Daughter of Regals (42 page)

It sucked the strength
out of Kristen with every breath. Before we’d gone five blocks, she was leaning
most of her weight on me. That was frightening, not because she was more than I
could bear, but because she seemed to weigh so little. Her substance was
bleeding away. In the garish and unreliable light of the streetlamps, shop windows,
and signs, only the dark marks on her face and neck appeared real.

But we were given one
blessing: the city itself left us alone. It had done its part by delaying me
earlier. We passed through crowds and traffic, past gutted tenements and
stalking gangs, as if we didn’t deserve to be noticed anymore.

Kristen didn’t complain,
and I didn’t let her stumble. One by one, we covered the blocks. When she
wanted to rest, we put our backs to the hot walls and leaned against them until
she was ready to go on.

During that whole long, slow
creep through the pitiless dark, she only spoke to me once. While we were
resting again, sometime after we turned on 49th, she said quietly, “I still don’t
know your name.”

We were committed to
each other; I owed her the truth. “I don’t either,” I said. Behind the wall of
the past, any number of things were hidden from me.

She seemed to accept
that. Or maybe she just didn’t have enough strength left to worry about both
Reese and me. She rested a little while longer. Then we started walking again.

And at last we left the
last slum behind and made our slow, frail, approach to The Root Cellar. Between
streetlights I looked for the moon, but it wasn’t able to show through the
clenched haze. I was sweating like a frightened animal. But Kristen might have
been immune to the heat. All she did was lean on me and walk and bleed.

I didn’t know what to
expect at Root’s mansion. Trouble of some kind. An entire squadron of security
guards. Minor demons lurking in the bushes around the front porch. Or an empty
building, deserted for the night. But the place wasn’t deserted. All the rest
of the mansion was dark; the greenhouse burned with light. Reese wasn’t able to
leave his pieces alone before his show. And none of the agents that Root might
have used against us appeared. He was that sure of himself.

On the other hand, the
front door was locked with a variety of bolts and wires.

But Kristen was
breathing sharply, urgently. Fear and desire and determination made her as
feverish as her brother; she wanted me to take her inside, to Reese’s defense.
And she’d lost a dangerous amount of blood. She wasn’t going to be able to stay
on her feet much longer. I took hold of the door, and it opened without a
sound. Cool air poured out at us, as concentrated as a moan of anguish.

We went in.

The foyer was dark. But
a wash of light from the cracks of the greenhouse doors showed us our way. The
carpet muffled our feet. Except for her ragged breathing and my frightened
heart, we were as silent as spirits.

But as we got near the
greenhouse, I couldn’t keep quiet anymore. I was too scared.

I caused the doors to
burst open with a crash that shook the walls. At the same time, I tried to
charge forward.

The brilliance of the
gallery seemed to explode in my face. For an instant, I was dazzled.

And I was stopped. The
light felt as solid as the wall that cut me off from the past.

Almost at once, my
vision cleared, and I saw Mortice Root and Reese Dona. They were alone in the
room, standing in front of a sculpture I hadn’t seen earlier—the biggest piece
here. Reese must have brought it in his rented truck. It was a wild,
swept-winged, malignant bird of prey, its beak wide in a cry of fury. One of its
clawed feet was curled like a fist. The other was gripped deep into a’ man’s
chest. Agony stretched the man’s face.

At least Reese had the
decency to be surprised. Root wasn’t. He faced us and grinned.

Reese gaped dismay at
Kristen and me for one moment. Then, with a wrench like an act of violence, he
turned his back. His shoulders hunched; his arms clamped over his stomach. “I
told you to go away.” His voice sounded like he was strangling. “I told you to
leave her alone.”

The light seemed to blow
against me like a wind. Like the current of the river that carried me away,
taking me from place to place without past and without future, hope.  it was
rising. It held me in the doorway; I couldn’t move through it.

“You are a fool,” Root
said to me. His voice rode the light as if he were shouting. “You have been
denied. You cannot enter here.”

He was so strong that I
was already half turned to leave when Kristen saved me.

As pale as ash, she
stood beside me. Fresh blood from her nose and ears marked her skin. The towel
around her neck was sodden and terrible. She looked too weak to keep standing.
Yet she matched her capacity for desperation against. Reese’s need.

“No,” she said in the
teeth of the light and Root’s grin. “He can stay. I want him here.”

I jerked myself toward
Reese again.

Ferocity came at me like
a cataract; but I stood against it. I had Kristen’s permission. That had to be
enough.

“Look at her!” I croaked
at his back. “She’s your sister!
Look
at her!”

He didn’t seem to hear
me at all. He was hunched over himself in front of his work. “Go away,” he
breathed weakly, as if he were talking to himself. “I can’t stand it. Just go
away.”

Gritting prayers between
my teeth like curses, I lowered my head, called up every ache and fragment of
strength I had left, and took one step into the greenhouse.

Reese fell to his knees
as if I’d broken the only string that held him upright.

At the same time, the
bird of prey poised above him moved.

Its wings beat downward.
Its talons clenched. The heart of its victim burst in his chest.

From his clay throat
came a brief hoarse wail of pain. Driven by urgency, I took two more steps
through the intense pressure walled against me.

And all the pieces
displayed in the greenhouse started to move.

Tormented statuettes
fell from their niches, cracked open, and cried out. Gargoyles mewed hideously.
The mouths of victims gaped open and whined. In a few swift moments, the air
was full of muffled shrieks and screams.

Through the pain, and
the fierce current forcing me away from Reese, and the horror, I heard Mortice
Root start to laugh.

