Black Light (37 page)

“Keep looking. No, not at the mountain—at the sky. Try to concentrate. There…”

I stared, frowning, tried to see anything but the pulse of blue sky, blurring as my eyes watered. “There’s nothing th—”

I gasped. Something
was
there. A starburst of white, and then another, smaller flare, and another. A whole group of them, clustered close together in the northeast sky. Like cracks in blue glass, or the refraction of sun on a windshield. But these did not move, even when I did, or disappear when I blinked and shaded my eyes. They remained, burning faintly but steadily above the mountaintop.

“The brightest one is Aldebaran,” said Balthazar. “The eye of Taurus. That is the entire constellation, there—”

I shook my head, and this time the stars did disappear. “They’re gone!” I turned to him in amazement. “How did you do that?”

“I didn’t. You saw them, Lit. You didn’t make them appear, any more than I did. You
saw
them, that’s all.”

“But how? That’s
incredible
.” I gazed out at the greeny-gold sweep of mountains, the river like a silver highway, and wondered what other marvels were there, just beyond my sight. “I’ve never seen them before.”

“You didn’t know where to look. You didn’t know
to
look. And no, not everyone can see them—not unless one is trained to, or has the nascent ability—”

“But how did
I
see them? I’m not trained, and I—”

I fell silent.

“No, you’re not trained,” said Balthazar. He remained standing, staring at the horizon with his arms crossed. “But you can see; you have talents. That is what the Benandanti are; that is what we do. We find those who are gifted, and train them. Sometimes children are born to our order. There are families that can trace their lineage back over three thousand years. Others want more than anything to be born into it, but are not. They can only serve us, as researchers or couriers, and in other ways. But those who choose to work with us…”

He turned, eyes blazing. “Join us, Lit. Join me. Centuries ago I failed Giulietta, but I won’t fail you, I swear it! Stay with me now and I will help you—I can do great things for you, I can show you the world within the world you know—”

His voice was pleading, desperate. He took me by the shoulders and gazed at me. “I would marry you,” he said in a low voice. “The Conclave could not deny me that; not this time—”

“What?” I gaped at him, then laughed. “Marry you? I can’t marry you! I’m only seventeen—”

“Lit! Please—”

“Let go,” I commanded; then more urgently, “let
go
—”

He did and I withdrew from him, shoving my hands into my pockets. “I’m not marrying
anyone.
Not to mention I don’t even
know
you—”

“Then don’t marry me,” he begged. “Just stay—no, not here, not with me! But with us. You’ll be starting college next year—I can arrange for you to be placed at the University of the Archangels and Saint John the Divine. We can arrange for a scholarship, you’ll be able to—”

“What?” I snorted in disbelief. “Don’t you get it? I can’t do any of this—this Benandanti stuff. It’s crazy! And I’m already going to school—to NYU. Maybe.”

I fell silent, thinking of Jamie Casson; of how even though the sun was shining here, it had been after midnight in Bolerium, and there was a train at four-thirty-five…

“I have to go,” I said curtly. “I—I’m sorry. I’m sorry I bothered you, I’m sorry I came but now I have to—”

I was halfway across the room before I stopped.

Exactly
how
was I to go? I looked around, dazed. Balthazar shook his head.

“You can’t go back,” he said. “Not to Bolerium. Please, Lit. You don’t really comprehend any of this—how could you? He
wants
you to return—he needs you, without you there will be no apotheosis. Without you he cannot be reborn—”

I looked at him as though he were nuts. “Jamie?”

“No! Axel Kern—”

“But he
is
born—I mean, he’s
there,
he’s not—”

“Not Axel Kern. He is just the avatar; the vessel. It is Dionysos who seeks to be born, and Kern will be discarded as though he were a ruined statue. He needs you, Lit. You’re a lightning rod for him—you and your rage, your energy—that is what gives him power. It has always been like this. The god and his initiates are intimately linked—without them, any sacrifice is merely another death.

“But with them—with the girl who serves as his consort, and slayer—with you, it all begins again.”

I listened, then asked in a low voice, “Is that what happened to Kissy Hardwick?”

“Yes. And to Laura Stone, Kern’s mistress, and to others.
Many
others. If you go to him, Lit, you will die, just as they did.”

