Labyrinth (Book 5) (11 page)

I paused at last before the door, standing in a void of the web just a little bigger than a shoe box. Music I couldn’t identify muttered from speakers over the door, mixed with the whispering of the grid. The sound made my head ache. My bare feet were cold—so was the rest of me—and I wasn’t sure if I should pull the gun or not. It wouldn’t do much to Wygan I was sure, but it did seem to distract Goodall, who wasn’t used to being bulletproof yet.

To hell with it: better one distracted than none. I went for the gun. Sometimes I have difficulty holding on to normal objects when I’m deep in the Grey so I pushed myself away from it, becoming as solid as possible as I slid my hand into the small of my back, gripping the pistol at the back of my hip and sliding it free of the holster. Then I threw my shoulder into the weak side of the door and bulled my way into the room, bringing the muzzle up to sweep the area as I ducked and dove in.

Wygan might have been on me by the time I came to a stop, except that Goodall got in the way. He wasn’t as fast as the Pharaohn-ankh-astet, but he happened to be standing between us and he was both surprised and pissed off at my entrance. Goodall lifted his arm to grab me, pivoting on the leg I’d knocked in earlier. He wobbled a little but he didn’t buckle, so the vampire recuperative powers were working. This time I didn’t kick his knee; I shot it.

He shrieked and spit a string of epithets as he went down. So far, so good.

Wygan seemed to vault over the other man, reaching for me, but I was already crouching down to avoid him, and the white-haired vampire ripped the air just above my head. I pushed the gun’s muzzle into the hollow below Goodall’s chin and forced him back to his feet with the pressure as Wygan spun to take another swipe at me. I kept the pale vampire in sight and turned Goodall to face him. “Keep coming and you’ll be shopping for a new minion.”

Goodall made a coughing sound as he rose. “Unholy bitch ...”

“You can blame your master for that.”

Wygan had stopped on the far side of the room, keeping the broadcast control console between us—more of a barrier to me, with my limited human strength and speed, than to him. In the normal he didn’t look any different than he had when we’d met two years earlier: heroin-addict thin, shoulder-length white hair rock-and-roll wild to hide the strange long shape of his skull, and still no sign that he was older than thirty-five at the most, though I knew he was ancient.

“ ’Arper Blaine. Wot an unexpected pleasure.” His Cockney accent was as broad and fake as ever.

But, I
had
surprised him—how nice for me. I kept my mouth shut and my gaze steady on his body, avoiding his snake-eyed stare—funny how they didn’t glow like those of his underlings—and watching for any shift of muscle that would telegraph motion. I took in the room from peripheral vision and replayed my memory of it, comparing the changes. There wasn’t much that was different from last time, except that the broadcast booth was plainly doing double duty now as Wygan’s lair and the old light array he’d used to keep the Guardian at bay was now much larger. There was also a dark spot of energy that coiled on itself like a gleaming black Orouborus, hanging unsupported in the air near what had been the disk racks. Now the rack was empty of all but a glimmering curtain of magic and that dark circle. The discs and my unschooled state must have hidden the circle from me before. Or maybe I just hadn’t noticed.

“You don’t ’ave to threaten Mr. Goodall, love—’e’s not doin’ you any ’arm.”

“But you’re planning to and I don’t see why I should suffer for your benefit alone. I’m not interested in playing games I can’t win.”

“Games?” Wygan snorted, his accent fading away to an angry hiss. “You don’t have a proper appreciation of necessity. My goals are far grander than some game. Ascension requires sacrifice.”

“So far, I doubt you’ve been the one to make any; you just coerce other people into giving up their lives for you. Aren’t sacrifices voluntary? It looks like you had to kidnap Edward, and did Goodall volunteer to be your lackey and spy or did you trick him into it? And you haven’t been so very clever at getting me to do what you want, either. Batting zero on cooperation, Wygan.”

“Yet you are here, Greywalker.”

“Right—with a gun to your ushabti’s head. Is that really the way you thought this was going to go down? You’ve been playing hardball to get me into your clutches for a while—years now—but I don’t think you’re as much in control as you pretend. Do you intend to keep playing me until I just happen to fall into the right place, the right shape? That doesn’t sound worthy of you; that hardly sounds like a plan at all, really. Unless it’s such a bad idea that you know no one would participate willingly. You couldn’t get my father to do it. You couldn’t get Alice to stick to your plan—I’m sure your minions in London have told you how she fucked up and went rogue. You’re the Pharaohn-ankh-astet—you’re supposed to be the baddest of the bad—but you don’t seem to be holding the reins as well as you should and you don’t have the confidence in your own plan to sell me on it.”

