by Andy Hyland
With coaxing, punching and some help from Zack they got me upright. I brushed my fingers against the side of my head. They came away covered with blood. Shit. Maybe I had brain damage. “Yeah, we’ll get you checked out,” Julie told me. “All we have to do is stay alive first. Easy, right? We’ve done the hard part.”
I stepped and staggered, and with determination and momentum we made it back up to the hotel corridor. The sound was duller here, and I could make out other shouts from just out of sight, moving closer. Zack was leading, Ollie slung over his shoulder now, the time for tender loving care long past. With his free hand he was calling a cast together. I was next, supported by Julie, unable to do anything but watch and try to not be too much of a burden. Arabella took the rear, one hand holding a long curved knife and the other glowing with her own hex, ready for action.
A Mage-born appeared out of nowhere, stepping through the air in the way they’d appeared when we took down the slavers. He had his steel spike ready, eyes flicking across the area. But he materialized too close to Arabella, and she was scarily quick. Before he’d even registered the event that took his life, her blade had darted in and out of his chest, puncturing his heart and sending all the blood flowing in the wrong directions. She did this without losing a step.
Through the kitchens, and we were in the outside courtyard, moving faster, me almost tripping over my own feet. Two security guards ran at us from the left. Zack disarmed them with a flick of his wrist, while Arabella flanked them, slashing at their arms. Julie took a quick look round, decided that the nearest catering truck was the next logical step, and started dragging me over towards it. “Come on,” she screamed at me, adrenaline giving her a strength that she shouldn’t, by rights, have.
I glanced back. The security team were down and out, but three Mage-born ghosted in next to the steps, and they were ready. Zack threw up a ward to deflect the first hex, while Arabella simply flung herself to the side, narrowly avoiding the other attack. Three against two, and we were no longer in great condition. It wasn’t going to end well. The eldest of the Mage-born clearly knew this, and started to sneer as he pulled the next hex together for casting.
He never made it. From nowhere a rock the size of a small dog fell out of the sky and caved in his head, so suddenly that it was almost comical. What was left of his face seemed slightly puzzled as his corpse collapsed to the ground. The rock, instead of falling, twisted twice, did a quick barrel roll and soared upwards again. At the same moment a second rock slammed into the shoulder of one of the other Mage-born, sending her flying into a side wall.
“Nice job, boys,” Julie called back, as the second rock paused in its flight, turned, and snapped off a quick salute to her. Gargoyles. Pain in the ass sometimes, but at no point would you ever want to not be on their side. It made all that time swinging dead pigeons around my head to attract their attention worthwhile.
We jumped into the van, Zack and Arabella up front, and Julie in the back, trying to make Ollie and I as comfortable as possible. It was an impossible job and she needn’t have bothered. The van lurched forward and we flew back to the rear door, crashing through boxes and crates to get there. At least I could vaguely defend myself - Ollie was utterly helpless. With some effort, we managed to get him sandwiched between us, protecting him from the worst of the shock as Zack plowed through the gate and swung a hard left. He didn’t let up, and the ride didn’t get any easier from there on, but Julie’s family gargoyles, Gary and Kevin, did a good job and there was no sign of the Mage-born tailing us.
To be absolutely safe, and knowing that any decent commercial company would track vans like these by GPS, we changed vehicles twice. At surveillance camera blind-spots we could find with our eyes closed, we selected the most boring and easily-boosted options. Half an hour later, when Arabella was absolutely satisfied that we were in the clear, we rolled up to what Julie had started calling the Mal-cave. Liberty was waiting there with two mages when we screeched to a halt, and Zack and Julie got to take a break while Ollie and I were carried inside at speed.
With the doors closed, Liberty crouched over Ollie. He pulled out his phone and called without even looking at it. “You know where I am. I need four mages who know how to keep their mouths shut. And make sure one of them is Josephine. Tell her it’s Westgate all over again. She’ll know what I mean. Yes, four mages. Hang on.” He looked over at me. I tried to raise my hand and tell him I was fine, but my head was dropping and my mouth wouldn’t move when I told it to. The last thing I heard before it all went black was Liberty. “Change of plan. Make it eight mages. And call Josephine now.”
