Wasteland King (2 page)

M
att Grogan liked leaning against the gas pumps and having a smoke, even if the bossman would give him hell about safety. It wasn't like anyone ever used the damn things, despite the fact that they were live. You had to walk inside to pay for your go-juice, and nobody wanted to do that. They wanted the pumps with the credit card readers, not ancient ones probably full of water and air bubbles, so they drove straight on to Barton to the shiny stop-and-robs there.

When he came back in, he thought he was dreaming.

Nobody had driven up, but there was a redheaded punk girl in a long black velvet coat in front of the ancient cooler-case, the glass door open and letting out a sourish frigid breeze as she drank from a quart of milk, probably right at its sell-by date. Christ knew the tourists never bought anything here but cigarettes and Doritos, pity-buys really so they could use the small, filthy
CUSTOMERS ONLY
bathroom around the side.

Her throat worked in long swallows, her weed-whacker-cut coppergold hair glowing under the fluorescents, and she was a stone
fox
even if she was drinking straight out of the carton. Skinny in all the right ways, but with nice tatas, and wearing a pair of black heels, too.

The only problem was, she was drinking without paying, and right next to her was a huge reddish hound who stared at Matt with the sky-blue, intelligent eyes of a husky. A dog shouldn't look that damn
thoughtful
, as if it was weighing you up.

“Hey!” Matt's voice broke, too. Cracked right in the middle. Bobby Grogan, the football savior of Barton High and Matt's older brother, had a nice low baritone, but Matt's had just fractured its way all through school, even though he would have given anything to sound tough just once. Just that once, when it counted.

Instead it was
crybaby Matt
, and the only thing worse was the pity on Bobby's face in the parking lot.
Lay off him, he's my brother.

She didn't stop drinking, her eyes closed and her slim throat moving just like an actress's. She finished off the whole damn quart, dropped it and gasped, then reached for another.

“Hey!” Matt repeated. “You gonna pay for that?”

Her eyes opened just a little. They were dark blue, and she gave him a single dismissive glance, tearing the top off the fresh carton in one movement. Milk splashed, and she bent like a ballerina to put the milk on the piss-yellow linoleum with little orange sparkles. The dog dipped his long snout in and began to drink as well.

Oh, man
. “You can't just
do
that, man! You gotta pay for it!”

She reached into the case again, little curls of steam rising off her bare wrist as the cooler wheezed. Those two quarts were all the whole milk they had, so she grabbed the lone container of half-and-half—ordered weekly because the bossman said offering free coffee would make someone buy it—and bent back the cardboard wings to open it. The spout was formed with a neat little twist of her wrist, and she lifted it to her lips, all while the dog made a wet bubbling noise that was probably enjoyment.

Oh, hell no
. “You can't
do
that!” He outright yelled. “Imma call the cops, lady! You're gonna get
arrested!
”

The instant he said it, he felt ridiculous.

She drank all the half-and-half and dropped that carton too, wiping at her mouth with the back of her left hand. Then she stared at Matt, like he was some sort of bug crawling around in her Cheerios.

Just like Cindy Parmentier, as a matter of fact, who let Matt feel her up behind the bleachers once but kept asking him to introduce her to Bobby. Then she spread that goddamn rumor about him being a fag, and even Bobby looked at him like he thought it might be true.

The woman's mouth opened slightly. She still said nothing. The dog kept sucking at the opened quart on the floor, but one wary eye was half open now.

“And you can't have dogs in here! Service animals only!” He sounded ridiculous even to himself.

She tipped her head back, and for a moment Matt thought she was going to scream. Instead, she laughed, deep rich chuckles spilling out and away, bright as the gold hoops in her ears. Matt flat-out stared, spellbound.

When she finished laughing, the dog was licking the floor clean, its nose bumping the empty cartons with snorfling sounds. She wiped away crystal teardrops on her beautiful cheeks, and walked right past Matt. She smelled like spice and fruit, something exotic, a warm draft that made him think of that day behind the bleachers, soft sloping breasts under his fumbling fingers and Cindy Parmentier's quick, light breathing scented with Juicy Fruit gum.

The dog passed, its tail whacking him a good one across the shins, way harder and bonier than a dog's tail had any right to be. Matt staggered. The door opened, early-summer heat breathing into the store's cave, and Matt ran after her. “
You didn't pay!
” he yelled, but he slipped on something a little weird underfoot, like the floor itself was moving to throw him off.

He went down hard, almost cracking his skull on the racks of nudie mags they couldn't sell inside the Barton city limits.
That
was the real reason this place held on, and once he started working here the kids at school started laughing even more.

