Darkness Calls (26 page)

“My Lady,” he said.

“Mr. King,” I replied, unimpressed. I could not look at his new body without seeing, superimposed, a short fat man in a wrinkled suit, stuffing hot dogs and bloody pretzels in his mouth. Far more disturbing than this otherworldly shape, which was too ridiculous, too odd, to be anything but merely curious.

“Dance with me,” he whispered, eyes glinting. “We have words to share.”

I flexed my hands, trying to muster the darkness within my heart—wondering, briefly, what it took to get a girl in the mood for murder. Nothing happened. Nothing stirred beneath my ribs. But my gloves were off, and the boys were already dancing death in their dreams.

“Nephele,” said Mr. King, still watching me. “Take our other guest for a spin.”

“No. I’ll wait here,” replied Father Lawrence, giving me a warning look. I met his gaze, but nothing else needed to be said. We both knew we were fucked. Him, more than me. He was nothing but a skin in this place.

Mr. King reached for me. I held still, fighting my instincts, but when he touched me for the first time, it was he who flinched. Shuddering, when his fingers wrapped around my right hand. Pain flexed behind his mask, some terrible hunger.

But then his mouth tightened into that cold, thin smile, and he led me backward into a waltz that floated us amongst the clockwork dancers, who watched behind their masks.
Another game,
I told myself. Part of the old dark game. Only this was not a demon in front of me but something else.

I was not an easy dancer. I had no rhythm. But in this place my feet floated, and I moved as I might fight—without thinking about it. Mr. King did not hold me tightly, but his grip was cool and firm. Not relaxed, but not entirely afraid, either. Cautious, maybe. He had wanted me to come here. Wheels were turning. He had a plan. And I realized that what Jack had said was true: whomever Mr. King held responsible for Ahsen’s murder, it was not me.

“So we are here, again,” he murmured. “Dancing around each other with death on our minds.”

“You’re not scared of me,” I said. “No matter what I’m thinking.”

His smile tightened. “I helped make you. All of us, who were masters of the Divine Organic, had a hand in the creation of your lineage. You were first, my Lady. The oldest of the Wardens. The oldest, and the most trouble. Of course I’m not frightened of you.”

But you’re frightened of something,
I thought, as his eyes ticked down to look at the armor on my right hand. For a moment I thought he might try to bite it off. The sensation was so strong I half imagined my arm disappearing down his throat. I almost hoped he would try. The boys loved cracking teeth.

But Mr. King did not attack me. He licked his lips, jaw flexing as though going through the motions of chewing. Again, I remembered him as that wrinkled little man. Eating, cramming pizza into his face. As though he had gone a thousand years without the pleasure of food and could not get enough of it: that visceral human satisfaction.

I tore my gaze from his mouth and found him studying my face.

“You are like her,” he said, softly. “I saw it in your eyes when you killed my other skin. Something in you is the same. Five thousand years dulls nothing for my memories. I remember your ancestor, before she disappeared from this world. Before she fell into the Labyrinth, and she returned with
that
.” He looked down again at the armor on my hand. “It would be better if you did not keep it long, my Lady. Objects born from the Labyrinth cannot be controlled by mortal minds. Such things have their
own
minds.”

“You’re mortal,” I said. “I think you’re goddamn ready to die, in fact.”

“There is sunlight younger than my kind,” replied Mr. King, “even if those dark years have been forgotten to save our sanity. I think dying now would be premature.”

“Don’t bullshit me.” I leaned in so close we could have kissed. He smelled like a corpse: a new one, cold and empty. “You’re scared. You’re scared of Grant, and you’re scared of being here when the prison veil comes down. You know what those demons did to Ahsen while she was locked up with them.” I smiled coldly. “Afraid of the same abuse? You go weak in the knees thinking about sucking some demon’s cock for the next ten thousand years? Or maybe you’ll like it. Maybe you
want
it.”

I was goading him. I wanted him to lose it. I needed it, because inside me I still felt nothing of that dark entity, not even the tiniest riddle of movement behind my ribs. I had come here with a mission, and so far, I was wasting every second of opportunity.

