Kate could see it plain on the younger girl’s face—reading intentions and moods was what Kate did, after all, and Alice was loudly telegraphing suspicion as she looked at the man in the dark purple robes, the only other person in the room who wasn’t an anonymous, generic guard in uniform.
Our timing could have been better, Kate thought as she watched that doubt fade from Alice’s face the second she saw Doc. Walking into the room with her prisoner in tow might have been a bad strategy for winning her over to their side.
“Guards! The prisoner has escaped!” the man in purple, whom Doc had told them was called the Vizier, called out. The guards seemed to be genuinely afraid of Titus, though, and Kate planned on using that to her advantage if they advanced on them.
Titus, however, and Doc, were both staring intently at the drama on the dais. There was tension building between the queen and the Vizier. And unfortunately, with dozens of pikes pointed at her, Kate knew she was going to have to let that drama play itself out.
Doc started talking. I hope he knows what he’s doing, Kate thought.
“Alice,” Doc said. “I failed you. I knew you’d be a powerful magician someday. But I wanted you to have a childhood without worry. I am so sorry someone else found you and took that away from you.”
“What are you talking about?” Alice said. She sounded angry, and lost, and, Kate realized, like someone who didn’t trust a single soul in that throne room. Alice whipped her head toward the Vizier.
“What are they talking about?” she asked.
“They lie,” the man said. “You built this world all on your own. I am just here to give you guidance when you need it, my queen. They’re just jealous of your power.”
“We’re not jealous,” Doc said. He held a hand out plaintively. “We just want to make sure you choose what to do with it, not someone else. Alice, you’ll be the most powerful magician of your generation. The only thing we want is to let you know you get to choose how to be that magician.”
“You’re trying to confuse me,” Alice said.
“Yes, they are,” the Vizier said.
“You stop talking,” Alice said, her tone even angrier with him than with Doc. “Why did you tell me to send my friends away?”
Kate’s eyes darted toward the bear and unicorn standing with Jane. She shook her head at the ridiculousness of it all, but Jane caught her attention. The women locked eyes, each waiting for the other to offer a plan. Kate shrugged subtly. Jane raised an eyebrow and bit her lip, her confusion clear.
“I didn’t tell you to send your friends away. You knew they were subverting your rule, and…” the Vizier said.
“I don’t even remember what you said they did wrong,” Alice said. “Sir Teddy, why did I send you away?”
The bear harrumphed and stepped forward.
“You said you felt that we could no longer be trusted, that we were working against you, my queen,” the bear said. “Queen Alice, all we ever wanted to do was protect you. We love you. It’s the only thing the four of us were created to do. We are lost without you.”
Alice stared down at the bear with eyes glistening with the faintest hint of tears.
“And I told you to go,” she said.
“It’s okay,” the bear said. “We can love you from afar as much as by your side. But when we were away, we couldn’t protect you anymore. And that’s why you made us. To protect you from dark things.”
Alice slowly turned her head toward the Vizier, then back to the bear.
“She remembers,” Gloomly said softly. Kate had almost forgotten the shadow-man was with them.
“Where is Galinda?” Alice asked. “What happened to my fairy?”
“She’s with our friends,” Jane said gently. “There’s something else in your land, something dangerous, and she guided them to it so they could try to stop it.”
Alice stood up straighter and looked down at Jane, a bit more of that imperious vibe returning to her demeanor.
“And what is this dangerous thing?” Alice said.
“Zombies,” Emily said. Kate almost groaned as she said it. “I know that sounds weird, but literally, you have zombies. Heading for your castle. Right now.”
“I warned you something else was here,” the Vizier said. “You are beset upon from all sides, Queen Alice. I am the only one who wants to protect you.”
Alice stared at her advisor with a look of annoyance Kate almost admired.
“I don’t know if I believe you,” she said.
Before the Vizier could respond, a tiny purplish light drifted up the stairs into the throne room. It took a moment to register, but Kate realized she was looking at fluttering, pearlescent wings. The fairy. This just keeps getting weirder and weirder, she thought, and then realized: the fairy was here without Billy and Bedlam.
