Fade Out (22 page)

“And? Dude’s crazy, in case you didn’t notice recently. He probably went off to chase butterflies or something”

“He’d have been there. Something happened to him.” Claire knew already, knew it all the way down to her bones. “Ada did something. She sent us to Morley, thinking he’d kill us. She’d go after Myrnin, too. I have to find him.”

“Not by yourself.”

“No,” Michael agreed.

“Ditto,” Eve said, and picked up a fresh weapons bag from the closet to sling over her shoulder. “Definitely not by yourself.”

Claire looked at each of them in turn, saving Shane for last. “You’re sure. Because it’s going to be dangerous.”

“You’re going after Ada, right?” Eve put stakes in her pockets, then tossed a crossbow to Shane, who caught it in midair. “You’re going to need backup. Especially if she’s got Myrnin. Besides, if we just sit here and wait, she can get us anytime she wants.”

“We should take the car,” Claire said, heading toward the closet to get her own weapons stash. “It’s not safe now going through the portals anymore. . . .”

A black hole formed in the wall next to her, and Claire felt the storm of force rip through the house. The portal wavered as the house itself fought back, trying to heal the rift, but whatever was tearing the entrance held firm. Ada.

Claire didn’t have time to run.

Ada’s blue-white hands came out of the darkness, grabbed Claire by the shirt, and dragged her into the portal.

It snapped shut on the shocked, angry faces of her friends.

She heard Shane scream her name.

So, Ada really could touch things. Claire kind of wished she’d taken that idea more seriously.

Claire woke up lying on cold, damp stone, feeling damp little feet skittering over her arm—rats, probably. She hoped it wasn’t roaches. She’d just die if it was roaches.

She was in the dark—utter, velvety darkness that pressed in on her like smothering cloth. When she moved, she heard the scrape of her shoes echo off into the distance.

Cave. Probably not Ada’s cave, because Claire couldn’t hear the distinctive hissing and clanking that came from Ada’s gears and pipes. It doesn’t have to be her cave, Claire reminded herself. Ada could open any portal, anywhere within Morganville—or under it. From the ragged, crude way she’d done it at the Glass House, though, she might not be able to keep up that sort of thing for long.

She was unraveling in control, even while she was getting stronger in raw power.

“Ada,” a voice said in the distance—weak and faint. “Ada, you must let me go. I order you to let me go.”

“No.” Ada’s voice came from nowhere, and everywhere ; not out of Claire’s speakerphone this time. Claire slapped at her pockets, but she had nothing—no weapons, no phone; Ada had taken everything. “You’re going nowhere. I’ve waited all these years, you know. So many years for you to love me.”

“Ada, please.” Myrnin sounded very weak; Claire could hardly believe it was really him. “I do love you. I always have. Please stop this. You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re not well. Let me help—”

He broke off with a strangled gasp. She’d hurt him, and it took a lot to hurt Myrnin.

Claire slowly climbed to her feet, put her hands on the nearest stone wall, and began to feel her way through the darkness.

“Going somewhere?” Ada’s voice asked from right behind her, as if the computer was leaning over her shoulder. Claire yelped and flailed out a hand, but there was nothing there. “I brought you here so that I can get rid of you once and for all, and you can help me make Myrnin better at the same time. Isn’t that clever of me?”

Her voice was breaking up into strange harmonics, not really a voice at all—mere noise. “How are you talking?” Claire asked. “You’re not using my phone.”

“Does it matter?”

“No,” Claire said. She sounded a lot less scared than she actually was, which she supposed was a good thing. “I’m just curious.”

“You’d be curious at your own autopsy,” Ada said, and broke into distorted laughter that reeled wildly out of control. “I’d like to see that.”

“Where’s Myrnin?”

“Don’t you dare try to take him away from me!” Ada shrieked. The echoes filled the cave, bounced, magnified until Claire had to clap her hands over her ears. She could feel the sound waves on her skin, like speakers booming at a rave. “He is mine; he’s always been mine; I will never give him up, never!”

“I’m not trying to take him away!” Claire shouted. “I just want to be sure he’s all right!”

The sound cut off, just like that. Even the echoes. Claire slowly lowered her hands and touched the wall again; she was afraid to try to move without keeping it under her fingers, because there was no possibility of seeing a thing. Not with human eyes.

“Claire?” Myrnin’s voice again, coming from ahead of her and to the right. He sounded weak, and concerned. “You have to get out of here. Please go away.”

“Kind of not an option,” she said. “Unless Ada wants to open me a portal . . . ?”

