Circle of Enemies: A Twenty Palaces Novel

by Harry Connolly

  To hell with it. I pulled him down the hall by the pant cuff. The dragging on the carpet caused his green plaid shirt to slide up, and I saw lumps under his skin moving down his body toward my hand, as though they could smell living flesh where it brushed his. I moved faster.

  By the time the nearest predator was at Stoned’s knee, I was close enough to the fire to feel it scorching my back. I let go of his ankle and shuffled around to the other side of him. The bulges under his skin stopped moving toward his foot as though they’d lost the scent.

  I didn’t want to give them the chance to find it again. I grabbed Stoned under the armpits and hoisted him up and through the doorway. I had to get so close that it felt like being on fire again, but I managed to drop him well into the flames.

  I staggered back against the wall, coughing and choking. I crouched there, staying low where the air was still breathable, and watched to see if any of the little iron creatures came scuttling out of the flames. There was nothing I could do about it if they did, but I had to know.

  My back and legs began to hurt in earnest now, and my wooziness grew stronger. I wanted to puke and take a nap but forced myself to wait and watch.

  The flames spread, the sirens of fire trucks roared outside, and the smoke grew thick. No creatures came out of the fire toward me, but did that mean they’d been destroyed? I couldn’t think about it. My head was too muzzy.

  Time to go. I crawled along the wall toward the metal door at the end of the hall. Saturday-morning public-service announcements had told me that I would find clean air at knee level, but I coughed and hacked on the stink of burning polyester. Just as I reached the edge of the door, it swung open.

  Two firefighters rushed by me. They wore helmets and bulky masks, and I suspect they didn’t even see me there on the floor. I slipped into the stairwell and let the door close behind me.

  The stairs were difficult. What smoke had gotten through rose up to the top of the stairwell, making the air breathable, but my legs did not want to move. I didn’t know how I was going to get to my car, or what I would do after that. A sudden wave of nausea almost made me slide down the final six steps.

  On the ground floor, I fell against the door and went out into the sunlight. The heat of the day was raw against my burns. I didn’t look down at them, though. I didn’t want to see how bad they were, because then the pain would hit me like a tidal wave.

  Not that it wasn’t already coming on. I tried to breathe slowly to control the pain, but every breath caught in my throat. I circled around the back of the building, leaning on parked cars while I passed between them. A firefighter yelled at me to get out of there, and a slender black woman in gray pinstripes rushed by me with car keys in her hand.

  Suddenly, Bud was beside me. “Hey there, Ray.”

  I staggered away from him and fell against the hood of a Lumina. “Damn,” I said, my voice slurred. “Scared me. Give me a hand, Bud.”

  He laughed. Summer was standing beside him. She never laughed. Neither moved to help me. “You said you were going to save us, Ray.” There was a touch of contempt in her voice. “How you gonna manage that?”

  I didn’t have the energy to spar with them. I was helpless, and that made me furious. “Vanish!” I shouted. The word made me choke. “VANISH!”

  Summer sneered at me. Bud smirked. Both of them turned their backs and walked away.

  I didn’t care, because my anger had given me focus and I’d suddenly remembered what I’d done with my spell.

  I’d thrown my ghost knife but hadn’t called it back, not through those flames. It should have passed through the wall, but I didn’t know how far it could go. I staggered toward the far end of the building—the south? I was all turned around—determined that I would not leave a magic spell lying around for anyone to find. I had to get it back.

  At the far side of the building was a narrow alley with a high fence. The chain-link fence had plastic slats threaded through it, so I couldn’t see what was on the other side. The pain grew stronger, stealing my life force away.

  There was not very much trash in the passageway, but I didn’t see my ghost knife anywhere. The only places left to go were back into the building and out to the front, where the fire trucks had gathered.

  I didn’t need to do that. I closed my eyes and reached for my ghost knife. It was nearby—still inside the building and above me, and as I focused on it, I felt myself wavering. My body wanted to shut down, and I was barely able to feel my spell and call it to me. The world seemed to be growing dark, but I did see the ghost knife slice through the wall to land in my open palm.

