Metal Guardian: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Rings of the Inconquo Book 2)

by A. L. Knorr

  I’d been cataloguing an ivory-handled knife with the remnants of a corroded copper blade, and I felt something akin to the tension I had felt while sitting in the hospital waiting room the night of my parents’ accident. Fear and desperation crackling below the surface. I identified the blade as secespita, a Roman blade used for cutting open sacrificial victims, usually animals but occasionally slaves or prisoners of war. Though a sickening revelation, it somehow seemed right given what I’d felt the entire time I’d worked on that artifact.

  This necklace had a different ‘wrongness’, but I did not have time to research its backstory, and for my purposes, it was unnecessary. I didn’t need the ghosts of the necklace, just the necklace itself.

  I laid the necklace down and held my hand out to the ingots. Spinnerets of the gold, copper, and silver rose from their respective ingots. The ingots would be noticeably diminished, but without clear tool marks or evidence of being smelted, the Museum would assume wear and tear of being handled extensively.

  I gathered and pinched them into the precise proportions before fusing them into an alloy that matched the necklace. The process required effort, and sweat began to bead on my brow. Twice as I closed my eyes to focus, I looked up to see the floating mass of metal glowing with heat, as though I’d stuck it into a blast furnace. By the time I was done, I had a solid orb of rose gold before me. The easy part done, I rescanned the artifact box to keep everything kosher. I had a feeling I would be doing that a lot.

  The raw material fashioned, I began the painstaking process of spinning it out from its dense state into the woven scapular necklace. I started with just the rough outline, and after a few minutes, I had what looked like a knockoff version of the original, similar but lacking the delicacy and austerity of the original.

  Taking it from knockoff to ‘twin’ to authentic required me to adjust the metal composition of each curl and branch of the necklace. It took several hours. I shed my jacket as sweat poured, my body giving expression to the exertion of my mind.

  I had to go back to the original to check, but upon completion, there wasn’t a single difference between the two, even to my metallic sense. The emotional presence of the original remained, bitter and insistent, but otherwise, the necklaces were indistinguishable down to the microscopic, possibly even atomic level.

  “Work around it or become a criminal,” I mused. “That’s what I call a workaround, Mr Sark.”

  I held up my handiwork and couldn’t keep a smile off my face.

  ---

  My pride and exhilaration lasted until the elevator doors opened to the front lobby.

  I’d returned the original necklace to Archives, and even Davenport’s ingratiating manner didn’t bring me down. The new necklace was under my shirt. This is going to work.

  Then reality hit.

  Even though I wasn’t stealing a priceless antiquity, I was still walking out the Museum front doors with a few hundred dollars of precious metal around my neck. True, my clothing hid it, but it wouldn’t take much of a search. Exactly why Marcus would search me was beside the point.

  My breathing became rapid and shallow as the elevator doors opened. Marcus talked on the phone with his back to me while he searched through paperwork on the desk. I could hear the words, but none of them made sense with my heart pounding in my ears.

  For a long second, I stood there, frozen, certain that if I put one toe out of the elevator, the game would be up. Metro police would come bursting through the door. I would be on the floor my wrists zip-tied together before I could blink. Some eager DI would rip the newly fashioned necklace off and hold it up for inspection by a hundred news reporters. Any hope of stopping Ninurta would vanish in a storm of sirens and flashing lights.

  The ridiculous and terrifying fantasy had me in its grip so long the elevator doors began to close again. Instinct kicked in, and I stuck my hand out. I moved, my gait stiffer than usual, and swiped my ID card as I went by the desk.

  Marcus called after me, but I was already passing through the front doors. I don’t know if I’d have broken into a run if I’d heard him coming after me, but thankfully he didn’t.

  It wasn’t until I’d descended into the glaring lights of the underground station that I felt my mind and body reconnect in a meaningful way. I gasped for air, my mind reeling under a heady mixture of fear and exhilaration. I moved towards one of the platform’s tiled pillars and leaned against it to catch my breath.

