Mox no longer wore the siphon over his mouth and nose, and his eyes lacked their usual focus. Sweat dotted his hairline, and there was tension in the tendons of his neck, the rise of his shoulders. Nero lifted his hand from Mox’s neck and whistled; a ripple went through the air that sent Mox stumbling toward Ziva.
“Consul?” Ziva said to him.
“Run,” Mox replied, looking from Ziva to Sloane. He said it without hope.
“There will be no running,” Nero said.
Now that Sloane was looking for the resemblance between Nero and the Dark One she had known, she saw it. Not in his face itself—which had likely been altered on Earth, unnatural as it had appeared—but in his bearing and posture, his shoulders thrown back and his chest out, his movements sharp and efficient. His voice, too, was the same, hard as flint, every word mechanical.
Nero whistled through the implant on his tooth, and an unnatural stiffness went through Mox’s body, pulling his shoulders and head back. It reminded Sloane of the way the many-plated siphon had stiffened into a glove when she put it on, then relaxed once it was in position. As if Mox himself was being used as a siphon through the one attached to his spine.
All around them was the iridescent sheen of magical barriers, keeping intruders out—and keeping them from escaping, not that Sloane had been considering escape. She couldn’t leave Mox to be Nero’s magical puppet.
The Needle pieces hummed in her hands, reacting to Nero or Mox or perhaps both. She felt as she had once, growing up, when her fingertip slipped into the socket of a Christmas light as she clipped the strand to the tree—the energy traveling through her entire body, unpleasant but as benign as an electric shock could be.
“What’s going on, Nero?” Matt said, stepping forward. His tone was one of forced calm, an act that Nero surely wouldn’t believe.
Nero looked at Matt with only vague familiarity, as if he had seen him once but couldn’t recall where. Sloane took advantage of his silence.
“Mox.” Her tone was pleading, even though she hadn’t meant it to be. Mox was bent over a little, clutching his side. “Are you hurt?”
“No. Just—uncomfortable.”
“Mox?” Nero looked almost fondly at him. “Oh, I see. Micah Oliver Kent Shepherd. M-O-K-S. It suits you better than Chosen One.”
Sloane spared a thought for the name Micah, best left behind, a name for a normal boy and not the man marred by magic who stood across from her, sweaty and hunched, unused to the draining of his power.
“Chosen One?” Matt said, wide-eyed, to Mox.
“The first,” Mox replied, terse. “You—whichever one of you it is—would be the fifth.”
“But . . . you killed the others?” Matt didn’t sound accusatory, just confused. “Why?”
“I didn’t know what they were,” Mox said. “And I didn’t want to die.”
Matt gave Mox a sympathetic look with just a hint of condescension. Sloane felt the familiar, almost comforting urge to smack him.
Nero waved, humming. His voice was reedy, not rich like Mox’s. A natural tenor. But the note was steady. Mox flinched again, and Matt screamed as his siphon crumpled into his hand, the metal plates crushed into his flesh. Blood ran down his fingers and dripped on the concrete. Esther’s siphon, too, pulled taut around her throat, and she choked, clawing at the chain that held it in place at the back of her neck. She managed to break it, and the siphon clattered to the ground, out of her reach.
Ziva’s mouth siphon was last; it wrenched free of her face, a chunk of rotting flesh coming away with it. The hole in her jaw was even larger now, showing more of her gritted teeth.
“Sloane,” Nero said, “if you would please put the pieces of that Needle back together?”
He sounded almost . . . tired. The rich sunlight glowed through his fine hair, making it look like golden thread.
“No,” Sloane replied automatically. She thought about hurling one of the two fragments into the river. But she wasn’t sure she would be able to release it. That charge still hummed through both pieces, and though she couldn’t say why, she felt certain that if she opened her fists and tried to tip the Needle’s pieces out of her hands, they would stay put as if magnetized.
“You are needlessly defiant,” Nero said to her, flicking a lock of hair away from his forehead. “I will not ask politely again.”
