Keys and Curses (Shadow Book 2) (16 page)

She folded her arms. “Rubbish.”

Fitz squatted on the floor just outside the circle. His voice was calm and measured. “It’s not rubbish.”

Flower flinched. “Will one of you please tell me what’s going on?”

“The man that Nikifor sees is real,” Fitz said. “Somehow he is sending what we call a shade to torment Nikifor. Right now he is threatening you, Flower. Is that correct, Nikifor?”

Nikifor nodded.

The shadow behind Flower reached out for him, but snatched his hand back from the air above the salt. He sneered. “Amateur sorcery? Really, boy, that won’t keep me out.”

“How can he threaten me?” Flower’s voice was less certain than usual.

“He is linked to you both. We need to figure out how and break his hold.” Fitz shifted position so he was half in the circle, half out. “Flower, you must remain perfectly still. Nikifor, you must fight him.”

“How?” Nikifor trembled. The Tormentor laid long, knotted fingers across Flower’s face.

Flower shuddered.

“Stay still Flower,” Fitz repeated. “Nikifor, focus on the Tormentor. Only on him. Push back. He is attacking you through your mind, your dreams, the qualities that make you a muse. The same skills that allow you to inspire humans. You must be a mirror that reflects the attack back at him.”

It was not difficult to focus only on the Tormentor. The shadow always took up every inch of space, sucked the life out of the whole room. Nikifor focused all of his attention on the space where the Tormentor’s eyes must be.

“Forget your fear,” Fitz whispered. “It is his weapon against you. Find another emotion.”

That was when Nikifor realised he was so angry his fists were clenched and his whole body trembled.

“Nikifor you’re scaring me,” Flower hissed.

“Quiet,” Fitz snapped. “Push into what you see, Nikifor.”

Nikifor straightened to his full height. Tension seized every muscle in his body. He fixed his eyes on that darkness and let the anger seize him.

Then something happened. It was very like the moment between waking and sleep, when he used to slip from Shadow into Dream and visit his writer. He hadn’t done that since he threw away his key; instead he’d drifted every night in a disturbed, formless void. But this was different. This time he was in a room cluttered with vials and metal instruments and books. There was a skull on a table in front of him, and two shiny glass balls with a blue current of electricity running between them. A single scalpel lay discarded, stained dark red with old blood.

All of this, however, was eclipsed by a massive machine cobbled together from rusty horns, giant springs, old carriage wheels and any number of other odd things. Liquid quicksilver poured from a pipe in the roof into a huge funnel, and sparks flickered and jumped from end to end. The cogs made a rickety thumping noise as they ground across the greatest horror of all: hundreds and hundreds of keys welded into the body of the beast. Keys that should have been hanging at the necks of all the missing muses.

A footstep. A choked exclamation.

He turned slowly to face a tall man in a purple and green coat, a shadow, a spectre, the creature who had haunted and hunted him for so long made flesh, even if this was a dream or a vision. Long dark hair streaked white from temple to tip framed a face so frozen with rage he might have been a monster fresh out of a nightmare.

The man stared at him. “What are you doing here? How did you do that?” He picked up a glass vial and ditched it at Nikifor’s head.

The glass shattered on his skin, bounced, tiny gleaming shards arcing into thin air. Nikifor felt like he’d slammed into a wall. He slid, fell into empty darkness that blinded him, deafened him to everything but that sensation of looking into the heart of evil.

Then he felt the dirt floor beneath his hands, smelled the faint sweet odour of pumpkin shells and mud.  He opened his eyes to a line of salt, a forest man who knew more than he was saying, a white-lipped Flower. The Tormentor was gone.

“Flower you can go now,” Fitz said.

For once, she didn’t argue or question. She got to her feet and left the hut as fast as she could.

Nikifor collapsed inside the circle, breathing hard. His senses crept back, one by one, until he felt quite normal again. He pushed limp strands of hair from his face.