  I slapped it against my chest and fell against the side of the building. Whatever it was and whatever it wanted, it was part of me, and I was glad to have it close. I slid it into the back pocket of my pants, miraculously hitting the target on my first try.

  I was about to fall when I felt a pair of hands grab me roughly. Damn, I had been caught by one of the firefighters, which meant an ambulance, then cops, then jail. I tried to convince myself it was better than dying, but I couldn’t make those thoughts come together in my head. The hands were strong; they lifted me and propped me against the fence.

  I looked up but didn’t see a firefighter’s jacket and helmet. It was the guy in the red T-shirt and the camo pants.

  He seemed happy to see me. “Hey!” he said. “Here you are!”

  I punched him in the mouth with all my strength, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough. The whole world turned dark, and I went down into it, knowing that I might never see daylight again.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Pain woke me. I was lying on my stomach in a darkened room; my legs were stiff and my back felt like it had a turtle shell attached. I put my arms underneath me and raised myself slowly—I couldn’t see any people, but if Camo Pants was nearby, I wanted him to think I was fall-down weak right up to the moment I jumped him.

  Unfortunately, I was weak. My back and legs hurt beyond belief. Every movement I made was like being burned all over again.

  Still, I had to move. I didn’t know anything about this place except that Camo Pants had brought me here, but that was enough. I had to get out.

  Most of my burns were below the knee, so I lifted my feet off the bed and did my best to roll over into a seated position.

  I didn’t make a sound. It took every bit of restraint I had, but I didn’t make a single sound.

  When the spots faded from my vision, I looked around. In the dim light from the window, I could see a little lamp on a table by the bed. I snapped it on. I was in a little room—a hotel room, by the look of it—with white paper on the walls, gleaming silver in the fixtures, and pale, ghostly furniture.

  I wasn’t wearing a shirt. My clothes were gone and my lower legs were covered with gauze and gauze pads. Now that I was finally ready to look at my burns, they were hidden. I glanced around the room again and saw burned, ragged black cloth on the little table by the window. My pants.

  My head was pounding and my mouth was parched. I peeled the edge of the gauze away from my leg just enough to peek underneath. It looked red, swollen, and wet. Had they smeared some kind of gel on me, or was that a huge blister? I hoped it was gel.

  I stood. The pain was blinding. I gritted my teeth to hold back a scream and dropped back onto the bed. God, the power of it made me nauseous. What the hell had I done to myself?

  I had only walked a few steps through a fire. A magic fire.

  Dammit. I was out of commission. How was I supposed to help Arne and the others with these drapes on them? How was I supposed to find Wally again? How was I supposed to find out what happened to Mouse?

  I put my feet on the floor. They felt swollen and the pain was agonizing, but it was only pain. Only pain. I staggered to the little table and searched my pants pockets. I found my wallet, my keys, and my ghost knife. The wallet even had my money inside. What this said about Camo Pants, I didn’t know and didn’t care.

  I put my wallet in my tee
th, biting down hard on it to distract myself from the pain. I slid the key ring over the little finger of my left hand and used my ghost knife to cut the corner of the table. The table leg came free, with enough of the top still attached that it made a dull wooden pick. I stared at my ghost knife for a few seconds, wondering how I was going to take it with me. Eventually, I slid it inside my wallet and put the wallet back in my mouth. It didn’t fit but I didn’t care. I just needed to get to a place where I could call an ambulance.

  I used the table leg as a cane while I crossed the room, then I pushed the door open and staggered through.

  It was a hotel suite, as I’d thought, and an expensive one. There was more white, silver, and platinum out here. My feet felt like they were soaking wet through the gauze, and I was sure I was seeping onto the snowy carpet.

  A gleaming silver phone sat on a tiny table at the far side of the suite. My original plan had been to get out of the building to get help, but suddenly I wasn’t sure I could cross the room. My vision was swirling and my head throbbed. I nearly lost my balance, which would have gotten me off my feet, but I didn’t think I could get back up.

