“Francie,” Jalaeka said, nodding towards the dressing room. She got up and went out with him and they had a whispered conversation. I didn’t get the words but the gist was clear. He’d always been so easygoing it was fascinating to watch him tease her as he laid down the law. She reluctantly agreed to whatever it was. The Valkyrie, whose hearing was sharper than mine by an order of magnitude, sighed heavily and hummed a little tune to herself to block out the personal stuff.
I concentrated on fighting my way into the arctic gear. Immediately ordinary temperatures came back to my extremities, even my feet. It was less like being a sofa than I’d feared. Jalaeka returned.
“Francine is going to go with Skuld to Kodiak Aerial and wait there,” he said to me. “You and I are going to Engine House.” He walked across to me and unzipped the chest section of my coat to stuff a plastic clothing bag inside it, then zipped me back up to the neck with a pat to my shoulder.
“Against my orders and advice,” the Valkyrie said, sounding cross but resigned to his overrule.
I watched him open the French windows onto the balcony. Snow and broken icicles fell in over him but he shook them off and took a deep breath of the dry, piercing air. He wasn’t wearing any cold weather gear and I knew he felt most human things, so I didn’t understand how he could take it now, when suddenly he changed shape without warning.
I felt a strange sensation, deep somewhere, like butterfly wings opening and closing. It wasn’t from him, even from those wings of his that were huge intersections of night moving through the simple material fabric of the Palace and revealing it, like an X-ray, to be much more than simple. It was no sooner there than gone, but it left a little coldness in the pit of my stomach.
“Let’s go,” the huge winged thing said, finally looking round at me with obsidian eyes, and I let go of the breath I’d been holding.
I glanced at Francine and she came over and gave me a hug. I reached into my inside pocket and took out my Abacand, thumbprinting it silently to take off its DNA security tags. I put it into her gloved hand and made sure she felt it. Her fingers closed over it and I gave her a kiss on her forehead, aware that we were somehow doing the soldiering thing and that, unlikely as it seemed, I was the one going to the front. She returned my kiss on my lips.
Behind her, the Valkyrie stood up. Gold to Eros’s black, she looked of this world, made, real. He didn’t. I fiddled, settling the clear face-mask he had given me into place.
“Come on, come on,” he said in pretended impatience. “No cynical modernist remarks about my suit from you, and no excessive homoerotic overtones from me. We haven’t got all day.”
His India-ink black hide was as slippery as polished stone. As I touched it the name of a demon, the first of all demons, the one from whom every evil had sprung, ran secretly up my nerves and into my mind. Fear and a sudden, awful doubt struck me dumb.
He picked me up and held me with my back to him, his huge arms under mine and crossed over my chest, his hands somewhere above my shoulders. My feet hung uselessly in their boots.
“Remember when we used to go paragliding in the summer?” he said.
“Yeah,” I gasped, feeling my teeth freeze when my mouth opened.
“This is going to be like that. Without the parachute.” As he spoke he stepped forward and jumped up over the rail.
There was no fall. Anadyr Park opened up in front of me like a film on fast zoom-out. I saw the Palace roof diminishing, the way it had fallen in on the attics and the grey, winged shapes that stumbled around in there. The white expanses of snow were smooth like sculpted surfaces. The forest was as huge. The ice, broken, crevassed, ridged and colossal, was as big as the mountains out of which it had flowed. White creatures I couldn’t name ran between the trees. They ran to a theme of claws and monstrous ferocity. Nothing marked the sky but the distant, receding sun, not even a cloud.
I saw how small the Palace was, how vast the Park had grown beyond it, and fear made my throat tight because I hadn’t grasped what he’d been talking about the night before, not really. The Park stretched way beyond the horizon. You used to be able to glimpse the other side of its bubble in the old days, could have seen the cliffs and headlands of Far Sankhara from my bedroom window like a mirage hanging over the end of the rose garden. I saw no sign of a city yet.
Tears ran out of my eyes, even under the visor.
There was blood on the ice of the frozen ornamental lake.
