And thus shall you forevermore
wander lost from shore to shore
I’ll admit I smiled as the headman’s sword hacked down, but almost as soon as Anne’s head hit the ground, I swooned. When I awoke, I was once again abed. With a different woman.
And so I found myself cast adrift upon an infinite sea of worlds. Surfacing every few days to find myself in a new reality. I mustn’t have been the only Henry that made my mistake, because as time went on, my life became more disordered as each Henry jumped in and tried to “fix” the errors of the one before. Tried to get back to the life that we started from. Is it any wonder that I deteriorated physically as well? Eventually, I woke up in this world. One of the most mundane that I’d seen. But what it had that none of the others did was a woman, swollen with my seed, who gave birth to a son—a son that broke the witch’s curse. I lived out my remaining years trying to find a woman that measured up to my own, first, sweet wife. I even married two more Catherines, but my body and spirit never recovered.
When I died, I found myself in this weak and dissolute form, barely more than spirit. Why I was hunted down, bound, and made to sleep, I understand not.
◆◆◆
I shook my head as Henry stopped speaking and the vision broke up with a final montage of the monarch’s divorces and dissolution passing across the canvas of my mind. I looked around and realized that I’d managed to wander deep into the hedge maze. “That was all very interesting, Your Majesty. However, I thought that your story was meant to provide a warning?” I said, glancing over my shoulder but not seeing Paula or Vir.
“I know a kindred soul when I see one, Mr. Adler,” Henry said, and I realized what he was saying. He’d had a beloved wife, a strong kingdom, power. But he’d wanted more and then spent the rest of his existence trying to get back what he originally had. Against all odds, I had retrieved Dana from oblivion. If I tried to use the Sigilum for my own ends, I might cause infinitely more pain to all of the people who the vampires would hurt. I thought of my dream showing the little boy ripped apart in front of his mother. Then I thought of Dana, belly swollen with a baby that could be monstrous—but just one child. Somehow I didn’t think she’d see it that way. Suddenly, I remembered Mia’s mission, driven out of my head by the story. “Henry, I was supposed to help capture you.”
“Oh, forsooth?” Henry said sarcastically.
I continued like I hadn’t just been burned by a five-hundred-year-old monarch. “Yes, Mia Noel, John Brown’s daughter, needs you to help convey a message. If this message doesn’t get across, the Chapter Master will eventually round up all of the attuned. She wants us to capture you, and, during transit, I’m supposed to offer you a deal for your freedom. But it isn’t right. You’re no monster. You’re less of a monster than I am. So I’m asking, man-to-man. Will you come with me?”
“Lad, I—” Henry started to say, his voice quiet, but he was interrupted by a shout.
“Now, Vir, get him or I’ll put you down like the vile little freak you are!” Paula screeched from somewhere outside the maze, and suddenly the trees near me shook like a gust of wind had blown past, although the air was completely still.
“Ow! That stung. Foolish boy! Desist now!” Henry shouted. I looked around, but I couldn’t see anything as branches snapped all around me, flying into the air.
How had the situation escalated so suddenly?
“Julian! Help me!” Vir’s voice sounded distant in my mind, and I had to make a decision; Henry hadn’t seemed like a monster, but Vir, even though I’d only known him for a few months, was my friend, and he was in trouble. How could I help? If I called up any extradimensional energy, I’d only get one shot. Oh—and I couldn’t even see the combatants. Then I thought of the golem.
“Vir, I need you to make bodies, something that I can aim at,” I commanded. In response, branches ripped free from centuries-old trees with a series of sharp snapping sounds, and two rough outlines formed from the arboreal ejecta, branches and leaves floating in the air only five feet away, just above the maze. “I am Groot…” I muttered, and simultaneously, I sought the place in myself where my connection to the Dreamscape lived, reached down to my hip, and pushed with my will. My fingers closed on hempen ropes, a weighted net, that I knew would be there.
I cocked my right arm and flung the disabling device—at Vir. I doubted that a normal net would be able to do anything to him, but this weapon wasn’t entirely of our dimension, so I expected it to be effective, and it would have been—if I hadn’t missed like a giant jackass. The net sailed low of both Vir and Henry by a good foot and a half, hit the top of a hedge, and clattered to the ground somewhere in the maze. Shit.
