Dreams of Shreds and Tatters Page 14

  Shouts drew her attention downward, and she raised a hand to shield her streaming eyes. A wild procession leapt through the streets below, cries of euan euan eu oi oi oi carrying on the cloying breeze. The wind ripped at her hair as she watched, tugging at the blanket.

  The procession wound toward the shore, where black waves lapped against the quay. The tide was rolling in. Two figures, one dark, one light, walked in the center of the panoply, a measured counterpoint to their companions’ reckless caper. Leopards and other beasts prowled amongst the dancers, and the footsteps that echoed between the buildings sounded more like hoofbeats.

  Euan euan eu oi oi oi! Iä iä oi oi oi!

  “You’re a long way from home, dreamer.”

  She startled at the voice and lost her balance. Warm hands caught her and pulled her back from the edge. She clung to Seker until the vertigo passed, each panicked breath carrying the scent of sandalwood and bitter citrus.

  “Careful,” he admonished softly.

  “What are you doing here?” She unclenched her fingers from his robes, biting her lip at the ember of pain pulsing in her hand.

  “Watching the parade.”

  She looked back; the procession was nearly to the quay. “What’s happening?” Seker only shrugged.

  Steps led down to the water, and the dark figure and the light descended the glistening stair. Women, Liz guessed, from their slender shapes. One wore a white cowl; the other’s hair spilled wild, tangled through with ivy.

  Waves broke against the seawall, black as obsidian. When they rolled back, a pale shape lay motionless on the stones. The revelers howled and chanted as the women bent and dragged the flotsam away from the water’s grasp. Naked limbs sprawled on the steps. Dark hair clung to a narrow white face.

  “Blake!”

  Seker’s hand closed on her arm. “Quietly. You don’t want their attention.”

  The chant swelled, echoing between the towers and across the water. Liz dragged her eyes off Blake for an instant to glare at Seker.

  “You stopped me.” Hearing his voice again, she was certain. “Twice I reached Blake, and twice you pulled me away.”

  He nodded, still holding her arm. She couldn’t break his grasp. “It wasn’t your time.”

  She looked down; the revelers hefted Blake’s limp body and carried him back the way they’d come, the two women leading them. “Where are they taking him?”

  Seker steered her around and pointed to a distant tower. More sky-wounding spires, taller than the rest, like carious yellow teeth piercing the clouds. Winged shapes circled their peaks, small with distance. “To the palace of the King.” His breath was warm against her cheek.

  Liz shuddered. Her hand throbbed in time with her heart. “I have to go there.”

  “Really?” He released her and she nearly fell. Her head swam. “Do you think you’re in any condition to help him?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I won’t leave him.” The stone shook beneath her. Or maybe that was just her quaking knees.

  “Already the dream tries to cast you out. You’re not meant to be here, and you’re not strong enough to stay.”

  She clenched her jaw and met his black gaze. “Then I’ll have to be stronger.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Do you understand exactly what you’re attempting? Every time some mad or foolish person finds their way here, the walls weaken. Every contact between Carcosa and your dreamlands—or your waking world—strengthens the King and his retinue that much more.”

  Liz swallowed. “So even now...”

  Seker nodded. “Your presence here unravels the seams, even now.”

  Ice water filled her stomach. “I can’t leave Blake.”

  “So loyal. So foolish.” He smiled ruefully.

  Her chin rose. “You can’t stop me.”

  Now he laughed. “Oh, yes I can, dreamer. But I’ll only give you three warnings. I won’t hinder you again. For now, however, you must return.”

  “No!”

  But he was gone, and Carcosa disintegrated under her feet. Red light burned her eyes and her mouth filled with blood.

  She screamed as she fell.

  IN SPITE OF his claims, Alex didn’t sleep. Insomnia was an old friend. Sleep, like doctors’ waiting rooms, was an unavoidable waste of time. He rarely remembered his dreams, save for the occasional anxiety nightmare. If he wanted to relive the awkward contretemps of adolescence he’d watch a teen comedy. Liz’s oneiromancy was as alien to him as high school had been.

