by Eileen Wilks
But if she didn’t go and he was telling the truth . . . what else was she going to do? If they didn’t destroy the amulet, they couldn’t stop the demon-possessed dopplegängers. Who wouldn’t die without a dose of mage fire, which Cullen couldn’t provide until he stopped seeing double.
“Rule!” she called “I think Chittenden’s here”—the description could fit Friar’s lieutenant—“and has the amulet! I’m going after him!”
He flung his head up. “No!” And the demon wolf charged him. He threw himself aside, rolled, and sprang to his feet.
Lily holstered her gun, which was no damn use whatsoever against creatures who considered a broken neck an inconvenience. And turned away from the man she loved while he battled for his life. Turned and ran.
Within seconds, Scott caught up with her. He didn’t say a word.
Rule must have sent him. Her eyes burned.
The field was clearing out faster than she would have thought possible, but it was far from empty. There were living people still fleeing. And there were bodies. A woman huddled next to one of those bodies, a man whose face and chest were so saturated with blood it was hard to see the ruin of his throat. It was horrible to do nothing. Horrible to keep running, but Lily did, chasing a white shape as vaguely formed as when she’d first seen it at the shooting range. A shape that was always a few yards ahead of her.
She ran. And ran. Scott kept pace beside her. They passed three clusters of fighting—lupi in both their forms, but mostly wolves, keeping demon wolves busy so they wouldn’t kill the humans who’d assembled here to root for an end to lupi.
As they drew near the Washington Monument, her ghostly guide suddenly veered to the left, toward a huddled mob of twenty or thirty people being circled by a pair of wolves. She followed, focusing on her breathing, on the even rise and fall of her legs, so she wouldn’t arrive too winded to do anything. And wondering what the hell she was supposed to do to save those people.
Wait a minute. She recognized one of the wolves. It was José. And he and the large gray wolf weren’t circling the people—they were patrolling, keeping one of the demon wolves away.
Stupid—she hadn’t noticed till just now, but the demon wolves were all alike. Of course they were. They’d all been made from blood or tissue from Brian’s wolf-form, so they were identical.
The ground shook.
Lily staggered, her stride broken. Someone screamed. The ground gave a second, harder shimmy, and she had to stop. Scott took her arm, steadying her.
A huge something rose from the ground. It was brownish gray and long, really long, and seemed to grow itself out of the earth, absorbing grass and dirt and rocks into itself as it became . No eyes, no legs, not much of anything but body . . . a segmented body three or four feet thick. Like an earthworm.
This time when the earth shook, Lily fell to her knees. So did Scott. And it kept on shaking.
Another form emerged, this one breaking and absorbing bits of Madison Street as it reared itself out of the earth . . . out and up, one end questing in the air as if seeking a scent. This one was even bigger, and it pulled itself together faster than the first one had.
It was not as big as the third one.
From the stage at the east end of the Mall to a spot just short of the steps to the Washington Monument, the earth bulged. It swelled up like the wall had at Fagin’s, shaping itself into segment after segment of stony worm eight feet thick . . . ten feet thick . . . twelve. Bodies rolled off as it formed itself. And, horribly, some bodies remained, incorporated into its mass along with sticks and stones, purses and grass.
The earth groaned as the creature began undulating. Moving slowly toward the first elemental.
A white but detailed Drummond darted in front of her, his mouth moving. Clearly impatient, he tried to grab Lily’s arm. His hand went right through her. She didn’t feel a thing. No cold chills. Nothing.
He grimaced and beckoned fiercely.
For one more second she stared at the enormous monster of earth and stone advancing slowly toward its smaller cousin. She couldn’t do anything about elementals. Nothing. Maybe Cullen could—if he was still alive. If he healed from the concussion fast enough.
She spun and followed Drummond.
José and the other wolf who’d been harrying the demon wolf had chased it well away from the knot of people. They didn’t seem to realize yet it was time to get away. Maybe they didn’t know where to go. Someone shoved to the edge of the mob. A woman. A woman in dirty jeans and a red shirt, with a face that would make any man hunt for a cloak to throw over puddles. “Lily!” Deborah cried. “It won’t listen to me! It’s angry—terribly angry—that it was called and wasn’t fed, and it’s angry that those others invaded its territory!”
