by Nazri Noor
“Truth,” I said carefully. “He offered me the truth.”
“Deception,” Thea said, shaking her head. “They’ve moved past attempting to murder you. Now it’s indoctrination that they’ll pursue. You’re more useful to them that way. And worse still that they have someone working on the inside to help them.” She pulled something out of her pocket, placing the familiar, spiny sharpness of it on her glass desk.
I stared at the dagger, than back up at her. “Herald? You don’t mean that. He can’t be working with them.” Couldn’t he? Just an hour ago I’d almost believed that Herald and Thea – no, that the entire Lorica was in league against me. My fingers ran through my hair of their own accord, tugging in confusion.
“We have good reason to believe it was him,” Thea said, her voice a mix of resignation and cold accusation. “He’s working with the Black Hand. Or are you trying to convince me that he’s innocent?” She took a single step, and that smallest movement filled the room with her presence: sharp, brilliant, suffocating. “Perhaps the man you met convinced you. Have you decided to trust your murderers so easily?”
“You know that isn’t true. Herald is innocent. Where is he?”
“He’s safe,” Thea said, in a way that told me he wasn’t. “For the moment. The Lorica has ways of handling internal matters that will ensure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again.” She took another step forward, close enough that she could lay a hand on my shoulder. Thea squeezed, the gems on one hand glinting as she did, and it was almost comforting.
“You’re cleverer than that, Dustin. I knew why you ran. You saw the knife, and you knew immediately, didn’t you? I always pegged you for your intelligence, your keenness. Surely you know it was him. It was so clever of the Black Hand to get such an innocuous-looking plant, too, someone so inoffensive. So harmless.”
“No,” I said. “Someone planted the blade on him. Herald isn’t tied to the Black Hand, nor to the god murders. I know it.”
Thea watched me, her face a mix of interest, and pity. For a moment, all was silence in her office, apart from the quiet, low hum of her computer, and from somewhere else, perhaps within the walls, a quiet, low chittering. The rats. Always the rats.
“You know that you can trust me, don’t you, Dustin? I would never wish you harm. You’re far too important to me.”
I looked up at her, wondering what to believe. “To the Lorica, you mean.”
She smiled sadly, and shook her head. “To me, Dustin. I’ve told you before. You’re a special person. I would almost say irreplaceable.”
“I don’t understand,” I began to say, my thoughts left unspoken, when a commotion streamed in from the hallway outside.
“Dustin,” a voice shouted. Prudence?
“Where the hell are you?” And Bastion?
The door exploded off its hinges, splinters spraying across the immaculate white of Thea’s carpet. Bastion strode in, face like thunder, his hand held menacingly up in front of him. Prudence rushed in after, her fists already charged with blue fire.
“Bastion? What’s going on?”
Prudence bent forward and yelled. “Get away from her, Dustin!”
On instinct my feet backed away, but I didn’t make it very far. Thea’s fingers were locked around my wrist, clamping with an alarming strength.
“Thea? You’re hurting me. I – ”
The air whizzed as the dagger flew between us, carving a quick, shallow crescent and slicing into my cheek. A warm wetness welled up against my skin. The pain was brief, immediate. The betrayal hurt more. Thea watched impassively as she unclenched her hand, leaving me free to stumble away.
“Thea?” I clutched at my cheek, alarmed at the stickiness oozing down my face. “What. Why?”
A powerful force gripped me and pulled me bodily away from her, my heels dragging against the carpet as I went. I turned, ready to fight Bastion off my back, when I realized that he was still at the door, grabbing me with the force of his power.
“Idiot,” he snarled. “You heard me and Prue. We said to get away.”
Thea seemed distracted, staring at the point of the dagger, angling it carefully so that whatever she’d drawn of my blood stayed along its blade, smiling to herself as she balanced the droplet of fluid, so bright red against the dagger’s edge.
“Herald alerted us,” Prudence said. “He said that you’d taken off, and he told Thea you disappeared. By the time Bastion and I made it to HQ, Herald had been taken into the Lorica’s custody.”
