Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952) (102 page)

“Are we going to get to Anne first?” Variam said.

“Yeah, but not by much.” I glanced through the futures in which we turned back. Crystal was still pursuing with Lyle trailing after, Onyx was behind them both but catching up fast, and I still couldn't pick Vitus out of the tangle. “Okay, this is going to get messy real fast. Vitus is up ahead and he wants Anne, but he'll be going after us second. Crystal wants to silence us, make sure we don't get out to spread the story. Lyle probably has no idea what's going on, so he's sticking next to Crystal. And Onyx . . . my guess is he's here to kill
everyone
. Vitus, Crystal, me, and anyone who doesn't get out of the way fast enough.”

“What's the plan?” Luna asked.

“There isn't one,” I said.

Luna and Variam looked at each other. I realised they were waiting for me to tell them what to do and felt a flash of frustration. Couldn't they tell I was making this up as I went along?

But they were looking to me to lead them, and even if I didn't know what I was doing I had to act as though I did. I tried to think of what would put Luna and Variam at the least risk. “All right,” I said. “I'll go in and get Anne. You two hold the entrance as long as you can, then fall back. If we get separated work your way out of the maze back to the top floor of the house to the long corridor where we entered. I'll meet you there and we can get out.”

“I'm going with—” Variam started to say.

“No,”
I said instantly. “Look, if these guys all attack us at once we're finished. Our only chance is to hold them as far away as we can. If we can keep them busy with each other, we can get away in the confusion. Crystal's key will get us out if we can make it to the door.”

A shape loomed out of the darkness ahead of us and a moment later the skeletal bushes opened up into a clearing. Before us was a small building, its foundations sunk into the ancient mud and its upper level reaching up into the shadows. We'd reached the centre of the hedgemaze.

There was only one way in: a crosshatched metal door, stiff from long disuse. “Hold this door until you're in danger and then get out,” I said as I got to work on it. “Try to delay Crystal long enough for Onyx to catch up, but if you can't, or once the fighting gets serious, run.” The door scraped open and I turned to look at Luna and Variam. “Got it?”

Luna looked around nervously at the dead clearing. “Okay.”

“Fine,” Variam said. “But if you're not back in five minutes, I'm going after—”

“If I'm not back in five minutes it probably means Anne and I are both dead. In that case, get out. There's a second way out through the hedgemaze around the back.”

Variam scowled. Luna was watching the clearing. There was maybe thirty feet of muddy ground between the edge of the hedgemaze and the building, and the air was ominously silent. With my divination I could sense Crystal hurrying closer with Onyx on her heels. If Luna and Variam hid inside the door they'd have some cover, but not much.

“Alex?” Luna said. The clearing was quiet, but I knew it wouldn't stay that way for long. “Hurry, okay?”

I walked into the darkness.

*  *  *

T
he inside of the building was cramped and decaying. Pieces of wall crunched under my feet and I had to turn sideways to squeeze through the single corridor, yet somehow as I picked my way through the debris I knew this little old building was the heart of Fountain Reach. All the space and luxury outside were just for show. The corridor bent around, then inward.

The room within was lined floor to ceiling with cracked grey tiles, and it stank. The air was heavy with a kind of sickly rich coppery smell that made me hold my breath. My foot slipped underneath me as I took the first step in, and I put my hand against the wall to steady myself. The tiles were cold. The place seemed to be darker than outside and only as my eyes adjusted did I start to make out the features of the room: the bathtub in the corner, the counters along one side, and the metal table in the centre. Lying on the metal table was a body.

As soon as I saw that I rushed to the table, my shoes skidding on the floor. The body on the table was Anne, and as I saw her my heart sank. Her head was hanging back off the edge of the table, and her throat had been messily cut open. “Oh no,” I whispered under my breath. I touched Anne's skin to find that it was cool. I looked into the futures in which I put my ear to her chest and listened and couldn't find anything. I've seen people with cut throats and I knew Anne's wound had to be fatal, but I still clung to a sliver of hope. I'd seen her survive lethal wounds before. There were straps holding Anne to the table and I started pulling them open. “Come on,” I whispered to myself. “Please don't be dead, please don't be dead . . .” The straps were sticky, but I was able to get them off. “Anne, if you can hear me, now would be—”

Anne sat up with a gasp and I nearly jumped out of my skin. She looked blindly from left to right in a panic and I caught her. “Easy! It's okay, you're safe.”

