by Lee Dignam
Alice parked her Mustang about half a block down from there and killed the ignition.
“You feel that?” she asked.
Isaac nodded. “It’s like a vibration,” he said, “A cold one.”
“I felt the same thing moments before the car hit the bar; it was the same feeling.”
Alice tried, from where she was, to spot any of the shadows Cameron had mentioned, but their position so far away from the street all the protestors were on didn’t make for a good vantage point. She stepped out, collected her keys, and put her hand up in front of her face to shield her eyes from the wind. The rain had slowed, but the wind was still beating the city with furious zeal. Isaac had to circle around the car and stand next to her just to be heard.
“Silver is on his way,” he said, “Cameron is waiting for us at the precinct.”
“He’s at the precinct?” Alice asked.
“Well, he’s on top of it.”
Alice decided not to question this and instead simply nodded. In a moment, Alice and Isaac were moving across the street and down the sidewalk to join the back of the crowd that seemed to be growing by the second. Looking at the mass of bodies as they approached, there was no way they were going to get through unless they pushed their way into it, and Alice wasn’t about to do that. Shoving through an already angry mob would draw too much attention. The wrong kind of attention, too.
“Here,” she said, and she pulled Isaac into an alley running parallel to the crowd. There, they broke out into a jog.
“What are you thinking about all this?” Isaac asked.
“I don’t know what I think,” she said, “I just know Nyx is involved. She has to be. None of this is a coincidence.”
“And Cora? What do you make of her?”
“I don’t like that she just shirked her responsibilities onto me when she felt like she was done with hunting, but I’m also kinda happy that she did. What happened to me, where Nyx is concerned, would have happened anyway, but without Trapper and the Chest, I don’t know who I would have become after I escaped. I’m trying not to be too harsh on her.”
“That’s probably the best way to look at it.”
“What else am I going to do?”
“Only your best.”
Alice smiled at this and turned a corner. The alley was tight, but it led directly to the street. The crowd was thin here, not as tightly packed together as it had been at the intersection where she had parked her car. No one looked into the alley, and no one noticed Alice and Isaac as they approached the mouth—not even the floating, near shapeless dark mass that zipped across the opening. She stopped in her tracks; Isaac did too.
“Did you see it?” Alice asked.
“I did. Is it?”
Alice and Isaac ducked behind a dumpster. “The same thing I saw in that car?” Alice asked, “Yeah. I don’t think it saw us.” Her arms had started to tingle all over again, causing the throbbing to return.
“What do you think it was doing?” Isaac asked.
“I don’t know. We’ll need to get closer. And higher.”
“Higher?”
“We need to see the entire street and avoid being seen by the crowd and the police. We need to go higher.”
Isaac nodded and pointed to the redbrick low-rise on the other side of the alley. It was four floors tall, and there were fire escape stairs crawling up the side of the building. Though they would need to jump up to grab the ladder and pull it down, they would be able to climb the fire-escape to the roof of the building.
“Give me a boost?” Alice asked.
Isaac moved first. He ran across the alley, pressed his back against the building, braced his knees, and made a cup with his hands into which she could put her foot. Alice took a breath and dashed toward Isaac, she then pushed her foot into his hands, reached up for the ladder on the underside of the gantry, and grabbed it. The ladder screamed on its hinges, but it came down with her weight. A moment later she was climbing, with Isaac following closely behind her.
“Any news on Silver?” Alice asked as she climbed to the third floor.
“None. He should have gotten here by now.”
“Maybe he’s stuck behind the crowd?”
“No—he wouldn’t be getting here on foot.”
Alice reached the top and climbed the small ladder to the roof. Her arm was pulsing with dull pain, but she pushed through it and quickly made her way toward the edge of the building. Frederich Street rolled out beneath her. To the right she saw the crowd of protestors, thicker toward the back and thinner, but more agitated, toward the front. On the left there were police officers in riot gear holding shields and batons. A truck had just arrived, and riot police were pouring out of it.
Men and women were screaming at the police officers. Some were finding random objects—bottles, rocks, anything—and throwing them at the line of uniforms. Another group of large men wearing bandanas over their mouths looked like they were getting ready to bull-rush the police line, and one of them, Alice was sure, was about to throw a can of tear-gas into the crowd.
None of this looked positive, and then she saw the shadows.
Like eels swimming in a river of people, they were everywhere—slippery dark masses zig-zagging through the crowd, wantonly going from person, to person, to person. These shapeless, formless beings seemed to be moving around randomly, aimlessly, without purpose or direction. Pain Children? No. Pain Children were distinctive and recognizable; they had substance and attitudes, they had identities. That’s what these creatures seemed to be lacking. So what were they?
“Silver,” Isaac said, and Alice thought she had missed something.
“Huh?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at Isaac.
He pointed across the way, to another rooftop. There she saw a young man wearing a hoody, standing with one foot on the ledge of another low-rise. When he locked eyes with Alice he pointed at the top of a parking garage about half a block down. There were more shadow entities standing on that roof, looking like dark, shimmering mirages against the gunmetal sky. These creatures had vague, humanoid forms about them—one had a billowing cape, another was eight feet tall, had horns, and was incredibly muscular, yet another had a toad-like shape, and the fourth was incredibly thin. As Alice continued to stare, she thought she could hear them.
