Fairytale (33 page)

“You lying, cheating little witch! Did you
really think you could—could...” His voice trailed into
silence.

Why? What...Brigit straightened just a
little, and leaned forward to peek around the front of the van. But
Zaslow wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was staring through the
chain-link fence at the baseball diamond. Blinking in confusion,
she followed his gaze, only to see a dark, menacing form standing
out on the field, right between home plate and the pitcher’s mound.
Where had he come from? How had he managed to walk out there
without either of them noticing? But there he was, standing still
as stone, so completely enshrouded in shadow that only his outline
was visible. But even without seeing him, Brigit knew he stared
straight at Zaslow.

She couldn’t make out a single detail about
the man. It seemed he wore a black coat, with a caped back that
swayed in the wind. The collar was turned up, and his face was
completely hidden in the shadow of a black felt hat.

“Enough, Zaslow,” the form said, only Brigit
got the creepy sensation that no part of him moved to issue the
command. Not even his lips.

Danger washed over her like a cold breeze.
She could smell it,
taste
it in the air, and her heart
chilled in her chest.

“Mr. Darque,” Zaslow said, and his voice had
gone from shaking with rage, to quivering in fear. “What are you
doing here this early? I’m not supposed to meet you for another
hour.”

“You told me my painting would be here,
Zaslow. I came to collect it. Though it doesn’t matter now.”

“I—I d-don’t under—”

“I paid you to steal the painting. Not to
have it copied.”

“Oh, that. Don’t worry about that, Mr.
Darque. It’s the best way to do these things,” Zaslow blustered,
but his voice was far from steady. “I thought—”

“I did not employ you to
think,
Zaslow. Nor to make copies. That painting should never have been
seen, especially by
that one.”
When he said that last part,
he turned toward where Brigit crouched beside the van, afraid to
stand up and show herself. “Your
thinking
has ruined my
plans, Zaslow.”

He cocked his head toward Brigit’s car, where
Zaslow still stood near an opened rear door. The dark man lifted
one hand and pointed a finger. A bolt of blue fire shot from it,
blasting through the chain link as if it were butter. The bolt hit
Zaslow dead center of his barrel chest. He howled in undisguised
agony, his body hurtling backward through the air. He landed on the
blacktop of the parking lot, rolling over and over before coming to
a dead stop. And then he lay still. A thin spiral of smoke rose
from his chest.

The scream she’d intended to emit died of
fright and never emerged. She swallowed the air she’d sucked in,
and looked back toward the dark form in the field. And she saw the
blackened hole in the chain link, where that bolt had blasted
through.

She had to get away from here. She had to get
Raze away from this thing. She straightened from her hunched
position on the ground, gripping the van door, ready to tug it open
and jump behind the wheel, her eyes never leaving that deadly
being.

He looked right at her and she got an awful
feeling of impending doom. The hand pointed in her direction. Her
heart slammed against her ribs, and she dove away from the van even
as the blue fire raced toward her. She hit the ground,
somersaulted, tried to breathe. God, what if he missed her and hit
Raze? The fire—or whatever it was—had burned into the ground near
her head, hitting like a bolt of lightning, and leaving bare,
charred earth and wisps of smoke. As she whipped her gaze back to
that evil, perhaps inhuman form, its hand took aim again. She
scrambled to her feet and ran for cover, heading away from the van,
toward the hulking bleachers, thinking she could hide behind or
under them. And blasts rocked the ground with their impact,
practically at her heels all the way.

“Brigit!”

Shocked, she twisted her head at the sound of
Raze’s voice, but her ankle turned, and she went down hard. Pain
shot from the injured ankle up into her leg. Panting, she looked
back to see Raze, levering himself out of the van on the driver’s
side.

“The pendant,” he rasped.

His feet hit the ground, and he gripped the
door for support, only to fall to his knees all the same. God, what
had Zaslow done to him to make him this weak?

“Use the pendant!”

Raze sagged forward, and then he was
still.

Automatically, Brigit reached up to clasp the
pewter fairy, but she found nothing there, and belatedly remembered
leaving it on Adam’s pillow. An act of love. No less.

