Queen's Gambit

by Karen Chance

  Graffitied monsters didn’t get tired, but master vamps did.

  Tomas was toast.

  Until his four crazy-ass partners decided to get busy, and help their friend. I saw Zheng over by the group, gesturing and pointing. They’d been hanging back until now, probably thinking that this was above their pay grade. And that prize money is no good if you’re not alive to spend it.

  But it looked like their buddy being taken had changed things, and they were moving in. The dark mage did something that caused a plume of smoke to engulf one of the flailing tentacles, which slowly started to lose color as its strength was sapped. But the main body of the creature did not seem affected, nor did the other arms, and I didn’t think he had time to take it piece by piece.

  The ugly bruiser with the torn-up face opted for a more direct approach. He ran and then launched himself at one of the flailing arms, using its momentum to send him soaring at the bulbous head. Where he landed and proceeded to attack with what looked like a large hatchet or possibly a battle ax.

  That would have worked fine on a real animal, which might have broken off its attack at a threat to its head. But this thing didn’t appear to notice or care if it did. Maybe because it didn’t run on blood like the rest of us, but on pure magic, which it still had plenty of. The bruiser could probably cave in the whole head, and the tentacles would still work.

  I didn’t know if he had enough brain power to figure that out, but somebody else did. The girl stepped forward and raised an arm. The guy, who I was assuming was her brother based on looks, was firing everything he had at the squid. That included a rocket that exploded a mass of blue-green slime out of the thing’s body when it detonated, covering a third of the ring.

  The girl just continued to stand there.

  For a moment, nothing happened. And then slowly, from far beneath the ground, a rumble could be heard. I didn’t know what was happening, but assumed it wasn’t good. Because the mage squad suddenly dropped their lassos and fled, and the sort of orderly—for Hong Kong, anyway—exodus became an all-out rout.

  People screamed, vehicles bolted, even the ponderous platforms, which handled like a semi with all the tires flat, started to move away. Why, I wasn’t sure, although something was definitely happening now. Something bad, I thought, as the ground swelled, as pipes broke and spewed water everywhere, and as bridges rocked wildly even as hundreds tried to get off.

  And as a tiny finger of blue light speared up from below, tearing a hole in the devil and causing him to roar and fall back a step.

  “Stop her!” Louis-Cesare said, grabbing my arm. “She’ll rupture the shield!”

  “The—shit!” I said, finally realized what I was seeing. That the crazy woman was trying to use the power of the lines to fight her battles for her, and was going to kill us all in the process. “How in the hell—”

  “She’s a jinx. Don’t let her so much as look at you.”

  Great.

  “And what are you going to do?” I demanded.

  He kissed me briefly, but fiercely. “Save Tomas.”

  Shit.

  But he was gone before I could stop him, because of course he was. The damned man had just tried to kill him, but letting someone he’d once been responsible for get eaten wasn’t in Louis-Cesare’s nature. It was in mine, but nobody had asked me.

  I said a bad word and ran straight for the girl.

  It was harder than it looked. The ground was streaming with shadows and colors, because some of the crazy cavalcade up there had multicolored lights hanging off their buses or draped around their balconies. A few even had strobes on their party barges, which sent wildly waving disco lights across the remains of the park, and flashed blindingly bright in my eyes.

  They were confusing, although not as much as the waves of dirt being flung upwards by the tentacles, or the massive feet of the demon, which were slamming down here, there, and everywhere, threatening to pound me into the ground. Or the water blasts from the ruptured pipes, which were trying to drown me in the gigantic mud puddle forming under my feet.

  Or under my knees, since it was already that deep in places, causing me to flail, and making each step a hard, sucking slog. I wasn’t getting anywhere this way, I thought, watching the tentacles waving about everywhere. And then reaching up and grabbing one going in the right direction, which ripped me out of the mud and launched me at the bitch causing all of this.

