The Lost Codex Read online

  Victor was tranquilized shortly after Brom found us, but is burning through the drugs at an alarming rate in what we all can only hope is a secure room.

  “Do you think what Victor said is possible?” Brom is asking the Librarian. We’re back in the conference room, assessing damage for what feels like the fiftieth time in a single day.

  “I don’t know.” A hot current crackles through her words. She disapproves of my presence, but worry for my brother overrides anything else. “And it is beginning to piss me off.”

  A hint of amusement softens Brom’s scowl. “Only beginning?”

  “The entire situation is wholly unacceptable. It makes me want to—”

  “You won’t, though.” A sharp edge scrapes over Brom’s assessment.

  “Want and do are entirely different creatures.” She drums a harsh beat against the table. “I wish I could offer more, old friend.”

  “We assumed that the creature was one of the original children from Hamelin,” Alice says. “He bore similar physical characteristics, such as rotten teeth and blackened eyes. Perhaps the Piper and thirteenth Wise Woman view these children as their own.”

  Did the blue eye blacken because they were able to corrupt Victor, or because whoever used to own it was Chosen?

  “It’s his eye.”

  Could Victor now have one of the creature’s eyes? I can’t remember if its eyes were mismatched when we fought or not.

  The monsters in my head root around for their ice picks.

  “You two have dispatched a number of Chosen before,” the Librarian points out to Alice. “The difference now is that Victor is concerned about retribution over this one.”

  “He is raving,” Alice counters. “It is quite obvious he is not in his right mind, nor has been since returning to the Institute. Many of his statements are suspect.”

  “Victor was off his protocol for four days,” Brom adds quietly. “There is no telling what effects that might have on his mind.”

  I lean back into my chair. “He has moments of clarity.” Moments when he’s Victor. Madness or not, my brother is still there, and I will be damned if I don’t help him fight his way back.

  “Does he, though?” Alice is gentle with her contradiction to my assertion. “Or could that opinion stem from hope rather than reality? Madness comes in many forms and guises, and is utterly seductive when needs be.”

  I may be losing pieces of my memory, and can’t always trust everything I see. But . . . “I believe him.”

  Brom strokes his beard. “Say we accept that this creature—”

  The Librarian interjects, “Let us call him Prometheus.”

  My father and I both roll our eyes at her not-so-witty attempts at humor. He concedes and continues, “If Prometheus was truly the Piper and thirteenth Wise Woman’s child, then where would that put us?”

  “The Piper’s goal to ascertain the Codex remains unchanged,” Alice insists. “He requires it for the convergence.”

  “Even for the most terrible of parents, a child’s death can change one’s course, Ms. Reeve. So the question we must ask ourselves is exactly what we must do in order to prepare for such an event.”

  “We have no proof that the creature was anything other than one of the Chosen,” Alice argues. “Besides, what parents would do such an awful thing to their child? He was stitched together like the creature from 1818SHE-F, indicating he was molded, like many of the others, to resemble persons from various Timelines.”

  “Who is to say that ones such as the Piper and the thirteenth Wise Woman would not do to their own flesh and blood that they did to others?”

  Alice’s eyes narrow as she hones in on the Librarian. Before she can say anything, the A.D. flings himself through the door, his boots shrieking against the floor. His breathing is harsh, his face flush. “A light turned on in Pfiefer’s apartment a few minutes ago.”

  In the span of a heartbeat, we’re all on our feet. Brom says, “Make it a quick report, Mr. Dawkins.”

  The A.D. bends over, his hands pressed against knees and thighs. “The team watching din’t notice anyone out of the ordinary enter the building, but a light doesn’t turn on by itself, does it?”

  I ask, “What are the bugs indicating?” And then, “There are bugs, right?”

  “Ain’t got no bugs inside.” My father’s assistant glances up at me. “Every one we tried to place fizzled out. It’s like they’ve got some kind of anti-surveillance system, although nobody found anything during their sweep shortly after the attack. There are curtains and blinds in the apartment, so we can’t even see what’s going on in there save the light framing the window.”

