My Black Beast (12 page)

“
Well, I don’t have any questions
about where the monster came from anymore.”

He huffed out half a laugh and then
sighed.

“
Will your arm be okay?”

Marka just looked at the ground in front of
her, gripping the ring that she’d killed the girl for touching.
Well, that may be an oversimplification. But certainly, it didn’t
make the situation better. She reached over and held her good hand
out to Lowell. He cupped his hand there and she let the ring fall
into it.

“
Are you sure I…”

She put her good arm over the broken one and
he heard the hum of the magic at work and the too familiar scrape
of bone moving and grinding inside. Marka’s face was wracked with
pain but she didn’t make even the slightest of noises. A half
minute and the work was done. She moved the mended limb back and
forth to test it. Everything was in order. Lowell offered the ring
back to her and she looked up at him for a moment before taking
it.

“
Can you walk now or do you want to
be carried?”

By way of an answer, she stood, lifting the
book from her lap, and walked to the edge of the street ahead of
him. She stopped there and turned. Lowell stood to join her. As he
came near, Marka reached out and took his hand. She would be in
charge. Of course. He was silly to think otherwise.

Chapter 13

The air in the massive
cave
that housed the city had become a
hellish swamp. The fissures were pumping their hot, wet breath in
and the panic of the citizens did little to help keep things cool.
There were no more alarms. The warnings had been
sent.

Marka did her best to lead Lowell through the
crush of panicked citizens, but no one was going anywhere. There
was a constant swell of panicked shouts and thundering booms from
the far distance. The tear that had been above the house was larger
now, stretching into the sky. The roads pulsed erratically with
light, brightening and dimming in turn.

Even with the slow pace it was clear that
Marka was tired. Her grip was loose and she was less sure of her
footing than she had always been, occasionally even stumbling a bit
among the crowd. It was unlike her and Lowell was concerned. Sure,
she could mend bones, but what about the rest of her? Was she truly
alright? There wasn’t anything resembling a proper doctor within
who knows how many dimensions of this place. Even if the cave was
under the city, getting back up without her help was apt to be
impossible. He didn’t even really know how he’d gotten down in the
first place.

Every time the fissures sputtered the gathered
people screamed and pressed forward. The mob was beginning to crush
itself as the wave of panic stricken people thickened and it was
becoming harder and harder to move at all. It seemed she’d had
enough. Marka began tugging Lowell hastily toward the side street.
If everyone was moving toward the spire, they would have to move
toward it a different way.

They found the edge of the crowd and pushed on
into the tiny passageways that Marka had been so fond of before.
Now, she looked wary, eyes darting up to a line of thin fissures
that ran directly above them and then around the alleys as they
passed and back up. She was waiting for something but the major
tears were well behind them now. Or maybe it wasn’t the tears she
was worried about.

Their pace was steady and uninterrupted by any
sort of traffic. Even with enough room in the alleyways for an
adult to pass unimpeded, the people didn’t use the back
alleys.

Lowell could see the details of the tower now.
It easily rivaled the largest buildings in Seattle for size, made
of dull white rock spiraling up a deep, onyx core. The white plates
didn’t touch the black core, but were three free standing
structures that grew narrower as they climbed. Somehow the
structure reminded him of an ice cream cone. The symmetrical
patterns on the white plating even sort of made it look like a
waffle cone. He was getting hungry, apparently. At least it was
something pleasant to think about.

A sudden series of screams from the main
avenue pulled his mind away from frozen treats and he looked down
to see Marka had already darted down the alley toward the street.
He followed as quickly as he could and came to the street to find
people fleeing in every direction, even into the alleys which
they’d previously not dared to occupy.

He could only catch glimpses of Marka through
the wave of bodies. They were the only two headed toward the spire,
everyone else fled backward, the way they’d come. There was a small
clearing. Lowell opened his mouth to call for Marka but before he
could, she stumbled to the side and was clipped by a fleeing
man.

Marka curled and went to the ground as a flock
of people moved past her.

“
Marka! Hey—”

The people were more frantic than they had
been and pushing past was nearly impossible. The wave began to thin
and he saw it. A tiny creature, deep red skin pulled taut over an
awkward skeleton. It moved on two legs, glaring and snapping at the
fleeing throngs, but not attacking. Was it too small? It was maybe
the size of a young child, but horribly shaped with too long
arms.

It spotted Marka on the ground and hunched,
raking its claws against the bricks and emitting a high squeal. The
creature was charging from Marka’s blind side and leapt, latching
onto her back. Lowell was already on his way to her side when the
creature landed. The razor fine claws dug into the thick hide of
Marka’s cloak. She shifted, trying to throw the creature
free.

Lowell tucked down and dove, shoulder first,
into the imp. The creature skittered across the ground and stopped
a few feet away. Lowell was on his feet first and the imp charged.
It leapt and Lowell instinctively caught it. A single claw made it
forward, catching his collar bone and running down the front of his
chest. The beast screeched and hissed and managed to writhe its
head over. Pointed teeth dug into his arm sending a stream of blood
trickling down his arm.

Instinctively, he tried to whip the little
bastard away, but it twisted against his throw and wrapped itself
around his arm. The force put Lowell off balance and he fell to the
ground. Now in a position of power, the imp crawled onto his chest.
It hissed hot, horrible breath into his face. Lowell closed his
eyes.

Where there should have been pain and a torn
off face, there was the slap of skin on… whatever the imp had. He
felt the prick of the claws slide off quickly and clatter on the
street again.

