The Chrome Borne Read online

  Then the spells started up again, and Sam realized why the layout had seemed so familiar as the bolts disappeared around the other side of the buildings—and reappeared moving faster around the other side, racing around the inside of the fenceposts in a league-wide stream of death. They accelerated.

  I'll be damned. Fairgrove's built like a simple electric motor—or a cyclotron. The posts are the electromagnets, the bolts the brushes. . . . I don't believe it! The more power you add, the faster the drum spins . . . and the magnet will—

  Sam never even needed to finish the thought, as he watched the spell-bolts swirling around the complex track in, one by one, on the single solid iron bolt embedded in the Nightmare's chest. There was a silent explosion, and a great coruscating ball of fire spread for a hundred feet. When it cleared, there was a smoking pile of shredded flesh and rags marking what had once been a Nightmare.

  But the rider was still moving, and had pulled back its hood.

  Its face was a contorted image of pain, hatred, sadism, every vile emotion a human could possess, magnified a thousandfold. Its eyes glittered with cruelty and hunger, desiccated skin wrinkling around the sockets as it opened its mouth to scream. A low, painful sound built in Sam's ears, like bone scraping concrete. It rose in pitch as the creature wailed, giving him a shooting pain that ricocheted in his head like the spell-bolts racing around the complex. Sam tried to concentrate on what Keighvin and Janie were saying, not wanting to ponder the fact that a few dollars' worth of surplus police equipment was all that was saving him from the deadly wail of the Bane-Sidhe.

  Sam and Donal broke from their cover and ran to crouch in the bushes around the forge building, but the creature lashed out at them with a whiplike tendril of crackling green fire. The blaze caught Donal in the chest, and heaved him off his feet, The Bane-Sidhe strode through the water-sprays, inside the lethal wall of spell-bolts, its head still tipped back in a wide-mouthed shriek.

  Sam crouched over Donal while the monster approached, and saw that he was still breathing—but barely. The breastplate had been breached in three places he could see, twisted and seeping a bright red fluid that looked as human as any blood Sam had ever seen. Sam felt a dog-like growl of anger rumbling in his chest, and he stood and pulled the Uzi.

  I'll be damned if ye'll get away with that, y'black bastard.

  Narrowing his eyes, Sam trained the watergun on the horror stalking towards him, trigger pulled as he leveled it. It primed and fired when the Bane-Sidhe was only two arms-lengths from him, and the holy water struck and burned, burned like sulfuric acid. Its scream turned from one of attack to terror as it caught "fire," deep channels burning into its flesh where the water touched, black blood streaming, and the last thing Sam saw in its eyes before it turned to run—was fear.

  * * *

  In a little pocket of Underhill chaos, hastily built into an island of protection, Vidal conjured another torrent of water. Once again, he sluiced the Bane-Sidhe down. The liquid poured over Niall, who lay face-down on the rubbery, soft floor, in a quivering heap of pain and suffering, rags plastered to his unnaturally thin body. Niall's howl had died down to a whimper, which was a blessing. It wasn't the purposeful scream of a Bane-Sidhe's vocal attack, but Niall's cries of agony had called up corresponding pain in his ally, even through Vidal's hastily-conjured earplugs of wax.

  The ultra-pure water, carefully warmed to blood-heat, was having an effect. Finally, Niall's whimpers faded and were replaced by hoarse, exhausted breathing.

  Vidal conjured a warm breeze to dry the Bane-Sidhe. He hadn't bothered to remove the creature's rags—he hadn't dared. He didn't want to know what lay beneath them.

  Slowly, the Bane-Sidhe uncurled, as the rags dried and fluttered in his artificial wind. "Are you all right?" Vidal asked carefully.

  "No," the Bane-Sidhe whispered raggedly. "But I shall mend." Then, as if the words had been dragged out of him unwillingly, "I thank you for your quick thinking. And you are right."

  "Right?" Vidal replied, surprised. "About what, pray?"

