valarltd | Entries tagged with wipwed

He dialed Ian's phone. It went straight to voice mail. Ian often turned it off when he was shopping. He said he couldn't concentrate if he was talking.

“Ahoy-hoy, my dear,” Teague decided to leave the message in his best British accent. “I hope you're on your way home. Mrs. Hudson is getting into quite the tizzy with all the preparation.”

He left the guest bedroom and went to the front room. Ian would need the refreshment tables set up and covered and the bar filled with ice. He could do that, even if he couldn't manage the whole spread.

Five o'clock came and went. He called Ian again, got dumped into voice mail again and started to pace. The party was in less than three hours. He considered calling the grocery store manager, but doubted Ms. Tanner would give him the time of day, let alone page Ian for him.

He called the grocery's deli instead and placed a rush order for three of their Halloween party trays, to be picked up at seven. He winced at the extra charge for the rush.

A slow burn started behind his eyes. Maybe Ian had left. That voice that told him to fly, his own fear of the holiday, maybe they had gotten the better of him and made him run. Why hadn't Ian told him any of this?

Teague headed for the kitchen. He wrestled the mini coffin into place across the saw-horses that Ian had left for it. The skeleton was washed and sterilized and sealed in a bag, so he added it to the coffin and began pouring bags of blue tortilla chips around it.

The emergency room. Ian had recovered from a Halloween in the emergency room because of an irresponsible top. Teague wanted to hunt this Mark down, and teach him a thing or three about being a good top, a good dom and a decent sadist.

He set the bowl of salsa in the skeleton's belly and went to get the plates of cookies Ian had baked. The bats and pumpkins and cats lay meticulously decorated and arranged. He set them out, hoping Ian would come home.

Ungrateful little bitch. Why had he taken Ian in, when he knew the kid was a grifter? Used and left, like the others. Betcha he gave you the starving puppy routine, Derek's voice mocked in his head.

He left the brain-shaped crab-dip mold in the refrigerator, but laid out the pumpkin pasties. The clock chimed the half hour and he realized it was six-thirty and quite dark. He had enough time to change and mix the punch.

Ian, Ian, please come home, he begged silently, hoping the universe or telepathy or something would carry his thoughts out. He called again. Instant voice mail again. Something was wrong.

He got the costume on and tied his necktie. Giving in to temptation, he called the grocery store. The female clerk identified herself.

“This is Teague Albright. I need you to page Ian McLean. He went shopping around three-thirty and hasn't come home. Tell him to call home. He's been gone too long.”

“Hold on, sir.” She put the page out. He heard the faintly tinny sound of the clerk paging Ian to call home at once. “Hope he calls you.”

“So do I.” Teague hung up and waited. He took a few minutes to just breathe. He unmolded the brain and set it out, then began mixing the punch. He would get the dry ice when he picked up the party trays.

He made the grocery run, looking for Ian all along the route, paying no mind to the trick-or-treaters who flocked on the sidewalks. Ian was nowhere to be seen. Why would he leave? He told the diary he loved me. Those were the only thoughts in Teague's head. He didn't even notice the clerks staring at his costume.

At seven thirty, food laid out and lights dimmed, he lit the jack-o-lanterns and set them out on the porch railing. Then he sank into a comfortable chair and brooded, finally giving in to panic. He called the police.

“No, I'm sorry. We can't do anything until he's been missing for forty-eight hours,” they said. Teague snapped the phone shut and turned it off.

The first knock came. He turned on the stereo, already set up with a supply of spooky music, from “Monster Mash” to “Music of the Night,” and answered the door, putting on the most cheerful face he could.

A thin woman with a sharp face and her hair back in a tight knot answered the door. “The professor is in the basement. He left word you were to go right down. It's the second door on the left in the hall.”

“Thank you, ma'am.” Edward handed her his coat and hat, and Charlie followed suit. He trailed Edward into the hall and down the stairs to a stone-lined basement.

“Too much like a dungeon down here,” he said.

“Imagination, Charles.” Edward knocked on the metal door.

It swung open to reveal a dark-haired man of average height, wearing a leather apron, rubber soled shoes and long heavy gloves, almost gauntlets. He pushed the protective goggles up on his forehead and smiled at them.

“Lord Withycombe, welcome. And this must be Mr. Doyle. Nigel has told me all about you and I've quite looked forward to meeting you. Do come in.”

Charlie shot Edward a glance, trying to convey his distress at having been discussed by Nigel Drake. He walked into the laboratory and jumped when the door swung shut behind him.

Tables and more tables, laden with an astonishing variety of clock parts, tools, hardware, test-tubes and beakers, alcohol burners, leyden jars and other random junk filled the room. Charlie had no idea what most of it did.

“Has Nigel told you of our purpose?” Professor Zimmer adjusted an alcohol flame under a simmering flask of something blue and then took off the gloves and goggles. He hung the apron on the back of an easy chair and invited Charlie and Edward to have a seat on the rather battered looking horsehair settee.

“Not really. He said you wished to test some equipment.” Edward looked around as he reached for his pipe. “Is it safe to smoke in here?”

“Not for you, no, my lord. Quite safe for the experiments.” Zimmer chuckled at his own joke. “I have been working on several prototype items for His Majesty's service. I want to test them under the most extreme possible condition so I have arranged an arctic expedition through the graces of your wife.”

