No Hero (28 page)

“No!” Ephemera shrieks.

Ophelia releases a high-pitched scream.

And I turn, but I don’t stop, because I don’t understand, and I don’t remember Shaw’s warning, and my fingers touch the water.

The pool turns black. A great flood of ink. Every animal in it releasing in one massive expulsion. My finger drips ink. And then I remember Shaw’s words. I remember her using the word
“psychotropic”
as a strange tingling sensation creeps up my arm. And the tingling is burning, is crushing, each sensation coming faster up my arm, battering against my skull, thundering over my chest, making my legs kick and spasm. I flinch backwards, wrenching my stained fingers away far, far too late, because already I am—

Ouch.

I’m not totally sure why I always end up in this alley face down... I need to work out a better way of getting here. Talk to a travel agent or something.

I push myself up and over, the smell of wet concrete still in my nose. And I realize—this is a new alleyway. I can hear the sound of traffic at its end, oddly muted, but undeniably present. The sky has clouds. The trash smells a little worse.

But the princess is there still. Still in the same dress. I watch her hands. I don’t want my arm to go all silly putty on me again.

“You’re—” I start. Her brow creases, her finger goes to her lips.

“You’re one of the Dreamers,” I whisper, my voice barely audible over the sound of my own breathing.

She nods as I push myself up to stand.

“You’re here,” I whispered. “On Earth.”

“We always were,” she says. “Only a part few see.” There is something lyrical and sing-song to her voice.

“But now we can all see you,” I whisper.

She turns from me, takes a step away, then she looks over her shoulder. A white finger beckons me on.

Our destination isn’t far. Just a fire escape door without a handle on our side halfway down the alley. It opens without her even touching it. A minor trick for her, I suppose.

The corridor beyond the door is dark and musty. There is a paint-spattered ladder leaning against one wall. On it is balanced a branching candlestick. Five candles drip wax down its bronze surface. The princess picks the candlestick up and, in its pool of light, makes her way down the corridor. Old newspapers and candy wrappers rustle as her dress sweeps over them.

She opens another nondescript door and we step into a dusty, shabby room.

Except the door opens onto more than that one room. There’s another one as well. I blink at the hallucination, but it won’t clear. There are two rooms here, layered one over the other. Like a picture developed from a double negative. In one version of reality this room is just a large storage room for something like a theater. Large flats lean against one wall. There are power tools and paint cans in odd piles. A rack of dresses. A make-up table with a broken mirror.

Then over or beneath or beyond this there is a second room. It has higher ceilings, and walls with plaster wainscoting that curls in great golden twists over blood-red paint, with massive oil canvases hanging heavily, glimmering slightly in the glow of massive chandeliers pregnant with glass and light.

The Dreamers swirl about in both rooms, avoiding piles of old magazines and picking at hors d’oeuvres scattered on gleaming mahogany cocktail tables.

Not all of the room’s occupants are as ethereal as my guide. Not all are beautiful even. One has heavy jowls that wobble as he sprays crumbs over a crumpled silver waistcoat. Another woman has a face that appears to have been badly burned, white ragged flesh sagging around her eyes and mouth, lending a permanently melancholy expression. A third seems to have virtually no muscle or fat to his face, the skin stretched tight over the skull, eyes large and red-rimmed, teeth pressing clearly against the paper-thin lips. His massive eyes follow me as I step across the room and I can feel mine watering at the sight. I start sympathy blinking.

I stop in the middle of the room looking around, turning slowly on the spot, trying to take it all in—the squalor and the glamour. My princess moves away from me back into the crowd that mills around me. Only the skull-faced man keeps staring, working his jaw, the skin stretching out, cheeks almost purple with each of his movements.

“Why are you here?” I say. My voice is less than a whisper.

Instantly, movement in the room stops. The Dreamers stand icily still. The princess raises a finger to her lips.

“Why are you all here? Why am I here?” I’m so quiet even I can’t hear the words. The Dreamers all stare at me.

“Tell me something,” I breathe. “Give me some clue. A break. Something. Someone.”

They turn to each other. I hear the quietest of susurrations, a hint of a breeze almost as they talk.

“Come on,” I plead. “Please. Come on.”

