CHAPTER NINETEEN
Lucius’s heart
rattled in his ears, sounding like machine-gun fire, but that was
the only rat-tat-tat he heard as they
fled through where he thought the enemy lines had been laid. The
grenades had done their work. In the low-lying solar lights planted
on either side of the pathway, he saw a hand, a foot, a dark smear
he thought was blood, and his gorge rose at the knowledge that
he had done that. Not Cizin this time.
Him.
But he’d do all that
and more if that was what it took to keep Jade safe. Dull rage
pounded through him, hatred for the bastards that had come after
them, and—Not now, he told himself. He
couldn’t think about that right now, just as he couldn’t think
about the crazy intensity of their lovemaking, or the clutch of his
heart when the first salvo of bullets had ripped through the French
doors and he’d seen her go down.
Without warning, a
machine gun chattered from nearby, sweeping a wide arc that glanced
off the icy shield. The bullets passed through the sleet. Jade
gasped and the magic winked out.
“Jade!” Lucius
grabbed her and dragged her into the lee of the next cottage over.
“Are you hurt?”
“I couldn’t hold it
any longer.” Her face was bloodless; she was shaking. But she
hadn’t been shot. Yet.
They needed to buy
more time. But how? Between the dim illumination from the solar
walkway lights and the bright, welcoming porch lights up at the
main house, he could see back to the shattered windows of what had
been their cottage, and in the other direction to the cottage where
the road-tripping family was—had been?—staying. Everywhere he
looked there were dark, slinking shadows and the flash of luminous
green eyes. “Makol,” he hissed, the
word coming out as a curse.
A few of the figures
came clear; he saw a pudgy guy in a cheap suit, another in
coveralls, a third in insignia-less fatigues. Their eyes were pure
makol but their motions were jerky and
uncoordinated.
Trying to look in
every direction at once, Lucius nudged her in the direction of the
parking area. “We’ve got to keep moving. Head for the Jeep. Strike
and the others should be—”
A whistle split the
air and their cottage exploded.
“Go!” Lucius put
himself between her and the blast, feeling shrapnel ping off the
body armor. He shoved her toward the Jeep, then jerked her back
when the next missile—RPG? fireball?—hit the ground in front of
them. Shitshitshit. He pushed her back
into their scant shelter, trying to think of a way out, trying not
to think about what would happen if they couldn’t
escape.
Adrenaline and denial
roared through him. He wouldn’t let them have her, wouldn’t let her
become what he had been. His body flared hot and cold; his head
spun; his vision narrowed to pinpoint focus as six makol stepped into the light. He took out the first
with a blast from his shotgun, nailed the second before the first
had finished falling, then ducked a spray of gunfire that chewed up
the corner of their hiding spot. He locked onto the third, finger
tightening on the trigger—
And the bastard burst
into flame. As did the makol next to
him, and the next, the fire leaping one to the next in a mad,
destructive dance. In an instant, the night was lit day-bright with
flames that gouted twenty feet into the air.
Lucius stared,
transfixed with horror as the makol
screamed in agony, reeling and pinwheeling, trying to douse the
inexorable flames, which burned their clothes away, melted their
skin and flesh. They were still linked in a napalm chain; he
followed it back into the shadows, just in time to see a man step
into the light.
The newcomer was tall
and built, his hair trimmed into a military brush cut. Sharp
featured, looking to be somewhere in his twenties, he was wearing
ass-hanging, ripped-up jeans and a tight wife-beater, and bore the
hellmark on his inner forearm along with three Nightkeeper glyphs
in black: the peccary, the warrior, and the pyrokine.
It was Rabbit, Lucius
realized with a hard, hot jolt of relief. Their backup had
arrived.
The young man’s face
was set, his eyes hot and hard, and flames laced from his
outstretched hands as he fed power to the fire magic, driving it
higher and higher still while the makol
folded, slumped to the ground, and broke apart into dark, hard
lumps of char.
Then, abruptly,
Rabbit dropped his hands and the magic winked out.
The afterimage burned
into Lucius’s retinas left him momentarily blinded, blinking. By
the time his vision cleared, it was all over. The makol were briquettes and he and Jade were
surrounded by heavily armed Nightkeepers. With a few terse orders,
Strike sent Nate and Alexis—apparently back from Ecuador, just as
Rabbit seemed to have reappeared—to sweep the perimeter and set a
watch.
The abrupt shift from
threat to rescue left Lucius feeling badly off balance. Or was that
the aftereffects of the strange sensation he’d felt just before
Rabbit showed up and played human blowtorch? Had he been on the
verge of breaking through to magic of his own? Had he sensed the
incoming teleport? Or had it been some sort of entirely human
altered consciousness associated with imminent death?
“What the fuck
happened here?” Strike demanded.
The question seemed
evenly divided between him and Jade, who had moved up to stand
beside him. When she didn’t answer right away, Lucius said, “Your
guess is as good as mine right now. We heard the—” He broke off
when it registered. “Willow. The innkeeper. We heard her
scream.”
Michael nodded as he
joined the group. “I count five human casualties in the other
buildings, a family in one cottage, an older woman in the main
house. The makol were—” He broke off.
