Dark Duets Part 16

"Aye."

"Actual h.e.l.l? Not just h.e.l.l but h.e.l.l h.e.l.l?"

"The same."

"I think I need to scream."

"You might at that," he said, either not getting her joke or not considering it one. "The Yvag have chosen you, marked you with their sigil, and that means that until they get their hands on you again, they're going to be extremely unhappy, not to mention panicked, because if they don't get you back for their ceremony, then that princeling who s.n.a.t.c.hed you has to take your place in the ritual."

"Good. f.u.c.k him."

"I couldnae agree more."

"Wait . . . princeling?"

"Aye, he is powerful among them. He has great charisma, la.s.s. They all have it, but few wield it with his level of power."

" 'Charisma'?" she echoed.

"Aye. Tae humans that's just a gift of attraction, something to sell cars with, but for the Yvag, it's one of their most powerful weapons. They can make you lay bare your throat for the knife and thank them while they cut."

She thought about all of the absurd things she had done, including stripping naked without a thought, and shivered.

Rhymer sighed. "Had I brought him down tonight it would have crushed them."

"For good?"

"No . . . but it would weaken them for many years to come. Ah well. Meantime, I recommend you switch off those lights before we pa.s.s this articulated lorry, else you're going tae give the driver a heart attack. You might want to put your clothes back on, too, as we'll be pulling off the road in a minute. At least your shoes."

"Oh, G.o.d."

Everything that was happening was jumbled inside Stacey's head, and she knew, on some level, that she should be reacting better than she was. She also knew with perfect clarity that she was teetering on the edge of some dangerous level of shock. There were too many bizarre and impossible things happening, and despite tears and gooseflesh, she was taking this all too calmly. Her lack of ordinary reaction to it terrified her.

Her nudity, oddly, did not. And it d.a.m.n well should have. She didn't even like wearing low-cut blouses.

Even so, she punched the switches until the rear of the limo went dark, and they pa.s.sed the semi. She sorted through the heaped jeans, cami, and sweater until she found her panties.

"Can you answer a question?"

"I can try."

"I . . . just went with that guy. That elf or whatever. I went with him. I let him touch me. I took my f.u.c.king clothes off for him. I don't do that. A guy tries to grab my a.s.s I kick the p.i.s.s out of him. I'm not a victim, d.a.m.n it, and I'm not anyone's casual piece of a.s.s."

"No," Rhymer agreed.

"Well, you seem to understand this madness, so can you tell me why I did this?"

In the rearview mirror she saw him grin again. It changed his face from one of lupine harshness to something else. When he smiled, his face was gentle. Sad . . . but gentle.

"If I tell ye that this is all glamour and magic, will you hit me in the back of the head with your shoe?"

"Why . . . is that the sort of thing you're likely to say?"

"Well . . . elves and all . . ."

"b.o.l.l.o.c.ks," she said, but mostly to herself. An admission that they were no longer driving through a sane landscape.

She pulled on her clothes. "So, what, I have to stay hidden till after Halloween?"

"Well, that's where we get into the long version of things. Normally, they would be hunting you for about a year."

"A year?" She did almost whack him with her shoe then.

"It's a question of relational temporalities. A day in Yvagddu lasts a year in our world. But they got c.o.c.ky about things, figured to haul you over and dispose of you just like that, so they waited-"

"Just tell me for f.u.c.k's sake!"

"Thirty more hours, more or less."

She fell back against the seat. "I have to call Carrie. I need to know she got back to the flat okay."

"Right. Here." He handed her a cell phone. "It's a burner. You don't want to use your own."

She stared from the phone to him. "Elves can track cell-phone calls?"

For the first time he gave her a genuine and open grin. "Aye, the universe is totally daft like that."

"But . . . why the secrecy? Why not go south? We could go down to London; n.o.body can find anybody there."

He shrugged. "You're lucky you don't have a family," he said. "If ye had folks, children, it'd be far worse. They could subst.i.tute them on account of your blood."

"If I had kids and a family," she fired back, "I wouldn't 'a been clubbing with Carrie in the first place. Pish."

Quite suddenly, Rhymer spoke in a peculiar singsong.

No cause to trust eyes of promise, Eyes so golden, eyes that burn, down into your darkest soul.

When you fall, and all unbinds The last of you will scream out for the first.

Despite the words, his singing voice was beautiful. In the strangest way, the sound of his voice comforted her, removing splinters of fear from her mind.

Rhymer fell silent again and drove on as if nothing odd had occurred.

She stared at him, his face bluish like a ghost's in the dawn light. Rhymer-what in h.e.l.l kind of name was that? Like something out of an old folk song.

6.

