Dragon's Teeth (46 page)
Authors: Mercedes Lackey
Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #historical, #dark fantasy
Then the smile vanished, and the eyes flinched away. Diana could move again, and staggered back against the brick wall of the building behind her, her breath coming in harsh pants, the brick rough and comforting in its reality beneath her hands.
“Diana?” It was Andre’s voice behind her.
“I’m—all right—” she said, not at all sure that she really was.
Andre strode silently past her, face grim and purposeful. The man seemed to sense his purpose, and smiled again—
But Andre never faltered for even the barest moment.
The smile wavered and faded; the man fell back a step or two, surprised that his weapon had failed him—
Then he scowled, and pulled something out of the sleeve of his windbreaker; and to Diana’s surprise, charged straight for Andre, his sneakered feet scuffing on the cement—
And something suddenly blurring about his right hand. As it connected with Andre’s upraised left arm, Diana realized what it was—almost too late.
“Andre—he has nunchucks—they’re
wood
,” she cried out urgently as Andre grunted in unexpected pain. “He can
kill
you with them! Get the
hell
out of here!”
Andre needed no second warning. In the blink of an eye, he was gone.
Leaving Diana to face the creature alone.
She dropped into guard-stance as he regarded her thoughtfully, still making no sound, not even of heavy breathing. In a moment he seemed to make up his mind, and came for her.
At least he didn’t smile again in that terrible way—perhaps the weapon was only effective once.
She hoped fervently he wouldn’t try again—as an empath, she was doubly vulnerable to a weapon forged of fear.
They circled each other warily, like two cats preparing to fight—then Diana thought she saw an opening—and took it.
And quickly came to the conclusion that she was overmatched, as he sent her tumbling with a badly bruised shin. The next few moments reinforced that conclusion—as he continued scatheless while she picked up injury after painful injury.
She was a brown belt in karate—but he was a black belt in kung fu, and the contest was a pathetically uneven match. She knew before very long that he was toying with her—and while he still swung the wooden nunchucks, Andre did not dare move in close enough to help.
She realized, (as fear dried her mouth, she grew more and more winded, and she searched frantically for a means of escape) that she was as good as dead.
If only she could get those damn ’chucks away from him!
And as she ducked and stumbled against the curb, narrowly avoiding the strike he made at her, an idea came to her. He knew from her moves—as she knew from his—that she was no amateur. He would never expect an amateur’s move from her—something truly stupid and suicidal—
So the next time he swung at her, she stood her ground. As the ’chuck came at her she took one step forward, smashing his nose with the heel of her right hand and lifting her left to intercept the flying baton.
As it connected with her left hand with a sickening crunch, she whirled and folded her entire body around hand and weapon, and went limp, carrying it away from him.
She collapsed in a heap at his feet, hand afire with pain, eyes blurring with it, and waited for either death or salvation.
And salvation in the form of Andre rose behind her attacker. With one
savate
kick he broke the man’s back; Diana could hear it cracking like green wood—and before her assailant could collapse, a second double-handed blow sent him crashing into the brick wall, head crushed like an eggshell.
Diana struggled to her feet, and waited for some arcane transformation.
Nothing.
She staggered to the corpse, face flat and expressionless—a sign she was suppressing pain and shock with utterly implacable iron will. Andre began to move forward as if to stop her, then backed off again at the look in her eyes.
She bent slightly, just enough to touch the shoulder of the body with her good hand—and released the Power.
Andre pulled her back to safety as the corpse exploded into flame, burning as if it had been soaked in oil. She watched the flames for one moment, wooden-faced; then abruptly collapsed.
Andre caught her easily before she could hurt herself further, lifting her in his arms as if she weighed no more than a kitten. “
Mon pauvre petite
,” he murmured, heading back towards the car at a swift but silent run. “It is the hospital for you, I think—”
“Saint—Francis—” she gasped, every step jarring her hand and bringing tears of pain to her eyes, “One of us—is on the night staff—Dr. Crane—”
“
Bien
,” he replied. “Now be silent—”
“But—how are you—”
“In your car, foolish one. I have the keys you left in it.”
“But—”
“I can drive.”
“But—”
“
And
I have a license. Will you be silent?”
