by Joe Ducie
His arm, still clutching his ruined rapier, jerked up and pierced my belly with three inches of blunt, melted steel.
Oh.
A torrent of hot pain blossomed, like so many roses unfurling, and ran up my side.
Shit.
“That was for Clare…” I groaned, rolling off Renegade and pulling his broken rapier, embedded in my gut, with me.
I struggled a bit with the blade, but that only turned the stinging pain into something sharper, so I stopped.
I stood but immediately fell to my knees, as men pierced by swords are wont to do.
A glimmer of satisfaction seemed to shine in Morpheus Renegade’s eyes, and then nothing shone there, save the reflected bursts from the reality storm bombarding the city.
Grinning like a lunatic, Renegade died first, pierced upon the Roseblade atop the highest point of the highest tower in the Lost City of Atlantis.
“Good riddance,” I said and yanked his sword from my stomach with a cry that sent me reeling away across the plateau in blinding agony.
Wounded but still clutching the crystal rose, I watched Tal’s ghostly form approach me. Her smile was gentle and sure. Vicious rips in the very seams of reality crackled like lightning across the sky and through the burning ash fall. I was heading full circle toward death, the puzzle all but complete.
Tal half-caught me and half-dropped me on the very edge of the Infernal Clock’s ruined dais. I could see down over the edge, into the sharp vortexes—the reality storms. I was catching glimpses into the Void. Perhaps there would be nothing left, once the Degradation dispersed completely, and Atlantis was thrust back into proper time, onto the Plains of Perdition. That was a happy thought.
“Here you are at the end, Declan. Was it as good for you as it was for me?”
Her pale hands found their way to my side, attempting to stem the flow from the sword wound. My blood seeped through her flesh, slow but steady. I couldn’t look into her crimson orbs.
“Did you want this to happen?”
Lord Oblivion smiled through Tal’s eyes. “Now you’re catching on.”
I moaned and closed my eyes, still clutching the Clock which was supposed to grant eternal life. So why was I dying slowly with nothing but the shade of a lover and one of the Everlasting for company?
“Have I done more harm than good here today?” I asked the unseen god.
“That remains to be seen, Knight. You have forced change after ten thousand years of relentless stagnation. The barriers between Forget and True Earth should fall. Creatures not seen in the genuine universe since the Dawn of Moment are stirring.” It paused. “So you may rest now. Do not fight the eternal sleep. Die well in the knowledge that, for the smallest fraction of time, you held the greatest power in all creation. The power to destroy it.”
“I’d rather a glass of scotch, between you and me.” I tried to laugh but coughed up a little more blood instead. “Let me speak to her.”
Oblivion paused, perhaps contemplating my request. “As you wish.” Some of the blood seemed to fade from her eyes.
Tal stared at me and said nothing. Could she really hear me? Or was the Everlasting just playing games? After everything, did it make any difference if it was her or not? Tal’s death, my death, the battles lost and won. All things said and done, what could I possibly say that would hold even the smallest scrap of purpose or meaning? Goodbye, of course. Goodnight, sweetheart. We were just lonely rivers flowing to the sea, to the sea.
“Did you see a future for us, Tal?” I asked, but she only stared. “Did you see us waking up together? Smiling in the morning? Did you see us laughing and growing old? Did you see me loving you even more for every morning as the years flew past?” I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Boy, I sure did.”
A sigh that was more of a wince brought me close to tears.
“Please say something.”
An arc of wicked purple lightning tore the heavens apart.
“Oh well. Songbird, I love—”
Tal pressed an ethereal finger against my lips. Her eyes, the eyes of a Knight, blurred from harsh crimson to soft, pepper brown. For a heartbeat, or the moment between, she was mine again in mind, body, and soul.
“I know,” she whispered, and vanished like smoke on the wind.
All things said and done in truth.
The world didn’t end, after all, but that did not seem so important under the burning cobalt sky.
*~*~*~*
Dying alone now, I had time to think about all that happened. What made sense and what did not.
