Forest Moon Rising (38 page)

“I’ll get it!” Phonetia called, sliding down the hardwood floor on stockinged feet. Her dark hair flew out behind her in a silken wave. A wisp of fresh evergreen and mown grass followed her. She curved and braked with uncanny precision right in front of the spy hole.

She’d donned new green jeans, mint polo, and a sweatshirt that splashed bright autumn leaves across the front in puffy rubber paint. No visible scars. She looked pretty, fresh, and eager, like a typical fourteen year old.

“It’s just Dad.” She flung open the door and stalked to the table.

“Who were you expecting that I’m such a disappointment?” Gollum asked from the doorway.

“Your brother, Oak?” I asked quietly.

“How’d you know?

“That bond we have, the one forged of blood and magic. I try not to pry, Phonetia, but it’s dangerous to maintain contact with your brothers.”

Gollum wandered by, snagging a piece of bacon.

“Do you have a reason for dropping in for breakfast unannounced ?” I scraped more batter into the waffle iron.

He found his own plate and cutlery to put on the table along with the three primary settings.

“Do I need a reason to drop by to see my daughters?” His glasses slid to the end of his nose and he peered over them at me. A gentle smile lit his face.

“Yes.” I turned my attention to coffee for me, milk and juice for the girls. Let him get his own damn coffee.

“Actually, Julia wanted to go to her psychiatric appointment by herself after I arranged for TAs to take my classes all day. I dropped her off. Pat will pick her up. Then they plan to hit some of the Veterans Day sales.”

The girls each gave him a hug before they took their places at the table. More affection than they gave me.

“How would you like to help the girls with their lessons? I could really use some time alone with my laptop to get some work done.”

“Oh, Mom, do we have to?” the girls chorused.

“Yes, you have to do schoolwork. With me or with your dad, take your pick.”

They chose Gollum, thinking he’d be a gentler taskmaster. I had news for them.

Three hours later, with three chapters edited and a new one written, I peeked out of my bedroom, amazed at the happy giggles and soft murmur of voices.

“May we please go pick up litter in the park, Dad?” E.T. asked.

“If you’ve finished your spelling practice.”

I eased into the hallway. “You know the drill, girls,” I said authoritatively. “Shoes, coats, and hats. Gloves and trash bags, one for garbage, one for recycling and one for returnable bottles and cans.” They’d picked up the idea of recycling faster than they did writing and math.

“Yes, Mom.” They both rolled their eyes as if my rules were the most outrageous ideas of all time. To them shoes, hats, and coats in a cold November drizzle were unnecessary.

I listened as they thumped down the concrete and steel stairs. When they jumped off the last two steps to the ground, I moved to the French door to watch them amble along the river path.

“You don’t need to watch them every moment. They’ve been roaming the city on their own for years,” Gollum said, coming up behind me. He stood too close, the warmth of his body filled me with yearning.

One and a half dates with Sean plus a lot of phone calls when he canceled on me, and I still longed for the man I couldn’t have.

“I know. But I’m still new to this mothering business.”

“Do you trust Scrap to keep an eye on them and alert you to any danger?”

“Of course. He’s the best baby-sitter ever invented. Sometimes I think he thinks he’s their mother.”

We both laughed.

“Have you told Julia about your illegitimate children?” I had to ask. I had to put the psychic distance between us.

“Not yet.”

“Will you?” I moved away from him, into the kitchen. I stirred a hearty beef stew that simmered in the slow cooker. (I’d discovered that the girls ate just about anything. They preferred vegetarian more from habit than choice.) Something to do. Anything to keep me from throwing myself at him.

That was dinner. What would I do for lunch, especially if Gollum hung around?

“I don’t know if I’ll tell Julia or not. I don’t trust this new stability and happiness. She’s been like this before, usually just before a major crash that sets her back years in her recovery.” He bent his head as he polished his glasses on a pristine handkerchief he fished out of his pocket.

“Veterans Day is this Monday. That means the local convention happens this weekend, day after tomorrow.” I checked the wall calendar to be sure. I’d gotten so caught up in the girls that I’d forgotten one of the most important weekends of the year for my career.

“I’m obligated to go.” I didn’t tell him that I’d given my guest membership to Sean. He was really looking forward to the costumes and nonsense, the music, the fight demonstrations, and the literary discussions.

If he didn’t get called in to work.

“Maybe we should take the girls,” Gollum said happily. “I’m sure they’ll enjoy it.”

“I know they will. They’ll disappear into the gaming rooms and I won’t see them for seventy-two hours. They still bug me to call someone and find out who won the interrupted game at High Desert Con last month.”

“Pat thinks she should move out. Maybe this would be a good test to see if Julia can be left alone.”

“Um.” An image of a pale woman with exquisitely cut hair sitting in a corner of Kelly’s Brew Pub while Squishy spoke to Sean and me flashed before my mind. Was that Julia?

For my sake I almost wished it were. For Gollum’s, I wasn’t so sure. How would he handle the news that his wife loved another woman more than him?

But if it was Julia on her first lesbian date, at least Squishy was moving toward an ethical separation from her patient.

I almost chuckled at how Sean had made a point of dismissing me as his patient before he asked me out.

“I’m close enough to commute to the con, so I won’t stay at the hotel,” I mused, making plans and lists in my head, half thinking out loud. “That means a little closer supervision of the girls when I bring them home at night.”

“You’ll miss out on some of the best filk,” Gollum reminded me. “They usually don’t get started until after ten. And Holly Shannon will be there.”