“So disobedient,” Thea said absentmindedly, her eyes still focused on the dagger. “So inefficient. I was upset that Herald allowed you to escape, so I had him punished. I’ve been working here forever. My word is gold. The Hands sprang into action and restrained him as soon as I asked. I didn’t need him after all. Just the dagger. And you, Dustin.”
“What have you done to him?” I shouted.
“He’s safe,” Bastion said, tugging on my arm. “She wanted all of HQ distracted so she could grab the dagger and finish what she started.”
“And finish I will. Look how Dustin ran so quickly from his friends, only to come crawling back when he couldn’t find the answers he wanted. Oh, I could have found the dagger myself, truthfully. Or I could have kept it after I stabbed you in the heart.”
My scar ached. “It was you. The cultist in the bronze mask. The one who murdered me.”
“Murdered?” Thea scoffed. I watched as she held her palm under the dagger, to make sure she could catch my blood if it threatened to drip off the blade. I watched the way she handled the dagger with skill, with painful familiarity. “I gave you a new life. Security. Power. I gave you purpose.”
“You planted the Book of Plagues on the Pruitts. You killed Resheph and Lei Kung. It was you.”
“Poor Dustin. Sweet Dustin. About time you figured it out. It took the Hounds forever to find the dagger, too. I had to plant it somewhere, after all, erase all traces of it being tied to me.”
“You pinned this all on Herald,” I said. Something stirred in my stomach. I had blamed him myself.
“In retrospect, it might have been amusing to send you to find the dagger. There would have been something so poetic and bittersweet about setting you to fetch your own murder weapon, like the good little dog that you are.” Her smile grew wider. “It wouldn’t have been hard to convince you, not with that collar around your neck.”
My fingers flew to my pendant. It was cold now, even against my skin. “What?”
She laughed. “I need you to keep wearing that,” she said, and almost immediately a sense of comfort, of warmth washed across my skin. “I need you to trust me.”
The gem was manipulating me, somehow. She was controlling me through it. I gritted my teeth and ripped it off my neck, the leather thong snapping.
“How dare you. I trusted you, Thea.”
Prudence reached for the gem, snatching it out of my fingers. “We all did, Dustin,” she said grimly, clenching her fingers, crushing the opal into powder.
Thea only smiled. “You know what’s curious about my gemstones? They only just work on humans. Slightest suggestions, little nudges, that’s the best I can do. On less intelligent creatures, however, they work wonders.” She stretched out her fingers, admiring her rings, the opals that glistened there. “Rodents, for example.”
“Why, Thea?” Prudence said. I couldn’t tell if she was just buying time, but something in the way that she and Bastion hadn’t advanced told me that we needed to be very, very careful about handling this.
“The thing about rats,” Thea said, “is that they can get around very quickly. Unseen, agile. And they’re everywhere, too. Slaying Resheph gave me dominion over the vermin, but it was my gems that gave me total control. And you know, it’s remarkable what you can do with a horde of rats. Their tiny little claws are perfect for marking things, for scratching things out. A design, for example.” She smiled. “Or a circle.”
Bastion elbowed his way past me. “Fuck,�
�� he muttered, holding out one hand. “She cast a circle. That’s why she needed the rats.”
“Well done, Sebastion.” Thea laughed. “You were never the cleverest, but you certainly are quick in your own way.” She ran her finger along the edge of the dagger, smearing my blood across the blade, muttering softly. My stomach turned.
“No,” I shouted, rushing forward. “Stop. What are you doing?”
Her chanting ended. “Closing the circle.”
Thea fell to one knee and thrust the dagger into the ground. The world exploded into white, a silvery brilliance bursting from lines that radiated in spokes from where the dagger struck. I held my hands up to my eyes as the energy surged its way out of Thea’s office, as massive pillars of blistering light detonated out of the very earth all across the city.
The rats. Valero. Thea had inscribed the entire city into a gargantuan circle.
