by Nazri Noor
Luella huffed. “Pick something. I wouldn’t have minded if they made off with something less valuable, but the thing was headed directly for the family repository downstairs, like it knew exactly where to go.” She raised her glass at me and winked. “It had your face, you know.”
A chill trickled down my spine. “Then how did you know it wasn’t me?”
“Because I took one of its hands.” She drained the last of her whiskey, then dismissed it with a wave. The glass hovered away and clinked as it settled onto the mantlepiece. “You may have seen how my son operates. Our talents are similar.” She clasped her hands together, skin flushed with alcohol, and beamed. “But he’s far more gifted. My precious baby.”
Bastion scratched the back of his head, his neck flushing. “Mother. Please.”
“So powerful. So handsome.” All hints of pride vanished from Luella’s face, and her cheeks became etched with vitriol. “And yet he squanders all his time and energy with the Lorica.”
“The hand,” Sterling piped up. I liked to think that he did it specifically to save Bastion from another tongue-lashing. I had no way to prove that, of course. Maybe he just wanted to get on with it. “Where did it go?”
“Oh,” Luella said. “That’s the best part. I caught the thing as it was escaping. Its hand fell into the bushes outside the window. Wouldn’t you know, it dissolved into the ground. Just a pile of sludge, and then nothing. The gardener says it might have salted the earth.”
Sterling and I exchanged glances. As if we didn’t already know that Other-Dustin and the thing that came to Brandt Manor were related.
“That’s why I needed to apologize,” Bastion mumbled in my general direction. “I blamed you for something you didn’t do.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time you were a jerk to me,” I said. Luella made something halfway between a chuckle and a snort. “But okay. Let’s just figure out what we can do about this.”
“Agreed,” Luella said. “Bastion wasn’t home when the burglar came. I intercepted him – it – as the thing was leaving the family vault. It might have broken into the manor, but breaking into our repository takes much more effort, that’s for certain. I chased it out through the same window it used to enter, and that’s when I severed its hand.”
Sterling craned his head, surveying the atrium slowly, his gaze finally resting on a bookcase. “There. Is that where it entered?”
“Why, yes.” Luella gave him another of her sticky grins. Bastion said nothing, but I felt the room warm just the slightest. “If you gentlemen will follow.”
I tried to hide my surprise when Luella headed directly for the bookcase in question, then kept walking, disappearing as her body moved among the books. It was a glamour. Sterling shrugged, then followed. I leaned in, curious about stepping through the illusory wall myself, when Bastion’s hand landed on my shoulder.
“Just so we’re clear,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically soft, his eyes still on the ground. “We’re all good, right, you and me?”
I rubbed my jaw where, not hours before, his knuckles had connected with my face. Lest we’ve forgotten: my precious, beautiful face. “You totally sucker-punched me, though.”
He frowned. “You don’t seriously expect me to let you hit me back, right?”
I gave him a slow, deliberate wink, and said nothing. I stepped through the bookcase, melting into the glamour. In my pocket, my hand clenched into a fist. I absolutely wanted to get him back for that – I just wasn’t going to say how, or when. Bastion shuffled after me uncertainly, making small, confused noises.
This was going to be fun.
Chapter 11
Imagine a wine cellar, except that there are no casks in it, no bottles lining endless shelves. Imagine a basement, with walls carved out of smooth stone, like a tunnel in a pyramid, or the storm drain leading out of some abandoned research facility. Imagine a crypt.
It was cold in the repository, and dark, so much that even I had difficulty seeing clearly. The time I’d spent in the Dark Room had honed my senses just enough to let me see better in gloom, but the chamber that the Brandts kept under their sumptuous mansion was like the pit itself. Soundless, except for our footsteps, except for our breath. And cold. Exceedingly cold.
Luella muttered a string of words I couldn’t make out, the rush of them tumbling from her lips with the low whisper and rattling crackle of twigs catching on fire. A globe of flame appeared about a foot away from her head, suspended there like lamplight.