“There is life outside of filk.” As if the music on the stereo in the background was anything else but the folk music of Science Fiction-Fantasy conventions.

“There may be life after filk, but is it a con without it?”

“Barely,” I acknowledged. Gollum and I had found common bonds at the filk sessions of our first con together.

Would I feel like I had to sing “Heart’s Path” again?

I had to remind myself that I had moved on. I had Sean. We liked each other. We shared a lot of common interests.

Trouble, babe.
Scrap popped in and out again.

“Scrap?”

“What?” Gollum asked. He’d already scooped up his jacket and headed for the door.

“Where are the girls and what is wrong, Scrap?”

“H
OLD BACK, TESS.
”
Gollum grabbed both my shoulders as I passed him on the paved path.

I tried to wiggle out of his grasp. “The hell I will. Those are my girls.” I pointed to the two figures ahead of us, rapidly disappearing around a curve.

They bent their heads together in close sisterly discussion.

“Their brothers are waiting for them. Family. Blood kin. They need to see them,” Gollum said.

“No. You don’t know half of what their father has done to all of them.” I slipped my jacket, leaving him standing there, holding the damp garment while I ran forward, full tilt. My left leg ached. I ignored the protest of atrophied muscles just coming to life again. Good thing I’d doubled up on my PT exercises. My therapist was nearly ready to dismiss me because I’d recovered strength and maneuverability so rapidly.

“Scrap, what’s happening?” Between the mist rising from the river and the drizzle sliding into my eyes, I could barely see the two blocks to where the girls had passed beyond my sight. A fat raindrop plopped from my tangled hair into my left eye, further blurring my perception.

I cursed and shook my head like a dog shedding bathwater.

“What has the elf done?” Gollum demanded. He kept up an easy loping stride; his long legs matched my running pace.

“He’s training the boys to continue his work of begetting an entire tribe of Nörglein. He wants them to practice on Phonetia and E.T. and strengthen the DNA in their children. I think he may have given Phonetia to his marijuana growing minions as a reward.”

“Shit!” He increased his pace, quickly outdistancing me.

I couldn’t remember ever hearing him curse. I wondered if outrage of this magnitude would push him to break his vow of nonviolence.

Better hurry, babe. I’m getting hot and thin,
Scrap snarled.

A burst of adrenaline gave my feet near levitation. Blood flowed strongly through my legs, eliminating lingering traces of my injury.

“Scrap, report,” I barked as the girls came into view again.

They ambled forward, oblivious to our pursuit or the danger that awaited them in the little hollow where the trail dipped and blackberries crowded close.

Damn.

I held out my hand as I ran, willing Scrap to land there and transform.

He obeyed.

A deadly calm replaced my panic. My stride evened out and stretched. Scrap elongated, thinned, curved. Faster than I’d ever seen him he sharpened the inner curve of the twin blades and extruded tines from the outside.

The quarter staff balanced precisely in my hand.

I bounced around the girls and skidded to a halt, blade at the ready, feet
en garde
just as Oak, Cedar, and Fir stepped onto the path.

“Oak!” Phonetia called. “You didn’t answer the phone.”

I brought the Celestial Blade horizontal, blocking him.

Both Phonetia and Oak took one step forward, looked at the blade, then at me, and back again to my weapon.

“I will protect the girls with my life,” I announced.

Six men, late teens and early twenties, who sorely needed showers and shaves, stepped from the concealing shrubbery. They twirled long chains with barbed links and unsheathed long knives. Their demon tats on their inside wrists pulsed red beneath the black ink.

“We can take her,” the leader, a stocky, bleached blond with swarthy skin, said. He wore a silver pendant on a black thong that replicated his tattoo. He extended the length of chain, coming dangerously close to Phonetia.

E.T. wisely retreated behind Gollum.

Easy pickings,
Scrap snarled to me.

None of the forest elf children or the demon-protected seemed to hear him.

Gollum came up beside me. He held his hands up, closed his eyes, and relaxed into an easy martial arts pose.

“What are you, some kind of blind Ninja?” the blond delinquent asked. He started swinging his chain.

“Something like that,” I replied, not wanting to break Gollum’s concentration.

Before I finished speaking I swished the blade, tangling the chain in the tines. I yanked.

This guy wisely released his weapon. I stumbled backward with the unexpected change in balance. E.T. yelped and retreated as I stepped on her toes.

Blondie’s comrades flanked him, trying to ease around our backs.

Gollum pushed his hands out in front of him.

I heard air displacement. I felt the recoil as the leader flew backward and landed on his butt in a tangle of blackberry vines and jutting teasel thistle, a nasty place. He had to hurt almost as if the Nörglein thrashed him with his wicked whip.

Gollum hadn’t laid a hand on him.

The five remaining men flowed into the space left vacant, advancing with weapons drawn.

The tree boys faded out of my periphery.

Duck, parry, turn, jab. I flew into action. Scrap took a long strip of skin off of one arm. Blood flowed freely. At the moment crimson drops touched the tattoo the elven minion yowled as if he’d been burned. The enchanted ink dissolved. His entire arm flushed with a serious inflammation. He rolled into the wet grass trying to extinguish the magical fire raging within him.

The men gave ground until we came abreast of where the leader pulled himself upright. He brandished a gun at me.

A little gun easily concealed inside his pant leg. A big magazine, almost as big as the gun itself hung below the barrel. He pushed the muzzle forward until his reach ended mere inches from my chest.