The Crimson Brand (32 page)

She opened her mouth to call for help and felt blood gush down her chin.  Before she could make a sound, the little gray man’s hands closed around her throat and began to squeeze.  Penny tried fruitlessly to pry the long, gray fingers from her throat, but they were as strong as stone.  She could not budge them.

The little gray man thrust its ugly face close to hers and snarled.

She flailed blindly in the dirt for her dropped wand but couldn’t find it.  The hollow began to darken around her.  She felt as if she were cradled in a dense fog.

I’m dead
, Penny thought, and the emotion that followed was neither fear nor sadness but anger.

Rage at the creature for stealing her life.

Her skin felt suddenly hot, very hot.  Red hot.  The animal sneer vanished from the monster’s face.  Its eyes went round with surprise.  Penny was viewing the gray man’s face through a bright, shimmering veil of fire. 

The stone fingers around her throat loosened, then released, and Penny drew in a deep, painful breath.  Her throat felt swollen, pinched shut.  For a moment she tottered on the edge of consciousness, the darkness of oblivion settling over her.  Then the darkness lifted, the world came back into focus, and Penny could breathe again.  She sat up, cringing at the aches and bruises that seemed to cover her from head to toe.

The little gray man waved its long arms, trying to extinguish the flames covering its hands.  It howled, not in pain but in frustration, and beat its hands in the dirt. 

As her strength returned, Penny’s fury swelled.  The sheath of fire around her pulsed with each frantic beat of her heart.  She forgot about Zoe.  She forgot about Katie and Susan.  There was only her rage and the creature.

Penny rose, aches and pains forgotten, and cocked her arm like a big league pitcher winding up for a fastball.  What she threw wasn’t a baseball but a fireball.  It hit the gray man in the chest, splattering tongues of flame into the trees behind him.  They burned for only a few seconds before dying out, but the flames covering the creature intensified.

He ran in a tight, panicked circle, howled in terror, and scampered toward the hill.

Zoe stood at the top on the path out of the hollow, her wand aimed down as the little gray man scrambled up the dirt steps. She blasted him to the ground.

Penny saw the look of fear on Zoe’s face, not of the little gray man but of her, and her anger ebbed away.  The shimmering orange heat-haze around her faded.  The flames sank into her skin. She felt cold in their sudden absence. 

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Zoe said, looking from Penny to the groaning creature on the ground.  She sounded petulant, angry. 

“Neither did I,” Penny said, and turned her attention back to the monster as well.

It twittered and moaned, sounding like a cross between a monkey and a bird, and rolled in the dirt to smother the flames.  Without Penny’s anger to feed them, they died out quickly.  The little gray man rose into a crouch, its body still smoldering, and regarded its new attacker.

Penny recognized ill intent in the thing’s expression, redoubled her search for the dropped wand, and found Katie, holding hers, in the open doorway leading to her room.

Katie dashed past Penny as the thing charged toward the hill.

“No you don’t!”  A fork of purple lightning arched through the air from the tip of Katie’s wand and struck the little gray man in the back.  It froze for a moment then fell, spread-eagle and twitching to the ground.  A heavy smell of ozone filled the air, and their hair began to dance with static. 

Penny approached it cautiously, massaging her sore, swollen throat.  Katie stayed at her side, wand pointed at the smoking body.

“Is it dead?”

Zoe skidded to a stop at the last step and braced herself against the trunk of a gnarled willow.  “What is it?”

Katie shook her head, then made a sound of protest when Penny took a step closer and nudged the thing with her foot.

“Relax, Kat.  I think you knocked it out.”

Penny nudged it again, then rolled it onto its back.

“Eww,” Katie groaned, keeping her wand pointed at it but averting her eyes.

“It’s called a homuncu … something or other,” Penny remarked, wishing she hadn’t rolled the little monster onto its back, “and apparently it’s a boy.”

Its eyes fluttered open.  It regarded the canopy of green above it in confusion for a moment, then bared its teeth as it saw Penny standing above it.  It grabbed feebly for her ankle, and she jumped back to avoid it, bumping into Katie, who was close on her heels.

Before it could rise again, long green whips snaked down from the surrounding willows and twisted around the little gray man’s wrists and ankles, binding him.  They hoisted him into the air and more slithered down, wrapping it from waist to knees, binding its legs together.  The willows hoisted it higher into the air until he hung above Penny and Katie, chattering down at them in his alien language and looking like a gargoyle in a grass skirt. 

Zoe stood at the bottom of the trail, both hands pressed to the narrow trunk of the nearest willow.

“That’s a good trick to know,” Penny croaked, still massaging her throat.

Zoe’s eyes moved from the gray man above them to Penny, but she said nothing.

Penny watched the creature for a moment, worried it might tear free from the limbs, but as strong as it was, they were stronger.  It thrashed about over their heads, straining at the willow whips; they wound tighter around him in response.

Zoe passed Penny while she regarded the struggling monster, dropped her wand to the dirt, and sat at the water’s edge.  She seemed to have lost all interest now that the immediate danger had passed.

“What did you call that thing?”  Katie gave the dangling little gray man a quick, furtive glance.

“Ho-mun-cu-lus,” Penny said, enunciating to make sure she got the name right.  She began to tell them about the egg Ronan had given her for her birthday and the baby homunculus that had hatched from it.

“Tell us later,” Katie said, lunging forward and grabbing Penny by the wrist to drag her toward the door.  “I saw something when I was looking for Ronan in the Conjuring Glass.  I think he’s in trouble.”

*   *   *

They stood in her room.  Penny could see the outline of the big mirror under the sheet Katie had thrown over it.