We passed that place, and over the snowless, arid tundra beyond it, where stunted trees were green but poor and the ground was mostly stone, and over the taiga after that. We flew more like an airliner than a kite, but I was glad of the smoothness. Finally, the bubble’s edge came into view like the shimmer of a mirage.
The air here was churning with odd currents where the cold met the warm of Sankhara. Clouds built and lightning darted. The sudden heat and turbulence flung us around.
“Hold on to your breakfast,” Jalaeka said and we went into a steep, sideways glide. We passed through the edge and came in across Sankhara Bay at about a hundred miles an hour. We were overtaken there by a silver dart rippling with sunlight which braked in the most beautiful arabesque over the city.
“That’s the Pterippus Vassago with Francine and Valkyrie,” Jalaeka told me as we came in slow over the beach and I could see the tent town had grown there, where Francine used to live a couple of lifetimes ago.
I could see a few people out on the boardwalk in spite of the unseasonably cool nip in the air and the evacuation notice, some Forged out too, a Mer-culean atop his sturdy wooden lifeguard’s tower, its windsock fluttering in the gentle wind. They watched the Pterippus with interest, but they didn’t notice us land above the high tideline on the sand even though we were much closer. Their inattention gave me an even deeper sense of unreality and I began to get very nervous.
Jalaeka became his usual self as he let me go and I struggled to get out of my sweltering, smothering clothing as he reclaimed the bag he gave me in the Palace and got dressed. We left my winter gear stuffed under the boardwalk weighted with a rock, and walked up onto the soft, weathered wood as we had done a hundred times or more. My shoulders ached where they’d been held.
We sat for a few moments on the bench at the tram stop, looking across the road at the row of Victorian boarding-houses. One was scruffy, overgrown in the garden, with peeling paintwork and boarded-up windows on the ground floor. So far as I knew, nobody had ever passed beyond the gate. Nobody had ever had a reason to. On the low wall outside it Damien was perched, eating a bag of chips. He waved at us.
Jalaeka bit his lips and looked at the place. “What do you know about Gateways? Specifically big important Gateways into mystical secret realms underground?” He sat on his hands and if he’d been short enough I got the feeling he would have swung his heels.
“Expect trouble,” I said, realizing I couldn’t go back now, no matter what his skin had told me. “And don’t eat when you’re in there. Or look back on the way out.”
“Look at me,” he said and I looked without thinking into his dark brown eyes.
“Hmm,” he said, as though he’d seen something and was satisfied with it. From thin air he produced a thing I recognized as a cigarette and a paraffin lighter. He lit it, offered it to me, I refused.
He exhaled smoke. “I lied to you.”
“When?”
“Just now. I lied to you. We’re not here to change me. We’re here to change you. Me and Damien. We’re going to go into the Engine and get it to rewrite you.”
He paused for another drag, then threw the thing down and stamped on it, then flicked the lighter on and off, then closed it and gave it to me. I turned it over. It was warm and heavy, nice to feel the round corners.
“Walk away now if you want to,” he said.
I weighed the lighter in my hand. I put it in my pocket and walked across the road to Damien.
He got up and threw the empty packet into the hedge, brushing salt o
ff his hands onto his pull-over. He gave me a hangdog look of extreme guilt and led the way up the path.
I walked through the tangled brambles that had grown across the space for a gate where no gate hung. I studied the cracked and pitted concrete path, nettles and goosegrass brushing our legs, thorns snagging and tearing across our clothes. My hand got stung. It was late in the season and the nettles were extra strong. I was grateful.
“Why me?” I said.
“You’re the only one,” Jalaeka answered.
Damien put his hand against the door’s crazed and flaking paintwork, ignoring the knocker. It opened. It wasn’t even locked, not even shut. It swung inwards silently onto a long, narrow and dark hall. He led us for a few strides, then stopped. I stumbled against his back. The first jolt of real fear shot through me like a dart.
“Because you’re not meant to be here, all the defences are operating,” Damien said lightly, gesturing to his left. “There’s no way round them. Jay—you’re up.”
