by Marc Zicree
And there was this: Why would a building that was all castle keep, with a moat at the front door and a dragon guarding the treasure, have unlocked doorways that let little old us waltz in and out? The answer was obvious: we’d been shuffled, cut, and dealt like a pack of playing cards. And the only question worth asking at this point—the $64,000 question, as Goldman would say—was: Why? What did Primal want? Really.
At the seventh-floor landing, we paused to survey the fire exit. The open fire exit.
Oh, this was just too damn convenient.
Doc caught my arm and turned me around to face him. He raised a hand to the torn front of my shirt, fingering the stained denim. “Is this blood?”
“It’s nothing, really.”
He pushed the fabric aside to bare the welts Clay had left. “These are claw marks. What in the name of God is in that place?”
“Nothing a can of mace wouldn’t cure. It’s fine, really. I just had a disagreement with somebody over my … charms.” Yeah, and I said it with a straight face, too.
Behind me Howard made a snuffling noise that sounded an awful lot like laughter.
I turned on him. “You got a problem?”
He shook his head.
“Good. Weapons?”
He just grinned at me, baring a mouthful of incredibly sharp teeth. Would’ve done a T-Rex proud.
“How about you?” I asked Doc.
In answer, he reached up under his jacket and pulled out his knife. It was about six inches long—a very effective weapon in the right hands.
“That’ll do,” I told him. “But only if you’re prepared to use it.”
The look he gave me was grim. “I am prepared.”
Yeah, but for what? I could’ve shared my certainty that we were stepping into a trap, that there were too many open doors in this place. I didn’t. What good would it have done? Instead I said, “Back at the Preserve … I wish I’d realized … I just wish there were more time.”
He smiled. “There is always time,” he said, then turned and walked into the darkness of the seventh floor.
God, let him be right, I thought, and stepped through after him.
TWENTY-SIX
DOC
We were smothered in cold, clammy darkness the mo-ment we entered the building, and made our way along a corridor that seemed to go forever up its north side. When at last we turned into the transverse hallway and the carpet ended, our footsteps made scrapes and whispers on the marble sheathing. Amplified and echoed by the escalator galleries, it seemed as if an army trod the halls. This was not such a bad thing, I reasoned. At least we should be able to hear as well as we were heard.
We turned from the escalators into a broad hallway that glowed with eerie green light and whose walls seemed to run wet with liquid. Colleen slid her crossbow out of its harness and set a bolt. I put a hand out to stay her.
“Don’t worry,” she said, her eyes probing the shadows between the tiny rivers of green light. “I’ll make damn sure what I’m shooting at before I empty this thing.” She turned her head toward me, green luminance washing across her face and into her eyes. “It looks like a haunted house. You ever been in a haunted house, Doc? Besides the Wishart place, I mean.”
“No. Never. I have been in field hospitals, though, in Afghanistan. When there was bombing, they would extinguish all the lights, and it would be this dark and this silent between explosions. It smelled like this. Like decay.”
“Cheery thought. We’re gonna have to work on that attitude, Viktor.”
I should not want to smile. Not here. “Thank you,” I said. “De nada.”
“I been in haunted houses,” Howard said. “Holy Family put on a good one at Halloween. Used to like ’em.”
Colleen let out a crack of laughter that echoed off the living walls. “The Holy Family put on a haunted house?”
Howard blinked at her, eyes like pale marbles in the wash of sickly light. “The church—over on Roosevelt.”
I found I could not tear my eyes from the strange green capillaries. They reminded me of blood vessels. A network of veins beneath the skin of …
Colleen was right. I needed to work on my attitude.
We went down the broad, bleeding hallway, Colleen at point, me slightly behind, Howard watching our backs. I could not say I was entirely comfortable with him there.
We had not gone far when we began to see vague patches of radiance moving behind the walls. As we worked our way down the hall, turning this way and that, they began to take recognizable form, as if each turn peeled away an obscuring layer of film. Flares—dozens of them—floated somehow behind these glazed walls like bright fish in an aquarium.
