Dragon's Teeth (43 page)

Di blinked. That was a new one on
her.
“A what?”

Harrison looked up, and for the first time, seemed to see her. “Uh—” he hesitated. “Uh, some of what Morrie said—uh, he seemed to think you—well, you’ve seen things—uh, he said you know things—”

She fished the pentagram out from under the neck of her jumpsuit and flashed it briefly. “My religion is non-traditional, yes, and there are more things in heaven and earth, etcetera. Now what in Tophet is a whoopie witch?”

“It’s—uh—a term some friends of mine use. It’s kind of hard to explain.” Harrison’s brow furrowed. “Look, let me give you examples. Real witches have grimorie, sometimes handed down through their families for centuries. Whoopie witches have books they picked up at the supermarket. Usually right at the check-out counter.”

“Real witches have carefully researched spells—” Di prompted.

“Whoopie witches draw a baseball diamond in chalk on the living room floor and recite random passages from the
Satanic Bible
.”

“When real witches make substitutions, they do so knowing the exact difference the substitute will make—”

“Whoopie witches slop taco sauce in their pentagram because it looks like blood.”

“Real witches gather their ingredients by hand—” Di was beginning to enjoy this game.

“Whoopie witches have a credit card, and
lots
of catalogues.” Harrison was grinning, and so was Andre.

“Real witches spend hours in meditation—”

“Whoopie witches sit under a pyramid they ordered from a catalogue and watch
Knot’s Landing
.”

“Real witches cast spells knowing that any change they make in someone’s life will come back at them three-fold, for good or ill—”

“Whoopie witches call up the Hideous Slime from Yosotha to eat their neighbor’s poodle because the bitch got the last carton of Haagen-Daaz double-chocolate at the Seven-Eleven.”

“I think I’ve got the picture. So dear Val decided to take the so-called research she did for the Great Fantasy Novel seriously?” Di leaned back into the railing and laughed. “Oh, Robert, I pity you! Did she try to tell you that the two of you just
must
have been priestly lovers in a past life in Atlantis?”

“Lemuria,” Harrison said, gloomily. “My God, she must be supporting half the crystal miners in Arkansas.”

“Don’t feel too sorry for her, Robert,” Di warned him. “With her advances, she can afford it. And I know some perfectly nice people in Arkansas who should only soak her for every penny they can get. Change the subject; you’re safe with us—and if she decides to hit the punch bowl hard enough, you can send her back to her hotel in a cab and she’ll never know the difference. What brings you to New York?”

“Morrie wants me to meet the new editors at Berkley; he thinks I’ve got a shot at selling them that near-space series I’ve been dying to do. And I had some people here in the City I really needed to see.” He sighed. “And, I’ll admit it, I’d been thinking about writing bodice-rippers under a pseudonym. When you know they’re getting ten times what I am—”

Di shrugged. “I don’t think you’d be happy doing it, unless you’ve written strictly to spec before. There’s a lot of things you have to conform to that you might not feel comfortable doing. Listen, Harrison, you seem to know quite a bit about hot-and-cold-running esoterica—how did you—”

Someone in one of the other rooms screamed. Not the angry scream of a woman who has been insulted, but the soul-chilling shriek of pure terror that brands itself on the air and stops all conversation dead.

“What in—” Harrison was on his feet, staring in the direction of the scream. Di ignored him and launched herself at the patio door, pulling the Glock 19 from the holster on her hip, and thankful she’d loaded the silver-tipped bullets in the first clip.

Funny how everybody thought it couldn’t be real because it was plastic . . . .

“Andre—the next balcony!” she called over her shoulder, knowing the vampire could easily scramble over the concrete divider and come in through the next patio door, giving them a two-pronged angle of attack.

The scream hadn’t been what alerted her—simultaneous with the scream had been the wrenching feeling in her gut that was the signal that someone had breached the fabric of the Otherworld in her presence. She didn’t know who, or what—but from the stream of panicked chiffon billowing towards the door at supersonic speed, it probably wasn’t nice, and it probably had a great deal to do with one of the party-goers.

Three amply endowed females (one Belle, one Ravished and one Harem) had reached the door to the next room at the same moment, and jammed it, and rather than one of them pulling free, they all three kept shoving harder, shrieking at the tops of their lungs in tones their agents surely recognized.

