Labyrinth (Book 5) (32 page)

I’d already touched the fabric of the grid and bent it to my own designs—badly and in a limited way—but that would be all Wygan was waiting for and I was pretty sure he already knew it had happened. His own connections to the grid weren’t the same as mine, but it was clear to me that he could sense or hear things happening there, too. So far, he’d had only one chance to grab me and that had been too soon after my experiment with the power lines of magic in the walls of Edward’s bunker to give him much time to come for me. The easiest thing for him to do now would be to let Goodall catch me and take me himself to wherever the Pharaohn’s plans were meant to play out. I didn’t like the role of goat, but I didn’t see a lot of options, and I knew that no matter how much Goodall disliked me, his master wouldn’t let him harm me at this stage. I imagined that my presence at the After Dark club would bring someone around if I lingered long enough.

After that, it was a matter of action and, whatever the result, it would be over by morning. Live or die, I had to succeed in stopping the Pharaohn’s plans for good tonight.

I wrote another long letter, folded it, and put it in my purse. Still no sign of Quinton or Carol and the time was now four thirty. I didn’t have much of a window left to get the last of my business done before night fell and things got crazy.

My first stop was Nanette Grover’s law office downtown. I worked for her once in a while, doing backgrounds on witnesses and investigating their stories before Nan went into court. She also acted as my lawyer on the rare occasions I needed one. It was an easy walk to her office from TPM, though I had to wear sunglasses under the overcast sky: The grid was too brightly present without them. Her secretary, Cathy, came out to meet me and it took a little discussion before she agreed to hold on to my holographic will for forty-eight hours. I said I’d come back and tear it up if everything went well, but I didn’t explain why it might be necessary in the first place. Mostly I wanted to be sure the property and pets scattered across Seattle got back where they belonged if I wasn’t drawing breath in the morning.

I had a feeling that I’d bounce back if something fatal happened to me, but that hadn’t been the case for my father. There were a lot of things that could, potentially, go wrong in a permanent way and I didn’t know how to mitigate any of them. The close harmony of the grid, its strange way of taking me over and then leaving me at a distance, only confused my sense of survivability. And there was the seductive call of the grid itself. You didn’t have to be dead to fall away from the world and not return. Or return altered. I thought my father had hinted I could lose these odd powers, but to what extent? And what would my shape be if that were true? For all of these reasons—and for Quinton—there had to be something left behind.

After that long, depressing thought, I found a quiet spot to call my mother.

Funny that a month earlier I wouldn’t have considered calling her for anything—not even a matter of life or death—but here I was, poking her phone number and hoping she had a few minutes to talk. She had been the monster of my childhood, but lately I’d begun to see her differently: as a desperate and lonely person I almost pitied. Almost. She was still responsible for her own misery, but at least she wasn’t truly responsible for mine.

She answered her phone and I wondered if she ever didn’t. “Sweetie!”

“Hello, Mother.”

“I was worried about you! You had to leave LA so quickly and I thought there must be something wrong.”

“Yeah. A little. I went to London on some business, but I had to come back to Seattle to finish it up. While I was gone, my employer was kidnapped.” If anything happened to me tonight, chances were good I’d be connected to Edward’s disappearance in a bad and public way—at least by the press—and, in spite of years of indifference, I didn’t want her to think that badly of me.

She gasped and judging from the dramatic sound, I guessed she had an audience. Probably her fiancé. “Oh, my goodness! Is he all right?”

“Not yet. I’m . . . helping out with something this evening,” I fumbled, uncomfortable with my ragged half-truth. “If it works out, everything will be fine. I just . . . thought I should let you know that I’m fine.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Harper, be careful. Obviously you’re not going to change your mind about doing . . . whatever it is you’re doing. But . . . you’re my baby. And you promised to come to the wedding.” Her voice quivered a little, but she stamped down on that and finished strong. “And I’m holding you to that! You hear?”

I smiled. Gods, she was transparent. “Yes, Mom.” And she had not abandoned me, even when I thought my father had. I was wrong about that, too, but as much as she infuriated me, at least her reasons for the crazy things she did were human.

She sniffled. “You never call me Mom. . . .”

“Well, I do now. And I have to go.” Before I started getting weepy myself and bloodying my clothes in public. “Send the invitations early, OK?”

“All right, sweetie. You take care.”

“I will. And you too.”

