by Stacia Kane
No. Fuck, no. She was the one in control; she was the one who’d made the decision and she would get herself out of this. She’d get them all out of this, all of them who’d bought a little speed and suddenly found themselves under someone else’s control. This was magic, and she could do magic; if there was one thing she could fucking do that was it. She wasn’t just a junkie, she was a motherfucking Churchwitch.
Somewhere in the distance, she thought she heard Lex calling her name. She tried to answer. “Give me a minute.”
Had he heard that? She didn’t know, still couldn’t see or hear. Had no idea if she was on the roof or what; her body remained inaccessible to her. The only way she knew for sure she wasn’t dead was that she wasn’t being picked up, wasn’t in the City.
And yeah, the night might very well end with her there, but not this way. No fucking way was she going to give up so easy; if Terrible wasn’t going to let her be alone down there, she sure as fuck wasn’t going to make him join her because she’d lost without putting up a fight. It wasn’t just her own life that depended on her, wasn’t just the army of nameless blank faces on the streets below. Terrible’s life depended on her staying alive, and she was going to do it.
So she pushed. Pushed as hard as she could, pushed with all the anger and determination a lifetime of shit had given her. She’d faced worse than this and she’d survived, and she’d be damned if she’d let this beat her.
Somehow she found a thread of … something. Something in the magic, something she could grab hold of. Yes! The heart of the spell, the line that connected it to its caster.
This wasn’t something she’d done very often. The Black Squad had training on this, but since her work usually involved nonmagical crimes—or at least it was supposed to—she’d had only the basic classes on it. But she found it. That was the important thing. And she could follow it—or she could if she could get hold of her own increasingly fuzzy mind, find some way to lessen the magic’s grip.
Almost immediately upon thinking it, the weight on her lifted. Her eyes were hers again, her body in her control. Not entirely, no; the magic was still there, oh it sure as fuck was, that deep-down pull on her wanting her to—to walk, to go, to pick up something and start hitting with it. It wanted her to— No, it wasn’t clear enough, not yet.
Not until she went back under. Because at that moment she felt her feet again, her arms and hands; felt one of them held in a tight grip she knew without thinking was Lex’s. That fucking sucked, because what she didn’t feel was that thin line of magic, the line she could trace. It was gone, and she wouldn’t find it again until she was back under. All the way.
“You was takin youself a walk,” he said. “Guessing you got it pretty strong, aye?”
“Where are we?”
“Still onna roof. Ready get off, head on down?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Go ahead of me, okay? I’ll follow you.”
He gave her a look—warning? Concern? She couldn’t tell—and started walking. He made it about four steps before the magic slid over her again.
The magic and the craving. Fuck, she wanted another bump, a whole line. Her body screamed for it, so loud she could almost hear it. One more bump. She needed to bring the magic back up, needed to make herself feel better. Shit, she needed that so damn bad.
“On the street,” she thought she heard Lex say. “Followin you now.”
So she had been moving. She had been going somewhere; she’d been following the magic. She hoped, anyway, that she’d been chasing it and not obeying it.
Haze covered her eyes, as if she saw everything through cloudy film. Bodies moved, fighting all around her; she heard shouts as if they were miles away. She wanted to join them. It was a need almost as bad as the need for another bump, another line, that need pulling at her like a beast with its prey, trying to rip her flesh off her bones and devour it. So overpowering, it was so fucking strong, so desperate. How long was she going to be able to fight it? How long would she be able to remember what she was supposed to do, why she was under?
For that matter, how long were Bump’s men going to hold on? All those people, all those bodies—their faces looked smudged and artificial to her, like golems—a swarm of them, endless like the clouds, all of them fixated on one thing. No one could last against that kind of determination. Nothing could last against it. They were running out of time. Not that they’d had much to begin with.
She needed to find the spell. She needed to step away from Lex. Fine, but how the hell to do that and not give in to the magic?
