She pulled back out of reflex, vision stung by unexpected light. Once more she lowered her head.
Through the narrow aperture she saw the enemy, giant, chanting. Stone Men. A young human stood near the gathered Flight—a captive, perhaps, or a traitor. Cat glossed over him. She recognized the smallest Stone Man as Cabot’s killer. Through her badge she had gleaned a few hazy images of the creature that broke out of the faceless witness’s window, and the small gargoyle matched those, too. No Stone Man could have entered the hospital undetected. He must have been there already—must have been the witness all along, somehow. It was the only explanation that made sense. But how had he removed his own face?
Cat’s gaze slid from the killer to the other familiar figure in that basement room. Tara hovered in the center of the Stone Men, lost in a flood of silver radiance, an astonished smile on her lips.
Hard to fake being faceless, Raz had said. Someone has to steal your face. Tara could have done that, easily, back at Cabot’s penthouse.
A crystal of ice formed in Cat’s brain, freezing as it spread. Even though Tara had warped her mind and betrayed her to a vampire’s embrace, Cat wanted to like the woman. At least, she wanted to believe Tara was a human being, loyal to her own kind. Tara didn’t trust Justice. Maybe when the murderer changed back to his true form and fled, she decided to track him down herself.
But why send Cat away, unless she had something to hide? And what could she have to hide, save that she knew the witness was a Stone Man? If she knew, why keep that knowledge from Justice? Why would Tara shelter a killer, unless she was on his side? Unless she had helped him hide from the Blacksuits since the very beginning?
No wonder she hid from Justice and fled across town. No wonder she regarded Cat with suspicion, grilling Abelard about her behind her back. No wonder she violated Cat’s mind, and forced her to betray herself and her city. She had been working with the Stone Men all along.
All this was conjecture. Suspicion, hearsay. Cat leaped from conclusion to conclusion. She wanted Tara to be guilty. Her brain pulsed against the limits of her skull. The world was muddy, absurd, unreal. She needed clarity. She needed logic greater than her fragile mind could bear. She needed Justice.
Her whole body shook at the thought, and sharp tears sliced her eyes. Gods and hells, she needed Justice.
The Stone Men were below her. This had to be enough to buy back her cold Lady’s love.
The ice reached the nape of Cat’s neck and crept down to her rapidly cooling heart.
She waved for Captain Pelham to approach. He knelt next to her and mouthed, “What?”
Cat pointed to the tiny hole. He bent close, and when his attention was engrossed by the view beyond the peephole, she reached beneath her shirt and gripped the badge on its chain around her neck.
The Blacksuit overcame her in an instant, sensing her need and shattering her mind’s shell. Captain Pelham glanced over his shoulder.
No eye could follow the speed of the Blacksuit’s motion.
The soft crack of breaking bone burst the inflated silence of the warehouse. Below the layers of diamond that enclosed Cat’s mind, she remembered the strength of his arms as he caught her, falling.
He was Tara’s friend. He would have tried to prevent Cat from fulfilling her duty.
Anyway, it was not her fault. She was a servant of Justice. Her mind was ice and her body black glass. She did not tremble. She did not feel pain, or guilt.
She called the other Blacksuits to her.
17
A thousand ebon statues scattered across the city turned toward a single spot on the waterfront. At first slowly, then faster, like a drummer intoxicated with a new and rapid beat, they began to run.
*
Tara rode the surf of a silver ocean in moonlight. Or perhaps she was the surf, floating atop the water and one with it at once. When she lay with a lover and woke slowly the next morning, not knowing of or caring for the world beyond her skin, or time beyond her joyous heart’s slow beat, she felt like this, but now her skin was the endless ocean, and her heart beat in measured rhythm against unknown sands. No thought of gargoyles or Craft or murder could command her. She lay free and glowing on the waters.
Cool light bathed her. She opened eyes she had not known were closed, looked up, and saw herself, arched in the sky above as she lay curved upon the sea. Up there, she was full and round, glowing with love and serenity. The night was her flesh. Stars clustered in the hollows of her hips and at the base of her neck.
She felt as a tiger cub must feel looking at her mother, who gives her milk, licks her clean with a rough tongue, and nuzzles her when she tries and fails to walk, her mother who stretches three sinewy meters from nose to tail tip, her mother whose piercing claws and beating engine of a heart no Craftsman would have dared to shape.
Was that truly her, in the sky? She blinked, and saw Ma Abernathy, smiling. Again, and it seemed to be Ms. Kevarian. Again, and she saw all of them, and none of them, and more, a power her mind desperately sought to fix in a familiar shape though it overflowed them all.
She was looking at a Goddess. Not a fragmentary divine spirit like the ones she had dissected at school, nor a corpse bereft of life, but a Goddess old as history, Seril Green-Eyed, Seril Undying of Alt Coulumb, Great Lady of Green and Silver.
Her eyes were open, huge as moons. Reflected in them, Tara saw an endless ocean where Seril lay as fully one with the water as she was with the sky. There was no difference between Seril of the water and Seril of the night.
Tara was not looking at a Goddess.
She was one with a Goddess.
She drew a ragged breath of cool air.
*
In the darkness of the Xiltanda, Alexander Denovo laid down his fork. Wood raked across polished tile as he pushed his chair back from the table.
“What is it?” Ms. Kevarian asked.
“Your assistant is in trouble.”
“Indeed?” She felt strangely calm as she ate another forkful of salmon. “How do you know that?”
“I remain in contact with Justice,” he said at last, and, when she did not react, “You’re not surprised?”
“On the contrary, I am quite concerned with Ms. Abernathy’s fate. I wonder what you intend to accomplish by rushing out in the middle of dinner.”
“The Stone Men are inside Alt Coulumb,” he said, as if this were something she did not know.
“Justice is searching for them.”
“Tara found them, and Justice discovered her in their company. She’ll be held as an accessory to Cabot’s murder.”
Ms. Kevarian set down her fork as well.
“Come with me to the Temple of Justice,” he said. “We’ll sort this out. Get Tara back.”
She stood, the consternation on her features unseen in the darkness. “Yes,” she echoed, her voice soft. “We must sort this out.”
As they moved through the dark room to the stairs, she knew, somehow, that Alexander Denovo was smiling.
*
Cat, who was also Justice, waited as hundreds of her brothers and sisters descended on the warehouse. The Stone Men’s ceremony continued below, silver waves receding to break again on Tara’s body. Justice’s vast thoughts still debated the facts, but Cat had her own theory: Tara saved the Stone Men’s assassin in exchange for their performance of this ritual, which flooded her precise soul with pleasure. Tara was as much an addict as Cat herself.
On the floor, the vampire twisted in pain as his regenerative system struggled to repair his spine. His mouth worked, his eyes stared, and little mewling noises escaped his ruined throat. He lacked the motor control to turn them into words.
She raised her foot over his back. Perhaps he was innocent, but she could not let him warn Tara. He would heal.