The Conclave of Shadow (13 page)

“Help me,” I whispered to the scarab swarm milling around my feet. My arm still dripped blood, birthing more of the creatures. I remembered Templeton, remembered what the Lady had said, reinforced by my days cramming over the Shadownomicon. Names. Names mattered here.

“You are the Blood-Dimmed Tide.” I wasn't sure whether to cringe or take a queer, feminist pride in the first name that came to mind. But what was said was said, and the scarabs seemed to respond, growing brighter in response to being named. Louder. Hungrier. “Help me free my daughter from those bastards.”

As eagerly as the blood had gushed from my arm, the tide of scarabs rushed forth. I followed in their wake, dribbling more scarabs behind me to add to their number. I hadn't been quite sure how useful a swarm of insects might be, no matter how menacing they looked. I should have had more faith in the special brand of awful the Shadow Realms seemed inclined to produce. The knights had released Mei Shen, dragging out rubbery sheets to bind her. Undaunted by their numbers or size, the scarabs swarmed over their feet and up their legs, moving like a single, bubbling pool of the blood from which they were formed. Three of the knights screamed and were silenced by a thick vanguard of scarabs sliding down their throats. The fourth knight danced about in a parody of a jig, trying to stomp the tide. A few scarabs were caught under boot, flattened like copper souvenir pennies, but they sprang back up the moment the knight stomped away and quickly overwhelmed him as they had his fellows.

The two knights on Tsung lost their hold. He surged up. The knight he shoved into the swarm was quickly overrun, and just as quickly the lump of that knight's body settled flat, as though he'd been devoured. I grappled the last knight. He made the mistake of trying to escape my hold by twisting my injured arm, releasing a second swarm of scarabs right into his chest. I turned away before I had to witness what they were doing to make him scream like that.

I wrapped my scarf around my arm. I needed my wits more than I needed a few more scarabs. With the knights distracted or downed, I rushed to Mei Shen's side. Tsung was already there, already rousing her from her faint. She swayed, woozy.

“We need to get out of here.” I looked around for my Sharpie, but I must have dropped it on the other side, along with my bag, which had my emergency stash of glow sticks intended for emergencies just like this. “Fuck.”

“We can carry her out. If we can get to the ferry…” Tsung said, not realizing my reason for cursing.

I ducked to sling Mei Shen's arm over my shoulder, hissing at the burn of her skin, like metal heated in the sun even through several layers of clothing. Tsung grunted as he took the other side, but he raised no complaint as we helped a groggy Mei Shen out of the Power House.

Gone was the sunny day, the tourists, the white-wheeling gulls – although I thought I spied the black shadows of cormorants overhead.

Sure, Masters. Those are cormorants. Keep telling yourself that.

“Wards… can you…?” Mei Shen gasped. She regained her footing, still gripping my shoulder to keep her balance.

“Dropped my Sharpie. How'd you get off the ferry?” I asked Tsung, glaring at him over Mei Shen's head. Actually, “How did you know we were here?”

“Somebody booked the tickets on my credit card.” His glare was all for Mei Shen. “I told you it wasn't safe to come here. I told you–”

“You can tell me all you want after we get out of here. Before–” A howl rose up all around us, horrible and hollow and pitched at the edge of hearing – Cthulhu's cover of whalesong's greatest hits. Mei Shen groaned and rested her forehead on Tsung's shoulder. “That. They've sounded the alarm.”

I glanced down the dark ribbon of road that led to the ferry slip, now filling with Conclave knights flooding from the guardhouse. The coyote brush on the hillside to our right rustled, a thousand soft hisses roused by the eerie clarion. Whatever flapped above us darted down. We ducked, but not fast enough. Something sharp skittered across my cheek, like a record needle skipping. A few more scarabs dribbled to the ground and milled about in confusion.

“So much for the ferry,” Tsung said, eying the gathering knights. They hadn't seen us yet, but it was only a matter of moments before the needle-beaked bird things drew down attention. The only clear route was the ruins running next to the road, the Officer's Club and the glass-black bay beyond that.

