The Collected Christopher Connery (25 page)

The mosquito living in Gail’s skull was growing more
sluggish by the second. She had managed to claw her way to the second stomach
while the bull was distracted, but when the beast had slid to a sudden stop,
she had been thrown forward, striking her head against the hard floor.

Why does its stomach have a floor?
But instead of
hurting, this question made her laugh. That was about all she had strength for
anyway. She didn’t think she could stand.

The bull was moving again, its charge even wilder than
before. It tossed its head savagely, dragging its horns against side of the
tunnel and smashing weakened bits of track beneath its heavy hooves.

The brain wasn’t far ahead. She could feel it pulsing
with red burning thoughts. If she could only reach it and put them out, then
maybe… She was halfway to her knees when she felt something snap in her chest.
Choking and coughing, she fell on to her elbows. When she lifted her head,
there was fresh blood on her sleeve.

The mosquito’s wings vibrated weakly.

Gail dragged herself forward.

Nia stretched out across the dark, shrieking abyss. The
air bit roughly at her cheeks and hair, snatching at her clothes, trying to
pull her down beneath the screaming wheels. She had managed to slow the train,
but she could feel it straining to regain speed with each car they passed
through.

I have to move quickly.

Arthur held tight to the back of her dress, which was
honestly just complicating the process, but it made him feel better, so Nia
tolerated it.

Leaning out as far as she could, she felt the fabric of
her dress stretching and straining.
Honestly, Arthur if you rip my dress…
Her
fingers found the handle of the door to the next car. It resisted for a moment,
then the door popped open. Pulling free of Arthur, Nia dragged herself across
the hazardous gap and into the relative safety of the next car. A moment later,
Arthur followed. He slammed the door behind him, wiping the sheen of sweat from
his face.

“Tell me we don’t have to do that again. Seven is
enough.”

“Unfortunately, if I’ve counted correctly, we have one
more – Gail!”

What Nia had at first taken for an abandoned trash bag at
the far end of the car began to move, one hand stretching toward the opposite
door handle before falling limply back to the floor.

The slowing spell was beginning to weaken and the train
was regaining its full speed, forcing Nia and Arthur to stagger slowly down the
aisle towards Gail. Twice, the detective tried to rise before they reached her
and twice she failed. When Nia and Arthur finally dropped to their knees beside
her, she had been completely still for nearly minute.

Arthur gently took Gail by both shoulders and turned her
over on to her back. Nia’s hands flew to her mouth too late to stifle a
dismayed cry. Gail’s eyes were open but fixed emptily at the ceiling. The gray
of her skin contrasted starkly with the bright red blood running from her eyes
and mouth.

Please don’t let me be too late, not again.
Nia
didn’t realize she was trying to brush the blood tears from Gail’s face until
Arthur gently moved her hands away. He lifted Gail’s arm and pushed back her
sleeve until he could check the pulse on the inside of her elbow. After a
moment that seemed to stretch on forever – until Nia thought she would scream
if it didn’t end – he said, “She’s alive.”

But not for long.
“We have to get the magic out of
her now or…” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the thought.

“But how do we do it?”

“It’s not so difficult, but it requires –”
Two
magicians. One to control the transfer and one to receive the magic into
themselves and filter it.
“It requires…”

A choking gasp burst from Gail’s throat and her body
convulsed. Somewhere in the back of Nia’s head, a cool and collected voice
began reciting the symptoms of excessive magical exposure in laymen.
Uncontrolled
manifestations of magic usually accompanied by pain, especially in the upper
body and head. As deterioration progresses, the victim will begin to suffer
breaks from reality, resulting in memory loss, somnamabulation, mood swings,
and nightmares. Finally, they will go into convulsions, quickly followed by
death.

Arthur gripped her arm. When she turned her head, he
looked directly into her eyes. “What do I have to do? I know the symptoms, but
not how to fix it, so tell me what to do.”

She had no choice. “I need you to be the receiver.
Someone who can process magic needs to take on the excess. I would do it
myself, but I need to be the mediator to move the magic between you and Gail. I
can’t do both. Being the receiver isn’t dangerous, but it may be…
uncomfortable.”
This is no time to soften the truth.
“Painful.”

Arthur nodded. “Let’s do it then.”

“It may also weaken your binding.”

That gave Arthur pause, his hand moving to the center of his
chest. Then his hands tightened into a fist. “If it breaks, I’ll have to get it
redone. Just make sure you tell them it wasn’t deliberate.”