  With my free hand, I reached inside the front of my jacket and felt the necklace. Watching a train pull into the station, rose gold beneath my fingertips, I felt another smile spreading across my face.

  Chapter Twelve

  Something wasn’t right. The train accelerated like a bullet-train. I gripped the arm of my seat as the G-force pressed against me. When the car finally burst into the light, the squeal of spectral brakes had an eerie keening note. The doors slapped open, and I staggered out, feeling the tension like a chill in the air.

  “Jackie, Professor?” I called, then realized with a start that my breath fogged in front of my face. Museum Station has always stayed at a moderate temperature, whatever weather the living world was having. I’d only experienced such a drastic temperature when Lowe went rumbly on meeting Sark. My ill-ease grew as I mounted the steps to the commons.

  “Professor!” I shouted more forcefully. “Jackie! What’s going on?”

  Jackie came skidding towards me as I crested the stairs, her face paler than new-fallen snow and frosty breath pluming from her like a steam engine.

  “Ibby,” she panted, grabbing me by the arm. “Come quick!”

  “What is going on?”

  She was already dragging me along. I was forced to jog, which quickly turned into a sprint to keep up with her longer legs.

  “Lowe’s gone crazy,” she gasped as we pelted towards the commons. “Iry is trying to stop him. He might kill them both!”

  I was definitely not in as good shape as Jackie, and the cold air seemed to shrink my lungs with each breath.

  “Who … killing … who?” My question came out in fits.

  We stopped, and my heart nearly did too. The obelisk now arched up to the ceiling, impossibly thin and blazing with blue fire. Between us and the columned courtyard swirled a collection of tables, chairs, and floor tiles, dragged from the commons floor. Their slow orbit accelerated. If I waited much longer, they were bound to become an impenetrable cyclone.

  “Sark did something Lowe didn’t like.” Jackie looked as bewildered as I felt. “Things fell apart. Iry tried to mediate, and then things started flying through the air.”

  I nodded and pointed towards the courtyard. “They’re in there?”

  “Yes, but Ibby,” Jackie held my arm as I started to move into the swirling debris. “Lowe isn’t himself.”

  I paused just long enough to see the honest fear etched into her features. She was terrified.

  “We’ll sort it out,” I said, hoping I sounded brave and plucky. “Come on.”

  We waded into the storm. Keeping low with arms upraised, we ducked and bobbed between bits of flying floor and furnishings. We managed to avoid the worst of it but had to dive for cover as a table came spinning through the air. We lunged the last few feet to the shelter of the columns. We emerged into the eye of the ghostly storm with only a few bruises and scrapes; we took a second to catch our breath, leaning against the stonework.

  As I sucked in more icy air, I could hear raised voices.

  “Move out of the way,” commanded an inhumanly deep and sinister voice. “Now.”

  I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the freezing temperature dance down my spine to dig icy claws into my belly. The last time I heard a voice like that, I was battling Kezsarak. This voice wasn’t Kezsarak’s mechanical thunder, but it had the same malice and was imbued with the same bone-deep hatred.

  “No,” answered a voice I recognized as Uncle Iry’s. “You are not well, Professor, and must rest.”

&n
bsp; I moved into the azure light of the courtyard, stifling a cry of shocked horror at what I saw. Uncle Iry stood in the centre of the courtyard, his arms stretched out protectively, while Sark lay on the ground in a foetal position, unmoving.

  Backlit by the fire wreathing the obelisk, a dark, grotesquely stretched creature loomed over my uncle, long fingers arched in the air ready to rake downward at a moment’s notice. Pale, glowing eyes glared down at Uncle Iry’s. My heart flew up into my throat as I realized I was indeed looking at a transformed James Lowe menacing my uncle.

  “Move now, or I will move you,” the monstrous ghost hissed. “And when I do, I cannot guarantee your safety.”

  “No,” Iry answered again, his voice soft but firm. “I cannot, sir.”

  Lowe drew himself up, emitting a kind of ragged gasp. The air grew even more bitterly cold.

  “Professor. James. Titus. Lowe,” I shouted, taking a step forward to punctuate each word. “Stop. This. Now.”

