"The first thing we have to do is get out of here," Eric said, handing the phone back to Kayla. "What I told Ria was right; it'll take time for Gabrevys's flunkies to get back, roust out mortal thugs, and send them here, but they do know where they left us, and as far as they know, we've got no way to leave in a hurry."
"We could always walk," Kayla said, regarding Lady Day cynically as she stuffed the phone back into her backpack. "I don't see her turning into a stretch-cycle. And even if she could, we'd kind of attract attention."
"Can't that thing, um, turn into other things?" Magnus said, surprising Eric. "Besides a bike, I mean." He hadn't thought that Magnus had been paying that much attention to the Otherworldly aspects of Eric's life—willingly or otherwise.
"Within limits," Eric agreed. "She did a car once, but it was a pretty small car. I'm not really sure she can turn into something big enough to hold five of us."
"And a dog," Kayla added.
Molly trotted back over to Lady Day to sniff at her front tire in a speculative fashion. Lady Day responded with a loud engine howl, and flashed her lights menacingly. The pug—not particularly daunted—scuttled backward, barking cheerfully.
"Whatever she's going to do, could she do it soon?" Ace begged. "Because I don't know how far we are from Atlantic City, but I'm sure you're right. Mr. Horn already knows he's got to send somebody else after us, and they're probably already on their way."
"C'mon, sweetie," Eric said to the elvensteed. "The five of us really need to get out of here, and you're our only way. Gabrevys isn't going to be happy that we got away from his knights. I need you to turn into something that will carry all of us."
The moment the words were out of his mouth, he knew he should have been more specific. Lady Day shivered all over, there was a kind of blurring around her, and suddenly, in place of the cream-and-red touring bike, there was . . .
"What's that?" Magnus asked after a long moment. "It looks like a Volkswagen. But . . . not. Um. A whole lot of not. Is there room in it for an engine?"
"Real impressive, Banyon," Kayla drawled.
"It's a Citroen," Eric said, inspecting the folding windows. "Just be glad she didn't pick a Reliant Robin." The goggle-eyed red-and-cream car—almost small enough to have fit into the Cadillac's trunk—did vaguely resemble a mutant Volkswagen. Fortunately Lady Day only looked like a Citroen; they wouldn't have to deal with the little French car's notoriously underpowered two-cylinder engine. Since she was still herself, there didn't have to be room for an engine. And with the rag-top down, they could all fit inside. Barely.
"Pleased with yourself, aren't you?" Eric said to the elvensteed. This was probably her revenge for his telling her to leave him and Magnus with the Unseleighe. But—yes, it could have been worse. She could easily have picked a Reliant Robin.
Lady Day flashed her headlights in her equivalent of uproarious laughter. Eric sighed inwardly. His fault for not being more specific, but on the other hand, she really couldn't turn into something much larger than this, so there was no point in wishing for something like, say, a Jeep Cherokee. There was a kind of mass limit, apparently—though one or two of the Sun-Descending and Fairgrove Sidhe had elvensteeds that could, and did, reliably replicate real sports cars.
Maybe it was an available power thing. Maybe it had something to do with seniority. Or rank. Or the fact that he wasn't Sidhe.
"Pile in, folks," Eric said with a sigh.
"Shotgun," Kayla said instantly.
They backtracked to the Garden State Parkway South entrance, and headed along it, looking for the nearest exit that would lead them to the northbound Parkway.
It wasn't the most comfortable ride Eric had ever gotten from his elvensteed. Even though there was no engine in the engine-compartment so he actually had somewhere to put his legs (and so did Kayla) it was still like being crammed into Big Pink's trunk. With the driver's seat pushed all the way forward to give the three jammed into the Citroen's miniscule back seat as much room as possible—and one of them was Hosea, who was not a small man—he felt as if the steering wheel was going to wear a groove in his hips, just to begin with. Plus, there was the fact that he was freezing: Lady Day's version of the Citroen's heating system was, Eric suspected, far better than the real thing, but even though it was turned up full-blast, it couldn't quite compensate for the fact that March was not convertible weather here on the Jersey Shore.
If Kayla weren't a touch-Empath, it would have made more sense for her to have been in the back seat with Ace and Magnus, but as wound up as the two of them were, Eric was sure it was pushing the limits of her shields just to be this close to them. Sitting in their laps would have been intolerable. And unfortunately, she wasn't wearing anything that would actually insulate her from them. He vowed to get her a set of silk long johns as soon as possible.
While neither Ace nor Hosea were complaining, Magnus was more than making up for their silence. And, sad as it was, the wind of their travel was not drowning him out, not completely. According to Magnus, the trunk of the Cadillac had been roomier.
At least, sandwiched between Hosea and Ace, he didn't have to worry about freezing, though of the five of them, he was the only one not dressed for the weather. Eric had been kidnapped from the back of his bike; Kayla had been out walking Molly when she'd jumped into Lady Day's saddle; and both Ace and Hosea had been wearing winter coats when they'd had to make a run for it, but Magnus had been kidnapped out of his classroom at Coenties and Arundel, and all he was wearing was his school blazer (the tie had gotten lost somewhere along the way).
However, when Magnus was complaining about things, Eric had long since learned, he wasn't either particularly hurt or particularly upset, and Eric let his brother's griping go pretty much in one ear and out the other while he worried about more immediate—and more urgent—problems. It was probably Magnus's way of coping with things. Ace wasn't telling him to shut up, so she must have gotten used to it.
Besides the discomfort of all of the passengers, he could feel Lady Day's uneasiness as well. The strain of carrying five passengers (and a dog, Eric footnoted mentally) was telling on her. Elvensteeds were enormously strong, and had incredible stamina, but they had peculiar limitations as well. Maybe it did have something to do with the fact that he wasn't Sidhe. She could run as a bike from here to the coast and back, but stretching into this form was draining her. No matter how much he wanted to get back to Atlantic City quickly—and no matter how convenient it would be for all of them (if cramped) if they could simply drive there in Eric's elvensteed, he had to let Lady Day revert to her elvenbike form as soon as possible. And evidently, in this shape, she couldn't ramp up to the warp-speed that would get them there in minutes.
He found an exit and took it, anxious for her, anxious to get back to the Ministry, anxious—hell, beginning a quiet panic—about what they'd find when they got there. Fortunately, the on-ramp for the northbound GSP was clearly marked, and almost as soon as they got on, he saw a sign for a rest stop a couple of miles ahead. Food Gas, it said. Presumably the former wouldn't give you the latter.
