The Coldest War (37 page)

“I bet ol' Ivan never saw this coming.”

Past another yawn, Will said, “Oh, yes. Undoubtedly.”

Roger showed his identification to the sentries manning the Admiralty screen. He parked the car at the foot of the wide marble stairs. The rising sun tinted the pale building with gold. Will stepped from the car. His shadow rippled up the stairs, as if escorting him inside.

Will drew a deep breath to hold the collywobbles at bay. He hoped today's events would prove Gwendolyn correct. Perhaps he'd be spared the worst of it; perhaps he wouldn't have to speak any Enochian. After all, that was the children's job. But he knew better. This was Milkweed, after all, and Milkweed left nobody unscathed. It would chew him, and swallow him, and cough him up again. But this time there might not be a Gwendolyn to catch him.

They stopped at Pethick's office to retrieve the key to the cellar. Marsh and, presumably, the Twin were firmly ensconced behind the locked door to Pembroke's office. Pethick was on the telephone when Roger and Will entered.

“You're quite certain there's no answer?… Get inside. Find anything that might tell us where Leslie's gone.… Look, I don't care if he lives in the bloody Taj Mahal. Just get in.… Yes, I'll take responsibility. Ring me the moment you have something.”

He dropped the handset on its cradle, hard enough to make the bells hum.

Roger said, “Trouble?”

“Leslie's gone missing,” said Pethick.

Will hadn't interacted with Pembroke much since those first intensive debriefings just after Marsh collared him. When Pembroke came to the safe house, it was mostly to question Klaus and Gretel.

Will said, “That's troubling.”

Pethick sighed. He dug out a key and handed it to Will.

Will imagined how he and Marsh might have reacted, had Stephenson suddenly vanished while Milkweed was on the verge of a major operation. It
was
rather suspicious, and compounded Will's sense of dread. This was not right. But he knew better than to think it might scuttle the day's plans, so he left the worrying to Pethick and resigned himself to spending the rest of the day in the cellar.

The pall of unease hanging over Will thickened into coal black thunderheads of despair when he checked on the children.

Finger paint had been splashed across the observation window. Picture books had spilled from an overturned bookcase. Torn pages littered the floor. They'd shredded their cushions; goose down swirled around their feet, piled up in the corners like snowdrifts. The maps hung in tatters. And in the midst of the destruction, the children virtually bounced off the walls while screaming themselves hoarse in a hodgepodge of English and Enochian.

The children, Will knew, took their emotional cues from the Eidolons. Insofar as cosmic entities had emotions; Will had always been unclear on that point. He doubted any of the other warlocks could have given a definitive answer.

Something was very, very wrong. Pembroke just happened to go missing while the Eidolons decided to throw a tantrum? No mere coincidence, this. The Eidolons saw everything at once, everywhere. Not as a chain of discrete events through time and space. A stone, a pond, and the ripples were all the same to them.

But which parts are the ripples, and which parts the stone?
Will wondered.

When they weren't communing with demons, the children were subject to the limitations of their human bodies. The youngest succumbed to weariness first. Pandemonium descended into bedlam, and then into mere chaos. It was as though a cyclone had passed through the classroom, whipping the children into a frenzy, but now it had passed, taking their appetite for mischief along with it. Several children were snoring, sprawled on torn cushions or huddled together on the floor, when Marsh brought the Twin downstairs.

Like Klaus, Gretel, and the other men and women whom Will had glimpsed in the Tarragona filmstrip, the poor woman had a bundle of wires trailing from her skull. But the first thing Will noticed was her eyes. They didn't match. He wondered if her sister shared that unusual trait.

“Well, hello there,” he said. “My name is William.”

Behind the Twin, Marsh slashed one hand through the air in a frantic “cut it out” motion.
Ah. Yes. Just do my job, shall I? Pretend she's a useful tool and nothing more?

Will ignored him. “I understand you've had a rather trying morning.”

