The Master (33 page)

“You're better with children,” Jack objected. “And I'm . . . I'm a death fey. This slaughter won't bother me as much as it will you.”

“That's true, but we can't afford to lose you,” Roman answered. “That's the bottom line, Jack. And you know I'm right. We can lose anyone but you.”

Jack's tight mouth said he didn't like the bottom line, but he didn't argue further. He put his whistle to his lips and turned down the righthand passage. A large group of children followed. Jack did not look back.

Taking a deep breath, Nick did the same. A third of the rescued children obediently turned in his direction, staring with blank eyes. Nick prayed that he wasn't doing anything terrible to their minds.

“Farrar, go with Nick,” Abrial said as he began shooting. He was fast, but he made every bullet count. Sadly, it didn't slow the horde at all.

Roman knelt beside Abrial and Thomas, bringing his own rifle into position. Its first blast was as loud as a thunderclap. Whatever was in his gun, it finally penetrated their trance; the goblins screeched loudly and then began to return fire in a disorganized fashion, shooting more of their own than at the fey. Still, the mob did not slow.

“Nick—leave!”

“I'm gone,” he said.

He pulled back as the tunnel erupted in ricocheting bullets and chips of razor-sharp rocks. He walked backward, looking on with respect. None of his friends so much as flinched. Even when shattered stone stabbed them, they went on shooting methodically, buying him and Jack and Zayn time to get the children away.

Nick glanced at the Piper. He wasn't sure if he was grateful for the company or not. Farrar would be better at handling the children and knew his way around the goblin tunnels, but the Piper was disconcerting and more than a bit repulsive.

“Have a care, nephew. And the Goddess watch after you all.” Farrar didn't wait for Nick to agree or add his own blessings; he blew his flute and the children filed into the passage after him. They flowed around Nick as if he weren't there. Farrar called, “Nick, watch our backs. I'll scout ahead. If any goblins are still sane, they may try to cut us off through side passages as well as come up from the rear.”

“I'm on it.” Nick looked down at the gun in his hands. It was ugly and, he knew, very efficient. It even smelled like death, bringing home the fact that dress rehearsal was over. The curtain had finally gone up, and everything that happened from here forward would be real. This was battle to the death.

Nick turned and followed the fleeing children. Like Jack, he didn't look back.

“We're in the Death Valley tunnels now, under the Panamint Mountains. There's an exit at Furnace Creek. The locals call it Devil's Hole.” Nyssa's tone was conversational, but Zee wasn't fooled; the woman was near panic. They could all sense that time was running out and danger closing in. “The Christian Bible speaks of a bottomless pit where demons dwell, in Revelations. There is a preacher on television who believes that Devil's Hole is one of the portals to Hell. He tells his parishioners that it is no coincidence that this place is found so close to Nevada's brothels. ‘
For a whore is a deep ditch and a strange woman is a narrow pit
,' or something like that. I never can keep the Proverbs straight.”

“Lovely,” Bysshe muttered breathlessly as they jogged. “I just adore picturesque places.”

Zee didn't say anything, and she didn't laugh either.

Nyssa made a face. “I read that Charles Manson searched for a bottomless pit in Death Valley in which he and his
family
could hide until he would come forth as leader of the new world. He's a goblin, you know. Insane, too. A rogue from Los Angeles.”

“That doesn't surprise me,” Bysshe said. She lifted a hand to her nose, pale in spite of her exertions. The ambiant smell was getting stronger. Zee didn't care for it, but it didn't make her ill the way it did the other two women.

“There is a small platform around here some where,” Nyssa said with a small cough. “We need to climb up to it and then follow along a ledge and down a tunnel. It's at the edge of a canyon. From there you can look down this abyss into a pool at the bottom. The pool connects to a vast underground lake, the bottom of which has not been explored— at least, not by us or the humans. It has some endangered species of tiny prehistoric pupfish found nowhere else on Earth. They're small but ferocious. Thomas and Cyra believe the pool may be connected underground to other small pools of pupfish located hundreds of miles away in Arizona and New Mexico. The Devil's Hole is also connected to the underground caverns located beneath Area Fifty-one.”

