The Black Palace Read online

  But Hava’s heart filled with a storm greater than any she had ever seen with her eyes. Heedless of La Voisin, heedless of the previous warnings from Lenka, she interrupted with as mighty a voice as she could muster. “No, I am not Seph.”

  La Voisin went silent.

  Lenka watched her in shock.

  Hava said, “I am the one who slayed Seph for her betrayal. I am the one who has sworn to slay you, La Voisin. And before I do, Lenka, I will make you grovel. I will tear the Malandanti down from their place on high and punish them for their treachery. My name is Hava. And may you learn to fear the sound of it.”

  Lenka did not laugh. She was too angry.

  But La Voisin did. “I stand corrected,” she said. “Lenka, you did not buy an urchin from your Witches of Endor. You bought an assassin.”

  Lenka said, “Then she was a poor choice for such a difficult task.”

  La Voisin said, still amused, “And your Witches of Endor must have been aligned with Ziggurat after all, without your knowing it. And now we are all in danger, for this young lady will slay us. Aren’t you afraid, Lenka? Aren’t you afraid for your life?”

  “I will execute her as soon as we are done here, La Voisin. And then I will take my wolves into the Black Palace, as you command. First I will apologize through my actions, and then I will beg at your feet for your forgiveness.”

  “Very well. Then we are finished here.” Another lightning strike came through the window in the mirror, and the image of La Voisin was gone.

  In an instant, without saying another word, Lenka grabbed Hava, unlocked her collar, and dragged her by her hair out of the room, leading her with a knife’s edge at her throat.

  Hava tried not to make the slightest sound of pain as it felt like her scalp was being ripped from her skull. She stumbled as she was pulled through one corridor, and then another. As they moved deeper through the basement, maybe under a different building now, Lenka flipped on electric light switches attached to thin tubes along the wall, illuminating single bare light bulbs that hung from the ceiling by wires. Drains and ends of pipes and rat-sized cracks scattered the walls and floors. It smelled of mildew and rot.

  Lenka stopped in a corridor and removed a large key ring that had been hanging from a hook. The keys shone brilliantly in the bulb light, plated in polished silver. She pulled Hava to a wood-plank door that barely hung on its hinges. Lenka kicked twice at it with audible grunts of frustration to knock it open.

  Hava’s nose was hit with an odor of musk. The room they entered was in no better care than the corridors. It was long, bare concrete. The bulb in this room was already switched on before Lenka entered. At the far end of the room, where the shadows were heaviest, Hava saw thick bars set into the structure, arranged like a prison cell, sturdy enough to withstand a crashing truck. Glints of silver wrapped the bars, like strands of some kind of ornamentation. She could make out the door within the wall of bars, confirming that it was in fact a cell, but it was too dark beyond that to see how far the cell went back, or what waited inside it.

  Lenka shouted in Czech, but not to Hava. She said, “Whine no more to me of your starvation. I bring you something fresh with hot blood still in its veins, for I am kind, am I not?”

  Hava was dragged to the cell. In the darkness, she could see the eyes of men, and their thin, hairy limbs, and they hunkered together like frightened primitives. She couldn’t see any one of them whole, and she could only guess at their number—five, maybe six. But then she saw their muzzles, and their ears. They were wolves, and they stood on their hind feet.

  Lenka slapped the ring of silver keys against the bars and raked them back and forth in a clamor, yelling, “Back, dogs! Back!”

  The wolves held their ears like men and walked backward, receding into the darkness so that Hava could no longer see them. The sound seemed painful to them.

  Lenka chose a key from the ring with one hand—the other still twisted in a grip on Hava’s hair—and she began to work the silver lock.

  This was Hava’s last chance to fight back, especially now that the knife was off of her throat, especially since once she was locked in the cell, there would be no getting back out. She swung at Lenka, and kicked, and tried to bite at the arm that held her. But Lenka yanked her away by the hair, making her blows fall short, keeping her teeth out of reach. And Lenka shook her about. If only Hava had a chance to gain her footing, to get loose of that leveraged grip, she could have done better, but by the time she found herself thrown onto the floor, she was inside the cell.

