- Chapter 24

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# CHAPTER ELEVEN

Feeling guilty is not the best way to start the day, Mac told himself, driving slowly toward Lianne's. He worried about telling her how out of hand his comforting of Felouen had gotten, then rationalized that hang-ups about monogamy were a mostly human obsession. But then he reminded himself that he had known about that human quirk before he started dating a human—

Finally he made up his mind that he would just pretend nothing had happened unless Lianne accidentally found out otherwise.

Besides, he told himself in an attempt to soothe his aching conscience, Felouen really needed me there last night. It made her so happy to see that I'd accepted the Ring's geas. She looked at me the way human women do when I've just won a race. And after Gwaryon's death, she needed comforting.

And since when does "comforting" include jumping the bereaved's bones? his conscience snapped back.

So much for that approach. He dragged his feet as he walked away from Rhellen, heading as slowly as he could up the walk to the apartment. And he knew immediately that there was something very odd.

She's left the door standing open, he thought when he stepped into the apartment entryway. The heavy gray door stood about an inch ajar. He could see that the chain lock wasn't on, either. Considering the day she had yesterday, I'm surprised she doesn't have the whole apartment locked and barred. What did she do, just go collapse on the couch? Or maybe—maybe she left it open for me this morning. So I'd just come straight in. He shook his head, puzzled, and knocked.

"Hey, Lianne!" There was no answer. He pushed the door all the way open, and looked inside.

Fear overwhelmed puzzlement.

He stared at the living room. It had been thoroughly and expertly trashed.

Oh, gods, he thought, oh, shit! With inhuman strength, he clamped down hard on the doorknob; it broke off in his hand. Before him, two living-room chairs lay on their sides with books scattered across them. The shattered television lay on the floor, one of the shoes he had last seen Lianne wearing resting in the debris. In the connecting kitchen, shards from broken glasses and dishes sparkled in the light of one errant sunbeam. A Rorschach blot of blood traced obscene patterns down one wall.

"Lianne! Lianne! Where are you?" he shouted. He ran from room to room. Beyond the living room and the kitchen, nothing had been disturbed. Lianne's jewelry was intact, her stereo and her computer were where they belonged, her clothes still hung neatly in the closet.

Only Lianne was gone.

In the sinister hush of the empty apartment, his sharp, irregular breaths and the tick of the kitchen clock were the only sounds. He stretched his psychic feelers—and came up empty. No magic had touched this room except his own. No demon creatures from the Unformed Plane had stolen Lianne away.

Scenes from a hundred TV cop shows played in his memory. Robbery wasn't the motive—and it wasn't magic, either Unseleighe or human. Rape? Kidnapping? Worse? Mac started looking for a message, a note, anything—going room to room and searching inch by inch.

When the phone rang right next to his ear, Mac jumped. "Gods, let it be her," he whispered. "Let this be some stupid mistake."

He picked up the handset and held it to his ear. "Lianne?" he asked.

"Not a chance, babe. It's Jewelene. I've got her." The voice on the other end of the line was muffled, the laughter in his ear was coarse and vicious. "You owe me. You owe me big time, baby—and you're going to pay. You know what?"

A dull ache gripped Mac's chest. "What?"

"You stole my car and slashed the tires. So I stole your girl. You don't want to know what I've slashed." The voice was laughing again.

Belinda Ciucci.

"What do you want?" Mac whispered.

The voice was full of obscene gloating. "I'm going to kill her. And I'm going to enjoy every long second of it."

Think, fool! What can you bargain for her? "You don't want her."

Belinda made a tsking sound. "Sure I do, babe. You know what they say about a bird in the hand and all that."

Convince her. Somehow convince her. "You want me. Not her."

Deep breathing for a moment, as his heart raced and fear clogged his throat. "Yeah, but I've got her. Right now, pal, I just want to hurt somebody. She put up a fight—I've already hurt her a little. She's not as pretty as she used to be."

Gods, Lianne. What in hell have I done to you? Mac thought. What did I get you into? How can I get you out again? "You tell me what you want me to do, and I'll do it. Just let her go. Don't hurt her anymore."

"Damn shame you didn't have that attitude a day or two ago. Everybody would have been a lot happier." Maclyn twisted a butter knife lying on the counter into a knot. Damn Belinda Ciucci,. he thought. I should have wiped her memories instead of playing games with her.

