He considered firing a warning shot, but that could attract the Myths behind him. Too dangerous.
Instead, he leapt onto the banister. Using the poise and balance that had once made him a dancing king at the Cotton Club, Lucas Harvey walked a tightrope-artist’s path up the slick marble surface… towards Rose.
He slipped once, but kept his cool. Senators and film-stars stared at him in wonder as he passed, walking with arms out. He was scared, of course. But that was the difference between disciples of Mithras, and the people running past him: he’d spent years mastering his emotions, communing with unspeakable things in dark caves filled with symbols and shadows. In comparison to those trials, this room was a cakewalk. Behind him, an ice sculpture smashed and someone screamed.
A hand groped at his ankle. It was Zelda, the vapid woman who’d written him a check. He tried to shake her off, but she was quite persistent.
“Run!” she screamed, eyes bulging. “It’s killing everyone!”
Then she was swept along by the crowd—her hand still on his ankle. Lucas was pulled along with her, his delicate balance thrown off. Grasping the empty air, his hand seized a microphone cable—one of dozens that ran up to Palmer’s podium. Using it for a rope, he hauled himself over the upper railing and tumbled onto the balcony.
Things were bad downstairs, but they were far worse here. The floor was slick with blood: rivers of it, so rich and thick he was reminded of sacrificial rites, in Greece. The blood ther had run just like this.
Around him, bodies lay tossed and sliced into chunks. Fine suits wriggled headless in death-throes. At the center of the horror was a creature of nightmare.
A crown of horns grew from its head, in a diadem of blades. A razor of bone jutted from one arm, and a heavy, blood-soaked hammer covered in veins hung from the other arm. The monster wore the scraps of a servant’s uniform.
I know that shape.
He saw Rose handcuffed, huddled against the wall on the far side of the room. She looked terrified, but alert. Good. He would need her to help fix this mess.
Some of the victims were still moving. He saw Mayor Nicholson, lying in a pool of his own blood—but still moving. And then there was Solomon, crouched behind a pillar and reaching for the gun in his dead enforcer’s hand. The hand was severed at the wrist, trails of sinew stretched behind it like the tail of a comet.
Solomon caught Lucas’s eye, and Lucas slowly shook his head. Don’t do it, you fool. Don’t shoot.
To a Myth this far along, bullets would be nothing but a distraction. You couldn’t kill the idea of rage. Until Mithras’ gifts faded, that murdering, blood-drunk satyr would be a tough customer. Tougher than he or Solomon could handle.
That raised a question. How had this shit-show happened? Usually it took months of Draughts, or Noxious directly to the lungs for days, to get someone this mutated. He supposed someone could’ve injected the Humors directly, but there was no evidence of that. But someone had clearly created this thing. Someone, a Host perhaps, had used the Gift to break this woman’s last tether with humanity.
The monster tore the head from a corpse and began bashing it to pieces; teeth scattered, and a shredded tongue landed at Rose’s feet. Rose looked more than scared: she looked guilty, like the people who came to his confessional. Lucas felt his stomach twist with disgust. Oh, Rose, babe. Why? Why would you make this thing?
He scurried across the battlefield, sweating from the body-heat rising from a dozen shredded cadavers. Halfway there, he slipped on blood and went down.
The creature faced him. Its huge, leonine eyes tracked his movement. He could see how the blessing had been forced on this one, but it didn’t look unhappy about it. It looked joyful, and that scared him.
“More,” it panted, its bare chest heaving. “More blood!”
It stalked towards him, and he raised the stolen pistol—but the trigger wouldn’t move. It was a revolver, and he hadn’t pulled back the hammer to move the cylinder and now he didn’t have time, the beast was nearly upon him—
There was a shredding cacophony of shots. King Solomon was kneeling behind a potted plant, sending off round after round from an Enfield .380. “This was my party,” he growled between shots. “Mine, dammit! I’ve had it with this shit!”
