Broken Contracts, page 17
Should.
Not for the first time, Slate wished Christopher were here.
In the year since the last attempt, Slate had heard nothing. Not a call, not a text, not a glimpse. He heard the assorted gossip—so and so had seen his TED talk, he was lecturing at such and such—but nobody present that night had heard a word from him. Nor were they likely to.
“What are we waiting for?” Coffey asked. “I don’t have all night.”
Slate sighed.
Picking up the book, he headed to the edge of the re-painted spell circle. It was mirrored, just like the year before—all that was missing was the vials of blood. He didn’t need the physical representation anymore. He could pull their power directly from the gateway.
Taking a deep breath, he looked at the woman in the center of the circle. He switched focus one last time. Nothing. Definitely nothing.
Unbidden, his brain dredged up the memory of the Gestalt’s arrival, the thick, wet sound the corpse had made as it fell from the gateway and onto the marble. The ice in his bones as the gate indifferently sapped the life from his body. The horrifying tearing as the bones of the Gestalt’s wings had carved through his skin—
Slate breathed again. He’d borne those memories for a year and was no worse off for it. He could bear some more.
And maybe, like the hedonistic revelries taking place upstairs, it would get easier with time.
He didn’t have time to wrestle with this. It was today or wait another year.
Casting one last glance at the doomed woman, Slate began to read.
He carefully noted each change as he read past it, every modification he’d worked into the spell over the months since the Gestalt had been forced to explain the damage he’d done. Slate ran through them in his head, making the energies balance, checking and rechecking his math as the magic flowed easily from his lips.
His blood cooled. Not deadly cold, not the airless cold that came when the gateway pulled more than the blood could give it. Just a chill, so faint it could have come from the air, if he didn’t know better.
It was much easier to prepare the gateway when it was already, in a sense, open. Like walking a worn path, rather than cutting his way through underbrush.
The slave in the center of the room tipped her head, like she was listening to something he couldn’t hear. Her brow furrowed in concentration . . .
And then silently, calmly, she stepped through the doorway.
Slate kept his eyes on the portal as long as he could, barely glancing at the paper. It wasn’t like he didn’t have the incantation long since memorized. His blood roared in his ears, or maybe it was the sound of the magic.
She didn’t fade away, like someone moving away down a dark hallway. Instead, the moment she passed over the threshold, she simply ceased to be there. Like she had walked through a waterfall, a smooth curtain of black paint.
He waited for something. Anything. Any sign of what had happened to the woman once she’d stepped into the void. He wasn’t sure what he expected. Screaming? Flailing? Maybe a fine mist of blood and viscera, venting forth like an exhale from some unknowable beast.
There were only two lines of the spell left to read, and then there was . . . nothing.
The room was quiet, everyone looking toward the stone doorway in rapt fascination.
In theory, her death should form the inner wall of the torus, sealing the damage inside and creating a hole through which Slate could reach. He stepped forward, into the circle, peering into the darkness.
Could he see something there? Just the slightest variation in the black-on-black that had taunted him over the last year?
There was no way to tell whether it had worked, whether the gateway was open, except . . . to try to bring something through.
Slate didn’t look at the Gestalt. Didn’t need to see those dark, hateful eyes regarding him. Instead, Slate kept his attention on the doorway he’d opened, on what might be waiting to journey from the other side.
Crouching down, Slate activated the circle, beginning the spell that would bring another angel through. The air in the room twisted, wind rising in a loud rush.
Something flickered, once, and he was reminded that it wasn’t blackness he was seeing. No, that flicker of shadow had been black, and it stood out like a spotlight against the colorless void that surrounded it. Slate stepped closer, searching for another flicker. He had to be ready; if this new arrival was as aggressive as the Gestalt had been, he’d only have a few seconds to activate the bands.
The blackness flickered again . . . and vanished, leaving Slate staring into the nothingness that his brain helpfully, inaccurately, interpreted as dark.
