Black City Demon

by Richard A. Knaak

  “Would his being dead change what’s happening to Kravayik?”

  “Probably . . . if we could accomplish that and if Holmes weren’t an even bigger, more immediate situation.”

  “Where’s he?”

  “I—” Suddenly, the world swam. Transposed over everything was a scene out of the exposition, replete with scores of people clad in the garb of the day. They strode around the area as if engrossed in the sights, especially the well over two-hundred-foot-tall marvel created by and named after steel magnate George Washington Ferris Jr. The translucent image of Ferris’s gargantuan wheel with its seating for over two thousand riders added an especially surreal touch to an already madcap sensation. Holmes had dragged forward with him through the decades a spectral memory of that time, one that appeared to be strengthening as he did.

  And then, the image became so real that I could barely see the chamber anymore. Now it was Claryce and the others who seemed to be ghosts.

  Nick . . . Nick . . . what’s happening to you?

  I tried to say something, but no words escaped me. Claryce and the rest became less distinct, less visible . . . but not quickly enough to prevent me from seeing a horrific image forming behind her.

  The twin whose throat’d been torn out by Fetch now grabbed for Claryce’s neck.

  I shouted, but still nothing came out. I realized that I was being pulled between the two visions, but was a part of neither.

  Eye will give you voice!

  I didn’t even hesitate. I let him do it.

  What felt like a volcano stirring scorched the inside of my throat. The next second, in a booming voice, I—we—shouted, “BEWARE!”

  The roar shook everything, but all I cared about was that my last glimpse before Claryce faded away was her turning with her revolver to the threat behind. I didn’t know if the gun would be enough, but at that moment, I thanked Heaven for her at least having a chance.

  And then belatedly thanked the dragon, too.

  Holmes’s memory world solidified. With a ghastly creak, Ferris’s wheel slowly turned, dark images I supposed were people riding in its seats. The throngs grew, but although they moved about and acted as one would’ve expected a crowd at such an event, their faces were blank of expression, of life. The men were also looking more and more like Holmes himself, with the women taking on faces that too much resembled Claryce . . . or maybe Claudette.

  “It was a simpler time . . . but, of course, everyone says that of the past, don’t they?”

  Holmes sounded as if he stood right in front of me, but even with me making a swift circle revealed him nowhere in sight.

  “Saint George. When I was growing up, I didn’t have much use for the Church, truly. Went to it when it was necessary for the facade, but why worship a god when you can be one?”

  “Is that all this is?” I asked as I continued surveying my surroundings. “Just the usual ‘I will rule the world’?”

  A man strolling by with a small girl looked at me as he passed. His grinning face was that of Holmes. “Well, that is a very nice benefit, if it comes to it.”

  He tipped his hat and continued on. The girl didn’t look at me, didn’t even act as if I was there.

  “But ruling a world takes a lot of effort,” another Holmes in a suit and long tie continued as he headed the opposite direction. Like the first, he tipped his hat as he moved on.

  I reached after him, only to have my hand go through.

  “All is thought,” Holmes said from behind me. I spun around to find him leading a group of four other men—all with his countenance—across the street that’d just formed. “But I never found enough to occupy my mind . . . until I began my experiments.”

  “‘Experiments’? Is that what you call the slaughters you committed?”

  “Oh, please,” the other four men chorused just before the group crossed.

  “Would you be concerned over the slaughter of a cow or hog?” continued a younger male dressed in a jersey and newsboy cap. “Or weeds plucked from the ground? Hardly.”

  “At least I give them some worth, some overall value,” Holmes added from yet another direction. This time, he wore a uniform and carried a package.

  I was getting sick and tired of playing in his world. I tried to concentrate on Claryce . . . and briefly faded images of her and the rest invaded Holmes’s world. I rejoiced that Claryce was not only alive but trying to get a bead on the Schreck, who at the moment had his arms pinned back by Fetch. Fetch, in his full Feirie form, was trying to take another bite out of the twin’s mutilated throat. I doubted anything less than full decapitation would slow the fiend.