The woman cleared her throat. "First, don't call the police. I'll kill her at the first sign that you've involved them. For now, you get to wait. You're going to meet me somewhere, but I haven't decided where yet. Stay by the phone. I'll call you back when I make up my mind."

Mac clenched his hand on the handset. This woman was not sane. "When?"

Belinda laughed, and the note in her voice confirmed that she was not sane. "Who knows?"

"Let me talk to her," he pleaded.

"Nope." There was a click. The woman had hung up.

Mac refrained from smashing the handset to shreds. Instead, he set it gently back in the receiver. Then he put his fist through the wall. "Dammit! Dammit, I should have been here, dammit! I should have been here. Not with Felouen. Here. If I'd been here, none of this would have happened."

He stared at the phone, his only link with Lianne. He hadn't thought through the possible consequences of angering Belinda, then leaving her to her own devices. He could have taken care of her by himself earlier—that would have been the end of it. No one would have suffered. Now he needed help, and needed it badly.

And Dierdre and Felouen and all of his other potential sources of help were currently Underhill gearing up to wipe out golems. In fact, he should have been going straight from Lianne's place back to Elfhame Outremer. Instead, he was locked in place in the apartment.

He would have to construct a Gate in the apartment, he decided—one that he could leave up and use to shuttle back and forth between Underhill and Lianne's telephone. The energy drain would be bad, worse since his resources were already low. He was tired, he was needed by both his own people and a seriously disturbed child, he'd just lost a friend and had another seriously hurt—and now Lianne was a hostage somewhere. He was pulled in too many directions.

Which is exactly when people get careless and get themselves killed, he told himself. Not that my state of readiness matters. There's no looking back. He started pulling in the energy that would form the Gate.

* * *

Amanda-Anne sat like a spider in her web, centered in the Unformed Plane, singing loudly and off-key, making monsters.

She had started to vary them—somewhere along the line, she had gotten tired of the stick-men. She made a few two-headed stick-men, but even that was too boring. She made some things with four legs and long, spiky tails and huge teeth, and she rather liked those. She made a few more, similar but with wings. When the first of her winged monsters flew through the air, she laughed and clapped her hands—and began adding wings to everything she made from then on. Her monsters started getting bigger. One had dozens of legs and three heads on long, snake-like necks; it flew with less grace than a winged tank might have, but it did fly.

No one bothered her in the Unformed's nothingness. The Father couldn't find her. The nasty things that lived there were more afraid of her than she was of them. Nothing could touch her, nothing could hurt her. She had never had so much fun in her life. She had never had so many friends, either.

She rubbed the green bead strung on her wrist. "My m-m-magic door," she whispered. "J-j-j-just like the g-g-genie's lamp." She crowed with delight. To have been so weak, to be so strong—it was wonderful.

And the best thing was that her magic door could take her back into the elf's world. She thought about this as she worked on her current creation, an eight-legged nightmare with hundreds of eyes and a fanged mouth that ran the length of its belly. If it weren't for the goody-two-shoes elves, that place would have been perfect. The Father and the Step-Mother couldn't get there. In among all those trees, with all that magic, she would be safe. She could hide there forever—if it weren't for the stupid elves, who would make her go home.

She thought yearningly of how nice this place would be without bossy elves, about how much she would like to hide here forever.

She sang to herself and made another monster.

* * *

Lianne woke to a blaze of pain, with the tang of blood and a filthy rag in her mouth, bathed in the stench of car exhaust and gasoline. She felt as if she was lying on a bed of nails, with another one slowly descending on her. Her head throbbed, her eyes would not open, her face burned horribly and screamed with pain. Her ribs crunched ominously against hard cold metal and stinking carpet when she rolled off to the left. She felt the bones of her face shift relative to each other when she moved, and white-hot searing agony shot through her skull. She sobbed, and the movement of her rib cage stabbed fire along her nerves.

What have I done? she wondered. Where am I?

She fought to retrieve foggy memory.

She remembered elves fighting the monsters—or was that a true memory? She remembered magic, too—and Maclyn doing magic. And that was crazy. Absolutely crazy. Impossible. Everyone knew that magic couldn't exist.

