half-lich 02 - void weaver (11 page)

“Wait,” Cameron whispered, tapping her shoulder.

Alice turned her head. “What?”

“You shouldn’t go first. Let me.”

“I’m fine.”

“
Bullshit
. You’re unprotected. If there’s something in that room, I need to get in there first.”

“What do you think is in that room?”

“I don’t know… a ghost?”

Alice rolled her eyes and turned again to face the door at the end of the hall. “If there
is
a ghost in that room, I’m probably better equipped to deal with it than you are, with or without my powers.”

“Alright, but I’m not going to be held—”

There was a loud explosion of sound, a series of unearthly shrieks, and then chaos erupted. By the time Alice turned around again to see what had happened, Cameron was all the way on the other side of the hall—and he was being pinned up against the TV unit by something tall, thin, and entirely naked.

The old man
.

Alice felt like all the breath had been sucked out of her lungs. Where the fuck had it come from? Behind them? That didn’t matter. It was here, it had Cameron and Alice—
Trapper
. Instinctively she went to pull Trapper up from the strap she always kept around her neck, but it wasn’t there. Like a phantom limb she was imagining its presence, and for a moment had felt powerful again, but the moment passed.

She watched Cameron struggle against the old man, who had grabbed Cameron by the shoulders and had started to hoist him up and off his feet.
What do I do,
she thought in that breathless instant of panic. When she had told Cameron she was better equipped at dealing with ghosts than he was she had lied, and now she was paying for that lie.

“Hey!” she said, screaming at the thing to get its attention. “Right here! Are you blind? I think you missed your target.”

The old man craned his neck around and snapped it into a 180-degree arc. It grinned an almost toothless grin, narrowed its black eyes, and tossed Cameron aside like he was a wet rag. As it turned the rest of its body around, Alice reached into the gun pocket of her leather jacket, produced the Glock, and cocked it. The metallic sound of the barrel sliding on its hinges sent a rush of power through Alice’s body and she raised the gun with both hands.

If it was here and she was seeing it, then it had manifested in the flesh; and a bullet wound would hurt him just as much as it would her.

It screeched, an ear-splitting sound that caused nearby windows to crack, and began to charge down the length of the corridor. Alice gently squeezed the trigger, and the gun went off with a loud bang and a bright flash. She had almost forgotten the feel of a gun in her hands—the muzzle flash, the kick-back, the smell of gunpowder. She had only had to discharge her gun on the field once during her time on the force, but used to go to the range often to hone her skills. Back in her Academy days, Alice had been the best shot of her intake.

And some skills you just don’t forget.

When the bullet flew out of her Glock, it went straight into the old man’s head and out the other side. The point of impact was tiny, but the exit was messy. Bits of
gore
so dark they could have been black sprayed one of the nearby walls, but the old man didn’t lose much speed. Alice squeezed the trigger again and succeeded in hitting the old man on the head this time too. It screamed as it barreled toward her, its mouth unhinging to become a dark, wide O.

Alice stretched the gun out with one hand and put a bullet in the thing’s mouth just as he came crashing over her, but the moment the Glock’s muzzle flashed the old man dispersed into a cloud of shadow that broke like a harmless wave of—putrid—smoke, and the bullet struck the wall on the far side of the hall.

Cameron came into view, his leather jacket covered in dust. “Did you get it?” he said.

“It’ll be back. I don’t think bullets will kill the old man.”

“You know what that thing
was
?”

Alice marched down the hall, past Cameron, and grabbed him by the arm. “I do, and we need to get the fuck out of here.”

“What? Wait! We just got here. What about Raegan and her mom?”

“Raegan is gone, and Raegan’s mom is all over your jacket and all over this house. We need to leave and get someplace safe—someone will have heard those gun shots.”

She ran past him, then, heading straight for the front door and yanking it open in her stride. Raegan’s apartment was the one at the end of the hall. When Alice turned to head out of it into the dark, light-less corridor stretching before her, she noticed something was different. The doors to the apartments along the hall were open. Had they been open before? She didn’t think so.

