The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker (27 page)

Darkness made a sweeping gesture, and the river overflowed its banks toward the prisoners, lapping at the toes of those who dared come forward. The water hissed and nipped at them with predatory teeth. The Guard spirits whimpered like wounded animals, crying inhuman sounds and shuddering, staring at the water in horror, retreating as if scalded. Darkness giggled again.

Percy’s heart broke for these poor mortal souls dragged innocently into a service they never wholly understood and left to rot, left off worse than dead, simply for trying to keep Darkness from harvesting his requisite horror. Her pity turned to anger. Her bosom burned with light, and several things converged at once.

A bent-shouldered man, once dark-skinned and handsome, stepped up onto a fallen rock and away from the oncoming tide of water. Staring at Percy, his dark eyes wide, he straightened, his tunic hanging less like rags and more like a priest’s robe, and two words flew from his lips in what Percy recognized as Arabic: “Our Lady!”

The horde turned to stare across the water at Darkness,
then at Percy. The assemblage of spirits fell reverently to their knees.

Darkness narrowed his eyes at her. His skull’s eye sockets burned even blacker.

“She’s here!” crowed a horrifically familiar voice. Percy whirled to behold an ash body with a head full of snakes, dragging and scraping into the chamber, a mere torso scrabbling toward them: Lucille Linden. Still the Gorgon lived, having half assembled while Beatrice and Aodhan were otherwise occupied. She squealed, her throat gurgling molten ash and her broken serpents rattling against the stones. “Right before your face, you damn fool! Mortal! Dash her brains against the rocks!”

Percy could feel her own light burning brighter, helplessly reactive.

Just as Darkness opened his mouth in rage, there was another sound—a roaring and tearing—and a portal opened high and distant in the air above and behind them. Percy looked up to see Alexi’s silhouette in it, an upper Athens foyer and The Guard behind him, chanting strengths and encouragement and she realized her world was not now as far away as she once imagined.

Darkness whirled. “You? You
live.
And. You. Dare.” His fury choked him as he shot a bony hand straight for her throat, toward her gathering light.

Percy dodged his initial clawing thrust but was unable to avoid the hard upswing of his fleshy fist, mashing her lip against her teeth, strands of her hair yanked away in bony fingertips. She reeled back in pain as red blood spurted onto her grey dress. Putting her hand to her lip, through the pain she nonetheless noticed how Darkness retracted his bones from her light.

“Damn you!” bellowed Alexi from above, from behind the portal. His booming voice carried, and it stunned all inhabitants of the Whisper-world over whom it washed. Out of the wave of fire bursting from him, a great and furious
bird descended, made of roaring blue light. Its great wings and fearsome claws tore and beat against the alternately beautiful and skeletal body of its enemy. “She’s not yours for the taking! She never has been!” the phoenix roared, Alexi’s words reverberating from its mouth.

Darkness batted at its fiery blue wings and talons in rage and irritation, if not in defeat. Lucille’s remains were kept at bay by other tendrils of blue fire, her writhing coils of hair hissing and snapping. In the distance there came barking, growing louder. Percy didn’t want to wait for a third monster to face, so she seized her opportunity, snatched the key from the lock and ran.

The Guard poured from their prison, clustered in sixes as they sought to cross the river, puzzled as to how to ford the dangerous waters. These legions filled the vast grey landscape with increasing hope, freshening the mildewed air, and their arms stretched out toward where Alexi stood as an angelic sentinel, a conduit for a glorious rain of cerulean flame. The leaders drank in this energy, invigorated, he their direct source to the fire of the Grand Work making them powerful once more, and with them, the other Guard. Percy felt as if she were witnessing a masterwork painting come to life, a heavenly host arming itself at the gates of hell.

It was a terrible strain on Alexi’s powerful but mortal body to be the sole bearer of such power and send it forth to others. Percy’s heart seized with love and concern. She had to get out and pull him away.

“Angels have no sway here!” Darkness hissed. He cast aside Phoenix’s blue fire as if it were a heaping cloak, his own red shroud flaring up around him like armour. The ticktock of his skeleton to flesh now lingered more moments in bone. He growled, turning to Percy with his eyes bloody fire. The river hissed and gurgled, and a surging wave rose that would surely rush to drag her under.

