Needle Rain

by Cari Silverwood

  To the right, bookshelves covered half the wall. A desk sat before them.

  “See what? The skeletons, you mean? No? Then I see nothing else to dread,” said Samos. “But I hear the ocean. The sounds from above, of the others shifting stones, stopped some minutes ago. Which makes me wonder where Tatiana has directed her men to go.”

  “And I see nothing as well,” added Thom. “Are there ghosts?”

  Bull turned from where he inspected a rusted, collapsed table and raised his light.

  “Yes, oh yes,” she said through a fear-tightened throat. “There are ghosts.”

  This was where it had happened. This was the very center of Vassbinder’s strange experiments. These dark ghosts were those who’d suffered Vassbinder’s presence for a hundred years, linked perhaps, by history and their deaths to this one place. Once they had been children. These ghosts were twisted horribly by what he’d done and they circled her in a vast and haphazard way. Did they wait to attack?

  She drew a ragged breath through her teeth. Controlling one ghost was possible, if all these chose to possess her at once, she feared the result.

  “Thom! Look for these books you need! I cannot spend too much time in here!”

  Her second plan, that had seemed so plausible in the sunlight, became an erratic and stupid idea down here. At least Vassbinder was not here. Or so she thought, until impossibly, she watched the spears of light be dimmed by a black presence oozing through the wall holes. The black congealed together into one. Vassbinder. He’d come from the room that must be flooded by sunlight.

  Alarmed, she took a step back. What ghost would seek sunlight?

  “I’ve found a book,” yelled Thom, from where he stood by the desk. “Notes on something-or-other.” He held it up in both hands and the entire book sloughed away like a pile of wet leaves. “Scum.”

  “These are like that also,” Bull said grimly, from the bookshelves at the wall. He swept his drawn sword lightly across a shelf and what seemed intact volumes turned into an amorphous heap. “Wet. Destroyed.”

  Heloise made herself walk a little into the room. Vassbinder stayed distant. She felt his ghost brooding, malevolent, yet something held him back. Other ghosts required night to transfer. It seemed he too was constrained by that.

  You can breathe, she told herself. “Perhaps there’s some documents sealed away somewhere? An airtight safe?”

  “Or maybe a bridge to fairyland while we’re at it,” muttered Samos. “More to the point. Tatiana’s men are abseiling down the cliff outside. The sound is unmistakable.” He turned to Heloise. “Your idea? You said you had one.” He struck a table near him and it collapsed in a flurry of rust. “Bring it out, damn it! Show us!”

  She clenched her jaw. Insufferable man. What use his demands, now? “I thought to use Vassbinder himself.”

  “What?” Thom’s voice squeaked. “Say you are joking. How? How use him?”

  She looked at him, held up her hands as she could show something tangible. “Skills have been filtering through. From the ghosts that possess me. His Needle Master skills, if I –”

  “No! Heloise, that is so fraught with danger.” The fear in Thom’s voice was for her and the middle of this chaos, bizarrely, she smiled inside.

  Samos stilled. “What are you talking about? Ghosts possess you?”

  “Can you do better?” She asked Thom. “Sorry. I don’t mean to insult you.” She straightened her back. “But I think I could control him.”

  “They’re here.” Samos turned to face the double doors.

  Bull picked up Toad and snicked down the loader. The gheist ammunition rack glowed iridescent and turned the underside of his chin to fish tank blue swirls. With a confidence that surprised her, Thom strode over to join them. The iron doors clanged and shook from some impact on the other side.

  No weapon in Samos’s hand, but then he was a weapon all by himself. He’d said he couldn’t defeat them all. She slipped the Sung steel knife from its scabbard. Never say couldn’t. Always try. She stepped forward and a bone crunched and slid beneath her shoe.

  And Vassbinder struck.

  She found herself staring at the ceiling and unable to move.

  Panic overwhelmed her until she wrestled it down.

  The plan, stick to it.

  Faster than the others, a little surer in the way he swarmed her body with his presence, but he slithered to the same points, took control the same way. She held back her satisfaction, uneasily sure there were ways this could go wrong. She had to be alert, ready for whatever he might do.

