shrine.
The smell of salt water, old wood, and creosote wafted into my nose both on the cold of the Grey and through the normal world. We were at Waterfront Park, only yards from the Great Wheel. I heard shouts as people were thrown aside by the passage of air and ghosts, but I paid them no attention, rushing down a short flight of steps onto the dock itself. I could see the thread between the ghosts and Limos taut and bright a few feet in front of me and I strove to reach it.
The wolf growled behind me. I turned my head just in time to see her leap for me. I rolled sideways, then scrambled back to my feet, putting the shrine down in the shadow of the strange abstract statue of Christopher Columbus that left a dark shape in the Grey as well as in the normal world.
I spun back to face Limos, moving away from the shrine and into the light, nearing the normal world enough to be thinner in the Grey—something wraithlike and weak in both planes—hoping to tempt her to bite at me and ignore the shrine.
The tangle of spirits struck the Great Wheel, making it sway as a storm of fireworks erupted overhead.
Limos lunged at me and I dove sideways, down into the Grey, reaching for the coil of light between her and the ghosts that swarmed over the Wheel, shaking it and raising a howl of unearthly wind. Water blasted up from the bay as if responding to the cry of the starving souls.
I clutched the thread of energy and it burned into my hands with the fire of Limos’s fury and hunger. I wrenched at it with all my might, driving myself down, deeper, into the Grey, toward the grid, stressing the gleaming energy until it blazed too bright to look at and ripped apart.
The broken power recoiled and snapped me away from the grid with the sound of thunder and an explosion of colored fire. I tumbled through the air, in and out of the Grey, back into the normal world, and landed hard on my shoulder against rough wooden dock planks.
The clouds lurking immediately over me tore open above the drifting smoke of the launch mortars and the sparkle of burning phosphor and washed down rain that blazed with reflected color from the distant starbursts of the fireworks.
The Limos wolf pounced from the Grey, dragging me back into the mist world with a snarl and a shake of the head, but the ghosts were no longer hers. They shouted and then rushed outward in a sparkling cloud, vanishing in a sigh and curls of mist. The gust of the Guardian Beast’s roar died away with them.
The dock was breathless in the rain, which looked like streams of light in the Grey. Colored tangles of energy—the Grey shapes of humans—lay everywhere, stunned or struggling to rise from where they’d been thrown by the eldritch wind. I could hear and see the Great Wheel’s operators as bright, shouting shapes scampering around, securing their giant mechanism and checking to see if it was safe and still functioning or if they should shut it down and try to remove people from the glass gondolas with a crane, their mutterings like distant birdcalls.
I at least knew the passengers were all alive and the threat to the Wheel was past. I was half done. But I needed to get back to the shrine and catch Limos in it before I could call this a victory. And I had to do it before she tore me to shreds and devoured me.
I wasn’t used to dealing with gods and I was never sure how much power they could bring to bear on me. This one was well and recently fed, which was a bad thing for me, even without the tribute souls at her beck and call. She was hungry for more and was going to be royally pissed off when she realized her loss.
Startled by the escape of her soul tribute, Limos jerked her head toward the Great Wheel, which stood as a dark shape in the Grey, dangling clustered lights of living human beings from its cold steel arc. I wrenched my leg free of her jaws, feeling those unnatural teeth tearing my flesh, and staggered to my feet. She turned back, glaring at me, her shape fluctuating toward skeletal human, then back toward wolf, the spectral skin melting away and flowing back in streams of quicksilver and spirit fire.
Finally she chose the human form, horrible as it was, and turned back toward me.
“You’ve robbed me,” she said, advancing as I backpedaled unevenly on my injured leg.
“They weren’t yours to take,” I replied, crabbing sideways and stumbling down a misty step toward the weird statue of Columbus, the silver-light rain ringing dull music off its bronze surface.
She streamed forward, clattering bones and chattering teeth as she reached for me, her burning, uncanny gaze on my face as her own melted continually, her bones in hard relief. She wasn’t interested in witty debate. She only wanted to kill me, so great was her fury and disappointment. The Grey didn’t hinder her, but it no longer helped her, either.
I threw myself backward, toward the statue, landing short of the writhing darkness that was the shrine.
Limos fell on me, picking me up and throwing me viciously toward the unyielding shape of the statue.
I twisted in the air, riffling my fingers over the temporaclines and pushing on the first one that predated the statue. I fell through it, passing harmlessly where I should have been smashed into the inert bronze shape . . .
. . . And fell out the other side, into the mist and churn of the Grey again, Limos screaming as she grabbed for me. But the statue I had avoided still blocked her and she had to sweep around it, her bones rattling—if the sound was from her at all. I had not seen or heard the Guardian since I’d fallen over Limos at the dock’s edge. I was certain it was still watching but I couldn’t expect any more help from that quarter. I didn’t need it, though. As Limos circled the statue, I scrambled in the shadow and grabbed the shrine. I pulled it to my chest, doors facing outward. I flicked the latch aside and flung the three sections open. The shrine gaped like a maw and I thrust it toward her as she reached down for me.
She screamed as she touched it and I braced the box between Columbus and my hip as I grabbed onto her bony arms, yanking her forward and into the shrine. The box swallowed her and I slammed the doors shut and latched them, sealing off her shrieks of betrayal. It wasn’t much of a prison, but she’d be stuck in it until someone opened the doors again. Sweeping it into my arms, I held it tight to my body, then I pushed toward the normal and found myself sitting under Columbus, panting, filthy, and bloodied, with the curiously heavy box on my lap.
It was still raining, but the isolated storm was dying out as the fireworks continued in the distance. A man in a reflective yellow coat ran past, heading toward the Great Wheel. I could see other men in various uniforms approaching—firemen, cops, public safety officers, EMTs. I struggled to my feet and limped away from them into the darkness.
“I could use another lift,” I muttered, thinking of the Guardian Beast, but the only response was a chiming of bone spines and what sounded like laughter.
TWENTY-FOUR
I managed to find a pedicab nearby and persuade the owner to take me back to Pioneer Square. He said he’d have to charge me extra for bleeding on his seat, but I didn’t fuss.
Carlos and Quinton stood in a shadow near the door to my office building, waiting for me. Quinton stepped forward and held his hands out to help me from the pedicab’s seat. I flinched with every movement, but I was thrilled to fall into his arms. “What’s a handsome guy like you doing here?” I asked.
“I’d say saving damsels is distress, but it looks like I missed. You’re hurt.”
“I don’t care,” I said and kissed him with all the aching passion and relief I contained.
“I can’t stay,” he said against my mouth. “Will you be OK? I have to get back to Northlake to take care of a few things, but I had to come and see that you were all right. I could feel”—he traced a bruise on my jaw where I’d hit the dock and stroked down to my aching shoulder—“all of this. I wish I’d been here sooner.”
“You didn’t miss anything good. And I’ll be fine.”
“But you know how I love a good fight scene. . . .”
“I suspect we’ll have plenty more in Europe.”
We kissed long and hard enough to garner some whistles from passersby and a shouted “Get a room!” before Quinton let me go to pay the pedicab driver.
“I’ll be back. Very soon,” he said, looking unhappy to be leaving.
“I know,” I said.
