White Hot

by Ilona Andrews

  “Do it!” David dared. “I’ll kill her.”

  Rogan’s spine curved; his massive shoulders hunched forward in a classic rowing pose. His back shook with strain. He locked his teeth and pulled, straightening. The lines of the circles spun in different directions. The smaller circle containing David slid across the floor toward me, taking the ice mage with it. I forgot to breathe. It was like the main circle had become a bobbin and David a dangling thread. The bobbin turned, winding the thread, and bringing David closer.

  “I’ll squeeze the life out of her with my bare hands,” David snarled.

  Blood dripped from Rogan’s nose. He pulled again. David slid closer.

  I had shockers, but he was a Prime. He was stronger, faster; he had training, and I was half dead. But I was angry. I was so angry.

  “You’ll get to watch her die. The last thing you’ll see before all that magic you spent puts you under will be my hands on her throat.”

  He was doing to Rogan exactly what he’d tried to do to Cornelius. No. You don’t.

  “I’ll break her. You’ll hear her bones snapping.”

  My teeth clicked from the cold. “Hurry up. We don’t have all day.”

  David’s eyes gleamed. “Ready to die?”

  “Matilda got your email,” I told him. “You sent a death threat to a little girl. You’re a piece of shit. Look at me. Look at my eyes. Do I look scared?”

  David blinked.

  “You’re a wart,” I told him. “You need to be removed. I’ll do it and three months from now nobody will remember your name.”

  It was so cold it hurt to breathe. The world wavered. Don’t black out. Not now. Rogan was almost out of magic. If he didn’t black out, I wouldn’t either.

  If I failed, I died. Rogan died. Howling would kill Cornelius and little Matilda just to cover his tracks. He would kill a child and keep on going with his life like it didn’t matter.

  Rogan cried out, his voice pure agony. The spell spun one last time. David hurtled toward me. His circle came apart, absorbed by the larger arcane design, and suddenly we were in the same space, about eight feet across. He charged toward me, his fist thrusting like a hammer. I tried to dodge, but his knuckles smashed into my chest. Something crunched. A sharp burst of pain tore through my insides. I forced myself through it and lunged at him, throwing all of my weight at him, aiming for his neck. He must’ve expected me to go down, because he barely managed to dodge. My hand locked on his forearm. Agony swelled in my shoulder and rolled down my arm to my fingertips.

  David Howling screamed.

  He flailed in my hands, spit flying from his mouth as my magic pulsed from my fingers into his body, a whip of pain shocking him like a live wire. He screamed again and punched me, hammering his fist into my shoulder, my head, my side, wherever he could land it in a desperate rush to knock me off him. I hunched my shoulders, trying to hide from the barrage, and hung on. Blood filled my mouth. His hand slapped my face, his thumb trying to gouge my right eye. I jerked away, my fingers still locked on his wrist. Only one of us was getting out alive. I wouldn’t let him kill me. I wouldn’t let him murder anyone else.

  Glowing worms swam before my eyes. I had to let go or the shockers would kill me.

  I unlocked my fingers. He stumbled back, foam dripping from his mouth, his eyes insane, and I raised my foot, leaned back, and kicked his kneecap. He howled, spun away from me, and dropped down to one knee. I had seconds before he shook it off and strangled me. I jumped on top of him, grabbed his head, and pushed it straight down on his neck. His vertebrae locked and I twisted.

  Nari’s terrified face flashed before me. I’ve got it. I won’t let him hurt your daughter.

  Bones crunched with a dry pop. I let go and David fell facedown, his head jutting at an odd angle.

  A strange sound echoed through the cistern and I realized it was Rogan laughing.

  Around me the power of the circle melted, the lines once again mere chalk, and I saw him on his back on the floor.

  My feet didn’t want to move. I staggered over and dropped by him. His eyes were open. His chest barely rose.

  “Connor?” I turned his face toward me. “Connor, talk to me!”

  “A wart, huh?” His voice was weak. “Good speech.”

  “I read it in some fanfiction on Herald.” I was so tired. I just wanted to sit here for a little bit. But sitting meant death. “Come on, we’ve got to get you up. We have to get out of here.”

