Greywalker

Chapter 30

We ran like two deer flushed from cover. I'd lost my shoes somewhere and my legs and arms were scraped and bleeding, but we never stopped nor turned back to investigate the storm behind us. In the office, I collapsed into my chair, shaking and gulping air. I felt sore, sick, wretched, and tired to death. Cameron sat still and kept quiet while I pulled myself back together.

Still shaking, but able to breathe, I looked at my bruised, bloodied limbs. "I'm kind of a mess." The world seemed unstable and prone to shimmer, lighting up with strange colors. I kept talking, just for the sound of a voice. "But I think we're all right."

"What do you suppose happened back there?" Cameron asked. "I had a weird feeling just before the screaming started."

"I think it was the opening salvo of the war. When I left, Edward was about to have a chat with Alice."

"Oh. You don't think she could take him out, do you? Then we'd be humped."

I shrugged, feeling pulped. "I doubt it. If Carlos chose to defend Edward, I'd expect it to get pretty nasty. That chaos might have been something Wygan did, too. He seemed to be expecting it, he was almost—" I broke off, gulping against bile. "You OK, Harper?" I jerked aside and heaved my dinner into the trash tan. This night was killing me. I hung there with my head down for a minute, waiting for the giddiness to pass.

Something crashed out in the hall and Cameron reentered the office carrying a paper cup full of water. I pulled myself up. He put the water on the desk and I took it with a questioning look.

He shifted from foot to foot. "Bathroom door was locked."

"Landlord'll have to fix it," I croaked. I really didn't give a damn. I rinsed my mouth and spat into the trash. "Thanks. And thanks for getting me out of there."

"I was afraid to touch you, because you always act like it hurts, but I figured whatever was back there was worse."

"You figured right. You'll make a pretty intimidating vampire someday." I coughed.

"I think I'd rather go the smooth and seductive route, thanks."

I eyed him, his blond hair a tangle, mustache ratty. He grinned. We both broke up in desperate laughter.

I gasped, clutching my very sore belly, and lay back into the chair.

"Maybe we should rethink our schedule, Harper."

"Huh?" I mumbled. I didn't think I could move. The chair was drawing me into its old, worn shape, muffling me with the comforting smell of warm leather and old files. My eyelids were as sore as the rest, so I closed them.

"You seem pretty wrecked. Maybe you should rest a couple of days before we go after that organ."

"Can't. Carlos and Edward laid plans. 'Sides, longer we wait, better chance the ghost will find it, or something like tonight happens again. Can't take much more of this. Have to cut it off, now…"

Cameron sighed a long, sad stream of blue fog. "I guess." I heard him say as the soft mist folded over me and I faded down to unconsciousness.

The buzzing of my pager woke me. My office was chill and empty but for me and a sound in the hall. My chest ached more than the rest of me.

Clank and scratch, something pushed on my office door. I started to raise my head. A flicker passed the edge of my vision. I peered side-ways and the Grey blazed in sunrise colors around the door, centered on a furious, red shape. I whipped my head to look, letting the Grey well up all around, flushing the room with rippling strands and a thin, cold mist.

Alice flew through the door at me. By reflex, I flung up my hands, shoving back against the grim crimson of her fury. She stopped inches from me, teeth bared and hands like reaping hooks.

She was a horror. A long slash had rent away part of her cheek, deforming her mouth and leaving a band of muscle exposed. Her clothing was tattered and her limbs were misshapen, showing broken bones and gouges that oozed black. Fury, pain, and violence whirled around her, reeking of blood and eviscerated bodies.

Looming over me, she hissed through her broken mouth, "Trickster witch. I would shred you, but your blood will feed me better."

My heart racketed and choked me. I barely dredged up the words, "No harm, Alice. You promised."

"Lied to me. Betrayed me. You die for it."

I rolled out of the chair and leaned on my desk, weak-legged. "I agreed to make a path to Edward and stand aside. Only that. I did that. I didn't stand in your way. I told you to be patient. You misplayed your moment." Barely keeping my brain functioning, I was dizzy with fatigue, and the Grey twisted through me, wringing out my strength.

She howled rage, frozen by her promise. My geas had worked.

She leveled burning eyes at me, catching me, pressing her command against me. "I will find a way and you will stand aside. You will neither help nor hinder. You will do nothing and you will go unharmed. Break this promise, and I will kill you for days, dine upon you slowly, drinking your screams like wine."

