“You can’t blame me. Lone killers have so few opportunities to talk shop.”
“Probably because you’re always busy killing people.”
“Not true. I haven’t killed anyone since landing in Houston.”
“Will wonders never cease?"
The knot of traffic finally dissolved, and we crawled forward, first slow, then faster.
“What about the legs bothers you?” he asked.
“In your professional opinion, was this a contract hit?”
“No. A contract killer would’ve set up in the swamp and put a bullet through his brain. Clean, efficient, and quick. The point is to ambush and get out fast.”
I had to stop looking at him. Every time I glanced at him I felt a little stab.
“Nobody murders anyone by burning their feet. The burns could mean he was tortured, but I have two problems with it. First, the burns are too severe.”
Physical torture was cyclical: pain followed by relief followed by pain until the subject broke. The promise to end the pain was the incentive to talk. Felix’s legs were practically burned off.
“Agreed,” Alessandro said. “Let me guess the second problem. He was a powerful geokinetic.”
“Yes.”
Geokinetics controlled the mineral component of the Earth’s crust: rocks, sand, some ores, and all gems. They excelled at raising defense barriers, they created sinkholes and earthquakes, and they were hard to kill when on the ground, because a geokinetic Prime could literally open the earth under his feet and vanish into it only to resurface a hundred yards away and drop his opponents into a bottomless pit.
“I just don’t see him sitting on his hands while they tortured him,” I said. “The method of murder had to be fast and sudden.”
“The preliminary report shows no water in the lungs,” Alessandro said. “That leaves us with the animal bite or the broken neck, which is the only thing that fits. It’s simple and instant: loop the power cable around his neck and shove him off the building. His weight would do the rest. Everything else, the drowning, being bitten, being burned, all of that takes too long.”
“Agreed.”
Unfortunately, none of it helped us. A broken neck required no magic. Literally any able-bodied adult could have done it.
“So they break his neck and then they dip him into water, so he is bitten, and then they burn his legs, and hang him back on the cable? Why?”
Alessandro spread his arms.
I glanced at him. “It would be really hard for one person to do.”
“Perhaps we’re looking for multiple killers,” he said.
“That’s good,” I told him.
He gave me an odd look.
“The more people involved, the more vulnerabilities to exploit, the higher the chances one of them will talk.”
He shook his head. “Sometimes you scare me.”
“That’s right, Prime Sagredo. Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
The old way to get to Jersey Village from the tollway meant taking the Senate Avenue exit. Two miles before that a bright new sign screamed a warning.
SENATE AVE EXIT CLOSED
USE PIT EXIT
They must have given up on all subtlety and just called it the Pit exit.
Another sign.
PIT EXIT
1 MILE
PERMIT REQUIRED
“Do we have a permit?” Alessandro asked.
I pointed at the sticker in the corner of the windshield. “Augustine gave me one before I left MII.”
PIT EXIT AHEAD
RIGHT LANE MUST EXIT
TURN AROUND
DON’T DROWN
PERMIT REQUIRED
“I’d hate to drown without a permit,” I murmured.
“You do like following the rules.”
“My following the rules is the only reason you are in my car.”
“And here I thought it was because of my charm and looks.”
I rolled my eyes. “There was a time when that would have been true, but now I’m immune.”
He grimaced. “I don’t think it ever worked on you.”
Oh, but it did. There was a time when I would’ve given anything for just a few minutes in his company.
The exit curved under the tollway and morphed into a low, long bridge. The man-made swamp spread out on both sides of us, the water dark like stout beer. Islands of floating algae dotted the surface, shockingly vivid, blue, orange, and brilliant green. Between them huge lilies bloomed, the scarlet petals glistening, as if dipped in blood. To our left, the husk of a building thrust up out of the water. Vines as thick as my leg gripped it like hands joined into a single fist, their dark-green heart-shaped leaves hiding the structure completely, except for the trademark orange ball at the top. A former Phillips 76.
In the distance other buildings hunkered down, some still recognizable; others were just mounds of crumbling concrete and vegetation. Ahead and to the right, the water rippled. A scaled body, bright orange and two feet long, leaped into the air. Behind it, long, toothy jaws broke the surface, snapped like scissors closing, caught the scaled creature, and dragged it under.
“My mother would love this,” Alessandro said.
“Does she like swamps?”
“She used to paint.” His expression softened slightly. “She loves color, the more vivid, the better. This is a nature riot.”
“You could take a pic for her. Perhaps she could paint from that.”
His face shut down. “We aren’t talking right now. Besides, she hasn’t picked up a paintbrush since my father died.”
What the hell was going on in his family?
Alessandro pondered the Pit. “How did this happen?”
“Politics.”
He glanced at me, a question in his eyes. I would have to explain.
“About fifteen years ago, a man named Thomas Bruce decided to run for mayor. He presented himself as a successful businessman, rich but humble enough to be called Bubba by his friends, and he ran campaign ads featuring himself at different backyard barbecues drinking beer, telling jokes, and promising to return Houston to the ‘good ole days.’ Somehow, he got elected. Then it came out that he hadn’t even finished college and most of his businesses nose-dived because he drove them into the ground. He was a joke, and one of the city councilmen told him that in public.”
