Part 34 (1/2)

Murphy's face flushed. ”Yet.”

The woman let out a smoky laugh, toying with Murphy's hair. ”We're getting to that. I only shared the embrace of the G.o.d with her, Wizard.”

”I was going to kick your a.s.s for that,” Murphy said. She looked around, and I noticed that a broken lamp lay on the floor, and the end table it had sat on had been knocked over, evidence of a struggle. ”But I feel so good good now. ...” Smoldering blue eyes found me. ”Harry. Come sit down with us.” now. ...” Smoldering blue eyes found me. ”Harry. Come sit down with us.”

”You should,” the woman murmured. ”We'll have a good time.” She produced a bottle of Mac's ale from somewhere. ”Come on. Have a drink with us.”

All I'd wanted was a beer, for Pete's sake.

But this wasn't what I had in mind. It was just wrong. I told myself very firmly that it was wrong. Even if Karrin managed, somehow, to make her gun's shoulder rig look like lingerie.

Or maybe that was me.

”Meditrina was a Roman G.o.ddess of wine,” I said instead. ”And the ba.s.sarids were another name for the handmaidens of Dionysus.” I nodded at the beer in her hand and said, ”I thought maenads were wine sn.o.bs.”

Her mouth spread in a wide, genuine-looking smile, and her teeth were very white. ”Any spirit is the spirit of the G.o.d, mortal.”

”That's what the psychic conduit links them to,” I said. ”To Dionysus. To the G.o.d of revels and ecstatic violence.”

”Of course,” the maenad said. ”Mortals have forgotten the true power of the G.o.d. The time has come to begin reminding them.”

”If you're going to muck with the drinks, why not start with the big beer dispensary in the arena? You'd get it to a lot more people that way.”

She sneered at me. ”Beer, brewed in cauldrons the size of houses by machines and then served cold. It has no soul. It isn't worthy of the name.”

”Got it,” I said. ”You're a beer sn.o.b.”

She smiled, her gorgeous green eyes on mine. ”I needed something real. Something a craftsman took loving pride in creating.”

This actually made sense, from a technical perspective. Magic is about a lot of things, and one of them is emotion. Once you begin to ma.s.s-manufacture anything, by the very nature of the process, you lose the sense of personal attachment you might have to something made by hand. For the maenad's purposes, it would have meant that the ma.s.s-produced beer had nothing she could sink her magical teeth into, no foundation upon which to lay her complex compulsion.

Mac's beer certainly qualified as being produced with pride-real, personal pride, I mean, not official corporate spokesperson pride.

”Why?” I asked her. ”Why do this at all?”

”I am hardly alone in my actions, Wizard,” she responded. ”And it is who I am.”

I frowned and tilted my head at her.

”Mortals have forgotten the G.o.ds,” she said, hints of anger creeping into her tone. ”They think the White G.o.d drove out the many G.o.ds. But they are here. We are here. I, too, was wors.h.i.+pped in my day, mortal man.”

”Maybe you didn't know this,” I said, ”but most of us couldn't give a rat's a.s.s. Raining down thunderbolts from on high isn't exclusive territory anymore.”

She snarled, her eyes growing even brighter. ”Indeed. We withdrew and gave the world into your keeping-and what has become of it? In two thousand years, you've poisoned and raped Mother Earth, who gave you life. You've cut down the forests, fouled the air, and darkened Apollo's chariot itself with the stench of your smithies.”

”And touching off a riot at the Bulls game is going to make some kind of point?” I demanded.

She smiled, showing sharp canines. ”My sisters have been doing football matches on the continent for years. We're expanding the franchise.” She drank from the bottle, wrapping her lips around it and making sure I noticed. ”Moderation. It's disgusting. We should have strangled Aristotle in his crib. Alcoholism-calling the G.o.d a disease disease!” She bared her teeth at me. ”A lesson must be taught.”

Murphy s.h.i.+vered, and then her expression turned ugly, her blue eyes focusing on me.

”Show your respect to the G.o.d, Wizard,” the maenad spat. ”Drink. Or I will introduce you to Pentheus and Orpheus.”

Greek guys. Both of whom were torn to pieces by maenads and their mortal female companions in orgies of ecstatic violence.

Murphy was breathing heavily now, sweating, her cheeks flushed, her eyes burning with l.u.s.t and rage. And she was staring right at me.

Hooboy.