“What is this?” Colleen’s voice oozed out in a whisper. “Some kind of giant stasis chamber? Cryogen— Cryo— Oh, hell, you know what I mean.”
“Cryonics,” I said. “And no, if it were something like that, it would no longer be working. This is not science, Colleen. This is something else.”
She moved to stand next to one of the glistening walls, staring up at the bright, blurred figures. “It’s like an aquarium.”
Like. Like an aquarium, like a stasis chamber, like a haunted house. It was like nothing we’d ever seen or even imagined, but still we tried to tell ourselves that it was. In this way we fooled ourselves into thinking we could grasp it, could deal with it. To do otherwise would have been a form of surrender.
We turned as the walls willed, and I came to think that perhaps they moved with us, changing shape to guide us deeper into the labyrinth. I was hopelessly turned about by the time we heard other voices somewhere in the maze. We couldn’t make out what they said, but they were raised in high emotion and punctuated by the ring of metal against stone.
“That’s Cal,” Colleen said, and picked up her pace.
Without warning we emerged into a square chamber twice the size of Cal’s entire Manhattan apartment. Cal and Goldie were there, faced off against each other like boxers. Cal had drawn his sword; Goldie gestured emphatically at the wall. Enid and Magritte were nowhere in sight.
“You’re wasting time, Cal,” Goldie was saying. “This is a dead end.”
“No. This is the way, dammit! There was a doorway here—I saw it. It closed up. We’re being intentionally blocked. They’ve given us one way out—back the way we came. I intend to go this way!”
He wielded the sword, and for an instant I thought he meant to use it on Goldie. But instead he swung it at the wall, connecting with a sound like the ringing of a bell. Sparks flew, the room seemed to shudder, thunder rolled around us.
I froze, struck with the impossible idea that the building was a living thing and that Cal had wounded it. Colleen shouted and vaulted across the chamber, Howard and I strung out behind.
Relief flooded Cal’s face at the sight of her. “Colleen— thank God—”
“What’re you doing?” she asked, gaze darting into the dark corners of the chamber. “Where’re Magritte and Enid?”
Cal stared at her, seemingly stunned. “I’m trying to get to Tina.” He pointed up at the wall, his eyes bright and sharp, his face gaunt in the play of light and shadow. A flare drifted there behind the dark, translucent surface—hair and clothing wafting as if in a breeze.
Colleen and I both stared up at her. Her long hair was the color of moon on wheat; large azure smudges marked her eyes; her skin had the sheen of sunlight through milk glass. She was a watercolor, no feature distinct enough to recognize.
Colleen grasped Cal’s arm. “Where are Magritte and Enid?” she repeated. “They were with Doc. They got up here before we did. They should be here.”
“Magritte is fine,” said Goldie absently. “She’s nearby. I can feel her.”
His lack of concern raised a chill in my breast. “Goldie, are you sure?” I asked. “Do you trust what you feel in this place?”
The look he gave me I have seen often in the eyes of men who wake to find themselves paralyzed. “I think maybe I’m a little fuck
ed up right now. Hard to tell.”
“But why aren’t they here?” asked Colleen.
Howard made a funny noise somewhere between a whimper and a growl. “Place has a mind of its own. Does what it wants.”
Yes, and it had wanted us to come here.
Goldie murmured something under his breath and wandered off, gazing at the walls, trailing his fingertips across them. I shuddered. I had set my hands to the most horrible wounds imaginable, but the thought of touching the green blood of the Tower made me reel.
Cal was staring at Howard as if the import of his words had finally struck him. After a moment he uttered a growl of frustration and stabbed his sword point first into the floor. It gouged out chips of stone and sent them dancing across the polished surface. He dropped to his haunches behind it, pressing his forehead to the hilt, his lips moving.
Did he pray? I strained to hear him, catching the whispered words.
“Come on, Griffin, use the Force. Think, think, think.”
As if on cue, flute music trilled—a high, mournful melody from the near corner of the room. Goldie, wooden flute at his lips, meandered back and forth, playing. The building rumbled as if in response, vibration passing through the floor beneath our feet.