Mac Lynn. Not Maclyn. He's a racecar driver. Not an elf. Something has happened to my mind—amnesia or something—to make me think of magic. However I got hurt like this—it's confused me.

But that wasn't so, was it? Maclyn, not Mac Lynn, wasn't human. She'd figured that out all by herself, using logic, using reason—and she'd caught him out. So the elves were real. That meant the monsters were real, too. The elves had won their fight with the monsters. Because of her. I'm a hero—whoopee. Look where it got me.

What happened next?

She remembered books. Child abuse books—she'd been reading, and she'd just figured out something about Amanda. Yes. It was coming back. She remembered the knock at her door, but it wasn't Mac waiting on the other side.

It had been a strange woman with a gun.

The woman had barged in—but Lianne hadn't reacted the way she'd expected. Lianne had grabbed a heavy ashtray and bashed the intruder in the face—God knows where the courage for that trick came from, or how I managed it—and blood had spurted down the inside of the pantyhose mask the bitch wore. A second bash, this time to the gun-hand, and the gun had flown across the room.

I got first licks in—but she had obviously had training. Lots of it.

Lianne was starting to remember the other things, as well. Very unpleasant things. The woman was good at hand-to-hand combat—she'd probably used it on other people, given the way she acted. When she dove at Lianne, she took her down and flipped her on her stomach, slapped handcuffs on her—what the hell was she doing with handcuffs?—and then started kicking.

Lianne knew she had broken ribs. She remembered hearing them crack when the woman's riding boots struck, and she could feel them now, hurting more than she'd ever thought she could hurt, screaming with pain with every breath. Her nose was broken, too, and probably her jaw and her left cheekbone—those injuries had occurred after the woman retrieved her gun, when she started beating Lianne in the face with it.

Her eyes wouldn't open because they were swollen so badly. I could go blind from this, she realized with horror, then wondered if she was going to live through this to be blind. She couldn't move her arms—the handcuffs were still on. Her ankles were tied together.

The rag in her mouth tasted of blood, old and new.

Why I'm here doesn't matter. What matters is—how do I get out?

From her almost-fetal position—which she could not change without bumping solid obstacles or causing even more pain than she already endured—from the smells, and from faintly heard road noises, she figured she was in the trunk of a car. She did not remember how she got there. She must have knocked me out, dragged me to the car—she was a hell of a lot stronger than I would have guessed.

The car door slammed so hard right then that the shock wave jarred her head and rattled through her teeth. The driver's weight as she (or was it a he now?) bounced the vehicle around, confirming the fact that her cage was, indeed, the trunk of her captor's car. The engine started up, and Lianne was thrown from one side to the other as the driver accelerated and turned corners at high speed. The teacher debated making some noise to let the driver know she was awake—then decided against it. There was nothing in the woman's attitude last night that made Lianne think she would let her get a drink of water, or go to the bathroom—if the same woman was still the one who had her. Lianne figured if she made any noise, she was more likely to be beaten with a pistol again. A drink of water wasn't worth the pain.

Mac will know I'm gone today. No one else will miss me until tomorrow, but Mac will know. I hope he finds me soon—I think she's going to kill me if he doesn't.

* * *

Elves with mage-blades and gleaming gold armor sat on the grass next to elves in Kevlar who carried Steyr AUGs, shotguns, or high-tech graphite compound bows—and these sat next to elves whose only weapons were their expressions of scorn or amused disbelief. Felouen tried to contain her dismay at the meager attendance. Less than half of Elfhame Outremer's fighting force had seen fit to show up for her briefing. The few warriors present had listened in polite silence while Felouen described her ordeal. She began with the spell that had drawn her and Gwaryon in and ended with Dierdre's entrance. Dierdre took up the tale then, describing what they found, Gwaryon's death and the rescue by the human woman.

Felouen thought that she had done well—and Dierdre certainly sounded convincing enough—but it was obvious that the warriors were unimpressed.

One of the younger elves, who wore no weapons, sprawled in the grass, nonchalant. He'd listened with a bored expression on his face. When she finished speaking, he indicated that he had a question with an indolently raised finger.

"Yes?" Felouen asked him.

