Lessons After Dark (24 page)

Then up ahead, there was a hole in the world.

After having wound through a mile or more in the close darkness of the trees, the path opened abruptly into a clearing. The green light came from the center of it, rising from the ground and then spreading into the sky, moving in patterns that resembled no flame Gareth had ever seen. Moonlight could reach the clearing too. In a circle perhaps twenty feet across, a man could see as well as if dawn had come early.

Gareth didn't really want to.

The trees were bending. Not as they might have done in a wind, which would have been strange enough for sturdy oaks and pines on that calm night, but rather twisting back and forth as if they were made of rubber. Coming in and out of focus, not only to Gareth's vision, but to the world itself.

Nor were the trees the only distorted things simply the most obvious. The earth was unsteady, and the very air seemed off, summer-hot one moment and cold the next, damp and dry at once.

The twisting, pulling sensation that had accompanied Balam's entrance was back in Gareth's mind, but now it felt multiplied tenfold. Closing his eyes brought no real relief, though it meant he didn't have to see the trees against the light. He would have reached out for support, but the only thing to lean against would have been one of the trees.

There was the rowan staff. That seemed to keep its shape, and the earth below it seemed more solid than that beneath his feet. And there was warmth at his side too. A voice, low and urgent, talking to him.

Olivia.

He couldn't abandon her. He had his duty, but more than that, he couldn't leave her to face this horror alone. Gareth bit down on his lip and tasted blood. The external pain returned him to his senses a little, enough so he could open his eyes and look again.

Now he saw the light rose out of water, a small, shallow pool. A brass pitcher sat beside it, and other, smaller shapes Gareth couldn't recognize straightaway.

Fitzpatrick stood near the pool his head thrown back—so far as to defy everything Gareth knew about human anatomy. His arms moved in gestures Gareth didn't know.

At Gareth's side, Olivia flung a hand out, pointing at Fitzpatrick with all the innate grace that had served her in front of crowds in London, and shouted three words in that language Gareth didn't understand. The words split the air, louder than a human voice should have been, and the night shuddered around them.

Fitzpatrick froze.

Briefly, Gareth let out his breath in relief. Then he saw the light hadn't vanished, hadn't even diminished. In its glow, Olivia's face was tense, her breathing quick. “I can't hold him for very long,” she said.

She withdrew the salt and silver cuff links from Waite's bag, stepped forward and put her free hand on Fitzpatrick's face. Gareth stumbled forward, then stopped himself. Olivia knew what she was doing. His interference wouldn't help anything. Not right now.

The best he could do was to learn more. He took a breath, steadied himself against the onslaught he knew would come, and focused inward and then out.

There was more pain. He had expected that, and still it took him hard. In the first moment of sight, Gareth fought the urge to double over or simply to be sick. His whole body seemed to become a flare, a trumpet of alarm, screaming
wrong
wrong
wrong
wrong
wrong
at the shifting world.

He clamped his white-knuckled hand on the rowan staff and slowly floundered his way toward solid ground.

Fitzpatrick and Olivia were glowing shapes in his view, and Fitzpatrick was, physically, not too badly off. The silver-gray threads that made up the boy's shape grew brighter and darker in time with the rhythm of the dancing light, but neither the scrying nor the twisting of the world had affected him very much. There were no wounds, no breaks in his body.

However, there was another color just under the silver, a color Gareth had never seen before and he could not have named. It bore some resemblance to the gray sludge that had infested Simon, but that had been only a small part of the demon. It was fully present in Fitzpatrick now, immaterial as it was. The malicious half sentience Gareth had sensed in Simon was ancient and hateful cunning now. The light writhed and twisted under Olivia's touch, reaching toward her, but it could not touch her. A green-gold radiance surrounded her hands, and the nameless color recoiled from it.

Olivia chanted, and the green-gold color pushed itself forward, surging from her hands into Fitzpatrick. The demon struck, fruitlessly, then retreated, farther into Fitzpatrick's soul. Olivia's light pursued it, and it ran again.

