Fireshaper's Doom (6 page)

A raised finger quieted Gary just as he was about to speak. A nod acknowledged it. Soundlessly they crept toward the voices.

The land sloped gently uphill beneath them, opening at last onto a sheer bank maybe eight feet high. Directly beneath it was the only point on the whole nearby shoreline where diving was really possible. Silent as trees they peered over it.

It was them, all right: Alec and Darrell “Runnerman” Buchanan. Dark hair and light hair was all David could easily distinguish through the sparkle of sunlight on the choppy surface—Darrell’s brassy yellow, shoulder-long in the runner’s mane the Enotah County High track team affected; Alec’s mousy brown darkened to near black by water.

Darrell twisted underwater, thrust up a wiry arm in salute, then sank into the depths again, reminding David of the final scene from
Deliverance.
A moment later Darrell’s head broke surface. Even at that distance the flash of teeth in his foolishly handsome face was visible, stark white against his deep tan.

“Well, it if ain’t the two lost boys!” he shouted cheerily, treading water. “What took you so long? Looking for Tinkerbell? Drop your drawers and join us!”

“Didn’t waste any time, did you?” David called back.

“Well, it’s supposed to rain, for one thing,” Darrell said. “And then we remembered Hudson’s cooking tonight, so we decided now’d be better than later. That way we won’t have to worry about cramps.”

“Or look at what we’re eating,” Alec added. “That’s a hell of a lot more important.”

Gary picked up a convenient stone and tossed it into the dark water a precise foot from Alec’s open mouth.

He ducked—too late. The wave left him choking.

“So, you guys coming in, or not?”

“Didn’t bring our suits.” David laughed.

“So?”

“So what’ve
you
got on?”

In answer Darrell leapt as far out of the water as he could, then dove quickly forward, displaying a flash of bare white bottom.

David and Gary looked at each other and nodded once in unison.

“Just as I suspected.” Gary snickered.

“
I
have nothing to be ashamed of,” David replied haughtily, prying at the heel of one shoe with the toe of the other.

Gary knelt to remove his training shoes. “Let’s just say you have nothing, and leave it at that!”

David waited until his friend was untying his laces, then leapt onto his back, wrapping his legs around Gary’s waist and clamping his arms tight around the boy’s bulging chest and upper arms.

“Would you like to repeat that, G-Man?”

“Do you
want
it repeated?” came the choked reply. “If you’d like, I’ll tell everybody we know—in minute, biological detail, with approximate numbers and dimensions.” He tensed and started to stand, completely ignoring David’s weight. “If you’ve got Liz’s address, I could even mail her a description,” he continued. “Or I could take some pictures…”

David lost his grip and slid to the ground, bringing Gary’s gym shorts down with him. He shrieked and jerked his hands away, scrambling to his feet in embarrassed horror. “Oh, Christ, Hudson, all I need to see is your furry butt staring me in the face!”

“You asked for it, faggot!”

“You guys coming or not?” Alec shouted from below.

“Sullivan might be,” Gary called back. “I think he’s trying to rape me.”

“I’ll get you for that, Hudson,” David shot back as he hastily skinned off his T-shirt. The ring glittered on his chest. He paused, fiddling with the clasp of the silver chain that held it. It was just the slightest bit too short to pull over his head easily.

Gary eyed him curiously. “God, Sullivan, what is it with you and that blessed chain? Why don’t you just
wear
the damned thing?” David’s expression darkened to one of deadly seriousness.
“
Because
—if I wear it people get all kinds of stupid ideas, and then they start asking stupid questions, and I’m sick of answering stupid questions,
okay
?”

“So why bother with it at all, then?”

David rolled his eyes. “Because—because I like having it around—if that’s all right with you. I mean it really isn’t any of your business.”

Gary’s face darkened in turn, as the tone of David’s words sank in. “Okay! Okay! It’s no big deal. You never have been straight with us about that ring, though, and I’m gettin’ a little tired of it.”

“Not
haven’t,
Gary,
can’t.
”

“Bullhockey,” Gary snorted, as he trotted the few steps to the bank and dove outward.

The ring at last on his finger, David followed him very quickly.

*

“We stay in here any longer we’ll shrivel up to nothing,” Alec said, as David’s head broke surface beside him. Darrell and Gary had long since departed.

“I think part of me already has.” David giggled.

Alec looked disgusted. “Who could tell?”

David sent a miniature tsunami splashing toward him. “Would you like to be dead, McLean? I’ve heard enough about
that
already.” Gary appeared on the bank, barefoot and shirtless, a pair of camouflage fatigues slung low across his hips. “Hey, guys, soup’s on.” Alec rolled his eyes. “Thanks for the warning.”

Gary threw a pine cone at him. “No problem, McLean, I’ll just pee in yours.”

Alec sighed and began stroking toward shore.

David glanced toward the southern horizon, saw the clouds massed there. They’d been building steadily since he’d arrived. “I hope it doesn’t rain,” he said as he set off after his friend.

“Not supposed to. Supposed to go south of here, according to the forecast,” Alec replied. “Christ, look at old Bloodtop over there!” David felt an anticipatory chill race over him, even as he glanced over his shoulder.

Half a mile away a mountain rose from the surface of the lake. Bloody Bald it was called, though David knew it by another name as well. In the Faery realm that mountain bore a castle, and that castle was the home of Lugh Samildinach, High King of the Sidhe in Tir-Nan-Og. Usually it looked like an ordinary mountain—was an ordinary mountain as far as most men were concerned. But sometimes it was much, much more: sometimes at dusk and dawn the glamour between was stripped away and he could see what really crowned that summit. Sometimes, too, he could hear horns calling there.

But this was nothing so remarkable.

