by Anah Crow
“Ask me that again and I’ll pluck you.” Dane took them all the way to the chain-link fence at the far edge of the lot. He could hear the cries and chaos already.
They ignored the chaos and made their way up a long ramp between sections of the boardwalk. The path to the pier on the far side of the boardwalk was cluttered with tourists and yellow trams that droned,
“Watch the tram car, please,” in a prerecorded nasal tone over and over, even though they were all stopped
on their cement paths. Past the carousel and the roller coasters, a Ferris wheel stood tall and still against the sky, riders screaming down from their unmoving baskets.
Aside from stopped rides and flickering lights, nothing here looked out of place, but the air told a different story. It was thick with panic and static and the unique scents of war. Aircraft fuel, gun oil, the sweat of soldiers and worse, all pricked at Dane’s senses. At the end of the pier, he could see the source.
In the distance, a long, sleek black limousine was parked askew on the boardwalk itself, and ATVs each bearing a driver and a passenger with an automatic rifle were prowling the sands like sharks below the helicopter pad at the end of the boardwalk. Dane grabbed Ylli by the wrist, planting his hand on Cyrus’s arm.
“Don’t let go of him. Don’t let anyone touch him.”
Another gust of wind brought more information. The acrid tang of it made him gag, not from what it was but from what it meant. Hounds. Moore was here. Cyrus had said the young mage couldn’t fall into the wrong hands, and Moore’s were the wrong hands, for certain. But he couldn’t smell Jonas, and that he didn’t understand. He’d have to wait for another day to get a shot at his oldest enemy.
“I won’t.” Ylli barely came up past Cyrus’s shoulder, but he had feral strength and endurance, even if he was prey.
A fountain of sparks went up as an empty ride spun down to its base and kept going, metal scraping against metal. Finally, it ground to a halt with a squeal of protest. Whatever was causing the disturbance was growing stronger. The mage Cyrus wanted found was afraid.
“They have her,” Cyrus said faintly. “And they know we have come.”
“Stay out of sight.” Dane pointed Ylli to where several families were clustered in the doorway of an ice cream parlor. The mixed scents might help hide them from the black-clad men loping their way. Men on the exterior, Dane reminded himself. On the outside only.
There was screaming from up ahead, and Dane had a glimpse of a young woman in a blue dress being half-carried onto the boardwalk. The new mage Cyrus had been talking about. She was young, younger than Lindsay from the look of her.
Dane wasn’t sure he could ever forgive Cyrus for picking this fight, the whole of it, but he didn’t have any choice but to stay the course now. He hoped like hell that—somehow—Lindsay was drawing attention from the action down here. The wind picked up, throwing a toppled tram across the boardwalk and smearing three of the Hounds as they bore down.
Dane let his change take over him and, in moments, the familiar world was replaced by the one his beast saw. All his human concerns slipped away and he was, once again, his beast. His lion body uncoiled like a spring, and he surged forward, wings folded tight against his flanks, ears back, staying low to the ground. The wind made it impossible to fly, or he would have taken to the air and swooped in to rip the girl
from the hands of the men trying to carry her away. Instead, he would have to fight his way to her—the more killing he did now, he told himself, the less he would have to do later.
Through the senses of a beast, the Hounds could never be mistaken for human. They reeked of science and wrongness. Everything in him screamed that they were perversions with nothing left of what they had been before Moore began her experimentation.
If Dane had anything to do with it, they wouldn’t be anything at all much longer. He had hunted them once with Ezqel, back when he had killed them to keep them from Lindsay. That, he had enjoyed to the depths of his soul.
“Do not waste your time at play.” The wind tickled the soft fur inside one of his ears. Dane ignored the bullets that sank into his hide and disemboweled a Hound with a swipe of his paw. “Bring her to me.”
Play. Taking pleasure in something didn’t make it a game. Dane bit the next Hound, crushing its skull, and spat out its vile blood. No idea what the drugs in it could do to him.
He could smell Cyrus’s little mage now; her terror made her scent strong enough to cut through the blood around him. He wasn’t playing, but neither was he about to suffer a Hound to live. He killed one as it fired a gun into his chest, shrieking in terror. The wounds seared and sickened him, then began to heal.