Gareth began to hear names in what she was chanting. He recognized a few of them—Michael, Tyr, Athena—but others were unfamiliar. Nevertheless, they seemed to be working. The demon kept retreating. He saw bits of it leaving Fitzpatrick's body. It didn't go toward the light, though.

He looked away to see where it
was
heading…

…and, for the first time, looked at the gash in the world with magical eyes.

In Olivia's metaphor of walls and doors, the demon had managed to knock out a load-bearing beam. It probably wouldn't be the end of the world, from what little Gareth could tell about such things, but at this rate, the situation certainly didn't look good for Englefield or anywhere nearby. The dislocation around them would intensify…and it would spread.

As if that wasn't bad enough, something was pressing against the other side. Shapes. Some of them were immaterial, like the demon, and he saw them only as vague impressions of color. Some of them looked like Balam or similar creatures. At least one was bigger. Much bigger.

They would all come through soon. Even fleeing Fitzpatrick's body, the demon was opening the gate. Soon, there'd be no need. It would open itself, or the beings on the other side would force the issue. Gareth felt the knowledge like a blow to the chest.

Then, and only then, did he think to wonder how he knew.

He'd never read magical theory. He'd certainly never been around anything like this disruption. And his idea of what was happening was fairly rough, but Gareth was certain he was right…as certain, he realized now, as he had been when he'd been fourteen and known how to make a cut hand stop bleeding.

Even as Gareth understood that, he heard Fitzpatrick crumple to the ground. Olivia stepped back, sweat running down her face despite the cold night air. “I…” she panted. “The gate…”

“It's a wound,” Gareth said. “The—nature of the world is injured.”

Understanding came into Olivia's face quickly. “Can you—?” She gestured. Vaguely, but Gareth knew what she meant.

Could
he heal this wound?

Looking at the light now, he could half-see the strands of power he'd worked with in people. These were far finer and constantly moving. Many of them were snapped in half, with so many loose ends dangling into…what? Gareth wasn't sure he wanted to know. He wasn't sure he was
able
to know.

“I can try!” he yelled back.

Olivia was at his side again. “I'm with you,” she said. “Wait a moment.”

Then she was in motion, opening Waite's bag, drawing out the candle, and placing it on the ground. A sweep of a stick she'd picked up created a circle. A few more gestures wrote symbols Gareth couldn't have read even on a chalkboard at bright noon, even if his head weren't pounding. He struggled to breathe. Struggled to wait.

Flame caught, first on the match in Olivia's hand and then on the wick of the candle. It was a small spot, barely visible against the witch-light, but it was one point to hold onto.

Olivia's face was another. It was set, determined and steady as she picked up the candle. Pale, perhaps, though the light made that hard to tell for certain. But it didn't matter. Whatever she felt, Garth knew there was no danger of her backing down. Not now, not ever.

She turned to the North and raised her voice, gesturing with her free hand and shouting a series of quick words that might almost have been Latin. As Gareth watched, she spun quickly and went through similar motions to the east, then the south, then the west before returning to the north and calling out a final phrase.

The candle flame looked larger now, and it seemed to be spreading down over Olivia's hands. Nevertheless, she didn't look worried or pained, and so, when she reached out, Gareth instantly took her hand in his. He reached out at the same time, magically rather than physically, sending his talent and energy toward the first of the fine, broken strands of the world.

Making the first connection was like trying to find the proverbial needle in the haystack, if the needle had squirmed away from his fingers and the haystack had been in constant motion. The broken threads writhed. The gulf between them yawned and pitched. The world shuddered. After his first failed attempts, Gareth drew back and watched, until the movements fell into a pattern. Then he lunged.

Grabbed.

Spliced.

His task became easier and harder at the same time. Easier because he was working with the broken end of the strand now. Each end
wanted
to find the other, just as the flesh of a mortal body
wanted
, in its own mindless way, to be whole. Now that Gareth had made a connection to one end, he could see more clearly how the other moved, and the connection was simpler.

