The Dormant (The Sublime Electricity Book #4)

by Pavel Kornev

  "I had not made a decision!" the Princess answered after a second’s pause.

  "So, it wasn't you that ordered the guardsmen to shoot me then? It isn't your fault? Your circle just filled up with these moral abominations all on its own?"

  The Princess glanced at the lieutenant, who was still holding me in the sights of his pistol, and very quietly and calmly, but just so as to make shivers run over my skin, asked:

  "Is that true, William?"

  "It was necessary!" he answered calmly.

  I didn't barge into their conversation, took the binoculars from the table and walked over to the window, wanting to see what had caught the Princess's interest. The windows of the heiress to the throne's chambers looked out over the Old City and Calvary looming over it. I could even see the iron tower on top of the hill. But no matter where I looked, my gaze returned unfailingly to Palace Square or, to be more accurate, to the sky above it. The clouds there, as before, were spinning into an inverted crater. In the depths of it, the ominous luster of the underworld continued to glisten. Shooting the priests hadn't changed anything.

  My heart was clenched by fear, and I hurried to walk back from the window deeper into the room.

  "Well, your Highness," I turned to the Princess, the pallor slowly retreating from her face, "have you decided who is at fault here and what must be done with him?"

  "More respect!" William Grace growled. He hadn't yet put his pistol back in the holster but was no longer poking me with it.

  "Cousin, we are in the same snare!" the Princess reminded me, burning me through with the gaze of her illustrious eyes. "And what was that ghastly trick you just performed?"

  "My heart... let's just say you're only leasing it and put a pin in that topic. We can return to it in better times."

  "No, allow..." the lieutenant began to boil over again, but the Princess immediately cut him off.

  "We're leaving this topic for now!" she ordered, heavily standing from the bed and walking to the table to drink some medicine.

  I delicately turned away but continued to follow the lieutenant with the corner of my eye. After long hesitation, he had returned his pistol to the holster.

  "Cousin, what can you say about our position?" Crown Princess Anna asked, having swallowed a pill with a few gulps of mineral water.

  "In decent society, it is not accepted to say such things," I joked unhappily and shuddered when a nearby machine-gun burst knocked with a frequent thrum.

  The disordered firing continued for a few seconds and the glass echoed from grenade explosions. All that time, the electric nightlight flickered. As soon as the firefight quieted down, it again glowed with an even and sharp light.

  "Don't be afraid, cousin," the Princess smiled. "The defense can hold out another few days, and the possessed will be held back by the guardsmen."

  I could say that I was not afraid, but I didn't deny the obvious. I was afraid and didn't see any reason to hide that. To me, fear was not something to be ashamed of. From my very birth, it was a part of me.

  "There's no way back out into the city," the lieutenant said, looking down at his feet. "We only got through the magical fog by a miracle. The hand-held dischargers do not have enough power for us to make it back."

  I could have said whose bone-headed decision it was that had lost us the armored vehicle, but I didn't, just asked:

  "Is the telephone still working?"

  "With outages," Crown Princess Anna answered. "And what of it?"

  "A bomb was thrown at the regent, he's wounded. Maybe..."

  "No," my cousin shook her head. "Nothing changed. I was promised they'd prepare me a special dirigible, but they cannot say when it will arrive. I don't believe them."

  "I'm certain that, in the nearest time, your death will be officially announced," William Grace poured oil on the fire.

  I couldn't see a reason to make such guesses and got right to the heart of the issue:

  "Your Highness, how long exactly will the palace’s reserve batteries last?"

  "Two or three days," the Princess forwarded. "And what of it?"

  "We cannot run, our defenses won't last long, and we cannot not count on help," I enumerated and chuckled. "Did I miss something?"

  "Get to the point!" William Grace demanded, looking at me like a wolf.

  I didn't engage him in a skirmish and asked the Princess:

  "What do you know about our defenses against the underworld, your Highness? Not just the palace's but the whole Empire's?"

  Crown Princess Anna shivered cold-bloodedly and forwarded:

  "Is it somehow connected with electromagnetic radiation? I haven't probed into such details."

