Distant Star (8 page)

I stood in ankle-deep ash, right
in the heart of Reach City. The air was cool, stagnant, and tense, as if
waiting for something to happen. A book printed in Will afforded access to
these lands of make-belief-made-real, but never into the story itself as it was
written. Why would it? A story written down had already happened. We had the
world after the tale, and this particular world I had ruined.

Once upon a time, I had given a
speech here about victory and freedom—
sugar
and spice and all things nice, boss—
and fighting the good fight. My
words had gone on to bury about eight million people.

Here, the penultimate battle of
the Tome Wars had been fought.

Here, I had killed a king and
toppled an empire.

Here, Tal had conceived of the
Degradation to seal away what we discovered in Atlantis. And from here we’d
made the deadly race to the Lost City—madmen and demons chasing the two
of us across Forget along the edge of the Void—and the end of the war.
Oh, Tal, how fast we ran.

The Reach was a modern metropolis
by True Earth standards. Before the best of my good intentions, the city had
been vibrant and busy, but appeared desolate now from where I stood. Twisted
and ruined husks of scorched cars lined the sidewalks, listing like broken
fence posts under the weight of all the ash and rubble. Lifeless skyscrapers
clawed at the dark clouds overhead, with piles of filth and bone swept into the
doorways. Fire had ravaged most of the city, yet I could still make out small
details, such as advertisements on the billboards.

Scattered all about the square
were dusty books, remnants of the Tome Wars, spines broken and pages ragged.
The stories were blank, spent, and small sparks of silver light danced about
the broken worlds. A massacre in more than one sense had happened here, all
those years ago.

No matter,
after all said and done. I turned away.

Pools of starlight flooded the
cusps of the tangled, thorny white roses growing where there should be no
roses. The flowers had pushed up through the cracks in the warped roads, and
thick, ropy green vines clung to the devastation. I thought them beautiful.
Almost.

“You touch one Roseblade…” I
muttered, and with a snarl ripped the nearest rose from the ground by its stem.
The thorns pierced my palm and tore at my fingers. Drops of blood stained the
petals crimson.

Clenching my fist around the
blasted rose, I stepped lightly through the ash fall, each pace echoing down
deserted city streets, and made my way across town to the safe house. The walk
was long and lonely, through nothing remarkable. Everything was covered in
grime and looked the same.

The small apartment was no
different. In the story of
Nightmare’s
Reach
the place had been home to the protagonist’s family who’d been stolen
in the night by secret police for crimes against the corrupt state. In my
story, the safe house had been a place to hide, to form unspeakable plans, and
to fall in love, of all things, or the beginnings of love—of desire made
real.

I’d hidden my body in one of the
upstairs bedrooms.

The stairs creaked under my
weight, and plumes of dust danced in small clouds around my feet.

“First one to fall in love loses. Ready, set…” I cupped Tal’s cheek
and kissed her lips. “Go.”

Scratched into the paneled wall
above the staircase was a bit of Tal’s handiwork: our names enclosed within a
crooked heart.

Silly girl. Silly, beautiful
girl.

I didn’t quite dare touch those
splintered names. Call me a coward, but touching them didn’t feel right after
what had happened. We were nineteen. Young and in love.
That
old story. Carving the heart in the wall had been a hopelessly
childish thing to do. But then, hadn’t we been hopeless children? Hadn’t we
believed we could make a difference? End a war? Love each other forever?

“Two out of three ain’t bad,” I
muttered.

Looking back, I knew we’d
understood next to nothing about love, and when we first kissed and spent our
night together, bleeding and bruised in this very room, lust, not love, drove
us. Love came later, only a day later, when I watched her die.

In our special room upstairs, an
old mattress sagged on a broken bed frame which hugged the wall. The shattered
window looked out at ruin. Thick white rose bushes, again where no rose bushes
should be, grew up through the floorboards here, as well. Thorny vines and
pure, untouched white petals brought back memories of Atlantis, of crystal
swords, and of the end of the world.

Beneath all that, marring the
dust and the wreckage, spread a crimson stain that could only be blood. The
stain didn’t look fresh, but then, it didn’t look old. I guessed it had been
created a few days ago, at most.

My body
had
been here, where I’d sent it, and the roses had grown after my
body had gone. In between now and then someone had stolen my beautiful corpse.

Damn. The flowers were strange,
but not entirely unexpected back here in the realms of Forget, given my sordid
past and connection to certain lost powers.
Keep
it simple, stupid
.

The roses were a sign from the
past. Another sign, if another was needed after my death and Jeff Brade’s
attack.
Trouble, and in our road, boss.
At least the presence of the abundant bushes made my next move clear.

I would travel deeper into
Forget.

Back to Ascension City.

But first I had to return to True
Earth, to prepare.

CHAPTER TEN

Hunting the
Transdimensional Whale

If I was honest with myself, and
I’d long ago promised Tal that I would be, then I’d been looking for a reason
to return to all I’d left behind, since my exile began. My death seemed as good
a reason as any to go back.

The white roses alluded to a
secret I’d left buried with a man in the market districts of Ascension City,
and they were a thorn in my side that needed pulling. If this was to be my last
battle, then so be it. I’d go out swinging and maybe take a king or god with
me, before I was through.

Ethan was waiting outside of the
shop when I stepped out of
Nightmare’s
Reach
in the late hours of the afternoon.

He was alone, which was odd. A
small sliver of worry for Sophie made me flip over the ward enchantment sign
and let him in.

“Glad I found you,” he said. “I
think something’s been following me.”

“Ethan, I don’t really have time
for—”

“No! I’m sorry, but you’ve got to
listen. I can’t find Sophie and she’s not taking my calls.”