Maybe she didn’t have a voice; she probably didn’t. But she’d try it, anyway. “Arketa restikah, arketa restikah. Baruel, baruel, matasae matasae. Arketa restikah …”
Was it her imagination or did she feel the bonds around her start to loosen? Could she see a little?
The Arketa was one of the weakest chants in the Church arsenal, but she didn’t want a strong one. She couldn’t overpower the magic totally or chance having it disappear, because she had to follow it, but she needed to think, to see. To access her body and voice, and her power.
Should she ask Lex for iron? There were filings in her bag, of course, but he could— No. She didn’t want him digging around in there, for one thing, and for another that might be too much, too strong.
So she kept going with the Arketa. At the fourth repetition she came back enough to see, to feel her feet and the ground beneath them; at the sixth she found her hands again. And … yes, she still had the line, she could still trace the magic. Shit, yes, just what she needed. She knew it, she knew the Church would have an answer.
What she didn’t know was where she’d been going, what she’d planned to do, or why she’d headed— Of course. The ship. She was heading for the ship.
She hadn’t found the master spell when they were on board earlier, but then she and Terrible hadn’t gone everywhere, had they? There were still a few floors she hadn’t even been on, and they’d only entered the captain’s room; there were plenty of others. She’d be willing to put money down that what she needed was there.
“The Agneta Katina,” she said, stopping her chant and letting it stay stopped. “We need to go there, that’s where we need to be.”
Magic flowed through her again, her grip on the end of it tight enough to make her insides ache. She needed another bump. It wouldn’t ease the pain, no—speed didn’t do shit for pain—but it would make it easier, make her feel better, cheer her up. Like speed always did. It would help her forget everything else, and this particular speed was especially good at that, wasn’t it?
Even in her blitzed and blissful state, though, she knew taking another hit would be a bad idea in that crowd. How much were they craving, how badly did they need more?
Well, shit, how badly did she need more, and it had been only, what, ten minutes? So, yeah. Not going to take it out on the street. Follow the line, get somewhere private. Hell, follow the line and get onto the boat; she needed the tunnel for that, so she needed to get into the taxidermist’s.
The magic line grew thicker, stronger, as she made her slow careful way along it. Very careful. If she could feel him, it was only a matter of time before he felt her, and once he felt her he could—well, he could do any number of things, none of them good.
Speed up, then, no pun intended. The line of magic vibrated gently, the line with so many offshoots, so many people connected to it. Like a thousand voices screaming across a great distance, screaming in fear and pain and frustration. And one of those voices was hers.
Shivers of bright sharp energy zipped through her body at odd intervals, little shocks that came out of nowhere. She must have been bumping into more speed-zombies. They hadn’t been that far from the docks, why was it taking so long, what was happening?
She hadn’t found the sorcerer in the magic yet. Didn’t want to find him until they got closer—hell, didn’t want to find him at all, unless they couldn’t find the master spell. That was what she needed to be working
on. Finding that spell, finding the other walnuts. All of those little threads, tributaries in the river of horror—they were people, yes, but they were spells. Slipped into pockets, tucked under couch cushions or beds. Tied—she felt them, saw them in her head—to rafters in abandoned buildings, stuck under chairs in bars and diners, hidden in cars. They littered Downside; they were everywhere.
She started the chant again and found herself still clutching Lex’s hand, surrounded by total darkness. “Where are—”
“That dead-animal place.” He was smoking; red light illuminated his face for a second as he took a drag. “Figured on takin us offen the street, I did, take that tunnel you come up out before. Them zombies gave me the callypunch, dig?”
“Yeah.” Her fingers shook as she dug out the speed and bumped up again; her body’s screams were too loud, too much to ignore any longer. Of course, when that death-and-old-asparagus taste hit her throat, she wished she had ignored it, but wasn’t that just fucking typical of her: to want something so badly, and then to instantly regret getting it.
