Strum Again? Book Three of the Songkiller Saga (43 page)

"I reckon we can start now," Dally Morales
said, his voice cutting through a multilingual chatter that could
have been literally called Babel. "I'm hopin' you've all been
briefed on your songs—"

"Oh,
I
get it," Barbara Harrington-Smith said. "This is a pageant of
some sort for our last night. How quaint. What a colossal waste of
time."

"Don't be such a spoilsport," Shayla St.
Michael hissed. "It might be fun."

"If it's a pageant, I hope somebody brought
Cokes and hot dogs," Heather-Jon complained. "I'm so sick of
freeze-dried I could puke."

About then the chuck truck drove up with
corn bread and chili, and people milled around spooning chili from
tin cups and sopping it in the corn bread. The sun finally went
down and the moon came up over the stock tank, its reflection
yellow and round as a Hi-Ho cracker and growing a little beard of
light as its rays skipped across wavelets and the breeze rippled in
the scummy water. Across the prairie a steer looked longingly at
the tank but didn't want anything to do with all those humans.

The night cooled off, and when almost
everyone was finished eating, Dally suggested they start on the
song again. He didn't have trouble making himself heard, but the
people were harder to herd than stampeding cattle because they were
used to the blare of the city. He winked at Ute and Nobby, and they
joined him on the tailgate of the truck and said, "Okay, take it
from when he tells her what's wrong—"

"You start, Dally," Ute said.

Dally grimaced. His Tex-Mex made the
Scottish accent in the song sound kind of funny.

"Then up she rode, that Elfin Queen

And laid her hand on me;

And ever since she did

I've been Part of her company.

"And Elfland's such a purty place

A darn good place to dwell,

But at the end of seven years

They pay a tithe to hell;

And I'm so full of flesh and blood

I'm afraid they'll use myself."

Ute, unwilling to hear the song's lyrics
butchered that way, broke in, singing Janet's lines;

"O tell me, tell me, Tam-a-Line

O tell me, an' tell me true,

Tell me this night and make no lie

What way I'll borrow you?"

Everyone had suddenly turned toward them,
and they heard a clickety clack clickety clack, and rising over
that, the cry of a mandolin and the words Tam Lin used to tell
Janet how to break the spell.

"On Halloween night

The elfin court will ride,

Through England and through all Scotland

And through the world wide.

"O they begin at sky setting

Rides all the evening tide;

And she that will her true-love borrow

At Miles-corse will him bide."

The ghost train, at first a noisy speck way
off in the distance, grew and grew until they could see the
smokestack, but though they could smell the smoke, they saw none.
The cattle stared at the train, impervious to it, and walked right
through it, though it seemed solid enough when its shining wheels
screamed to a halt and the whistle blew and people unloaded from
two of the passenger cars.

"I think we better revise some of it," Faron
was saying. "How about:

"This is the Summer Solstice night

And the fairy queen will ride

Through Texas to the Rio Grande

And all the world wide.

O, they begin at sky setting

Ride through the evening tide—"

"Damn!" said Dally. "Is that right?"

"What?" Faron asked.

"That they started at sunset. If so, they're
on their way, and we better get this sucker learned and get into
position." He whistled a sharp shrill blast and beckoned to Faron,
who revised as he went, singing the lyrics:

"You'll take you to the stock tank

Between midnight and one

And fill your hands with holy water

And cast your compass round."

"We didn't bring any holy water," Ute
said.

"All water is holy," Heather-Jon reminded
him piously. "It's the blood of the earth."

"So it is," Anna Mae said. "Besides, it's
probably a pre-Christian song anyway, and they just added that to
please the priests. The compass bit is probably a pentagram drawn
for Janet's protection."

"We're s'posed to draw one
around
all
of us?" Brose
asked. "Hell, Torchy and Willie won't be able to ride within a mile
of us if we draw one big enough to cover all of us."

"What does the rest of the song say?" Dally
asked.

"Well, it goes on about the fairy court—how
there'll be first kings and queens, though I don't know where
Torchy's going to find any of those around here, then many maidens,
then there'll be grooms and knights and then—"

He sang the appropriate verses. Then Faron
and Brose and the others revised them where it seemed absolutely
necessary. People grew restless, and Anna Mae sprinkled more fairy
dust over Dally and everyone who had been on the train. She wasn't
sure that was the thing to do, because somehow it might negate
their ability to fight Torchy, but the dust made the rest of the
people more attentive, and they muttered lines to themselves and
took notes.

Clouds scudded across the moon, ringing it,
halving it, flirting like veils across the belly of a Middle
Eastern dancer. People looked away every few minutes, down each
fork of the road every few minutes.

Dally hushed everyone and lay down with his
ear to the ground, then jumped up, brushed his hands on his thighs,
and palms down gestured everyone to prostrate themselves and be
quiet.

The chuck truck and the other vehicles had
been driven a distance away and parked.

The ghost train, one moment seemingly solid
iron that had transported a hundred people over several hundred
miles, the next moment had faded away like a dollar the day after
payday.

All the people except Julianne, Brose, Anna
Mae, Gussie, Faron, and Dally lay huddled together on the ground.
The other six hunkered down against the still-warm side of the
water tank, sweat rolling off them as Juli scratched a pentagram
with the toe of her laceless shoe, and they all stepped forward
into it and waited.

The first horses to clop by the stock tank
were painted pinto ponies, ridden by a feather-and-leather-bedecked
Indian chieftain and his woman, Indians and ponies both transparent
as the white man's treaty promises. The black tails of the Indian
mounts flicked the steam blowing out the noses of the proud
arch-necked horses ridden by a black-and-silver-clad grandee with
an arrow in his back, and his lady, whose skirts all but covered
the horse's body and swept the ground on both sides. None of these
people looked to the right or the left, not even when a gasp or two
came from the shadows around the stock tank.

