half-lich 02 - void weaver (16 page)

“You don’t have anything to be scared of in here.”

Alice drew herself up and helped him with the big box he was carrying. “What’s in the box?”

“Boomer balls,” he said, and he opened the box and pulled a series of big rubber balls out of it. He handed one to Alice and asked her to throw it at an empty space. As soon as she did, the tiger cubs went running for it and began to paw and bite it. Some of the larger cats moved around and sniffed the larger balls where they fell, but mostly they seemed happy to sit in the sun for a while.

“This place is incredible,” Alice said.

“Yeah? I’m glad you like it.”

“I love it. The white tiger is gorgeous.”

Cameron smiled at the tiger, but his expression darkened. Alice noticed. “That’s Hope,” Cameron said. “She’s… sick.”

“Sick? She doesn’t look sick.”

“White tigers are heavily inbred, more so than any other kind. That kind of thing causes mental problems, as well as physiological deformities. Her immune system isn’t as strong as Nuala’s, and her eyesight isn’t great.”

“That’s so sad.”

“Don’t feel too bad. She was on the brink of death when we found her. I’d say she was lucky to come to me; with magic I’ve been able to slowly bring her back to health, and I think I can fix her immune system even if I can’t fix her eyesight. But the truth is
I
was lucky to find
her
.”

“What do you mean?”

Cameron smiled again. “Never mind, I’d rather not go into it.”

“Hey, last night I shared something with you that only one other person in this world knows. I think I’m owed a story, if you have one to tell.”

She had told him about her… peculiar condition. It was the only way she could explain how much she knew about Nyx, and how she knew exactly what had happened to the people who used to live in Raegan’s building. Telling him had been difficult. Her nerves had caused her to shake almost violently as she spoke, but Cameron was a good listener. He made it easy. And when it was done she had felt as light as a cloud.

“It’s not that great a story,” Cameron said, “Hope just came at a time when I needed it. That’s why we called her Hope.”

“Is it about a girl?” Alice asked.

“How about I just invite you over here one day to volunteer?”

Alice looked over at Hope and considered this. She imagined a future where she could stroke that big cat’s cheeks in the same way Cameron had done to Nuala last night. “I can come over? Just like that?”

“Yeah, we’re always looking for an extra hand. Besides, they like you.”

“I’ll consider it…
after
you tell me this story you’re withholding.”

“I’m not going to talk about it, okay?”

Alice frowned. Had she upset him? How? Maybe she had pushed too far. She hadn’t considered the topic may be
difficult
and not
awkward.
Had he lost someone? If he had, then she was being inconsiderate and that wasn’t cool. She was about to put her hand on his shoulder to try and apologize when, almost instantly, the wind changed.

Cameron noticed this too and perked up. The breeze had been a soft, easterly one, but it was now blowing westward and had picked up speed. Alice felt a thousand tiny ants crawl up her back and spread over her arms. It wasn’t just the wind that had changed, but the sun was fading too. When Alice looked up she saw thick clouds churning and converging above the sanctuary like a terrible time-lapse video.

“This isn’t natural,” she said.

“No… it’s not,” Cameron said, also watching the clouds change.

Alice’s instincts kicked in and she bolted for the front gate with Cameron at her side, leaping fearlessly over the big cats which had now started to move back into their sheltered habitats. Her boots slammed hard on the grass and the mud, kicking up large globs of it, but she kept running until she could see the Harley parked inside the perimeter of the sanctuary, and then she ran harder until she struck the chain-link fence.

There, beyond the outer gate, she spotted two vehicles which hadn’t been there the night before. Lined up in front of the vehicles were six people, all wearing long, dark dusters which billowed and flapped with the wind. One of them, a woman with purple hair, had her hands up and was making circular motions with them; and wherever her hands went, they left a glowing trail.

“Do you know them?” Alice asked.

“The magistrate’s legionnaires,” Cameron said, “How the fuck did they think to come here?”

“I don’t know, but they’re here.”

“Dammit.”

