Maelstrom (28 page)

The gasoline tank exploded with a thunderous
blast.

Bits of metal flew past, a piece of the
tiller striking the road just inches away from my nose. The remains
of the flaming wreck hurtled forward on the burning wheels. The
cultists blocking the bridge dove madly out of the way, but
momentum carried the fiery wreckage into two who weren’t fast
enough, smashing them into the bridge railing.

My motor car. Gone.

There came another distant boom, and a third
line of arcane fire roared to new life. Sheets of blue flame
reached toward the sky from the three lines, and the Lapidem blazed
like a small sun where they all met in the eye of the vortex.

“Whyborne?” I called. “Iskander? Are you all
right?”

“I’m fine!” Whyborne called. “But—damn
it!”

The surviving cultists from this end of the
bridge rushed toward us. I drew my revolver, prepared to shoot as
many as possible.

A host of sleek forms erupted from beneath
the bridge. Shark teeth flashed in the torchlight, and clouds of
stinging tentacle hair wrapped around exposed skin.

I held my fire, instead drawing my sword
cane. Iskander had his knives, and charged into the fray with a
ululating cry. The ketoi scarcely needed our help, though, their
savage teeth and sharp spears washing the streets in blood.

One of the cultists broke free from the
ketoi and rushed toward Whyborne. He fell back, eyes wide, and drew
the witch hunter’s dagger from his coat. I let out a shout of alarm
and tried to run to his side, but I knew I’d never reach him in
time.

One of the ketoi leapt onto the cultist’s
back. Her teeth sank into his head, biting through his hood and
knocking his mask off. He screamed horribly, crashing to the ground
while she continued to maul him.

I lunged forward with my sword cane, ending
his struggles. The ketoi rose from his limp body, and I found
myself staring into my mother-in-law’s face. “Heliabel?”

“Heliabel?” repeated a voice from behind
me.

Niles stood there, having apparently
abandoned his motor car after seeing what had become of my poor
Curved Dash. His eyes were wide, his skin slightly ashen. He
started to lift one hand, then stopped, so it hovered halfway into
the gesture.

She drew herself up like a queen. Her
tentacle hair stilled its thrashing. “Niles,” she said. Blood
rimmed her teeth. “Griffin. Persephone says—”

“Brother?”

Persephone stood a few feet from Whyborne,
her eyes wide. “I knew it! As soon as I drew close, I knew that was
not Fire in His Blood,” she cried. “He stole your face, but it
wasn’t you.”

There came the sound of a fourth distant
explosion, accompanied by screams and breaking glass. Seconds
later, another arcane line surged into violent life.

Four down, two to go.

Whyborne nodded. “You’re right. It isn’t
me—it’s Bradley. And he has Christine.”

Persephone grinned. “Not for long. I
followed him here. As soon as I realized he was not my brother, I
went into the sea and called.”

“Summoning an army does have its
advantages,” Heliabel agreed.

“Librarians! Defend your city!” Mr. Quinn
shouted from the opposite end of the bridge.

“Speaking of which,” I said.

There came a wild cacophony of shouts, the
librarians hurling rocks at the line of cultists. A horse let out a
loud whinny as someone tried to drive a carriage through. It reared
in the traces, hooves striking at the cultists, forcing them back.
A smattering of guns fired as well.

Dark shapes slipped over the side of the
bridge. One of the cultists holding Christine started to cry
out—then fell silent as a ketoi spear took him in the chest. The
other surrendered his grip on Christine in favor of drawing out a
wicked-looking dagger.

Christine didn’t hesitate. She charged at
the side of the bridge, and two of the ketoi caught her up just as
she reached the railing. All three dove, bodies vanishing beneath
the water.

“Christine’s safe!” Whyborne cried, at the
same moment Iskander exclaimed, “Thank God!”

Hope bloomed in my chest. Bradley had no
chance. If he’d meant to use Christine as his final sacrifice, he
no longer had any hope of completing the ritual, no matter how much
chanting he did in the meantime. His cultists fell before the ketoi
and the librarians. We’d have him soon enough, and Whyborne would
discover how to reverse the body swap once we had the Lapidem back
in our possession.

A fifth line surged into power. “He can’t
complete the ritual, can he?” I asked in alarm.

