“What is that?” I asked.
My answer was another slash of the limber stick, this time across the back of my neck. When I put my hand there, it came away smeared with blood.
“To your left, kiddie, left! Don’t hesitate, it ain’t locked.”
I opened the door on my left and started up a steep and narrow stairway that seemed to go on forever. I marked off four hundred steps before I lost count. My legs began to ache again, and the narrow cut the limber stick had opened on the nape of my neck burned.
“Slowing down, kiddie. Better keep up if you don’t want to feel the cold fire.”
If he was talking about the aura that surrounded him, I most definitely did not want to feel it. I kept climbing, and just when I felt that my thighs were going to cramp up and refuse to carry me any further, we reached a door at the top. By then I was gasping for breath. Not the thing behind me, which wasn’t a surprise. He was dead, after all.
This corridor was wider, hung with velvet tapestries of red, purple, and blue. The gas-jets were enclosed in fine glass chimneys. It’s a residence wing, I thought. We passed little alcoves that were for the most part empty, and I wondered if they had once contained butterfly sculptures. A few contained marble figures of naked women and men, and one held an exceedingly horrible thing with a cloud of tentacles obscuring its head. That made me think of Jenny Schuster, who had introduced me to H.P. Lovecraft’s favorite pet monster, Cthulhu, also known as He Who Waits Below.
We must have walked half a mile down this richly appointed passage. Near the end we passed gold-framed mirrors facing each other, which made my reflection endless. I saw that my face and hair were filthy from my last frantic hours trying to escape Lilimar. There was blood on my neck. And I appeared to be alone. My night soldier guardian cast no reflection. Where he should have been there was only a faint blue haze… and the limber stick, seeming to float by itself. I glanced around to make sure he was still there and the stick came down on me, finding that same spot on the back of my neck. The burn was immediate.
“Walk! Walk, damn you!”
I walked. The corridor came to an end at a stout door that looked like solid mahogany banded with gold. The night soldier tapped my hand with his hateful stick, then tapped the door. I took the hint and knocked. The limber stick came down, cutting through my shirt at the shoulder.
“Harder!”
I hammered with the side of my fist. Blood was trickling down my upper arm and the back of my neck. Sweat mixed with it, stinging. I thought to myself, I don’t know if you can die, you miserable blue fuck, but if you can, and if I get the chance, I am going to kill your ass.
The door opened and there stood Kellin, also known as the Lord High.
Wearing, of all things, a red velvet smoking jacket.
7
Unreality surged through me again. The thing that had grabbed me seconds before I would have made good my escape had looked like something from an old-school horror comic—part vampire, part skeleton, part Walking Dead zombie. Now the gray hair that had hung in clumps around his pallid cheeks was neatly combed back from the face of a man who was elderly but seemingly in the bloom of ruddy-cheeked health. His lips were full. His eyes, bracketed by benign smile lines, looked out beneath lushly unkempt gray eyebrows. He reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t think who.
“Ah,” he said, and smiled. “Our new guest. Come in, please. Aaron, you may leave.”
The night soldier who had brought me—Aaron—hesitated. Kellin flapped a good-natured hand at him. He gave a little bow, stepped back, and closed the door.
I looked around. We were in a wood-paneled foyer. Beyond was a living room that made me think of a gentleman’s club in a Sherlock Holmes story: richly paneled walls, high-backed chairs, a long sofa upholstered in dark blue velvet. Half a dozen lamps cast soft pools of glow, and I didn’t think they were gas-powered. In this part of the palace, at least, there seemed to be electricity. And, of course, there had been the bus that had cut a path between the squad of night soldiers. The one this thing had been driving.
“Come, guest.”
He turned his back to me, seemingly unafraid that I would attack him. He led me into the living room, so different from the dank cell in which I’d awakened that a third wave of unreality washed over and through me. Maybe he was unafraid because he had eyes in the back of his head, peering out from that carefully combed （and rather vain） collar-length gray hair. It wouldn’t have surprised me. By that point, nothing would have.
Two of the gentleman’s club chairs faced each other over a small table with a tiled surface featuring a prancing unicorn. Perched on the unicorn’s butt was a small tray with a teapot, a vial-sized container of sugar （I hoped it was sugar and not white arsenic）， tiny spoons, and two cups with roses around the rims.