The Glass God (40 page)

… and I’m terrified of them, but I think that’s stupid because if the lights were low I could be just like that, I could be just like them, but they give me this thing, this thing in a box and it’s a really long, thin box, and I know I shouldn’t look and I do and it’s…

Beautiful.

Glass – clear glass – but, like, bright, like it has its own internal light, like there’s a light all the way through it, woven into the glass itself. And the sisters say, “you should be careful with that, don’t cut yourself” and I ask why and they just look at me and say, “do you know what it is, this thing you worship?” and I say, “I don’t worship anything” and they say “you shouldn’t tamper” and I’m scared again, but I think they’re trying to be kind, and I go back to the spa and Brid is there and I give her the blade and, as I’m leaving, Mrs Greyfoot sees me and she screams. She looks right at me and she screams, “I will have your shoes, I will have your shoes, I will have your shoes!”

Brid says it’s fine.

That I mustn’t be afraid.

That I mustn’t answer the door to strangers.

Keep faith.

Believe in her.

Because she’s my friend.

And to believe in
him
, too. To believe in… in the one who is coming, and never breathe to anyone the secrets of the glass blade. And I promise I won’t, of course I won’t, because Brid is my friend, and he will make everything better. But deep down I know, somehow I just know…

… we’re doing something wrong. We’re doing something evil. We’re making a…

Chapter 70

There Is No Need to Fear the Dark

The striga stopped, mid-sentence, eyes flashing up towards the still-locked door of the vault. “Did you hear…⁠?” she began.

Sharon strained, and murmured, “Uh… no?”

All three pairs of ears strained.

Silence in the glowing house. “You said you were making something?” murmured Sharon.

Doubt and guilt twisted their ugly path across Zhanyi’s round features.

“A god,” she whispered. “A new god.”

A pause.

Rhys hiccupped.

Sharon said, “Okay, I gotta tell you, it’s not every day that people say that sorta thing. I mean, maybe it’s everyday for you, but for me, it’s kinda a new experience. What… kind of god?”

“A new god,” repeated Zhanyi, in the far-off tones of one remembering a mantra. “A beautiful god, a god of the city, a god from the streets, a perfect, immaculate god. A glass god.”

Sharon paused. She said, “Tallish guy, skin of glass, body of glass, spits glass everywhere?”

Zhanyi’s eyes widened. “You’ve seen him?”

“Seen him, had a row with him, run away from him.”

“He is… he is coming! He is growing stronger, from our worship, from our love, from our magics. He’s becoming…⁠” She stopped, listening for something beyond the door. Then, softer, “⁠… he’s going to be the new lord of the city. The Midnight Mayor, Old Man Bone – they’re old magic. They say they’re new, urban gods born from the street. But they’re the old streets, the old ways. Our lord is new, he is perfection, he’ll sweep away the old ones.”

“Okay,” murmured Sharon. “As deputy Midnight Mayor, I really don’t know what that says for my job prospects. You mentioned a blade…⁠”

Zhanyi flinched. “He… must be fed.”

“Fed?”

“There must be… sacrifice.”

Sharon’s face darkened. “
Sacrifice?
” she echoed. “
Fed?
Like… you feed Old Man Bone?”

“Hacq said…⁠”

“Who’s Hacq?”

“The high priest.”

“You have a high priest already? That’s kinda keen.”

“He’s the head of the coven.”

“And Brid?”

“She’s a priestess.”

Sharon took this in. “I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news here, but she’s kinda dead.” Zhanyi’s hands flew to her mouth. “It wasn’t me!” Sharon insisted. “Or Rhys, for that matter!” Rhys nodded, and tried to smile his most harmless, sweet-natured smile.

“But, point is, it’s all going a bit wrong, and if I understand you right… if you’re
feeding
this glass god of yours, then that is kinda putting you in the shit, and, actually, does seriously undermine this whole dialogue we’ve got going here. The glass blade you collected from the scylla sisters…⁠”

“You know about the scyllas?”

“Yeah. They’re dead, too, by the by. Your glass guy – he killed them.”

Zhanyi let out a gasp. “No! He’s kind, he loves us…⁠”

“Kinda didn’t love the scylla sisters. Or Rhys, or me. Anyway, this glass blade… I’m guessing you don’t have it now?”

“No.” Her word was a bare whisper.

“You gave it to Brid, right?”