Chapter 19
My feet tangled as Bastion, Prudence, and I ran for the exit. HQ was in chaos, the entirety of the building blaring with the end-song of invisible klaxons. Thea was nowhere to be found, but her shattered office windows gave us a good guess. That’s why we were headed for the streets.
Everything was a whirl. The woman I thought to trust the most was the one who had literally stabbed me through my heart. I felt at my cheek, at the crusted gore drying against the cut Thea had left there. All this while she had played me with her opal, biding her time with casting a circle over the entirety of the city. What kind of madness had driven her to this, and what kind of madness had she brought down on Valero? I clenched my fists, dreading those very answers as I rushed out onto the street with the rest of the Lorica.
The city had transformed into a terrifying mockery of the day, enormous pillars of light illuminating Valero with a frigid, horrible white, the absence of color so bleak against the urban landscape, an ivory inferno.
Fuck the underground, am I right? Forget the Veil. People were pouring out into the streets, panicking – normals, most of them, pointing at the light beaming into the clouds. They clapped their hands over their ears at the horrible keening noise that sounded like distant laughter, or screaming, laced with the awful, discordant music that seemed to echo from the very sky itself. And all around us the wind lashed, thunder rumbling, the warped aftershocks of the storm god’s passing. Was it the end of the world? Was that what Thea had triggered?
“Get everyone to safety,” Prudence shouted over the din, directing what little staff we had on hand to usher the normals out and away from Central Square. Hands, Hounds, Wings alike rushed to help, and still I had a sinking feeling. What could the Lorica do for them? I saw Scions mixed in among the crowd, some muttering to themselves, preparing spells, and others barking orders. But again: to what avail?
People stood at the doors and balconies of their apartments, children clutched at their waists. Far down the streets sirens blared, though not loud enough to truly be heard over the alien song of the circle. Lights that should have flashed red and blue pulsed as emergency vehicles rushed in all directions, but their colors were washed over by the all-encompassing white.
Then the droves began, a mass exodus of people streaming out of the square, out of restaurants, out of hotels and homes, cars choking the streets as the normals headed – where, exactly? Movement went in all directions, but there was no clear sign of haven, of any sort of safety. Six massive pillars encircled the city. Who knew if they formed a barrier between Valero and the world outside?
Chaos. That was what Thea had initiated, and if that was all she wanted, she had it. But I knew it wasn’t the end of things. Valero had been twisted into a nightmarish alabaster hellscape, yet it was only the setting of the stage. This was just the beginning.
Worse, still, was what Thea had become.
She was suspended, somehow, far above the power lines, rotating slowly, as if she were surveying the city, watching her handiwork. There was a different quality to her, the luminosity glowing from inside her skin as if she had become a living lamp, a pale firefly. She stretched out her arms, her hands reaching to either side of her, the rings on her fingers now grown into orbs of spectacular luminescence, each gemstone glowing like a sphere of light.
Thea threw her head back, as if breathing in the night air, savoring her newfound form and power. She turned to face us, her meditation complete. Her eyes, in contrast to her body, were pits of total darkness, deep and devoid of emotion, apart from glee. When she smiled, more light poured out of her mouth. Looking upon her was painful, like staring into the sun. She was beautiful, radiant, terrible.
“Hang back,” Bastion said from somewhere beside me. “Let her make the first move.”
Like I needed to be told. I stood with the others, some thirty of us who had poured out of the Lorica, all of us unsure of what we were meant to do. Odessa was with us, her expression flat, her body deathly still. Even the Scions were playing things cautiously.
But someone broke away from our pack. One of the Hands, a man I didn’t know all too well. Jonas, I think. He went straight for Thea, his hand cupped around a wad of fire, running blindly for her in some foolish, brazen attempt to be a hero.
“Jonas,” someone shouted. “Don’t!”
It was hard to tell where Thea was looking, or if she was looking at all, but it happened so seamlessly. She reached one hand to her side, calling glimmers of light to gather in her palm and between her fingers. I knew what was coming. Thea had used her power on me, once, to create arcane grenades made of explosive radiance, testing my talent by bombarding me with spheres of light as deadly as fireballs. I recognized the shapes she was forming this time. I should have known.
