by Zan Safra
Kill them like the rest—
Dark. Cold. Choking. Pain. A whisper.
Jette?
Running. Footsteps. Many. Whisper.
Jette…
Out of the tunnel. Rage. Wrenching. A wall. My fists. Cratering the stone. Too thick. No time, no escape…
The masked men. Five. Advancing. Cornering me.
The wall against my back. “Get away!”
Rage hate hurt them ruin them pay WE ARE STRONG ENOUGH—
“Run! I’ll kill you!” My voice. Not hers. “Run!”
They raise their crossbows. Red haze smothers me. I am losing. She is—
A fist grabs my coat. It jerks me backwards. Darkness crushes me. Stone fills my mouth. I cannot move. I am caught in quicksand, buried alive and—
I fall back into snowy air, facing a stone wall. The colors leach from my skin and hair, leaving them pale. The tentacles retreat, unpiercing me, coiling in the back of my brain. Exhausted.
I collapse against the wall, hooking my fingers into cracks in the stone. Solid stone. I passed through solid stone…
But I am me. She is gone.
For now.
I cannot think. I am so exhausted, so…
A hand brushes my shoulder. Jette?
I drag myself about. I am in a different alley. A dark blur retreats from my side, resolving into a form I know.
My mouth feels full of sand. “Yurei?”
He shrinks against the wall, holding his left shoulder. The part of his face I can see is blanched with pain.
“You…you are hurt!”
I go to him. He says nothing, only clutches his shoulder, teeth chattering with cold.
Think…think, try to think…
My head begins to clear. Shelter. He needs shelter.
I take his other arm and pull him after me, down the alley. The masked men will work out what happened. We cannot be here when they do.
A tower bell rings in the distance, clanging nine times. The alley leads onto a bridge that ends at another square, the same square I left. The Academia looms just beside us, gleaming even whiter than the snow. “There,” Yurei rasps.
“No!” I gasp. “No, Yurei! Wait—"
He passes through the wall, dragging me with him. Stone crushes me and then we are through, into a marble corridor. Misty light shines from mounted sconces, staining the corridor an eerie marshlit green. Thick shadows fill the gaps between them like doorways into a void.
I bring up my staff, searching the hall. The Academia looks nothing like the Collegium. I had expected something like the halls I had always known, with wood-paneled walls, warmer lights, portraits of famous alchemists. But the air of the Academia is as cold as the night outside. The marble walls are veined with black, like the innards of some petrified beast. The floor is a confusing mosaic and the ceiling is vaulted and heavy. Dynamos hum in the distance.
Yurei slumps against the wall and slides to the floor, teeth clenched in a snarl of pain. I beat back my fear and kneel beside him. Every clink of my bandolier is as loud as smashing glass. It is mad to hide here, but if we keep silent we might have a chance.
I pry his hand from his shoulder. His coat is so thin that I do not need to remove it to feel what is wrong. “Your shoulder is out of joint,” I whisper.
He nods, taking a shuddering breath. He wrestles his unhurt arm out of his coat. Half of his white shirtsleeve is torn. A burn scar covers his forearm from his wrist to his elbow, healed but still recent. Yurei twists the sleeve of his coat into a rope and bites down on it.
I adjust my hands on his shoulder and shove as hard as I can. The joint snaps back into its socket. A strangled grunt leaks through the cloth between Yurei’s teeth. His hand clamps down on mine, so tightly that I feel my knuckles compress. The sleeve falls from his mouth and he sags against the wall again, trembling as the breath wheezes out of him.
When he lets go of my hand I whisper, “What happened to you?”
He does not answer. A trickle of blood runs down his chin and drips onto his shirt.
I unfold my lenses and examine his eyes. His pupils are dilated, drops of ink with only the thinnest ring of yellow surrounding them. He is concussed.
“Yurei.” I shake him. “Yurei!”
He mutters something in a language I have never heard. Another rivulet of blood drips down his chin. I cannot tell whether it comes from his scalp or beneath his mask.
I move my lenses over his mask. In the unearthly light its alchemical sheen is brighter. The miniscule glyphs along its edges pulse like tiny hearts, arranged in a configuration I have never seen before.