“The House of Mirrors?”  Penny could hardly believe what she was hearing.  She hadn’t thought much about the place since leaving it to burn the previous fall.  She had no idea the place was still around and standing.  “You’re sure, Kat?”

“Yeah,” Katie said, amazement clear in her voice.  “I think all the mirrors in there were linked to the Conjuring Glass, like ours.  I saw what was left of the place through a piece of broken mirror.”

“And Ronan was there?”

“No.”  Katie waved an impatient hand, perhaps indicating that Penny should shut up and let her finish.  “But I think he
was
there.  I was looking for Ronan, and the Conjuring Glass took me there.  I think it’s in the junkyard.”

“The junkyard!”  Penny nearly shouted, and Katie slapped a hand over her mouth.

“Can you
not
scream?”  Katie gave the trapdoor a quick nervous glance, as if expecting Susan to bust in on them at any moment to ask what all the shouting was about.

Penny slapped Katie’s hand away but continued in a lower voice.

“
Of course
… that’s where Ronan has been going, and that creep’s son was guarding it ….”

“To keep people away from the House of Mirrors,” Katie finished.  “I figured that out.  Tovar must have had other stuff in there like the mirrors and those doorknobs.  Ronan was trying to get them all before someone else did.”

“But who was Joseph Duke guarding them for?”  It was too much information, too much weirdness to sort out all at once, so Penny decided for the time being to focus on the one small bit of weirdness at a time.  “So where was Ronan?”

“I don’t know,” Katie said, sounding as flustered as Penny felt.  “A cave, I think.  Somewhere underground.  I didn’t see
him
.  There was a watch and something else.  But there was blood in the dirt. 
A lot of blood
.”

Penny’s blood ran cold.  Ronan hurt.  Ronan bleeding.  Ronan vulnerable and in danger, something she had not truly believed was possible. 

“We have to find him, Kat.”  She barely heard her own words.  There was no strength behind them.  “We have to help him.”

Katie nodded.  Her face had gone ashen, her eyes large, and there was a perceptible tremor in her shoulders, but she agreed without hesitation.

Penny sat on the edge of her bed and pulled aside the sheet covering the mirror.  The Conjuring Glass reflected her face for a moment, then a swirl of gray mist obscured it.  She concentrated on seeing Ronan, but when the mist cleared the glass showed only darkness.

Katie put the tip of the wand close to the glass, and there was light, shining into the Conjuring Glass and out of the little mirror.  It seemed to be sitting upright, because the lower half showed them what Katie had described, an old watch on a chain, something that looked like a broach pin, and a large wet spot in the dirt that Penny thought had to be blood.  And there had been a lot of it.

But it showed something else Katie hadn’t noticed on her first glance
—
the bottom of a rusted metal door.

*   *   *

Penny and Katie hid the Conjuring Glass under her bed and hurried back into the hollow to tell Zoe what they’d seen, but she was gone.  A quick glance upward confirmed that the little gray man was still securely bound and dangling.  He glowered down at them but no longer struggled.

“Zoe!”  Katie shouted, but her call went unanswered.

Penny sprinted up the path to the field above and scanned it for Zoe’s tall outline.  “She’s not up here.”

Katie pulled her little mirror out of her pocket as Penny stumbled and slid back down to join her.  “Zoe!” 

Penny bent down over it.  “Zoe, Ronan’s hurt.  We need your help!”

There was no reply.

“Where is she?”  Katie cried out in frustration.  “Should we call Ellen?”

“No,” Penny said, shoving the door closed, cutting off the view of her bedroom.  “I think Ellen has already made up her mind.”

Katie looked unhappy at the statement but accepted it.

“Are you ready?”

“Not really,” Katie said, but she held her wand ready and moved close behind Penny.

Penny concentrated on the image of the rusted door, trying not to puzzle over the odd perspective the mirror had shown them.  She touched her wand to the surface of the door the Birdman had thoughtfully abandoned in the hollow, and then turned the knob with her other hand and pulled it open.

Behind her Katie gasped.

Now Penny knew why the perspective seemed strange.

They stared into the inside of a filthy old refrigerator, then down at the missing floor and into the tunnel below. 

The drop wasn’t far, but the tunnel was narrow, like the drainpipe under downtown, and led deeper into the earth instead of out of it.  They could see the mirror, the dull metallic sheen of the old pocket watch, the gemstone sparkle of the broach. 

Penny took a deep, calming breath, trying to ward off claustrophobia at the thought of crawling through that tunnel.

She stepped through the door.

“This is the craziest thing we’ve ever done,” Katie said, an audible tremor in her voice.

And that is saying a lot
, Penny added silently. 

Penny stood inside the old refrigerator and stared into the opening, her resolve not just weakening but threatening to crawl away and hide under a rock.  Before it could, she dropped to her knees and slid head first into the steep mouth of the tunnel, shimmying deeper into it on her elbows and knees.  She kept her wand pointed forward wishing she knew how to light her wand tip like she’d seen Katie do.

As soon as she wished it, her wand responded with a weak glow that made her almost wish it was dark again.  The tunnel went on as far as she could see, which wasn’t far, but she could imagine miles of dark tunnel stretching ahead of her.  The hard-packed earth was spotted with blood.

She heard the door close behind her and fought off a wave of claustrophobic panic.

“Why did you close the door?” she whispered.  “We want the door
open
.”

“No, we don’t,” Katie whispered back.  Her nerves sounded clearly in her tone.  “If something else comes back this way, that door would lead it right into the hollow.”

Penny reluctantly accepted the wisdom of Katie’s words but was unable to move forward.  Her limbs seemed frozen in place, and only grudgingly unfroze when Katie prodded her from behind.  Panic rode on her back like a monkey, ready to seize her around the throat.