Wind Raker - Book IV of The Order of the Air (33 page)

So surely they could all relax for one night! Jerry was watching the kids while she and Lewis and Mitch and Stasi had a night out at the supper club that Mrs. Patton had recommended. She didn't seem to be here tonight, but Lewis had greeted her husband, who was talking to a couple of Army officers by the coat check as they came in.

Stasi seemed subdued for Stasi, which meant about normal for anyone else, but Mitch had persuaded her out into the middle to show off some flashy dance with a lot of spins. People stopped and backed out of their way to watch just like in an Astaire and Rogers movie. Stasi had a black dress with marabou around the hem, which you'd think would look silly but it really didn't out in the middle of the floor, her back straight as she twirled into Mitch's arms with a hundred watt smile like there was a camera and a spotlight. He looked like he was having the best time ever, tux and all. Ok, the part that kind of looked like a waltz only with both of them hopping on one foot was a little silly but…

She felt Lewis stiffen suddenly, looking at something over her shoulder. "What's wrong?" she asked in a low voice.

"That man," Lewis said.

"What man?" Whoever he was looking at was directly behind her, and he'd have to turn her in the dance for her to see.

Which he did. "That man at the bar talking to George."

George was easy to find, even in the press. He was talking to a man in impeccable evening dress, a gray haired man with a Van Dyke beard and a mobile, animated face. They were both smiling and nodding a lot. "So?" Alma asked.

"I don't know what he's doing in Hawaii, but that's Pelley."

"What?" Alma watched as he reached into a silver case and handed George something, who took it and shook hands. "Are you sure?"

"Absolutely," Lewis said. "I met him in LA with Henry two years ago. I'm absolutely sure." Lewis turned her again, trying to see. "What's he giving him?"

"It looked like a business card," Al said, rotating around.

"I suppose there's no harm in that." The momentum of the dance took her back around. Pelley was walking away. George took a last drink of his cocktail, draining it all the way down, and put the glass on the bar while he slipped the card into his pocket and pulled out his keys. He laid two bits on the bar by the empty glass and headed for the door.

A cold chill ran down Alma's spine. "We have to go," she said.

"What?" Lewis had his back to the bar.

"We need to go. Now." Alma broke out of the dance, pulling Lewis after her.

"What about Mitch and Stasi?" Lewis said, following her through the crowd.

"It will take too much time." Mitch and Stasi were out in the middle of the floor, absolutely surrounded by people.

"How are they going to get home?"

"They can take a cab." Alma hurried past the coat check. She could come back for her wrap tomorrow. It was hardly the first time a lady had forgotten her wrap. Lewis followed after. The doorman barely got it open before she plunged out.

The rising whine of eight cylinders cut through the night, George's white car pulling out, headlights glancing across the sign and shrubbery as he turned onto the coast road.

"What's going on?" Lewis said.

"I don't know. But you drive." Alma ran for their Buick, shoving the keys into Lewis' hand. "I need both hands free."

Lewis got the car in gear quickly, pealing out with the squeal of rubber, and Alma braced herself.

"How could a business card be dangerous?" Lewis asked. He didn't take his eyes off the road, and that was Lewis to a T, doing what needed to be done and only asking questions when they wouldn't slow things down.

"It's a marker," Alma said. "I've seen that done before. It's like a homing beacon. You get someone to take it and then they're marked for something to find them."

Lewis shot her a sideways alarmed look and they careened around a curve. "Like what?"

"A fetch," Alma said. The certainty was growing in her. There was a wrongness in the air tonight she could almost feel. "Catch up to George. Keep him in sight."

"Ok." Lewis stepped on the gas, shifting up as they sped down the coast road, distant taillights elusively ahead of them. A curve loomed and Lewis swore under his breath, shifting down and rounding it. The road came out of trees for a moment into bright moonlight, the sea on their right side sighing at the base of stark volcanic cliffs.

"He's going too fast," Alma said. The white car was in view for a moment ahead, and then the road twisted and it was swallowed by trees.

"He knows the road and I don't," Lewis said. He shifted up again, pouring it on while the road was straight.

