My body, head to toe, changed, recuperating from countless infinitesimally small injuries. A one-percent change in every single damn cell, or spirit, or whatever.
Molly, too, was reeling, trying to find her balance, flickering madly. Mags only looked concerned.
“What the moose dick was that?” she asked.
I could smell it on the air, stronger with every passing second. Like smoke and dust after a bomb had hit. The smell was sharp, like overripe fruit and a room where there had been a little too much sex and sweat, without sufficient washing of sheets. It smelled warm.
It made me think of Carl. Of a time when I’d been very human, with human comforts close at hand.
The predominant odor was wine, late in its arrival, so sharp I might have wanted to sneeze if I’d been able to. I could taste it, as the smell reached and touched the back of my tongue on its way down to my lungs.
I felt just a little lightheaded.
What had Faysal said? I consumed whatever was at hand.
Even this ambient power, apparently.
I was going to get drunk on it.
“Something like this, he couldn’t get away with it if he hadn’t cleared it with every other local power,” I said.
“They didn’t clear it with me,” Mags said.
“That would have been warning you,” I said. “And if you’re colluding with Thorburns, as your relationship with Molly suggests, that means they might see telling you as a risk that they’d tip Rose off. I’ve got to go.”
“I don’t get it,” Mags called out. I was already leaving.
“Someone’s throwing a party at Hillsglade House,” I called out. “Molly, what I said before – if you need help, call for me and stall.”
“What if you need help?” Mags asked.
But I was already gone, too far away to answer the question.
It wasn’t a long trip. Three paces, leaping across darkness. Another five paces, this time taking a route that took me away from the house, but positioned me for another step across the reflective surfaces, jumping a considerable distance in the process.
I arrived at the front window of the house.
The interior of the house was no longer dark, but had a peculiar hue, like the light was shining off wine red and gold surfaces. The smell was thick, The barriers had been breached. The tail end of Jeremy Meath’s group was still making its way into the house. They moved as a group, fanning out through the rooms.
I stepped inside, in a manner of speaking.
Whatever Jeremy had done here, calling his god in to ram down the metaphorical gate, it had changed the atmosphere fairly dramatically. The air was heavy, even on my side of the mirrors, thick as though the place had filled with smoke, the smell of incense and faint perfumes joining the smells that had wafted out as far as the lakeside. The lighting was skewed, and the impact of the divine act had knocked books from their shelves, unsettling and moving furniture. I saw two women climbing over and under a tipped-over bookshelf in the hallway.
In this light of red and gold tints, I could see their real features. Their facial and bone structure was different, though not unpleasant. Their movements were languid, as they easily crawled across the spaces, as if they were simultaneously very flexible and very strong.
They might have reminded me of lions, with that grace, predatory slant to their features, and general strength, but they were panting hard, bronzed skin flushed red, and when the one in the rear looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was following, her pupils were pinpoints.
I moved up to the window overlooking the turn in the staircase.
The lead Maenad wore a snake, coiled up and along the one arm, around the back of her neck, and down the other arm. It was the color of red wine, with a diamond pattern of white along its back.
I felt like, given general fairness, that snakes should only be big or poisonous, not both. That snake looked like it was both.
“Search,” I heard Jeremy speak. He was on the second floor. “Turn it upside down. We know they’re in here.”
“I can smell them,” a satyr spoke. He had full-size ram’s horns on his head, hair spilling down thick and coarse over his shoulders and back, but the horns were heavy, and his legs those of a goat, his body perpetually leaning forward. One hand rested on his knee, while his horned head swung ponderously from left to right. “They smell scared.”
“Scared is good,” Jeremy said.
I had a better look of him as he turned my way. The satyr’s nose was flat and wide, his eyes narrow. He was muscular, but he had a barrel chest. If satyrs were supposed to be expressions of male fertility, this guy must have been created when unibrows were considered sexy.
A little different from the other Satyrs, who blended the qualities of beast and man in a kinder, more artistic way. They stood straight, they didn’t slouch. They looked more boyish. Not quite modern-day male models, but all were guys I imagined could hit on women at bars with some success.
“They’re here somewhere,” he said. “A treat to whoever finds them first. I don’t want to ask for help if he thinks we can manage it ourselves with the resources we have at hand.”
I knew where they were. The question was, did he have the resources to, or did I have time?
I crossed the length of the hallway, passing within two feet of the priest.
“I can,” the Maenad leader said, as she reached the top of the stairs. She had the fluid strength of the lion, the snake around her shoulders, the features of both on her face, her eyes bloodshot. She panted, nostrils flaring. “I want that reward.”
She extended her hand, and the snake began to slither forth, unwinding from her right arm to raise itself up from her left. It extended its tongue, and turned its head, pausing for a fraction of a second to hiss, tongue out.
I followed its line of sight.
The bookshelf, where the lower entrance to Grandmother’s hidden library was.
That was all I needed.
I could be patient, sure, but there were times for action.
Quickly, quietly, I crossed picture frames and mirrors, until I was right next to her.
I wasn’t sure how this worked, or how far I could go. This wasn’t the sort of thing I could practice.
Still holding the Hyena, I hit the glass of the picture frame as hard as I could, stabbing through.
Glass flew. I didn’t see if it did any damage – that same glass was my window into seeing that world.
I felt my footing break apart as the glass scattered, darkness opening up. What little footing managed to exist rose and fall and shrunk in area as the glass turned over in the air, taking in less light, less connected to the glass that had neighbored it with every split second that passed.
But I wasn’t gone. I hadn’t been relocated.
The window was still there, broken as it was.
Remembering Rose’s actions in the police station, I reached through with my open hand, blind, remembering only the position of things. I aimed for her wrist.
I got a handful of snake instead.
Strong as the maenad was, and as quick as the snake might be, she was using the one arm to support half of the weight of a snake that could have weighed a hundred or more pounds. Her strength didn’t break the laws of physics. When I moved her arm, it swung, as the snake adjusted for the movement.
She wasn’t able to just tear her hand free.
I, on the other hand, was able to move the Hyena.