"I felt the spell you're talking about yesterday. I warded against it as soon as I noticed it, and it didn't bother me. If you hadn't been hanging around old weird Gwaryon, you would done the same thing, and then we wouldn't have been out here earlier using a lot of valuable energy saving your life." He shrugged and turned his palms up. "Not that I resent helping you out—but if you had taken a few reasonable precautions, it wouldn't have been necessary."

One of the older elves nodded. "You should never have answered a summons unarmed."

"How in all the hells would I know that?" Felouen snapped. "Humans stopped summoning elves long before I was born. And Gwaryon didn't mention it."

One of the others grunted. "He should have."

"Granted," Felouen snarled. "However, you are all missing the point. The witch-child who summoned us wasn't the threat. The other child and the Unseleighe things she called were the threat."

A mail-clad woman who sat near the front sighed. "I find it hard to believe that they are even a fraction of the threat you make them out to be, Felouen. The sort of weirdlings a child is strong enough to conjure would have to be pretty feeble. I know they killed Gwaryon, and I'm not discounting the injuries they did you—but neither of you were armed. Neither Dierdre nor Maclyn were harmed."

Felouen felt her frustration building. She hit her fists together, wishing each of them held one slow-brained elvish skull in it. "The only reason they were unhurt is that the human woman broke the containment spell and sent them back wherever they came from."

A shrug of indifference. "Yes. Precisely. We're talking about monsters that one human can banish."

"We're talkin' about five beasties that four elves couldna' kill—couldna' even scratch, Ymelthre." Dierdre, cross-legged to one side of the standing Felouen, leaned forward, her eyes glowing with contained rage. "With our enchanted blades, we couldna' even make them cry out. And neither Gwaryon nor Felouen could break the binding spell that held them helpless. A spell a `mere human child' set. Felouen has seen these things in the Oracular Pool, and she says they are a threat to us. And I've fought them, and I say they are a threat to us. We need to stand a watch. We need to be ready."

Felouen watched them as the group broke into a debate over standing watch versus not standing watch. I know what the problem is. Nothing really scares them anymore, she thought. They have been the fastest and the strongest and the best for so long, they believe they can't be hurt. Except by our Unseleighe kin, and this time they aren't involved.

When the group announced its decision to post a bare-bones watch so thin that she knew it was merely a token thrown in her direction because she was the warriors' chieftain, she smiled bitterly. Well, I hope they're right.

After the main group had drifted off, several of the Ring-sworn, who had waited in silence, came up to stand in front of her. She recognized all of them from long-ago campaigns together, or from more recent social meetings. Of the group, considered by most of the elvenkind in Elfhame Outremer to be dreadfully conservative, Amallen was nominal leader. Amallen bent one knee slightly—Old World manners—and briefly bowed his head.

"Lady," he said in grave tones, "do not think too badly of them. They have not fought beside you—and they cannot imagine a human child who could bring forth anything that could endanger them. We," and with a nod of his head he indicated his companions, "have decided among ourselves to stand a separate watch. We will begin at once; we have already set our shifts. The others will realize that they were wrong later—and some may die learning their folly. We don't need to see the monsters to smell their taint. There is something sorely wrong here—and though we cannot fathom it, we cannot doubt it."

Felouen smiled gratefully, as relief so profound it made her knees weak washed over her. "Those who will later owe you their lives will thank you. I know that thanks is due now." She hugged each of the nine who had supported her for so long. "I wish this were idle worrying. As it is, I know you won't be standing your watches alone for long."

* * *

Belinda grinned at herself in the rearview mirror. The worm turns—that's the phrase, I think. The worm turns. She readjusted the mirror and stretched the stiff muscles in her shoulders.

The worm has certainly turned in my favor now. The light changed from red to green, and Belinda headed through the intersection and pointed the car out of town. She'd spent the night in the Thunderbird, unwilling to move her captive out of the security of the trunk, and equally unwilling to leave her in the trunk while she slept inside her motel room. No sense taking a chance on the teacher waking up and making enough noise to get herself rescued. And she couldn't think of anyplace to keep the woman—until she remembered the abandoned building out in the middle of nowhere that she'd hiked past the night Mac Lynn stole her car.

It would work well enough, Belinda thought. Tie the teacher up, steal her clothes so that she didn't get the urge to do any wandering even if she got loose, and leave her.

