Blood and Whispers, page 33
When the steam passed and I could breathe, I opened my eyes to see someone standing at the end of the path. Bleary-eyed, I couldn’t quite make out who it was. I saw what looked, for a second, like a tall woman with pale skin, dark hair, and a feathered cloak, wreathed in darkness. Nemain? Or was it Badb? Whichever, where had she come from? Had Aengus called the Tuatha Dé?
Then I blinked, and I could see it was Connors, running toward me. What was she doing here? She was supposed to be making sure Lajoie was safe. Before I could ask her, the world went dark.
I dreamed, then.
For once, it wasn’t a nightmare. I was floating in a void, then slowly I started to see something indescribably magnificent. The cosmos came into being, but I wasn’t seeing it in only three dimensions. I could see the entire multiverse—our universe and its infinite possible permutations, the Otherworld and its own cosmology and all of their variants, and still other realms beside, all moving and interacting together in an eternal, endless, incomprehensibly complex dance. Wherever two or more universes swirled around each other, I saw a glowing, iridescent energy connecting the two and spiraling fractal tendrils into each. I understood instinctively these were the lines of magical energy that emanated from the connections between realities, the flow of magic through all existence across time and space.
For a few seconds, I couldn’t just see everything that existed, in this universe and the rest. I could see everything that ever had existed, and everything that ever could exist. For one brief moment, I was omniscient.
Then I woke up.
I knew I’d just seen something important, but couldn’t quite remember what it had been. I opened my eyes to see Connors bent over my head, saying something to me. I couldn’t make it out. I shook my head, and suddenly I was back to reality.
“Quinn!” Connors was shouting. “Wake up!”
I forgot about my dream entirely as I struggled to concentrate.
I looked at her. Had she been the Morrigan for a second? Had the Morrigan been here? It was all still a bit confused and hazy.
“I’m awake,” I groaned, and struggled to sit up. “What’s happening?”
She looked me in the eyes, as if trying to see if I were concussed. “It’s over, Quinn. I called on the Morrigan’s favor, and it worked. He got scared and confused, just like Nemain promised. Then you got him. I don’t know what the hell you did, but you fried the son of a bitch. Almost cooked yourself in the process.”
“That’s good,” I grunted, my voice hoarse and raspy from being nearly choked to death. My vision of her now made sense. I’d almost forgotten about Nemain’s promise to the detectives outside the gates of the Black Fortress. It had only been last week, but it seemed a lifetime ago.
I was exhausted, and completely beat to hell. I wanted to sleep for about a year. But then I suddenly remembered something.
“What about the others?”
She looked grim. “Rachel got a good knock when a lamppost fell on her, and I saw at least a couple of other sorcerers down. I don’t know how bad it is. Your mother is taking care of the wounded right now. Johannes’s remaining soldiers surrendered after they saw him get barbecued; Aengus is dealing with them. You’re hurt, too. Don’t move too much. I’ve got an ambulance on the way.”
Great, I thought to myself. More hospitals. Just what I needed.
I shook my head again.
“Have to make sure,” I gasped, then I rolled up to a sitting position.
She looked concerned but didn’t try to stop me. Between the pain and the exhaustion, I had to take a second to catch my breath before actually standing up. Then, leaning on Connors, I staggered over to the fountain to see Johannes’s body.
She hadn’t been exaggerating when she said he’d been barbecued. He was burned to a crisp, his charred corpse lying in the fountain, slightly soggy—most of the water had been boiled off, but there were still a couple inches at the bottom.
He’d told me, two nights before, that only the strongest effort could break the bonds tying his life to the magical fields that permeated reality. It seemed a direct internal hit from the weapon he’d taught me to wield, the heart of magic itself, was enough to do the trick. But just in case, I sat down on the edge of the fountain and gestured toward the kukri lying a few yards away. Connors understood.
