Elvendude (32 page)

"And claimed to be sent by you."

Zeldan scratched his long, pointed chin thoughtfully. "Not I, my dear Morrigan. I do hope you've imprisoned them."

She nodded, with some relief evident on her obese features. "They are now in a node shell, on the palace grounds."

"Node shell?" Zeldan said. "But that means, if you made this transmission, you had to pull away power from the prison. Are you certain they're still secure?"

For the first time Zeldan remembered, Morrigan looked uncertain, threatened, even. "What?" she finally said. "Certainly that won't mean . . ."

"Who knows," Zeldan said with an air of resignation.
If she's slipped up, and these intruders have escaped, it would really make my day.
"My elves are down there. Nagas, if I remember, is in charge of patrolling the area. He is young, true, but he has a firm understanding of leadership."
And torture. And maiming.
"Have you even bothered to contact him?"

"Of course I have!" Morrigan snapped. "They are on their way to the palace as we speak."

"Find out who the intruders are," he said, wondering who would do such a foolhardy thing.
Certainly not the Avalon elves, gone to reclaim the palace? Since we've already sacked it, I'm tempted to give it back to them, so that I can have the satisfaction of taking it from them again.

"One moment," Morrigan said, and left the screen temporarily.

Zeldan sighed. The idea behind communicating with Underhill in this fashion was to keep the messages brief; dead space like that took as much power as dialogue. He glanced at a dial on their bank of storage cells, watched it drop ever so slowly, and resisted a temptation to break the connection. "Hanging up" on Morrigan would give a certain amount of satisfaction. But her wrath would be difficult to deal with later.

She returned to the screen, this time more shaken than before. "It was a mage," she said. "And they've escaped. Nagas intercepted them as they were trying to leave."

"Ah, excellent," Zeldan said confidently. "Then we have nothing to worry about. Nagas will deal with them."
A mage? That might only mean . . . certainly not.
"Have Nagas report to me immediately. May he use your terminal?"

After a pause, during which Morrigan had a difficult time maintaining eye contact with Zeldan, she said, "He can't, Zeldan. He's dead. The group, whoever they were, killed the entire patrol."

Zeldan stared at her image.
If there were some way to wrap my hands around your neck, I would,
he thought in the confused rage that followed.
Dead? The entire party?

"No witnesses?" Zeldan finally sputtered.
This can't be
. "Survivors? Anyone?"

She looked distressed, not smug. Zeldan gave her credit for that much. "None. Except, the group of mercenaries I had watching the fields."

"Mercs?" Zeldan asked hopefully.
They would have to be formidable to be any match for a mage.

"Gargoyles," she explained.

Zeldan groaned.
The weakest creatures in Underhill. I'm surprised they subdued the intruders in the first place.

"Whoever they were, they are long gone," Morrigan said. "Tell me, Zeldan. You'd said that Aedham Tuiereann was no threat. Is it possible
he
was this mage?"

He withheld a snarl. "Perhaps, but I doubt it," he managed to say.

"You don't sound convinced," she said. "But no matter. Once our plan is completed, we will have
all
the negative power we need, and then some. Avalon and any other Seleighe clan that happens along will have their hands full with our mayhem. I am not worried."

You should be,
Zeldan wanted to say, but that would only make things difficult for himself. "As for the Avalon pestilence, we will have that under control as well. We have a lead that should take us directly to the Tuiereann rat's nest. The McDaris residence, I believe," he said proudly.
She probably doesn't care that much about eliminating this particular King, but I certainly do. It was just a matter of simple detective work. Mort has proven his usefulness three times over.

Zeldan continued, "We have already met with our human minions. They are ready to deliver your concentrated Black Dream to the human watering holes."

Morrigan's face turned blood-red. "Then why hasn't it happened already?"

"These things take time," Zeldan replied.
And planning, and patience, neither of which you have experience with.
"The logistics involved, the different layers of security we must penetrate to disperse our product in the water system. It's more complicated than you realize."

