The Dire King (Jackaby #4)(58)

Gravity shifted abruptly. Down became left and up became right and then the Blessed Virgin was shattering into a million tiny pieces all around me and rows of pews were rushing toward me. I ricocheted into the first bench hard enough to send it tumbling into the second, skidded along the floor, and came to rest in an aisle. My head spun. From the sound of it, Jackaby’s landing had been no smoother than mine.

I took a silent inventory of my injuries, wiggling my legs and arms and gingerly turning my neck this way and that before I sat up. We were in the church.

“So much for subterfuge,” said Jackaby, climbing out from under an overturned lectern at the front of the chamber. “Are you all right?”

“I have felt better,” I said, “but stiff upper lip and all that.” I winced. “And stiff everything else while we’re at it. I may have bruised parts of myself I didn’t know I had.”

I surveyed the room. It was a chapel like any other, with a large wooden cross on the wall above the dais, where Jackaby was now sitting up, and more stained glass windows around the room letting in colorful rays of filtered sunlight.

I looked back at the one through which we had made our explosive entrance. The dark tower was visible, its details hazy behind the bright green glow. I expected to see Morwen leaping after us at any moment, but the scene beyond the veil remained empty. Where was she?

Jackaby appeared to be having the same thought. “I doubt she wants to risk having her power siphoned if she comes through,” he reasoned.

“Right,” I said. “Why didn’t that thing drain us the way it drained Serif?” I asked.

“It did,” Jackaby grunted. He limped off the podium, moving toward the back of the church. “We’re human, though, not beings of magic, so the effects were not as pronounced. It was definitely pulling at our vital energies, though. If we had hung about, it would have finished the job soon enough.”

“Now that you mention it, I could use a sustaining cup of tea. Although that might come of being broadsided by a church,” I said. “And cut by a vampire, and bullied by ogres.”

“We also skipped breakfast,” Jackaby added. “It’s probably the breakfast.”

The glow coming from the rend above us dimmed, and the gap began to seal over. I blinked as the sunlight from the earthly world crept through in its place. “She’s shifted the device,” Jackaby said. “The gap is mending itself again. The next one could be anywhere. Keep alert. We need to get out of here and back to the hold at once.”

“Of course. We wouldn’t want to leave Morwen waiting.”

There was a flutter of movement from the shattered window above us. The gap was nearly closed when a streak of blue shot through it and came to land with a splash in the aisle next to me. I stumbled backward. The rend closed and unfiltered sunlight sparkled off the glistening figure rising in front of us. Morwen had ridden the burst of water into the church.

“I don’t think she’s the waiting type,” said Jackaby.





Chapter Twenty-Four

Morwen took a deep breath, water curling up around her legs like a coiling liquid snake. There was nothing between us now but empty air. The church held its breath.

And then Morwen collapsed.

The nixie dropped to her knees. Her water whip fell, splattering into a damp smear across the floorboards.

“She must have drained her magic crossing the barrier!” I said.

“No,” said Jackaby. “She turned the machine away from the gap so that she could make the jump. This is something else.”

Morwen shuddered.

“It’s the church,” Jackaby said. “The last time you met, she couldn’t touch you when your scars formed the likeness of a cross on your cheek—now she’s got apostles shining down at her from every window and that great big symbol hanging over her.” He gestured up to the massive cross on the wall above the lectern.

Morwen was straining to rise, but her eyes screwed shut and she fell again.

“Luck is on our side for once,” Jackaby added. “That’s novel.”

“Oh dear,” I said. “I have a feeling it’s not going to last.”

“What?” He followed my eyes. Emerald light was playing across the surface of the enormous cross. A new rend was forming right on top of it.

“If the veil opens there, it’s going to split the cross in two,” I said. “If the sign of the cross is what’s holding Morwen in place, I sincerely doubt it will be very effective in pieces.”

“We need to get up there the moment it does,” Jackaby declared. “That rend is our path back to the Annwyn.”

Together we upturned the nearest pew. The bench was heavy and ungainly, but we managed to lean it up against the wall with its back side up, like a ramp. A tiny hole had formed in the center of the cross, and it was growing.

“It’s opening,” said Jackaby. He glanced back at Morwen Finstern, who was clenching her fists as if straining against an invisible weight. “Get up there.”

I held my skirts and took the ramp at a run. I was nearly to the top when the base slid out and the pew dropped several inches. My feet skidded out from under me and I slammed hard against the wood, hugging it to keep from falling. Jackaby threw his body weight against the bottom of the bench to stop it from sliding.