I stood in the threshold, not believing my eyes.
“Too late, too late!” they cawed. “More weight, more weight!”
Thunk!
Malleus buried her shears in the crossrail above my head. I screamed and ducked, but she wrapped a festering arm around my neck and held me while the birds piled more stones onto my sister’s tiny body.
“Let me go!” I growled, but Malleus pulled me into the hallway as I fought back, yanking her arm off my throat. “I swear to God!”
“Leave her alone.” Harken crawled toward us. His hands were bathed in blood, and a gash stretched across his forehead, blood trickling down his face. He collapsed onto his stomach, then reached out. “Please.”
Laughing, Malleus stomped on his outstretched hand. “One of you will die now,” she hissed in my ear and swung me around to face Harken. “Your sister or you. Choose.”
“The hell I will!” I dropped to a knee and yanked her arm hard. “Choose this, bitch!”
Malleus flew over my shoulder and fell hard onto the hallway floor. I dived back into the room and kicked the door closed. Outside, Harken shouted something at Malleus, but by then I had scrambled to my feet, my shoes slipping in the thick dust. I dived across the room, yelling and clapping my hands at the birds roosting on the thick board.
“Get off my sister!”
They were deaf to my cries, and they kept piling the stones, as if I were a ghost they couldn’t see. With a sweep of my arm, I tried to scatter the rooks, but they bounced away and came right back, shrieking, “More weight! More weight!”
“Shut up, you goddamn birds!” I yelled. “Hold on, Devie! I’ll get you out.”
I tried to lift the board. My muscles strained, and I felt something pop in my back. All the blood rushed to my face, and little supernovas exploded in my eyes. The pebbles, though, began to shift. They rolled down the board and cascaded to the floor. The more I pushed, the lighter the board got until with one last heave I sent it flying.
“Devie!”
My sister lay like a corpse on the stone table. Her hair formed a halo around her head. I reached for her, and she sat bolt upright, eyes rolled back, and screamed, “Will and Kelly swinging from a tree, HA-NG-ING!”
I shook her shoulders. “Devon! Wake up!”
“WILL AND KELLY SWINGING FROM A TREE, HA-NG-ING!”
“Come on!” I slapped her cheek. “Snap out of it!”
Her head pivoted slowly toward me. Her eyes popped open, and she smiled. “The dead girl says hello.” Then she went limp, her face drained of color, her body drained of life.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
I grabbed Devon’s wrist to check for a pulse, but my own heart was beating too loud and fast to find one. I pressed my ear against her throat. A few seconds passed, then I heard it, the faint thump of a heartbeat.
“She’s alive!” I yelled. “Thank God. Wake up, Devie. C’mon.”
Devon’s eyes stayed closed, no matter how much I shook her. She was alive, but for how long? We had to get to an emergency room. I checked my phone. No bars, no signal. I gathered her in my arms, kicked through the cawing rooks, and carried her to the door.
There I paused, an ear to the wood, listening for sounds of the fight.
Nothing.
Nothing but my own heartbeat.
If Malleus had beaten Harken, she would have the egg, and there would be no reason to spare our lives. I yanked open the door and stepped into the hallway. The way was clear both ways. No Malleus in sight, but no Harken, either.
I held Devon tight and headed for the elevator.
“Why do you hurry, little one?”
I looked up and wished to God I hadn’t.
Malleus was suspended above the hallway, long, spindly arms and legs pressed against the walls. Before I could move, she dropped like a counterweight and slammed us to the floor. My ears rang like a shot had bounced off my skull, and Devon rolled out of my arms.
“We tire of the game.” Malleus lifted Devon by the hair and pressed the tip of the shears against an eyelid. “Give us the egg, or we shall make the waif’s flesh a pillow and stuff it with her pretty hair.”
“Let go of her.” I was woozy, my vision a blur, my equilibrium gone. The walls seemed ready to crash onto us. “It’s me you want.”
“We only desire the egg. What matters a weak-kneed girl?”
