Keys and Curses (Shadow Book 2)

by Nina Smith

  Flower went closer to the machine. She hadn’t recognised them at first, but now they glared at her in silent anger, the keys, embedded into the cogs and wheels, lifeless, frozen things, like pieces of a skeleton. Her voice sounded like it came from somewhere far, far away. “My king, what have you done?”

  But he ignored her. Instead he spoke a single word. “Kazza.”

  Kazza appeared in her cloud of smoke in the middle of the room. She pushed back her mane of hair, smirked at Flower and bowed to Pierus. “My king.”

  “My faithful subject informs me traitors and rebels are mounting an attack on one of my mines. I suggest you deal with it.”

  “Yes, my king.” Kazza disappeared, leaving behind only a whiff of smoke.

  Flower gave a squeak of dismay, hardly able to believe what she’d just seen. Of all the outraged words struggling to come out of her mouth, she only managed one sentence. “Nikifor is not a traitor!”

  “Did you not say he is intending to attack a mine?”

  “Yes, sort of, but-”

  “And did he not throw away his key?”

  “How did you-”

  “You tell me Flower, is Nikifor loyal to me?”

  Flower pressed a hand to her mouth. She’d asked him that very question. I hope he rots in a pit until the end of his days, he’d said. “No,” she whispered.

  “And you? Are you loyal to me?”

  “I have always been your most loyal subject.” The words made her sick to her stomach, because they were true, and right now she hated herself for it. “But I don’t understand. Why? Why all this? And where are the muses?”

  “Oh, Flower. Dear, sweet, loyal girl.” Pierus tipped her chin up, and this time when she looked into his eyes she saw what she’d never seen before. Cold. Something a little dead. Something that was pure malice. “You know full well my life is the most important thing in Shadow. If I die, so does everyone. I need this machine to watch for threats on my life. Of course it would have been much easier to build had a certain horrid little fairy not stolen something vital from me, but in time I’ll find that too.”

  “Fairy?” Flower squeaked.

  “Yes, you’d remember her. Hippy Ishtar. Dreadful creature, she’s dead, thank Shadow. And now that you’re here with your key I can finally complete the machine. Then nothing will stop me from finding Nikifor and any other threat to my life. You, meanwhile, will very soon join the other muses. Don’t worry, you’ll be quite happy there.” He patted her on the cheek and walked back to the machine.

  Flower stared, too shocked to react. “They were right,” she whispered. “They were all right.”

  “How very tiresome,” Pierus said. “I do hate it when other people are right, don’t you?”

  Flower didn’t think much about what she was going to do next. She sprang at Pierus, collided with him and sent him sprawling into the machine. She seized her key from his hand and ran for the door, only to find it locked. She hammered on it. “Pinky!” she yelled.

  “Even if you get through that door, there’s no escape. You cannot leave the Arch without my help.” He tapped her on the shoulder. “Give me the key.”

  Flower ducked away from him and ran for the stairs in the middle of the room before she remembered the fetches on the roof.

  He stalked her. “Don’t be tiresome, Flower. And don’t make me angry.”

  She backed away from him, clutching the key behind her back. “You’re a monster. I don’t know how I spent all these centuries believing in you.”

  “Because you’re gullible, like all your kind. You especially provided me with no end of amusement. I never knew a muse to follow me around with such doe-eyed devotion for so long. Now give me the key.” He held his hand out.

  “Never.”

  “My patience is not infinite, Flower. I trained you to obey orders, now obey me. Give me the key.”

  “No.” Flower edged along the wall. Her hand brushed a curtain. There was space behind it.

  “Flower.”

  “I quit!” she yelled, and yanked the curtain from its flimsy hangings, but there was no escape behind it, only a fresh horror. She bit her lip to keep from screaming at the sight of Shazza chained inside a tall, narrow cage, her face ugly and blotchy from crying, a gag stuffed in her mouth.

  “You might want to rethink that, my dear. Let me show you what happens to people who quit my employ.” Pierus strode to the cage, reached through the bars and pushed a lock of hair out of Shazza’s eyes. “Comfortable, my dear?”