“You elected a clown?”
“Don’t look at me. I was too young to vote. Bubba Bruce became desperate to be remembered for something, so he decided to build a subway system. Unfortunately, Houston is built on a swamp. Do you know the easiest way to get a pool in Houston?”
“No.”
“Dig a basement.”
He grinned. “So, it’s American Venice?”
“It’s not quite a lagoon, but it’s close. Many smart people told Bubba that his plan was stupid. But he dug his heels in and assembled a team of mages who were supposed to ‘push the water out.’ The city paid them a ton of money, they took six months to research, then another month to prep, and on the groundbreaking day, they pushed the water out.”
Ahead our bridge ran into an island, a small chunk of dry ground with a section of the street a few blocks long and some ruined buildings.
“So, Bubba’s plan worked?” Alessandro said.
“In a manner of speaking. Jersey Village, where we are now, was built on top of an empty oil field, and once the water was gone, parts of it sank. The containment failed, and the area flooded.”
I slowed Rhino and we rolled from the bridge onto the island.
“What happened to Bubba?”
“He was booted out of office. The city tried to fix this mess, but nobody knew how and there was no money left for it. People lost everything. Businesses went bankrupt, homes were destroyed. It took years for insurance claims to be paid out while the insurance companies sued the city.”
A large abandoned building loomed on our right side. The bottom floor was all glass. Dried algae stained the walls above it, an odd contra
st to the building’s ultramodern lines. A grimy sign marked it as a Nissan dealership. This area must have been recently drained. Ahead the island ended, and a big yellow sign advised us to turn left, directing us to another bridge.
“Meanwhile, drug addicts and the homeless started squatting in the Pit and having turf wars. Then people began dumping arcane hazmat and—”
A wall of green hurtled from the left and smashed into Rhino. The SUV rocked, the suspension compensating with a groan. A mess of plants, pale metal, and strange bone pressed against my window.
I stepped on the gas. Rhino lurched forward and slid sideways, to the left, where dark water lapped at crumbling asphalt. Something had clamped on to our front axle and pulled us toward the mire.
I stood on the brakes. Rhino slid, wheels spinning.
Six inches toward the water.
Another six inches.
The green mass against my window drew back, contracting. A sharp metal beak surfaced from within it and punched my window. The armored glass held. Rhino slid another foot toward the swamp.
We had to break free or we’d drown.
“Into the building,” Alessandro said.
I took my foot off the brake and threw the vehicle into reverse. The SUV spun to the left. I stomped on the gas. Rhino jumped backward, crashing through the glass wall of the dealership. Shards rained all around us. I kept going backward, past the individual offices, through the showroom.
A green creature spilled into the gap I’d made, filling the entire hole with its bulk. Another mass of green loomed on my dashboard screen, captured by the rearview camera. A third darted on the side, just outside the windows. We were surrounded.
If the three of them teamed up, they would pull us into the water. We had to make a stand.
I slammed on the brakes.
Alessandro jumped out of the car. Magic burst around him, and the M4 materialized in his hands out of thin air. I punched the release on the console and grabbed Linus’ sword.
The green creature behind us stared through the glass. It resembled a wire framework stuffed to the brim with water plants, vines, and algae, but instead of a wire, its outer skeleton consisted of fused metal and bone, bound together by magic. Seven feet tall, it stood on four massive limbs tipped with twin metal claws. Its back arched, like the spine of an angry cat. Its conical head ended in a massive beak and its eyes, two pools of glowing white, burned into me.
A construct.
I let my magic spiral to it, like the shoots of a grapevine growing toward the sun. A faint glimmer of intelligence brushed against my mind, an echo of sentience, too distant to influence. They were remote-controlled, extensions of someone’s powerful will.
“Grenade!” Alessandro barked.
I hit the floor.
The grenade launcher popped, like a tennis ball being fired from a machine. The grenade sank into the beast that followed us through the hole we’d made and detonated.
The blast tore the creature apart. For a moment, metal and bone shards hung in the air among the plant trash, the smoke from the grenade contained in a perfect sphere of magic, and I glimpsed a metal gyroscope with a glowing plant bud inside it. It was like watching an explosion on TV with no sound. My mind knew there should have been a kaboom, followed by a blast wave, but there was none.
The magic collapsed in on itself, yanking parts of the creature back together. It re-formed and righted itself, smaller, clunkier, but still mobile. A chunk on the left side of it didn’t make it, and as it teetered, the vines and plants grew at a dizzying speed to fill the gap. It belched and a cloud of black smoke erupted from it.
It regenerated. Constructs were inorganic. They didn’t regenerate. They were a collection of parts infused with magic. Eventually constructs ran out of that initial infusion and collapsed.
This was a hybrid between a construct and a living creature, alive in a whole different way with magic so powerful it swallowed the grenade blast like it was nothing. Regeneration like that would require a power source more potent than any infusion. This was beyond the capabilities of any animator Prime on record.
We were so screwed.
Alessandro bared his teeth.
