Luminous Part 23

CONSUeLa slid into the dark, pressed close against V. The entrance shrank behind her, squeezing over her foot, and disappeared. Even without light, she felt the enclosed s.p.a.ce wrapped tightly around them.

"V . . ." she said.

* Bones. * The violin song rang through her shadow veins, sorrowful and thankful all at once.

"He made a mirror out of the Flow," V whispered back; his heartbeat thudded in her ears. "He placed it in your room and trapped me here. Now he's got you, too."

Thoughts ricocheted around inside her head. "Tender?" she gasped. She still saw him as limp and lifeless, staring with shaven brows at Mercy House.

"Who else?" V growled, smoothing his hands down her humerus bones. If he was shocked to feel only the silky-sh.e.l.l surface, he gave no indication.

She blinked against the darkness, her mind still reeling. "Why?"

Tender's voice rang down into the chamber of no walls, no floor, and no light. "Actually, I'm conducting an experiment," he said. "I'm curious to test your theory, seeing how far you'd go to save another, or how far you'd go to save yourself, or if it's all just words," Tender quipped. Bodiless, the sound was mockingly everywhere. Consuela thought that he might be speaking only to her. She felt the vibrations of his voice in her bones.

"It's down to the last few," Tender said casually. "Both of you have been instrumental and, thereby, worthy to see it through. So: whoever makes it out may live a little longer, but we all know there's only so much borrowed time."

"He's insane," V said flatly. She couldn't quite agree, but why trap them here? Why try to kill everyone? What good would it do to empty the Flow? Tender would still be stuck here. Alone. He still couldn't get back to the real world.

A little hint of something other than s.a.d.i.s.tic daring tinged his words. "I've been watching you two-it's a rare thing-but I've seen it before," he said. "Young love. Desperate times. Strange bedfellows and all that. So preciously predictable." He sighed. "So let's play this out: who will sacrifice themself for the other? One of you is likely to get out. The other is likely to stay in the Flow. I mean this fairly literally, since you are basically in a pocket of the stuff. It's seamless on the other side-there's no up or down . . . or out, for that matter, although I trust in your joint inventiveness. The prize is a chance to live a little while longer, riddled with guilt at leaving the other behind, and the opportunity to seek revenge. The loser, obviously, dies. Or, hey, don't choose and see what happens-that's a choice, too. I am generous because I'm leaving it entirely up to you; the Flow was never so kind. However, time is short." There was a slight pause, just enough to heighten Consuela's panic. V's hands held on to her bones. "Ever wonder if we actually have to breathe in the Flow . . . ?"

"Tender!" Consuela shouted. "Don't do this!"

"I didn't," Tender said. "You did."

She felt his anger like a gavel. His embarra.s.sment was her epitaph.

A vacuum sealed. Consuela felt her lungs constrict. Spots appeared before her eyes. Was it her imagination, or had she stopped breathing? Did skeletons breathe? Did angels? Or ghosts? The darkness became a velvet blanket smothering her. The absence of light was like a force pus.h.i.+ng against her sockets, burrowing into her brain. She ground her teeth.

"Look away," V said, which made no sense until he flicked on a light. The cigarette lighter sparked like a flashbulb in the dark. It took a while for the winks of red and white to resolve into his profile, blackness underlining his eyes, nose, and lower lip. He held the little finger of flame high. "You okay?"

She placed her palms flat against his chest, taking comfort in his solidity. "I've been better," she admitted. "Is he gone?"

V reached out to touch the walls. Consuela splayed her fingers, but pulled back when the blackness gave sickeningly under her hand. Only the s.p.a.ce underfoot felt solid. They pressed against each other.

"He's gone crazy," V muttered.

Consuela only shook her head. Tender wasn't crazy, not here; he was sane-which had to be worse when he'd been trapped for this long. Trapped with no way out.

"He wants it to end," Consuela said. "He wants to be the one to do it and take everyone down with him." They were just ants, crawling, broken, and scrambling under his boot. She felt the awesome pressure of enclosure, the venom of claustrophobia seeping into her veins. It trembled on her nonexistent tongue. It was at that moment that she knew that Tender had written the poem.

"Never ending," she gagged. "It's his h.e.l.l." I can't breathe!

