by Zan Safra
Yurei.
Phantom.
Chapter Three
Yurei
I RUN. THE GROWL of voices echoes among the city walls, snaking through the noise of the warning bells as they ring, and ring, and ring, clashing in my ears, my skull. I still feel the two girls’ gazes, even though they’ve fled, so fixed I could feel them piercing me, skinning me, peeling me to the bone…
A brick wall rushes out of the dark. In the moments it takes to reach it I will myself to lighten, to grow more insubstantial than air, than shadow, a single second before I strike the brick—
I slip through the wall. An instant of blackness, of gritty scraping, the feeling of diving through a cascade of sand, and then I’m past it, running out into the frigid night and a lightless alley like any other. Different walls fly past, ones I can’t chance slipping through without knowing what lies beyond them. The noise of the bells and the beating of my own blood spin together, blanketing everything I see with a throbbing mist, flattening all to tracings that shiver like plucked strings—
Voices shout, carabinieri, slashes of white streaking through my mind. A metallic baying drowns them, an unearthly howl that slices through the bells like a blade.
They have an Infernal.
The howling grows louder, madder. Ahead two carabinieri round the corner, striding towards me. A black shape bounds before them, straining at its lead.
Fade!
A feeling of hiddenness sweeps over me, softening my edges, merging me with the shadows. I dart into a different alley, freezing air scouring my lungs. A drainpipe clings to a wall ahead. I catch hold of it and climb. The jagged creak of its metal stabs at my ears as I reach the roof, tangling with the clatter of shingles as they slip and rattle under my feet. Venice spins around me, hundreds upon hundreds of roofs, domes, spires, a plume of black smoke, an ocean of icy stars. I run to the roof’s edge and leap, flying over the canal below, onto the next building. The wind slices through my flimsy coat, whistling across the surface of my mask, whipping smoke into my eyes as I run, bounding, soaring, fleeing…
I see it, rearing above the rooftops: a white marble mountain jutting from the desert of tiles. The opera house.
I leap onto its roof and slip through it, falling into emptiness. The rush of the wind turns to silence, the starlight to shadows, but the darkness is nothing to me. I fall through the fly gallery, towards a spider’s web of ropes, weights, pulleys. I catch a lift line to slow myself and let go before my weight can unbalance it, twist in the air to dodge a bar of mounted lights and fall further. I land on the stage in a crouch.
A fine rain of dust drifts from above. I fall onto the boards and close my eyes. Even in the stillness the wood seems to tremble, reverberating with the sounds of hours ago: steps trudging back and forth, wheels rolling, canvas fluttering, pulleys squeaking, the explosive hiss of the gas-lights as they flared and died, and the…
The music.
I hear it still, feel it, centuries of sound soaked into the building’s very foundations, unlike any I’d ever heard before I came here, shimmering with colors I’d never seen. I saw the sound inside my head, the way I see all music, all voices: a billowing ocean of hues, and within it other sounds, other colors: flowing ribbons, falling stars, all darting about, sparking, drifting, winding and weaving and taking flight. They rose from instruments I’d never seen, singing melodies I could never have imagined…
The weapon strapped to my left forearm anchors me. I close my hand, feeling the web of leather strips wound through my fingers, what allows me to control the device with a single movement. Its weight is a reminder.
That isn’t my world. It can never be.
I let my hand fall open. The weapon is called a johyo in the language of the land where I was born, a contraption made of twin reels, a ten-foot cord, and a metal weight that transforms into a blade at a touch. It’s been ten years since they fastened it to me. I was seven years old when they captured and masked me.
I sit, resting my forehead against my knees, wrapping my arms around them. The lacquered black mask presses against my face. Nothing but the miniscule alchemical glyphs carved into its edges hold it in place. I can take it off in an instant.
I sigh. It’s why the Naturals of La Filomena think me a spirit. They’ve caught only glimpses of me, when I was careless enough to wander about unfaded. El fantasmo, the phantom.
It’s fitting. The person I was is dead. I’m nothing but his ghost.
