by Kim Harrison
“Rick didn’t do this,” Daniel said, unmoving beside her. “You did.”
Kal stopped short. Trisk’s heart pounded when she felt him tap a ley line and turn. “Don’t be absurd,” Kal said, and Trisk’s anger hesitated, slipping into what might be fear at how far Kal would go to hide his guilt. He’d already killed one man. “We need humans to keep everything functioning. But the vampires . . .” He stopped, head bobbing. “You get a crazy one, and they think they can rule the world.” Lips pressed, he looked past them to the boxcar. “Orchid!” he shouted. “Let’s go! It’s too cold for you out here.”
The pixy flew out of the car, her dust an alarmed red. She didn’t land on his shoulder, instead alighting on the top of a nearby car, looking unsure and unhappy. Kal’s expression tightened into an angry grimace upon seeing her reluctance.
“Maybe it’s not about saving your species,” Daniel said. “Maybe you’re sick enough to kill the world if you can blame it on Trisk. Maybe your pride led you to think you were smart enough to tweak the virus safely, but you were dumb enough to screw it up. That’s my working theory until I find a better one. Dr. Kalamack.”
Trisk flushed, not moving away from Daniel. Kal was petty and self-serving, and with an ugly certainty, she decided none of Daniel’s suggestions were beyond him—especially the one about pride. All this might be because of a grudge. God, please. Anything but that.
“Is that what you think?” Kal said, and hearing the warning in his voice, Trisk eased a thought into a ley line, praying he didn’t notice and that there was no one around to see.
“Let me tell you what I think.” Daniel pointed an accusing finger, his outrage warring with his professional need to get along. “I think you tried to discredit Trisk by killing her tomato with my virus, and when Rick found out that you accidentally made a carrier for the PTV, you burned him to death in Trisk’s field to destroy the evidence as well as Rick. That’s what I think.”
Wire tight, Trisk watched Kal’s hands, not his eyes.
“You shouldn’t have told those people your virus was in Trisk’s tomatoes,” Kal said, and a wash of heat took her. Shit. It really was him. Not only that, but he wanted the virus to spread.
“You bastard,” Daniel whispered, and before she could stop him, he went for Kal.
“Daniel! No!” she shouted.
Kal’s hands twisted, and a green-tinted ball of energy vaporated between them. It was ugly, larger and deadlier than the spell he had thrown at her on the presentation floor. This smacked of black magic, its only purpose to hurt or kill. If Kal was responsible for the plague, he’d have no problem killing her, much less Daniel, to cover it up.
“Septiens!” she shouted, imagining a circle around Daniel to deflect and protect him. It was undrawn, and therefore vulnerable. Exhaling, she pushed more energy into it until the molecule-thin barrier flashed with an instant of stability. Her hand flared in pain, and she funneled more through her, burning. Daniel, intent on reaching Kal, hit the inside of her circle, bouncing back with a grunt of surprise and falling in the loose rock between the tracks.
Kal’s energy hit her bubble at the same time, ricocheting away with a ping and an evil-sounding hiss, the black-and-green haze corkscrewing into a distant boxcar, where it burst in a shower of gold sparkles.
Her circle failed, and the power of the line rushed to fill the void the deflected energy had made, swirling toward it like water down a drain and vanishing. It hurt, but she wouldn’t let go of the line, and Trisk held her throbbing hand to her middle.
Daniel blinked, surprised to find himself on the ground. Kal stared at him for an unreal three seconds, trying to figure out why the man was down and not withering in whatever spell that had been. But then Kal’s gaze shifted to Trisk, his eyes narrowing as he saw her, shaking in anger as she stood protectively over Daniel.
“You will be held accountable for this,” she promised Kal, her hand aching as she pooled the spent energy from the circle into a mass of unfocused magic in her good hand. “You will be held accountable!” she exclaimed, thinking of the dead family behind her, of April, who would never smile at pretend again. “I will make sure the entire world knows it was you,” she vowed.
Kal backed up a step and her confidence swelled, feeding her anger.