"Stay with him," Alma said. The sense of dread was rising, but so was power. It bled out of rocks and hills, out of the sea and the air that washed the trees of Hawaii. It was dark as blood from stones, molten and seaward-bound, close to the surface and bright as though only the faintest cinders obscured it from sight. "Close as a wingman."

"Will do." Lewis trimmed the big machine through the curve, his face set in concentration. His headlights flashed over the road ahead.

The white car accelerated on the straightway under the trees, then downshifted just before a turn, the sky lighter ahead.

"What…"

Lewis had barely breathed a word, but she saw it, a dark shape emerging — no, coalescing — at the side of the road, gathering itself to spring.

"Aegis!" There was no need for subtlety, no need for silence. Alma shouted the word aloud, hands forward to propel the force outward with the strength of her thought, Athena's shield, brazen and solid, Medusa's head with snakes entwining upon it, fueled by the deep earth of Hawaii. She flung it outward, between the fetch and the white car.

In that same split second the driver saw the fetch, a dark shape big as a horse or a cow barreling out of the underbrush directly in its path. The car swerved, brakes squealing.

The fetch collided with the shield just shy of the car's left front bumper with an unearthly scream echoed by the tires, Lewis fish-tailing the rental as he tried not to run into the white car from behind.

The white car skidded, one tire blowing as the driver fought for control. It half rotated, headlights flashing across the tableau caught for one moment, fanged creature and bright shield, before both vanished. With a crash and crunch of steel the back of the car slid into a tree, back right side crumpling as it came to rest.

Lewis feathered the brake, a spray of gravel pelting as he pulled up beside it.

Alma's arms shook from the power exerted, her heart pounding as she threw open the door and jumped out.

The white car's driver's side window was shattered and George had a cut over his eye, a thin trickle of blood running down his face, but he looked up and swore when he saw her. "What in the hell was that?"

There was no point in pretense. "A fetch," Alma said. "Sent to kill you."

The back passenger door was crunched against the tree, and just beyond it the cliff dropped away sixty feet or more to the rocky surf.

"The bastard damn near did," George said. He seemed to feel the cut for the first time and reached up to touch it, looking at the blood on his fingers. "Who the hell are you people?"

"The Builders of the Temple," Lewis said calmly and confidently. "You already knew we were in a Lodge."

Yes, but that was social, Alma thought. It was one thing to join a lodge and to socialize with other occultists, to celebrate the seasons or to balance oneself. It was an entirely different thing to believe this.

And yet his gaze was perfectly level. "Did you see that thing?'

"Yes," Alma said. "It was absolutely real."

George took a deep breath. Then he climbed out of the car, wincing as he did. He looked at the shattered back end. "And so is this," he said. "Crap."

S
tasi glanced around the club, aware that Mitch was doing the same. "Looking for Alma and Lewis?"

There was the beginning of a frown between his brows. "Yeah. I haven't seen them in quite a while."

"I haven't either." Stasi turned, drawing him toward the edge of the dance floor. "At least three dances."

"Maybe they're in the rest room," Mitch said, but there was a sound in his voice that said he didn't believe it.

"Both of them, darling? For twenty minutes?" She craned her neck. Sometimes it was a pain to be short. "Do you see them in the bar?"

"No." He let go of her hand, checking out the bar patrons. "Maybe they went out on the lanai to get some air."

"Maybe." She followed him out, standing in the puddle of light of the tiki torches while he looked around.

"The car's gone."

"What?"

"They've left." Mitch came back, nothing lazy about his stance or voice now. "That's not ok."

"We can call a cab," Stasi said.

"Al wouldn’t leave without telling us unless it was an emergency," Mitch said.

A stab of fear went through her. "The children?"

"If Jerry had called he would have paged us if it were any of ours. If it were Dora, Lewis would have said something before they left." Mitch shook his head, turning back to the parking lot again. "You stay here in case they call. I'm going to take a look around the area. Chances are they…."

"They what?" Stasi asked. "Ran off into the woods?"

"If they did, it's for a good reason," Mitch said.

"Ok. I'll be in the bar." She went back inside, stopping to check her lipstick in the entry mirror. Mitch was just looking for a reason to go crawl around in a tuxedo. Really, what would Alma and Lewis be doing in the woods with the car? Surely taking the car meant they were driving somewhere!

