Broken Mirrors (21 page)

But in that long desperate moment beating against the dome, the fear subsided. Last time, he’d found a new host so quickly, he hadn’t had time to get used to the feeling of weightlessness and disorientation, and he still wasn’t used to it, but the blind unreasoning flight for a new warm body to possess receded, slightly.

His body! It was still at the bottom of the pit! Faster than thought, he settled back into his stolen skin. It was like sliding into a warm bath, and he gasped – he gasped, because he had lungs – and touched himself all over to make sure he was whole. He was kind of sore – he’d banged his elbow – and he was on the floor twisted at an awkward angle because he hadn’t bothered to arrange his body in any kind of sensible fashion before vacating it. That was dumb – he’d have to be smarter about it next time.

Next time. Right. Once could be a fluke. Any good experiment had to be repeatable.

Leaning against the wall of the pit, he went limp, making sure his body wouldn’t fall over and land on one of the chunks of busted cinderblock that littered the floor. Once settled, he closed his eyes, and did circular breathing like Beta-B had taught him, and visualized that rising-from-the-depths image…

Suddenly he could see again, though he hadn’t opened his eyes. And he could see in all directions, not just 360 degree vision, but… however many degrees there were in a sphere. Which was probably not any degrees at all since a sphere was three-dimensional, which meant instead of degrees there’d be some other math thing, and –

Holy hell I’m out of my body again, he thought, and he knew it was true, because his body was lying there on the floor of the pit, empty as a pair of pants left at the foot of a bed. More importantly, he was out of his body and thinking about math (and his own ignorance thereof) instead of just groping around in blind unreasoning panic for a new meat-bag to occupy. He tried to direct his movement and found he could propel himself – though he couldn’t have said how – around the pit, up and down, taking in the sights. Sight, yes, and into spectrums invisible to his human eyes, but he had no sense of smell, or taste, and no sense of touch, though he could hear his body breathing, except it wasn’t so much hearing as interpreting the vibrations in the air. He could also sense the presence of humans, too, sort of like… how a magnet senses north.

What the hell am I? Rondeau thought, and settled back down into his body again.

He stood up, and opened his mouth to yell, but this stupid magic bubble was soundproof. They wouldn’t let him out until it was time to let him out. He had no clue how long he’d been down there, which meant he might have way too much time to brood over what Marla wanted him to do. Knowing he could leave his body at will was one thing – if he could control the panic that came when he first departed the flesh, he wouldn’t necessarily commit any grievous crimes against humanity. After all, knowing how to shoot a gun doesn’t automatically make you a murderer.

But, being told to shoot somebody, and then doing what you were told, did make you a murderer.

Oh well. Screw that noise. Introspection had never gotten him anywhere. He was in a body again, and bodies were glorious things, marvelous engines of pleasure. So while he was stuck in this hole in the ground, bored out of his mind but with a functioning body, he might as well drop his pants and rub one out.

He fantasized about Talion, because even with the missing fingers and all, that guy was still hot.

Crapsey’s body flew through the air, driven by a wall of green light, and smashed into a much more conventional wall, made of brick. At least, he was pretty sure it was a brick wall. The other possibility was that a truck had crashed into him, and he didn’t remember seeing any trucks rumbling through the catacombs. His body lay crumpled like a pile of dirty laundry at the base of the wall, and the green light faded, though a tinge of the color overlaid his vision, making everything in the dim dank chamber look faintly algae-beslimed.

Viscarro advanced on him, stepping over the Mason and scuttling past one-armed Nicolette without paying them any attention. His robes parted as he walked, and Crapsey noticed he had a false leg, a fancy thing made of brass and carved dark woods, doubtless magically animated. “You must be admiring my prosthesis.” Viscarro’s voice was like coal falling down a metal chute. “It’s an adequate bit of engineering, though nothing like the original. Nicolette would need one of these to replace her missing arm, except she’s going to bleed out and die, making the limb unnecessary. Teleportation is so gauche. Shouldn’t you all know better?”

“Listen!” Crapsey shouted. “I’m on your side! Go over there and take the cloak off that woman before she wakes up! We can end this!”