Something began in Percy’s mind as soft music, and a
voice not entirely her own flew from her lips—a voice that had once proclaimed great things, banished Gorgons and saved The Guard’s lives. “Perhaps not angels, but
I
once did,” an elder power murmured.

An arc of light burst from Percy, landing a vicious slap upon Darkness’s skull. Particles of bone flaked from his cheek. The light then spread over the river, and the black water became frosted glass, which The Guard instantly poured across, swarming the opposite bank. Countless leader spirits added their power to the firebird form still harassing Darkness. Their shackles of firelight could not hold him in this realm, but they slowed him.

Darkness reeled, swatting at the blue fire all around. He stared down his empty breast, then at the empty lock, where the key had been. Flickering into the shape of a man, he gave a pathetic wail in Percy’s retreating direction: “You’d tear my heart again?”

Percy turned, a comfortable distance now between them but continued moving—she didn’t trust the very shadows not to seize her. “This body doesn’t know you,” she cried, her voice again her own. “And it seems you never had a heart to lose.”

“You. Will. All. Pay.” The voice of Darkness was amplified over the water, echoing, and he broke all remaining tendrils of flame with a blow. He flung an arm forward and the river gushed up, a wave of black water and morphing stone that that crested toward her.

“Oh, I’m quite sure,” Percy muttered. Standing firm, she gripped his key so tightly she thought its grooves might make her hand bleed.

There came a raucous yell, a countering battle cry, and Darkness’s threat was defied. A wave of ghostly forms, brightening into blinding strength and purpose, made a wall before her, taking the brunt of the river’s attack. This host of firelit Guard leaders held the line against the wave of stone,
water, sentimental detritus and bones; then they all turned to her and in many different tongues said, “Run.”

Percy picked up her skirts and fled down the corridor through which she had come. Flowers continuously bloomed, then died at her feet. But escape was not complete. Lucille’s broken, burned body awaited her at the final intersection, shrieking and crawling and flinging herself forward, her snakes at full charge, molten dust spraying everywhere.

“Do you not learn?” Percy muttered as a crumbling hand grazed her bustle, snatching at the fabric. She seized her sturdy, doubled skirts and whipped them to the side in a blow, and Lucille’s ashen head full of snakes once again rolled off her body and down the corridor with renewed screaming. “Again, I prove the greater power,” she stated, allowing herself a moment of pride.

But things weren’t so simple. A molten snake head had affixed itself to her hem and was starting to set her garment afire.

“At your side, my lady.” Aodhan appeared, his words a cool draft in her ear, his healing energy steadying her and urging her back toward the portal through which she’d come. He kicked the snake head from her skirt and crushed it under his boot. It gave a sickening hiss.

Percy ran as hard and fast as she could, a tidal wave of restless spirits and rage swelling up behind her. Aodhan and The Guard leaders stood between her and the gathering storm, but wind, dust and bone bit at her flesh and chipped away at Aodhan’s grey form.

“Place the key on Athens’s soil, my lady, and we may finally have a chance,” he called out through the tempest.

“And Marianna?”

“The worlds will merge and you can bring her safely home. But first you have to get back yourself! Keep running. I’ll take your friend!”

The light ahead was brightening. She could glimpse forms
through the portal. Who was that just on the other side? Alexi! Her hand shielded her eyes, his face all she wished to see. He had returned from his portal above, was now standing guard here, fierce and furious.

“My love!” Percy cried.

Relief flooded his features as he first caught sight of her deep in the corridor, but his eyes widened at the chaos behind her. She was sure he cried her name, but the sound was drowned by Darkness’s tumult.

A blaze of blue fire reached out and surrounded her, more powerful magic than she’d ever felt. This protective barrier lifted her off her feet and drew her through the portal, her own radiant white light mixing with Alexi’s blue sorcery. She floated, a blindingly illuminated bundle, directly down into his waiting arms. He whisked her behind him as the Whisper-world portal slammed shut, the wave of Darkness’s horror crashing impotently on the other side.

London’s Guard encircled the couple, energy pouring forth, their arms outstretched and the wind of their magic whipping their clothes. They were ready for a fight. Jane touched her hand to Percy’s split lip, healing it in the instant. Thunder roared across the sky. Percy wasn’t sure from which world the sound originated.

