Stunned by her blind good luck, she thanked him and moved quickly to the stairway. She had never even thought to ask if a man with a walking staff and a limp had come in. Stupid, stupid! She tore off the nylon mask and went up the stairs in a rush, wondering what Simon and Ross were doing up there, wondering if somehow she was already too late. There was still too much she didn’t know, too much about the circumstances surrounding the events portended in Ross’s dream that was hidden from her. There was a tangle of threads in this matter that needed careful unraveling before it ensnared them all.
She reached the second-floor landing and wheeled left to where a dozen steps rose to a dimly lit corridor and the exhibition rooms beyond. She was halfway up this second set of stairs when she drew up short.
John Ross walked out of the shadows, a luminous, terrifying apparition. His clothes were torn and bloodied, and his tattered coat billowed out from his half-naked body like a cape. The black, rune-scrolled staff that was the source of his magic shimmered with silver light, and the radiance it emitted ran all about him like electricity. His strong, sharply angled face was hard-set and drawn, and his green eyes were fierce with determination and rage.
When he saw her, he faltered slightly, and with recognition came a hint of fear and shock. “Nest!” he hissed.
Her breath caught in her throat. “John, what happened?” When he shook his head, unwilling to answer, she wasted no further time on the matter. “John, I had to come back,” she said quickly. “I took a chance I might find you here. I have to talk with you.”
He shook his head in horror, seeing something that was hidden from her, some truth too terrible to accept. “Get out of here, Nest! I told you to get away! I warned you about the dream!”
“But that’s why I’m here.” She tried to get closer, but he held up one hand as if to ward himself against her. “John, you have to forget about the dream. The dream was a lie.”
“It was the truth!” he shouted back at her. “The dream was the truth! The dream is meant to happen! But some of it can still be changed, enough so that you won’t be hurt!- But you have to get out of here! You have to leave now!”
She brushed back her curly hair, trying to understand what he was saying. “No, the dream doesn’t have to happen. Don’t you remember? You’re supposed to prevent the dream!”
He came forward a step, wild-eyed and shining with silver light, the magic a living thing as it raced up and down his body and across his limbs. “You don’t understand!” he hissed at her in fury. “I’m supposed to make it happen!”
There were footsteps and voices on the Grand Stairway, and Nest turned in surprise. She heard Simon Lawrence speaking, and she rushed to where she could see him climbing out of the brightly lit mezzanine toward the second-floor shadows.
She wheeled back to find John Ross striding toward her. “Get out of the way, Nest.”
She stared at him, appalled at what she saw in his eyes and heard in his voice. “No, John, wait.”
The footsteps stopped momentarily, the voices still audible. Nest could hear Simon Lawrence distinctly, calling to someone below. A woman. Carole Price? Nest went back toward Ross, holding out her hands pleadingly. “John, it isn’t him!”
His laugh was brittle. “I saw him, Nest! He did this to me, moments ago, up there!” He gestured back in the direction from which he had come. “He told me everything, admitted it! Then he attacked me! He’s the demon, Nest! He’s the one who stalked you in the park, the one who destroyed Ariel and Audrey and Boot! He’s the one who set fire to Fresh Start! He’s the one who killed Ray Hapgood!”
He slammed the butt end of his black staff against the stone floor, and white fire ran up its length like a rocket, searing the dark. “This dream isn’t like the others, Nest! It’s a prophecy!” His voice was ragged and uneven, choked with anger. “It’s a revelation meant to put things right! It’s a window into a truth I was trying wrongly, foolishly to ignore! I have to act on it! I have to make it happen!”
She held up her hands to slow his advance. “No, John, listen to me!”
The footsteps were approaching again, the voices growing stronger. She could hear Simon joking with someone, could hear muffled responses, sudden laughter, the clink of glasses. Ross was staring past her, the staff’s magic gathering about his knotted hands, growing brighter as he waited for Simon to come into view so that he could unleash it.
“Step aside, Nest,” he said softly.
In desperation she backed away from him, but slowly and with measured steps, so he did not advance immediately, but stood watching to see what she intended. She backed until the sweep of the stairway came into view, then wheeled on the knot of people approaching. Simon Lawrence was foremost, smiling, at ease, exchanging remarks with Carole Price and three weathered, worn-looking men who looked to have seen hard times and few respites. They had not seen her yet, and she did not wait for them to do so. She acted on instinct and out of need. She called on her own magic, on the magic she had been born with but had forsworn since the death of Gran. She called on it without knowing whether it would come, but with certainty that it must. She drew Simon Lawrence’s gaze to her own, just a glimpse and no more, just enough to bind them for an instant, then used the magic to buckle his legs and drop him nerveless and limp upon the stairs.
She stepped quickly from view as his companions gathered around him, kneeling to see what had happened. It surprised her how quickly she was able to regain her use of a skill she had not tested for so long. But calling on it had an unexpected side effect. It had awakened something else inside of her, something much larger and more dangerous. She felt it stir and then rise, growing large and ferocious, and for a terrifying moment she felt as if it might get away from her completely.
