Justin steeled himself against the pain of movement and reached down for the chamber pot. Before he could grab it, he realized it was too late. The warmth of his own piss was turning cold against his skin, turning his soaked nightclothes frigid.
He growled, a tortured animal’s howl, and shoved the pot from him. It fell to the ground and shattered, littering the ground with shards of glazed pottery. He let his head fall back, and it hit the bedstead. The blow was not that hard, but his skin felt like brittle parchment, and his bones felt as weak as grass stems. The pain was such that he thought he had split open his own skull. Sweat trickled into his eyes. For a terrible, fevered moment he thought the moistness must be his own brains, leaking away with the rest of his life. Harsh sobs wracked his body. Beside him, he could hear Gwendolyne’s pitiful whimpers.
“The dreams…” Gwendolyne’s weak voice carried to him, “Justinian, ’tis fierce cold. It does coat my body with ice. It touches my very bones. A coverlet…canst thou reach one?”
Justin clamped his jaw and ground his teeth together until he thought they must crack. He couldn’t bear to listen to this any longer. Fair, sweet Gwendolyne, reduced to this. He would die to preserve her, but he could not endure hearing her any longer, not like this. Her cries were as sharp as sewing needles thrust into his ears. He had no more blankets. Their bed was piled high, a foot thick with them, and still she shivered. Still he shivered. And now he had pissed himself.
I will not die like this, he thought. I cannot die like this. I am a man of breeding. A man of honor. I will not die in a pool of my own urine.
“I will not go out like this,” he vowed. “I will take matters in my own hands first.”
Gwendolyne cried quietly at his side. “I am sorry, my lord…I am so sorry…”
She suffers past bearing, he thought. I should end it. The mad thought leapt upon him. He looked about for something he could use to end her pain. Standing near the doorway, near the corner where he had sought the chamber pot, was a tall mirror, ringed round with thick carvings.
The mirror’s gilt frame was battered. But the glass face of the mirror was intact. If he could shatter it, he could use the fragments to end Gwendolyne’s mortal suffering and his own.
Now he stared at the mirror, abandoned at the side of the entryway. He crawled out of his bed and across the floor. He reached out a shaking hand, took its frame, and pulled it toward him.
It was then that Justin’s world changed forever.
“So you have found the strength for one last attempt at controlling your life, even as it slowly seeps from you?” the mirror said. The voice Justinian heard was low, gravelly.
Justin let go of the mirror as if it was a snake that had bitten him, and shrank away from it.
“What?” he said. He had been certain that the delusions had left him, that his thoughts were finally his own. But the mirror was speaking to him, so he had to be slipping into madness once more.
“I do not think that your ears have progressed quite so far into death as you would have me believe, Lord Sterling. Shrink not from me. It is my place to be here. And I think it would not offend any truth if I claimed that you have called upon me to appear here.” The voice was clearly coming from the mirror, though he feared to gaze on it again. But he had to.
Justinian’s hands trembled as he approached. He could not tell whether it was the sickness or his fear which caused him to shake so. Slowly, he raised his head and peered into the glass.
In the mirror gazing out at him was not what he expected to see—his own ravaged reflection. Instead, he saw a beautiful man’s face surrounded by golden hair curling down to his shoulders. The man’s eyes were the deepest shade of green Justin had ever seen, glistening like emeralds. They were fathomless. Justin looked at them, speechless. Eternity sped past him and he could do nothing. Time had no meaning and everything lived within that gaze, everything that mattered.
Finally, eternity came to an end and Justin blinked.
“Who—who are you?” he spoke sluggishly through his wasted lips.
“Your salvation, Lord Sterling,” the mirror replied. “It is your nature to scream against death. When you were dying, your limbs fought the very air that you might grasp yet another breath and draw it into your lungs. It would be the falsest of lies, if I said that my reflection is other than thine own, in all ways that matter.”
“Riddles,” Justin said, “do not answer my question. Who are you?”
