by Karen Chance
“The power play,” Lawrence said, materializing out of nothing right in front of me. “And even for a novice, that was pathetic.”
Behind him, memory-me made an “oh shit” face and launched herself back into the trench.
“Really? How’s this?” I asked, and kicked him viciously backward.
Because I might not be strong enough to kill Lawrence myself, but I had plenty of lethal memories that might.
As he was discovering.
I saw him fall into the scene, saw him land in a splash of mud and blood and half-rotten donkey parts. But I didn’t see him get up. Maybe because a barrage of artillery fire ripped across the scene a second later, whiting out everything.
Or maybe because I was running like hell.
Not back for the entrance, but farther, further in. Dodging around, looking for other memories, worse ones, because the son of a bitch wasn’t dead yet. No, not yet, or I’d be out of here. I ran past strafing gunfire and a stampede of horses and a crashing surf and—
And straight into the fist that came out of nowhere.
It looked a little different than it had a moment ago, blackened and bleeding, with bare knuckle bones protruding from ruined flesh. It matched the face above it, which was almost unrecognizable. Demon red eyes looked out of a mask of charred skin that had partially flaked off, including the part that had once covered the now hairless skull. One cheek was split open, the guard uniform he was wearing was smoking, and half of the breastplate had melted to the burnt torso.
It looked like Lawrence hadn’t come apart fast enough this time. But he hadn’t died, either. A fact he demonstrated by sending me staggering back against the floor. He tried to shove a boot through my skull next, but I grabbed it—hot, melting rubber, shit—and twisted. I heard his knee pop before I felt it, before he screamed and grabbed my hair, jerking me up and throwing me face-first into the wall.
Right before I whirled and kicked out with everything I had left, sending him flying back into another memory. Of an earthquake-fueled rock fall that had very nearly caved in my head once, a few hundred years ago. And then I turned and scrambled away, trying to look ahead and behind at the same time, my eyes watching half a mountain slough away into billowing dust, while my feet—
Splashed down in a puddle.
The puddle was on wet cement. The cement was in a warehouse. And the warehouse looked to be on the edge of what passed for civilization.
Shit. I immediately spun back around, looking for the way out, because I must have accidentally fallen through one of the flickering memories that formed the obstacle course outside. But there was no door, no square of boiling darkness, no furious pursuer.
Just a drab, water-stained wall, a couple of broken pallets and the puddle. The puddle was water. I looked up.
And a great drop of tar-laced rain hit me square in the face.
Great.
I looked back down, holding my eye and wondering: Now what?
I honestly had no idea. I was panting with exhaustion, my wrist was on fire, and now I was half blind. I wasn’t going to win a fight like this. If Lawrence found me, I was toast.
Of course, I probably was anyway. I didn’t recognize this place, so it must be one of Dorina’s memories. And since I didn’t even know how to navigate my own, the chances of figuring a way out of hers didn’t seem so great. So I went in instead, because it was either that or wait around to die.
Although it smelled like something already had.
Maybe a lot of somethings, judging by the stench. But it wasn’t the old, familiar stink of putrefaction that caught my attention as I passed behind a wall of crates. It was the fact that whatever had died in here wasn’t exactly—
Human.
I stopped abruptly, staring at the remains of what looked like hundreds of creatures, stacked against the far wall in cages three and four high.
Most were various species of fey I had encountered through the years, along with what might have been shifters. Others…I didn’t know about the others. And I doubted that anybody else would have, either. The monsters who had engineered these crossbreeds hadn’t been concerned with viability or quality of life or anything but their intended outcome.
I wondered how many creatures they had killed along the way.
I wondered if those hadn’t been the lucky ones.
Because it looked like they had just abandoned this place, once they’d finally achieved the result they wanted. Or maybe the Circle had gotten too close, and the conspirators had decided to walk away, leaving us another cache to find. Only we wouldn’t have learned much from this one.
Because they hadn’t bothered to open the cages before they left.
And the contents hadn’t managed it themselves. There were signs that a number had tried, biting and clawing at the bars, before succumbing to hunger or thirst. Or in a few cases, to their fellow experiments. But it didn’t look like any had made it out.
Or maybe I spoke too soon.
A bunch of boxes formed a tall line facing the cages, blocking off the view of at least half the wall of horrors. That was true even when I got close, drawn by morbid curiosity and a weird sense of hope. And found a woman kneeling on the floor.
Her head was bowed, but not in shadow. A beam of moonlight was filtering down from a high window, illuminating her like a spotlight. As a result, her face was mostly still visible.
And her face was mine.
I had a killer on my trail and, given his track record, he wouldn’t take long to find me. I should get moving, should try to find a defensible position. Should try to figure out how to fight something that could dust away to powder in the blink of an eye.
But I didn’t move. She didn’t seem to notice me, or even look up. But I…couldn’t look anywhere else.
She looked like a vampire.
I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but we weren’t twins, despite the superficials. She had my short dark hair, my features, my height, even my basic style of clothing. At least, the kind I wore when I wasn’t going to the party from hell: black jeans, a black tank top, a black leather jacket. She had on rubber-soled shoes instead of my usual ass-kicking boots, maybe because she didn’t need any help in that department.