The thing barely flinched. It looked, if anything, annoyed by the gunshots. The bullets glanced off the thing’s horns; a few found their mark in its chest, but it shrieked and turned towards Solomon.
Seeing it distracted, Lucas took a chance, leaping up and stumbling towards Rose. Solomon had probably killed a more people than this thing had, and he had no desire to save the man. He sprinted across the bloodbath, the smell of voided bowels and spilled intestinal fluids choking him.
Rose grabbed at him as he arrived, fingers digging into his arm. “I didn’t mean to, Lucas—I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want this!”
“I know.” He heard Solomon roar with fury, and the creature howled in answer. He laid a hand on Rose. “I know you didn’t. But I need you to fix it.”
“Fix… Lucas! I can’t fix this! She’s gone, there’s nothing left—”
“Yes, there is.” He wasn’t sure if he believed that, but she needed to hear it. She was a Host; she’d shown it when she sent those gangsters running in the alley, back in Roxbury, and he knew she could do this. She could truly master the gift … if she didn’t lose her mind first. “Look inside her. Something human’s there—I need you to find it.”
“I…” Rose watched the red horror pick up Solomon, and bash him against the podium. Microphones squeaked and crackled with feedback. “There’s nothing.”
He struggled to be patient. She didn’t understand her purpose, not yet—not tonight. But she’d have to learn fast… or they’d both end up as obituaries, in tomorrow’s Globe. “Rose… I know you feel responsible, but you have to understand, she wanted this. You can see it on her face. She has a reason to hurt these people… And reason means humanity.”
“She’s insane! I can’t—”
“Madness always has method. Even if we can’t see, or understand it.” He gripped her face, hoping, praying this wasn’t a mistake—praying he’d found the right one. If he was wrong about this, all the bloodshed around them would be for nothing. “But you can feel it. Through her skin—in her soul. Try harder.” Please, Lord. Please let me be right, this time.
I can’t lose another one. Not like this.
Rose pushed aside her panic, tried to think past the hot blood soaking her dress. She tried to see into the Queen, look through the ugly shell around her. Something must have forced her into this life—Lucas was right, everyone had something driving them. Even her.
She pushed past the carapace of hatred that encased the woman’s heart like a cocoon. At first she felt nothing, just a bubbling abyss of hate. Then she found it.
Grief,” she said. “She’s… she’s lost something. Someone.”
He nodded. More gunshots went off as Solomon tried uselessly to bring down his attacker, and they both flinched. “Take that. Twist it. If she’s not pure …”
“She won’t be a Myth.” Rose shook her head. “It’s so deep..”
He squeezed her hand. “I can’t tell you how to be good at this. That’s something you need to learn for yourself.”
More gunshots sounded. “Goddamn woman!” snarled Solomon from behind them. “I ain’t dying to no goddamn woman!” Stubbornness alone, it seemed, was keeping him alive… and buying them a few more seconds. She had to use that time. She had to try.
Rose shuddered, and reached out with a hand—and she pulled on the grief at the Red Queen’s core. She pulled hard, and with no subtlety. She Twisted it, with a strength she hadn’t realized she had.
I found you, in there. Now come out.
Come OUT.
The demon staggered, hissing. Solomon’s beaten, bloodied form wormed away, and this time it didn’t chase him. It turned toward Rose, eyes flickering with flame.
“You,” i
t said.
Rose felt her own body, her own soul, linked with the madwoman in that moment. It hurt her, fucked her up to be connected to that kind of bloody, hideous need. It felt wrong.
I could still go. Just run, out the doors, anywhere. I don’t have to do this… I don’t have to be this.
It would be easy… but it wouldn’t be right. And she had to clean up this mess. People had died because of her—fathers that would never come home to their children, innocent waiters and pencil-pushers who had never earned violence like this. She owed it to them, to keep fighting.
Rose reached deeper, holding out her hand, white lightning flashing and pulsing in her blood. The demon charged them, sickle ready to carve.
