It's late. Beatrice and Mary are both asleep, and I can't stop myself glancing at Beatrice from time to time to reassure myself she's not bleeding again. Raven should be sleeping too but he insists on staying up to help me, and I can't stop him when he's this excited. It's a frustrating process, full of gaps and uncertainties, but ultimately I find I'm enjoying it. This is detective work, after all. I wish I had my whiteboard. Raven's notebook will have to do. I'm glad he talked me into taking a nap earlier. I don't want to have to stop.
I'm in a maze of corridors. Nowhere I recognise, but they've got an institutional feel. I'm lost, running blindly, and I can hear a sound. The rhythmic beating of a huge black heart. I don't know where it is, or if I should be running towards it or away. All I know is that I have to run.
And then I'm awake, lying on the bed in the hotel room. That wasn't too bad, compared to some of the nightmares I've had recently. And one memory is lingering. A sign, reading "Archive C, British Museum".
The door opens, and before I even have time to panic I see that it's Beatrice with her arms full of takeaway coffee cups. My usual quadruple espresso. Lattes for everyone else. Raven's still asleep, in his chair despite my best efforts, but Mary's awake. And I end up having to try to explain how me and Beatrice both have ancient Romans living in our heads and one of them gave me this spear.
Beatrice is feeling the need to be up and doing something instead of staying in this hotel room, and after my nightmare I'm feeling the need to visit the British Museum. Maybe that archive will tell us something about the Romans in our heads, or the Dreori tribe that the book talks about. She's game. Although first we need a shopping trip. Beatrice managed to hide the blood on her t-shirt by closing her jacket, but she really needs something clean. Between stabbing myself at the hospital and treating Beatrice's wound, my clothes are more blood than fabric by now, and Raven's still in a hospital gown.
Beatrice gets in the shower, and I ask Mary to help me move Raven to the bed. No need. He's awake, and insists on moving himself. I explain about the museum idea. He's sceptical, given what it says in the book about evidence of the tribe being destroyed, but I'm not so sure. Museums keep a lot of things that aren't on display to the public, and my dream told me I need to find that archive. That's not helping my case, as he points out I'm now talking about breaking into the museum. He has a point. I'm not bad at lock picking, but electronic alarm systems are a whole different ball game.
Raven suggests I should go in a dream. That idea terrifies me, but it makes sense. My dreams are horrifying, but lucid. I could probably find the way. So the plan is, we'll visit the museum during the day, to get a feel for the layout of the building - to case the joint, as Raven puts it - and then come back to the hotel to do the scary part. Maybe I can bring Beatrice with me for that part as well? Raven thinks he might be able to help with that.
Raven notes that the guy on the desk here is rather over familiar. On the plus side, that means Raven's managed to talk to someone other than us. On the minus side, that's not the kind of attitude I expect from the receptionist in a place like this. Mary mentions that he asked her for Nathan's number when she talked to him. Ahh. That's OK then.
After a meal and quick shopping trip, Beatrice and me set out for the museum. We look pretty normal, so it should just be a matter of going in like any other pair of tourists. Except when we get there there's a bunch of TSG officers hanging around outside and here we are carrying an ancient Roman spear in a sports bag. Even if by some miracle they're here for some reason unrelated to us, that's still not going to go well for us.
We take a walk around the perimeter. The museum is huge, with plenty of ways in and out. Finding one that's neither guarded nor alarmed, however, proves impossible. But there has to be a way in! We got into hell through Raven's bathroom mirror. We must be able to get into a museum. Beatrice has an idea. I'm good at being inconspicuous. She's good at being conspicuous. She'll play the obnoxious tourist and create a distraction while I sneak inside.
Beatrice hands me the spear, goes over to a door and kicks it open. Immediately alarms sound, security guards descend, and while she yells at them about looking for the toilets, I find my moment to step inside. I'm not going to have long. This place has cameras and at some point someone's going to notice my arrival. I pull up my hood and scarf so at least my face is covered, and start my search. Stairs or a lift. The archive has to be in the basement.
