by Beth Cato
As the door swung open, the dogs backed away, whining. “That’s not a good sign, is it?”
Cy looked to Ingrid. “What do they know that we don’t?”
She frowned. “Something smells bad to them. Can you smell anything?”
They murmured in the negative. Ingrid’s unease increased tenfold.
The stairs griped underfoot, every sound as loud as a scream. The Tesla rod provided their only light, its blue glow spectral. The steps were shallow, forcing Ingrid to slowly ease down sideways while relying on her staff for support, as there were no rails.
They reached a corner landing. The light revealed a short flight downward, and a large empty space beyond. A presence prickled at her, as if she’d fallen into blackberry vines.
“There’s a fantastic out there,” she whispered. “Something . . . powerful. It’s completely still, about fifteen feet dead ahead of us. It’s . . . angry. Focusing on us.”
Cy did not move. Behind her, Fenris shifted to pull out his own Tesla rod.
“It’s not moving. I don’t think it can move.” She frowned, closing her eyes and focusing. Whatever this was, it didn’t draw on elemental magic like selkies or thunderbirds. Instead, it exuded a strange combination of heat from magic, but coldness within its physical being. “I’m reminded of the two-headed snake—it’s cold like that—but this doesn’t have that kind of ancient presence or great size.”
“Something serpentine, but young, angry, and unmoving?” Cy asked.
“This sounds like a dangerous sort of children’s guessing game,” said Fenris.
“Shush.” Remembering the sorcery in place on her body, Ingrid listened, as a dog listens. “Hissing. I hear lots of soft hissing. Not at floor level. About head height, I’d say.”
“God Almighty.” Cy breathed out the words. “Do they have a gorgon’s head playing guard?”
Ingrid’s gaze dropped to the floor. “A gorgon? Like Medusa?”
“One of her line. She was the only mortal gorgon of the three in Greek mythology. I’ve heard of gorgon heads being used to guard valuables in Europe, but how did the Chinese get hold of one?”
“The Chinese are scattered all over the world,” said Fenris. “Why not pick up a gorgon’s head as a souvenir of your travels? It’s more useful than an engraved spoon.”
Ingrid extended a greeting via magic. Her reply: a lash of fiery rage. She tried again. The very essence of the creature tried to snap at her as if with a hundred fanged mouths.
“There’s no heartbeat. No ability to speak. No desire to speak.” A chill went through her. “How horrible, to be used in such a way.”
“That’s how fantastics are treated, Ingrid,” Cy said softly. “You know that.”
She did. And she hated it. “I suppose we need to follow the example of Perseus. There was a mirror in the facilities upstairs. We can use that to get close enough to cover the head.”
“Question,” said Fenris, holding up a hand. “Are we certain what’s down here is worth the risk of perhaps turning into a statue?”
Ingrid wanted to laugh at that—the idea that they were standing in a stairwell seriously debating whether or not to risk getting transformed into stone.
“Lee wouldn’t have wanted you to endanger yourself.” Cy’s gaze on Ingrid was sober and eerie in the scant light.
“Whatever is down here must be important for us to find. Lee couldn’t have been aware of the trap they were setting.”
“Ingrid. You know Lee may not have had much choice in laying the bait.”
“That may be true, but I don’t think that’s what happened here. Uncle Moon wouldn’t want me turned into a statue. He’d want me alive so I could help his cause. And he’d want you alive, Cy, in order to control me.”
Cy conceded the point with a grim nod.
“As far as I’m concerned, the presence of the gorgon is further proof that there’s something important here, and I intend to find it.” She glanced toward the darkness. Now that she knew what to listen for, she could hear the headful of hissing snakes. “I can take care of the gorgon. Even if I’m blindfolded, I can sense exactly where it is and what it’s doing. I can uncover it again when we leave so that it can still do its job.”
Cy looked aghast. She glared at Fenris. “Come now, where’s your rebuttal?”
He shrugged. “You’ve made up your mind. Just know that I’m not hauling around a statue of you in the Bug. You’d go well over our weight allowance.”