Anne clutched at my arm. “Where is he?” Her voice was raspy but recovering and the ugly slash across her throat was healing as I watched, new skin growing across the wound with a flicker of green light.

“He's not here,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “We're . . .” I trailed off. Anne was staring past me and as I turned I saw that she was looking at the bathtub. Something flickered on my precognition and I suddenly realised what I'd slipped on earlier. The floor was covered in patches of that dark, sticky liquid and it was spread all over the room . . . and filling the bathtub. And it was there that the smell was coming from.

“Oh,” I said quietly.

The liquid in the bathtub stirred, dark ripples spreading and lapping at the edge. Something broke the surface, rivulets of blood trickling from the head as it turned slowly to face us. For a moment it held itself motionless and then the rest of the creature rose slowly and steadily out of the bath, coming fully into view as streams of blood splashed off the shoulders to splatter on the floor. It was a human body, wasted and twisted and skin pale from lack of light, but with pieces missing. The muscles were spaced unevenly around the spindly frame, too strong in places and too weak in others, and the arms were longer than they should have been, hanging below the knees. For all that, though, it could almost have passed as a man except for the face. There were no eyes in the sockets, only a pair of gaping black voids. The mouth opened, toothless, to let loose a hissing, sighing breath.

The creature that had once been Vitus Aubuchon stared sightlessly at us.

I moved first, half-dragging Anne in a rush for the door, but fast as I was Vitus was faster. There was a weird twisting, warping sensation and suddenly Vitus was standing blocking the exit, his breath making a cloud in the air as I backpedalled frantically.

There was one other exit, a doorway leading deeper into the building. I made a snap decision and bolted for it. Anne had found her feet again and followed me, and as we ran I heard a weird rasping, grating sound from behind us. Vitus Aubuchon was laughing.

We burst into the next room only to skid to a halt, and as I looked around I felt my mouth go dry. The walls were lined with alcoves, each about three feet wide by three feet deep, and they were all filled with human remains. The older alcoves contained bones, neatly piled on top of each other with the skull placed on top, rows and rows of them each with the skulls grinning emptily outward. The newer bodies were . . . fresher. Most were desiccated and dark but the closest alcove, on the far right, contained what looked like the huddled form of a girl, black hair covering her face. But for an odd shapelessness she might have been alive. There were dozens of alcoves, hundreds. Most were full, but there was space for more—a lot more. At the far end was a furnace but otherwise there was nothing else in the room . . . including doors. We'd come to a dead end.

From behind I could hear the dragging feet of Vitus drawing closer. I searched frantically through the futures, trying to find a way Anne and I could get out safely. I didn't find one. It was getting harder and harder not to panic and I had to clamp down on my feelings as I tried to figure out what to do.

“Alex,” Anne whispered, and I could hear the fear in her voice.

“Can you do anything to stop him?” I said.

Anne hesitated for just an instant, then I saw something flash across her face and she nodded. “If I get close.”

I sized Anne up. She still looked wobbly on her feet, though at least she'd repaired the gaping wound to her throat. But while her eyes were afraid, they were steady. “Do it,” I said. “I'll draw him in.”
And let's pray it works.

Anne drew back to the corner of the room nearest to the door; she was weaving some kind of spell about herself but it wasn't doing anything that I could see. A moment later a shadow fell over the doorway as Vitus Aubuchon stepped in.

I stood facing Vitus, weight on the balls of my feet, tense and ready to jump. I was maybe thirty feet from him, between the alcoves filled with the bodies of those who'd died here in Fountain Reach. Anne was to Vitus's right, less than half the distance away, but his sightless eyes were locked on me. I looked back into those empty sockets and felt a thrill of pure terror.