I know this hurt. She’d lost people, too. Her mother and father had survived, but her uncle, her cousins, her grandmother… the orchards, the houses. Even the dogs, all burned. No one had ever answered for that. The loss inside the Queen echoed her own ugly ache.
She squeezed that pain, crushed it with her thoughts. The beastial face began to shrink and melt, but the creature was fighting her—summoning memories of oppression and brutality. The need for vengeance pulsed hot and sickly inside her. “More blood!”
“No.” Rose dug through years of supression, submerging the monster’s defenses with bitter loss. The horns shrank; the sickle crumbled.
But the Myth reached them before Rose was finished. Spurs of bone still jutted from the mutant’s hand, and she smashed her fist into Lucas’ temple, sending him reeling.
Rose leapt up, gripping her by the arm. “I said… no!”
White veins spread through Aleksandra’s skin. The Queen collapsed, tears welling in her eyes. Memories of Papa surged in her—the smell of his shaving lather, the jaundiced yellow of his teeth, the sandy roughness of his beard. The sight of his corpse, cold and gray.
She was lost, drifting on a sea of grief. Rose stood over her, and saw how easy it would be to keep pushing, drown the woman in misery until she tried to take her own life. But she had enough blood on her hands tonight.
“Go,” she hissed at the Queen—shrunken and human now, nude and sobbing. The woman raised a pale fist to strike her, and Rose kicked her in the ribs. Divine Host or not, she was a criminal. And when you saw a chance to establish dominance in this business, you took it.
The Queen went, crawling out the veranda doors towards the beach. Everyone who could have stopped her was dead or fleeing. The rain outside slicked over the floor and diluting the blood.
“Lucas…” She knelt over him. The blow to his face was bad; one eye socket was purple and weeping blood. She pulled him to his feet; he was lucid enough to walk, at least.
“We need to go. Come on.”
They pushed out the elegant white doors, onto the veranda which wrapped around the Atlantic’s frame. Together, they broke for the stairs, which led down to the beach. Perhaps they could still get away, before the law called in reinforcements… and they were forced to explain what had happened.
Rose was in no condition to come up with a cover story. The horrible acts she’d committed were stamped on the inside of her brain; she tried to pull away from Lucas as they headed for the stairs.
“Stop! Please. I just… need a minute.”
Lucas frowned. “We don’t have a minute.”
“What we did to that woman... The blood…” Her hands were still covered with it. God, there was blood all over her, in every crevice. It was congealing on her knuckles, drying into flakes… “How can you not care? How can you just keep going, like this?”
“I do care.” Lucas’ face was set, long and drawn against the dark of night and the distant storm on the water. “I care more than I can say. But right now, caring just slows us down. And if we slow down—”
“Stop! Freeze!”
Men in brown coats were sprinting towards them over the sand, towards the stairs leading off the Atlantic’s gazebo. Rose almost sobbed; she had no strength left to Twist them. Even if she’d been able, she might have just let them take her. After what she’d done … All those people, torn to pieces. She couldn’t reach that deep again, not after what she’d seen.
She didn’t have to. Lucas raised his revolver, and in quick succession, shot all three of them. In seconds, they all lay bleeding on the sand.
“Jesus! Lucas, you…” Rose almost dropped him. The shots had deafened her, so close after all the gunfire in the balcony. “What did you just—”
“We serve a higher purpose tonight.” His voice was shaky, but his eyes were clear and bright. “Let’s go. There are skiffs in the boathouse, down the shore—we need to be gone, and the best path is over the water.”
Rose saw no alternative. Even if this massacre hadn’t been entirely their fault, those three dead men certainly were. If they were caught, it was curtains for both of them.
I’m an accomplice to mass murder. Why? Jesus, why is this happening to me?
They hobbled along the slippery, rain-soggy beach towards the boathouses, seaweed and washed-up buoys tripping them. Rose kicked off her fancy shoes, and then in a moment of calm rationality, picked them up. She didn’t want to leave evidence behind.
As the two of them pushed a skiff into the waves, she felt herself draining away—becoming a ghost. No one could see what she’d seen, and just walk away.