Wygan narrowed his eyes but kept silent. I imagined I’d hit a nerve there. He was hesitating and that was to my benefit. All I needed was for him to show me my father, or Edward, or slip up on even the smallest hint of what he was up to and I was sure I could work out the rest from there. That was all I needed: one admission, one clue. I was willing to walk dangerously close to the line to get it, but once I did, I was gone. I hoped. Though I might need all my cavalry to pull me out. I was cognizant of how little plan I had and how thin what there was of it looked.

Goodall twitched in my grip and I squeezed on the pistol’s cocking lever so it made a quelling click. He seethed and held himself stiffly against the pain in his knee and the indignity of having been held at the point of an uncocked gun. “You’re not worthy,” he muttered. “You don’t deserve it, you weak, mercenary little bitch.”

I ignored the insults—it’s not as if I haven’t been called them before. “Deserve? There are a lot of things I don’t deserve—like having my head beaten in, or my relatives killed and friends terrorized. Whatever the Pharaohn’s plan is, I doubt he’s got anyone’s interest in mind but his own. If you believe otherwise, you’re deluded.” I wondered if Goodall hated me for some other reason or if he thought he could take my place. . . . “If he wants me to play along, he’s going to have to make it worth my while one way or another. And that starts with a little information.”

“You have no idea what is in store,” Wygan whispered, “what you can do....”

“No.” The whispers of the grid roared in my head and seemed to push out of my mouth as an echo of some other mind: “I am the gate, the bridge. Mine is the power to cross the gap—” I broke through the rushing voices and regained control of my words. I had no idea of the meaning of what I’d just said, but I wasn’t going to let on. “So why not tell me the rest? I’m sure Goodall is dying to know, too. After all, he already sold his soul and he doesn’t even know what he’ll get for it. Me, I prefer a more equitable exchange.”

Goodall shifted his eyes to Wygan. “You can’t trust her. She’s a weak vessel, like that whimpering thing you keep in the blackness. She’s not interested in anything but destroying you and keeping the world as it is. She’s on Edward’s side.”

Now I wanted to know what the thing in the blackness was, but I knew better than to let Wygan know that. It might have been Edward or my father, but it was something Goodall disdained and that might make it something I wanted. I barked at him, “I’m on my own damned side and I’m not giving anyone anything for free. Edward tried to push me and I didn’t bend. I went to London when he gave me something I wanted, not because I’m his lackey or his hired gun.”

“He gave you money,” Goodall sneered.

“He gave me an excuse to do what I wanted to do anyway.” I dug the gun muzzle into his neck harder. “You want to give me another one? You think I didn’t enjoy taking Alice’s head off?”

Wygan laughed and a sensation like knife-edged shards of ice ripped down my spine. “I know what you want. Equity, knowledge, justice . . . yes, those are the currencies that move you, Greywalker. But not all. You have the weakness of loyalty, a useless emotion. The fury in you, the anger . . . that I can use.”

I could feel imminent motion building in the room like a static charge. I wanted to get closer to the hanging coil of darkness that might contain my father or Edward. I shifted the pistol so I’d have a better arc of movement and Goodall started to duck away from me. Wygan lunged forward, making a shrieking noise that should have frozen me in place like a jacklighted deer, except that the noise in my ears cut across the sound and kept me moving, though trembling.

Ahead of me, the oily magical curtain billowed as if in the wind of Wygan’s passage. The normal world fell aside, letting the Grey flood the room, lit with fire and neon. Goodall tumbled away, pushed or falling I didn’t know, as I toppled the other way, toward the gleaming void.

Wygan’s claws pierced into my upper arms. As at the first time we’d met, his true form showed through in the Grey: white and scaled, with a long, ophidian skull topped by a ridge starting above mesmerizing, pearl-black eyes. And like the first time, I screamed, feeling something ancient and awful cut into me. With time, the memory of his soul-chilling touch had softened and made the terror bearable, but it rushed back and once the air had fled my lungs, the deathly cold of it suffocated me.

