Then the dervish of hate swept down on me again, howling. And froze in the shade of the dancers buried knee-deep in the horror of murdered bodies.
I wavered.
Carlos roared. "Now, Blaine!”
I dove into the entity, into the knives of time and the barbed wire of Ian's fury woven into it. I slipped and twisted my way through the tesseract of what had been Celia, just as I had run through time and space to elude and capture it, feeling blood in the palm of my glove where the thorns of the tangle had ripped my hand. I slid over frozen lakes of memory and crashed deeper into the structure of power and madness, seeking the center, where the control must lie.
Something was muttering, crooning images of terror."… in the fire, limbs crisped and split. . own living eyes…”
The entity's tectonic plates of memory shifted, sliding and buckling under me, throwing me against the agony of a shred of Mark's death, hanging in the frozen storm like a drop of crystal. The dancers had stopped but the other ghosts had not and they brushed through the suspended entity, disturbing chimes of memory and pain that rang on my own bones.
"… implacable. They crawl beneath your skin…”
That voice; part Ian, part Carlos, speaking nightmares. I shook the sound from my ears, staggering back into the depth of the thing I hoped to destroy.
"… dolls of flesh…”
I buried my hands in the tangle of energy and memory, wrenched at the structure that resisted me, fought as if alive, pulsing in my grip and burning over my nerves. Nausea swamped me as I felt I was tearing some live thing to shreds. I gagged and clutched for support, reeling in the swamp of remembered blood rising from the floor on the tide of unwholesome light. I was lost in the maze of knotted rage that had been Celia, unable to find the core and open it up to be destroyed.
"… drinks your soul and will…”
Desperate, I clutched at my own thin thread and followed it down into the clenched bud of the monster's core. Coiled tight, the heart of the entity looked like a pulsing spiral-rose of blood and fire. Wincing with fear, I clutched the thing and twisted it backward, unwinding the spiral through a writhing curtain of time.
"… eternal…" No, not Ian. Carlos, turning Ian's horrors back on him!
Then the core opened and I stared down into the web of human desire that had formed it. Four broken threads, one more frayed almost through, my own a pale golden color against the yellow and blue weave, shot with ashen gray and warped with Pyrrhic red. The red lines pulsed like arteries, feeding on something, swelling toward an overload of corrupted power as something else fed on the brightness of the life that bound the entity together. White flashes of memory seared my eyes and I tried to turn away.
Images and sensations erupted in my mind: a book tumbled from on high and struck my chest; a whirling brooch sliced into my cheek; a wooden slab rammed into my thigh; a shocked instant—
I tried to rip myself out of the fully flowered heart of the thing— out of the boomerang memories of Ian's cruelty pouring from the collective memory of the entity. I struggled in the net of flooding madness.
A tide of specters washed around the room, crashing against the corner where Carlos stood, muttering over Ian. Nightmares and memories, every eternal terror that ever crawled or clawed through the thoughts of men, he poured into the gaping mind of the young man who shuddered and dwindled at his feet.
"What are you doing?" I gasped. "Stop it!”
Carlos turned a vicious face to mine. "Is he worth your life? Look to the charm!”
I shot a glance down and saw below the shape of murder that the tangle was burning to a circle of ash. Only a small fragment of thorn and vine remained. I threw myself back into the construct s core.
My heart racking, trepid, against my ribs, I grabbed for the blazing center of the vile red core, for Ian's control line. My bleeding hand closed on the power line and the agony of the inferno roared up my arm, spreading through my body. A sad sigh of smoke coiled up and the splayed layers of the entity shrieked as they rushed inward.
I bit down, tasting blood, yanking with all my might as the dancers lurched. Time and memory crashed in and I yelled, plummeting backward, shredded by the flying knives of history whirling outward.
The stained floor slammed into my back, ramming my pistol into my kidney, my shoulder making a grinding sound as I hit. Reality swam in the mist of Grey and near-unconsciousness.
Carlos bent over me. "You're not done." He hauled me to my feet, his touch stabbing me with horrors, and set me before a tangled skein of yellow and blue threads that hung pathetically in the air, wafting in an unfelt breeze as the shooting played out again around us. "Finish the job," he added. "Pluck it out.”
My left arm hung limp from a misshapen shoulder. With my right hand, I pulled the frayed strand of Celia's tether from around my own head and tore it from me. It felt like some horrible weed was drawn from my flesh, its spreading, spidery roots gone deep into my limbs. I stumbled and shied from another touch of Carlos's hands.
I panted and blinked, finding the last pathetic shred of the entity turning in the air as from a gallows. I stuck my good hand into it, pushed, and it fell to pieces. The shower of yellow and blue threads glittered and vanished.
I sank to my knees, looking toward Ian. He was huddled in the corner against a broken table, staring, cloaked in a strange, black haze. His lips moved, but he didn't see anything normal people would see and the words were a gabble of broken thoughts. I hadn't pulled the plug fast enough to save him from the memories of his own actions, the torments he had inflicted on the helpless filtered through Carlos's necromancy and poured back into his mind like poison. He seemed smaller, burned hollow, and I knew I hadn't imagined that Carlos had somehow drawn the living power of the entity through Ian into himself as he drove him mad.
"You bastard," I muttered. My shoulder and knee were throbbing and I had no more energy to express my fury, revulsion, and despair.
He chuckled, the burn scars on his face fading as I watched. "I am. He was not so very hard to break—his mind already teetered on the edge. I only made sure he would fall into chaos, not into power. It's best.”
"When I believe you, I'll let you know," I whispered, swaying. My back blazed pain, my tongue was clumsy in my mouth and I tasted blood from biting it. The world swam in blazing colors and restless silver ghosts.
"Even in victory, you spit like a cat." I felt the rolling disturbance of his amusement. "Formidable creature. Assure yourself this was necessary. It was what had to be for everyone's sake.”
There was some noise from outside. Carlos glanced over his shoulder. "Do you wish to leave here?”
"No," I gasped, falling against the wall and sliding down. "The cops—”
"Are coming." He stood and melted into the darkness.
I was alone with the ghosts. The twenty-year-old memory of robbery and murder played again before my eyes. I waited for the police as I watched the shade of the lone survivor of that bloody night crawl from the room.
Solis found only me and Ian.
EPILOGUE
No one would have been believed and judged competent to stand trial when they raved about ghosts and vampires, sex and death, and women who danced in curtains of blood and fire. During his hearing, Ian's sudden fits of screaming, swearing, and sobbing did nothing to advance a finding for sanity, even though the things he said were true. I would not have called what I had done in the dread light of the entity dancing, however.
Ian had been quiet at first, sitting still and calm beside his lawyer. His demeanor and responses had been almost childlike in simplicity and lack of focus. Then he had burst into profanity and screaming. Guards removed him from the room after the second rage of hysteria, when he had raised his hands to his face, shrieking and gouging at his own eyes. He was committed to Western State Hospital, confessing to Mark's murder over and over in gruesome detail. I knew he'd never be coming out; Carlos had deranged his mind too far for hope of recovery.