by J. Kenner
"Kiera," Clarence said, tossing her a knife. "Cut her across the image, then throw me the knife."
"You?"
"I'll need your blood to call you back."
"Oh." I supposed that made sense. Next time, though, I'd be sure to bring my passport along. Just in case I got stuck going home the more traditional commercial-jetliner way. "How will you know when to open it?"
"I'll know," he said, though his expression did not fill me with confidence.
"Ready?" Kiera asked. "It's either going to work, or it isn't."
She had a point, and even though I was far from ready, I nodded. Rose was behind me, but I swear I could feel her eyes upon me. And then, when Kiera slashed the blade fast and sharp against my skin, I heard my sister's sharp intake of breath.
“The knife!" Clarence said, as Kiera tossed it. "Now clasp hands. Quickly! Quickly!"
We did, and not a moment too soon, because almost simultaneously with my blood dripping onto the symbol drawn onto the floor, the concrete beneath us seemed to fall away. The colored outline that had been drawn around us began to spin and rise, as if pulling up a thin, misty curtain, and leaving us encased in a writhing, moving tube. It stretched and pulled, and as everything outside the tube went black, I held tight to Kiera's hand, for the first time grateful I had company on this freakish journey.
At first, it didn't seem like we were going anywhere, then the tug came, that hard yank at the gut. Kiera yelped, so I knew she felt it too, and all of a sudden we were hurtling through space, our hands clenched tight as nothingness swirled around us.
Except it wasn't nothing. There were sounds. And bits of light. And strange mists. And the overwhelming sense that we were not alone.
The ground had disappeared from beneath us, and the only purchase I had on any sort of reality was my death grip on Kiera's hand. Her fingernails cut into my flesh, drawing blood, and the pain was grounding me, because I was starting to fear that if we didn't end up somewhere soon, I was going to scream and scream and scream and—
"Holy shit!" Kiera's voice cut through the darkness of the room we'd just landed in.
"Shhhh." I had my hand over her mouth without thinking. "Someone was with us," I whispered, my mouth by her ear, my voice low.
I felt her nod. I couldn't see her, though. Wherever we were, it was pitch-black, and I was beginning to fear that Clarence's bridging skills needed some work.
A slight breeze stirred my hair, and I twisted my head, finding the direction from which the air was coming. I tapped Kiera, then crawled slowly in that direction, small rocks digging into my palms and knees as I inched my way through the chamber. After what seemed like an eternity but was probably only fifteen minutes, I found the far wall. I didn't know if we were alone in the room, and if we weren't, I didn't want to reveal ourselves to our companion. I didn't really see an alternative, though. If there was a way out of this chamber, it was there by the draft. But I couldn't feel the exit point and I was out of ideas.
I reached into the interior pocket of my duster and pulled out my cell phone, silently berating Clarence for not loading us up with all sorts of survival-type goodies. Like, say, some C-4 and a detonator.
Barring that, I flipped open my phone and let the light shine back into the chamber, illuminating Kiera's face in the strange blue light. Hers, thank goodness, was the only face I saw, and I immediately felt a dozen pounds lighter. Maybe nothing had come with us through the bridge. Maybe we were there on our own, and we'd get the key and get out without any trouble.
I mean, hey. A girl can dream, right?
Kiera scrambled up beside me, adding the light from her phone to mine. "Where are we, anyway?" she asked.
"Dunno. Do you have a signal?" My phone was flashing No service, and it was clear hers was, too. Hundreds of dollars of technology between us, and the most we had were expensive flashlights. "Right here," I said, pointing at a seam in the stone. "I think if we just push—"
I pushed as I spoke, and, sure enough, the stone wriggled loose. "Help me." She got up close, and the two of us pushed and shoved until finally the stone gave way and we had a nice, girl-sized hole in the wall. I looked over my shoulder at Kiera and shrugged. "Here goes nothing," I said, then wriggled through the hole. It was tight—my shoulders scraped the sides—but it wasn't as if I had far to go. I emerged on the other side of the wall in a cavernous room, the walls of which were decorated with images that looked like something you might buy at Pier One. And, no, I'm not history, science, or geography girl, so "from Asia somewhere" was the best that I could do.