The light in her hand gathered and solidified into a lance even taller than she was. Then another spear manifested, and another, until six of them hovered in the air around her. Another shout of warning rang across the square, but Jonas kept charging. He thrust his hand upward, lobbing the ball of flame. The corner of Thea’s mouth quirked. She opened her hand, fingers outstretched, and all six spears launched in concert, sailing unerringly for the ground.
The spears met the fireball in midair, snuffing it out through sheer force, then kept flying. All six impaled Jonas at once, slamming with enough force to crater the asphalt in a burst of blood and broken gravel. His body went rigid, then all at once limp, supported only by the spears.
Thea clenched her fist, and the spears disappeared. Jonas slumped to the ground, bleeding from six massive holes – just like the Pruitts, like Resheph. Someone screamed.
“Everyone stay back,” Bastion roared. No one needed to be told this time.
“You should listen to him,” Thea said. Her speech had a different quality, like it was coming from a place far away, threaded over and under with echoes that might have been copies of her own voice, or the sound of something entirely other, alien. She looked over her shoulder, spinning on her invisible axis again, admiring the pillars of light. “Let the circle do its work.”
I looked back, watching for the Scions, noting that several of them were still mouthing words, weaving their spells. Complex, destructive ones, I hoped, spells that could end this horror quickly. Maybe that was how I could help, I thought. Buy them time. Be the diversion.
“Why did you do all this, Thea?” I shouted. “Killing the Pruitts, the god murders. Killing me. Why?”
Thea swiveled again, her black eyes settling on me. “Terrible, wasn’t it?” She hovered lower, closer. The shuffle of activity around me told me that the others were clearing off in fear, that perhaps I should as well. But I had a job to do. “I do apologize.”
“For what?” My teeth ground into each other so much it hurt. “For everything you’ve done? For all the lives you’ve taken?”
Thea tilted her head, thinking. “I suppose. And for deceiving you, and the Lorica. I needed time, you know, to get everything in order, to lay my plans out. It was so simple, too. Who would ever suspect anything so serious from rats? If I had slain a greater en
tity, there would have been more cause to question and investigate. As I expected, no one was too concerned with the death of a minor deity.”
“That’s what you wanted everyone to think,” Prudence said. She seemed to have the same idea: let Thea gloat like the big damn villain she thought she was. The difference was that I really did want answers.
“But the rats. Oh, the rats. Such simple creatures. It didn’t take much out of me, you know, to control them, to get their claws to leave little marks across the city. Make enough marks – ”
“Enough to draw a circle,” Prudence said.
Thea smiled, holding her hands out, spinning in place like a triumphant child.
“And what’s the circle for, Thea? Are you planning to destroy Valero?”
Thea stopped spinning. “You’ll find out soon enough. You’re so clever and all.”
“Not as clever as you,” I spat, the taste in my mouth bitter. “You set me to find you. You were the murderer, and you wanted me to find you.”
“And you failed, until it was too late. Not quite the best Hound at the Lorica, then.” That stung more than it should have. Why, I couldn’t say. Maybe I even believed her all those times she praised me. “But I can’t say that you were ever a bad dog, Dustin. You always wore the collar I gave you, like a good little puppy.”
I reached at my throat for the gem that was no longer there. “You used me,” I said.
“How melodramatic. Putting you on the altar, though? Turning you into a sacrifice? Now that was using you.”
My nails dug into the palms of my hands.
“That blade was never meant to kill you, Dustin. It was only meant to plant something inside of your heart.”
I staggered, clutching at my scar. I looked down at myself, at the back of my hands, then up at her again. Is that why it hurt all those times? Or was Thea bluffing again?
Her smile went wider, the black of her eyes gleaming. “Then you know, don’t you? Do you feel it even now, growing inside you like a cancer? And now that you’ve ripened, now that something as powerful as Hecate has granted you her favor, your blood has sweetened, perfect for closing a circle as grand and majestic as this. You’ve served your purpose, Dustin, and in time, you may have other roles to fulfill.”
