The Collected Christopher Connery Page 13

  When she was done, she handed the spell to Gail, who studied it for a moment. “What do I have to do?”

  “Just hold it against the door. Once it’s making contact, it should trigger automatically.”

  Gail took a step toward the door then hesitated for a few seconds, hand hovering above the knob.

  Nia clasped her hands together tightly. Please don’t look too hard. If you start seeing the spiders, they will see you as well and we’ll be right back where we started.

  Then Gail shrugged and pressed her hand flat to the door. One spider was hunched just beneath her hand, but it just continued winding web around a captured fly. Nia felt the magic take effect and saw Gail jump as if she had received a static shock.

  There was a soft click.

  Gail looked back at Nia as the spider crawled out from beneath her fingers. “Is it open?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now please take your hand off of the door,” said Arthur, “because –” He broke off when Nia shot him a look. The last thing they needed was Gail picturing the spiders touching her.

  Gail’s hand moved to the door handle, passing through layers of spider web as if they were made of smoke. “Shall we get this over with?”

  Nia nodded. “Yes, I think so.”

  “We could just live here instead,” said Arthur, but Gail was already opening the door to the heart of Connery’s illusion.

  23

  Nia Graves

  Nia led the way into the basement, holding her dressing gown tight against her body to prevent any of the spiders from catching hold of it. She didn’t know if they could leave the door, but why take the risk?

  Focused as she was on keeping spiders off of her pajamas, she didn’t take her first look at the basement until she had taken several steps inside. When she finally did look around, she cursed Connery with all the hate in her heart.

  They had found the basement at last. There were shelves stacked high with cardboard boxes and old linen. She could see the boiler burning brightly against the far wall.

  And then there were the arms.

  Dozens, no, hundreds of arms, piled on top of each other in heaps.

  Gail stepped up to Nia’s shoulder and described the situation with admirable succinctness. “Well, we’re fucked now.”

  Arthur stumbled into the room a moment later, kicking the door closed with a disgusted grunt. “If I never see another spider again it will be too – oh, what the hell?”

  Another admirable summation.

  Nia didn’t know where to start. There was magic that could point them to the right set of arms, of course, but without the head… Nia pressed her knuckles to her temples in frustration. Now she would have to wade through a sea of disembodied arms, checking each individually, and she did not have time for this…

  “Nia!” Arthur’s voice was hushed but sharp as he stared around the room. “Nia, what are we going to do now?”

  “Oh, goodness, Arthur, it’s not as if you haven’t seen this kind of thing before,” Nia replied in a whisper.

  “He has?” said Gail. “And why are we whispering again?”

  “I’m a surgeon, remember?” Arthur whispered back. Then he rolled his eyes and repeated himself at normal volume. “I’m a surgeon, so yes, I’ve seen amputated limbs, but not on the floor and not piles of them.”

  Nia pursed her lips as she gazed out over the gory ocean. “Only one pair is real, we just have to find them.” She looked over at Gail. “I assume you’re seeing exactly what Arthur and I are?”

  “You mean a whole bunch of arms? Yeah.” Putting her hands on her hips, Gail squinted across the room. “But there aren’t really this many, are there? There’s just the two and Connery’s messing with us. Unless… No, I don’t think even Connery would have a severed arm collection. Hopefully. Anyway, I guess I could try not to see what you two are seeing, just give me a sec.” She breathed deeply and closed her eyes.

  Nia watched her face closely, wondering if she could actually do it. Illusions like this, illusions hardwired into the spell itself, were always harder to see through, because they were designed to affect as wide an audience as possible. Nia’s earlier spells had stopped – or mostly stopped – the illusion from cherry-picking inside their memories for inspiration, but that didn’t have any effect on the illusion’s constant set pieces. But the spiders had been a set piece as well and Gail had seen through them, so perhaps… The frayed ends of Nia’s earmuffs tickled the back of her neck and she pulled it off irritably. She listened hard for a moment, but heard only the crackling fire in the boiler. The tension in her chest eased a little. That part of the illusion, at least, seemed to be finished.

