“What I’m trying to say is I shouldn’t have prevented you from talking to other people, even if you wanted to say bad things about me. Maybe especially if you had an opinion I didn’t agree with.”
Pamela’s not the same as I remember. Val took his time forming the sentence, as if picking each word carefully. I do not like the way she treats you.
That made two of us, but I found myself shaking my head. I didn’t approve of Pamela’s methods, but none of her actions had been malicious or ill intended, and it felt cheap to bond with Val by tarnishing his hero. “She’s just doing her job and making sure my region is protected.”
So are you. You’re a good enforcer, Dice.
Pathetically grateful for his meager praise, I hoped it meant he’d forgiven me. “Thank you, Val. I may not know any other handbooks, but I’m glad I got paired with you.”
So you’re not going to sell me?
“What?” My exclamation echoed in the tiny room. More hushed, I asked, “What are you talking about?”
The region is bankrupt and you don’t think I’m useful, but I am worth a lot.
Oh Val. “I would never sell you. Not to save the region, not even when you’re being a pain in the ass. You’re my friend, and you’re stuck with me.”
You’re not always sand in my binding, either.
A backhanded compliment and a bit of flair in his font: Val was cheering up.
“Are we okay?”
Yes. Thank you for talking to me. He barely let the words land before he wrote over them. I want you to know that if I had any knowledge about how to bring the pooka back, I would tell you.
“I know. Do you want to talk with Pamela now?”
Val hesitated. Maybe later.
I’d expected more enthusiasm, but he might have restrained himself to spare my feelings.
Essentially, nothing about my situation had changed, but as I exited the bathroom, my steps were lighter. One relationship repaired, one to go. If only mending things with Jamie would be so easy.
Pamela wasn’t standing guard outside the bathroom door, as I’d anticipated. She’d moved to pace in a tight circle in front of Brad’s office.
“Do you feel that?” Brad asked her.
She nodded. “I’ll need a contingent of prajurit—”
“I’m on it.” Brad pivoted and stepped into his office. “I need six volunteers to—”
The chorus of prajurit voices drowned out his next words.
Summer had arrived, and when she glanced in my direction, her look should have incinerated me. I thought her opinion of me had been bad before I’d stranded her alone with Pamela to aimlessly hunt the tyv last night, but apparently there had been deeper depths to plumb.
“Nice of you to join us,” she said, ice in her voice.
I met her disdainful gaze with a sense of remorse. I kept screwing up with her, undermining any possibility of us forming a friendship.
“I’m sorry about last night. I—”
Summer turned her back to me and walked away.
Just like that, my regret dried up. Jaw locked, I grabbed my coat and stuffed my arms into the sleeves. When no one moved toward the exit, I laid Val open on the table so he could participate. He greeted Summer and Pamela, the words appearing in large font easily visible from several feet away.
“Ah, hello,” Summer said, eyes flicking up to meet mine, then back to Val.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I’m sensing drones. Close. Within the pooka’s tether range,” Pamela said, her tone grim. “The fact that he’s not hiding them . . . This could be the pooka’s turning point, Madison. If he’s become stronger in atrum than lux lucis, it would hamper his ability to provide a neutral camouflage.”
My heartbeat pounded against my eardrums, and my voice warbled when I spoke. “Or he could have decided to stop helping them.”
“He’s had no reason to change his mind,” Brad said, stepping out of his office. An entourage of prajurit fanned out around him. “Just . . . just be prepared.”
The room swam, and I braced a hand on the table. They had to be wrong.
24
Are Your Reflexes Good? I Want to Try Something
The drones didn’t politely wait in one location for us to show up and kill them, nor could Pamela get a consistent lock on them. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or frustrated. If the balance of Jamie’s soul was tilting toward evil, making it harder for him to disguise the drones, at least the transition wasn’t fast or seamless. However, the longer it took us to locate the drones, the more time they and the tyv had to spew evil across my region and eat the souls of my norms. I couldn’t win, and the tangle of my conflicting hopes twisted my stomach into knots.
