The Relic Guild (45 page)

Hamir allowed himself a tinge of satisfied pride. ‘Come along,’ he said, and his bodyguard followed him to a set of stairs that descended to the next level of the Nightshade.

Seeing the avatar in his laboratory had not surprised Hamir as much as what it had said to him. The secrets of the Nightshade were many, and the blue spectre seemed to know them all. It had told Hamir many things that he was inclined neither to believe nor disbelieve. However, being in the uncustomary position of having no choice, he had been forced to follow the avatar’s instructions. The first of those instructions was to continue travelling down until he reached the deepest region of the Nightshade, and a room known as the Last and Lowest Chamber.

Curiously, the whispery voice of Hagi Tabet had ceased goading the necromancer as he journeyed downward. Undoubtedly, she must be watching him, but her silence endured even when he paused to allow Jacob to rid the way of three more of her servants. With everything considered, Hamir regarded the new Resident’s silence with suspicion. She obviously knew something he did not.

The answer to his suspicions came just after he stepped through a narrow archway to the next set of descending stairs. There was a fizzing sound from behind him, followed by a wet slurp. Hamir turned and saw that Jacob had ceased following him. The flesh of his head had been melted and now dripped through his wire-frame body in greasy lumps. An instant later, Jacob’s skull was reduced to dust, and the surgical implements fell from his grasp. As the mannequin toppled to the ground, a woman dressed in a priest’s cassock was revealed standing behind it. Hamir recognised her long hair, dark and straight, and her small, porcelain face that would have been flawless if not for the patch of scarring on her forehead. All in all, her presence was unsurprising.

She walked towards him, stepping over Jacob’s remains. Hamir raised a hand, whispered a word, and cast a barrier of wavering acid, transparent and sickly grey, to cover the archway. The woman smiled thinly.

‘Hello, Hamir,’ she said with only the barrier separating them. ‘It has been such a long time. How are you faring?’

Hamir considered, and then rocked his head from side to side. ‘Fair to middling. Yourself?’

‘Never better.’ Her smile grew thinner. ‘Why are you running from us?’

He pursed his lips. ‘From my perspective, that question sounds a little rhetorical, Lady Asajad.’

‘Oh, Hamir.’ She studied the barrier of acid magic. ‘You are the Resident’s aide. Hagi Tabet needs your help. Fabian and I
need your help. And soon, Viktor Gadreel will need your help.’

‘Doubtful.’

Asajad chuckled. ‘Must you always be so mistrusting? The Relic Guild is no more. Your masters have gone. Service to the Nightshade is all that remains for you, and the Nightshade belongs to the Genii now.’ Her attempt at a sympathetic expression could not hide the grim amusement lurking beneath. ‘Time to choose a side, Hamir.’

‘Yes. Yes, I suppose it is.’

She took a step closer to the barrier. ‘We can give you what you want, you know,’ she whispered. ‘All the time and freedom to conduct your …
experiments,
without question or restriction. You can go as far as you wish, and no one will stop you. What possible reason could you have not to share your secrets with us?’

Hamir raised an eyebrow. ‘Another rhetorical question, or a genuine invitation to join the Genii?’ He shook his head. ‘You always were a difficult one to read, Lady Asajad.’

Her dark eyes glinted. ‘You are either with us or against us, Hamir.’ She peered through the barrier again ‘But – come now – let us not be separated. Let us continue this conversation in a more personal manner.’

Asajad reached out and placed a hand against the acid barrier. She gritted her teeth as the skin of her palm hissed and smoked for but an instant, and then her thin smile returned as she began absorbing the deathly grey magic.

Hamir took a step back. The barrier was an improvisation, and he had known the instant he cast it that it would, at best, only serve to slow a Genii. However, the magic was strong enough to buy him the moments that might make the difference between success and failure. But success depended on the avatar being trustworthy.

‘As considerate as your invitation is,’ he told Asajad as she continued to absorb the barrier, ‘I’m rather afraid I’ve had a better offer. Goodbye, my Lady.’

He turned and jogged down the stairs, Mo Asajad’s screams of fury following him.