I remembered the rooftops on the buildings I'd seen protruding from the hills. Like pagodas, I'd said, and the memory made me feel a bit better. If we were somewhere in Asia, maybe we were in the right place after all.
"What now?" Kiera asked, squeezing out of the hole behind me.
"I don't know." There was no neon arrow pointing the way. No sign saying Push Here to Retrieve Relic. Nothing at all to help us find the thing we were looking for. I didn't even know if the thing was bigger than a bread box, and right then I felt a spurt of dark, sour anger. A low fury that I'd been thrust into this job—by both Johnson and Clarence, no less—and neither one of them had given me a clue what I was supposed to do once I got in the general vicinity of the thing.
"I don't like this," Kiera whispered. "I can fight demons. They trained me to do that. But I'm not freaking Indiana Jones."
I felt the same way, but there wasn't a lot we could do about it at the moment. Complain to the management, and management might decide to leave us there. Somehow, the idea didn't appeal.
"Listen," I said. "Do you hear that?" It was faint, but I was pretty sure I'd picked up on the sound of running water.
"A stream?"
"Where?" I don't know why, but I was certain the stream was important.
She pointed to the far side of the cavern. "There. Look."
She was right. From where we were standing, it was almost impossible to see, but there was a small stream running alongside the far wall of the cavern, snaking around the stone wall and into the connecting chamber.
"Come on," I said, unsheathing my knife. "We're following it."
I knew the moment we followed the stream around the wall and into the next chamber that we'd made the right decision. Not only had the pictograms on the walls changed—the new ones depicting hellish, demonic images fighting bright shining beings in a pitched battle staged across all four of the chamber's walls—but my arm was burning like a son of a bitch again.
“This is the way," I said. "My arm's burning."
"Like that hot-or-cold game," Kiera said. "Guess we're getting hot."
The stream widened in this room, moving away from the wall to divide the room into two distinct sections. The side we were on had nothing of interest. Floor. Walls. Us.
The side across the river seemed much more promising. Not only was the climax of the pictograph story being played out over there—the shining creatures were beating back the snarling beasts—but there was a stone table covered with Chinese characters. Four statues of warriors, each holding a sword, stood beside the table. On top of the table there was a mirror positioned to reflect off another mirror on the roof. One that looked straight down at an ornate jade box sitting on the bed of the river, surrounded by and covered with water.
Bingo.
I wasn't entirely sure how the general public would access this chamber—as far as I could tell, the only way into this entire area was the way we came—but whoever had designed it had obviously wanted visitors to understand that whatever was in that jade box was Important Shit.
And considering the way my arm was burning, I'd bet money it was the Important Shit I'd come for.
“Let's go," Kiera said, taking a step toward the stream.
"Wait." I put a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged me off.
"Dammit, Lily. Let's get the thing and get out of here." She hurried toward the stream, prepared to jump over it. I sa
w her bend—
—and then I saw her fall, laid flat in the blink of an eye.
What the fuck?
I whipped around, my heart pounding, my knife ready, and faced her attacker—Deacon.
14
“No!" I yelled. "You cannot be here. You can't."
"I can't let you do this."
"You're still singing the same song, Deacon."
"I don't want to fight you."
"Then don't," I said. I took I step backward toward the stream. It didn't look deep. If I could get across it, and somehow get my hands on that jade box before Deacon got to me . . .
I didn't know if that was possible. In fact, about the only thing I did know was that Deacon meant business. If I wanted this first piece of the Oris Clef, I was going to have to fight for it. And, dammit, that meant I had to trust that Clarence would get the bridge to me when I needed it.
Deacon was watching me warily, his gaze shifting from the mirror to the stream and to me. "Work with me," he said. "We're running out of time, and you know damn well I'm not your enemy."
