“Somehow they got into the Pit and bred in there. They love it. They eat just about anything, swim like fish, and their reproductive cycle is only three months. Each Razorscale female lays between forty and sixty eggs. About half of the hatchlings survive. They eat each other, the fuckers, but they breed so fast, it doesn’t matter. I put a leviathan-class armored serpent in there, twice. They ate them both. Tatyana wanted to section off the swamp and evaporate it, bit by bit.”
“Bad idea,” Alessandro said. “The cost would be prohibitive. Money could be found, but there are at least three environmental groups lobbying to designate the Pit as a wildlife preserve. You’ve told them to relocate any native endangered species. If they found out that you burned them alive instead, the public outcry could force the city to cancel the project.”
Marat laughed. “Yes. People who never ran from Razorscales want to preserve the vicious bastards. They’re welcome to take a stab at conserving them. Maybe they can take one home as a pet.”
“How did you deal with it?” I asked.
“Well, the serpents didn’t eat them, and Tatyana’s plan was nuts, so Cheryl animated some mechanical monstrosity and we dumped that in there. It worked at first. It killed three nests, and then they must have gotten it somehow, because the Razorscales came back and Cheryl couldn’t feel her construct anymore. My guess is, it must have gone deeper into the Pit and found whatever it is we’re fighting now. The Razorscales killed a girl, one of our workers.”
Marat grimaced. “See, I have a pond. You’re supposed to aerate it and if you do it too fast, the toxic sludge that accumulates in the bottom rises to the top, and all the fish die. I asked Jiang to do it in the Pit and the bastard flat out refused. Said it would kill all life in a mile radius and it would be a crime against nature. The most he would do is set up a strong current away from the main island to drive the fish deeper into the Pit. The Razorscales followed the food supply and we started to get a foothold in the swamp. We thought we were home free, started building again, and then one morning the arcane circle powering the current was gone and the ring crap started.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean that the Razorscales started swarming and every swarm came with one of those rings in its center.” Marat nodded at the gyroscopes on the table. “They spin in place and there are glowing flowers in them.”
“Is it always Razorscales?” Alessandro asked.
“No. Sometimes we get a big monster, with some smaller monsters.”
“A hunter with his hounds.”
“Exactly. I think it’s making them out of people it kills. Felix and I took down a hunter once. There was a human corpse in it.”
The Abyss stole humans, killed them, and used their bodies and minds to create hybrid constructs. This was a nightmare.
“This is a disaster,” Alessandro said.
Marat skewed his face. “You think? Welcome to my life. We are eighty million into this project, fifteen of them mine. Maybe that’s not shit to you, Count Moneybags, but for my family, it’s everything. This project employs four hundred people. They’re counting on it to put food on the table. I have to make this work. I’m here every day. While Cheryl is going to her charity lunches, Tatyana is burning shit for fun, and Jiang jerks off to his House’s corporate logo, I’m here in the mud, trying to keep people from dying. It was me and Felix. One of us has to be here to fight it off or more of our people will die. Now it’s just me.”
“How did Felix feel about the thing in the swamp?” I asked.
“It bothered him. An environmentalist snuck on-site, a kid, barely sixteen years old. It dragged her into the water, and Felix raised a damn island to keep her alive. Saved her, sent her home, but it kept him from sleeping at night. He worried. When the surveyor disappeared, he wanted to shut everything down.”
“Did you agree?” I asked. I already knew the answer.
Marat laughed, a cold, bitter sound. “He called an emergency meeting on Thursday, the day before he died. We put it to a vote. Four against one. I knew exactly what was going on and I voted against him. If I had opened my stupid mouth and convinced them to listen to him, he might be alive today. They might have still outvoted us, but at least I would have tried.”
Now the anger made sense. Marat was eaten up by guilt. He felt trapped. They had abandoned him to the Pit, where he’d sunk all of his money, and he couldn’t get out. And now the only person who understood and worked with him was dead and he had done nothing to prevent it.
