by M. R. Forbes
“No,” I replied, barely able to think. Everything was blurry, but was that a rooftop in the trees? “There.”
Frank looked in the direction I was facing. He must have seen it too because he changed direction, forcing his way through the overgrown vegetation.
He didn’t slow when the building came into view. It was an ugly brown thing with a pair of wide doors that were hanging off-kilter. The sign for it had fallen to the ground beside it a long time ago, and I didn’t have the capacity to read it as Frank forced open the door with his shoulder, dropped me inside, and then pulled it closed.
Then he ducked down beside me, Birdie and Snuffles aimed at the door. I could hear the rustling in the brush, and then the manticore’s slightly labored breathing.
It approached the building, reaching the door and hitting it a couple of times with its front claws. When the door didn’t give, it circled a few times before finally wandering away.
“That was too close,” Frank said, looking down at me. “Can you move?”
I tried to shake my head. “No.”
“I’m going to take your shirt off so I can see the wound.”
I sat there in silence. Had I just risked my life to try to save his?
I was trying to figure out what that meant when the poison finally stole my consciousness.
52
Throwing stones in glass houses
Frank was sitting against the wall of the building when I woke up. I didn’t say anything at first. I tried to move my finger instead. The poison had worn off.
“How long?” I asked, lifting my head. My muscles were sore but functional.
Frank looked over at me, his face brightening and a huge smile covering half of it. “Twenty minutes?” He got to his feet and walked over to me.
“The manticore?”
“Gone. I’m expecting to see it on the news in a couple of days. I healed the stab wound.”
I looked down at my chest. He had put my shirt back on, too. “Thanks.”
“I don’t know much about getting stung by one of those things, but I have a feeling you’re supposed to still be paralyzed.”
I pushed myself up to a sitting position. “Forty-eight hours,” I said. That was how long I had heard. “Long enough to bring you back to the den and save you for later.”
“You knew that when you jumped in front of it for me?”
“Yeah.”
“We would have lost the door if you were laid up for forty-eight.”
“I wasn’t thinking about that.”
“You saved my life.”
“You saved mine.”
He laughed. “I guess that makes us bros.”
“Friends? Yeah. I guess it does.”
He held out his hand. I grabbed it and let him help me up.
“Twenty-minutes. That’s got to be a record.”
I nodded. It probably was. “The bigger question is, how the hell did I do it?”
“Maybe being paralyzed isn’t that different from being dead, and you’ve got experience with that.”
“I guess anything is possible.”
I turned to examine the building. It was all hardwood and dark, with signs pointing to areas to cue up into lines. Rope guides lay toppled over on the floor, dirty and rusty.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“The sign was in German, but if I had to guess, I would say it’s a funhouse or haunted house or something.”
I walked across the floor to the ride’s entrance and peered inside. I was surprised to find dim light emanating from fixtures near the ceiling, just bright enough to move without getting tripped up.
“Come on,” I said, going further in.
There was a defined path to the space, a narrow corridor with different scenes separated by walls and enclosures. It had all been built before the reversal, and Frank had to stay crouched to fit.
“I’m going with haunted house,” Frank said as we crossed one scene, where a disfigured clown was positioned to drop a chainsaw toward the passing riders.
“Looks that way,” I agreed. There was a cage on the other side, and I could imagine an actor screaming and reaching through the bars, trying to escape from someone or something.
We kept going. A couple of the scenes had doors, and I entered them to try them out. Nothing.
We passed through the entire house. The hallway spilled out into a rear parlor with no apparent exit. Instead, we found ourselves in a room surrounded by antique mirrors. They were ornately decorated, covered with layers of dust and cobwebs. Trick mirrors. The kind that distorted your appearance, making you look fatter, or thinner, or giving you a huge head and tiny legs.
“There’s no way out,” Frank said, moving to each of the mirrors and laughing at his appearance.
“Back the way we came,” I replied, turning to retreat.
A short hum preceded a snap, and the corridor disappeared, a mirror dropping in front of it on hidden guides.
“What the?” Frank spun in a circle.
“It’s part of the ride,” I said, walking up to the opposite mirror. It made me look gaunter than I already was. A true skeleton. “I bet this one will open in a minute. We must have tripped an electric eye or something.”
“Yeah, makes sense. Hey, look at me.”
I glanced over at the mirror he was in front of. His muscles had grown to three times the size.
“I’ve never seen a mirror like this do that before,” I said, suddenly curious. I walked over to it and put my hand on it, sending death magic into the glass to dispel any other magic that it was imbued with. Within seconds, it had become a normal mirror.
“Aw, you ruined it,” Frank complained.
I stared at myself in the reflection. I was used to looking horrible, but the blood on my shirt made me look like I was one of the props.
“So we’re supposed to just wait here?” Frank asked, walking over to another mirror and chuckling. “I thought we were in a hurry.”
“We are,” I replied, still looking at myself.
