“That remains to be seen, Knight.
You have forced change after ten thousand years of relentless stagnation. The
barriers between Forget and True Earth should fall. Creatures not seen in the
genuine universe since the Dawn of Moment are stirring.” It paused. “So you may
rest now. Do not fight the eternal sleep. Die well in the knowledge that, for
the smallest fraction of time, you held the greatest power in all creation. The
power to destroy it.”
“I’d rather a glass of scotch,
between you and me.” I tried to laugh but coughed up a little more blood
instead. “Let me speak to her.”
Oblivion paused, perhaps
contemplating my request. “As you wish.” Some of the blood seemed to fade from
her eyes.
Tal stared at me and said
nothing. Could she really hear me? Or was the Everlasting just playing games?
After everything, did it make any difference if it was her or not? Tal’s death,
my death, the battles lost and won. All things said and done, what could I
possibly say that would hold even the smallest scrap of purpose or meaning?
Goodbye, of course. Goodnight, sweetheart. We were just lonely rivers flowing
to the sea, to the sea.
“Did you see a future for us,
Tal?” I asked, but she only stared. “Did you see us waking up together? Smiling
in the morning? Did you see us laughing and growing old? Did you see me loving
you even more for every morning as the years flew past?” I took a deep breath
and exhaled slowly. “Boy, I sure did.”
A sigh that was more of a wince
brought me close to tears.
“Please say something.”
An arc of wicked purple lightning
tore the heavens apart.
“Oh well. Songbird, I
love—”
Tal pressed an ethereal finger
against my lips. Her eyes, the eyes of a Knight, blurred from harsh crimson to
soft, pepper brown. For a heartbeat, or the moment between, she was mine again
in mind, body, and soul.
“I know,” she whispered, and
vanished like smoke on the wind.
All things said and done in
truth.
The world didn’t end, after all, but
that did not seem so important under the burning cobalt sky.
*~*~*~*
Dying alone now, I had time to
think about all that happened. What made sense and what did not.
Lord Oblivion had played a long
game, it seemed, forcing me back here with a
need
to destroy the Infernal Clock. I never would have done that
five years ago, not for anything. But to stop the Degradation and save the
Story Thread… The Everlasting had played me like a fiddle. I’d done exactly
what It wanted. And now the consequences were unknown and unfathomable.
You have forced change…
I sure had.
The pain in my side was fatally
grim but bearable. I had a view away to my left of the city, of the reality
storm forcing it through the ruins of the Degradation and across time to the
Plains of Perdition. All my work was undone, but for the right reasons. To my
right, Morpheus Renegade still grinned at me from where he was pinned to the
stone by the Roseblade.
“Quit smiling, you bastard.”
My vision blurred, but I caught
movement from the far side of the plateau. I tried hard to focus. Someone,
dressed all in white, emerged from the staircase that led down into the spire.
A tall person, familiar.
She moved across the
tower—purposeful, soundless footsteps—and paused when she reached
Renegade. Carefully, she closed his eyes with her hand and ran her fingers
along the golden hilt of the blade stuck through his heart, and then continued
on to me. I thought about playing dead, but I was close enough to the real
thing to make little difference.
The Immortal Queen lowered
herself to her knees next to me and brushed my blood-soaked fringe out of my
eyes. She sighed and removed her mask.
“Oh… you bad girl.”
Beholding the face behind the
porcelain, I felt all the blades—real and emotional—dig and twist
just a little deeper. I was still alive enough to feel like an idiot.
“Would you like a sweet?” Emily
Grace asked, offering me a bag of strawberry bonbons.
“No, thank you.” I took a shallow
breath and kept a hand pressed against the wound in my side. “I’m sweet enough.”
“You killed my husband.”
“I told all of you that I would,
in Ascension City.”
“Yes… but he has killed you,
too.”
A lot of things fell into place,
through the hazy pain. “I suppose you were the one who left
Tales of Atlantis
on the beach for me to
find. Was it only half a week ago I watched you dance at Paddy’s? How did I not
know it was you, Emily?”
The Immortal Queen shrugged as
she rested one hand on the small roundness of her belly, her unborn son, if
prophecy was to be believed. “You didn’t want me to be anything but what I was.
A friend, someone to flirt with, and the promise of something more.” She
tsked
. “Declan, you don’t get to have
that.”
“No, I suppose not.” I unclenched
my fist and let the Infernal Clock fall. It struck the obsidian plateau with a
dull chime. “Same old mistakes, hmm. Brand new ways. Like loving a woman you
can’t have… hoping for a future that will never come.”
“The eternal trap of desire,
yes?”
The Clock petals unfurled and
fell from the bud of the flower like the shards of a broken glass. “Will you…
will you take one of those to Clare Valentine? Bring her back, please. She
didn’t deserve to die. Not like that.”
Emily glanced at the crystal
flower stem, hunger in her eyes, and snatched it up. She stood, gazing just
beyond me at the city ablaze, a mile below. “Is that what you want, Declan? A
last request?”
Her face was blank—she may
as well have been wearing her mask again. “It is,” I said carefully. “Please.”
She glanced back at Renegade,
then back at me. “Then it gives me great pleasure to see you die unsatisfied,
Shadowless.”
The Immortal Queen jammed her
heel into my wound and, with a cry of exultant triumph, kicked me over the edge
of the plateau and into the open air a mile above the burning city. Petals from
the Infernal Clock scattered as I snatched at her foot and missed.
I fell.
I fell hard and fast, the wind
rushing past my ears and stinging my eyes. Like a ragdoll, sodden and bloody, I
fell through burning cherry blossoms riding the edge of the reality storms.
