by K. Gorman
At least, there aren’t any syringes.
Outside, the light flashed on her level—Christ, had they already made it up here?
She hurried inside, dodging the misplaced arm of a mannequin just inside the doorway, and squatted in the empty space opposite the bread. Placing a hand over her nose and mouth, she slid down, her attention fixed on the slight glow of light that illuminated the overhanging edge of the counter.
Footsteps sounded outside.
Yep, they were on her level.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
She froze as the flashlight swung around, catching the grime on the front windows. The store darkened a second later, and she resisted the urge to relax, instead listening hard to the footsteps that had paused close to the escalator bridge.
The person had three choices. They could go across the bridge to the other side of the mall, which would be awesome for her, or they could take a left and follow the side of the mall back the other way—an equally great option—or they could come toward her.
The flashlight swung again, and she thought she heard the person mutter—a man, perhaps?
Then, the footsteps started up again.
Toward her.
God fucking damnit.
Where the hell was Aiden? Just how long did a teleport take?
A door creaked open close by. Not the store she was hiding in, thankfully. It sounded more like the one which had the banner.
She gave a little thanks that she hadn’t hidden in there.
A few seconds later, it closed again. The footsteps continued. She held her breath, ducking as the light flashed into the windows of her store again, illuminating the air above her and shining on the edge of the counter.
The store dimmed as it moved once more. With the backsplash his light created, the store didn’t go quite as dark as it had before. She could just barely make out the silhouettes of the beer bottles, along with the ghostly shape of the mannequin arm at the far end.
Slowly, she breathed again.
Beer bottles were fine company. She didn’t mind staying with them for hours, so long as whoever was out there didn’t come in here.
Easing herself up, she risked a look over the counter—and froze.
The man was just on the other side of the window, his back to her and his flashlight pointing farther up the hall.
Her phone received another message.
The quick chirp was deafening in the quiet.
The light snapped back. She smacked her chin on the counter as she ducked out of sight.
Too late. He’d seen her.
Broken glass crunched outside. The door gave a slight groan as he entered the store.
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
“Come out. I know you’re there.”
Yep, definitely a male voice. She hid a groan as she rested her forehead against her hand.
Well, at least Aiden should be here soon. How long did it take Mages to teleport?
She pulled herself back up, grimacing as her injured hand gripped the edge of the counter. A beer bottle clinked as her toe knocked against it.
She squinted as the beam of his flashlight moved to her face. “Hi.”
“Come out from behind there. Slowly. No magic.”
Slow was not a problem for her. She eased herself over the trash and bottles on the floor, leaning heavily on the counter, and winced as she used her injured hand to open the half-door separating her from the rest of the store.
It was only when she was on the other side, in full view of him, that she noticed he had a gun.
She froze, her attention fixed on it.
Oh, hell.
A familiar shock slipped through her system, knocking through her bones. In an instant, she felt the pain in her injured finger subside from her awareness, replaced by a thick haze around the inside of her brain and a rise of static in the back of her mind. Heat burned up within her, flushing her skin as her hand began to shake.
“Don’t shoot me,” she said, her voice a shaky, ragged whisper. A slice of pain brushed briefly across her senses as she raised her hand, agitating the wound. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you should tell your boss that.”
She barely heard him, too focused on the gun. She tried to look away from it, but it was as if it was a magnet and her entire consciousness had been taken over by iron filings. Her foot hit a bottle, and the thump and roll it did against the floor made him flinch.
In the next moment, the gun had raised to her face.
“I said no magic!”
That shook her from her episode.
A frown creased her face as she glanced up, a mix of alarm and confusion spiking through her as she attempted to see his gaze beyond the gun’s muzzle. “I’m not. I—”
A flash on her hand cut her off. A line of molten orange color slid out of the cuff of her shirt, formed a neat, spider-web circle around the transfer mark, then split into five to run along the bones of her fingers.
Now that she was paying attention, she could feel the other lines sliding around her body, mapping every major point in a warm orange-gold.
The tracking spell.
“It’s not me!” She thrust her hands up in the air in surrender—Hell, he was never going to believe her. She stumbled back, knocking into one of the mannequins as she retreated, her hands a fiery blaze of light by this point. It was coming up her neck, now, sliding over the ridge of her chin to capture her face, similar to how the Phoenix had. “Don’t shoot!
On the tail end of her words, the gun went off.
Heat flashed over her. She lunged back with a yelp, crashing sidelong into several mannequins and falling to the floor in a pile of plastic limbs and bodies. Pain flashed through her hip, elbow, and shoulder as she landed, the mannequins clunking down around her in a cacophony of hollow-sounding thuds and bounces, but she didn’t stop, the adrenaline in her blood keeping her scrambling back, her heart pumping in a frenzied panic.
Then, slowly, over several seconds, she realized she hadn’t been hit.
The gun had been pointed straight at her face, just over a meter away, and it had missed.
She was unharmed.
