Percy whirled. “What? You said you’d be my constant guide!”
Beatrice stepped backward. “Darling, he knows me now, and I must be ready at the doors. Remember the path. Aodhan will be with you; he knows not to leave you entirely unattended.”
“Do other dangers await? What about the hellhound, guardian of these sideways shadows? If I fight it, as my light did once before, will I not give myself away?”
Beatrice nodded. “Aodhan and I have discussed this. We need to throw off your scent, to make you undetected to the beast. The abomination is still in pieces, but it might congeal at any time. Your nearly dead friend can help.”
Percy groaned in sorrow. “Can I see her?”
“I’m taking you there now. You mustn’t wake her, however, or she is lost. This way. Remember these turns. Think of the map. Have you studied it?”
“As best I can.”
“These paths will help you when the worlds combine. Once her feet again touch the stones of your world, keeping your friend alive will be easier. However, you will need to remain focused on Darkness. He will go after Alexi and your living Guard first and foremost, I’m sure.”
Percy felt inner forces growl.
“Do control yourself”—Beatrice scowled, glancing at Percy’s growing luminescence—“or we’ll not get far. Tell me you’ve got some Catholic trick that can calm you.”
Percy murmured a few prayers so rote that it was like her muscles alone spoke them, the first words she’d learned in her convent youth, the first words taught for when ghosts and visions overwhelmed her young eyes. She breathed easier, and the telling light of her power eased to a faint glow.
“Indeed,” Beatrice murmured, clearly lost in a memory. “The prayers of our youth, like rosaries in our blood.”
This recalled Percy to her beads, and she felt Michael’s calming gift against her skin. She began moving again, stepping carefully.
Movement below caught her eye. As she stepped, there were tiny green sprouts that burst around her boots. Tiny spots of colour amid the dreary grey; buds, blooms, red, pink and purple; colour—spring and life. “Oh,” she breathed, quite taken aback. “I’m making flowers.”
Beatrice glanced down. “Ah. It seems this place is bringing out your predecessor’s most charming qualities.” Her face fell. “Pity they don’t last.”
Percy looked. Where there had been life an instant prior, now only dead husks remained. Grey curled petals and wilted black leaves.
“Not here,” Beatrice added.
Percy frowned, terribly sad. She tugged on the laces of her skirts, and the fabric hung a bit lower. The fabric kissed the ground, now hiding all traces of beautiful life created but then choked out by shadow.
They turned a corner, and Beatrice tapped on an iron gate. Aodhan peered out, beckoning them forward under the jagged arch of a crypt. Percy’s hand went to her mouth. Marianna lay atop a stone tomb beneath a pale winding sheet to hide the fading green of her dress, her once-vibrant colouring blanched, shifting to grey. Ash still trickled around her eyes and dribbled from the corners of her lips. Her hands lay outside the sheet, revealing crusted grit deep under her fingernails, faint crimson blood from gashes pooled in her cupped palms, and bruises shaded the hollows of her fair skin. The damage looked all the more severe in the half-light.
Aodhan held the long lock of hair, Jane’s gift, tightly, its touchstone of power allowing a healing glow to hover over her. Ash rose to the surface below the German girl’s skin and worked out her pores with a tiny hiss.
Percy felt bile churn in her stomach. “How is she?” she asked in Gaelic.
“Alive for now,” he replied in kind. “She dreams heavily. Your mentalist will have to heal her. Come close, I’ve a gruesome task to mask your scent.”
Percy nodded and approached.
Aodhan pressed his hands to Marianna’s cupped palms, dipping his fingertips in her pooled blood, dragging fluid black as pitch and thick as tar onto his fingertips. “Pull back your sleeves.” When Percy did so, grimacing, he rubbed blood and ash onto her wrists, up her arms.
“Forgive me,” he said, and lifted his fingers behind her ears. Viscous liquid—an unwelcome, horrid perfume—was dabbed behind her lobes. Inhaling the coppery scent of her best friend’s blood, Percy bit her lip to keep from crying out, hot tears cooling instantly upon her cheeks.
