Doyle's RT crackled as he thumbed it off, irritatedly. So much for close to a week's surveillance. So much for five days of crouching in a bit of damp shrubbery he felt he knew so well by now that he could have reconstructed it from memory, given a supply of twigs, branches, leaves and some glue to stick them all together. Bloody Cowley. Murphy and Jax had drawn the cushy portions of this assignment, watching from the relative comfort of two cars stationed on the road which ran parallel to the field, but someone had had to watch the access provided by the footpath on the other side. Perhaps the fact that it was Doyle was Cowley's not so subtle expression of displeasure at the way he'd got rid of yet another partner the month before. This time, Doyle had to admit that he may have been partially at fault, and yet who could blame him for not wishing to be tied to a lunatic like Jim Clanahan? Cowley, apparently--though he hadn't insisted that Doyle pay the entire cost of repairing the wall Clanahan had bashed his way through. It was clear to Doyle that Clanahan was a dead loss as a partner; he hadn't a speck of self-preservation, or he wouldn't have kept on even after he'd broken two bones in his left hand. As if, in the first bloody place, anyone in CI5 who had two brain cells to rub against each other would have believed that story Doyle'd concocted for him! Doyle muttered a few well-chosen words on the subject of Jim Clanahan, then returned to his current grievance.

Bloody neo-Druid fanatics and their ill-begotten plans for throwing the country into chaos. As if any degree of chaos could allow them to achieve their ends. Mass religious conversion through the use of high explosives? It wasn't a tactic likely to garner much success. Would have made quite a mess, though, shards of stained glass and bricks--not to mention the carnage which would have been made of the congregations gathered for the celebration of Easter Sunday in churches and cathedrals throughout the country. Doyle supposed that it was a good thing the plot had been scotched. But it would have been nice if that had happened five days before.

The clouds parted for a moment as they scudded across the sky, and the light of the full moon shone briefly upon the circle of standing stones not a hundred yards from Doyle. He made a face as he looked at the massive blocks of granite. Moonlight and wilful credulity were responsible for a good deal of nonsense. Someone with more imagination could probably convince himself that the stones wavered in the uncertain brilliance flooding the field; even, perhaps, that they danced. Was the way the shadows clustered around them, of course, and the way the human mind strove to make patterns out of random shifts in the play of light. He stood up. It'd take close to ten minutes for him to walk to where Murph was parked beside the road, waiting for him; the longer he stood here, the colder his feet would get. He took one more look at the stones before turning to make his way through the dew-sodden grass of the field, then paused. The clouds covered the moon again, leaving him in darkness relieved only by the faint glow of the distant city, painted in vague shades of orange upon the bottoms of the clouds towards the north.

It wasn't the sound of a motor. A little breeze hurried by him, insinuating damp, chilly fingers into his collar as it passed. And it wasn't the sound of leaves rustling in the wind. He cocked his head, trying to identify the sound which came to him so faintly. Reminded him of something out of his childhood. Something...the memory of Saturdays spent in the flickering darkness of the cinema came back to him, along with the remembered taste of stale popcorn and the way the hulls had stuck to his teeth. All those westerns he'd watched, wide open spaces and heroes on horseback, meting out justice with the aid of a six-gun. Good and bad in shades of black and white, fist-fights in saloons, and the last minute rescue of the schoolmarm, with hoofbeats thudding rhythmically on the ground bringing more of a sense of urgency than squealing tyres ever could.

Doyle nodded to himself. No mistaking that sound, and it was coming closer. Fool was likely to go arse over ears when his horse put a hoof into a rabbit hole. Downright suicidal to be galloping full-tilt over ground like this in the daylight; doing it at night must take something extravagant in the way of a deathwish. He listened, and the sound of the approaching hoofbeats grew louder and closer, as rapid and steady as if the rider were galloping across a playing field in broad daylight. He could hear the creak of harness now, and as the moon once more shone out from a rift in the clouds, he looked up just in time to see the rider passing him by.

Damned moonlight made everything look weird. Hell, it made Doyle feel weird. He looked up at the man on the horse in the instant he went by, and his first reaction, even as the shock of the man's eyes meeting his sent a jolt of cold electricity down his backbone, was that he didn't even look human. Skin too white, hair too like a banner of dark silk, mouth too damned tempting, eyebrows--something different about the eyebrows--but it was the eyes gleaming at him from under those eyebrows which took Doyle's breath away, and seemed to catch at his soul the way a hook takes a fish. His heart thudded in his chest as if he'd been running hard, his knees wanted to buckle under him, and he took a half-step towards the rider and horse--too late even to reach out and grasp a strand of the flowing midnight which was the horse's tail. The man didn't pause as he rode his steed past Doyle and towards the standing stones, but just as he reached them, he wheeled about and came to a halt, looking back at Doyle.

