In Veritas

by C. J. Lavigne

  Verity feels the ground solid beneath her feet and the familiar press of Ouroboros—a dog now—against her leg. She can see only the ghost-glow of Colin’s face and the disembodied spark of his eyes. There’s a pause before he says, “Anyone have a light?” His voice is low.

  “Is there a lamp? Vee, check the wall to your left. Just by the door.” Santiago sounds tense, but not alarmed; Verity feels the dog alert at her side. She reaches to the left, and behind herself; she encounters only rough stone.

  “No. Do you think she’ll come after us?”

  “No.” Colin’s starlit gaze shifts side to side as he shakes his head. “Hell. I should’ve remembered. Privya had a lantern last time.”

  Light flares—not a match, but the quicksilver gleam that usually occupies the lamps of the between. In this case, it issues from a fist-sized rock Jihan holds in her left hand. Straightening from a fluid crouch, she offers it to Colin.

  “Thanks—oh, Christ, you’ve bled all over it, haven’t you.” It isn’t a question. Colin sighs. “We need to talk about this system of yours.” He reaches for the rock, but doesn’t take it; he grasps Jihan’s bloodied wrist instead, and his light flares slightly as he heals whatever cut she’s made.

  He doesn’t let go; he only holds her there, looking up at her.

  “There’s not much time,” he says. “I don’t—are we just reading things in to what you do? Assuming you’ll do the same thing you tried before? You never tell us. I don’t know what you want. But you haven’t killed anyone tonight. You got Vee out. Thanks. But I need to know—really, truly—that when we go down there, you’re not going to snipe Privya and open some portal to hell. You’ve been here. You’ve been listening. It’s not worth it.”

  Santiago snorts. “You want to avert an apocalypse by asking nicely?”

  “We’re through fighting.” Colin’s voice is both steel and exhaustion. He doesn’t look away from Jihan.

  She meets his gaze, and the line between her eyebrows deepens, then melts away. Reaching forward with her other hand, she touches Colin’s cheek—leaving a smear of wet darkness—and leans down, pressing her lips gently to his forehead. When she steps back, she leaves him holding the rock, its white glow somehow unmarred by crimson. For a single breath, the quirk of her lips is wry. Then she looks away, expression shifting to marble.

  Colin’s sparkling stare is briefly brighter than the light he nearly fumbles. “That ... holy shit, first. But also, that is maybe not as comforting as you imagine.”

  Jihan reverses her grip on her crack-bladed hunting knife and turns to proffer the weapon, hilt-first, to Verity.

  Verity says, “Um.”

  Jihan only stands, precise and patient, continuing to offer the knife.

  Hesitantly, Verity takes it. It’s slightly heavier than she expected, but also smoother; the chipped hilt is well worn in her hand. Just the heft of it tastes of hot violence. She drops it awkwardly in a side pocket of her borrowed coat and wipes her palms against the lapel.

  Jihan bows almost infinitesimally, takes three steps to the side, and vanishes into blackness.

  “Damn it, now where’s she—I’ll take that as a promise.” Colin bites at his lower lip. “And you,” he adds to Santiago, quietly.

  “I’ll do what you want.” The magician’s voice is strained.

  “Yeah. Well.” Colin briefly transfers the lamp-rock to his cane hand and shrugs at his own coat. “A little help?” When Santiago helps him get the trench coat off, his wings rustle and flex; the angel breathes a sigh of relief, but he’s already raising the light up to look around.

  They are surrounded on three sides by a wall that is partially the pale cream yellow of the pavilion, and partially uneven brown stone; the mix of the two is oddly organic, as though they’d been liquefied and then frozen together again. The space is not as narrow as the between Verity has become accustomed to; it is not large, but they have room to stand a little spread out, and when Colin’s wings stretch outward, the edge of a feather tip only brushes one wall. The angel is still aglow, but his light is dimmed in contrast to the brilliance of the stone in his hand. Their shadows—even Santiago’s—are long on the walls. The door back is plain and yellow, with a metal knob. The between ahead is blackness.

  “Well,” observes Santiago. “Guess we go that way.”