When Cameron came rushing out of Raegan’s apartment, he found Alice staring into the long hall—almost frozen.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Dust…” she said, and she pointed.

From behind the threshold of each open door, thin puffs of shimmering dust were being exhaled. And from behind the clouds of dust,
things
were beginning to emerge.

CHAPTER 10

Blood of a Shadow

The only door in the dark, cramped room led Isaac through an equally dark and stuffy corridor. The walls and ceiling were lined with pipes and rubber tubes, and though the darkness was near-total, Isaac could see the distinct shapes of two other doors—one to the right, and one at the end of the corridor.

Jim led the way, and Isaac followed his silhouette. When Jim arrived at the far door, he placed his hand on the locking mechanism, and said “Ouvrir”—the French word for “open.” The wedding ring on Jim’s hand suddenly flashed with soft blue light, there was a click, and Jim pulled the door open revealing to Isaac exactly where they were.

They were in the subway.

Isaac stepped out of the corridor and onto the tracks, rolling the sleeves of his shirt up as he went. This tunnel was dark too, but in a moment it filled with soft blue light emanating from Isaac’s magic bangle. He raised his arm to chest height and the light touched cables that ran along the floor like black snakes, train tracks that disappeared into an open mouth of nothingness, and struts and support beams which cast sinister shadows that seemed to follow Isaac’s movements.

“Where the hell have you brought me, Jim?” Isaac asked.

“We’re underneath the Warwick district,” Jim said, “In a section of the subway which has been shut down for about, oh, fifteen years or so.”

“That’s good to know.”

“Don’t worry. This place hasn’t seen a train in as long as that. Barely sees any humans, either. I’m the only one who comes down here; the only one who
can
come down here.”

In the darkness rats squeaked, water dripped, and shadows watched.

“What do you mean by
the only one who can come down here
?” Isaac asked.

“This place is one of my protectorates,” Jim said, “I have set up magical wards to keep it obscured from humans and free from interference by other supernatural entities. As best as I can, in any case. Creating any kind of lasting, blanket protection is difficult even for a trained librarian such as myself.”

“Don’t you have help? An assistant, perhaps?”

“I had considered it, but I’m a private man, Isaac, and I like to be in control. I didn’t want to risk anyone knowing my secrets. Any mage worth his salt will know the location of the majority of the areas I maintain, but this place is a secret I hope to keep for a very long time.”

“Aren’t you about to break your own promise to yourself by bringing me here?” Isaac asked.

“I’m willing to make an exception in this case.”

“Why?”

Jim stopped walking and turned to look at Isaac. In the soft blue glow, he looked like some kind of pale ghost, but then he pushed his glasses back into place on his nose and the illusion was broken. “You trust me, don’t you Isaac?”

“I do. We have been friends for a long time.”

Jim nodded. “Trust and friendship alone wouldn’t be enough for me to break the silence surrounding my most guarded secrets, such as this place. Having said that, I hope you can begin to understand the magnitude of what is at stake here.”

“Besides my life?”

“Your life and the lives of every mage are infinitesimal compared to the ultimate purpose of the souls they carry. All souls are eternal. Human souls drift across the vast oceans of time and space, shining like dim, distant stars. Were it not for the strange fusion of our once human souls with that of a soul forged in the Tempest, we would drift too—but now we have purpose. The halves of our souls responsible for our ability to perform magic leapfrog through time, travelling from body to body in the care of our Guardians, fulfilling duties and shifting cosmic balance one way or the other. Our Guardians are forbidden to tell us anything about any previous lives our Tempest born souls may have lived, but in every lifetime the purpose of a mage’s soul is presented to those who carry them.”

“And you think you’ve found mine?”

“I do.”

