Dreams of Shreds and Tatters (14 page)

Rae laughed aloud and spun, skirts belling. Laughter answered from the shadows as she staggered to a dizzy halt. The rhythm of dancing feet echoed around her.

She walked blind, full of visions of dancers and angels and bloody-mouthed maenads. The fog smelled of roses and incense and the warmth in her blood burned away the winter chill. She would have danced forever, followed the visions wherever they led.

They led through Gastown, she realized when her eyes finally cleared, to a narrow alley near the docks. A clatter and boom rolled through the haze, echoing like hammers, like giant sour bells. Only container trains loading and unloading, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d left Vancouver far behind. She shivered; twilight had given way to true night and the cold was worse than ever.

Light burned at the end of the alley, painting wet bricks orange and gold. She followed the promise of warmth into a dead end, where a fire crackled inside a rusted metal drum. A man crouched beside the barrel, muttering to himself. Hatless and gloveless in the cold, sweatshirt sleeves pushed past his elbows. The flickering light washed his shirt from blood to black and back again.

He looked up as Rae approached, his face a mask of shadow. His aura writhed with black and yellow flames. Paper piled in drifts around him: newsprint, receipts, crumpled napkins. Metal gleamed in his hand.

“They sent you, didn’t they?” His voice was rough, wet and bubbling, like he gargled milk and broken glass for breakfast.

She moved closer, into the fire’s warmth. “Who is
they
?”

“The twins.”

The knife flashed as he drew the blade along his forearm. Steady looping strokes, calligraphy in flesh. She sucked in a breath, waiting for the ruby spill, but he didn’t bleed. She smelled blood, though, clotted and sour.

She crouched beside him, folding her arms across her knees as she studied the loops and whorls covering his arms. The same writing covered the scattered paper. “What is that?” The smell was worse here, cloying under the ash and hot rust from the fire. Rot-sweet. Honey-sweet. He was manic too.

“I don’t know what it means,” he said, “but they keep showing it to me. I have to write it down so I’ll remember.” Gaunt and sunken-eyed, hair matted with pine needles—she wondered if he’d been sleeping in a park. In the unsteady light the veins in his wrists and neck were black.

“How long have you been here?” she asked, touching his hand. A spark crawled between them.

“I’m not sure. It’s so foggy.” He took her hand and turned it palm-up. Her veins looked dark, too, threads of licorice under almond-milk skin. “I remember the door opening. You saw it too, didn’t you?”

She nodded. His hands were icy despite the fire. “I saw.”

“After that... it gets confusing. I was with my friends. We were going to find the door. But something happened. Screaming and thunder...” He stood, pulling Rae to her feet with careless strength. Letting go of her hand, he tugged up his ragged shirt. “Something bad.”

Dried blood covered his chest and stomach. More soaked the front of his jeans. She hissed at the neat black puncture below his sternum: so much blood for such a tiny little hole. His skin stretched as he moved and the rusty crust cracked in webs.

“I was scared at first, but then they started talking to me.”

“Who? The twins?” She reached out, stopping before she touched his skin. He caught her wrist and pressed her fingers to the wound. Cold meat. Jellied blood.

“Yes.”

The women in her visions, the maenads. Rae shivered with the memory of a bloody kiss. “What do they say?”

“They’re coming. The sisters and their king. They’re coming and we have to wait for them. They’ll make us into something more.”

He pressed her against the wall. One rough hand brushed her cheek, pushed back her hood to stroke her hair. She shuddered. “I’m glad you’re here,” he whispered. “I didn’t want to wait alone.”

Her breath rushed out, shining in the firelight. The fire’s warmth rolled over them, but his flesh was cold as the night. She couldn’t see his face, only his glowing aura. The knife glowed too as he raised it, light sparking on the edge.

“What—” She choked on the question. Black yarn parted with a rasp as he cut through her sweater. The blade never touched her skin. Sweater, T-shirt, the camisole beneath: he peeled her layer by layer until her chest was bare to the winter night.

“What are you doing?” She ought to be scared, ought to scream or fight. But the tremble in her limbs wasn’t fear.