"Hey!" Doyle found his voice in a breathy gasp. "Hey!" he said, a little louder, as he broke into a run, needing to catch up to the other and find out who--what--he was. Each jarring step took far too long and covered too little ground, and he stumbled more than once as he went, because he could not spare an instant to look down at his footing. As he came to within about twenty feet of the other, Doyle stumbled again, and this time he went to his knees, not so much because he'd been betrayed by the uneven ground but because the other, looking full at him from where he sat astride his horse, smiled.

There was no kindness in it, nor cruelty; the expression which widened those lips, which gleamed with the sharp ivory of teeth, seemed to hold no emotion Doyle was familiar with--and yet it was charged with intensity.

"Who--" Doyle gasped the word out, then was struck dumb as the other turned his horse again and vanished between the stones. He did not ride into the centre of the circle. He vanished. Between the stones.

Doyle hauled himself to his feet, disbelieving the evidence of his own eyes. People didn't vanish--but the unmarked, dew-sprinkled grass in the centre of the stone circle, and the silence of the night, disturbed only by the ragged sound of his own breathing, disputed his certainty. It had to be some kind of trick. Damned if he knew how it had been done, but surely it couldn't stand up to a closer examination. Doyle walked a little nearer. The stones stood there, cold unmoving granite: ancient, and uninterested in the affairs of men. There was no cleverly painted backdrop hung between them, no pit in the ground which could hold a horse and a man, no--Doyle abruptly looked up into the sky--no helicopter, of course; he'd have heard it, but no balloon, either, to raise such a weight soundlessly up and away. Though the sound of the burner roaring away to provide the necessary lift would have alerted him of that, too. How the hell--? Doyle came closer to the stones, standing close enough to touch them. He took another step--

Light and sound erupted around him. He went into a defensive crouch, startled, hand reaching for his Browning--but it was not there. Gone where? He straightened, slowly, hand still patting absently at the place where his gun ought to have been, and stared at the place he found himself in. It was vast, the ceiling high, high above him, hung with coolly glowing lamps, and the far wall nearly lost in the distance, and it was filled with colour, sound and movement: people dressed in bright, fanciful clothing, dancing, eating, drinking. A party.

Doyle looked a little more closely. Not people. Not human people, anyway. They were too limber in their movements, too graceful, too beautiful. Any one of them, male or female, would have made the most gorgeous, most sought-after movie star or model he'd ever seen look homely in comparison. Not only that, but their eyes--there was something about their eyes: an otherness which made the hair on the back of his neck stir and rise. And they were all looking at him. Doyle stood a little straighter, too aware of the contrast between him and these others, and how they must see him: shorter, his form stockier, coarser, dressed in jeans and jacket--rough clothing of muddy hue, instead of flowing, silky draperies in tones to rival any jewel--and with his hair springing out, unkempt, in all directions, and his face, which had been nothing to brag about even before he'd collected that broken cheekbone. He raised a hand to cover it, and forgot himself in mid-action, for there, a little way from him, he saw the man--man? a portion of his mind enquired, before it fell dumb--who had led him here.

Chilly laughter rippled across the room, but Doyle didn't hear it. All of his attention was focused upon the face of the man he'd seen before only by moonlight. Clad in garments of a deep, midnight blue, he stood out among his fellows like a black pearl among opals. Dark hair hugged a well-shaped head, the lips widened in that same compelling smile Doyle had seen once before, and blue eyes glittered at him. Drawn to that smile, those eyes, Doyle started towards the other, but lost sight of him as slender, graceful figures moved in the figures of the dance, cutting off his line of sight. Forgetting to consider what impression he might make in this strange company, careless of consequences, Doyle took several running steps towards the place where last he'd seen the other, then stopped when the place came into view. He was no longer there. Doyle looked around, trying to find him. There, to the right, a dark head moving away from him. Doyle ran in that direction, heedless of the sound of tinkling laughter from all about him, only to find that his quarry had vanished again. Drawn first in one direction, then in another by glimpses of the other, this pursuit his only goal, Doyle ran, turned and ran again, brushing past lissom forms whose steps never faltered as they followed the form of their dance, but who moved aside from him easily and without haste, as the sound of their amusement blended with the music they danced to. In fact, Doyle was vaguely convinced, as he dodged this way and that, that the amusement created the music they danced to, but he was beyond caring about it. Frustration built in him as his futile chase went on and on, his breath coming short, his face flushed, sweat prickling all over his body, until finally he stopped short, looking wildly about himself, on the verge of breaking out into a howl of inarticulate rage and defeat--and there the other was, right in front of him, within reach.