And yet, if I’d seen her from across the room, I’d have sworn she was a vampire.
It was something in the way she held herself, so preternaturally still. Something in the way she squatted there, effortlessly balanced on just the toes of her feet, in a pose a prima ballerina would have tired of very fast. Something in the way she didn’t seem to breathe or blink quite the right number of times per minute.
Although the latter might have had something to do with the silent tears rolling down her face, unnoticed and unchecked.
I’d never seen a vamp cry before. And even though I wasn’t seeing it now, it looked like I was, and it threw me. Like this night, like this whole week, hadn’t done that enough already.
I was beginning to wonder if you could get so far off balance that you’d never quite make it back to true. I was starting to feel like that, and then she looked up. But not at me.
She was cradling something I hadn’t noticed because my eyes hadn’t left her face. Something with thin blond hair, soiled and tangled, a slight form, a dirty blue shirt or dress. Something—
Someone.
Child.
The images slammed into me, most of them too fast to process, but I got the gist. She’d found the girl; she’d lost the girl. And had been looking for her ever since. Searching the underbelly of the city, places like the one where she’d found her, places like this. And cutting a swath through an entire chain of slavers, smugglers and Black Circle members in the process.
There hadn’t been a civil war in the smuggling community. They hadn’t savaged each other and then thrown the bodies into the portals. That had been Dorina on a rampage, every time I went to sleep, looking for the child she’d lost.
And finally found.
“To
o late,” I mouthed along with her.
She clutched the girl harder, and her face was so open, so easy to read. More so than mine ever was. She didn’t mask her feelings, didn’t hide behind sarcasm or bad jokes. Didn’t pretend. She hurt; she cried.
And I felt the earth shift a little more under my feet, centuries of preconceptions crumbling beneath the foundations.
I didn’t know who I was anymore. Didn’t know who she was. It was strange to be facing the end of my life, and realize that I’d never really known myself at all.
Or the memory I was suddenly seeing.
The golden footsteps I had followed across the city ended at her body.
She was crumpled on the floor, near the line of cages where she must have collapsed. I did not know why she had come here. Perhaps hoping to free the others? If so, she had been too late.
Like us.
“Not quite,” the creature with me murmured, his long wings sweeping the ground as he knelt a few yards away.
And held out a hand.
And from the body rose…a golden child, happy and laughing and skipping over to the shining one, who opened his arms for her.
I stared as he picked her up, this creature made of light. Like him, I realized. I didn’t say it aloud, but he nodded.
“They stole her from my people.”
“Why?” I asked, my voice hoarse.
“For the same reason they stole all of these.” He glanced around. “They wished to make a weapon, to give themselves an edge in a war. They needed something that would work in Faerie and on Earth. But there are few things that walk the Divide well enough for their purposes.”
“The Divide?”
“Earth is the highest of the hells; Faerie is the lowest of the heavens. My people originated in one realm and…moved…to the other. Therefore our magic works in both.”
I didn’t understand. I just reached for the child, but he kept a hand on her arm. She looked up at him, bright-eyed, curious.
But he shook his head. “She must return to her people.”
“Then…she is not dead?”
“The body is. But she will one day be strong enough to make another, since her essence was not scattered. Thanks to you.”
I didn’t understand that, either. I didn’t understand anything. Except that the child would not be here.
She would not be family.
“You have a family,” he said softly. “More than you know.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t speak. The child didn’t, either, but she pulled away from him. And this time, he let her go.
She came over to me, and looked down at the body I still held. And then up at me. And smiled.
And placed a soft kiss, light, light like air, on my cheek.
“To help you bridge your own divide,” the Irin murmured.
I looked at him, hurting, defeated. “I don’t understand,” I cried.
“You will.”
Something clattered to the floor behind me, loud in the silence. I jumped and spun—and saw no one. Just an echoing, dark warehouse, cold and empty and completely still.
And the same was true when I turned back a moment later.
And found myself alone.
The woman—Dorina—was gone. And so were the child and the Irin. No sign of them remained, not a scent, not even an impression in the dust. I stared, wondering if my fevered brain had dreamed them up.
Like the hubcap that suddenly clattered to the floor at my feet, shiny and metallic and reflecting—
“Damn.”
I started moving just as the whole towering line of boxes began to tip over, coming after me in wave after wave of cardboard. And falling machine parts, which seemed to constitute most of the boxes’ contents. Parts that were glittering in the moonlight and striking off concrete and about to cave my head in if I didn’t get out of the way.
Which would have been easier if they hadn’t been coming from both directions.
I stopped, turned, and went back the other way, but found no escape. Except for one. I dove into an empty cage, trying to avoid seeing what was on either side in favor of watching what was in front. Because I knew who was going to be coming through that fall of destruction, and I needed to be out of here before he trapped me in—
And then it wasn’t a problem anymore. When he suddenly materialized out of nothing in front of my makeshift bunker and snatched me out. And while his face was still a blackened mess, he must have been busy healing the important stuff. Because my feet weren’t even touching the ground.
