Revenant

by Kat Richardson

  A rattling swirl of ivory and black whirled toward him. Carlos flicked the Lâmina through it and the spell fell apart, littering the floor with white grit.

  Griffin jolted backward, spitting, “Why can’t I kill you, you bastard? You should be dead!”

  Silent, Carlos sprang toward her, the gleaming blackness of the blade thrust forward in a blur that sliced into Griffin’s chest almost faster than I could follow. Her mouth fell open in shock as his hand pushed wrist-deep under the arch of her ribs. I gagged.

  Carlos leaned close, as if he would kiss her, and murmured words that seemed to settle on Griffin like dust. She writhed, smoke rising around her. He yanked his arm back, tearing something pulsing and dripping blood from her chest.

  I doubled over in an agony of reflected death as Griffin collapsed to the floor, blood and dark vapor pouring from the hole in her torso. She blinked twice, her mouth working like that of a fish out of water. Then she was still and I could barely breathe from the shock of her death as it moved through me.

  Rui ran through the archway with a fleetness that belied his age and stopped, taking in the body and the blood on the floor with a strange gleam in his eye. He raised his head to look at us, his gaze narrowed, as if he was trying to decide which was more important: catching us or dismembering his dead student.

  Before he could move farther, Carlos flung Griffin’s heart at the bone mage’s head and whirled back to drag me to my feet and across the hall to the cellar door.

  He slammed it closed behind us, muttering swift, barbed words that sparked and sealed themselves across the door.

  We fled down the cellar stairs, snuffing candles as we went, tumbling and staggering down to the cool, dry darkness of the rooms below where Quinton waited in a foment of impatience and worry. Carlos led us through the last door and bolted it behind himself once again before showing us the concealed door on the other side. Beyond the odd little portal, a narrow tunnel sloped upward toward the castle that lay on the summit, dreaming in the sun. We stepped inside, Carlos pausing again to work some more complicated spell at the threshold of the secret door, and then we began up the steep stone passage.

  The house echoed behind us with the sound of Rui’s rage.

  By the time we emerged on the far side of the hill near the castle wall, we could no longer feel or hear the shuddering of the house, but there was a new sound in the air. The chatter of morning tourists on the castle ramparts above us was louder than it should have been, breaking into shouts and sudden squeals as a shadow passed over with a sound of leathery wings. Housewives on the terraced streets below looked up and screamed. Seabirds cruised through the blue sky above, letting distant cries into the air perfumed with the river and the scent of Lisbon’s streets and moved aside in the sudden rush of air as a churning, dark mass of wings, eyes, and streaming cloud-stuff that looked like tentacles dove from above. It spread in my vision, obscuring most of the sky in inky green horror.

  Quinton had stopped just within the concealment of shrubs and trees that covered the mouth of our escape tunnel. “What in three kinds of hell is that?”

  Carlos tilted his head. In the slanting light through the shrubs there was no sign of the gore that had splattered him as Griffin died. “Someone’s nightmare. Rui brought his dreamspinner along.”

  “So he or she can do more than raise weak drachen,” I said. “Is it dangerous or just an illusion?”

  “Even an illusion can be dangerous, but this one is weak. A dreamspinner’s work is always stronger in shadow and night than in daylight,” Carlos replied.

  “We’ve seen some of his work in the daylight before on this trip,” I reminded him.

  “True, but this one is decaying already. It won’t last more than a few minutes longer.”

  “Why bother with it, then?” I asked.

  “I suspect he’s as pleased with the diversion and fright it’s creating as with any practical aspect.”

  “But can we afford to wait for it to dissipate?” Quinton asked. “How much time do you think we’ve bought ourselves?”

  “Perhaps three hours,” Carlos said.

  “Well, I guess we’ve got a few minutes to wait, whether we like it or not,” Quinton said. “I’m thinking that if we split up and get far from here before they get free from the house, we might improve that lead. How long do you think it will take Rui and Griffin to catch up?”

