by Jocelyn Fox
Ross swore under her breath. The smell of charred flesh slid greasily into her nose. It was a miracle the explosion hadn’t set the entire place on fire. Tyr was nowhere to be seen. She looked at Duke, feeling useless in her indecision. At least she held Forin and Farin in her palms, protecting them, for whatever that was worth. “What do we do?”
“Can you handle them and getting Ramel to the truck?” Duke asked tersely.
Her body still ached from the forced position in which she’d been bound to the beam, but she nodded. If that was what needed to be done, she’d do it. The last hours were a blur, shadows and pain and confusion all muddled in her head. She firmly wrenched her mind away from trying to grasp at the memories. Focus on now. Focus on the present, do what needs to be done, and figure everything else out later.
Farin pushed at the shield of her hands. Ross opened her cupped palms.
“Put us on your shoulder,” Farin piped. “I will make sure we do not fall.”
Ross didn’t question the Glasidhe. She raised them to her shoulder and felt their slight weight transfer. Farin situated Forin against the curve of her neck. She felt a tug in her hair as the Glasidhe both created handholds, but the slight discomfort didn’t matter at all. It was a small price to pay.
Duke kissed her hard on the mouth as she stepped close to take Ramel. She tasted smoke and blood on her bruised lips but she returned the kiss hungrily. It felt good to be alive. She’d doubted her survival these past hours, of that much she was sure. Heat raced through her. The kiss only lasted a few heartbeats but it felt like longer. She clung to it briefly and then slid under Ramel’s shoulder, grunting as she took his weight. Poor guy couldn’t catch a break, she thought grimly. She couldn’t remember what Corsica had done to him, but she did remember his swallowed screams.
The hollow of her throat tingled. Tyr had quickly drawn a rune there, faster than she’d thought possible, and the world had stopped spinning. After the world had gone black, she’d been able to regain some semblance of consciousness through sheer effort of will, but she’d still seen double and fought nausea even after she’d gotten the hang of keeping her mind in the place it needed to be to accept the strange reality of Corsica’s lair.
“Wait fifteen minutes for us,” said Duke. “If we’re not out, get them back to the house and then come back for us.”
“Why do you want me to leave?” Ross asked, her stomach plummeting.
“Because if Molly comes out on top, she’s probably going to come after you. At the house, you can regroup and you have the wards that Tyr and Merrick created,” said Duke quickly.
The floor bucked as another explosion rocked the warehouse. The strings suspending the bird skeleton with emeralds studding its skull snapped, and the bones clattered to the floor amidst the metallic jangle of coins shifting and treasure falling from ledges. Ross stumbled and gritted her teeth as she grabbed a fistful of Ramel’s shirt, hauling at him to keep him on his feet. The Unseelie Knight staggered but then regained his balance. She glanced over her shoulder and glimpsed Vivian, holding her left arm over her like a shield, a rune blazing on her hand and covering her and Niall in a fierce light. Niall was still on the ground, and Vivian lay over him protecting him with her own body and with her shield. Ross felt a flash of fierce pride in her friend’s courage, followed by a sharp stab of fear. Vivian wasn’t a soldier. Vivian hadn’t trained for this. But then her tired mind remembered that for the past weeks, Vivian had been training for this.
Molly’s laugh raised the hairs on the back of Ross’s neck. Ramel jerked at the sound as though it struck a chord of memory in him.
“You gotta go,” said Duke tersely.
“Come with us,” Ross said.
Duke grinned. “I got more experience dealin’ with this magic stuff than you give me credit for, babe.” He motioned toward the door. “Get ‘em to safety and wait fifteen. Then haul ass to the house.”
Ross’s throat closed. She didn’t answer but forced her body to move. The Glasidhe clutched at her hair and her ear as she moved Ramel through brute force. “Come on man, help me out,” she growled as she maneuvered them through a particularly tricky patch of floor covered in scattered coins and ropes of pearls.
“Mab is draining him,” Farin said into her ear. “She is desperate. And then Corsica…”
Ross stumbled and winced as the muscles in her back protested. “Yeah, well, I’m pretty desperate right now, too, Farin!”