You’d think their advances failed to pay out!
Di kept the Glock in her hand, but sprinted for the door. She grabbed the nearest flailing arm (Harem), planted her foot in the midsection of her neighbor (Belle) and shoved and pulled at the same time. The clot of feminine hysteria came loose with a sound of ripping cloth; a crinoline parted company with its wearer. The three women tumbled through the door, giving Di a clear launching path into the next room. She took it, diving for the shelter of a huge wooden coffee table, rolling, and aiming for the door of the last room with the Glock. And her elbow hit someone.

“What are
you
doing here?” asked Harrison, and Di, simultaneously. Harrison cowered—no,
had taken cover
, there was a distinct difference—behind the sofa beside the coffee table, his own huge magnum aimed at the same doorway.

“My
job
,” they said—also simultaneously.

“
What?
”
(Again in chorus).

“This is all a very amusing study in synchronicity,” said Andre, crouching just behind Harrison, bowler tipped and sword from his umbrella out and ready, “but I suggest you both pay attention to that most boorish party-crasher over there—”

Something very large occluded the light for a moment in the next room, then the lights went out, and Di distinctly heard the sound of the chandelier being torn from the ceiling and thrown against the wall. She winced.

There go my dues up again.

“I got a glimpse,” Andre continued. “It was very large, perhaps ten feet tall, and—
cherie
, looked like nothing so much as a rubber creature from a very bad movie. Except that I do not think it was rubber.”

At just that moment, there was a thrashing from the other room, and Valentine Vervain, long red hair liberally beslimed, minus nine-foot train and one of her sleeves, scrambled through the door and plastered herself against the wall, where she promptly passed out.

“Valentine?” Di murmured—and snapped her head towards Harrison when he moaned—“Oh
no
,” in a way that made her
sure
he knew something.

“Harrison!” she snapped. “Cough it up!”

There was a sound of things breaking in the other room, as if something was fumbling around in the dark, picking up whatever it encountered, and smashing it in frustration.

“Valentine—she said something about getting some of her ‘friends’ together tonight and ‘calling up her soul mate’ so she could ‘show that ex of hers.’ I gather he appeared at the divorce hearing with a twenty-one-year-old blonde.” Harrison gulped. “I figured she was just blowing it off—I never thought she had any power—”

“You’d be amazed what anger will do,” Di replied grimly, keeping her eyes on the darkened doorway. “Sometimes it even transcends a total lack of talent. Put that together with the time of year—All Hallow’s E’en—Samhain—is tomorrow. The Wall Between the Worlds is especially thin, and power flows are heavy right now. That’s a recipe for disaster if I ever heard one.”

“And here comes M’sieur Soul Mate,” said Andre, warningly.

What shambled in through the door was nothing that Di had ever heard of. It was, indeed, about ten feet tall. It was a very dark brown— It was covered with luxuriant brown hair—all over. Otherwise, it was nude. If there were any eyes, the hair hid them completely. It was built something along the lines of a powerful body-builder, taken to exaggerated lengths, and it drooled. It also stank, a combination of sulfur and musk so strong it would have brought tears to the eyes of a skunk.

“Wah-wen-ine!” it bawled, waving its arms around, as if it were blind. “Wah-wen-ine!”

“Oh goddess,” Di groaned, putting two and two together and coming up with—
she called a soul mate, and specified parameters. But she forgot to specify “human.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

The other writer nodded. “Tall, check. Dark, check. Long hair, check. Handsome—well, I suppose in some circles.” Harrison stared at the thing in fascination.

“Some—thing—that will accept her completely as she is, and love her completely. Young, sure, he can’t be more than five minutes old.” Di watched the thing fumble for the doorframe and cling to it. “Look at that, he can’t see. So love
is
blind. Strong and as masculine as you can get. And not too bright, which I bet she also specified. Oh, my ears and whiskers.”

Valentine came to, saw the thing, and screamed.

“
Wah-wen-ine!
” it howled, and lunged for her. Reflexively, Di and Harrison both shot. He emptied his cylinder, and one speed-loader; Di gave up after four shots, when it was obvious they
were
hitting the thing, to no effect.

