Chapter 43

  You had better not open that door.

  - George MacDonald, Phantastes

  Akkama found Abraham Black on the Paper Moon. He wasn’t trying to hide from her. He stood on a blue ridge overlooking a raging conflagration which consumed the paper forest beyond. Smoke and ash billowed up to the skies; some of the flying embers caught in the hot updrafts set fire to the paper clouds overhead, so that even pieces of the sky were burning.

  Akkama came up behind him, careful to keep her distance. She saw blood dripping from where she had sliced him along the right arm. Not a fatal injury, but it proved that even with whatever strange powers he’d gained from the dark key, he still bled. Ruby red blood, just like hers.

  “The hero comes,” she said, more to herself than to Black. In darkest light. At the starfall. This was it. She was going to do it. Right here. Get the key. Save the world. Be a hero.

  “Your moon,” said Black, “is fitting.” Parts of his outline seemed to waver as though attempting to blend into the churning column of black smoke behind him. He became difficult to see. “It is to me a clarity. I understand now.” He raised one hand. It held not a revolver, but a match. A quick flick of his hand, and the match flared to life. “I was a fool.” He flicked the match at a pile of paper rocks nearby. The flame nearly guttered and died before one of the tiny parchment pebbles caught the flame.

  “So, just to be clear,” said Akkama, “You’re not going to give me the key?”

  He turned from the smoke and fire to meet her eyes, and Akkama had to look away after only a moment. “No,” said Abraham Black. “I think not. I think that the previous ruler of the Dark World had the right idea, after all. I think I will be opening the door at the heart of Skywater Citadel. Not you.”

  Akkama shook her head. “That’s too bad.”

  Black turned to face her squarely. His cape flared to the side, though there wasn’t much wind. His revolvers gleamed in the dark. A challenger.

  But Akkama had a different idea. She pointed at Black. “Now,” she said. “Shadow. Bond to Abraham Black.”

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  Abraham blinked at her in surprise and incomprehension. That slight, confused hesitation was enough. Jeronimy’s angel, in the form of Akkama’s shadow, lashed out and affixed itself to Abraham Black.

  Dendar, her guardian, had told her something about angels, something that Arcadelt would have told them if he’d lived long enough. She had told Akkama that they could bond to almost anything, including a sentient creature. And when Akkama had asked the natural follow-up question—even against said creature’s will?—Dendar had only smiled an evil, fanged smile.

  And now that knowledge would save them. Abraham Black would be bonded to Jeronimy’s angel. He would serve them. He would surrender the dark key.

  Black fell to the ground, his look of surprise replaced with shock, then pain, then horror. He collapsed, twitching and shaking as though seizing up, into a pool of darkness that clung to him like tar. His eyes bulged. He shrieked in terror, in agony. He thrashed. He tried to grasp his revolvers, but it was no use.

  Akkama did not know how the bonding of angels normally worked, but she suspected that it was typically faster and cleaner than this. Abraham Black fought against it for a long time. Perhaps the dark key gave him powers of darkness that allowed him to fend off the process for some time. He sure made a racket, anyway.

  The darkness of Jeronimy’s angel infiltrated Black. It infected him. It became him, turned his blood and bones into darkness. It changed him.

  At last, after a minute that seemed to go on for hours, Abraham Black lay silent and twitching on the ground. His cloak draped around him like the nexus of a spiderweb of shadows that stretched out across the landscape. He panted. He coughed.

  Akkama peeked out from behind her paper boulder. Something strange was happening inside of her, but she couldn’t tell what. Apprehension? Maybe, she thought, just maybe, this hadn’t been a good idea after all.

  Abraham Black chuckled, and something was horribly wrong with his voice. He slowly stood, and something was horrifically wrong with how he moved.

  Something stirred inside of Akkama, a whisper of something she had not felt in years.

  “Sho,” said Abraham Black, breathing the word with a shaken, rattling breath. “Thish wash your plan.” He turned his head to look at her, and something was so heart-stoppingly wrong with how his head moved that Akkama’s breath caught. “It sheemsh,” said Black, “that you have mishcalculated.”

  He laughed again. This time he threw his head back and delivered his ghastly cackle up to the fuliginous paper heavens like the smoke of the blazing fire beyond.

  It was the laugh that did it. Akkama backed away, eyes wide. The floodgates opened, and a sensation rushed through her that she had almost forgotten. Ice in her veins. Heart pounding, but not from exhilaration. Her chest tight, unable to breathe.

  Fear.

  Trembling, she turned and stumbled away, pushing desperately through the papery undergrowth, her burning blade slashing fiery gashes through any obstacle in her path. She had to get away.

  The serpent fled, burning its way through a paper world, and Abraham Black followed.