by S. W. Clarke
Mariana. The same name Valdis had called me on the night of the GrandExodus. Who was this Mariana? I filed the question away as I stepped back. “You’ve got ten minutes and forty-three seconds to explain this symbol.”
“Yes, yes, all right.” The doctor edged away from me and crossed around his desk.
I set my hand on the phone. “Don’t you call security now.”
“No, no.” He waved distracted fingers at me as he pulled out one of his drawers and began rummaging through papers, muttering to himself. I’d swear his whole demeanor changed the moment he’d realized I was Tara Drake.
He had become helpful.
Excited.
I didn’t like excited. In this case, I’d prefer he stayed afraid.
Seleema and I exchanged a wary glance. I could see in her eyes that she was as unnerved by his behavior as I was.
Finally, he found what he was looking for—a thick yellow envelope. He passed it across the desk toward me. “This is everything you need to know.”
I accepted it. The thing must have been two inches thick. “What do you mean, ‘everything I need to know?’ ”
“Ten minutes is not nearly enough time to explain the symbol’s significance to you. You will find it in there.”
The strangeness of all this raised more questions than I had time to ask. And when a carnie felt out of her depth, she faked otherwise. So I folded the envelope to my chest and stared him down. “I know you know the leader of the Scarred.”
“Ah, you mean your Wilhelm.” He nodded once. “A man of singular desire. We have worked together through the centuries.”
“My Wilhelm?”
The doctor seemed distracted by my braid; he reached toward it like a curious child. “May I have a sample of your hair?”
I jerked away. "First, that’s patently creepy. Second, why?”
His hand retracted, the fingers rubbing together in disappointment. “You are the product of centuries of work. A subject of great fascination for me.”
“Centuries?” I raised a hand. “Listen, Doctor, I’m no Other.”
A tiny smirk appeared. “No, that you are not.”
I didn’t like men who smirked. I especially didn’t like smirking men who thought they knew more about me than I knew about me. “Who the hell are you?”
"Telling you all in nine minutes will impede your journey,” Drow said simply, infuriatingly. “Have you ever seen the snowdrop flower?”
Snowdrop. That was what Valdis had called me five years ago.
It was the name of a flower.
“It opens with slow surety,” the doctor went on, his fingers imitating the opening blossom, “the petals rising from their downward droop to embrace the sunlight.”
It felt like he was trying to tell me something, but with the roundaboutness of a zen master. Typical Other.
“I have seen this flower,” Seleema said. “In Jannah.”
Drow’s gaze rose to Seleema. “Jannah? Wonder of wonders, are you a houri?”
Seleema inclined her head.
Drow clapped his hands together. "Oh, I would be so very curious to talk to you about the nature of the soul. Please forgive me for being forward or crass, but houris are the fulfillers of desire. I wonder if that is something you would be inclined to provide?"
I raised a finger. “Uh, excuse me. Dragon burning through glass in six minutes.”
Maybe I ought to have said sixty seconds, because the two of them ignored me.
"Unfortunately,” Seleema said, “my heart and my whispering eye have been promised to Franklin."
I jerked my head at Seleema. "Whispering eye?"
She gave a coquettish smile. "You know, the eye that hides beneath the belly button. When opened, it can reveal a great deal about yourself and your partner."
"You mean your hoochie."
The smile disappeared. She gave a slow, almost inaudible sigh. Then, "Yes Tara, my hoochie."
The doctor laughed. “Ah, Tara Drake has befriended a houri. A more wonderful coincidence could not have been asked for.”
This train was so far off the tracks, I couldn’t even keep them in my sight. I pointed at Drow, fixing him under the weight of my finger. “Annabelle Martin. Where is she?”
Drow’s head bobbed back. “Yes, you’re looking for her. Of course you are.” He stepped over to his computer. “May I show you? We must be fast. I called security before I knew it was you trying to break in.”
“Son of a motherless goat.” I sensed he wasn’t lying, so I nodded for him to sit. “Whatever you’re going to show us on the computer, do it fast.”
He sat down in the chair and brought the computer out of sleep mode. He brought up a map of New York City in his web browser and pointed to a spot in Midtown Manhattan. “The Scarred own several properties on these two blocks. Annabelle will be on the roof of one of them two nights from now, during the witching hour.”
“The roof?” Seleema and I said in unison.
“Which building?” I asked.
Drow’s shoulders rose. “I do not know.”
I bit back a curse. There must have been at least a dozen buildings on those blocks; how was I supposed to figure out which roof she’d be on?
“Now you must go.” Drow stood up and began ushering us out of the office. “Quickly.”
I glanced at him over my shoulder. “Why are you helping us?”
“I’ve waited five years to help you on your way, Tara Drake,” he murmured as he reached between us to open the office door. “Go left. Follow the hallway to the emergency exit. You will set off the alarm, but you should find an exit to the fire escape. Your dragon can take you from there.”
A moment later, Seleema and I were out in the hallway.
The doctor peered at me through the door’s opening a moment as we stood there. “You really are just like her.”
“Her?” I repeated.