Doyle reached. He caught the other by his wrist, closing his fingers about spun-steel strength, suspecting even as he did so that he was being allowed to. The sounds of amusement from the crowd peaked, then ebbed, and the form of the dance changed as the music became lighter, more airy.

"Come," said the other. His voice was clear and resonant; Doyle felt it all the way to his toes, and he found himself following docilely as he was led across the room. They went through an archway hung about with scarlet vines, and the sound from the party diminished to a whisper. They walked down a long passageway with doors leading off to either side at intervals, some of them closed, others ajar, with light in various hues and unfamiliar sounds and scents spilling from them. After a long time, they stopped in front of a closed door. The man he was with touched a place near the edge of the door, and it swung open. Doyle stepped across the threshold and stopped in his tracks, amazed by what he saw.

He stood on what looked like a marble pavement. The air was warm and a breeze brushed like velvet past his cheeks. A luxurious couch lay to his left, and a fountain tinkled delicately ahead and to the right; thick rugs lay here and there upon the marble. There were no walls and no ceiling. It seemed that he stood under the moon and stars--but as Doyle looked at the brilliant patterns which decorated the plush darkness of the sky, he could see no constellations that he knew. The door closed behind him with a faint sound; Doyle was somehow unsurprised to note that it seemed to stand by itself, unsupported by any surrounding wall. At least it hadn't vanished when it closed.

"Well come," said his companion, and smiled at him.

Doyle let go the grip he'd held on the other's wrist, and opened and closed his hand a couple of times. He cleared his throat. "Who are you?" he asked, trying to resist the lure of that smile.

The other reached out and touched his broken cheek, lightly, then uttered a string of liquid-sounding syllables which escaped Doyle's comprehension. He repeated two of them which caught his attention. "Bo-die?"

"That will do." The other seemed amused by his difficulty.

"I'm Doyle. Ray Doyle."

"Ah." It was a polite acknowledgement that Doyle had spoken, no more.

"Where are we?"

"Do you really care?" Bodie asked. He gestured at their surroundings. "We have what is necessary, do we not?"

Doyle's reply was stillborn as Bodie reached out and touched him, tracing a finger down his chest and belly, and then rubbing palm and fingers over his crotch in an insistent and arrogant demand for response--a demand which Doyle's body answered eagerly, almost violently.

Doyle shook his head and took half a step back, fighting the urge to give in and take what was obviously on offer. Never mind that he didn't generally hop into bed with blokes, he wanted to, now. This bloke was different. Doyle uttered a half-strangled chuckle as his body throbbed with need. Different? Yeah. He looked at the too-pale skin, into those inhuman eyes, and was lost. Stepping forward, he laid hands upon his companion, feeling muscle and bone beneath thin fabric, the warmth of living flesh branding his palms, and the sensation drove him to action as relentlessly as a lash laid across his back might have done. He swept his hands back and forth, searching for a way within the silky fabric, wanting to feel flesh against his flesh, and found his way, through a kind of folded pleat which opened easily once he'd found it. Stripping the fabric back from skin which looked so cool, and yet felt so hot to the touch, he leaned forward and set his mouth against the join of shoulder and neck. The taste of Bodie was intoxicating; Doyle's head spun, and yet he was acutely aware of the touch of hands on his body, moving to loosen and remove jacket, shirt and jeans, and slipping into his pants to squeeze and caress.

Wanting more, needing more, he moved acquiescently as he was urged to lift one foot and then the other to step out of the remaining encumbrance of his clothing, and then he followed the subtle but determined direction provided him by the nudge and prod of the other's body, and moved over to the couch. Silky-soft covers gave beneath him as he reclined; silky-soft skin slid over his own as Bodie covered him. But softness was not the only thing which he felt. There was the sweep of hands across his skin, stimulating nerve endings to exquisite excitement with remarkable precision, and the sharpness of teeth, the swab of a moist tongue, the grasp and clasp of hard fingers, and eventually, the insistent insinuation of Bodie into him, which made him first yelp with the unexpected, and not entirely comfortable sensation of it, and then pant and swear as the sensation became intolerable pleasure and he dissolved into incoherence.

