Paint it Black, page 32
Even though her spell of concealment held strong, she skulked around the edge of the warehouse to a deserted corner where she could poke her head through and observe. Finding a vantage point, she stepped out from under the mezzanine and found herself beneath a device of Dropnick’s so vast it filled the entire expanse of the interior.
Suspended from cables was an elaborate armature made of thin brass in the shape of an open globe divided up into segments. Smaller shapes hung within: globes, pyramids, and cubes arrayed in what could have been a three-dimensional chart of constellations in the heavens. Around the globe were positioned elevated work platforms on vertical scissor lifts. Lab-coated and construction-helmeted technicians worked intently on the structure, testing, adjusting, and taking measurements. At the base, attached to it by thick ropes of exposed copper wire, was a large array of blocky consoles made from Dropnick’s unique technology, both elaborate and antiquated, like something out of a fantasy of the early days of electricity. Bare light bulbs glowed on and off. Racks of valves buzzed and hummed. Technicians ran around checking gauges, turning cranks and pulling levers. As she watched, work paused abruptly. A buzz of excitement rippled through the workers as doors on the far side of the warehouse opened, and an army of technicians entered pushing people on wheeled hospital gurneys.
Not just people: saints with auras so weak they could be mistaken for acolytes.
40
The first to emerge was Judge Griffiths, the saint of Law. Though the white-haired old man was muzzled and bound with leather straps to the gurney, he lay completely still as they wheeled him in. From where she stood, it looked to Gosha like he might be unconscious or heavily drugged, but then she saw the leather belt across his chest holding a circular bronze device against his body. Another of Dropnick’s demonic machines, no doubt keeping Judge Griffiths subdued. His attendant wheeled him to one of the many work platforms, unbuckled him from the gurney, and hoisted him onto the platform to be lifted up to a small bronze wireframe globe higher up in the armature. Within the globe was suspended a plate of brass molded into the shape of a recliner chair. Three technicians moved him into it and strapped him down.
“Why do all this now? We’re three days away.”
George’s voice rang out across the floor, loud and arrogant as if he owned the place. He and Dropnick stood at the base of the armature surrounded by a group of a dozen men and women. More than half were George’s acolytes, all male, the shimmering armor of their auras dwarfed by the majesty of his own. With them stood Dropnick’s thugs. Gosha recognized the tall woman with the severe straight hair and angry bangs that led the assault on her home in the back of the group. Her eyes alive, the woman’s gaze flickered around the group as if waiting for something to happen.
As George and Dropnick talked, the remainder of the saints were wheeled in to be added to the armature.
“The recipient will be too active, too unstable,” said Dropnick standing beside George. George towered over the little man. “After the process, he must be conditioned so he may enter the Palace of Westminster without detection.”
“But everyone who could detect him is here.”
George pointed at the armature and the other saints.
“It’s not quite as simple as that.”
“It never is with you.”
George sneered, pleased with himself at the gibe, and looked to the acolyte next to him for acknowledgment of his cleverness. The acolyte smiled the smile of a well-practiced sycophant.
Dropnick laughed, a lame, nervous chuckle.
“After the procedure, the recipient will be very agitated. He will not be able to act coherently for several hours and will require extensive conditioning if he is to carry out his assigned task.”
“His assigned task? He’ll be a walking bomb powerful enough to bring down Parliament. You really are a sociopath, aren’t you.”
“If you hadn’t insisted on providing the subject for the transfer of energies,” Dropnick ignored the insult, “I could have pre-conditioned someone to receive the procedure, but it still would require time for the energies to settle. This entire process is extremely delicate.”
George approached the armature and the bank of consoles beneath it. Dropnick’s lieutenant circled the outskirts of the group toward him, but Dropnick caught her eye with a subtle gesture and called her off. George peered at the control panel and reached to push a button, but Dropnick put an arm across its surface to stop him. George pulled back and stared down at the little man, outraged at being denied. Gosha had seen that expression many times before, when he was drunk and behaving like a baby and she had to act like his mother and put him back in his place.
I can’t believe I ever fell in love with you.
Above them, Dropnick’s workers finished up securing the saints into the armature. She recognized most of them. La Davina, dressed in drab male drag, was suspended halfway down the rig, Euphemia Graham, Saint of Mystery, beneath him, her head lolling to one side. A trickle of drool seeped out of her muzzle onto her green cashmere cardigan. Beneath them, at floor level, was Emerson Margrave. He wore the same circular device strapped to his chest as all the others, but Dropnick’s workers hadn’t bothered to restrain him.
“It had better work, Dropnick.” George walked around under the armature looking up at the other saints. “You’ve cost me a fortune. What about those?”
He pointed up to three empty chairs, one twice as wide as the others.
“We were not able to secure all the saints of the Convocation,” said Dropnick.
“Are you kidding me!” George spun around and bore down on him. “I’ve been working on this for months. You guaranteed me results! Where the fuck are they?”
Dropnick’s lieutenant stiffened, every muscle fiber in her body tensed and ready to commit murder, but she held herself back.
“The saints of Shadow and Devotion could not be located. They have quite disappeared.”
