Stephen sighed. “Fine.”
“Did you kill Felix?”
“No.”
“What was your opinion of the man?”
“I found him annoying.”
“In what way?”
“In that charming, be-my-friend way.”
“I’m not sure I completely understand,” I told him.
“Felix wanted everybody to like him. He was one of those people who try too hard. He wanted to share drinks and kept making inconvenient invitations to play golf together so we could all pretend to be a happy business family. I didn’t want to play golf with him. My plate is full. I wanted to finish this project, divide the profits, and move on.”
“What about Marat?”
Stephen grimaced. “The man has no manners, but he works hard and he’s sincere. There’s no artifice there. He’s driven by the need to take care of his family.”
“Tatyana?”
“A bull in a china shop. Fire is the solution to every problem, and if fire doesn’t work, try more fire. Elemental mages like us tend to approach all problems through the lens of their own magic, but she carries it to the extreme.”
“Cheryl?” I saved the most important for last.
Stephen frowned. “You watched the drama. Do you remember Han Min’s stepmother, the one who had the reputation as the living Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy, but kept torturing her in private?”
“Do you think Cheryl secretly tortures people?”
“No, but I think there is an ulterior motive behind every action that woman takes. She’s a manipulative human being. When you criticize her strategy, she often makes you feel as if you are a bully, which isn’t a quality I look for in a business partner. Business requires a clear head and honest discussions of pros and cons.”
“Then why did you agree to this project?”
“That decision was made above me,” he said.
Cheryl had talked his parents into it.
“Cheryl and Felix were the driving forces behind the Pit Reclamation Project,” Stephen continued. “Felix brought in Marat and Tatyana. Cheryl invited my House. I was the last to join the board. Still, given the choice to walk into the swamp with one of them, I would take any of them over Cheryl.”
Clear enough.
“I have honored your request,” Stephen said. “You got honest direct answers. Now I would like one. What is the thing in the Pit?”
“You felt it?” I asked him.
“No, I felt the amount of water it displaced when I went to look for Felix the day after he died. It was a very significant amount.”
“It’s a Saito construct.”
He didn’t blink. He didn’t say anything. He simply stopped moving.
“It’s aware. It regenerates and expands. It’s enlarging the Pit to suit its purposes and it’s telepathically monitoring the humans on the site.”
A dangerous shadow darkened Stephen’s eyes. “Thank you for your candor, Prime Baylor.”
“I told you,” Arabella sang out as we walked out of the Jiang Tower. “I told you, I told you, I told you, and you didn’t believe me.”
“Yes, yes,” Leon muttered. “You’re so great.”
“I am great!”
He nodded. “And so humble.”
“Humble is for losers. I am a winner.”
Across the street, a flittering wall of glass that was the 2 Riverway Tower housing IBM, law offices, and the attached multilevel parking garage gleamed with reflected sunlight. A short driveway led to the garage, branching off from Riverway Drive. At the mouth of the driveway, leaning on his silver Spider, stood Alessandro Sagredo.
I released a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. Alive and in one piece.
Alessandro raised his head. Our eyes connected. He smiled.
Adrenaline rushed through me in a hot wave, prickling my fingertips.
“And here comes the Count,” Leon drawled.
I slowed slightly. “Leon?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not Alessandro.” He wore the right clothes, he had the right build and the correct face, and he stood the right way. But he wasn’t Alessandro.
“Are you sure?” Leon’s voice went cold.
When Alessandro looked at me, it was as if his world stopped. This man looked at me as if I were a pretty girl he’d like to screw.
“I’m sure.”
Leon faced the fake Alessandro. “Hey, dickhead. Your illusion needs work.”
The fake Alessandro jerked his hand up. The sun caught the stainless-steel barrel of a large caliber handgun.
Leon’s hands came up in a blur. The SIG and Glock firearms barked in unison, spitting bullets. The fake Alessandro collapsed.