After that, the night seemed to go on forever, and the two of them went on as well, long after Doyle would have sworn he was beyond rising to the occasion. He learned things about himself, and what he was capable of, which he'd not known before, and he also learned much about his partner. As he lay there, exhausted, listening to the quiet, regular breathing beside him, and wondering when dawn would begin to brighten the horizon, he reflected upon that for a while. He recalled looking down into that pale face at one point, taking it between his palms, and kissing it all over, and he also recalled the expression he'd seen when he'd paused for a moment. Smiling down at Bodie, he'd traced that odd eyebrow with a finger, wondering at the asymmetry of it. It was an imperfection which might have spoiled the effect of the handsome features, but somehow it added to their charm.

"I like this," he'd said.

Bodie's brow had wrinkled, infinitesimally. "Like it? What do you mean?"

"I just do. It's quirky."

Bodie's expression of incomprehension had deepened, and Doyle grinned down at him and dropped a kiss on the tip of his nose. "Quirky. Different."

"And you like that? Something different?"

"Just said so, didn't I?"

There had been a long, considering silence from the other, and then Bodie had smiled at him, a warm affectionate smile which brought his face alive, and reached up and traced a finger across Doyle's forehead in a complicated pattern. Doyle remembered how it had tickled. "You like it," Bodie had repeated once more, a faintly questioning note in his voice.

"Yeah. And I like you, too." And Doyle had set out to prove that assertion to his companion--quite thoroughly. He was met with an enthusiastic response, one which, oddly, seemed both less practised and more spontaneous than that which he had received before. Where before, Bodie's touch had been skilled and extraordinarily arousing, now it was eager, almost needy, and for the first time, Doyle heard the sound of Bodie's voice lifted in expression of his pleasure as Doyle entered him. For the first time, but not for the last.

When would dawn arrive? Doyle looked up at the sky, but couldn't tell anything by the position of the stars; the moon at least was still up. He lifted his wrist, and noticed that his watch was gone. He couldn't recall having taken it off; it was just gone. Like his--gun.

Doyle sat up abruptly. Just what the hell was going on? For that matter, where the hell was he? He looked down at Bodie's sleeping form, and his incipient panic eased a little. The questions remained, and his need to have them answered was just as urgent, but no matter what he found out, he knew that he'd found something good here. Without their having said a word of commitment, something had grown between him and Bodie, and Doyle had the very clear conviction that it was something which was going to last for a long time. He leaned down and brushed his mouth across slightly parted lips.

"Mmph?" A tuft of Bodie's hair was standing on end. Doyle smoothed it down.

"Good morning. Or at least, it ought to be, soon. Unless this is some kind of spaceship out in outer space. You want to tell me what I've got myself into the middle of?"

Bodie sat upright with a start. He looked searchingly at Doyle for a moment, then climbed out of bed and pulled on his clothes.

"Come on. Get dressed. Hurry."

"You kicking me out, then?" Doyle asked, somewhat bewildered, and beginning to wonder if he'd been wrong about Bodie's feelings for him.

"No. Yes. Come on, Ray Doyle! Before they realise."

"They who?" Doyle asked, scrambling into his clothes with as much speed as he could muster.

"I'll tell you later. Just hurry up. There's no time to spare--it may already be too late!" Bodie took him by the hand and hurried him over to the door, opening it a crack. "All right. I'll do what I can. I've learned some things, and it's been a long time since they..." his voice trailed off as he peered out into the passageway. "No one around. Let's go. We may get away with it."

Doyle had the impression that Bodie's words had been more hopeful than convinced, but their sincerity was unmistakable. He followed Bodie out the door and trotted along in his wake without protest. The passageway seemed the same as it had been the night before, interminably long, but some of the sounds and smells coming from the rooms they passed struck Doyle as suggesting things menacing and sinister, and he wondered why he had not been alarmed when he'd passed them before. Perhaps the sounds and smells had been different, then, but Doyle couldn't quite convince himself of that. He increased his pace a little, and Bodie looked over at him and sped up as well.

They stopped at the archway with the red vines. Bodie took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. "Follow my lead. Trust me." Then, he placed one hand on Doyle's head and the other over his heart and mumbled something. It sounded like verse of some sort, but in a language Doyle didn't recognise. The world went dim and grey before his eyes, as if a veil had been dropped over him. Bodie was looking at him searchingly.

Doyle nodded. "Go ahead." His voice sounded muffled in his own ears.

