The enemy had come and gone. The ropes hung abandoned on the cypress. They had taken Spider’s treasure with them. No matter. He would find them. None escaped Ruh.
Ruh reached the shore and crouched in the mud, careful not to step on the small spike spheres of magic bombs scattered in the sludge. They weren’t his, nor did they belong to anyone from Spider’s crew. Tentacles whispered from his shoulder in a rush of ichor. The magic licked the bombs. They tasted foreign. They tasted like the Mirror.
He stared at the mud marks. Interesting. Someone had stripped a body here. The clothes lay in a soggy pile. The bombs must’ve fallen from the pockets as the clothes were pulled off the corpse. The enemy wasn’t above looting the dead. Even the Mirror’s dead.
He scooted closer to the black pond and dipped his tentacles into the water. The cilia within them trembled, eager to taste the scents and flavors, but he kept them hidden. They were too fragile for this task.
He sank the tentacles and felt them snake their way through slick water, combing the pond.
Something brushed against them. He held still. A hand gripped them, and through the sensitive tissue, Ruh perceived a familiar taste. Familiar yet odd, as if something wasn’t quite right with the magic the person generated. The hand released him.
Ruh withdrew and retrieved a length of rope, still attached to the tree limb. He dropped the end of the rope into the pond and fed it to the black water.
The weight clamped onto the line and Ruh strained to pull it up. His hands slid a little, finding little purchase on the peat-slicked line, but despite his weak grip, the rope slowly coiled at his feet. Finally a head broke the surface, grotesque with its skin and hair blackened. A mouth gaped wide and gulped the air.
Ruh grasped Spider’s hand, wrenched him ashore, and crouched as the cell leader rested. The peat-sheathed water had little air in it. A few minutes longer and Spider would’ve suffocated. Or perhaps drowned was the more appropriate word. Ruh puzzled over it.
“I’ve made arrangements for the pickup as you’ve instructed me,” he said. “Four operatives will meet us at a creek a mile and a half to the southwest. Through that path.” He pointed to the narrow trail that sliced through the hill.
“I can’t feel my legs.” Spider’s voice sounded even.
So that explained the odd taste.
Ruh nodded. “Then I will carry you, m’lord.”
“The Box?”
“They’ve taken it. But I will track it down.”
“I know you will …” Spider nodded and paused. His eyes focused on something beyond Ruh. “In the bushes,” he said softly.
A tentacle slivered from Ruh’s shoulder and tasted the air. The scent lanced the cilia on his arm. Animal fur. The stench of urine, unlike any he had encountered. The moist odor of breath, laced with scents of rotting meat. And magic. Strange, contorted, abnormal magic, pulsing with fury.
“It’s not an animal,” he whispered. His hand found the heavy knife and loosed it from his belt.
He spun around just as the huge shape launched from the top of the hill. It sailed into the open in an impossibly long leap, its tail lashing like a whip. The spiked curve of the spine flexed. Sickle talons rent the air, aiming for Ruh’s chest. Too stunned to dodge, he slashed at the horrid jaws, gaping open on the abominable face. The knife sliced deep into the flesh and met bone.
The beast snapped. Triangular teeth bit Ruh’s arm. He felt nothing, no tug, no jerk, but suddenly his arm vanished. Blood spurted in a hot fountain from the stump of his elbow. The beast gulped.
An explosion of pain in his shoulder nearly shocked him into unconsciousness. The monster gulped again and turned toward him, paw over paw, blood stretching in long strands from between the yellowed fangs.
Ruh ran. On his third step, a heavy weight smashed into him, crushing him, pinning him down. The world went dark, and Ruh saw the inside of the beast’s mouth before the jaws severed his head from his shoulders. Foul stench filled his nostrils. The sticky tongue smothered his face, snuffing out awareness.
SPIDER plunged his hands into the ground and pulled. The hot wedge of pain that sat in the small of his back flared into a blinding daze. He stretched, chancing a glance at the beast. It tore into Ruh’s back and flung a piece of bloody meat into the air.
Desperately, Spider stretched. His fingers closed about a spiked sphere. The Mirror’s bombs. Probably from William. The irony …
The beast growled. The hair on Spider’s arms rose. He stifled the instinctual reaction and pushed himself forward, through the pain, to another tiny sphere.