The shadows that gathered around us smelled of rain and saturated wood. I couldn’t see a thing in their gloom, but the walls were so close to my sides I felt more claustrophobic than threatened. The door closed behind me with a soft but distinct sound of a lock clicking home and I heard the same cascade as I had in the pub the night of the pool balls. All the names—here we are, here we are, here we are, Greg, you poor fucker, are you listening? No Ktickt there.
As my eyes got used to the gloom I saw Jalaeka step sideways into a room I hadn’t even realized was there. The doorway was simply a kind of ragged mouth torn in the lath and plaster of the wall, barely high enough for him. He ducked his head to go through and the smell of rain increased, blooming outward and up with a fresh fungal rider on it. Timber creaked and moaned. I tried not to touch anything as I looked through after him.
The part of me still functionally academic realized with a cheap thrill that I was actually inside what was known as a Legacy structure, made when the Sidebar was made. Damien pointed upwards and kept himself close to the wall.
A strange glow seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The walls of an ordinary front room ran with water and suppurated with growths of green and brilliant blue algae. There was almost no floor at all on the far side. The ornate black granite fireplace sat in a wall that dropped down and down into complete blackness. Beneath Jalaeka’s feet the floor creaked and bent. Then he looked up and I let my gaze track his.
Seated on the broken floor above us, hanging through the hole, which should have been occupied by a plaster rose and a light, was a creature that seemed to be made of leaded-glass crystal. It reflected and refracted light like a diamond.
Long arms ended in longer fingers spiked with sharp nails, some broken. Its face was elongated and as romantically faery-informed as the high towers of the central city Aelf. Large slanted eyes, colourless and transparent, stared at us both, one, then the other, then at Jalaeka. They didn’t blink. A high forehead gave way to a horsetail plume like the Mohican of an ancient warlord’s helmet but this was fibre-optic glass and its tips shone with crimson light. The mouth was excessively long and opened in a fierce grin, clown-wide. I saw a lot of teeth. The rags of its clothing were rough fighting garb, as if it was the spectre of a thousand-year-old horse lord, petrified and compressed to mineral form.
I was always wary of unfamiliar and complicated forms. It was typical of Gateway guardians that it should combine many historical and fantastic qualities, and the behavioural combinations weren’t remotely predictable.
“Don’t try to kill it,” Damien suggested helpfully. “It’s got unlimited access to the generator. Just pay.”
The thing moved forward with the reluctant caution of all security guards. It dropped onto the edge of the boards just before the abyss and landed in a low crouch, barely making a noise. I felt the floor judder and bounce with its weight and realized how light the thing was. He was. He straightened up and, in his standing and movements, became almost human.
“Ah, crap,” Jalaeka muttered under his breath, apparently recognizing something I must have missed.
“What?” I whispered, but no sound came out of my mouth. I thought I could feel something underneath us cracking.
Jalaeka took his jacket off. He threw the jacket back towards me and I clutched it, the metal buttons icy against my hands, denim tough.
There was a whump and another gust of chilly, wet air. I glanced up and saw two female figures, similar to the first, clinging to the ceiling. One was tinged with the faintest muted colours like a delicate ink drawing. Her friend rattled a quiver full of glass shards and fitted one to a slender short bow. She didn’t aim it but it sat in her hands easily as she clung to the soggy rim with her feet. Chunks of plaster fell down like cake icing.
A feeling I’d never had before began sweeping through me in waves that made my head buzz and my limbs jitter. I glanced around, urgently looking for somewhere to be sick—but it had already happened. I felt as if I were broken inside, in my mind. I could feel someone else looking out of me but nothing else about them, no clue who, no sense of them except that my body wasn’t a hundred percent mine. Then it left me. I thought it was Unity, Theo rising, but it was only fear.
“W-wha- . . .” I said.
“Vampire,” Damien said, feigning a casual air.
The guard took reluctant steps forward, sniffing and staring. He gave me a last, dismissive look which made me vomit unexpectedly, in gratitude that he’d lost interest. He refocused his avid gaze on Jalaeka and shifted side to side nervously.
