The Dire King Page 14

  Charlie’s eyes were locked on mine. “Come back alive,” he whispered.

  “That is the plan,” I said, as gamely as I could manage. “And if I do . . .” I put a hand on his chest and tried to ignore Alina, who was watching intently.

  “Miss Rook!” Jackaby hollered from the head of the stairs. “While it’s still dark out!”

  I caught up with Jackaby on the stairs.

  “I think we kept that appropriately upbeat, don’t you?” Jackaby mused.

  “Upbeat, sir?”

  “I am loath to dishearten Mr. Barker with the full gravity of our situation when he needs to remain optimistic. Of course, the reality is that we may be murdered by Pavel immediately, attacked by some rogue monster on our way to the rend, or assassinated by the recently liberated Morwen once we get there. Even if none of those things happens, reaching our destination still puts us squarely in the company of the most unfathomably powerful mage in the Annwyn, along with an army of the least savory creatures ever spawned. And that is only if we are able to cross the rend. Stepping through an unstable rift in the fabric joining parallel dimensional planes is stretching the definition of foolish.”

  “We’re going to die,” I said.

  “Only probably.”

  “And you didn’t want to dishearten Mr. Barker with that assessment?”

  “Seemed cruel.”

  “Quite.” I swallowed.

  “Nobody needs that dread hanging over their head.”

  “No, certainly not.”

  “Ready?”

  “My extremities might be numb. Is that normal?”

  “I’m sure it is. Come along.”

  “But what does the machine do, exactly?” Jenny asked for the third time since we had left the house. Over her translucent shoulder was slung Jackaby’s satchel. She had tucked within it the wooden stake and a handful of other protective implements and charms.

  “I don’t know what it does,” Pavel replied. “It’s big.”

  “How big?”

  “I’ve never been good with all the technical nonsense—I just know that it is the crux of the Dire King’s strategy. You should have seen him when his first one was destroyed. There was a lot of blood that night. He had been preparing for his rise back then, but he had to delay another decade just to get it right. The machine is his obsession. Without it, the veil does not fall.”

  “And you never bothered to ask how it works?”

  “You don’t ask the Dire King questions.”

  “It’s fine,” said Jackaby. “Based on our experience with Owen Finstern’s device, the full-scale machine will probably have something to do with energies or vital forces.” Owen Finstern was Morwen’s twin brother, the king’s bastard son. The king had been more concerned with stealing his son’s unique device than he had been with preserving his son’s life. “Whatever it is, we will just have to sort out what it is and how to sabotage it when we get there.”

  “Don’t worry. You’ve got the eyes for it,” Pavel said. “The Dire King wants those eyes. He had very strict rules about killing you because of those eyes. He never could get inside that head of yours to use them, though. It tickles me that instead of using your eyes to fine-tune his device, you will be using them to tear it apart. It’s the little things, really.”

  “If the Dire King wanted Jackaby’s sight to help him finish his machine,” I said, “then it can’t be operational, can it?”

  “The Dire King always has alternative solutions.”

  “What sort of alternative solutions?”

  “Hatun,” Jackaby said flatly. “Hatun is the only other person I know of who occasionally sees things as I see them.”

  “That means she’s more likely to be alive,” I reassured him.

  “They’ll be amassing an army, too,” Pavel added. “So, expect that.”

  “Of course they will,” I said.

  “Not just any army,” Pavel continued. “The worst the Annwyn has to offer. They will be waiting to flood into the human world as soon as the veil begins to crumble. This front line of monsters is supposed to prime the pump, wreaking havoc and leaving fear and chaos in its wake. The Dire King speaks often about balance,” Pavel explained. “Order and chaos. He says creatures of chaos have too long been suppressed while their brethren are celebrated. The Unseelie fae eat it up whenever he talks like that. They get all frothy and wild-eyed.”

  “And you swallowed that maniac’s nonsense?”