“Yes.”

“About… what, three weeks ago?”

“Yes.” Zhanyi’s eyes were downcast, her body huddled in tight to itself, curled up for protection against the world and its accusations.

“And did Brid tell you what she wanted it for?”

“She said there had to be sacrifices.”

“She tell you what kind?”

“She said… shoes.”

Sharon forced her smile to remain intact. “Shoes,” she repeated. “And you took this to mean…⁠?”

“I thought… we burnt shoes?”

“You
burnt
them?”

“As an offering to the glass god! To show our devotion! I burnt three pairs,” she added, with an air of regret. “Hacq said that the loyal would walk barefoot over glass. He showed us the scars on his feet.”

Nothing could keep the smile on Sharon’s face fixed any longer. “So I’m guessing he didn’t mention something about the people who were
wearing
the shoes?”

“N-n-n-n-no!” Zhanyi’s voice was almost a scream.

“Great.” Sharon straightened up, and said, “Look, I’m really sorry about this, I can see that you probably didn’t mean any harm even though, I gotta tell you, things are really kinda crap and you’re gonna have to do a lot of rethinking about your lifestyle approach in the future. But the thing is, there are dead people all over this business, and that’s, like, something I was hoping to avoid this early in my career, so actually, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to…⁠” Her voice stopped abruptly. “Rhys?” she murmured.

“Yes, Ms Li?”

“Did you open the vault door?”

“Um… no, Ms Li.” He turned, following her gaze to where the heavy metal door, through which they’d walked a few minutes since, stood ajar. “Uh…⁠” he began.

The lights went out.

“Uummmm…⁠” The sound was long, slow, careful. It came from the very pit of Rhys’s lungs, as if every part of his body was willing, in that single sound, for things not really to be as bad as they seemed. In the absolute darkness, he looked to where he felt Sharon ought to be, and fumbled in his pocket for something which might glow, or pop, or even shimmer, or do anything at all that didn’t involve standing still in a pitch-black room with a…

… yes, with a creature that made a sound like…

“iiiiiiiiiiiIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIII’M COMING
!”

His fingers closed round an old plastic bottle into which he’d poured a potion. At a command it glowed with the golden light of not-quite-rinsed-out baby shampoo, and as he raised it to see, his gaze brushed across Sharon, turning towards the open door, then fixed on the shape rising up from the floor behind her, the source of the sound, of the voice which had only a few seconds ago been so quiet, so human, and which now shrieked,

“
IIIIIII’MMMM FREEEEEE!
”

By the thin glow of his shampoo bottle, Rhys saw Zhanyi rise up on her haunches, shoulders hunched forward, chin twisted down like an old crone’s, back arching, knees twisting out to the side; and as she looked up through her loose black hair, the tresses on her head began to tangle and knit together, lashing themselves into coils of metal rope which spun and slashed at the air around her, with gleaming, sparking tips. Her fingers stretched, and stretched again, fine strands of wire sprouting in place of the hairs on the back of her hands, needle-thin, needle-sharp; and her eyes – her eyes were widening, expanding so they seemed to fill her face, other features displaced, and Rhys could see the capillaries in her irises straightening and pulsing with blood, forming ridged criss-cross patterns like a circuit board, banishing the whites of her eyes, and in each great pupil he thought he could see shapes moving, bursts of light flaring up and withering away into the inky darkness of her stare. Then Zhanyi rose up even as her knees snapped backwards with a snicker-snacker of realigning bone, and stretched out her fingers – if fingers were what they could be called any more – and, with a shriek, leapt straight at Rhys’s face.

Something fast knocked Rhys out of the way and held on to him, its momentum carrying him to the floor and then down
through
the floor itself, landing with an explosion of papers and card in a mess of boxes below. Rhys groaned as the shock rippled all the way down to his toes, and looked up blearily into Sharon’s dimly illuminated face.

“Uh?”

She rolled off him, slid through a pile of boxes to the nearest piece of clear floor, grabbed him by the arm and said, “Antihistamines!”

“Oh, um…⁠” Rhys started fumbling in his pockets even as something fast, bounding fast, galloping on all fours, thundered across the floor overhead, claws tearing at wallpaper and wall as it passed, and screamed the hunting cry of the striga.

