by Jeff Somers
I poured myself another glass. It was like drinking water. Nothing affected me. Waited. Thought about my father. Thought about him not thinking about me. Thought about moving up in the world, sending the winged monkeys out to bring him in for an interview. Got that mean feeling again. I pushed it away as violently as I could, my head pounding.
The silence struck me. Too fucking quiet for a bar. Too fucking quiet for a bar full of assholes volunteering for the Asshole Army. I half stood. Spun around. Mags was staring off into space. And then, as I watched, he was washed away like he’d been nothing but watercolors. An invisible rain scoured him away in streaks, then the wall behind him, then the floor.
And then I felt it. Magic.
Once I noticed it, it was everywhere. Heavy in the air. Sizzling on my skin. I could almost smell the fucking blood in the air, iron and rust. I’d spent the last few days swimming in fucking blood magic every day. I’d forgotten what an emergency felt like.
The bar dissolved around me, melted by acid, leaving behind a void of white and gray. I knew it was a Glamour, none of it real. I thought of Hiram. Perception was reality.
I spun back, tearing at my sleeve, running through the spells in my head. A dozen ways to pick locks. A dozen Charms. A dozen simple Glamours. I didn’t know a single fucking fireball spell. A single military-grade weaponized Cantrip.
“Please. Have some manners.”
I looked up as I jerked my switchblade from my pocket. Mika Renar stood some unknowable distance away in the white void, the last streaks of the floor draining away. Or, rather, her Glamour stood there.
She looked completely real. My heart picked up speed. I had a half erection. Her skin looked like it tasted sweet. Her hair moved and caught every bit of light and turned it fiery red. It looked like it would feel like silk against your skin. She was tall and lovely, wearing a black dress, smart and businesslike. Her face broke my heart. She looked like I’d broken hers, all sad and on the verge of tears that would fall to the floor like tiny diamonds.
As she walked into the room, Amir wheeled the Mummy in. The wheelchair was old and outdated. The wheels squeaked as it moved. The Mummy looked like she might turn to dust if he jostled her too hard. I considered her habit of just letting everyone know they were dealing with a Glamour. Just not giving a shit. There was something intimidating about someone who didn’t give a fuck if you knew they were vain, that they were fucking with you. Most people made avatars like that using a Glamour to hide behind. Renar used it just to show you she could burn the gas.
Amir was smiling. Wearing five thousand dollars on his back. And looking good doing it.
It was no use. I’d been sandbagged, and I had no way of striking out. I turned and was surprised to find the chair and table still there, sitting on nothing, just white emptiness. I sank down into the seat and watched the Glamour prowl. I wondered, feverishly, if she would feel like anything if I reached out and touched it. How far the illusion would go. If I would even care that it was an illusion.
“If I had known you were planning to lead your merry band of irregulars to my house, I would have saved myself the trouble of fetching you,” she said. Her Glamour said. Her voice was light and mocking, sweet and golden. A worm tickling its way into my ear. “I’ve recently realized I must do some things myself, as apparently one cannot rely on anyone else to accomplish anything.”
For a second, a cloud passed over Amir’s face. I was going to die, but it was worth it, all of it, for that one second of doubt on that bastard’s face. I wondered if he was sporting some new bruises under that suit, what the exact nature of Renar’s punishments were.
She paused. Both the Glamour and the Mummy inclined their heads simultaneously. Looking at the table. I stared in horror at the udug, left sitting there like a puddle of color, slick and shiny.
I dived. I launched myself bodily at the table. Hated myself for being so stupid—if it had been in my pocket, it would have told me what to do. It would have issued me instructions. And Renar wouldn’t have known, at least not for crucial seconds. I had an advantage and I’d left it sitting on the fucking table.
The Army of Assholes had chosen its general well.
I beat them to it. I slapped my hand down on the udug. It spoke to me. It said four words before it was yanked from under my palm by invisible force. I stumbled and crashed to the floor, where a heavy weight settled on me, courtesy of Cal Amir and Mika Renar. I lay there panting, sucking in sawdust and shit and skin flakes, the dried-up puke of a million long-dead revelers.
