Tales of the Unquiet Gods (16 page)

"I don't think any of us are exactly used to this, this whatever it is," she said.

Pat's lips twisted into a wry smile.

"Yeah, well. It's a hell of thing, when nightmares become real and you can do things you never thought possible. I'm not really sure I want to live in this new world, you know?"

Melody nodded, the strength of the motion shaking her entire slim form.

A thought occurred to Pat.

"If you only got this message just now, what were you doing here tonight in the first place?"

Melody's pale face went the steely blank of furious anger. Pat unconsciously tensed in reaction. He'd seen that look before on people who were about to go berserk.

"I lost a regular."

Pat blinked, lost in the sudden switch.

"I'm - sorry?"

Melody turned her scowl on him.

"I've been playing in parks for weeks now, and I've gotten to recognize some of the people who are usually there at certain times. Patterns, flows, the way people fall into routines." She shot him an irritated look.

Pat nodded. He did, indeed, know how people fell into patterns of behavior. It was human nature: take the same bus to work at the same time. Wear the same clothes on the same days. With few exceptions, most people even ate the same dishes for most of their lives.

"One lady comes by Washington Square Park every morning and listens to me play a few songs. I think she works for the university. She always looks sad, but she's been staying longer and longer over the last couple of weeks, and seems like she's, well, getting happier." Her mouth worked, and her breath whistled in and out her nose. "This morning, she walked past. I called her name, and when she didn't respond, I called again. She usually wears open-necked shirts -" the hair on the back of Pat's neck stood up, "- and always with a specific necklace: a piece of deep green jade."

"And today, she wasn't." Pat stared into nothing. "She was wearing a loose, button down shirt, or a bulky sweater, or a coat with a high collar. And she probably works late, outside of normal business hours, at least." The coin's uneven edge bit into Pat's palm. "She walked home, or to the subway, or to a bus station. And there was a young man who just needed a moment of her time -"

"Patrick!"

Melody's strangled cry wrenched Pat back to himself. He shook like the proverbial leaf. Tension racked his entire body, driven by a potent concoction of remembered terror and blinding rage. Melody's wide eyes acted on him like a chill rain, cooling the red fury that gripped him.

"I'm sorry."

She looked hard at him, harder than a woman that many years his junior should be able to.

"Mike was right: there's something damaged in you, Detective."

Pat stared at her, unable to speak. Runey'd told him much the same thing when he woke up in the hospital. A stew of thoughts and emotions seethed just inside his skin, and under it all was a terrible dread.

"We spoke before you visited me," she continued. "When he healed you, he saw what he called gray places. Something in you that wasn't physical, but was affected. By what you experienced."

Pat shuddered. It fit. He wanted to lash out. At Melody. At the world. Trauma did things, and he'd found little more traumatic than being reduced to a passenger in your own body by something so unquestionably evil.

"I'm troubled by your drive to resolve this." She shook her head as Pat's eyebrows climbed. "Not ending the threat and finding Carla, but that it be you and now. Why do you need to be the one to do this, when by rights you should be healing still?"

"I can find them," Pat grated, his jaw still tight with inner turmoil.

Melody blinked, confused.

"I - I can feel. Things," he elaborated, forcing words through suddenly stiff lips. "I knew you were here in the park long before I heard your pipe. I could tell you were playing." He shook his head, at a loss. "I don't know how to describe it. I just knew."

She crossed her arms and tapped her chin with the whistle.

"As though somebody stood behind you, whispering it into your ear?" Her eyes turned opaque, as though she was looking into another place.

"No, not at all." He shook his head. "It was more like hot, summer sun on a patch of sunburn, and about as pleasant. I know about where I'm going by where it hurts." Just like he'd known where to find Vincent, and when Mike was trying to heal him.

"That's - not -" Melody cut off.

"Not the same as the rest of you," Pat asked. He shook his head, staring over her head. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and showed her the coin nestled in his palm. Melody's eyes narrowed in sudden speculation as he continued. "No, not really, is it? Which makes sense, considering I just got handing this a little bit ago by somebody who has no reason to know the rest of us. And I haven't felt anything like the rest of you described. On the other hand, this -
sense -
does mean I should have a fool-proof way to find -" his lips twisted in a silent snarl, "-
them
, doesn't it?"

Melody didn't answer, and for a moment they both stared at the shiny disc in his hand. Melody reached out and closed his fingers around the coin, a gentle touch that surprised Pat.

"And so it has to be you."

"But it doesn't have to be you, too," he objected, still troubled with the idea of taking an untrained young woman into harm's way. Pat was certain she didn't actually want to come. Or at least, she was afraid of what she'd find if she did. Which he could respect: he knew what there was to find, and was pretty scared already.

"Yes, it does have to be me," she said, voice firm. She looked him in the eyes again, and again he was struck by the iron determination in hers. "If only because I won't tell you where I followed my regular, Naomi, to when she left work."

Pat's jaw dropped.

"What? What do you mean,
won't tell me
?" Incandescent fury seared Pat's mind.

She gave him a cool look he couldn't help but admire.

"I think it's obvious, Detective. If you don't agree to my accompanying you tonight, I won't tell you what I know. It's the new moon tonight, as I'm sure you've noticed, which doesn't leave a whole lot of time."

Pat's head throbbed.

"I'll -"

"You'll do nothing but agree to let me come along. To do anything else, anything to force my compliance would compromise your honor as a police officer." She cocked her head sideways. "Wouldn't it?"

