The Shape Stealer (27 page)

Sure as he was standing there, this was Tiamat, she-devil of Babylon. Thousands of miles from home and thousands of years past her extinction at the hands of monotheism. Tiamat.

His one, his only, his primordial, mother.

She leapt at him, her vulture talons dripping with blood, not to hurt him but what he dreaded more: to kiss him. The resulting filth and disease would inflict on him a demise more excruciating than that from a slit throat. He jumped a full ten yards away from her.

Then he heard a stirring, a rippling in the black water to his left, and felt as much as heard a cascade climbing the air, as if a forty-foot waterfall had suddenly formed out of fog and mist. He looked up fearfully, he who had previously felt no fear. Shrouded in the tumult, the spontaneous waterfall, this same creature, Tiamat, appeared in a newly enlarged form, rising from the Bay. The smaller monster on the pavement in front of him vanished.

Behind the cascade, a half mile out in the Bay, fog and mist parted from Alcatraz, as if the rock and its edifice were liberated by Tiamat’s manifestation. The dread overwhelming Marduk was unbearable. The vipers on the risen monster’s head were a serious threat to him, many feet long and as thick as he was, slithering downward toward him.

He turned away and raced back toward the city, along the Marina path, at his maximum speed. Fortunately Tiamat made no effort to pursue him, but he could hear her cracked, demonic laughter reverberating after him.

“Son. I love you. Son.”

He kept running. The Palace Motor Inn was a port of refuge compared to this hell. Maybe he wasn’t so hungry after all. Maybe his next meal could wait.

33

City on the Edge of Time

We left for San Francisco the next day, lucky enough to get tickets on the same flight as Jay and Becky,

Or perhaps it wasn’t luck.

Oberon had said I was fated to defeat Dee, Marduk, and the Malefactors and to be with Will. I was beginning to feel that events were rushing forward, carrying me toward my fate just as the moving walkways at JFK carried us toward our departure gate.

Will was much less garrulous on this flight. While he had taken a liking to Roman, his time spent with my father had made him realize that winning my hand in marriage was not so simple an affair as asking for it. He seemed sobered, as well, by the mechanics of the twenty-first century. Instead of marveling at the technology that kept the airplane aloft, he seemed daunted by the crowds in the airport, the security procedures, and the jostling of the passengers vying for available overhead compartment space. The twenty-first century was beginning to lose its interest for him—or maybe he was just still growing weaker. He slept for most of the flight, only waking when we began our descent toward San Francisco.

He perked up a bit on the drive into the city. While the skyscrapers of New York had overawed him, his first sight of the Financial District skyline swathed in layers of fog seemed to enchant him. The lathering fog
was
an enchanting sight. I hadn’t been in San Francisco for years—not since a childhood trip with my parents—and I’d forgotten how spectacular the city was. The gaily painted Victorian houses perched on steep hills rising up from the deep blue bay, the dramatic banks of fog swathed over the city like cotton batting, the great ochre sweep of the Golden Gate Bridge … it all looked like a magic kingdom in a fairy tale.

“There’s sure to be a portal here,” I told Will as our taxi climbed Fillmore Street into Pacific Heights. “I can practically smell it.”

He gave me a wan smile. “Yes, my lady, I believe you are right. This city looks as though it were perched on the edge of time itself. Do not worry. I will be, as your friend Becky so colorfully says, out of your hair before long.”

I started to assure him I hadn’t meant to say I was impatient for him to go, but we pulled up then in front of the three-story lilac and lime green Victorian house where we were staying. Jay and Becky’s bandmate Fiona, whose new boyfriend Jared owned the house, were standing on the sidewalk waving. Then there were greetings and introductions and rooms to be sorted out. Assuming we were a couple, Jared had put Will and me in a room on the third floor. I was going to object, but Will had already sunk into a deep armchair in that room, in front of a window with a view of the bay. There were two beds and a sitting area, so there was ample room to spread out—and I’d be able to keep an eye on Will.

While Jay and Becky went with Fiona to do a sound check at the Fillmore, I called Annick on her cell. She told me that they were staying at a motor inn in the Marina district only a short trolley ride away; they’d be over in half an hour.

