A warmth enveloped me, and my fear melted. It was a wish every being could understand. I smiled into her cold grey eyes-but before I could say a word, there was a shift, a blurring of colors, and I was standing in a hallway. I looked to my left and right in confusion. Where did my seat go? Where did the train go? More importantly, where did my coffee go? It was quiet in the hallway. No one was around. The hall was lined in rich, dark wood worn by decades of polishing. Mahogany, I guessed. Rare stuff. Expensive stuff. Portraits stretched the length of the hallway. The figures sat in regal poses; pale faces looking down at me with in disdain. The mere idea of sharing this hall with anyone else seemed to repulse them. Growing up in Vegas, I was familiar with big egos. These folks had them in spades. I walked over and looked at a few of the portraits. They shared Rei"s dark glossy hair, narrow nose, and faint blue eyes. Some wore clothes from the Middle Ages. Others, more modern dress. All were very pale. They looked like they could use a pint or two.
But how had I gotten here? I was supposed to be on a train, wasn"t I?
It wasn"t so clear to me anymore. The train seemed so far away, so foreign.
I went to take a deep breath, but with a shock, I realized I couldn"t. In fact, I wasn"t breathing at all. I tried to pinch myself, but discovered I lacked the necessary appendages. Looking down, I figured out the problem. I wasn"t exactly whole. The me in this place wasn"t corporeal. It was just a mere shade of my former self. A vague outline of my body was all that remained. That gave me a pretty good scare (metaphysically speaking).
I chuckled. Ghosts weren"t supposed to be scared of ghosts.
I was pondering the new lightness of my being, when I heard m.u.f.fled noises coming from further down the hall. What were they going to do, vacuum me? I prayed it wasn"t Bill Murray and the rest of the crew, took a deep non-breath, and floated towards the sounds.
Halfway there, I ran across a ma.s.sive tapestry. I"d never seen art like this outside of a textbook, but I recalled from AP World History that they were all the rage during the Middle Ages. The detail was fantastic. To think it was made up of threads of silk...
The tapestry portrayed a grand battle. A small battalion stood inside the walls of a castle on a hill. A black and white flag flew on their tallest bastion. I recognized the pattern. It was called the Crusader"s Cross-a relic from the Christian conquest of Jerusalem. Below the flag, at the center of the piece, stood two bulky men. They looked down from upon their battlement at the horde of men besieging them. The two must have been the main characters of this story. The first wore a set of scarlet armor and held an enormous black sabre. The second was dressed in heavy gray robes. He clenched a staff and pointed it at the heavens. I followed his hand into the sky. A horrific vision played out above them. Demons and angels clashed. Winged beasts swooped through the air, slashing at one another as they pa.s.sed. The sky was a mixture of orange and red flames. Smoke and debris clouded most of the view. I stood transfixed by the scene. The tapestry drew the eye like a magnet. The artist must have been fantastically skilled...and I wondered who the two men were. They seemed reasonably bada.s.s.
My revere was shattered by a young girl"s screams. I left the tapestry and headed toward the source of the noise. Her shouts were coming from one of the rooms up on the right. As I closed, I heard some of her m.u.f.fled words.
"No, no, no!" the girl pleaded. "I didn"t mean to. I"m sorry, Nana!"
Arriving at the door, I paused. I felt a strong urge to withdraw. This place was private. It felt like I was invading it. I hesitated until another roll of cries erupted from within, and the need to intervene overcame me. I went to grasp the door handle, and my hand went straight through. Visually disturbing, yes, but it didn"t cause any pain. I gave a spiritual shrug and walked straight through the planks of polished wood. The scent of blood smacked into my nostrils. Apparently my sense of smell still worked.
Why did it always have to be blood? I wondered.
Tyrone Nelson"s corpse flashed in front of me, but I fought the vision off. It wasn"t so hard; there was already a nightmare playing out in front of me. The little girl knelt on the floor. Her face, her long black hair, her light-yellow sundress-everything was covered in blood. She clutched the opened neck of a maid with burnt orange hair. In rhythmic pulses, blood surged past the girl"s little fingers to paint the room in red. Transfixed, I watched as the pulsing flows formed Rorschach blots across the young maid"s crisp white ap.r.o.n.