Marsh said something in German, ostensibly translating for the Twin. She spared a moment from surveying the surroundings, the expression on her face growing more puzzled by the moment, to nod at Will. He recognized the slate she carried; Marsh had used it sporadically during the first few days after he returned from the hospital. A single word had been printed on the slate in block letters, and underlined:
BITTE?

Will had only a smattering of German, but the meaning came across just the same. She begged Marsh to deliver on his promise. Will suspected she might change her mind after the Eidolons gave her a once-over.

Marsh frowned at the observation window, where streaks of green, purple, and red trickled down the pane to mix into a dull brown along the sash. “What the hell is this? What did you tell them?”

Will pulled him aside. He whispered, “I told you they were agitated, didn't I? Well, here's your proof. They had already torn the place to shreds when I arrived.”

“They look exhausted. Can they still do what we need?”

Will made an effort to keep his voice level. “Perhaps we ought to rethink this. First Pembroke goes missing, and then the Eidolons whip the children into a frenzy. Don't you think this is a bit troubling?”

Marsh shook his head. “The Eidolons had nothing to do with Pembroke. It's Gretel. I'd swear my life on it.”

Damn the stubborn fool.
“You may very well be, if this isn't a coincidence.”

“We'll worry about it later.” Marsh pointed at the Twin. “You need to get her sister here, now. We can't risk having them tell Ivan about you and this place.”

“You don't trust them.”

“Of course not.”

Will asked, “Pethick's done his part?”

The words tasted like ash. He leaned against the wall, took steadying breaths, trying not to sick up.

The Eidolons had demanded eight new blood maps for today's work. Eight innocent civilians killed or maimed by their own government. Will hated himself for knowing this and not shouting it from the rooftops. One can either condemn atrocities, or be an accessory to them. Will had done both in his life.

The last time Milkweed had attempted a teleportation, Will and the other warlocks had been forced to derail entire trains in order to meet the Eidolons' price.

Marsh nodded. He still favored the wounded side of his neck when he moved. “The prices have been paid. For this, and for what comes later.”

Will couldn't think of any further way to stall. And the poor woman looked desperately sad. So he said, “Let's get this behind us then.”

He ushered Marsh and the Twin through the door to the classroom. The few children who weren't dead asleep ignored the newcomer, much as they'd ignored Will the first time he'd come here. But Marsh's arrival brought their stupor to an end. The older children nudged the younger ones.

“The man Marsh is here.”

A few blinks, a few rubbed eyes, and soon the entire class was on its feet. As one, they crowded around Marsh and the Twin, who looked deeply uncertain about this.

“The man Marsh is here,” repeated the oldest. The others repeated Marsh's human name. It became a chant.

“Children.” Will clapped. The chanting continued, faster. Will clapped again.
“Children!”

They stopped. They looked at Will. “Hello, William,” said the boy who'd recognized Marsh.
Will-ee-am.

“Hello, children.” He cast a glance at the Twin. She looked shaken. He tried to give her a reassuring smile. Marsh spoke to her in what was probably the most soothing tone his ruined voice could manage. Will returned his attention to the children.

“Do you remember when I told you about my friend, whose twin sister is lost and alone?”

A handful of children nodded. The rest watched him with dull eyes.

Will held a hand out to the Twin. She came forward.

“Here she is. Isn't she nice?” From the corner of his mouth, Will added, “Wave to the children, please.” Marsh translated; she managed a trembling, halfhearted wave.

“But our friend here,” said Will, “is quite sad. She misses her sister very much.” He looked around at the assortment of cherubic faces. “I think we should bring her sister here. Don't you?”

Will had tied himself in knots over the wording of the negotiation. He'd opted for the clearest, most specific statement possible. It was crucial the children understood exactly what he wanted, lest he wind up with a two-headed grotesquery screaming itself to death on the classroom floor. They sought to
reunite
the Twins, but not
unify
them. Such was the danger. Without sufficiently considered phrasing, the Eidolons might very well try to stuff both women into the same body. It was all the same to the demons. Will hoped he'd circumvented that, but still felt queasy. She seemed decent.

“Bring her here,” said one of the oldest boys.