Without bodyguard or weapon, Hamir travelled down and down, twisting and turning through the maze of the Nightshade, mildly surprised and thankful that no more of Tabet’s servants appeared to hinder his way. Still dogged by the shouts and screams of Lady Asajad, he quickened his pace along a lengthy corridor that led to an antechamber. Here two more corridors splintered off, one to the left and one directly ahead. Hamir continued on straight, and descended the final flight of stairs that would bring him to his destination.

Mo Asajad was not far behind.

As he exited into another small antechamber, he paused to cast an acid barrier over the stairwell entrance. Turning, he stepped up to the far wall and pressed a hand to its maze pattern. The outline of a door appeared instantly. But even as he made to push the door open, a voice spoke from behind him.

‘You’re a fool, Hamir.’

Lady Asajad had reached the bottom of the stairs. Her face was cold and calm as she pressed a hand to the barrier of acid. Already, the magic was diminishing.

‘You could have had all that you crave,’ she hissed. ‘But now the side you have chosen is quite obvious, and –’ she grinned with long white teeth – ‘I suspect the blood of a necromancer will taste sweeter than any other.’

‘Hmm.’ Hamir pushed open the door, and the Genii could only snarl after him as he slipped into the Last and Lowest Chamber of the Nightshade.

Clara had never realised that such a grand but miserable place existed beneath the streets of her home. She supposed she should have felt astonished and repulsed in equal measures as she traipsed through this dank and slimy world. But the truth was, she felt nothing for her environment. Her mind could focus only on her simmering anger, which her every thought seemed to fuel. Not even her medicine could abate the heat inside her.

She stared at the two skeletons lying on the walkway beside the river. Stripped of flesh, the white bones were charred and blackened.

‘Do you think one of them is Samuel?’ she asked; her voice was neutral.

‘Perhaps,’ Van Bam replied.

The ex-Resident crouched at the edge of the walkway, facing down into the river. The ruins of two golems lay in the shallow water, raw sewage flowing around them. Atop one pile of grey and broken stone sat an empty terracotta jar.

‘That’s three of them,’ Clara said. ‘Well – three that we know of. How many more friends do you think Fabian Moor has?’

Van Bam didn’t reply and continued to gaze at the golems as though lost in contemplation. But Clara knew that he was feeling lost; that he had run out of ideas and hopelessness had entered his soul. She could smell it on him, and the scent disgusted her more than that of the sewers.

It had been the sound of Samuel’s fire-bullet that brought them to this area. The soft thunder of the impact had been quickly followed by a low roar that seemed to rock the stiff atmosphere and suck the moisture from the air. Van Bam said it was the sound of a fireball. Had Samuel died in the blast he had created? Did one of the blackened skeletons belong to the old bounty hunter? But a fireball wouldn’t strip flesh from bone so completely. These skeletons must have been the food source the new Genii had devoured to reanimate itself once released from the terracotta jar.

‘What do we do now, Van Bam?’

He didn’t respond.

‘Van Bam?’ she pressed tersely.

He turned his metallic eyes to her. ‘In all honesty, Clara, I do not know.’

Clara scoffed; the weakness in his voice offended her, and she was barely able to look at him.

Van Bam
seemed to sense her disappointment, and his expression was almost
apologetic as he rose to his feet. Standing with his
back to the river, he looked left and right along
the walkway.

Clara left him to his indecision and popped
yet another tablet of monkshood into her mouth. As she
chewed it to a bitter, chalky paste, she noted that
there weren’t many tablets left in her medicine tin.
It would not be long before she needed to renew
her supply – perhaps a day, two at the most if
she rationed. But it wasn’t as if she could
just pop up into Labrys Town for a new prescription.
Once her medicine ran out, the wolf wouldn’t remain
caged for long.

Clara wasn’t sure she cared anymore.

‘
We should keep moving,’ Van Bam announced.

‘Where to?’

‘Anywhere,
Clara. Now the Genii is reanimated, he or she will
soon have to feed, and—’

A scream echoed from somewhere
not so very distant. Clara and Van Bam stared at
each other for a quick, frozen moment.