The energies of a spell swirled around Vitus and I threw myself right. The space I'd been in warped and shrank, the air seeming to ripple. It looked like nothing but I'd seen what would have happened if that had caught me. I came to a stop next to the alcoves; Vitus's head turned to track me and the same spell flashed out again.

The blast radius was wider this time and I only just made it out. Two of the skeletons and an iron partition were caught in the spell and there was a crunching, snapping sound as they were crushed into fragments, the space around them crumpling like a paper bag. Splinters rattled on the floor as Vitus gave a hissing sound and advanced towards me.

Anne moved the instant Vitus's back was to her. Vitus was just about to cast a third spell when Anne's hand touched his shoulder.

And in that moment I finally understood why life mages are feared.

Anne ripped Vitus Aubuchon's life out of his body like tearing a page out of a notebook. It was over so fast I literally didn't see it. There was a green flash and then Vitus's body was toppling, dead before it hit the ground.

I looked down at Vitus, then up at Anne, eyes wide. Anne was staring down at Vitus's body. There was something in her eyes I'd never seen before and for just a moment I felt a chill, and then it was gone and she only looked pale and tired. “We should go,” Anne said.

Vitus's body was starting to dissolve, the misshapen form turning black and breaking away into ash and dust. I picked my way around it to meet up with Anne. “Why didn't he see you?”

“He can't see,” Anne said. “He senses life, so I masked mine . . . We need to go!”

We hurried back into the room with the table and the bathtub, now silent and still once more. “That was what you were doing before?” I asked.

“I played dead.” Anne's face looked drawn but at least she didn't seem hurt anymore. “After he . . .”

I gave the room a last glance, shuddered, and was about to leave when I stopped. There had been a stir of movement from the bathtub. As I watched, a ripple spread across the dark surface, followed by another. “Anne?” I asked carefully. “He's going to
stay
dead, right?”

Anne shook her head.

The ripples were increasing, and as I looked into the future I saw that in a few seconds something was going to break the surface. I ran for the door.

*  *  *

“
I
thought you killed him!” I shouted to Anne as we ran down the corridor.

“It doesn't stick!” Anne shouted back. “Fountain Reach keeps him alive; it's what it was made to do. As long as he's in this house, he can't die!”

I swore under my breath. “So he can teleport, he can bend space, and he's immortal. Wonderful.”

In the time we'd been inside the entrance to the building had become a battlefield. The doorway was open and ragged now, the door a pile of scrap metal, and Variam and Luna were crouched on either side with gashes torn in the walls around them. Outside, the dark hedgemaze was lit up with flickering orange light; several of the dead bushes were on fire. Both Variam and Luna turned towards us as we approached and Luna's eyes lit up. “Anne!”

“You're okay?” Variam demanded.

I grabbed Anne and pulled her to one side. An instant later a salvo of force blades came scything in from outside, carving through brick and metal. They cut through the outer wall, went over the heads of Luna and Variam and past me and Anne, cut through the inner wall on the other side, and kept right on going. Variam swore. “So I'm guessing Onyx is here,” I said.

“So's Crystal!” Luna said. She sounded shaken, but she was holding steady. “It's crazy out there, I don't know who's fighting who—”

“Can't make it across that ground,” Variam said. “We need to go back the way you came.”

“That's worse!” Anne said.

“She's right,” I said. “We'll be caught between them and Vitus.” I pulled a condenser marble from my pocket. “Variam, when I give the word put a wall of fire down parallel to the front wall thirty feet out. Then run. Go right, head for the far side of the maze, and don't stop.”

Variam nodded and from outside I heard the thunderclap of force magic. I leant out and threw the condenser through the doorway and out into the clearing, ahead and to the left. It shattered and mist sprang up. “Now!” I called to Variam.

Orange light wreathed Variam's hands, and with a roar a wall of fire flared into life, lighting up the dark hedgemaze in leaping flame. It cut halfway through the mist and ignited the dead wood of the maze to the left and right, blocking off vision. Luna was out the door first with the rest of us right behind her.