  "Keighvin Silverhair." There was no mistaking the venom in the Bane-Sidhe's voice now, the acidic hatred. "He has become contaminated with these mortals to the point that he is a great danger to us. He must be removed."

  Vidal nearly lost his jaw. Those were the last words he expected to hear out of Niall; the Bane-Sidhe's stubborn refusal to admit he was ever wrong was legendary.

  "I will help—when I have recovered," Niall concluded faintly. "But what do we do in the meantime? We have been routed."

  "Not necessarily," Vidal said slowly, thinking of the silk-wrapped bundle he'd left Underhill. Aurilia had given it to him just this morning, after he'd issued the challenge.

  "Keighvin and his fools have one strength," she'd told him, handing the tear-gas grenade to him, after showing him how to handle the weapon with silk-lined leather gloves, and how to pull the pin by means of the nylon cargo-tie she'd fastened to it in case he lost the gloves. "Their pet mortals know our weaknesses and exploit them, and they're using the mortals' weapons whenever they can. You'd best get ready to do the same if you want to defeat them."

  He'd laughed at her at the time. Now—

  Now he was coming to the reluctant conclusion that she was brighter than he had thought.

  "I think I have a way to even the score a little," he said, slowly. "If nothing else—I think I can force one of the vermin out of its hole. The one, not incidentally, that got you."

  The Bane-Sidhe's head turned sharply, and Vidal thought he saw the glitter of eyes inside the darkness of its hood, and despite himself, he shuddered.

  "Do that," Niall said tersely, "and every power I have is at your call, without reservation."

  Vidal held back the thrill of triumph, at least enough to keep it from showing on his face.

  * * *

  Sam unlocked the door and turned to lock it behind him—for although Vidal could not pop in magically, there was nothing stopping the Sidhe from walking in mundanely through the door unless Sam was very careful. The house was much too quiet without Thoreau padding up to greet him, but Sam was glad now that he had sent the spaniel to a kennel for safety until this was all over.

  That's one non-combatant out of the way, anyway, he told himself. He'd done everything he could to cover his tracks, too; he'd paid in advance, then registered the dog under a neighbor's name, with her agreement, telling her he was going to be on a consulting job and might not be home for a while. It would take a great deal of investigation for the enemy to learn that Thoreau belonged to Sam. And by then, with luck, this would all be over.

  He made sure that his new crowbar—one of six—was still in the umbrella stand by the door, and headed for the library. He still wanted to double-check something before he turned in for the night—what there was left of it.

  Certainly the last thing he ever expected when he took this job was to get involved with elven warfare.

  But the moment he reached the library door and turned on the light, something crashed through the window.

  Glass shards flew everywhere. Something dark skittered and spun across the floor, banging into the furniture, skipping across the rug, spewing a yellowish gas from one end. It spun like a dervish, and Sam made the fundamental error of gasping in surprise.

  The stinging of his throat and eyes told him how great an error that had been.

  Tear-gas. Just like Belfast. Only this time he hadn't gotten such a big whiff of it.

  Coughing and choking, Sam covered his nose and mouth with his hands, and ran, stumbling, for the door. His eyes burned painfully, streaming tears, making it hard to see; and his lungs felt as if someone had poured hot lead into them.

  He fumbled at the lock and wrenched at the door handle until it opened, slamming it into the wall. He dove through it, tumbling out into the cool, fresh air and dropping to his knees on the concrete, his lungs screaming for oxygen.

  Falling to his knees was all that saved him from the knife that thud
ded into the doorframe above him.

  He started back, then jerked his head around in the direction of the curse that came out of the darkness, just as the house alarms—which he had not disarmed—started wailing, and all the exterior lights flared on as the second line of computer-driven defenses activated.

  Peering through tears, he made out the dark shape of the enemy Sidhe, Vidal—and only that single foe—as the creature threw up its arm to protect its eyes from the wash of powerful light.

  Vidal Dhu—you bastard.