  I didn’t make it all the way there, as I had to let go when the tentacle started to head back up. But I hit a mostly solid piece of ground and was up and throwing myself at her a second later. And I wasn’t in the mood to be gentle.

  She went down and then out when I belted her upside the jaw, possibly hard enough to break it. I threw some magical cuffs on her and kicked her into my purse, because I couldn’t carry her through all this otherwise. Then I took off, running and leaping and occasionally falling through the chaos, heading for the side of the ring and the shadow of a now deserted broadcasting booth.

  The two announcers had long since fled, although the nearby Jumbotron was still running with images. I didn’t try to figure them out; I was far too close. And the same was true when I turned back to the fight, which was so high above my head that I couldn’t see anything.

  But nobody had turned off the second Jumbotron across the park, which gave me a perfect view of Louis-Cesare stabbing his sword hilt-deep into a giant squid eye. And unlike the side of its head, which the creature hadn’t seem to give a shit about, it was Not Happy with this latest attack. Probably because a blind animal is very soon a dead animal.

  It sent out another of those skull-piercing shrieks, echoing off the buildings and pulling a collective groan from the remaining crowd. It also thrashed wildly, trying to find this dangerous new threat—and in the process dropped the old one. Tomas went tumbling out of the beast’s mouth, Louis-Cesare reached for him and missed, and the now tiny looking body plummeted straight for the ground—

  Before a slashing tentacle smacked him my way.

  I started slightly as he hit the Jumbotron, causing all of the colors and images to scatter wildly for a moment. And then to stabilize, when he peeled off and fell limply to the ground, face first. He just lay there, as if dead, but he wasn’t dead. He was a first level master and while that probably hadn’t done him any good, he’d recover.

  I glanced around.

  Nobody was in the area, unless you counted the fight going on overhead, which looked like it was winding down. The thrashing had caused the tentacle around the devil’s arm to loosen, and he’d seized his chance. He’d grabbed the squid thing, trying to rip it apart, and giving Louis-Cesare a chance to escape.

  And me a chance to assemble my crew.

  I ran over to the not-moving vamp, crawled inside my purse for a second, and came up with another Spider’s Bite. I threw it on the bastard, watched it web him up, and dragged him inside. Fucker.

  Then I moved over to the bottom of the now wrecked cage that the devil had been in, with its huge door hanging off its hinges and the metal bars twisted or broken. Another slumped figure lay beside it, having been tossed there at some point in the fight. I checked his meaty neck for a pulse, and it beat strong and steady. He might not be smart, but he was tough. He was also starting to come around.

  I threw a couple of pairs of cuffs on the bruiser, hands and feet, then added a third to connect them in back and hogtie him, just to be safe. Then into the purse he went. Okay; that was three.

  Where was number four?

  Surprisingly, four was still in it, spraying both of the creatures above him with bullets, apparently not realizing that his friend was no longer in need of rescue. That was good. It kept his attention elsewhere.

  And in all this, it wasn’t like he could hear me sneaking up on him, was it?

  A moment later, number four was secured, leaving only one.

  But the dark mage was wilier, and very much aware of what had just happened. He had simply been too far away to
stop it. But now he was running at me, both hands consumed by black, oily-looking clouds, which based on what had happened to the squid, were intended to drain me of magic and/or life as soon as they touched me.

  Great.

  To make matters worse, Louis-Cesare, who should have been down by now, had become stuck—literally. The blue gel that the squid’s body had thrown out was apparently harmless, but very sticky. Which meant that it wasn’t harmless since it had glued my hubby in place, stuck to what was left of the squid’s body as it and the devil reached crunch time.

  I reached back into my bag of tricks, grabbed a grappling hook, and slung it at a passing rickshaw. It caught the back seat, jerking me up and over the dark mage’s head before he could grab me, which was good. But it was traveling in the wrong direction, which was not. The maneuver also seemed to really piss off the mage, who dropped the power sucking spell in favor of a lasso, and a moment later, he was in my face.