  Then I noticed a small figure sitting at a marble-topped table in the center of the room. Its back was turned to me, and it was wrapped in black lace and hunched over like a vulture. It couldn’t have been Camo Pants, could it? He was too large for this small shape.

  It didn’t matter. I couldn’t get to the phone without passing him. I hefted the table leg like a club and moved forward. The pain made it hard to think, but maybe this little person all wrapped up in black fabric was Camo after all.

  It was just pain. Just pain. It made me dizzy and sick, and it clouded my vision at the edges, but I could push through it. I raised the table leg, feeling bleary and angry. I was hurting and I was ready to share that hurt.

  “Ray.”

  I stopped, confused, and turned toward the voice. Annalise stood beside a small desk in the corner, watching me carefully.

  Annalise Powliss was my boss, a peer in the Twenty Palace Society, and she was incredibly powerful. Although she was just barely over five feet tall and as thin as a rail, she was covered with tattoos—spells—that gave her extraordinary strength and toughness. She could tear a car door off its hinges with one hand and could shrug off a bullet through the eye. I’d seen her do both.

  She wasn’t wearing her usual gear—there was no outsized fireman’s jacket, no vest covered with alligator-clipped spells. She wore a pair of plain blue drawstring pants and a white button-down shirt. Her tattoo-covered feet were bare. I’d never seen her dressed in such flimsy clothes.

  Like mine, her tattoos were spells, but hers covered her whole body from her collarbones down—I’d seen them one time after her clothes had burned on a job.

  Finally her face, which was pale and delicate—almost childlike—was set in the most curious expression I’d ever seen. She had always been difficult to read, but for the first time since I’d met her, she seemed nervous.

  “Ray,” she said again in her funny high voice, “that’s a peer in the society you’re threatening.”

  I turned back to the shrouded figure. It had turned toward me, and I saw that it was a little old woman with olive skin and gray streaks in her hair. Her face was impassive and her eyes were dreamy.

  How had I mistaken her for Camo Pants? I let the table leg fall from my hands, then immediately wished I had it back so I could lean on it again. The little old woman was a peer? If so, she was probably just as powerful as Annalise—maybe more so. Hitting her with a hunk of pine wouldn’t have done more than tear some lace.

  The world began to go dark.

  “Talbot!” Annalise called. Her voice seemed to come from far away. Suddenly, I felt hands lift me up and steady me. I leaned against a body—not Annalise’s, a large one—and fought my way back to consciousness.

  “Hey hey now,” a man beside me said. He smelled of Old Spice and dry sweat. “You shouldn’t be out of bed yet. You ain’t ready.”

  I looked up at him. He wasn’t wearing his red shirt anymore, but it was Camo Pants. I was happy to see he had a fat lip. He was holding my wallet and ghost knife; I reached for them and he let me take them.

  “Get off me,” I said. “You tried to kill me.”

  “Is that right? Maybe I did, although most of the guys I’ve tried to kill were wearing a keffiyeh at the time.”

  “You fired a rocket at me today.” Had that happened today? I had no idea how long I’d been out.

  “Guess I should apologize then. Guess I should be glad I missed.” He must have guessed wrong, because the apology never came. He led me back into the small room and eased me into the bed facedown. “My name is Talbot, by the way. I’m a wooden man, just like you. Do you want some kind of painkiller?”

  “Yes.”

  “No,” Annalise said from somewhere behind me, and in that moment I hated her and everything about her. “Talbot, go out to the fridge and bring the blue container.”

  Talbot left the room. My face was turned toward the window. I didn’t want to look at Annalise. I was badly hurt, helpless, and ashamed of it.

  “Ray, what the hell am I going to do with you?”

  I almost said Put me out of my misery, but I was afraid she’d do it. “Water, boss. I need water.”

  “No, you don’t.” She took my wallet and ghost knife. Damn. I thought we were past that. I didn’t have the strength to object.