“If she were wearing her pendant, old man, I
wouldn’t be foolish enough to take aim at her.”

That deep, calm voice floated through the
night, and chills raced up Brigit’s spine. She looked up, saw that
thing lifting his hand toward her again, and knew he had her this
time. If she twitched, that fiery spear would run her through. And
if she didn’t, it would do so anyway. And there was nowhere to
go.

* * *

Adam saw it. He didn’t believe it, but he saw
it. Some black enshrouded wizard or something, hurling lightning
bolts at Brigit as she ran for her life. And he didn’t know why, or
what this was all about. He only knew he had to protect her, if it
meant his life.

Adam ran over the blacktopped parking lot to
the grass at the edge of the diamond. He poured all his strength
into running toward the scene unfolding there. He saw Brigit
struggle to her feet, and turn to face her attacker. He saw her
stand a little straighter as she realized she was trapped. Nowhere
to run. He ran faster, harder, his lungs burning. And then, just as
that thing lifted its deadly hand toward her again, Adam launched
himself. He growled with physical effort as he pushed off with his
feet. And his body arrowed into the space between Brigit and the
dark thing. Like a diver, only there would be no water to cushion
the landing, he thought vaguely. And maybe it wouldn’t matter
anyway, because by the time he landed, he didn’t think he’d be
feeling much of anything. He saw the fire leave the dark man’s
fingertips as he sailed through the air. And he had a second to
wonder at it, just before the blue lightning hit him in the chest,
hot and hard and sizzling. Like a shotgun. Like a sledge hammer. He
felt his ribs crack under the impact, felt his body driven
backward. Its voltage had his nerves screaming aloud, and the burn!
God the burn was like a brand in the center of his chest. He hit
the ground so hard he couldn’t draw a breath. But he saw what
happened. He saw that blue fire double over itself, as if
ricocheting off his chest, and he saw it shoot back to its
source.

Adam’s eyes followed. The blue bolt smashed
into the man on the mound, and he vanished. Just like that.
Gone.

And Adam felt himself slipping away, too. But
he knew Brigit was okay, just by the way she whispered his name as
she fell to the ground beside him. The way she stroked his face,
kissed him. And he didn’t regret what he’d done for a second.

God, that burning. Grating his teeth, he
lifted one hand and grasped his sternum. His palm closed on
something that seared it. He gripped the item anyway, tearing it
from his chest and letting it fall into the grass at his side.
Blackness descended on him. And he found his only regret in leaving
this world, was that he was leaving her. He loved her, and he’d
never even told her so.

Brigit stared, blinking in disbelief. The
shape burned into the center of Adam’s chest was a familiar one.
She searched the grass and found it. Her pewter fairy. He’d been
wearing it. He’d found it there on his pillow, and he’d put it
around his own neck.

Tears threatened, and she swallowed hard. She
reached out to retrieve her pendant from the grass, only to draw
away fast when it burned her fingertips. Frowning, she looked
closer. The once-clear quartz point held lovingly in the pewter
fairy’s embrace was blackened now, charred as if something had
burned it. And she realized that somehow, the bolt of fire had hit
the crystal. She’d seen it rebound back to annihilate its owner.
Had her pendant somehow been responsible? But how? Was that why
Raze had been yelling at her to use...

Raze!

She twisted her head to see him lying on the
ground beside the van. So still. And again, she leaned over Adam,
shaking him gently. Torn in two.

Tires skidded on pavement, and a door
slammed. Footfalls pounded toward her, and she heard a man swearing
out loud. Then he was kneeling beside her, and she frowned in
confusion.

She knew him. The man Adam had hired to check
up on her, the private investigator. Mac Cordair. It didn’t matter
why he was here. “Help him,” she whispered. “Please, help him.”

His fingers pressed to Adam’s neck, and then
his head lowered to Adam’s chest. His lips thin, he faced her.
“There’s a phone in my car, Brigit. No, not the one I came in.
That’s...borrowed. The one Adam was driving. Find it, and call an
ambulance. Hurry.”

She staggered to her feet, saw him bending
over Adam’s body, positioning his hands over Adam’s chest again.
And she spun, and raced away to make the call.