There were no dreams. No anything. Just a comforting darkness, and the sound of waves crashing on a distant shore. In time the edges of my vision became lighter, and I felt myself rising effortlessly as the waves faded into silence.
“Malachi,” someone said gently. “You back with us? Take your time.”
It took a while, but I managed to raise an eyelid. Liberty’s head was on a level with mine, but at an angle. A few seconds later, I realized he was upright and I was lying down. “Relax,” he told me. “No rush. As long as you need.”
“Is he awake?” said someone else from further away. Arabella. “Is he up?” No patience or calmness from her - she was frantic, desperate.
I tried to get up, but Liberty put a strong hand on my chest and pushed me back. “He’s back with us. Remember what we spoke about, girl.”
“Yeah, sure.” Her face appeared directly above mine. There was a bruise around her left eye that wasn’t there before. “Malachi, I know you’re hurt, and I know he’s telling you to take it easy, but you can’t. You just can’t. You’ve got to get up.”
I looked at Liberty, panicked. He frowned and nodded to someone I couldn’t see. A palm touched my forehead, and suddenly I wasn’t there anymore.
The next time my eyes opened it was darker. Still inside, but someone had dimmed the lights. Nobody around. No Liberty waiting for me to wake. With some effort I sat up, too quickly, making my head pound so hard I thought I was going to spew. After a period of absolute stillness I tried to stand. Success. But damn, it hurt.
Next job. Where was I, and where was everyone else? A bottle of water was on a table next to the makeshift bed I’d been stretched out on. I gulped half of it down and started feeling close to human again as I looked around. A small, square room, no furniture to speak of besides the bed and table. A single door.
Eric was waiting on the other side of the door. Well, not waiting exactly. Stepping slowly and methodically around a room that looked like a miniature version of the Mal-cave. Except that it had cages and glass tanks against the walls instead of boxes. And it stank to high heaven. Either Eric had a severe olfactory problem or he was too caught up in his note-taking to notice or care. I stood watching him for minutes, slowly drinking the rest of the water, while he went about his work.
Eventually his circuit brought him to a position where I could no longer be ignored. He looked up, more irritated than interested by my presence. “You’re up,” he said in a flat tone. “Good to see you’re better.”
“You need to put more feeling into statements like that. You’re too dead-pan. Won’t fool anyone.”
His cheek twitched in irritation. “It’s s-something I’m working on. Anyway, since you’re up, you’d b-better get upstairs. It’s g-going badly.”
“What’s going badly?”
“The war.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I found the stairs through another, secure-looking door. The noise grew louder as I ascended. The murmur of voices interspersed with shouts and the odd scream. I don’t know what I was expecting to find when I reached the top, but it wasn’t this.
The Mal-cave had been transformed, and not in a good way. The orderly worktables were shoved against the walls, crushing boxes, contents spilled across the floor. Dirty stained mattresses covered most of the floor, apart from a curtained-off area at the far end, near the main e
ntrance. My eyes wandered as I stepped carefully between the bodies that lay sprawled across whatever bedding had been found for them. Some were unconscious but still muttering and spitting in their drug-induced sleep. Others were awake, or at least their eyes were open, staring vacantly upwards as I passed. A few were obviously dead, their bodies just the left-behind shells of the people they once were.
The faces were familiar but most of the names escaped me. Still, I was looking at the Aware, that much I was certain of. The damage was incredible. At the minor end were significant burns stretching across limbs and torsos. Less lucky were those that looked like they’d been victims of acid attacks. They were the ones with corroded orbital sockets and cheeks, teeth and bones visible where they just shouldn’t be.
Two guys moved past me to my left, dragging a corpse wrapped in a sheet. The one carrying the legs turned and looked at me as they went. He smiled. If someone’s happy to see you in a place like this…well, I wasn’t sure what it meant, but how could it possibly be good?