The floor was pure white emptiness. The smell and grit was disorienting.
“You are useful,” Renar said. Her breath, the Glamour’s breath, would smell like cherries, I thought. “Pathetic, but useful. This is a very disobedient artifact. It has been seeking escape from me for decades, usually finding its way into the hands of the lower-class mages, such as yourself. Such as your gasam. It seeks to trick you into releasing it from its bondage. But, of course, this does not work, because you are too stupid to release it. I am glad to have it back.”
I saw her feet. The Glamour’s beautifully manicured feet. Stiletto heels. Gliding. They floated a tiny, tiny fraction of space above the floor. The only flaw in the illusion, and I had to be nose-first into the planks to see it.
“You will have time on the ride home to contemplate your mistakes, Trickster. To consider the folly of going against your betters. Yes?”
I blew snot into the void. Jesus. They were taking me with them. It didn’t make any fucking sense. “Why not just kill me?”
Suddenly, her Glamour knelt down and leaned in, putting her painfully beautiful face close to mine. There was no heat. No breath. “I told you, darling,” she whispered, “that you would suffer.”
The Glamour turned and walked away. But the Mummy’s eyes were locked on me. Fury. Hatred. Triumph. The eyes were the only thing left alive in her.
The invisible weight turned into an invisible fist, and I started to struggle against them. It was hopeless, but it was only for show anyway.
Because the four words the udug had whispered to me were let her take you.
24
I was in the car with Amir. Again.
It was just as friendly the second time around. He’d bound me with a simple spell that anchored me to the car seat, anchored my arms to my sides. I could have cut a syllable out of it, gained a half second, but it was a nice piece of work even so. He’d left me able to talk. Which felt like a gift. If there was any blood in the air to work with, I could be free of his restraints in a second, my hands on his throat. I could bite my cheek, and maybe that tiny flow of gas would be enough to at least get my arms free. And I wasn’t even sure if I should try to escape.
The udug had said, let her take you. I’d let her take me. As if I’d had any fucking choice. Now I didn’t know what came next: I’d let her take me, but did I let her take me all the way to her fucking murder machine of a house, push me into the funnel, and get myself ground up?
I didn’t know. I knew that Claire was there. And the other girls. And on the other side of tomorrow, everyone in the fucking world, in a sense. And we’d contracted from an Army of Assholes into One Supreme Asshole.
I looked over at Cal Amir. It was exactly like the previous ride. My life had gotten stuck in a groove, that was for sure. Like a giant ritual, my life just a giant mage’s spell. Patterns on patterns on patterns. Amir was unruffled and didn’t seem to hold a grudge. He noticed me looking at him, glanced at me, and offered me a small, sour smile as he turned back to the road.
“Do you know how old I am, Mr. Vonnegan?”
I nodded. “Half past ugly, a quarter to hideous.”
“I am fifty-nine.”
I looked back at him before I could stop myself. Didn’t believe it. He was thirty. Thirty-five, maybe. Young and taut and smooth yet, without the tiny lines time scratched into you like sand blasting over your skin.
“You don’t believe it, I know. But it’s
true. This is what that old cunt has taught me. So much, she has taught me.”
I gave him a sunny smile. “Like the old royals in the middle ages. Bathing in virgins’ blood to stay young. While they rotted inside.”
“We’re a little better at the details,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve been carrying her water for decades, because she knows everything. And I’ve almost sucked her dry. There’s just one secret she’s kept from me.”
I closed my eyes. I felt very tired. “The Biludha-tah-namus.”
“Immortality. True immortality. I look young, I feel young, Vonnegan—but I’m really fifty-nine. I’ll hit a hundred, probably, and feel good. But I’m still going to die. Just like she’s still going to die. But once she casts the Rite, I won’t need her anymore.”
“Bully for you,” I said. “You can wander the empty world, kicking skulls around like tin cans. Enjoy it.”