“Antihistamines, antihistamines…⁠” stammered the druid, patting down pocket after pocket. “I’m sure I had…⁠”

Sharon let out a groan, grabbed him by the sleeve and dragged him out through the nearest wall, even as the door burst back and Zhanyi – or the creature which had been Zhanyi – tore into the room. Her head was held high on a great, thickened body of wire-encrusted skin; her hair lashed around her, tearing scars in the frame of the door; and her metal claws were still growing to their full length on her elongated fingertips. For a second the striga stared, bewildered, at the empty room as Sharon and Rhys passed through the nearby wall; then her nostrils flared and with a cry she turned and leapt down the stairs, her body uncoiling cat-like as it sprang. Her claws gouged mortar dust from the wall where they struck, and seized it, so that she now hung suspended, head turning this way and that as she searched out her prey.

One floor below, Sharon and Rhys passed into the shadow walk, the druid mumbling, “Maybe the other pocket…⁠?”

But even from the shadow walk, the golden glow of Rhys’s potion was faintly visible. Zhanyi shrieked again and, propelling herself backwards off the face of the wall, she threw herself claws first at the glow passing the bottom of the stairs. Her leap struck something which fell, tumbling first to the landing below, then out of visibility entirely and into the full obscurity of the darkened house. The striga raised her head triumphantly, crouching on the fallen body of her prey, and looked down into a face which was…

… altered.

A silver metal skin had laid itself over once soft features, a red, glowing madness was intruding itself across formerly almond eyes, and from the parted lips of the striga’s intended victim, a black puff of smoke curled around a stretching lizard tongue. Confused, the striga looked down to where, by rights, her claws should have punched straight through rib and lung, and saw instead that her intended victim’s spreading metal skin was now complete, thickening before her eyes; and even as she looked, she saw something darken in the face of the creature beneath her.

Then Sharon, the Alderman’s badge tucked firmly in her right fist, clenched her dragon-skinned fingers tighter around the hot little source of magic, and hit Zhanyi as hard as she could across the side of the face.

The striga flew backwards, head knocking against the wall, as Sharon rolled onto her feet, head aching, vision pulsing a scarlet red, the whisper of…

domine dirige nos domine dirige nos domine dirige

          i’m freeeeeeeee!

I bought you doughnuts…

                              come be freeeeeeeeee

          and this umbrella!

domine dirige nos domine dirige nos

     and congratulations!

… rushing in her ear. She looked at Zhanyi. In the gloom of the whitewashed hall, softened by Rhys’s potion, she saw a striga, a monster of the dark, a creature out of nightmares, fed on the forbidden things that happen when there is no one there to perceive them. And she knew that her own fingers were the fingers of the dragon, her blood was the blood of the streets, her breath was fire, her judgement was fury, her authority was absolute, go on, go on, go on, kill the monster…

Then Zhanyi picked herself back up and snarled an animal snarl and for a moment, Sharon saw as only a shaman can see and there was a girl standing in front of her and even as she screamed the hunting cry of the untamed beast, a voice drifted beneath it, barely audible in the shadows, and it whispered

          I am beautiful, I am wonderful, I have a secret…

And for a second, Sharon hesitated.

Then something moved in the corner of her eye, a shadow heading for the front door, and in that instant, that moment of divided attention, Zhanyi leapt. Sharon threw up her hands in front of her and was surprised, and then again, not that surprised, to see that her fingers had the claws of the dragon, and her arm was growing tendrils of metal which spread around her and lapped at the air like pennants in a breeze, and as Zhanyi threw herself at the shaman, Sharon stepped to one side and threw the full force of her combined fists into the side of the striga. The blow knocked Zhanyi across the hall, and into the door of the whitewashed living room, nearly colliding with Rhys, who was picking himself up from where he’d fallen at the bottom of the stairs. The druid gave a whimper and scurried into the living room itself, carrying his potion with him, but Sharon was surprised – and then again, not so surprised – to discover that the scarlet haze across her sight required little in the way of light for her to see by, and even as it richened, deepened, it seemed that the striga grew brighter in her eyes, every pulse of blood through her body visible, every puff of breath a great expulsion that distorted the air. Sharon thought she heard the front door slam, but there was no time to think about it as Zhanyi got to her feet and, cautiously now, began to back through the living-room door, eyes locked on Sharon, teeth bared and claws out. Sharon advanced carefully after her, opening the fingers of her left hand to reveal the black claws that had also grown from her skin, fuelled by the badge of the Aldermen.