  “Jihan obviously has.” Colin frowns. “It’ll be a staircase soon, if I remember. But also ... there’s someone else up ahead? I can feel it.” He doesn’t sound certain, but he moves forward anyway, holding the rock out. His cane makes a clicking sound on the half-stone floor.

  “Here. Let me go first.” Santiago is already moving.

  “I’ve got it—Jesus!” Colin’s wings beat twice at the air, propelling him a step backward and filling the strange cave with wind. The light from his hand falls across the face of a young woman who sits splayed against the wall, her legs barring his path. She is wearing a security polo shirt over jeans and runners. Her skin is white, her black hair artfully straightened; strands of it dance in the play of feathered air. She blinks reflexively at the light and the wind, but her lips are slack and her chin is wet with drool.

  Ouroboros has sprung forward, its teeth bared in a silent growl; its head low, it crowds the space between the angel and the staring woman. Verity, abruptly alone, steps toward Colin so she can take the rock and hold it high. Its shining surface looks rough, but against her palm, it is cool and clear-cut as a diamond.

  “Thanks. Ouro, don’t.” Colin hands his cane to Santiago, then sets his hand against the wall and lowers himself carefully to kneel in front of the girl, his bad knee stretched out and his wings spread for balance. “She’s barely here. She isn’t here. Feels like someone miles away.”

  “Privya did it.” Verity keeps the light steady. Looking at the stranger’s empty face, she is acutely conscious of the weight of the knife in her pocket. She doesn’t touch it. Ouro has returned to her side, and she breathes in the shadow-scent of the fur pressed against her bare legs.

  “I know.” Colin’s glow brightens as he leans in close to the girl’s face, tracing his fingers across her skin. His tone is tired. “Haven’t seen it before, but—Privya’s very old. She’s used so many lives. It’s no wonder she’s so easy with death. Come on, sweetheart, can you hear me?”

  The girl doesn’t blink again. She only stares at nothing. The drool on her chin is fresh, though, and her shirt rises and falls with her breath.

  “She’s ... is she, was she, one of you?” Verity isn’t sure whether to say ‘us.’

  “No. But she isn’t anything, now. Easy enough for Privya to bring a shell between.” Colin sighs. He squeezes the girl’s shoulder, then stands, waving off Santiago’s assistance. “I’m guessing Privya wanted to be strong for whatever’s next. I can’t do anything. Shit.”

  Santiago shakes his head. “I’m sorry for the girl, but we have to go. We can come back for her.”

  “Yeah.” Colin is an open wound. He only steps over the girl’s legs, carefully, then holds his hand out to take the rock back from Verity. This time, Ouroboros flows out in front of him, vanishing into the darkness before the angel can protest. Verity catches a glimpse of golden eyes before the dog is gone.

  “Staircase ahead,” reports Santiago. “Going down.” Verity glances at him; in the faint light of the stone, his lips are thin with tension. He moves after Colin; Verity goes with him. Both are careful not to disturb the injured girl. “It’s strange in here,” he comments. “Besides the obvious, I mean. This shadow is none of mine. Ouro and I can’t speak to it. It’s old. It watches.”

  “It tastes like licorice,” offers Verity.

  Santiago snorts. “Red or black?”

  “Black. Aniseed. But it’s kind of, um ... fuzzy.”

  “You are some help.”

  “This is why I don’t tell people things.”

  The magician conjures what momentarily looks like a snake, but is in fact a black scarf. He flourishes it,
making the end dance a little, then tucks it in a pocket. “Stairs about ten feet ahead,” he notes to Colin. “Ouro’s waiting. There’s more light below.”

  “Right.” Colin’s footsteps, already faster than he’s generally prone to, pick up, irregular but speedy. The rhythm of his cane taps an eccentric beat on the ground. He flaps his wings, helping himself along, though he curses once when his feathers scrape the wall. “Here it is. Look, I’ve been here, or somewhere like it. The stairs’ll lead down to a tunnel, and the tunnel to a cavern, and god only knows what Privya or Jihan is—do you feel that?”

  The air in the hallway shivers.