  He knew then that he had a few seconds before the Sidhe recovered and renewed the attack—

  He was praying under his breath, the old litany of "Hail Mary," the words tumbling off his tongue in a high-speed gabble without his being aware of when he had started. And in the meantime, the rest of him was moving again, scrambling to his feet and making a desperate, tear-blurred, panting dash for the garage.

  He reached it a breath ahead of the knife that clattered off the door, punched a key-code on the pad to open it, and ducked another blade that landed somewhere in the darkened interior of the garage. If he could just reach the back—

  He did, falling to his knees beside his goal, as the Sidhe came charging through the door behind him. Sam glanced over his shoulder, seeing only the upraised arms, and that black and glittering sword.

  ThankyouMotherMary— Sam reached for the switch on the powerful box-fan in the middle of the floor with one hand, and the loosely wrapped packet of iron filings in his pocket with the other.

  Just then the Sidhe spotted him, crouched on the floor. The enemy shouted with triumph, cries audible even over the sirens from Sam's alarm system, and raised his sword.

  Sam switched on the fan, ripped the bag out of his pocket and dumped the double-handful of iron filings into the wind of its blades.

  Howls of triumph changed abruptly to cries of pain, as thousands of tiny lances of Cold Iron bit into the Sidhe's face and hands, penetrating and catching even in its garments.

  The Sidhe cried out again, threw his hands up to shield his face, and dropped the sword, which shattered into a thousand glassy bits on the concrete floor. Sam snarled, and rose to his feet, reaching blindly to the tool rack on the back wall, his breath wheezing in his lungs, his face still streaming tears.

  Sam grabbed the first thing that came to hand; a solid, antique metal T-square, old and heavy enough to be made of steel.

  He charged the Sidhe, swinging the implement viciously, like one of his peasant ancestors with a scythe. The Sidhe broke and ran, and Sam pursued, still swinging, to the end of his driveway. There he had to stop, for his lungs and legs both gave out—though he screamed hoarse curses at his enemy right up until the police first arrived in response to the commotion.

  * * *

  Neither Vidal nor the Bane-Sidhe were anywhere in the studio complex, which suited Aurilia just fine. She had work to do, and she couldn't do it if they were hanging around the studio or even the area of Underhill that had been sculpted to hold it. All they ever did was laze about, doing nothing useful, whining about some imagined grievance or other. Making constructs was tedious, exacting work, and she couldn't do it if there was someone distracting her, critiquing her, generally getting in the way.

  The grunt work, of making the blanks, had already been done for her by an Unseleighe-mage who had gotten to play Messelina in the Caligula piece, trading work for the privilege of participation in their epic and a share in the results. They waited for her in their boxes in the Underhill workshop, in a work area Aurilia had pretty much to herself most of the time. The other two couldn't be bothered with sculpting constructs; Aurilia considered herself something of an artist in that area. It took skill to create something that would fool the clients into thinking it was a human being; skill and attention to detail. The latter required a patience neither Vidal nor Niall had, for all that they were powerful mages.

  She hadn't planned on building her "extras" for another week, but the discoveries of this evening changed all that. She was working with a limited window of opportunity. Before too long, Tannim would extract his little pavement princess from her surroundings and get her away to safety. If he didn't succeed in that, the girl might be murdered by her own stupidity, or the kids might connect Adder's Fork with the young hookers who had already disappeared. The entire schedule for shooting "Deadly Doctor" would have to be moved up if Aurilia was going to be able to extract the maximum value from the potentials of the situation. That would take a lot of work on her part, but the end result would be worth it.

  She opened the first coffinlike box. The creature waiting inside was not "alive" in the strictest sense. It was shaped rather like a store-front mannequin, the modern kind that was utterly featureless, with no eyes, ears, nose, mouth, or other orifices, just a blank face-shaped area. No hair yet, either, and it didn't breathe. If you cut it right now, it wouldn't bleed, for it had no circulatory system. It took all of its nourishment passively, like a plant, from the energy Aurilia channeled into it. If Aurilia didn't use it or feed it, within a month it would die of starvation and never even whimper in pain.

