Not Maureen.
A stranger, dark-haired and dark-skinned, big breasts and wide hips offset by a waist that would have done credit to a wasp -- a shape guaranteed to make most males forget the face above it. She smiled at him, sardonic, with the lazy narrowed eyes of a cat studying a trapped mouse, and the smile rang alarm bells all up and down his spine. His nose flared in reflex, sniffing the stale prison air.
Fiona.
She'd disguised her face and body, but hadn't bothered with either her smile or the dangerous whiff of pregnant Old One. For whatever twisty reason, she wanted him and only him to know just who she was.
He guessed that they still had two locked doors between them and whatever other surprises she had waiting. His brain chased down the branches of her chess moves, operating in overdrive. She wanted to spook him, make him jump in some particular way. She knew how to follow him between the worlds, a nasty trick of hers that he'd never figured out. The pasture oak was rooted in her lands and the keep might be shielded.
The Pendragons, then. And if she followed, he knew another step to safety. His old partner Claire had blurted it to him, one time together in a dead run from some Sidhe that had seemed likely to cut them both to bits and burn the bits.
He stepped and felt the jail fade around him and stepped again and stepped again, quick through the darkness and the clammy air. And then he stepped into the parlor of a Georgian townhouse in Chelsea Court, furniture draped in yellowed dust-cloths and wallpaper peeling from the age and damp. No changes allowed -- they'd never even pulled the old gas lamps from the walls.
"If they follow us, remember. Any safe-house transit room, there'll be a circle somewhere on the walls or floor. Round mirror, round rug, a scrawl of graffiti. Walk right through it, holding a red circle in your head. You'll end up in a place with friendly guards."
That had been Claire's message, trimmed of gasps for breath and breaks as she spun behind cover and bore her weapon on their back-trail while he sprinted and dodged ahead to find a place where he could cover her. Then they'd reached a place where they could dare to drop their guards and take a world-walk.
Those Sidhe hadn't followed, either through lack of skill or lack of caring. Fiona had -- he felt it along his spine from the base of his skull clear down to his ass, and he'd learned long since to trust that feeling. And she wasn't in any hurry, either.
He scanned the walls, the floor, even the ceiling. The whole bloody place was rectilinear, wide solid furniture and heavy dusty picture frames and a square shallow hearth with long clouded mirror mantelpiece over. He felt his sister behind him, getting closer, taking her own sweet time and savoring every step of it. She liked to play with the mice she caught.
A shadow negative on his right, the wallpaper, ghost of a picture or mirror removed and the old fresh paper exposed, a circle where centuries of sun and grime and smoke had never made their marks. He stared at it, making the edges red in his mind. He stepped to it and into it and through it. His sister flickered in the corner of his eye.
Then she vanished. The room vanished. He stepped into a stone room, gray and bare and square, lit by flickering oil lamps, with one open doorway to the right and a faux arch in the masonry facing him. The place looked old, smelled old, like the cellars under Maureen's keep. Just clean instead of dusty. Raised smooth stone formed a disk in the middle of the archway. He assumed that was his next gate. He could walk right through.
Except for the guards flanking the arch. Two guards, in ruffled purple velvet that put him in mind of Oscar Wilde, balloon pants and tunics and floppy poofter hats like overgrown berets straight out of Renaissance Italy. The men looked like they should be hoisting halberds at shoulder arms, instead of those 9mm SMGs. SMGs bearing on his chest, and fingers inside the trigger guards. Brian lifted his hands slowly over his head. He reminded himself that men could dress like drag queens and still be dangerous. Witness the Vatican's Swiss Guards.
They stared at him, eyes narrowed, waiting for something. Safeties clicked. Off, he presumed.
"Brian Albion, House Emris, access code Alpha Nancy Niner Fiver Seven Charlie." And if they wanted a bloody password, he was buggered.
Well, he'd reached some kind of refuge, anyway. No sign of Fiona, no sense of danger behind him. But he didn't dare relax. He'd never seen uniforms like those. And the Pendragons guarded their secrets like, well, dragons. The guards stood maybe ten feet apart, corners of the facing wall. Too far for him to take both down, and too alert. He could get one, but that wasn't good enough.
"Captain of the watch to the gatehouse!" The shout echoed back through that right-hand door into a tunnel, doubtless with a murder-hole overhead and a portcullis beyond. The place gave that same feel of a castle's outer gate. Defense-in-depth, against expected siege.
Brian thought he recognized the men, higher ranking Pendragons he'd never actually met, didn't know their names. Field ops weren't supposed to know most of the roster. What you don't know, you can't tell under torture.
They kept their weapons ready, held relaxed rather than tense, but it looked like the relaxed readiness of a Judo master waiting for a false move, rather than carelessness. He focused back and forth between the fingers hovering above triggers, moving in unison, slowly settling