The fairy drifted around the room for a moment, then dropped down onto Jane’s shoulder. Why Jane? Kate thought, but then she knew: if Billy sent the fairy for help, he would always, without a doubt, tell her to find Jane. They’re in trouble, Kate realized. If Billy’s asking for help, things got very bad very quickly.
Jane immediately confirmed Kate’s fears.
“That’s my fairy friend,” Alice said. “Galinda, I’m glad to see you.”
The fairy bowed as she stood on Jane’s shoulder. The solar-powered girl had gone very pale and very still.
“Something bad has happened,” Jane said.
Doc didn’t even hesitate. He stepped forward, past Kate, and pointed to Jane.
“Go. Go now,” he said.
Jane nodded and grabbed Emily by the wrist, pulling her into the air as she took flight. The duo dashed out of the throne room, gone before anyone could stop them.
“Galinda, what’s happening?” Alice said.
“Monsters, Queen Alice,” the fairy said. “Monsters unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.”
“There are no monsters here,” Alice said. “I built this world so there would be no monsters. What’s happening? Why is everything breaking?”
Doc stepped forward. Kate caught him making subtle hand gestures as he spoke, getting ready to cast a spell.
“The Vizier has been clouding your mind, Alice,” Doc said. “There’s nothing any of us can do to help you. But you have the power to take control back from him. That’s your power. That’s your right.”
“They’re trying to tear us apart, Alice,” the Vizier said. “Don’t let them do this.”
“That’s the first time you’ve called me by my name, and not queen,” Alice said. “Are they telling the truth, Vizier?”
The Vizier changed, then; Kate saw it happen in the blink of an eye, as he seemed to grow taller, thinner, his eyes becoming red embers instead of the gentle grey eyes he’d had before. He stepped away from Alice and made a violent gesture with his hand, not unlike the sort of thing Kate had witnessed Doc do when casting a spell. Alice bent forward as if she’d been struck in the stomach. The Vizier pointed at Kate and the others on the left side of the throne room.
“This works so much better when you’re willing,” the Vizier said. “But if I have to steal your power outright, I will.”
He pointed a finger, now long and tipped with a hooked claw, at Doc, who released whatever spell he’d been working on seconds before. Kate felt a barely visible shield spring up in front of her, knocking her backward onto her heels.
Gloomly darted forward like a ghost.
“Don’t touch our Alice,” the shadow-man said, his eyes gleaming, golden orbs as he swelled with dark power.
A burst of sickly, grimy light burst forth from the Vizier’s hooked fingertip. It did not follow a straight arc, but bent and twisted like lightning. Kate watched in horror as it tore through Gloomly like paper, shredding the shadow-creature, tearing him apart at the seams.
“No!” Doc yelled, realizing too late Gloomly had left the protective circle he created. The destructive beam of arcane energy hit the shield Doc summoned and splashed against i
t like rain on glass, breaking into pieces and falling to the floor harmlessly.
The room went deadly quiet as Gloomly disintegrated a few inches of shadow at a time.
“I’m sorry, Alice. I tried…” the shadow-man said. And then he was gone.
“You!” Alice said, clutching her gut, her face a mask of pain and rage. “I trusted you! You killed my friend!”
“He was never real, little girl,” the Vizier said, his shape still changing, growing bigger, his shoulders taking on a curved, cartoonish shape. “I saved you from your imaginary friends and showed you how to use your power to create worlds, and now, now you betray me? You could have made another shadow puppet. You could make anything you wanted to. But not anymore.”
Alice stretched out her hand toward the Vizier, who looked more and more like a thing of pure nightmare than a man with each passing second.
“You let me in,” he said. “I’ll eat your fears and devour your magic until there is nothing left.”
“Alice!” Doc said. “You can cut him off! All you need to do is will it so. That’s your strength he’s stealing. Take it back!”