That's it. We'll have to find another way from here.
They pulled into the rest stop. Fortunately, at this hour of the morning—not even seven yet, and on a Friday—the place was fairly deserted. Eric was relieved to see that it was a "full service" stop with the usual road food places: a Nathan's, a TCBY/Dunkin' Donuts, and a McDonald's, in addition to the gas-station mini-mart. The world might be coming to an end, but he really couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten anything, and his stomach was assuring him it was more than time to fuel up. And if he felt that way, the teenagers—and certainly Hosea, who ate more than anyone he'd ever seen before—must be feeling as if their stomachs were in too-close proximity to their backbones.
"Everybody out," he said. He pulled out his wallet and handed Magnus several twenties as soon as his brother had squirmed free of the back seat. "Go get some breakfast."
Magnus didn't have to be told twice. He took the cash and headed for the Mickey D's. The others followed. Come rain, come shine, come the end of the world, a teenager was going to want fries and a coke.
Kayla stayed behind, proving that her teenage years were behind her—somewhat. "What about you, Bard-boy?"
"Gonna see a man about a bike," Eric said.
Lady Day was perfectly capable of driving on her own, but just because the rest stop was mostly deserted didn't mean it was completely deserted, and he didn't really want an audience for what was about to happen. Eric drove around the back of the buildings, looking for more privacy.
He got out of the Citroen, and almost before he could close the tiny clown-car door, Lady Day shuddered and resumed her preferred form. Eric would have been willing to swear that the elvensteed gave an audible sigh of relief at the transformation. He patted her gas-tank sympathetically. "I'm sorry, girl," he said apologetically. "We'll find another ride. I won't put you through any more of that."
But now what? They were stuck in a rest stop a long way from Atlantic City without any practical way of getting back there quickly. Certainly Eric could call Ria from here and see if she could get a car to them, but the same things that had kept him from asking her to do that back where they'd been stranded still held. Getting a car to them would probably take hours, and Eric suspected they didn't have hours—either to stay ahead of Gabrevys's hunters, or to do what they could to make sure that what he planned didn't happen. If there was no other way, he'd ferry the others up the Parkway one by one, but he'd really prefer to find another solution. Running Lady Day at warp would probably leave a magical signature, and besides, that would be splitting the party. If there was one thing that bad horror movies and the occasional RPG had taught him—not to mention practical experience—it was this: never, ever, under any circumstances, split up the party. Do that, and the bad guys always got you.
Maybe something would come to him.
He left Lady Day parked behind the building and walked back to the McDonald's. When he got there, to his surprise, Kayla was standing out front, Molly cradled in her arms. At his puzzled look, she shrugged.
"Dogs. Restaurants. Not a good mix. We're not in France, you know, Banyon. Too-Tall said he'd bring us out something, an' there's tables over there. We'll manage."
"Hey, it's way too cold to eat outside, and I bet Molly's a lot cleaner than half the patrons. I bet if you bring her inside nobody'll notice her." And a touch of Bardic Magick would make certain of it. He winked at her, and raised his eyebrows significantly. "They'll probably look right past her."
Cellophane, Mister Cellophane, should'a been my name . . .
Kayla grinned, and Molly panted. "Guess we're in France after all, hotshot."
Eric held the door for her, and she followed him in. Whoever would have thought that a musical about gangsters would come in so handy?
Ace was holding down a table while the other two were at the counter ordering for all of them. Eric and Kayla sat down, with Kayla holding Molly on her lap. Just as he'd promised, nobody gave Molly a second glance. In fact, as the song promised, they looked right through her.
"Is your bike okay?" Ace asked. She must have picked up on his anxiety. Then again, she was a lot more sensitive to body language than the average teenager. Say, Magnus.
"She's fine," Eric said, and shrugged. "Unfortunately, she can't take the five of us any farther than this. It's just too hard on her."
When the others arrived at the table with breakfast, they convened an impromptu council of war. First casting a spell, this time using the "Uncle Ernie" song from the Who's musical Tommy to make certain they couldn't be overheard—though any strangers overhearing their conversation would probably think they were a bunch of gamers—Eric told the others everything he'd learned from Ria.
"—so while she'll do what she can, she can't be sure that Horn won't be two jumps ahead of her all the way. Or that the whole thing isn't some sort of long, complicated Unseleighe trap to rope Ace in," Eric finished. He shook his head. "That's the trouble with dealing with the Unseleighe. Everything is complicated with them, and they've had centuries to learn how to make really tortuous plans."
"So it might just all be up to us, is what you're saying," Kayla said, looking both discouraged and stubborn at the same time.
"Could be," Eric answered reluctantly. He hated the fact that this was the only answer he had to give, but it was. Sitting here, in this utterly normal place, he had absolutely no idea how he and Hosea could possibly find Prince Gabrevys's bomb and neutralize it, let alone solve all the other problems that an Unseleighe Prince who'd become the best buddy of a power-mad televangelist cozying up to a bunch of White Supremacists represented. If this was a TV show, Ria and her private army would be showing up about now. Instead we've got two teenagers, a couple of musicians and an Empathic Healer. And not one of us is a MacGyver.
He supposed they'd have to wing it. As usual. He was getting awfully tired of the universe throwing its problems at him and expecting him to solve them.
"So all we have to do is actually get back there," Hosea said. "And right smartly at that, since the concert's going to start around noon, from what Mr. Horn told me. Pity it's a mite too far to walk in the time we have." His brows furrowed as he spoke; he wasn't being ironic. Eric had the feeling that he was perfectly prepared to try to hoof it back.
"An' too bad we've all got such high moral principles we can't just steal a car—not that there's all that many of them around here to boost just now," Kayla added. "Of course, the fact that none of us know how to hotwire anything that isn't fifteen years old probably doesn't help." She raised an eyebrow at Eric. "Unless that Bardic magic can disable a car alarm and get it moving without a key?"
"Not without knowing a lot more about cars than I do," he admitted. "The magic can only do what I tell it to, and I have to know what I'm doing first."
"So how are we going to get there now that your ride's punked out on us?" Magnus asked.