Lord Oblivion had played a long game, it seemed, forcing me back here with a need to destroy the Infernal Clock. I never would have done that five years ago, not for anything. But to stop the Degradation and save the Story Thread… The Everlasting had played me like a fiddle. I’d done exactly what It wanted. And now the consequences were unknown and unfathomable.
You have forced change…
I sure had.
The pain in my side was fatally grim but bearable. I had a view away to my left of the city, of the reality storm forcing it through the ruins of the Degradation and across time to the Plains of Perdition. All my work was undone, but for the right reasons. To my right, Morpheus Renegade still grinned at me from where he was pinned to the stone by the Roseblade.
“Quit smiling, you bastard.”
My vision blurred, but I caught movement from the far side of the plateau. I tried hard to focus. Someone, dressed all in white, emerged from the staircase that led down into the spire. A tall person, familiar.
She moved across the tower—purposeful, soundless footsteps—and paused when she reached Renegade. Carefully, she closed his eyes with her hand and ran her fingers along the golden hilt of the blade stuck through his heart, and then continued on to me. I thought about playing dead, but I was close enough to the real thing to make little difference.
The Immortal Queen lowered herself to her knees next to me and brushed my blood-soaked fringe out of my eyes. She sighed and removed her mask.
“Oh… you bad girl.”
Beholding the face behind the porcelain, I felt all the blades—real and emotional—dig and twist just a little deeper. I was still alive enough to feel like an idiot.
“Would you like a sweet?” Emily Grace asked, offering me a bag of strawberry bonbons.
“No, thank you.” I took a shallow breath and kept a hand pressed against the wound in my side. “I’m sweet enough.”
“You killed my husband.”
“I told all of you that I would, in Ascension City.”
“Yes… but he has killed you, too.”
A lot of things fell into place, through the hazy pain. “I suppose you were the one who left Tales of Atlantis on the beach for me to find. Was it only half a week ago I watched you dance at Paddy’s? How did I not know it was you, Emily?”
The Immortal Queen shrugged as she rested one hand on the small roundness of her belly, her unborn son, if prophecy was to be believed. “You didn’t want me to be anything but what I was. A friend, someone to flirt with, and the promise of something more.” She tsked. “Declan, you don’t get to have that.”
“No, I suppose not.” I unclenched my fist and let the Infernal Clock fall. It struck the obsidian plateau with a dull chime. “Same old mistakes, hmm. Brand new ways. Like loving a woman you can’t have… hoping for a future that will never come.”
“The eternal trap of desire, yes?”
The Clock petals unfurled and fell from the bud of the flower like the shards of a broken glass. “Will you… will you take one of those to Clare Valentine? Bring her back, please. She didn’t deserve to die. Not like that.”
Emily glanced at the crystal flower stem, hunger in her eyes, and snatched it up. She stood, gazing just beyond me at the city ablaze, a mile below. “Is that what you want, Declan? A last request?”
Her face was blank—she may as well have been wearing her mask again. “It is,” I said carefully.
“Please.”
She glanced back at Renegade, then back at me. “Then it gives me great pleasure to see you die unsatisfied, Shadowless.”
The Immortal Queen jammed her heel into my wound and, with a cry of exultant triumph, kicked me over the edge of the plateau and into the open air a mile above the burning city. Petals from the Infernal Clock scattered as I snatched at her foot and missed.
I fell.
I fell hard and fast, the wind rushing past my ears and stinging my eyes. Like a ragdoll, sodden and bloody, I fell through burning cherry blossoms riding the edge of the reality storms.
The ground rushed up to meet me in a final embrace—
A bolt of sizzling silver light, a strike from one of the tears in reality, struck me in the chest a split second before I was splattered in the dust. My entire form convulsed, and Atlantis disappeared.
The Void consumed me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Bad Girls, Honey
“Declan! Declan Hale, help me out here…”
I lay on a cool wooden floor. The scent of musky vanilla, cut grass, and old leather washed over me, mingled with the harsh copper tang of blood. Here I was at the end, back at the beginning.
