King Henry and the Three Little Trips (The King Henry Tapes)

by Richard Raley

  And the Learning Council’s spy-assassin-message girl.

  It was near the top as revelations went. Probably only behind finding out about the Vampire Divines. “What do you mean one of them breeds humans?” an outraged Eva had asked Fines Samson when he told her.

  Revelation or not, mostly Eva had just let the whole Maximus thing go in one ear and out the other. She worked for the Learning Council and her mentor was one of them, why should she worry about being outgunned by her side, right? Right? No, no . . . we kind of locked one of them up and then she escaped; now she’s outside lurking about and you have to sneak past her . . . good luck, Solid Snake!

  Eva breathed a sigh of relief as she arrived at the first shadow in the hallway corridor. One more. Then the door. She allowed herself a shiver. Holy fuckballs! she even quoted Lover Boy. What I wouldn’t give for him to be with me right about now . . . I’d even take Welf along for the ride. Either of them . . . though Vicky would probably be trying to hug one of the Three Queens into submission right about now.

  One more shadow.

  Just one more.

  Her eyes watched the hallway door, waiting for one of the Three Queens to come through, but they were busy with Little. Wolf or not, it really is crappy what I’m doing to you. She glanced over at the other shadow in the hallway. Not nearly as long of a run as the one she was in now from the secretarial room. Still . . .

  Still . . .

  Eva’s eyes squinted at the shadowy corner.

  “You know how to hide,” the shadow spoke with Isabel Soto’s voice, “you know how to be quiet, but you still stink like a human and my nose picked you out, Eva.”

  Eva’s whole body shivered, that one involuntary.

  Gun with seven bullets, butterfly knife, twenty minutes of scio-anima, the mechanical part of her brain listed. Get through her and you’re free, that’s all you have to do.

  “You work for the Lady. He told me,” Isabel’s voice said. “He told me about how much of a liar the Lady is too. Showed me the truth when he freed me; yes, he did indeed. You shouldn’t work for the Lady, Eva. You should join us. You were never mean to me, not like Hope or some of the others. You can’t be with King Henry because he’s mine, but . . . I’m sure we’ll find a nice man for you. Or a nice woman. There’s many to pick from . . . most of them aren’t even as crazy as the Three Queens.”

  The hardest conjuration for a sciomancer is the use of scio-anima as weapons. Most Intras can’t even do it, surely not as sharp as a blade. But Eva could. She was very good at it, better than anyone else in her graduate classes with Mr. McBee. Breaking off two pieces of scio-anima from her pool, she directed it to wrap around her hands and then to fold upon itself again and again, lengthening and sharpening. Shadow gushed and slid along her wrists and knuckles, but at the edge a six-inch flat blade of pure blackness formed.

  It made little sense as far as physics was concerned.

  As Lover Boy would say: sometimes the Mancy just doesn’t give a shit.

  “Eva?” Isabel asked. “I know what you’re thinking and it’s a very bad idea. I’ll have to hurt you if you try. Just . . . give up. I won’t let them do anything to you. You can even come to the arena with us and watch King Henry kill Conan. Conan thinks he has a chance, but my master is betting on King Henry. He says we can’t hurt King Henry until he gives us something . . . which is a very good thing. I don’t want to hurt King Henry. I want him to join us just like I want you to join us.”

  A small touch of scio-anima dispelled the shadow hiding Isabel.

  She didn’t look like Veronica Lee any more.

  She looked like Eva.

  Exactly like Eva.

  “So tiny and powerful,” Not-Eva whispered with Isabel’s voice. “Always some place to be, never pleased, always wanting more, greedy even. Not my favorite body but not the worst I’ve tried to be.”

  “Copy these!” Eva snarled before throwing herself across the hallway, scio-blades in front of her.

  Isabel jumped straight over her head, trying to catch Eva with a kick on the way up. Eva rolled under it in a gymnast’s tumble, coming up running. If she’s going to get out of the way for me . . .

  Eva bounced off a wall, heading for the backdoor. So close, so close! Isabel grabbed her hoodie from behind, almost choking her. Again she went with the reverse momentum, turning to drive six inches of sharpened scio-anima into Isabel’s gut.