The beast stepped over Ruh’s savaged corpse and started toward him.
Pull, flash of pain, bitter taste in the mouth. Three. Now he had three. If three didn’t do it …
A huge paw sank into the muck next to him. Talons bit into his side and flipped him on his back. He kept the bombs clutched in his fist. The tiny bumps on the surface of the spheres sank in under the pressure of his fingers. The bombs would explode a second after he let them go.
The beast lowered his head. Drool dripped on Spider’s chest. He looked at the grotesque face. Red eyes stared back at him, deliberate, smart. They caught him. Mesmerized him. He sank deep into their depths, stunned by their ferocity and intellect and pain. One chance. He had one chance, or it would end right here.
The massive jaws opened wide, wider, cavernous.
“Hello, Vernard,” he whispered.
A low groan broke free of the beast’s mouth. It stretched into an ululating cry and suddenly shifted into a long coherent word.
“Genevieve …”
“I fused her,” Spider said. “Took her from your family.”
The thing that used to be Vernard Dubois snarled in rage.
“I’ll take Cerise, too,” Spider promised. “I will kill you, and then I’ll find her and take her, too.”
The jaws unhinged and plunged down to bite. Spider tossed the bombs into the black throat and shoved himself to the side.
Vernard’s head exploded. A wet mist of blood and brains showered Spider’s stomach. Thick slabs of meat pelted him. The stump of the body toppled and crashed forward. Spider threw his hands out to shield himself, but the weight was too great, and it plunged on top of him. A wide gap glared where the beast’s neck used to be, and as it fell, blood gushed from it in a hot sticky flood, drenching Spider’s face.
With sick dread, Spider waited for the body of the beast to glue itself together.
A moment passed.
Another.
Spider strained, gripping the ground. The corpse pinned him down, and in the wide gash he saw the black, moist sack of the heart still pumping. He reached into the ruined body, ripped out the bulging organ, and bit into its flesh. The blood burned his mouth. He tore the still living flesh with his teeth and forced it down.
If there was any truth in Vernard’s journal, the beast’s heart would restore him. He choked down another bite and let it go before nausea made him lose it.
Spider clenched his muscles, thrusting himself into agony. His torso slid from under the beast. He dragged his hand across his mouth, wiping away the blood, unable to believe he lived. He breathed in deeply and savored the damp Mire air he so used to hate. It tasted sweet.
Spider rolled to his stomach. A mud field stretched before him, seemingly endless. An eternity away the southwestern path gaped. A mile and a half.
Spider clutched at the ground with dirty fingers and pulled himself six inches forward. Pain lashed him. He caught his breath and pulled again.
THIRTY
WILLIAM opened his eyes. Wooden boards ran above his head. He blinked. Pain swept through him in a torrent, ripping out a groan. Things swam out of focus.
A door banged. A dim shape thrust into the room. William struck at it, but his arm fell limp.
“It’s me, it’s me,” Gaston’s voice said. A hand restrained him.
William snarled.
“Come on now, friend,” Zeke’s voic
e said. “You’re safe, it’s all good. All good. Gaston, slide him back into bed, before he chokes himself. There we go.”
“Where is she?”
“Safe,” Gaston said. “She’s safe.”
Alive. Cerise was alive.
A cup bumped against his lips.
“Drink,” Zeke said. “You’ll feel all better after you drink.”
The liquid spilled into his mouth. It tasted vile, bitter, and metallic. William tried to spit it out but somehow it worked its way down his throat into his stomach. Warmth spread through him, dulling the pain.
Slowly his vision returned to normal, and he stared at Gaston kneeling by the bed, his face two inches away.
There was something on his neck. William reached over. His fingers grazed leather.
“Hang on.” Zeke reached over and unhooked something, lifting a large dog collar free. “Sorry about that. You went wolf on us a couple of times. Had to keep you put.”
William shook his head. His voice came out hoarse. “Where is Cerise?”
“She had to go home,” Gaston said.
“Where am I?” He tried to rise, but they clamped him down.