  The door shut behind her. Then it was locked.

  “I will be back soon with leashes,” Lenka said. “We are going hunting. Eat fast and gain your strength. I will tolerate no more whining. Tonight there will be great reward and great punishment. Remember that only one of you can be my best hunter, and one of you must be the worst.”

  Lenka walked away without so much as a glance at Hava, not even a single hateful word. Hava had not even merited a place as Lenka’s enemy, for in her mind, Hava was already food.

  Hava covered her nakedness with her hands and looked into the dark of the cell. The wolves crept forward, and they breathed heavily. There were five of them. Their hair was mangy, and they were covered in filth, and they stank. Through their skin she could see the impressions of their ribs and the bones in their shoulders. Some of them scratched at themselves as if covered in lice and fleas, and others twitched and flexed, and they moved toward her with drool hanging in strands from their mouths in a lust of hunger, and their eyes seemed not to blink, and it was clear in their faces that they were going to tear her apart.

  Chapter 11

  DiFranco saw wolves fill the archways at the edges of the arena. They pushed shoulder to shoulder, their backs hulking high, their heads low. They furrowed their snouts and snarled their teeth, and they barked in snaps and cracks. Their small eyes glowed yellow in the dark where they were held, kept back by silver collars and by silver chains pulled straight. Their handlers, still out of sight deeper in the shadows of the arcades, would not yet let them enter the arena with the Witchfinders. Even though the silver collars had singed the hair around the wolves’ necks, they leaned forward against the pain, pulling at the stone floor with their front claws, desperate to get to work on their prey.

  One wolf stood out among the others. He was immense and grim, his fur too black even for their flashlights. He looked capable of pulling the links of his chain to pieces, but he had a silver ring through his nose, and a silver string from it kept his face controlled by its unseen handler like a puppet.

  And frustrated at being kept back still, the wolves frothed at the jaws and whined.

  DiFranco didn’t fire yet, which was probably why Sledge and Jan didn’t either. She hoped to use what little ammo they had left on the witches who drove the wolves.

  “Is it time to run away yet?” Jan said.

  “Not yet,” DiFranco said. Then she asked Sledge, “Why do you think they’re holding?”

  “I think they’re scared of us,” Sledge said.

  This had not occurred to DiFranco. Maybe the witches didn’t want to have to fight. After all, DiFranco and Sledge and even Jan were invaders and had already done a fair amount of damage in the Black Palace. They were still Witchfinders. They were still dangerous. So DiFranco, emboldened now, yelled at them, “Witchfinders Union. Pacify your beasts and hit the floor. Face down, palms up. If we find you any other way, you’re executed.”

  Sledge said, “Hell yeah.” Then he retrieved his grenade, pulled the pin, keeping the lip held for just a little longer, and added, “You have ten seconds to comply.”

  The witches’ voices no longer screamed at their wolves. Instead, they seemed to talk to each other from their three archways. They were probably discussing what to do about a standoff that they did not expect.

  Sledge said, “Chew on this while you talk it over.” He tossed the grenade underhanded, and it rolled toward the black wolf.

 
From the darkness beyond their view, a witch guided the chain at the wolf’s nose ring and brought his muzzle down on the grenade. The wolf snatched it up and swallowed it.

  Sledge hummed in curiosity. “Never seen that before.”

  Then it blasted.

  The wolf was knocked up into the air, end over end, its legs whipping in wrong directions. It hit the floor on its side, and as fast as it did, it scrabbled to its feet and belched black smoke. It shook its head like hellfire, and its eyes burned. It ripped free from the chains that held it and ran in some blind trajectory, not colliding with the Witchfinders out of chance only, and it hit a farther wall, which it leapt and scaled like a simple fence. It ran amok in the stadium seats in the level above them, cracking stone benches, howling like a demon, coughing fire. Its chain whipped behind it, cutting the air like razor wire.