Harder because his power and the force Olivia was passing to him were flowing out to bridge the gap between strands. Harder because Gareth had, without realizing it, opened himself to more than just the threads of the world.

The hole had its own power. As mindless as the threads, it pulled at him nonetheless, and pulled with considerable force. If he slipped forward a little, he would go through, and emerge—where? Gareth didn't think anyone on Earth knew that. The power Olivia was sending him gave him a handhold, though. Otherwise, he would have succumbed almost immediately.

The power might very well have killed Gareth had he not connected to the strands when he did, and it still might. If what Olivia had given him to help Simon had been a cold drenching on a hot day, this was standing under a waterfall. Magic coursed through him, beating at every fiber of his consciousness. There was far too much for a mortal body to contain. All Gareth could do was direct it.

So he did, stretching energy across the gap between one end of the strand and another, grabbing the loose end and tying it into the new string. The new length was amber gold and bronze. The weave it attached to was radiant, but colorless. A man could have spent quite a while marveling at that. Gareth didn't have time.

He reached for the next strand and the next, conscious as he did so of Olivia's presence. Her hand was still in his. More importantly, her power moved within him, linked to him, sustaining him in the midst of chaos. She was no rock, Gareth became aware as he worked, or a chain to keep him in place. Neither of those would have given him much aid in this present nightmare. Neither of them might have survived long.

Instead, Olivia shifted with the world like a rider on a trotting horse. She moved as it did, reacting and responding but never quite letting it get out of control. The power coursing into Gareth ebbed and flowed regularly. It never sputtered, never quite died, never overwhelmed him any more than it
always
overwhelmed him.

He was certain Olivia never doubted herself. He thanked God for it, or whatever gods there might be.

As Gareth completed the third strand and the fourth, he saw the edges of the hole growing closer together. The movement was only slight at first. He didn't have time to observe it at length, nor did he have the nerve to tempt fate and draw any conclusions. Instead, he went back to his work.

And with the sixth strand, the hole was definitely smaller. With the eighth, the rest of the broken strands met. With the twelfth, their ends started twining together, each finding its mate and joining again.

He poured more power into the weave, giving it strength to heal itself both quickly and thoroughly. Now his body was realizing it was late at night and he'd walked very fast over a great distance to reach the clearing. Now he was feeling the drain on his own energy. Despite the power Olivia had given him some strength, apparently, had to come from his personal stores. Cold would come soon, and hunger.

At first, Gareth thought the rejoining strands had made a sound—a creaking kind of sound, like a door swinging shut.

Then Olivia screamed.

During her time with Dr. Gillespie, Olivia had come across a battered volume of Milton and had read the words
they
also
serve
who
only
stand
and
wait
. At the time, her inclination to
serve
anyone was rather small. The line had been just a pretty phrase. In the midnight forest with Gareth, she found it echoing in her head.

She wasn't even waiting. Not really. Mending the rift took far longer than healing Mr. Grenville had, she was working with far less stable energy than she'd been using then, and, oh, yes, the world around her was trying to pull itself apart while she did so. Olivia kept alert, shifted her stance, grasped and released power as it became necessary. She watched Gareth and William and the rift. There was plenty to occupy her, yet she found space enough in her mind to wonder how Gareth was faring. The eerie light showed the tension in his body, his set jaw and thin lips as he stared into the wound in reality. His hand was tight on hers, almost painful.

She wanted to scream with impatience. She wanted to sob with fear. She did neither, and when she saw the rift begin to close, ever so slowly, she didn't jump into the air and yell with joy, as strong as that impulse was.

There were things to do. Closing down the conduit of energy was one of them, and that fully occupied her consciousness for a little while, because it required the most delicate balance Olivia had ever managed. If she shut off the flow of power too rapidly, Gareth would have nothing but his own energy to work with. If she took too much time about the process, he'd have nowhere to shunt the extra power.

Admittedly, Olivia had never seen what would happen when the mortal frame had to deal with too much magical energy. The results could be wonderful. Conversely, she somehow doubted the likelihood of that, and so she went to work, shutting down the connection a little bit at a time. She didn't even let herself look up when she heard a strange creaking sound. It was probably the wind in the branches.

