The Dark Remains (24 page)

The level of spontaneous muscular activity was certainly an order of magnitude higher. There: a slight curling of the fingers in the right hand, followed almost immediately by the small but perceptible twitch of a cheek. With a thumb, Chandra raised one of the eyelids. Immediately the pupil constricted, highly reactive to the overhead light.

Chandra released the eyelid and nodded, satisfied. His earlier beliefs appeared correct. After weeks in a deep coma, the patient was close once more to consciousness. Whether he would cross the veil remained to be seen; sometimes such victims surfaced briefly, only to sink deeper and not return. However, Chandra’s newest study focused on the use of combination drug therapy to enhance the recovery process. Certainly this man seemed a good candidate for the research. Chandra would speak to the hospital administration tomorrow.

Chandra leaned over the rail of the bed. “Soon, my friend, you shall be able to tell us your name.”

The man remained motionless. Once again, Chandra wondered who he was. He was a tall man, certainly a full foot taller than Chandra if he were to stand, and before the atrophying of his muscles he had been powerful as well. Clearly he had led a rough life. When taking his history, a nurse had cataloged over a dozen significant scars on his body. And there was the wound that had nearly
cost him his life, a gash in his side that had pierced the body wall. The wound was well healed now, his veins filled with blood again. What remained was to see if his brain would forgive his body for the trauma.

“You are a fighter, aren’t you, my friend?” Chandra murmured.

It wasn’t only the scars. Certainly there was a wildness to him, even in unconsciousness: a fierceness to the sharp features, a freedom to the long hair tumbling back from his brow. He seemed a fallen warrior, lying in his funeral boat as the waves carried him from the shore. Except he was not dead. Not yet.

“Nor will you be. If you are a fighter, then fight, my friend. Tomorrow I will help you in your battle.”

The clock on the wall ticked the seconds away. Chandra sighed. Time to pick up the mango ice cream, to kiss Devi’s sweet, sticky lips after she ate it straight from the carton, and to raise Mahesh cooing in his arms.

It was only as he started to turn from the bed that he noticed it, draped over the IV stand beside the bed. At first he took it for a piece of gauze. It was only as his fingers pierced its fabric that he understood. He pulled his hand back and stared at the gossamer shreds. It was a spiderweb, dense and glittering. He went still, thinking, but before he could arrive at a conclusion there was a faint
plop
as something small fell from the ceiling above and landed on his arm.

The thing was about as large as a quarter, its surface a dull, burnished gold marked by a crimson diamond in the center. Then, even as he watched, the thing stretched forth eight slender, golden legs and scurried down the length of his arm. It moved with a mindless precision that seemed more mechanical than organic, scuttling over the cloth ridges and valleys of his white lab coat.

Fascinated, he watched. Two tiny eyes glinted like rubies. Then the gold spider crawled over the cuff of his
coat sleeve and onto the back of his hand. He could actually see its gold pincers extend forth, could observe them sink easily into his flesh, piercing skin, reaching for moving blood.

The pain was instant and agonizing, like fire. With a cry, Chandra flung his hand aside. There was a gold flash, and a skittering sound against the polished floor. Chandra turned and moved toward the door, but already his muscles were stiffening to cold clay as the poison moved through his body, carried rapidly by the increased blood flow and heart rate that accompanied fear and the rush of adrenaline.

He tried to cry out for help, but his vocal cords were already paralyzed, and the sound was a hoarse croak. A neurotoxin then, like that of the pit vipers that had haunted the edges of his childhood village in India. He had once seen a playmate of his struck by a snake not twenty feet away, and the boy had been dead by the time Chandra had run to him.

The floor rushed up to meet his left cheek, striking it with a curiously dull and muffled sound. A convulsion turned his face upward. The pain was fading. Chandra’s last vision was of the face of the clock on the wall, as distorted as a timepiece in a painting by Dalí. Even then, his mind was able to achieve a clarity apart from his physical being, to crystallize itself in thought.

Time of death: 7:09
P.M
. Cause: heart failure from a rapidly acting neurotoxin of unknown origin
.

A weak muscle spasm passed through him, then came one final meditation.

Kiss Mahesh for me, dearest
.