“We had a fight the day before he died.” Marat grimaced. “After we voted against him, he’d said that if we wouldn’t see reason, he’d find someone who would. When we came back here, I had argued with him over it. I told him that if the city shut us down because he did something stupid, my House would go bankrupt and he’d be taking food out of my family’s mouths.”
“I know you didn’t kill Felix.” I leaned forward. “Who do you think did?”
Marat spread his arms. “Hell if I know. Could be any of them. Jiang doesn’t say anything, and if you ask him a direct question, he’ll talk for five minutes about how House Jiang is a respected and responsible House. With responsibilities. And respect. Because our Houses are apparently garbage. By the time he’s done talking, you’ve forgotten what you’ve asked him in the first place. All Cheryl ever cares about is her charity crap. I don’t know if she’s applying for sainthood or what, but she wants the accolades. I can tell you, it costs a lot of money to be that cherished. Not that she needs the goodwill as much as Tatyana does. That snot-nosed punk brother of hers gave her family a black eye and she’s desperate to heal it. At least my solution was environmentally responsible. Her solution is to burn it all down. Maybe she can make a bonfire out of the mountain of lawsuits we’ll be hit with to keep herself warm at night.”
Okay then.
Marat slumped in his chair. “There. That’s what I think of everyone. Are we done now?”
“You’re not going to win this fight,” I told him. He would like this part even less than Alessandro’s knife, but I had to explain it to him, because his people’s safety depended on it. “While you were wrestling with tentacles, I was attacked by a telekinetic.”
“Not me.”
“I know. I jumped into the water and struck his mind. The thing in the Pit felt my magic and came in for a closer look. I felt it. The reason you haven’t made progress is because it’s not in the Pit. It is the Pit. It’s a vast enormous consciousness. A single entity that stretches to the farthest reaches of the mire. It’s malicious and telepathic. You need to get shielders.”
“There is no money. Who’s going to pay for that?”
“I will.” Alessandro pushed away from the door. “I’ll talk to Lander. Find some telepaths, and don’t be cheap or you’ll have no workers left.”
“It won’t make a difference,” Marat said, defeated.
Despair rolled off of him. At the core of it, Marat wasn’t a bad man. He was unpleasant, but he cared about his family and about his workers. Felix’s death crushed him. He was already wading through a lake of guilt and that had pulled him all the way under.
“Felix did reach out for help,” I told him. “I am that help.”
He gave me a weary look. “What are you going to do about it?”
I raised my arm and pushed. The trickle of magic slid into the star within a circle under my skin, projecting it into the air. Marat’s eyes went wide.
“The National Assembly appreciates your assistance in this matter, Prime Kazarian. Your cooperation has been noted. You will not speak of this conversation to anyone. You will not reveal my true affiliation. If called upon, you will assist me in any way possible.”
He nodded, mute.
I faded the star and rose. “It will be okay,” I told him. “There is a light at the end of the tunnel.”
Ten minutes after we left the main island, Alessandro stopped the car and leaned over to me. “Hospital.”
“
You don’t have to menace me.”
“Yes, I do. I’m taking you to a hospital. That was our agreement. Pick one.”
I gave him the address of Rogan’s private physician. He plugged it into his phone, and we were off.
I stared out of the window at the Pit.
“Does it hurt?” he asked after a while.
“A little.” The painkiller was wearing off. The four wounds in my side burned like someone was hammering red-hot nails into me.
“We’ll get there soon.” He reached over and squeezed my hand.
“I don’t like threatening people to get what I need.” And I shouldn’t have said that. We weren’t in a position to have a heart-to-heart and I had no business looking for support in him.
“Marat is . . . un mulo . . . a mule. He’s strong and stubborn. He won’t listen to reason, but he understands consequences and authority. He didn’t recognize yours because you’re younger and female and he didn’t recognize mine because I’m young and spoiled Eurotrash.”
