by T. A. Pratt
“I had a surprise for you,” he said, and the table didn’t move. “I thought it would be a nice way to celebrate your defeating Reave, but now I feel like an idiot for wasting the time.”
“What kind of surprise?”
“You mentioned that you wished you could get Terry Reeves—the man who assaulted Genevieve—so you could make him pay for what he’d done. It seemed reasonable to me that if he’d raped one woman, he might have raped another, so I looked on the sex-offender database, and found a man by that name who was recently released from prison, and who still lives in Felport. I found a photo, and he even looks like Reave a little—bald, dead little eyes, ugly teeth. I was going to send a couple of your pet police to pick him up and bring him over. I thought it could help Genevieve’s therapy, to know that her real rapist had been punished. I’m sorry I took on a project like that without—”
“Wait,” Hamil said. “You found her rapist? You know where he is right now?”
“Well, yes,” Ted said. “I guess he was never apprehended for the attack on Genevieve because she was catatonic. She never told anyone his name before—she still hasn’t, St. John Austen told us. Genevieve probably can’t even bring herself to say his name, though she was inside his mind, so it’s no surprise she knew it.”
“Marla,” Hamil said. “I had no idea that man was still at large. But if he’s local…”
“Holy shit,” Marla said, rising. “Ted, you’re a fucking genius. You’re also an idiot for not mentioning this sooner, but even subtracting that idiocy from your score, you’re still a genius. Where is this guy? We need him.”
“Why?” Joshua said. “I don’t understand.”
She patted him on the head. “You don’t have to understand, sweetheart, you just have to know it’s beautiful. Ted, what’s the address?” He checked his PDA and read it out. The place was in a shitty part of town, but they weren’t too far from the shitty part of town, so that was all right. “Ted, you and Joshua stay here, man the phones, let me know if anything develops. Hamil, Rondeau, come with me.”
“This could really work,” Hamil said. “I need to give it some thought, figure out how exactly to proceed…. We should go to Langford’s. He’ll have anything we’d possibly need.”
“Done,” Marla said. Real hope was surging in her now.
“I’m glad I could help,” Ted said. “Will you tell me how I helped?”
“After we’ve saved the city from devastation,” Marla said.
“Can I come?” Joshua said.
Marla hesitated. She didn’t want to leave his side, either—she’d missed him. “We’ll have a celebratory romp if this works, Joshua. For now, I need you here. The bad guys might come knocking, and you’re the only one who can sweet-talk them away from the door.”
“If you think that’s where I’d be most useful,” Joshua said, sounding a little put out. She almost relented, but damn it, she was right. She could nurse his hurt feelings later. While wearing a nurse uniform, if that’s what he wanted.
“We’ll call when we finish,” Marla said, and hustled Hamil and Rondeau toward the elevator. For once, Hamil moved faster than any of them. And why not? He was the one with the skills to take advantage of Ted’s fortuitous find, though Marla would have to handle the tricky bits. That was okay. She liked the tricky bits.
In the car, on the way to Terry Reeves’s house, Hamil leaned forward from the backseat and touched Marla’s shoulder. “I want to make sure you understand how dangerous this is,” he said quietly. If Rondeau could hear, he pretended not to. “If it goes wrong, if Reave doesn’t react as we hope…you and Genevieve could both die, simultaneously.”
Marla nodded, reaching back to pat his knee. “I know, big guy. But that’s the kind of situation we’re in. Finding Terry Reeves, having him in town…it’s almost enough to make me believe in providence. At the very least, it’s big luck. If it comes with big risks, well, so it goes. At least this will be decisive.”
“True enough,” Hamil murmured, and sank back into the seat.
Marla kicked in the door of the shitty little house on Rampart Street. Terry Reeves sat in a recliner in dirty boxer shorts, watching TV with a beer in his hand. His eyes went wide. “Get the fuck out of my house!”
“Terry Reeves?” Marla said, though there was no question—he was a less pale but equally bald version of Reave, with bushier eyebrows and an older face.
“It’s none of your business who I am, bitch!”