“How?” she said, disobeying him.
“Night school,” he replied succinctly, reaching the car, putting her briefly on her feet to unlock the passenger-side door, then lifting her into it. “You are not the only one who knows of urban camouflage.”
This time she did not reply—mostly because she had fainted from pain.
The emergency room was empty—for which Andre was very grateful. His invocation of Dr. Crane brought a thin, bearded young man around to the tiny examining cubicle in record time.
“Good God Almighty! What did you tangle with, a bus?” he exclaimed, when stripping the sweatsuit jacket and pants revealed that there was little of Diana that was not battered and black-and-blue.
Andre wrinkled his nose at the acrid antiseptic odors around them, and replied shortly. “No. Your ‘Ripper.’”
The startled gaze the doctor fastened on him revealed that Andre had scored. “Who—won?” he asked at last.
“We did. I do not think he will prey upon anyone again.”
The doctor’s eyes closed briefly; Andre read prayerful thankfulness on his face as he sighed with relief. Then he returned to business. “You must be Andre, right? Anything I can supply?”
Andre laughed at the hesitation in his voice. “Fear not, your blood supply is quite safe, and I am unharmed. It is Diana who needs you.”
The relief on the doctor’s face made Andre laugh again.
Dr. Crane ignored him. “Right,” he said, turning to the work
he
knew best.
She was lightheaded and groggy with the Demerol Dr. Crane had given her as Andre deftly stripped her and tucked her into her bed; she’d dozed all the way home in the car.
“I just wish I knew
what
that thing was—” she said inconsequentially, as he arranged her arm in its light Fiberglas cast a little more comfortably. “—I won’t be happy until I
know
—”
“Then you are about to be happy,
cherie
, for I have had the brainstorm—” Andre ducked into the living room and emerged with a dusty leather-bound book. “Remember I said there was something familiar about it? Now I think I know what it was.” He consulted the index, and turned pages rapidly—found the place he sought, and read for a few moments. “As I thought—listen. ‘The
gaki
—also known as the Japanese vampire—also takes its nourishment only from the living. There are many kinds of
gaki
, extracting their sustenance from a wide variety of sources. The most harmless are the
perfume
and
music gaki
—and they are by far the most common. Far deadlier are those that require blood, flesh—or souls.’”
“Souls?”
“Just so. ‘To feed, or when at rest, they take their normal form of a dense cloud of dark smoke. At other times, like the
kitsune
, they take on the form of a human being. Unlike the
kitsune
, however, there is no way to distinguish them in this form from any other human. In the smoke form, they are invulnerable—in the human form, however, they can be killed; but to permanently destroy them, the body must be burned—preferably in conjunction with or solely by Power.’ I said there was something familiar about it—it seems to have been a kind of distant cousin.” Andre’s mouth smiled, but his eyes reflected only a long-abiding bitterness.
“There is
no way
you have any relationship with that—thing!” she said forcefully. “It had no more honor, heart or soul than a rabid beast!”
“I—I thank you,
cherie
,” he said, slowly, the warmth returning to his eyes. “There are not many who would think as you do.”
“Their own closed-minded stupidity.”
“To change the subject—what was it that made you burn it as you did? I would have abandoned it. It seemed dead enough.”
“I don’t know—it just seemed the thing to do,” she yawned. “Sometimes my instincts just work . . . right . . . .”
Suddenly her eyes seemed too leaden to keep open.
“Like they did with you . . . .” She fought against exhaustion and the drug, trying to keep both at bay.
But without success. Sleep claimed her for its own.
He watched her for the rest of the night, until the leaden lethargy of his own limbs told him dawn was near. He had already decided not to share her bed, lest any movement on his part cause her pain—instead, he made up a pallet on the floor beside her.
He stood over her broodingly while he in his turn fought slumber, and touched her face gently. “Well—” he whispered, holding off torpor far deeper and heavier than hers could ever be—while she was mortal. “You are not aware to hear, so I may say what I will and you cannot forbid. Dream; sleep and dream—I shall see you safe—my only love.”
And he took his place beside her, to lie motionless until night should come again.
This was originally for a Susan Shwartz anthology,
Sisters of Fantasy 2
.