If Kristen had failed me
then, I would have been finished. But in some way she had made herself blind
and deaf to what was happening. Her entire soul was focused on one object—help
for her brother—and she willed me forward with all the passion she had learned
in ten years of self-sacrifice. She was prepared to spend the last of her life
here for Reese’s sake.

She made it possible for
me to keep going.

Black anguish rose like
a current at me. And the force of the light mounted. I felt it ripping at my
skin. It was as hot as the hunger ravening for Reese’s heart.

Yet I took two more
steps.

And two more.

And reached him.

He still knelt under the
wingspread of the nightmare bird he had created. The light didn’t hurt him; he
didn’t feel it at all. He was on his knees because he simply couldn’t stand. He
gripped his arms over his heart to keep himself from howling.

There I noticed
something I should have recognized earlier. He had sculpted a man for his bird
of prey to attack, not a woman. I could see the figure clearly enough now to
realize that Reese had given the man his own features. Here, at least, he had
shaped one of his own terrors rather than merely bringing out the darkness of
Mortice Root’s clay.

After that, nothing else
mattered. I didn’t feel the pain or the pressure; ferocity and dismay lost
their power.

I knelt in front of
Reese, took hold of his shoulders, and hugged him like a child. “Just look at
her,” I breathed into his ear. “She’s your sister. You don’t have to do this to
her.”

She stood across the
room from me with her eyes closed and her determination gripped in her small
fists.

From under her eyelids,
stark blood streamed down her cheeks.

 I pleaded. “I can help
you. Just look.” In the end, he didn’t look at her. He didn’t need to. He knew
what was happening.

 Suddenly, he wrenched out
of my embrace. His arms flung me aside. He raised his head, and one lorn wail
corded his throat:

“
Kristen
!”

Root’s laughter stopped
as if it’d been cut down with an axe.

That cry was all I
needed. It came right from Reese’s heart, too pure to be denied. It was
permission, and I took it.

I rose to my feet,
easily now, easily. All the things that stood in my way made no difference.
Transformed, I faced Mortice Root across the swelling force of his malice. All
his confidence was gone to panic.

Slowly, I raised my
arms.

Beams of white sprouted
from my palms, clean white almost silver. It wasn’t fire or light in any worldly
sense; but it blazed over my head like light, ran down my arms like fire. It
took my coat and pants, even my shoes, away from me in flames. Then it wrapped
me in the robes of God until all my body burned.

Root tried to scream,
but his voice didn’t make any sound.

Towering white-silver, I
reached up into the storm-dammed sky and brought down a blast that staggered
the entire mansion to its foundations. Crashing past glass and frame and light
fixtures, a bolt that might have been lightning took hold of Root from head to
foot. For an instant, the gallery’s lights failed. Everything turned black
except for Root’s horror etched against darkness and the blast that bore him
away.

When the lights came
back on, the danger was gone from the greenhouse. All the crying and the pain
and the pressure were gone. Only the sculptures themselves remained.

They were slumped and
ruined, like melted wax.

Outside, rain began to
rattle against the glass of the greenhouse.

Later, I went looking for some clothes; I
couldn’t very well go around naked. After a while, I located a suite of private
rooms at the back of the building. But everything I found there belonged to
Root. His personal stink had soaked right into the fabric. I hated the idea of
putting his things on my skin when I’d just been burned clean. But I had to
wear something. In disgust, I took one of his rich shirts and a pair of pants.
That was my punishment for having been so eager to judge Reese Dona.

Back in the greenhouse,
I found him sitting on the floor with Kristen’s head cradled in his lap. He was
stroking the soft hair at her temples and grieving to himself. For the time
being, at least, I was sure his grief had nothing to do with his mined work.

Kristen was fast asleep,
exhausted by exertion and loss of blood. But I could see that she was going to
be all right.

Her bleeding had stopped
completely. And Reese had already cleaned some of the stains from her face and
neck.

Rain thundered against
the ceiling of the greenhouse; jagged lines of lightning scrawled the heavens.
But all the glass was intact, and the storm stayed outside, where it belonged.
From the safety of shelter, the downpour felt comforting.

 And the manufactured
cool of the building had wiped out most of Root’s unnatural heat. That was
comforting, too.

It was time for me to
go.

But I didn’t want to
leave Reese like this. I couldn’t do anything about the regret that was going
to dog him for the rest of his life. But I wanted to try.

The river was calling
for me. Abruptly, as if I thought he was in any shape to hear me, I said, “What
you did here—the work you did for Root—wasn’t wrong. Don’t  blame yourself for
that. You just went too far. You need to find the balance. Reason and energy.”
Need and help.  “There’s no limit to what you can do, if you just keep your
balance.

 He didn’t answer. Maybe
he wasn’t listening to me at all. But ‘after a moment he bent over Kristen and
kissed her forehead.

That was enough. I had
to go. Some of the details of the greenhouse were already starting to melt.

My bare feet didn’t make
any sound as I left the room, crossed the foyer, and went out into…

BEFORE HE REALIZED WHAT HE WAS DOING, HE
SWUNG the knife.

The home of Creel and Vi Sump. The
living room.

Her real name is
Violet, but everyone calls her Vi. They’ve been married for two years now, and
she isn’t blooming.

Their home is modest
but comfortable: Creel has a good job with his company, but he isn’t moving up.
In the living room, some of the furnishings are better than the space they
occupy. A good stereo contrasts with the state of the wallpaper. The
arrangement of the furniture shows a certain amount of frustration: there’s no
way to set the armchairs and sofa so that people who sit on them can’t see the
water spots in the ceiling. The flowers in the vase on the end table are real,
but they look plastic. At night, the lights leave shadows at odd places around
the room.