  Lull him. Yes. Lull him. Let him think he had possessed her.

  And now...to rip him loose enough to free herself, yet leaving one or two minor contacts, enough to stop him dissipating.

  She concentrated, feeling her way. Slow but sure. Accuracy was the key.

  And he made her kneel, eyes closed. Why closed? She wondered. He made her fingers grope across the floor. She felt something hard and skinny. A bone. Open my eyes, she told herself. It was futile, for she hadn’t freed them yet.

  An urgency gripped her. Ignore what he does, free yourself!

  Her hand, controlled by Vassbinder, stabbed herself. Thin, cold...it was an ice fragment that sent a burning line across her body, joining the needles. And another.

  Needles. Needles! He was making her needle herself!

  Another stabbed her. She jerked, whined.

  Desperately she freed her eyes, popped loose his hold. See. Freed her mouth. Scream.

  “Help me! Thom! Stop the needles!” If anyone could understand it would be him.

  Her fingers scrabbled, found another needle, raised it, then something slid across the floor and grabbed her arm. Thom.

  “What’s happening? Heloise, you’re needling yourself! It’s Vassbinder, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she croaked. Inside her, Vassbinder tried to claw back control. Her sight was gone again. She had nothing now except her mouth. “Hold me.”

  The inner battle wasn’t one she could win. He’d gained too much. The needles had done it. Salty tears ran into her mouth. She was crying and couldn’t tell.

  “You’re so like Omi inside,” Vassbinder whispered. “Did you not realize?” He chuckled and it echoed in her thoughts. “The coward may not have come down here, but I’ve studied him from afar. I know what I can do inside his body. And yours, gorgeous lady, is the same. I’ve planned this for so, so long. Give in. Give yourself.”

  As he spoke silkily, his touch ate at her last hold, cockroaches nibbling on a sleeper’s toes.

  So easy it would be. A languid warmth flowed through her mind. Who hadn’t thought that life was far too difficult and yearned for release? Letting go would be easy.

  “Goodbye, Thom.” But she couldn’t hear his reply. Her ears were silent to her perception.

  Then something else nibbled at her. Not Vassbinder this time. Something tiny nibbled at her lips, something that asked permission. What terrible thing could this be?

  It nibbled again and she kept her mouth shut, her teeth clamped. It wasn’t the physical that kept this new thing away, it was her thoughts. A please rolled in. Then more pleases, a plague of them. Say no and she ceased to exist. Say, yes and...what could be worse? Nothing. She opened her mouth and a giggling horde rolled and flowed down her throat to then spread like honey from her center outward.

  The children.

  Snarling, shocked, Vassbinder fought this new invasion. A hundred, hundred fingers poked him, prodded him gleefully, and shoved him aside. Slowly, she regained her body.

  “My gods,” she said, eyes opening. She found herself cradled in Thom’s arms. “There’re so many of them.”

  “So many what?”

  It was hard to concentrate with all of them giggling and running about. “The ghosts – they’re inside me. The children,” she said in awe. “They’ve got Vassbinder cornered.”

  “They have?” His face loomed above her. “Where?”

  “In me.”<
br />
  “Really?” His words were half-terrified, half confused.

  With her fingers shaking, while filtering everything through what she felt of Vassbinder, she began to remove the needles he’d placed. They hurt just as much coming out as going in.

  The doors, the doors, the doors, the children whispered to her.

  Doom was coming.

  The doors burst open letting in a conflagration of daylight and the first of the Sungese.

  She watched, slack jawed and paralyzed, as Samos batted the first five of them aside. Then she knew what must be done. The only way they could survive.

  “Bring him to me,” she rasped out. “Samos.”

  “Samos? Oh, Heloise.” He kissed her forehead and lowered her to the floor. “I must go help him.”

  “No! Bring him to me. To be made into an Immolator! A full Immolator!”

  He stared, flummoxed for a moment, then spun and sprinted to Samos, screaming her message as he went.

  Oh, Thom, she thought, now you’ve gone and told the enemy and they will not cease until they’ve torn us all from this world and cast us into oblivion.