The Glasidhe warrior fell silent and didn’t say another word as Ross moved Ramel toward the door. She forced herself not to look back, not even when the sharp report of gunshots cracked through the air.
“Get outside, get to the truck,” she said under her breath, and that became her mantra, like one of the phrases she repeated while running to give her mind focus.
As they neared the door, Ramel regained some of his senses. He tried to stop, digging in his heels and succeeding in nearly taking both of them to the hardwood floor.
“Molly,” he gasped.
“I think it’s beyond your abilities right now, man,” she replied, dragging him forward.
“Not to help her,” said Ramel brokenly. “To…stop her.”
The way he said the word left no doubt in Ross’s mind that he really meant kill. Because that was the only way that Molly was going to be diverted from her mission. She’d gone full native, letting the bone sorcerer work whatever weird spell gave him his power. And with a terribly icy feeling, Ross realized that she agreed with Ramel. But she shook her head.
“Still beyond your abilities right now,” she told him, pulling him toward the door. They were so close. One of the Glasidhe whimpered as Vivian shouted something in a foreign tongue, some sort of incantation that made the air vibrate. “Come on,” she said, hauling at him. They were steps away from the door. Then within arm’s length. She kicked at the door, caught it with her shoulder as it swung shut again and she dragged Ramel through.
When the door swung shut behind them, Ross almost collapsed in relief. The strange pressure of Corsica’s lair, even with the rune Tyr had drawn on her hand, disappeared. Ramel took a shuddering breath and straightened. He still needed her under his shoulder, but she wasn’t dragging him anymore. They walked awkwardly but at a good pace over the broken pavement. Ramel’s breath hitched as they waded through the shadows, and then they broke through into the sounds of the city.
They reached the alley where Ross had parked the truck those ages ago. She didn’t have the key but she had a spare stashed in a magnetic box in the undercarriage, one that needed a combination to unlock.
“Where are you hurt?” she asked Ramel as she carefully stepped away from him. He leaned against the dirty brick of the building beside the alley, his copper hair gleaming in a bar of light from one of the nearby street lamps. He didn’t seem to have heard her, his vibrant eyes staring into the distance, haunted. Ross felt her chest ache as she realized that his breath wasn’t hitching because he was in pain. Or maybe he was. But the Unseelie Knight was also weeping, tears tracking down his grimy face.
She swore under her breath and turned away. At least she could afford him a bit of privacy. “Farin, can you two hop off onto the hood of the truck for a moment?” she asked quietly, moving close to the vehicle.
The Glasidhe twins wordlessly jumped from her shoulder to the hood of the truck. Their movement was less than graceful, and Farin grabbed Forin to keep him from falling as they landed. Ross bellied under the truck to retrieve her spare key, the stench of the alleyway – wet pavement, garbage, that bayou smell so particular to New Orleans, where nothing ever seemed to dry – almost welcome after the scent of burning flesh. Of Corsica.
Ross pushed herself to her feet with a grimace, brushing gravel from her legs and trying to ignore the building aches in her back and shoulders. Ramel hadn’t moved. She dialed in the combination and slid the box open, scooping out the key with a flash of triumph.
“Come on,” she said gently to Ramel. “L
et’s at least get you sitting down, and I can see if I can do anything else for you.”
He wordlessly obeyed her. His silent compliance worried her more than his struggle inside the warehouse. She opened the passenger door for him and he climbed into the cab of the truck. She shut the door, collected Forin and Farin from the hood and climbed into the driver’s seat, locking them in. After allowing the Glasidhe to step down onto the dashboard, she turned to Ramel.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry for getting you into this mess.”
That spurred a response from him. He stirred and turned toward her. She reached up and flicked on the overhead light, throwing into relief the bruising on his face.
“Not your fault,” he said. “Molly would have done this…whether I was there or not.”
“She said she was doing it so no one else would have to endure what you two did,” Ross said, reaching into the back seat and hooking a finger through the strap of the medical kit she always kept stocked in her vehicle.
