BloodAngel Page 6

  The word startled him away from the card.

  "Necromancer," he said, and he didn't know why.

  Lauren frowned at him. "Priestess," she said again, pointedly, and tapped the card with her finger. She closed her eyes and recited from memory: "She holds secret knowledge and wisdom, the mysteries of which will only be revealed when the candidate is properly ready. The veil between the pillars represents the darkness before dawn, the state before enlightenment." She paused, opened her eyes, took a sip of her scotch. "The promise," she said dramatically, "of revelation."

  Ramsey picked up the card and turned it facedown: turning that fierce blue gaze away from him, that book so heavy in her lap. Lauren is wrong. The voice rose up inside him like a dark, secret fish. Lauren is wrong. She isn't a priestess. She is—

  His chest tightened.

  She is—

  Lauren was looking at him.

  She is part of the betrayal.

  "Ramsey?" Lauren said.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I just—" He pressed a hand against his temple. Sometimes I think crazy things, he wanted to say, but did not. Sometimes I hear this voice, this dreamvoice, I hear it so clearly, even when I'm wide awake. "Headache," he said instead.

  "I've been talking too much," Lauren said. "I know that. I'm sorry."

  "Jesus Christ, Lauren, don't apologize. I'll listen to you anytime."

  She looked at him for a beat, said, "You really mean that, don't you?"

  He glanced away from her. Said quickly, "This thing tomorrow. You're going to see someone who… reads tarot cards professionally?"

  Lauren tilted her head to the side, the chopped-off hair brushing her shoulder.

  "Not quite," she said.

  Chapter Ten

  The address was an effort to find: an unmarked steel door at the end of an alley. Only the faint thump of music suggested life behind the brick wall. Jess tried the door, half expecting it to be locked, half expecting some avantgarde type to rise before her and thunder Thou art not cool enough before casting her outside. But the door opened easily. She went up two inside steps, opened a second door.

  Stepping into a small white hall that reeked of fresh paint. A staircase to her left led upwards and down.

  "My girl, you're not prepared for this place."

  Tucked against the wall opposite the stairwell was a reception desk. Two tall, slender women stood behind it and looked at her. One had purple curly hair cascading to a narrow waist. She wore a shiny bronze jumpsuit that laced up the sides. The second was a platinum blonde squeezed into a vinyl corset, long legs balanced on deadly stilettos. She held a switchblade in one hand, using the tip of the blade to clean her long fingernails.

  "Stop," the purple-haired one said to Jess.

  "In the name of love," added the blonde.

  They looked at each other and giggled.

  Jess said, "I'm looking for Kai Youngblood."

  The purple-haired one snapped her gum. "A lot of people are looking for God, honey, that don't mean they're ever gonna find Him."

  "Or Her," the other one added.

  "You're very cute," the first one said generously. "You're just savagely underdressed. Go down the street, maybe Sweet Zone will take you."

  "I have this," Jess said. She was starting to feel like a fool. But she fished the small silver disk from her pocket, held it out for them to see.

  Purple Hair plucked it from Jess's fingers. She studied it. She showed it to her companion. They studied it together. They looked at Jess. Something new surfaced in their expressions… something that looked very much like awe.

  "If your man is around," said Blonde, "he's downstairs."

  Purple Hair was still staring.

  Blonde pointed at her with the switchblade. "So don't just stand there. Take your fine self downstairs."

  The staircase was narrow, dark and winding, thumping with bass.

  Someone was slumped on the bottom step.

  She thought he was unconscious, until he stirred and lifted his head. He was maybe sixteen, naked from the waist up, rib bones pushing against his skin. A blue, glistening powder decorated his chest and back, looping up from the ragged waistband of his jeans to the base of his throat. His eyes were bloodshot, heavy-lidded.

  "Jax it with me," he said softly, and held out his hand.

  Cupped in the palm was a mound of blue powder.

  "We can jax it together," he whispered. He gave her a moist-lipped grin, dipping his fingertips in the powder and drawing them down along both cheekbones. She thought of fairy dust mixed with war paint and had no idea what the hell it was. Her knowledge of the club scene stopped with ecstasy (and she herself had preferred cocaine, before giving it up—in one brutal swoop—with cigarettes).