  “Call Dupin,” Brom orders. “Have him meet us downstairs in ten.”

  Phone already out and fingers flying, the A.D. bolts from the room.

  Driving in New York is an art, and for a man who grew up in Paris during the Nineteenth Century, C. Auguste Dupin is a master. We make our way across town in blur of dodges, bursts of speed, and miraculous turning of corners that did not end up with the SUV rolling.

  Inside the otherwise empty lobby, Dupin ups his game by blowing a handful of powder in the doorman’s face. I catch the man as he slumps toward the ground. The A.D. nicks his keys and enters the security room, ready to take out the building’s cameras. I drag the sedated doorman in behind him and prop him up in a chair.

  Brom hovers in the doorway. “Any sign of the security guard?”

  The A.D. flips through the monitors. He taps on one of the grainy screens. “Fifth floor.”

  “Leave him to me.” Dupin shoves his hands in his pockets and heads toward the stairs.

  “Since I don’t have one of Marianne’s viruses,” the A.D. says, “I’m going to need to stay here and manually erase the footage.” The sharp crack of knuckles juxtaposes against the soft hiss emanating from the screens. “Shut the door on your way out.”

  Brom, Alice, and I board the elevator. Thanks to Wendy’s infernos, our choices of weapons were limited. I’ve got the gun I’ve kept stashed by my bed. Alice toys with a pair of daggers tucked beneath her mattress. Brom has a small pistol he always keeps on him.

  “I want whoever it is alive,” my father says for the fourth time since we left the Institute. He demands answers, and the dead don’t always tell their stories effectively.

  Alice goes over the layout of the apartment again, and as she does, I sincerely hope that this location doesn’t shift and change like Bücherei, Pfiefer’s mansion. One day, it housed a mysterious, multi-story labyrinth of a library chocked full with author mementos. The next, it was unoccupied, an empty shell of a house with nothing in it but an old couch and a photograph of Alice and me.

  The Piper had been watching us for some time. Is he watching now?

  A ding sounds, and the three of us make our way out of the elevator and down the hall toward apartment 1202. Carpet mutes our journey, but the hairs on my arms prick upward at the sheer lack of noise we wade into. No sounds of daily life slip through door cracks, no faint strains of conversations, music, or television. People go to work, true, but it’s early enough in the evening that at least some twelfth-floor residents ought to be home.

  My father picks 1202’s lock so quickly that I worry my fever hasn’t subsidized. I require a double take to ensure that it’s Brom with me and not the A.D. He extracts a can of spray oil from his coat and applied to the hinges before opening the door.

  When I catch his attention, a single brow raised, he winks.

  We quietly enter, silently latching the door behind us. The A.D. reported a light came on in this apartment. He was right and wrong all at once—light, yes, but all lights are on. Every damn one of them burns brightly.

  No one is in sight.

  Brom motions toward a hallway, his nod indicating he’ll search the office. Alice is to head to the main living area and kitchen, me down the other hallway, toward the bedrooms.

  Hardwood floors and rugs are not as generously soundproof as ca
rpet, and as such, each step is slower and more carefully placed. The first bedroom’s door is wide open; a quick glance shows no sign of inhabitants. But it’s not this room that I’m concerned with. The door of the one farther down the hall is propped shut, leaving just a crack to peek through.

  Jackpot.

  Directly in my line of sight is the back of a statuesque woman with dark hair twisted up into a bizarre sculpture of sorts. She’s dressed in an elaborate red and black dress. At her feet is . . . I think it’s a naked man with a burlap bag covering his face. One of the woman’s dagger-like high heels digs into his groin area. He doesn’t scream, though, even as I watch blood bubble around the golden-tipped heel.

  Beyond is an open golden, glowing doorway to an unknown Timeline.

  Suddenly, the woman’s head lifts and slowly turns. Just as I am about to kick in the door and begin shooting, the shock of her cold, pale face paralyzes me. Literally. I could not move or speak even if I wanted to.

  Wonderland’s Queen of Hearts beams as if she just won the best croquet game ever.

