Bloodbath

  I blink. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “The reason you don’t like Dick.”

  “Um—well, I guess, sometimes, but I don’t categorize my sexuality as penis-repulsion, I’m just not into anyone who identifies as—”

  “No, I meant Richard. The reason you don’t like Richard.”

  “Oh—oh, yeah, Richard! Right, that Dick, that’s totally the Dick you meant.” I make a few awkward throat-clearing noises. “Um—oh, you think I don’t like him?”

  Jenny raises an eyebrow at me. “You make it painfully obvious. But seriously, it’s okay, you can chill. I’m my own person, I make my own decisions, and you don’t have to protect me from the big bad man. You can lay off of him, okay?”

  My eye twitches. “Well, I know that now.” At this point, I’m pretty sure you’re a danger to him, not the other way around. “But I gotta ask—why Dick? Why hire him, why manipulate him, why not someone—I don’t know, more competent? I’m pretty sure you could be doing this whole song and dance with a dude who has more… hair.”

  Her eyes wander up to the ceiling as she leans back, bracing her hands behind her on the bed. She shrugs. “Maybe it’s a pity thing, I don’t know. But he’s a good guy, and he tries hard. Everyone wants to be a hero, but no one ever wants to do the work, you know? Sure, he’s not the smartest, or the strongest, but he’s getting out there and doing his best to help with what he’s got. That’s got merit.”

  I think about it. Then I squint at her. “…Okay, no, I still don’t get it. I think you need to raise your standards, and I think you’re the first person I’ve met in a while who’s messier than I am. You ever thought about going to therapy?”

  She snorts and falls backward onto her bed. As she laughs, wiping tears off her face with a forearm, her cell phone chimes merrily from a nearby pillow. Jenny reaches for it, raises it to her eyes—and then bolts upright.

  “It’s a text from Dick.”

  “What does it say?” I ask, even as I’m scooting in to get a look at the screen.

  “‘To Jenny,’” Jenny reads out loud, “‘I apologize for what happened yesterday. Everything was a blut…’” Jenny stops reading and squints at the screen.

  “I think he means ‘blur,’” I supplement helpfully.

  “‘…a blur, and I let myself be distracted from what I really should have been doing to help you, which is finding David. I’m going to fix that now, with Henry’s help.’” She cocks her head. “Um, who’s Henry?”

  I drop my face into my hands. “Me. I’m Henry. Gods fucking dammit, Dick.”

  “‘Stay strong, everything is going to be alright. I’ll take care of it.’ Aww, that’s kind of sweet.”

  I grumble into my hands, “What would be sweeter would be if he actually told me what’s going on before bragging to you about some kind of grand master plan—”

  My own phone buzzes in the pocket of my ill-fitting jeans. I yank it out to find my own message from Dick waiting for me. I lean back and start reading it out loud in a sarcastic, baritone imitation of Dick’s voice.

  “‘Henry, I know you’re still angry at me—’ you fucking bet I am, Jesus Christ—‘but I’ve made some new progress on the case. I have an informant.’” That gives me pause. I keep reading, this time without the sarcastic mockery. “‘He claims to know about the missing people, but he can’t tell me more unless we’re in a safe place. He knows you by name and says you run in the same circles. I trust you, so I know he’s for real. He says the people who went after you are after him too.’”

  Jenny turns to me in alarm. “There are people after you?”

  “Yeah, they’re the reason I’m dressed like this. Nasty fuckers, they drive around in a big black van and have guns. Textbook evil henchmen.”

  My phone buzzes again in my hand. A little thumbnail of a map shows up on my screen. A few seconds later there’s another buzz, and a new chunk of text. I read aloud again:

  “‘I’m with him now. He wants you to come too; the location is on the map I just sent you. Look for the building with…’” The next words make my heart shrivel and drop into my stomach. “‘…the black van parked in front of it.’”

  Jenny becomes a statue next to me, as cold and unmoving as granite. I don’t even read the rest of the message out loud; the two of us scan it silently with our eyes.

  He wants my phone now, so I need to wrap this up quickly. But this is the breakthrough we were waiting for. We’re going to find David and Aden and everyone else who’s missing, and we’ll do it as a team. I promise.