  “You go,” he said. “Get help. I’m good here for a bit.”

  Lie.

  I glanced up. David was dead, but his magic had done its damage. The floor was white with frost. We were already past the point of being cold. We had to get out of here or we’d die.

  “No, you’re not. The cistern will take hours to warm up.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Lie.

  “Go get help. The faster you get someone here, the better my chances. I’ll be fine.”

  Lie.

  “You’re at your limit,” I said. “You will freeze to death before I can get back.”

  “No.”

  Lie.

  “Stop lying to me!”

  He raised his hand and stroked my cheek with his fingers.

  “Listen to me.”

  “We have to get out of here!”

  He focused on my face and for a moment the old Rogan with steel-hard eyes resurfaced and melted back into Connor. “That nightmare you had with the cave and the rat, it wasn’t yours. It was mine. I don’t know why or how, but you attuned yourself to me. You’re sensitive to my projections. You pick them up even when I don’t concentrate on sending them to you.”

  I tried to pull him upright, but my arms were so weak.

  “I project when I’m under stress. The moment I pass out, my mind will react and try to purge all this shit from my head so I can rest. I’ll project while unconscious and you’re exhausted. You have no defenses. If you’re still here, you won’t be yourself. You’ll be me. You won’t know where you are or what you’re doing. I need you to go now, Nevada.”

  “No.”

  He was looking at me like I was the only thing that had ever mattered. “If you don’t survive, none of this is worth it to me. I love you.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. This was never about both of us getting out. Leave. Now.”

  “Don’t you pull this hero bullshit with me. Get up. You’re Mad Rogan. Get up.”

  “God damn it,” he snarled. “Get the hell away from me.”

  “Get up or I’m dying here with you. I’ll lie down right here on the floor.”

  “Get out of here!” He tried to sit up. His eyes rolled back in his head. I grabbed him before he hit the floor. He was heavy. So heavy. He slumped over me, limp.

  Tears wet my cheeks. “Connor, please. Please. I can’t carry you. Please wake up. I love you. Don’t leave me.”

  His skin was cold. He stopped breathing. Oh God. Panic slapped me. I pushed him back and put my head on his chest and heard the beating of his heart, distant and weak, but steady. I pressed my cheek against his nose. A faint flutter of air escaping warmed my skin. Still alive. I straightened. He wasn’t waking up. Think. Think . . .

  David didn’t teleport here, which meant he had to have clothes. I got up and stumbled about looking for clothes, a bag, anything.

  The cistern tore in front of me, the concrete columns vanished, and jungle breathed into my face, bright violent green. I fought it with everything I had. This isn’t real. The hazy concrete columns swung into view. I forced myself to move. There! A duffel bag by one of the columns.

  Something was coming for me. I could hear it moving through the vivid growth. Something with long needle teeth, with a bite that burned like ice and turned your skin blue and black with necrosis. It was close. I had to hide.

  Bag. Stay with the bag. Bag. Bag. Bag.

  I reached it and dropped on my knees. Clothes—T-shirt, underwear, jeans, windbreaker—car keys,
a gun, phone. Yes! I swiped the screen. Password locked.

  I was out in the open and the thing with needled teeth was staring at my back. Its gaze bore into me. I had to get out. I had to hide.

  I tapped Emergency Call. No signal.

  The thing was coming for me. Rogan was lying in the open, in the middle of a clearing. I had to get him out before it found him.

  I grabbed the bag, slung it over my shoulder, and staggered to Rogan. I pulled out and tied the windbreaker over his hips. It would make him easier to drag.

  The jungle wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. I hooked my arms under his armpits and heaved. My feet slid on the frost and I fell on my ass. Why was this happening? I just want out. Help me, somebody, I want out of this nightmare. I just want for this to end. I could shoot myself. Just finish it. I had a gun.

  If I killed myself, who would walk them out of the jungle?

  I clawed my way through the visions flooding my brain. At the right wall, thirty-five yards away, a door broke the uniform concrete. I had to get us to that door. I crawled back up and heaved his huge body to me. He moved an inch. I would take an inch. An inch was closer to the door than before.

  I was warm. Dear God, I was warm. That meant I was dying.