Valentine scrambled on hands and knees over the carpet, still screaming—but crawling in the wrong direction, towards the balcony, not the door.

“
Merde!
” Andre flung himself between the creature’s clutching hands and its summoner, before Di could do anything.

And before Di could react to
that
, the thing back-handed Andre into a wall hard enough to put him through the plasterboard.

Valentine passed out again. Andre was already out for the count. There are some things even a vampire has a little trouble recovering from.

“Jesus!” Harrison was on his feet, fumbling for something in his pocket. Di joined him, holstering the Glock, and grabbed his arm.

“Harrison, distract it, make a noise, anything!” She pulled the atheme from her boot sheath and began cutting Sigils in the air with it, getting the Words of Dismissal out as fast as she could without slurring the syllables.

Harrison didn’t even hesitate; he grabbed a couple of tin serving trays from the coffee table, shook off their contents, and banged them together.

The thing turned its head toward him, its hands just inches away from its goal. “Wah-wen-ine?” it said.

Harrison banged the trays again. It lunged toward the sound. It was a lot faster than Di thought it was.

Evidently Harrison made the same error in judgment. It missed him by inches, and he scrambled out of the way by the width of a hair, just as Di concluded the Ritual of Dismissal.

To no effect.

“Hurry
up
, will you?” Harrison yelped, as the thing threw the couch into the wall and lunged again.

“I’m
trying!
” she replied through clenched teeth—though not loud enough to distract the thing, which had concluded either (a) Harrison was Valentine or (b) Harrison was keeping it from Valentine. Whichever, it had gone from wailing Valentine’s name to simply wailing, and lunging after Harrison, who was dodging with commendable agility in a man of middle age.

Of course, he has a lot of incentive.

She tried three more dismissals, still with no effect, the room was trashed, and Harrison was getting winded, and running out of heavy, expensive things to throw . . . .

And the only thing she could think of was the “incantation” she used—as a joke—to make the stoplights change in her favor.

Oh hell—a cockamamie incantation pulled it up—

“By the Seven Rings of Zsa Zsa Gabor and the Rock of Elizabeth Taylor I command thee!” she shouted, stepping between the thing and Harrison (who was beginning to stumble). “By the Six Wives of Eddie Fisher and the Words of Karnak the Great I compel thee!
Freeze, buddy!
”

Power rose, through her, crested over her—and hit the thing. And the thing—stopped. It whimpered, and struggled a little against invisible bonds, but seemed unable to move.

Harrison dropped to the carpet, right on top of a spill of guacamole and ground-in tortilla chips, whimpering a little himself.

I have to get rid of this thing, quick, before it breaks the compulsion—
She closed her eyes and trusted to instinct, and shouted the first thing that came into her mind. The Parking Ritual, with one change . . .

“Great Squat, send him
to
a spot, and I’ll send you three nuns—”

Mage energies raged through the room, whirling about her, invisible, intangible to eyes and ears, but she felt them. She was the heart of the whirlwind, she and the other—

There was a
pop
of displaced air; she opened her eyes to see that the creature was gone—but the mage energies continued to whirl—faster—

“Je-
sus
,” said Harrison. “How did you—”

She waved him frantically to silence as the energies sensed his presence and began to circle in on him.

“Great Squat, thanks for the spot!” she yelled desperately, trying to complete the incantation before Harrison could be pulled in. “
Your nuns are in the mail!
”

The energies swirled up and away, satisfied. Andre groaned, stirred, and began extracting himself from the powdered sheetrock wall. Harrison stumbled over to give him a hand.

Just then someone pounded on the outer door of the suite.

“Police!” came a muffled voice. “Open the door!”

“It’s open!” Di yelled back, unzipping her belt-pouch and pulling out her wallet.

Three people, two uniformed NYPD and one fellow in a suit with an impressive .357 Magnum in his hand, peered cautiously around the doorframe.

“Jee-zus Christ,” one said in awe.

“Who?” the dazed Valentine murmured, hand hanging limply over her forehead. “Wha’ hap . . .”

Andre appeared beside Di, bowler in hand, umbrella spotless and innocent-looking again.