“I don’t believe that.” I didn’t care that he could hear how my voice shook, or see how my entire body was trembling. “I don’t believe any of it. Because if you’re right, and I’m somehow connected to your Giulietta, then I’m different from all of them—”

My hand shot out to point at the books strewn across the table and floor. “Is Kissy Hardwick in there?” I demanded. “Is there a painting of Laura Stone in the Villa of the Mysteries?
Is there
?”

For one long moment I stood and waited. Waited for him to tell me,
Yes, they’re all in those books, there’s nothing so special about you at all,
waited for him to say,
Hush, Lit, wake up, wake up…

Balthazar Warnick said nothing. Behind him clouds started to gather above the mountaintop. Far below, the river darkened from silver to lead. Finally I turned, looking for a way out; looking for the way back to Bolerium.

There was none. Or rather, there was only one, and I knew what
that
was.

I would have to leave the same way I had arrived. My heart began to pound, but I focused all my will on keeping my hands steady, raising them in front of me and staring at the wall. There was no window in it, no door. I had seen two doors in that room, the one Kirsten had entered by, and another, battered door of wood set into a recessed wall and topped by a lintel with Latin words painted in faded letters—

OMNIA BONA BONIS

As I stared at the door the words seemed to glow, and I heard Ralph Casson’s disdainful voice—

They call themselves The Good Walkers
—
Those Who Do Well—

And just as suddenly the meaning of the Latin words came to me, spoken by another, kinder, voice—

All things are good with good men.

“Join us,” whispered Balthazar. The battered door glowed brighter, the radiance of a thousand suns striving to reach me.

But I would not go that way. Instead I wrenched my gaze from the door and turned back to the far wall, the shelves bowed beneath the weight of all the secrets they held, an entire world captured between leather and vellum and cloth covers. I held my arms straight, making my entire body go rigid until my arms and shoulders ached. I stood there and stared at the wall, willing my escape from the Orphic Lodge; willing the portal to come.

And it came. Like flame stitching the edges of a parchment, its outlines appeared before me: a ragged doorway with a threshold that burned so fiercely I blinked, then cried out as I almost lost the image to the darker silhouettes of shelves and wainscoting—

“Lit! No!”

Tears streamed from my eyes as I struggled not to blink again. Like a shipwreck rising from dark water the shape of the passage burned through the wall. Its perimeter glowed dazzlingly, but at its center was a blackness at once terrible and terrifyingly beautiful, a glittering penumbra like the remnant of a shattered star. Even as I fought to remain standing I was drawn toward it, sucked down as though I were toppling into the abyss. There was a roaring in my ears, the thunder of a raging fire. Behind me I could hear Balthazar’s voice, faint and ineffectual as a sigh—

“Lit! Don’t! You don’t know—”

I was falling forward. Howling wind raked me, sent my hair streaming outward into ashes and smoke as I plunged into the portal.

“—you don’t—”

“Get back!” I screamed.

The flesh along my arms rippled and burned, the darkness seared my throat but somehow I found the will to laugh. Because
I had done it
—I had created it, the portal was there and even if it destroyed me, even if I never drew another breath to tell anyone what I had seen, the making of it was
mine.
Around me was nothing but flame and heat and the void, and I shrieked even as the abyss took me and Balthazar’s warning voice came one last time—

“You don’t know what you’re doing
—
”

As I fell, laughing, and shouted back at him through the darkness—

“Then I’ll learn the hard way.”

T
HIS TIME IT WAS
not like crashing, but waking. There was no pain. Darkness and flame alike receded into a muted gray expanse that held the promise of vast space, an unseen ocean beyond the fog. The mist grew brighter, feathered with electric blue and violet. I blinked, blinked again as the realization dawned that I
could
blink; that I was alive, and awake, and definitely no longer in the Orphic Lodge. There was something familiar about the surface under my back, something that was soft without actually being very comfortable; something cold.

“Hello?”

It took a second to register that this was my own voice, croaky and tentative.

