The Night Parade (33 page)

“By night we can ride the shadows, we can navigate the winds of darkness. A hundred strong, a thousand strong, we could breeze past you and steal the flesh from your bones with ease. Without a mage you would never sense us.”

Myrmeen wondered where the other members of the Night Parade were hidden. She had not forgotten that Tamara had tried to kill her; she also had not forgotten that the woman-spider had stepped back, allowing Myrmeen to live. An odd sensation had passed between them, something that Myrmeen desperately had tried to forget.

If Krystin is not my daughter, who is?

Recognition.

Impossible, Myrmeen thought as she stared at the lithe, dark-haired woman with red specks in her eyes. She looks too old to be my daughter. But, then, these creatures’ appearances often are deceiving.

A flash of pure white light shocked Myrmeen from her thoughts and she registered the sizzle of lightning as a bolt reached down from the darkened skies and struck a building a few blocks away. Krystin eased into her arms in a natural embrace. Myrmeen wondered if Tamara had killed the pair of guardsmen assigned to watch them or if the soldiers had run to get help. The latter was unlikely, as Tamara appeared completely human in this form.

“I know you’re thinking about running,” Tamara said as she made her final turn and stopped abruptly, her hair whipping around to obscure one side of her face. “If I meant you harm, you would know by now.”

Myrmeen tensed as thunder rolled again, louder, closer.

“I want to help,” Tamara said. “I was wrong about you. I was wrong about so much I believed about you.”

The fighter could not stop the flood of thoughts that filled her mind and might drown her if she were not careful: The Night Parade took my daughter. Krystin is not that child. Tamara could be. She has more of Dak in her, but she could wefl be my child.

“How do you expect us to believe you?” Ord said.

Tamara gazed coldly at the man. “What you do is of little consequence to me. My concern is for Myrmeen.”

“Why?” Myrmeen asked, shocked that the words had leapt from her mind to her tongue with so little restraint.

“I have my reasons,” Tamara said. “Do you hear it?”

The first drops of rain began to fall, heavy, violent splatters of liquid.

I’m dripping. Honey, I hate that.

Myrmeen shook the image from her nightmare away. Above, a blanket of storm clouds had covered the city. She thought of Reisz and knew that they had acted too late.

“The children,” she said, hoping there was time enough to find one orphanage and try to save the infants from the Night Parade.

“Yes,” Tamara said darkly, “the children will suffer this night if you do not listen to me.”

From somewhere far off Myrmeen heard the dulcet sounds of a harp intertwined with a sweet, joyous voice that was accompanied by a flute and the delicate reverberations of a triangle. The sounds were carried on the wind, and Myrmeen suddenly felt weak. As her knees turned to liquid and she fell, Myrmeen was vaguely aware of Krystin and Ord also succumbing to the lure of the strangely beautiful music, a lullaby more irresistible than any they had ever heard before.

Tamara snatched up the blade that Myrmeen had dropped. The music was not harming her. She slashed Myrmeen’s palm, then her own. Pressing her wounded hand against Myrmeen’s, Tamara threw her head back and repeated a phrase in an ancient language that humans could never speak. As their blood mixed, Myrmeen’s eyes fluttered and suddenly she pulled away from Tamara, scrambling back in fear and distrust.

“Bellophat’s music cannot harm you now,” Tamara said. “You will not be another human cow to be slaughtered. My blood has touched yours, as yours touched mine, long ago.”

Myrmeen did not have time to ask Tamara to explain her cryptic statement. “Protect the others, too.”

“As you wish,” Tamara said, taking Krystin’s and Ord’s palms and sharing blood with them. As Krystin and the last Harper shook off the sudden, numbing effects of sleep, they dragged themselves to their feet and stood beside Myrmeen, whose hand was outstretched to catch the rain.

Krystin touched Myrmeen’s arm. “The Devlaines.”

“Don’t bother,” Tamara said. “The Devlaines are dead. Doppelgangers have taken their place.”

Somehow, Krystin was not surprised to learn that Lord Sixx had lied and that he had murdered her adopted parents. What shocked her, however, was her own lack of emotion at the news that they were dead. She felt very little for these people, her memories of them hazy and indistinct. It would strike her later, she was certain of that. For now, her mind seemed willing to protect her from the shock.

