Alex glanced at Eerie, but she was still looking away, her fists clenched, but her posture slumped and defeated.
“I’m not sure that I do,” Alex said. “What do you mean?”
“I would be within my rights to incarcerate you until further investigation can be done,” Rebecca said, sounding sad about it. “It’s my responsibility to prevent you from killing everyone and destroying everything, and I’m expected to do everything in my power to keep the peace. I’m an Auditor, remember? Like you are supposed to be, Alex? That’s our job.”
“Don’t say things like that,” Alex said, unable to keep himself from shivering. “Please, Ms. Levy. You can’t mean it.”
“I care more than I should for both of you, and I don’t want to so much as ground you,” Rebecca said quietly. “I’m going to offer you a deal that you don’t deserve, and trust you to honor it, even though I shouldn’t. Stop this, now. Both of you. If you promise me that you’ll stop messing with reality, consorting with our enemies, and doing favors for Emily Muir, I’ll task the Auditors to deal with the Church of Sleep.”
Eerie gave Alex a look, her eyes narrowed, and the corners of her mouth turned down, but whatever meaning he was supposed to take from it eluded him. He shrugged at her, hands out in a gesture of confusion.
“No deal,” Eerie said, folding her arms. “You were always the best to me, Rebecca. I haven’t forgotten that, but right now we need Emily’s help more than we need the Auditors. I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” Rebecca said, her jaw working from side to side. “You are a couple of dumb kids, you know? What do you expect me to do here?”
“We’re all friends, right?” Alex gave them both a hopeful look in turn. “That’s what’s important, isn’t it? Can’t you just trust us?”
“I wish. You betrayed my trust when you destroyed the Source Well, if you hadn’t already with your other shenanigans,” Rebecca said. “You’ve taken it out of my hands. This isn’t a personal affair anymore. It’s gone political, Alex.”
“Oh.” Alex winced. “I hate politics.”
“I’m not sure why this is so hard for the two of you to understand, but I’m going to try and explain once more,” Rebecca said. “What you plan to do tomorrow could very well end the world, whether you succeed or fail. I can’t let you maybe kill everyone, no matter how head-over-heels you are for each other.”
“Yeah?” Alex glared. “What are you gonna do, then?”
“I’m gonna stop you,” Rebecca said sourly. “The only question is—”
The door to the cafeteria banged open as Alice rushed in.
“Becca! We got a problem!”
Rebecca put her head in her hands.
“Of course we do.”
“One of Gaul’s freaky nephews is outside,” Alice said, pulling on her arm. “He said he’s looking for you.”
“Of course he did.”
“Are you coming, or what?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Rebecca said, pausing to glare at Alex and Eerie. “You two stay right here, okay? We aren’t done.”
The women hurried from the cafeteria.
“This seems like an Auditor thing, Alex.”
“Yeah.”
“They didn’t invite you to come.”
“Uh huh.”
“Are you not an Auditor anymore?”
“I don’t know,” Alex said. “Seems like I’m not, though.”
“Is that sad?” Eerie touched his arm. “Are you sad now?”
He put his arm around her, and she rested her head on his shoulder.
“I’m not really hungry anymore.”
“Me either.”
“I’m tired. Do you want to go back to your room, or do you want to go see the fight or whatever it is without me?”
“My room,” Alex said, pulling her into his arms. “With you.”
***
There was a small crowd arrayed about Egill Johannsson, though they kept a careful, if not respectful, distance from the Anathema. Rebecca glanced at the faces as Alice forced their way through and was surprised not to see Emily or any of her crew present.
That might have something to do with Vivik, Rebecca thought. With a remote viewer like him on her side, Emily did not need to worry about missing out on anything.
A pity, really.
They had penciled Vivik in to run Analytics in a few years.
Cursing boys and their hormones, Rebecca followed Alice over to the center of the small crowd, where Xia faced off with Egill.
Calling the encounter impassive would have been generous.
It was more like a staring contest that had ended in mutual disinterest.
Egill ignored the handful of people who stood around him, each hoping that the interloper was someone else’s responsibility, while Xia watched with total detachment. Rebecca could feel waves of relief pass through the crowd as the Auditors were noticed, nervousness mutating into eagerness as they realized they were off the hook.
“I hate my job,” Rebecca announced, stopping just short of Egill and jamming a finger into his chest. “What do you want?”
He backed away, puzzled and appalled.
“Do you treat all your guests this way?”
“I’m in a bad mood,” Rebecca said, advancing on him. “Are you here to fight, kid? Do you want to fight me? Because I could get into a fight,” she said, poking him again. “That could happen. You wanna go?”
“No! Not at all,” Egill said, again retreating. “I’m only here because my uncle wanted me to talk to you.”
“I’m not interested in talking,” Rebecca growled. “I’m either going to sleep or fight. Which is it, kid?”
“Calm down! My uncle told me that you would be reasonable! I just have to tell you one thing,” he protested. “The Church of Sleep will manifest in Central tomorrow morning.”
“I know that,” Rebecca said. “Everyone keeps telling me that.”
