War for the Oaks (4 page)

Eddi rose to her knees and started to back away. The dog took her shoulder in its mouth. She felt the long canines through her jacket, and she stopped moving.

" 'A's 'edder," said the dog, and let go. "Bide with us, sweet, until we give you leave to go."

"Why should I, if I can scare you off by calling the police?"

"Ah, but you can't. True, were you to call them, the glaistig"—with a rush of water the woman surfaced and shook her hair out around her—"would become a splash in the fountain, and I, a straying dog. But what of tomorrow night? Would they believe you, these policemen, if you told them you were haunted, and by what, and bid them stay beside you day and night? We will have you in the end; be wise, and let the end be now."

But by the dog's last word, Eddi had lunged for the stairs. Her vision blacked from rising too fast, but she kept on. This time she would outrun the damn dog or let him tear her throat out. Her outstretched hand found the stair rail—

Strong arms closed around her, pinning hers to her sides. She kicked backward, connected with something, and heard a hiss of pain. Hands fastened on her upper arms and spun her around.

It was the man who had chased her down the mall, the black man in the University Bar. The streetlights slanted across his face, and she could see his teeth clenched, the tumble of hair down his forehead, the shadows that hid his eyes. She didn't have time to wonder where he'd come from before he spoke.

"Idiot child! Do you want me to lose my temper?"

The words were clearer from the human lips and tongue, but the voice was the black dog's. That recognition must have shown in her face; he bared his teeth, and a dog's growl rose from his throat. Eddi swallowed thickly and closed her eyes.

His little laugh startled them back open. "Can it be?" he said with a taunting smile. "You watch the glaistig melt and never turn a hair, yet let me but change from dog to man, and your courage flies away!"

Fury rose up in her, shouldering her fear aside. "Let go of me," she said, her voice flat and icy. She shrugged his hands from her arms.

"Truly, I mean you no harm," he said.

"That must be why you pushed me down the stairs."

"I did
not
push you," he said, irritated. "You fell." He stretched out a hand as if to take hold of her again. She stared at him until his hand fell back to his side. Then she walked across the pavement, back to the pool and the woman made of water.

"What do you want?" Eddi asked the silver-pale figure. Up close,
the moonlight face was not so perfectly beautiful; the features were sharp and elongated.

"Your service, until we release you."

"Doing what?"

The water-woman smiled, a sweet, cruel expression, and Eddi saw that she had delicately proportioned fangs.
But vampires don't like water
, she thought with a shiver. "Doing whatever you're told, child of Man. Is that not the nature of servitude?"

"Glaistig!" said the man-who-was-also-a-dog.

"You raise your voice to me," the woman said haughtily, looking past Eddi to where he stood.

"I would raise my leg to you, were you worth the effort. Leave be, Glaistig. Tease her, and she'll learn to bite." He stepped forward to the edge of the pool. He had to look up to meet the woman's eyes—he was not much taller than Eddi, though his ominous presence had made him seem larger. "I say there is no harm in telling her what we require,"

"And if she mislikes the sound of it?"

"Why, perhaps she'll spit in your eye, Glaistig, and you can drown her. There's a treat for you, eh?"

"I would as soon not trouble." The water-woman turned an evaluating look on Eddi. Then she inclined her head, an approving gesture, and Eddi felt a rush of pleasure. She was startled by the woman's fluid silver beauty. All the cruelty she thought she'd seen in those features was gone.

"Your pardon," the water-woman said, her voice still cold, but now full of the cadences of old rivers. "We will treat you very well, but you must not plague us with questions. Our concerns are greater than yours, and beyond your ken."

Eddi didn't agree—and yet, what in the water-woman's speech was unreasonable? These were great and noble beings, it was clear, and her business should be to do as they told her.

The woman watched her intently; the dark man, his face blank, looked from Eddi to the water-woman as if waiting. They wanted a response. Eddi could feel a nod pulling her chin down—and at last shook her head, though she didn't know why.

"You are a stupid little beast," the water-woman said pleasantly, with the force of absolute truth, "and will do as you are told."

Is that any way for a great and noble being to talk?
Eddi thought.
She felt as if she'd been drunk and was now suddenly sober. The woman in the pool was thin and witchy again.