  Which didn’t excuse the fact that he’d acted an ass. Even if he was right.

  Being right was a hollow sort of consolation if this was the straw that broke their relationship. Liz forgave him any number of faults: his acerbic temper, snobbery, pedantry, and probably others he was less aware of. But the one thing she couldn’t forgive was a lack of compassion. Of care. And the fact that he cared for her so much it hurt would never be enough.

  His last two relationships had been with people who thought only of themselves. The difference wasn’t as amusing as it might have been.

  But he didn’t get up to apologize and Liz didn’t come to bed. In the morning, he decided, he would swallow his pride. For now he could savor the bitter taste of being right, even if it soured his stomach.

  When he had memorized the shadowed hotel ceiling, he opened the doors of his memory palace. Sleep might be fickle, but the ars memoriae always answered.

  The doors swung inward—heavy polished teak, studded with brass and framed in floriated pillars, topped by an intricate lintel. One of dozens of architectural styles that had struck his fancy enough to incorporate into the locus. They opened into a long hallway lined with doors and niches. He’d begun the palace at thirteen, and the early wings were crude. The hall resembled something from primary school, and smelled of chalk and floor polish no matter how he added on.

  The niches held books and recitations; he’d since added a library to house his university textbooks and lesson plans. He moved that way now. Perhaps Summa contra Gentiles would finally send him to sleep.

  He paused at a branching corridor. Of all the rooms and halls in the burgeoning labyrinth, it alone was dark. The breeze that wafted out was cold and dusty. All his memories from Boston, the focus of which had been Samantha’s study. He was almost feeling masochistic enough to pick at those scabs.

  Before he could decide, a door slammed in the distance, scattering echoes down the hall. A hot wind gusted, reeking of brine and chemicals and the cloying sweetness of funeral roses.

  The memory palace crumbled like a sand castle and Alex jerked upright in bed. The same draft whipped through the hotel room and a strange red light filled the doorway. He stumbled up, groping for his glasses on the nightstand.

  The balcony doors stood open, rattling on their hinges, curtains flapping. On the ledge, a blanket puddled at her feet, stood Liz. But the view beyond her wasn’t Vancouver.

  She stood silhouetted against a crimson sky—bloody light and clouds dark as scabs, and twisting alien towers beyond. She leaned against the railing, hands upraised as if to ward off a blow. Against that bleeding sky, the wrought iron barrier seemed fragile as blown glass.

  She let out a breathless scream and fell.

  Alex lunged with a prayer and saw it answered; she fell back and not forward, crumpling onto the narrow concrete ledge, trapping the blanket beneath her before the wind could claim it.

  The red light vanished as he reached her. Alex pulled Liz into his arms, scanning the sky for anything to explain what he’d seen. But there was only the winter night and city lights like a web of stars. The shearing wind smelled only of rain and cold and the bitter blend of exhaust and ocean and wet concrete.

  Liz moaned as he dragged her onto his lap, her head lolling. Her skin was scarcely warmer than the air. Moisture dripped warm onto his arm, chilling quickly; her nose was bleeding. Adrenaline spiked and he lifted her, dragging the blanket with them. The room was dark—the lamp’s bulb had blown.

>   Alex made it to the bed before his strength gave out and retractions squeezed his ribs. His hands shook so badly he could barely get the inhaler to his mouth. He counted to sixty and sucked in another dose.

  Liz moaned again. Blood trickled down her cheek, staining her hair and the sheets. Alex fumbled for a tissue and pressed it under her nose.

  Was this the door the maenad had wanted open?

  Her eyes fluttered, black beneath damp lashes, and she murmured something.

  “You were sleepwalking,” he lied. “Go back to sleep.” He wiped away more blood and stroked her tangled hair until she lay still.

  No chance of rest now. Adrenaline and albuterol stretched his nerves taut as piano wire, played a jangling jazz progression up and down his spine. Alex sat with his back to the creaking headboard and held Liz’s hand until dawn crept cold and blue into the room.

