The Keepers (52 page)

“There is no
thing
,” Gabriel said. “She acted alone, and I won't guess at her reasons.”

“She just called off the golem and said ‘Have a nice day'?”

“Clearly not. She freed me and told me to leave the nest. But obviously I haven't done that.”

“Do we trust him?” Chloe asked Horace.

“Do we have a choice?”

Chloe stepped close to Gabriel. “Listen. Don't argue. When the crucible comes, you shield Horace. But when you feel me start to emerge, you pull the humour away. Understand?”

Doubt creased Gabriel face. “Emerge?”

“Don't screw this up,” she said, and spun to Horace. “Where will the crucible dog be?”

“Right there, right inside the door.”

“In how long?”

Horace tried to summon times from his sightings the night before. “Two minutes? But Dr. Jericho—” He felt the box turning the corner at the end of the corridor. “He's nearly here.”

Before the words were even out, Chloe began sinking.

Sinking into the ground.

Wonder and horror raced across Horace's skin. “What are you doing?”

“I'm fixing it. I'm following the future you saw, Horace. This is why you didn't see me, my part of how it happens.” The stone swallowed her knees, her waist, her shoulders and slid up her throat. “Two minutes,” she said, and she took a deep breath. She closed her eyes, and then she was gone.

Gabriel's milky blue gaze floated over Horace. “Did you know she could do that?”

Horace shook his head. “She always said she couldn't.”

“Times are changing. Do you know what happens next?”

“I think . . . I think we're about to be brave.”

Heavy footsteps in the hall, and then Dr. Jericho knifed into the boiler room. The box was with him, inside his jacket, burning like a beacon. The Mordin's sharp eyes darted here and there, taking in Horace, Gabriel, the open ash door, the third cell still locked tight. He straightened, gathering his
limbs and his face, becoming elegant and professorial. “I had hoped we could settle this reasonably, but I see now I was wrong.”

“That's not surprising, is it?” Horace said. The box was so close now, its presence almost overpowering.

The Mordin ignored him, turning to Gabriel. “Your escape—it's come at a curiously bad time. I wonder how you managed it.”

“The golem was inattentive.”

“The golem does not know inattention. It only knows obedience. Was it the girl?”

Gabriel said nothing, and after a long, considering look, the Mordin tipped his eyes down at the floor, frowning at the stone beneath his feet. Horace felt a chill, but then Dr. Jericho glanced at the door. “The crucible is coming. When it arrives, I will let it take you down. The two of you, and Chloe too.” He paused and sliced the air with his hand. “
Hypnotize
you, if you like.”

Now Horace heard it—footsteps and voices far down the hall. He thought he saw the faintest glimmer of green light dancing along the wall outside the door. Chloe had been under for a full minute. Horace peeked into his pocket at his watch: it was three seconds past 3:32. Ninety seconds until the dumindar would arrive. His mind began counting.

Dr. Jericho, watching, laughed. “Still thinking to collect your package when it arrives? Even with Gabriel's help, you could not stop me from taking the dragonfly now.” He spread
his arms wide. “Blind me, maim me, deafen me—I can feel the Fel'Daera from the other side like I can feel the ground beneath my feet. Still,” he said, turning toward Gabriel, “I'm afraid I cannot allow you to rain on this particular parade.” He sprang, slamming Gabriel against the wall and pinning him there.

“May I borrow this, young man?” Dr. Jericho sneered, laying his hand on the Staff of Obro. The smell of brimstone was strong now. The hallway was a shifting tunnel of green light. Horace counted:
thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six
. Dr. Jericho, so arrogant—so sure he was a step ahead, sure everything was a lie. What would he do with the truth?

“Chloe's already gone,” Horace called out. “The dragonfly arrived and she's gone.”

“Arrived? Already? Oh I doubt that very much.”

“Twenty minutes ago. Didn't you feel it?”

Dr. Jericho looked sharply back at him, a trickle of doubt—finally—leaking from his face. Gabriel twisted free of the Mordin's grip. As he rolled away, the magnificent green light of the crucible swept across the walls, filling the room. It washed over Horace like a dream, promising another world, another way of being. Horace wanted to be there, in the light. He sat forward, reaching, trying to get to it. He saw a great shape deep in the light, stepping into the room on all fours. And then the humour roared to life.