“Remember this world, remember what I showed you,” Wygan hissed. “I taught you to see. Now learn it all. Take it in, gather it to you, let it rush into you, the sound, the feel....”

I just had to concentrate on getting to that dark ring within the magic, certain that something I needed lay beyond it. I didn’t want to touch it or take it in, but I was hearing far more than he knew. He wouldn’t have wanted me to listen to the voice that worked its way through the crystalline cold of his words. . . .

“Harper, I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would come to this.”

I gulped for the wisp of warmth his voice brought. “Dad?” It wasn’t even a sound, just the shape of the word cracking against the ice. I tried to look for him and spotted a ring of dark fire around the black center of the gleaming nimbus of void. I struggled to turn toward it, to move into that familiar silent flame I’d first seen around the hole where my father’s ghost should have been.

Wygan pushed me forward, toward the blazing grid of magical energy that roared up in the Grey. Twin fires leapt as my head and shoulders crossed over the black edge of the ring—cold flame edging the oubliette while the hungry, singing power of the grid flared with surreal color. Agony raced over my nerves, wrenching another soundless shriek from me and turning the world black at the edges. I felt twisted, immolated like a tree writhing in wildfire.

“It’s knowledge you crave,” Wygan cooed at me, stabbing my heavy, ice-bound limbs with his claws. “Here is knowledge. Is that not an equitable exchange? Drink it in and know.”

His voice flayed me and I gagged, struggling to wriggle free even as the sensation worsened with every second I resisted him. I was half in, half out, held on the brink by Wygan’s bitter grip. I couldn’t stand it. . . . It felt as if every molecule of my body was tearing apart from the rest, exploding from the sound and power at the black edge.

The other voice drifted to me. “Don’t fight yet. It makes the pain much worse. Slide, go limp.”

That’s what I’d seen happening to Simondson; when he fought, when he moved toward the memory of life, he was burned and tormented. It felt like my brain was bleeding, my limbs charring into brittle sticks. No, I thought. I can’t give in. I will die. I’ll become what he wants; he’ll win!

“It’s not so simple. Listen to them, little girl. Let them in.”

It wasn’t Edward and it couldn’t be my father. He’d killed himself to keep me safe, so how could he tell me to give in? He wouldn’t! It was a trick. It was something of Wygan’s to pull me into the Grey beyond redemption, beyond my control. This voice was a monster that wanted nothing less than my soul—if I had one.

The cacophony of the grid sang and boiled at my brain. Snatches of words fluttered in my ears with a whisper of moth wings and the screech of magic. The sound tore at my mind and burned into my body like acid. Shrieks of pain and terror snuffed to whimpers as they caught and burned away in my throat.

My father’s voice continued in swift blasts of soft air against my face. “It’s everything. That’s what he wants. He doesn’t need me, only you. You have to listen. The song will tell you. There’s a back door. Use the puzzles to open the way. Shape the key to the lock and open the maze. Each puzzle is a door. The doors are always at the center. From center to center you can cross to me. From the center you’re in the Grey, but you’re not really here. You’ll be safe if you come through the maze. Find the labyrinth—the first maze. Open the right door with the key.”

Things were starting to fade, a darkness like fever sleep closed in as the cold and anoxia shut me down. The ringing in my ears, the screeching and muttering, became a shouting chorus of voices tumbling over one another into babble. I felt myself going limp, the pain easing back but not helping me stay alive.

“Not like that, little girl. I said not to fight; I didn’t say to give up.”

Wygan’s voice floated over the top of my consciousness, crooning, “Yes, yes....”

And in counterpoint, the voice from within the void continued as if from another conversation. “You’ll have to come back for me later. He can’t know I have any strength or he’ll destroy me and . . . then I can’t help. Listen, listen. . . . I remember your mother. . . . I remember the time she bought you those red tap shoes so the blood wouldn’t show. I was so angry with her! So angry ...” Dad’s voice slid upward into a spine-jarring shriek of anguish I could feel through my whole body, like the cutting agony of those horrid crimson shoes. The angrier he got, the more I thought I could see his shape in the darkness, nearly there, nearly solid and writhing in torment with every word. His pain seemed to infect me. A scarlet rage of suffering ripped through me, shouted into my head on the voice of the grid and I jerked away from Wygan’s grip.