  "Maybe next time," Jess said, not unkindly, and sidestepped him on the stair.

  As she walked towards the heavy curtain that blocked off the end of the hall, she heard him call, "Gotta be careful, big sister. All the pretty things gotta be careful…"

  She swept back the curtain and stepped beyond.

  Her first thought: it wasn't a club.

  It was a spectacle.

  The cavernous space was made more so by the heavy gilded mirrors that leaned against the walls, reflecting the room and multiplying the population. Iron staircases wound up into balconies where sinewy figures leaned against railings and sipped from long-stemmed glasses, gazing into the sea of bodies below. Above them all, two voluptuous women sat on swings suspended from the ceiling, describing wide arcs in the haze-filled air. Their long white hair trailed behind them, blew back against their bodies, streamed out again. Ropes hung in a far corner, small lithe figures twisting and slithering along their lengths like snakes. On stainless-steel pedestals throughout the room, girls and boys were posed like living art, rendered immobile by the white leather straps that crisscrossed their limbs and bodies, forced them into contrived, unnatural positions. As Jess watched, a woman in a red sequined catsuit climbed onto a pedestal and crouched beside a boy-sculpture. She held a chocolate to his mouth. After a moment, he accepted, the chocolate disappearing between his lips; she waited a moment and then offered him another.

  Savagely under dressed, Purple Hair had called her. She saw men and women alike dressed in lush, flamboyant styles: feather capes, gleaming snakeskin bodysuits, elaborate ensembles of silk, velvet, fur, leather and vinyl, that clung or draped or fell to the floor. Some wore masks—exquisitely crafted masks studded with stones and feathers. As they danced—everyone dancing—to a world beat-techno fusion, bass and flutes and pulsing, thrumming rhythms.

  She felt eyes on her—crawling across her—as she angled through the crowd to the bar. Yet when she sought to return the looks, gazes broke away from her like thin bones snapping.

  And it was then she started to see the marks, like pale, glittering tattoos. The same blue substance on the boy in the stairwell now surfaced on a man's inner wrist as he lifted his drink; glistened on the back of a woman's naked shoulder; described a cross on a laughing man's cheek. Jess passed beneath a wrought-iron cage that hung on chains from the ceiling. She turned and looked up through the bars: a girl contortionist was standing on her hands, bent neatly in half, the top of her head nestled against her buttocks, her small bare feet pointed through the bars. In the flickering light, the glittering blue streaks on her face and body were so wide and thick they looked carved into her skin. The girl's eyes were hollowed out and haunted.

  A hard edge slammed against her; Jess realized she had knocked over a martini glass, pink liquid spreading onto the bar's beaten-metal surface. The owner of the drink didn't appear to be anywhere. The bartender was at the far end, serving a woman in a purple dress with a mandarin collar. Jess felt a quick shock of recognition: wasn't she that blonde supermodel, the one in the Versace ads… ?

  A tall blade-thin man stepped into her line of vision. He wore old-fashioned velvet coattails, rather tattered, braided long black hair draped along his shoulder. His eyes were
dark, but had the same shape, same uncanny luster, as Kai's. "I have something for you," he said, smiling at her, as he lifted a walking cane and placed it on the bar. It was tipped with a heavy silver death's head. He took a silver cigarette case from his pocket, opened it, and held it toward her. "Have some," he said generously. "You look like you're in need."

  The case was filled with more of the blue powder. The man repelled her, but she couldn't help her curiosity: "What is it?"

  "A taste of the Dreamlines."

  "Of what?"

  He grinned. "You must be new. Careful. These are deep, deep waters for a novice." He paused. "My name is Salik. And you are… ?"

  "What are the Dreamlines?" she said.

  "Oh," he said, still grinning, "the Dreamlines are a place of power—first power, original power, if you go deep enough. They bridge all the realms."

  "The realms?"

  He waved a hand. "Realms, worlds, dimensions, call them what you want."

