A band called Lost Angels was deafening the audience—and the five of them—with its second number by the time they had everything they needed.
Eric was counting on the fact that they still had a little time. There would be at least one whole set by the warm-up band, and a couple of songs by the main attraction before the place went up. Jormin was the lead singer of Pure Blood, and no Bard could resist the chance to perform for this large an audience. Eric had to have at least until Pure Blood took the stage and did a couple of numbers.
But he intended to deny Jormin his audience. Long before then, he and his friends would Bard-Out the people assembled here. They'd undo the frenzy that Gabrevys and his minions had whipped them into, calm them, and convince them to simply leave. The combination of his and Hosea's Bardcraft and Ace's Talent should be able to accomplish that.
But all those people wouldn't be able to hear them over the amps down there, even with magick to help. So they needed to improvise. . . .
They were able to move around fairly easily behind the stage. Nobody was back there; the road crew was standing out in front with Security, watching the show. Until the time came to change the set for the next act, there wouldn't be anything to do.
Eric cast a glamourie over them that didn't exactly change their appearance, but did make them seem to belong there. They didn't have to worry about running into Jormin—he was playing his part of Being a Rock Star, and would be waiting in one of the two trailers that served as green rooms until it was time for Pure Blood to take the stage.
As for Billy Fairchild and any speeches he might be going to make, Eric suspected they'd be timed for just before Pure Blood's appearance as well. He'd want his audience all worked up and ready for him, just as if this were one of his Praise Hours. Besides, Pure Blood was his trophy band; he would want to introduce them.
As big and as ugly as this whole thing was, it still had more than a little in common with all the RenFaires Eric had worked through the years. The stage crew had their mind on the performers, and anybody who looked as if they belonged where they were and were doing what they were supposed to be doing would pretty much be ignored.
For that matter, the number of trained and reliable roadies around was finite. These guys probably didn't care who or what they worked for, as long as they got their paychecks. This year, it was Christian metal; next year, it could be a thrash-rock group, a bunch of Goths, a boy-band or a punk revival. Whoever had a bankroll and a payroll.
The five of them loaded several flatbed carts with what they needed. There wasn't anything big enough to shift the drum-kit and the keyboard, but Lady Day obliged them there, transforming herself into a very shiny four-wheeled "motorized" cart.
"Hey. Wha'chew doin'?" one of the road crew said, wandering over. He was wearing a "Red Nails: Leap of Faith" T-shirt and had to shout to be heard over the band, even back here behind the amplifiers.
"We've got to move this stuff out of the way to make a clear path to the stage," Eric said, extending a thread of Bardic Magick toward the man to make what was actually a pretty lame excuse become completely believable. "They told us to take it over by the trailers."
"Well, hell, we'll just have to move it back over here again when Pure Blood comes on, but if that's what they said, go ahead. Wouldn't want the sky-pilots to trip over somebody's ax. Need any help?"
"No, we've got it. Thanks."
"Look out for souvenir hunters. Judah's been having trouble hanging on to his panties. The ladies think he's really hot." The roadie ended with a snort that said, wordlessly, and so does he.
Eric just grinned and waved, keeping up his impersonation of someone who was with the tour. Lady Day started rolling, and he did his best to give the impression he was controlling a heavy load.
It seemed as if it took forever before they were safely buried in the middle of the crowd—safe, because the people surrounding them would do a lot to mask them from magickal detection, assuming Gabrevys's people were looking for them here. The spells Eric and Hosea cast kept them from being trampled: the people might not quite register that they were there, but they moved out of the way anyway.
Once they'd worked their way around to the front of the stage, the music was even louder than before. Eric hadn't thought it was possible. He'd never been a real fan of this stuff: his own tastes had always run to classical and traditional music.
Even Magnus and Kayla, who did like what Eric privately referred to as "that head-banging noise" (Kayla liked techno-House; Magnus was a fan of Black Metal) didn't seem to care for the current offering. Well, they could probably make out the lyrics. . . .
Ace and Hosea simply looked grim. And Molly, who was riding atop one of the carts, had flattened down as far as she could, her ears pressed close to the sides of her bowling-ball-shaped head. If the music was stunningly loud to human hearing, Eric could barely imagine how it must sound to a dog.
The crowd began to thin as they neared the other building. Everybody wanted to be close to the music.
Right. Bottom of the ninth and bases loaded. You've been here before. Nevertheless, his stomach was knotting up. He felt a terrible need to hurry, although they were moving as fast as they could, and if they flat-out ran, they might attract the attention of any of the things around here that could see through Bardic glamouries. There was a lot they were counting on to make this work: most of all, that Prince Gabrevys shared the fatal obliviousness of all the Unseleighe Sidhe, and would simply never imagine (not that any of the Sidhe were any good at imagining, and as far as Eric knew, Gabrevys had no human advisors) that an enemy he'd last seen running for his life, an enemy that Gabrevys knew he was more powerful than, would simply turn around and sneak right back into his mortal stronghold.
And beyond that, they were counting on the fact that Gabrevys ap Ganeliel was a feudal prince who took his ruling style from the real Middle Ages—which meant that the way he wanted to do something was the way it was going to be done, period. And that meant that even if any of his underlings happened to have any initiative, they certainly wouldn't use it. If Gabrevys had a bunch of people looking for the five of them in South Jersey and said that was where they were, nobody would be looking for them here if they knew what was good for them.
Meanwhile, just as Eric had said to Magnus what seemed like a thousand years ago, repeating what his own mentor had told him: "Life is war, young Banyon. Art is war. You would do well to remember both these things. Concentrate on the destination, not the journey. And do not allow your lust for frivolity and self-indulgence to distract you, for your enemy will use that against you. Self-indulgence is a vice no Bard—and no warrior—can afford."
They weren't here to take out Gabrevys or his Bard—or even Parker Wheatley and his new "Demonic" crusade today. All they wanted to do was shut down this crowd so that Ria's specialists could come in and find the bomb. They wouldn't have any trouble getting into the building—provided they didn't have Talent, anyway.
Hosea tapped Eric on the shoulder and pointed. Between the music and the roaring of the crowd, talking was impossible. He could have cast a bubble of silence around them to shut out the noise, but he really didn't want to use any more magick than he had to. Enough magick of the wrong sort would probably attract Gabrevys's attention.
He looked where Hosea indicated.
There were two guards in casino security uniforms standing in front of the main entrance to the building they wanted to enter, obviously to keep spectators from getting in. Getting around them wouldn't be a problem—a quick look with his mage-sight told Eric they were ordinary mortals, and so the glamourie he had cast to conceal the five of them would hold, and they could probably just walk right past them—but if there were guards here, there'd be more around the side, where the service door was, and those would take more dealing with.
He was right. As they angled around the side, he saw two more of the uniformed guards. But he was not at all prepared for what happened next.
He was ready to put them both to sleep, but he needed to catch their attention in order to do it. But the moment their attention was on them, he didn't get the reaction—irritation, anger, even fear—that he expected. Instead they looked resigned and faintly amused.
