Vanished

CHAPTER 33

In the darkness of Regent’s Canal on that cricket-serenaded summer night, Marsden chose to talk rather than let me teach him to swim. I guess he knew my technique would involve a lot of holding him under. “The asetem-ankh-astet are a type of vampire,” he started.

“I figured that out from what Sekhmet said. What makes them special? Why do you seem a bit more freaked out about them than Edward’s kind?” Not that I wasn’t, but I wanted to know if my heightened fear near them was just my problem or if it was their effect on everyone.

“They have a glamour of terror. And they feed on more than blood.”

“All of them do. Sekhmet said these feed on souls—the ka, she called it.”

“Not that I’ve seen, but I suppose you could think of it that way. They dine on emotional energy—on the psychic component.”

“Isn’t that just another kind of Grey power?”

He scoffed. “That’s an expression of the energy. Blood’s just a. a fuel source, so t’speak. What makes the Pharaohn so hideous is he eats, he breathes, he lives chaos. It gives him power beyond the ordinary vampire sort of guff. He breeds mayhem, havoc, and destruction. He uses his people to create it through devastation, death, pain, terror. whatever it takes. Y’can imagine other vampires don’t care for that.”

“Yeah. So what?”

“The current Pharaohn seems to have some longer-range plan in mind that involves the Grey itself. Something that either breeds chaos or feeds on it to do something else. He’s been looking for a tool that’ll make the Grey. flow the way he needs it to—a Greywalker with a special ability plying it as he directs, in the right place. We’re a rare enough bird as it is that he decided not to wait until the right one come along but to grab a few and see what he could do by force. You could say he’s been working on his technique awhile at our expense.

“Your father was a particularly favored experiment of his. Fortunately he ruined the Pharaohn’s plans, but he left you behind for the bastard to try again.”

“And the Pharaohn punished him for escaping. So you said. What did you mean by that?”

“You ever talked to your dad? To his ghost, I mean?”

“No. I tried but it’s like there’s a hole where the ghost ought to be.”

Marsden nodded, his lank hair swinging. “Because the Pharaohn’s got ’im bottled up somewhere. He’s got a hole like that Hardy tree and stuck ’im in it.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “He made a hole like that? I thought vampires didn’t have any magic.”

“He didn’t make it. They just happen. He found it, or moved it. And he shackled your dad’s ghost with torments and stuck him in it to scream and suffer till he’s got something better to do with him.”

I tightened my grip in anger without thinking, pressing Marsden against the boat’s stern rail. “How come I didn’t see the guardian beast around the tree then?”

“What?”

“When I got near where my dad should have been, the beast turned up. You know it?”

“Course! Rattling thing of bones and ghost-sinew. Nasty temper.” His mouth quirked at one corner. “I don’t like that.”

“It’s not high on my hit parade, either.”

“What did this hole look like? Like the tree or different?”

“Very different. It was more like a fire around a core of emptiness. It was a million colors and it was completely silent. The guardian beast didn’t want me to go near it.”

“Colors. That is trouble. Means the white worm’s figured out the beast’s weakness. The guardian’s got a bit of a vision problem, see? Sequences of certain colors cause it confusion and blindness. Whatever he’s up to, the king of worms doesn’t want the beast anywhere near it.”

“Because the beast would destroy it?” I remembered my first meeting with Wygan as he sat in his broadcast booth, a rack of colored lightbulbs flashing randomly. Now I knew they’d kept the guardian beast at bay; Wygan was already a threat to the Grey and had to hide from the monster that patrolled its borders. Whatever he was planning had to be pretty bad.

Marsden nodded again. “I’d bet my life.”

“Then why doesn’t the beast come after me?”

“Think it reads minds, do ya?” He scoffed. “Got no reason to until you do something to threaten the Grey. So long as you’re not doing nothing, it’s not interested in you, no matter how weird your psychic shape is.”

“My what?”

“What do I look like to you? In the Grey?”

“Like broken glass and mirrors—colorless, moving shards.”

“As I should—I’m neutral to the Grey, as most Greywalkers are. But you are bright white to me—all the colors at once. You’re active to the Grey—you’re tied up in the living Grey itself because he tied you to it, didn’t he?”

I nodded while saying, “Wygan is the Pharaohn—the ‘white worm-man’ my dad wrote about. What’s he up to?” My voice sounded like poison.

“I’ve no idea, but it will affect the Grey—else why would he need a Greywalker for his dirty work? — and he’ll move heaven and hell to get it. He’ll burn you out like a candle.”

“As if you care what happens to me.”

His face twisted into a fearsome expression. “I care what becomes of us all, girl. You’ve a lot of brass, but that’s not enough—he’s three thousand years old and a lot more cunning than you. You’re a bit of flash paper—a fuse—for his bomb. You may have that gift of persuasion, but it’s not going to work on him. You can’t fast-talk him into changing his mind.”

I shook my head as if flinging water from my ears. “What the hell are you talking about now?”

Marsden growled and whipped his head side to side as if he were looking for watchers. “You think it’s just something everyone does? Do you?”

Now he had me frowning. I didn’t know what he meant, but I was annoyed by his tone.

“It’s your particular talent,” he went on. “We’ve all got one or two—us in the Grey. You are unnaturally persuasive. Didn’t you ever notice that everyone answers your bloody damned questions more readily than most people’s?”

“If I was any good at persuasion, why didn’t I get my mother off my back a lot earlier, hm?”

“Maybe y’didn’t really want to.”

“And maybe you’re really full of shit. It’s just a psychological trick. I was taught it in college,” I growled. “It’s not some kind of magic—”

“Bollocks. You got better at it; you learned a new way to pretend it wasn’t special. You learned how to endure, how to act like everyone else, how to blend in, how to lie to yourself so you could lie to others. That’s what you’re good at. And look at what you use it for: snoopin’, pryin’, doin’ other people’s dirty work—”

I grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “Shut up!”

“You should be home. You should be putting paid to that bastard Wygan and whatever he’s up to, not chasing after Edward Kammerling’s blasted fantasies—that is, if you really think you can.”

“It’s all connected, you blind idiot! You’re such a know-it-all and you can’t see that? I don’t know how it all fits together, but I won’t leave until I do! And I’m not willing to sacrifice others to save my own skin!” I shouted, shoving him over the rail. I startled myself with what I’d said and the heat of the anger that had forced it out.

Marsden flipped over and sprawled on the dock, slowly rolling onto his back, laughing at me. “You’re madder than what I am. You think you need to stay on Kammerling’s good side? Need to keep on with your charade of an investigation? Or are you afraid—”

“I want my friend back!” I spat. I leapt off the boat and squatted down beside him, holding him down on the dock with one hand. He didn’t try to rise but skewered me with his eyeless glance. I met it and didn’t flinch at the eerie sense of vision from those scarred hollows. “I don’t give a crap about Edward’s business except how it might be part of Wygan’s plan. I know it’s all connected: Vampires took Will Novak and I want him back. I will leave when I have him or when whoever took him is back in their grave forever. And I don’t care about your warnings, or the Pharaohn’s lackeys, or the threats of stone goddesses. Do you understand?”

Marsden just lay still and said nothing, his empty eye sockets gleaming a transient blue. “It’s a key.”