The sight of the carabinieri I fought burns in my head, their faces, their eyes, the glint of their rifles as they aimed them at the two girls.
I should have done worse.
Fury flares within my chest. I attacked out of panic. I thought only to stop them.
The fury grows, spreading like venom through my veins. They would have murdered the Unnatural girls without a thought. They were nothing to them. Nothing.
And they call us monsters.
I should have—
My fingers brush the edge of the scar on my right wrist, the rippling burn.
The fury extinguishes. I grit my teeth. No...
The theater draws in, close, suffocating. Air. I need the air.
I leap from the stage, flying over the orchestra pit and into the carpeted aisle. I run past the hundreds of velveted seats, into a foyer of marble pillars and polished wooden floors. I cross it and slip through the doors and wrought-iron gates, into the square.
The bells have stilled. The freezing night no longer quivers. Lamp-posts bearing trios of gas-lights cast their brownish glow over the square, the squat well in its middle, the pocked granite wall of the looming church.
I move on. The shadows of the Unnatural girls drift ahead of me like ghosts.
I never thought I’d so much as glimpse another, though I knew there were alchemists in Venice. I’ve seen them. Their uniforms make them impossible to miss, as does their stride, their arrogance, the way others make way for them in the streets. Where there are alchemists, there are Unnaturals.
But so few of us are free.
A hanging, soaking chill fills the square like a fog. The towering walls narrow to form a brick alley, its ragged white plaster stained with waterfalls of rust. The silence pours into my ears, a sound unlike the ordinary quiet of night. The city wasn’t this way when I first arrived, not so still, so suffocated. There’s a murderer about. Some say it’s a maniac, a crazed madman. Others murmur that it’s something worse, a creature of nightmare, of the sort that devastated a distant city years ago. Risen dead.
I’ve heard of such things. Transformed corpses hunting the living. Vampires.
I don’t so much as slow my pace. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a lunatic or a ghoul. Neither frightens me.
The alley leads me past doors I’ve never seen, into a place I’ve never gone. My footsteps echo among the walls like clapping hands, not soft and muffled, as they always are.
I stop. The slapping footsteps continue, not my own.
I fade, sharpening my hearing. The footsteps near, too quick and light to be those of a carabiniere. I vault over a dry stone fountain and into the shadow of a doorway, just as movement flickers at the alley’s end.
A figure rushes out of the dark, half-swallowed by a hooded pilot’s coat. It reaches a stack of barrels and ducks behind it, sinking to the ground. Long streaks of mud stain the coat. Something beneath it clinks like glass.
The figure pulls back its hood and becomes a girl, perhaps my age or slightly younger. Her damp hair clings to her face, reaching only to her chin, ragged at its edges and a pure, snowy white. Her skin is pale, nearly the same color as her hair. As she stares into the dark I see her eyes as well, huge and a strange, silvery blue. I’ve heard of those like her, those born without color…
She climbs to her feet. She seems delicate, elfin, her cheekbones jutting like those of one starved. Her gaze is bewildered, as though she recognizes nothing of what she sees around her. R
ivulets of water drip from her coat as she turns.
My heart beats faster. There was an aethership crash. I saw it from the rooftops, saw one of the Unnatural girls pull the other from the water, one who wore a coat just like hers.
She’s come from the crash as well.
The girl pulls her hood forward and hurries into the mouth of a narrow lane. I leave the doorway and follow her. I won’t let her see me. I won’t be able to stand another stare, but I can’t let her continue alone. There are carabinieri everywhere. I don’t know what her abilities may be, or whether she can fight at all.
She darts to the left, out of sight. I follow her into a different alley. Damp footprints shine on the ground, but dry and vanish near an archway, the entrance to a narrow courtyard. I take a step into it, searching.
Something tugs at my ankle. I hear a chime, soft, gray.
I glance down. A length of twine stretches from one side of the stone archway to the other, strung with a row of tiny bells.
A tripcord.
A weight slams into my back and sends me sprawling onto the ground. A dark cloud plummets down and pins me, a mass of bristly ropes reeking of mud and fish. Voices explode, flashes of color blazing in the dark.
