The Chrome Borne Read online

  He blinked himself into the body of the plane, avoiding the dead-black area of the Gate in the tail. He didn't know where that led, and Foxtrot had whispered into his head that he didn't want to know where it went. For a moment he was afraid that Queen Bee there was going through—

  But no; instead of turning towards the tail, as soon as she climbed the stairs to the side entrance, she turned towards the cockpit, taking strides as long as that tight executive skirt of hers would permit, her high-heels clicking determinedly on the flooring. He followed her, growing more and more alarmed.

  Jeez. She got a gun up there or somethin'? She can't be plannin' t'take this thing off—

  But that, it seemed, was precisely what she intended to do.

  She dropped herself down into the pilot's chair, and reached for the controls. Ross looked around, frantically, for a way to stop her—he was just a plain old country boy—he didn't know anything about gear like this, not like Tannim did.

  But that reminded him of what Tannim had told him about how he could glitch gear—and none of this stuff was armored against spirits. In their arrogance, the Bad Guys must never have counted on finding a ghost ranged up against them.

  As the motors caught, and the rotors started to turn, Ross grinned savagely, and began taking a walk through the control panels.

  * * *

  Aurilia strapped herself into the pilot's seat and reached for the controls, glad she'd taken the time to rob that young pilot of his memories. It was time to cut her losses and run for it. Vidal was gone, and since the Fairgrove hosts were here instead of at the ambush site, presumably they had either killed or captured him. She'd already lost personnel, including some lesser Sidhe. Since the hangar door had malfunctioned and let the enemy in, she might as well take advantage of the situation and fly the plane, Gate and all, out. There were other cities to exploit; Atlanta wasn't that far away. She could return one day in force, and take Keighvin at her leisure.

  She heard the first engine catch; the second. All the instruments were green—

  She'd take the aircraft out on the runway, and too bad for anything that happened to be in the way. Maybe she'd waggle the wings at the Fairgrove idiots shaking their fists down on the ground. Then head for new, fresher meat—

  The engines coughed once, twice—the rotors slowed—and the engines died. Lights began flashing all over the cockpit, and warning buzzers whined like hornets in a blender.

  She stared at the instrument panel, which now displayed readings that made no sense at all. The oil-pressure was off-scale; an engine was overheating. One had never started. Five airplanes were about to hit her according to radar. The airspeed read one hundred twenty knots. The altimeter showed her to be in a steep climb.

  She pounded her fists on the panel, but succeeded only in hurting her hand. Somehow, something had glitched the electronics. And as she stared at the display panels, movement ahead of her caught her eye.

  The hangar door was closing. Even if she could fix what had just been done, she'd never get the plane started and moving before the door was closed.

  She snapped the belts off and flung herself out of the seat. Niall, she thought, a red rage beginning to take hold of her, making her shake. Niall will have to go call in his debts, the stinking corpse. If Keighvin wants a war, a war he'll get!

  * * *

  The girl lay where one of the Sidhe had flung her, on the couch in one of the movie-sets, too hysterical and fear-crazed to touch. Foxtrot left her alone. He couldn't do anything for her mental state, and at the moment she wasn't in any physical danger.

  There wasn't a lot he could do in this Sidhe-built pocket of Underhill, anyway. His realm was a different sort of space. Right now he was little more than a glowing spark, hovering at about eye-level for a human, beside one of the video cameras. Still, whatever he could do to help the cause—though he couldn't do much here, at least he could do something. He couldn't even enter the human plane at all, not like Ross and the true ghosts could.

  Changes in the energy level rippled across him, alerting him to the fact that something had just crossed the Gate. He bounced in place, torn between the urge to see what had crossed it, and the fear that if he left the girl alone, something would happen to her. Finally he gave in to the former, and raced across the studios to the staging area in front of the Gate. It didn't look like much; just an expanse of flat, brown stone, walled on one side by the studios, on two sides by the gray, swirling chaos of Unseleighe Underhill, and on the fourth side by the utterly featureless, black void of the Gate. The two pillars that held it in place on this side glowed an eye-jarring blackish-green. If Fox forced himself he could see through to the other side, very dimly, as if he was peering through dark smoked glass.