  “Be careful, Ibby,” Jackie whispered hoarsely, unable to peel herself from the column she clutched. “Please.”

  The ghost’s serpentine neck twisted, and he regarded me with those bright eyes.

  “He almost touched the patient!” Lowe answered in a voice that was part wail, part scream. “He desires it, covets it! The thief!”

  He began to turn back towards Sark and Uncle Iry. I darted forward to stand next to Uncle Iry and looked up at the painfully luminous gaze.

  “He must be punished!” Lowe keened again, but his scythe-like fingers remained where they were.

  “Is it worth hurting us?” I met his stare without flinching. “Is punishing him worth hurting your friends?”

  The wounds of light in his shadowed face narrowed, and he threw his head back to give a scream that hit my ears like a thousand icy needles. It slid through meat and between bones to claw at my heart and mind, shredding through to my soul. I nearly blacked out realizing too late that I was left in no state to defend myself, much less the unconscious form of Sark.

  Thankfully, that wasn’t necessary.

  The flames faltered on the obelisk as it began to shrink back to its original size. My breath spilled out in little white clouds, but I could feel the temperature warming. I looked for the monstrous form of Lowe, but he’d shrunk back to his original size and shape. He sat against the retaining wall that enclosed the obelisk, Kezsarak’s cube resting in his lap. His long fingers traced lightly over the bands which ran across the demonic prison.

  “Are you okay?” I turned to Uncle Iry.

  His eyes were huge, and his hand trembled as he ran it across his face.

  “Y-yes.” He cleared his throat and straightened. “I am not hurt.”

  A groan came from behind us as Sark rolled to his knees, not as unconscious as I’d thought.

  “I’m all right, too,” he said, “if anyone wanted to know.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Jackie?”

  “I’m here.” She took her first tentative steps into the courtyard.

  “I imagine we have more to talk about, don’t we, Professor?”

  Lowe nodded slowly, his eyes melancholy as his fingers continued their wandering course over the cube. “I imagine we do.”

  ---

  “I’m afraid I am ill-suited to rehabilitate our patient,” Lowe confessed as we seated ourselves in the rearranged commons. He held Kezsarak’s prison on his lap, hands folded possessively on the top, but I was glad to see they were no longer caressing the cube.

  “It seems that he has more effect on me than I on him.”

  The magic that maintained the ghost-station had ‘reset’ the damage from Lowe’s poltergeistian episode, The only reminders were the bruises forming on Jackie and me, and the wary looks everyone gave Lowe.

  “When did you notice that this was happening?” I asked, trying to keep myself from looking for that terrible glow in his eyes.

  “I’m not sure,” he confessed, his voice subdued and haunted. “To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure anything was happening until you brought Sark here.”

  His gaze turned to Uncle Iry, abject shame written in every line of his face. “Mister Bashir, again, I cannot apologize enough for my behaviour.”

  Uncle Iry flapped a hand, but none of us were under any delusion that he didn’t see Lowe in a new light. Initially, he’d watched Lowe as a kind of oddity, interested but in the most banal way. Now he couldn’t keep himself from tracking Lowe, subconsciously determined to keep a threat in front of him.

  Sark made a kind of coughing growl, and Lowe turned to look at him stonily.

  “Yes?”

  “I was just noticing the distinct lack of concern for me,” Sark observed dryly. “Just sayin’.”

  Lowe turned to me with a long-suffering look.

  “We’ll get to you in a minute,” I said in a tone that brooked no argument before turning back to Lowe. “Okay, if you don’t know when it started happening, do you at least know what is happening?”

  Lowe sat quietly, a pensive expression on his face.

  “I don’t know how else to describe it except corruption,” he said with a long, surrendering sigh. “The more time I spend with Kezsarak, the more his bitterness seeps into me. I can feel it, and combined with the frustration in my own failure to help him heal, I feel that … frankly, I feel like I am losing myself.”