  Two other wolves were loosed. They came straight for the Witchfinders. DiFranco put rounds into their skulls and shoulders. The wolves were getting pelted by rounds from Jan too. They went down a few yards away and seized in pain, their legs shaking. But these were lead rounds, so they would be back up again soon.

  DiFranco stepped out of formation toward one of the twitching wolves and drew her pocket shotgun. She pushed the muzzle toward its eye and fired, sending silver-shot through its skull away from her. The wolf went still.

  Sledge had also stepped out of formation with his sawed-off in hand and blasted a shell of silver shot down into the skull of the other wolf. A mess of blood and hair sprayed his boots.

  They returned to their back-to-back formation in the center of the arena. The raging wolf at the level above howled from some far-off corridor that he had flung himself through. He was, at least, no longer a factor in this fight.

  And they were winning, two to zero. Maybe they wouldn’t have to flee after all. Maybe they could stand their ground. DiFranco could see hints of the witch’s gowns as they hid at the edge of the dark. She yelled at them, “Send out anyone else you want dead.”

  From the archway that had loosed its wolves, a witch raised her arm. She held a wheel lock pistol, and she leveled it at DiFranco.

  “Firearm!” DiFranco said. She pulled her legs up and fell to the floor, kneeling, her own pistol trained forward, but in the same moment Sledge knelt in front of her with his shield up, blocking her shot.

  The witch fired a single thump of smoking thunder. Sledge was knocked on his ass. Now with a clear line of sight, DiFranco opened fire. And as she fired, as her adrenaline slowed the world around her, everything happened so fast, coming from the periphery of her eyes. She saw a witch outside of her firing line holding forth a severed head by its maidservant-hood with one hand, and with the other hand she worked its jaw open and shut. She saw Sledge using the butt of his pistol to knock a glowing ember out of a dent in the steel boss of his shield, where he had been hit by the shot of the wheel lock. She saw the chains go slack on three more wolves from two other archways, and saw them run in place on the stone floor before gaining purchase forward. She saw another witch lean forth from the shadows and vomit a stream of black spiders. And with the odd innocence of a child playing on the lawn, another witch danced forward from a new archway, waving and twirling limbs sewn together at their flesh, seeming unassociated with the hunting parties but drawn here by the ruckus all the same.

  The fight was now on full-tilt. Everything so fast felt so slow.

  DiFranco saw her witch fall back into the shadows, and she turned her line of fire to the wolves racing toward them.

  The ember that popped out of Sledge’s shield boss fell to the floor and uncurled. It was now a salamander, as red as magma, and it scorched the stone floor where it writhed and grew.

  Jan bumped DiFranco forward, throwing off her sight-picture for half a second. He grappled on the ground with something.

  Sledge had not yet managed to get off his side on the floor.

  DiFranco fired and dropped one wolf and, because of the bump, missed her shots at a second.

  A third wolf, unthreatened by bullets, went for Sledge. It lunged through the air at him.

  Spiders poured out on the floor and swarmed toward them.

  The second wolf was nearing DiFranco, running as if to lunge for her.

  Sledge caught his wolf with the rim of his shield straight to the back of its open jaws, holding back its teeth. The wolf was stunned, but was straddling Sledge, who, lying under its belly, had the muzzle of his shotgun to the wolf’s throat. He fired. Gore fountained overhead.

  The other wolf brought its hind legs under itself and leapt headlong at DiFranco. She was still kneeling. With no footing to move, she pivoted and spun one knee to the other, dancer-like and shedding sparks. The wolf landed in the spot she had cleared and it skidded past her. It struggled to turn around in its own momentum, looping its head where it wanted to go and cross stepping over its own claws. DiFranco was in position and put the rest of her clip into its ribs. It crumpled to its side. She shoulder-rolled from her knees, drawing her stiletto from her boot sheath, and, coming up beside the wolf, drove her blade through the middle of its brow.

  She released her empty clip to the ground and stood while reloading to cover her partners.

  Sledge stood holding the barrel of his shotgun and swung its grip like a club at the molten salamander, which had now grown to the size of a komodo. The wood of the grip smoldered and cracked apart with each blow.

