With a Golden Sword (DFZ Changeling Book 2), page 16
“Yes, he will,” the double insisted. “He’ll know.”
Lola opened her mouth only to close it again. Why was her double so sure when Lola herself wasn’t? On that same note, why was she still “Lola” even though practically all of her magic was somewhere else? As she’d been told many, many, maaaaaaaaany times, changelings didn’t have souls. She was just a fabrication, a child-stealing spell gone rogue, and yet Lola knew with absolute certainty that she was here in the cat, not in the body that looked like hers. It didn’t make any sense as she understood her own magic, but she had no time to figure it out.
“Just go break stuff,” she ordered. “Whether we fool him or not, the Rider can’t allow his master’s plans to be disrupted, but Valente’s a kind guy. I bet he won’t turn you into ice chunks like he did the troll.”
That would be wonderful, because Lola had left herself a very small lifeboat. She was reasonably certain she could regenerate any amount of gossamer given enough time, but she’d never tried coming back from a piece this small before, and as much as she loved cats, she didn’t want to be stuck as one.
“I’ll come back as fast as I can,” she promised, hopping up onto the headboard of Victor’s bed. “Just keep the Rider off me.”
“I can’t beat him,” her doppelganger warned. “The only reason your piano worked earlier was because he wasn’t expecting it. That’s not going to happen twice.”
“You don’t need to win,” Lola assured her. “You just need to buy me time. Now go cause a ruckus.”
Her double nodded and crept out of the room, slipping through the wards on the doorway Lola hadn’t even noticed as easily as a real changeling. Beaming with pride at what her gossamer could do, Lola slipped silently down onto the mattress. She was so small now that she could hide her body completely behind Victor’s pillow. She used this to get closer to her old master than she’d ever dared, creeping forward until she was nose to nose with Victor’s sleeping face.
It felt incredibly weird, and not because she was a cat. Before this moment, Lola had never actually seen Victor when he wasn’t awake. No surprise considering his obsession with control, but he looked so… different this way. He was still smothered in the illusions that turned him into the handsome Hero, but his face looked hollow and empty in a way even magic couldn’t hide. His body also seemed much smaller than she remembered, curled up under the blankets like a little old man’s.
He looked so vulnerable that Lola seriously considered covering his face with a pillow and ending it all right here. The only reason she didn’t was because she was pretty sure Valente’s head would be lost forever if Victor died with it still inside. That, and she no longer had enough gossamer to form the hands she needed to hold the pillow down.
Shaking her head at the missed opportunity, Lola curled her little cat body around Victor’s scalp. She’d just pressed her tail against his ear for even more contact when she heard the thunk of the Rider’s brand-new body hitting the floor.
Everything was a scramble after that. Lola pressed herself as flat against the pillow as she could get, hoping the dark and all the gossamer she’d sent out as bait would keep Valente from spotting her as she plunged herself like a spear into Victor’s dreams.
Chapter 11
Diving into Victor’s dreams was like falling into a vortex. As with everything involving her former master, he dragged her down, sucking her through his suffocating red darkness. It went on so much longer than her descent into Simon’s dream that Lola was staring to worry he’d trapped her in some kind of eternally falling loop when her feet landed on something that didn’t give.
She stopped with a stumble, looking around to see what sort of dream she’d landed in. No matter how hard she squinted, though, there was nothing to see. There was no movement, no people, not even any lights, just red-tinged darkness stretching out forever in every direction.
Lola planted her feet with a frown. She waved her hand in front of her face next. As expected, it was too dark to see it. She could feel it was a hand, though, and not a paw.
Her frown deepened. She must have reverted back to her normal shape sometime during the fall. That shouldn’t have been possible given how little gossamer she’d left herself, but dreams didn’t follow normal logic, and Lola was certain that this was a dream. It had the right feel, though she found it odd that Victor would dream of nothing. Not that she’d wanted to see his twisted dreams, but it was very weird.
