Labyrinth

by Kat Richardson

  “That she’s going to do something kind of stupid,” Carol suggested.

  “Foolish. Honorable. . . . OK, yeah, stupid!”

  Harper had been growing stranger and more upset since she got back from London. He knew she wasn’t always saying everything she thought—that was how they were together—but this was a distant fear and despair that pulled her away from him. He wanted her to tell him, but what she had said was horrible and incomplete. He tried to help. He comforted and supported and looked for information or ways to help her silence the voices that had plagued her until she beat her head against the floor.

  That had upset him. It wasn’t like her to hurt herself. But she had and she seemed to be heading for worse pain.

  He hadn’t meant her when he’d said someone wouldn’t walk out of the situation alive. He’d been sure Kammerling was already toast, but no one else seemed to believe that. But it sounded like she hadn’t expected to walk away from the broadcast tower at all. Not for Novak or her dead dad—neither of those made sense—but for something she couldn’t express. She’d said the Grey was swallowing her and he wasn’t sure how that could be true, but maybe it was and he couldn’t let it happen.

  Carol had driven them to Queen Anne, to the broadcast towers, where they saw nothing that indicated anything amiss. They drove back and forth across the crown of the hill, checking each one. . . . Maybe he should have gone to the Danzigers’, but time felt too short.

  Finally, he pointed at the place they’d found Wygan the last time: the tower in the middle of the hill, alone on the edge of a park, across from the condemned gymnasium. He got out of her car and stared at the place. Something wasn’t right . . . a thread of light out of place, a reflection maybe. He turned until he was facing the old gym building. One of the chained doors wasn’t quite tight in its frame. But there shouldn’t have been anything in there at all.

  He leaned in through the car window. “Maybe you should call Solis. I’m going to look around.”

  “Not by yourself! I’m going with you. My—my boss is in there.”

  “No. If Harper is right, it’s going to be dangerous in there, and if she’s in trouble, we need backup. Which is why you are going to call the cops and wait here. I don’t want anyone else dead.”

  Carol clamped her mouth into a hard line and her bottom lip quivered a little, but she didn’t argue further.

  Quinton slipped off into the shadows, skirting around the streetlamps and bushes until he got to the streak of light. He could hear people talking in low voices that seemed to rise from the ground, and there was a smell hanging around the place like turned earth and new cement. New construction under the cover of the condemned building. Why hadn’t he noticed it before? Aside from not looking for it in the dark last time and being too busy running away.

  This was just a bad place, bottom line. Rotten shit happened here and he was sure it would happen again tonight.

  He touched the door and felt it give a little: Someone hadn’t pulled it all the way closed or . . . He ran his fingers lightly over the edges of the frame until he found a pebble that had wedged itself in the hinge. Should have cleaned up better, but if they’d been in a rush, one little rock was easy to miss. Lucky for him.

  He thought he should check for an alarm, but with the door ajar, it would have gone off already if there was one.

  He patted down his pockets and found a dental mirror. Then he opened the door a bit more and pushed the mirror in, looking for anyone inside. Empty little room, lockers. He went in and shut the door until it stuck on the pebble again—after all, it’s not breaking and entering if the door is open. Empty, empty, empty, but he could still hear the mutter of voices somewhere.

  He went carefully through the rooms, but he didn’t find anyone and that was just weird. People had been there, but they were gone now. One room looked a lot like a jail cell except it didn’t have bars, just a strange metal bench thing—or a box, depending on how you looked at it.

  He found a set of recently poured cement stairs and started down one at a time. The air in the stairwell seemed too thin and he felt like he couldn’t get enough oxygen. It might have made someone else panic, but Quinton was used to strange airless places and he just moved with more care.

  Noise, much louder, came up the stairs—something like a tree falling and then a gunshot. He startled forward but caught himself in the return of silence and went on, creeping down.

