Lost Grace (The Reminiscent Exile Book 4)

by Joe Ducie

  My Will snapped into place and the doorway opened. It was late afternoon in Switzerland, bright sunlight poured through the breach, along with the scent of wet, old forests—something foreign to this part of Australia. A quokka hopped along the shoreline, gave us very little notice, and bounced through the portal. The little creature looked around, surprised to find himself so suddenly in Switzerland, and disappeared from view around the edge of the doorway.

  “I guess it’s safe then,” Annie said.

  I sent one of my trusty mind webs out from Rottnest, through the doorway, and into the immediate area surrounding the portal in the forest. Nothing seemed out of place. Strong currents of magic in the air—untamed Will—but that was to be expected, given the nature of the Atlas Lexicon. It was, perhaps, the largest centre and concentration of power on True Earth. I knew that for fact. That concentration would get the Lexicon in trouble one day… and perhaps it already had.

  Just on the edge of my senses, through the fairy-tale-looking forest, I felt something wrong. Something malignant. It was a shimmer, a pale reflection, of the Degradation I’d used to end the Tome Wars. But whatever it was—a shield, a dome, a chokepoint—it was first cousin to my dark work all those years ago. And that work had been possible only with the help of the Everlasting.

  “Not looking good?” Annie asked, reading my face.

  “It’s definitely our usual caper, which means death and demons and old gods. You still in?”

  Annie grinned. “Never a dull moment.”

  I offered my hand, she placed hers in mine firmly, and we stepped as one through the portal, travelling several thousand miles in a single step. We left behind the warm night air, the stink of the pink algae on Rottnest, and entered the forests surrounding the Atlas Lexicon.

  “What a nice day,” Annie said. “That portal beats the hell out of ten hours on a plane and jetlag.”

  Moss and brambles, tall trees forming a canopy pierced by beams of warm light, and a meandering network of trails and pathways made up the nearby forest. I glanced over my shoulder, found an old worn stone archway holding my portal in place, and snapped my fingers. The portal vanished, the way cut off.

  From my duffel bag I retrieved the sword and belt forged in Atlantis and strapped the weapon to my waist, and the gleaming shotgun. As before, I loaded my pockets—jeans and waistcoat—with extra shells. A little dell disappeared behind the portal archway, and I stashed the duffel bag down there. Nothing I couldn’t replace in the bag, but it was best to have a few secrets. Especially if a hasty retreat were required. I loved a good hasty retreat.

  “Which way?” Annie asked. She had drawn her revolver. We were alike in many ways, almost reading each other’s minds. If the connection through the petals in our hearts kept strengthening, mind reading wouldn’t be far behind. I needed to sit Annie down and explain. She already suspected something, that much I knew.

  I pointed northwest through the trees. The little quokka, thousands of miles from home, chewed quite happily on some leafy foliage atop a small mound of dirt.

  “Guard my bag,” I told him, as Annie and I set a quick march along a well-worn path through the trees.

  “I think we’re about two miles out from the main city,” I said. “It’s hard to judge. There’s definitely something up ahead that’s wrong. Dark magic, corrupted Will, that sort of thing.”

  “Any bad guys?”

  “I’d wager yes.”

  Annie nodded and double-checked the load of her revolver.

  Five minutes of walking and the trees thinned, the dirt path became a wide cobblestone lane, and we got our first proper look at the majesty of the Atlas Lexicon.

  We were at the southern end of a massive valley, surrounded on all sides by towering mountains, the peaks and granite faces snow-capped and distant. Rolling green fields to the east, dotted with dozens—hundreds—of wild horses. To the west, something I’d only read about—the Restless Cemetery. A city, sacked and destroyed in Roman times, that now housed hundreds of thousands of tombs, surrounded by a sixty-foot high enchanted wall. To keep the dead inside. Much like the necromancy back in Perth that had summoned me here, the Restless Cemetery wasn’t quite dead.

  Annie and I glanced south, back along the cobblestone road toward a town—perhaps a mile away—of quaint little cottages, smoky chimneys, and a few odd farmers working in tilled fields. One of the fields held a contingent of tents, emergency vehicles, and dozens of people dotted to and fro within the mess. A mobile military command centre I could hazard a guess as to why it was needed.