"Is this the rest of the stuff for the guys upstairs?" one of the men asked. He had to cup his hands over his mouth and shout to be heard.
"Uh . . . yeah," Eric said. Guys? Upstairs? This does not sound good.
But they could deal with them when they got there—they'd have to—and right now he was going to take the guards' mistake as a gift from whatever gods protected improvising musicians. He simply waited as one of the guards opened the unlocked door for them and held it to let them move their equipment through, cracking some joke that Eric and the others couldn't hear.
At least once the door was shut, the music was damped to a dull roar. They moved away from the entrance, down the dark hall, lest the Security people should think twice about letting them in. Next thing they had to do was find the stairs—and then find out whose little helpers those guys had mistaken them for.
But was something else weird going on.
This building should have had all the charm of a wet sock, even in the middle of March: stuffy, airless, and damp with the fact that it had been uninhabited and without power for who knew how long. But although it was obviously untenanted, there was air circulating here.
"Power's on," Magnus said, coming to a stop. He flipped a wall switch. The overhead lights came on. "Yup."
"Elevators," Kayla said, turning back. With elevators they wouldn't have to drag this stuff up quite so many stairs, and from the second story, they could find the roof access.
"Why?" Hosea asked simply.
"Somebody else in this building needs power for something," Eric said. "Electrical power, not the other kind. And they must be running enough equipment off it that the guys at the door figured we were with them, bringing in more."
Kayla found the button and pushed it. The rumble of the elevator indicated that all the building's systems were, indeed, live. It descended to ground level and the doors opened.
Kayla started to wheel her cart into it, but Eric stopped her.
"If there are freaky people upstairs, Hosea and I had better deal with them first," he said.
"Here, Little Bit," Hosea said, slipping his banjo off his shoulder and handing it to Kayla. "You hang on to Jeanette for me until I get back."
"Aw, geez," Kayla muttered, taking the instrument gingerly by the neck. "First dogs, now haunted refugees from the Grand Ol' Opry. Hurry back, you guys."
Her tone was light, but her pupils were dilated. Eric just nodded at her.
The elevator doors opened, and Hosea and Eric walked in.
Eric took a deep breath, doing his best to feel as far away as he could, trying to sense danger ahead—or possibly behind. He wasn't sure whether to feel pleased or irritated that he didn't sense anything at all.
The elevator stopped.
The lights were on here on the second floor, at least in the back half of the building, but like the old joke said, nobody seemed to be home.
Neither Eric nor Hosea were inclined to raise their voices though—or even, really, to talk. Both of them could feel that there was something wrong here, as wrong as if all the closed doors they passed in the hallway concealed stacks of murdered bodies. They just weren't sure, either of them, what it was.
And for some reason, they could hear the concert better here than they had downstairs.
Could the bomb be here, instead of over in the cathedral and casino? Eric paused to consider that. It was so . . . unlikely . . . that he simply didn't think that Gabrevys would have thought of it, and he couldn't imagine that the Unseleighe Prince would have warded that building and not this one if the bomb were here.
But because the stakes were so very high, Eric took the time to look, using his mage-sight to look not only through the building, but through the building, as if it weren't there, searching for anything that thought of itself as a bomb. Nothing on this floor, or the floor below, and the building was built on a slab besides—buildings near the coast didn't tend to run to basements—so there wasn't a basement to worry about.
Nothing.
Whatever was the cause of their uneasiness, it was something else.
When they found the fire stairs at the end of the hallway—fortunately the building wasn't very large, not in comparison with the Cathedral and Casino of Prayer—they also found a nest of extension cords running from various outlets and rushing up the steps like a Medusa's hair. The door itself was propped open—the music was very loud now—and ice-cold outdoor air came blowing down the short flight of stairs that led to the roof. The air brought with it a rank organic scent—maybe somebody had been dumping garbage up here?
"Somebody shore needs a lot of power for his radio," Hosea said. Eric couldn't hear him now, but he could read his lips.
Eric nodded. "Let's go see," he mouthed back.
They moved cautiously up the stairs, Eric in the lead. The door at the top hadn't just been propped open, it had been ripped off its hinges. Well, that pretty much explained why the music was so loud.
Ripped off the hinges . . .
This is not good.
Cautiously, Eric looked around the edge of the doorway.
The power cables snaked out to the center of the roof to three state-of-the-art video cameras on tripods and their peripherals, all trained on the stage across the way. The set-up wouldn't be visible from the ground—well, they hadn't seen it, after all.
And baby-sitting the equipment were three werewolves.
They weren't "real" werewolves—as much as the term had any meaning. They were seven-foot-tall fur-covered tailless bipeds with wolfish heads, hands with long talons, and doglike haunches: horror-movie werewolves. They weren't anything Eric had a name for, but Gabrevys had already proved he had allies from something other than the Celtic-based Unseleighe Realms.
Must be Low Court, or something like it, or they would have spotted us on our way here, Eric thought automatically. Low Court Seleighe Sidhe couldn't survive away from their Node Grove; in fact, none of the Low Court creatures on the Light Side of the Force that he had ever run across could get far from their anchoring point in the World Above. He didn't want to think about what their Unseleighe counterparts did to manage.
Or had done for them.
If they were Unseleighe, he could try playing the Bard Card: of course, if they weren't Sidhe after all—and they might not be; there were some very weird things Underhill—it wouldn't matter at all to them whether he was a Bard or not. Only the Celtic-inspired creatures had any respect for Bards, or fear of them.
Hosea came up behind him and peered out over his shoulder. The big man saw what Eric had seen and jerked back with a sound like a stifled and indignant cough of laughter.
Eric could only share his feelings. There was something weirdly silly—and horrible at the same time—about watching a bunch of shaggy nightmares peering through lenses, adjusting recording equipment, and generally acting like techie-geeks, while knowing they must be here so that Gabrevys would have a nice detailed wide-angle souvenir of the explosion and its aftermath. And knowing, too, that the moment they saw the two humans, they'd come for them and rip them to bits. And probably eat them.
He didn't want to fight. He'd been in one full-scale elven battle—the one Perenor had so kindly arranged back in Southern California—and he still had nightmares about that.
Maybe he could just get them all to go to sleep . . .
"Nice puppies," Eric muttered under his breath, conjuring up his Flute of Air.
The notes he blew weren't precisely music: they were music and more—color and light and scent; the idea of rest, comfort, deep, dreamless sleep. They spread out from the shimmering body of the flute in a sparkling swirling fan and arced over the werewolves as if Eric had cast a net.
The spell had no effect.
Except one.
All three of them pricked up their ears as if somebody had just rung the dinner bell.
As one, they swiveled their long heads and stared.
And with a flash of fangs, all three of them came loping across the roof toward the doorway. The wolf-legs on the almost-human torso gave them an odd tippy-toe gait that looked uncomfortable, like sprinters in high heels.
Except they were coming really fast. And it didn't look as if they were eager to shake hands. Rip the hands off, yes; shake them, no.
Ice and fire mixed ran through his veins, and everything went into Matrix-style bullet-time.
