Lady of Misrule (Marla Mason Book 8)
Page 23
She grunted. “Man, I already draw comics. I need another hobby? One that’s more dangerous? I might as well take up alligator wrestling.”
He shrugged. “You gotta decide what to do on your own. Some of us, magic fills a part of our lives that would be empty otherwise. If she hadn’t found magic, I don’t know what Marla would be – except she’d probably be dead. She sure as hell wouldn’t be a part-time goddess of death. But if you don’t have that kind of hole in your life, or if you’ve got love and art to fill it, shit. I can’t promise magic would make things better.”
Marzi flicked her cigarette butt over the railing. “I don’t know. Your advice doesn’t seem so terrible.”
He nodded. “You know, sometimes I even surprise myself.”
Marzi in the War Room
They all lined up in a line before the suite’s door, Bradley holding Marzi’s hand, her holding Pelham’s hand, Pelham holding Rondeau’s. Regina Queen refused to hold anyone’s hands, and scoffed at the suggestion that she close her eyes. “I fear nothing in this world or any other.”
“Hell can get a little warm, in places,” the Stranger said. “But suit yourself.”
“Are there not realms of terrible ice in the underworld as well?”
The Stranger chortled. “You’re talking about Dante, now? Regina, that’s just infernal fanfic. Sure, there are probably icy parts of the underworld, but then, anything anyone finds unpleasant is probably down there somewhere. Let’s go.”
Marzi closed her eyes, the door clicked open, and she followed the tug of Bradley’s hand, pulling Pelham along after her. As before, she was hit with a rush of heat, and a profound sense of disorientation: the psychic GPS in her head basically glitching-out, informing her that she was nowhere and no place and in danger, and she gritted her teeth and rode it out. Pelham murmured, “Are we there? Is something happening?”
“Damn, you non-psychics are lucky,” Rondeau said.
“Slime mold,” a cold voice said. Cold, but not Regina’s. The Stranger’s? Sort of, but also something else. There was magic here way bigger than Marzi’s. “Cockroaches. Too much life. Out. Out. Get out.”
Bradley pulled at Marzi, and the disorientation lessened and then vanished, and when she opened her eyes, she was standing in what looked like a night club, with a dance floor and a DJ booth and a bar along one wall. The house lights were on, and half a dozen people were sitting or standing around a big table set up in the center of the dance floor. One of them, a youngish, sharp-featured woman with a bleached-white duck fuzz of hair, whistled. “Damn, Marla. Did you bring the entire rhythm section of the Polyphonic Spree with you? What a fuckin’ menagerie.”
The Stranger pointed people out. “Nicolette. You know Rondeau and Pelham and Bradley. That’s Marzi McCarty – she’s a low-level reweaver with experience fighting the Outsider, and some success with limiting his powers. I also brought Regina Queen, the ice witch.”
“Damn. I’ve heard of you, Regina. You’re Viscarro’s mom, right?”
Regina just sniffed, drifting around the club, peering at everything with obvious distaste.
“All right, she at least might halfway useful,” Nicolette said. “Ha. We three queens.” She snorted. “The Ice Queen, the Queen of the Dead, and the Witch Queen of Felport.”
“You’re more like the Lady of Misrule,” the Stranger said. “But you’ll have to do. What’s the plan?”
“The plan is, shut the fuck up, we’re getting a transmission here.” Nicolette walked across the dance floor, and the big screen over the bar flickered to life. At first, Marzi couldn’t make sense of the image, and then it resolved into something like a found-footage horror movie, a handheld camera jiggling around in a dark cavern of some kind. The camera spun around and focused on the dust-streaked features of a middle-aged man.
“Is that Mr. Beadle?” the Stranger said. “Where the hell is he?”
“Shush it,” Nicolette said. Marzi glanced at the Stranger, who scowled, her hand drifting toward the dagger in her coat. There were all kinds of politics here Marzi didn’t understand, but it was obvious these two women didn’t have much use for each other. This was clearly a “united against a common enemy” type of thing. Which was actually one of Marzi’s favorite kind of stories to write: the best arc of The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl was probably the one where Rangergirl and the tyrannical Aaron Burr joined forces to fight the Outlaw. There was a little more tension when you were living inside that kind of story, though.