“That, too, is but a riddle, should you wish to solve it. But what I offer you now is more than a riddle. I will give you your salvation. I offer immortal life for you, for your beloved. All you must do is to take my hand…”
Delusion or not, Justin was willing to grasp at anything that might save him, might save his beloved Gwendolyne. With his hand, the hand that was not grasping the mirror, Justinian reached out, trembling with fear, to the golden-haired man. The hand of the mirror man seemed to have reached through the reflective glass as though it was nothing more than water. Justin took the hand, felt the shock as flesh met flesh…
He vanished beyond the glass.
He did not know how long he was in the world on the far side of the mirror, and he could never remember exactly what he heard or did. Only a few moments passed in the world he’d left behind before he stepped out of the mirror again. But he had changed in every way that mattered. His angel had burned away the lumps, had washed away the spots, had cleansed his entire being with fire. He felt the vigor of true health, and more. Beyond vitality, he felt invincible. His vision was crisp and clear. The smell of death in the room was strong, but he was above it now. Death could never touch him.
His beloved Gwendolyne still suffered here in this room, with death so near Justinian could almost touch its hovering presence. He had so little time. Justin lifted up the great mirror as if it was a child’s toy, took it to the bed, and sat next to her.
Her eyes were closed. She slept fitfully, whimpering and twitching as the last stages of the plague ravaged her fevered body. Justinian touched her face gently. She didn’t respond. Had she already slipped away? Was he too late? He put his hand under her dull, tousled hair, cupped her head and lifted it into his lap. He ran his thumb in a tender circle over her cheekbone, a lover’s caress. She stirred under his touch. Her eyes opened and she moaned at the strain her new position placed upon her swollen neck.
“Justin…no…” she murmured. Her eyes focused on him, then. They widened.
“My lord,” her shocked voice was weak, “you have recovered…”
“I am completely healed,” he told her. “And now it is your turn to live again.”
“Truly, my lord? A miracle!”
“It is, my lady. An angel has come here to deliver us. We are not damned, but are meant to be saved. Look here in this glass. Let him cleanse you of this malady, as he did me.” Justin held her up to face the mirror.
As soon as she saw the figure in the mirror, her eyes went wide. “No!” she breathed with all the scant force she could muster. She pushed his arm and turned her face away. “What have you done?”
Justin’s brow furrowed, and he gently turned her toward the mirror again, despite her struggles. Her strength was no match for his at the best of times, much less now. “Do not let your delusions get the better of your judgment, my wife. Look again. He can heal you. Do I not stand before you once again a whole man? Do you not see an improvement in me? This is our own angel, sent to us.”
“He is no angel, my lord. He is a devil! You have made a pact with the devil, by my life! Can you not see his fangs?” Gwendolyne’s eyes avoided the mirror in terror, and looked upon him with a mixture of pity and fear. She struggled to escape him, but he pulled her closer to him, holding her more tightly in his embrace.
“Look quickly, wife,” he pleaded. “Your time draws near. I beseech you! Do not turn away.”
“No. I would die a thousand deaths ere I make my bed with Satan. Recant, my lord. He has warped your mind
. ’Tis no angel within the mirror.”
“Open your eyes, woman, I beg you! Please, before the plague has its way with you.”
Again she struggled to get away from him. Her weak movements were fruitless against his strength, and he forced her to face the mirror in desperation, angered that she would refuse her obvious salvation.
“Do it,” he commanded. “Accept!”
“Never,” she replied.
He reached out and dragged the mirror closer, but still she would not look. Again, he tried to force her to look…he tried to force her. He lifted her head ever upward. He…
And then the plague took her. She could no longer stand against it.
Her tears fell onto his arm as she died. Her tears…her blood.
Drops of blood on green scales.
“NO!” Justin lurched awake. His apartment was the same. The same mirror that had witnessed her death now stood on the dais across from him. His gaze fell upon his untidy gallery, the pictures he had sketched, some painstakingly, others hastily. Some of the works, mostly the architectural drawings, were precise. Not one line was out of place in them. Others canvasses were battlefields of slashing graphite—mostly the figures, the pictures of the women that had caught Justin’s attention. All those women…they were all one woman. All of them were Gwendolyne. Each figure. Gwendolyne, whom the plague had taken from him.