I glanced at Paula. “Oops?” I said, and shrugged. I’d hoped to let Henry go free while getting Vir out of harm’s way.
“Stop it…” Vir said, his voice almost pleading. I tried to scramble through the hedge to find the net, but it took me half a minute of struggling to get through the dense bush. When I came out the other side, twigs rained down on me. Glancing up, I noticed that the bodies Vir had formed were coming apart, but there was nothing I could do if I couldn’t find my weapon. On hands and knees, I crawled along the path, searching under the trees.
“Julian, here,” Paula said, skidding around the corner and reaching for some of the rope strands of my weapon—but her fingers went right through them. Interesting, but not very helpful, I thought as I scrambled forward to a soundtrack of rustling branches and grunting, ethereal combatants.
“Boy, I trained as a knight for thirty years. Yield!” Henry bellowed, and Paula gasped. I grabbed the net and spun to face the spot where I’d last seen the fighters.
“Shit,” I said, understanding Paula’s gasp. Hovering a dozen feet away were two blue, glowing forms. One was a large, powerfully built man who was clearly visible, and the other was smaller and only discernible by a faint radiance limning it. Even worse, the smaller, staggering form, surely Vir, was between me and the late, late monarch.
“Julian, stop them!” Paula ordered, shoving me hard in the back and pointing. This snapped me out of the mental fuzziness that was already building from using my powers and proved that she could see them as well.
I stalked forward. “Henry Tudor! This man is only doing his duty. He’s been told that you’re dangerous, so he’s trying to stop you. To defend the kingdom.” Henry looked up, his fist cocked back. “Stop, dammit!” I yelled, and Henry shook his head. There was a moment of tension, and then the king shoved Vir’s incorporeal form, which winked out, and the former king, looking like the powerful young monarch that had been a famous jouster and not a fat old man, strode through the hedge behind him, sending branches flying with a crack. About two seconds later, I felt the net in my hand disappear.
“Well, that was a grade-A screw-up that you two just pulled off,” Paula said, standing back with her hands on her hips and a scowl on her lips.
I turned to tell her exactly what she could screw, but Henry was looming behind her. I tried to open my mouth, but I kept right on turning as my mind abruptly shut down and I crashed to the ground. Lights out. Shit.
Chapter 16
1900, Sunday, June 19–0900, Monday, June 20, 2016
When I woke up a few hours later, I was at the Sons’ headquarters on Temple Avenue in one of the on-call rooms. My first thought was for Vir. I didn’t know what Henry had done to him, but he’d sounded hurt and scared. My very distant second thought was for Paula and what Henry had been about to do to her when I passed out. Finally, I realized that I should be concerned for myself. Normally, when I passed out after using my powers at work, I’d be dumped at home to rest. I wondered if I was in trouble for being part of a twice-botched operation. Of course, I wasn’t sure if I was upset that the operation had been a failure. Henry had only really been defending himself. While some of the things that I’d helped stop during my time with the Sons had obviously been malignant, there was no indication that Henry fell into that cat
egory. I was reminded of the warnings that Father O. and Senior Auditor Brown had given me about the Sons’ treatment of attuned, the hostility I’d seen in the office recently, Sloane’s veiled threats, and the Escapees—I wondered how long it would be until I found myself in a locked room.
That said, I breathed a sigh of relief when the door handle turned and I was able to exit the room without setting off any alarms. I was the opposite of relieved a moment later when a couple of waiting agents popped up from their seats on the other side of the nearly empty Sunday evening office. One was a black man in his early forties, who I didn’t know, and the other, broad-shouldered figure was Christian.
“Christian, do you know what happened to Vir? How is he?” I inquired. My heart rose up to my throat and I held my breath as I waited for the big man’s reply—I wasn’t sure how I’d function if I’d managed to get another person I’d cared about hurt. There were so damned many already…
The big Afrikaner shook his head. “Hello, Julian. You’re to go to the boss lady’s office. She answers your questions. We’ll make sure that where you are doesn’t become a question, eh?” he said with a friendly smile stretching his well-tanned face as the pair of men fell in on either side of me. A minute later, I was deposited in Mia’s office.