  "Oh…"

  He grinned even wider. "This"—he gestured with the powder—"will catapult your mind straight there. Want to try?"

  "What's the downside?"

  "It turns your brain to sludge. Eventually. But a small price to pay, I assure you."

  "I like my brain the way it is."

  "What a shame."

  She was turning away from him when he said, "But wait. Doesn't this belong to you?" He held out the silver disk Kai had given her. His nails were long, curved, and silver-tinted. His other hand was encased in a black glove, held to his side as if it were wounded.

  She reached for the disk. She felt the small cold weight of it in her palm—and then nothing.

  The coin was gone.

  The man grinned again and plucked it from the air.

  "I haven't seen this crest in a long, long time. So what's your connection with our beloved Kai?" Twisting his mouth on the word beloved. "His royal highness Kai? He's been gone a very long time, you know. Some of us were starting to wonder."

  Ignore him, a voice warned, but again, the surge of curiosity: "Wonder what?"

  "What he's been up to. What he might be responsible for." The man's smile widened. "Perhaps you hadn't heard. The official ending of things has officially begun."

  Her mind flashed on Kai's words: The boy dies horribly, and the whole world goes to hell. Many hells, actually. Jess felt her eyes itch and water and as she closed them, rubbed them, she had the sudden tilted feeling that this club and this man Salik and her desire to find Kai were already a memory sunk deep in the past, that she would open her eyes to a future made present, to a series of blasted, twisted landscapes, everything burning, screaming, and dying.

  Her eyes snapped open.

  "You can see it, can't you?" There was a glitter in Salik's eyes, in his voice: This man, Jess realized, this man is not fully sane. "You can see it. Can't you?"

  She said nothing.

  "There will be a whole new world order," the man went on. "And it won't belong to your kind, or even to Kai's. So you might want to form a more strategic alliance."

  The man leaned towards her, smiling. His teeth were crooked and uneven. "Kai Youngblood," he said distinctly, "is spoiled weak royal scum. But myself, well, I could be your friend. It will be good to have friends in the days ahead. Why don't you come with me for a bit?" His grin widened. "In fact, you look familiar—"

  "Fuck off," Jess said, and moved away from him.

  Except his hand slipped out, thumb and fingers encircling her wrist—a light, slithering touch, there and gone.

  "Quite familiar," the man said. "You're a painter, aren't you? That delicious young thing in Sara Nolan's stable. I was at your show the other night. This is getting more interesting all the time. What could His Highness possibly want with you?"

  The feeling started in her wrist, swarming up her arm like light. She stumbled, grabbed the edge of the bar to steady herself.

  The man stepped closer to her, humming beneath his breath. He said in singsong, "Why don't we go awwwaaaaaay…"

  The alien warmth was moving through her body, eating up her strength.

  "… and chat for a while? You can tell your new friend Salik everything you know about absolutely everything…"

  Thought became an elusive, watery process. Her knees were dissolving beneath her; she couldn't hold on to the bar; she was going down—

  Except then the man closed in on her. "No," Jess muttered; her vision clicked back into focus and she pulled away from him. His eyebrows went up in surprise. Jess stumbled back from him and he didn't make any move to go after her. She turned—

  —And realized people had drifted in from the dance floor to watch them. The supermodel from the Versace ads was among them, lifting her drink to collagen-enhanced lips. Jess stumbled, nearly fell, as that alien light began slipping up inside her head now, trickling through her mind. "Excuse me," she muttered to a man in a fur-and-feather coat, "let me through—"

  The man said, "Aren't you supposed to stay?"

  She tried to shove her way past him and he grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back with such force she felt the floor disappear beneath her feet. Then she was on the ground, and hurting—except, no, the pain was dissolving, there was no pain anywhere. The light and warmth were all through her now, taking the strength from her body, taking over her body, and that no longer seemed a bad thing. Salik was bending over her, his black-gloved hand tucked against his side, his other hand gripping the walking cane. "I'll return you to Kai"—and his breath was hot on her face—"eventually. In some form. I promise."