Ada laughed softly.

“Guess not.” Claire took a couple of more steps forward, but it took her off the angle toward Myrnin’s voice. “Myrnin, I can’t see. I’m going to try to get to you, but you have to keep talking, okay?”

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t try to reach me. Claire, I’m asking you, please stay where you are. Get out if you can. Do not come near me.”

She was ignoring that, mostly because the idea of staying alone in this darkness, listening to Ada do bad things to him, was worse than anything he could do to her himself. “Keep talking,” she said. She heard him take in a deep breath, then let it out. He didn’t say a word. She guessed he thought that if he didn’t encourage her, maybe she’d give up.

He should have known better.

“Stop!” Myrnin’s voice suddenly rang out of the black, urgent and sharp, and Claire paused with her right foot still raised. “Back up. Slowly. Two steps. Do it, Claire!”

She did, putting one foot carefully behind the other, and stopped. “What is it?”

“The floor isn’t stable. If you try to cross that way, it’ll break through under your weight. You must stay where you are!”

“So concerned for the new girl,” Ada’s voice said, vibrating out of the cave walls. “Never so concerned for me, were you? Even though you always knew how much I loved you. How much I wanted to be with you. I let you drink my blood, Myrnin. I let you take everything. And then you did this to me.”

“Oh, stop whining,” Myrnin snapped. “You were grateful enough to become a vampire, and it had nothing to do with your being a lovesick schoolgirl. You wanted a thousand lifetimes to explore the world, to discover, to learn. I gave you that, Ada.”

“You were supposed to take care of me.”

“According to whom?”

“According to me!” The echoes built again, bouncing wildly, and Claire crouched down in place, hands firmly over her ears again. This time, the echoes died gradually. Once it was quiet, Claire rose to her feet and started moving carefully forward at an angle to her original course, testing the floor before putting her full weight on the stone.

It felt solid.

“Claire, please stop,” Myrnin said raggedly. “You can’t see. You don’t know how dangerous this is.”

“Describe it to me. Help me! If you don’t, I’ll just keep walking.”

“That’s exactly what she wants. She wants you to try to reach me—” Myrnin broke off with a small cry of pain.

“Myrnin?” Claire forgot all about being careful, and took a step forward. Too fast. She felt the stone snap and crumble and fall away, dark on dark, and she teetered off balance over the edge of a hole that led to the center of the world, apparently. She didn’t even hear the falling rocks hit bottom.

Claire slowly shifted her weight to her back foot and stepped back to solid stone again. Her heart was pounding so hard it hurt, and she couldn’t seem to slow down her panicked breathing.

“Myrnin, you have to help me,” she said. “Tell me which way to go. We can do this.”

“Even if you reach me, it’s no help to either of us,” he said. “She has me. There’s no point in your dying, as well.”

“Just tell me how to get there.”

After a few silent seconds, Myrnin said, “Two steps to your right, then one forward.” As she accomplished that, he said, “Claire, she’s right. I did take advantage of her. She did love me. I used that to get what I wanted from her.”

“You mean, like a guy?” Claire counted steps carefully, then stopped. “Next.”

“One step forward, then one diagonally to your left. What I did was considerably worse than you think. I made her a vampire so I could have a reliable assistant, one who loved me and would never betray me. I made her a slave.”

“Next. And one thing I can tell you about Ada, she was never a slave, not to you or anybody else. And you really did love her, or you wouldn’t have kept her locket all these years.”

“Another step straight to your left, then six forward. And don’t be daft. I keep gum wrappers. It doesn’t mean I love the gum that was once in them.”

She counted. He didn’t say anything else. Once she got to the end of the directions, she said, “Next. I’m not wrong about Ada. You did love her.”

“Straight ahead, one step.”

“You’re not going to tell me I’m wrong?”

“What’s the point? Three steps to your right.”

“The point is to keep us talking so I’m not so terrified out of my mind,” she said. “What are we going to do about her?”

“Nothing. There’s nothing we can do.”

“I’m there. Next? Also, there’s got to be something. What about—” She was about to say the reset code, and he must have known it, because he let out a sharp hiss for silence. She swallowed the words.

“Focus,” Myrnin said. “Forward three small steps. Be careful not to overshoot.”

She found out why when she took the steps; her toes overhung what felt like another sinkhole.

Myrnin’s voice was close now, very close. “Next,” she said.

“This is the difficult part,” he said. “You’re going to have to jump.”