“Bellophat,” Myrmeen said absently.

Vizier Bellophat promised us sustenance.

She had heard those words on the black ship that had been smuggling inhuman cargo into the city’s port. She remembered the monstrosity that could twist its body into instruments and produce sounds she had never heard before.

“We killed Bellophat,” Myrmeen said, “drowned him.”

“Not all of our kind need air to breathe,” Tamara said. “You inconvenienced us, that’s all.”

“The children,” Krystin said insistently.

“Yes,” Tamara agreed, “they are the most vulnerable. The only chance you have to save them is by killing Bellophat. If you silence his music, the people will wake and take arms against my kind. It is the only chance humans have this night. The festival is overdue, and Calimport will be gutted much worse than during the last storm.”

“Which had not been a storm,” Myrmeen said, wondering if the rain she felt also was an illusion. Thunder clapped and lightning crackled over the water.

“I still don’t understand,” Myrmeen said as she heard the music grow even louder. “Why are you helping us?”

“For selfish reasons,” Tamara said. With those words she turned and leapt toward a nearby wall, which she scaled and vanished over before Myrmeen could ask her question a second time.

Myrmeen looked at the child who might have been her daughter had circumstances been different, and the young man who had been thrust into a life he had not chosen for himself, and said, “We have to end this if we can.”

Krystin and Ord nodded in agreement, and together they ran toward the music, the sounds of the storm and the encompassing fingers of rain closing over them as they disappeared into the night.

Twenty-One

“That you are my son disgusts me.”

Alden McGregor tried to keep his own revulsion at bay as he stared at the red-skinned man who had spoken. The man’s flesh appeared to have been flayed, leaving only bare muscle and tissue. Alden could tell that the man before him in the darkened chamber once had been a beautiful physical specimen that had literally been turned inside out and stitched back together. He wore a black leather tunic, stitched up the front, his arms and legs exposed. Rubies adorned his waist sash and the bands around his arms and thighs. His eyes were sky blue.

He was Magistrate Dymas, he explained, Lord of the Dance. When he performed, his motions could cause even the casual observer to experience vertigo and lose all motor functions. The nightmares he could provoke began with the fulfillment of fantasies and ended with the most humiliating of disappointments. The feeling of loss after even one such dream could drive a person to suicide. The elegance of his movements were balanced by the crudeness of his appearance, speech, and manner. Although he was intelligent and educated, his speech often lapsed into the gutter slang of his youth. He was like an animal who fiercely labored to maintain a civilized appearance. Alden loathed him.

“These is my powers,” Dymas said. “What’s yours? You’re a dog. You hunt and sniff and follow the scent of blood. You ain’t one of us. You’re fodder. I weren’t happy when your mother died, but at least she didn’t see the wretch you are!”

Holding back his tears, Alden looked away from the man who claimed to be his father. Dymas moved with unbelievable speed and agility, leaping to his son’s side and kneeling beside the boy as Alden recovered from the slight dizziness he felt after watching Dymas in motion.

“I want to see Pieraccinni,” Alden said firmly.

“That old woman has hawked you enough. Don’t you mention his name.”

Furiously whirling on the flayed man, Alden shouted, “Pieraccinni was there for me. Where were you?”

Dymas laughed. “You call yourself his, but you ratted on the pig when you knew he was one of us. I bet you weren’t pleased none to learn you wasn’t exactly much better.” He frowned. “Come on now, boy. Admit it. Ain’t you happier knowing your blood ain’t tainted with humanity?”

To the night people, humans were monsters, Alden knew.

Dymas’s features softened. “Ah. You never seen the lands of your people. Our kingdoms make this world look like nothing. If I could take you there, you wouldn’t act like this at the thought of your true sire. %u’d be happy with what you are. You would, you know.”

Raising his misshapen hands before him, Alden found he no longer could hold back his tears. His gentle hands, which had caressed the soft flanks of a dozen women, now would tear bloody gashes in their skin. He was becoming more of an animal with every hour.

“If it was such a paradise, why leave?” Alden asked.

