Between Floors

by W. R. Gingell

  “See anything across the road?” I asked.

  “Yeah, someone new came in last night.”

  “Not last night; about a week ago.”

  Morgana gave a small snort of laughter. “Someone new came in then, too. I don’t think he was happy to be there, though; there was fighting and a dog, and someone broke the window. I thought the dog was going to jump out, but the beefy bloke who stands at the window grabbed it by the tail.”

  “There’s a dog there, huh?” Heck yeah! I’d found him!

  “A really big one,” she said earnestly. “I thought it was a wolf at first.”

  Yep. I’d found him.

  “All right if I use your window for a while, then?”

  “That’s who you’re after?”

  “Nah, I’m after the dog,” I said, and she grinned.

  “If you need anything, I’m just over here,” she said. “And there’s water and stuff in the fridge. You can use the kitchen if you want, too; it might be a bit dusty, though. I mostly have food delivered.”

  “That’s not healthy,” I said; but if she had the money to eat out all the time—not to mention the money for a place as big and well-stocked as this one—she was probably flush enough to be buying good food.

  She only shrugged at me, and when I settled by the window, carefully out of sight, she said, “The other cop that did surveillance here was interested in that building, too. It’s a kind of Mob hospital, isn’t it?”

  “There’s no Mob in Tasmania,” I said.

  “That’s what he said, too. All right, Triad, then.”

  “We don’t really have the Triad here, either,” I told her, though if it came right down to it, she wasn’t that far off. She just didn’t know the extent of it. “It’s a kind of hospital, yeah. And the people who go there aren’t…well, they’re not exactly law-abiding citizens, if you want to put it like that.”

  Morgana must have been satisfied with that, because when I turned back to the window, I heard her tv switch on in a flash of static. She wasn’t wrong about her view, though; when I turned my gaze out on the window she’d pointed at, I could see the impressively large shoulder of someone who was nearly as big as Zero. I repressed a grin: He must be there to prevent Daniel trying to turn wolf and leap out the window again.

  I could see Daniel, too; and the sight of him lying in bed with a scowl directed at the big bloke in the window made my heart feel lighter all of a sudden. Athelas might be waiting to kill me again, and I was bound to fall asleep much sooner than I wanted, but at least the consequences of my last escapade were less awful than I’d thought they were. Daniel didn’t look too healthy—he was too pale and thin from what I remembered of him—but he was alive and obviously chirpy enough to be trying to escape, and that was cheering.

  I stayed there for what was probably too long, with the mumble of Morgana’s tv in the background, until I remembered that I was supposed to be out for a walk—and until a text from Zero pinged me awake from watching the small square of scowling life across the road.

  It said, Come home.

  “Bossy,” I muttered, but I got up.

  Morgana, who hadn’t moved from her bed, looked away from the tv in surprise. “Aren’t you staying?”

  “Nope,” I said. “He doesn’t need constant surveillance—I’m just here to make sure everything’s going all right. I’ll probably be back a few times a week, if that’s okay with you.”

  “All right,” she said. As I was on the way out, she added, “If I’m asleep, just come in anyway. The door’s always unlocked.”

  I stopped at the door, frowning. “’Zat safe?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “There’s the kids out there.”

  “Okay,” I said, and kept going. It wasn’t my business. It wasn’t my business to tell her that kids weren’t a safety feature. It wasn’t my business to worry about whether or not her neighbours were noticing enough people to see if she got into trouble—or to wonder why she didn’t have any visible parents living with her.

  Not my business.

  Not. My. Business.

  Maybe when I was done with the whole thing of sneaking in to check up on Daniel, I could ask Zero to have a look at the security of the building. That’s all. Didn’t have to do anything else.

  I spent the rest of my walk home trying to figure out exactly how I would broach that with Zero, and came home to find Zero and JinYeong waiting for me in the living room. JinYeong looked accusing, Zero pretty much as normal—cold and very slightly disapproving. That was nice; he’d been a bit too crushed and worried lately for my liking.