At least, that’s what he tried to shout, but his jaw stayed firmly closed, and his tongue didn’t so much as wiggle in his mouth. Crapsey tried to get up, but his body didn’t respond. Uh oh. Had the blow snapped his spine somewhere, or had Viscarro’s staff merely paralyzed him? Either way, this body was no good at the moment. There had to be an apprentice lurking around here somewhere he could possess, and with a voice and mobility he could approach Viscarro and make an audible plea for alliance. Or, failing that, go down fighting.

He tried to leave his body, but the zap of green light had shaken up his brain, and it was tough to focus on his visualizations – the image of steam escaping from the mouth of a teakettle usually worked best, but it wasn’t working now, and he couldn’t remember any of his other options, they all tore and blew away. Maybe it was more than the crash-landing. Maybe the nasty green light had done something to his mind.

Viscarro was standing over him, face like old leather stretched on a bone frame, repulsive little teeth bared in a smile of triumph. “I see you lost your jaw again, Rondeau. The new one looks very interesting. What are those runes? They look like Elder Script, but that can’t be, the last known examples were lost, undocumented, when Rasmussen perished in the megalithic temple collapse…” He knelt down, reaching out with his crooked-stick fingers, and Crapsey knew without a whisper of a doubt that he was about to get his wonderful useful jaw ripped right off his face.

Nicolette stood up behind Viscarro, blood still oozing from her shoulder, swaying unsteadily. She had something in her remaining hand, one of her little baubles — Crapsey couldn’t see exactly what. She tossed it underhand toward the back of Viscarro’s head, and then collapsed to the floor.

Crapsey tried to turn his head away, expecting an explosion, but of course his neck wouldn’t cooperate. His eyelids worked, so he just squeezed his eyes shut and hoped for minimal shrapnel. No boom followed, though – all he heard was the thump of Viscarro’s staff hitting the floor and a muffled scream. He opened his eyes, and Viscarro was on the floor, clawing at his face, which had thick tendrils of vegetation – grape vines, maybe? – growing all over it, woody stems twining around his head like a mummy’s cerements, leaves sprouting. Viscarro didn’t need to breathe, and he soon stopped panicking and began groping for his staff, but the vines wound down around his neck and his chest, and bound up his arms against his body. Within half a minute Viscarro was entirely covered in the growths, curled into a fetal lump, and his screams were barely audible under the wooden shell.

A flare of light blazed beyond Viscarro, and Crapsey squinted against it. Nicolette held what looked like an ordinary sparkler, but the head was far brighter than usual, and she gritted her teeth as she pressed the flame against the stump of her shoulder, cauterizing the wound. The white light seemed to burn away the greenish tinge in Crapsey’s vision, and he experimentally twisted around. His body responded, albeit stiffly, and he grabbed Viscarro’s staff – no longer illuminated, it was just a gnarled piece of wood – and used it to lever himself to his feet. He considered giving Viscarro’s vine-twined body a good kick, but it would probably just hurt his foot. The guy was armored.

“You saved my life,” Crapsey said.

Nicolette’s sparkler went dark. Still on the ground, she looked up at him, a lunatic brightness in her eyes. “Damn. I should’ve waited a few more minutes then. Could’ve been rid of you.”

“Don’t make me hit you with this stick when I’m feeling so grateful.”

“Do whatever you like, jawface.” Nicolette winced and looked at the place her left arm should have been. “Damn. Why do I have a sudden urge to go frame Dr. Richard Kimball for a crime he didn’t commit?”

Crapsey frowned. Nicolette often made no sense, so he didn’t bother asking what she was talking about. “You lost your arm in my world, too. Had it amputated by choice, and replaced it with this horrible tentacle thing.”

“Nice. I was just thinking about how this little mishap opens up some intriguing prosthetic possibilities, though I was going in more of a sex-toy type direction. Tentacles are cool, too, though. Help a witch up?”

Crapsey, who was feeling marginally steadier on his feet now, held out his hand and pulled Nicolette upright. They both hobbled toward the still unmoving Mason.

“Think she’s dead?” Nicolette said.

“No. My paralysis went away when Viscarro dropped his magic stick, so I bet the Mason’s did, too. My guess? She’s laying there, listening, and waiting to see what we’ll do – whether we’ll try to take the cloak off, or kill her, or whatever.”

The Mason rolled over and gazed up at them from the floor. “You know me so well, Crapsey. If your body hadn’t been so young and undeveloped when I was looking for a host, I might have taken you over. You’re nowhere near as weak or stupid as people suppose, and while your will is not like that of humans, it has a certain… resiliency, a kind of hybrid strength. It’s just as well — I wouldn’t have been able to use your ability to switch bodies, so it would have been a waste of a good tool — but still.”

