Inexorably, he pushed Domek back, away from the column.
“Dawn is close. Begin the process,” Paluska instructed the alchemist, placing the circlet on his head. Imrich pulled a lever, and the machine whirred to life.
* * *
While Domek and the other young lamplighter grappled, Ora kept her attention on the two remaining men. Domek had explained some of the complicated lamplighter dynamics on their approach to the square. She flexed her hands and tilted her head, willing her claws to burst forward and her human teeth to retract in favor of her second set. She opened her mouth, letting the wide gash of her extended lips reveal the needle-like teeth below.
Imrich and Paluska seemed unimpressed by her display.
She shrugged and darted forward. She expected Paluska to try to stop her. He was the leader of the lamplighters, and had undoubtedly fought many of her kind before. He might even be able to beat her. But if she could get him fighting for his life instead of draining the essence from Domek’s wisp, she could delay his plan long enough to stop it.
Instead, he stayed beside the pulsing machine while the old man stepped forward to meet her. He hobbled on ancient, sore muscles down the steps. If he thought she would balk from incapacitating an old man, he would be disappointed. Tonight, she’d lost a friend who had stuck by her side against his own people. Stopping a monster would not faze her.
She moved with superhuman speed, prepared to knock him out without killing him. When she stepped within arm’s length, though, he reached out and touched her chest with one frail, old hand.
There was a loud, violent crackle, and Ora was sent flying backward. Her skin felt hot and painful, centered on her collarbone where he had struck her. She reached up to feel the wound, but there was no damage to her skin. She looked up at Imrich, who was smiling.
“What was that?” she asked through battered lungs.
He held up his hand to reveal a small rod. A wire snaked back from its end toward the machine. “The legends say hawthorn is the only force that can harm a pijavica, but I knew that couldn’t be true. You’re undead, but not stone. Fire can destroy anything—even your kind. I knew there would be something else we could harness against you. I had a theory, which you have kindly proven. Electricity.”
Ora, from her hours spent reading at the university library and attending lectures from guest scientists, knew the basics of electricity, but also that the technology for harnessing lightning was still infantile. Who was this man Domek had been apprenticed to?
He didn’t wait for her to recover her feet. He approached her with that same slow, steady pace, and leaned down to shock her again. The caged lightning jolted through her, pain searing through to the tips of her hair.
“The future is coming, Lady Fischerová,” Imrich said. “I’ve worked my entire life toward a breakthrough like the ones we’re exploring tonight. Where we can’t use your power, we’ll destroy it. Monsters will be banished from the world in the light of electricity. Darkness is your domain. When we conquer it, only humanity will remain.”
“Monsters come from humanity,” Ora spat.
“Then we’ll destroy them as they’re born,” Imrich said, and electrocuted her again.
She screamed.
* * *
Domek dodged another swipe from Anton, narrowly avoiding the tip of the stake. Anton had gotten in several cuts, leaving blood dripping into his right eye from a slice in his brow. In contrast, Domek was clumsy and slow with the sword. With the added weight of his injuries, he telegraphed each motion enough for Anton to dodge him easily.
“You know this isn’t right,” Domek snarled, stumbling backward. Anton was still pushing him away from the column, where Paluska was draining Kája and Ora had collided with Imrich. “Are you really prepared to live with killing the human soul that’s up there? With wiping out every pijavica at once?”
“You should be cheering for us,” Anton snarled. “You were my brother, Domek.”
“How could I cheer for this?”
“We’re doing what we always wanted. We’re ending this war.”
“You don’t understand what you’re doing. What has Paluska told you?” Domek said, barely dodging a sharp jab of a stake. “He’s lying to you, Anton. He’s manipulating you.”
Anton’s thrusts were becoming erratic, his jaw clenched with fury. He was shepherding Domek, keeping him away from the column. “Paluska is a good leader. He noticed me. He’s helped me. You’ve always thought I was stupid.”
