Needle Rain (28 page)

“No. I’m sorry. Nothing as yet.”

“Come.” She briefly touched his arm. “Let’s catch up.” Though, of course, Bull had already stopped to wait for them.

Touch was such an intimate sense. Like a spark set to dry tinder, her fingers had registered the feel of his skin, relished it, and sent mild pleasure racing through her.

Only a fraction of a second had she paused, but he’d noticed.

Nervous, she looked up at him. His face was all dark shadows and ravines. Unreadable.

He lightly rested his hand on her shoulder. If the other had been a spark, this was the heat of fire.

She resisted flinching away.

“Thank you for what you did back there,” he said, softly. “I owe so much to so many that I don’t know what value my own life is any more. If I have to, I’ll go with Samos, though preferably not dead.” He half laughed. “But not until I’ve done my utmost to help you also, and Omi.”

Bull was watching. What would he think they were talking about?

Thom’s meaning sank in. Aghast, she drew back, whispering, “Don’t talk about being dead.”

The closeness stifled her. She felt her breaths merge with his, and with the wall at her back, Thom seemed to be closer than before. She reached up, hesitantly, until her fingertips grazed his face and felt the lightest stubble.

When he leaned in to kiss her, she was slow in reacting and his lips brushed hers before she managed a shaky
no
. Her palm on his chest convinced him.

Thom stopped and nodded then straightened. His
sorry
was so light only she could’ve heard it. Her wry shrug was so infinitesimal only the two of them could know. It was nobody else’s business anyway.

Stupid of her though. “I...I gave the wrong signals. It was my mistake.”

“Mutual. At least now I know.”

“Mmm.”

“Hah,” Samos muttered further up the corridor. “So that’s why she didn’t want me to kill him. Thought you said he’d done something awful to her?”

That brush of his lips on hers had felt so good, the thrill of awakening desire unmistakable. He hadn’t moved farther away and her hand remained flattened to his chest. Each breath he took communicated to her through her palm, as did his heartbeat.

This was wrong. Had to be.

They might die soon.

She clenched her hand, gathering the cloth of his shirt, then she rose to her tiptoes and kissed him, once, but long enough to make both their hearts accelerate. As she lowered herself to stand flat-footed again, his eyes followed hers.

“Don’t say anything. That was just...a maybe.” Reluctantly, she released his shirt.

He studied her then nodded.

This wasn’t the time for more than promises.

“I won’t,” he murmured, so close she felt the heat of his body. “And I won’t talk about being dead again.”

“Good.” Her laugh broke the tension and he smiled. As they both turned, she said under her breath, “I’d like to talk some more, one day, about everything.”

They needed to say more to each other. Much more.

“Sure. Now, we need to concentrate on surviving.”

“Of course.”

“The next stairs down are here,” announced Bull, as they approached, giving her the dirtiest look she’d ever had from him.

She really should have told Bull that she’d never seen him in the way that he hoped she did. Later. It had to wait.

These stairs were an anomaly.

“I think there should have been another set near the trapdoors. Buried further back, perhaps.” Though this came second-hand via her borrowed architect sense, it made sense.

Bull grunted. “Well, these’ll do. They’re here, we’re here.”

“Sure.”

The stairs were stone, as everything seemed to be, and the next level down was lower than expected. Following the slope of the cliff? That would be also sensible, as the alternative would have been to chip away at rock. The stairwell was the deepest black at the bottom, as if it had become another color altogether.

“This is the lowest level,” she found herself saying as they took the final turn of the stairs.

How did I know that?

Every hair on her body slowly stood up.

Her knowledge had come from outside her own self – from Vassbinder. How quietly he’d penetrated her thoughts. If he could do that so easily, what else might he do?

No. No. Think. Be logical. She mustn’t let fear control her.

It couldn’t be deliberate. This was as relentless and natural as the sea washing onto the beach and wetting the grains of sand.

Down here, his influence pervaded every particle of air and structure. Down here, he had been god for more than a hundred years. The god of ghosts, for there were more ghosts than she could count.

“Can you see them?” she asked. “Turn up the lantern!”

They flitted across her vision, dark as a shadow, and barely as high as her waist.

On the sea-damp floor lay many child-sized skeletons. Fifteen, or twenty, perhaps. Those close to her bore the marks of an unnatural death. Gold needles lay among the bones, still whole and shining despite the passage of time and the salt-moistened air. Gold didn’t rust.

The room was wide and long. The trink light only illuminated thirty feet of its length. The stairs had turned them about and this room ran beneath the area they’d traversed upstairs. At the farthest end, a broad set of iron doors spanned the left wall, and near them spear-thin rays of sunlight pierced through. The room that the doors opened onto must be in daylight, its walls broken and exposed to the sea.

To the right, bookshelves covered half the wall. A desk sat before them.

“See what? The skeletons, you mean? No? Then I see nothing else to dread,” said Samos. “But I hear the ocean. The sounds from above, of the others shifting stones, stopped some minutes ago. Which makes me wonder where Tatiana has directed her men to go.”

“And I see nothing as well,” added Thom. “Are there ghosts?”

Bull turned from where he inspected a rusted, collapsed table and raised his light.

“Yes, oh yes,” she said through a fear-tightened throat. “There are ghosts.”

This was where it had happened. This was the very center of Vassbinder’s strange experiments. These dark ghosts were those who’d suffered Vassbinder’s presence for a hundred years, linked perhaps, by history and their deaths to this one place. Once they had been children. These ghosts were twisted horribly by what he’d done and they circled her in a vast and haphazard way. Did they wait to attack?

She drew a ragged breath through her teeth. Controlling one ghost was possible, if all these chose to possess her at once, she feared the result.

