Lackey, Mercedes - Serrated Edge 05 - Chrome Circle Page 9

  He stepped across the threshold. "You know," he said, conversationally, as he stared into the empty, weed-filled space that had once held his workshop and all his beloved Mustangs in their various states of repair, "I had a dream about this place, before I ever set foot in it. I dreamed that I came up to this door, opened it, and looked around. The place was mostly empty, full of shadows. And right there—" he pointed to the west corner "—there was a tarp with something under it. In my dream I would come up to that tarp, and pull it off, and there was an engine under there. Not just any engine, but a 428 CobraJet, in absolutely perfect condition. Mint, like the day it had come off the line. And it had just been waiting for me to find it."

  He contemplated the corner for a moment; there was no sign now that there had ever been anything there. Somewhere under the weeds, there probably lurked all the bits of junk the guy he'd sold salvage rights to hadn't carted off, but you wouldn't know that from here. "Anyway, that was what convinced me to rent this barn; to begin my Mustang restoration business, to go ahead with the whole plan. I did just that, rented it sight unseen; walked up to the place with the key in my hand and unlocked the door and swung it open. And sure enough, in that corner, there was a tarp, with something under it. I walked up to it; my heart was pounding, let me tell you. I grabbed the end of the tarp, and I pulled it away—"

  "And the engine was there!" Joe exclaimed when he paused.

  Tannim shook his head, smiling. "Nope. Nothing but a pile of musty old lumber and some odd bits of farm equipment. And just at first, I was horribly disappointed. I felt like the dream had let me down, somehow."

  He let his gaze drift upward to what was left of the walls, to the blue sky above where the roof had been. And he realized that coming here did not hurt, as he had feared it would. He'd given up the limited dreams this place meant a long time ago—outgrown them, so to speak. He might just as readily have felt pain at seeing his old tricycle, or his playpen.

  "But then," he continued, "I had this revelation. The dream hadn't let me down at all, because it had spurred me to make the commitment to try the business. I might not otherwise have done it. And I knew at that moment that the things I would build here would be so much better than that phantom engine, there'd be no comparison. Everyone wants to hit it big and have something great just happen, like winning a lottery. But—the things I would create here would be all mine, built out of the work of my own hands and my own sweat, and not just thrown into my lap."

  "Yeah . . ." Joe said, and nodded. "Yeah, I see what you mean." And although not everyone would have understood, Tannim had the sense that Joe did.

  He took another step or two into the barn, and felt all the protective energies of Chinthliss' magics close around him. The blackened walls took on a peculiar golden haze as he reactivated those magics; gaps in the walls closed up, and a glowing golden field arched upward, between him and the open sky.

  Joe stared, wide-eyed, open-mouthed. Tannim grinned, gazing right along with him. He still loved this place.

  "Well, there it is, Joe. Real magic. Don't know how much Al and Bob showed you, but this is it: two-hundred proof."

  "They never showed me anything like this," Joe replied, still ogling around with unabashed astonishment.

  Tannim permitted himself a chuckle. "Well," he said, "there's more where that came from."

  * * *

  Joe hadn't imagined why Tannim had brought them to this burned-out hulk of a barn, except out of nostalgia. He did understand what Tannim meant with his story about the dream-engine, though. He'd had more than enough experience with how gifts out of the blue could backfire on you, or have strings attached you didn't even know about until you began your puppet-dance. No, it was better to earn what you got, that was for sure.

  Still—the place was not exactly prepossessing. The roof was gone, and although the remains of the four walls lifted ragged and blackened timbers to the sky, he couldn't imagine what Tannim could find here that he couldn't get in—say—a brush-filled ravine, or a tree-packed ridge, both of which would offer the same amount of privacy that this barn would.

  Then Tannim had done—something—and as his skin tingled with the feeling of a lightning storm building, the walls came alive and rose unbroken to the sky in solid sheets of power.

  More than that, a kind of roof appeared overhead—a roof of glowing golden light.

  All of it was rather ghostlike, since he could see right through it, but it felt powerful, and he had no doubt that it would protect them in its way as well as armor plating.

  That left him with a lump in his throat. Witnessing magic like this was an electrifying and bewildering experience.

  Al and Bob had shown him a few things, including something they'd called "personal shields," but it had all been small stuff compared with this. Was this the kind of thing Tannim did all the time? Would he be expected to work with this kind of stuff on a regular basis? And what about the other people at Fairgrove? Were they all as—well—as powerful as this?

  "What do you want me to do, sir?" he asked, pleased that his voice shook only a little.

  "Just watch," Tannim replied, taking a relaxed pose in the center of the barn, legs spread apart almost like a pistol-shooting stance, arms raised over his head. "Nothing else."

  Well, that was easy enough to do. . . .