“Got he yet?”
“Almost. I— The spell, there’s so many of them, but it feels really close, it feels like the master spell is really close, so— Fuck!”
Her body caught fire. Not literally, at least she sure as fuck hoped not. She couldn’t see it. Couldn’t see anything as the magic inside her swelled and shrieked. Something had just— What the hell had he done?
Through the pain she felt her knees hit the floor, the disgusting floor coated with slime and bacteria. In her speed-and-magic-crazed mind she pictured them, millions of them, germs like maggots with evil grins full of teeth, swarming up her legs, biting her, eating her.
She screamed—she thought she screamed, who the fuck knew if her voice actually came out or not—and swatted at them. Tried to swat at them, at least, because she didn’t know if her arms were working, either.
He’d found her. The sorcerer had found her; he knew she was coming for him, and he was fighting back.
He knew what scared her, too. The magic gave him access to her mind; those sharp-toothed bacteria, those malevolent germs, grew bigger, stronger, grew long spindly arms to wrap around her and human faces straight out of her darkest memories. They howled and screamed at her. They sank their needle-teeth into her flesh and disappeared into her bloodstream.
She stopped reciting the Arketa in her head, and white washed over her vision again. It didn’t block out the foulness crawling all over her body, the things that had lived in her right palm when she’d cut it on the Dreamthief’s amulet, insects and worms, roaches and flies. All of those she could still see through the mist.
Dull pain blossomed in her cheek, distracting her long enough to make her remember. Somewhere she realized Lex had hit her—well, she realized it when the pain happened again. It didn’t hurt that much; she had no idea if it would have if she’d been able to really feel. But it hurt enough to bring her back to herself for a second—to make her realize he’d somehow managed to short out the protection spell or whatever it was Lex carried—and that second was all she needed.
It was also all she got. She’d just started the Arketa again when the white before her eyes changed to black, and a sick miasma of neon colors swirled before them, like being trapped in a nightmare kaleidoscope. He was fighting her, all right. He was trying to obscure anything she might see, anything she might find, throwing images and shit at her to hide himself.
No fucking way was she going to let that work.
She grabbed hold of the cord, that invisible cord of magic, and yanked it as hard as she could.
The line vibrated. She felt it in her head, felt it reverberate along all of the connected lines. If it had any effect on the crowd of bespelled bodies outside, she couldn’t tell, but the way it shook gave her something, and it was all she needed.
It gave her the master bag, the heart of the spell. It wasn’t on the Agneta Katina. It was the Agneta Katina. The whole fucking ship. He’d painted it with ghost-and-magic-infused paint; he’d hidden the spell ingredients all over it, from stem to stern, and he’d activated it.
Holy fuck, the entire ship was a spell bag. How the hell was she supposed to destroy that?
The bay. The bay was running water, right? And running water could break a spell, purify its parts. So she had to get the ship submerged in it, that was all.
She had to sink a motherfucking freighter, and she had to do it on her own.
Another wave of horror washed over her, more sights and sounds she didn’t want to see or hear again in her life. More shit crawling all over her, so real it made her already pounding heart start jerking around like an electrocuted nerve. He was fighting back, fighting harder, shit, she couldn’t breathe—
“Arketa restikah, arketa restikah …”
It wasn’t working. She felt—she practically heard—him chuckle as he sent more power throbbing down the line at her, enough to knock her down, to send her flying from her body.
More pain across her face. She wanted to tell Lex to quit fucking slapping her but really, what else was he supposed to do? She didn’t have the breath, anyway, and when she did she had more important things to tell him.
“The ship,” she croaked, or at least tried to; she could only hope he was able to hear her. “We have to destroy the ship.”
She thought he replied, but whatever he said was lost, too quiet for her to hear over the airplane-engine roar of magic in her head. An explosion, that’s what she needed. Fire could destroy the spell, too.
