“Shit!” I said, and something like half a hundred tentacles shot through the air towards me.
Riordan intercepted them, moving in a blur, his Shadowmorph blade flicking right and left. He sliced through the glistening black tentacles as they reached for me.
“Nadia!” he said. “Take him! I’ll keep the tentacles off you!”
Right. First things first. I cast a spell, gritting my teeth as I strained, and a curtain of white mist rose up before Riordan and Caina’s prone form, hardening into a wall of glittering diamond-hard ice twenty feet tall and one foot thick. That slowed the maelogaunt’s barrage of tentacles long enough for me to cast another spell. I called a sphere of flame and hurled it in an arc that took it over the top of the wall, and if my aim was right, should have landed right in the maelogaunt’s center of mass.
The sphere exploded, and for an instant, the ice wall glowed yellow-orange. A roar of fury filled the gymnasium, and my ice wall exploded outward, icy shards raining in all directions. I cast a kinetic Shield large enough to protect myself, Riordan, and Caina from the rain of broken shards, and the maelogaunt surged through the wreckage, tentacles lashing like whips. I hurled another volley of lightning globes, and the maelogaunt cast a Shield spell around itself as Riordan sliced through the tentacles that reached for us. My lightning sparked and snarled off the Shield, and I felt the raw power of the maelogaunt’s defense. Whatever the maelogaunt had become, whatever it had done to Harper, it had become much stronger.
Well, when strength wouldn’t work, misdirection might. In fact, I preferred it.
I cast the Splinter Mask spell, and eleven perfect illusionary doubles of me appeared around the gymnasium. Harper’s head whipped back and forth as he tried to keep all of them in sight at once, and at my mental command, all the duplicates began running in different directions at once, casting spells as they did so. The maelogaunt began working spells, throwing bolts of fire and lashing its tentacles like whips. My illusionary duplicates were not robust, and a single hit from a tentacle or spell could disrupt them.
But they did hold the creature’s attention, which gave me all the time I need to cast my next spell. Mist swirled around my hands, and I pushed them out to hurl a lance of ice as long as I was tall and as thick as my leg. It shot across the gymnasium and slammed into Harper’s torso. His head snapped back with a scream, and the maelogaunt’s tentacles lashed like loose ropes in a storm. I wondered how much of Harper was left in the creature, or if he had been overwhelmed entirely by the power of the maelogaunt.
One of the tentacles lashed back and coiled around one of the strands of the web of mist behind the creature. I thought the maelogaunt intended to unravel the web and flee, but the misty strands exploded out to fill the gymnasium.
I snarled a curse and stepped forward, fearing that I was caught, but I walked right through the strands. Nevertheless, I felt the chill, and I also felt the maelogaunt’s web probing at my memories, digging into my head. To hell with that. The maelogaunt was wounded, and its tentacles kept jerking and twitching. If I could get a good blow to Harper’s head or chest, I thought that would finish the creature off.
Except I started to see things in the mist.
My brother Russell lay dying in his bed. He had always been a bit on the gaunt side thanks to his frostfever, but Morvilind’s cure spells had kept the worst of the disease’s ravages at bay. But now he was nothing more than a skeleton draped in skin, his eyes glittering and mad in his skull-like face.
“Nadia,” he croaked. “I thought you were going to save me. I thought…I thought…”
No, no, that wasn’t right. I had saved Russell, hadn’t I? The High Queen had arranged for Mr. Vander to cure him on the day she recruited me as her shadow agent. I knew Russell was alive and well and in Milwaukee. But he was in front of me, dying in his bed, right here and now.
I shook my head, trying to clear it as fog rolled through my memories. Russell was alive and well. I knew it. I had just talked to him on the phone yesterday. But he was dying in front of me. No, this was an illusion the maelogaunt’s stupid magic had spun up.
I snarled and hurled a globe of fire, and the image of Russell shattered into nothingness. I was back in the gymnasium, glaring at the wounded maelogaunt, and I started to pull together power for another spell.