  THAT NIGHT, RAINER sat cross-legged on the cold floor of the loft, books scattered on the boards around him. Unwarded, the power contained in their pages crawled over his skin, crackled like static at every touch. They whispered in his head, ugly, seductive secrets. Men had killed for the knowledge they contained; the Brotherhood had tried hard enough to kill him after their theft.

  None of their incantations could help him find Blake. He shut his burning eyes. The passages carved themselves into his brain, Greek and Latin characters leaving simmering tracers long after he looked away. Alien energy seethed under his skin, like and unlike the power of the King. He couldn’t use it to recall a lost soul—safely, at least—but he could put it to more practical use.

  Stretching out his awareness, he channeled the excess power into the gallery’s wards. Sigils on doors and windows flared with dull otherwise light as new strength flooded them. Enough to keep the shadow beasts at bay, he hoped.

  The nape of his neck prickled as the last magic bled away. Fatigue came in its wake, aching to his bones. He needed rest, but the thought galled.

  How could the angel expect him to go on as if nothing had happened? Go back to selling drugs to children, teaching them parlor tricks, turning their thoughts to the King. He had buried a friend today, and tomorrow he would host a party like nothing had happened, would coddle and cajole his backers into parting with more money, woo them with free food and wine. It left a sour taste in his mouth.

  Blake was worth more than that.

  Rainer had known all the ways it could go wrong, of course— the drug and the oath. He’d seen the disasters in Berlin. Acolytes who burned their minds out with visions until their bodies died of shock. But the alchemy was strong enough to keep soul bound to flesh even after death, to keep the shell animate.

  His joints popped as he straightened; a book slid off his lap with a spark and scuff of leather. He’d seen all the horrible things, all the accidents and abuses, but he’d been so certain he could avoid the Brotherhood’s mistakes. He was better, after all—the one the King had chosen out of all of them, the first Morgenstern in generations to mean the vows he swore.

  He snorted at his own foolishness. He’d repeated all the mistakes and made more of his own. Now Robert and Gemma and Alain were dead, and Blake was lost somewhere beyond his reach. Antja had grown distant and unhappy, and the rest of his allies were turning away out of fear or greed.

  He had to put things right—with Antja, with the others. He had to bring Blake back. He was sworn to serve, but sometimes the best service was given by ignoring orders.

  The floorboards chilled his feet as he unlocked the door and left the loft; the concrete steps in the stairwell were even colder. Goosebumps roughened his bare chest. The emergency exits were locked when the gallery was closed, but the door responded to his hand and will as if to a key. A witchlight floated over his head, bathing the gallery in eerie yellow light. Shadows crawled across the floor and paintings writhed on the walls. His padding steps carried through the silence as he followed the winding partitions toward the center of the labyrinth.

  The painting had changed. He had suspected it on the night of the opening, but now he was certain. The door opened wider. Just a fraction of an inch, enough to make him doubt his eyes. But when Blake had first painted it, only a hint of the farther world had been visible, only a suggestion of shape and shadow. Now the outline of a tower was clear, and the black horizon beyond.

  Blake had slipped through that door and now he was with the King. Rainer was Chosen—shouldn’t the door open for him as well?

  The globe of witchlight lowered, spinning in front of his eyes. Bright tendrils lashed out, until a sigil of golden flame hung before him like a misshapen triskelion.

  It wasn’t, as his uncle thought, a forgotten rune, an alchemical relic. It was a name. The true name of the King, perhaps, that Rainer couldn’t yet understand.

  Something stirred in his blood in response to the burning sign. A chill uncoiled in the pit of his stomach, crawling through his limbs. This power had nothing to do with his own magecraft; this was the King’s gift.

  His heart slowed, and his blood thickened and chilled. He closed his eyes as the veins in his hands blackened. The sight still turned his stomach after all these years.

  He opened his eyes and fixed them on the door. Blake had passed through—he had to follow. He held Blake’s face in his mind, wrapped the thought of him around himself like armor. The door filled his vision, carvings writhing across the marble. Rainer gathered all his power, all the alien strength inside him, and pushed.

  The door opened.

