The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [56]
Beltan, can you hear me? I’m here, Grace. And Travis has been coming to see you every night.
She held her breath, straining to listen. There was only gray silence. Then, just as she started to let go, she heard it. It was far less than a word—a shard of a thought—but she had heard it.
Grace’s eyes snapped open. It was Beltan. He had made the sound in her mind, she was certain. His face was motionless once more, but there could be no doubt about what she had heard. She gripped his hand. Hard. “Come on, Beltan. You’ve got to come back to us. Please try. For me—for Travis.”
Grace knew that if he didn’t wake soon, they would move him to a state institution. This was a public hospital; they couldn’t turn people away, but they wouldn’t let a John Doe occupy a bed indefinitely. Yet that was far from her sole worry.
It was only a matter of time until Duratek found them.
In a way, Grace was surprised the three of them hadn’t already been apprehended. Almost daily she or Travis saw one of the sleek, black vehicles driving down a city street—slowly, as if searching. No doubt Duratek believed that if either Grace or Travis ever came back, they would come here, to Denver. And they were right.
Grace had no idea how they were supposed to do it, but somehow she and Travis had to get back to Eldh. And they had to take Beltan with them. She was certain Duratek would be more than interested to get their hands on a native of the world they sought to rape and conquer.
Only now Beltan was close to waking. If they could just get him somewhere safe while he finished his recovery, they could start searching for a way back. However, it wasn’t as if she could ask the police for help. To them, Grace was the woman who had handcuffed one of their detectives and threatened him at gunpoint. No matter that Janson had been an ironheart; the police didn’t know that. So where could they go for protection?
But you’ve known all along, Grace.
She reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a business card. It was more gray than white now, smudged and torn, but she could still read it:
THE SEEKERS
1-800-555-8294
She had kept the card with her for so long, ever since that night in late October when Hadrian Farr had given it to her. Who else could she go to for help if not them?
You should ask Travis.
But even as she thought this, she headed for the door and the nearest pay phone.
19.
Deirdre Falling Hawk sat in a corner of the dim Soho pub, staring at the glass of clear green liquid on the table before her. On a plate next to the glass was a cube of sugar and a silver spoon. Although they were hard to make out in the gloom of the pub, there were words etched into the surface of the spoon: Drink and Forget.
If only it were really that simple. But wasn’t that why she was here? The board that hung outside the peeling door of the pub read Crumbe’s Cupboard. And the occasional tourist or businessman who stumbled inside found only sticky tables, warm glasses of Bass Ale, and cold fish and chips. But from her visits to London, Deirdre knew that to the locals this place was known as The Sign of the Green Fairy. And they came here for something else.
Quickly, as if afraid she might change her mind, she placed the sugar cube on the spoon and lowered it into the glass. Then she raised the glass and took a long sip of the green liquid. It was sweet and powerfully bitter. The licorice-like taste of anise coated her tongue, and the pungent esters of wormwood rose in her head, an emerald mist to shroud her brain.
As Deirdre lowered the glass, an old-fashioned lithograph on the opposite wall caught her eye. It depicted a young man in Victorian suit coat and cravat, sitting at a table and scribbling madly with a quill pen on a paper before him. Behind him, tangling slender fingers through the writer’s hair, was a woman clad in a flowing gown. No, not just a woman. Wings of gossamer sprouted from her back, and her gown trailed away in a comet’s tail of leaves and stars. A