  Isabel smiled, clucking her tongue. She could even sound like Eva if she wanted. It was worse than looking in a mirror. Eva had never liked mirrors. She liked this even less. “So sharp I barely even feel it!”

  Eva stabbed the second blade toward Isabel’s face. The corpusmancer locked her hands around Eva’s wrist and then pushed back with the leverage. If Eva was really fighting her shadow then she would’ve had equal strength, but Isabel cheated with corpusmancer backed muscles that easily slammed Eva up against a wall.

  “You can’t hurt my body,” Isabel told her, “but you are hurting my feelings!”

  Eva twisted the scio-blade still in Isabel’s gut. The other woman grimaced. Eva twisted it the other way. It should’ve been cutting more and more flesh; instead it just felt like she was moving the thing around inside of Isabel, like Isabel was nothing but modeler’s clay.

  Eva’s head rung as she was lifted and thrown into the wall again. This isn’t working! Getting close enough to grapple had been a bad idea, but locked in a hallway with a corpusmancer there weren’t many good ideas.

  The third time Isabel tried to slam her into the wall, Eva went with the upswing, jumping. Her feet hit the wall one after another as she pushed forward and twisted, breaking Isabel’s grip on her arm. Good! It also placed Isabel between Eva and the door to freedom again. Bad!

  Isabel swung at her head but Eva dodged backwards. “No touching!”

  Isabel’s body shifted in an instant, one minute Eva, the next Hope Hunting. Hope Hunting? You got some explaining to do, Lover Boy . . . Isabel swung again, this time with extra reach, being as Hope had a good ten inches of height on Eva. With a frustrated growl, Eva darted farther back, dropping the anima left in her scio-blades in front of her like a wall of darkness.

  On the other side of the shadow, Isabel hesitated. Just long enough for Eva to pull her .45 out of her coat pocket and click off the safety. Isabel almost impaled herself on the barrel when she jumped through the shadow. Eyes like crystal blinked down at Eva. “Oh.”

  Eva fired three shots into Isabel’s chest. Three shots. Point blank. From a .45. Anything but a rhinoceros should’ve been mush. Maybe even a vampire. It did stagger Isabel backwards, the corpusmancer only remaining standing by digging the nails of her fingers into the walls. But still . . . she was standing.

  Smiling a bloody leer at Eva. “Naughty, naughty. I’ll be spitting those out for hours.”

  Out of time and ideas on how to get through, Eva gave up and went with Plan B. Back on through the dentist shop and out the front door. Four shots left. Three for the Queens. Left an extra. The gun pointed up between Isabel’s eyes.

  Isabel smiled around blood. “Won’t work . . . I’ve tried!”

  The gun dipped down, putting a bullet into Isabel’s kneecap. For once, the woman shrieked in pain. Eva didn’t have time to enjoy it; she was already running the other way. Past her shadow, down the main hallway.

  The door opened.

  Catherine Hayes saw her, eyes wide.

  Eva raised her gun.

  The stitched mouthed Mortimer knocked Catherine out of the way just as Eva pulled the trigger. For his trouble Mortimer took a bullet in the chest that sent him down to the ground. Behind him, Catherine screamed in rage.

  Ten minutes of scio-anima.

  Eva threw it before her, not gentle as all. She clouded the air with shadows, shadows that light couldn’t pierce. She slammed through the door, firing her last two shots at random before her, trying to drive back any Queen thinking about stopping her. Sometimes you needed precision, others
you just needed to give all you could and hope.

  The shots probably saved her life.

  Teresa’s fireball went high at the crack of the pistol, giving Eva enough space to baseball slide under the flames. It still wrecked havoc on her shadows, blasting and evaporating them where it came in contact with them.

  Knife.

  Eva grabbed the knife from her shoe as she slid, flipping it around and locking it in place as she stood. Teresa motioned with her hands to form more fire. Eva threw the knife at her, happy to see it lodge in Teresa’s forearm and even happier to hear her scream.

  Right . . . through the front door.

  Mary appeared before her through the shadows, more surprised than Eva was. Eva jumped, snapping up a kick to plant into the hydromancer’s face. Down she went, pigtails flapping out to both sides as she fell.