But the door had closed, and Seleema and I were alone again.
That is, until a security guard came around the corner. Seems Dr. Drow hadn’t been lying.
↔
The middle-aged guard paused at the end of the hall, staring at me and Seleema. We weren’t exactly who you’d expect to be breaking into a doctor’s office in a hospital.
Or maybe he was just dazzled by the houri. That seemed to happen pretty regularly.
Then his training kicked in, and he pointed a thick finger at us. “Both of you, stay right there.”
“Oh,” Seleema said, half in awe and half in concern, “it is the guardian of the healers’ hall.”
I clicked my tongue at the houri. “That’s our cue.”
She nodded, and the two of us broke into a jog in the opposite direction. I tucked the folder into my jacket and zipped it up as we ran. Normally I wouldn’t mind talking my way out of a situation like this, but I couldn’t risk losing the envelope.
It was, apparently, everything I needed to know.
As promised, the emergency exit sign came into view at the end of the hall. I was the first to reach it, and I shouldered it open. The klaxon kicked in, blaring through the hospital, promising a fire.
And if we didn’t show our faces in four minutes, there would be a fire. Percy would see to it.
We came into the stairwell, and Seleema started down. I held a hand out, stopping her. Footsteps were coming up the stairs.
I glanced over the railing, caught sight of a second security guard; evidently Langone took attempted break-ins pretty seriously. He caught a glimpse of me, too, and yelled for us to stay right there.
Of course, I was already disobeying.
On our left, a window stared out onto the street below. And just beyond the glass, a fire escape led to the ground.
I stepped to the window. “Let’s get some fresh air.”
Seleema was leaning over the railing like a curious child. “He is ascending the stairs quite fast for his girth.”
I struggled to push the window up, but it was sticky. So much for the hospital staf
f easily escaping a fire. “Then help me open this.”
Seleema finally understood my intention. She crossed to the window, pushed it open with one effortless thrust. Then, before I could say anything, she popped out the bug screen and it hit the fire escape with a thud.
I shook my head as I climbed up onto the sill. “Just like that, huh?”
“Just like what?”
I stepped out onto the fire escape, my boots clanging as the frigid wind pushed my braid over my shoulder. “Just me being jealous of your strength. Close the window behind you and hold it shut a second.”
Seleema followed with grace equal to her power. She pressed the window shut and kept her hand on it as I pulled the silver whistle out from under my shirt.
A man’s face appeared at the window—one of the security guards. He tried to lift the window, but Seleema kept it down with two fingers.
I set the whistle to my lips, and it made a soundless noise as I poured air into it. Three seconds of silence followed, and in the fourth, a crack sounded through the air.
Percy swung around the building, wings cracking again as he came to a hover by the fire escape. “You had one minute and three seconds left.”
“That’s a whole sixty-three seconds.”
“I was already preparing an enormous fireball.”
“I’m sure you were.” I stepped to the edge of the escape, and gestured for Seleema to come forward. “You ever ride a dragon in Jannah?”
The houri’s eyes had gone wide as coins. “Never,” she breathed.
In the next second, Percy swung alongside the fire escape, and I climbed over the railing and dropped onto the saddle on his back. “Welcome to the GoneGod World.”
I looked up at Seleema, who still held the window shut. I’d expected to have to encourage her, to tell her it was safe, that she wouldn’t fall off, but I didn’t have to do any of those things.
She stepped forward, climbed like a cat over the railing, and eased her way onto the saddle behind me. Her arms went around my waist, and above us, the window groaned open.
“The police are on their way,” the security guard called out, unable to see down to where we hovered in the darkness. “The moment you get to the ground, they’ll be waiting for you.”
Even five years after the gods left, nobody ever expected a getaway dragon.
Well, all the better for me. I leaned forward, grabbing his spine. “Back to the apartment, Perce.”
As we departed the hospital, Seleema did something else I didn’t expect. The moment we started off through the city, swung around a building and caught a stomach-flipping updraft, she began to laugh. It might have been nervous laughter, but I didn’t sense as much.
It was thrill. It was delight.
And in that moment, I understood that Seleema and I had a certain kinship.
Here, in the midst of all this trouble, we took pleasure in what we could. It wasn’t about the future or the past, but the simple and marvelous act of riding a dragon through New York City.
I grinned, leaned closer to Percy. “Hey, could you take us past the park?”
And that was how, on the night before Halloween, I ended up riding a dragon over Central Park with a houri clasping my waist. Some stories no one would believe. And that was all right by me, because I’d lived them.
Back at the apartment, we got Percy bedded down in the garage with the tarp atop him. “One more night out here,” I promised him as I lowered it over his face. “Just one more.”
“I’m holding you to that,” he said, muffled.
As Seleema and I walked up the steps to where Frank waited, she glanced over at me. “Do you suppose they will come looking for us?”
“Who?”
“The police. We broke into the healers’ hall.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
I stood behind Seleema as she inserted the key into the lock, and the dark elf’s face came to mind. “Because I think Dr. Drow will tell them it was all a misunderstanding.”
She glanced back at me. “Why would he do such a thing?”
