Ahead of me, the oily magical curtain billowed as if in the wind of Wygan’s passage. The normal world fell aside, letting the Grey flood the room, lit with fire and neon. Goodall tumbled away, pushed or falling I didn’t know, as I toppled the other way, toward the gleaming void.
Wygan’s claws pierced into my upper arms. As at the first time we’d met, his true form showed through in the Grey: white and scaled, with a long, ophidian skull topped by a ridge starting above mesmerizing, pearl-black eyes. And like the first time, I screamed, feeling something ancient and awful cut into me. With time, the memory of his soul-chilling touch had softened and made the terror bearable, but it rushed back and once the air had fled my lungs, the deathly cold of it suffocated me.
“Remember this world, remember what I showed you,” Wygan hissed. “I taught you to see. Now learn it all. Take it in, gather it to you, let it rush into you, the sound, the feel....”
I just had to concentrate on getting to that dark ring within the magic, certain that something I needed lay beyond it. I didn’t want to touch it or take it in, but I was hearing far more than he knew. He wouldn’t have wanted me to listen to the voice that worked its way through the crystalline cold of his words. . . .
“Harper, I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would come to this.”
I gulped for the wisp of warmth his voice brought. “Dad?” It wasn’t even a sound, just the shape of the word cracking against the ice. I tried to look for him and spotted a ring of dark fire around the black center of the gleaming nimbus of void. I struggled to turn toward it, to move into that familiar silent flame I’d first seen around the hole where my father’s ghost should have been.
Wygan pushed me forward, toward the blazing grid of magical energy that roared up in the Grey. Twin fires leapt as my head and shoulders crossed over the black edge of the ring—cold flame edging the oubliette while the hungry, singing power of the grid flared with surreal color. Agony raced over my nerves, wrenching another soundless shriek from me and turning the world black at the edges. I felt twisted, immolated like a tree writhing in wildfire.
“It’s knowledge you crave,” Wygan cooed at me, stabbing my heavy, ice-bound limbs with his claws. “Here is knowledge. Is that not an equitable exchange? Drink it in and know.”
His voice flayed me and I gagged, struggling to wriggle free even as the sensation worsened with every second I resisted him. I was half in, half out, held on the brink by Wygan’s bitter grip. I couldn’t stand it. . . . It felt as if every molecule of my body was tearing apart from the rest, exploding from the sound and power at the black edge.
The other voice drifted to me. “Don’t fight yet. It makes the pain much worse. Slide, go limp.”
That’s what I’d seen happening to Simondson; when he fought, when he moved toward the memory of life, he was burned and tormented. It felt like my brain was bleeding, my limbs charring into brittle sticks. No, I thought. I can’t give in. I will die. I’ll become what he wants; he’ll win!
“It’s not so simple. Listen to them, little girl. Let them in.”
It wasn’t Edward and it couldn’t be my father. He’d killed himself to keep me safe, so how could he tell me to give in? He wouldn’t! It was a trick. It was something of Wygan’s to pull me into the Grey beyond redemption, beyond my control. This voice was a monster that wanted nothing less than my soul—if I had one.
The cacophony of the grid sang and boiled at my brain. Snatches of words fluttered in my ears with a whisper of moth wings and the screech of magic. The sound tore at my mind and burned into my body like acid. Shrieks of pain and terror snuffed to whimpers as they caught and burned away in my throat.
My father’s voice continued in swift blasts of soft air against my face. “It’s everything. That’s what he wants. He doesn’t need me, only you. You have to listen. The song will tell you. There’s a back door. Use the puzzles to open the way. Shape the key to the lock and open the maze. Each puzzle is a door. The doors are always at the center. From center to center you can cross to me. From the center you’re in the Grey, but you’re not really here. You’ll be safe if you come through the maze. Find the labyrinth—the first maze. Open the right door with the key.”
Things were starting to fade, a darkness like fever sleep closed in as the cold and anoxia shut me down. The ringing in my ears, the screeching and muttering, became a shouting chorus of voices tumbling over one another into babble. I felt myself going limp, the pain easing back but not helping me stay alive.
“Not like that, little girl. I said not to fight; I didn’t say to give up.”
Wygan’s voice floated over the top of my consciousness, crooning, “Yes, yes....”
And in counterpoint, the voice from within the void continued as if from another conversation. “You’ll have to come back for me later. He can’t know I have any strength or he’ll destroy me and . . . then I can’t help. Listen, listen. . . . I remember your mother. . . . I remember the time she bought you those red tap shoes so the blood wouldn’t show. I was so angry with her! So angry ...” Dad’s voice slid upward into a spine-jarring shriek of anguish I could feel through my whole body, like the cutting agony of those horrid crimson shoes. The angrier he got, the more I thought I could see his shape in the darkness, nearly there, nearly solid and writhing in torment with every word. His pain seemed to infect me. A scarlet rage of suffering ripped through me, shouted into my head on the voice of the grid and I jerked away from Wygan’s grip.
The frigid ivory knives of his claws slid out of my flesh and blood washed onto my skin, warm and sharp with the scent of life. I rolled onto my back, the floor unexpectedly solid beneath me as the Grey pulled away, recoiling as if in shock. The room flushed amber as the lights in Wygan’s rack shifted to keep the Guardian Beast at bay.
They were all I could see and all I could think of to buy time to escape. The echo of the grid’s refrain vibrated along my nerves as if the energy of the Grey were powering my limbs and not the weak impulse of my own battered brain. Wygan swooped to grab me once again and I clutched my hands together over my chest, feeling the hard shape of my pistol between my palms.
I squeezed and shot. Again and again. The gun kicked against my sternum as each light shattered and the room went dark with the roar of the Beast descending.
I rolled again, the ringing of the gunshots in my ears deafening me, and started crawling. . . .
TWELVE
It didn’t matter now if I touched the red spiderweb lines that coated the hallway. Wygan and Goodall already knew I was leaving, but there was nothing they could do; they were too busy with damage control and keeping themselves out of the jaws of the Guardian Beast. I didn’t doubt they’d survive—it couldn’t be that easy to stop the Pharaohn-ankh-astet or someone would have done it long ago. I dragged myself down the darkened corridor toward the exit, a growing square of distant, white light.
Even crawling, I felt I was staggering, swaying unsteadily from wall to wall and losing my focus under bouts of nausea. Yeah, that was familiar. But this time I didn’t feel like a rape victim. This time there was some hope under the ache, horror, and disgust. Also a hell of a lot of fear, but I wasn’t listening to it gibbering in the back of my head; I pushed it down and dragged onward.
The light grew painfully bright and ran toward me, making a sound like wings. It started dipping toward me, that light and a gold thread of a voice called out from a distance, “Not yet! You don’t know what they’ve done.”