It occurred to me that we’d yet to come in sight of the spot where I’d seen the lone light. I had to assume that it was where I’d find everything, including Galerius and the card.
My attention focused upward, I didn’t notice my foot kick something until the object slid to the rail and collided with it.
A hand. A meaty hand. Something had not only severed it from its owner’s wrist but also cauterized it.
I’d had a really bad feeling before. It was a whole lot worse now.
I ran toward where I’d seen that light. Inside my head, the dragon started roaring at me to let him take over. I knew what his plan would be. He’d fly up over the ship and set it ablaze. Of course, that assumed we evaded both the power of Galerius’s card and the beast at the same time, something I found highly doubtful.
A shot rang out.
It couldn’t be. I cursed Michael and every other saint I could think of at that moment. She couldn’t be on board.
My stomach turned upside down. I braced myself.
Things shifted. The Frank O’Connor stretched, and the area toward which I’d been running flattened a bit.
And suddenly, I was inside. With Claryce. Claryce who should’ve been locked up safely on shore. Claryce who’d somehow managed to get on the ship, despite my efforts.
And then even that shock fell to the wayside as I stared at the thing across from her . . . a thing I belatedly realized was Galerius.
He sat propped in a metallic chair, one arm dangling uselessly. His legs were twisted beneath him. The left half of his face was covered with a sickly green scaling, making it look as if he was transforming into a dragon of sorts. A long brown robe like a friar might’ve worn attempted to cover what I figured out had to be a body long wracked by disease. I couldn’t even see how he could survive in such a condition.
No. It all made sense. The reason he’d been able to survive whatever afflicted him was plain and simple. His card.
Claryce stood with her gun drawn. She looked confused.
“Nick! No. You’re another illusion. I warned him. He shouldn’t have tried—” Her gaze briefly shifted to her other side where, sure enough, Quiet Ford stood, held by the same two goons who’d left after the golem. I wanted to punch Quiet again for dragging Claryce back into this. He, meanwhile, seemed unperturbed by either what he’d done by bringing her here or by their current precarious circumstances.
The golem stood between Claryce and Galerius. There was a hole in the emptiness where the face should’ve been that must’ve resulted from her gunshot. Even as I stood there, the hole slowly sealed up.
The head turned toward me.
“Ah. Nick. Nick Medea. Nicomedia. I still find that so amusing,” Galerius rasped. He grinned, a pretty disgusting sight considering rot had taken away one side of his mouth. I marveled that he could talk at all, even while I tried to think how I might be able to kill him. “Perhaps I should be honored . . . keep your hand from your coat, Nick.“
Another goon stepped out from behind Galerius’s tall chair. He had a tommy aimed at Claryce.
“They’ve been informed that you’re hard to take down, but that your friends aren’t. They know their targets.”
“Let them—”
“Let them go? You’re seriously going to say that?” He chuckled . . . or at least made a grunting sound that, for him, seemed to pass as such. “The ape means little to me other than as a hostage, but she. . . she must be here if this is to succeed.” He made another ghastly smile. “In fact, with her present, it all comes together.”
“Are you sure you can survive it? You look a little . . . green.”
His smile turned into a scowl. “Soon, this will never have happened. The blasted potion the doctor created from the bit of dragon I’d obtained seemed at first to work, but then I discovered that it hadn’t saved me; it’d merely put my disease on a slower pace. I had to do something more, but my condition became so . . . obvious . . . that I could no longer keep my rivals at bay. I had to abandon my throne and begin my search anew.”
“All the while like that?”
The golem shrugged for him. “It hadn’t spread so much then. That took another hundred years and more. The one other dubious gift your damned dragon gave me was enabling me to live much longer. Didn’t realize how much longer until Rome fell. Of course, by then I’d shifted my search closer to Constantinople. And there is where I came across the card and learned the truth about everything.”