“I should think not.” Christine struggled up
the embankment, her clothing dripping wet. “He meant to make me his
final sacrifice. Bradley never did have any imagination.”

“Christine!” Iskander ran to her and swept
her into his arms. “God, Christine, I never—”

“Look out!” Christine shouted.

More cultists swept in toward us from the
surrounding city. How many were there? My informants had said an
unusual number of strangers had invaded the town. Had they been
drawn from all over the world, intent on the Restoration their cult
promised to usher in?

I tossed Christine my gun. She and Iskander
fell together back to back, while I prepared to do battle with my
sword cane.

“I know Bradley forced you to write the
letter,” Iskander said. There came the calm crack of the revolver
as Christine aimed and fired. “But I know too there was some truth
in it. You never wanted a society wedding, and I was
thoughtless.”

The world was shadows and madness. The
flames from the burning motor car flung an uncertain orange glow
over the scene. Cultists and librarians struggled against one
another, and I glimpsed Mr. Quinn bashing a man in the face with
what appeared to be a very heavy dictionary.

“You’re being absurd!” Christine shouted
back. “We’re going to be married, damn it, and Whyborne is going to
walk me down the aisle in his proper body. It’s going to be
perfect, even if I have to kill every one of these bastards
myself!”

I slashed and turned, grabbing a handful of
robes and wrenching an attacker off his feet. A moment later,
Iskander finished him off in a spray of blood. “I love you,
Christine!”

“Are you both insane?” Whyborne shouted.
“Bradley is still casting his spell!”

The air seemed to tremble. Bradley stood at
the center of the bridge beside his device, one of the cultists who
had held Christine still beside him.

The sixth and final arcane line roared to
life.

The light at the heart of the maelstrom
nearly blinded my shadowsight. I almost heard it now, a keening
song, as if the vortex itself had a voice. I started onto the
bridge, dodging the cultists the ketoi hadn’t yet brought down.
Whyborne joined me, the witch hunter’s dagger clutched in his
hand.

“Bradley!” he shouted. “Give yourself up!
Your plan is in ruins. Give me back my body, and we’ll let you
live.”

Bradley turned slowly, and
I found myself glad a mask hid his stolen face. “Yours? You didn’t
deserve this! You didn’t deserve any of it! And now you
dare
to think me
defeated?”

With a single, smooth motion, he drew his
knife across the throat of the cultist at his side.

The man’s hood fell back as he staggered.
His knife tumbled from limp fingers, but before he could follow it
to the ground, Bradley hauled the man’s dying body closer to the
device. Blood poured across the Lapidem, down the strange cradle it
sat in, into grooves and hollows that suddenly flared with arcane
light. A sphere of blue fire sprang up, visible even to my ordinary
sight, encircling Bradley and the device alike.

With a final, contemptuous shove, Bradley
dropped the empty husk of the dead man. Turning to the device, he
raised his arms and began to chant.

Whyborne

I stood frozen. All around me the battle
still raged: librarians struggled with the cultists, ketoi rose
from the river howling in rage, and Christine fired Griffin’s
revolver. But somehow I heard Bradley’s chant even through the
screams and snarls, the words in no tongue I knew.

Perhaps in no tongue ever spoken by
humankind.

The wind picked up, and I felt it spiral,
even as the great maelstrom spiraled beneath my feet. The bubble of
seething blue light enclosing Bradley spread its radiance over the
scene, visible now even to me.

“Whyborne!” Griffin shouted. I turned. A
dark clot of robed men rushed toward us, yet more reinforcements
summoned from wherever they had lurked in reserve. “What’s
happening?”

“Power,” I said numbly. The six ritual sites
had been primed in some fashion, and now fed titanic amounts of
arcane energy into the heart of the vortex. “The Lapidem is
absorbing it for the moment, I think, but that will only last until
Bradley reaches the end of his chant.”

Griffin paled. “And then...the beacon?”

“To signal the start of the Restoration.
Yes.”

He nodded. Then he firmed his grip on his
sword cane and looked to me. “What do we do? Can we reach Bradley
through the sphere of energy surrounding him?”

I had no magic. No means of stopping
Bradley. Nothing at all but the witch hunter’s dagger.

