Once I had a place to study, I could search through Nettle's pages. What did I expect to find there beyond another copy of cure the lame? The spell to summon the ice predator? Maybe a dozen--or a hundred--other ways to destroy friends, ruin lives, and end the world? I was tempted to buy a lighter and torch the whole thing right now.
And at the same time, I wanted to make a special copy all for myself. Despite the tattoos, ghost knife and gloves, I was still the ninety-pound weakling in this fight. The power these pages represented was tempting. Would it give me the juice to take on Annalise? Echo? Even Callin?
No. I wasn't going to summon up more predators, no matter who was coming after me. Not after everything I'd seen.
But there were other reasons to make a copy. Carefully hidden, Nettle's spell book might be a useful bargaining chip if Annalise ever caught up with me.
Without realizing it, I'd ridden to the copy shop. My subconscious seemed to have decided for me. I was going to use what money I had left to copy Nettle's books, and this shop, with its damn blue pages, was the only place I could afford to have the job done.
It was strange to think that the shift I'd worked there had been the happiest time I'd had in years, but it had.
They'd be closing soon, and Andrea would not be glad to see me. Either I'd apologize to her or I'd tear the phone out of the wall and intimidate her. Whatever it took to keep her from calling Uncle Karl again. I'd make my copies, pay for them, then run like hell.
The door to the shop stood wide open. Someone had propped it open with a pack of expensive cream-colored letter paper. I walked inside.
Dried leaves blew across the carpet. A hard-bitten woman in a threadbare suit stood at a self-serve machine, making copies of her resume on the same cream-colored paper. She added a handful of copies to an eight-inch stack behind her. A homeless man sat on the window sill in the corner. He took a swig out of a bottle in a paper bag, then offered me a smile. Andrea and Oscar were nowhere in sight.
I approached the woman in the threadbare suit. "Where's the staff?"
The woman turned off the copier, slid her original off the glass and hefted her resumes. Her lips were pressed into a thin line and she refused to look me in the eye. "It's not my fault if there's no one here to take my money." She walked out the door.
I went behind the counter. "Hey, buddy," the drunk said. "Can you spare some change?"
There were no jobs running on the expensive copiers behind the counter. The phone was off the hook, and the drawer to the cash register was open and empty.
The office door was closed and locked. I stuck my hand far back into the shelf under the cash register and found the spare key.
The drunk decided to join me. He shuffled around the edge of the counter as I slipped the key into the lock and opened the office door.
We were immediately hit with the coppery smell of drying blood. The wall, carpet, and desk were streaked with brownish-red splashes.
"Holy God," the drunk said. "Jesus, show us your mercy."
I opened the door all the way, revealing a message written high on the wall in blood. It read: For our cousin.
I knew I should have just backed away. I should have turned and run out the damn door without looking back. Instead, I stepped into the room. Andrea and Oscar lay beneath the desk. Both had been slashed open and torn apart. One of Oscar's ears, ringed with piercings, lay on the desk calendar.
I staggered toward the door, feeling woozy.
"Jesus smite the devil!" the drunk said. "What happened here?"
I grabbed his grimy sleeve and pushed him aside so I could get the hell out of that room. Andrea and Oscar were dead because of me. They were dead because I had worked here for one damn day.
Jon would never have done this; Echo must have... But Echo had never met Andrea and Oscar, as far as I knew. Only Jon knew I'd worked here.
I closed my eyes, but I could still smell the blood. If Jon had done this, it was because of the cousin inside him. It was like a mental illness; he couldn't be held responsible. If there was some way to drive the cousin out--restore Jon to his old self--and leave him whole...
"What are we going to do?" the drunk asked.
"Do you want to talk to the cops about this?"
"Oh, Good Lord, no," the man said.
"Me, neither." I pressed my knuckle on the phone cradle to bring the dial tone back, then used the same knuckle to dial 911.
I hustled toward the front door before the call connected. The old drunk followed.
This time there were no cops to read my license plate as I pulled away. Not that it mattered. It was getting close to eleven, and I needed to settle in someplace that was secluded and had a light to read by. I ran through all the homes, apartments, and other spaces I'd been to since I got to town, but they had all been compromised or destroyed. No one had even talked about a place, except...
And then I thought of the perfect spot.
#
A light rain had begun to fall. I circled the baseball field once, looking out for a bunch of teenagers sneaking beers or a homeless guy rolled up in a sleeping bag. Luckily, it was empty. I rode across left field and parked behind a Dumpster. It wasn't completely hidden, but it was good enough.
The dugout was just a few feet away. This was the field where Jon and I had played together as kids. His house was not six blocks from here. At the batting cages, Echo had told me that Jon had brought her and the others out to the field near his house to knock a ball around, and I knew immediately that this was the one. He and I had spent hours here; of course he'd come back as soon as he could.
I jammed the helmet under the mesh net and went into the dugout. The shelter was built with cinderblocks that had been painted blue, and while there was a streetlight to read by, I was protected from the rain and prying eyes. If it had walls to keep out the wind, a leather couch and a hot shower, I'd have been ecstatic.
