Dark Siren (12 page)

What had felt like cobwebs the last time she stepped through these doors, now felt something like fingers touching her face—cold, clammy,
strong
fingers. Alice batted the invisible fingers away as she went through the doors. Of course there was nothing there to bat away, so her hands met with air. She shuddered as she emerged in the dark, empty, suffocating room, and ran nervous fingers through her hair, checking to make sure the fingers were completely gone.

Without wasting any time, Alice and Isaac padded their way down the slightly sloping steps, holding onto the handrail for support, and reached the flat area at the foot of the big screen. The knocked-over trash can was still there, as were the popcorn boxes and empty soda bottles.

“Now what?” Alice asked, letting her backpack fall to the floor and unzipping it.

Isaac walked around the open space counterclockwise. He did this only once, returning to his original position in the center of the flat area. By the time he had returned, Alice had Trapper in her hands, with the strap safely wrapped around the back of her neck, and was warming up the flash. She checked that the toggle hadn’t moved to MAT. It hadn’t. It remained firmly stuck to the REF setting.

Isaac removed his charcoal suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, exposing the bangle he had always worn on his right wrist—an ornate, brass thing encrusted with jewels and etchings, some of which Alice couldn’t recognize. But she recognized the bangle itself. He had been wearing it when they had been dating almost two years ago. He never took it off, like it was fused to his skin. Maybe it was. When he waved his left hand over the bangle and began to whisper to himself, a soft blue light manifested from the etched symbols and jewels.

Feathers of pale blue smoke, like steam, rose from Isaac’s wrist as the armlet reacted to his muttered incantation and the odd, circular movements of his fingers. But the spirits didn’t come charging out of the darkness to attack, at least not immediately, and they didn’t come even after a number of motes of blue light had flown out of the bangle and arranged themselves into a perfect circle a few feet away from where Isaac was standing.

The lights looked more and more like tiny balls of flame as the seconds passed. They gently pulsed, bathing the auditorium in soft blue bursts. In the center of the circle, a bright white light was beginning to push its way into existence. Alice got the impression, watching the tiny shafts of white light as they streaked out of a central point, of a drill poking a hole through solid rock to let sunshine into a dark cave.

This white light, the final manifestation of Isaac’s unknowable power, completed the spell. Alice knew then, with instinctual certainty, if the spirits of this place hadn’t cared much about Isaac before, he had certainly captured their attention now.

“Call to her,” Isaac said, in a hushed tone. “Do it quickly.”

Alice approached the floating circlet of pulsing light. The air coming off it was cool, and she felt herself wanting to touch it, wanting to reach out and put her fingers against the light. It wouldn’t hurt her, the power may even help nourish her, but she didn’t want to risk it. Instead she approached with her camera held low in her hands, cleared her throat, and called out.

“Emily?”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Shadow Woman

Though Emily hadn’t replied, not out loud, Alice knew she was close. Maybe even close enough to hear her. The auditorium was as quiet as it had ever been, only it now seemed to be full of people. The gentle light emanating from the pulsing magic circle floating in the middle of the room projected itself onto the multitude of empty rows of seats.

“I can feel her,” Alice said.

“You’re sure?” Isaac asked. He had one arm, the arm with the brass bangle on it, up at chest level and curled so it ran parallel across his chest. His left arm, meanwhile, hovered over the bangle, fingers twitching occasionally like a puppeteer giving life to a doll.

“I know she is,” Alice said, “But she’s not alone. Why isn’t she replying?”

“I don’t know. We should be able to hear her.”

“Something’s wrong.”

Alice pulled away from the light and brought Trapper to her eye. She peered in through the view finder and focused her will into the device. As she did so, the thin, cloudy film which seemed to blur her vision began to stabilize. But the eye of the camera filled with light, and she had to look away for a moment, wincing from the brightness of it. The light was only a soft glow in the world of the living, but in the world of the dead, it was a brilliant beacon even more powerful than a lighthouse.

And there was Emily, only she wasn’t moving.

Alice called to her, but Emily seemed to be frozen to the spot, and with the bright white floodlight bathing her she looked very much like the deer in headlights everyone talks about.
Why?
Alice thought,
why isn’t she moving?
She pulled her eyes away from the camera, blinked, and could almost see Emily’s figure superimposed in the darkness of the auditorium, exactly where she stood. Alice ran, dashing up the stairs two at a time, and then looked into her viewfinder once more. Unfortunately, she had overshot the spot where Emily had been standing, and she was now looking up at a huge man with bulging muscles and a gas mask on his face. He was wearing cargo khakis, a pair of combat boots, and a dirty, white, wife beater mottled with blood. A pair of silver dog-tags dangled from his neck and glinted against the bright light inside the Reflection.

In an instant she recognized his energy, his aura, his presence. An image flashed in her mind of a man pressing big thumbs into her eyes—this man. She had felt the pain after she snapped a shot of Emily in the theater, but hadn’t been able to figure out where the pain had come from. Now he stood before her, as real as anyone else—as real as Isaac standing only a few feet away, as real as the rows and rows of faded velvet seats, as real as Alice herself—and he was starting down the stairs. Whether he could sense Alice’s presence or not she didn’t know, but she backed up all the same, putting one unsteady foot on the step below her, then another, and then another.

But there was something else about the gas mask man, too; a feeling which made the scar on Alice’s back begin to throb with pain.

Alice spun around, holding the camera at eye-level, and saw through it Emily’s silhouette, stark black against the blinding light in the center of the theater. Emily, however, wasn’t alone down there. There was a woman with her. The woman’s arms were up in mock surrender, her fingers stretched open, palms toward the light. As she closed the gap between her hands, Alice saw that the big, pulsing ball of light was… shrinking.

