by TA Moore
Madoc laughed with a strangled sound that scraped at his throat. “Apples,” he said. Old—very old—rage clawed at the back of his mind and tried to get out. It was the smoke, even though it tasted like paint and gas instead of lantern oil and the charred boughs of the orchard. He scrambled to his feet and grabbed Took’s sleeve to drag him up. “I guess it meant something to someone other than you. Move.”
He gave Took a shove to get him to take that first step.
“We could go out the back,” Took said. He pulled his gun and held it down against his thigh as he took the stairs two at a time. “Fire rises.”
“I know what fire does,” Madoc said roughly. Inside, the flames had started to crawl up the walls and the floor was already pitted and bowed as the heat steamed it, and outside, the fire flickered and flashed as it caught on the wooden slats. It sounded hungry as it bit into the house with a hushed, crackly grumble like a demon’s stomach. “They came armed with holy oil and fire. They’ll have a plan of attack. The back will be covered.”
It shouldn’t have been enough. Madoc could side-step the fire, into the cold shadow and smoke world that lay alongside it, and slip away, like a dead fish against the blood-tide. Even if the bone and star-stuff creature had lingered—and it could have been centuries to it, or a heartbeat—he could slip those stripped raw fingers. He had before. The boyars had been forced to a compromise, not a defeat, when they signed the Accord.
He would be alone, though. Even the eldest among them couldn’t take a passenger into otherworld, where the gods, Gods, and demons lived. Attempts to do so had been fatal for the passenger, disfiguring for the guide. Madoc wouldn’t—couldn’t—lose Took like that.
Was that love, he wondered, or just old, singed guilt?
“Nobody knew I would be at the Aron house,” Took said. He looked back over his shoulder as he reached the top of the stairs. “You?”
Madoc hesitated for a moment and then admitted, “Lawrence.” It felt like a betrayal, even as he added, “She can be trusted.”
“Me, myself, and I can be trusted,” Took said. He paused to cough and looked surprised at the bark of it. “I thought one advantage of death would be no more coughing.”
“You don’t need to breathe,” Madoc said. He could feel the tickle of it in the back of his throat—the prickled heat in his chest—but his body mended before any of that became a cough. “But you still do, and smoke irritates, especially when the holy oil has filled the air with juniper and myrrh.”
He opened a door with his elbow. It was the master bedroom. This part of the house hadn’t been part of the murder downstairs, so none of the violence had made it up here, and the room had just been stripped instead of redecorated. The carpet on the floor was lightly worn, and the ghosts of old furniture were marked out in dust on the walls.
Madoc stuck to the wall of the room as he made his way to the window. The last thing he wanted was to give anyone a clear shot. Smoke hung overhead in a dour gray pall. He pushed the heavy brocade curtain back with one finger and peered through the crack down into the garden.
The magnolia wouldn’t betray anyone’s location again. The fragile white flowers were withered, and fire crawled up the trunk and turned the spindly branches to kindling. Two men in black, faces masked, sprayed the back of the house with accelerant from tanks strapped to their thighs.
“Hunters,” he said.
“Waring wasn’t a Hunter recruit,” Took insisted.
“Not the point,” Madoc countered. “We’ve had a lot of chatter about an uptick in Hunter activity down the coast over the last few years. They’ve been more aggressive than they used to be.”
“When I’m investigating this case? It’s the point,” Took said. He ducked through the door and made his way around the room to the other side of the window. His voice sounded odd, slightly strangled. Madoc supposed it had been a while since he’d been in the field. “They shut the water off.”
Madoc hissed under his breath. He fished his phone from his pocket and called Lawrence.
“Fire strike at the Aron house,” he said. A quick hand sign told Took to stay in place while Madoc went out into the hall and opened a door into a front-facing bedroom. Smoke hung lazily in the air and glazed the window with grime. He peered onto the street outside, at a row of firmly closed curtains and a man in black with a machine gun cradled lazily in his arms. It would be enough to kill a young vampire, and even a boyar would be slowed down if they got cut in half by high-velocity customized bullets. “Four hunters. Fire and silver. They’ve cut the water, so make sure the fire department is prepared—”
“Sir?” Lawrence spluttered. He heard tires screech in the background and horns blare for a second. Then she flicked the siren on to drown them out. “What happened?”
