The Map of Moments

by Christopher Golden

  Whatever you did to yourself that day, you did it to me as well. We've both got blood on our hands.”

  Gabrielle looked so lost. “So you're here to rescue me?” she asked.

  “To save your life, yes,” he said. I wanted so much from this Moment! Once, I even hoped… “But we both know it's too late to rescue you. I couldn't go back that far.” As he said this last, his voice broke. “That Moment can't be changed.” God, how he wanted to go to her, to hold her and try to lend her solace. But he had none to give. “You've got to get out of here, Gaby. Get to high ground. I don't know how long you have, but we're talking hours. You need to go right now.”

  “And do what?” she cried, and in those three words he heard the despair of falling angels.

  Max steeled himself to take her out of there by force if it came to that. “You've got to go back to Ray. You've got to be what you promised, otherwise Coco and Mireault win, and what they made you do—”

  “I can never change that!”

  “No, you can't. But you can stop it being their victory, and make it yours.”

  “I'm so tired…”

  “You're nineteen!”

  She laughed, but it was bitter and sharp. “What, I have my whole life ahead of me? All two centuries of it, fighting the Tordu? The conjure-woman, Gabrielle? What kind of life is that, Max?”

  “What kind of death is this?”

  She snorted, but did not answer. She drank more wine, her eyes distant, and the storm made itself known once more. Something smashed against the side of the house and was lifted, scraping, across the roof.

  “Some of the wards are damaged in the storm,” Max said.

  “Seddicus …?” Her eyes were wide and filled with terror.

  Max shook his head. “Not this time. But if you die here, and Ray dies, then they won't worry about Seddicus anymore. They'll have the city for themselves, and they'll grow strong and fat on its people. Then they'll be able to keep their demon at bay forever.”

  “You sound like you care.”

  “I do,” Max said. And he surprised himself by meaning it. He hated Ray for what he had done to Gabrielle, and what he had steered Max into. But he also understood why the old conjure-man had done it. He remembered a scene from a film his mother had loved, The Cruel Sea, where the captain of a destroyer steered his boat through a group of shipwrecked, drowning men so that he could depth-charge a U-boat. He'd known the U-boat would sink many more ships, and kill many more men if he did not destroy it there and then. But the expression on that captain's face had stuck with Max for a long time. The pain, the hopelessness, the shame. His mother had cried every time she watched the movie, and as a kid Max had needed to ask her why.

  But he lived, and he learned.

  He wondered whether he should go to sit beside Gabrielle, but decided against it. So he watched her finish the bottle of wine, and then stand, and when she came to him he remained leaning against the wall, hoping against everything he had seen and heard that she would reach out and stroke his face, just once.

  But this Gabrielle was a stranger.

  She walked to the stairs and started to descend.

  Max went after her. “Ray's waiting for you at—

  “Cooper's,” she said. “Yeah. Ray's always waiting for you at Cooper's.” She smiled back up at him, and when she next spoke, he tried hard to hear something more than her words suggested, more than sorrow, and regret, and something approaching love. But there was nothing.

  “I'm sorry for what I did to you,” Gabrielle said. She disappeared from view, and moments later Max heard the front door open and the storm blow in.

  Then silence descended, and Max swayed, disoriented, and slumped to the floor of a very different place.

  He didn't sleep, exactly. But he did rest. It felt as if he'd run a marathon. The attic room was bare now; no blankets, no empty wine bottles. The house smelled stale, but there was no odor of rot.

  When he stirred at last, and found the strength to go outside, the street was a ruin, and there was an old truck parked in a driveway a few houses away. A man jumped from the truck, and for a beat Max hoped it would be the old man he had shouted at to get away. But fate, he knew, could never be so kind, nor so neat. This man was younger, and whatever grief he carried he kept to himself.

  Max looked up at the house. The dormer was bare of those spray-painted words. No one had died in this attic. He had changed the world forever.

