by Sara Hanover
A slight chill swirled about me. This is the time of year when Richmond settles into autumn. Frost at night. Ice, sometimes, after the rain. Trees that shed don a flare of color before going shockingly bare, in advance of winter, and their bare moments had hit. I can’t ever remember getting much in the way of heavy snow here, but we do get winter, cold and achy, and it does snow now and then. I couldn’t tell if the essence around me teased of the coming season or if it was my father haunting me.
“Hey, Dad,” I said to the cold air. “Don’t try to talk, just listen. I’m just thinking things over. Making plans. There’s a high elf, Devian. He’s not a nice guy and he’s taking hostages. I’m just trying to figure out a way to get Mom and Aunt April home safe. If we can work things out, I might even be able to get my hands on Mortimer’s journals. There’s a possibility he worked with you, even if briefly, and knew what had you all knotted up, and who might have done this to you. Iron Dwarves keep thorough records, supposedly. If I can get that information, I’m one step closer to helping you. One step closer to bringing you back. Devian might have had a hand in it, too, but I’m betting he won’t answer any questions, and we intend on putting him out of reach. So I’m not sure how I can bring you home.” Or send him on, which was a possibility I didn’t want to consider, but might have to, when that day came.
The cold air developed a misty wing which enveloped me and then faded. A hug, I guessed, the best he could do right now. He’d been so weak lately. Or perhaps the stone kept him a little out of reach as it protected me. I couldn’t ask either to determine which. I stood up, tugged on my jeans’ waistband, and decided it would all work out because it had to and I had no other choice.
Brian met me at the top of the stairs, dropping the flash-bang in my hand. “Slam dunk it.”
I couldn’t mistake it for any of the others. It glittered like one of those rainbows that had greeted my twentieth birthday, but it had a skin around it, rather like saran wrap, to protect it. I knew when I tossed it, the flash-bang would have to hit the ground hard or it wouldn’t explode.
“Got it.”
He cleared his throat then. “I’m going to prepare.”
He went upstairs where I could hear the floorboards creak faintly as he moved across them.
I paused at the door to my mom’s office. Her laptop was in place on her desk, so at least that hadn’t been abducted along with her; her work was safe. From what I could tell, work had been moving right along on her dissertation, finally. She should be here, too, safe at her desk. If I hadn’t decided to go after the Eye of Nimora, she would still be where she wanted to be—home. Out of habit, I plucked the computer up and stowed it in her desk drawer although I left it unlocked, in case I needed to retrieve it.
My phone let out a little chime indicating a text was received. I thumbed it open and then forwarded it to everyone who counted. I Googled the time. Just before dawn, when the new moon would fade into the sunrise, and in a part of town I did not know. I immediately heard from the professor: No, absolutely not.
I queried back: why?
Not to our advantage, he told me.
Advantages could make the difference, obviously, but I wasn’t sure what he objected to. So I asked.
And he texted back: Midnight or dawn. Location is unimportant, it’s the time.
It came back so quickly I realized that Brian used the phone and he’d more than just learned two-thumb texting, he’d mastered it. But it was the professor behind the words. Before I could ask more questions, Carter weighed in on the group text: The time will be fine.
And the two began to go back and forth on the merits of the rendezvous while I just listened to the texts ping and kept up. Finally, the time and place were begrudgingly accepted, and I let Devian know.
The guys told me to get whatever sleep I could. Nice advice, if I could take it. I didn’t think I could sleep a wink.
Next thing I knew, I dreamed.
And the fight started.
I had almost forgotten what it was like to do battle in my sleep. Maybe Scout’s presence soothed me or maybe I’d just been too dog-tired, pun intended, to dream, but I hadn’t been up to a fight in days. Or, more accurately, nights. Yet as I stood alone, in downtown Richmond near where bricks lined the streets and quaint lampposts decorated the corners, I knew I wasn’t alone nor would I be left alone. Something or someone hunted me.