Watching the orphaned scarabs scuttle aimlessly gave me an idea. “Can you get us across to the real world?” Tsung hesitated. Nodded. “Then maybe a distraction to lure them away from the ferry?” I said and squeezed my scarf-bandaged arm. The pain helped me focus my whispered call. I'd done similar things to summon shadow in the real world, or when I called Templeton, but this was different. This wasn't an alien monster I'd temporarily bound to my will, or a friend who helped me out of his goodwill. This was something
mine
. Something of me, but separate.

I could contemplate the unsettling ramifications of that during the same later that Tsung was going to use to yell at Mei Shen.

Out of the shadows of the Power House came a shining, satin-bright flood of scarabs. Their hard carapaces clacked against each other, the rising crescendo of their chittering like an alien invasion. The orphaned scarabs at our feet perked up and joined my Blood-Dimmed Tide as it coursed down the black road to meet the gathering knights.

“You made a cockroach army,” Tsung said, deadpan.

I scowled at him. “They're scarabs.”

“Whatever you need to tell yourself to let you sleep at night.”

Later. I'd also tell him where he could shove his opinions. Later. For now, I led the way down the escarpment into the roofless shell of the Officer's Club.

The blackened walls rose into the sky like decaying teeth sprouting from rocky gums. Beyond the rocks, the shadow reflection of the bay shifted in slow, thick ripples. The surface shone black as pitch and nearly as viscous. Tsung and I helped steady Mei Shen as we climbed down to the gully that had once been the ground floor. I frowned out at the waters. I was even less eager to test them than I would have been if we'd stood on the other side of the veil.

“Where's a raincoat raft when you need one?” I muttered.

“Now what?” Mei Shen asked, then answered her own question. “I can fly us out of here.”

“No!” Tsung and I said in tandem.

“You'll only draw attention and pursuit,” he explained.

“And you're woozy enough that you might crash us into the drink,” I continued, because it looked like Mei Shen might argue with Tsung's logic.

Mei Shen crossed her arms, a sure sign that she was digging in for an argument. The next stage would be her doing what she wanted to do anyway. Which was probably why she and I had ended up here in the first place, with David Tsung rushing to the rescue. I needed an alternative that didn't require waiting and hoping my scarab army could lure the knights away from the ferry platform. I picked at the scabbing-over scratch on my cheek and released another drop of blood.

It was smaller than the others, barely larger than a Japanese beetle, the runt of my scarab swarm. He balanced on my fingertip like a cabochon agate.

“Hey. Um.” Names. “Rover.” Ugh. I sucked at this. “Red Rover? Is there somewhere we can hide? Or some way off this island? A boat? Something?”

The blood scarab circled my fingertip, then its carapace opened up to reveal shadow-thin wings, and it flitted off into the thick coyote brush at the base of the wall.

Holding my breath in case my luck gave out, I slid down the incline and dug into the brambles. A narrow stairway of tarry black stone descended into the earth, ending in a rusted grate. Rover hovered above one of the crossbars as though waiting until I'd seen him, then he flitted off again into the darkness beyond the grate. The tiny ember spark of his carapace quickly faded in the shadows.

I tamped down on a eureka-style shout. My little scarab had led the way to the legendary catacombs of Alcatraz.

“Hey!” I hissed up at Mei Shen and David Tsung, still engaged in a contest of wills that Tsung would never win. “If you two are done flirting, I think I've got us a way out.”

T
he initial intestinal
twists of the damp cave gave way to a long, smooth-walled corridor that glistened dimly in the soft glow of my scarab and Mei Shen's scales. The smoothness of the walls and the uniform shape of the passage confused me until I reasoned that this was not man-made nor water-carved, but the ecofact of some long-gone – and disturbingly large – seaworm of some sort.