Cal glanced up at him. “Damn,” he murmured, then turned his eyes to the dully gleaming flare behind the wall. “Is that Tina? I look at her and I see Tina. Goldie sees Tina. Tell me what you see, Doc.”
“I must be honest with you, Calvin. I see a flare who may or may not be your sister. Her features aren’t clear enough for certainty.”
“Colleen?”
She made an impatient gesture. “Yeah. I’d have to agree with Doc. I can’t tell who she is. Look, can we get out of here?” “Sha—zam!”
Goldie’s shout brought us all about, pulses pounding. We turned in time to see him disappear into the wall, grinning. “Oh, shit,” said Colleen. “Not again.”
But Goldie reappeared immediately, beckoning to us with the flute. “Don’t lollygag, folks. Let’s go.”
We moved in unison to the place where he stood, and found a doorway where before there had been none.
“What did you do?” Cal asked.
“You heard Howie: the place has a mind of its own. If it has a mind, the mind can be tricked. Right?” There was an exultant gleam in his dark eyes. He bowed, flourishing the flute. “After you.”
We went through the new doorway into another corridor. When it dead-ended in a few yards, Goldie played another doorway and another. We drew nearer to the flare, spiraling toward her. She grew brighter, clearer, until any of us who had known Tina might recognize her… if we could trust the testimony of our own eyes in this place. Still, looking at her I could believe this was the wraith-child I had treated in Manhattan. Or perhaps I only wanted to believe it.
At the final barrier we stood, listening to muted thunder rolling around us, while Goldie played Kevin Elk Sings’s flute. In the space beyond, the flare that might be Tina held out her arms to us.
Then the barrier was gone and we were through into a long, narrow room from which the ceiling seemed to have been blown away. Wires and cables had been ripped free and in some places hung nearly to the floor. There were a number of flares here, most of them hovering high above us amid the tangle of wiring and mangled ceiling tiles. They seemed not even to mark our passing.
Tina, or what we hoped was Tina, floated against the wall in a near corner. She pivoted to look at us, and Cal rushed toward her, arms outstretched. She didn’t come down to meet him, but merely hung there, just beyond his reach, looking down, her face devoid of expression.
“Tina? It’s me. It’s Cal.” His voice shattered on the words; his arms reached up to her.
“It’s Cal,” she repeated, her voice seeping out in a hushed monotone.
“Tina, I’ve found a place. A place you’ll be safe from the Source. A home.”
“Home?” she echoed.
“Come down, please. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” “Afraid,” she echoed, and turned her head toward the far end of the room.
Cal mirrored the movement, sickly green light licking across his face. Out of the gloom an oily bloodied spray arced outward to wrap itself around the bright flare. Cal cried out and leapt back, wrenching his sword from its scabbard, wielding it in both hands. There was nothing he could do. The crimson stain invaded the flare aura and altered it, polluted it. And the poor child, writhing in agony, moaned Cal’s name.
He shrieked rage and launched himself toward the source of the red power, Goldie in his wake.
Something rose up out of the darkness there. Something huge and bright—the titanic golden statue of Nebuchadnez-zar’s dream. I knew this must be Primal, and I suspected I already knew the penalty for failing to offer veneration. It raised gleaming arms and the building rocked. I kept my feet with difficulty, but Cal and Goldie, in frantic motion, tumbled to the floor.
It spoke then, twisting thunder into words. “What an amusing novelty you normals are. Except for you, Mr. Goldman, you’re not quite normal, are you? You have… a delicious strangeness about you. You also have a most receptive mind. I wouldn’t have been able to spring this trap without your help.”
With a wordless cry, Goldie flung out his arms and unleashed an explosion of gold-white light in Primal’s face. It met a wall of crimson but was not repelled. Instead, the scarlet ooze seemed to filter Goldie’s power, to stain it, as it had stained the flare’s aura. Then it spat the stuff out again in a vivid pulse aimed directly at Cal. It caught him in a breaking wave, flinging him backward into the room. He rebounded off the wall and crumpled into a heap nearly beneath the flare.