I couldn't pull away from her. I was too exhausted to push or dodge. It wouldn't matter, though, once the organ was gone. I found myself nodding, panting, "All right. I'll stand aside."

She spun away, the door crashing behind her as I fell to the floor.

I woke at five o'clock, stiff, cold, and miserable, huddled on the floor. I dragged myself home.

A phone call awakened me again at ten. Nightmares of the night before left me incoherent when I answered, but the voice on the other end chirped, "Good morning. May I speak to Harper Blaine, please?"

I grunted and prepared to dump her into telephonic oblivion. The last thing I could deal with was a telemarketer.

"Ms. Blaine? Edward Kammerling requested that we call you and confirm your appointment and ask if everything was still on schedule."

"Uh… yeah. Edwards OK?"

"Oh, yes. He wanted you to know that everything is on track for tonight's party, but that you will have to make your own transportation arrangements. He has his own way in, of course. Will that be a problem?"

"No."

"That's what we hoped to hear. Everything else will be taken care of. Thank you and have a nice day!"

My stomach gurgled and I pitched the phone back into its cradle, burying my head under the pillow and wishing damnation on all TPM employees, living or undead.

Getting out of bed was difficult. My limbs were stiff with scabs and bruises, I felt like I had the flu, and too many sleepless nights weighed me down. The previous night was muddy in my mind, nightmare differentiated poorly from reality. The night ahead didn't promise to be any better.

I called Will, hoping to touch normalcy. Michael answered.

"Where's Will?"

"He's out at the police station."

"Is he OK?"

I could hear him shrug, unhappily. "I guess… I gotta go to class. I'll tell him you called, though."

That would have to do. I wandered around the condo, listless, aching. I kept picking up the ferret and cuddling her, hoping that things weren't as awful as they seemed and that hiding my face in her warm, fragrant fur would somehow make them better. Chaos didn't appreciate the attention and jumped out of my stifling arms, skipping off to throw books down from shelves. I hoped I'd see her again and I left a note for my neighbor, just in case I didn't.

I called Mara and told her about my meeting with Edward and what I needed from her now. She said she'd have to discuss it with Ben. Dragging my feet, I gathered up my stuff and hauled myself to the office.

I paged Quinton between bouts of uninteresting paperwork and frustrating phone calls. He strolled in a little after noon and glanced at the boarded-over windows. "What happened? Somebody try to break in again?"

"Rough client."

"Not your guy with the Camaro."

"No, the one who doesn't show up on video."

He growled, looking me over. "He roughed you up?"

"I fell on some stairs."

He shot a queer glance at me.

"It's the truth. Look, Quinton, I have a problem a lot worse than a tumble on the steps."

"What do you need?"

"I need to get past a security system so I can break something."

He blinked a few times. "Umm…. that's often illegal."

"Yeah. But I can't come up with another option. If it doesn't get done—I just have to."

He frowned at the desperation in my voice. "Must be something pretty bad. Why do you need to do this?"

I shook my head at myself. "It's nuts."

"What can be weirder than putting an alarm in a car trunk for a vampire?"

"How 'bout exorcising a ghost and defusing a paranormal time bomb?"

He rocked on his heels and nodded. "OK. That's weirder. How did you get mixed up in that? Your client?"

"The guy who broke my windows. He's a ghost. I didn't know it when I took the job."

Quinton sat down and waited for the rest.

I sighed. "He hired me to find a piece of furniture. I found it, but couldn't get it for him. He got rough and I figured out what he was. I didn't want to keep working for him. He made it clear he would do whatever it took to get what he wanted and if I stood in his way, he'd go through me. I can't run from him—he's a ghost—and I can't imagine what he's capable of. I figured the only way to get rid of him was to find out why he really wanted the thing. Now I know. And it's terrible. There is no option but to stop him."

I closed my eyes a moment, tired, but relieved to have gotten it all out. I wondered if Quinton thought I was crazy yet.

He mulled it for a moment. "Why does this job fall on you? Why do you have to stop it?"

I played with a pencil and didn't look at him. "I'm afraid that this thing will hurt me, too. I'm a little bit ghost or monster myself, connected to all of this stuff. Horrible things have happened, and I'm just too much a coward to let this happen, too. This is the only thing I can think of to stop it."