“Well, that shirt was a bit much. I kept waiting for you to strategically unbutton it to display your chest.”
He looked at me. “Are you interested in my chest?”
“No.” Why did I even open my mouth?
“I can take my shirt off for you, if you’d like.”
“No.”
“I had no idea the presence of my shirt has been bothering you all this time.”
“Alessandro!”
He laughed. Then his smile died. “Is showing Marat the badge going to carry consequences for you?”
“No. Linus allows me to reveal who I am when it’s absolutely necessary. It was necessary. That’s the only way to keep Marat quiet.”
“I don’t think that was it. I think you did it to reassure him, because you felt sorry for him.”
“Think whatever you want.”
“Arkan has a pet telekinetic,” Alessandro said.
I reached over and rested my fingers on his forehead. “Strange. No fever.”
“Why would I have a fever?”
“Because you just shared information without prompting.”
I took my hand off and he leaned slightly, as if he wanted to prolong the touch, but caught himself.
“I jumped into the nasty water for you and you still don’t trust me. I probably do have a fever from that. You don’t even know what’s in that water . . .”
“If you have a fever, Dr. Daniela will take care of it.”
“I don’t think Dr. Daniela can do anything for my kind of fever.”
Yeah, right. “Tell me about Arkan’s telekinetic.”
“Young, very powerful. Arkan is grooming him as his protégé.” Alessandro frowned.
“How powerful?”
“He lifted a semi once and threw it.”
“Threw it where?”
“At me.”
Don’t ask. Don’t ask how or where. Don’t tempt yourself to care. “Did you dodge it?”
“I did.”
“Good.” I nodded and looked out the window.
Dr. Daniela Arias ran a state-of-the-art private clinic located in a bunkerlike building that was guarded better than Fort Knox. She was none too pleased with the condition of my wounds.
“So, you got clawed by an arcane construct, then you ran around the Pit, and for an encore you jumped into the filthy, magically tainted water that’s probably full of sewage?”
“Exactly,” Alessandro volunteered.
Dr. Arias turned to him. She was six feet tall, built like an Amazon, and when she scowled at you, you wanted to become very small and squeak “yes, ma’am” to anything she said. The stare she leveled at Alessandro was withering.
“And you didn’t stop her why?”
“Yes, why didn’t you stop me?” I demanded.
Alessandro gave us a dazzling smile. It bounced off Dr. Arias like a laser beam from a mirror.
“I did try to stop you. I jumped into the water instead of you to keep you from drowning and being eaten. How was I supposed to know you would follow me?”
“You’re expected to use common sense.” Dr. Arias glared at the two of us. “The two of you are old enough to know better. I need to run some tests and fix this mess. Catalina, make whatever calls you need to make before I start, and you, whoever you are, occupy yourself with something. She’ll be here for a couple of hours.”
I texted Arabella. Are you there?
Is you dead?
No. Need clothes.
Did you have sexy times with Alessandro?
No, I fell into the Pit. Don’t tell Mom. Don’t tell Nevada either. I need clothes to see Cheryl Castellano.
Where are you?
Dr. Arias.
Okay.
I called Bern. It was faster than texting, because when he concentrated on something, he ignored the texts. “Hey. Could you please do an aerial surveillance of the Pit and compare it to any records we have of it in six-month intervals?”
“How far do you need me to go?”
“Three years should do it.” Three years ago, the Pit looked normal, and I wanted a baseline. “Thank you.”
Alessandro parked himself by the door, leaning on the wall.
“You might want to go home,” I told him.
“I don’t think so.”
“You smell like a swamp and I’m safe here. This is Mad Rogan’s private clinic. He provides the security.”
Alessandro sniffed his sleeve and grimaced.
“I won’t leave without you,” I promised.
“If you try, I’ll find you and I’ll be angry.”
“Is that supposed to be some sort of threat?”
“No, it’s a warning. Don’t leave without me.”
“Go away.”
He left.
