The Labyrinth of the Dead Read online

  "What else could you possibly need to do?" Portia was incredulous. "Is this not enough? Look what you have wrought!"

  Kanika laughed. "This is just the beginning."

  —12—

  CELESTINE HAD poured what remained of her essence into protecting her charges and emerged from her hiding place looking wizened and dimmed, barely clinging to life. Lahash held her by the scruff of her neck, keeping her at arm’s reach as if he found her presence distasteful. Portia could not fault him for that.

  "My lady." Portia stood and bowed to her, keeping one foot firmly planted on Kanika’s belly.

  Celestine spat. "Thrice-cursed bitch, what more would you bleed from me? How many more of us have to die because of you? You brought this upon us, you! You upset the order, you invited evil into our hiding place, you began this chain of events and now you take me away from my contemplation, my preparation to meet oblivion. And for what end? To salve your conscience?" She slapped Portia with as much might as she could muster. "I curse you and your beloved. I wish neither of you had ever been gotten on your wanton mothers!"

  "Listen to me, Lady Abbess." Portia reined in her temper sharply, trembling with the effort of not slaughtering the insolent women. "This fate has been long in coming and would have found you regardless of my presence. I may have accelerated it, but in no way did I cause it. Are you so blind not to see that you have been played the fool, madame? This plan was laid long ago by those who have little thought but for their own gain." Portia glanced toward Imogen, who still stood on the balcony, transfixed by the celestial drama playing out over their heads.

  Celestine shook her head. "No," she cried.

  Portia closed her fist around the neckline of Celestine’s diaphanous gown. "Tell me the truth, did you not know what went on beneath your own feet? What did Belial promise you that you allowed your haven, your precious, blessed sanctuary to be turned into the focus-point for her blasted contraption? You brought this upon yourself! You are the betrayer, not me. Do not lay this at my feet to save what little is left of your soul. I will not bear your guilt, Lady. I have quite enough of my own, thank you."

  "I am no traitor!"

  "Then you are a liar." Portia shook her mercilessly, pulling her free of Lahash’s grasp. "Look at my eyes—do you know what they are capable of seeing? Do you know that I can see the condemnation written on your soul as if you had shown me the receipt for thirty pieces of silver? How do we stop this? Tell me, woman! Tell me, or so help me I will rip your tongue out of your head and squeeze the words out of it with my bare hands!"

  Celestine broke down. Her knees buckled and she sank to the floor, sobbing. "There is no way. There is nothing you or anyone can do to stop this now."

  "I don’t believe you."

  She pressed her fists to her temples and tugged on the once fine braids, now disheveled. "It does not matter now. I thought to control her with her own ambitious plans. I carried on like I did not know what she was about. I sat by and waited, waited for the day she would come to fulfill what schemes she had laid."

  "And what would you have done, then?"

  Celestine shrugged. "She was supposed to come here, herself. It needed us both to work, or so she told me. I have one of the blades, the black one. It has been hidden here for years. I sought to plunge it through her lying black heart and stop all of this madness. The hell-blades are the only things that can stop her. She did not know I had one."

  Portia opened her mouth once, twice, before the words would finally came to her. "That’s all?" she sputtered. "You were just going to wait and stab her, just like that? Do you think she’d just sit still and let you plunge a hell-forged blade into her?"

  Celestine shied away from her, offering something between a shrug and a shake of the head. "I don’t know. I had other obligations, I had other souls to save. I trusted my own strength against hers. I had more to fight for."

  "Oh, I understand. You were busy. You just didn’t get around to planning anything better."

  "I saved your Imogen!"

  "Only after Belial had captured her, questioned her, blinded her, and set her free as bait to lure me to this place where she would serve as the linchpin to this ghastly plan! I’d hardly call that ‘saving.’ In fact, it sounds pretty damned convenient, to me."

  "No! No, it was not like that! Not at all."