Quinton was quiet. I continued playing with the pencil and breathing around the stone in my chest.

Finally he asked, "So what building are we breaking into? Give me all the information you've got and I'll hunt down the rest. By the way, when are we doing this?"

I glanced up. "Tonight."

"Tonight? Oh, boy… Miracles 'R' Us. I assume that we're not going to go and ask permission for this."

"I already offered to buy the thing—the museum won't sell. That's what made my client so angry. If I could think of another way, I'd do it."

"All right," he sighed. "Let's get to it."

I sketched out the plan and gave him everything I knew about Madison Forrest House security. Quinton soaked it up without taking notes.

"OK. I'm going to the library. I'll call you when I've got it figured out."

I thanked him, but he was already heading out the door.

Mara called later in the afternoon. With an edge in her voice she told me she would do it, but needed a lift to the museum. She didn't give me time to ask any questions.

At six, Quinton called.

"I got it. I can do it. I'll see you there a little after sunset, OK?"

"OK," I agreed.

I drove up to Queen Anne to get Mara. The house did not look quite as inviting as normal, the color of the light in the windows an unpleasant green. Albert met me on the walk again. I limped to the door, alarm racing my heart.

Mara answered my knock. Her face was pinched.

"Come in," she clipped out. "Ben's upset."

"Oh?"

"He doesn't want me to go. Now that he knows the threat is real, he thinks I can't help and will be in harm's way needlessly. Imagine!"

Ben stepped into the arch from the dining room. "I'm worried about you. What's wrong with that? You're my wife, our son's mother. I don't want anything to happen to you. I think that's reasonable."

She turned to glare at him. "Now that it's down to theory versus practice, you don't really believe in magic at all. You think it's just feel-good hocus-pocus and dancin naked under the moon with a bunch of March-hare feminists."

"That's not true!"

"'Course it's not, but it's what you think—" Somewhere in the house a tiny sound started up.

I waded in. "Stop this. I need Mara. I know she can do it, because I've seen her do it. It has to be this way."

"I could come along."

"No." The sound grew into a distant, hiccupping cry.

Ben and Mara both looked toward the stairs.

Mara looked panicked. "Someone needs to stay with Brian. Besides, if something does go wrong—"

"Then you admit that something could go wrong, that you may not be competent to—"

Mara's panic turned to ire. "I certainly do not admit I'm not competent! I only meant that no plan is completely foolproof. Don't assume you know better than I what I—"

Ben cut her off. "It's too dangerous! It's irresponsible and unsafe and—well, it's destruction of private property! It's just not right! Harper," he added, turning to me, "you know this isn't right."

I cocked my head at him and leaned against the doorframe. "What is right? Letting the ghost do whatever he wants with it? Allowing everyone who treads in the Grey to be fried like an egg when it blows up? If you have a better plan, I'd be glad to hear it, because frankly this one stinks, but it's all I've got."

Brian was at full wail now. Ben stared at me. Mara gaped at me, her mouth forming a little O.

Ben blinked. His face crumpled and he turned toward the stairs. "Brian needs me. And Harper needs you, Mara. She's right. She's right. You'd better go." He stopped on the first landing and glared back at us. "But you had better come back. Brian and I need you, too."

Mara began crying, flew up the steps, and threw herself into her husband's arms. "I love you. I will be very, very careful, I promise. Thank you, love."

Ben looked on the verge of tears himself, his head hanging over her shoulder a moment before he turned to give his wife a kiss.

"I know you'll be careful, sweetheart. I know it. You'll be fine," he added, letting her go. "You two had better get going. It's going to be dark soon." He turned and marched up the stairs.

Mara plodded to me, reaching for her purse by the door as we went out and swiping at her eyes. Albert blinked owl-like at us from the porch, but made no move to come along.

Dejected, Mara sat in the front seat. "I wish I could have Ben with me… though you look like you'll need more help than I. You look one step from dead."

"I think I felt better when I was."

I drove out to the museum and told her the plan. Mara nodded. I felt miserable. Nothing within or without didn't ache with bruises or a wearying, bone-deep illness, and everything I saw was aglimmer with streaks of color and coils of Grey.

I did not park in the same lot as on the previous visits, but several blocks away and around a couple of corners. We got out and walked to the museum.

