Circle of Enemies

by Harry Connolly

  Ty tried to pick up an old candlestick shaped like a gas-lamp post but apparently decided against it. His hand fell to his side. He tried to touch it again, didn’t, then shrugged and walked away. The compulsion was strong.

  “But this,” Wally continued, waving his arms around. “This is a clue farm right here. I think Georges Francois hid the Book of Oceans, and I think this unbreakable collection contains the clues we need to find it. What’s more, I think this head-chopped statue is the key to the mystery.”

  I stared at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “It’s true, man! I’m sure of it! It’s how these people think! They want to pass their power to someone who’s earned it. And I’m not the first person to believe this, let me tell you. Not by a long shot.”

  “Why would he hide it and leave clues? You said he vanished, right? How do you know it didn’t vanish with him?”

  “Then why would he create this collection, huh?”

  “Because he was an egotistical asshole.” I turned to Fidel, Summer, and the others. “You’re signing on with this guy?”

  They looked dubious. “Apparently,” Fidel admitted.

  “Ray, don’t doubt me.” Wally shuffled his bulk into the center of the room. “I know you think you’re hot shit, but I gotta tell you, I haven’t seen it. Neither have these guys. I have no idea how you got this rep as a badass killer, but I suspect you’re just a front.

  “And I admit, I’m not really big on thinking up plans. But you know what? I don’t have to be. I am damn good at finding out secrets. I solved every version of Myst without ever looking at a walk-through.”

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed at him.

  He smirked and shrugged. “Go ahead, buddy. Have a chuckle. But I’m telling you, I see things in ways you can’t understand. These objects are all bound together, and they’re all connected to him.” Wally waved a hand at Lino. “I know a little desert retreat that’s going to be abandoned soon, and I was going to ask you to join me while I worked this out. Why should you be killing all these people for the Twenty Palace Society when you could be killing for an old friend? Huh?” He sounded almost hurt. “I was hoping that, if nothing else, your rep would keep some of those assholes off my back while I figured these clues.”

  “Why would you think I’d help you?”

  “The King Book of Oceans,” he said. “The Lilly Book of Motes.” He moved toward the statue, his expression blank.

  “No.”

  “I know. It’s too late for that anyway. Kill him.”

  I held up my empty hands, thinking my old friends might hesitate to kill me in cold blood.

  Summer raised her gun.

  I reached for the ghost knife and it zipped out of my back pocket. Summer sighted on my chest and fired two quick shots. Then I had my spell in my hand.

  I whipped my arm down as I lunged at her, slashing the ghost knife through the barrel of her gun. It cut at an angle, slicing it close to her hand but not touching her. The silencer and front end of the barrel thunked to the floor, then the slide shot toward me and bounced off my leg.

  Summer gaped at the ruined weapon in her hand, then at the two holes in my shirt.

  I spun on Wally. He stepped backward, passing through the wall like a phantom. I threw my spell at him.

  The ghost knife plunged through the plasterboard after him, zipping right between the head-chopping statue and a brass cow rearing up like a lion. It couldn’t have missed, I was sure, and a moment later I was proven right when a jet of flame burst through the wall, blasting plaster, wood splinters, and knickknacks toward me.

  I stumbled, struck something with my heel, and fell backward onto jagged wood and broken plaster. Lino was on the floor next to me, curled up on his hands and knees and covering his head.

  Wally screamed as the flames roared out of him and through the hole in the wall. I must have hit one of his little iron bugs and ignited the others. They tumbled, still burning, out of a hole in his belly.

  I grabbed Lino’s flabby biceps and hauled him to his feet. “Let’s save your life.” I dragged him from the room.

  Summer was still standing by the back door with Ty beside her. Fidel was standing in the doorway with Bud right behind him, almost ready to push his way into the room. Only Fidel was looking at me; he gaped at the bullet holes in my shirt.

  “Shit, Ray,” Fidel said. “Are you bulletproof?” I could see the hunger in his eyes.

