“Sir. You’ve seen what just a little bit of magic can do. Imagine a power a hundred times greater in the hands of people who think nothing of impaling an old friend with a forklift. Imagine those people secretly in control of the KGB. Or the CIA. Or the Kremlin. Or the White House.”
Josh shook his head, looking nauseated. But the ex-Special Forces soldier glared at Gabe through narrowed eyes. “You’ve been fighting a secret war under my nose.”
Gabe shook his head. “More like a secret holding action. One that is failing very badly right now.”
“Then you can fill me in on the way.”
Josh chimed in. “Sir, the less you see tonight, the more deniability you’ll have later. When Edith’s replacement arrives.” He gave Gabe a reassuring nod as their boss chewed this over: We’re in this together, partner.
Frank sighed. “Make those bastards pay for Edith.”
• • •
The room shook. Long cracks zigzagged through the walls and floor of the chamber, sifting grit and the scent of petrichor into Andula’s hair. She scrambled to keep her balance. The frissons of sickly dread that had plagued her all evening now metastasized into full-body trembling. The world had become a fever dream. She couldn’t think.
Zerena dropped her final mask, revealing a woman in the throes of wide-eyed panic. Even Terzian raised his voice to be heard over the supernatural earthquake: “Engage the Babylonian talisman! Now!”
Zerena clawed at the top button of her blouse and snapped the chain on the pendant dangling at the base of her throat. The irregular pulsation of its glow turned the chamber a sickly green. Still clutching the charm in one hand, she crossed the room—kicking aside the useless telephone, which emitted a plaintive beeping to announce it was off the hook—and grabbed Andula with her other.
“If you don’t want to be permanently incapacitated,” she said in a voice just shy of a shriek, “you will throw yourself into helping us.” She shoved Andula across the room, saying, “Realign the mirrors!”
Andula felt … inside-out. As if her mind and body were being twisted, sculpted into a parody of what she had been. How could Zerena move, much less think, while buffeted by this howling maelstrom? The others acted as if they couldn’t hear the deafening shrieks. Weren’t they cowed by the anguish of Andula’s very own shackled angel? Andula stumbled across the room like a drunk. She fell to her knees. An icy tingle shot through her arm when her fingers brushed the polished abalone shell. Streamers of drool leaked from the corners of her mouth as she fumbled to aim the mirror at its twin.
The rumbling stopped.
The elemental stopped screaming. The room was silent again but for the beeping of the discarded telephone and Zerena and Terzian’s steady chanting.
Andula quickly felt better. Much better.
• • •
The ground punched every last wisp of breath from Jordan’s lungs. She gawped at a coal-black sky, rain running up her nose and into her open mouth as she struggled to breathe. But the blinding, white-hot agony in her left leg tried to steal away breath that she did not have and could not spare.
Through the rain came a shout: “She’s down. Get her!”
Jordan heaved herself into a half-roll, clawing at the cobbles to pull her body around. A spasm wracked her chest; an explosive gasp reopened her lungs. She inhaled dirty rainwater and the soot of centuries. She tried to drag herself into the shadows, away from the street lamps. Every bump in the cobbles jarred her useless leg, the pain a fraying rope at the edge of a very deep abyss.
• • •
“Jordan!”
For an instant Tanya feared the worst. But then the barkeep started flailing, struggling to right herself like a newborn foal. Her leg had an unnatural kink in it. Fingers fumbling for another charm, for anything that would help, Tanya sprinted across slippery, uneven cobbles toward her helpless ally.
Halfway there, somebody tackled her. Together they skid-rolled into a gutter. Torrents of rainwater sluiced over them as they grappled on a storm drain.
• • •
One chanted syllable at a time, one heartbeat at a time, Zerena tamed the maelstrom. Terzian leaned into the storm, too, lending his strength, but it was she who wrested control from the unchained elementals, the silent shriekers filling the cellar with mindless yearning. She’d mastered the charm in her fist. It no longer flickered like a dying lightbulb. The glow seeping through her fingers grew steadily from a cloudy moonset to the blaze of full noon.
