The Broken Lands (45 page)

The gambler's fingers tightened on the lapels of Sam's collar, his forearms digging harder into the arteries in his neck. Sam swallowed convulsively, making noises that he couldn't believe were coming from him. At the corners of his vision, black and blue spots moved around and started to multiply. One of his arms went tingly and numb.

She turned to face the catherine wheel, opened her palm, and blew across it.
 

 

Behind Jin, the coal cinders faded as they sifted down. The red spark running along the fuse reached the first case and the wheel leaped into motion in a ring of spinning silver-blue light accompanied by a clear, sweet whistling. At this point, though, Sam could barely tell the difference between the sparks from the wheel and the sparks inside his own head.

“I'm not fooling,” Jin said, and then, without seeming to have moved at all, she was standing right before them, nearly close enough for Sam to touch.

If, that is, he'd still had working hands. With a dim shock he realized he couldn't feel any of his limbs anymore.

Over Jin's shoulder, the wheel of blue fire changed to silver-gray, like a snowy sky.

With her eyes on Walker's, she reached out one finger and traced the shape of what Sam thought might've been a circle on the back of the gambler's hand. Before she had even completed the gesture, he snarled and shot his other hand out to grab Jin by the throat.

Blood flowed achingly back into Sam's brain as the gambler howled in pain and flung him aside, sending him sprawling with such force he had to scramble to keep away from the tower's edge, which was barely visible under the fog pouring in like a tide down the river.

He raised his head just in time to see the wheel's spin slow to a halt and change direction as the silver fireworks faded out and transitioned seamlessly into a deep green. The ring of fire was getting smaller as it burned inward toward the center.

Shaking his hand in pain, Walker turned shocked eyes on Jin and, baring his two rows of teeth, lifted her by the neck until she was eye-to-eye with him. The green wheel became a gold wheel, spinning faster and faster as it shrank inward.

Sam crawled to Walter Mapp. As he staggered back to his feet, Jin drew another circle—
a wheel,
he realized—on the gambler's other hand, the one that was wrapped around her own throat, just as the gold fireworks began to burn crimson.

“Damn!” Walker threw her down hard, clutching both hands to his chest. On the back of each, a circle burned, deep, dark blood red, the same color as the spinning center of the catherine wheel and the mark on Jin's forehead.

She landed in a crouch, feet hidden in the fog. Still clasping his damaged hands, Walker stalked toward her. “Hurt me all you want. Pain is nothing, not for me. But I will bring such pain upon you that your
grandchildren
will feel it, if you're unlucky enough to live through this.
I will make you say the words.
”

Sam lurched after Walker. Jin's eyes flicked to him and she gave a tiny shake of her head—
no
—as she backed away from him. Past the wheel. Past the fire.

“Where are you going to go now?” Walker hissed. “Say it. Now, or I'll throw you off.”

“I'm not to be beaten by foxes who think they're tigers,” Jin said coldly.

He sneered angrily. “Guess I know where you got that from.”

“Then you ought to know to take me seriously when I say it.” But she kept backing up.

“Jin!” Sam screamed.

Which is when the explosive at the center of the catherine wheel ignited.

The detonation was soundless and colorless. The two halves of the sphere blew apart, although Sam could've sworn what he actually saw was the last spinning circle of the wheel's light being sucked
into
the explosion.

The remains of the sphere fell into the fire.

The fire leaped out of its container and raced, faster than Sam had ever seen fire move, along the cables. Red to the east, blue to the west, like two arms flung outward. And the bridge burned in the fog
.

“By blood I claim this crossroads,” Jin said, her voice ringing across the granite. “By the blood in these stones, by Constantine's blood and the blood of Sam's father and the rest of the men who died to place them.”

“I will kill you,” Walker growled.

“By naming I claim this crossroads,” she continued, still backing up across the fog-obscured stone floor.

“This is your last chance,” Walker snarled.

“By the names of the cities on either side,” Jin said with a glare, “by Brooklyn and New York, and all the names of those who died to build them and the names of those who live in them still, and I do it in the name of the pillars of the city: the keeper of the roads and the keeper of sanctuary, the keeper of lore and the smith, and the keeper of the conjunction.”

The gambler gave a scream of fury and hurtled at Jin. Mapp grabbed Sam to keep him from lunging at Walker.

“And by fire I claim this crossroads.” She smiled coldly and calmly as Walker closed in across the last few yards. “I claim it for the people of New York and the people of Brooklyn, for now and forever.”

And then, just before his hands connected with her, Walker disappeared.

The fog beneath his feet slid up in lazy curls of mist. It was as if he had—but no . . . no, Sam thought, that was impossible.

Jin remained where she stood, breathing hard but perfectly composed.

And yet . . . what it had looked like—what it had looked
exactly
like—was a man stepping off the edge of the tower and plunging down.

But if that was the case, then that meant Jin would have to be standing on thin air.

The two blazing arms along the cables disappeared, leaving nothing but a small, normal-looking fire crackling in the tin pan.

“Hey! Hey!” Constantine's voice called from the dark between the towers. “Everybody all right?”

“Yes,” Sam called. “Yes, we're here!”

A moment later Con appeared on the footpath, followed by Ambrose. Sam pushed out of Mapp's grasp and stumbled toward Jin.

“Sam, stop!” Jin shouted from the fog beyond the fire. “Wait . . . stay there, I'm coming back.”