  "It is, that's exactly it," I confirmed. "And somewhere in the palace, there is a transmitter creating disturbances, depriving these defenses of effectiveness. Most likely, it was installed by an order from the regent. We cannot find it. The only way out is to totally disactivate the power grid."

  "Then the palace will be left without power!" the Princess shot out.

  "As soon as the disturbances stop, the radiation from the Sublime Electricity transmitters will drive off the demons and dispel the magic. We'll just have to fight off the possessed."

  "But wait!" my cousin frowned. "As soon as the battery loses charge, the other transmitter will stop giving off disturbances! We can simply wait!"

  "I suspect the transmitter doesn't need as much power to work normally as the palace defenses do," I sighed. "They will turn off much sooner."

  "William, what do you say?" Crown Princess Anna then turned to the lieutenant.

  Grace faltered for an instant, but overcame himself and answered with military directness:

  "We shouldn't underestimate the conspirators. They could easily reach the remaining Sublime Electricity transmitters and destroy them. Then, there will be nothing to save us."

  The Princess shook her head.

  "I cannot give an order to turn off the reserve batteries. They'll simply think I've gone mad!" she declared, her fists clenched in anxiety. "That is our only defense against hostile magic. We cannot deprive our people of hope!"

  "Then we'll do it ourselves!" William Grace declared.

  "The two of us?"

  The lieutenant looked at me in doubt and cringed.

  "I could manage alone."

  "No!" Crown Princess Anna shot out. "It’s too dangerous. You'll have to go down into the basement, and we have no information about what is happening there right now. You'll both go!"

  "If you say so, your Highness," William Grace gave in facilely.

  "Cousin?"

  "You can count on me."

  "Then go at once!" the Princess ordered. "And invite your companions to my room. I’d like to get to know them."

  We left the heiress to the throne’s chambers and, while William Grace lied to the captain about inspecting the reserve power source, I had time to look around. I was most surprised that there were no illustrious among the ladies-in-waiting or the guardsmen.

  Was it really true that all illustrious had been purged from the palace?

  "Let's go," Grace called me, throwing the strap of his Gauss caster over his shoulder.

  "And what about the cable gun?" I kicked the backpack with the electric battery that was lying against the wall with the tip of my boot.

  "I don't think we'll need it. The protection is still working for now."

  "It is," I nodded, but still brought the grenade pouch with me.

  6

  WE HAD TO GO DOWN into the basement through the elevator shaft. It was dark, gloomy and seemingly bottomless. The stairwells had been mined, so there simply was no other way.

  Clacking my boot soles on the iron rungs, I went down first, jumped onto the stone floor and lit up the room with my torch, revealing many dark corridors.

  "Another basement!" I muttered quietly to myself, looking around, but William Grace still heard me.

  "What?" he got on guard.

  "Nothing. Where
to now?"

  "Follow me," the lieutenant said confidently, as if he had been here many times, and we walked down the underground passage, following rubberized wires snaking under the ceiling.

  The presence of the otherworldly could not be felt one bit in the basement and there was good reason. The air down here was so electrified that our every movement was accompanied by an electric rustling. This was no place for demons.

  But our opponents were such low beasts that they let the underworld have a hundred-pointadvantage. My hands were just itching to shoot the lieutenant in the back of the head–just for preventative purposes! –and I had to shake myself and talk myself out of doing anything stupid.

  "It's here!" William Grace said a bit later and started unlocking the door, which was no less monumental than that of a bank vault.

  As soon as we walked into the long basement, my skin was pinched by the huge amount of static charge in the air. My head started spinning. In the depths of the room, lit by the uneven glow of electric bulbs, there were rows of electric cabinets all along the walls. Each of them had a breaker painted red.

  "You take the left row, I take the right!" William pointed and lowered the first lever, severing the sealed wires.

  I followed his example, and we walked down the basement, disabling one cabinet after the next. And the farther we walked, the more the static electricity receded in favor of the icy presence of the otherworldly.

  "Faster!" I shouted, now at a run.