But then he laughed, becoming again that prideful snot she’d grown up with. “Who do you think they’re going to believe?” he said in a show of confidence that was just that—a show. “You or me?” he added. “It was your project. I was sent to find the flaws, and boy, did I find one.” Saluting them with a casual finger, he turned his back on them and walked away, sure she wouldn’t have the guts to throw the energy pooled in her hand.
“You little bastard,” Daniel said as he scrambled up.
The world will thank me, she thought. But knowing that if Kal died, so did the only way to prove her and Daniel’s innocence, she warped the energy not with a curse, but something else, something she hadn’t known was possible until last week. It was a black magic; she didn’t care.
Perhaps Gally is right about me, she thought, her only emotion one of satisfaction as she threw it, the scintillating sparkles pulling off and away from her with the sensation of drawing a glove off inside out. She shuddered, feeling both clean and filthy at the same time. Coated in black, her spell sped toward Kal’s retreating form.
“Kal!” Orchid shouted, and the man turned, his toe elegantly sketching a circle like a figure skater. A whispered phrase of Latin, and a circle sprang up. Her spell slammed into it, slivering over the entire barrier like black lightning, little flashes of gold looking for a way in.
Kal’s fear showed for an instant, and then he stood from his instinctive crouch, a demeaning smile on his face when her energy seemed to spend itself and vanish into the earth.
“Looks like I’m not the only one doing a little correspondence study,” Kal said, and with a scoffing laugh, he let his circle fall and beat a hasty retreat, slipping between two cars and out of her sight. “Orchid!” he shouted, and the pixy rose up, hovering indecisively for a moment before darting after him.
This time, Trisk let Kal go. Shaking, she looked at her hands, still feeling the pinpricks of the spent energy. She was breathless and a little ill, and she swallowed hard, determined not to throw up. What Kal didn’t know was that her charm had reached him, sliding underground and then through an open pipe buried in the ground to cross his circle and gently settle into his aura like a second skin.
“It worked,” she murmured, looking at her hands and seeing no difference. It hadn’t been a spell or charm to hurt or kill, but one to mark. After seeing Gally move his curse’s smut onto her, she’d figured out how to then move it to Kal, coating him in her smut. It was a curse without actually cursing him, marking him so the demons could find him. It might be tomorrow, it might be in eighty years, but when one got out, he would sense the blackness on Kal like a lighthouse in the night and take him for his own, thinking Kal had earned the smut honestly.
“Are you okay?” Daniel asked, and she pulled her head up, resolved to carry the shame of it with no regrets.
Nodding, she took a deep breath and shouted, “You hear me, Kalamack! Something will come for you in the night. I promise you!” Falling back into herself, she gingerly rubbed her burned hand. She’d broken the most sacred rule of magic. You always pay for the dark you do. Forcing the smut on another was the darkest sin, one she’d walk away from with no one the wiser. It made her fouler than Kal. It made her akin to a demon. She didn’t care.
Much. “How about you?” she said, feeling unreal. “Are you all right?”
Daniel looked at the cars, his head drooping. “Fine. What was that you threw at him?”
Trisk gripped her elbows. Her aura was spotlessly clean, and she’d never felt so dirty. “Regret,” she said, though she’d do it again in an instant. And I’m going to raise a child? Our child? Quen, what have I done?
Her longtime friend’s moral compass
would never understand why she’d done it. Unexpected tears threatened, and she clenched her jaw, refusing to cry. Seeing it, Daniel tugged her into a sideways hug—which only made things worse. “It’s okay. The thing right now is to get to a phone and let people know you can avoid getting sick.”
She nodded, throat tight. Her thoughts still on what Quen would say, she turned to the boxcar for one last look. Her grip on the ley line strengthened, and with a flick of thought, she sent the entire car into flames.
Daniel stumbled back, his eyes wide as they shifted from her obvious misery to the engulfed car, burning hotter than any normal fire. She wouldn’t leave them half-burned and foul; she wanted them cremated. Bones would remain, but little else.
“Let’s go,” Daniel said softly as the heated metal began to creak and ping. For all the fury of the flames, Trisk knew they wouldn’t catch anything else on fire. Head down, she fell into place beside him, thinking that she didn’t deserve any kindness when his arm went over her shoulder.
