Twenty Palaces: A Prequel

by Harry Connolly

  I swung again and again. Red blood spattered against the wall and I began to hit his arms and his legs, too, then his battered skull over and over. I realized I was screaming, and as I kept swinging, my scream became words as my terror poured out of me.

  "You son of a bitch! You fucking son of a bitch! I couldn't--"

  I stopped, then staggered backwards, nearly falling against the wall. My left hand was still in terrible, terrible pain, and that seemed to steal the strength from me. I dropped the bat and cradled it. Tears streamed down my cheeks.

  Jon lay still on the carpet, his head a misshapen pulp. "I couldn't save you," I said. My voice was raw and I sounded like the stupidest man alive.

  I stumbled into the hall and fell flat on my belly, my face against the carpet. If Echo came upstairs to investigate the fight, I'd be helpless, but so what? I'd failed Jon, just as I knew I would.

  But my aunt and uncle were downstairs, not to mention that sickly little girl. I stumbled into the bathroom, yanked a hand towel off the shelf and wrapped it around my gunshot hand. It bled steadily, so I pressed the wound against my ribs. The pain helped clear my head.

  On my way to the stairs, I reached for the ghost knife, letting it zip into my hand. Then I gripped it between my teeth and picked up the gun.

  It was time to put an end to this. It was time to kill Echo.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I expected to fall on the way down the stairs back stairs, but I held it together somehow. I had blood on my shirt from where it had leaked through the bathroom towel, and I pressed harder against my chest. I was no expert on bullet wounds, but I knew I needed pressure to control the bleeding. My knees were shaking, but whether that was from blood loss or adrenaline, I didn't know.

  I stumbled into the kitchen. It was dark, but a dim night light showed me that it had been completely remodeled. I made my way around the table, being careful not to bump the chairs. It was ridiculous to try to sneak around after everything that had happened, but I was doing it anyway.

  As I crossed the room, I glanced the length of the house and saw the shadows moving against the frosted glass beside the front door. Was it the bodyguards? The old woman with the bad hearing? It didn't matter to me, as long as they didn't interfere.

  The basement door was still in the same place; I pulled it open. It sounded like a gale was blowing down there, but the noise was slowly dying. The spell was almost finished. I hurried down the stairs, my feet clumping heavily on the wood.

  Another bodyguard stepped into view. He was the biggest of all of them, and his big brown eyes and long jaw gave him the good looks of a movie star. Over his shoulder, I could see the painted sigils on the floor flashing as they--and the floor--began to vanish.

  I pointed the gun at him to control him, then I spit out my ghost knife and caught it between my gunshot hand and my chest. "I've always heard that shooting someone with a .22 wouldn't kill them, just annoy them."

  He backed away as I descended the stairs. I had a sudden memory of Jon at 13, his shirt punching into his belly as the bullet hit him, the sound of the gunshot and the terrible flow of blood. The thought made me dizzy, but I could squeeze the trigger again if I had to. If I had to. "I've heard the same thing," the bodyguard said in a rich, deep voice.

  "Well, I have enough bullets in here to be the most annoying guy you'll ever meet in your life."

  "Okay, sir, but I'd rather we all kept our cool."

  "Good," I glanced around the room. The design on the floor looked even bigger here than it had in the house, but that may have been because, in clearing space for it, Echo and Jon had piled everything into walls of clutter. Cardboard banker boxes had split open from the weight of scrap wood piled onto them, family pictures half-tumbled out of broken laundry baskets, bird houses and wood-working tools both had been thrown onto work benches, all to clear floor space.

  Which was barely large enough to accommodate the spell. The circle the little girl in the pretty dress lay in--which was about one o'clock from where I stood--was physically under the work bench--she couldn't have sat upright if she'd wanted to.

  Aunt Theresa was in the center and Uncle Karl was over at ten o'clock. The huge plywood model train layouts leaning against the clutter were so close to the outer circle that a cat couldn't have passed through. The only way I was getting to any of them was by entering the circle or hiring a bulldozer.

