Nevermore

45 A Door

They found the double-doors of the palace open, a long smear of blood leading them inside to the first chamber—the blue chamber. Crystal snowflakes hung suspended from a vaulted ceiling, wavering ever so slightly in the eerie stillness that now replaced the once feverish chaos of the masquerade.

The revelers had since stopped their antics and had receded from the center of the floor. They stood in a mass of confusion and fear, masks lowered, eyes darting in the direction of the open doors leading into the purple chamber. Following on Reynolds’s heels, Isobel rushed into the room. Or rather, into the space where the purple chamber should have been. Instead she found herself back in the warehouse—at the Grim Facade—the raging goth music blasting at full volume, the sudden noise of it startling her so much that for a split second she’d thought the world truly had ended.

Confused, Isobel turned to look behind her. The archway to the chamber remained, freestanding in midair, all the courtiers watching her, their faces as stunned as hers. She glanced down. Between her feet, a long wet smear of blood marred the floor.

She followed its path with her eyes, her gaze stopping on the hem of a scarlet-stained robe.

The Red Death. It glided amid the other costumers, who, Isobel noticed, began to consist of goths and dream-revelers alike. And the two worlds were only just starting to notice each other.

Reynolds appeared suddenly at her side. “Look out,” he growled, shoving her.

A hissing sound pierced her ears as a Noc came sailing between them. Reynolds, his arm as quick as a striking cobra, grasped the Noc by the neck and slammed the creature to the floor, where it shattered on impact, a look of shock registering on its face the instant before it smashed apart.

Several masqueraders and goths squealed and shrank back from the commotion.

“Reynolds!” Isobel gasped, pointing. Behind him, another Noc formed through a cloud of violet murk. Reynolds whirled, taking a swipe with one arm, his movements precise, practiced.

His attack sailed through the violet mist, and, laughing, the Noc slid away. Another swooped in to take its place, snatching Reynolds’s hat from his head and placing it on his own, while yet a third formed through the air, its crimson claws raised.

Isobel rushed the Noc that was poised to strike. At the sight of her, it screeched in terror and dissipated. She heard an echoing shriek from somewhere to her right, followed by another smash. Then the head of the Noc that had stolen Reynolds’s hat, now free of its body, rolled to a stop at her feet, its eye sockets hollow and void. Isobel brought her foot down, crushing the face in.

The remaining Nocs wailed in terror, and as one, they receded, flitting apart as they took their bird forms. Their dark wings whisked them up and higher, until they reached the banisters of the gallery, where they perched. There they squawked and hopped, their caws ringing in their throats like curses.

Isobel glanced down in time to see Reynolds replace his hat over thick, dark, and smoothed-back hair.

Somewhere in the crowd, a girl screamed. The goth music ground to a slow halt, and the moaning singer’s voice died out. Everyone began to take notice, to shrink back from the visage of the Red Death. At its feet lay one of the dream-revelers, her silver dress spotted with crimson. Beneath her dove’s mask, her face oozed, glistening red from the pores.

“It is happening,” Reynolds said. “You must go to the woodlands now, find the door with the signs. You’ll know it when you see it. The link between our worlds is there inside. You’ll know that, too, when you see it. Godspeed, and beware the white one.”

“What—but I don’t even know how to—”

“Go,” he said. “Only you can change the dream. Only you can sever the link.”

She hesitated. “What about you?”

“I will fight here.”

She shook her head. “That’s not what I meant.”

His eyes locked with hers. Surprise lit their darkness from within. And then he laughed, a bitter sound. “For me, the worst has long since been done. Now go.”

“But—!”

“I cannot vanquish the Red Death. Not without killing the boy whose soul it imprisons. I can only hold it at bay, and only for so long. Then know that I will do what I must.”

“What? Brad? No! But—but I don’t even know how to get to the woodlands from here!”

“Make a door, Isobel,” he said. “When there is no way, you must make a way.” His hands disappeared beneath the folds of his cloak. There was a scrape of metal, and in the next moment, his gloved hands emerged. In each, he now brandished a short curved blade. A pair of silver cutlasses. They glinted in a pass of strobe lights. Without a further word, he turned from her. His gait measured and assured, he walked a straight line for the figure of the Red Death.

As though alerted through some extra sense, the glow in the phantasm’s eyes brightened like hell-fire, and Death turned to greet him.

