I didn’t know the language or what the words meant, but they trembled on the air and then turned liquid, echoing in the grid and running into the circle, flushing it a deep purple. Something made of bone spines, spiderweb, and ghost sinew began to form in the second circle. The roar of the Beast issued from its shadow jaws of dagger teeth. But the circle around it wasn’t quite closed. . . .
Carlos shot me a warning glance. “You cannot imprison a Guardian with the paltry blood of a mad human.”
Wygan dropped Will’s foot and turned around, watching the necromancer with narrowed eyes as his victim scrabbled away. The Pharaohn twisted up a smile as he looked at the two vampires. “What would you, then, Ataíde?”
“The blood of a magical creature is required.”
The Pharaohn laughed and it came out a long, strangling hiss. “We are out of unicorns, I fear.”
Carlos shrugged but there was nothing casual in it. “One of your own will do.” He let his glance shift to Goodall. “Even that abomination. You do not need him to close the spell now that I am here.”
Goodall scowled and swayed forward as if he would break from his place and attack Carlos.
Wygan shook his head, the reflection off his ghostly scales scintillating in the air like snow. “Ah, Ataíde. Not quite so clever as you think you are. I still need him to keep you from my throat. And the Greywalker would not volunteer even if she could. But the blood of a vampire will do. Kill Kammerling.”
Edward tried to thrash away, but Carlos held onto his arm with no effort and shook him a little, saying, “Peace now. I am no threat to you.” Edward subsided into a weakened heap. Then Carlos returned his attention to the Pharaohn. “You well know that is one thing I cannot do, no matter how I crave it.”
“Oh, yes: the tie that binds. . . .”
He kept his gaze on Wygan’s, daring the hypnotizing stare of the White Worm. “If you would have it, then you must free me to do it. As you promised.”
Wygan knit his thin white brows and shot rapid glances at me and Goodall. The ushabti growled and took a step before another glare put him back in his place.
“Kammerling’s too weak,” Goodall suggested. “Cut the Greywalker. Her part’s nearly done.”
“But nearly is not completely,” Wygan muttered back. “You let your jealousy and greed for power run away with your sense. No, Edward will do.”
I kept my mouth shut, still studying the circles on the floor. I could see the weak links, the open gates, even as the gold, blue, and red lines of the grid began weaving into me, pulling my substance and will toward it. I sank to my knees to get closer, risking the connection between normal and Grey, letting the warp and weft of the grid be extra eyes and ears as I moved toward it.
The Pharaohn turned his gaze back to Carlos, evaluating the necromancer before he stepped close. The set of his head told me he was bothered by something but unable to pin it down. He put his hand out toward Carlos, and in the blaze of the grid I could see how his shape slid into the tangled lines of power around them, brushing into magic in a way that was chillingly familiar. He didn’t encounter the thread he expected and twitched back, angry.
But the asetem aren’t as fast as other vampires and Carlos was already thrusting the Lâmina up toward the Pharaohn’s gut. Only the intervention of Goodall and the luck of the devil kept the uncanny blade out of Wygan’s eldritch flesh. Goodall jumped and yanked his master backward as Carlos moved and the whispering knife slashed through cloth and air.
The nearly solid shape of the Guardian screamed in the circle, but Wygan would not be distracted again. He shoved Goodall back and stepped close behind Carlos, plunging his hands into the dark vampire’s neck and shoulder, holding him in the grip of his fury and power. He shook the bigger man violently and I could see Carlos arch and buckle as the shape of his own life and magic twisted under the Pharaohn’s grip and the blade clattered from his hand.
“I do not know how you’ve freed yourself, but there shall be no more tricks, Ataíde. Do it, or I’ll scatter you to the wind.”
It was not an idle threat, but I could see his power strain. He could destroy Carlos, and it would ruin him in the process, but the urge to survive was too strong for the necromancer, whether he knew the odds or not. And there were still chances to stop the Pharaohn. . . .
The dark vampire nodded. “All right.” Wygan pushed him down.
Carlos crouched beside Edward. “I’m sorry for this,” he whispered. “I meant to forgive our past.” He picked up the Lâmina from the floor and let it touch the base of Edward’s neck. His eyes sought mine for just a moment. Then he looked away again.