No one but a monster.
CHAPTER 13
“TRAITOR…”
Aleksandra was shivering naked under the boardwalk at the end of the beach, cold and miserable. The theme-park south of the Atlantic glimmered under bruised clouds and gathering night, mocking her. It was over: the pigs had won. She was disgraced.
She watched Rose escape with her man, the two of them vanishing into the mist. “Capitalist… bitch…”
Those feelings the Host had forced into her, that weakness. How could she fight that? How could she win, when the Host turned her own feelings against her? In this moment of confusion, she felt like a child once more: fatherless, wandering the world, hoping someone would spare pity or kindness. None ever did.
“Why do you weep, child?”
She looked up. Standing over her, with his scarves soaked in blood, was Edwin Fischer. One of Buda’s best operatives, he’d helped orchestrate this attack … but everything had gone wrong. They’d meant to take Mitchel Palmer prisoner, but the Host had distracted her, unleashed her hatred before she could seize the man.
How could they make this right? Their plan was in shambles. Father Buda had promised the capitalists would shred each other, but they were already rallying—flashlights swept the Atlantic’s veranda, looking for her. The machine of law was rising to its feet, shaking off the dust. Soon they would find her.
“It’s gone. It’s over.” She shook her head, clinging at fistfuls of sand. “They’ll stop our voices forever.”
“I don’t think so.” Fischer was grinning, his teeth numerous and immaculate. He was their quietest operative, blending into gentlemen’s clubs and Ivy League universities with his eccentric, educated charm. But there was something about him hinting at madness, from the extra layers of clothes to the tense way he stood—like a coiled viper.
“Behold.” He gestured with one oversized, floppy sleeve. “A prophet, come unto these yellow sands.”
They saw a figure, tottering along the beach. A leftover from her bloody games, confused and staggering. But that face…
Could it be him? She recognized the heavy glasses, his thick neck and round face. The man wandering down the beach, was Mitchell Palmer. He must’ve slipped outside in the chaos, before the police put up a cordon.
“Anarchy prevails.” Their target, the next Host—the vessel for a great new experiment, was right in front of them. She would please Mithras yet.
Fischer smiled as Palmer drew closer, stumbling randomly. “I see you’ve stopped weeping.”
“Find a vehicle, Fischer. I’ll handle this.” She licked her lips, the crusted blood on them as sweet as honey to her. One last ch
ance, Papa. Give me one last chance. I will do things right, this time.
“As you wish.” Fischer went.
Wrapping a discarded fishing net around herself, Aleksandra seized a length of driftwood.
She moved toward the target. Palmer was shaking, disoriented. She’d never spoken to him face to face, before. He looked so old—his hair edged with gray, stress-lines marring his face. There were bags under his eyes. Tiny, round spectacles perched on the edge of his nose, and his square face looked pale and frightened.
“Miss… You’d better get away, miss. A terrible thing’s happened.”
While he spoke, his eyes wandered, unfocused. He was a Quaker, she knew. Until the raids six years ago, he’d led a life of complete non-violence. How quickly he’d turned on a dime, to come after people like her.
“I know,” she said.
“Oh, my,” he said, noticing her shredded clothes and the bloody net covering her. Information seemed slow to reach his brain—struggling through his trauma. “You’re quite bare. Are… are you alright, miss?”
He stared for quite some time; she let him. That… bitch back in the Atlantic had distracted her, changed her, and then finally defeated her. Someone cunning enough to control Humours like that would never be a good recruit.
But Palmer… he was just soft enough, malleable enough, to be their tabula rasa. Of course, he would need to be broken first.
No time like the present.
“You look cold. Do you need my coat—”
She swung the driftwood at his head, and the meaty crack of it filled her with joy. He toppled, and she found herself hitting him again and again, bludgeoning his frail body like a farmer threshing wheat.
Crying out, he struggled to get away. “Why? Please, I don’t understa—Augh!”
Spirits of the Charles Page 18