  The Atlas Lexicon sat at the north end of the valley. A solid mile north from where Annie and I had emerged from the forest. A mini-city of silver spires and towers, connected by crystal skybridges—and at its heart, as with all cities designed by the Vale, like Atlantis before and Ascension City after, the tallest tower, a skyscraper. The placement of such a tower granted the Atlas Lexicon legitimacy, power. Only a handful of places in all creation could claim a Vale-constructed tower. A sign of nobility, of the right to rule.

  The one in Ascension City, where my brother sat on the Dragon Throne, was far cooler.

  The Atlas Lexicon was impressive, but endangered.

  A horrid purple-black shield of light, a dome like a snow globe, covered the entire city. It pulsed with ugly sourness, near-transparent, allowing us to see the towers within. Around that shield, creatures shambled and shuffled—things that looked vaguely human, things that didn’t even bother. I knew, at least in part, what I was looking at.

  “It’s a breach.”

  “Sorry?” Annie said.

  “A breach. Someone, something—our bad guy—has opened a breach to one of the dead worlds. They call them Wastewheres here at the Atlas Lexicon, if I remember that right. The worlds along the Story Thread that house nothing but monsters and darkness. Something cut a path through, letting all those creatures in. As for the shield… that’s a different problem entirely.”

  “Declan, what’s that over there?” Annie pointed not to the north, but more toward the west, across the cobblestone lane, to something moving through a copse of trees not too far away.

  I threw a detection net in that direction and felt it ping against something cruel, old, dangerous. Something held together by ancient magic and pure cussedness. Surprisingly, I felt it sense me back, so it was at least mildly Willful.

  I hefted my shotgun onto my shoulder. “Target practice,” I said. “Come on!”

  Knowing it was sighted, the beast burst from the trees, uprooting them, blasting the trunks into splinters as if tearing through tissue paper. What emerged was a skeletal thing, about twelve feet tall, with burning red coals for eyes in a skull elongated, stretched, to look like something you might see on a dragon.

  Black leathery wings, rotten and useless, hung from its back. It stood on two legs and carried shackles, chains, in its bony arms. The beast roared, a sound that echoed across the whole valley, shook snow from distant peaks, and snapped the chains like whips. Blue fire erupted along the cold steel.

  We closed the distance fast.

  I was barely across the cobblestone lane when the beast leapt—a deadling, I was sure, but of a kind I was unfamiliar—and covered the ground between us in three seconds. My shotgun was already raised as I cut to the side, a great mass of burning chain links gouging the earth where I’d been standing a half-second before. Cold air rushed past me, leaving a rime of blue frost on my arm.

  I pulled the trigger on the shotgun, aiming for the pulsating black heart in the beast’s chest. The heart ran slick with black, congealed blood—blood like oil.

  A torrent of magenta and red flame roared from the barrel of my shotgun, six feet of fire, and a storm of pellets slammed into the beast. The deadling shrieked in pain and surprise, as it was thrown twenty feet back through the air, landing hard on its back, coils of its chains wrapped around its legs.

  I was thrown back a few feet as well, the shotgun braced against the groove in
my shoulder. Less than perfect form, but need’s must and all that tosh, I hit the ground hard.

  Annie offered me her hand and pulled me to my feet.

  “That hurt?” she asked.

  I grunted. The beast still howled in pain, desperately yanking at the knot of chains around its thin, skeletal legs—each of which, I noticed, ended in four razor-sharp claws.

  “Want to kill it?” I asked.

  “Yes, please,” Annie said.

  “I hit it pretty good. When it gets up, aim for the heart, Annie. Destroy the heart or the brain, that’s how you put down a deadling. The shotgun blast should have opened up a nice hole in its ribcage.”

  Annie swallowed—myriad emotions warred across her face: fear, doubt, resolved into tempered anger, righteous fury. I felt the moment she decided to put the beast down and raised her revolver.

  The beast tore itself free of the chains and stumbled to one knee, red burning eyes focused on me with hate rarely seen in this world, and struggled to pull itself up. The shotgun had torn a good chunk of its hipbone away. One leg hung useless.