Fetch growled and took a step toward Galerius. With a slight wave of my hand, I stopped him from getting any closer. At the same time, my eyes darted toward Quiet, who was acting much too calm. As if sensing me, he raised his head just enough so that I could see his eyes under his cap.
At that point, I understood. I didn’t like it, but I understood. I knew what I had to do.
I talked.
“Is that where you also ran across them . . . him, I should say?”
“The Triple Man? By then, I’d discovered about Feirie and the Gate . . . but not yet that you, of all damned people, had become it’s guardian. I found him two days from Constantinople. In a small, abandoned monastery, if you can believe it. He was just sitting there, staring at the card! He’d set it in a place of honor, as if the monastery had been built just for it! The waste!”
I could see that Galerius had wanted to tell this story for a long time. I was willing to let him now that I knew better what was going on with the fourth member of our party. “Who was he?”
“Never found out. Some practitioner of the arts who stumbled on the card and didn’t have the resistance to its seductive power. It became his master, his existence, to the extent that when it on occasion stirred to life—altering things around it in the process—sometimes he didn’t quite keep in synchrony with the new variation. Hence his literal three selves.” Galerius managed to lean forward. “Weak! Not like you or me! We are masters of the card . . . although you certainly wasted your time with it. You could’ve changed it all, Nick. You could’ve saved her in any life. Any. Instead, you let them stay dead. Another reason I wanted her to remember. So she can see how true you really are. You could’ve saved whichever incarnation you truly loved. Have you told the princess that?”
“Nick . . . what’s he mean, you could’ve saved them? One of the others, like Clarissa?”
The golem clapped.
“As astute as ever, princess—”
“Stop calling me that!” she ordered, aiming past the golem to the true Galerius.
“As you wish . . . Claryce. Yes, our saint here could have used the card to adjust what had been to what he wanted. His favorite variation of you—Cleolinda, I mean—could have been returned to him whenever he desired . . . unless apparently his true love wasn’t so true after all!”
“Is that right, Nick? You could’ve brought Clarissa back. Loved and comforted her?”
“Forever . . .” Galerius added unhelpfully.
It was true. I’d known almost from the beginning that the card offered such a path, that I could even bring Cleolinda herself back if I so dreamed.
That, though, would’ve sent me spiraling down the same path as the Triple Man. Even if it hadn’t, I’d have worried about the repercussions, something not at all a concern to Galerius.
Claryce shook. “Oh, my God!” The revolver slipped from her grip. She didn’t even notice, her face now buried in her hands. “Dear God! No!”
“Ah! She finally remembers!” Galerius roared with almost mad glee, the golem applauding for him. Small drops of pus splattered on the floor below him. “Wonderful! Tell him about real true love, Cle-olinda! Real true love!”
Even though Claryce had dropped her weapon, Galerius gave no signal for his men to close in. No, he simply watched.
I finally rushed to her, Fetch covering me. Claryce looked up at me . . . and her expression grew more horrified.
“It’s all me, Nick! It’s all me!”
“What’re you talking about? Don’t
let him—”
Claryce vehemently shook her head. “No! I did this, don’t you see? All of this!”
“You’re not making sense!”
Galerius laughed hard. “Oh yes, she is. Perfect sense! Tell him!”
Swallowing, Claryce gestured at our surroundings. “This! Everything outside. Maybe everything we’ve lived. All my fault!” She shivered. “Nick . . . I did finish the dragon. I was honored as a saint. You . . . you died in the struggle and I could never accept that. So when the chance came, I took it!”
I thought I knew where this was leading, but I refused to believe it “Claryce, you didn’t do any—”
“Nick . . . I used the card to bring you back to life. . .”
CHAPTER 26
“You don’t know what you’re saying. Don’t let him play games with your mind!”
She shook her head again. “No, Nick! I know it’s the truth. I really remember. I remember everything!”