The skull-faced one stalks forward suddenly. All eyes follow him as he crosses to stand in front of me. He stops a pace away. Sweeps an arm at one wall. Like the ringmaster at a nightmare circus. Gives me the shivers.

The wall shimmers, like a sheet of silk suddenly exposed then pulled away. I stare into a room beyond, dusty and dirty. Cobwebs seem to fill the space, to blur its edges, packed almost as tight as cotton balls. At the center, hemmed in on all sides, sit two girls. It takes me a moment to recognize them. I am not used to seeing them with their hair bushy and pinned in place, with their dresses plump and carefully arranged.

The Twins sit in the filthy room, slowly laying down tarot cards.

“Keep them safe,” the skull-faced Dreamer speaks. “Keep them safe.”

“But that’s...” I press my hands to my temple. Because I’m back at the beginning. I’m here over and over and over... And I think the Dreamers are trying to be helpful. But, God, they’re bad at it.

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. What I’ve been trying to do.” I try to keep my voice low, patient, but I must have gone up a decibel or two because everyone is back to frowning at me.

“Sorry,” I breathe. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to need a little more help than that.”

“Important,” says skull-face, again indicating the girls. “Save them.”

“I know,” I say. “I really, genuinely know. But if you just give me a few pointers—”

Again the glowers. A few fingers to lips.

“Keep them safe.” Again.

“I know!” I can’t help it. I’m a patient soul, but this is just... I shout at them. I’m not stupid enough to grab the guy by the lapels and shake him, but I do shout in his face.

And the world rips and tears, holes burn through reality and through me and then—

—I am lying on my back by the side of the pool, the back of my head throbbing where I was thrown backwards.

I groan as I open my eyes. The groan gurgles and dies. I look up into the silver tip of Kayla’s sword.

“What the feck are you doing here?”

“You,” I say. Because suddenly it’s starting to make sense.

“I asked you a feckin’ question!” Her eyes are furious dots in a contorted face. Somewhere in the background I can hear a girl crying. The sword floats an inch above my nose.

But all I can think about is the skull-faced man, about his command. Now. I think he meant now. Here. Now. In this moment.

“Of course you can’t save her,” I say slowly, ignoring her talking, ignoring the blade. I’m too busy figuring things out. “You kill her.”

“What?” Kayla actually flinches at the words. “I... what? What the feck are you talking about?” There is a look of utter panic on her face. And this must be it. I have her. I’ve got her. I go to push myself up but the sword comes back. It is quivering now, though.

“You’re one of them. You betray us, and you kill her. Her but not Ephemera. You can’t kill Ephie. Something stops you and you’re trying to figure out what.” That must be it.

But that’s not it. No. Because the sword stiffens, straightens. “I am going to cut out your feckin’ gizzard, you little lying sack of shit,” she says, and her voice is abruptly calm. “You don’t ever talk about me and my girls. You don’t have the feckin’ right.”

Her sword arm comes back. I am acutely aware that the girls are watching this. They shouldn’t see this. What a stupid thought to end your life on.

There is a cough behind us.

“Sorry,” says Clyde.

Kayla glares around behind her. Her sword doesn’t move.

“Terrible timing,” Clyde says. “Or, you know, alternatively, quite good. Depends on your point of view, I imagine.”

“S... S...” I pull in a breath to get myself under control. “Something like that.”

“What do you want?” Kayla hisses. The girls, I see, have let go of the edge of the pool, are floating lazily away. The excitement is apparently over. Which is good news.

“Well,” Clyde swallows audibly. “It’s just... Shaw sent me down here. She was asking... wants the whole team to assemble. All constituent parts attached. Well... she didn’t specify that. Sort of assuming.” He laughs high and nervous, not taking the Twins’ lead.

“Why?” Kayla asks.

“Well, you know,” Clyde blusters, “she seems like she’s quite fond of us as we are. You know, whole, and hale, and hearty, and—”

“Why does she want us to meet?”

“Oh!” Clyde swallows again. “My prototype. The one to throw the Progeny out of people’s heads. Think we’ve got something workable up and running. Want to... try it out and stuff.”

“That was fast,” I say, doing my best to keep my voice casual, trying to ignore the sword still hovering above my head.