I blinked to adjust, and when Sterling flinched away, I planted my hands on his back in what I hoped was a reassuring manner. He looked at me over his shoulders, his eyes all jittery, but he kept walking when I nudged him. I couldn’t blame the guy.
Sterling and fire had a bit of bad history, between him being incinerated by a beam of sunlight, and being nearly obliterated when a miniature sun appeared just feet above him. Also there was that one time when a cigarette exploded in his face.
I hate to admit that I was involved in at least two – okay, all of those situations, but that was part of what made Sterling and I closer, morbid as it sounds. He drank a bit of my blood, so I set him on fire a little. You don’t know that you’re really friends until you’ve fought a little, am I right? Eye for an eye and all that.
The tunnel didn’t go on as long as I expected, and we ended up at a stone wall that carried a relief of the Brandt family’s leonine crest. Dark, pinpoint stains dotted its surface, which was when I realized that the other Other-Dustin didn’t have a chance of breaking into the family vault even if it slammed its head repeatedly against the wall. The entrance was magically sealed, and there was only one way to gain access.
“You do it, Sebastion,” Luella said. “Mommy’s been hitting the sauce a little too hard tonight. If I prick myself I may just spray blood all over the place.”
I didn’t know if alcohol actually did make blood thinner, or pump faster, but the sheer mention of letting seemed to have an effect on Sterling. He made a small sound in the back of his throat, then threw me an uncertain, sidewards glance.
“Fucking behave,” I muttered, softly enough that the others wouldn’t hear.
Bastion tutted, shaking his head at his mother as he brought two of his fingers together. Before they could even meet, just inches apart, one of them bloomed with a perfect bead of dark blood, as if pricked with an invisible knife. Sterling shuddered, then pushed his fist against his mouth, biting at his knuckles.
“Sterling. Honestly. Get a grip.”
“I’m trying,” he said, his voice thick with desire.
Bastion incanted softly to himself, then pressed his bloodied finger into the relief, his blood joining the other tiny splotches scattered across the stone. The walls around us rumbled, like great, stone gears were turning inside of them, the hidden mechanism groaning like some ancient beast. The Brandt crest rotated some degrees, then with some effort, slid slowly apart, stone grinding against stone, a thin cloud of dust lingering in the breach where the seal once stood.
The Brandts stepped through the gap. Sterling stayed still, even after I pushed on his shoulders.
“Dude. Come on.”
He didn’t budge, just watching mother and son longingly as Bastion stuck his finger in his mouth and nursed his pinprick wound.
“Oh my God, Sterling, you’re the worst. Stay here until you get your shit together.”
“Yeah,” he murmured, scratching the back of his neck and smoothing down the creases in his jeans. “Yeah, I’ll be fine, be right with you.”
And sure, contextually I guess I understood where he was coming from. Vampires liked being able to sample blood from unusual sources, whether that meant mythical creatures, supernatural beings, or mages. Bastion’s blood must have been even more tempting, considering the immense arcane power that flowed through his veins.
Just how much power the Brandts held, however, I didn’t truly grasp until I stepped into their family vault.
Li
ghts were slowly coming on high up in the ceiling, gradually revealing the interior of a room filled wall-to-wall with display cases, each containing a different artifact, and each artifact, no doubt, filled with deep stores of supernatural potential. A cursory calculation told me that there must have been at least thirty cases in the vault, many of them holding pieces of jewelry, dusty grimoires, even one or two weapons.
This was like a section of the Gallery, the massive library found in the Lorica headquarters where their archivists stored all their confiscated artifacts and enchanted relics. The Brandts had their own miniature Gallery in the basement of their manor, and it was small testament to both their wealth and their power.
The whistle that escaped my lips tumbled around the room. Both Luella and Bastion turned to me at the sound of it, giving me satisfied and somewhat smug glances. And for once, I wasn’t mad about it. I didn’t need to be told what each item in the vault could do to guess that it was a formidable collection. It was an arcane artillery stockpile that would have been brutally dangerous in the wrong hands.