Clouds obscured the moon, but that wasn't the only source of darkness. The Grey around the building had thickened into an artificial midnight, a twist of realities from which light seemed to flee. Quinton had been leaning against a tree by the fence line and now ambled toward us, emerging from the coil of darkness like a ship from fog. I did not introduce my companions to each other. They didn't mind.

"Hi," Quinton greeted us. "I've already got stuff in place and I can control what the cameras see, so the security guys shouldn't be alerted. The perimeter alarm is off at the side door. It's not locked. Don't touch any exterior doors or windows and don't make too much noise." He began to lead us up the darkened edge of the drive, in cover of shadowing trees and shrubs.

I murmured to him, "How'd you manage all of that?"

"I don't want you to know."

"Thanks. Will you come inside?"

"Only as far as the kitchen, where the electrical box is. I want to stay near the switches, in case anyone starts prowling around."

"OK. Have you seen anyone else yet?"

"Vampires and ghosts? Not yet, but I might not see them at all. They're sneaky bastards. Besides, it's barely dark yet."

"'Sneaky. Charming description." We all turned and faced Edward.

He stood in the shadows under the covered driveway. "I hope I didn't miss much. Eavesdropping is one of my best techniques."

None of us blushed.

"Who else are we to expect?" I asked.

"Only Carlos and Cameron. With your friend here, it should prove sufficient."

"No one rallied to the flag?"

"There were volunteers, but I didn't get to be the lead dog without having some teeth. Occasionally, it's necessary to prove I still have them. It wouldn't behoove me to ask my people to do what I wouldn't. Besides which, they will be busy creating the illusion that all of us were busy elsewhere tonight."

Quinton muttered under his breath, "Teeth and balls. Nice combo—for a pit bull."

Edward turned his gaze on Quinton and skewered him with it. Quinton squirmed a bit, but didn't look down.

"And for lone wolves," Edward added. "Just be careful whose pack you run across this time."

I looked at them both. "You guys know each other?"

Edward gazed at Quinton. "By reputation."

Quinton gave a slight nod and we all chose to look toward the side door.

Edward pointed to it. "Shall we go?"

We went as stealthily as wet gravel would allow—a train of phan-tom follow-the-leader—and let ourselves in. Quinton stood aside and waited for us to pass.

"I'll stay here until I see another vampire," he whispered.

"And Cameron."

"OK. Stay quiet, all right? Neighbors like to walk their dogs around here, even in the rain."

Carlos and Cameron joined us as we started up the stairs. We all hesitated at the top, glancing about. I don't know what made the vampires scope the area like that, but in my case, it was fear. Mara looked nervous and overwound. She cast a look at me and sketched a sign in the air between us. It sparked a moment and shed warmth on me, then faded.

We went to the parlor. The door was sheathed in a blanket of ugliness that oozed and seeped around the edges, flowing onto the floor, creeping like a spreading puddle of blood. Carlos brushed past the rest of us and touched the door, whispering. The darkness squirmed aside. We followed him in. He closed the door behind us.

The room was swathed in the rolling, icy blackness that had retreated from the door. Carlos pushed it back with his hands, clearing space. We moved furniture to his direction, shuffling in aching silence. Mara and I were sweating before we were done, and I moved at an old woman's pace. I had to give the organ a wide berth. Every time I came near, it sent a tentacle of darkness toward me. Carlos pinched them off with a smell of burnt flesh.

With all the furniture pushed up to the farthest walls, we rolled up the rug. We stood back as Carlos began to chalk symbols on the floor. Mara held one of my hands and chanted something that kept the Grey back from us. The Grey web inside me buzzed with exhausting activity, crackling and arcing over my nerves and joints as the energy from the nexus hummed through me. I watched the darkness lap at the arc of chalked sigils. After a while, Carlos motioned to Edward and they began to push and pull on the organ. Judging from their grunts and stifled noises, it was terrible work.

Cameron started forward to help. Carlos waved him off.

"Better for us to do it." He gave a rictus grin. "We are old in our own evil."

Once the organ was a few feet from the wall, Edward fell back, looking as ill as I felt. His face and neck bore thin, white weals that had not been there the night before. Carlos crept around the floor, singing in a low voice, drawing a careful circle of runes and symbols that writhed and connected into an endless, glowing gyre enclosing himself and the organ.