Edward rolled his eyes and Charlie caught it. Sarah Brown, Edward's jilted fiancee, had no qualms about presenting herself as his wife.

“I'm sorry, my lord. You didn't know?”

“I am unmarried,” Edward said. “Miss Brown is not my wife, whatever she may have told you. However, the expedition sounds quite intriguing.”

“I hope it will be. We shall be testing a number of inventions.”

“Arctic,” Charlie put in. “Will we be going by boat?” He felt ill at the mere prospect. Being on a boat was his private circle of Hell.

Professor Zimmer laughed. “Not at all. I have a hovercraft I am most enthused to test. I've significantly improved Muller's design and we should get a top speed of forty knots, instead of his thirty-two.”

Edward feigned interest as Zimmer rambled about air-cushions and hydrofoils. Charlie looked around and made notes. If nothing else, he could write it up and sell it as a pulp adventure.

When the professor's tone changed, Charlie paid closer attention. He seemed less sure of himself now, talking about the logistics of the expedition.
Edward took over very smoothly. “Leave that to us.”

“Have you made an Arctic expedition, Lord Withycombe?” Zimmer pushed his glasses up on his nose and the look of skepticism on his face dropped Charlie's opinion of him a couple notches.

“No. But I have friends and acquaintances who have. I planned to chat with them in the next week and begin assembling the gear.”

“Very good.” Zimmer handed him a list. “I've taken the liberty of doing much the same. However, I would be interested in how this compares to your adventurous friends' suggestions.”

Edward glanced at the list and handed it over to Charlie. “Keep track of that for me, will you Charles?”

“Yes, sir.” Charlie read over the list before folding it away.

“Now,” Edward settled back in his chair, “about my pay.”

“Pay?” Professor Zimmer looked stunned. “But my lord, please remember I was under the impression you were funding this.”

“Pay will be taken care of, Edward, darling.”

The door swung soundlessly shut behind Sarah and her henchmen. Nigel looked smug and proper and the large American, Vince, looked like he'd rather be someplace more entertaining. Sarah swept through the workshop, her easy grace enabling her to miss all the overhanging bits and pieces. Vince sent one pile crashing to the floor and Professor Zimmer winced even as he stood in the presence of a lady. Edward did not trouble himself to rise, so Charlie stayed seated.

“I am good enough. I am on my way up. Nothing can stop me, except for me.” She repeated the affirmation five times and sighed. More corporate bullshit. Affirmations didn't do jack-shit for getting raises or bonuses or performance reviews. Nothing did for those except hard work. She hung out her tan skirt and pink with tan blouse for the next day. She would pack when it was closer to time. How bad could it be, really?

Two weeks later, crammed with five other people in an underpowered minivan that labored up the Ozark Mountains with wheezes and groans and shuddered its way to a break-neck sixty-five miles an hour going down the other side, she rolled her eyes at herself for asking questions to which she already knew the answer.

“Paddle faster, I hear banjos,” Vince from HR snarked at the driver.

“Ignore him, Bill,” Susie from Reception said. “Nothing's suited little Princess Pissypants since we passed the last bar.”

“One more word out of either of you, and you ride on the roofrack,” Bill, the IT guy, growled. Carla sank a little deeper in her seat and turned up her mp3 player. Chris still snored in the back as he had since the last rest break. Jim and Kim were too busy kissing in the back seat to care.

The hills were gorgeous at this time of year, with autumn just coming on. Sumac blazed red among the fading green. A few trees had already started turning orange and yellow.

The motel sat in an enormous gravel parking lot, looking as if it had been forgotten since 1953. The red doors and white walls were freshly painted, but the low-slung building itself looked ancient. Carla shivered.

The shuttered restaurant next door lent an even creepier air to the place. The remaining letters hung awkwardly from the sign that advertised “Ch k n ied ste 3.9.” An overturned building block table lay among the weeds in the dead flowerbed.

“Oh goodie,” Vince sneered. “We're checking into the Bates Motel. No showers, girls.”

Vince wasn't a bad guy, really, Carla thought as he helped her get her suitcase. She knew he always got bitchy when he was irritated or scared. He had taken the camp persona and made it his own, but some people didn't understand and more had fallen victim to his vicious tongue.

“It'll be all right,” she said. “The brochure made the conference center sound a lot more modern.”

Jim snorted as he grabbed his suitcase and Kim's as well. “I just hope this place has hot water and a bed that's not as vintage it looks.”

Kelig Raklray took another swing at the tree he was using for a pell. Maybe exercising on an empty stomach wasn't the smartest idea, but he could hardly sit around and wait to starve. There wasn't much for a fourth-rate swordsman's apprentice to do in the swamp.

He'd been wandering, more lost than anything, since his last master died in a battle with a Drasrt. There hadn't been anything left to bury of him. The humanoid lizards considered themselves the top of the food chain and humans a tasty treat.

Overcome by heat and hunger, Kelig slumped down in the sparse shade of a gnarled tree, his sword hanging limp and unregarded by his side. The moss dripping from its branches hung black and dead. The whole swamp had been like that, twisted and dying, the water sluggish and stagnant.
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