“We didn’t have no choice,” Dymas said ruefully. “The prey we had ate for as long as we could remember was dying off. All we could do was eat off each other or find new worlds with new prey. There was somethin’ of a war. All this energy was released. The sages said our reality was torn. Doors opened, gateways to other realms, like this one. Most of us fought the new order. I mean, it would’ve bred the hunter from us, would’ve made us less than we are. We left our homes for these new worlds. We’ve been quiet, secret like, you know, but we’ve grown. Don’t fool yourself, we’ve—”

“What is the apparatus?” Alden said, interrupting.

Dymas smiled. “That you’ll know tonight.”

Alden thought of the scene he had witnessed at the cavernous retreat, the plans Tamara and Zeal had made to betray Lord Sixx. He had kept his silence. Staring into the flayed man’s deceptively soft eyes, Alden said, “I look forward to that, father. I do.”

“Maybe there’s hope for you,” Dymas said as he took the young man in an embrace that startled Alden.

“Yes,” Alden said as he looked out over his father’s shoulder, his red eyes blazing, his sharp teeth grinding. “Perhaps there is, after all.”

From outside he heard the sound of thunder and the siren’s call of Bellophat’s music, which raised a longing in his heart that sickened him. A familiar scent came to him suddenly, one that he had not expected to breathe ever again.

Krystin was nearby.

The proximity of her blood made him tremble. Overwhelmed by new and terrible desires, he clutched at his father, praying that he would be able to keep his inhuman needs under control long enough for Krystin to escape.

Myrmeen, Krystin, and Ord could tell they were getting close. They had taken shelter beneath an overhang of a warehouse overlooking the docks. The music overpowered the thunder and the driving, insistent strumming of the rain. They had passed dozens of men and women who wandered about entranced, and Myrmeen wondered if Calimport would become a city of sleepwalkers; even the dour men of the city guard had succumbed to Bellophat’s sweet music, their eyes squeezed shut, smiles of transcendence on their faces. In the harbor, ships had floated toward the docks and crashed, the men on board falling over like dolls on an unsteady surface. The survivors calmly drifted into the water, many approaching shore, where they were drawn by the music.

Myrmeen could feel the intoxicating lure of Bellophat’s call. She took Krystin’s hand and said, “I’m betting there will be no guards with Bellophat. No one is expecting a fight. I want you to stay here.”

“That’s suicide,” Krystin said.

“No,” Myrmeen said, Tamara’s blood causing a swelling of confidence within her breast. “I can do this alone.”

“If there’s no risk, why not let us come with you?” Ord said as he felt his own need for action rise.

Krystin touched Myrmeen’s arm. “You said you would never doubt my abilities in a fight again. You said—”

“Just shut up and wait, all right?” Myrmeen screamed, her rage bringing her to the verge of embracing an all-too-familiar sensation: The last time she had experienced such a killing frenzy, such a taste of ecstasy, of blind animal release with no human guilt and no human feelings to bar her from her pleasure, had been the time she had slipped on Shandower’s gauntlet and felt the apparatus’s magic surge through her.

Myrmeen bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. She shuddered as she fought the impulse to run screaming through the streets, killing anything that moved in her way.

“It’s not just Tamara’s blood,” she said softly. “Bellophat’s music affects the night people, too. It helps release what’s in their hearts.”

And what’s in ours, Krystin thought, frightened by what she saw in Myrmeen’s eyes.

“Please,” Myrmeen begged, “I don’t want you to see me like this. Let me go alone.”

Krystin backed away.

“Protect her, Ord!” Myrmeen cried. He nodded. Unable to contain her murderous desire any longer, Myrmeen bolted from them, her boots splashing through rapidly forming puddles as she hurtled through the streets and vanished.

Ord touched Krystin’s shoulder. She looked up and saw that not all the moisture on his face had come from the steady flow of the rain.

“They’re gone,” he said, “all of them.”

Krystin knew that Ord finally was allowing himself to feel the grief he had been denying over his parents’ deaths. She wondered if perhaps Tamara’s blood and the call of Bellophat’s music had pried loose his buried emotions. For whatever reason, he had begun to cry.

Krystin felt a strength and compassion in her heart that was bold and true. She reached up and smoothed away the tear that was drifting past his cheek, then took Ord in her arms. They held each other, Ord whispering that he was sorry, so very sorry, for the things he had said and done, and Krystin’s words echoed his. The rain lessened slightly and they became aware that they were no longer alone.