  Neither had noticed me. Both were staring downward, into the Empty Spaces.

  But Echo herself was in the seven o'clock position, just on my left. She looked at me with a strange mix of hatred and hunger that made me want to shoot her just on principle.

  At four o'clock was Skullface. He was the easy way to break the spell. "Here's the best way for all of us to keep cool, then: Pull your boss out of the circle."

  "I can't do that," the bodyguard said. He was watching me warily, waiting for his chance to move, but he was being smart about it.

  "You don't understand. What she's doing is going to kill him."

  "The man has pancreatic cancer. How much worse could it get?"

  Worse than you can imagine, was what I almost said, but that wouldn't have gotten me anywhere. No one else in the room had noticed me yet, and the spell had reached the point where silence had fallen. No one would hear what I said next except the other guard.

  "Pull him out of the circle or I'm going to put a bullet in that little girl."

  The bodyguard's eyes were wide and blank, but I knew it wasn't shock. He was taking my measure. "Son, you can't even bring yourself to point your gun at that little girl. I don't think you're going to shoot her. I'm guessing you've seen what bullets can do. Am I right?"

  I couldn't believe he'd seen through my bluff so quickly. "Are you so sure about that? Are you gonna take that risk?"

  "That's my job and I'm good at it."

  I glanced over at my aunt and the others. The floor had vanished, and the lights were swirling upward. "Look at this! This is what you're defending?" I was nearly shouting. "Get on your knees."

  He did, smoothly. I knew it wouldn't slow him much if he decided to go for me, but I needed every advantage I could get. I pivoted and shot Echo.

  I aimed for her head, but my hand was shaking so much that the bullet struck her knee instead. She didn't move, didn't even flinch. My stomach felt hollow. I'd hoped to drive her out of the circle, but I knew that wasn't going to happen, not if shooting her only made her sit and glare at me harder.

  There was a shuffle behind me and I turned toward the bodyguard. My look froze him in place. I fired at Echo again--missing this time--and then the gun wouldn't fire again. It had jammed.

  Maybe if I'd had both hands, I could have cleared it quickly and kept firing, but it was already too late. The lights swirling below the design began to push against it, then they burst through the floor and floated around Aunt Theresa.

  I heard the guard getting to his feet, but I didn't spare him a look. You think you've paid your debt... I took one long step toward the circle, and then I jumped.

  The circle flashed white as I passed through it, and suddenly I was inside the void.

  It wasn't cold, or hot, or any other feeling I could identify. There was a sense of deadness against my skin, as though my sense of touch had been switched off. After an instant of weightlessness, in which it felt as though I was falling from a great height, I realized I was simply floating toward my aunt. There was no gravity here and I might have floated across the room if not for the sigils inside the central spot, drawing me in.

  It seemed as though I was moving slowly, terribly slowly across the open space. I made progress, but each moment felt as wide and as deep as the universe. I felt as wide and deep as the universe, my mind and my senses expanded to fill so much space that I lost all sense of myself. My every thought, memory, and emotion broke apart into tiny specks and flew away from me until they were like single dust motes hanging in the spaces between galaxies.

  And still I floated
forward, feeling like a wave so small it was indistinguishable from its surroundings.

  After an eternal second, I broached the edge of the circle my aunt was sitting in, and I suddenly collapsed in on myself. It was like returning to consciousness from a moment of blessed oblivion, and I could suddenly see, smell, touch, everything. My whole life rushed back at me, every fight, every fuck, every moment of shame or fury. I became myself again.

  But on a conscious level my thoughts continued uninterrupted: Aunt, cousins, Echo, ghost knife. My feet silently struck the invisible floor inside the central circle--as I'd hoped, it had been large enough to hold Echo's corpse, so it was large enough for two people--and I found myself standing over my aunt.

  She looked up at me, as shocked as if I'd flown down out of the sky, and I saw her say my name. I still couldn't hear a thing. She gaped at the sight of my bloody hand. A glowing light circled near her mouth.

