Girl of Nightmares (27 page)

They exchange a look, but neither one turns green when they go over and take a knife.

“I talked to my grandfather,” says Thomas. “He says we’re idiots.”

“We?”

“Well, mostly you.” We smile. I might be an idiot, but Morfran will be watching. If Thomas needs protection, he can send it from across the ocean.

I clear my throat. “Listen, I—I don’t know what kind of shape we’re going to be in when we get back. If they try to do something to Anna—”

“I’m pretty sure Anna could rend the Order into bits,” Thomas says. “But just in case, I know some tricks to slow them down.”

Carmel smiles. “I should’ve brought my bat.” A strange look comes on to her face.

“Has anyone considered how we’re getting Anna back to Thunder Bay?” she asks. “I mean, I’m pretty sure her passport has expired.”

I laugh, and so do the others, even Gideon.

“You two had better go along,” Gideon says, and motions out the door. “We’ll be right behind.”

They nod and touch my arm as they pass.

“Do I need to ask you to make sure they’re safe, if—?” I ask Gideon after they’re gone.

“No,” he replies. He puts his hand on my shoulder, heavily. “I swear that you don’t.”

*   *   *

In the space of a day, this place has aged a century. Electricity has been exchanged for candlelight. It flickers along the walls of the halls and bounces across the stone surface of the floor. Business attire is gone too; every person we pass has robed up, and each time we go by they make this gesture of blessing and prayer. Or maybe it’s a hex, depending on the person. I don’t do anything in return. Only one hand gesture springs to mind, and it just isn’t appropriate.

Gideon and I move through the maze of passages and connected rooms until we stand in front of a set of tall oak double doors. Before I can ask where the Order keeps the battering ram, the doors open from the inside to reveal a stone staircase, twisting down into the dark.

“Torch,” Gideon says tersely, and one of the people near the door hands him one. The light reveals finely carved granite steps. I expected them to be dark and wet, primitive.

“Careful,” I say when Gideon starts down.

“I won’t fall,” he replies. “What do you think I grabbed the torch for?”

“It’s not that. I was mostly thinking that you’d trip on the robe and break your neck.”

He grumbles something about being perfectly capable, but he steps carefully. I follow and do the same thing. Torch or no torch, the stairs are dizzying. There’s no handrail and they twist tightly around and around until my sense of direction is shot and I have no idea how far we’ve descended. The air is progressively colder, and damper. It feels like we’re walking down the throat of a whale.

When we reach the bottom, we have to curl around a wall, so the candlelight hits us suddenly as we walk into the large, circular space. Candles line the wall in three rows: one row of white pillars and one row of black. The center row is a pattern of both. They sit on shelves carved into the rock.

The robes are standing in the center in a semicircle that’s waiting to close. Only the senior-most members of the Order are present, and I look at their faces, all old and anonymous, except for Thomas and Carmel. I wish they’d put the hoods down. They look weird with their hair obscured. Burke is of course standing at the center like a keystone. He doesn’t make any show of warmth this time. His features are cut sharp in the candlelight, and that’s just how I’ll remember him. Looking like a jerk.

Thomas and Carmel are on the edge of the semicircle, Thomas trying not to look out of place and Carmel not giving a shit one way or the other. They give me nervous smiles, and I eyeball the Order members. At each one of their belts glitters a sharpened knife; I glance at Gideon. If this goes wrong, he’d better have some kind of trick up his sleeve, or he, Thomas, and Carmel will all be Julius Caesar’ed before he says two words.

Thomas locks eyes with me, and we glance up. The ceiling isn’t visible. It’s too high for the candlelight to reach. I look at Thomas again and his eyes widen. We hate this place. It feels like it’s underneath everything. Underground. Underwater. A bad place to die.

No one has said anything since Gideon and I arrived. I feel their eyes, though, on my face and flickering over the knife handle in my back pocket. They want me to take it out. They want to see it, to ooh and aah over it one more time. Well, forget it, assholes. I’m going through the gate, finding my girl, and coming back out again. Then we’ll see what you have to say.

My hands have started to shake; I clench them up tight. Behind us, footsteps echo down the stairway. Jestine is being led in by Hardy and Wright, but led is the wrong word. Escorted is better. To the Order, this show is all about her.

