Oof, she thought. I think I’m…taller, by an inch or so? She looked down and tilted one foot. And these are some amazing boots. I think I like them. A lot.
She wandered up the hall. Lost in her thoughts, in this strange new world, she didn’t notice how the air began to boil at her back.
Five
“Stop the car,” Savannah hissed. “Pull over. Now.”
They were in the middle of nowhere, some stretch of faceless highway flanked by walls of dead pine and scrub. Scottie sighed and leaned on the brakes. The BMW rumbled into the bed of dirt at the roadside.
“What?” he said. “You got something?”
She did. She felt something. Since her rebirth, healed and made better than new by the power of her own invention, she saw the world through the shards of a broken mirror. Slices, jagged and broken, that shifted when she turned her midnight eye. Some reflected the world that her body currently occupied (What is a body? she thought with disdain. Just a vessel for the mind, nothing more, nothing useful), and some offered glimpses of the worlds next door. Ropes of ink held them all together, thick, slimy, and black, a spiderweb stretching to some infinite plane and beyond.
“The detective,” Savannah said.
Now she had Scottie’s full attention. His hand shot to the bag at his side, to the hilt of his new katana, as his eyes darted to the windows. “Here? Where is she?”
“Not here, no. There. She’s mind-traveling. I see her soul on a tether, a lovely ink tether, stretching from her body to her consciousness somewhere very far away.”
“And that helps us how, exactly?”
“I invented that tether. And I believe I can follow it, all the way down. I’ll be right back. Stay put.”
Then she was gone. No flash of light, no dazzling aura of power, not even a sound. She was just gone, as if she’d been edited out of reality.
* * *
Marie heard Nessa’s voice. No, not exactly, but close enough to be her twin sister. She crept close to an open archway. A lantern cast a shifting puddle of light, the yellow of ancient bone, across the black paving stones. Marie lingered at the light’s edge, draped in shadow.
“Where are you going with this, Hedy?”
“Resonance,” said a young woman’s voice, eager but timid around the edges. “I think I can invent a ritual, powered by your own blood—your unique essence—to create a permanent echo inside the Shadow In-Between.”
“To what end?” the other-Nessa asked.
“To send a warning,” the girl replied, “to yourself.”
This is where it happened, Marie thought. The message they’d plucked from the winds of the universe, broadcast upon Nessa’s black mirror. She heard footsteps, and she scurried back up the hallway before anyone spotted her. She was still in control of this body—a psychic traveler cast back in time, possessing her own ancestor—and she wasn’t sure how well she could playact her former incarnation. She didn’t know if she had the power to change what had happened here, but she couldn’t risk it. Anything that stopped that message from being recorded would be a disaster for her past and present self.
She made a wrong turn, somewhere in the twists of black-stone warrens, and found herself in a desolate gallery. Dead candles sagged, half-melted in brass sconces, shedding no light across the racks of scrolls. A thousand books rotted away in the dark, their bindings falling to pieces. Silverfish flitted across the shelves like a tide of glimmering roaches, turning centuries of lost wisdom into a feast of brittle paper.
Something shimmered at the corner of her left eye. She turned, and it was gone.
A rattling sound, like dice rolling in a wooden box, clacked from a far corner of the gallery. She turned to look, only to whirl on her feet as a whisper rasped from just behind her shoulder: “Marie.”
Empty air and darkness. Marie’s hands dropped, moving on instinct to the hilts of her twin sickles.
“Who’s there?” she said.
The whisper returned, seeming to come from everywhere at once now, carried on a gusting chuckle. “Oh, Mariiie.”
Marie’s fingertips brushed the clasps on her belt, ready to snap them open and draw her weapons. Her mouth went dry as she sidestepped in slow circles, moving to the heart of the gallery.
“Show yourself,” she demanded.
A patch of shadow, in the far corner, became a murky blob of bubbling oil. A figure slowly rose from the ground, draped in glistening rags, pushing her shoulders back with wet pops of rattling bone. Strands of ropy tar dripped from the brim of her hood and the tattered sleeves of her robe, splattering the stones at her feet.