“I know of you. Your blood may do me harm,” the vampire said. His voice was thin and fine like a very worn-out vinyl recording in a museum. He sniffed again and licked his lips. He was trembling with a repulsive display of lust and fear. Clear liquid spooled out of his mouth, strung itself down to his feet. He panted as though he were burning up.
Jalaeka tipped his head to one side. He even sounded sympathetic when he said, “I won’t hurt you.”
There was a brief and unintelligible hissed conversation between the three vampires. The females chattered and made sounds like rubber tyres squealing in a tight bend. They coughed low tone calls. The male vampire shook and bowed under their scourging but snarled at them, a desperate, doglike sound, and for a second I thought they were going to start fighting.
With a dull snap of old timber the floor dropped two inches and began to tip towards the fireplace.
“Hurry up,” Damien suggested. “If you fall through here, it’s a long way down.”
I sank to my knees, still holding the jacket. The vampire himself moved forward so fast I didn’t see him do it. He fetched up face-to-face with Jalaeka and made a warding sign before his face with one fragile finger. “Eros,” he said, so nervous that the sibilant s-sound stuttered between his incredible teeth. He hesitantly touched Jalaeka’s bare arm with one hand and looked up again. Whatever he saw made his eyes open wider, their huge slanted diamonds changing shape until his pupils were vertical black lines inside his eyes.
Jalaeka reached out and slid his hands across its thin form, drawing it closer so that it looked as though they were going to kiss, but at the last minute the vampire’s eyes filmed over white and it turned to his neck instead. Sightlessly it opened its mouth in an automatic gape. There were no two delicate snake fangs there but a row of long, fine needles backed by a row of gleaming razors. It gave a curious reflexive flick of its skull and used the recoil to bite.
There was a sound, a kind of juicy crunch that I felt knot my empty gut again in an agonizing cramp. Jalaeka staggered and made a sound that was a gasp and a shout. The thing in me that watched rose closer. Is it me? I thought. Am I disconnecting from reality? But it didn’t feel like me. Damien gave me a thoughtful, frightened glance, watching me closely. His nostrils flared and he had to struggle not to back away from me.
Theo.
I stared at the vampire’s spined back and Jalaeka’s hands on it, gentle. Like paint dropped
in water, colour was beginning to flood into its surfaces, spreading and brightening. Jalaeka was talking to me but it was hard to hear him, hard to concentrate.
“Greg, look at me.”
There was a really peculiar noise. Not only the sucking of the vampire, but another one inside that. The colours in its body started to give off their own light. The female vampires began to whimper and the male began to shudder with a ferocious, unstoppable rhythm.
I could feel Theo’s attention. I knew it was him.
“Greg for fuck’s sake look at me, you prat.”
I glanced at Jalaeka. He was hurting but he covered it well. Like someone’s mother, he told me to get back into the hall, everything would be all right, it would be over in a minute.
Theo didn’t want to go. He wanted to see. He was the vampire and the room and the house and the road and he could taste blood and the maddening sensation of unsimilar Stuff structures entering his vampire body. What was given became him. It didn’t betray itself. He couldn’t read it. It wasn’t Unity. It didn’t consume him.
Jalaeka was consoling him and he couldn’t stand it. He let go of me.
The vampire itself was weeping. I realized that as I started to turn. I crawled the two steps back to the hall and onto a drier, more solid surface, where I sat and drew my legs up close to me. I hugged the cold jacket to me and stared over the collar of it into the room. Damien came and stood beside me.
“It’s all right,” I heard Jalaeka saying. “It’s all right.”
Then the female vampire in the roof made a birdlike call and darted away, her arrows chiming against one another. Her sister followed her.
The hallway seemed lighter suddenly, and I realized that sunlight was falling in weakly through the quarter-light in the door, yellowing the paintwork and showing me my own coat, my trousers, my boots and his blue jacket. All fine. All still there. Hey, look at that. Orange stitched genuine red-tab jacket, not puked on, miraculously. Reflexocare black men’s casual pants already repelling the black streaks of filth and verdigris with that trademark quiet action.
Living Next Door to the God of Love Page 40