Of course, killing her immediately would be a lot less complicated. There was nothing to connect her with the woman; nothing left behind to incriminate Belinda. It would be just one more senseless abduction-murder—probably wind up on "Unsolved Mysteries." If she killed the teacher, there wouldn't be any witnesses who might cause trouble later, and Mac Lynn didn't need to know his little slut was dead—hell, the whole purpose of this business had been to get him by the balls. Belinda smiled. The tone of his voice over the phone told him she'd accomplished that. So Miss Teacher had served her purpose. He'd go where Belinda told him to go, hoping that his girlfriend would still be alive.

The abandoned house would still make a good destination. It could be weeks or even months before someone found the body—Belinda and the child and Mel Tanbridge would be well away from North Carolina by then.

She retraced her trip from that night carefully, stopping and backtracking on a couple of occasions as she missed a turn. It was a long drive, made longer by the fact that she felt obligated to drive the speed limit right then. It would be a stone bitch to get pulled with a well-beaten kidnap victim in her possession.

The sun rode higher and the day started getting hot—a nice enough change, Belinda thought, after the cold, wet crap of the day before. She drove past hundreds of little rural houses, all of them ordinary, all of them quiet—which suited her just fine. But none of them was the one she wanted.

Finally she spotted the place. Weeds had overgrown the drive, and kudzu, greening as the weather warmed, covered everything else. In another month, the house would be completely invisible under its kudzu blanket.

Perfect. I'll have to thank Mac Lynn for helping me find this dump.

Now, what to do with little miss schoolmarm?

Belinda considered only an instant, then decided. Hostages were risky, and too much trouble to take care of. Dead bodies, on the other hand, were very little trouble at all. She'd rather deal with corpses than captives any day.

So, she'd get the woman out of the trunk, march her into the place. Shoot her in the head, shove the body through some loose floorboards—there were bound to be some loose floorboards in there somewhere. Then she'd find a phone, call Mac Lynn, have him meet her—where?

Why not out here? Torture the bastard, dump him next to his girlfriend while he's still alive and can appreciate it—then kill him. That would be fair after what he's done to me.

First the girlfriend.

She pulled into the weed-choked drive, and the Thunderbird bumped along, weeds and sticks hissing and thumping against the glossy brown finish. She stopped the car when she was right behind the house. It was going to be hell to get back out again, she thought with displeasure.

The place was dilapidated, the wrap-around porch sagged to the ground in several places, and the only part of the structure that looked slightly solid were the boards nailed over the windows. There had been something nailed over the door, too, but that had been ripped away. The actual door hung on one rusted hinge, partway open. The place was a perfect haven for snakes and rats and God only knew what else. At least that probably keeps the riff-raff out, she mused. More than that ludicrous little sign, anyway.

The building was posted, "NO TRESPASS—G BY ORDER OF T—." Rain and sun and wind had bleached the yellow sign to bone white on one side and obliterated much of its message. Dump looks like the place where the universe goes to die. It gave her the creeps worse in the daylight than it had at night. She realized that was because she could see it better in daylight.

Belinda pulled out her gun. It was a good, reliable weapon. She didn't use it often—guns weren't subtle enough for her taste most of the time—but it had never let her down.

Still, she didn't much like the idea of killing the teacher—it would hurt the bastard race driver, but it was extra. She wasn't getting paid for it—and that made it dirtier, somehow, than killing for pay. Or for revenge.

Belinda looked out at the bleak ruin. I'll be doing her a favor, she decided. It would be worse for her if I left her here alive.

She slipped the gun into its holster and pulled the keys out of the ignition. It would be a long time before she made the mistake of leaving them in it again—no matter how little time she intended to be gone. She popped the latch on the trunk, got out, and walked around to the back, fighting her way through burrs and thorns and tenacious stickers.

She pulled her shoulders back and took a deep breath. The gap between the trunk and the hood looked odd for a moment. Peculiar. It gave her the shivers for just a moment, like someone had stepped on her grave.

She shook off the feeling.

Ah, well. Showtime, she thought.

She reached down to release the latch.

* * *

Cethlenn flew Abbey across the slick ice-barrier that Alice had created to protect her domain, then floated both of them down to stand in the long, white-on-white corridor.

Amanda-Abbey studied the high-arched ceiling and the unadorned walls that ran, unbroken, to the vanishing point. "She's in there?" she asked.

