"Shut up," Annalise said. "Callin just tried to kill me with one of his damn envelopes. That gives your story a little more weight."
I nodded. I didn't mind framing a guilty man. "No shit. But if you hadn't destroyed those pages, we might've had a way to help my friend."
"I'd have destroyed them anyway. Callin and I are peers in the society, and stealing spells from other peers is a capital crime."
That seemed pretty stupid to me. If they all shared all of their spells, not only would they do away with the "unequal peers" Callin mentioned, but they'd know when one of them had a spell that did something stupid and dangerous, like summon "cousins."
Annalise was staring at me. Hard. I didn't like it. "What?"
"You tried to save that man," she said.
I watched her closely. Behind her anger at Callin, she was feeling something else. "And you forgot to give a shit," I said. "What does this society of yours do? Because you're not about helping people."
"We help people," she said, sounding almost defensive. "If your friend is left alone, he'll never stop killing. I'm here to prevent that."
"We have to cure them."
Annalise shook her head. "I doubt a cure exists for this."
"No." It was time to push her as far as I could. "You don't get to shrug and say This was easier again. You say that too often. It was one of your own that made the mess, and you better step up and fix things. Not destroy the problem. Not kill people. Fix it. We have to make Callin undo the spell."
"'We' can't make Callin do anything," Annalise said. "But when help arrives...." Her voice trailed off doubtfully.
I had to keep pushing her to stand against Callin. "I want in," I said. "I want to help you against Callin."
Annalise gave me a funny look. It made me nervous. "Will you be my wooden man?"
There was that term again. I didn't know what a wooden man was, but I was ready to find out. "To help my friend, I'd team up with the devil himself."
Annalise stood and shrugged out of her fireman's jacket. "Obviously," she said. She draped the coat over me.
I felt a sudden, tremendous pressure, as though my soul was being squeezed out of my body, then everything went dark.
#
I opened my eyes and saw that the room was still dark. I sat bolt upright, fully awake in an instant. Just as it had with Payton, Annalise's jacket had pushed the consciousness out of me. At least, that's how it had seemed. I felt rested, though, as if I'd enjoyed a long night's sleep. I sat up. My mouth was dry, my stomach grumbling and my legs and back were sore, but I felt pretty good, considering the state of the couch I'd crashed on. It was chilly, though.
I noticed something on the back of my hand. It was covered with tattoos just like Annalise's. They ran over my wrist and up the outside of my forearm to my elbow. I realized that my shirt was missing and that my chest and stomach were also covered with weird black marks.
"He wakes!" A woman's voice said. "Good morning, handsome!"
A dark-skinned woman with a strong Brazilian accent walked toward me. She was somewhere in the prime of her forties, and I could tell, from just a glance at her bright eyes, that she was enjoying them very well. She cut an orange in half with a very large fighting knife and offered half to me.
After a moment's hesitation, I accepted it. "What did you do to me?" I held up my tattooed hand. I tried not to sound angry, but it was there in my voice anyway.
"I have done nothing. She protected you. See?" She grabbed my hand and laid the knife blade against my arm. I dropped my orange half and tried to pull away, but like Annalise, she was too strong. She slashed.
Nothing. No cut, no pain. The knife couldn't penetrate the tattoo.
"My name is Irena," the woman said. She bit a piece of orange. Juice ran down her hand and over her wrist.
"Hello, Irena. I'm Ray." I liked the way she smiled and wondered what she'd be like in bed. Not now, I thought. I touched the tattoos on my arm. "I can't feel anything here. It's like...."
"Like armor," Annalise said as she entered the room. "Like a shell."
She had taken off her fireman's jacket, her vest and a couple other layers of clothing until all she was wearing was a sleeveless T-shirt and heavy canvas pants. She was even smaller than I'd realized. And the tattoos on her hands continued up her arms over her shoulders and under her clothes. I could see the black sigils through her threadbare shirt.