Bodie took his hand in a tighter grip, and led him through the archway. The party was still going on; the music was still playing, the dancing still going on. The dancers were still as graceful, still as beautiful, but there was something about them which set his teeth on edge. Perhaps it was the grey veil--but Doyle didn't think so. He rather thought that he was seeing more clearly now, with the veil, than he had the night before, without it. Some kind of glamour seemed to have dropped from his eyes, letting him see the dancers not only as not quite human, which had been obvious even before, but also as beings which might well be inimical to him and the rest of humanity. Beauty was not necessarily benign.

And where did that leave Bodie and him? Doyle looked over at his companion as they crossed the wide expanse of the hall. Bodie was looking intently at the far wall, and muttering to himself as they walked. The dancers dipped and swayed, whirled and spun, passing them on either side. Doyle found that he was tempted to hold his breath, but he concentrated upon putting one foot in front of the other, and upon keeping a tight hold of Bodie's hand. The palm clasped in his was sweaty and cold, and there were now lines of strain wrinkling Bodie's forehead.

As they approached the grey stone wall, one of the dancers swooped closer to them, the hem of her garment floating past Doyle's face as she spun around in front of Bodie. Her expression of serene self-absorption wavered a trifle as her gaze swept across Bodie, and the grey mist evaporated in an instant, as Bodie yelled and dragged him the last few feet to the wall--and through the apparently solid stonework, and out.

Hand still clasped in Bodie's, Doyle looked up at a brightening sky. Dawn, at last. He recognised the field, and the hard solidity at his back was granite, one of the standing stones. Home again. He looked over at his companion. The rosy light from the east flushed Bodie's face; the ivory pallor was gone. Blue eyes looked back at Doyle, and that quirky eyebrow lifted quizzically.

"What now?"

"Do we need to worry about them coming after us?" Doyle asked.

"Nah. 'S daylight. Besides, we got away fair and square, and that's one of the rules they live by--most of the time. Might have to worry about sour milk now and again, if one of them gets the opportunity."

"That's not a problem; I can drink my tea without." Doyle sat there for a moment. "So it wasn't UFO's, then."

"Strictly home-grown. They were here before us, you know."

"Us?"

"You don't think I'm one of them, do you? You never would have got away if I was. Every now and again, they'll kidnap some kid from his cot. That was me."

"Oh. That explains the eyebrow, then."

"Uh-huh." He looked towards the east. "Be nice to see the sun. I've been out for visits now and again; they'd let me go once they trusted me--so much as they ever trust a changeling--but only at night, on a full moon. And they always liked it so much when I brought something back for them to play with." His mouth twisted, but he held fast to Doyle's hand.

Doyle grimaced. "It's all right. I understand how it might have been." He looked at the morose set to Bodie's mouth. "You want to come live with me for a while, now you've moved out of your old digs? I'll show you the ropes--life in the city. All that."

"That'd be nice." Bodie didn't say any more than that, but his expression was markedly more cheerful.

Doyle stirred. The ground was awfully cold and damp. Something small but lumpy was digging into his left buttock. He reached under himself and dragged it out, then stared at what he held. It was the corroded remains of a wristwatch. He looked at it a little closer. His wristwatch.

"Meant to warn you about that; didn't have time," Bodie said.

"Uh-huh. Seven years in one night, is it?" Doyle stood up and stretched, then reached down his hand to his companion, and helped him up.

"Yeah. Never did work out how they do that."

"Cowley's going to have my hide, you know," Doyle said conversationally. "He'll never believe this story." He started across the field towards the road. Bodie fell into step beside him.

"Cowley?" he asked.

"My boss."

"Think he'll take you back to work for him?"

"Could be."

"What is it you do, Doyle?"

"Mmm. Try to make sure the bad guys don't have it all their way, I reckon. Odd hours, some excitement now and again."

"Sounds like a good job. D'you think Cowley'd be interested in hiring a friend of yours--if you put in a good word for him?"

"Maybe. If I catch him on a good day." They had reached the road. Doyle paused, wondering which way would be the better direction to start out in.

"He have something against changelings, then?"

"No, not so far as I know. But I'm not sure how he feels about employing fairies--or how that would go over with the other agents."

Bodie gave him a scathing look. "It's the Fair Folk, if you want to be polite--it's usually safer that way. And, it's 'elves,' otherwise. And neither of us is one, so it shouldn't be a problem, right?"

It was several days before Bodie understood why Doyle had laughed so hard and so long at that, but by then most of CI5 had seen Bodie in action, and understood the wisdom of civility, so the amount of damage was limited.

-- THE END --

5/25/96 - 5/26/96
Originally published in Syndicated Images, Entropy Express, 1985