by Ann Vremont
“Kean is your only chance of living.” Her voice had a distant quality to it, the tone disturbingly matter-of-fact.
Meyrick shifted in his seat and ran a hand over the Bloodstone. His gaze narrowed as he inspected Aideen. She was trembling, he realized, but not with fear. Power streamed between her and the Bloodstone, its flow bidirectional, such that neither was the source nor the recipient. He could feel the handle of the scepter warming, threatening to burn his hand. He tightened his grip on the scepter. Very well, he thought. Let it melt metal to bone. It will still be mine.
“He’s already killed two of my men—those incompetents I sent to Rossaveal.” His left hand involuntarily brushed the thigh Kean had shot. “Doesn’t sound like someone I should keep alive.”
“He didn’t kill those men in Rossaveal. I did.”
Calm, polite, unblinking. The woman unnerved him. He wanted to kill her then and there, and her lover, but couldn’t risk any more near catastrophes. Already, the papers were picking up on the underground tremors rippling through London. And he had lost a technician to something unspeakable. He shuddered at the memory of the young man wrapped in the gray, decaying grip of some vaguely humanoid creature that had crept from the mist they’d managed to conjure in the lab. Metal shards served as the creature’s teeth and needles for its nails. Flesh sloughed off from the creature as the lab’s refined air hit it. Fat and muscle peeled away to reveal a skeleton, not of bone or even metal but wriggling, wormlike things—parasites bloated with the creature’s life juices.
Aideen picked the images from his head. She had no time for him to decide whether he would let her and Kean live. “Shall I show you how?” she interrupted and sucked in a lungful of air.
“Stop her!” Meyrick shrieked.
The same man that had woken her tapped her at the base of her skull, a sharp, skillful hit that folded her to the floor.
* * * * *
Aideen opened her eyes. Her cheek was pressed against the cold tile and she was staring at Everett’s dirt-caked boots. Her gaze followed the line of tile to Meyrick’s throne. Kean was at his feet, a collar around his throat. From the collar, a chain led to a manacle secured around Meyrick’s wrist. She glanced up at Meyrick’s face, the smile far colder than the tile pressed against her cheek. She looked back to Kean. His face was bloodied, one cheek swollen but his gaze was alert. Battered but unbeaten. Aideen’s chest swelled in relief and some of her energy reached out to caress him. He straightened noticeably, his features softening and his mouth shaping a word. She nodded, stopping him, and pushed herself into a sitting position.
The room swirled around her and she mentally clutched at the latent power that floated through the air. The swirling stopped and she looked up at Meyrick again, her vision clear.
“I’m not sure what it is you’re proposing, Miss Godwin,” he said and jerked Kean’s chain. “So why don’t you stop wasting my time and tell me.”
She looked at the large square tiles that covered the distance between her and Meyrick and she smiled. “A game…one of strategy.” She looked at Kean and the pained grimace he wore. “You’ve already taken my knight.”
“So, I’m well ahead.” Meyrick seemed pleased and he loosened his grip on the chain.
Aideen merely shrugged. “One would think.”
“What were you last week?” Meyrick’s voice was a coarse laugh, heavy with insolence, as he asked his question. “A shopkeeper!” He shook his head and his body bounced in amusement. “And yet you think you can play and win against me!”
Again, she unnerved him with her simple response. “Yes.”
“And whose move is it?” Meyrick asked. Aideen nodded at him and he rose, pulling Kean along with him. The double doors opened as he moved before them, some hidden sensor triggered by his proximity.
Aideen suppressed a small gasp as she saw what lay on the other side. On a platform stood a structure straight from the movies. It looked, she thought, like a time machine but without any moving parts. It was dodecahedral, each of its twelve faces a pentagon. Each pentagon was made of interlocking triangles that alternated between metal and cut crystal. The metal was polished to a high shine that reflected the room’s contents.
Meyrick turned to Aideen, his grip tightening on Kean’s chain. “We’re very close to the endgame, aren’t we Miss Godwin?”