Alexi whirled upon her, seizing her by the shoulders, desperate to keep hold of her. “Persephone, if you ever go in there again, I swear to you—”

“No, no, I’ve no need to go in there again,” Percy said, laughing, almost hysterical. Was this relief, or terror? “It’s coming to us. It’s all coming here.”

Alexi shooed The Guard out of the chapel before whirling on Percy. “What did he do to you?” he barked, raking hands through his hair, feeling his own choking desperation.

“You saw. Other than repulse and hit me, nothing.”

“You were at his side—”

“Alexi, my dear husband, there’ll be plenty of time for a chat about all this, but now you must protect me. My dear, you’ll not only be protecting me, but the child I carry. Our child.”

His eyes widened. His brow furrowed. “Our child?”

“Yes, love. It would seem the Whisper-world can reveal some of life’s mysteries.”

Stunned, Alexi clasped his arms tightly around Percy, but not before he angled his face down to stare her straight in the eye. “And so you not only endangered yourself, but our child as well?”

Percy’s lips thinned. “I see the professor desires only to scold his student.” She tried to pull away, to stare him down with balled fists, but he wouldn’t let her go. Her ire forced her onward. “Whether you believe me or not, this was the only way. I knew it. You might praise me for my bravery.” She wriggled an arm free to hold up the key before his face. “Thank you for that Phoenix fire. It gave me the moment I needed, and you empowered The Guard. Our troops, indeed! Well done. But now, if you’ll excuse me, we’ve a war to commence.”

Alexi’s jaw twitched as he loosened his grip, but he sought
her hands and clutched them in his. He was reeling. Their
child?
“I am so proud of you, Percy. Of your extraordinary bravery. And you’ve no idea my relief, but I—”

“Hate it when I undertake risk without you. Yes, I’m
well
aware. Believe me, I certainly would have chosen to have my powerful protector by my side, but you need your wits, love, and those I couldn’t guarantee past that threshold.”

“I dreamed he was…ravaging you.”

Percy made a face. “How utterly disgusting. Thank heavens it didn’t happen.” She turned away, prepared to run up the stairs.

“How can you be so nonchalant?” Alexi cried, whirling her back to face him.

Percy’s eyes flashed. “If I were to ruminate upon all that’s just happened—indeed, upon what’s about to happen—I would fall to pieces. Timidity was for my youth, Alexi. I’m a woman now. You helped make me so; now I beg you to be the leader I require.” She placed her hand on her abdomen. “That
we
require.”

Alexi’s veil of madness parted. What Michael had said was true: this volatility was a disease of the merging worlds, was the master of the Whisper-world’s dark ploy to sow the seeds of division. It was particularly potent poison against remnants of the Phoenix, but Alexi refused to further succumb.

He nodded, trying to shake the nearly druglike effect of fear from his body. “Of course, darling. The press of the worlds affects me…” He broke off, realizing apologies weren’t enough. Not to her.

She seemed to harbour no ill will. Instead, she took his hand and led him up the stairs. “I should have realized. Speak to me, love, and I’ll separate myth from reality. You must trust me. I’d die for you, you realize. Love has given me strength my meek nature never imagined. I went in so that we might yet be free…”

Alexi’s face contorted. “And I, an ungrateful, jealous wretch—”

“Your fire roused and saved me. We desperately needed your intervention. But let this rage, anger, fear and jealousy now be fuel for a more productive fire. I need you to tell me where there’s another lock.” She dangled the key once more before him. “This was used to lock up The Guards, but now it will give them freedom from Darkness at last. Fitting.”

“Will they fight for us?”

Percy stared at him as if he were daft. “Did you see what was happening in there? None of us has a choice but to fight, with no weapons but our thirst for this madness to end. That, I’m sure, is ammunition they’ve stored up in spades.”

Their friends awaited them anxiously at the centre of Promethe Hall. All of Athens was glowing a hazy sapphire colour, the air becoming a readier medium to conduct their gifts.

“The school seal,” Alexi declared, his eyes wide. “My friends, our brave Percy has the second key, direct from the heart of Darkness. Come.” He gestured for them to follow him up the stairs to the stately, open foyer where he and Percy had twice now shared impossibly beautiful waltzes.

“Alexi, remember the vision we saw here?” Rebecca said. “Your glorious wings?”

He nodded, bending over the seal so seemingly tied to their fate. His fingers searched out a keyhole, and there it was, in the motto, the dot over the
i
of the word “Light.” Blue fire crackled around the mosaic edges.