“I found the fragments of the seal,” the man on the screen was saying. “I have reconstructed the symbols, and have transmitted them to Hamil’s team. They predate human language, though there are traces of a kind of proto-Aklo –”
“Save the etymological stuff for a scholarly paper, Beadle,” Nicolette interrupted. “Can those seals hold this thing, or what?”
“Hold it, yes. There’s no evidence to suggest how the ancients lured the Outsider into the vault in the first place, but if you can find a way to get the creature inside – yes, those symbols will hold it.”
“Whoa.” The Stranger stepped forward. “Beadle, are you in Death Valley?”
“Yes, Marla. Nicolette dispatched me straight away when she got your call.” He made a sour face. “I had to teleport – it was harrowing. Once I arrived I used forensic magic to piece together the magical prison your cultists destroyed when they released the Outsider. If we seek to hold the beast, after all, why not see how it was held before?”
“I... shit. I never thought to do that.”
“Of course you didn’t.” Nicolette shook her head. “You’re all about breaking shit, Marla. You’re crap when it comes to putting stuff back together.”
The Stranger took off her hat, wiped her brow, and put it back. “That’s... Hellfire. That’s a fair cop, Nicolette. This time anyway. So we can build a box to keep the Outsider in? So the only problem’s putting it in the box.”
“Shouldn’t be hard to set a trap,” Nicolette said. “We know where it’s going: the gazebo in Fludd Park. I had it looked at, Bowman. You gonna start paying me rent for keeping an entry to your realm in my city?”
“No more than I charge you rent for living in my multiverse,” Bradley said. “I’d advise your wizards to avoid trying to use the gazebo to get to my realm. The journey would be... unpleasant. Though, fortunately, quite brief.”
“Focus, people,” Marzi said. “We still have to get the Outsider into the box. We managed to trick it into a prison before. Of course, if the monster is smart, we might not be able to trick it the same way again.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Nicolette said. “Anything you can do, Marla, I can do better.”
Bradley in, and Just Outside, Felport
The psychic corps of Felport – the seers, sibyls, and oracles pledged to serve the chief sorcerer, guided by Bradley, because he knew what he was doing – got their first ping on the approaching monster in the morning two days after they arrived in Felport. Bradley had explained Cole’s idea to the psychic corps, getting them to blanket the area in constant surveillance and look for spots they couldn’t see, and it had finally worked: there was an impenetrable dead zone, moving toward them at the speed of a walking man.
Marla leapt to her feet from the futon when she got the word. “Thank the gods, even the ones I’m not fucking.” She and Bradley were staying in her dusty old apartment, in an abandoned building Marla technically still owned, though Nicolette was talking about having the whole structure demolished as soon as she had a spare moment.
Bradley rose from the armchair where he’d spent the past six-hour shift, hooked into the mental grid of Nicolette’s psychic monsters. “The Outsider’s a few miles outside of town, approaching from the West. Doesn’t seem to be in a big hurry.”
“Even so, I don’t know what took it so long.” Marla put on her coat and filled the pockets with pebbles. She’d spent the past few days enchanting the stones with who-knows-what nasty magics, b
ecause Nicolette wouldn’t let her take part in any of the planning. Nicolette had happily dragooned Regina, Marzi, Rondeau, and even Pelham, who had a surprising amount of tactical acumen, into the cause. Making Marla remain idle while her onetime home city was under threat was a really elegant way to fuck with her, Bradley had to admit. “Should’ve been here a couple days ago.”
“Maybe it took a detour to eat a river god in Mississippi or a slaughterhouse god in Chicago,” Bradley said. “You know, picking up a canapé or two on its way to the main buffet. We should be prepared for it to be stronger than before.”