It was a simple trick of light—the very one that had given the mountain its name, in fact, for the westering sun had caught the pale silicon surfaces that slashed its vertical faces, and had lit them with its own blazing glory, painting them red from top to water’s edge, so that the whole peak seemed awash with bloody fire. The mountains behind had fallen into shadow, darkened by the approaching clouds, and Bloody Bald shone like a sentinel of light before them. And then a cloud brushed the sun and the effect was gone.

“Geez,” Alec said. “For a minute there, I thought I’d had a glimpse of Faerie.”

David shook his head as he joined him on the shore. “Not this time, my lad; sometimes this world has its own magic.” He reached for the rope they had tied there for the purpose, and hauled himself up the bank, realizing only then that he hadn’t brought a towel.
Have to use my shirt
,
I guess,
he thought, tugging at the ring.
Soon as I put this back on its chain.

Five minutes later he and Alec pushed through the last of the laurel and joined their friends at the campsite. The fire had been built up a little, and a pile of steaming hamburger patties was arranged on a foil-covered rack beside it. A cooler full of beer stood open by one of the awning poles. Gary and Darrell had their backs to them and were occupied with something inside the van.

“Well, smells good, anyway—” David began, his jaws clenching in sudden outrage as he saw what occupied his friends’ attention. “Dammit, guys, that’s personal!” he cried, dashing forward.

Gary spun around and stuffed something behind his back, then changed his mind and held it out accusingly. “Yeah, Sullivan, right. Real personal. Look, what is this shit about other worlds and all? I mean, look at this!” He thrust the note from
The Fairy-faith
straight into David’s face.

David reached for it, but Gary snatched it away. “You can read, Hudson. What does it sound like?”

“Sounds like a bunch of crap, my man. Either that, or your woman’s gone stark, raving bonkers.”

David’s eyes flashed dangerously. “Just give me the note, okay?”

“No way, man! Not till you tell us what’s going on.”

“Nothing’s going on. Absolutely
nothing
—except that you’re standing between me and my property.”

Gary stuck the paper in his hip pocket and stood up very much straighter, his arms folded across his outthrust chest. “You gonna do something about it?”

David started forward, but Gary blocked him with one stiffened arm. “Dammit, Gary, don’t do this to me!”

“I ain’t doing nothing, Sullivan. Just trying to get some straight answers out of you. It’s not like we haven’t been patient.”

“Like what happened to you last summer that had you so weirded out?” Darrell put in, moving to stand beside Gary, thereby blocking the entrance to the van. “Like why were you so vague and drifty all last fall? Like how come your brother and uncle were so sick, and then healed all of a sudden—in one night, so I hear.”

“Yeah, Sullivan, spill it. We’ve waited a year, and all we’ve got is some weird shit your brother’s supposed to have told at church about a dog talking to him, or something. And some stuff about shiny people in the woods.”

“And a boy in white,” Darrell added.

David’s mouth dropped open. “How’d you know about that!”

Gary and Darrell exchanged troubled glances. “Tell him, Runnerman.”

Darrell cleared his throat. “Well, my mom works in the hospital, see. Twice a week as a volunteer. You knew that,
right?…
Well, when your uncle was sick last year, she had to check on him every hour or so, and found him really ranting and raving a couple of times.”

“You should have told me!” David exploded.

“What—and given you something else to worry about?”

David took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. “So what’s he supposed to have said?”

“Talked about a boy in white, mostly. That really put the wind up her, ’cause she thought he was having one of those out-of-body experiences, or something. Only he wasn’t.”

“And how do you know? Those things might be for real.”

“’Cause she asked him what he was seeing, asshole, and he kept saying something about the blond boy in the woods. First she thought it was you, but when she asked him if it was, he said no, it was the boy in the funny white clothes with the bow.”

Gary took up the attack again: “And there’s that friggin’ ring you’re so damned particular about. You can’t tell me there’s not something strange about that! Hell, man, I’ve looked at the friggin’ thing close up and personal, and it gives me the willies, let me tell you. Handmade out of solid silver or I’m a virgin. Older’n shit, or may I never get laid again.”

“What do you mean you’ve looked at it?’’

Gary puffed his cheeks and stared at the ground. “Oh, hell—remember that time you spent the night at my house last winter? When my folks were gone and we raided my dad’s bar and sat up ’til four drinking and talking, until you passed out?”

David bit his upper lip, nodding slowly.

“Well, once you were, like, out of it, I just pulled that mother out of its chain and took a look at it in the light. I mean, I know you’d let me see it before, but always kinda quick and uneasy-like. Well, I wanted me a good long look, and I took one.”

“Asshole!”

“No, man. Just curious. Curious as to why one of my best friends had just spent six months acting like the cat that swallowed the canary, and the canary that had been swallowed by the cat, all at the same time.”

“More like nine months,” Darrell amended. “He’s still doing it. An honest man’d level with his buddies.”

“Right-o, Runnerman. I mean, hell, guy’ll go swimming stark naked at the drop of a hat,
admits
to jacking off and God knows what all else. But ask him about a silver ring and an attitude that evidently goes with it, and he clams up tight as a nun’s you-know-what. Oughta kick him out of the M-gang, just for not playing straight with us.”

David had stood about as much interrogation as he could. “It’s not that I don’t
want
to tell you…”

“Oh
yeah
?”
Gary cried. “Then why don’t you?”

David glanced over his shoulder to see Alec looking confused and ineffectual and unhappy. There’d be no help from that quarter, nor could there be. Alec couldn’t tell them any more than he could. “Okay, Sullivan, start talking.”

“About what?”

Gary almost hit him. “Anything—everything! What’ve we been talking about for the last ten minutes?”

“I can’t tell you.”