At least, I hoped it was long gone. The fear that it might not be kept Tsung, Mei Shen, and myself moving with little conversation. None of us wanted to call the attention of something awful by talking too loudly.

I was only able to track how long we followed my little red spark by the creaking of my knees and the double-fisted tension in the small of my back. Walking was my main mode of transportation around the city, so if I was getting sore, then however far we'd gone, it was far. It was only when my thighs started burning and my breath shortened that I realized we were walking up an incline and probably had been for some time.

“I think we're out from under the bay,” I whispered, a weight of fear lifting now that I wasn't imagining several million gallons of seawater – or the Shadow Realms equivalent – crashing down on top of us.

“Can you get us out? Either of you?” Mei Shen asked. I pressed my hand against the red-dim wall illuminated by her glow. Shook my head. Tsung was already shaking his.

“Not enough light to get to the other side,” I said, cursing again that I'd thrown aside my backpack in my rush to get to Mei Shen. So many things I could have used – my glow sticks, my cell phone. Instead, I'd led us into a tunnel that still might lead nowhere. Stupid, stupid.

“I can't even tell what's on the other side,” Tsung said, which made me feel a little better. At least I wasn't the only member of the poor-planning brigade.

“Rock. I'm not sure there's even a tunnel on the other side,” I said. Up ahead, my little Red Rover was bobbing and flickering strangely.

Mei Shen scraped a claw along the wall. “How can that be?”

“Whatever creature made it only exists on this side.” I reached for Red Rover just as he flickered and winked out.

I stumbled to a stop. Mei Shen crashed into me, and Tsung behind her, pushing me forward. My face smooshed into a vertical bed of spongy black fungus and underneath that, a wall of solid stone.

“Ack!” I shoved back, my hands slipping on the fungus-covered wall. The crushed fungus exuded an odor of old tires and brackish water. I scrubbed at my cheek, which did little good given my hands were covered with the same slime. “Dead end,” I said. Overcoming my reluctance to touch the fungus again, I poked through it with one finger. There was no sign of Red Rover. Poor little guy.

“Is it?” Mei Shen raised a hand. Her scales were dimmer at her extremities, but her long, curved claws gleamed the mellow gold of antique pearls. Instead of the corridor roof, the area above us opened up. We stood in a sunken carbuncle in the floor of what seemed to be a narrow crevasse running perpendicular to our passage. A lazy flicker of red flitted down and landed on my shoulder, shadow wings tucking neatly away under his shining carapace.

“Good job, little guy,” I said, and got a little wing flutter in response.

“Which way?” Tsung asked, already searching the walls of our carbuncle for the best route up and out. The fungus-covered wall didn't offer much in the way of purchase, but he was tall enough to catch the lip and strong enough to pull himself up.

Tsung caught me when I jumped, hauling me up to the lip so I could climb. We both assisted Mei Shen, grimacing at the heat of her scales.

“I could try flying us–”

“Too narrow, and we don't know how high the passage goes. We don't want you getting stuck or injured,” Tsung said before I could weigh in. Just as well. I didn't want to point out that in this place, Mei Shen's touch was uncomfortable for both of us. Too uncomfortable for her to fly us around for any length of time. That was the sort of disturbing bit of knowledge I'd prefer to dissect over tea and biscuits.

“If I'm reading Rover correctly, one way's as good as another?” I held up one fungus-damp finger, testing the air. “That way?”

“Why?” Mei Shen asked, peering in the direction I'd pointed.

“Because I read too much Mark Twain as a kid? There's a breeze.”

With no good argument against it, we left the carbuncle and headed along the crevasse toward my elusive breeze.

“
I
think
we may have chosen poorly,” Tsung said some while later. The ache in my spine and knees had moved down to my feet. My toes throbbed. My arches cramped. My legs felt like they were held together with rubber bands, like one of those little plastic figures that collapses when you press the button in the base. I kept on keeping on only because I knew that once one of us flagged, the other two would quickly follow. Sorry, Anne Robinson, but I was not going to be the weakest link.