Run? No real place to go. If he and Hosea ran, they'd only lead the werewolves back to the others—who were even less prepared to defend themselves than Eric and Hosea were—and when push came to shove, they needed this rooftop as a staging ground for their spell.
No matter who was on it now.
They had to fight. And as little as Eric liked the idea, they had to kill, because he didn't think there was any way short of that to stop these creatures without magick.
Eric stepped out onto the roof. He summoned up his armor—of all the spells he had at his command, this was one of the easiest—and drew his sword. So much for Bardic inviolability; even if they are Sidhe I've just forfeited my rights to that by drawing first. . . .
Just for good measure he summoned up a levin-bolt (major chord; crash of violins) and with everything he had in him, he threw it at the nearest one, full-strength.
A levin-bolt was pure raw magick, as lethal as lightning: Sidhe, mortal, or King Kong, a levin-bolt would destroy them all.
But he wasn't particularly surprised—just a little disappointed—to see the blast of energy slide sideways in every direction at once—at least that was what it looked like—without any effect.
Not Sidhe, then. He'd been pretty sure when he'd seen how they'd reacted to his first spell, but now he was really sure. Some of the creatures that lived Underhill, oddly enough, all things considered, were utterly magick-null. Magick simply didn't affect them.
They made great shock troops.
Now his senses all began to speed up, until they caught up with real-time.
Right about the moment that the werewolves closed on them.
The lead werewolf clawed at him, growling, and Eric ran sideways along the roof, opening up room to move. The other two followed; he could see the three of them barking—or whatever they did—but he couldn't hear a thing over the music. He danced out of the way, muscles reacting before his brain finished going Oh shit! He jabbed at the monster with his sword, making it keep its distance. One good swipe from those talons and his head would come right off.
He ducked under a clumsy swipe and slashed at the arm, and was relieved to see that the blade bit deep into the shaggy flesh, and that it seemed to hurt—at least enough to make the monster backpedal a bit. Dharniel had been insistent that he learn more about swordplay than Terenil had had the time to teach him, saying a Bard must be a master of all the arts. While Eric would never be the equal of someone who'd had centuries to spend practicing with a blade, he wasn't exactly incompetent. And his body was trained now, the way a gymnast's body was trained. He didn't have to think anymore to fight; just react.
The other two stayed behind the leader, trying to decide what to do. In a moment they'd spread out and try to surround him, and then things would get—Eric grimaced at himself, but was unable to resist the pun—hairy. Behind them, he saw Hosea running toward the camera equipment. They hadn't noticed that Eric had brought a friend yet.
Dharniel had always told him that the outcome of a fight was decided in the first moments of engagement. He didn't have time right now to wonder if that was true, and in fact he'd never really figured out what the Elven War-Chief meant by it.
What he did know was that suddenly for just a moment he had an opening, and a werewolf right in front of him that he'd made just too mad with his constant sword-pricks to realize that running straight into a sword probably wasn't a good idea.
It was a perfect stop-thrust, even though his sword wasn't really designed for fencing moves, and he'd had to bring it up two-handed. Nausea rose up in his throat as the length of elven blade slid through hair and skin and meat, but it did what it was designed to do. It killed. The werewolf made an odd gargling sound, and dropped, sliding off his blade even as Eric withdrew it.
That left two.
Eric danced back, moving automatically, trying not to think too hard about what he'd just done. It wasn't the first time he'd been responsible for things and people dying, sure, but it was the first time he'd done it so up close and hands on. And this was not the time to have a melt-down over it. He might have killed one, but there were two left.
And whichever one he went for, the other one would go for him.
"Hey-yah—doggie!"
Hosea's words echoed loud in the few seconds of silence between the end of the music across the way and the start of the crowd's cheering. He came running across the roof, one of the tripod legs from one of the cameras in his hand. As a makeshift spear, it was probably as good as they were going to be able to come up with on short notice.
One of the two monsters turned its attention to Hosea. Eric shifted his attention to the other one. The music started again.
How many numbers is this? Are they near the end of their set? Is Pure Blood the next band to go on, or do they have another warm-up band? Dammit, we've got to finish this!
Either the new werewolf was smarter than the one Eric had just killed, or it had learned from the leader's fatal mistake. It circled around, forcing him to keep turning to face it, growling meaningfully deep in its throat—Eric couldn't hear it, but it looked as if it were growling—and slashing at him with those long-taloned hands.
And he kept slashing back. But he inflicted only superficial cuts; not enough to disable, not enough to kill. Perhaps not even enough for it to feel.
It was waiting for him to get tired, he realized. Or careless. If it could get inside his defense, it could tear him to pieces. And he was distracted, wanting to know what was happening with Hosea and knowing he didn't dare look.
He'd wounded it a dozen times—small cuts on its forearms—but they weren't even slowing it down. And he was getting tired. He was going to have to think of something new. And fast.
He dropped his sword, turned, and ran.
He'd had his back to the camera equipment when he'd done it, and the sheer apparent stupidity of the maneuver got him a good five-second lead. He reached the cameras first and turned.
The werewolf was in midair, springing for the kill, fangs bared, talons spread.
Eric called his sword.
It snapped into his palm with a stinging impact. He barely had time to bring the point up before the monster landed on it.
And him.
Ah CRAP!
All the breath was driven out of him, as the mass of fetid fur threw him to the surface of the roof.
His armor saved him from broken bones, but there was no way that having a couple of hundred pounds of werewolf land on you from six feet up could be called fun by any stretch of the imagination. He did his best to roll with the impact, but it still knocked the air out of him completely, and it was several seconds before he could shove the smelly mass off him and get to his feet.
Star Wars had always been his favorite movie. He'd driven Dharniel crazy practicing moves from the dueling sequences. Now he was glad that —
Hosea!
He looked wildly around.
Hosea was standing over the last of the werewolves. Its throat gaped open as if it had been sliced. The improvised spear stuck up out of its abdomen at an angle as well, but that obviously hadn't been enough to kill it.
Hosea saw him and smiled, but not happily. He held out his gloved hands, and now Eric could see that there was a thin red cord looped between them.
"Banjo string," Hosea explained. "Ah keep extras in mah pockets 'cause they do break at the darndest times, an', well, Ah figured that a lot of uncanny things don't like silver much."
And, silver or not, a metal banjo string makes a pretty good garrote, Eric thought.
"Come on," Eric said wearily. "I don't think we have much time."
Dead, the creatures were vulnerable to magick. Eric used a spell to burn the bodies to ash. He really didn't think the others needed to come up here and see a roof full of dead werewolves.
Getting the equipment upstairs took two trips, and when they were done, Eric locked both elevators open and took a moment to summon a spell to lock all the downstairs doors: the doors to the outside as well as the doors to the fire stairs. It wouldn't stop anybody who was really determined to get in for very long, but it would buy them time.
Without Lady Day, getting the drumset up the last half-flight of stairs would have been a major undertaking, but the elvensteed simply rolled up the stairs as if she were one of the Mars Rovers. Molly followed her, scampering around the roof, and sniffing curiously at the scorch-marks that were all that remained of the werewolves.
