Blood from Stone

by Laura Anne Gilman

  Weapons. Bow and arrows and stone knives and they were plunged into Wren’s heart all at once, stabbing sharp and sudden. If she hadn’t known it wasn’t real, she would have died, then and there.

  The power of the attack was too much: this wasn’t just the snarls of history, pissed off at being passed by. They were using the exhibits, knowingly or not, to attack her. Bastards. That was what they did; they used things lesser than themselves, like tools, and never mind what it did to those tools.

  The tube was chafing against her slicks, the material having to work overtime wicking sweat off her skin, the book clutched to her side. It would be easier to have current carry them both but she was afraid to let them go, afraid the guard would try to grab them, would get his hands on them.

  “Let it go.”

  A whisper in her ear, a coaxing lure, twitching like a hook in the water, glinting like gold. “You’re so tired, so scared. Let it go, and you can rest, you’ll be safe, he won’t be interested in you anymore.”

  Wren’s eyes widened, her skin prickling under the sweat. Air caught in her throat and she hiccupped painfully. The nearest exhibit, a display of Native garb, swayed forward ominously—or was it her imagination?

  “So scared, poor thing…” The voice was back, trying to pry open her scalp and climb inside her brain, painted fingernails and perfect teeth the image of concerned comfort and safety, if only she, Wren, would turn to her, give up, give in.

  Wren almost laughed, and the deerskin outfit swayed back away from the sound. Idiots. They thought that she was scared? She was pissed. They threatened her demon, were fiddling about with her damned livelihood for their own damn egos, and using piss-stupid old magics they probably had no clue about, hurting this poor schlub who was going to have a heart attack from all the running they were making him do, and then they tried to mindfuck her into just giving up because she was, oh, poor little her, scared?

  Old magics had been abandoned because they were unpredictable, unreliable. Not weaker—stronger in some ways, especially if you weren’t picky about the price you paid. Blood magic, sex magic, the exchange of power for power. That was what these bastards were doing.

  Current was cleaner. It asked more of you, but the eventual price was less. And nobody else had to pay for what you took.

  Wren had used old magics before, too, and had them used on her. She could play that game, if that was the game these bastards wanted to play. But she would take precautions, negotiate the price to be paid ahead of time. She just had to figure out how. And fast.

  Take blood from stone. Give blood. Stone. Bedrock for strength, but more…what was it that she wasn’t remembering?

  She spun on her heel, the book dropping to the ground in front of her, and waited. The guard blew through the doorway, clearly expecting her to still be running, and almost plowed into her.

  The conflict was clear on his face: the man, his training, said to grab the intruder, to arrest the thief. Whoever was riding him, meanwhile, was demanding that he grab the book. But to do so would require him to go down low in front of her, opening himself to attack, and he was a smart enough man, normally, not to do that willingly.

  In the seconds it took for man and rider to wage a war of wills, Wren acted. Not outwardly, but inward, burrowing down deep into herself, into the core, through her core and into the bedrock of her life.

  She didn’t need old magics. She had something better.

  There was no sense of doorways or windows, no sideways slip from one awareness to the other, but a layering of the two-into-one, like layers of onion skin: thin and crackling, but malleable at the same time.

  *Valere?* A sense of—not surprise, but distraction.

  She apologized for the intrusion, even as she was laying hold of the solid grounding that he represented. *Just need to take a bit.*

  She felt him brace for a blast of current, but instead she gathered double fistfuls of current inside her, the darker, tarry strength, the cobras of current, poison in their fangs and venom in their motions, and shoved them into him, cutting furrows in the bone, etching her own signature into his solid, stolid self. Stone, current running like blood, the poison leeching out in the stone of his psyche, coming out clean and strong, still dark but smoother, less poisoned.

  Less wizzed.

  Blood not from stone, but into stone.

  This was what demons were for. This was his gift to her; her gift to him, to trust him with herself, utterly and entirely, everything inside, the shameful as well as the pleasing, the illness as well as the health. The hatred, as well as the love. Into stone, and stone would purify.

  Understanding brought a deeper connection, and through that connection she saw, for an instant, through his eyes.

  Sergei, his normally sleekly tidy hair a mess, knocked into a corner of P.B.’s apartment, his face bleeding and bruised, his eyes closed, lids heavy-shadowed and brow furrowed as though in pain. Another man stood over him, thick arms and heavy fists, reaching down as though to pick him up to administer another beating. Thick white-furred arms, holding—a chair? Part of a chair, at least, the ladderback of a former chair, bringing it down on the stranger’s head.

  *Bit busy right now.*

  His thought came without alarm; annoyance, yes, and disgust, and a bit of fierce amusement.

  *So I see,* she thought back at him.

  Sergei’s eyes opened, and the pale brown of them bypassed the attacker and went directly to her—no, to P.B., but she felt the impact, as well, the fierce delight of an all-out brawl. His internal energy surged almost like current, and half a city away her system responded, taking the almost-tangible crackle out of the air and bundling it up as though it was a live wire, channeling it—the demon acting as safe-conductor between them—and running it back down into her core, bright and alive, clean and sparking. In that instant, the three of them were one, complete and delighted.