"Don't panic," V said sternly, the flip side of calm. "We're going to get out of this. We will. Trust me. Listen to the sound of my voice, all right? Think about something else." His last words choked out of him as he fumbled in the darkness. "Talk to me," V said over his shoulder. "You make skins, right? Tell me how it works."

"I don't know," Consuela croaked, fingers clawing at her missing trachea. "If I think about it too much, it doesn't work." She kept talking past the yammering panic, swallowing reflexively. "I just . . . do it. It's the same when I undo it."

V kept her talking, feeling the spongy walls for any c.h.i.n.k, waving the lighter like a lantern above their heads.

"Undo it?" he prompted. "How?"

She shuddered against the suffocating fear and began following V's methodic prodding, grateful for something to do as she spoke. "I can change the skin back into its parts. The water is just water, the air disappears. My feather skin became a big pile of black fluff."

V reached above his head as high as he could, fingers extended, touching nothing.

"What did you do with it?" he said as he strained.

Consuela shook her head. She couldn't find escape anywhere! Was this how Tender felt all the time? Was that what he was trying to teach them? Or would he really . . . ? Yes, he would. I saw him with that b.l.o.o.d.y sword.

"I threw it out the window," she said.

"Really?" V said. "Why?"

"I don't know," she admitted. Consuela wasn't sure why she'd done any of the things she'd been doing of late. Any time she stopped and thought about it, she ended up in tears. Better not to stop and think, just do it. Action. It had saved Rodriguez and the guy in the building, the drunken woman in a field, and a drowning boy. When she thought about herself and how helpless she felt, how much she missed home, she turned into a useless heap. It struck her that this was always when she'd hear V's violin-voice singing her name. The one that now called her "angel" in secret. Angel Bones. It sounded very ominous now. Macabre. Hopeless. But she couldn't give up. Consuela kept searching.

V knelt on the floor and ran his hands over their feet, where shoes and bones touched blackness, pus.h.i.+ng his hand, then his fist, hard against the Flow.

"Anything?" she asked. He shook his head. She ran a hand over her skull. "s.h.i.+ne the light here." V moved the lighter obediently toward her in case she'd seen something new. Instead, she pointed to herself.

"Can you see yourself in this?" Consuela indicated the smooth plate of her skull, knowing that the abalone s.h.i.+mmer was dull, muted with color and light.

"No." said V. "It's too . . . *Hypnotic/Beautiful/ Deep * . . . milky."

They were both uncomfortably silent.

"I don't have eyes to look into," she said, almost chuckling, but afraid to let the laughter bubble out. "But there's blood," she said, suddenly serious.

"Blood? What blood?" V demanded.

"When you'd gone-I saw myself in a drop of blood," Consuela said, remembering the scissors, which might have torn her to ribbons, but instead had puffed into smoke. Tender had meant them for V. This trap was meant for the both of them. "I'm okay. It was when I'd cut my finger on the gla.s.s. There was a spot of blood on the floor and I could see my reflection. I thought you could see me."

"I didn't look," he admitted. "I didn't think about that. Liquid."

"While it's wet, it can reflect. But I can't bleed," Consuela said slowly. "You can."

"I can," he said. "But I can't take you with me. Moving through reflections isn't like moving through mirrors-it's a tight squeeze. I barely got through the last time and I was alone." V sighed. "I might be able to get out that way, but what about you?"

"I'll get out," she said bravely.

"How?" V pressed.

"I don't know," she said. "Somehow."

V shook his head. "Not good enough."

"V . . ."

"No." He said it one step shy of "please."

He took a step closer. "I'm supposed to protect you," he said. "That doesn't end now."

Consuela met his eyes, saying something she'd dared to wonder about.

"Was I supposed to die in that changing room?" V said nothing. "I don't think so," she added carefully. "I think that I'm supposed to be here."

"I don't know," he confessed.

"You were compelled to save me, and you did. I'm here. Now." Consuela said it and her thoughts tumbled into order. "And I can save you."

The world snapped open.

The world snapped shut.

I'm here to save you. Save us. Save the Flow. She felt it like it was one of her skins, sure and solid. But how?

"I can make it out through the reflection, all right?" he said. "But I'm not going unless I know that you can, too. Make a skin and get out first." She shook her head. Her denial of the possibility seemed to feed his conviction. "Use anything," V insisted. "Use the lighter. My s.h.i.+rt. The dark . . ."