“That’s simultaneously creepy and flattering, boss. But what if you took me over and I jumped bodies to get away from you? Wouldn’t you be stuck hanging off an empty body, and pretty much totally fucked?”

The Mason rose. “You could not leap voluntarily in those days. And once I was on your shoulders, and in your mind, I could have made sure you never learned how. Many sorcerers have the ability transfer their consciousness to other bodies, too, you know – I just made sure Marla never did.”

Crapsey sniffed. “And here I thought I was special.”

“Oh, you are. Body-swapping requires preparation and ritual for sorcerers, but it comes so naturally to you. And your ability to… displace… other souls and consign them to oblivion is unique in my experience. Sorcerers have no such power. Their most common approach is merely to switch consciousness, trading bodies, and the act is frowned upon by most, considered a crime and violation. As if vermin can even commit crimes against one another.”

“I know that body-switching trick,” Nicolette said. “It’s a bitch to do right, takes forever to work up the ritual. Unless you’re talking about twins or something, where you can set up a sympathetic resonance, then it’s pretty easy. I knew this pair of twins in the Four Tree Gang who switched bodies all the time, mostly just to sleep with each others’ girlfriends. We call it ‘the thing on the doorstep trick.’”

“H.P. Lovecraft reference,” Crapsey said. “Nice. Bonus points.”

“You can read?” Nicolette said.

“Sure. Well. To be honest, it was like an adaptation in a comic book, but I got the general idea.”

Nicolette shook her head. “Anyway. Not that I don’t enjoy talking shop with my colleagues and all, but can we, like, become people of action again? I ate a painkiller charm, but this stump’s going to start bothering me bad pretty soon, and I lost who knows how much blood. I could use some healing magic. There’s a bruja who owes me a favor, maybe we could go see her -”

The Mason sighed. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

And then something happened that Crapsey had never seen before: The Mason’s cloak flashed and changed to white, the purple visible only when her movements revealed the garment’s lining. The Mason suddenly looked a lot less like a menacing witch and a lot more like a tree-loving druid or something. She smiled. “There was a time when Marla struggled mightily whenever my offensive capabilities were reduced this way, but she’s quiet now.” The Mason reached out to touch Nicolette’s wound, ignoring the chaos witch’s gasp, and white light spiraled up the Mason’s fingers and across Nicolette’s charred flesh.

Crapsey watched, mouth hanging open, as the light swirled and dripped and ran, the cauterized stump becoming pink flesh. White light streamed into the shape of bones, growing down from the shoulder, and more light wrapped the bones to form muscle, and Crapsey said, “Holy shit, are you growing her a new arm?”

“Just something temporary,” the Mason murmured, and indeed, the light didn’t turn into flesh, but stayed light – only light hardened, light in the shape of a bicep, an elbow, a forearm, a wrist, a hand.

The Mason stepped away, and Nicolette lifted her new faintly-glowing arm, clenching and unclenching the fingers. “Fucking cool,” she said. “Feels like the whole arm’s dipped in ice water or something, but still, I can feel. How long will it last?”

The Mason shrugged. “Until I stop paying attention to it. So enjoy it while you can.”

Nicolette swung the arm around, made a fist, and otherwise experimented with her new limb. “Can I do anything cool with this? Suck out life force, or turn people to steam, or anything?”

“It’s an artificial limb made of thickened light,” the Mason said. “If that’s not sufficiently magical for you, perhaps you should recalibrate your expectations.”

“Yeah, all right.” Nicolette pointed her glowing arm at Viscarro. “So what happens to the green man there?”

The Mason circled Viscarro’s wooden sarcophagus. “What did you do to him?”

“Enchanted grape seed. A hundred year’s growth compacted into something the size of a pea. Pretty sweet, huh?”

“Ingenious,” the Mason said. “I will burn him.” The white cloak flickered and became purple again, and the Mason snapped her fingers. Flames abruptly engulfed the wood, leaves curling and blackening, and Viscarro began screaming again, though not for long. The furious and self-contained fire soon turned the vines and flesh and bone underneath to a heap of ash and fragments, then guttered out, leaving behind an oddly aromatic smoke.