by Dan Stout
Eyes wide, he stared over my shoulder. An amateur trying an amateur trick on a pro. I kept all my focus on him.
“That’s when you found Jane.”
Tenebrae’s attention snapped back to me. His brows furrowed. “Who?”
“The woman in the alley.” I fought the urge to scream. “The one you bought snake oil from.”
“Oh.” He was still shooting glances over my shoulder. I still wasn’t falling for it.
“What was her name?” I slipped one more step closer to him. A wind was picking up, and it eased some of the sweat from my brow.
“The girl?” His eyes narrowed. “I have no idea. I’m offering you the entire conspiracy behind the military presence, and you care about the body of some whore in an alley?”
I almost pulled the trigger. But I moved a step closer. If he made it across the alley, I’d never bring him in. If he fell, he’d never face justice for what he’d done to Jane. I had to slow him down. I had to keep him talking. I raised my voice to be heard over the increasing howl of the wind.
“Did she have manna? Is that why you killed her?”
He blinked, looking puzzled. I pushed forward, and he took a step back. Dangerously close to the roof’s edge.
“Her?” he said. “She was dead when I found her.”
* * *
I struggled to process Tenebrae’s statement—was it possible the video had shown Anson’s reaction to someone else’s presence, or was Tenebrae bluffing, lying about this like he’d lied about nearly everything else? Jax interrupted my train of thought, surprising me by interrupting my exchange with Tenebrae.
“Get down!” he ordered the sorcerer. “Step away from the ledge, then kneel down and put your hands on your head.” There was a hint of concern in his voice, audible in the rising howl of the wind.
I finally looked behind me, in time to see Paulus in her black suit and silver-accented boots, her clothes untouched by the slightest breeze. Her lips tight, eyes locked on Tenebrae, she wore the same look of delight I’d seen in Rumple’s eyes when he caught a stray mouse. She swung two fingers in a lazy circle, and a blast of wind bowled me over and stole the breath from my lungs.
The mopped tar roofing gave slightly as I struck it, the rubber-like surface warm and surprisingly yielding. It didn’t do much to soften the blow as my head bounced off the ground. I lay flat on my back, body panicking as I struggled to breathe. I stared straight up at the cloud-streaked blackness of the sky and wondered what the Hells had happened.
All around me was the crashing and screeching of tearing metal. Realization set in as the first trickles of air seeped back into my lungs. Tenebrae had admitted that the AFS secrets were all safe in his head. If Paulus really wanted to keep them a secret, there was one sure way. She’d never let him walk away alive.
My lungs expanded, filling with oxygen, and I sat up with a jerk, only to be bowled over by a shockwave of heat and wind. Flat on my back once again, I felt for my revolver.
For a moment there was only tar and gravel, then the cold metal of the revolver’s barrel was in my hand.
I secured my weapon and rolled away, coming up in a crouch. Jax was a short distance to my left, on his hands and knees as he fought to catch his breath. Paulus and Tenebrae were twenty paces in the opposite direction, fire and air warping and wrapping around them. It was a surreal scene, something I’d only read about in fairy tales and history books. An actual, true-to-the-Path sorcerers’ duel.
I duck-walked to Jax’s side, helping steady him in the onslaught of heat and wind vortex, when an echoing crash snapped my attention back to the combatants.
Paulus grasped a metal rod in each hand, each no more than the length of her forearm. She swung them as though conducting a diabolical orchestra, and for a moment she had the appearance of a storybook sorcerer, decked out with a magic wand. Across the roof, two large metal rails danced around Tenebrae, each taller than me and probably twice as heavy. The rails darted in the air, responding to Paulus’s movements, mimicking the directions of her metal rods and allowing her to attack Tenebrae at a distance and in the process doing damage to everything nearby.