“Why did you leave Vandemere so soon, Marie? I wasn’t finished examining you.”
She recognized the voice now. It was broken, edged with shards of razor-sharp glass, but she recognized it.
“Dr. Cross,” Marie breathed.
“This is fine, though,” Savannah said. “This is better than fine. I understand so much, now. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. So obvious. So simple. Many of the best discoveries are. Did you know that penicillin was a lucky accident?”
The snaps on Marie’s belt clicked open. She drew her weapons.
“I don’t know how you survived,” Marie said, “but I’m willing to fix that, here and now.”
The sickles felt good in her hands. Natural. She spun one in her grip, a slow and confident twirl. Then she stared at them, confused, and put them back on her belt—
No. Not her belt. Marie froze, occupying two minds at once and suddenly standing outside her borrowed body. She watched herself shake her head, sheathe her sickles, and walk out of the empty chamber. She looked down at her hands. She could see through them, a ghost made of spun glass, and the phantom blades of her weapons glimmered like slices of starlight.
“I shifted us out of frame,” Savannah said. “Can’t have you tampering with causality. Your previous incarnation will go back to what she was doing before you stepped into her flesh. Namely, preparing to die. So you have that in common.”
The black chamber faded, and winter crept in at the edges. Bitter, breath-stealing cold, borne on luminous, bleak mists. The world became a void of empty white. Cracks appeared in the walls of the universe and shone like veins of cursed silver. Marie felt a pressure in her sinuses, squeezing hard, as if this misty battleground could buckle and crash in upon itself at any moment.
The two women circled one another, ten feet apart, their footsteps punctuated by the crackling rattle of Savannah’s disjointed bones. She was a phantom in an oil-drenched cloak, with one glittering spider eye peering out from under her sodden rags.
“Still can’t believe I didn’t see it,” she hissed. “The ink. I broke a cardinal rule, I’m afraid. How does the saying go? ‘Never get high on your own supply’? I thought the ink in my veins, in my bones—I thought that was what connected us on a magical level.”
“There is nothing connecting us,” Marie said. She limbered up, rolling her neck, and gave one of the sickles an experimental swing. It looked like the ghost of a weapon, but it sliced the air like razor-honed steel.
“You couldn’t be more wrong. You’re the reason. You’re the reason we’re here. Well, not you, specifically, but you’re birds of a feather. You and the spaceman. You’ve got the same blood running in your veins. Everything I built, everything I’ve created—it’s all thanks to you. Now I need to learn more. I want to get to know you, Marie. From the inside.”
Savannah hunched over. Her spine snapped. Wet fabric tore with the sound of slicing shears as Marie stared in horror. Thorny tendrils poked from the rents in the mad doctor’s cloak, jutting from her back. As they stretched out, sprouting joints, Marie wasn’t sure if she was looking at something biological, mechanical, or a nightmare in-between.
When Savannah stood tall once more, four arms wavered at her back. Mottled, rotting skin sheathed cores of black steel, shining through where the flesh stretched thin. One arm ended in a pincer lined with the teeth-like thorn
s of a dead rose. Another, a scalpel, its blue-metal blade inscribed with scratchy runes. As Marie watched, the other two twisted, buckled, and grew rusty spear tips.
The thorn pincer clacked, impatient, as Savannah’s eye widened in glee.
“I had to leave my extra arms back at the lab,” she said. “I missed my extra arms. Then I realized I could just make more.”
“Nessa,” Marie whispered, “if you can hear me, pull me out—”
Savannah’s ragged cloak flowed behind her, leaving spatters of black tar in her wake as she lunged, faster than she looked. Marie ducked low. One sickle cracked against a skeletal arm, glittering star-metal clashing against steel, and a pincer snapped the air above her head. Marie lashed out, her second sickle cutting into the small of Savannah’s back. The blade sank in, twisted—and snapped. She dropped the useless hilt as Savannah spun, the scalpel arm leading the way with a whip-crack sound. It sliced across Marie’s shoulder, parting her leathers like butter and biting with a cobra-fanged sting. A scatter of blood drops, glimmering scarlet, flew across the swirling white mists.
