Cole spoke. ‘It might not have done what I thought it would because of the type of power in this place? I don’t know. It really didn’t look right. And when It took over, it was scared of something in the castle, Henry. There’s something in here with us. Something I’ve never felt before. It’s sort of like charred, bleached, white-coloured magic is being spilled out all over the place. And this place is breaking up, Henry. I can’t see it now, but when It was in charge, I could see something pulling the castle down, stretching it. Something very heavy, I think. And maybe something vampire.’
Millar’s face must have said something in response; after a glance at him, Cole went quiet.
‘Was it the vampire trail we followed, pulling the castle down? I thought I heard some screaming and stuff?’ Henry had been somewhat preoccupied by impending death.
Cole shook his head. ‘I saw the owner of the trail. It looks like a vampire soul, but it’s huge. Like dozens of ghost vampires or something. This really isn’t my strong suit, pal. And it’s not the thing pulling this place down. That’s something much bigger’
Vampires had souls? And there was an even bigger vampire somewhere below them? Was that what Cole was saying? That was going on the long list of things to feed Henry’s growing anxiety disorder. They needed a plan. ‘So, what do we do now, man?’
Resignation flashed on Cole’s face. ‘How should I know? I know almost as little as you. In fact, you might know more than me. I don’t even know how I got here – you?’ Cole’s slumped shoulders and soft tone were worse than his anger. Henry sat. ‘Women. They just appeared out of nowhere. Threw some ice at you. I tried to protect you, honest, but they sort of tied me up and floated me in here.’
Cole grunted. ‘Sounds like Myriad magic. How many?’
Henry indicated five with his fingers. ‘And some more inside.’
Cole’s eyebrows raised, drawing a wince. He rubbed his head as he spoke. ‘That explains Andrew’s door then. Still no clue what they’re doing here, wherever this is. This castle can’t even be accessed unless you can siphon. And what the fuck does any of this have to do with a massive vampire soul knocking about the city snatching up other vampires?’
Henry had dropped his files outside. He missed having something to leaf through – it helped his thinking. ‘The trail led us here. You said black-magic portals were a first on you, and I’m guessing hordes of wizards aren’t normal either?’
Cole shook his head. ‘Totally un-fucking normal.’
They had to figure this out, somehow. Henry got up and started walking around the space. ‘So why are they taking vampires? What’s the angle?’
Cole spoke. ‘We know Andrew was running the Cipactli. It’s not hard to see his end. Remove competition and probably extort his buyers. I think the mages here might have taken Andrew. They might be nightstaffs. Or worse. The mages here must have some way of getting in and out of this place, which means black magic. They must have been doing something with the vampires. It’s got to be linked to the massive vampire soul running around. And whatever is under here.’
Henry tapped his teeth. None of this answered the one question he hadn’t dared ask since he’d seen this place. ‘You think they took Lucy? You think she’s here?’ Cole flashed him a look which was hard to read. Henry spread his hands. ‘What?’
Cole sighed. ‘Henry, you’ve got to stop with this Lucy thing. I get it, she was nice to you, but come on, kid. You saw Lisa; you saw what the feeding had done to her? Forget Lucy. Whoever she was, she’s gone now. And she chose it. There’s no forcing that stuff in the city; people have to choose.’
Something tight lodged in his chest. ‘Oh, she chose it, did she? She was there for her kid. He was probably sick or something, but hey. It’s on her, right? She brought it on herself.’
Cole rounded, scary. ‘You think I don’t want to help people? You think that I think it’s okay?’
Actually, the way Cole blamed them for it, yes. Surprise overtook him when he recognised Cole’s defence for what it was. ‘Man, I don’t know what to say. I mean, I kind of thought you hated them the way you talk about them.’
Cole’s teeth gritted. ‘It’s not that simple. There’re no magic cures, Millar. No help without strings attached. Not in the real world. How could they be so stupid?’
Cole’s world was dark and ugly. And Cole wasn’t changing it. ‘So, everyone’s just shit, and we shouldn’t try to help, is that it?’ Silence hung between them, weighty.
‘I’m not saying that. People make choices, and they’re responsible.’ This was rich.