  Laughter reached him through the void. A woman’s laugh, soft and mocking. He smelled leather and musk and bitter cloves, the viney green scent of sap. “A brave little bird to fly so far. But this isn’t your place, not yet. And if you’ve come for your offering, don’t worry—I’ll take good care of him. Go home, Chosen, and wait for us.”

  The taste of bitter almonds filled his mouth. Then a wave of darkness poured through the open door, and crushed him beneath its weight.

  12

  Bat Country

  RAE WOKE TO sunlight and warm sheets. And bound hands.

  Steel cuffs circled her wrists, holding them above her head; a chain scraped the headboard as she moved. The metal was warm from her skin, from the watery sunshine spilling across the bed. The flesh beneath the cuffs was tender, as though she’d struggled. She had no memory of it if she had. Beneath the rumpled sheet, she was naked except for her underwear.

  Rae tugged against the restraints and gasped as dull fire blazed through her shoulders. Wiggling her fingers brought them from numbness to stinging pins and needles. Her left calf cramped and the pain made her eyes water. Her stomach was empty, her bladder too full.

  “Is this how you usually treat guests?” she asked, because it was better than crying.

  Lailah stirred, unfolding from a chair at the foot of the bed. Her palm left a red crease across her cheek. Her dark eyes were shadowed and her hair fell in coffee-colored tangles around her face. “Guests who won’t quit thrashing, yes. You nearly ripped your stitches out. Not to mention my face.” She turned her head to show the angry pink scratches down her other cheek.

  Rae remembered the night before in flashes: the alley; the dizzying drive north; a cold, silent house. Light splintering off a needle as Lailah stitched the slash in her side.

  Lailah stood and rolled her neck with a crackle of vertebrae. Muscles bunched and uncoiled in her shoulders as she stretched. “How do you feel?”

  “Like shit.”

  “Hold still,” the woman said, leaning over her to unlock the cuffs. Rae held her breath against the pain as her arms fell against the pillow, heavy and useless as dead meat. Lailah stepped back and Rae saw the black gun holstered at the small of her back.

  “How long have I been out?” She worked a dry tongue against the roof of her mouth. From the light she guessed it was already afternoon.

  “Twelve hours, give or take.” Lailah sank back into her chair. “You were raving in your sleep. About the twins, the king.”
>
  “I don’t remember.” It was nearly true. Only fragments lingered, flashes of dark-eyed women and writhing dancers. Rae propped herself up and glanced around the room: plain and nearly bare, as devoid of personality as a hotel. Outside the window, bare branches swayed against a cold white sky. “Bathroom?” she asked when she could move her fingers and toes again.

  “Down the hall.”

  Her legs trembled as she slipped out of bed, and she clung to the frame until she was sure they’d hold her. She paused as she passed the window. Winter seeped through the glass, sending goosebumps rippling down her limbs and tightening her breasts until they ached.

  Outside, water glittered mirror-bright, framed by trees and distant mountains. Thin, striated clouds streaked the sky, stained orange in the west. Snow lay in drifts beneath the trees, milk blue and untouched by feet or tires.

  “Where are we?” Rae asked. Her breath fogged the glass.

  “Carroll Cove. Where your friend drowned.” Lailah’s eyes tightened. “You really don’t know, do you?”

  “No!” Irritation overcame her fear. “I don’t know anything! Not why Alain drowned, or why Blake is in the hospital, or why monsters are following me. And I don’t know who you are or what you want.” Her tone softened. Shouting in her underwear seemed more ridiculous than righteously angry. “Why? Why bring me here?”

  “It’s out of the way, in case there’s trouble.”

  “In case you need to shoot anyone, you mean?”

  “That’s part of it, yes. And there’s a certain balance in coming back to the scene of the crime.”

  “What crime? What happened that night?”

  “I don’t know,” Lailah admitted. “And I think we need to figure that out before we can stop it.”

  Rae wondered who she meant by we. She was about to ask, when movement caught her eye through the window. A shadow fluttered outside, a scrap of darkness at the treeline. Lithe, winged darkness. “Oh.” She raised a hand to the glass, half in wonder and half in fear. “Is that... something from beneath the skin of the world?”