There was an awkward silence. The best answer Eric had been able to come up with so far was riding to the nearest town and renting a car—only he didn't know where the nearest town with a rental place was, or how long it would take. "Rent something?" He had a vague recollection of a rental company that came to pick you up . . . if only he could remember which one it was. And if there was one close enough.
"Well," Ace said, "can't we just hitchhike back?"
The others stared at her in surprise.
"Five of us?" Kayla asked doubtfully.
And a dog, Eric thought. Don't forget the dog.
"That's got to be one of your dumber ideas," Magnus finally said. Ace's face hardened, but her expression was the kind that a tough little girl took on when she'd been hurt. Eric tried to kick him under the table, but he couldn't reach him.
"We can ask," Ace said stubbornly, her chin set. "We can do that." She got to her feet and walked out. "How's it hurt?"
"Time to drain the dog," Kayla said instantly, and followed, Molly in her arms. Considering that Molly'd made a second breakfast off most of an Egg McMuffin plus a whole hash brown patty, Eric thought walking the dog might be a really, really good idea. Not to mention that it would be a good idea for someone to go with Ace.
Hosea gave Eric one of those meaningful-yet-inscrutable looks the Ozark Bard was so very good at and said he'd see if Ace needed any help.
That left Eric alone with Magnus. And from Magnus's sullen expression, he was pretty sure Magnus thought he was in for a lecture on manners.
Only Eric had gotten every lecture in the mythical book on manners himself—from his parents. And if he'd gotten them, Magnus had certainly gotten them. Probably twice over, since the 'rents had figured they hadn't filled Eric's ears nearly enough.
So he wasn't going to do that.
"If you don't like her any more, you don't have to see her again once we get back to New York," he said instead, pretending that he thought Magnus's rudeness was due entirely to dislike rather than teenage-male stupidity. Oh yeah. I remember being that stupid. "Just try to hold it together until then—I mean, assuming we all live that long—because she's had it pretty rough lately. She could stand a lot of kindness about now, or I think she might crack up on us." And if she goes to pieces, I'm not actually sure I can put her back together. And for that matter, if she goes to pieces in a Talented kind of way, she could take the rest of us with her without much problem, from what I've seen so far. "I know things have been rough on you, too, but—well," he shrugged. "You're a guy. You're tough."
That actually got Magnus's attention. "Don't like her?" he said, surprised, then demanded. "Why wouldn't I like her?"
"I don't know," Eric said carefully—Magnus's emotions ran close to the surface at the best of times, and they'd been rubbed especially raw by the news that his parents had hired Unseleighe Mages—knowingly or not—to turn him into a mindless vegetable. "But it's possible that she might have just gotten the idea that you don't like her. I've done a lot more dating than you have—" Kathi, and Traci, and Donna, and just before he got mixed up with Kory, there'd been the spectacular melt-down with Maureen "—and the one thing I know for sure about ladies of any age is that they kind of hate being called 'stupid.'"
Magnus thought that over for a while, while he finished the extra-large chocolate shake he'd ordered to go with breakfast. "I didn't call Ace 'stupid,'" he finally said. "I said her idea was stupid."
Eric winced mentally. "Well," he said mildly, "she really might not like that much either right now. And the way she's feeling, well, if you say things like that, she's gonna be oversensitive, and she'll take it to mean you're talking about her."
"It is a stupid idea," Magnus said stubbornly. "Nobody's going to give a ride to five whackos and a dog."
"Maybe not," Eric agreed, trying to resist the urge to slug his brother. "I admit it doesn't sound very likely. But Lady Day can't carry the five of us at once, I'm not sure how fast Ria could get a car here—or I could get a car—and I really can't think of anything better right off hand than asking around to see if someone will give us a ride. What's it going to hurt? If that doesn't work, we'll try something else."
Magnus stared down at the table and began to tear a napkin into tiny strips. Eric had a good idea that Ace's idea of hitching wasn't really the issue here. And in a moment, Magnus confirmed that.
"They hired those guys," he said quietly. "To suck out our brains and turn us into robot-kid-zombies."
That was what was really bothering his brother. Eric understood, and sympathized. He himself had had almost two decades to come to terms with how their parents had treated him, so this was only another drop in the bucket. For Magnus, it was different—and much more immediate, in a way.
"They didn't know what they were doing," Eric said quickly, hoping, in a way, to soften the blow.
"No, Eric," Magnus said, gazing up at him with those disconcerting green eyes. He sounded chillingly adult, as if it were he, not Eric, who was the many-years-elder. "That's the whole point. They knew exactly what they were doing. What they didn't know was how. They didn't know it was going to involve woo-woo magic and alien brain-eating monsters, sure. I betcha they didn't think too hard about what was going to go on, but if you put a gun to either of their heads and they had to take a wild-ass guess, they'd say, hey, maybe drugs, maybe some new and exciting form of lobotomy-lite. And yeah, kidnapping. We can't forget that. That was in the plan from the start and they knew exactly what they were doing when they signed on for that. But they would have said it was all worth it because it was all going to be so convenient once all the messy stuff was over with. 'Just don't bother me with the inconvenient details that I'll have to work hard to forget later.'"
The depth of bitterness in Magnus's voice was something Eric had no words for. Had he ever felt such bitterness, such—not even hate, but despair? He didn't think so—no, it seemed to him that he'd been thinking about other things entirely. Fear of the Nightflyers, and fear for his own sanity had trumped everything else. He'd been thinking more about running away—and just plain not thinking—than thinking about his parents. Then he'd been thinking about keeping food in his belly, and then—quite quickly, actually, once he'd discovered the Rennies and the busking in L.A., he'd been mostly thinking about playing music and having sex and getting high, and not necessarily in that order. But Magnus didn't have those things to worry about, and except for that short stint on the streets, never had. He'd been able to concentrate on his relationship with his parents to the exclusion of all else.
And Eric couldn't say Magnus had drawn the wrong conclusions, either. Their parents had hired Christian Family Intervention to get Magnus back—and not just to get him back, but to return him to them docile and obedient. To return both Magnus and Eric in that condition, in fact. They hadn't asked how CFI was going to accomplish this. They hadn't asked any of the questions that people who cared about anything but their own way would ask.
And at last, Eric felt—cold. And angry. And for one moment he wanted—
But no. The anger of a Bard could kill. No matter what they deserved, it wouldn't be his hands that dealt the cards. Karma could come back to bite their asses on its own. The best revenge he could get would be the one he was taking now; to remove himself and Magnus from their control forever, and let them stew in their own juices.
