Paint it Black, page 37
She felt her own tiny spark of hope kindle in her breast. If this worked, she might have a way to disarm all of Dropnick’s devices and free everyone still trapped. And the witches in sanctuary in Cheyne Heath could get out.
Mamusha, I’ve never needed you more.
In the two minutes she’d been caught in the trap negotiating with the moth-lord, the technicians had finished loading all the acolytes into their coffin-pods. Other sleek, functionally attired thugs had dragged in the bodies of Bolton and three of the other people who had fallen to the moth-lord’s rampage for Dropnick’s inspection. He took off his glasses, cleaned them with a cloth from his waistcoat, and put them back on before leaning in to inspect Bolton. He took from his pocket a brass cube covered in switches and gauges and waved it over her body.
“Fascinating.” He checked the surface of the cube to read the results of his scan. “Complete psychological collapse.”
He pressed two fingers to Bolton’s neck to read her pulse.
“And yet the body remains intact. Save as many of these subjects as possible. Once we’ve completed today’s procedure, we shall study them in depth. It’s been a while since I’ve conducted a vivisection.”
A chill ran down her spine at the gleam of innocent enthusiasm in his eyes.
“What about her?” said one of the guards.
Dropnick looked at Gosha, sizing her up.
“Keep her contained until we’re absolutely ready. I don’t want any more intrusions. Malcolm.”
He snapped his fingers to get the attention of a technician supervising the placement of the acolytes in the coffin pods and taking notes.
“Yes, Doctor?”
“I’m going into the entanglement chamber. When we’re ready to begin, drop the field and kill her. Then clear out and seal everything up. Are you capable of supervising?”
The technician looked at Gosha with all the compassion he might give to a lab rat, which was none.
“Absolutely, Doctor.”
“Good. Carry on, everyone!” He addressed the room as he left. “Second time’s the one.”
She didn’t need to think through what she had to do next. The plan played itself out before her eyes in less than a heartbeat. Though her body was frozen, the Influence flowing around her was not. All it took was a thought from her and it lashed out at both of the globe devices in her field of vision, crushing the tiny pinpricks of light within them. The globes failed quietly without anyone noticing, though the two going down were only enough to weaken the field holding her. She couldn’t see the other globes, but all it took was knowing they were there to send Influence out to crush the fragments of perverted consciousness within them.
The field collapsed.
Thankfully, the moth-lord had ceded control of her body back to her. She didn’t waste time picking off the men pointing weapons at her one by one. Instead, she sent Influence outward in a blast wave that crushed the glowing bubbles of purple within anyone it passed. Some dropped their weapons and fell to the floor, some locked up, frozen stock still, their bodies betraying them. Three turned their guns on themselves.
The violence of a dozen men succumbing to her power knocked out the furious, anxious energy burning in her gut.
“THEIR ANGUISH FILLS ME,” crowed the moth-lord. “I THRIVE IN THEIR DESPAIR. MORE! I DEMAND MORE!”
Once again, it pushed her out of her own body and lurched her toward the remaining handful of technicians who dropped everything and fled toward the second exit, but they weren’t quick enough. The moth-lord extended her arm and swept a wave of Influence at them that took them all down. Behind the observation window, more technicians scrambled to escape, but they all succumbed to a second wave the moth-lord threw at them.
The moth-lord roared inside her head and turned on the twenty coffin-pods, each containing an acolyte. It raised both her arms, ready to crush them.
NO!
She poured every ounce of discipline, every drop of authority she could muster, into it.
Influence came to her aid. It surged through her body and forced her back into her own head.
“HOW DARE YOU DENY ME, SLAVE! THESE SOULS ARE MINE. THEIR JOY IS FORFEIT. IT IS YOUR DUTY TO DELIVER THEM TO ME.”
“I told you this before,” she said out loud. “I am no one’s slave. You picked me, now deal with it.”
It raged and raged, but this time she was able to push it to the back of her mind as she threw open coffin-pod lids until she found Miss Bonita and Bowie Blades.
