Circling warily, keeping his potentia tightly leashed, he eased himself in for a closer look. Straight away he felt the other Monk flinch. Heard him groan. But he couldn’t let that stop him. He had to keep pushing, no matter the cost. And there was going to be a cost. A bloody steep one.
The other Monk’s sharp discomfort increased. He could feel it now, in his own flesh, a weird kind of echo. Because they were the same man, sort of? More or less? Or because he’d sunk himself so deeply into the man’s etheretic aura that he was starting to lose track of where it ended and his own began?
Either way he’d have to be careful. This was dangerous magic-even for him.
Gritting his teeth he gathered his own potentia closer. Imagined it thin and sharp like a needle, poised to pierce the invisible shadbolt’s poisonous heart. Where was it, anyhow? He could feel it. He could taste it. It was here. Why couldn’t he see it?
Come on, you filthy thing. Come out, come out, wherever you are.
Images were starting to form in his mind. Shards of glass. Sharpened knives. Bits and pieces of barbed wire. Twisted and tangled and embedded in flesh. And the hand that had forged them-the wizard who’d dreamed them, had turned his dreams into a lethal reality Gerald. Oh, Gerald. What happened to you?
Achingly familiar, abhorrently strange, Gerald’s despicably altered thaumic signature tainted every thread of the shadbolt. No doubt about it now. No way to hide. This was Gerald’s doing. The other Gerald. This Monk’s Gerald. He felt a trembling clutch of fear.
I don’t know if I can break this monstrosity. I don’t know the man who made it.
From a long, long way distant he heard himself sob, once. A sound of despair and impending defeat. Then faintly he heard a voice.
“Don’t you dare give up, Monk Markham. We both know you can do this.”
Melissande, being bossy and regal the way only she could. Taking heart from her snippiness, taking heart from her, he steadied his ragged breathing and looked again at the cage in which the other Monk was trapped.
Something tickled his attention. Something familiar. Outlying semi-cants, like the shadbolt he’d broken on Mr. Plummer’s prisoner. Not the same thaumic signature but the same wicked design. Either it was a coincidence-or Gerald and their mysterious black market wizard had been reading the same books. Even though this was awful, he nearly laughed.
His Gerald had told him exactly how to break through this kind of lock. After doing it twice he was practically an expert. And once the correct sequence of semi-cants was triggered, the rest of the shadbolt should just… melt away. All he had to do was work out the correct order.
Except last time it was Gerald who’d identified the right sequence. Sure, he’d figured the proper timing to break them, but without the correct order If he can do it, I can. I have to. Come on, Debbie. Prove that pillock Aylesbury wrong.
The other Monk was weakening. The strain of this was proving too much for him. They were both running out of time now.
Come on, come on, come on.
With a surge of his potentia he pushed through the wardings and the barriers surrounding the shadbolt, roughly pulling them apart. The other Monk screamed, the most hideous sound. He felt the pain sear through his own body and screamed with him. He couldn’t help it-but he didn’t let it stop him, either.
Twelve semi-cants. Three groupings. Twenty-four different timings. And oh bugger-what was that? A buzzing, a burning, a warning shudder through the ether. No. He’d set something off. Some kind of thaumic booby-trap. Hell. Why hadn’t he sensed it?
Damn you, Dunwoody! When did you get so sneaky?
Now the race was really on. Desperately he threw his potentia at the tangle of incants. But even as they fell, their timings haphazardly staccato, he could feel the other Gerald’s thaumic booby-trap expanding, spreading like acid spilled from a filthy glass.
Come on, Markham, come on, come on. Are you a bloody genius or aren’t you?
Six hexes down. Seven. Eight. Nine. The other Monk was howling. God, somebody shut him up. Ten. Eleven.
The twelfth semi-cant resisted. Because it wasn’t a simple semi-cant. No, of course it wasn’t. It was a triple-hexed double-looped terto-cant. You bastard. He and the other Monk were howling together now, blood and bones and flesh on fire. The booby-trap had nearly reached its critical tipping-point. No more minutes left, only seconds remaining.
No time for kindness. No time for finesse. He ripped apart the shadbolt’s final incant like a wolf falling on a lamb. And then, as he pulled himself free of the Monk from next door’s tattered aura, he managed to extinguish the booby-trap before it finished its job.
Take that, Gerald, you maniac. Whoever you are.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The other Monk’s cries of anguish were unspeakable. Hands pressed to her face, Melissande turned away. “I can’t bear this,” she muttered to Reg on her shoulder, feeling like the worst kind of coward. “I can’t.”
“Come on, ducky,” said Reg. Her claws were close to drawing blood, she was clutching so tight. “It can’t go on much longer.”
No, it couldn’t. Because if their Monk didn’t break the shadbolt in the next few seconds the other Monk would surely die-or else go totally mad.
Hurry up, Monk. Hurry up. Saint Snodgrass, help him.
Still hiding behind her hands, she could hear Bibbie’s harsh, choked breathing. Poor Bibbie. She shouldn’t have stayed. This was too cruel.
And then the two Monks let out a blood-curdling yell. She spun around so hard and so fast that Reg nearly lost her perch. Swearing and flapping, the bird managed to hang on. Bibbie leaped for the sofa, her ivory-pale cheeks drenched with tears.
“Monk! Monk! Are you all right? Monk! ”
Limp as an overcooked Yok Tok noodle, Monk slid all the way to the parlor carpet. His nose was bleeding, thick red splatters on his chin and his shirt. Eyes rolled up in his head he sprawled on the floor, looking entirely too close to dead for comfort. Only the rasping of air in his throat reassured them that he was actually alive.
“Monk, you idiot!” cried Bibbie, and hauled him into her lap. “Please, please, don’t just lie there. Say something!”
Monk made a nasty gargling sound without any words in it. Bibbie choked back a sob and held her wretched brother even tighter, heedless of the blood smearing from him onto her.
Reg chattered her beak. “You’d better check on the other one, ducky. And cross your fingers while you’re at it, because if the bugger’s dead we might never know what the devil’s going on.”
Reg was right. Of course. She was nearly always right. It was quite possibly her most aggravating trait. “Hop off, then,” she said, twitching her shoulder. “I’ll have no hope of giving him the kiss of life with you breathing down my neck giving me points for technique.”
Ordinarily that would’ve provoked a flood of sarcastic commentary, with bonus insults, but even Reg was flattened by this latest turn of events. The bird hopped to the sofa’s arm without so much as an inelegant snort.
Stepping over and around her Monk and Bibbie, Melissande perched on the edge of the sofa beside the other Monk. He looked utterly dreadful, so pale he was gray except for where he was splodged with blood. She couldn’t see him breathing. Trembling with nerves, heart racing, she snatched off her spectacles and held them over his slightly parted lips. Held her breath-held her breath-then let it out in a sickeningly relieved whoosh as his slow exhalation lightly fogged the lenses.
“Saint Snodgrass be praised,” she whispered, and leaned close. “Monk. Monk, can you hear me?”
The other Monk stirred, his stubby eyelashes fluttering. Beneath his closed eyelids his eyes moved from side to side, restless.
