Chasing the Dragon (55 page)

The demon started talking. Lila heard it on automatic. That voice.
That hissing scratch. So they were the same. And the maker of that
zombie ... here it was. The cold strength of the Signal filled her, the
knowledge that everything mattered and everything changed, nothing
lost but nothing the same. She kissed Zal, and then, keeping herself
between him and it, she turned on the demon.

"I've had enough of you," she said, overriding its speech in which
it explained it had used its tactics in order to bring her here, or rather not her but the sword, which it wanted to use. The form of the
demon's body looked exactly like the one she had sat before when she
tried to use the crystal pane. "If all you wanted was the sword, why
didn't you just ask me for it? It isn't even mine."

Xavien seemed taken aback, but only for an instant. "And would
you have given it to me?"

"Take it." Lila flipped the sword up and around. She presented the
hilt. "End the fucking drama already before I end it for you."

"Umm ..." Zal said behind her in the casual easygoing boy tone
that meant it was a seriously bad move. There was a bright metal
sound above them. Teazle had drawn his swords. The ghosts gathered
close, closer until they were ringed by a mass of cold, glowing forms.

One of the light forms that Teazle had told her was an angel
dropped down beside the demon suddenly.

"You don't even know what you hold," the demon said. "Night's
Mantle."

"I do," Lila replied, looking up the reference and reading as she
continued to offer the sword. "Go on. Take it. Have your stupid dream
already so we can get out of here. I used to be patient but I've really
had it with your crap. You have power. Big scare. I know it. You know
it. Take the fucking thing and be done." She felt the moment brim
with sudden tension, and that smile she'd felt on her face recently
came back. It wasn't the nicest smile in the world. "If you can."

"She's a Voidelf," Zal murmured. The vibration of his voice against
the back of her neck made her shiver.

Lila looked that up. As she did so the demon came forward to take
the sword. And she twitched it back, just out of his grasp. She stared
at the form, felt Zal, saw the Fleet, remembered Lily's promise, saw her
office, filled with his things, Sarasilien's things, the library. She? She.
This was no demon. She was an elf. And not just any elf. At a speed
faster than she was aware of a pattern snapped in place inside her. For
an instant she saw Sarasilien's eyes as he bent over her when she was suffering outside the operating room, the first day she woke up as a
machine. He had been crying. It wasn't for her. She'd forgotten. His
kindness, the way he had felt, like a father. And then, Zal's story about
the creation of the shadowkin. Lila was sure, as sure as she was that her
own father had never been able to pull anything together except his
kindness towards his children, that her mother couldn't face an ordinary life without being smashed numb by drink, that Max had lived
in that house all her life, in case she came back one day ...

She was sure that this was Sarasilien's daughter.

The demon hesitated with the patience of a striking adder and
made another, much more definite attempt to seize the hilt. Lila
flicked it out of reach teasingly a second time, as if she were toying
with an irritating younger sister. She grinned and tutted, "Oh no,
doesn't look like you can have it. Isn't that a shame?"

"This is not a game!" the demon snarled. Its voice had become
slightly strangled. "Give me the sword or I will kill your boyfriend and
the rest of them. There will not even be a memory left of what they
were. I will ruin your world and theirs. Make it again."

"She probably can do it," Zal whispered. "She'll certainly try
harder than last time. Unstable."

"Last time!" Lila felt her grin turn to a frown. "Others?"

"Here." The demon made an angry, sweeping gesture and Lila saw
the bodies farther down the deck. She went cold for a second as she
realized who they were, nauseous for a moment with the swirl of
feeling as she saw Tath, delighted that he had survived, horrified that
he seemed to be dead already. Along with Mal. Their slumped forms
were dissipating, becoming thin. It was invisible to the eye, but she
could feel the order of their signals breaking up. If they stayed out
much longer this creature wouldn't need to bother trying to finish
them. She felt weaker herself, and she'd bet even Teazle did, although
you wouldn't know it to look at him.

"You moron," Lila sighed, with anger that she had to suppress for now, and with sadness. "Your father is still alive. You still have a
chance."

"I have no father," the demon snarled, but it sounded less than
certain.

"Well I have his office and personal effects and his library in my
head, and I say he's alive. We could find him for you."

"I can find him myself. Give me the mantle."

"Here." Lila held it out. Again the hand came. Again she twitched
it away. "It doesn't seem to want to."

"Stop doing that!"

Lila made her best innocent face. "What? I'm not doing anything.
It doesn't like you." Faster than anyone would have noticed she looked
at the sword herself. Now that she'd finished reading the damn books
and their hundreds of references about the thing she really did realize
what she was holding. "Shit!" she said under her breath so that only
Zal could hear her. "It's the thing itself."

The moment was lost in a sudden lurch of the ship. All the bells
of the Fleet went ringing and their horns sounded out. Patches of
nothing flickered in all that had seemed so solid and true.

"We can all end here," the demon said. Its voice was icy. "If you
rather."

Panic broke out. The Fleet began to break up more literally, lights
moving off, some at speed.

In Lila's hand the sword moved. At the same time she felt Zal
nudge her, and she looked around in bewilderment to find him
holding out to her a book that was oddly solid.

"I'm supposed to give you this, apparently," he said.

Lila took it. As she did so she felt the sword lift and the demon's
hand grab it successfully. She let it go and looked around at the sound
of surprise to find the demon standing with a pen in its hand, staring
at it. She opened the green-bound book. On the flyleaf was written, in
deep black ink and a hesitant but beautiful handwritten elvish script, as of someone doing their best writing, "The Journal of Xaviendra
Angela Sarasilien, begun on her twenty-eighth birthday...." Lila
turned the page and saw the first line, the date, and then closed it. She
held it out as the negative storm began to blot out the spirit forms in
greater flurries, feeling motes of herself vanishing.