“It’s only a matter of time,” Pamela said, craning to examine the roofs we passed. She sat in the passenger seat of my car, and with Summer following, bringing the prajurit in her vehicle, we snaked through crowded subdivisions for an hour, making frequent U-turns and backtracking according to the pulses of evil sporadically registering on the inspector’s soul. “I’m picking them up more frequen— Turn around, they’re headed that way.”
I flipped on a blinker and looped through a sleepy intersection, passing Summer. I didn’t dare chance looking for drones myself. Doing so would require switching to Primordium, where road lines, sidewalks, and the traffic lights all blended into the same gray tone. Instead, I concentrated on being an exemplary chauffeur and keeping my mouth shut. The less the inspector and I said to each other, the better.
“There! Got you, sucker,” Pamela exclaimed, pointing due east.
Unable to fly over the line of houses in front of us, I sped back to the main road and raced around the long block. We made a right onto East Roseville Parkway and took the first left, entering an apartment complex. My apartment complex. We came in through the west entrance, over three city blocks from my actual building, but I still wanted to laugh, or perhaps cry. Jamie couldn’t have made this situation worse if he had tried.
“Clearly the pooka doesn’t respect you, and he definitely doesn’t care for your safety if he’s bringing the tyv to your backyard,” Pamela said.
“Or it means he’s not in charge of where she goes,” I countered.
I wished I believed myself, but I’d yet to meet an evil creature Jamie couldn’t overpower with his innate strength, including the tyv. If he had a way of communicating with her, not simply disguising her whereabouts, then it wasn’t hard to picture him in charge. Guiding the tyv to my doorstep fell in line with his escalating rebellion.
Following Pamela’s directions through the convoluted jigsaw puzzle of three-story buildings squeezed around old oak trees, tennis courts, and pools, I selected an empty parking spot far from my apartment. When I shoved from the car, icy air scraped down my esophagus, carrying a bitter mix of wood smoke, exhaust, and swamp. I exhaled, my breath a white fog in the yellow lamplight. Cars occupied almost every parking space, and lights illuminated the interior of dozens of apartments, but no one lingered in the cold with us.
High above, well out of the range of my palmquell, drones crisscrossed the sky, their mixed-energy bodies transforming the black expanse into a seething patchwork. Their numbers had doubled, tripled, as if all the drones Summer and I had killed had been resurrected over the last two nights, back to feed once more on my region. I shuddered and tightened my grip on the palmquell, its familiar shape in the palm of my hand steadying my nerves.
Summer parked and opened her door, pressing back against her seat when a flurry of prajurit blasted through the opening. Of the six queens Brad had selected, only two had more than three warriors in her clan. I recognized Lestari and her warriors, who hovered nearest me. The rest fanned out, all keeping an equal distance between themselves and the other clans. Drafts of arctic air from their wing beats stirred strands of hair against my face, tickling my numbing cheeks.
Pamela divided the prajurit into two groups, three queens per group, design
ating the queens with the most warriors to be each team’s leader. Then she selected a warrior from each group, assigning the two men the task of scouting and serving as messengers. I braced for a slurry of arguments, but the prajurit remained silent, their differences set aside for the battle.
“No clan has jurisdiction here, and no deeds performed today imply future territorial rights,” Pamela announced. “Clan Hujan Gembira has spent the last two days stockpiling supplies and will arrive shortly. I want a poison bead dropped down every chimney in this complex and in every chimney within a thousand-wing-beat radius. No exceptions.”
Dismissed, the queens of each group clustered together, lifting higher while they discussed strategy. The warriors fanned out, ever watchful. One scout zoomed over the closest building and out of sight, and the prajurit who remained as our go-between messenger settled onto the warm hood of the Civic.
Pamela’s misshapen soul pulsed over her left thigh, and she stiffened. “Damn, the tyv is strong.” Her hand drifted to the soul breaker at her neck as she swiveled to stare unerringly south. Not taking her eyes off the horizon, she said, “Madison, you’re at my side at all times. If I can’t reach out and touch you, you’re too far away. Keep up.”
She broke into a jog, angling across the parking lot and up a muddy slope to a walkway. The prajurit warrior buzzed from the Civic’s hood after her, and I chased them, dividing my attention between the ground and sky. Summer caught up to us, and our pounding footsteps echoed against the nearby buildings.
