Wicked Misery (Miss Misery)

by Martin, Tracey

  Putting out the fires was the Gryphons’ first priority, and they only paid attention to the preds when they got in the way. They didn’t seem to notice me at all.

  I kept to Lucen’s side, and together we kept to the shadows. Where sylphs sparred with magi, we stayed away, though the crossfire was dangerous. Curses detonated all around, and the odd bullet whizzed past.

  This was Boston, I told myself again and again. This was my city. Yet these blocks, not far from the Common, looked nothing like it. It was as though I was trapped in some video game’s version of a post-apocalyptic city.

  We found a satyr handcuffed by the Gryphons but abandoned on the side of the road. She’d been cursed unconscious and un-wakeable. After digging through his bag, Lucen discovered a serviceable counter-curse. “They arrested me for fighting,” the groggy satyr explained. “But then the salamanders got close, and they got called off.”

  I worked at picking her cuff lock as we walked.

  We also encountered a few fights that involved satyrs, and Lucen joined them. I steeled myself each time, fearing the worst. We picked up a couple more satyrs that way, including Devon, who chided Lucen for not answering the phone earlier. Despite his injuries, he grinned at me salaciously. Clearly he figured he knew why Lucen had ignored the phone.

  Our growing group provided some safety, but in other ways made us a worthwhile target for curse grenades that would have been wasted on only two. One went off behind me, taking out a corner of a building. I choked on the smoke and opened my eyes as a burnt hulk of an SUV careened toward me.

  I dropped to avoid burning debris and rolled out of the car’s way. Lucen’s voice rang in my ears, but he was trapped on the other side of the street. I landed at the feet of a sylph. Sneering, he flicked his switchblade. “Hey, lookie. It’s the girl who started this. Your head will finish it.”

  I shot my left leg behind his and nailed him in the knee with my right. It cracked, and he toppled over backward.

  “Asshole.” I was on my feet before him and stepped on his wrist.

  “Jess! Behind you!”

  I spun around, but the newest sylph streaked toward me. I didn’t see her arm or her leg or whatever it was she used to hit me. I only felt it.

  Doubled over, I landed on the concrete. The sylph’s bony fingers dug into me as she pulled me away from the burning SUV. My vision wavered. Lucen was yelling, and the sylph was taunting me. I tasted blood.

  With a ferocious tug, the sylph yanked me up. I fumbled for a knife but flailed too long trying to catch my balance. This time I saw the sylph’s foot shoot out. It collided with my back, and I hit the ground again, too dazed to brace my fall with my hands. More blood. More heat from the flames that felt like they were setting my battered body on fire. An explosion rocked the ground behind me, and Lucen’s yelling took on a whole new tone.

  Gasping, I rolled away from the sylph, finally managing to retrieve a knife. Why hadn’t she attacked again? She was way faster than me. Pushing myself upright, I discovered the answer—salamander.

  Its mouth of flaming teeth wasn’t even ten feet away from me, and its sizzling tongue licked the crumbling wall. In spite of the heat, my blood chilled. With arms barely able to hold myself, I crawled backward. The thing was huge, six feet long if an inch.

  Left knee back, then right knee. I willed my body to keep going through the pain. To my right, the carcass of the SUV burned. I couldn’t see Lucen or the sylph anywhere, and I didn’t dare make any sudden movements.

  Left. Right. I had time to get out of here if I was quiet. The brick building didn’t ignite without a struggle. The salamander stood on its hind legs. Spittle-sized fires dripped from its mouth.

  A foot connected with my butt. With a moan, I collapsed forward, and my knife clattered to the ground. The salamander whipped its head around, and red-and-gold eyes met my own.

  The heat of its glare could have made my guts boil. Its forked tongue whipped against ethereal lips, and that was the last I saw before my fear powered me to my feet.

  The sylph was backing up slowly into a dead end. That last explosion had done in a new building, and the debris crumbled to the street. We were trapped in an alley with the salamander. The only way out lay between the SUV and the flame-filled creature.