I hung up and looked at the phone a moment before I put it away. That had been awkward. . . .

I killed the last of the sunlight eating dinner in a restaurant at the top of a glass tower and staring at the city below as the lights came on, arc-bright in the Grey I couldn’t shake off. The voices of the grid grew louder as the hours passed but less comprehensible, the words chopped up like I was standing in the midst of a large party that jerked in and out of time. It made me irritable and paranoid. Quinton didn’t call. I didn’t like admitting that I was worried, and more than that: I feared I’d never see him again.

THIRTY

I
wasn’t dressed for the place, but the doorman at the After Dark let me in anyhow. I suppose being alive in a vampire club is all the cachet you really need to get in. Staying that way may be trickier. But they know me, which is my real ace in the hole.

It was still early for the bloodsucking fraternity and there weren’t very many customers in the place yet. A lot of the early birds were demi-vampires, donors, and subordinate turns waiting for whoever pulled their strings or strung them out. The room was always cold, but now the chill was my sense of the Grey clinging to me like a wet coat. The white marble floors seemed almost reflective in their brightness, and once the room was full, the red-and-black clouds of vampiric auras would give it a stygian cast. I spotted two asetem near the back door, their uncanny glowing eyes free of the usual contact lenses and gleaming orange like hot coals. I imagined the news of my presence would be in Wygan’s ears in minutes. The broadcast station had plenty of phone lines, even if there wasn’t a more arcane method of communication between the Pharaohn and his children that I didn’t know about.

I sat down at what was usually Edward’s table, making a small stir in the thin crowd. I put my sunglasses back on and waited, schooling myself to be still, not to fidget with my bag or look for something to do. It wasn’t too hard: With my shades on, I could close my eyes against the battering light and sound and let the noise of the grid, humming and babbling with every change in the room, be my alarm system. The one positive angle I could see to the increasing apathy I felt as the grid tried to bind me to itself was that I didn’t yet feel any anxiety about this situation. And that made me less interesting to the watching asetem as well.

The crowd was denser half an hour later when Gwen arrived. She slid next to me, as light on the strings of the grid as the stroke of a feather, but I still felt her presence like a cold finger drawn up my spine. “You look ruthless,” she whispered.

“Ruthless?” I asked, opening my eyes and glancing at her.

She was as pale and ineffective-looking as ever, but her eyes gleamed and she gave a tiny, hungry smile. “Yes. Dangerous with an air of power held in check.”

“Hm,” I muttered. The strange change in my perception of the Grey seemed to have an outward expression as well, and that intrigued me a little. Or maybe it was just that the brightness and the noise made me scowl.

I could feel tremors and flutters in the Grey. It was like being a spider in her web the way every disturbance traveled to me. The impression of Cameron’s arrival rippled through the room just a moment ahead of his presence with a gust of Grey whispers. I wondered if psychics felt something like this. It was interesting, but overall, I didn’t care for it. The asetem in the opposite corner were a different matter. They thrived on strong emotional emanations, so they must have been having a delicious time with the hors d’oeuvres of anticipation radiating from most of the people in the room.

There was a palpable wave of anxiety and excitement that rang discordant wind chimes on the grid when Cameron and Sarah walked in. A sussuration of speculation raced and spread like flame, leaping high when Cam paused by the table, looking it over before he chose to sit down in what was usually Edward’s chair.

My phone vibrated in my pocket and made me twitch—I hoped the vampires would take it as a sign that I was as surprised as they about Cameron’s move. Without looking, I squeezed the silence button and sent the call to voice mail. I hoped it was Quinton, but this was not the time to be checking my phone.

Two of Edward’s usual hangers-on sidled close, plainly hoping to talk to Cam about what he was doing and looking askance at Sarah, who had taken the seat on his other side, putting him between her and Gwen. I, the foreign creature with the scary aura, sat at the free end of the group, where I could move at any time. The setting projected “Prince in his court” with the subtlety of a brick through a window.

Cameron gave the two curious vampires a bland “Yes?” that served as opening enough for them to sit down and start whispering at him. The sound grated on my ears, distorted by the noise of the grid into sharp squawks. Cam looked bored and a little annoyed by the two supplicants, but he leaned forward and listened. I wondered if they’d been put up to the scene or if it was just a natural extension of the usual jockeying for position. I let my attention float out into the room on the power lines of the grid, wide enough to thin the noise in my head, but it only helped a little as everyone was focused back toward Cameron’s entourage.