“I can’t!” Alice said.
Kate watched as Alice seemed to shrink, becoming gaunt, dark bags under her eyes. She looked sick, exhausted, drained as the nightmare creature grew in scope. We might be too late, Kate thought.
And then a new voice entered the clamor of the throne room. The voice they needed to hear.
“Not alone, you can’t,” the Lady Dreamless said. She emerged from a hidden passage behind the throne, one even Kate with her constant study of the battlefield had missed, the two demon hounds flanking her on either side. “But together, we can cut you free.”
Chapter 55: The dead, walking
Jane didn’t have to drag Emily far to find what Galinda had warned them about: they barely made it to the end of the stairs leading out of the castle before the drawbridge slammed open and the dead and twisted began pouring in.
“I think I saw this on Game of Thrones,” Emily said. Jane let go of Emily’s wrist, the two women hovering about ten feet off the floor.
“I don’t see Billy or Bedlam,” Jane said. “We have to…”
She trailed off as she saw a massive, misshapen creature waddle just beyond the portcullis.
“What was that,” Jane said.
“And why are these zombies all dressed so nicely?” Emily said. Other creatures began to follow the standard-issue corpses, humans with arms warped into strange new shapes, or walking on legs with too many limbs, dragging spiked tails or worse.
Jane shot a glance over her shoulder back toward the throne room.
“We have to keep them from getting in,” she said.
“Do we care if the zombies are mangled or not?” Emily said.
“I think they’re, um, locally grown,” Jane said.
“No head shots then. Gotcha,” Emily said. I got this.
Emily pushed past Jane—which Jane knew was most likely to keep her from getting caught up in Emily’s bubbles of float—and held both hands out in front of her, palms forward. Then she twisted her wrists like a conductor issuing instructions to her orchestra.
The zombies began to float off the ground.
“Violence is not always the solution, padawan,” Emily said. She pushed forward, lifting more and more of the walking corpses with her, scooping up some of the twisted living creatures as well as she progressed.
“This is a temporary fix,” Jane warned.
“Oh, I know,” Emily said. “But if I pick up the zombies and drop them a mile away, I figure at the average zombie land speed, whatever’s going on inside the throne room will have resolved itself by the time they get back.”
“Y’know, on the whole, we’ve come up with worse plans together,” Jane said.
“See?” Emily said. “I expect my new business cards to read: master tactician.”
Emily carried dozens of zombies out of the castle gate, all of them reaching out to her or trying in vain to walk despite no longer touching the ground. Once they were outside, though, Jane saw the problem was more than just the shambling dead.
“Well those things are positively Lovecraftian,” Emily said, gesturing with her chin at two living siege engines slamming massive, multi-joined appendages into the castle walls.
“Great,” Jane said. “I’ll take care of whatever those are. You go find a cemetery or like, corral or something to drop the other ones in.”
“Got it,” Emily said. “Try to make sure the world doesn’t end while I’m gone.”
Emily raised her hand again, taking the pile of undead even higher into the air over Westwick and began to fly at her slow but steady speed away from the castle.
The castle itself, meanwhile, began to shake and crack beneath the heavy blows of the two stitched-together mutants. Jane flew down to the nearest, trying to figure out if it had a face to punch.
The closer she got, though, she found her answer: it didn’t simply have a face. It had many, all mindless rictuses of pain.
“And I thought the body-snatching aliens were gross,” she said. “Hey I don’t suppose I can talk you out of this?”
The creature didn’t answer, instead smashing one of its bulky limbs against the castle wall, causing stone and mortar to crumble.
“Okay then,” Jane said. The next time the creature swung its limb, Jane caught it, trying very hard not to vocalize how much the slimy texture of its skin grossed her out. The creature bucked at her grasp, so she cranked up the heat, igniting her hands with flames.
All at once, the creature issued a sound Jane would never forget, the sound of dozens of voices crying out at once.