He ran a hand from her sternum to her navel, caressing the curves and hollows of her stomach. Her chest hitched, silver flashing. “Do you feel it?” His breath was cold on her cheek as he leaned close. “Do you feel the stars?”

She felt the maenad’s need coursing through her, drowning anything careful. Anything sane. He was dead. Her hand slid beneath the gore-stiff fabric of his shirt. Blood crunched under her nails. “Yes.”

He leaned closer, grinding her shoulder blades against the bricks, and she whimpered. His face was in her hair, lips on her ear, her throat. His hand slid up, grazing the underside of her breast; her hips twitched.

“Can you see the towers?”

She closed her eyes and watched black moons wheel over an ivory city. Her back arched, pressing her hips against his; he wasn’t that dead, after all. His palm closed over her breast, pinching flesh against metal. She was warm enough for both of them.

He drew back to look at her and she tilted her head. What did dead lips taste like? But he shook himself like a dog and pulled away. Rae whimpered again, trembling for the press of flesh.

“I can’t,” he said, even as he swayed toward her. “Not yet. I need to write it all down. I can’t forget the things she shows me.”

The knife kissed her ribs, an ice-feather tickle. She froze, breath caught. “What—”

“It doesn’t hurt. You’ll see.” His other hand cupped her cheek and she fought not to lean into the touch. “She’ll show you too.”

She gasped as the blade pierced the skin below her ribs. No pain, just cold and pressure, a pop and tug. Easier than any of her piercings. Skin gaped and dark blood oozed down her stomach, thick and sticky as treacle.

“Don’t,” she whispered.

“I can’t forget.”

The night shattered into thunder and light and fell around her in razor shards. The dead man jerked, the knife slipping from his fingers as his right temple burst. Blood and brains spilled like pomegranate seeds. Rae let out a startled squeak as they splattered her face. He toppled sideways, colors fading from his aura.

A dog-headed monster stood in front of her, teeth shining in the firelight. It touched her face with burning taloned hands. Now the fear came, washing away desire and leaving Rae cold and shaking. She wanted to scream, but her voice was dead.

“Did he hurt you?” the monster asked, and now it was only a woman, dark-haired and familiar. She looked at Rae’s stomach and cursed. The wound stretched with every panicked breath, but only bled a slow molasses trickle.

“Not you too,” the woman muttered. Oil-slick metal gleamed in her hand as she stepped back and raised the gun. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t.” It was the only word she could manage. Rae looked down at the dead man, but he was a blur of red and shadow. She couldn’t hear the chanting anymore, couldn’t smell the roses. Only wet brick and charred metal and blood. Only the echo of distant trains. The world spun beneath her. The wall tilted and threw her off.

“Don’t,” she whispered again. Then she slid into the dark.

V
OICES REACHED HER
as though through deep water, but Rae couldn’t open her eyes. Someone held her, strong arms cradling her like a child. She felt another heartbeat through cloth and flesh. The touch was warm and soothing, a sharp contrast to the icy breeze against her face.

“No,” a woman said, low and harsh. A familiar voice, but Rae couldn’t place it. “You can’t bring her here.”

“Why not?” This voice belonged to the person holding her. The woman from the alley; her chest swelled with the words.

“She’s tainted. The stain runs too deep.”

“She’s sick. We can help her.”

“This isn’t an ordinary drug.” A third woman speaking now, and this voice too was familiar. Rae tried to stir, but her limbs hung limp and unresponsive. “You can’t lock her up for a week and let it work itself out of her system. The sickness is in her soul.”

“We can
help
her,” Rae’s rescuer said again. “You helped me.”

“There’s only one way to help her now. You know it, Lailah.”

Recognition came at last. The other women were Rabia and Noor, the baristas at Café Al Azrad. Rae had never heard them so grim and cold before. Sticky lashes parted, and through a glaze of tears Rae saw the sisters framed in the light from an open door. They stood shoulder to shoulder, blocking the way. Their shadows streamed down the steps, bent and inhuman.

“You can give her mercy,” Rabia said. “Or I can.” She offered it as easily as she’d once offered Rae free coffee.