I took the pages from the canvas bag and separated the English translations from the non-English ones. Presumably, I was looking at Latin but beyond E Pluribus Unum and habeas corpus I had no real way to tell.
That left the three copies in English, plus the spiral notebook they'd been photocopied from, plus Wally's copy. Each was about four times as thick as Callin's spell book. I took a deep breath and held the book under the light.
My hands were shaking. Wally had read these pages and had turned into... Whatever he was now. Nuts. A killer. And they had done the same thing to the person he took them from, if he could be believed.
Well, fuck him. Nothing in here was going to get to me. I had work to do.
The first page was a solid block of text. I scanned it, confirmed that it wasn't a spell or instructions for undoing a spell--just a self-important introduction--then moved on.
I turned the next page, and the next. Wally had called this the "secret history of the world" or something, but that didn't interest me. I didn't need to know about the whole world, and I didn't want to know. All I cared about was the one thing in front of me: how to save my friend. Once that was done, maybe I'd read the pages, or walk into a police station, or jump off the Aurora Bridge, or hijack a plane to Cuba. I couldn't even imagine it, because I couldn't see that far ahead.
But what I did know was that I was never going to be a seat-belt person. Never. I'd never have a steady job, a smart wife or a couple of kids. I'd gone too far.
I kept paging through the stack, passing maps, glancing at disturbing sketches in the margins, skimming the cramped handwriting. Finally, I reached the spells.
I laid my hand over the designs as I studied them. Cure the lame wasn't the first spell, but it was near the front. I kept going, carefully not thinking about what each spell did and whether it looked like something I could cast on my own. When I reached the end, I hadn't found what I was looking for.
I did the same thing with the second copy, then the third. Nothing. I took out the copy Wally left for me and the spiral notebook, then compared it to the other
three, going page by page. With the exception of the page Echo took, all were identical.
I didn't curse. I didn't shout. I didn't tear the pages apart and throw them on the ground. Instead I carefully turned back to the beginning of the book and began skimming more carefully, searching for references to spell casting--how to undo them, how to find other spell books, anything. I still couldn't find what I was looking for.
Finally, I knelt on the concrete and laid out the three Latin copies of the book with one of the English versions. I flipped through them, comparing the margin illustrations and glyphs. I didn't do more than glance at them, careful not to trigger one when I was not ready. If I could find a page where the Latin and English didn't match, I'd check it somehow, to see if it told me how to reverse a spell. Maybe I'd go back to the University; they had to have a teacher there who could translate Latin. A professor of Latin? I had no idea how it worked, but I could find out.
But it was no use. All the Latin copies matched each other and the English translations. There was no spell to undo Jon's curse.
I stood and walked to the end of the dugout. In that spot, I could be seen from the street but I had to risk it, because the urge to tear all those pages apart was unbearable, but I had to take deep, shuddering breaths to control my frustration. I couldn't destroy those books. They contained power. They were tools, and bargaining chips, too, if it came to that. I'd have to find a safe place to hide them.
But they weren't going to help me save my friend. I didn't have any sure, safe, simple way to save my friend.
I drew the ghost knife out of my pocket. As stupid and awful as it sounded, I was going to have to cut the cousins out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The first thing I did was eat the rest of the oranges; they were delicious and they made me feel human again. Then I organized the copies and the notebook into the canvas bag, put on the helmet, and rode away.
There was a supermarket relatively close by, and it was busy enough even at this late hour that no one was likely to pay much attention to me. I parked Wally's motorcycle, hurried to the entrance and fished a handful of empty plastic shopping bags out of the bag recycling bin. By some miracle, they were dry. Stuffing all the bags into one, I trapped them under the mesh and rode off to a greenbelt a few blocks from my aunt's house.
There, I wrapped the canvas bag in several layers of plastic to bury it. I had to dig with my hands, because the ghost knife couldn't cut through the tree roots, but I dug deep and, after I filled it in, I covered the spot with a circle of flat stones. Maybe I'd be able to reclaim them someday. Maybe.
I climbed back onto the motorcycle, knowing it was past time to ditch it. Unfortunately, it was already after midnight, and standing out at some corner, waiting an hour for a nearly-empty bus would just get me busted. Walking was just as risky. What the hell. Everyone's luck ran out at some point. It was time to find out what how far I could push mine.
I pulled on the helmet. It was time to find Jon, Echo and Macy. They would need floor space to draw out that circle, and privacy, too, in case the society came after them again. I knew where I would do it, if I were them.
Barely fifteen minutes later, I pulled up outside the Hilltop Physical Therapy Center. I parked the motorcycle out front and slid the helmet into the mesh. Wally said he'd given the cure to Macy's friends, and she'd run off. I was willing to bet those friends were co-workers who wanted to cure a few more of their patients.
Ducking under the yellow police tape, I peered through the glass of the front door. It was pretty dark in there; I couldn't see much more than a dim hallway. I walked around the building and found a fire door beside the parking lot out back. It was also locked, but it was not readily visible from the street.
With my ghost knife, I cut a long, thin panel out of the center of the door. No alarm bells sounded, although the metal panel hitting the concrete walkway seemed as loud as a traffic accident in the quiet night.