“Thom! Look for these books you need! I cannot spend too much time in here!”

Her second plan, that had seemed so plausible in the sunlight, became an erratic and stupid idea down here. At least Vassbinder was not here. Or so she thought, until impossibly, she watched the spears of light be dimmed by a black presence oozing through the wall holes. The black congealed together into one. Vassbinder. He’d come from the room that must be flooded by sunlight.

Alarmed, she took a step back. What ghost would seek sunlight?

“I’ve found a book,” yelled Thom, from where he stood by the desk. “Notes on something-or-other.” He held it up in both hands and the entire book sloughed away like a pile of wet leaves. “Scum.”

“These are like that also,” Bull said grimly, from the bookshelves at the wall. He swept his drawn sword lightly across a shelf and what seemed intact volumes turned into an amorphous heap. “Wet. Destroyed.”

Heloise made herself walk a little into the room. Vassbinder stayed distant. She felt his ghost brooding, malevolent, yet something held him back. Other ghosts required night to transfer. It seemed he too was constrained by that.

You can breathe, she told herself. “Perhaps there’s some documents sealed away somewhere? An airtight safe?”

“Or maybe a bridge to fairyland while we’re at it,” muttered Samos. “More to the point. Tatiana’s men are abseiling down the cliff outside. The sound is unmistakable.” He turned to Heloise. “Your idea? You said you had one.” He struck a table near him and it collapsed in a flurry of rust. “Bring it out, damn it! Show us!”

She clenched her jaw. Insufferable man. What use his demands, now? “I thought to use Vassbinder himself.”

“What?” Thom’s voice squeaked. “Say you are joking. How? How use him?”

She looked at him, held up her hands as she could show something tangible. “Skills have been filtering through. From the ghosts that possess me. His Needle Master skills, if I –”

“No! Heloise, that is so fraught with danger.” The fear in Thom’s voice was for her and the middle of this chaos, bizarrely, she smiled inside.

Samos stilled. “What are you talking about? Ghosts possess you?”

“Can you do better?” She asked Thom. “Sorry. I don’t mean to insult you.” She straightened her back. “But I think I could control him.”

“They’re here.” Samos turned to face the double doors.

Bull picked up Toad and snicked down the loader. The gheist ammunition rack glowed iridescent and turned the underside of his chin to fish tank blue swirls. With a confidence that surprised her, Thom strode over to join them. The iron doors clanged and shook from some impact on the other side.

No weapon in Samos’s hand, but then he was a weapon all by himself. He’d said he couldn’t defeat them all. She slipped the Sung steel knife from its scabbard. Never say couldn’t. Always try. She stepped forward and a bone crunched and slid beneath her shoe.

And Vassbinder
struck
.

She found herself staring at the ceiling and unable to move.

Panic overwhelmed her until she wrestled it down.

The plan, stick to it.

Faster than the others, a little surer in the way he swarmed her body with his presence, but he slithered to the same points, took control the same way. She held back her satisfaction, uneasily sure there were ways this could go wrong. She had to be alert, ready for whatever he might do.

Lull him. Yes. Lull him. Let him think he had possessed her.

And now...to rip him loose enough to free herself, yet leaving one or two minor contacts, enough to stop him dissipating.

She concentrated, feeling her way. Slow but sure. Accuracy was the key.

And he made her kneel, eyes closed. Why closed? She wondered. He made her fingers grope across the floor. She felt something hard and skinny. A bone. Open my eyes, she told herself. It was futile, for she hadn’t freed them yet.

An urgency gripped her.
Ignore what he does, free yourself!

Her hand, controlled by Vassbinder, stabbed herself. Thin, cold...it was an ice fragment that sent a burning line across her body, joining the needles. And another.

Needles. Needles! He was making her needle herself!

Another stabbed her. She jerked, whined.

Desperately she freed her eyes, popped loose his hold.
See
. Freed her mouth.
Scream.

“Help me! Thom! Stop the needles!” If anyone could understand it would be him.

Her fingers scrabbled, found another needle, raised it, then something slid across the floor and grabbed her arm. Thom.

“What’s happening? Heloise, you’re needling yourself! It’s Vassbinder, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she croaked. Inside her, Vassbinder tried to claw back control. Her sight was gone again. She had nothing now except her mouth. “Hold me.”

The inner battle wasn’t one she could win. He’d gained too much. The needles had done it. Salty tears ran into her mouth. She was crying and couldn’t tell.

“You’re so like Omi inside,” Vassbinder whispered. “Did you not realize?” He chuckled and it echoed in her thoughts. “The coward may not have come down here, but I’ve studied him from afar. I know what I can do inside his body. And yours, gorgeous lady, is the same. I’ve planned this for so, so long. Give in. Give yourself.”

As he spoke silkily, his touch ate at her last hold, cockroaches nibbling on a sleeper’s toes.

So easy it would be. A languid warmth flowed through her mind. Who hadn’t thought that life was far too difficult and yearned for release? Letting go would be easy.

“Goodbye, Thom.” But she couldn’t hear his reply. Her ears were silent to her perception.

Then something else nibbled at her. Not Vassbinder this time. Something tiny nibbled at her lips, something that asked permission. What terrible thing could this be?

It nibbled again and she kept her mouth shut, her teeth clamped. It wasn’t the physical that kept this new thing away, it was her thoughts. A
please
rolled in. Then more pleases, a plague of them. Say no and she ceased to exist. Say, yes and...what could be worse? Nothing. She opened her mouth and a giggling horde rolled and flowed down her throat to then spread like honey from her center outward.

The children.

Snarling, shocked, Vassbinder fought this new invasion. A hundred, hundred fingers poked him, prodded him gleefully, and shoved him aside. Slowly, she regained her body.