Isobel watched on as, for a single moment, the two figures from the dreamworld stood opposite each other, like knights on a chessboard. One robed in black. One in red.

When the tension between them broke into movement, it was like watching a battle for light between moths. Cloaks whispered and curled. A blade flashed. Like jagged leaves stirred by a storm, they swept round each other, neither landing a blow, yet each of them whirling in a perpetual fury of motion.

One of Reynolds’s blades caught the cloak of the Red Death. The crimson-soaked fabric fell partially back, revealing a head and torso that might as well have belonged to a skeleton.

Ribs strained to break the tight yellow skin that clung to the creature’s body like wet cloth. Blood dripped from its sunken eyes, from its shriveled mouth, and from the tips of its outstretched fingers.

The space cleared for them by the crowd once more widened with a collective retreat. The goths lowered their masks to watch, their stark faces appalled, afraid, confused, and then, finally—excited.

Then someone actually cheered.

Typical, was the only thing Isobel could think. Even given the circumstances, she couldn’t help but roll her eyes. The goths—they thought it wasn’t real. They thought it was all a show.

And why not, when this sort of twisted crap was just their thing?

Above, along the gallery, an audience of Nocs crowed and rasped frenziedly in their bird forms. They hopped the length of the banister and followed the fight with their beady, bloodthirsty eyes, as though anxious to join in yet too afraid to swoop down and add their own blows.

A wboosh sound, a great rushing of air, came from the center of the open space. Like a house of cards, the Red Death collapsed in on itself, swallowed whole by the floor. It left in its wake a dark and ominous stain. In the next instant it emerged from behind Reynolds, rearing over him like an all-consuming shadow.

As though by magnetic force, Reynolds’s blades were swept out from his grip. In midair they turned on him, and Reynolds whirled just in time to accept the thrust of both into his chest.

A collective scream arose from the mass of onlookers, Isobel’s shrill cry among theirs.

She broke forward in a run as the Red Death drove Reynolds forcefully back. He plowed hard into the floorboards and slid, unconscious, to a halt at Isobel’s feet.

“Omigod!” she screeched, landing on her knees at his side.

What should she do? Her hands fluttered uselessly over him, like stupefied butterflies. She reached for the blades but then snatched her hands back. Her gaze fell to the white scarf covering his nose and mouth. Was CPR even an option at this point?

His eyes popped open, and she yelped. He glared up at her past the brim of his hat and, with each hand, grabbed both blades by the hilt. He yanked them from his chest in one clean motion. Gray ash poured out from the would-be wounds like sand. Then the openings closed over, and all traces of damage vanished into the blackness of his clothes.

Isobel gaped.

“Why are you still here?” he growled, then launched himself up from the floor. Blades crossed, he charged, then drove them into the Red Death’s back, stopping its approach toward a group of retreating girls dressed as fallen angels. The demon arched and howled—a sound like a hundred baying hounds. In a wrenching motion, Reynolds uncrossed the blades in a clean swipe. They sliced neatly through, and the bloodied figure dispersed with a shriek, transformed into a syrupy red-black liquid that slapped the floor and sent a slash of bright crimson to mar the clean white of Reynolds’s scarf.

There was no moment of reprieve.

The liquid on the floor pooled and writhed. It gathered itself, and like a phantom emerging from its grave, the robed form rose, whole once again. Its ruby eyes flashed rage.

Like everyone else, Isobel stood rooted to the spot, mesmerized by the otherworldly battle taking place before her. At least until one of Reynolds’s blades sailed in her direction. It pierced the floor right next to her foot. She jumped, staggering back.

“Go!” he boomed.

Thinking she shouldn’t wait to see if he’d send the other one after her, she turned and sped pell-mell through the throng of hapless spectators. She shoved and nudged her way past countless empty stares from innumerable masks.

But where was she going?

The answer came when something caught her foot, and she tripped. She met the floor palms-first with a smack.

“Whoops. Need a hand?”

That voice. Isobel twisted around to find him hovering over her, the hollow, jagged portion of his lost arm held out to her. “Oh, wait,” Pinfeathers said, withdrawing the lacking appendage. “Already gave you one of those today, didn’t I?”

Isobel pushed up from the floor, ready to run. He shoved her down again with one foot. She fell with a sharp gasp of pain, and he flipped her to sprawl flat onto her back. A squall of fluttering appeared behind him, and one by one, the other Nocs took their true forms until, like a flock of ravenous vultures, they encircled her.

