Moonheart (68 page)

As its physical form squeezed the life from her hand, so its soul reached for her. She waited for its touch without struggling. She welcomed death.

And then she heard voices. In that last moment where she balanced on the keen edge between life and death, saw faces merging with the demonic features of her tormentor.

She saw Pukwudji, his face lifted to the sky as he cried: "See her, Mother Moon? She is your daughter, this hornless one. But she will not be hornless for long!"

Mother Moon. And then there were bone discs spinning through the air between Mal'ek'a and herself. One was the image of a quarter moon. On its reverse was a stag's horns. A head formed under the antlers and a voice that seemed familiar, though she didn't know it, murmured: "What if she loses her way and leaves you stranded there, forever and always? What if she fails? What will sustain you then?"

The face changed and Taliesin's features were there. "My love," he replied to that other voice.

The bard's image changed, became a seascape, lonely trees standing guard on limestone cliffs, and the voice of the wind in them asking: "What are you doing here... so far..."

Again the antlered man.

"Waiting," he said. "Waiting to see old wrongs righted."

"We will see," the wind replied. "We will see."

They spoke of her, Sara realized. They spoke of what she must do, but they expected too much. They couldn't know what Mal'ek'a was, who it was, what it made her. All she wanted was to die. She remembered her dream, so long ago, when she lay in her own bed, in her own rooms, and the feral thing had reached out for her, jaws closing on her—

No!
she cried.

Magefire blossomed between her and the monster, throwing it back.

She heard the drumming then, felt the rathe'wen'a lending their aid.

A name,
the drums muttered.
If we had a name...

A name? She knew Mal'ek'a's true name. But before she could speak it, Mal'ek'a lunged, quenching her magefire in a flood of darkness.

Is that it?
she demanded.
Is that all they require— your name?

Mal'ek'a smothered her soul-shape's mouth with horrors. She choked on the things that crawled across her face and skin, burrowed into her flesh until her skin rippled with their passage. This wasn't her real body, she told herself. It was all illusion. But the pain was real. And the maggots, as they burrowed through her flesh, felt real...

Yes,
Mal'ek'a said, speaking for the first time.
We are kin. For you to have survived so long, we must be kin. Blood of my blood. Joined to me... when I swallow you... that will bring me more power than all the rings that Gwyn ap Nudd might fashion.

It wasn't real! If she could only—

Too real,
Mal'ek'a hissed.
Too real for you.

The drums pounded, magefire crackled like lightning, but nothing could penetrate Mal'ek'a's defenses. While the rathe'wen'a fought on, Kieran despaired. He was only half aware of the room around them. He saw some of Blue's berserk battle with the tragg'a, Tucker lying still against the wall. When the blue fires rose up and the door closed, he knew a moment's hope. The House could help them! But understood in the next instant that all the House could do was contain Mal'ek'a. And when the creature finally had the ring, nothing would contain it. Not the House. Not the drumming. Not the worlds themselves.

He saw then the blistering on Sara's arm, the skin bubbling and charring. Name of all! Mother Mary...

He lunged forward, took hold of Sara's arm to try to pull her free, and was suddenly overwhelmed by small pale squirming horrors that burrowed into his body. He heard the hiss of Mal'ek'a's evil voice like a roar in his skull, knew the sensations of a body not his own. He and Sara were sharing a body once more. He felt the final vestiges of hope give way in her, and so in him, pulling both down into endless despair. Then he found, in amongst it all, a name he'd always known.

He threw it out to the drummers before Mal'ek'a could contain him as well. The drums caught the name, wove it into their spell, channeled it back through Sara, through the ring.

Tomasin Hengwr t'Hap howled.

Suddenly Kieran and Sara were free. Sara was thrown back, the ring on her finger glowing white, healing the blistered and burned tissue of her flesh while it pierced Mal'ek'a with its unearthly radiance. Kieran shuddered, then lifted his own hands to join his magefire to hers. He heard, above the sound of the drumming, the sound of harping— here for a moment, then gone.

We can only hold him,
Ha'kan'ta cried in despair.
He is still too strong.

Already the white flare of the ring was dimming. Sara's legs gave out from under her and she slowly slid to the floor. The rathe'wen'a attempted to continue alone, but exhaustion was beginning to take its toll on them. The drumming wavered.