I didn’t like the way Galerius was taking this all in, as if he’d had more than torture in mind when he awakened her memories. It also bothered me to think that we’d done exactly what he’d wanted by stimulating the recovery of her memories.
Claryce continued to stare into the past. “Clementina. I was using the name Clementina because it was too painful to use Cleolinda—my true name—after losing you, Georgius.”
I tried not to show any dismay at what she was hinting at. “Only a couple hundred years after the . . . incident,” Galerius offered. “She lived in the heart of the Eastern empire. Near Constantinople. In my research to find a way to cure myself, I discovered her continued existence and realized why she still lived. It became clear to me that my fate was bound to yours and hers. Naturally, I journeyed to Constantinople immediately.”
Each time Galerius mentioned Constantinople, there was a tinge of hatred. It had been his archrival Constantine who’d finally wrested control of the empire from him. Galerius had never been a man to forget grudges, even when that enemy was long dead.
“He came looking for me,” she went on. “I didn’t know him in this . . . version of reality. Cloaked to disguise his sickness, but spinning tales of a love stretching through time—God! I drank up his story! He was your old friend, cursed to walk the earth until he could bring us together again!”
“You should’ve seen me, Nick. A truly impressive display of acting.” He made the golem sweep off its hat and do a grandiose bow.
It had taken place shortly after he’d stolen the card from the Triple Man. Galerius had thought he’d learned from the other’s mistake. Each time the card was used, it affected the wielder in different ways. Therefore, he’d decided to let “Clementina” be his pawn.
He’d crafted a story of love, loss, and sacrifice that had played on her passions so much she’d willingly agreed to use the card as he’d directed. Of course, Galerius had only cared about one thing. In his tale, he’d been the strong healthy friend of ours. When she adjusted reality, he fully expected to be restored to that. And by staying with her, he also believed he would be able to reclaim the card. After all, in his version, I could only be brought back if she sacrificed herself in my place.
She’d done as he said. She’d imagined the reality he’d suggested.
Unfortunately for Galerius, the same flames he’d sparked in her to trick her into acting as his pawn had colored her perception of what he wanted. Her mind had instinctively altered things before the fact.
And in the process, Cleolinda—acting as Clementina—had lost track of Galerius’s supposed role. He’d been subconsciously relegated to just being there. Unaware of his monstrous affliction, she’d assumed he would be restored to what he’d been before.
“I remember feeling sick for a moment, as if I’d been struck with— vertigo, I guess. Then, when I recovered . . . I wasn’t me, anymore. Not Cleolinda or even Clementina. I am . . . was . . . Cleopatra of Chalcedon . . . and I do not . . . did not . . . understand this card in my possession. What was I doing with it?”
I remembered Cleopatra of Chalcedon. I guided Claryce’s chin so that she looked at me. “I recall her. I recall you.”
“Nikolaos,” Claryce murmured, looking into my eyes. “I thought I lost you.”
“No,” interjected Galerius in a tone that no longer sounded amused. “You lost yourself and you lost me. Your guise of Clemen tina ceased to exist, erased from history by the powers of the card as it, like all the other cards in the deck, restructured reality as it apparently saw fit. She remained a fragmented memory for you only because you’d been the one to use the card.” His chuckle took on an edge of madness. “It was Cleopatra of Chalcedon who now lived, Cleopatra of Chalcedon who had once been the princess Cleolinda, but no longer Saint Cleolinda. If it’d been Saint Cleolinda, there would’ve been no more incarnations, just her living on and on and you nicely dead, Nick. Instead, the tribune Georgius had survived the struggle, and the legend of his victory over the dragon had begun, bringing things to what they are this day.”
The golem went to his side. Galerius guided it to help him stand . . . at least as much as he was able. The once-mighty emperor was a bent abomination who should’ve been dead.
“The gods must’ve laughed!” he rasped. “I changed, too . . . for the worse! Because of you! The two of you! Even more frustrating, because she now feared the card, she cast it away . . . and the damned elf found it first.”