  Meanwhile, Kravayik still struggled with Lysander’s shade. Despite being nearly engulfed, Kravayik showed no sign of surrendering. From his left hand slipped a small, ebony dagger I assumed to be of black silver. He jabbed at the shadowy form, which easily shifted out of the way.

  Twisting nimbly, Kravayik whirled toward Lysander’s physical form and threw the dagger.

  Holmes’s idealized world abruptly took prominence again.

  “Ah! There you are,” a chorus of Holmeses announced. “It was her, wasn’t it? It’s always her, in one incarnation or another. It’s always the princess . . . what was her original name, Cleolinda? Yes, that’s what he said! And now it’s Claryce, another lovely name. Were the others so vibrant? I recall Claudette, of course. A strange pairing, those two.”

  Holmes seemed to want to talk. I pretended rapt attention while I surreptitiously searched for where the true Holmes could be found. I didn’t want to use the link he’d created for fear I’d open us up to his power. That meant that I had to be especially careful, relying mostly on my own limited human senses and my experience with others before this.

  This wasn’t the first time Holmes had mentioned someone else. Somehow, though, it didn’t sound like he meant Lysander.

  Before I could follow through, Holmes spoke again.

  “I looked forward so very much to what she could offer toward my efforts. I’d researched reincarnation before, of course, but I’d never come across a reliable case. The other possible ones . . . well, they still made their contribution.”

  One Holmes broke off from the rest. I considered striking . . . and certainly the dragon supported that option . . . but knew that Holmes wouldn’t present himself so readily.

  “But when it was all said and done, when all I wanted was a simple answer as to how to extricate myself from this situation, I discovered that not all the sacrifices I made amounted to anything if I could not affect the very core of the Gate’s existence.”

  I still hadn’t located him, but couldn’t help looking at his illusion. “You don’t just need the Gate and the shadow, then. You’re actually bound to them, aren’t you?” I thought about all I’d seen. “Of course. You can’t exist beyond the Gate’s shadow. You’re bound to it.”

  For the first time, I received a scowl. “Wasn’t supposed to work out that way. I’d been studying life and death on the side while I . . . shall we say ‘paid’ my way with various enterprises among the provincials—”

  “You mean you conned and defrauded people wherever you went.”

  “I taught them valuable lessons. They deserved to pay a price, especially considering how long I had to put up with them and their simple ways.”

  I shook my head. “Some of them paid a terrible price.”

  “Those served a better purpose, you mean. My genius couldn’t be allowed to dim, much less die. That is what this is all about! Didn’t you see that?” The Holmes image removed his bowler and looked at me as if marveling that his reasoning hadn’t been clear from the start. “Feirie may be a static realm . . . well, not for much longer . . . but think of all the great minds that the human race has produced! Aristotle, Caesar, and da Vinci are three names that most rubes could at least fathom. I could list a thousand artists, generals, mathematicians, athletes, and inventors who’ve risen among humanity to accomplish tremendous and lasting changes
. . . and for what?”

  I’d finally sensed something. It’d been the least of traces, but I was certain that I’d nearly pinpointed where the true Holmes was. Unfortunately, to do any better would’ve required utilizing our link to Holmes, something I was certain that he’d notice.

  “For what?” I repeated, hoping to keep him caught up in his ego.

  “For death to simply claim them in the end and leave them to be forgotten by more than a handful.” Holmes put his bowler back on. “I couldn’t let that happen to my genius! That’s why I began gathering everything I could to at least stave off matters until a final solution could present itself!” He tapped his hat and grinned. “And I thank you for that ever so much.”

  A wrenching sound echoed through the memory world. Holmes turned his gaze. I couldn’t help but instinctively follow suit.

  Ferris’s wheel had torn itself free. It rolled for some distance, crushing parts of the exposition’s “White City” region in the process. In the true world, I couldn’t have seen such detail, but here in the twisted product of Holmes’s thoughts, proportion meant little.