Behind the glare of the man’s flashlight, a glowing orange sigil rose in the air, barely illuminating the pointing hand it was attached to as Aiden stepped out of the gloom, a sneer of sheer disgust twisted across his face.
“You just shot an unarmed girl,” he spat, jabbing a finger toward the man.
The man spun around with a quick, loud suck of breath, both gun and flashlight going with him. Mieshka was left in the dark, watching with a thudding heart as the light caught Aiden’s worn T-shirt, ragged jeans, and pale skin, not quite overpowering the glow of the fiery sigil on the back of his hand.
“S-she was doing magic.”
Aiden’s sneer twisted further.
“No, she wasn’t. I was.”
Fire erupted between them, blooming mid-air in front of their faces, orange and gold melding together in a movement more controlled and organized than any of the military’s explosions could do—she caught a brief glimpse of sigils within it—before it blew the man right off his feet.
He landed in a limp pile a couple meters away, cradled by several old, plastic bags and the sagging remnants of a shelving unit. The gun and light clattered to the floor and skidded, smacking hard into the base of the sales counter.
The firelight faded, leaving only the two sigils—one on her hand and one on Aiden’s—and the flashlight as the sole sources of illumination in the room.
Glass crunched. Aiden’s foot stepped into the flashlight’s beam as he stooped to pick it up. He pointed it first at the man who lay prone on the floor, gave him a quick exam, then swung it over to Mieshka.
She flinched as the light glared into her eyes. He aimed the beam away from her face.
“Are you hurt?”
Her hands shook. She could still see the shape of the man’s body in the di
mness. He wasn’t moving.
“Is he dead?”
“No. Just unconscious. Is that blood?” Aiden focused the light on her hand, bending to get a closer look. “Twelve suns, are you okay?”
“I cut it on a window. Haven’t had a chance to clean it, yet.”
“You’re a bloody mess.” His gaze shifted from her hand to her face and then the rest of her body, giving her a more prolonged assessment. His eyebrows rose as he squatted down to her level. “Ilia, look at you.”
“I also fell on my face. And my ass, just now.”
“You have been busy.” With a gentle touch, he took her hand in his, turning it over and easing the bandage up to examine the wound. “Let’s get you back to my office. Buck’s our medical guy. Jo gives him lots of practice patching people up, so he’s pretty good, and our first aid kit is well stocked.” His gaze shifted up to meet hers. “He’ll say if you need a hospital visit or not.”
She nodded, then made to get up. He helped her, pulling on her uninjured arm to keep her steady. For a moment, her vision blotted out as a wave of static rolled through it. She closed her eyes, breathing through the sensation, then opened them.
“We’re walking?”
“Yep. Sorry. Can’t take people with me when I teleport. That’s just one of those unbreakable magic rules that I can’t bend.”
She swallowed. “Okay. I lost my flashlight, though.”
“That’s okay. We’ll take this one.” He waved the one in his hand and made a gesture to the man on the floor. “He’s not using it anymore.”
“You’re going to leave him without a light?”
“He was going to leave you without a life.”
Okay, that was a good point.
“Keep that hand above your heart,” Aiden continued. “I could cauterize it here, but that would hurt—and it looks like it’s already closing on its own.”
Chapter 20
Mieshka was in shock. Aiden could tell that much, at least. Stiff movement, slow to react, not seeming to notice that her wound had bled through the tissues she’d wrapped around it and was starting to leave blots and streaks on the things it touched—mostly her chin and neck. At least, she was holding it upright now, hovering between her shoulder and the top of her head, depending on when he looked at her. A tacky string of orange hair stuck to the side of her cheek, unbending when she moved. Under the blood that smeared across the back of her hand, the transfer mark he’d put on her blazed a fiery golden-orange.
Goddesses’ fury, no wonder the kid had shot her. She was a walking horror movie.
But the cut had seemed half-healed when he’d looked at it. Just how long had she been down here, running and hiding?
He’d get an answer, eventually. After all was said and done—though a smidgen of worry egged on him from the back of his mind. With her already injured, would the Phoenix become extra-protective when it transferred into her? As far as crystal-spirits went, it was a rather dense and one-sided one, and it had already burned him once defending her. He had to make sure he could still get to her once it transferred in.
Of course, he hadn’t actually had the whole transfer conversation with her, yet.
That could wait until his office, after Buck had bandaged her up. No use talking to her while she was shocky.
The transfer mark would keep her warm, at least. And he’d make sure she didn’t fall. She’d already stumbled into him once, on the way down one of the escalators—tripping over the steps with her sneakers. He hadn’t made any comment, only braced against her weight and helped her back to a standing position, giving her a quick check for any twisted ankles or other new injuries.
Now, though, he was curious.
“What were you doing down here, anyway?”
Her footsteps paused behind him for a moment. Perhaps she was more coherent than he’d thought, despite her shock symptoms.