  Door, just jump through it!

  Eva sprinted the rest of the way, hurling herself forward. She turned in mid-air, planning to guard her face from the glass if it shattered. But the glass didn’t shatter.

  She never reached the door.

  Instead she hit something invisible . . . and it stuck to her.

  It held her.

  Eva thrashed at it, legs and feet, elbows and shoulders.

  It turned her slowly to see Catherine Hayes standing just before her, arm outstretched.

  When Catherine Hayes smiled it cut you, a bold and angry echo that reminded Eva of Miss Dale’s. No paper-cut here though . . . a gash of knife across your throat, into your skin with a twist. “Well, well . . . we’ve just had ourselves a volunteer!”

  *

  Evelyn Strange never felt less sexual than when she was naked.

  She was forty-five years old. She had wrinkles everywhere now, what breasts she did have looked like drooping pancakes, her hips were nonexistent, and her womb had packed up and declared bankruptcy years ago. About the only thing going for her was that she didn’t have a single gray hair on her head or anywhere else. Also, what hair she had was exactly where it was supposed to be, not sprouting into uncharted territory.

  “We’re supposed to have a Crone, a Mother, and a Maiden, but you’ll have to settle for two Crones, Reti,” Evelyn told her comatose patient.

  Eva made no comment, being comatose. The girl was also nude, only covered by the straps that held her in the wheelchair. Evelyn had seen every inch of her in the last weeks, even the extra couple that shouldn’t be there. You give a girl her physicals for seven years and suddenly you’re working on an unknown battlefield.

  There was a knock at the lightlock. Evelyn tiptoed over to it, careful to dodge the lines of Slush on the floor. Naked, in the dark, surrounded by hydro-anima, is it any wonder I’m so annoyed? More annoyed than usual? Her butt was cold . . . this was not a feeling she wanted to experience in the middle of an overly complex anima conjuration.

  Unlocking the door to the room, Evelyn peeked out into the lightlock. The Lady was inside, also undressing. She didn’t seem to care about being nude nearly as much as Evelyn did. Evelyn supposed she had practice at it, given it was a well-known fact that the Lady and Fines Samson spent their evenings together. Given the amount of erectile dysfunction pills Fines Samson goes through, probably more than their evenings.

  “Samson didn’t try to barge in?” Evelyn asked.

  The Lady smiled as she stripped off the last bit of clothing. “No. He’s a good man, only in your hair when you don’t need to put forward all of your concentration. He knows better. He did question me on the conjuration considerably, but then I like it when he worries about me. Concern and gratitude, the twin pillars of any stable relationship.”

  The Lady was let into the hospital room, the lightlock door closed behind her. The single candle sat at the center of it, barely illuminating Eva Reti in thick shadows. Directly across from her, the second wheelchair waited.

  The Lady ambled over to it, checking the Slush lines as she did so. “Speaking of gratitude: what excellent work you’ve done, Evelyn!”

  Evelyn Strange had never needed gratitude. Probably why she just scowled when men tried to lay it on thick. The Lady . . . that was a harder gratitude to ignore, but the doctor forced herself to focus on the patient’s life and not mushy things like feelings. “Are you sure this will succeed?”

  “Now you sound like Fines,” the Lady joked.

  “I’m more worried about my patient than I am the old woman who should know better,” Evelyn pointed out.

  Leaning over Eva’s body, the Lady tilted the girl’s head up and forced open her eyes. “All of this will give Eva a chance to battle for her life. Whether she wins or loses will be up to her. As for us, we will be fine as long as no one interrupts us, which is why I have a pair of ESLED agents at the door.” A grunt escaped the Lady as she sat down in her wheelchair. “I’ve fought to stay out of one of these for the last decade and now here I am by choice . . .”

  “It’s only temporary,” Evelyn reminded her.

  “Isn’t everything?” the Lady joked some more.

  Good thing one of us can have a sense of humor. Evelyn rarely had one, but it would have been nice for it to appear tonight. As it was, she just kept trying to keep her temper down. “Time to cover you.”

  “Eva first,” the Lady ordered. “Cover us, then wheel us close enough so I can grasp her hands.”

