by N. D. Wilson
Listening to his drumming pulse, Cyrus stared at it. He could hear footsteps. He saw flashlights. Tugging his finger out of Patricia’s mouth, he jumped backward into the shadow of the spiral stairs.
Exhaling and biting his tongue, Cyrus leaned his head into the hallway. Two men, nothing but shapes behind their flashlights, stood at the open door.
“I don’t care,” one of them said. “He can’t make us open it. We checked the lock and that’s that. If Rupe wants to check the inside of a Burial, he can do it himself. I might be stuck as a watchman for the next two months, but I’m not the bloody Avengel.”
The other man spoke, but his voice was too low to make out, swallowed by whispering echoes. Cyrus slid forward.
“Can’t see the fuss of it all,” the first one said. “Double guards and Burial checking? Does he think old Rasputin’s gonna up and walk away? And what exactly am I gonna do if he does? Or Tamerlane? I’d like to see the two of us put that one back to bed.”
The black door boomed shut behind them, and flashlights flicked in both directions. “Who’s Rupe protecting anyhow? Skelton’s mutts? And for what? They’ll be twice the trouble he was — there being two of them — and it’s Billy’s own outlaw friends that have Rupe sweating.” The man snorted and then shivered loudly. “Truth? Run me into that nightmare Maxi, and I’d hand those two Smiths right over — with Parmesan, too, and an offer to grind the pepper. And Phoenix is worse than worse. Will you be dying for those two?”
“No, sir,” said the second man. “Leave the dying to Rupe.”
The men had turned and were walking away, voices fading with their footsteps.
Cyrus stepped into the dark hallway. When it was as silent as it was dark, he found Patricia’s head and popped his finger back in her mouth. She didn’t even seem surprised, sliding all the way up to the second knuckle. Holding his coiled silver light above his head, Cyrus moved slowly to the big black door. He slid his hand over the cold, rivet-puckered steel and found a single star-shaped keyhole beneath a heavy ring.
He looked around. Why not? Rupert had basically told him to test the keys. He breathed slowly, trying to quiet his pulse. His muscles were tightening — he felt just like he had before he’d climbed onto the roof of his school with a bucket of water balloons. Antigone would hate this. Dan would yell at him. He had no endgame at all. The principal would ask him exactly what he had been thinking, and there would be no answer. But still … he dug out his keys. The gold one was too big. The silver one slid in easily, became a starred shaft, and turned.
Beneath his hand, Cyrus felt a quiet series of shafts sliding and tumblers tumbling. And then, nothing. He removed the key, and the heavy iron ring on the door sighed when Cyrus lifted it. The door swung in. Cold breath crawled out of the darkness and into Cyrus’s lungs.
Cyrus stepped forward. The floor was colder beneath his bare feet, and his faint silver light didn’t seem to penetrate the darkness beyond the door. He moved all the way in.
The room was an empty cube, entirely lined with the same black riveted steel as the door. Cyrus stretched his lit hand from side to side, to the ceiling, to the floor, straining his eyes. The floor in the center of the room was patterned — a small circle surrounded by a large ring of flat steel petals, like a black armored sunburst. In the very center, there was a keyhole. Cyrus moved toward it, easing his bare feet onto the broad steel petals. They were the source of the cold, and for a moment, he thought his feet would freeze in place. He knelt and inched forward on his knees, breathing hard.
“What do you think, Patricia?” Cyrus whispered. He was already pulling out his keys. His legs were frozen, his hands were almost pale. The gold key slid down into the floor. But he didn’t turn it. He looked over his shoulder at the door and listened for footsteps. Nothing. He should go back. But retreating now would only mean coming back again later. Tomorrow. Next week. He wouldn’t be able to leave it alone. Not for long.
Cyrus shivered. He was here now.…
Bracing himself, Cyrus turned the key, and the floor began to fall away beneath him. Jerking the key back out, he dove onto his side, rolling clear of the growing hole. Steel whispered to steel as the petals dropped to form another spiral stair. Cyrus scrambled to his feet. Frigid air rolled across the floor, and pale-blue light flickered on the ceiling above the shaft.
