Matchbox Girls (27 page)

He took a moment to flick a hand at AT dismissively. “Didn’t want you here, kiddo.” His fingers twitched and stuttered as he coughed, a horrible hacking sound. He gasped, “What did you bring
her
here for?”

“Because I can’t be in two places at once,” AT snapped. “Hey, you,” she said to Absolven. “Bugger off if you don’t want to see your own guts.”

Absolven’s gaze flicked between AT, Marley, and the children. “Hey!” said AT sharply. “We outnumber you. Go away.”

“But you are each all alone,” said Absolven.

“I don’t think so,” said AT. She stepped forward, planted her hand on the big man’s sternum, and pushed so hard she lifted him up, tossing him back a yard.

Absolven landed gracefully in a crouch. He straightened and raised his hand, beckoning at the figures behind him. They didn’t move, but the air shimmered. AT said, “Finish up fast, Corbin.”

“They put up a barrier to stop me from leaving.
Us
from leaving, now.” He tilted his head toward the roiling hazy wall around the edge of the terrace.

“But you can take it down.”

Corbin gave AT another impatient glance. “Not without help, or I wouldn’t still be here.”

“Well? I can provide a distraction.” AT darted forward to knock Absolven back again. This time, he was ready for her. His hand swept up, a triangular blade gleaming in his fist.

But AT trusted her, and AT was safe.

The blade’s glare became a flash and Absolven shifted off-balance as he missed his strike. AT grinned humorlessly as she kicked him.

“Ah,” said Corbin. “That's your plan.” He glanced at Marley directly for the first time. “How’s your breathing?”

Marley took a deep breath and realized that it was significantly more challenging than it had been in the Backworld. She wheezed. Corbin nodded. “They’re concentrating the toxins from the smoke and smog. They brought Absolven here to finish me fast, but slowly will do the job as well.”

“Is there something I can do to help break this barrier?” As he coughed again, she added, “I bet my brand of help would make it easier for you to breathe. Let me—”

“Hell with that,” Corbin said. “I’m fine.” Marley stared at him in surprise. He went on. “While we’re talking, though, I might as well tell you what I found out up here. Hold on.” He tugged on something invisible.

Marley was glad she’d resisted activating her Sight; there was enough to keep track of already. The twins were behind her, and AT was harassing Absolven. The teenager grinned, surrounded by a clear halo in the thickening orange haze. The dogs were making plenty of noise elsewhere on the terrace.

“I talked to the Machine that’s helping Ettoriel and Absolven. We saw a fragment of it when Absolven showed up at Penny's.” said Corbin abruptly. “According to it, the girls represent a kind of singularity or event horizon, obscuring their projections of the future.”

“What does that even mean?” asked Marley sharply, thinking again of the vision of the swing in a post-apocalyptic L.A. “Do they
know
the future or not?”

Corbin gave her a pained look. “Does it matter? Ettoriel thinks they do. He might not be interested in breaking the Hush for personal gain, but he'd definitely want to save the world.”

Marley took a deep breath. “He thinks there
is
no future. That’s what he told me. But you said this Machine is helping him? So it could be lying, too.”

“I don’t think so. The Machines are hard—dangerous—to understand, but everything I’ve read says they have no ability to deceive.”

Marley shook her head. “I don’t—”

“Marley, look out!” shouted AT. She was getting to her feet on the far side of the roof, near the mist-cloaked figures. Absolven was moving towards Marley, hindered but not stopped by the dog trying to trip him.

“Hell,” said Corbin. “Run!” He coughed again, even as his hands seemed to blur.

Marley scanned the terrace. “Up the stairs,” she called to the girls. “Go, now!” They both took off running. She dropped the bag containing Neath at the end of Corbin’s circle, and then dashed off in a different direction, weaving between scattered outdoor furniture. It was hard to run, so much harder than it had been that morning. This time she had to fight to get enough breath.

Helpless cursing from AT drifted across the terrace, and Marley veered to avoid one of the smog clouds. She almost tripped over a hose and grabbed it as she recovered, half-turning to check on her pursuer. He wasn’t moving quickly, harried as he was by AT and the dogs, but he seemed inexorable. She backed up, watching him.