Ramel leaned his head back against the seat. “You have your own stories…of doomed lovers. From your poets.” He stared into nothing. “That seems to be…my continual fate.”
Ross wondered what he meant by that cryptic remark but she let it slide. She put the key in the ignition and started the truck, adjusting the air conditioning and marking the time. Fifteen minutes. Would she hear anything if the warehouse exploded or would that strange pocket of silence suck it all in like a black hole? She blinked as a snatch of memory played like a clip of a movie in her mind’s eye: Molly kneeling in front of Ramel, Corsica’s voice low and purring in the background as Molly slid a silver knife down Ramel’s bare chest. Ross shuddered, feeling sick but compressing the feeling down. Now was not the time to give in to emotion.
“Let me see your chest,” she said, unzipping the medical kit. The sound was loud in the enclosed space.
Still staring into the distance, Ramel pulled his shirt over his head with stiff movements. The rippled scars of his burns were fading but still apparent. Ross leaned over as he sat back with a sigh.
“I was the first to kiss the Bearer, though,” he said musingly, almost to himself.
Farin gave a doubtful snort from the dashboard as Ross inspected the cut. It ran from the base of Ramel’s throat to his navel, neatly bisecting his sleek torso. Ross found herself running her eyes over the lines of his body again, hardly able to believe that he’d nearly died only weeks ago. From a purely professional medical standpoint, his body should have wasted somewhat during recovery, she thought as she ripped open a packet of gauze and began to clean the worst parts of the wound, where grime darkened the congealed blood. Tending to the cut gave her something to do. It gave her hands something concrete, her mind something to focus on other than the potential mortal peril of the people she loved most in the world.
“You’re wondering whether you should run back in,” Ramel murmured. He didn’t wince as she applied antiseptic to the cut. It had already clotted, so she didn’t bandage it. Smoothing the ointment onto the wound with light fingers gave her time to think about her reply. It was a disconcerting feeling, not knowing what to say.
“You cannot help,” said Farin to Ross, her voice grave.
“I find that a little hard to believe,” Ross replied to the Glasidhe.
“You are strong for a mortal,” conceded Farin, “but the bone sorcerer is stronger.” She bared her teeth at the mention of the conjurer, once a Northman and now a pawn in Corsica’s game. Molly’s game, Ross corrected herself silently.
Ross pressed her lips together. She checked the clock. Six minutes had passed. Eight more until it was time to evacuate. “You’re right,” she said finally, more to see if the words would help stop the pit in her stomach from expanding any farther. She checked herself again for injuries, a bone-deep exhaustion settling into her body now that they were out of immediate danger. Worry still gnawed at her, but her body recognized that the imminent peril to Ramel was over, at least for now.
She was pretty sure her nose was broken – the fragmented memory of Corsica grinning manically as she hit Ross flashed in her mind’s eye like the sun glinting off a shard of broken glass. That promised a nice headache. And the welts on her wrists from the bindings would turn into impressive bruises in a few hours. Her ribs felt like she’d taken a few kicks, but after running her fingers over her sides experimentally, she felt reasonably confident that nothing was broken. It didn’t feel like anyone was stabbing her when she breathed, so there was that, too.
Three more minutes passed. The silence in the cab of the truck thickened She adjusted the air conditioning, glancing in concern at Ramel as he shivered. The Glasidhe twins kept quiet, stunned or in shock or both.
Then the truck vibrated with a rumble that shuddered through the ground like the far-off echo of an earthquake. Ross looked sharply at Ramel. The Unseelie Knight sat up straighter, his green eyes gleaming like shards of emerald in the shadows.
“Something’s happening,” said Ross.
Had the twins not been so exhausted by their ordeal in the iron-wrapped cage, they would have certainly had a cheeky reply. Something along the lines of How observant, the words uttered dryly by Forin or with exuberant sarcasm by Farin.