Mr. King stopped dancing, such raw, naked loathing in his eyes, I almost forgot that he could not hurt me. I wanted to get away from him, desperately. I wanted to
flee
, and the instinct was so strong I stumbled backward. He did not let go. I had never seen such pain.

But it was not for me. He looked
past
me, as though gazing into some terrible memory, and whispered, “If you are not a whore, you are a warrior, and if you are not a warrior, you are a queen—but there is nothing else between within the army of the demon Lords and Kings.”

Zee went very still against my skin. All the boys did. As though hearing that rhyme struck them hard, made them dream things they had forgotten. I wanted to rub my arms, but my right hand was still held—and my left rested against Mr. King’s stolen arm. His gaze flicked back to me—and in that split second he seemed to remember where he was, whom he was with, and the hate in his eyes subsided into a cold curiosity that I found utterly discomfiting.

“Old Jack,” he said slowly, “has done something quite unexpected, with you.”

“Really,” I replied carefully. “I can’t imagine what
you
find unexpected about anything.”

He did not smile. “Your blood. He is in your blood. Every Avatar who inhabits a skin marks that skin with a print that is of us, and individual to us. That . . . print . . . is in you. Only one generation removed. I can smell it.” Mr. King jerked me against him. “Tampering with your lineage is something even
I
would not do.”

“You’ve tried to kill me.”

“Death is safer than the alternative,” he whispered. “What you are is inviolate. Which means, my Lady, that you are worth more to me now,
alive
. When the others see you, when they learn what Old Jack has done, he will suffer. He will suffer more than Ahsen.”

“You loved her,” I said, cold. “That’s why you hate him so much.”

Mr. King pushed me away, and I stumbled into the dancers. Not one made a sound, and I did not look at them as silk rustled and metal gleamed around my arms and legs. I had eyes only for Mr. King.

“If I cannot possess what I need,” he said softly, “I will have to devise a way to take it.”

“You’re good at that.” I gestured at dancers, who swayed, so silent and watchful; unnaturally so, as if they had been made to do nothing more than move along the engraved labyrinth lines. “You’ve taken so much already.”

Mr. King began to turn his back on me. “I took nothing. All of this . . . was offered to me, as in the days of old. This, my temple. And in return, I have given much. Magic. Lives less ordinary. You would be amazed at how many crave such simple things.”

I had seen grown men and women drink blood and avoid sunlight because they thought it would make them vampires. I had observed attempts at witchcraft, or focused meditations in the search of psychic powers. It was the New Age, everywhere; and never mind UFO hunters. Even the idolization of the material and monetary was as much a means of escape as any fantasy of the otherworldly.

So no, I was not amazed. But it frightened me that it had been so easy.

“We fought the war,” continued Mr. King, almost to himself. “We built the prison walls. All for this jewel, this sweet island, to save ourselves and the humans who treated us like gods. But they forgot us when we were no longer needed. They tore us down. They built their world with iron. So I take what is mine, as is my right. As is the right of one who
made
them.” He flashed me a hard look. “The Labyrinth will not deny me again.”

He clapped his hands, and the dancers parted. I saw Father Lawrence, on his knees, clutching his chest. Nephele stood behind him, her palms resting on top of his head. I started to run toward them, and hands caught me. The dancers. Fingers like steel knots.

“Stop,” I snapped, heart thundering. “Don’t hurt him.”

“He is flesh,” replied Mr. King. “He is nothing except what I desire. Unless you would unlock the Labyrinth in return for keeping him whole?”

I hesitated, and a faint smile touched his mouth. “I thought not.”

Mr. King looked at Father Lawrence, and a charge surged through the air, against my skin. The priest threw back his head and screamed.

Now,
I told myself, fighting desperately against the hands that held me.
Goddamn it, now.

Father Lawrence’s voice broke, breath rattling in his throat. His entire body trembled, his head thrown back and held by Nephele. She was smiling at him, gently, but her fingers dug so deeply into his cheeks and brow I saw blood trickling from beneath her nails. Mr. King stepped closer to him, still staring, his hands moving now like a conductor’s. The brown skin of Father Lawrence’s hands rippled.

