by Jack Conner
"... no ..."
"Yes."
"... no ... please ... forgive me ..."
She felt the wall of ice within her give just a little. His face wasn't as she remembered. It wasn't cruel. It was mature, almost kind. And it was the face of a man who had suffered, Harry had been right.
"Jesus," she said, and turned her gaze away.
"Danielle," he said, his voice weak now, his whole torso being suspended by only his hair, what little blood he had left slowly leaking out of his cooling body.
She felt a tear fall from the corner of an eye and turned back to stare at this naked, dying man before her, butchered by her own hand.
"You deserved it," she whispered.
His watery eyes closed.
"Yes," he answered. "Now, please ... forgive me..."
She released her grip on his hair. He crumpled to the floor with a muffled sound of agony.
"You fucking bastard," she said.
He just lay there at her knees, barely stirring.
She saw that his blood had stained her clothes all over. She could feel the wetness against her skin. Slowly, very slowly, she began to cry. Doubling over, she placed her hands over her eyes and wept.
"... I'm sorry," he was saying. "I'm so ... so ... sorry .... Please, Danielle ... forgive me..."
She swallowed her tears, but still her throat was raw. For a long time, she remained silent. She let herself cry, let all the hurt and anger of the years come out and roll down her cheeks. It was like nothing she'd ever known, a deep unburdening, a cleansing unlike any she'd ever experienced after a killing. Deep within her, something changed, became calm, and she did forgive this man for what he'd done, or what a different version of him had done to her many years ago.
Fucking bastard, she thought. Fucking fucking bastard. I got to him too late ...
After some time, she clasped her hands and stared up at the strange domed ceiling and the gargoyles there, or past the ceiling to what (if anything) waited above.
"God," she whispered. "If you're there, you're a bastard, too—but please give me strength anyway."
As she said it, one of the gargoyles stirred.
Danielle nearly shot out of her skin. The gargoyle leapt from its perch and landed on the stone floor a few feet away.
Like Malcolm, it stood tall and naked, but unlike Malcolm, it was an extremely large being with black skin, a tangled beard and carefully-patterned dreadlocks.
"Good evening, Danielle," said Jagoda. "I'm not a sign from your god, but I'm a lot more fun."
* * *
Danielle froze.
This was too much. Just seconds ago, she’d laid to rest the biggest demon of her life. Emotions pounded through her too fast to name.
Jagoda had no right to be here! This was perhaps the most private moment of her life. Now, after dealing with Malcolm, she was free from the death-squad, free to await Ruegger’s return. Free either to continue their quest or let it go. But now …
He smiled, his big teeth shining wetly in the thin light.
"Jesus," she said, rising and backing away.
"There you go again," he admonished.
"How the hell did you get here?" she said.
"Tunnels, my dear. As you might know, or not, Junger and myself are legendary for our tunnels."
"No ... I mean, how ... in the castle ... ?"
"Blackie granted us unlimited access to this little retreat in reward for our creation of the Tree of Death. You might've heard about it? It was quite well received. Anyway, that is why we built it for him. That was our price. Admission past the gates at any time."
Unable to think, Danielle wiped some of Malcolm's blood away from her mouth and forced herself to breathe evenly. Jesus. What the hell was going on?
At last, she said, "Why’d you come here?"
"Because this is where it's all going down, isn't it? We've been watching for so long, but watching wasn't getting the job done."
Going down? What was going down? "What do you hope to accomplish?"
"We still believe that we're all on the verge of a new world order, and we intend to be in on the ground floor. Now is a time of choosing allies."
"Allies," she repeated dumbly. "So you want me for an ally?"
He laughed. "Not quite, my dear. If you had killed dear Malcolm, it might be another story. That is why I came. Ruegger, maybe, but not you. We need a meal-ticket and we can't have morals getting in the way."
For some reason, this didn't seem to shame him at all, this admission that he was just looking for someone to take him where he wanted to go. But, as Danielle had been raised to believe that you must find friends where you could, maybe he'd been conditioned to believe that one should find coattails to hang onto. The question was who that would be.
She wanted to ask where Junger was, but she remembered Sophia telling her that the other Balaklava was dead. Jean-Pierre had taken his life, and the world was a better place for it. Cruelly, she smiled, hoping to hurt this fucker as best she could. She couldn’t think of anyone else more deserving.
"How does it feel to be alone?" she said.
"Alone?"
"Now that your boyfriend's dead."
"Yes, Junger is dead, but I'll never be alone. We will always be together. At any rate, you failed the test, Danielle. You let Malcolm live. Part of me knew you would. I just can't walk away now."
"Shut up," she told him. "Just turn around and get the fuck out of here."
"Ah, Danielle. So tender, so fragile. I can't bear to see you live unscathed, conscience clean. Maybe you wouldn't have done it yourself, but he wouldn't be here if it weren't for your hatred." He shrugged, to show that it didn't matter. "It's good enough for me."
Her eyes darted to Malcolm, who had managed to crawl off into a corner and was staring at the two immortals as if they were on some celestial plane far removed from him. Then, suddenly, realizing Jagoda's intent, his eyes widened in terror.