“She’s lying!” Harken staggered toward us, a bloody hand pressed against his stomach. He held the poker in the other. “If any harm comes to them, I’ll destroy your precious egg and your soul along with it.”
“Destroy the egg,” Malleus hissed, “and you destroy yourself.”
“A small price to be rid of your stink.” Harken stuck the poker under Malleus’s chin. “Let go of the girl, or I’ll break your jaw again.”
Malleus laughed. “You cannot hurt us, only impede us. Pain is nothing.”
“Say that after I rip your throat out.” He pulled a shiny egg from his front pocket. “The egg for the girl, as agreed.”
As agreed? I thought.
She eyed him suspiciously but then held out her hand. “Yes, the egg for the girl.” Malleus let Devon slide to the ground. “You will pay dearly for this, familiar.”
Harken moved between the Shadowless and us. “Willow Jane, take your sister,” he said, keeping the egg raised.
I darted in and looped Devon under the arms, dragging her toward the elevators. “Come with us! You’re wounded! You can’t fight her now!”
“Do as I say!” he yelled, pocketing the egg. “No matter what you hear, don’t look back!”
“Harken!” I couldn’t desert him. “Come with us!”
But he wouldn’t. He just flashed that annoying grin and bowed. Then with a deep feral growl he charged Malleus with the poker raised above his head. Ignoring the clash behind me, ignoring Harken’s cries and Malleus’s raging, and abandoning the guy who had just saved our lives, I pulled my sister toward the elevator and prayed that it would arrive fast enough.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
HARKEN made a sweeping, low bow to the Shadowless. “How did you enjoy the performance?”
“We would have preferred more blood,” Malleus said and pointed at the girl hanging from the noose. “Cut her down.”
“Cut her down yourself,” Harken snarled. “I’m done with your dirty work.”
Malleus nudged Kelly’s feet and set her body swinging. “Yet you continue to do it. Our egg?”
“We have a bargain, remember?”
“All magic has a price. Of all creatures doomed to walk this earth, you know that best of all. How will you pay for mine?”
Harken took the shiny stone from his front pocket and wrapped it in his blood-soaked handkerchief. “With this. And the blood of the Uncanny.”
“The price of that magic is BLOOD,” Malleus screamed. “Not SOME blood. ALL THE BLOOD!”
“It’s all you’re going to get, mistress.”
With speed that defied natural laws, she drove her shears into the meat of his thigh. Harken screamed and fell backward, Malleus collapsing on top of him, twisting the blades, then yanking them out. He only grunted when she plunged the sharp tips into his gut until he stopped trying to escape.
“Egg, egg,” she said. “Who has the egg?”
Coughing up blood, Harken handed her the ensanguined handkerchief.
She held the egg up to Kelly. “Gaze upon it! Gaze upon the heart that will awaken the shadows.” She spun Kelly’s body again. “Even yours, wretched child, even yours.”
She tucked the heart into her coat, grabbed Harken by the ankles. She dragged him to the end of the hallway.
“We made a bargain,” Harken murmured.
“For the Uncanny’s blood, and you aided her escape. So as you betray us, we betray you.” She tossed him inside like an empty burlap bag. “But do not worry, familiar, the road will rise to meet you.”
PART FIVE
A DIVINE AND SUPERNATURAL LIGHT
> CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
WHEN the elevator door opened, I summoned whatever strength I had left and swung Devon into a fireman’s carry, evenly distributing her weight across my shoulders. For a little kid she weighed a ton, and I was so tired my knees buckled. I carried her across the lobby, past the snoring guard, and hit the door at full stride. I turned my hip to take the force, and the door flew open. I stumbled and almost slid down the rain-slicked steps. My hockey smarts took over, and I caught my balance.
“Sorry, Devie,” I said. “It’s going to be okay. I’m getting help.”
The streets were more deserted than before. The rain was coming down harder, and all the cars parked on the alley were dark. I spun in a circle bewildered, not sure what to do, until a horn sounded a block over.
“Hang on, Devie!” I yelled and ran toward the sound, my boots splashing through deep puddles, my chest tight from the struggle for air. Hang on yourself, I thought, and kept repeating it till I reached Beacon Street. “Thank God.”