“I can’t jest about this,” said Cy tightly.
“Then don’t,” she said, giving his arm a soft stroke as she started up the stairs again. “Fenris, will you give me a hand with supplies?”
Not far from the door, they found a length of gray-stained rag to cover her eyes, and a gunnysack that didn’t allow light to shine through.
“Be careful,” Cy said as he knotted the blindfold at the back of her head.
“I will be. Stone skin wouldn’t suit me one bit.” As she spoke, she wondered what happened if a person was bitten by the snakes of a gorgon. She couldn’t recall that being addressed in the old tales, and she certainly wasn’t going to broach the question to Cy.
“Can you see this?” he asked.
“I can’t see anything except the color black.” She touched the blindfold to verify it was secure.
“Good. I just waved the lit rod in front of your face. Here’s the sack.” His voice was thick.
She extended her staff to Cy, and he exchanged it for the gunnysack. She folded back the bag’s lip to create a ready opening.
“Cy?” She found his chest with her outstretched fingers, and leaned forward. His beard scraped her face, and then their lips met. His kiss seared her senses, his hand on her waist needy, desperate, but his fear did nothing to change her mind. She took the final step to the floor and turned toward the hissing, magically radiant presence ahead.
She took small, mincing steps. She was conscious of how her muscles moved through her calf and foot, how the elastic band helped lift up her toes with each stride. The hissing grew louder. Ingrid felt the intense focus of the gorgon, how it craved for her to come closer, closer.
Something crunched underfoot. She stopped.
“What was that?” called Cy.
“I have no idea.” She took another step, kicking some sort of small object. It skittered away. She continued forward, finding more and more objects underfoot that were akin to small, brittle rocks. Finally, she stood within arm’s reach of the gorgon.
The unseen, writhing, hissing presence unnerved her more than the massive two-headed snake in Olema. That snake, she could communicate with. This . . . well, maybe once upon a time it could speak on a human level, but now its only language was fury. She felt the power of those humanlike eyes that could turn her to stone. To her senses, they glowed like lit coals.
She held her arms wide as she brought the bag down. The gorgon’s annoyance flared, the snake hair flailing against its cover. She found the hard corner of a wooden crate, then another, and continued pulling the sack down. The gorgon’s head had been set up as if on a pedestal. She unrolled the sack until it dangled down a good foot below the base of the decapitated head.
“I think it’s covered,” she said. Now came the most terrifying part of all.
They had to turn on the lights.
Chapter 12
“I’m going to flare the Tesla rod,” Cy said. Ingrid remained still, her breath fast, her world still rendered black by the blindfold. “You did it, Ingrid. I can see the snakes rustling against the cloth. God Almighty.” She heard his deep sigh of relief. “Fenris, let’s check for nonmagical traps before we head to the light box.”
Fingers shaking, she pried off her blindfold. In the thin light, the burlap cloth rippled as dozens of little snakes tried to pierce the thick weave. Footsteps caused her to turn. Fenris passed her Pele’s staff. He held a second gunnysack ready in his other hand.
“Better to be redundant as a precaution,�
� he said, and covered the head a second time. Then he scurried to join Cy.
Ingrid leaned on her stick, still not quite ready to move. Getting that close to a gorgon was probably not among the most intelligent things she had ever done, but she had faith it was worth the risk.
Cy and Fenris spent several minutes examining the room before daring to turn on the overhead lights. Ingrid blinked rapidly, momentarily blinded.
When her vision cleared, she saw the basement had no windows. The solitary room was the size of the building above, the space filled with barrels, crates, heaping piles of books, small bags, large vases, discarded clothing, and all matter of detritus.
These were the artifacts of people’s lives and livelihoods, abandoned.
“Look at all of this.” Fenris peered inside a burlap bag, then through the slats of a crate. “There’s anything and everything in here. Dinnerware. Silks. Sacks of rice.”
Ingrid looked around in despair. Were the owners of these belongings still alive? So many Chinese were being attacked or imprisoned. She glanced down and gasped, a hand flying to her mouth.