  “Why are you smiling?” he asked me. Now there was a faint touch of worry to his pale brow again.

  “Didn’t do anything,” I said automatically, sitting down on the couch, and JinYeong made a very small choke of laugher.

  “Kojitmal,” he said.

  “Rude,” I said; but it wasn’t like I hadn’t accused him of being a fibber before, so fair enough. “What’s the go? What do you want me for?”

  “First,” said Zero. “Lunch. Then it’s time to sleep again.”

  “Oh, right,” I said. I was tired enough to sleep at the drop of a hat, but somehow I’d expected a bit longer to recharge and recoup. “You coming with me again?”

  “Every time,” said Zero shortly. “They don’t know we’re in; it’s the best avenue for information that we can get. I want to try and find where he is again.”

  “All right,” I said, yawning. There was definitely something about the quality of sleep I was getting while I was dreaming of Athelas—it was like I hadn’t had any sleep at all. I’d had three mugs of strong, black coffee today; there was no way I should be falling asleep like I was.

  “Hyeong, chunbihaesseoyo?”

  “Ready,” agreed Zero. “Go now.”

  “Where’s he going?” I asked into another yawn, as Between swallowed JinYeong and left behind a brief shadow that faded into a pattern in the wallpaper.

  “He’s going to check a possible place for signs of Athelas when you free him this time,” said Zero. “Once the prison is gone—”

  “Once I die,” I muttered, wrapping my arms around my legs.

  “—he’ll be out of the Sandman’s influence and in the real world,” Zero continued. “I could find no trace of him while I was there, but if they’d had him in the construct again since last time, I wouldn’t have been able to do so.”

  “Is it the station?”

  “No. The station is peopled by humans; dream or not, it’s impractically dangerous for them to keep him there. He could slaughter them all at one go if he got out.”

  “Yeah, but the dream—”

  “If there’s no sense of him this time, JinYeong will try the station next.”

  That was better than nothing, I supposed. And Zero was right—what kind of Behindkind gave someone like Athelas to a bunch of humans to torture? “If JinYeong senses him, can he go in?”

  “I told him not to do so,” said Zero.

  “That’s not an answer,” I said, nudging up against his arm. “He’s gunna go in if he senses Athelas, isn’t he?”

  A barely-audible sigh made the air heavier. “It’s possible.”

  I nodded. “So you might have to leave pretty quick. I’ll be fine. You can leave when you need to.”

  He nodded silently, and I got the feeling that maybe he felt bad about it. That was kind of nice, even if I would have preferred to wake up with him there instead of dying alone and waking up to an empty house.

  When it came, the dream was just a little bit different again. This time there was no interim of sleepy floating, no wafting walls, and no white halls; I fell asleep in one moment, and woke the next in the white room with Athelas opposite me and the drag of Zero’s passage fading from somewhere around my shoulders.

  Zero moved around from behind me and silently began to circle the room again, but I marched up to Athelas and yelled, “Stop flamin’ killing me!”

  Athela
s’ head turned slowly, his eyes taking too long to focus on me. “Must you shout, Pet?”

  “Yes, I flamin’ must! And while we’re at it, where are we?”

  “No matter how loudly you shout,” murmured Athelas, “I can tell you nothing more than I know myself.”

  “Fine,” I said. “So you’re not gunna tell me where you are because—reasons. And you’re not gunna tell me anything else ’cos you think I’m not myself.”

  This time, Athelas didn’t answer, as silent as Zero stalking the room and looking at things I couldn’t see.

  I said to him, “What, you’re sulking? I’m the one who should be sulking! You’ve killed me three times!”

  He might not have spoken, but his eyes flickered toward me for the smallest moment.

  “And it’s no good saying and yet here we are because it’s not like I’ve got any choice about it,” I told him. “I just fall asleep and here I am. If you don’t want to keep killing me, it’s not like you have to keep doing it!”

