Penult (39 page)

I looked again at the young dragonfly.
It was the prettiest thing, its body all rust and blue with
opalescent eyes. It had wavy copper bands on its wings with clear
patches and black accents. That striping was unusual for the
dragonflies around her. He was a rare species, apparently. Less
common, anyway, if not a mutant. Like me.

“
Um … how about …
Tigger?”

“
Trigger?”

“
No, Tigger. As in … Tiger.
As in Pooh.”

Urszula looked puzzled, but she nodded
nevertheless.

***

The bluish sun had disappeared from
the horizon by the time I entered the warren. I thought I knew
where I was going this time but I soon proved myself wrong. I kept
doubling back to the same little triangular park where a group of
Old Ones sat staring at each other like statuary. I could only
imagine what they thought of me the third time I went by, if they
could even see me.

I couldn’t ask for directions because
this place had no addresses. I could not even identify a suitable
landmark nearby to help folks help me navigate. It was just another
living space in a maze of identical living spaces. I never should
have let Urszula leave without showing me how to get
there.

As I wandered, longing to collapse
onto that dense heap of mats that served as my bed, a familiar
tingle scuttled down my arm, sending pins and needles into my
fingertips. I looked down at my mottled hand in the early stages of
a fade. Patches of translucent skin revealed nerves and tendon and
bone. Finding my living quarters seemed a moot point now. I sat
down on a plinth like some Old One and awaited my fate.

***

Wherever I had come, it was way cozier
than my little hooch in the warren, high thread count cotton
encasing a cloud of down and a mattress topper of rapid-reacting
memory foam that gave way to any pressure point before it ever had
a chance to form.

I could hear a broadcaster talking
about shootings and terrorists. British accent. This was not
Heaven. It was not prison. Some place in between.

Glasgow.

If this was a hotel, it was much
fancier than any room I had ever booked, fancier than Wendell’s
place in London or the Hilton Karla and I and stayed at in
Inverness on Wendell’s dime.

I surged up out of bed and nearly fell
flat on my face. A swarm of ghost moths flew up to clutter and
cloud my brain. I was hungrier than a goat tethered in a parking
lot.

I stumbled out the door of the
bedroom, following the sound of the television. Four sets of female
eyes popped wider than nature even intended and all four women
sprang into action, catching me before I could collapse, leading me
to a small sofa where they sat me down and took my pulse and
checked the temperature of my brow.

“
Where are we?” I said.
“What happened to the train?”

“
The train? That was
yesterday,” said Helen. “We’ve been here a full day
now.”

“
You went away to that
place you go, didn’t you?” said Fiona.

“
He hasn’t eaten a shred in
two days,” said Helen. “He must be famished.”

“
I’ll go get some takeout,”
said Britt, rushing to the door. “Indian? Chinese? Any
preference?”

“
Fish and chips,” I said.
“With those mashed green peas.”

“
You got it,” said Britt,
slamming the door.

“
Did you see Karla?” said
Helen. “How is she?”

“
I … uh … no. I didn’t see
her. At least I didn’t think so. I’m … not sure.”

“
Jessica’s been sharing
some of your stories with us,” said Fiona. “Just fascinating.
Gargantuan insects. Killer angels. Really?”

“
Um … yeah,” I said. “Can
we change the channel, please?” The explosions and bloody scenes on
the streets of some nameless Middle Eastern city disturbed
me.

Jessica switched over to that talk
show where some middle aged guys goofed around and talked about
cars. That, I could handle.

“
We’ve been out looking
today, James,” said Helen. “Scoured the streets of
Glasgow.”

“
Did you know there are
three fundamentalist Catholic sects in this city?” said Jessica.
“Some of the parishes are tiny. A few families each.”

“
I never would have
imagined,” said Helen. “In Scotland of all places.”

“
Sedevacantists. You want
Sedevacantists.”

“
Yes. None of these
recognize the Pope,” said Jessica. “That’s the definition, isn’t
it?”

“
Yeah, but there are other
sects. SSPX. SSPV. They’re different.”

“
Karla’s dad. Edmund. You
were right, James. He
is
out of jail,” said Jessica. “We found a news
report on Google saying he got time off for good behavior. After
less than one year. And the man was convicted of
manslaughter!”

“
We’re not sure yet if he’s
actually in Glasgow,” said Helen. “I couldn’t get those church
people to talk to me. They kept acting like I was from Mars. And I
was dressed quite conservatively. Used my best manners.”

Fiona fetched me a glass of water. I
thanked her and drained it, and so she fetched me
another.

“
What’s the trick James?”
said Jessica. “How do we get ourselves into those
churches?”

“
You don’t. Stay away.
Those people are nuts. They’re dangerous. I wouldn’t go anywhere
near them. I would watch the entrances maybe. See who goes in and
comes out. They might have drugged her like they did to me and
Linval.”

“
At what point do we call
the authorities?” said Helen.

“
Only when you’re certain
they have her,” I said. “We don’t want them to know we’re out
looking.”

“
This is so exciting!” said
Fiona. “I mean, no for you, of course. Not for poor Karla. But …
this kind of adventure doesn’t happen every day.”

Helen rolled her eyes. “I could do
with a little less of it, thank you. I just want to know if these
are the bastards who burnt our farm.”

Knuckles rapped on the door and the
latch released. Britt let herself in.

“
Food!” she said, holding
up a paper sack.

***

Those fish and chips were about the
best I ever had. And the shower I took afterward was simply
glorious. I gave my special credit card to Jessica to pick me up
some new clothes, and whatever odds and ends the ladies all needed.
It still worked like a charm and I had a crisp set of boxers, blue
T-shirt, black jeans and grey hoodie waiting for me when I slipped
out of the bathroom wrapped only in a towel.