  So, I put a fist in his, something he hadn’t seemed to expect, because mages never do. They’re so used to finding magical solutions to problems that they sometimes forget that the old fashioned, bare knuckles type works, too. In fact, it worked a little too well, because the bastard let go of the lasso and started slip and fall away.

  I caught him. I almost tore my shoulder out of joint in the process, but I caught him. And got my legs around him a moment later, because he was a dead weight and I was holding us both up one-handed while being jerked across the damned sky!

  Even worse, the lasso spell hadn’t faded away yet. It was lashing me like a burning rope every time the damned rickshaw driver changed direction, which was often because the mages were back. They had regrouped and were heading into the fray, seeing an opportunity to finish this.

  And in the process, they were freaking out my driver, who encountered grim war mages everywhere he turned, who were not happy to see him. One of them plucked him out of the driver’s seat and yelled something at me; what I didn’t know because I was busy, damn it! And I don’t speak Cantonese.

  But I’d managed to get my free hand into the bag and felt around. I needed something to hold the mage, but it would have to be something special. Something he wouldn’t immediately know how to counter, something that would take him by surprise—

  Something like that, I thought, as the pissed off war mage got tired of talking and threw a cuff at us, which latched onto the mage’s ankle. It quickly started climbing his body, spewing out chains with locks every few inches. And, knowing war mages, each one of them probably required a different spell to release.

  That’ll do, I thought, and stuffed my purse over his head.

  A second later, he was gone, and that made five.

  The team was assembled, although they hadn’t impressed me much so far. But at least they knew where Eternity was, which was more than I did. Now I just had to get out of here.

  Another cuff was thrown at me, but missed because I was launching myself into the now empty driver’s seat. A second after that, I was peeling away from the war mage’s rickshaw, back toward the fight. Right alongside a phalanx of other vehicles, because the mages were diving as one.

  I dove faster. Louis-Cesare was tiny compared to the creatures they were fighting, and I didn’t know if they’d see him or not. And the kind of combined spells they could throw might not be survivable, even for a master. So, I floored it, heedless of thrashing tentacles, battling giants, and pursuing mages. But spells travel faster than people, and they were gearing up to throw, and—

  And they had to abort, sending colorful spells shooting off into the night, because a huge limo was suddenly rocketing into the scene, like a shiny black bullet.

  Several spells hit the side, which had thrown itself between Louis-Cesare and the mages. I expected to see it go up like a fireball, but it must have been warded. Because, instead, all I heard was—

  “Short stuff! Grab him!”

  I grabbed him.

  Not that I had to do much. Louis-Cesare had almost freed himself already, and jumped into the seat beside me as soon as I got close enough. I didn’t have to stop or even pause as a result, just took off in a new direction, trying to get as far from the fight as possible before—

  That, I thought, as a tentacle caught us a massive blow.

  It was the biggest one of them all, which had been wrapped around the devil’s arm this whole time. But he was being targeted by the mages now, maybe because he was in better shape than his beleaguered, half blind, and battered opponent, allowing the tentacle to spring free. And the squid’s full strength to hit us broadside.

  Louis-Cesare grabbed me as our vehicle went flying in a great inverted parabola, high over the city. He held on as it broke in two, falling away as we reached the apex of the arc. He stared at me, his face terrible for a long instant.

  And then we fell.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Dorina, Faerie

  Ray was up before I was the next morning. In fact, I wasn’t entirely certain that he had been to sleep at all. Because he had made something.

  “Is it . . . a raft?” I asked, sitting up.

  He was standing down by the water, with the hem of his tunic wet and his hair damp and sticking out everywhere, as if he had shaken it to dry. He put his hands on his hips. “Why you gotta sound like that?”

  I yawned. “Like what?”

  “Like you’re not sure if that’s the right word.”