‘Coming from you? Are you kidding me?’ The level of hypocrisy galled.
‘Yes, including me, Millar. I’m a total fuck-up, pal. Sooner you work that out, sooner I get some peace and fucking quiet.’ That sounded like an accurate self-assessment. It seemed Henry would have to save Lucy on his own.
Damn, but what if Cole was right? Lisa had clucked like a bald chicken to be fed on. It left his jaw hanging, but there it was. Was that why Lucy had stayed with Andrew?
‘I went back for her.’ Cole’s chair dragged around to face him.
‘Eh?’ Cole sat, square. His face was softer.
‘Lucy – when you took off, after the Cipactli came. I went to Andrew’s. I wanted us to run away.’
A rolling chuckle brought heat to Henry’s cheeks. ‘It’s not funny.’
Cole raised a placating hand. ‘No, Millar. It’s nice, pal. It’s just a unique mixture of incredibly ballsey, naive and, frankly, doomed to fail.’ Was that Cole’s idea of a compliment? It calmed the heat anyway.
‘You’re one weird guy, Henry Millar.’ Sounded like that was meant to be a compliment too.
‘I just want to save her, is that so bad?’
Cole looked him in the eye. ‘Look kid, this white knight stuff? I don’t know. It feels right. I know it does – I can go there too – but it’s dangerous.’
What? Of course it was dangerous; it was heroic! ‘You think it’s dangerous to help people, so we shouldn’t?’ Strain was written in tight lines on Cole’s face. It wasn’t like him not to blow up.
‘No, I’m not saying that at all. But we should be helping people on their terms, not on ours. That’s what’s hard, and that’s what’s worthwhile. If you want to do real good, it can’t be what you think is good all the time. Trust me; the most dangerous people around are always the ones convinced they’re doing the right thing.’
Lumbering-Beast-Man was lecturing him? On being good? ‘Oh yeah, cause you’re such an expert.’ Once Cole lost it, Cole would be in the wrong.
Cole’s voice started to rise. ‘Look, that woman, the one you say you care about and want to do well by? She’s not got much of a say in anything. She’s a possession to Andrew, and if she came away with you, she’d be a possession of yours.’
Henry’s body trembled. ‘No, she wouldn’t! She’d be free! I’d save her. She could do whatever she wanted!’
Cole finally snapped. ‘Is that right? So, you’ve got no agenda here? You’ll just free her and let her go? You don’t fantasise about how grateful she might be to her knight in shining armour? You’d be totally fine if she said, thanks and see you around. You’d say, not a problem, off you go and live your life, which by the way, you told me you don’t want to change, but I changed it anyway, because I know best.’
They were both on their feet. ‘Well, maybe I do know what’s best! She’d be better off with me than with Andrew, that’s for sure.’ Cole looked ready to burst him. ‘Go on then, you big beast man. Hit me; I can see you want to.’ Cole’s eyes suddenly brimmed. Henry stepped back, startled.
‘I’d never hurt you for real, kid. I hope you know that. Look, Henry, Lucy has the right to make bad choices, and if this was so noble, you’d be worried about more than just her. What about the Toms, eh? None of them pull your strings the same way?’
How dare he suggest that? Cole could get teary all he liked, but he couldn’t get it; he’d not been there. H
enry’s arms were ready to punch. ‘No! They weren’t nice to me!’ Cole waved a hand, dismissive. ‘They were following their master’s orders. Do you even know how much skin it would have cost one of them, if they were caught talking to you? Lucy ever seem scared when you were asking her stuff?’
Something cut through. She’d seemed terrified. Of Andrew, surely of Andrew. He’d practically begged her to speak to him. She’d seemed less hard than the men. It hadn’t occurred to him she might be risking something.
‘Yeah, think about this, Millar. She’s a slave, and you’d free her – which is great in theory – but she’d just end up owing you something in a different form.’
The ground bashed Henry’s back as he slumped. The bit down inside him that couldn’t deny what Cole was saying fought with the bit that insisted he was the good guy here. He bowed his head. The shame of being called out like this, his private hopes shining for all to see. Lumbering-Beast-Man had turned this around on him, knifed him with his own good intentions. Was he really just a selfish guy pretending to be something better?