“Arthur, are you sure?” Binding was a hideously painful
process. After the procedure, Arthur suffered years of terrible nightmares,
dreams that left him shaking and sick. Even today, he sometimes unconsciously
touched his chest in moments of disquiet. He had described it to her in his own
words only once:
It’s like someone ripping your rib cage open with their
bare hands, fooling around with your insides, and then closing you up with a
knitting needle and razor wire. And you have to stay awake for all of it or it
starts over again.
“Maybe we – maybe we could –”

“Just do it before I change my mind.” Arthur sat back and
closed his eyes. “Do it fast, Ni.”

“I will, I will.” Yanking a piece of chalk from her
sleeve, Nia drew one circle under Gail’s head, trying not to see how slack and
dead her face looked. Then she drew another circle around Arthur before
finishing with a third in the space between them.

“Just relax and let the magic pass through you,” she told
Arthur before beginning. “It will be uncomfortable to have so much magic moving
into you, but if you relax, it will be easier. Think of it like someone pushing
you on to a fluffy mattress. It’s easier to fall then push back.”

One of Arthur’s eyes cracked open to look at her. “Was
that supposed to be as dirty as it sounded?”

“Oh, Arthur.”

“No, then.” Arthur closed his eyes again, smile fading as
he braced his hands on his knees. “All right, Nia, go on.”

He’s right, we have no more time to waste.
She
held Gail’s head gently between her hands as she triggered the magic. When
Nia’s fingers brushed against the clammy skin at Gail’s temples, the
detective’s lips moved slightly murmuring broken phrases about a bull and a
brain and a metal house filling with rain. None of it made any sense, but it
filled Nia with icy dread even so.

If the magic becomes too deeply imbedded in the brain,
extraction, and therefore recovery, may prove impossible.

But there was no time for worry; now was the time for
work. With a swipe of her finger, she broke a small hole in the border of the
circle under Gail’s head. Then she did the same to the circle around Arthur,
taking care to keep the gaps as close to parallel as she could. Finally, she
knelt beside the center circle. This was the most difficult part. The first two
circles could actually handle the transfer themselves, but with no mediator,
the magic would be ripped from Gail’s mind with such violence that it would
leave her permanently brain-damaged if not dead. And though Arthur was a
magician, such a sudden influx of magic could seriously injure him as well and
would certainly shatter his binding.

No, Nia would have to carefully regulate the speed of the
transfer. She could not allow Gail’s mind to suffer more than it already had
and she could not allow Arthur’s binding to break. While he wouldn’t be blamed
for the breakage under these circumstances, it would still have to be redone
and Nia had no intention of making him go through that horror again.  

When she triggered the mediating circle, she immediately
felt the air around her come alive with magic. It was an unsettling sensation
that reminded Nia too much of the brief bursts of energy she sometimes felt
when she woke too suddenly from a bad dream – instinctive, impulsive magic,
unbound and uncontrolled – but intellectually, she knew it was different. This
magic might have been felt free, but in actuality, it was trapped within the
circuit of circles. Nia just had to make certain it followed the correct path.

So she closed her ears to the tight, pained breaths
coming from Arthur and the ominous silence from Gail and focused on feeding the
magic through the circuit. It seemed to take an age, a slow and painful age,
but finally the magic trickling from Gail slowed until there was nothing left
to remove. There would be a little residue left behind, of course, there was no
avoiding that, but the magical content of Gail’s body was now well within
healthy parameters. Many laymen possessed latent magic in amounts too small to
be utilized. Gail had simply joined their ranks.

When she was sure there was no more magic coming from the
detective, she interrupted the circuit by breaking the center circle at several
points and scribbling over the center. As soon as that was done, Arthur slumped
to his side, clutching his chest.

“Arthur? Arthur, are you all right?” Nia pulled his hands
away and replaced them with her own.

“Did it break?” he asked through heaving breaths. At this
distance it was painfully easy to see the fear in his eyes.

“No.” Nia’s heart swelled with relief. “No. It weakened
it a little, but it didn’t break.”

“Will they have to –”

“No. Weakened is not the same as broken. Your magic is
still bound. I see no reason to perform an unnecessary procedure.” Nia didn’t
know if the Directors would feel the same, but it didn’t matter. Arthur had
never been a flight risk. The Directors had no reason to test his binding and
only by deliberate test would they be able to tell that there had been any
change.