The double-sized chair was for the saints of Devotion, the only sphere that shared its power between two individuals. Adair said they had vanished. Perhaps they found a way to escape Dropnick like Pauline. That left a third vacant seat. Gosha wondered who was supposed to be in it.
George turned pink with fury as he thrust his face into Dropnick’s.
“You little shit! You utterly incompetent weasel! You promised me power!”
“I assure you, Mr. Armitage,” said Dropnick, not nearly as intimidated as he should have been at George’s close-quarter tirade, “the procedure will be entirely successful. We do not require a full complement. We have all the subjects we require to begin. Look! Your contribution is ready.”
Technicians rolled in another muzzled and restrained figure, this one bearing no aura. From where she stood, all she could see was the man’s feet, but Gosha knew without a doubt it was Alfie. He struggled valiantly as they wheeled him in, to no avail.
“Why haven’t you drugged him like the rest?” George walked over to the gurney as they wheeled Alfie to a chair at the center of the armature’s base. “Wait.”
He waved the technicians away.
“Hello, pretty boy.” He bent over and leered at Alfie. “You’re going to die.”
Alfie strained at the cuffs that bound him and roared through his muzzle. George pursed his lips and dribbled a stream of spittle onto Alfie’s face. He chuckled as he swaggered back to Dropnick at the console.
“Why isn’t he drugged?”
“The saints are not drugged,” said the doctor with the faintest trace of offense. “They are restrained by a delicate reconfiguring of the psychospiritual force that gives them their power to prepare them for the procedure. Our recipient does not possess the same resources and must remain fully conscious throughout.”
One of the technicians touched Alfie with the rounded tip of a brass wand. He convulsed once and collapsed back onto the gurney, stunned, his head lolling around. The technicians unstrapped him and transferred him to the chair where they restrained him once again.
Enough watching from afar, thought Gosha. She couldn’t let them turn Alfie into a bomb.
She stepped out from her seclusion to get a better look at the layout and figure out a plan of attack, but the second she moved, Dropnick’s lieutenant snapped her head toward her. Gosha froze, but the woman didn’t see her.
Was that a coincidence, or was she able to sense her despite the spell of concealment? Gosha couldn’t take the risk and remained frozen in place while she came up with a plan.
She was certain she could find the pathway back through the rabbit warren, but there was just too much equipment and too many people between the entrance and Alfie. If she could create a distraction, perhaps another decoy, she could drag Alfie back this way and they could sneak out under cover of the mezzanine overhang.
She would need one dirty great distraction.
Alfie began to thrash again, the effects of the stun baton wearing off. In the commotion of workers finalizing the armature and the consoles to turn Alfie into a bomb, Dropnick’s lieutenant was forced back. Gosha moved to the control console, stepping through the armature, careful not to brush into anything and break the concealment spell. She could duck behind the console and start pulling wires. That ought to throw a spanner into the works, and the confusion might give her enough time to re-cloak herself and get to Alfie.
“I do believe we’re ready.” Dropnick’s eyes glowed with excitement. “Miss Bolton, if you please.”
Dropnick’s lieutenant took from the pocket of her business suit a device that Gosha remembered well: the cylinder Dropnick had used to paralyze Gosha and Eleanor at Banksville Psychiatric Hospital when she was trying to rescue Sir Wilfred. She tensed, ready to duck to safety, but she was completely exposed. If the cylinder caused the concealment spell to fail, they would see her immediately.
George watched, unaware of what was about to happen, as Bolton spun a dial and pressed a button on the cylinder. Gosha leaped for the seclusion of a nearby tower of crates, fully expecting to be frozen in mid-air before she could make it to cover. The ambient Influence around her became suddenly turgid and then effervesced in enervating static, but, to her surprise, she retained full use of her limbs and made it to the tower without a problem, the spell of concealment firmly in place.
Un unexpected side effect of Dropnick’s evil devices, she thought. By suppressing her talisman, she was technically no longer a witch by any standard he understood, with no connection to Influence and the Spheres, confounded or otherwise, and thus was immune to the infernal gadget.
She peered around the edge of the stack of crates, careful not to touch them and lose her cloaking. George and his acolytes were not so lucky. They stood frozen in place, fully vulnerable to the effects of the cylinder.
“Excellent.” Dropnick raised his voice to address the room. “Good work, everyone. Please add Mr. Armitage to the framework.”
He turned to one of the technicians.
“And we’re certain we are unable to locate the final saints?”
“Yes, doctor. We can’t find them, but they remain effectively neutralized. Should we try another sweep?”
“Never mind,” said Dropnick, as casually disappointed as if his guest of honor at a dinner party had failed to show. “We have the clone field generators to balance out the spread. Go ahead and bring them up from the laboratory, would you?”
The technician nodded and talked into a giant walkie talkie, the kind Gosha had seen Bowie Blades use many times at Bar de Bauche.
As technicians approached George to cart him off to his place in the armature, the shatter of breaking glass echoed through the warehouse, followed by the deafening crack of gunfire: once, twice, three times. Rope lines dropped from the broken skylights above and black-uniformed men descended as others ran out around the mezzanine, weapons drawn and pointed down at the work floor.