“Right,” Cyrus said, and he moved to the stairs. Patricia tightened on his fingers. He knew what he was doing. Maybe. This had to be one of the Burials. There could be a dead body at the bottom — maybe a frozen body. Maybe two. But whatever it was, he was going to see it. He was going to go down even if it froze his feet off.
Why? He could hear Antigone’s frantic, absent objection. You can’t. You shouldn’t. Don’t!
Cyrus bit his lip and inched forward. Why? Why had he gone through every room in the Archer, opening every drawer, every closet, and lifting every mattress? Why had he pulled tires from streams and wormed beneath the floorboards of barns and climbed into the ceiling of his mother’s hospital room? Because he needed to.
As he descended into the cold blue light, Cyrus clutched Patricia’s body as tightly as she clutched him. Green mixed with blue, flickering like fire. But it couldn’t be fire. The colors were wrong. And it was cold.
Around each step, Cyrus expected to see the source of the light. But around each step, he found only more steps. The steel ran out and became stone. Another slow turn and his feet splashed into moving water. Cyrus didn’t even notice.
In front of him, a large room was full of fast water, swirling in a whirlpool that reached every wall. Down in the whirlpool’s mouth, before it became a throat, there was a nest of icy blue-and-green flame. In the center of that nest, a black stone column ran down out of sight. On top of the column, a man sat with his legs crossed. Cyrus could see the thick iron bands that clamped his crossed legs to the stone. But he could not see the man’s arms. Fifty feet — at least — of brown beard and hair had tangled around his shoulders and arms and was stretched out in the swirling water like seaweed, even reaching the walls. The man’s face was oddly peaceful, even noble. He looked like he was lost in some distant, slow-moving dream, or was savoring the warm crawl of a summer breeze on his face — as if his surroundings, the water, the stone, the cold fire and iron bands, were all illusion. His eyes were closed, and his skin was translucent white. In the center of his forehead, there was a brutal hole the size of a bullet.
While Cyrus stared, the flames between him and the man receded slightly. Something liquid, something warm and alive, reached into him. He could feel it racing in his veins. His jaw locked, and every hair on his body stood up and screamed.
Kill me.
He heard the voice, but the man on the column had not moved. His eyes were still closed.
The Reaper’s Blade. Come. Cut me loose from this flesh.
Cyrus’s right foot slid forward and down a step, deeper into the rushing water. What was he doing? He tried to jerk his foot back. He tried to pull himself away. His other foot was moving forward. The flames shrunk further.
I can live in you—
In a rush, the flames rebounded, roaring to the ceiling. The voice was gone, ripped from Cyrus like his own gut. Gulping, gasping for breath, Cyrus fell backward onto the stairs.
As the flames receded to their original height, the bearded man raised his head slowly, opened his eyes, and looked into Cyrus’s.
Crab-crawling frantically, Cyrus made it up around the first bend and out of sight. Coughing, still fighting for breath, he rolled onto his knees, scrambled to his feet, raced up the stairs, and tumbled out onto the steel floor. Then he crawled back to the keyhole, slid in the gold key with a shaking hand, and managed to twist before he dropped onto his face. The stairs rose slowly back up into the floor.
His hands were twitching. His stomach, knotted in fear, was loosening into nausea. His face, pressed against the icy steel floor, still dripped with sweat. Patricia stared at him from around his finger.
She’d loosened her grip, but his finger was stinging. She might have bitten him.
“I’m sorry,” Cyrus mumbled. “I’ll listen to you next time.”
He forced himself up. He needed to get out. Now.
He managed to pull the big door closed quietly, and made sure that it had locked. Then he staggered for his little spiral stairs and the long trek home.
He stopped. Voices. Laughter rolled out of the stairwell. Flashlights.
No. Cyrus spun around. No, no, no.
He ran down the length of the hallway on boiled legs, rounded a corner, sprinted another length, and dead-ended at a door. Not locked. He didn’t need the keys. Dropping them into his pocket, he slipped carefully through onto a cold marble floor. Another hallway, this one with sconces on crowded walls, burning low enough that the paintings and maps were mere shapes in shadow. He popped the still-glowing Patricia off his finger and raised her to his neck.
Beneath his bare feet, the floor became rough with mosaic.