“I just want you to know,” Lawrence said amiably, “when I am consul, your father will be the first to die.”
“Then he’ll live a long time,” I gasped, because the hand holding me was around my throat. “The Senate remains.”
“For the moment,” Lawrence said, frowning, because I guess I wasn’t on script. I was supposed to be cowed and begging or awed and overcome by his brilliance.
Instead, I decided to go out as I’d lived, a bitch to the very end, and materialized a stake into my hand. Only to get thrown at the remaining boxes. Which hadn’t budged because they contained what felt like solid rock.
I slid off and was jerked back within striking range, because Lawrence wasn’t afraid of me. And why should he be? I was beat-up, bruised and bloodied, and had the use of only one hand. Even if I managed to slip the wooden sliver into that cold, dead heart, there would be no way to slice his throat before he snapped mine.
And he knew it.
A smile cracked those burnt lips, causing a little blood to ooze down his chin. “I think this is what they call checkmate.”
And it would have been. Except for the figure who suddenly rose up behind him, very real in the darkness. With black, black eyes that met mine.
And locked.
I swallowed, and Lawrence eased up slightly, waiting for my final pleas, I suppose.
He would wait a while.
“I don’t think…that’s a game…for three,” I whispered, and saw his eyes go wide.
Right before he threw me away, trying to get space to turn.
But the boxes that hemmed me in did the same to him, and there was nowhere to go. I hit the ground, but turned in time to see a shining blade slice cleanly through his jugular. He knocked his assailant away, sending her sailing halfway across the length of the warehouse, but I was already moving.
I lunged off the ground, ducked under a fist that disintegrated before it could touch me, as Lawrence’s patented trick rippled inward from the extremities. He was disintegrating, but not as quickly as before, his injuries taking a toll. And the target I needed was still solid. He stumbled back, trying to buy himself another second, even as his legs foamed away into nothingness.
Even as I fell on him, snarling.
And slammed my stake home.
Epilogue
It was amazing what twenty-four hours could do, I thought, gazing out over the now pristine ballroom.
Not that there weren’t still signs of the battle. Tapestries were draped around the walls, hiding missing marble panels and weapons’ fire, and lending the room an odd Gypsy vibe. Potted plants had sprouted here and there, too, covering gaps in the floor where broken tiles had been pried out and not yet replaced. And one of the great chandeliers was missing, obviously too damaged for repair, leaving a strange patch of dimmer light in the center of the floor, where I stood.
That was okay, though. That was actually my only saving grace. Not that a shadow did much to conceal me from the hundreds of sharp vampire eyes scattered around what remained of the ballroom, but it was better than nothing. Especially since I had the vague impression I might be listing slightly to the left.
I straightened up, trying to look nonchalant, and caught an eye roll from Ray in the family box.
He was easy to spot because he was hanging over the side, dressed to kill in a tux so sleek it simply had to be bespoke. I didn’t know where he’d gotten it, but I suspected that Louis-Cesare’s tailor wa
s being taken advantage of. I didn’t know, though, since I hadn’t seen Ray. I hadn’t seen anybody much, since I woke up an hour ago, after apparently being out of it for most of a day.
And I pretty much still was. I’d been woken up, still half asleep and dreaming about little golden footprints leading me out of a long, dark tunnel. And then dressed in a scarlet, bias-cut gown that was far too attention-getting for my taste, only nobody had asked me.
They hadn’t asked me when they dragged me in here, either, surrounded by a bunch of guards I didn’t need except as props to keep me on my feet. Only then, the guards had disappeared, blending back into the crowd and leaving me alone. And facing a balcony stuffed with new faces.
The new senators had been inducted while I slept, I guessed. I recognized the old crew, the ones too wily or too strong or just too damned hard to kill for the war to have removed them. There was Marlowe, looking like a guy on his way to a fancy dress ball, in full-on Elizabethan regalia. Or maybe Stuart era; I always got the styles mixed up. But the velvets and laces didn’t make him look any less deadly, maybe because of the searing look he was sending me.
It wasn’t his usual glare; I didn’t know what it was. I looked blearily back for a minute, then decided I didn’t care. Because right next to him was Louis-Cesare.
He was in a tux as fine as Ray’s, probably because the same guy had made it. It was a break with tradition, assuming he was on the Senate again—which is what it looked like to me, ban or no. He was in one of the crimson-backed chairs everybody was using, the ones that looked more like thrones. There were twelve of them on the balcony, six on either side of the consul’s massive no-doubt-about-it throne.
He was also looking a little…antsy. His hands kept clenching and unclenching on the carved arms of his chair, like he was hyped up on caffeine or something. Only it couldn’t be, because caffeine had no effect on vampires. I didn’t know what did affect vampires, but it looked like a lot of them had had it. Not on the Senate, but in the crowd, which was looking less than perfectly composed. The crowd was actually looking kind of like fans in a football stadium right before the deciding points are scored—jumpy, anxious, breathless.