***

Bridin rested in the hospital bed, waiting,
and listening with scarcely veiled amusement to the hospital
nurse’s puzzled tone.

“Her pulse was barely there when she arrived,
doctor. Weak, and thready. Heartbeat erratic. Respirations slow and
shallow. Body temp way down. I don’t understand it.”

“Odd. Her vitals are normal now.”

Yes, but don’t think about sending me back,
because I can re-create those symptoms if I have to.

“We’ll run some tests, keep her overnight for
observation, see what the blood work turns up.”

“Yes, doctor.”

Lovely, the way they talk about me as if I’m
not even in the room. Do they think I’m deaf as well as insane?

“Nurse, is this patient considered dangerous?
Prone to violence?”

“Not according to what her private nurse told
us.”

“A suicide risk, then?”

“No, doctor.”

“Hmm. Then why the apes outside the room?
They worried she’ll try to run off?”

They referred, of course, to the sentries
outside her hospital room. Two of Darque’s oversized hulks. She
considered them prison guards. They’d followed the ambulance, at
Darque’s orders, no doubt.

“I asked,” the feminine voice replied. “Her
nurse says she doesn’t have a history of running away.”

“Let’s send them on their way, then. They’re
making the staff nervous and scaring the hell out of the patients.
You’d think we had Charles Manson in here the way they’re watching
her.”

Bridin heard the smile in the nurse’s voice
as she replied, “Yes, Doctor. I’ll do that right away. No doubt
they’ll argue the point, but I’m sure security can handle them. And
then I’m taking that nurse of hers a cup of coffee. Poor woman is
worried sick.”

“You just be sure she stays in the waiting
room. I don’t want anyone bothering this young lady until we get to
the bottom of these symptoms.”

Perfect. And not a moment too soon, either.
Brigit is here!

***

Brigit paced the emergency room, and she
couldn’t stop crying. Mac stood in a corner, looking a little
shell-shocked and staring into a cup of coffee he hadn’t yet
tasted. Brigit had been all but hysterical by the time he’d had a
chance to question her about what had happened. And she didn’t
suppose her story about a man in black hurling lightning bolts at
them had made much sense to Mac as he’d driven her to the hospital,
behind the ambulance with its flashing lights and screaming
siren.

It still made no sense to her.

She only knew what she’d seen. And what she’d
seen had been Adam, throwing himself in front of her, saving her
life.

She had held herself together until they’d
bundled him and Raze into an ambulance. Another had arrived a few
seconds later. They’d taken Zaslow away in a black vinyl bag.

Despite his confusion, Mac had convinced
Brigit to tell the police she’d arrived after the fact. That she’d
seen nothing, and had no idea what had happened.

They were busy right now at the field, with a
team of electricians, trying to find the source of the high-voltage
charge that had killed one man and put another in the hospital.
When they found nothing, they’d probably attribute it to summer
lightning, blasting down from a clear sky.

Brigit jumped to attention when the doctor
emerged from Adam’s room. She nodded in Brigit’s direction and
Brigit hurried forward.

“Is he...”

“Alive, but still unconscious,” the woman
said softly, and she placed a gentle hand on Brigit’s shoulder. “He
took a powerful jolt, Miss...”

“Malone. Brigit.”

“Brigit,” she repeated. “His heart rate is
normal now, steady, and he’s breathing on his own, but he might be
out for quite some time.”

“But is he going to be all right? When he
wakes up, will he—”

The hand on her shoulder tightened.
“If
he wakes up, Brigit. I have to be honest with you. Right
now, we can’t even be certain he will. He could slip into coma. And
if he does come around, there could be brain damage.”

“My God,” she whispered. “My God.”

“Then again, he might be just fine. There’s
no way to be sure of the extent of the damage, right now. We’ll
know more in a day or so. I’m sorry the news isn’t better.”

Brigit tried to keep her knees steady. Tried
not to sink to the floor. It was an effort she wasn’t certain she’d
be able to sustain very long.

“As for the man who was brought in with him,
Mr. uh...” She flipped a chart open, scanned it. “That’s right.
Malone, same as you. He’s sleeping off the effects of a pretty
potent tranquilizer. Other than that, he’s just fine.”