I lower my lenses. He wants his face hidden. He may be deformed. Many Unnaturals are.
I steel myself. It does not matter. I must find the injury. Without treatment an infected wound could kill him.
I take hold of the mask. Perhaps he will not notice in his state. I will never speak of what I see. With any luck he will never know.
I pull off the mask.
A shriek rips out of him. The noise throws me to the floor. He grabs his face. “Give it back!”
He claws at me, nails swiping the air. “Give it back!” His voice crashes about the hall, a tornado of screams. “Give it back! Give itaaaaah!”
He throws himself into the corner. Shadows rip from larger ones, wrapping around him like solid things, flooding the corner with blackness. The mask grows hot in my hands, glyphs burning like stars.
Joints crack. Yurei screams. More gruesome cracks pierce the darkness. I try to cry out his name but nothing leaves me. I am trapped in a nightmare. I cannot scream or move or do anything to stop this—
The shadows writhe. A bone-white hand crawls out of them. Its fingers are longer than before. “Give…it…”
The voice is not Yurei’s. It is not human. I have no words to describe it. No words exist.
“Give…please…”
My muscles unlock. I crawl to the darkness and thrust the mask into the hand. It jerks back into the shadows. Bones crunch, popping, creaking. The screaming voice changes, unwarping, returning to the one I know.
The shadows flit away. Yurei collapses onto the floor, mask hiding his face. Its glyphs dim.
“Y-Yurei?”
He gives no sign that he heard me. He lies crumpled on the marble, dazed.
My brain starts working again. The screaming. Someone heard it. Everyone in the Academia must have heard it.
I jump up. “Yurei!”
His eyelids flutter. “Jette?”
“We must go! Hurry!” I grab my staff and his arm and pull him upright. He hisses in pain but remains sitting, just as footsteps echo in the distance.
I haul him to his feet and run down the corridor, in the only direction left to go. Further into the Academia.
The footsteps near, coming from ahead. The corridor ends twenty paces ahead, opening into a wider, green-lit hall. The footsteps are loud, nearly upon us, approaching the corridor’s end.
We reach the hall. A shadow appears to my right. I whip my staff at its head with all of my strength. The shadow dodges. The head of the staff slams into the wall, sending a shock rattling up my arm.
The shadow raises its hands, backing away, into plain sight. It undoes the string of its bonnet and casts it away.
I nearly drop my staff. “Belle?”
It is her. A dying chimerical illusion shades her skin and she wears a lavender snow-spattered gown, but it is her, well and alive.
Her face brightens. “Jette!”
She runs to throw her arms around me and halts. Her mouth drops open. “Masked boy?”
I gape at her. “You know—"
Yurei stumbles, weaving on his feet. Belle catches him by his other arm. “His name is Yurei. He is hurt,” I whisper. “We must go!”
Belle nods, her face hardening. “This way.”
We drag Yurei across the hall. It is enormous, a cavern of marble and
murky light. Moonlight pours through a domed glass window, illuminating a giant orrery, two stories in height, a contraption of slowly spinning rings representing the movements of the planets.
We run across the mosaic floor. “There,” Belle hisses, pointing to the opposite end of the hall. “That’s the way I…”
We stop. A white mask appears in the gloom, floating like a ghost in the dark.
The shadows part like liquid as the rest of the man steps into the light. The alchemical glow carves deep black lines in the grooves of the grinning mask, turning it to a gargoyle, a horrible mimicry of a face.
Awful fear grips me by the throat. The masked man approaches. A weapon glints in his hand, black as his glove. No longer a crossbow.
A revolver.
Another mask emerges from a different direction. Then another. Another. Another. Man after man comes into being, ten of them, forming a line, black revolvers gleaming in their hands.
Belle sucks in a gasp. I raise my staff. The men come for us, moving in perfect coordination, step after leaden step.
Yurei’s hand finds mine. He pulls Belle and me back, trying to shield us. The men advance. We retreat. The base of the orrery’s platform knocks against my heels. The last traces of Belle’s illusion melt away. As one the men lift their revolvers and aim them at our heads.