“Road trip food. Right. I hope it didn’t get Reva. Who knows how well this thing can track gods? It got a whiff of the gazebo off of us easily enough.” She sighed. “If I could put the Outsider in a bottle, like I did with that nixie from San Franciso, it would make a handy monster-detector. Guess it’s too dangerous. I need another one, though. I don’t have Nicolette for a psychic bloodhound anymore.”
“How are you, ah, doing with all that? With her? The situation?”
Marla shook her head, then sat down to slip on her cowboy boots. “Nicolette... Damn it. She seems to have a handle on things. She’s got Felport running like a beautiful machine. As much as she’s tried to shut me out, to discourage people from talking to me, still, I can tell. The place is humming, and the sorcerous community has never been so coordinated. For me, getting them to do anything was always like herding cats, and also, the cats were on fire.”
“This Fisher King thing she did gave her a connection deeper than any you ever had here,” Bradley said. “The sorcerers are all connected to her, too, and her to them. It’s big magic.”
“Imagine if someone who didn’t suck had cast that kind of spell. If I’d done it, for instance. I would’ve been the greatest ruler this city had ever seen.”
Bradley smiled. “Yeah, but you wouldn’t have risked the spontaneous decapitations. I think this process needed to start with a terrible person who didn’t care about human lives. It’s kind of satisfying, in a way, don’t you think? Nicolette, the most selfish, small-minded, petty chaos witch I’ve ever met, turned into a supernaturally dedicated civil servant. She was trying to screw with you, but she got trapped in a new role in the process. Honestly, apart from how much she hates you, she hardly even seems all that warped and dysfunctional anymore.”
“Ha. I’m supposed to take comfort in that? She wanted to prove she could rule the city better than I could, and she is. At least, assuming she doesn’t fuck up this thing with the Outsider, she is. Gods. Anyway. Where are we needed?”
Bradley consulted the orders dropped into his brain by the psychic network. “You and me and Marzi get to be the welcoming committee. Nicolette says, quote, ‘Put up a good fight, and if Marla gets eaten in the process, that’s fine with me.’”
“She wishes. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. Come on.”
•
A car waited for them on the curb, a sleek black low-slung sedan of no identifiable make or model, its windows and windshield tinted a disturbingly opaque black, its engine idling.
I’m Sierra, a voice said in Bradley’s head. I’ll be your ride today. It sounded like the soothing voice of a good GPS system.
“What the fuck,” Bradley said. “Marla, this car is talking.”
The passenger door opened, and Marzi got out. “Hey, guys. Sierra says hop in.”
“Sierra.” Marla walked around the car. “What is this thing?”
“Nicolette found her in some junkyard.” Marzi said. “Just sitting up on cinderblocks. She put new tires on, and the car just... woke up. Sierra says she doesn’t remember where she came from.” Marzi shrugged. “Magical car. Drives herself. Heals damage like she’s alive. We’ve been hanging out. I am very cool and jaded about magic now.”
Marzi keeps trying to turn me into a stagecoach, the voice in Bradley’s head said, and he laughed. Marla frowned at him.
“Is it haunted or something?” Marla said. “You got a read on it, Bradley?”
“It is a car,” he said. “Not, like, a monster that looks like a car. Magical car, for sure. Beyond that... Not something I’ve ever encountered before.”
“Why is your name Sierra?” Marla said.
Why is your name Marla? the car replied, and Bradley and Marzi both laughed.
Marla rolled her eyes. “I don’t even want to know what she said. Psychics. Everywhere I look, psychics. Even the car is psychic. Fine. Sierra, take us to the edge of town.”
They climbed in – Marla and Bradley in back, Marzi up front, everyone avoiding the driver’s seat. There was no steering wheel anyway. The interior of the car was dark, the seats made of something soft and plush that wasn’t exactly leather. The engine didn’t roar, but the car leapt forward like it had some major power under the hood. Bradley wondered if there was even an engine in there, or something else.
“What’s the plan?” Marzi said.