  Someone screamed, hysterical with fear. Not Harper’s voice, but it made Quinton move a little faster. The staircase was long, way too long. . . .

  A noise like a train wreck ripped through the building, sending a shot of adrenaline into his blood that got him down the next six stairs in a run. The clatter of his own feet made the noise worse as something screeched and choked until it stopped. Then a blast of air knocked him back, icy cold and carrying a sensation of horror so strong that it turned him around.

  He froze. He could hear more noise now, from above as well as below. The sound of cars and men in boots. The police. He’d have to get downstairs before they did. God knew what was down there, but he wanted Harper out of it before Solis and the Feebs showed up. The need to get to Harper was stronger than the wash of things unclean and dreadful that roared up the stairs.

  He bit his lip and charged down, letting his feet clatter all the way to fight the noise of something down below that screamed with a thousand, tormented voices at once and froze his blood. He felt like his innards were turning to water, but he kept going.

  The bottom landing had a locked door on it, but he braced himself against the wall and kicked it just above the lock. The door buckled but didn’t quite spring open. He put his shoulder against it and pushed.

  The door swung open on boiling fog and light, spiked with the scent of blood and something rotting. He couldn’t see well, but he thought he saw Harper in the haze before she faded and vanished, grappling with what looked like a giant white cobra of smoke. The snake screeched and unraveled, dissolving into the strange vapor that filled the room.

  He could see other people moving in the fog, but the sense of something threatening, sinister, and hungry held him at bay a moment longer. Brightness bloomed in the center of the room and he could hear feet coming across the cement above.

  Then the gleaming cloud sucked itself away with a whispering sound, leaving a nimbus like a double rainbow around the middle of the room. There was a door there and two people. One of them turned and went through the door, bursting into light and falling apart into golden shapes that tumbled away, leaving the impression of some huge, lithe shape that faded with the brightness and left only quiet and the smell of something burnt. Only the other remained. Slim, brown-haired . . .

  He ran toward her, calling her name: “Harper, Harper!” She started to turn toward him. He saw bruises, wounds, blood. . . .

  From the edge of the room something moved, and Harper jerked, slamming forward onto the ground under the concussion of a gunshot. Quinton wheeled toward the shooter. Fucking Goodall.

  He couldn’t hear the words on the other man’s lips, but he knew “bitch” when he saw it and the man kept walking forward, raising the gun again. . . . Quinton leapt at him, twisting to clutch for the heavy automatic still smoking in the other man’s hand. Something shoved him away, pushing him toward Harper. The dark thing moved too fast for a human and stunk of carrion. Jesus, another vampire. Another shot went off behind him—smaller and lighter than Goodall’s—but he didn’t turn back, just scrambled along the floor to Harper, past something dead that wasn’t too human and something that looked like cremated remains scattered through a tangle of ruined clothes.

  He tried to turn her head, but she wasn’t moving and her face was scraped and oozing blood where she’d hit the floor. Her shoulders and back were lacerated with weird marks that closed up as he watched. He rolled her over, pulling her head into his lap. She sighed, staring up at him, but he knew she didn’t see him. There was a ragged hole in her midsec
tion, an exit wound the size of a fist, a foul stench, and a sea of blood where she’d been lying. She wasn’t bleeding now. The big hole seemed to sparkle, and he thought it was knitting up, pulling itself back together the way the cuts in her shoulder had.

  Then it stopped. Breath slid out of her mouth and she seemed to get heavier in his lap, her staring eyes seeming to dull as he watched. Something felt like it cracked open in his chest. He wanted to scream, but men don’t, and he wanted to cry, but he couldn’t. He just held on to her body, which already felt too cool, and listened to feet pound down the stairs too damned late.

  Something loomed behind him, but he didn’t give it the satisfaction of a glance. “She will come back.” Carlos. Scariest bastard in the bunch and he hadn’t helped her.