Aodhan wiped his sullied hands on the lace cuffs of Marianna’s silk dress before ripping off the accents with a sound that grated in the close air. He handed Percy the soiled scraps. “Place these somewhere.”
Percy closed her eyes and tucked the befouled fabric into her corset, forcing back seizures of revulsion. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured to Marianna’s sleeping form. She lowered her sleeves, grateful to keep the traces of gore hidden from her own eyes.
Aodhan was back at work, brushing what ash he could into a ceramic jar and adding that to a line of containers along a nearby crevasse. “Don’t worry.” He gestured to the vessels. “I sent some to the bottom of the river. While there’s unnatural life to this infernal grit, she won’t come back remotely whole.”
“Come, Percy,” Beatrice whispered, taking her by the elbow. “Aodhan will lead you but must remain nearby in shadow for the sake of safety.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the portal’s edge. Unless I’m there to stop him, I’m sure your stubborn husband will come in after you and we can’t afford to lose his wits. Once you have that key, get out. Take it into Athens, to the upstairs seal. Those doors will unlock and await you to open them.”
“Where exactly is the key?” Percy pleaded, her mind spinning.
“Oh, you’ll see it. Off with you now. Darkness awaits,” Beatrice said grimly. When Percy quaked she added, “Remember, unless you act otherwise, he’ll think you just another spirit.”
“Just another spirit,” Percy repeated, trying to rally, stepping farther into the cold shadows.
Alexi didn’t dream often, but when he did, his dreams fell into distinct categories.
For a man who had seen so much of it, he never dreamed of the ghastly, of poltergeists or rotting shades. Rather, he dreamed of personal matters, of his paralyzed sister, forever damned to a cripple’s half-life, in awe and fear of him. He dreamed of his parents vanishing for fright, of his blood relatives hanging back as if he were contaminated by a disease that they never dared treat or bothered to comprehend.
He dreamed sometimes of passionate matters. There had been the “visitations” of his youth. Those vivid glimpses of an exquisite goddess were almost the only thing that kept his embittered young heart from rejecting destiny and prophecy entirely. She’d vanished, however, presumably when Percy was born, at which point his dream lover no longer had a face. The other details remained, however, as an encouragement to keep waiting…
His dreams had been particularly quiet of late, save those pertaining to waking to find Percy not at his side, but tonight that was no longer true. He stood at the end of a stone corridor, breathing in both mold and sorrow. A stark grey light shone at the opposite end, and sounds echoed against the dank stones. He recognized the impassioned female voice.
His stomach and fists clenched as he moved forward into the grey light, stepping onto a platform and looking down. Across a rushing river stood cracked columns and crumbling statues that stood silent sentry over a grand dais where an entwined couple writhed. Glimpses of ghost white flesh maddened him.
“No,” he choked. It wasn’t her. Everyone was pale in this purgatory.
The man was a young and beautiful specimen, angelic like a pre-Raphaelite painting, nearly as pale as the woman he clutched, his mouth lean and cruel. The auburn tresses down his back looked more like streaming blood than hair. He was naked, his hands buried under immense folds of fabric.
The writhing woman’s magnificent dress was a familiar light blue. Her face was hidden under masses of hair, but no other tresses were that pearlescent white, and he could have re
cognized anywhere those shocking white limbs and the sound of her gasps. And with the figure wearing Percy’s wedding dress…
Alexi felt a bellowing cry of fury choke its way up his throat and a roaring rush of fire leaped to his hands. His enemy turned to look up at him with burning red eyes, flashing a lascivious smile. Alexi felt a searing pain and looked down to find that his hands were not wielding blue flame; instead, yellow-orange fire was burning his flesh. The scent of it nauseating, the agony grew unbearable.
He told himself that this was illusion, that he’d wake up and find Percy at his side. But his flesh melted, and all he could do was stare at his wife, writhing in the grasp of the Whisper-world, property of Darkness at last.
With a wretched scream Alexi shot to his feet, throwing aside the covers of his office cot, making his office candelabra roar with tall flame before again going dark. “Percy!” he cried, turning to her, resolving that he’d truly never again let her out of his sight. But she was gone.