“I don’t have many rules to live by,” Sloane said, “but ‘When a murderous psychopath tells you to do something, don’t do it’ is absolutely one of them.”
“Fine,” Nero said, and he whistled, light and high as a finch song.
Mox drew up straight again, and Sloane could see the strain in his face, in his entire body.
Both pieces of Needle started wriggling in Sloane’s hands, their sharp ends jabbing her as they fought to escape her grasp. She struggled to keep hold of them, but when one of them plunged deep into her fingertip, she yelled and shook out her hand, and suddenly the two pieces were hovering in the air in front of her face.
But she still felt them, burning, buzzing, stinging. Felt the acid of them in her veins. They wanted to be hers, not his. And all she had to do was want them.
Go on, then, she thought, and she turned her palms over, as if beckoning them.
There was a sharp and horrible pain in both of her hands as the two pieces burrowed into her, one half into each hand, into her index fingers, so her nails separated from her skin. The pieces worked their way down her hands, and she could see them moving, like worms wriggling beneath soft earth. With horror, she watched as the skin on the back of her scarred hand lifted away to accommodate the foreign but familiar object.
She had been the one to break the Needle, pushing every ounce of herself into the effort. But she knew it would mend without effort. It was eager to mend, just as it had been eager to bury itself in her flesh.
The piece of needle in her left hand was still moving, carving a line of agony down her arm and into the crook of her elbow. A bruise blossomed there as the Needle pierced a blood vessel. She bit her lip as it worked its way to her shoulder, sliced across her chest, then traveled down her arm, leaving another bruise, a twin to the first one. The pieces of the Needle united with a fierce glow, and a burning unlike anything Sloane had ever felt. She screamed, every inch of her skin now feeling raw.
Mox gaped at her, his cheeks pink with the effort of futile resistance. Sloane’s blood dripped from the punctures of the Needle fragments. She let it flow, swallowing down bile.
“Now,” Nero said, sounding frustrated, “I will have to cut it out of you.”
He started toward her, and Sloane put up a hand to stop him. She didn’t need to make a sound for the Needle to work. It expressed her purest desire, and what she craved in that moment was a second to think. A barrier formed between her and Nero, rippling as he touched it. He dug in with his own magic before focusing Mox’s too. She could feel the difference between the two, one sharp and clever, the other rough and hot.
As repulsed as she was by the foreign body now lodged in the back of her hand again, Sloane also marveled at it a little, at the thought that such a small thing could be so powerful and so beyond her comprehension. It was like the sun—even at a great distance, filtered by atmosphere, its rays were strong enough to warm the Earth. All the most powerful things she knew were also destructive unless diluted in some way.
She stared at Nero—at the Dark One—through the barrier.
“Is this what it’s always been about?” she said. “The Needle?”
She remembered that as the Dark One asked her about their weapons cache—right before forcing her to choose between herself and Albie—he had stared at her hand, at the scars there, with something like fascination. She had thought that he was fascinated by her, but as Ziva had said so plainly, there was nothing special about her, nothing powerful—except that the Needle was her weapon and no one else’s.
“What is it that you want?” she said, and her voice sounded quiet, curious.
<
br /> Nero’s eyes focused on hers, and she heard a hum or a whistle, but she wasn’t paying attention. She was somewhere else.
42
Nero grabbed the metal railing, water running down his knuckles. Waiting for him at the river’s edge was Aelia, crouched, her red skirt tight around her knees. He held the pair of boots out with his other hand, and she took them from him, though she kept them away from her body as if disgusted by them.
“These, really?” Aelia said. “This was the object she poured herself into?”
“She is not sentimental, and she didn’t keep a journal, unlike the last Chosen One.” He hoisted himself up out of the water using the railing, then climbed over it, his limbs heavy from the swim between universes. “I needed something she had modified and kept close in order to summon her.”