  In truth, I wasn’t. The item was floating—for the moment—but I did not know how much longer that would hold true. He appeared to have used the fey rope to tie together a great mass of driftwood, but not to lie it flat, as you might expect. Instead, it was literally a pile of sticks that I assumed we were meant to straddle, as that appeared to be the only option.

  “It is a very nice raft,” I lied, because he had probably worked hard on it.

  “It’s a piece of crap,” Ray said grinning, instantly changing his demeanor. “But there’s a method to the madness.”

  I blinked, trying to keep up with what I assumed was another joke. Humor was difficult. But he seemed to find the situation amusing, and was now patting the raft fondly.

  “This baby is gonna get us so far away from here, that the damned Svarestri will never find us.”

  I looked at it again. I decided to attempt some humor. “Do you wish to bet on that?”

  Ray frowned and sloshed up the bank. “I know it don’t look like much, but you gotta understand how things work here.”

  “All right.” I did not try humor again. I did not think I had gotten it right.

  “The forests are impassable—at least to us. They’re right out.” He picked through our supplies and handed me the fey version of trail mix.

  “Thank you.”

  “The roads are no better,” he added, sitting beside me. “The Svarestri are hunting you, so they’re probably watching ‘em all. Plus, there could be bandits and God knows what lurking around, ‘cause I don’t even know where the hell we are. Judging by the whole ancient demigoddess visit/river flowing over nothing thing, I’d guess somewhere along the border of Nimue’s lands. But that don’t narrow it down much.”

  “The river was . . . enchanting,” I said, remembering.

  He snorted. “Yeah, that’s one way of putting it.”

  I cocked my head. “How would you put it?”

  “That it’s enchanted. It ain’t about being pretty. It acts like fortress walls, all around her realm. From what I hear, if anybody tries to invade, she just—” he made a strange sort of jerking gesture.

  “She does what?” I asked, because I hadn’t understood that.

  “Pulls the rug out from under ‘em, or in this case, the river. She’s said to be able to do almost anything with it: make it flood and wash their whole army away; make it seep evil smells that confuse man and beast alike, until they drown in only a few feet of water; use it to carry illusions of massive armies that don’t exist; or cause it to vanish completely, dropping th
e invaders hundreds of feet onto all those waiting stalagmites . . .”

  I realized that I had leaned forward as he spoke, eating my trail mix like a child in a movie theatre absently munching on popcorn while being engrossed with the story on screen. I sat back up and attempted to act as if I was unmoved. I do not think I succeeded, as Ray grinned at me.

  “Or that could all be a load of crap. The fey love stories, and the more exaggerated, the better. Best not to pay too much attention to what they say.”

  “But even exaggerated stories often contain truth,” I pointed out. “And after what happened last night . . . perhaps it would be best to avoid her lands.”

  “Yeah, only that would be kind of a trick. Nimue’s realm lies in the middle of everything, bordering Aeslinn’s kingdom, the dark fey, and the Blarestri.”

  “The Blarestri are on our side, are they not?” I asked, remembering Caedmon, the odd creature who was their king. I had not known what to make of him, but I hadn’t trusted him. He had tried to make a claim on Dory, declaring that she was part fey and thus belonged to him. He had made it sound like he was doing her a favor, but there had been an acquisitive look in his eyes. And then the fey had come to kidnap us . . .

  But his fey were golden haired for the most part, with bright blue eyes instead of the pewter ones of the Svarestri. And he had seemed more the type to try to seduce his way to what he wanted, rather than take it by force. But then, seduction had not worked . . .

  I frowned. I did not know who to trust in this strange land, but I did not think it was him. And it appeared that Ray agreed.

  “The fey are on their own side,” he said cynically. “Never forget that. If Caedmon wasn’t making out like a bandit in this war, he wouldn’t be helping us. But his old rival just got run out of his kingdom, leaving Caedmon in charge of two now. Don’t be surprised if he’s not too quick to change that.”