Vanished (27 page)

I narrowed my eyes and kept my mouth shut over the urge to spit. Or vomit. Her aura had never been pleasant but it was a vile thing now. Twice dead, twice resurrected, blood-soaked, mad, and burning with her own fury, she was Hate walking.

“He took me from the fire. You and the others almost destroyed me, but he saved me. He bathed me in blood, soaked me in it, drowned me in it.”

I could see it as she spoke, like a film blazoned in fire on the glimmering, cold air. He dragged her from the house as Cameron had dragged Carlos and hid her in a place of cold stone and salt water. He did murder and let blood run like a brook. Her body, cracked and blackened like a cinder, drank the blood, swelling with it and healing itself, the pores of her skin like a million tiny mouths. For months he nurtured her on blood and the poison of his mind. Then, beneath the surface of a swelling pool of gore, he cut her into pieces. . . .

“. . . and he put me into the jars, filled with the blood that kept me alive, healing my burns. I was just too . . . large to heal in a single piece, he said. But the blood would keep me and mend my flesh. He promised me Simeon’s help when I rose. How was I to know it would take so long? What could I do?” she added, her hand curled elegantly as she made a small shrug. Her black bandages rippled and hitched over her still-raw joints. “He owned me then. And I owe him. And what he wants is you.”

The mood was broken as I felt my phone vibrate in the small of my back. It stopped after one buzz. Then it started up again in a moment and went on for three more cycles. Michael’s signal at last. They’d located Will and were coming to meet me. I didn’t know if they had Will or not and I hoped they wouldn’t get too close or do anything stupid if I wasn’t at the rendezvous when they arrived. They may have had what they’d gone for, but I didn’t and I couldn’t just leave, not with Alice preening and purring in front of me.

“You didn’t have to take Will to get me. I was coming anyway,” I ground out as my guts churned and settled again slowly.

She made a pout. “Oh, you don’t think I believe that, do you? That you would come just for Edward? Oh, no. The Pharaohn-ankh-astet said to take the thing most dear to you. And here he was! I already had your picture from when I first watched you for Wygan and seduced that silly man to beat you. Simeon knew just how to use the photo to make you desperate to come here. Nightmares are so much more persuasive than pleas, aren’t they? How could I resist? When I’m done, I get Edward’s domain in London with the help of the asetem and Simeon, and all I had to do was take Purcell,” she said, waving dismis sively at the trapped vampire behind Glick, “and your William. This great fool,” she added, flicking a scarlet-tipped finger toward Glick, “has been the last little cherry on my cake. And I’ll have done what Edward failed to do—hold all of London in my hand, all the vampires beneath my rule. Mine. Not his.”

I felt weak and dizzy. She hadn’t just followed me; she’d helped to kill me and she would push me farther into death for the sake of the debt she owed Wygan. I wondered what had become of my assailant once he’d left the courtroom the last time I saw him. Yet another thing I’d have to discover if I wanted to put my mind at ease or at least shut down the mental screaming that was threatening to overwhelm me.

Alice laughed, the sound purely insane and dangerous, rolling across the still room like an earthquake.

Glick stiffened. “For the Pharaohn? That filthy white bastard? You said they was breaking from the Pharaohn. You said it was for our advantage. Knew I shouldn’t have caved to the likes of you! You brought the asetem among us, you brought him—that Jew,” he spat with a glare at Simeon, “and you turned us on ourselves.”

Alice gave him a pitying glance with a lifted brow. Simeon didn’t react at all.

Glick took a step away from her, glancing at Simeon and picking a route far from either of them. “You lied to us,” he said, amazed. “A thing like you? Deceived me? Deceived the Brotherhood?”

Alice’s expression turned to a slow sneer of disgust. “Weak, useless fool.” She flicked her scarlet-tipped claw at him. “Kreanou. Relieve me of this . . . thing.”

A low hiss rose on my other side. I whipped my head to look at the silver-eyed monster beside me, but it was already moving. I shifted my glance toward Glick, Alice, and Simeon.

A look of terror flashed across Glick’s face. All eyes watched as he spun around and bolted with the unnatural speed and strength of his kind, streaking for the nearest open doorway. A black wind raced after him, edged in brick red, and blocked the door, congealing into the shape of the silver-eyed vampire—or whatever it was—with saber fangs curving from its impossibly gaping mouth. Simeon and Alice turned as one and walked a few steps toward them, Alice laughing with maniacal glee.

I heard a noise from Purcell and I dashed to him, hoping to get him out of the inevitable line of fire.