“Is it the fiend? Is it the fiend?”
“Keep quiet, won’t you?”
“What for? Will they arrest us now that we’ve done their work for them?”
The net tightens, dragging me over the ground. Lantern light blinds me. “Bring him here,” comes another voice. “Let’s see what we have.”
The lantern withdraws. As the glare fades I see faces, eyes, staring at me. Staring.
I jerk sideways, slipping through the ropes, and roll onto my feet. A crowd of Naturals surrounds me, men and women gripping iron pokers, kitchen knives, broken wooden beams. One man looks at the net in his hands, and then at me. The rest of them gaze at me, dumbfounded, and I realize what I’ve done.
A man with a scar crossing his face nudges another. “Look at his eyes,” he mutters. “What’s wrong with his eyes?”
Unnatural. Whispers flit through the crowd, wisps of black smoke. Bestia…monster…
I circle my wrist. The reels of my weapon engage, unwinding the cord. The metal weight drops into my hand.
The whispers darken. Mostro…freak…diaol…fiend…
Something flies out of the crowd, straight for my face. I dodge. A chunk of paving-stone strikes the wall behind me and shatters. Another blur arcs over the heads of the crowd. I fling the weight in my hand, launching my weapon. The weight flies out and smashes the brick out of the air.
The crowd recoils. As the fragments rain down I draw in the cord, catch hold of it at a certain length and snap it upwards, spinning the weight over my head like a lasso.
Fear makes my grip falter. My voice strains for my throat but I can’t conjure a word. I can only chant in my head, begging. Let me go…let me go…
The man with the fire iron glances at the scarred man and jerks his head towards me. I hear a footstep, a rustling of cloth. The dozens of gazes shift past me.
It happens in a heartbeat. They move as one, the pair of them and the man creeping up behind me. I jerk the cord and bring the weight down on the scarred man’s skull. The reels spin and the cord retracts. I catch the weight and spin to hurl it into the face of the man behind me. I twist again and send it flying into the fist of the third.
Yells erupt from the crowd. The men recoil, one clutching his head, the second cradling his broken hand, the third covering his bloodied face. I back away, spinning the weight again. Let me go…let me go…
The scarred man pulls a knife from his jacket. “Together! It can’t fight us all!”
More knives appear, slipping out of vests, jackets, belts. The weight flashes above me, a silver comet streaking past. Whish…whish…whish…
“What are you waiting for?” a woman screams. “Do it! Kill it!”
Crack.
An explosion bursts above like the snap of a giant whip. From the back of the crowd comes the noise of a blow, a shriek of pain. More screams follow until a figure in a drenched pilot’s coat shoves past the crowd and screams at me, “Cover your eyes!”
She hurls something into the air. I close my eyes just as a red flash blazes. A hand clamps around my arm. The pale girl yells into my ear, a stabbing spike of green. “Run!”
I catch the weight and run after her, through a narrow gap in the mob. They clutch at their faces, crying out in pain. A man lunges at us, squinting through tearing eyes. His hand catches the girl’s sleeve. She whips a black staff from beneath her coat and rams the head of it into his stomach. His grip falters. I kick him away and we run again, shouts following us, the fallen net snatching at our feet.
I chance a look back as we reach the alley. A different man stumbles after us, clenching a broken brick. He draws back his arm and flings it.
I grab the girl’s sleeve, but not in time to save her. The brick smashes into the back of her head. The force of the blow tears her arm from my hand. She lurches into the stone fountain, throwing her arms about it as she falls.
I run to her. She clings to the fountain, her hood fallen forward, hiding her face. More shadows rush through the archway. One of them points at us, shouting, “There!”
The grinding of stone shivers through the ground. The pale girl tightens her arms around the fountain. A growl leaks through her teeth, a grating, grayish snarl that burst out as a shriek.
In a single twist she rips the fountain out of its foundation and throws it down the alley. It soars through the air and plunges into the mob. Men scream, hideous, blood-colored shrieks.