However, if Tsung's words were preface to him giving up and asking for a rest, I was fine with nudging that along. “What makes you say that?”

“See that darkness up there?”

I snorted, too tired to dredge up a real laugh. Outside the glow of Mei Shen's scales, there was nothing but darkness. Even Rover had buried himself somewhere in the folds of my coat. “Gee, which darkness is that? The pitch black, the oily obsidian, or the velvet depths of nothingness?”

“The Voidlands.”

Any urge to laugh drained away. I skidded to a stop, looking ahead and trying to see what my brain clearly didn't want me to see. “That's not funny.”

“I'm not laughing.”

No, I didn't think he was. Now that I wasn't concentrating on setting one foot after the other, I could see what he meant. Between the velvet and the obsidian was an absence of light so deep that I could only measure its existence by holding up my hand for foreground comparison. Seeing the Voidlands through the protection of the veil dimmed their awfulness. Now I was being forced to confront it head on, and my mind was twisting itself into a pretzel in its attempts to not comprehend.

I had been in the Voidlands. Once. During my rescue of Mei Shen after her uncle had kidnapped her. I still wasn't quite sure how I had made it out, other than using the insanity of the place to trick myself into thinking I was sane long enough to escape it. What else could explain the swarm of Templetons that had bubbled up to drag me out? I still wasn't sure how much of my perception of that experience had been real and how much had been pleasant alternatives to whatever I'd really experienced. I was pretty sure I'd tried to end the world by opening the bridge to the essence of not-being. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Which was the problem.

“We should head back,” Mei Shen said, interrupting my moment of gibbering terror.

“What an excellent suggestion,” I said. We all retreated several steps before turning to hurry back the way we'd come.

Only to collide again a moment later when Tsung stumbled to a halt. “We've got company.” Sure enough, several raptor shapes soared ahead, a slightly dimmer grey than the sheer walls that trapped us. They swooped down the crevasse like patrolling TIE-fighters. A screech of discovery from one of them jolted me out of my inaction.

“Shit. Run!” I hesitated in following my own directive. There was only one way to run that wouldn't put us in the path of the raptors.

“Which way?” Tsung asked, stymied by my hesitation. I glanced back at the Void. Even worse than entering voluntarily would be to be driven into it in terror.

“The tunnel. Back the way we came!” And hope for a miracle, I didn't bother to add. I sprinted as best I could along the uneven ground. No need to tell anyone that pretty much either way, we were screwed.

We ran beneath the raptors, close enough to see that they weren't raptors at all. They were gargoyles. They howled and wheeled about, nearly colliding in their confusion as we changed course. It gave us a few moments' lead, but that wouldn't be enough.

It also gave me a good look at what we were facing, which wasn't always a good thing. The gargoyles' bodies were heavy-boned and muscled, vaguely doglike. Their skin was dark as weeping stone and looked just as solid. Their pinions spread wide, a canopy of bone-shot shadow, and they rattled with every downbeat. If Tom's rocket pack and the
Kestrel
stretched credulity with how they managed to fly, then the gargoyles snapped it like tired Silly Putty. They weren't aloft by their own design, but by the will of another. A powerful will. That was the way of things in the Shadow Realms. Nothing kept its shape longer than an echo, unless someone with power willed it so.

My experience with the Blood-Dimmed Tide and Red Rover was still new and unfamiliar. Until now, the most I'd managed to craft was a half dozen or so amorphous blobs. I didn't have the power to sustain something as complex as these gargoyles for any length of time. Only the Conclave could command a half dozen flying gargoyle soldiers of bone and shadow.

“Masters, there's nowhere to run!” Tsung panted beside me. He was right. We'd already walked this path. The walls were too high and sheer to scale. This was why, as a rule, I avoided the Shadow Realms. It was a place of impasses.

Like now. Keep running, or stand and fight a losing battle?