‘Can you tell
from which direction it came?’ Van Bam asked.

‘I think
so, it—’ She flinched as a second scream came, full
of rage. The voice carried an undercurrent, something not quite
human, and Clara had heard it before, very recently, at
East Side Asylum.

‘There,’ she said, pointing into the gloom. ‘
Not too far away.’ A third scream shattered the air. ‘
And it’s getting closer.’

Van Bam illuminated his cane. ‘
I have changed my mind,’ he whispered. ‘It is time
to stay put and hide, Clara. Keep close.’

Under the
concealing light of the green glass cane, the two agents
stepped away from the river and backed up against the
wall beside the mouth of a tunnel. Evidently the Genii
had already fed, and whoever had been infected with the
virus was heading their way, but a darker thought occurred
to Clara. What if the skeletons on the walkway belonged
to bounty hunters, and it was their flesh that had
reanimated the Genii? What if Samuel had survived the fireball,
but it was his blood that had provided the Genii
with his first meal? What if Old Man Sam was
now on his way to becoming a golem?

Clara cocked
her ear as she heard someone coughing with a series
of
harsh barks. She saw Van Bam’s face was tight, pensive. The sound was getting closer.

Clara’s anger rose again. Wouldn’t it be a kind of poetic justice if Samuel was infected? To be stripped of his arrogance as the virus ravaged his body; to be reduced to a slavering animal that cared for nothing save sating its bloodlust; to lose all knowledge of who he was and what he had done as he slowly changed into an indolent, servile golem – yes, Clara decided there would be.

She sniffed sharply. A smell reached her nostrils: the pungent, rotten stench of infection. A cruel smile curled her lips.

She’d have no problem putting Samuel out of his misery, ending his pathetic, bestial existence. After all, not so long ago, he had intended to kill
her
for the sake of a bounty contract. If it came to it, Clara would have to deal with Samuel anyway; Van Bam was in no fit state.

A moment later, she sensed Van Bam tensing as a figure emerged into the light of a glow lamp further ahead on the walkway. With hair shorn close to the scalp and wearing a long coat, the figure loped forwards, fingers claws and teeth bared.

It was a woman.

Clara’s first reaction was a tinge of disappointment that the virus victim was not Samuel. But she experienced a rush of pleasure as the woman came closer, revealing a face belonging to someone else she knew: a bounty hunter called Nim.

Though Nim couldn’t see the Relic Guild agents, she obviously knew that fresh blood was close by. Her red tongue darted from her mouth as if tasting the air like a snake. She stopped to look up and sniff. She screamed her frustration, and as her voice shattered the rancid atmosphere, Nim continued onwards, her pace now a stalking crawl. Clara’s blood quickened.

Clara knew that Nim always worked with her sister, Aga – who was probably now one of those skeletons. Although an unpleasant bitch, Aga was much preferable to her sibling. A sociopath and a heavy drinker, Nim had been barred from every place along Green Glass Row – except for the Lazy House. Fat Jacob alone had welcomed Nim’s money, turned a blind eye to the things she did to the whores. She had hired Clara once, and the bruises had been quicker to heal than the memories.

The stench of infection grew heavy as Nim crept closer. An empty gun holster was strapped to her leg. Black veins spread like cracks in glass from a bloody bite wound on her neck. She stopped several paces from Clara to turn full circle and lick the air once more. The mask of rage Nim wore on her pale face, the long white teeth, and her animalistic gait, all served to finally expose the brutal monster that had always lurked within her. It was a fitting look for the bounty hunter, a truer look, and it gave Clara an idea.

What reason did she have to let the beast live? Clara’s anger was making her feel so strong; all she had to do was step from the circle of concealing light and she could simply snap Nim’s neck with her bare hands. An excellent idea.

As she made to follow through with her reasoning, Van Bam grabbed her arm and his metallic eyes glared at her, desperate and questioning. Before Clara had time to think her actions through, she made a noise that might have been a bark, and then brought her knee sharply up into Van Bam’s groin. With a gasp, he fell down onto all fours, gagging as his glass cane rolled away from his grasp. The sickly green light sputtered and died.