by Nazri Noor
He hesitated, but it was in his nature, as both a sentient artifact and a soldier: he had to obey.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Dust.”
In a flash so quick and precise, Vanitas separated from his scabbard and sliced a line up my body, cutting my chest, my chin, and my cheek open with only the point of his sword. I gasped. Any further and he could have slashed my eye instead. I grimaced from the pain, but I needed blood.
As much as I could manage. I reached for my wounds as blood dribbled down my skin, hot and thick, smearing both my hands in as much red as I could muster. The Heart’s beam was coming hard, and fast. Once both my palms were slick with blood, I thrust them upward, and screamed.
The Dark Room emanated in massive threads and tendrils from my blood, from every gore-slicked surface, from every shadow in the neighborhood. Around me I heard normals shouting, though if it was because of the beam or the horrible manifestation of my magic, I’ll never know.
I roared, louder and louder, my body straining, my breath draining as I forced the shadows to rise in huge waves, to form as large a dome as I could muster. I had blocked out the moon once, to stop feeding Tsukuyomi his power. I had to hope that I was strong enough to block out the Heart itself.
A sphere, I told the Dark Room, as I bled, and bled. Make a sphere, big enough to protect these people. Big enough to save their lives.
“Dustin, stop,” said a tinny, buzzing voice. It was my cellphone. Royce was still talking. I couldn’t stop, not for him, not for the Lorica and its fucking whims.
Then a hand cuffed me by the scruff, pulling, distracting me enough to break my concentration. The shadows wavered. Closer to my ear, I heard the same voice, this time clearer, and with it came the smell of whiskey and cigarettes.
“I said stop.”
I watched the sky. Like a meteor entering the atmosphere, the Heart’s beam was disintegrating, fading, vanishing into a slim shaft of nothing. I fell to my knees, and as I collapsed, the shadows receded.
Royce dropped to the grass, sitting cross-legged, panting. “I came as soon as I called it off. Wanted to check on you.” He slapped me on the back, which only made me cough and sputter. I felt so drained, so weak.
Around us the normals were screaming, at each other, into cellphones, no doubt wondering if the enormous beam of light and the accompanying dance of shadows had been some mass hallucination.
“It was a mistake,” Royce said. “Something about the star-metal triggered a warning back at HQ. The assumption was a new cult, more priests using the star-metal to open more rifts.”
I glared at him. “And you didn’t think to use the Lorica’s damn Eyes to check that it was me?”
“You’ve gotten really good at hiding your aura. I’m told it’s tougher to track your signature down these days. Maybe it’s that black room stuff you’re involved in, makes you harder to spot now, like a shadow.” He frowned at me. “What were you doing, anyway?”
“Enchanted it,” I said, gesturing at my neck. “Needed a place of power, so went to my dad’s house. Using it to seal the Eldest.”
Royce stared at me hard for a second, then nodded firmly. “I believe you.”
I didn’t care that he did. I was going to push through with creating the seal, with locking away those fuckers forever. My fingers grazed the amulet, and a tingle ran up my hand. Instinctively, I could tell that my mom’s shade was still out there, somewhere not so far away. Good job, Asher. He’d gotten them out safely.
“Right,” Royce said, groaning as he pushed himself to his feet, brushing blades of grass off his pants. “I guess I’m headed back. Maybe give us a warning next time you do something fishy with that metal, huh?”
“Right,” I said, staring glumly at the grass. “Thanks.”
“Yeah,” Royce said, the air between us so thick in its awkwardness. It was weird, starting to think of him as a friend. And I hated what I was about to do, because friends don’t do other friends dirty like that.
“Well. I guess I’m headed back to the Lorica now. Check in with the Heart, tell them everything’s in order, call in some Mouths and Wings to clean all this shit up.”
“Okay,” I said, giving him a flat smile.
I watched his body, waiting for some kind of signal to tell me that he was preparing to teleport. I’d never noticed it before, but there it was, a little flicker of light in his eyes. And when I spotted it, I reached out and grabbed his ankles.
