Blood Engines(98)

 

 

 

 

B found the entrance to the Celestial’s shop easily, and also saw the golden threads shimmering at chest-height across the doorway. He figured they were meant to be invisible. But B could see through things like that, more and more—apparently his spirit-eyes benefited from all the exercise he’d been giving them, as they seemed to grow more acute with each passing hour. It was disconcerting; the corners and shadows of the world increasingly teemed with potential and present spirits, and B could see them all, beating their ragged wings against the membrane that separated this reality from whatever strange lands lay beyond. He could blind himself to the creatures to an extent, let them fade into the background of his awareness, but they never went away completely. His whole life was beginning to resemble one of those dreams, full of just-glimpsed mysteries and portentous commonplaces. In a way, it was a relief to be so fully immersed in this uncanny world—he no longer felt on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. He almost felt as if he belonged. None of which made him more comfortable about the prospect of entering a sorcerer’s workshop with murder in mind.

 

Ducking beneath the golden threads to avoid setting off any traps or tattletales, he crept into the shop as quietly as possible. The wreckage from earlier remained, but there were no people inside, at least not in the front room. B stepped carefully through the broken bottles, crushed canisters, and scattered herbs, striving for the stealth and grace he’d often playacted in his movies.

 

Voices emanated from beyond the twisted, blackened metal counter at the rear of the shop. The concealed door was slightly ajar. B couldn’t make out the words coming from behind the door—his extraordinary senses didn’t extend into the auditory realm, apparently—but he thought the language might be some sort of Chinese. B crept forward and pushed open the door to the back room a bare quarter of an inch more and peered inside. The room was lit by lanterns with red shades, reminding him uncomfortably of the emergency lights on Bethany’s train. In the flickering light, the shadows seemed to squirm. Rondeau was there, past the surgical table, bound to a chair with duct tape, his mouth sealed over. He looked incredibly bored. The Celestial was there, too, along with the apprentice, and seeing how fiercely the younger one gesticulated and spoke, and how submissively the older one nodded and stared down, B had no doubt that Rondeau was right about the older sorcerer stealing the younger one’s body. The younger one was really the Celestial, so she was the one B had to destroy. That meant the apprentice would never get her real body back, and that was sad, but B didn’t have much choice.

 

B took a slow breath, preparing himself to reverse the cloak. In that moment, he saw something glimmering in the room beyond, tiny filaments like the ones spread across the door, but while those had been golden, these were red. In the red light they were nearly invisible, even to his eyes, which meant anyone else would have likely walked straight into them. The filaments crisscrossed the front half of the room thoroughly, from wall to wall and ceiling to floor, forming a somewhat messy grid that cut B off from Rondeau and the others as surely as a wire fence would have. He didn’t know what they did, but he suspected it was nothing good. If the golden wires at the front door had been meant merely to notify the Celestial of Marla’s arrival, then these red wires were likely meant for uglier purposes.

 

What was B supposed to do now? The cloak gave him great power, but of a strictly physical nature. If he couldn’t get to the sorcerer, he couldn’t hurt him, and that meant he didn’t have any edge at all.

 

“Marla!” the Celestial shouted. “I hear you breathing, you sneaking creeping bitch. You’ve come early. Enter, and bring Ch’ang Hao so that I may leash him.”

 

There wasn’t much point in trying to run away, and B at least had the element of surprise—or, at least, bewildering inexplicability—on his side. He pushed open the door and stepped in, careful to keep far back from the red filaments.

 

“You are not Marla,” the Celestial said. “But you are wearing her clothes. Don’t tell me she sent an apprentice to deal with me.”

 

“Why not?” B said. “You’re talking to me through your apprentice, aren’t you?” He looked toward the old man. There was no reason to let the Celestial know that B was aware of his body-swapping tendencies. Marla hadn’t told him much about the ways of sorcerers, but she had made it clear that a secret was something to be held and valued.

 

“My master does not wish to sully his lips by speaking the foul bitch’s name,” the Celestial said smoothly. “Come closer, apprentice, so that I may give you a message to take to your bitch mistress.”