The Dormant (The Sublime Electricity Book #4)

by Pavel Kornev

  "Door, cousin!" the Princess shouted again. "Lock it!"

  The bodies of the servants began to stir, but it was not life that returned to them. Some incorporeal infernal creatures had entered their corpses.

  "Curses..." I whispered, locking the bolt. Then the Princess gave a thin shout behind me.

  I was next to her in an instant. I looked out the window and nearly shouted in surprise myself when I saw a giant figure on Palace Square with a bare skull.

  The conspirators had fallen back on their reserve plan. After losing their electromagnetic disturbance device, they had rolled the dice and destroyed the last transmitter protecting New Babylon from the underworld. That risked wiping the whole city off the face of the earth and ending millions of lives but, in the struggle to determine the new world order, anything was allowed. To some, human blood is just the grease of the gears of history.

  I wondered if Mr. Edison had a hand in all this.

  I wanted to believe he didn't.

  "We're dead!" The Princess whispered out as the door shuddered after a strong blow.

  "Is there a secret passage here?" I asked.

  Before my cousin managed to answer, the room was filled by a prolonged wail from the lady-in-waiting. Kneeling, the oracle was pressing her face in her hands. There were streams of dark blood running between her thin fingers with bright red nails. After that, she stood imperceptibly to her feet, moving brokenly and unevenly like a marionette. She pulled her hands from her face and led a frightening gaze over us, her eyes filled with an impenetrable blackness. In her bloodied hand, as if by magic, there appeared a ladies' pistol she'd snuck past the guards.

  "Bow before the power of Mictlantecuhtli, lord of the dead!" the oracle said in another's voice and suddenly started laughing a mad, elusive and barking laughter. "Pitiful worms, who of you is ready for a meeting with the lord? Maybe you, beanpole?"

  The muzzle stopped between my eyes, and I froze motionless, trying not to breathe.

  "Or you, limpy?" the oracle whispered out, taking Smith in her sights. "Or you, red vixen? Oh no, what about our little sleepyhead?"

  The lady-in-waiting, having fallen under the influence of the powerful otherworldly creature due to her talent, acquired an unbelievable sharpness of motion and turned her pistol from one to the next so rapidly that no one managed to even move. The blood covering her eyes did nothing to worsen her aim.

  "So, who wants to meet the lord first?" the oracle asked. "No one knows but the lord! And me! I know! I know, oh yes!"

  I was prepared to throw myself at the possessed lady if a chance presented itself, but I had no way of guessing her next move, so I just waited. The last thing I wanted was to catch a bullet.

  "Skin to the right! Brains to the left!" the lady-in-waiting started to suddenly recite some ghastly rhyme, spinning ceaselessly in place like a Persian dervish. "Meat on ice! And eyeballs cleft!"

  With every phrase, the pistol pointed at someone else, but not in a circle, without any obvious order.

  "The bones they go for hellhound treats!" The lady-in-waiting turned her barrel from the succubus and aimed it at the princess. "And souls alone we do not keep!" she said after that and whispered out: "Oh poor Anna, I'm so sorry..."

  Thomas Smith jumped off the divan just an instant before the oracle pulled down on the trigger. The investigator threw his arms in front of him, but his wounded leg left had less power than he wanted. He made it and was too late at the same time.

  The bullet intended for the Princess pierced straight through his pistol hand and slammed into the investigator's left eye. Before Thomas hit the ground, Elizabeth-Maria had struck the lady-in-waiting with the lamp she grabbed off the nightstand. The bronze base easily split the skull of the possessed lady, and the oracle fell dead onto the ground. A single bloodied pearl rolled along the carpet.

  "Curses!" Elizabeth-Maria exhaled, wiping the streaks of blood off her face. "Leo, we really put our foot in it this time!"

  And I couldn't argue with that. The figure of the Aztec god of death was becoming more and more physical, and the evil emanating from it rolled over me in waves, bending reality with its power, intoxicating the conscience.

  Our illustrious blood had protected us, but that couldn't last long.