“Hello?” I said again, louder. There was no answer. I rubbed my eyes, trying to dispel the sense that the air was somehow fuzzy, along with everything else. It took another moment, but then I knew. I was in the room where I’d last seen Hillary and Ali; the room with the black light and the stereo and the sun spider. I was in Bolerium.

“It worked,” I breathed. Beside me the sheet was bunched up, weighted by a knot of blankets. Without looking I elbowed it aside, then rolled to the other end of the mattress, groaning, and stood. “God, I can’t believe it
worked
…”

My legs trembled as though I’d been on a roller coaster. Underfoot was the same rough carpet of acorns and twigs and poppy pods, above me the same ultraviolet light buzzing ominously in its plaster medallion, like a wasp in a rose.

And there was another sound as well, the monotonous click and scratch of a needle stuck on vinyl. I crossed to where the stereo sat in the corner, surrounded by a desolation of album sleeves and loose records, marijuana seeds and a broken syringe. I picked up the stereo arm, replaced it and switched the
OFF
button; then slid the album from its spindle, tilting it so that I could read the label.

BERLIN

I grinned wryly: that would have been Ali’s choice. I glanced around for the cover but didn’t see it. I stuck the record atop a stack of albums, turned and tripped over something round and smooth.

“Oh,
fuck
!”

I’d stepped on the glass globe that held the sun scorpion. Swearing, I kicked aside shards of broken glass and stone and a small gritty heap of sand. Something gleamed as it skittered across the floor, glowing cobalt in the UV light; then disappeared, as though it were a flame that had been extinguished. I hopped over the shattered globe. The fact that I had on heavy leather boots with two-inch heels somehow didn’t seem much of a comfort. I headed for the half-open door, but when I reached the mattress again I froze.

Sprawled across its center was the tangled mass of blankets I’d shoved aside minutes before. One side of the pallet was bare, and still showed the faint imprint of my body.

But there was someone on the other side of the mattress, the side that was closest to me. Her body curved to form a question mark, arms drawn in front of her with hands clasped. She still wore her dress with the heart-shaped cutouts; in the cold light the flesh that showed through looked slick and damp, the color of a mussel shell. Her eyes were slitted, her mouth open and teeth bared, tongue protruding like a kitten’s. Along the bottom of her jaw a silvery filament of saliva glistened.

“Ali. Hey, Ali…” I knelt, paused before touching her arm.
“Shit.”

I jerked my hand back. Her skin felt hard, cool as plastic. I swallowed, tasting bile; forced myself to look at her again, my gaze traveling from face to breast to abdomen, searching for some sign that this wasn’t real, that I’d made a mistake and she was just sleeping.

She wasn’t. I steeled all my courage to lay one palm against her breast. It was like touching a hot water bottle that’s been left overnight, cold and slightly flaccid.

“Oh, Christ, Ali, don’t do this, don’t do this, please
please
don’t—”

I lowered my face until it grazed hers. Her cheeks were cold, her hair stiff. I ran my hand along her arm, stopped when I reached the crook of her elbow. There was a row of tiny bruises there, each with a bright dot in the center, as though she’d been playing with a red Magic Marker. I brushed a dank tuft of hair from her forehead, let my finger trace the outline of her cheek, trailing down the side of her nose until it reached her upper lip. There was something sticky there, sticky and granular. I pulled away, letting a wash of blue light cascade from the overhead bulb onto her face. Sparks of purple and black glittered on her lips and around her mouth, as though she’d been eating poisoned sugar. I hesitated, then touched her mouth and held my finger up to the light. The same purplish gleam was there, flecked with grains of glowing violet. I inhaled, breathing in a perfumed sweetness that was also rank, like wisteria or fetid water.

“They look so peaceful when they’re asleep.”

A figure loomed above me, her sharkskin jacket and miniskirt given a sinister, inky sheen by the light.

“She’s—she’s dead.” I stumbled to my feet. “Have you—did you—”

Precious Bane stared at the corpse.
“‘Lethaeo perfusa papavera somno,’”
she said in a throaty voice. “Poppies soaked with the sleep of Lethe.” She stooped and gently touched Ali’s lips with her finger. “Opium soaked in honey.”

She held up her hand, the UV bulb making her nails glow like so many lit tapers. “She must have eaten an entire cake of it—yeah, look, there it is—”