  Pavel shrugged. “I swallowed fresh blood from fluted glasses. I have never hunted so often or lived in such luxury. Have you ever slept in a silk-lined coffin? Organized chaos is surprisingly lucrative.”

  “So, we need to sneak past an entire army undetected, and then work out how to disable an exotic technology that nobody fully understands,” I said. “Anything else we should know?”

  “That’s about it. Oh, and try not to die too close to each other.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.

  “We have a guy—I mean they have a guy,” Pavel said. “He’s very good with, how should I put this . . .”

  Jackaby cleared his throat. “With the manipulation of the deceased? The dark art of necromancy?”

  “I was going to say meat puppets,” Pavel replied. “I mean, I am undead myself, but his little marionettes always give me the creeps. Dying makes your body fair game for his little trick, so if you happen to kick the bucket, just try to kick it as far away as you can in case he should raise you.”

  “Thank you,” Jackaby said. “Very helpful.”

  We walked in silence for several paces. Jenny was worrying the strap on Jackaby’s satchel as she walked. “Would you like me to carry it for you?” I asked her.

  “Hm?” she said. “No, no thank you. I’ve been doing better with tangibility. I’m fine, really.” She hung back as Jackaby and Pavel got a few paces ahead. “I think the only thing I can’t seem to make contact with is Jackaby.”

  “You can’t?”

  Her shoulders sagged. “I don’t know why. It’s as though I can’t give myself permission to.”

  “Do you think it’s something to do with Mr. Carson?”

  She looked pained, and I wished I hadn’t spoken of her murdered fiancé. “Howard was a good man,” she said. “But I finally had my chance to say good-bye. I—I don’t know. I just can’t.”

  I didn’t press the matter. My ears perked up at the sound of a policeman’s whistle a street or two away. I could hear faint voices, and in the distance a dog was barking. The streetlight ahead of us had gone out, leaving us in a pool of midnight black. I kept waiting for something to come leaping out at us from around a corner. We quickened our pace to catch up to the men.

  “I’ve never liked being out in the streets this late,” I said, pulling my coat tighter around my shoulders. “New Fiddleham is not the same city after nightfall.”

  “You read my mind, Miss Rook,” Pavel said, kneeling down by the curb. “The streets won’t get us where we’re going, anyway. From here, we travel below them.”

  He pulled up the heavy grate and dropped it onto the cobblestones with a clang. The tunnel beneath was even darker than the pitch-black streets, if that was possible.

  “I am not going in there,” I said.

  “Suit yourself. Your boss is the only one I really need.”

  Jackaby lowered himself and dropped into the sewer. His feet hit the bottom with a splash. “Sir,” I began. Pavel slipped in after him.

  Jenny gave me a shrug. She slid gracefully after them, down into the darkness.

  I stood alone on the street, my heart pumping. I had spent enough time in deep, dark tunnels to last a lifetime. I glanced back the way we had come. I closed my eyes. Deep breath. I could do this. I knelt down. I had not crossed an ocean just to take the safe path. Deep breath. I lowered
my legs into the clammy air of the sewer. I had chosen this life. I had chosen foolish and dangerous and good. My feet hit the bottom with a splash. Deep breath. Oh good lord, that smell! I stopped taking deep breaths and held my sleeve over my face instead.

  My eyes blinked open. The tunnel was not pure black. It was more of a hazy charcoal gray, punctuated every block or so by shafts of moonlight. I could see silhouettes slogging forward ahead of me. Pavel was leading the way, eager energy in his steps. The first dose of Jackaby’s blood appeared to have brought him out of his languor; I hated to imagine what he could accomplish if he had drained the source completely. Jackaby was a step behind him, hunched over under the shallow ceiling, and Jenny was a shimmer at his side. I hastened to catch up.

  If you have never had the pleasure of traveling by sewer, allow me to spare you the visceral details. This was not a space designed for comfort of either body or mind, and I found it distressingly difficult to gauge distance and time in those gloomy passages.