"Yeah," Eric said softly, "you're right. And that sucks. And the only good thing about any of this is that the fact that they kidnapped you is going to be great for our custody case if we can figure out how to use it. Just . . . don't beat Ace up over it, okay? Watch who's in your backlash. Save it for the people who deserve it. Think how they're gonna look when you tell the judge all about this."
"Yeah, okay," Magnus muttered, tearing the napkin into further tiny strips. By now he had what looked like an enormous mound of confetti in front of him. "I guess I'll go tell her she isn't stupid, okay?"
I hope she takes that in the spirit that it's intended. "Yeah," Eric said. "That would be a good start."
When they got outside, Eric walked around a bit, looking for the others. He finally located Ace over by the gas pumps, talking to a man standing in the back door of a Winnebago that was pulled up to the pumps.
He ambled over in that direction. As he got closer, he could see that the 'bago had been custom-painted on the side, with the legend "Wild Bill's Geese." But instead of the wildlife picture Eric expected to go along with something like that, there was a design of a gold laurel crown surrounding a sable oval on which was placed a gold spearhead, point up.
Now, Eric was familiar with both SCAdians and Rennies, and this didn't look like anything that either of those groups would have painted on the side of an RV. And while there were a fair number of SCAdians who were getting long in the tooth these days, he didn't think too many of them were collecting Social Security.
Besides, there were none of the other medievaloid trappings that the SCAdians tended to bedeck their vehicles with. No "I Stop For Dragons" bumper stickers, no rack of rattan weapons tied to the back, or pavilion lashed down to the top. In fact, the bit of art had a sort of military precision about it, as if it was some sort of insignia.
Okay. That's a little freaky, Eric thought. Those geese must be really fighting back.
The man was quite old—Eric judged him to be well over eighty—and his skin was dappled with the spots of age. He held himself erect with the aid of an aluminum cane. What little hair he had left was snow white. But for all the fragility of age, there was a vitality and good humor about him that made Eric smile in spite of his current problems. And he was treating Ace with gentlemanly courtesy that was, at the same time, not at all condescending.
"Eric!" Ace called, waving at him. "This is Mr. Jedburgh. He and his son are going up to Atlantic City to see a show, and he says he'd be more than happy to give all of us a ride."
Eric approached, trying to get more of a feel for the man, and getting nothing but good vibrations. "Not a problem, sonny," Jedburgh said. "I had more than one set of wheels, ah, give out on me in my time. Always at the worst possible moment, too. There are five of you, the young lady said?"
"And a dog," Eric said.
"Always liked dogs. Adam Jedburgh, at your service, as the young lady told you," he added, holding out his hand.
"Eric Banyon. This is my—" Whoops! He caught himself just in time, and finished smoothly "—son, Magnus." It wouldn't do to blow his cover story now. They had to live with it all the time, not just in the courtroom.
Eric shook the proffered hand. For all the man's age, his grip was dry and firm.
"You look a little young to have a son that age," Adam Jedburgh said shrewdly. "I'd have taken you for brothers."
"I'm a youthful indiscretion," Magnus said promptly.
"Very youthful, and very indiscreet," Eric said, with a grin. "Thank you very much, Mr. Jedburgh. We really appreciate this. Ace, Magnus, you stay here, and I'll go round up Hosea and Kayla. I'll be back in a minute." And that would give him a little time out of sight to toss a bit of glamourie over himself so he looked a bit closer to the age he ought to be by the World's Time.
"Don't dawdle. Slot machines wait for no man," Adam Jedburgh called cheerfully after him.
Eric found Kayla and Hosea over in the designated dog-walking area. Hosea had Jeanette slung over his back in her soft carry-case, and Kayla had the end of Molly's red-leather leash looped over her wrist as the pug wandered aimlessly about. She glanced up as Eric approached, her gaze turning expectant as she saw his expression.
"Believe it or not, Ace found us a ride," Eric said. "Not just that, but a comfortable and friendly ride."
Hosea grinned. "She said she'd do better at it without me around to scare people off, and Ah guess she was right after all."
Kayla grinned. "Girl power!"
Eric shrugged. "Something like that, I guess."
"Let's go, then," Kayla said. "Come on, Molly. Manners."
When they got back, the Winnebago had pulled up past the pumps and was waiting among the parked eighteen-wheelers. Another man—a younger version of Adam—climbed down from the driver's side door and walked back toward them.
"I'm Douglas Jedburgh, Adam's son. Is this the rest of you?" He looked friendly, but cautious. Eric didn't blame him. He was taking a risk, no matter what his father had promised. Five strangers, three of them young men—could be trouble.
Then again—five strangers and a pug? Not the kind of combination you expected to be pulling carjackings. . . .
Molly barked cheerfully and he reached down to ruffle her ears.
"This is all of us," Eric agreed. "I'm Eric, this is Kayla and Hosea. You've already met my son"—he'd nearly tripped himself up again, and once again, caught himself at the last moment—"Magnus, and Ace. We're really grateful for the ride."
"Well, we were going that way anyway. Dad said I should get out of the house and stop moping just because Mary wasn't there, and he wanted to see the fleshpots—we're from Minnesota, you see," he added, as if that explained everything. "Normally I wouldn't pick up hitchhikers, but Dad's a good judge of character. He's had to be."
Eric glanced sideways at Kayla. She looked perfectly serene. Whatever had motivated Douglas and his father to take off for the wicked city, it wasn't Douglas's grieving widowhood, though that would be a reasonable guess for a man his age. So the wife probably wasn't "the late."
"So where is your wife?" Eric asked. "If I'm not being too nosy."
"Well, I did lay myself open to the question. Climb on in and we'll get moving. Dad'll be happy to answer it in great detail."
As they walked up to the RV, Eric saw Hosea blink in startlement at the design on the side, but the big man climbed in without comment, and Eric and Kayla followed, climbing in through the middle door.
A lot of the more well-off Rennies Eric had known had possessed RVs. Some of them had gutted the insides and completely redone them. Some of them had left them pretty much the way they were. They'd run the gamut from shabby-but-serviceable to works of art, like Suleika the dancer's vintage Airstream trailer.
This one had a military neatness to it. While obviously several years old, well-used and well-loved, everything was well-cared-for and in its place. The cabinets were secured with widgets to keep the doors from flying open accidentally when the RV was moving, and seatbelts—bolted to the frame of the vehicle—had been added to the couches in case of extra passengers.
