by Nazri Noor
I couldn’t say the same for Thea. She had gone pale, somehow even whiter, more translucent than the unearthly shade that her skin had taken on. The light that shone from within her body guttered. A thin trickle of blood dripped from the corner of her mouth, as black and as blasphemous as the pool of gore spreading from the spike that had pierced her abdomen, soiling the pure white of her strange armor.
Her head twitched as she turned to me with confused eyes, her mouth struggling to form around a curse. She lifted her hand, her face straining as she forced her fingers to gesture, to attack again. I severed the connection to the Dark Room, slamming the door shut. The spike dissolved into black smoke, then dissipated. Thea crashed heavily to the ground – then slipped off the edge of the platform.
Bastion cried out. Maybe he had hoped to have something or someone to arrest and return to the Lorica. But Thea was gone, and dead. From how high up we were, she had to be dead. And from how high up we were, I’d have pitied her more if she survived, how broken her body would have been when it hit the ground.
My lack of remorse should have surprised me, but I felt only satisfaction when the blade had burst out of the shadows, nothing but pleasure when she fell from the tower. The violence was exhilarating. Perhaps I had acquired a taste for destruction. Maybe it was always there, a part of me all along. In some dusty corner of my mind, I heard Hecate titter.
The scar at my chest burned, but not with the same intensity as before. I felt a wetness at my shoulder, and I winced at the stinging pain. My wound was bleeding again. I might have escaped tearing my scar open this time, but the Dark Room wanted its payment in flesh and in blood.
Bastion was barely holding himself up on the ground by his forearms. He looked up at me and muttered. “I can’t believe you killed her.”
I looked as far as I dared over the edge of the platform, the night wind tousling my hair, wondering why I felt so numb.
“Me neither.”
“I’m okay with it,” Asher said, splayed on his back, still panting for breath. “It was either her or me.”
“I don’t think you have anything else to worry about now, kid. You’re gonna be okay.” Bastion arranged himself across the ground, spreading his arms as he lay back. I was exhausted just looking at him.
I watched the two of them, wanting more than anything to collapse, wondering whether that would be terrible for my wound.
“So,” Bastion said, after a few quiet moments. “How the hell do we get off this thing?”
Chapter 27
Salvation came in the form of a Wing, a surly man with close-cropped hair who looked pretty unhappy to have been woken up so late in the night. He had a Hand with him, who already had a crackling handful of electricity prepared as they blinked into existence right on the tip of the spire.
Asher might have whimpered at the sight of yet more strangers looking to attack us. I didn’t recognize either of them, but at Bastion’s word the Hand immediately stood down. It took a couple of trips for the Wing to teleport us all off the stalk. I was the last to go, and I used the time to bundle up the broken pieces of Vanitas’s blade and scabbard in my jacket. It didn’t feel right to just leave him there.
A swarm of Lorica staff waited at the base of the stalk. Maybe an exaggeration, but if this was going to turn into yet another altercation, or worse, an arrest, then it was clear that the Black Hand – sorry, that Carver’s delegation was tremendously outnumbered. It didn’t seem like we were in any danger, though. Not just yet. In fact, Asher, Bastion, and I were rushed by another group of Hands as soon as we were back on the ground. They were clerics, which was easy enough to tell when my wound stopped bleeding as soon as one of them touched me.
“You’re going to be just fine,” one of the Hands told Asher, stroking him gently on the back. It seemed like such an innocuous gesture, but the cleric was subtly imbuing him with healing energy, enough that his pallor was beginning to fade. I thought that he would have the ability to heal himself, to an extent, but considering his ordeal, it was obvious that he needed a hand. Or a Hand, as it were.
I looked around, marveling at the Lorica’s sheer efficiency. Men and women flung spells at the fallen trees and foliage, rearranging everything in the botanical gardens to make sure that the normals wouldn’t notice anything amiss.
