Dreams of Shreds and Tatters (29 page)

Facing the red darkness of the corridor, she saw the wave of shadows coming. They ran on all fours along the floor and the walls, a sleek boneless surge, wings furled to fit through the hall. Beautiful and terrible and unstoppable.

Liz drew another lungful of searing, smoky air and leapt forward, dragging Alex with her as she flung herself on top of Blake. The shadows rushed past them and the draft of their wings was cold and clean. She twisted around in time to see the monsters fall over the woman, black and silent. Rainer fell to his knees as dark blood sprayed the room, sizzling as it burned. Wings like slices of midnight eclipsed the burning door.

She never knew, afterward, if it was an accident or not. Rainer looked up from the threshold, looked from Antja to Blake and back again. Liz thought he smiled, but she was never sure of that either. He pushed himself up—into the path of a razored black tail as it whipped through the air.

The tip sank into his back and out his chest. A bubble of blood burst on his lips as he gasped. Blake jerked, and Liz felt rather than heard his choked sound of dismay. Antja screamed and emptied her pistol into the creature, but the bullets passed through inky flesh without so much as a ripple.

The last vines retreated, clutching at anything in reach as they were sucked through the disintegrating door. Liz dodged a flailing coil and Blake batted another aside. Sparks and flakes of burning canvas drifted through the air, crisping hair and searing skin as they landed. Whether the fire undid their tenebrous shapes, or if they simply retreated now that their purpose was fulfilled, the shadowcreatures melted into nothing. The flames licking the canvas frame blazed higher, mushrooming across the ceiling. The heat withered Liz’s lungs, singed the fine hair on her face.

Antja stood silhouetted against the apocalyptic light as the flames rolled toward her. Then Lailah flung an arm around her, knocking her out of their reach.

“Run!” she shouted.

They ran.

Fire raced them down the hall, consuming partitions and paintings and sculptures, rolling in greedy waves across the ceiling. Alex collapsed, one hand clawing at his chest; Liz and Blake grabbed him and dragged him on. Something groaned and crashed behind them.

The shock of the night air drove Liz to her knees in dirty snow, shredding her hands on ice and blacktop. Tears dripped off her cheeks and she couldn’t stop coughing. Yellow light and black smoke bled from the top of the gallery, staining the night. Sirens wailed in the distance. Antja wailed. Snow spun through the glow of the sodium lamps.

Blake offered her a hand, still supporting Alex with one arm. His face was a mask of blood and soot. Silver flashed on his outstretched hand, the ring nearly lost under ash and filth. His eyes were human again.

I
F
B
LAKE HAD
been less hollow and numb, he would never have gone back to Carroll Cove. But by the time he realized where they were going, he was slumped against Liz in the back seat with no strength left to argue. Dawn was a bruise in the east when they climbed the steps of a different cabin, an ache behind his eyes. He collapsed onto the couch like his strings had been cut. He had no strength to take off his coat—Sands’ coat. Beneath the reek of smoke and blood caught in the wool, he smelled oranges and incense. The scent followed him into the dark.

He woke later to silence and morning light. At least he thought he was awake; his eyes were open, staring into a darkened corner, but his limbs wouldn’t move. Sleep fog faded, replaced by the prickling certainty that he was being watched.

Hypnagogia. Alex had taught him the word. The transition between sleep and waking, prone to hallucinations and sleep paralysis. Night terrors, even in the daylight. That knowledge did nothing to quell the shivering dread that spread beneath his skin. Something was watching him, waiting in the dark, moving closer—

Pale sunlight slanted between the curtains. Beyond that watery line, shadows stirred. Blake waited for the winged monsters to emerge from the gloom and end this once and for all, as they had for Rainer. But the slender shape that stepped into the light was even worse.

The light fell through Alain as he drifted forward; he cast no shadow on the floor. His eyes were black and lightless beneath a fall of bleach-streaked hair.

You’ll really be thinking of me,
the maenad had taunted. But staring at the specter in front of him, Blake didn’t think any nightmare could be worse than the simple knowledge of what he’d lost. His eyes stung and watered, and he couldn’t wipe the tears away.

“I held on,” Alain whispered. “I held on tight. But you let go.” His voice was soft and dark and rougher than ever, but Blake wasn’t sure if his lips were moving.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he went on. “But that doesn’t make it any warmer here. I’m always drowning now. Drowning in you.”

Then he was gone. Lazy dust motes danced through the cold light and Blake wept silently into the cushions.

A
KNOCK AT
the door woke Alex, soft and insistent, dragging him out of a dreamless sleep. Dawnlight edged the curtains, and Liz curled next to him, one arm limp and warm across his stomach. She didn’t stir as he slid out of bed and fumbled for his clothes in the gloom. Last night’s clothes—his nose wrinkled at the clinging stench of smoke.

He expected to find Lailah in the hall, or Blake. Instead it was Antja looking up at him. She had refused their invitation to come back to the cabin last night, instead taking Rainer’s car and disappearing before the fire trucks arrived; he hadn’t thought he would see her again. The wan light showed her bruised, burnwelted face, the singed ends of her hair. Alex doubted she’d slept.

“Lailah let me in,” she said. Alex winced at the hoarse scrape of her voice. “She’s outside.” She nodded toward the water. In the shadows of the front room, Blake lay motionless on the sofa.

Alex opened his mouth and shut it again uselessly. Concern was too clumsy a thing, pity too cruel. The light brightened by inches and the silence stretched.