I didn’t have to ask which elf. Oberon, of course. Fortunately, he’d lost it, too. Maybe to the Triple Man, maybe to someone else. I knew there’d been other wielders through the centuries. I’d even encountered them on occasion.
“Always just out of my grasp. I could sense it, draw from it, but not enough to achieve what I needed. Not enough to end this . . . and so, to bide my time, I began my little game with you, Nick. A twofold game with her lives as the prize. On the one hand, because I hoped to turn you to hunting for the card yourself. On the other . . . because it just pleased me to take her from you.”
“You—”
The ship lurched. While the rest of us fought to regain our balance, Galerius just stood there, looking very satisfied. It wasn’t a comforting notion.
“We are there at last!” he declared loudly. “After so long, to be mere moments from correcting this travesty!”
I studied Quiet. He remained exactly as he’d been throughout my time here. That also disturbed me greatly.
I fought to stall a little longer, hoping something would change matters so that I wouldn’t have to rely on the last of last resorts.
“Can you feel it, Nick? The essence of the Gate?”
I could. I suddenly felt both stronger and yet somehow fragmented. It was disconcerting, but I didn’t exactly want it to go away, either.
“You made this all possible, you know. Until the Gate became fixed in place, I couldn’t have hoped to achieve this. But now, over the past fifty years and more, the energies binding it to Chicago have built up. Someone had to know where they would come together.”
And again I cursed Joseph.
I couldn’t wait any longer. My hand inched toward Her Lady’s gift while at the same time I calculated how quickly I could down the tommy gunner and reach Galerius.
“This is the place, then?” Claryce asked, sounding odd. “Then, you’ll want this.”
She pulled away from me and reached into the inside of her coat in a motion that looked almost as if she was going to draw the sword.
Only it was something far more dangerous than Her Lady’s gift.
The Clothos card.
I went from cursing Joseph to cursing Michael. I didn’t know what mad scheme he’d had in mind, but he’d tricked me when he’d sworn to take care of the card.
I moved, but Claryce moved faster. She held out the card toward Galerius, who looked more curious about what was happening than concerned.
And then he gave that awful smile once more. “Thank you. I could sense it was near . . . and yet not near. Now I un
derstand.”
He reached out his hand.
The card flew from her grip to his fingers.
Claryce seemed to wake out of whatever trance she’d just fallen into. She stared at her fingers as if seeing them for the first time.
She looked at me. “What just happened?”
“You just gave him the card.”
“The card? I had the card?”
“You don’t remember?”
Claryce vehemently shook her head. I wanted to know what Michael was up to. I also wanted to throttle him.
“Everything aligns,” Galerius announced, clutching the card as if it was his beloved child. “I knew you’d try to use the card against me; I gave you no choice. First against the Triple Man, then against me. Using its powers becomes quite convenient, doesn’t it? That’s the danger of it. It seduces you, slowly becoming your master, not your servant.”
“Think about what you’re saying, Galerius, and think again about doing anything with it. You of all people know its dangers.” I kept doing calculations as to what attacks I might be able to use. There was always the last choice of letting the dragon out, but I knew that was one thing he’d be prepared for. “You’re not acting as its master; you’ve been seduced by it as much as the Triple Man.”
The ship groaned again. I felt a sense of displacement that had nothing to do with the card and everything to do with the Gate. For the first time in sixteen centuries, I felt as if part of my bond to it had faded.
Galerius hadn’t yet used the card, which made me wonder how he could be controlling everything. I could feel forces shifting around us. Around me.
My legs started to buckle.
“Did I forget to mention one thing, Georgius?” I heard Galerius say as if from a long, deep tunnel. “The spell will devour the Gate and all it is in the process! Think of it! You’re being freed from your task at long last! Of course, I’m afraid it means that the centuries are about to catch up with you, but at least you’ll finally be free!”
Black City Dragon Page 31