Except the gym vanished, and I was back in the Eternity Crucible.
My breath sucked through my clenched teeth, my stomach twisting with remembered dread and agony. Nothing had changed. It looked the same as I remembered, the deserted small town ringed in wooded hills, the sky that burned, the endless sense of being watched. I staggered a few steps back, bile burning in the back of my throat. No, no, this wasn’t right. I had gotten out of the Eternity Crucible. I had escaped, stopped the Rebels, burned the Archons, married Riordan.
Or maybe I hadn’t.
Maybe none of that had really happened. Maybe it had been a mad dream, and I had never escaped the Crucible, not ever, and I never would…
I turned my head, looking for anthrophages, and saw Riordan.
Riordan? No, wait, that wasn’t right. Riordan hadn’t been in the Eternity Crucible with me. But he was here now, and he was staring at me with horror.
“Riordan?” I said.
“No, that didn’t happen,” he said, staring at me. Or maybe at something only his eyes could see. “She survived. She didn’t die. The Sky Hammer didn’t kill her. I got there in time, I made Arvalaeon open the gate, I…
I realized that something was wrong with my mind. No, someone was messing with my mind. The maelogaunt, that was it. I had endured scarier things than some pompous doctor turned into a giant tentacle monster, and I wasn’t losing to some idiot who turned into a monster because he thought the chairwoman of the board didn’t appreciate his genius sufficiently.
I snarled and unleashed the insane rage that I kept bottled up, the fury that had come bubbling out when I had fought the anthrophages in the cavern. That rage had let me survive the Eternity Crucible with something that sort of resembled sanity, but I had to keep a lid on it because otherwise I would go nuts and be unable to function.
The image of the Eternity Crucible wavered and blurred, and suddenly I was half inside the twisted gymnasium and half inside the Crucible, both images superimposed over each other. I saw the maelogaunt creeping back, black slime dripping from the wound I had punched through its chest, and I felt the full weight of its attention and will hammering at my burning mind.
The mental attack should have collapsed my defenses, but I was too pissed off to care.
“Hey, asshole!” I screamed. “I heard Andromache Kardamnos said you were a crappy doctor! I heard she said the nurses were more competent than you!”
That definitely got the attention of whatever remained of Harper’s mind inside the creature. The maelogaunt snarled, and a globe of lightning howled towards me. I got a Shield spell up and deflected it, and started shrieking insults at the creature, everything I could think of to say.
I wanted its full attention on me.
Because I saw a flash of silver light in the corner of my eye.
###
Caina staggered back to her feet.
Her headache was titanic. Some of it was that her head had bounced off the gym floor. Some of it was the amount of magical power pouring out from the maelogaunt, which shone like fire to the vision of the valikarion. It was overwhelming, and just looking at it made her head hurt.
But that didn’t matter.
She saw Nadia and Riordan facing the maelogaunt, saw the tendrils of the creature’s magic wrapping around them. They were both fighting it, but Nadia had wounded the maelogaunt, and the creature was struggling for its survival. Its whole attention was bent upon Nadia.
So it didn’t notice as Caina glided up to it. She walked through the tendrils of mist, but they did not touch her. Mind-affecting magic could not harm a valikarion. Closer and closer she came as the maelogaunt spun out more tendrils of it
s web to attack Nadia and Riordan.
Then the head that had once belonged to Geoffrey Harper started to turn, but it was too late. Caina leaped up, slashed her valikon across his throat, and then plunged the silver sword into the chest wound. Harper’s mouth yawned wide in a silent scream, black slime pouring down his chest and stomach. The maelogaunt thrashed and fought to cast another spell, but with the valikon piercing its flesh, the creature could not summon any magical power.
The maelogaunt shuddered once more, and then collapsed dead at Caina’s feat. The tentacles went limp and unspooled across the floor. The images of the newborns winked out of existence as the link was broken, and the web of mist itself unraveled a few seconds later. Andromache and Winston fell to the floor. Caina really hoped they were still alive.
She turned, her valikon burning in her right hand, and saw Nadia and Riordan hurrying towards her.