  Then Gail opened her eyes and said, “Huh.”

  “Huh what?” said Arthur, following Nia’s example and pulling off his earmuffs.

  “I’ll tell you one thing, Connery did not have a severed arm collection.” Gail was grinning.

  Nia couldn’t resist grabbing Gail’s arm and half-bouncing with excitement. “Can you see them? The real arms?”

  Gail’s face fell. “No. To be honest, I don’t see any arms anymore.”

  “That’s a start!” Finally, things seemed to be looking up. “They are definitely here somewhere. We just have to find them. Well, you have to find them.” She smiled apologetically. “I could check all the arms I see one at a time, but then I’m afraid we would be here for a very, very, very –”

  “Okay, okay, I get the idea.” Gail rubbed her hands together and started across the room. Nia followed, trying to ignore the brush of cold clammy skin against her legs and absolutely not imagining those limp hands reaching up to grab her.

  Walking fearlessly ahead of her, Gail murmured to herself. “Now if I were going to hide some dismembered arms, where would I put them…?”

  “I really hope you can’t actually answer that question,” Arthur called from his spot by the door, which he had pointedly not moved from since they had entered the basement.

  “I know they’re in here somewhere,” said Nia. She could feel them, tingling like eyes on her back, but she couldn’t pinpoint the source among the rest of the magical noise.

  Gail stopped suddenly, rubbing her forehead.

  “Is your head hurting again?” Nia asked, stomach sinking. Sudden intense pain was worrying; sudden, intense, recurring pain was even more ominous.

  “I’m fine.” Gail dropped her hands and blinked her eyes a few times. “It was just a twinge, nothing to worry about.”

  Nia put her hands on her hips. “Detective, I hope you’re not one of those people who constantly maintains they are ‘fine’ when they are in fact ‘not fine,’ because as admirable as it is to not wish to worry others, in a situation like this, it is important to be frank. We are supposed to be a team and – Are you laughing at me?”

  Gail did a very poor job of twisting her grin down into a scowl. “Of course not, princess. Trust me, if my head starts hurting like it did back by the kitchen, you’ll be the first to know. Probably because I’ll lying on the floor screaming.”

  When Gail turned to squint into a dark corner, Nia asked, “Why do you call me that?”

  “Call you what?”

  “Princess. ‘Doc,’ I understand given Arthur’s profession, but princess?”

  Gail chuckled. “Sorry, yeah, I probably should have guessed. Anyway, I call you princess because you’re an Illuminator, which means you’re smart and in charge of just about everyone – and you dress nice. Does it bother you? I’ll stop if it does. I’m always making up dumb names for people. Got the habit from my dad.”

  Nia was still caught on the sudden rush of compliments. Did she dress nice? She tried, of course, but at the moment she was standing in a basement in only her nightgown and a one-sleeved dressing gown. She realized she was tugging on a lock of hair and stopped herself with a low embarrassed cough. “No, it doesn’t bother me. I was just curious about the choice of epithet.”

  “Well, now you know.” Gail s
miled at her and Nia was startled to find herself blushing. Then the detective turned away and went, “Oh hey, what do we have here?”

  As Nia watched, Gail strode across the room, bent down, and picked up a single arm by the hand. It had been lying close to the wall, obscured by many others, though Nia supposed that, for Gail, it had been hidden by no more than a shadow.

  Gail wrinkled her nose as she studied the arm. “I can’t believe he actually agreed to be hacked up like this. You couldn’t get me to do this even if you did convince me I could come back to life afterwards. Well, here’s one anyway.” She moved to toss it behind her, but Nia rushed forward to catch it.

  “Careful, detective! We don’t want to lose it again.”

  “Oh, right. I forgot.” Gail held awkwardly to the other end of the arm. “You sure you don’t mind touching it? I can carry it if you want.”

  “Oh no, we all receive extensive biological education at the Academy. I’m actually certified to perform autopsies!”