Like the four horsemen, she thought.
“Alice?” Isaac asked.
She put her hand out and closed her eyes. The wind pushed at Alice’s back, but she held firm and listened with her mind. They were whispering to the shadow creatures on the streets. Directing them? Possibly. These four beings looked like overlords of some kind. Taskmasters. Generals. Alice couldn’t understand the words these entities were using, if they were words at all, but she understood the intent: bring the chaos, bring the chaos, bring the chaos.
Alice’s eyes shot open and she saw, on the streets, the group of burly men wearing bandanas start to charge the police line.
“We have to stop this,” Alice said, “People are going to die here.”
“We can’t use magic here—what about all those people?”
“Forget the Magus Codice! Those creatures want this to get bloody. They want chaos. We have to do something.”
Isaac turned his eyes up at Silver. Silver’s eyes narrowed. Isaac nodded. Silver grabbed the sword strapped to his back—which Alice hadn’t seen until now—and readied it at his side. The sword began to glow, and a shadow creature from the street perked up like a coiled cobra, stared at Silver, and then leapt into the air, lunging directly at him.
Alice’s heart jumped into her chest. For a moment her body twitched as if she wanted to take a step to try and help, or scream for Silver to look out, but he had seen it. The creature cleared the four floors in a single bound, its maw open wide enough to engulf an entire car. Silver took a step back at the last moment, then with a slight running start, leapt off the ledge of the building and landed on the shadow creature’s back. With his sword arched dow
n, Silver cut a line into the dark entity as he ran along the length of it, jumping off the entity’s long tail and ducking into a roll on street level.
The shadow shimmered, and then exploded into a cloud of dark ink that seemed to rise into the sky.
“Shit!” Alice said, stunned by what she had seen.
Silver looked up at her and at Isaac, nodded, and then pushed his way into the stunned crowd with his sword at the ready. Alice turned to look at Isaac. He was concentrating on the crowd, his arms outstretched, his magic bangle throwing up wispy lines of blue smoke from beneath the cuff of his jacket.
“What are you going to do?” Alice asked.
“I’m going to stop the crowd from killing itself. Cameron is going to help.”
She nodded. “Then I’m going after the things on the roof.”
“No, Alice, not on your own.”
“I won’t be on my own.”
Alice’s eyes narrowed into fine slits as she surveyed the ground below. Silver had made his presence known among the crowd of humans, and while many of them moved away from the crazy guy with the sword, others who were either braver or dumber than the rest seemed to almost try and test him, seeing the weapon in his hands as an object to challenge rather than one to stay away from.
She curled her right hand into a fist and pushed her power through it, causing it to buzz coldly. She didn’t have Trapper with her, so she would have to think like a mage and improvise. This part wasn’t easy, but she had an idea of what she wanted to happen; she wanted to draw the shadow creatures to herself and keep them away from the crowd. If they were causing the humans to go into a frenzy, then taking them out of the picture would only help matters.
When the buzzing in her hand had reached a critical point, she thrust her hand outward, unfurled her fist, and sent a shockwave of Void energy through the crowd, causing many humans—including Silver—to fall to the ground where they stood. A moment later, from within the mass of fallen people, a shadow rose like a menacing, noxious mist.
It had noticed Alice, and it was hurtling right at her.
CHAPTER 16
It Came From Up There
The dark mass raced toward Alice at breakneck speed, faster than she had anticipated it could move. Alice turned to the right, ran at the ledge of the building, and leapt, crossing over the narrow alley they had just been in and rolling on her shoulder. Her arm throbbed from the sudden impact, but she shrugged it off and got up, taking cover behind an air conditioning unit.
The shapeless thing of shadow ignored Isaac and rushed toward her, closing the distance in only a matter of seconds. When it was close enough, Alice came out of hiding with her hands glowing and sent tendrils of shadowy Void energy directly into the center of the mass. The shadow jerked when the tendrils ran through it, as if its body were made of soft flesh and the tendrils were made of metal.
Drop by drop, Alice watched the shadow creature begin to disperse into a cloud of ink that seemed to float upward into the sky.
Alice breathed deep and exhaled, but she couldn’t rest. One down, she thought, and she dashed toward the edge of this building, the one overlooking the street. The crowd was in a panic now. The shockwave Alice had sent into the crowd had knocked protestors to the ground, and many weren’t sure how the wind had gotten so powerful so quickly.
Some protestors remained, though, and it didn’t seem like they were going anywhere. Worse, Alice couldn’t spot Silver in the rush of people, nor could she see other shadow creatures swimming around on the ground. She turned her attention up to the parking garage and saw that the four entities that had been there a moment ago were still there. The one with the cape raised its shadowy hand and pointed at Alice.
Two of the figures standing on the rooftop leapt up high, and Alice lost them against the dark sky.
“Alice!” Silver said from ground level. He had separated from the crowd and was looking up at her, his sword in his hand.