  The crackling fire drowned out all noise but my shallow breaths. I glanced over my shoulder. The sylph had raised a sword and pointed it at me as if to warn me to stay away. Right, because if I had to choose between a pissed-off pred and a salamander, I’d take the salamander? To hell with that. If I burned to death, the sylph was going with me. The flaming thing might not have noticed either of us if she hadn’t kicked me.

  I feinted a step back then lunged, dodging the sylph’s blade and pressing my back to the mountain of smoldering crap behind her. The salamander had dropped to all fours and scampered toward us.

  Hand trembling, I grabbed a chunk of brick and mortar and threw it. Next to me, the sylph lowered her sword and chanted to no effect. The salamander had grown too big to be controlled by simple magic. It snapped its jaw at the brick, and my projectile passed through its fiery body without inflicting any more damage than the sylph’s spell.

  The brick did appear to accomplish one thing, though—it annoyed the salamander. Flames filled its eyes. Shit. I was about to become toast. Literally.

  Heedless of the pain, I stuck the knife between my teeth, grasped the hot debris and started climbing the rubble. The sylph followed my lead but wasn’t content to merely escape. She grabbed my shirt. My fingers scraped rough patches of mortar and concrete. More dust kept raining down, making it almost impossible to look up. I held on tighter, pressed my body to the debris to keep from being flung backward. The heat seared my skin. She pulled harder. If I let go to fight her, I’d fall for sure.

  Suddenly, the sylph screamed. The salamander had jumped up and was snapping at her feet. Sparks flew into the air. An ember landed on my pants. I pressed my brief advantage, scurrying higher while the salamander ignored me for the more magically potent sylph. The debris shifted under me, and I felt the sylph’s hand on the end of my braid.

  I swatted at her futilely. Between the smoke, the burns forming all over me and whatever damage she’d done earlier, not even my panic could keep me fueled. The air was too thick, too heavy.

  “Jess!”

  I heard an explosion and then Lucen’s head appeared atop the rubble pile. Hands and arms quickly followed. The sylph screamed as I grabbed for him, and my head shrieked with pain as a clump of my hair came free. More smoke rose below me. Something in the debris had caught fire.

  “Come on!” Lucen pulled me the rest of the way up, and jagged bits of crap tore at my clothes. The sylph was reaching for her sword.

  Closing my eyes, I wedged my foot around a cinderblock and pushed it off the pile. Either the sylph didn’t see it coming or didn’t have time to scream. Something heavy hit the ground, but I resolutely kept my face forward. With Lucen’s help, I scrambled over the top of the pile and got the hell off it as fast as I could.

  Someone pressed a water bottle into my hands, and Lucen beat at the bottoms of my pants until all the glowing embers subsided.

  I hurt in so many places it was almost like being numb. My brain couldn’t process the pain. More of that cool salve was smeared on my palms, and some on my cheeks. I heaved breath after breath, but the air on this side of the wall was scarcely better.

  Devon blew me a kiss. “You’re pretty tough for a human, but if you’re not on fire anymore, we need to keep moving.”

  I blinked soot from my eyes. “Thanks, I think.”

  “Dezzi was this way,” Devon said. “Come on.”

  We found her a few minutes later, surrounded by several other satyrs. The buildings around them hissed purple smoke, suggesting someone had already put out the fires on this block. She waved us over, her impatience obvious. One of her earrings had torn from her left ear, and she leaned on a thin, salamander fire-forged blade as if it
were a cane.

  “All the damn lines are jammed.” She threw her phone into her pocket. “You brought supplies?”

  Lucen patted the backpack.

  “Good. Raf has been gathering the wounded. I’m trying to reach Azria and can’t get through. We need to get them on their feet and get them back to Shadowtown.”

  Lucen and a couple others started toward the line of bleeding satyrs huddled behind Dezzi. Devon joined the few who’d formed a perimeter around us with their weapons drawn. Without anything else to do, I followed Lucen, figuring I could be of some help playing nurse.

  Dezzi grasped my wrist. “I believe you might be right. Only the furies would have done something like this.”

  “What happened?”