  “Yes.” Santiago follows as closely behind Colin as he can without getting in the way of flapping wings. Ouroboros, still a dog, melts out of the darkness ahead and positions itself at Verity’s side again. She drops a hand to its shoulders, letting it guide her. Ahead of her, Santiago sets his palm against the base of Colin’s wings as though he might lend the angel further speed.

  The floor does give way to stairs; they are smoothly cut from the same brown rock, descending gracefully in a spiral. No hint of the pavilion’s yellow remains here. Everything is stone, and it grows rockier as they descend.

  Verity expects the air to be musty, but in fact, it has a silvery fresh quality—as though it is new, and no one has ever breathed it before. She realizes the silver is light, getting brighter; she brushes the wall with her fingers and feels the coarse texture of faintly glowing lichen.

  “Something here.” Colin pauses, where a series of sigils and whorls is smeared dark and intricately dripping across the step and down both sides of the wall. It extends upward past sight. “Blood. Friggin’ of course. What is it with those two?”

  “What is it?”

  Santiago leans around Colin, trying to get a better look at the ground. The stairwell is tight. “My guess is Privya left something to slow us down, and Jihan’s broken it.”

  “So we can step over it?”

  Santiago hesitates.

  Verity murmurs, “Tell me it’s safe.”

  Colin turns, craning his neck as he looks back upward. “Sorry?”

  “Tell me it’s safe. Like you mean it.”

  “It’s safe.”

  Verity considers that—cider and fog—then nods. “Marbled, but not a lie. Keep going.”

  “Thanks.” Colin taps his cane down on the next step; encountering no apparent resistance, he proceeds downward. Santiago follows, then Verity, with Ouro crowding at her.

  “You could be a snake again,” she suggests, but the dog only looks up with laughing yellow eyes, and she sighs. The streaks of blood brush her skin as she passes, spiked but soft. “Did Jihan cut—I have her knife.”

  Santiago snorts. “I’ll eat Ouro if she only had one.”

  “Just come on.” Colin’s wings are beginning to take up too much room on the increasingly narrow stairs; the black feathers block the light in his hand, making Verity hesitate on the uncertain footing. She’s grateful for the dog, even when it pushes impatiently at her knee.

  The steps give way to rock as the curling stairwell levels out into a straight tunnel. “Almost there.” Colin hefts the gleaming rock and pauses in front of another mess of bloody marks blocking his way. “Well, she’s gone past, so.” He steps past and nothing happens. Santiago, Verity and Ouro follow with caution.

  A few steps further, the corridor begins to open up; Colin sighs with relief as he can stretch his wings. The walls ahead are illuminated by some other blue-white light that spills across the rocky floor; the angel hesitates.

  Somewhere up ahead, a child laughs.

  [IMAGE: Aberdeen Pavilion at night, lit by spotlights from surrounding buildings. It’s late winter. A crowd has gathered in the courtyard.]

  23

  I’m not sure how to write this part.

  youve come a long way

  It’s still for you. I know you want people to know.

  thanks

  when youre finished take the pages away

  keep them safe

  dont let me burn them

  Will you read to the end?

  once

  All right. Before I finish: did you ever understand, about Jihan? Even a little?

  jihan

  we were exactly where she wanted us to be

  You’ve tried to explain it. I just don’t follow. She’d go days without looking at me. She carried that knife like it was her only friend. Then, one time, she watched a raindrop run down a window, and maybe I almost saw her smile.

  jihan was a real person

  alethea was a real person

  i didnt know them none of us did except privya and

  privya wouldnt say

  What do you mean, real?

  thats the problem a good question maybe i mean real maybe i mean they had childhoods and favourite colours jihans favourite colour is death not because she doesnt care (she would have once) but she forgot how

  you wrote typed the story about colin in the cavern in san francisco

  Yes?

  Vee?

  okay stop interrupting this is hard leave me a few days between sentences

  okay

  imagine

  hypothetical

  two women one tried to open a door but it was a chasm

  to swallow the earth

  an accident

  the other one stopped her but stopped

  together

  they broke the door

  they stopped

  for a century for ever they were

  together

  all their pieces scattered over time and possibility

  even time has a between

  colin had a choice gather one in let one go

  imagine trying to come back from that

  from everything everywhere

  and be someone who spoke words and remembered your

  mother

  if you are part of eternity once can you ever not be

  isnt that what eternity means

  I think I understand now.

  colin would never torture anyone on purpose

  THE END

  “Wait.” Santiago presses himself against the wall and Ouroboros flows past, sliding sinuously beneath Colin’s raised wing before it whips ahead and vanishes around the curve.