Domek tried to swipe at Anton’s arm with the sword, but its heft was unwieldy in his hands, and the other man was easily able to duck out of the way. Anton had the advantage, but he was not moving in for the kill. Perhaps Domek could still reach him. “I never thought you were stupid,” he said.
“Don’t lie to me.” He lunged forward. Domek tried to parry the blow with the sword, but he was a moment too slow. The stake drove into the flesh of Domek’s upper arm, sending a flood of pain through him. He shouted, dropping the sword with a clatter to the wet cobblestones and falling to his knees. The agony was too intense to try to lift his right arm again, and he had no chance of wielding the sword with his left.
Domek stared up at his roommate, clutching the wound. “I heard you were planning to kill me in the morning,” he spat. “Is that really what you want? When did Paluska become more important to you than me? I’ve been by your side for years. What about Evka? What about the promise we made after that?”
Anton hesitated, the bloody stake still held at the ready. His eyes were wild.
“What has Paluska done for you but lead you into this?” “He helped me,” he said, readjusting his grip on the weapon. “He’s the only one who could help me. After…” He stopped talking, gaze distant. Something had changed inside his friend. Domek had been too focused on his own troubles to notice, but there had been a weight on Anton’s shoulders for months now.
“What happened, Anton?”
“I thought he was a monster,” he blurted. “He jumped out at me while I was on patrol. It was raining. The stake was already in my hand. It hit his heart and he died. No dust—just a human bleeding out on the street. Paluska understood. We have a difficult job.”
“Anton… You should have told me.”
“You think you’re so noble,” Anton spat. “So much better than everyone else. Now look at you. You’re fucking our enemy! You’re betraying everything we knew.”
“Ora isn’t the enemy.”
“No,” Anton said, eyes blazing. “I guess I am.”
A scream pierced the square, feminine and feral at once.
Anton jolted and looked back, and Domek lunged forward to collide with his knees, sending him sprawling onto the cobblestones. They fell heavily, rain splashing around them. They grappled messily, desperate hands searching for leverage. Despite his injured arm, Domek had the advantage of sheer heft. He threw his weight into his movements, pressing Anton into the mud.
Domek knelt over him, legs pinning Anton’s to the ground. “You’re a traitor,” Anton snarled, trying to free himself.
“Better that than a murderer,” Domek growled, and then punched Anton across the face. His left arm was not as strong as his right, but the blow collided all the same. After years of fighting stone-skinned pijavice, it was strange to feel flesh give under his knuckles. The hit knocked Anton’s head against the cobblestones, and his eyes grew unfocused.
Domek raised his fist again, and then stopped. The punch had cut open Anton’s lip, and the blood was mixing with the rain, diluting and washing onto the ground. He was staring up at Domek with rage and hurt, as though he expected Domek to beat him to death.
Gritting his teeth, Domek reached into his pocket and pulled out one of Kája’s red ribbons. Moving as quickly as he could through the pain without letting Anton gain enough leverage to get up, he looped the ribbon around one of Anton’s wrists. It pulled tight without his help, latching on. The bright red silk stood out against the mud and dirt l
ike a wound. Using the loose end as a leash, he jerked the wrist across Anton’s body. As Domek had hoped, the ribbon leaped to do its job, lassoing Anton’s other wrist and pinning them together.
“What is this?” Anton demanded. His arms flexed as he tried to pull himself free, but the ribbons were deceptively strong.
Domek ignored him, pulling out the second ribbon and turning to get Anton’s feet. Keeping his injured arm close to his chest, Domek used the other to pin one of Anton’s boots and wrap it with the last ribbon. When he turned to the other, Anton kicked out with it, managing to catch Domek in the stomach. The air rushed from him, but the blow was too glancing to do any damage. Breathing through his nose with difficulty, Domek wrestled the second foot into place.
When both Anton’s hands and feet were bound, Domek fell back onto the cobblestones. His hands splashed in the mud, jarring his injured arm.
“You can’t leave me like this,” Anton shouted, twisting on the ground.