Nothing happened. To his right, someone else came around to stand at his shoulder, staring along with him.
Absolutely fucking nothing.
“Oh, shit,” the person—Coffey—said. It took a moment for Slate to see what he’d seen. Slate had been so focused on what he could see inside the gate, he’d failed to notice the gate itself, which had begun to bleed.
It wasn’t damaged, as far as Slate could tell. The blood wasn’t coming from any particular crack in the stone. Instead, the whole surface had begun to weep, like a glass on a hot summer day. Thick, dark blood welled from the stone, trickling in slow, thin rivulets to the floor.
In the corner, the Gestalt began to laugh.
Anger welled up in Slate, a deep rage that made his vision go red.
He whirled on the angel, his hands forming into fists at his sides.
“Shut up!” he screamed, taking no satisfaction when the laughter instantly stopped. Mirth still danced in the angel’s eyes. Slate crossed the room in four strides, shoving the Gestalt against the wall. The laughter was replaced by a look of pain as the angle of his wings changed, yanking at the grommets.
“What did I do wrong?” Slate demanded. “Every single one of those invocations was correct. I did them right. I know I did.”
The Gestalt mumbled into his muzzle, almost smug as he did.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Slate said, tearing at the buckle and throwing the gag to the side. “Talk.”
“You invoked them wrongly,” Gestalt said, wrinkling his nose.
“Tell the fucking truth,” Slate ordered. “I know I said them right.”
“You did the magic wrong,” the Gestalt insisted.
Slate reached out, taking a handful of the chains strung between the creature’s wings. Without warning he twisted, yanking against the raw wounds. Behind him, someone made an approving noise. Coffey, or maybe Godfrey.
The angel made a noise halfway between a groan and a gag as fresh blood began to drip from the grommets.
“I’m telling the truth,” the Gestalt managed, when Slate released him. “You perceive a deep mystery and you try to compel it by shaking air at it. You shook the air the way you meant to, but the magic laughs.”
“You mean the gateway can’t be fixed with an incantation?” Slate demanded incredulously. “You said it would work!”
“What I said,” the Gestalt said, breathless laughter in his voice, “was ‘It is safe.’ And it is. Your impotent magic has left you utterly unharmed.”
“Why didn’t you tell him it couldn’t work?” Coffey asked, uselessly, and Slate rolled his eyes, knowing the answer even before it was spoken.
“Because he didn’t ask,” the Gestalt said. Slate took hold of the lowest chain and yanked. The angel screamed as the grommets pulled free, tearing through skin and muscle on their way out. He staggered, going to one knee, his breath coming heavy as the pain washed over him.
Slate had no sympathy.
A year. He’d wasted a year. He’d wasted the year trying to perfect magic that had never had a chance.
“What magic will work?” Slate demanded, and the angel gave him a wide grin.
“Nothing you’re capable of.”
“Bullshit,” Coffey said. People were gathering now. “He used this the first time; that’s how we got you.”
Slate’s heart skipped a beat. Coffey was wrong: he hadn’t opened it the first time. That had been Christopher. Christopher, who had a power Slate couldn’t hope to touch.
But the Gestalt was shaking his head.
“You tripped and fell down a path unguarded,” he said, and Slate could tell he was struggling to find the words. “It would take you, your books, a thousand years to learn the framework of what you’re meddling in, another thousand to understand why you succeeded, and a million after to know how you’ve been confounded.”
“You fix it, then,” Coffey demanded, grabbing the chains. The Gestalt stumbled as he was dragged across the room and shoved face to face with the black sheen of the doorway.
“It works perfectly, for my purposes,” the angel said, and Coffey shoved him closer.
“Then maybe we change your purposes,” he hissed. “Maybe you do your best and if you manage to fix it, you get to survive when I fucking push you through!”
“I would rather die,” the Gestalt said, his voice level.