“Are you in pain?” she asked him.

He shook his head, though the way he was clutching at his
heart suggested otherwise. “No, I’m all right. I just need to rest for a
minute. Thank – thank you, Nia.” When Nia saw relieved tears sliding down his
cheeks, she wrapped her arms around him and rested her head against his, hating
how grateful he was that she hadn’t hurt him.

He let her hold him for a moment then laughed a little
and shrugged her off. “Check on Detective Lin.”

Gail.
Nia crawled to where Gail lay against the
door. The detective still hadn’t moved, but her chest rose and fell regularly
and when Nia touched her cheek, she found it warm.

Those were both good signs, but the true test would come
after she regained consciousness.

“Detective,” she whispered. “Detective, are you –” The
train lurched around another bend and Nia fell on Gail’s outstretched arm.

“Ow!” Gail tried to jerk up, but the combination of her
own weakness and Nia’s weight knocked her back to the floor. “Geeze, what the
hell?”

Nia struggled to her knees again and peered into Gail’s
face. “Detective? Are you all right? Do you know where you are and why you’re
here?”

“Yeah,” said Gail slowly. “I mean, I think so. We’re in
the subway tunnels to get Connery because for some reason you still think
that’s a good idea and now I’m – I’m on a train.” She trailed off as her eyes
moved slowly from the ceiling to the seats beside her. “Okay, I admit that has
me a little stumped.” She reached up and rubbed her head. “There was a – a cow
or something. I was trying to find its brain because it was going to do –
something.” She smiled a little wryly at Nia. “I take it I was pretty far gone,
huh?”

“Actually, I believe you were on the right track – no pun
intended – though the magic caught up with you. Arthur and I managed to remove
it, though. You should be fine now.” Nia managed to keep her voice steady
despite the memory of blood running down Gail’s face. Speaking of which… She
pulled a handkerchief from her handbag and tried to clean the worst of the
blood from Gail’s cheeks and chin.

Gail laughed and took the handkerchief herself. “I’ll do
it.” She pushed herself up until she was leaning against the row of seats and
scrubbed her face hard with the thin cloth. Then she looked over at Arthur who
was lying on his back with his hands folded over his stomach.

“You okay, doc? You look almost as bad as me.”

“The difference between me and you is that I can see
you,” Arthur replied, “so no, I don’t.”

Laughing, Gail wiped the handkerchief a little harder
across her face. “Asshole.”

“But are you sure you’re all right?” Nia asked fretfully,
watching Gail closely for any sign of permanent damage. “You looked – not well.
I was worried.”

Under the circumstances, Gail’s normally charming
sardonic smile was a bit infuriating. “You were?”

Nia huffed out her annoyance. “Yes, of course, I was. We
didn’t –we didn’t know and – I feared that –” It seemed the harder Nia tried to
untangle her tongue, the more knotted it became. “I wasn’t certain we would…”

“How long am I going to have to lie over here?” Arthur
called. “I wouldn’t complain except the floor is really filthy and I don’t have
any bandages to count.”

“What are you on about, doc?”

“I’m just saying that –”

“Oh, Arthur, will you –” Nia’s interruption was
interrupted when the train rocked so violently that for a moment, she was
certain it would tip on to its side and kill them all. She grabbed hold of a
handrail while Gail and Arthur both scrambled to keep from sliding across the
floor. When the shaking finally stopped, they were all clumped together in the
center of the aisle.

“So,” Gail said after a moment. “I take it that Connery
is a little upset that we’ve made it this far.”

“Yes, so we had better hurry and finish what we started.”
Nia got to her feet, but when Arthur and Gail tried to follow suit they swayed
and sank back to the floor.

“Damn.” Gail rubbed her trembling legs. “I feel like a
baby learning to walk.”

“Apt metaphor,” said Arthur, leaning back against the
seats and rubbing his chest.

Nia considered pointing out that it had more specifically
been a simile, but she decided that the type of the comparison was irrelevant
when the
meaning
was that neither Arthur nor Gail would be able to
accompany her to the first car.

She would be on her own.

Before the fear could take root, she gathered her things,
explaining what she intended to do. “And please don’t argue,” she added as
Gail’s mouth opened. “You’re both clearly exhausted and won’t be able to cross
to the next car in your current state, not even after I apply another slowing
spell.”