His Gwendolyne.
…not blood. The plague had taken her, and her tears had fallen upon his arm.
He looked down at his arm, human now. Surely those had been tears…
“You’re truly pitiful, Justin. A broken-backed, sniveling excuse for an Elder. If you were a horse, I’d shoot you.”
Justin whirled around at the soft, deep voice. The American accent was too contrived to be real.
“Kalzar!” Justin snarled.
“Perhaps that’s not a fair comparison,” Kalzar said. “I’d shoot you anyway, given the chance.”
His old enemy must have entered through Justin’s mirror again, though he was not standing anywhere close to it. And this time, Justin had not been aware of the transition.
But Justin knew full well that there was no other way to get into the apartment short of breaking the skylight or smashing the door down. And both were intact. That Kalzar could enter and leave Justin’s sanctum at will lit a furious fire in Justin’s stomach.
Kalzar walked across to the picture-covered wall, ripped down a picture of Tina. “I remember when you were more ruthless than this. Today, it’s getting so that every time you kill, you have to run straight back here and stick that needle in your arm.” Kalzar’s burning eyes turned toward Justin.
“I told you not to come back here,” Justin said, gripping the arms of his chair tightly with his hands to keep from trying to tear Kalzar’s throat out with them. Kalzar healed as fast as Justin. It would be a waste of effort.
Kalzar’s smile was a distillation of pure evil, his teeth glistening in the dim room. “I will have your heart this time, Sterling. Every time you stick that needle in your arm, you grow weaker mentally, even if not physically. Do you think the master doesn’t know that? He sees everything. One day, you’re going to wake up and find my claws closing about your neck.”
Justin stood up. He shoved the heavy overstuffed easy chair off to the side as though it was composed of air. It flew across the room and landed against the wall with a resounding crash.
“Why not try it now, Kalzar?” Justin challenged his adversary. “You parade around, growling and howling about your wounded pride. I think you spend so much time talking because you know I could tear you apart. Am I wrong? Come for me, and we’ll find out!”
Kalzar seethed, searching for words. He bent over, and Justin could see him preparing to make the transformation to the Wyrm state. The Dragon had warned them both about fighting each other, had made it quite clear that their lives might be at stake if they ever did so. While Kalzar could not kill Justin, the Dragon could certainly kill one or both of them. But Justin wasn’t worried about that anymore—death might come as a relief to him these days.
Still, those thoughts were insubstantial next to Justin’s anger, next to the red haze of accumulated rage—nearly six hundred years’ worth of rancor and ill will since he’d first met Kalzar—that engulfed him.
Kalzar stopped himself. Justin could feel how close the Arab had come to changing. The tightly stretched skin on Kalzar’s clenched fists bubbled, trying to become scales, but he held back, held it in.
Justin baited him again, spoiling for a fight that would finally put this rivalry to rest one way or another. “You refuse my gauntlet, Kalzar. Why is that? Are you that afraid? Does the Dragon’s last reprimand to you still sting? Or are you so sure of the loss you can’t afford to try me?
“I remember when you were the Dragon’s lieutenant, closer to him than I, but that’s not the case any longer, is it? Who took that from you? Oh, that’s right. I did, didn’t I? I told you before. The Dragon is a surgeon and you are a club. He can only use you to make a bloody mess, not to do the real work.” Justin walked up to Kalzar, and the Arab flinched with each step Justin took, tried desperately to keep hold of his rage. Saliva trickled out of the corner of Kalzar’s mouth as he fought his urge to change, to kill.
Justin could feel the transformation trying to burst out in himself also. Just below the surface of his skin, he could feel his bones reforming, those great muscles swelling in his shoulders. The Wyrm in him wanted to be set free. Those burning eyes wanted to look upon Kalzar. That indestructible hide wanted to gleam in the bloody light of battle with a worthy opponent. Justin kept the Wyrm at bay, but only barely. The one thing that kept him from leaping upon Kalzar and ripping his throat out was the thought of facing the Dragon afterward.