  The Bane-Sidhe paced impatiently on the other side, rags fluttering as he moved. It must have been what caused the disturbance in the Gate energies, Fox reasoned. But—why?

  Movement in the gray chaos caught his attention. There was someone out there—coming in response to a call?

  No—

  There were hundreds. Lesser Sidhe atop Nightmares, trolls and goblins and boggles and red-caps and worse—every variety of Underhill nasty Fox had ever seen—headed this way—

  Making for the Gate.

  If they came through, Ross's friends would be outnumbered and outclassed. He had to stop them, somehow. All he had here in the way of special effects was the power of pure illusion. . . .

  And there was only one entity powerful enough in and of himself to stop an army of the Unseleighe Court. It would be a gamble; they might not believe the illusion. They might decide to take him on anyway. By his reckoning, the trick had only a fifty percent chance of working.

  Well, that was what being a shapechanger and a trickster was all about, and he'd played worse odds happily.

  He took his most recent memory of the High King and held it up before his mind's eye. The memory was about five hundred years old, but it would do. That wasn't so long in the lives of the Sidhe.

  He Manifested in a flash of light, calculated to blind and surprise them, and when they recovered from the blaze, they saw the majesty of King Oberon striding towards them.

  As he raised his remembered image of Oberon's sword in a threatening sweep, the foremost riders pulled their beasts up on their haunches, pure fear on their faces. As he took one step forward, they turned tail and ran, panicking the ones behind them, until the entire army was in flight.

  Fox howled with maniacal glee, conjured the illusion of an elvensteed below him, and gave chase.

  * * *

  Aurilia snarled with impatience, kicked off her high heels, and summoned her armor and arms. She ran down the stairs of the plane and headed aft, wondering what could be holding up Niall. Surely it didn't take that long to summon his followers! And while the Bane-Sidhe dawdled, the last of Vidal Dhu's flunkies were falling, and her own troops were coming under fire. Fatal fire too; most of Keighvin's people were armed with a variety of Cold Iron weapons, and those that weren't were using the presence of the two steel-bearing cars to bend the trajectories of their magics in unexpected ways.

  Damn them!

  She could hardly see, she was so angry. The feel of the hilt in her hand was not enough; she wanted to slash something with it—

  Just as she reached the tail of the plane and the ramp down onto the concrete, the Bane-Sidhe let out a wail of despair and stumbled down the ramp to cling to her with both skeletal hands, babbling, desiccated eyes wide in horror.

  "What?" she shouted at him, daring to shake him, hard. "What? What's the matter?"

  "Oberon!" Niall wailed. "It's Oberon! He's here, he's on Keighvin's side, he—chased off the army—he might return—"

  Oberon! For one moment, she panicked as thoroughly as Niall. But then—

  "It can't be Oberon, you fool!" she said fiercely. "He's vowed to stay clear of things involving mortals!" Niall continued to babble, and she pushed him away from her in disgust. "Come on, you worm,
" she snapped, turning, and hoping the insult would wake some sense in the Bane-Sidhe's skull. "There's still time to—"

  She froze. There was a mortal between her and the battle; an old man brandishing a gun—and a seltzer bottle.

  * * *

  While Dottie marched straight into the fray, pumping her shotgun and picking off targets as calmly as if she was shooting skeet, Sam worked his way around the edge of the hangar towards the C-130. The sawblade-frisbees proved lethal indeed; by the time he was twenty feet from the tail-ramp, he'd used them all, and to good effect. Dull or not, they acted as if they were sharp when they hit any of the enemy—and even if all his hits did was to wound the creatures, that gave one of the other Fairgrove Folk a chance to get in a killing blow.

  He made a dash from cover to the tail-ramp of the plane without getting worse than his hair scorched—and a steel-jacketed round into his attacker's face took care of hazard from that quarter. That was when he heard voices—and recognized one of them for the Bane-Sidhe by the evil whine under its words.

  Blessed Mother Mary—if that thing starts to howling, in here, with all the echoes—

  He froze with fear and indecision. He remembered all too well his last encounter with the thing. And that was with the protection of his ear-pieces. Here, at short range, the thing could fry his brain.

