Nigel Findley - House of the Sun

But they didn't come. Still they churned through the air, swirling and hurtling around where the elf had stood, as if searching for some trace of him. I looked about me. There were no spirits paying any attention to us anymore-none at all. And frag it, there went my last excuse.

Suddenly, I laughed. On the runway back on Oahu, Quinn Harlech had told me he could do things I'd never be able to, hadn't he? Things I'd never succeed without? Well, he'd just proven it, hadn't he? He'd drawn away the spirits that were standing between me and my objective…

Before I could have second thoughts, I gripped my assault rifle, and I started running down the scree slope toward the Dance below.

Running full-tilt down the slope, I suddenly pulled up short as I heard a scream from behind me. I turned.

Pohaku had Akaku'akanene locked in a kind of sleeper hold, her stringy throat gripped in the crook of his left elbow. In his right hand was a small pistol, a hold-out, its muzzle held firmly to the Nene shaman's temple.

"Turn into ice, haole," the bodyguard spat.

I froze. Alana Kono had her own gun out, the ruby dot of its laser sight settled firmly on her erstwhile partner's forehead.

"Don't!" Pohaku snapped at the woman. He glanced pointedly at the hold-out pistol. "Two-way trigger, hoa, okay? I squeeze, it fires. I release, it fires. Got me?"

Ah, drek. I'd read about guns with that kind of rig. At the time I couldn't understand why anyone would want a two-way trigger. The only possible application I could think of was… well, this. A Mexican standoff where you need the ultimate dead-man trigger. Where regardless of what reflex action you take when you catch a bullet, you know your own gun's going to go off. Great.

I looked into Akaku'akanene's face from a distance of maybe ten meters. Her dark, beady eyes were calm, accepting. She had to know the thoughts that were going through my head.

Too bad, old lady, you've got a lot of jam. But there's more at stake here than one woman's life. May Goose have mercy on your soul… I shifted my grip on the assault rifle. One quick burst into Pohaku's head and trust the impact of the rounds will knock his gun hand off-line before the pistol splatters the kahuna's brains…

"Don't even think it, Montgomery!" Pohaku growled. "Look!"

I looked.

And started to sweat again. Most of the guardian spirits were still flailing about where Quinn had vanished. But two of them-big, nasty, fiery ones-had turned their attention back to us and were orbiting us slowly at a distance of fifteen meters from Akaku'akanene. Drek!

"Don't do it, Montgomery," Pohaku repeated, vocalizing the thoughts that were running through my own mind. "You shoot me, I geek her, and those things have you for dinner. You try to get down there, they'll rip you apart. You saw what they did to the troopers."

I saw, all right. I ground my teeth, and lowered my weapon.

"Put it down," Pohaku ordered. "Both of you, weapons on the ground."

Kono and I exchanged helpless glances. Neither one of us knew what the frag to do. Slowly we crouched to set our weapons down on the broken volcanic rock. "What now?" I asked.

Pohaku grinned, possibly the first time I'd seen any expression other than anger, hatred, or scorn on his face. "Now we wait, and we watch. It should be an interesting show."

No drek. I looked downhill toward the shifting, churning light. The intensity of the Dance seemed to have increased. The fan of witch-light was brighter, and the wave-fronts propagating through it seemed sharper-edged. Static discharges licked along the lower margin of the cloud-deck, strobe-lighting the scene below. In the flashes some of the boulders dotting the scree slope seemed to be moving- slowly, like cautious animals. My feverish imagination, of course.

There had to be some way out of this stand off. I just needed time to think of it. "You're Na Kama'aina, aren't you?" I said, turning back to Pohaku, more to keep him talking than because I really wanted to know the answer.

He snorted his derision. "Na Kama'aina? Pigeon-livered cowards, all of them."

"ALOHA, then," I suggested.

"Of course. Just like Ka-wena-'ula-a-Hi'iaka-i-ka-poli-o-Pele-ka-wahine-'ai-ho-nua."

For a moment I thought he'd lost it for some reason and had just started babbling. But then a couple of the fluid syllables clicked with something in my memory. That was Scott's name, wasn't it? The name that Scott, the chauffeur/assassin, had told me his mother had given him. (Like drek, I thought suddenly. He'd taken that name himself, just like Marky "Te Purewa" Harrop, hadn't he?)

"ALOHA, then," I echoed in agreement. I paused, my mind whirring. "So I guess you've finally convinced Na Kama'aina to go along with your anticorp plan, haven't you?" I said at last, glancing pointedly down-slope toward the Dance.

Pohaku laughed harshly. "It took them fragging long enough, too, haole. But now we're going to see some real action."

I nodded slowly. "You know I'm trying to figure a way out of this," I said after a long moment. "Why don't you just cack me now and get it over with?"

He snorted. "I take my gun off-line and she drops me." He inclined his head toward Kono.

And vice versa. I thought grimly. The only one with any real freedom of action was Akaku'akanene herself. So why wasn't the shaman doing something? Couldn't she cast some kind of spell, blow the gun out of his hand, and drop the fragger in his tracks?

Then, no, I realized. He had to have some kind of magical protection, some antispell barrier or something-maybe spell-locked to him, or even Quickened so it was part of his aura. So Akaku'akanene was as immobilized in all of this as we were.

Downslope, I could feel the waves of magic spun off by the Dance. My stomach knotted and churned; my bowels felt like they were full of ice water. Frag it, I had to do something. I had to gamble. Maybe if I dropped Pohaku-and managed not to get Akaku'akanene geeked in the process- the shaman could shield me from the guardian spirits while I made a run for the Dancers… I took a deep, energizing breath, locating my assault rifle precisely in my peripheral vision. I wouldn't have much time to do it right. I tensed…

And that's when it hurtled into my field of view. A nene-a fragging goose. Honking and flapping, it soared in from Akaku'akanene's right, seemingly straight for her head.

Pohaku reacted instinctively, bringing up an elbow to protect his face. His right elbow, the elbow of his gun hand. The hold-out pistol came off-line.

Time seemed to flick into slow-motion mode. As I dived for my assault rifle, I saw the goose as it hurtled in.

Pohaku's reaction was an instant late, and the big bird's clawed feet tore at his face. He yelled in pain and alarm, rearing back from the threat to his eyes.

And then everything seemed to happen at once. The instant the barrel of Pohaku's hold-out was away from Akaku'akanene's head, the shaman drove an elbow up and back. The bony joint sank deep into the bodyguard's throat, knocking him back and off balance. Almost simultaneously a single shot rang out as Kono-who'd had the same idea as me-drilled a round into Pohaku's ten-ring. And then the Ares HVAR was in my hands, barrel coming up, laser sighting dot tracking onto the stumbling Pohaku's torso. I clamped down on the trigger; the rifle didn't so much stutter as scream on autofire. The stream of bullets did Pohaku like a chain-saw.

And then it was over. Of the three of us, only Akaku'akanene seemed unshaken by what had just happened. She brushed at her baggy clothing as if to rid it of some offending dust. Then she looked at me with those dark, glittering eyes and said quietly, "Go."

Like frag I'll go, I almost said. Then I saw the two guardian spirits that had been circling us. They were hurtling in, almost like the goose that had already vanished back into me shadows that spawned it. Akaku'akanene must have dropped her magical shield in the excitement. Instinct brought up the assault rifle again, even though intellect told me it was useless.