“So this is why you were so protective,” I said, nodding at Mrs. Brandt. “It’s why you went so far as to take someone’s hand.”
“Holy shit,” Sterling said, having finally calmed himself and joined us in the repository.
“Indeed,” Luella said. “My actions might have been extreme, considering the thing had a snowball’s chance in hell of breaking its way into the family vault. But it’s the principle of it, you know?”
“We are nothing without our pride,” Bastion said.
“Nothing without our pride,” Luella echoed, pointing at the Brandt family crest embedded in one of the walls, at the lion’s head that watched us stoically. “My husband would have done so much worse. He would have severed the creature’s legs. Maybe taken its heart.”
“Sounds like my kind of guy,” Sterling said absently, peering into the display case of a gem that throbbed with an internal light, pulsing rhythmically, its azure glow rippling like water across the glass.
“He was irreplaceable,” Luella sighed. “As irreplaceable as the treasures we keep here. Heirlooms, nearly all of them, crafted by our ancestors, if not won as trophies in battle. By rights no one should know about this chamber. It’s a family secret, and I trust the two of you will be prudent enough to keep it that way.”
I nodded. Sterling, nose now pressed up against a different display case, put up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
“We have a theory about these doppelgangers of yours, Dustin.” Bastion gestured around the room. “The family vault is warded. Think of it like a recording studio. Sound doesn’t come out, the way that arcane energy doesn’t leak out of this place. Even the Eyes couldn’t find us here. There’s only one thing in this entire room that we can’t mask, and that’s because of its, well, unique properties.”
He beckoned us to the far end of the room, to a display case that looked like all the others. Inside was a nondescript blade, short, like a dagger, and without a hilt.
“This is the Null Dagger,” Luella said. “Shaped like a throwing knife, which is really the only effective way to use the thing. And the reason our spells cannot cloak it is because of its own unique enchantment. It dampens magic in a field around itself. A very small field, yes, but one strong enough that it cancels nearly all known magic.”
Sterling scratched his chin, making it look like he was in deep thought as he fingered his non-beard. “That hardly seems useful.”
“Well, normally, yes,” Luella said. “But if the right person knew how to wield this thing, they could disable a mage simply by poking them with it. Like I said, the dampening field is small, but stab someone with it, and make sure it hangs in there? Then even a wizard is only as good as a helpless child.”
I frowned as I stared at the thing, then frowned harder when I raised a hand over its display case. Something definitely felt off. It was as if the air was filled with static, and my hand was moving through a cloud of fuzzy, invisible fibers. My eyes met with Bastion’s, and something from months ago came flooding back to me. It seemed to come back to him, too.
“That reminds me,” he said, cocking his head. “Whatever happened to that pocketknife I lent you? The one you used to draw blood for Hecate’s summoning?”
“Oh. Yeah. Carver destroyed it, the same night I almost killed him with one of Herald’s lightning bottles.”
Bastion tutted, then shook his head. “You owe me a knife, Graves. That was a good one, too. About the same weight as the Null Dagger.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I always wondered about that. You can do miracles with your talent, yet you carried that knife around in your pocket. What gives?”
Luella watched us with interest, and Sterling wandered off again, with marked disinterest. The peaks of Bastion’s cheeks reddened.
“I guess it was practice, for when I can find a use for the Null Dagger. You know, lay it down somewhere, levitate it, then throw it at someone? If a mage doesn’t see it coming, that’s a quick, easy way to disable them.”
Luella patted the back of his hand. “It’s very sweet that you’re trying to find some use for this wasted trinket.” She looked at me, shaking her head. “We only keep it because his father won it in a duel. The point is, as strange as the dagger’s properties are, it maintains a magical energy signature that someone can still read, in spite of the wards we’ve placed here.”
I blinked at her, finally connecting the dots. “So you’re suggesting that my doppelganger was attracted to its signal? That’s why it came here?”
“That’s the theory,” Bastion said. “Look, one of them went after Prudence’s grandma. Her shop is loaded with magic. I don’t think these things are picky at all. They smell something in the air, they just go for it.”