“No,” he gasped.

The room shivered in the Grey, flashing silver and red by turns. Something shrieked and Purcell collapsed to his knees as if he’d been scythed down. I closed the distance, but a rushing cold sprang up from the floor and gripped me like an icy fist. I was trapped as surely as if I’d been caged in steel bars.

“I tried to warn you,” Purcell whispered near my feet. “You stepped on the switch. Now you’re stuck in one of these damnable spell cages, like me! Another of Simeon’s horrid inventions. Don’t try anything magical or they freeze you like a fly in amber.”

“What about you?”

“It just crushes me if I move. I shouldn’t have flinched. But poor Henry . . .”

Glick screamed, and under the sound of Alice’s laughter, I could hear something tearing wetly apart. Glick’s screams stopped abruptly and the smell of blood thickened the air. Purcell whimpered as the spell squeezed down on him.

“Why, John,” Alice said, returning to our side of the dais, “you’ve got our guest stuck.” Her smile was sickening.

She turned and swept the room with her glittering stare. “There will be no more resistance from any of you! The kreanou has no mercy. He listens only to me and he only wishes to destroy.” She pointed back toward the arch where Glick had met his quick and gruesome end. “
That
is what happens to fools who try to cross me.”

My Greyness made movement into torture, and every degree of rotation ripped into me as if I were bound in barbed wire. Turning back to face Alice felt like I was being flayed alive, but I managed it.

Alice was watching me. “How nice of you to truss yourself up. Now all I have to do is deliver you and it’s all mine.” Then she added, her voice not much louder than a whisper, but piercing and clear as shattering crystal, “You should know. You should
want
to know, what it is you’re going to do.”

“I’m not going to do anything for you or the Pharaohn.” That didn’t sound as commanding as I’d hoped; more a pathetic whimper.

She just smiled back and purred words as sickening as venom. “It’s going to be lovely. He’s been trying for so long and now he finally has you here, alone, and Edward where he can’t run. It’s all been so very perfect. He said you’re a gate.” She tilted her head back and forth as she gave her tiny, evil smile, and I thought of my father’s puzzle, tucked into my pocket. It was a key. . . . “I don’t see it. A gate. Well”—she twitched her eyebrows, dismissing the incongruity—“I suppose you will be when we’re done. I am disappointed, however. I hoped you’d make more trouble. He says you have to die just a bit more. I wouldn’t mind if it were a lot more, but . . . well. He wouldn’t like it. And I have my demesne to look after now.”

She turned and beckoned. The kreanou, glowering, blood splashed, and ravenous, prowled over to her. “The House of Detention,” she said, her voice taking on the strange blue shiver of command. I could see the strand connecting her to the kreanou shimmer with it. “We’ll see what the butcher makes of her. And if not him, your turn.” Alice glanced at me again. “It would be a pity if the kreanou gives in to his nature. Dez!”

I didn’t have time to wonder about the kreanou’s nature and the connection between the creature, Alice, and her sorcerer. I was pretty sure someone was going to kill me—or do their best impression—in a few minutes, and I wasn’t quite sure I believed that Greywalkers always bounced back. It hadn’t worked that way for Dad. I preferred not to test Marsden’s theories if possible, and I just plain didn’t want to die!

The wavering demi-vamp dragged his steps to the dais. It was obvious he didn’t like what had happened to Glick, but he didn’t have a lot of options other than following the orders of his new Primate or being the next stress test for the kreanou.

“Take them to the House of Detention. You can dispose of Purcell there and leave her for the ghost. It’s really very poetic, don’t you think? Letting the ghost have a chance at killing the ghost killer?” She looked me in the eye with a red gleam of hate. “It wouldn’t work if you weren’t what you are. And don’t worry: I’ll take such good care of your dear William.”

I wasn’t sure, specifically, what the kreanou was, but the term “killing machine” fit it in general pretty well. I didn’t want to tangle with it if I hoped to live and save Will.

I kept Will in the front of my mind, even through the torturing jolts the cage stabbed into me with every step, even when my thoughts tried to wander to Quinton and whatever terrors were building back home, even when I wondered about the strange little puzzle in my pocket and what a gate might do with its own key. I focused on the one immediate thing: I had to get Will out.

We passed through the magical barrier around the room in a haze of pain. Once outside of the ceremonial chamber, the cages dropped off and Purcell and I could move easier, but we were both drained from the agony of the short walk. It was wretched going with Dez and the kreanou prodding us along through the buried catacombs.