  This construct was destined for another fate, however; one it would never understand.

  Aurilia had already selected personas for this batch of constructs, and had clipped the pictures she wanted to use to the top of each box. This one would be a "Victorian Street Sparrow"; Aurilia's term for the underage thieves, pickpockets, and prostitutes that used to throng London's working-class districts.

  And humans treat teenage prostitution as if it's something new because now there are mortals with PhDs writing about it.

  She took the picture of the full-face shot in her right hand, and placed her left on the construct-blank's chest. The flesh was warm, but a little rubbery under her hand—and much too smooth to be human. That was all right; the clients weren't going to be paying much attention to the skin, after all. If it looked too perfect, they'd assume it was makeup or lighting.

  The face would be the first; it was the hardest. She chanted the first words of the spell, calling into being the features in the photograph she held: square chin, slightly undershot jaw, petulant lips. The flesh writhed and obeyed her, clearing away from jawline and neck, mounding up to form the lips, cheeks, and chin. The nose was next; nothing hard there, since the basic shape was already in place. Then the eye area. But there were no eyes there yet; the lids closed over round, featureless balls at the moment.

  She selected another photograph and chanted to the body, giving it high, small breasts, a slightly protruding belly as if it was a little bit pregnant, broad hips. Then she sang hair into being, head and pubic; she had intended brown, but it grew up auburn. She decided to leave it the way it was. Sometimes the constructs took on slightly different characteristics than she had intended, though she never knew why.

  What she had done up until now was pure sculpture. Now began the hard part; the part that required kenning. She removed her hands from the construct, and flexed them, then cupped them over the body in the box.

  She sank herself into deep awareness and her chant changed; the rhythm pattern shifted, until it replicated the beat of the human heart. The words shifted, too, becoming heavier, more potent in sound if nothing else.

  But they were potent in other ways.

  Now the skin of the construct heaved and rippled, as beneath it, Aurilia created organs, bones, and a primitive nervous and circulatory system. The latter didn't have to actually do any work; its main job was to carry "blood" to places where the construct was going to be hurt. If Aurilia hadn't been in so much of a hurry, she could have created an exact duplicate of a human, something that would stand up to anything but a tissue analysis—but there was no point in being that thorough.

  In the old days, that was why so many changelings sickened and died; no mater what they were fed, the food didn't nourish them and they wasted away. Why create something well made? We wanted the changelings to die. So did the Seleighe fools, though for en
tirely different reasons. . . .

  Lungs were made the same way; mere bellows to simulate breathing and provide air for speaking and screaming. However; the construct did need a good pain-nerve net; it was going to have to react appropriately to painful stimuli. That meant a basic spine and some brain functions.

  Within an hour, she had her "extra"; one of the creatures destined to die in front of the camera. She'd created dozens of constructs in her time; so long as the raw material was there, it was no strain anymore.

  Bending over the box for a close look, she made the creature blink, simulate a variety of expressions, breathe. She fished a long, slender crystal from a pouch at her waist. It looked like a half-melted icicle, but was warm to the touch. This was the key to making her "extras" truly convincing; it was a condensed memory-crystal, containing the reactions of every human who had ever been inside either of the studios. She placed it point-down on the construct's forehead, and pushed it into the "brain." When her palm touched the skin of the forehead, the eyes suddenly snapped open.

  The construct screamed itself awake.

  She hushed it with a word and a motion.

  The creature blinked, looked at her—and cowered away.

  Satisfied, she put it to sleep with a thought, closed the lid on the creature's "coffin" and moved on to the next box.

  She was half done when Vidal entered the complex, so immersed in her creations that she honestly didn't notice he was there until he knocked something over in the Studio Two bathroom and it broke. That startled her and broke her concentration, and she sensed his presence. She waited impatiently for him to put in an appearance and disrupt her work.