.

The emissary raised his eyes. "I am called Abhean."

Ceridwen narrowed her eyes. "I have heard the name. You are the Harper?"

Abhean nodded. "In happier times, that's true. When times grow dark, there's little call for my music."

"I'd think more call than ever."
"I am master of the harp, but also of the sword, and one can serve the king better than the other."

Ceridwen strode toward him. "You may rise, Harper, and tell me your purpose here. The Fey so rarely enter the Blight."

Abhean stood and rested his hand on the pommel of his sword, slightly at attention, a formal air about him. "I beg your forgiveness, Princess Ceridwen, for my rudeness upon my arrival. Entering the Blight has me on edge, and I have behaved inexcusably."

"The humans live in this world, the Blight as our people call it, every day, and only some of them behave inexcusably. Nevertheless, you are excused, but only if you will arrive at the purpose of your intrusion immediately."

The Harper executed a small bow. "Of course, Princess —"

"Merely Ceridwen, please."

"If you wish."

"So I do."

"Ceridwen, then. Your uncle, King Finvarra, has sent me to ask you to return immediately to his court. He bade me tell you that he fears for your safety because of the way the Blight trembles. The seers spy a shadow that covers all of the worlds. All of the signs indicate that something terrible has awoken and threatens this world."

Ceridwen nodded. "Yes. I know well the peril the human world faces. Yet it is that very danger that forces me to stay. The terror that the seers have predicted threatens all realms, not only this one. But here is where it will come first and where we have the best chance of stopping it."

Abhean arched an eyebrow and took a deep breath. He let it out slowly and shifted awkwardly on his feet.

"You have something else to say, Harper?"
"I'm sorry, Ceridwen, but I am ill prepared for your refusal. The king gave me only a message to deliver. I had not imagined you would deny him."

"Yet I must."

The handsome Fey warrior regarded her with those eyes, so bright green they were mesmerizing. "If I may be so bold —"

"I doubt that I could prevent it."

" — there is trouble at home as well. Trouble of a different sort. The ill feeling that the seers have perceived has unsettled all of Faerie. Those who supported Morrigan or who refuse to believe the extent of her surrender to darkness resent the king. There is a great deal of political turmoil. I fear the outcome, Ceridwen. I fear we may see a return to the Twilight Wars."

Horrorstruck, she stared at him. Images of shadow spreading across the land, of all of Faerie torn by civil war, of blood and savagery and monsters ravaging the land, played across her mind. Her mother's screams echoed inside her skull.

"Surely it cannot have grown that dire so quickly."

Abhean lowered his gaze. "I fear it will come to that before long."

For long moments, Ceridwen stared at him. She glanced around the garden and back at the house, the French doors that led into her bedroom standing open and inviting. She thought about Arthur, and the love that had reignited. More than anything, however, she thought of the Demogorgon, the unimaginable evil that even now made its way across the universe toward this world.

The humans could not stand alone.

She would not let Arthur face the Demogorgon without her at his side. Ceridwen felt sure he would die, and if so, she had to perish at his side. In her heart, she knew this. Fate weighed heavily upon her.

"You know how to find me, should the worst come to pass. Should the trouble here be averted, I will come to my uncle's side immediately. Carry that message to him, with my love."

"As you wish," Abhean replied.

The Harper reached within his cloak and removed his harp. He plucked at its strings and bade her farewell even as he began to fade away, as though he had never been there at all. Warrior and poet, he had ever been a great ally to Finvarra, for with his harp he was a Walker Between Worlds.

With him gone and some of the lightness returned to the garden, Ceridwen went to the fountain. Droplets of water fell around her and upon her, fresh and cool upon her skin.

She reached into the water, and the fountain ceased, leaving only a rippling pool.

Ceridwen brushed her hand across the surface of the water once, twice, a third time. "Kate," she whispered. "Moya. Emmy. Kiera."

Faces appeared on the water, images that wavered with the brush of her hand on the scrying pool. With a touch, she turned the scrying pool to ice as clear as a mirror, and the images settled. Each of the women glanced up, one by one, as she called their names. They would not be able to see her, but they would hear her voice, these lovers of the natural world who had made offerings to her, who had been her eyes in the human world during the years when she refused to return here.

One by one, they answered her, softly, reverently.

"There is trouble in Faerie, my friends," she told them, and immediately sensed their anxiety, their fear. "No, no. I am in no danger at the moment. It is the realm I fear for, not my own safety. You must spread the word to all of those who believe, who would serve me. If there is any sign of further discord in Faerie, if any of you sense anything, or if any of the sprites and such with whom you communicate bring unwelcome news, you must inform me immediately."