"Belt up and we'll get rolling. It's going to take us at least ninety minutes to get to Atlantic City," Douglas Jedburgh said. When he'd heard the clicking of seatbelts, he shifted into gear, and pulled out onto the access road leading to the Parkway.
Follow us and don't be seen, Eric told Lady Day silently, and felt the elvensteed's equally silent assent.
Driving an RV was like driving a small house, and it accelerated about as well. But by the same token, it was pretty hard to miss, so they weren't really in any danger of being hit, and fairly soon they'd reached cruising speed.
"He was asking where Mary was," Douglas said to his father companionably.
"You were complaining again," Adam Jedburgh corrected him good-naturedly. He turned his seat—the passenger seat in the Winnebago could turn to face the back—and grinned cheerfully at Eric. "This young feller was going to sit around the house and mope for six weeks just because Mary was off helping Kimberly bring my great-grandbaby into the world and making sure Kimmie had a little help around the place. Oh, it's not that Mason's a bad boy, you understand, for a grandson-in-law, but he's on the road six days out of seven, and Kimmie's at home, and with the new baby, what girl—even a great big grown-up girl that we're all supposed to call 'women' these days from the time they can walk—wouldn't want her mother there to help out and tell her that new babies don't break? So Mary went, and I didn't see any reason for Dougie to sit around the house waiting for her to get back like a retriever pining for duck season when he could be indulging me instead of driving his neighbors crazy. The way he carries on, you'd think Mary'd gone to Heaven instead of Amarillo."
Douglas Jedburgh grinned, but said nothing to contradict his father.
"Boy or girl?" Hosea asked with interest.
"Doctors say she's going to have a boy," Adam said promptly. "We'll know for sure in a week or so. In my day, you had to wait until the baby was born and take what you got."
"Ah guess that's still the way, when you come right down to it," Hosea said. "Ah don't think we've been rightly introduced, sir. Ah'm Hosea Songmaker, and Ah couldn't help but notice what you have painted on the side of your RV. Ah guess you were in the OSS in the war?"
Adam looked surprised, then pleased. "Well, Mr. Songmaker, that's a pretty good guess. Not too many people remember the OSS anymore."
"Didn't have to guess," Hosea said modestly. "Mah grandaddy served with them. Name of Jeb Songmaker."
"Jeb Songmaker!" Adam did a double-take, and a grin spread across his face until it nearly met at the back of his head. "Dougie, this is Jeberechiah Songmaker's grandson! You remember I told you about him!" Adam said excitedly. "Good Lord, Jeb's grandson! Talk about a small world—I never would have thought it!"
"Oh, wow, this is just . . . weird," Kayla said in an undertone.
"The OSS wasn't that large an organization," Eric said. "Not like the CIA is today. It isn't all that unlikely that two agents would know each other." At Magnus's blank look, he explained further. "The OSS was the first American intelligence agency, formed by William Donovan during World War II. At the end of the war, it was replaced by the Central Intelligence Agency."
He was trying to be unobtrusive, but he could have been shouting his explanations for all the attention that Adam was paying to them. No, it was Hosea that had all of his attention. Hardly surprising. Meeting Hosea must make Adam feel as if he was somehow catching up to an old comrade.
"So what happened to Jeb?" Adam asked eagerly. "We lost track of each other—"
"He got through the war right enough," Hosea said, with a nod. "Went on home to his farm—he must of talked about his parcel o' land—and married my gran'ma Dora. My gran'parents had the raisin' of me, but Gran'pa Jeb never did talk much about what he did during the War, leastways not to me."
"I'm glad he got back," Adam Jedburgh said simply. "A lot of good men didn't. I met Jeb during training in England—a long skinny drink of water with a hill-country accent you could cut with a knife. Me, I was there for the same reason a lot of other guys were: German had been the first language in my house growing up, and I spoke it like Uncle Adolf's brother."
"Dad—" Douglas Jedburgh said warningly.
"Dougie, I'm too old to change my spots. Oh, I know, I know: we won the war and they're all our friends now, and every one of them is a Good German. But they weren't then. Or do you think I'm boring our guests?"
"Please," Eric said quickly. "Nobody's bored. And we'd all like to hear about this." It was fascinating—how often did you get a chance to listen to living history? Especially living secret history; a lot of what the OSS did was still under lock and key. Besides, this had to be good for Adam Jedburgh, to find out what had happened to an old friend. And if Adam Jedburgh was talking, neither he nor his son would be asking awkward questions about Eric and his friends—questions they might not be able to answer. He'd already come close to slipping up twice over Magnus, and none of them had known they'd need a cover story.
"There. You see? As I was saying, there was Jeberechiah, looking like he'd never had shoes on before in his life—no offense, Hosea, but back in '41, a lot of kids joined up who'd never been off the farm and still had straw in their hair, and your granddaddy looked like a prime example—with his old violin and an ugly yellow dog that none of us knew how he'd managed to smuggle onto the troopship, let alone get it onto the base, but there it was, and an accent that just about ensured he'd be shot the moment he set foot anywhere in Europe—and as far as any of us knew, he didn't speak a word of anything but English, and that not very well, and I could not imagine how he had managed to talk his way into Wild Bill's command. I remember one time . . ."
For the next several miles Adam Jedburgh had them all laughing helplessly with anecdotes of clever—and highly trained—young men on the loose in wartime England. Eric wasn't sure how much of these stories to believe, but apparently Jeb Songmaker had been the ringleader in a series of practical jokes that would have put the pranks of any collection of modern college students to shame.
There was the still-fondly-remembered incident of the local farmer's prize cow smuggled into the colonel's office.
The exceptionally-well-concealed (and exceptionally productive) still.
The exploding mashed potatoes.
The night maneuvers that had left the "enemy" searching for them all night in a freezing downpour while Jeb's team had spent the night sleeping warmly in a barn ten miles outside the combat area—and sitting down to a good country breakfast cooked by the farmer's wife in the morning.
But one thing puzzled Adam Jedburgh greatly, and he returned to it once more.