Beacon was busier. Much busier, with taxis and cars weaving through the night. Without even thinking about it, I stepped into the one-way street. A big SUV laid on its horn, but I didn’t move—I was too freaking exhausted to. Headlights flashed, and the whole world filled up with their light. I dropped to my knees as the SUV skidded sideways, the brakes locking up, as it bumped the curb.
“What the hell?” A woman jumped out and came at us, just a silhouette in the headlights. “Are you trying to get run—holy Jeez! Are you okay?”
“Please, help me!” I was out of breath and struggling to hang on to Devon. “It’s my sister! She needs an ambulance!”
The woman helped me lay Devon on the sidewalk, dialed 911 on her phone. “What happened to her?”
“She was taken!” My voice turned from angry to frightened. My body started to shake. “It’s on the news. The one who did it, she’s upstairs in the hotel.”
“We’ve got a little girl in bad shape here,” the woman said when the 911 operator loudly asked for the nature of the emergency.
“Please tell them to hurry,” I pleaded.
The driver nodded. She lifted Devon’s wrist and closed her eyes, counting. “I got a pulse, but looks like she might be in shock? It’s freezing out here.”
But she’ll be okay, I told myself. Shock could be treated with a blanket. That’s what she needed, a blanket. Her skin was so cold, and she needed something warm.
Then above us, something crashed through a window, and seconds later broken glass rained down, followed by a weight that slammed into the sidewalk.
“Jesus,” the woman whispered. “That guy jumped!”
“Jumped?” I said and followed the driver’s eyes.
Harken’s broken body lay on the pavement, arms and legs bent at the wrong angles, a puddle of blood forming around his head.
“No,” I whispered. “No, no.”
The driver stepped in front of me, blocking my view. “Don’t look, don’t look.”
But I’d already looked, because I always looked. I’d seen everything from the instant the body had landed and then bounced. I’d seen the fractured face of a dead man, and I already knew what the driver was trying to keep me from witnessing.
Harken was dead.
I looked up at the hotel, where Malleus was leaning out a high window. She had the egg, and I had my sister. But Harken was dead, and that hadn’t been part of the bargain. He wasn’t supposed to die. A locust swarm of black spots clouded my vision. It felt like I was on the cusp of a terrible glimpse, but it never came.
“What a pity,” Malleus called down, mocking me. “We have our heart’s desire, and the girl has nothing but a paper doll.”
She was cackling like a lunatic when I bit my thumb and pulled out a thread of gossamer, twisting it as I did. The world turned sepia, and everything ran in reverse.
Rain rose from the ground.
Glass flew into the air.
Harken’s body was sucked from the pavement and pulled up, up into the window, and then the sheet of glass re-formed behind him.
“Stop!” I commanded, and the whole world did.
Gently, I set Devon on the sidewalk. Then I climbed behind the wheel of the woman’s SUV and drove forward to the spot where Harken had landed just a few seconds before.
I returned to Devon and licked my thumb. “Please let it work,” I begged.
The window broke above us, and broken glass rained down while I covered Devon’s face with my body. With a deep thwack Harken’s body landed on the SUV, collapsing the roof like a trampoline.
“Jesus!” the woman said. “That guy jumped! My car!”
“Please live,” I prayed. “I need your help with Devon. I need you.”
“He’s breathing!” the driver yelled. “Lucky bastard! What’re the odds?”
I stepped into the street and stared up into the night.
Malleus and the egg were gone.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
MINUTES after Harken fell from the Hellesgate two EMTs unloaded Devon from the back of an ambulance. Like every cop/medical show I’d ever seen, they rolled her out past me and into the emergency room, calling out codes and vital signs to the nice people in scrubs who ran out to greet them. What was different from the shows was the way no one swooped down on me with a blanket and guided me inside, where they explained exactly what was wrong with my sister and how they were going to fix it. They left me standing beside the curb, shivering from the cold and working out how I was going to explain to Ma what had happened to her baby.