The look on Coffey’s face was angry enough to be almost comical. Slate regarded them, switching focus. Coffey, in a suit that cost more than most men would make in their lives, the undulating network of his connections surrounding him like a starburst. And beside him, this slave—no, this creature, with his black cotton pants slung low on his thin hips, his feet bare, standing tall and unafraid as he faced his death.
Slate, somewhat to his surprise, found it arousing. The anger and resentment sat in his belly like a burning stone, but it seemed that in some regards, heat was heat.
Slate wondered if the creature could be humiliated, or if he were too inhuman to feel shame. Maybe it was just a matter of how low he could be brought, how much dignity could be stripped from the bound, bleeding—
Slate blinked, switching his focus back to normal vision.
The angel was still bleeding. A slow rivulet of dark blood ran from his wing down his side, soaking into his waistband. There was a trail of it across the floor, disappearing into the puddle surrounding the doorway.
“He’s not healing,” Slate said aloud, interrupting Coffey’s litany of threats. The Gestalt didn’t react.
“We know,” said a voice from nearer the wall. Slate glanced over. He’d almost forgotten the others were there. Well. Some of the others. Some of them had gone upstairs, but Godfrey had apparently stayed around to watch the show. “He’s been slowing down.”
“And you’re telling me this now?”
“Didn’t know you were interested in my research,” Godfrey said, stepping closer. “I usually get the impression you’d rather not have the details.”
“And you’re usually correct,” Slate said. “But what do you mean ‘he’s slowing down’?”
“I mean the rate of his healing is slowing down,” Godfrey said. “A thirty centimeter incision at two centimeter depth took seven point two seconds to heal, this time last year. Yesterday, it was up to twenty-four.”
“He’s doing it on purpose,” Slate said. “He’s fucking with you.” He turned to the angel, gesturing to the place where the grommet had torn loose. “Heal that. As fast as you can.”
“I am,” the angel said simply, still staring into the darkness. “My powers are running dry. Did you think I was the only creature in existence who could exist in perpetuity?”
Slate whirled to Godfrey. “What are you doing about this? Can’t you . . . I don’t know, feed him better or something?”
“Yes, it never occurred to me that a starving creature might need to eat,” Godfrey snapped. “His power comes from . . .” He gestured widely. “I don’t know. Osmosis. Whatever power source he used for sustenance back home, it doesn’t exist here.”
Slate rubbed his face. The anticipation from this morning had utterly dissipated, followed by a quiet, rolling sense of dismay.
The doorway was still closed, and would stay that way for another year, at the minimum. The methods he’d been using to compel the Gestalt were clearly ineffective, and he didn’t know why. And to top it all off, the one creature they’d managed to pull through the gate was dying.
“It’s more concerning to me that he was lying to you,” Godfrey said, stroking his chin as he regarded the angel. “I thought we’d gotten that out of him by now.”
“I didn’t lie,” the Gestalt said, and Slate didn’t miss the way he pulled, slightly, away.
“You didn’t tell the truth either,” Godfrey said. He stepped closer, turning the angel with an almost gentle touch on his shoulder. The torn wing came into the light, feathers burnished with drying blood. “You know what that means.”
The Gestalt said nothing. The proud stance from a moment ago was gone, replaced by a bitter stoicism.
“How long do you think it will take to heal this time?” Godfrey asked. Slate crossed his arms, listening despite himself. The Gestalt didn’t answer.
“Godfrey does debarkings,” Coffey explained, seeing Slate’s confusion. The Gestalt’s face went ever so slightly paler. “I’ve had like four of mine done. There’s no reason slaves need to talk.”
“It leaves them with a dull rasp, at the moment,” Godfrey said, not taking his eyes off the angel. He reached up, drawing a line down the column of the Gestalt’s throat. “But I’m working on it.”
Slate could feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing up, though whether in arousal or disgust he wasn’t fully sure.
The Gestalt looked toward the gate with something like longing as he was led away, leaving Slate alone in the ballroom. It was very quiet, after the noise of the magic. Even the sounds of the party upstairs seemed exceptionally muted.