Tenebrae held up the most ludicrous thing I could imagine. A water balloon. He chanted, closed his eyes, and squeezed, forcing a portion to extrude into a straight line. Behind us, one of the water towers shook, rattled, and then burst open, an impossibly solid arm of water breaking free of its metal prison. The rest of the water tank fell away, revealing the thing that Tenebrae had created before his meeting. The water creature was fully twice my height, an egg-shaped puppet dancing to its master’s commands. Matching Tenebrae’s tiny construction, the water droplet formed tentacles and lashed out with rounded protrusions that held the weight of a small car and the force of acceleration imbued by Tenebrae’s actions.
Beside me, Jax sighed. “Oh, Hells . . .”
The metal rails swung again as Paulus responded. Her aim was off, and the end of one railing caught in the roof membrane, tearing chunks of it up in a deep furrow. It slowed the railing but didn’t stop it, and with a twist of her arm Paulus lashed out and hit her mark, plunging the massive metal rail into the shambling water shape.
Her strike cut through the water beast, disrupted the surface, and momentarily caused it to tremble. But Tenebrae’s binding was too strong, and the water simply cascaded over itself, healing the wound. The water thing rolled forward, bending and twisting like the balloon in Tenebrae’s grip.
As Paulus attacked, Tenebrae focused more attention on the rubber object in his hands. The balloon seemed abnormally thick, the contours of its surface more malleable, more capable of holding its form. Whether magically modified or simply a thicker rubber, the balloon didn’t break under duress and Tenebrae was able to shape it, sculpt it, stretching and expanding the balloon and making the tons of water from the tower stumble forward like a drunken bruiser. No matter what Paulus did to the creature, it simply regrouped, conforming once more to the shape of Tenebrae’s puppet.
The rails themselves had begun to glow. A scattering of red-rimmed circles appeared, consumed from within like steel wool burning in a slow fire. Manna rot. Paulus parried a swing of the creature’s arm with one of the rails, but it began to twist, collapsing in on itself like the flower blossom I’d seen in Gellica’s office.
The memory of Gellica’s office triggered another thought. If I could affect the cobwebs, could I do the same to Tenebrae now? With Jax stabilized, I holstered my weapon and walked forward, hands outstretched. The winding strands of cobwebs grew stronger, and I focused on the tingling, biting sensation. It was stronger than when I’d encountered it with snake oil. This feeling was pure, more intense, like an undiluted whiskey that steals your breath even as it wraps you in a barrel-aged haze.
I tore at the threads, and felt the now-familiar sensations of hunger and cold, blended with pressure in my sinuses as the sights and sounds of the world seemed to slip slightly away. In the distance, somewhere off the roof, there was a growing buzz, as if the crowd below had begun cheering my name, like the crowd at the CaCuri rally. Tenebrae’s water creature didn’t move any slower, but he seemed confused, using his free hand to poke at his shirt.
I focused on breaking the link, trying to remember how it had worked before. “Dammit,” I muttered, feeling the anger and frustration growing in me like a wild creature, and I grasped the threads and squeezed. “Dammit, dammit, dammit!” The cold and pressure lifted, and I looked around, hoping that I’d succeeded.
Across the roof, the water creature flew back and forth, reacting to Tenebrae’s tiniest gesture like the flower in Gellica’s office. My jaw dropped. Instead of reducing the magic, I’d boosted it. The hulking shape streaked across the roof almost faster than the eye could follow. Tenebrae tried to brace it by shooting out a pseudopod like a brake, but the combination of water weight and heightened acceleration proved too much for th
e roof. Tar and underlayment exploded outward from the impact, exposing the framing even as it, too, gave way.
The water creature wavered, and Tenebrae attempted to pull it back, causing it to swing one arm out and down, striking the roof beneath our feet and expanding the jagged crater. The combined weight and damage were more than the structure could bear. The creature toppled forward, falling through the hole in the roof. The structure gave out under my feet, and I followed Tenebrae’s watery creation into the void. As we tumbled, I collided with its massive shape, and for a second the creature’s liquid shell bent beneath my weight. Then the surface parted and I plunged inside it, absorbed into the creature as we fell.
34
INSIDE THE CREATURE, THE WORLD was blue-tinted and quiet. Surrounded by water, a cool chill spread across my body and a pressure built against my sinuses. I finally understood what connecting with manna felt like—being plunged underwater. For a moment, I was weightless. My arms and legs drifted and the sound of screaming was at a distant remove.
