by Jenn Stark
“Are you sure?” Nikki said, pacing toward it. “I mean she’s got that crazy look in her eye that would certainly qualify as your mom, but she’s dead on you otherwise.”
“You ask me, she looks mostly like Sariah,” Simon offered. That line struck us all dead quiet for a second. We shook it off as Roland pointed to a shadowed doorway the illumination had revealed, far on the other side of the room.
“You want out? That’s the way out,” Roland said. “But we step out that way, and the shit’s going to hit the fan right quick. Probably should give you the full story as I know it before that happens.”
A sudden commotion split the night air from outside the doorway, an explosion—and then a chorus of shouting.
“You may want to make that fast,” Nikki drawled.
24
“Let’s hit it,” Roland agreed. “But go slow. You’re going to want to know what’s happening out there before you see it.”
“Yeah?” Nigel fixed him with a hard stare. “And how is it you know what we’ll see?”
“Because I’ve got ears,” Roland snapped. “And the Moon’s honor guard like to talk, at least when they aren’t all dressed up as wolves. To hear them tell the tale, she’s been stuck on this bloody rock for millennia, seemingly happy, but how could she be? They think she’s afraid of facing the real world, or maybe she’s brokenhearted or some rot. They’ve been waiting for someone to come and save her arse since God was a child, and they were pretty damned certain I was it. When I broke through, it’d been the first time anybody had been to this sector in literally millennia.”
“Why didn’t she just leave?” Nikki asked. “She was a member of the Arcana Council. Presumably, that means she had some pretty strong magic.”
“It’s a good question,” Roland agreed. “According to her guard, her magic rocks the casbah. She was the goddess of shapeshifters, to the surprise of no one, and she knew how to wield that power. Her mind wasn’t always easy to follow, but nobody thought much of that, because that was a hazard of the position. She tended to think of things in a different way from most. Anyway, shortly after she went on an unholy tear of magic all over the world, enough to feed six thousand years of moon worship and create an entire collective unconscious full of fairy tales, she came here. Never gave a reason. Seemed happy as a clam. And here she’s remained. She’s rebuilt this part of wherever the hell we are, mastered more spells, but she never wanted to leave it. Not once.”
I blinked. Roland didn’t know where we were, precisely. I decided that was for the best.
“Didn’t she get lonely?” Simon asked, and the grizzled hunter shrugged.
“She was a big fan, apparently, of believing she was lonelier in the real world than she was here.”
Nikki snorted. “That happens.”
“The long and the short of it, her guards were and are willing to do whatever she wanted, but secretly, they felt like she should return to her homeland and take up the fight.”
“What fight?” I asked, blinking, as the many options for battles flooded my brain. There was the age-old fight between the more powerful Connecteds and the weak. There was the fight against the Connecteds by ordinary people who had not fully accessed their magic—and who preferred to oppress those with abilities rather than understand their own. And, of late, there was the fight between the Shadow Court and the Arcana Council. All in all, the entire Connected world was on the brink of war, in one way or another. “Any fights we should know about in particular?”
Roland shrugged. “They weren’t real clear on that. But she wanted nothing to do with it. Would never tell them why. She’s psychic, obviously, so maybe she knew it wouldn’t turn out so well, or maybe she just liked this place better.”
Nikki glanced around the carved walls, peering at the richly inlaid tile. “If the rest of it looks like this, I can’t say I blame her.”
“Yeah, well, I showed up and she took me out at the knees. All I got on that score was, I wasn’t worthy. Not very helpful and hurt my feelings besides.” He said this last with a wry smile, and I shook my head. Roland was definitely feeling better.
“How did you get the job in the first place?” I asked. “Who hired you?
He sighed heavily. “Woman, rich as God, handled everything through intermediaries. Never met her. Only knew her as a ghost, honestly. I’m not entirely sure she’s female, if you get right down to it. I just got the feeling she was.”
“The feeling,” Nikki said, her tone derisive. “What kind of feeling would that be?”