Unlike the rumble of the ground that had accompanied the explosion in the warehouse, this vibration intensified. Ross lowered her jaw to relieve the pressure in her ears as the air tightened. She glanced at Ramel again, feeling her eyes widen in question, but he didn’t offer any sort of explanation.
Duke had to bang on the hood of the truck to get her attention. She jumped guiltily and unlocked the cab door as he wrenched on the door handle. Niall climbed into the truck, white as a sheet, blue blood smeared over the side of his face.
“Where’s Vivian?” Ross said, her voice coming out as a yell in the tight, vibrating white noise. Everything seemed thick, the city flexing around them.
“She’s coming,” said Duke, his pistol still in his hand as he slid into the back seat and shut the door. “Get ready to exfil, pull out into the street.”
Ross wordlessly put the truck into gear, her mind slipping into the unquestioning state that existed between thought and action. A bare second to decide if the action was acceptable, and then she was moving. That was how it had to be in a gunfight, bullets spitting around you, little shards of rock and dust flying up as rounds impacted the cement or the mud brick or the godforsaken hard packed dirt of the ground. That was how it had to be in a burning building, flames raging hungrily through the structure, flickering columns that mesmerized as they sucked the oxygen out of the air and seared everything into ash. And now it was how it had to be in the dark alleyway next to this strange slice of another world in an abandoned factory as Ross pulled the truck out onto the light-smeared road. It had started to rain, and streaks of neon light reflected on the black wet street.
“What happened?” she yelled again. She could barely hear her words. She didn’t know if Duke even heard her. She should be ecstatic that he was in the back seat, smelling like wet dog and holding security out the back window of the cab with his pistol. But this strange vibration squeezed everything tight, emotion and her heartbeat and the sound of her breath rasping in and out of her lungs.
Duke didn’t answer her. Ross flexed her fingers around the steering wheel, felt the cool leather under her skin, let her foot off the brake just enough to feel the truck inch forward. Control. She was in control of this great rumbling beast. She wasn’t powerless, bound to a pole by that bitch with the red markings on her face. Why had she ever gone to try to reason with Molly? What stupidity had driven her to think that she could just ask Corsica not to kill anymore and that would be the end of it?
Another fragment of recollection glinted in Ross’s mind. Damn them, they’d done something to her memories. Shattered them like a mirror, reflecting fifteen different versions like a funhouse mirror twisting shapes and colors into foreign objects. A wave of rage washed over her,
followed closely by nausea, as she processed the image on that shard now glimmering in her mind’s eye: a kid no more than twelve, the whites shockingly bright around his wide dark eyes as Corsica dragged him across the room with no more effort than a wildcat carries a thrashing rabbit. Ross felt her hands tighten around the steering wheel. What the hell had Corsica done? Then, another flash: Molly, leaning over a middle-aged woman who was crying, smiling at the woman’s pleas for mercy. Ross felt bile rise in the back of her throat. What had she seen during her hours at the warehouse?
Reports of smaller detonations close to the truck broke through the thick white noise of the quivering world. Ross dragged in a breath and slammed the door on the flashes of memory. Time enough for that later. Time enough to fall apart once everyone was safe.
The thought rose in her mind unbidden: would they ever be safe again?
“Get ready to go!” yelled Duke, rolling down his window and leaning half of his body out of the truck so that he could bring up his weapon. Ross looked in the rearview mirror, catching a flare of brightness followed by one of the small detonations. Then the truck bounced slightly on its wheels as two figures leapt into the bed, climbing over the tailgate with urgent speed.
“Go, go, go!”
Ross snapped her attention back to the road and stomped on the accelerator, the truck’s tires squealing on the wet pavement. One of the figures in the flatbed popped up, red hair whirling like flames in the sudden wind as the truck gained speed, barreling down the road. Vivian threw one last ball of fire at a pursuer that Ross couldn’t see. Duke let out a whoop as he slid back inside the cab and ejected the magazine from his pistol. Ross couldn’t look away from the road anymore, but she knew that he was counting the rounds left in his magazine and squaring up that count with what he had in his head and the spare rounds he always carried for reload.