"That's enough," Eddi said, and regarded her two captors warily. "Tell me what all this is about."

They were staring at her. "Well, Dog," the water-woman said at last, though she kept her eyes on Eddi, "you've chosen well and ill in equal measure. She is indeed more than she seems, though by Oak and Ash I cannot say how much. But you saw how she slipped the glamour as if it were a torn net. You'll have no easy task."

The dark man looked up at the water-woman as if he had a great deal to say and resented not being able to say it. Then he turned back to Eddi, and some of the same expression remained. "Eddi McCandry, the Seelie Court goes to war, and needs the presence of mortal blood to bring death to its enemies."

The phrase "mortal blood" sent a shooting cold through her, but she said, "That sounded like gibberish to me."

He hissed something under his breath. "I'll begin again. We are not human."

She couldn't help it—she laughed. They couldn't, of course,
not
be human. Nothing else had that shape. And they couldn't possibly
be
human, because nothing human had more than one shape. They might indeed be werewolves and vampires, but she had no desire to hear them say so. She could see the seams of the world around her begin to ravel and part, and the things waiting outside to pass through the holes were at once terrible and ridiculous. It was like being tickled—an unpleasant feeling that by some perverse reflex brings on laughter. "So what are you?" she gasped.

"We have many names," said the water-woman. "We are the Gray Neighbors, the Good People, the Strangers, the Fair Folk—"

"The
Little
People," drawled the short, dark man.

"Fairies," said Eddi, her laughter strangled. The resulting silence was so complete that she was afraid they'd struck her deaf.

"Had we come to grant a favor, the sound of that name would drive us off," growled the dark man. "Use it again at your peril."

"But that's what you are, isn't it?" Eddi turned to the water-woman. "Isn't it?"

Slowly, the pale head inclined, the attenuated white hands with their long nails rose and turned palm up. Yes.

Fairy tales. That was all she could remember about fairies, and as
she tried desperately to recall the ones she'd heard or read, she realized she knew of few with fairies in them. And the two before her were nothing like Rumpelstiltskin or Cinderella's fairy godmother. Elegant Oberon and Titania, silly Puck—Shakespeare was no help, either. These two, with their changing shapes and their offhand cruelties, had their roots in horror movies.

"Are you going to kill me?" Eddi whispered. The mention of mortal blood was taking on more significance.

"Not necessarily," replied the water-woman, as if it were a question of purely intellectual interest. "Let the phouka finish."

"That is what my kind is called," said the dark man. "Phouka. You may call me so; it's name enough. She"—he nodded toward the woman in the pool—"is a glaistig, and so you may call her. For all that she may deny it, she and I have much in common."

Eddi ignored the glaistig's scowl, and said to the phouka, "And you turn into a dog."

"And a man," he grinned. When he was satisfied that he had startled her, he added smugly, "I have been credited with horse and goat as well, but I take no notice of it."

The glaistig shook her hair irritably, and it foamed in the soft light. "So, introductions all around. These amenities will outlast dawn if I leave this to you, Dog."

He snapped at her. The gesture was a grotesque fit for his human jaws.

"We are of the Seelie Court, noblest blood of Faerie," the glaistig continued. "We are the guardians, the rulers"—here the phouka snorted—"and to us are reserved the sacred grounds of hill and spring, the magical herbs and trees."

"But of course," the phouka broke in, "where there are those who think themselves noble folk, there must be some poor sod to play the commoner. . . . "

"Dog—"

"And in our case, we have the Unseelie Court, the most sodden lot you're like to see."

"Am I . . . like to see?" Eddi said weakly.

"Oh, yes. You're certain to, betimes. They've laid claim to territory of ours," he went on, in a voice edged with satire. "We've resolved to water it with their blood."

"That's nice." Eddi felt a queasy forboding. "What do you want me to do? Referee?"

The phouka flung his head back and barked laughter. "Ah, sweetling, you are fresh as the wind, if not as quick. The Unseelie Court are as immortal as we are. We could strike off all their warty heads tonight, and have it all to do again tomorrow. How would you slay an immortal?"

"I wouldn't."

