The Nekropolis Archives (120 page)

  I pointed toward Talaith. "Maybe not soon enough to deal with
her
."

  The Witch Queen had managed to shake off her confusion, and now glared down at us.

  "So you're in this with her, are you, Galm? Our two Dominions have been at peace for years, but I suppose you got tired of being a good neighbor, eh? No matter. I claim this Dominion by right of conquest, and you stand in my way at your peril!"

  Galm bared his fangs at Talaith, and I could feel the psychic pressure as his power began to build in response to her threat.

  "Choose your words carefully, witch! I do not claim to fully understand what is going on here, but it's clear there's more to this affair than meets the eye." He gestured to Varney. "This man is my servant, and from what he has told me, this war is nothing but a ruse. Both you and Varvara have been tricked. Call off your people and come down here so we can talk and sort this mess out before things get any worse."

  Talaith looked uncertain, and for a moment I thought she might do as Galm suggested. But then a sly expression came over her face.

  "What does it matter to me how and why this war began? All that's important is how it ends. And I intend for it to end with my being the ruler of two dominions! So step aside, Galm, while I finish off Varvara and claim what is rightfully mine!"

  "I can't do that, Talaith." Galm's icy calm was a terrible thing to behold. "We Darklords have one Dominion apiece. That's the agreement we made when we founded Nekropolis, and that's how it's going to stay."

  Talaith sneered. "And who's going to stop me? You? You're powerful enough, I admit, but you're alone, while I have several dozen of my strongest people with me." She gestured at the Arcane assembled behind her. "You cannot possibly hope to stand against us all!"

  Galm's smile was cold as ice. "Who said I was alone?"

  Shadows gathered on the walls of the penthouse, and out of them stepped a host of Bloodborn, some of the most powerful vampires in the city: Waldemar the Librarian, Orlock the Collector, the Scarlet Orchid, Baron Lamprey, the Exsanguinator Supreme, Countess Carpathia, Incizor, the Dalai Lamia and more. Dread and terrible beings all, they gazed upward at Talaith and her soldiers with cold dead eyes and smiles like Death itself.

  Varney looked insufferably pleased with himself. "I told Galm it might not be a bad idea to bring along some backup."

  "Good thinking," I said.

  Galm gave no command, but the Bloodborn hissed a battle cry and leaped skyward, their bodies melting into shadowy forms as they streaked toward the hovering Arcane. Witches and warlocks began loosing bolts of magic energy, but the vampires dodged them easily, and the fight was well and truly on.

  Galm turned to us.

  "I'll have to confront Talaith directly," he said. "You're on your own from here on out. Find my daughter, Richter. Make certain she and my grandchildren are safe, and then see to it that the creature who abducted them pays for his crime. Varney, you're with us."

  Galm then burst apart into a flock of shadow bats and headed toward Talaith. The Witch Queen let out a cry of frustrated fury and started slinging energy bolts as the king of the Bloodborn came for her.

  "I'm sorry," Varney said. "But I must do as my lord commands. Good luck to you both."

  He assumed his whirlwind form and flew off to join the fight, and his curseweave hazmat suit, now empty, collapsed to floor next to us.

  As tempting as it was to watch a battle between Bloodborn and Arcane, not to mention two Darklords, I tore my gaze away from the action above us. Shamika and I still had work to do.

  I looked at Varvara. The Demon Queen's gaze remained glassy, her face expressionless. Galm had said she was fighting to throw off Gregor's mental control, but there was no outward sign of her efforts. I had no idea how long it would take, but I doubted we could count on Varvara to regain control of her body in time to help us.

  I forgot about Varvara and turned to Shamika. "Where's Gregor at?" I asked her. "He has to be using some kind of machine to transport Nekropolis to Earth. Where is it?"

  "I don't know!" she said. "I told you, I searched throughout the city for the missing Arcane, but I wasn't able to find a single trace of them, and I didn't find any dimension-shifting machinery during my search either."

  "Maybe he's hidden the machine using magic," I said. "Or maybe he's located it underground somewhere." But neither of those possibilities felt right to me. A thought was nagging at the back of my mind, one that I couldn't quite catch hold of. I pictured the way Gregor had stood after he'd absorbed Talaith's magic strike. He'd pointed the lightning rod toward the sky and unleashed the bolt into the darkness. I remembered what he'd said just before doing it.

