He smiled, his big teeth shining wetly in the
thin light.
"Jesus," she said, rising and backing
away.
"There you go again," he admonished.
"How the hell did you get here?" she
said.
"Tunnels, my dear.
As you might know, or
not, Junger and
myself
are legendary for our
tunnels."
"No ... I mean, how ... in the castle
... ?"
"Blackie granted us unlimited access to
this little retreat in reward for our creation of the Tree of Death. You
might've heard about it? It was quite well received. Anyway, that is why we
built it for him. That was our price.
Admission past the
gates at any time."
Unable to think, Danielle wiped some of Malcolm's
blood away from her mouth and forced herself to breathe evenly. Jesus. What the
hell was going on?
At last, she said, "Why’d you come
here?"
"Because this is where it's all going down,
isn't it? We've been watching for so long, but watching wasn't getting the job
done."
Going down?
What was going down? "What
do you hope to accomplish?"
"We still believe that we're all on the
verge of a new world order, and we intend to be in on the ground floor. Now is
a time of choosing allies."
"Allies," she repeated dumbly.
"So you want me for an ally?"
He laughed. "Not quite, my dear. If you had
killed dear Malcolm, it might be another story. That is why I came.
Ruegger, maybe, but not you.
We need a meal-ticket and we
can't have morals getting in the way."
For some reason, this didn't seem to shame him
at all, this admission that he was just looking for someone to take him where
he wanted to go. But, as Danielle had been raised to believe that you must find
friends where you could, maybe he'd been conditioned to believe that one should
find coattails to hang onto. The question was who that would be.
She wanted to ask where Junger was, but she
remembered Sophia telling her that the other Balaklava
was dead. Jean-Pierre had taken his life, and the world was a better place for
it. Cruelly, she smiled, hoping to hurt this fucker as best she could. She
couldn’t think of anyone else more deserving.
"How does it feel to be alone?" she
said.
"Alone?"
"Now that your
boyfriend's dead."
"Yes, Junger is dead, but I'll never be alone.
We will always be together. At any rate, you failed the test, Danielle. You let
Malcolm live. Part of me knew you would. I just can't walk away now."
"Shut up," she told him. "Just
turn around and get the fuck out of here."
"Ah, Danielle.
So tender, so fragile. I
can't bear to see you live unscathed, conscience clean. Maybe you wouldn't have
done it yourself, but he wouldn't be here if it weren't for your hatred."
He shrugged, to show that it didn't matter. "It's good enough for
me."
Her eyes darted to Malcolm, who had managed to
crawl off into a corner and was staring at the two immortals as if they were on
some celestial plane far removed from him. Then, suddenly, realizing Jagoda's
intent, his eyes widened in terror.
As the Balaklava
moved toward her old foster brother, Danielle cried, "No! Don't you dare
touch
him!
"
Jagoda continued towards Malcolm.
"You bastard!"
She lunged at him.
Half-turning, he swatted her away without
breaking his stride. For the last time, she reminded herself that he was
immeasurably stronger than
herself
. Her physical
presence could not deter him.
Jagoda reached Malcolm, crouched against the
wall, unmoving, perhaps thinking that Danielle could really come to his aid.
Suddenly, Jagoda raised a clawed foot and plunged it down, pinning Malcolm's
arm to the wall at the shoulder.
Using this to hold his victim in place, Jagoda
reached down, grabbed the arm
and twisted
it off.
Malcolm howled and writhed. The Balaklava
applied some of his own saliva to the spurting wound. The spit acted as a
coagulant, stopping the flow of blood almost immediately. Still, the wall on
that side of Malcolm's body was painted in red.
Jagoda raised the arm to his mouth and bit down
on the bone, letting the marrow burst on his tongue. Of course, thought
Danielle. This is what a Balaklava feeds on.
Malcolm was still alive, though. That was the
main thing. She might've been about to kill him a few minutes ago, but no more.
Inspiration struck her.
"Jagoda," she said, inching her way
towards the door. "If you don't release that man, you'll regret it."
Still munching on the bone, the Balaklava said nothing, just looked at her, triumph
blazing from his eyes. He stripped back the flesh of the arm as if peeling a
banana and chomped down.
Around his mouthful, he said, "Say 'bye to
Brother."
"No, I don't think so. Malcolm will be
around for awhile, unless you never want to see your precious Tree again."
Malice flared in his eyes.
"Touch
my Art and you will become a part of it, Danielle—and
remember, my Art
is Death."
"An artist is his own worst critic."
"Danielle, don't do this."
"Let him live and I'll forget it. Take
another bite off that arm and I'll hack apart every goddamned limb of your
fucking Tree."
"I will
not
be threatened.” He sank
his teeth once more into the arm.
Danielle flung open the door and ran as fast as
she could down the corridor. Streaking past the guard outpost, she wondered how
Jagoda would get around them, then remembered the tunnels he'd spoken of and the
stories Sophia had told her about the Labyrinth in New York. If he'd been here in the castle
for long, he'd probably already started a network of tunnels; hell, he probably
started one when he was here working on the Tree, and that was some time ago.
She ran and ran, at last finding herself in the
section of the catacombs reserved for the art exhibits. Though Harry had taken
her to see the Tree a few days before, she couldn't immediately remember where
it was, and by the time the memory surfaced she was already there.
Entering the chamber slowly, on guard in case
Jagoda had arrived before her, she took in the circle of coffins and the large
bone-tree rising from the circle's center. Directly over the tree, in the
ceiling itself, the green piece of glass glowed with the room's only light save
for the scattered torches blazing along the earthen walls.