“This will bring you no joy, Lailah bat Raz.” Noor’s voice was inflectionless, but the words struck Rae like stones. She tilted her head and her eyes flashed red-gold. “And a great deal of pain.”

“Damn you both,” Lailah spat. She spun, and Rae’s stomach rolled with the motion. Rae moaned, and Lailah peered down at her, her pupils shining like an animal’s in the darkness. Rae shut her eyes tight against the sight.

S
HE OPENED THEM
again to the poison-green glow of dashboard lights and headlamps slicing through the foggy night beyond. Glass pressed cold and hard against her cheek and a seatbelt chafed across her collarbone. An engine’s purr shivered through her bones. Her mouth tasted like dirty pennies.

“Where are we?” Phlegm crackled in her throat.

“The middle of nowhere.” Green light lined the driver’s brokennosed profile. Her aura glowed brighter: plum wine, marbled thorny red and black. Not reassuring colors, but familiar. The woman from the café, who’d warned her about magic. At least she looked human now, no trace of the sharp-toothed second face Rae had glimpsed in the alley.

“Where are we going?” The heater blasted over her, but she was chilled through. She curled her legs clumsily beneath her, wincing as she scuffed the expensive leather.

“Even farther.”

“Why? Mercy?”

Lailah’s eyes flashed as she glanced sideways. “I could have done that in the alley. Is that what you want?”

Rae touched her face, scraping a dark crust off one cheek.

Blood like pomegranate seeds. Her nails bit her palm as her hand clenched. “What happened?” Someday she would say something that wasn’t a question.

“After the dead man carved you up? You fainted. Then you started to bleed. Why don’t you tell me what happened before that?”

Rae eased a hand under the tattered wool of her sweater, bit back a whimper as she brushed gauze and tape. There was the pain she hadn’t felt earlier.

“You’ll need stitches,” Lailah said.

Rae tugged her ruined top closed, pressing a fist against her mouth to hold back the ugly noise welling in her throat. “What’s your name?” Lailah asked.

“Rae.” It took two tries to make the right sound.

“Is that short for something?”

Her mouth twisted. “Raven. No, really,” she said when Lailah snorted. “Raven Solstice Morisseau. My mom is a hippy.” “No kidding.”

“Lailah means night.”

Another sideways flash of eyes. “It does. I guess I can’t laugh.”

She shifted gears and violent red ribbons bled from her hand. Rae flinched. “The solstice—that’s tonight. The longest night of the year.”

“No kidding,” Rae echoed. Her hand tightened in her ruined sweater.

The road curved and sloped and inertia pressed her against the seat. The car growled like something sleek and dangerous.

Headlights grazed a wall of trees. Beyond that, a deeper darkness blotted the sky. The mountains.

“So what happened, Rae?”

“I don’t know. It’s all confused.” She brushed a tangled rope of hair out of her face. “Why did you shoot him?”

“His having a knife in you wasn’t reason enough?”

She shivered, hunching tighter. “He was—”
Only trying to write it down.

“Dead?” Lailah said instead. “Yes.”

Rae swallowed. “Am I... dying?” She couldn’t be dead yet: her pulse beat too hard in her throat.

“No. But something’s not right, either. I can still smell the mania in you.” Her mouth pinched at the corner.

Rae stifled a sigh at the familiar disapproval. This wasn’t quite the same as arguing about smoking pot with straight-edgers. “The taint. Is that what Rabia meant?”

A dark shape flickered in front of the car, skirting the edge of the lights. Lailah swore and tapped the brakes, but when she flipped on the brights the road was empty again. Rae’s neck prickled as she clutched the shoulder strap; she knew that liquid darkness.

The car slowed, engine quieting. Wings rushed softly overhead. “Bat country,” she whispered.

“They’re following us. Hunting.”

“Hunting what?” She swallowed hard in Lailah’s silence. “Me?

Why don’t they do something?”

“Traveler’s luck. Motion gives you purpose, purpose gives you strength. If we stop, though...” The shape passed them again, light teasing a lithe oil-black body. “Should I give you to them?” It sounded more an honest question than a threat, but wasn’t any more reassuring.

