Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04 (49 page)

 
          
What
a ghastly coincidence, if you could even call it that. No wonder they've seemed
to be one step ahead of us all along, with a spy in the house of John Cannon's
closest friend.

 
          
And
now they were moving openly against Jamie Melford
—
and neither Colin nor Claire
had the faintest idea of where their
Temple
was.

 
          
It
was nearly
eight o'clock
when the three of them left the Melfords'
Upper West Side
apartment. Their only
chance to save Jamie Melfords life
—
and soul
—
lay in Claire's erratic
scrying abilities.

 
          
Claire
had been fortunate to be taught scrying by Alison Margrave. Alison had worked
patiently with her for months under Colin's aegis, guiding Claire to discover
the techniques that unlocked her Gift. Every psychic was different, using
items as disparate as fire and water, a deck of Tarot cards, or an astrological
chart, to unlock clairvoyant powers, but scrying was one of the fundamental
disciplines that all psychics stumbled into eventually. Claire had been trained
in one of the oldest methods: that of the
shewstone.
The mineral crystal
was a heavy weight in the pocket of her coat as Colin drove down the
East River Drive
.

 
          
It
was Christmas Eve and the traffic was heavy. Each time the van became stopped
in traffic Claire winced as the tension inside it took a sharp upswing. She
could almost hear Colin grinding his teeth in frustration.

 
          
But
Jamie Melford was not dead. Claire clung to that tottering certainty. She could
not sense him at all, and had only the most wavering sense of
place,
but
she clung to the conviction that he lived as desperately as his wife did. She could
not bear to think that he had fallen into that Night which was eternal, but
the clues revealed by Claire's scrying were so muddled and few: explosions,
alarm sirens . . .

 
          
Thanks
to Martin Becket, they'd been able to restrict their searching to only those
areas where blasting was going on tonight
—
an emergency, indeed, to
make men work on Christmas Eve, but the bank that had the advertising slogan
"The city never sleeps" certainly had the right of it
—
New York was a
twenty-four-hour town.

 
          
The
first site they tried was on
Second Avenue
, over on the
East Side
. They wasted forty minutes
checking out a several-block area
—
uselessly
—
before heading downtown once
more.

 
          
"Hurry.
Please . . . hurry," Barbara Melford whispered under her breath.

 
          
Colin
turned off the
East River Drive
onto
Houston Street
, and within moments they
were lost in the twisting maze of
Greenwich Village
streets. When she heard the
dull
crump
of explosions, Claire felt a pang of relief so strong it made
her giddy.

 
          
"Well,
there's the blasting," she said. "Now all we have to find is the
fire-house."
Or whatever other source there might be for the sirens I
heard. . .

 
          
"That
way!" Barbara said suddenly, pointing off to the left. Colin looked at her
strangely, but followed her directions without comment.

 
          
This
was one of the oldest sections of
New York
, and many of the streets
retained their original cobblestones. Claire rolled down the passenger-side
window as the van drove slowly through the streets, straining her senses to
search for the black coven's hideout. The night air was sharp, with the
minti-ness of fresh snow on the air. She breathed deeply, trying to banish the
nauseated faintness that had dogged her ever since the apartment, but she felt
as if there was a tide of liquid garbage rising around her, and waves of
sickness seemed to steal the oxygen from her lungs.

 
          
As
if from a great distance, she could hear Colin asking her to take the wheel.
Barely conscious, Claire slid across the seat, but changing position seemed to
make the sickness worse. It was horrible
—
like drowning, like dying
—
watching the faint clean
light of life and air dim out far above.

 
          
Suddenly,
Colin placed a hand on her shoulder, speaking to her sharply. She tried to
rally, but she could feel herself greying out. . . .

 
          
"Barbara,
can you drive?"

 
          
The
intent that coiled around them was like nothing he had felt in many, many years
—
Colin could well understand
why a Sensitive was swooning just from exposure to it. There was a peculiar
immediacy to the Evil that manifested through human intervention; something
far more frightening than the sheer inhumanity of the Shadow. All men were born
with a spark of the Light, and the deliberate destruction of that part of
themselves was what gave their actions this extraordinary taint of ghastliness.

 
          
He
blessed the foresight that had caused Claire to place so many vital items into
the emergency kit that she'd packed in Colin's apartment, and he blessed his
own prudence, that had made him store his ritual dress here in the back of the
van
—
they'd
be needing the biggest of big guns here tonight. He opened the door and got out
of the van, walking around to the back and climbing in again.

 
          
Barbara
crawled over Claire across the bench seat and managed to navigate the van into a
parking space along the curb. All up and down
Houston Street
, faceless warehouses
presented indistinguishable unblinking facades. Any of them might be the hiding
place they sought, and time was running out.