I scrambled to his side, whispering scraps of prayer. Chaos had entered the chamber, voices shouted, thunder rolled, the very walls seemed to shake. I ignored all. By flare light, I could see that Cal lived. His pulse was strong. Before I could check beneath his eyelids, they fluttered and his eyes opened. They focused, not on me, but behind and above me. They filled with the aqua radiance, grew wide and troubled.
“No,” he said.
I twisted to follow his gaze. Above me, the girl hung, her glow strong but tarnished with red. Her body moved as if in a current, and I thought for a moment that it was her pain that Cal was responding to. But when I gazed into her face, I knew the lie of that. Beneath the fathomless eyes her mouth was curved in an unholy smile.
TWENTY-SEVEN
CAL
Ihurt all over and tingled as if I’d connected with an electric fence. But for the first time in what seemed an eternity my mind was clear. Every perception, every sensation, cut like a shard of glass.
I looked up into that face, a face that should have been Tina’s, and saw something fundamentally and inexpressibly alien. This was not Tina, had never been Tina.
“You all right?” Colleen leaned over me, cutting off my view of the flare, her own face barely recognizable in the ripples of light and dark. Howard peered over her shoulder.
The wave of futile bitterness passed. I took up my sword in one hand, grabbed Colleen’s arm with the other, and hauled myself upright, turning toward the front of the room. Primal stood there in a blaze of his own light, flinging out bright spheres. The flares in the room had congregated above him.
It was as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes. I could now see what Colleen had commented on before—that the flares were tethered to him by a visible web of power. He was drawing on them, sucking up their life to fuel his own.
Goldie was the target of Primal’s volleys. He was huddled in the middle of the room, tucked into himself, rocking back and forth. The fireballs detonated with a fizzing sound, exploding like trick snakes and writhing about him. His golden halo, so bright in the semidarkness, was tinted crimson.
“He’ll kill him,” I said. “He’ll kill Goldie if we don’t get him out of here.”
“What do we do?” Colleen asked.
“Split up. Try to distract Primal. Confuse him. I’ll ge
t Goldie.”
I sheathed my sword and crab-crawled toward him on my hands and knees, using dangling hanks of cable for cover, flattening myself to the floor when slivers of Primal’s light flew too near. I wasn’t sure what I’d do when I reached him. I’d have to trust my instincts—pray there was some way to separate Primal from his power supply.
Your thought is your reality, Doc had said. Colleen had complained that life’s rules had been suspended, and Mary that they had changed so much she no longer knew them. They were right. There were new rules, new laws of nature; perhaps even nature itself was fundamentally changed. Before, if you wanted to set off an explosion, you had to take the indirect route offered by science. You had to manipulate matter. Now, the connective tissue between thought and reality was exposed. And that exposure presented us with a whole new set of tools, a whole new realm of arts and sciences.
New rules, new ways to set off explosions.
I heard a shout from the shadows somewhere near the front of the room. Colleen. A moment later mundane fire flared and rocketed toward Primal on a crossbow bolt. I didn’t see it connect, but Primal let out a roar that sounded like a train wreck and flashed white-hot. The red missiles stopped falling.
I scrambled to Goldie’s side, grabbed him with both hands and shook him as hard as I dared. “Goldie, come on! Get clear. Now.”
He shook his head, cringing as Primal roared again, firing lightning in every direction. “No good. He’s turned me into a boomerang. I could’ve killed you.”
“You didn’t. Goldie, come on. I need you. Clear your head.”
He raised his hands, tangling his fingers in his rampant hair. “He’s in my head, dammit! I’m a fucking puppet!”
I shook him again, cringing as Howard let out a wild howl somewhere in the dark. “Let it go. I have an idea. Take my hand.” I held it out to him.
He raised his eyes to my face. He looked less like a man and more like a wild thing—a satyr surprised in a forest glade. But he obeyed, lacing his fingers into mine. I could feel the power in him, hot and raw and reckless. Darkness and light colliding; converging and separating. I’d had no idea how strong he’d become.