“I met this boy,” she started, pausing to grimace as she accidentally bumped her injured hand into the railing. “I convinced him to take me here.”
‘Convinced him,’ huh? He’d started out thinking maybe the boy had been the trouble, but it sounded like she’d engineered it. “Does he live down here?”
“Yeah…”
Her voice trailed off, preoccupied in a way he couldn’t quite read.
He bit off the questions as they went down another escalator—no need to take her focus off the stairs. As they descended, his light caught the back of what appeared to be a Valentine’s Day banner, nearly eighty years old.
“Did I get shot?” she asked.
“Technically, no. You only got shot at. I put up a shield.”
Usually, his shields incinerated bullets. This time, he’d just used it to deflect. If they went back and looked, they’d probably find a bullet hole in the ceiling.
“You can do that?”
“Yes.”
He decided not to point out the very large shield he’d helped engineer above the city. She’d figure it out when the shock wore off.
“Could I do that?”
“Yes—and sooner than you think.” He glanced back, reversing his original decision to delay the conversation. Might as well have it now since it was coming up. “I’d like you to absorb the Phoenix today.”
She stopped dead. Her eyes widened as they met his. “What?”
“As I’m sure you’ve heard, Sophia—the Water Mage—has been abducted. Either the same is going to happen to me, or we get proactive about it.” He gave her a grim smile. “I’ve been running some data today. Each crystal is connected to each other on a kind of metaphysical level—especially the four in Ryarne, since they are siblings—but I suspect there’s a Lost Tech device blocking my engines from tracking them. There’s a small, speculative chance that you could bypass that block and lead us to the crystals.”
Actually, he had no idea how big or small the chance was, but he greeted each situation with a large dose of pessimism. There was no data on what he wanted her to do, and, apart from some very dubious claims from incredibly ancient Lürian myths and stories, and more than a few novels of straight fiction, there’d been no success with direct human-to-crystal communication.
Everything went through spells and Maanai.
“I thought you said I shouldn’t absorb the Phoenix yet. Because it would overpower me with energy and burn everything in sight.”
“Yeah, well, we’re kind of running out of options here—worst case scenario, we can stick you in a fire retardant room for a week or so while it settles itself out. There are also some dampening spells we can use. Sophia’s probably the best for it. She was always smarter about that kind of thing. Plus, she’s Water and a natural… anti-Fire person.”
Anti-Fire person? Etania’s curse, he was forgetting how to speak English.
He motioned her to follow him out onto the landing, then swung the flashlight around, getting his bearings. They were back on the second floor, at least, which served as the main artery in this place. A glance over the rail made the floor of the mall come into sight. A Tyrannosaurus rex looked up at him from the gap, old, covered in dust, and with a yellow graffiti tag marking its left haunch—which told him that they were close to the exit.
Shouldn’t he be seeing the lights right about now?
“Why’s it so dark in here?” he asked.
“Chris turned the circuit off. I guess no one’s bothered to turn it back on.”
Well, anyone he knew who’d been responsible for engineering the mall’s reworkings would probably not be chasing random girls in the dark. He doubted her pursuers would even know where to find the breaker panels.
“Is Chris the boy?”
“Yes.” She gave her head a little shake, which seemed like an unconscious movement on her part. “Do you think he’s okay?”
Aiden paused. “You said he lives down here?”
“Yeah.”
“Then he’ll probably be fine.”
She hesitated. “Robin doesn’t live down her
e. She’s over in North Quad.”
He squinted back at her. “Who’s Robin?”
“My other friend. She came down, too.” Another pause, this time with a growing frown. “She led the people away.”
Great. So he had at least one teenager unaccounted for.
It wasn’t exactly something he could worry about right now.
“She’s going to have to wait. I’ll send a note to Roger’s crew.”
“He said he was understaffed,” she pointed out.
“He said right—we need to find Sophia, and we need to find out who’s responsible for this. My engine can’t hold the shield for long, and I can’t risk the crystal, so either I need to find them, or we need to evacuate.”
That must have struck a chord with her. Her gaze sharpened, and he felt a small draw on his power—the transfer still linked them, and her emotions likely called on it.
“You’re going to abandon the city?”
“Hey, now, I’ve given the ministers plenty of warning—and I am not Westran. If they’ve mismanaged the war so badly that someone has come in to make a direct attack against shield generation, then that is their fault as much as it is my problem. They’ve known about this for a long, long time.”
She stared at him, her eyes dark and accusing.
“Look, I’ll send Jo back down to find your friend, okay? She knows the Underground better than any of us.”
By the sharpness of her gaze, he guessed the change of topic had not gone unnoticed, but eventually, she nodded and began to pick her way after him.
It took her several minutes to speak again.
“So, I take it my apprenticeship has become non-optional?”
He frowned. “I thought you wanted to have it.”
“I did. I do. Dad permitting.”
“What’s wrong with your dad?”
“He doesn’t like the Underground. Says there’s bad people down here. Gangs.”