  For a while, he thought of simply going to the airport and flying out of New Orleans, never to return. But after everything that had happened to him, this journey felt incomplete. There was something tugging at him, a part of him that had become forever New Orleans.

  He had to know what had happened to Gabrielle.

  He had to know if it had worked.

  Standing outside Cooper's once again, Max sniffed the air, wondering whether he would smell Gabrielle's perfume. He closed his eyes and tried to feel the crackle of magic within him, tried to get some sense of what waited for him inside the building, but whatever static he'd accumulated, he had spent it. He felt empty of potential, shorn of power. But at least he still possessed a soul.

  What Ray had led her to …what that old bastard had allowed to happen to Gabrielle …

  Max was not the man he used to be. The violence he had committed weighed upon him. He'd struck a man with a car, killed him. He'd watched people die. He'd fought a man, beaten him, and he had witnessed the woman he loved commit murder, surrendering her soul to eternal damnation.

  I could kill him, Max thought. He imagined his hands

  closing around Ray's throat, squeezing, and Corinne's smile floated before him, and Gabrielle's laughter seemed to fill the air. But even in his imagination his hands soon loosened, and the old man fell away. Max might have killed, but he was no murderer.

  He pushed the door open and went inside. Ray and Gabrielle were sitting at the usual spot, the two of them engrossed in conversation. A half-empty whiskey bottle stood before them, and two glasses, and Max wondered how long they had been here. How long had he been out, lying on the floor of that attic? A day, a week, a year? He had no way of telling. Messes with your body clock, his sister had once said after flying from Boston to the UK, and Max smiled as he remembered that. Try this, he thought.

  When they looked up at last, there was no surprise in Ray's eyes. Of course not.

  But Gabrielle looked amazed.

  “I thought you'd gone back to Boston!”

  His breath caught in his throat, brows knitting. Could it be that she didn't remember? Of course. Her eyes held no guile.

  “I came back,” Max said.

  Ray, the old bastard, actually laughed. He remembered well enough.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Unfinished business.”

  Ray's smile faded and his old, hooded eyes drooped. “Nothin’ left unfinished,” he said. “That's it now. That's all.”

  “You can't just leave it like this,” Max said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because…” He sat at the table with them. She was staring at him, and her eyes were so very different. “Because…” But he could think of no reasons that involved the old man. Max and his interests no longer mattered to Ray.

  Not at all.

  “It's done,” Ray whispered firmly. His voice sounded as old as the years he claimed, and when Max caught his eye, he was shocked at Ray's expression. He was almost crying.

  “So you've got the mojo now?” Max asked, looking at Gabrielle.

  “All kinds,” she said darkly.

  “And you're the Oracle,” he said.

  “She will be,” Ray answered for her. “There's just one more Moment to pass, and then the balance will be reestablished. For a time, at least.”

  Max did not understand. But then the door of Cooper's burst open, Coco entered, and the time for questions was over.

  Rising from his chair, Max moved to Gabrielle's side, putting himself between her and C
oco. Ray leaned back, seemingly resigned to what was to come, and with a whisper Coco cleared the room. Chairs scraped, and the half a dozen other patrons left, along with the Cooper brothers.

  Coco took another step forward, and then he saw past Max, to Gabrielle sitting there. His eyes went wide and his mouth hung agape.

  Mireault entered the bar. Old, withered, pathetic, his power surged before him in a wave that took Max's breath away. A chill like winter's first frost settled on the room. Mireault moved with painful determination, wheezing, and then he looked at the three of them and stopped, staring, a statue of an impossibly old man.

  Then he started laughing. It was a cheerful chuckle, the sort of laughter a place like this heard many times each and every day.

  “So,” said Mireault le Tordu, “everything has changed.”

  “But…” Coco began, shaking his head, baffled.

  Tumblers clicked, and more doors opened in Max's mind.

  Several other Tordu entered, some carrying guns, and they all paused as they saw Gabrielle.