And, dollars to doughnuts, I knew exactly what.
So, since I was going to be out here on my own, I decided I knew what I wanted to be carrying, and named it. Before I could blink, I held the professor’s blasting rod in my hands, his wooden cane with its faceted crystal in the handle, and it glittered like a clear and perfect diamond in the dream light. The stone in my left palm clicked gently against it as I righted it and gripped it tighter. Even the sound of it radiated confidence, not to mention the heft.
The thought nagged at me: why the cane and not the professor himself?
Because he wasn’t himself, not at all, and the cane did not have the weakness of a mortal being. My dream self knew what it wanted to rely upon, even if I was uncertain. I was new. Untrained but not untested.
I wandered along through stores and businesses that had been gentrified from dockside business, where once nobody respectable would have strolled. Many had brass plaques identifying what historic period they’d survived and what, if anything, significant had happened there. A surprising number had leaned upon one another since Revolutionary war days, reinforced with modern beams and roofing but not refined, little changed where possible, and now holding storefronts with a certain cachet. At the end of the block, near a curve of the James, a sign swung out. The Cutting Block, it read, and although it was a dream, I recognized a popular college bar and grill that often didn’t check ID as it should. Rumor had it that the building was haunted and that it had been a butchery in its first life, livestock driven into it and carcasses of meat hauled out. I’d been in there once or twice despite being underage but didn’t believe the common urban legend that blood could still be smelled or the sad and low cries of animals heard as their lives ended.
As I approached it, that disbelief fled. The heavy copper tang did infiltrate my senses, but I heard no sound, the entire street deadly silent except for my own steady trespass. It made my insides feel quivery and cowardly. Then a quiet wind swung the sign as I approached and paused under it; it should have creaked, but it didn’t. The front door stood ajar, just enough to offer an invitation. Nothing else on the street attracted my attention or looked like it should. I hesitated under the sign for another long moment, deciding.
Then I toed the door wide open.
The door should have creaked, too, rusty hinges and all, but it didn’t. It swung smoothly inward, and the streetlight from outside, with a gas instead of electric flame, cast my shadow across the threshold. My breath hitched as I felt Evelyn with me, or her shade, or her essence, going to the doorway with me.
“Live and learn,” she told me. She glowed as I passed her by. It wasn’t much of a casting, as the interior seemed to swallow it up, but I took a deep breath and entered anyway.
I know. Places like this aren’t meant to be entered. I mean, I seriously realize that. Every nerve in my body screamed at me not to go into the Cutting Block. Before I finished crossing the border from street to building, I let go of the professor’s cane and wished it back home safe, where it belonged. Because I dreamed it, it went. I could only hope that safe became part of it as well.
Once inside, my eyes adjusted; I discovered I wore my bracers, with each of those golden stones, topazes, softly lit. I couldn’t see a lot, but what I could see, I didn’t want to. What should have been a hipster bar reverted back to its original, grisly occupation. I could smell the blood and odor of freshly cut and ground meat. It roiled inside of me, and my stomach clenched, overwhelmed, halting me in place.
Then the meat hooks and racks caught my attention. Row after row of them, suspended from the ceiling, crude chains and thick heavy ropes holding them, sides of beef and pork waiting to be chopped down. And beyond them . . .
Human forms hung from the racks.
More grotesque in their own way, they swung back and forth slightly in a nonexistent wind, clothed as they would be in real life, but at the mercy of the meat hook that held them. And they were not lifeless. Far from it. As I approached them, they opened eyes to watch me. Lifted their heads. Opened their mouths to try to speak to me, and I knew what they wanted. To be taken down. To be freed.
One managed a whisper as I passed her: “No voice but yours.” I looked up and recognized a fourth grade teacher from Franklin elementary school. Another lifted a hand, and his shirt cuff brushed my sleeve, the owner of the little pharmacy on the corner. A begrimed car mechanic from the garage that had kept my mom’s car running for years. Good people, as I remembered. So what were they doing here? This was not some insane dream idea of physical therapy, they were prisoners.