“What happened?” Fitz asked after a few minutes of silence.

“I saw him,” Nikifor said. The words hardly seemed adequate.

“Did you recognise him?”

He shook his head. “There was a machine. A huge machine, with quicksilver pouring into it. It was wired together with–with–” he swallowed, hardly able to go on. “With keys. Thousands of them.”

“All the missing muses’ keys,” Fitz finished.

Nikifor nodded. He still trembled.

“What does the machine do?”

“I don’t know.” Nikifor met the other man’s eyes over the circle and saw the same terrible fears reflected in them.

“He wants yours and Flower’s keys,” Fitz finally said.

“I threw my key into the ocean.” Nikifor pushed a trembling hand through his limp, knotted hair. Everything was suddenly so clear. “He wants–he wants to find Flower!”

“Then he must not. Under any circumstances.”

Fitz’s words had barely left his mouth when an unearthly scream pierced the village.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Flower was only too glad to get away from Fitz and Nikifor. Honestly, the pair of them were freaking her out. She wasn’t entirely sure what she’d just participated in around that salt circle, but she hadn’t liked it one bit, not when the room went icy cold, not when Nikifor looked at someone, something right behind her as though he wanted to kill it, and definitely not when he’d gone blank and not been there at all. She had no idea when Nikifor had gone from being a messed up drug addict to someone who fought ghosts and shades, but she found the whole thing frankly frightening and she wanted no part of it. She patted down her hair and tried to shrug off the memory of invisible fingers yanking on it earlier. Had Nikifor said nothing, she could have believed it was her imagination.

But it wasn’t. And that changed everything.

Flower stopped in the middle of the village and glanced over her shoulder at Fitz’s pumpkin house. Who did he think he was, marching in and taking over and making Nikifor into someone who frightened her? She looked around for Mudface. She needed a distraction. Anything to bring the world back to normal.

It was far too early for the cooking fires, but the smell of smoke in the air intensified. Flower put a hand over her nose and mouth to block the overpowering stench. Really it was awful, something had to be on fire, but she couldn’t see even a wisp of-

An explosion of black smoke out of nothing knocked her to the ground.

When the smoke cleared, a young woman crouched in front of her. She had dirty blonde hair and wore a long grey coat. She pushed herself up on her hands and gave Flower a slow, triumphant smile. “Found you.”

“You!” Flower lunged for her, only too glad to have something to take her frustration out on.

The girl dodged away.

“You’re a false muse!” Flower sprang to her feet and stalked her in a tight circle.

The girl backed away with every step, her grin getting bigger and bigger. “I’m a real muse,” she said. “I’m one of the new muses. You’re the fake now. You’ve been fired. You’re obsolete. You’re an anachronism!”

“I’m going to beat the smoke out of you!” Flower yanked a pitchfork out of the ground and swung it at her. “Clear off! You come near these fairies and I’ll teach you the meaning of anachronism!”

“Am I supposed to be scared?” The girl danced away from the pitchfork. “Since you mention it, I’m only here because someone wants a serious talk with you.”

“Who?” Flower shook the pitchfork at her.

“Tut, tut, tut.” The girl shook her finger. “As if you didn’t know. Fairies, you say? How convenient for me. I think I might call in some friends.” She opened her mouth wide and uttered a long, shrill, unearthly scream.

Flower dropped the pitchfork and clapped her hands over her ears. The sound seemed to go on forever. It drew the fairies out of the crops and the pumpkin houses to gather around and stare. Fitz and Nikifor came running.

Flower dropped her hands the moment the noise stopped and gave Nikifor and Fitz a wild look, before glancing at the sky. Already a distant buzz gathered beyond the crops. A tiny dark spot appeared in the blue to the west.

The false muse gave her a wicked, wicked smile. “Times up.”

“Why you horrid little imposter!” Flower leaped for her again.

The girl disappeared in a cloud of rancid black smoke. Flower sprawled in the dirt and said every bad word she knew.

