TWENTY-ONE

“Well, ain’t that a kick in the pants,” Charlie mutters. “You wanna back that up and try again, or should I just let you slap on the cuffs?”

I hold up what I found in Charlie’s garage. “See this? The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I was giving Charlie a hard time about reading it at the bar.”

“Yeah, that really clears things up,” Charlie says. “I knew a guy once who went on a killing spree after an all-night binge of The Wind in the Willows.”

“This isn’t just a book, Charlie.” I toss it on the coffee table. “It’s an illustrated version, what’s called a graphic novel. In other words, a comic book.”

Comic books. Harmless hobby of kids and middle-aged geeks, right? On the world of my birth, sure … but not on the version of Earth I call Thropirelem. There, shamans use comics’ combination of words, images, and imagination to turn them into powerful mystic totems, so dangerous that they’ve been outlawed since the nineteen-fifties.

Doctor Pete leans down and picks it up. Studies the cover, but doesn’t open it. “Yes. I can feel the mystic potential being routed through it. Is this what Longinus was killed for?”

“I think so—but that was only part of it. See, everything in this town was carefully manipulated to make my life a living hell … but you can’t really suffer pain unless you have a little pleasure first. In the end, it gives you even more to lose. That’s why Charlie Allen—the Charlie of this reality—really was my friend. He was someone I could trust, someone who really and truly was on my side. That way, whatever horrible thing Longinus had planned for him was guaranteed to cause the maximum amount of anguish.”

Stoker nods, his gaze on Charlie. “So he recreated Charlie as closely as he could, right down to his loyalty. Big mistake.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I should have suspected something when Charlie offered to help me get rid of the body so quickly. He had no idea I’d be the one to discover the corpse—and once I did, he figured the best solution to keep me from being locked up was to sanitize the crime scene.”

Charlie looks thoughtful. “So this version of me figures out that Longinus is behind you having such a craptastic life. He goes to Longinus’s house, confronts him, maybe catches him in the middle of some kind of ritual. He kills Longinus and steals the mystic artifact he was using, then stashes it while he tries to figure out what to do next, not wanting any of the other cult members to get their hands on it.”

“Yeah. He leaves in a big hurry, then can’t go back for fear of being discovered. Until I force his hand.”

Doctor Pete is turning the graphic novel over in his hands, studying the back as well as the front. “So this is, what—the mystic center of all the spells woven through this place?”

I nod. “Has to be. Think about it: a girl, ripped out of her own world and thrown into another. When I first got my memory back, I compared my situation to Alice’s in Through the Looking-Glass, but this place is a lot more like a warped version of Oz: I was taken from a supernatural world into a small town in Kansas. There’s a storm that prevents me from going anywhere. The beasts are anything but cowardly, the tin man’s heart is too large for his own good, and the guy with the big brain is an albino afraid of burning in the sun. I’ve even got a faithful dog, for Christ’s sake.”

“And at the middle of it all,” Doctor Pete murmurs, “A genuine wizard who specializes in illusions. Yes, that’s exactly the kind of resonant structure that would work with this kind of sorcery. Preestablished patterns waiting to be mystically energized…”

“Right down to the Yellow Brick Road,” I say. “Once again, its purpose is inverted: it leads out, not in. The highway.”

“And the Gallowsman?” Stoker asks. “Who does he represent?”

“He’s the Wicked Witch,” I say. “No flying monkeys, just a hangman’s rope. Makes a backward kind of sense, I guess; you find both in trees, but one defies gravity while the other uses it to kill.”

“Classic black magic,” Doctor Pete says. “Turn a cross upside down, perform a holy ritual in reverse. Turn a work of joy and wonder into one of despair and terror.” He taps the cover lightly with one finger. “But poor Charlie Allen had no idea what to do with this. It would take someone trained in shamanism to properly utilize it, especially now that the one who cast the initial spells is dead.”

“Somebody like Stoker?” I ask.

Doctor Pete hesitates. I know what he’s thinking: Oh, sure, as long as you’re fine with placing the mystic equivalent of an atomic bomb in the hands of a professional terrorist. Okay, Doctor Pete wouldn’t make the bomb reference—they don’t use them where he’s from—but otherwise that’s got to be what’s bothering him—

“I don’t think so,” Doctor Pete says carefully, then says something else. It’s a short phrase, not in English, and sounds less like language than a series of growls and whines.