Rae’s fingers poked through the weave of the yarn. “You saved me in the alley. Doesn’t that mean you’re responsible for me now?” Lailah laughed, low and bitter. “I guess it does. All right then— hang on.”

She floored the gas.

A
LEX TRIED TO
convince Liz to go to bed a dozen times, but sleep was the last thing she wanted. Hours past midnight she still sat curled on the sofa while he paced, picking at a mangy grey gum scar on the blue upholstery and breathing in the faint mustiness left by the dozens of people who’d sat there before her. If she kept her left hand still in her lap, she could almost ignore the pain.

She couldn’t ignore the memory of the woman lunging at her, bearing her down. Sharp teeth closing in her flesh. Heat and pain and pooling blood. A dead woman’s flesh leaking across wet asphalt.

Open the door
.

A shadow passed between her and the lamp and she flinched, but it was only Alex. By the way he looked down at her, one eyebrow cocked, she realized he must have spoken.

“What?”

His lips thinned. “I said, what was that woman talking about? You understood her.”

His accent was thicker, the words too precise. She could smell the liquor filtering through his skin. When she didn’t answer he started pacing again.

“Dreams,” she said at last. “She was talking about my dreams.”

He stopped and his mouth opened and shut with a snap. Then he fell into a chair. A coin appeared in his hand and he began walking it across his knuckles. His unoccupied hand clenched against the arm of the chair.

“How?”

“I don’t know.” She sat up straighter, wincing as her hand shifted.

“Liz—” He shook his head, glasses flashing. “I want to understand this, but you have to give me something to work with.”

“Like what?” Her voice cracked, leaking frustration. “I dream of Blake, see him drowning over and over again. There’s a door in my head that leads to him, but I can’t hold on long enough—”

“To what? Save him? You can’t keep doing this, blaming yourself. You’re making yourself sick.”

“This isn’t a delusion! And that woman saw it too.”

“That woman was drugged out of her fucking mind.” He stopped over-enunciating and the edges of his words softened and slurred. “She saw whatever the hell it is junkies see, and you latched onto it because you can’t let this go. Because you care too bloody much.”

Her scratched cheek stung with her flush. “It’s a hell of a lot better than the alternative.”

The coin fell from Alex’s fingers, winking as it rolled under the table. He uncoiled from his chair before it stopped moving. His hand closed on her left forearm and she squealed in pain.

“You think I don’t care? I care about you. And this”—he shook her arm and she squealed again—“is no dream.” His eyes narrowed, red and glossy behind his glasses. “We were lucky. I didn’t come here to see you end up in the hospital too. Or worse.”

She jerked her arm away, rubbing the red mark his fingers left. The bite throbbed, sharp and nauseating. “I know that,” she snapped, fighting back an angrier retort. He was worried, and scared, and that bothered her more than any anger or disbelief.

He yanked his hand back, as if realizing what he’d done. “We can’t stay here forever. We have school, jobs. Lives, even if yours isn’t as dear to you as it should be.”

She swallowed the sour taste of nerves, her stomach roiling. Argument was just as sickening as her swollen hand. “I know,” she said softly. “We still have a few more days.”

Alex stared at her as if he could read her unspoken thoughts beneath her skin. “Would it be so easy for you to give up everything? To throw your life away to help someone else?”

“Not easy.”

He nodded slowly. “But you’ll do it anyway.”

“Alex, please. You’re drunk, and we’re both exhausted. Can’t we talk about this in the morning?”

A muscle twitched in his jaw. “You’re right,” he said at last, his diction sharp as a slap. “I am drunk, and I’m going to sleep it off. I’d suggest you do the same, but we know how much good that would do.”

Before she could think of a reply, he walked away. He didn’t slam the bedroom door, but it echoed in her chest all the same.

A
NOTHER HOUR CREPT
by, and another. Liz huddled under the scratchy blanket, all the lamps turned off but one. Her eyes ached, dry and raw, but sleep wouldn’t come. Beneath the churning growl of the heater, Alex’s breath rasped from the other room.