Dying on the floor of my shop.
“Don’t keep me waiting, pretty boy.”
I rolled over onto my back and groaned as I tried to piece it all together. The reality storms ravaging Atlantis, the death throes of the Infernal Clock, had spat me through the Void and time. Back here, to True Earth and to the start of all this madness—my death just over a week ago, as I understand events.
Declan Hale, ugly son of a bitch that he was, gazed at me from above. I was looking up at myself.
“Stop staring, sweetheart,” I said, and grinned one helluva bloody grin.
He reached out his hand to touch me, which was just too weird.
“Don’t touch me—you’ll create a paradox that’ll destroy the universe.”
He snatched his arm back. “Really?”
“No. Not really. But you touch yourself enough as it is.” I laughed. How long did it take to die? Not much longer, if memory served. “I just wanted… wanted to tell you something.” I let go of my wound and motioned him in closer. His breath was warm and stank of old scotch.
“You’re me?” he asked.
“And you will be me.”
“How long before this happens?”
“You got just over a week. Grim forests in the dark, Dec.” What could I tell him that would make a difference? The truth of what was to come? The knowledge of my death hadn’t saved me. No, events had played their course.
Destiny cast no shadow.
“I can’t save you from that wound. All the Will in the world couldn’t… Are you wearing my favorite grey waistcoat?” he asked.
“It looks better on me,” I said. “And we both know I don’t deserve saving. We’re dead, Dec.” There was very little pain anymore. I felt almost… euphoric. At peace, after so long. Perhaps saying goodbye to Tal had done that. “Now listen. I am you. This is real. Call it time travel if it helps you sleep at night. It won’t, trust me, but it’ll keep you alive for… heh… for now.”
“What are you—?”
“Shut up and listen.” I could tell myself the important things and save as much as I knew how to save. At least the Degradation would be undone this way. Nothing was more important than that. Not my life. Not even Clare’s. “Train Ethan, love Clare, hug Sophie. Forgive the Historian. And trust Marcus, until he gives you a reason not to. And he will, oh my yes, he will.”
The rest of the track was just a sad song stuck on repeat, baby. I kept thinking of Emily, back in Atlantis. She had the Infernal Clock and the Roseblade. It didn’t matter, I suppose. This was my death, only moments away.
Younger Declan had a rough week ahead of him. He leaned down and looked as though he had something to say, so I lunged up and wrapped a hand around his neck, pressing our foreheads together to cut him off. He had a lot to understand, and there wasn’t very much I could tell him, just enough to die kind of satisfied.
“Don’t be such an arrogant fuck,” I growled. “And get a haircut. This ain’t no painted desert serenade.” Was that everything? Things were getting dark now. Low road, boss. It didn’t hurt so much anymore. “Something else… something… Ah, yeah. Declan, remember, Tal always aimed for the heart.”
I had enjoyed seeing her, what had been left behind, and seeing a lot of familiar things and friends this last week. Oh well.
All the meager strength I had left fled my limbs, and I fell back. My head hit the floor with a sickening thud.
Someone turned out all the lights.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Madman’s Lullaby
Of dying, I remember very little.
It hurt—then it didn’t.
Of waking up, I remember every second.
It hurt—and did not stop hurting.
I’ve had some hangovers in my time, seen a few empty scotch bottles scattered across the room and more than one or two half-eaten kebabs, but this was something else entirely.
I opened my eyes to a world of pain and drew in a harsh, startled breath that filled my lungs with what felt like a mix of ice water and acid.
Some part of me felt strong hands holding me down as I thrashed and moaned.
Blinding light made me blink rapidly and fight whatever was holding me back. Whoever was restraining me was just a dark silhouette against the glare.
“Be still, Hale.”
The voice echoed as if from a great distance. I moaned, fighting through the pain, and did my best not to struggle. I hurt too much to move. After a time that may have been five minutes, or longer, I could make out more than a hazy shadow. A simple, plain room came into stark focus: a worn carpet, walls in need of paint, and a single hanging halogen bulb swinging in the breeze that came through an open window.