“Get here in time to take one alive, and we’ll know,” Madoc said. He stared at the man outside as he tried to pick out identifying details in the featureless black. Something happened down the road—a man’s voice raised in worry—and the man turned to fire off a quick burst of bullets. Someone screamed and doors slammed. “We have injured. I—”
Glass smashed in one of the other rooms. Madoc turned toward the noise, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw the man outside do the same. The gun was hitched up onto his hip, ready to fire.
“Wait for backup,” he clipped out to Lawrence. “I don’t need a dead agent.”
Or not another one, he thought grimly as he headed back to Took, because you only got lucky enough to have them come back once.
Chapter Seven
VAMPIRES’ FIRST suspects were always Hunters, just as the first word in a Hunter’s mouth when they raised the hue and cry was “Vampire.” When you needed someone to blame, why not someone you hated? It was easy. Sometimes it was right.
Not this time.
Took leaned his shoulder against the wall and took aim through the window. He pulled the trigger, and one of the men below staggered as it hit his shoulder. He tripped over his own foot and went down in the dirt with a grunt. His hand flew up to his shoulder, groped at the heavy black fabric, and he laughed when he pulled it away clean.
“Stupid fucking wetmouth,” he yelled as he scrambled to his feet. The mask over his mouth muffled his voice. “Didn’t have Kevlar in your day, eh?”
He hitched the wand of the tanker up and aimed accelerant in a wild arc up the side of the house. It splashed over the windowsill and flicked droplets onto Took’s jacket. The fire scuttled up the side of the house after the spray of fuel. A spark caught on Took’s cuff, singed, and died.
“Fucker,” the other man yelled as he backed away. He swiped at his mask with a gloved hand. “Keep it low, you moron.”
The moron didn’t listen.
Took aimed again, took a breath, and held it. He probably didn’t need to anymore, he supposed, but being a good shot was muscle memory—habit, training, anger. His finger tightened and the bullet hit the slim metal tanker strapped to the man’s thigh, exposed by the tight line of the strained hose. Accelerant spilled out in a wet gush down the man’s leg, like he’d pissed himself with gas.
“Son of a bitch,” the man spluttered as he landed on his ass in the grass again. The spray of fuel trickled down the wand onto him. “Stupid undead thing. Don’t even know when to lie down and burn.”
His friend stepped away from him in disgust. He kept his stream of gas aimed into the hot, wild heart of the fire. “Would you just—”
Took stripped his jacket off and tied it roughly around his gun.
“What are you doing?” Madoc snapped as he came back into the room.
“Improvising.” Took stuck his jacket into the flames that flickered along the windowsill. The fabric lit quickly as the drops of gasoline flared and wicked the fire through the tightly woven fabric. One more suit down, Took thought dryly, as he turned the bundle to light the other side.
“Bennett, don’t,” Madoc snapped.
The words pushed at the inside of Took�
��s head, a pressure against his eardrums that needed equalizing. He shook his head as much to dislodge that ache as to disagree with Madoc.
“Hunters know about backsplash,” he told Madoc and pitched the flaming ball of metal and silk-woven linen out the window. It hit the man in the chest as he struggled to his knees and he went up like a firework. Took’s tongue flicked against the edges of his adrenaline-extended fangs and he tasted the thick, treacle-sweet of ichor. “And this vampire knows Kevlar is no good against fire.”
The man screamed and rolled on the grass as he batted frantically at his arms and crotch. It only spread the fire around like a halo. His companion took a step toward him, and a damp spot of fluid on his boot sparked and spluttered over the sole. He jumped back and stamped his foot on the grass. The black rubber melted in long, tangled strings.
“You could have waited for backup,” Madoc said as he dragged Took away from the window. “Now we just have more fire to deal with, no water, and you just threw your gun into the garden.”
Took crouched down and unclipped his holdout from the ankle holster. Paranoia could have its uses. After Heather Waring turned up on his doorstep, he needed the extra security. There was a narrow stake holstered in his other boot, but he couldn’t tell Madoc about that… just in case.
He shoved the sick tangle of suspicion and guilt out of his way as he stood back up, flashed the gun at Madoc, and tried to ignore the raw, blistered meat of his fingers. They would heal like everything else, eventually. “One problem solved,” he said. “Your turn.”