“Jump?” She wasn’t sure he was thinking straight. “I can’t jump. I can’t see!”

“You wanted to get to me, and this is what it takes. If you want to stay where you are—”

“No. Tell me.”

“Two steps to your left, and jump straight forward, hard. I’ll catch you.”

“Myrnin—”

“I’ll catch you,” he whispered into the dark. “Jump.”

She took two running steps and before she could let herself think about what she was doing, dug in her toes and leaped forward.

She crashed into Myrnin’s solid body, his cold arms wrapped around her, and for a few breaths he held her close as she shivered. He smelled like metal. Like cold things.

He didn’t let go.

“Myrnin?”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

And then he bit her.

When Claire came awake again, there were lights in the cave—diffuse and dim, but enough to make things out. Like Myrnin, sitting huddled against the cave wall. She must have made some noise, because his head came up, and he looked straight at her.

She didn’t think she’d ever seen anybody look so miserable in her life, and for a moment she couldn’t think why he would look that way, and then it all came crashing back.

The throbbing in her neck.

The hollow, disconnected feeling inside her.

The panicked thudding of her heart trying to speed too little blood through the racetrack of her veins. Yeah, she recognized that feeling all too well.

“You bit me,” she said. It came out surprised, and a little sad. She started to sit up, but that didn’t go so well; she sank back to the cold stone floor, feeling sick and vague, as if she were fading out of the world.

“Don’t move,” he said softly. “Your pressure is very low. I tried—I tried to stop, Claire. I did try. Please give me the credit.”

“You bit me,” she said again. It still sounded surprised, although she really wasn’t anymore. You can’t trust him. Shane had said that. And Michael. And Eve. Even Amelie.

You can’t trust me.

Myrnin had told her that, too, from the very first. She’d just never really, really believed it. Myrnin was like a thrill ride, one of those dark carnival tracks where scary things swooped in close but never quite touched you.

Now she knew better.

“I told you I’d kill you if you did that. I promised.”

“I am so sorry,” Myrnin said, and lowered his head.

“Lie still. It won’t be so bad if you keep yourself flat.” He sounded tired and defeated. Claire blinked back gray fog, fighting her way back into the world, and almost wished she hadn’t when he shifted a little, and she saw—really saw—what had happened to him.

There was a silver bar through his left arm, driven in between the two bones. On either side of it hung silver chains that rattled on the stone and were fixed to a silver-plated bolt. The wound continued to drip red down his arm and hand, to patter into a large puddle around him.

Claire had a flash of Amelie at Sam’s grave, silver driven into the wounds to keep them from closing. But Amelie had chosen to do that. This had been done to keep Myrnin here, pinned and helpless.

He shuddered, and the chains rattled. Even as old as he was, the silver must have been horribly painful to him; she could see tendrils of smoke coming from his arm, and he was careful to keep his hand away from the chains. His skin was covered with thick red burns.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I tried to warn you, but I couldn’t—I needed—”

“I know,” Claire said. “It’s—” What was it? Not okay, okay would be a real stretch. Understandable, maybe. “It’s not so bad.” It was, though. Still, Myrnin looked a little relieved. “Who did this to you?”

The relief faded from his face, replaced with a blank, black rage. “Who do you think?” he asked.

And from all around them, from the faint shimmer of crystal embedded in the walls, came a soft, smoky laugh.

“She touched me,” Claire said, remembering. “She dragged me here. I didn’t think she could do that.”

“No,” Myrnin agreed. “I didn’t think she could do a great many things, although she was capable of them on a purely theoretical level. I’ve been a fool, Claire. You tried to warn me—even Amelie warned me, but I thought—I thought I understood what I’d created. I thought she was my servant.”

“And now,” Ada said, gliding out of the wall in cold silver and black, “you belong to me. But am I not a generous master? You starved me for so long, barely giving me enough blood to survive. Now I give you a feast.” Her cutout image turned toward Claire, and she folded her hands together at her waist, prim and perfect. “Oh, Myrnin. You didn’t finish your dinner. Don’t let it go bad.”

Myrnin stripped his black velvet coat off his right arm, then shrugged it down his left until it was covering the chain. He took hold of it, right-handed, and pulled. Claire tried to get up to help, but her head went weird again, and she had to rest. She rolled on her side and watched Myrnin’s right arm tremble as he tried to exert enough pressure to snap the chain, and then he sat back against the wall, panting.

He stared at Ada as if he wanted to rip her into confetti.

