Chapter 22 #2
But speaking of it seemed to restore Marrion, bringing her to her center of calm. She was reporting to us as she would report to Olwyn, like she was sitting in the safety of her mentor’s presence and relating a distantly-observed experiment.
I knew it was some form of shelter, taking refuge in terms like ‘termination’, and that deep inside a part of her was still screaming, nothing but a terrified little girl lost in the dark and in over her head.
But I would be damned if I let Marrion fall apart and die down here, so I accepted her report with cool composure.
There would be time later to let her sob out the last of her horror and grief.
“You did what you had to do, Marrion. I’m proud of you.” I patted her head, and thought I saw the faintest hint of a smile on her bloodied lips. “These tunnels obviously connect, so we’ll find Nikos and Talos soon.”
She nodded absently, and then she finally seemed to come back to herself, regaining awareness of her surroundings.
And the first thing her eyes landed on was Líadan.
“Who is that?” Marrion asked sharply, standing up. Jesamin dropped her handkerchief, rising to her feet with her hands held out.
“Her name is Líadan,” she said, and gave the woman an imploring look. “It’s all right. She won’t harm you.”
Líadan backed up, her gaze wary once more, holding my blanket around herself like a shield. But I would give it to her—even when my blood-soaked niece strode forward to peer at the chthonium ring around her neck, the white-haired woman didn’t run away, just stood there and stared at the ground.
But as Marrion straightened, frowning to herself, I realized it wasn’t courage holding Líadan in place. She looked…subservient. Utterly obedient, as though expecting Marrion to reach out and slap her.
Jesamin and I exchanged a look, and I saw that she had noticed the same thing.
“We found her in one of those cylinders,” Jesamin said. “She was…the only human left alive, I think. Not surprising, with this place being buried for so long.”
Marrion backed away from Líadan, both of them watching each other with identical cagey expressions.
“Aunt Wyn told me that nothing was ever recovered from beyond the Gates,” Marrion said in an almost casual tone, but her eyes were burning.
“Not even in the days of the royal highbloods. So if she was found here, in these laboratories, then she has been alive since roughly the Migration Era of the Fae, and I strongly question the wisdom of being in close proximity to her.”
“I don’t think Líadan’s dangerous,” Jesamin said doubtfully. “She’s frightened, certainly, and confused, but if she was going to act against us…she’s had plenty of opportunities by now.”
“Oh, I’m not saying she’s actively hostile.
” Marrion looked at the quilt of port-wine stains covering the woman’s pale face and body.
“I’m saying she may have been exposed to ancient diseases our bodies have absolutely no protection against. Aleyn’s body began ripping itself apart the moment he touched that alembic.
Only the gods know exactly what the Fae were brewing down here, and if she was preserved for several thousand years, there’s no saying their plagues and scourges couldn’t have survived as well. ”
This time, I caught the flat shine of terror in Jesamin’s eyes when she looked at me. We had both touched her, skin to skin. Líadan had been in contact with Jesamin directly for the last two hours, at least.
“I think,” I began, hoping desperately that I was right, “that if Líadan was infectious, we would have shown signs by now.”
Hearing her name repeatedly, the woman’s dark eyes were darting between us and the floor, her lips turned down.
She may not understand, but she knew perfectly damn well she was the subject under discussion, and in response, she wrapped the blanket tight and held still, making herself seem smaller and unobtrusive.
“You would be fine, Uncle. Your blood is likely to overpower anything she may pass on. But Jesamin…” Marrion looked at her, and the relief I’d experienced at Marrion’s return to sanity once again fell away, leaving me standing over an abyss.
“I feel perfectly fine.” Jesamin lifted her chin in the air, but I noticed she had gone so pale that if not for Líadan’s skin shining like a beacon next to her, I would’ve called her ghostly. “Tired, sore, and hungry, but not sick.”
“Gods, I hope that holds,” Marrion said, rubbing her temples. “You’ll want to quarantine her, of course. I know Aunt Wyn would certainly volunteer to perform her blood testing and study her.”