And for the first time since his birth, Dr. Rohan Chandra’s thoughts were silent.

Somehow, Grace expected Travis to be angry when he stepped into their musty motel room, pale and tired from his night’s work at the hospital, and she told him she had telephoned the Seekers. Instead, a haggard grin crossed his face. “So what took you so long?”

She crossed her arms inside her preposterously baggy thrift-store sweater. “Do you mean to say that all this time I’ve been agonizing over whether or not I should contact the Seekers and how quickly you were going to eviscerate me if I did, you’ve been expecting me to call them?”

He sat on the corner of the opposite bed, mattress springs mewling like a nest of baby mice. “Pretty much.”

Grace let out a groan. Nothing like torturing oneself for days on end for absolutely no reason whatsoever. She glared at the cardboard box and pair of Styrofoam cups strategically positioned on the nightstand. “If I had known you were going to be this easy, I wouldn’t have bothered getting coffee and King Donut to soften you up.”

“On the contrary, Grace, you chose wisely.” He flipped up the lid, grabbed a powdered jelly, and took a big, squishy bite. “If the Seekers are coming to town, we’re going to need all the energy we can get.”

She popped the lid on her coffee and took a deep swig. A reflexive grimace crossed her face.

He cocked his head. “What is it?”

Grace laughed, gazing down at the oily surface of the brown liquid in the cup. “It’s nothing, really. It’s just that
on Eldh I always found myself wishing for real coffee. And now that I’m here …”

“You wish it were
maddok.
”

Her smile faded, but she concealed it by raising the cup and taking another sip of the coffee. It was hot and bitter, and it burned her tongue.

“You miss Eldh, don’t you, Grace?”

His voice was soft, his gray eyes concerned. Sometimes this new seriousness of his startled her. Since she first met him, Travis had been funny and complaining and charming in a fumbling way. And, when both worlds had needed it most, impossibly brave. But since Castle Spardis, where he confronted the Necromancer Dakarreth in the fires of the Great Stone Krondisar, he had changed.

It was subtle. Had they not been through so much together, she might not have noticed it. However, there was something to Travis now that had never been there before. She could call it depth, perhaps. Or strength of character. Or even wisdom. It was hard to diagnose it precisely.

“I do miss it,” Grace said. “It’s hard to explain. For so many years I tried to make a place for myself here in Denver, a place where I could survive. And I did. But on Eldh, I did more than just survive. There, it felt like …”

“You belonged,” he finished quietly.

She nodded.

“We’ll get back, Grace. I don’t know how, but we’ll find a way. We have to.” He warmed his hands around his coffee. “I’m not sure where I belong anymore, if I even belong anywhere. But you need to be there, and so does Beltan.”

Grace sucked in a breath. Yes, that was it—that was the peculiar aura around Travis these days. He had given up everything he was, everything he had ever been, to save Eldh. Maybe now he was a man who had nothing left of himself that he feared losing. There was a peace in such freedom, and a purity, but a terrible sorrow as well.

An urge filled Grace to touch his arm, to say something comforting, but she held herself until it passed. Over the improbable course of this last year, she had learned she could still care for others, that the heart she had thought long ago excised still beat within her. But it was yet a fragile organ, and she did not believe it would ever be completely whole.

“So, did you check on Beltan last night?” she said, opting for brisk instead of sympathetic.

He crammed the remains of the jelly donut into his mouth. “I couldn’t get to his room. Something happened on the fourth floor of the hospital before I got in, but I don’t know what it was. There were security guards posted at the doors, and they weren’t letting anyone through.”

A sour taste rose in Grace’s throat. The coffee was cheap stuff. She should have sprung for Starbucks; they still had several gold coins they could sell on East Colfax for money. She forced the bile back down her gullet. This was strange news, but it would be foolish to believe it had something to do with her and Travis. Not everything in Denver revolved around them. As of yesterday morning, when she had dared to venture into Denver Memorial, Beltan had still not awakened. Nothing had changed. Travis could check on him again tonight.

“Come on,” Travis said, holding out a donut. His grin was back now, and his silver earrings glinted. “You need to build up your strength if you’re going to talk to the Seekers. Everything they say is a riddle wrapped in the
New York Times
crossword puzzle translated into ancient Greek. So eat.”

