Free Darkthunder's Way by Tom Deitz Page A

for skinny Alec McLean. Not with all the hot-blooded muscular young jocks on the prowl. But still—she’d said she might see him again. Suddenly he was looking forward to that encounter with a fervor that bordered on irrational.
    *
    Eva, Eva, Eva: The name was still dancing through Alec’s brain when he climbed into Apocalypse Now, Runnerman Buchanan’s tan VW van ten minutes later. He could still lower his lids and see her, see that secretive flash in her eyes, the devilish curve of her smile. He had tried to find her, of course; had searched the fairgrounds until he had no choice but to abandon his quest or miss his ride, and that was a for-real bummer.
    And now, perhaps ninety seconds into the journey home, he found himself presented with another.
    They had just trundled noisily through the morass of traffic in the fairgrounds parking lot and eased onto the MacTyrie road. Their first bits of shouted conversation (Darrell had a Guns N’ Roses tape on full) had been casual enough: a round of cheerful kidding about Dr. McLean’s refusal to allow the new Volvo 760 in such heavy traffic. And then Alec had fallen silent, too distracted to pay much attention to his dizzy buddy’s random chatter—which was hard to hear anyway over the thundering stereo and the rude-sounding blatts of the Vee-dub’s near-nonexistent muffler.
    Until, he suddenly realized, the voluble Mr. Buchanan had just raised that subject again.
    “Okay, McLean, fess up. It’s time you leveled with me, man.”
    “Huh? What’d you say?”
    Darrell glared at him sullenly from under brass-blond hair caught back in the impressive ponytail the members of the Enotah County High track team affected. His narrow face looked sharp and weasel-like. “Don’t give me that shit, man; you know what I said: What went on at the Traders’ camp that time? What was all that B.S. with the fire and all, and you and G-Man and Mad Dave and his sweetie bein’ gone all night?”
    Alec grimaced in irritation. He didn’t need this right now. Shoot, even if he had wanted to spill the facts, there was no way he could have, at least not to Darrell. The whole mess had been an affair of Faerie, and the Ban of Lugh was therefore in effect. The upshot was that Alec couldn’t tell his friend what he wanted to know. The best he had been able to manage when the topic had arisen in the almost-two-weeks since the incident was to say that he had sworn an oath to the Traders not to tell and feared their wrath if he did. David’s tongue was under similar interdict, as was G-Man’s—which meant that, except for Aikin Daniels who had been out of town the whole time and still was, the illustrious Mr. Buchanan was the sole member of the MacTyrie Gang who was still ignorant. Unfortunately, it looked like staying that way. Certainly there was nothing Alec could do to change the situation.
    Darrell, however, was not so easily dissuaded. “Come on, Mach-one, spill it; I mean it’s not like I wasn’t involved or anything. It was me had to spend three hours tellin’ the cops I didn’t know shit about you guys disappearin’, and then blammo back you are on Sunday mornin’ like nothin’ happened. That ain’t cookin’ with gas, man.”
    Alec took a deep breath and turned his gaze to the vistas of motels and marinas flashing by on his right, all blocking the gray-purple humps of the mountains. “I told you, I can’t! I mean look, I would if I could, but I can’t, okay? I took an oath.”
    “Bullshit.”
    Alec’s fists clenched automatically. “I can’t ,” he repeated. “You’re just gonna have to make do with that.”
    Darrell’s glare almost pinned him to the window. “Bullshit, I say. I’ve had enough of your and Sullivan’s secrets: boys-in-white, shiny people in the woods, that ring that burned G-Man that time…I mean, Jesus, you’ve even got him doing it! You guys took an oath as a member of the MacTyrie Gang, too; remember? Straight talk, honest answers to honest