A man slipped up behind Deborah. He wore a good-quality suit, no tie, and was tall and thin, with short honey-blond hair. And—like Drummond had said—a prissy mouth. “That’s the way it goes sometimes,” Paul Chittenden said as he slid his arm around Deborah’s neck and squeezed. “Lily Yu, isn’t it? Stop right there. I can break her neck in a second.”
Lily slowed, not quite stopping, holding her hands out to demonstrate her lack of a weapon. “Scott,” she whispered. “Can you—?”
“We’re too far,” he whispered back. “If he knows what he’s doing, he could kill her before I get there.”
Chittenden applied more pressure. Deborah’s face turned bloodless. “I said stop.”
Lily did. So did Scott.
The people closest to Deborah and Chittenden had pulled back a few paces. “Hey,” said a beefy man with a crew cut. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Stopping evil from spreading,” Chittenden said, smiling. “Do you believe in the Second Amendment, sir?”
“Yes, but—”
“So do I.” He drew a gun from inside his jacket and shot the man.
No one screamed this time. Maybe they’d overloaded on the horrors of the day. No one moved or spoke.
“Now,” Chittenden said, turning that prissy smile on Lily, the gun held casually in the hand that wasn’t choking Deborah, “we’ll have a chance to get acquainted while my pets are doing their work. So . . . do you come here often? What’s your sign? If you were stranded on a desert island—”
The woman who jumped Chittenden must have been at least sixty, and probably weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet. She belted him in the head with a purse the size of a small suitcase. He staggered, his gun-hand swinging around, his smile gone—and his attention diverted.
Scott shot forward like a bullet from a gun.
Chittenden backhanded the woman, who collapsed. And, from ten feet away, Scott leaped.
Quickly Chittenden brought his gun up. At point-blank range, he fired.
Scott smashed into Deborah, knocking both her and Chittenden to the ground.
Lily had shoved into a run the same moment as Scott. She was slower, but she got there. She got there seconds after Chittenden shoved Deborah and Scott off of him, just as he started to scramble to his feet. She got there with her weapon in hand, and she jammed it into his ear while he was still couched on one knee.
“Give me a reason,” she gritted. “Give me one tiny little reason. I’d love to blow your brains out.”
He froze.
Deborah lay on the ground, breathing hard, but stirring. Scott didn’t move.
“Hell with it,” Lily said, and reversed her weapon and struck him in the temple, hard, with the butt of her gun.
He collapsed.
She followed him down and hit him again, just to be sure. Then checked his eyelids. Oh, yeah, he was out. “Deborah, you okay?”
“Yes, I . . .” She wheezed. “Hurts, but I’m okay.”
“Check on Scott.” Lily grabbed Chittenden’s right hand. No ring. She reached for the other one.
“Oh, no.” Deborah sat up and felt Scott’s neck. “He’s . . . there’s a pulse.”
Relief barely had time to register. Dru
mmond swept into Lily’s field of view. He patted his upper chest urgently, scowling.
She scowled back. Then she got it. A necklace. Chittenden wore the thing around his neck. She reached inside Chittenden’s shirt. A moment’s groping and she touched it—and recoiled.
The ring had been foul. This was ... putrescence. Needles and slime and decay, glass shards, blood gone rotten. Touching it was like being kicked in the chest. For a second she forgot to breathe.
How many? How many people had he killed to load this thing with so much death magic?
Grimly she forced herself to retrieve it, but this time she felt for the chain first. A couple of hard yanks broke the clasp and she pulled it free.
It was an amulet, as Cullen had predicted, the stone a match for the one in the ring—a dark, dull red that didn’t look like any gemstone Lily knew. The stone was oval in shape and about two inches long, set in some plain metal. Not gold, and it lacked the sheen of silver.
She sat back on her heels. Now what?