  Holding a second jar of highly saturated H.A.I.M.S that the Lady had brought with her, Evelyn paused with it lingering over Eva’s lolling head. “Do I have to worry about disrupting the circle?”

  “Pour it like a four-year-old and be quick about it,” the Lady answered.

  The slushy mixture took a shake to come free of its container, but when it did it gave a thick splat. It smelled like a water-logged room in a jar. With her senses for anima, it felt like a star exploding . . . crashing down on Eva’s head and slowly dripping down her face, neck, and chest, coating the girl in deep blue light.

  Next came the Lady, who let out a hiss as the cold slop washed down her. “Remind me to do this in the summer if this ever happens again, Evelyn.”

  “Not our choice, just the idiot children who keep getting hurt.”

  “Yes, I suppose . . . push us together now.”

  Evelyn did so, finishing by grabbing Eva’s hands to lock them inside of the Lady’s. “What now?”

  “Take the candle and exit the circle,” the Lady ordered. “Whatever you do, do not reenter it until we are finished.”

  “When will you be finished?” Evelyn asked, picking up the candle.

  “When it is finished.”

  “Don’t give me cryptic monk crap, Maudette!” Evelyn suddenly snapped. At once she felt embarrassed by the outburst.

  The Lady took it with a wry smile. “You will know when Eva wakes up or I drop dead, was that better? Feeling less anxious now?”

  “Drop . . . dead?”

  “Stealing from Death has its consequences, especially when one fails. To the corner, Evelyn.”

  Evelyn did so. Her breathing was quick, her pulse high, her skin goosebumped. I haven’t had a panic attack since I was fourteen . . . not since I realized the Mancy was giving them to me.

  “Relax, child,” the Lady whispered. “You only have to watch and witness. It is in my hands now, mine and Eva Reti’s.” Anima released from inside of the Lady, flowing in a flash down the lines that Evelyn had earlier painted on the floor. In reality you could see nothing, but with the Mancy, the blue starlight grew, spread, converging in the circles. More anima came from the Lady, lighting Eva and herself in brilliant blue fire. A third wave of anima came, as large as those before it. Hours of anima in whole, more than enough to destroy Evelyn ten times over. The third wave threaded between Eva and the lady, picking up excess Slush from the floor. Up it flowed into a cage-like structure that Evelyn had never seen before.

  “Now,” the Lady gave a last order, “extinguish the candle.”

  *

  Eva’s eyes opened to nothing but darkness.
<
br />   Darkness deeper than space itself. Yet . . . she saw.

  She saw rock, felt it beneath her . . . a floor.

  Shadows, so many shadows. Alive, swirling . . . everywhere among the darkness. Not alive, not sentient, but moving about, free of gravity, free of care or need, like kelp adrift in the ocean. Among the shadows she felt what she could not see, she felt scio-anima. Everywhere, in everything. In her even. She put her hand in front of her face, expecting shadows to seep from her pores, but there was nothing.

  In fact . . . she was wrong.

  She wasn’t shadow as she should be.

  A part of her was something else, something bright and wicked and predatory. Not as old as the shadows, but older than any single human, than any single mancer could claim. A piece of thousands over just as many years and it was inside of her, fighting for control of her, fighting to destroy her so it could be free.

  She saw glimpses of it in her hand, fragments only. Bright and gleaming, a mix of thirteen colors, more than mortal eyes should even see. What is this . . . what happened?

  Eva remembered calling Lover Boy, teasing him like always. She remembered tracking Conan Sapa and then . . . she found him and she found more than just him. It went wrong, yes? Yes, it did. She was captured. They laughed. All three of them laughed. Only Isabel didn’t laugh, only Isabel was sad. But she did nothing to stop the others.

  Catherine . . . Teresa . . . Mary . . . the Three Queens . . . they . . .

  There was so much anima floating in the air and then Grant Little screamed . . . and . . .

  Eva’s head hurt, the wrong part of her shivering inside, making her skin glow with prismatic light. She rolled over on her knees, sitting up. Her hands were fists; her jaw was clenched against the pain. It was inside of her and it wanted out and it was so strong. She had only shadows . . . how can you stop something like that with only shadows?