Jim turned and faced the sphere of darkness ahead of them. With a wave of his hand, every last one of the many rings on his fingers began to shine with pale blue light—the signature color of House Pluto—and the darkness shied away from the light. Where a moment ago there had been a dark tunnel to oblivion, the tunnel now opened into a kind of cavern. Seconds later, a number of static torches erupted with blue flame, illuminating the cavern. When Isaac spun around on the spot to take in the vaulted ceiling, the stone murals, and the podium at the center of the room, he noticed the way they had entered wasn’t there anymore.

Instead of an open subway tunnel, there was a small corridor—roughly large enough for two men to walk through, but no more. Isaac saw, on the other side of the tunnel, the train tracks and cables. He had somehow transitioned—without moving—from there to here; wherever
here
was. What was more, looking through the strangely narrow and elongated tunnel was giving him something like vertigo, causing his head to spin.

He turned away from the opening and focused his attention on the rest of the cavern.

“The nausea will pass,” Jim said, “It’s only temporary.”

Isaac stepped down the slope, toward the center of the vault-like cave. “What is this place?”

“Haven’t you already figured it out?”

“I will in a minute, but if time is short I was hoping you could help me along.”

“Look around. What do you see?”

Isaac saw them. He had seen them the minute he first took in a good eyeful of the place. The dead language of the Void Weavers was present everywhere; etched into the walls and murals, carved into the half-columns surrounding the podium at the center of the room, and on the podium itself. The runes had also been drawn into an ornate silver bowl which rested atop the podium. The bowl was empty, and simple, but there was something beautiful about it; majesty in simplicity.

“This is a temple,” Isaac said. “One of
their
temples.”

“Magnificent, isn’t it?” Jim asked, joining Isaac by the podium.

The earth shuddered lightly, rocking the temple just enough to shake loose earth from the ceiling and causing clouds of dust to fall around them. “Was that a—”

“Train? Yes. We’re directly beneath a junction.”

“So this is still our world?”

“Of course. When the Weavers built this place they designed it so that it could only be accessed with magic, but it is very much a part of the world we know.”

“I’ll do my best to learn as much about these mages as I can,” Isaac said, “Though I doubt this is the reason why you brought me here.”

Jim smiled and shook his head. “I said earlier I think I may have found our purpose. I don’t mean that our souls are connected in any way. They might be, but I can’t confirm this. What I am certain of, however, is that you have been touched by magic from the Void, which puts you in a unique position.”

“Is it that of
dead man walking
? I’m sure I’m not unique in that.”

“Not quite. The taint affecting your aura will only be fatal if you allow it to spread unchecked, but the only way to contain it is by using Void magic. This is where the weavers got their power. The Void tainted their souls, so they went out into that dark place and learned not only how to control their taint, but also how to protect against its power, and how to wield it against humanity’s enemies.”

“Just what is it you’re saying?” Isaac asked, though he knew the answer.

Jim pushed his glasses back into place. “You have a chance, Isaac, to walk the Void path. Only you can do this. You, whose soul has already touched the Void, have the power to enter that dark place and return as one of
them
.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible through magic. You know that.”

“Perhaps not, but what you’re suggesting is madness. How am I supposed to step into an unknown realm with no knowledge of its inner workings and master a form of magic I hadn’t even heard of before tonight? That’s a risk I’m not willing to take.”

“Isaac, I understand your apprehension—really I do—but you need to understand something else also. There are no more Void Weavers left. If there are, there can’t be many, and many is what we would need to beat the darkness that is surely racing toward this earth.”

Isaac’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Are you telling me you can’t feel it? The pain, the hate, the death. We see it every day on the news. The world is tearing itself apart.”

“Humans have always killed each other. I would know.”

“Indeed, but there are far more humans now than there have ever been at any point in the history of our species. Our world is protected from the Void by a thin layer of fabric. Each one of those deaths, each cry of pain, and each sliver of abuse creates a tear in that fabric, and without the Void Weavers to repair it,
things
are getting through. If what you told the Magistrate in court is even half true, then
Nyx
must surely be one of those creatures. But I can assure you—she won’t be the last, or even the strongest.”