  It reared back, arm and chain whipped up into the air, and exposed its chest.

  The ribcage had shattered—but not nearly enough for Annie to make her shot. I could see its pulsing heart, bleeding more oil light from the few shotgun pellets that had pierced its armour, not enough to put it down, but enough to slow it down.

  “Detective Brie—” I began.

  “Shut up, Hale,” she replied.

  Being Hale, I shut up.

  Annie rolled her shoulders and gazed down the sight of her revolver. She pulled back on the hammer for a hair trigger. The dark silver barrel wobbled, held, and then grew perfectly still. The breeze whipped Annie’s dark hair about her face, but she didn’t flinch. She breathed in once, exhaled slowly, as the beast leapt from the torn earth with a tremendous snarl—a fetid gust of decay washed over us, made me crinkle my nose.

  Annie sighed, a gentle sound, and her revolver roared.

  It happened almost in slow motion—at least for me. For a perfect few seconds, I saw the future clearer than the Historian. The silver bullet spiralled through the air, the beast fell into its path, and the lance of lead took the space between two of its ribs. A space no wider than a deck of playing cards.

  The bullet punched the beast’s heart, exploding that pulsating black mess, and time sped back up.

  It’s shrieks—of pain, of anger—stopped abruptly. As it fell through the air, truly dead, its entire form burst into pure white flame. By the time the beast struck the ground only five feet from us, it was already so much ash in the wind.

  Annie gasped and took a step back. I put a hand on her shoulder and grinned.

  “Nice shot,” I said, knowing full well such a shot was impossible, and not of this world. Again, I thought of the petal in her heart. What was the Infernal Clock doing to her? The conversation would have to wait until our business at the Lexicon was concluded, but I feared even that much time may have been pushing my luck now. My hand was going to be forced, one way or another.

  “Why did it burst into flame?” Annie asked. “Cold… flame?”

  “Destroying the heart, you severed its connection to the magic keeping it ‘alive’. Centuries of decay and death caught up with it all at once.”

  Annie took a deep breath and chuckled. “Cool.”

  “Agreed.”

  We turned to the sound of a convoy of vehicles roaring down the road from the town in the distance—or more likely the field command tents. A sleek set of four green Land Rovers, accompanied by a detail of military jeeps with rear-mounted machine guns. M240’s, I thought, though hard to tell at this distance.

  I retrieved my shotgun, the barrel red hot, but kept it pointed at the ground.

  “Holster your weapon,” I told Annie. “We’re about to be arrested.”

  We walked back to the cobblestone road as the trucks pulled up level with us. I placed my shotgun down on the ground. My sword belt joined the weapon as the mounted machine guns swivelled in my direction. The grim-faced soldiers behind the machine guns looked young, far too young, but then in the grand scheme of things, I was young, too.

  A tall man emerged from the first Land Rover, toting a blue crystal staff. He was classically handsome, dressed in a fine suit, and carried the air of a leader—of the big swingin’ dick in charge.

  “You are under arrest…” he began and trailed away. The colour drained from his face. His mouth moved soundlessly for a few seconds and he used his staff to steady himself. “By the Everlasting, Declan Hale!”

  “Howdy,” I said. “And this is my friend Annie.”

  My name spread like poisoned wildfire through the convoy. All four weapon mounts swung solely to point at me. Annie took a clever step to the side, distancing herself from the infamous Shadowless Arbiter and the potential hail of hot lead.

  The tall man with the staff recovered enough to hold up a hand. “Nobody move. Nobody fire.” He met my gaze, though it pained him. “I am Lord Towré Winter, the Seat of Neverwhere, of the Atlas Lexicon. The Knights Infernal are not to visit the Atlas Lexicon without invitation, Arbiter Hale.”

  “The Knights Infernal,” I said, “don’t know I’m here. It’s just me, Winter, and I go where I damn well please.” The sharpest knife in existence—a knife I used to own—would have struggled to cut through the tension in the air. “That said, I am here at the invite of Lady Evelyn Waterwood. She requested my assistance to deal with the… well, you know. Your infestation.” I gestured vaguely to the north, at the horrid purple shield strangling the city.