  "It was all in vain!" the Princess groaned, and the crystalline purity of her fear shook me no less than an electric shock.

  In the fireplace chimney, I suddenly heard a rustling, and the Beast fell into the room in a cloud of soot. In his clawed paw, the albino was clenching a heart, pulsating with a ghostly luster. The air around was warped by the power of a fallen one.

  The Princess shrieked in surprise and flattened herself against the wall, while my imaginary friend calmly threw back his head, clenched his claws and squeezed the rest of the blood from Itztli's heart into his mouth.

  "Bugger, rotten meat!" he cursed, throwing the heart into the far corner of the room and taking the jar of coca leaves I'd lost in the catacombs from under his blood-soaked cloak.

  "You're the last thing we needed here!" Elizabeth-Maria cringed.

  "What beast is this?" the Princess asked, her teeth chattering in fear as the albino started packing his mouth with the juicy foliage.

  "Where are your manners, cousin?" the Beast growled, working his jaws quickly. Then, he pulled out the kitchen knife he had tucked into his belt. "Bugger! Leo, don't yawn! I'll be blown up!"

  "What is happening?!" Anna cried when the albino walking toward her slit his meaty palm with the knife.

  "I need your nightmare!" I answered in an attack of sudden illumination. "Let me bring that rain of fire into reality! Let me burn the impurity out once and for all!"

  The Princess hesitated.

  "Believe me!" I begged. "It's our only chance to escape!"

  "But how?!"

  "Just accept the power and give me your fear!"

  Anna bit her lip and decisively extended her right hand. The Beast split the heiress to the throne's skin unceremoniously and squeezed her fragile girlish hand hard with his big paw. The glow filling the albino ran out into the Princess, and he started to quickly flicker and become incorporeal.

  Without delay, I clenched my cousin's free hand and stretched out with my illustrious talent to the horror beating desperately inside her. I scrambled further and deeper, past it to her nightly nightmares of fiery rain, the vile stench of burned flesh and the fierce luster of a new star in the black stormy heavens over New Babylon.

  The power pouring out of the Beast lashed me with a stormy flow and ran into the desolate dead-ends of her consciousness. I didn't resist its pressure. Quite the opposite. I sped it up and drove it on, stoking the flame of her fear of the end of the world further and further, manifesting it with my illustrious talent.

  But before I finished, the flow of power suddenly ran dry.

  The Beast dissolved without a trace and the old kitchen knife fell with a metallic clang to the floor, while I was flung away from my cousin onto the bed. I did a somersault over it and rolled onto the rug.

  Princess Anna, though, didn't even flinch. With her arms spread wide, she was frozen in the middle of the room. The statue-like immobility combined in a surprising way with the marble whiteness of her skin. Crimson blood continued to streak down the split skin of her palm. In all other ways, though the Princess remained fully motionless, not blinking and, seemingly, not even breathing.

  Or was she really not breathing?

  I overcame the weakness that had captivated me, and stood to my feet, walked over to the window and looked outside with hope. But the ghostly black crater was still spinning in the heavens as before. No firestorm, none of the furor of a star falling to earth.

  The angel had not appeared to save us. I had failed.

  But then, the otherworldly dread from Palace Square wafted stronger and stronger, the emanation of evil piercing my soul and tearing it to bits. Reality withered and was destroyed, not able to bear the unnatural presence of Mictlantecuht
li. The light of day went dark, the purple fires in the empty eyeholes of the Aztec god's skull blazed brighter than the sun.

  "It was all pointless," I rasped out, spitting a clot of blood on the floor. "Pointless..."

  The electromagnetic radiation was no longer protecting New Babylon, and the power of the fallen had flowed between my fingers and evaporated without a trace. Nothing could stop the Aztec divinity of death from throwing open the gates of his underworldly kingdom now.

  I prayed for the Creator to come to our aid!

  The light on the square finally went dark. I stumbled back from the window and unexpectedly realized that this had nothing to do with the sun going out. No, it was all to do with the luster behind my back!