  I bit down on the Velcro strap holding Irena's glove on my right hand, yanked it off, then stuffed it into my mouth with the palm--and the sigil on it--facing outward.

  The circle was full of the glowing lights, now. They spun around us quickly, excitedly. I pulled the ghost knife from beneath my bloody hand, sliding it over my clothes to wipe it off, then crouched down to pull my aunt closer to me. Just as her weight braced against my legs, one of the lights entered her mouth. At nearly the same moment, I slid the ghost knife into the back of her neck.

  The ball of light burst into a sickly mist. Theresa slumped against me, her whole body going slack. Other cousins, already fighting for position, dove toward her. With my injured hand, I supported her head, holding it so I could keep the ghost knife in place. The pain was like being shot all over again, and I shouted through the glove.

  Immediately, a half dozen cousins swarmed toward the sound, even as more and more dove into Theresa's mouth and burst into greenish-black mist. They followed each other in a steady stream, pushing up through the opening in the floor as though they couldn't sense each other and had no idea what was happening to the rest of their swarm.

  A half-second later, the cousins who responded to the sound of my voice rushed toward my face. It took all my self-control not to reel back and dodge away from them; I let the first enter my mouth and strike the glove.

  The impact was solid. The spines of the cousins' crooked legs scraped at my lips and gouged the roof of my mouth. A second, then a third struck the spell, all of them taking up the same space, all of them digging at the inside of my mouth. A fourth hit, a fifth.

  The awful mist nearly obscured my aunt's head, but I could still feel, through some connection I didn't understand, the cousins throwing themselves blindly onto the ghost knife. I didn't have to endure the pain in my mouth forever. I just had to hold on until every cousin had come into our world and destroyed themselves.

  A sixth hit the glove.

  The balls of light floating around me suddenly dissolved upward in a spray of liquid light. Someone had broken the circle. I looked downward and saw two dozen or so swirling lights still out in the Empty Spaces. I'd been so close to getting them all. So close.

  I slid the ghost knife from the back of my aunt's neck. It came out clean, and after a moment's shock realized there was blood all over the back of her neck.

  Only my blood, I hoped, not hers, but there was no time to check now. I pivoted inside the circle. The spell must have been broken a few seconds before, because the floor had returned before I even had a chance to look up. The passage into the Empty Spaces was sealed.

  Echo leaned to the side, her hand planted on the concrete beyond the circle. She'd broken the spell while there were still cousins safely in the Empty Spaces; if she'd waited a few seconds longer, they would have all died, every one. The only ones left were the ones stuck to the glove in my mouth, who were still panicked and attacking me.

  Echo rolled over, getting her good leg under her. The gunshot knee didn't seem to bother her, but she clearly couldn't use it. Even so, her movements were quick and fluid, and I could tell by the look on her face that she was coming for me.

  I took a deep breath. There were others in the room--my uncle, the bodyguard, Skullface--who might be coming after me, but I didn't pay any attention to them. I had one chance to take on Echo and live, and the winner was going to be decided in the next quarter second.

  She bent her good leg, ready to jump, and I started moving my right hand--and my ghost knife--forward. Her eyes darted toward it. Just as she pushed off, I let out that deep breath I'd just taken and spit the glove at her.

  She came at me fast, but not as fast as she had before. And although she couldn't change the direction and momentum of her jump, she did reach out quickly and easily to snatch the glove out of the air.

  The cousins were still attached to it, and they thrashed and gouged at her skin. The small injuries they gave her made her wince in pain in a way the bullet hadn't--because the predators were still mostly magical? Whatever caused it, she paused just long enough for me to slap my injured hand over hers, and Irena's glove.

  Her whole body stiffened, and the crooked, branching limbs of the cousin appeared around her head, whipping and twisting under the strain.

  Ignoring my pain, I threw myself at her and plunged the ghost knife into her left cheek, then slicing upward.

  She fell onto the floor and the side of her head broke open, just like the others' had. Except this time, my aunt and uncle, Skullface, his bodyguard, and the little girl all saw the creature that came out of her.

