Labyrinth

by Kat Richardson

  Ben refused to laugh, though we could all see his mouth twitch.

  There was a bit more discussion, none of it really going anywhere, before I put the ferret into her cage and walked out of the house, heading uphill toward the broadcast towers on the top. Quinton strolled along with me, holding on to a paperback-sized silver box containing his latest Grey detector.

  “Not seeing anything here,” he muttered.

  “Not surprising. Wygan won’t have staked out the whole route—it’s pretty public—only the Danzigers’ and the station. Nothing else is really important and would spread his resources too thin.”

  Quinton grunted acknowledgment. “Sounds like he’s got a limited supply of cronies.”

  “Limited numbers, yes. Unfortunately, his assistants aren’t limited to the asetem and Goodall. Any vampire who’s not aligned with Edward could be working for Wygan. I don’t know how many vampires there are in Seattle, or how many might be persuaded to come from somewhere else, if that’s possible. So I admit I’m only making a best guess based on the activity I’ve seen and what you’ve reported.”

  Quinton sighed. “I hate Heisenberg. We can know where the vampires are but not how many.”

  “Not that it matters. We will get in one way or another. Or I will. If things go pear-shaped, you get the hell out and fetch the Danzigers.”

  He nodded and we walked on in silence, each scanning for enemies or pitfalls but finding nothing. Even outside the station, in the darkness at the edge of the parking lot, there was nothing to find except the uncanny bloodred trace of vampires past.

  We went around and came up on the tower from behind, pausing in the shadows of overgrown hedges that skirted the now-abandoned parking lot of the old Queen Anne High School gymnasium across the narrow road on the east side. The gym building was locked, the nearest doors secured with a loop of chain and a padlock, keeping them closed in spite of evidence of recent vandalism. The windowless concrete refugee from the 1970s was the ugliest building on the whole hill—and would have been standout grotesque almost anywhere—but it was still unusual to find any sort of petty destruction or tagging in the area that was sometimes called Nob Hill. But the snippet of narrow road we stood on was rarely traveled, even sitting as it did across from a newer school building and next to a graciously renovated old one. The odd isolation of the old gym made it a perfect target for anyone angry enough to kick in the doors. I took it as a sign that the area wasn’t too well patrolled at night or monitored by any video cameras, which was good news for us.

  There was a bit of open park on the west side of the tower and some impressive houses across the main street running in front. Nothing but trees and bushes to the north. The chain-link fence around the tower and its building was pierced by gates on the front and side. The side gate, facing us, stood open.

  “Seems too easy,” Quinton whispered.

  “The bad stuff ’s inside.”

  “Yeah....” He studied the rear door with a monocular from where we stood. “Looks like one old-style CCTV security camera on the door and an electronic combination lock. Bit behind the times, technology-wise.”

  “I don’t think Wygan is too worried about that sort of thing.”

  Quinton snorted. “Makes my job easier.” He scrambled in his pockets and brought out a small flashlight in place of the monocular. “Do you see anything in the Grey between here and the door?”

  “Nothing significant.”

  “Then get ready to run when the next car comes over the hill.”

  We both crouched in the shadows of the plants at the edge of the street and waited. After a few minutes, an SUV came up the road, its headlights momentarily flicking upward and over the building as it crested the rise. Quinton flicked on his powerful flashlight, aiming for the camera and flooding the lens with bright white light under cover of the headlights’ glare. We bolted forward for the few seconds that the camera was blinded and stopped directly under it, where it had no view. Whoever had set it up had assumed that no one inside wanted to see the lock keypad or the intercom as much as they wanted to see the face of someone standing on the porch to use them, leaving a nice human-sized hole in the view if you stood right under the camera or up against the door. I took the door position so Quinton could work on the lock, putting my back to it and scanning the area in the Grey, just in case.

  An unusual number of ghosts seemed to wander near the building, thin vaporous things even in the Grey, loops of memory drained of all intelligence, but lingering. Or perhaps drawn in, I thought as I peered harder at one: the ghost of a railroad worker, wearing an antique coverall and cap with the Great Northern’s mountain goat logo on the front. What was he doing here? What little I could make out of the rest was equally hodgepodge and as I started to examine them the ringing in my ears returned, rising to a whining chatter. I shook my head.