Like bloodhounds. Even Diaz’s artifact, the one Connor and Salimah shook me down for. The Heartstopper? That thing had a very, very specific and debatably useful function that no one would risk the ire of an entire gang of vampires just to steal. It didn’t make sense until now. These doppelgangers were like magpies, drawn inexorably to arcane objects. The question was why?
A scrabbling from the wall behind us jolted me out of my thoughts. I looked to the Brandts, wondering if we’d triggered yet another secret passage in this already bizarre mystery mansion.
“She knows we’re here,” Luella said, her chest heaving with dismay.
“Mother,” Bastion hissed, his eyes darting between myself and Sterling. “She doesn’t know anything and you’re well aware of that. And do we really need to discuss this here? Now?”
“They already know about the vault, Sebastion. I don’t see what harm it would bring to introduce them.”
“But – ”
Luella ignored him as she headed for the side of the room farthest from the entrance. There was another relief of the family crest sculpted into the wall, but this one didn’t have the same series of rusted blotches over its surface. Luella passed her hand over the relief, her finger pressing into an area on the lion’s forehead. Something clicked, and the noise started up again, though this time the whirring and grinding wasn’t quite as loud, as if the button was driving a smaller mechanism.
From behind us, Sterling muttered a curse. I bit my tongue to hold everything back when I saw what was hidden behind the second passage. It was a small room, only slightly larger than a broom closet. Its corners were lit by magical fires, the kind that gave off no heat. In the center was a cushioned pedestal. On top of it was a bizarre, horrifying sculpture of a woman, naked, formed into a strange, almost conical shape.
It was all wrong. Its limbs were fused to its body in places they logically couldn’t, knees locked together, arms trapped against its torso with excess flaps of skin. And where its head might belong was a jumble of features, like an abstract painting rendered in three dimensions. The mouth was close to where the sculpture’s forehead should have been placed. Two depressions that were meant to represent its eyes were
placed on either side of its head, each set of eyelids without lashes, fused shut.
The eyelids flew open.
I staggered away in terror. The eyes on either side of the thing’s head flickered, rolling madly, staring at everything and nothing. The sculpture shuddered, rocking in place, the cushion underneath it twisting and shuffling against the stone, and the scrabbling noise started anew.
“Gentlemen,” Luella said. “I’d like you to meet my mother.”
Chapter 12
I thought that coming to the Vault was going to be an exercise in awe, of witnessing the literal foundation of the Brandt family’s power. I did not expect to go from bewildered wonder to abject horror in the span of so many seconds.
The woman on the plinth was alive, very much so, but she might have been better off dead. Her bulbous gray eyes rolled about in sheer terror, searching far beyond the room for something only she could see.
Imagine, for a moment, a woman made out of wax, or a candle in the shape of a human being. Now leave that figure out in the sun. Set it on a warm pavement.
Set fire to its hair.
“This is Agatha Black,” Luella said. “Perhaps one of the most powerful witches to ever walk this earth. She was my mother, and grandmother to Sebastion. A strong woman, brimming with destructive force, a sorceress with a brilliant mind.” Luella’s breath caught in her throat. “But even the best among us make mistakes.”
This had to have been one hell of a mistake. What could cause someone to be warped as grotesquely as Agatha was? This was a husk of a person, no longer human. The thing on the plinth lurched and jerked, twitching away from threats we couldn’t perceive.
Bastion made sure to catch my eye, his arms folded across his chest. For once he didn’t seem like the impetuous, arrogant boy I’d always made him out to be. For once he looked like a man, albeit one tarnished by his past and his loss.
“I told you, once, that this is what happens to those who draw the attention of the Eldest. Grandmother was at the peak of her power, one of the strongest the Lorica had ever recorded. But she wanted more, much more than the entities could give her. Gods, demons, creatures of myth, none of them could have done something this cruel.” Bastion shook his head, watching his grandmother with something that looked like anger, then something that looked like pity. “Only the Eldest.”
