Blackwood (30 page)

  No one was going to intervene. No one was going to save her.

  Her head notched back to what lay before her, and her feet moved forward. Cloaked arms extended, marking a gray path across the stage for her and her father's body.

  The audience murmurs kicked up a notch then. People wouldn't think
this
was part of the show.

  "That's the Blackwoods!" someone said. It was a man in the middle section, starting to rise from his seat, gesturing toward the stage. Was that Mike from Stop and Gas? As the seller of the cheapest six-pack in town he
would
be the other person besides Chief Rawling to finally recognise her father.

  As quickly as he said the words, his mouth clacked shut, his seatmates shrinking away from the loud noise of it.

  Dee called, "Stay in your seats."

  And the audience did, obviously bewildered that they couldn't do otherwise. The feds and Chief Rawling trotted back down the aisle, sinking into seats left empty in the returned's section.

  The breeze brought a rank smell to meet her nose. More dead fish. They must be washing up on the beach behind the theater.

  His Royal Majesty appeared at stage right. "What is this?" he demanded. But the director was silenced as quickly as the others.

  The words Dee spoke weren't any she recognised, but they brought forth a trembling-in-ecstasy Roswell. He hadn't rated a cloak, but he did carry the pistol. The dulled metal and its bright jewels lay flat on his extended hands as he walked up the stairs. A paler-than-ever Bone broke away behind him, not climbing onto the stage, but taking a seat down front instead.

  Roswell crossed the stage, stopping across from Dee and Miranda. The three of them were obviously the main event, isolated from the mass of gray cloaks. Her own position placed her at exactly center stage, under the main spotlight.

  Miranda cringed at how loud her voice was when she spoke – was made to speak. She said, "I have a story to tell, of a night much like this, on a shore not far from here, many years ago. A young woman, Mary Blackwood, was brought out from the safe walls of the Colony's fort at night to meet the ship of the man who loved her. A man who had spent long months in the traveling, navigating by patterns in the stars, on the most auspicious of schedules. A great man who would have given up his greatness had she but asked. A man who was coming to deliver his promise to the colonists sent on Raleigh's voyage. To deliver his promise to Miss Blackwood herself."

  Miranda was held rapt by the story like everyone else, despite the fact she was being used to tell it. She didn't know where the story would end, just that she expected humiliation.

  When she stopped fighting for control, her tongue moved easier. The words slipped freely from her lips. "She was an enchantment, a brave dream, emerging from the night forest in a dark hooded cloak. The girl met him with a kiss – as beautiful as she had ever been, after those long months away. The colonists were ready, she said, ready for their final journey, the journey of forever. She asked to see the mechanism of their transformation."

  She paused, not of her own accord, but because Dee needed a pause. Apparently a sizeable one.

  The surf sloshed behind them. The wind sang in her ears.

  "The weapon was a variation on a new creation. A pistol. No wonder now, of course, but then the processes were still being perfected. And the man had let the words of angels and pure intentions guide him as he perfected this weapon, so that it gave not death, but life. Eternal life. The alchemist's –
humanity's
– final challenge would be met. His love asked, and he showed her the product of his work. He placed it in her hands himself, to let her hold it."

  If there'd still been any insects alive, they would have seemed loud in the hush of the theater.

  "But Mary had not – as the others – agreed to the voyage, to the prospects ahead, with a pure and true heart. She was pledged to the queen's stooge, Raleigh, the purse behind the colonist's voyage, but not the power. The man had always been the power. Mary stole the weapon and hid it. The stars were only auspicious that night, the preparations in place nearly impossible to recreate. She made his promise a lie. Even so, the alchemist was too noble to let her meet the punishment she deserved. So he joined their fates forever, with a simple mark. Made it so he could never lose her. She would still have the weapon, and one day she would bring it to him, and assist in the last great work that ever need be done. She would do so willingly. She would keep her promise."

  Miranda wanted to protest with some comments of her own, but of course she couldn't. There was no
willingly
about any of this.

  She wasn't a betrayer of good. She was a betrayer of evil. Her ancestor Mary Blackwood had tricked John Dee, had beat him.

  Winning was possible.

  It. Was. Possible.