  Then the chair came down on the back of the stranger’s head, and as the man doubled over, Sergei gut-punched him with obvious, malicious relish in the act.

  Boys, she thought, and left them to it.

  Back in the museum, barely a second had passed, but it was long enough for the rider to have regained control of the guard and worked out some kind of compromise, controlling mind and ridden body. He scuttled sideways around her, kicking the book out of her range and then, rather than diving for it the way she expected, lunged toward her.

  Current surged in reaction, the purified current carrying her outrage without rage, her disgust and horror under control but no less powerful for that. It twined, ribbons of color and dark forming one giant serpent so strong the guard saw it with physical eyes, forcing him back a half step in shock before his rider sent him forward again, clearly against his own wishes.

  For that alone, Wren hated her opponent—if they did this to another human, an innocent, what worse would they do to a demon in their control? What would they do with that kind of freedom, that kind of power?

  The current struck, and Wren had a moment of satisfaction as she felt it sizzle through his skin, and dropped him unconscious onto the floor. A shimmer of blackness rose out of him, kicked out of his system by the blow.

  Poor bastard, she thought, reaching down to grab the book, but you can’t have this book. I’ll burn it, first. She must have said it out loud, or thought it loud enough, because the black magic expanded into a full-size cloud of energy, fierce striations of no-color at its core, pulsing like a dozen hearts. Glass shattered behind her, and a roar—psychic, not physical, but no less eardrum-shattering for all that, filled the room and echoed down the hallways.

  “You have got to be shitting me,” Wren said, already running. No need to look back; she already knew what was gaining on her. A giant grizzly bear, half of his teeth fake and no digestive ability whatsoever inside his taxi-dermied body, but wanting to tear her flesh from bone anyway: not for dinner but because, suddenly, he could.

  She had captured a stuffed horse once. Mor
e accurately, she had trapped the body of an old stuffed warhorse that had been inhabited by a pookha. But it had taken years of working the case part-time, chasing after a being with an agenda of its own. This was entirely different, and wasn’t nobody paying her to do a damn thing except run.

  The old-magic mages were pissed.

  Around her, exhibits were moving, clearly feeling the effects of whatever spell her assailants were using, but the bear seemed to have taken the largest dose, as it was the only one actually out of its enclosure and doing more than looking and gesturing in her direction.

  Safest place, where’s the safest place? She knew this museum, damn it. She should know where to go. Something without livestock in the display. The obvious choice would be the exotic minerals display, but it was too far, would take too long, and anyway, there was danger there, as well, that damned meteor, why she had avoided it originally. Somewhere things aren’t so angry, she decided, almost losing her balance on an overpolished bit of floor, and knocking into the side of a water fountain. Where things get what they think is their due, where people go oooo….

  Her mind was already there, calculating escape routes, even as she changed her direction mid-stride and backtracked right past the bear. It wasn’t as agile as it had been in life, and took several paces to turn around and start back after her.

  By then, Wren was already heading across the main lobby, and into the dinosaur exhibit.

  By the standards of larger museums, the exhibit wasn’t much. But it was enough, like jumping out of thick, humid summer air into a crisp wet stream, the difference in psychic pressure: for the first time since going into fugue state, Wren didn’t feel anger or frustration but rather a smooth, almost mellow contentment.

  Guess being dead and dust that long really does give you new perspective, she thought, morbidly amused, before a baby T. rex reached down as though to sniff at the top of her head like an inquisitive cat. Wren yelped, jumping forward and ducking under the outstretched arms of another, unrecognizable dinosaur skeleton, feeling the cool finger bones brush against her cheek. Oh, holy mother of God, get me out of here.

  In response, the roar of the ursa major returned as the furred corpse lumbered through the door and batted aside baby rex, letting the bones scatter across the floor like giant pickup sticks. Wren barely had time to gulp before mama rex’s head swung around and down, looking directly at the grizzly as though she still had eyes.

  Wren was pretty sure she wet herself. That was the thing about old magic. You could get it started, but you didn’t always get to control where it went. Especially when you went riding someone without their consent, the way these idiots had. Everything was moving, like some damned Disney animatronics ride, and it was a hell of a lot more fun when you got warned before it started that you were on a dark ride.

  Wren put on another burst of speed toward where an unmarked emergency exit should be, according to the floor plan. Unlike the public ones, it shouldn’t be alarmed from the inside—employees used it to take smoke breaks, during shift.

  Even if it screamed in every alarm in every precinct in town, at this point she didn’t care. If she could get outside, she somehow knew, the spell couldn’t follow her. It was trapped within the confines, where the exhibits lived, bounded by their territory, their comfort zone. That was the limit to old magic, where current had none.

  Fine by her. She’d done the job; it was time to go home. Let someone else do the goddamned cleanup this time.

  twenty

  Wren busted out of the museum’s emergency side door and into the narrow—and thankfully trash-free—alley between the buildings. If anyone had been lurking for her, or if they had thought to post any kind of guard on the various exits, she would have been toast, but apparently the competition had focused all their talent—and Talent—on controlling the guard. She hoped they choked on their incantations and died purple-faced in embarrassing-to-explain positions.

