She handed me a small vial of white liquid. “Here. This will work, but when you start breathing again it’s going to take a while for the toxins to make their way out of your system. You’ll be unconscious and vulnerable.”
She blew out the lamp and let me walk ahead of her up the stairs. Fang watched us when we returned to the parlor.
“Now go away and let me have my rest,” Lei said. “And if you don’t survive, I don’t want your mates showing up here, blaming me.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. Now that it was light, I could see the dot in the sky—a blot, growing ever closer. “If I don’t survive, you’ll have bigger things to worry about.”
* * *
Conrad and Cal were on the stoop when I returned, and Conrad jumped to his feet. “You can’t just go running off like that!” he shouted.
“I left a note,” I said.
“Dammit, a note’s not enough when we’re in a strange city.” Conrad sighed. “You always go off and leave me to worry.…”
“What are you so afraid I’m going to do?” I said, fingering the vial in my pocket. “Start another apocalypse?”
“Okay, that’s not fair,” Conrad said. “I don’t blame you for what’s happening. I’m here helping you, aren’t I?”
I sighed and nodded. I knew that Conrad didn’t really blame me. That he was just as scared and clueless as I was. There was no way I could explain that by doing this, I might help our father as well as myself, not without Conrad thinking I’d succumbed to iron poisoning and gone mad again. It was better that he was irritated with me.
“I’m on your side,” Conrad grumbled. “Not that you seem to want me there most of the time.”
“Listen,” Cal said. “Nobody is against anybody. How about we all go inside? Chang said he’d gotten things mostly ready.” He looked at me. “That is, if you’re still sure you want to do this.”
“Yes,” I said, though I wasn’t sure now. I was terrified, both of becoming like the doctor and of the possibility that I would reach the Deadlands and wouldn’t be able to find Dean. Or that I would find him and he wouldn’t recognize me, would just be one of the shredded souls Chang had spoken of. Or that we’d both get trapped, and I’d die for good, a soul without a body, stuck as Dean was on the other side.
“That’s good, then.” Cal always knew when I was lying, but he never called me on it. He never forced me to feel any weaker or more scared than I already did. That was why he was my best friend, and always would be.
Inside, I could hear a clicking and whirring from the back of the shop, where the doctor’s machine resided. My Weird prickled in response, sensing its potential to reach between the worlds.
I ignored it. To try to manipulate machines would just result in a stabbing headache and a nosebleed. My true power was the Gates. It had been nice, to be able to fix things purely with my mind, but that wasn’t who I was any longer.
I wasn’t anyone I recognized. I shivered as I thought of the vial Lei had given me, the weight of it in my palm. Soon, I wouldn’t even be alive. I tried to look brave, even though on the inside I was shaking with fear.
“All right, everything appears to be operational,” Chang said when he saw me. I glanced over the cube wall and saw that the doctor’s bed was empty.
“Where is he?” I said. Chang’s mouth tightened.
“Upstairs, sleeping it off. If he knew we were holding another séance he’d raise a fuss, and we don’t need that.”
“No,” I agreed.
Chang pointed to a chair hooked up to the apparatus and took a seat in another chair, on the opposite side. “Sit. The copper will conduct your body’s natural electricity and put you in tune with the device.”
I sat, and felt a prickle across my exposed skin. The Tesla coil hummed and arced, and Cal and Conrad kept their distance.
There was so much to say to both of them, more than I could possibly express. If this was truly the last time we would be together, there was no way I could tell them everything.
I resolved to act as if it wasn’t, as if I’d wake up, and everything would be fine and we’d have all the time in the world.
“Ready as we’ll ever be,” Chang said. “I’m going to ensure everything is working correctly.”
I took the vial from my pocket and placed it next to the aethervox assembly. Chang eyed it.
“And what is that?”
“Lei Xiang gave it to me. She said it’ll stop my heart for a few minutes, so as long as someone is there to bring me back.…” I rubbed my arms, already feeling cold. “No permanent damage to the body.”
“Good,” Chang said. “That’s good. Don’t worry, I’ve had a lot of experience reviving people. And I’ll make sure your body is looked after while your soul is floating.”
“Conrad and Cal will, too,” I said. “You can trust them, if the situation gets bad.”
“As much as I trust anyone, then,” Chang said with a tight smile. He turned on the aethervox, acting as if everything were normal, so I tried to take my cue from him. The record spun lazily, needle not dropped. “How it works is, you take the poison on my signal. I’ll only have a few seconds to hook you into the reader, so I need to be precise.”
I nodded. “All right.”
Chang examined his instruments and adjusted a few dials on the panel in front of him. “Here we go …,” he murmured to no one except himself.
I felt a hum rise in the room as the invisible energy of the aether crackled. The coil began to arc faster, the hum overriding everything, even the shouts and sounds from the street.
“Get ready,” Chang told me. “And do exactly as I say. I’ll resuscitate you, and if it works, you’ll be alive, but you won’t wake up until I unhook you.”
I reached out and gripped the vial. It was cool to the touch, and the liquid inside vibrated along with everything else in the room.