‘I’ve been there, Millar. Recently, too. There was business up North. I got fixed on what I thought was right. I learned the hard way, and it cost lives. I’m trying to save you the same pain.’
A tear ran down Henry’s cheek. ‘So, your answer is fuck them all?’ It tasted like a bitter rind.
‘Until I find a better one, Millar. You hardly knew her, kid, so who’s all this about, really? You or her?’
Henry sniffed.
He hadn’t fed for days., the master caged him, driving him on and on, trying to kindle the spark of power he knew had died with him.
The room came smashing back. ‘Holy shit.’ A hand grabbed Henry’s shoulder. That hunger …
Henry refused to hurt them. Refused to hurt anyone. The animals had kept him satiated for a while, until the master refused him those too. She cowered in the corner of the room. A new one, called Lucy like all the rest. Auburn hair and an enticing aura of pain. The master was a prize bastard, offering this one up after the long nights. The misty vapour of fear and hurt that would feed him clung to her form like sweet dripping fat. It had been months. Lucy called to the dark song in his chest as he advanced.
‘What’s happening to me?’ Back in the room, fragments from before shook loose, filling him with a dread so heavy his tears ran like lead. How could he have been a vampire? And what had he done to Lucy?
What if that was what her fear had been about? She’d talked to him, because she was scared of them both – Andrew and him. His stomach twisted. He clasped his head in his hands.
The door thumped open, hitting the wall. Henry’s limbs knit tight, his legs together, his arms pinned to his sides, trussed up by magic once more. He tried to scream, to move, to do anything.
Any hope that Cole would somehow save the day took a moment to leave. No noise, no motion. Henry hung, suspended from the ground, a fly trapped. Of all the spiders in the web, his own memory was the one he feared the most.
Chapter 25
There were many kinds of Myriad mage, but Cole hated binders the most. He’d been Han-Soloed without a fight. He couldn’t even speak. Binders always had an easy arrogance about them. Knowing they could shut up anyone, anytime they wanted, made them that way. The fact that binders were rare as worthwhile modern art didn’t help when one of them hog-tied him and stuck an apple in his mouth. He hoped she could see the fury in his eyes. Outside the protection of the runes, his parasite waited.
As soon as they crossed the threshold of the room, propelled as though in some nightmare hospital bed, It leapt. He was ready, his mind scooping it in a cage of pure will. Its absence in the shielded room had been bittersweet strangeness, like a growth excised to leave empty scar tissue. It sat in his gut, throwing itself against the bars in a way he could only describe as lacking conviction. The strange power that radiated through this Disneyland-on-acid building seemed to conflict It. Cole was now totally sober, his head throbbing. It sat at the back of his mind-prison.
It had ambushed him. He’d have to be doubly careful now. Why hadn’t his body been ripped apart by the change? He’d fallen, any way it could be measured. It was a fluke he wasn’t gone, lost in a prison of his own skin – those prison runes that saved him were extremely rare.
No one had mentioned that the siphon’s mind got locked inside the monster’s. He’d always assumed the siphon died when they became the monster. The memory of the two siphons he’d put down in his career so far flared with new pain. Pain unique to real understanding. But he couldn’t afford it right now. He had to live now; he’d drink and fight to forget later.
The roof ticked by. This castle was disturbing. It glowed with the same off-white power that polluted the air, like it was alive. Even more disturbing were the fracture lines and rips in the castle’s fabric. Something too large for the world was under this place. What was going on here? Why hadn’t the wytches just killed them? He had to keep his cool, no matter what.
Operation Radical New Approach. Keep his shit together. The women around them were mages alright. A huntress, the binder and a seer, he guessed by their dress. Team Insurance Policy. They had the calm look Myriad mages tended to get if they had lived a while. Years of offering up their life experience to a forgotten god would harden anyone’s nerves, just as a lifetime of fighting his parasite had hardened his. He would give anything to be able to feed his regrets to some god or other, but no one wanted that baggage. The roof ticked by.