I swallowed. “I have no idea.”
But I suspected the answer was close to my chest.
Chapter 17
We entered to the scent of fresh sourdough bread. Seleema dropped her keys into the clamshell by the door, and Frank appeared with a checkered apron and oven mitts on his hands.
“Oh, my dear.” He came forward, and she met him in the hallway. The two of them embraced like they hadn’t seen each other in days. “You’re cold. Why are you so cold?”
Seleema stayed wrapped in his arms. “It is quite windy flying on a dragon.”
“Flying?” Frank’s eyes flicked to me. “On a dragon?”
I came forward, unzipping my jacket and pulling the envelope out. “That’s why I never leave home without leather and my long underwear. You never know when you’ll need it.”
Frank eyed the envelope. “Is that what you needed?”
“Apparently.” I passed into the living room, sat down on the couch and sloughed off my jacket. I set the envelope on the coffee table, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees and gazing down at it.
Seleema and Frank, still attached at the hip, went into the kitchen. She proceeded to tell him about everything that had happened since we’d left the apartment, and I heard intermittent gasps coming from the kitchen.
I kept staring down at the envelope. Normally I’d open it right up, but I needed to allow the snow swirling in the globe of my head to settle. Right now it was flurrying, obscuring my thoughts.
“You look just like her.” Those were the last words the doctor had said to me.
Who did I look like? How did he know me? And why had he helped me?
“I’ve waited five years to help you on your way.”
Five years. Five years since the Grand Exodus—since my parents were murdered. What was the connection?
I tapped my knees, staring without seeing. Was it a trap? It could very well be; if he was helping the Scarred kidnap and traffic people, then he had no good reason to help a woman he’d never met thwart their plans.
But apparently the answers were in the envelope.
I sighed and lifted it off the coffee table, unwound the tie. When I opened it, a stack of old, handwritten papers greeted me. I slid them out and began paging through them.
At some point, my stomach dropped and didn’t come back up. This was the life’s work of Dr. Elvarish Drow.
And when I say “life’s work,” I’m including the two thousand years before he became mortal. Apparently he had always been a doctor of some kind, though he had probably been called different things through the centuries. Shaman, healer, scholar.
One thing remained constant from the Middle Ages onward: his relationship with a certain vampire.
I read fast—too fast to properly process what I was reading. But I couldn’t stop myself; I had a feeling I knew who this vampire was.
Seven hundred years ago, Drow had been approached by Wilhelm, a vampire who wanted desperately to understand the secrets of the soul. Because while vampires were immortal, they could still die to the obvious things—sunlight, stakes to the heart.
And apparently this vampire’s mate had died, and he’d never gotten over it. He was determined to bring her soul back from wherever it had gone to.
Elvarish Drow had called this grieving vampire “First.” Again and again, he referred to him as “First.” And while I’d originally thought it was some strange nickname, I realized as I read that this vampire was, literally, the first.
Wilhelm was the original vampire.
But he didn’t get his wish. Despite seven hundred years of study and a whole lot of awful medical procedures performed on innocent humans, Drow couldn’t find a way to bring the soul of Wilhelm’s dead wife back.
Then Wilhelm found a particular magical amulet.
Drow had included a drawing of the amulet on the next pa
ge. There, replicated in pen, was a half-decent drawing of the amulet I’d seen around Valdis’s neck five years ago.
And on it was etched a certain symbol.
I stared at the drawing, trying to keep my hand steady as I leaned over to hold it under the soft light from the lamp on the end table.
There it was—the angelic symbol for rebirth.
All of this murdering and kidnapping was to bring back his thousand-years-gone dead wife.
“You bastard,” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure whether I was referring to the doctor or Wilhelm, or both. “You just want it all, don’t you?”
Yeah, I was definitely referring to both of them.
A thought occurred to me—actually, it lanced my heart, and I inhaled like I’d actually been pierced. But it didn’t come to fruition, because Seleema walked in.
“Who wants it all?”
I straightened, found Seleema standing with two glasses of orange juice. She set both on the coffee table.
I placed the paper back in the pile. At some point, I realized, my heartbeat had increased considerably. “Wilhelm. The ex-vampire who kidnapped Annabelle.”
He’d said Annabelle would be on the roof of a building near Times Square tomorrow night. At the witching hour.
On the far wall, a puppy calendar hung open to the current month—October. And today was the 30th. Tomorrow night was Halloween. Back in New Orleans I had found a notecard pressed between Grunt’s couch cushions with V on Halloween written on the back.
I’d known for months now that something would go down on Halloween, but I hadn’t been sure what. Not until now.
My lips pressed together. An ex-vampire’s clan was going to bring a young woman to the roof of one of the tallest buildings in New York during the witching hour on Halloween.
Color me surprised.
Seleema perched on the edge of the armchair. “Have you found the answers you need?”
I glanced at the pile. “A few of them, at least.” I knew I could learn more, though. I still didn’t know what “the descendant” meant, or why everyone kept making references to snowdrops. “Do you have a computer?”
“A computer?” Seleema set one finger to her chin, tapping.