We rode along in silence for a few minutes. I pictured Claire. Saw her, pale and tall and angry. I liked her angry. I pictured pissing her off, getting that high color in her face, shaking her up like a soda bottle and then popping her top, launching her. I saw her on the balls of her feet like at Gottschalk’s place, bouncing down the hall to coldcock someone. So many of my memories of Claire, I realized, involved her kicking someone’s ass.
“I’ll offer you a deal, Mr. Vonnegan.”
My eyes popped open. I didn’t look at him. It was hard not to; he was shiny.
“Tell me: You were at Ev Fallon’s workshop. He let you in. Did you have your eyes open, Mr. Vonnegan?”
Jesus. Fallon’s workshop was a blood battery, somehow storing sacrificial energy for future use. Something I’d never heard of. Something no one, as far as I knew, had ever done before.
“Mika’s a genius with the Words,” Amir said easily, steering the car smoothly. “But she’s no Fabricator. There are precious few of them around. And none of them take apprentices for some reason. Autodidacts, all of them. I’d love to know how to do what Fallon does. So I’ll make this offer: If you can give me his Fabrication—if you can even give me a good hint how he made that fucking place—I’ll shoot you right here on the side of the road. No torture for you. No untold suffering. No having to bleed so that we can live forever. It’ll be quick.”
I was dirty. I could feel my collar scraping the back of my neck. I could smell myself, smearing Amir’s leather seats. My clothes had cost nothing when they’d been new, and were worse than worthless now. I had no money on me. I was hungover. Unshaven. Sweating. I was the complete polar opposite of Calvin Amir.
I wanted the udug. I wanted the flat voice that didn’t care what I did or didn’t do. I wanted to be told there was a gun under the seat, or have it teach me some ancient spell no one had recited in a thousand years, or any hint of something from an hour in the future, just because that would indicate that I was still alive an hour in the future. I could feel it in my hands, its slick, squirmy presence, and I craved it.
“What’s amazing to me,” I said slowly, trying to stretch out a little and get comfortable in Amir’s leather seats, “is how assholes always think offering to shoot me in the head is somehow some great offer I can’t pass up. I mean, do the fucking math. On the one hand, you’re predicting torture and horror and me watching my intestines spill out onto the floor or some such shit while the world ends. Which might happen. Or it might not. Because the world is fucking chaos, Cal. Did you see me coming, Cal? Did you see me shitting all over your set up here? Did you see yourself having to hoof it all over the fucking country, chasing after me? Chaos, Cal. You can’t say for sure how this is going to end. So what you’re offering me is a sucker’s bet. You’re offering me the certainty of a bullet in the ear on the side of some fucking backwoods upstate two-lane against the possibility that you and your Mummy are going to bleed the world dry and make me watch, and then bleed me out for kicks, and kill my friends, and call me names.” I looked at him. He was watching the road. He’d lost his smile. “I’m idimustari, you cunt. Don’t try to con me.”
“Fine,” Amir said.
I realized, with sick disappointment, that he didn’t care. He didn’t care what I thought of him, or that his ruse had failed. He just wanted to know things. Everything. He just wanted to know everything. He’d been sucking at Renar’s bloated, diseased tit for decades and had just about learned everything he could from her, and here was something he didn’t know. And he wanted to know it. And he was willing to risk the wrath of his gasam—a woman whose affection I feared, so I couldn’t imagine what her wrath was like—just to learn something he didn’t know.
Cal Amir was an angel. A pure being. He just wanted to know.
And he was in a chatty mood. We had at least another half hour on the road. Alone. I shifted in my seat and rolled the inside of my cheek between my teeth. Steeled myself. Bit down hard.
Copper flooded my mouth. Pain spiked my head. I controlled myself. Stayed still. It was a trickle, barely noticeable. I stole Ketterly’s old ventriliquist’s trick and barely moved my lips, lightly whispering the world’s simplest Charm, a weak, tiny thing he might never notice. Almost inaudible. It wouldn’t push him hard. Would just make him more amiable. Friendlier. Chattier. I didn’t have the juice to break the spell holding me in the seat, or do anything to Amir. Nothing useful.