The book becomes more. That’s the only way to put it. The colors on the cover get brighter, the lines crisper—not just the lines of the illustration, but the lines of the book itself, its outline in space and maybe time. It’s more booklike than it was before, making it both more real and more unnatural simultaneously. It’s almost like a hyperrealistic, three-dimensional drawing of itself.

“Doc?” I ask. “What’s happening?”

“For everyone’s safety, please don’t come any closer,” Doctor Pete says. “It’s not unusual for an artifact like this to be mystically encrypted or booby-trapped. I’m doing my best to interrogate it without setting anything off.…” He mutters a few more animalistic words, and it feels like the air in the room gets thicker.

“Uh-oh,” says Charlie.

“That wasn’t an exploratory incantation,” Stoker says.

“No,” agrees Doctor Pete. “That was to ensure nobody does anything rash, like try to grab me. Though only you, Mr. Stoker, would have the acumen to understand exactly what I’m holding and just how useful it’s going to be.”

“You want to explain that, Doc?” Charlie says.

“Of course, Charlie. This book is a focus for more than illusion and memory spells; it can concentrate and magnify a variety of occult forces, much like the Gallowsman does. But what he does with misfortune and despair, the book does with more potent supernatural energies: the pure essence of a lycanthrope or a hemovore, for instance. It can channel that energy, pump it up, and return it a hundredfold—turning an ordinary pire or thrope into something much more. It’s why the supernaturals here seem less human and more predatory.”

“Good thing we’re all human, then,” I say.

Doctor Pete chuckles.

When I hear that sound, I don’t need to hear any more. I know who I’m talking to now.

“Not exactly true,” Tair says. “I—this body, I mean—has been bitten by a thrope. Tiny little bits of werewolfy virus are coursing through my bloodstream, just waiting for the first full moon to explode into furious activity.”

“Was it you all along?” I ask. “Or did you just hitch a ride and lurk in the background until you saw an opportunity?”

“A little of one and some of the other, actually. You brought both of us across—the Doc and I each have that particular memory you accessed—but I’ve managed to impose a state where we’re both present at the same time, though not in equal amounts. Basically, one can passively watch and the other can act. I’ve resisted acting until now—you’re too smart to fool for long—but this is too good to pass up. And don’t think the Doc is coming back, either; I just used the book to give him a little shove through the extradimensional door. He’s back in his own body, back in his own reality, back in his own prison cell. And me—I’m here.”

“For now,” I say. “Until we eliminate the alpha wolf. Then you and everyone else she’s infected go back to normal.”

Tair shakes his head. “Oh, I’m aware of the situation. But let’s reason this out, shall we? To dewolf everyone, you have to kill the African Queen. Can you do that? Ruthlessly execute a former ally, someone you’ve fought alongside? Yes, she’s currently locked in the trunk of her own car, but this is more about willpower than opportunity.”

I don’t answer that, so he keeps on talking. “And anyway, there’s very little point in returning the status to quo. Most of the wolf-bitten are probably already dead, or will be soon. No, I doubt very much that you’d execute Ms. Shaka just to cure me of lycanthropy.”

“You’ve got it the wrong way around,” I say. “Now that Doctor Pete’s not a factor, the only one I need to execute is you.”

He smiles, but I can see in his eyes that he realizes he’s made a tactical error. I smile back. “Anyway,” I say, “I doubt if I have much to worry about from you, anyway. You’re not even a lycanthrope anymore, just a guy who got a hickey from the real thing—and this is all going to be over long before the next full moon.”

“You’re right about that,” he admits. “The last thing, I mean. But obviously you haven’t been paying close enough attention; see, I’m holding the mystical equivalent of a full moon right here in my hands.…”

He says something else in that guttural language, and this time I can identify at least one word: Luna.

And then he begins to change.

I’ve seen thropes transform before, too many times to count. But this is different; this is the very first time the body Tair’s stolen has been through this, and it’s not ready—it’s being forced to change, the flame of lycanthropy inside him getting sprayed by arcane gasoline. Fur erupts from Tair’s skin, bones loudly crack into new configurations, fangs and claws snap out like spring-loaded knives. It must hurt like hell, but his mouth and throat are transforming so fast he can’t even howl.