“Settle down,” Zeke told him. “I will explain everything to you, but you’ve got to lie still or we’ll tie your ass to the bed. You got me?”
Fine. William lay back down.
“They brought you to me four days ago. They had you in some sort of casket, and you were barely breathing. Apparently you were hurt bad, and whatever the casket did kept you alive, but you weren’t getting any better. Cerise said that we had to get you to the Weird because the Mire didn’t have enough magic, and if we left you where you were, you’d die.”
They put him in the Box. He’d died. He remembered dying and the mist and then nothing.
“We didn’t have a lot of time,” Zeke said. “You were hanging by a thread. The Hand’s freaks were still after the Mars, and we had to move fast. There is only one way out of the Mire into the Weird and that’s through Louisiana. We had to grease the Border Guard’s hand. It took everything I had and all the money the Mars had. Wiped us out clean, but we got you and the kid out, because she didn’t trust me alone. I better get reimbursed for this. We’re in Louisiana now, in the country, in one of the Mirror’s safe houses.”
Zeke reached to the table and lifted a square of lined paper. “Here. She wrote you a note.”
William clenched the paper in his hand, focusing on it with all of his will. The tiny scribbles solidified into words.
I love you so much. I’m so sorry, I can’t go with you. There are only fifteen adults left, and most of them are hurt. The Hand’s freaks ran after you killed Spider, but they keep coming back. We’ve been attacked twice, and we don’t have enough money to get everyone over the border. I have to stay behind to protect the kids and Lark.
Live, William. Get better, get strong again, and find me if you can. Even if I never see you again, I regret nothing. I only wish we had more time.
He read it again. And again. It didn’t say anything different.
He would find her again. But before he did that, he had to make her safe from everyone. Her and her whole damn family. Until he saved the lot of them, they would never let her go.
The kid raised a cup and held it up to his mouth. “You need more of this tea.”
“No.” Every word was an effort. “The Box?”
“He broke it,” Zeke said in disgust. “Shattered the thing to pieces. When I woke up, it was burning.”
“Cerise told me to.” Gaston bumped the cup against William’s lips. “She said for you to drink this. It’s good for you. It will make you better.”
“No.”
Gaston’s face radiated grim determination. “You don’t have to like it. You have to drink it. Don’t make me hold your nose closed.”
William cursed and drank. There was only one man who could help him now. He had to get stronger so he could travel, and if it meant he had to chug the vomit-inducing tea, he would do it.
By evening, he managed to keep down some broth. The next day he sat up, two days later he walked, and two days after that, he and Gaston crossed the border between Louisiana and Adrianglia, heading north.
“WOW.” Gaston gaped at the two-story mansion, situated on a perfectly manicured lawn. “Wow. Is that all one house?”
William grumbled. Gaston had never set foot out of the swamp. The entire way through the Weird, the kid would stare at things in amazement, get embarrassed, and then try to be a smart-ass about it. It was getting old.
“Who lives here?”
“Earl Declan Camarine, Marshal of the Southern Provinces.”
“Are we going to get arrested?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
William growled at him.
A window on the second floor burst in an explosion of glittering shards. A body hurled through it and a boy dropped into a half crouch onto the balcony rail, his crazy auburn hair blazing with red streaks like a shock of dark flame. Wild yellow eyes stared at William from a narrow face. The kid looked at least a foot taller than he remembered.
“Jack!” Rose’s voice called.
Jack’s eyes flared with feral fire. He hissed and leaped off the balcony, changing in mid-jump, shredding his clothes. A spotted adolescent lynx landed into the green grass and took off at a dead run, heading toward the trees.
Wouldn’t be able to pull it off in the Edge, William reflected. In the Edge, changing shapes took a few seconds, but in the Weird with magic full force, you could go furry with no pain on the fly. Jack spilled out of his clothes quickly. No pause, no awkwardness. The kid had practice going from dressed to furry. “Jack!” Rose ran out onto the balcony. She wore a peach-colored gown and her hair was up. “Jack, wait! Damn it.”
She saw them below. Her eyes widened.
“I’m here to see Declan,” William told her.
Two minutes later he sat in Declan’s study. He’d left Gaston with Rose, who took him to the kitchen. The kid ate like a horse.