"Thing was, if Jeb Songmaker was with us in England, he had to be heading for somewhere in the European Theater. And he had to have already gotten through our training course back home. Well, I worried about how he was going to manage. There was no way he was going to sound like anything but a GI Joe—heck—begging your pardon, girls—the local folks could barely understand a word he said, he came from that far back in the hills—and that wasn't going to do him any good east of Calais. I tried to teach him enough German to get by, but it was hopeless. So one night when we were down at the local pub, I asked him what he was going to do if he had to talk to anybody over there. And he said, in that country twang of his, 'I'll get by.'"
The old man shook his head, obviously still unable to believe it even after all these years. "And I guess he did, because he always came back, no matter where they sent him."
"But Ah guess you lost touch with him?" Hosea asked.
"Oh," Adam said off-handedly, "I went over to France to help out the Resistance, and I decided to stay for a while. We had to do a little improvising when our supplies ran out, but our biggest hole-card against Johnny Boche was always laughter. The one thing fascists of all stripes hate most is being ridiculed, and we found out that we could do as much damage if we could make people laugh at them as by blowing something up. I owe that lesson to your grandfather, Hosea, and I'm happy to be able to pay it back, even in this little way."
They'd been seeing signs for Atlantic City for the last several miles, but now they were starting to get close.
"Well," Adam said, after clearing his throat and glancing at an exit sign, "looks like we're about to drink that parting glass, so to speak."
"We're staying at the Trump Taj Mahal—Dad says if you're going to go to the devil, you might as well do it up brown," Douglas Jedburgh said with a small smile. "We could take you there—or is there some other place we could drop you?"
Eric had been thinking about how to answer that one for almost an hour. "You can just drop us at any parking lot along the way that's convenient, thanks. We can call a cab from there." That much was perfectly true—they did intend to call a cab—and a touch of Bardic Magick encouraged their Good Samaritans not to ask any of the obvious questions, like where their hotel was, and why they shouldn't just drop them there.
Going back to Ace and Hosea's hotel room would have been logical and easy—but it was also fairly likely that it was staked out by goons either mortal or Unseleighe.
"You're sure you'll be okay?" Douglas Jedburgh asked.
"They're sure, Dougie," Adam told his son firmly. "Probably can't wait to get away from all your chatter," he added, winking at them. "But if you need anything else, you come around to the Taj Mahal and ask for Adam Jedburgh. Dougie and I will be there for a week, seeing the sights before we head on down to Texas. Figure we'll give Mary and Kimmie a little surprise and I'll get an early look at my great-grand-baby."
"We'll do that, sir," Hosea said. "Iff'n there's need. That's a promise. An' here—" He paused to fish in his pocket, and came up with one of the business cards Eric had insisted he have printed up. Because you never know when you'll need one. It looked good to have them when you were busking, and better still to have them in case someone actually might offer you a gig. They were simple enough, just his name, a phone number and address, and Musician: blue-grass, country, and folk. "You cain always get ahold of me here."
Eric sighed with relief. This was even better. Hosea had just proved that they had permanent addresses. Adam would be a lot less curious now.
"Well, good," Adam said firmly. "Wild Bill's Geese stick together, and that goes for their families as well."
A few minutes later, Douglas Jedburgh found a place to stop, and expertly maneuvered the Winnebago into a strip-mall parking lot. He stopped the RV, and the five of them got out.
As he drove away, Kayla turned to Hosea. "You know the weirdest people," she said, setting Molly down.
"Ah wasn't the one who knew him, but mah gran'pappy. Ah guess it was in the family, though," Hosea said reasonably. "Ah sort of suspected things might fall out that way when Ah saw what was painted on the side of the RV. Gran'pa didn't talk about the war all so very much, but he did have his unit patch, an' it looked just like that. They weren't authorized, and they were all supposed to be destroyed, but Ah guess one or two of them got away."
"He was there to help us when we needed help," Ace said, as if she were pronouncing a sort of judgment.
Magnus sighed. "It wasn't a dumb idea, okay. But it was kind of a long shot."
Ace smiled at him. Apparently he was forgiven. "Sometimes you just have to take a chance."
Just then there was a faint flurry in the air. Suddenly a cream-and-red touring bike of no exact make sat parked in an empty parking slot a few feet away.
"Took you long enough to get here," Eric said to the elvensteed.
"Now what?" Kayla asked.
"We call that cab," Eric said. "And we head back out to the cathedral and casino. If we can't do anything else to stop what's happening there today, we can at least make sure that Gabriel's bomb doesn't go off."
I hope.
"At least we can make sure we get everybody cleared out before it does," Ace said, with the same finality. "Somehow."
The taxi arrived promptly—the first thing that had gone completely right in quite a while—and the driver had no objection to taking Molly as a passenger. The four (five) of them rode in the taxi while Eric followed on Lady Day.
By the time they reached the road that led toward the Heavenly Grace Business Park, it was a little after eleven o'clock. Traffic was heavy—all apparently on its way to the concert—and a lot of the cars had bumper stickers like "Keep America Pure" and "White is Right" on them, and symbols that were almost—but not quite, of course—Nazi flags.
They were still at least five miles from the gates, but traffic had already slowed to a crawl. Eric stood up in his seat and looked ahead—he could already see people just giving up and starting to pull off on the verge and park. Soon traffic wouldn't just be slow, it would be stopped entirely.
No matter what Magnus thought, Eric wasn't quite old enough to have been at Woodstock I, but nobody of any age could have missed the endless retrospectives of the event, so Eric was perfectly aware of how snarled the traffic around a big outdoor concert—especially one that really was free—could get. Very soon now the cars weren't going to pull off to the side of the road to park. Their drivers were just going to abandon them in the middle of the road and start walking in to the concert, and then the fun would really begin.
He flagged the taxi down and pointed for the driver to pull off. Fortunately there was a cross-street ahead; he saw Kayla speak to the driver, who turned into it—a better idea than Eric's—and stopped.
Eric pulled up beside the driver's side window.
"I had no idea the traffic was so heavy," he said, digging into his jeans for his wallet. "You'd better turn back. We'll walk from here."
The others, taking their cue from him, began piling out. Eric added a generous tip to the amount on the meter. It wasn't going to be easy getting out of here.
The driver must have agreed, for instead of turning around, he simply drove off down the road in the direction he was headed.
"And once more I say, 'now what?'" Kayla said, when they were all standing on the side of the road.
"We walk in. I'm sure it won't be the first time you snuck into a rock-concert," Eric said.