Dashing past manicured landscaping, we burst into a spacious quad. Muddy slopes and waterlogged lawns surrounded the central fenced-in pool, and towering apartment units boxed us in on three sides. I skidded to a stop. We’d found the tyv.
Inflated half again as large as the last time I’d seen her, the tyv loomed atop the building to our left. Her massive wings spanned the width of an apartment, and her grotesquely bloated body wouldn’t have fit through the sliding glass door. Shuffling on six sturdy legs, she dragged her abdomen soundlessly across the roof tiles, aligning her rear with the nearest chimney and depositing an egg into its depths. Drones buzzed around her, flitting across the roof and crawling along her body, but when she lifted her ponderous bulk into the sky, few assisted her.
She had not only grown larger, but she had also grown stronger. A lot stronger.
Oh, Jamie, what have you done?
The tyv lit upon the next rooftop and crawled from chimney to chimney, pausing to stab her spearlike mouth into unlucky drones and drain them of their partially digested lux lucis, leaving the victims little more than emaciated black shadows.
“We’re too close,” Pamela whispered, and I startled, released from the horror that had frozen me in place. “Let’s circle the pool. We need to put distance between us and— Bloody hell. What are they doing now?”
A cluster of drones over twenty strong peeled from the roiling mass and formed a tight circle above us, needle proboscises angled down, dark multifaceted eyes glossy with hunger. Lux lucis churned strong in each of them, making them easy to track against the dark sky.
“That’s not normal drone behavior,” Summer said.
“No, it’s not.” Pamela spared a glance for the prajurit warrior hovering near my shoulder. “Go. Get to safety.”
He raised a sword, tapped his fist to his chest, and rocketed toward the nearest tree, his white body blending into the lux lucis–saturated branches.
“We should get to cover, too,” I suggested.
“Stay together. Summer, watch our backs.” Pamela pivoted to put her back to Summer’s, her rough grip on my forearm spinning me around with her. It didn’t matter which way I faced; drones filled the sky in every direction. At some invisible signal, they fell upon us.
“I hope your aim has gotten better, Madison,” Pamela said. “Stand your ground.”
The drones swarmed in a complex, multidirectional attack. I fired a blur of lux lucis, pulling energy from my soul in a steady drain and feeding it through the palmquell. Drones exploded, filling the air with a cloud of atrum particles, but the three of us couldn’t hold off the nonstop attacks for long. I heard Summer’s muffled cry first, spinning too late to kill the drone that had struck her. She bolted.
Sharp pain lanced through my shoulder and neck, staggering me. When I regained my balance, I sprinted for the nearest oak. I needed to get to cover. My sneakers slipped in mud and I went down on one knee, springing back to my feet and not stopping until my back pressed to rough bark. Gulping in air, I checked the canopy. White limbs arched above me, dwindling into slender branches and spindly twigs. Beyond them, drones swirled and spun, but none swooped low enough to attack.
Closing my eyes, I sucked in deep breaths, keeping one hand planted on the tree to absorb its lux lucis. I’d made it to cover. I’d—
The fog of false urgency cleared from my thoughts. Crap. I’d run.
I shoved from the tree but stopped after two steps, taking stock of the situation. Summer crouched in the stairwell of the same building the tyv crawled atop, hidden from the monstrous creature’s sight while she fired through the open backs of the concrete steps at the drones assaulting Pamela.
The inspector hadn’t budged, and her soul visibly dimmed as she unloaded a continuous blur of bullets into the ceaseless drones. For every evil insect she killed, two more jabbed her soul, their bites draining her even faster.
My sprint to cover had been the smart tactic. Even Summer had sought out a more defensive position, so why didn’t Pamela? At the very least, why didn’t she employ evasive maneuvers?
Stand your ground. It had been the last thing she had said, and it must have been her intent when she had been struck by the first drone. Every drone afterward only reinforced her determination to remain rooted in place. Pamela could no more move than I could have stopped myself from running for the tree.
