I watched as he struggled to wind the ribbon around his own neck with hands that grew steadily weaker and clumsier. Once the connection was formed, he touched his thumb to his bloody wound, running it along the ribbon, from himself to the doll.
A hyper-realistic wound started to open on the doll’s throat. His own wound started to close.
He stopped, his hands trembling, and the transfer reversed.
The Hyena’s effect taking hold?
I watched him try and fail again. Using ghosts as some sort of repository or sympathetic replica, to take his pain.
No, a ghost wouldn’t be enough. Just like with the Bane, something like this might well require a soul.
Very gently, I pulled the doll from his grip. The ribbon came undone again. Weak hands reached for and failed to grab the doll.
“Be free, soul,” I said, before cracking the doll down the middle.
The agonized face separated, and a moment later, the doll’s face was only two depressions for eyes, a bump for the nose, and a line for the mouth.
I put the halves of the doll on the ground.
There was enough blood on hand. I couldn’t see the spirits, but I could imagine the same rules held true. Blood had power.
Right now, we had to be discreet.
Using the available blood, I drew a circle around the four bodies. Hopefully breaking connections.
I left the Necromancer behind, bleeding out in the circle, and hoped there was karma in that.
“Come on, Green,” I said, “It might be better to be a little hungry, as we keep this up. There’s more troublemakers around.”
She nodded, grinning.
“There are Behaims,” Evan said. “Just a block over. I think they heard stuff, but they decided not to come.”
I nodded.
We moved as a group, much as we had before. Green Eyes was bloody enough that she didn’t quite blend in, but that was negligible at best.
Behaims.
I didn’t expect what I saw.
They’d called back their Others. Clockwork men, children and old men shrouded in rags that hid their faces. A giant surrounded by sand. A bogeyman that aged with every step, before giving birth to herself in about two seconds flat, her placenta becoming a red dress by then time she’d aged to five. I saw another technicolor Other, too.
“We’ll need to do readings,” a man was saying. He had an abrasive tone to his voice, vaguely irritating. “Figure out where Johannes and the Duchamps stand. This is going to get very messy, very quickly.”
“Especially when they see what we just did,” one of the youngest Behaims present spoke up. I wasn’t sure, given the winter clothes he was swaddled in, but he might have been Owen, one of the Behaims to show up in Toronto.
The abrasive-voiced guy spoke again, “It’s not the right way to do this.”
“No,” Alister said, “Probably not.”
I’d heard the abrasive voiced guy before. He was one of the ones who had argued on behalf of Alister. Against peace.
Good enough.
The Behaims were dispersing, moving in groups. I saw the guy with the voice rounding up his Others. Clockwork men.
There was a power to be had in attacking the unassailable.
Strike, then run.
“Green Eyes, head back the way we came, ambush anyone who comes after, that’s older than twenty,” I whispered. “Evan, give me my escape route.”
“Will do, chief,” Evan said, wing-saluting me.
Easy enough, as the Behaims split up. They were individually vulnerable, but they felt like they were safe. I could strike and I could run. I knew how the time magic worked. Barring some major intervention, they wouldn’t catch me.
And if they were doing readings on the other major players… they wouldn’t be doing readings on me, necessarily.
I slipped close to the clockwork-man wrangler. Again, I put the blade to his throat.
I cut. Blood showered onto the snow. I turned to slip away, ready to attack another group from another angle.
Reality wrenched.
I was back where I’d started.
The clockwork wrangler was unhurt.
I noticed that Ben, the decent-ish guy, was now staring me down, a few paces away.
Had he done it? No, that wasn’t a perception trick. Something bigger.
I frowned, ready to back away.
Something barred my path, the broad side of a lance.
A suit of armor, clockwork. A knight, about eight feet tall.
But unlike any of the other things, it was inlaid with gold.
It vibrated with power, as if an immense heat came off it.
I felt a little bit like I had around the djinn.
“Blake,” Alister said, behind me.
I turned.
I saw Alister.
“Meet my new weapon,” he said.
The weapon barely concerned me. If he was even talking about the suit of armor. The thing the Behaims had said would put them back on the map. A secondary issue at best.
Alister had company, standing next to him.
Rose. Holding his hand. They almost matched in height and sheer pretentiousness, standing side by side. Rose wearing grandmother’s old clothes, Alister being just a little too stylish and fashionably dressed for a guy in his late teens or early twenties, hanging around Jacob’s Bell.
She’d had a plan, apparently. Obvious enough. She’d wanted an opportunity to chat with certain people.
The plan, as it turned out, involved an engagement ring on her finger.