“Oh, good, you are a total asshole,” she said. “I won’t feel bad about doing this, then.” She tossed a fist-sized river rock at him, and he threw up his hands to ward it off. When it touched him, though, he dropped like a stone himself, totally unconscious. “He’ll have a monster headache when he wakes up, and I can’t say I mind.”
Rondeau came in and sighed. “I always wind up doing the heavy lifting.” He dragged Terry toward the door, wrinkling his nose. “Man, he stinks.” Marla picked up Reeves’s feet, and they hurried toward the waiting Bentley. Hamil took up most of the backseat, but that was okay, because they were sticking Terry in the trunk. They dumped him on top of the spare tire and the jack, and Rondeau hesitated before closing the lid. “Uh, Marla, are you really planning on killing this guy?”
“It could go that way,” she admitted. “I’m not sure, but if it’s a choice between him dying or having to kill Genevieve, who should win? A serial rapist, or one of his victims and me?”
“No argument there,” Rondeau said, and shut the lid. “The cold-murder thing never sits well with me, but I understand having to make bad choices. I just…I kinda worry….”
“I’m not looking forward to doing it, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Marla said. “I think this guy should be castrated and put in a box forever, but I don’t believe in killing anyone unless there’s no other way to protect the innocent, you know that. And unless you’re a sorcerer, a supermax prison is a pretty good way to make sure you never fuck over another innocent.”
“You’re doing good,” Rondeau said. “I haven’t had a chance to say that, and I know a lot of things have gone sideways these last couple of days, but you’re doing good.”
“Me and you should go have some breakfast when this all blows over,” Marla said. “You can buy me a danish and tell me how awesome I am some more.”
“It’s a date, boss.”
Langford opened the door and ushered them in. “Ted called and told me you were coming, though he wasn’t certain why.” He cleared off a long autopsy table so they could lay Terry Reeves down. “Who’s our friend?”
“This is the man who assaulted Genevieve,” Marla said. “The original flesh-and-blood inspiration for Reave, king of nightmares.”
“Oh,” Langford said, raising his eyebrows, which meant he was very impressed indeed. “That’s clever.”
“I should get to work,” Hamil said, and set about collecting coils of wire, copper nails, vials of salt, and other tools of his trade. He’d seen the possibilities even faster than Marla had, probably. This idiot rapist Terry Reeves and the dark overlord Reave were fundamentally connected on a deep level; they weren’t just similar, they were the same. They could make Terry Reeves into a living, life-sized voodoo doll for Reave. Whatever Terry Reeves suffered, Reave would suffer. If Reeves died, there was a chance—not a certainty, but a chance—that Reave would die, too.
But Marla and Hamil had more complicated ideas.
“Will you just be cutting off his head, in hopes that will finish Reave?” Langford said.
“Nope,” Marla said. “I think the only way for Genevieve to really get rid of Reave is to believe she can beat him. He’s grown to tremendous proportions in her mind. She needs to realize the real Terry Reeves is a sad piece of shit she can squish like a bug, not the monster she’s built him up to be. She needs to see the inside of his head again and realize it’s a squalid, nasty place, not worth her fear. Which means…” She went to the box of Genevieve’s possessions, which Lang
ford had used to track her. There were alligator clips attached to the photograph, the silk scarf, the hairbrush, the book. “We’ve got hair and clothes and beloved items, and that means we can set up a sympathetic resonance between Genevieve and whoever has these possessions. At the same time, we’ll set up a resonance between Reave and Terry Reeves, and make the big bad guy a little bit more mortal and vulnerable.”
Hamil came over and began lifting items from the box. “Marla’s mind will enter Genevieve’s body, and because Genevieve is such a powerful psychic, her consciousness should flow into Marla as well. There should be no danger of rejection. Thanks to the resonance, Genevieve should apprehend Marla’s motives quickly, and though she’s unbalanced, we think—or more truthfully, we hope—she will let us proceed. They’ll essentially switch bodies. Marla will be able to deal with Reave, and Genevieve will be able to confront this man, and, perhaps, gain some closure. Or possibly slit his throat, depending on her temperament.”