“It will appear at the Academy,” Egill said. “The hidden garden in the courtyard of the Main Library. That’s what my uncle wanted me to tell you. He said you would know what I was talking about.”
“More words,” Rebecca said, reaching for him. “I am not interested in your words.”
“You are a terrible host, Rebecca Levy,” Egill said, stepping away. “Good night.”
He blinked out of existence before Rebecca could get her hands on him.
“Kids are awful,” Rebecca said. “They should be illegal.”
“No argument from me,” Alice said. “What now?”
“I’m going to sleep,” Rebecca said. “Today sucks, and I will have no further involvement with it.”
Xia joined Alice as Rebecca marched off, nearly trampling onlookers who failed to move aside quickly enough.
“I don’t know,” Alice said. “You think she’s gonna be okay?”
Xia stood motionless beside her and made no indication either way.
“Good point,” Alice said, nodding. “You always know just what to say.”
Twenty-Nine
Day Seven
John Parson had to take the long way back from the Outer Dark.
Any member of the Rescue Alex from the Outer Dark Club would have recognized the route, but it took John a great deal less time in his current form.
He itched on the inside, among the new organs and cancers that had grown in his distended abdomen, and sand was caked around his lacerated eyes. His skeleton was filled with microscopic fractures, the result of his ongoing transformation, and every step sent jolts of pain shooting up his legs and along his spine.
At least this time he had figured out the trick of producing clothing, along with flesh.
The suffering was abject, but he bore it without noise or complaint, since there was not enough of what he had considered himself to be bothered. He was almost entirely the Church and what the Church needed, and not very much at all a man named John Parson.
Of course, almost is not the same thing as all.
/> He tore through the landscape, reducing the trees in his path to scraps and splinters. His form mutated with the terrain and the environment, the distance melting away in an agonizing fugue state. The Church called to his feverish brain from Central, and he was as a moth to a lightbulb.
He went first to where it should have been, and by the time he arrived, his normal appearance, at least, had been restored.
The Outer Dark no longer felt familiar.
It was just another place, and he paid it no mind.
He was concerned with what was not there.
John Parson surveyed the broken remainder of Marcus’s rose garden, as the last of the identical blooms shriveled and died, consumed by gathering black mist. The sky was nearly black, above, as the Outer Dark finished its reclamation of the area.
Marcus sat on an upside-down bucket amid the ruined garden. For some reason, Katya, the Black Sun assassin, sat beside him on a couple stacked bags of soil. When they noticed John looking at them, they raised their bottles in greeting.
Everything was wrong.
The Church of Sleep was meant to have manifested in this place.
John knew it, his solemn assurance reinforced by the spontaneous destruction of the garden.
Marcus had planted the garden here because the Church would manifest here. He had called it a protest. John had, in his former state, considered it an admirable but futile exercise.
Apparently, he had been mistaken.
Instead…
John grimaced and looked away. He wanted to ask Marcus, to confirm his suspicions as to the cause, but that would have been pointless.
The Changeling was responsible, of course. Who else?
The Church of Sleep was driven into the fabric of reality like a nail through a finger, and watching the petals wither, John suddenly knew just where it had punctured reality.
He was called there, as the Horrors were called, to take his place.
He took a step in a direction that had not existed, a moment before, and then he was gone.
Another step, and he stood before the ruin of the Academy’s Main Library. In the center of the broken building, the Church pierced the ceiling and towered above Central, so white that it hurt his eyes to look at it.
It was of no specific size or orientation, constructed entirely without corners or joinings. Each line of the building extended in parallel as far as could be seen. The Church scoffed at the necessity of a top or a bottom and eschewed the distinction between inside and outside.
The windows of the Academy reflected a light that he could not see, and the scattered stone and mortar of the Main Library hummed in resonance with the subtle vibration that could already be felt from one side of Central to the other.
The sky above the Church was black, the habitual gloom of Central banished by its presence.
Horrors congregated about the Church, screaming as they drifted slowly toward it, like asteroids being pulled into a planetary gravity well, orbiting the Church in narrowing circuits, until they shrieked and deflated, and then drifted slowly to the ground like broken kites.
The migration was enormous. Horrors crowded Central’s sky as far as he could see with his new eyes, which was very far.
Three out of the vast herd of Horrors overhead were pulled close to the Church. They screamed as they were rent by bolts of slow lightning that came creeping out of the ground around the library. Their smoking exoskeletons fell from the sky and were pulverized by the broken walls of the library.
Figures began the grisly process of extracting themselves from the gelatinous corpses of the Horrors. John watched the process with obvious impatience.
“You took long enough,” John said, adjusting his coat. “I was starting to wonder.”
“We were delayed,” the first of three figures said as it approached, their voice buzzing first like an overturned hive, then the roar of nearby traffic. “That has never happened before. It should not have happened.”
They were not even vaguely human, despite the identical suits they wore, black with a matching tie over a white shirt, as if they were a trio of mourners. Above their tightly buttoned collars there was nothing but a black smear, as if a fraction of the night sky were placed where they should have had faces.