Domek clamored to his feet. “I can’t kill you. Maybe I don’t have your conviction,” he said, the last word coming out like a snarl. “Stay down, Anton.”
Without waiting for a response, he raced back to the column, wiping the blood from his eyes with his left hand as he went, his right arm cradled close to his chest.
On the cobblestones, Ora lay in a crumpled heap at Imrich’s feet, but Domek didn’t deviate from his race for Paluska. Unless Ora was dust, she would survive. Kája didn’t have that long. The wires connecting Paluska with the globe containing the wisp were quivering with the power of the current racing through them, and Kája’s glow was flickering like a heartbeat.
The machine seemed complicated. If he’d had time, Domek was sure he could have figured out how to disable it. He didn’t have time, so he gathered as much speed as he could get on the slick marble and tackled Paluska instead, digging his shoulder into Paluska’s torso. The circlet tore from his head as they both landed heavily on the column’s marble steps, and the delicate machine rocked dangerously.
Domek panted, trying to pin Paluska, but the other man had been fighting for longer than Domek had been alive, and Domek had been slowed by his brawl with Anton. The leader of the lamplighters moved with brutal skill, slamming Domek’s head against the column’s base. Still, Domek fought blindly, determined to keep Paluska away from the machine. He shoved Paluska hard, sending him tripping down the steps and sprawling onto the ground.
Domek turned back to the machine to find that Imrich had taken Paluska’s place, and was fitting the circlet to his own head.
“You’re an arrogant little fool,” Imrich said, “but your stubbornness won’t stop me. You could have joined us.”
“Imrich, don’t—” Domek started, but Paluska punched him in the jaw before he could finish the sentence. It was Domek’s turn to fall down the steps, and he landed heavily. His head cracked against the stone, and the world spun around him. The breath had been knocked from his lungs, and it was all he could do to roll and look up at Imrich manipulating the machine holding Kája.
The wisp’s fire flickered, as though it were being peeled away from its center. “Let’s turn up the speed of this process, shall we?” Imrich said, maneuvering a lever.
Paluska strode slowly down the steps toward Domek, languid lethality in every motion. Anton had been going easy on Domek, not truly wanting to hurt him. Paluska appeared ready to kill him.
“Don’t,” Domek panted, reaching toward Imrich.
Ora, suddenly, appeared at the base of the column. She had recovered from whatever Imrich had done to her, and—ignoring the complicated mess of wires—snatched the simple clay jar from the base of the machine. He stared at her, transfixed. Her dress was torn and mussed, her beautiful face split for the row of sharp fangs. She was stunning, slender and powerful as a snake, bright-eyed and fierce.
The last thing Domek saw before Paluska’s boot connected with his head was her palms beginning to glow.
* * *
Flame scorched Ora’s hands, branding her with the sigils on the outside of the vodník’s jar. She screamed—it was worse than the lightning, worse than the bullet wound. Then, the pain receded, and the wisp was hers.
“Kája,” she called. “Back in your jar.”
No machine could overpower the wisp’s focused magic. In a blink, Kája was free of the glass globe. He streamed into the jar in Ora’s hands, whirling and sparking. As soon as he was inside, Ora secured the lid, and the only light left illuminating the square were the lamps along the edges.
Then, there was another light.
A pale woman appeared in their midst, her pristine white gown glowing as though bathed in a full moon that wasn’t there. If her sudden appearance hadn’t been enough of a clue that she was no human, she was floating well off the ground. She looked at the tableau, and her mouth opened in a vicious, silent scream.
Hearing Domek’s story of the White Lady had not prepared her for encountering it face-to-face. Ora had known that there was a White Lady haunting Prague. She had been in the castle since Ora had been born, a rumor and myth that had always seemed like part of Prague’s mystery. The being in front of her now was very real, and very angry.
Ora tensed, clutching the jar to her chest, but the White Lady did not attack her. Instead, it darted forward nearly too fast to see and grabbed Imrich with pale fingers. In one quick motion, she jerked him free of the circlet connecting him to his hellish machine and held him aloft.