The other vampires and kin in the room stirred and muttered. Some left or moved to new tables, breaking and forming alliances as I watched; most stayed as they were, acting as if nothing going on in the room was important to them. A few sent Cameron glares of open hostility. Cam ignored it all and went on with his conversation.

The place was full and the murmurs and adjustments were dying down when Carlos entered and blew the latent emotions in the room into brilliant flame that roared through the blazing grid. He stopped a single pace inside and studied the scene. A slow boil of black fury rolled off him and he strode toward our table. He did not seem to look at anyone other than Cameron, but I knew he was aware of us all, from the asetem looking avid and excited in the corner to me, playing stone-faced in my personal madhouse while Gwen cringed beside me.

Carlos stopped at the edge of the table and glared at the two whispering vampires next to Sarah. They scuttled away without another word, leaving an insectile chittering on the threads of the Grey.

Cameron looked up, his expression one of pleasant surprise and confusion with a touch of fear that I didn’t think was entirely feigned. He stood up, smiling. “Carlos!” Then he bridled and winced as Carlos redirected his glower to him.

Carlos’s voice was not loud, but it rumbled through the Grey and set waves crashing into one another. “Presumptuous whelp. Do you think you’re Edward’s equal because you are my student?”

Cameron shook his head. Tiny flashes of white and gold exploded in the energy nimbus around him. “No. Of course not. But there’s a void without him and it needs to be filled. I seem to be the only person willing to step in temporarily rather than try to grab it all for myself.”

“Are you? And what if he never comes back? Will you step aside for someone else?”

“I would if it were you. It ought to be you as—”

Carlos hit him, the movement visible only as a black blur. Cam went backward into the wall hard enough to dent it as Sarah tumbled to the floor in the oversweep of Carlos’s strike. Gwen and I both flew to our feet—as did many of the audience—in an instant. Gwen made a slight whimpering noise that echoed in my head as she backed up.

I held my ground, not knowing how this was meant to play out once I’d said my piece but sticking to the short script I had. Cameron’s note had not told me exactly what to expect—there hadn’t been time and, had we done otherwise, the asetem would taste the falseness of our fear and anger. It was all the most desperate kind of improvisation. I hoped. “Carlos, this isn’t necessary. Maintaining peace in this community—” I started.

He whipped his head around to glare at me and his expression was almost a blow. “This is none of your affair, daylighter!” he roared. Even holding fast to the knowledge that it was only an act, I had to clench my jaw and shut my eyes against the buffeting pressure of his voice.

He turned his attention back to Cameron, who’d pushed himself forward off the wall, using his momentum to drive a flat-palmed strike into his mentor’s face. Gleams of gold and silver energy rushed ahead of the movement; Cameron was putting more than his physical strength into hitting Carlos. He’d been only twenty-one when Edward turned him, and his slender frame offered insufficient muscle against the bulkier, older vampire, even with the paranormal advantages of the undead.

Apparently taken by surprise, Carlos was flung backward about two feet and came to a hard stop against another table, knocking it sideways with a crash. “Oh, very nicely done, schoolboy,” he spat, regaining his balance and running his fingers down the crooked length of his broken nose. The cartilage crackled and popped as he moved it back into place.

Cameron’s punk-short hair hadn’t been mussed, but fury disarranged his features into an unrecognizable mask. “No one touches my people,” he hissed back.

“Ah, ‘your people,’ ” Carlos repeated in a sardonic tone. “So it comes out. You
are
usurping the position of your patron.”

“I wouldn’t have to if you’d do it yourself! You’re the most powerful of us all. You could hold this city in the palm of your hand in your spare time!”

Carlos moved closer, his chin down so his black stare bored out from the shadow beneath his brow. His aura flushed a vibrant red among the death black, and the sound in the grid became a banshee wail. “I am
bound
to Edward. He commands my fealty so long as he is on this earth.”

“How is it disloyal to preserve what is his until he can reclaim it? How is that against your oath?” Cameron shot back. He made no allusion to the real reason for the uneasy centuries of detente; neither Carlos nor Edward had ever wanted to expose that twisted betrayal.

Carlos raised his head in a rush and looked down his nose at the younger vampire. Cold seemed to roll off him, damping everything in a sudden pall. “The depth of your ignorance astounds me. I wash my hands of you. And I’ll leave you to the mercy of ‘your people.’ ” He turned away.