I thought of Amir asking me to teach him something clever, the last time we were driving out here. If the universe gave you patterns, the least you could do was study them, and use them.
“Tell you what,” I said, trying to keep my swollen cheek at bay. To sound normal. “Let’s make a deal. I tell you something, you tell me something.”
He smiled brilliantly. Pleased. Charmed. “A deal! I could wait until we’re at the house and have a few Bleeders make you tell me whatever it is you think I would like to know. Make you talk until you’re croaking blood, my friend. But this is so much more sporting—okay, you first!”
I considered. The Charm was a slender thing. Its power, such as it was, rested entirely on its not being noticed. I had to jolly him. I was working with the bare minimum of gas, the least amount of blood you could use to any effect at all. My advantage was tiny, and I had to work it.
“Fallon’s whole workshop—the whole building—is an artifact. He lives inside it.”
Amir wasn’t smiling anymore. His face was lit from within. A manic, excited kind of light. He sat rigidly forward, hunched over the wheel, nodding. Eager. “I see! I suspected that. But the selfish bastard would never let me come near for an examination.”
I jumped in before he could think of his own tidbit to tell me. “Where’s Claire?”
He nodded, still calm. “She’s slot one. At the bottom. The final sacrifice!”
I pictured the design Fallon had shown me. The horrific corkscrew tunneling down under the house. All the blood and suffering flowing down there, where Renar would be weaving the biludha.
“Where does Fallon store the blood?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I didn’t see that much. Why not ask your little green stone?”
The udug. My hands twitched as I thought about it.
“I am not foolish enough to touch that artifact,” he snapped. I felt a slight tension in the spell: Amir displeased. Without thinking, I rushed to fill the gap. “There’s a secret room in the basement. He’s got all his designs and specs filed there, if he didn’t destroy it.”
Amir nodded gleefully. “I will search for it.”
“When will Renar begin casting?” When will the world end?
He nodded, as if agreeing with something I couldn’t hear. “Tonight. Assuming we are done with you.”
Alarm spiked inside me. Ridiculous. I’d been captured—again—and was heading to Renar’s death machine of a house—again. I was wearing alarm as a coat.
“What are you doing with me?”
Amir winked at the road. “We have to be sure you didn’t try to undo the marking. That you didn’t use one of your fucking l
ittle tricks to set some clever trap for us. We have to be sure.”
He shrugged. “So we’re going to have to hurt you.”
25
The worst part was the tape.
It was white duct tape. Thick. Sticky. Wrapped from one cheek to the other, covering my mouth. To keep me from speaking, from mouthing any of the Words. Casting spells. Simple and effective.
It wasn’t the fact that I couldn’t breathe well through my nose. It wasn’t the painful tug of the tape on my whiskers. It wasn’t the fact that my hands were bound behind me, or that my ankles were tied to the chair legs. It wasn’t the way I could smell myself, days without a shower, days of sweat and worry. It wasn’t that I was finally at Renar’s house again, with plans to the place in my pocket, undetected by Amir. It was the knowledge that at some point Amir or Renar or a fucking dimma hey why the fuck not was going to march in here and the first thing they were going to do was tear the fucking tape off with one mighty flourish. Taking my face with it.
It was coming. And knowing it was coming was terrible.
I kept tasting the air for the biludha. I would feel it. Long before it crested and started feeding on the world, I’d know it. It would be invisible electricity in the air. Only those of us with the art would feel it. Any of us who didn’t know what was happening—those of us not powerful enough to be invited to the party and too far away to have heard through the rumor mill—would go nuts. They’d feel it, this immense spell, and go nuts trying to figure out what was happening.
I was going to die in this fucking room.
It was a very nice room. The sort of room your grandmother kept for guests, with a layer of dust on the flowered bedspread, a vague smell of potpourri in the air.
It was a tomb. I imagined dozens of rooms just like it throughout the mansion, which would be, of course, larger on the inside than the outside. Of course. Naturally. And in each of these rooms was the rotting corpse of another Prince of the Assholes, another moron who’d thought he might test his will against the gods.