Jamming the key into the lock caused a roar exponentially greater than the one from revealing the map below. It was as if a thousand stones rolled away, rumbling thunderously inside the walls of Athens, azure fire streaking across every tile, floorboard and sizzling in the mortar. The noise became deafening, light pouring from underneath each of
the new doorways, all of which begged to open, convulsing against their hinges.

“Open the doors!” Alexi cried.

Michael and Rebecca scurried toward the first floor. As the doors shook yet harder, Elijah cried, “Josie, Jane, come—we’ve got to attend to Apollo Hall.”

Jane’s cat was nervously pacing, hackles up, a low whine in his throat, and Frederic hopped up and down on a nearby bench. The Irishwoman called out, “Marlowe, to the headmistress’s apartments! Frederic, too, take shelter!” The white cat did not need to be told twice, and the black bird followed.

“Stay close to at least one other,” Alexi called to his friends. “But open them quickly.” He grabbed Percy by the hand to dart with her into the corridor off the foyer.

“Beware the water!” Percy added in a shout, crossing herself as her husband gripped the first doorknob to another world.

He flung open the door, and the two of them stumbled back against the wall, blinded. “The Power and the Light!” Alexi cried.

Percy heard an earthshaking reply in a hundred tongues, “THE POWER AND THE LIGHT!”

A hundred figures in bright blue light poured over them in a welcome deluge. These Guard spirits flew in, one after another through the doorway, with hardly time to notice Percy and Alexi. The moment they crossed unto Athens and realized they could float, they careened up and away from the rushing tides of dark water that had threatened them on the Whisper side. The moisture leached toward Percy on the corridor floor, but as she backed away from it she noticed that here it seemed a harmless pool. She hoped it would stay that way.

Running to fling open the next newly created door, Percy watched the entering Guards. Once they were within Athens’s walls, the newcomers could sustain their powers; some
hands glowed with blue flame or soft white light; some of the visitors were reciting incantations. Some held up glyphs or runes on their palms, clothing, lockets or shields. Some were touching each other’s hearts and laughing. But all of these dear spirits of light and song would be needed, Percy knew, for the rest came pouring through the doors, too: the uninvited threat.

All jumbled among the beautiful goodness of The Guard of many eras, tumbling into Athens rather than haplessly out into the world, there were just as many dark and dangerous spirits. Rotting bodies and putrefying souls, ragged clothes and the stench of misery, these were souls loath to leave earth and unsuited for heaven. These spirits were the allies of Darkness, his army he’d assembled, and they shrieked through the halls of Athens, breaking glass and upending bricks. These were the foes of the released Guard. But Beatrice had been an able general, choosing their battleground wisely. Back at work again after wasting away behind Whisper-world walls, the forces of Light immediately joined battle.

Alexi led Percy along, his precise, scientific mind innately knowing the natural location of each iteration of seven. He called their destinations out as they hurtled forward, flinging doors open one after another, with yet more Guard and the ungodly pouring through. Alexi had the good sense to shut the doors behind them when their allies were through, minimizing the standing river-water flood and limiting the number of their foes as much as possible.

Alexi’s own Guard converged in the courtyard. Snow had begun to fall in strange patterns, either hanging suspended in the air or drifting at different speeds, as the air was awash with forces that muddied mortal minds. The voices had Percy’s ears splitting. She envied the fact that the rest of her comrades saw this burgeoning and haphazard battlefield in utter silence.

“All are open?” Alexi asked. Everyone nodded, breathless.

“Isn’t it magnificent?” Jane cried, whirling around to behold the tumult. “Look at all of them. And here we thought we’d be alone!”

Percy had a hard time rejoicing. Where was Darkness? What rooms and vaults and hideous secrets were yet to open?

The ground beneath them gurgled and shook. The angel fountain, graceful throughout all elements, seemed suddenly frail. Her basin belched, black muck oozing from her spouts, and the drain at the centre of the courtyard spewed foul water, its metal grate flying from its moorings. The stones were soon flooded with death water.

The Guard sought higher ground, knowing they didn’t want to test the perilous substance as bones began vomiting from the drain. Percy gave a small cry as foul muck landed on the fold of her skirt and hung there. She shook it off, following the others up an exterior staircase to the wide balcony of Promethe Hall. It looked out over the courtyard, one door attached to the ballroom, the other the infirmary. Gazing across the clerestory windows down into the alley outside the school grounds, she noticed the drains there too regurgitated bone and dark water.