A final corner and he knew where he was. He had reached the main hallway — big leather boat, reptilian skin, fresco-mapped ceilings and mosaic-mapped floors, all sleeping in shadow. He slowed down. Two chatting watchmen disappeared through a distant door.
Cyrus could see the entrance to the Galleria. Another fifty yards and he would be at the dining hall. Through the dining hall and he would reach the kitchen.
Food. At the suggestion, his body roared to life with complaints. He needed something to settle his stomach and refill his veins, something to take the wobble out of his legs and the panic out of his mind. He needed something to make him stop shivering and shaking. Then he could start his trek back.
Battling to keep his breathing low and his feet from slapping, he jogged close to the wall around statues and tables and tusked skulls.
He reached the dining hall and ducked out of dimness, through swinging doors, and into black nothing. He had only ever seen the space from behind a heating grate, not well enough to pass through it blind, but he didn’t bother Patricia again. Pausing inside the doors, his wide eyes strained for the faintest dusting of light. His pulse thundered, his ears rang, and the dim outline of a door appeared in the distance.
A plane passed overhead.
Cyrus felt his way through a graveyard of tables, burdened with upside-down chairs, bumping and adjusting his course until he finally reached the kitchen door and pushed it open on tired hinges.
Fire Island was dormant. The wall of copper kettles, pots, and skillets was fully armored. Beyond the wall of windows, a swollen half-moon skunk-striped the black lake. Harbored boats rocked naked masts. Flashlights and colored wands bobbed around the airfield. A plane, twin engines whining, passed by the windows, eased itself away from the earth, and disappeared.
In the kitchen, only one small, elbowed lamp was lit beside a large pot — a copper vat — squatting on a low-flame burner near the windows. Spices, bottles, and a tub of molasses were scattered around it.
Cyrus rounded the island and approached the light. Steam was rising from the pot, and so was a smell to melt his heart. Barbecue sauce. It had to be. And stronger than most. Cyrus’s mouth was suddenly liquid. Dan had tried to barbecue at first, but only ever with bottles of store sauce, and not for a while. Meat was expensive. This simmering joy was different. This would be sauce like his father’s had been — or better.
Inhaling slowly, Cyrus rose onto his toes and examined the thick brown surface inside the pot. A slow bubble grew and burst, releasing spiced breath from the depths. He couldn’t resist. Cyrus tapped the side of the pot, testing for heat, and then dipped his finger. Hot. Perfect. He raised it to his mouth.
A hairy fist clamped onto his wrist and spun him around. Big Ben Sterling loomed above him.
“What thief is this?” the cook asked.
“I–I’m sorry,” Cyrus stammered. “I — You said—”
“Cyrus Smith, is it?” The cook scratched his unnetted beard. The very tip was tied tight with a small pink ribbon. Sterling grinned. “Ben did tell you to help yourself, didn’t he? Well, not to this.” He looked at the pot. “This needs testing, and that’s a job for the vice-cook.”
Grabbing a rag, he swabbed Cyrus’s finger clean.
“I’m sorry,” Cyrus said again. “It smells really good.”
“That it does, lad,” Sterling said. “But smell is only the beginning.” Releasing Cyrus’s wrist, he stepped back, and his thin metal legs were invisible in the darkness. He looked like a huge man levitating on his knees. The bells were missing from his ears. “Now tell me why Cyrus Smith is out wandering the night’s middle while the Keepers are all in a beer froth about his safety?”
Another plane rattled the windows. Cyrus looked back over his shoulder, watching its wing lights disappear. He felt dizzy, and his legs were weak.
“I just …” He paused. “I couldn’t sleep.”
Sterling tugged on his beard and lowered his brows. “And you look to have had a fright, too. Well, frights are easy things to find in Ashtown.” He slapped Cyrus on the shoulder and winked. “Lad, if it’s your brother you’re frettin’ about, Rupert Greeves is the bloodiest of bloodhounds. He gets his man, don’t you worry about that.” He nodded out the window. “He’ll be running planes till the sun rises, no matter who’s complaining. You rest easy. He’ll find what’s there to be found.”
“What are they looking for?” Cyrus asked. “What can you see from a plane at night?”
“Oh, they’re not looking out the windows,” Sterling said. “Rupert will have his hunters out.”