“You’re leaving today,” she said at last. He nodded. “So am I. But I wanted to give you something first.”

She lifted a bag off her shoulder. The same one she’d rescued from the gallery, he thought. He took it, feeling the familiar weight and shape of books through the leather. “What are these?”

“Nothing I want. They were— I don’t want them. You might not either, but I suspect you’ll take better care of them.”

“Thank you. I think.” He forced down a cough. “Antja, I’m sorry—”

She shook her head, a quick, violent, gesture, and he broke off.

“I wish I could say it was nice to have met you,” she said with a bitter smile. “Maybe some other time. But thank you all the same.”

He reached to adjust his glasses, but caught himself mid-gesture. His hand curled at his side. “What will you do?”

“I don’t know. Go somewhere warm. We’d talked about...” She shook her head again.

Alex swallowed. “Good luck.”

“You too. I think you’ll need it as much as I do.” She lifted a hand as if she meant to touch him, but dropped it. Her weight shifted and she paused on the brink of turning away. “Rainer always thought that magic was inherited. A birthright. I don’t believe that.”

“What do you believe?” he asked after a long pause.

“That it’s contagious. It slips past your defenses and changes you. And we’re all infected now.” She cast one last tired smile over her shoulder. “Good bye.”

He didn’t follow her out, but he stood in the hall until the sound of her car faded into the distance.

T
HE CEMETERY LAY
under a white shroud, silent save for the creak and sway of trees. The afternoon sky was the color of milk, while dusk spread violet grey as pigeon wings in the east. Their flight left in three hours. This was the only stop Blake had asked to make.

Snow crunched under his boots as he crossed the lawn. His hair, still damp from a hasty shower, froze in tendrils against his scalp. That was nothing, though, to the greater chill coiled inside him. Liz thought it was over, but he new better; the shadowy thing was still inside him, parasite or symbiont. His piece of Carcosa. Quiescent, at least, since the gallery burned.

He frowned at the smooth, rolling grounds as he navigated between graves. Cemeteries should have standing markers, statues and obelisks and brooding mausoleums. Something to remember— not these bland, homogenous stones. Flowers broke the drift of snow over Alain’s grave, wilted and crusted with ice. Someone would come soon to take them away.

Gone. As simple as that. Nothing left now but memories and nightmares, and a haunting that may or may not have been real.

Blake swallowed, his throat tight. His eyes were dry, though. All the tears had leaked out of him this morning. He thought he should leave something, but what would be the use? It would be gone with the flowers. Besides, graves were for the living, and he already knew he wouldn’t come back.

There was nowhere for him to go back to. Not in Vancouver, and not in Connecticut.

Slow footsteps crunched behind him, pulling him out of his fugue. Blake squared his shoulders, rehearsing what he would say to Liz. She would understand, at least. He could always trust her to understand. But when he turned he found not Liz but Alex. His mouth snapped shut, all his half-formed thoughts dying unvoiced.

They stood in silence, not quite meeting one another’s eyes. Lazy snowflakes spiraled down, snagging in Alex’s hair, on the shoulders of his coat. He looked half a corpse in the wan light, his eyes sunken and bruised, naked without his glasses, and one cheek spotted with welts.

“You’re thinking of staying,” he said at last. His breath whistled softly.

“Not staying,” Blake said. “Not here.”

Alex flicked a hand in dismissal. “But you don’t plan on coming home.”

Blake stiffened at his tone. “How can I? It’s too dangerous.”

One eyebrow quirked. “Is that what you’re telling yourself?”

Heat rose in Blake’s face. “Alain died because of me! What happened at the gallery—Rae and Rainer—that was because of me. This thing is still inside me, and I don’t know what it will do next. I don’t know what I’ll do. How can you expect me to go home knowing I’d put everyone around me in danger?”

“It’s easier to be alone. Not to trust. To walk away and tell yourself it’s for the best. I understand that.” Alex raised a hand before Blake could reply. “I don’t know if everything that happened was because of you. Maybe it was. What I do know is that Liz nearly died for you. If you leave now, you’ll throw that in her face. You’ll break her heart. And if you do that I’ll—” He broke off, forcing his strained, angry voice low again. “I’ll do something stupid that will embarrass us both.” He tugged his coat straight self-consciously.

“It isn’t that simple. What if the next person I hurt is Liz? Do you want that on your conscience? Because I sure as hell don’t.”

Alex’s eyes narrowed. Then he smiled sardonically. “Push me away all you like. It’s Liz I’m concerned about.”

“You don’t understand.” Blake’s jaw clenched. Christ, he sounded like a damned teenager.

“I don’t know what you experienced, it’s true. I can’t know. But I know what Liz went through to find you. Hell. And she’ll do it again. She’s made her choice. I may not like it, but I have to respect it. And you should too.”

Blake drew a breath and let it out again. It hung shimmering in the air before the wind unraveled it.

“Liz won’t give up on you,” Alex went on, his voice softening. “And I won’t give up on Liz. We’re bloody well stuck with each other. We might as well make the best of it. Lailah, on the other hand, will probably leave us to freeze if we stand out here much longer. And I’ve had enough of the cold.”

He turned toward the car. After a moment, Blake followed. He might regret it, but he was tired of the cold too.

Liz raised her eyebrows in a silent question as he slid into the back seat:
are you all right?
Blake nodded. It felt less like a lie than he’d thought it would. She reached for his hand, and he returned the gentle pressure.

“Let’s go home.”