“I wish we had more time together, Miss Gallow. There are a so many things that I would like to talk to you about. I think that one day we will meet again, as we are now. Maybe then we can talk more. I sincerely regret what I have to do, now. To make it up to you, I’m going to fix Xia, too, okay? I know how protective you are of him.”
Alice’s instinct, her drive for survival, was primal and fundamental to her nature. Even in her lulled, half- conscious state, she reacted apprehensively to what she perceived as a threat.
“I’m sorry, truly — but I can’t allow you to remember any of this. With your condition that seems particularly cruel. However, I’m being indulgent — there is a child I that I spoil, I’m afraid, and there is a boy that she is fond of. He won’t make it if you don’t. I’m counting on you, Miss Gallow, even if you won’t remember me. If you can remember anything, remember this: the Church of Sleep, Miss Gallow. They are always watching us…”
There was an interval that was lost to her. Not forgotten, not exactly. Lost like a dream to morning sunlight.
Alice picked herself up and dusted herself off, and then probed her bruised head and jaw hesitantly, as if she expected it to break if she handled it roughly. She tried to remember, and she could only recall snippets, bits and pieces of what had happened after Mitsuru had gone berserk. She felt sad about it, and that usually meant that she’d forgotten something good, something that had made her happy. She shrugged it off with the benefit of long experience.
Poking at her jaw with her index finger, Alice Gallow walked through the rubble and wreckage that dotted the site of Mitsuru and Leigh’s battle, wondering what had happened, wondering if anyone else was still alive. There was something, stuck like a barb on the surface of her mind, an itch she couldn’t scratch. Her mind insisted on returning to it, like remembering a melody but forgetting the words, vague but insistent, infuriating. She tried to think in his direction.
“Gaul?”
“It’s about time. Pull yourself together. There are things that must be done, and you, Chief Auditor, are the one who needs to do them.”
Today, Alice thought, is going to be a big day for the old diary.
There was something wrong with these Weir. They were… twisted, somehow. Malformed. Hideous and rank, their skin crawling with tumors and sores, their features obscured and deformed. Alex couldn’t help but wonder if they were somehow already dead.
Katya ducked underneath the outstretched arms of one of them, and one of three needles she clutched in her left hand disappeared. The Weir’s howl was muffled, as she had impaled it with a needle through the jaw and into the skull. She opened her hand and the other two needles disappeared, and the Weir behind it fell as well. Then it was his turn, stepping up behind her. He had practiced it dozens of times, but he had never felt more nervous than with a Weir lunging at him and nothing else at all to rely on. He reached out his hand, using his arm as a rough visual guide. Wait until the Weir was twice as far… Katya had taught him to aim, and he did, for the point right between the beast’s eyes…
The Black Door skidded open a crack. Alex let a little bit of the cold in through an opening the size of a pinhole. The blood in the Weir’s brain froze, along with some of its head and most of its eyes. The creature made a ghastly sound, and then fell to the ground and twitched as its nervous system died in shock.
“You only need to freeze like five centimeters, max,” Katya scolded. “You’re still overdoing it.”
She walked over to the Weir he had killed, and kicked its head experimentally.
“It’s like someone poured a slushy inside a pumpkin,” Katya observed dryly, then paused, and looked away. “But you did pretty good, all in all. You’re still slow, but I don’t feel quite as bad about you watching my back.”
“I’m going to accept that as a compliment,” Alex said happily, “because I know it’s as close as I’m going to get. Look, we do this, and I’m gone, okay? We get Rebecca back on her feet, and then I’m going back down to Central.”
“Through the woods,” Katya said coolly, tapping her foot impatiently.
“Yeah.”
“Which are filled with…? I don’t know. Anathema, I suppose. Lots of them.”
“Well, yeah. I mean, I have to, right?”
“I suppose,” Katya mused. “The only other girl in the world who was willing to sleep with you decided that she preferred death, so your options for the future are limited.”
“Hey,” Alex said, genuinely hurt and not fully able to disguise it. “That’s really harsh, even for you.”
“Sorry. You’re just going to have to deal with it.”
“Well, whatever. I have to go for Eerie. I said some things that I wish I hadn’t… and now that I think about it,” Alex said, wondering why he was confessing this to Katya, of all people, “there are some things that I want to say that I should have said. Right now, I’m trying not to compound my mistakes. So, while I appreciate your help, I’d appreciate it even more if you would lay the fuck off. Please.”
Katya regarded him narrowly. It could have gone either way. He wasn’t sure how many of the needles she had left woven into the lining of her jacket, and he found himself watching her hands intently. Then she shrugged and walked off, toward the gate, stepping neatly over the corpse of the Weir, head steaming from internal temperature deferential.
They made it halfway to the gate, which seemed good, given how crowded the woods seemed to be tonight. At least, for variety’s sake, they managed to stumble over the next group of Anathema, rather than vice versa. Both Weir looked very surprised. The human — well, no, Alex reminded himself; the Anathema with them looked even more so.
Katya threw one of her needles at him, overhand, and he ducked to avoid it, reaching for his gun. It flickered out of sight in mid-air, holding onto the momentum when it reappeared somewhere inside of him, emerging, point first, from the right side of his chest, poking out from between his ribs. He dropped the gun he’d been holding and stared at it in horror. Alex held out his hand, measuring from there, and waited for the Weir to move. He didn’t have to wait very long.
They were faster than he anticipated, and he almost didn’t get the first one, on the way in, which would have been a problem, because Katya was still digging through her pockets. He had to try twice, in rapid succession, unpleasantly aware that every pinhole meant a few more hours of his life lost to dreamless, hollow sleep. His first attempt grazed the back of the Weir’s skull. The second one hit the mark, and the thing fell down in the same horrible convulsions. Alex spun to face the final Weir, knowing the he would be too late to stop it, wondering if Katya had worked anything out.
The Weir dropped to its knees in coughing, choking spasms, close enough that Alex could smell its foul breath. He turned and looked at Katya gratefully as the thing died.
“Fuck, man, I thought you were out of needles or something,” Alex gasped, his hands on his knees. “I would’ve been dead.”
“Actually,” Katya said modestly. “I did kind of run out of… accessible needles. I actually killed that one with a handful of dirt. Whatever works, right?”
“Accessible?”
Katya blushed.
“Yeah, can we not talk about that?”
“Right,” Alex said, turning back toward the gate. “You’re right. How do you think we should do this? Do we walk right in, or what?”
As they walked along, he could hear clothing rustle and shift behind him. He risked one quick look back, and caught her fussing with her skirt lining, and got a good idea about where the “inaccessible” needles were stored. Then Katya caught him looking and glared, and he sort of wished he hadn’t.
As much as Alex tried to keep his mind on other things, it returned again and again to Emily. He recalled the strange things she’d said, the water bleeding out of her skin, watching her disintegrate in his arms; it was like a sore in his mind, constantly threatening to occupy his attention. When he actually gave in and tried to think the whole scene through, though, Alex drew a complete blank. His mind fixated and recoiled over the sheer horror and impossibility of the situation. Alex remembered what she looked like in her white dress on a sunny afternoon not so long ago, on the other side of the Gate he and Katya were cautiously approaching now, and it caused pain that ran right through him, nestling in his chest as if it planned to stay. However, if he had been asked to explain, there