"A sweet sentiment." He smiled fondly at her. "But there is a way. Were
you
upon the battlefield, you would bring to it the taint of mortality. All wounds would be true ones, and some would be fatal."

Eddi said slowly, "You want me to help you kill each other. And all I have to do is stand there."

"For all that it's inelegantly expressed, yes."

"Good. I hope you all die to the last man—or elf."

"Tsk. Oh, did I neglect to say that the Unseelie Court, being less than fond of parting with their loathly lives, will be eager to prove your mortality and rob us of your talismanic presence?"

"Ah," said Eddi. "I suppose I would have figured that out eventually."
So this
she thought, her stomach clenched with fear,
is how it feels to be drafted
.

The glaistig spoke again. "The phouka has been assigned as your keeper, that we need not hunt you out when you are wanted. He will be at your side always. He serves also as your bodyguard," she continued, before Eddi could protest. "Spies for the Unseelie Court will learn of you soon." She raised her sharp white face to the sky. "Dawn is almost upon us, and I am tired. Begone." And she melted back into the pool with a rush.

Eddi saw that she was right about the dawn; the windows across the street reflected pink-tinged gray. She was aware, suddenly, of the reality of the buildings around her. This was the same Nicollet Mall that had been here yesterday. The difference, the unreality, must lie with her.

But she felt real. She ached from falling down the steps, she was tired, the fingertips of her left hand smarted from playing guitar . . .
Carla
, she thought.
I could call her right now, and she'd answer the phone and grunt at me, and say. "Are you crazy, girl? It's
—" is it six? "—
six o'clock in the goddamn morning!" And I'd tell her what just happened, and she'd say
—

"Rowan and Thorn, woman!" came the voice of the phouka from the street above her. "Do come along, or I'll fetch you!"

Climbing the steps felt like mounting a scaffold. When she got to the top, there was no sign of the phouka. Then, three feet away, the black dog rose from behind a planter and turned his red eyes on her.

"Stop that," she said. "Change back."

"Indeed not. I'm to be your bodyguard, am I not? Many's the mortal in this city who'd envy you your fine big guard dog, poppet. See?" And he leaped between her and some imaginary assailant, his head lowered and hackles bristling, stiff-legged, a rumble in his throat that seemed to shake the pavement. "Oh, what a terror I am! But puppygentle with my mistress." He bounded back to her, tail wagging, and licked her hand.

Eddi snatched it away and wiped it on her jacket. "Cut it out, you hear me? Don't touch me again!"

His ears drooped, and he rolled his fearsome eyes upward. "She rejects my doggish loyalty. Ah, my heart, my heart." He turned and began to prance down the mall ahead of her.

"Where are you going?"

"Why, home with you, my sweet."

"How do you know the way?"

He looked at her over his black-furred shoulder. "Did you think, perhaps, that I wandered into that vile hole last night by chance? You've been my study, Eddi McCandry, for many a day. I know where you live." And he set off once again.

She was furious. What else did these—things—know about her? The color of her rugs? The contents of her refrigerator? That she talked to her reflection in the bathroom mirror?

"What makes you think I'm going home?" Eddi said sweetly.

He looked back and cocked his head. "Aren't you?"

"No. I'm going to the pound. There's a dangerous dog loose in this neighborhood."

His lip began to curl back from his teeth. "Eddi . . ."

She didn't think he'd let her get as far as the pound. But she might manage a phone booth—yes, there was the blue-and-white sign on the corner.
Don't look at the phone. And don't run
. She strode across the street as if she meant to keep walking. At the last moment, she ducked into the booth and slammed the folding door.

She braced her feet against the door and her shoulders on the opposite wall.

"May I lend you a quarter?" said the infuriating voice. The black dog sat beside the booth, ears up, head tilted inquiringly.

Eddi felt foolish, but she didn't take her feet off the door.

"This call's free."

"Ah. You don't mind, do you, if I listen? I want to know what you'll think of to tell them."

She let her breath out slowly. "I'm going to call the cops. The squad car will come, and whether you're a dog, a man, or not here at all, I'm going to the station with them. If they won't take me, I'll hit one of them and they'll
have
to take me."