Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02 (23 page)

 
          
"So.
What do
you
do?" His first
hunger satisfied, Dennis Raymond was now prepared to make what was his version
of small talk. But, with senses abraded raw by tension and stress, Winter knew
that what the world would see as small talk was only Dennis's method of setting
up another attack.

 
          
And
unfortunately, any retaliation on Winter's part would have a price that was
paid by Janelle, and not by her. A
high
price.

 
          
"I
have a seat on the New York Stock Exchange," Winter said, although that
wasn't quite true.
Arkham
Miskatonic
King paid the five-figure rental fee each year, not her, and she was sure that
by now her pit pass had gone to someone else.

 
          
Still,
it sounded impressive.

 
          
"Well
la-di-dah," Dennis said archly, waggling his hand. He was not entirely
sober. "I guess you're one of those women who thinks she can do just fine
without a man."

 
          
For
some reason the statement made Winter think of Grey again; if she concentrated,
she could almost imagine him here, now, one slanting golden eyebrow raised and
a mocking smile of deliberation playing about his mobile mouth.

 
          
"Denny—"
Janelle said.

 
          
"Shut
up,
Neenie
;
I'm talking to our guest. Isn't that right,
Miz
Mus
-grave, that you're one of those
women who thinks she's as good as a man?"

 
          
I'm as good as some and better than some.
And you aren't even a man, Dennis Raymond
—
you're a willful, spoiled brat and someone should spank you. Hard.

 
          
There
was the sound of shattering glass from the kitchen and Winter started guiltily.
Had she caused that breakage?

 
          
Dennis
swore and shoved his chair back. "
Gaw
-dam
kids,"
he said, his words more
slurred than they had been a moment ago. He lurched to his feet and shambled
off in the direction of the kitchen.

 
          
Winter
looked at Janelle.

 
          
"The
local kids," Janelle said. "They throw rocks at the house. They broke
the kitchen window last week—cracked right across."

 
          
Oh no they didn't,
Winter thought with
despairing certainty. She heard another crash from the kitchen, and the ugly
sound of Denny's cursing. She heard the kitchen door open and slam.

 
          
"He's
gone outside. But he never finds them," Janelle said dejectedly.

 
          
This might be my only chance.

 
          
A
clear cold sense of purpose cut across the tangled emotions of the evening,
sharpening Winter's will and senses as if she'd inhaled pure oxygen. If she
did not ask about Hunter
Greyson
now there might not
be another chance.

 
          
"
Jannie
, do you remember Hunter
Greyson
?
Do you remember Nuclear Circle—the things we used to do?"

 
          
Janelle's
face lit up; she looked eager and wistful. "Oh, golly—Grey! I haven't
thought about him in years! I guess the two of you broke up?" she asked
Winter.

 
          
Or. . . something.

 
          
"So
you don't hear from him?" Winter asked, just to be sure. It was only later
that she realized that Janelle had sidestepped her question about
Nuclear Circle
completely.

 
          
"No."
Janelle's face was losing its animation, regaining its defensive mask of
vagueness. "Maybe Ramsey does; I don't know. He's never mentioned
him."

 
          
Denny
Raymond stomped back into the dining room. His face was an alarming shade of
crimson, and he'd taken the opportunity in the kitchen to refresh his drink.
This time the short glass was half full of straight bourbon—no ice.

 
          
"Well,
your little friends got away again," he said to Janelle. "She
encourages them," he added to Winter. "They're always sucking up to
her, hanging around—she feeds them, that's what it is, when honest to God,
they've got their own homes to go to, don't they?"

 
          
"Most
of the women around here work," Janelle murmured apologetically.
"All I do is—"

 
          
"All
you do is get taken advantage of,
Neenie
, and don't
forget I told you. You don't work—I told you when I married you I was going to
take care of you, didn't I? And these guys that say it's okay for their wives
to work—well, you aren't going to be the one taking care of their kids—or
anything else of theirs for that matter—and when I catch those little bastards
..." His voice trailed off ominously, and he glared at both women as if
they'd contradicted him.

 
          
Was
this what Denny thought of as taking care of his wife? Winter wondered. For
that matter, was this what Janelle had wanted out of their marriage? Someone
who would make all the decisions, take all her freedom, so she would not have
to face the pressure of her own success or failure?

