Labyrinth

SIXTEEN

Under any circumstances, perching on the stool in Carlos’s cellar would have been uncomfortable and creepy. In the present ones, it was surreal. The post-adrenaline burn left me feeling wrung out, but I didn’t want to lean against the stone walls of the foundation for support—knowing what they contained and what they kept out made me certain they wept invisible horrors the same way water condenses in a cold room. I hunched on the backless stool, keeping my feet off the floor, too. The darkly shining shapes of the magic circle etched into the surface gave me chills.

Carlos had no compunctions on either score. He leaned against the wall nearby, eschewing the other stool, with his arms crossed over his chest. I watched him as he started speaking but he didn’t meet my eyes. Every other time we’d talked he’d stared at me, unblinking, his gaze boring into me as if he could capture my will or my soul by the pressure of that glance. “Don’t misconstrue this place, Blaine. This is not my home. This is my workshop, my . . . house of labor.” He flexed his hands into and out of fists. The house rustled above us and the fires of the magic circle surged as if a wind fanned them. “Where one finds peace, that is heart and home. But this . . . this is my blackened soul.”

If he’d still been alive he might have drawn a breath or two, but he paused and frowned, darkening the room with his expression. I thought I could hear the névoacria crawling across the floor above us and shivered.

“That object you brought here has wreaked more death than a hundred years of warfare. I was dishonest when I called it a mere knife.”

“I can tell it’s a magical implement. Like an athame?” I asked, trying to understand. It didn’t seem quite like a dark artifact, but I wasn’t sure what else it was. I don’t know much about magic-working—I don’t do magic—and I only had vague ideas about the tools required from Mara and some of my past cases. Sometimes it’s better to play the fool than be one.

“No!” he barked and finally he looked at me, his dark eyes glittering with the same black fire that rose off his magic circle. “An athame is a witch’s tool, ceremonial, dull at the point. They are not meant for bloodletting. That is the Lâmina que Consome as Almas—” He cut himself off and shook away the name, infuriated at his slip. “It is a blood blade for black work. Meteoric iron, its source rained destruction and death on the world millennia before men put their puny feet to the ground. It was forged in a fire of human bone, quenched in clay dug from blood-soaked ground. It was mine. I killed for it. The man I murdered had slaughtered a whole village for it. And so on, back and back to its first forging. It hungers for blood, for death. It wants, but nothing so much as it longs to be whole again. Do you understand?”

His voice rang on the stone foundation and played on my bones, rousing the chorus of the Grey in my head as he continued, echoed and amplified by the singing of the grid. The other sounds of the house in the former graveyard fell away.

“That was Edward’s mistake: He didn’t understand the instrument he stole. Had he chosen any other knife, it might have destroyed me. Had he not broken the blade in my chest, I would have expired in the wreckage of Seville. If the fool had understood anything of what he did, we would both be long quit of this world. The blade would have killed him also if he hadn’t locked it away—he could not have controlled it for so long otherwise. But luck favors fools. We both survived.”

I shook myself from the disgust that wove around me—I couldn’t afford to be squeamish or delicate about this. “Are you saying that the knife has some kind of will or . . . sentience?”

His voice dropped a little, no longer ringing the room with its resonance but still deep enough to throb in my chest. “It has purpose. You’ve seen this before. You were the one who brought me to the organ. . . .”

“That artifact had a ghost—he had the will,” I said.

“But the organ contained and channeled it. This knife has an owner and a desire. Brought naked into the heart of my power—this place that sings with the essence of what I have given myself over to—it longs for that which it lost. It pulls on the shard, compels it to rejoin the whole.”

I scowled. “You don’t want the broken tip out of your heart?”

“I wish it gone. But the blade does not have a mind; it does not know that rejoining the pieces by force will rip me apart. If they are brought together again, without control, that I would not survive. I am not ready to end this existence.”

“Then—” I started, but he pushed himself suddenly off the wall and leaned over the table between us, staring hard at me, cocking his head as he did. The reek of death and blood, the nausea that vampires always cast over me, was much worse with Carlos. It made me wince and pull my knees up as if I could roll into a protective ball around my churning guts.

He ignored my reaction, studying me with a stare as penetrating and precise as a laser. In the past, he could see things about me that even I didn’t know; what did he see now? “You could do it,” he muttered. “Not yet, but very soon. You are growing together.”

Shocked, I blurted out, “I’m what?”

He hesitated for a tense moment. Then Carlos grabbed onto both my shoulders at once, without any word or sign of what he intended. His violent twitch at the contact rocked us both and I felt like I’d been wrapped in a live wire. My hair rose on my arms and the buzzing sensation of electric shock crawled over my nerves and every inch of skin and bone as my muscles spasmed. Air bound up in my chest and I felt that I was choking. Panic surged over me and something that felt like resurrection and clear water flowed behind it, bursting outward from my core.