  He watched, and for awhile nothing much seemed to happen. Then he felt that funny tingling along his skin that he had learned meant something magical was going on, and a faintly glowing ball of green-and-gold light formed in front of Tannim, hovering in the air at about chest height. Soon it was quite solid, as if someone had hung a light bulb right in midair. He could not imagine what this thing was, but he watched it with wide eyes. This wasn't the sort of thing he saw every day.

  Tannim stared into the ball, and Joe had the sensation that he was somehow talking to it. He dropped his right hand long enough to pull the black driving-glove out of one pocket, and held it up to the globe for a long time.

  Then he tucked the glove away again, raised his hand back over his head, and stared at the globe for a moment longer.

  This was as creepy as anything Brother Joseph had ever done, and only the sense that this was not anything evil or even harmful kept Joe standing where he was. He knew what evil felt like; whatever it was, this wasn't evil.

  But he almost lost it when the ball suddenly brightened until it rivaled the sunshine and cast a tall shadow of Tannim against the wall behind him. And he did yelp when it vanished in a clap of thunder.

  But Tannim only dropped his hands, dusted them off against his jeans, and stared at the walls for a moment. Abruptly, the glow disappeared, leaving only the fire-blackened timbers again.

  "I love that effect!" Tannim laughed.

  "What was that?" Joe blurted. "What did you do?"

  "Call it—a magical version of a fax machine," Tannim replied after a moment, his green eyes luminous in the bright sunshine, as if there was some power making them shine. "I have a friend named Chinthliss who's like a more powerful version of Foxtrot, though he'd choke if you ever said it to him. I want him to help me, and that little glow-ball is how I told him pretty much everything we know." He grinned then, and pulled his Wayfarers out of his pocket, putting them on. "Now, we just wait."

  A magical version of a fax? Joe shook his head; this was way beyond anything Al and Bob had ever showed him. Even though he knew that when they came to visit they hadn't ever come by airplane much less driven across the country, they hadn't once explained how they did manage to cross the miles between Pawnee and Savannah whenever they chose. They certainly hadn't shown him things like this. Tannim turned away from him for a moment and bent his head down to peer at something in the grass growing up through the barn floor.

  Joe might have asked more questions, except that at that precise moment, someone coughed delicately behind him.

  "Excuse me?" said a low, sexy, female voice.

  * * *

  Tannim thought he
saw something give off a bit of mage-sparkle in the grass at his feet, and he peered down for a moment.

  "Excuse me?" said a voice that was not Joe's.

  Tannim jumped in startlement, and turned to face the barn door.

  And froze as he saw who was standing there behind Joe, his mind lodged on a single thought, unable to get past it.

  It's her—it's her—it's her—

  And it was: the woman who had haunted him and hunted him down through his dreams for the last decade and more. The woman he'd dreamed of this morning. Her. And she stood there, nonplussedly taking in his look of complete and utter shock.

  There was absolutely no doubt of it; she matched his dreams in every detail. Gently curved, raven-wing hair swept down past her shoulders and framed a face that he knew as well as he knew his own. Amused, emerald-green eyes gazed at him from beneath strong brows that arched as delicately as a bit of Japanese brushwork. The regal nose was just short of being hawklike, and gave strength to the prominent cheekbones. The sensual mouth hinted at a hundred secrets. And the body, the perfect, slim, small-breasted body . . . did more than hint.

  She stood as he remembered her standing; poised, and not posed, graceful movement arrested for the briefest of moments. She wore silk and leather; a red silk jumpsuit that flowed in an exotic cut that spoke of expensive designers, tooled and riveted black leather belt and boots. She wore them beautifully, flawlessly, unselfconsciously, as if they were the stuff of her everyday attire.

  "Excuse me," she said again, in a throaty contralto that he remembered whispering intimacies into his ear, ". . . but I understood that I could find someone here who works on Mustangs."

  He took one step toward her; another. At the third step, he looked past her and spotted her black Mustang standing in the midst of the tall grass outside the barn door. The grasses waved gently around it, like something out of a commercial. Joe simply stood frozen in place, staring at her. She waited, calmly. She looked as if she would be perfectly ready to wait all day.

  Tannim started to speak, and had to cough to clear his throat before his voice would work.

  "Not—for a long time," he said dazedly.

  "Ah," she replied, with a smile tinged with something he could not read.

  But then her eyes widened as she looked past his shoulder, and she stepped back in alarm.

  Fear lanced him. He whirled to look.

  There was nothing there.

  Quickly, realizing that she had pulled the oldest trick in the book on him, he turned back.

  She was already gone. And so was her car.

  Only then did his mind click back into gear, as he sprinted past the broken-down door, and stood where the car had been. There was the imprint of four tires in the grass—but no track-marks leading up to them. There was no sign that the car had actually been driven through the grass to reach that spot, and there had been no sound of a motor.

  Belatedly, recognition. The car that had stood there had been the same Mustang that had shadowed him last night.

  The grasses waved and parted; he looked down when his subconscious recognized that the shadow there was not a shadow. There was a second black, fingerless driving glove in the grass at his feet.