A thought was eating at the corner of my brain, but I couldn’t quite get a hold on it. There was something about the mirror. Something more than the magic that was keeping Frank so amused.
I finally looked away, heading to a second mirror. This one changed my gender, reflecting me with more delicate features and a pair of breasts. I put my hand on this one, too, drawing the magic from it.
“Don’t break them all,” Frank said. “I need something to do.”
I ignored him, looking at the others. There was one that caught my eye.
It wasn’t reflecting at all.
I walked over to it, staring at the surface. It was blank. Empty. Interesting. I got a little closer to it and saw that I was wrong. There was a reflection. My eyes. Only my eyes.
The rest of the mirrors were funny. This one was frightening. I felt as though every ounce of guilt and anger and hurt and pain was exposed through the stark, inescapable, damning view.
I wanted to look away from it. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. If my eyes were a window to my soul laid bare, my soul was a train wreck that refused to be ignored. My gut twisted. My muscles tensed. My jaw clamped down. Who would have ever thought something so simple would cause such a reaction?
There was a crack, and a whine as the mirror blocking the exit slid up the side of the wall, clearing the way back out into the park. I managed to pull my eyes away then, turning them toward the open air beyond.
“You okay, boss?” Frank asked.
I wasn’t sure. My throat was dry and my hands were sweaty. Somebody had to look at that mirror to get out. Someone had to face themselves. It was part of the ride. The most twisted, horrifying part.
“Boss?” Frank said again.
I reached out toward the mirror. Its existence was a perversion, even if it was tucked away in a derelict amusement park. Whatever Black was thinking when he made it, I was going to unmake it.
I put my hand on it. At least,
I tried to. It hit the dark surface.
Then it sank through.
“What the?” Frank said.
I didn’t pull my hand away. Instead, I kept pushing, letting it sink deeper until it was up to my elbow.
“Some people think that mirrors are a gateway to another dimension,” I said, feeling a sense of smug satisfaction at my semi-accidental discovery. “I guess Black decided to make it true.”
Why? I didn’t know. For as much as my fate had been connected to the wizard’s, for everything Dannie had told me about her father, and for all of our interactions, I still felt like I didn’t know that much about him. Maybe there was some deep-rooted significance to the park, to the mirror, to the strange reflection.
Or maybe he just thought it was a better hiding place for the entrance to his submerged domain.
Either way, we had found it.
53
Now you sea me
I knew we were in the right place as soon as we stepped through the mirror. The sculpture of Mr. Black and his family loomed large over us as we came out into the atrium while the portal we traveled through appeared on this side as a pair of double doors.
There was nobody else in the room. Was there anyone else in the house?
“Nice digs,” Frank said. “That thing is kind of fugly, though.”
“You can say that again.”
“I’m guessing this place is pretty huge. Do you know where Sandman is being held?”
“She never said. I don’t think she knows.”
He nodded. “Maybe we should split up. We’ll cover more ground. Plus, you’re a ghost in here as long as we aren’t together.”
“No. It didn’t turn out too well for me the first time, and we’ve got no way to communicate over a distance. Besides, Black knows what we’re looking for. There’s only one place we can end up. If Tarakona is doing his job well, we’ll be out before Black notices. If not, he’ll meet us there. He isn’t going to get his hands dirty unless he has to.”
“Yeah, I figured that much. It’s good to be the King.”
We crossed the atrium floor, heading through a second pair of doors and into a long corridor. I had been here with Black before. There was an elevator at the end that would lead us to other parts of the house.
“My guess is that she’ll be on the bottom floor. It’s quiet and out of the way. Black keeps his artifacts in a room down there, too.”
“It’s as good a place to start as any.”
And who knew what kind of treasures I might find down there?
We picked up the pace, going for the elevator at a run. Black could appear at any moment, with or without reinforcements. Whatever Tarakona was doing to keep him busy, he wouldn’t make that more important than keeping Kirin from escaping.
I could almost feel the change in the magical fields when the wizard appeared behind us. I knew instinctively that it wasn’t Black. The fields changed, but not in the same grandiose way. I stopped running, spinning around and channeling the death magic, whispering the incantation to send the power out. A woman in a tailored suit was standing at the far end of the hallway, her hands raised and bleeding electricity. Her hair was slightly ruffled, her suit a little wrinkled. A sheen of sweat rested on her forehead, suggesting she had already been in the middle of something before she arrived.
The lightning launched from her hands, hitting my negative field and falling apart. Frank had drawn his guns behind me, and I winced at the deafening roar of the pistols in my ear. The wizard raised a shield of magic in front of them, knocking them aside.
I checked the distance to the elevator. It was close.
“Frank, keep going,” I said. “Fall back.”
Frank started to backpedal, while the wizard dropped to a knee, putting her hand on the floor. It immediately began shaking, too quickly for me to counter. My knees buckled, and I fell to the side, catching myself on the wall. A ball of fire was already on its way, and for a moment I thought I was going to be toast. I raised my hand to it, spitting the foreign words out just in time to dissipate it against my fingertips. The remnants washed over me like a warm breeze.