Cameron pulled the chain-link fence open, stepped into the space between the fence and the front gate, and put his hands up. Alice fell in beside him, drew her gun, and cocked it. The man standing at the center of the group—a bear of a man with a stern, no-bullshit face—stepped forward with his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Let me guess,” he said, his scratchy voice rising effortlessly above the sound of the churning wind, “You’re
Alice
.”

Alice shifted her weight from one foot to the other, keeping the gun behind her back. Did she recognize him? “You’ve got me mistaken. I think you’ve come to the wrong place.”

“I don’t think I have.”

“This is my sanctuary,” Cameron said, “My domain. Leave now, and no one has to get hurt.”

“Who said anything about anyone getting hurt?” the man asked, still approaching.

“You’re here with five other people and you’re causing all of
this
,” she said, pointing to the sky with her free hand. “You’ve clearly got plans to hurt
someone
.”

“You have it all figured out, huh?” he asked.

Alice now brought her gun up and aimed it at the man with the raspy voice. She
did
know him, but from where? “I’m warning you,” she said. “Don’t take another step.”

She never saw the magic coming. One of the men standing in the line made a gesture with his hand—barely a flick of the wrist—and the gun slipped out of Alice’s grasp. It hit the external gate with a clang and sailed across the open space and into the hand of the man with the raspy voice. He inspected the Glock, and slid it into the waistband of his pants. Alice could feel her heart
pounding
in her chest. Small beads of sweat were opening on her forehead, and her skin was tightening around her muscles and bones.

No Trapper, and now no gun either.

The man smiled. “Now that you’ve seen what we can do,” he said, “I don’t think you ought to be making any threats. Am I understood?”

“What the hell do you want?” Cameron asked.

“I’m disappointed in you, West. You could have been one of us.”

“That was back when the legionnaires were more than just thugs, Logan. You know you can’t get into my sanctuary, so just leave and no one has to get hurt.”

“There we go with the getting hurt business. No one’s going to hurt anyone, especially now that I’ve disarmed your friend. All we want to do is talk, so open the gate and let us in, and this’ll be over soon.”

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Good, because I don’t want to talk to you either; all I want is her,” he said, “I just want Alice Werner.”

“I don’t know if you heard me,” Cameron said, approaching the gate, “But you’re not getting anything from us, and you’re not getting in. You’re wasting your time here.”

Logan smiled—a sharp, threatening smile—and said, “I don’t want to have to do this the hard way, but let me explain to you what’ll happen if I don’t get your cooperation. Are you listening? We don’t need to get
in
to your sanctuary, but you need the sanctuary to stay in one piece for the sake of the animals you’re keeping under your care. If you don’t surrender her to us, we’re going to tear up every square inch of land here until all that’s left is a scorched, broken, ruin. Do you understand now?”

Cameron was about to speak, but Alice stopped him. “No,” she said in a low voice. “It isn’t worth it.”

“I won’t let you go out there,” Cameron said.

“Why not? You heard what he’s going to do.”

“He’s going to do it
anyway
. They aren’t here representing the magistrate. I know
them,
and I know my people. The magistrate would
never
condone the destruction of another mage’s space. It’s against the law. The fact they’ve threatened me with it tells me they’re acting on their own. I don’t have help here. The only thing I can do is fight for this place.”

Alice threw her gaze across to the legionnaires again.

“Tell you what,” Logan said, “I can see you’re having trouble there. I’ll give you… ten minutes to decide whether we do this the easy way, or the hard way. This can all be over before breakfast. I don’t know about you, but I’d kill for a plate of pancakes and some bacon.”

“How do we know you’re going to honor your word?” Alice asked.

“You don’t. Your ten minutes starts now.”

CHAPTER 16

Infection

“Begin?” Isaac asked. “Begin what?”

The mirror version of Isaac with the black mouth smirked and leaned out of the bedroom. The door shut hard in front of him leaving, Isaac in the bedroom with his Guardian and his mother. He turned to look at her, and immediately upon laying eyes on her cold, dead body felt his muscles contract and release all at once.