“Hunters?” Cyrus looked out the window. “Hunters, like people, or like … things?”
Sterling laughed. “Things. The planes just follow along like horses behind the hounds. Hold on now, lad.”
The cook bounced slowly toward a pantry and returned with a cloth napkin. He held it out to Cyrus. A hunk of cold chicken sat in its center, coated with a skin of spiced molasses.
Laughter wandered into the kitchen. Sterling slapped the chicken into Cyrus’s hand, grabbed his shoulders, and pointed him toward the dining hall.
“Get on now, quick. I don’t want to be explaining you to the watchmen, not in the mood they’re in. Back through the dining hall, and quietly, too.”
Cyrus hurried to the door. The laughter was growing louder. “Thanks,” he whispered, and the legless cook saluted.
Thirty-two minutes later, a relieved Cyrus stepped into orange light and the sound of two breathing sleepers beside a tocking grandfather clock. He’d been lost and found and lost again, but he’d found his way in the end, and without getting caught. And he’d be able to do it again.
With chicken in his teeth and the sound of airplanes in his ears, he slid beneath his blankets. Sleep was waiting for him, soft and swift.
Cyrus flew in his dreams. He flew all the way back to the sea, back in time, back to a cold night on the north coast of California with the moon sliding low beneath broken clouds. He flew down beneath the cliffs, above thundering winter surf and into a red station wagon sitting on the sand. There he shivered with his sister and his brother while his mother stammered quick prayers in a language he didn’t understand. He watched distant rocks and the lights on the small boat when they disappeared forever. He watched his mother plunge into the midnight water and strike out into the surf. He heard Dan yelling, calling for her. Splashing. Searching.
Daniel Smith opened his eyes. His throat was desert-dry and desert-hot. He blinked, and the world hardened a little, regrowing its edges. He squeezed his eyes tight and tried opening them again. This time, he could see a blue curtain partitioning his bed from the rest of the room. Was he in a hospital? What had happened? The fire? The smoke? He remembered the fire trucks leaving before dawn. He remembered Cyrus and Antigone unconscious across his bed.
He had been standing in the parking lot, alone with the Golden Lady, staring at the ruins of his life. And there had been … a man. With very worn teeth. And knives.
He tried to sit up. An invisible weight on his chest crushed the breath out of him, pinning him down.
Cold fingers stroked his cheek. Dan flinched, twisting his head to the side.
An extremely thin man seated next to Dan’s bed withdrew his hand. He was wearing a jarringly white suit and vest beneath what looked like a tattered and stained lab coat. His thick black hair was slicked into heavy curls at the back and shone like polished wax. His needle-sharp eyes were as pale as blue pearls.
The man smiled slowly, folding long, tight lines into his cheeks. His teeth were whiter than his suit, and a large gap in the front punctuated his smile like an exclamation mark. “Mr. Smith,” the man said, his voice crawling out slowly in a musical drawl. “Welcome to my home. I apologize for your unconsciousness, and for any pain you may have been caused. My name is Dr. Edwin Phoenix, and I do hope we can be friends. There’s just so much I can do for you and for yours.”
He leaned forward and turned Daniel’s head to the right.
“If we’re friendly, that is.”
Another bed was just beside Dan’s. His mother, breathing softly, as peacefully unconscious as she had been for the past two years, was propped up on pillows.
Phoenix sat back, his smile shrinking. “Are you my friend, Daniel Smith? Do please say yes.”
Dan tried to kick but only managed to wiggle his toes. He tried to roll, but his shoulders wouldn’t come off the mattress. Sweat beaded on his forehead and dripped into his eyes. The man stood and leaned his thin body over the bed, eyes locked on Dan’s.
“Don’t rush your answer, now.” He pressed cold lips against Dan’s forehead, then straightened and turned away.
Anger and panic inflated Dan’s veins. A roar filled his lungs, but it rose from his chest as silent as a breath.
Cyrus Smith jerked, opening his sleep-clouded eyes. He blinked, his mind still half-dreaming. In the doorway, Nolan was writhing, jerking at his skin, scraping his naked body with a knife, peeling off translucent sheets, stepping out of his legs like reptilian socks. The skin, empty and weightless, floated out to the clattering spiders.