“Yes.” She let her gaze travel over the structure in admiration, hoping to stroke his ego enough that he would divulge some nugget of useful information. “What is it?”
“A resonance chamber,” he answered.
Aideen stepped closer, her eyes just picking up thin filaments of fiber optic strands that led from the floor, ceiling and walls to Meyrick’s chamber of glass and metal. She guessed the strands served some sort of sensing and recording purpose. He meant to make her obsolete.
“And why do you need me?” she asked.
“I figured out well before anyone else what your purpose was,” he said and reached out to caress one of the chamber’s metal plates. “Even your father went to his grave not knowing exactly what you were.”
She pointed at the strands. “And what are those?” She stalled for time while she thought through her final strategy. The image of Myr and Danu, awash in pleasure in that center dimension, filled her head. She looked at Kean. It would hardly be a fate to lament.
“Detectors.”
“To record me?” She tried to sound disingenuous but it didn’t matter if he saw through her. Whether he thought her truthful or conniving, he would always think he was outplaying her. That had always been his downfall—from one life to the next.
“Yes, to record you.” Meyrick tilted his head at her. “What is it you see, Miss Godwin?”
She hitched her shoulders and gave him one of many honest answers available. “An egomaniac.”
His mouth twitched and he put the end of the scepter through one of the links to Kean’s chain. He twisted it, the lever increasing his strength several fold.
“You still haven’t explained why you need me,” Aideen reminded him.
Meyrick slipped the scepter from the link and tapped his nose with the tip of the stone. He swept his arm in the direction of the chamber. “Everett,” he whipped the name out, its force a cold slap to the Pumpkin King’s face. “What is it you call Miss Godwin?”
“Songbird.” Everett’s hand snaked out to stroke a strand of Aideen’s hair. He was as impatient as the players for the game to be over. Wanting her was unbearable, as was the attention she lavished on Meyrick. He glanced at the phantom that held the songbird’s attention, anger welling up inside him at the realization that, his answer given, he was forgotten once again.
“Well, songbird,” Meyrick said and gestured for a technician to remove one of the pentagons. “What I want is for you to step into your cage and sing.”
She shook her head. “It’ll do you no good.”
He looked around at his technicians, every one of them a male, and rolled his eyes. Some responded with uneasy smiles, others laughed outright at her presumption.
“Why is that?” Meyrick asked after his amusement subsided.
“The stone itself is a resonance factor,” she said. His sudden frown told her he hadn’t considered the idea and that, once considered, he understood it to be true. “The stone has to be with me in the chamber.” Meyrick shook his head, discounting the idea. But Aideen pressed on. “If you want both of your new toys to work, you’ll have to step into the chamber with me.”
He thought her proposition over slowly. He turned it over and rejected it, only to turn it over and examine it anew. “It’s a trap. You’ll use it against me.”
“If I use it against you,” she said, her gaze lighting on Kean, “I use it against anyone close to you.”
“No,” he said and backed away. Kean, sensing Meyrick’s hesitation, stood firm, his resistance compelling Meyrick to return to his original position. “We’ll try it my way and then see—”
Aideen, her f
ingers at the bottom edge of her shirt, stopped Meyrick with the sharp rip of her hem. She held the small tracking dot up in the air. “Take your time,” she suggested. “What little you have left.”
“Just fucking do it,” Everett prodded his one-time mentor. “She’s not going to do anything to hurt him and then it won’t matter whether an army breaks in,” he promised. “You’ll have an army of your own.” And, oh, what an army, Everett thought, remembering the murder of one of Meyrick’s white-smocked lab boys. An army of creatures fit for a king. A real king. Not some pretender the likes of Meyrick. He looked at Aideen, the feather of an idea stroking the inside of his head. Everett reached out and grabbed Aideen by the elbow.
Meyrick saw the movement and the mutinous look Everett wore. “Control yourself,” he commanded. “Or you’ll find yourself rotting away in a jail cell!” Reluctance leadening his limbs, Everett let go. But the final threat to Meyrick’s authority was too much for him. Meyrick stepped into the chamber, Kean dragged behind him. “Come,” he said to Aideen, only a thin layer of power coating the order.