They let her go without a red robe too. Or maybe she refused it. When I look at her, there’s still a persistent twinge in my gut saying she’s not my enemy, and it’s hard not to trust it after so long even if it seems crazy. She walks into the circle and her escorts retreat back up the stairs. The robed circle closes up behind her, leaving us alone in the center. She acknowledges the Order and then looks at me, tries to smirk, and falters. She’s wearing a white tank and low-riding black pants. There are no visible talismans, or medallions, or jewelry. But I catch a whiff of rosemary. She’s been anointed for protection. Around her leg is a strap that looks to contain a knife, and there’s a similar one strapped to her other thigh. Somewhere, Lara Croft is wanting her look back.

“Can we really not change your mind?” Burke asks without an ounce of sincerity.

“Just get on with it,” I mutter. He smiles without showing his teeth. Some people can’t make anything but dishonest faces.

“The circle has already been cast,” he says mildly. “The gateway is clear. All that remains is to swing it wide. But first, you must choose your anchor.”

“My anchor?”

“The person who will serve as your link to this plane. Without them, you wouldn’t be able to find your way back. You must each choose.”

My mind flickers to Gideon. Then I look left.

“Thomas,” I say.

His eyes widen. I think he’s trying to look flattered but succeeds in just looking sick to his stomach.

“Colin Burke,” Jestine says beside me. No big surprise there.

Thomas swallows and steps forward. He draws the dummy athame from his belt and wraps his fist around the blade. When he pulls the edge against his palm, he manages to keep from flinching, even as the blood wells and spills out the side of his fist. He wipes the athame on his robe and slides it back into his belt, then dips his thumb into the blood pooling in his palm. It’s warm when he smears a small crescent onto my forehead, just above my brow. I nod at him as he backs up. Beside him, Carmel’s eyes are wide. They both thought I’d choose Gideon. I thought so too until I opened my mouth.

I turn; Burke and Jestine repeat the ritual. His blood is shining and crimson against her skin. When she turns to face me, I fight the urge to wipe it off. She swallows hard, and her eyes are bright. Adrenaline is releasing into our blood, making the world sharper, clearer, more immediate. It’s not the same as when I hold the athame but it’s close. At a nod from Burke, the rest of the Order pull their knives out. Carmel is only a half step behind them as they all drag the blades across their palms; her eyes narrow at the brief sting. Then all of them, Thomas and Burke included, turn their hands over, allowing the blood to drip onto the floor, spattering onto a mosaic of pale yellow asymmetrical tiles. When the droplets strike, the flames on the candles flare and energy like the waves over intense heat rushes to the center and reverberates outward. I can feel it, beneath my feet, changing the surface. Just how is hard to describe. It’s like the ground beneath our shoes is becoming
less
. Like it’s thinning out, or losing a dimension. We’re standing on a surface that isn’t a surface anymore.

“It’s time, Cas,” Jestine says.

“Time,” I say.

“They’ve done their part, paving the way. But they can’t open the door. That you have to do yourself.”

Magic is swimming through my head in a fucking torrent. Looking around the circle, I can barely distinguish Carmel and Gideon from the others. Beneath the hoods, their features have blurred. Then I catch sight of Thomas, so clear that he might as well be sparkling, and my stomach drops down a few inches in my throat. My arm moves; I don’t realize that I’m reaching for the athame until it’s in my hand, until I’m looking down at it, the flames from the candles flickering orange on the blade.

“I have to go first,” says Jestine. She’s standing square to me. The athame is pointed toward her stomach.

“No.” I pull back but she grabs my shoulder. I didn’t know this is what they meant. I thought it would be Burke. I thought it would be a shallow cut on the arm. I don’t know what I thought. I didn’t think anything; I didn’t want to. I back up another step.

“If you go, I go,” Jestine says from between clenched teeth. Before I can react, she grasps my hand where it holds the athame and plunges it deep into her side. I watch the blade sink in like a nightmare, slow but so easily, like it was sliding through water. When it comes out it shines a translucent red.

“Jestine!” I shout. The word dies loud in my ears. The walls give off no echo. Her body folds up and she sinks to her knees. She’s clutching at her side; only the smallest bit of blood breaks through her fingers, but I know it’s worse than that.