  You're for it, lad. This is it. It's you between that thing and all your friends. He squared his shoulders. He was the only one within striking distance of it. And if it took him down—well—there were worse ways to go.

  He stood up and walked calmly around the ramp; the Bane-Sidhe was there, all right—and curiously shrunken. It clung to the shoulders of a stunning woman in dark, shining armor, and babbled fearfully at her. She pushed it away, and turned. And froze as she saw him. He brought up both his weapons to bear.

  The Bane-Sidhe took one look at the bottle in his hand, and stood paralyzed with fear, unable to speak, much less howl.

  The woman stared at him—then began to laugh. "What is this?" she said scornfully. "Which are you, Moe, Larry, or Curly?"

  The Bane-Sidhe pawed her shoulder and babbled something about "It's him, it's him, Holy Water." She shoved the thing rudely away and began walking toward Sam. "You're a fool, mortal," she said, her eyes narrowing as she slowly unsheathed her sword. "I know all about guns and gunpowder." Her free hand sketched a symbol in the air, where it glowed between them for a moment. "There," she continued, "your gun is useless. Go ahead, try it—"

  He did, he couldn't help himself; he pulled the trigger convulsively, and the hammer simply clicked. She laughed.

  "I don't necessarily have to play by elven rules any more than Keighvin does. What my magic can't touch, the magic of an elemental can. And as for that silly little water bottle you have, it might give Niall problems, but it won't hurt me. Holy Water is only good against the Bane-Sidhe, not a full-Sidhe. I might even find it—refreshing—"

  He shook the bottle frantically to get the maximum amount of spray, as she neared him, forcing him to back up against the corrugated metal wall of the hangar. She raised her sword. "Good night, court jester," she said—

  And he hit her full in the face with the metal-charged water.

  She screamed; he raised the stream above her as she dropped to her knees, pawing at her face, and sprayed the Bane-Sidhe. It opened its mouth to shriek, and he directed the stream into its mouth—saw it splash out for a moment—and then come out the back of the Bane-Sidhe's head, boiling the decayed skin off of its bones.

  The nozzle clogged, then, but it didn't matter. Both the woman and the Bane-Sidhe were out of the battle and no hazard to anyone. The woman knelt, keening in pain; the Bane-Sidhe writhed on the ground unable even to do that.

  I did it. By God, I did it. . . .

  He took one step to the woman, raised the seltzer bottle, and brought it crashing down onto her skull. His old legs gave out, then, and he sat down on the concrete, and waited for the rest to find him.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Tannim limped away from Tania and the Mustang, crowbar unsheathed and at the ready. Three black elvensteeds thundered past him, ridden by spell-casting Sidhe in cobalt blue armor. They cut across his path, in pursuit of two red elvensteeds ridden by gray-clad Unseleighe, whose armor already showed burn marks and holes from bullets and elven arrows. As he watched, the three chasing split into an inverted vee, one to each side and one pulling back between them. Seeing they had been flanked, but not immediately noticing the third fighter, the Unseleighe slowed and whirled, to be caught in the throats by that third Fairgrove warrior sweeping a silver longsword in a massive arc. Both riders fell, and the Fairgrove fighters dispatched the red 'steeds with swordstrokes. Then the three turned as one, seeking new targets. Padraig, Sean, and Siobhan, Tannim noted absently. I guess polo is good for something after all.

  And so the battle went; the Lesser Sidhe their Unseleighe opponents had rallied were being steadily routed by Keighvin's tactical skill—and the unpredictability of the magical and technological weapons brought to bear against them.

  Tannim had not yet engaged any Unseleighe in hand-to-hand combat since leaving the car—but he held no illusions that his freedom would last. For now, he was taking the lay of the situation magically, while he had the time to do so. He Felt the hangar's defensive net being drained away around the battle; someone had given up on this place, and was going to use its energy elsewhere. The airplane's engines had started a moment earlier, but had then gone silent, propellers seizing. Maybe Ross had glitched the airplane, and now whoever had been trying to escape was gathering power for a last stand. Maybe it was one of the Fairgrove mages stealing the power away.