You know what you must do,
the House said.

Jamie nodded. He crawled from the chair to where Ur'wen'ta's discarded spear lay. As the first of the rathe'wen'a fell under Mal'ek'a's rejuvenated power, he stepped forward, the weapon raised awkwardly in a two-handed grip. He plunged it straight into the monster's chest.

Black blood sprayed from the wound, burning like acid where the hissing drops landed. Mal'ek'a's clawed paw grasped the spear and it pulled itself along the weapon's length, reaching for Jamie. The monster's eyes bulged. Blood trickled between its jaws. The face was half Tom's, half the distended features of a tragg'a. Jamie held on grimly as the thing clawed its way closer. He could see the life leaking from the monster, knew he must only hold on another moment. Only one more moment.

"Blood... for blood!" Mal'ek'a roared.

Its talons tore into Jamie's chest and the two fell, one atop the other, red blood mingling with black, smoking and hissing in tiny pools. Then silence fell in the tower room.

Collins watched Madison and the squad come out of the House. He could hear the murmur of the crowd on Bank Street swell in anticipation. Goddamn ghouls, he thought. He ran forward, hesitated when he saw the looks on the faces of the men.

"Jesus! What did you find in there?"

"Hell," Madison said.

The spotlights that stabbed the park with their brilliant glare accentuated the pallor of his skin.

"Just what the hell were those things?" Wilson was muttering.

"I don't know," one of the other squad members said. He swallowed thickly. "I'm just glad that a bullet can kill them. God! Did you see that guy by the door..."

Madison stared beyond Collins to where the crowd pushed at the barriers. TV cameras whirred, zoomed in to capture on video the reactions of the men as they stood around, breathing deeply of the clean air, soaking up the dark green of the night-time park to ease the memories of what they'd so recently viewed.

"Get rid of them, Dan," Madison said. "Get rid of them all. I want this whole area cleared."

"Do you want to call in the military?" Corporal Holger asked.

"We'll call up whatever it takes to clean that place out. I don't know if anyone's still alive in there, but if they are, we've got to get them out."

"Shee
-it,
" Wilson said. "We're going back
in
there?"

"What about Tucker?" Collins asked.

"We didn't... find him." Madison rubbed his temples. His leg was throbbing. "Christ! After what we've found so far, I'm not sure I even
want
to find him."

Collins put a hand on Madison's forearm. "You better take it easy, Wally. You look all done in. We've got some coffee over there by the—"

His voice broke off and he stared numbly behind the Superintendent at the House. Madison turned and took a step back, stunned.

When Jean-Paul saw the Superintendent emerge from the House, his first thought was to walk over and speak with him. But when he saw the grim looks on the faces of the men, he hesitated. Mother of God! What had they found in there? He looked at the House and stared at it in morbid fascination. The building looked dead. Ancient. Unlived in. Then his eyes widened.

Blue fire ran up the walls, sheathing the House in eerie flames. They ran crackling up to the eaves, swept across the roof, leaped up into the dark night sky. There they took the shape of two men. Jean-Paul recognized them both. One was
le sorcier
Thomas Hengwr. The other was Jamie Tams.

They were joined by a thick thread that, as Jean-Paul looked more closely, appeared to be a spear. Jamie Tams held one end. The other was plunged into Hengwr's chest. A howl ripped across the sky, cutting through the noise of the sirens and the crowd and the two figures flickered in the fires that engulfed the House. Suddenly the figures joined, elongated. The shriek dwindled into an unearthly moan that shook the ground, rattled the houses for blocks away. Then the elongated single figure rushed straight up into the air, vanishing in a trail of flickering blue light like a comet's tail.

It left in its wake a silence broken only by the wailing of the sirens. The men operating them shut them off, one by one. The watching crowds were silent. The House stood black and empty beyond the park.

"Mary, Mother of Jesus," Collins murmured in awe.

Madison walked slowly towards the House, followed by Collins and the squad. Nervous fingers curled around the triggers of their SMGs. As they neared the House, they saw that the walls appeared to be wrapped in some sort of black sheathing that stretched from the ground at their feet up to the roof. Madison nodded to Holger who sent a couple of his men back up a ladder.