  Mireault waved his hand back over his shoulder, as if dismissing everyone behind him. Then he came forward and gently, carefully, lowered himself into the chair Max had just vacated. The old man's eyes had not left Gabrielle for a second. He stared at her for a while, nodding, grunting now and then, as if the truth of what had happened was presenting itself fully to his mind.

  “Very good, Matrisse,” he said at last. “Father would have been delighted at your deceptions.”

  “You expected me to do nothing?” Ray asked.

  “You were bound to try,” Mireault said. A smell came off of him, something older than age, and Max thought of the stinking mess he'd seen this man smearing across a ward centuries before. “But I knew you were all but powerless. Dying. My dear brother, dying.” And then the withered old man did something that amazed Max—he reached across the table and took Ray's hand.

  “Death comes for us all,” Ray said.

  “So they say.” Mireault nodded slowly. “Clever of you.

  Very clever. You'd have never survived the Moments yourself.” He kept his gaze on Ray, and Ray stared back. How long since they've spoken like this? Max thought. How long since they've even seen each other?

  “Never was about my survival.”

  “The lengths you go to,” Mireault said. “You can never win.”

  “But I must never lose.”

  Mireault chuckled. “That boy's heart tasted good, and strong. The boy Gabrielle delivered to me. I thank you, brother.”

  Ray's smile slipped. “A necessary evil.”

  “Are you really going to let him leave,” Mireault whispered, “with all he knows?”

  Max realized with a sickening jolt that the old man was talking about him.

  “Gabrielle will take him to the airport and—

  “No, brother,” Mireault said, smiling. “She's still vulnerable. Still …not all here. We'll have her yet, and you'll die, and I'll let Coco have the young professor. More blood on my brother's hands.”

  Ray frowned. “He's served his purpose, Mireault. Why not jus’—”

  “He knows too much! About us, and about you.” He glanced at Gabrielle. “About her!”

  “Gabrielle—” Coco began, but he said no more. Mireault raised one hand and the Tordu man's eyes bulged, his mouth gaping open.

  “You speak when I tell you to speak,” Mireault whispered. “Fucking idiot!” In those two hissed words, Max heard the pent-up fury and blame that simmered in this old man, emotions that spoke of some form of defeat. And it was terrifying.

  Ray glanced at Max. His expression was unreadable. Then he looked at Gabrielle, and Max saw something there that he had seen in his own mirrored reflection many times since leaving New Orleans: love, and loss.

  “You know,” Ray said.

  Gabrielle nodded.

  Mireault, twisted and withered as he was, suddenly sat up straighter. “What does she—?”

  Ray stood and leaned across the table. As he did so he pulled Mireault closer to him, reached for his head, for all the world looking as if he wanted to give his brother a kiss.

  Gabrielle grabbed Max's hand—her skin cool, dry, distant—and shoved him to one side.

  “Now's the time, brother,” Ray said. Mireault squealed something that Max could not hear…

  But then Coco moved, and Max understood.

  As Mireault lifted his clawed hand to frantically wave his men back, Coco pulled a gun, stepped forward, and shot Ray through the head.

  “No!” Mireault wailed, his voice that of a child.

  Ray slumped to the table, whining as he turned his head and reached for Mireault once more.

  Coco shot him two more times.

  Beside Max, Gabrielle gasped and went rigid, her eyes wide, mouth slack. She squeezed his hand so tight that he felt the bones crunched together, knuckles popping, and he tugged hard to remove his hand from her grip. Some dreg of the magic he'd gathered and used remained, because he sensed what was happening to her—smelled the history of New Orleans, saw its present sad state, and tasted the hope that existed once again in its future.

  Mireault was laughing and crying. Coco looked aghast at what he had done, and he had already dropped the gun, both hands reaching hesitantly for his master as confusion and fear took hold.

  Oh, you'll get yours, Max thought, and he found it in himself to smile at Coco's stunned expression.