Then we hit the floor below.
We broke through with a rumble, as the massive weight and momentum of the creature propelled us on, through a room of terrified onlookers, and into the first level, where kitchen staff scattered deeper into the Paradise or out onto the alley through the back entrance. The solid slab of the ground floor finally proved too much for the creature to barrel through, and it dispersed, a water tower’s worth of liquid creating a small tidal wave of destruction in the Paradise Parlor’s kitchen.
Suddenly in air again, I gasped like a fish pulled out of an ice hole, dragged by a hook into a confusing new world and about to have my life extinguished. For two long, jagged breaths the water around me drained away. Then it began to reconstitute itself. Water flowed back together to form the creature. Puddles flowed upward from the tile floor, and droplets peeled back from the walls and ceiling where they’d splashed. I was no exception.
I clawed at a nearby worktable, pulling myself up onto unsteady legs. All around, CaCuri staffers and thugs ran in circles, baffled by what to do in the face of the impossible. I was soaked to the bone, water dripping from my clothes as I got my bearings. A single drop gathered at the edge of my shirt cuff. But instead of falling to the floor, it hesitated, trembling, then dispersed back into the cloth. A heartbeat later, a bead of water gathered at the top of my shirt cuff, grew, then fell up, drifting away overhead. The enchanted water was responding as Tenebrae reexerted his control.
A second later the effect was all over my body. The water that had covered me began to pull off of my body. Moisture stripped away from me, drying my clothes and pulling free of my hair and skin, even from where it had gotten into my nose and mouth, a painful sensation like beads on a string being yanked from my sinuses. I cupped a hand over my mouth, but the water simply pushed out between my fingers. The pain was intense and claustrophobia-inducing. I swatted at the threads of spider silk leading back to the roof, where Tenebrae called the water to return to him. As I clutched at the threads the cold and hunger emerged once more, but before I could act, the threads were whisked from my grasp. The creature formed into a pillar of water and flowed its way back up through the crater, taking the threads with it. I was left partially dry, with some of my clothing still wet, where I’d managed to sever the connection completely. I stared at the retreating creature, ravenous and dizzy. That’s when I realized that Jax was alone up there with Tenebrae and Paulus.
I had to find the stairs, had to get to the roof, had to stop Tenebrae and find justice for Jane. But something tugged at the frayed edges of my mind. I replayed Tenebrae’s shocked denial. It sounded sincere, but for now I had to set it aside. Jax needed me. Chilled and damp, I stumbled forward, counting on the continued shouts and screams in the building to make the sight of a lone running figure seem ordinary.
I left the kitchen through a swinging access door and found myself in a large dining area. A little sit-down service for the CaCuris’ best pals. I wove through the sea of round tables, making my way to the double doors at the far end of the room. I swung one open with as little noise as possible.
I entered the hallway with my badge miraculously still tucked into my jacket breast pocket. Not that a badge would get much respect here, but it might make someone think twice about sinking a knife into my gut. I walked as quickly as I could manage, gait unsteady after my multi-floor plunge. Eventually I recognized one of the sitting rooms we’d been taken through earlier to meet Thomas. Oriented properly, I turned in a circle, surveying my options and eventually picking the most garishly decorated hallway. I guessed the stairs wouldn’t be too far from there.
As I crept forward, the sound of arguing voices echoed from farther down the hall. The same voices I’d heard yelling at Donnie’s, but now carrying even more vitriol and anger. The kind of yelling that didn’t end happily. I paused, wondering whether to head back the way I’d come or try to creep past unnoticed. But when an agonized moan drifted out of the throne room I knew the CaCuris weren’t alone. Someone in that room had let out a wordless plea for help that I couldn’t ignore.
I crept toward the room at the end of the hallway and peered through the half-open door. The building shuddered with the force of the battle raging overhead, and I spotted Thomas. He’d shed his suit coat, and his shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows. He was literally red-handed with the blood of a thin young Gillmyn strapped to the ornate throne. Thomas paced like a caged animal, back and forth before his victim, occasionally reaching up to check on the padded pocket of his waistcoat, where I suspected his pocket watch still sat tucked safely away.