Chang dropped the needle onto the record. “It’s starting,” he said, and over the hum I heard the barest whisper, the sound of a human voice.
Oh, help me, it wailed. I am lost.… I am so alone.…
Another joined in, screaming incoherently, as if they were being tortured beyond all ability to endure. I shuddered, watching my breath frost as the temperature in the room plummeted at least twenty degrees.
“It’s a side effect,” Chang said. “Of opening a passage between this world and the Deadlands. It’s cold there.” He cut a glance at me, and I tried to ignore the voices, of which there were more and more—children laughing, women crying, an endless cacophony of pleas, pain and denial.
“We call them whispers,” Chang said, his voice cutting through my growing horror. “Just snippets of soul that haven’t quite made it to the Deadlands, trapped in some sort of space between here and there. The doctor and I were never able to quantify. Ignore them—they can’t hurt you.”
“Can’t we do something?” I said. The screams raked across my ears like claws, until I would have done anything to make them stop.
“No,” Chang said, turning a final dial. “They’re lost to us. Nobody can reach them. Neither in the Deadlands nor any other world. They’re little more than echoes, really.”
The record spun faster, the needle cutting into the wax, saving the whispers’ words for posterity.
Chang checked his levels and then nodded to me. “Go ahead,” he said loudly, over the crying and wailing. “If you still want to.”
I’d never wanted anything less, but I also didn’t want to show my fear to Chang and the others. I unscrewed the vial quickly and tilted it to my lips. The glass rim was cold, like a snowflake landing on my tongue.
The poison itself tasted horrible, like something left buried in the ground for a long time, then dug up and fermented. It coated my tongue with a sick flavor and sent a feverish heat down my throat.
I gagged as I swallowed, and to my horror couldn’t stop gagging. My airway closed off and the most horrible spasms shot through my stomach. I did panic then, trying to
stand, and knocking Chang’s control panel askew.
“Help me,” he snapped at Cal, who ran to my side and pinned my arms down.
I was dying, there was no doubt about it. I could feel each piece of me shutting down and drifting away as the pain intensified, replacing all thoughts and feelings except panic.
But this was the way it had to be, for me and for Dean. For everything.
Chang laid me flat on the wooden plank near the machine and started hooking leads to me. I saw the long flash of an IV needle but didn’t feel it pierce my skin. I couldn’t feel anything now, could see nothing but the purple glow of the Tesla coil.
“She’s convulsing!” Cal cried. I could barely distinguish his voice from the whispers, which had gotten so loud I thought they might split my skull. “Do something!”
“Nothing to do,” Chang said. “She’s got to die for this to work.”
Something flickered in and out of my vision, and I saw a woman in the sort of garb Lei had worn when she was trying to scam us standing over me, reaching for me, her nails jagged and the tips of her fingers bloody. Oh, help me, she hissed. I’m so alone, so afraid.… They buried me there, all alone.…
I tried to scream, but it died in my throat as I became aware that the woman wasn’t the only person in the room. The machine was surrounded by black and silver figures, all of them wavering as if they were underwater. The whispers had bodies, bodies a living person couldn’t perceive.
The pitch of the machine’s whine increased, and I felt my last breath slip out of me as if a piece of silk had drifted through my fingers.
The whispers turned to look at me, and the woman who’d spoken reached out to grab my hair.
A small boy, also wearing traditional Chinese garb, stopped her. “No, Mama,” he said, looking at me with the same blank, bleeding eyes as the girl on Alcatraz. “She’s not staying here.”
The whispers converged on me, grabbing at my clothes and hair, trying to touch my face, and I lashed out, trying to fight them.
The pain had stopped, and I could move, but I felt as if I were drugged, moving slow and dull, not nearly at my usual speed.
In the center of the machine, between the coils, I saw a small fissure of the same black and silver light the whispers seemed to be made out of, and I tried to shove my way through them toward it.
Don’t leave us! the woman screamed. Don’t go away like the man!
That made me stop struggling for a moment. “Man? What man?”
Mama, stop, said the boy. The man didn’t stay. She won’t stay. She’ll go on to the Deadlands and we’ll still be here.
The fissure widened and arched into the shape I recognized, the tiny tear in space-time that Gateminders could perceive when they traveled from place to place. Now that I was dead, I could perceive the one to the Deadlands as well.
I tried to move again, and the whispers relaxed their hold this time, but when I took the first step, something hit my chest as if I’d been struck with a bat.
Chang had started trying to bring me back. I moved again, trying to fight against the blows Chang was raining on my physical body as he tried to resuscitate me.
My fingers grazed the fissure in the fabric of this in-between place, and I felt as if I had been sucked into a whirlpool. There was no free will involved in this at all—I touched it, and the Deadlands dragged me down.
There wasn’t the usual tug of the Gates, the feeling of being spread across the universe, my mind and body a million glittering points of light. This felt like sinking, like I was drowning in the deepest of oceans, powerless to do anything other than watch as I drifted down through the silver-gray fog, into a place no human eye had ever touched.
I saw other faces, other shapes, in the fog. More of the whispers, who hissed and gnashed their teeth and tried to grab for me, and other, larger things.