  Kanika rolled onto her side, propping her head up on her elbow. She laughed with dark glee, and when she spoke it was with Belial’s voice. "Oh give off your sanctimonious posturing, Celestine. Our allegiance was made in days of old and fortified when the opportunity to pursue this plot presented itself. You took your share, a portion of the young and the lovely, culling only the beautiful women from the herd of souls that found themselves in our dark streets. You gave them Heaven here in this dark in-between realm. You held them no less prisoner than I did with their husbands, sons, and brothers, with their less comely sisters and daughters and lovers. No, you were not as crafty as I was with them—" her eyes flickered toward the pile of mangled reaper corpses. "—but instead, you kept them like dolls in a glass case. Or in your case, an opal tower."

  Celestine shuddered, her body bent double with tears that spread across the floor like diamonds. Portia tasted one and it rang out with power on her tongue. She glanced between the two women and a terrifying idea was born in her mind.

  "You can make this right, my lady." Portia did not like what she was about to suggest, but she could think of few other options. "You had no plan? No scheme to stop Belial should she get out of control?"

  "None."

  "But you had the power to do so if you had wanted."

  "I did, once, but not any longer. I spent it trying to preserve my darling girls from you."

  "Enough of your venom, Celestine. I am offering one chance to save them all. I have no idea if it will work, but it is better than doing nothing, which almost guarantees that they will all perish. And probably the rest of us with them."

  "What do you suggest?"

  "Give me your life."

  "What?"

  "Oh, brava, Portia! I knew you’d come around to my way of thinking," Kanika cried out, sounding like Nigel once more. "We are more alike than you care to admit, you and I."

  She ground her heel into Kanika’s belly. "Enough. I am not like you."

  "Of course not," she answered breathlessly, relaxing back to the floor with the air of a spectator at a sporting event.

  "Lady," Portia met Celestine’s gaze, "I ask you to do this willingly. You are weakening, and when your light goes out there will be no hope at all left. I ask that you pass on what you can to me, that I might put an end to this entire wretched affair. What do you say?"

  She shrugged inelegantly. "Since I am bound to die horribly either way, why not?"

  "Quite noble."

  "Do what you must. I wash my hands of all of this."

  "Lahash, hold Kanika down." Portia removed her foot and took Celestine firmly by the shoulders. "I promise not to hurt you when I do this."

  "I am far from caring about pain, now."

  Portia kissed her whiskey-colored lips, drawing in breath after breath of her essence. There was little left but it was potent.

  "Portia! What are you doing?" Imogen’s cry bounced out of her hearing and fell away. Somewhere there was a scuffle, but that, too, was lost in the sea breath and light.

  Portia consumed Celestine’s power, feeling it infuse her every cell. Her hair worked free of its braid and spread out like a silver halo around her head. Each feather sparkled with radiance as her wings unfurled into a protective mantle around them both.

  And when the well was nearly dry, she pulled away, not taking that last morsel. Celestine mewled as she fell to the floor. Her amber eyes were cloudy, distant.

  "Why? Why not take the lot?"

  Portia shook her head, sending glittering arcs out around her like ripples. "I am not her. I am not Nigel. I have no need to capture your soul, just your power. I have no interes
t is carrying you around in my pocket for the rest of eternity."

  "I will die! No, take the last! I want to live! I want to live on in you!"

  "Absolutely not."

  "Please!"

  Moved to pity, Portia took up the axe, which was blindingly bright. In a motion too quick to be seen, she severed Celestine’s head and let the last of the warm blood spill. It seeped outward, covering the crystalline floor and climbing up the walls. Just like the blood of the tower’s maidens had done, Celestine’s blood turned the tower to stone, pulling it ever closer to the living world.

  "Thank you," Kanika said. "I hadn’t the heart to off the slattern myself, but it turns out this was just what I needed."

  The stars were directly overhead, tantalizingly close with little of the barrier remaining. Kanika had her arm snugly around Imogen’s waist.

  "I was never one for redheads, really, but I think it might be fun to share, don’t you? Besides, now that she’s got your eyes, it has really improved her appearance." She kissed Imogen’s cheek, having to rise up on her toes to do so.