The inspector possessed one of the strongest souls I’d ever seen, but even she couldn’t withstand this assault forever, and she certainly couldn’t take out all the drones by herself.
“Stay there,” I yelled to Summer. “I’ll get her.”
I yanked my pet wood from my pocket and flicked my wrist to extend it, pumping lux lucis down the wand’s length. With my palmquell in my opposite hand, I charged.
Get Pamela to cover. Get Pamela to cover, I chanted, keeping my gaze locked on the inspector. I fired into the sky but didn’t pay attention to where my bullets landed. I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted in case a drone struck. If a random impulse stranded me out in the open, the drones would drain my lux lucis even faster than they devoured Pamela’s. Slashing blindly overhead with the pet wood, I barreled into the inspector.
“We need to move,” I barked.
Her eyes latched on to me with feverish intensity. I grabbed a fistful of her jacket, but the pet wood made me clumsy, and she shrugged out of my grip. Spinning, she seized my right wrist. Fine. That worked, too.
“Let’s go.” I tugged, ready to pull her with me.
Pamela dropped her palmquell.
“What are you—”
She slapped a handcuff over my right forearm and cinched it tight, then snapped the other cuff to her left wrist, locking us together. I stared at the shackle in shock.
Pain jabbed through my back as a drone pierced my soul and swallowed a mouthful before buzzing skyward. I threw my palmquell aside and slapped Pamela with the full weight of my body behind the swing. Her head snapped back, and the crack of sound ricocheted through the buildings before the pain registered in my palm. I grinned. That had been damn satisfying.
Pamela dipped into her stance and cocked her fist. I danced backward, stumbling when my trapped wrist canted my balance. My foot slipped off the edge of the sidewalk into the mud and kept sliding. Crashing to my butt, I slid under Pamela swing by pure accident. Our connected wrists jerked her off balance and she slammed down on me with the force of a small vehicle, punching the air from my lungs.
Unco
mprehendingly, I gaped at the sky, my entire field of vision boiling with drones. My pulse pounded, a deep accompaniment to the ringing in my ears; then my lungs remembered how to function, and I sucked in oxygen with a cavernous moan that set me coughing.
Fiery pain radiated from my right shoulder down to my wrist, where my hand kinked awkwardly against my side. A sharp ache, slowly numbing, informed me I’d have a new Bowie sheath–shaped bruise across my lower back. I’d landed in mud, not on the concrete sidewalk, which had probably saved me from a broken tailbone and concussion, but with the icy muck oozing into the gap between my coat and pants, I found it hard to be grateful.
Pamela floundered, her knee grinding into my thigh, her free hand pinning my hair to the ground. I groaned, and she froze, looking around with sudden awareness. Most of the drones had retreated into the airspace outside the range of our palmquells, but a handful broke away, dropping down to make the most of our helplessness. My left hand fisted on nothing, and panic carved through my midsection. I’d thrown the palmquell . . . there.
I wrenched my hair from beneath Pamela’s hand, the sharp pain eliciting unbidden tears. Residual lux lucis gave the weapon a soft glow against the gray mud where it lay, useless, out of reach. I’d lost hold of the pet wood, too. Grunting, I braced my hand on Pamela’s knee where it jabbed into my thigh, and shoved. The inspector toppled onto her butt, snapping the cuff against my wrist and twisting my arm painfully.
I’d done nothing but prove—repeatedly—my devotion to my job, my region, and lux lucis. Even at my most rebellious, the worst I’d done was take a night off and get embarrassingly intimate with Alex in a dance club. Yet the handcuff shackling me to Pamela’s side reaffirmed how little she trusted me and how little faith she had in my ability to maintain my true lux lucis nature. Fury and humiliation pulsed through my limbs, leaving me shaky, my control thread-thin.
When the drones struck, this wouldn’t be pretty.
The glint of white bullets winked through the air, and the lead drone exploded into atrum dust. The two behind it kept coming. Pamela flared a beam of lux lucis from her palm, a shining sword made of the pure energy of her soul, and cut the next drone in half. The third veered wide, wings blurring to gain altitude.
A Fistful of Frost Page 34