“Was that what I think it was?” Fitz’s frown sunk his whole face into a network of lines.

Flower let him help her to her feet. “They’re coming.”

Fitz said a bad word she’d never even heard before. He gestured to the circle of gaping Bloomin Fairies. “Into the crops, all of you, hide! The fetches are coming!”

They kept staring.

“Fetches!” Fitz roared. “Hide!”

Mudface pushed her way through to the centre of the circle. She clutched her book in one hand and waved the other madly in front of their faces. “Go find carrots until the stinkies disappear!”

Comprehension dawned. The knot of fairies broke up and ran into the crops.

“Mudface go with them, make sure they hide properly,” Fitz said. “The further away the better. Leave me a sign so I can find you.”

Mudface nodded and headed for the greenery.

“Nikifor can you hold them off?”

Nikifor, who already had the double-headed axe in his hands, gave Fitz the barest nod and stationed himself right in the centre of the village, quite obviously more than in the mood for a fight. She didn’t blame him.

“Flower,” Fitz said, “you need to get the Lord of the Gourd out. I’ll check the rest of the village, make sure everyone’s evacuated.”

There was no time to argue. Half the sky had darkened with a swarm of fetches even bigger than the last one they’d faced.

“Bring it on you stinking little villains!” Nikifor roared, shaking his axe at the sky.

She hadn’t heard him that mad in, well, ever. Flower bolted for the huge central pumpkin house and burst through the door.

Pumpkinhead dropped his mortar and pestle at her sudden entry and scattered powder everywhere. He jumped to his feet, ran to the Lord of the Gourd and poked her awake.

The Lord of the Gourd sat bolt upright and scowled at Flower. “What now you giant annoying dead freakin muse!” she yelled.

Flower kept calm. In situations like this it just didn’t do to lose your head. “Pumpkinhead, there are stinkies coming,” she said. “Go pick carrots until they’re gone. Keep out of sight.”

“But-” Pumpkinhead pointed at the Lord of the Gourd.

“Go.” Flower gave him her most ferocious scowl.

Pumpkinhead hurried out, muttering to himself about bossy dead freakin muses.

“Eh? What? Stinkies?” The Lord of the Gourd rose to her feet, folded her arms and made a horrible face at Flower. “What mischief you making now?”

“No mischief.” Flower matched the Lord of the Gourd’s scowl with a ferocious look of her own. “It’s just as I warned you earlier. A false muse found your village, and now the fetches are on their way.”

“You said there were stinkies!”

“They’re the same thing! The stinkies are coming! All your people are hiding in the crops, and you need to hide too or you’ll be killed!”

“This is my village!” The Lord of the Gourd jabbed at the ground with a gnarled finger. “And I’m not moving. Just you let those stinkies at me.”

“You’re not going to move from here, are you?”

The Lord of the Gourd folded her arms. “No.”

“Right.” Flower stepped over the Gourd, picked her up blankets and all under one arm and set off for the door.

“Hey! Hey you giant dead freakin dumb muse put me down! How dare you touch the Lord of the Gourd? I said put me down!”

“No.” Flower pushed open the door.

“Wait! Wait! The Gourd!” The Lord of the Gourd kicked and squirmed so hard it was almost impossible for Flower to keep her grip.

“What do you mean, the Gourd?”

“Get the Gourd!” The Lord of the Gourd yelled.

“Oh for Shadow’s sake!” Flower swung around, fetched the Gourd and handed it to her.

The Lord of the Gourd stopped struggling instantly. She glared at Flower with baleful eyes. “Great big freakin dead muse, how dare you touch the Gourd with your filthy un-fairy fingers?”

“Does this mean you’ll come with me if I put you down?”

The Lord of the Gourd’s snub nose went into the air. “No. You can carry me.”

Flower muttered several bad words under her breath, ducked through the door and stumbled into the day.