Gray. Senselessness and solitude. Horace pushed himself back against the wall, his head clearing. He remembered the
dumindar and began to feel his way along the wall toward the first cell. Noises all around, cries and movement. A mighty roar—Dr. Jericho, or the Keeper of the crucible?

“Gabriel!” Horace called.

“I'm here.” Everywhere.

“Tell me.”

“They're panicking, spreading out. The dog is coming—it's here in the room. Dr. Jericho is trying to find me.”

“What about Chloe?” Horace's hands found an opening in the wall and he pulled himself inside the first cell, still counting:
fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty
. Just a few more seconds for Chloe. Thirty seconds until the dumindar arrived. With it, they would be safe for a moment. With it, at least Chloe would be able to escape. Where was she?

And then a moment later, Gabriel: “She's coming. It's happening.”

Gabriel tore down the humour. Sound and light blared—voices rising in relief and recognition, and the stink of the crucible dog flaring up again, and above all the glittering green light. Half inside the cell, Horace threw up a hand, trying to keep its irresistible heat from his face. The beast that carried the crucible was closer now, a shadow beside the sun, three shambling men beside it. Across the room, Gabriel was reaching for the green light, his face going slack. Farther back, Dr. Jericho rose to his full height, towering over everything, hissing at what he saw.

And what he saw, what they all saw, in the dazzle of that
light: Chloe, rising perfectly out of the floor as if she were a submerged sculpture and the floor was the receding sea. She emerged just beside the crucible dog, right at the feet of her own father. Chloe looked up at him, her neck bending prettily in the light, the crucible spilling her shadow far across the floor in the shape of a flame. That light—so enticing. So warm. Horace fought it off, tried to keep himself from moving toward it.

“Dad,” Chloe said, her voice clear and fragile, falling like a drop of rain. The man turned and looked down at her, confusion beginning to gather on his already wretched face. Dr. Jericho surged toward them.

The crucible dog opened its great jaws as if to snap at Chloe. She spun. She uncoiled, leaping onto the low shoulder of the beast. Her face was a miracle, stone on fire. The dragonfly whirred at her chest. Horace imagined the song that came from it now, a sweet, dark song, pure and clean, railing against the green light. Chloe rose up over the top of the crucible, lifting her fist high above the light.

“No!” Horace shouted, understanding what she meant to do. Chloe threw her fist down into the center of the blazing green spindle, burying her arm in it to the elbow. The light flared and crackled violently, and then flickered, dwindled—burning still but half extinguished in Chloe's ghostly flesh, ablaze inside the skin and muscle and bone of her arm. Her face became a canyon of pain.

Across the room, Gabriel gasped, hunkering down like a
gargoyle around the staff. He swung the staff forward, as if to call the humour forth again, but Dr. Jericho took a lunging sidestep toward him and roared in anger, swinging a mighty backhanded blow that caught Gabriel in the chest and hurled him against the wall. The staff clattered from his hand.

Chloe clung to the crucible. Her arm was creased and torn with light. The dragonfly swung, wings trembling, seeming to swoop and hang, banking and slowing like a leaf on wind. She caught Horace's eye and nodded.

And then the dragonfly's wings went still.

Chloe screamed, a jagged, throated cry. Dr. Jericho froze. The green light folded into itself, was swallowed completely—gone, consumed by Chloe's flesh. The crucible dog roared, baring a grisly ridge of gnarled teeth. It reared back and bucked, throwing Chloe across the room. She hit the ground hard, tumbling to a stop a few feet from Horace, still screaming.

The crucible dog staggered forward and slumped to the ground, robbed of the light it carried. All around it, the Riven grabbed their long heads, keening. They scurried from the room, scattering like exposed bugs beneath an overturned stone. The men, Chloe's father included, fell where they stood.

Dr. Jericho launched himself toward Horace and Chloe, Horace gazing upward with his hands open and waiting, Chloe twisting in pain a few feet away. The moment was almost here. It had to get here in time. The dumin would protect them.
Eighty-eight, eighty-nine, please
—and then a soft
pop
sounded just overhead. The dumindar was falling toward him, trailing its chain like a streamer of smoke. Horace reached for it.

