“Shut up, Ms. Wilbur, or I will have you shot,” Solorov said. Stephanie gaped at her.
I heard an old man’s wheezing laughter. They stopped and glanced back as he shambled into view. He wore a bulky black coat and a black fur cap with the earflaps down, and he leaned on a gnarled black cane that had been heavily carved. A pair of black bird-watching binoculars hung around his neck. Frail rushed to him and gently took a black leather satchel from his hand.
I realized I was staring, just as the others were. There was something arresting about him, although he appeared completely ordinary in every way.
Frail walked beside the old man as though he was ready to catch him, but he continued his questioning. “Please, explain why you are so sure he is not a local.”
“It was the way he spoke,” Ursula said. Her tone was flat. “Some things he said. He said Mr. Yin didn’t have Armand anymore. He said that Armand had escaped.”
“That’s a lie,” Stephanie blurted out, apparently forgetting the professor’s threat. “I just spoke with Mr. Yin ten minutes ago, and they are en route without incident. He must have been trying to trick you.” The contempt she held for Ursula was clear.
“What did he look like?” Frail asked.
“He was a little over six feet tall. Slender and handsome with a knife scar on his cheek. He was wearing a stolen servant’s uniform. And he had tattoos on the backs of his hands.”
The old man spoke up, his voice raw and low. “What sort of tattoos?”
“Like his.” Ursula pointed at Tattoo.
They fell silent.
“What?” Stephanie asked. “What does that mean?”
The old man turned toward Frail and spoke in a soft grumble of German. Frail rushed away on an errand, then exchanged a meaningful look with Tattoo. “Professor Solorov,” the old man called. “Bring your people back to the house, please. This is something I will have to take care of, I think.”
I heard a cellphone being dialed. “Come back to the house” was all she said. I heard the phone snap shut.
Then I heard her say in a low voice: “Tell me why those tattoos might be important.”
The voice that answered was Kripke’s. “I thought you people knew—”
“I do know, Mr. Kripke. Now you have to impress me with what you know.”
“Well, the tattoos are spells. The part that shows, anyway. Most are probably protection spells.”
“So far you haven’t impressed me.”
“For instance,” Kripke continued, emphasizing the words to show his annoyance at being interrupted. “That one there, on the German muscle’s forehead, that’s the guiding hand. It’s supposed to make others feel something, depending on the little variations. A really common version makes people attracted to you. Sexually, I mean. His is a little different, but judging by how I feel every time I look at him, I suspect it’s supposed to intimidate people.”
There was a brief pause. Finally, Solorov spoke in a low, urgent, dangerous voice. “You will turn over your spell book to me, along with all copies, or I—”
“I don’t have a spell book,” Kripke snapped.
“—or I will kill you and everyone in your family. I’ll burn their houses down while they sleep at night. Do you understand me?” Her voice was urgent and, unlike the others in her group, completely free of oh boy I get to be naughty breathlessness. She was fierce and cold and sharp.
“I don’t have a spell book,” Kripke said. “I really don’t. If I did, I’d be a badass like them. I wouldn’t be letting you hold a gun on me.”
“Then where did you get this level of information? Or are you fabricating it?”
Kripke sighed. “A guy dropped by the server uninvited. He baited his way in, but before we could ban him, he offered up good information—very good.”
“What good information did he give you?”
“It’s too complicated to go into it now. Honest. We can review that later, if you want, but one of the things he gave us was a write-up of a couple of dozen spells and the outward glyphs that go with them. Mostly, they were protection spells like golem flesh and iron gate, but he also included odd things like the twisted path and the second word. No summoning spells. He listed the things the spells could do when they were fresh and when they weren’t.”
“I want to see that.”
“Okay.”
“And everything else you have.”
Kripke sighed again. “Okay. It goes against our TOA, but okay. Another thing: I know where the security guards went. I saw Mr. Yin approach the one at the front door, the lead. Yin flashed ID and ordered them to leave. The guard called someone, and after a couple of seconds, he shrugged and ordered all his men into their Expeditions.”
“The harpy hired one of Mr. Yin’s companies to provide security?” Solorov sounded amused.
“More likely Yin found out who she hired and bought them out. He’s really, really rich.”
The old man’s assistant returned. Everyone stopped talking. He handed a metal bar to the old man, who shuffled out onto the lawn.
I wondered who had given Kripke his information. I knew the society would be interested in that. I also wondered what he’d meant when he said spells could be fresh. Until Ursula shook off the effects of my ghost knife, it hadn’t occurred to me that it might have an expiration date.
I couldn’t help but think of my boss, Annalise. She wouldn’t have hidden in a dark basement, eavesdropping. She would have bashed heads together.
Would she have killed Kripke and the professor? The Twenty Palace Society killed people who used magic. Did they kill people who were just searching for it, too?
Not that it mattered right now. I wasn’t going to kill anyone I didn’t have to, and not just on Catherine’s say-so. I did need to grab hold of Kripke, though. Like the professor, I wanted information from him.
Tattoo returned with the sour-faced old housekeeper. He held her hand as they walked across the grass. Her scowl had been replaced by an empty, dreamy smile. Someone needed to give her a coat.