“Holy shi – ” Royce shouted, as his body dissipated into thin air. I might have said something, too, except that I disappeared with him, teleported as a passenger through his power.
I needed to hitch a ride, see.
I wanted to have a few words with the Heart.
Chapter 25
Like a jigsaw, piece by piece, the world came slipping back into order. The warmth of controlled temperature, whether regulated by technology or by magic, rushed over my skin. The air, it smelled like fire.
Being in the great council of the Heart felt like being in a real heart’s chambers, truthfully. Its light was blood red. Strange shapes skittered across the walls, evoking the pulse of cells and organs. From someplace I couldn’t identify came a steady, rhythmic noise, like the drums a shaman might use to keep time as he crossed between worlds – like the beating of an actual heart.
Royce stamped his feet, kicking me off his legs, muttering harsh, abrupt curses. He glared at me. I would have apologized, but the commotion was attracting the attention of – the others.
The Scions, gathered there in a circle within the heart of the Heart. They stood ringed around a spherical grid, what I quickly took to be a map of the earth, not unlike the one the Eyes referred to within the Lorica’s great library.
Above it rotated a ring of crystals, all of them the same red as the beam that the Heart so lovingly sent to do its dirty work. It must have been the mechanism they used to channel their destructive energies. Some of the Scions were talking among themselves, gesturing at the three-dimensional map, but many more were looking over their shoulders, staring at Royce, and at me. One approached.
“Dustin,” she hissed. “You shouldn’t be here.”
I peeled myself off the floor, scratching at the itch of sticky, half-drying blood on my cheek and my chest. “Odessa,” I greeted lazily. “It’s nice to see you again.” I pushed past her, but her hand reached out and clamped around my upper arm like an iron manacle.
Scion and shield-maiden of the Lorica, Odessa specialized in erecting massive forcefields, making her a defensive asset for the organization. Too bad she couldn’t defend my family.
“You must know that this was a mistake,” she said. “Royce called off the attack. You must leave. There is nothing more you can do.”
“Oh, there’s plenty I can do,” I said, laughing, drunk with power, with fury, as I stumbled for the ring of Scions at the Heart’s center. A few stepped back, and when I realized that they feared me, my heart bloomed with pride, with lust. But many more stood their ground, raising their chins. Who was I against the combined might of the Lorica’s ruling council?
I was dying to find out.
“Leave now and we will be merciful,” called a man from the front of the ring. I didn’t recognize him, but then again, it was hard to identify most of the Scions. They wore glamours to keep their identities hidden, even if they only huddled in the gloom of the Heart’s chamber. Like rats. Like cowards.
“Actually,” I said, stalking ever forward, “I think I’ll stay, thanks very much.”
Royce materialized before me, his hand held out against my chest, his eyes hard with warning. “Dustin. You don’t want to do this.”
“Oh,” I said. “But I do. These people threatened my family when all I want to do is help.” I bent my head so I could see behind Royce’s bulk, locking eyes with the Scions. “Did you fucking hear me? All I ever wanted to do was help, and you fucking tried to murder my family.”
“Dispose of him, Royce,” sa
id a woman’s voice. “He was only ever a Hound. Expendable.”
“Fuck you, lady,” I shouted. “And fuck your Hounds and your Eyes, and all your fucking Cocks and Assholes. I’ve been working against the Eldest ever since I left your precious Lorica. My friends and I are always first on the scene, bleeding and breaking ourselves to do your fucking jobs, cleaning up your messes before you’ve even gotten your useless corpses out of bed.”
“Dustin,” Royce said, gripping my chest hard, restraining me with both hands now. Physically, he was so much stronger than me, but I wasn’t done. Not by a long shot.
“You’re all cowards,” I screamed, my cheek stinging from new warmth, the salt of my tears spilling into my wounds. “I only ever wanted to help. You don’t touch my family, you useless fucks. You don’t ever touch my family.”