She wanted to go to bed, to curl into his warmth and to hell with dreams, but she couldn’t. Not pride—not only pride, at least—but a sick dread. He would leave. If she didn’t find Blake soon, didn’t do something, he would leave. She couldn’t blame him—she was still amazed he’d come with her at all, that she hadn’t had to face this alone. But it couldn’t last.

Blake couldn’t last. Even if the thing in the darkness didn’t swallow him, how long could machines keep him alive? How long would the hospital bother?

The curtains swayed in the heater’s draft. Wind whistled past the windows and her thoughts chased their tails.

Blake’s painting, Carcosa, the King, mania. There was a thread in all of this to lead her though the maze, she just had to find it.

The girl at the café and her scattered tarot cards. The Hanged Man—sacrifice and resurrection—and the Tower.

I have seen the towers of the lost city,
Yves said. She saw his face as Blake had painted it, his eyes seared and empty.
Aldebaran is his star
.

Aldebaran. She tried to remember her astronomy class, wishing she had Alex’s memory. Part of Taurus, she thought, or maybe the Hyades. And weren’t the Hyades the nymphs who watched over the infant Dionysus? She straightened, a tiny burst of endorphins pushing away her fatigue.

Liz stood, wincing as blood tingled back into her feet, and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. The wind was a razor’s kiss as she opened the balcony door, slicing through cloth and flesh. She pulled the blanket tighter and peered up at the sky.

The rain had stopped and a tattered lace of clouds drifted over the sky, stained orange-grey by citylight. Through the gaps Liz found the three bright stars of Orion’s belt and followed their line to Taurus and the vermilion gleam of Aldebaran. The bull’s eye.

Concrete numbed her bare feet and the blanket snapped in the wind. What did it mean? What did that furnace of hydrogen and helium have to do with Blake?

Her good hand tightened around the ring.
Open the door
. The star pulsed brighter and she couldn’t look away. Aldebaran drowned the lesser lights, drank them down, and she heard the song that echoed in the blazing fusion of its heart.

The world slipped.

Buildings shivered and changed, steel and glass twisting into stone. The railing in front of her vanished and she stood on a narrow ledge, her toes brushing empty air. Her stomach gave a vertiginous lurch as she looked down. It was a long way to fall.

She stood above a twilit city, beneath a bruised and lowering sky. Towers still rose around her, tall as Vancouver’s skyscrapers. But scrape was too mild a word for these spires and steeples. Sky-gougers. Sky-renders. Clouds bled darkness where the summits ripped them open. Beyond the buildings, black water stretched to the horizon.

The light brightened by inches. Not a grey or golden dawn, but blood-red and burning. Aldebaran rose, swollen and simmering, and a breathless sound slipped between Liz’s teeth. An ancient star, a dying star—it would swallow everything in reach before it spent itself and cooled. Fire-opal brilliance seared away the ocean mist and hot incarnadine light spilled between the city walls. The air was harsh with brine and a sharp chemical tang.

Shouts drew her attention downward, and she raised a hand to shield her streaming eyes. A wild procession leapt through the streets below, cries of
euan euan eu oi oi oi
carrying on the cloying breeze. The wind ripped at her hair as she watched, tugging at the blanket.

The procession wound toward the shore, where black waves lapped against the quay. The tide was rolling in. Two figures, one dark, one light, walked in the center of the panoply, a measured counterpoint to their companions’ reckless caper. Leopards and other beasts prowled amongst the dancers, and the footsteps that echoed between the buildings sounded more like hoofbeats.

Euan euan eu oi oi oi! Iä iä oi oi oi!

“You’re a long way from home, dreamer.”

She startled at the voice and lost her balance. Warm hands caught her and pulled her back from the edge. She clung to Seker until the vertigo passed, each panicked breath carrying the scent of sandalwood and bitter citrus.

“Careful,” he admonished softly.

“What are you doing here?” She unclenched her fingers from his robes, biting her lip at the ember of pain pulsing in her hand.

“Watching the parade.”

She looked back; the procession was nearly to the quay. “What’s happening?” Seker only shrugged.