Since her normal body seemed to be back, Lola held out her hand to make a flashlight only to think better of it at the last second. She didn’t know what sort of dream this was yet, but shining a light around a sleeping man’s head seemed like a sure-fire way to wake them up. This would all be for nothing if Victor came to and kicked her out before she’d done anything, so Lola settled for groping her way forward, sliding her feet blindly along the ground as she started searching for a way down.
There had to be one. Thanks to Simon, Lola knew that Victor went to his death quite often, and when you went somewhere a lot, you made a path. If Lola could find Victor’s, she should be able to walk right down to the creepy red room she’d busted into when she’d freed Morgan. It was a beautifully simple plan, but as ever, Victor made things difficult.
She walked through the dark for what felt like hours, but her groping hands never bumped into anything. Same went for her feet. Even when she took off the sneakers she hadn’t realized she was wearing until her lace came undone, the floor here all felt the same: a smooth, flat nothing.
It went on for so long, Lola began to worry she’d been wrong before. Maybe Victor wasn’t dreaming after all and she was wandering through the darkness of his unconscious brain. Lola didn’t know if that was possible, but she liked it better than the other explanation, which was that she’d fallen into a trap.
Given whose head she was in, it wasn’t unthinkable, but Lola had never heard of a human who could shape his own dreams. Not lucid dreaming where you took over what was already there, but true control where you determined what appeared. If anyone could do it, though, it would be Victor. She was worrying she’d already doomed herself when she heard something slosh.
Lola stopped with a jerk, reaching down to feel the ground with her fingers. Everything here was body temperature, so she hadn’t even noticed she was walking through a puddle until she heard it. Sliding her bare feet around her in a circle, Lola determined she was standing in a shallow lake of some kind of viscous liquid.
Her stomach curdled instantly. Everything in here already reeked of Victor’s magic, so she couldn’t smell it, but she knew it was blood. It was always blood with Victor. But while that thought made her want to gag, at least the blood was something. If this part of the darkness had a blood lake, then it must be different from the rest.
Trying her best not to think about what she was walking through, Lola paced the shallow lake to get a measure of its size. She’d only heard the splash a few seconds ago, so she reasoned she couldn’t be that far in, but no matter how far she walked, Lola couldn’t find the pool’s edge. It seemed to be everywhere, an ocean of blood filling his entire mind. And while that was very Victor, it didn’t give her much to work with. There was no trail, no tunnel, no spot in the lake that was deeper than the rest. It was just a bunch of blood lying on the ground.
Just thinking about that made Lola want to throw up. Even if it wasn’t doing anything but sitting there, she had a lot of trauma involving Victor’s blood, particularly in large pools. But as hard as she was trying to keep those memories at bay, they actually gave her an idea. A terrifying one, but nothing else was working, so Lola stopped walking and got down on her knees.
The blood started seeping into her clothes immediately, covering her in a sticky, heavy, familiar feeling. The only thing missing was Victor’s hand shoving her down, but Lola breathed through the anxiety and bent lower, curling her body over until her nose was touching the pool’s oily surface. Simon had said that a person’s death was the deepest part of themselves. This whole time, Lola had been groping around on the surface, but the last time she’d gotten into Victor’s death, she’d had to sink.
That thought was enough to make her dry-heave. She’d rather fight the Rider blind than plunge her face into yet another pool of Victor’s choking, disgusting blood, but she couldn't think of any other way. Her double wouldn’t be able to keep Valente occupied for long. She needed to suck it up and do what she’d come here to do, but the blood was so thick. Her face wasn’t even in it yet, but Lola could already feel it coating her lungs and eating her screams.
Every bit of her was begging not to do this. As ever, though, Lola couldn’t run away. Before, that had always been because Victor was holding her down. Now, though, Lola was the one forcing her face forward, because she’d promised. She’d promised Valente she’d save him. If she broke her word now after making such a fuss, she’d be as big a liar as Victor.