Like a shell. I'd seen her glow like a star in the parking lot of the sports bar and I'd figured there were more tattoos under her clothes, but I hadn't thought she'd be completely covered. How much of her skin was like dead flesh--completely numb to the touch?
Christ. No wonder she was so screwed up.
I stood and examined myself. The tattoos covered my chest, stomach and outer forearms. As far as I could tell, there was nothing below the waist or above my collarbones.
"I didn't do your back," Annalise said. "When we fight, you'll be protected if you face the danger. If you try to run away...."
"I get it," I said. "Is it permanent?"
"Yes. They'll last as long as you do."
I considered them again. The marks were intricate, meaningless and ugly. I was moving further and further from the seat-belt life I'd hoped for, but it was too late now. I had gone this far and couldn't back out now.
And damn if it didn't feel good. All these marks had power. While Annalise and Irena looked over a sheet of paper, I reached out and grabbed a metal table lamp in my left hand. I couldn't squeeze it like tissue paper. Ah well. No super-strength for me.
The bandage Callin had placed on my neck finally lost so much of its glue that it fell partly off and lay against my shoulder. I peeled it away and saw there were two spots of blood on it. "Right here," I said, tapping the spot where Callin had bit me. "I want more on my neck. Both sides."
Annalise and Irena looked at each other. "We move against Callin soon," Annalise said. "We don't have time to put you out again."
Irena pursed her lips. "The process is painful, Raymond."
"Please," I said. "He drank my blood."
Annalise shrugged and took a small paint brush from an end table drawer.
"You will be awake for this?" Irena clucked her tongue and shook her head. "Brave."
Annalise pointed me to the floor and I lay down. She turned me onto my side and knelt beside my back, then wrapped her left arm across my chest, trapping both of my arms. "Take his legs, please."
And I knew this was going to be bad. Irena took hold of my legs and held them tightly. With her forearm, Annalise trapped my head against her knee.
Any enjoyment I might have gotten from the touch of two women--any two--was quashed by the knowledge that something terrible was about to happen. My arms spasmed, wanting to be free, but struggling against Annalise was like pushing against a brick wall.
I couldn't see Annalise's face but I wondered what she was waiting for. Maybe she was concentrating, making sure she got it right. That was cool by me.
Then she touched the tip of the paint brush against my skin and a jet of sizzling black steam blasted out of me.
I screamed. The pain was worse than anything I'd ever felt in my life. Worse that the fire in the library, worse than the beatings in prison, worse than anything. The magic clung to my skin like a living creature and chewed at me. A spider web of pain ran through my whole body like a spreading infection.
I knew a flaw in the spell she was creating might kill me and I tried not to struggle, but my body couldn't be controlled. It bucked and shuddered no matter how much I tried to take deep breaths and relax. There was no Zen meditation for this shit. This was torture.
The women held me in place. I felt woozy and thought I might pass out, but the magic was in my head, keeping me awake and aware as it transformed me.
Then she lifted the brush. It was over. The pain eased but didn't vanish completely. I had never felt anything so terrible in my life.
"Other side," I said between gasps
. "Do the other side."
Annalise turned my head the other way and pressed it into place. Irena shook her head and looked down as the pain took hold again. And I screamed. It was all I could do, and I did it with every ounce of energy I had.
When it was finally over, Annalise released me and let me fall onto the floor. Tears welled in my eyes and when I tried to blink them away they splashed onto my face. I should have been ashamed of them, but the pain was still so fierce I thought it might pinch my head off. It was all I could do to hold myself together.
After several minutes, the pain had eased enough to let me stand. I took several deep, steadying breaths, then leaned against a wooden support beam. I slid my hand over the rough texture of it. It helped.
The clock on the wall said it was almost four o'clock. The high windows were dark, so it was a.m. rather than p.m. Annalise brought me here at in the tiny hours of the morning. Had I been out for twenty-six hours or fifty?