Wet Wings
Mercedes Lackey
Katherine watched avidly, chin cradled in her old, arthritic hands, as the chrysalis heaved, and writhed, and finally split up the back. The crinkled, sodden wings of the butterfly emerged first, followed by the bloated body. She breathed a sigh of wonder, as she always did, and the butterfly tried to flap its useless wings in alarm as it caught her movement.
“Silly thing,” she chided it affectionately. “You know you can’t fly with wet wings!” Then she exerted a little of her magic; just a little, brushing the butterfly with a spark of calm that jumped from her trembling index finger to its quivering antenna.
The butterfly, soothed, went back to its real job, pumping the fluid from its body into the veins of its wings, unfurling them into their full glory. It was not a particularly rare butterfly, certainly not an endangered one; nothing but a common Buckeye, a butterfly so ordinary that no one even commented on seeing them when she was a child. But Katherine had always found the markings exquisite, and she had used this species and the Sulfurs more often than any other to carry her magic.
Magic.
That was a word hard to find written anymore. No one approved of magic these days. Strange that in a country that gave the Church of Gaia equal rights with the Catholic Church, no one believed in magic.
But magic was not “correct.” It was not given equally to all, nor could it be given equally to all. And that which could not be made equal, must be destroyed . . . .
“We always knew that there would be repression and a burning time again,” she told the butterfly, as its wings unfolded a little more. “But we never thought that the ones behind the repression would come from our own ranks.”
Perhaps she should have realized it would happen. So many people had come to her over the years, drawn by the magic in her books, demanding to be taught. Some had the talent and the will; most had only delusions. How they had cursed her when she told them the truth! They had wanted to be like the heroes and heroines of her stories;
special, powerful.
She remembered them all; the boy she had told, regretfully, that his “telepathy” was only observation and the ability to read body-language. The girl whose “psychic attacks” had been caused by potassium imbalances. The would-be “bardic mage” who had nothing other than a facility to delude himself. And the many who could not tell a tale, because they would not let themselves see the tales all around them. They were neither powerful nor special, at least not in terms either of the power of magic, nor the magic of storytelling. More often than not, they would go to someone else, demanding to be taught, unwilling to hear the truth.
Eventually, they found someone; in one of the many movements that sprouted on the fringes like parasitic mushrooms. She, like the other mages of her time, had simply shaken her head and sighed for them. But what she had not reckoned on, nor had anyone else, was that these movements had gained strength and a life of their own—and had gone political.
Somehow, although the process had been so gradual she had never noticed when it had become unstoppable, those who cherished their delusions began to legislate some of those delusions. “Politically correct” they called it—and
some
of the things they had done she had welcomed, seeing them as the harbingers of more freedom, not less.
But they had gone from the reasonable to the unreasoning; from demanding and getting a removal of sexism to a denial of sexuality and the differences that should have been celebrated. From legislating the humane treatment of animals to making the possession of any animal or animal product without licenses and yearly inspections a crime. Fewer people bothered with owning a pet these days—no, not a pet, an “Animal Companion,” and one did not “own” it, one “nurtured” it. Not when inspectors had the right to come into your home, day or night, to make certain that you were giving your Animal Companion all the rights to which it was entitled. And the rarer the animal, the more onerous the conditions . . . .
“That wouldn’t suit you, would it, Horace?” she asked the young crow perched over the window. Horace was completely illegal; there was no way she could have gotten a license for him. She lived in an apartment, not on a farm; she could never give him the four-acre “hunting preserve” he required. Never mind that he had come to her, lured by her magic, and that he was free to come and go through her window, hunting and exercising at will. He also came and went with her little spell packets, providing her with eyes on the world where she could not go, and bringing back the cocoons and chrysalises that she used for her butterfly-magics.
She shook her head, and sighed. They had sucked all the juice of life out of the world, that was what they had done. Outside, the gray overcast day mirrored the gray sameness of the world they had created. There were no bright colors anymore to draw the eye, only pastels. No passion, no fire, nothing to arouse any kind of emotions. They had decreed that everyone
must
be equal, and no one must be offended, ever. And they had begun the burning and the banning . . . .