There in the gap of the wall, the black sheathing seemed like smoky glass, covering every inch of the hole.

"Sealed up tighter than a nun," one of the men called down.

"What the hell was that we saw?" Collins asked.

Madison shook his head slowly. "I don't know, Dan. I don't know if we'll ever know." He drew a hand along his face, stared blankly at the House, then turned away. "Let's get rid of these crowds and call up some more men— see if we can't find a way in again."

For those still living in the northwest tower, the ensuing silence was a sweet balm that they clung to for long precious moments. Kieran looked around at what was left of them. The tragg'a had fled. Tucker lay by the wall where he'd been thrown, Maggie bent over him, but staring at the still body that lay in the center of the room. Sally was helping Blue lean up against the wall. She wiped the blood from his eyes. When he saw Jamie's corpse, he looked away, weeping. Sara lay against the other wall, white with shock, her eyes unseeing.

Remembering what she'd undergone, Kieran shuddered. Only two of the fourteen rathe'wen'a remained. With guilty relief, Kieran realized that one of them was Ha'kan'ta. He drew her close to him. The other was Ur'wen'ta, who slowly hobbled to the couch and dropped onto it with a bitter sigh. May'asa lifted his head and nudged the shaman's hand with his muzzle. The wolf's silver fur was red with dried blood, but it had survived.

"How could it have been... Tom?" Kieran asked. He looked at where Jamie lay. The spear was still clutched in his hands. His head was tilted to one side. His torn chest was hidden from view, but blood leaked into pools on either side of him. There was no sign of Mal'ek'a. No sign of Thomas Hengwr who had been the Dread-That-Walks-Nameless.

"
Nom de tout,"
Kieran murmured. "Did it escape? Is it
still
alive?"

Beside him, Ha'kan'ta slowly shook her head. "He has been cleansed from this world— but at such a cost."

She pulled away from Kieran and crossed the room to where Sara lay. The arm that had been burned was healed, but the ring had changed. The gold had been burned black in that last desperate attempt to hold the monster back. Kneeling by her, Ha'kan'ta took Sara's face in her hands and spoke a pain-easing spell. Her sen'fer'sa was at its lowest ebb, but she forced it to answer her. Her drum tapped a soft rhythm, weak and distant. Slowly the glazed look left Sara's eyes, and color returned to her ashen cheeks. She looked over Ha'kan'ta's shoulder, saw Jamie, remembered...

"Hush, Little-Otter," Ha'kan'ta murmured. "It is over now." She drew Sara's head to her shoulder, ran her hand down her back. "Hush."

"It... it's not over. You don't know. It... Mal'ek'a's blood... it's still in me. The evil is still here... in me."

Ha'kan'ta shook her head. "We all have good and ill within us. Such is the way that Mother Bear formed us. That is why we strive for peace— we who follow the Way. We strive to keep the one at bay while we add potency to the other. It can take many lives to accomplish that, Little-Otter. The road to the Place of Dreaming Thunder is not a short or easy one. And no one will take you there. You must fare on your own, with your own strengths, quelling your own weaknesses. Others can guide you, or share your burdens awhile, but in the end it is you who must choose between the one and the other. Only you can decide which you will be— a Thomas Hengwr or a Mal'ek'a. For though they sprang from the same source, they were never the same."

"I wanted to die so bad," Sara said. "Just to know that the same blood flows through me..."She shivered.

Ha'kan'ta glanced at Kieran. "We must take them from here— all that are hurt. Then we must cleanse this lodge. I think Sins'amin will aid us in that. She owes us that much."

Kieran nodded.

"My arm was all burned," Sara murmured, sitting back. She looked at her hand, at the black ring.

Ha'kan'ta reached forward and scraped a fleck of black charring free. Under it, the gold still gleamed yellow.

"See?" the rathe'wen'a said. "Evil can cloak us, can do all it can to cover us with its own corruption, yet if the heart remains true, it cannot prevail. It can slay the body, but it cannot slay the soul. There is no shame in sharing Mal'ek'a's blood. The shame would be in fleeing life. In giving truth to Mal'ek'a's lies. Show the world that Mal'ek'a's blood means nothing. That it is what is in here"— she touched her breast—"that counts. The silence within. The stillness born of the something-in-movement that we call up with our drumming.