“We set up on the road where the Outsider’s approaching, and we try to kill it. Bradley will boost your power, you’ll try to squeeze the Outsider down into something human, and I’ll stab it in the face over and over while you shoot it with your pistol.”
“Ah. I thought we were just a distraction detail, to lull it into a false sense of security or whatever.”
Bradley nodded. “We are – the main body of the assault is happening in the park – but the more we weaken it, the better chance the rest of the sorcerers will have to knock it on the ground long enough to get it sealed up in Beadle’s box. When we fight it, go all out.”
“I want to kill it.” Marla cracked her knuckles. “It would be pretty sweet to rob Nicolette of her big moment.”
“Glad to see we’re all working together in harmony,” Marzi said.
“Teamwork for the win,” Bradley agreed.
•
They parked under the trees outside of town, on a two-lane blacktop road lined with keep-away spells to keep the ordinaries off the route. The sun filtered down through the trees. Bradley and Marzi sat on Sierra’s hood while Marla paced around and did knife katas and muttered darkly to herself.
Marzi nodded in her direction. “That is one high-strung chick.”
“She comes by it honest. She feels responsible for the Outsider, because her cultists are the ones who set it free.”
“You have weird friends, dude.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” Something in the psychic network hooked up in his head tingled, an opacity where there’d been transparency before, and he slid off the car and stared down the road. Marzi joined him. “Someone’s coming.”
Marzi stepped out into the middle of the road, knife in her hand.
“We’d best make sure he’s someone manageable, then.” Marzi held out her hand, and Bradley took it. The link between them, prepared in a ritual earlier, activated, and his brain lit up like a crystal chandelier. Marzi’s mind was a great engine, and he was helping to take some of the load so it wouldn’t overheat. Or something. Metaphors weren’t his strong point.
The figure walking down the road toward them stumbled, shook its head, then continued, moving faster now. Marzi had locked onto it, made it more human, and thus more manageable. Maybe even killable.
“Sierra,” Marla called. “You want to go run that fucker down?”
Marzi and Bradley moved out of the way as Sierra’s engine purred. Marla stepped aside too, making an “after you” gesture.
The car accelerated faster than seemed possible given the physical laws of the universe, covering the few hundred yards between itself and the approaching Outsider seconds.
The Outsider didn’t dive out of the way, didn’t even flinch, and Bradley heard Marla mutter, “Oh, crap.”
The car hit the Outsider and then flipped, flying through the air and landing on its roof half in the ditch by the side of the road. The Outsider rose from a crouch, one of its arms dangling at an angle that suggested broken bones, but it seemed otherwise unharmed.
I’m upside down in a ditch, so I’ve been better, the car said. Kill that thing for me. It scratched up my paint.
“He shouldn’t be able to do that,” Marzi muttered. “I am squeezing him down so hard.”
“He must have eaten another god or two on the trip. He’s gotten stronger.” Bradley raised his voice. “Marla, be careful! He’s tougher now!”
The Outsider closed the distance, coming at a run now, and Marla stepped back into the middle of the road. “He ain’t shit!” she called.
The Outsider was close enough to see, now, still in a form caught somewhere between seedy and suave, dressed in an old-fashioned suit and a low-crowned top hat, with ostentatious rings twinkling on its fingers. “You again!” it called. “Come to escort me to the gazebo? It’s not necessary, really. I’ll find my own way.”
This time, Marla didn’t banter. She flung a handful of stones at the monster, and cacophony reigned.
Some of the pebbles burst into flame. Others exploded into shrapnel. A few landed on the ground and spun out tendrils of slime and spider silk and vines, crawling up the Outsider’s body and entangling it. The creature ducked, snarled, and lashed out with its fists. Black fire burst from the ground around it, destroying the entangling elements, and if any of the concussive stones had harmed the Outsider, it wasn’t letting on. While it was distracted, though, Marla moved in with the knife, slashing at the creature, making it dance back.
“Can’t get a clear shot.” Marzi was trying to flank the Outsider, pistol in her hand, but Marla was dancing around too much to give her an opening.