  “Not ready?” Quinton whispered.

  “Huh?”

  “I said I’m done and you shook your head. Aren’t you ready to go in?”

  “Oh. Yes, I think it’s safe to open the door and see what’s on the other side.”

  Quinton quirked an eyebrow at me, catching the pun. A heavy click sounded from the lock mechanism and, remaining crouched outside the threshold, he pushed the door open. I looked in through the Grey.

  Just beyond the door, the hallway to the broadcast booth looked like a red-and-black version of a funnelweb spider’s trap. I could barely spot a surface on the walls or floor bigger than my hand that wasn’t thick with the filaments of magic. They caked the narrow corridor, converting it into a tunnel that led to the monster’s lair at the center of the web: the booth where I’d first met Wygan.

  My stomach heaved and a flash of hot fear broke a sweat on my skin that went instantly clammy. I had to go ahead, even though my mind and body balked. In all the rushing to examine my past and the why and how of my Greywalker status—even though I knew it would come to this—I hadn’t considered the visceral horror that returning to confront Wygan here would hold for me. In this building, at the end of the spell-hung hall, was where he had broken me, where I’d been forced to knowledge I didn’t want.

  The buzzing in my ears crescendoed to a screeching of ghostly voices calling out to me: “darling,” and “Harper,” and “monster,” and “bitch.” They cried for my attention in every way imaginable, pleading, cursing, cajoling, flirting, and even in the din a thin voice called me “little girl” and sent a flare of dying fire scurrying toward me on the spider’s web of magic. That was my father—this time I was sure—and he was trying to reach me. I’d hoped there might be a way to him if I was close to Wygan and it seemed I might be right. And no matter how half-formed my plan, now I had no choice; I had to go to him, somewhere ahead in this web-bound maze.

  The tangle of energy that festooned the hall pulled away from the weak flare, making a path too narrow and coiling to tread but pointing the way deeper into the heart of the gyre. I could see there were other holes in the uncanny fabric, now that I was looking for them. A difficult string of stepping-stones, rising normal and dry in the flood of Grey energy. It was going to be tricky, but I thought I could do it. . . .

  I braced myself, catching my breath and straightening my spine as much as I could. I hadn’t been en pointe for decades and I didn’t have the shoes for it, but I still knew how to move with the precision and balance required. I hoped. I shed my boots and socks and started to step over the doorsill.

  Quinton caught my near elbow, steadying my movement. “You’re going?”

  “Yeah,” I whispered back, digging in my pocket. “Here, hold on to Simondson while I’m gone. I don’t want Wygan to sniff him out.”

  Quinton accepted the tin that held the thread of my dead assailant and tucked it away, adding, “Forty minutes and I’m coming after you.”

  “You damn well better.”

  I took a long, storklike step into the thick nest of magical threads, arching my foot into a slender point that slid through
a hole in the crimson tangle until I could touch the floor. As I stepped away from Quinton, I eased deeper into the Grey, becoming less solid, more fluid, and closer to death. I lost contact with his warmth but didn’t look back as the sound of the Grey roared in my head.

  Tunnel-like, the center of the hallway was clear enough for me to stalk down without much bending to avoid the energy threads. I plotted each step with care, certain that like a real spiderweb, one inappropriate twitch of the magical mesh would bring its master rushing to capture me. It was difficult finding the right spot for each step, but the thin, blazed trail of my father’s sending remained, though slowly closing, hinting at the way ahead and leaving clear spaces on the walls to put down an occasional steadying hand.

  Progress was slow and miserable. Each step sent a new shout of sound through my head, as if I were treading on unseen wounded beneath the fire and fog of the Grey. I controlled a shudder and went on toward the chromatic flashing of lights at the end of the hall.