Drawn like moths to Flame, the free elementals of Prague supped on the energies of two ley lines. Flame’s enemies, Zerena’s enemies, had tried to thwart them by severing their coordination with the other nodes. Even with the Babylonian talisman it required sheer iron will to wrestle the energies back under control. But Zerena had done just that, and now, chanting, Terzian looked on her with unqualified approval plain on his face … and just a hint of trepidation. She’d relish that later.
And to think he had gifted this remarkable talisman to Sasha. That pompous fool could never have learned its intricacies so quickly.
Now Terzian would see that she, only she, was capable and worthy of standing at his side in the highest echelons of Flame. Above him, once she became a Host. The first man-made Host in human history.
Terzian was watching Andula, a strange flicker reflected in his eyes. Zerena risked a glance across the chamber and what she saw there nearly caused her to lose the chant. She recovered in time to prevent another plunge into chaos, but barely; how difficult it was, not to throw back her head and shout in triumph.
• • •
Why are they staring at me?
Andula felt better than she had since emerging from the soul-searing frostburn of Ice stasis. Better than ever in her life. Pain and confusion had left her, banished by the ritual. Her mind was crystalline, her body incorruptible.
Why, then, did the old man glare at her with eyes full of doubt?
But then Andula looked at her hand holding the mirror in place, and the sheath of scarlet flames enfolding it, and marveled at the sensation of mild numbness where searing agony should have been.
Her elemental, her God-given angel, was awake. Fully awake.
Living fire studied the contours of her soul, embraced the lacuna that made her a Host, fitting her hand-in-glove. This, she wanted to shout, was her true birth.
• • •
A laugh escaped Zerena. She was awash in a giddiness she hadn’t known since her days as an ignorant farm girl reeling from her first kiss.
Andula’s elemental was relenting. Soon it would kneel to the ritual and accept the yoke of human will. Then it would abandon the schoolgirl and meld with its true master, Zerena. How appropriate, how perfect in this moment of triumph, that Andula should be the vessel for a creature of pure fire. Zerena would become the avatar of Flame, its human incarnation.
The talisman in her fist blazed like a star. An inferno consumed Andula.
• • •
Tanya’s assailant pinned her to the ground. He grabbed a fistful of hair and slammed her head against the curb. She choked as filthy runoff splashed into her eyes, nose, mouth.
• • •
Jordan’s leg crackled like shattered porcelain as she dragged herself across the uneven street. Every movement was a battle against the urge to puke. She tasted blood.
A new noise joined the wet crunching of her leg and the hiss of rain. Snap, pop, snap. At first she thought it was her leg pulling apart, the tendons and ligaments bursting apart like overstretched rubber bands. Her pain-fevered mind thought this was a good thing, a lessened burden. Leave it behind, it’s dead weight.
A figure appeared at the end of the street, converging on the melee at a dead sprint. Was this a hallucination, agony manifesting as madness? A vision of herself running hell for leather to summon Nadia?
Flashes of light flittered around the newcomer like fireflies. The popping was the report of gunfire, Jordan realized, and the flashes wer
e sparks struck by the bullets as they slammed ineffectually against a magical bulwark solid as a leaden slab.
Jordan froze, transfixed. This was a Host—a fully actualized Host—at work. She never thought she’d see such a thing. It was wonderful and terrible to behold.
The Flame sentry sheltered in the doorway of Bar Vodnář straightened, braced himself, used both hands to level a machine pistol at Van. But she was on him before he could pull the trigger. She tore the weapon from his fingers and sent him sliding across the street with a single punch to the sternum. Jordan’s leg flared anew, a twinge of sympathy from her own shattered bones.
Van kicked the unguarded door. It burst into flinders.
My bar, thought Jordan.
Van plunged through Flame’s wards like a bullet through tissue paper.
“Wait—” Jordan croaked.
“No, I don’t think I will,” said a vaguely familiar voice. A heavy foot landed on her back, pinning her down.
• • •
Too late, Andula realized she’d been tricked.
A hook of pure magic, a nasty barbed and serrated thing, scraped at her soul. Zerena and Terzian had forged it with their infernal chanting. Andula cried out in sympathetic agony as it pierced her personal angel like a centurion’s lance.