Once she’d handed me the knife, I swung my legs over into the fountain and dragged myself next to Johannes’s corpse. With my dwindling strength, I raised the blade as high as I could manage and chopped down into his neck. It was thoroughly burnt, and there wasn’t much resistance, his head falling off cleanly as the kukri hit the bottom of the fountain. Then I sat back up and looked Connors in the eye.
“Now it’s finished,” I told her.
Chapter 33
A few days later, I went to visit Henri Lajoie in the hospital. I was still beat to hell, but the bruises around my neck were mostly faded, my black eyes were almost gone, and my various wounds from the last two weeks were well on track now that I had my healing abilities again. After experiencing life without them for a mere few minutes, I did not envy Henri’s impending road to recovery at all.
Connors had already told me that after some complications caused by the kidnapping, the doctors now expected it to be two or three months of rehab before he could be fitted for a prosthesis, then months or years longer of physical therapy and practice before he’d be recovered as fully as he could get with only one arm. It was going to be frustrating and painful.
I knocked on the open door.
“Hello, Detective,” I greeted him.
He shook his head in response.
“Not anymore,” he replied. “Medical retirement. The department feels I won’t be able to perform my duties adequately with only one arm.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said as I walked in and sat in the chair near his bedside. “But I brought you something.” I put the water bottle I was carrying on his bedside table.
He looked at it, then back and me with one eyebrow quirked.
“Water? That’s one thing I don’t need you to bring me, Quinn.”
I gave him a small smile. It wasn’t much, but then again, I hadn’t smiled much for decades. I’d been doing it a bit over the past couple days, but I was still out of practice and it felt strange, almost alien, like I was forcing it.
“Try it,” I told him.
He shrugged, reached his remaining arm over to open the cap, and took a sip. His eyes went wide.
“That’s not water. What the hell is this? Tastes like some kind of juice. Tingles in my mouth and throat.”
“I can’t regrow your arm, unfortunately. But I can help you get back on your feet a lot faster than your doctors can. No offense to them, of course—I’m told they’re the best in the country. But they don’t have access to healing potions. I figured it was the least I could do, considering how you got hurt in the first place.”
He nodded slowly. “Thanks, Quinn. Connors told me you blamed yourself for me getting hurt. Do me a favor. Don’t.” He met my eyes. “That’s not on you. That’s between me and Samantha Carr. She did this to me, not you. And I was in that stairwell because I chose to be in that stairwell—you tried to keep me clear of it. None of this is your fault.”
My smile had gone away, replaced by guilt and shame.
“If I’d been smarter,” I answered, “none of us would have been in that stairwell. And if I hadn’t been a coward, I’d have ended it before you got inside.”
He shrugged. “Coulda’, woulda’, shoulda’, Quinn. Unless you happen to have a time machine, there’s nothing we can do about that now. I should be mad, I realize. A lot of people would be mad. At you, at themselves, at the world. But I’m not. I’ve been through a lot. My family was murdered when I was twelve years old. I’m a gay, black, immigrant orphan who decided to become a police officer in modern America. I know what it’s like to deal with things not going my way. I’ll get through this.”
I looked at Henri Lajoie more measuringly. He was right, a lot of people would be angry. I knew that better than most. I’d faced similar adversity, and I’d lost my fight. I’d given up, crawled into a whisky bottle, and spent over seventy years feeling sorry for myself and drinking myself to sleep, angry at the world, at the Arcanum, at myself. I’d let myself be defined by all the horrible things that I’d done and that had happened to me. And I was literally one of the most powerful mages on the planet. Here was Henri Lajoie, an ordinary person, who’d been through as much trauma as most anyone would ever experience, telling me he was going to be fine.
“You’re stronger than I am,” I told him.
He cocked his head. “What do you mean?”
“When I got hurt, I didn’t handle it with grace at all. You saw—you met me when I was still in that state. The drinking, the anger, the isolation. I didn’t get that way by accident. After the Shadow War, I felt angry and ashamed and powerless, and that’s who I became.”