  Maybe it was part of a trap.

  In any case, the flow was heading in the general direction of the airplane; he narrowed his eyes to home in on the focal point—

  And was struck sharply from behind, strongly enough to go to the concrete.

  Dammit! I missed one . . . ?

  A heavy arrow clattered to the ground beside him, from where it had struck him in the back. Its tip smoldered—elf-shot, made to kill humans instantly by disrupting their tissues and lifeforce at once. It had not penetrated, thanks to Chinthliss' armor, but left a ragged, seething hole in his beloved jacket. He whirled, hands blazing with energy, to face a seven-foot-tall Unseleighe who had fired point-blank at him from behind several huge wooden crates.

  The bow was raised again, arrow leveling at Tannim's face this time—and Tannim took three stumbling steps towards him and lashed out with the crowbar's hook. He caught the bow, which splintered as if touched by an arc-welder.

  Enchanted. Damn I've got a good one here. . . .

  The Sidhe's face contorted with a snarl; apparently he had felt about the bow much the way Tannim felt about his jacket. Tannim looped the crowbar's path up over his head and brought it down on the Sidhe's upraised arm, where sparks flew again.

  Enchanted armor, too? Oh, hell, I don't need this right now.

  Tannim's shoulder blades ached from where the arrow had hit; the armor had done nothing to arrest the shaft's momentum. The knee, and now the entire leg, were threatening to freeze up, and only dogged determination was keeping him on his feet. That, and a strong sense of self-preservation.

  The Sidhe staggered back, and dug his fingers into the crate beside him, coming away with a two-by-four the size of Detroit. He dearly intended to beat Tannim into a liquid with it. The fellow hadn't drawn his sword, doubtless assuming that Tannim was armored the same as he, but like as not, he'd noted that the arrow's impact alone had hurt the human. The young mage could only limp backwards, mind working furiously to find an easy save—or any save!—while the towering Unseleighe stalked him.

  The two-by-four swung; Tannim deflected it downwards with the crowbar. Its owner brought it back around much faster than Tannim would have thought possible and swung again, too fast to deflect, this time just catching Tannim in the left side above the kidneys. He flew sideways
, landing on his back, and the crowbar slipped from his fingers and clanged against the concrete.

  The visor on the Sidhe's helm was down now, a silvery metal skull shadowing slit-pupilled eyes. He stepped swiftly to the downed human, drawing the board up over his head for the final blow, one to Tannim's skull. Tannim's fingers grasped the pointed end of the crowbar as he propped himself up with his left arm, and he did the only thing he could—

  The crowbar struck again, this time hooking the Sidhe's right ankle, and Tannim put all his weight into pulling on it. The warrior went off-balance and toppled back, as Tannim recovered and leapt to the warrior's chest, pressing the crowbar's point under the visor and prying up. The metal skullface bent until the bone underneath gave. The body twitched once, then fell still.

  Tannim withdrew the dripping bar and staggered back, falling against the crate he'd nearly bodyslammed a moment before. The three riders shot past him then, one raising a high-sign to him before decapitating another Lesser Sidhe, and then all three disappeared behind another stack of crates. Above them, a flash of white—a barn owl, no doubt giving aerial information to Keighvin. To his right, shotgun blasts and other gunfire marked Dottie's arrival with a pair of mechanics. And at the tail of the airplane was—

  Tannim broke into as good a run as he could manage, sending out a desperate mental call to all of his allies, and even Chinthliss. He'd spotted the focus of the tapped energy—and she was just about to unleash it on Sam Kelly.

  * * *

  Sam backed away from what he'd done, inching on his buttocks like a kid in a sandbox. This was all so absurd, and so deadly—maiming fairy tales with a slapstick gag. At his age, anyone else would be sipping prune juice and weeding petunias in Florida, not acting like Batman in mail-order slacks. It was ridiculous, all of it, but there it was—a gibbering, discorporating Bane-Sidhe scratching its last moments on the tail-ramp of a C-130 with no throat or mouth left to scream with, and at the foot of the ramp, a former Joan Crawford look-alike knelt, doing the ultimate death scene.