The cut orange was face down on the couch. I picked it up and wiped it clean with the side of my hand. I was hungry enough not to care. It was sweet and wonderful in my empty belly.
I noticed an open bathroom door and went inside. The mirror above the sink was almost too small for me to see the tattoos on my neck.
They weren't real tattoos, of course--they had been painted onto my skin, not injected beneath it--but if Annalise was to be believed they were just as permanent. The spell on my left side was a swirl with a series of dots down one side. I ran my finger over it, thinking too late that I might smear it. I couldn't detect any difference in the way the protected and unprotected skin felt, except that the unprotected skin could feel my fingertip on it, while the enchanted skin could not.
"Where are you?" Annalise said from the other room.
I walked out of the bathroom. Annalise stood by the back door. Irena stood at her shoulder.
"Just throwing some water on my face and looking at my new decorations," I said.
Annalise's expression was flat. "It's almost time."
"Tell him," Irena said. Annalise turned to her in surprise. "He should know what is happening and why we are doing this, yes? You know how Callin steals secrets from his enemies, and so does he. He's just undergone a terrible ordeal for us. He deserves it."
Annalise looked at Irena for a few extra seconds, then turned to me. She was scowling, as she motioned me toward the couch. I tried to work out the relationship she had with Irena. Were they teacher and student? Big and little sister? Some mixture of the two?
I settled onto the end of the couch and Annalise perched herself on the edge of the rocking chair opposite. She held herself very still. "You asked before what we do."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"This world," she began grudgingly, "every world, is surrounded by predators. They're like ghosts who are always near us and they're always hungry, always searching for living planets to devour."
"I--" I stopped myself from saying I've seen this from a spell in Callin's book. Stealing spells from a peer would get me killed. "I think I understand." It sounded lame even to me.
She continued. "Certain magic--summoning magic--calls to these predators and changes them. They become partly physical, partly not, like the worm you saw emerge from that girl's mouth. That's what's inside your friends."
"Can you summon these predators?" I asked, thinking maybe she could summon them out of Jon's body.
"No." Her voice was sharp. "Summoning magic is forbidden. We destroy every summoning spell we can find, as well as anyone who knows the spell and anything they might have summoned." She leaned toward me. "I destroy predators. I don't call them to this world."
"So, those worms are... demons?"
She shook her head. "I've never seen a demon. Or an angel. I've never visited heaven or hell, and I've never spoken to God. All I know is that humans are prey and we're surrounded by hunters, that the predators like to be summoned, but hate to be held in place, that--"
"Jon and Callin cast a summoning spell." It sounded so simple when I said it that way. So straightforward.
"And now your friend is killing people. He'll keep killing people and summoning more predators--"
"Cousins," I said. "They call each other 'cousins.'"
"Which is why," she continued, as if I hadn't interrupted her, "we have to stop them by any means necessary."
"Do you do this all the time? How often does this happen?"
"You don't need to know that."
"Okay. Tell me more about these predators." She didn't like that question. "Tell me about the first predator you ever destroyed."
She stared at me. I could tell she was doing some kind of calculation about me, but she was unusually hard to read. "I won't do that," she said, "but I will tell you about the second. Did you ever hear about the Torso Killer? The press sometimes called him the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run."
I never liked to read the newspapers. "Sorry. Never heard of it."
"He wasn't an 'it'. A man did all those killings. A man with crooked teeth and big round drinker's nose. Don't ask his name because I killed him and burned down his place without asking for it. But he had a predator in his little place. It was hard to see unless it had sopped up human blood... and who knows what else. Some kind of little sponge, I think."
"And this guy was feeding it like a pet?"
"He was."
"Why?"
"I have no idea. It was doing something for him--all these assholes get some kind of power or gift or knowledge for all the killing they do, but I wasn't there to chat with him about it. I was there to start the fire that burned man and predator both to cinders."