  But Roswell came closer, and her hands reached out for the pistol and gripped it. Phillips' shout of, "Miranda, fight him!" was sweet but meaningless. The surf and the air and the night around her were as unreal as her ability to exert her own will.

  She leveled the pistol, her arm steady, pointing it at Dee. Her lips formed a final pronouncement: "And now I will make this man, and with him these colonists, the first immortals in a new world."

  Her finger curled around the trigger, pulled hard…

  The metal vibrated in her hand with enough force to push her back, and she waited to see the spray of dust emerge.

  But nothing else happened. Nothing.

  The barrel was blocked. Not even magic could force the contents out until it was cleared. Her sabotage had
worked.

  As Dee understood, her father's face twisted and he howled in rage. The colonists shouted to each other, surging forward in their borrowed bodies. Miranda found she could move enough to fling the gun off the stage, in Phillips' direction. Maybe he would take it behind the theater and throw it in the Sound to drown it in the waves, lose it forever, carried out to the ocean beyond.

  Dee lunged at her, and her heart froze. Because Sidekick danced across the stage barking and snarling, snapping at Dee's legs, trying to protect her.

  "No, boy," she said. She intended to get him behind her, but Sidekick began to wheeze. Dee had to be the cause.

  He stood blade straight in still concentration, his black eyes fixed on Sidekick. Death rattles twisted Kicks' long torso, and he didn't seem like her big, goofy dog at all. He seemed so very small and fragile, so easy for Dee to break, to end forever.

  Miranda thought of her father, how her father would never have hurt Sidekick. She thought of her father who hadn't gone crazy, and she hoped he was on the other side of that glass wall, hoped for him to break it.

  She called out to him, screaming, "Dad! Dad, you have to stop him! Dad!"

28

Forgetting the Lines

When Sidekick leapt onto the stage snarling Phillips knew that no federal agents could keep him off it. "Dad, I have to go," he pleaded. His father thrust an arm across the feds' chests and said, "Let him," in a tone that left no room for argument.

  Phillips' bounded from his seat, pausing to say, "Sorry about that whole drugging you thing. Desperate times, desperate measures. Etcetera." The agent started to respond, but Phillips didn't stick around to hear what he had to say.

  As he rushed the stage, the voices in his head were a raging river of sound. He battled to build a wall and dam them behind it. He needed his mind clear, or clear
er
, anyway.

  The crowd was on its feet, but he was the lone one heading
into
the action. The audience was more confused than anything, thrown by their inability to move during Dee's pathetic monologue using Miranda as mouthpiece. Invisible hands had held them all in their seats.

  Miranda had messed with Dee's magical weapon somehow. She was amazing.

  Phillips put his hands on the edge of the stage and vaulted onto it. He immediately had to dodge a few angry cloak wearers, who were forming a protective circle around their outraged master. The returned would have grudges against Miranda, wouldn't they? Her ancestor had trapped them in mortality, had been the reason Dee put them on hold behind death's veil.

  Dee was essentially a jilted fake boyfriend. Phillips wasn't comforted. Anyone who carried a torch after this long would be dangerous even
without
the power over life and death.

  A middle-aged cloaked woman attempted to block Phillips' path, but his mom pushed her aside. He expected her to try and stop him too, but then he saw how her watery eyes gleamed under the stage lights. She said, "I just wanted to protect you."

  So she'd finally understood that signing on for this had been a mistake. Too late was better than never. He said, "You need to get out of here. Go find Dad."

  "I'm a bad mother, the worst. You help her. You…" She squeezed him into a brief hug. "You be careful. I trust you."

  His mom let him go and Phillips maneuvered through two more cloak wearers, past the boundaries of their imperfect circle. He was just in time to watch Miranda lunge at Dee and beat his chest with her fists. She was screaming. Dee didn't fight her. He stood vain and proud and tall.

  Sidekick wasn't fighting either. He'd lain down, rolled onto his side. From this angle, it was impossible to say whether he was still breathing. Maybe Miranda had managed to distract Dee before he could do permanent damage to the dog's lungs or heart. What he'd done to Phillips had hurt like hell. Poor Sidekick wouldn't even know where the pain came from.

