The Labyrinth of the Dead (13 page)

The girl looked up. Her grey eyes
gleamed familiar but her smile was terrifying. "I almost couldn’t manage the
spell," she said, as if they were chatting over tea. "You lost the cemetery
moss back at the docks. And the virgin’s hair is missing, too. But no matter,
really, it is actually better this way. She’s weakened, but still potent enough
to be worth my while." Her grin widened and her canine teeth extended into
long, vampiric points. Kanika crouched beside
Belial’s body, stroking her forehead almost tenderly for a moment. "Thank you,
Portia. You did everything you ever promised me you would do." Glancing up
through velvety lashes, her face lit up with a chilling smile that soured
Portia’s stomach. "You promised me your aid once, not so long ago, but it seems
like a lifetime ago now. I suppose that it was, all things considered. Not that
it matters, now. This wouldn’t be possible if it hadn’t been for you—none of
this."

Kanika bent down and ran her
ever-lengthening tongue through the congealing blood, sweeping a clean track
through it. She coiled the disturbing extremity back into her mouth and savaged
Belial’s nearly-healed throat until it, too, ran violet.

The axe vibrated and the coin pinged
against the floor. Portia gave Belial and Kanika a wide berth and retrieved it.
She held it, ready to strike, but her muscles hitched and tightened. Something
kept her from striking.

The girl sat up, licking her lips and
snickering. "You can’t hurt me, Portia. You wouldn’t. You promised to protect
me."

Portia’s breath hissed out from between
her teeth and she lowered the weapon. Kanika grinned and returned her attention
to Belial, leaving her back exposed, her inky curls falling away from the nape
of her neck. Portia stood, rooted to the spot.

Run
, the axe seemed to urge.
Run, damn you!

Kanika continued to drink hungrily,
slurp after gulp. She paused once more and caught Portia’s eye. "You really
have given me what I want, Portia dear, and now I’d like to return the favor."

"And how is that, pray tell?" Portia
eased away slowly.

"What do you most want?" Kanika wiped
her mouth daintily with her fingertips. "How silly of me, I know what you most
want. And I can give her to you."

"I can go to Imogen myself."

"Not if I consume her first." Kanika’s cold, grey stare bore straight through Portia. "I
know where she is. Do you think you can beat me to her?" She smiled. "That
would be a lark wouldn’t it? On your mark, get set, go!"

 Belial moaned and Kanika turned her attention back
to the demoness. The satchel had been dropped in the
middle of the floor, forgotten, and Portia pawed through it eagerly until she
found the black velvet bag. She crammed it deep into the front of her corset,
taking comfort in the press of it against her skin. Behind her, Kanika still
drank noisily as Belial struggled and mewled pitifully.

"Portia Gyony." The demon queen’s voice
was the scrape of bone on bone. Her skin pulled taut against Kanika’s devouring mouth. "Like a daughter to me. Only you
can save me from this fate, my child. I will be your slave. Save me, save me
like you have saved so many others." She reached out a gnarled hand, still
studded with bony spikes, most of them broken and jagged. Her pale skin had
lost its luminosity and was beginning to sink into the terrain of her skeleton.

Portia stepped around her. "No, I can’t
help you. I never could. You brought this upon yourself, Belial. You had so
many strings to pull that you’ve become tangled in your own web."

A strong tremor passed through the
derelict castle, shuddering through the ground at their feet.

"The machine," Belial hissed, scraping
at the floor. "She is going to take my place as queen, she is going to conquer
without me. She does not need me. She needs Imogen. She needs the one who
straddles both worlds to open the door. Stop her, Portia," she wheezed with her
last rattling breath.

Kanika reveled in the ecstasy of
consuming Belial. Portia had seen this before, when Nigel had drained the
essence out of Analise. She took what little time this grisly ritual offered
her and ran from the hall.

The herders, Portia saw, still cowered
behind a pillar, their lenses focused on her. They regarded each other for a
breath of stillness before they came forward, glancing warily toward the throne
where Kanika had dragged Belial’s body across her narrow lap to better pull at
what little fluid was left in the demoness’ flesh,
cradling the queen in a savage embrace.