"Yeah, Bard-boy, but it's definitely going to be the first time I snuck into a Neo-Nazi rock concert. Did you see some of those bumper stickers?" Kayla answered.
Eric simply shuddered. New York might be the most cosmopolitan city on Earth, but there were a few things its inhabitants were insulated from. And now it finally started to feel real. He found himself clenching and unclenching his fists, and he was getting the beginning of the cold he always got in his belly at the start of a fight.
A fight. And he was taking Ace and Magnus, both utterly unacquainted with fighting, into the middle of it. And Kayla, utterly unsuited.
But if he stopped to ask himself what he thought he was doing—he would stop. And so would they.
And people would die.
"Are you going to be okay if we go in there?" Eric asked.
Kayla shrugged. "Unless I run into one of your heavy hitters, I'm going to be more than fine. That's the really sick thing, Eric. All those people out there right now? They're really happy. They think they're good people surrounded by other good people and having a great time. They just think some other people—blacks or Jews or gays or Muslims or pick your label—have to be killed, or put in camps, or gotten rid of some other way. But most of them don't even hate those people. Not usually. They just think it's their duty, and it's right, and it's sad but it's something that has to be done. And the people that make me want to scream are the ones that convinced them that this is the truth."
"I guess you're going to have to scream later," Eric said. "We'd better start walking. But the minute we get this bomb thing dealt with, I'm going Underhill and coming back with either a good strong leash for Prince Gabrevys or a really good reason why I can't have one."
As soon as we get this bomb thing dealt with. As if I had any ideas how.
"Hmph," Hosea grunted. "Ah'm thinkin' if you cain't put a leash on him, Ah'm gonna. An' about now, Ah'm thinkin' it oughtta be made outta Cold Iron."
Eric nodded; he hoped he'd be able to get help from Misthold in dealing with Prince Gabrevys, but he was already considering the possibility that he couldn't. He wasn't sure what he was going to do in that case—the last thing he wanted to do was start a war Underhill, but the next to last thing he wanted was to have to watch his back every moment for the rest of his life just because an Unseleighe Prince had decided to start a vendetta.
"Count me out," Kayla said, shaking her head. "I've had enough of Elf Hill for a lifetime."
Maybe, Punkette—but Elf Hill has a habit of not letting go.
They headed back up the road toward the gate, cutting through the traffic as soon as there was a gap. As far as any observers could see, Eric was wheeling his motorcycle along beside them, but in fact, Lady Day was doing all the work, and he was just resting a hand on one of her handlebars.
The closer they got, the colder he became. Because ideas still weren't coming to him.
Wish we'd been able to ask old Adam for some advice. Someone from the OSS now—there was someone who would have had some creative notions for this situation.
As they got closer, they started to hear music in the distance—not live, Eric thought; probably something canned being run through the amps on whatever stage was set up.
They were walking right back into the dragon's lair—which was an insult to the few dragons Eric had ever met, none of whom could ever have come up with something this vile—and Eric still didn't have any clear idea of what he was going to do about the problem when he got there. Worst of all, the people he was bringing with him were by no stretch of the imagination a crack commando team.
Kayla was an Empath and Healer. Great after the battle was over, but not a lot of use in a fight. In fact, the fight itself would probably lay her out cold.
Magnus didn't, as far as Eric knew, have any expressed magick at all. He'd been lucky enough to escape with his life once, and now Eric was dragging him right back into danger. The trouble was, there were no safe places—even if Magnus agreed to stay somewhere out of harm's way, it was just as likely that Gabrevys would find him wherever he was and use him as a weapon against Eric and the others. And stashing him somewhere would be splitting the party again. Nope. It was ab-so-lutely guaranteed that if the party got split up, both parts would end up in trouble.
Ace was a powerful Talent, it was true. The only trouble was, her power worked just as irresistibly on her own side as on the other side, and once she'd created an emotion in people, she couldn't direct how they responded to it. In a controlled environment like Billy Fairchild's Praise Hour, that didn't matter. In the chaotic venue of a rock concert, it could matter quite a bit.
Hosea was Eric's apprentice, and a Guardian. Both of those things counted for a lot, but Eric had no illusions: the magickal muscle they were facing could eat the two of them for breakfast and not even get indigestion. A trained, Unseleighe Master Bard, an Unseleighe Magus Major, and who knew what sorts of allies. Some of which he already knew were resistant to Cold Iron.
Why are we doing this? he asked himself. But he knew the answer.
Because we're the good guys, and we have to try.
Around them, more and more people were starting to walk in. The line of cars heading toward the gate had slowed to a crawl, moving at barely two miles an hour now. The people on foot were easily outpacing those still in their vehicles.
Kayla picked up Molly and cradled her in her arms. The little pug was gallant and willing, but there was no way she could walk all the way to the casino and cathedral, and she'd only slow them down if they kept to her pace anyway.
"Your purse is ringing," Magnus said to Kayla.
Kayla passed Molly to Ace and dug in her backpack. The ringing sound got louder. She flipped open the phone, and after listening a moment, she passed it to Eric.
"It's for you," she said with a smirk.
"Um . . . hello?" Eric said.
"Where are you?" Ria asked.
Oh, please tell me you have a crack SWAT army ready to storm this place.
"A couple of miles up the road from the concert site," Eric said. "The place is jammed. We're walking in."
Please tell me you want us to turn around and leave.
"That's the best news I've had all morning," Ria said. "I hope you can do something when you get there."
You hope we can do something. That is not what I wanted to hear.
"That doesn't sound good," Eric said. "I don't mean to sound cranky, but weren't you supposed to be calling the cavalry?"
"Put it this way. I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that there were a few favors left for me to pull in, and I used them. The bomb squad is all set to go in and take the casino apart."
A familiar sound overhead caught Eric's attention, and he looked up. There were three helicopters in the sky over the casino. Two of them were obviously press. The third one looked a lot more businesslike. Ria's? Or Horn's?
Or someone else's? There was always Wheatley to think about.
"And the bad news?" he asked.
"They can't get in. I don't know what it looks like from where you are, but there are almost five thousand people packed in at the site down there, and Pure Blood, the other bands, and the local bikers and skinheads have got the crowd so worked up about 'Federal persecution,' Waco, and Ruby Ridge, that the sight of anything that even looks like an agent of the government is going to start a full-scale riot. Bottom line: they aren't sure about the bomb, and they are sure about the riot. They're talking with someone in the organization about arranging to get a team inside quietly, but that's going to take time."