She watched their feet, her sneakers beside his sensible office shoes, now scratched and marred into a bland gray, as far from their original shiny black as she was from the innocent woman she’d been two weeks ago. Slowly the uncomfortable rocks turned into flat dirt, then an echoing, empty wheelhouse. The gates were locked, but they used a Dumpster to get over the wall, and the two of them came out onto the streets proper, their first eager steps faltering as they took in the empty silence.
“Where is everyone?” Daniel whispered, and she shrugged, angling them toward the taller buildings. A megaphone blared in the distance, and a heavy diesel truck rumbled. Without comment, they went in the opposite direction. Twitches of curtains balanced the pervading scent of new death. The city wasn’t deserted, and it wasn’t dead.
“I think everyone is hiding,” Trisk said. “How much change do you have?” she asked as she saw a pay phone outside a gas station.
“Few dollars.” He searched his pocket as they crossed the road. Someone was coming. Not that big diesel truck, but several cars by the sound of it. “Maybe we should find a phone off the main street,” he said as they passed two abandoned vehicles in the parking lot.
She didn’t have even a dime, and she lifted the receiver to find a dial tone. “Oh, thank God,” she whispered, loath to leave it.
“Uh, Trisk, it’s the cops,” Daniel said, and she stumbled when he pulled her into the chancy shadows to leave the receiver swinging.
Ahhh, shit, she thought, but it was too late and the lights flashed and the siren whooped once to tell them to stay put. “Oh, man,” she whispered when five cars stopped tight in the parking lot, almost pinning them against the wall of the building. Men dressed in combat gear spilled out, yelling at them, and she put her hands up. Her thoughts went to her hair, her clothes. She looked a mess. They’d never believe her story. Quen wouldn’t have made a mistake like this. I should have been more careful.
Silent, Daniel raised his hands, his fingers spread as two men approached, pushing him into the wall and cuffing him.
“Hey, we’re the good guys,” Trisk protested as one manhandled her, cuffing her hands behind her. “We know what’s causing the plague. We need to talk to someone in Detroit.”
Daniel stumbled, grunting as they pushed him into the wall of the gas station again. “I don’t think they care,” he said, lips pressing when someone told him to shut up.
Ticked, she reached for a ley line, her eyes widening when she realized the cuffs were made of charmed silver. It was probably standard practice in a big city where it was easier to treat everyone as a witch, vampire, or Were until proven otherwise—whether the humans on the force knew it or not. “We haven’t done anything wrong,” she said as an officer patted her down.
A thin man with a hint of a mustache looked up from where he stood at a car, a radio in his hand. “You’re breaking curfew,” he said. Though not the oldest cop out here, he was clearly in charge, his soft wrinkles falling into themselves as he tossed the radio into the car and came over.
Immediately she recognized him as a witch, his long fingers made dexterous from spell casting and a faint scent of redwood emanating from him. His close-cut salt-and-pepper hair gave him a distinguished air, but his lumpy nose ruined it, and feeling an unexpected connection, Trisk fought a lifetime of conditioning to not blurt out that she was an elf.
“We didn’t know about the curfew,” Daniel said over his shoulder. “We just got here.”
The captain hesitated a good eight feet back. It was telling, and her unease tightened into a hard knot. If you were fast, eight feet was enough time to react to a magic assault as well as a vampire attack. “And how would you have done that?” the man said as he looked down at a sheaf of papers one of his men handed him, the wrinkles about his eyes bunching up. “The roads are barricaded.”
“We came by train,” Trisk said, and then upon seeing his doubt, added, “Freight train.”
The man beside him fidgeted. “Captain Pelhan, we’ve been asked to investigate a fire in the train yard,” he said, and his eyebrows high, Pelhan waited for an explanation.
“Ah,” Daniel said, eyes darting to Trisk as he turned to put his back to the wall. “That was us. We set fire to one of the cars to contain any sickness we might have brought.”
The officer, Trisk realized, was a witch as well, and in a sudden flash of hope, she decided everyone out here was either a witch or Were. They were probably the only ones on the police force that were reporting for duty. But no vampires, she mused, thinking that odd, as living vampires were drawn to the power that came with a badge. Not to mention being on the force made it easier to cover up a master’s mistake in taking a lost human.