  Mireault's tears and laughter filled the bar, and the sound of Ray's blood dripping from the table seemed just as loud.

  Gabrielle went slack, sitting back down next to the dead man. As her hand loosened around Max's and she let him go at last, he felt a dreadful loss. Hold me, he thought. Hold on to me forever; maybe you can no longer love but I can, and can't that be enough?

  But she was already different, already changed. “Mireault,” she said, breathing heavily.

  “Oracle,” he said, tears still streaming from his eyes. “We'll be seeing…” He waved a hand, shook his head.

  “I'm sure,” Gabrielle said.

  The old man stood and his Tordu helpers, Coco among them, held his arms and guided him backward out of the bar. His gaze never left the face of his dead brother.

  Max left her in the bar, and as the door closed gently behind him, he was no longer certain that Gabrielle was even in there at all. From outside, the building looked and felt deserted and abandoned, and the street echoed with noises that all originated elsewhere.

  He walked, and after a while he managed to hail a cab. He told the driver to take him to the airport. The young guy raised an eyebrow and shrugged, as if barely understanding why anyone would ever wish to leave the city.

  Max leaned against the window and watched the streets, the squares, the ruined places passing by. Gabrielle's parting words echoed to him, and they were already taking on the tone of a haunting. Max, it was always you in that attic with me.

  They passed a large market that the driver said had been gutted by fire soon after the flood. There was a small crowd of people on the sidewalk in front of the building, a few of them standing behind trestle tables piled high with bottled water, gas canisters, food containers, clothes in boxes, a hundred more things. The others browsed in front of the tables, and here and there money was changing hands.

  “They're managing,” the young driver said. “Can't never beat the storm, but can't let it win, either.”

  “It's all about balance,” Max muttered.

  “Yeah,” the driver said. “Yeah!”And he drove the rest of the way in contemplative silence.

  A while before they reached the airport Max drifted off to sleep. In his dream, Gabrielle still loved him.

  And when he awoke, she was still alive.

  About the Authors

  CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN’S novels include The Lost Ones, The Myth Hunters, Wildwood Road, The Boys Are Back in Town, The Ferryman, Strangewood, Of Saints and Shadows, and The Bor-derkind. Golden co-wrote the lavishly illustra
ted novel Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire with Mike Mignola, and they are currently scripting it as a feature film for New Regency. He has also written books for teens and young adults, including the thriller series Body of Evidence, honored by the New York Public Library and chosen as one of YALSA's Best Books for Young Readers. Upcoming teen novels include Poison Ink for Delacorte, Soulless for MTV Books, and The Secret Journeys of Jack London, a collaboration with Tim Lebbon. With Thomas E. Sniegoski, he is the coauthor of the dark fantasy series The Menagerie as well as the young readers fantasy series OutCast and the comic book miniseries Talent, both of which were recently acquired by Universal Pictures. Golden and Sniegoski also wrote the upcoming comic book miniseries The Sisterhood, currently in development as a feature film. Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. Please visit him at www.christophergolden.com.

  TIM LEBBON lives in South Wales with his wife and two children. His books include the British Fantasy Award-winning Dusk and its sequel Dawn, Fallen, Berserk, The Everlasting, Hellboy: Unnatural Selection, and the New York Times bestseller 30 Days of Night. Forthcoming books include the new fantasy novel The Island, two YA novels making up The Secret Journeys of Jack London (in collaboration with Christopher Golden), the collection Last Exit for the Lost from Cemetery Dance Publications, and further books with Night Shade Books, Necessary Evil Press, and Humdrumming, among others. He has won three British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, a Shocker, and a Tombstone Award, and has been a finalist for International Horror Guild and World Fantasy awards. His novella White is soon to be a major Hollywood movie, and several other novels and novellas are currently in development in the US and the UK. Find out more about Tim at his websites: www.timlebbon.net and www.noreela.com.

  THE MAP OF MOMENTS

  A Bantam Book / February 2009