"Somewhere," Cethlenn agreed.

Abbey stared at the nothingness, puzzled. "How will we find her?"

Cethlenn didn't seem concerned. "We won't. She'll find us."

"We're just going to wait here?" Abbey asked, hoping that Cethlenn had some plan.

Cethlenn gave the girl a weary smile. "I wish it were so easy. No—we'll walk. Make lots of noise."

That made no sense at all. "Why?"

"You'll see," Cethlenn promised.

The two of them started down the corridor, stomping on the floor as hard as they could, sending the clamor of their footsteps ringing on ahead of them. Amanda-Abbey started hopping, and her heavy thumps increased the racket—until she noticed the noise becoming muffled, and the floor on which she jumped becoming springier.

She looked down at her feet. "Cethlenn," she whispered, "look! The floor is growing carpet!"

"Aye." Cethlenn did not seem surprised. "She always does that after a bit. Now we must sing. Know you a bothersome song that we can sing together?"

" `One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall,' " Abbey offered after a moment's thought.

Cethlenn shook her head. "Sing a bit of it for me."

Amanda-Abbey did, while the witch listened.

"Oh, for sure—" Cethlenn laughed. "That will drive her to distraction."

They resumed marching while they bellowed through nearly forty verses of the song. Again, Abbey noticed a change, as their singing echoed less and less, and seemed closer and smaller—though she knew she was making just as much noise as she had at the first.

Cethlenn looked up and pointed at the ceiling.

Amanda-Abbey's gaze followed the gesture. "She's lowered it."

"Now we bring her to us," Cethlenn whispered. "Here. Take this." The witch made a gesture, and a pail of bright yellow paint appeared in her hand. She offered it to Abbey, who took it and stared at it in confusion.

Cethlenn created blue and pink paints for herself, in the brightest tints imaginable. She took the pink pail, and slung it against one wall. Fluorescent streaks spread in gaudy profusion, and dripped messily down the surface of the corridor. The witch followed the same procedure with the blue.

Amanda-Abbey watched, appalled. "That's not very nice, Cethlenn," she said.

"It had to be done." The witch shrugged. "Now you do yours."

Abbey bit her lip, then tipped her can and dribbled just a bit of the yellow onto the floor.

"Not on the carpet!" a shrill soprano voice screeched, and a child raced out of hiding and yanked the can away from Abbey.

Abbey and Alice stared at each other. Abbey thought that the girl appeared to be about her own age—but that similarity was the only one Abbey could find. The other girl was as white as the walls around her—white hair, white face, white lips, white clothes—no hint of color touched any part of her except for her eyes. The girl's eyes were gray, but they were neither the bright and lively gray of kittens nor the safe gray of the bark of old maple trees, nor the firm and dependable gray of the stones in good fireplaces. They were the dismal gray of drizzly late afternoons when the sun hadn't been out all day. They were the flat gray of institutional paint, the kind Abbey saw used on garage floors and storage rooms, and the kind she suspected prisons would be painted in.

"I'm Abbey," she said, lost in the hopelessness of those gray, gray eyes. "I'm—I'm your sister."

The gray eyes narrowed. "You made a mess!" Alice fumed. "You tracked on my carpet, you were noisy, you were singing in my hall!" She glared at the two of them, then pointed her finger at Cethlenn. "You have come here before. I don't want you here."

"Alice!" Cethlenn took the authoritarian posture and voice of a demanding adult. "You are being rude to your guest. You have not properly introduced yourself to your sister."

Alice wasn't fooled for a second. "I'm not the one who went into peoples' houses and stomped and screamed and sang wicked songs and threw paint on the walls and tracked it into the carpet. That's evil. Evil! I don't have to be polite to evil people—the Bible says not to countenance wickedness."

Abbey raised an eyebrow and looked at the witch. :This is my sister? She's awful. Why would anyone ever let her come out?:

:She's very good at cleaning up messes. That's something neither you nor Anne have managed yet. Adults think she is a very good child, she knows manners—and she is very organized and very patient. And she doesn't mind being alone.: Cethlenn rested a hand on Abbey's shoulder. :She also knows things you don't know. You need her.:

:Then we shouldn't have dumped paint on her carpet.:

Cethlenn waved her hand at the paint that still marked walls and floor. It vanished, along with the paint cans that had contained it. :Now she doesn't have as much to be upset about.:

Cethlenn jammed her thumbs into the braided belt that wrapped around her narrow waist and leaned down until her eyes were on a level with Amanda-Alice's. "If you want to stop real wickedness, come with us," she told the pale girl. "You have yet another sister, who protects both of you. She thinks the way to protect you is by making monsters—and that is what she is doing now. She has to be stopped."