“You okay?” said Nadia. “Thought you were dead.” That crazed look had come back into her eyes, and she looked on the verge of exploding. She took a shuddering breath as Riordan put a hand on her shoulder, and her eyes grew calmer. “The way your head hit the floor…”
“Nasty lump,” said Caina, “and I won’t deny that I feel positively dreadful, but I’ll live. What did the maelogaunt do to you?”
Nadia grinned that humorless rictus of a grin. “Damned things showed me some bad memories.” Some actual mirth touched the smile. “But what the hell. Lived through those memories once before, I can do it again, right?”
“Or things that never were,” said Riordan, his hand still on his wife’s shoulder. Caina wondered what the maelogaunt had shown him and decided that she didn’t want to know. There was a haunted look in those dark eyes that seemed out of place on his grim features.
“Right,” said Nadia. “Well, let’s see if the rich boat lady and her husband are still alive…”
Caina blinked. “Rich boat lady?”
“Andromache Kardamnos,” said Nadia with some asperity. “I know who she is, I’m just in a bad mood. I’ve got those physical links back to Earth I took from the HVAC room, so we just need to find a good location, and then I can open a rift way…”
The ground heaved, and a strange groaning filled the gymnasium. Caina stumbled and caught her balance, and cracks glowing with gray light spread across the floor and ceiling. Pieces of the steel rafters fell from the ceiling and shattered against the floor as if they had been made of glass.
“Uh,” said Nadia. “So we killed the maelogaunt. What happens to its domain when it’s dead?”
“It collapses,” said Riordan.
“Guess we’re opening a rift way right here,” said Nadia.
Caina looked at Andromache. “I’ll help you move them…”
“No need,” said Riordan, and he jogged to them. He stooped and picked up Andromache under one arm and Winston under another, carrying them like they were bags of salt. Caina wondered how in the hell he was strong enough to do that, but then she saw that his eyes had gone solid black. He was drawing heavily on his Shadowmorph for strength.
Even through her crushing headache, she felt the flicker of desire. She marveled again at the self-control it took to function as a Shadow Hunter.
“Okay,” said Nadia as another steel beam shattered against the ground. “Let’s hope this rift way takes us someplace pleasant. Go!”
The curtain of gray mist rose up before her and opened into a rift way. Beyond Caina glimpsed a street and the headlights of a car, so at least the rift way hadn’t deposited them in the wilderness somewhere. Riordan hurried through it, carrying Andromache and Winston, and Caina went through next, Nadia a half-step behind her.
The rift way snapped closed, and Caina caught her balance and looked around.
She was standing on a sidewalk next to a four-lane street with a median. Over the sidewalk rose a domed building with the look of a courthouse or some sort of government office. It was nighttime, wherever they were, and a few cars hissed up and down the street. American license plates, Caina noted, though she didn’t recognize the state.
Riordan lowered Andromache and Winston to the ground with a grunt and then wiped his forehead. Carrying two adults at a dead lift must have been a strain even for a Shadow Hunter’s strength.
“Do you know where we are?” said Caina.
“Yeah.” Nadia wiped sweat from her forehead in a similar gesture to Riordan’s. Likely opening a rift way was as much of a strain as carrying two unconscious adults. “We’re in St. Paul. Uh, that’s the Minnesota State Capitol.” She waved a hand at the domed building. “So at least we’re in the United States. But we’re going to have a bit of a trip back to New York. God, I want a cigarette.”
Andromache let out a long groan and sat up, rubbing her head, and next to her Winston stirred.
“You should probably explain things to them,” said Riordan.
“Good idea,” said Caina. “Then we need to figure out how to get back to New York.”
“She’s the rich boat lady,” said Nadia. “Ask her for a ride.”
“Caina?” said Andromache. “What the bloody hell is going on? Why am I outside? Where are we?”
“St. Paul,” said Caina.
“St. Paul?” said Andromache, incredulous. “How did we get to Minnesota?”