"I didn"t mean to!" the young girl said. "I"m sorry, Nana. I promise I"ll be a good girl. Just wake up, okay? Nana? Wake up, Nana."
The young maid raised her hand to touch the little girl"s cheek.
"Nana?" The little girl froze.
The maid stroked her hair gently, soothing the little girl"s cries. Then her pulse lessened, and her hand faded back to the ground.
"Nana?" the little girl whispered.
No voice answered. The room became deathly quiet.
She laid her ear upon the young woman"s breast, listened intently, switched ears, tried again-and then burst into a stream of tears.
I stood frozen in place as the moments past. How had this happened? Why was I witnessing it?
Noises came from behind me, footsteps coming down the hallway.
Thank goodness, I thought. Someone had finally arrived.
The door opened and a woman gasped. "For crying out loud, Rei! Don"t waste it!" the melodic female voice scolded. Rei? I started to feel dizzy. I didn"t understand. Rei Bathory was an adult. Rei Bathory was my age.
The little girl started shaking. Her hands still cradled the young maid"s opened throat. She looked up and glared straight through me at the person at the doorway. Her face locked into a snarl.
"Never!" she screamed, white fangs gleaming. "Never, never, never!"
A cold blue surge of light shot across the room. My bones chilled. My ears popped. The wave touched me and I screamed. I stumbled backwards at the tremendous change in pressure, and with a rush of whiteness, my existence imploded.
It was like I"d been caught in a bomb blast. I flew backward through a roar of light and sound. I tumbled past things I couldn"t comprehend, let alone cla.s.sify. What was left of my being twirled about in a helpless spiral. I despaired, a.s.sumed all was lost, until, just as suddenly, I slapped into a liquid-like barrier with a huff. My flesh stung from the impact, like after a belly flop off the high dive. And just like that, it was over. I was back on the train, sitting in a chair, holding a crushed Styrofoam cup.
I felt a remote pain issuing from my hand and pants, and I noticed that I was staring into a set of very confused blue eyes. She looked so old. What had happened to her? Rei Bathory was a young girl. Rei Bathory was like a little sister. What had happened to her body? It was so big now...
No, I corrected myself. This was Rei too. This was the Rei that shared the time and place of my body. I recognized the sensation. My head had cleaved into two parts. I had been in two places at the same time. Now the two pieces were trying to come back together.
The Rei that sat next to me drew back. Her body was trembling.
"What did you do?" she asked accusingly. Tears were welling up in her eyes. "What on earth was that sensation?"
I couldn"t speak. I was trying to re-identify my lips.
Rei wiped her blossoming tears away. She looked at the moisture and frowned. "Why am I crying?"
Still disoriented by the dual sensory feeds, my head spun. I felt the patter of the railcar, but could still smell the blood, still feel the steam rising up off the dead woman"s body. It felt like I had lost my place in a book. I was flipping through the pages of my mind, trying to remember where I had left off. And I needed fresh air. I needed it right away. The smell of blood had to go away or I was going to puke.
I stumbled to my feet. I was getting the heck out of here. I aimed for the aisle, but crashed into another pa.s.senger"s chair. Mumbling an apology, I struggled on. People were beginning to stare. I must have looked like a drunk loaded to the gills with booze. My Sight fired up in response to their attentions. The extra input added to my vertigo. Not puking was no longer an option. It was only a matter of time now. Reaching from seat-to-seat, I struggled down the aisle. Finally making it to the end of the car, I stepped out onto the gap just as my vision failed me. My knees buckled, and I lost my lunch off the side of the train.
"Ugh," I groaned. "I didn"t get to enjoy that danish for very long..."
The thought of the danish threw me into another bout of puking. Finished with that lovely sequel, I sat down in heap and let the cool evening air wash over me. What the h.e.l.l just happened? What had I done? My jelly brain wasn"t up to the challenge of figuring anything out right now. I was tired and frazzled and nearing my wits" end.
I was staring down at the tracks when a sheet of long black hair blew into my face.
I jumped with a start.
"d.a.m.n it!" I pleaded. "Could you please stop doing that?"
She plopped down next to me.
"You deserved that one. Well, at least I think you deserved that one." Rei sounded grumpy. "What spell was that just now?"