  Then, with more wrenching, the wheel took on a more oval shape. Seats went flying, bodies flung from them in the process.

  “You brought it to me. You gave it to me. You gave me everything, Saint George . . . and I thank you.”

  Even as the wheel had begun to reshape, I’d brought Her Lady’s gift around at the image who’d been leading the speaking. The Feirie blade cut through his throat, neatly beheading him.

  The head rolled off the left shoulder. Instead of falling, though, it spiraled in the air until it took up a position floating a foot to the side of the body. One hand reached up to where the bowler’d originally been and tipped the empty air. The bowler hat rose and then dropped onto the severed head.

  “I am all I will be because of you . . .” Holmes said cheerfully. “I will always be in your debt.”

  He faded away, the grinning head last of all just like Alice’s Cheshire cat.

  I’d hated that character when Dodgson’d told me about it, not that he’d listened.

  At that moment, the wheel went through one last, swift scream of metal as it concluded its transformation. I didn’t need the last minute arching and gleaming stars to tell me what it’d been turning into. That’d been obvious long before it finished.

  The Gate loomed over me.

  Holmes’s world lost cohesion as the Gate dominated all. Without warning, I stood again on the shore of Lake Michigan, watching as the Gate flared bright in a cornucopia of colors that included those I could only see because of my own ties to the portal.

  And worse yet, I could also see that the key to all Holmes hoped to do—the shadow caused by the Gate itself—now draped over all Chicago.

  CHAPTER 27

  I am all I will be because of you. . . .

  I am all I will be because of you. . . .

  I knew what Holmes had meant. I couldn’t be blamed for all the heinous murders he’d committed nor anything Lysander or their servants had done to achieve their goals, but still I couldn’t help feeling the incredible guilt he’d probably hoped I’d feel.

  If not for the Gate coming to Chicago—and then being bound there by the events of the Great Fire—Holmes’s monstrous search for immortality would’ve ended with his neck stretched in Pennsylvania. Instead, the inroads he’d made had been just enough to enable him to keep him at the edge of death until now, until he could use me to complete matters.

  I am all I will be because of you. . . .

  Long ago, when I’d still been a tribune serving Diocles and naive to the cunning whispers of Galerius in his ears, I’d been troubled by the deaths that’d happened due to my role, my position. I’d taken those deaths heavily, part of the reason I’d embraced Heaven so fully. Even early on in my task as gatekeeper, I’d prayed for each individual who died as a result of the incidents influenced by the Gate and those who’d sought to misuse it.

  But time had hardened me more than I’d realized. The Nilssons had proven an example of that. I’d had to remind myself to think of them after they’d been brutally murdered. Only when it’d come to Cleolinda and her incarnations had I retained my fullest grief . . . and that’d been for some pretty selfish reasons, I knew.

  I remained aware every second that I wasn’t alone in this, that Claryce and the others were fighting alongside me. If Holmes’d thought I’d break down because of my guilt, he’d been misinformed by someone.

  Despite the chill lake wind, I knew I couldn’t actually be standing here. I still had to be within the matrix of Holmes’s sanctum. He hadn’t completed his work or else none of us would’ve been left alive. Holmes hadn’t struck me as someone to leave his enemies behind even after triumph.

  Which meant that all his talk had been, as I’d thought, an attempt to stave me off until things did fall into place for him. What he hadn’t realized, though, was that I’d used every second on trying to understand him.

  And one thing I now understood was that Lysander didn’t realize that he didn’t have the upper hand on his ally. Joseph’d actually tried to warn him, but the elf’d been too haughty to even listen.

  The other thing I’d discovered was that Holmes couldn’t possibly proceed any further without me. I knew he hadn’t been trying to reveal that, but it made sense to me with everything else. If he hadn’t needed me, he wouldn’t have wasted so much time. He needed something to happen and was hoping I’d make that happen.

  He wanted me to become the dragon one more time.