Declan looked at him from behind the desk. He hadn’t changed a bit: same hard eyes, same blond hair. Except he was growing it out again. He grew it long every few years to use as a power resource in case he had to sacrifice a part of himself to magic. Where William was leaner and taller, Declan looked like he could punch through walls. Judging by the look in his eyes, he wouldn’t mind bashing his fist against a few bricks.
Declan surveyed him. “Doing well?”
“Yeah.”
“Looking kind of thin there. My mother’s always looking for a new diet. Maybe you can share some tips?”
William bared his teeth. “Yeah. Shouldn’t you be all fat by now? Is that some flab on your sides?”
“Fuck you.”
They looked at each other.
“Two fucking years.” Declan spread his hands. “Two fucking years you’re gone without a word. So. What can the Office of Marshal do for you?”
William unclenched his teeth. It killed him to say it. “I need help.”
Declan nodded. “Tell me about it.”
Half an hour later William finished. It would’ve taken less time, but two minutes into the story he’d mentioned Nancy Virai, and Declan had turned pale and taken a big square bottle of Southern bourbon out of the cabinet. The bottle was half-empty now.
“So let me get it straight.” Declan leaned forward. “You’ve got the journal.”
“Not on me.”
Declan rolled his eyes. “Give me some credit. You do have it, though?”
“Yes.”
“Chances are, the girl’s father is still in Kasis. Once what’s left of Spider’s flunkies report back to their home office, the Hand will come after her, and they will want to use him as leverage. You want to save her, but she left you. And if you don’t give the journal to the Mirror, they will skin you alive. You want to get the girl and what’s left of her family out of the Mire, but you can’t do it through the border
with the Broken, because they have too much magic. Have I got it right?
“Yeah, pretty much.”
Declan nodded his blond head and gulped more bourbon. “I’ll need a favor in return.”
Figured. “What is it?”
“Jack. He’s a good kid, but … he needs guidance. He needs understanding and I can’t give it to him because I have no idea what goes on in his head.”
William nodded. “Fine. I’ll help with Jack. I would’ve anyway.”
“I know, but you hate to owe anyone. This way we’re even.”
Declan pulled a copper sphere from the corner of his desk and tapped it. The sphere cracked in the middle. The two halves slid apart, revealing a pale crystal. A spark of light flared within the crystalline depths and streamed in a ray of light to form a map six inches above the sphere.
“Louisiana. Border. Mire.” Declan pronounced the words with crisp exactness. The map centered on the green blob of the Mire where it touched the border of the Louisiana.
“Kasis,” Declan said.
The map remained where it was.
“Blasted thing. Kasis Castle.”
The map slid to the Adrianglian border. A small dot of white glow flared on the boundary and grew into a gray castle. Declan scowled at it. “I’ve had a run-in with Antoine de Kasis before. The de Kasis family has treaties in place with both the Gauls and us that keep them out of our border squabbles. They were put in place a century ago due to some classified service the family provided to both Louisiana and Adrianglia. I never could find out what exactly they did. The treaties forbid any sort of military action on their land. The price of this sweet deal is complete neutrality from the Kasis family: they can’t aid either Louisiana or Adrianglia.”
William nodded. “I wondered why the Mirror didn’t just walk me into the Mire through Kasis. Now I know.”
“There is another reason. Antoine de Kasis is dirty. He’s a Louisiana sympathizer, and he’s very useful to them. His lands are the only way into the Mire without the bother of dealing with the Louisiana border guard. The Mirror has to suspect he’s dirty, because if I know, they definitely know. However, they lack proof of his involvement. If they’re holding the girl’s father there, it’s likely he’s guarded by the Hand’s agents, which would implicate Antoine. The Mirror won’t like invading Kasis for two reasons. First, they know Antoine is dirty and they observe him in order to gather intelligence on the Hand’s movements. If they take him out, there goes their chance to spy on the Hand. Second, if the Hand isn’t there for some reason and if the Mirror’s agents don’t find any clear-cut proof of Antoine’s involvement with the Gauls, invading Kasis would cause an international incident of huge proportions.”
Bayou Moon te-2 Page 40