Some Hands were disintegrating the revolting, sticky remains of the fallen shrikes, eliminating the evidence. Still others were helping to heal the leftovers of the Viridian Dawn, then turning them over to Mouths who whispered in their ears and stroked at their temples, psychically erasing and replacing their memories of the evening, and hopefully, of their entire time with Deirdre.
Oh, of course. Deirdre. She was being led away by three Hands, accompanied by a Wing. Her head was still held high, her wrists bound in ropes that were no doubt enchanted to prevent any form of magical escape.
Closer by a cleric was examining Prudence’s ankle. Gil was crouched near her, concerned, an especially bizarre picture considering he had returned to human form, shirtless and slathered in a grotesque mix of his own blood and the horrible black liquid that leaked out of every shrike he had ripped apart with his bare hands.
Everything looked to be in order, and as far as I could tell, we weren’t in trouble. Yet. The main problem, as indicated by the huddle of Lorica staffers gathered around the base of the stalk, was the question of getting it the hell out of the gardens in the first place.
Another Hand clapped me on the shoulder. I was too transfixed on the enormity of the stalk to look, at first, but the way he kept squeezing my arm prompted me to acknowledge him.
“Ow. Dude. Can I help you?”
“It’s more of a question of whether I can help you,” the Hand said.
I blinked, peered closer, and froze. It wasn’t a Hand at all. The man had curly black hair, a deep tan, and an infuriatingly cocky expression that surpassed the arrogance of both Bastion and Sterling combined. Along his temples ran his familiar wreath tattoo, its leaves bending in the wind.
“Dionysus,” I muttered, well aware that I had said it with all the displeasure of someone who was being forced to gargle vinegar.
He sniffed. “You’d think I’d get a warmer welcome considering your predicament.” He was still clutching my arm, studying my wrist closely.
“Hey, it’s your fault I’m in these circumstances after all.” I tried tugging my arm away, but the god was strong, even when it looked like he was only limply grasping me by the forearm. “So about that. Can you please remove this damn mark from my body already? We stopped the Viridian Dawn.” I couldn’t help swallowing as I tried to form my next few words. I look over to where Enrietta’s body fell. Her corpse was gone. In its place were patches of small, white flowers. “But we couldn’t save Mrs. Boules.”
“Yes. I heard. You couldn’t have known, really. Who knew that it would have been that same madwoman who killed all those other gods?”
“Yeah. Speaking of which – pretty bold of you to just go gallivanting outside of your domicile, isn’t it? Risky enough to do that half-and-half thing with your bar, and now this?”
Dionysus grinned and tapped the side of his nose. “Ah. It’s not really me. This is just an avatar. An aspect of myself that I’m sending out to do my dirty work. Think of it as a meat puppet.”
So that must have been the same deal with Hecate. Still didn’t answer how she managed to enter the Dark Room, though. Dionysus put my arm down at last. I rubbed my wrist gingerly.
“The whole situation with Enrietta Boules is very unfortunate. As for the Dawn, it turns out that someone on the inside was responsible for all my missing toys. One of my maenads. You might have met her that night you came to visit, in fact.”
“The waitress? Wow. She seemed so, I don’t know, loyal to you.”
“Well, yes, but she was still only human in the end. Greed took over, and all that. Which is funny for me to say, I suppose, considering my people aren’t exactly above greed and other petty e
motions. As you may have noticed yourself.” He winked. I grimaced.
“So I assume the maenad’s getting the axe.”
“Yes. You might say in a very literal way, even.”
Yikes. Considering how Dionysus’s followers were so bloodthirsty by default, I decided not to probe further on the matter. “But about my arm,” I said, lifting my wrist to my face, the breath catching in my throat when I realized the death brand was gone.
“It’s done. Shame, really. I thought it was a good look for you. You should consider getting a tattoo.”
“Not for a long time, no. And I think I’ll avoid accepting food and drink from entities from now on, thanks very much. I don’t like the idea of being poisoned again.”