Then Mara began a larger circle of her own, outside and around his, that encompassed most of the rest of the room. She muttered as she walked, making a trail of dim sparks along with her chalk line that pushed the darkness into a heavy, gathering storm around the organ. She left a small opening opposite the door. I went to stand by it with her, facing the door. I could feel the organ's power surging.

"The scent of blood to draw him," Carlos said and looked toward me and Mara.

She glared at him.

Carlos watched me and started to reach for my hand.

"No," Mara snapped, her words coming out of her mouth sharp gold and scintillating. "And not mine, either. You know that."

Edward raised a languid hand. "Don't be cruel, Carlos. It's poor form to repay our friends in that coin. I'd give mine, if I had any."

"Maybe your friend downstairs," Carlos suggested. "I could call him here."

I tried to glare at him. "That's not fair."

Carlos growled, "Fair…" Cameron started to say something, but Carlos shut him up with a look. "Very well, then. Cameron, open the door for our guest."

Cameron edged around the circle as Carlos, mumbling something that sounded more like curses than spells, drew a small knife from his clothing. He slashed it across his right wrist.

Nothing happened. Then Carlos closed his eyes. His lips moved but no sound came out. His chest heaved as though from heavy exertion and dark, slow drops of blood welled along the wound, then dripped to the seething floor. They splashed loud as cymbals. Carlos flung his hand in an arc, dark droplets splattering over the organs mirror and stops with the sound of shattering crystal.

Stillness and the sickening stink of corrupted blood held us. I was panting as I called out, "Sergeyev. Grigori Sergeyev. I have your vessel. Come and get it."

A wind burst up from the floor with a roar and a shape rushed through the door. It crossed the edge of the first circle, racing toward me. Mara dropped to her knees and closed her circle with a word. A wall of white light leapt upward. The Grey shape smashed against the barrier and recoiled with a howl of frustration, collapsing into the form of my spectral client, trapped between the two charmed circles.

He cursed us all in vociferous Russian. Cameron stood spellbound by the door and I cowered behind Mara, oppressed by the ghost's withering hatred and battered by my own fear, pain, and exhaustion.

"There's nothing he can do to you, so long as the circles remain intact," Mara whispered, as I held her shoulders. "The only one at risk is Carlos, and no ghost wants a taste of a necromancer's fury if he can avoid it." She looked uncertain and pale with fatigue, hands wound into her circle's spell, keeping the ghost confined between it and Carlos's circle of necromancy. Her own power strained to maintain the circle's integrity as Sergeyev stormed against it. I hoped whatever flowed, pulsing, through me was helping her, but I didn't know.

Carlos reached out and yanked one of the stops out of the organ. Sergeyev turned with a jerk and threw himself against the inner circle with a shriek. The ivory decoration on the knob crumbled to dust and sifted to the floor, frosting the blood with a thin coat of white. Carlos dropped the knob and reached for another.

"Nyet!" Sergeyev screamed, followed by a babble of Russian sounding imploring and threatening by turns.

Carlos answered him. "We come to release you, you ungrateful wretch. Seven hundred years of torment and all you can think of is revenge. Against whom?"

Sergeyev spat out a name, stalking in frustration around the perim-eter of Carlos's circle. His appearance wavered and flickered through a vertigo-inducing montage of every person he'd ever worn, stolen, or devoured. I leaned one shoulder against the wall, which flickered with strange lights.

"Dead," Carlos snapped back. "A long time dead. I knew of him." He yanked out another stop. "From his torments, I release thee. From this prison, I release thee…"

The revenant shrieked and howled, clawing at the air between them and cursing in gouts of fiery storm until my knees shook and I thought my ears would bleed. Carlos screamed back at the ghost, long, entwining words that wove around the spirit, loosening and thinning him as the vampire dashed more and more of the organ to the ground. Music rails and preset knobs rattled to the floor and sloughed into dust. Keys groaned as they were wrenched from the boards and fell away in slivers of memory.

The hallway boomed. I was slow to turn my head, but heard Cameron scream and fall.

"What a lovely party," Alice hissed from the doorway. "And I wasn't invited." The flesh on her face still showed deep gashes, but her hair, face, and dress were covered in fresh blood.

The sight staggered me, and I leaned one hand hard onto Mara. Quinton…?

"Bitch," Edward spat, whirling toward Alice.