Slate was exhausted. He slumped, leaning with one hand against the stone doorway, heedless of the blood coating it.
It was gritty with something that wasn’t stone.
Slate stared into the nothingness, remembering the way the woman had simply vanished as she’d crossed the threshold. What did that feel like? Could it feel like anything? Or had her body simply ceased to exist the moment it had passed from the human realm?
He wondered if she’d seen anything before she died. If the doorway had given her the tiniest glimpse of the unknown as payment for what she’d sacrificed. Did the magic recognize the magnitude of what it demanded? Or was it simply a force, churning the universe as thoughtlessly as gravity?
Slate stared into the void, and in his mind’s eye, the void stared back.
It didn’t escape him that he could answer these questions. He could simply step . . . forward . . . and know.
His fingers tightened on the stone, as if anchoring him against the pull of his own intentions.
He didn’t have to go . . . all the way through. Maybe just—
His hand stilled before he realized what it was doing. The fingertips of his free hand were barely an inch from the inky blackness of the door. He could just . . . he could just . . .
The space narrowed, so slowly as to be almost imperceptible. Inside his own mind, Slate questioned whether this was really happening, watching it as though from outside his own body. The idea that he could stop didn’t seem entirely accurate.
A single millimeter remained, and then—
The tips of his fingers vanished, as though sliced off by an invisible blade, and pain instantly jolted through him, seizing through his wrist like an electric shock.
Slate yanked his hand back, staring at it in disbelief. At first he thought there was blood—but no, he’d simply cradled the injury in his bloodied hand on instinct.
His fingertips had turned black. Not the empty, lightless black of the doorway, but the ashy purple-black of frostbite. He could feel his heart beating in the surrounding flesh, each pulse screaming agony down his arm.
Fuck, he thought, staring down at them. A disconnected part of his mind noted the clear, straight delineation between damaged and undamaged flesh, while another equally neutral voice suggested that maybe he should seek medical help instead of kneeling here all night, staring at himself.
He hadn’t even realized he’d fallen.
He lurched to his feet, trying to think of what he knew about frostbite—if it even was frostbite, or some paranormal malady following different rules entirely.
He needed to get to a medic, immediately—and it wasn’t until he’d staggered into the elevator and pressed the button that he realized he had a better option.
Godfrey. Godfrey was a doctor.
The elevator doors opened and he staggered out, his hand screaming as he jostled it. Most of the people gathered around didn’t turn to look—and why would they? Someone had just stepped out of the elevator. No reason for alarm.
The bones of his hand were like molten lead, the fire leaching its way up into his forearm.
He scanned the crowd, looking for the wings that would stand a head above the rest.
There. Across the atrium, headed for the private rooms.
Slate wasn’t aware whether he actually vocalized an excuse me, or even a move as he pushed his way through the crowd, leaving blood on more than one evening gown or suit as he went. His hand was going numb, which was a horrid mix of good and bad news.
“Godfrey!” he called out. He still couldn’t see the man through the crowd, but chances were, he was with the Gestalt, who had stopped moving. “Fucking hell!”
The people nearest him quickly chose to make a path. It widened as he barreled through it, not slowing for those who wouldn’t move on their own.
At the end, Godfrey stood with his arms crossed, looking him up and down.
“I only left you for a second,” the man said, voice more incredulous than worried. “What happened? Where are you bleeding from?”
“It’s not my blood,” Slate said, struck with a strange case of déjà vu. Wasn’t that what he’d said to Micah, a year ago? “No, it’s my hand, it—”
He held his hand up so Godfrey could see the damage for himself.
It was perfectly fine.
The fingertips that had been black and cracking a minute ago were now covered in pink, healthy skin. The numbness overtaking his hand was rapidly fading into a neutral lack of pain. And the agony spreading up his wrist was now a mild soreness, no worse than the persistent click he’d had in one knee for years.