  “Griffin will not be catching up, which may remove Rui from the equation for a day while he deals with her remains. If our trail goes cold here, it could be two or three more days before he and your father find other ways to track us. If the estate proves to be remote enough, we may confound their efforts completely—when we reach it.”

  “And you don’t know what they still need to make their Hell Dragon?”

  “We know they still need the bones of a child. They may require the bones of a repentant thief, among others. If the bones are touched by power, the strength of their spell is greater, and the same is true if the bones serve more than one purpose. Rui will take some of those from Griffin, but he will find them unsatisfactory. Your niece would have sufficed, but they have lost her. They will look elsewhere for their woman’s bones, once they realize Griffin’s are tainted. Without knowing precisely what’s already been taken from the ossuaries and whom they’ve killed, I can’t know what’s still wanting. The recent damage has all been in Lisbon or in the south along the Algarve. There are ossuaries in the Alentejo—the most important is the Capela dos Ossos in the church of Saint Francis, in Évora where the skeleton of a child hangs in chains, but there are two more in the area. One at Campo Maior and another at Monforte, both to the northeast. They are more likely to find their woman’s bones and their thief at one of those.”

  The boiling cloud of wings and tentacles turned in the sky, growing smaller and thinner. “I think it’s fading out,” I said.

  “Good,” Quinton replied. “The sooner it’s gone, the sooner we go. If we split up here, they’ll have to decide who’s more important to chase after and that will tell us what they’re most worried about—you or us.” Carlos looked dubious while Quinton continued. “I know where the estate is from what she said and since you have Rafa . . .”

  It was hard to credit, but Carlos appeared uncertain. Since we’d arrived, I’d seen him use magic as casually as if it cost nothing; he’d called the nevoacria without any apparent effort. He was on his home turf, one of the most powerful mages I’d ever met, and yet he hesitated. But nothing was as he remembered and he currently existed in a more fragile state than he’d experienced in nearly three hundred years. Now he faced traveling alone in daylight, which had become as foreign to him as living on the moon. For five years I’d thought of him as invincible, infallible, but now he wasn’t. His aura had changed so profoundly in the past twenty-four hours that I could no longer read it, but I could see it shift and contract around him. Was it possible Carlos was overwhelmed and didn’t want to part company with us for reasons that had nothing to do with practicality or safety?

  “What of Blaine?” Carlos asked.

  “I always know where Quinton is—or at least which direction—if I concentrate hard enough,” I said, laying my hand on my chest for a moment to touch the point of our paranormal connection. “I’ll just head northeast until I find him.”

  Both men frowned at me, but they didn’t have any more choice than I did. “It’s nearly gone,” I noted, watching the nightmare spark and thin in the air before it swirled and dove for the ground. “Are we agreed on a plan?”

  Their replies were drowned in the shrieks of the people on the castle rampart as the dreamspinner’s work plunged toward them, in its last act.

  “It would be unwise for us to travel farther together,” Carlos conceded. “I will go through Évora and then find my way to the estate. I will meet you both there.”

  He stepped out into the sun a
nd walked toward the castle, just another slightly dusty tourist—not a sign of bloody murder left on his skin or clothes. I watched him until Quinton pulled me the other way—there was only one other direction to go on the road below us and no way up or down without wings. We’d have to walk together for a few minutes.

  “He’ll be all right. He’s the baddest badass in Portugal.”

  “I’m not sure about that,” I said as we walked down the north slope of the hill and away from Carlos and the Castelo São Jorge. “He’s vulnerable—mortal, at least temporarily—and this isn’t the same Lisbon he’s used to anymore.”

  “He’s still more dangerous than six of anyone else put together. He stopped Griffin, didn’t he? She wasn’t a pushover.”

  “He ripped her heart out.”

  “Good for him. No one better deserved the loss of a major organ. You don’t see Carlos as others do, Harper. No one who doesn’t have a death wish is going to mess with him.”