  The swarm of spiders had made its way to them and pooled on the ground like an oil spill.

  Jan lay on his back, attacked by a headless corpse in a red maidservant’s dress, sprawling on him and flinging its arms at him wildly. The thick blood that slopped from the severed neck made the fight slippery, but Jan managed to hook the arms in a clinch, position his shins, and with a graceful sweep he launched the thing off of him. The kid knew jiujitsu.

  The corpse continued flailing on the ground, unaware that it was alone. Jan, lying on his side, shot the witch who puppeteered its severed head. The face of the head was Seph’s. The witch had brought it up after them all the way from the cavern.

  The first wolf that DiFranco had dropped with lead was getting back up to its feet. She had to put some silver in it. The wolf crouched and met her with its pinpoint eyes. She reached for the stiletto handle in her boot sheath in a split second of mind-fog, and it wasn’t there. She had left it in the skull of the other one, and this wolf was already springing at her. She was a helpless target in its path. But Sledge threw himself on it midair and hit the ground in a hugging barrel role. Sledge twisted the wolf by its head off of himself, which would have done no good as the wolf recovered to its feet, the faster of the two, if Sledge had not aimed it toward the molten salamander. The wolf landed on top of the thing and was immediately burning and shaking.

  Jan was taking shots at the witches in the archways.

  DiFranco retrieved her stiletto to finish off the burning wolf, but the writhing of both creatures spread the flames and char, and it was too much a mess of heat to stab. She threw the stiletto at its head. It stuck somewhere in their struggle, but she couldn’t tell where, and she was content with sharp silver in a dying wolf.

  Sledge struggled back to his feet and he swiped and stomped at the spiders that tried to climb him.

  Jan was still on the ground, and spiders swarmed on him. He repeated out loud to himself, “They’re not real. They’re not real.”

  But DiFranco saw them too, so she yelled, “No, Jan. They’re real. Get up.”

  At that, Jan yelped and rushed to his feet, slapping the spiders off of him and kicking his legs.

  One witch still twirled the sewn limbs through the air and skipped back and forth for no reason that DiFranco could discern. But given her jade tattoos and feathers and clanking jewelry, she must have been a native of this arena, a Temacpalitoti, a witch who dances with the forearms of dead women.

  The others were either pacified or out of sight.

  The immediate threat was the swarm of s
piders. For every dozen that Sledge and Jan knocked off of themselves, two dozen more climbed them. She couldn’t tell whether they were being bitten, but the spiders seemed to be climbing for their mouths. DiFranco evaded the swarm with constant footwork, but she couldn’t help her partners. Her ammo and explosives would do no good. She looked around for anything. The wolf that lay crushing the salamander no longer moved, but its body continued to boil and roast apart in a black stench. That might do. DiFranco ran light of foot over the spiders toward it, and she grabbed a front paw and tugged. It felt like reaching into an oven. The leg came off at the joint, and as if it were a marinade brush, she wiped the leg into the molten mess below, and then she swung it in a wide arc at the spiders. The spiders burned and scattered in her path.

  It worked.

  She loaded the leg with the fleshy magma again and wiped a circle on the floor. She was able to stomp on the spiders caught inside the circle without having to fend off any more coming at her from beyond it. She called for Sledge and Jan to come to her. They ran over the spiders and leapt the molten boundary and joined her. They continued to wipe the spiders off of themselves and stomp them into the stone, still in desperate fits to keep the things from making their way up their necks and into their mouths, but now that they were finite, Sledge and Jan made progress in getting free of them.

  DiFranco was now able to look for the source of the spiders, the witch who had begun vomiting them in the first place. She was near her archway, low, and DiFranco shot at her. It seemed that the witch was now kneeling with her head on the floor, but all the spiders made it hard to tell. It didn’t help that the Temacpalitoti danced in the way, an annoying distraction. DiFranco would need to risk going closer to make sure the witch was dead, or to find the means to kill her if lead wasn’t doing the trick. Otherwise, the witch would continue to vomit spiders until they flooded this place to the ceiling.