  “How do you know?” Quinton screamed. “What if she doesn’t? She said there’s always a last time and what if this was it? All this is for nothing. She didn’t save anyone, not even herself. And you didn’t help!”

  He hung his head and now the tears came. Carlos made a scoffing sound deep in his throat. Quinton wanted to kill him.

  “Oh, ye of little faith. It appears Ms. Blaine shot Mr. Goodall before she went down. She is much too stubborn to die.”

  Men with guns scrambled through the door and Quinton could feel Carlos step back, probably sliding into shadows or some other damned vampire trick so he wouldn’t have to explain anything.

  In the distance, someone was talking. “Who are you?” Solis, maybe . . .

  “Carlos Pires Ataíde. I accompanied Ms. Linzey and Mr. Lassiter.”

  Solis grunted and said something in Spanish.

  “No, only Portuguese and the sort of words your mother would blush at.”

  Shuffling sounds barely penetrated his mind as he blinked the stinging water out of his eyes, trying to see Harper’s face for as long as he could. He kept fooling himself that she’d twitched or shivered, but he knew it wasn’t true. She felt so cold and heavy. Didn’t they always say dead people were lighter? What was it . . . twenty-one grams? The weight of a soul. Or a breath.

  Someone was kneeling beside him, pulling on him, trying to get to Harper, but he wouldn’t let them take her. Busy hands worked around him and voices floated past, unheard.

  Quinton shivered, breathing too roughly around the heavy constriction in his chest and throat. His hands trembled, brushing the fallen teardrops off Harper’s face. How would he ever draw another breath with this feeling in his chest? It was like dying himself.

  Then Harper blinked.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I made up several terms and creatures for this book and the previous one since I couldn’t find good words to describe what I wanted or monsters to take the roles I needed. In two cases I worked from Portuguese roots, since Carlos, who introduces both terms, is originally from Portugal. In vetting my terms I got some help from two native Portuguese speakers: Nelia Chalmers, and Guilhermes Damian. Errors and misappropriations are all mine and not their fault. I tend to take vile liberties with languages, so I hope native speakers and scholars won’t be too upset with me for what I’ve done here.

  Névoacria: “Mist creature.” Created by me from two Portuguese terms: “névoa,” meaning “mist,” and “criatura,” meaning “creature.” I shortened the term to make it easier to read.

  Lâmina que Consome as Almas: “Blade that consumes souls.” A suggestion in Portuguese from Nelia, and one I just couldn’t resist.

  Seraphi-guardi: “Seraphlike guards.” This is a passive creature made of numberless, ethereal eyes, suggested by the seraphim described in Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quartet books. Another term I made up, but this time from the Latin roots.

  Kreanou: A vampire subtype with shape-shifting abilities, driven by ultimate fury and despair to destroy its creator and therefore itself. Each is tied to its vampiric creator by an incompletely severed link which stops it from ever being sane or free. This is another creature I invented; the name is bastardized Greek.

  Asetem-ankh-astet: Ancient Egyptian vampires who thrive on emotional pain and turmoil. They are the “children” of the Pharaohn-ankh-astet and depend on his existence and power for their own. As his power wanes, so does theirs. They cannot long survive without the Pharaohn.

  Ushabti: A daywalking demi-vampire type specific to the asetem. Closer to human than most demi-vampires and dhampirs, the ushabti acts as a servant to the Pharaohn and has magical abilities that are unique to each ushabti. The term comes from the Egyptian funerary figures of the same name that were put into ancient graves to assist the dead in the afterlife.

  Pharaohn-ankh-astet: The god-king of the asetem, he is the dwindling remains of an ancient serpent god—which I cobbled up from the numerous snake gods found in legends throughout Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Only the Pharaohn can make an asete, and with his death, the remaining asetem must either find another god, learn to make one, or die (quickly or slowly).

  The previous book, Vanished, had no author’s note even though I did a lot of research for it, including some on-the-ground work in London. But since nearly all of the research did make it into the book, a note didn’t seem as important. What didn’t make it may have its day another time.