He shook his head and smiled, a touch of sadness in his eyes.
“It isn’t about strength, Quinn. It’s about choices. I’ve seen enough people take that path to know that I don’t want to do the same, so I choose not to. Some people, they don’t have a choice. Depression, mental illness, addictions, you know. But I do. I’ve got a choice. So I’m choosing to be a survivor, not a victim. In my experience, attitude is more important than strength in things like this.” He cocked his head at the door. “Plus it helps to have friends.”
I turned in my seat to see Connors standing in the doorway, alongside an Asian man I didn’t recognize who was holding a bouquet of flowers.
“C’mon in, you two,” Lajoie said. “We’re just chatting.”
I stood up. “How’ve you been, Detective Connors?”
I hadn’t seen her since I’d discharged myself from the hospital for the third time in less than two weeks. I extended a hand, but she ignored it and stepped in to give me a hug instead. I was surprised, but it felt nice. Apart from Sam’s kiss, it was the most nonviolent human contact I’d had in ages. I returned the hug, briefly, then she stepped back and looked me up and down.
“Other than all the paperwork, I’ve been pretty good, Quinn. You look better.”
I shrugged. “I feel better, too. Just came to check on Henri now that I can move around under my own power.”
“Quinn, is it?” the man who’d arrived with her asked as he set the flowers down on the table next to the bottle of healing potion. “I’ve heard a bit about you. Henri told me you killed the bitch who took his arm.”
I looked confused. “I did, I suppose. I’m sorry, who are you?”
Lajoie laughed from his bed. “Oh, yes, I guess you two haven’t been introduced. Quinn, this is my husband Peter.”
“Oh!” I exclaimed. “That makes sense. Nice to meet you, Peter.” I extended my hand, and unlike Connors he actually took it.
“Thanks,” he told me. “Always glad to meet Henri’s friends. You seem much nicer than he described, though.”
I smiled, a bit more broadly than before, as he released my hand.
“I’m trying something different. Anyway, I should be going. Got some things to take care of, just wanted to check on Henri here first. I’ll be back when I can.”
After a round of goodbyes, I headed out the door, but I didn’t go home.
I’d returned home from the hospital to discover a letter, postmarked the day of the fight in Logan Square. As I sat on the train to New York, I reread it again.
My Dearest Thomas,
Congratulations are in order, for if you are alive to read this, then you have succeeded in whatever stratagem you devised to thwart me, and I am most likely dead. This is of course not the ending I would prefer—while I have never had any desire to hurt you, the sacrifice was necessary for the greater good. In saving yourself, you have doomed humanity to a future of interminable wars, tyrannical despots, endemic corruption, and great evil. But I take small solace that such a victory suggests you, at least, have begun the process of moving on from the past and re-entering the world at large. If I cannot guide humanity to a better future, I can at least think of no one better suited to protect them from their own darkness than you, my most apt pupil and beloved progeny.
I leave to you the brownstone and everything within it. Knowing you, I expect you may be tempted to empty the library and the liquor cabinet, then burn the rest. I’d advise you against such a course: there are several artifacts throughout the house that may be of a great deal of interest. But it is yours to do with as you please.
I am sorry it has come to this, Thomas. But please know that everything I have ever done has been for the greater good.
Farewell,
Johannes
I folded the page back up and returned it to the inside pocket of my coat. I’d been trying to process it for over a day now, and still couldn’t decide how to feel. Certainly, I hated Johannes—while he wasn’t at fault for every one of the memories which troubled my sleep, he was the cause of a great many. He’d set me up, he’d used me, he’d killed those I’d loved, and he’d tried to murder me, all for his supposed greater good. One of my fellow sorcerers, a Third Rank I had never met before that day, had died in the battle against his acolytes, and two others had been badly injured. But as much as I hated him, I owed him a great debt. In his mad plan to remake the world, he’d taught me the deepest magics any human sorcerer had known for thousands of years. That gift did not atone for his many sins, but it was a beautiful gift nonetheless, and one which had twice enabled me to save the world from the evils he’d unleashed.
