Game of Cages

by Harry Connolly

  I sprawled on the floor again as the entire house lurched. Plaster dust fell onto the back of my neck, and I managed to stand. I did not want to die in here. Not like this. Another blast of white fire sliced upward through the floor, cutting the wall with the tall front windows from the rest of the house.

  Everything leaned toward the front, and I thought the whole building might fold up right then, pinching me into jelly. There was no way to get out by the front—the gaps were too iffy to jump, and I couldn’t trust the floor to hold me even if I made it across. I had to try the back of the house.

  The floor dropped beneath me—just a foot—but it was enough to slam me to my knees again. I imagined myself falling backward onto all that clutter below: the overturned chairs, furniture corners, everything. At this height I’d be lucky to only break my back. Goose bumps ran down my back and arms, and I scrambled on my hands and knees toward the door.

  Stephanie came toward me.

  God, the smell was awful. I struggled to my feet, determined not to die on my knees. She was standing on a cloud of silver smoke a foot or two off the buckled floorboards. Where her eyes should have been, two worms wagged back and forth, their mouths gaping wide enough to show little teeth.

  The wall behind her suddenly vanished, and I knew another spell was coming. I lunged at her just as she reached me, but I was faster. Her ankle squished like a bag of jelly when I grabbed it, but I squeezed tight and pulled, tipping her off balance. She fell back as the spell advanced, and I leapt up toward the broken doorway.

  Zahn’s spell swept over her and erased her from the world. I grabbed the edge of the doorframe and pulled myself through, barely clearing the edge of the spell.

  I scurried along the hall toward Regina’s room. She had a window in there, even if getting out that way would leave me on the wrong side of the house. The floor was so crooked that I had to run along the corner where it met the wall. The building groaned and shuddered, and something somewhere close snapped. The sound was as loud as a sledgehammer’s blow.

  Regina’s door was already open, although her bed had slid against the crooked frame. I climbed over it, kicking at the covers as they tried to tangle my legs. I tread on Regina’s framed photos, smashing the glass.

  The exterior wall leaned above me. When I lifted the window, it slid open like a blessing. I caught hold of the bottom of the sill and started to pull myself through just as everything began to come apart with a sound like a series of small explosions. My footing fell away and the wall rushed toward me. In a burst of desperate strength, I pulled myself through the open window, ignoring the sawdust billowing into my face and the shards of glass striking it.

  The wall plummeted around me as I lurched through it. I tumbled down the outside of the house, feeling as though I had used the last of my strength and willpower. I fell into the grass, and somehow landed on the side of the house, practically right on the spot where Fat Guy had been crouching when I’d cut his shotgun apart.

  I forced myself to sit up. I was exhausted, and when I looked up, I saw Zahn and Ursula standing where I’d left them. Both were staring at me; Ursula looked pale and shell-shocked; Zahn had a grim smile on his face.

  I couldn’t make myself care anymore. I’d destroyed the sapphire dog, just as I’d said I would, and I didn’t have any more willpower left. Not after everything I’d done. I was finished, and they could see it on my face.

  The Plexiglas cage behind Ursula and Zahn had somehow shrunk. I looked at it more closely and saw that it wasn’t only the cage that had changed shape. Everything—space itself—had bent toward the cut in the sapphire dog’s neck. The cage, the battery, and the ground they rested on bowed inward as though the world was being pulled into the predator’s body.

  But Zahn didn’t see it because he was focused on me. He opened his coat and drew a playing card from an inside pocket with well-practiced ease. The warp suddenly expanded, and the edges trembled as though under tremendous strain. I could feel the distortion inside me, like an urge to scream.

  Zahn turned toward it, surprised. Ursula gasped. The warp suddenly swelled and both of their bodies twisted as though they had stepped into a funhouse mirror.

  Then the warp released in a single overwhelming blast.

  I remember the light, but I don’t think there was any sound. I felt myself silently lifted up and thrown across the grass.

  The light was bright and pure. It filled everything, and it seemed to be full of watching eyes.

  I woke on the grass at the base of the hill a couple of dozen feet from where I’d been. Nothing seemed to be broken. I snapped my fingers and heard the sound, which was a tremendous relief.

  I checked that I still had my ghost knife, then moved toward the house. Ursula and Zahn lay on the lawn. They weren’t whole, though. You couldn’t have made a whole body out of both of them combined. There was no blood anywhere, just a lack of parts.

  Then I saw a flash of blue near the front of the house. I walked around the bodies, trying not to look at them. I felt hollowed out, and I wasn’t ready to fill that empty space with the sight of more dead people, even these.

  On the front lawn, the two halves of the sapphire dog’s body were fading in and out, appearing here and there in a seemingly random way. It wasn’t until I realized that the ghost knife had cut through the predator’s eyes, blinding it, that I understood that the two parts were trying to find each other.

  The hedge closest to the truck had been spared the collapse of the Wilbur house. I quietly took a set of the woven Christmas lights off the top. There was an electric outlet set in the back of the cube truck. I plugged the lights into it, and they lit up dimly.