  “Lady Evelyn is trapped in the Lexicon,” Lord Winter said. “We’ve had no communication with any of the governing body in two days.”

  “She used… alternative means to contact me,” I said. “Means best discussed in private, Lord Winter.”

  Lord Winter considered, then nodded.

  “Guest rights,” he said. “For you and… Annie.”

  “So not under arrest?” I lowered my hands.

  “Maybe later,” Winter said. “Once we’ve had a chat. Avery, collect Arbiter Hale’s weaponry. If you’d like to ride with me?” He gestured to his Land Rover.

  I dropped Annie a wink. “Splendid. Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE TWILIGHT HOUR

  ‘So I never went back…’

  An armed escort… escorted… us through the encampment in the green fields just north of the quaint little town in the southern valley, which I learned from Lord Winter was known as Spire-Brunnen, the Fountain Spear—a bastardised translation from the old Germanic, but fit to purpose, I was assured. Whatever that meant.

  The sleepy cottages, old churches, winding cobblestone lanes and markets, made the town look like somewhere worth living. I’d put a pretty penny on there being a damn good tavern. A tavern hoarding wooden-barrelled kegs bulging with delicious, foamy German beer. Bah, I shook my head to clear it. Sober and lovin’ it, that was me.

  I’d been in my fair share of military encampments, emergency management centres, triage tents, and the operation in the field outside of Spire-Brunnen commanded by Lord Winter was a professional job. We marched past mess halls, armouries, barracks, vehicle depots, alongside communication tents and armaments pointed toward the Restless Cemetery and the Atlas Lexicon beyond. Lord Winter saw me inspecting his camp and I gave him a respectful nod.

  The command tent had been constructed at the heart of the camp, a wide and white pavilion of reinforced steel frame and, at a wager, enchanted cloth to repel the most common—and a few uncommon—methods of attack, of eavesdropping, and intrusion.

  Annie and I were led under the flaps at the entrance and entered a modern space, panels on the floor over the grassy field, and rows of desks holding computers. A large screen on the far wall held dozens of conflicting images—aerial views of the valley and the Lexicon, mostly. Dozens of people manned the desk, spoke into headsets, through tablets attached to thei
r wrists. None of them spared us a glance. I saw attack parties in the fields to the north, battling with the deadlings and creatures surrounding the Lexicon at checkpoints and in trenches. They weren’t idle, I’d give them that much. Hell, I was impressed.

  Lord Winter led us to a glass cube of an office on the western wall of the tent. We sat down on a fine leather sofa, Annie and I, and were brought cups of steaming hot coffee, which given the hour stretching toward midnight for us, on Perth time, was most welcome. We had no worry about jetlag, as Annie had said, but it was still going to be a very long day.

  The doors to the glass cube closed with a whispered hiss on pneumatic rails, sealing Annie and myself in with Lord Towré Winter. He walked with a limp, I noticed, masked by his impressive dark obsidian and blue staff, which he now racked against one of the glass walls.

  Winter, perhaps the most handsome man I’d ever seen, sat opposite us in a leather armchair and smiled. I noticed the canine teeth on either side of his upper jaw were diamond, or something like diamond. The man had crystal teeth. Sure.

  A long moment stretched toward uncomfortable. Annie fidgeted next to me. I took a polite sip of rather decent coffee, though I was no real judge of such things.

  “I never thought to actually meet you,” Lord Winter broke the silence. “You’re more myth than man. More legend than legit.”

  “True Earth is under my protection,” I said mildly. “That includes the Atlas Lexicon.” Winter frowned and opened his mouth to protest. “Whether you want that protection or not.” My tone brooked no argument. “Though I’ve no intentions to dismantle your leadership or upset the sovereignty of the Lexicon. I admire the work you do here. I would like to see it continue once we clear up the unpleasantness to the north.”

  “Thank you for your candour,” Winter replied with half a smile. Ever the diplomat, it would appear. “Unpleasantness, indeed. That’s putting it mildly. Deadlings roaming outside the Restless Cemetery. That hasn’t happened in centuries.”