Hours later, standing in the parlor of the brownstone in Cobble Hill, in the very room where he had pretended to be my friend for the last time, I was surprised to discover I did not feel angry.
I should have. I’d thought I would, surrounded by the physical reminders of everything he’d done to me. But I felt nothing at all. The voice that whispered in the back of my mind, the one that fed my rage and urged me to let it loose, had fallen silent. Perhaps I’d satisfied its ravenous hunger when I’d called on the fire to kill Johannes. Perhaps I’d even achieved some kind of peace. I didn’t know. But I wasn’t angry.
Instead I wandered through the brownstone and took a mental inventory of everything inside, memories flowing through me like they’d happened to someone else. In the library where I’d spent so many hours studying ancient texts, I examined the dozens of magical artifacts and tools on the shelves and the walls, with both magical and ordinary senses. Athames, bowls and jars of various substances, a mysterious stone orb that presented a void of nothingness when I tasted the magical fields around it. In the conservatory where I’d first touched the wellspring so many years before, among the various potted plants, I found a small hawthorn bush which I was certain had not been there back then. I wondered what was on the other side of the thinned veil from the Immortal’s house. Olympus? That was a question which would wait for another day.
I was startled from my musings by a knock on the front door. I walked to the entrance hall and opened it to discover a petite Chinese woman, the streaks of grey in her hair not detracting from her striking beauty. I didn’t recognize her.
“Can I help you?”
“Thomas Quinn,” she replied, extending a hand, “my name is He Xiangu. It’s a pleasure to meet you at last.”
I didn’t take her hand and raised an eyebrow.
“You’re an Immortal. One of Johannes’s siblings.”
After a moment she withdrew the hand. “I am. Technically I am your aunt, several generations removed.”
“Forgive me,” I replied, stony faced, “if I don’t feel an overwhelming familial connection.”
“Of course. I understand. Very well, then. May I come in, at least? I would prefer this conversation be private. I assure you I mean you no harm.”
I shook my head. “I’m done trusting Immortals.”
“That’s reasonable, after what my brother has done. But I am not my brother, nor are the rest of us. I merely came to let you know that we bear you no ill will for what you did to Janus, and to discuss our relationship moving forward.”
“What relationship?”
“Janus taught you a great deal, Mr. Quinn. But there is still much for you to learn if you wish to truly master the wellspring and the Great Cycle which powers it.”
I grunted. “I think not.”
She nodded. “I understand. Once burned, twice shy, as it were. But there may come a time, perhaps sooner than you expect, when you will need such knowledge. In Janus’s library, there is a small onyx orb. If you change your mind, to contact me you have only to activate it with the power of the wellspring. Goodbye, Mr. Quinn.”
She walked down the steps and turned right up the block.
I closed the door, thinking. I wasn’t sure what to make of her words. Johannes had suggested, when he’d visited me in the hospital to reveal himself, that his siblings did not support his plans, that he alone was behind the Tamesis, behind shaping me into his weapon. But simply because they weren’t involved in what he’d done to me didn’t mean they could be trusted. They were still Immortals. I didn’t know them, and I didn’t know enough about their plans to know whether anything they said was the truth.
I didn’t need to decide anything immediately. What I needed was rest, but I had no desire to do so in that house. I locked up the brownstone, set my own wards to replace those which had faded after Johannes’s death, and caught a cab back to Penn Station. Immortals could wait for another day.
Besides, I had a number of bridges to begin repairing after decades of neglect, starting with my parents and with Aengus. My mother had stayed while I was in the hospital, keeping me company while I healed, but we hadn’t had the conversations I knew we still needed to have. Aengus, for his part, had returned to the Otherworld to report recent events to Lugh and his court. I needed to reach out to both of them, and that was far more important than an old house and some magical artifacts.