  I clicked my tongue. The ears on the creature’s head suddenly turned toward me, then the head vanished and appeared beside me. I draped the lights over it, then folded it twice for good measure. It stopped vanishing and reappearing. I had trapped it. It wasn’t the lights—it liked the light—it was the live wires that the predator couldn’t cross. The cages had been spiderwebbed with wires, and the pets had been careful to run cables along only three walls in the field house, leaving one open for an escape route.

  I held my hand away from my body and snapped my fingers. When the predator shot its tongue toward the sound, I sliced it off with the ghost knife. The severed tongue fell into the mud and shriveled there. Its body staggered, then crumpled to the ground and lay still.

  The head could only twitch its ears. I wondered if it could understand me. “Stay away from my world,” I whispered to it. The ears twitched back and forth as though it couldn’t find the source of my voice. “There are monsters here.”

  The head shrunk and bowed in on itself. I backpedaled, but there was no second explosion. The head, tongue, and body each seemed to be sucked into a tiny spot, and then they were gone.

  There was still another job to do. I walked to the side of the house. All that was left of Ursula was a pair of legs and the hips to hold them together. The rest of her body was simply gone. Even stranger was that there was no gore or exposed organs at the severed part of her torso. That part of her was covered with smooth, unmarked skin, as though she had grown that way naturally.

  Zahn was missing his body from the ribs down. He was also missing one arm from just below the shoulder and the other from just below the elbow. When I bent to see if he also had skin over the severed part of his torso, he called me an asshole.

  Yeah, I was startled. I knew sorcerers were tough, but this was a bit much.

  “Feed me, and I will teach you,” he said. His voice sounded low and strained. “I will show you the world behind the world.”

  “Pass. I’ve seen how you treat your people. No loyalty.”

  “They were simpletons and they failed me. But you are something else, yes? Not even a true sorcerer, and look what you did.”

  “That’s what I do,” I told him. My voice sounded flat, and it scared me a little. “I kill.”

  “I do not believe you. I can s
ee it. You have killed, but you are not a natural killer. You care too much for that. The Twenty Palace Society has lied to you, the way they lie to everyone.”

  “Is this conversation going to take long? Because my socks are wet.”

  “And you want power. For three hundred years I have been looking for someone clever enough to pass my secrets to. I think that could be you. I need meat. Care enough to save my life, and you save three hundred years of history. In return, I will show you real power the Hosenscheisser in the society cannot. Come on, boy. Care enough to save one more life.”

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed at him. “You don’t get it, do you? I killed kids today because of the deal you made with that predator. Kids! If you think I’m going to …”

  Why was I talking to him?

  I dragged the ghost knife through his torso. Black steam blasted out of him. The smooth skin over the bottom of his rib cage where the rest of his body should have been suddenly burst open. He lost blood and magic in a tremendous rush.

  I hit him again and again, and it took me a few seconds to realize that he was laughing as well as screaming.

  “A ghost knife!” he wheezed. “You are killing me with a ghost knife, and you cast it on a piece of paper!” He screamed, then laughed again, straining every muscle. “I’ll bet you do not even realize what you’ve done!”

  I didn’t feel like being laughed at just then. I dragged my spell through his face and head, then stuffed Annalise’s last green ribbon into his mouth. That was it for him.

  Once Zahn was dead, I suddenly thought it might be a good idea to call someone outside Washaway who could help. I took a deep breath and let relief flood through me. The town was no longer sealed. Help would be coming very soon.

  I gave his three-hundred-year-old bones a kick for the hell of it.

  In the truck I found the lightning rod Zahn had used to summon the floating storms, along with a carpetbag loaded with candles, jars, amulets, and other suspicious crap, all in a mixed-up jumble.

  I set all that stuff at the top of the driveway. Then I dragged the bodies into an opening in the side of the house, dropping them into the basement. That was an ugly job, but I didn’t have much choice. I wondered whether Regina had gotten away, or was crushed under a beam in the wreckage or rotting in a ditch somewhere, feeding the crows. Maybe I’d never know.

  I parked the truck next to the house and lit them both on fire.

  It started to rain again as I made my way to the van. The wind was cold. Annalise was as still as before. I loaded the old man’s gear into the back of the van and drove away.

  EPILOGUE

  I hit Redial on Annalise’s cell and told the tweedy-sounding guy who answered what was going on. He seemed pissed that I’d called, but to hell with him. After I disconnected the call, I had an itch to call all the hospitals in the area to ask about my mother. It made no sense at all, but the urge was there.

  I drove home. It took four hours, but another society investigator was already waiting for me there. I told him and his recorder everything that happened and showed him the stuff I’d taken from Zahn. He seemed impressed for about three seconds, then called up his poker face again.

  When I asked about Annalise, he told me not to worry, they had someone who would be able to find her. I was about to tell him to look in the back of the van, because the search was over, but maybe he meant something I didn’t understand.

  After that, he left. I half expected him to offer me a ride to a safe house or something, but he didn’t. I didn’t ask.

  I didn’t deserve to be safe.

  I reported my credit cards stolen and called Harvey. I told him I could work my usual shift after the holiday, and he didn’t even ask about my mom. Maybe he heard something in my voice and thought better of it.