  I stare mutely at my cell phone. I reach for the scarf at my side and wind it tightly around my nose and mouth. Then I scream, the sound muffled by scratchy pink wool, and hurl my phone at the wall.

  There’s a sickening CRACK—but I don’t care. Not right now. Dick, that fucking idiot, that complete, utter—I should just leave him to his fate. Let him be tortured, let him be killed, whatever. He got himself into this mess just because he was careless and stupid and naïve, and everything would have been alright if he had just stopped taking initiative—

  And then I see the mask of horror on Jenny’s face. The face Dick looks at like it’s a fucking shooting star. The face he doesn’t even know he’s about to die for. And my good-person-instincts come roaring back.

  “It’s a trap,” Jenny says, her voice hoarse. “The people who took David—they have Dick too now, don’t they? Oh god—you can’t let them kill him. Please, you have to go, you have to—please, I can’t lose him too…!”

  Fuck. I have to go save him.

  I tug the scarf down to my chin and take a deep, shuddering breath. Then I unwind it from my throat altogether, and stand up.

  “You got any more of those cupcakes left?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Operation Rescue Dick

  Isabella texts me back, telling me she can’t track the signal from Dick’s phone. Of course. Dick might not even be at the location he claims he’s at—or he could already be dead. The only way I’ll know for certain is if I confront Icy Eyes and his cronies at the proposed “meeting spot.” That, of course, is exactly what they want. Bastards.

  I go to the address, still in disguise. It’s an abandoned warehouse—gods, these people are embarrassingly theatrical. Gazing up at the rusted, crumbling exterior of the place, I find that I really don’t want to die in this place. You won’t, I promise myself, taking another cupcake out of the oversized Tupperware in my hands. Fuck, I’m so full, I’ve already eaten three of these on the way here. This is the last one I have. But Nikki was right, there’s a lot of magic in these cupcakes. They’re rich and sweet and melt in your mouth like ice cream, and once you’ve got one down you can feel this warm exuberance radiating through your limbs, all the way down to your toes and fingertips.

  Last time I felt this powerful, I ended up using all that energy to make a Molotov curse-in-a-bottle. I wish I had one of those right now. Damn it, I should have made more concussion hexes after that disaster with the Merestis last week—but how the Hell could I have known this would happen?

  I cram the last cupcake into my mouth, then lick the frosting off my fingers and gently place the Tupperware on a fencepost. I pile my scarf and cardigan on top of that, tie my loose hair back, and roll my neck, flexing my hands to either side of me. I’m going to need to make this energy last.

  Creeping around the side of the building to peek into the front entrance, I see no one. But then I let the cupcake magic curl up to my ears and polish off my hearing; sure enough, there’s a scuffling footstep, the subtle clearing of a throat. I slink back around the corner.

  I keep all of my senses open as I move. The building has two rows of cracked, clouded-over windows along its yellowing exterior, some distance above me. I squint at them, trying to gauge the height. Hmm, can I…?

  I crouch, pooling energy in my legs. Then I spring upward.

  I sail into the air in a beautiful arc, and then—ohcrapfuckshit—smack right into one o
f the filthy windows. I let out a pigeon-like squawk as I start to fall, but catch the bottom ledge of the window before gravity fully reclaims me. My shoulder screams where it was nearly wrenched out of its socket. But hey, I’m alive! And I’ve got a sneaky way into the warehouse.

  Not to mention, I feel like a godsdamned superhero. I glance at the faraway ground, let myself geek out for a few seconds—oh man oh man oh man—then shove down the giddy feelings and get back to work.

  I shimmy along the ledge until I find a window with the pane knocked out. Peering through, I find that I’m maybe ten feet above a long platform that juts out from the warehouse’s interior wall and extends around the entire room. It’s all one huge, dilapidated space crowded with boxes, pillars, and trash; even the copious neon graffiti on the walls has become faded and covered with grime. There’s one guy leaning on the wall next to the front door, presumably the one I detected earlier. Another is strolling lazily down the walkway below me. The acrid scent of cigarette smoke wafts over from the back of the warehouse, alerting me to an extra presence in the shadows. The last two goons are talking in low tones behind a set of enormous, dusty crates—one of those two is Icy Eyes.