I made a pot of tea in the kitchen and asked Jared to let them in, and went back upstairs with the tea to tell Will that our friends were on their way, thinking he’d be pleased to see Kepler again. I found him still seated in the same chair, seemingly frozen to the spot. The view from the window
was
mesmerizing. A low bank of fog had moved across the bay, obscuring the water and the hills in Marin County except for their peaks, which seemed to float like islands in the fog.

“I’ve never seen a fog like this before,” he said when I sat down in the chair beside him.

“I read in the guide book that it’s caused by the warm air from the Pacific blowing across colder currents and then being pushed through the Golden Gate when the land temperature rises … or something like that.”

Will smiled and shook his head. “That may be how your scientists explain it, but I can
feel
this fog in my bones. It is time itself, broken free of its moorings. I can feel it calling to me.”

“Calling to you?” I asked, distressed at the melancholy tone of his voice.

“Yes. It knows I’m in the wrong time. It wants me to go back.”

“How can time
want
anything—” I began, but a voice interrupted me.

“He’s right.”

I turned and saw Kepler standing in the doorway, his eyes fixed on the view. Annick and Jules stood behind him. “I’ve felt it too since we came to this city. The pull of time. This city rests on a seam in time—a gateway. I imagine that’s why the terrain was called the Golden Gate. And no doubt that’s why the Knights Templar built an institute here—and why the Malefactors want to destroy it.”

“Have you been able to find the institute?” I asked, rising to greet Jules and Annick. Annick kissed me on both cheeks and then, much to my surprise, Jules did too.

“No,” Annick replied, smiling at my surprise over Jules’s warm greeting. “It is too carefully hidden, and the city is swarming with Malefactors. One followed us when we went to the Fillmore. Jules distracted him…” Her upper lip quirked into a smile. “… while I went to the ticket window.”

“I pretended to be a lost tourist,” Jules said proudly, “who could not speak English. Imagine! I, who attended Oxford for three years!”

“Jules has developed quite the gift for subterfuge,” Annick said fondly.

I was glad to see that Jules and Annick were getting on better but was impatient to find out more about their progress in finding the institute. “What did they tell you at the ticket window?”

“The clerk was quite excited to see the tickets. ‘You must be coming to our Doors retrospective,’ she said. ‘Only you’re here on the wrong date.’ Then she gave me this.”

Annick took out a bright purple flier on which was printed, in pink psychedelic script, the words: “Travel back in time to the sixties with London Dispersion Force! Vintage Doors tickets will gain you free admission.” The concert date was tomorrow.

“That’s Jay and Becky’s concert,” I said. Then I explained how they had booked the tour after recording their new album with Prospero Records.

“And you say that this recording company is run by a … um…” Jules wrinkled his nose. “… what did you say she was?”

“I’m not exactly sure what Ariel Earhart is. One of the fey, certainly—some kind of wind spirit.”

“An air elemental, no doubt,” Annick said. “My grandfather taught me about them. They ride the airwaves and can hear frequencies we can’t.”

“Yes,” I replied. “They can read minds too.”

“My grandfather said that they could also sense time frequencies and were natural time travelers.”

Jules snorted. “That’s never been definitively demonstrated—” he began, but Kepler rushed to Annick’s defense.

“Ah, but it coincides with my theories of time,” Kepler remarked, roused from his contemplation of the fog-shrouded view by the mention of his favorite subject. “A related point is that people with an aptitude for geometry may also have a capacity in the area of time travel, as they are more likely to detect polygonal patterns in the shapes around them. Where cracks in time are more likely to be hidden…”

I could see that Kepler was gearing up to deliver one of his long-winded lectures, which, while fascinating, would take up much valuable time. I had noticed that Will’s eyes were heavy, and I wanted to get rid of everybody so he could rest.

“So, is it likely that the songs Ariel inspired Jay to write and that the band will perform tomorrow will have the right frequency to open the time portal?” I asked.

Annick, Jules, and Kepler exchanged glances and nodded.

“Good, then we’ll go to the concert tomorrow. If the frequencies don’t work, I have this.” I removed the silver box from the laptop case I’d carried it in. When I took it out, Jules and Annick gasped. Even Will stirred himself and stared at the box apprehensively.