Dionysus looked at me and blinked, somewhat bemused, when something clicked. He chuckled softly. “Oh. Of course. The poison. Right.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood. Wait. Was it a trick? “You did poison me, didn’t you? The tattoo wasn’t just a ruse? I was going to die when the last petal fell?”
“Oh, yes, of course. It’s just that it’s hard for me to think of it as a poison. This is what happened. You swallowed a very tiny little seed. So small, you couldn’t possibly have noticed it in your wine. I didn’t poison you, really, so much as planted something inside of your body.”
“Wait. What?”
“Yeah. You wouldn’t have dropped dead.” Dionysus grabbed his throat, eyes bulging, and he made an exaggerated choking sound. Then he laughed. “Nothing like that. Here’s what would have happened if the timer had run out. That thing inside you would have grown all at once, and brambles would have burst out of every orifice in your body.”
My mouth fell open. Dionysus pointed at the carrion-stalk.
“Kind of like that, actually. Which reminds me.” He held his hand out, and the noise of something whizzing through the air sounded through the night. A speck of gold leapt from the tip of the spire, flying at high speed towards his open hand. His thyrsus. We’d totally forgotten about it.
“Curious how that woman – your old master, I mean – was able to create something so massive. I suppose she used the power from the Codex to perform the trick. That’s what the Viridian Dawn was planning, you know? Vines everywhere, across the whole city, then the world.” He tutted. “It’s why they wanted my precious little baby.”
He pointed the thyrsus at the twisted mass of vines. There was no flash of light, no grand display of magic, just a sigh, as of the wind shifting. The tower disintegrated into a storm of flowers, falling all about us in a hail of petals.
I couldn’t help holding my mouth open as I stared. Even the battle-hardened men and women of the Lorica gaped at the sight, some reaching for wands and defensive devices in case it was some kind of trap. I felt like I was in on a small, sacred secret, that I was the only person in the arboretum who knew the phenomenon for what it was: a god’s favor.
“Awesome, isn’t it?” Dionysus said, chuckling. “Anyway, I should be off. You should come by the Amphora for a drink one of these nights.”
I frowned. “That’s a terrible joke.”
Dionysus laughed. “I know. That’s what makes it so funny.” He clapped my shoulder – the uninjured one, like he knew where I’d been hurt – and winked again. “Don’t be a stranger, Dustin Graves. The gods don’t forget those who have helped them.” And before I could answer, the wind sighed again, and the god had dispersed into a cloud of petals.
The craziest thing of all was that no one seemed to notice, not Asher, who was being treated just an arm’s length from me, and not Bastion, though I suppose I understood considering how exhausted they both were.
Ah. But Carver? Trust Carver to be on top of everything.
“Making friends in low places, I see.” His suit was still ripped where Thea had returned his spear, but he looked all right otherwise, apart from the occasional smudges of shrike blood on his slightly rumpled clothing.
“I’m just glad that’s over,” I said. “I’m just glad that this is all over.”
“Not quite.”
I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed her, but a young woman joined the two of us, slipping into the conversation like she had every right to be there. And truthfully, she did, considering she was in charge of the entire operation. It had been months since I’d seen her, but Odessa looked very much the same. She was a Scion of the Lorica, and if Bastion and Prudence were to be believed, the reason behind how strangely the whole business with the Codex – with Asher – was being handled.
“Dustin Graves.”
I stiffened my back and fought not to stammer. Something about Odessa had always intimidated me, and it wasn’t just her rank as a Scion.
“Odessa. Hi. I don’t know if you’ve met my – I guess he’s my boss. Carver.”
Something passed between them, and Odessa raised an eyebrow. “Carver.” The corner of her mouth quirked, not quite a smile, but almost. “Is that the name you go by these days?”
The thing Carver did with his lips could have almost passed for a smile. “A pleasure to see you too, Odessa.”