The mages didn’t even look at him. It would murder them, given the chance. The Myriad mages pretended they were somehow better than the siphons, carving up their own lives to feed creatures that were as a cruel as anything the Murk contained. What the gods did with all the experiences they were given, no one seemed to know. Natalia described it like it was a tug o’ war.
They passed through another double door. These mages had nice, pretty powers. Their gods drank from people, just the same as monsters as far as Cole could see, but they didn’t make people experience the horror of being buried alive, chewed up, drunk or swallowed every time they used their abilities, and Cole’s power did, so hey – he was the pariah!
The strange power of this place crawled and lived. The air swam with it, as though coated with flakes of regurgitated plankton. It was a kind of life vomit with all the sourness of cud, and they were approaching the source. His parasite drew back. The cracks that were visible had begun to glow, the fabric of the place stretching and faltering. Pain and suffering climbed into his sinuses as the scent of ruined life seeped through the cracks in this place. Vampire. What did it mean? Finally, they halted.
Doors opened, and the ceiling fell upward suddenly, as they moved into a chamber. His body tipped up, so he was floating along like standing on a Segway, a foot above the floor. Millar floated slightly ahead, the wytches on foot beside them.
He was so frozen by the binder’s magic, only his eyes could move. It was a wonder his heart and lungs still worked. Disturbing thought. If Cole got a chance, the binder went down first. But this didn’t feel like a getting-a-chance kind of scenario. The chamber might have been beautiful in the normal sight spectrum, but the foulness that flooded everywhere crumpled his mind. If he could have shrunk to touch less of it, he would have.
His eyes travelled up. The space curved above in an oval, and at its apex lurked the source of the strange magic. It shrivelled, curling inside his mind. The women escorting Cole chanted, ‘Mournanvil,’ in low voices filled with pain. They had to be referring to the great weight, shaped like an anvil, spinning above them. The Mournanvil dominated the room, poised above like a giant foot ready to stomp a hole through the earth.
The Anvil held him, its plug-hole gravity drawing him on. Time stretched out like a fragile hair. Images began to push into his mind. He fought on reflex. His physical body floated further into the room, forcing the Anvil out of his field of view. His eyes were wet, his stomach churned. It screamed inside his gut and ma
de no move to escape. The Murk had always been a sucking, grasping, eating thing to Cole. The Anvil was the opposite – it birthed corruption in an outward-flowing tide of polluted life.
He took in the room. Floods of fire and water and chanting weaving magic soared and dived. Women stood around what looked like runes, except he’d never heard of runes two metres tall before.
Through the women, in them and around them with cancerous rays, the Anvil poured its radiation. These women were changed. They didn’t look it, but inside he could sense the alterations caused by the Anvil’s corruption. It left tumours on their souls.
Their eyes were cast up, transfixed as tears streamed down their faces, mingled with red blood. They wore the narcotic of pain in their expressions, their arms cast up to their idols. There was no floor ahead of Cole. A single bridge traversed a chasm. Aside from being a tactical nightmare, the chasm was awash with fumes, billowing up from below. Suffering bled upward on grim vapour – life, set on fire, yet he could not make out the source. The cursed sisters led him and Henry on foot, falling into single file as they crossed the bridge across the chasm.
The path’s conclusion was a platform, in the centre of the room. Andrew Ancroft was naked and stretched in an X-shape. He was suspended on his back, elevated a few feet above the centre of the platform and directly under the Anvil. Only a sacrifice would be positioned like that.
Above Ancroft but below the Anvil and visible only to Cole, unless there was another siphon in the room, strands wove together: a pacing ghost, fuelled by Murk energy but laced with the fibre of humanity. The green of the ghost’s energy was flecked with purple. Both were charred colours, but not as burned as the vampire energy wafting around the chamber. The ghost was bound together with off-white strands of power and wore supple-looking leather, probably armour. Finely-stitched fabric hung around his shoulders and flowed down his back in a cloak. He had a long, broadsword worn comfortably at his hip. He was some sort of warrior. What the fuck was going on here? There must have been a necromancer hiding among the mages. A rogue siphon. He couldn’t see the siphon, but he would know them immediately when he did. It would respond, feeling their parasite’s presence.
The Cost of Magic (The Ethan Cole Series Book 1) Page 28