"Um . . . trouble?" Kayla asked, watching the pug.
"Some," Eric admitted. Not that Kayla couldn't take a pretty good guess. He knew those things had needed to die, and had probably deserved to die besides, but he wasn't sure how he felt about being the one to kill two of them, and he didn't really have time to sort out his feelings right now.
Eric had played with Beth's band, Spiral Dance, enough times to know how to set up a band's equipment, and he knew Kayla had some experience herself. They got to work, clearing the space they'd need.
"These amps aren't going to be anything like big enough," Magnus said, as he uncovered the drum-kit and began setting it out. As soon as he removed the last piece of equipment from Lady Day, the elvensteed shuddered and resumed her "natural" form—looking rather relieved to do so, Eric thought. "They'll never hear us."
Magnus pulled out a set of sticks and twirled them experimentally, frowning.
"Magick will take care of that," Eric said, setting up the keyboard. The gods bless Dharniel and Juilliard for their mutual agreement that a Bard should be a master of many instruments. The keyboard certainly wasn't his favorite instrument, and he wasn't wild about the elven harp either, but he could play both of them. He started transferring the power cables from the recording devices to their equipment.
Kayla had already slung a metallic-purple Stratocaster over her shoulder and was fingering it experimentally, her face neutral.
Eric kept his mouth buttoned—but he hadn't known until this moment she could play guitar. Maybe it was something she'd learned while Underhill—just as Dharniel had insisted that he learn swordcraft, the Healers had seen to it that Kayla learn to play and sing. It would make sense. The elves had a notion that a person should be well-rounded that dated back to the training of a medieval knight.
Ace picked up a microphone and was checking it. "Just like old times," she said. She flipped switches on its accompanying amp and nodded.
Hosea would be playing Jeanette, of course. He'd set up a microphone close to her soundbox, and another one on a stand so he could sing and play at the same time.
Eric found the microphone that belonged in the stand attached to the keyboard and clipped it into place.
No time. No rehearsal. And the stakes just about as high as they could be.
And Magnus the key to all of it, because a band without a drummer wasn't a band.
He looked at Magnus. Magnus raised his sticks in salute and smiled ferally.
"Okay," Kayla said. "Let's rock the house. With what?"
"Doesn't matter," Ace said absently. Her eyes were far away. "The music's just a vessel. I'll make it do what you want."
"Something as different from that as possible," Eric said firmly, indicating the band on the stage across the way. He brought his hands down on the keys with a theatrical crash.
He was alone for the first few bars until Magnus realized what he was playing. His brother shot him a look of agonized disbelief, then laid down the rhythm, clear and strong.
Kayla and Hosea came in right on cue, and then Ace.
"'I thought love was only true in fairy tales—'"
A silly trippy hippity-hoppy song, first made a hit by the Monkees when Eric had been younger than Magnus was now, and recently covered by Smashbox in a movie about a big green guy who marries a princess and lives happily ever after.
A happy song. A hopeful song. A song about finding out things weren't so bad after all. About believing.
Ace poured everything she had into the song. Eric could feel exactly what she was doing: everyone who heard her—and thanks to Bardic Magick, that was everyone here—felt happiness. Felt love. Felt a desire to be kind, and most of all, to help.
It was the best thing she could have done. If she'd focused on making them all want to leave, she would have triggered the same kind of riots they'd come here to avoid. But calm happy helpful people would cooperate with the Bomb Squad, and would certainly leave in an orderly fashion if they were told to.
He concentrated everything he had on feeding her more power, and he knew Hosea was doing the same.
And out of nowhere, he felt that power increase, as if somehow, the whole was more—far more—than the sum of two Bards and two Talents.
No.
Three Talents.
Magnus?
Eric glanced over at his brother. To all appearances, Magnus was lost in a world of his own, his hands blurring over the drums as he laid down a complex underpinning for the song. His head was down, his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. He'd even taken off his blazer.
And he—glowed—with power. Eric could see its threads, reaching out to all of them.
No Gift of his own that anyone can see—but the power to make the Gifts of others stronger . . .
"I'm A Believer" came to an end. Without a pause, Eric called for "Istanbul" by They Might Be Giants.
Judah Galilee paced back and forth in his dressing room irritably. His master had truly not been pleased when he had been forced to return empty-handed this dawn, and only the fact that his presence was vital at this entertainment—and for others of his master's plans in the days to come—had kept him and his men from going to feed the Shadows. But it had been made clear to him that he stood in disgrace: the hunt for Misthold's mortal Bard—and the rewards for its successful conclusion—were to be given to others. Mere underlings! Worse. Mortals. Weak, mayfly mortals!
Oh, let the Prince attempt to build his Domain upon the prowess of mortals! Judah thought rebelliously. Others have gone that road, and the Chaos Lands have taken them! He will see in the end that only his own blood may be trusted.
Judah smiled. But Prince Gabrevys's own blood couldn't be trusted, could it? His own blood had betrayed him, fled to the Bright Court, hiding there behind the skirts of the spineless milk-toothed Seleighe. Oh, the song he could make of that would cast his master down so low that not even the Morrigan herself—should she wish it—could raise him up again.
Perhaps . . . just perhaps . . . it was time to remind Prince Gabrevys of that fact, and seek a greater share in his master's power.
Or seek another Court.
But not just yet. Not until he was sure there was no greater prize to be won here.
Suddenly Judah felt a ripple of magic spread over the lovely, murky, anguished currents of the Festival. A small thing at first, but it grew, spreading like oil on a turbulent sea, leaching away the anger, the power, that he and the others had so carefully nurtured here.
He flung open the door of his dressing room and rushed outside.
The others were standing in the hallway. They'd felt it too. They weren't Bards, of course—he wasn't foolish enough to keep such competition close, but even minstrels, Court singers and entertainers with minor magicks, were neither blind nor deaf to magick.
He thrust open the door to the outside and glared around wildly.
There!
Atop the building across the way. Judah's lips pulled back in a feral snarl. His master's quarry and all his friends, here in the heart of Prince Gabrevys's power, working such magick as was an affront to his master and all his careful plans. Already the audience was turning away from the stage as if the band had fallen silent and was moving toward the other building, to stand grouped around it, drinking from the tainted fountain of Bright magicks.
Judah felt their pull as well. They burned across his senses like acid as their pull strengthened. Give in—submit—grovel—
"No!" he shouted.
He grabbed Jakan—who was nearest—by the shoulder and flung him out the door. "Get to the stage!" he shouted. "By the Morrigan, we will whip these dogs to their kennels and leave their bones to rot in the Chaos Lands!"
About the time Eric and the band were halfway through their second number, they had no competition. The band on the stage below had simply stopped to listen—not that TMBG's lyrics made sense at the best of times, really, which was part of the point. As for Lost Angels' erstwhile audience, they'd turned away, toward Ace and the spell she was weaving, and were moving toward the building. They'd simply dropped their banners and signs, as if they were no longer of any real importance. And that, more than anything else, was a good sign the music was working.