I reached the curtain - a thick cotton drape stretching the width of the room - and pulled it up, scooting under. The more familiar figures of my life were here, lying on the floor -mercifully intact - or leaning way back on chairs. Liberty was standing at a desk in deep discussion with Zack, poring over a map. Julie was crouching near Arabella, holding an ice pack against her arm.
“So there’s a war,” I said. “What the hell happened?”
“You made it,” Julie said, covering the distance between us in two strides and crushing me tightly in her arms. “We thought you probably would, but…well, it was bad for a while there.”
“Good to see you too,” I said, pushing her gently away. “How long was I out? Weeks?”
Arabella looked up at me. The black eye had faded, but a jagged scar ran along her cheek near the right ear. “Five days. Only five days. That’s apparently how long it takes the world to go to shit.”
“Who’s at war with us?”
“The Mage-born,” Zack said, his eyes not leaving the map. “Who else would it be?”
“But we stopped that. We got Ollie out. There was no public confession - no grand declaration of our - my- guilt.”
“The problem was,” said Arabella, “that we broke in, killed their men and three of the senior family members, including one council member. And we ran out dragging the star witness. Apparently once we did that they didn’t exactly need a confession anymore.”
“It started the day after you arrived back here,” said Liberty, turning towards me. His skin was pale and greasy, the once-frizzy and uncontrollable hair laying slick and lank against his skin. “At night. They moved in groups, usually three or four. With the element of surprise, the Aware fell quickly.”
“How many?” I managed to ask.
“To date, sixty-seven.”
“No.” I didn’t know how many of the Aware there were in Manhattan, or the neighboring areas, but we’re not talking huge numbers. Not thousands. Not even the high hundreds. “No.”
“We got the word out, organized, took precautions. That stabilized things. But it couldn’t hold.”
“So we went on the offensive,” Zack cut in. “We knew the family names.” He looked over at Julie, who looked anywhere but at him. “We hit hard and fast. Now their losses match ours, but…they’re more secure. They have the resources. If it wasn’t for this place and the stash Becky kept here, we’d have been wiped out by now. Even so, as it is…we’ve got days at best. And the moment they know we’re based here, it’s as good as over.”
I sat down in a chair and put my head in my hands. “We did this. I did this.”
“We’ve all been thinking that,” said Julie. “Not about you, I mean - about us, thinking that we brought it all down. But we didn’t. If we hadn’t done what we did, it would have happened anyway. We didn’t make anything worse, we just failed to stop it.”
“But you’re here now,” Zack said, his tone hardening. “You’re what we need now, Malachi. Now more than ever.”
I looked up at him and he saw the confusion on my face. “You’re Malachi English, the ballsy Brit who can do anything he puts his mind to.”
“We know you’re a prick,” said Arabella. “But everyone else in the Aware hasn’t caught on yet.”
“You’re a symbol. You can turn this around. You lead, they’ll follow. We’ll follow. We need hope at the moment, and you’re it.”
I sat quietly for a moment, letting this sink in. Finally I spoke. “No.”
Zack paused for a moment, and then grabbed me by my shirt, spun me around and shoved me through the curtain. “You see this?” he demanded. “You see what they’re doing?” For an instant there was near-silence. Everyone able to move their heads turned to look at us. Zack dropped his voice to a hoarse whisper. “The ones that are looking at you are the lucky ones. No, scratch that, the lucky ones are the ones that had the sense to skip town early on, before the borders started getting patrolled. We’ve given up trying to respect the bodies of the dead - they’re either burned or left where they fell. Come on, Malachi. Can’t you see what’s being done to us?”
I turned round and looked him straight in the eye. He blinked first. “I see exactly what’s being done to us. I just can’t figure out how you can be so bloody blind to it.” I shouldered past, back through the curtain to where Arabella and Julie were standing stock still. Only Liberty seemed unfazed by the argument. “Where’s my phone?” I asked.
Julie reached into her pocket and pulled it out. “I’ve been going through your texts and messages. Everything from the Aware has been deleted. It’s out of date - everyone knows the score now. And some of it was…pretty grim.”