Or talk.

The thickness in the air that’s preventing us from moving evaporates. I’d like to say that I’m the first one to react, but that distinction goes to Stoker. He lunges up from the couch, driving his shoulder into Tair’s gut and knocking him backward. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz drops to the ground.

“Get the book!” Stoker yells.

I scoop it up. It doesn’t do me any good, though; my knowledge of shamanism is strictly informal and secondhand. The only people in the room with any training are currently locked in hand-to-hand combat.

And what a fight it is.

Stoker shouldn’t stand a chance. He’s big and muscular and experienced, but Tair’s a supernatural being. In their own world, Tair would disembowel him and throttle him with his own intestines.

But that’s not where we are. And Stoker seems to be adapting a lot quicker than Tair.

Stoker’s strategy is simple and brutal: cause so much damage that all Tair’s resources will go into fixing it, while inflicting massive amounts of pain to keep him off-balance and confused. Tair’s already in agony; Stoker intends to keep him there while turning up the volume.

It’s ugly and vicious and cruel—but from a purely technical point of view, it’s a thing of beauty. An elbow strike to the muzzle that breaks Tair’s jaw and sends newly minted fangs flying, followed by a knee to the ribs and an elbow to the temple and a punch to the snout, blow after blow after blow. Stoker’s not holding back, putting everything he has into offense and nothing into defense; he’s got bloody knuckles from hitting Tair in the mouth and at least one set of clawmarks on his chest. He ignores them and what they mean; this isn’t his body he’s fighting with, after all.

I think it’s the first time Stoker’s ever been able to really cut loose. An ordinary human taking this sort of beating would have been unconscious or dead in the first few seconds; a pire would have been annoyed, but unhurt. But right here, right now, Stoker can unleash all the rage and hatred that’s been burning inside him his whole life and not care about the consequences.

Some people think werewolves are invulnerable to being hurt by anything other than silver, but that’s not how it works. They can be hurt by anything, they just heal really fast—and Tair is healing even faster than that.

Stoker uses it against him.

He hammers at Tair’s upper arm until it breaks. Then he bends it in a direction it was never meant to go—and holds it there until it heals.

That only takes a second or two, but it’s long enough for Tair to regain a little composure and launch a less frenzied counterattack. He’s down on the floor by now, and he slashes at the back of Stoker’s ankle, trying to hamstring him. Tair’s claws rip through Stoker’s boots with ease, but the heavy leather provides enough protection that Stoker escapes being crippled.

Stoker releases Tair’s arm and jumps back, out of range. He’s lost the momentum of his attack, but managed to take one of his opponent’s weapons out of commission; Tair’s arm is a weird L-shape now, almost impossible for him to use effectively.

“My turn,” Charlie says.

He opens up with the shotgun. The blast catches Tair in the eyes.

While the thrope can shrug off the damage caused by the bits of wood in our improvised ammo, the silver shavings are another matter. They blind him, and not in a temporary way.

I pull one of my scythes from my belt and snap it open. Tair snarls, recognizing the sound. I know him well enough to predict what he’ll do next: try to run. Hide somewhere, fix his arm, regroup. He’s smart that way.

Not this time.

“Sorry, Tair,” I say. I’m between him and the nearest window or door. “End of the line. You gambled, you lost.”

He understands. He crouches there, his right arm at that disturbing angle, and tries to shift back to human form. It almost works: his fur shortens, his frame shifts, his claws retract. But only for a moment; having let the wild genie out of its bottle, he discovers he can’t just stuff it back inside. His fur and claws lengthen, and his muzzle returns—though his eyes don’t. He growls in frustration, shaking his head like a dog with a flea in its ear. A gigantic, rabid dog on the verge of losing control …

Stoker plucks the other scythe from my belt and snaps it open with a single flick, almost as easily as I would.

“No!” I shout, and then Tair leaps for my throat.

Stoker and I strike at the same time. I duck, swinging up as Tair passes over me and slicing open his belly. It’s a nasty wound, especially with a silvered blade, but I’ve seen Tair survive worse. It’s designed to hurt him badly enough to end the fight and force him to listen to reason.

Stoker isn’t interested in a conversation.

He shows this by aiming for Tair’s neck. It’s an easy hit; Tair’s blind, in midair, and Stoker has plenty of time.