The other vampire twisted in pain, clashing his fangs, before slumping over, exhausted, muttering, “Our past and I are too broken. Finish it.”
The room shook and the shrieking of the Guardian Beast made the Grey dim and flicker as the tip of the blade sliced upward, flaying open the artery in Edward’s neck. The blood didn’t flow: It dripped, dark and thick, from the wound. Carlos said a few more words in the weird tongue and let Edward fall into the edge of the circle. Wygan hissed and darted to the crumpling vampire, scooping him up and tossing him all the way into the center of the main circle as he threw himself into the remaining small open circle between me and the nearly captive Guardian Beast. Now, Wygan was locked with me into the accelerating motion of the spell.
Edward struck the ground where the temporacline glittered. The floor shook. Slow blood spattered and ran outward. I could see the lingering shadow of his existence shatter and stop, frozen in the instant he expired, borrowed blood still dark on the glassy floor. Goodall slapped his hand down on the lines of the outer circle once again, and another inner ring slammed closed, sending up a curtain of dark fire as the monster of bone and mist surged into it, corporeal and vulnerable as a lamb. The Guardian Beast was captured.
Popping sounds came from above us, punctuating the noise of the grid with unexpected flashes of white light and confusion that barely penetrated to us. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it seemed foreign and removed from what went on here.
The Guardian Beast screamed in frustration as it was caught, dragging my attention back. Then the circle began tightening around it like a noose. I could see Goodall hauling on the threads of it, pulling them somehow through Carlos, drawing the dark lines closer to the construct of the Grey’s wrath even as Carlos fought him. The first touch of the deep purple fire crumbled the Guardian’s spines like rotten wood.
The world screamed around me as the grid burned brighter and brighter with the dissolving essence of the Guardian Beast pouring back into it. The silvery ghost-stuff of the Grey boiled and rippled as if pocked by gunfire. The Beast dwindled and Wygan seemed to unknit, loosening form and essence, giving up his ancient body to reshape himself. . . .
Now, now, now! the chorus screamed. A deeper throbbing note rolled the floor beneath my feet, calling me, and I leapt toward it, diving into the world between. Digging myself into the grid, I heaved on the circle, my own energy flowing into it and tearing at the weak links. I could taste the work of Carlos there, corroding the marks painstakingly prepared by Goodall and Wygan. I could feel true names like sharp stones tumbling away beneath me.
The gleaming fog substance of the Grey stretched all around me, falling away into depths that rippled with color like a lightning storm. Above us, a squall churned the surface, but nothing more. Distant sparkles and sheets of light flashed and vanished, reappearing elsewhere as racing lines that curled through the rolling, constant clouds of ghost-stuff. It was vast and empty, lonely and yet so close, touching and supporting me amid the matrix of its power. The bright-burning wire frame of the energy grid plunged and soared in every direction, sending throbbing lines and curls of magic outward, some thick as sewer pipes, others mere whispers and strands like fallen hair. My heart seemed to expand in my chest, pressing the breath out of me as I stared into the profound and terrible beauty of it. It reflected a sense of satisfaction at my won
der.
The brightness flexed and twisted, throbbing with intensity and engendering a pleasant anticipation. It rippled—the nearest, broadest conduits of power arcing toward me—and I reached for them with open arms. I almost laughed as I stared into it all, seeing the thin threads of the magic circle around me as fragile sketches. I knew I could simply step out of them if I wanted. They were pulled from the grid, and all of that was mine to move as I pleased. I could just . . . disperse into it, out of my restricted physical shell of a body, and be gone. . . .
Then the Grey shrieked again, heaving like a stormy sea and shaking me in my fragile, mortal skin. I could see the Guardian in the coil of the shattered magic circle, reduced to a thin rope of color, twisted too tight, nearly to the breaking point. I reached for it, drawing it toward me by lines of colored light, but I was too late and the rope, pulled in two directions, broke, unwinding and spreading its threads to sink into the grid and scatter like windblown sand across the waves and ripples of the circle, sliding toward Wygan.