She sat down at the bar, contemplating, and then tugged at the bartender's sleeve. "Is there a phone I could use to call a taxi?"

"I'm happy to call you a taxi, ma'am," the bartender said. "It usually takes about twenty minutes."

"Thank you," Stasi said, crossing her legs and checking the clock. "I'll wait right here."

A man slid onto the barstool next to her. "I'm afraid it's going to be a good deal more than twenty minutes tonight," he said. "There's been an accident on the coast road. Very unfortunate. Of course people will take the curves too fast when they've been drinking. It's tragic but hardly unexpected."

Stasi schooled her face to calm, though his voice sent a shiver down her spine, a voice from her past that she hoped she'd left behind. "Mr. Pelley," she said evenly.

"Mrs. Mitchell Sorley." His hair was a little grayer, streaking dark hair in a way that looked distinguished rather than old, dapper and neat in evening dress and Van Dyke beard like a continental gentleman. He nodded courteously, taking in her black dress with marabou trim and her wedding band. "You've moved up in the world."

"Well," Stasi said, opening her cigarette case and drawing one out. "A girl's got to look after herself."

"And very nicely too," Pelley said. "May I congratulate you on your marriage?" He offered her a light with a silver lighter.

"Thank you." The ritual of the cigarette gave her a moment to think. If Lewis and Alma had been in a wreck there wasn't anything she could do from here, nothing Mitch could do, and she couldn't get back to the house and the children without a taxi. On the other hand, if this were a game of Pelley's she'd do well not to spook. Either way, he was dangerous but while he was talking to her in a very public place he wasn't doing anything else.

"You're worried about your aviator friends," Pelley said shrewdly, lighting one of his own. "No need to. I don't think they were the ones killed. Some hard drinking soldier." He shrugged. "These things happen."

"And how would you know that?" Stasi asked, a hint of challenge in her voice. "I don't see you out on the coast road."

He smiled. "Do you and I need to be physically present to know something?"

"Do we?" Stasi said. There were no Dead in the club. Not recently dead, not long dead. There was no one she could ask, and certainly no just killed soul running about in confusion, returning to the last place they'd been.

"I don't," he said. He turned to the bartender. "Whisky on the rocks for me. Mrs. Sorley, would you like something?"

"A gin fizz," Stasi said. Letting Pelley buy her drinks was one way to do it. She gave him what she hoped was a knowing smile. "Tell me something, Bill. What are you up to?"

He smiled urbanely. "Let me tell you a story, Mrs. Sorley. It's very fanciful, but bear with me. I think you'll find it interesting."

"I'm sure I will," Stasi said. Where in the hell was Mitch?

He took a long draw from his cigarette. "Once upon a time…. That's how fairy tales start, right? Once upon a time there was a kingdom that was defended by a peerless fellowship of knights. Maybe they were the Paladins of Charlemagne or the Knights of the Round Table. Or maybe they were some other knights altogether. It doesn't matter. What does matter is this — there was blood and steel and kingdoms were won and lost and cities fell and flames went up to the sky. Treasures were buried and the dead lay in the open air. There was victory and defeat, gold to adorn the biers of noble kings and queens, and at last the knights lay still and silent, every single one. Crypts were sealed with weeping, and those whose bodies were never found rotted away in the spring, their corpses revealed by the melting snow. Grass covered all, white flowers dotting the hillsides like unchanging snowflakes."

A shiver ran down her spine, visions rising at his words. It seemed she could see all he said, made as real before her eyes as a moving picture.

"But the knights only slept. They were bound, you see. They were bound by their oaths and their fellowship, by their king and their God. They belonged to the Story, slaves to the world, as though the rings on their fingers were fetters of iron rather than bands of gold. The greatest knights who ever lived!"

Pelley stopped and raised his whisky as the bartender put it down, lifted his glass as though in toast. "Again and again they are called back, not as skeletal forms that move in the dark but in new bodies, young and strong and perfect, ready to take up their service again. They are the ultimate warriors, honed by thousands of years of human strife, victors and losers of the greatest battles in history. They are the best of the best, unconquerable save by one another."