"Spell?" Those were real too? "I have no freakin" idea, Rei. You"re the expert. You tell me." I didn"t know what to say to her. I didn"t think the Queen of Darkness would respond positively to the news that I had been rummaging through her memories. A change of subject was most definitely in order. "Rei, when I woke up in the warehouse I noticed that part of that pool of blood around you was charred to a crisp...what caused that?"
The train bent into a turn. The wheels screeched in protest.
"You don"t know about that either?" she asked.
I shook my head.
"Seriously, Dieter, you can recall absolutely nothing?"
"Nothing."
Rei frowned.
"Dieter, I find that impossible to believe. I shall respect your desire for discretion, but there is no way you are of the Imperiti. You performed a most complex trans.m.u.tation. I watched you set up an extraction field and perform the permutations necessary for wefting with my own eyes-or eye, rather. The other retina was still mending."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," I said putting my hands up in the air. "Partnering? Trans.m.u.tation? Extraction fields? What on earth are you talking about? I hit that tall guy with the pipe, and it stopped my heart. When he was standing over me, I was just trying to flick the guy off. You know, give him a piece of my mind? It turned out that he was a walking defibrillator. The shock must have restarted my heart. I just got lucky. I didn"t do anything on purpose."
Rei looked at me dubiously.
"Dieter, are you telling me earnestly that you cannot recall what happened next?"
I shook my head.
"This is most frustrating without glamour," she grumbled. "And you have experienced nothing like this before?"
I was about to say no, but I stopped myself. "Oh," I said quietly.
Rei looked at me expectantly. I knew I shouldn"t say anything. Telling Rei anything about that day would be foolish, illogical, and reckless. I would be admitting to a crime-a murder for goodness sake-but for some inexplicable reason, I knew I could trust her. (Besides, I was already an accessory to Rei"s three murders. What are a few more years to a death sentence?) "Alright," I said grudgingly, "I"ll try to explain, but I need you to keep this in confidence, okay?"
Rei nodded. "I swear it on Bator"s grave."
I took a deep breath and stared out into the pa.s.sing darkness. "It happened during a schoolyard fight about eight months ago. I challenged the leader of the Splotches to-"
"Apologies, Dieter, but what manner of creature is a splotch?"
"A splotch isn"t a creature. It"s a regular run-of-the-mill person. The Splotches were a gang that bleached their slacks so that they looked splotchy."
Rei frowned. "That is asinine."
"Yea, pretty much," I said with a shrug. "Anyway, I challenged their leader to a fight. I beat him, but then the rest of the Splotches joined in. I ran for it, but caught a rock to the back of the head. Tyrone-he was their leader-well, he got me alone. He tried to finish the job with another rock. When the rock came down, I sort of blocked the blow with my left hand. Then something happened, and I felt energy course through me."
Rei nodded. "You absorbed the kinetic energy with an extraction field and conduited the energy through your body. A favorite tactic of cataphracts. What did you trans.m.u.te the energy into?"
"Trans.m.u.te? I don"t know what that means. I just grabbed Tyrone"s head with my right hand and then it sorta just blew off...along with part of the school building."
Rei"s jaw dropped, which was discomforting. Her fangs were taking some time to get used to. "Do you mean to tell me that the next time you attempted a trans.m.u.tation, you decided to point your hand at me?"
I cringed. "Um...sorry?"
Rei started laughing. "Truly, you are mad, Dieter Resnick."
I couldn"t muster a laugh, myself. I was thinking of Tyrone. Tyrone was an a.s.shole, but I hadn"t wanted to kill him.
Sure we did, a voice muttered in my head. And we loved doing it too.
I looked around in confusion. What the h.e.l.l was that?
Rei"s laughter kinda died off. She looked slightly distressed. "Dieter, I do not believe you enjoyed it. And I do not believe you should feel guilty. You do not have any control over your faculties. Novice mages cannot manage manaflows until they are properly trained. Proper trans.m.u.tations require focus and a clear image of what you want to accomplish." Rei"s face soured. "Or so I"m told."
"Um, Rei?" It was my turn to look confused. "I didn"t say a word of that out loud. How did you know what I was thinking?"
She shrugged. "It is a side effect of the partnering. Think nothing of it."
I cringed. If Rei could sense what I was thinking, she might have a pretty good idea what I saw in her head. "Rei. I"m sorry for what happened in the railcar. I didn"t expect that to happen."