But it’s still a shock when Tair’s head thumps onto the floor next to me. I hear the body slam into the front door.

He transforms back into human form; that’s what thropes do when they die. His skull and face reshape themselves, until I’m looking at Doctor Pete’s familiar features instead of the head of a monster. His eyes are still ruined.

I stare down at him. Tair was an egotistical, arrogant bastard, one who screwed me over more than once, but he had style and his own peculiar brand of honor. Ultimately, he was a collection of bad choices, rage, and self-interest … and that’s why I felt sorry for him. We’re all one ill-considered decision away from a different life, but we never get to see what that life might entail. Tair did. I couldn’t even blame him for those bad choices, because he didn’t really make them—they were created by sorcery, an artificial history as fake as anything Ahaseurus imposed on the citizenry of this town.

“You didn’t have to kill him,” I say, glaring at Stoker.

“Yes, I did. He wasn’t trying to escape, Jace; he was in a killing rage. The lycanthropic essence he’d charged himself up with was overpowering his mind. He wouldn’t have stopped until all of us were dead or he was. I made the only choice.”

I wish I could argue with him, but I suddenly just don’t have the energy. I should be happy—Doctor Pete is finally free of Tair, and once that’s been verified by the prison shamans I have no doubt he’ll be freed.

But it doesn’t feel like a victory.

*   *   *

It’s much darker outside than it should be at this time of day. It’s the storm, filling the sky overhead and looking less and less natural every minute. Crimson lightning dances through the black and gray clouds, which are churning and boiling more like smoke from a volcano than anything generated by the atmosphere; it wouldn’t surprise me if they began to belch poisonous toads on our heads.

Stoker’s been studying both the spell book and the graphic novel for the last half hour. I’m so burnt out from near-constant betrayal that I don’t even care if he decides to Benedict Arnold me; I’ll just let Charlie shoot him and soldier on. When the only person you can trust turns out to be the perp you were chasing all along, you kind of have to give up and go with the flow.

We moved Tair’s body out to the garage. His head, too.

“I think I know a way out of this,” Stoker says at last.

I’m curled up on the sofa, working on my third cup of coffee. Charlie’s staring out the window with the shotgun in his hands.

“Go ahead,” I say.

Stoker taps the spell book with one finger. “I recognize some of these. Gateway spells. There has to be a door into and out of this place, and this is the key that unlocks them.”

“So where’s the door?” Charlie asks.

“It’s not a door, it’s a road,” I answer. “The highway work site, the one guarded by the road crew. That’s where it has to be.”

“So let’s go.” Stoker gets to his feet.

“Not yet,” I say. “We’ve got unfinished business.”

“Cassius.”

“Yes.”

“Planning on capturing him the way you did the alpha wolf? That’s not going to work.”

“I know. I’m hoping I can talk to him.”

Stoker shakes his head. “That’s exactly what Ahaseurus would want you to do. He’s already scripted the inevitable confrontation between you two, and all possible endings are bad ones: He betrays you. He doesn’t betray you but dies in your arms. You kill him. He turns you. He turns you and then you kill him. You kill him because you think he’s going to betray you, and then you discover his innocence. You know this—you’ve run all these possibilities already. What possible outcome could you even hope for?”

“The one where he doesn’t father a race of evil vampires that turn this planet into their own private blood reserve. You know, the kind of horrific nightmare you’ve spent your entire existence fighting.”

He meets my angry gaze calmly. “Good. I know what the stakes are; I just wanted to make sure you do, too. Because I know how clever Cassius is. If we don’t take him down fast and hard, he’ll game us. You know he will. And there’s nobody better.”

“I’m aware of that.” I keep my voice cold, my body language tense. Considering the situation, it isn’t difficult. “But he’s working at a disadvantage. He doesn’t have access to his usual intelligence network. This isn’t his world. Ahaseurus will have altered his mind, just like the others—but this is Cassius we’re talking about, a pire thousands of years old. He’s developed techniques to store and retrieve his own memories that make him much more aware of his own mental processes. The psychic blocks Ahaseurus will have been forced to use will be equally powerful, which puts Cassius at a further disadvantage. If we were going up against him at his full strength, we’d already be dead—but he’s being forced to play this damn game too, which handicaps him. And that’s the only thing that gives us a fighting chance.”