  “Those aren’t the people I’m worried about. What if Rui and your father catch him?”

  “They won’t—if he doesn’t have to watch out for us, he has more options about how to stymie Rui than we do. We’re a detriment to him at this stage. Besides, who would you bet on in that fight? The apprentice or the master? Seriously.”

  Even in my uncertainty and the lingering ache in my chest from Griffin’s death, I had to give him that point. “How do you think they found us?” I asked.

  “Taxi driver.”

  “What taxi driver?”

  “You didn’t notice? Down at the end of the block where the street turns, there was a taxi parked. The same cab you and Carlos came home in.”

  “I can’t believe I missed it.”

  “You were both in pretty bad shape last night, so it’s not that surprising. And don’t kick yourself about not having identified the driver as a villain. Dad and Rui just did what the cops would do—they checked for anyone who fit your or Carlos’s description. My dad’s seen you both before, but we got lucky, because the old man wasn’t quite prepared to see Carlos at all, much less running around in daylight. They knew he survived, but Griffin obviously didn’t stay to see the finale. I guess Carlos was right about her vanity being her downfall.”

  “I’m just afraid we’re throwing him to the wolves. And after what I did to keep him alive.” I had to trot to keep up with Quinton’s agitated pace.

  “Rui and my dad won’t want any of us alive to stop them. They both know how dangerous Carlos is to their plans and Dad can’t risk having me on the loose for similar reasons. And while my father may not be sure what you are even if Rui’s told him—and he strikes me as the sort who likes to keep a few cards hidden at all times—he knows you’re not normal. With or without me, you’re a wild card far too dangerous to leave in someone else’s hands. We’re all running from the wolves, now. I’m frankly worried about whoever may be with Dad aside from Carlos’s dearest enemy. I can’t plan for what I don’t know. On the upside, Dad’s not going to be moving very fast with that leg.”

  “On the downside, when we’re talking about bone mages, I’m more concerned about where his original leg is now. It happened before he took Soraia, so it’s not a substitute for her. . . .”

  “I’m trying not to think about that.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  We both shut up and jogged on down the hill. At the first corner we came to, Quinton stopped, gave me a quick kiss, and turned aside, taking the other road and leaving me to my own devices.

  I had no doubt about my ability to find my own way—strange city or not, figuring things out was my forte—but I was still worried and other bits of my mind continued pursuing the calculus of destruction and the unacknowledged weight of fear.

  TWENTY-THREE

  I started walking the other way, feeling the slightest pull of Quinton behind me, but knowing better than to turn around. At each intersection, I turned away from that tugging sensation, looking for some way out of town. I finally came down from the castle hill on Rua Cavaleiros at the north end of the Baixa, where the next of Lisbon’s seven hills began to swoop back upward. Ahead of me lay Praça Martim Moniz—another open plaza with trees and fountains set in a huge oval park of ubiquitous white tile. The area was scruffier than the nearby Praça da Figueira with only a few of the Pombaline Baroque buildings looking slightly down-at-the-heels here amid flat-fronted modern construction. Low-set half walls of bland concrete shoehorned an antique church between what appeared to be a commercial building coated in peeling paint on one end and a hideous 1970s apartment block on the other.

  On the near side, I spotted a bus stop that was nearly a block long across the street from a sign for an underground metro station. I ran across the road, dodging traffic, to the station stairs. I figured I could find my way out of town if I could get to a train or bus station. Whatever I did, I knew the train station at Cais do Sodré lay southwest and I wanted to go northeast, so as long as I moved in the opposite direction of the trains Quinton and I had used to go to Carcavelos, I should get closer to my goal. I was less worried about catching up to Quinton once I got out of Lisbon. Though it was illogical, I knew I wouldn’t have any trouble finding him once I started trying—we always seemed to fall back together. The curious, pulling sensation in my chest that connected us through the Grey thrummed and vibrated with the nervous quivering of my heart.