One of Dr. Jericho's monstrous hands slashed out and snatched the dumindar from the air. Shock slid through Horace. Beside him, Chloe watched tensely, breathing sharply between clenched teeth. The Mordin crouched over them, examining the dumindar closely. A slow smile slit his face as he saw what it was. “Oh, my dear Tinkers. Fortune still sails,” he murmured, and he reached out with his other hand and grasped Horace around the neck.

The Mordin straightened, lifting Horace until his feet were dangling. Horace thought his neck would crack. He clawed at Dr. Jericho's hand, but it was wrapped around his throat like a tree root. Chloe shouted his name. Horace could feel the Fel'Daera, agonizingly close, just inside the Mordin's jacket, but he could not hope to reach it. He could barely hope to stay conscious. Dr. Jericho threw his arms wide, Horace's struggling body hanging from one hand like a rag, the dumindar glinting in the other. From the corner of his eye, Horace saw Gabriel stirring against the opposite wall, reaching for the staff.

The Mordin gazed gleefully down at Chloe, sprawled on the floor at his feet. The wings of the dragonfly were a blur once again. “I have often wondered, my dear,” Dr. Jericho said to her, “how long you can keep that up. Shall we find out?” And then he pinched the dumindar between two fingers, crushing it.

A soft puff of dust flew up, and the chest-thumping toll of the dumin blasted them. The scent of flowers filled Horace's nose. Across the room, Gabriel lifted his staff, shouting, but in the same instant the shining sphere of the dumin sprang to life.

Everything outside the dumin ceased to exist. There was nothing to see, nowhere to look, just a silver illumination that fell like moonlight—Gabriel had raised the humour. It enveloped the dumin but could not penetrate it. There was nothing now but the three of them—Horace, Chloe, and the Mordin, here inside this sphere carved from the nothingness outside.

Horace tried to look down at Chloe. She was on her knees, her right arm pressed awkwardly against her body, her face boiling with anger and pain. Even now Dr. Jericho had no idea what she was capable of, what the dragonfly truly was. Horace thought he might pass out any moment now, his head awash in a raging red current. Chloe stood, eyes burning. “Remember the Vora,” Horace whispered at her through closed teeth.

Without warning, Chloe leapt at the Mordin. The tip of one foot went into his thigh and caught purchase inside his flesh. Dr. Jericho cried out, buckling and dropping to one knee. The hand around Horace's neck loosened, and Horace's feet found the ground. Dr. Jericho swatted at Chloe, a mighty swipe that passed through her like the ghost she was. She stuck her own hand through the thin man's jacket, into his torso, searching for the box. “Where is it?” she cried.

Horace reached up and grabbed Dr. Jericho's arm,
hoisting himself high. He scrambled up the Mordin's front and reached unerringly into the pocket where the Fel'Daera lay. His fingers closed around it—a blessed relief, a homecoming. But before he could pull it free, Dr. Jericho planted his great hand on Horace's chest and shoved. Horace went flying, the Fel'Daera coming with him. He struck the side of the curving surface of the dumin, knocking the wind out of himself, but somehow regaining his feet, gasping. Above, Chloe still clung to the Mordin. Dr. Jericho smacked at her uselessly again, pounding his own chest instead. Chloe swung her head to look at Horace. “Are you ready?” she said.

Horace nodded. He held out the Fel'Daera toward her, ready for her to take it, to take it out of here and save it once and for all.

Chloe jumped. Dr. Jericho roared, his face carved with rage. Chloe dropped toward Horace, and as they collided—if that was even the word—she passed
into
Horace, her flesh entering his. Her chest in his, the air in her lungs mingling with his own, her heart and his heart both beating together in this same mingled body. He felt—and knew at once he would never forget—the sensation of her eye entering his own. The box was between them, buried in them both, and the dragonfly too. The box was a warm fist in his gut—their gut?—the dragonfly a buzzing flutter between their ribs.

And as Chloe fell deeper into him, she caught him somehow, grabbed him not with her hands but with all of her, making his body a part of whatever she was now, whatever
she became in these moments, and oh god it hurt, a pressure and displacement, an agony he couldn't name, pulling at him cheek to cheek, bone to bone, cell to cell, an irresistible embrace. He was as big as the universe, electric and vast, and there was a song with them that he was just beginning to hear, an angel's choir of pipes and horns—the Alvalaithen.