Gunfire erupted, coming from all around us. Bullets scored the pavement. I grabbed Arabella’s hand and pulled her behind a black Mercedes parked on the street.
In the middle of the road Leon spun like a dervish, firing without taking aim.
Guns popped like firecrackers. A hoarse scream tore through the gunfire. Bullets punched the Mercedes and the sidewalk behind us. Arabella tried to rise to look over the hood and I yanked her back down. Leon’s guns fired in twin bursts. A man cried out, his fear-soaked shriek full of pain.
And then everything went quiet. The sudden silence was deafening.
I straightened.
Bodies littered the street, painting the ground with red, their guns next to them. At least half a dozen. No, more. The man to our left must have fallen from the roof, because his legs jutted at odd angles from his body, shattered. The woman to his left was missing a face. Nobody moved.
In the middle of the road, Leon watched as the illusion mage, still wearing Alessandro’s body, dragged himself down the driveway toward the parking garage. Two long red bloodstains painted the road in his wake.
Holy crap.
Leon methodically reloaded the Glock, then the SIG.
The illusion mage was still pulling himself away from the carnage, moaning as he slowly shifted his body forward.
Arabella counted the bodies with her finger. “Nine.”
The one-man SWAT team that was my baby cousin started forward. The mage heard him and frantically tried to crawl faster. A quiet desperate mutter came from him. “No, no, no . . .”
Leon reached him and kicked the mage over onto his back. The fake Alessandro squirmed. His body shimmered, melting, and snapped into Audrey. She looked at Leon with huge blue eyes, her heart-shaped, delicate face stained with tears.
Oh you scumbag. If Leon didn’t kill the mage, I would strangle that asshole myself.
Arabella clenched her teeth, her hands curled into fists, and started forward, then stopped. This belonged to Leon.
My cousin studied the petite girl on the ground.
“Please,” the mage pleaded in Audrey’s voice. “Please don’t hurt me.”
Leon raised the Glock and slowly took aim.
Audrey cried out, “You don’t have to do this. I have information, I can—”
Leon squeezed the trigger. The bullet bit between Audrey’s eyes. Her body melted into a large dark-skinned man in his fifties. The expression on Leon’s face made my stomach churn.
I pressed the car keys into my sister’s hand. “Get the car and call Sabrian, please.”
There were probably a dozen security cameras around us. I wouldn’t be surprised if Munoz was already on his way.
Arabella nodded and ran down the driveway into the parking garage where we had parked Rhino.
I crossed the distance to Leon. His tan face gained a green tint. He stared, unblinking, his eyes hollow. He looked dead. His arm was still raised, aiming at the corpse.
I put my hand on his forearm and gently pushed his arm down. “It’s over.”
He looked at me, his eyes glassy. “She’s still dead.”
“Yes. But he won’t hurt anybody else. None of them will hurt anyone ever again.”
He turned away from me and looked at the bodies as if se
eing them for the first time.
Taking a life always hurt. It never went away, no matter how justified the kill was. It still cost you a piece of your soul and it hurt when that piece died.
A blur of green shot out of the decorative hedges on our left and smashed into me. Big scaly arms clamped around me and jerked me off the ground. I kicked my feet trying to break free, but it was like fighting in a straitjacket. Whatever grabbed me turned and ran. The buildings rushed past me.
Gunshots rang out behind us, Leon firing in a controlled frenzy.
Bushes loomed ahead. The creature tore through them, the branches raking my arms and face, and burst onto the bank of Buffalo Bayou.
It flipped me, and I saw it. It resembled a Razorscale, but built with reeds and metal. It had the same powerful tail and similar limbs, but where a true Razorscale had only two, this one had six, arranged in pairs along its body, and it towered over me, eight feet tall, not counting the four-foot tail. Its head swiveled toward me on a thick neck, a big beautiful flower with a single perfectly round eye in its center.
The Abyss had built a better construct. It was learning.
