The Conclave of Shadow (19 page)

David must have said something. I vaguely registered a flare of light when he left. I think Asha might have jostled my arm to snap me out of my daze. I paid her no mind. I was fixated on watching that oozing blood sluggishly gloop down onto the sigils, watching the script catch and burst into dark flames. They raced around the circle and flared at the center where the titanium burned, dampening the orange flames into a smoky gleam. The air around us vibrated like the center of a Tesla coil. It stank of sun-warmed asphalt.

“Anne?” I whispered.

The Lady took her scarf – my scarf? – and wrapped it around her arm. “Yes.”

“And you knew my grandfather.”

“Yes.”

I shook my head, even as I spoke aloud the next logical step. “And he took… something… from you.”

The Lady's gaze bored into mine. “Yes.”

“Are you–?”

“The call comes. Later, I will explain.”

And she was gone. I stared at the place where a moment before the Lady had stood. Eventually, Asha's elbow jostling got through to me.

“– don't snap out of it, I am going to slap you.”

“Wha–?” I blinked at her. Didn't she realize? Didn't she comprehend?
Anne
.

Abby had been right. It was strange that I'd never questioned. Never wondered.

“Just… nothing. Put your hat on. It's time to go.”

Asha dragged me, stumbling, over the activated ritual circle to the darkly glowing titanium orb. The thunder of many boots echoed up the circular stairwell. The Conclave knights had broken in. They were coming.

I donned my hat and let her drag me through fire once more.

R
incon Hill isn't much
of a hill anymore. A century of development has leveled it until all that remains is a small rise of hardscrabble ground framed by towering office buildings and bisected by the last on-ramps and off-ramps before the 880 feeds onto the Bay Bridge on the way to Treasure Island.

The first thing I noticed after the screaming pain faded was the rumble of the 880 traffic overhead, the thump-thump of tires crossing bridge seams at sixty miles per hour. The second thing I noticed was a soft, heavy weight landing on my back, pressing me down into the grime and dirt of a vacant triangle of land. Jagged pebbles and bits of shattered glass and grit pressed into my cheek as the weight bore me down. Above me, much closer than the bridge overpass, a rumble started up loud enough to make my body vibrate.

Shit. I had a pretty good notion of what – or who – was sitting on me.

“I thank you, firespawn, for bringing my quarry to me.” Lao Hu's voice rumbled right above my left ear. My fingers scraped through the dirt as I searched for some way around my helplessness. “You have spared me an annoying hunt.”

“And you helped me out of a very annoying – and binding – contract.” Asha's voice came from somewhere behind me. All I could see from my tiger-trapped vantage was the slope of the verge leading down to an underpass, my new motorcycle parked on the sidewalk on the other side of a chain-link fence. The grimy freeway wall cast a shadow across the ground just beyond my reach. Asha's booted feet moved into view. “Though of course I would still appreciate payment.”

“As we agreed. I will deliver it to you after I've dealt with this one and her master.” Something soft and meat-scented nuzzled my hat off my head.

I twisted as best I could under Lao Hu's paw so that I could see Asha when I told her off.

Abby beat me to it. “You vindictive bitch! I should have known you'd pull something like this–”

“Oh, I'm the bitch?” Asha strode out of my line of sight again. Lao Hu growled when I stretched to try to track her. “Who enslaved someone else to force their cooperation? Oh. Right. Not me.”

“So that's how you rationalize selling us out? I hope the payoff is worth it.”

“Lao Hu has kindly agreed to retrieve Father's carpet. So yes. I would say that it is worth it.”

Silence fell, save for the roar of traffic and Lao Hu's purr. My shifting about had inched me closer to the stripe of shadow cast by the overpass. I kicked my feet to distract attention from my creeping hand.

“What of the nodes?” said a new voice, the Lady, speaking to Asha. So at least Abby's summoning had worked. “Will you still help us attune them?”

Asha's laugh was as grating as the grit and glass beneath my cheek. But it also provided another welcome distraction for Lao Hu. My fingers dug further forward.

“Let me introduce you to a colorful little phrase called ‘not my circus, not my monkeys.'”

“Does that mean no?”

“Yeah. It means no.”

“Then I have no use for you.”

My quest to touch the overpass shadow became moot. The shadow darkened and expanded to encompass everything around me. I heard the beginnings of Asha's screams, but they cut off as I took the escape offered and dove into the Shadow Realms.

Not that it helped any. Lao Hu was still an immovable weight on my back. The world around us had gone ink dark. In place of the overpass, a massive tangle of roots ran down to the glass-still waters of the bay. I closed my eyes and concentrated.