  I turned sharply and covered my eyes with my hand, not having the strength to bear the glow emanating from the Princess. My cousin was hovering a half meter off the floor with her arms spread wide. Blinding beams were blasting out of her wide-open eyes, and her dress had burned to ash. The fiery threads of tendons burned under her skin, filling the room with an unnaturally bright glow as if from thousands and thousands of bulbs.

  The silhouette of the Princess lit up and she began to become incorporeal, at the same time increasing in size and turning into a living luster. Then–in an instant! – with a taught clap, blindingly white wings spread out behind her back.

  A burst of thickened air threw me to the wall, but even the dizziness of the strong blow to the back of my head didn't stop me from recognizing the blinding figure. It was exactly what the angelic embodiment of the Princess looked like in the dream!

  Only then did I realize what a mistake I'd made. My cousin was not afraid of the retaliation of the fallen, nor the end of the world. She was horrified that she might lose her human essence and become something else once and for all!

  Cretin! Damned cretin!

  The beating of the angelic heart echoed in my head with an unbearable pain. All the color in the room dimmed and faded, while the pictures turned into gray panels, as if the Princess had taken every last drop of their beauty.

  I do not know how long I would have been able to withstand the horrifying presence of this supernatural creature, but a light flap of her blindingly white wings made the stone wall of the palace shudder and with a deafening creak, she fell outside.

  The angel was pushed out of the castle and started falling to the ground. She her wings just above the earth and rose up to the very heavens with a fiery flourish.

  The clouds, cloven by this rapid motion, burned with the luster of red-hot steel, and a sulfur rain began lashing down on the Old City.

  Chaos raced over the city with a destructive tsunami of fire. Fragments of glass exploded, and the doors flew out. Tile flew off roofs and some whole buildings just collapsed. Towers were demolished, and trees were pulled up by the roots. Everywhere and everything was flickering with the purifying flame of the heavens.

  I hurriedly retreated deeper inside, but still could sense the burning echoes of fire, which torched the otherworldly power, not leaving the Aztec god of the dead the slightest chance. The supernatural fire even burned and dissolved the granite tiles of Palace Square. It seemed the air itself was burning outside.

  And it was.

  The gates to the kingdom of the dead dispersed without a trace, and their ghastly creator went with them.

  And suddenly, the ferocity of the fiery rain falling onto the capital started diminishing, while the blinding star hovering over the square shot up into the heavens like a roman candle. But the angel didn't disappear from this world, nothing of the sort. I could still sense the echo of her measured heartbeat in my head.

  "Damn it..." I whispered, not having the power to think over what had happened.

  Something suddenly rustled under the Princess's bed and a disheveled Elizabeth-Maria crawled out.

  "Just what was that?" she demanded an explanation. "Leo, what have you done now?!"

  "It wasn't me," I answered, shaken by a nervous shiver. "It was all fear."

  "Did you bring a fallen one back to life?" Elizabeth-Maria squinted. "You decided to manifest a nightmare?!"

  "It was not a fallen one, but an angel," I corrected the succubus. "I turned my cousin into an angel. That was her fear."

  "Yet another image in your head?" Elizabeth-Maria cringed and licked a drop of blood off the back of her hand.

  "You might say that," I confirmed, undoing the lock.

  The front door took some effort to open due to the heap of bodies on the other side but, overcoming my disgust, I walked over them into the guest room, then out into the corridor.

  It was simply unbearable to remain in the palace.

  Elizabeth-Maria followed me and suddenly asked:

  "And where'd you get the power, Leo?" but she immediately waved it off. "No, don't answer. It doesn't matter now."

  "What do you mean?" I turned.

  "It doesn't matter where you got the power. It matters that you didn't give it to me. You violated your oath, Leo."

  Sensing an incomprehensible consternation, I took a step back from the succubus, and held my open hand out in front of me in an awkward defensive gesture, then sped up:

  "Wait! But I saved us! I saved everyone, this whole cursed city!"