“Bring her here,” said the girl in the pink frock.

More children picked up this new chant. New voices joined in each iteration.

Will fished inside a pocket of his waistcoat for a safety pin. Raising his voice to speak over the chanting, he said, “I have to prick her finger. Her sister must draw her own blood as well. The tiniest drop will suffice.”

She looked even more confused and doubtful when Marsh relayed the instructions. But she let Will stab the pad of her index finger. He squeezed, gently, until a scarlet bead welled from the puncture. Meanwhile, her expression went a bit slack. The children picked up the tempo.

The Twin winced. Marsh asked her something in German. She nodded. “It's done,” he said.

The last children joined the chorus. As before, they switched seamlessly from English to Enochian: inhuman syllables built from the howls of dying galaxies, the sizzle of starlight, the thunder of creation, the silence of an empty universe. Terror replaced apprehension on the Twin's face.

Something entered the room. It oozed in through the fissures between one instant and the next. That dreadfully familiar pressure, that suffocating sense of a vast intelligence suffused their surroundings. Even the air felt thicker, heavier. More real. The floor rippled underfoot, as the geometry of the world flowed like soft candle wax around the searing reality of the Eidolon.

The children burbled in Enochian. They spoke in unison, their precision inhuman. Will still hadn't cracked the deep structure of their creole, but the surface meaning cascaded through the chthonic rumbles. They called up a prior negotiation, put it to the Eidolon's attention.

It responded in kind. As the surface of the sun to a smoldering campfire, so, too, was the pure Enochian of an Eidolon to that filtered through human flesh. There was a deep structure here as well—undercurrents of impatience and agitation churning a malevolent sea.

The Twin clamped her hands over her ears. The slate fell from her trembling fingers. It bounced: once, twice, then made an impossibly slow pirouette before coming to rest suspended on a single corner.

Will shifted his weight again, buffeted by the howl of Enochian. He listened.

Commingled blood. A price paid. Somewhere in London, a pair of window-washers had tumbled to their deaths when their scaffolding failed. Scaffolding sabotaged by Pethick's men and marked with specks of the warlock children's blood. Elsewhere, a chain had snapped at a shipyard, crushing two men. And an accident on the Tube had killed five and wounded eleven.

Commingled blood maps. Another sliver of the world handed to the Eidolons. Milkweed had overpaid, but the Eidolons never made change.

The negotiation and blood price were complete. Now it was the Eidolon's turn. It agreed to this task in the language of creation, using grammar like a chisel that sculpted reality.

Will nodded at Marsh. Marsh took the Twin's wrist and pulled her hand toward the children. A red streak marred her ear where she'd pressed her fingers. Blood dripped to the floor, loud as a scream.

The Eidolon found her blood. It read the map, traced the boundaries of her existence, and
saw
her.

Terror distorted her features, revealed rings of eggshell white around her mismatched eyes. Her knees gave out. Marsh caught her.

Almost done. Now for the trick that made this entire venture possible. A loophole that would enable the warlock children to retrieve a person they'd never met.

Identical twins. Identical blood.

All that remained was to make the connection and bring it to the Eidolon's attention.

See this,
said the children.
Two bodies, one blood.

“Quickly now,” Will managed. “She has to connect with her sister. While it's watching her.”

Marsh whispered in the Twin's bloodied ear. Will couldn't imagine how she could concentrate under that cosmic scrutiny. But she was stronger, far stronger, than she looked. Her fear-wide eyes glazed over as she once again called up that thing Klaus called
Willenskräfte
to build a bridge of willpower to her sister.

And that's when everything went to hell.

The undercurrent of agitation from the Eidolon erupted into a tsunami of rage. Will dropped to his knees, his concentration shattered by the onslaught. Even the children staggered beneath the tidal wave of celestial indignation. They screamed, curling into fetal balls as they hit the floor.

The Twin lay unconscious, dragged to the center of the maelstrom. Marsh crawled forward. He tried to grab her, but the Eidolonic fury had shredded the space and time around her to confetti.