Suddenly Eric saw four figures rush out toward the other stage. He saw a flash of blood-red hair. Gabrevys's Bard.
They mounted the stage, dragging the musicians away from their instruments and throwing them bodily from the stage. As they moved within range of the cameras, their images appeared on the two big screens flanking the stage. In the unforgiving close-up Eric could see Jormin's face distorted with hate and pain at the effects of the spell that Ace was weaving.
The Unseleighe Bard wasn't even bothering with the glamourie that would give him human seeming. None of them were. Anyone in the audience who noticed would probably just take it for another special effect, though, or some elaborate form of makeup.
Eric saw Jormin's lips move as he shouted something to the band.
And suddenly the opening chords of something oddly familiar to a classically trained musician blasted from the gigantic amplifiers that towered over the Main Stage.
Verdi's Dies Irae.
It sounded as if Jormin had opened the gates of Hell. He wasn't even trying to disguise the fact that the sounds the four of them were producing couldn't possibly come from those instruments. A pure wall of hate, carried on the rising tide of the music, swept over the unsuspecting audience, destroying what Ace had done and drawing them back toward Pure Blood.
But its true target was Eric and the others.
Inside the casino and cathedral, for once the slot machines were quiet, there was no sound from the tables, and instead of recordings of upbeat praise music, the speakers were emitting a muted feed from the concert stage. A lavish buffet and open bar was laid on for the members of the press who were more interested in either watching the concert in comfort—all the screens in the casino were showing the live feed from the stage—or in interviewing Billy Fairchild and his associates. Billy was pleased to see they'd had a good turn-out, all more than willing to listen to what he had to say so long as he was feeding them and supplying free booze. Well, you had to use the devil's weapons, sometimes. Not that he was entirely averse to the notion of a drop or two, now and then. For purely medicinal purposes, of course. And as soon as those long-hair boys of Gabe's had finished their caterwauling, he'd go out and lead God's righteous army of the Faithful gathered here today in a prayer for the deliverance into their hands of certain knowledge of their enemies and the strength to cleanse the Lord's house of sinners. And then Brother Wheatley would say a word or two about the demons, which would certainly be good for business. Free-will offerings had been up a solid two percent since Wheatley had been on the show, and Billy was thinking of having him on again. Now there was someone he understood! Someone with a goal, and a straight idea of just who the enemy was, someone who had old-fashioned ideas about what worked and how to confront your enemies. Reveal the devil's handiwork, wherever you found it! Go straight for the jugular, that was the way to do it! None of this pussyfooting around. Why, if he'd done it all the way he'd wanted, he'd have had his rights as a father, and had one of the boys just go and get Heavenly Grace and haul her home like the disobedient and contrary Serpent's Tooth she was, and deprogram her like Gabriel was supposed to be doing and none of this business with lawyers and courts. . . .
The sound from the screens was kept down to a tolerable level, thank the Good Lord, though even with the casino's excellent soundproofing everything seemed to vibrate just a bit from the playing of the actual band outside. Try as he might, he could not find it within his heart to like this music, no matter how good it was for the Ministry. It was nothing like his own sweet Gospel choir and his dear Heavenly Grace. Even from in here, the band's playing was like being next to a freeway at rush hour, and according to Gabe, it wasn't the loudest one that was going to play today. At least he could leave after he'd made his speech—and before he lost his hearing.
Oh, how he missed Heavenly Grace's singing! But Gabe had promised him that she would be with him soon. Maybe Gabe had come to his senses about straight talk and straight action. Maybe spending time with the young and impatient had done the trick. Yes, yes, that was surely the answer, for Gabe had sworn that after today, the lawyers and the courts wouldn't matter any more, and that Billy would never have to deal with them again. His lost lamb would soon be back within the fold, and that after today, he wouldn't have to worry about missing her any longer. It could be those long-hair boys had done Gabe some good, set his mind to action instead of dancing around that limb of Satan that called herself a judge. Billy had to give Gabriel Horn this much: only in that one instance had Gabe not been able to deliver what he'd promised. And Gabe had been madder over that than Billy'd been, almost.
Suddenly Billy realized that the God-awful caterwauling had stopped. He glanced up at the screen, and frowned. The musicians were just standing there, holding their instruments, staring off into space.
Just like they were off in a trance or something. Except if this was a Visitation of the Holy Spirit, they'd have been speaking in Tongues, not standing there like a bunch of street-corner hop-heads.
There could only be one explanation. They were a bunch of street-corner hop-heads.
His temper flared.
Dammit, he'd told Gabriel no drugs! These were supposed to be good Christian boys witnessing to Jesus through music, not drug-addled Satanic vipers like the kind of rock musicians you saw on television and read about in the papers! He couldn't afford any shadow of scandal—
And where was Gabriel, come to that?
Fuming, Billy Fairchild went off to look for the man responsible for this disaster.
Parker Wheatley stood as far as it was possible to get from the front doors of the casino, but the sound of the guitars was still like the whine of a jet engine; both piercing and exhausting. From the briefing earlier in the day, he knew that they had at least another forty minutes of this to endure before it was time for the Reverend Billy Fairchild to strut and preen.
And for him to do his bit, as well. It had taken every bit of persuasion he had, and ultimately he'd had to point to a miniscule bump in the collection-plate tally that was statistically insignificant, but he'd managed to get Billy to agree to let him have another shot at haranguing the masses.
He didn't much like this business, these neo-Nazi Christians. They were unstable, uncontrolled, dangerous. There was no telling what they might do.
If he'd still been working in Washington—or even had any contacts there that he still cared to cultivate—he would certainly have sent a carefully worded memo or two their way just to consolidate his own position. If Fairchild Ministries wasn't on one of the hatewatch lists yet, it would be very soon, unless the political climate on the Hill had changed out of all recognition. He was going to have to do something about that if he was going to get anything useful out of them at all. Not that he cared about the direction as such—but narrowing the focus to the far-far-far end of the extreme came with a price tag. Pretty soon people like the Anti-Defamation Leagues of both Jewish and Moslem sectors were going to come nipping at Billy's heels, not to mention the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the ACLU and—well, fighting them was going to take away money and resources, and there was no point in pouring both down a hole when simply moderating the tone would keep them away.
However, once they went away—well, that particular far-far-far-out sector and their plans for America were very, very useful indeed, so far as Wheatley was concerned. Moderate the tone in public, that was the key. In private—find a way to control them, then use them, use them for all they were worth.
The close connection between some of the Christian denominations and the White Power sects was a more than open secret. As far back as Reconstruction at least, racism and bigotry had wrapped themselves in the American flag, thumped the Bible, and brandished the Cross . . . when they weren't burning it on somebody's lawn.
And when the times had changed, they'd changed with them. After the end of WWII, certainly racism and anti-Semitism had continued to flourish as ugly blots on the American landscape, but any notions of "Aryan supremacy" had needed to be carefully packaged, as the Nazis had rendered the name—if not the actual concept—unpalatable to the generation that had fought and died to make Europe free.