And then the hook pulled. The flames around her body dimmed, flickered.
Living fire screamed as it lost its grip on Andula. Andula screamed as foul magic sought to cleave her soul. Screamed until her lungs were empty. A crimson curtain fell across the world.
She filled her lungs and howled anew, writhing as her bond with the elemental stretched thin. The snap-snap-snapping of invisible sinews rattled her eyes in their sockets. God had forsaken her, revoked His gift as punishment for listening to Zerena, for—
A tremendous impact rocked the building, as though somebody had crashed a truck into it. It toppled the shelves, sent inventory cascading across the floor, and shattered one of the mirrors. Zerena and Terzian lost their balance and their grip on the cowed elemental.
Andula’s elemental, her wonderful fiery angel, thrashed free of its snare. Instantly, painlessly, it snapped back into place, filling out her soul again. Together they blazed brighter than ever.
Chains of compulsion shattered. The cellar reverberated with the thunder of uncontrolled magic.
• • •
Each blow from Tanya’s assailant launched a new volley of fireworks behind her eyelids. A pendant dangled from the collar of his shirt as he leaned over, throttling her. She snagged it with one free hand then jammed a knee in his groin. His spasm snapped the pendant chain. She clambered free, choking on rainwater.
It was a Flame charm of course, only activated by their arrogant brand of magic. There was only one piece of Flame enchantment she knew reliably well, and it wasn’t meant for combat. But she slammed the copper-wrapped onyx against the groaning man’s temple, and chanted a reversal of the spell Zerena had taught her. For an instant she thought it had failed, but then his face twisted in revulsion as the taste of rot and death filled his mouth. He doubled over, vomiting. She kicked him twice.
When she whirled, seeking Jordan, the sudden flare of pain made her vision blur. Concussion, she realized. But she kept looking.
Jordan lay flailing on the street. A man crouched over her, his knee pressed into her back.
Tanya hadn’t made it more than a few yards before another Flame sentry barred the way. She clumsily ducked his first punch, wondering how long she’d last in close-quarters combat with no weapons, no charms, and a cracked skull. Her brain threatened to plop out like the yolk of a broken egg every time she moved.
Her assailant spun around, as if suddenly aware of somebody behind him. His head snapped back, and again, then he crumpled to the ground. Nadia stepped over the heap of his body like a rain-sodden, communist Valkyrie.
• • •
The man kneeling on Jordan rolled her over, heedless of the broken sack of meat and bone that had been her leg. He leered at her, leaning close enough that she could smell a recent dinner of tea and sausages on his breath.
“Remember me?” She didn’t. Not at first. But something about his voice … “You could have avoided this if you’d taken our first offer. But now we have your bar, and you get nothing.”
Oh. It had to be this creep.
Months ago, he and one of his Flame pals had tried to wrest control of the building from her. She’d told them in no uncertain terms that Flame could never have Bar Vodnář, then sent them packing.
“It hurt like hell, what you did to us,” he growled. He narrowed his eyes and pulled a knife from its sheath. “Ivan’s dead now, so I’ll have to take his revenge as well as mine.”
Jordan tried to crawl away, but her broken leg was an anchor. Her fingers twitched, checking every fold of her clothes, but she’d lost her own knife when she fell, and she’d depleted Nadia’s charms by the time she’d reached the top of the utility pole. She had nothing.
He pressed the blade to her ear. There was another pop, muted beneath the incessant rain, and then he coughed. A trickle of blood escaped his lips; his eyes went unfocused. His collapse revealed Gabe, a wisp of smoke rising from the barrel of his pistol. Behind him, his partner Josh scanned the street.
Gabe shoved the dead man aside and fell into a crouch beside her. “We’re even now,” he said. “You look terrible, by the way.”
• • •
Alestair had to ditch the car after a tremor sent it careering into a lamppost.
Zerena Pulnoc and that despicable Armenian had torn a ragged hole in the arcane fabric of the city, mistaking destruction for reconfiguration. And now they chanted while the ley line network unraveled, like Nero fiddling as the flames grew higher. Alestair could hear their voices over the splashing and rapping of his footsteps on the rainy street, snatches of ghostly echoes like whispers bouncing through a dusty air duct.