Tattoo steered her onto the lawn. The old man waited at the bottom of the slope, twisted iron bar in his hand. I had a bad feeling about that damn bar. I took out my ghost knife.
The old man was about fifty feet from me. I could have thrown my ghost knife and hit him easily. It goes where I want it to go—I don’t even really need to Frisbee it, although it moves faster that way. Still, the Fellows had shotguns. And I would have bet every penny I had that the old man was a sorcerer. My little ghost knife couldn’t take out all of them, but maybe I could disrupt things and get away.
Assuming it worked on him better than it had on Ursula.
Men crowded around Solorov to ask her questions, and their legs completely blocked my view. I could hear them muttering to one another, half excited and half envious. I needed to get to another window to see what the old man was going to do. I couldn’t throw my spell without aiming it, and if I was going to stop him, I’d need to hit the bar—and him—with my first shot.
The window to my left was blocked with garden tools. The window to my right was blocked by an old couch on its end. I leaned back to see if there was a better option farther down the room.
“Christ!” one of the men outside shouted.
I turned back to the window. The men had stepped to the side, clearing my line of sight.
The old woman lay on her back in the grass. The old man had just stabbed the metal bar through her chest into the ground. He stared at a carving on the top of the bar.
“He did that right out in the open,” one of the Fellows said. “Right in front of us.”
“Be quiet,” Solorov said.
I had expected him to consult a spell book, say a few words, maybe draw a circle. Something. But he hadn’t, and I had missed my chance. I should have just cut my way through to him, and to hell with what came of it.
Frail ran toward the house, putting a lot of distance between himself and the body. The old man only ste
pped back a few feet. He looked to the sky, but I couldn’t see anything up there besides night clouds and stars.
The metal bar wobbled. It was adorned with a variety of shapes, but at this distance I could only make out the one on top, a large eye.
There was a sudden flash of light. The Fellows leaped back against the building wall. A bolt of lightning had flashed out of the clear night sky and struck the trembling bar—a lightning rod, that’s what it was—engulfing the old woman in crackling light.
Her body lifted off the ground as the power poured out of the sky. The lightning—tinged with red now as though stained with blood—curled around her, shaping itself into a ball. The Fellows cursed in fear. A woman screamed—it sounded like Stephanie. I felt like screaming myself. Then the light became too bright to look at.
After a couple of seconds, the light faded enough for me to squint at it again. It had formed a sphere about three feet across. It rose into the air, drawing itself off the lightning rod as if unimpaling itself. The old woman had been reduced to blackened bones. The grass where she had lain was not even singed, although the lightning rod glowed white hot.
The churning ball of burning gas and lightning hovered above the old man.
“Sweet Jesus,” someone said. “What did he do?”
I knew the answer already. He’d summoned a predator right in front of me.
I looked at my ghost knife. My spell was written on laminated paper. Even if it could kill that creature—and that was a big if—I was sure the heat and power of the thing would destroy my spell.
I wasn’t ready to do that. It was my only weapon, the only spell I’d created myself, and I didn’t have the spell book anymore.
The old man shouted something at the predator in German. “He’s telling it to search the woods around the house,” one of the Fellows said. “He’s telling it to kill everyone it finds between the house and the iron fence.”
“But what the hell is it?” Russian Accent asked.
It was Kripke who answered. “I think it’s a floating storm.”
The predator floated toward the cottage. The old man shouted at it, then shouted again, his voice more insistent and aggravated.
“He’s telling it to hunt,” Kripke said, volunteering information like a good little employee.
The floating storm did not change direction. It hovered above the spot where the thick black power cable connected to the guesthouse. Blue arcs jumped from the wires into its body. The old man shouted at it again, sounding like a grandfather trying to control a toddler from the comfort of his easy chair. The predator ignored him.
The porch light suddenly went out, and the blue arcs stopped. A couple of flickering tongues of flame appeared on the cottage roof.
Once the power was off, the floating storm glided toward the woods. The old man scowled at Tattoo, who responded in German. The old man shrugged. They both laughed and shook their heads like boys who had launched a firework in the wrong direction. The predator was out of their control, and they thought it was funny.
Tattoo walked up to the lightning rod, which had cooled to merely red hot, and grabbed it with his bare hand. Both men started toward the house.
The predator floated over the bare trees, making shadows sweep across the grass. “Professor,” one of the Fellows said, “I think we should be getting inside.”
She didn’t move. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Um, can we go now?” Kripke said. “It’s not safe to be out here.” No one moved. “Please?”
Professor Solorov sighed. “Let’s go inside and find some candles. We may be here awhile.”
They stepped back, leaving me a clear view of the predator as it moved away from the house. Had it sensed Catherine and the gunmen searching the grounds of the estate? It didn’t even have any eyes.
Catherine needed to know this thing was hunting her. She had a cell, but I didn’t know her number. I had to risk going into the woods to warn her, and I didn’t have much time.
I pushed the window closed. I heard a muffled “Hey!” Footsteps came toward me. Damn.
I backed off the steamer trunks and crouched behind a little round table that smelled of mold. A man knelt by the window and shined a flashlight inside. The light was too dim to illuminate the pitch-blackness of the basement, but it didn’t matter. I’d been spotted.