  The last time I saw her was at the New York Public Librarian’s fundraiser gala. We were hunting the Piper and instead stumbled upon one of Alice’s fiercest rivals. Before we could take her into custody, she disappeared into an unknown Timeline’s doorway, leading us to assume she was in collusion with the Piper—although how so, none of us knew.

  This is the bitch who instructed Sweeney Todd to insert a boojum into the base of Alice’s spine, nearly killing the woman I love.

  Triumph crawls across Hearts’ blood-red lips as she has the audacity to lift a single finger up to signal me to remain quiet. Then she kicks aside the man and strides toward me.

  Her metal-tipped heels make no sounds upon the hardwood floors. How can that be?

  I struggle to move, to yell, to shoot. I can’t even blink. Hell, I’m not even sure I’m breathing.

  I have to make this bitch pay for what she’s done to Alice.

  She slides open the door, and then, just as my muscles tense enough to snap me out of whatever trance I’m in, she presses her body against mine. Her breath slithers across my skin. “Hello, poppet. I have been waiting for you.” Sharp nails did into my chin as she angles my face toward hers. “Naughty poppet, taking his time.”

  I yearn to tell her how sorry I am, how truly sorry, but she merely pats my cheek before pulling me inside the bedroom. The door is locked behind us.

  “Do not fret,” the Queen coos as I follow where she leads. “No one can hear us in here.”

  Why would I care if someone were to hear us?

  No—that’s not right. I care. Don’t I? This isn’t right.

  Is it?

  I look down and find a man’s bleeding body between us. Bloody holes curve into a heart shape across his chest. She’d been torturing this person for some time.

  Did he hurt her? I’ll kill him.

  No—no, that’s not right, either. He’s . . . I know him, don’t I?

  The Queen drags heavily ringed fingers down my cheek, across my neck. I crave to lean into her touch. “Although I was cautioned against my curiosity, and advised to wait patiently, I wanted to see if it were true.” Fingers curve around my throat. “And I am delighted to find that you are just as promised.”

  Pride bursts from every single one of my nerve endings even as breathing turns difficult. But then the Queen releases me and taps me on my nose. “I had worried, my poppet, that you would have fought more. I was prepared for it.”

  Why would I fight her? Why would she even think such ridiculous thoughts?

  “It’s a shame, in a way. I like it when my slaves fight.” The Queen reaches down and removes the gun from my hand. I don’t see where it goes, but it doesn’t matters. If she wants me to shoot for her, I will. If she wants me defenseless, I’ll be that, too. Hell, if she wants to shoot me, I’ll stand perfectly still. “I wonder . . . which would hurt the Queen of Diamonds more?”

  The sensation of someone plucking a guitar string within my head reverberates enough to cause a wince.

  “You disappearing tonight, without any notice or indication as to where you go?” the Queen asks. “Or perhaps as she watches you walk away from her with the understanding that there is nothing she can do?” She grips my chin again and leans across the expanse of blood and victim below us. Is she angry with me?

  I’m relieved when her ruby lips caress mine. Not angry. Possessive.

  When she pulls away, the room tilts. Turns hazy, like there’s a blaze contained by these walls.

  This . . . this isn’t right.

  “Honestly, I wish to see her face,” the Queen of Hearts murmurs. “One of my greatest joys in life so far was watching Diamonds accept her banishment and realize that she would not only lose her reign, Court, and peoples, but also the White King. Their grief was utterly delicious. I pray it will be the same when she comes to understand that you are no longer hers.”

  That name again. Diamonds. The Queen of Diamonds. Another sharp, painful ache behind my temple has me stumbling a step backward.

  “Oh, so there is a bit of fight in you, is there?” Fire gleams at me as her lips thin. “Should I punish you, or. . .” She presses her mouth against mine once more, and exhaustion drapes its heavy blankets over my body. Her tongue runs across the seam of my lips, and—

  “Finn?”

  It’s as if a bucket of ice water has crashed down upon me. I blink, and the woman before me morphs back into my enemy.

  I hiss, fumbling for my gun, “I am going to make you pay for what you’ve done to Alice.”

