Sidhe-Devil Read online

  Harris sighed, then grabbed Zeb's tie and pulled him around to look behind the chairs. "That's why."

  "What the hell happened to him?"

  "I hit him."

  "Why? What is he to you?"

  "He's a fairy."

  Zeb pulled back and looked appalled. "Harris, that's not like you at all. You've never been a gay-basher."

  "No, no, no. He's not gay. Or maybe he is. I don't know. He's a fairy."

  "You've lost me."

  "In other words, he's someone from the fair world. Come on. We need to find out if there are more of them." He drew Zeb back around the column and into the crowd. "You see any guys about chest-high, built like bowling balls, point 'em out to me."

  "So you can beat them up. Sure."

  The photographer called, "Husband, please stand beside the bride again."

  "Dammit! Zeb, give me your jacket."

  * * *

  Zeb watched Harris rejoin Gaby in front of the camera. Zeb could tell Harris's smile was forced. It looked genuine enough, but Zeb had known him long enough to distinguish between reality and acting where Harris was concerned. Zeb returned to the man Harris had slugged.

  He didn't find an invitation among the man's effects. But he did find the man's gun. It was a strange piece, brassy in color, large for a revolver.

  Okay. So someone had crashed the wedding with a gun. Harris might be crazy, with all this talk of fairies, but he wasn't paranoid. And he'd suggested there were more strange folk out there. Well, if there were potential enemies in the crowd with firearms, Zeb didn't intend to be unarmed. He wrapped the gun up in Harris's jacket and took it with him.

  Zeb returned to the edges of the crowd and looked around. He immediately spotted men so like the one Harris had slugged that they had to be relatives: short, squat, thick-chested, most of them bulbous-nosed and bearded. They were wearing the worst off-the-rack suits Zeb had seen in a long while. All four stood at the main doors leading into the hall, but as he watched, three departed—leaving the tallest one behind.

  A guard, Zeb decided.

  * * *

  Harris took Gaby in his arms and kissed her. Kissed her long past the point the photographer said he had the shot. Then he whispered, "There are fair folk here."

  Gaby held her smile. "I thought you were acting strangely."

  "Side by side, please," the photographer said.

  They obliged. Gaby asked, "Someone Doc sent to guard us, maybe?"

  "Nah. Son of a bitch wouldn't have drawn on me if he was guarding me. Is that another one? Over by your mother. Short, nose like a squashed avocado?"

  "No, that's my uncle Ernesto."

  "What's he doing out of jail?"

  "Attending our wedding, silly. Wait, there's one, at the doors out. Oh, damn."

  "What?"

  "Zeb's headed right for him."

  * * *

  Zeb snagged a glass of champagne from a waiter's tray and added a drunken sway to his walk as he approached the door. Convince him you're crippled, he told himself, and his guard will come down.

  On his way through the door he bumped into the squat red-headed man and sloshed champagne all over his chest. "Oh, man, I'm sorry. Here, hold this." He managed to get the glass into the man's hand and began mopping the stain with Harris's jacket. Beneath the man's suit coat he could clearly see the hard edges of the butt of another handgun.

  "Stupid buggering dusker, see what you've done."

  "Oh, man, I'm mortified. This jacket has to have set you back at least twenty bucks. I'll fix it right up." He grabbed the squat man's lapel and dragged him out into the empty corridor, mopping away at the stain. "Harris is a friend of mine. Friend of yours? You know he fights, right? I used to fight with him. Then I was his manager. What's a dusker?"

  "That's you, lad. Dusky, stupid, and drunk, like all your kind—"

  "That's what I figured." Zeb took a quick look up and down the corridor; sure that there was no one to see, he swung the gun wrapped in Harris's jacket and hit the man once in the side of the head, hard enough to jar his own arm. The man's eyes rolled up in his head and he fell.

  Zeb looked around. Still no witnesses. He took several long moments to pull free the man's cheap tie and bind his hands with it, then stuffed him under one of the backless couches lining the hallway. Its shadow nearly hid the unconscious man.

  * * *

  The groom's party sweated under the photographer's lights. Zeb, lacking a jacket, stood behind Harris again. He leaned close and whispered, "There was another one, at the door. I got him."

  Harris's eyes opened wider. "You got him? What does that mean?"