Another smell reached him on the high winds, cedar and roses and ancient things. Hesham and Mahesh. They sapped the power of a mage’s magic, stifling it completely. He had known their scent for years but had only recently come to hate it. He could forgive mercenary alliances, but not that they had tried to take his place with Lindsay.
A thump of blades cutting the air made him snarl. The helicopter was huge and black, too large for the helipad. Cyrus’s wind should have been enough to ground it, but there it was, preparing to lift off. A rush of icy air caught him in the face, drawn from far out at sea, and the sky darkened. He crouched low to the ground. The wind felt wrong.
More Hounds were coming, spilling out of vans, clambering up from the beach and onto the boardwalk. He had to stop Moore’s people from taking that girl. The rest would have to wait. If he could take her from her captors, he might be able to get her to safety, as he had done with Lindsay. He dodged the slicing arc of bullets firing from a large gun mounted in the back of a van and folded his wings back tightly.
Keeping low to the ground, he ran for the helipad.
Already, the helicopter was beginning to lift. Dane could see the lurch as it broke free of gravity for the first time. Two tall, thin men—Hesham and Mahesh—hurried toward the helipad. The brown-skinned young woman in the blue dress hung limp between them, her feet dragging on the ground, one bare and one still in a white shoe. He pushed hard into the wind that fought him back, and all he could think was that Cyrus had lost control of the air. Gunfire staggered him, shattering one of his paws and leaving him to struggle on three legs while his magic healed him. Overhead, an immense spiral of black clouds roared.
The limousine driver opened the back door and helped an auburn-haired woman out. Moore. She had come and Dane wanted nothing more than to tear her to shreds. But he had to focus. The human part of his mind was full of questions—where was Lourdes, where was Jonas—but the beast forged on, slapping away an ATV that came too close, using it to clear a path ahead of him as he gained a dozen precious yards.
Another woman, this one with long, dark hair, slipped out after Moore and took her by the arm, hurrying her to the helicopter. Where the hail of bullets had failed to deter him, a lightning bolt smashing a crater into the walkway ahead gave him pause. The dark-haired one was a weather witch; she must have been the reason Cyrus was struggling. He looked behind to see the Hounds closing in, maneuvering to trap him while the helicopter escaped.
Dane summoned up all his strength for a dash down the last hundred yards of the boardwalk. The wind lifted him and slammed him to the ground, into a streak of rifle fire. He scrabbled onto all fours, spreading his wings. The helicopter was already rising. He could see Moore through the open door, and the other woman next to her. A wave of the dark-haired woman’s hand and lightning ripped down again.
There was nothing he could do, but that wouldn’t stop him from trying. As Moore escaped, the Hounds turned on him, some with guns and some with blades. There had to be at least thirty of them, and many human soldiers as well. He had survived worse. Pursuing him kept them from turning on Cyrus.
The rain came down like a wall of wet night and the Hounds hunted him, their bullets tearing into him faster than he could heal. Dane charged the nearest cluster, determined to keep them busy for as long as pos
sible. And then something else came. Dane heard a sickening thud like a bomb going off, and the darkness was washed away in a flood of eerie red light.
The Hounds turned from him and began to howl. Dane dropped the one he was killing to face the new threat. A breaker of fire swept down the boardwalk, consuming everything in its path. There was nothing he could do but run like a terrified cat. As he cleared the far side of the helipad, the burning wave broke over the boardwalk. The howling reached a crescendo, and was gone.
When Dane turned, everything stood as it had been. The rain pounded down, a natural rain now, and washed away the smoke. He let the form of the beast slide away before Lindsay’s illusion disappeared, but he kept the core of it in him so that he could follow his nose back to his people.
He found Noah waiting for him, pointing him toward the van and the car. Lindsay was probably in the back of the car, with Kristan in the driver’s seat. The van door was open, waiting for him. He couldn’t make the words to thank Noah for his intervention. He limped to the van, trying to make sense of what had happened to them.