 
          
Surely
not. She'd been eight years younger when she'd married him, and in the flush of
romantic love. Surely she hadn't known what Dennis Raymond was—or would turn
into.

 
          
But
she knew now. And she was still here.

 
          
There
were several other unexplained noises during the rest of dinner, but Denny
didn't
get
up to investigate them.
Instead he complained about the quality of the meal, the housekeeping of the
immaculate house, and even about the way Janelle looked until it was all Winter
could do to hold her tongue. She could not keep the treacherous, dangerous
thought out of her mind that if the creature that stalked her—and which apparently,
in defiance of the laws of space and time, was here in
Rappahoag
,
New Jersey, at the same time it stalked Glastonbury—wished to hurt and kill,
here was one candidate who would not be missed. She prayed very hard that she
had no influence over it, since if Denny turned up dead Winter would find it
difficult to forgive herself, no matter how pleasurable the thought of his
death was to contemplate now.

 
          
Finally
dinner and dessert—a gooey bakery cake—were over, and Winter, hastily rising to
her feet, thanked Janelle for a lovely evening while saying she had to go.

 
          
"I've
got to hit the road bright and early tomorrow morning, you know. It's been
terrific seeing you again,
Jannie
—and a pleasure to
meet you as well, Mr. Raymond."

 
          
Winter
had learned, on Wall Street, to lie passionately and convincingly on short
notice, and she drew on those skills now.

 
          
"Yeah,
stop by anytime." The inflection Denny put on his words turned them into
their opposite. He did not get up; he merely stared into his empty glass.

 
          
Janelle
went back to the guest room with Winter to retrieve her coat and purse. Winter
just happened to be looking toward her as Janelle reached for the hanger, and
that was how she saw the mottled green and yellow bruises that circled
Janelle's wrist like a bracelet. She took no pleasure from having her
suspicions confirmed.

 
          
"You
could leave him, you know," she said to Janelle.

 
          
"Yeah."
Janelle turned toward her, holding out the coat. "But where would I go?
And what does it matter, anyway? I'm not anybody."

 
          
"Yes
you
are,"
Winter told her
fiercely.

 
          
But
she knew that no words of hers would pierce the impenetrable hedge of psychic
thorns that Janelle had woven around herself. Denny, monster though he was, was
only the tool by which Janelle Baker— clever, talented Janelle—had made it
impossible for herself to succeed and unnecessary even to try. And for that
form of freedom Janelle would pay any price.

 
          
Even
this.

 
          
Janelle
saw where Winter was looking and pushed the sleeve of her sweatshirt back down
so it covered the bruises.

 
          
"It
. . . it's only sometimes. But he doesn't mean it," Janelle said dully.
"It was an accident, really."

 
          
Winter
wondered with a flash of despair just how many other marks the baggy,
all-encompassing green
sweatsuit
hid. And she knew
that with no one to stop him, Denny Raymond would go from sometimes to
always—if he hadn't already—and that at his fists someday Janelle would find in
truth the oblivion she sought.

 
          
"How
could it happen?" Winter asked, and it wasn't the beatings that she meant.
Janelle shrugged, and now there were tears glittering in her eyes.

 
          
"I
don't know, Winter. You make choices, and by the time you figure the first one
wasn't that good and ought to be unmade, you've already made five more on top
of it, then ten—and you can't go back. It's just easier, I guess, to let it
ride. Because you're all tangled up, and even if you could get loose and shove
everything back to square one, the chances you thought you had when you were
twenty are all gone—and there's no way you could have known how they were going
to work out anyhow. I'm just not that brave."

 
          
Winter
nodded, biting her lip to keep from crying. "If I could—"

 
          
Janelle
put a hand on her arm.

 
          
"It's
too late, Winter. It's too late for all of us. Even for Grey, wherever he is.
It's too late."

WINTER AND ROUGH WEATHER

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude.

— WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

 
          
BACK IN HER NEAT, 
ANTISEPTIC HOTEL ROOM--
AS
  
SOULless
and bland as Janelle's
house but with more justification—Winter paced and fretted. She was not
completely well even yet, and should have been exhausted from the long drive
and everything that had happened that day, but somehow the frustration
energized her until her body and mind were racing like an engine with no
cut-off switch. How could she leave Janelle in that horrible situation, married
to a man who beat her and despised her?

