The Academy (64 page)

He glanced around, at the thin walls and the acoustic tiling along the ceiling, and then cleared his throat, loudly, twice.

She’d turned her back to him, he realized. Whether because she knew already (and she
must
know, he was certain) or because she’d forgotten, she’d turned her back to him. Perhaps the baring of her back had been a display for his benefit? Perhaps, he thought, perhaps Alice remembered more than she’d let on…

He sighed and pulled the knife from his pocket.

The Weir that he drove it into seemed surprised. Chris couldn’t blame him. Even as he batted away the pieces of splintered plywood that flew at him from where the beast had broken through the partitioning, a snarling half-ton of corded muscle and elongated canines, Chris had trouble believing that he was the agency behind what was happening, watching himself push the blade up through the creature’s jaw, piercing through the mouth and into the skull, as if someone else were doing it.

He felt the disturbance in the air behind him, and heard the low growls and the sound of heavy padded footsteps on the carpet, and knew that the larger group had come from behind. He had time to activate the Thorns protocol before he felt the claws rake his shoulders, the stench of the beast as it carried him down to the ground, stinking of blood and rotting flesh, its teeth working their way inexorably towards his jaw. Chris grabbed the Weir, one hand pressed against its moist and slimy snout, the other scrambling for purchase on its lower jaw. As he tried to force the creatures head away from his throat, his hand slipped on the drool-slick rolls of hair and flesh that surrounded its mouth, the ends of his middle and index fingers slipping into the gaping maw of the Weir, and then disappearing almost painlessly in a flash of yellow teeth.

Chris worked one leg out from underneath the crushing weight of the thing, hooking his toes underneath the Weir’s rear leg, pushing himself up, trying to work his head away from the snarling mouth. His mangled hand flailed uselessly around its lower jaw, too slippery with blood and saliva to find a grip. He managed to work his other thumb up and into what he hoped was the creatures eye, jamming it in and the pushing as far into the wet, gelatinous tissue as possible. The Weir’s howl, coming only inches from his face, was deafening. Chris thought that maybe his other hand, the wounded one, might have drifted back to the creatures mouth again, but he couldn’t feel it anymore, and all he could see above him was the struggling bulk of the Weir, its weight crushing the air from his lungs.

He tried to breathe and couldn’t, unable to force any air into his chest. His vision was covered with brilliant white points, gradually expanding until he was half-blind, seeing only blurred movement and strange lights. Hot blood dripped down onto his face and neck, but he wasn’t sure whether it was his own or the Weir’s. He worked the thumb he had forced into the creatures eye, trying to widen the wound, tearing and pulling at the glutinous flesh. He could feel the Weir’s breath on his neck, and knew that he didn’t have much longer.

The shotgun blast was like a bomb going off next to his head, a concussive sound that immediately deafened him, the flash of light and heat so close that it seared his hair and scalp. He watched Alice roll the corpse of the Weir off of him in the strange silence that followed, adding to the dream-like feel of the entire scene, the woman in black clucking over him and helping him sit up. Chris stared down blankly at the remainder of his right hand, of which there was little more than the palm, thumb, and a single, dangling finger left. The jagged wound that the Weir’s teeth had left behind bled freely, and for a short time, Chris wondered why Alice made no move to try and stop it.

He felt Alice wrap her arms around him, pulling him backwards, leaning his back against her chest, her muffled voice telling him to relax. As his wits and hearing slowly returned to him, he glanced down at his chest, and realized with a sober, detached judgment that he was already dead. His chest was a hideous mess, gouged and shredded by the Weir’s scrambling forepaws, and in two places, fractured ribs jutted out from the torn skin, stark white and horrifying. But most of the blood pooling on his chest and running down his abdomen, he realized, was from the wound in his throat.

“Fuck, fuck,” Alice said, and Chris was amazed to see that she was crying, her face contorted and miserable. She held him tightly to her from where she crouched behind him, her arms wrapped around his shoulders, his head leaning against her chest. He thought briefly of asking her to not squeeze so tightly, and then realized with an abstract fear that it didn’t even hurt. “Why, Chris?”

He tried to laugh, but it turned into a wet, racking cough. He tried a smile, his face too numb to be sure that he had accomplished it.

“Prague,” he sputtered, his voice only barely audible. “You don’t remember it at all?”

Alice sobbed and then shook her head reluctantly.

“I know that you mean something to me, Chris,” she said simply, almost apologetically. “But, I can’t remember why. I’m sorry…”

Chris tried to pat her on the arm, but his own arm wouldn’t lift up, and anyway he couldn’t see her much, now, since it had become so dark. Anyway, he remembered, there wasn’t much of a hand there now. He almost laughed again, but at the last moment thought better of it, and settled on trying another smile.

“No, that’s okay. You remember the important part, at least.”

“What?”

He could taste the salt of her tears on his lips when he licked them. Chris wanted to tell her he felt cold, but he couldn’t seem to manage the effort.

“Chris, I would have found a way to save you…”

He tried to shake his head. He wasn’t sure if anything happened.