  “Still an hour or so until sunrise,” Jackaby said as we finally slowed to a stop. He was peeking out of a grate by his head. “We seem to be on the outskirts of New Fiddleham. Wait a moment. I know where we are!”

  I propped myself up on the tips of my toes and peered out next to him. From my angle, I could see stars and dark trees and just the tips of the eaves of a few nearby buildings.

  “Almost there,” Pavel said. “This way.” He braced his shoulder against a nondescript wall of the tunnel and pushed. With the grate of bricks against stone, a wide section of wall swung inward like a door.

  “Where are we, sir?” I whispered as we followed Pavel through the hidden passageway. The door led to some sort of basement. The floor was packed earth, and the air was cold and dry.

  “We are in the substructure of the last building our dear friend Douglas ever walked into while wearing shoes,” Jackaby said. “Well, unless you count those little booties I had made for him so that he wouldn’t drip pond water all down the staircase. But those didn’t last a week, and they never fit well over his webbed feet.”

  I coughed.

  “The church. We appear to be directly beneath Father Grafton’s church. Several supernatural beings have been through here. They’ve left their traces like footprints. Pavel’s aura is all over, and so is Morwen’s. She definitely came through here before us tonight. She’s hours ahead. There are hints of chameleomorphs, and I do believe—yes, that’s a lingering residual imprint from the redcap we caught months ago!”

  “But I was just inside the church,” Jenny said. “I searched every room. I didn’t see any secret passages or mysterious portals to another dimension.”

  “That sounds embarrassing,” said Pavel. “I would be embarrassed. Are you embarrassed?”

  Jenny glared daggers at him.

  “There’s a trace of someone else,” said Jackaby. “A trace of someone who’s been through recently—within the past week at least. A trace of someone . . . fae.”

  “That would probably be Tilde,” Pavel surmised. “He’s not a lot of fun, but he does his job. He’s not around right now, is he?” He glanced over his shoulder nervously.

  “Tilde is a fairy?” said Jackaby. “But why would a fairy be sneaking through the rend when he could just use a veil-gate? Why is a fairy working with the Dire King at all? What I’m picking up is not monstrous; it’s a Seelie fae.”

  Pavel shrugged. “I don’t do auras.”

  “So how do we get up?” I asked, scanning the dusty planks above us for any sign of a trapdoor.

  “We don’t. We go down,” smirked Pavel. “Obviously.”

  “There,” said Jackaby, pointing at a small patch of absolutely nothing over in the corner. Pavel looked impressed.

  “I don’t see anything,” I said.

  “Neither do I,” said Jackaby. “I do see something everywhere else, though. The whole ceiling is imbued with a tincture of religious faith, the walls have been saturated in history, the air around us has a fine mist of the mystical, and even the dirt beneath us is covered in trails and wisps of paranormal auras. Except there. It’s as though there is a sinkhole right there, maybe ten feet wide.”

  Pavel knelt and dug his fingernails into the dust. “Cigar for the clever fellow.” He pulled up a plank of wood the same color as the dirt and leaned it up against the wall. The earth below appeared to have been fractured like a broken mirror; crumbling fragments of dusty brown drifted around the edges, suspended as though floating in an invisible pond. The center of the cleft was a glowing pool of pale green light. “I do believe that’s vial number two to me?”

  Jackaby reached into his coat and retrieved a second glass tube of crimson blood. He tossed it to Pavel. “Fair enough. You were true to your word.”

  Pavel’s eyes fluttered shut as he sucked down the sticky liquid. His whole body shuddered and he tossed the vial aside, licking his teeth. It broke against the rocky foundation. His face was still a mess of scar tissue, but by the light of the green glow it looked smoother already than it had when he first turned up on our doorstep, and it was fading to a pale pink and less of an angry red.

  “Hits the spot,” he said. “I’ll have one more for the road, if you don’t mind, Detective.” His eyes looked dilated.

  “You’ll have one more when I am sure we’re not walking into an ambush,” Jackaby answered. “After you.”