“You are nothing, you are weak,” chanted the chorus as she laid a hand on the device strapped to Miss Bonita’s chest. “You are listless, you have no purpose.”
The tiny fragment of a soul glittered within it, but she didn’t dare use Influence to break it. The moth-lord pressed against her consciousness as it raved, waiting for her to call upon its power so it could push its way back into her body. Instead, she unstrapped the device and crushed it with the heel of her Doc Martens. Miss Bonita began to come around immediately. Color flooded back into her cheeks and her head lolled around on a limp neck as she struggled to regain her senses. Gosha didn’t have time to do more than crush the device on Bowie and hope between the two of them they could get the other acolytes and saints free. Dropnick must surely know what she’d done by now. She needed to stop him before he could regroup and adapt, or before he could escape.
“Gosha,” rasped Bowie, pulling up out of the coffin-pod.
“Can’t talk.” Gosha made for the door Dropnick had left by, pulling her switchblade from her pocket and clicking it open, grateful she had at least one tool she could rely on. “Too much to do.”
The door led her to another room with partitions. The entanglement chamber, Dropnick had called it. She burst in, ready to deal on the fly with whatever she found there, but the chamber was empty.
“Dammit,” she sighed, but at least that meant he wasn’t making more trouble.
With all the Sturm und Drang of the moth-lord, she had lost touch with the Between, but she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and there it was, just a glimmer in the corners of the chamber, seeping out behind the markings on the walls. Her pockets still bulged with Elsie’s lozenges. She unwrapped one and popped it in her mouth. As tart strawberry sweetness tingled across her tongue, her second sight—which, she realized, had never truly left her since taking the oath even when the effects of the lozenges had worn off—strengthened, becoming deeper and richer.
“TRULY, YOU ARE A PRIZE THAT WILL ADD TO MY GLORY,” boomed the moth-lord, to Gosha’s intense irritation. She’d worked with more than a few creative directors in her time with the same attitude toward the help.
Switchblade in hand, she found the outer door to the chamber and walked out into the corridor, only to feel the ground buck beneath her feet and her skin flush with heat and shiver with cold at the same time. Her heart pounded out of control as a heavy sleep weighed on her brain.
“Up is down,” the chorus of voices in her head sprang to life, “and down is up. You burn and freeze. You run and fall. You live and die.”
“Kill her!” shouted Dropnick from somewhere down the corridor. “Kill her immed—”
Gunfire rang out with the sharp popping of firecrackers. Only the mellow warmth of the Between, settled firmly beneath the disorientation of Dropnick’s devices, allowed her the reflexes to throw herself back through the chamber door without being hit.
The original warehouse walls would never have survived gunfire, but the chamber had been remodeled to house Dropnick’s technology and whatever the walls had been reinforced with was sufficient to stop bullets, at least for the moment. Lady forbid they should have grenades or heavier firepower. She staggered to the far wall and slumped against it to recover from the disorientation of the devices and longed for a kind of magic that didn’t make her feel like she had a perpetual concussion.
The continued gunfire outside did a lot to help her pull herself together. She’d spent enough time charging through the warehouse to have a sense of the layout. She could go back and out the way she came, past the trap they’d snared her in, and wrap around. If she was lucky, she might even be able to emerge behind them.
She summoned up the feeling of protection and remove her mother’s spell of concealment always gave her and released it to the twilight glow, holding the image in her mind to sustain the spell, though it was a struggle. Between the ravings of the moth-lord and the chanting of her helpful chorus, she had a lot going on in her head.
Retreating back through the outer chamber, she passed Miss Bonita and Bowie helping the other acolytes out of the coffin-pods, their auras all gaining strength as they were freed from the devices that held them. Beyond, in the corridors, she stepped over the chattering, moaning husks of men and women whose souls she’d crushed under the control of the moth-lord. The warehouse had become an asylum ripped from a cheesy sixties horror film.