 
          
And who would someday kill her. Someday
soon.
Truth
Jourdemayne
might have called it a
psychic flash; Winter Musgrave only knew that it was an unwelcome and
unprovable
intuition that she had no trouble at all
believing. And the guilty, angry suspicion that Janelle would welcome that
release did nothing to make Winter feel better.

 
          
All
her life Winter had been a realist—accepting with good grace or at least good
manners the things she could not change, however much she hated them.
And 1 did bate them
—
a lot of them, anyway.
But the daily realities of Janelle's life
filled her with a monstrous sense of
unfairness;
even if Janelle were afraid of her artistic talent, surely she did not have
to be punished so much for choosing not to use her gifts.

 
          
That horrible, pompous, arrogant,
mean-spirited little hypocritical coward of a man!
Winter dug her nails
into her palms until the flesh bled. Dennis Raymond's face filled her mind's
eye. He was not evil—she had a hazy acquaintance with evil, at least enough to
know what it was not—but he was the sort that let evil in, and then whined
afterward, desperate to escape the consequences of the actions they'd relished
at the time.

 
          
Warmth
and strength filled her, a tingling rush of power that was curiously numbing,
though Winter felt achingly alert. The inoffensive neutral tones of carpet,
walls, and bedspread that made up the Marriott bedroom seemed to take on
vividness, as though they were painted with light, and the plain yellow
illumination of the lamp on the dresser seemed to be filled with patterns of
coruscating color. She felt a hot congested warmth beneath her heart; a
predatory certainty. . . .

 
          
The
row of cosmetics lined up on the dresser began to dance upon its surface,
trembling as if perturbed by a small earthquake. With horrified intuition,
Winter saw the hate-serpent that lived inside her wake, its aura pressing out
through the surface of her skin until she could look down and see a shimmering
mist of sequin-bright scales overlaying her skin, as the monstrous intolerant
guardian within her spread its patterned hood and sought for prey.

 
          
No!

 
          
Winter
sank slowly to her knees, the faint trembling of the objects on her dresser
sounding as loud as the rumblings of an avalanche in her ears. She would not
let this happen here—the creature that stalked her, the
magickal
child,
that creature she could not control—but the poltergeist,
born of her very marrow, should be hers to command. She could master this
shameful shadow-twin; she'd found that out that night at the Institute. But
the tension in her body was nearly sexual in its intensity, unambiguously
demanding release. Winter nearly panicked and surrendered to its craving—but to
panic would be to lose all.

 
          
To
panic would be to
fail.

 
          
Winter
drew the refusal to fail about her like an icy cloak, like the season for which
she was named. She tried to concentrate, but could not remember what would stop
the thing that drew its life from her, and it had seduced her on until she was
far too keyed-up to release the energy and the tension within her.

 
          
She
took a deep breath, forcing her lungs to expand against the iron weight
crushing her chest. And having nothing else left to fight with, she set her
mind and her bare will against the power in which she still only half believed.

 
          
No. I will not let you. They aren't yours to
play with. They aren't mine to make over in my own image. They're people
—
they belong to themselves, and what they
choose to do is their own business, even if what they do makes me unhappy.
Leave them alone. I do
NOT
give you
permission to act in my name!

 
          
The
power raged through her; she was flame, within and without, surrendering even
her name. The only thing she clung to was that she would have her own way—what
she
wanted was what would happen, and
anything that lived in her, or worked through her, would learn to understand
that.

 
          
But
it was a long hard fight.

 
          
Winter
awoke as dawn was coming in through the open curtains. She was lying on the
floor of her hotel room. Her gray flannel skirt was rumpled and her pantyhose
were run; every muscle was stiff and she felt sick and light-boned as if she'd
been on the mother of all benders. When she sat up, a bolt of pain behind her eyes
made her cry out in protest.

 
          
What was 1 drinking
—
furniture polish?

 
          
She
managed to make it all the way to the bathroom before she threw up what was
left of last night's dinner, retching until her entire torso ached with the
spasms and her throat felt raw and scoured. There were bruises on her forearms
as if she'd been grappling with something—or, more likely, had banged into the
hotel furniture while she was on the floor. The marks were black with angry red
centers; severe and painful. Bruises that would take a long time to heal.

 
          
Bruises
like the ones on Janelle's arms.

 
          
Winter
repressed a reflexive pang of hatred for Denny, letting it sweep away in the
dawning realization of what she'd done. She'd gotten her own way. She'd won,
even if it'd almost killed her. The serpent had not struck—all her instincts
said so.