The swirling mist cleared momentarily, just enough for him to see with perfect clarity the moment when she stepped back onto the tower.

 

In the basement beneath his church in Red Hook, Basile Christophel stared at the tallow-coated table where the daemon Bios reigned over his nebulae of sparks. “This is impossible,” Christophel murmured, entranced.

The glowing cinders were multiplying at an impossible rate. Along the line representing the East River, the cinders were so thick and burning so hot the tallow was actually
melting,
a thing that should not have been possible. And the gold-white glow was spreading inland on both sides.

The daemon with its scarlet cheroot brain strode across its disintegrating dominion, watching its world spark to life, glow, and melt.

So entranced and disbelieving was the conjuror as the world on the table began to devolve that he didn't notice when the tallow at the edges started to liquefy.

The cinders continued to multiply. Christophel looked on, transfixed. Bios waded across its kingdom. And then, the first runnel of hot liquid tallow poured off the table and onto Christophel's perfectly polished boot.

The room had been so quiet that the sound of the spatter was audible. Christophel looked down to stare at the congealing mess on his shoe. Then he raised his head and discovered the figure of Bios—there was no mistaking it—
facing
him. If the thing had had eyes, it would've looked as though the daemon was actually
staring
at him.

Which, of course, was impossible.

Unless something unanticipated had just happened to his praxis.

The conjuror looked down at the tallow on his boot again just as another tiny stream ran off the table. “Breach overflow,” he murmured softly, wonderingly.

Then he began to sweat.

The daemon spoke. “I am the root,” it said, but unlike the last time it had uttered these words, it sounded uncertain.

A drop of red sweat fell into Christophel's left eye. He blinked and wiped it away.

“I am the root,” Bios said again. This time there was a note of anger in its voice. The glowing cheroot began to fade.

Christophel took a step back. The bloody sweat slid down his neck to soak into his collar.

“I am the root!”
Two points of red light began to burn in its head.
Eyes
. Christophel stepped back again, stumbled over an uneven stone in the floor.
“I am the root, the root of the tree,”
Bios snarled, its voice rising to a weird scream,
“and thou shalt have no gods other than me!”

The melted tallow reversed its course and ran inward to the center of the table where the daemon stood, and in a heartbeat Bios stood three times as tall. Still staring with its furious, burning eyes at the conjuror that had called it into being, the daemon crouched and launched itself off the table.

Christophel screamed.

C
ONSTANTINE LOWERED
the crates back down on the winch lift. Then, with a quick nod to Sam, he and Ambrose and Mapp started back across the footpath to the New York tower, where the boat was tied up on the river.

“Did you see it?” Jin asked, peering up from where she was packing her rucksack. “I mean, I know you were running from Walker and Bones,” she added.

He grinned. “I saw the whole thing. It was pretty amazing.”

She smiled up at him with a vaguely mischievous look. “Want to see something else? While it's just us?”

His stomach flipped in five or six different directions. “Yeah.”

“Promise you won't say anything. Or have some kind of weird panic reaction.”

“I don't have the slightest clue why I would do either.”

“Okay.” She straightened up, still smiling that mischievous little smile. “This might not work, so don't laugh if . . . well. Watch.”

She opened her hand, and in her palm was one last rocket. Frowning in concentration, she took the fuse and rolled it between her thumb and forefinger.

It ignited, and Jin yelped in delight. Sam stared. “How did you—?”

She raised her eyebrows, then turned her face up and threw the rocket into the air. And it
sailed,
high and fast with a sound like a violin, not as if it had been thrown at all but as if shot from a cannon, until the fuse burned down.

A universe of violet fire ignited overhead, and a muted
boom
shook the night.

Sam stared. She'd lit the thing with her bare hands and just flung it up there and it had
flown
. “How did you do that?”

“I think it's something I can do now.” Jin kept her face turned up, her mouth stretched into a smile that made Sam want to laugh in delight. “What do you think?”

The violet glow lit her face and hair, and Sam said the first words that came into his head. “It's beautiful,” he said, “and so are you, and I don't know what I'm going to do when you leave.”

 

Jin felt the familiar unease begin to rise, but before it could really take root in her head and start to hurt, Sam's arms were around her and he was pulling her close.

Which is when, to her horror, she started to cry.

Everything welled up. Gone was the joy of the fireworks, the triumph of all they had done. Everything, all the confusion and disbelief about Sam, all her anger at who she was and what she had been, all the sadness she felt because, even if the rest of it could be figured out, she would still be leaving him behind in a matter of days, and the mortification that she was actually crying, on top of it all—everything poured out.

She turned her face away and buried it in his shoulder, hands knotted in his shirt, and sobbed. His arms tightened around her, and he leaned his cheek against her temple and stroked her hair, which only made her cry harder.

And then, at last, she was wrung empty and the shuddering stopped.

“Are you okay?”

The words were quiet, spoken beside her ear, and she realized she wasn't quite empty after all. There was a knot in her chest, a knot that had nothing to do with her past and everything to do with right now, with this boy with the green eyes who didn't seem to care that she had just cried all over his shirt.

He kissed her ear, he kissed her forehead, and the knot in Jin's chest dissolved into pieces. She kissed him back.

 

It was somewhere at about this point, as hundreds of thousands of Bios's daemons escaped from the isolated world of their table and discovered that they could speak as well as listen, that people throughout New York and Brooklyn, throughout Gravesend, and all the way out along the coast of Long Island suddenly be­gan to hear voices.