And they looked at me now, chins turning, eyes imploring, as if they thought I could be their savior. I wanted to say, not my popcorn, not my circus, but I couldn’t. I sidled by one of the economics teachers at Sky Hawk CC and he managed to say: “The stone.”
That caught on. It sighed through the cavernous building, echoing back from the high rafters and faraway corners. Stone. Stone.
My left hand tingled vigorously.
How did they know? Why did they hope?
And who was behind this army of distraught people?
Then I saw the hanger who was more shade and darkness than mortal flesh, the girl-fox with three tails I knew as Joanna Hashimoto. She spun about on her hook, and her katana lashed out at me, missing by a scant inch. She spat and hissed at her failure to cut me. She’d been pretty once but now anger and pain contorted her features.
She kicked at me, spinning about on the rack, and shreds of inky nothingness peeled off her body, disintegrating as they hit the old flooring. Her katana slashed about as she spun, a silver crescent that moved like lightning. I knew who her puppet master had to be, so I ducked around her, careful, because I did not intend to meet Devian in this place of horrors. Not without my crew and the plans we’d tried to carefully make. In the corner just beyond Joanna, I saw her father, who did little more than open his eyes and glare at me as I went down the aisle. His katana stayed in its back sheath and his hands remained quiet by his sides, but I could feel the hatred boiling out of his stare.
Beyond them, I encountered Judge Maxwell Parker. His eyes narrowed in anger at me, one of them still purple and greenish above the brow and down into the temple. He reached for me and missed, hissing in disappointment. That gave me pause. How good could the Society be if it was unaware of Parker’s fall? Or perhaps they knew full well and kept him as a small fish to lead them to the bigger fish. As I circled widely past, I could feel the emanation of hate coming after. Even with no idea why he’d taken Germanigold, I knew we’d made an enemy and would have to watch our backs if the Society couldn’t. I had a more immediate problem, though, as the scent of the butchery rose thickly.
The smell of blood worried me. What bled here, and how much, and why?
The old wood floor creaked under my feet. When I looked down, I could see clouds of stains, old blood and worse, no doubt from the past. But dry now, gone for all intents and purposes, long gone. The butchery floor held its own resonance and gore from its past, but I told myself it couldn’t touch me now. I hoped I was right.
Then I saw Remy. Her once-elegant form twirled about slowly on its hook, and blood dripped from her seemingly lifeless form. I remembered her as slender, long-nosed but beautiful, hair done up, movements as graceful as they could be deceitful. Her turtleneck sweater hid the arch of her throat, soaked with blood that looked more black than crimson in this lighting, and her eyes, already open, showed no hint of awareness. A blood drop fell from a limp hand and as it hit the floor, rippled into a small puddle of the same, I saw her rib cage lift and fall in a breath. I stood for a minute or two but did not see another exhalation.
I moved away, thinking that she both lived and died at an excruciatingly slow rate. Tortured, unlike all the others, and in ways far worse.
Illumination from my bracers flickered, growing dim. If I wasn’t careful, I’d be left in the dark here, and I definitely did not want that.
I was about to turn away and leave when I saw two final captives. The sight froze me for a split second, and then hot tears filled my eyes and I moved down the row heedlessly, because nothing could keep me from my mother.
Sweat or rain had wet her blond hair to her skull, and she wore a cream silk blouse that was one of her favorites. This time she’d paired it with her navy slacks. I couldn’t see a bit of red on her, but that didn’t keep my heart from thumping in my chest so loudly she had to have heard it. Aunt April hung next to her, ankles crossed primly and her arms folded over her chest, eyes shut tightly as if she couldn’t bear to see about her.
I glided to a stop next to my mother. She put out her hand and held me as I tried to reach up and pull her down off the hook. “It is not,” she whispered into my ear, “what you think.”