If he allowed his eyes to linger on any of three dark smudges, John started to see blood-red stars within them, unfamiliar constellations twinkling in the depths of that impossible shadow.
“It’s just an expression,” John explained. “I didn’t mean that literally.”
“A falsehood is a falsehood,” the second figure said, with a voice like a steam whistle, the sound resonating in John’s eardrums long after the words were spoken. “These people are so devoted to their beliefs/fictions.”
“Yes, I suppose they are,” John said agreeably. “I expected you at the usual place, in the Outer Dark. What brings you to Central?”
“The tampering of a foolish gardener, as you are well aware,” the third figure said, with a melodious voice that resembled the tones of a woodwind instrument, multi-toned and in constant harmony with itself. “Why is she not here?”
“You don’t know already?”
“We wish to hear you say it,” the second figure explained. “Tell us of your failure.”
“Time for it all to come to out, then,” John said, rubbing his hands together. “The Changeling has no plans to return to the Church. She has claimed a name and an identity, and she wishes to preserve them.”
“A name?” The figure hissed. “A name is nothing. We are capable of such things as well. Shall we demonstrate?”
“I am Mr. Crane,” the first figure said, a crimson star flashing in the black mirror that stood in place of its head. “This is the name that I have chosen.”
“The name of a grade-school teacher at the Academy,” John said, with an amused look. “A fine choice.”
“I am Mrs. Gimble,” the second figure said, sparks dripping from its absent head like spittle, brushing cinders from the seared front of its shirt with fingers as thin and grasping as poverty. “This is a name/identification.”
“My first secretary’s name,” John Parson remarked. “Not my favorite person, honestly.”
The third figure hesitated.
It reached into the darkness atop its collar, going in all the way to the elbow and rummaging about it for a short while. It pulled the arm free with difficulty, a piece of soggy newsprint clutched between two fingers. As it struggled to unfold the paper, John noticed that its fingers were attached the wrong way around, bending opposite the palm.
“I am Mr. Pig Iron,” the figure whistled. “You will address me as such.”
“Taking names hardly makes you all my equals. Do you not understand? I have refined myself, during my time here. I have become something beyond a mere Representative,” John said. “Regardless, as we are properly introduced, might I ask you to leave, and allow me to handle the trouble with Changeling? I assure you that I have the situation entirely under control.”
The three figures turned toward each other and appeared to confer, but the only sounds that John heard were the wind rattling through the branches of a half-dead, hollow tree. Then they turned in unison to face him again.
“You may ask,” Mr. Crane confirmed.
“That’s very civil of you,” John said. “Will you depart and allow me to handle matters here?”
“We will not,” Mrs. Gimble said, in a tone that reminded John of an oboe. “The Fifth Assembly of the Church of Sleep has convened and appointed us Representatives. The Assembly will not disperse until the Changeling is pacified/subjugated.”
“I’ve already told you that I wish to handle it myself.”
“There is no self,” Mrs. Gimble said. “There is no separation/identity.”
“You may not want,” Mr. Crane said. “You may not have.”
“I think I might, but leaving that aside,” John said, “this seems like a lot of trouble just to devour one little girl.�
�
“The Changeling is not a girl, and we do not eat,” Mr. Pig Iron said, in a deafening and shrill tone. “We know only hunger.”
“I know a very nice place in Spain where they do a sixteen-course prix fixe dinner, if you are interested. My treat,” John said, pocketing his cufflinks. “Something to occupy you while I resolve this situation. If not, then I’m afraid I’ll have to stop you here.”
The three figures repeated their apparent conference. Mr. Pig Iron reached into the absence that crowned its suit and dug about violently. The arm reemerged coated up to the elbow with what mucus, another soggy scrap of grey paper pinched between inverted fingers.
“We do not want dinner,” Mr. Pig Iron informed him. “Your offer is noted.”
“What a pity,” John said, rolling up his sleeves. “You probably would have liked it.”
“We do not like. You must have realized that something has gone wrong with you,” Mr. Crane insisted, his voice humming like an electrical transformer. “You have failed the Church. You are a failure, and you will die an appropriate death.”
“I will not die, and I am not broken,” John said, loosening his collar. “As I have told you, I have no more intention to defy the Church. I simply wish to correct my own mistake. Is that so much to ask? Are you certain you won’t leave in peace?”
“We will depart,” Mrs. Gimble said, showering him with sparks. “As soon as we have taken/forced/brutalized the Changeling.”
“Oh, very well,” John said, dismissing them with a gesture. “Burn, then.”
The three figures were consumed by a wall of flame, a towering inferno that singed the tiny hairs on his exposed skin. A grassfire broke out near the edge of the woods, and many of the books scattered about them caught fire.
The inferno swirled and diminished, pulled into the shadow above Mr. Crane’s collar and consumed.
John frowned and closed his eyes.
Bolts of slow lightning ripped themselves from the ground, impaling the Representatives.
They disappeared into a brilliant confusion of electrical discharge. John Parson took a deep breath, and then mopped his forehead with his pocket square, his face flushed and his eyes full of burst blood vessels.
The Church of Sleep (Central Series Book 5) Page 75