Now she took it to Cullen and hoped like hell he’d healed his concussion enough to attempt mage fire. She shoved to her feet and looked down what used to be a grassy field . . .
The stage was gone. Weirdly, the Jumbotron screen still reared up, but it loomed over a rubble of broken boards. In front of that rubble, dozens of wolves fought.
All of them, she realized as she looked around, a sudden, sick lurch of her heart making her squeeze her hands into fists. All of the demon wolves had congregated in that one spot. Where Rule was.
The elementals were battling.
The giant one had wrapped most of its length around the smallest one like an enormous boa constrictor. Neither made any sound, not a vocalization, anyway, but there was a dull grating of stone against stone. And while the giant one squeezed the smallest, the third elemental took the giant’s tail—or its far end, anyway—in its jaws and chomped.
Stone crunched.
“Oh, dear,” Deborah whispered.
Earth elementals move slowly. That’s what Lily had been told. And the giant one had seemed to be especially slow. Managing that much bulk wouldn’t be easy, especially if you didn’t practice having a physical form very often. But it turned out that elementals could move fast—when they really, really wanted to.
The coils wrapped around the smallest one loosened and the head—if that was a head—whipped around and around, unwrapping itself enough to lunge at the third elemental like a striking snake. Its jaws opened. And kept opening.
Yeah, that was definitely the head. Eyeless and blind, and not that much like an earthworm after all. Not when most of that head became a gaping, tooth-lined maw. Rows of teeth, like a shark’s—not huge teeth, not for the size of that mouth, but there were a lot of them. It caught the other elemental’s head in its jaws . . . and crunched.
The captive elemental shook. Its body began to crack, like rock struck by a hammer. Cracks, fissures, opened up in it—then all at once it exploded into dust, dust that hung in the air in a huge, dirty cloud.
Twenty or thirty tiny figures dressed all in brown raced out of the dusty cloud, little legs pumping. Brownies could move amazingly fast. “Lily, Lily!” yelled the one in the lead. “Rule’s hurt! Cullen’s hurt! Everyone’s in trouble! Do you have the nasty thing?”
“I—yes!” she called back. “But—”
“You have to break it!” Harry screamed. “Make it not-be! You have to do it now!”
“I can’t—it takes mage fire to—”
“No!” He was still yelling at the top of his little lungs even as he came to a stop in front of her. “Give it to it! Hurry!”
Do what?
“To the Great It!” He pointed at the enormous elemental, which seemed to be considering renewing its attack on the other one. But that one was beginning to subside. To sink back into the earth. Slowly, but it was on its way out of here.
“Are you nuts? You want me to feed an enraged giant elemental a colossal amount of death magic?”
He rolled his eyes. “Stupid! Earth doesn’t cleanse as quick as fire, but it cleanses. Hurry!”
Deborah spoke in her husky, damaged voice. “It’s too angry. I can feel how it rages . . . it will kill anything, anyone, that comes near.”
Lily had promised Rule she wouldn’t die. But if the only way to save Rule was to break a promise—
“Never mind. You’re too big and slow, anyway.”
“I—hey!” she cried.
The chain she’d been gripping dangled loose. The amulet wasn’t on it anymore.
And a whole troop of brownies were running away—and they were amazingly fast. Running straight toward a giant, enraged earth elemental.
“Lily?” Deborah said. “Who were we just talking to?”
Lily turned her head, incredulous. “You didn’t see them?”
“See who? I heard someone, but I didn’t see a thing.”
“Brownies,” Lily said numbly as she turned back to watch the timid little brownies charge a creature as long as a football field. “A whole troop of brownies.”
They pelted straight for it. It noticed them—apparently it didn’t need eyes all that much—and swung its head around, opening those jaws once more, lowering its head to the ground. They split into two streams, one group veering to each side of that enormous head—and scrambled up onto it.
The head reared up. And up. They clung to it—its surface wasn’t smooth, after all, being full of stones and sticks and the occasional body part—and they were little and light. They clambered around on its head, then formed a chain, a brownie ladder. The ones at the top of the beast’s head somehow anchored themselves so others could dangle, hands gripping hands or feet, some upside down, some rightside up, all assembling themselves so quickly it was like magic.