I slipped into the dark building. My footsteps were nearly silent on the plush carpet, but if they were here, Jon, Macy or Echo had to have heard that panel. I side-stepped so I wouldn't be silhouetted by the parking lot security lights outside. The cold air blew gently through the opening. That meant I was upwind of them and their sensitive noses and there was probably no way I could sneak up on them now. Not that I wouldn't try.
And then there were Irena's gloves. I'd been wearing them for hours and they'd become a little rank. I held my ghost knife close to my body and extended my gloved left hand in front of me as I went down the hall.
Office doors on either side of the hall stood open. I stepped into the first one on the left. It smelled faintly of stale cigarettes, but it was empty. I checked the office across the hall. Also empty.
I crept to the next one and peered in. Another empty office. I realized I was holding my breath. Arne posted lookouts wherever he went, but I doubted Jon was that organized or experienced. Still, I wasn't about to underestimate him. I didn't want Echo or Macy charging at me from behind.
There was a housekeeping cart parked beside the next door. I figured that was a bad sign, and I was right. As soon as I stepped into the doorway I could smell the blood. Right there in the middle of the floor, a man lay stretched out on the carpet. He looked as though lions had torn into him.
I tried to work out a body count but I was too rattled to make my brain work properly, and thinking of the other corpses I'd seen didn't do much to clear my head. At least I knew they'd been here recently.
I proceeded down the hall, carefully checking each room, but I didn't find any more dead bodies. There were no super-powerful killers, either.
I reached the central reception area, which wasn't as central as I'd thought. The big glass front door with the motorcycle parked out front was just a short way to the left. Another hall like the one I'd come down lay ahead, and beside the reception desk was a bank of elevators and a broad, curving staircase leading up.
I crossed the reception area and walked down the other hallway, just in case one of them was hiding down here. Hell, they might even be sleeping off a big meal.
I wasn't that lucky. Only the first two doors led to offices. The rest were broom closets, bathrooms, tools, a small cafeteria and a padlocked and dead-bolted drug dispensary.
I considered breaking into the dispensary. A hefty sedative would make the upcoming "surgery" much easier, but I wasn't sure they would work on the cousins, which were not even completely physical. And the dispensary was likely to be alarmed.
I skipped it, went back to the reception area and crept up the stairs. I strained to hear a sound, any sound, that would warn me Echo was coming for me again, but everything was utterly still and silent.
The top floor was dark, too, but high, clouded windows along the far wall let in just enough streetlight to see the furniture. To the left was a wide parquet aerobics floor. To the right was a darkened nest of cable-and-pulley exercise equipment. Directly behind me was a row of small examination rooms.
I went toward the parquet floor and the huge sigil that had been painted onto it. I thought it looked very like the design on the floor in Macy and Echo's house, except that someone had added a cross, a star of David and the words "blessed be" to the outer ring.
There were blackened scorch marks in the five places where people were supposed to sit. The methods and goals of the Twenty Palace Society made more sense with every corpse.
"I can smell you."
I spun around. That was Macy's voice, but I couldn't see her anywhere. I squinted into the shadowy, complicated mass of equipment, but I couldn't see her.
"How's my Right Guard holding up?" I said, hoping her answer would give away her position.
"Terrible," she said from somewhere in the darkness. "Their hexes smell like rotting flesh and shit. You're covered with them."
I saw a shadow move in the darkness. Found her. I circled to silhouette her against the windows. As if she could sense what I wanted, she stepped into th
e light.
This was Jon's girl. If I was going to save him, I should save her, too. "Macy, what if I could remove your curse?"
She laughed. "If Wally can't, you sure as hell can't."
"I think I might have a way. Let me try to help you."
"What am I, a guinea pig? A trial run so you can perfect your technique for your boyfriend?" She laughed again and there was deep bitterness in it. "It's too late for me. Too late for everyone. You seem like a nice guy, Ray. You should go to Rio or Ibiza or something. Maybe you could have a couple happy months before the end."
"Echo's going to cast the spell again?" Of course I already knew the answer.
"And again and again and again until the world is overrun with my cousins and you humans are hunted to extinction."
I moved toward her, my gloved hand and ghost knife held out in front of me. "How could I enjoy Rio knowing that?"
Macy lunged at me. She was fast, so fast I didn't even have time to flinch, but she snapped short of her lunge like a dog on a leash. A bench press machine behind her wobbled.
She was bound by her ankle. I circled back and away from her. "Tied you up, did they? Why did they do that?"
"So I wouldn't be so squeamish about my food."
I looked past her and, for the first time, noticed a body lying at the base of the window. The dim light glinted off the worn reflective stripe of a firefighter's jacket. Annalise.
That's when I noticed a second body lying right at Macy's feet. Irena lay stretched out and torn open like a slaughtered gazelle.
"Oh, shit. You're eating them."
"The smell of their blood was irresistible. I'm getting used to the idea of making meals out of you people. How does Rio sound now?"
"I don't have a passport. And I can't just leave those bodies here with you."
"Whatever. You can be one of us or one of them. I can't bring myself to care the way I used to."
Twenty Palaces: A Prequel Page 20