  "I killed him and I ate him. What do you think it means? He's sleeping it off under some furniture."

  "Hey, you! Straighten up, would you?"

  Zeb glared at the photographer and did so. He stage-whispered, "There were originally four at the door. Three of them left. I don't know where they went."

  "Great." Harris smiled and waved at Gaby, showing three fingers, then blew her a kiss. She caught it and ate it, then turned to her family. "Okay, she knows."

  "Would the groom please quit waving and talking? We'll get this done a lot faster if everyone cooperates!"

  Harris sighed and whispered, "The Donohues hired the photographer. Since we wouldn't let them arrange everything—"

  "God, what a catastrophe that would have been."

  "—they insisted on being helpful. Hey, watch Gaby. She's going to her uncle Pedro, the cop. I bet she lifts his piece."

  "You're kidding." Zeb watched. Gaby hugged a middle-aged Latino man, talked sweetly to him, tucked something away in her flower bouquet as she was doing it. "Je-zus. What have you two really been up to the last six months?"

  "Tell you later. Okay, she's got fire."

  "Huh?"

  "A gun. Time for us to take off. These guys can't be here for anyone else but us, so our departure will probably draw them off, keep everyone else safe."

  "I'm with you."

  "I meant, me and Gaby. Bye." Harris made a strangled noise loud enough for half the hall to hear. He tugged his tie free. "Enough! Time to change before this thing kills me." The crowd laughed. The photographer, plainly upset, tried to wave him back to his position, to no effect.

  "Gaby and I will be back in fifteen minutes, dressed to gorge. We'll eat until the first guest blows up." More laughs. He moved through the crowd toward his wife.

  Zeb caught up with him. "I meant it, man. You owe me some answers."

  "I do. You want someone to shoot at you while you get them?"

  They reached Gaby. Harris snagged her by the waist, pulling her from the embrace of her father. "I'm stealing her away again, Ted. Be back soon."

  When they were a few steps away, Zeb continued, his voice a growl, "I don't want them shooting at you, either, moron."

  Gaby said, "I didn't spot any more in the crowd."

  "They left," Harris said. "Probably not far."

  "What do you want to bet they're either in our rooms or between here and there?"

  Harris gave her an admonishing look. "Sucker bet." They reached the doors and the hall beyond.

  "So, you're going to call the police on this?" Zeb asked.

  Harris shook his head. "Nah. Too many complications already. What did you do with the door guard?"

  Zeb pointed at the couch.

  "Get his gun. If he doesn't have it when he wakes up, he can't use it."

  Zeb stooped beside the couch and dragged the unconscious man's revolver out. He shoved it into Harris's jacket beside the one he'd taken earlier. "I do all this, I do get an answer, don't I?"

  "Oh, I imagine," Gaby said. "Okay. You want to earn a hundred bucks the easy way?"

  * * *

  Zeb shook the concierge's hand and pressed the fifties into it. "My pal just got married down in the Catalina Suite. I want to play a little practical joke on him. I'd like to borrow a staff jacket and one of those rolling dinner trays . . . and to charge
some champagne to my room."

  * * *

  Zeb knocked on the bride's door. There was no response. Gaby slid her card into the lock and Zeb opened the door, then pushed the cart ahead of him as he entered. He slowed the door's closing so it came to rest against the jamb without latching. "Room service," he called.

  He didn't see them until he was almost through the entry hall; beyond, two men, one whose blond beard was heavily tinged with gray and another who was clean-shaven, sat on the bed to the right, and a third, an older man, sat in a hotel chair dragged against the wall to the left.

  All were squat and surly. The two on the bed had hands hovering near their armpits. The third, the one with the grayest beard, held something the size and shape of an egg but a gleaming black; this he rolled delicately around in his hand as he stared at Zeb. There was something unnatural about the little item; it didn't roll the way it should, but wobbled as though something alive were inside it. The man kept his other hand tucked into his jacket pocket.

  Zeb managed a smile he didn't feel. "Champagne for the bride's party. Compliments of the house."

  There was suspicion in the older man's voice: "What house?"

  Zeb just stared for a moment. Was there anyone in the U.S. who didn't know what "compliments of the house" meant? "The hotel," Zeb said. "Compliments of the hotel. That means free."