Steps led down to the water, and the dark figure and the light descended the glistening stair. Women, Liz guessed, from their slender shapes. One wore a white cowl; the other’s hair spilled wild, tangled through with ivy.

Waves broke against the seawall, black as obsidian. When they rolled back, a pale shape lay motionless on the stones. The revelers howled and chanted as the women bent and dragged the flotsam away from the water’s grasp. Naked limbs sprawled on the steps. Dark hair clung to a narrow white face.

“Blake!”

Seker’s hand closed on her arm. “Quietly. You don’t want their attention.”

The chant swelled, echoing between the towers and across the water. Liz dragged her eyes off Blake for an instant to glare at Seker.

“You stopped me.” Hearing his voice again, she was certain. “Twice I reached Blake, and twice you pulled me away.”

He nodded, still holding her arm. She couldn’t break his grasp. “It wasn’t your time.”

She looked down; the revelers hefted Blake’s limp body and carried him back the way they’d come, the two women leading them. “Where are they taking him?”

Seker steered her around and pointed to a distant tower. More sky-wounding spires, taller than the rest, like carious yellow teeth piercing the clouds. Winged shapes circled their peaks, small with distance. “To the palace of the King.” His breath was warm against her cheek.

Liz shuddered. Her hand throbbed in time with her heart. “I have to go there.”

“Really?” He released her and she nearly fell. Her head swam. “Do you think you’re in any condition to help him?”

“It doesn’t matter. I won’t leave him.” The stone shook beneath her. Or maybe that was just her quaking knees.

“Already the dream tries to cast you out. You’re not meant to be here, and you’re not strong enough to stay.”

She clenched her jaw and met his black gaze. “Then I’ll have to be stronger.”

His eyes narrowed. “Do you understand exactly what you’re attempting? Every time some mad or foolish person finds their way here, the walls weaken. Every contact between Carcosa and your dreamlands—or your waking world—strengthens the King and his retinue that much more.”

Liz swallowed. “So even now...”

Seker nodded. “Your presence here unravels the seams, even now.”

Ice water filled her stomach. “I can’t leave Blake.”

“So loyal. So foolish.” He smiled ruefully.

Her chin rose. “You can’t stop me.”

Now he laughed. “Oh, yes I can, dreamer. But I’ll only give you three warnings. I won’t hinder you again. For now, however, you must return.”

“No!”

But he was gone, and Carcosa disintegrated under her feet. Red light burned her eyes and her mouth filled with blood.

She screamed as she fell.

I
N SPITE OF
his claims, Alex didn’t sleep. Insomnia was an old friend. Sleep, like doctors’ waiting rooms, was an unavoidable waste of time. He rarely remembered his dreams, save for the occasional anxiety nightmare. If he wanted to relive the awkward contretemps of adolescence he’d watch a teen comedy. Liz’s oneiromancy was as alien to him as high school had been.

Which didn’t excuse the fact that he’d acted an ass. Even if he was right.

Being right was a hollow sort of consolation if this was the straw that broke their relationship. Liz forgave him any number of faults: his acerbic temper, snobbery, pedantry, and probably others he was less aware of. But the one thing she couldn’t forgive was a lack of compassion. Of care. And the fact that he cared for her so much it hurt would never be enough.

His last two relationships had been with people who thought only of themselves. The difference wasn’t as amusing as it might have been.

But he didn’t get up to apologize and Liz didn’t come to bed. In the morning, he decided, he would swallow his pride. For now he could savor the bitter taste of being right, even if it soured his stomach.

When he had memorized the shadowed hotel ceiling, he opened the doors of his memory palace. Sleep might be fickle, but the
ars memoriae
always answered.

The doors swung inward—heavy polished teak, studded with brass and framed in floriated pillars, topped by an intricate lintel. One of dozens of architectural styles that had struck his fancy enough to incorporate into the locus. They opened into a long hallway lined with doors and niches. He’d begun the palace at thirteen, and the early wings were crude. The hall resembled something from primary school, and smelled of chalk and floor polish no matter how he added on.