Daughter of Danger: The Dark Avenger's Sidekick Book One (Moth & Cobweb 4)

by John C. Wright

  “Five men went down into the grave to raise this building up. One was smeared flat by a truck. One was clobbered by a hoist. One was when a blasting cap misfired, and he was blown into the air. One fell down an elevator shaft. One from the scaffolding was plucked off by the wind. I hate working in this building. I hear black wings going past the windows.”

  Ami shivered, not precisely sure what this conversation meant, but not liking it. She wondered if speaking of the dead would summon them. But she dared not turn the ring to white and become visible to these living men. She was trapped in the elevator with them.

  Leroy said, “You cannot hear the color of the dang feathers. There is no such thing as your wingy-thingy crow-man.”

  Ami’s eyes grew wide. Crow-man? What did that mean?

  The doors ground open. Ami vaulted upward, swung her legs up, and clung to the crossbraces of the roof of the car.

  O’Keefe followed her with his eyes as she moved. He tugged on the bar of the hand-truck and carefully stepped under her, his eyes on her.

  The two young men maneuvered their hand-truck beneath her and out the door. The red-haired one, O’Keefe, was still staring upward and still talking. His words held the solemn, fierce tone of someone who knows he is not being heard. “Winged Vengeance is real. The Fair Folk—that’s what we call them in case they are listening close by—the Fair Folk walk among us, unseen, unheard, bent on their unknown business, fighting their silent wars, harvesting souls for Hell.”

  The doors closed. She was alone.

  4. Observation Deck

  Ami found and opened the emergency panel in the elevator car roof. A twist of the ring and she was visible again, but weightless. She resolved not to turn invisible again: it could not be a coincidence that O’Keefe had warned her of the ghosts haunting the building.

  A flick of the wrist brought out the wirepoon pistol. With the softest hiss of noise, the grapnel soared overhead up the elevator shaft.

  On the sixty-ninth floor, Ami clung precariously to the inward side of the locked elevator door. In the pitch blackness, she examined the lock with her ultraviolet flashlight and mask-goggles. The lock was meant to keep out intruders from the other side, not this side. It was easy enough to slide her cape hem around the latch, to stiffen the fabric to metal-hardness, and to yank the latch open.

  At this hour, no one was on this floor. She picked the lock to a law firm, and entered. To her surprise—she had been planning to cut the glass—the windows could be opened and shut. She supposed the building had been raised before the invention of air conditioning.

  She dialed her suit hue to a gray to match the brick of the building. Up she climbed, weightless as a wraith and quick as a fleeting shadow, in a straight line up the column of shadow created by two columns of windows to either side of her.

  The observation deck on the eighty-sixth floor was empty at this hour. Up she went.

  The tower grew sharply narrower. The outside of the last ten floors was coated with lights. She squinted and blinked and climbed, dreadfully aware that any hostile observer could surely see her dark suit against the wash of spotlights, like a black fox walking on snow.

  Above this, it was dark. She saw spotlights positioned to light up the mooring mast, but they were not lit.

  The one hundred second floor had an enclosed observatory. Again, she saw no one, but a feeling of dread touched her heart as if with an ice-cold hand. This told her that the ghosts were here, staring out over the city. She twisted the ring to white and, more cautiously, now that she weighed a hundred pounds, shot the grapnel and climbed.

  She rose above a knee-high railing. It seemed absurdly low, almost as if daring someone to fall over it. Here was a hatch originally meant as the disembarkation door for airships tethered to the spire. From this hatch, to the left and right, a small balcony circled the spire.

  The wind caught and tugged at her. The sounds of the city so far below were inaudible. She felt the whole tower roll and pitch like a ship at sea, but she could not tell if this were real or her inner ear playing a trick on her.

  The moon was bright and half full. The lights which, earlier, had been drowning out the moonlight, now were far underfoot. A high wind was pushing scraps of silver-edged black cloud across the face of the moon. It grew darker.

  No one was here. The voice had said only to meet on “the roof.” What part of the roof had he meant?