  For Labyrinth, there was a lot less external research than any previous book. I did go to Leavenworth, Washington, and do a lot of driving around and reading up to find the perfect place for Dru Cristoffer’s house and labyrinth. The actual location has never been built on and is, in fact, just a fold of empty land up behind the cemetery. The Leavenworth graveyard, however, does exist right where I said it does. It’s an interesting place to look at and people are still being buried there once in a while.

  The ghosts Harper sees on the road are memorials to documented modern and historical accidents. One in particular, the two women and a boy, is a sad, strange tale that began with the death of a Seattle mortician on Thanksgiving night 1944 and ended with the death of his family exactly four years later. It’s the sort of thing you’d half expect Harper to find, and if you want to know more about this tragedy, the article at HistoryLink is very good: www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=8229.

  The ladies at the Upper Valley Historical Society have no idea how much my tour of their museum and bookshop helped in the writing of the Leavenworth scenes and my understanding of the town’s current and past incarnations. All the museum volunteers were helpful and sweet, and they never knew what dreadful things I was contemplating. Also, the maker of some of the tastiest chocolate in the world is located in Leavenworth so the trip wasn’t all work and no play.

  Some of my research into math, mazes, labyrinths, and their relation to Greek keys led me to the fun webpages of programmer Jo Edkins. You can find a nifty animation showing how a Greek key becomes a labyrinth on this page that Edkins designed: gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/greekkey/origin.htm.

  I got some help from my sister, Elizabeth Rose, and her husband, Armando Marini, with the Lâmina’s possible origin and construction as well as some of the ceremonial magic and magic circle information. As usual, I tweaked a few things to match my needs rather than sticking strictly to canon. Clay quenching is a real process in weapon forging and several legends mention quenching magical blades in the blood of enemies, but I don’t suggest trying this at home. Or anywhere else.

  I also must apologize to residents of the Nob Hill district in Queen Anne for putting a nest of asetem in their midst. I had to muck about a little with the actual geography of the hill and its towers to get what I wanted for the story in place, but I tried to keep it to a minimum. For instance, the Queen Anne High School gymnasium building wasn’t actually closed until September of 2009, but it was too good a location to resist. I would have used the original high school building, which is said to be haunted, but it’s now been renovated into very classy condos and I just couldn’t see Wygan living there. . . .

  The asetem-ankh-astet and their Pharaohn are entirely my creation. So far as I could discover
, there aren’t any legendary vampires in Egyptian mythology, but I’d already gotten started on the tale and pretty much had to leave it in. I ran across a few references online to the Church of Astet-Ka but was never able to get any substantive information about this group, what it is, or its origin in the time I had. I borrowed part of the name and then twisted and played with it to my own ends (and just in case there are any copyright issues), but the vampires and their details are all mine and not extracted or borrowed from another source.

  The hardest thing about this book was pulling all the strands together from all the previous books. I did try to keep everything consistent and look things up when I didn’t have them already in the series bible, but I may have missed one or two details or gotten them wrong. My editor, copy editor, and beta readers did their best to keep me on track, but where things went wrong, that’s all my fault.

  I really didn’t enjoy killing off characters. I’m kind of attached to most of these folks since they are my very first creations, and doing any of them in wasn’t fun. But not everyone can live forever and sometimes in fiction it’s necessary to cut someone out and do horrible things to perfectly nice people.

  I also hope readers will forgive me for allowing time to slip a bit in these stories. Harper’s tale to date has only spanned a little more than two years, though it’s taken five years to tell it, and details have been matched to the time of writing rather than my attempting to keep Harper in strict chronology. If that had been the case, the current book would have been set in May of 2002, but it takes place in May of 2010 instead. I plan to continue with this habit as long as the series is still in production, since it not only makes it easier for me, but readers seem to relate better to a character who is active in their own time.