That was just horrible enough to get her over the edge. Quickly, before she lost her nerve, Lola plunged her face straight into the blood. This should have ended in a broken nose since the puddle was barely deep enough to cover her feet, but—just like when Victor had slammed her face down in the Fenrir dream—Lola didn’t crash. She sank, falling into the shallow puddle like she was falling down a well.
Blood poured into her nose as she plummeted. If she’d screamed, it would have filled her completely, but Lola didn’t scream this time. She didn’t fight, didn’t let him in. She just curled her body into a ball and went with the flow, sinking like an anchor down, down, down through the red darkness until it wasn’t darkness anymore. It was just red. A blinding, overpowering crimson that filled her senses before condensing into the monochrome room she remembered.
She landed on the crimson carpet like a meteor. Her balled-up body unfurled when she hit, leaving her gasping on her back. Lola swore she could still feel the blood all over, but her hands were clean when she brought them up. She was running them over her face to make sure the blood was really gone when she noticed the room was bigger than she remembered.
A lot bigger.
Lola went still, hands falling back to the carpet as she stared up at the cavernous space. It was still red and weird with its modern furniture and creepy blood fireplace, but the crimson carpet was now the size of a football field. The porthole to the Sea of Magic she’d escaped through last time was so far away she could barely see it, and the red chandelier that lit the place looked like a distant star, but the biggest change by far was the room’s walls.
They’d grown exponentially just like everything else, but unlike the ridiculously huge carpet, all of their extra space had been crammed with pictures. So, so many pictures packed together in a grid that it looked like the walls were tiled.
There’d been pictures on the walls last time too, but this was ridiculous. There had to be thousands of them now, acres and acres of people’s fearful faces going up as far as Lola could see. They were all done in the same red-only monochrome as the portrait of Victor she’d seen inside Simon’s death, but that painting had been life-sized and full body. These were much smaller, little eight-by-tens that showed no more than the subject’s head and neck.
Each one was framed in a simple black rectangle with a red thread hanging off the bottom. But where the thread in Simon’s death had ended in a noose around his neck, these were all tied off with neat little bows, like presents waiting to be unwrapped.
That struck her as important, but Lola hadn’t come to gawk at Victor’s creepy magic. Despite its growth spurt, the red room still had the same layout as last time, which meant the red safe with Valente’s head should be behind her. That was where it had been when she and Morgan had broken out, but when Lola finally made the trek across the field of carpet, the table the safe was supposed to be on was empty.
She grabbed it with a curse, pulling the ugly red thing off the wall to check behind and under it. It was pointless because she could already see there was nothing, but this didn’t make any sense. Victor’s death was the only place he could put the Rider’s head where even Valente wouldn’t be able to feel it. It had to be here.
Roaring with rage and fear, Lola began tearing the room apart. She overturned the couches and ripped off their pillows, stuck her head over the fire to look up the chimney. She even tried to pry the pictures off the walls, but there was nothing to find. The safe they’d broken out of last time simply wasn’t here.
Too defeated even to scream, Lola stumbled back to the fireplace, pressing both hands against the red mantel as she stared down at her bare feet. What did she do now? She’d been so sure that Valente’s head would be here, but she’d realized halfway through her violent search that she couldn’t smell a whiff of his midwinter magic. She’d told herself that was because everything here was soaked in Victor’s bloody stench, but now…
Lola’s fingers curled against the blood-red bricks. If the Rider’s head wasn’t here, then this had all been a waste of time. She’d put Simon in danger and dropped that piano on Valente for nothing. Victor would be waking up any second, and she had zilch to show for it. She didn’t even know how she was getting out of—
Her whirling thoughts stopped with a jerk as a pair of black, glossy shoes, the only thing besides herself in this place that wasn’t bleedingly red, stepped into her vision. She was still gawking at them in uncomprehending horror when a familiar smug voice sounded practically in her ear.
“Hello, my monster.”
Lola closed her eyes with a hiss. “How long have you been here?”