"Again, my most uneasy parcel, I do not fault you. You are unskilled. A neophyte. I apologize if you witnessed anything...distasteful. Just avoid making eye contact. It enhances the link"s potency. Once we get to Elliot, we can distance ourselves and let the weft-link fade."
Interesting. Rei didn"t know what I saw. It wasn"t a two-way street. Through this "weft-link" you could see something inside the other person, but the other person didn"t know what you saw?
Creepy.
"Rei, what is this weft-link thingy you keep talking about? What is partnering?"
"A discussion would be meaningless. You don"t even understand the basics."
"Come on, Rei, just start me on the basics then. Do you have anything more pressing to attend to?"
Rei sighed. "Partnering has to do with combat." Pausing to collect her thoughts, Rei dangled her slender legs off the side of the railcar and began kicking them back and forth like she had done in the office. "There are two basic forms of fighting: close combat and ranged combat. Casting can pack quite a wallop, but very few of the Magi can cast effectively while engaged in close combat."
Wallop? My grandma was the last person I heard use that word. I brushed that aside and tried to focus on her point. "So what you"re saying is that magic is like a long-range weapon?"
"Indeed," Rei said, gesturing with her hands. "Distance can improve a cast"s effectiveness because a good cast requires both time and concentration to pull off properly. You can think of most mages like you do howitzer cannons. Howitzers can cause incredible damage at a distance, but they are most vulnerable if attacked at close range."
"So if you were to engage a mage in combat, you would try to close distance with him. And if you were a mage...oh, I get it! In the warehouse, the goal of those thugs was to hold you at bay long enough for the tall man to cast at you from a distance."
"Indeed," Rei said, growing more animated. It was the first time she had taken the lead in one of our conversations. "The Magi often employ fodder to cover their casts. I was fortunate today. This "tall man," as you call him, was weak. His attacks were slow enough to dodge. Given the same amount of time, a stronger magus would have, say, blown my head off." Rei smiled at me, but I was too distracted to catch the flattery. Had Rei just called that maniac weak? Stars above, if that guy was weak, what was a strong spell slinger like?
I scratched my head. One thing still didn"t make sense. "Rei, you just called those two thugs fodder. You didn"t call them partners."
Rei laughed out loud. "Dieter, partnering is completely different."
What did she mean? If a partner wasn"t merely there to cover your casts...
"Oh." My eyes widened. "Do you mean to tell me you can cast spells on your allies too?"
Rei grinned. "Indeed. But it is not that simple, Dieter. Magic can strengthen bodies, harden resolve and keen senses; however, such work is not easy. Humans are complex beings, Dieter. They have many moving parts. Toying with them can have...unantic.i.p.ated consequences."
An image of a human puddle popped into my head.
"I"m guessing there"s a loophole?"
"There are a few," Rei said with a nod. "A magus can circ.u.mvent these challenges by binding themselves to another. This harmonizes the flows. In the European tradition, the other was traditionally a knight. The binding forms a conduit between them in which mana can flow safely." Rei smiled. "Conduiting mana in is this manner is most helpful in killing all manner of things."
"Wait a minute, Rei." A cold shiver ran down my spine. "You said a binding. Do you mean that you and I are like, stuck together somehow?" I didn"t know what a binding was, but I could use my imagination. The idea of being fused to another person was seriously creepy.
"Our weft-link is of a temporary nature," Rei said stiffly. "It is incomplete, and as I have already told you twice, it will wear off with time and distance." She stood and dusted off her pants. "The inconvenience will be over soon. You have nothing to worry about."
Had I said something wrong? I didn"t get it. And Rei hadn"t even answered the most important part. "Rei," I asked, chasing after her, "does partnering explain how you cut that guy in half? How did you do that, anyway?"
Rei checked her watch. "Enough talk. We are about to arrive in New Haven. Retrieve your bag, Resnick. We need to change to a local train at the station. Dean Albright will fret if we are late."
My shoulders drooped. I guess it was back to business. Women confused me. One minute they were happily chatting away about how to crush your enemies and have them kneel before you, and the next minute they were ordering you off a train. I didn"t want to start an argument, so I followed Rei into the railcar and did as I was told. Besides, I was tired; it had been a long day.