"Making—monsters?" Alice looked at Abbey. "You are going to stop her?"

Abbey shrugged helplessly. "Cethlenn says the two of us can't. We need more help."

Alice's eyes lit with a zealot's glee. "I'll help. When we've stopped her, I'll tell her about the Bible."

Amanda-Abbey, who had met Anne once before, had doubts about the wisdom of that, but she kept them to herself. She figured Alice would reconsider, too, once she'd met the other "sister." So she said nothing, just nodded.

Cethlenn said, "Excellent. I'm glad you're joining us, Alice. We can put your talents to good use."

Abbey tried not to be bothered by the fact that, where she had only had herself and the faceless voice of "Stranger" to rely on a few days ago, now she had the bossy presence of Cethlenn and the bizarre Alice. And Anne, who scared her badly, and whom she did not like at all, was yet to come.

* * *

Maclyn finished the Gate and sagged against the living-room wall, gray with exhaustion. :Rhellen—stay put, and if the phone rings, come through and get me,: he Mindspoke to his elvensteed—hoofprints in the living room were the least of the damage that had been done here. :The Gate is in the kitchen—get me as fast as you can, and get me back here before it stops. I'll leave the side door open.:

The elvensteed sent back affirmation, and Maclyn stepped toward the kitchen and through the Gate.

He stepped out at the periphery of the Grove and immediately looked toward its center. He had expected to see the fighting forces of Elfhame Outremer assembled, or at least to have been met by armed guards.

But there was no one. The Grove was devoid of warriors, devoid of elves of any walk of life. He listened and heard the gentle laughter and the music of normal days coming from Elfhame Outremer itself, and he frowned. Surely Felouen and Dierdre had brought their message to the city. Yet the sounds he heard were not the sounds of a people preparing for war.

"Ha, Thaerry, you almost had me," a light female voice called from the other side of the Grove.

Maclyn saw a red-clad beauty dart out from under the sheltering boughs of the trees, followed closely by her lean swain, elegantly robed in gold-shot blue.

"Droewyn, you minx—I'll have you yet," the would-be lover answered. He caught the girl and tripped her into the grass, and the two of them rolled together, laughing and fondling each other, oblivious to Maclyn's presence.

"Pardon," Mac said, stepping into the open arena of the Grove with them, "but have Felouen and Dierdre not been here?"

Droewyn straightened her bodice with some annoyance, and said, "Aye, they've been, Maclyn—gone, too, I hope. Old buzzards, prophesying their dismal tales of doom."

Thaerronal chuckled and nibbled on his companion's neck. He gave Maclyn a pointed stare and said, dryly, "They headed back toward the Oracular Pool, no doubt to bathe themselves in more of their gloomy worries. Why don't you follow them?"

Maclyn bit his lip and withheld the criticism he wanted so badly to give. Thaerry was about his own age—and one of the few Elves of the High Court even less inclined to involvement in Court affairs than he had been. Droewyn was Low Court, tied to the Grove—Maclyn wouldn't have expected any better of her.

So he nodded stiffly and ran in the direction they'd indicated.

The rich woodland scents, the soft whisper of his boots on the forest loam, the warm, moist breeze that brushed his skin, the twilight gleam of the eyes of the beasts that watched his progress along the path—all those things said "home" to him, reassured him—

:Halt, Maclyn, Ring-sworn Friend of the High Court of Elfhame Outremer.: The crisp Mindspoken command cut through the exhausted reverie into which he'd drifted. Maclyn skidded to a stop and watched the forest around him.