  He picked it up, and immediately banished the thought that he might have dropped last night's glove and not have noticed. That glove had been torn where it had been riveted to the door and he'd ripped it off. This glove, also for the right hand, was intact.

  And it, too, contained a small strip of parchment.

  He took it out, and there was another quotation handwritten there, in the same spidery hand.

  * * *

  The painful warrior famoused for fight,

  After a thousand victories, once foiled,

  Is from the books of honour razed quite,

  And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd.

  Sonnet 25

  * * *

  He stared at it, the meaning burning arc-light bright in his mind. The challenge has been made. Chicken out of this one—or be defeated—and everything you are and ever were will be erased, and everything you ever did will be forgotten.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Tannim tucked the slip of parchment back into the glove with special care. The sun burned down on his head, as the quotation burned in his mind. Of all the ways he'd ever imagined of meeting her, this had never once crossed his mind. He'd pictured himself simply running into her in some exotic place, imagined finding her on his side in a desperate combat, wondered if some day she might simply appear at Fairgrove as a new "employee" even as he had. He had fantasized rescuing her, fighting by her side, having her rescue him, even. It had never once entered his mind that she could be an enemy.

  No—not an enemy. Have to call it like it is; I don't know that yet. An opponent, but I can't put her in the "enemy" column yet. Maybe that was wishful thinking, but he couldn't get all those dreams out of his head. Surely they meant something.

  Grass swished and crackled behind him, and young Joe moved out of the barn to stand next to him. "There was a lady there a minute ago, wasn't there?" he said, his voice remarkably steady, given the circumstances. "And a car?" In the brilliant sun, his hair looked almost white, and his vividly blue eyes mirrored the Oklahoma sky.

  "Uh-huh," Tannim confirmed. "I'm beginning to feel like Prince Charming. She left me another glove."

  Joe regarded the glove in Tannim's hand with a dubious expression and made no move to touch it. "I don't think you're gonna have too much luck going around Tulsa getting women to try those on to see if they fit."

  Tannim smiled faintly. Not bad; the kid's keeping his sense of humor. "Not as reliable as a glass slipper."

  No maker's mark in these gloves, though. No tag, and no sign that one had been cut or taken out. No identifying marks at all. Wasn't that a little odd?

  Come to think of it, they didn't really look mass-produced. Huh. Custom work? If so, they might be as good as a glass slipper if I can find out where they came from.

  He was just about ready to take the gloves apart, stitch by stitch, when a warning tingle along his personal shields alerted him. Something was manifesting in the barn!

  He tested the energies, and recognized one he had not really expected to encounter quite so soon. But it was more than welcome, especially in light of this second challenge.

  He sprinted back to the barn and reinvoked all the protections; the golden walls of power came up around him, enclosing him in a safe zone that only he, Chinthliss, or their sendings would be able to pass. He held his hands out at chest height, preparing the space in front of him to receive whatever Chinthliss' answer would be.

  A thunderclap announced its arrival in his hands, and a flash of golden light that lit up the inside of the protective dome as it passed through the shields.

  It came in the form of the same green and gold message-globe he himself had sent out, which confirmed his surprised and delighted guess that Chinthliss had answered him immediately, interrupting whatever else he was doing to do so. There were times when the dragon came through for him.

  The globe settled in his hands, weightlessly, and pulsed for a moment, as it confirmed his identity. Then it deepened in color, turning from golden green to a deep bronze, and he felt a familiar touch on his mind. He relaxed and let the message flow into his thoughts.

  :I have heard, and am intrigued, Son of Dragons.: The deep bass, purely mental voice tolled sonorously in his head. :I will arrive at the usual place at the hour the sun has vanished. And in case you have forgotten, the "usual place" is the building in which you once kept all your machines.:

  The globe spun on its axis then whirled and changed, fading as it discharged its energies into the air, the shields, and anything else that was able to absorb a little extra power.

  Including Tannim, who was not too proud to get a little of the charge he'd put into the thing back again.

  Once again, he brought the protections down, and took a quick glance at Joe. The young
man was not watching him; instead, he had taken up a "guard" position at the doorframe, and his alert stance told Tannim that his erstwhile protégé was perfectly prepared to fight anything that tried to cause trouble. Obviously Joe had not made the assumption that because the challenger was a woman, she could be dismissed.

  Good. At least that's one lesson he won't have to learn the hard way.

  "Joe?" he said quietly. The young man turned and nodded.

  "Nothing out there that I can see," he said. "Nobody watching us as far as I can tell. Did your friend send you a return fax?"

  Tannim had to smile at the ease with which Joe had accepted his own offhanded terminology. "As a matter of fact, he did," Tannim replied. "He's going to be here tonight. We'll have to come out here to meet him."

  "And until then?" Joe asked, his expression stolid, only his eyes showing his nervous tension as he continually glanced from side to side, making certain nothing could creep up on them.