  The lieutenant was not far behind.

  When the line of electric cabinets finally ended, and the emergency lighting turned off, I turned to the exit. But a bright torch beam sharply cut into my face.

  "I suppose we'll have to sort everything out here and now." William Grace had picked a bad time to have it out.

  The stone floor shook underfoot, and cold shivers of incertitude ran down my back. But I didn't lose my presence of mind and gave an arrogant sniffle, hiding the Cerberus I had snuck down here behind my back.

  "You'd shoot an unarmed man?" I asked, masking my fear behind a crooked smirk. "How noble!"

  "Tell me, by what diabolic means did you deprive her Highness of consciousness!" the lieutenant demanded. "And don't get a mind to lie or wheedle! I can easily sniff out a lie!"

  "And what does it matter to you?" I snorted and, in an intentionally provocative tone, enquired: "Were you appointed to be her Highness's keeper? Or is it personal?"

  To be perfectly honest, I was intending to shoot him as soon as he moved. My teeth were grinding due to my fear of basements, anddying– again or once and for all? –in a basement made me doubly fearful. And I was not going to waste valuable time, nor allow myself to get shot.

  I wanted to get out of here right away and was watching the lieutenant closely. His face had gone purple in rage, but before he managed to do anything, the already impenetrable black shadows of the underground behind him grew denser.

  "People...!"

  The quiet whisper sounded out right in my head and passed over my bare nerves like an emery board. William Grace turned sharply and pointed his electric torch at the skinless, crimson flesh of Itztli.

  "Pitiful little souls!" the deity of obsidian blades exhaled and sharply jerked his bloodied arm, as if tearing our little souls right out of our bodies.

  William Grace collapsed dead on the stone floor. An instant later, the unknown power sharply knocked me forward as well. An unbearable pain flashed in my chest, and before my eyes everything started swimming. But just then, my tattoos scorched my skin with a burning fire, and that burning helped me stay on my feet in the most astonishing way. Not paying any mind to the smell of burned flesh, I straightened up, spread my shoulders and laughed through the pain:

  "Is that the best you can do?"

  The deity of obsidian blades was still wafting with the otherworldly, but the Cerberus was renowned for its reliability against wizardly charms, and I could count on three shots no matter how this played out. Most important was not to miss.

  "I'll cut out your heart!" Itztli growled.

  "It's already been cut out," I answered calmly and added with an acrid smile: "Twice!"

  Itztli raised the obsidian knife, intending to run on the attack, and immediately a nasty metallic squeal rang out behind his back.

  "Who's the snappy dresser?" asked the Beast, coming out of the darkness. The tip of the kitchen knife squeezed in his paw had left a long scratch on the door of an iron cabinet.

  The Aztec god turned to the new opponent and unleashed a long tirade in an unfamiliar language. The echoes of his voice cut into my head like the clinking of a smith's hammer, while the Beast just contemptuously spit on the floor under him.

  "Carrion, bugger!" he cringed. "Made of dead meat, and also full of bluster! Frankenstein's monster, bugger!"

  Itztli threw himself on the attack in a movement not visible to the naked eye, but the Beast gracefully slipped away from the obsidian blade and split the side of his skinless rival in a return blow, as if making an incision on an anatomical mannequin.

  I didn't join their skirmish, just shot all three rounds of the Cerberus into Itztli's back and took to my heels. The otherworldly presence of something immeasurably greater than this minor deity of blood rituals was warping the surrounding reality more and more, and just one word was pounding in my head: "Run! Run! Run!"

  Sensing the fierce breath of the underworld behind me, I turned and saw a wave of icy fog racing down the corridor. I tossed an incendiary grenade as I ran, then another and ran on with all my might. The phosphorus flame allowed me to gain a few seconds, and that time was just enough for me to reach the elevator and start up the rungs immured into the shaft walls.

  The wave of frost struck the stone wall and froze everything below, but I was already too high up. Just a blurred echo of the fierce evil reached me.

  I got away!