A second man knelt by the window. I heard one of them tell the other that he’d seen the window close. While I silently cursed my stupidity and impatience, they yelled for more people. I couldn’t keep hiding here. If I was going to warn Catherine, I’d have to move before they got organized.
I pivoted away from the window and bumped into something sharp and metallic. It clattered to the floor, then a stack of somethings crashed in the darkness. Not that it mattered now.
I reached the window I’d cut open and pulled it from the frame. The way looked clear. I climbed up, sticking my head and neck through.
A foot squelched in the mud nearby and I threw myself backward. A shotgun blast tore through the window frame, spraying wood splinters like shrapnel.
I fell back onto the legs of a chair, rolled to the side, and ducked behind a stack of copper pots.
Fat Guy knelt beside the open window and peered in, shotgun in hand. “I saw him,” he said to someone over his shoulder. “I didn’t get him, though.”
I had the sudden urge to leap forward and punch him in the face with every bit of strength I could muster. The son of a bitch had shot at me. I clenched my hands into fists to calm my trembling and hung back in the darkness like a coward.
Whoever he was talking to grabbed his shoulder and tried to pull him back. “The fat lady said he had a gun.”
Fat Guy shrugged the hand away. “I saw his hands. He didn’t have no gun. Get inside and get down there.”
I threw my ghost knife at him.
He must have seen movement because he threw himself back. The ghost knife struck the shotgun, shearing off the front of the barrel and the pump, too. The cut part of the weapon fell through the window into the basement.
I called the ghost knife and it zipped through the open window into my hand. It still worked on dead things, at least.
Fat Guy held up half of his weapon. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“What could have done that?”
“I don’t know, but I will soon. Gimme your shotgun.”
The other Fellow didn’t like that suggestion, and both men moved away from the window to talk about it. The other man eventually agreed to stand guard.
I inched forward, peering around the edge of the window jamb. The Fellow stood about ten feet away, the shotgun against his shoulder as though he was about to shoot skeet. He was the one dressed in biking clothes.
“Hey in there!” he yelled. “Come out with your hands up, and I won’t shoot.”
He snapped the barrel of the gun to the right, then left, looking very trigger-happy. I didn’t want to throw my ghost knife directly into the path of a blast of buckshot. I moved toward the front of the house. The garage offered more cover, but it was too far away. Had they posted a new guard at the front door? I’d have to risk it.
Heavy footsteps clomped overhead. The Fellows were coming—with guns—and I didn’t have time to wait around. My only real hope was that they were all coming after me, leaving the area outside unguarded.
I banged my head against something that made a solid wooden thunk. I laid my hands on it—it was smooth and curved, but I had no idea what it was. What I could tell was that it completely blocked the path. I had to turn back.
Footsteps stumbled down the stairs somewhere to my left. By the echo, I judged they were coming from the center of the room.
I crept back the way I’d come, keeping low so they wouldn’t spot my silhouette against a window.
One of them said something in another language. Russian, maybe. Another answered: “Just one, I think. A guy.” The Russian-speaker answered. He didn’t sound confident. Someon
e flicked a light switch several times. Nothing happened.
Damn. I wished I could pinpoint where they were.
“I don’t like it down here,” another one said. The Russian-speaker said something that seemed like agreement. “I mean, what was that thing outside? We didn’t try to buy something like that, did we?”
“Shut up, Gregor,” another said. I recognized his voice. It was Fat Guy. “You’re gonna talk yourself out of the Fellowship.”
“I’m just saying,” Gregor continued, ignoring the other man’s advice. “You saw that old woman die. You saw her spirit, or whatever that was, float away into the woods. What if it comes for us? Are we supposed to use shotguns against it?”
“Then let’s find this guy,” a new voice said, “so we can go home.”
They were spooked. I just wished they’d been spooked by me. I sure as hell didn’t want to fight all of these guys. One at a time, without guns, was bad enough, but like this it was too chancy.
Then I had an idea. I threw the ghost knife into the darkness.
I waited, feeling it move away from me. No effect. The Russian-speaker was talking, and the others were listening quietly. I called it back and threw it again in a slightly different direction.
This time I was rewarded by a loud crash across the room. The spell had cut part of an unsteady stack somewhere.
“Christ!” Gregor shouted. There was a barrage of gunfire. I dropped to the ground, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t aimed at me. After a few seconds, the shooting stopped. I called my ghost knife back, my ears still ringing.
“Goddammit!” Fat Guy yelled. “I’m standing right here!”
The trigger-happy one was breathing hard. So was I. The ghost knife settled into my hand.
“Reload that weapon,” Fat Guy said. “And if you shoot one of us, I’m going to kill you and your mother, too. Get me?”
“Sorry,” Gregor mumbled.
I slowly got to my knees. My shoe scuffed against the floor, but the Fellows were breathing too hard to hear it.
“We should fan out,” Russian Accent said.
“We’re not fucking fanning out. Not with this crew. I’d prolly bump an old mirror, and Gregor here would empty a clip of soft-points into me. Stick together and cover each other.”
Game of Cages Page 7