  The hands moved away from the concealed holsters, but Zeb didn't sense that the men's guards were lowering. "Put it there," said the grayest of them, pointing to the window.

  "Yes, sir." Zeb positioned the rolling rack just so, then gestured like a game-show hostess at the bottle and the bucket of ice. "Shall I bring more glasses up?"

  "No," said the graybeard. "Get out."

  The door into the room widened. Silent, Harris entered. Zeb forced himself not to glance in that direction. "Yes, sir," he said.

  He took a step as if to leave, then stopped and looked expectantly between them. He gestured at all of them, two fingers toward the men on the bed, one for the one in the chair. "Sirs, a gratuity is appropriate."

  "What's that?" asked the graybeard.

  Harris moved forward. Gaby entered behind him. She had Pedro's revolver in both hands, barrel raised toward the ceiling.

  "A tip," Zeb explained patiently. "An informal reward of money for services rendered. At a hotel like this one, an appropriate tip is, well, too damned much."

  They looked at each other, confused.

  "Okay, forget it," Zeb said. "You look like some cheap bastards anyway." He lashed out with his left foot, hitting the beardless gunman in the side of the head, a gratifyingly solid connection.

  Graybeard was fast. He lobbed the black egg toward Zeb. It hit Zeb in the chest and split open with a moist noise. Graybeard said something; Zeb thought the word was "beater."

  And suddenly Zeb was wrapped up tight in a black sheet. It felt and smelled like rubber, constricting his arms and legs, holding him tight. He lost his balance and tipped over backward across the bed.

  Someone was shouting in his ear, a wordless yammering, "Ya ya ya ya ya!" Zeb, wrestling with the black sheet, turned to look—right into the glowing eyes of a black rubber face. It was flat as a paper plate, approximately human in its arrangement of features, but looked like a cartoon image of a wild, buck-toothed native, and continued to shriek at Zeb.

  "Goddammit, get this thing off me!"

  Zeb heard a pair of thuds and a click that sounded like the cocking of a gun. He heard Gaby say, "Don't move. These are steel-jacketed slugs. You know what they do to you." Then hands were on him, rolling him over, yanking at the black sheet.

  It seemed actually to struggle, but finally came away from Zeb, and he could see Harris tugging at it. Harris gave it another yank and Zeb rolled free, off the bed and onto the floor.

  What Harris held was something that looked like what would result if a large black cartoon man were squashed beneath a steamroller. It was sheet-thin and large enough to be a bedspread, but had definable limbs and head—a lolling head that continued to yammer. Its body now lay limp. Harris thoughtfully began rolling it up into a tube, starting with the head so the yammering was cut off.

  Zeb sat up. Nearby, Gaby stood covering the graybeard, the one squat man who was still conscious; she held her gun in a two-handed grip, her wedding dress making it a curious picture. Zeb's gunman was unconscious, leaning against the bed's headboard; Harris's target lay flat on the bed, holding his throat and making choking noises. The graybeard was standing, gripping his right forearm in a way that reminded Zeb of hairline fractures.

  Zeb asked mildly, "Now will you tell me what's going on?"

  Harris smiled. "Nope."

  * * *

  "What do you mean, no police?" Zeb, tying the silent gunmen's hands with drawcords cut from the curtains, found time to glare at his friend. Harris stood easily, one of the brassy revolvers in his hands, while in the adjoining room Gaby shed her wedding dress in favor of a pullover sweater and slacks. Zeb tried not to be distracted.

  "Police can't do anything about it," Harris said. "Gaby, ready?"

  "Shoes," she said, and came in to sit on a chair and put them on.

  "Police can get answers. Make them talk."

  "No." Harris shook his head. "We could get some answers if we felt like employing torture. Which I don't. We could hand them over to the police and these poor sons of bitches would be dead in a day or two."

  "L.A. cops aren't that bad."

  "No, but these guys are likely to be dangerously allergic to ferrous metal. Put them in the wrong kind of handcuffs, in a cell, in an ordinary hospital room, they'll be poisoned to death before the doctors even figured out what was wrong." Harris looked from prisoner to prisoner. "You guys. I'm going to take you to the bottom of the stairwell and tie you up there. Eventually you'll get loose and can split. I'm doing this just 'cause I don't want your deaths on my conscience. You owe me your lives. Remember that sometime."