Stacey had a.s.sumed they would be pulling into, at the very least, a lay-by. They weren't all that far from where they'd begun, maybe ten kilometers.

Instead, Rhymer turned the behemoth of a limo onto another dirt track that led into the darkness of another wood. He shut off the engine but left the headlamps glowing onto a clearing among the trees.

When she climbed out after him, she spotted the nose of a blue Fiat Punto backed in on the left. She remained where she was while he headed to the other car. He didn't seem to realize she wasn't following him until he had crossed the clearing.

He met her gaze over the limo. "I don't blame you," he said. "I'd be contemplating scarpering, too, wondering how hard it can be to lose me in the woods. I'll save you the trouble of breaking your ankle on a root-I'll not chase you. You go as you choose. Whatever you do, though, don't wait here. It'll like as not take them the whole morning, but they'll find it."

She took a wobbling step away from the limousine door. "Will they all be like him? Because I didn't have any choice with him . . ." She felt her face burn as she said that. It felt like admitting something bad, something dirty.

"What, you mean his glamour? Oh, they'll be sleekit but none of them's cowrin or timorous beasties."

She said, "What?"

Rhymer took a breath and continued, but Stacey noticed that he dialed down his accent. It seemed to take effort for him to speak in a normal, modern way. So weird, she thought. Rhymer said, "The glamoured ones all gleam like that. They'll have a harder time now on account of you're not wide open, d'ye see? So you stand a chance there; you can get away before they snare you again. It's the skinwalkers you likely won't see coming."

"What are skinwalkers?"

He glanced into the darkness behind the limo. "We should have this conversation while in motion, not waiting for them to catch us up."

"But you took their transportation."

He shook his head. "It's hardly the only way they travel. Even on foot I get from here to there. They won't be on foot." He sighed. "I had to leave a bonny little motorcycle back there, but I couldnae see driving off on that with you starkers on the back."

"Uh . . . no."

He nodded to the Punto. "This piece of junk will do for now. It's faster than it looks, and it's the kind of thing no one pays attention to."

"Nondescript ain't in it," she agreed.

Suddenly something whooshed above the trees. It might have been an owl, she thought, but Rhymer immediately climbed into the Punto and started the engine. Stacey pulled off her shoes again and walked, limped, cursed her way across the clearing toward the compact Fiat. The second she was in, he took off. They swung around the limousine and back up the dark rutted track, then back onto the A68 again.

A stripe of gray dawn painted the eastern horizon. She tossed her shoes into the back, noticing as she did the curving lines of some device laid across the rear seats.

Her inner voice couldn't seem to settle between rage and terror. The urge to yell at him compelled her, but she couldn't identify what for. He had saved her life, and she was reacting as though she resented it. All meaningful questions went unspoken while she asked herself what in h.e.l.l was wrong with her.

Finally, she prompted, "Skinwalkers . . . ?"

"Mmm." He glanced at her sidelong. "People taken over by the Yvag. Mostly people in positions of power."

"What, like kings?"

Rhymer's features stiffened as if he could see something terrible on the road ahead. She couldn't help looking. But then he sang in the same soft voice as before. It was almost spoken-word but flowed with an elusive interior melody.

Never kings, but always kingdoms.

Never thrones but always ears.

Crucial words, spoke in whispers, from our hands put power in theirs.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it, what is that? You got like some f.u.c.king Tourette's you can't help?"

"What?" He blinked at her, perplexed. "What did I say?"

She repeated the lyrics more or less, then asked, "You don't know when you do that?"

Rhymer took a moment answering that. "I don't, actually, strange as that sounds. I . . . know it's happening, but I'm lost while it happens. It's like something is talking through me."

"Oh, f.u.c.k me. You're telling me you're possessed?"

"No," he said quickly. "It's not that at all. I don't know how to explain it, though."

"But you do know what it means-what you said?"

"Aye."

When he didn't offer more than that, she said, "Well? How about we both know, since it's my a.r.s.e they want, not yours."

"It's my head they want."

"I thought they wanted me."

"And now I've interfered, you're a pathway to me."

"The f.u.c.k I am."

Rhymer shrugged. "It's complicated."

"So's algebra. Try me anyway."

But he didn't.

She ground her teeth. "Okay, then what about the other thing? Tell me about those skinwalker things. Otherwise, you're taking me the h.e.l.l back to Edinburgh right now, and sod you and your elves."

"Right." Rhymer rubbed his eyes. "So, the Yvag, they're ancient, like more ancient than the earth itself."

"How's that possible?"

"Where they live, it's a s.p.a.ce between universes, ours and others. There are lots of others, I gather."

"A multiverse?"

He cut her a sharp look. "Now how do ye know that word?"

"I have every episode of Doctor Who DVRed. Keep talking."