In the passenger seat of the van, Cyrus was pale and still, his breath coming slowly.
“I called Negasi. He’ll meet us at the house,” Ylli offered from the backseat. He was almost as white as Cyrus, a bedraggled and terrified little bird. “I don’t know what happened. He said some other mage took the wind from him.”
“She did.” Dane started the van and turned it to follow Kristan home. He couldn’t hear anything through the static in his head, his mind turned to a channel left blank with disbelief. He reached over and found Cyrus’s hand, fumbled until his fingers were on Cyrus’s pulse. It fluttered there like a broken butterfly, clinging to life all the way home.
At the house, Dane carried Cyrus to his room, where Negasi waited. The healer helped Dane undress Cyrus and wrap him in warm blankets while he tried to give Cyrus back some strength. When they had done all they could, Dane could hear that familiar heartbeat again, but it did nothing to comfort him now.
He left Cyrus in Negasi’s capable hands and went to his own room, where he closed and locked the door. If anyone spoke to him or if he replied, he couldn’t have said. He sat in the chair at his desk and took out a sheet of paper. He meant to write Ezqel, but the page stayed as empty as his mind.
Chapter Five
The drive home was silent. Even Kristan knew when to keep her mouth shut. When they stopped in the driveway, Noah disappeared into the house before Lindsay could say anything.
Lindsay didn’t find Noah upstairs, nor Dane. What he found instead was a locked door. Noah wouldn’t lock Lindsay out of his own room, so it must have been Dane. He’d think about that once he found Noah. Lindsay checked the back porch, but still no Noah. Finally, he found Noah in his old room, the room he hadn’t slept in since the incident with Kristan. Lindsay hadn’t been ready to let him go; he could relax at night when he knew Noah was sleeping.
The room wasn’t big, only enough space for a bed and a dresser. Noah had, at some point, shoved the bed over by the window and he sat there now on the window ledge, smoking a cigarette. A half-empty bottle swung gently as he tipped it back and forth, watching the amber liquid wash up the sides. After a moment of thoughtful contemplation, he took a drink.
Lindsay didn’t bother asking Noah if he was all right. Of course he wasn’t. Noah hadn’t been all right since he’d come here. At best, today hadn’t helped.
Lindsay settled on the bed and watched him drink, but watching wasn’t going to fix anything.
“Come here.”
Noah put his cigarette out in the ashtray on the sill, then took another drink. “Are you okay?” It wasn’t obedience, but it wasn’t outright rejection, either.
“I’ll live.” Lindsay pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around his legs, resting his chin on his knees. If Noah wasn’t going to come to him, he might as well be comfortable. He let Noah guide the conversation for now, hoping it would help him relax. “It’s easier now that I can keep them out of my head.”
“How many...” Noah started, then shook his head. “I tried to keep it in one place. I just...they were going to kill him, or something. Worse. I don’t even know who they are.”
“Hounds. They belong to Dr. Moore.” Lindsay swallowed down a surge of bile that threatened to fill his mouth. “They’re...not human. Not quite mages either. Dane says their blood tastes poisoned, that Moore probably made them what they are in one of her...” He had to take a slow breath to keep his voice from catching. “In one of her experiments.”
Lindsay couldn’t let himself get distracted by Moore, though. Not right now. Noah was still vibrating enough that the alcohol sloshed in the bottle, and Lindsay held out his hand.
“Come here,” he said again.
“They’re gone now.” Noah left the bottle on the sill and came down this time. “I don’t know... I’d feel better if it had felt terrible. It didn’t.” He looked grim and distraught at once.
“I understand.” Lindsay slid over to sit with his back to the wall and coaxed Noah to sit beside him.
“It isn’t easy, but you did the only thing you could do. And thank you for it. They might have killed him, or they might have taken him back to whatever Moore is calling a lab these days, and let Jonas do it instead.”
“I wouldn’t let anything happen to him if I could help it.” Noah slid his arm around Lindsay and hugged him a little. “Or you. I promise. I owe you both. And I’ve had my lifetime full of being helpless already.” He gave Lindsay another squeeze.
