half-lich 02 - void weaver (12 page)

“What you’re asking…” Isaac started to say, but his thought trailed off.

“I wouldn’t ask if I thought there was another choice. The taint will kill you even if you don’t do this. Better to die trying than to live knowing that a painful slide to insanity and then death awaits you, otherwise.”

“Cheerfully put, Jim.”

The cavern rumbled again and more dust fell from the ceiling as Isaac considered what Jim was saying. His was a perfectly good, sound argument, but the risks… the risks were huge. He had no idea what awaited him on the other side, no idea how much protection his own magic would afford him considering all Jim had said about the Void and its denizens, and he also had no idea how long a trip into the Void would take. Alice was out there right now, powerless but still hunting down a creature even mages would struggle to deal with.

“The camera,” Isaac said, “You said a Void Weaver had built it, correct?”

“I did, and as far as I can tell, yes, it was.”

“If I do this and return. Could I build another one like it?”

“You could if you had the right teacher. Luckily, you have me. I may not be a Void Weaver, but I know a thing or two that’ll help you.”

Isaac nodded. “Alright,” he said, “I guess I have no choice.”

Jim smiled brightly, reached into his jacket pocket, and produced an envelope. Inside there was a single sheet of paper upon which he seemed to have scribbled something. He read it once on his own and then handed it to Isaac, who immediately recognized it as yet another spell; only this one used sigils the Void Weavers had used in their magical workings.

“Let me guess,” Isaac said, “I’m the only one who can cast this spell?”

“You are,” Jim said.

“And what does it do, exactly?”

“I… actually don’t know.”

“What?” Isaac asked, staring at Jim intently.

“But—I suspect it… opens the way.”

“You suspect? Is there any chance this spell could vaporize me instead?”

“None,” Jim said. “Well, slim. Almost none. Sorry, the alphabet is easy to understand, but putting the right spells in the right place when you don’t have the instincts to go with it, it can get messy.”

Isaac took another look at the incantation on the page. It seemed simple enough to him. The spell required him to visualize the opening of a door in his mind and asked that he speak several words of power while walking counter-clockwise around the podium. This wasn’t uncommon, nor was it particularly unpleasant. But the spell had another requirement, too; it needed Isaac to drink
the blood of a shadow
from the bowl on the podium.

“Blood of a shadow?” Isaac asked.

Jim produced a small knife from his pocket. “You’ll have to use mine.”

“Your shadow?”

Jim nodded. He handed the knife to Isaac, and then took a step away from the podium. With his hands by his side and his palms outstretched, he closed his eyes and began to murmur under his own breath. Isaac watched as the rings on his fingers began to glow, and as Jim repeated the words of power over and over, the dancing shadow at his feet began to rise and assume an almost physical form.

In a quiet corner of his mind, Isaac thought of Nyx. Alice had referred to her as the shadow woman numerous times because that was how Nyx had chosen to present herself. It was almost poetic that the spell to open a portal into the Void included the symbolic bleeding of a living shadow—the physical representation of a creature of the Void.

Jim’s shadow continued to rise, moving like a puppet on a string—floating toward the bowl at Jim’s command.

“Now,” he said when his shadow’s neck was stretched over the bowl, and Isaac didn’t hesitate. One quick movement of his arm was all it took to carve a piece of the shadow’s neck. Black pieces of the strange creature began to fall into the bowl, and as they touched each other they melted together to create a still, smooth liquid.

Jim clapped his hands together and the shadow returned to its place at his feet, but the spell had left him pale.

“Are you alright?” Isaac asked.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Now you. Call on your Guardian, enact the spell, and let’s finish this.”

Isaac nodded. He handed the paper back to Jim, seeing as he wouldn’t need it, and stretched his hands over the bowl. One syllable at a time he began to recite the words written on the paper, and as his bangle began to glow brighter and more vibrantly, the smell of honey, herbs, and rot filled the room. The Good Doctor stood over Isaac’s shoulder, watching from behind its beaked mask—perhaps disapprovingly, Isaac didn’t know—as his charge prepared himself to plunge into something without having first scouted the way.