Her face darkened. "
Details!
" she screamed. "I want action!"

The screen went blank.

Zeldan gazed at it for a long time, then got up, put on his Peter Pritchard human seeming, and went back among the cattle, and their pain.

And with the death of Nagas,
Mage Japhet Dhu thought, with no small amount of satisfaction,
dies the remaining obstacle to
my
plan.

The mage had sensed the Gate in Underhill the moment it formed, but instead of intercepting whomever came out of it, he watched from a distance. It was, to his surprise, the former Prince of Avalon.

The Seleighe have returned to Underhill. Come to claim your kingdom, have you?
he thought. Nagas was the last remaining Unseleighe leader who had remained faithful to his father, so it was only natural that he seek out this new threat to Zeldan's territory. The others in Japhet's organization remained quietly loyal to Japhet, while his father made a fool of himself chasing down Seleighe children. Japhet had considered approaching Morrigan in hopes of making an arrangement beneficial to both of them, but as it stood Zeldan was providing a substantial amount of raw power, energy which was lacking in this Underhill wasteland.
Better to wait until Father is less useful before approaching the bitch.

This new development with the Avalon clan was completely unexpected. At first the mage didn't know what to make of it. The Seleighe King didn't seem to be particularly powerful, in fact had not even bothered to construct any kind of shield. And when the mercenary gargoyles captured them, they had put up no fight whatsoever.
Their actions are curious,
Japhet thought.
What do they expect to gain among the ruins of their former elfhame?

Mage Japhet grew bored with the proceedings, returned to his stronghold, and summoned his fellow mages. While Morrigan's attention was focused on these new intruders, he reasoned, they had the perfect opportunity tap into Morrigan's fresh load of harvested human pain.

My father will pay for his folly,
Japhet thought.
His obsession for ridding the universe of the Seleighe plague will be his undoing.

And I will be waiting, patiently, until he fails. Then I will claim for myself what is rightfully mine. I am, after all, the sole heir to Zeldan's kingdom.

One of his mages brought a crude oracle to him; it was a construct of one of Morrigan's crystals, stolen from her mines. On occasion they were able to eavesdrop on the transmissions between Zeldan and Underhill, and do so without detection. They used the oracle sparingly.

This had better warrant my special attention,
Mage Japhet thought as he took the fist-sized crystal from the cowering Unseleighe elf.

Interesting,
Japhet thought, as he took in Zeldan's and Morrigan's conversation.
The King of Avalon is a mage. And he is returning to the human's world to destroy my father!

How very kind of him to simplify my life for me.

Daryl returned home from the trip to Lake Tawekoni, in part because he hoped he might shake Mort. The little demon had appeared nearly everywhere else in his life but here, in his house. So here he came, hoping to be alone, at least for a little while.

The house appeared to be empty when he pulled up. Both cars were gone, which meant Mom was probably at her bridge party, and Dad was out God only knew where. Only the porch light was on, but that came on automatically at sunset; the rest of the house was on a computer, which automatically turned on certain lights, but lately hadn't been working right, so Dad had shut it off. The house was dark when he entered, but he didn't find anything peculiar about that.

The Dream had worn off somewhat, but he didn't really want to do more of it right away, for fear Mort might reappear. He knew he had to slow down, he was doing too much of it, and since he wasn't an addict he had to show himself that the stuff didn't have control of him. That meant leaving the Dream alone.

He went into the kitchen in search of a beer or a cooler, found a half-consumed six-pack of Bud, and opened one. The cold suds burned a comfortable path down his throat, and as its numbness spread, he decided he wasn't so anxious anymore.

Maybe I should just switch to beer and leave it at that,
he considered. But somehow the thought reminded him of Justin, guzzling suds with those football jocks in the pickup, and the prospect didn't have as much appeal to him.

Maybe scotch. That is the civilized way to imbibe, after all.

On the kitchen counter he found a note, with a twenty-dollar bill. It was from his mother, who was letting him know that she would be out playing bridge, as he'd already guessed. The twenty was for him to use "any way he liked."