“Well,” said Caina. “It’s a long story…”
“I’ll summarize,” said Nadia. “Your Chief of Medicine hated your guts. So, he made a pact with a maelogaunt from the Shadowlands. He kidnapped you and we followed, so we killed the creature. In the process, its domain started to collapse, so we needed to take the first rift way out and ended up in Minnesota.”
Andromache gaped at her, mouth hanging open.
“I say,” murmured Winston.
“Any questions?” said Nadia.
***
Chapter 10: Reconcile
I’ll say this about Andromache Kardamnos. The woman might have had the personality of a food processor set at full speed, but she knew how to pay her debts.
She flew us back to New York. On her private jet, no less, once she had summoned it from New York. I had never actually flown on a plane before, since planes, trains, and zeppelins all required ID, and my jobs for Morvilind had kept me moving across the country anonymously. (I had been on a helicopter a few times, but that was with either Arvalaeon or the Rebels, so I hadn’t enjoyed the experience at all.) I have to admit, I liked flying. At least flying on a private jet.
The food was so good I even managed to keep it down.
“Commercial airline travel isn’t nearly as nice,” said Riordan, sitting next to me. He had graciously allowed me to have the window seat, which I had claimed by the expedient of rushing to it and sitting down first. I supposed the way I gaped out the window at the passing countryside was a bit gauche, but I didn’t care. This was my first time on a plane, so by God I was going to enjoy it.
“Probably not,” I said. “Like a cross-country bus, but in the air.”
I sipped coffee and watched the countryside go by. A few minutes later Caina sat across from us. She looked a little haggard, but she didn’t have a concussion.
“I just talked with the High Queen,” she said. “Her Majesty is pleased with how things turned out.”
“Well, good,” I said.
“She has a message for you,” said Caina. “I’m supposed to thank you for your assistance in this matter.” She smiled. “As if I would not have done that myself.”
“Always good to be on the right side of the boss, I suppose,” I said.
“And a message for you,” said Caina to Riordan. “She is pleased that you burned that copy of the Summoning Codex.” It had been the first thing he had done after Andromache had found a phone and started giving orders to her minions.
“Good,” said Riordan. “That book was too dangerous to leave around. If Harper hadn’t found that, he might have been just another bitter man instead of a mutated corpse in the Shadowlands.”
; We made it back to New York later that day. Andromache and Winston thanked us again, which included a payment of ninety thousand dollars to the Shadow Hunters on Riordan’s behalf. (Andromache knew the account number, so I guess she had hired my husband’s organization before.) We took a taxi back to the hospital, retrieved the SUV, and drove to Riordan’s condo in Manhattan.
Later that night we sat on the couch, watching an old movie. It was about the Crusades, and while I wasn’t sure, I wondered if it was based on one of Riordan’s books. Well, I say we were sitting. Riordan was sitting, but I was lying down with my head resting in his lap. That doesn’t sound comfortable, but it was. I felt…calm, and at peace in a way I rarely did.
“What did you think of Caina?” I said.
“Competent,” said Riordan. “Good at what she does. Quite brave.”
“I saw her check you out a few times,” I said.
He smiled. “While that would be flattering, I can’t take credit for it. That would be the work of my Shadowmorph. You were almost always looking at the same time, I might add.”
“Yeah, but you’re mine, so it’s okay.”
Riordan hesitated. “Mostly, though…she seemed sad.”
I thought about what Caina had told me, how she wanted children but couldn’t have them. I decided that was too private to repeat.
“The first time I met her,” I said, “she said she lost someone close to her. A lover, I think.”
“I used to be like her,” said Riordan, voice quiet. He didn’t often talk about his first wife and his one other long-term relationship. Both women had tried to kill him, one at the behest of the Rebels, the second when her Shadowmorph had driven her insane. “I threw myself into my work. Partly for something to do, and partly because I would be so busy I didn’t have time to feel anything.”
“What changed?” I said.
He smiled. “I met this plucky thief who gave me her telephone number.”
Cloak & Ghost: Lost Gate Page 12