As the Balaklava moved toward her old foster brother, Danielle cried, "No! Don't you dare touch him!"
Jagoda continued towards Malcolm.
"You bastard!"
She lunged at him.
Half-turning, he swatted her away without breaking his stride. For the last time, she reminded herself that he was immeasurably stronger than herself. Her physical presence could not deter him.
Jagoda reached Malcolm, crouched against the wall, unmoving, perhaps thinking that Danielle could really come to his aid. Suddenly, Jagoda raised a clawed foot and plunged it down, pinning Malcolm's arm to the wall at the shoulder.
Using this to hold his victim in place, Jagoda reached down, grabbed the arm and twisted it off. Malcolm howled and writhed. The Balaklava applied some of his own saliva to the spurting wound. The spit acted as a coagulant, stopping the flow of blood almost immediately. Still, the wall on that side of Malcolm's body was painted in red.
Jagoda raised the arm to his mouth and bit down on the bone, letting the marrow burst on his tongue. Of course, thought Danielle. This is what a Balaklava feeds on.
Malcolm was still alive, though. That was the main thing. She might've been about to kill him a few minutes ago, but no more.
Inspiration struck her.
"Jagoda," she said, inching her way towards the door. "If you don't release that man, you'll regret it."
Still munching on the bone, the Balaklava said nothing, just looked at her, triumph blazing from his eyes. He stripped back the flesh of the arm as if peeling a banana and chomped down.
Around his mouthful, he said, "Say 'bye to Brother."
"No, I don't think so. Malcolm will be around for awhile, unless you never want to see your precious Tree again."
Malice flared in his eyes. "Touch my Art and you will become a part of it, Danielle—and remember, my Art is Death."
"An artist is his own worst critic."
"Danielle, don't do this."
"Let him live and I'll forget it. Take another bite off that arm and I'll hack apart every go
ddamned limb of your fucking Tree."
"I will not be threatened.” He sank his teeth once more into the arm.
Danielle flung open the door and ran as fast as she could down the corridor. Streaking past the guard outpost, she wondered how Jagoda would get around them, then remembered the tunnels he'd spoken of and the stories Sophia had told her about the Labyrinth in New York. If he'd been here in the castle for long, he'd probably already started a network of tunnels; hell, he probably started one when he was here working on the Tree, and that was some time ago.
She ran and ran, at last finding herself in the section of the catacombs reserved for the art exhibits. Though Harry had taken her to see the Tree a few days before, she couldn't immediately remember where it was, and by the time the memory surfaced she was already there.
Entering the chamber slowly, on guard in case Jagoda had arrived before her, she took in the circle of coffins and the large bone-tree rising from the circle's center. Directly over the tree, in the ceiling itself, the green piece of glass glowed with the room's only light save for the scattered torches blazing along the earthen walls.
From their erect coffins, Danielle could feel the corpses staring at her. And they were staring, weren't they? It wasn't just a trick of the light. And there! At the corner of her eye, was that movement?
She waited. Nothing.
She stepped toward the Tree, wishing she had some bat or pipe or something to begin the damage with. She plucked up one of the root-bones instead, which led from the base of the Tree to each individual coffin. She selected a thigh bone, the closest thing to a bat she could find, and started smashing away at the lowest limbs of the Tree. They broke loudly, but they were bound so together that they wouldn't collapse without some effort on her part.
At last, after several minutes of swinging her bones (she needed a new one every so often), she began to do some serious damage, surely enough to enrage Jagoda if the Balaklava was protective of his art. This is some funny shit, isn’t it? Malcolm had consumed her thoughts since she was a fourteen-year-old girl—she'd wanted to kill him for so long—and now she was willing to risk her own immortal life to see him live? Well, fuck it.
Suddenly, from all around her, she heard strange dry noises, creaks and pops from things that should've stopped creaking and popping long ago. She ceased her destruction of the Tree and stepped away from it, turning in slow circles to keep her back from being vulnerable.
The corpses lived. They emerged from their coffins, yawning and stretching their gruesome limbs.
"Damn," she said.
They really weren't dead. And they weren't being manipulated by anyone's telekinetic abilities, either. No, these things had been dead once, but were dead no more. They were zombies, as Tommy O'Connel had been a zombie, and they were moving toward her in terrifying synchronicity.
"Come on, guys," she said, raising her hands in a placating gesture. "Just calm down now."
Unheeding, they shuffled toward her. Their arms rose. Their claw-like hands opened and closed.
"Just think about this," she said. "I mean, hell—you want a cigarette or something?"
They came on. Closer.
Too fucking much. Where had the normal world gone? Where were the convenience stores, the Taco Bells, the bagel shops? One minute she was through with Malcolm. Ready to get on with her life. Now, all the rules had changed. And none of the new ones were good. When she had decided to go with Cloire, to come to the Castle, she’d stepped through a looking glass, but the world on this side of it wasn’t just dark, or distorted; it was just plain mean.
From the expressions on the zombies’ faces, she could see that their minds weren't all their own, that there was a force behind them that was the driving entity. Like Tommy O’Connel and Laslo's others. If these zombies were minions of a chalgid like Laslo, who was the chalgid?