  I remembered that light from the first time I’d met Wygan: a rack of simple, colored bulbs strobing random combinations of blue, red, and yellow. I didn’t understand it then, but now I knew the Guardian Beast had difficulty with certain colors of light and shied away from them, confused that they looked like magic but didn’t act like it. Wygan, plotting something it wouldn’t like, had learned the trick of hiding himself from the Beast with the random lights. But it meant he couldn’t go far without risking its attention. No wonder he’d sent Alice to England: He couldn’t leave Seattle unless he took his light show with him. I nearly stumbled as I thought that perhaps he’d needed them two years ago to keep the Beast away as he’d planted a piece of the Grey in my chest. And now he was too far advanced into his plan for the Beast to ignore him. Which meant that killing Simondson—for which he’d left his lair, at horrendous risk—had been the last stage before he became an active threat to the Grey. Now I knew what the coils of electric cable in the brewery office had been for: to run the light show under which Wygan hid from the retribution of the Guardian Beast. Whatever I was going into, it was extremely unpretty.

  As I neared the door I began to see hints of a dark-blue thread in the red-and-black warp of magic in the hall: Goodall was nearby or had had a hand in making the web. Either way, it seemed likely I would find him in the room with Wygan. I wondered how long the funnel web had been in place and what it meant. It could have been a trap just for me, but it had the feel of something built up in layers over time.

  I paused at last before the door, standing in a void of the web just a little bigger than a shoe box. Music I couldn’t identify muttered from speakers over the door, mixed with the whispering of the grid. The sound made my head ache. My bare feet were cold—so was the rest of me—and I wasn’t sure if I should pull the gun or not. It wouldn’t do much to Wygan I was sure, but it did seem to distract Goodall, who wasn’t used to being bulletproof yet.

  To hell with it: better one distracted than none. I went for the gun. Sometimes I have difficulty holding on to normal objects when I’m deep in the Grey so I pushed myself away from it, becoming as solid as possible as I slid my hand into the small of my back, gripping the pistol at the back of my hip and sliding it free of the holster. Then I threw my shoulder into the weak side of the door and bulled my way into the room, bringing the muzzle up to sweep the area as I ducked and dove in.

  Wygan might have been on me by the time I came to a stop, except that Goodall got in the way. He wasn’t as fast as the Pharaohn-ankh-astet, but he happened to be standing between us and he was both surprised and pissed off at my entrance. Goodall lifted his arm to grab me, pivoting on the leg I’d knocked in earlier. He wobbled a little but he didn’t buckle, so the vampire recuperative powers were working. This time I didn’t kick his knee; I shot it.

  He shrieked and spit a string of epithets as he went down. So far, so good.

  Wygan seemed to vault over the other man, reaching for me, but I was already crouching down to avoid him, and the white-haired vampire ripped the air just above my head. I pushed the gun’s muzzle into the hollow below Goodall’s chin and forced him back to his feet with the pressure as Wygan spun to take another swipe at me. I kept the pale vampire in sight and turned Goodall to face him. “Keep coming and you’ll be shopping for a new minion.”

  Goodall made a coughing sound as he rose. “Unholy bitch ...”

  “You can blame your master for that.”

  Wygan had stopped on the far side of the room, keeping the broadcast control console between us—more of a barrier to me, with my limited human strength and speed, than to him. In the normal he didn’t look any different than he had when we’d met two years earlier: heroin-addict thin, shoulder-length white hair rock-and-roll wild to hide the strange long shape of his skull, and still no sign that he was older than thirty-five at the most, though I knew he was ancient.

  “ ’Arper Blaine. Wot an unexpected pleasure.” His Cockney accent was as broad and fake as ever.

  But, I had surprised him—how nice for me. I kept my mouth shut and my gaze steady on his body, avoiding his snake-eyed stare—funny how they didn’t glow like those of his underlings—and watching for any shift of muscle that would telegraph motion. I took in the room from peripheral vision and replayed my memory of it, comparing the changes. There wasn’t much that was different from last time, except that the broadcast booth was plainly doing double duty now as Wygan’s lair and the old light array he’d used to keep the Guardian at bay was now much larger. There was also a dark spot of energy that coiled on itself like a gleaming black Orouborus, hanging unsupported in the air near what had been the disk racks. Now the rack was empty of all but a glimmering curtain of magic and that dark circle. The discs and my unschooled state must have hidden the circle from me before. Or maybe I just hadn’t noticed.