The maddened cry that began as anguish and finished in fury roused the nearby Guard. Josephine’s worried voice echoed in the hall outside: “Alexi?”
Head spinning, groggy, Alexi threw his robes over his disheveled shirtsleeves and flung wide the door, sending both Josephine and Elijah sprawling. He stormed out into the hall. “Where the bloody hell is she?”
He charged toward Promethe Hall, and they hurried in his wake. “Alexi, surely—”
“Were none of you standing guard?”
“Alexi, we tried, but sleep came heavy—too heavy,” Josephine said. “As if forced.”
“I don’t remember drifting off,” Elijah admitted, shaking his head as if clearing it. “Surely you were sedated, too.”
Alexi burst into the foyer of Promethe Hall to find Rebecca stirring in a chair. Michael was stretching against the wall. Their colour drained upon sight of his expression.
“Why are none of you in place? Why do none of you realize she’s gone?” he cried.
Jane came bounding from around the corner, Marlowe mewling at her feet. Frederic squawked from the chandelier above, the ghostly boy who floated there patting the bird’s head.
“Gone?” Michael rushed forward. “I kept awake, reading to Rebecca, trying to pass the time, but sleep must have fallen so heavy—”
An explosion of helpless anger obliterated all else. Alexi raised his fist as if he was about to hit something, or someone. Michael boldly held out his hand to counter him. The jolt of peaceful energy Michael delivered jarred away the unfounded violence. “Caution, Alexi,” Michael said. “The Whisper-world presses in, affecting our minds and hearts. It wants to tear us all apart. Just like this.” With a hand to his shoulder, Rebecca led Michael out of striking range.
Alexi reeled back in shock, horrified by his clenched fist and instead pounding it against his own chest. “I was by her side!” he cried. “What a fool am I? How could I not have felt her go? How did I fail to feel her leave my arms?” His fury propelled him toward the chapel. “Where the hell are you?” he bellowed. The images from his dream still seared his eyes.
The chapel doors were open. So was the black rectangle that led to their private, sacred space. Alexi growled and charged ahead, The Guard barely able to keep up. Frayed blue lightning crackled all around his body.
Racing down the stairs and into the chapel, he cursed to find the murmuring portal to the Whisper-world a wet, dark, open mouth floating at the centre of the room, the fiery map licking at his feet. A small blue mark, with another at its side, moved inexorably toward the red dot in the distance.
“Alexi, no! You mustn’t—” Rebecca cried from atop the stairs.
Charging the portal, he was just about to throw himself in when a ball of blue fire leaped out and struck him square in the chest. Thrown backward onto the stone floor, he saw Beatrice step into view, her eyes holding the same fiery determination as his. Her hands awash with blue flame that she pulled from the power of the sacred space and into her hands, her stance wide, she eyed him sternly.
Her words floated from the edge of the Whisper-world just enough to whisper adamantly in Alexi’s ear. “Oh, no you don’t! This isn’t the way to make yourself useful.”
Percy squinted. There was a gusting wind in the Whisper-world, carrying dust and sour air, tangling her hair and invading her skirts. Spirits everywhere were squabbling, angry and violent. The farther in she went, the more of a mess she found. Her slow steps made oddly dull sounds. Every hair of her neck was on end.
“Remember this path,” Aodhan said softly, ducking a random blow by an eternally drunken sailor, deflecting him with a glowing hand that warned he not try again. “You’ll need to retrace it. We can’t take the risk of you going out a wrong portal and ending up in some other level of this place. I’ve not dared to adventure the whole of it.”
“I wouldn’t want to,” Percy replied, thinking of how her movement would be marked on the map. “We’ve been veering left.”
She wondered how time passed here, and she prayed Alexi was still sleeping soundly, unaware of her absence. But she could have sworn she heard a distant roar that sounded distinctly familiar. She winced.
“You mustn’t worry about him,” Aodhan said, watching.
“Are you worried for Jane?”
Aodhan’s lips thinned and he nodded, realizing such words were pointless. They would fear for those they loved.
“I’m scared to see this Darkness. I’m scared of what might happen inside me that I can’t predict,” Percy murmured. The sound of rushing water grew louder in her ears.