Chapter Twenty
Aideen watched the lab technician reseal the opening after she stepped into the chamber. The fit of their three bodies was tight. Kean’s hip was pressed against hers, lending her strength, while the cold touch of Meyrick’s flesh threatened to steal her soul. Around the chamber was an audience of brain and brawn, each eager for the impending show. One of the technicians finished adjusting the slides on a control panel and gave Meyrick a thumbs-up signal.
“I need to touch the stone,” Aideen said and reached toward the scepter. Meyrick tensed but didn’t voice his objection. Her fingertips touched the Bloodstone, its energy an erratic pulse at first. Then the pattern came to her. She closed her eyes and saw the notes written in red against the black backdrop of her eyelids. She took a deep breath and began to sing the notes. On the fourth repetition, she heard Meyrick’s pleased gasp of wonder. The song etched forever on her brain, she dared to open her eyes.
Gossamer creatures floated above the men’s heads. They had no permanent shape, floating into contact with one another, lending a bit of their diaphanous flesh to one, borrowing some from another—aerial jellyfish. One of the lab technicians was standing on a stool trying to capture one of the creatures. Aideen lowered her pitch and they dissolved. Red membranes appeared along the floor. She could tell by the expressions of those outside the chamber that a horrible smell filled the room. She smiled, her pitch growing sharper and the membranes began to pop, black liquid spilling from them.
“How low can you go?” Meyrick chuckled beside her as one of his thugs leaned over and retched on a lab tech’s white coat.
On the tenth repetition, Aideen brought her voice down as low as she could while keeping the notes intact. Gray mist filled the room. Next to her, Meyrick stiffened.
“No, bring your voice back up,” he warned.
Aideen smiled but her pitch remained the same. Something snaked along the floor, parting the mist. She knew these horrors. From his wide-eyed gaze, she guessed Meyrick, too, had gotten a taste of what lurked in the mist. The mist thickened, pressed itself against the chamber. Something wet hit one of the clear panels and slid down its side. Her gaze flicked to that side of the chamber and she almost faltered. It was a bloody hand, still connected to its owner, several fingers bitten off at the joints.
“Bring your voice back up!” Meyrick demanded. But he had nothing to barter with. His men were outside and, from the look of things, not faring very well as the experiment progressed.
Slowly, she brought her voice up a notch. The mist iced in the air and fell to the floor like ground glass. Surrounding the chamber were several bodies, mauled. Meyrick’s men were all dead, dying, or hiding under a lab table. Except for Everett. Blood coated his face and one eye hung limp against his cheek, secured only by a filament of tissue. But he was still standing, not cowering. Her voice faltered as her gaze crept lower down his body. He was bleeding from his crotch, a dark stain spreading. His hand groped, fascinated by the wetness. When he discovered the emasculation, he smiled and began to pump his fingers into the wound, his face a contrast of blood and ecstasy.
Aideen’s throat constricted, her voice rising higher. A drop of blood dripped from Kean’s nose and she could hear Meyrick’s pained breathing. The air around the chamber began to glow red and those still alive began to writhe on the floor, with Everett once again being the sole exception. He continued pumping his fingers in and out of the wound while his clothes burst into flames. Then his flesh began to burn. He sniffed the air, realized the odor was his own, and threw his head back in a wild laugh that Aideen could only see and not hear. On the floor, Meyrick’s entourage crumbled to black ash. Only then, did Everett follow, his laugh extinguished in an explosion of flame.
The red atmosphere thickened and began to eddy around the chamber. Its spinning made her dizzy and she tried to focus her gaze on Kean. The drop of blood had become a small stream that fell from his chin onto the bottom pentagon of the chamber, but he still was standing. Meyrick, having no connection to the rhythm of the Bloodstone’s song, was further gone. Blood trickled from every orifice. The growing pool of blood on the chamber’s floor began to swirl, its direction opposite that of the whirlpool of red outside. Aideen could hear the metal frame of the chamber begin to creak but she couldn’t relax her voice. The stone wouldn’t let her.