The creature clenched me to its chest and leaped into the muddy river. Water swallowed us. I flailed, panicking. The more I struggled, the tighter it held me. The beast shot through the river like a torpedo, the force of the water pressing on my face.
I would die in this stupid dirty river.
I clawed at the construct. It surfaced, spinning. For a moment there was air, and I gulped it, and then we were under again.
Another spin, a lungful of fresh air, followed by another dive.
It wasn’t trying to kill me. It was taking me to the Pit.
I spun my magic inside me, building it up.
The beast surfaced. I gulped the air and sang out a short high note. “Mine.”
The Abyss’ mind and my magic collided. The beast went under. Water flooded into my mouth. There wasn’t enough air. I clung to the construct’s matrix, grappling with the nebulous intelligence on the other end. It pondered me, stunned. Images flickered between us—Felix’s face, Felix facing the swamp, Felix asking, “Why are you here?” and the answer blazing in his mind in glowing numbers: “162AC.” More images, Cheryl, Felix saying in a weird echoing voice, “I found someone to take care of it,” a distorted image of Linus, and then me, wavering, as if I were underwater.
My air ran out. I knew I was thrashing, my body fighting on pure instinct. I poured all my magic into that connection, imagining me dying, imagining my limp body sinking into the muck of the river bottom, disappearing completely. I showed the Abyss the absence of me and sent a single focused torrent with the last bit of power in my oxygen-starved brain.
Stop!
The beast broke the surface in an explosion of foam, like a great white breaching, and hurled me forward.
Air, dear God, so much air.
I landed on my side on solid ground. Pain punched my injured hip and I barely noticed it, focused on sucking as much air as I could into my lungs. The Abyss hovered on the edge of my mind, watching.
Finally, I sat up, coughing. Water laced with mud came out of me. My mouth tasted foul. I looked up.
The Razorscale construct crouched by me on all six limbs. The white fringes of its petals shivered slightly, the turquoise eye staring at me with terrible intensity.
We were on some sort of muddy bank. Behind us and up, the sounds of traffic filled the air, so mundane it was surreal. I glanced over my shoulder. A tall concrete bridge towered over the river. It had to be Woodway Drive.
The construct leaned forward. Our eyes were inches apart.
Images slipped into my brain. I was sitting on a huge lily pad, bloodred flowers blooming all around me, glowing with magic. A tentacle slid through the water and dropped a fat fish in front of me. It flapped on the leaf, big mouth gasping. All around me the Pit sang, the splashing of water, the soft whispers of fish streaking under the surface of my leaf, frogs croaking, distant Razorscales bellowing, a bull gator roaring, birds singing . . . The Abyss serenaded me with the sounds of the swamp the way it heard them.
Its mind wrapped around me. No, not its. His. It was a distinctly male presence.
The view rushed over water to some buildings. A metal-tipped tentacle burst from the muck and pierced the guard standing on the walkway. The man convulsed, impaled through his stomach. A second tentacle wrapped around him and dragged him into the water, through the swamp, with dizzying speed, to where I sat. The tentacles lifted the body out of the mire and showed it to me.
All around me appendages rose from under the surface, some big, some small, some tipped with metal, others with long spindly digits. They filleted the guard like fish, dropping organs and flesh into the mire. The water boiled as fish and other things fed.
The appendages dipped the bloody remnants of the man into the water and pulled him out again, neatly separating the head and spinal column from the body. A massive tangle of plants surfaced, and the Abyss began to weave them around the head and spine. A larger, thicker appendage appeared, shaped like a bulb, opened, and secreted liquid metal onto the plants, wrapping it like a ribbon around the shape it was building.
Another thin tentacle thrust a glowing seed into the amorphous construct. Magic sparked and the new beast moved, its body tightening, flowing into a compact shape, vaguely familiar. The construct dropped onto all fours. It had four limbs, a long muzzle, a short tail, two floppy ears . . .
It looked like . . . It . . .
The Abyss had made a cow-sized version of Shadow for me and he put the dead man’s brain into it.