  "Wait a minute." Another voice. The supermodel, kneeling beside Jess, eyeing her with what seemed to be genuine concern. "She really doesn't look well. I think she needs a—"

  "She only needs me," Salik said. He lifted his cane and shoved it against the model's chest—against and through—and Jess heard but couldn't believe she was hearing the wet crunch of bone and gristle, saw but couldn't believe she was seeing the end of the cane emerge from the woman's back, as her voice lodged with a grunt in her throat and she looked at Jess with widened eyes, her hands scrabbling at her chest, at the cane that impaled her, before she slumped to the ground and began to convulse.

  The bartender looked on, drying a wine glass.

  "Let's go, little girl," Salik was saying to her, grabbing at her shoulders, lifting her up, when a voice said, "Salik."

  Salik looked up, mouth twisting into a hard smile.

  "It took you long enough," he said. "You missed the good parts."

  He let her go. She felt herself fall; heard the sound as her head hit the floor; none of it seemed to mean much. Her vision was dimming at the edges. She saw Kai stepping through the crowd, staring at Salik. They were both saying things, but the words were so distorted (through this haze of beautiful, floating light that was about to carry her off), that she couldn't make sense of them, didn't want to, didn't care.

  Then Salik yelled, "You think this world's worth saving? You think it ever has been?" when his body lifted and slammed back against the bar as if he'd been picked up and thrown, except no one had touched him. He clapped both hands to his eyes and screamed in fury. Blood dripped between his fingers. Then Salik's shoulders started to shake; he was laughing. "Oh, I forgot you can still do this," he said, taking his hands away. His eyes were blindly staring orbs, leaking blood. "I trust the effects are still temporary?" Then the warmth and light and bliss swallowed his words entirely and Jess's gaze fell away from him. Her own eyes were closing.

  And then Kai's voice in her ear, as clear and sharp as January cold: "Jess."

  She struggled to hold on to the last shard of consciousness.

  "You'll be fine," Kai was saying. He was crouching next to her. "Just ride it out. But don't believe in it—it's an illusion—it's false—"

  But the light, she wanted to say. It was as if the whole world were splitting open, corridors of light stretching on in all directions, and all she had to do was follow those corridors until the
y led her to the source of everything, the answers to all the questions she had ever wanted to ask. And it would feel so very, very good.

  Kai was still talking except now she couldn't hear him; his lips were moving with no voice attached. She smiled at him and closed her eyes. He could go away now. She was fine. But then she heard his voice in his head, inside her own thoughts, startling her away from the light and the bliss: I need to know, Kai said. Do you trust me? Will you come with me?

  The man who had been in the library all those years ago, who had looked at her so sadly, who had given her the memory of that warm perfect hour on the balcony, a lizard asleep on the ledge. His name was Tapaku.

  "Yes," Jess said. Or thought she said. She was aware of someone—Kai?—picking her up in his arms, moving faster than she would have thought possible. She was aware of people falling away to either side of them, making room for them, watching in awe from behind their artful masks.

  That was all the awareness she could manage. She felt herself shutting down.

  The world disappeared. Everything was light and darkness, both.

  Chapter Eleven

  They waited on the porch steps. Lauren was dressed in shorts and a tank top, the brace enclosing her left knee. While other girls wore platform sandals or flip-flops, Lauren wore sneakers. She never went barefoot, even in the house; she padded around in socks or slippers or ballet flats. Ramsey knew without asking that it was the dancing; it had banged up her feet, and she was self-conscious.

  "That's her," Lauren said, slipping on sunglasses. "That's my girl."

  A battered-looking Mustang convertible swung into their cul-de-sac. The girl at the wheel was the same age as Lauren. Ramsey knew her from around school: her name was Aimee Reed; she was in all the school plays.

  "It's Ramsey, right?" Aimee was looking at him with a friendly expression. "Are you coming too?"

  "He is," Lauren said.

  She got in the front, Ramsey in the back, crutches angled through the gap in the front seats. The Mustang pulled away from the curb. The suburbs thinned, the road turned pitted and bumpy, houses yielding to trees and grass and sloping fields.