They were at the base of the column, only a meter from its grand center, and the White Lady threw Imrich back against it with enough force that something cracked loudly.
Between bone and marble, Ora had a theory what it was.
The old man didn’t move again.
Paluska, still standing over Domek’s limp form, pulled a glass vial of something iridescent from his jacket pocket. The family’s lost cure. “I don’t need the wisp,” he said, voice nearly frantic. “I’ll take back Prague myself.” In a swift motion, he uncapped the vial and drank. He blinked. When his eyes opened, they were glowing.
He gasped, and the sound seemed to echo in the square. He lifted his hand and snapped. A ball of fire hovered over his palm, flickering and crackling without any fuel apart from Paluska’s magic. The serum had worked.
The White Lady turned to him, still silently screaming. He twisted his wrist and flung the fire toward the spirit. It glanced through her incorporeal chest, slamming into the building behind her. She darted toward him, fast as a shooting star, but the wisp’s magic had made him quicker than any human.
The White Lady collided with him, and then jolted backward. Face a mask of pain, she put a hand to her side. Bright white light was seeping from a hole in her dress, illuminating the column.
Paluska held up a gleaming silver dagger. “I can feel its burn now,” he said. “It’s like ice.”
The White Lady snarled at him silently, still on her feet.
With the feral grin of a wolf, he lunged to meet her.
Ora watched them fight for a moment, but had no plans to step in the middle. She didn’t trust the White Lady to know the difference between friend and foe.
Instead, keeping Kája’s jar close to her chest, she raced toward Domek. She knelt beside him and put her hand on his chest. He was breathing, but she could smell the iron tang of his blood hot in the air. Carefully, Ora cupped Domek’s head and lifted it off the ground.
“Domek,” she murmured, listening to the rushing pulse of blood under his skin. “Domek, wake up.” He didn’t move.
She glanced back at Paluska’s swift and brutal fight with the White Lady. They were evenly matched—the White Lady was more powerful, but now Paluska was enhanced as well, and he was accustomed to fighting a stronger opponent. More gashes of light were pouring from the White Lady’s form, but Paluska was bleeding from both nostrils. The White Lady threw him into the flat façade of the building in front of Týn Church, cracking the plaster, but he was on his feet again in an i
nstant.
“Domek, I’m not losing anyone else tonight.”
He did not stir.
“Damn it, we have to go! If you don’t get up, I’m going to carry you out of this square like a fair maiden,” she snarled quietly. Furiously, she pressed a kiss against his lips. For a moment, he was still limp, unmoving, but he finally shifted under her.
He blinked and stared up at her. “Ora?” He reached up, a hand hovering by her cheek.
“It’s me,” she said, relief choking her for a moment. “The situation is getting out of control. We need to get out of here. I have your friend.” She nodded beside them, where she’d set the jar.
Domek looked over, already gaining some of the energy that had drained away with his blood. “We can’t leave,” he said. “That machine…”
“The alchemist is dead. Your White Lady showed up. She seems to be fighting on our side—for now.”
“What happened to Paluska?” he asked, clearly noticing the lamplighter leader’s enhanced speed.
“He drank the cure.”
“Drank it…?”
“Come on. We have to go.”
“The lamplighters could figure out how to use that machine without Imrich. Just let me…” He sat up with Ora’s help, and then climbed to his feet. He stumbled only once, but Ora’s hand on his elbow steadied him. “Keep Kája safe. I’ll take care of it.”
* * *
Ora ignored him, as he should have expected. After she helped him walk the final few meters to the abandoned copper machine, she set herself at the foot of the steps between him and the dueling figures, Kája’s jar held close. She crouched slightly, ready to defend him with claws and teeth if necessary. There was an alarmingly large gash on Paluska’s forehead, but it healed as Domek watched. He was beyond human now. Would he have taken the serum if he had known it had created the monster that had killed Webber? Or was he too obsessed with power to care?
The Lights of Prague Page 32