“What’s this place?” I muttered to Purcell.

“We’re in the bones of the city. The catacombs and old tunnels. Down where the rivers used to flow until they covered ’em over and made ’em into sewers. You can hear the Fleet muttering its old songs if you listen,” he murmured back, misunderstanding what I’d meant to ask.

“No, I mean what’s this House of Detention?”

“Used to be the holding jail—where they kept prisoners until they could send ’em to another place. Or hang ’em. Miserable, it was. It’s a ruin now. Breeds ghosts like a battlefield. Most of ’em nasty.”

I tried to see into the darkness that descended as we went farther into the tunnels, but the ghost light was uneven and I kept catching glimmers of white and reflections of forgotten illumination that caught in my eye like dust. Things moved in the distance and sounds echoed and rattled strangely.

The last of the candlelight from the chamber beneath the priory had long faded, when I saw something flicker down a connecting tunnel like a distant mirror in the sun.

Then came a silver-white flash behind us that went up to the ceiling with a concussion that threw us forward. The roar and scream of the explosion came right behind it and my ears rang, but I could still hear a mad cackle in my head. Marsden’s cackle.

Fast footsteps pattered like a distant storm on my right and a clammy hand grasped my upper arm, wrenching me upright. I jerked my head to look at the hand’s owner.

Michael Novak yanked me toward the nearest black branch of the tunnel. “Come on!” he rasped in a low, panicky voice.

Screaming and rending sounds came from behind and the iron smell of blood mixed with the nauseating corruption of vampire curdled the air.

I didn’t look back. Whatever Marsden was doing, I didn’t want to waste the time he was buying us by watching it. I started to go with Michael, but Purcell threw himself between us onto my other arm. He stared into my eyes and clapped his hands around mine, pressing something rigid and toothed into my palms. “Edward’s vault. Tell him I am sorry.”

The kreanou shrieked its victory as Dez’s screams cut off short. Purcell shoved me after Michael before turning to run toward the carnage.

The younger Novak hauled me along, twisting my arm near to dislocation in his rush. “Run, run, run,” he chanted.

I gathered my wits, closed my fist around the hard, biting thing Purcell had entrusted to me, and sprinted with Michael through the opening and into the darkness of a passageway that plunged downward into the earth and the smell of sewers. I could hear scuffling and growls behind us but not a single cry. I hoped Purcell was made of tougher stuff than Dez and Glick had been. Never thought I’d root for the vampire . . . I hoped all this wasn’t in vain.

“Will?” I asked as we ran.

“Couldn’t get to him,” Michael replied, gasping the words. “Got worried . . . waiting for you . . .”

“You know . . . where?”

He grunted, “Uh-huh.” Then he shut up and we charged on.

I was lost, not knowing what direction we were going or where we were in the twisting tunnels and dry, ancient sewers below Clerkenwell. I just tore along in Michael’s wake. We flashed past a silvery line on the floor and I heard a crack of thunder as another blur of white light shot up behind us, leaving a barrier of sparking magic and acrid smoke. The shape of the spell reminded me of the tangles and traps Mara had made for me once—little bits of hedge magic woven into rings of thorns and grass. It wasn’t the same but it was similar, and I assumed it was something Marsden had done to cover our escape. I didn’t really care so long as the kreanou didn’t follow us.

Michael jagged to the right and into another tunnel. A pale smear detached from the wall and hurried beside us.

“That should send ’im whimperin’ back to his mother,” Marsden crowed as he fell in with us. “Round the left—we’ll be able to hop over there.”

“Over . . . what?” I panted, adrenaline shortening my breath and making me stagger.

“Time. To the House of Detention when it was still standin’. There’s a way out back then.”

“No!” I objected. “That’s . . . where—”

“I heard the plan,” he snapped. “But we shan’t be going through the bit that bloodsucking bitch had in mind, and they can’t follow us my way. The only other way out from this end takes us through St. James’s. You don’t want that!”

“No,” I agreed.

“Then bleedin’ trust me!”

Around the next bend in the passage we came to the fragment of an ancient wall and threw ourselves over it. Marsden scrambled up first, clutched at the thickly silvered air, and wrenched. . . .

The world jerked sideways.

We rolled to the ground and up against the wall at a new angle. Or possibly a different wall.

Marsden picked himself up and brushed dirt from his trousers and coat. He turned back to us, whispering, “Been a prison for three hundred years. Lots of bad things floatin’ about.” Then he put his finger over his lips. We followed him in silence.