She laughed and darted forward, tearing a hole in the circles on the floor. She snatched the mirror from the organ. "Mine!" she shouted. Colors and streamers of power roared around her, twining over and through her. "I am your mistress now. Attack the ones who would harm you!"

Sergeyev howled unholy glee and rushed into the inner circle, pouncing on Carlos and the organ.

Mara sobbed and rocked backward. We lurched back against the flickering wall, cringing.

Edward flew toward Alice, who danced sideways from the circle, clutching her prize to her chest. She howled mad laughter and shouted, "Edward! It's only you I want! Run away, mice! Run and hide, or I'll eat you, too!" She fired a cold glare of triumph at me and laughed harder.

Cameron lurched to his feet near the door, his neck and head looking lopsided and loose. He snatched at her, missed, and swung his arms again.

Carlos had fallen back against the organ, his arms up, warding against Sergeyev's slashing energies. Shrieking faces and savage blades of light lashed from the instrument. Single-minded, the necromancer swiped at the music rail, dislodging the last of the spindles, which dissolved and powdered on the floor as they came away from the instrument. The ghost yowled and wavered a moment, then attacked with savagery.

Mara struggled up out of my arms and flung a ball of blue light at the ghost's back. It splattered across him and he howled as Carlos howled, too.

She winced. "They're too close together. We'll have to reclose the circle. Come and help me."

I tried to move and felt ice tighten on my limbs and a sharp shortening of my breath. Sickness and revulsion held me back with a muttering in my brain: "Neither help nor hinder…"

Mara threw herself onto the floor and began to crawl, drawing new symbols and chanting in gasps. She looked up at me, desperation in her eyes. "Come on!"

I stumbled a step back. If I moved forward I felt the weight of Alice's geas against me. But I could go and nothing would happen to me—she had promised me that, screamed the chittering voice in my head…

Mara tore her gaze from me with a frightened face and kept crawling, painfully, across the floor.

I backed toward the door, curling against the shuddering, battering of the Grey in violent discord, while the double-pronged battle raged around me, cutting me with stray blades of energy that played tearing chords on my chest.

Sergeyev smashed at Carlos, oblivious to every counter his opponent made. Even as his substance faded, his strength, drawn from the artifact, seemed to grow, and his wrath burned a reeking red and black pall around them.

Edward and Cameron flung themselves on Alice from opposite sides and grabbed her. She fought and screamed, slashing and biting, tearing flesh wherever she touched them, a whirlwind of fury. Cameron caught her flailing arm and yanked it backward. A sickening pop and a rending sound—Alice shrieked and wrenched toward him, jaws gaping. Edward snatched at her head, tangled his hands in her flying red hair and yanked, twisted, jerked…

Her neck snapped with a crunch and she flopped onto the floor, thrashing like a gaffed fish and gnashing her teeth. The mirror dropped and smashed. Cameron grabbed the nearest thing: a needlework stand. He knocked the embroidery hoop off and plunged the long spindle of wood down, into Alice's chest.

Her scream shook the house. I sprawled to the floor as Mara crawled the last few feet to close the circle. The rush of magic as the circle closed rattled my teeth, and the temperature plummeted ten degrees.

"Mirror!" Carlos yelled. I could see his groping hand for a moment under the barrage of Sergeyev's assault.

Edward grabbed a ragged piece of the broken mirror and threw it. Carlos's hand reached for it, dark, dead blood flying wide. The ghost flung himself against the sparkling shard of mirror. It cut into his form, slicing the hot threads of power that cloaked them, melting and flowing into him.

Alice's heels beat the floor into buckling ripples and her teeth snapped as she pawed at the rod through her chest. Beside her, Sergeyev shimmered silver and red, inching toward solidity as his appearance slid and wavered over his uncanny surface.

The room heaved and shuddered. Sergeyev screamed and dove at Carlos, slashing him with razor hands. Cameron and I both lurched forward. I pulled up short, held back by a stab across my chest.

Mara snatched him back. "Don't break it or we're done for," she cried.

"Fire!" Carlos shouted, one hand groping as he tried to roll away from the glittering monstrosity that tore at him. "Please!"

Mara caught her breath and Edward froze. He gave a jerking nod and Mara scrabbled in her pockets, yanking out a wooden kitchen match. She struck it and tossed it over the chalked circle.