One turned an eye on me, sightless and cloudy, and if I’d had breath I would have gasped.
It looked like the Old Ones looked to my eyes, great star-sized bodies that held universes of their own under their translucent skin, drifting tentacles that brushed through galaxies, eyes like suns that burned you to the core.
But this one was small, and broken, and floated before me as if it, too, had drowned and was dead.
You came, it whispered to me. You shouldn’t have.
“I had no choice,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I was talking or we were speaking in some other, more primal way that transcended voice and language.
That’s what the other said, the Old One told me. The one who came before.
“The doctor,” I said. “I know who he is.”
Not the sad soul who fears death. The other, said the Old One. The one touched by our gift, before you. He came here, for the same answers you seek.
The thing had to be talking about Tesla. But it couldn’t be. Tesla had built the Gates, but he’d never spoken of that part of his life to anyone except the Brotherhood.
“You’re lying,” I told the Old One, as we drifted through the silver. The cold increased. Below us, I saw a black whorl, toward which everything in this in-between place was slowly drawn. A whisper wavered at the edge, and then broke apart into a thousand blots of darkness and disappeared.
I am old beyond knowing. I cannot lie. I speak only what is true, the Old One said.
“I’m not here for you,” I tried to explain. I was done acting as the tool of beings older and more powerful than myself. All that mattered was Dean.
But you are here for us, it said. You are our agent, our herald in the Iron Land, whether you like it or not. You, Destroyer, and your vast gift are the harbinger of the wind that will sweep the world clean, just as the one before you was. And you have no choice in the matter, just as he had none. You will pave the way for our return, or you will perish. It is a simple truth, even for one as primitive as you.
“Leave me alone!” I screamed. It couldn’t be true. I’d made the bargain with the Old Ones out of desperation, not because I was fated to. Nothing in my life was predetermined. Everything that had brought me here had been my doing, my choice.
At least, that was what I had to believe if I didn’t want to go insane for good.
Beware, said the figure. You go to the realm of the one who waits. He watches. He schemes. He knows that you are coming.
Before I could reply, I touched the edge of the black floor of this place, and it enveloped me.
When I opened my eyes, I was on solid ground, and I knew for sure from the cold and my lack of breathing that I was dead.
10
Deadlands
I LAY ON A road, paved in crushed white shells that poked into me every which way. I got up and brushed myself off. My skin was gray and I felt no heartbeat in my chest, nor air drawn into and out of my lungs. My soul was here, covered in the white dust. My physical body, I hoped, was still suspended somewhere in Chinatown, between life and death, and relying on Conrad, Cal and Chang to bring me back before I became permanently attached to the Deadlands and my body withered away, devoid of everything that made me Aoife Grayson.
I turned in a slow circle, examining the landscape. The road wound through black sand, a switchback snake as far as I could see. Red clay mountains rose to the east; their plateaus and spires looked as if real mountains had melted, peaks and valleys turned to slurry. In the other direction, I saw the faint outline of a distant city wreathed in noxious green-yellow smoke. I could hear the faint whine of air-raid sirens.
Some sort of bird with leathery wings and stained white feathers flew low over me and landed with a squawk on a lumpy object at the edge of the road.
I flinched when I realized that the object it perched on was a body, bloated with decay and covered with drab brown rags. A little farther away, I saw a wheeled caravan, the type pulled by horses, burned out and on its side. Picked-over bones scattered across the sand told me what had happened to the rest of the passengers.
Looking between the city and the mountains again, I pic
ked the city and started walking. There would be someone there, I hoped, who could tell me what I was looking for.
The heat was oppressive—I had never thought about the Deadlands in terms of being a real place, a physical place with gravity and geography and atmosphere. I’d pictured a vast nothingness where the dead, if they still existed in some form, collected like pennies dropped into a bucket.
But it felt as real as any place I’d ever walked as a live person. The heat, the grit on my face, the sounds and certainly the smells, all real. Unpleasantly real.
I tried to tell myself that I seemed as if I belonged here, that no one could harm me. There was nobody here to do it, anyway.
As I walked, the shells crunching under my feet, I saw the air waver on the horizon, where a purple-cast sun burned. There was a dot in the sky here, too—the pernicious influence of the Old Ones had extended even into the land of the dead.
I was distracted by the movement, which had grown larger and faster, a wave of advancing chaos across the black sand.
I stopped walking and watched, mesmerized, as the horizon ceased to be a line and became a lacy black pattern against the pale violet sky.
A buzzing reached my ears, overriding the air-raid sirens and the wailing of the wind across the vast sands, and too late I realized that whatever was coming at me was sentient, alive and hungry.
The sand moved as if it were the skin of a living thing, lifted and formed into a swirling mass that appeared to be made of mouths and teeth.
I screamed, I think, as the first stinging bits of the thing touched my exposed skin, and then turned to run. It was all too clear now what had chewed those bodies on the road to pieces.
It was a curious sensation, to run but not breathe. I didn’t get winded, but my limbs got heavier and heavier, and I started to feel detached from my body as I sprinted, as if I were floating just outside, watching the black tide encroach on me.
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