“Let’s just say I’ve seen a lot of shit in my life. This was pretty
bad.”
Gods. Lucius didn’t let himself close his eyes,
though he very badly wanted to. His stomach pitched with the
knowledge that Willow and the road-tripping family of four would’ve
been snoozing in safe oblivion if he hadn’t turned off the highway
and followed the arrows.
“After the scream,”
Jade said, picking up his report, “the makol breached our perimeter.” She sketched out the
attack, her voice impassive, her mien gone
counselor-cool.
Lucius told himself
it was a good thing she could pull herself together so quickly and
thoroughly, that he shouldn’t resent her recovery. But he was still
reeling, and the blood ran hot in his veins. He wanted to shoot
something, wanted to tear into someone and let off some steam.
Crazy impulses pounded through him, strange and
unfamiliar.
Forcing himself to
focus, he grated, “The makol were new,
and they were locals.”
The magi zeroed in on
him. Strike ordered, “Keep going.”
“Their movements were
slow and jerky, like the makol
controlling the bodies weren’t used to all the synapses yet. Which
was lucky for us, as it made them inaccurate, if well armed. There
wasn’t any continuity of clothing, so they weren’t an assembled
fighting unit. There was a mechanic, a guy in a suit, a
soldier-wannabe type in military surplus. I bet we’ll find a bunch
of cars parked down the road.” He looked at the charred lumps,
wondering if the magi had known Rabbit’s magic didn’t require the
head-and-heart spell to nuke makol.
From the looks the kid was getting, he suspected that would be a
“not.”
Michael nodded
grimly. “I took down four of them in the main house. One was
wearing a T-shirt from a gun shop with a local address. The other
three were in military surplus. What do you want to bet there’s a
private militia quartered somewhere in these hills?” He paused.
“It’d be a good hunting ground for someone looking for bad
guys.”
“Like an ajaw-makol,” Strike agreed. He looked back at
Lucius. “That’s what you’re thinking, right?”
“It plays,” Jade
said, her voice strong, even if her color wasn’t. “We’ve suspected
there might be an ajaw-makol on the
earth plane. Either the Banol Kax
sensed that Lucius and I were outside the Skywatch wards and sent
the demon after us, or the thing sensed us and came on its
own.”
“I’d guess the
latter,” Lucius said. When the others looked at him, he lifted a
shoulder. “My impression—and that’s all it is—was that makol are similar to the magi in that they have
different skill sets. I didn’t get the sense that Cizin was in
constant contact with its masters, more that it phoned home now and
then, probably during the cardinal days.”
“What was in your
demon’s toolbox?” Michael challenged.
Lucius bared his
teeth. “How about the ability to reach through the barrier and
compel an otherwise decent guy to steal from someone he respected?”
But that brought his thoughts circling back to what he’d been
thinking on the drive, about birthrights and tendencies. Shelving
that for the moment, he continued. “Regardless of who or what gave
the order, my guess is that the ajaw-makol got here and recruited a couple of dozen
locals, pulling the gnarliest and nastiest, and handpicking a
couple of specifics, like the gun store owner and the militants,
both of whom came with access to firepower.”
Strike considered
that for a few seconds before nodding. “It plays. Now for the
million- dollar question: How did they track you? Or, more
important, what changed between last night and tonight? Was it just
a question of timing, or was there something more?”
Lucius didn’t say
anything about the whirling buzz that might or might not have been
his magic, because that had happened after the attack
began.
Jade, though, said,
“I think I know.” She loosened her hastily applied body armor,
reached in, and lifted Anna’s pendant from around her neck. Letting
the chain flow through her fingers, she held it out to him. “On the
way home, I was carrying this.”
The king stared at
the skull effigy, which glinted in the porch lights of the main
house. His face ran through a range of emotions, none of them
comfortable. In the end, he settled not on the fury that Lucius had
anticipated, but on a sharp grief of the sort Lucius had seen
before at the gravesides of loved ones cut down unexpectedly. Leah
touched Strike’s arm and murmured something in his ear. The king
blinked, his face went to stone, and he took the pendant from Jade
with an almost violent swipe.
“I’m sor—” Jade
began, but Leah cut her off with a lifted finger that said,
Not now, and Jade
subsided.
Strike folded the
chain carefully and slipped the pendant into his pocket before
refocusing on the others, his cobalt eyes gone hollow. “That
probably explains it. She should’ve brought it back to Skywatch
herself. It’s not safe to separate these sorts of things from their
bound bloodlines.”
Lucius didn’t have an
answer to that, so he stayed silent. Inwardly, though, he cursed
Anna. Bad enough that she’d given up on the Nightkeepers; worse
that she’d endangered Jade in her cowardice.
Four dark shadows
melted from the darkness: the sweep teams reporting back that the
site was clear. Strike nodded. “Okay. Michael, you and Lucius wait
for Rabbit and take the Jeep. I’ll ’port everyone else back with
me.” He moved away to an open space, and he and the others started
forming the palm-to-palm link he typically used for group
’ports.