And then she saw that the Bloodstone itself was softening, its shape kept intact by its own rapid spinning. They were going to die. The idea hit her in her chest. It took her breath away and her voice broke. In the silence, Meyrick dropped to his knees, a bloodless husk. Aideen’s hand shot out and grabbed the chain that still linked Meyrick to Kean. The metal began to glow red, the light spreading up her arm. The center chain link broke from the heat and Meyrick fell the rest of the way to the chamber’s floor, his scepter clattering beside him.
Aideen looked at Kean. He was bathed in a soft crimson light. She followed the length of her arm and saw that the same glow infected her body. Liquid fire shot into the chamber as the last of the metal frame gave way and Meyrick disappeared, absorbed by the center, the dark corruption of his soul balancing the Bloodstone’s purity.
Don’t let go of the chain. Aideen looked at Kean but he hadn’t thought the words. The speaker’s identity became clear as she felt the warm push of breasts against her back. They were here, swimming alongside Kean and Aideen, keeping them safe as the center sought balance. Her grip on the chain, her lifeline to Kean, tightened.
A low hum built in the air around her. Beyond Kean’s shoulder, she could see Myr’s form slowly taking shape. Sing, children, Danu commanded. Aideen opened her mouth to comply and warm liquid flowed in, filling her throat. She looked at Kean. His throat expanded as it filled with the center’s wet flame. Behind her, Danu was singing low. Aideen tried to push the liquid out, to draw breath and join Danu’s song. Her body shook, buzzed with the dissolution of her flesh. Before the heat reached her brain and wiped all thought from it, she had an instant’s recognition of the lullaby with which Danu was singing them to their final rest.
Chapter Twenty-One
Heat cooled to mere warmth that, in its turn, ebbed to a faint chill that insinuated itself against her skin. Aideen opened her eyes, a wide ribbon of stars winking down at her. She started to sit up and felt the sharp rubble of broken concrete gouging at her jeans and sweater. She lifted a hand, her fingers locked in a numb claw, and heard the clink of metal as the chain slipped from her hands and fell against the concrete.
Her eyes adjusted to the night surrounding her and her memory slowly began to unfold, offering tantalizing glimpses of the day just passed. Her body still reluctant to cooperate, her throat cemented with dust and dried blood, she patted the rubble around her and found the chain she had dropped. She rolled over and took the chain in both hands. She inched her way along it, careful not to pull on the chain. At last, she reached the dark crown of hair.
Aideen worked the muscles of her throat until she was able to croak his name. Only crickets answered her. She crawled until she could lay alongside him and placed her head on his chest. His body was cold but she felt the soft rise and fall of his chest, heard the dust-clogged rattle of his breathing. She thought someone called her name but she couldn’t answer. It had taken everything she had just to say his name. Her hands found Kean’s and his fingers curled in response. She wanted to sleep, to lie next to him, sharing his warmth and offering her own. But the voice was insistent, demanding that she answer.
Light joined the insistent call and her lids fluttered open only to snap shut in pain as the beam of a flashlight pierced her skull.
“Here!” The voice was excited—a man’s pitch shooting high and then cracking. “Over here, both of them.” Someone hushed him, told him to turn his flashlight off but he didn’t listen. “Hurry!”
The man bent down beside Aideen, his knees cracking at the effort. He brushed her hair back from her face and slipped his hand under her chin to feel for a pulse. He whispered his thanks to the stars and leaned across Aideen to check Kean.
“Barely, boy.” The man’s voice was thick with emotion that obscured his identity. “Hold on…you’re not about to leave me with a bunch of wailing women to look after.”
“Are they alive?” It was Claubine, voice trembling but recognizable, who asked the question.
“Just,” the man answered. “Get those men up here!”
Aideen heard the click, click, click of a flashlight, felt its bright tattoo.
“To hell with being quiet,” the man barked. “We’ve got worse things to worry about than the police.” The man lifted Aideen’s arm and she snatched it back to Kean’s chest, curling her fingers into his clothing. “Aideen, let go so we can carry you down to the van.”