  Now, if you'll all excuse me for a moment, I need to transfer this.

  He'd sent Talaith's energy to the machine, wherever that was. And I was certain he had another body there to run the show from that end. How long would it take for him to put Talaith's power to work and begin transporting the city to Earth, this time permanently? Not long, I feared, and we had no idea where he was. If only I could think…

  Once more I felt the sensation of my missing hand moving, only it felt different this time, kind of tingly. I looked down at the stump protruding from my right arm, and I was surprised to see my hand reappear right where it belonged, attached more or less firmly to my body. My fingers were clenched into a fist, and when I opened them I saw that I was clutching a small metal disk. I grinned. It was a reverser! Somehow Devona had gotten hold of my hand and used one of the magic disks to reverse Gregor's teleportation spell, sending my hand back to where it was taken from: my wrist. But why hadn't she used the reverser to send herself back too? Why just my hand?

  And then I saw that my palm was marred by thin lines, and I remembered feeling a sensation of pressure on my hand a while ago, almost as if someone were cutting into it. I pulled away the reverser with my other hand and held up my palm so I could examine it more closely. There, cut into the flesh – with Devona's teeth, I guessed – was a single word.

  Ulterion.

  I grinned from ear to ear.

  "I love that woman."

EIGHTEEN

"I've never flown this high before. It's fun!"

  "Not exactly the first word that leaps to my mind," I said. "Terrifying, maybe. Hazardous, certainly. But fun? I don't think so."

  Shamika had reshaped herself into something that resembled a large black moth, and I sat on her back, clutching two fleshy handles she'd created at the base of her head for me to grip. Her fan-like wings beat the air with forceful strokes as we soared through the darkness above Nekropolis, the city spread out below us like a child's toy. A dark, twisted child, that is. While the Sprawl, Gothtown, and the Boneyard are the most urban Dominions, only the first two had enough lights burning to cut through the darkness. The Boneyard is the realm of the Dead, and they have no need of streetlights to illuminate their way. Glamere and the Wyldwood are both pastoral for the most part, but even they had fires dotting the landscape here and there. The most light, of course, came from the mystic energies released in the continuing battle between the Bloodborn and Arcane in the air over Demon's Roost. I wondered how the fight would turn out. If Galm and his vampire soldiers could keep Talaith and her people busy long enough for Varvara to regain control of herself, then the Demon Queen could join in and repel Talaith. Otherwise, there was a chance that when – if – I returned home to the Sprawl, I might find it under new management. That is, assuming Gregor didn't succeed in relocating the whole damn city to Earth.

  Umbriel the Shadowsun hung in the air off to our left, and we were almost even with it. Umbriel is an artificial construct, created by Dis and the Darklords to help maintain Nekropolis in this dimension, as well as provide the city's atmosphere and the power for Phlegethon. As such, it's not located off in space, as is the case with Earth's sun, and it's much smaller than Sol. But as for where Ulterion was located, I had no idea. There was a reason it was called the Hidden Moon, after all. We'd started out in the general direction in which we'd seen Gregor release the mystic power he'd gathered from Talaith, and Shamika had told me that if we got close enough, she should be able to sense her brother's presence. But so far we'd had no luck. I'd hoped that if we drew near Ulterion we might be able to spot it visually, but the sky above Nekropolis is totally and completely black, with no stars to provide illumination. Umbriel is a sort of grayish color that makes it easy enough to see against the darkness, and I'd hoped Ulterion might look similar, but if it did, I couldn't see it.

  As we flew, I thought of what Ichorus had told me in the Fever House, how he'd been searching for Ulterion and been blasted with some kind of energy ray. I wished I'd questioned him then, for it was obvious now that he'd come close to stumbling across Gregor's operation and triggered some kind of defense system. Ichorus had been lucky to survive with only a few scorched feathers. If Shamika was unable to sense Gregor, and we couldn't spot Ulterion visually, my last hope was that we might repeat Ichorus' mistake and–

  Light flared in the darkness ahead, and a beam of energy lanced toward us. I tried to warn Shamika to brace herself, but I wasn't able to get the words out in time. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth as energy crackled around us and then dissipated harmlessly. I opened my eyes, only mildly surprised that Shamika and I hadn't been burned to a crisp. It seemed the Coat of Every Color had once again done its job and shielded us from Gregor's energy blast.