The girl sways on her feet. I lunge to catch her but she slips out of my arms. She curls into a ball on the paving-stones, trembling as though caught in some sort of fit. Her paleness changes. Colors flicker through her, staining her hair and skin, flashes of deep black, sickly gray.
More figures emerge from the courtyard, clambering over the broken fountain and the men screaming beneath it. They merge, melting into one, a twisting mass of heads, grasping hands, shining eyes and teeth.
Take off the mask.
The fury pours into my blood, a poison that turns to hissing, shrieking hate.
Take off the mask.
The mob-beast approaches. I know that sight. I’ve seen it before, again and again. Wherever I go, wherever I flee, they’re the same, beating, crushing, tearing, murdering, the same, the same, the same…
The scarred man detaches from the swarm, running ahead, his face a mess of blood. The man who flung the brick limps after him.
I lift my hand. My fingers brush my mask.
They deserve it. They deserve whatever they get. I don’t care what becomes of me. I don’t care if I die, as long as I drag them with me, and make them suffer—
A gasp from the ground cracks my thoughts, from the pale girl, lying where she fell, shivering.
The fire coursing through me withers to burning threads, to embers, to ash.
I let my voice slip through my teeth, rising not from my throat but from within my chest, where it lies coiled around my heart: a low, slithering hiss, so soft that the men before me hear nothing, even as I send it snaking into their ears. “Stop.”
They stop. Their gazes soften, glazing.
I see my voice at work, ribbons of black flame unfurling, winding around them, trapping them in a waking dream. “See what I tell you to see.”
The air between us ripples, foreshadowing a mirage. I see it as well as they do. I can see my own illusion, fool even myself.
“See us,” I breathe. “Standing before you.”
The black fire takes shape, dividing into two. The flames lengthen, shifting in hue, spinning into forms that grow bright and solid, doubles of the two of us.
I shout at the mob, “See them run!”
My voice slaps them awake. The pair of illusions dash away, down a side alley. “After them!”
I roar. “Go!”
They charge after the mirage. The rumbling noise of them follows, fading, gone.
The pale girl wheezes again. Her hand still grips the object she wielded as a weapon, a sort of staff or walking stick, carved of black wood and topped with a silver handle. Scratched into it are letters of the Latin alphabet, a crooked row of stark lines, hooks, crescents.
J. Jekyll.
I gather her up in my arms and run, fading us both, into the night.
Chapter Four
Jette
I AM IN A FOG.
My head swims with sickness. From far away I feel arms about me, carrying me. My hand still grips my shillelagh, my staff, as the ghost of a horrible pain lingers within my skull, like a bruise imprinted onto my brain. I try to wake but I am sinking, deeper into the fog, into before.
I wake. I open my eyes. I feel ill, groggy and weak. A bitter taste lingers on my tongue, stinging like burnt sugar. I know what it is.
I choke. A gag smothers me. I cannot move. Restraints cut into my wrists, my ankles, my forehead, my throat. The wheels of the gurney squeak as an alchemist in a gray assistant’s uniform pushes it down the corridor. It is happening again.
I scream through the gag. I thrash against the restraints, but I am not strong enough to break them, not as I am now.
The horrible taste burns in my mouth. They drugged me. They weakened me.
Helpless. I am helpless.
Doors open. The air grows colder. I feel it on my scalp. They have already shorn my hair.
The assistant wheels me into the operating theater. Alchemists pack the room. There are students in green uniforms and older alchemists in black, studying me coldly as the assistant leaves me in the center of the theater. An alchemist with a cloth mask covering the lower half of her face rolls a small table to stop beside me. Steel instruments gleam on a metal tray.
I scream to the audience through the gag. Help me…please help me…
But no one will. They never do. I am only an Unnatural. No one cares, no one no one no one—
A man begins to speak. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is our intent to demonstrate this particular procedure making use of Subject Forty-Nine of the Hawkins-Yarborough-Danvers Experiment, created fifteen years past at the Royal Collegium Alchemicum of Edinburgh…”