  I found it hard to argue after what we’d just seen and the way he held Kezsarak’s cube. When we’d first brought the demon here, Lowe had to be convinced to let him stay in the Station and then cajoled into considering trying to rehabilitate the monster. Now he held onto the thing like a child with a security blanket. Had I been wrong last year in trying to help the grief-maddened gallu?

  “Is he trying to influence you?” I asked, pointing at the cube. “Trying to control you, or something?”

  Lowe’s hand enfolded the cube protectively, and his face became wrought with concern.

  “No, no, nothing like that!” He shook his head but folded more of his body around the cube. I suspected that Lowe was not the most objective party. The interaction was between a ghost and a demon, and I wasn’t about to consider asking the demon.

  “Alright, Kezsarak’s not doing it on purpose, but he’s still doing something to you.” Jackie looked at Lowe directly, but not without affection or concern. “Is it just being near him? Interacting with him? Could you just, you know, not do that?”

  “Yes, yes, and no,” Lowe said, frowning. “I believe it is a matter of both proximity and interaction, but right now, there is no other option, though perhaps I could cut down on the most direct interactions.”

  “I don’t understand,” Uncle Iry said. “Could you not just put the box in the lower portions of the station and then avoid it?”

  “You must remember that this entire station is an interactive psychic creation.” Lowe released the cube to sweep his hand one way and then the other. “Everything you see, for reasons that I myself barely understand, is created from my spirit, my essence, which is why it appears as I remember it. Putting the patient anywhere else in the station is pointless, because it is still inside of my mind, and therefore in touch with me. Does that make sense?”

  We took a moment to consider this. It wasn’t a very helpful discovery, but it did at least express the parameters of what we were facing.

  “Wait,” Jackie called, blood draining from her face. “That means that when I’ve used the loo in here, I …”

  Lowe suddenly looked very uncomfortable and cleared his throat twice before managing to answer.

  “Don’t think too hard on it,” he said sheepishly. “Besides, it’s not like I am fully aware of everything happening, at least, not unless I choose to be, and when it comes to such necessities … sacred, I assure you.”

  Jackie didn’t look convinced. It might have been funny, if not for the fact that I felt we were losing sight of the gravity of the situation.

  “Toilets aside, do we need to move Kezsarak out
of here?” I asked. “For your sake and ours?”

  Again, Lowe seemed to curl around the cube, with a peculiar, child-like expression. “Where exactly would that be? You do remember why you deposited him here in the first place, don’t you?” His voice was strident and petulant. He nodded towards Sark, who flinched a little.

  “While you are attempting to find a way to stop a demi-god from rising, where are you going to find the time and resources to relocate the patient to a secure location, watched over by someone you can trust. Tell me, Ibby, where will the patient be safe?”

  “Stop saying that!” I snapped. “He’s not a patient, some victim of a disease. He’s a demon, Professor, a monster who would’ve killed the whole world three times over for vengeance.”

  Lowe looked at me, shock and outrage widening his eyes.

  “So, you never really meant me to help him then, is that it? You convinced me to counsel his sleeping spirit, for what? Just to give me something to do?”

  He and I knew that wasn’t true. After defeating Kezsarak, I had been moved by his tragic betrayal and wished something could be done for him. Now though … I was wrong, and in being wrong I’d not only harmed a friend but might have made our impossible mission that much worse.

  “I don’t know anymore,” I said through gritted teeth. “I don’t know if I was crazy for hoping he could be saved or for asking you to do it.”

  “Ibby, steady luv.” Jackie reached a hand for my shoulder, but I shook her off.

  “If you haven’t noticed, I’m making this up as I go,” I growled, my hands bunching into trembling fists at my knees. “We’ve got so many things in the air––and too much riding on those things going right––for us to risk you turning into some kind of monster. If keeping that from happening means we need to toss Kezsarak into the channel, and I admit that I’m an idiot, then so be it!”

  I hoped I’d feel better after that little tirade, but Jackie and Uncle Iry watched me with worried eyes, while Lowe hugged the cube protectively. Sark, on the other hand, seemed to be considering the situation with a cool head, and I was nervous about what that meant. Was he plotting his way out of our merry little band or something more nefarious?