“Ow!” Matt rolled, thrashing to get back up. Something jabbed at his cheek, and something else poked his finger. Tiny, vicious little stings all over him.

The bell over the door tinkled again. “Stop that,” the voice said, low and sweet as warm caramel, with a hidden fierceness. Just those two words made the sweat spring out all over him.

It was a good thing his eyes were closed, or he would have seen the tiny flying things, their faces set in scowling mutiny, their wings fluttering and a deep throbbing blue spreading through the glow surrounding each one of them, spheres of brilliance bleached by both day and fluorescent light but still bolder, richer than the colors of the tired mortal world. Some had gleaming, tiny sewing-needle blades, and their mouths opened to show sharp pearly teeth.

A low, thunderous growl. It was the dog, and Matt rolled around some more, suddenly terrified of opening his eyes. His bladder let go in a warm gush, and the stinging continued.

“I said,
Stop it
.” Everything inside the store rattled. The floor heaved a little again, and that was when he opened his eyes and saw… them. The little people, some naked and others in tiny rags of fluttering clothing, their delicate insect-veined wings, their sharp noses and the wicked merriment of their sweet, chiming pinprick voices as they chorused.

They darted at him, but the woman said, “No,” again, firmly, even as they piped indignantly at her. “Leave him alone. He's just a kid.”

They winked out. The door closed with a whoosh, and he lay there in his own urine, quivering. Her footsteps were light tiptaps on the tarmac outside before they were swallowed up by the hum of air-conditioning.

And a faint, low, deadly chiming. Little pinpricks of light bloomed around him again, and he began to scream.

Not long afterward Matt Grogan got up, tiny teethmarks pressed into his flesh on his face and hands, bloody pinpricks decking every inch of exposed skin. He bolted through the door without waiting for it to open, shattering glass into the parking lot.

He ran into the sagebrush wilderness, and nobody in Barton ever saw him again.

S
ummerhome rose upon its green hill, its pennants in wind-driven tatters. The walls should have been gloss-white and greenstone, the towers strong and fair like the slim necks of ghilliedhu girls, and around its pearly sword-shapes the green hills and shaded dells should have rippled rich and verdant. The Road should have dipped and swayed easily, describing crest and hollow with a lover's caress; there were many paths, but they all led Home.

The hills and valleys were green and fragrant, copse and meadow drowsing under a golden sun. They were not as rich and fair as they had been before, nor did they recline under their own vivid dreams as in Unwinter's half of the year. The ghilliedhu girls did not dance as they were wont to do from morning to dusk in their shady damp homes; the pixies did not flit from flower to flower gathering crystal dewdrops. The air shimmered, but not with enticement or promise. Strange patches spread over the landscape of the more-than-real, oddly bleached, a fraying paper screen losing its color.

The trees themselves drew back into the hollows, the shade under their branches full of strange whispers, passing rumor from bole to branch.

Rumor—and something else.

Occasionally, a tree would begin to shake. Its spirit, a dryad slim or stocky, hair tangling and fingers knotting, would go into convulsions, black boils bursting from almost-ageless flesh. First there were the spots and streaks of leprous green, then the blackboil, then the convulsions.

And then, a sidhe died, the tree withering into a rotting stump oozing brackish filth.

The dwarven doors were shut tight, admitting neither friend nor foe, and the free sidhe hid elsewhere, perhaps hoping the cold iron of the mortal world would provide an inoculation just as mortal blood did. Some whispered the plague was an invention of the mortals, jealous of the sidhe's frolicsome immortality, but it was always answered with the lament that no mortal believed in the Good Folk anymore, so that was impossible.

Summerhome's towers were bleached bone, and the greenstone upon them had paled to pastel instead of forest. A pall hung over the heart of Summer, the fount the Seelie held all Danu's folk flowed from. The vapor carried an unfamiliar reek of burning, perhaps left over from the disposal of quick-rotting bodies, both from Unwinter's recent raid and from the plague itself.

Sparse though the latter was, there was no real hope of it abating. Not now that Summer's borders had been breached, and the sickness brought in.

From the sugarwhite shores of the Dreaming Sea to the green stillness of Marrowdowne, from the high moors where the giants strode and those of the trollfolk allied to Summer crouched and ruminated in their slow bass grumbles to the grottos where naiads peered anxiously into still water to reassure themselves that their skin was unmarked, Summer quivered with fear and fever.