“I can’t say,” Roland said, sounding legitimately perplexed. “Nothing she ever said or did hinted at gender. And her negotiation was tough, smart, steady, and mean as a snake, but that can go both ways. But whatever her gender, she means business. She had a couple of goons pluck me out of a dive bar that I bloody well hadn’t thought anyone had ever heard of. They threw me in the back of the car and drove me out in the middle of the goddamned outback. At that point, one of her goons put a gun to my head, told me the job, and asked if I wanted to take it. Not being a stupid rabbit, I took it.”
“What was the job?” I asked, glancing toward the opening. We were almost upon it, and the chants were getting louder.
“Go to Peru, find an opal ring, take it to Choquequirao, find the Moon. I know my opals, so I wasn’t all enthused about the idea of trekking halfway around the world to find something I could get right in my own backyard, but of course, this wasn’t your ordinary ring.”
“I guess not,” I said, pulling the ring out of my pocket and tossing it to him. He stepped back and let it hit him in the chest, then drop, only Nikki ducking in fast enough to catch the bauble before it fell all the way to the tile.
“A little respect for the artifacts,” she protested.
Roland shook his head. “I made the dumbass mistake of putting that thing on my finger once. It was a long, long fall to get to where you found me, wherever this godforsaken plane is. And a second before it all went dark on me, I flung that piece of shit as far away as I could, setting in play the call to you, Sara—which I’d made sure to have in place ahead of time, since I didn’t trust this setup in the slightest.”
“Why’d you put the ring on your finger if you didn’t trust it?” Nikki asked. “Did your contact tell you to or not?”
“Because the ring was just the first step. I got more cash if I found the woman who went with the ring. I don’t know if my employer expected me to put the ring on or not. She’s a twisty bitch.” He held up his hands. “And I mean that in an equal opportunity kind of way.”
“So where is the Moon?” Nigel asked, eyeing the chunky ring. “You found this ring, where? Up top? Cusco? Did she just leave it behind somewhere when she was shopping?”
“Not exactly,” Roland said. “There was some pretty dark magic involved in knocking that out of the rock that held it.”
“You excavated it?” Nigel asked, clearly shocked.
Roland stared at him in surprise. “No, you dumbass, I stole it from the Larco Museum in Lima. Some seriously messed-up artifacts there, I’m not going to lie, but I found what I needed, sprung it free, and came to Choquequirao. So I saved you all a pile of work. You’re welcome.”
Before we could properly express our thanks, we stepped out into the moon-swept landscape.
“Whoa,” Nikki said. “I begin to understand why a girl might wanna hang around.”
We looked out at a mosh pit of exquisitely built warriors, male and female alike, gathered around a central dais at the base of a wide amphitheater, chanting and shouting at the top of their lungs. Circling the dais were gorgeous Greek statues, all with limbs intact.
Simon whistled. “Did something special happen to pull in this crowd or is this just all-you-can-eat Tuesday?”
Roland waved a weary hand. “They come to exalt her every night. I’d hear it and weep with relief that another cycle of the Moon has been completed and I’ve been spared, and she’s been spared as well.”
“Yes, well, they’re not alone, not this time,” Nigel put in. “I know some of those buggers down there, and they are not the guardians of the Moon.”
I stepped forward to see what he meant, and he was right. It had been a few years, but the hunters in the world of the arcane black market didn’t experience a lot of turnover unless it was of the permanent kind. Not at this level. In the midst of the chanting and cheering guardians, there were all too many faces I recognized.
“How did they get here?” I protested. “I barely made it myself.”
“They didn’t get here of their own volition, I can tell you that,” Roland shrugged. “Someone very powerful pulled them in—or pushed them.”
“Forget all that, look.” Nikki pointed at the warriors paying absolutely no attention to the hunters. “How dumb are her guardians? They don’t see that these are enemies in their midst?”
“Not enemies,” Roland corrected. “Remember, they’re here to free the Moon. Her guardians support that.”