Marie landed hard on the fog-shrouded stone, clutching her shoulder. She scooted backward and fended off two more snaps of the spear-tipped arms. As their weapons met, clanging, she watched her sickle blossom with rust. The next blow shattered her blade. She hurled the useless hilt. It struck Savannah’s cloak, bouncing off the glistening coat of tar.
“Time for vivisection,” Savannah said, looming over her. “Let’s see what makes you tick.”
Marie tried to push herself up, to get her balance, only to roll as Savannah’s pincer arm lunged for her throat. A rusty spear tip stabbed at the air, lancing an inch from her eye.
“Nessa, pull me out now!” she shouted.
The pressure in her sinuses built to a roar. The silver cracks around them pulsed in unison—then burst. The walls of reality blew apart in shards of broken diamond, and the void of deep space flooded in.
* * *
Marie was drowning in air. She couldn’t see, couldn’t think, couldn’t make her lungs work. Her throat clenched, convulsing. She felt arms around her now, a hand pressed to her sweat-drenched bangs.
“It’s okay,” Nessa said, lips to her ear. “Breathe. Breathe. You’re here. You’re back.”
Marie took a deep, unsteady breath. The room spun to a stop, locking into place as her eyes found their focus. She was aching, nauseous—bleeding, she realized, as she noticed the stinging in her shoulder and a patch of blood soaked through her blouse.
“Shit, shit,” she stammered, plucking at the buttons, peeling the sticky fabric back. “She cut me.”
Nessa saved her questions. She eased Marie off the hotel bed and hustled her into the bathroom, grabbing a towel and drenching it in warm water. She pressed the towel to her wound.
“It’s not deep, I don’t think,” Nessa said. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
“How did she cut me?” Marie squinted, still shaky on her feet. Nessa sat her down on the edge of the bathtub.
Nessa dabbed at her shoulder, frowned, and ran a fresh corner of towel under the tap.
“We’re in the realm of theory here, but one school of thought says our physical bodies will mirror our psychic reflections. If your consciousness is injured, your flesh will spontaneously mirror the wound, to keep your sense of self intact. But more importantly, who is she? Who did this to you?”
“Savannah Cross,” Marie said. “She’s alive.”
Nessa pursed her lips. Her eyes became chips of ice behind her glasses.
“I don’t see how she survived Vandemere,” she said, “but if you say it’s so, I believe you.”
“She’s…different now. And she was babbling something about some kind of connection—something to do with my blood, and ink, and some kind of ‘spaceman’? It didn’t make any sense.”
Nessa folded the towel in her hand, patting the cut, the damp cotton turning from eggshell white to the color of a cherry snow cone.
“No clue,” Nessa said, “but clearly we can’t try an experiment like this again. I never should have allowed you to risk it. My fault you were hurt. It’s unacceptable.”
“Hey,” Marie said. She put her hand on Nessa’s shoulder, feeling her frantic energy. “Hey, it’s okay.”
“It is not okay, Marie.” Nessa grimaced at the wound, patting faster, her anger and irritation working up into a spiral. “You’re too precious to risk in some pointless, half-conceived—”
“Not pointless. It worked. Before Savannah crashed the party, I was there. Inside one of my old lives. I think it was the day before you recorded the warning for us.”
Nessa hesitated. Her fury ebbed, replaced by curiosity as she met Marie’s gaze.
“Wisdom’s Grave? Did you find out where it is?”
“No. They didn’t know either. But I got the next best thing.” Marie put her hand over Nessa’s, squeezing the towel tight against her cut. “I found out who does know. And I know where we need to go next.”
Nessa rose, quick, animated again. “Tell me while I wrap up the mirror and pack. If Savannah was able to track your psychic projection, there’s a greater-than-zero chance she’s on her way to our physical location as we speak. We need to leave. Now.”
Six
Monique had idled away her shift behind the cash register at Spirit Harbor, pretending to read a rumpled old copy of Fate magazine and checking out the occasional customer. All regulars, no one standing out, smooth sailing.