My brain is empty. I have no plan. No thoughts. Nothing.
Cloth rustles against marble, a dry, gravelling hiss. The line of masked men parts, making way for a specter draped in black.
The thing from the alley. The vampire.
Belle throws her shoulders back and tosses her head. “Well?” She looks the vampire up and down and snorts. “Who are you meant to be?”
The veiled thing does not respond. I feel its eyes, skewering each of us in turn, a predator studying prey.
Prey. Us.
The vampire speaks in a low, desiccated scratch, the hiss of a mummified snake. “I am the Dragon’s heir.”
Belle sneers. “Ooh, fancy.”
Yurei’s hand crushes mine. My outstretched staff shakes in my hand. Belle. Even my own silent voice is choked. Belle, stop…
Something like a chuckle worms through the vampire’s words. “What a marvelous modern age this is, to create ones such as you.”
It glides towards us, a column of rippling darkness, closing the distance inch by inch until—
A shout rings through the hall. “Fiend!”
The vampire stops, garments fluttering around it. It turns, revolving in place, letting me see beyond it. A girl I have never seen before stands at the hall’s end, a brass spyglass shining in her hand.
Chapter Ten
Ayanda
“FIEND!”
The green light of the Academia fills the hall with a sickly glow. The orrery spins, casting confused, traveling shadows. The Dead creature faces me, a black-swathed form twice as tall as I am. A row of armed men stand behind it, and beyond them are Belle, Yurei, and the girl called Jette. The clashing moonlight pales them, turning them to statues in a cemetery.
Let them go. I form the words in my head, screaming them, but all that leaves me is a whisper. “Let…”
The Dead creature’s veil shifts as the head beneath it tilts. The cold inside me grows, threads of ice wound around my bones. The guiding in my chest is far stronger, no longer a thread but a chain, a hawser reeling me in. I can nearly see it, an oily black rope stretching between us. Binding us.
“Let them go, kudlak!”
The fiend recoils like a rearing snake. The men remain perfectly still, their aim unwavering.
I scream the varianta’s name. “Kudlak! Shape-changer!”
Kudlak. I knew the moment I saw it, that ghoulish dead-eyed imitation grinning at me in the church. One of the strongest of the Greater Dead.
A voice scrapes through the Dead creature’s veil, low, old, slithering. “Who…are…you?”
A chill surges down the hawser and stabs into my heart. I unlock my glaive.
A skeletal hand creeps from the folds of cloth. Black talons unsheathe, long, glittering, straight as daggers.
“Who are you?” it hisses.
I twist my glaive. The shaft and blade extend. I spin it in my hands and level the blade at the kudlak. Hold fast…for God’s sake, hold fast…
A growl slides into the Dead creature’s voice. “Who are you?”
A different feeling shocks me, striking me like a train. I’ve never heard the creature’s voice. There’s no face to see. But I feel it. I know it’s true.
I know you.
The fiend recoils. Feelings that aren’t mine course down the connection tethering us. Confusion. Astonishment.
“You?” it whispers.
Its fingers curl. A snarl scratches from the vampire’s throat, rising and rising until it erupts in an inhuman shriek. “You!”
The kudlak launches itself at me. I lash out with my glaive. The vampire catches the shaft and rips the glaive out of my hands. Fingers lock around my throat, squeezing like vises, lifting me up. I grab the Dead creature’s arm, wrenching, kicking. Bones crack under my boots but the hand still tightens, choking me. My strength isn’t enough, not for this—
The stench of rot envelops me. The thing jerks me close, so hard that without my strength it would have snapped my neck. “I…will…skin…you.”
The fiend reaches for my face, opening a hand large enough to grasp my entire head. The claws come closer, closer, until their points just prick my skin—
I wrench a silver hatpin from my cuff and stab it like a dagger into its neck.
The point drives into bone. A screech bursts through the veil. The hand crushing my throat opens. I fall hard, rolling away from the thrashing vampire. More shouts join the fiend’s, men’s shouts. The row of masked men falters. Their masks flash white as they turn, looking about in confusion.