Lao Hu's paw cuffed my head. “Silly
Lung Bao Hu Zhe
. You cannot escape me. Didn't you learn before that I walk in many realms? Mortal, Elemental, Spirit. And I walk in Shadow too.”

I flinched at the faint prick of claws flexing into the meat of my shoulder through layers of trench coat and mohair wool. “Yeah. Got that. Counted on it, actually. 'Cause you know who else does? Them.”

From under the roots and over them, from the water and the sky, came the remnants of the Lady's army. My Blood-Dimmed Tide rode the crest, a thin line of crimson foam. Estelle flew with the gargoyles, a ragged banshee of lace and light.

Lao Hu lunged off me to meet the onslaught. I rolled away, dug a glow stick from my pocket, and cracked it. Moments later, I was back in the real world. I snatched up my hat and scrambled away from the giant cat who appeared to be attacking the air.

“Masters!” Abby grabbed me and hauled me further away to the questionable safety of the ritual circle. This one was sunk into a five-by-five pit dug into the hill, orange safety cones rimming it and a pile of gravel backfill waiting to fill it. The sigils were embedded into the bedrock in hardened black tar. At the center, another titanium node glowed with fire and shadow, already attuned to both realms.

“Asha?”

Abby glared at the Lady. “I don't know. Not sure I want to. What the fuck is going on with the tiger?”

Lao Hu fought the air, leaping, snapping at nothing behind him, slamming his paws against the freeway wall.

“Cats. They walk in many worlds,” I said.

“He battles my army. They will not hold him long.” The Lady cupped my cheek, “You must attune the nodes.”

I shivered. I had too many questions for her. Who had named her Anne? Why had she shaped herself to look like me? What had my grandfather taken from her? Why had she taken the picture of a younger me? None of my questions were important at the moment. “You expect me to do it? But how? I don't know how–”

“Blood is the quickest key. Blood is the thread that links all things. Your blood is my blood. It will be enough.”

“But what about Alam al-Jinn?” With Asha gone, we were screwed. The suggestion that Abby do it had been a ruse to trick Asha's cooperation. Nothing more.

“For that, you must entice Lao Hu to follow you to each node. I will ensure there is blood.”

Her hand slipped from my cheek, pulling the shadows around my face for me. She stalked towards Lao Hu, fingers lengthening and thickening until they were curved talons, the sort that could reach from under a bed or a car and take you out at the ankles. She lowered into a feral crouch, and any resemblance to me slid from her skin like water. She was the Lady once more, in her cobweb-mended coat.

“Go,” she said, and lunged at Lao Hu.

I went.

I
crouched
low over the body of my motorcycle, weaving through the noontime traffic that choked the Embarcadero. Horns honked at my passage, people on the broad sidewalk waved. I even got some bells from one of the restored F-line streetcars as I passed it by. If I'd been worried about Lao Hu being able to follow my trail on the bike, I needn't have. If he couldn't track me by scent, a few hundred pedestrians would be able to help point the way Mr Mystic had gone. I could only hope that he wanted me badly enough to leave the pedestrians alone.

I skirted Levi Plaza and ditched my bike in a cul-de-sac between office buildings on Sansome. No help for it. I'd have to climb the stairs on foot. I started them two at a time, but by the time I'd crested above the office rooftops – the halfway point, by my reckoning – it was all I could do to keep dragging myself up at a fast walk. My breath burned in my throat, my side ached. I wasted too much time glancing behind me, wondering when Lao Hu would catch up to me, wondering how I was going to lead him to five more nodes. Six, counting Land's End. Wondering how I was going to escape him after that if I did manage the rest.

Wondering if the Lady had managed to escape. The Lady. Anne. My grandmother's name. My… grandmother?

No. I knew better. Mitchell Masters didn't have the best track record with the truth.

“I don't. Bloody well. Have
time
for this shit,” I rasped, using the surge of frustration to push myself up the last few flights of stairs and out into the parking lot for Coit Tower.

“Missy?” Jack was waiting in the center of the parking lot turnabout. He rushed across the empty lot to steady me as I staggered at the top of the steps.

I tore my hat off, bracing my hands on my knees and trying to heave in enough oxygen to satisfy my burning muscles and lungs. “Missy. Mystic. I don't even fucking know anymore.” I ripped away my wig, careless of the pins, and threw it to the ground. Wind cooled the heat coming off my sweat-slicked hair. I blotted my brow against my shoulder.

Jack stopped a few feet away. “What can I do?”

“What do you know?” I hadn't entirely caught my breath, but I forced myself upright, forced myself to move past him. The grass circle in the center of the lot had been torn up, leaving another five-by-five pit surrounded by orange safety cones and a mound of gravel backfill. I jumped down into the pit. Hard black sigils like the one at Rincon Hill were embedded in a circle around an inert node of titanium. Jack's car was parked just on the other side of the pit, the only car in the lot. Bless Argent for coming through.