Then she recovered herself, all in an instant, and turned back to face Ross. He hadn’t moved. He was standing where she had left him, a puzzled look on his face. He had seen something that had escaped her, and whatever it was, it had left him confused and momentarily distracted.
She did not wait for him to recover. She went to him immediately, crossed the open space between them, and came right up to where he stood, aswirl in his magic, enfolded by the staff’s power, the rage and fierce determination returning to his eyes as he recovered his purpose.
“No, John,” she said again, quickly, firmly, taking hold of his arms, ignoring the feel of the magic as it played across her skin. She was not afraid. There was no place for her fear in what he required of her. Her eyes met his and she held him bound. “You’ve been tricked, John. We’ve all been tricked.”
“Nest,” he whispered, but there was no force behind the speaking of her name, only a vague sort of plea.
“I know,” she replied softly, meaning it without understanding how exactly, knowing mostly that he needed to feel it was true. “But it isn’t him, John. It isn’t Simon. He isn’t the demon.”
And then she told him who was.
Chapter 24
So now, with his memory of the dream that had started it all fading like autumn color, John Ross began to cross the shadowed cobblestone expanse of Occidental Park in Pioneer Square, his topcoat pulled close about his battered, bloodied torso, a wraith come down out of Purgatory to find the demon who had sentenced him to Hell. The night air was cold and sharp with the smell of winter’s coming, and he breathed in the icy scents. Wooden totems loomed overhead as he passed beneath their watchful, fierce gaze, and the homeless who scurried to get out of his way cast apprehensive glances over their shoulders, wary of the silver glow that emanated in a faint sheen from the long black staff that supported him On the hard surface of the cobblestones, the butt end of the staff clicked softly to mark his progress, and a sudden rush of wind blew debris in a ragged scuttle from his path. The feeders who had gathered at his return trailed silently in his wake, eyes watchful, movements quick and furtive. He could sense their anticipation and their hunger for what lay ahead.
He was a Knight of the Word once mo
re, now and forever, bound by the pledge he had given in persuading the magic to return to him. He was become anew what he had sought so hard to escape, and in his recognition and acceptance of the futility of his efforts he found a kind of solace. It was the home he had looked for and not found in his other life. It was the reality of his existence he had sought to deny. In his renunciation of the Word, he had lost his way, been deceived, and very nearly given himself over to a fate that even on brief reflection made his skin crawl.
But all that was past. All of who he had been and sought to be in these last twelve months was past. His life, the only life he would ever have now, he supposed, was given back to him, and he must find a way to atone for casting it aside so recklessly.
Even if it meant giving it up again as payment for the cost of setting things right.
Street lamps burned with fierce bright centers through the Halloween gloom. All masks were off, all secrets revealed, the trickery finished. By dawn, there would be an accounting and a retribution and perhaps his own death. It would depend on how much of himself he had rescued, how much of the warrior he had been he could summon anew.
He looked ahead to the lights of his apartment, and beyond to the smoking ruins of Fresh Start and the mostly darkened bulk of Pass/Go. The buildings lined the corridor of Main Street, safeholds hiding the secrets of the people within. Ross experienced a sense of futility in thinking of the disguises that obscured the truths in human existence. It was so easy to become lost in the smug certainty that what happened to others really mattered very little to you. It was so easy to ignore the ties that bound humanity on its collective journey in search of grace.
A solitary car passed down the broad corridor of Second Avenue and disappeared. In the distance rose voices and music, laughter and shouts, the sounds of celebration on All Hallows’ Eve. For those people, at least, the dark side of witchery and demons was only a myth.
He passed Waterfall Park, the rush of the waterfall a muffled whoosh in the dark confines of the park’s walls, the courtyard a vaguely defined spiderweb of wrought-iron tables, chairs, and trellises amid the blockier forms of the stone fountains and sculptures. He turned on hearing his name called, looking back the way he had come. Nest Freemark was running toward him, her unzipped parka flying out behind her, her curly hair jouncing about her round, flushed face. Feeders melted away into the darkness at her approach, into the rocks of the park, into the tangle of tables and chairs, but she seemed heedless of them. She came up to Ross in a rush and stood panting before him, eyes quickly searching his own.
“I came to help,” she said.
He smiled at her earnest expression, at the determination he found in her young voice. “No, Nest,” he told her quietly.
“But I want to. I need to.”
He had left her behind at the museum when he had departed. She had gone down the stairs to intercept Simon Lawrence and his companions, to delay them long enough for Ross to slip out a side door so he wouldn’t be seen. Even so, in leaving another way besides the main entrance he set off an alarm that brought security guards from the lower level. As he crossed the street toward a dark alleyway, he watched them stumble unaccountably in their efforts to navigate the Grand Stairway, Nest studying them intently from her position beside a recovering Simon.
“For Ariel,” she said firmly. “For Boot and Audrey.”
He felt a rush of hot shame and anger, the revelations she had provided burning through him in a fresh wave of shock and disbelief. But truth has a way of making itself known even to the most skeptical, and he had stripped away the blinders that had kept him deceived and was empowered by his new knowledge and the determination it generated.
“For myself, John,” she finished.