  “A few minutes before eight Pete received a phone call from his partner. Finally. He instructed Pete to come to an address downtown. So naturally, we go with. When we arrived, sylphs were already there, and so were the bodies of five more of their addicts. All mutilated, clearly sexually used, their chests opened and their hearts removed.”

  My stomach churned, and I put a hand over my mouth.

  “Yes, it was vile.” Dezzi slammed the sword point into the street, and the pavement cracked. “The sylphs were in a rage. They too had received a call, telling them to come here, that they would find the ones responsible and be able to rescue the rest of their missing addicts.”

  “So it was a setup?”

  “And then the magi arrived.”

  I wet my lips. “Who think they’re being framed for the crimes because of the hearts.”

  Dezzi nodded and gestured around us. “You see what transpired. It will only grow worse if I cannot convince Assym to hear reason. We cannot survive fighting among ourselves and against the magi. And once the Gryphons capture all the salamanders, we will have them to contend with too.”

  “I’m guessing Pete’s partner was never here, right? What happened to Pete?” I braced in anticipation of the answer.

  “Dead. We tried to keep him out of the fighting, but he was too easy a target.”

  “So our best lead is gone. Wonderful. Wait a minute.” I licked the blood that dripped on my lips and blotted the rest with my shirt. “How did someone know they could use Pete to lure us here? Who else knew we had him?”

  Dezzi raised an eyebrow. “That is a good question, isn’t it?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Between the fires, the Gryphons, the sylphs and the magi, it took most of the night to move the wounded and the dead back to Shadowtown, and the satyrs ended up with more wounded in the process. Rafael and Azria, who apparently acted like magical medics to the satyrs, set up a temporary infirmary in Raf’s apartment for those who were the most gravely hurt. I offered to help but was routinely ignored. Although Shadowtown was untouched by the fires, the purple sky infected the streets. Few people wandered outdoors, and those who did were armed and traveled in packs. Lucen practically chased me into The Lair and told me to stay away from the windows.

  Dezzi called for a full council meeting, demanding that anyone not dead show up. They gathered at the bar, and I overheard mention of harpies, sylphs and magi. Possible fury involvement was mentioned, as well, but most people weren’t ready to blame them. Yet everyone was ready to fight.

  My opinions didn’t matter. And since I wasn’t invited to be part of any of the meetings Dezzi was hastily arranging, I hung out with Sweetpea in Lucen’s apartment. By then it was four a.m., but adrenaline kept me wide awake, as did the magical hit I got from panicking humans in the city. The fear and despair was so strong I could taste it in Shadowtown.

  I tried to be useful, racking my brain for new ways to discover my note-writer’s identity, but wakefulness didn’t necessarily make me capable of coherent thoughts. When Lucen still hadn’t returned by six, I went to bed.

  Sleep didn’t come easily. I worried about Steph, and Bridget, and all my former friends who I’d ditched simply because I couldn’t stand seeing them live the life I’d dreamed about. My sleep, when it came at last, was plagued by visions of salamanders consuming the city, gobbling icons from Faneuil Hall to Fenway Park, then taking down The Feathers and Shadowtown. Meanwhile, violence erupted spontaneously in Shadowtown’s streets until they ran with rivers of blood. I kept climbing to higher ground, but the blood surged toward my ankles. If it touched me, I’d become an addict, though I didn’t know to who. On the sidelines, my masked note-writer and an unseen fury cheered from behind chain-link barriers like spectators at the Meat Matches.

  I woke up with a spasm. Sunlight coated the bed, and stale smoke clogged the air. I’d never shut the drapes or bothered to shower. Exhausted, I opened the window to air the room out and washed. To the east, a purple haze hung in the sky. All was deathly quiet.

  Lucen’s door was shut, and I assumed he was sleeping. It was already two in the afternoon. While the coffee brewed, I stared at the walls, silently berating myself for not getting up earlier. Time was running out. Tomorrow was Friday, and my best lead was dead. Yet I wasn’t sure how getting up earlier might have helped since I couldn’t pursue the fury lead on my own.