“It was Tabby mostly,” Clyde says. Even though the bulk of Kayla’s admittedly petite frame blocks my vision of him, I can still hear the smile in his voice. Maybe Kayla and I are the yang to their ying. The better they get along the closer Kayla comes to using me as an anatomy lesson for the Twins.

“So,” I say, playing it far cooler than I am, “better be getting along then.”

“Yes,” Clyde says. “Probably should. You know how Shaw’s a stickler for timing.”

Still Kayla doesn’t move. Not for a moment. Then with a grimace of something very close to hatred she stands. It takes me a moment to follow suit. My hands are shaking badly. My breath is shaky. But I manage it, because in the back of my head a small victorious voice is shouting at Kayla—now you get yours. Now you get yours.

No one will meet my eye.

They won’t meet each other’s either. We stand in a circle and it strikes me that we look like the shiftiest prayer group to ever meet. The thought almost makes me laugh, which would be terrible timing.

We’re gathered around a small black disk that looks like it’s mostly held together with duct tape. A flat red button protrudes from the center like some day-glow mushroom.

“It causes interdimensional friction,” Clyde tells us. “Anything that exists on more than one reality, a Progeny for example, should be pretty much fried. While onereality folks like you and me should get a free ride.”

“You
have
tested this, right?” I’m not overly keen on the word “should.”

“Didn’t kill any guinea pigs,” Tabby says.

“Or rats. Or my cats,” Clyde adds. “Good thing about the cats really. Penicillin kills cats actually. Or possibly guinea pigs. One of the two. Anyway, would have been a disaster if that, whichever one it actually was... is... had been the first test subject. Would never have made it to human tests. Robbed humanity of a great asset.”

“Your point, Clyde?” Shaw asks.

“Oh. Yes,” Clyde flusters. “A point. Well, just, I suppose, you can’t always be a hundred percent certain from animal tests. That’s all.”

He shrugs.

“Not completely reassuring, Clyde,” Shaw says.

His head retreats between his shoulders.

But that’s not it. That’s not why we can’t look at each other. Otherwise, when Tabby says, “We’ve checked it best we can. No theoretical way for it to harm people. That we can find,” then Clyde would smile, or look at her. But he doesn’t. None of us smile.

Because we’re all wondering which one of us it is. It doesn’t matter how many alternatives Shaw throws out, we’re all quietly certain that the traitor is in this room. But if we talk we might give our suspicions away, and nobody wants to be wrong.

I don’t think any of us wants to be right, either.

Which, in the end, is why we have to do this, no matter how unsafe it may be. We have to get some trust back. We’re never going to be a team until we do this.

“OK then,” I say, “let’s do this.”

Clyde hesitates.

“Do it,” Shaw says.

He hesitates.

“Now,” Kayla says.

“Just do it, Clyde,” says Tabitha.

Clyde’s hand comes down.

I’m on the floor. I don’t know how I got on the floor. I feel broken.

Slowly I find my hands, my feet. They seem further away than usual. Getting on all fours is hard. Getting on my feet is harder. My head throbs. My stomach rolls. The world lurches left then right. I don’t think all the signals are getting through. It feels like working a marionette. Apparently I am no good at working marionettes.

Next time someone tells me there’s no theoretical way something can hurt me, I’m going to pop a couple of ibuprofen just in case.

Everyone else is lying where they stood. Tabitha sprawled out like some recently crashed bird—dress and hair spread out like broken wings. Kayla is sprawled backward, fringe thrown out of her eyes for once, revealing surprisingly long, soft lashes. Shaw is curled up on herself, as if knocked back into infancy. And Clyde...

Wait...

Clyde...

Where the hell is Clyde?

A wave of bile rolls through my stomach. A sickness greater than the one the little black disk brought on. And oh shit. Oh no.

I scan the room a final time. Clyde has to be here. He must be here.

But he’s not.

The Twins.

I look at Kayla. Right now she couldn’t stop a kid from crossing the street, let alone a Progeny-infected magician. And I don’t have the time to wake her up.

I have to get to the Twins.

I stagger forward. My vision blurs. For a moment all I can see is blood. Blood in the water.