The first gargoyle plummeted into a dive, taking the choice from me. I dropped and rolled, but the talons snagged my coat, jerking me half-aloft. I raised my arms and struggled out of my coat.

There was a screech of pain and fury as a second gargoyle swooped down, right into Tsung's roundhouse kick. The creature was knocked aside with a rattle of bone, but Tsung landed with a wince and a gasp, favoring his foot.

“What are these damn things made of? Granite?”

Another dove for Mei Shen, and her claws cut through its wings, sending severed bone spurs flying. They clattered against the wall, the rattle of bone drowned out by the gargoyle's screech of pain.

“Or tofu,” Mei Shen said with a pleased little smirk, holding up her gold-gleaming claws. “You run. I will fight these.”

Tsung and I shared a rare look of perfect agreement. Yeah, like either of us was going to leave her alone.

We didn't have time to argue with her. Five more gargoyles were diving down on us, their pinions snapping close to their bodies as though wind resistance was an issue. Which it wasn't. They were just shadow on wings of shadow diving through more shadow. This place was nothing else.

Except maybe perception?

“Go for their wings.” I willed my own shadow into shape. It was nothing compared to the complex constructs attacking us. Just a gently undulating veil, only a little more corporeal than the shadow around it.

That's all the kraben had been, really. That's all I needed.

On my command, the veil rose up behind the attacking gargoyles and wrapped around one of them. Head on, the gargoyle would have torn through the tissue-thin veil with momentum alone, but from behind the veil could wrap, and wrap, and bind those wings close. Howling its fury, the gargoyle plummeted to the ground. I fell to my knees, exhausted even from the small effort of keeping the winding sheet under command.

Another cry came from my left – human. I glanced over. Tsung had wrenched back the wing of one gargoyle – it hung askew as though broken – but another gargoyle had seized him from behind and was launching aloft.

“David!” Mei Shen screamed. The other three gargoyles had surrounded her, keeping her trapped in a cage of bone wings and shadow without coming within range of her claws. All three were knocked back by a long, sinuous tail as she transformed into a full dragon.

Light exploded through the crevasse like an M-80 going off in an old coffee can, blinding me and, I could only hope, the remaining gargoyles. It would have been so easy to use that light to step back into my own world, but there was nowhere to step. Everything on the other side of the veil was stone. And I couldn't leave Mei Shen.

Though apparently, she had no such qualms about leaving me. By the time my eyesight cleared enough that I could tell my real foes from the dancing blobs of my blown-out rods and cones, Mei Shen was a streamer of red-gold light diminishing into the distance, and the five gargoyles she'd left me to deal with had recovered and were closing in.

Well, fuck. I suppose there was one way to follow Mei Shen and Tsung. Not that it looked like I had much of a choice.

I put up no resistance when one of the gargoyles caught me with clawlike hands and launched aloft, wrenching my arms with every wing beat. We were flanked by two more, and the two with damaged wings limped behind, tearing my coat to shreds between them. There but for the grace of God went I?

We crested the lip of the crevasse. The landscape beyond was carved with deep ravines, like the claw marks of some long-gone leviathan. They all led in the same direction. Ahead of me, the gargoyle carrying Tsung banked, Mei Shen's red-gold streak in close pursuit. My captors trailed in their wake. We flew over the claw-mark ravines, heading toward the looming Voidlands. The leading edge cut across the landscape like the event horizon of a black hole; nothing beyond that dark curtain was visible, nor did I particularly care to see what it hid. In the rush of contained terror that followed that realization, the destruction of my coat barely mattered.

Wherever we were headed, God's grace didn't mean squat.

T
he gargoyles banked again
before we crossed over into the Voidlands, their path paralleling the leading edge. The claw-marked landscape gave way to a primordial forest of trees the size of small skyscrapers. No surprise, really. A glance across the veil told me we were somewhere in north Marin. I suspected we were seeing the Shadow equivalent of Muir Woods. It settled some of my fear. At least they weren't returning us to Alcatraz.