  His expression made me furious. I threw a punch at him, but he retreated toward the front door and vanished. My fist slammed into the doorjamb, and I cursed at the pain. I’d split my knuckles wide open.

  Stupid. I moved toward the hall. I couldn’t see Fidel or Bud; they had to be between me and the front door at the end of the hall. There were stairs on the right, and I shoved Lino toward them. We stumbled up.

  The knowledge that Fidel or Summer could be inches away from me with a knife made me so shaky that I could barely lift my legs. Lino pounded up the steps, and I did my best to follow him.

  “Front room,” I said, but he was already headed there.

  I entered after him and slammed the door. At least we’d know when one of the invisibles tried to come in.

  Lino ran to the bedside table and yanked open a drawer. He pulled out an old revolver with a carved pearl handle. I grabbed it and twisted it out of his hand. “No.”

  “How can you say no?” His voice was high with stress. “These criminals broke into my home! If I can’t shoot the hell out of them, please explain why not!”

  The bedroom we were standing in was carefully arranged and covered with a thin layer of dust, like a museum exhibit. I went to the window and looked out. The greenery was heavy, but we were pretty high up. I could see the Dodge Sprinter parked across the street. There was also a sloping roof just outside the window, with a low gutter at the edge.

  “Because nothing they’re doing here is worth you losing your life.” I snatched a baseball off the bureau. It felt small in my hand—it had been many years since I played ball, but in my freaked-out adrenaline high, the long throw felt entirely natural. The ball punched a hole in the window, soared out through the tree branches, and struck the side of Annalise’s van.

  “That was Mr. Francois’s Mickey Mantle!”

  “Well, why don’t you go get it, then?” I opened the window. There was glass on the shingles, but he was wearing shoes. Lino hesitated. Just as I was about to point out the tree he should climb down, the bedroom door burst open.

  I tore the curtain rod off the wall, then spun and threw it toward the door. The curtain fell on an invisible form there, and I charged at it, knowing I couldn’t use my ghost knife or Lino’s gun. I drew back my bloody right hand, hoping that the punch I was about to throw wouldn’t hurt too much.

  “I have a gun!” It was Bud’s voice. I stopped where I was. The curtains bounced to the floor, and I heard him move away from me. Damn. I stepped toward the sound, but Bud shouted, “Don’t!”

  “Show me the gun.”

  He obliged by becoming visible. I had no idea why he did what I told him, but he definitely had a gun, which looked so ungainly because of the silencer. He was pale and trembling, so scared I thought he might crap himself. I knew how he felt.

  But he didn’t squeeze the trigger. Wally had been completely casual when he told them to murder me, but Bud wasn’t a killer. He was a tough thief and a little mean, but killing someone in cold blood was deeper waters than he liked. I could see that he was trying to work himself up to it.

  “Happy now?” he asked. “I’m bringing this loser back downstairs. Him, we want alive.”

  “Bud, you have to let me go downstairs to meet my boss. She’s on her way into the building”—in fact, she should have arrived already. Where was she?—“and she’s coming for Wally. I need to tell her to lay off you guys.”

  Bud scratched at the side of his neck. The pale skin there looked red. “They have guns.”

  I pulle
d at the holes in the front of my shirt. “So what?”

  “You ain’t bulletproof,” Bud said, as if trying to convince himself. “Not with that face.”

  “Bud, you have it all wrong. We need to get you—all of you—back to the place where you got this creature.” There was something at the back of my mind, something I was missing, but now wasn’t the time to think it out. “We—”

  “Shut up, Ray,” he said through clenched teeth. “You think I’m going to listen to you? You stole my truck!”

  He was working himself up to pull the trigger, and he was very, very close.

  Lino stepped up from the side, almost from behind Bud, and slammed a golf club down on his forearm.

  The gun didn’t go off. I rushed Bud and slammed my right elbow into his mouth while I groped for the gun. I clamped my left hand onto his right, but it was empty. He’d dropped the gun and I hadn’t even heard it hit the floor.

  I spun him around and pushed him against the wall. The fight had gone out of him, and when I grabbed his forearm, he hissed sharply in pain. Lino must have broken a bone.