  Pavel cracked his neck and gave Jackaby a smile that had gone rotten several days ago and probably should have been tossed out of the bushel before it spoiled all of the other smiles. “Once more unto the breach,” he recited, and fell backward into the verdant glow.

  Jackaby approached the rend.

  “I don’t suppose you can see what’s waiting for us on the other side?” I asked.

  “I see nothing beyond the point of crossing. I couldn’t see the veil-gate in Rosemary’s Green, either, although I knew it had to be right in front of me. I can register earthly auras just fine, and otherworldly auras are quite vivid—but I think the overlap of the two creates a sort of anomaly my sight doesn’t know how to process.”

  “So, we’re just going across blind?” I said.

  “Looks that way.” Jackaby nodded.

  “Through a portal we know has been frequented by our worst enemies?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Because we’re trusting a psychopath who has repeatedly tried to murder us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just so we’re clear.”

  Jackaby stepped off the edge of the dirt floor and into the emerald light as though he had just walked off the end of a pier wearing lead shoes.

  Jenny coasted in after him headfirst.

  I screwed up my courage and took the crossing with a little jump, bending my knees as I dropped out of our world and into the next.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The world turned upside down. One moment I was looking down at the emerald pool beneath my feet as I fell into it—and the next moment I was looking at the sky, as I fell away from it. I scrambled to right myself as a floor of stone tiles leapt toward my head. My arms crumpled under me, but I managed to roll out of the landing just enough to cushion the blow. I pushed myself up and looked around.

  We had traveled so far beneath the streets of the city, deep under the buildings, and deeper still into the earth, only to emerge in the biting-cold fresh air high atop a towering citadel overlooking a strange and foreign land.

  I had visited the Annwyn once before. The first time had been a smooth transition, like stepping from one room into another. This was something else. I was standing on the rooftop of a tower on the corner of a castle wall. As I peered timidly over the edge, I blanched. Had the rend dropped us ten feet from this spot, we would have fallen half a dozen stories before we hit the ground.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned with a start. Jackaby held
a finger to his lips and gestured for me to follow silently. Jenny was a few feet ahead. The tower on which we found ourselves stood higher than the castle’s curtain wall. I looked where Jackaby was pointing just in time to see what appeared to be Pavel’s soiled rags slipping over the edge of the rooftop and dropping onto the castle wall below.

  We slid along the tiles until I could hear voices coming from just over the parapet. Jackaby held a hand up in warning. We kept our heads low as we neared the edge. I could not see Pavel anywhere.

  “It’s about the bits you carve off is what I’m saying,” grunted a deep, gravelly voice right below us. “If I cut off some guy’s arms and legs, you’d say he lost his arms and legs—you wouldn’t say his arms an’ legs had lost their torso.”

  “Yes, exactly,” replied a second, scratchy voice, “but that’s my point. If I cleave clean through some sap’s neck, you ought to say that he lost his body, not that he lost his head. Body’s just meat.”

  “Okay, but everyone knows that if you cut off a gremlin’s head, its little runt body runs around for a good hour, causing just as much havoc as when it was whole. Sometimes more. You lose your head, not your body.”

  “That’s just a myth, the gremlin thing.”

  “Isn’t. Seen it myself. ”

  “You have not.”

  “Hey! Who goes there?” the first voice suddenly grunted in alarm. There was a sickening crunch and then another, followed by a loud clattering and then two thumps like sandbags hitting stone.

  Jackaby peeked tentatively over the edge, and then stood up. I followed suit.

  The path that ran along the top of the castle wall was about six feet wide, bordered on either side by a short, crenellated wall. Two hulking bodies lay sprawled on the stones right below us. They were easily ten feet tall apiece. Poleaxes had fallen by their sides, and matching curved daggers hung on their hips. Their heads sat at unhealthy angles to their shoulders. Their necks had clearly been snapped.

  “Such a waste.” Pavel sighed, looking down at the slain guards as he dusted off his hands.