  I debated whether to turn on the news, check the Internet, do something to learn the extent of the damage, but I couldn’t bring myself to move. After living it, reading about it felt almost pornographic.

  My arm and hands itched, which I took as a good sign of healing, but the rest of me ached from head to toes. So did my brain when I remembered what had transpired between me and Lucen last night before the fires. Well, maybe it wasn’t just my brain, but attributing the ache to something in my chest was too scary. I was angry at myself for even wanting to trust him. He’d sounded so sincere, but could a satyr even be sincere? What kind of human let themselves get emotionally attached to a pred?

  You are such an idiot, Jess.

  While I drank coffee, I heard Lucen moving around upstairs. I got up and cracked a few eggs into a pan—I was not doing the Pop-Tart thing again, debt be damned—and added two slices of bread to the toaster. By the time Lucen stumbled down, I had breakfast prepared and a single intelligent thought.

  “What happened last night?”

  Lucen yawned. His hair and T-shirt were rumpled like he’d gone to sleep in his clothes, but he didn’t reek of smoke, so that couldn’t be it. It was a good look for him though. Made him seem almost human, which, of course, he wasn’t, and I ought to know better than to even jokingly think of him that way. But damn. My memories of our interlude on the sofa were seared into my head—the taste of his lips, the gentle way he’d brushed hair out of my face. I had not expected him to be gentle. Hadn’t wanted him to be. So maybe that was why he had been.

  Satyr, Jess. He lives to torment humans.

  And I was dying for him to torment me again. How twisted was that?

  I bit my lip. I’d had that chance but not the guts—or simply too much intelligence—to go through with it.

  Lucen was speaking, and I prayed he was too concerned about the larger issues at hand to notice my emotional turmoil. “The good news—if it can be called that—is Eyff buys into the idea that a fury might be orchestrating things. Of course, he completely vouches for his own people’s innocence, but he finds it suspicious the way the furies have been staying out of everyone’s business for a change. Not all the harpies, nor all of our people, agree. We need some hard proof. Someone to corroborate this information, which doesn’t get us any further than we are now since we can’t do that until we find your guy.”

  “And the bad?” I asked as he took several deep swallows of coffee.

  “Assym won’t budge. I suppose that’s mediocre news. Bad news would have been if he declared war right then and there, but that doesn’t mean his people won’t be prowling for fights. You can’t leave this house alone.” I started to protest but Lucen cut me off. “I don’t plan to leave alone. It’s Dezzi’s orders. Got it?”

  I shut my mouth and carefully set two plates of eggs and toast on the table. Hi, my n
ame’s Jessica, and I’ll be your serving wench today. Some routines were hard to unlearn. “Got it. So that wasn’t war last night?”

  “That? Call it foreplay.”

  “What about the magi?”

  “Dezzi and Eyff asked to council with Xander. They haven’t heard anything yet.” Lucen piled butter on his toast. “We need to hide you better. Unless they have a lot of dead or wounded, expect Gryphon raids today or tomorrow.”

  “They’ll be looking for me?”

  “They’ll be looking for anyone who can cough up information about the fires. They might find you in the process.”

  I must have been too tired to care because I didn’t react. “I had a thought.”

  “I hope it relates to the fires because we still don’t have any idea how last night was pulled off.”

  “It sort of does.” I mushed my eggs around, eager yet reluctant to share because I hated this idea, even though I thought it was good. “The first time I talked to this guy he said he wanted to have fun with me. His idea of a good time was the Meat Matches.”

  “Not a shocking revelation if he turns out to be a fury’s addict.”

  “Yeah, but my thought is—if this guy likes them as much as he seemed to, and especially if he’s a rage addict, he’ll be at them.”

  Lucen didn’t look as excited as I thought he should. I considered throwing the jam at him until I realized my mistake. As a satyr he’d have no interest in the Meat Matches, and thus no clue where I was going with this.

  “The furies have a Match scheduled for tomorrow night.”

  “That doesn’t do us any good if we don’t have a name or a face.”

  “Does it matter? Won’t you be able to pick him out of a crowd because of his gift? Like you could pick me out?”