Circle of Enemies: A Twenty Palaces Novel

by Harry Connolly

  Ty dropped his shirt to cover the sigil. It occurred to me that I had Annalise’s cell in my pocket. I took it out and lifted Ty’s shirt again. He went stiff and awkward when I touched him. I snapped the picture quickly and backed away. Ty frowned at me and straightened his shirt. “Yeah. The ink was diluted, I think, and when it wears out, I’m history, right?”

  I looked him in the eye. “Caramella is already dead.”

  “Damn.” He turned his back and stepped over to the bureau. There was another unrecognizable spaceship on it. Ty flicked it with his fingers. It slid across the painted wood and fell to the carpet with a fragile plastic sound.

  “Ty,” I said, pointing my thumb at Dale. I chose my words carefully. “Do you care about this victim?”

  Dale looked at me, shocked. “Victim?”

  Ty laughed sadly. “Oh, Ray, you have no idea. You don’t know how many times I’ve had to pick up a credit card he’s left forgotten on a restaurant table. Or car keys. You don’t even know. But yeah. I love him.”

  “Then you have to get away from him.”

  “No!” Dale shouted. “Ty, I don’t know what’s going on, okay, but—”

  “Shut up,” Ty said. His tone wasn’t unkind, just sad. “I mean it.”

  “When Caramella went,” I pushed on, “she nearly took Vi’s daughter with her.”

  “Vi’s daughter?” he said, as though it was hilarious that I’d called her that.

  “Yes. And not just her, either. When this thing takes you, it’s going to take whoever is nearby, too. Ty, I can—”

  “You can what, Ray? What? Tell me what you can do?”

  “I can get you away from people—”

  “Fuck that. I want to live.” Ty bared his teeth at me as he said it, letting anger give him strength. “I’m not going to give up now! I’m going to find this Wally King, and I’ll offer him the money. If that doesn’t work, I’ll offer him his own damn life. He’ll show me a way—”

  “Ty—”

  “No, Ray, shut up! He’ll show me how to take it off and put it on when I want, and—”

  “Ty, it’s not a goddamn jacket! It’s down in your lungs, isn’t it? It’s breathing for you, and it’s up your nose and in your head. And it’s strong, I know. It’s not going to let you put it on and take it off like a hat.”

  “What can you offer that’s better, Ray? I wouldn’t even be in this mess if it wasn’t for you, and you want to take me somewhere quiet to die?”

  My ghost knife was in my pocket, but if I used it, the drape on him would kill him, and who knows how many more would come through. Ty wouldn’t be happy to see me reaching into my pocket just then, either.

  “You were wrong about one thing, Ray. Wally King did ask me to do a little something for him, but I wasn’t going to do it. I think I changed my mind.”

  He turned into a silhouette, giving me a glimpse of the Empty Spaces, then he vanished.

  I spun and tore the covers off the bed, throwing them at him. I didn’t have to bother; he wasn’t hiding from me, he was charging. The striped sheet flopped over Ty’s head just before he slammed me off my feet into the wall.

  I was pinned, the wooden bedpost digging into my low ribs and kidney. Damn, he was strong. I felt his right hand release my shirt, saw the blanket flutter as it slid off him. I raised my left hand to protect my head.

  His first punch glanced off my triceps and the top of my head. It probably hurt him as much as it hurt me. His second struck the part of my forearm protected by spells. That one didn’t hurt me at all.

  His weight shifted and I twisted to the left. His third punch landed right on my solar plexus. He might have killed me with it if not for the spells there.

  My feet were off the floor, and I didn’t have room to lift them onto the bed. Instead, I kicked low, hoping to hit Ty’s knee. I missed. I had no idea where he was. All I could see was Dale standing in the corner with a horrified expression.

  I tucked my chin and protected my face as well as I could. Even though I couldn’t see him, I could feel him. He was still holding me with his left hand. I reached out with my right, trying to find his eyes, but he wrenched himself away and slammed me down on his bed.

  I could hear his breathing, ragged and furious, but I looked straight through him at Dale. While he rained down punches on me, I curled my legs and kicked at him again. I needed to get him off balance. I needed leverage.