Nikki scowled. “But why? If she doesn’t want it, why do they?”
Roland shrugged. “They’ve been stuck here for millennia. They believe they can defend her, should she wish to be defended. And they could, if she would call on them to fight for her. But she’s not a general of some army. That’s not her personality.”
My mouth quirked into a wry grin. Maybe the Moon and I had more in common than I wanted to admit.
Nigel gave Roland the side-eye. “And you know all this, how, again?”
He gestured vaguely to me. “The blasted ring. You put it on, right?”
“Not for long,” I countered, and he grunted.
“Well, I didn’t stay in her brain long enough to get cozy either, but it was enough to know who she was as a person, what she wanted, what she hoped for. And to be clear, that was a whole lot of being left alone. She’s an immortal. She makes her art and protects her people by making sure they cannot be hurt.”
I made a face. I’d gone down this rabbit hole myself. I understood the desire not to harm the people who had pledged their allegiance to me. Others had told me it was their choice, but that didn’t make it any easier.
“So now what?” I asked. “Is this going to be a brawl?”
“We’ve got some additional guys coming in,” Simon said, and I looked to where he was pointing. More artifact hunters, and some other outliers too, men, women, even children emerged at the edges of the amphitheater. My gaze rested on this last group a moment longer. How many thousands of years had they been trapped in Atlantis by a woman who believed she was a benevolent goddess, keeping her children from experiencing a life beyond the borders she’d so carefully set for them?
If they wanted more than that, and from the hope in their eyes, it seemed clear they did, then they deserved to experience it.
“Not gonna lie, this is taking on some serious shades of Garden of Eden for me,” Nikki muttered. “And the natives clearly want out.”
The calls of the crowd grew even higher, and were at last rewarded by a shaft of moonlight piercing the clouds. It bathed the central dais as the crescendo of noise leapt. A woman formed in the gleaming spotlight, exactly what I would have expected the Moon to look like, tall, statuesque, with elegantly outstretched arms and long, sinewy legs. She was dressed in a toga, her skin pale, her flowing hair almost a blue white. Her eyes were large and luminous, her features as symmetrical as the marble effigies surrounding her.
“Girl has got to up her costume game with a body like that,” Nikki said, passing judgment. “What I could do with her in an afternoon in Vegas…”
The Moon turned, her arms going out, her fingertips almost seeming to brush the air, as if she was picking up the energy of the crowd. She smiled benevolently, but there was something definitely off about her.
“She seems a little checked out,” Simon murmured.
“She’s barmy,” Roland scoffed. He squinted at me. “You didn’t pick up on that when you put on her ring?”
I shook my head. “I told you, I didn’t wear it for longer than a few seconds, definitely not long enough to get a sense of her.”
“Well, no wonder you’re confused, then. She’s no longer got a seat at her own table, not entirely. Her people don’t know it. Or if they do, they don’t talk about it.”
“Why would the Star need her, then?” I asked. “If that’s who’s trying to free her—which it has to be. She’s certainly not trying to free herself.”
“Been asking that same question,” Roland said. “I don’t like any of the answers.”
“Celestine!” shouted a man in the front, tall, dark haired, and swarthy, bristling with muscles. “The world clamors for your return. We would serve you in a realm that can appreciate your beauty and your strengths. Unfurl the sails of midnight, and allow us to celebrate you as you were meant to be celebrated.”
“Ooooo, diplomatic,” Nikki observed with a grin. “I like this guy.”
Celestine’s smile deepened with genuine affection. “I have seen all, Torsten. I know all. The light of the Moon cannot protect you there as it can here.”
Her voice was oddly melancholy in contrast to her smile, and I could see from the ripples of dismay that swept through the crowd that this was not an unexpected response.
“We will fight. We will live! We will do honor to you, Celestine,” someone else called out.
But Celestine was having none of it. Her eyes shifted up, her chin tilted, and she seemed to grow slightly more transparent, a shimmer of stars visible through her hands.
“She’s leaving,” someone shouted, rough and loud, not a guardian or any of their kin.