 
          
Before—in
Glastonbury
and at the
Bidney
Institute—she'd panicked and been too weak. Her unconscious mind had been able
to seize control and throw its angry tantrum, acting out a rage that Winter
could not fathom the source of. But now she was stronger. And she'd stay
stronger— and be ready for it the next time it decided to coil up out of its
lair.

 
          
A poltergeist, eh? Well, we'll see who's
going to haunt whom!

 
          
She
tried to stand then and found she couldn't, no matter how great a victory she'd
won the night before. On hands and knees Winter crawled out of the
bathroom—ruining her clothes further—and dragged her purse down off the bed
where she'd carelessly slung it. She dug through its considerable contents with
dogged desperation until she found Tabitha Whitefield's battered little
pamphlet, tucked in between two fresh packets of Centering Tea. Slumped on the
floor, holding her eyes open with an effort of will, Winter began at last to read.

 
          
Half
an hour later, the raging hunger that hammered her body was so great that
Winter realized it would be impossible to concentrate until she'd done
something about it. Cudgeling her brains to remember what Truth and Dylan had
said about first aid for psychics, she scrambled awkwardly over to the
built-in bar. With a reckless disregard for the charges that would appear on
her room bill later, she opened the small refrigerator and crammed her mouth
full of chocolate, then slugged down a can of Coke Classic. The quick sugar fix
cleared her brain; sipping a second Coke more slowly, she placed a call to Room
Service—

 
          
"I'd
like some waffles or pancakes or something—whatever's fastest. Hot water for
tea. And lots and lots and lots of maple syrup."

 
          
—and
then retreated to the bathroom to finish cleaning up.

 
          
Two
more cans of Coke and a couple of candy bars later—the sugar seemed to vaporize
as it hit her bloodstream—her breakfast arrived. Winter dumped Centering Tea
into a carafe of hot water to steep, and tucked into scrambled eggs and French
toast with a morning appetite she hadn't felt in longer than she could
remember.

 
          
As
she ate, Winter read through the pamphlet a second time. The
"centering" (centering
what?
Winter
wondered) exercises started out very simply—timing and counting breaths—and
then went on to what Tabitha called directed visualization. First Winter was to
imagine a white square, and when she could do that, she was to go on to a blue
circle. Finally, when she had also mastered holding the image of a red triangle
in her mind's eye without distraction, she was to attempt to see all three at
once, superimposed one on the other, while she breathed slowly and regularly
and sensed her body's energy flowing in a regular circuit from the top of her
head through the soles of her feet and back to the top of her head again.

 
          
Sounds loony,
Winter declared,
but at this point what have I got to lose?

 
          
She
almost wished she could call the Institute and ask Truth's opinion of the
practice—she'd formed a stronger bond with the young researcher than she yet
wanted to admit—but realized that to do that would simply be to entangle
herself further with Truth
Jourdemayne
and Dylan
Palmer. And this particular quest was something she had to accomplish alone.

 
          
Only, if the point is to outrun the thing
that tried to kill Truth and seems to be fixated on me, I'm not doing a very
good job of it. It seems to be here ahead of me,
atjanelle's
house.

 
          
Everything
Janelle had mentioned—the vandalism, the dead animals— pointed to the
artificial Elemental rather than to Winter's poltergeist, but Winter somehow
felt she was being offered a stalking horse. As if, even if the creature were
here before her, its true motive in tormenting Janelle was to force
Winter
to surrender to it.

 
          
Well, I won't,
Winter vowed simply.
Now, who's next on the list?

 
          
The
next name that Nina Fowler had given her was Ramsey Miller, and Janelle had
also mentioned being recently in touch with him. Winter took out the copy of
the 1982
Taghkanic
yearbook that she'd bought in
Glastonbury
and stared at the picture of a youthful
Ramsey Miller wearing long sideburns and a soup-strainer mustache. His hair
curled over the edge of his dark turtleneck in an oddly antique fashion. She
wondered what he looked like now.

 
          
So Ramsey's next, but do I really want to go
on with this? Ramsey might be
—
oh,
anything. I can call
—/
really ought
to call today
—
but that won't tell me
what he's going to be like. Janelle sounded all right on the phone yesterday,
but then look what happened. What if he and Cassie
—
and even Grey, if I find him
—
are
the same way? All. . . changed?