"And time is what we probably don't have," Eric said grimly. "But they're set to go in?"
"The moment it's clear," Ria said.
"I guess what we have to do is clear it," Eric said. "Thanks, Ria."
"Thank me after they find the bomb," Ria said. "If there is one."
He handed the phone back to Kayla, and summarized Ria's conversation for the others.
"Mr. Horn said he'd hired security, too," Ace said miserably. "Special security."
"I guess the Feds aren't going to get in there one minute before he wants them to," Kayla said.
"But we need to get in there now," Hosea said. He dug around in his pocket and produced a brightly colored plastic rectangle on a lanyard; the press-pass Gabriel Horn had given him two days before. He hung it around his neck. "Ah guess if we run into any of that 'special security' of Mr. Horn's, Ah'll tell them Ah'm with the band."
Magnus gave a cynical snort.
Up ahead they could see people climbing over the low wall that separated the business park from the road. It wasn't very high—less than five feet—and more a matter of decoration than security.
"I think that's our cue," Eric said, nodding toward the others.
Hosea boosted the others over the wall—Kayla and Ace first, then Molly, then Magnus and Eric. Then he handed Jeanette over the wall to Eric, then heaved himself over, swinging himself across the top of the wall like an Olympic gymnast working out on the vaulting horse. He dropped lightly to the grass on the other side.
"Hey, what about your bike?" Magnus said.
"She's coming," Eric said. "Look."
For a moment, it seemed a black mare hung poised in the air over the wall, legs outstretched in a leap. Then she landed, neat-footed, and there was only the touring bike again, looking as pleased with itself as a machine could look.
"What if somebody saw that?" Magnus said, sounding scandalized.
"Think they'd believe it?" Kayla asked. "Everybody knows motorcycles don't turn into horses and leap stone walls. And I don't care if these are supposed to be Christian bands, I'll lay you good money more than half this crowd is stoned on something already. Trust me, I'm a Healer, I can tell these things. C'mon, Gus, let's get going."
Eric put a hand on Lady Day's handlebars again. It might make sense for them to split up—it would certainly be faster, and he could take one passenger with him on Lady Day—but now more than ever Eric knew they should stay together. Apart they were too vulnerable. All of them.
Don't split the party.
They began to walk as quickly as they could toward the concert venue. The music got louder; an insistent primal beat.
They were moving through crowds of other people, all heading in the same direction. Apparently the cars were being diverted down to the far entrance, because the road that led right past the casino held nothing but pedestrians, and looking back, Eric could see that the casino entrance was blocked with bright yellow sawhorses and cars, and several men wearing black security uniforms were standing around beside the cars. They were letting pedestrians in, but no vehicles. Despite the fact that the road was empty and available, the pedestrians were walking across the lawns and the landscaped areas toward the music. Eric wondered if Billy Fairchild'd had any idea of what he'd been letting himself in for when he'd agreed to host a free concert here. Tomorrow this place was going to look as if it had hosted a tractor-pull, not a concert.
It's going to look a lot worse than that if you can't pull a rabbit out of your hat, Banyon, he told himself grimly. By now the ice had taken over his gut and was edging up his spine. Strangely it was not fear. Maybe he'd been in too many fights already for that.
Maybe it was just hubris.
Ria had said that this was a flashpoint crowd on the edge of riot, but Eric neither saw nor sensed any sign of that here on the fringes. The thing it reminded him of most strongly was the Eloi moving toward the Morlock's call: docile, eager, and oblivious.
At least the lack of cars made their progress faster now. They soon drew even with the Casino and Cathedral of Prayer.
To Eric's mage-sight, the building shimmered with darkly scarlet wards so dense and many-layered that the building itself was nearly invisible. From that he could assume that there was, in fact, a bomb inside, but he couldn't sense it. He doubted he could even walk through the door.
He blinked, banishing his Othersight. What he could see with his regular vision didn't look any better. Standing in front of the side door of the building were about a dozen of those skinhead bikers Ria had mentioned, looking armed for bear. Even if they could take the muscle out, they couldn't get into the building—he doubted anyone with the least scrap of Talent could.
He heard Kayla take a sharp breath.
"Oh, god," Ace said in a choked voice, looking up and pointing.
The others looked where she indicated.
There were people, crowds of people, clearly visible at the office windows of the upper stories of the casino and cathedral looking out over the crowd: the casino itself might be closed, but either the rest of Billy Fairchild's empire was open for business, or he'd offered it up as a coign of vantage for those interested in seeing the concert but not mingling with the groundlings.
Eric felt a pang of something too deep for horror. How many people does Gabrevys need to kill to do whatever it is he's trying to do? he thought with frustrated indignation. That Gabrevys should try to destroy him and Magnus was almost reasonable in comparison—that was revenge, and revenge was understandable.
But this . . . ? This huge amassing of unnecessary deaths, just because you could—that was pure Unseleighe evil.
Having reached the building, they'd reached the edge of the concert crowd as well. The audience filled the entire space between the clear-space at the foot of the stage—kept clear by more of the biker-Security—and the empty building at the other side of the parking lot. It was one of the original buildings that had been here when Billy had bought the place; a long low building only two stories tall, and just far enough away that none of the audience had yet been tempted to climb up on its roof to get a better view of the bands.
Eric suspected that Ria's estimation of the number of attendees had been conservative. There were a lot more than five thousand people here. Either Billy had underestimated the draw of the bands on the bill when he'd talked to Hosea, or Gabriel Horn had been lying. There might be as many as ten thousand people here already.
The entire parking lot had been cleared of cars. The stage had been set up directly in front of the casino and cathedral—which meant that the giant light-up three-story cross was directly behind it. At the moment the stage was empty, but two giant video screens flanked it, playing music videos.
The stage itself was draped in red, white, and black—instead of blue—and some of the audience were carrying home-made banners and placards. Some of them bore crosses.
Some of them didn't.
"Welcome to Nuremburg," Kayla said to Eric. Her voice was a little slurred; she sounded slightly drunk on the intense emotions of the crowd. "I hope you've got a plan?"
He did. Seeing the crowd, the stage, one had come to him.
"Some people are getting up onto the stage," Hosea reported. "Warm-up band, Ah guess."
"Perfect," Eric said. "Now here's what we do . . ."