“Just remember, there are things about him that will make you wish to flee. Stay strong. Play his little mind games if you can, it may endear you to him, but stay strong.”
“I don’t want to be endeared,” Percy said through clenched teeth.
“Well, you also don’t want him to drag you across the river and imprison you with the rest of our sorry lot. You’re not here for him, Persephone. You are here for them. Don’t you see?”
All the careening spirits of the Whisper-world fell away as the corridor opened onto a huge grey space, the ceiling endless shadow, the path ahead a wide circle around a tall stone dais lined with crumbling stone pillars choked with dead ivy. Aodhan fell back. “I won’t be far.”
A vast stone tower sat behind the circular dais, its dark and deteriorating bricks reaching up to oblivion, and between Percy and that sweeping stone platform lay a rushing river surrounding the steps up to the dais like a moat. Upon its turbulent surface, the river bore the occasional bone or piece of trash. And across the river, atop a wide and jagged stone throne, sat Darkness.
For the first time in the Whisper-world, Percy saw a bright colour. Shimmering scarlet fabric floated around his naked torso, a corner hovering tastefully between his legs like a silken fig leaf. He was beautiful and sculpted like a classical masterpiece. And then suddenly he shifted. He was a mere skeleton.
Percy had to bite her lip. She stared at him, his face alternately breathtaking and a skull, blinking between the two as if the pendulum of a clock, ticking away seconds, life spans and eternity. It mesmerized her for a while, ticking her life away.
“H-hello,” Percy finally managed to choke out, surprised a word came at all.
Darkness looked up. It was so strange to think of this force of nature as a person, inhabiting a body, but it was, she supposed, just a form—something to relate to, something finite, a single illuminated point of a lightless infinity. She was grateful for this, and for her destined ability to tread these dread paths; otherwise she and her friends would be entirely outmatched. As it stood, things looked grim. She bit back the fear that threatened to consume her.
His red eyes burned at first, then cooled into sparkling rubies as fresh as the blush upon his youthful lips—when he had lips. He examined her a moment, swiveling his head to the side, his skull sockets taking her in from each angle.
Percy felt herself blush and inhaled, expanding her rib cage agains
t her corset, which pressed her rosary beads into her flesh, calming her with the power Michael had placed in them.
“Why, hello indeed, miss. And welcome.” He’d adopted her accent, her vernacular, perhaps to make her more comfortable. Perhaps to get information more easily out of her.
He rose and walked to the edge of the river, his scarlet drape like wings in eddying currents around his limbs, beckoned her forward with a graceful hand that faded into reaching bone. “What cares shall you add?” he asked. His voice was youthful and attempted to be seductive. “Feed this river your sorrow.” His hand, his bones, gestured languidly to the flowing black water. “Tell me something of yourself. What did loved ones call you?”
“Pearl,” Percy replied, feeling her rosary beads chill on her skin, which was moist with sweat, nerves and the river breeze.
“Pearl. Indeed. You appear quite the jewel. Did you live well?”
“I…lived life well. But I was young.”
Darkness clucked a tongue that silenced as he became a skull. “Yes, yes, a tragedy. You, and your unborn child with you,” he murmured, smiling. “Just the sort of sadness to make you linger here quite a while, if not forever.”
Percy felt the room spin, and she clutched at her skirts. Her child?
“You must be quite freshly dead, for you’re quite luminous in this place,” Darkness continued casually.
Percy glanced down to see that, to this most shocking revelation, her body had responded with a glowing inner light. A prayer for survival and the rush of Michael’s power made tangible in her rosary beads allowed her the necessary breath of calm, else she’d surely give away her powers and Darkness would trap her here, put her in that stone tower behind him. Her, and her child. She had to find the key and get out as soon as possible.
Her face gave her away. “Oh. You didn’t know about the baby,” Darkness breathed. “How delicious!” He clapped delighted skeletal hands that clicked, then resounded as flesh, then clicked again. “Cast it all to the river, dear, tell it your grief, add your sweet tears to the well from which we drink.”
The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker Page 27