“That’s Marguerite’s box, the one I st— borrowed from her in 1602. Dee used it to summon Marduk.”

“Oberon told me it can also be used to open doors in time.”

“Of course it can,” Kepler said, leaning closer to the box and peering at the spirals etched into the lid. “Those lines on it are time disrupters.” He touched the lid, and the lines glowed blue and began to spin.

“Careful!” Jules cautioned. “I’ve heard about the device. It’s extremely volatile. It can tear the fabric of time. We must be very cautious with it. If the Malefactors ever got hold of it…”

Jules didn’t have to finish his sentence. We could all well imagine what the Malefactors might do with a time disruptor.

*   *   *

I shooed everyone out of our room soon after that, saying that I was jet-lagged and wanted to rest up for tomorrow. Really, I wanted Will to get some rest. He’d become agitated while looking at the silver box. As soon as everyone was gone I put it back in the laptop case, but his eyes remained fixed on it.

“That’s when everything started to go wrong,” he said. “When I took the box from Marguerite. What did Kepler call it? A time disruptor?” He laughed dryly, the laugh turning into a cough. “It certainly disrupted
my
life.”

“Yeah, mine too,” I said, helping him up from the chair and steering him over to one of the beds. “It was after I found the box in Dee’s shop that everything went nuts: the town house was robbed, fairies started popping up all over, I met you…”

He turned his head to me and looked up from the bed. “Me? You mean my older self?”

“Yes, of course,” I replied quickly, busying myself unfolding a blanket so he wouldn’t see the embarrassed expression on my face. “That’s what I meant.”

When I drew the blanket up over his chest I saw he was smiling at me. “That’s the first time you mixed us up.”

“Yeah, well, I’m a bit jet-lagged. We all are. You should get some rest now. Tomorrow’s going to be a big day.”

“The biggest,” he agreed, the smile fading from his face. “Garet?”

“Yes?”

“Would you … I mean … er … if it’s no trouble…”

“What, Will?”

“Would you stay with me for a bit? Until I fall asleep? It’s just that I don’t want to be alone right now. I have the strangest feeling every time I close my eyes that I’m fading and that without something to hold onto I’ll simply vanish.”

I looked into his gray eyes and saw with alarm the reflection of the blue spirals from the box spinning into the void. He
was
fading. I lay down on the bed beside him. He looked startled for a moment, but when I put my arms around him and guided his head to my shoulder I felt his muscles relax and heard him sigh.

“Just hold on tight,” I told him. “I’m not going anywhere and neither are you.”

*   *   *

I dreamed I was standing on the edge of a pool, my bare feet gripping the mud bank. I stepped into the water and the cold rippled up from my feet, raising goosebumps all over my body. I looked down at my arms and saw that feathers were sprouting from my skin. I stretched out my arms and felt the wind rustle my newly fledged wings. I glided into the pool, my feathered breast cleaving the water, its chill now a delicious balm. I felt the release of shedding my human skin … but then I heard a twig break on the shore behind me, and I swerved my long neck to look back … and saw
him
. The human I’d come to love. I’d told him again and again not to follow me to the pool, but I might as well have sent him an invitation writ in gold on a silken banner, so drawn were these humans to the hidden and forbidden.

But wasn’t that one of the things we loved about them?

It was the rule, though, that when they saw us in our natural—or
supernatural
—state, we had to leave. I had never questioned why—until now, when I saw the look of pain in his eyes. But already I was lifting off the water, beating my wings into flight, obeying the injunction, regretting the hurt I was causing even as he lifted his bow to his shoulder and aimed … and I saw in his eyes that he no more wanted to do what he was doing than I did, but we were both caught in this age-old dance, hunter and prey, lover and beloved, the wolf as compelled to chase as the deer to flee …

Then the arrow struck me.

I cried out in a human voice that was echoed by a voice on the shore, the ripples my body made as it hit the water spreading out in circles that would reach into the centuries …

He was striding through the water, reaching for me, his arms wrapping around me. “I’m sorry,” he was saying, murmuring the words into my neck. “I’m so sorry, I never meant to hurt you.”