She had been so beautiful. He had remembered her not as a woman or a mother, but as the embodiment of light and warmth itself. In each and every one of his memories of his mother, she was always possessed of a soft, warm glow—like an angel. With this memory unearthed now, he never thought he would be able to see her in the same light again.

“I don’t know what to do,” Isaac said. “I need guidance.”

“I cannot accompany you on this journey,” the Good Doctor said. “If you wish to become a Void Weaver, you must do this alone. You must learn so that I may teach you.”

A paradox,
Isaac thought. “I… I don’t understand,” he said.

“You must, or we will not survive.”

“Wait,” Isaac said, but the Good Doctor was already fading into the shadowy corner of the room. “No! Don’t go!” Isaac dashed toward the shadows, his hand outstretched. By the time he got there, the Guardian was gone, and he was alone; alone with a corpse.

Isaac came up to the body and knelt beside her. His eyes were stinging and his throat was tight, but he took her cold, bloody hand and held it. He thought about her then, about the last year, and months of her life. Seconds he himself had been witness to. He vowed he would never forget the way her eyes, wide and fearful, had regarded him when he entered the bedroom and saw what she had done. She hadn’t expected him to see the act itself, hadn’t wanted him to, but he had come anyway, excited to tell her they had bought an entire cheesecake from the bakery for them to enjoy.

And he
had
forgotten. His brain had taken this traumatic memory, locked it in some deep, dark corner of his mind, and had left it there. Only the Void itself had opened that attic door, had rummaged around for this very memory, and had deliberately opened it for Isaac to look at. It was the mental equivalent to opening a box with a rotting human head inside of it, complete with the stink, and the flies, and the instinct to throw up.

Isaac put his clean hand on his mouth to stifle the moan that threatened, at any second, to spill out. Around him the world evaporated, like morning mist chased away by the sun’s touch. A cold wind pressed down on his face and shoulders, and Isaac realized as he stood that he had gone back to the dark place—to the place where his body slowly turned to mist and light.

He spun around on the spot like a dog chasing his tail, calling into the darkness, but receiving no reply. His Guardian wasn’t there, the doppelganger wasn’t there, and the world itself wasn’t there anymore. All that existed was the crushing darkness, the chilling cold, and the sense that there were
things
watching from the dark—hungry, inscrutable, unknowable things.

The passage of time meant nothing in this place. Hours, minutes, seconds—time itself blurred together so that it was no longer linear, one second happening before the next, but an ocean. Everything that had ever happened, was happening, and would ever happen, collided into the same moment. The only thing Isaac had to ground himself with was the slow way in which his physical, human body was turning to smoke. This was all that was real to him.

He closed his eyes hard and concentrated on making his own will manifest—to further strengthen his sense of being. But when he opened them again, an old, dusty classroom seemed to have come up out of nowhere to surround him. A spinning globe sat on the teacher’s table. Classic fictional works from the likes of Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and William Shakespeare filled the bookshelf next to the blackboard. The teacher’s desk itself was covered in papers, notebooks, pens, and even an old calculator.

This place
, he thought,
this was my school back in Surrey.

A cascading explosion of sound grumbled overhead, and Isaac faced the window which looked into the schoolyard. The sky was dark and the clouds were moving quickly in the same direction, like animals fleeing from a predator. Someone coughed and Isaac turned to find the classroom was full of glassy-eyed children, all wearing the same buttoned gray shirts and moss-green sweaters—the Wesley Kensington Secondary School uniforms.

Isaac’s eyebrows knitted together and he stared at the children; for a moment, he was unable to speak.

“H-hello,” he said, but the children didn’t reply.

His vision blurred momentarily and his head began to spin. He shook his head, blinked away the blurriness, and brought his mind back into focus only to find the classroom empty. His heart began to thump against his ribcage. He hadn’t heard the children get up to leave, hadn’t heard the scraping of chairs on the tiled floors, or the murmur of voices, or the rustling of bags and schoolbooks.