Shooting this creature with conventional ammo was useless; however, if we could take out the power source, it should fall apart. The glowing bud was the key, but there was no way to tell where it was within their bodies.
The beast on the opposite side of the dealership rammed the glass. The windows shattered. The construct landed on the floor and scrambled toward us, slipping on broken glass.
I sank a burst of my magic into Linus’ sword and charged the second construct.
Behind me the grenade launcher popped. The walls quaked. The staccato of the M4 spitting bullets ripped into the air. Alessandro, blowing the construct apart with a grenade to expose the gyroscope and trying to shoot at its glowing flower before the bio-construct re-formed.
The construct lunged at me, trying to bury me under its bulk. I spun to the side. The creature shot past me, slid, turning, and swiped at me with its claws. I danced out of the way and sliced at its leg.
The blade bounced off.
The beast twisted its paw and hooked me with its claws. Sharp points of pain stabbed my side and thigh. The construct tossed me into the air like a cat playing with its toy.
I hit the floor with my shoulder, rolled, and scrambled to my feet. My side burned. The beast bore down on me, and in a terrified burst of adrenaline I saw everything around me with crystal clarity: the beast charging, Alessandro on my left firing the grenade launcher, the counter behind me, and the offices on my right and left, and I knew I had nowhere to go.
I sank more magic into the sword. It kicked in my hand, as if I had struck something hard with it. Hair-thin glowing lines spread through the blade. Work! Work, damn you.
The beast reared, blocking everything else. My magic tugged on me, and I slashed in a wide arc, following its lead. There was no resistance. The head and the right shoulder of the beast slid aside and fell over. The rest of the body swayed, fighting to stay upright.
Thank you, Linus.
Plants wriggled from the severed stump and latched on to the other chunk of the body. The two halves snapped together. Fine. Now that the sword worked, I had a shot at the flower. I couldn’t sense it, but it was in there. The drain of the sword pulled all of my magic in one direction. There was none to spare. I had to cut blind.
The third creature crashed through the glass. Its glowing eyes sighted me. It surged forward.
I couldn’t take them both.
Alessandro thrust himself between the third construct and me. The grenade launcher was gone. A bright red banner popped into his hands, white words clear on red vinyl—“Christmas Sale”—and Alessandro snapped it open like an unfurling flag.
The second construct lunged at me. I swung my sword and its front limbs crashed to the floor. It grew new ones and I sliced them off before they fully formed.
The third beast turned its head toward the flash of red. Alessandro waved the banner as if it were a matador’s cape and moved to the left, spinning the construct away from me. It chased him, swiping at him with its enormous paws.
It could tear him apart and I would watch him die because of me, and there was nothing I could do about it. I had to cut faster.
Alessandro dodged the bone claws with a fencer’s grace, slipped between them, and rushed the beast. The banner fluttered to the ground. Before it landed, two swords flashed into Alessandro’s hands. His magic whipped around him, a serpent of orange sparks. The Artisan ripped into the construct.
I turned myself into a bladed whirlwind. Plants and metal sprayed as I hacked chunks off the construct. The pieces crawled and wiggled, sliding back to the creature, but I kept slicing. My arm burned as if magic flowing from it turned into molten lead on its way through muscle and bone.
Something crashed to the left and a cubicle flew through the air like it was cardboard.
Faster. I had to cut faster.
The construct collapsed in front of me. A foot-wide ring with a bud in the center hung in front of me, suspended in midair by pure magic. Before it could remake itself, I jumped into the mass of vegetation and sliced at the spinning metal rings. The gyroscope fell to the ground at my feet.
The green heap exploded up, swallowing me—the construct, trying to re-form. I must’ve missed the flower.
Magic folded in on me, chunks of the creature flying and slamming into me, as the beast tried to regenerate with me inside it. Plants and magic blinded me. I stomped, trying to find the flower by feel.
Pressure ground my chest. It hurt to breathe. I stomped again and again. Where the hell was it?
A hunk of metal smashed against my head, and the world’s biggest bell rang between my ears. My vision swam. I stomped in frantic frenzy. Something crunched under my foot. The pressure vanished. Pieces of the beast rained down around me.
I turned and saw Alessandro standing by the SUV, my tactical machete in his right hand and a metal ring with a severed plant stem hanging from it in his left. Nothing else moved.
We won. We took on an impossible fight and we won.
He dropped the ring and grinned at me, and I grinned back.
A body crashed through the skylight and landed between us. Nine feet tall, humanoid, with four arms and two sturdy legs, it was made of the same material as the beasts, but instead of the blunt head with glowing eyes, its face was a rotting human head. The skin had peeled off its cheekbones, frozen in time by the magic. Its lips were gone, and its teeth flashed a grotesque smirk. Two human eyes, charged with blue magic, glared at us.
I didn’t have enough magic to swing the sword.
A second sword, a narrow black blade, appeared in Alessandro’s left hand.
My magic brushed against a rudimentary intelligence. It felt muddled, undone, as if parts of it had rotted away, but it was there.
The creature turned toward Alessandro. Metal blades slid from the vegetation of its four arms.
It had a mind. Not much of one, but it was there.
“Feed it magic!” I hurled my blade over the beast.
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