  I staggered to the side, feeling suddenly woozy and fell to my knees on the concrete floor. The red circle was just there, beside me. I'd have to destroy that soon. Very soon. And just behind the circle where Echo sat, a plastic supermarket shopping bag lay on the floor. Amongst all the clutter, something about it called for my attention

  My mouth was full of blood, but not as much as I'd expected. I let it run onto the floor because it was disgusting to swallow it.

  "Karl, no."

  That was Aunt Theresa's voice, just behind me, breaking through the silence; suddenly, I could hear everything around me, shuffling feet, harsh breathing, the little girl calling for Daddy.

  I turned and saw Karl pointing his gun at me.

  "Karl," Theresa said again. "Ray just saved me. Those lights... I saw them up close. I saw them. They were...."

  She turned to me, hoping I would finish the sentence. I could have said alive or hungry, but what I said instead was: "Hallucinations." It was hard to talk, but they seemed to understand.

  She looked disappointed. "Oh, Raymond."

  Uncle Karl didn't lower his weapon. "What do you mean, hallucinations? I saw that! We all did!"

  I was too tired to argue. Footsteps thundered across the living room floor above. The guards from out front were on their way. Skullface and the others were watching us with wide eyes, as if we were juggling hand grenades.

  I spit blood on the floor so I could talk to Skullface. "Keep those motherfuckers out of here, or else."

  The bodyguard leaned close to him. "Sir, I think we should leave."

  Skullface agreed and they met the guards halfway on the stairs, ordering them all to back up.

  My uncle was still angry, but the barrel of his gun was no longer pointing at me. It had wandered off to the side a few inches. "How could that have been a hallucination?"

  "What other explanation are you going to give?" I asked, loud enough for Skullface to hear me. "There was no cure. There never was. It was just a drug that liquefied your brain."

  Karl shook his head. "I've seen Jon's medical records. His spine was healed."

  I shook my head and spit again. "It was a con."

  The old man stopped at the top of the stairs and stared at me. Did he believe me? I hoped so. If the guy put his fortune into finding another spell, he just might succeed, and who would be around to clean up that mess? Not Mr. "I gave my word" over there.

  "They tried to get me involved," I continued. "Bu
t fuck that. They used hallucinogens to make you see things--to make you think they were doing magic."

  When Skullface spoke, his voice was thin and nasal. "My people checked him out, too. His medical records--"

  "All they would have given you is poison."

  "But--

  Karl pivoted toward the stairs. "Do you have a better explanation?"

  Skullface shut his mouth. The little girl in his arms looked at me over her wasted legs. Her eyes were wide but her expression was calm. Whatever she was feeling, she wasn't showing it. They disappeared up the stairs.

  Karl had put his gun away and helped Theresa to her feet. I pocketed my ghost knife and picked up the supermarket shopping bag.

  Inside was Annalise's vest and all of her ribbons.

  Theresa hugged me, briefly, then walked quickly around Echo's body. Karl led her toward the stairs.

  On a shelf beneath the stairs, I found a can of turpentine and an old mop. I screwed off the top and started pouring it over the painted floor.

  "Hey!" Karl growled. "You're destroying evidence!"

  I didn't turn around. I just began mopping the chemical around, destroying the design.

  "Hell," Karl said, resignation in his voice, "Good thing I wasn't here to see that." They continued up the stairs.

  The blue sheet of paper with the summoning spell on it was lying under the shopping bag. I dropped it into a puddle of turpentine, then took out one of Annalise's a red ribbons. Would it even work for me? I had no way to know except to try. I willed it to ignite and threw it into a corner. It struck a pile of magazines like a dart and burst into flames, setting fire to a stack of magazines beside the design. Then I lit the end of the turpentine-soaked mop and tossed it into the pile of clutter. Go, fire.

  Of course, I was still holding a bag full of Annalise's spells. There was a lot of power in here, even if I didn't know what it all did. Strangely, though, holding the bag of spells was like standing beside her, in some weird way. I could sense her in the magic.

  And while I wanted power, I didn't want hers. I wanted my own. I threw the bag into the flames.