He snagged a streetlamp post with the handle of his umbrella and whipped around the corner into the scene of a street brawl. Flame had posted sentries, naturally, but now they were either down or engaged. Rapid assessment: Three men down; Tanya and Nadia exchanging gunfire with somebody on the roof of the pub; Joshua covering Gabriel as the latter performed first aid on somebody lying on the street.
The front door was open. Missing, actually. So, too, the magical barricade with which Flame had doubtless encircled the building.
Alestair didn’t think twice. He charged past the combatants and straight into Bar Vodnář.
• • •
“Alestair!”
Josh took a step toward the bar. Gabe cinched the belt looped around Jordan’s leg. She cried out, then fell unconscious.
“Don’t be stupid, Josh. You don’t belong in there. They’ll tear you apart.” He didn’t want to carry Jordan, lest the jostling cause the jagged edges of a bone to sever an artery, and he sure as hell didn’t want to carry her alone through a battlefield. “C’mon, help me get her to cover.”
But his partner was already gone.
• • •
The acolyte on the roof ducked behind the parapet. As police sirens approached, Nadia shouted, “Cover me!”
Before Tanya could react, her partner sprinted for the bar. Nadia charged headlong into an unstable mystical war zone, chasing after the woman who’d broken her heart.
Alestair was already inside, where Zerena and Terzian were doing God-only-knew-what to poor Andula.
Gabe’s partner, Josh, followed Alestair into what by now was probably a metaphysical meat grinder, one that would surely kill the uninitiated.
Jordan needed help.
Gabe (Was he an ally? An enemy? A friend? Something more? Something less?) struggled alone to drag her to safety.
In that moment, it seemed, everybody in the city needed Tanya’s help.
She chose Gabe.
• • •
Josh had never seen a bar brawl. He’d always assumed they only happened in west
erns. But upon following Alestair inside, he realized he was surrounded by the aftermath of just such a fight. He arrived in time to see his erstwhile lover disappear down the cellar stairs. But Josh faltered in his attempt to follow, for the ruins of the bar—and the sharp, eye-watering stench of ozone—gave him pause.
There were three others in the bar. One man had been thrown into the Wurlitzer with enough force to dent the facade; he slumped, unmoving, in the impression his body had made in the jukebox’s metal frame. A woman lay draped over the bar, bleeding out from a hundred cuts from the shards of glass embedded in her back—debris from the shattered liquor bottles behind her. Pale tongues of blue flame lapped at the puddles of alcohol on the counter. A second man was sprawled on the floor beside the empty doorframe where Josh had entered, clothes and exposed skin pierced with dozens of nasty wooden splinters. The shrapnel wasn’t the reason he drew raspy breaths: One side of his face, from jaw to cheekbone, had been caved in as if a mule had kicked him in the head.
Alestair, even the Alestair Josh had seen in action at the docks, couldn’t have done all this. Not in the moment between his entrance and Josh’s.
• • •
Zerena stood at the heart of a magical furnace, an alchemical kiln intended to transmute the rough clay of frail human beings into the stout and sturdy bricks from which Flame would build its towering future. But now the wail of swirling elementals threatened to warp the very geometry of the cellar, making it melt and twist upon itself as though she’d been transported into a work by Escher or Dalí. The air itself was alive. So, too, the stone walls of the cellar, the water bubbling up through the floor, the flames enveloping Andula.
The ritual teetered on a knife edge, threatening to spin irrevocably out of control. Zerena stretched herself to her limits, and then with Terzian’s aid pushed harder and discovered new limits within herself, all the while grimacing with physical effort.
That was when an intruder came charging down the stairs.
If Zerena stood at the heart of a blast furnace, this woman was the sun. The interloper headed straight for the Host, unaffected by the elementals and the arcane currents sloshing through the cellar. It was as if the magic were diminished, deadened, before it touched her. She could only be one thing.
The Witch Who Came In From The Cold: The Complete Season 2: The Complete Season 2 (The Witch Who Came In From The Cold Season 2) Page 49