“I saw what you did with those birds at the hotel,” Marley called. “That wasn’t very nice.”

“Nice and necessary are often exclusive,” the big man replied. “It
is
you protecting them, isn’t it?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why are you working with Ettoriel?” Her fingers slid over the sprayer trigger.

“His reasons are compelling. And what I have now, he gave me.” He paused to pick up AT and toss her into a pile of chairs, then shake a dog off his wrist. He wasn't interested in hurting them any more than a man swimming upriver was trying to hurt the current, and so he made progress, simply because he was much larger than the teenage girl. Blood welled from marks all over his body, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“You mean he’s your father?” Out of the corner of Marley’s eye, she saw a pair of heads peeking over the rail on the upper level of the terrace. The girls had gotten out of the way. Good.

Absolven shook himself violently. “Don’t blaspheme, please.” Then, like a bird spontaneously taking flight, he leapt for her from twenty feet away.

Marley yelped in surprise and stumbled sideways, a chair scraping across her leg. He thumped to the ground beside her. She scrabbled at the chair and flung it toward the figure looming over her. Then she brought up the sprayer and pressed the trigger, sending a stream of pressurized water into his face. Finally, she flung the sprayer itself at him and scrambled around him on all fours, toward the staircase to the second level.

Even though he was disoriented by her rapid defense, he grabbed at her as she passed just out of reach. His nails elongated into claws; their tips combed through her hair. She flung another chair at him, not looking to see if it hit as she threw herself toward the staircase.

She had to keep thinking, but it was so hard. He was right behind her. One more lunge and he’d have her, and those talons would hurt so much more than Neath’s kitten claws. She could hear him breathing.

Halfway up the stairs, Marley clawed at her own arm, trying to force her scattered brain to recall the activation toggle Tia had set on her suppression spell.
Like so.

The curse struck her. She tripped as the
wrongness
slammed through her and struck the stair beneath her feet. Something metal screamed and buckled. The staircase leaned and sank, and she scrambled up a few more steps on her hands and knees before the other brace tore itself loose. There was a cry and a grunt from behind her as Absolven fell with the bottom half of the staircase on top of him. Then the step Marley’s feet were on disappeared beneath her as the staircase kept on collapsing, and she was left hanging from a crumbling step by her fingers. She scrabbled for a railing that was still connected to the concrete, and it bent under her weight. Frantically, she swung herself up, gashing her forearm on the suddenly jagged metal. Then she leapt for the edge of the terrace, catching it with her fingers as the remains of the staircase fell away from the wall, red rust flaking off long bolts as they sailed past her cheek.

She hung there for a moment, distantly aware of the dogs barking, of AT shouting something, and the twins cheering her on. There was a bit of metal under her fingers, the last remnant of the staircase. Her fingernails hurt. Slowly, she braced one foot against the concrete wall and tried to figure out what would happen if she fell. Broken ankle, maybe, if there wasn’t a bunch of jagged rusting metal right beneath her. As it was, it didn’t bear contemplating.

The metal heap beneath her groaned and settled. Was it settling? Or was it moving because something was moving beneath it?

The much more human groan below her was a jolt of electricity to her spine. Without conscious effort, she rose over the edge of the terrace like a swimmer surfacing.

She crouched a few feet away from the edge, panting. Lissa came and hugged her, while Kari stayed at the railing, staring over the edge. She hugged Lissa back, then pushed herself to her feet. Her entire body ached. An exercise regimen of reading in the park wasn’t enough for fighting monsters, even if she had superpowers.

“Got it!” shouted Corbin, triumphantly. “Get them, AT!” Marley looked over the railing to see Corbin punching the air as he jumped out of his circle. The three mist-wrapped figures on the far side of the terrace spread out. AT spun, looking between Corbin and Marley, and then whistled and raced across the terrace. The dogs met her halfway, and they piled onto one misted figure.

The heap below groaned again, and slid open. Absolven stood up, unsteadily. He inspected himself before tugging a piece of shrapnel out of his arm. Then he raised his bloody face, his blue eyes meeting Marley’s.

He said something under his breath. His shape changed, and didn’t change. He was still the man, but contained within the man-shape was the griffin, and it was the griffin that cast the shadow. A hooked shadow beak opened, and the shadowy wings flared wide before flapping down heavily. Absolven flung himself up, a huge, impossible jump that had him landing on his feet on the edge of the terrace.