There was something more to be said about that story, I could see it in her face. Then she looked at her watch and the moment was gone. "Time to pay Callin a visit."
The three of us did not go to Callin's hotel on the back of Annalise's motorcycle, thank God. Instead we piled into a battered Dodge Sprinter and rumbled through out into the city.
Annalise drove. Irena sat in the passenger seat. I crouched on the floor beside Annalise's BMW, which was locked into a clever little mounting system bolted to the floor. On the other side of the motorcycle lay a small stack of Irena's luggage.
"Do not open them, handsome boy," she said to me. "The tricks inside are dangerous, and not for you."
"Gotcha," I said, letting the boy remark go. I'd sat on the floor of Jon's van, too, but it had been nicer than this one, even with the fast food wrappers. I was again reminded of sitting in the back of Arne's Expedition while we went out to "work." We'd cruise around looking for cars to boost, with Arne dropping one of us off when he'd spotted something worthwhile. Afterwards, he'd drive back to the yard and wait for us to bring in the cars. Then it was back into the Expedition for another round.
I was struck by how much this was like those trips--The tension, the feeling that I was risking myself for a big score. At least Annalise and Irena weren't pounding beers or snorting lines, although Arne would have been furious about the tattoos. He never worked with criminals who wanted to advertise their profession.
Annalise parked on the street. Callin's hotel was just across the street.
"Raymond," Irena said, "please climb out through the front." I moved away from her suitcases and followed her through the passenger door. Sunrise was still an hour away.
Annalise yanked open the back doors of the van and Irena unzipped an outside pocket of her suitcase. She removed a medallion and placed it in Annalise's hand.
"This should allow us to approach him undetected."
"Should?" I asked as she hung one around my neck.
"Callin has been around a long time," Annalise said. Her tone suggested she was phrasing that carefully to avoid saying something I shouldn't know. "He's older than all of us put together."
"And he knows many tricks," Irena said. She hung a medallion around her own neck.
Annalise walked away from us, toward the intersection. She stared up at the top of the hotel.<
br />
"Hold this for me," Irena said. I accepted a long canvas gym bag and held the mouth open. Irena took four harpoons from a suitcase and slid them into the bag. I noticed a tiny sigil on each blade. "So, you are Annalise's new wooden man?" she asked without looking at me.
I suddenly felt like a new boyfriend getting the once-over from the best friend. The idea gave me a perverse thrill. "Apparently."
She looked at me sharply. Should I have sounded more enthusiastic?
"So then, you are a former soldier?"
"No,"
"A policeman?"
"Hell, no." My tone was sharper than I'd intended.
Irena frowned. She seemed to understand perfectly. "A criminal, then. That foolish girl." Irena silently put a small leather case in the gym bag, then a belt of knives, then a coil of rope.
She took an ice pick from a box and, instead of dropping it into the bag, waved it under my nose. "Listen to me, my handsome criminal. Annalise is a very good friend to me, and I have tried to counsel her as best I could. Now she has taken a wooden man, and she has flown in the face of all I have tried to teach her. So be it. Each of us must learn in our own way. But if you betray her, there will be no place on this Earth from which you can hide from me." She dropped the ice pick into the bag.
I'd already betrayed her, of course. I'd written her name on the envelope, fabricating the evidence that persuaded her to make this little attack. It was too late to turn back now. "I hear you."
"You had better." Irena dropped a set of chains into the bag, then took it from me. The bag had gotten heavy, but she hefted it as if it weighed no more than a loaf of bread. "Will this be enough?" she murmured to herself. "I don't think this will be enough." She climbed back into the van.
I had been dismissed. I walked toward Annalise, who was still staring up at the top of the hotel. If she was going to get cold feet, now was the time.
But when I came up beside her, I saw that her face was grim and determined. Apparently, she wasn't the type to back out. She turned and looked up at me. "Has she given you the once over?"
Twenty Palaces: A Prequel Page 14