The lines and charms blazed upward in flame, then bit into the dry wood of the floor. Beyond them, Carlos muttered, gasping and waning. Edward backed from the fire, stumbling, blind, over Alice, while Cameron pounded the floor with his fists, howling, "No, no, no!"

I looked toward the door and saw more flames. The fire was spreading on the lines of force. Alice dragged herself from the floor, lurching for Edward through the growing inferno. I couldn't move to stop her and live, and I couldn't help Carlos. Only stopping Sergeyev would save anyone, but I'd made the wrong choice—under the weight of Alice's geas and my own fear, my own weakness—and my friends would die for it.

Dead if you do and damned if you don't. I wouldn't survive if Sergeyev won, whether Alice took me out later or not. But if she needed to threaten me, then I must have a choice. And she'd have to find me—or my body—first. I started crawling forward, pushing against the pain in my chest. The house shook, bucking and roaring with a sound like a freight train bearing down.

A gut-tearing chill ripped into me and I rolled onto my back. The huge shape of the black guardian beast burst from the flame, vaulting upward, through the ceiling, trailing fire and smoke, then rushing back toward us, frenzied, roaring. Its maw gaped an infinite, lightless pit above me as I lay cold in motionless terror.

I pushed my hands uselessly against the pressure rushing before the monster and felt fire sear along my arms. "No, no, not me," I gasped, "not now." The knot in my chest burned and twisted like a blade as the jaws closed over me. I was too slow, too late, and I couldn't help anyone now. I sobbed and let go, not caring what the monster did to me. Who cared if the Grey swallowed me whole?

I gave up struggling. I let it have me.

I felt the knot in my chest loosen, blooming open, pouring the writhing, living Grey through me, knitting it into my body and mind. I let it wash across me and I felt bright as the soft snow-mist that enclosed me.

Then the floor slapped my back and I looked up into a blaze of light, streaming and boiling around a black void. The guardian breathed out an odor of tombs and poised above me, confused. I pointed at Sergeyev.

The beast reared back, spinning and shrieking, and its tail of pure pain lashed across me. I gasped and sank toward the dark as screams erupted nearby.

The creature plunged toward Carlos and Sergeyev, forms of fire and shadow, engaged to death. It whipped a circle around the two figures. For an instant, the awesome horror reflected in Sergeyev's shifting mirror, spinning, its terrible jaws agape. Then the beast reared and the ghost shrieked as the black creature swallowed him and dove down, through the buckling floor, vanishing under a boil of black smoke and the reek of inferno. The scream swelled and roared, consuming, powered upward and outward by the flick of the flaming tail.

Crackling and groaning pierced the vacuum of sound left by the monster's rushing exit. I rolled to my knees and looked around. Alice lay still nearby, skewered to the floor between Edward and Cameron. The house was still shuddering, the flames of the circle now gobbling at the floor and walls, gouting noxious smoke. Behind the ring of fire, Carlos struggled, making weak, broken movements, pulling himself up against the organ, which shivered and collapsed against itself, sending him to the burning boards. Cameron leapt up, but Edward grabbed him before he could cross the fiery line. I curled into an anguished crouch.

Edward touched my shoulder and I shuddered. "Out," he ordered. "Before the house collapses."

Mara dragged me to my feet and toward the door. The house seemed ramshackle and doomed, staggering beneath us as we stumbled and crawled for the stairs. I glanced back, blinded by smoke, tears, and pain, ears ringing, seeing the parlor in flames, three dark shapes moving within it, tearing the organ to pieces.

Halfway down the tilting staircase, Mara and I met Quinton coming up. He grabbed me by the shoulders and I winced, yelping, the pain so sharp I gagged on it. Ignoring that, he hustled both of us out through the kitchen at a furious pace, yanking something out of the electrical panel with gloved hands as we passed.

I gasped. "Cameron, Carlos—"

Quinton snapped at me, "They can take care of themselves. They're vampires. We're not!"

I whimpered and folded myself around the memory of pain at my core. Quinton and Mara dragged me down the rain-washed driveway and out the gate. I was all heels and slippery ankles. Between the two of them, they shoved me into the backseat of the Rover. Mara climbed in beside me, shaking. Quinton pickpocketed my keys and drove through the grim, ash-darkened rain. Finally, he parked on a side street and turned to look back at me.

"I think this is a safer place, but you can see it from here."

My head clearing in fresher air, I raised my head. "See what?"

"The museum. It's burning."