  “Sorry, Bud,” I said, although I was suddenly unsure how much that apology was supposed to cover. I looked down to pick up the gun, but it was missing.

  So was Lino. Had he gone out the window? Somehow I didn’t think he was spry enough to get out and down so quickly. The bedroom door was standing open.

  There was a loud crash downstairs. Annalise had finally arrived.

  A sound like water flowing through a tunnel came from the first floor, and I shoved Bud through the door toward it. He let me. An eerie orange light shone up the stairs; was the building on fire? I hurried toward it. Bud curled his arm across his body and moved his feet as fast as I pushed him, but the vitality had gone out of him.

  At the foot of the stairs, we found the ground-floor hall blocked by a weird twist of the air, an orange glow that made the air seem to flow toward the front of the house. I didn’t know what the hell it was, but it felt fundamentally wrong, the way some predators do when I get too close.

  Bud drew back, not wanting to touch it. The weird flow was close to the bottom step, but I couldn’t judge how close. It was coming from somewhere in the front room and flowing toward the front door—from Wally toward Annalise, I assumed—but I didn’t want to get close enough to look down the hall to confirm it.

  Then the flow reversed and I felt a weird pressure wash over me. I started rethinking all my thoughts of the last few seconds, but backward. I fell against the stairs, disoriented, feeling unmade in some odd way I couldn’t understand.

  My skin crawled. Whatever strange magic had been flowing toward the door, it had been turned back on itself, and I’d felt the effects. The flow faltered and stopped.

  I tried to raise my hand, but it swung downward instead of up and I banged my wrist against the edge of the stair. The spell Annalise had used to turn Wally’s magic back on itself was still affecting me, making me move in the wrong direction and sporadically think backward.

  Bud’s drape must have shielded him from the effects, because he stepped off the bottom stair, turned toward the front of the house, and raised his good left hand. He was holding a tiny pistol, and I had no idea where he’d gotten it. He looked tired and sad, as though he’d given up any hope of living out the day. Annalise strode into view. Bud aimed the gun at her throat and, from barely six inches away, shot her.

  She didn’t even flinch. She swatted his hand away, and his face came alive with sudden, startled pain. Annalise grabbed him by the belt and collar, then raised him over her head.

  “Boss, no!” I hadn’t gotten the words out of my mouth when she threw him down onto the floor with such force that the whole house shook and the floorboards cracked.

  Bud suddenly turned crimson—all the blood that would have splashed out of his shattered body washed over his skin, held in by the drape. Someone was screaming and the wooden floor kept cracking, although part of my disoriented brain knew the sound wasn’t coming from the floor.

  Annalise stared at Bud’s corpse, her brow furrowed as she watched his blood disappear. A buzzing noise grew louder and I struggled to my feet. Annalise reached toward her vest.

  I tried to move toward her but took two steps back instead. Damn, her reversal spell still had me all turned around. I let myself fall toward her—she grew larger in my vision, at least—just as the floor vanished.

  Bud and Annalise both dropped into the darkness below. Annalise gasped in surprise just before I caught her sleeve. The Nomex was slick; for a moment I thought it might slip out of my injured hand, but it didn’t.

  I jammed my foot between banister posts so I wouldn’t slide in after her. Annalise slid out of the oversized jacket—it wasn’t fastened, and she didn’t fit into it anyway—but she caught hold of the hem and swung out over the void. She looked up at me, and God, for the first time ever she looked genuinely afraid.

  And there, below her, was a huge mass of drapes moving toward us.

  Just as I was about to start hauling Annalise in, she did it herself, scrambling hand over hand up the length of her jacket, then over me. She hopped up onto the stair behind me and said: “Don’t lose my jacket.”

  The drapes were coming, and not in small numbers. Not five, not six … This was a swarm of thousands. I scrambled to the side, trying to get away, but I was too slow. Too slow! The drapes were already here.

  The predators burst up through the opening in the floor just as a ribbon zipped over my head and burst into a huge bubble of green flame.

  There was no keening this time, no death cries. The drapes died suddenly and violently.