  Ty switched his grip on my shirt so his knuckles would grind into my throat. I finally managed to get a good kick against his knee and made him stagger. He didn’t let me up, but the pressure eased, and I had a moment’s break from the beating I was taking on my ribs and my left arm.

  His grip on my throat loosened. I caught his thumb in my right hand and started to peel it back. He wouldn’t let me break it, though. He ripped his hand away and backed off.

  For a moment I was afraid he’d gotten smart. If he’d let go of me and hit me with a bit more distance, I’d never have been able to protect myself. I pushed my way off the bed toward him, determined to keep him close.

  I hadn’t yet gotten all the way upright when a fat ceramic lamp floated off the bedside table and rushed at me. I swung at it with my protected forearm and shattered it. Broken bits of clay clattered against my face and chest, and the heavy base struck my lip painfully.

  I felt something kick against my feet, and I was on my back again. Ty fumbled at my shirt, trying to get control of me and pin me again—he could turn invisible, but he couldn’t break his fighting habits. He had to stick with what he was comfortable with.

  Shards of broken ceramic jabbed painfully into my back, and the twisted metal workings of the lamp lay across my chest. I grabbed it. The shade had come off, but the bulb had not broken. I felt Ty heave his weight on me, about to throw more punches, and I jabbed upward.

  It wasn’t hard to guess where he was. The thin glass of the bulb shattered with a muffled shink sound, and I pushed.

  I heard Ty back away, cursing. The bulb was broken almost down to the socket, with a couple of nasty glass shards sticking out. I’d expected to see blood on them, but there was nothing, just a faint, slimy sheen. I tossed it aside and sat up off the bed. Ty didn’t come at me again.

  He cursed again, and I oriented myself on the sound. The left side of my body below my arm was bruised, and I had several spots on my face and head that felt painful and inflamed. If he’d been planning to beat me to death, it would have taken him a long time, but he was capable of it.

  Ty cursed again, and this time his voice had gone high with fear. Had I hit a vital spot like a throat or an eye? I couldn’t say I was sorry if I had, but I didn’t want to deal with the consequences of killing him here. I wasn’t ready to face four drapes, or to defend Dale from them.

  Ty let out a wordless cry, then said: “It’s like a tongue!”

  “What’s happening?” Dale cried.

  “Ty!” I said. “Show yourself.”

  He did. There was a tiny drop of blood on his shoulder. It didn’t look serious to me, but Ty shuddered and twitched back and forth. “Ah! Omigodomigodomigod …”

  I moved toward him at the same time Dale did. There was still a delicate sliver of glass protruding from his skin. While I watched, it slowly backed out of the cut as though pulled by an invisible hand, then fell. I picked it up off the carpet. There wasn’t a drop of blood on it.

  Dale grabbed Ty’s bare arm, then let go with a hiss. Ty grimaced and turned his face to the ceiling. The cut on his shoulder didn’t look serious. It barely seemed to be bleeding.

  “Shit!” Ty gasped. “It’s digging in and squeezing—Ah, God!” He grimaced and staggered as though the right side of his body was paralyzed. “It’s milking the blood out of me!”

  I grabbed his gloved hand. It was bone dry, while my clothes were soaked with sweat. “This way,” I said. “Quickly.”

  Dale struck my hand away. He was stronger and faster than he seemed. “You’re the one who hurt him! G
et out! Get the fuck out!”

  “I’m the only one who knows what’s going on!” I shouted, surprising myself with my sudden anger. My face was in pain and felt swollen. Not to mention, I was trying to help a guy who had been beating the crap out of me a minute earlier.

  “This is my place!” Dale shouted, and he was angry enough to let a Georgia accent show. “Mine!”

  “Stop fighting,” Ty said, “and do something about this leech.”

  Dale and I looked at each other. I waited for him to lay out a plan, but it was pretty obvious he had nothing. After a couple of seconds, I turned to Ty.

  “All right, asshole,” I said. “That thing on you is starving.”

  “Jesus, shit!” Ty said, as the blood welled up around his little scratch and vanished. “It’s drinking my blood?”

  “It won’t be satisfied with your blood. It wants your skin and your guts and all the thoughts in your head, too. It wants everything, and like I said, it’s starving. Now, it can’t feed on you while Wally’s spell is in place, but—”

  “But it’s taking the parts that come out of me. I’m not stupid.”