“Don’t pout,” she said. “If you’re good, I’ll let you off the chain from time to time. In a few years, perhaps”

Claire blinked slowly. “She’s sick,” she said. “Isn’t she?”

“She’s insane,” Myrnin said. “Ada, my darling, this would be amusing if you weren’t trying to kill us. You do realize that if I die, you waste away down here. No more blood. No more treats. No more anything.”

In answer, Ada’s image reached out and grabbed Claire by the hair, dragging her up to a sitting position. “Oh, I think I can hunt up my own blood,” Ada said. “After all, I control the portals. I can reach out and snatch up anyone I wish. But you’re right. It would be terribly boring, all alone in the dark. I’ll have to keep you all to myself, the way you kept me all to yourself, all these years.” She dropped Claire and wiped her hand on her computer-generated gown. “But I can’t share you with her, my love.”

Myrnin’s eyes flared red, then smoothed back to black, full of secrets. “No indeed,” he said. “Why, she’s in the way. I see that now. Send her out of here, lock her out of the portals. I never want to see her again.”

“Easily done,” Ada said, and grabbed Claire’s hair again. She dragged her backward, and Claire flailed weakly, grabbing at loose stones and breaking nails on sharp edges of rock.

She looked over her shoulder in the direction they were going.

Ada was dragging her to the edge of the sinkhole.

“No!” Myrnin said, and got to his feet. He lunged to the end of his chain, reaching out; his clawing fingers fell short of Claire’s foot by about two inches. “No, Ada, don’t! I need her!”

“That’s too bad,” Ada said. “Because I don’t.”

Claire’s hand fell on a sharp, ancient bone—a rib?—and she stabbed blindly behind her head. A second later it occurred to her that she was trying to stab an image, a hologram, an empty space—but Ada let out a yell and the pressure on Claire’s hair eased.

Ada’s pressed both hands over her midsection, which slowly spread into a black stain.

She was bleeding.

Where the blood hit the stone, it vanished in a curl of smoke.

But the wound didn’t heal.

“Yes!” Myrnin cried out. “Yes, by manifesting enough to touch you, she makes herself vulnerable—Claire! Here! Come here!” Myrnin cried, and Claire crawled back in his direction. The second she was within reach, he dragged her toward him, putting her against the wall.

Ada was still standing where she’d been, looking down at her and the spreading dark stain on her dress. Her image guttered, flared, sparked, and then stabilized again.

She flashed toward them, screaming that awful, echoing shriek from all the walls. Myrnin pivoted gracefully and hooked the slack of his chain around her silver, two-dimensional throat. Where it touched her, it burned black holes, and her scream grew louder, until it was cracking stone in the walls. She tried to pull free, but the silver wouldn’t let her go. “I’ve got her!” he said, although Claire could see that his whole body was trembling from the strain, and the burn of silver on his hands must have been horrible. “Go, Claire! Get out of here! You have to go!”

She was too weak, too dizzy. The room was a minefield of sinkholes and false floors, and even if she’d known where to step, chances were she’d simply collapse halfway across and disappear into one of those deep, dark chasms . . . .

And she couldn’t just leave him.

“Claire!” His voice was desperate. “You have to go. Go now.”

Now that the lights were on, she could see a clear trail that looked solid, leading all around the room’s edge. Claire stumbled out onto it, guiding herself with both hands on the stone wall, and took one torturous step after another. The lights flickered, and the screaming suddenly cut off behind her.

Claire didn’t dare look back. She was at the door, a black unknown facing her.

Portal.

She couldn’t think. Couldn’t get her head together. Couldn’t remember all the frequencies to align to take her where she needed to go.

Behind her, she heard Ada laugh.

You have to do this. You can do this!

Claire’s eyes snapped open, and without thinking about it, without even meaning to do it, she threw herself forward into the darkness.

And fell out on the other side, into the tunnel beneath Myrnin’s lab. Overhead, the trapdoor was open, letting in streams of pale lamplight. Claire staggered into a wall, bounced, and ran away from the light, into the damp chill of the tunnel.

Twelve long steps, and she heard the cavern echoing overhead. She slapped the wall until she found the lights, flipped them on, and ran toward the keyboard at the center of Ada’s hissing, steaming, clanking metal form.

A cable slithered across the stone, trying to trip her, but she stumbled on, caught herself against the giant keyboard, and took a second to gasp for breath. Her body was shaking all over, cold as a vampire’s, and she just wanted to fall down, fall and sleep in the dark.