  Clutching the book and papers to her closely, she edged toward the street. Just because it looked and sounded clear was no reason to assume it actually was clear. Lots of jobs went south at the very end, because someone got cocky.

  Barely shoving her nose out, she took a quick look. A woman in a long coat, walking a short-legged brown dog down the street: both of them looking bored to death by the process. A transit bus cruising down Fifth Avenue, lumbering to a stop. Nobody got on or off, and it rolled forward again when the light changed.

  No police cars, no yowling masses, no anything out of place. No scent or sight of current in the air, beyond the normal flickers. If she went into fugue she might be able to find more, but…no. Not worth it. A woman and two men wearing business casual walked up to the museum, disappearing around to the main side entrance, where peons and delivery people went to be let inside. The admin staff was arriving. Time to be going.

  No sign of Sergei.

  Of course not. He was off having a bonding bar brawl with P.B.

  Damn it, he was supposed to be here, waiting for the doors to open. He had her change of clothing! Not to mention a bag to hold her Retrieval, so it wasn’t all quite so much out in the open. The tube could be carrying anything, bike messengers and couriers used them all the time, nobody looked twice, but the book was…not the sort of thing you lugged around Manhattan, as a rule.

  The irritation flared, and then faded. He had a reason to go haring off, otherwise he would be here. She needed to finish the job, then worry about her boys. Anything else was counterproductive.

  She had to get away from here, before the Dutch mages—and their magic-slave—found her.

  “too tired

  to deal with this shit:

  safely home.”

  The words could have meant anything, in the mouths of any other Talent. Wren’s intent shaped the cantrip into a heavy boost for her no-see-me, feeling it kick in and crank through her system until she thought she might be able to walk right up to a cop and kick him in the shins and not have him even feel it.

  Not that she was going to test that theory. At least not until she was a few blocks away. Taking a deep breath, she walked out into the street, and strode away from the museum, the book and the tube clutched to her chest like a baby rescued from fire. Every step she took, the tension in her back grew less, but the weight of the book became heavier.

  She had it. Now what the hell were they going to do with it?

  With each step, as the adrenaline of the job wore off completely, Wren’s entire body began to feel the results of the mad chase. She had a shin splint, and a pulled muscle in her side, a depressing number of bruises, and at some point she had conked her elbow hard enough that it still twinged painfully when she moved. Four or five blocks away from the museum a downtown bus pulled to the curb just as she passed by the stop, and Wren took the opportunity to slip on behind a woman with twin toddlers. One of them, a black-haired little angel with a devilish look on her face, caught sight of Wren despite the no-see-me spell, and looked as if she was going to say something, but was distracted by her mother urging her onto one of the plastic seats.

  The incident made her think, again, about the kid she’d left upstate. Was his dad behaving himself? She hoped so. If not, the Tri-Com would do something. They understood; they had to take better care of their kidlets. There couldn’t be a repeat of the Lost Ones.

  She had a sudden vision of a dozen or so kidlets being herded by exasperated mentors, like some kind of demented Cosa version of a crèche, and started to giggle.

  Fortunately, her stop came up next, before anyone noticed that an empty patch of air was having hysterics.

  She made it through the streets and up the stairs of her apartment, flipped the door locks open, and locked them securely behind her. Then she stashed the book, notebook, and tube in the back of her overcrowded hall closet where only a trained archaeologist could excavate them safely, peeled off her slicks and tossed them into a corner, and crawled, almost literally, into bed, tears of exhaustion forming at the c
orner of her eyes even as her body touched the mattress.

  “I’m getting too old for this shit,” she told the apartment, and in her exhaustion she could have sworn that she heard the walls and floors hum with sympathy, before she passed out.

  She woke when a weight dropped onto the bed next to her. Still exhausted, she reached out, expecting to touch Sergei’s warm skin. The thick, scratchy texture her fingers encountered had her sitting upright, the covers sliding off her body as she scooted away from whatever it was breathing heavily next to her.

  Current flashed like lightning, filling the room, and all the air was expelled from her lungs.

  “Whoa, careful with the remaining fur!”

  “You scared the crap out of me,” she said, then did a double take as she actually saw what she had touched. “What the hell happened?”

  P.B. tried to smile, but it came out as more of a grimace, the patchy skin where fur had been shaved away to allow for the stitches stretching the demon’s face uncomfortably. Between that, and the bandages, and what looked like a black eye, the demon looked less like a cuddly stuffed toy and more like the tail end of a hard riot. “Your partner has a hell of an uppercut.”

  “Sergei?” She started to get out of bed, then remembered that she had striped off her slicks when she came in and not bothered to put anything on before collapsing into bed. “Demon, close your eyes!”

  “Like I haven’t seen it all before,” P.B. grumbled, but obligingly placed one bandaged paw over his eyes and turned his face away. “Sergei’s fine, by the way,” he continued as she searched the room for her robe, wrapping herself in it and tying the tie firmly. “A few stitches here and there, and a hell of a headache, but he’s fine.”

  “Stitches?” That got her to stop, half-dressed, and look at him. Stitches were okay, but if that was what he was telling her, there was more he wasn’t.