  The fires and violence in Washaway made the national news, of course, but it took a while for the authorities to settle on a story they liked. While they were hashing it out, the remaining pets died. As I’d expected, killing the predator hadn’t saved them. Whatever the sapphire dog did to their brains had cut their lives short. None of them survived to the end of the week.

  Maybe that should have made me feel better about what I’d done in the food bank, but it didn’t.

  The state cops, the FBI, Homeland Security, and news crews from every part of the world descended on Washaway. The feds quashed talk of a terrorist attack, but it took a while before they decided to blame it all on international drug violence and the brave local citizens who were killed in the crossfire. Hanging those accusations on Yin and Zahn was a stretch for some folks, but no one had a better explanation. As for Kripke and Solorov, they were inconveniently alive and spent a fortune on lawyers trying to stay out of prison.

  Two full shifts of 911 dispatchers lost their jobs for small-talking when they should have been raising alarm bells. Steve Cardinal was singled out for special scorn—they even played a couple of his friendly calls to the state police on the TV. It was unfair to him, but he was past caring.

  But I didn’t follow any of this from the comfort of my apartment. By Christmas morning, the cops had found my name and brought me in.

  I disappeared from the world.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This was not an easy book to write, and I’m tremendously grateful to the people who helped me put it together: Betsy Mitchell, Caitlin Blasdell, Liza Dawson, Beth Pearson, Margaret Wimberger, and many, many others. Thank you all.

  Read on for an excerpt from the next

  Twenty Palaces novel

  by Harry Connolly

  COMING SOON

  FROM DEL REY BOOKS

  It was August in Seattle, when the city enjoyed actual sunshine and temperatures in the eighties. I’d spent the day working, which made for a nice change. I’d just finished a forty-hour temp landscaping job; dirt and dried sweat made my face and arms itch. I hated the feeling, but even worse was that I didn’t have anything lined up for next week.

  As I walked up the alley to home, I passed a pair of older women standing beside a scraggly vegetable garden. One kept saying she was sweltering, sweltering, but her friend didn’t seem sympathetic. Neither was I. I was used to summers in the desert; this weather didn’t bother me.

  When they noticed me, they fell silent. The unsympathetic one took her friend’s hand and led her toward the back door, keeping a wary eye on me. That didn’t bother me, either.

  I stumped up the stairs to my apartment, above my aunt’s garage. It was too late to call the temp agency tonight; I’d have to try them early Monday morning. Not that I had much hope. It was hard for an ex-con to find work, especially an ex-con with my name.

  I’m Raymond Lilly and I’ve lost track of the number of people I’ve killed.

  My ancient garage-sale answering machine was blinking. I played the messages. Two were from reporters, one from a journalist-blogger, and one from a writer. They offered me the chance to tell my side of what had happened in Washaway last Christmas. Except for the writer’s, I recognized all the voices—they’d called many times over the last few weeks, sometimes several times a day.

  I absentmindedly rubbed the tattoos on the backs of my hands. They looked like artless jailhouse squiggles, but in reality they were magic spells, and I’d be behind bars without them. None of the survivors in Washaway could pick me out of a lineup, and none of the fingerprint or DNA evidence I’d left behind pointed to me anymore. I was on the twisted path.

  I erased the messages. There was no point in calling them back. None of them understood the meaning of the words “fuck off.”

  The sounds of their voices had triggered a low buzzing anger that made me feel slightly out of control. I showered, then dropped my work clothes into the bottom of the tub, scrubbed them clean, and hung them from the curtain rod. I felt much better after that.

  I wiped steam from the bathroom window and looked out. My aunt had not hung a paper angel in her kitchen window. That meant I could order in a sandwich for din
ner. I put on my sleeping clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of cut-off sweatpants. I could eat alone, in silence, without someone asking how I was sleeping, how I was eating, and wouldn’t things be better if I went to talk to someone?

  I wouldn’t have to say “Thank you, but I can’t” a half dozen times. My aunt was right; I’d probably sleep better if I could talk about the nightmares—and what I’d done to bring them on—but I’d be bedding down in a padded room.

  I opened my door to dispel the steam, even though an unlocked door felt like a gun at my back. I went to my bathroom mirror and looked carefully. Damn. I was wasting away.

  A voice behind me said: “You look like shit.”

  I yelped and spun around. In an instant, my heart was pounding at my chest as my hand fumbled across the sink looking for something to use as a weapon.

  Caramella was standing in the bathroom doorway, and I was so startled to see her that everything went still for a moment. My adrenaline eased and I could hear my harsh breath in the silence. It had been five years or more, and she’d changed quite a bit. Her skin, which had once been so dark, seemed lighter, as though she spent all her time indoors, and while she still straightened her hair, now she had it up in a bun. She wore orange pants with an elastic waistband and a white halter. She’d gained some weight over the last few years, and she seemed taller somehow.

  But she didn’t belong here, not in Seattle. She belonged down in L.A., hanging at the Bigfoot Room with Arne, Robbie, and the rest.

  I almost asked her what she was doing here, but I didn’t want her to think she wasn’t welcome. In truth, I didn’t know how I felt about her. “Welcome to my bathroom,” I said.

  “Thanks. I hate it.”