  They just glared.

  "Your red-headed pal is under a couch outside the Catalina Suite, and your other pal is under some chairs stacked at the side of the suite." Harris offered the squat men a mirthless smile. "Don't say I never gave you anything."

  "Ready," Gaby said. She took up her uncle Pedro's gun and trained it on the three men.

  Harris went into the adjoining room.

  "Harris, are you going to write the note?"

  "No, you do it, I'm changing."

  "Well, I'm guarding."

  Zeb sighed. "I'll guard." He took up one of the brass handguns, swung the cylinder open to assure himself it was loaded, and closed it again. He held it at the ready. "Just like a normal revolver?"

  "Just like," she said. "Except that it's devisement-reinforced bronze, or maybe beryllium bronze, instead of steel. It fires a big, slow bullet, kind of like the original Webleys. In spite of its weight, expect a fair amount of kick." She set her own gun down and dug around in the bedside table's drawer until she found hotel stationery and a pen.

  "Let's see," she said, and began writing as she talked. " `Dear Mama and Papa, and Mom and Dad Greene, please tell everyone we know about what they did to the Toyota, and you're not going to catch us that easily.' "

  "Good start," Harris said.

  Zeb aimed at the silent, glowering gunmen. "This is surreal. Gaby, I thought you hated guns."

  "I do, pretty much," she said. "But if you're going to shoot somebody, there's nothing better for it. `By the time you read this, we'll be gone, halfway to our honeymoon, which isn't really in Toronto, despite what Cousin Jane thinks. Fooled you.' Aren't you ready yet, Harris?"

  "Almost."

  She smiled at Zeb and whispered, "I knew he wouldn't be. But he was bothering me about it—"

  "So you have to bother him. Right." Zeb gave Graybeard his war-face. It was something to do that fit the unreal mood of the situation, and he was gratified to see one of the other gunmen lean away from his intensity, though Graybeard did not.

  " `
And now you've fallen for our master plan. We're gone, so you have to do everything. Jane can pack us up and check us out; we're already paid up through tomorrow. Mama and Papa and Minister Mike, if you'd act as hosts at the party, we'd be grateful forever. Pedro can throw everybody out when the time is right, and if Mom and Dad Greene would pack up the presents and have them shipped over to our apartment, we'd really appreciate it. We love you all. Signed—' "

  " `P.S.,' " Harris called. " `I think Uncle Pedro accidentally left his gun in my room; I've put it in the bedside table.' "

  "Oh, good point." She scribbled that down.

  Harris stepped back from the other room, now attired in blue jeans, dark T-shirt, and jeans jacket. "Ready."

  "About time. You men, always slowing things down with your dressing and your makeup . . ."

  "Well, I'm about to do it again," Zeb said. "I'm not dressed, I'm not packed, and I'm not checked out."

  "Okay, you go down to your room and do that now," Harris said. "While we're disposing of our squat little friends. We'll meet you in the lobby in . . ." He checked his watch. "Ten minutes?"

  "Done."

  Chapter Two

  On the walkway between the plane and the gate, Harris stretched. The plane had been packed, so he'd mostly sat in cramped discomfort on the long flight from L.A. to New York.

  "He's going to be mad," Gaby said.

  Harris nodded. "He sure is. But not as mad as if we took him there and got him killed. Then he'd really be mad."

  They reached the gate. Beyond it they saw the main walkway between gates. It was thick with travelers.

  Gaby said, "He is mad."

  Harris looked. He sighed. "That doesn't begin to describe it."

  Ahead of them, unmoving in the exact center of the walkway, straddling his suitcase, his expression one of glowering unhappiness, stood Zeb Watson. People walking by caught sight of his expression and circled around to keep well clear of him.

  As they neared him, Harris put on a cheerful smile. "Would you believe we forgot?"

  Zeb picked up his bag and fell in step beside them. "Nope. You ditched me." His voice was a low growl.

  "How the hell did you find us, anyway?"

  "Accident. After waiting around at the hotel, after checking your room, after making an idiot of myself, I took a cab to your address to see if I could figure out what the hell was going on. And when I found your address, it was a damned commercial mail-drop place. You don't even really live in L.A., do you?"