From behind a massive tree, an armed and armored elf stepped into view. The Uzi hung casually at her side; the Kevlar body armor fit her like a seamed skin. Her soft gold hair streamed like a river from the silver coronet that held it out of her eyes. She grinned at him. :Nice to see you've finally joined us.:

Maclyn smiled with relief. :Hallara. Good to see someone standing watch.:

The woman, one of his mother's contemporaries, laughed. :Some of us know Felouen—and Dierdre. They have better things to do than chase imaginary bogans; if they say the Unseleighe—or anything else—are about to bite us, we won't wait until we feel the teeth. So. There are enough of us to cover the permanent Gates, with a few left over to raise the alarm throughout Elfhame Outremer. We may be caught short, but we won't be caught sleeping.:

He nodded. :Mother around?:

:Checking the Oracle, I think. The omens were very bad, last time I got any news. Crisis impending, any second—of course, that's the Oracle. Damned imprecise. Makes you wish something would happen, just so you could get past the waiting.:

Maclyn's laugh was bitter. :Don't you believe it. The waiting is a hell of a lot better. Things have broken loose on my side—someone kidnapped my girlfriend.:

:The human? Is it related to all of this?:

:I don't think so. This crazy woman has been following me for about a week. I don't know what she wants, but she's not Unseleighe, just mad, and evil. A bad combination, but there's none of the feel of magic to her.:

Hallara nodded, then whistled—a low run of rapid notes with a liquid trill at the end. The whistle was answered and repeated.

I really ought to keep up on the codes, Maclyn thought as he listened to the brief message making its way through Elfhame Outremer. It would save a hell of a lot of footwork.

In almost no time, Dierdre, astride her elvensteed, galloped into view.

"That red-headed bitch kidnapped Lianne," Maclyn told her without preamble. "I need help finding her—and some backup for her rescue."

"The timing on this couldn't have been worse. The Oracle is showing imminent disaster, Mac. None of us dare leave—it appears that an attack is going to be launched against us through one of the Gates within mere minutes. I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave you on your own where Lianne is concerned."

This was not only unexpected, it was disastrous. "Dammit!"

Dierdre shook her head, implacable. "I'm sorry. We're thin here as it is."

"I know—" he pleaded, "but I'm afraid for Lianne's life."

"And I'm afraid for all of ours." Never had he seen his mother look so drawn, so torn by conflicting duties. "I'm sorry, Maclyn. Go back, do what you can—I'll come and help you search if I survive this."

Mac stared at his feet, then looked into his mother's eyes, anguished. Conflicting loyalties and loves tore at him as well. "She's in trouble because of me. I can't stay and help you fight. I can't abandon her, Mother."

She nodded slowly. "Go. I understand. A single fighter more or less isn't going to make a difference. An army, now—but an army isn't going to have time to come to us. We've called on Fairgrove, but they're depleted and down after their last to-do. Nobody else is near enough."

Maclyn's shoulders sagged, and he turned and began the walk back toward his own Gate.

* * *

Amanda-Anne shivered. The cold mists of the Unformed Plane seeped through to her very bones, and the things she had made had grown restive. They looked at her with edgy calculation in their glowing eyes—circled around her along an ever-shrinking perimeter, snapped their toothy jaws and hissed at each other, slashed and growled. But always, they watched her.

And the closer they moved, the more she ached for a safe haven, and the more she yearned for safety, the more restless and dangerous her monsters became. Suddenly, making them didn't seem like such a good idea after all.

They grinned at her, the awful things, and they suddenly looked hungry. She didn't know what to feed them, but she suspected they would be only too happy to eat little girls. And now Amanda-Anne felt very much like a frightened little girl again. The Unformed Plane wasn't fun anymore. Making monsters wasn't fun. She wanted to be warm, she wanted to be protected, she wanted to be—

—in a safe place. Where the elves lived!

She "stretched"—reached out to take control of the body she shared with the others. It wasn't occupied—all the others were elsewhere, and the body itself was in Amanda's bedroom, curled on the bed. Amanda-Anne took control, opened her eyes, wrapped stubby fingers around Mommy's green bead. The first of the monsters appeared in her bedroom, following her.

Amanda-Anne shrieked and carved a road that drove straight into the heart of the elves' stronghold, and safety.

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Framed

Title: | The Otherworld
Author: | Mercedes Lackey, Larry Dixon, Mark Shepherd & Holly Lisle
ISBN: | 0-671-57852-9
Copyright: | © 1992 by Mercedes Lackey
Publisher: | Baen Books