I flung myself backward, jerking my knees to my chest and lashing forward with both booted feet at once. I shouldn’t have had the strength to hurt him with such a short kick, but he ripped away and stumbled back to the wall he’d come from. I fell off the stool and sprang back to my feet with my back against the cold-burning foundation stones, gulping in breath that tasted like tombs.

I reached for my pistol, but stopped my hand on the bundled knife instead. “Don’t try that again.”

Carlos wasn’t looking at me but at his hands as he brought them away from his gut. He straightened up, frowning. I didn’t see anything wrong with them; they weren’t bloodied or burned as I’d almost expected from the force. “Very close,” he murmured. “So that’s what he wants. . . .”

“What who wants?” I demanded. “Wygan? What pieces are you putting together, because I want to see that picture, too.”

He raised his eyes to mine and I could see them smoldering red and yellow within the wide irises. “I’m certain that you do. The Pharaohn. His ruthless monstrosity, Goodall, came to bargain with me recently. The whelp didn’t seem pleased. . . .” Carlos tilted his head and looked me over again. “I should have given in to impulse: He would have made a pretty home for maggots.” Carlos seemed to enjoy my shudder at his image. “Edward did not know the viper he coddled. Now Goodall’s master pretends to cajole my assistance with a plan unnamed in return for my freedom, though in truth so long as he controls Edward and the knife, he commands me. But he does not have the knife.”

I wanted to know more about Goodall, but there was something more pressing and I asked about that first. “But so long as you thought he did, why wouldn’t you help him? I presume he made some offer to set you free from Edward in exchange for help with whatever he’s up to. You’re no friend of Edward’s. Why would you balk?”

He almost smiled, but what he said seemed disconnected from his expression. “I would rather lie buried alive ten thousand years than see any world the Pharaohn would build. Edward bred our hatred—mine and the Pharaohn’s—by what he made of us, by his . . . stupidity, for his ambition. What he sowed now comes to reap him. But our tie is a tangled thread and if one of us can use it to his advantage, the others are compelled to his purpose. Wygan now has the whip hand and plans to use it. Unless the cord can be cut.”

Now he did smile, a terrible thing of predator’s teeth, lit by the unholy fire in his eyes. “You’re hovering a hair’s breadth from the great weft of magic. If you reach for it, you can bend the shape of magic itself.”

I shook my head. “I’m not a mage or a witch. I can’t use magic.”

“I said you could bend it. Or you nearly can. That is not use, only ability. With that power, you could remove the blade’s shard from my heart and make the knife whole. Then I would not be subject to the whim of either Edward or his captor.”

I started shaking my head. “I don’t—I don’t think I can do that. . . .”

He stared at me like a collector evaluating a piece. “You have no idea. What you ‘know’ is a handful of salt in the ocean. I don’t guess this, Blaine. This I know. But I can guess why the Pharaohn would find such a skill useful, given what else he now commands.”

I looked at him as narrowly as he had inspected me and saw the black aura around him shaping itself into sharp spikes whose tips reached deep into the Grey, like rigid fingers seeking a grip on the grid. “What does he command? Do you have some idea what his plans are?” I demanded.

“I do.”

I was drawn toward him but held myself back after a few steps. “Then you must understand why I want your help.”

He leaned in again, lowering over me. “But the knife alone is nothing—more likely to destroy me than aid you. Agree to do what I ask, and I will help you.”

“The help I need is not half-guessed plans or horror tales. I need to stop Wygan. I have no intention of being his pawn.”

“You could simply flee. How could he compel you?” He was playing with me; he knew there was more at stake and was pushing me to say so.

“Aside from not letting him rule the world, or whatever he’s after? Shouldn’t that be enough for anyone?”

“Perhaps once. But I can see your white honor crumbling. There is something more personal for you, now. Darker.”

I squeezed my eyes closed a second, so I didn’t have to see the certainty in his eyes. “He has my father.”

That wretched eyebrow rose and his mouth quirked into half a cruel smile. “Your father died when you were a child. What part of him does the Pharaohn hold?”

“His ghost. He has him trapped in a sort of magical cell—an oubliette—and he’s discovered a way to . . . torment ghosts.”

Carlos focused past me, thinking aloud. “Interesting. . . . I wouldn’t have thought he had the skill. Oh, but he has his ushabti.”

“This trick predates Goodall—he wasn’t Wygan’s ushabti two weeks ago.”

Carlos waved that aside. “He hadn’t made the final offering, but he was the Pharaohn’s man. Once the Pharaohn knows the thing can be done, he need only teach each ushabti how. Generations of his servants could have known it.”

“Wouldn’t you have heard of it before if he had?”

“That is not important at this point. His plan and your place in it are what concern you. And me. All else will fall in the scope of that. His plan depends upon you and Edward—who stupidly put this train in motion. He has Edward. Even if you run, it matters not to him: He will keep Edward prisoner until he captures you and forces you to do what he desires.”

“And what does he need you for?”