But nearly six decades had passed since V-E Day; the men that had fought the Nazis were dead, senile, or too old and polite to say anything, and what might seem an unlikely alliance for any student of history—Nazi tenets and far-right Christian fundamentalism—had taken hold in the ideological attics and basements of the Far Right, growing more powerful every year.
And their promoters more savvy. These days the neo-"Aryan" groups recruited at "festivals of European culture" that seemed, on the surface, just as innocuous as the Highland Games and Scottish festivals that had thousands of normal red-blooded American men dressing up in plaid skirts every year. They slicked up their message and set it to a hard-rock beat—just as Gabriel Horn was doing now—and before their listeners quite knew what was happening, they were swept into in the dark, poisonous subculture of "racial purity."
Oh, not many, out of all those who bought the albums or went to the events. Right now, the recruiters thought that one in a hundred was a good return on their investment. And it was, because for every person who didn't get involved on a deeper level, there were a dozen who thought that whatever aspect of European Christianity—to give the movement only one of the hundreds of names it was currently going by—they'd encountered was perfectly harmless. Nothing to make a fuss about. In fact, some of their points were right on, brother! And they'd continue thinking these cheerful, smiling, happy people were all right, a little loud, maybe, but pretty much on the right track. They'd let themselves be lulled, let themselves look past all the warning signs, and if this lot ever found themselves a single charismatic leader, they'd watch and applaud him all the way to the White House.
Wake up, America. It's 1938, Wheatley thought sardonically.
Not that he cared much. There was business to be done under any government, and if the power was consolidated at the top without all those checks and balances like the ones that had put an end to his career, that made things a lot easier for guys like him. Parker Wheatley wanted power, and he wasn't at all fastidious about what he had to do to get it—or who he had to work with. Who was in charge at the top wasn't important. What was important was that they helped him get his job done. Everything else was superfluous.
In fact, hitching his wagon to Billy Fairchild's star might have been a smart move for more reasons than just the Ria Llewellyn connection.
Oh, he hadn't gotten very far yet hunting Spookies in the Fairchild organization—or demons, as Billy preferred to call them—but there was something here to find: he could smell it. He couldn't say just what it was, but somebody in Billy Fairchild's happy family had their hand in a damned big cookie-jar somewhere. It took a horse-thief to know one, after all. So far he'd been kept busy making speeches; he'd barely had a chance to interview—and clear—half the staff. His office and his apartment had both been searched, which was interesting in a quiet way. They were after Aerune's equipment, obviously. And that someone was looking for it was very interesting indeed . . . because no one else was supposed to know it existed.
The music stopped—he felt it as much as heard it—and Wheatley sighed in relief. He knew it was only a temporary respite, but they must all give thanks for the gifts they were given, as his current patron would say.
He went over to the bar to get another drink.
Halfway through his Scotch, the band started up again. Wheatley glanced up at the screen in faint annoyance.
His glass dropped from his nerveless fingers.
There were four Spookies up there on the stage. Playing guitars. And, aside from features more angular than he'd remembered, and the pointed ears, looking very damned much like that pet rock band of Gabriel Horn's, the one he'd been so proud of, the one that was the whole reason for this counter-Woodstock. . . .
And it hit him.
Horn knows. Horn knows what they are.
The realization filled him with virulent excitement. Gabriel Horn had disliked him from the beginning—Wheatley had put that down to a simple turf-war. But—oh, God—what if there were more to it than that? He'd told Fairchild that this was just the sort of operation that the Spookies loved to take over for their own unknowable purposes, and he'd been right—
He looked around wildly. Neither Billy Fairchild nor Gabriel Horn were anywhere to be seen.
Cursing under his breath, Parker Wheatley ran to get his equipment.
He'd elected to watch the concert from his office. Better that than subjecting himself to the yammering of the mortal cattle that Billy loved to surround himself with. And on this day of all days, it would have been too great a temptation to simply slay them all.
Personally.
The mere idea of just summoning his royal armor and his blade, and wading through the crowd swinging, was almost too much to resist.
Gabriel Horn paced back and forth across the floor of his office, all but growling aloud. Only the promise of the carnage to come in less than an hour was remotely soothing.
How could everything have gone so desperately awry so very quickly? Only last night he had everything well in hand: the Bright Bard and his brother were his captives, and by now they should have been destroyed and on their way to spend the rest of their truncated lives as toadying serfs. Heavenly Grace had been a small disappointment, but at least there he would have had revenge, if not victory.
And then they had escaped.
And Jormin and the others had not recaptured them.
The humans he had sent in their place had been no more expert huntsmen, even though he had included a Sidhe among their number to trace the fugitives by magick. It had not occurred to him that they would have elvensteeds—impossible to track by magick or huntscraft—and by then the trail was cold.
He'd done what he could to reclaim the victory. He'd set a watch upon the hotel at which Heavenly Grace and Hosea Songmaker had stayed—if Jormin's geas held, the apprentice-Bard and the little songbird would return there as soon as they could. But in the wake of so many disappointments, Gabriel had little hope of such luck. Though his hunters were still searching for their quarry—as they would until he recalled them did they know what was good for them—without magick to aid them, the hunt would be long and undoubtedly fruitless.
So Misthold's Bard and his acolytes ran free. And Sieur Eric would undoubtedly go whining to his master—if he was not at Arvin's feet already, licking Bright Court boots—of his ill-usage. And worse. The bedlamite Bard would tell all he knew of Gabriel's plans in the world, and who knew what Gabriel's Bright Court cousins might say to that?
Who knew what they would attempt to do to his son?
And if High King Oberon were brought into it . . .
Gabrevys would not forego his revenge against Eric Banyon, by any means, but it would have to take another form, at another time. For now, he would have to content himself as much as he could with knowing how the fate of the Bright Bard's parents would grieve him—and was it not, after all, a fate truly of Sieur Eric's own making?
He would have Jormin make a song about it.
If he did not feed the wretched Bard to the Shadows instead. At least he could do that, if he chose. Jormin was his Bard, his liegeman, and Gabrevys had the rights of life and death over him by ancient usage.
How—how—could Jormin have underestimated the damage young Songmaker could do? It must have been he who had freed the others: there was no one else. Foolish, the confidence that had left one enemy, however weak and ineffectual, to run free, and only see the disaster it had brought in its wake—!
Slowly a sense of wrongness began to penetrate Gabriel's furious anger. It took a long time to gain his attention, but at last he looked—really looked—out the window at the concert venue below.
The audience was moving away from the stage. Turning away from the performers that they had come to see, moving slowly toward the building at the far side of the parking lot, as if there were something there that drew them. But the only thing there should be Gabrevys's own camera setup, placed safely out of harm's way to film the explosion to come.
No.
There were humans on the roof.
The Bard and his companions.
Playing instruments.
Making magick.
Bespelling the audience—his audience!—for a purpose Gabriel did not understand, but which must be some plot to further ruin his plans.
And the blend of the girl's Talent with the magick of Misthold's Bard was irresistible.