I screamed at the Avatar, surging forward, and the boys screamed with me in their dreams. My tattooed flesh grew hot—Raw and Aaz, burning—and the men and women holding me cried out as my clothing began to smoke. I lunged again, and this time no one held me back. Beneath my ribs, inside my heart, the coiled shadow finally stirred.

Mr. King turned to look at me, and I slammed my fist into his jaw, cracking the mask he wore. Only, it was not wood. It was bone. Growing out of his face. He spun, but did not go down, and I snatched his hair with my right hand and grabbed his throat with the other, digging my fingers into his jugular. Hunger rose inside me. Tasted like laughter. His flesh was hard and smooth as marble, and the boys began burning him alive.

He made no sound. No nerves to feel pain. But blood seeped from the corners of his eyes, and though he stared at me first with arrogance, even boredom, that changed in moments. He looked too deeply in my eyes. He looked, without blinking. And the fear that flickered through his gaze, in pieces, was so thick I could have carved it from him.

Hands reached around my body to pull me away, so many hands that clutched and grappled, but nothing could move me. Flesh that touched me burned. And still he stared, and the darkness rustled, rising; and I whispered, “Who ever did you think killed Ahsen?”

Mr. King stopped struggling. I leaned in so close my mouth brushed his cheek, and he recoiled from me as darkness rolled smooth within my bones and blood, slow and easy, as if an ocean brewed inside me: warm, tangled in moonlight. I closed my eyes because I did not need to see. I could feel every breath around me, each heartbeat tingling on my tongue. Those dancers surrounding us, reduced to bone and flesh and blood—life, dripping from them; life, eking through their porous skins as though rivers were contained within. I could taste them. I could touch them, with a thought.

Borders of illusion whispered, too: this stone palace nothing but a figment, a step sideways into a bubble born from Mr. King’s mind, which carried a scent small as his soul, rotten and small, so old it was nothing but a crusty knot. Pitiful creature. Nothing and nobody, but what he pretended to be. No one real to call his own.

Small worm of a thought. Pushed away. But not before I remembered her death—and saw Grant in her place.

I tried to open my eyes, but my body refused me. Tried to listen, but heard only the thrumming thunder of shadow-coils rubbing against the underside of my skin. Fought to feel Mr. King, choking in my hands, but sensed nothing but his spirit.

Kill him,
I told the creature inside me, recoiling from my own self.
Kill him now.

It did not. It held back, examining the Avatar. Regarding him with the same cold scrutiny one might give a peculiarly rare species of ant. I could feel its curiosity, which was infinitely alien—alien, and yet, me.

We remember,
whispered that soft, sibilant voice, and Mr. King screamed, clutching wildly at his head and my hands, shuddering so violently it was as though tiny axes hacked at him from the inside out.

He was in pain. Brutal, vicious pain. I wondered if he had ever felt pain, but it was in him now, and I felt no joy, no satisfaction. Just horror. I had gotten what I wanted. He was being killed.

Slowly. Tortured.

Something else, too. Memories, scalped from Mr. King. Behind my eyes, images fluttered: thorn-strikes of starlight so dizzying I fell hard to one knee. All I could see was stars, a blanket of stars vast and lonely without end—and others with me, traveling through the nebular night as wolves, in packs, clustered tight as thought—becoming one thought—unity not enough to assuage the crawling, intolerable knowledge that
we feel nothing, we are nothing, even as we scream as one we will never end, we will pass though darkness in desolation and begin as thus again—

Again and again. I could not escape. I fought, screaming to hear myself past the screams already inside my head—those endless starlit cries of the Avatars, lost in their madness—dimly aware that I was clawing at my own body, fingernails striking sparks on my skin. My voice broke.

Then Zee was inside my head. Zee and the boys, humming a desperate lullaby—and that coiled presence within my heart, the shadows surrounding my heart, broke the connection to Mr. King.

Who, in that moment, fled.

I felt it happen. I tasted Mr. King’s spirit—cold, hard knot—as it shot from the flesh of his breaking body like a bullet. Odd, terrible sensation. As though part of my belly button left with him. Nothing I could do. I lay sprawled on the stone floor. I could not move. I could hardly see. My voice was nothing but a hiss and drool.