 
          
Carefully,
using a box of wooden matches that had never been used for any other purpose,
Colin lit two tapers which had been blessed by a cooperative priest. As soon as
the flames began to burn steadily, the crushing weight of the evil all around
them lifted slightly in the presence of the holy light. He placed one of the
candles in Barbara's hand, and kept the other for himself.

 
          
As
the consecrated light shone down on her, Claire began to revive. By the time
Colin had settled his heavy jeweled breastplate into place and began to tie on
the complicated folds of his cap, Claire was sitting up again, bent forward
and breathing deeply.

 
          
"Good
girl," Colin said encouragingly. He pulled the hood of his plain outer
robe up, allowing it to hide most of the ornate ritual finery beneath, and
picked up the long wrapped bundle that would be his most formidable weapon in
the struggle here tonight. "Let's go."

 
          
Colin
strode up the block, holding his consecrated flame high, as if it were a torch.
All around him, the air vibrated to silent shouting, and the icy wind off the
Hudson River
dragged at his clothes,
making the long bundle he carried awkward and unwieldy. He was uncomfortably
aware that the two tiny flames were all that stood between the three of them
and suffocation in the
sea
of
Darkness
that surrounded them. While
the force being raised here tonight by the black coven might not have the
potency to actually kill them, Colin had enough experience of the world to know
that there were many things worse than death.

 
          
Claire
was reeling along beside him almost as if she were drunk, moaning to herself
painfully with each breath. Barbara was following behind, sheer nerves making
her babble like a standup comic. She held the candle low against her body and
sheltered from the wind with her free hand.

 
          
"Quiet!"
Colin barked at last. "Let her concentrate!"

 
          
Barbara
fell silent in midword, and Colin spared a moment of sympathy for her, but he
could hardly afford more, as beleaguered as they were.

 
          
"This
one," Claire whispered, lurching to a stop in front of one door that could
not be differentiated from any of the others that lined the
midnight
street. "No . . . I'm
not. I don't
—
"

 
          
"No,
it's this one," Barbara said definitively, sounding a little puzzled that
neither of them realized what was obvious to her. With the fearlessness of ignorance,
she walked up to a door a few feet away and grabbed the handle, only to release
it with a startled cry. She tore off her mitten, staring at the hand beneath
as though she expected to see something horrible.

 
          
"It
must have been just ... a shock. But it felt as if it were . . . hot?" she
said, bewildered.

 
          
So
Barbara Melford is a Sensitive, too,
Colin thought to himself.

 
          
It
would explain much about this whole affair, including why Barbara had fought so
stubbornly for so many years to hold onto Jamie, even with all the forces of
Hell arrayed against her. Many people fought and died for the Light without
ever understanding that they were in a war at all; if not for this encounter,
Barbara Melford would have been such a person. Colin vowed that if they all
survived this night, Barbara would strive in ignorance no longer.

 
          
"Get
back, Barbara," Colin said gently. He handed Claire the bundle that he
carried. "Let me handle this. You take care of her." He thrust the
reeling Claire at Barbara, and turned to the door.

 
          
He
felt nothing when he reached for the handle
—
for once he blessed his lack
of the Gift
—
but on the other hand, the door didn't move, either. It was
locked.

 
          
He
supposed it had been too much to hope for that the door would have been open,
but Colin had brought his skeleton keys with him for just such a circumstance,
and fortunately the lock was an old one that one of his blanks was likely to
fit. He found the right master for it at just the moment when his ungloved fingers
seemed about to go completely numb in the cutting river wind.

 
          
He
kicked open the unlocked door and took his candle back from Claire.

 
          
"In
normal circumstances, I'd say ladies first, but I think this is a special
case." He strode into the filthy building, and heard Claire and Barbara
hurrying after him.

 
          
On
the fourth floor the smell of frankincense and asafetida seeping out from
around the door was all the evidence he needed. There was a sickly sweet tang
to the smoke that made his head spin
—
there was hashish in that
incense, the black magician's quick and dangerous method of opening the higher
chakras.

 
          
"Give
me that," he said to Claire, taking the wrapped parcel from her hands. He
shook the sword free of its protection; the Seal of Solomon set into the
quillons seemed to blaze like the sun in the dimness of the dingy loft.

 
          
Then
he took one step back and kicked the door in.

 
          
The
darkness seemed to roll out through the opening like ink diffusing through
water. Colin heard Claire cry out with real revulsion in the moment before he
ran forward into the gloomy haze. Jamie Melford was here somewhere, and their
prisoner. God grant that he was
still
alive
—
and sane.