“No,” he whispered, Alice pressing her ear to his bloodied mouth to try and make it out, “It’s better like this. I never liked you Auditors, anyway. But, Alice…”

She held him, clutched to her chest, just like that, until he grew cold and heavy, until she was certain that he wasn’t there any longer, wishing desperately that she could remember this man that she had felt compelled to save, whose death drove her to tears. When she finally set him aside, she did so gently, laying him out a few feet from the corpse of the Weir, his arms folded over his wounded chest, his diminished hand tucked underneath his elbow.

She looked at him, for a while. It looked as if she wanted to say something. The only sound was the moaning of the one Weir who had survived the Thorns protocol, pinned against the other members of its pack, impaled by half a dozen different spikes that had grown out of the walls and ceiling, both lungs punctured multiple times. She decided that she was pleased with its suffering, and left the Weir to it.

She looked over at the Weir that Chris had stabbed with the knife he’d concealed, most of its body already rendered into a foul soapy liquid, pieces of hair and flesh floating across the top of the bloody gel.

“Nasty,” she observed, kicking at the knife with toe of her boot experimentally. “So that’s what you had in mind for me, eh?” She said to no one in particular. “Such an idiot. Like he could have stabbed me.”

After a moment’s thought, she collected the knife and her shotgun, absently loading cartridges from one of her belt’s pouches, not bothering to wipe the tears and blood from her face, her gait confident and unhurried, walking towards the great stained teak doors at the end of the hall.

She met no further opposition, nor did she expect to. The door opened easily when she turned the tarnished silver knob, as she had expected it to.

The room on the other side was large, so large that she suspected that a number of interior walls had been knocked out to create the space. The acoustic tiling had been removed from the ceiling, and its place there was a tangle of exposed wiring and lighting rigs, only about half of which seemed to function. Someone had started the process of installing off-white carpeting in the room, but had been interrupted, and Alice could see rolls of unused carpeting and exposed floor boards all around the periphery, only a few feet from where the mob of Weir stood, slobbering and hissing in the relative darkness. She didn’t bother to count. What difference did it make?

There was a single desk in the room, a great ancient thing carved from some kind of deep red tropical wood, empty apart from a single lit candle and an antique rotary dial phone. The man behind it rose when she entered and remained standing, the top of his face hidden by the excessive folds of the purple robe that he wore. He was clean-shaven, olive-skinned, and perhaps middle-aged, she guessed.

“Purple?” Alice said skeptically, cocking her head to one side and grinning, the heavy gun again resting across her shoulders, one hand wrapped loosely around the grip. “That’s what you went with?”

The part of the man’s face she could see smiled back.

“Purple was once reserved for royalty,” he said softly. “Purple is also the color of magic.”

Alice’s grin broadened.

“You might want to go with something a bit more contemporary,” she offered. “These days, a guy in a purple bathrobe might seem a little gay.”

When the man laughed, the silken folds of his robe flexed and bent, moving gently as if in the wind, the metallic thread that constituted the fringe catching the light in odd ways. When he spoke, his voice was little more than a whisper, but she had no trouble hearing it nonetheless, even from across the room. On the desk, the lone red candle guttered, little more than a nub, its flame buffeted by a wind that she could not feel.

“Do you really not remember me at all, Alice?”

The man asked the question softly, the same half-smile on his face, ambiguous and somehow off-putting.

Alice shrugged, unconcerned.

“Look, I already had this conversation once today, with someone I would have actually liked to be able to remember, so can we just,” Alice gestured impatiently with her free hand, “get on with this?”

The man smiled, briefly, gently.

“You’ve always been impatient, Alice,” he said affectionately. “And I am sorry to delay you, but I have to admit this reunion is something that I’ve been looking forward to for some time. You see, my dear, you work for me.”

Alice laughed.

“Right. Whatever you say, boss.”

“No, I’m telling the truth,” the man in the robe said insistently. “You were one of my very best.”

“If I work for you,” Alice said acidly, “then why is it that I am here conducting an Audit on Central’s authority?”

“Because that’s what I asked you to do,” the man said, shrugging, a gesture that sent ripples down the length of the purple fabric. “More than two hundred years ago. I needed you to become an Auditor, Alice, and you’ve done so very well for me. I am truly grateful.”

“Right, fuck this,” Alice snapped. “Since I’m on official business, I’ll need your name. You can tell me, or I can have Alistair interrogate your corpse. No big thing to me, either way.”

The man chuckled softly.

“We used to be lovers, you know? It hurts my pride very much that you don’t remember me. And I’m not telling you my name because you already know it. But, if you can’t remember it, then you can call me the Rosicrucian.”

Alice lifted the shotgun off her shoulders, leveling it one-handed at the man’s head. Around her, she heard the heavy footfalls and the deep guttural intakes of breath from the restless crowd of Weir, nervous and uncertain. Behind the gaping mouth of the gun, Alice’s face lit up with pure, feral ecstasy.

“Whatever you say,” Alice said, leering. “In that case, try and get me off, before I finish you.”

The Rosicrucian raised his arms up, only his olive fingers visible poking out from the generous sleeves, small purple sparks dancing around him in strange, contrary rotations, snapping and sparking in the air around him.

“You can’t possibly win, Alice,” he said, almost pleaded. “This isn’t necessary.”

Alice smile widened by a millimeter. Then she pulled the trigger.