  “You don’t ’ave to threaten Mr. Goodall, love—’e’s not doin’ you any ’arm.”

  “But you’re planning to and I don’t see why I should suffer for your benefit alone. I’m not interested in playing games I can’t win.”

  “Games?” Wygan snorted, his accent fading away to an angry hiss. “You don’t have a proper appreciation of necessity. My goals are far grander than some game. Ascension requires sacrifice.”

  “So far, I doubt you’ve been the one to make any; you just coerce other people into giving up their lives for you. Aren’t sacrifices voluntary? It looks like you had to kidnap Edward, and did Goodall volunteer to be your lackey and spy or did you trick him into it? And you haven’t been so very clever at getting me to do what you want, either. Batting zero on cooperation, Wygan.”

  “Yet you are here, Greywalker.”

  “Right—with a gun to your ushabti’s head. Is that really the way you thought this was going to go down? You’ve been playing hardball to get me into your clutches for a while—years now—but I don’t think you’re as much in control as you pretend. Do you intend to keep playing me until I just happen to fall into the right place, the right shape? That doesn’t sound worthy of you; that hardly sounds like a plan at all, really. Unless it’s such a bad idea that you know no one would participate willingly. You couldn’t get my father to do it. You couldn’t get Alice to stick to your plan—I’m sure your minions in London have told you how she fucked up and went rogue. You’re the Pharaohn-ankh-astet—you’re supposed to be the baddest of the bad—but you don’t seem to be holding the reins as well as you should and you don’t have the confidence in your own plan to sell me on it.”

  Wygan narrowed his eyes but kept silent. I imagined I’d hit a nerve there. He was hesitating and that was to my benefit. All I needed was for him to show me my father, or Edward, or slip up on even the smallest hint of what he was up to and I was sure I could work out the rest from there. That was all I needed: one admission, one clue. I was willing to walk dangerously close to the line to get it, but once I did, I was gone. I hoped. Though I might need all my cavalry to pull me out. I was cognizant of how li
ttle plan I had and how thin what there was of it looked.

  Goodall twitched in my grip and I squeezed on the pistol’s cocking lever so it made a quelling click. He seethed and held himself stiffly against the pain in his knee and the indignity of having been held at the point of an uncocked gun. “You’re not worthy,” he muttered. “You don’t deserve it, you weak, mercenary little bitch.”

  I ignored the insults—it’s not as if I haven’t been called them before. “Deserve? There are a lot of things I don’t deserve—like having my head beaten in, or my relatives killed and friends terrorized. Whatever the Pharaohn’s plan is, I doubt he’s got anyone’s interest in mind but his own. If you believe otherwise, you’re deluded.” I wondered if Goodall hated me for some other reason or if he thought he could take my place. . . . “If he wants me to play along, he’s going to have to make it worth my while one way or another. And that starts with a little information.”

  “You have no idea what is in store,” Wygan whispered, “what you can do....”

  “No.” The whispers of the grid roared in my head and seemed to push out of my mouth as an echo of some other mind: “I am the gate, the bridge. Mine is the power to cross the gap—” I broke through the rushing voices and regained control of my words. I had no idea of the meaning of what I’d just said, but I wasn’t going to let on. “So why not tell me the rest? I’m sure Goodall is dying to know, too. After all, he already sold his soul and he doesn’t even know what he’ll get for it. Me, I prefer a more equitable exchange.”

  Goodall shifted his eyes to Wygan. “You can’t trust her. She’s a weak vessel, like that whimpering thing you keep in the blackness. She’s not interested in anything but destroying you and keeping the world as it is. She’s on Edward’s side.”

  Now I wanted to know what the thing in the blackness was, but I knew better than to let Wygan know that. It might have been Edward or my father, but it was something Goodall disdained and that might make it something I wanted. I barked at him, “I’m on my own damned side and I’m not giving anyone anything for free. Edward tried to push me and I didn’t bend. I went to London when he gave me something I wanted, not because I’m his lackey or his hired gun.”