  There was a ladder leading up to the spire, obviously for maintenance.

  Up the ladder she went.

  The wind blew the moon free. Like a galleon in full sail rounding the point of an island, the crescent came out from the cloud, and silver light spilled all around.

  She looked up. A cloaked and masked figure was standing, dark in the moonlight, on one of the struts of the mooring mast, arms akimbo and legs spread.

  She shot the grapnel around the stanchion of one of the many transmitter dishes festooning the mooring mast and drew herself up to a strut at right angles to his. Her toes were on a beam of metal no wider than her palm. A triangle of open air with a 1,400-foot drop below parted the two of them.

  5. Karasu Tengu

  The black mask covered his face and came to a sharp triangle like the beak of a bird of prey. The silhouette of the cloak as it was caught and flapped in the night wind was visible. It was parted in the middle, and the hems were scalloped like the wingfeathers of an enormous black bird. To her own surprise, she realized she knew it: it was a hagaromo, a feathered celestial robe.

  She clicked her lenses from infrared to light amplification. In the infrared, he was invisible. Something in his suit made him the same heat-wavelength as his background. In the greenish hue of the light amplification, she saw the glint of his weapon harness beneath his cloak. Underneath, he wore a black leathery body suit of the same fabric and cut as hers. A Japanese longbow, a yumi, was visible peering over his right shoulder. The hilts of a Japanese longsword, a daikatana, was visible over his left.

  She raised her right fist and placed her left hand over it, inclining her head slightly. She was mute, waiting for him to speak.

  He was silent for a minute, then two, studying her.

  She removed her mask and cowl and tucked them away into her cloak. Her hair was caught by the sudden wind. The braid had come undone, so her locks spread like a black cloud and flew like a streaming banner, whipping in the wind.

  He spoke in Japanese. “Who danced for joy on the day of darkness, when all the spirits of Heaven wept before the stone that blocked the cave where light died? Who stepped forth when none other would go to confront the dreadful spirit that stood upon the eight-forked bridge binding earth to Heaven, and opened the way? Who stood watch before the sacred grail of Sarras, from whose rim the last sacrifice at the last feast drank the last of the wine?”

  Her heart leaped. Her ears knew his voice. She knew she was his disciple and she owed him absolute loyalty. She dismissed the idea of attempting any deception.

  She said, “If you are asking me a password, or a riddle, I don’t know the answer.”

  “She whose shape and appearance you mock would have known. Why should I not kill you here and now, out of memory for her?”

  It took her a moment to realize what he was saying. “But I am not dead! I am here, right before you! I am she! I am… I am…”

  “Your impersonation of the faithful girl you mock is preposterously unconvincing. You do not even know her name.”

  “I am an amnesiac.”

  “Unlikely.”

  A sense of frustration boiled up in her. She had expected a friend and ally from her former life to save her, cure her, and make all things better. She had not expected disbelief, danger, and death threats.

  She cried out, “But true! My memories are stolen, along with my life! An accident or black magic robbed me. I don’t know what happened to me! But I know you! I know your voice! You saved my life!”

  “Did I?”

  “Your voice told me what to do when
I woke up in the hospital. My memory of your voice. You trained my arms and my legs and my whole body to be weapons. I fought them off and escaped. Two werewolves and a goat-monster. Redcaps.”

  “Oh? Where are they now?”

  “Who, the monsters? All dead. I killed all three.”

  “Did you weep for them after?”

  She drew her head back in surprise. Ah. “No. Was I supposed to? They were stronger than me. I was glad to see them die.”

  “Did you see to it that they were properly buried?”

  She snorted in contempt. “Ha! I left them for the crows to eat.”

  His shoulders slumped, and the raven mask tilted downward. He said in a soft voice. “Very well. I believe you are she. Fling yourself from this tower to your death.”

  “What? Why?”

  He straightened again, but his voice was shaking with suppressed emotion. “Is it your place to question me? I have spoken. Kill yourself.”