There was little humor in me, but I snorted anyway. “She won’t just volunteer. She will entirely commandeer this whole problem as soon as she gets word of this.”
“Aren’t you both forgetting something?” Jesamin asked sharply.
“She’s a person, not a creature to be locked up and studied.
And she’s going to be in for a hell of a shock.
What if she was one of the slaves living in those little stone holes?
What if she has no idea that there’s an entire world above her head? ”
I knew Líadan couldn’t possibly understand a word of this, but perhaps she understood that Jesamin was championing her cause, because she sidled closer to her, hiding behind her shoulder.
I didn’t like that. Not at all. If my Jesamin were infected by her…if she turned into something like Aleyn…I found myself physically incapable of imagining the outcome. It was a great, horrified blank space in my mind.
“Everything will be fine,” Jesamin said to her, a touch desperately. “I won’t let them lock you away. Everything will be fine.”
I took a breath, exhaling my fears. “The damage is done regardless. We’ll move on and find the rest of our crew, and worry about that later.”
Marrion nodded, and Jesamin urged Líadan to follow her. We passed Aleyn’s body, which Marrion winced and looked away from, and Jesamin’s lip curled in horror and disgust.
I hated to let him rot here, but there was no other way. We could not touch an infected body. I fully intended to allow Jesamin to flood Liuridar with fire, and perhaps the pyre would reach him, and send his soul into peace.
The rooms Marrion had passed through were essentially identical to our path; we retraced them as the fulmen flickered overhead, finally coming to the door that had shut behind Marrion, and another intersection.
I gestured to the middle path. “We’ll take this route, and likely meet with Nikos along the way. Marrion, stay behind them. You’re forbidden from using sanguimancy again.”
She scowled, showing her sharp incisors in a grimace, but skirted well around Líadan and took her place in the rear. At least Wyn had trained her to know her limits.
The laboratories continued for some time, and we finally rounded a loop and I heard a distant thudding noise. Jesamin’s face relaxed into pure relief. “That’s Talos. He’s close.”
We entered a massive laboratory, where the fulmen surged and ebbed into near-total darkness, and I had time to note fresh wetness underfoot just before glass cracked.
As one, we looked to the right, where more cylindrical aquaria lined the walls.
There was a fiend climbing from one of the tanks, ripping the rubbery tube from his distorted mouthful of fangs, shredding his own flesh as he scrabbled to clear the shattered glass.
A fiend.
Jesamin fired and immediately ripped a new packet of powder and shot from her waistcoat, reloading.
A hole appeared in the fiend’s broad chest, and he snarled, his bear’s jaws slavering, the mass of his bulky body almost impervious to the lead ball.
He simply tossed his head, twisted ram’s horns breaking more glass from the upper half of the cylinder as he leaned into the remaining barrier.
“Missed,” she muttered, aligning another shot. “Fuck me.”
The fiend’s eyes met mine, but there was no recognition in them. No intelligence. No sanity.
His gaze swung to Jesamin, still steadying her pistol, grunting and drooling as he focused on her, his fangs jutting forward.
He was a beast, the animals we might’ve been. Our first incarnation. Elder brother.
All those years of being called an animal, yet this being before me was truly what they claimed I was.
For the first time in many years, I felt a surge of bitter vindication. Never again would I feel like a creature, not when I had seen one with my own eyes.
I lunged at him, driving him back just as the lower half of the cylinder shattered, thrusting my claws into the soft meat under his jaw. The fiend grunted, red eyes rolling in their sockets, and sprang up to butt me with his curling horns.
Gods, the strength of the bastard. I flew across the room, smashing onto my back and driving the air from my lungs. Even Bane would have met his match in this one.
But my one blow had achieved what I’d aimed for: the fiend had forgotten Jesamin and Marrion, stalking towards me on all fours.
His claws were the length of a man’s hand, and unlike my brothers, most of his human body had been distorted; more bear than man, with the countenance of a simple creature.