Finding her way to Dropnick through the rabbit warren was easy thanks to the concussive ripples of intermittent gunfire echoing through the corridors. She came across them within minutes, emerging with Dropnick and three of his men, two armed guards, and a thug with a device, to her left and five, two thugs and three guards, to her right. All nine faced the entanglement chamber to her right, the guards in front letting off short bursts of bullets every few seconds. Had the concealment spell not insulated her from the sights and sounds around her, she would have been deafened.
“I will not leave without seeing her dead,” shouted Dropnick to the guard at his right hand. “She’s the key to the entire project.”
“We’re doing what we can, sir, but we’re down to a handful of men. We need to consider blowing the place.”
“Absolutely not! The fruit of two decade’s work is in this building.”
“Doctor,” said the thug standing behind him. “What about the bomb rig? We could reconfigure the framework to enhance the stasis field and capture her in that.”
“Brilliant,” said Dropnick, afire with enthusiasm. “Drive her back to the framework,” he said to the guard to his right. “You,” he said to the one to his left. “Come with us. Derek, you will contact the secondary site and have them send reinforcements.”
The sneaky bastard always has a bolt hole to run to.
The way back to the giant armature was toward the entanglement chamber they thought they had her pinned in.
“Push forward,” said the squad leader, and his men reloaded, setting up an alternating pattern of gunfire as they edged forward that would have been quite intimidating had Gosha not been standing behind them.
Not knowing how long she’d be able to keep control of her own body, she had to end this quickly. The boost from Elsie’s lozenge was great, but she needed more.
What I wouldn’t give for a good curse right about now, she thought, wanting dearly to cast something wicked and deadly, something that would teach these monsters the ultimate lesson, to inflict on them the harshest form of justice, but she never cared to fully understand how her mother’s curses worked, and had no idea how to formulate such a wish for the Between, nor what the cost to herself might be.
But there is one of her curses I know how to cast, she thought, an evil glee kindling in her chest. Agnieszka’s favorite hex.
She’d never felt so close to her mother as she did now.
Threading her way out from the midst of the scrum—best not be too close when the chaos started—she ducked around a corner and offered up the spell to the Between. As she released it, columns of inky flame sprung up among Dropnick and his people, her widow’s weeds giving her a preview of what was to come.
The guard furthest to the right in the front slipped and twisted, squeezing the trigger as he spun, and cut down one of the two other guards beside him and the flanking thug, who was thrown against the wall by the impact. Two columns of black flame winked out as the two dead guards slid to the floor.
The remaining guard in the front turned on the shooter and expertly put two bullets in the man’s head, but the recoil of his gun got the better of him. He took a half step back, tripped on the spreadeagled legs of the fallen thug and let off a burst of bullets as he fell, taking out the remaining member of his group. Two more columns of dark flame winked out, leaving only one more.
The back line of three guards clustered around Dropnick didn’t weather the hex any better. The squad leader fumbled and dropped his semi-automatic, the safety clip attaching it to his uniform breaking. The gun clattered to the floor and slid away, knocking into the boot of the other remaining guard who twitched and shot himself in the foot. His gun jammed, the spray of bullets making it buck in his hand. The bullets cut through the squad leader and the final flame of widow’s weeds winked out. Only two guards remained alive with Dropnick, one still on the floor recovering from shooting himself in the foot.
Decisions flickered through her mind, spun faster than the speed of thought thanks to Elsie’s psychedelic lozenges. She clicked the switchblade shut and threw it with absolute certainty that it would hurl itself with blinding speed at the guard just now getting back to his feet. The Between snatched up the knife and the heavy blade flew as fast as a bullet, striking him between the eyes.
So sure was she that the switchblade would do what she wanted, she didn’t even wait for it to connect before willing it at the one remaining guard. This one was enough of a professional to override the pain and shock of shooting himself in the foot and aim his semi-automatic at her. He never got a chance to fire. The sheathed blade struck him in the temple, and he joined his comrade in oblivion.
“Live and die,” chanted the chorus in her head, alerting her to the final thug turning his device on her. “Burn and freeze, fall and fall and fall and fall and fall…”
She willed the blade at him and knocked him out, but the chanting chorus united in a single chord, rich in overtones. The ambient Influence surrounding her erupted in violent static that held her frozen in place.