  What? What did I say? Into oblivion? Those words were not hers. Vassbinder’s words, and overdramatic at that.

  “Hurry, Samos!” she screamed, and found her legs were partly returned to her control. She forced herself upright and went about on her knees, collecting the required needles from the skeletons, from one to the other. Through the holes in her leggings she felt the scrape and prick of the bones.

  Samos slid to a halt before her, his heels leaving smoky trails of dust. His face contorting, he glared at her, silently. Thom had told him.

  Behind him she heard and saw the soft bloop and hiss as Bull fired a shot into the doorway. Two men fell, flailing, lit up by a thousand jets flaring blue from their pores.

  “I know,” she softly replied. This was almost a death sentence. Almost. “Give me your body if you want this. Or say, no. Your choice.”

  Samos sucked in air through teeth then nodded and held out his arms and spread his legs.

  One drawn-in breath, one flash-quick siphoning of Vassbinder’s memories brought to her by the giggling minions, and she began. Second-hand instinct. His, not hers. The needles, golden and fine, gathered in the left hand. The right hand wielding them like darts and sliding them into Samos slicker than a seamstress with an oft-sewn dress pattern. To her half-Vassbinder eyes, he lit up with lightning.

  And all the while she felt Vassbinder inside her, wrestling under the triumphant horde of the child ghosts. For this once, the ghost was the glove, and she the puppeteer. Her skin acquired a strange, black halo, her sense of self expanding outward, not much, a half inch perhaps. She felt before she touched.

  The fight at the doorway became frantic. Bull fired two more shots that felled another two men. The blue balls made odd fluttering buzzing sounds as they spun across the room. Fear of such an agonizing death was holding them back. She could make it. Six more needles.

  “Spin,” she hissed at Samos. She started on his back, plunging the needles through cloth. Ignoring his flinches. For an Immolator, he was tender skinned.

  Another bloop and hiss, but this time the projectile came from without, and Bull cleared the desk, rolling backward over it as he strove to avoid being hit. The round splattered and spun across the back wall, turning books into blue sputtering avalanches that tumbled from the shelves.

  “Tatiana!” Samos warned.

  “Don’t move!” Two more needles.

  The doorway boiled with men. One was Teo. No one else could move like that. Another Samos, but on the wrong side. Outclassed and totally outnumbered, Thom had fallen back toward her. His stance and movements told her he knew Sung-tai, but what use was that skill against so many with swords? Frantic, she looked away. Concentrate!

  One needle.

  The tip of the last needle touched Samos’s thigh. She slid it, rotated it, measured its length as she had the others, her tongue caught between her teeth. “There! Go!”

  Samos bounded away. Her Sung knife in his fist, he flung it. One man dropped.

  Already, a couplet of blades thrown by Teo arrowed toward Bull and nailed him backward into the bookshelves. The Toad flipped from his hand and across the slick floor.

  A woman stood in the doorway among the men, her red hair a bright symbol in the midst of battle, a gheist weapon in her arms, its nose pointing menacingly toward Heloise. This was Tatiana Ironheart.

  Thom moved across her vision, yards behind Samos, who was casually flinging men aside and striking them down one after the other in some obscene dance of war. This onslaught forged an arrow straight at Teo.

  Still crippled, her legs weak, and deprived of her only weapon, Heloise watched. Her pulse thumped, her mouth was dry as ashes. She could make it to Bull. His eyes seemed closed and he sprawled on his side, leaking blood. Child ghosts flitted here and there, weaving around the combatants, black birds disturbed from their nesting place.

  From the corner of her vision, Heloise saw a flash of blue light and focused on the origin. Tatiana stood, legs wide-based, smiling at her.

  Heloise gaped. Heading for her was a churning blue ball. She screamed but the sound had no time to leave her lungs.

  Thom stepped into its path and the blue disintegrated in a burst that limned him with violet.

  As one the child ghosts inside her quailed. The air twisted.

  Her scream burst from her. Heloise scrambled, lurching to her feet then toward him, barely registering the grimace on Tatiana’s face as she pulled the trigger again and again on an empty gun, or the two men battling like goliaths in a circle cleared of others. She reached Thom’s feet.