“Silver,” she said, “You have to get up here. Get them away from the crowd.”
Silver nodded. He closed his eyes, turned his head up to where Alice was, and disappeared into a flash of purple light. Alice felt the vibrations of his passing through the Void, and suddenly he exploded onto the rooftop next to her, though off balance. He hopped on one foot and stretched his arms out until finally he righted himself.
“Be careful,” Alice said, “I saw two of the leaders break off but I didn’t see where they went.”
Out of the corner of her eye Alice caught something large and dark heading her way. She had only an instant to put her right arm up and conjure a shield of pure Void energy before something struck her hard enough to lift her off her feet and send her sprawling several feet across the rooftop. Though she had put up a shield, the hit resonated throughout her body so intensely it made her teeth rattle.
Alice looked up and saw the muscular shadow figure steadily advancing toward her. Seeing it up close, she noticed that it had definition and features. She could identify its big pectoral muscles, its biceps, and the powerful, ropy muscles on its neck stretched taut. It was, she thought, like a minotaur with two large, glowing violet eyes in its head and a mouth filled with sharp, copper teeth.
She shook the blow off and got to her feet, though her balance was unsteady. She wondered where Silver was, but decided she couldn’t worry about that now. “Alright,” she said, “Let’s go.”
The shadowy minotaur snarled and charged—its head cocked, and its arm arched back ready to swing. Alice ducked to the right as it swung and put an air vent between her and the creature, but its giant fist had enough power behind it to crush the metal into an unrecognizable shape. Alice backed up, looked to the left, and caught a glimpse of Silver, who was engaged in a swordfight with the thinnest of the shadowy figures. Its hands ended in blades, and when they collided with Silver’s sword they rang out like an authentic sword clash.
Alice turned her attention back to the approaching minotaur again just as it swung its huge fist in her direction. She threw herself to the ground, and the fist went smashing into the stairwell enclosure, sending an explosion of brick and debris in all directions. Alice covered her head, then rolled to the right, and jumped quickly to her feet. From out of her right hand she conjured another set of Void tendrils and threw them at the minotaur, but they bounced off its thick hide and fell inertly to the floor, disappearing in an instant.
“Oh fuck,” she said. Alice turned around and ran.
The minotaur gave chase. She couldn’t jump onto the building she had come from because the other building was taller than the one she was on. She considered jumping to the street or maybe to the fire escape, but if she failed, she would plummet and seriously injure herself. Then again, if the minotaur got her with a solid hit, she would be seriously injured anyway. Alice turned and saw the creature barreling toward her with its head low, and its mouth turned up into a grin.
She was about to jump across toward the gantry on the other building when she heard a growl. Immediately she ducked, tucking her head into her arms just as something seemed to leap over her and strike the rooftop she was on. When she looked up, she saw Cameron rushing toward the minotaur. It changed targets, went to strike Cameron, but he blocked its fist with his own, then jumped an impossible height, grabbed the minotaur around the neck, and swung onto its back.
“Hit it!” Cameron said as he struggled with the muscular shadow.
Alice looked around. “Hit it with what?” she asked, but then she saw. She hadn’t seen it before because the minotaur kept its head low and its shoulders hunched, but within its dark body there was a pulsing blue light. Her eyes widened like a treasure-hunter opening a chest full of gold as she realized, to her dread and relief, what the light was.
A soul.
Without hesitating, Alice charged. She pushed her power into her hand and it glowed bright blue. The creature kept reaching over its back to grab Cameron, but he seemed to be possessed of some kind of supernatural strength a
nd was strong enough to deflect the minotaur’s attempts at grabbing him. When the creature arched its back and roared into the sky, Alice took the shot. She placed her foot on the minotaur’s lap, propelled herself toward it, and shoved her uninjured hand into its midsection.
Her hand seemed to punch through its body as if it were made of air, and though she had to stretch far, her fingers clamped around the cold, blue core; the minotaur’s beating heart. It let out a scream that seemed to shake the building’s very foundation. Lightning crackled above and thunder rolled. The minotaur seemed to tremble like it was being filled with bullets spat out of a machine gun, and then it dissolved into a cloud of inky blackness that, like the others before it, began to drip upward and into the sky.
Alice landed on her feet, as did Cameron, and when they looked for Silver they found him plunging his sword into the thin shadow’s chest. A moment later, the thing was gone, and Silver’s sword was glowing with soft, blue light—just like Alice’s hand. She watched the soul dance there, around her fingers and her arm, fascinated. She hadn’t expected the minotaur to have a soul at its core. This soul wasn’t just human, it was pure, and somehow untainted.
“Is that what I think it is?” Cameron asked, his hair matted and wet.
Alice nodded, and without thinking about it she brought her fingers up to her lips and the soul rushed into her mouth. The feeling as her supernatural metabolism digested the soul was a cold tingle at first, but then it became warm and satisfying—like wrapping yourself in a blanket on a rainy day. Alice thought she could hear a distant voice manifesting in the back of her mind, but there was too much going on for her to know what it was saying.
Silver inspected his sword as he approached. The glow was fading, but still present. “Didn’t know my sword could do that,” he said.