“I’m sorry,” she said, dropping to the ground with the monstrosity’s arm over her shoulder like a rope. She dug her heels in and pulled the abomination away from the castle wall. It fought hard, its extra limbs pushing and dragging away from Jane.
The creature thrashed, slamming into Jane with two other arm-like parts, a fourth grasping onto the castle itself in an attempt to stop her from dragging it away. Frustrated, Jane took again to the air so the abomination could no longer use its multitude of feet to strain against her.
Jane yanked once, twice, like a tug of war, and finally she heard metal and stone break away as the creature lost its grip on the castle. Already pulling skyward, she immediately rose twenty feet or more, the unfathomable creature thrashing and swaying as it tried to find purchases.
This might be the only time I’ve been jealous of Emily’s powers, Jane thought, the desperate, violent beast fighting against her grip. The castle rumbled again, and Jane saw the other abomination making progress in battering its way through the walls. She found her eyes drawn to the weird shape of the castle, the illogical, imbalanced geometry of it, and started to picture what would happen if one of the walls were destabilized enough to no longer be load-bearing.
It’s going to knock the whole castle down, Jane thought.
She tightened her grip on the monster’s arm and began to spin, using the mass of the creature as a weight, herself as the fulcrum. It was awkward and ugly, but after a few rotations she had a decent spin going. Super-strength isn’t totally useless, she thought, wishing she had Kate’s dance training to avoid getting dizzy.
Okay, either this is going to work, or I’m going to hit the castle and kill everyone by accident, she thought. Here goes.
She released her grip on the abomination, hoping she timed the throw right to send it flying in the right direction. Her heart skipped a beat, convinced she’d slipped or miscalculated.
The elephantine creature slammed into its twin with a vile, sickening slam. Both creatures wailed in fear or pain or both, tumbling over, their multitudes of limbs intertwining and tangling. Their legs kicked pathetically, unable to right themselves onto their feet.
Jane winced in pity while fighting off nausea. She didn’t know what the massive abominations were, but she knew she’d be unhappy when she found ou
t what made them.
In the distance, she saw Emily drifting further and further way. Okay, Jane thought. Two problems down. From the direction of the town proper, she caught a glimpse of Billy’s signature blue-white light, and she sighed in relief knowing he was on his way.
Once more, she turned her attention to the castle’s maw. She landed on the drawbridge and started running inside.
And that was when she saw two figures she’d missed during the fight with the undead monsters ascending the stairs into the throne room, silhouetted in the glow of flashing arcane light.
Chapter 56: Thieves of power
Titus rapidly took stock of the battlefield.
In the center, Alice, confused, angry, betrayed.
The nightmare being that had once been the Vizier, now bigger, inhuman, eyes glowing from a face marred by smoke.
Doc beside him, a magical shield still held before him with one hand, his free hand preparing another spell.
Kate to his other side, arms up and ready to fight, but staying safely behind Doc’s shield.
The little stuffed bear, the sword he wore on his back drawn, standing protectively in front of the unicorn, both looking at Alice with expressions both afraid and concerned.
The Lady Dreamless beyond the dais in her true form, pearlescent skin and red mystical energy. Her two muscle-bound demon hounds at her side, teeth bared, their eyes and mouths glowing with an internal flame.
The Vizier panned the throne room, lavender energy crackling around his fingers as he decided who to disintegrate next. He seemed to regard Lady Dreamless as, if not the greatest threat, the presence in the room most demanding his attention.
“You don’t get to cast me out here,” he said to her, his voice taking on a deep, echoing aspect. “This is my realm, not yours. You don’t have the power to control me.”
“You have made a great mistake, nightmare,” Lady Dreamless said.
“Bold words for someone so far from home,” the Vizier said.
Titus focused his attention on Alice, who looked pale, drawn, drained. He’s eating away at her magic, Titus thought. He was feeding off her slowly before, but now, with nothing to lose, he’s showing no restraint. The young girl wavered on her feet as if in a fever.
The Indestructibles (Book 5): The Crimson Child Page 26