I recoiled. “No!”
The image of the Pit faltered and vanished. The Razorscale construct clamped its forelimbs on my legs.
Regina said that if a single matrix node survived, the Abyss could rebuild itself. That meant a matrix node could function independently. I had to break this one free of the Abyss or I would end up on a lily pad in the Pit.
I poured my magic into the creature’s matrix. My evil grandmother could’ve cleaved it free, Nevada too, but my magic seduced. It didn’t sever. I could only wrap my power around it and try to make it mine.
The construct pulled my legs, sliding me across the mud, as it backed toward the water. I swathed my power around it, tighter and tighter, layering it like an onion, trying to isolate the matrix node from the tendrils of the Abyss’ mind. If I let it get me into the water again, it would be over.
The creature yanked me toward the river.
I pulled it to me with everything I had. The Abyss clutched on to the construct, trying to wrestle it free from me. It was like putting a dog leash on a lion and trying to drag it. The Abyss was strong, so much stronger, but he was so far and I was right here.
I released my wings and they opened behind me, radiant with magic. I stared into the turquoise eye and sang.
“Sleep my child and peace attend thee,
All through the night . . .”
The construct stopped pulling.
“Guardian angels God will send thee,
All through the night . . .”
The Abyss’ hold on the creature was slipping. Both of them were listening to me, one seduced and the other fascinated.
“Soft the drowsy hours are creeping,
Hill and dale in slumber sleeping,
I my loved ones’ watch am keeping,
All through the night . . .”
The construct’s matrix buckled under the pressure.
I forgot the next part, skipped it, and kept singing.
“While the moon her watch is keeping,
All through the night.
While the weary world is sleeping,
All through the night.
O’er thy spirit gently stealing,
Visions of delight revealing,
Breathes a pure and holy feeling,
All through the night . . .”
The Abyss’ grip slid off the construct’s mind and vani
shed. The creature scooted closer to me, its flower glowing, and wrapped itself around my body, like an affectionate dog. Its metal scales vibrated, making a soft mechanical purr . . .
A body dropped from above and landed on top of the construct in a flash of orange magic. Alessandro swung and buried Linus’ sword in the creature’s eye. The construct fell apart into bands of metal and reeds.
Alessandro glared at me. “I leave you alone for six hours and this is what happens?”
I scrambled to my feet. “I had it! I took it away from the Abyss! You—”
He kissed me. The world spun sideways. A whirlwind of emotions tore through me—relief, need, want, outrage—and I didn’t know which one to pick. Outrage won.
Alessandro’s lips left mine. He squeezed me to him, a huge grin on his face. “You’re alive.”
“You killed my construct,” I ground out.
“You can’t keep it,” Alessandro said. “It’s bad.”
“Let go of me!”
I pushed away from him and swayed. He caught me. Alarm skewed his face. “Are you okay?”
The words fell out one by one. “Tired. Dirty. Wet. Hurt. Frustrated.” My brain suddenly came up with a complete thought and I spat it out. “Now? Of all the times you could have kissed me, you thought now was a good idea? I have mud and algae in my mouth.”
He grinned again, wrapped his arm around my waist, and half steered, half carried me up the slope to a narrow, paved sidewalk leading up the bank. My legs barely moved.
“Where were you?” I squeezed out.
“Busting Arkan’s HQ in Houston.”
“Are you okay?” He looked okay, but that didn’t mean he was okay.
“Yes.”
“Is Linus okay?”
“Yes.”
“Are they dead?”
“Some of them. The telekinetic wasn’t there.”
“I can’t believe you kissed me. You’ve lost your mind.”
“You were dragged off by a monster into the river. You can’t blame me.”
Oh yes, I could.
“What did it want?” he asked.
“Me.”
“It can’t have you.”
“It’s a he.”
“What?”
“It’s a he, Alessandro. He thinks he should. He showed me images.”
A hot spike of pain shot through my right hip. My leg folded, but Alessandro caught me.
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