But the ship was steel. Steel didn’t burn. She didn’t think steel melted, either, and even if it did, it would be at temperatures way hotter than any she could generate.
The cord vibrated. An order. He was ordering his crowd to do something, to— Shit. He was ordering them into the building. Ordering them after her.
Sight and hearing came rushing back to her, just enough for her to see them outside, hear them pounding on the wood over the street-level windows. It barely registered in her mind before Lex started running, pulling her along after him, into the workshop and the tunnel below— No, not into it. She heard him say something, but she didn’t know what it was, and it didn’t matter because she saw it, too. Water. The tide was in, the tunnel impassable.
Lex kicked open the back door of the workshop and dragged Chess into the alley behind it. Thank fuck, at least that was empty. Too bad it wouldn’t be for long; she could feel him watching her. He’d send them after her, they’d keep coming, and no way could she fight them all off. No way could Lex or all of Bump’s men fight them off. They didn’t think, didn’t feel, and the power the sorcerer had put into them would keep them moving even after their bodies were ruined, crushed.… They were an army no one could defeat.
Her mind screamed for escape; her body screamed for more speed. He wanted her to do more, wanted to pull her deeper under his spell. She fought it as hard as she could, exhaustion creeping into her head even as her limbs buzzed and jerked from the drugs already in her system.
“Lex.” Could he hear her? “Lex, it’s the boat. The boat is the spell. We have to destroy the boat.”
Whatever reply he might have made was lost in the wave of magic thundering over her again. So much, and so strong; she couldn’t fight that, couldn’t beat him, and couldn’t destroy the Agneta Katina.
Lex had pushed her all the way down the alley behind the taxidermist’s so they were on the docks again, and the horde had turned to them. They were coming, this was it, they were coming— The key.
She had the key.
She had the key, and she’d managed to short out the magic earlier. She’d shorted out the spell in the center of it, and she hadn’t been part of it. Something was happening in the conscious part of her mind, some sort of idea forming. She had the key, and she’d been able to overpower the spell, even if for only a short moment.
And she hadn’t been part of it then; now she was. Did that give her an advantage? She wanted to think i
t did but she couldn’t think anything, she was so tired of thinking, tired of fighting.
Colors over her eyes, pain in her chest from her heart slamming itself against her ribs, aching in her limbs from trying to move, from fighting the spell’s control and the almost overwhelming desire to do another bump, another hit, to chop herself a fresh thick line and vacuum it up, lose herself in it for good. More images flashed before her, like a movie she never wanted to see again in the last moments of her life.
No. She dug her heels in, dimly aware of another pain in her jaw; whether it was from Lex or from gritting her teeth so hard, she didn’t know or care.
Magic flowed all along the cord, connecting her to the sorcerer, to all his other victims. Of course it did; the cord was made of magic, wasn’t it? Was it? Confusion flowed along and mixed with the magic. Where was she, what was she doing? Was she part of the spell, or was she imagining it all? Was she dreaming? Before her eyes were faces, lights, spreading pools of red and blue and green; was it real? Was the dim shadowy shape of a ship she could just make out beyond the colors and lights real?
She spun at the end of the cord, leaving her body, riding a wave of smooth cold magic embedded with shards of glass. Being controlled, fighting against it, but knowing she couldn’t win, and her instincts were to curl up, block it out, leave her body, because she’d been there so many times before.
But she could feel them, all of the others. Feel them following orders, coming for her, as if they were all part of a vast singular consciousness. She wanted to come for herself; she was hunter and hunted, and the confusion of it helped her break free. Helped her fight back.
She reached into her bag, shouting the Arketa in her head as loud as she could. It took her a minute to remember it; the words got lost on her tongue. But the spell’s power receded enough for her to take a breath, for her to realize that Lex had pushed her up a flight of stairs, that she was in some kind of tower on the docks. His voice in sharp Cantonese made a familiar background as she grabbed that moment of clarity and held on to it with all her might.