In his hands, Dropnick held his blasted cylinder.
The moth-lord raged within her and she felt herself being pushed out of her own head. The static began to falter, the tiny device enough to hold a couple of witches, but entirely insufficient against a saint with the power of a Lord of Influence, but Dropnick was already reaching for one of the fallen weapons and would have it long before the cylinder failed.
There was no Influence free for her to throw at him, but she didn’t need it. She had the perfect spell. She thought of the complete trust the boys had in her, the unconditional acceptance she felt among the ladies, her sisters-in-Craft, the devoted friendship of Johnny, and the love she saw in Alfie’s eyes when he looked at her, and gifted all that to the Between with the wish that Dropnick should feel the same for her.
He blinked and looked confused, looked down at the semi-automatic in his hands, dropped it as if it burned like a hot coal, and fumbled for the cylinder in his pocket to turn it off. The static dissolved, Influence flowing freely around her once again. She struggled to regain control of her body, pushing the moth-lord back in her mind while keeping the thread of the spell alive.
“I’m so sorry.” Dropnick reached to place his palm on her forehead like she did to the boys to check if they had a temperature. “How are you feeling?”
She bristled at the invasion of her personal space, her nerves still jangled by the static, and brushed his hand away.
“Don’t touch me,” she snapped.
“Of course, of course,” he said, hovering next to her. “Do forgive me.”
She wanted dearly to punch him in the face for everything he’d done, but that would probably break the spell and create more problems. She needed him on her side.
“Where is Alfie?”
“Alfie?” he said, not recognizing the name.
“My boyfriend. You turned him into a bomb.”
She’d been trying to replicate the interrogation spell she’d forged with the help of Pauline Sutton’s two-headed dragon, but now she worried she’d pushed it too far and made him an idiot.
“Oh, the young gentlemen I’m preparing to raze the Palace of Westminster,” he said as matter-of-fact as if talking about someone he’d invited to tea.
“Yes, him.”
Dear Lady, the spell may have turned him to my side, but he’s still a sociopath.
“I’ll take you to him. Please come with me.”
He gestured down the hall and noticed the bodies strewn around them with only the mildest curiosity as they stepped over them.
“The process was quite effective,” he said as he led her deeper into the rabbit warren.
Passing the coffin-pod chamber, she noticed a commotion further down the corridor.
“Wait.” She reached out to hold him back.
With a hand on his shoulder, she summoned the concealment spell and the already-drab colors of the warehouse shifted toward gray. A raging moth-lord, the chattering chorus, and the gossamer threads of the two spells she was trying to sustain at the same time was about all she could manage. Any more and she’d give herself a nosebleed.
“Fascinating,” he said, and took out the cube he’d used to scan her with.
“Curiosity,” chanted the chorus, “excitement, reveal all you have to me, show me your secrets.”
“Put that away.”
He looked sheepish and tucked it back in his pocket. Even though the chorus in her head seemed to think it was harmless, she didn’t want to risk it.
The figures approached, but she sensed who they were with her second sight before she could see them at the far end of the poorly lit corridor. The acolytes released from the coffin-pods were helping the captured saints escape. The saints were in bad shape, their auras not even as strong as their acolytes who surrounded them in a ring of protection as they shuffled out, about one acolyte per saint. Only five spheres were represented among the acolytes—Strength, Justice, Liberation, Mystery, and one of the many auras she couldn’t identify. The saints followed along meekly, looking confused. Gosha watched them as they went past, mesmerized by what she saw. Each saint had about its head a different glowing mark, an addition to their aura, but nothing she’d ever seen before: Euphemia Graham had about her head a shifting veil, as if she were a bride or a widow. La Davina bore a hoop around her head like the rings of Saturn. A radiant halo surrounded Bishop Worsley’s head as if he were a Catholic saint in a stained glass window. She thought about dropping the concealment spell and revealing herself to them, but they’d only insist she hand over Dropnick, and she needed the bastard.