As the words left Isaac’s lips, the black liquid in the bowl began to shiver. A moment later the cavern started to rumble, and dust fell from the ceiling. Isaac thought it would pass, as the other tremors had, but it didn’t pass. Instead, the rumbling intensified. Dust and dirt fell in large clouds now. Isaac’s eyes faltered and he broke concentration with the bowl to look for Jim and found him eyeing the narrow exit.

“Go,” Isaac said when a break came in his incantation, “I’ll do this myself.”

“I’m not leaving until you’re through!”

Isaac turned his attention to the bowl again and recited the incantation for the third time. His bangle wasn’t just glowing brightly now; it had turned cold—deathly cold. He could see motes of light beginning to dance around the podium. All along the cavern walls and even on the murals, the strange sigils had begun to glow, shifting from blue to purple to orange. But the rumbling wouldn’t cease, and when Isaac picked the bowl of shadow blood up he heard a loud thump that made the ground shake so hard it nearly toppled him off his feet.

“Drink it!” Jim said, and Isaac tipped the liquid into his mouth and swallowed it in a single gulp.

It was as if a cold, dead hand had reached into his neck and was sliding down his esophagus and into his stomach. Isaac convulsed and shook. Unable to control it, he fell to the floor gripping his throat. For a while he struggled, tossing and turning, but a veil of darkness was beginning to fall over his eyes.

As he went under, the last thing on his mind was Alice, only this time he wasn’t hoping their relationship would rekindle; he simply hoped he would see her again after this.

CHAPTER 11

Children of Pain

Alice backed up a step, then another, and another, until her back pressed against the building’s outer wall. She stared wide-eyed as the dark hall began to fill with shapes of all sizes and proportions, though none of these creatures seemed to have form. They were living shadows, solid and insubstantial at the same time. They were legion, they were hungry, and even though she had a gun in her hand, Alice was powerless.

She chanced a look over her shoulder and saw, through the hall window at her back, her choices; she could either run through the gauntlet of entities blocking the hall, or fling herself out of the window and hope for the best. But the drop was four stories, and from this angle she couldn’t see if there was anything soft enough down there to break her fall.

Alice turned to face the Pain Children again and beheld the writhing darkness before her. A shimmering mantle of dust was billowing out of each of the open doors, and then the moment of cold realization hit like a block of ice sinking deep into the pit of her stomach. The building was infested with Pain Children, and Nyx had consumed the soul of every living person here.

The mass stopped moving. A deep grumble of sound filled the hall, and like athletes responding to the bang of a gun, the Pain Children sprang into action.

Alice didn’t hesitate. Trapper was gone, but even if she had Trapper she wouldn’t have been stupid enough to try and take them all on. It had taken multiple attacks to bring down the gas mask man and there were too many Pain Children to count in here. Brute force wasn’t what she needed—she needed subtlety.

As the specters charged, Alice reached into the outer pocket of her leather jacket, pulled out the tube she had retrieved from the drawer in her office, and created a rough line on the ground directly in front of herself and Cameron. When the first Pain Children struck the invisible barrier created by the salt it broke like a screeching wave on a rock, dispersing into a cloud of shadow, sound, and wind around them and then reforming a few feet away but still behind the line on the floor.

The other Pain Children faltered, hesitantly hanging back for only a couple of seconds, and Alice seized the initiative to create a strong circle of salt around the two of them.

“What the fuck is that?” Cameron asked.

“Salt.”

“Where did you learn how to do that?”

“No good hunter relies on a single tool,” Alice said, drawing herself up. “Now what?”

“What do you mean?”

“The salt won’t hold them forever. If you’ve got any tricks, now is the time.”

The Pain Children began to move. Like a heaving breath, they shied away from the salt—becoming one with the darkness around them—and then came screaming at it. Alice put her hands up instinctively and turned her head away from the tide of living shadow. Specters began to pound and claw and gnash at the wall, and as they did, Alice began to see them for what they really were.