Of course there's a locked cover on the freight lift. Prizing it off takes some time, time I don't have, but the call button works. Inside I'm faced with an array of buttons for different levels, but somehow I find I've pressed the button for one of the sub basements. I don't know how I knew which one it was, but as the doors open again I know I'm in the right place. Back in those institutional corridors. I've already been here too long and I start to run, desperately looking for the sign I remember, but instead I hear voices. Two people talking in strange distorted tones.
I can't let myself be found. I duck into the nearest doorway. And there I hear again the beating of that huge black heart, and a strangely familiar voice calling to me. The people outside are still there and getting closer. The voice is still calling. I go towards it. And then I see why the voice sounded so familiar.
It's me. Or rather, it's me but taller and smartly dressed and without my slumped shoulders and dark circles under the eyes. She's sitting on a throne. Maybe this is meant to disturb me. I ask her, is this supposed to be a vision of what I could have been if I'd made better life choices? No, she says. She's my future.
She tells me she has knowledge for me, but she isn't sure I'm ready for it. I don't know what she's worried about. Does she really think more knowledge is going to break me? By now I'm not sure there's anything left to break. But it seems she expects me to prove myself to her anyway, and something is coming for me from out of the shadows. It's Beatrice, but huge, with muscles to match, and black eyes and clawed fingers.
I feel myself start to burn with rage. How dare they keep using the faces of my friends to hurt me? This monstrosity is not my beautiful brave Beatrice, and as she charges towards me I raise Huldra's spear to deflect her at the last moment, then drive it into her leg. I know that would have taken down any normal human, but this thing is not human and she moves like lightning. Her claws swipe across my neck and I feel hot blood starting to drip down, but now she's close, close enough that I can drive that spear up under her chin. There's a moment of resistance before I feel it smash through bone, and when I pull it free it's dripping, not with blood but black ichor.
As the Beatrice creature crumples to the ground I do my best to stand nochalently, even though I'm gripping the spear so tightly my entire hands have turned white. Whoever - whatever - this person who wears my face might be, it seems I've impressed her. She comes towards me, reaching out her hand which is filling with smoke. She pushes it into my head, and I feel her fingers reaching right through my skull as she does it. And then my head starts to explode.
When I wake up, I'm alone, sitting on the throne. I get up. I don't like that image. I can feel so much knowledge in my head I can barely make sense of it. I fix on a few specific things. Symbols. The one I saw on my phone that made me stop breathing, and the one Raven used to bind Lily. I know the names associated with them now. Thaumiel. Malkuth.
I have to get out of here. Get Beatrice out of whatever trouble she's got herself into on my behalf, when she's still so injured she should never have left the hotel room, not that that would ever have stopped her. But I can still hear those voices outside, and while they're no longer horribly distorted, they're still people capable of calling down a world of trouble on someone who's broken into the archives of the British Museum.
I hide behind the throne, and briefly think of trying to come up with some kind of story to explain why I'm here, but quickly dismiss that. My head might be full of knowledge of what I'm realising must be magic, but I'm still the same old Izzy who can't come up with a cover story to save her life. Magic then. Can I do some magic that will make me inconspicuous while I get out of here? I'm in a museum archive. There must be something down here that can help me out.
What I find is a funeral shroud. I know I can use it to shroud myself from human sight for a little while. Unfortunately, to do that I'm going to have to destroy it. A priceless museum artifact, that I'm going to destroy for my own benefit. Maybe there's a better way, but I don't have one right now. The shroud turns to dust in my hands.
It worked. They don't see me, and even seem to step slightly out of my way as I pass. I'm free. But as I walk down the corridor I realised it's changed. The ground beneath my feet turns to sharp black sand, and the air becomes oppressive with a horribly familiar heat.
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