“Christian, Michael, could you please leave us? Mr. Adler’s disciplinary review is a private HR matter.” Mia’s voice was clipped and angry. The two men left, Christian giving me a commiserative pat on the shoulder as he departed.
“Report,” Mia commanded when they were gone, switching to a much more subdued tone.
“How’s Vir?” I countered, angry that she cared so little for my friend. In retaliation, she didn’t lift her eyes from her laptop screen for nearly a minute or offer me a seat. I hadn’t fully recovered from using my abilities, so I was light-headed and perspiring when her head snapped up, making her long chestnut ponytail swing.
“Senior Penitent Sharma is in one of our secure hospital wards. His vital signs are stable, but he hasn’t regained consciousness. Agent Smith suffered a minor concussion, so her report was woefully incomplete. I’d like your explanation of what occurred,” Mia said in a surprisingly neutral tone. I wasn’t sure how much I should tell her, but I couldn’t let her see me hesitate, so I bought some time.
“Thanks. Could you please let me know when he’s awake? Also, if anyone is doing flowers or a card or something, then I’d happily chip in,” I said. Mia, who had never worked in a normal office, blinked a few times and shook her head at the unexpected request. I patted myself on the back; obfuscation through banality.
“Umm…of course,” she replied eventually and motioned for me to take a seat. By then I’d decided to push my luck, so I told her about everything that had happened, in full, from start to finish. Including Agent Smith’s threats against Vir, my refusal to capture the king, and Henry’s warning.
“…so, I guess I don’t understand why we’re spending our resources hunting down someone like Henry when there’s a potential vampire outbreak,” I finished.
Mia was quiet for long seconds as she stared at me. I got the feeling that she was now the one weighing how much to tell me. “Julian, I think that you should take Henry’s warning to heart. You have Dana. Focus on the missions that we’ve assigned you. Henry was able to hurt Vir; what more proof do you need? As promised, information about the vampire and the possible vampire outbreak has been passed on to the Senior Auditor and the Chapter Master. You have neither the control nor the experience to contribute to the action we are planning. Should you become aware of any information that might pertain to this matter through the Dreamscape, let us know. Otherwise, stay away from the vampire thing—please.”
I couldn’t stay away from the vampire thing, not with Sloane looking into it and interested in the Sigilum as well, but I couldn’t tell Mia that. “I’ll be careful.”
Mia sighed slightly and then asked the question that mattered to her. “Do you think that Henry was going to say yes?” she asked, her tone neutral, but I caught her tapping her teeth with one well-manicured nail—her nervous tell.
“I don’t know. On the one hand, if he was going to say yes, then it should have been quite a short reply. On the other hand, he does like to hear himself talk,” I answered as truthfully as I could.
“Okay. Go, rest this evening. I’ll let you know if we pick up Henry’s trail. And I’ll get someone to speak to Agent Smith. Her behavior is…unprofessional,” Mia said, scowling like she’d bitten into a lemon on the last words. She had her own extradimensional abilities, and I was sure that she’d endured her share of hostility over the years.
I took a long, slow breath through my nose. I hadn’t really expected Mia to call off the hunt for Henry, but my conscience demanded that I try. I nodded and turned toward the door, thinking that I couldn’t afford to directly defy the Sons, but even if they did find Henry, I didn’t have to try very hard to bring him in—or to convince him to support Mia’s scheme. I wanted her help, but I wasn’t going to hurt an innocent to get it. That was one lesson that I’d learned well enough from my clash with Senior Auditor Brown the previous fall.
Mia’s next words felt like she had read my mind, and around here that was a real possibility. “Oh, and Julian, I believe it is you Americans who came up with the saying ‘three strikes and you’re out’? Don’t whiff again—neither of us can afford that.” She looked back down at her papers, clearly dismissing me, but I couldn’t help noticing how mild my reprimand had been. Perhaps I wasn’t the only one who had taken away Brown’s lesson on collateral damage.