  Roswell dove toward Miranda and Dee, latching onto her like a tick. He was trying to pry her off his hero. She elbowed him in the face.

  Phillips ran the rest of the way to her, and shouldered Roswell away. "Time out, professor," he said, satisfied when Roswell skittered back several feet.

  With Miranda no longer pummeling Dee, the alchemist bent double, the pinstripes of his suit folding in a crease at his waist. Phillips wondered if she'd managed to injure him.

  Dee unfolded to a standing position, his arms flinging out. The motions reminded Phillips of a puppet on jerky strings. They weren't the least bit fluid. Was Dee not able to control the body? Why?

  Miranda sucked in a breath. "Dad?" she said.

  Two sharp bobs of the head for yes. His limbs flew in a fight with the air, with himself. With Dee.

  Miranda's dad
was
back in his body, but Dee was still on board. The body turned, looked at Phillips. The chorus of voices erupted from behind the flimsy wall Phillips had built to contain them. The man's eyes went flat and black for just a moment, and he spoke to Phillips, "She wants you. She gets what she deserves."

  Phillips didn't have time to prepare for the force that slammed into him. Not that he'd have been able to. All the air left his body. The spirits roared, rising in an endless cocoon of sound, until Phillips was the one behind the wall. He was the one clawing to get to the surface, trapped among the voices he'd only ever wanted to ignore.

  John Dee occupied his body.

  "Dad? Why would you say that? Dad!" He barely heard Miranda's voice through the others around him. They were much closer than she was.

  Phillips watched from a distance as an invisible ribbon of energy like an arm or a tentacle emerged from his body. It was searching… Seeking…

  Dee lifted Phillips' arm. He waved the hand at a cloaked figure blocking the crowd. "Step aside," he said.

  The man dropped his cloak and moved, saying, "Master."

  Phillips had no choice but to look as Dee swept his eyes over the audience…

  Nice, brave, loyal Officer Warren did not look afraid. His weapon was in his hand, and he was in the aisle making for the front of the house. The ribbon of power smashed into him. He fell to his knees like he'd crossed a goal line.

  In a way, he had. Officer Warren's death filled Dee with a rush of power.

  A woman wearing a long white dress crumpled as the ribbon moved on, adding the energy of her life force to its own. To Dee's.

  Phillips felt Dee revel in the rush of power. He felt everything Dee did.

  Dr Roswell wobbled into the edge of Phillips' vision, and Dee noticed him. Phillips knew that Roswell was next. The ribbon entered his chest.

  Roswell's death was his punishment for touching Miranda. Inside Dee, Phillips discovered a vast rage that might once have been love. It was cold and absolute and centered on Miranda. Dee couldn't separate her from her ancestor. Mary, Miranda. Both were Blackwoods.

  Phillips located Miranda's voice, still distant. She was talking to her father. "Dad, you know you're dead, and we need to keep it that way. Is he inside you?"

  "He…" The man's words in response were weak, shaky. "He left."

  She didn't know Dee had taken over Phillips.

  Roswell fell, then, wearing a dreamy smile as he died.

  
Crazy as he was, he didn't need to die. No one else needed to…

  In the first second, Miranda didn't move, busy gaping at Roswell's glassy dead eyes. In the next, she turned to Phillips in confusion. "What happened to him?"

  Dee was barely aware of her question, busy making his way through every cell of Phillips' body. Phillips had to retreat, back inside the cocoon of voices, the spirits talking to a version of him that wasn't home anymore, telling that him things he couldn't understand.

  Dee learned his new vessel quickly. When he noticed Miranda's attention, it was like a spark flaring into fire. He wanted her. He shifted Phillips' body toward her, close enough to use one of his arms to grip the back of her head.

  Miranda frowned, still confused. Phillips' heard his voice say, "Such a beauty," felt his arm pull her closer.

  The spirits he hid among were talking and talking and he had no way to warn her.

  He didn't need to. She figured it out, tearing free of his grasp. But she didn't run, not this girl. She put her hands on Phillips' shoulders and shook them. She snapped her fingers in his face. He barely heard. Within him, Dee's cold rage surged.