“What is that?” Zee asked.

“A place where the government has been doing some nasty experiments. They let people think it's with aliens from another world, but I suspect it is really with some fey bogeys—perhaps a hobgoblin. Supposedly these reptilian-type aliens live in the tunnels and show up now and again to scare the locals. We had only just started investigating when this thing with Qasim came up.”

“And this is where the ax is? In this chamber with an abyss?” Bysshe asked.

“Yes.”

“But not at the bottom of a pit with the ferocious pupfish or whores?” she clarified.

“No. At least . . . I don't think it is.”

Bysshe rolled her eyes.

A migration of upright shadows followed, collecting up strays as it went so that the tunnel grew darker as Nick progressed through the goblin lands. He had the oddest conviction that if he stepped among them, he would hear them murmuring—dark ghosts lost in underground oblivion where night always ruled and the dead never rested.

“Your woman is brave.” Farrar's voice startled Nick. Apparently it wasn't necessary for the Piper to play constantly to keep the children moving.

Brave?
That was a word for her. The more he knew Zee, the more he admired her. Nick doubted that anyone had ever told her that she could be president or an astronaut—or a leader of a hive when she grew up. Hell, he doubted they'd told her she could be anything. Yet, when she'd seen that she wasn't really living—wasn't thriving, at least—she had turned her back on the only society and family she had, and had set off to find a place where she could live and grow. And she had struck out boldly, taking her young siblings with her. Such a proposition was enough to make most young women quail, but Zee had never looked back.

Then she had run into a monster with an evil plan. Faced with Qasim, most people would have run as far away as possible. Instead, Zee had gone for help. She had found what were her supposed hereditary enemies and asked them for help in saving human children she didn't know.

Yes, she was brave. And she was compassionate.

And she was . . . part goblin.

He kept running into that thought.

Nick shook his head. He didn't know a lot about goblin culture, but everything he had heard over the last few days had convinced him that Zee was nothing like the family that had birthed her. She was a swan born into a family of vicious ducklings. And didn't he believe—didn't he
know
—that people could rise above their rough beginnings? The son of a racist wasn't always a racist. The offspring of killers didn't always kill. The demon seed myth was just that: a myth. Zee could be whatever she decided to be.

The floor of the cavern gradually grew folded, and in places the stone had shattered. The children slowed and many began to stumble.

“What happened here? An earthquake?” Nick asked, as he helped the unresponsive children as best he could.

“After a fashion,” Farrar answered, watching as Nick tried to deal with the small bodies. There was nothing else the centaur could do, having no physical body of his own. “And damn puzzling it will be to geologists, too.” He glanced down the tunnel and then back at Nick. There was admiration in his voice. “This is Cyra's work, unless I miss my guess. The cave was already pissed at the goblins for their careless excavations, and was in the mood to do some damage. Still, it was quite a feat, getting the mountain to cooperate and cause a quake at the ideal moment.”

“It sounds a feat,” Nick answered, having a hard time imagining the delicate Cyra in control of such strong magic. It was also hard to imagine that anyone could communicate in any direct way with the earth. He'd seen Jack listening to the shian, but Jack never answered back—not that Nick had seen, at any rate. Nick supposed he had a long way to go in his recent education.

“That wasn't her best trick, though,” Farrar said. “You've met the dragon, haven't you?”

“Yes.”

“That's Cyra's invention.”

“She made the dragon?” Nick tried not to gape. “You can
make
dragons?”

“The dragon—its personality—already existed inside Thomas. He was a split-personality back then, two actual beings sharing one body. Cyra was able to give the dragon its own body. She pulled dinosaur bones right out of the rock they had fossilized in, and then conjured flesh and fire for it.”

So this was Thomas's animal half! Nick could now understand why the man had been glad to be rid of it.

“Cyra sounds a dangerous lady,” he said slowly. “She looks so fragile, too.”