Then the door jangled, and a stranger came to town. She was tall, lean, her body sheathed in a motorcycle jacket and black leather pants to match. She wore her platinum-blond hair in a waist-length braid, swaying behind her like a scorpion’s tail as she strode to the counter.
“Afternoon,” Monique said. She set her magazine down. “Can I help you?”
The woman held up a pair of photographs. She spoke in a thick Russian accent.
“This one is seeking these two women. They may have passed through the area. Have you seen them?”
Monique had the eyes of a witch. She opened them, gazing upon the visitor with her second sight, and froze. She knew there were only two possibilities ahead of her: either she was going to pull off the bluff of her life, or she was going to die.
She kept her lips tight, her physical eyes straight ahead and unblinking, wearing her face like a bulletproof mask. “I know all my regular customers,” she said. “These two, I don’t know.”
“Are you certain? Take another look.”
“Are they in some kind of trouble?” Monique asked. “You a cop?”
The woman brandished the photos in one hand and a business card in the other. Svetlana Tkachenko, it read, Sunlight Bail Bond Agency.
“Bounty hunter,” Monique said.
She nodded. “These women are fugitives from New York. Very dangerous criminals.”
“And why would a pair of…dangerous criminals,” Monique asked, “stop in at a metaphysical-supply store?”
The hunter flashed a toothy smile. “The woman with the glasses believes she has magical powers. This one encounters many delusional people in her line of work.”
She leaned forward, closing the space between them. Her gaze locked onto Monique like a laser sight on a gun.
“But this one always captures her quarry in the end.”
Monique bit down on her bottom lip to keep it from twitching. She pressed her palms to the glass counter and took a slow, deep breath.
“Well, they haven’t been here. Maybe leave me your card? If I see ’em, I’ll give you a call.”
Two pale fingers, nails painted black, slid the card across the glass.
“Be careful,” the hunter said.
After she left, Monique locked the front door and flipped the Closed sign. She darted into the back room. It took her three tries to dial her emergency number. Her fingers shook too hard to hit the buttons. Finally, she punched in the right string of digits, and she waited with the old plastic re
ceiver cradled to her ear. It rang three times, then clicked.
“It’s me,” she said. “Listen, someone just came around looking for your girls. It was a fucking demon. I don’t mean a possessor or a half-blood, I mean a genuine, honest-to—”
She turned in mid-sentence. The woman was standing behind her. She raised one hand, her painted nails turned to black iron claws, and raked it downward in a brutal swipe. Monique’s blood spattered her leathers as the clerk crumpled to the stockroom floor.
The hunter took the dangling phone and put it to her ear. Silence on the other end. She squinted, then hung up. She turned her attention to Monique. The clerk was still alive, her shirt in tatters and her chest guttering blood onto the concrete floor as she struggled to breathe. One shaking hand brandished the symbol on a chain around her throat, a tiny antique key. As it began to glow with pale ruby light, the hunter reached down, tore the chain as she ripped the pendant from her hand, and tossed it across the room.
“Let us start again,” she said. “This one is also called Nyx. This one believes that you lied to her. This one does not appreciate liars. But through the careful application of pain, liars can be motivated to become truth tellers.”
Monique rolled onto her belly, groaning as she struggled to pull herself across the floor. If she could make it to the door, and find enough breath to scream for help—
Nyx’s motorcycle boot came down hard on the small of her back. Something cracked, wet, inside of her body. She screamed then. Just not loud enough.
* * *
On the other side of Asbury Park, another pair of hunters—earnest, full-hearted, and entirely unprepared for the world they were about to enter—were hot on Marie and Nessa’s trail. They rolled into town in a rented Explorer, the dusty SUV rumbling over potholes as Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” hit its crescendo. Sitting in the passenger seat, Tony Fisher winced as the bouncing sent a jolt of pain along his wounded arm. He wore it in a sling, harnessed neat and tight over the sleeve of his chocolate-brown suit.
Detonation Boulevard (The Wisdom's Grave Trilogy Book 2) Page 4