"This is yours."

The demon stared, hesitated, reached out, looked at the book and
the pen in its hands, then opened the book, and turned it the right way
up. Then it looked at Lila and the demon disguise it had been wearing
fell to dust. The storm blotted out its last few flakes and was gone.
Before them stood a tall, narrow figure of an elflike girl who looked
exactly as if she had been drawn in ink and coloured in with a lighter
wash of the same. She looked like Zal, but unlike him she had two
magnificent antelope-like horns rising out of her skull. Her black hair
whipped around her and grew down her back and over her shoulders
in a long, silky fur.

"I don't understand," she said falteringly, looking at the pen. "I
thought ... I thought it would change me. Why am I still here?
Why?!" And the last word was a cry of absolute horror and loneliness.
She turned to the angel beside her. "What have you done?" She held
out the pen. "What is this? Why aren't I like you? Why can't I hear
you?" She whirled around, looking for the other one, but it was already
rushing towards her as she started to scream, a truly awful sound that
felt like it was tearing Lila's own insides apart.

The black storm was back in an instant, but this time it had a
vortex focused on Xaviendra as she hunched in on herself. She'd
dropped the book and the pen and was clawing at her own face with
both hands. As Lila watched the angels darted in and their light closed
on her arms. They fought with her, trying to make her stop. All the
time the scream continued.

Lila turned to find Zal, suddenly terrified he was gone, and looked
into the dark of his face. He was shouting at her, almost inaudible. He was pointing at the pen, the book, miming writing, pointing at her.
Teazle was the fastest to react. He darted down and seized both items,
opened the book to the last page that was written on, and held out the
pen to her.

Write something! he mouthed at her.

Lila felt herself dissolving. Overhead the Void was beginning to
break open and the light of other worlds was coming through, like a
haze.

She read the last lines of the careful hand, now more practiced and
less self-conscious ...

... experiments are truly evil. I cannot allow them to continue or allow
my father to continue in this insane purpose which he is so convinced is for the
greater good of the elves and the safety of Alfheim. There are forces at work in
those with power that are too fond of their own will. If he will not see how he
is used and corrupted, then I will make him see. He has gone to Demonia on a
hunt for more "materials" for the soul forge. In his absence I have answered the
call. I have volunteered to be a subject for the change. When it is done and he
returns home then let him see the value of his work. I pray to survive long
enough to illustrate the truth.

Around them the Fleet shook and began to fade. Deep cold
burning.

Lila uncapped the pen and saw the nib flood with the infinite
blood of Night. She looked up at Zal, thought of her own father and,
strangely, of Sandra Lane and Sarah Bentley. She struggled for a
moment, because what she was about to do did not seem entirely just
and merely a whim that exacted no retribution and solved no history.
It salved only pain. But then she wrote quickly and easily.

It was aboard the Fleet in the gulf of Night that Xaviendra Angela
Sarasilien woke from the long journey she had embarked on centuries before to
find herself changed according to her most heartfelt and sincere wish ...

The screaming abruptly stopped.

... surrounded by the faery, Malachi, a curious cat; by the Lord of Winter. Ilyatath Voynassi Taliesetra, who was once carried in the heart of the robot girl
and who was born again in Faeryland; by the demon, Teazle Sikarza, who went
Under and came out an Angel; by the human Lila Amanda Black, who was
remade by the Signal; and by Zal the rock star, soul rebel, and last survivor of
the reign of jack the Giantkiller-her allies. Friends and lovers all, they had
recovered from the rigours of their trials by the grace of Night, mother of creation,
whose pen so wrote, this day. She time-stamped it and signed her own
name to the entry, because it seemed appropriate to. In doing so she
realized that she did not know Zal's true name.

Lila looked up. Zal was reading over her shoulder. She capped the pen
and closed the book. There was calm and the Fleet drifted, damaged
but still distinguishable.

A tall elf with white hair and golden eyes was standing beside Zal,
just behind him. She nodded at Lila in a businesslike manner and spat
the dog end of a cigar out onto the deck, where she ground it under
the toe of her soldier's boot. "Signed, sealed, delivered, he's yours," she
said. "That concludes my bargain with you. It's me, Lily, whatever.
Thanks for unlocking Under and letting us all out," she added with a
scowl as if thanks weren't something she was used to delivering. Then
she cleared her throat, spat the result over the rail, and addressed Zal.
"I'll be seeing you, honey. Make it not too soon." She reached out and
clapped him on the shoulder. "Be sure you go back with the Green
King there." She stabbed a thumb out to indicate the slowly rising
form of Ilyatath. "Via Faeryland. And wait there. Or you won't get
your body back. Understand?"

"Yes." He grinned at her. "You sang well."

"Uh-huh? Fuck that," she muttered, producing an enormous cigar
from her sleeve. She stuck it in her mouth and looked pleased with herself. "Until later."

Lila was not surprised to see her fade out, patting her pockets, and,
as she was halfway gone, producing the pen, at which she raised her
eyebrows and then waved at Lila as if to say Well look at this! Then she
laughed, put the pen into a pocket of her war tunic, took the cigar out
of her mouth, stuck her tongue out, and lit the cigar on it. She sucked
hard until the thing was almost flaming, before jabbing it back into
place and winking as the last trace of her vanished.

Lila looked at her hand. Sure enough the pen was gone. She sighed,
relieved, and then Malachi was running towards her, slowly, limping a
little, but running. He was in his giant catman form, as big and ugly
as any nightmare, but she hugged him as he arrived and felt his
thumping paw on her back. Tath was behind him.