Two more pops. She swept her hand in front of herself, and a stiff wind knocked the bullets aside. The action bought me enough time to get my balance and gain a few steps on the elevator. I flicked my eyes back toward it just in time to see five ghosts drop in, along with the flicker of Mr. Black as he came and went.
“Frank,” I shouted.
The trogre was already on them, barrelling his massive frame into the group, which was squeezed by the size of the corridor. He knocked them aside, grabbing one and throwing him hard enough into the wall that both the stone and the ghost’s head cracked.
More gunfire sounded, bullets hitting Frank in the back. His duster was bulletproof, and he absorbed the pain without complaint, raising his cannon and shooting back at close range. I put my eyes back on the wizard before I had to watch heads explode into mush.
She had produced a gun from somewhere, and she fired three times. The first bullet missed. The second hit me in the leg. The third grazed my shoulder. I gritted my teeth at the pain. She was starting to piss me off.
Unfortunately, most of my magic didn’t work very well at a distance. If I couldn’t reach the elevator, I needed to close the gap.
I checked Frank one more time. He had a spot of blood on his shoulder but was otherwise fine. He finished off the last of the ghosts, breaking an arm before throwing him to the ground.
I smiled. Black had underestimated us. He had never had to fight a war on two fronts before, and his strategy was lacking. He had put his home below the water not only to keep it hidden and safe but also because the fields were so close at hand. What made him stronger made any user stronger.
Including me.
I gathered the death magic, spreading it out like tendrils, into the ghosts that Frank hadn’t ruined beyond usefulness. The wizard at the end of the hall shot at me again, two of the bullets hitting me in the chest. I ignored them, and the pain. My energy reached the corpses, sucking the life force from them and returning it to me, healing the bullet wounds at the same time I recalled the newly released souls.
The wizard looked panicked as three of the ghosts rose on unsteady limbs. She gathered her magic again, launching enough flame to fill the corridor. I raised my hands against it, calling for more of the death magic, using it to dispel her assault.
Three undead ghosts raised their assault rifles and opened fire.
She wrapped herself in a cocoon of energy that the bullets couldn’t penetrate.
“You don’t have to die here,” I shouted to her. “I only want to free the girl.”
“Are you kidding?” she said, hidden behind her barrier. “My father will kill me if I surrender to you.”
Father? I stopped my zombies from shooting.
“You’re Black’s daughter?” I said.
“Aiyana,” she replied, dropping the shield. I got a better look at her now. She didn’t have the same mother as Dannie, but I could see a slight resemblance. “I’m sorry, Baron. I can’t just let you go.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“I have to. I don’t have a choice.”
I would have asked her if she really thought Mr. Black would kill his own child, but I already knew the answer. I didn’t want to hurt Dannie’s sister, not because of the sins of her father.
I didn’t have a choice either.
It only took one bullet, a single shot from Dead Ghost Number One. She wasn’t ready for it. She wasn’t expecting it. It was a good shot, right between the eyes, that dropped her in an instant.
“I’m sorry,” I said, releasing the threads that held the zombies. They too tumbled to the floor.
“I bet Black won’t make that mistake again,” Frank said, reviewing the carnage.
I was disgusted with it, and saddened at the sight of Aiyana dead on the floor. At the same time, I felt an elation at how easily I had wielded the power. It
was a window into how dangerously intoxicating and transformative it could be. A single step into perhaps understanding Mr. Black a little bit better.
It turned my stomach.
I glanced at Frank without speaking and then tread past the blood and bodies to the elevator.
“Let’s get this over with.”
54
Museum quality
We rode the elevator to the bottom floor. I kept waiting for Black to pop in again and deliver an army into the tight confines of the cabin, or to snap the cable and let us plummet to our death. He didn’t do either. I knew that he knew Aiyana was dead. He had known as soon as Dannie had been killed, and they were anything but close. Did he feel remorse over his decisions? Did he feel sorrow? He had always claimed he did, but his actions hadn’t done much to prove it.
We exited the elevator directly into the room where Black kept his collection of ancient, magically enhanced artifacts. The last time I had been here, he had given me the mask to help me fight back against his son and to get revenge for Dannie’s death. At least, that’s what he had said at the time. I knew better now. Matwau had been seeking enough power to become a threat, and Black had to stop him before that happened.
There were dozens of priceless items displayed throughout the room, organized as if they were on the floor of a museum. There were weapons of all kinds, as well as clothing, carvings, and spellbooks held in preserving liquid. We moved through the room more slowly than the others. I focused on the discordant hum of the death frequency, listening for any sign that there was something in here I could use.
There wasn’t.
“All of this stuff is magic?” Frank asked.
“Yeah. From before the first reversal. Back when Tarakona was a baby.”
“Whoa. How did Black find all of this stuff?”
“He’s been hunting it down for years, to keep it out of the hands of his enemies, and to try to figure out how the first anti-magic switch happened so he can reproduce it.”