“I’m losing the connection,” Isaac said, his voice rising with worry, “Something’s trying to close it.”

“It’s the woman,” Alice said.

“I’m going to try and rip the hole open further. I’m going to pull Emily out.”

“What? How! You said you couldn’t open a portal!”

“I lied. But if this shadow woman is strong enough to block me out, we may not get another chance at this.”

Isaac’s bangle hand came up and Alice felt—she didn’t see it, but she
felt
it—another presence as it entered the fray. She smelled honey and mint, heard a swoosh, and noticed how the shadows around Isaac seemed to thicken. Following the sweet smell was the heady aroma of pestilence, of plague, and of foulness. But through the camera she saw nothing save for the woman whose shadows danced behind her back, and Emily, who still hadn’t moved.

“Emily!” Alice screamed, “You have to move now!” but Emily wasn’t moving. She couldn’t hear Alice, or maybe she could hear, but couldn’t move at all, as if she was stuck in a bout of sleep paralysis. Maybe she truly had been frozen, by fear or by magic—it didn’t matter which. All that mattered was that Emily was running out of time, and she wasn’t responding.

It didn’t matter now whether Alice was looking through the eye of her camera or not, the auditorium was full of light—summer sky blue in the world of the living, milk white in the world of the dead. The whole room filled with a humming sound and the rush of air. Alice felt her hair pull away from her face and tug at her from behind, as if a helicopter were taking off in the center of the theater.

“It’s not working,” Isaac said, his voice rising above the sound of the hum, “She’s killing the connection. Whatever you’re going to do with that thing, do it now!”

Alice centered the frame on the shadow woman, but when she saw her full profile, the pain on her back intensified.

The shadow woman’s hands had been pushed apart by a sudden burst of light, but she had regained herself and the light was dimming again as she closed the gap once more. Seconds. They only had seconds to get Emily out. But Emily was only seconds, a short dash, away from the light. Alice could see her running down the stairs two at a time, in full control of her movements, spurred into action of her own accord.

And the gas mask man was chasing her.

She had neither heard a sound, nor immediately seen anything. It was something she felt on her skin and a pop in her ears like a change in pressure. She leaned onto the handrail for support, steadying herself, and when she looked through the viewfinder again saw the gas mask man now only a shimmering shadow against the white light. He was running after Emily, chasing her down the stairs and gaining on her fast. He was bigger than her, and would close the gap before she reached the light.

If that happened, it was all over.

Alice called on the power she kept buried in the pit of her own soul and felt it rise to the surface in an electric rush which left her feeling cold, but buzzing. Her finger came up to the button on the camera and she steadied it before snapping a picture which would trap the essence of one of these entities, but she suddenly couldn’t decide which one to hit. She couldn’t do both. The time it would take to snap two pictures was too great for the time she had, and even if she had enough time, she knew she was running low on energy.

One shot was all she had, and then she would have to pay the consequences later.

She saw how the shadow woman’s hands were no more than a basketball apart, saw Emily running down the stairs—running for her life—and saw the big thing chasing after her to take her life away. When Alice saw how his hand was coming over his head, winding up for an attempt at a grab, she didn’t have to see anything else. Alice pressed the button the camera.

There was a click, a bright flash, and her body filled with the sensation of electric discharge. She shuddered and closed her eyes through the strangely pleasurable sensation. When she opened her eyes again and stared through the viewfinder, she saw… nothing. Darkness. The humming sound had abruptly ended, leaving her ears slightly ringing as they adjusted. Her eyes, likewise, still had the impression of shapes scarred into them, but these were only ghosts.

The camera made a whirring sound, and then spat a Polaroid out of the front slot.

“Emily?” Alice said, “Did you make it?”

“No,” Isaac said, “The woman blocked me out.”

She tried to look through the viewfinder again, but saw nothing at all. The theater was dark, sure, but the reason for this obscurity went further than mundane darkness. Of this Alice was certain. The woman hadn’t just blocked Isaac’s magic out, she had somehow obfuscated the entire Reflection.

If Emily had been lost to them before, she would be almost impossible to find now.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Playing with Fire

She reached a shaky hand around the front of the camera, plucked the cool Polaroid from the slot, and shook it before shining light on the picture. The last time she had attempted to capture something in this place it hadn’t worked. She wondered if the spirits here had some kind of protection Alice wasn’t aware of. Hopefully, she had at least spared Emily from having been caught by the gas mask man.

Her heart raced. The Polaroid was a frame of shimmering, moving light. It was as if someone had taken a picture of the sun—a bright, moving, almost fluid light—and, in doing so, had caught a piece of it. There, at the center, a shape started to form. Tall and broad, it flickered in and out of focus. Isaac saw it too, and he jumped when the shape charged at them from within the frame. Alice had been expecting it this time.

“I caught it,” she said, holding the picture firmly between two fingers. “I caught the bastard.”

“Where’s the woman?” Isaac asked, “Did you get her too?”

Alice shook her head.

“Why?”

Of all the things she had expected to hear from him,
why
wasn’t one of them. The word caught her off guard. “Why?” she asked. “What do you mean?”

“Why didn’t you attack the shadow woman? She was dispelling my magic. If I could have kept the rift open a little longer—”

“Emily still wouldn’t have made it because
this
son of a bitch had almost caught her.”

“Maybe, but with the shadow woman gone, we would have been able to figure something out. I don’t, and didn’t, feel the same power from this thing as I did from that woman.”