  She said, “I cannot. There is one I have been charged to save.”

  “You swore to obey my every word.”

  She said, “All my oaths were washed away by the bright lady. Why do you want me to kill myself?”

  He said, “Because I am too weak to kill you as I should. I cannot see your face without seeing her.”

  “Her? Who?”

  “Her to whom we both owe the greatest loyalty.”

  Pain stabbed through her heart. “Mother. My mother. She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  He nodded grimly but said nothing.

  She cried, “I can feel the sorrow, but I cannot remember her. I don’t know her name. I don’t know mine. Or yours! Who are you?”

  He said softly, “I am the eyes of the night. I am the swift and deadly arrowshaft that strikes from afar. I am retaliation. I am reprisal. I am Winged Vengeance.”

  She felt warmth on her cheek, the sting of salt in her eye. She wiped free the tears she discovered. In a hoarse voice she demanded, “Then tell me! Why must I die?”

  6. Winged Vengeance

  The dark figure said, “You must die because if you are not a mist-shadow or a sending meant to deceive me, then you are in truth who you seem.”

  “What happened to me?”

  “You fell into the hands of the Supreme Council of Anarchists. None escapes them, except by death, and, even then, sometimes death is no escape. You are enchanted, either possessed by a ghost or mesmerized by a vampire. You serve them now: otherwise, they would not have set you free into the world. No doubt even now they climb the sides of this tower. More fools they.”

  “How can I prove my soul is mine?”

  “It is a thing cannot be proven.”

  “Then how do you know it is not my own?”

  “The Anarchists have no reason to allow you to know you are their slave. You are more sincerely convincing if you also are deceived. The ghost within you will act when needed.”

  “I am true!”

  He shook his head. “I expose myself to danger merely speaking to you. It is sentimentality and unwise. But the ghosts of this tower fear my bow, and they can keep the Anarchists at bay for a time.”

  “There is no one to keep at bay,” said Ami in a weary tone. “No one knows I am here!”

  He made a curt, cutting motion with his hand. “We have but a few minutes to say farewell. If you are truly my disciple, for the sake of the blood and the vendetta we serve, you would know the dishonor you have done me, as well as the danger you pose, and take your own life.”

  “What dishonor? I fought the Anarchists. I do not serve them! I killed their wolves. I fought against Lucien Cobweb. Do you know that name? He is Thursday of the Anarchists. He set a trap for me at a place called Catoblepas Warehouse in Weehawken. They are moving in more and more monsters. They wear counterfeit red caps. The Anarchists are moving them into the world of men in numbers too great for the Black Spell to cover.”

  “Why?”

  “They seek to break the Black Spell of the elfs and overthrow the secret rulers of the world.”

  “Were that truly what they sought, none would oppose them,” he said bitterly. “Where are the monster being brought?”

  She said, “I am not sure. Their Eater of the Dead hauled the corpses of the wolves to the Cobbler’s Club on Lexington. Is that useful information? Do you believe me now?”

  He shook his raven-beaked mask slowly. “Coming from you? I cannot trust the source.”

  “Could I not be exorcised if I were possessed?”

  “Not by me.”

  “I saw a boy in glasses with a bell, book, and candle. Is he an exorcist? He was with a knight. And a dog.”

  “He is the Ghostly Father’s novice. The horseman you saw was the squire of the Green Knight. I don’t know the dog. They are what remains of the Last Crusade.”

  She wondered at the note of bitterness in his voice.

  “What if one of them vouches for me? They fought the wolves and owl-women.”

  “I answer nothing.”

  “What are the Anarchists? Who are they?”

  “We should not be speaking.”

  She said in a shrill voice, “They know who they are! They know you know because you are hunting them! They are also hunting me! Why not tell me? Even if I were possessed, what is the harm?”

  He laughed softly. “You are my little Fox-girl, indeed. Put away your claws!” He drew a breath, and his voice hardened with hatred. “The Anarchists are foes of man and elf alike: the Supreme Council is a parliament of ghosts and undead, beasts and monstrosities, and everything that most despises its own soul. They are of the Twilight. They slew mine. I slay theirs.”