“Professor Trent called. Told me about Lao Hu and Asha. That you're the one attuning the wards now. And you've got to lure Lao Hu into doing the same.”

“That about covers it.” I jammed my hat atop my head. It felt a little loose without the wig, but at least I wasn't fighting off a pounding headache or heat exhaustion. “I need something to cut myself with.”

Jack handed me a utility knife, the sort used to open boxes and protective packaging. Well, at least it was sharp. I dithered a moment over where to make the slice, settled on the forearm that I'd already slashed up a few days past. I shoved up my sleeve and sliced through a few of the stitches Shimizu had pestered me to sit through. I let the blood drip onto the prepared sigils, and they flared with smoky fire, the same flames that had lit the Alcatraz lighthouse and the Rincon Hill node.

Now I just needed Lao Hu to follow.

“What else can I do?” Jack asked, voice only shaking a little bit. He rarely got to see Mr Mystic in action. Usually, he just dealt with the fallout.

“Get the hell out of here. Tell Shimizu to clear the house.” Russian Hill was my next stop, and I wanted it empty when I got there. “I don't know if Lao Hu's taking hostages, and I don't want to give him reason to try.”

I headed for the stairs, but something, some shift in the shadows among the trees, gave me pause.

“Down!” I tackled Jack out of the way just as a half ton of pissed-off jungle cat launched at us.

Lao Hu sailed over our heads and across the pit, claws tearing up grass and concrete as he tried to stop his slide. He slammed into Jack's car.

“Go!” I shoved Jack ahead of me, scrambling after him. I glanced back. Blood streaked along the grass, and a bloody smear ran along the dent in the side of Jack's car. At the center of the pit, the node flared brighter, a marriage of flame and shadow. Good enough. Time to get the hell out of Dodge.

I raced after Jack and made a running leap for the stairway. I covered half a flight in that first jump before catching the railing and using it to shift direction. I hit the landing and jumped again, vaulted over the next rail down and then the next after that. Going down was so much easier than going up. I'd almost caught up with Jack when I heard the scrape of claws above me.

I couldn't lead Lao Hu to Jack. I balanced on the next rail and made the long leap to the rooftop patio of the neighboring office building. I took out a few plastic deck chairs before I managed to roll to my feet. A low, fifties-modern penthouse covered the other half of the rooftop, a long bank of mirrored windows reflecting the tiger on my tail. I slammed through the access door and into a communal kitchen area. A girl with Disney-villain hair – silky black threaded liberally with silver – shrieked at my entry. Her Cup O' Noodles went flying into the air.

“Apologies. For both myself and the tiger,” I said, slamming my palm against the lift call button and blessing whatever gods looked after me that it opened immediately.

“T-tiger?” she stammered, but I was already in the lift, frantically pressing the close-doors button. They slid shut on the sound of breaking glass and another shriek.

I
burst
through the main doors of the office building and revved my bike into motion just as the screams on Sansome started up. Evidence that Lao Hu had opted for the long jump down from the rooftop. I nearly kneed asphalt leaning into the turn onto Sansome, back tire fishtailing like crazy as I straightened and kicked into high gear the wrong way down a one-way street. A glance in my mirror told me that Lao Hu was closer than I'd ever want him to appear.

He may have been several hundred pounds of bloody-minded murder, but I walked this city every day and rode it when I wasn't walking. I knew it better than he ever would. I cut up Union and across Washington Square Park, passing the Pagoda Palace. Took Filbert to avoid the inevitable snaking line of cars coming down Lombard. Crested the hill leading to Mystic Manor–

– and screeched to a shredded-rubber stop at the gauntlet of news vans clogging my street.

“Bloody hell,” I muttered. My wild city ride must have brought the B-rollers out in force, save that now they were A-rollers, and they were about to get front-row seats.

Something inevitable as death sideswiped my rear tire, sending my bike – and me – spinning into the line of cars parked perpendicular to the steep incline of the street. My bike wedged under a hapless little Fiat just as I jumped free. I landed on top of the Fiat and hopped up the rising line of car rooftops. Launching over the crowd of scrambling news people and cameramen, I sprawled atop the van for KRON-4. I slid chest first to a stop, hand clamped to my head to keep my hat in place.

A few intrepid reporters took the chance to fire off a few asinine questions –
Mr Mystic, are you working with Argent again? Do you have any thoughts about the attack on the California Academy of Sciences? Have you heard the reports about a tiger running loose through the city?