He tossed the donut into the air. She caught it in an easy motion and took a big, shockingly sweet bite.

Fifteen minutes later they walked down West Colfax, the mountains and a cool autumnal breeze at their backs. A cluster of glass-and-steel skyscrapers rose before them, looking strangely alien. Shouldn’t they have been made of
gray stone, their crenellated parapets crowned with bright, snapping banners? But Calavere was a world away. These were a different sort of castle.

They could have taken the No. 16 bus to Civic Center Park. They were to meet Hadrian Farr and Deirdre Falling Hawk at the Denver Art Museum, which stood on the south side of the park. But they still had over an hour until their appointed time. The day was lovely, and it was only a couple of miles to the museum, so they had decided to hoof it.

Or maybe it was just that neither of them had quite gotten reaccustomed to cars and buses. The hard, shiny vehicles roared past them down Colfax, seeming to hurtle past at an outrageous speed Grace supposed was all of thirty-five miles per hour. She relished the solid feel of the sidewalk beneath her boots of Eldhish leather.

Grace wasn’t entirely certain when she noticed the police car. It impinged on her awareness slowly, like a gathering shadow, until suddenly she turned her head. The patrol car drove not thirty feet behind them. She snapped back around, clutching her cup.

“White or black,” Travis said through clenched teeth.

He didn’t need to say more.
White
meant a police car. Of concern, but not immediately dangerous. Grace was still wanted in this town for assaulting an officer, but not every cruiser would be looking for her. As for black—that meant
them
. And from what Travis had told her, she would much rather have a long conversation with the police than a chat with one of the friendly representatives of Duratek.

“White,” she said.

They kept walking. Grace was aware of a pale blur as the patrol car drove past, but she did not glance in its direction. She breathed a sigh as the vehicle rolled down the street ahead of them—

—then her breath ceased as the vehicle slowed and halted. Through the dim rectangle of the rear window she
saw the driver look back over his shoulder. She caught the faint sparks of his eyes with her own. The car’s reverse lights blinked on, and her heart stuttered.

Grace clutched Travis’s arm. “What do we do?”

“I don’t know. If we run, we might as well hold up a big sign that says Fugitives ‘R’ Us.”

Motionless, she watched the car back up toward them. What would she say when they questioned her?
You can’t detain me, Officer. I’m a citizen of another world
. Something told her there were no Calavaner embassies in Denver.

A blaring noise vibrated through her body. She managed to crane her neck in time to see a delivery truck hurtling east down Colfax. Brakes hissed and squealed as the truck slowed, coming to a stop mere inches before colliding with the police car. The truck’s door flew open, and the meaty driver clambered out, his face puffy and red as he strode toward the patrol vehicle, arms waving.

“Now,” Travis said. “While he’s distracted.”

A row of brick-and-glass storefronts lined the block, a shopette that had no doubt seemed sleek and modern in 1964 but was now squat and drab, part of an architectural experiment that had ended, not only in failure, but in ugliness. Travis pulled Grace toward the nearest doorway.

The sound of chimes floated on the air as the door shut behind them, along with the sound of water bubbling over stone. A faint haze of smoke drifted on the air, rich and mossy on the tongue. A tree branch arched overhead, its gold leaves glinting in the faint light.

A small gasp escaped Grace. Once before she had walked into a room only to discover a forest instead. It had been in Castle Calavere, when she and Travis had gone to speak with Trifkin Mossberry and his troupe of actors. Through some magic of the Little People, their room had seemed at once a castle chamber and a greenwood glade. Was there a similar magic at work here?

“Hello,” a husky voice said. “Can I help you find something?”

Smoke swirled, and before them stood a tall, lean, dark-skinned woman. From her clingy red minidress sprouted slender, beautifully muscled arms and impossibly long legs that Grace knew hordes of Paris runway models would gladly sell what little remained of their souls in order to possess. White platform shoes made her nearly as tall as Travis, and the fantastically sculpted black coiffure that crowned her head was clearly not meant to be anything but a wig. She was, in a word, gorgeous.