  Lahash lay in a spreading pool of brackish blood that began to add a wine-red cast to the walls of the tower. He growled, clutching a gushing wound at his side. Kanika twirled his dagger in her free hand.

  "Captain," Portia began.

  "Don’t spare me any damn pity, I deserve this end." He rolled onto his back and groaned. "The clever bitch. She can channel Belial to the fore. She called upon my oath and I gave over my blade to her. I gave my death to her, gift wrapped." He coughed up a mouthful of black, clotted blood. "Now, brave Portia, it is her turn. Kill her, for me, for all of Salus. Damned clever bitch."

  But Portia was already advancing on Kanika with the gleaming axe.

  "You’re a fool, Portia. A fool to turn your back on me, a fool to leave our precious prize so far out of your reach. But yet again, you have done everything I have needed you to. Misguided nobility is the most tragic kind, isn’t it?" Kanika drew the blade across Imogen’s throat, deep enough only to draw blood. She bent Imogen double, letting the blood drip like rubies. They lit up as they spread across the floor, staggeringly bright.

  "Did you think I meant to kill her?" Kanika laughed shrilly. "What fun would that be? This way, I can have my cake and eat it, too." She licked her lips lasciviously at Imogen.

  Imogen hitched up her dress and dug her fingers into the flesh of her thigh. She raised a small black stylus, like the kind used to inscribe wet clay, and thrust it into Kanika’s heart. "I unmake you."

  The tower rocked with the force of her words as purple-brown demon blood began to spout from the wound. Kanika lost her grip on Imogen and clawed at the sliver of metal.

  "What is that?" Portia’s voice echoed with light.

  Imogen looked abashed. "It was Celestine’s secret weapon. I stole it when I realized she had no intention of stopping Belial. It has cost me much to carry it." With a hand seared with rising welts, she pulled up her gown to reveal where a large portion of her thigh was necrotic and scarred. "I sealed it into my own flesh."

  "Imogen…."

  Kanika rolled and writhed, cursing loudly.

  "It won’t kill her, I don’t think. It isn’t large enough and I do not have the power I once did. But it will buy us time. Come, you must see this for yourself."

  Out on the balcony, the sky was falling.

  —13—

  THE DOME of ever-perfect blue had cracked asunder. The ground surrounding the tower was gone. The structure seemed held aloft by a single beam of light that throbbed in time to the rift engine beneath it.

  Gone was the skyline of Salus, the tall peaks of factories and mints that stamped out coin after coin of shadow-gold. The treasure itself now burned in the great boilers below, generating the energy needed to rend the planes of reality apart.

  "Celestine was right," Imogen murmured in fearful awe. "It is too late to stop this."

  At the horizon a jagged border of pipes and gear glowed red, bits of false sky clung to the edge of the shadow-world, and a line of craggy hills with city lights glowed in the distance with the burr of airships sounding overhead.

  "Do you know where we are?" Imogen rubbed the wound on her throat.

  Leaning out over the balcony, Portia squinted into the distance. "Capitola-by-the-Sea, I think. They have a harbor and an airstrip with a zeppelin hangar that services the Royal Air Force. I went with my parents once, the only time they took me out with them. There was a scene, and they never let me go with them again."

  Imogen began to say something soothing, but she was distracted by two herders scuttling from stone to stone, arms laden with bulging sacks that clanged with the sound of metal on metal. "What’s that?"

  "Reinforcements. And weapons."

  "What good will it do?"

  Portia regarded her beloved. "This is war, now. We need to alert the Primacy. We need to mobilize the full might of the Grigori. The Aldias will soon learn that their plan has come to fruition. We need to be ready for that."

  Imogen opened her mouth, but shut it again with a click. She leaned over the railing and watched more and more of the barrier between the worlds crumble away as the light around them grew stronger. "You could have left me here, you know. I don’t want the weight of this." She indicated the severed edge of Salus knitting itself into the living realm.

  "If I had known this was the price, I might have changed my mind."