Claire closed her eyes, and the symbols began to burn against her eyelids. The symbols she’d memorized every day since Myrnin had given her the sketch on paper of the order. She knew this.

She had this.

She opened her eyes . . . and gasped in utter anguish, because the keys were all blank.

Somewhere in the darkness, Ada’s tinny voice scratched out a contemptuous laugh. “Surprised, little wretch? What’s wrong, not as easy as you’d thought?”

You’ve got this. Claire chanted that to herself, and closed her eyes again. This time, she didn’t just imagine the symbols she wanted to push, but with a huge effort, she imagined the keyboard as it had been the last time she’d seen it. She fixed the image in her mind, opened her eyes, and touched the first key.

Yes. Yes, that was right.

The force required to push the key down seemed enormous, like trying to squeeze a boulder. She got the first symbol pressed, then pushed her palm down on the second and leaned her whole weight against it. It slowly, reluctantly clicked and locked.

Ada’s laughter died away.

The third symbol was Amelie’s Founder’s Symbol, the same as on Claire’s gold bracelet, and Claire clearly remembered its position right in the center of the keyboard. She put her palm on it and pushed until it locked down. As she reached for the fourth key, she lost her balance and almost fell.

Behind her, Ada’s voice came out of the scratchy, ancient speakers. “Stop. You’re going to make a mistake.”

“I won’t,” Claire gasped, and pushed the fourth key down. Two more to go.

She couldn’t remember the fifth symbol. She knew it was there, but somehow, her mind wouldn’t focus. Everything seemed blurry and odd. She closed her eyes again and concentrated, concentrated very hard, until she remembered that it had been hidden down on the bottom-left side.

When she opened her eyes, Ada was right there, inches from her face. Claire shrieked and jumped back, slamming her fist forward.

It went right through Ada’s form. She wasn’t able to stay physical anymore. Myrnin had really hurt her. She hadn’t fixed the damage to her image, either—there were black wounds on her throat and hands, and a black stain covering most of her dress.

Her eyes were glowing silver.

“Stop,” Ada said.

“No,” Claire panted, closed her eyes, and stepped through her image. She found the key she was looking for, and pushed it.

One more.

“All right,” Ada said. “Then I’ll stop you.”

Claire felt cold against her skin, and heard the hiss and clank of the computer grow loud, almost like chatter.

The lights went out, but the noise got louder—and louder.

Ada’s cold fingers brushed the back of her neck.

Claire turned toward the darkness behind her. “So that’s it?” she yelled. “That’s all you’ve got? Turn off the lights? Scary! I’m totally shaking, you freak! What do you think I am, five and scared of the dark?”

“I think you’re defeated,” Ada said. “And I think I will kill you, when and how I wish.” Ada had made herself physical again, but it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. She was still bleeding from where Claire had hurt her, and now her neck and face were scarred and burned from the chain. Her head was at a strange angle, but she was still alive. She glowed a very faint, phosphorous kind of silver.

“You’ll never find the key in the dark,” Ada almost purred. “You’re defeated. And now you die.”

“You first,” Claire said.

Claire reached behind her from blind instinct and memory, and slammed her palm down on a key. It almost went down, but then it popped up again.

Wrong.

Ada’s ice-cold hands—not really hands anymore—closed around her neck. “Stupid girl,” she said. “So close.”

Ada’s fingers squeezed, locking the breath in her throat, and Claire wildly hammered her palm down on the next key to the right.

It locked down with an almost physical snap.

As Claire’s fingers slipped off the key, it clicked into place, and the clattering of the machine . . .

. . . stopped.

For a breathless second those cold fingers kept on strangling her, and then they softened, turned to mist . . .

And then they were gone.

A steady, quiet glow came up around her.

Lights.

Claire sank down, back to the keyboard, gasping in breaths through her bruised throat, and watched a silvery light flicker in midair, then take on form.

Ada, but not Ada.The same image, but immaculate, perfectly groomed, and with an entirely blank expression.

“Welcome,” Ada said. “May I ask who you are?”

“Claire,” she said. “My name is Claire.”

“My name is—” Ada cocked her head and frowned. “I’m not quite sure. Addy?”

“Ada.”

“Ah yes. Ada.” Ada’s flat image smiled, but it was a fake kind of smile, with nothing behind it. “I’m not feeling very well.”

“You just got reset.”

“No, I know all about that. I don’t feel at all well, quite beyond that. There’s something very wrong with my mind.” Her image flickered, and a spasm of emotion flared across her perfect, blank face. “I’m scared, Claire. Can you fix me?”