His clothes were waterlogged. Aelia set the boots down and performed the working to dry him off, flicking her fingers at his cloak.
“You can take that mask off now,” Aelia said, cringing. “You look like a melting candle.”
He unfastened the top button of his shirt and undid the clasp holding the siphon to his chest. The working didn’t change his face, but it projected a different appearance to anyone who looked at him, even on Earth. Aelia had told him before that the projection didn’t look precisely normal, which was perhaps even more desirable for his purposes. The people of Earth were vulnerable to even the most transparent of workings, given their denial of magic’s existence.
He had amused himself by reading the latest theories: the Dark One was a government experiment gone awry; an alien invader pursuing world domination; a mad billionaire turned supervillain. The people of Earth, he had decided, read too many comic books.
He picked up the girl’s boots, and together he and Aelia set out toward the terraces of trees along the river walk. It was before sunrise, and the city was as empty as it ever was. He heard a few cars rushing past on Wacker Drive, the homeless woman on the corner of LaSalle singing to herself, and the snap of Aelia’s shoes. He had scolded her before for her ostentatious clothing and unsubtle footwear. It was important to remain discreet on these late-night missions or someone might notice them.
“Is it magic that she pours into the boots?” Aelia said. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” he said. They began to climb the terraces, ducking under the pink blooms of crabapples and eastern redbuds. “And it is a kind of magic, if we think of magic as an energy of will. She has exerted her will over these boots, modifying them and repairing them, putting them on and removing them, just as the boy exerted his will over the paper crane.” The origami had survived the journey from Earth to Genetrix in a plastic sandwich bag and was now perched on a windowsill in his workshop. “The emotional attachment to the object only strengthens the energy associated with it, which will empower me to summon them both here.”
“And you don’t know which one possesses the Needle.”
“I believe it’s the girl, but I prefer to be thorough.”
“When will you go back?”
They had reached the street level. Nero paused and smiled at Aelia. “Don’t tell me you are eager to be rid of me again?”
Aelia flinched a little, the corners of her mouth tugging down. “I merely want to prepare for my relocation if it’s imminent.”
“We are still several months away from the destruction of these universes, I assure you,” Nero said. “I have secured your place in a new one; you have nothing to fear as long as you continue to help me.”
Aelia gave a tight smile and led the way across the street, toward the Camel. As Nero passed the singing woman on the corner, he dropped a coin into the cup before her. There was no shame, he thought, in giving someone momentary relief, even if her universe was doomed to destruction.
It was Aelia’s smile that was the last to disappear, staying steady as the Cheshire cat’s as a new memory surfaced.
“You are not listening to me,” he said.
They stood in his workshop, glowing orbs adrift around them. Nero was hunched over a notebook, scribbling a few stray thoughts before he forgot them. The electricity in the Camel had gone out, so the orbs provided the only light, lending an eerie glow to the new praetor’s face.
“The collision is inevitable,” he said slowly, as if he were speaking to someone who was quite stupid. He hadn’t thought that Aelia was, but she had displayed a remarkable lack of comprehension in the conversation thus far. “I am holding the two worlds apart for now—with a substantial portion of my magic, I might add—but once I am dead, they will continue along the path they have been on since the Tenebris Incident connected them: toward destruction.”
Lightning flashed in the windows, ominous. Thunder came soon after, like a drumroll.
“The Tenebris Incident?” she said. One of the orbs floated next to her ear, where she wore a gold-plated siphon that came to a point, a reflection of the ridiculous Genetrixae fashion trend of women dressing like elven princesses. Her gown was long and loose with billowing sleeves. “You never told me that was what forged this connection.”
“What else could have accomplished such a thing?” He scowled at her. “The magical core of this planet shattered and sent fragments of Genetrix’s magic into another universe and, due to the instability of time during universe-to-universe travel, back in time. Those shards became magical objects of legend on Earth—but there are so many false legends that it has been difficult to discern the true ones. That’s why I must continue to go back and forth between universes. I am considering doing something more dramatic to draw out the truth more quickly. I am tired of stalling the inevitable.”