  Shazza shook her head furiously. Fresh tears stained her cheeks.

  Pierus withdrew his hand and pulled on a lever next to the cage. Flower jumped back when the cage sparked and popped. Shazza shook violently in the iron confines and screamed behind the gag.

  Flower screamed too, unable to believe what she was seeing. She collapsed to her knees. “I’m sorry Sharon,” she whispered.

  “Don’t be so dramatic.” Pierus pushed the lever back up and the shaking stopped. “It won’t do her any damage, she’s made of smoke and silver. But it does hurt her, since she remembers being human, unlike the later models.” He tilted his head and studied Shazza as though she were an insect. “Now Flower, give me the key.”

  Flower got to her feet, wary now, the key clutched in her fist. “Let her go.”

  “I’m losing my patience.” He held out his hand.

  Flower glanced at Shazza’s swollen, puffy eyes, then around the locked room. She wondered where Pinky was and if she’d get out of this alive. Somebody had to. She tightened her fist around the key, took two quick steps forward and punched Pierus in the face.

  He was ready this time. He hardly seemed to feel the blow. Before Flower could move away, the back of his hand connected with her temple. She stumbled back, tripped over debris, jarred her head on the corner of a table and landed face down on the stone floor.

  Flower jumped to her feet, ready to fight, but she wasn’t in that terrifying place anymore. She was in Krysta’s study. She yelled in fright. Pierus had knocked her out, he was going to get the key.

  She looked at her hands and found the key still clutched there. She was here, he didn’t have it yet.

  Krysta walked in, leaned the hockey stick against the wall and sprawled into the chair. She put her head in her hands and groaned.

  “Krysta.” Flower went to her, put her hands around the girl’s head and clutched the key to her forehead. “Krysta you have to help me.”

  Krysta’s back went rigid. She shuddered.

  “Krysta Ishtar only you can help us now.” A sob shook Flower’s ribs, the only one she’d allow herself. “Please tell someone. Please find a way to get a message through, I’m trapped in the muse king’s castle with Pinky and Shazza, I think he’s going to kill us all and do something awful with that machine. Please help.”

  Krysta stared straight ahead. She exhaled a long breath. “Holy freaking hell!”

  “I’m getting through!” Flower closed her eyes, concentrated like she never had before and poured the whole story, everything that had happened, in through the key and straight into her writer’s waiting mind.

  Krysta picked up her pen and furiously scribbled on her notepad.

  Flower came to so suddenly she was left dizzy and disorientated. Some tall, evil figure bent over her. Cold fingers prised her fist apart and dragged the key relentlessly from her grip.

  She groaned. Her head felt like there was an axe buried in it.

  Pierus gave her a none-too-gentle nudge in the ribs with his boot. “Get up.”

  She got to her feet. Her head pounded. Her ribs hurt too. She looked around and, through the haze, saw a chunk of stone at her feet that had come loose from the floor. She silently thanked Hippy Ishtar for cursing this castle to crumble around him, picked up the stone and followed the king across the room. He had his back to her while he fit the key into the machine.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he was saying. “I admire your conviction. I wish things could
be different, Flower, but my life has to come before everything. I saw my death at the hands of Nikifor and some kind of tall fairy. If that means I have to kill or imprison every muse and fairy in Shadow then that’s what I’ll do. It’s for the greater good.”

  Flower made sure her swing was wound up for the maximum impact. Then she smashed her piece of stone into the back of Pierus’s head.

  He dropped without a sound. The key went flying across the floor. Shazza made a muffled sound behind her gag.

  Flower glanced from the king to the false muse to the machine, then at the rock in her hand. She bashed the rock into the nearest cog, but it barely made a dent. She shifted her attention to a long, heavy iron pipe rising from the machine and bashed at the brace keeping it there until it came away from the wall, then pulled the thing free.

  A trickle of silver came from the end and fizzed on the surface of the machine. Flower weighed the pipe in her hands. It was heavy. She took one end, just like she’d seen Krysta do with her hockey stick, and slammed it into the machine.

  Shazza squealed.