As one, the hunters rushed the dais.
The battle was on.
25
I didn’t waste any time. Fixing my gaze on the dais, a good fifty feet away from me as we stood at the top of the amphitheater-like arena, I gritted my teeth as my body caught fire and puffed into the efficient, if painful, rearranging of molecules that allowed me to travel from space to space. While the Magician could disappear in a cheery plume of mist, my process was a little more, ah, incendiary.
It remained effective, though, even in Atlantis. With a sizzle and grimace, I dropped into nothing and then reappeared atop the dais. Six feet away, the Moon turned to me, her eyes brightening with excitement and an almost childlike glee, her mouth tilting into a smile, her arms widening in welcome.
I strode toward her. “We have to—whoa!”
My earnest plea to convince the Moon to come with me was abruptly cut short as a compact, leather-clad body barreled into me from the side, knocking me flat on my back and nearly off the dais altogether. I looked up, shocked to see the hard, weathered face of Gamon, Judgment of the Arcana Council, her flat-black eyes bristling with intensity, her dark hair streaked with silver and lashed back in a severe braid. She wore her usual black tactical gear, always ready for a fight, and she lunged toward me as I scrambled back.
“What in the—”
“Just go with it!” Gamon snarled, and then her fist came down, checking only slightly as she clocked me across the jaw. I skidded a few more paces, then came up in a fury, my hands bursting into flames.
“What the hell?” I demanded, swinging away to relocate the Moon, only to be knocked sideways again by Gamon.
“You can’t bring her back,” she insisted. “You’re too strong.”
I stared at her, totally confused. “I’ve got to bring her back. Nobody else can.”
“Celestine!” The voice that cracked across the dais chilled me to the bone, a voice I’d grown to loathe, then made my peace with, then loathe all over again in rapidly reducing spirals. I spun around.
“How in fuck’s name did you get here?” I demanded of the Emperor, Viktor Dal, who stood in his full raiment of gold-and-silver robes, an honest-to-God crown on his head. I had never seen this asshat dress in anything other than a suit, but across the dais, Celestine’s eyes grew wide as she took in his blond Aryan
perfection. It made my stomach turn.
“He can’t bring her back either,” Gamon announced, but he was closer to the Moon, and while I didn’t actually know the full extent of the Emperor’s powers, I knew he was tight with Tesla, and that changed everything about his ability to move between the planes. He took a step forward, and then Simon, of all people, came bounding up the stairs.
“You’re not supposed to be here!” Simon howled, and the bad blood that had long simmered between these two members of the Arcana Council boiled over, the thin, wiry Fool launching himself at the much more physically powerful emperor with a fury that clearly took the elder Council member off guard. He stumbled back, only a few steps, but it was enough to topple them both into the crowd.
I still didn’t understand what was going on, but I certainly supported that move. I jolted forward, only to feel a hand wrap brutally into my flying ponytail and jerk me back, nearly separating my head from my shoulders.
“What in the actual fuck,” I growled as Gamon whirled me around.
She let go of my ponytail before I toppled into her. “I told you, you can’t be the one to bring her back. Nobody from the Council can. It’ll reveal the extent of their strength or something, and that’s no good.”
But I shook my head, furious to the point of hysteria. “What are you talking about? Freeing the Moon is the entire reason I came here.”
“Armaeus unraveled another thread of this ball of crazy, and the game has changed. I don’t understand it, the guy’s a freak. But he shot me into this godforsaken hellhole to warn you and I let him, so he owes me. A lot.”
The mention of the Magician caught me up short. But not for long. The first line of attackers broke and surged up onto the dais. Now Gamon and I no longer had the luxury of fighting each other. We had to turn and fight off the rabble, some of whom I recognized, some of whom recognized me, and the fights quickly shifted in tone from a desperate pursuit of the McGuffin into an all-out rumble. Gamon was also not completely unknown to this group, and as we fought with greater intensity, she seemed to come to the same realization I did.