“Good God. It was mice. I was stepping on mice.” The little creatures had been rendered into statues. Her footsteps had scattered some pieces across the floor, and she saw an intact mouse a few feet away. It sat up on its haunches, gaze toward the gorgon. The figure could have passed for an intricate garden ornament. “I hope these creatures didn’t feel pain.”
“Turning into a statue would be a quick process, I’d think.” Cy motioned to the far side of the room. “I found that drawer, 36C, and it’s in quite a peculiar space.”
“I found something you should see, too.” Fenris waved at them from the middle of the room. He had an open box in front of him, his expression strangely excited. “Look!” he said as they approached. In both hands, he held plates of orichalcum, each about the size of a dime novel. He held them spanned out like handfuls of playing cards.
Cy plucked one away, holding it to the light to inspect the edges. “This looks like ten-plate. That’s a small fortune in your hands.”
“Yes, it is. Quite fortuitous.” Fenris’s expression was pointed.
Cy shook his head. “These belong to refugees. Raiding from them is unconscionable.”
“Even if this happens to be exactly what we need to help Ingrid do her part to help them? To help their prophesied leader?”
Cy backed away. “We can’t. It’s wrong. We must only look where Lee told us to. You shouldn’t be rummaging around at all.”
“What do you say, Ingrid?” Fenris extended a handful of orichalcum to her.
She couldn’t help but grip a piece of ori. If she dropped the thin plate, she could imagine it drifting like a feather. “I . . . I don’t know. Cy’s right. The thought of stealing from them is horrible.” She bit her lip as she stared at the metal. These could change everything for her. “At the same time, we know the fox is hunting for me . . .”
“Fenris.” Cy’s tone was sharp. “That crate’s not why we’re here, and we can’t deliberate morality until dawn.”
Ingrid reluctantly handed the ori back to Fenris. She hobbled around towers of boxes to the back corner of the basement, where she found a sectioned-off area with tables, drawers, microscopes, and glass tubes in shapes and sizes that she couldn’t even name.
“This looks like the room the Chinese were destroying in Seattle as the UP moved in,” she said.
“The similarity struck me as well,” said Cy.
“It’s also like the one we saw in San Francisco.” Fenris joined them, his hands stuffed in the deep pockets of his overshirt.
“I don’t recall that being mentioned,” Cy said, a question in the statement.
Ingrid was stunned to realize they hadn’t brought it up before. “I think that detail fell by the wayside, with Fenris being injured so soon afterward. In Chinatown, deep in a guarded building, there was a room like this around the corner from where Mr. Sakaguchi was held to convalesce. We stopped inside and Lee . . . Lee asked to inject me with a syringe. He didn’t specify what the contents were.”
“You’ll find this interesting, then.” Cy slid open a drawer labeled 36C along with other characters in Chinese. Inside were clear liquid-filled glasses nestled against plush blue fabric.
“‘For Cy and Fenris,’ Lee said in his message.” She looked up, eyes wide. “He intends for you to be injected as well.”
Cy nodded, mouth set in a grim line. “With what? That’s the dilemma. There’s nothing here in English to identify what’s what. There are plenty of empty drawers, though, and a bin of empty syringes.”
She touched her arm where the needle had pierced her almost exactly a month ago. “Lee asked me if I trusted him with my life. I said I did, of course.”
“Lee didn’t offer me the same treatment at the time. Not that I would have accepted.” Fenris shook his head. “I suppose I should be flattered to possess an invitation now, though I should state that it’s against my beliefs to place any liquids other than coffee inside my body.”
Cy’s gaze sharpened. “He said this would save your life, Ingrid?”
“Yes, something along those lines,” she said. Fenris nodded.
“Lee’d want you kept safe no matter what.” Cy tapped a fingernail on a glass barrel in the drawer. “The Chinese surely have some counterattack or defensive strategy in the works.”
“Like a poison attack?” asked Ingrid.
“You can’t inoculate against poison. Work up a resistance, maybe, but that tends to be a gradual and fraught process.” He grimaced. “If you had any symptoms of illness in the days that followed your injection, they may have blended with your energy sickness or been remedied by the fox’s dark Reiki. I suppose there’s only one way to be certain of what this does.” He worked off his coat with a rustle of leather and began to roll up his shirtsleeve.