“Tell that to Kiera," I said, glancing toward my partner, who I really hoped was only laid out and not dead.
"Paralytic," Deacon said. "I'm surprised you don't remember. It's the same one I used on you."
"I didn't pass out," I countered.
He shrugged. "Combined it with a sleeping agent. She'll have one hell of a headache, but she'll be fine."
"Gee, that was considerate of you. But you shouldn't have wasted it on her. I'm the one getting the relic. That means I'm the one you need to stop."
"I intend to," he said, and this time there was no conversational tone to his voice. No banter between two people who'd been skirting around the edges of building tension. No small nod to whatever tenuous trust had developed between the two of us. No, this time there was nothing but sharp edges and the promise of danger.
This time, I saw the Deacon who dwelled under the surface.
I told myself not to be scared. Of all the people in the world, Deacon wouldn't hurt me. After all, I was at the center of his belief system, wasn't I? I was the girl who was going to lock the gate to hell with him.
Which meant he wouldn't do anything to put me truly out of commission.
But knock me out, take me far away, destroy the relic that I needed to save my sister? Any of those options was still highly plausible. Even probable.
"Enough with the talking," I said, then turned and made a break for it. As I did, I heard him cry out, "No—the water," and then I felt something hard and fast grab my legs. I barely had time to process the fact that he'd leaped forward and grabbed my ankles, pulling me backward toward him.
I went sprawling forward, smashing the side of my face on the stone floor. My cheekbone felt like it exploded, and white-hot pain radiated out like the sun, filling my face with liquid pain and turning the entire room a sickly red color.
"Acid," he said, as I climbed to my feet. "The water's acid."
"What?"
He pulled a coin from his pocket. He tossed it in the stream, and it immediately dissolved, leaving nothing but a bit of smoke fizzing on the surface of the water. "Holy shit," I said.
I took another look at the altar and the setup of mirrors. Then I crawled to the edge of the stream and peered down. Sure enough, the jade box was down there, somehow unaffected by the acid. And inside it I was certain, was my prize. The piece of the relic that was making my arm ache and burn.
"It's impossible to retrieve," Deacon said.
"And you know this how?"
He ignored me, turning away, moving to bend down next to Kiera. "Her pulse is steady."
"Yay," I said. "Wasn't really worried. Focus, dammit. Because I'm going to get that thing."
"No," he said. "You're not. It's down there. In acid. And it's not coming out."
"If it's acid, why isn't the box burned up?"
He lifted a brow. "It's magic acid," he said, his tone dripping with such sarcasm that I had to laugh. Especially since that was clearly the truth. It was magic acid. And if there was one thing that the magic didn't affect then I had to assume there was something else as well.
"Jade," I said. "Maybe there's more jade in here. We can dam up the acid water around the box, and when it's dry, we can reach in and get the relic."
"Brilliant." he said. "But the jade will disintegrate."
I looked pointedly at the obviously intact box that lay within the flowing water. He shrugged, then nodded toward the murals on the walls. "The gemstones on the swords in the pictures," he said. "They're made of jade."
"You're helping me?" I asked. But I wasn't foolish enough to argue about it. Instead, I went to the wall and used my knife to pry out one of the jade pieces. Then I hurried back to the stream and dropped it in.
Seconds later, it had dissolved.
"Like I told you," Deacon said. "It's impossible."
"I don't believe that." At the moment however, I had nothing to back me up. Just a deep sense of righteousness. After all, a fricking map had appeared on my skin. So what was the point of having a map to lead you to something that no one in the entire world could get their hands on? And I wasn't in the mood to believe it was a cosmic joke. When your arm has been slashed and diced, and your blood smeared and drained as much as mine had, the idea that you did it all so that the cosmos could have a big laugh really didn't go over well.
Even then, my arm was aching. Deep, steady throbs, like some damned coded message I was too dense to understand, too stupid to get.
Except . . .
I cocked my head to the side. Surely it couldn't be that simple.