  "I don’t give a damn about this city!" Elizabeth-Maria raised her voice. An instant later, she was next to me. "You broke an oath!"

  Her long fingers clenched my shoulder. Her nails had become claws and pierced my jacket through to the flesh, stopping me from pushing her away.

  "What are you doing?" I rasped out, nearly losing consciousness from the piercing pain.

  "I'm taking what is rightfully mine!"

  "But what about my soul?"

  "Keep it! I no longer need it!" the succubus laughed, clenching something invisible in the fingers of her free hand and pulling it to her.

  She pulled out my talent.

  Everything started swimming before my eyes. The world became a blur.

  Red hair became black, facial features grew more defined, and a sickly angularity took shape. I suddenly realized that before me was no longer Elizabeth-Maria, but Crown Princess Anna. The succubus had become her infernal twin, a doppelganger.

  "You've got a wonderful talent, cousin!" Elizabeth-Maria said in another's voice and shrugged her narrow shoulders, allowing her leather jacket to slide off. "Just astonishing! And now, it's mine!"

  "And what about me?" I murmured with a lifeless rustle. "What about me?"

  "You're long dead, my boy. You just cannot make peace with that. But you'll have to..."

  Elizabeth-Maria stepped back abruptly, as if breaking the thread that bound us, and my chest was pierced with a sharp pain. Something squelched and blood flowed from a gaping wound. In a soundless plea, I extended a hand to the succubus, but the beast threw my hand back with a laugh. I had already started to get corpse spots.

  "Make peace with it, Leo. Make your peace and die already!"

  A sharp jab pushed me onto my back. I fell face up on the cold stones, broke through them and fell into the very underworld. But only my soul went into the abyss, my body remained, looking with glassy eyes at the ceiling.

  I died.

  7

  DEATH IS FALLING into an abyss, fast and unending.

  There are no devils with pitchforks, one's soul simply flies into a black hole, passing old memories and breaking into bits on the sharp edges of insults and disenchantments. Then it grows back just in time to slam full speed into another betrayal or treachery. And so on, without end.

  The cold of the icy basement, the dim light of a kerosene lamp, thesteely reflection of a butcher's knife–a carefully forgotten memory had just begun to pull and swallow my mind when a certain power burst into my soul with a ghostly harpoon and drew it back into my body with a sharp burst.

  I squirmed, coughed and started breathing.

  I cursed.

  I was reborn.

  Not feeling capable of believing the mi
racle, I yanked the shirt off my chest and gasped in amazement, not seeing any open wounds, or even old scars. What was more, even my tattoos had disappeared. I had become the person I was born as, and there could only be one explanation for that.

  "Liliana!" I whispered, feeling the subtle support of her faith.

  That could not save me from a banal knife blow or bullet to the back of the head, but my girlfriend believed, and her sincere faith had managed to replace my absent talent.

  Stumbling and faltering at every step, I walked over to the first set of mirrors. The succubus had left her old clothing next to them, but I just stared at my new reflection. I had calm gray eyes and a round face, no longer so sharp and angular.

  I had become the very person Lily imagined me to be. I had changed somewhat, but I was alive again. I could easily leave everything as it was, quietly sneak out of the palace, go to Switzerland and never regret my decision.

  What was more, that was exactly what I should have done.

  Liliana had given me the chance to start everything again, and it would have been deeply ungrateful to not make use of that chance.

  Become a normal person and not sense fears, not touch them and not manifest them. Use my imagination only when reading books. Get married, have children, live the calm and quiet life of a rentier with my beloved wife and die on the same day as her.

  I was supposed to accept Liliana's gift, but I could not do so.

  After all, I no longer heard the beating of my second heart so I was doomed to see a dead angel in my dreams, full of hopeless sorrow, hovering in the black wasteland of space until the end of days. And every night, I would die together with it in the midst of that limitless waste.

  Every cursed night...

  I didn't want that for myself.

  Anyhow, who was I trying to fool?

  In fact, my teeth were grinding with desire to square up with the succubus!