But she had not seen herself as he had, back at the museum, in the shadowy confines of the Exhibition Hall, where the two of them had come face-to-face in a confrontation that might have led to the horrific fulfillment of his dream. She did not realize yet what she had revealed to him that even she did not know, of the way her magic had evolved, of the secret she now held inside. Powerful forces were at work in Nest Freemark that would change her life yet again. He should tell her, of course. But he could not bring himself to do so now, when the secrets of his own life weighed so heavily on his mind and demanded their own resolution.
He stepped closer to her and put his hands on her shoulders. “I am a Knight of the Word, Nest. I am what I was always meant to be, and I owe much of that to you. But I cannot claim the right to serve if I do not resolve first the reason I lost my way. I have to do that. And I have to do it alone. This is personal to me, so close to the bone that to settle it in any other way would leave me hollowed out. Do you see?”
She studied his face a long time. “But you’re hurt. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
He took his hands away from her shoulders and settled them on the polished length of his staff. “The magic will give me the strength I need for this.”
She shook her head. “I don’t like it. It’s too dangerous.”
He looked at her, thinking it odd that someone so young should speak to him of what was too dangerous. But then the dangers in her own life had been, on balance, no less than his.
“Wait for me here, Nest,” he told her. “Keep watch. If I don’t come out, at least one other person will know the truth.”
He didn’t wait for her response but wheeled away quickly and went down the sidewalk to the corner, turned left along Second, and walked to the apartment entrance. Feeders reappeared in droves, creeping over the walls of Waterfall Park, coming up from the gutters and out of the alleyways between the buildings. They materialized in such numbers that he experienced an unexpected chill. Their yellow eyes were fixed on him, empty of everything but their hunger. So many, he mused. He could feel the weight of their expectations in the way they pressed forward to be close to him, and he knew they understood with primal instinct what was at stake.
He entered the foyer, using his key, walked to the elevator, and took it up to the sixth floor. The feeders did not follow. He imagined them scaling the outside wall, climbing steadily, relentlessly closer to the windows of his apartment. He envisioned an enormous tidal wave washing toward a sleeping town.
He exited the elevator and moved to his apartment door, used his key again, and entered.
The apartment was shadowy and silent, with only a single lamp burning at one end of the old couch. Stefanie sat reading in the halo of its light, her exquisite face lifting to greet him, her strange, smoky eyes filling with shock as he closed the door and came into the light.
“John, what happened?” she whispered, rising quickly.
He put out his hand, a defensive gesture, and shook his head. “Don’t get up, Stef. Just stay where you are, please.” He leaned heavily on his staff, studying her perplexed face, the way she brushed back her dark hair, cool and reserved, watchful. “Simon Lawrence isn’t dead,” he said quietly.
He saw a flicker of something dark in her eyes, but her face never changed. “What do you mean? Why would he be dead? What are you talking about, John?”
He shrugged. “It’s simple. I went to the museum to speak with him. He was waiting for me. He admitted everything—firing me without giving me a hearing, stealing the money himself, working to destroy Fresh Start, all of it. Then he attacked me. He overpowered me, threw me down, and walked away. When he left, I went after him. I wanted to kill him I would have, too, except for Nest Freemark. She came back from the airport to warn me. It wasn’t Simon Lawrence I was looking for at all, she said.” He paused, watching her carefully. “It was you.”
She shook her head slowly, a strange little smile playing over her lips. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
He nodded indulgently. She was so beautiful, but everything about her was a lie. “The fact of the matter is, I was ready to believe everything you wanted me to believe. That Simon Lawrence was the demon. That he was responsible for all the bad things happenin
g. That he was intent on ruining my life, on using me, on breaking me down. I had convinced myself. Then, when you tricked me into coming upstairs at the museum, when you disguised yourself as Simon and attacked me, humiliated me, taunted me, and cast me aside as if I were worthless, I was primed and ready to kill him the moment I found him again. And I would have killed him, too, if not for Nest.”
“John—”
“She told me it was you, Stef, and after I got past the initial shock that such a thing could possibly be, that I could have been fooled so completely, that I could have been so stupid, I began to realize what had happened. You were so clever, Stef. You used me right from the beginning. You let me approach you in Boston, played me like a fish on a line, and then reeled me in. I was hooked. I loved you. You made yourself so desirable and so accessible I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to believe you were the beginning, the cornerstone, of a new life. I was through being a Knight of the Word; I wanted something else. You understood what that something was better than I did, and you gave it to me. You gave me the promise of a life with you.
“But you know, what really made it all work was that I couldn’t imagine it wasn’t real. Why would it be anything else? Why wouldn’t you be exactly who you said you were? When Nest first suggested you might be the demon, I dismissed the idea out of hand. It made no sense. If you were the demon, why wouldn’t you just kill me and be done with it? Of what possible use was I alive? A former Knight of the Word, an exile, a wanderer—I was just further proof you had made the right choice a long time ago when you embraced the Void.”
She wasn’t saying anything. She was just sitting there, listening attentively, waiting to see if he had really worked it out. He could tell it just by looking at her, by the way she was studying him. It infuriated him; it made him feel ashamed for the way he had allowed himself to be used.