  While I climbed the brackets, I heard a frequent thunder of shots and grenade explosions from above. But before I managed to crawl out of the wide-open elevator doors, I heard the guardsmen shout out elated cries.

  I couldn't hold back and cursed aloud.

  It worked! It actually worked!

  Bugger, how wonderful!

  I laughed and laid out powerless on the cold marble floor, feeling like the true savior of the Empire.

  But then, the sunken countenance of the gray-haired colonel loomed over me.

  "Where is William?" he asked, looking me gloomily from top to bottom.

  "Dead," I answered shortly, heavily standing to my feet. In my turn, I enquired: "I heard shouts, did something happen?"

  "Her Highness ordered you brought right to her after inspecting the batteries," the colonel told me, leaving my question unanswered.

  That worried me, but not too much. No matter how I spun it, despite the death of Lieutenant Grace, our undertaking had culminated in unspeakable success. As soon as the conspirators’ transmitter had stopped generating disturbances, the Sublime Electricity’s signal had cast all the demons out of our reality. The possessed, though, who were less sensitive to radiation had just been forced to retreat into the catacombs. The black-magic fog quickly dispersed, and even the ghastly pit in the heavens started to fade and lose its dimensions. The purple flame in it faded.

  When I, accompanied by the colonel and a few of his subordinates, walked into the guest room of her Highness's apartments, an untamable joy reigned. The ladies-in-waiting, the Imperial medics and guards were plainly overjoyed, as if they had been condemned to death but been pardoned at the last moment.

  As for the Princess, though, she garbled her celebratory speech half word when I entered, drily congratulated the courtiers on the miraculous rescue and quickly hid in her chambers.

  I handed in my weapon and headed off after her without any desire.

  As soon as I closed the door behind me, my cousin walked away from the window sill she had been leaning on, and dismissed the lady-in-waiting oracle with an annoyed wave of the
hand.

  "Leopold! I'm waiting!" the heiress to the throne then called me by name.

  Thomas Smith, sitting on the divan, was too occupied by his wounded leg to notice the annoyance that came through in her voice. But as for Elizabeth-Maria, she immediately turned away from the picture of poppies and sized me up with her stubborn gaze but, fortunately, didn't do anything.

  Overcoming my indecision, I walked over and stood next to the Princess.

  "What happened to Lieutenant Grace?" Anna asked whispering so no one else would hear.

  "Electromagnetic waves don't make it underground. We were caught by a demon. The lieutenant died."

  "How did you escape?"

  Instead of answering, I pulled back my unbuttoned shirt collar, letting my cousin look at the tattoos inflamed on my neck by the burn. The designs on my shoulders, back and chest burned my skin no less.

  Crown Princess Anna sighed fitfully, and the elevated beat of her heart began echoing painfully in my temples. My cousin was silent for a long time, gathering her thoughts, and was about to ask another question when a bright spark flashed somewhere in the city.

  "What the devil?!" I cursed out and grabbed the binoculars. A few seconds later the powerful explosion’s shockwave made it to us and the windowpanes rattled in their frames.

  I watched the iron tower on top of Calvary careen to the side, torn out of the ground, then the pulse of an unseen battering ram knocked me away from the window. I tripped over an ottoman behind me and fell to the floor, while my cousin fell on top of me, having lost her balance. Thomas Smith was thrown off the divan, and the lady-in-waiting oracle fell senseless on the carpet. Only Elizabeth-Maria was still on her feet. But she too was turning her head and heavily leaning her hand on the wall like a boxer who had just taken a knockout punch.

  "Curses!" I rasped out, lifting the heiress to the throne to her feet. "What now?!"

  "It's in the castle!" my cousin exhaled. "It's here! Lock the room now!"

  Finally knocked off course by the unexpected order, I ran over to the front door and, with horror, saw the servants and guardsmen in the entryway dead, as if the otherworldly creature rushing through the castle had drawn all the lifeforce from the people in one swipe. Only the illustrious had survived. The Princess, Thomas Smith, the lady-in-waiting and I could not be harmed by the diabolic curse. Elizabeth-Maria all the more.