Her life’s blood.

As I watch, she loses a dimension, becomes less, like the air around us and the floor beneath our feet. She’s gone, crossed over. What’s left is hollowed out, nothing more than a place marker.

I look down at her, hypnotized, and turn the athame inward. When it breaks through my skin the world spins. It feels like my mind is being pulled out through a pinhole. I clench my jaw and press harder, thinking of Jestine, thinking of Anna. My knees hit the floor, and the light goes out.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-SIX

There is nothing good here. There never has been. My cheek lies pressed against a surface that is neither hot nor cold, neither dull nor sharp. But it is hard. Everywhere my body touches it is about to shatter. This was a mistake. We don’t belong here. Wherever it is, it is the lack of everything. No light, no darkness. No air or taste. It’s nothing; a void.

I don’t want to think anymore. My eyes might pop and run out of my head. I might break my skull against the bottom and listen to the empty pieces, wobbling like the discarded shell of an egg.

(Cas, open your eyes.)

My eyes are open. There isn’t anything to see.

(You have to open your eyes. You have to breathe.)

This place is the thing behind madness. There is nothing good here. Off the map. If you eat frustration it chokes you. This place exists in the wake of a scream.

(Listen to my voice. Listen. I’m here. It’s difficult, but you have to
make
it. In your mind. Form it in your mind.)

Mind is unraveling. Can’t make it stay together. Come all this way to drift off and break apart. There are things people need. Air. Water. Laughter. Strength. Breath.

Breathe.

“That’s it,” says Jestine. “Take it slow.” Her face materializes like fog in a mirror and the rest of the world follows suit, filling in like a paint-by-number. I’m lying on what feels like stone in a gravity chamber, heavy density against my skull, dug up against my shoulder blades. This must be how a caught fish feels, pulled up onto a dock, the wood pressing into its gills and eye when nothing has ever pressed against it before. Their gills throb to no use. My lungs pull to no use. Something is moving in and out of them, but it isn’t air. There’s no sensation of nourishment hitting my blood. I grab my chest.

“Don’t panic about that. Just keep breathing. It doesn’t matter if it’s real or not. Let it feel familiar.” She grabs on to my arms; she feels so warm, warmer than anything I remember. I don’t know how long we’ve been here. It feels like hours. It feels like a second. They could be the same thing.

“It’s all about the mind,” she says. “That’s what we are. Look.” She touches my stomach, and I wince, anticipating pain. Only there isn’t any. The wound isn’t there. It should be there. There should be a hole ripped in my t-shirt and blood should have spread out in a circle. The knife should be sticking out of me.

“No, you don’t need that,” she says. I look down again. Where there was nothing, now there’s a small tear and a dark patch of wetness. “You don’t need that,” she says again. “That still exists. Over there. On the other side, our bodies are bleeding out. If we don’t make it back before they’re empty, we’ll be dead.”

“How do we get back?”

“Look behind you.”

Behind me there is stone. I’m lying on my back. But I turn my head slightly.

Thomas. I can see him. And if I focus, the window widens to reveal the rest of the room. The Order’s cuts are still open, dripping slowly to the floor. Our bodies are there, mine and Jestine’s, curled up where they fell.

“We’re on the other side of the mirror,” I say.

“In a manner of speaking. But really, we’re still there. We’re still alive. The only thing that came, physically, is the athame.”

I look down. It’s in my hand, and there is no blood on the blade. I squeeze it, and the action brings emotion in a wave. The familiarity in this place of nothing almost makes me want to plunge it into my stomach again.

“You have to stand up now.” Jestine rises to her feet. She’s shades brighter than everything else. She holds out her hand, and behind her head there is endless black sky. No stars. No edges.

“How do you know all this?” I ask, and struggle up without help. Wherever we are, there aren’t any rules of perspective. It seems like I can see forever and yet only a few feet in every direction. And there’s no light. At least not light how we would recognize it. Things simply are. And what they are is flat stone, cliff-carved walls of something that might be gray and might be black.

“The Order kept records of when they retrieved the metal for the athame. Most are lost and what’s left is dodgy, but I studied every last bit.”