The herders touched Portia’s forearms,
prodding and pushing her toward the wide entry doors, yet shuffling unwillingly
away from their dying mistress.

"Come with me," Portia ordered them,
and they fell in behind her, relaxing into the habit of being under command.

Drained of blood, Belial looked like an
ivory effigy, but Kanika was not finished. Portia knew what came next and she
was not keen on witnessing it again. The herders loped close on her heels as
she made for the large double doors at the far end of the chamber. Beneath the
floor, Belial’s terrible machine groaned ominously. Kanika sealed her voracious
mouth over what was left of the queen and breathed in the very last of her
essence. A high hum filled the air, rising in pitch until it climaxed into a
ringing harmony before shattering into an uneasy quiet. Glancing back, what had
been Belial was nothing but a fine golden dust gleaming gritty on the marble
floor. Kanika was bent double and panting, blood glittering on her lips. An
aura of light and shadow swirled around her, growing stronger, and the ringing
began anew, but deeper, more sonorous and somehow much more dangerous.

An intense quake rocked the building
and a deep fissure cracked the floor from end to end. The herders pushed Portia
out of the glided throne room and heaved the massive doors closed behind them.
As one, they whistled through their masks, calling a pack of dire-hounds to
them from the shadows. The tallest of them hooked his ropy, muscled arm around
Portia’s waist and whisked her along with him through the receiving rooms and
into the decaying foyer.

The shaking
intensified. They clicked frantically and Portia did not understand them, but
she could smell the raw reek of their fear. The herders threw themselves into
the work of turning the mighty gears of the outer doors. Their hands were
clumsy in their panic and haste.

A thunderous boom
echoed through the halls as the doors far behind them were blown open. Portia
heard the elaborate Oriental panels slam into the walls and the wrenching
jangle as the hinges shattered.

"Work faster," she urged the herders
who had begun to argue amongst themselves in sibilant whines.

An intense change of air pressure
heralded the approach of danger. A sphere of distorted shadows extended down
the corridor and Kanika’s small silhouette could be
seen at its center. She effortlessly knocked through doors and blew out the
walls of the corridor. The shaking continued, increasing in magnitude. The
herders shook their heads mutely at the door. The shifting structure had the
gears hopelessly jammed. Time was running out and Portia felt her plans about
to shake apart like the walls around her. She cursed herself for not striking
Kanika when she had the chance.

"Stand aside!" Portia swung the axe
into the door. Sparks flew as metal contacted metal, but the axe bit only a
small hole into the panel. She pressed her palm to it instead, and before she
could even finish calling upon the light within, the doors flew open with a
squeal of protesting metal.

Out in the courtyard, the reapers were
converging on the palace. Ever-widening cracks had formed in the pavement there,
buckling the golden paving stones and tripping the guards as they sought to
render aid to their queen. Lahash barred her way,
leveling his barbed iron pike at Portia’s heart.

"Halt!"

"I’d rather not. Your queen is dead and
what has taken her place is not going to be happy to see you. Besides, I am in
a dreadful hurry. Please, stand aside."

He lowered the pike and reached for
Portia, but her hard gaze stopped him cold. An aura of flame blazed from her,
betraying her furious temper. The moment grew strained between them before the
commander stepped away from her, avoiding her eyes like a dog that had been
kicked.

"Captain Lahash."
One of the reapers jogged up and stumbled as he beheld Portia. He sputtered and
ducked his head to them both. "These herders were with her."

The herders warbled with panic,
pointing toward the castle with their fleshless hands.

The commander growled, his heavy brows
lowering. Without much menace behind his gesture, he pointed his sinuous
black-bladed dagger to Portia’s throat. "You will explain."

The anger faded, replaced by
indignation. "I will not. I had nothing to do with this. Investigate all you’d
like, but I am going back to the sanctuary." She made only a few steps away
before the ground heaved so mightily that it knocked her off her feet, leaving
her sprawled on an island of pavement surrounded by ominous, acrid steam that
billowed up all around her. Lahash crouched a few
yards away. Portia could see a cavernous space below them, lit with a dusky
glow. The captain scrambled onto the more solid ground of the courtyard,
leaving Portia behind on an unstable slab that slid precariously into the maw.
With a few strong sweeps of her wings, Portia rose out of the cave-in.