Marla took off her cloak. “You better lock this up, though, Langford. When I switch places with Genevieve, she’ll be riding around in my body, and I don’t want her having access to a weapon quite that badass. Who knows how she’ll react when she recognizes this guy?”
Marla sat down. Hamil wound Genevieve’s scarf around her throat, and wove strands of hair from the brush in with Marla’s own. He tucked the book and the photograph into her pockets. “What do you think?” Marla said.
“It’s fine,” Hamil said. “I think it’s good enough.” He lit candles and began his incantations, and Marla did her best to meditate and empty her mind.
“I don’t think anything’s happ—” she began, and then, suddenly, something was.
Another bench, in another park, on a summer day. Not the dream world, exactly—the edges of this place blurred, nothing quite solidifying unless Marla looked at it directly. She was in some tiny corner of Genevieve’s mind—or else Genevieve was in a corner of Marla’s mind.
Genevieve sat beside her, twisting a scarf in her hands. “Marla. I can’t keep you straight. Kill, save, help, harm.”
“Definitely help now,” Marla said. “So let me help, would you?”
“He can’t be defeated. I’ve tried. He killed my knight.”
“At the very least, I owe you a break, then. Let me take your place for a while. You can sit out the next round of the torture decathlon, okay?”
Genevieve cocked her head. “And what waits for me if I rest for a while in your body?”
“It’s better if you see that for yourself.” But of course, there was no keeping secrets from Genevieve—even asking the question was just a courtesy on her part, the type of kindness polite psychics learned early on, and it was heartening that Genevieve was still sane enough to bother.
“You have…Reave? The man who attacked me? But he’s here, in this tower—”
“Not exactly.” Marla hesitated. It was hard to diplomatically tell someone they were bat-shit insane, especially when that someone could read your mind. “Reave is a nightmare you had. We’ve got the cause of the nightmare. Terry Reeves. Do you understand?”
Marla’s mind was spread out before Genevieve like a rummage table at a garage sale, but Genevieve seemed to have trouble comprehending. “But he—I don’t—what will he…” She trailed off, her face a twist of anguish.
“Look, you’ll be safe. And I’ll take your pain for a while. Let me do that? To make up for that whole planning-to-kill-you thing?”
Genevieve nodded, and the bench fell away.
Marla found herself in a small cell with black walls, sitting on a chair. She wasn’t bound—why would Reave bind Genevieve, when she was so broken? The body was sore, but not abused. The torments would be mostly psychological, of course. Reave couldn’t risk actually hurting Genevieve. She was his power source. Marla stood, stretched, and tested the body’s capabilities. Genevieve was no martial artist, and she was physically weaker than Marla, but Marla wasn’t expecting to brawl. She had other plans. She’d hoped that taking Genevieve’s body would give her access to the woman’s vast reality-altering powers, but no such luck—maybe she could have used those powers, but she had no idea how, anyway, any more than taking over a nuclear physicist’s body would let her know how to build an atom bomb.
Marla could see, as with the vividness of a dream, the world through her own body’s eyes, now inhabited by Genevieve. It was profoundly disorienting, but Marla’s recent experience piloting the chimera helped. Genevieve stood up, and Hamil and Rondeau gave her reassurances, and Marla felt some strain in the back of her head as Genevieve read their minds. Marla’s brain, of course, was no good at reading minds, so Genevieve had to reach back through their psychic link to her own brain to do so. Marla was impressed with the woman’s range—Langford’s warehouse was across town, and Genevieve was able to pinpoint particular minds there with great accuracy. Genevieve went to look at Terry Reeves, still unconscious on an autopsy table. “But he’s so old,” Genevieve said, and Marla grinned. That was as good a cue as any. She turned her attention away from Genevieve to the situation at hand.
“HEY!” she shouted, and a faceless guard appeared at the barred grate in the door. “Call your boss, I need to talk to him. Don’t just stand there, shadow-face, get him! Unless he’s afraid to speak to a woman.” The guard disappeared, and Marla grinned. The muscles in her face felt strange. Genevieve didn’t smile much.