Alexi set his jaw. “I’d held hope that Athens would take the whole brunt, but perhaps a bit of collateral damage was inevitable,” he murmured, holding her tightly to his side.

They gazed down over the muddied courtyard, where several individual combats had begun. From an Asian Guard at one end, Percy heard haiku directed toward a disemboweled spirit who kept throwing his intestines everywhere. She was thankful the absurd scene was in greyscale; otherwise she’d have retched. Another set of Guard, these six in thick robes and dulcet Russian tones, were trying to return the bones back to the depths from whence they came, though they made sure they themselves floated well above.

Percy gasped, hearing a dread sound. “Barking,” she whispered. “That barking. It’s back, the hell—”

As she spoke, an ink black cloud snarled upward from the basin beneath the angel, a hundred bones gnashed in its hundred salivating jaws. The hellhound responsible for the Ripper murders had returned at last, its teeth bared as it again smelled its familiar Guard prey. It showed one oozing dog’s head, then three, then thirty; its chimerical form gained mass and ground, leaping up a full story to snap in Percy’s face.

Alexi smacked its thirty snouts with blue fire. The Guard encircled Percy and began a cantus, the hymn blending in with those of the other Guards. All were of a relative pitch and in the common Guard language, developed for this sacred purpose, and they combined now to great effect. The Russian and Asian troupes had turned their fiery songs upon the rear of the hound, which lashed out and tore edges of their cloaks and tunics, but yelped and plummeted back down onto the angel fountain to rock her on her basin.

Surprisingly, the angel retaliated. Sapphire lightning crackled around her graceful bronze body. Her wings flapped and her eyes blazed. The hound burst into a thousand acrid wisps of smoke. The other Guards seemed just as amazed by this as London’s, and the Chinese and Russian Guards stared up at Percy. She thanked them for their service in their native tongues, and they smiled and rushed to join her up on the terrace, but another set of irreconcilable souls came bounding out into the courtyard. Seeing them, Alexi gestured that The Guards might wish to remain as courtyard sentinels.

Luminous tendrils of flame poured from the angel’s spouts, a life-giving fount of blessing from which The Guard alone could draw. “All of Athens comes to life to fight,” Josephine breathed excitedly. “Reflecting and magnifying our powers!”

“So long as her foundations don’t get turned against us,” Rebecca cautioned. She gestured to the south side of the
courtyard and the entrance to the ladies’ dormitory. Dead ivy had begun to wind its way up the stairs. In its wake, the warm red sandstone of Athens’s exterior bricks grew sooty, black water lapping at the base of the portico.

She glanced into the ballroom behind her and growled. Its glittering grandeur was kept reverently closed save for one special gala night, but now all manner of pathetic creatures were hanging from chandeliers, overturning the furniture and attempting lewd displays upon the busts of famous philosophers that lined the golden-trimmed hall.

“Damn all of you. This is our ballroom, not a brothel!” Her tone was the one reserved for students found breaking the rules of no contact, a tone that could make a mother superior feel chastened. Flinging open the French doors, she charged onto the polished wooden floor with a stern recitation of common propriety taken from a contemporary ladies’ handbook, making the offending phantasms screw up their faces in dismay.

Another Guard appeared in the ballroom, an elegant African troupe. This group was leveling impressive proverbs to stun the wits of the rabble, to confuse them away from destruction. Their mentalist and healer were attempting to keep several poltergeists from overturning fine divans. They had been successful before, but here they found the chandelier crystals raining down through their bodies.

Their leader was an incredible woman with hair covered in a light veil but trailing long locks. Her eyes held the fire, not her hands; and without a sound between them, only a nod of proud recognition, she and Alexi began weaving and dodging in an intricate dance of shockingly efficient casting. Their magic bound each and every offender to his spot, wailing and gnashing their teeth. One by one the offending spirits began to fade away for good, their bodies flickering or peeling away into wisps of smoke, or popping out with a small snap and a burst of light. It was either peace or nothingness
for them, Percy assumed, for the power of Athens was creating Judgment Day for them, and there were no second chances. The spirits seemed to realize it, too, for they offered Percy their last words, few of which were pleasant.