Could it?
"Lily?"
I pulled my knife back out, and as Deacon watched, I sliced my palm, wincing only slightly as the blade cut through flesh. Then I crawled to the edge of the acid stream, held my hand over the churning water, and let the drops flow from my hand into the acid.
I flinched when the first drop hit, expecting a flurry of smoke and the fizz as my blood burned in the acid water. But there was nothing. Just a red stain that slowly dissipated as the acid diluted my blood.
I met Deacon's eyes, suddenly smug. "My blood," I said. “It's wicked cool."
Not that this newfound knowledge about my blood did me a lot of good right off the bat. Because I had a feeling it wasn't me, but rather my blood, that was the magic elixir, and to test that theory, I plucked a strand of hair, then watched it fizzle and pop as the acid consumed it.
Damn.
Carefully, I used my knife to slice a thin strip of skin from the pad of my thumb. I dropped it into the acid water, too, and it was consumed even before my palm started to heal. Damn, damn, and double damn! How the heck was I supposed to get to the box if the acid-proof blood was hidden away inside my skin?
"Am I supposed to let it burn off my skin? My muscle? All the way down to the bone?" I looked up at Deacon, certain he could see both the disgust and the fear in my eyes. "I heal, so—"
"Give it up, Lily," Deacon said. "It isn't meant to be." As he spoke, a low buzzing seemed to fill the chamber, and across the stream, the stone guards shifted, moving their swords into attack positions.
"Deacon," I said, warily. "Did you see that?"
"We're running out of time. We need to get out of here."
"Screw that. You heard Johnson. Rose's life depends on me."
"You really think Johnson's going to let her live? You rely on a bargain with Johnson, and your sister is already dead."
"I am not leaving without the relic."
He shot a significant look at the stone warriors, all four of which had taken a step toward the stream. "Then you may not be leaving at all."
"Then help me, dammit."
He frowned at me, then turned and looked back over his shoulder, at the source of that loud humming, almost like the thrum of an electric generator. When he turned back to me, I could see harsh resignation in his eyes. "This isn't over," he said. "I help you now, you hav
e to help me. I want to find the key. The key to lock the gates, not open them."
I licked my lips, then nodded. "I don't know how I'd have any more luck searching than you, but I'll help. I'm not taking any risks with Rose's life, but I'll help you look."
He glanced at the stream. "Give me your arm."
"What are you—"
"Hurry!"
I complied, and he sliced my forearm as I cried out in pain and surprise. "What the fuck?"
"Wait," he said, squeezing my flesh, drawing blood to the surface.
"Oh, shit," I said, realizing what he was doing. "That's brilliant."
"I hope so," he said, as he began smearing my hand and arm, painting me in a protective armor of my own blood. "Now," he cried, and I plunged my arm into the water, my teeth clenched as I expected the worst.
The worst, however, didn't come, and my hand closed around the jade box. I lifted it, drew it out, then opened the lid to reveal what looked like a sparkling gold chain necklace.
Across the stream, the warriors sprang fully to life. Beside me, Deacon rose, his weapon at the ready. “Take it," he said, "and let's go."
Going, however, wasn't an option. Because even though I drew out the chain and slipped it over my head, there was no portal to take us back. We were stuck. And that meant that we had to fight.
"Clarence!" I screamed uselessly, pressing my hand over the tattoo. "Dammit, Clarence, I have it!"
I thrust my arm up into the air and saw that the tattoo of the second location was now raised and burning like the first. Even the third tattoo felt prickly, burning even more than the second one did at that moment.
We were ready to move on, but we couldn't, and I really wasn't keen on being stuck down there forever. Especially since for me, forever was a literal thing.
Even as I was pondering how those soldiers' swords could easily slice me into a bunch of small, eternal pieces, the soldiers themselves leaped over the stream, swords ready. I rolled to the side as one came straight at me, then turned around to stab it in the back with my knife.
Nothing happened.
The statues had started out stone, and apparently they still were.