“It was me,” she said, knowing they’d go out and find the bodies. “I wasn’t going to walk away and leave them to putrefy. The fire won’t spread. I made sure of it.”
It was all she could do to not openly say she was an elf, but Captain Pelhan’s brow rose in understanding when she made a small finger motion as if making a spell.
Hesitating, Pelhan tapped his papers against his hand. Behind him, his men came back from searching the nearby area. “The government is asking everyone to hunker down,” he said. His voice was softer, holding the hint of understanding.
“We really need to get to a phone,” she tried again, not liking the feel of the cuffs around her wrists. “We were trying to get to Detroit and ended up here. Sa’han Ulbrine is waiting for me. We might know how to stop this. I have to talk to him.”
The captain’s eye twitched at the openly Inderland term, his gaze going to Daniel, then to her. “No one can stop this.” He took a slow breath, as if divorcing himself from what was to come. “He’s not sick!” he said loudly to his men. “Tom, take him to the stadium.”
“Hey! Wait a minute!” Daniel exclaimed when they began to pull him away. Trisk stiffened in protest, and the man beside her put a heavy hand on her shoulder in warning.
“He’s with me,” she said, but she wasn’t sure if that was going to help him or not. If she wasn’t going to the stadium, where was she going? “Daniel!”
Captain Pelhan came forward to take her arm, the tingle of a ley line, promising hurt if she should try anything. “All humans breaking curfew go to either the hospital or containment centers. Everyone else goes to jail.”
Humans? she wondered, but he had said it softly enough that only the nearest officers could hear. At least they knew she wasn’t one. “He’s a scientist, like me,” she said, stumbling as she looked over her shoulder at Daniel as they were led to different cars. “I need his help. It’s the tomatoes, the T4 Angel tomato. That’s where the toxin is. Even stuff that’s been on the shelf for a year.”
Pelhan stopped at the car, waiting as one of his officers opened the back door. “The fuzzy tomato?” the younger man asked, and the captain gave him a look to shut up.
“That’s the one,” Trisk said, breathless, glad someone was listening. “The virus is using i
t as a host, condensing the levels into toxic range. I need to get to a phone. If I can convince Sa’han Ulbrine, he can get the word out, and we can stop this.”
Pelhan chewed his lip, thinking that over. Beyond him, Daniel was shoved into a car, but it didn’t drive away, and she waited, heart pounding.
“Captain?” a man called from a third car, a radio in his hand. “They match the descriptions of the two geneticists from Global Genetics. They’re wanted for questioning in a murder, sir.”
Trisk’s eyes shot to Pelhan’s, her first flush of fear settling in for a long stay. “We didn’t kill Rick. One of my colleagues, Dr. Trenton Kalamack, killed him to cover up that he was the one who allowed Daniel’s virus to attach itself to my tomato. He’s here. Somewhere. Please. We’re trying to stop this. If I could just talk to Sa’han Ulbrine. I need to get to Detroit.”
At that, the captain seemed to come back to himself. “Detroit is gone,” he said as he put his hand on her head and all but pushed her into the car.
“Gone!” Inside the car, she stared up at him, quickly putting her leg outside so he couldn’t shut the door. “What do you mean, gone? Like no communication?”
Pelhan bodily put her foot back in the car, warning her with a frown to leave it there. “No, gone, as in wiped off the face of the earth, taking everyone with it. It was the vamps and the witches, and we’re by God not going to let that happen here.”
And with that, he shut the door.
25
The police station smelled like angry dog and spicy redwood. Overlaying it was the musky scent she’d always identified with vampires, and Trisk’s nose wrinkled as the officer holding her elbow escorted her deeper into the facility. It was busy with cops and a few harried secretaries in trim uniforms who never saw the street, and she wondered whether she was smelling her fellow Inderlanders so strongly because there were no human scents to mask them, or if they were just really stressed.
“Captain Pelhan!” one of the officers hailed as he caught sight of them coming in, his short red hair making him stand out. His arm was in a sling, and the metal charm around his neck disguised as a St. Christopher medallion made her think he was a witch. Telling the kid at his desk to stay put, the officer stood, grabbed a folder, and wove through the open offices toward them.