“Where?” I groaned.
“You’re above the kebab shop in Riverwood Plaza, Hale. True Earth, just across from your shop. My humble abode these last few weeks.”
Old Mathias, the banana cart salesman, held me down. His lip was split from where I must have hit him.
“Mathias?” I blinked, trying to work through it all. I remembered Clare, Atlantis, the Infernal Clock, Renegade, and Emily. “How? How are you here? Are we both dead?”
“Far from it, my friend,” he said with a chuckle. His accent was gone and his grasp of English much improved.
I’d been tricked. “Who are you, then? Really?”
“We’ve met before, you and I. More than once.” Mathias dabbed at his lip with a handkerchief. “Before you destroyed Reach City. I cut the throat of one of your allies to draw you out.”
Clare. He was talking about sweet Clare.
My head was killing me. “Jade?” It couldn’t be. He looked so old, so worn. Jade had only been in his fifties five years ago. He had been an enemy on both sides in the Tome Wars, after forsaking a position at the Infernal Academy. If I remembered correctly, his wife had been murdered, and Jade had turned cold. A homicidal maniac, a mercenary for hire to the highest bidder. “Aloysius Jade…?”
Jade inclined his head. “At your service.”
“What happened to you?”
“Well, I didn’t die, as you did, but I came close. Five years in Starhold can nearly kill a man.”
I shook my head, disbelieving. “We were this close to one another on the street. I ate one of your damned frozen bananas, and I didn’t recognize you.”
“My own mother, bless her cruel heart, wouldn’t recognize me now. I’m an old man, in body if not mind.” He shrugged. “Aren’t you curious?”
“Curious?”
“About why you’re alive.”
I shrugged, then sat up, holding my belly. The devastating stab wound in my stomach, from Renegade’s sword, was a mess of tangled scar tissue. It looked nasty but old. I felt my face. Tal’s cut was a thin, soft line running down my no
se.
I was healed.
Alive and healed.
“No, I’m pretty sure I know what happened.” I held my head in my hands for a long moment. Memories returned to me about being on the plateau of the Infernal Clock. As Emily, the Immortal Queen, had kicked me from the summit I’d snatched wildly at her foot… and missed. But I’d managed to clutch a single petal before I fell.
“It was the Infernal Clock that brought me back. Had to be. What I don’t understand is why you’re here, why you’re… caring for me.” I thought about it. “No, I’m sorry. I just don’t get it.”
“A petal of the Infernal Clock… Legend says such a thing can grant immortality.”
“Do I look immortal?”
He snorted. “You look like death warmed up.”
I pressed a hand to my forehead and sniffed. “That’s funny. I think I need a drink.”
Jade produced a bottle of red wine and two glasses. “From your own selection, of course. To your good health, hmm.”
We drank in silence. I could only sip at the rose-red liquid.
“The petal was glowing and embedded in your palm, when I found you—your body, I mean—in what’s left of the Reach.” Jade paused. “I invoked a dash of Will into it, then a touch more. I used all the Will I had, and I haven’t been able to so much as channel a drop since, but the petal began to sing. I felt… I felt very small.”
“You saw me dispose of my body a week ago, didn’t you?”
“I’ve been watching you for weeks, Hale. Renegade broke me out of Starhold and sent me to either drag you back to Forget or kill you trying, and bring back a vial of your blood.” He shrugged. “I guess he got tired of waiting, and sent that kid to break your exile and force you to act. Morpheus is not the patient type.”
“Was not the patient type. He’s dead. I killed him.” Jade, for the first time, looked surprised. “But you avoided my question. The night I… I died?”
“Yes, I saw you. I felt the cords of Will you used to send the body—I didn’t know it was your own, at this point—across to Nightmare’s Reach. Honestly? I was curious. You have racked up a more than significant death toll, Hale, so why so much trouble to hide one more? I went searching in the Reach, followed the thread of your Will through the dust to that house.”