  She clucks delightedly as she backs into the glowing doorway. Where the hell is my gun? “I think it is the other way around, is it not?” And then, Hearts is nothing but a blur of red and black before the door disappears.

  “Finn?”

  The door pushes open and I stumble into the man on the floor. Alice rushes into the room. “There you are! The rest of the apartment is—”

  She stops. Looks at me hard, her eyes slits.

  If I didn’t know better, I’d say I’ve just come off the worst drinking bender of all time. I had the Queen of Hearts before me, and she got away.

  How in the hell did that happen? And where the hell is my gun?

  Brom appears behind Alice. “Who is that on the floor?” He glances up at me. “Why is there red lipstick all over your face?”

  I wipe the back of a hand across my mouth. Creamy red stains my skin.

  Brom is bending down at my feet, yanking the burlap sack off the man’s head. A sense of searing anger, grief, and outrage explodes in my chest. Below me is Otto Lidenbrock.

  Someone captured and tortured one of the Collectors’ Society’s agents.

  And there’s lipstick on my face, and it isn’t Alice’s. She isn’t wearing any. I don’t remember kissing anyone that isn’t Alice. What is going on?

  The woman I love steps into my line of sight as Brom attempts to wake the former professor. “What did she do to you?”

  She. Which she?

  “The Queen of Hearts. What did she do to you?”

  Brom swears. “He’s alive, but needs a doctor immediately. Finn, call 911.”

  I dig out my phone from my pocket and do as requested. My father asks Alice, “What’s this about the Queen of Hearts?”

  She motions at the bloody heart carved upon Otto’s chest. “I have seen this more times than I would like.” More tightly, “The rogue on Finn’s face is a color I know to be hers.”

  The Queen of Hearts . . . kissed me? I am immediately, and thoroughly, ready to purge the little left in my stomach.

  When I hang up, Brom asks, “What happened in here, son?”

  It scares the shit out of me to admit, “I don’t remember.”

  OTTO LIDENBROCK IS ON life support. His injuries are numerous—more than simply the grotesque calling card the Queen of Hearts left behind. One of the Society’s doctors snuck in various medicines from different Timelines to the
hospital in an effort to help our fallen comrade, but even so, the mood within the Institute is bleak.

  “How can you not remember the Queen of freaking Hearts?” Mary snaps at Finn.

  I fire off a warning of my own. “Enough.”

  Since I found him in the Piper’s bedroom, a sense of agitated frustration has engulfed Finn. Worse, his fever returned with a vengeance.

  “I—I don’t—” He clutches his head to stem the raging headache that now grips him.

  I temper my frustration in order to remind him, “Don’t force the memories. You must relax.”

  In the car on the ride home, the smell of Hearts’ perfume wafted from his skin. He showered as soon as we arrived at the Institute, almost as if he knew that traces of the evil woman lingered on his face and body.

  The list of this woman’s transgressions grows exponentially. She and I will have a reckoning before the end.

  How dare she attack him.

  “I agree with Alice,” the Librarian says from her perch by the door. “There is no use haranguing Finn when no answers will come.”

  Mary shoots off my sitting room couch. “Those bastards are taking us out one by one! Wendy, Otto, Finn. Victor.” Her nose wrinkles at the catch in her list. “Dammit, even the little princess was attacked. The Chosen won’t stop until they’ve eliminated each and every last one of us, will they?”

  The Librarian says quietly, “It seems as much, doesn’t?”

  Mary storms from the flat, brushing past the Librarian. Within seconds, a door across the hallway slams shut.

  “She isn’t wrong,” the Librarian murmurs. And then she, too, leaves.

  Finn pushes the heel of his hand against his forehead. I remind him again to cease forcing the memories.

  He says quietly, heartbreakingly, “I’m so damn sorry, Alice.”

  I twist my hands into my skirt. “You have nothing to be sorry about.”

  “I kissed someone. Someone who isn’t you. I don’t—that’s—I can’t even imagine wanting anyone but you.”

  I stare straight ahead, refusing to even allow an image of the event to coagulate, lest I immediately charge off with my blades in my fists. “She kissed you, an unwillingly partner. Of that I have no doubt.”