Marley backed away. She didn’t have a plan for this. On some level, she’d still believed in things like “people can’t fly.” She was an idiot. This terrace was smaller and there was nowhere to run. But there had to be a way off this level other than one rusty staircase.

Terror made it hard to think. The claws on Absolven’s fingers weren’t shadow claws.

“Marley?” said Lissa. The fear in her voice made Marley want to throw herself at Absolven, because it was even worse than the claws.

“Hide. Don’t watch,” she said to the girls. She took a deep breath and backed up another few steps. Her chest hurt. Instead of chairs, there were ashtrays up here. “Absolven. Don’t do this. Ettoriel is wrong.”

“You and I, none of our kind should exist,” he said, his voice gentle. “There has been so much mercy granted by Heaven, granted for love. They love so deeply. And look what exchanging obedience for love has brought us. I must be better than my father. But I wish you had let them go in the beginning.”

Marley’s breath hissed between her teeth. “I have to be better than my parents, too.”

“Marley,” called Lissa again, and this time there was an insistence in her tone that overshadowed the fear. The twins stood together in the shadow of a table, hands welded together.

Kari shouted, “Go away, bad man! Go away before it wakes up and hurts you!”

There was a cracking sound, all around them. The shadow the twins stood in flooded with crimson. Absolven looked around.

Lissa shook her head. “Too late.”

-twenty-nine-

S
omething clanked below. There was a whirring, crashing sound and metal scraped against metal. The air shivered at the awful scratching along the wall, and then a creature formed of broken staircase structure pulled itself over the edge.

It looked like an insect, with six legs made of broken struts, and the steps and railings curved into a thorax. Its head was a tiny knot of twisted metal, barely visible behind a double pair of giant, moving mandibles made of jagged, rusted splinters.

The creature vaulted over the railing at the edge of the terrace and then stopped, shifting its legs as if it wasn’t quite sure how to use them. The mandibles moved like the grinding of gears.

Absolven leapt away from it, shadow wings billowing out. The metal insect’s head whipped around and it rose up on its back two legs and lunged at the big man. One mandible pierced a shadow wing and Absolven screamed as blood sprayed across the rooftop.

Marley ran to the twins. Lissa had her face covered, while Kari was staring, eyes enormous. It was the precursor to a wail, she knew. She scooped one child up in each arm, just as Kari started screaming.

Absolven tumbled away from the metal insect, half his shadow indistinct. All of his attention was focused on the creature. It moved toward him, rolling from one leg to another, and he watched it like a cat. Then he dove at it, rolling under it and grabbing one of the metal legs. It bent in his grip and he wrenched at it before rolling away empty-handed. A mandible slashed at his back as he escaped its reach.

Kari wailed again, and Lissa was weeping into her hands. Marley realized that the metal insect traveled within a reddened shadow just like the one that had followed Kari and Lissa, and that now surrounded her. It was part of them, part of their power.

Horror made her legs weak. The twins were no longer
safe
. The bloody shadow invaded their auras, throbbing as though it was alive, bound around them like an umbilical cord wrapped around their necks.

The thing snapped at Absolven, and the dreadful red umbilical pulsed brightly. Marley’s vision went dark around the edges.

She put the twins down, slipping away from their grasping hands. Absolven rolled away from the metal insect again and came up in a crouch, grinning fiercely. Two of the abomination’s legs were hobbled now. Marley wasn’t sure she’d place a bet on who would win. But whichever nightmare won the duel, she was certain the twins would lose. There were burdens that children shouldn’t have to bear.

Absolven moved slightly, and Marley charged. Too late, he saw her coming from the corner of his eye, and shifted his attention and his center of balance away from the metal insect. But it wasn’t enough. Marley’s smaller frame struck him as low as she could, and she pushed and lifted with every aching muscle in her body.

Absolven flipped over the railing at the edge of the terrace. He turned the cartwheel into a somersault and then, mid-air, stretched out to try and catch himself on the edge. But Marley had surprised him too much, tossed him too far. His one working wing stretched taut, but it was useless alone. Marley watched, panting, as he dropped out of sight.