It was more worrisome to see Cy in this position than to endure the mysterious treatment herself. “You wondered if Lee had mailed that note under duress. Now you’re willing to take his word on faith?”
“Ingrid, I question everything. It’s my nature. I wonder at the spin of our planet, at the rise and fall of the sun each day. I question why and how you can love a lout like me, a man with the graves of thousands on my conscience.” He shrugged, but his quick confession struck Ingrid like a dart. “One thing is a certainty. I don’t doubt Lee’s devotion to you. If this is the same substance—”
“—which we have no way of knowing,” cut in Fenris.
“True.” Cy held the syringe to his arm. “I’ll take it on faith.” Ingrid had to look away to avoid the sight of the needle entering his flesh.
“Oh, hell. If I turn keel-up, I’ll haunt you,” Fenris said, pointing at Ingrid. His overshirt was baggy enough that he simply rolled up the sleeve. Cy applied a light touch to hold Fenris’s arm still as he injected him using a fresh syringe.
“The night’s halfway done. Let’s rig up their security again and head out. No need to linger,” Cy said when he had finished.
Fenris kept pace with Ingrid as they crossed the room. “What if we take the gorgon’s head with us? It might stop Bl—the fox.”
Cy turned from where he stood near the light box. “Can’t risk anyone else who may be around her at the time, us included. Besides, the ambassadorial ring makes her almost impervious to harm.”
Fenris sighed. “I suppose we must leave it, then, though I’ve known some wretched examples of humanity who would be greatly improved by becoming statuary.”
Cy secured the blindfold over Ingrid’s eyes and shut off the lights. She again walked toward the angry essence of the decapitated head. It wasn’t nearly as nerve-racking this time, though the crunches beneath her boots made her cringe with every step.
She lifted up the layers of gunnysack one by one. The snakes hissed their rage. As Ingrid retreated a step, she reached into her power to send the gorgon a deep apology for its plight and her inability to provide further h
elp, to which she received no comprehensible reply.
She faced the staircase as Cy untied the blindfold for her. Fenris held Cy’s rod for him, the tip at a minimal glow, and passed it back to him. “You’re well? No bites?” Cy asked, his worried gaze examining her. At her nod, he started up the staircase. “Be ready for any threats in the building or on the street.” Fenris kept pace with Ingrid as they ascended the bend in the stairs.
Ingrid frowned and slowed. She heard a soft, subtle clinking sound with each step. Could it be another trap?
Cy stopped short a few stairs up. “What’s that sound?”
“Maybe some stones are stuck to my boots?” Ingrid wondered aloud.
“I don’t hear anything,” said Fenris.
“No. I know that noise,” Cy said, holding out the rod to illuminate Fenris.
He rolled his eyes. “Congratulations. You found me out. My pockets are filled with orichalcum.”
Cy rubbed his face with his free hand. “How much?”
“As much as would fit.” Fenris held his head at a defiant tilt. “It should be more than enough for the braces. Enough to do a few versions, if need be. What, should we have Ingrid drop a bag over the gorgon again so that we can repack the ori in its box, nice and neat?”
“Good grief, Fenris.” Cy groaned.
Ingrid opened her mouth to speak but Fenris spoke first. “Yes, good grief. We need this orichalcum. And I will gladly apologize to the rightful owners for my thievery, if they aren’t already dead.” He advanced another step, bringing him closer to Cy.
Cy’s defiance crumbled as he looked away, his face tight with grief. “You’re right. I hate it, but you’re right. I deliberated taking it myself, but I hadn’t the nerve.”
“Thankfully, not all of us ride such a noble high horse,” said Fenris.
“Since I have absolutely no desire to go near that head again, let’s consider the matter resolved,” said Ingrid, though guilt still weighed in her gut like a stone. “The fact is, we needed ori. Now we have it. That is that.”
Cy nodded, relaxing more in the face of Ingrid’s resolve.