  My hackles raise when I see him. Images of him raising his gun and shooting the kid in the parking garage, of Isabella slumped on the floor with blood running down her face, are still fresh in my mind.

  “How do we know she’s even still alive?” Icy Eyes’s conversation partner is saying. “I don’t know if you noticed, but she had a lot of bullets in her.”

  “She’s not dead,” Icy Eyes replies in a knife-sharp tone. His accent, it sounds… Swedish? Danish? “Her sister is a famous healer, the same one that kept her from being torn apart by demon blood. I’d bet my secondborn she’s patched up and on her way here right now.”

  My eyes narrow at that. He knows magic—or at least, knows of magic. Which means he’s not entirely a civilian. He’s part of the community—as a mage, monster, or mercenary, I can’t tell.

  “How do you know she’ll come looking for this guy? He’s nothing special.”

  “Neither was the parking attendant, but she tried to save him. Hero complexes make people predictable.”

  Well now, that’s just rude.

  Icy Eyes drops a large, gloved hand on his minion’s shoulder, and I hear it land with a whump. “No more mistakes. The office worker you found online? That was sloppy.”

  “The gun can’t be traced back to us—” His voice cuts off, and he stumbles. His hand twitches toward his shoulder, where Icy Eyes’s grip has tightened like a monkey wrench.

  Icy Eyes acts like nothing happened, continuing conversationally, “Shoot her as soon as she walks through that door. And kill her friend after.” He lets go of the henchman’s shoulder, and maybe I’m imagining it, but I can hear the bones readjusting.

  So Dick is still alive and most likely nearby—good to know. Great to know, actually. Icy Eyes strides out of the warehouse, nodding at the guy by the door as he does so. I’m torn. On one hand, I want him to leave; he’s a dangerous, unpredictable, scary variable that I don’t think I’d survive a direct confrontation with. On the other hand, I want to stomp on his throat.

  I’m starting to feel a burn in my arms. It’s not bad enough to make me drop from the ledge, but enough to remind me I’m working with borrowed strength. I haul myself up and over the bottom sill of the window, the cuff of my jeans briefly catching on a jagged edge of glass, and dangle with my shoes about four feet from the platform. I try to land on the balls of my feet, knees giving way to a low, silent crouch—not silent enough, apparently, because the guy on the platform visibly starts. He whips around, and our eyes lock.

  Heat ripples down my arm. I throw out my hand; my magic wraps around his throat as an invisible tendril that triggers every muscle to contract. His eyes bulge and his mouth opens and closes, but no sound escapes. As he convulses in place, I dash forward and swing two clasped fists into his temple.

  He falls in a beautiful, silent arc, eyes already rolling into the back of his head, the pinnacle of a stealthy takedown—until his face hits the platform railing with a crunch of nasal bones and a metallic CLAAANG!

  “Huh?” someone says from below.

  There’s nowhere to hide; the whole platform is as bare as a stripper’s pubic mound. Panic sends me vaulting over the railing and into the shadow of a huge stack of crates, tweaking both my ankles at the same time. Motherfucking ow.

  “Wolfie? Hey, Wolfie!” the guy by the door calls. “The hell are you doing, get up!”

  I slink toward the back of the warehouse, muscles buzzing with tension and magic. As I step with deliberate, silent focus, I brush my fingertips against a crate and marvel at the clarity of its wood grain surface. Holy shit, David’s cupcakes pack a punch. If he’s dead, I feel horribly sorry for him, but I’m also sad that the magic community’s lost such a talented member it didn’t even know it had. As I muse, the smell of cigarette smoke returns to me in a rich burst; I follow it to its source.

  When I peek around the corner, the goon is stubbing his cigarette out under his shoe and hastily shoving a phone into his back pocket. Shouting rises from the other side of the warehouse as, presumably, the others find Wolfie’s unconscious body. “What’s going on?” the cigarette-smoker calls as he steps out of the shadows, hand reaching for his hip holster.

  I lunge with my fingers outstretched and aimed at his Adam’s apple. Crap, missed—! My jab hits the flabby underside of his jaw instead, staggering but not winding him. His fist blurs in an unsteady arc; shockwaves of pain ripple through my ribcage. He takes a second too long to hit again—I grab his wrist, yank him toward me, and knee him in the ‘nads as hard as humanly possible.