Neither Jade nor
Lucius argued against their separation. As far as he was concerned,
if there was a demon out there hunting Nightkeepers and their
relics, he wanted her safely back at Skywatch ASAP.
When they were gone,
Michael tapped his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get the Jeep.” The
mage claimed the driver’s position and waved Lucius to
shotgun.
“Isn’t Rabbit coming
with us?”
“In a minute.”
Michael burned rubber out of the parking area and didn’t stop until
they’d hit the top of the hill. Then he spun a quick one-eighty and
parked, leaving the vehicle idling as he looked down at the Weeping
Willow Inn.
The first lick of
flames came from an upper floor of the main house. The second came
from one of the cottages. Then it was hard to keep track of where
the fire was tracking as it danced back and forth, lighting the
buildings, consuming them. Rabbit stood at the edge of the
visitor’s parking lot, visible in silhouette against the firelight,
as he conducted the destruction with wide sweeps of his arms, a
maestro of fire.
“Oh,” Lucius said as
understanding dawned.
“I did my best with
the bodies,” Michael said quietly. “If their families ask
questions, the sort of investigation there’s likely to be out here
will conclude that they died quickly in their beds, with no
suffering.”
“Which is a lie,”
Lucius said hollowly. “They suffered.”
“Yeah, they did. But
it won’t help for the people left behind to know it.”
Lucius thought of
what he’d yelled at Anna, sanctimoniously bitching at her to think
about how she would feel to know that people were dying and she
could have done something to stop it. Well,
now you know, asshole. How does it feel?
The ranch was fully
involved now, the fire tongues reaching up to the sky where the
deaf gods lived. He pressed his forehead against the now-warm glass
of the Jeep’s window and watched the flames, how they swirled and
slashed, almost but not quite making pictures that seemed they
should have meaning. In them he saw the garrulous innkeeper, not as
she’d been that evening, but as the young woman in the framed
picture that had sat on the front desk. In it, she’d had her arms
wrapped around a smiling GI, neither of them knowing they would
both die under enemy fire, some fifty years apart.
She’d never
remarried, she’d told him; had never really even dated. Her Bobby
had been her man, her one true love. She might not have died for
him, as Jade’s mother had done for her family, but in a way, Willow
had given her life just as surely to love.
Gods, how do people do it? Lucius wondered, making
himself watch as Rabbit conducted events down below. Why do they do it? What was the upside of love,
when there seemed to be so many downsides?
“You kept Jade safe,”
Michael said suddenly, unexpectedly. “You got her out of the
cottage.”
“We should’ve kept
driving.”
“Then they would’ve
hit the Jeep and you probably wouldn’t have made it out.” Michael
paused. “Look, I know the math doesn’t work on that one: two people
if they hit the Jeep versus five people at the ranch. I’m sorry,
but not all of the ‘we the people’ are actually created equal. Jade
is valuable, potentially vital. You’re . . . well, we’re not sure
what you are. But you’re something. So, yeah, I’ll trade the two of
you safe for the lives of five noncombatants.”
“Is that the sort of
math they taught you in assassin school?” Lucius asked bitterly.
“Or is that more of an us-versus-them Nightkeeper thing? How many
humans would you trade for a single Nightkeeper’s life and still
consider it a fair trade? Fifty? A hundred? A
thousand?”
Although Michael’s
temper had mellowed since his engagement, he still had a hell of a
glare. He used it now. “Honestly? However many it took. There are
eleven of us and however many billion of you. If our survival now
means that you all get to see Christmas Day 2012, then fuck the
math and protect the magi.” He sent a sidelong look in Lucius’s
direction. “Same goes for the woman you love, mage or not. You do
what it takes, whatever the sacrifice.”
Lucius let that one
pass and returned to staring down at the ranch, where Rabbit was
concentrating his fire white-hot on a couple of key locations.
“Doesn’t he ever get tired?”
“Apparently not this
week,” Michael said cryptically.
It was another ten
minutes before Rabbit, satisfied with his work, doused the flames
and trudged up the hill to the Jeep. Michael dug through Jade and
Lucius’s road supplies and pulled out a gallon of water and
Lucius’s spare clothes, and made the soot-covered, sweat-soaked
mage wash and change before he let him in the Jeep. Still, the
smell of smoke was thick and cloying.
Rabbit opened the
passenger-side door and jerked his thumb at Lucius. “Out. I’ve got
shotgun.”
Lucius bristled.
“Why? Mage’s prerogative?”
“No, asshole. You
grubbed through my apartment. Not that there was anything to see
there other than Pervy Doughboy’s wiener pics, but still. It’s the
principle.”
Discovering that he
didn’t have a comeback for that, Lucius climbed into the cramped
rear deck, collapsed across the bench seat, and found a
semicomfortable position as Michael sent the Jeep back along the
narrow secondary roads and out onto the highway. They passed a
couple of fire trucks headed the other way, sirens going. Lucius
didn’t know why that made him feel a little better about leaving.
After that, he didn’t fall asleep so much as his brain simply shut
off, unable to process anything more. It didn’t turn off all the
way, though; instead it sent him dreams of dead eyes and flames,
and a wall of stone that looked solid, but wasn’t.