  “Oh. Good.” Gail bent down and picked up with the second arm. After handing that one to Nia as well, she rubbed her eyes. “Ow, damn, is the air really dry in here or is it just me?”

  Nia almost dropped the arms.

  Gail’s eyes were bleeding.

  She gave Nia a puzzled smile. “What is it?” She glanced down at her hand, at the streaks of red across the knuckles. “Oh.” She wiped her left eye and looked again. “Oh god… I’m guessing that’s bad.” She stared at Nia as blood ran in narrow streams down her cheeks. Then her legs gave out and she collapsed on a pile of severed limbs.

  “What happened?” Arthur was running toward them. “Nia, what –” He broke off with a strangled cry as he was suddenly grabbed by several pairs of hands. He tried to tear free, but for every hand he managed to pry off, another lurched across the floor to take its place.

  Nia watched in mute horror as Arthur fell forward on his hands and knees. The arms grabbed his hair and face, dragging him flat. She heard him scream.

  A hand closed on her arm. She whipped around, tearing at the fingers until she realized they belonged to Gail. The detective stared at her with bloody eyes. Her lips moved, but Nia didn’t understand her.

  “What?” Another hand had fastened onto her leg and she knew this one didn’t belong to Detective Lin.

  Arthur screamed again, but it was weaker this time, choked and wet.

  Gail reached out and took Connery’s arms from Nia, clutching them tight to her chest. Then she spoke again, a hoarse whisper that barely reached Nia’s ears.

  “Break it.”

  Break the illusion? No, she couldn’t, not like this. Such spells required calm and care, if she got it wrong then –

  “Nia!” Arthur’s voice, broken with pain.

  Gail, holding the arms tighter, nodded.

  A hand gripped Nia’s shoulder, the fingers crawling like spider legs toward her throat. Not wasting another moment, she ripped the makeshift bandage off of her hand and sliced open the scab. Blood ran down her wrist as cold fingers clamped down on her windpipe. She held on tight to her last breath and smeared her blood across the only empty patch of floor she could reach.

  The spell was clumsy and crude, limited by her choice of medium and the hand attempting to strangle her, but she all she had to do was destabilize the illusion, just a little tear in the pocket reality, just a tiny, tiny rip and…

  Gail choked and blood splashed across her chin.

  Nia’s eyesight was failing, but a soft shuffling sound made her look up from her smeared circle. The arms on the other side of the room had twisted together, rising up in a great mass, fingers flexing as it heaved itself up from the floor. She could just barely make out Arthur’s broken body twisted inside the hideous golem.

  “No,” she whispered. She reached back and managed to tear the hand from her throat long enough to squeeze more blood from her wounded hand and finish her circle. She could do this, she could stop this, she could save them.

  Then she heard it. The song again. So soft, but coming closer. She knew if she looked up she would see her mother standing over her, watching her with sad but understanding eyes. She would stroke Nia’s hair like she used to.

  Then she would probably take Nia’s head between her hands and snap her neck, because that was not her mother’s voice and that was not her mother.

  Nia could feel Connery’s magic trying to hold itself together, to dig fingers into her mind.

  That won’t work this time. Nia smashed her bloody hand down on the circle.

  The illusion shattered.

  24

  Gail Lin

  Everything exploded into color and silence. Gail felt like she was trapped inside a kaleidoscope, the world shimmering and stretching around her, her ears finding only aching emptiness.

  Then, like a bursting bubble, the illusion fell away. Gail found herself curled on her side, a pair of severed arms clutched against her chest. The rumbling of the boiler was painfully loud. Rolling on to her hands and knees, she was happy to find the floor free of severed limbs – except, of course, for the ones she was holding. When she touched her face, her fingers came away damp with sweat but unbloodied.

  Yikes. That had been – well, she guessed it was about time her nightmares had gotten some new material.

  As she climbed to her feet, she saw Nia bent over Arthur who remained sprawled on the floor, fighting for breath. Kicking Connery’s arms aside, she hurried over and dropped to a crouch beside Nia. “Is he all right?”