I find my glaive and leap up. I charge towards the others, shoving men out of my way as I scream at Yurei, “The machineworks! Below!”
His eyes flicker, brightening. Understanding.
He grips Belle and Jette by the arms. I lunge for him and catch hold of his coat an instant before the floor vanishes from beneath us. We plunge downward, into a flash of dull light.
A metal floor crashes against my back. I untangle my legs from my skirts and sit up to find us in the middle of a machinists’ passageway. A long chain of alchemical lanterns dangles from the roof, casting bronze light over a tunnel built of tarnished metal plates riveted together. A steady clatter leaks through the cracks between them, like the turning of the gears of a gigantic clock. Clack, clack, CLANK…clack, clack, CLANK…
Alive. The noise, the light and the hard metal prove it. We’re alive.
Jette flinches, shielding her eyes from the light. Belle sits up, disheveled hair falling in her face. Yurei crouches, face turned away.
“What is this?” Jette asks. She speaks with a thick accent, Anglian or Scotian. “Where are we?”
“The machineworks.” It takes all of my will to keep from stammering. “They keep Venice afloat.”
I take up my glaive. The hawser anchored in my chest feels stretched, thinned, but the tension still remains. The binding hasn’t broken. The fiend is still near.
“We mustn’t stay here. We have to leave.”
Three of us stand. Yurei still crouches, head bowed, his hair shielding his masked face.
“Yurei?” I ask.
He unfolds and rises, holding his shoulder. “I’m well…enough,” he mumbles.
I don’t believe him, but there’s nothing I can do to help him here. “Follow me.”
I start down the corridor, trying to work out where we are. Jette hurries to catch up with me. “What do you know of that creature?”
“It’s a kudlak.” The word is harsh in my mouth, sharp-edged. “A varianta of the Greater Dead. A vampire.”
The creature’s characteristics race thro
ugh my head. A shape-changing varianta of the Greater Dead. Its brain hasn’t deteriorated like those of the Lesser variantele. The Greater Dead retain their memories and intelligence. It’s only their humanity that dies.
“And those men?” Belle asks. “They were alive.”
A sick feeling trickles into my stomach. I know precisely what they are. “Moroi. Living people forced to consume Dead blood.”
“What?” Belle sounds revolted. “Why?”
“The Greater Dead use them as living servants, to carry out tasks the vampire or its Dead slaves can’t manage themselves. The most powerful can hold hundreds in thrall.”
I know as much of them as I do of the Dead. “Moroi are dangerous. They’re indistinguishable from other people. The only physical manifestation is a blackening of the veins, and that’s easy enough to hide,” I say. “The true change is within their minds. They become utterly loyal to the vampire, devoted to it above all else. The Greater Dead can even use their moroi as spies. Some are skilled enough to see through their servants’ eyes. Even listen through their ears.”
The sickness worsens. The murders aren’t purposeless. The fiend isn’t a lone vampire run amok. It has moroi. It has designs.
We come to a junction, a round chamber with five hollow doorways, entrances to passageways that lead in every direction. Tarnished plates set in the walls name them. CASTELLO XVI, SAN POLO VIII, GIUDECCA III, DORSODURO II, SAN MARCO XVIII.
“Look,” Belle whispers.
She points to the doorway marked SAN MARCO VXIII. A pair of small reddish lights hang in the darkness like twin flames. More pairs appear, gathered around the first, some higher, some lower, all alight with the same pulsing gleam.
Eyes.
They brighten. Hunched shapes form around them, shuffling, swaying from side to side. Their skin is a mottled gray, glistening like the flesh of some squirming thing found under a rock. Their twitching fingers are blunt, with their smallest bent and horribly thickened, giving each hand two clawed thumbs.
The creature in the lead scuttles ahead of the others. The rags of a machinist’s uniform drape over its shriveled frame. Its face is that of a corpse, cheekbones jutting, nose hollow. Its bulging eyes burn red, standing out from their sockets like the eyes of a fly. Nothing human remains of its mouth. It gapes, a round, red-rimmed pit in its face, the saw-toothed maw of a leech.