Behind them, however, came the rumble of
wagon wheels. A team of handsome matched black horses responded
with a trot to the whistle and crack of a whip over their heads. A
fancy decorated wagon carried a group of laughing, drinking, waving
wanton women that, if Willie had been paying attention to such
things—which for the first time in his life he was too preoccupied
to do—he would have recognized as employees of Lulubelle Baker's
Petroleum Puncher's Paradise. Not exactly maidens, but definitely
female women and most likely unmarried, which was what maiden once
meant anyway.

Faron began to play Lazarus II softly and
sing. In a whisper other voices joined his.

"The next in court that comes to you

Are footmen, grooms, and squires"

—
he sang as a motley collection of
cowboys, Indians, and soldiers both Mexican and Texan, some wearing
remnants of rebel uniforms from the Civil War, filed solemnly
past—

"The next in court that comes to you

Are knights, and I'll be there."

And so he was. Willie MacKai rode the boss's
finest white thoroughbred and wore a white Stetson hat with a band
that held one fine golden star in the front, like something you'd
find on a famous actor's dressing-room door.

Faron stood and so did the others, Julianne
at the forefront, Dally nodding to his poets to keep their groups
on the right verse.

"I, MacKai, on a milk white steed

A gold star at my crown

Because I was a singin' star

They gave me that renown."

Julianne rose up as the next verse
began. She was not in love with Willie, but Janet was the
single
female
monster-changer
she had been while she inhabited the ballads, and so Julianne
figured she was the best woman for the job. Besides, she looked the
part.

The singing was quite loud now but was
noticed by neither Willie nor Torchy, who wore a Spanish lady's
riding habit in glowing green with tinkling bells comprising the
silver trim on the bolero and skirt hem and forming a band around
the brim of her flat-crowned Spanish riding hat. Like the grandee's
lady before her, her skirts swept the ground around her Appaloosa's
feet.

"Look," Brose whispered, and Juli spared a
look away from Willie. Down the left fork a business-suited man and
what looked like a crew of gangsters stood waiting. If they'd been
wearing trench coats and the scene had been on a bridge, it would
have been something like a spy movie where they changed prisoners
at the border. Her head swiveled back to Willie, and while everyone
else sang the traditional verse, Faron sang:

"You'll take my horse then by the head

And let the bridle fall;

The queen of Elfin she'll cry out

Willie's gone awa'"

One of the animal-rights activists cried out
when Juli touched the horse and scuttled forward to soothe it while
Juli pulled Willie, who seemed stoned or something, down from the
horse and into her arms. He was a little big for her to handle, so
Gussie and Anna Mae and Brose helped her pull him into the
pentagram. All of them were sweating rivers, but Willie's skin was
as cool as if he'd just stepped out of a freezer, and his eyes
stared over their heads.

But though Willie didn't snap out of his
trance, Torchy snapped out of hers with a whoop and a holler. "Wait
just a blessed minute!" she yelled, not to the people who held
Willie but to the dark figures waiting beyond the left-hand
fork.

"Are you settin' me up or what? You
going to let mortals rob you of your sacrifice? He's a
volunteer,
for heaven sakes. The
song says now that I'll turn him into a wolf and a fire, a snake, a
deer, and a silken string, and these people are ready for that.
Help me out, can't you? This deal is going to do more for you than
it will for me."

"Very well," the Chairdevil said. "And no
matter what the others do, if the little blond lets go, the deal's
off. Come on, team. We'll show her something to really scare
her."

CHAPTER 27

The devils didn't even need to consult among
themselves to know what to do. The singers had brought all those
people together, figuring that the more voices they had to raise
the song, the more thwarted the devils would be. But the devils
were smart and were wearing earplugs that night, though Torchy
wasn't, of course.

The magical force generated by the song was
greater because it came from more throats. Still, there was no
safety in numbers of mere mortals against that crew of devils. They
concentrated all their power on Julianne Martin and loosed upon her
their most terrible weapon: a projection of literal reality.

She looked into Willie's staring eyes as the
others sang the verse:

"Then I'll appear in your arms

Like a wolf that ne'er would tame."

And suddenly she and he were together after
he did a big concert—she didn't seem to have been singing. And
there were crowds of other women around, and he had eyes and hands
for every single one but her—

"You hold me fast, don't let me go

Or we'll never meet again."

Listening to them sing, she could only
barely remember that this was someone she cared about, not some
worthless womanizing chauvinistic macho—

"Then I'll appear in your arms

Like the fire that burns saw bold—"

And she was still holding him, but he was
burning with fever, was so thin she found it hard to believe even
his bones could be so small, and stank to high heaven. More
horrible, when she looked at her own strong arms, she saw them
shrinking to the bone too, and knew that he had caught some
terrible disease and was giving it to her. But if she already
caught it, there was no hope for her, was there, and she couldn't
abandon him like this no matter—

"You'll hold me fast, not let me go

I'll be as cold as iron."

And his face filled out and reddened, and
his eyes seemed to bulge with pointless anger, his arms to tighten
around her and his hands into bruising fists. She felt her body
ache with past blows and her heart break with the lash of
humiliating, sarcastic insults he'd just hurled at her.

"Then I'll appear in your arms

Like the adder and the snake."

And she would have let go of him then, but
Brose and Gussie's grip held her arms fast as they felt her trying
to let go, and she remembered it was just her friend, Willie, as
the words changed again—

"You'll hold me fast, not let me go