  "I see it now!" Shamika said, and she banked right, her wings beating faster, and we surged forward at increased speed.

  I didn't see anything, but then my zombie eyes aren't any better than the ones I had when I was alive. Shamika was an alien creature, and I had no idea exactly how her senses worked, but if she said she saw Ulterion, I believed her. A moment later I was finally able to make out a dark shape of an orb, black against the black sky behind it. I couldn't tell how large it was, for there was nothing nearby to lend perspective, but I guessed that while it was a far smaller version of the satellite that orbited Earth, it was at least big enough for Gregor's dimension-shifting machine.

  Gregor didn't bother firing his energy ray at us again. He learned fast – information was his stock in trade, after all – and he probably needed all the power he could get to make his machine work. Why waste it on us if the Coat of Every Color would just repel his attacks? So Shamika and I were able to approach Ulterion without any more trouble, and she descended to the surface of the Hidden Moon and landed with surprising gentleness for someone who'd just completed her first flight.

  I climbed off and stood on wobbly legs. My physical condition had little to do with how nervous I'd been during our flight and everything to do with how difficult it was for me to keep my various body parts together. The cohesion spell that Papa Chatha had cast on me was close to wearing off, and when it finally failed, I'd collapse into a pile of useless pieces. If we were going to stop Gregor, we had to do it fast.

  I looked around, but it was like standing in the middle of a deep cave without any light source. I could sense the solid weight of Ulterion beneath my feet and feel its rocky surface under my shoes, but I couldn't see a damn thing.

  "It's OK," Shamika said. "I'll lead you."

  Ulterion, like Umbriel, lay within the atmospheric bubble that encloses Nekropolis, so even though we were technically standing on the surface of a moon, there was air to transmit our voices, even if neither of us needed it to breathe.

  Shamika took my hand with human-seeming fingers, and I knew she'd once more taken the form of a teenage girl. She started walking, and I went with her, moving with the spastic jerky motions that were all I was capable of. Shamika surely noticed my awkward movements, but she said nothing about them.

  "There's a dome a few hundred feet in front of us," Shamika said. "It looks like Gregor created it from Ulterion's substance."

  I imagined hundreds of insects scuttling over the moon's dark surface, tearing chunks out of the ground and refashioning them bit by bit into a dome to hide Gregor's machinery. "Can you see anything that looks like an entrance?"

  "I doubt there is one," she said. "Gregor used teleportation magic to bring the magic-users here, remember? It's probably how he moved his equipment in as well. But don't worry. I'll be able to get us inside."

  With every step we took, I anticipated an attack by a horde of insects, but none came. I still wore the Coat of Every Color and carried the Dreamthrower, and I had the Herald Bells and the
osame-fuda
gun tucked into my pockets. Maybe Gregor knew his insects couldn't stand against the holy weapons. Or maybe he had another reason for not attacking us. Whatever it was, I knew I wouldn't like it. Gregor always stacked the deck in his favor.

  I sensed the dome ahead of us rather than seeing it, but I still would've bumped into it if Shamika hadn't stopped me. Before either of us could say or do anything, a tiny pinprick of light appeared in the surface of the dome before us. It quickly widened as a semicircular door formed, spilling greenish light onto the moon's dark surface.

  I could see Shamika's face now, and she was frowning.

  "I was wrong," she said. "Gregor didn't make the dome out of Ulterion's substance. He made it out of his own."

  I looked at Shamika. "Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly."

  She gave me a confused look, and I said, "Means we're expected. Shall we?"

  We stepped inside, and I didn't bother to check if the entrance sealed shut behind us. I knew it would.

  Greenfire torches were set in sconces around the inside of the dome, providing illumination. The mystic flames were set to burn at a low level, and I remembered how Gregor had once told me that since the Watchers were native to this dark dimension, intense light could hurt them. Too bad I hadn't asked Maggie to loan me one of the Hidden Light's illuminaries.