Carlos gave me a sly look. “I am merely convenient. He controls Edward, Edward controls me, and I have skill to do something the Pharaohn needs. There is another with the ability, but the Pharaohn has no leverage on that one. He would have to bargain with something more precious than threats and torment. He would rather press me into service than deal with the other. And so would you.”

Carlos knew me too well. I wanted to tangle with some unknown mage even less than I wanted to deal with him. And he’d confirmed something I’d suspected since Edward first asked me to go to London: There was a powerful blood mage somewhere in the area—one strong enough to have controlled and installed the ancient blood-worked panels on Edward’s bunker doors. The price for those services might be as awful as whatever Wygan was already planning. Better the devil I knew.

And he knew it. Carlos gave me his wolf smile and chuckled; the house shivered. “When the power comes to you, then you can relieve me of the knife.”

I was not letting him off easy. I pushed through the Grey, pushed on the blackness in the cellar and made a geas that thrust its spines into us both. His surprise quivered through the iron-hard shape in the Grey. I stared him down before he could recover, trying not to cringe from the pain and the cold. “And if I help you get free of the Lâmina, you will take my side in this confrontation with the Pharaohn. You’ll tell me his plan so far as you know it and you’ll do all you can to help me stop it.”

The death-cold fingers of the compulsion and bond pierced into me. I could see the dark magical form, a barbed helix, coiling deep into both of us. Carlos resisted and I stopped breathing as the geas surged and throbbed a moment, cutting me with such chill agony that tears sprang from my eyes and ran in viscous, icy trails down my face.

He threw back his head, eyes shut. “Yes.” He gave in and the cold pressure of the geas collapsed, dissolving into us in a shimmer of black threads. “I will.” He brought his head down again, making a small, respectful nod. But his glance was wary and appraising. “You do not need to bind me.”

I caught my breath—I didn’t care if he saw I was shaken—and wiped the back of my hand across my cheeks. “Oh I do. I remember the last time you helped me.”

He made an ingenuous face. “I only advised—”

“In the Wah Mee,” I said, my voice like acid.

He gave a dismissive shrug and looked aside. “I didn’t kill the boy.”

“You absorbed his life and drove him insane.”

He glared back at me, his chin down and only his eyes showing between the dark swaths of his hair and beard. He was angry and it shivered in his voice, growing louder as he spoke, making the creatures of mist and shadow scurry a scratching tarantella on the floor above. “An unhappy consequence of his own design. He intended your death as well as others; it reeked on him like sweat. I only showed him his own mind. You required my assistance and there is always a price. You could not pay, so I took what I needed from him—he will toil in his madness a shorter time for that. Is that not mercy? Insanity was his fate, but you stopped him from practicing it upon others. Is that not righteous? Has not justice been served?” he roared. “Are you dissatisfied with your role, Paladin of the Dead?”

I reeled under his fury and a slap of self-loathing: I was guilty of thinking only I could do right or bring justice to the dead and the things of the Grey and I had been secretly relieved to see Ian Markine sent to the prison wing at Western State and not escape justice for what he’d done. I could have left it to Solis to solve, but I hadn’t; I’d gone out to capture him and I’d taken Carlos with me to make sure. I had hated the way it happened, but I had caused it and I had been glad of the end result. Now I saw myself as a hypocrite for it.

The shocking strength of Carlos’s anger and my disgust with myself sent me stumbling back against the wall as the building seemed to shake. I wanted to scream or cry, but I choked it off. I slapped my hands against the stones to keep from falling and felt something brush past my palm with a wet, sticky sensation. One of the névoacria slipped away, leaving a crimson trail on the wall that the stone seemed to drink. I twitched away and stared down at my hands, appalled with what I had done and horrified by what I saw.

The backs of my hands were streaked red where I’d wiped away my tears: half-frozen, bloody tears that now ran bright across my knuckles as they thawed. No. No, not this too . . . I wanted to flee, to hide. What was happening to me . . . ? Denials crescendoed in my head in mocking, shouting chorus. . . .

I didn’t realize I’d given voice to those fears until I felt Carlos touch my hand. I hadn’t even seen him come close and reach; it was the softer chill of his finger sweeping across my hand that startled me back to sense. I gasped and jumped away from him, but there was no place to go. He wasn’t going to hurt me; he couldn’t—we were bound together to a purpose—but I was still afraid and my stomach knotted, twisting in my gut and freezing the air in my lungs.

I was panting as Carlos backed off a step. “How long have you wept blood?” He wasn’t shouting or angry but curious.

I shook my head too rapidly and caught myself. I bit my lip and breathed through my nose until I calmed enough to speak without shaking, but I wasn’t doing well. I let out a laugh edged in hysteria. “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I bleed light and cry blood. Since I got back. Since London. Since . . . I don’t know.” I really was losing it if I was confessing my fears to Carlos. But the words tumbled out, echoing inside my head, and I couldn’t stop them.

“Hm . . .” He drew a shape in the air between us and it shimmered red before fading to gold and drifting away like dust. He looked me over, frowning. Then he pointed just to the left of my breastbone. “What dead thing made that?”