I snatched them up and slipped into my
room. The ladies had booked a three room suite at the Blythswood
Square hotel, also paid for with my ivory credit card. I wondered
how long the Friends of Penult would extend me credit once they had
learned I had returned to the Liminality and had already struck
down a Seraph from the sky. Until then, I would spend and once they
cut me off, I had a case to go to Wendell for support.

Dried, dressed and combed, I went back
out to sit with the ladies who were sketching out their
surveillance plans for tomorrow. They planned one more full day of
watching the churches before we would move on to Inverness, and
after that, Aberdeen if necessary, both apparently harboring
bastions of Edmund’s cult.

I was in no rush to go back to Root.
My emotions were not in the greatest shape, so I was feeling pretty
vulnerable. Thankfully, the comforts and companionship of this
evening kept the roots at bay.

“
Are you sure there are no
angels where you go?” said Helen.

“
Nah,” I said. “There are
people … souls … who pretend to be, I guess. But they’re just
people. Misguided, mistaken people who think they’re better than
everyone else.”

“
Just like here,” said
Britt.

“
Yeah,” I said. “Just like
here.”

We stayed up and played cards until
Helen got sleepy and triggered a chain reaction of yawning and the
consensus that it was time to retire to bed. I raided the mini bar
for a tiny bottle of vodka and a beer to chase it, hoping it would
tamp down my frazzled nerves.

Considering I had been unconscious for
most of the previous twenty four hours, at least in the other
world, I wasn’t sleepy at all. I went into my room anyhow and laid
down, studying the shifting lights on my wall from the street
below, listening to the sound of the city at night, drunks singing,
garbage trucks emptying dumpsters, street sweepers.

I became aware of a familiar flow that
regularly invaded my dreams in the Liminality. It found and
buffeted my soul like a strong current, trying to sweep it away,
but not to Root.

The stream flirted with me, beckoning
me to join it until I relented and let it was over me. I wasn’t
even sleeping this time. Fully alert and awake, it took me. This
was something new and amazing to me. The barriers between me and
the Singularity were getting weaker and weaker all the
time.

Leaving my body on the bed, it carried
me outside the hotel to the streets of Glasgow, to the drunken man
I could hear singing, to his wife four blocks away in an apartment,
watching a DVD and waiting for him to come home.

And then I was in the train station
sampling the mind of one of those lonely young men I used to see
everywhere, convinced they were all Sergei’s bounty hunters, but
this was truly just a lonely and troubled young man, both pining
and dreading to go home.

And then I was in a train far down the
tracks. It looked like the same kind of train we had ridden north
from Pontypool. And I recognized a passenger. Belinda. The woman
who had met me at the airport in Rome. Who first warned me against
returning to the Liminality. She was coming north.
Coincidentally?

And then I was flying, flitting from
head to head across a rural landscape, through small towns, big
towns, nameless cities. Spiraling around its neighborhoods, homing
in on a person sitting with her back against a road embankment,
feet propped against a light post as she snacked on a hunk of
baguette.

Karla. It was Karla. Yes. This time I
was a hundred percent sure.

She leapt up. Alarmed. She whirled
around, facing an unseen accoster. She began to run, but I stayed
with her, holding on as long as I could, even though the stream was
already tugging at me, trying to carry me away.

“
James?”

Her voice loosened my grip and I was
torn away, caught up in the torrent, bouncing over souls like so
many stones in a riverbed.

And I was back in my room, feeling
leaden and inert. I should have been happy. Karla looked fine. She
looked healthy and free. By no means a prisoner or a hostage. Just
… homeless. But what did that mean?

When the roots came, they came hard
and fast. I could not keep them at bay. They took me like a fox
takes a vole.

Chapter 41:
Cracker

I found myself prostrate and naked in
a walkway in the middle of the warren next to the vacant plinth
where I had faded. Little strips of glowing root had been placed
here and there to mark certain entryways, but it was way too dark
for me to make sense of this maze and find my way to my
quarters.

Something slithered against the paving
stones across the way where it was too dark to see. I noticed my
sword glinting on the plinth. I grabbed it and hopped to my feet,
stalking the critter before it could get away. I pounced and
impaled it with my sword.

“
Gotcha! You
fucker!

It was my hoodie, which had half
reverted back to roots and was crawling around the corner,
attempting a getaway. I snatched it up and went a little farther
down the alley where I found my pants attempting to climb a wall
like some octopus trying to escape a fishing boat. I wove both back
into submission with a few twirls of my sword tip and pulled them
on. With the chill breeze and all, I was grateful for some
clothes.

I left the warren and skirted its
outer wall, heading down towards the rim and the main stairway.
Down there would be the mats that Olivier had set up for me to nap.
I could catch a few winks and then choose a saddle for my new
dragonfly in time to meet Urszula up at the meadow for my flying
lesson.

I was looking forward to riding
Tigger, but also a little nervous about what would come next. The
sooner I learned to fly the sooner we would leave for Penult, the
place that spawned all these Cherubim and Hashmallim and Seraphim
that were tearing up this place. I couldn’t help but feel a little
bit afraid.

My glimpse of Karla in that
Singularity dream—if indeed it was a dream—still unsettled me. I
should have felt relieved that she seemed healthy and uninjured,
that she was free, not under any kind of threat, but I couldn’t
help but be unnerved.

What was she doing? Where was she? Had
she been taken and escaped? Was she looking for me or running from
me?

Something about it made me all queasy
inside. I felt somehow betrayed. Why was I risking my butt going to
Penult? She had wanted me here and now here I was. Why hadn’t she
come and found me? Was she too happy now for the Liminality? Being
away from me? I mean, what the fuck? How was that supposed to make
me feel?