Inside the Home's high-vaulted halls, brughnies scurried back and forth in the kitchens, but no dryads flocked to carry hair ribbons and little chantment spangles for their betters. The highborn fullbloods, most vulnerable to the plague, kept an unwonted distance from each other, and some had slipped away to other estates and winter homes, no doubt on urgent business.

On a low bench on a high dais, among the repaired columns of Summer's throne room,
she
sat, slim and straight and lovely still, her hands clasped tight in her lap. Her mantle was deep green, her shoulders peeking glow-nacreous through artful rends in rich fabric. The Jewel on Summer's forehead glowed, a low dull-emerald glare. It was not the hurtful radiance of her former glory, but her golden hair was still long and lustrous, and her smile was still as soft and wicked as she viewed the knights arrayed among the forest of fluted stone.

Broghan the Black, called Trollsbane, the glass badge of Armormaster upon his chest, stood on the third step of the dais. He did not glance at the knight who knelt on the second, a dark-haired lord in full armor chased with glowing sungold. Dwarven work, and very fine; Broghan's own unrelieved black was all the more restrained in comparison.

Or so he wished to think.

The golden knight with the
brun
mane, Summer's current favorite, stared at her slippered feet, waiting for a word. Once, he had worn small golden flowers in his hair, when his lady had been one of the Queen's handmaidens.

No more.

Summer did not let him wait long. “Braghn Moran.” Soft, so dulcet-sweet, the most winning of her voices. The air filled with appleblossom scent, white petals showering from above as layers of chantment, applied at festival after festival, woke in response to her will. “A fair lord, and a fell one.”

“Your Majesty does me much honor,” he murmured in reply. No ripple stirred among the serried ranks, though no doubt a few of them grudged him said honor. They had already forgotten a wheat-haired mortal boy's brief tenure as the apple of Summer's black, black eye, and Braghn Moran's sighs and hollow cheeks during it.

The wiser knew it was only a matter of time before any favor she bestowed upon him was lost in due course.
Fickle as Summer
, some said—though never very loudly. Braghn Moran's golden-haired lover had left Court not long ago, when Summer's gaze had snared the one who wore her flowers.

The sidhe did not share. But when Summer took, what could another elf-maid do? The Feathersalt was of an old and pure name, and her absence was perhaps not
quite
with Summer's leave… but that was a matter for later.

“Something troubles me, Braghn.”

The knight could have observed that there were many troublesome things afoot among the sidhe lately, but he did not—perhaps a mark of wisdom in itself. He simply examined the toe of Summer's green velvet slipper, peeking out from under the heavy folds of her mantle. If he compared it to another lady's, none could tell.

Summer pressed onward. “I seek a certain troublesome sprite, and I would have you find him for me.”

“Who could not come, when you call?” Broghan the Black commented.

Summer did not spare him so much as a glance. “I believe Puck Goodfellow is leading a certain former Armormaster down many a path.”

A rustle now
did
pass through the ranks of Seelie knights.

Gallow
. The Half who had committed the unforgivable, who had killed a peaceful envoy, then insulted Summer and all of Seelie to boot.

“You wish me to kill Gallow?” Braghn Moran did not sound as if he considered it much of a challenge.

Summer's faint smile widened a trifle. “No, my dear Braghn. Puck Goodfellow has mislaid his head; it belongs upon my mantelpiece where I may gaze upon it. I have had enough of his play at neutrality. If the free sidhe are not with us, they are with Unwinter.” Cruel and cold, her beauty now, not the visage of the simple nymph it otherwise pleased her to wear. This was a different face, one haughty and motionless as marble. “And I will not tolerate Unwinter's insolence further.”

Braghn Moran rose. He glittered as he stood before Summer, stray gleams of sunshine striking from dwarven-carved lines on breastplate, greaves, armplates. Fine strands of honey in his chestnut hair caught the light as well. “Yes, my Queen.”

“Do this, and you shall be my lord.” She smiled, softening, a kittenish moue on her glossy carmine lips. Petals showered through the air, shying away from each sidhe's breathing cloak of chantment.

Moran made no reply, merely turned on his heel. The ranks parted for him, and some may have noticed he did not swear to her before he left, nor did he glance back. His face was set and dark, and when the doors closed behind him, Summer's smile fled.

“The rest of you,” she continued, “are required for other work.”

Tension crackled between the floating petals, each exuding a crisp apple scent as it touched the floor. For Summer to expend her strength on this glamouring, for her to appear thus, was perhaps not quite wise in her recent state.

But who would tell
her
as much?

She finally gave them their task. “Jeremiah Gallow, once Armormaster, offends your queen.” Her hands tightened against each other in her lap. “Kill him, and bring Unwinter's Horn to me.”