  Negotiating an unfamiliar transit system can be nerve-racking, but I got to do it in a foreign language while trying to stay off the radar of anyone—or anything—associated with my almost father-in-law. The paranormals were much easier to avoid than the spies—I could see them coming. The Martim Moniz metro station wasn’t very busy. With Purlis and his uncanny companion in mind, I moved with care, first finding a restroom so I could clean up a little, and then slipping into the Grey to peek at the station from that vantage point before I strolled out into it.

  I saw two of the uncomfortable, rolling auras I’d spotted at Cais do Sodré and something that looked like a transparent human skeleton. My guess on the last one was some kind of ghost working for Purlis—whether it wanted to or not. I wasn’t sure if the men and the skeletal thing were looking for me at all. I have a distinctive glow in the Grey and I thought it might be better if I didn’t find out the hard way that they could see it. Chances were good the two dark auras belonged to humans who couldn’t see through walls, so if I knew where they were, I could avoid them. The skeleton was more of a problem, especially since, being a bone construct, it had to be the work of the Kostní Mágové. I had no idea how it functioned. It wasn’t close, however, so I slipped back to the normal and out of the restroom. Looking down the concourse, I guessed that the Men with Ugly Auras—I dubbed them the MUAs for convenience—were inside the gates, but it appeared that the skeleton was outside them.

  I slunk down the concourse toward the ticket-vending machines, keeping my vision partially turned to the Grey until I spotted the edge of the skeleton. I looked toward it and saw one of the many art installations that seemed to be common in Lisbon’s metro stations. I shivered, realizing that the gruesome thing was embedded in an otherwise nondescript bit of construction board that covered a wall repair in progress. It faced the turnstiles I’d have to pass through to get to the platform. I guessed that there would be some similar thing at any other set of turnstiles for this station, so there wasn’t much to be gained in checking and a lot of time to be lost. I’d have to find a way through this chokepoint.

  I stopped well back from the turnstiles as if I couldn’t find my ticket and pushed myself back against the tiled wall, studying the construction through the Grey. It reminded me of something I’d dealt with before—a sort of paranormal security system that had been set up by a blood mage using a dead dog. I’d been able to get around that with a combination of my skill and Quinton’s theory, but this didn’t seem to be quite as complicated. It was more like a sile
nt alarm that looked for something specific and sent a signal to whoever was at the receiving end, by paranormal means, without alerting the subject. The skeleton probably sent some kind of alarm to the MUAs so they could converge on the turnstiles once I—or whatever they were looking for—was committed and couldn’t back out easily, since the gates were the automated stainless steel variety that took the ticket at one end and gave it back on the other side of their automated wing doors. It wasn’t a complicated system and to someone without my ability, it was undetectable and inescapable. But it had a couple of weaknesses—the skeleton used as the detector was embedded in something movable and the chances were good it saw in only one direction—forward from its hollow eye sockets.

  I studied the board and how it was supported, wondering if I could just . . . tip it over and walk past. The thing might alert when it fell, however, and that wasn’t any better than just setting it off to begin with. I almost laughed at myself as I realized I could slip behind it through the Grey and step out on the other side of the turnstiles without ever passing in front of the skeleton. It was a good thing Quinton hadn’t come with me, since he had no such ability.

  I waited for a rush in the late-morning commuter crowd and slid past the skeleton alarm. Now I just had to deal with the MUAs on the other side. I was pretty sure they knew what I looked like by now—Rui and Papa Purlis both knew, and it was unlikely that anyone working for this group had no discreet communications. I’d have to spot them before they spotted me.

  I walked to the system map on a wall and studied it, planning my route. I also checked for the locations of the two creeps I’d spotted as I did so. It appeared that the route was faster if I went south, but there were more chances to lose a tail if I went north, and the zoo’s metro station connected to the northernmost train station in Lisbon. I was sure I’d be able to find a bus or a train going northeast from there. . . .