  Flower slammed her pipe into every inch of the machine she could find. She shattered wheels, bent springs and pipes and dented cogs completely out of shape. Every inch of her rage against Pierus went into pummelling the machine into a mangled, useless piece of scrap metal. When she finally reached the pipe through which the quicksilver flowed, she smashed the join with one mighty swing, then jumped out of the way when silver sprayed all over the machine. The mangled remains crackled and sparked.

  Shazza gave another muffled scream.

  Flower dragged Pierus out of the way of the spraying silver and went through his pockets until she found a set of keys. She hurried over to the cage, hands shaking now from nerves, and tried each key until the cage and then the manacles opened. Shazza spilled out of the cage and ripped the gag off. “That thing’s gonna blow up!”

  Flower said a bad word. She grabbed her key off the floor, pocketed it and took hold of one of Pierus’s shoulders. “Help me with this.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “If he dies Shadow could end! Do you want to take that chance?”

  A crack from the machine became an ominous rumble. Shazza and Flower both threw themselves to the floor on top of the unconscious king.

  The blast of heat went right over them and blew the door off its hinges. Shards of metal flew like missiles through the room and embedded themselves in the walls. A coil bounced off the stone a bare inch from Flower’s face. She thought the shirt would be seared from her back.

  Then it was over. They sat up and looked at the smouldering, mangled remains of the machine.

  “I’m not dead,” Shazza said.

  “Me neither. Let’s get out of here.”

  “No, you don’t understand.” Shazza turned a shell-shocked stare on her. “I was trying to warn you when you were smashing it up. He used that machine to make all us new muses. I thought if it was broken, we’d all die. I–I sort of hoped–” she put her head in her hands, then gave Flower a haunted look. “I’m not a human anymore. I’m not a muse, either, I’m just something he broke. I thought maybe this nightmare would be over.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  An order lashed across the cave from the midst of the vampires. “Identify yourselves.”

  Clockwork snickered. “Come out here and I’ll give you my life history if you want.”

  The voice went a shade nastier, but it was impossible to see which of the vampires was speaking. “Identify yourself, Fairy, and explain how you escaped.”

  “Come and get me.” Clockwork gave them a stiff middle finger.

  The hissing grew louder. The rage that ebbed out of that cave matched Nikifor’s own. These vampires stood between him and saving Flower from whatever fate the king had in store. “We’re wasting time.”

  “What do you mean? I already started insulting them.” Clockwork gave him a baffled look.

  “Fairies,” Nikifor muttered under his breath. “Are you armed?”

  Clockwork drew two daggers from his belt. “Are you proposing we just go straight in there mate?”

  In reply, Nikifor swung his axe in a single circle and strode into the cave. The moment he stepped over the line from sunlight into darkness, the vampires descended on him. Just like that, all his thoughts, all his fears evaporated, leaving only the anger. The axe swung. Blood spurted through the darkness. Snarls and insults swirled around him and some part of him that only awoke during hopeless battles gloried in it. He was home. This was what he was meant to do. This was what he was born for. The axe became a gleaming silver streak of light and vampires fell like sheaves of wheat. Blood trickled down his arm, but he had no idea if it was his own or from the creature he’d just yanked his axe out of. He paused, panting, only when they stopped coming. Clockwork’s daggers arced in low against vicious blows from the lightning rod of the last vampire standing. Knowing better than to interfere, Nikifor leaned against the wall, caught his breath and watched.

  Clockwork fought dirty. Within thirty seconds he’d struck so many low blows the vampire was reduced to a stagger. Just when Nikifor was getting impatient to keep going, the fairy booted the vampire in the backside and sent him stumbling into the light. “And stay out!” he yelled.

  Nikifor turned his attention to the doorway the vampires had been guarding. It was a stout wooden construct, hastily and badly fitted to the tunnel it barred. He slammed the bolts from their casing and kicked it open.

  “Mate, you have anger issues,” Clockwork said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Nikifor hurried down the dark tunnel ahead of them. Burning torches were set into the walls at irregular intervals, leaving them walking rapidly downhill in darkness until Clockwork broke one of the torches from the wall.