That was the other thing. Talk at the Lorica put Odessa’s age somewhere in the hundreds, even though she didn’t look a minute over eighteen. And that same chill of time I felt from her emanated from Carver as well. Whatever history these two had, it went back a while.
“I’ll cut to the chase,” Odessa said. “Surely you’ve realized by now that we’ve resorted to non-aggression because of the – unusual circumstances surrounding the Codex. That is why you all still live. I’ve held back the Lorica’s hand in this. We won’t make trouble for you and your people, Carver. Give us the Codex, and we’ll be on our way.” She waved a hand across the garden, across the carpet of petals. “We’ll forget this ever happened.”
Carver scoffed. “You speak as if this was our fault. Thea was one of your own. Blame her for what happened. The boy stays with us.”
The brief talk of necromancy came back to me, and I wondered if that was why both factions – well, three, if you counted the newly defunct Viridian Dawn – wanted Asher so badly.
Odessa crossed her arms, the gesture somehow making her seem so much bigger. “We have wards, artifacts, room enough at the Lorica to protect him. A rotating staff of personal guardians. He will be safe with us.”
Carver was either playing well at looking unimpressed, or genuinely was, and he just shrugged. “We have a werewolf.”
I nodded, I guess as my way of supporting my current employer. But before I could say anything, Asher had already asserted himself, making his presence known by clearing his throat.
“I wonder if I’m allowed to decide for myself,” he said quietly. It occurred to me then that he probably hadn’t been given that opportunity very many times in life.
Odessa watched him for a moment, as did Carver. Then she nodded.
“I’ll stay with Carver, if that’s all right with everyone.” Asher scratched the bridge of his nose. “I have a feeling he has a lot to teach me.”
Odessa’s expression remained unchanged, but something in her demeanor was enough to tell me she was disappointed. Similarly, something in Carver’s stony-still face told me he was thrilled.
“Very well,” Odessa said, brushing aside a single lock of hair that had fallen over her face. “But we’ll be watching.” She turned to Carver. “We’re always watching.”
Carver smiled thinly. “Of that I am hideously aware.”
Odessa gave Asher one last, lingering look, and was about to leave when Romira approached us. She gazed at each of us in turn, aware that she had walked into something, but whatever she needed to tell Odessa clearly couldn’t wait. There was an uncharacteristic agitation in Romira’s face, and it made me uncomfortable. Itchy.
“Well?” Odessa folded her hands in front of her, waiting. “Do you have something to report?”
Romira looked about again, her gaze resting on me this time.
“It’s all right to speak,”
Odessa said.
“Fine then.” Romira nodded. “We’ve scoured the grounds, and I’ve used my sight. I know it sounds unlikely, but we can’t find her. There’s no trace of Thea’s body anywhere.”
I held the bundle of broken bronze in my jacket closer to my chest, Vanitas’s shattered pieces still cool from the night air. I clenched my fist.
Chapter 28
“Pass the lemon butter sauce,” Bastion said.
Gil set down his utensils, wiped his mouth, and kindly obliged. To his left, Prudence was tucking into her own plate of boiled crab. Carver sat next to Bastion, taking small sips of his coffee between mouthfuls of food, finally having remembered that humans didn’t have a normal tolerance for boiling-hot liquid.
No one was throwing punches, and no one was trying to kill each other. Trust me, I was just as surprised as you are. I couldn’t quite recall who had suggested it, but after the battle at the botanical gardens, it was decided that the whole lot of us should go out for dinner some time, get to know each other, possibly draw some professional boundary lines.
I’d dreaded potential shenanigans involving poison, but the Lorica half of our dining party would never have resorted to something so low, and the other half tended to prefer ripping things apart and getting as bloody as possible. As dinner progressed, though, it was becoming increasingly clear that those lines were very blurry as far as Prudence and Gil were concerned.
Carver had announced at the beginning of the evening that he was paying for everything. So far our dinner guests were being very reasonably polite about ordering, but it still made me question where his ridiculous buying power and accompanying lack of understanding of modern finances were coming from.