  A cold wind blew as he spoke, and his cloak lifted and waved, and the long strands of her hair whipped past her face.

  He said coldly, “I see a strange look in your eye.”

  “Your eyes are sharp.”

  “I see by night as well as by day. Your heart is turned. You no longer serve me.”

  A sad shudder traveled through her. Yet she would not lie, not to him. That would be disloyal. She said, “The bright lady who spoke to me in a dream absolved me of all my oaths, or so she said. I am made anew.”

  “Dreams are elfin things and not to be trusted.”

  “She said I served Heaven.”

  “You serve the enemy! The stench of the forces of the Night World clings about you like an odor of blood newly shed.”

  Ami unwittingly fingered the white ring. She remembered the unwholesome smell the ring gave off when it turned to it darker hues. Was this black magic? Her instinctive desire to tell her master all things ebbed sharply. If he did not believe her now, there was no reason to add fuel to his skepticism.

  But her sense of loyalty was too strong. If she was his true disciple, she would show him obedience even when she thought him in the wrong. Obeying only orders when it suits you is not obedience.

  After all, this dark man was very likely the one, the beloved soul, the bright lady had commanded Ami to save from the darkness.

  She said, “I have the Ring of Mists.” She held it up.

  The mask betrayed no expression, and neither did his voice. “So you were successful in your mad quest, it seems.” His voice grew colder. “It is a seeming that does not deceive. The Anarchists would not have let you keep so fabulous a treasure unless you were their slave.”

  She closed her eyes and drew a slow, long breath, seeking calm. Knowing that her only link to her past life mistrusted her, and was about to slip away, was like a dark pressure on her temples.

  She must resign herself to whatever fate ordained. Removing all desire would remove all disappointment, confusion, and pain.

  With her eyes closed, she said in voice as bitter as his, “You are so certain I failed? Because you think I am dead, I hear your true opinion of me. Obituaries are honest, so they say.” Her eyes popped open. “Quest? How did I come to have this ring? What mission am I on? Who am I?”

  The raven mask turned down. He peered at
the balconies and sides of the Empire State Building below them. His mask then rose as he scanned the sky. Nothing but stars, the crescent moon, and silver-limned clouds were overhead.

  She said, “No one is coming. I would never betray you.”

  The beak turned back toward her. “One who is possessed or mesmerized never knows. Their tricks are cruel, and deceive even the wise.”

  She said, “I know I would have killed myself before I allowed myself to be taken alive into their hands! Have you no faith in me?”

  He said, “I once trusted a man I never saw. He was my teacher and master and leader. Why did he never show himself? Because he knew we would die at the hands of the Anarchists. He led us to death! I alone escaped.”

  Ami felt a flame of anger in her soul. “And now the student is the master!”

  Winged Vengeance said angrily, “What do you mean?”

  “No faith he had in you; you have none in me. I recovered the ring and escaped the Anarchists.”

  “And how did you do that?” And she heard in his tone of voice that he was asking how she accomplished the impossible. She squinted, pursing her lips. Perhaps he was asking how she accomplished what he could not.

  She said, “I don’t remember. Some wound or dark magic took my memory away. You are so certain that I failed?”

  “I followed you. I saw you enter the Tower of Glass. You could not have escaped alive.”

  “Perhaps I did not. The bright lady said she restored my lost life. At first I thought that was a way of speaking. But it was literal. I was dead.” Ami began shivering and could not cease.

  “You are no ghost, no dead flesh revived by dark science, no vampiress.”

  She said, “Those things are hellish mockeries of what Heaven promises.”

  The dark figure squatted and rested his elbows on his knees. Now more than ever he looked like a black raven perched on a wire. “Heaven is far away, and only a deadly silence answers prayers. No miracle revives the dead once they die.”

  “Yet here I stand, alive!”

  “You were released after being altered to their will.”