  I led the two of them into the other room, fighting very hard against the urge to tell him just how incredibly stupid he was. It was hard to raise my left arm, and my upper left incisor felt loose in my mouth. Ty parked himself on a chair at the little dining room table. Dale said he was going to the bathroom for bandages and disinfectant. I went into the kitchen, set a small cast-iron skillet on the stove, and turned the gas under it as high as it would go.

  “Ray.” Ty’s voice came from the other room. I didn’t think he could see what I was doing, because I don’t think he could have been so calm. “I’m sorry.”

  I told him what he could do with himself.

  “Then why are you helping me?”

  There were gel packs in the freezer. I took two, pinning one against my ribs with my elbow and laying the other on the side of my face. “Because you may be a selfish, self-justifying asshole who thinks he can buy his way out of this mess, but that thing on you is worse.”

  “It’s really alive, isn’t it? It’s a monster.”

  I sighed and closed my eyes. Predators killed people, and so did I. “It’s an animal,” I said. “And it’s probably a person, too. I think it’s smart—maybe as smart as a human, but in a different way.” The dry skillet had begun to smoke faintly.

  “I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Listen, if it’s hungry, and it can’t eat me, can’t I get it to go to someone else? You know? Agh!” He paused while the drape worked on him. “Why can’t I just, I don’t know, transfer it?”

  The packs were too cold. I tossed them into the sink on top of a pair of tiny bowls. “We don’t do that,” I said as I went into the other room.

  Dale returned with a roll of bandages and a squeeze tube of disinfectant. He crouched in front of Ty and tried to squeeze gel onto the cuts. Ty looked me in the eyes, and for the first time I saw desperation there. “Ray, there’s got to be a way.”

  I looked directly at Dale. “Ty, who do you have in mind?”

  “No,” Ty said. “There has to be someone else. Some bum off the street maybe. Somebody worthless.” He winced and clutched at his shoulder. “Hey! There’s a guy at the gym who smacks his wife around sometimes. He’s the one.”

  “Even if I knew a way, I wouldn’t do it,” I said.

  “Why not?” Ty demanded, as Dale flung the squeeze tube onto the table with an annoyed hiss. The drape was not letting him put the disinfectant on. “Why does it have to be me? If this thing is going to kill somebody, why can’t it be him? Why me?”

  I thought about the rape souvenir Lenard kept in the locker at the Bigfoot Room, and Maria’s endless talk about finding a job, and Ty himself holding me down while he was hitting me. Why do any of us do anything? It’s not like we put a lot of rational thought into things. “You two have slept together in the last few days, right? I mean, in the same bed.”

  Ty saw what I was saying immediately. “Shit.”

  Dale laid a bandage over Ty’s shoulder and placed some tape on it. Then he looked back at me. “What?”

  “This thing’s been on him for days, waiting for the chance to feed. If it was going to jump to another unprotected victim, it would have done that already while you were sleeping. Wally didn’t put a mark on you, did he?”

  “I don’t know any Wally.”

  I turned my attention back to Ty. “It has a meal and it’s not letting go. Ever.”

  “Goddammit!” Dale said. The bandage had slid to the side and bunched up, and the tape had peeled away. He started to lay another one in place, and Ty helped him hold it still.

  I went into the kitchen. The skillet was smoking hot now, and slightly grayish at the center. I wrapped an oven pad around the handle and picked it up.

  “What’s that smell?” Dale asked as I came back into the room. I shoved him aside and jammed the hot metal against Ty’s wound.

  He screamed. Oh, how he screamed. His voice almost covered the sound of the meat hissing against metal, but nothing could mask the smell of burning flesh and polyester shirt.

  After a couple of seconds, I took it off him. Then I grabbed Dale by the elbow and pulled him back. If the drape killed Ty, I wanted Dale and me to be far enough back that we didn’t fall into the Empty Spaces.

  It didn’t kill him, though. Instead, Ty slid off the chair onto his knees, cursing and promising to kill me.