  "No, you wouldn’t have. I know you too well." Imogen sighed. "Besides, Belial was in league with Nigel and the whole damned lot of them from the beginning. This would have come about, regardless. But I do wish I had never been part of it."

  "If you had never been a part of this, you would never have been a part of me, either."

  "I realize that. But how can you weigh even the truest of love against the destruction of the world and the shattering of our most solemn vows of protection?"

  Portia had no answer for her. She only turned away to find Kanika.

  Inside, the girl’s body lay sprawled on the floor, her eyelids fluttering and the grey irises darting back and forth. She had wrenched the black stiletto free, along with a glob of flesh, leaving a chunk missing from her chest like a bite taken from an apple.

  Portia could see Nigel there within her, panting with exertion. "What was that?" he growled. "Curse that damn crafty hussy!"

  "Nigel, this ends now. You are going to help me put this back to rights."

  "I’m afraid not, sister dear."

  "Then I am going to have to kill you."

  "We have already had this discussion, I think, and I don’t see what’s changed. You won’t shed innocent blood."

  "You told me she wasn’t innocent." Taking the axe in both hands, Portia stood over Kanika’s body. "I sever Kanika from Nigel, I split the two souls one from another." She brought the axe down in an arc of brilliance, slamming it down into Kanika’s narrow chest. Intense radiance blossomed beneath her blade, and Nigel screamed in his own pale voice. He shuddered and moaned, his soul lying beside a gleaming sphere.

  Portia reached out and plucked forth the tiny kernel that was Kanika, the remaining bonds easily severed. It shone in her hand just like a large pearl, gleaming with sassy charm and cheeky laughter. Portia smiled at it, feeling the familiar essence of her guide and companion in this tiny nugget of soul.

  "I keep my promises." Portia slid the girl’s essence into the velvet bag that had once kept Imogen’s pendant safe and tucked it back into the front of her corset. It felt warm between her breasts.

  With the binding soul gone, the spirit body of Kanika began to dissolve, leaving Nigel and his cadre of consumed spirits naked, with no defenses.

  Sulking, Nigel drew his aura of shades closely about him. "See what you’ve done! There was a lot of trouble gone into that, and now I have to start all over! The Aldias will not be pleased."

  "I have had quite enough of what the Aldias want, and I aim to put a stop to this whole charade!"

  The
rift engine lurched, rocking the tower, and a shrill whistle came up from the ground. It began as a sound like a tea kettle boiling and grew into a piercing noise that sent even Nigel reeling and covering his ears.

  "Portia!" Imogen’s voice was the very sound of terror, strangled and sharp.

  Portia raised the axe to finish Nigel. "Just give me a minute."

  "Portia! Portia, please!" Her voice cracked with panic, rising into a scream.

  Portia reluctantly stepped away from Nigel. "I’m coming, Imogen!" The blaring noise disoriented her, causing her steps to falter.

  Imogen clutched the glassy railing that bounded the balcony with white-knuckled intensity. The air blowing in from outside smelled strongly of the sea and of coal fumes and burnt coffee. The blaring abruptly stopped and Portia shook her head, trying to regain her equilibrium.

  "Imogen!" Portia shut her eyes tightly and took a deep breath, bringing her strength to the fore.

  "Portia…" Imogen’s voice was nearly lost amid the crashing of waves upon the rocky shore and the roar of the dozen airships circling above. "Portia, help me." Her words dissolved into nothing as Portia rushed through the open doorway.

  She raced to her beloved’s side. Out on the open balcony, the damp wind stung Portia’s face, driving the breath from her body with shock. The tower now perched on a craggy outcropping that jutted into the sea, peppered by the rolling breakers. The rocky hills marched up the shoreline and the warm glow of gaslights could be easily seen just beyond them. Yes, it was indeed Capitola-by-the-Sea. The briny gusts brought gooseflesh to Portia’s arms and whipped her fine, silver hair into wet snarls. She wrapped her wings around her shoulders for warmth and turned to include Imogen in her embrace. But she was alone.