These weren’t intelligent beings like the gas mask man or the poltergeist—they were
beasts
.

“Whatever you’re going to do, do it now,” Alice said.

Cameron turned and looked at the window. He closed his eyes, flexed his fingers, and then smashed the window out with his elbow sending hundreds of shards of glass glittering to the ground below. Another solid hit and the frame itself came loose before falling away entirely.
What kind of strength is that,
Alice thought, but she didn’t have time to wonder; he had grabbed her by the arm and turned her to look at him.

His eyes
, she thought, and she saw how his irises had transformed to slits, and his misty grey pupils had become golden—the color of molten lava. Beneath his shirt, an amulet of some kind was glowing with a color and intensity to match his eyes. Magic was at work. But Alice, on instinct, resisted his attempt to pull her toward the open hole in the wall.

“Do you trust me?” Cameron asked, sensing her hesitation, her fear.

She had no time to say no and no choice but to say yes. Alice nodded.

Cameron drew her close to his chest, surrounded her with his arms, and shoulder charged his way through the opening. Alice’s stomach felt like it was still trying to claw its way back to the floor they had just jumped out of as they free-fell four stories to the ground; all she could hear was the rush of the wind and the beating of her heart against her temples.

Time itself seemed to stretch and condense at the same time, so that the fall was both near-instant and also seemed to last hours. For a moment it felt as though she were flying, but when Cameron hit the ground, he hit the ground hard and Alice spilled out of his arms. She rolled and hit the side of a dumpster, but the blow was minor.

She got up and glanced up at the opening in the side of the building. Shards of glass were still falling, but the Pain Children weren’t following.

Cameron groaned and struggled while getting to his feet. “Fuck, I think I broke something.”

Alice helped him up and supported his weight. “We have to get out of here,” she said, “I don’t know if they’ll follow us, but they might.”

The street was still quiet; at least, it wasn’t any more active than any normal city street might have been. Cars rolled idly past. Pedestrians with earbuds stuffed into their ears did likewise, oblivious to what had just happened only a few feet away from them. Those who
had
seen anything had already cleared the area.

“I can’t ride,” Cameron said as he got to his bike. He dug his keys out of his pocket and handed them to her. “You’ll have to drive.”

“You’re serious?” she asked, taking the keys.

“Now isn’t the time for questions.”

Alice nodded and straddled the bike without grabbing the helmets from the saddlebags.
Fuck helmets
, she thought, and she helped Cameron get on the bike behind her. He wrapped his hands around her waist, locking his fingers around her just as she had done. Alice then stuffed the key into the ignition, turned it, and flicked the starter. The bike roared and rumbled, triggering all of her old wants and dreams of owning one to come rushing back to her.

“You never forget,” she said to herself as she tugged on the throttle and listened to the engine purr.

“Huh?” Cameron asked.

But she didn’t reply. Instead, she brought the Harley onto the road with a single, confident motion, skipping the first two red lights she came across and slowing only when she thought they were clear of the Pain Children. It was then she realized she had no idea where to go next.

“How badly are you hurt?” she asked.

“I don’t know, but my leg and shoulder are on fire.”

“Serves you right for jumping out of the window like that. Are you insane?”

“We survived, didn’t we?”

“Barely. What kind of magic was that, anyway?”

“It’ll take too long to explain, but I guess you’ve figured out what kind of a mage I am.”

“Yeah, the bat-shit crazy kind. If you ever think of doing that again, I’ll hurt you more than the fall.”

“Yes ma’am. Where are you taking us?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s a good start. Think we’re being followed?”

Maybe
Alice thought, and this was the truth. She wasn’t sure what it was she was feeling. The encounter with the poltergeist and then the Pain Children had adrenalized her, filled her with excitement and energy. Even at her strongest, detecting the presence of unseen stalkers would have been difficult. In her current state, she had no way of knowing.

“We might be,” Alice said, “If we are, we need to go someplace safe, but I’m not going back to that safe house. We’ll go to my place and regroup.”