”Make you a counteroffer,” I said quietly. ”Break off the enchantment on the beer and get out of my town, now, and I won't FedEx you back to the Aegean in a dozen pieces.”

”If you will not honor the G.o.d in life,” Meditrina said, ”then you will honor him in death death.” She flung out a hand, and Murphy flew at me with a howl of primal fury.

I ran away.

Don't get me wrong. I've faced a lot of screaming, charging monsters in my day. Granted, not one of them was small and blond and pretty from making out with what might have been a literal G.o.ddess. All the same, my options were limited. Murphy obviously wasn't in her right mind. I had my blasting rod ready to go, but I didn't want to kill her. I didn't want to go hand to hand with her, either. Murphy was a dedicated martial artist, especially good at grappling, and if it came to a clinch, I wouldn't fare any better than Caine had.

I flung myself back out of the room and into the corridor beyond before Murphy could catch me and twist my arm into some kind of Escher portrait. I heard gla.s.s breaking somewhere behind me.

Murphy came out hard on my heels and I brought my s.h.i.+eld bracelet up as I turned, trying to angle it so that it wouldn't hurt her. My s.h.i.+eld flashed to blue-silver life as she closed on me, and she bounced off it as if it had been solid steel, stumbling to one side. Meditrina followed her, clutching a broken bottle, the whites of her eyes visible all the way around the bright green, an ecstatic and entirely creepy expression of joy lighting her face. She slashed at me, three quick, graceful motions, and I got out of the way of only one of them. Hot pain seared my chin and my right hand, and my blasting rod went flying off down the corridor, bouncing off people's legs.

I'm not an expert like Murphy, but I've taken some cla.s.ses, too, and more important, I've been in a bunch of sc.r.a.pes in my life. In the literal school of hard knocks, you learn the ropes fast, and the lessons go bone-deep. As I reeled from the blow, I turned my momentum into a spin and swept my leg through Meditrina's. G.o.ddess or not, the maenad didn't weigh half what I did, and her legs went out from under her.

Murphy blindsided me with a kick that lit up my whole rib cage with pain, and she had seized an arm before I could fight through it. If it had been my right arm, I'm not sure what might have happened- but she grabbed my left, and I activated my s.h.i.+eld bracelet, sheathing it in sheer, kinetic power and forcing her hands away.

I don't care how many aikido lessons you've had-they don't train you for force fields.

I reached out with my will and screamed, ”Forzare!” Then I seized a large plastic waste bin with my power. With a flick of my hand, I flung it at Murphy. It struck her hard and knocked her off me; I backpedaled. Meditrina had regained her feet and was coming for me, bottle flickering.

She drove me back into the beer-stand counter across the hall, and I brought up my s.h.i.+eld again just as her makes.h.i.+ft weapon came forward. Gla.s.s shattered against it, cutting her own hand-always a risk with a bottle. But the force of the blow was sufficient to carry through the s.h.i.+eld and slam my back against the counter. I bounced off some guy trying to carry beer in plastic cups and went down soaked in brew.

Murphy jumped on me then, pinning my left arm down as Meditrina started raking at my face with her nails, both of them screaming like banshees.

I had to shut one eye when a sharp fingernail grazed it, but I saw my chance as Meditrina's hands-hot, horribly strong hands-closed over my throat.

I choked out a gasped, ”Forzare!” and reached out my right hand, snapping a slender chain that held up one end of a sign suspended above the beer stand behind me.

A heavy wooden sign that read, in large cheerful letters, PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY, swung down in a ponderous, scything arc and struck Meditrina on the side of the head, hitting her like a giant's fist. Her nails left scarlet lines on my throat as she was torn off me.

Murphy looked up, shocked, and I hauled with all my strength. I had to position her before she took up where Meditrina left off. I felt something wrench and give way as my thumb left its socket, and I howled in pain as the sign swung back, albeit with a lot less momentum now, and clouted Murphy on the noggin, too.

Then a bunch of people jumped on us, and the cops came running.

WHILE THEY WERE arresting me, I managed to convince the cops that there was something bad in Mac's beer. They got with the caterers and rounded up the whole batch, apparently before more than a handful of people could drink any. There was some wild behavior, but no one else got hurt.

None of which did me any good. After all, I was soaked in Budweiser and had a.s.saulted two attractive women. I went to the drunk tank, which angered me mainly because I'd never gotten my freaking beer. And to add insult to injury, after paying exorbitant rates for a ticket, I hadn't gotten to see the game, either.

There's no freaking justice in this world.