I thrust my open hand at the ring of crystals orbiting at the crown of the holographic map. I hadn’t meant for it to happen, but the shadows burst from the darkness, from the patch of blood on my palm, their spikes and spines smaller, more precise as they knocked the crystals out of their slow, lazy cycle. They went scattering. Some smashed on the ground. Gasps and cries of outrage went up from Scions. I laughed.
“Okay,” Royce muttered, taking me by the back of my jacket. “You’re done here.”
“No,” I yelled. “I’ll never be done, and you know why? It’s because – ”
A little boy caught my glare, then ran away crying.
What the – what the fuck just happened?
The air was cool again. We were outside, in the midst of trees, of families picnicking and enjoying a quiet night, at least until I appeared out of nowhere and started screaming my head off. Royce had teleported me to Heinsite Park.
He slung his arm over my shoulder, putting on an easy laugh. “It’s okay, folks,” he said. “My buddy’s just had a little too much to drink. Gonna get him some coffee. Cheers.”
Scattered voices responded, lifting beer bottles and plastic wine glasses, and the normals went back to what they were doing. Movie night in Heinsite, as it turned out, some family-friendly comedy playing out on a giant projector screen.
“Come on,” Royce said, softer this time, but with more urgency. “You’re coming with me.”
“I wasn’t done,” I said, suddenly deflated, the air all gone out of me, my rage cooled by the wet night air. “I wasn’t finished and you took me away.”
He shoved me in the chest, and I stumbled back, struggling to find my footing. Yeah, I definitely seemed drunk, but the fury had died down, wicked out of my body by the cold.
“I don’t think you understand what you were doing back there,” he snarled. A few more steps of backpedaling and he had me up against a tree. I noticed that it was the same one he smashed me into that time he tried to first warn me about the Heart.
“The Heart wants what it wants,” I muttered, echoing Royce’s words.
He frowned harder. “What?”
“You tried to warn me before, and I wouldn’t listen.” I looked down at his hand, his fingers still fisting a clump of my shirt, like he was about to hand me a beatdown. “I never thanked you then. Guess I should thank you now for taking me away from the Scions.”
Royce gaped for some moments, then retrieved his hand, regaining his composure. “Well. You see. Um. It wouldn’t have ended well, okay? Surely you understand that. You, up against all those Scions? You were lucky they even let you leave alive.”
I narrowed my eyes, my gaze focusing on the projector screen just past Royce’s head, my voice trailing off into calm. I couldn’t tell if they were showing a comedy or something meant to be romantic, yet clean. A romantic comedy, then?
“Funny, isn’t it?” I said. “How they think of themselves as the arbiters of justice, at least in the underground. How do you deal with it, Royce? It’s so fucking frustrating.”
He sighed, patting my shoulder, his hand somehow warm and comforting, words I never thought I would ever use in the same sentence as the name Royce. He fiddled through his pockets, bringing a cigarette to his lips and lighting it.
“Why do you think I smoke so much?” he grumbled. He leaned against the tree, sliding down until his butt hit the grass. He patted the earth, indicating for me to sit, and so I did.
“Give me one of those,” I said.
“Don’t you fucking start,” Royce said. “Honestly, you don’t want this.”
I really didn’t, but I wanted something to just knock me out of whatever I was feeling. The delirium had left me, that brew of rage that was simmering in my body gone flat. A kind of numbness was taking over, as if to remind me that anything I said or did when the Lorica was involved meant nothing. I never realized that dealing with the Scions would ever be more infuriating than dealing with the gods. At least the Convocation offered to actually help.
Royce pushed something metallic and cool into my hand. “Here,” he said. “No cigarettes for you. Just shut up and drink this.”
I twisted the cap off the flask, a powerful hit of whiskey vapor wafting into my nostrils. I winced, but took a sip anyway. It burned on the way down, drops of it like liquid fire on my lips. I licked those away, too, then chuckled.
“You remember when I stabbed you in the leg?”
He growled from deep inside his chest, snatching the flask away, his eyes flitting to his thigh. “Yeah, I fucking remember. You’re lucky it didn’t do any permanent damage.”