“What’s left?”
“Two very insistent people you should look at. Stacey the harpy sounds worried. And Larry Dialgo started ringing every hour on the hour.”
One non-magical human, one hellkind. Getting some sort of outside perspective on all this sounded like a good thing. “We need to head out, get in touch with - hang on. I’ve been stuck downstairs. From the look of you two,” I nodded at Zack and Arabella, “you’ve been right out there in it. How many Silvian knots did you burn through, staying away from Julie for that long?”
The silence was deafening. “Thing is,” said Arabella, “we found a stash here, but the supply’s still limited. So we halved the number we’d need to use.”
The implications took a few seconds to sink in. Then a red mist fell and before I knew what was happening I’d grabbed Zack and had him up against the wall, nearly off his feet, my forearm pressing hard into his throat. “You took Julie? You took Julie? Out there - into a war zone?”
Julie and Arabella grabbed and arm each, and, assisted by Liberty grabbing me around my neck, slowly dragged me away from Zack. “You bastard,” I hissed. “You utter bastard.”
He looked right back at me. “I did what I had to do. We saved lives.”
“And how many did you take in return?”
“Shit, Malachi, whose side are you actually on?”
“I’m on yours, Zack. Always on yours. You’re the one that’s gone rogue. Damn it, why didn’t you think?”
“Zack, why don’t you take a break? Check on Ollie?” Liberty suggested.
“He’s still with us?” I asked as Zack stalked out.
“Just,” said Liberty. “We’ve had every mage I could find take a look at him. We can’t heal him, and we can’t see what the problem is, either. If it’s a charm, it’s hidden so deeply that we’ve never seen its kind before. Eric has a couple of ideas, but…now isn’t the time for them.”
“Why not?”
“Because they involved cutting Ollie’s brain open. I don’t think Eric gets that we’re trying to heal the guy, not conduct a forensic examination. So, Malachi,” he sat down on a chair and looked up at me wearily. “Please, please tell me you’ve got a plan here.”
“We need to win a war,” said Arabella.
“No we bloody don’
t,” I told her. “We need to stop one.”
Stacey wasn’t answering her phone, so Larry Dialgo was first on my list, by default. I strode ahead with Julie on my shoulder. She was stealing anxious looks at me every few seconds and I was pretending not to notice. Zack and Arabella were a few meters back, keeping pace but maintaining distance. In an ideal world Zack would have been back at base, since I had no great desire to be around him at present. Couldn’t waste any more Silvian knots, though - for the time being we were stuck with each other.
“You know, you’re kind of taking me out into a war zone yourself here,” Julie said cautiously.
“It’s unavoidable. With the way things have escalated, hiding isn’t going to work for much longer. Better to be out doing something than waiting for an inevitable death. Anyway, I told you, we’re not out to kill anyone. We’re out to speak.”
“You’ve hurt Zack.”
“He’s bloody lucky I didn’t punch his face in.”
“I didn’t mean physically. He really thought he was doing the best thing, what you would have wanted. Fighting for your people.”
“Your people. That’s the whole problem here, isn’t it? Thinking like that. From them, but from us as well. It needs to stop.”
“They did kind of start it. Zack’s right about that.”
“They didn’t start it. Someone started it. Someone has manipulated everything. And he’s going to pay.”
“Patrick.”
“Yep. I don’t know what he’s aiming for, but he’s playing them by playing us. The spider at the center of the web.”
“If we could find out what he’s up to -”
“No, we don’t even have to know that. We just have to show him up for who he is. The Mage-born are at each other’s throats as well. They’ve just delayed that fight until they finish us off. We need them to see who the real enemy is.”
We moved through Central Park in the darkness. Although I was up and moving, everything ached. And that wasn’t the worst part. My magic reserves hadn’t replenished. I’d drained them to the point where I went into soul-shock. Liberty’s healers had dragged me back from the edge, but I wasn’t close to fighting fit. Another good reason for having Zack with me. We might be pissed off with each other but if it went down, he had my back.