“She’s right,” Charlie says. “You know what our best weapon against Cassius is? Himself. We gotta break whatever chains Ahaseurus wrapped around his brain. He must be fighting to get loose already. With the local magic starting to fray at the edges, maybe we can finish the job.”

“Too risky,” Stoker says. “He could mislead us. We can’t gamble with the future of every human being on the planet—”

“I’ll do what I have to,” I say.

“And so will I,” says Cassius.

He’s standing in the hall that leads to the garage. He must have come in through the side door.

And he’s holding a really big gun in one hand.

*   *   *

“Charlie?” Cassius says pleasantly. “Put the shotgun on the floor, please. Sheriff, do the same with your weapon. And step away from the spell book—if you so much as utter a single arcane word, I’ll be forced to shoot you.”

He doesn’t mention me or my scythes. Why should he? They’re only a threat in hand-to-hand combat, and he’s got a gun—my gun, a Ruger Super Redhawk Alaskan chambered with .454 rounds that can be used to hunt moose. It looks very, very odd in his hands, like a battle-ax being wielded by an astronaut.

Charlie and Stoker do as he says.

“Where’d you get my gun?” I ask.

“Longinus, of course. He had no use for it, and seemed to think it was funny to give it to me.”

“How much did you overhear, just now?”

“Oh, pretty much all of it, I think. Intriguing, but about what I was told to expect.”

“Whatever Longinus said to you, it wasn’t the truth.”

“Oh, I’m aware of that. I’m in the intelligence field, after all; I understand compartmentalization and plausible deniability. Longinus told me as much as he could, and lied to me when necessary. Even so, I have a firm grasp of the situation.”

He sounds very sure of himself—but then, Cassius always does. “Yeah? Can you explain it to me?”

“I’ll do my best. Whether or not you believe me is up to you. Please, all of you, sit down—Charlie, I’m sure your leg must be bothering you.”

We take seats on the couch. He picks up the spell book and graphic novel, and moves both of them out of reach before he begins.

“None of this is real, Jace. Oh, yes, we’re physically here, events are occurring—but not for the reasons you think. This town isn’t what you believe it to be.”

“Oh? And what is it?”

“A training exercise. One being run by the intelligence agency both you and I work for. They do this sort of thing every few years, pushing agents to their psychological limits; illusion spells and memory implants are used to manipulate both the present and past, to see how we’ll react as things gradually get worse and worse.”

“You said we. Surely they don’t subject the director of the NSA to this—”

He cuts me off with a harsh laugh. “Director? Jace, I’m a field agent, just like you—or Zhang, or Tanaka, or Isamu. We all have our little dramas we’ve been programmed to play out, and it’s all smoke and mirrors. Nobody actually dies, it just appears that they do.”

I study his body language, his eyes, his phrasing, looking for signs that he’s lying. I don’t find any. He seems to really believe what he’s telling me, as preposterous as it sounds.

I guess it makes a sort of sense, from a brainwashing point of view; if you want to convince a spook of something, appeal to their paranoia. Spin a web of conspiracy and half-truths, a structure complicated enough to occupy their attention while obscuring your real intentions. It’s almost credible.…

Unless you’re a trained psychologist.

“So this is all a carefully crafted scenario?” I ask. “Designed to see how field agents react to escalating stress through gradually increasing chaos and persecution? Okay, that’s a viable explanation for some of the insanity around us. But in order to make that explanation work—to properly explain away a hundred possible tiny discrepancies and contradictions—it’s necessary to use false memories and illusion spells, correct?”

“That’s the procedure. I know your memories feel like they really happened, but—”

It’s my turn to laugh. “No, that’s not it. It’s a basic problem in logic. You can’t mess with people’s thought processes on a physical level—including memories—and get any kind of useful data about their genuine reaction to a given situation. It’s like the old joke about the scientist who teaches a frog to jump when it hears a bell, then immerses it in boiling water and notes that it no longer jumps when the bell sounds.”

“I don’t see—”

“He concludes that boiling water makes frogs deaf. We’re the frogs, Cassius; Ahaseurus can get us to jump or he can boil our brains, but he can’t do both.”

He frowns. I can see him struggling with what I just told him, and I honestly don’t know how he’s going to react.

“This is unacceptable,” he says flatly.

He points the gun at Stoker and fires.