From their erect coffins, Danielle could feel
the corpses staring at her. And they
were
staring, weren't they? It
wasn't just a trick of the light. And there! At the corner of her eye, was that
movement?
She waited.
Nothing.
She stepped toward the Tree, wishing she had
some bat or pipe or something to begin the damage with. She plucked up one of
the root-bones instead, which led from the base of the Tree to each individual
coffin. She selected a thigh bone, the closest thing to a bat she could find,
and started smashing away at the lowest limbs of the Tree. They broke loudly,
but they were bound so together that they wouldn't collapse without some effort
on her part.
At last, after several minutes of swinging her
bones (she needed a new one every so often)
,
she began
to do some serious damage, surely enough to enrage Jagoda if the Balaklava was protective of his art.
This is some funny shit, isn’t it?
Malcolm had consumed her
thoughts since she was a fourteen-year-old girl—she'd wanted to kill him for
so long
—and now she was willing to risk
her own immortal life to see him live?
Well, fuck it
.
Suddenly, from all around her, she heard strange
dry noises, creaks and pops from things that should've stopped creaking and
popping long ago. She ceased her destruction of the Tree and stepped away from
it, turning in slow circles to keep her back from being vulnerable.
The corpses lived. They emerged from their
coffins, yawning and stretching their gruesome limbs.
"Damn," she said.
They really
weren't
dead. And they weren't being manipulated by anyone's telekinetic abilities,
either. No, these things had been dead once, but were dead no more. They were
zombies, as Tommy
O'Connel
had been a zombie, and
they were moving toward her in terrifying synchronicity.
"Come on, guys," she said, raising her
hands in a placating gesture.
"Just calm down now."
Unheeding, they shuffled toward her. Their arms
rose. Their claw-like hands opened and closed.
"Just think about this," she said.
"I mean, hell—you want a cigarette or something?"
They came on.
Closer.
Too fucking much
.
Where had the normal world gone? Where were the
convenience stores, the Taco Bells, the bagel shops? One minute she was through
with Malcolm.
Ready to get on with her life.
Now, all
the rules had changed. And none of the new ones were good. When she had decided
to go with Cloire, to come to the Castle, she’d stepped through a looking glass,
but the world on this side of it wasn’t just dark, or distorted; it was just
plain mean.
From the expressions on the zombies’ faces, she
could see that their minds weren't all their own, that there was a force behind
them that was the driving entity.
Like Tommy
O’Connel
and Laslo's others.
If
these zombies were minions of a chalgid like Laslo, who was the chalgid?
The answer walked into the room, infant-ribs
sticking out of his tattooed face like little tusks. It was Junger, Jagoda's
blacker half, and he frowned deeply, surveying the damage Danielle had done to
his creation.
"Danielle," he said sadly. "What
have you done?"
"What have
I
done?" she asked,
trying to stop the fevered pounding in her skull. "What the hell have you
done, and what the hell are you doing here? I thought you were dead!"
"I am. I was. When Jagoda and myself were
at Laslo's mission, we knew the day might come when one of us would die, so
each of us tore off one of Singer's arms—we knew he was a chalgid, though a
weak one as yet—and drank the marrow. That way, if one of us died, the other would
be able to revive him."
"So Jean-Pierre
did
kill you."
"Of course.
When Jagoda resurrected
me, he gave me enough of his blood—even a few fingers so I could have the
marrow—to make me a chalgid, instead of the blood-slave I would otherwise
become."
"So now both of you ..."
He smiled wider. The implications drove through
her like spikes. Now the demons were more powerful than ever.
While Junger was speaking, his zombies—his
slaves—had ceased their approach toward her, giving her a few moments to assess
her options. She realized she was pretty much fucked unless she could talk her
way out of this.
"And now?" she said, trying to sound
confident, as if she expected him to shrug the whole incident off and let her
be.
"Now?" he repeated, chuckling to show
that it was a joke. To some extent his zombies joined in the mirth, but their
bodies had been dead much longer than Laslo's shades and they weren't cut out
for laughter. However, they had been raised by a Balaklava-chalgid hybrid and
their brittle bodies must be strong. Dust billowed from their cackling maws.
"Well, Danielle," Junger said, cocking
his head meaningfully; at this signal, the zombies began their forward march
once more. "Now you die."
"But no!" she
said, desperate.
"That's not the way it's supposed to be. You're only supposed to harass
us, not kill us. That's what Vistrot hired you to do, so that he'd have
something to use against Amelia ..."
Junger raised his eyebrows, and for a moment
Danielle thought she had him.
"So you figured that part out," he
said. "I thought Hauswell might prove useful to you. One thing you don't
know, though, Danielle: Vistrot's dead, or missing. In either event, Amelia has
effectively taken over his territory. Jagoda and I have free range to do
whatever we want with you. Ruegger, we'll leave to the kavasari. At this point,
she’s about the only thing to give us pause, and she has always had eyes for
the Darkling. Why interfere?"
The zombies were very near now. Danielle thought
of burrowing through the ground, but Junger was a shapeshifter and would be a
much better mole than
herself
. Which left one
option ...
She leapt upwards, grabbing the lowest branch of
the tree.
Climbed.
By the time she reached the second
level of branches, she could hear the zombies jumping for purchase on the
first. She clawed her way up the thorny sculpture, noticing things she hadn't before.
Human and animal skulls hung from the branches of the tree, as if they were the
fruit of this macabre creation.