As the Guardian Beast unraveled, the Grey broke on the edge of reality and surged outward, battering me back to the surface of the normal for a moment before it tried to suck me back down, back into the depths of the grid. Wygan laughed as the roiling chaos of it washed over us all.
I could see Carlos pushed back by the wave of power flooding the room, shattering his connection to the circle. He fought against the tide, the Lâmina still in his fist, as he turned his attention toward Wygan. Goodall threw himself across the vampire’s path, grappling him down and sending the knife spinning across the floor as the door behind him swung open. Quinton darted in and snapped to a halt, searching for me. But I was hard to see in the rioting, wild magic and fog of the room.
The bloody blade cut through the edges of the circle, destroying the curtains of indigo and purple light. Wygan shivered as the directed power faded and joined the rest of the rampaging energy in the room. “The hard way, then,” he said, chuckling and fixing his gaze on me through the layers of fog and magic.
He was fast, barely corporeal, fed on the Guardian’s death, the rampant noise of the grid, and Will’s terror. He caught my shape easily and hauled it in, taking my head in his ghostly hands like he meant to break my neck. “Now you’ll have to die, my dear. Sometimes we must break our tools.”
“I am not your tool,” I whispered, sinking down toward the grid and away from his flickering physicality. “I’m your doom.”
I’d had a lot of practice in the last twenty-four hours and it was easy to slide away from him, luring him deeper into the Grey, toward the raw surge of magic. He would have more power there, but if he wanted to catch me, he’d have to pursue me toward the grid, shrugging off the physical strength of his body. I would not. And once this confrontation was done, I would not mind dying.
We slipped through the ice storm of the Grey, sinking into the live fire and swell of power lines that shouted and sang into my head. Wygan’s form shivered and lost solidity, but still snakelike, he flowed after me. We twisted as I hunted for a corner of time hard enough to trap him in, racing through the sharp edges of temporaclines as he clawed and bit at me, tearing pieces of my weirdly expanded self away, whittling me back to only body and will.
Each wrenching wound cut through me like a knife, pain I had not expected manifested in the shrieks of the Grey. I thought I grew smaller, shrinking like Alice as she plummeted down the rabbit hole.
But we fell not into Wonderland but into light: light living, crying, mourning its protector while it flooded up and overran its banks, devouring and searching for a shore. It threw me into the whiplash stream of black and red that Wygan had become, and I swam sideways, wound in his lightning grip, dragging him into the tide of shifting time against the slashing edges of temporaclines and monstrous things too old to name.
I cried in agony, growing desperate for the moment I could turn and pin the monster that laughed red-and-gold horror into me. I could feel the Pharaohn’s delight in the treacherous depths of the Grey, his exultation, anticipating my tormented, useless death.
“Here, little girl,” came a whisper of white sparks. “Here.”
I spun, twirling streamers of gold across the silver ocean of mist, and thrust through the black-snake coil, diving toward the voice of my father and towing the Pharaohn with me. To the reflection of normal eyes that the Grey fed me, I knew I looked a tiny figure, turning like one lost in the fog, fighting a ragged shadow of white smoke and ethereal flesh still just recognizable as Wygan. Up and sideways, into the black center of a blazing ring within a ring, each burning too hot for flesh to stand with the shattered sliver of temporacline glittering at the center. I could see the edges of rooms superimposed on rooms, trees, fires: Dru Cristoffer’s apple orchard maze, my father’s office splashed with his blood and brains, the Hardy Tree, the puzzle balls falling outward/ inward . . . into the fiery circles of the oubliette and ethereal labyrinth doors as they blazed. The puzzle balls and their unfolding magic gates to the hidden parts of the Grey were finally burning and we would go with them in a moment.