Cameron was not going to let it go. He reached out and yanked the bigger man back around. “You’re a coward and you call it loyalty. You’ll challenge me and lecture me, but you won’t stop me.” Cameron, less than a full step away, spit in the other vampire’s face.

Rage ignited around Carlos, flushing the Grey a glittering scarlet that chimed and shrieked all the louder. His voice ground out between his teeth, ice-cold and implacable. “I
will
stop you, treacherous brat. I’ll show you what it is to be obedient, to bow your head and bend your knee while you seethe with hate. Bound by the flesh of your flesh and the blood of your creation, you will know what torment is.” He snatched Sarah to his chest and stepped back in one impossibly quick motion.

Cameron froze. The necromancer held a small, glittering knife to the young woman’s throat, flicking it against the edge of her vein as she trembled, wide-eyed, in his grip.

Gwen cried out as blood flowed from between Carlos’s fingers, “No! Sarah!”

Carlos muttered in quick liquid syllables as the blood hit the floor and rang on the Grey like a giant bronze bell. Sarah rolled up her eyes and went limp as the vibration rippled through the room. I knew she was acting, but even I thought it looked real. Carlos let her fall, his right hand coming away from her neck smeared red. He drew on the air with her blood, whispering quickly and making a hard gesture that flicked the precious fluid toward her brother’s face.

Cameron snatched the blood from the air between them and leapt forward, pressing his bloody hand over Carlos’s face and taking up the weird language of the false spell in a rapid shout. The last word dulled the sound in the room as if someone had closed a sealed door and sucked out the air. It was impressive, even though the weight of it in the Grey was next to nothing. Only the breathless, sinking feeling was real: The rest was magical sham and fireworks, and I was one of only three people in the room who could tell the difference. Even the asetem would only feel the ripple. Carlos flinched as if Cameron had struck him much harder but kept to his feet.

Gwen scrambled over the table to scoop Sarah off the floor as Cameron knelt down beside her. He stroked his bloody hand over the dripping wound on her neck. Then he turned his head away. “Gwen, you do it. I—I can’t. She’s my sister.”

Gwen seemed to coil around her, hiding what she did as she bent her head down over the young woman’s neck.

The Grey sounded hollow, waiting, whining like a clockwork thing wound too tight.

Carlos had not moved except to close his eyes. The fallen set of his shoulders and the darkness around him looked like despair. The bloody handprint on his face faded as if his skin drank it in.

Cameron stood up and looked at him, his face full of pity and sorrow more than anger. “Did you think I didn’t learn anything from you?
You
taught me that blood binding.
You
taught me how to break it and how to avoid it as well. Now you’re bound to me, by your own words. And by that blood I was born with. And since she’s not dead, you’re also bound to Sarah. I know you know all this, but I’m saying it so all of our kind here know it, too. You’re mine.” Actually, most vampires wouldn’t know a binding until it bit them. But the show wasn’t for them: It was for the Pharaohn’s spies. Cam glanced side to side as if a little nervous about what he was doing. “I think it might be wise for you to kneel.”

Carlos opened his eyes, his face devoid of expression. He spoke without emotion or force, in the same sort of floating emptiness I had experienced the night before. “I will not.”

The strange golden sparks welled again in the palms of Cameron’s hands as he brought them up, open, to chest height. “Don’t make me force you, sensei.”

It was a strange word to choose, freighted with respect and tradition, and it reminded me that Cameron had been studying Japanese when he was still an ordinary college student. An age of knowledge had passed since then, and though he didn’t look much different, here was ample evidence that everything had changed. He leaned closer, resting his clean hand on Carlos’s shoulder, and whispered something into the bigger man’s ear. Then he took a step back.

He didn’t quite let his hands relax, keeping them poised just a bit in front of his body, but he didn’t do anything. He just waited, his brow shadowed with anxiety.

Nothing stirred. A roomful of creatures who don’t breathe make an unsettling silence.

Sarah let out a quiet little moan. The sound seemed to break Carlos, and he sank onto his knees, letting his head fall forward. He shuddered as he settled all the way to the floor, putting out his open hands, palm up, on his thighs. The bloodstained penknife clattered onto the marble tiles, spinning a scarlet smear. “I submit.”