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of them, driving it through the first Sidhe and into the chest of a second. The ogre wasn t fooling around. I
saw another of the Faerie topple over as Drat cut his legs out from under him with his battle-axe. I doubt the
Sidhe even saw the troll; his melon head didn t come up past the layer of fog. Several more Dark Sidhe
stepped in to take the place of their fallen comrades. They brought their own ogre with them, and a few
vampires just for good measure.
 We d better get in there, I said to Leanne.  I ll help even the odds, but then I want a crack at
Aeshma. Thomas, kill that music before I... I looked around, but the bard was nowhere to be seen.  Now
where the hell did he run off to?
Leanne didn t know either. He must have slipped away while we were beheading the vamps. We
didn t have time to worry about him. Besides, Thomas could take care of himself.
We were shoving our way through the dancers when some big army ape took a swing at Leanne. The
guy was huge--he must have stood at least six foot stupid. Leanne grabbed him by the collar and the seat of
his pants and used him as a human shield as we pushed through the rest of the crowd. Josh, Charlie, and Drat
were having a hard go of it when we arrived. Leanne tossed the battered soldier aside, and we waded into the
fray.
I cut into the ogre with a vengeance. I still remembered the beating I d taken from the one in the alley.
I guess I had a score to settle. This poor slob didn t last two seconds, but he did bleed on me. I could just
make out Alex over his corpse. She stood there like a zombie while the Goths careened all about her.
The song shifted up a key suddenly as the druids bowed before Alex. The crowd went wild, picking
her up over their heads and passing her to the front of the stage, where Aeshma waited for her. The druids
surrounded her, then led her back to the central crucifix. Aeshma raised his hand palm upward in a slow,
deliberate stage gesture. Alex was levitated gently, her head thrown back and arms out to her sides. Two
druids rose with her and bound her hands to the cross, then slowly returned to the ground.
Josh went berserk. He tore into the Sidhe with fang and claw, fully changed now and his magical
weapons forgotten. Charlie wasn t much better. He had vowed nothing would ever take Alex from Josh and
Sabrina again, and was hell-bent on keeping that vow.
I looked about for Thomas, but the bard was still nowhere to be seen. How long was this damn song
anyway? It made "Stairway to Heaven" sound like a jingle. The stage was still about twenty feet away, with
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the enemy force trying to butcher us, a bunch of vampire wannabes dancing madly between it and me, and the
crowd entranced and oblivious to it all. Enough was enough.
 Go go gadget legs! All right, so I watch way too much television. I leapt high over the crowd, and
even did a neat little forward flip before landing on the stage in front of Aeshma and drawing my sword. I felt
so Luke Skywalker, except for the fact that Aeshma wasn t my father. No, don t even go there.
I don t know if the crowd thought it was part of the show, or were still entranced by the music, but
they howled and screamed in approval.
Aeshma grinned.  What do you think you re going to do with that?
He had a point. It s not like it had worked so well the last time. I slashed up from the hip in a quick
draw-cut that scythed cleanly through his neck from right to left. Call me an optimist. He clutched at his throat
and staggered a few steps, eyes wide in shock, then laughed. The rat-bastard had been faking it; there wasn t a
mark on him. Well, at least one of us was having fun.
Aeshma conjured up a burning sword. He must have been as fast as I was, because the next thing I
knew it was buried up to the cross-hilt in my chest.
 I know, it s a little too Old Testament for my tastes, but the audience expects it, he said. The crowd
danced on, oblivious to what occurred on stage. Aeshma s band didn t miss a beat in all the ruckus.
I lurched back a step and coughed up smoke. Believe me, having a burning broadsword rammed
through you is another one of those things you don t want to experience. The sword came out with a bit of
tugging--it caught on a rib--and I drove it point first into the stage. This was getting us nowhere.
 It looks like it s time for another trip down memory lane for you, the demon said, and snapped his
fingers.
I was fourteen years old. Mom wasn t home from work yet so...
 Not bloody likely! I yelled. Suddenly I was back on stage with Aeshma.  Been there, done that, seen
the therapist.
The problem with living in the past is that you tend to dwell on the bad stuff, or remember the good
stuff better than it actually was. Either you don t move forward because you re afraid of being hurt again, or
because you just know it will never be as good as it once was.
My eyes had been closed to the world around me long before they were opened to the Other Realm. I
had denied the existence of both realities, buried myself in my past, and missed out on my present. Josh,
Sabrina, Alex, Leanne, Thomas, Drat, Alison, Dad Grandpa, and Bear--friends and loved ones both present
and past. I d come to realize living is about what we do now, not what we did then. Aeshma couldn t trap me
in the past again, because I didn t live there anymore. Everything I want, everyone I need, was here. Now.
Aeshma blinked, surprised that I d broken his spell.
He looked positively stunned when the thunder of Celtic drums assaulted the crowd. It overwhelmed
the heavy, industrial techno-beat, turning it in to something more primitive, utterly changing the character of
the music. A rhythm guitar backed up the lead, its simple refrain undermining the song s dark intent. It
inspired hope now rather than hatred, camaraderie instead of conflict. The crowd faltered. The dancers looked
almost euphoric, reveling in the celebration of youth now instead of the danse macabre. The fighting became
sporadic.
Thomas stood on the roof of a police van parked across the street near the rear of the crowd. He
cradled a vintage twelve-string Rickenbacker in his hands, fingers caressing the frets as the fog curled up
around him. I guess he d decided to go high tech, although the damn guitar didn t seem to be plugged into
anything, not even an amplifier. And don t ask me where the drums were coming from, either. He hadn t been
able to kill the music, so this was the next best thing.
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Aeshma flickered before me like a bad video edit. Thomas s music seemed to be messing with the
demon s reality. One moment he was this neo-punk Nancy-boy; the next a forty-foot goat-headed monstrosity.
Tam-Lien had said something about Aeshma not really being able to manipulate matter; that his power
was illusion. If that was true, then the Nancy-boy was a fake, and the demon visage his true appearance. That
meant that when I tried to decapitate him, all I d truly done was swing at the empty air between the demon s
straddled legs, so...
I waited for the goat-thing to make an appearance again and slashed sideways at his right knee. Hey,
he was forty feet tall--that s all I could reach. Aeshma bellowed. This time I could tell he wasn t faking it. The
music stuttered like a record skipping. I swung the sword hard, cutting deeply into the demon s calf. He
screamed--a half-roar, half-bleat of pain and frustration--and went down on one knee.
The music skipped another beat. Here and there throughout the crowd the fighting and dancing came
to a standstill. The revelers slowly awakened. The cops took advantage of the lull and hauled off some of the
worst of the brawlers.
I prepared to strike again, but Aeshma caught me with a brutal backhanded wallop that hurled me end [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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