  Dale tore out of my grip and rushed to him. “Oh my God, you—”

  “At least he won’t bleed to death from a scratch,” I said. Of course, he would die soon enough anyway, but now I figured it was safe to take him outdoors. I went into the bedroom and slid open the closet doors. Half a dozen belts hung from a hook. I chose an army-surplus web belt.

  And there on the floor was the open suitcase. I picked up a packet of hundred-dollar bills. The wrapper helpfully told me, in ink the color of spicy brown mustard, that the bundle was worth ten thousand dollars.

  A suitcase full of money was a new thing for me. I’d always stolen cars, not cash. At least, not in piles. I didn’t have a job and I’d just taken a beating from a friend—I wanted this money so much that it made me angry. I tore the wrapper off and stuffed the folded bills into my back pocket. I could have made things hard for Ty and Dale by tossing the wrapper behind the bureau where the cops might find it, but I dropped it into the suitcase instead. I wasn’t put on this earth to help cops.

  Back in the other room, Ty was smearing aloe on his shoulder. Dale stood between us, a butcher knife in his hand. I’m sure it was the biggest one he could find.

  “You’re leaving,” Dale said. “Now.”

  “I know. And I’m taking Ty with me.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What are you gonna do? Stab me so my guts fall out on the carpet? Right here in your own apartment, with a suitcase full of stolen money in the other room?”

  That was all he needed to hear. He sagged and turned toward Ty, letting the knife hang low at his side. “Ty …” His voice had an air of finality about it.

  “Don’t say it,” Ty said. “I already know.” He stood. “I tried to do things the right way. I tried a regular job and taxes and everything, but I just couldn’t work it out.”

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  “I’m not going to go down without a fight.” Ty turned to me. “How much of the money did you take?”

  “Less than all of it, but enough that I don’t feel like killing you anymore.”

  Dale was staring at me. “Can you …” He couldn’t finish the question. I didn’t think he was even sure what he was asking for.

  “I don’t know, but no one else is even going to try.”

  Ty laid his hand on Dale’s shoulder. “Take the money and get out of town for a while. Take a week, drive up the coast. Use up some of that vacation time. If you spend the money slowly, no one will notice.”

 
“Tear off the wrappers,” I said. “Order something at a drive-through McDonald’s or something. Take the food out of the bag, stuff the wrappers into the bottom, and roll it up tight. Then stuff the bag into a trash can right there at the restaurant.”

  Dale moved toward Ty. “Don’t,” Ty said, and stepped back. “It’ll burn you.”

  Dale kissed him.

  I looked away, but I didn’t turn my back. Dale still had that damn knife. After a short while, I heard Dale go into the bathroom. He closed the door and turned on the water to wash.

  I wrapped the belt around Ty’s right wrist and tightened it as far as it would go. He let me. We left the apartment and went down the rough concrete stairs. I held the end of the belt like a leash. It made me feel like an asshole.

  “I’m through playing games,” I said. “If you take that belt off or”—I couldn’t say it on a public stairwell—“do your thing, I’ll kill you, and to hell with the consequences.”

  “I was the one who beat the hell out of Justin Gage, you know.”

  I couldn’t remember who he was talking about, and I said so.

  He laughed a little. “Guess you wouldn’t. He’s a big figure in my life, but … He’s the Cardio-eira guy at the gym where I work. You know, like Tae-Bo, but with capoeira? Never mind. It’s a new fitness thing that’s been getting pretty popular, even though it’s really stupid. Everyone who went to the gym wanted Gage—I couldn’t even pick up the guy’s sloppy seconds. And to make it worse, he was always being nice to me about it. Encouraging me that I was good enough and telling me how it all takes time … like I needed attaboys from him. Do you know how much the gym charged me to work there?”

  “No.” I tried to sound like I cared, but I failed. He glanced at me. He could see how I felt, but he was too busy feeling sorry for himself to drop it.

  “Well, it’s a lot. After I kicked his dancey little capoeira ass, I took over a bunch of his clients, but I could tell they weren’t going to switch permanently. It was just a waste. Maybe I should have killed him. He was just lying there, at the end—I could have stamped on his neck, you know? But I wasn’t desperate enough for that. That’s what I told myself. I wasn’t desperate enough. I thought I could be a straight arrow, you know? Like Dale. Such a waste, man.”