She was cut off by the sound of applause from a single pair of hands. We both turned toward the middle of the room.
Clay stood there in the wash of muted sunlight, having appeared seemingly out of nowhere, clapping slowly, rhythmically. He was wearing what looked like an orange hazmat suit, and the flesh of his face and hands gleamed greenish white. His hair, uncovered, was long and curling and had a similar tint. And although he didn’t fly, I caught, not for the first time, the strangeness of his gait. Gliding, as if he merely skimmed the ground he walked.
As he moved toward us he drew the flares down from their dark aerie. They bobbed about him, tethered, as they had been tethered to Primal. He stopped applauding and clasped his hands together over his heart. “Oh, Colleen, you are such a clever girl. I had no idea. None of my normals are nearly as clever as you and your friends. You’ve been quite an amusement. I’m sorry this has to end.”
“That makes one of us,” Colleen returned acidly. She fidgeted, in her own unique way, rolling the haft of her knife over and over in her hand. “We’re nothing to you. Why don’t you just let us go?”
“You’re not going anywhere. None of you. Oh, well, maybe Howard. He’s pretty much outlived his usefulness. But the rest of you are going to stay to populate the king’s court with life, laughter… and love,” he added, affording Colleen a wry leer.
“Like hell,” Colleen assured him.
“You really don’t get it, do you?” Clay asked. “I’m not the loser here. You are. You destroyed a figurehead, an effigy. You killed a machine.” His eyes swept the walls around us, lips curving in a smile. “No-you killed part of a machine. And the master of the machine is very much alive. You still have to deal with me.” He slapped a palm to his narrow chest, pulled out a bright green ball of energy, and balanced it on the palm of his hand. “Which one of you gets this?” he asked, then swung gracefully toward me, puckering up to blow the thing in my direction.
“You are so fucking predictable,” Colleen said.
Clay pivoted. The blazing orb caught her in the chest and flung her across the floor. She skidded almost to the gaping window and rolled into a fetal position.
Adrenaline sang in my veins. I took a wild slash at Clay with my sword, but he was too quick. He dodged lightly out of reach, laughing. I kept after him, parrying, thrusting, keeping his attention on me. From the corner of my eye I saw Enid hovering uncertainly behind Doc, harmonica still in his hand.
“Enid!” I shouted, keeping my eyes on Clay. “Enid, the flares!”
Familiar melody rose around me. Enid’s refugee song. He broke away from the group gathered around Magritte and moved toward the flares, harmonica wailing out the very depths of his soul. It was a siren song; the flares melted to it, turning their bright eyes away from their master. Their auras changed subtly, shedding reds, shading toward aqua. Playing, Enid headed for the doorway, the harmonica’s haunting voice echoing through the hollow room. The flares moved with him, the cords or conduits that connected them to the building dissolving. Behind the walls the bright veins of light dimmed.
The building shuddered, and panic flashed in Clay’s eyes. He shot a sphere of light at Enid. It hit the barrier of Enid’s music and melted harmlessly away. He lobbed a second salvo at me. I met it with my sword. It fizzled in a shower of golden sparks.
I went straight at him. He released a barrage of arcane grapeshot. I caught the brilliant pebbles with the blade, swept them aside, and advanced, careless of where they landed. Enid and the flares receded into the darkness; the Tower sighed and moaned. Clay laughed and danced away from me. But he sweated now, his eyes wild.
I will probably never shake the feeling that I caused what happened next. I know I could have prevented it.
Four feet from where Doc and Goldie shielded Magritte, Clay stopped and extended a hand toward the nearest wall. The fey arteries blazed, their pulse quickening. I could almost hear the drumming of a great mechanical heart. A second later a green streamer of light leapt from the wall to Clay’s outstretched hand. It enveloped him, fed him.
I lunged, hoping to land a blow while he was distracted, but before I could touch him, he turned and pointed at Maggie. A bolt of energy shot from his fingertip straight to her heart. She spasmed, aqua radiance backwashing along the connection. There was a flash of light, a sizzle of sound, and the emerald trail sucked itself back up, wreathing Clay in a rainbow. He broke his connection with the Tower.
Magritte went limp in Goldie’s arms, light extinguished.
He screamed-one long, piercing note of anguish that I will hear until the day I die. Longer, if there’s any life after this one. Doc bent to revive her, but I knew she was gone. Because Goldie knew.
The building shook as if the ground beneath it shivered. The walls pulsed with lurid Light.
In the moment of vertigo, Howard flung himself at Clay, snapping with animal fury, claw-hands reaching, ready to rend and tear. But Clay, exultant, danced out of the way. He was suddenly able to leave the ground and, if not to fly, at least to levitate. He grinned at me, vibrating with new power, ablaze with it, his hair tossing in the breeze from the blown out window.
“Christ, what a rush! I had no idea … Here I’d been keeping those creatures alive, taking only what I needed-what I thought I needed. I had no idea it could be this … powerful an experience.” He smiled beatifically and rubbed a hand over his heart as if petting the new power that infused it. “Do you know how many devas are in this place? Dozens. Scores.” He giggled. “So much for saving something for a rainy day.”
Dear God, I’d taken a garden-variety monster and driven it to become a flare killer. Somehow, we had to bring him down before he could reach any of the other flares. But how? He was no longer a man. He wasn’t even a flare. He was an unknown, connected to this damn Tower in ways I didn’t understand. I shook myself. Understanding was irrelevant. We had to stop him.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Colleen raise her head from the floor. She fumbled her necklace off over her head, made a beckoning gesture with her fingers, then dropped her head and lay still. Clay didn’t seem to notice her, though she was only about five feet from him.
I took a long, gliding step to my left.
“Maybe,” Clay mused, “my diet doesn’t need to be limited to devas. You can read changed texts, can’t you? Maybe I’ll sample you next. Lord knows what I could do with your little talent.”
I stepped left again, raising the sword.
He glided right, laughing at me. “You don’t actually think you’re going to get near me with that thing, do you?”
In answer I raised it over my head and came right at him.
At that exact moment Colleen wrapped a hand around his ankle, then sliced through the leg of his coverall with her knife. His skin gleamed through the tear for an instant before she reached in and grasped his leg.
He shrieked, convulsing as if caught in a powerful electrical current. A swarm of shimmering sparks raced up his leg to engulf him, devouring his bright new aura.
No hesitation. Not now. I knew what this thing was- what I had to do. I redoubled my grip on the sword, took two strides and ran Clay through. I felt the power in him kicking back through the blade, still battling me. The sword bucked in my grasp as if alive, but I held on-willed myself to hold on.
In a spray of light and blood he pitched backward, sliding off the blade toward the shattered window, dragging Colleen with him.
I flung the sword aside and threw myself down practically on top of her in the debris, wrapping my arms around her as tightly as I could. She let go of his ankle as he went over, stopping our slide just short of the jagged border. We watched as the spot of orange receded into the twilight.