"The machine is doing this, isn’t it?"

Lahash ground his jaw. "Someone has engaged Her Majesty’s
rift engine. It was not time yet! We do not have possession of the portal
soul!"

"And you never will, so help me."

A shudder groaned through the ground,
prying open the hard-packed road in another gasp of sulphurous
steam that blasted a knot of reapers, leaving most of them dead. Portia dodged
the blast, flapping frantically above it.

"Is this damned thing supposed to tear
the island apart?"

"The rift engine is part the system
that keeps the island aloft."

"Of course it is." Portia sighed. "And
that means that the island is going to shake apart soon, isn’t it?" She turned
away, scanning the horizon for the shimmering sanctuary tower in the distance.
Time was now a more dangerous foe than Kanika as the land below her disintegrated.

"She would not have initiated it," the
captain insisted. "Not without the proper protocol. I was not informed!"

"Can this tantrum wait?"

A drumbeat thudding came from behind
the palace walls. The masonry curved outward with a loud groan before bursting
apart with a clatter of stones and shrapnel. They saw the aura first as it
emerged from the gaping hole in the palace’s façade, bringing down the
soul-forged bricks around it as if the emanation of shadow and light was a
solid thing. The roof of the central chamber collapsed and a fearsome cloud of
dust rushed outward, flowing around the aura like water over a stone. The
figure at the center of the sphere remained untouched by dust and metal. She
glided down the stairs, eyes glowing darkly gold.

"Majesty?" Lahash
hastily bowed and took two steps toward the collapsed walls.

Her face turned toward him, no longer
the charming heart-shaped visage that Portia knew as Kanika, but something else
familiar. Part Kanika, part Belial, and part…

"Nigel!" Panic seared through Portia’s
soul. She realized now why Kanika’s eyes seemed so
very familiar, but in Kanika’s innocent face, she had
failed to recognize them. A shudder crept through her at the memory of the
girl’s touch, or waking up with her head pillowed in Portia’s lap. But the
revulsion was immediately replaced with dread. When she had fought Nigel in the
convent, it had been a near thing. Without Imogen’s
help, she did not think she could have defeated him. He still wore the souls of
his victims around him like a cloak, and Belial glowed brilliantly and foremost
among them, her power still intact and ready for Nigel’s use. Portia landed,
putting Lahash between herself and her damnable
foster-brother.

"Sweet sister," Nigel said in a voice
that still sounded like Kanika’s piping tones, but
with a dreadful deep echo. "Still here? You were never good at a footrace."

The reapers retreated from the voice,
falling back behind Lahash but looking to Portia.

"What do you want?" Portia shouted.

"I’ll be getting to you soon enough,
dear foster sister, but there are other things that require my attention.
Imogen is waiting."

The ground rumbled, opening another
hole in the courtyard’s center, this one a wide maw that consumed several
square yards of paving stones and not a few reapers. Through the nearly
blinding smoke and steam, Portia could see a piston the size of an oak tree
moving gears as big as carriage wheels. The engine below roared with effort,
puffing and gasping like a living thing. A hum sang beneath the terrific noise,
following the small balls of lights that zipped past in thick glass tubes. The
lights were shuttled away from the palace, streaking through clear pipes that
vanished beneath the remaining road that lead toward the sanctuary.

 Portia squinted into the gloomy fog and saw the
proof of her suspicion as a sliver of silver-white light began to rise from
those sacred grounds. The sanctuary was not, Portia realized, a rebellious
enclave, or at least not solely that. Belial had allowed it not only to remain,
but to thrive and flourish because somehow it abetted her plans.

She turned slowly toward the steps of
the ruined palace. "What have you done?"

"I am taking what is rightfully
destined to be mine." The creature that had once been Kanika chuckled and crouched
down, then leapt straight into the air, leaving a crater below her. Like a dark
comet, she streaked toward the softly lit trees of the sanctuary. A taunt
echoed back to them, hauntingly: "Too slow, Portia."