  His subsequent progress toward the floor is swift and uninterrupted. His phone falls out of his pocket; I glance at it, just out of curiosity, and see a message from “Riley” that says, They really wouldn’t even give you the day off on your daughter’s birthday?

  I look back at the groaning, twitching heap on the floor. I bend over it and say, “Dude, this is the universe telling you to go to your kid’s birthday party. Listen to the universe.” Then I flick a little burst of magic into his skull, putting him to sleep.

  Pounding footsteps, a minute click—it takes me half a second to register the noise as the unlocking of a handgun’s safety, and another half-second to dive out of the way before a thundering CRACK devastates my eardrums. I’m still rolling when the toe of a heavy boot slams into my cheekbone. As the side of my face erupts in pain, I blindly lock in on the smell of smoking gunpowder and send a shard zipping through the air in that direction. Furious cursing; a clatter as the gun drops to the floor. I scramble onto my hands and knees and dart forward, slicing another shard across his calf—he howls, the sound echoing off the hard walls and ceiling. As he goes down, he grabs me by the shirt and takes me with him.

  We roll across the trash-strewn floor, elbows and knees knocking against concrete and into each other’s fleshy bits. I try to use my borrowed strength, wrestle him down so I can gain the higher ground—and then I realize I’m out of gas. Shit, no no no no, not now—I clutch at the last scraps of cupcake magic as it drains from my muscles, leaving behind only a dull hollowness in place of the strength they lent me before. Without it, there’s nothing I can do to keep him from pinning me to the floor as we roll to a stop, then punching me across the face.

  A million constellations are invented behind my eyelids. He hits me again, and again—my arm falls to the side and brushes a hard metal cylinder that fits right into my hand. I grab it and swing, shouting with desperate triumph at the CLANG of it hitting the side of the goon’s head. I take a moment to identify the cylinder as a half-full can of spray paint—then I swing it again, hitting the other side of his head. Finally I shove him off of me, stagger back against a crate, and spray his eyes full of neon orange paint. His screams provide the catharsis of a four-hour therapy session.

  Running footsteps.
I spin around and raise my aerosol can—just as the last man standing rounds the corner with a pistol.

  We stare at each other for half a second. I try depressing the nozzle on my can, releasing a pathetic sppffft of paint in his direction. In response, he raises the gun, levels it at my head, and pulls the trigger.

  CRACK!

  A wall of force slams into me, hitting one side of my chest and shoulder and spinning me like a weathervane. The breath is knocked out of me in an ooph and my head reels with lack of oxygen. My field of vision is a mess of motion blur—then two strong, warm hands grip my waist and a soft body presses up against my chest, anchoring me upright even as the momentum keeps me spinning. Even in all the sound and chaos and motion, it takes just as long as a blink to focus in on the image in front of me—that of twin suns dancing in golden eyes, framed by a face shaped like a heart and wild, bouncing black hair.

  Lilith grins toothily at me. Then she shoves me backward, right into the shooter.

  His yelp is only slightly higher-pitched than mine as we topple together onto the concrete. The smoldering barrel of his gun glances painfully off my shoulder blade—I throw my elbow backward, still yelling, praying to gods above and below that a bullet doesn’t find my brain.

  CRACK!

  My ear is ringing so loudly it’s like someone’s trying to plug it with the wide end of a baseball bat. The gunman is wheezing underneath me, trying and failing to double over with my elbow planted in his gut and my weight pinning him down. I tumble off of him, land on one knee on the floor, and realize the spray paint can is still somehow in my hand. I whack him in the forehead with it—I do that again, and again and again until his body goes limp and both his face and the can are dented, bloody messes.

  I fumble with rubber fingers to wrest the gun out of his unconscious grip. I don’t remember what all the parts are called, but I know enough to eject the magazine, pull back the slide to make the last bullet fall out, and then—how do I take the slide off altogether? I keep yanking it back like a kid with a faulty Beyblade, but—shit, right, pull it back just a little, undo the lock, and the whole thing comes apart. I chuck the slide at a far wall. I don’t mean to drop the other half of the gun, but it slips from my limp, twitching fingers anyway.