Pat glared at her. He wasn't a big man, but he had to have a good forty or fifty pounds on Melody, as well as a decade more life experience. And she stood there dictating terms. And she was right, dammit! Pat knew he wouldn't wring her neck, as much as she might deserve it. He couldn't do a damn thing without turning into the thing the monster had made of him. And she knew it just as well as he did.

"Fine," he growled after a moment.

At his grudging acquiescence, a tension he hadn't noticed drained from her. The skin around her eyes and mouth loosened and her shoulders slumped. When she took a deep, shuddering breath, and let it out again, Pat realized how scared she'd been. And still was, unless he missed his guess completely.

"But," he continued, "you do what I say. If I say run, you run. If I say hide, you find the deepest hole you can and pull it in after you. If I say jump -"

"I ask how high on the way up?" She assayed a small smile, which transformed her face.

"Damn right, you do." He looked around, and tentatively felt the surrounding area with his still tender senses. Low-grade nausea immediately burned in his gut, but he didn't feel anything but the usual amount of spiritual noise. It was the same misery he'd been picking up on all his life, though he didn't really know it. Committed, he bent down to retrieve his fishing gear.

"Well, you're the one with the information."

She looked at him, cobalt eyes widening a hair.

"You don't need anything, Patrick? A gun or something?"

He looked down at the case in his hand.

"I'll need to stop by the parking garage where my car lives to drop this off, but that's it."

11

It was a quick trip to the garage, and they made it in silence. Melody didn't seem to have anything to say - Pat was impressed she'd spoken as much as she had - and he was too preoccupied. He kept pushing at his newfound senses, like an athlete testing an injury. He was pretty sure he was going to develop a tic, since he winced every time he did.

After that, Melody quickly led him to a place every New Yorker knew.

"Times Square?" Incredulity colored his question. She nodded, her blush showing despite the variegated color of the square by night. He looked around, watched the hundreds of people moving through the square, never mind the time of day. Tracking anybody through the busiest intersection of the busiest city in the world was a nightmare under the best of circumstances, and he said so.

Melody just shook her head.

"Naomi didn't stop here," she said, and began walking, with a native's disregard for traffic. Pat stuck to her, keeping his head up as she led him through the pedestrian mall along Broadway and then down the stairs to the subway station.

At first, Pat thought crowd noise started his head pounding. A lot of people generated a lot of sound, but there was something else involved. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and the skin across his forehead felt tight. They scanned their passes and slid through the turnstiles, and Pat snagged Melody's elbow and pulled her out of the flow of traffic.

She cast him an oblique look, but obliged when he gestured. The slow throb in his head was uncomfortable, but not greatly painful. Pat pushed at his surroundings with his senses and nearly jumped out of his shoes. His feet suddenly felt on flame. He damped his ability with a grimace. When Melody looked a question, he leaned close enough to be heard over the press of humanity.

"Well, something's down there, underneath us."

Her expression showed she understood, and she motioned him to follow her again. Once they were on the platform, she pointed off to one side.

"Naomi went over there, then disappeared. I waited for a while, but she didn't come back."

Then Pat took the lead, walking over to the spot Melody indicated. He turned around and surveyed the platform with a practiced eye. When Melody made as if to keep going, he shook his head, and then walked over to a bench. Melody followed, her expression one of puzzlement. He sat down next to the homeless man, there, a grizzled man wearing a faded parka in olive drab.

"I bet you see a bunch of stuff."

The man started, and then his eyes narrowed.

"I ain't telling you nothing, cop."

Pat smiled, in his element.

"Yeah, I'm a cop. So what?" He reached into the coin pocket of his jeans and pulled out a folded twenty. He made sure the man saw the number. "I just want to know one thing, man. You in?"

Suspicion showed clearly on the street dweller's face, joined by a rising anger. Melody, who'd been leaning against the wall on Pat's other side, poked her head around.

"Do you know Tourney Martin?"

Pat blinked at the apparent non-sequitur, but the homeless man's face broke into a grin.

"Sure, I know Tourn! He keeps us all safe, down below." His face crumpled. "Mostly. As much as he can." He cast a ferocious scowl at the people waiting for the next train. "They don't know it, but there's bad things in the dark."

Pat nodded. He knew what evil lurked in the heart of the city.

"We're helping Tourney," Melody said, her soprano voice cutting clearly through the noise of the platform. The man transferred his masterful scowl to Pat, his suspicion back in spades. Melody opened her mouth again, but Pat waved her quiet.

"Have you seen him spin his sword?"

The man's bright green eyes disappeared widened. It was quite a sight to see his bushy, gray eyebrows disappear into the rat's nest of wiry hair sticking out from under the grubby cap he wore.

"You seen that?" The man asked, amazement lighting up his face. "He let you? Craziest thing I ever saw, that was. We was down in the dark, and a thing with arms long as you, Missy, trying to carry me off! I was so scared I pissed myself! Usually the things I see ain't actually there. Can't touch me, leastwise. All of a sudden, Tourn shows up, waving that peacemaker of his around. I've seen it before, but this time, wow! It was lit up gold like one in a church somewheres."

"Yeah, I've seen it," Pat said, his voice haunted. He'd seen it from the other side. It looked like the sword of God, come to avenge. He'd prayed it would end the torture his life had become, and instead it freed him. He prayed he'd be able to get some back from those horrible things.

"Yeah, well Tourn whipped that thing around, and next thing you know I'm sitting on the floor with a big, black arm turning into goo on my pants." He mimed the action as he narrated. The man's garrulous enthusiasm carried him on through the end of his brief story. "Wowwee, what a stink, but at least it covered up the smell of the piss, begging your pardon, Missy."