Lindsay sighed and leaned into the embrace, reaching across to lay his hand on Noah’s chest. He knew what Noah was remembering, but didn’t know how to say so without sounding like he’d betrayed Noah’s trust somehow. “I’m sorry you were thrown into all this,” he said instead. “This isn’t what you signed on for.”
“You make it sound like it was my choice.” Noah snorted derisively. “I admit, I wasn’t going to deal, being stuck at home, no matter how much anyone tried. And I’m not stupid enough to assume Cyrus didn’t have a use for me if he took me into his house. There’s only so much I’m good for. He’s not running a steakhouse.”
There was a pause, then Noah gagged and shuddered. “Okay, no more cooking jokes.” He reached up and back to grab the bottle he’d left on the sill. Lindsay didn’t object when he took a long drink.
“His reasons don’t dictate that I can’t feel bad you’ve gotten dragged into my mess.” Irrationally, Moore felt like his problem. Knowing Moore had that girl made Lindsay feel sick inside. He was torn between wanting to run as fast and far as he could and wanting to demand Cyrus help him find her.
“And if I say you can’t?” Noah took another drink and put the bottle back. “I could have skipped out.
I knew I’d be getting in the shit. Can’t think of anywhere else I’d go, though.” He shrugged and snuggled Lindsay against him, wrapping both arms around him protectively and pressing his cheek against Lindsay’s hair. “Can’t argue it’s been therapeutic.”
Lindsay laughed. “Therapeutic, hm?” Noah wasn’t the same man who’d first been given to Lindsay, so maybe he was right. Maybe all of this was good for him, somehow.
“It’s good to belong somewhere,” Noah said quietly. He started combing his long, hot fingers through Lindsay’s damp, matted hair, untangling it with practiced gentleness. The storm had wreaked a good bit of havoc on it, but Noah’s fingers never snagged or pulled.
“You don’t smell like smoke. Guess I have to thank the weather witch for that,” he murmured. “You should be tired. You worked hard. What you did... Even if I wasn’t yours, I wouldn’t let someone take you.”
It was worth the exhaustion. But he wished he’d been able to help that girl too.
“You’re the one who put out all those fires,” he pointed out.
“You’re too new to all this to understand the whole of it.” Noah hummed softly as he worked through Lindsay’s hair. T
he task seemed to comfort him because Lindsay could feel his tension fading. “It’s a bit charming. The one Moore has must be as gifted as you are, in her own way. But it wouldn’t matter if she were mundane. Some things can’t happen to anyone.”
“I hope we can help her before Moore...” Lindsay shook his head and sighed. Moore had done terrible things to him, and he didn’t want to think about any of it happening to someone else. “I should’ve killed her when I had the chance.”
“Don’t think like that,” Noah said, shifting so Lindsay could see his frown. “Your damn government lets her run out of control. Someone should have killed her long before you came along. And today, you are the only one not to blame for what went wrong. You did everything right.”
“That’s not unlocking the door between me and Dane right now.” Lindsay was willing to let the issue of Moore go, but being shut out made him feel like something must be his fault.
Noah’s expression twisted. “That can hardly be your fault, either,” he said slowly, like he was plucking each word out of a minefield. “If Dane falters, you might close the door on me someday. In the past, Cyrus would never have failed, Lin. Today, he did.”
Lindsay’s frustration disappeared as Noah shone a light on what he’d missed. Cyrus had failed... That was how Moore’s people had gotten away with the mage Cyrus had been so determined to save.
What Noah was suggesting finally sank in. The idea of losing Dane was terrible and left him with a yawning emptiness in his chest that he had to take slow, deep breaths to try to fill. He couldn’t imagine how Dane felt—Dane had belonged to Cyrus for a long time. And Cyrus, the thought of being without him left Lindsay feeling exposed. Cyrus kept them safe.
“I’m sorry, Lindsay.” Noah stroked his hair and tried to comfort him. “No one is going to talk about it, at least not to us. It’s not our place. It’s for the three of them to deal with. Someday, it’ll be our place, if we live that long. Right now, it’s our place to do what Dane needs. Including getting by without him.”