Maybe it was magic—of a different sort. One that called for skill, not power.
One brownie climbed down that living ladder . . . which dangled right over the great elemental’s mouth.
That mouth opened wide and wider, a horrible, gaping maw. The elemental flung its head once as if it was nodding emphatically—and the chain of brownies swept out, then in. Right into its mouth. Which closed—but brownies spurted out even as it did. With delicious, desperate speed they shot out, slipped out like watermelon seeds, and scampered down stony, segmented sides. Down and down and . . .
The elemental stopped moving.
“Oh,” Deborah murmured. “Ohh . . . that tasted nasty, but it feels so full now. Content.”
Escape artists, Lily thought. That’s what Rule had called them. Brownies valued nothing so much as a great escape—and oh, what an escape that had been!
Slowly the elemental began to subside. The stony mass lost its shape gradually, even gracefully, clods of dirt, rocks, and sticks breaking loose to fall to the ground as it sank itself back into the earth.
It was gone.
Lily looked toward the east end of what used to be the National Mall. There were a few patches of grass left, but no people. They’d fled or been killed.
Except at the far end. Where the fighting had stopped.
She shivered. He was alive, she knew he was alive, but how badly hurt? How many others were dead? She glanced at Deborah, at Scott so still on the ground. “Take care of him,” she pleaded. And set off at a run yet again.
FORTY
RULE lay flat on the ground, his eyes closed. He felt her coming. At last. At last.
Cullen was loosening the tourniquet he’d tied high on Rule’s left leg. “Bleeding’s stopped,” he announced with satisfaction. “Or almost. It’s a godawful mess, but you aren’t bleeding anymore.”
Good. He’d lost so much blood he couldn’t sit up. Best if he held on to what was left.
“I wish I knew what was happening inside . . . but if the artery’s stopped bleeding, you’ll be healing up whatever was causing the internal bleeding pretty quick now, if you haven’t already.”
“Don’t . . . mention the ... intern
al bleeding to her.” Gods, but talking hurt.
Cullen snorted. “She’ll cripple me good if I lie. But if it doesn’t come up . . .”
Rule nodded slightly. That was good enough.
I’ll live if you will, she’d said. He’d done his best, but for a while it had seemed he’d default on his end of the bargain.
She was nearly here . . .
And then she was. “Rule.” She took his hand. Warmth and ease spread through him in a sigh of contentment. “You’re a mess.” Her laugh was shaky. “A really bloody mess. Can you see at all?”
“One eye is just swollen shut. The other . . .” He stopped to gather enough energy to finish. “That one will have to regrow.”
“I guess you didn’t see the brownies, then.”
Brownies? Not since Harry’s troop stood on the edges of the crowd, letting themselves be seen for once, yelling at everyone to “run this way!” Brownies were good at giving warnings, after all. And they’d helped, directing people where to go...
“They’re heroes. The most incredible heroes. I’ll tell you about it in a minute.” The sound of Lily’s voice suggested she’d turned her head. “His leg?”
Cullen answered. “Broken. The femoral artery got ripped open, but the bleeding’s stopped.”
He heard her swallow.
Cullen’s voice went soft, as it so rarely did. “He’ll be okay, Lily. Not able to do much, not for a while, even with his super-duper speedy healing. But he’ll be okay.”
That was good to know.
The sirens he’d been hearing were close now. Good. They’d need a lot of ambulances. So many injured . . .
“And the others?” Lily asked, her voice low and raw. “I see some of them, but . . . Karonski. Did anyone ever find him?”
“He’s alive. Got knocked out, but Mike found him and brought him out.”
“And Chris?”
Silence.
So many dead . . .
“They converged on us,” Cullen said after a moment. “About the time that giant elemental Fagin had been keeping as a pet rose up, all of the demon wolves came after Rule. The rest of us were just obstacles. There’d be more dead if they’d cared about killing us, but they didn’t. Everyone’s hurt, but not as many lupi died as might have. All they wanted was to get to Rule.”