◆◆◆
It was nearly nine in the evening when my train pulled into West Ealing station. I kept my eyes peeled during my short walk home, but no one and nothing jumped me. It was high summer, so there were no lights on to tell me whether or not Dana was home (people often forget just how far north London is). I was relieved to find her there, less so when a yeasty smell hit my nostrils. Baking bread was Dana’s preferred way of dealing with stress, or at least her preferred way of dealing with stress when she was nine months pregnant, if you know what I mean. Wink, wink.
“Where have you been?” I heard her say from the kitchen. My phone had run out of battery power while I was passed out, so I hadn’t been able to warn her of my late return.
“There was an accident at work today. Vir’s in hospital,” I replied, my voice cracking slightly. I hadn’t realized that I cared so much. I was used to being in danger, and I was used to people getting hurt in dangerous situations around me, but I wasn’t used to my friends getting hurt because of the decisions that I’d intentionally made. Dana appeared a moment later and gave me an awkward side-hug.
“Come have some bread, sweetheart,” she said. And I did. And it was good.
After we’d eaten, I told her about what had happened and about my talks with Mia and Sloane. Dana sat back, running long fingernails through her hair in a motion that I’d seen her do a thousand times when working on a difficult work project. I didn’t want to interrupt—I respected her opinion too much to rush her—so I waited silently for nearly two minutes. “Well…horsepucky.” You can take the girl out of the South, I thought as she continued: “We still fundamentally have two choices: go after the Sigilum for ourselves, or go after it for a third party. All of the rest of our decisions hang off of those. And yes, I’m discounting any of the options where we do nothing. Because if you do choose to do nothing, I’m going to leave you, and I’ll try to find the Sigilum for our child, whichever one actually needs it. Our child, that’s where my vote goes,” she said, taking a deep hitching breath before saying, “But if you think, if you honestly believe that you have to be involved to stop the slaughter you see in your dream, then I’ll back you.”
My first instinct, shaped by years of laying waste to the nightmares of London’s dreamers, was to vow death and vengeance to the vampires; however, my discussion with the ethereal king had gotten me thinking more about the impact of m
y choices. He’d made one wrong choice and had suffered for an eternity. “Dana, we don’t need to decide immediately. The most important thing is that we need to get the Sigilum. Who knows, once we have it, maybe we can find some way to use it for what we need to and give it to Sloane,” I said.
“Somehow I doubt it, Julian. We don’t even know how we’d use it if we had it, but you’re right, let’s focus on getting it first and keeping our options open. Call Sloane. Your dream showed that you’ll find the Sigilum while he fights Cooper; promise whatever you need to—and keep your fingers crossed the whole time.”
I nodded, but my stomach churned like a tumble dryer with a full load. Edward Sloane was a dangerous, capable man, and I didn’t want to think about what he’d do if he thought I intended to double-cross him. Well, maybe one of the Escapees would randomly kill me tomorrow and cut through this whole tangled mess.
◆◆◆
I called Sloane. After five rings, the monster hunter picked up. “Mr. Adler. Are you taking me up on my offer?”
“I am. Where do I meet y—”
There was a knock at the door. After having a veritable cavalcade of people break into my house the previous year, I’d installed IP cameras and serious locks. Pulling up my phone to check, I saw Edward Sloane smiling up at me, dressed in a dark shirt, blue jeans, and…cowboy boots? He waggled his fingers.
I threw the locks and opened the door. “Good evening, Edward.”
“Ja, it is a good evening. We’re going to take out a monster. Come on, young man!” Sloane grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the car. I noticed that he’d splashed on some aftershave. Apparently this was his idea of a fun night out.
Sloane was driving a big, black Mercedes-Benz C-Class, and before I could even buckle up, he floored it, sucking me back against the seat with instant acceleration. We rocketed up the A40, doing at least thirty miles an hour over the speed limit, and whipped around the Hanger Lane Gyratory, navigating the roughly twenty-five lanes of traffic that met there with a squeal of tires and honking of horn that would have made a Cairo taxi driver proud. You know, back when there still was a Cairo.
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