  A faint breath of air escaped Athelas. As if he felt he might as well speak now that the sigh had got out, he said, “On the contrary. I certainly do have to keep killing you. If you don’t care for it, the remedy is in your own hands.”

  “Speaking of hands,” I said suspiciously, “what have you got this time? A flamin’ razor blade?”

  “It has barely been ten minutes since last you visited,” said Athelas.

  “It hasn’t, you know,” I said. “It’s been more than a day. Dunno what they’ve got you on, but it’s definitely been longer than that.”

  He laughed at me, the sound bubbling as if he was breathing blood. “I think not. I killed you only ten minutes ago.”

  I gazed up at him. Was that why he was looking so haggard? Someone else had been in here again with my face, and he’d killed them.

  “You really don’t like killing me, do you?” I asked. Maybe to someone else he would only have looked like he was worn from the torture, but I didn’t think so, and somehow that cheered me more than I expected.

  “It’s somewhat tiring,” Athelas said, turning his eyes on me fully; and the ice in those eyes made me shiver. “However,” he continued, “I will kill you with alacrity every time you come back to me. I very much enjoy ridding my presence of you.”

  “Yeah,” I said, because he hadn’t said he enjoyed killing Pet—just the person he thought I was. It didn’t mean I was looking forward to being killed again, but it did mean I didn’t feel so sick about it.

  “And it will be my pleasure to craft a new method of killing you each and every time,” added Athelas.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Beaut. I’ll look forward to that.”

  He laughed. I didn’t know whether that was a good or a bad thing. Whichever one it was, it definitely meant he was getting stronger again quickly: Whatever wounds he had suffered in his mind from killing me last time, he was mentally preparing to do it again.

  I huffed a sigh and sat down at the base of the moonlight. At least now I knew he would be able to free his own arms. Maybe I could leave him like that and it would be enough to get me out before he freed his own arms enough to kill me.

  I pulled in another big sigh, reached my hands out to touch the moonlight, and asked him, “What’s the go with Zero and JinYeong, anyway? If I’m gunna die, I want to get something out of it.”

  “I would assume you know as much as I,” Athelas said.

  “You’d assume wrong, then. What’s the deal with him and JinYeong?”

  “I would very much like to know what you expect to learn from any such information,” said Athelas. He sounded amused again, which was probably a bad sign for me. “I assure you that it won’t help you in the slightest. It won’t help you to learn anything about my lord that you didn’t already know—you can be certain that I won’t provide any useful information for you.”

  “You don’t have to provide useful information,” I said. “And I’m pretty flamin’ sure that what you think is useful information and what I think is useful information is something different.”

  It couldn’t help being different: Athelas thought I was part of Upper Management—whoever they actually were—or maybe even something else entirely. In any case, the things I wanted to know weren’t even slightly the sort of thing that an information-gathering group would want to know.

  “It’d be nice if you used your brain,” I said sourly, and saw Athelas’ eyebrows slightly quirk.

  “Perhaps I shall tear out your tongue,” he said.

  He said it so lightly, so easily.

  “Fine,” I said, shoving my hands into my pockets and hunching my shoulders to stop the shivers. “I won’t try to free you, then. We’ll just flamin’ stay here forever.”

  “You won’t have to do so. I shall free myself.”

  “Yeah? How come you haven’t escaped yet, then?”

  “It would be a mistake to assume that I’m not here according to my own will,” said Athelas, and when he looked over at me again, his eyes weren’t just cold, they were amused.

  I tried not to shudder. Somehow it was worse to think of Athelas being still strung up like that because he had a plan, than it was to think he had been captured and put there. Was it even possible for someone to put themselves through something like that for the sake of being undercover?

  If it was, Athelas was about the only person I could think of actually being able to do it. Mind you, it wasn’t like he was actually a person, so there was that.

  “What about JinYeong?” I asked. “Can I ask about him specifically, or will you threaten to tear out my tongue about that, too?”