Scenarios ran through my head of the best way to enter, subdue him, and radio my comrades that I had Thomas. When he hit the guy again I decided the Hells with it, and burst into the room, drawing a bead on Thomas.
“Don’t move!” I shouted the words, as if I could make him surrender through sheer force of will. He froze, and I considered it mission accomplished. Now I simply needed to find a way to restrain Thomas, reach Jax, stop Tenebrae, and get all of us out of the building before it collapsed.
I’d almost figured it out when a heavy hand clamped down on my neck, twisting me to the right as my gun hand was pulled backward. The bouncer from the front room had me from behind. I hit the wall beside the door, cheek pressing into my teeth, as pressure on my wrist forced me to release my weapon.
When I dropped the gun, my assailant released my arm and punched me twice. Pain exploded in my lower back as he targeted my kidney and then, with an uppercut, my groin. My face slid down the wall as he recovered my gun, and I heard the scrape of metal as he stowed my weapon behind his belt buckle.
Marguiles had one hand on my neck and levered my right hand back and up, keeping me stooped over and at risk of having my arm broken. I craned my neck to get a glimpse of the twins.
“It’s the manna strike cop,” he said. There was enough of a quiver in his voice that I knew he didn’t like this setup. That was something to work with.
Katie stood by the chair, hand on its back, between the ceremonial knife belts, staring at her brother and the mess of a man in the chair.
“Thomas, what did you do?”
“Nothing that didn’t need doing,” he said, bottom lip jutting out like a petulant child. But when he looked at me he broke into a smile. A cruel child delighted to find a helpless animal to torment. He pulled out his pocket watch and absently ran his fingers over its face. “Nothing I can’t do again.”
I opted for the direct approach.
“Thomas CaCuri, you’re under arrest for assault and battery,” I glanced at the poor SOB in the chair, “of whoever that is.”
Katie said, “Don’t listen to him.” But it was a whisper, more to herself than the blood-hungry Thomas.
Her twin sneered, speaking to me. “You come to save your little friend?” He shoved the palm of his hand against the Gillmyn’s cheek, turning th
e victim’s head so I could get a look at his face.
It was Weston, the eager Gillmyn who’d helped broker our meeting with the Harlqs. He was mercifully unconscious.
“We had eyes on them,” Thomas said. “On the filthy Harlqs. And who goes waltzing in to talk to Anders? The ice plains hero. And after you and your throat-talker buddy show up in our house,” he jabbed a finger at the floor, “who gets spotted at the festival, but Anders’s right-hand man.”
Weston wasn’t anyone’s right-hand man. He was a fool who romanticized gangsters. That wasn’t a mistake that should carry a death sentence.
“Stupid,” I said. Marguiles kept me doubled over, but I kept talking. “When I met the Harlqs I stared at them like my life depended on it. And that kid wasn’t there. You grabbed some poor bastard who came here to celebrate the holiday and beat him almost to death.”
The bloodied twin paused, considering my words.
“Well.” Thomas walked in my direction with a spring in his step. He placed a large hand on my forehead and pushed, craning my neck back so he could look me in the eye. “I guess I’ll have to finish the job, and then move on to you.” He poked a finger against my forehead. “Put him in the chair, Marguiles.”
“Got you red-handed,” I said, panting as Marguiles tightened his grip. “You imbecile.”
“Thomas,” Katie’s words grew in volume. “Listen to me . . .”
“Can’t do nothing to me.” Thomas slid his hand from my forehead to my ear, knuckles brushing over my cheekbone before pausing to twist my earlobe, thumbnail pinching into soft flesh. “I got a whole organization that’ll alibi me. I wasn’t here, and I never said a thing.”
“You know I didn’t come here alone,” I said. “Cop walks into your place of business and disappears? That’s a strong lock.” Tenebrae’s denial resurfaced in my mind once again. “We’ve already got you on video,” I said. “Anson on the fire escape, you in the alley.”