The CT scan detected no bleeding or swelling in my brain. I escaped without any broken bones, but there was a lot of soft tissue bruising and some arcane bacteria decided to throw a party in my lacerations, which we found out when Dr. Arias removed the bandages and neon-green pus leaked out. She shot me with another dose of antivenom and set about cleaning my wounds.
“Did the pretty boy patch you up?” Dr. Arias asked, working on the cuts.
“Yes.”
“He didn’t do a terrible job. He has some training.”
“I’ll tell him that you think he’s pretty. That will make him happy.”
Dr. Arias smiled. “I have a feeling he knows he’s pretty.”
My sister showed up, accompanied by Runa and two of our security people. They delivered clothes and makeup. I told them about the telekinetic and Marat being pulled into the swamp, and then Runa used her magic to purify my cuts and accidentally neutralized the antivenom, and Dr. Arias kicked them both out. On the plus side, my cuts were now taken care of and infection was unlikely. On the minus side, I received my third injection of antivenom “just to be safe,” and the skin on my left side felt like it was about to give up and peel off my skeleton.
I kept the existence of the Abyss to myself until Dr. Arias left me to rest, and then I called Linus.
“Yes?” He sounded like he was in a helicopter.
I kept my voice low. “There is an alien mind in the Pit. It’s beyond anything I’ve ever felt and it’s malicious.”
He pondered it for a few seconds. “Do you want me to shut the project down?”
“Not yet.”
“Keep me updated.”
I hung up and stared at the phone. I needed to get the hell out of this bed. It was almost 2:00 p.m. Cheryl expected me in two hours. But I was so tired and my whole body hurt.
I picked up my purse, which Alessandro had brought into the room, took out a piece of chalk, and drew a charging circle. The base charging circle was one of the easier designs to draw: a large circle, a smaller circle inside that, then three circles inside that inner circle arranged in a triangle, and finally three outer circles opposite the inner triad. In the past six months, I’d begun to develop my own vers
ion. Eventually it would become a Key, a complex charging design particular to our House. For now, it was about two-thirds of the way there. I drew it so often, it took me less than three minutes to complete it. On a good day, when everything didn’t hurt like now, I could do it in half the time.
I stripped to my underwear and bra, stepped into the circle, sat, and put my phone in front of me. I didn’t want to leave the circle if some emergency popped up.
The chalk lines waited for me, inert and so mundane. I sent a pulse of power through the circle. The chalk ignited with pale silver, sending tiny puffs of dust into the air. Power splashed against me. I relaxed and opened myself to it.
Before Runa left, she told me that her expert friend examined the gyroscope Cornelius had dropped off yesterday. Runa didn’t like her conclusions, and I liked them even less.
How did an alien intelligence come to be in the Pit? Was it summoned? In the hundred-plus years of the serum being active, nobody had ever found a human-level intelligence in the arcane realm, but it didn’t mean one couldn’t exist.
How would you even fight such a mind? Mental mages didn’t really come together the way other combat mages could. Our fights were duels, one-on-one. Having more than one mental mage wouldn’t help, because when two minds engaged each other, they became locked, like two wrestlers gripping one another, exerting every ounce of strength they had to trip their opponent while keeping their balance. I had no idea if the Abyss could be engaged by more than one mage. Most likely, it would just crack our minds one by one like a bull trampling eggs.
An hour crawled by. Then another. I barely noticed.
My phone chimed. Bug.
I found your thing. Watch it by yourself.
He’d sent a link to a private server we used for confidential communication. I logged in and checked the file box. A single video file waited for me. I clicked it.
A lawn stretched in front of the camera, the lush grass a fresh spring green. Ancient stones, cracked and darkened with age, crossed it, leading to rows and rows of white chairs, forming an aisle. Stone pedestals flanked the entrance to the aisle supporting marble urns overflowing with white and pink, and at its end, in the shadow of a large tree a flower arch waited, poised against distant hills.
Emerald Blaze Page 17
