"You want to know?" Ian asked, his face going feral and calculating. "Then come real, real close and I'll whisper in your ear. We'll cuddle up like we used to and I'll tell you everything you want to hear.”
Ana clamped her jaw tight, starting to lean forward.
I could feel the pressure of Celia's presence crush against me and the room flickered red to my eyes.
I shoved through the door.
Airless, sweltering, the room blazed in hot colors and thick coils of Grey energy. Ian and Ana both jerked their heads toward me. I could see a red line, flaring and thick as an ancient python, pulsing from Ian's body. Ana's own yellow thread was spindling away, drawing her, helpless, toward him.
I rushed to her and shoved her out of the room. "Run," I ordered, slamming the door. Then I turned back to Ian. It would be useless, but I drew the gun anyway, hoping Ian would choose to concentrate on the apparent and immediate threat, rather than on his ex-girlfriend. The press of Celia's power pulled back as if the entity were surprised. I knew it was Ian's surprise, but the feeling was eerie nonetheless.
"How 'bout you tell me where you got those keys," I invited. "But I think I'll stay right here—you don't look so cuddly to me.”
His eyes locked on the gun for a moment, then shifted back up to me. There was a quiver of tense uncertainty in the air between us. "You. . you stupid, stupid bitch.”
"You're awfully fond of that phrase. Tell me about the keys.”
"Fuck you.”
I laughed. "Heck of a vocabulary you have, Ian. With that sort of charm, I guess you figured Ana'd come crawling back to you.”
"She did!”
"Didn't look that way to me.”
"I'd have gotten her back. Her and that half-breed bastard.”
"Wrong kind of Indian," I needled.
"Shut up! You don't know what you're messing with. I can hurt you without even touching you! I can take them out the same way." I could almost see him calculating his chance of launching Celia against me versus the risk of a bullet.
"Like you took out Mark?" I asked, drawing on his vanity—hoping his desire to brag would hold him back a moment.
Viciousness dripped from his voice. "He deserved it! I didn't even know I could do it, but it was easy. How could Cara want him when he was faking things I could do for real? He didn't deserve her!”
"And you killed him because Mark had what you couldn't get. What, did you see him with Cara? Or did you follow her to his place?" I heard something moving with stealth toward the door. I had to draw Celia away from whoever gathered their strength there.
Ian ranted on. "She acted like a whore," he spat. "She told me off, but I followed her. When I saw her come out, I was angry and it was so easy! He was a liar and a cheat and it was easy to crush him. And it felt so good—like breaking something you've always hated. I just wanted him dead and he was dead. And it'll be the same with that slut and her fuck toy!”
Ragged instants of memory flared as he screamed at me: wrenching impressions of creatures suffering; the green snap of bone; the powdery smash of plaster and a wash of blood; unholy thrill reflected in a dying eye.
My hand tensed around the pistol grips and I felt the HK's cocking lever compress the spring to the limit. A desire to squeeze the trigger and wipe out the source of those images fought with my urge to puke. But I only looked at Ian and raised a cynical eyebrow.
He glared at me, his stare blazing, his whole form seeming engulfed in flames and fury. The presence of the entity bloomed and expanded at my back, grinding against my spine, teetering on the brink of eruption. I felt flayed and sick with the sudden stink of it—dead things vomited up by the sea to rot on the shore in the reek of half-burned gunpowder.
I laughed at him again. I decocked the pistol and tucked it back into the holster.
"You sad, ridiculous boy. You think you can hurt them with that?" I demanded, jerking my head toward the mass of Celia gathering behind me. "You'll have to come through me first, freak.”
Celia exploded against me as I dove into the Grey I scrambled through the history of the building, finding an open door and dodging through it as heavy boots pounded into the room. Shouts, shots, noise faded into the mist of the Grey as I ran from the unnatural thing behind me.
It howled like Nemesis descending. I stumbled, tumbled, plummeted into void space. . and landed with a jarring thump in something that stank of sewer and boiled with eldritch things. I was somewhere deep in the underlay of Seattle's history. Keeping a hand tight around the ghost-bottle, I clambered back to my feet and ran as fast as the clutching, ravenous mist would let me. I hurtled down a long tunnel of reek and screams.
Celia caught me and buffeted me into an incorporeal wall. My head rang against stone and I slid down into cold. I wondered for an instant what would happen if I died here, but I didn't want to find out and scrabbled away as the entity re-gathered its force.
Its action was sporadic as it stabbed and grabbed at me. I assumed other things distracted Ian's attention or the poltergeist's assault would have been relentless, but Celia was stupid enough to be single-minded even without his direction. It drew back after each attack, then pressed in again. I searched for exits and grabbed the first upward route I spotted, pulling myself without looking through a hole that felt like a mouth lined with raking teeth.
Icy fluid rushed over me and I found myself standing in a culvert of filthy water. An old storm drain. I'd come back up into a more recent time shard. I jumped for the rungs of an access ladder as Celia smashed against my flailing legs, tossing me back down into the water. I rolled to cushion the glass and came up panting and dizzy.
The bloodshot yellow whirlwind of energy and knife-blade time pulled back, a little dimmer and smaller than before. I realized it was losing energy with each sally. But it was still powerful enough to kill me if it got a good chance and until then, it would drain my energy with every assault. I held the flask out and ran at it, hoping to catch it, but it slewed up and vanished into a fold of history.
I took the opportunity to climb to the surface and out a manhole.
I tumbled into the path of a beer wagon. I dodged out of its way, skidding onto the sidewalk to be cut through by the heedless ghosts of long-dead pedestrians. I shuddered as they passed through me and my legs went weak. Celia hadn't reappeared yet and I was grateful for that.
I kept my feet and caught my breath, staring around, looking for a sign of the time or the place. I couldn't recognize the location. A massive building rose to my right and below me was a steep hill cut with streets of narrow, Victorian row houses, more like something from San Francisco than Seattle. I stared at the large building beside me on the crown of the hill. It was a massive structure, five or six stories with gabled roofs and corner turrets. There was a bell tower sort of thing in the middle of the main wall and a sign—
Celia smashed into me from behind, but with nothing to crush me against, I flew forward, curling myself into a ball around the precious ghost-bottle and somersaulting into the base of the building—which felt as solid and hard as anything I'd ever fallen against in the normal world. I peeled my eyes open, feeling the container still whole against my chest and belly.
Now I could read the sign. Washington Hotel. I'd never heard of a Washington Hotel, and this corner, towering over the Sound, wasn't familiar at all. The cornerstone near my head had a list of names, among them Arthur Denny.
I shook myself and got to my feet, rubber-legged. This was the old Denny Hotel. On Denny Hill. The hill washed away by R. H. Thomson during the Denny Regrade.
Now I knew where I was, the Pacific Place Mall somewhere deep in the historyless soil beneath me, and knew how I might trap the entity and force it into the flask. I began staggering down the ghost hill, feeling for a slot in the sediment of time. I could hear Celia shrieking and buzzing as it came on.