The answer walked into the room, infant-ribs sticking out of his tattooed face like little tusks. It was Junger, Jagoda's blacker half, and he frowned deeply, surveying the damage Danielle had done to his creation.
"Danielle," he said sadly. "What have you done?"
"What have I done?" she asked, trying to stop the fevered pounding in her skull. "What the hell have you done, and what the hell are you doing here? I thought you were dead!"
"I am. I was. When Jagoda and myself were at Laslo's mission, we knew the day might come when one of us would die, so each of us tore off one of Singer's arms—we knew he was a chalgid, though a weak one as yet—and drank the marrow. That way, if one of us died, the other would be able to revive him."
"So Jean-Pierre did kill you."
"Of course. When Jagoda resurrected me, he gave me enough of his blood—even a few fingers so I could have the marrow—to make me a chalgid, instead of the blood-slave I would otherwise become."
"So now both of you ..."
He smiled wider. The implications drove through her like spikes. Now the demons were more powerful than ever.
While Junger was speaking, his zombies—his slaves—had ceased their approach toward her, giving her a few moments to assess her options. She realized she was pretty much fucked unless she could talk her way out of this.
"And now?" she said, trying to sound confident, as if she expected him to shrug the whole incident off and let her be.
"Now?" he repeated, chuckling to show that it was a joke. To some extent his zombies joined in the mirth, but their bodies had been dead much longer than Laslo's shades and they weren't cut out for laughter. However, they had been raised by a Balaklava-chalgid hybrid and their brittle bodies must be strong. Dust billowed from their cackling maws.
"Well, Danielle," Junger said, cocking his head meaningfully; at this signal, the zombies began their forward march once more. "Now you die."
"But no!" she said, desperate. "That's not the way it's supposed to be. You're only supposed to harass us, not kill us. That's what Vistrot hired you to do, so that he'd have something to use against Amelia ..."
Junger raised his eyebrows, and for a moment Danielle thought she had him.
"So you figured that part out," he said. "I thought Hauswell might prove useful to you. One thing you don't know, though, Danielle: Vistrot's dead, or missing. In either event, Amelia has effectively taken over his territory. Jagoda and I have free range to do whatever we want with you. Ruegger, we'll leave to the kavasari. At this point, she’s about the only thing to give us pause, and she has always had eyes for the Darkling. Why interfere?"
The zombies were very near now. Danielle thought of burrowing through the ground, but Junger was a shapeshifter and would be a much better mole than herself. Which left one option ...
She leapt upwards, grabbing the lowest branch of the tree. Climbed. By the time she reached the second level of branches, she could hear the zombies jumping for purchase on the first. She clawed her way up the thorny sculpture, noticing things she hadn't before. Human and animal skulls hung from the branches of the tree, as if they were the fruit of this macabre creation.
The skulls opened and closed their mouths at her—Junger playing games with his telekinesis—and then branches started swatting her, not trying too hard to remove her from the tree, but letting her know that she was doomed.
The ivory skull of an ape cracked against her head. She swatted at the bone-fruit, and it snapped back.
Below, she could hear the zombies ascending rapidly, eager to bring her down. A claw-like hand grabbed at her boot. She kicked it off. Plowed upward with greater speed.
She hit the top. Looked all around. Shit.
There was only one entrance to the room, where Junger stood, watching her with satisfaction. Occasionally a twitch of annoyance would cross his face as he heard the sounds of his sculpture being broken by his own undead slaves, but that was it.
She looked overhead. Behind the green piece of glass, there would be a light, which would have wires running from it ... and these wires might follow a service tunnel into which she could escape.
A large form stood before it, a shape with sunglasses and dreadlocks.
"Good to see you again," said Jagoda.
He reached toward her—
She dropped away, hunkering low on the highest branch of the tree just out of his reach. The ghoulish phantoms below closed in on her every second.
"Go away!" she roared at Jagoda. "Just go away and leave me the fuck alone!"
Jagoda grinned. "That's not much of a hello."
Anger pulsed through every artery in her system. She collected it all in her eyes and socked him with every last ounce of her hatred.
He didn’t even flinch.
This is it. She could feel the tears working behind her eyes and tried hard to suppress them, but the end had come for her, she knew. Death perched happily above her, blocking out the light, ready to taste the center of her bones. It ringed the tree, and clustered on the branches. It waited in the entrance. All because she hadn’t killed Malcolm!
"I never did anything to you," she said, hating the pitiful note in her voice.
"No," Jagoda agreed. "That's never been very important to us. Have no fear, child. Your suffering will make great Art."
The zombies grabbed her. She could feel their filthy hands all over her, and though she fought them she knew it was futile. Growling, they dragged her down the Tree of Death and past its snapping fruits. They hauled her to the ground and pinned her there.
Junger's intricately-tattooed bald head smiled down at her.
"I bet you're wondering what comes next," he said.
"Fuck you," she spat. She could feel that her face was all scrunched up, that tears were leaking out of her eyes despite all her attempts to stop them, and she could hear that her voice sounded beyond the point of pitiful now. She bucked and kicked against the undead limbs that held her down, finally feeling strength returning to her, but her resistance would do no good.