I could have stayed there and held Wygan to be immolated together into nothingness, but I yanked myself into searing air, my body protesting, bleeding, gasping for breath. And the Pharaohn rushed from the cold blackness beneath our pyre, struggling for shape where there were only fiery recollections and ghosts. For a moment, his memory of himself coalesced, drawn from the ash and flame: the ancient snake god writhed before me, gaping its fangs and striking. I let it come, taking the bite in my back, the fangs sinking in. I held the monstrous thing against me, forcing him to the gleaming surface of the temporacline, as I hooked my fingers into the slowing, knotted energy of his ethereal form and pulled the core of him apart. It burned and struggled, his fangs biting deeper, tearing at me as it loosened. First memory falling away, then shape, and then the scorching tangle of energy, magic, knowledge, self . . . so many jackstraws in my hands. I sank, exhausted, toward the dark center as the fires of the labyrinth doors burned out. I struggled away from the grid, back through the mist and chaos of the Grey toward the surface of the normal world, scattering the dimming threads of the Pharaohn and the falling ash of his children into the fog.
The world seemed to gasp and quiver, dozens of voices crying into the grid at once, lost and terrified. The voices of the asetem, the grid told me, those too weak and old to continue without him, falling into oblivion with their father-god. The half-mad unconscious of the grid raged at me in mindless despair; I had destroyed a god. . . .
This time there was no emotional chill to insulate me from the horror and pain of what I’d done. I stumbled back into the normal, bereft and bleeding, trying to get to Quinton and get out of the room before things got worse. Pandemonium still reigned in the concrete basement I fell back into; the rift had not healed with the destruction of Wygan. I could feel the furious Grey hungering, trying to devour me as it searched for another Guardian, for anything that would hold it in shape, stop it from raveling out into the wide world.
My vision was still dazzled by the ghost-stuff of the Grey and the raw burning of the grid within. With it storming around me, I couldn’t find my way. I crashed into someone and grabbed onto him. He was shaking, slim, too tall to be Quinton and too insubstantial to be Goodall or Carlos.
“Will,” I breathed. “Can you see the door?”
“Oh, yes.” He wasn’t shaking with fear: It was excitement. “It’s beautiful.”
I turned to look back the way I had come, back toward the center of the circle that was now only ash and flickering fire, back where the single glassy temporacline shard had sparkled, where time had stopped under Edward’s ruined shell.
Yes, there stood a door, much like the one I’d seen the first time I’d gone into the Grey, back what seemed long ago. Made of cloud and light, it beckoned and pulled us toward it. The door. The mouth of the starving Grey, seeking something, someone, to guide and protect it.
“No, Will. You shou
ldn’t go there. That’s a dangerous place.”
“It’s lovely. It wants me to come.” He planted a soft, absent kiss on my temple and pushed me aside, moving crabwise and crippled through the doorway. The raging power of the unbound Grey unwound his physical form, leaving a fleeting Will-shaped skein of bright blue and gold that sparkled away into the light and fog of the world between the worlds.
The clouds of Grey and magical fire drew in as a new Guardian began to take shape beyond the door: the long, elegant form of a Beast spun of spiderwebs and ghostlight into animate runes and twining Celtic knots, flickering silver like reflections on glass and strands of platinum hair. The door whispered closed and the storm ceased.
Footsteps pounded across the floor as I stood, staring at the misty portal that faded toward the colors of the grid through the retreating silver fog of the Grey.
“Harper, Harper!”
Even through the ringing in my ears and the diminishing mutterings of the treacherous grid, I heard Quinton and started, once more, to turn.
And something ripped into my back and through my gut, driving me onto the floor.
Warm wetness spread under me, bringing new pain with it, covering me, and making the world darker at the edges.
“Little girl. Let me take this. . . .”
“Dad . . .” But he was gone and I felt sorrow, compassion, despair, and joy flood in as the inhuman remoteness that had tortured and sustained me disintegrated, leaving me. If ever I woke, I would not be the same, I would not hold and move the power of the grid again. The humming of it died and the bright lines slid away from me, growing further distant as darkness closed in. Even the Grey turned thin and cold, mocking me with voices I almost remembered, until it sparkled, dying. . . .
EPILOGUE
He had run. He had not waited. Carol had tried to stop him, but he fought and made it to the elevator before she caught up to him again. He dragged her in with him and rushed through the best explanation he could make. “Harper knows where Goodall and Wygan are—where they have Kammerling—but I think she’s going to try and stop them herself. I think—I think—”
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