Marla picked up the waste-bucket and stood by the door. In a moment the door creaked open and Reave entered. He was close to seven feet tall now, his bald head more gleaming than mushroomlike, his stupid shiny coat cinched tight at the waist.
Marla threw the contents of the bucket into his face, and laughed when he stumbled back. One of his guards handed him a handkerchief, and Reave wiped the worst of the smears away. “Have you gone even more mad, woman? You will pay for that.”
“Why do you have guards with you, Terry? Too afraid to talk to me one-on-one?”
Reave frowned, then waved his hand, and the guards withdrew, shutting the door after them. “You know how I feel about women who talk back, Genevieve. You know what happens to them.”
“Oh?” Marla said, pretending to cringe, then stepping forward and kicking him as hard as she could between his legs. Reave’s eyes widened, but that was all, and Marla grinned. “A real man would have doubled over when I did that, Terry. But you don’t even have balls, do you? You stand there all menacing, but you couldn’t fuck me if I begged you, much less against my will. How is it you think you can threaten me when the closest thing you’ve got to a cock is this big stupid tower?”
Reave spat at her feet. “You are not Genevieve. This is Genevieve’s body, but…Marla?”
She curtsied. “You’re pretty slow on the uptake for the lord of nightmares, Terry.”
“You think this is clever? You found some hair, some piece of her clothes, and decided to give Genevieve a respite? You think I won’t hurt you?”
“Of course you won’t, you moron. Genevieve is the source of your power. You won’t touch a hair on her head.”
Reave sniffed. “There are torments that do not result in death, Marla.”
“Yeah, and I’m sure you’re good at inflicting them on a traumatized woman in a state of semicatatonia. But I’m a little more feisty. You don’t like feisty women, do you, Terry?”
“Don’t call me Terry!” he roared, and Marla just laughed in his face. She loved this part.
“Oh, that’s right. Terry’s just the true story you were inspired by, right? Oh, and incidentally—we have him. The real original you, asshole.”
“You lie.”
Marla just snorted.
“Even if you do, it doesn’t matter. He is not me. He is only a man. I am the king of nightmares—”
“Oh, whatever. I know you’d like to believe that, but you should know better. That drunk rapist is exactly what you are, when you strip away all special effects. A nothing who gets off on hurting people. And we�
�ve got him. Which means we’ve got you.”
“Nonsense,” Reave said. “I’ll have my guards bring up a board, and a bucket of piss, and I’m going to strap you down and pour urine across your face until you decide to leave this body and—”
“Hold that thought,” Marla said, and reached back in her mind for the connection to Genevieve, who was still staring at Terry Reeves. Gen, she thought. Why don’t you give that bastard a slap?
What? I can’t. What if he—
He can’t do anything but take it.
She felt a little surge of glee from Genevieve, who drew her hand back and slapped Terry Reeves hard across the face.
Reave, who’d been unspooling more threats, suddenly staggered back and clutched his cheek. “What—how did you—”
“Genevieve just slapped Terry Reeves. Felt that, did you? Guess you guys do have some connection, huh?”
“I—I’ll send my armies, and they’ll find her, find you, and Reeves, too. I’ll install him here in palatial comfort, he will never want for anything—”
“Try it,” Marla said. “My people are there, and Reeves will die if you make a move.”
Reave shrank visibly before her. From seven feet to six, then down to five and a half feet tall, no taller than the real Terry Reeves. The hem of his long black coat dragged the floor now. “What do you want?” he said at last. “A place in the new regime? Something can be arranged.”
“Oh, yeah, sign me up for a seat on the ruling council of the rapeocracy. Fuck you, Reave. All I want is for Genevieve to see you for what you are.”
Reave whimpered.
Back in Langford’s lab, the slap had awakened Terry Reeves, who tried to sit up, but was held down by his restraints. “Fuck is this? Head hurts,” he slurred, and Reave’s lips moved in the same words, though he didn’t actually speak. Now that Terry Reeves was awake, the connection—strengthened and reinforced by Hamil’s sympathetic magic—between Reave and himself was more noticeable, and Reave was probably seeing through Reeves’s eyes as well as his own.