  The soles of his shoes pointed her way, and that contained more horror than any ghost, for worms of ectoplasm squirted from the shoes, to convulse on the floor and disappear. Yet none of those worms had been on Thom. Something had stopped them piercing him?

  A fine black cloud speckled her vision before it faded. She whispered a prayer and fell to her knees with a painful thump. Hesitantly she laid a hand on his cheek.

  He lay unmoving, the black braid of hair across his face, then his hands twitched, and he breathed.

  The blows and cries of the other men fighting seemed as distant as the moon.

  Slowly she lowered her head to rest her forehead on his. Gods, yes. He breathed.

  “What happened?” he asked hoarsely.

  “You saved me,” she said quietly. “And, I think...” She listened again to the ghosts within and to the others, so few of them now, who inhabited the room. They reinforced her notion. Some of their number had put themselves between Thom and the incoming ectoplasm.

  “The child ghosts saved you. Stay there. I have to go to Bull.”

  ****

  Samos fought with precision, each move calculated. Each hit. Each kick. There were so many variables but he counted them all. How many were against him. Most kept their distance. Calculate, enumerate, weigh the odds. The need to protect those behind him, even Thom Drager. The thrown knives and the odd spear. The speed and skills of Teo. But most of all, what slowed him was his awareness of Tatiana. He could resist her, but the closer she came, the more she slowed him down. Fractions of a second. Enough to make a difference against Teo. She was so sure he would not kill her.

  Every so often, between the blocks and missed killing blows, he let his fingers brush the pendant on his palm. Still there, thank the gods. The fight swirled across the room and back, each of them struggling for supremacy. They bounced off walls and sometimes off men who strayed too close. And all the time, Tatiana circled them as if linked by a chain.

  A kick from Teo carved a sliver of skin from his shoulder, his return blow with the Sung knife sliced only air, but Teo again connected. The tip of Teo’s knife cut through the strap of the pendant. Samos caught it as it slipped and saw the hint of a smile touch Tatiana’s lips.

  He heard the click, as she made little gleeful bites w
ith teeth against teeth, anticipating his defeat.

  He made a decision.

  The risk was there, but worth it. He whipped his hand across and flung the pendant. The air cracked, marking its swift passage.

  Teo somersaulted and nearly caught it. The green stone gleamed as it shot past his fingers, sped on its way and went straight into Tatiana’s mouth. Teeth fragments flew.

  Tatianna choked out a scream and fell, clutching her throat.

  “Ahh,” Samos sighed.

  That fraction of a second was now his. Teo was landing from the leap when Samos struck his first blow. Wishing he didn’t have to kill, but knowing he did, Samos smashed a blurred flurry of blows into Teo’s neck, skull, stomach, and spun him to crush the spine in three places. The man slid unconscious across the floor, leaving a red trail – finished and dead in seconds.

  Then he was over Tatiana. She lay on her side, coughing. Her hand covered her mouth and blood seeped between her fingers. She blinked up at him.

  He should kill her too. “Where is it?” He held out his hand, waiting for her to return the pendant. But she only pointed at her throat, her eyes wide. The red wig sat askew.

  She’d swallowed it.

  And all he could think for a turgid second or two was of what else she’d swallowed and where those lips had been on his body.

  She hacked out another cough, took her hand away and spat gobbets of blood and saliva on the floor.

  Glancing up, he saw her men running away. Some tripped as they tried to keep him in their sight, their faces distorted into gargoyle shapes by horror. Shock gripped them along with fear. Beyond, past the smashed-open doors, the bright blue sky and fluffy white clouds showed through holes in the broken wall. He didn’t bother to try to stop her men as they swarmed up the ropes.

  Teeth gritted, mind blanking out the memories of pleasure, he gripped the back of Tatiana’s neck and dragged her over to where Heloise sat tending to Bull.

  She’d pulled a knife from one arm and was binding the wound. A second knife, sunk to the hilt, pinned his other arm to a shelf. The man was more lucid and bleeding less than he should be. Then Samos took in the pattern of needles down his chest. Healing ones, of course. Courtesy of Heloise.