  Nia’s head snapped up, her eyes a bit too wide and a bit too bright. “You’re not hurt?”

  “I’m fine, but what about him?”

  Swallowing hard, Nia clenched her injured hand until blood ran down her wrist. “In a moment, he will be fine.”

  Gail could only watch with a mixture of admiration and disgust as Nia used her own blood to draw a healing spell around Arthur. When she triggered it, Arthur gave a sharp gasp and his chest popped outward like someone had inflated him with a bicycle pump.

  His ribs were crushed, Gail realized. That’s why he couldn’t breathe.

  Nia pushed the sweat-damp hair off of Arthur’s forehead and managed to smile down into his frightened face. “You’re all right now, Arthur, you’re all right.” Then she sagged forward and Gail barely caught her before she fell across Arthur’s newly healed chest.

  “Hey, princess,” she said worriedly as she held the limp magician against her chest. “What did you to yourself?”

  “I’m fine,” Nia mumbled.

  “Whatever happened to being frank?” Gail lifted Nia’s injured hand, hissing when she saw the angry red gash on the palm.

  “I am being frank. I’m just… tired. It’s been a long…” She didn’t get the rest of the words out before her head fell heavily against Gail’s collarbone. There was a moment when Gail was afraid she had just up and died, but no, if she held still enough, she could feel Nia’s heart beating. Its rhythm was a little too quick, but it was there.

  “Okay, princess,” she said, giving Nia’s hair an awkward pat. “We’ll get you up to bed and you can rest.”

  Nia, out cold, didn’t answer.

  “Is she all right?” asked Arthur. He was trying to sit up, but it was as if he had a pile of invisible rocks on his chest.

  “She’s fine, just out of it. Don’t you think you should rest for a second?”

  “I don’t want to stay down here any longer than I have to.” He did a lot of groaning and wincing as he clumped to his feet, but he made it. “What happened to me? I remember…” Then he shuddered and shook his head. “On second thought, maybe I don’t want to remember.” His eyes flicked over to the other side of the basement where Gail had left Connery’s arms. “So we actually found them. I wasn’t sure that really happened.”

  “I’m not sure any of that really happened,” Gail replied, “but yeah, we got the arms, whatever good they’ll do us.”

  “At least this means we’re closer to don
e. We’re lucky he didn’t hide each finger individually.”

  Gail groaned. “Don’t even say that.” I don’t care what good it’ll do, I’m not spending the rest of my life hunting for Connery’s toes and strands of hair.”

  “We won’t need to find his hair,” Nia said faintly into Gail’s shirt. “You don’t need hair to…” Her voice faded into the deeper breaths of what Gail hoped was true sleep.

  Arthur smiled down at them, though Gail thought the expression looked a bit ragged. “We should get her upstairs. Do you want me to carry her?”

  Gail looked doubtfully at Arthur’s shaky legs. He had a lean kind of strength to him, sure, but after the beating he’d taken, she didn’t think he was up to carrying his own coat.

  “Why don’t we carry her between us,” she said finally. “That way we’ll be sure not to drop her and it’ll look less suspicious. We can just say she had too much wine with lunch.”

  Arthur raised an eyebrow doubtfully. “In a bloody, shredded nightgown?”

  “Way too much wine.” But he had a point. Gail wriggled out her coat and pulled it over the sleeping magician’s shoulders. She was just about to try to work Nia’s arms through the sleeves when another idea occurred to her.

  “Hey, doc, bring me the arms.”

  “Ah, the doc thing, I’d hoped that was part of the illusion too.” But he did what she said, plucking the arms up by the thumbs and carrying them back with his own arms outstretched to keep Connery’s limbs as far from him as possible. When he dropped the arms beside Gail, she picked up one and set it against Nia’s coat-covered shoulder. They weren’t going to be quite the right length – Connery had been a good bit taller than Nia – but it would serve until they got back to their rooms.

  Arthur’s face wrinkled in disgust as Gail began working the arm into the sleeve. “Ugh, you can’t be serious.”