  The door opened again. I turned my head and saw Annalise intercept Talbot and take something from him. He left, closing the door behind him. I felt my ghost knife getting farther away from me, until I could no longer sense it through my pain and misery.

  Annalise pulled up a chair and sat by the bed. She looked absurdly small, but I was glad she was nearby. She held a big plastic bowl in her lap. “You know you belong to me, right, Ray?”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “I’m your wooden man, boss.” She didn’t respond. “You’re not going to sell me, are you?”

  “No, I don’t want to sell you,” she said, as if it was a legitimate possibility that didn’t interest her for the moment. “But I have changed you.”

  I almost laughed. Yes, a lot about me had changed since I met her.

  “Ray, you’re not paying attention.” She popped open the lid on the plastic bin and held it close to me. Inside were tiny cubes of raw, red meat. Beef, probably. They smelled like blood—I’d been cooked more than they had. The smell made me dizzy and sick.

  I stared into the bin and at her. She moved them closer to my face. Carefully, I reached in and picked up one of the cubes. It was cold.

  “Don’t bother chewing,” she said. “It doesn’t help. Just swallow it down.”

  I put it in my mouth. It felt wrong. Wrong wrong wrong, as though it were a dog turd. I spit it into my hand.

  “No, Ray. Try again.”

  I didn’t like the way she was looking at me. I put the cube back in my mouth. Was it poison? No, and I knew it wasn’t. Annalise would crack my skull open or throw me through a window before she’d poison me. I tried to swallow it three times, but it wouldn’t go down. The fourth time, it finally slid down my throat.

  Annalise quickly set the bin down and lunged at me. She clamped one hand over my mouth and grabbed the back of my head with the other. Her strength was enormous; she held my head in place, my mouth closed, while my guts wrenched and my body bucked. My legs scraped against the sheets, bringing out a whole new level of agony—fierce and wild and utterly in control of me. Blisters burst and flooded the gauze. The pain was so overwhelming that it felt like madness.

  Eventually, whatever was happening inside me eased. My body stopped writhing and I lay on the sheets, soaked in sweat and exhausted.

  Annalise had a spell on her body somewhere that healed her when she ate meat, especially meat that was raw and fresh. Not only had I seen her do it, I’d saved her life once by cramming tiny slices of raw beef down her throat.


  But it hadn’t been like this. She hadn’t tried to puke up what she ate. Her body had accepted it. Mine didn’t. Mine wasn’t healing. If she’d put a spell on me like the one she had, she’d screwed it up. It didn’t work.

  I lay still because I didn’t have a choice. Annalise let go of me and picked up the plastic tub again.

  “No.”

  “Yes, Ray. Another.”

  “No. I don’t belong to you.”

  “Yes, you do, Ray. You wanted to be my wooden man, so you do. You’re mine.”

  She held the bin closer to my face. I swatted at it, but I was too weak to knock it away. I doubt I could have knocked it out of her grip if I’d been at full strength. “Fuck you.”

  “Ray,” she said, leaning close to me. Her voice was still absurdly high, like a cartoon animal. “Ray, you gave yourself to me. You’re mine. The golem flesh spell is on you because I wanted it there; you don’t get a say. If I have to, I can break your jaw open and force this crap down your throat. Why not? Enough meat would just heal you again. Now, are you going to take it, or am I going to make you take it?”

  God, I hated her. She scared the living hell out of me, and I hate to show my fear. “Boss, go fu—”

  In a blink, her thumb was in my mouth. It tasted gritty—of course she hadn’t washed her hands—and she forced another cube of meat past my teeth. I tried to bite down on her, but it was like biting the tread of a tractor tire. If it hurt, she didn’t show it.

  She forced that cube down my throat, then another, then another. After a while, I didn’t have the strength to buck and thrash anymore. I sprawled on the bed, sweating and miserable. When I tried to puke, Annalise clamped her hands over my mouth and nose. I choked. I shuddered. Finally, I wept like a child.

  She forced it all down me. It took almost two hours, but she put the whole contents of the tub into me.