A twenty. Mere pocket change, compared to what he'd been making at the New You. That day he'd made the first drop, a whole ki of Dream, and took his cut for that day, one grand, in cash. It was the easiest thousand he'd ever made in his life, and despite his reservations about working for this strange outfit, Mort included, he looked forward to more of the easy money.

The light buzz the beer gave him told him he'd hadn't had any garden-variety coke in awhile.
Hell,
he thought,
I guess that would be okay. It's Dream I'm slowing down on, not coke. Dad has some in his bedroom. He always has some. Might even be able to snatch a few Valiums from Mom's bottle to help me sleep later.

He went into the master bedroom, turned the light on, and reached for the silver tray under the bed. It was an antique, probably about a hundred years old, but was so finely polished that it worked just as well as a mirror. There was enough coke leftover from the last time to make two healthy, go-for-it lines. He took the twenty, rolled it up, and snorted both lines in two deep breaths.

Use it any way I liked,
he thought whimsically, regarding the twenty.
Mom can occasionally be helpful, if only by accident.

The coke burned for a moment in his sinuses, then became a mild itch, which had just been scratched. The numbness originating with the beer deepened.

Just coke,
he thought, as the clouds of heaven descended on his brain.
No Mort.
Part of him realized that cocaine reduced his thinking to two-syllable snatches.
No prob. I'm fine.

He put the tray back, turned off the light, climbed the stairs.

Music from one of the Alan Parsons albums, Daryl didn't know which, poured out of Justin's room. There was no light under his brother's door. The door to his own room was open, leading to darkness. Daryl frowned, vaguely annoyed at this intrusion to his personal space.

He turned the light on, and saw his brother lying facedown on the floor.

"Justin?"

Justin didn't move.

He's playing games. Or he's passed out. I'll just ignore him.

With the intention of taking a shower, he stepped over Justin on his way to the bathroom.

He noticed the five black-stoppered vials, all empty, and his glass pipe, next to Justin's left hand.

"Justin, just what the hell are you doing?"

The words came out weakly, a mere whisper. Daryl's heart thundered in his chest.

"Justin?" he said again, as he knelt over his brother.

As he reached to roll him over, his hand recoiled from the cold arm, the cold shoulder, the cold neck.

No. He isn't. He can't be.

The image of his birthday party at Steve's flashed through his head. His dead friends, and those not so dead. But this was different, this was his brother.

Justin is not dead.

Stars filled his vision as he became light-headed, but he grabbed Justin by the arm anyway, and rolled him completely over. He had never had much of a tan, but now Justin was very pale and very cold.

Justin's eyes were open, unblinking, and filled with terror. His mouth was frozen in a scream.

Justin!

Daryl stared at him, reached for his wrist, found no pulse there, looked for one in his neck. Nothing.

Shaking, he picked up one of the five empty vials.
Five? Did he smoke all five of these bottles of Black Dream? Oh, God. He must have. He's so cold. But where the hell did he get it?
Sticking out from under the bed was a shoe box, filled with vials. This was also where he'd kept
his
pipe.

He had no strength to move, so he sat there, staring at his lifeless brother. The pleasing numbness from the coke drained away from him.
His face is so horrible,
Daryl thought vaguely.
I wonder what he saw?

His stomach's contents rose to the back of his throat. As he ran to the toilet to retch his guts out, he thought briefly about D&D, and all the good times he'd had with his brother. And all the times he wouldn't, now.

After he'd completely emptied his stomach, he reached for the telephone and dialed 911 for an ambulance. "Just
send one.
My brother overdosed. I think he's dead," he said, to the dispatcher's repeated request for details, and hung up.

Without being fully aware of what he was doing, he pulled his wallet out and began looking for something. The piece of paper with Moira's phone number fell out.

Call if you need help.

Through the tears, Daryl picked up the phone and dialed.

Adam woke from a sound sleep on the living room couch. He sat up with a start, then closed his eyes against the headache that threatened to rip him in two.