“And there’s nothing you can do, even with all your power, to sever this connection and save both worlds?”
“Even if I wanted to, which I do not, I am immortal, not all-powerful,” he said. “And soon, circumstances permitting, I won’t even be that.”
“I’ll never understand you.” Aelia moved toward the windows, which were rattling in their frames from the wind. Rain splattered across them, obscuring the view of the city beyond. “Many would kill to live forever; they would sacrifice their love, their children, every penny they own. And you spend all your time searching for the one who can end your life.”
“Those who thirst for immortality have no comprehension of it.” He walked to the drink cart that stood next to the doorway and poured whiskey into a clean tumbler. “For the first two hundred years, it is intoxicating, yes.” The cut crystal of the tumbler caught the light of one of the orbs and sent it scattering across the floor. “But then everything becomes more and more meaningless. A life, a nation, an entire universe—their triumphs, their squabbles, their pathetic grasping at power, it is all the same, no matter where I go, no matter what I do.” He sipped his whiskey, the spice of it stinging his throat. “I am tired.”
Aelia glanced at him. She was not as afraid of him now as she had been when he first told her what he was and invited her to kill him. He had known she was the right one to tell because she actually tried to do it—tried half a dozen workings that had taken his breath, stopped his heart, and even attempted to sever his head. He had allowed it, though it was no more than he himself had tried. He had also tied weights to his ankles and jumped into the ocean; self-administered the venom of the most venomous snake on Earth, the inland taipan; and, in one universe, hurled himself into an active volcano. All the attempts—his and Aelia’s—had failed, as his magic defended and preserved him.
Still, she sometimes betrayed fear. Like now, her eyebrows knit together, her expression haunted. “And this boy, you believe he will be able to do it?” she said.
“I have been in dozens of universes with dozens of Chosen Ones and warriors and magicians of renown,” he said. “None have had the raw power of this boy. He may not have the skill or the focus, but I don’t require him to. He is a blunt instrument only.”
Aelia nodded. “But his desire to do so mu
st be cultivated,” she said distantly. “And desire cannot be forced.”
Nero drained his glass. “Precisely what I need your help with.”
The glow of an orb was what remained.
The door to the workshop shuddered as he flung it open with his siphon and then slammed it behind him. He was trembling. He cursed and shook out his hands. One would think that hundreds of years of life would eradicate this kind of weakness, but still it lingered.
He filled the air with whistles, one to lock the door behind him, one to set up a sound barrier around the circumference of the workshop, one to summon his notebook to the table before him, and the last to ready his pen to take down his dictation. He sank into a chair next to a stack of books and used his handkerchief to wipe his forehead of sweat. He tasted salt from his upper lip.
The pen stood upright, shivering in anticipation of his voice.
“It is done,” he said. “The Army of Flickering is dead.”
The pen began to move. He ran his hands down his legs to wipe the moisture from his palms.
“He will want to kill me now,” he added, with some relief.
Sloane felt the hunger of the Dark One and, above all, the weariness. They felt both together.
He thought of Micah and his wry smile. Strange, he had always thought, that such an extraordinary child came from such ordinary parents. Nancy, host of a weekly knitting circle, last year’s winner of the chili contest at the town fair. Phil, thinning on top, thickening on the bottom, manager of the local bank. They had eyed Nero’s siphon uneasily when he shook their hands, and they hadn’t fought him when he took their son away from them.
Micah didn’t need a siphon to do magic. He hardly even needed intent. His desires simply manifested when provoked. He had lit his first bedroom in the Camel on fire. He had broken every single plate in the cafeteria at once. He had made flowers grow out of the stone floor in the Hall of Summons.
Now he sat on top of the siphon fortis in the Hall of Summons, looking small despite his early lankiness. It was the ears poking out of his hair, maybe, that made him look so young.
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