  Colin flashes Santiago a look that manages to be indulgent, impatient, and terrified all at once; his irises spark sapphire, then he follows the dog. Santiago and Verity are close behind. Verity feels the weight of the knife in the pocket of her borrowed coat, heavy against her thigh.

  The cavern that opens up in front of them is vast. Lichen gleams faintly, illuminating shapes and shadows, but the walls spill away to either side and the ceiling vanishes above. There are narrow stalagmites rising from the floor, and stalactites that descend from some hidden darkness to drop like ghostly swollen fingers toward the ground.

  The floor of the cavern slopes upward, toward what is presumably the centre; at the top of this low, lumpen hill, a beacon burns that dwarfs the faint glow from the walls or the steadily shining rock in Colin’s hand. Verity has to blink and raise one hand to shield her eyes from the crystal-bell ringing.

  She can just make out a stalagmite that is thick at the base and broken off where it begins to taper, rising perhaps four feet from the ground. It’s from the top that the light spills. Blinking into the beam, Verity can inhale colours rising in a rainbow braid, tinting the air with pastel that tastes of forged steel. Privya stands on one side, up to her wrists in light. She is wearing a loose red t-shirt over a ragged grey skirt and boots; the clothing is incongruous, her girlish features now set in lines of ancient, stubborn concentration.

  On the opposite side of the low stone column, Alan stands, holding his granddaughter up with his withered hands cupped around her middle so that she can brace her tiny feet on the stalagmite’s edge. She is smiling and bright-eyed as she reaches for the lines of shining colour.

  They are surrounded by a
circle of small, crimson-glowing sigils, interspersed with dry scattered leaves and white sparking grains of sand. Jihan kneels here, her back to the tunnel entrance and her hands working feverishly at the ground.

  In the vast cavern, Ouroboros is a dog, then a wolf, then a massive beast that stalks toward the glowing column, gliding its way between stone formations. Its teeth are bared. Santiago stalks behind it; he would pause to help Colin, but the angel waves him off as he limps hurriedly toward the centre of power. Verity trails behind, moving carefully, sensitive to each sweep of wings ahead.

  “Oh hi,” says Privya, pleasantly. “You made it. You didn’t hurt Shauna, did you?”

  “No.” Colin is panting as he moves. “We’re not the ones hurting people.”

  “Tell that to my guys you left lying in the street.” Privya’s tone is less pleasant. She doesn’t look over as Ouroboros reaches the boundary of herbs and sand on the floor; Verity hears the markings sing as the massive dog rears back, stung. “I couldn’t stop them. That’s how scared they were. They knew they couldn’t win, and they still tried.”

  “I’m sorry.” Colin is only halfway up the sloping climb, his wings flapping awkwardly as stalagmites catch at his feathers. He has to pause to talk; he leans with both hands on his cane. “I tried to help them. The woman in the red—”

  “Nadine.” Privya continues watching the pool of light in front of her; her brows are furrowed in concentration. “You did try. Thanks for that. Nadine died in the ambulance. All those ... needles. Computers.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter how sorry you are. I do appreciate that you made the effort. It’s more than you did for my Alethea.”

  The little girl Sanna motions with her hands; to Verity’s eyes, she shifts one of the strands of light-within-light just a few inches to the side, where it winds around another. There’s a chiming sound and a waft of roasting chestnuts. Something small snaps into brilliant focus within the larger column, part of a shining whole.

  “I couldn’t save her,” Colin says. “I wish I had. She felt kind.”

  Ouroboros ripples, growing longer and more sleek. Scales undulate across its shadowed form, and it settles into the shape of a sullen anaconda, sliding restless along the borders of Privya’s barrier circle. It weaves through stone columns; it doesn’t touch Jihan, though it intermittently obscures her from outside view as she works like a gardener bent over weeds.