I sat on the curb, still alone, when a second ambulance pulled up. They unloaded Harken from the back and rolled him right past me, shouting about broken bones and contusions. No surprise that. That’s what happens when you fall from a high building with a car for a pillow. The big shock was that he was still alive at all. With no one paying any attention to me, I borrowed a blanket from the back of the ambulance, wrapped it around my own shoulders, and wandered inside.
For fifteen minutes, I paced the hallway that connected the emergency room to the main lobby, looking at commemorative plaques. When my phone buzzed, I jumped, having forgotten that I had a phone.
Willie! Just saw the news on Twitter! He jumped? WTF? I mean, W! T! F!
That was Siobhan shorthand for Willie Jane, I have just seen the story of your sister’s rescue on the news, and I would like to know her condition and how you are doing, and if it wouldn’t be too inconvenient, an explanation of why I wasn’t there.
At Boston Gen ER. Then I added: I need a friend.
ETA 30 seconds.
I wanted to cry. So I did. I was still crying when I heard the doors swish open, Siobhan walked in with my mother, and Ma called out my name.
“Willow Jane!” She came running across the lobby, arms thrown out wide like she used to when I was a kindergartner, and she swept me up, even though I was taller in my boots, and she had to stand on tiptoe to take me under her wing.
“Thank God you’re safe.”
That’s when I really began to cry, letting loose every emotion pent up within me. I guess I needed my Ma, too.
More than I knew.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
THE hours after we arrived at Boston Medical Center were like watching a Patriots game on fast forward: Ma in a chair beside Devie, holding her hand and resting her head on the mattress. Ma’s eyes closing as Siobhan sang “Sweet Caroline” over and over again. Nurses and doctors rushing in and out, hooking up machines, inserting IVs, cocooning Devon in a thermal blanket, and checking and rechecking vitals so that they could hook up even more machines. Cops coming three times to get my story. Me ignoring their questions and Ma sending them away. The techs wheeling Devon out to run MRIs and ECGs and other tests with three-letter acronyms.
Then the fast forward would end, and I would be awakened in the deep windowsill, where I’d been sitting, praying for my sister to regain consciousness. Two points of light came from the twin fluorescents
above Devon’s bed, which imbued her skin with a bluish cast. Her black hair lay limp on her cheeks, and she was attached to an IV and monitors that displayed her heart rate and blood pressure in periodic beeping intervals.
Ma was curled up in a ball, a cardigan tucked under her chin like a comforter. Siobhan was splayed out, an arm over one side, a leg flowing over the other, sleeping like the dead.
“Willow Jane,” Ma said, looking at me funny, “did your father visit your dreams?”
“Huh?”
“You were talking to him in your sleep. About the letter he left you.”
“I was?” I could tell she was about to begin an inquisition, and that was a very bad idea. “Weird.”
“Wicked weird.” Siobhan sat up, yawning like she’d been asleep, but I knew she’d been on watch out for us. “How’s the nap?”
“Balls.” I worked my knotted neck. My back was so stiff I could barely stand. “How long have I been snoozing this time?
“Not long,” Siobhan said. “It’s still dark out.”
“Yeah, it is. How’s Devie?”
“Doctors say there’s nothing wrong with her, except hypothermia.” Ma’s voice sounded like she was reading from a script. “They think she’ll be okay in a couple of days.”
“A couple of days.” I sighed and fiddled with my thumb. “So no brain damage or anything?”
Ma didn’t answer. She fixated on my thumb, which was nicely hidden behind a Band-Aid that Siobhan had liberated for me. “What’s wrong with your—”
“The doctors,” Siobhan interrupted, “said it was too soon to tell.”
Thanks, I mouthed to her. I need to talk to you.
Ma walked over and stood beside me. She looked like she’d had aged twenty years. “Willow Jane, you’re hiding something. You’ve got to tell the doctors. You’ve got to tell me.”
How could I tell her? There were two choices. Either I made up a lie on the spot, or I told the truth and watched Ma lose her mind.
Uncanny Page 24