"I can't. It has to be something . . . organic." She struggled to put it into words. "I don't think there's anything I can use, because it's not real. Really real."

Shadows wavered and flickered like laughter in the silence.

"The fire is real," V said quietly.

"I already have a skin of fire back in my room," Consuela said. "I don't think I can make another one; it feels already done." It was a feeling she trusted, but it left her helpless. "I don't know what else I could use."

One-handed, V began patting his pockets, checking his clothes for something-anything-while his other hand held up the feeble flicker of light. He stopped suddenly with his hand flat against his chest.

"Use me."

"What?" said Consuela.

"That's it," V whispered. "Use me. Make a skin of me."

* I can save you. *

"No." She hissed back, "That's not possible."

"You said something organic, something real."

"Not a person!" she said, when she meant to say, "Not you!" The idea made her sick.

V shook his head. "You're not listening to yourself," he said. "You can make a skin of anything organic, anything real. I'm both." He hushed her next protest with a chopping wave. "No! Listen, if it works, you can get out of here using me-my powers, right? My skin. You can get us through a reflection. You won't need a mirror."

Consuela kept shaking her head, unable to express her horror without her eyes.

"I won't do it," she muttered. "I can't."

V shook off her words. "You can and you will. We have to get out, tell the others, and stop him."

"What if there aren't any others?" she shot back.

"Then you will have to stop him."

Consuela tasted fresh panic. "I can't . . ."

"Stop it!" V spat. "You can. This will work."

He was right, it could. It should.

"What if I can't turn you back?" she said.

"This will work!" V insisted. "Like reflecting in your eyes, right?" He touched one hand to her jawbone, lifting her skull upward. He spoke directly into her faceless face. "You thought outside the lines before. You showed me it could work. Believe it. Believe me." V touched his eye. "Just a reflection," he said, and touched his chest. "Just organic. You understand? Consuela: This. Will. Work."

She didn't trust her voice. Her mind spun with the idea of a thousand feathers loose on her bed. What if a person just turned into . . . parts? V?

"I can save you," V said quietly. "Let me save you."

* This is what I'm here for/Consuela/Angel/Bones *

* I can save you. *

* Let me save you. *

She shook her head against the montage of grisly doubts in her mind.

"No. Not just you, not just me-it has to save us both," she said, projecting a certainty she didn't feel. She touched his arm, speaking quickly. "All right. Tell me how it works, what to look for in there"-the Mirror Realm-"and I'll get us out."

V was suddenly taken aback. Her hand on his flesh, he realized the ramifications of what he'd been asking, begging, her to do.

"Keep your . . . my eyes open," he said carefully. "See the black door and walk through it without moving your feet. Like through the Flow: with intention. When you're in, look for the Vs drawn in the top right-hand corners. Those are the mirrors I've used. The tall one with the condensation is yours. It'll most likely be on your left, but you never know. Don't wander through any strange mirrors. Always aim for the one you know."

She nodded. He did, too. A sort of understanding pa.s.sed between them, leaving an awkward acceptance behind.

"Give me your hand." The way V said it, she had to obey, the way she had since first coming to the Flow. She saw his hand on hers and wildflowers and Christmas lights and a half-remembered kiss. Consuela offered her hand, forcing herself to watch his every movement, trying not to think too much about what was happening or what might come next.

He rolled up his sleeve and turned his arm over. Taking her slim finger bones in his grip, he pressed the talon ends to his skin and resolutely pressed down. Both gasped as her fingertips pierced the skin, blood welling up in little vampire pools, a tiny spray of red flung almost to his wrist. He let his arm fall and fisted his grip, pumping blood down his forearm, ma.s.saging out a thin pool drop by drop. Thankfully, it didn't soak into the Flow. V grunted against the pain and sweat speckled his face.

* I hate pain. *

They knelt over the growing red splash. The lighter in his hand shook slightly, setting the shadows dancing. When the patch of blood spread as wide as his palm, V placed the lighter to one side, snapping its lever down with a rubber band wound around its middle. V pressed his hand over the wounds and wound his sleeve around them, glancing at the lighter, then at her.

"I can see the outline of your body," he said. * Naked in the firelight. *

Consuela was glad the bones would not betray her blush or her fear. She hoped, though, that perhaps V might see her smile.

Her lips were ghosted shadow and half-reflected light.

The Flow snapped open.