Then something grabbed her around her waist.

Her first impressions were jumbled and senseless: the smell of rot and dead leaves, darkness, and something that held her far harder than anything human could have. Screaming, she shoved at it and felt slime under her hands. It didn't give. Olivia shrieked again, kicked backward. Her foot sank into something squashy. She tried to remember the one offensive spell she'd learned to cast without preparation.

Fire ripped its way out of Olivia's body and into whatever was holding her. The magic took much of her strength with it, and when her unknown assailant dropped her hard to the ground, the blow knocked the wind out of her for a moment.

She stared upward at a dark mass of—she didn't know exactly what. There were branches in it and dirt and leaves. This was the form the demon had made for itself when she'd cast it out of Fitzpatrick in this place where the world was thin. This was its last attempt at achieving its goals. Banishing it would not work, not here, not when the gate was still a little ways open and she had no protective circle.

Olivia didn't know what would.

A mouth opened below the eyes, a mouth as large as she was. The beast lunged forward.

When it reared back abruptly, roaring with the wooden noise Olivia had heard before, her mind didn't recognize what had happened at first. Instinct propelled her body more quickly, and she rolled out of the demon's path before she saw Gareth drawing back the rowan staff for another blow.

She couldn't find the rowan branch, but she grabbed another stick at hand and fumbled for her book of matches. Her mind was racing all the while, the aether still clouding her vision. There was still a line of power between the demon and the gate. Now that Gareth was distracted, the demon's will was opening it again, faster than the world could fix itself.

Connection could go both ways. If the demon could influence the gate, then the gate could affect the demon. At least, Olivia hoped that was the case.

As the demon lunged for Gareth, Olivia struck a match and used what remained of her power. The stick she held burst into flame. She jabbed it toward the demon and danced backward as the beast turned toward her again. The stick was burning faster than she would have liked. She wished she hadn't noticed that.

“Close the gate!” she yelled to Gareth. “Finish it!”

He hesitated just a moment. Then he turned back to the gate, knelt…and tossed his staff toward Olivia. She caught it in one hand and held it to the remains of her stick. It seemed to take forever for the wood to catch.

The demon hissed like wind through the trees and bounded toward Gareth, reaching out with tentacles of wood and dirt. Olivia lunged desperately forward. She heard her skirt tear. She also heard bark crackling as some part of the foremost tentacle caught fire. There was another roar.

She stumbled forward, pressing her advantage, thinking she should have taken lessons from Mrs. Grenville. Her dress caught around her ankles. The staff weighed down her arm. She ducked but not fast enough. A lashing tendril slammed into her side.

It hurt, no question about that, and Olivia rocked backward on her feet. She was still
on
her feet, though. She'd expected to be across the clearing, against a tree or dead. Waving the staff, she stared at the demon through the jumping firelight. Was the creature smaller? It looked smaller.

This time, its roar was more of a shriek. In the aether, something was pulling it away. It was draining through the gate, shedding bits of its assumed form as it went. More and more of it dropped away, faster the further it diminished, like an avalanche in reverse.

In desperation, it charged toward Olivia once more. She hadn't been expecting that, and she was tired. The sharp sticks that served as its teeth closed on her sleeve. She felt them against her arm for one second. Then she jerked backward, and her sleeve tore away.

The demon fell. When it hit the ground, its body shattered into a jumble of leaves and soil and rocks and twigs. The gate sucked the rest of it back inside and sealed itself together. Olivia stood, staring at a spot that looked like anywhere else in the forest.

“Are you all right? Did it hurt you?”

Gareth's hands were on her shoulders. His voice was breathless.

“Yes. No. Shouldn't you know that already?” Olivia asked with a laugh she knew bordered on hysterical.

She switched her gaze out of the aether and looked up. Moonlight and candlelight were all that illuminated Gareth's face, but they were enough to see his weariness…and his smile.