I scratched my chin, tree bark cool against my back, my insides coursing with the slow warmth of whiskey. “Sorry, man, didn’t mean to laugh about it. It’s more – you and me, you know? We fucking hated each other. And I’m pretty sure this is the second time you’ve saved my hide.”
Royce cleared his throat, then took another swig from the flask, like he was trying to wash something out of his system. Typical man’s man, I thought.
“Don’t get sentimental on me now,” he said. “But yeah. You know that already. Odessa and I have a different point of view when it comes to these things. Don’t let it get to your head, Graves, but you’ve got to be the key to figuring this shit out. Killing you isn’t the answer.” He offered me the flask, and I shook my head. “But if it isn’t, what is?”
“This,” I said, picking up Mom’s amulet – my amulet – between my thumb and forefinger. “This’ll seal them away forever. Made it myself, you know. Enchanted it earlier, but you already know that.”
“Right, right,” Royce said, peering closely at the amulet. “So why is it glowing, then?”
“What?”
I sat bolt upright, flipping the pendant over. The garnet was glowing, all right, shimmering with an internal light that burned stronger and stronger with every passing second, until I was sure that its brightness was going to attract unwanted attention.
Then the sky began to fill with eerie, pipe-like music. A droning, like distorted flutes – like an alien song spilling out of a warped, twisted throat.
“Oh shit,” I breathed. “No. Not here, not now.”
There it was, just dozens of feet away from the projector screen: a white, spinning portal.
Chapter 26
“What the fuck is happening, Graves?”
I looked at the amulet, then up at the portal. How the hell was I supposed to know? All I knew was that the jewel in my hand was meant to close the gateway that was threatening to open by – oh fuck, by a huge crowd of normals.
“We’ve got to do something about this,” I said, springing to my feet. “Call out your Wings, we need to evacuate these people immediately.”
“Oh yeah?” Royce flung his hand out at the rift. “And what about that? I can’t call a strike from the Heart. We’re basically in the middle of the city. Do you know how many would – ”
“Just deal with the civilians, will you?” Plus there was the small matter of me destroying the Heart’s mechanism. I was careful not to mention that. “I’ll call Carver. Figure something out.”
Royce touched two fingers to his
temple, tapping into the Lorica’s network, and I sprinted towards the rift, screaming bloody murder.
“Get the hell out of here,” I shouted at the normals.
At least a hundred of them, by my guess, still transfixed by the film, the volume of it drowning out my voice. They hadn’t noticed the rift at all. I ran faster, all the way up to the screen. I stood in front of it, shouting at them to evacuate, waving my arms.
And then I wasn’t there anymore. Royce had snuck up on me again, teleporting me beside the shimmering Eldest portal.
“You idiot,” he snarled. “I know you were just a Hound, but don’t you know any of the protocol? You’ll send them into a panic. You’re covered in blood, and you’re going to stand there and yell like a lunatic?”
“Fucking fine,” I snarled back, shaking him off me. With one hand I was already dialing Carver, and with the other I brandished my amulet at the portal, completely and embarrassingly unsure of what I was supposed to do.
“Nothing’s happening, Graves,” Royce said warningly.
“Will you please attend to the normals, Royce? Christ Almighty, just – yes, hello, Carver? Heinsite Park. We’ve got a major problem. There’s a rift here and – ”
“By the gods above and below,” Carver shouted from behind me. “Will we never be rid of these infernal things?”
I whirled around, my phone still pressed to my ear, shocked to see him standing there with Gil, Sterling, and Asher at his side.
“Asher,” Carver shouted. “To me. The ritual I taught you. Help me destroy this thing.”
Asher nodded, but I grabbed his arm, needing to know. “Dad? And Mom? Are they safe?”
“Norm’s back home,” he said. “But Diana disappeared.” He nodded at my amulet. “She should be safe with you. If the shade separates too far from its tether, it can’t maintain its shape in the material world.”
“Excellent lecture, Mister Mayhew,” Carver said. “But now is not the time.”