  I turned Her Lady’s gift point down and thrust hard. Dark emerald and blue energies exploded where the blade sank into what was supposedly the frosty beach.

  The Gate, the violent, icy lake . . . Chicago itself . . . all vanished, replaced again by one of the chambers within the maze.

  And there, of course, stood Joseph. It didn’t surprise me. He was doing something with a part of the black silver array beyond Lysander’s ken.

  “What’re you doing, Joseph?”

  “The wake is nearly done, but done too soon,” he answered merrily as he fiddled. “Just a tweak here. Just a tweak there. That’ll fix it.” He looked back at me. “Is it time to board the express?”

  “Yeah, soon.” I studied what he’d done. If I understood it, he’d arranged everything gathered to be drawn back to elsewhere in the maze. Away from Lysander, who’d been its true nexus for so long. That’d not only bring everything to Holmes, but burn out Lysander in the process. A simple way for Holmes to cleanly remove his ally.

  I raised the sword. With one convenient slice, I could wreak havoc on all Holmes’s plans. Gently pushing aside, Joseph, I focused on his work. In the midst, I noticed the place I was looking for. One cut.

  One cut.

  Well? asked the dragon impatiently. Strike! Put an end to this!

  Instead of answering, I lowered Her Lady’s gift. “Sorry to disappoint you, Holmes.”

  A sudden wave of nausea overtook me. I dropped the sword and fell to my knees.

  “No matter,” the Beast of Chicago remarked without a hint of disappointment. “A small matter. You and I, we’re bound enough for me to go on. You see, I had Joseph do a little more work before letting you come back. The other part was just a ploy.”

  I didn’t bother to answer. Through my nausea and pain, I sensed Holmes physically approach.

  “The shadow’s stretched as far as it can,” he went on, “and I can’t draw the rest of what I need from Feirie and the Gate until I make the final blending with you.”

  He didn’t have to explain to me what he meant. The ties he’d created through my stolen blood could only go so far. Now, he needed the rest.

  “I’d say if you don’t struggle it won’t be very painful, but, then, I’d be lying to you just as I had all the rest. It’ll be very painful. So very much so. Try not to scream too much. It won’t help alleviate anything. I’ve seen it enough.”

  The last few words came fro
m very nearby. I knew where he stood.

  Fighting against the strain, I shoved myself to my feet and grabbed the outstretched hand holding the hollow-tipped blade.

  With pleasure, I looked into his startled face.

  “After sixteen centuries, I’ve learned to endure more pain than you could even imagine,” I replied as I twisted his wrist.

  The dagger dropped to the floor with a clatter. Holmes’s surprise turned to a darkness of such depth that I’d only seen on a few over the generations.

  “What I can’t take one way, I can take another.” He grinned and, if not for our other hands coming together at that moment, would’ve probably even tipped his ever-present bowler.

  The moment our hands touched, I understood what he meant. The fingers grasping mine weren’t fingers, but the scaled digits of a monster of reptilian appearance.

  A dragon.

  “We are one. I will be one . . .” Holmes whispered. “You will give me what you are.”

  I felt an emptying. Not one of the body, but of the soul. What I’d become after my death, after inadvertently making myself successor to the dragon as guardian, was slowly but surely being drawn from me to Holmes.

  Eye can stop this! Let me out and I will bite his head off!

  I met Holmes’s gaze and saw that if I did try to unleash the dragon on his own, I’d only magnify the rate of loss. The changes Holmes’d had Joseph make had all been to create a better conduit for stealing our mutual essence. Before, he couldn’t have done it, but along with the energies he’d already drained from Feirie, he now had the strength and spellwork to take the rest.

  But only if I let him. I braced myself and silently said, If you want to save both our hides . . . or at least yours . . . then help me. . . .

  He didn’t reply, but in the next instant, I felt a surge of strength. I dared not funnel it into any sort of magical reaction for fear that’d just be what Holmes wanted. Instead, I used it to create a wall against which he could strike futilely until he was weakened enough for my own attack.