“You,” I told her, “are displayed like a meat carcass in a butcher shop. It can’t be much worse. Stand on my shoulders, let me see if I can lift you off.” I tried to heave her up, but she fought me, feet flying and the two of us circling about each other futilely, her telling me to leave and me telling her to stand up.
Aunt April said quietly, “Listen to Mary and get out, while you can.” Her eyes flew open. “It’s a trap.”
Seriously, she didn’t think I knew that . . . and she also thought I’d leave her and my mother behind?
My mother shook herself hard enough that chains rattled and ropes sawed and a bit of dust flitted from the eaves down about us. I batted the debris away from me and saw, just for a flash, a bit of glitter about it. I looked up. Moonlight shined through patches in the roof where boards had split open, and rain had wrenched a pathway down, and I watched the colorful motes drifting to the floor, like pixie dust.
And beyond, in the corner, something monstrous spread cloaklike wings, and a face as pale as a moon stared out at me from the dark, and he—whatever, whoever it was—laughed. He put a hand out, waggled a few fingers and all the chains and pulleys answered to his movement, bodies dancing like grotesque puppets as the rainbow dust swirled closer to me.
“Oh, hell no,” I said, backing away quickly. I wasn’t going to be beguiled by that stuff again even as I realized my mother and my aunt might not be my mother and aunt.
I turned and ran for the door, far in front of me now, its thin edge of an opening falling radiant across the blood-stained floor to guide me.
The door, scarcely open before, began to close. Thanking my coach for making me run sprints, I raced for it. But a body occupied the threshold for a moment and I saw Evelyn, beckoning, holding the time and space for me.
“Hurry!” she urged me. “The jaws are closing!”
I stretched my legs and dug for all the strength I had. Then I put my left palm down and fell into a baseball diamond runner’s skid, a slide meant to carry me across the plate, and asked my stone for an extra kick of speed. Evelyn faded as I slipped through her form.
We, the stone and I, made it through as the doorway slammed shut behind. Dream over.
CHAPTER FORTY
. . . NOW YOU DON’T
SLEEP IS A wonderful thing. I managed about two hours of it before Brian and Carter knocked politely on my bedroom door and told me to get the lead out, time to leave. I wondered where southern chivalry had fled. I hadn’t bothered to undress for the night so I’d be on my feet and all set.
Scout rolled over on his back, stretching all four paws into the air as he yawned.
&nb
sp; “Like you have anything to complain about!” I shoved him off the bed. He came back for my pillow, yanked it out from under me to the floor and plopped his puppy body down on it, engulfing it.
Finding my shoes, I got them on, despite the big stumbling block taking up most of the floor space in my room and returning to doggish snores. He had to know I was going out when I reached for my sneakers, but he didn’t put up a single protest when I started downstairs without him. I did a U-turn in the hallway and came back, grabbing one of his soft ears anyway. “You’re going out before you go back to sleep,” I told him and so he did. The light from the mudroom back door fell upon a still, very unawake backyard.
Carter had coffee waiting in three big containers from one of those fancy coffee shops in town. He pointed at the one marked with a T. “Coffee mocha with cream and sugar and an extra shot of chocolate.”
“Be still my heart,” I said as I took it up and tested the heavenly goodness. Still very hot but not enough to scald the tip of my tongue. “Sweet and free, just the way I like it.”
Now that he had returned inside, Scout began hopefully nudging his empty food dish.
“Too early.”
He sneezed.
Relenting, I dropped a handful of kibble into the stainless steel realm. “Still early for a full feeding. That will have to do.”
He settled for it, but when he finished, it was Carter’s foot he came and sat on, not mine. I got a baleful look, instead.
“Have we got all that we need?”
I had the special flash-bang in my right pocket and that was about all I had to carry. Brian’s jacket pockets bulged with whatever it was the professor thought he needed, and Carter had a long knife that I’d never seen before lashed to his left thigh.
“Wow. Know how to use it?”