She had become alarmed when the burning and banning started; she knew that her own world was doomed when it reached things like “Hansel and Gretel”—banned, not because there was a witch in it, but because the witch was evil, and that might offend witches. She had known that her own work was doomed when a book that had been lauded for its portrayal of a young gay hero was banned because the young gay hero was unhappy and suicidal. She had not even bothered to argue. She simply announced her retirement, and went into seclusion, pouring all her energies into the magic of her butterflies.
From the first moment of spring to the last of autumn, Horace brought her caterpillars and cocoons. When the young butterflies emerged, she gave them each a special burden and sent them out into the world again.
Wonder. Imagination. Joy. Diversity.
Some she sent out to wake the gifts of magic in others. Some she sent to wake simple stubborn will.
Discontent. Rebellion.
She sowed her seeds, here in this tiny apartment, of what she hoped would be the next revolution. She would not be here to see it—but the day would come, she hoped, when those who
were
different and special would no longer be willing or content with sameness and equality at the expense of diversity.
Her door buzzer sounded, jarring her out of her reverie.
She got up, stiffly, and went to the intercom. But the face there was that of her old friend Piet, the “Environmental Engineer” of the apartment building, and he wore an expression of despair.
“Kathy, the Psi-cops are coming for you,” he said, quickly, casting a look over his shoulder to see if there was anyone listening. “They made me let them in—”
The screen darkened abruptly.
Oh, gods—
She had been so careful! But—in a way, she had expected it. She had been a world-renowned fantasy writer; she had made no secret of her knowledge of real-world magics. The Psi-cops had not made any spectacular arrests lately. Possibly they were running out of victims; she should have known they would start looking at peoples’ pasts.
She glanced around at the apartment reflexively—
No. There was no hope. There were too many things she had that were contraband. The shelves full of books, the feathers and bones she used in her magics, the freezer full of meat that she shared with Horace and his predecessors, the wool blankets—
For that matter, they could arrest her on the basis of her jewelry alone, the fetish necklaces she carved and made, the medicine wheels and shields, and the prayer feathers. She was not Native American; she had no right to make these things even for private use.
And she knew what would happen to her. The Psi-cops would take her away, confiscate all her property, and “re-educate” her.
Drugged, brainwashed, wired and probed.
There would be nothing left of her when they finished. They had “re-educated” Jim three years ago, and when he came out, everything, even his magic and his ability to tell a story, was gone. He had not even had the opportunity to gift it to someone else; they had simply crushed it. He had committed suicide less than a week after his release.
She had a few more minutes at most, before they zapped the lock on her door and broke in. She had to save something, anything!
Then her eyes lighted on the butterfly, his wings fully unfurled and waving gently, and she knew what she would do.
First, she freed Horace. He flew off, squawking indignantly at being sent out into the overcast sky. But there was no other choice; if they found him, they would probably cage him up and send him to a forest preserve somewhere. He did not know how to find food in a wilderness—let him at least stay here in the city, where he knew how to steal food from birdfeeders, and where the best dumpsters were.
Then she cupped her hands around the butterfly, and gathered all of her magic.
All
of it this time; a great burden for one tiny insect, but there was no choice.
Songs and tales, magic and wonder; power, vision, will, strength—
She breathed them into the butterfly’s wings, and he trembled as the magic swirled around him, in a vortex of sparkling mist.
Pride. Poetry. Determination. Love. Hope—
She heard them at the door, banging on it, ordering her to open in the name of the Equal State. She ignored them. There was at least a minute or so left.
The gift of words. The gift of difference—
Finally she took her hands away, spent and exhausted, and feeling as empty as an old paper sack. The butterfly waved his wings, and though she could no longer see it, she knew that a drift of sparkling power followed the movements.
There was a whine behind her as the Psi-cops zapped the lock.
She opened the window, coaxed the butterfly onto her hand, and put him outside. An errant ray of sunshine broke through the overcast, gilding him with a glory that mirrored the magic he carried.
“Go,” she breathed. “Find someone worthy.”
He spread his wings, tested the breeze, and lifted off her hand, to be carried away.
And she turned, full of dignity and empty of all else, to face her enemies.