  “Do you do this kind of thing a lot?”

  “Only since I met Fitz.”

  “Yeah well, I’m warning you right now. When the time comes for Krysta to come back here, I don’t want you putting her in any of these kinds of fights.”

  Nikifor remembered that girl and how she’d taken on the vampires with only a curved wooden stick and almost broken his head. “Er–did you happen to notice she appears to like fighting?”

  Clockwork snorted. “Of course she does, she’s half Bloody Fairy. But she’s the only kid Hippy and I will ever have, so just don’t you go getting her killed, or I will hunt you down and end you.”

  Nikifor glanced at his companion sidelong. He had little doubt the man could and would do just that, half his size or not.

  Clockwork put a finger to his lips and indicated the tunnel ahead of them.

  Nikifor couldn’t see a thing in the darkness, but he listened. Indistinct sounds reached him. Tapping, perhaps. Muted voices.

  “The mine is not far that way,” Clockwork whispered. He glanced behind them. “And Ishtar should catch up soon. Somewhere here there’s a side tunnel. We can sneak in. Well, I can, you’re too big. You’ll have to use the main entrance.”

  “Are you sure there’s a tunnel?” Nikifor eyed the blank wall doubtfully.

  “Mate I grew up in here. I was gonna work in here like everyone else until my dad took me to Dream. Here it is.” Clockwork half-disappeared.

  “See what you can do to free your family,” Nikifor said. “I’ll distract everyone else.”

  Clockwork winked. “Meet you on the other side.” Then he disappeared.

  Nikifor continued alone down the tunnel, so busy worrying about why Clockwork was treating him as a potential suitor for a girl who thought she’d dreamed him he almost fell down the stairs into the mine. He caught himself just in time and stared out over the vast underground operation.

  The endless silver sea made the Quicksilvers’ mine look like a paddling pool. The length and breadth of the lake was criss-crossed by iron frames that held in place at least ten enormous wheels. Each wheel engaged in ponderous turns, picking the silver up in buckets taller than Nikifor and
depositing it in vast iron pipes that creaked and rumbled like thunder. He couldn’t see the carts that took the silver away, but he knew they could not be far.

  Hundreds of Freakin Fairies worked silently, their faces drawn and resentful. Many were scarred by whiplashes and brands. Others bore open, gaping wounds on their throats. Here and there bodies lay motionless underfoot, whether dead or asleep he couldn’t tell.

  In and around them, surrounding the machinery and the lake and the teams of fairies, swarmed more vampires than Nikifor had seen since the Vampire Wars. Their silver masks reflected the colour of the lake, making it seem the quicksilver had come alive, turned itself into a brutal, evil army. He wondered how the king had bent the vampire nation to his will. It never would have happened had Rustam Badora been alive. Then the vampires had been slave to his will alone.

  The anger, never far from the surface, crashed over him. Flower could already be in the hands of that monster, the Tormentor, the creature who had driven him to insanity for years and years and years. The familiar urge built in his blood, in his guts, into his throat. He knew the curse would force its way out of his mouth, but this time he didn’t care. He was the Muse Champion, the only one in Shadow who could take on this many vampires and live. He could, and would, put a dent in the king’s plans today.

  “Die you rotten vampire scum!” Nikifor leaped down the stairs. He swung his axe. Blood spurted.

  He had no idea how long he fought. Once he thought he was out in the middle of a moonlit field, fighting for his life against thousands of vampires, the ruins of the Bloody Fairy fortification clawing the sky behind him. For that one moment it felt like the night the king had returned from Dream with Hippy Ishtar, the night he’d worked magic with some ancient treasure and light had ripped away the night, blinded him, destroyed every vampire it touched and driven back the rest. The night the king and a fairy had saved Shadow.

  A vicious blow in the face from a vampire fist jolted him back. Nikifor stumbled. His vision went double and there were twice as many Moon Troopers pressing in on him. Hands of steel dragged him under. Expressionless masks peered down at him, so many of them they blurred and turned to a sheet of silver. He thought for one mad moment he’d drowned in the lake and would be encased in silver forevermore.