“Don't be fooled by appearances, Nick,” Farrar chided. “They are all dangerous ladies. Io singlehandedly took out the goblin hive in Detroit. Jack killed the leader, but the destruction of that underground city was all Io. Sober little Lyris killed the goblin king of New Orleans, who was also a master vampire. And Nyssa took out most of King Carbon's elite troops by summoning the Wild Hunt— something few pureblood feys could do and remain sane, or even live to tell about it.” Farrar gave one of many periodic trills on his pipe, guiding the vacant-eyed children around a deep gouge in the floor. He added, “It wouldn't surprise me at all if your Zee has some hidden greatness in her, too. Cadalach only calls warriors to service. And the magic mates you for a purpose. There are seeds of greatness in all of you that will be realized in the next generation as well.”

This notion was by no means new, but Nick didn't like thinking about it. Hadn't he just decided the whole genetic destiny thing didn't really apply?

“It's kind of you to help out with our problem— especially since the fight isn't really yours,” he said diplomatically.

Farrar laughed. “Kind? I don't think I've done anything out of kindness since good King Wenceslas looked out on the feast of Stephen.”

“That would be the . . . thirteenth century?” Nick guessed. His knowledge of such things was hazy.

“Eighth, actually. And lots of good it did him being kind to the peasants. They assassinated him the moment my back was turned.”

This was fascinating, but Nick refused to be distracted. “Well, if not out of kindness, why are you helping?” he asked directly.

“Three reasons,” Farrar answered. “I hate the goblins. I love my nephew. And I was bored. I leave you to decide which was the most motivating.” The centaur's grin was spectacularly wide and a little scary.

A distant rumble rolled toward them through the quaking air, and Farrar stopped smiling.

“Um . . . the cavern isn't likely to convulse without Cyra, is it?” Nick asked.

“That wasn't the cavern. That was a bomb,” Farrar answered, looking suddenly quite grim.

“Something of Jack's?” Nick asked.

“No, Jack would never use a weapon that harmed the earth—especially not so close to Las Vegas.”

“Near Vegas?”

“Yes. Remember that traveling the faerie road is not linear. We move around in space and time, and distances fold in on themselves.” Farrar cocked his head, listening. “We have to go. Right now. There's another road nearby.”

“We are going. The children are doing the best they can.”

Farrar blew on his pipe and the children began to run. Apparently they
could
do better. Nick grumbled.

“We need to go faster,” the Piper said, and Nick picked up the pace.

“Why?” he demanded. “Will the blast come our way? Will it cause a cave-in?”

“Jack would never do anything to harm something innocent like the earth, but the earth isn't so discriminating. Something hurt it and it will probably hurt back.” As if to underline this pessimistic prediction, the wall began to tremble and its iridescent green dust began to flake away. A few white stalactites freed themselves from the ceiling and smashed to the ground behind them, drilling into the floor.

“That was a warning shot,” Farrar said. “The next one won't miss.”

Nick didn't answer; he just picked up the two smallest kids and raced after the centaur and the others.

Farrar led them through a warren of chutes and caverns that seemed to cross and recross themselves until Nick lost all sense of direction. A horrible odor buffeted them, trying to force them back with scent that abraded mind and body. Nick began to feel desiccated, his skin dry and crisp. Even his eyeballs felt as if they had been buffed by sandpaper. The goblin lands were
hostile.

“How do the goblins manage here?” he muttered, looking down at the smallest girl, who trotted near him. She showed no sign of distress, but Nick picked her up anyway. He knew that he probably looked ridiculous.

“Scent trails,” Farrar answered. “And they see really well in the dark.”

The thought wasn't comforting.

The tunnels grew warmer and the smell more pungent. Nick thought it was like walking into the throat of some giant beast with particularly bad halitosis. Then, a possible reason for the temperature change occurred to him.

“Is it the dragon?” he asked Farrar. “Is that why things are warming?”

“Yes, and I do believe the beast's been barbecuing again. That's probably good news for us.”