Well. It would have to do, then.

“Whyborne?” Griffin’s face was pale and
streaked with blood. The reeking smoke from the burning motor car
billowed around us, stinging my eyes.

“Stay here and hold off the reinforcements,”
I said. “I’ll stop Bradley.”

He seized my wrist. “Ival, just remember.
You might not be in the right body, but you’re still the right man.
Widdershins knows its own.” His fingers tightened, the white pearl
on his wedding band glowing in the blue light. “I’ll hold them off
your back. Do what needs to be done.”

Griffin released me and turned to the
charging cultists. The steel of his sword cane reflected the light
redly—then became red from blood as he slashed and stabbed.

I tore my eyes away from him, forcing my
feet into motion. The wind grew stronger and stronger as I neared
the center of the bridge, and the river roared and shook the stones
beneath my feet. Above us, the very clouds had joined the vortex,
swirling like a hurricane while Bradley’s chant rose toward a
crescendo.

I paused just outside the barrier, my arm
raised against the glare. I firmed my grip on the witch hunter’s
dagger and held it before me like a shield.

Taking a deep breath, I plunged into the
sphere of gathering energy.

Pain seared every nerve, and it was all I
could do not to scream. Wild magic exploded all around me, a part
of the maelstrom made manifest, scorching my skin. The witch
hunter’s dagger sliced through it, but it could only do so much to
protect me from the sheer amount of magic surrounding me.

I’d told Griffin a normal human body wasn’t
meant to channel such power. I’d been right; the taste of burning
filled my mouth, and blood hazed my vision. No wonder Bradley’s
acquisition of my body had been so carefully planned.

And now I was in an ordinary body. Just an
ordinary person.

I couldn’t do this. My legs gave way, my
knees striking the stones. I had to turn back, before it killed me,
before I died here, burned to ash by a magic this form was never
meant to contain.

I looked back over my shoulder, ready to
crawl away. Bradley had been right about me. I was nothing but the
blood I’d been lucky enough to be born to. Without it, without the
magic, I had nothing at all to make me special.

The fighting behind me had grown more
desperate: Persephone and Griffin stood back to back, while
Christine had run out of bullets and now fought by Iskander with a
spear of ketoi make. Father fired his old Remington from the war,
the gray in his beard washed red from the firelight.

All of them, depending on me. If Bradley
succeeded in sending the signal, in starting a chain of events
meant to return the inhuman Masters to their old power, all of them
would die. The ketoi and umbrae would be slaves again, and I
doubted most humans would fare any better.

Clutching the dagger tight, I forced myself
to my feet. A cry of anguish escaped me, and I turned it to a shout
of rage as I plunged forward, toward the heart of the sphere and
Bradley.

He turned, flinging up a
hand. I
felt
the
spell he tried to use against me come apart on the edge of the
dagger.

The device flared, visible even to my merely
human sight, and I knew there was no time left. I couldn’t let him
finish the ritual, no matter the cost.

“You should have left this in the museum,” I
said. And thrust the dagger deep into the chest of what had been my
body.

His eyes widened in shock. The pain in my
own limbs reached a crescendo, and I heard myself laughing like a
maniac, a sound of despair and triumph mixed together.

There came a deep bell-like tone, as if the
entire world were a chime that had just been struck by a mallet.
The sphere around us collapsed, and the maelstrom’s fire burst
forth from the Lapidem, punching a hole in the very sky and pouring
through into whatever lay Beyond.

I was too late. The signal had been
sent.

Griffin

Whyborne’s shout of fury and pain echoed to
me even over the sounds of battle. I bashed a cultist in the face
with my fist, then kicked another in the stomach to buy myself
space. “Whyborne! I’m coming!”

I turned to run out onto the bridge—then
froze. Whyborne had made his way to Bradley, but my heart lurched
at the sight.

He’d said a mortal body wasn’t meant to
contain the fury of the maelstrom. And now I realized just how
right he’d been.

Skin charred and turned black, peeling away
in patches, the ash scattered by the howling wind. Hair came loose
in clumps, and blood soaked through his clothes in places. I
screamed at him to stop, to come back. Nothing was worth this.
Whyborne in the wrong body would still be my love; he couldn’t die
like this. He had to stop.