“I never asked for your place of favor,” Justin finally said. “I earned it. You disgust me, then and now. You curry favor like the lowest of flunkies, like a serf groveling before his lord. You run here and there, tearing off heads without ever asking why, hoping he’ll notice. But he knows you for what you are. A beast incapable of planning, incapable of conscious thought. He needs generals. You’ll never transform yourself into anything more than the gutter thief you once were.”
Kalzar just stood there, fighting his instincts, fighting not to become a Wyrm.
Justin was momentarily impressed. A hundred years ago, the Arab would have launched himself at Justin in a foaming rage. Instead, he turned away, turned his back on Justin, struggled to halt the transformation, reverse it.
“Leave now, Kalzar,” Justin spat, “and never enter my house again; otherwise, I will test the Dragon’s warning. I will kill you, and risk the consequences. It would be worth it to rid this earth of the festering sore that is your existence.”
Kalzar turned slowly to face him. Justin realized that the outcome here was still in question. The dragonling form was still just an instant away, waiting to be set free. Fire glowed behind Kalzar’s pupils.
Kalzar opened his mouth to say something and hissed instead. A low growl rumbled from his throat.
The man rather than the monster struggled to find his voice, and finally spoke. “Oh, yesss,” he hissed. “Yesss, Jussstinian. Tessst it!”
Justin was tempted. Oh, so tempted. But then sanity reared its head again. Why waste the energy on such a pile of steaming refuse? “Go, Kalzar,” he said. “Go make more of your ham-handed mistakes. I’ll see you in my dreams.”
“Yesss,” Kalzar replied. “Like you will dream of the girl you watch so carefully. Do you know that she nearly died tonight after you left her? Or perhaps as you will dream of the detective, who dares death to come for her with every breath she takes?”
“Get out of my city, Kalzar. I won’t warn you again.”
Kalzar’s mottled face wrinkled in a grin. “You will have to kill them both soon. The master will feel your reluctance.”
“Neither of them are a threat to the Dragon. They know only what I allow them to kn
ow.”
“But we must be sure about such matters.” Kalzar said, stepping toward the mirror. “They know something is going on. They have seen the signs. The girl has seen you, you fool! I have assigned their deaths to Omar. He needs more practice. Your ‘delicate methods’ don’t make full use of his talents.”
Justin snarled at Kalzar, horrified by his words. “No disciple kills in this city without my consent! That’s final. Omar bungled the first mission I sent him on. Badly. If he kills again without my supervision, I’ll rip his arms off and leave him in the mirror!”
Kalzar merely sneered at him. “Then do your job, Justin. The master wants your women dead. If you don’t kill them, I will be forced to step in.”
“I will handle them in my fashion!”
“The master doesn’t approve of your fashion.”
“You would like to think you know the master’s mind, wouldn’t you, Kalzar?” Justin said.
Kalzar’s lips curled. “I just left Omar at a blues club on LaSalle Street,” Kalzar said. “I guess this lady detective of yours likes the blues. Or perhaps I should say she liked the blues. Omar is fast, even if he’s not always careful…”
Justin jumped at Kalzar, but Kalzar was ready for him. He sidestepped and rushed toward the mirror. Justin cut him off.
“You have the reflexes of an old man, Justinian!” Kalzar cackled. The Arab jumped sideways, snatching a hand mirror from Justin’s drug paraphernalia. Justin glared in fury as Kalzar stuck the mirror in his face.
“See, my master!” Kalzar crooned, “Look upon this trash, at the wreck of what was once one of your Elders!”
Justin half expected, as Kalzar did, that the Dragon would appear in the mirror, but nothing looked back at Justin but his own reflection.
Slowly, clearly confounded by the Dragon’s refusal to respond, Kalzar rose from his crouch and turned the mirror to face himself. He gritted his teeth and his muscles twitched.
Dark Heart Page 13