It all happened so quickly, Bolton barely had time to pocket the cylinder before a technician near her pulled out a gun and held it to her head. Another did the same to Dropnick as the uniformed men ran into the crowd to hold guns on Dropnick’s people.
“The restraint,” said the technician with the gun on Bolton, holding out his free hand.
Her eyes narrowed into slits of hate.
“Traitor,” she hissed.
“Loser,” he said back.
She handed him the cylinder as two uniformed men descended upon her, assault rifles at point blank range. The technician turned a dial, clicked a button, and the angry static dissipated, the ambient Influence returning to its unconditioned flow about the cavernous space.
George came back to life roaring and doubled over, his fists clenched, but the roar quickly turned to a laugh of triumph.
“My lord,” said the technician with the cylinder, bringing it over to him.
“Well played, Dropnick,” said George. “Well played. I really didn’t expect you to be capable of such a bold move.”
“How did you get through—” said Dropnick, looking around, shocked, at the soldiers with their weapons.
“Money, doctor. It bought all of this.” He waved the cylinder like a baton to encompass the entire facility. “It just as easily bought me my own research and development division. And I didn’t even have to use supernatural power to lure your staff away. Mr. Shaw here,” he clasped the shoulder of the technician who had given him the cylinder, “is a very ambitious gentleman. Just as much a visionary as you are. What do say, Mr. Shaw? Are we ready to do this?”
“Yes, my lord,” said Shaw, leading George to the console. “You were correct in your hypothesis. Doctor Dropnick’s intent was to erase the legacy structure of the Spheres completely, but it’s a small matter to reconfigure the device to your specifications.”
The technician began to turn nobs and flick switches on the console.
“There. Now, rather than erase the structure completely, the apparatus will detune the current distribution and refocus it into your dominion, my lord. You will be all-powerful.”
George nodded as if he understood what Shaw said, but Gosha could tell that he didn’t. He’d always fancied himself much more of an intellectual than he actually was. Sainthood had done nothing to level his opinion of himself.
“Little pricks like you,” George turned to Dropnick, “always think you’re the smartest person in the room. You’ve no idea what real vision is.”
Gosha’s mind raced. The giant armature above them was intended to wipe away the Spheres, but there had been no talk of using it to build Dropnick’s own personal sphere. He must have some other set up for that. George might have financed the operation, but Dropnick had been keeping secrets. If she was able to get Alfie—
She caught herself.
When she got Alfie out, she would have to come back and ferret out the rest of his operation. Or perhaps she could do enough damage here to make the whole thing moot.
“No, no, no,” whined Dropnick. “You’ll ruin everything! Miss Bolton, do something!”
All the while, Bolton had been sizing up the opposition. With Dropnick’s plea, she launched into action. Moving with deadly speed, she rushed the nearest soldier and grabbed his weapon. Spinning into him while he still held it, she shot the other soldier holding a gun on her, who dropped dead to the floor. With a sharp thrust of her elbow, she dislocated the soldier’s arm, took his gun from him and shot him in the head. She dropped the weapon, reached into her coat to touch something, and disappeared with the signature nauseating lurch of one of Dropnick’s devices.
Commotion erupted all over the warehouse as Bolton’s underlings followed her lead. Uniformed soldiers fell everywhere. The handful of men still standing assembled around George, creating a perimeter of protection.
Gosha didn’t wait for the outcome. This was the distraction she needed to get Alfie out. She ran to the armature, ducking carefully through the framework to keep herself concealed for as long as possible.
Technicians and workers fled in the exchange of gunfire, the confusion mounting as George’s acolytes went to work with High Influence to control the minds of anyone they could to press gang them into service.
Gosha’s concealment spell broke as she undid the strap securing one of Alfie’s arms to the gurney. His eyes went wide with relief at the sight of her, and he tried to speak, but all she could hear through the muzzle was muffled mumbling. She ignored him and went to work on his legs.
“Thank god,” he said, undoing the muzzle with his free hand as Gosha untied his other. “I was so worried about you.”
“You were worried about me!” She laughed and kissed him hard on the lips. “We have to get you out of here.”
Behind them, the commotion slowed. It didn’t really matter to her who was winning. Neither would be good for her. She pulled Alfie down behind the gurney.
“See that door over there?”
She pointed to the way she’d come in. Alfie nodded.
“We’ll run to the wall and sneak around this mess.”
He nodded again and darted away in a crouch before she could grab him and re-cast the concealment spell about them.
“Wait!” she whispered, shuffling after him, but her foot snagged on something and she tumbled to the ground. “Alfie!”
She yanked at her foot, but dark brambles thrust up out of cracks in the concrete floor, entangling her in their vines and holding her fast.
“Alfie!”
The brambles grew and grew, wrapping around her leg. Ten feet away from her lay Emerson Margrave in his chair, the device that should have held him neutralized shattered by his fingers which had transformed into jagged, elongated, bark-like spikes. Feeble and decrepit, unable to raise his head, hatred burned in his eyes. A single finger stretched out toward the brambles that trapped her.