With one black boot, Pinfeathers trapped her outstretched arm against the floor. With his remaining hand, and to the delight of the other Nocs, he lifted something curved, sharp, and gleaming to rest on his shoulder. Isobel’s eyes widened at the sight of Reynolds’s cutlass, the one he’d thrown at her. Only now did she realize that he must have meant for her to take it, only now did she see how stupid she’d been for leaving it there, open for grabs.

“Well.” Pinfeathers sighed, twisting the blade, letting it catch the light. “You know what they say—eye for an eye and all that.”

The Nocs barked with raucous laughter.

“No!” She twisted at the waist, sending a fierce kick into Pinfeathers’s side. To her surprise, her aim landed true, and under the snug fabric of his jacket, she felt part of his torso cave in with an audible crunch. He roared at her, though more out of fury, it seemed, than from pain.

The other Nocs, their laughter transforming into sympathetic hisses, writhed and withered away from her, cringing and clutching into themselves like snakes.

“Hold her!” Pinfeathers ordered with a stern point of the cutlass. As one, the other Nocs obeyed. Cold clay hands fastened to her free arm, claws dug into her legs as they pinned her.

Isobel wrenched and thrashed beneath their grip, her gaze darting. But there was nothing she could grab, nothing to use as a weapon, no one who could help her.

She held her breath and shut her eyes, braced for the pain. In her mind, she groped through her thoughts and formed the image of a door. She thought of one that would take her to the woodlands. Make a way, Reynolds had said. She pictured the door behind her, right at her back, pressed against her the way the floor was now. With the hand held closest at her side, she felt with her fingertips for the doorknob in her imagination . . . and touched something solid.

She gasped, her eyes springing open.

In a split second, the cutlass came down, whistling as it divided the air in its path. Isobel clenched every muscle, ready to feel the severing of her arm from her body. She gripped the doorknob that it was now too late to turn. The blade rained down, and with a clank, she felt it—break?

Low whispers erupted from the Nocs, the sound of suspicion and fear. They released her and shrank back at once, unanimous in their recoil.

Isobel had to raise her head from the floor to look, to make sure that her mind hadn’t simply blocked the pain. It was the cutlass that lay broken and detached, though, and not any part of her. Her widened gaze shot immediately to Pinfeathers, who, still looming over her, raised the fractured hilt to his scrutiny.

“Hmm,” he said, “I was afraid that might be the case.”

Isobel took her chance. She grabbed the doorknob she’d made in the floor and twisted it. The ground beneath her swung free, and they toppled through.

Taken by surprise, Pinfeathers tumbled past her, while Isobel held tightly to the knob. She opened her mouth in a silent scream as her body jerked to a halt and she dangled above a world of ash, of withered leaves and black charcoal trees. She looked down between her feet in time to see Pinfeathers dispel into thick spirals of ink before he could shatter against the ground that lay no more than ten feet below.

It had worked, she realized, casting a quick glance around her. She was back! She’d made it to the woodlands.

The heads of the other Nocs appeared in a circle around the open door above her. Their whispers continued, and they turned their heads to look at one another, though not a one of them made even the slightest move to grab her.

Isobel’s grip on the doorknob began to slip. She let go and, prepared for the drop, landed squarely on her feet. Pinfeathers gathered himself once more into his humanoid form. He stood at a distance from her while other Nocs, morphing into birds, poured themselves through the open doorway. They lighted on the barren, swaying branches of the skeletal trees, watching, waiting.

Ash rained around them, heavy and thick enough to collect on the shoulders of Varen’s jacket. By now, Isobel’s hair had become completely unraveled, and it whipped about her face in a flurry of cold winds.

The purple sky overhead swirled and roiled like the eye of a hurricane. The door that hung open and suspended in the sky swung shut with the next gust of air. She peered through the trees, and there she saw another door. This one was narrower, familiar to her, and she knew it at once as the one she sought. It was almost, she dared to think, as if the door had been seeking her.

Or lying in wait.

As she approached, her eyes went to the two signs taped to the door’s surface. The words on the signs were written backward, but she didn’t need to read them to know what they said.

She knew that the top one read DO NOT ENTER, while the one below it warned the reader to BEWARE OF BESS.