The ground rushed up to meet me
in a final embrace—
A bolt of sizzling silver light,
a strike from one of the tears in reality, struck me in the chest a split
second before I was splattered in the dust. My entire form convulsed, and
Atlantis disappeared.
The Void consumed me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Bad Girls, Honey
“Declan! Declan Hale, help me out
here…”
I lay on a cool wooden floor. The
scent of musky vanilla, cut grass, and old leather washed over me, mingled with
the harsh copper tang of blood. Here I was at the end, back at the beginning.
Dying on the floor of my shop.
“Don’t keep me waiting, pretty
boy.”
I rolled over onto my back and
groaned as I tried to piece it all together. The reality storms ravaging
Atlantis, the death throes of the Infernal Clock, had spat me through the Void
and
time.
Back here, to True Earth
and to the start of all this madness—my death just over a week ago, as I
understand events.
Declan Hale, ugly son of a bitch
that he was, gazed at me from above. I was looking up at myself.
“Stop staring, sweetheart,” I
said, and grinned one
helluva
bloody
grin.
He reached out his hand to touch
me, which was just too weird.
“Don’t touch me—you’ll
create a paradox that’ll destroy the universe.”
He snatched his arm back.
“Really?”
“No. Not really. But you touch
yourself enough as it is.” I laughed. How long did it take to die? Not much
longer, if memory served. “I just wanted… wanted to tell you something.” I let
go of my wound and motioned him in closer. His breath was warm and stank of old
scotch.
“You’re me?” he asked.
“And you will be me.”
“How long before this happens?”
“You got just over a week. Grim
forests in the dark, Dec.” What could I tell him that would make a difference?
The truth of what was to come? The knowledge of my death hadn’t saved me. No,
events had played their course.
Destiny cast no shadow.
“I can’t save you from that
wound. All the Will in the world couldn’t… Are you wearing my favorite grey
waistcoat?” he asked.
“It looks better on me,” I said.
“And we both know I don’t deserve saving. We’re dead, Dec.” There was very
little pain anymore. I felt almost… euphoric. At peace, after so long. Perhaps
saying goodbye to Tal had done that. “Now listen. I am you. This is real. Call
it time travel if it helps you sleep at night. It won’t, trust me, but it’ll
keep you alive for… heh… for now.”
“What are you—?”
“Shut up and listen.” I could
tell myself the important things and save as much as I knew how to save. At
least the Degradation would be undone this way. Nothing was more important than
that. Not my life. Not even Clare’s. “Train Ethan, love Clare, hug Sophie.
Forgive
the Historian. And trust Marcus,
until he gives you a reason not to. And he will, oh my yes, he will.”
The rest of the track was just a
sad song stuck on repeat, baby. I kept thinking of Emily, back in Atlantis. She
had the Infernal Clock and the Roseblade. It didn’t matter, I suppose. This was
my death, only moments away.
Younger Declan had a rough week
ahead of him. He leaned down and looked as though he had something to say, so I
lunged up and wrapped a hand around his neck, pressing our foreheads together
to cut him off. He had a lot to understand, and there wasn’t very much I could
tell him, just enough to die kind of satisfied.
“Don’t be such an arrogant
fuck
,” I growled. “And get a haircut.
This ain’t no painted desert serenade.” Was that everything? Things were
getting dark now.
Low road, boss.
It
didn’t hurt so much anymore. “Something else… something… Ah, yeah. Declan,
remember, Tal
always
aimed for the
heart.”
I had enjoyed seeing her, what
had been left behind, and seeing a lot of familiar things and friends this last
week. Oh well.
All the meager strength I had
left fled my limbs, and I fell back. My head hit the floor with a sickening
thud.
Someone turned out all the
lights.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
The Madman’s Lullaby
Of dying, I remember very little.
It hurt—then it didn’t.
Of waking up, I remember every
second.
It hurt—and did not
stop
hurting.
I’ve had some hangovers in my
time, seen a few empty scotch bottles scattered across the room and more than
one or two half-eaten kebabs, but this was something else entirely.
I opened my eyes to a world of
pain and drew in a harsh, startled breath that filled my lungs with what felt
like a mix of ice water and acid.
Some part of me felt strong hands
holding me down as I thrashed and moaned.
Blinding light made me blink
rapidly and fight whatever was holding me back. Whoever was restraining me was
just a dark silhouette against the glare.
“Be still, Hale.”
The voice echoed as if from a
great distance. I moaned, fighting through the pain, and did my best not to
struggle. I hurt too much to move. After a time that may have been five
minutes, or longer, I could make out more than a hazy shadow. A simple, plain
room came into stark focus: a worn carpet, walls in need of paint, and a single
hanging halogen bulb swinging in the breeze that came through an open window.
“Where?” I groaned.
“You’re above the kebab shop in
Riverwood Plaza, Hale. True Earth, just across from your shop. My humble abode
these last few weeks.”
Old Mathias, the banana cart
salesman, held me down. His lip was split from where I must have hit him.
“Mathias?” I blinked, trying to
work through it all. I remembered Clare, Atlantis, the Infernal Clock, Renegade,
and Emily. “How? How are you here? Are we both dead?”
“Far from it, my friend,” he said
with a chuckle. His accent was gone and his grasp of English much improved.
I’d been tricked. “Who are you,
then? Really?”
“We’ve met before, you and I.
More than once.” Mathias dabbed at his lip with a handkerchief. “Before you
destroyed Reach City. I cut the throat of one of your allies to draw you out.”
Clare. He was talking about sweet
Clare.