  “Knowing about JinYeong can’t possibly help you in any way, either.”

  “Never said it could,” I said. “Just wanted something to talk about other than you ripping out tongues and stuff.”

  “There’s no enjoyment in that.”

  “Speak for yourself. Right, if we talk about JinYeong, are you gunna get your knickers in a twist?”

  Athelas half-shrugged, and hissed at the pain it caused him. “It’s nothing to me what you learn about the vampire.”

  “Nice,” I said. It wasn’t like JinYeong liked Athelas much, either, but it was different knowing that and actually seeing one of them willing to give up information on the other without a struggle.

  “What exactly would you like to know about JinYeong?”

  “Dunno,” I said. I didn’t actually care to know much about JinYeong, but if it was the only information Athelas was going to spill, I might as well learn what I could. “How come he’s travelling around with Zero, I suppose?”

  “I’ve already told the pet this,” said Athelas, his eyes narrow and mocking.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But you only told me he wanted to make sure no one else kills Zero except him. It’s not like Zero needs help to survive, though, is it?”

  “Perhaps not, but it seems that he’s destined to have help he neither desires nor needs,” Athelas said. “He has mine, after all.”

  “What happened with JinYeong’s sister, then?”

  “She made the mistake of becoming fond of Zero.”

  I frowned. “How’s that a mistake?”

  There was that mocking gleam to Athelas’ eyes again. “As I also informed the pet, Zero is fae. He can’t love in the same way that humans and vampires love.”

  “Hang on, vampires can love people?” I demanded. Skinny, nose-in-the-air JinYeong in love with someone? “Rubbish! JinYeong’s too much in love with himself to fall in love with anyone else!”

  “Good gracious, you’re making a thorough job of it this time, aren’t you? Vampires were once human, just like lycanthropes; the change to either form of superhuman amplifies rather than dampens the emotions. It’s why very young vampires need to learn control very quickly. It is also why most young vampires don’t live long enough to learn that control.”

  Well, that explained the mess Daniel and Erica made of the supermarket a while ago. I’d thought Da
niel was young and stupid—turns out he’s just a normal lycanthrope.

  Normal. Yeah.

  “Anyway,” I said, “I didn’t mean that. I mean, how is it a mistake that ended up with her being dead? Don’t reckon Zero killed her because she fell in love with him.”

  “In this world, as I’m sure you are aware, and especially more so in the world Behind, there are people who use pain and terror as a method of control.”

  He was mocking again—not me, but the person he thought I was.

  “Behindkind of that sort were interested in controlling Zero, and they found a particularly effective method in JinYeong’s sister.”

  “What happened to her?” I asked, though I was more than half sure I didn’t really want to know the answer. “How did Zero end up killing her?”

  Another amused, side glance from Athelas. It must be common enough knowledge that he thought it amusing that I asked about it.

  “She was captured by Behindkind who thought to use her as a way to draw Zero to themselves, but I don’t think they bargained on how much she would fight being used as leverage. She made a bargain with one of the other denizens of the house and burst from her prison as a new vampire. Had she been a little better able to control the beginning frenzy, there might have been some hope for her.”

  “She went mad?”

  “A clumsy way to put it, but close enough to the truth. My lord caught up with her as she was drinking her way through a household of humans, and in the struggle that ensued, she was slain. JinYeong arrived just too late to help.”

  “Oh,” I said uncomfortably. I’d asked for the information, but I hadn’t thought about what it would be like to get it. It was a weird thing to feel sorry for JinYeong.

  “Dear me, are you sorry you asked? He’s merely a vampire, after all. Not even an original Behindkind.” Athelas watched me, darkly amused. “Or are you showing me what you think the Pet would feel?”

  “’S’pose JinYeong took it badly,” I said. I would have. Even if my parents had turned evil for a bit, I still didn’t think I’d be able to forgive someone for killing them.

  “You could say that,” Athelas said. “So young and passionate! He has mellowed somewhat with age.”