But that can be remedied . . .
Gabriel clenched his fist, summoning a levin-bolt, and took aim at the wretched chit of a girl.
And then, with a growl and an internal wrench, stopped. Even now he did not—quite—dare openly break the Law of the Sidhe that held that there should be no overt usage of magick in the World Above. Besides, there was too much Cold Iron here for him to be sure his bolt would fly true—if it struck Bard Eric instead of Heavenly Grace . . .
Then he would be called to account before the High Court itself, and his enemies would be delighted to see that the accounting fell heavily upon him. Oberon would not be amused. And Oberon was High King, not merely because he was Eldest, which he was, but because he was more powerful than any fifty Magus Majors put together.
There was silence below, and then a sudden upwelling of sound and magick. He recognized the playing of his own Bard, and saw the audience eddy about in confusion, caught between the two Bards.
For a moment Gabriel hesitated. If he went down to the stage, joined his power to Jormin's . . .
But no. Though he was a Magus Major, vast in power, he was no Bard. Even here he felt the weakening effects of the spell Bard Eric was spinning; the lure of Heavenly Grace's singing. Perhaps if it had merely been Bard against Bard, Jormin could have won this battle. But it was not. There was the Bard, who had human creativity as well as magick. There was the Apprentice, who was strong in spirit if not in skill. There was the girl, with something beyond mere magick. And—he sensed—another, who had a Talent that bound them together in a whole that was far, far, greater than the sum of its parts. Much as he honored Jormin's gifts, he did not believe his Bard could prevail.
There was only one thing to do to salvage what little he could of all his hopes and plans.
The bomb must explode now.
Wheatley always kept some of his equipment in his office. Not the irreplaceable things, like the parasympathetic energy detectors that detected the reality-manipulating energy that Spookies gave off, or the illusion-filtering lenses that would allow their wearer to see through most Spookie illusions, but the simple things that could be made with Earth technology, like the bolt-guns and the steel capture nets.
Weapons.
It only took him a moment or two to arm himself and stuff some extra equipment into a small bag. If he was lucky, today he'd be able to provide Billy Fairchild with what he'd wanted—a Live Capture of an actual "demon." And all on film! There were cameras all over, trained on that stage. He'd have the capture from as many angles as anyone could want.
And coup of coups, it would be the capture of a "demon" that had been taken into the bosom of the Ministry and cherished there.
As he hurried from his office back toward the casino, he slipped the filter-glasses on. He hated wearing the things: no matter what they'd done with them in R&D, they'd always looked like cheap sun-glasses, and everything the wearer saw looked faintly green.
But wearing them, he'd see the world as it truly was.
And that was vital.
It seemed an eternity as the elevator doors closed and the car began its slow descent toward ground-level, and to Wheatley's intense frustration, it stopped almost immediately.
The doors opened, and Wheatley found himself staring at . . . One of Them.
Tall, taller than Wheatley. Features so angular they looked like a cartoon exaggeration of a human. Pointed ears, and the green, cat-pupilled eyes that were the hallmark of every single one of them. There was a frozen moment when they stared at each other, then Wheatley saw understanding in the monster's eyes that he saw it for what it was.
Wheatley raised his gun and fired.
It was something they'd designed themselves, back in the PDI days, based on Aerune's careful descriptions of what would be most effective against his kind. It was a spring-driven gun—a purely mechanical process—that fired inch-long projectiles of pure iron about the diameter of a really fat knitting needle. It didn't have the range or penetrating capability of a conventional weapon, but against Spookies there was nothing on God's Green Earth more effective.
Half-a-dozen of the projectiles buried themselves in the creature's chest with a faint stuttering sound—thank God the guns were relatively silent, because the upper floors were filled with sightseers today. The Spookie staggered backward, falling to its knees, and then to the floor, twitching as if it had been electrocuted. Wheatley noted with faint interest that smoke was actually rising from the entry wounds.
He didn't make the mistake of assuming it was helpless. Too many good field agents had died making exactly that mistake. He moved quickly, rolling it over and cuffing its hands behind its back—ordinary handcuffs, but oddly enough, just the thing for a Spookie—and then rolling it up in the capture net. The net had locks, allowing its contents to be body-bagged for easy transportation. Like the cuffs, it was steel, not iron, but steel was nearly as effective against Spookies and a great deal stronger.
It was curious that while the Spookies looked more or less like humans, wherever the net and the handcuffs touched the creature's bare flesh, it actually blistered. It was an odd chemical reaction that they'd never gotten a chance to study thoroughly at the PDI, and now, of course, he lacked the equipment and resources. It was an unfortunate loss to the cause of science.
The creature was bleeding heavily from its wounds and, cuffed and wrapped in steel and with a half-dozen iron bolts in its chest, was no longer able to put up much of a fight. Wheatley dragged it into the elevator and punched the button for one of the still-unoccupied floors. He'd find some place to stash the thing, out of the way, until he could add it to his public captures.
Now that he had time to take a better look at what it was wearing, he was fairly sure that it was—or had been impersonating—Gabriel Horn, and the knowledge both cheered and chilled him. Had there ever been a real Gabriel Horn? Or had the Spookie infiltration of Billy Fairchild's organization been at the highest levels all along?
It didn't matter. He could question the Horn-thing later, if it survived. He was reasonably sure it would; Spookies were tough, and he was fairly sure he'd missed the heart. And even if it didn't, he'd have the other four as live captures. It was far more important to neutralize one of Them that was so close to the center of power.
And there won't be any more turf-war going on. Fairchild will be mine, by God!
The elevator stopped again on the unoccupied floor. Wheatley pressed the button that would hold the doors open and dragged his prisoner into the hall. The Spookie groaned in pain as the steel meshes bit into its flesh, but Wheatley didn't care. Right now he had to get it to a secure place as quickly as possible, and then go after the others.
Fortunately the unoccupied floors hadn't been completely finished. There was vinyl, not carpeting, on the floors. That made dragging his burden considerably easier, for Wheatley was not a young man, and had always left the physical side of the PDI's operations to his carefully handpicked cadre of field agents.
He wondered where they were now, his muscle-squad. They'd been good; smart enough to improvise, smart enough not to ask questions that none of them wanted the answer to, incurious, and closemouthed. After today, he'd certainly have the money to hire at least some of them into the private sector, if they weren't there already.
He opened the first door he found and dragged the Spookie inside. He would have left it in the hallway, except for the fear that it would cry out, and someone might hear, and stop to help it before realizing what it was.
He removed his glasses to check. It was clear that it no longer had the power to maintain the illusion of human form that the creatures so loved to mock humanity with, but its flesh was so burned and swollen by contact with the steel netting that its inhumanity was not instantly recognizable. Only the long pointed ears betrayed it.
"By the Morrigan, you will die a thousand deaths for this," it whispered faintly. It coughed, and spat blood, writhing as it futilely sought some position that would keep its head and body from coming into contact with the mesh of the capture net.
"But not today," Wheatley said, with a satisfaction so deep he wasn't even inclined to gloat. "Today belongs to the human race, 'Mr. Horn.'"