  There were stairs.

  I couldn’t do stairs. He was too heavy.

  Daniela would fix him. Daniela fixed everyone and everything, except a bullet to the head.

  The mage hunters were coming. I could hear them breathing. I got my gun and waited.

  Get to higher ground. Radio for pickup.

  Jimenez was waiting upstairs with his knife. His face swam before me, hazy, his eyes two bottomless pools of darkness. “It’s not him. He would have broken by now. This is a career officer. Take him to the back and shoot him.”

  I still had six rounds left.

  Get to higher ground.

  They were coming for me. Their voices floated down to me.

  No. No, I didn’t come all this way for them to kill us now.

  Something bit me. My body gave out. I crashed down. The mage hound’s maw loomed over me, all slimy serpentine tongue and thin sharp teeth, and swallowed me whole.

  Chapter 14

  The sheets were so soft and warm it was like being wrapped in a heated cloud.

  I was alive. I smiled.

  Rogan!

  I sat straight up in bed. I was in a large room with a single hospital bed.

  “Hello? Is anybody there?”

  The door swung open and Dr. Arias strode into the room. About forty, over six feet tall, Daniela Arias was huge: broad shoulders, powerful legs, and muscular arms. Her features, large and attractive, were handsome rather than pretty, but right now her face was a cool professional mask. I’d met her before. She was Rogan’s private physician.

  “Is Rogan alive?”

  “In better shape than you.”

  Relief washed through me. I slumped back on the pillow. He lived. We both lived.

  “What happened?”

  She pulled up a chair. “You dragged him out. Somehow, you managed to pull him thirty yards across the floor and up two flights of stairs. His back and ass are one long bruise with a helping of concrete road rash, so his dreams of being a nude model are shattered for a while.”

  I’d laugh, but her face told me it wasn’t a good idea.

  “The reservoir’s door had an excellent waterproof seal, which is what saved you. The air outside of it was at a normal temperature. You got up to the second landing, where you got a signal and you called 911 and told them that you needed a pickup because Cazadores were coming. They thought you were delusional, but we were monitoring the 911 calls.”

  “How?”

  “Your cousin and Bug, from what I understand. After Rogan and you disappeared and his tracking went dead, they snapped to it. Rivera’s team was dispatched Downtown, to mop up, and my team sat, waiting for any sign of you. As soon as we caught your call, we went to you. We’ve dealt with Rogan falling unconscious before, so we knew what to expect. You had a gun, so we tasered you, and then we did all the things you normally do when you’re trying to save someone’s life. Here we are, almost twenty hours later. You have two broken ribs. Howling did a number on your face, so you won’t be modeling in the near future either. I’ve notified your family that you’re safe but otherwise occupied. I figured you needed some downtime. Your cousin is fine. Melosa got him out. The summon disappeared after you teleported out, so Houston is fine as well.”

  “Rogan’s cousin? She walked children onto the street to block our way. That’s why we crashed.”

  She shook her head. “She disappeared.”

  Of course, she did.

  Daniela handed me a mirror. Bruises covered the right side of my face. A lump swelled on my right shoulder. I looked like a boxer at the end of a final round of a hard title match.

  “It doesn’t hurt,” I told her.

  “Oh, it will,” she said. “Once the painkillers wear off.”

  “Where is Rogan?”

  “He decided to give you some space.”

  That wasn’t an answer. I reached for my blanket.

  “I understand that your first instinct is to dramatically jump out of bed and rush over there,” Daniela said. “It’s a good plan, except you’re so medicated you’ll have trouble making it to the bathroom, let alone driving. Why don’t we sit here and chat a bit?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  Her eyes were hard. “Not really.”

  “Okay.”

  Daniela cleared her throat. “I have a nephew. Sweet kid. Martin’s twenty-four now. He did his four years in the army, earned his college tuition, and enrolled in UNC. He wants to be a geologist. He says he likes rocks because they don’t shoot back at you.”

  It sounded like a joke, but again she didn’t smile.

  “He got himself expelled a month ago. You know that horror movie where the guy in a pig mask chases kids across college campus. Screamer-something.”