Marka was over him at full speed. She moved on
the nasty little vermin before it had time to regain composure and
brought her heel down on it. There were a few wet cracks and the
imp was done.

Lowell pulled himself up, the adrenaline
making it nearly impossible to stay down. He tore away a chunk of
shirt as he approached Marka and wrapped it tightly around his
wounded arm, wincing.

“
Whatever we’re doing, I think
we’re running out of time.”

The bleeding had already slowed and the pain
was starting to numb. He nodded toward the spire.

Marka moved first, the streets now clear as
far as they could see. The run was short from there as they turned
onto a wide road, much wider than any of the others had been. He
could see there were two more like it splitting out from the large
circular mall that sat at the base of the spire.

There was a flood of bodies in the area below
the spire, stretching up the streets. Lowell screamed as they
approached the back part of the line and people turned. To his
surprise they noticed him this time around. The path cleared ahead
as people darted away from the bleeding stranger.

Soon the pair stood in the circle at the base
of the spire, looking up at it. The space between the white spirals
glowed dimly with magical energy, continuing the patterns that had
been dug into the pale stone. Around the base, the white stone was
unbroken except for a few passages wide enough to let a few dozen
people through at a time. The openings were clustered with guards
in the black linen and the crowds kept their distance.

Marka broke through the crowd and walked out.
The guards all turned their eyes to watch her. She pulled the book
from under her cloak and held it up.

He could see it took everything she had, but
the small girl forced as much sound as she could through a voice
box that lacked any real practice with making sound. She spoke her
language slowly and the air rippled with every word, her tattoos
flaring. It was all she could do to force the words out, but they
listened. When she was finished, she lowered the book and watched
the guards with wary eyes.

Lowell came to her side and placed a hand on
her shoulder. She looked up at him and he smiled. She turned her
attention back to the guards. There was a heated discussion among
them. He was not close enough to hear clearly and it would have
done him little good to be closer.

A few in the crowd shouted at the guards, but
none dared to move past the line that had formed. A guard motioned
at the crowd and another shook her head and shrugged dismissively.
It was during their talk that Lowell noticed that the wind was
still and the temperature was cool here. There was none of the hot
humidity of the world just a few steps away, where the line of
people stopped.

The guards turned to Marka again. They split
ranks in an orderly fashion and formed up on either side of the
door. From front to back, each of them took to a knee and faced
their head toward the floor.

Marka stepped forward, grabbing Lowell by the
hand.

“
End,” she said, and pulled him
toward the spire.

Chapter 14

A cold wind seemed to pull
them toward
the small, rounded opening in the black spire. It was entirely
smooth and uniform, something sort of unnatural given the fact that
it was made out of a giant black rock. Light fell into it and got
stuck in such a way that it gleamed but never shifted. Lowell could
swear he saw shifting just under the surface of the rock, but any
time he thought he saw a movement the area became too dark to make
out as the sinking light got pulled away into the spire.

He was hesitant to enter the place. As
interesting as it had been from a distance, there was a deep sense
of foreboding about the structure. Weird how getting your arm
nearly chewed off by a tiny demon changes the way you look at
places.

The entrance was narrow and ran deeper into
the massive stone spire than Lowell had expected. All around him
there was solid onyx, even the ground beneath him. The entryway
must have run ten feet with a low ceiling overhead adding to a
growing sense of claustrophobia. The light from the square behind
them quickly fell away as it was devoured by the unrelenting
darkness of the stone and was slowly replaced by a much stranger
light. A white-purple like the burning of Marka’s magic seemed to
come from everywhere around them. It followed them as they moved
in, showing only the nearest two or three feet with any certain
visibility before it was swallowed back up.

There was a dim wave of magic pulsing across
Marka’s tattoos as they entered a much more spacious area. The
light now pulsed out from them at regular intervals, ricocheting
through black crystal and giving them brief ideas of how the room
looked. Marka walked with confidence, and soon found them a
stairway. It was an awkward thing, with too narrow steps that were
also too high to comfortably walk up. It was also an unnecessarily
long staircase for how much vertical space it should have covered.
Marka walked in front and made her way up carefully, keeping the
book in the hand nearest the wall. There was no guard rail to speak
of, only a small raised lip at the edge. This was not so much a
safety feature as it was the sort of thing that would trip you and
then make you be dead.

High stepping was never a particular favorite
as far as pastimes went and Lowell was now more annoyed at climbing
stairs than he had been with all the frantic walking tours of the
city he’d been on. The pain in his thighs reminded him to wonder
whether the lack of pain in his arm was good or bad. He couldn’t
really decide so he figured that if it fell off he would deal with
it then.

The stairway finally came to a landing that
spread out wide in front of them. From what the pulsing light
showed, it was a massive disk that seemed to float in the middle of
the spire. It could have been a huge column, but there was no real
way to check that didn’t involve leaning over the edge and that
seemed like an option better left unexplored.

The pulses of light died against a flat black
surface in the middle of the disk. There was no detail on the rock
and it looked to just be a dead end. He expected that Marka would
pull him some direction. Instead, her leg began to glow. He
half-instinctively took a step back, not wanting to get caught in
whatever was about to happen.

He watched her closely. For the first time, in
the dark of the vast black room, he could see the magic moving
along the tattoos. It wasn’t the tattoos themselves that lit, it
was the skin between. The color was different now, fluctuating and
not nearly so bright. He looked to Marka. She was gritting her
teeth against the pain in her leg. Lowell moved to touch her, but
as he took the first step, the light began to stream off of her leg
and toward the door.