I rose to my feet again, gripping his horns and throwing him over on his side. The fiend bellowed, thrashing out with those brutal claws as he landed on his back, and then he jerked, at the same moment that another round of thunder crashed and echoed through the halls.
One of the fiend’s eyes had exploded, the socket gushing dark blood, and he went limp. I dropped him, staring at the perfect tiny hole that had ended this massive being’s life.
“We shall consider the first shot a warm-up,” Jesamin sniffed, already unshouldering her pack to bring out another twist of black powder and shot.
I stared at her. She’d shot him dead in the eye.
“I had him,” I said, and she simply reloaded her pistol, carefully tamping down the fresh powder and lead ball.
“We’ll call my way a shortcut, then.”
“Is it a shortcut, or are you going for a record for the most fiends shot? You’ve already come after me. What if you had shot me in the eye? I could be dead now.”
Jesamin snorted, as though she meant to laugh, but her face was still too drawn for true humor. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’d never aim for anything other than center mass without my spectacles.”
“And what if you’d had your spectacles? What then?” I demanded, and she smiled, a little shakily, and chucked me under the chin with a wink.
“You’re the one who brought me my spectacles, darling. And much appreciated, too.”
I couldn’t stop myself, even with our audience. I grabbed her into a crushing hug, burying my face in her lovely, sweat-soaked, honey-scented hair.
“You are a dangerous little menace,” I whispered in her ear, and felt her laugh, even through the trembling in her limbs. “Thank the gods you didn’t have the pliers as well.”
She twisted her head, kissing me deeply, both of us radiating nothing but the simple joy of still being alive.
“You’re the one who grabbed him by the horns,” she whispered against my lips. “One of us did something absurd, and it was definitely not me.”
She was still smiling, though, even as we parted, but Marrion’s breathless whisper of “Uncle” washed all joy from me. Jesamin turned, frowning.
The other cylinders still gleamed with blue light. Bubbles rose nostrils, indicating life.
Each and every one held a fiend, and more than one of them were moving. The fulmen flickered again, casting the laboratory into temporary darkness.
“Go,” I whispered, releasing Jesamin and pushing her towards the far door. “Fast and silent.”
Jesamin waved Líadan after her, and the two of them ran on tiptoes, followed by Marrion, who had clearly chosen to disregard my orders and was already cutting a fresh Eye into her palm.
I brought up the rear, watching as the fiends, those terrible, twisted conglomerations of man and animal, writhed in their watery tombs, struggling to awaken.
We passed through a darkened room where a table lay before us, the long-dried body of a fiend laid out on it in the manner of a vivisection, his flesh and ribcage spread open and pinned in place.
The women glanced at the table and hurried on, as clearly unnerved as I felt. There was a distant sloshing sound, and we were all nearly in a full run when we came to a hall that deviated in two directions, two open doors.
Marrion held out a shaky hand, the blood coating her palm now clotted and slimy.
She was breathing too quickly, her face too pale.
“I think…left,” she whispered raggedly. “Left. I have a stronger impression of life in that direction. It’s hard to tell.
There’s a crystcore near, and it’s suffocating my senses. ”
I didn’t ask her if she meant life as in the remaining members of our party, or glass tubes full of ancient, still-breathing fiends and wargs. She could no longer spare blood for the Eye to see more clearly.
Jesamin nodded in agreement, looking vaguely ill. “I feel it more every time it surges,” she said in an undertone. “It’s like a thundercloud, pressing on my mind.”
“To the left, then,” I said, urging them along.
Jesamin, the nearest to the door, went first. And a bare second after she passed beneath the line of demarcation, the floor buckled underfoot, shaking and surging, the fulmen flaring as bright as lightning.
Everyone staggered. Jesamin gasped and doubled over from the force of her illness, reaching out blindly for support.
I reached for her but the fulmen went dark, and something hissed through the air between us. A door coming down, cutting us off from each other.
When I felt for her hand, my fingers met nothing but a cold, hard wall.