  “Screamer-Dreamer.” Living in a household with three teenagers made me a horror movie expert. It was a stupid cheap flick, but for some reason it had caught on and there were memes of Piggy, the killer, all over the Internet with witty sayings plastered over them.

  “A campus radio station was pranking people live on the air. They had a guy dressed in a pig mask and some sort of black shroud. He’d hide behind something, burst out with a big plastic knife, and chase people around. They were filming it for YouTube.”

  Yep. Sounded just like something college kids would do. I knew exactly where this story was going.

  “The pig guy charged Martin, and Martin took the knife away from him and hit him. He didn’t just hit him once. He went for the knife hand first, dislocated the guy’s shoulder, and then punched him four times in the head in less than two seconds. It took three people to pull him off. I asked him about it. He said something just snapped inside him. He saw a threat and reacted. He isn’t a violent kid. Never been in a civilian fight before. He felt terrible about it. He apologized. The college expelled him and there were serious charges, until Rogan’s lawyers moved in and had it dropped down to a misdemeanor. Still, it will be on his record forever. He’s going to a private university in January.”

  “Piggy should’ve played dead,” I said. “If he stopped moving, Martin would’ve stopped hitting.”

  “Probably,” she said. “The kid who had the bright idea to scare people with his knife didn’t expect to be hospitalized, because civilians typically don’t try to kill you when you scare them.”

  “It was irresponsible either way.”

  Daniela sighed. “We have rules in our society. Don’t steal. Don’t hurt others. Don’t kill. That’s the big one. We take these kids, some of them barely eighteen years old, tell them that rules no longer apply and then we drop them into the war zone. Fight or flight is a constellation response, a perfect storm within your body. It makes you faster, stronger, hyperaware, but all of it comes at a cost. So
ldiers in combat are running a biochemical sprint, except for them it’s a marathon that doesn’t end. It wears the body down and it carves new neurological pathways through your brain. It changes you. Permanently. Then you finally come home and people expect you to set all that aside and immediately remember what it’s like to be a normal person.”

  Daniela leaned back.

  “My nephew, Martin, is a relatively well-adjusted veteran. He simply needs time and a little help to re-attune himself to the civilian world. The switch that moderates the severity of his response needs to be recalibrated. Some people don’t understand that.”

  I understood it. I knew all the statistics and I’d seen the hysteria firsthand. When Mom snapped, the assistant DA assigned to her case called her a ticking bomb and waved around the PTSD flag, which Mom didn’t have. He made it sound like she would go on a shooting rampage any minute. In reality, most veterans were a danger to themselves rather than others. The suicide rate among vets was 50 percent higher than in the rest of the population.

  “Like I said,” Daniela continued. “Martin was a sweet kid. You know who else was a sweet kid before the army got a hold of him? Connor Rogan. I knew him at the very start of his service. He was so young. Full of himself, a little cocky, and idealistic. The brass realized early on what they had, so they guarded him like the Hope Diamond and controlled everything he saw. We used to call him BL—Bubble Lieutenant. They built this bubble of patriotism around him. Everyone he interacted with told him he was a hero, that he was serving his country, saving lives, and doing the right thing. They would bring him out, tell him how many thousands of lives would be saved if he did what they ordered, then he’d crush a city, and they’d whisk him away before we combed through the ruins. He knew there were casualties, but he never saw the dead bodies. He was an officer in name only. When they promoted him to captain, we had a good laugh.”

  Daniela’s voice broke. She held her hand up for a moment, then continued.

  “After about two years of this, he became their ultimate weapon. Just a rumor of his presence in an area changed the conditions of engagement. During that summer the command received reports of a superweapon being built in the Maya Forest, thirteen million acres of jungle that stretch all across Belize into the Yucatan. It was some sort of superbomb that could level a city and then poison everything around it with radiation, and the Mexican military was desperate enough to use it. I never got all the details—above my clearance—but whatever it was had to be convincing, because our command got together a strike team and attached Rogan to it. The plan was to covertly paradrop into Campeche, get Rogan to target, and once the facility was destroyed, get picked up. Ten seconds into the paradrop we knew we were fucked, because they were shooting at us while we were still in the air.”