Eric could actually see the clashing magicks boiling over each other like oil over water.
And their side was winning. He'd hardly dared believe it at first, but they were. What was it that Dharniel had said?
"The difference between the Light and the Shadow is that when the Light illuminates what is in the Shadow, there turns out to be nothing there after all but illusion and fear, but even when the Shadow overwhelms the Light, there still exists the rock of courage and the spark of hope. . . ."
They ripped into their third number with the force of a freight train that had lost its brakes, playing as if they'd gigged together for years. I just wish Bethie was here to hear this, Eric thought wistfully.
Pure Blood was giving it everything they had—Eric couldn't hear them, though he could see them on the monitors—but the audience just wasn't buying what they were selling today. The crowd had all moved away from the main stage, clearing the road and the area around the casino and cathedral, and now Eric could see the flashing lights of emergency vehicles moving up the main road. The Bomb Squad had arrived.
He knew he was singing better than he ever had before in his life, his tenor and Hosea's rich baritone automatically finding the harmony to support Ace's soaring bell-clear soprano. It was as if the five of them were one performer now, acting together without thought, without flaw. Even Molly's yips and barks contributed to the music.
Down below people were crying, were hugging each other, were kissing. It might not last, but right here, right now, everything was—was Light. Peace was right. Love was right. No one even thought about hating anyone else right now. This was the way the world should be.
Then he saw Parker Wheatley.
The man was impossible to miss in a bright green suit, his image twelve feet high on two giant screens. He'd climbed up on the stage, moving toward Judah Galilee, holding something in his hand that Eric couldn't quite make out, even with the magnification the big screen provided.
But Judah didn't react. None of the members of Pure Blood reacted, although Wheatley walked right past the drummer, in plain sight of him. It was as if they couldn't see him at all.
Green suit—Beth told me—it makes them invisible to Sidhe, or nearly—
His immediate impulse was to warn Judah, but before he could think of how to do it—never mind whether or not Judah would believe him—Judah recoiled and fell.
All his spells, all his arts, his carefully crafted songs—worthless! The fickle human sheep had chosen another master this day, and no matter how much he raged, Jormin ap Galever could do nothing to change that. He might summon levin-bolts and burn them all to ash, but against the power the Bright Bard had summoned—in the Morrigan's Name, how?—he and his minions were helpless to bend the humans' wills.
And that spell, that loathsome tainted groveling love, was like a web of Cold Iron laid upon his skin. . . .
Suddenly he howled in stark agony, as a bolt of the metal itself pierced his skin. He fell to the floor—where was his attacker? Who dared?
"Stay back, all of you. I have more of these."
And with a clangor of discordances, the music, their music, stuttered to a halt and died.
Judah writhed upon the stage, clawing at his back, but the human's bolt had gone too deep for him to draw it out. He could feel it eating at him from within, boiling his flesh away.
"All of you. Over there. With him."
Abidan and Jakan slowly moved to obey, lifting the straps of their guitars over their necks and beginning to move toward Judah, their postures the picture of dejected defeat. Their instruments dangled from their hands as if they had suddenly forgotten their use. Coz stood up from behind the drums and began to move forward as well.
"Keep your hands where I can see them. And don't bother trying any of your tricks. This suit I'm wearing will protect me from anything you can possibly do."
"Ae, e'en this, maister?" Abidan snarled. Suddenly he straightened, tossing off his pose of subjugation, his guitar spinning in his hands as if it were a battle-axe, not an instrument. He brought it down on the man's arm hard enough to break the bone, then swung it again at the back of his head.
The stranger in the green suit crumpled to the ground with a surprised bleat.
On the rooftop opposite, they saw it all. Ace stopped singing and stared at the scene on the monitor in horror, then looked back at Eric. Behind her, the playing of the others straggled to a stop. First Jormin/Judah went down—then Wheatley, hammered by one of Judah's band!
Now what were they supposed to do?
Eric understood her confusion all too well. Certainly Judah and the others were the enemy by any rubber yardstick you chose to use—but then, so was Wheatley. And no matter what, it wasn't right for them to simply stand by and let two sets of Bad Guys tear each other to shreds. But they shouldn't help Wheatley, not after what he'd done to Kory and Beth, and to all those other people. And they wouldn't help Jormin!
What could they do?
But the Unseleighe band weren't pressing their attack against Wheatley. The other three had gathered around their leader, lifting Judah up and carrying him from the stage.
"Sing," Eric said urgently to Ace. "We're not done yet, not even close! There's still the bomb. We've still got all those people out there and we can't let them turn back into a mob."
Ace lifted the microphone again.
This time it wasn't a bouncy rock song or a piece of retro bubblegum fluff. She returned to the music she knew best, and the pure soaring strains of her own namesake song, "Amazing Grace," echoed through the now-silent parking-lot, as the crowd gathered below them in hushed and reverent silence and the emergency vehicles clustered ever-deeper around the Cathedral and Casino of Prayer.
This time her song held sadness.
Sadness for every lost opportunity, every unkind word, every chance at reconciliation turned away through pride or anger. She might sing that she had been "lost but now was found," but beneath her words was the aching sorrow for all those who still were lost in the Shadow, who were still blind, who still turned away from love to seek hate, who still could not see the Grace that could save them. Because they'd won now, Eric realized: he could see it and so could she, and that meant they'd both have to face their families, and try to deal with the aftermath of all the terrible things that had happened here.
Things that had happened out of a kind of love. Not the sort from Ecclesiastes, the love that was "faithful and kind, does not insist on its own way," but love of the worst and most toxic sort—twisted and wrong-headed and not love by any reasonable definition. But it thought of itself as being love; and it was still something that had started out to be—once, long ago—real love.
And so tears glistened in Ace's eyes as she sang, and a lump formed in Eric's throat as he played—for the families, for the parents they both could have had, if a thousand things had gone differently.
And down there below—down there, those thousands of listeners looked in the mirror of her song, and saw themselves. Saw that they were cut from the same cloth as Billy Fairchild, as the elder Banyons. Saw, at least in this moment; and at least in this moment, realized all the pain they were creating. Realized that the Grace that had sacrificed itself for them, had done so in vain, because in their hate, their fear, and their rejection of everything that was just a little different from them, they had turned away from that Grace, and into the Shadow.
And they cried. By ones and twos and entire groups, they fell to their knees, or they stood with their faces turned up to the sky, and they wept. Wept as they had probably never wept in their whole lives. Wept for guilt, wept for fear, but most of all, wept for the rest of the message that Ace's song gave them.
But it's never too late to heal, the music seemed to say. Let the anger pass when the time for it is done, and leave the hate behind forever. . . . You have stood in the Shadow, now come to the Light, for the Light will still, ever and always, welcome you, forgive you, want you still. Flawed and ugly as your hearts and souls are, the Light wants you to come home and be made beautiful again.
And so, most of all, as the Bomb Squad moved in, and they stood beneath the roof, oblivious to everything else around them, they wept for hope.