“I’m always here,” Victor replied. “This is my death, after all.”
Of course.
“I felt your first intrusion as well,” he informed her casually. “I was too busy with more important matters to act on it back then, but I didn’t want you thinking I hadn’t noticed.”
“I don’t care,” Lola said, hands balling into fists. “Where is the Rider’s head?”
“Is all you’re here for?” He sounded disappointed. “I thought you’d come to kill me.”
“You’re not worth the trouble,” Lola snarled, yanking her head up at last. When she turned to bare her teeth at him, though, the sight of his face stopped her cold.
The man beside her was definitely Victor, but in a form Lola had never seen. He’d always covered himself in illusions, especially since he’d become the Hero, but there was no magic on him now. Just his own face, which was so saggy and ancient it looked like he was about to crumble to dust before her eyes.
“Surprised?” Victor said, turning his chin to give her a better look at his sunken cheeks. “You shouldn’t be. Mortality is a tyrant, and I’ve been doing this for a very long time.”
Lola knew that. He’d appeared to her as a middle-aged man in the hospital twenty years ago. If the image he’d presented then was even remotely true, he’d have to be in his sixties by now, but this Victor looked way beyond that. She’d never seen a human so withered who was still alive.
“Now you see why I wear the illusions,” he said when she couldn’t stop staring. “People pay less attention to you as you get older, which is ridiculous. Experience is power. I could try to fight the stupidity, but it’s so much easier getting people to swallow a story when it comes in a handsome package, and heroes are supposed to be young.”
He lifted his thin arms, old joints creaking inside his sagging red jacket as he cupped Lola’s cheek with a skeletal hand. “But we’ve never needed pretensions, have we, my monster? You’ve always seen me for exactly what I am.”
“Are you delusional?” Lola cried, jerking away. “You’ve done nothing but lie to me my entire life!”
“Did I?” Victor asked, tilting his skull-like head. “The first day we met, when I saved you from that hospital, I told you I was the hero, and here I stand. I told you you were the monster, and there you are. I told you you could save your sister, and so you did.”
He smiled. “You’ve always liked to paint me as the architect of all your suffering, but I’ve never needed to lie to one so far beneath me. I’ve always been and done exactly what I said. You were the one who needed to believe differently.”
“No,” Lola snarled, scrambling farther away. “You don’t get to do this to me. You don’t get to reshape the past into a story where you’re not a lying abuser. I saw what you did to Simon, and I know what you did to Valente. You’re the monster here, not me. All I ever wanted was to get away from you!”
“And yet here we are, closer than ever.” His wrinkled face twisted into a terrifying version of the smug smile she knew so well. “You crow and strut about how you’re free, but you’ve spent the last three weeks hiding in someone else’s barrow. You seduced my knight, and yet the moment I returned, he knelt right back at my feet. Even your darling Simon came back to my fold. And yes, I know he intends to betray me, but that’s how it always goes between a blood mage and his apprentice. I wouldn’t respect him if he didn’t try, but it’s not going to work. His efforts, like yours, will always end in failure. You know why that is, don’t you?”
Lola turned away, refusing to answer, so Victor did it for her.
“Because I always win.”
“Is that all this is about for you?” she spat, glaring at him with a lifetime of hate. “Winning? Gratifying your arrogance?”
“Arrogance is the core of humanity’s strength,” he said proudly. “We have always been weak and short-lived. If we meekly accepted our lot, we’d be nothing but grass trampled beneath the feet of greater powers. It is our daring, our arrogance that has lifted us out of the mud we were born into. That is what blood magic is about. That is humanity’s power, and it’s why you can never beat me. Because I know exactly what I am capable of, and it is far greater than you.”
Lola clutched the edge of the fireplace. She wanted to call him out, to scream that he was a narcissistic liar, but it was hard to say anything when Victor’s magic was burying her like a landslide. Logically, she knew that was because they were inside his death, the one place in the universe where Victor actually was a god.