  When the green flames faded, I saw the predators swirling around the opening—close enough that I could have rolled over and slapped one—but not coming through. Then the floor reappeared and became solid, sealing over the opening.

  Thick wads of gray sludge covered the baseboard and wall. Damn if we hadn’t just found a way to kill the drapes without letting more into our world. I saw Annalise pluck another green ribbon from her vest. It was her last one.

  “Boss, don’t kill the ones who can turn invisible.”

  “He didn’t look invisible to me.” Police sirens grew louder. “Remember what I said about the police.”

  She stepped onto the hall floor, one hand on the banister just in case the portal reopened. It didn’t. I stepped out behind her. Wally stood at the end of the hall, with an open door behind him that led to the backyard. The front of his shirt was torn, and his swollen belly had burst open. I could see dark, wet things moving inside.

  He held Lino Vela beside him. Lino looked at me, gasping for air. He was so freaked out that any of us could have controlled him with a gentle word. At the edge of the room stood Summer and Fidel, and they looked just as shaken and helpless as Lino. Flickering light from a fire I couldn’t see played against their faces.

  “This guy,” Wally said, his voice quavering a little, “can help us find the Book of Oceans. We can make a deal. Your people are looking for it, too, and—”

  Annalise lowered her shoulder and ran through the gray sludge at him.

  Summer and Fidel vanished.

  Wally shoved Lino in front of him. “Listen! Wait!” he said, but that wasn’t going to stop Annalise. Lino cringed.

  “Boss!” I shouted, moving toward her, but it was too late. She threw a ribbon into the room. A greenish black tentacle whipped out of the open wound in Wally’s gut and slapped Lino toward it.

  Lino and the ribbon touched. For an instant, green fire lit his terrified expression. He didn’t scream. He didn’t have time.

  Wally, though, screamed high and loud. Annalise charged into the room just as the flames died. Lino’s smoking bones hadn’t even had time to fall to the floor before she knocked them around the room.

  I followed. Wally stumbled and fell onto his side. He raised his left hand to protect himself; everything from the middle of his forearm to the tips of his fingers had burned
down to a stiff, gleaming, resinous bone.

  Annalise grabbed him just above the elbow and stomped on his thigh.

  His leg flattened and buckled. Wally shrieked, and the sound of it stopped me in my tracks. I stood in the doorway, horror-struck at the noise he was making. Goose bumps ran down my back, and I flushed with shame. I hated Wally, but no man should ever be reduced to making a sound like that.

  Annalise, her face utterly blank, like that of a skilled worker with a complicated job, twisted Wally’s burned arm like a chicken wing and tore it off at the shoulder.

  There was no blood for some reason, but I could see the awful knobby end of Wally’s upper-arm bone. Annalise crammed that raw bone into his open, screaming mouth.

  I didn’t want to see any more. I didn’t want to see the breaking teeth or the way she nearly pushed the bone out the back of his head. This was her work. I didn’t want to see any more, but I couldn’t look away, either.

  This was who we were.

  Something greenish black inside Wally’s body lashed out at Annalise, but she caught it with her other hand. More tentacles flashed out at her, battering her and knocking her away, but she had hold of her victim and there was no way she’d give up now.

  God, she was winning.

  The strange orange flow erupted out of him, and Annalise was thrown back and her body curled to the side as though gravity was bending around her. The distorted flow suddenly changed direction, shredding the tentacle in her hand.

  Annalise staggered. The torn flesh on Wally’s belly opened again, showing more of the formless, writhing thing inside him. A limb flashed out, slapping Annalise away. The flowing orange distortion struck her again, lifting her off her feet and blasting her into the living room.

  I rushed after her to keep her in view. She flew in a straight line, smashed through the plate-glass window, and passed through the greenery out of sight.

  Damn. I ran toward her as though she had me on a leash. I had to make sure she hadn’t been turned inside out or something.

  She lay tangled in the bushes by the front gate, and two LAPD uniforms struggled toward her, guns drawn. Her expression was furious and frustrated.