I closed the door and flipped
over the sign again. That tingle of subtle Will rushed through the shop. Ethan
shivered, though I doubt he knew why. He was green. Despite my lessons, he
probably still thought himself some sort of wizard or sorcerer.

“I’m sure she’s fine, mate.” I
wasn’t sure of any such thing, but I had my own hand to play, a lousy hand,
really, without a happy ending. I wanted to say goodbye to Emily, but that
wasn’t in the cards, either.

“Can you… I don’t know… ‘Will’
her a message, or something?”

“Will doesn’t work like that.
Ethan, perhaps you should start again. Someone following you?”

“
Something
. Something that moved so fast—and it was all dark,
like a shadow. But a living shadow. With nothing attached to it.”

Now he had my attention. “A
shadow?”

“I could feel it at university,
where I last saw Soph, and on my way over here,” he said, “like an itch on the
back of my neck.” He scratched at his hairline. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t
think it was real. I
saw it
, Hale!”

“I believe you. I do.” I rubbed
at my brow to ward off the inevitable headache. “Sounds like a Voidling.”

Ethan paled so quickly I thought
he might faint. He slumped against one of the stacks, knocking over a heap of
Shakespeare and Austen. “I thought Marcus was just trying to scare me off.
Why’s it after me?”

I patted him on the shoulder and
attempted a reassuring smile. “It just followed you to me, I’m sure. They took
five years to get here, but here they are. It’s probably skulking around the
courtyard, zeroing in.”

“You don’t seem worried about
that. It’s going to eat our souls!”

“Thing is,” I said, as if I
hadn’t heard him, “five years is nothing to these creatures. They exist outside
of time. Outside of everything. From beyond the universe. All things being
even, it actually found me fairly quickly. I thought I’d be an old man before
the Voidlings even bothered.”

“So… bad luck?”

“Oh, always. But this feels like
something else. For it to arrive now, of all times…” I gazed out through the
fragile windowpanes into the brightly lit plaza, darting from nook to cranny and
anywhere darkness could hide. With everything else that had happened in the
last few days, the appearance of a shadow-ken could be no coincidence. “I think
it had help. A guiding hand.”

“Are we in trouble? Can I sneak
out the back, or something?”

“Safest place for you is right
here,” I said and meant it. “Tell me, Ethan, have you ever used your Will to do
damage? To hurt?”

“No.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m telling you, no!”

“Every kid plays with matches,
mate, so give me the truth. I’m not asking if you’ve killed anyone, but shot a
fireball into the ocean? Blasted a sphere of lightning at a Coke bottle?”

“Well, I guess I may have—”

“Good. Probably won’t be enough,
but good. This thing comes at you, hit it with all the coins bouncing around in
that thick skull of yours. Go down swingin’, chief.”

Ethan clenched his fists and, for
the first time, looked me in the eye. “You’re insane, aren’t you?”

“I think I’ll go change into my
black waistcoat.” I’d watched myself die in the grey one. “Mind the shop until
I come back?”

A Voidling was the broad and
sweeping term for the collection of living shadows and other monstrosities that
existed beyond the known realms. The Knights knew they existed. Every now and
again, probably more often since the Degradation went so awry, they seeped in
at select places in the world, holes in reality, and caused havoc. Voidlings
were the antithesis of the written word, because they devoured not just flesh
but aspects of the Story Thread itself.

For the most part, they were
mindless. Those that crossed the Void into reality did so to
eat
and be destroyed. They were
ridiculously hard to kill because, technically, they weren’t alive, but they
could be blasted to nothing with enough fire and ice and lightning.

But, as I
said, only for the most part.

Other kinds of Voidlings existed
beside the mindless shadows. These entities had intelligence, purpose, and
desire, and were quite dangerous. Anyone who might survive an encounter with
such a creature rarely did so intact, or with even a semblance of sanity. The
thing that had followed Ethan was of the latter kind—it had to be, given
its patience in the courtyard—and had stalked him to me. Clever, really.

I’d give the Voidling the shop,
but I’d have to take Ethan into Forget with me, a kinder fate, but not by much.
Upstairs, I shrugged into my finest black waistcoat and navy blue necktie. The
coat had a custom-made holster stitched into the lining for a six-by-nine
paperback. Heading back downstairs, I plucked
Tales of Atlantis
, hidden in plain sight, from one of the piles of
books stacked haphazardly on the spiral staircase.

Ethan had helped himself to a sip
of spicy Captain’s rum in my absence. Good for him. I nodded at a dusty glass,
and he poured me two fingers’ worth.

“You ready?”

“Ready for what?” he asked.

“We’re going to skip a few
lessons in your education, Mr. Reilly. But we’ll have to act fast. As soon as
that thing outside senses a drop of Will from either of us it’ll attack, for no
other reason than its hunger.” My ward enchantments were useless against the
Voidling’s power, and after all the time away from Forget, I wasn’t sure if I
still had the strength to fight it.

“Okay, but what about Sophie?”

My first thought was an unkind
one. My second, somewhat worse. I had no reason to think she was already dead,
not based on the evidence, but with a Voidling on the loose, her chances were
slim. Ethan must have read the look on my face. He moaned.

“Sophie can take care of
herself,” I said.

“I’m not going with you if she’s
in trouble,” he said, swallowing hard. “I came to you for help. But if you’re
just going to run, then I-I’ll find her, by myself.”

“That’s fine.”

“What?”

“Do what you like. Come with me
or don’t, Ethan. You’re more than free to make your own choice—”

There was a pounding on the shop
door. I glanced over, startled, and it was my turn to moan. Clare Valentine
stood just beyond my invisible ward line, unable or unwilling to cross it
without permission. Probably unable. Behind her were a half-dozen grim-faced
men and women in long grey cloaks, a retrieval squad of Knights Infernal,
unless I missed my guess.