Something exploded outside with a hollow bang that rattled the windows. Took stepped back and looked out. The man still lay in the burned starburst, his leg and side a charred mess. He was still alive, but barely.
Took’s brain caught on that. It was important. There was no time to work out how yet, so Took tucked it away in the back of his head. Later. The other man was at the back of the garden as he yanked and hammered his fist on the gate. He kicked it with a heavy, half-melted boot as he looked back over his shoulder at the house.
“Madoc,” Took said. “They locked their men in. Why—”
“Life for the living,” Madoc muttered. Beneath their feet the fire glowed through the floor, the heat hot enough to crack the plaster. “How much influence do the Hunters have in Charleston?”
“There’s no Hunter cells in Charleston,” Took said. He ignored Madoc’s snort of disagreement. The move to Charleston had been done when he was still… off his game… but he’d done his due diligence on the city. He knew how to sniff out Hunters and their haunts, nearly as well as he could vampires. In the end they weren’t that different, although both sides would slit his throat for saying so. “Hunter money, sure, but people like Waring are the face of the anti-Accord movement in Charleston. They don’t like you—”
“Us.”
Took swallowed the reminder with a mouthful of hot air and acrid smoke. The seasoning might have made it more palatable than usual.
“They don’t like us,” he corrected himself as they skirted the fire-weakened spots on the floor and got out into the hall. The staircase was gone, and the banister poked out into the smoke like a stained, broken bone. Heat soaked into his skin, but it didn’t feel like living warmth, more like a fever that would cook him from inside. He suddenly missed sweat. “But the focus is on politics and policies, not stakes and garlic. There’s some violence, but mostly they stick to rhetoric, not Molotov cocktails.”
Madoc absorbed that as he opened a door with his shoulder. A wall of heat and smoke shoved out with almost physical force. It had been a child’s room. The furniture was gone, but it was still painted sky blue and interrupted with multicolored balloons stickered over the walls. Smoke had grimed the blue down to a cloudy day, and the balloons peeled off the sweaty paint as though they were about to deflate.
Sometimes the tragedy of a case caught Took by surprise. He licked his lips and looked away from the ruin of someone’s dream bedroom.
“Can we get out?” he asked.
“We have armed men out the front,” Madoc said. “You sure they aren’t Hunters?”
Took peered down into the street. He could feel the heat off the glass like an oven, and his skin was tight and painful as he reddened. The butt of the gun was tucked into the man’s armpit, and he held the weight of it with casual confidence. Other than the bandana pulled up over his mouth and nose, his gear could pass for streetwear at first glance. Under the tight leather jacket, Took would bet he had on a nondescript cotton shirt or a worn T-shirt with a funny slogan. That was popular too. People rarely suspected a man in a funny shirt of being dangerous.
“Him, maybe,” he admitted.
Madoc looked smug for a second. He wiped it away on the sleeve of his shirt as the smoke got dense and hot enough to drag a wet cough out of his throat. His skin was flushed, more red than pink, and cracked painfully around his mouth and nose. Fat, wet blisters ran in stripes up his throat and splattered along the side of his face.
It would heal. Took had seen him hurt worse. It still made him care more than was probably safe… or fair.
“Okay,” Took said. “What are they going to do? Why lock their own men in the garden? It won’t burn.”
Madoc frowned and the long blisters pulled tight against his skin, but the screech of an approaching siren cut through whatever he was about to say. Took ducked his head to peer up the road and saw the sleek black police cars fishtail onto the narrow road just ahead of the fire engine.
“Backup is here,” Took said with relief. “We might get a ladder down.”
“No,” Madoc said abruptly. “We get out now. That’s why they cut the water. Get down. Get out of the line of fire. Let me deal with the Hunter.”
“Fuck off,” Took said. He hesitated as he struggled to swallow with no moisture in his throat. “Remember Michigan?”
Madoc did. He hesitated for a moment. “You’re not Kit,” he said.
“No,” Took agreed. “You can tell, because I don’t want to die.”
He never had. That was one of the solid threads he could remember. Even at the worst, he hadn’t been able to let go of the hope for tomorrow. It hadn’t felt like a strength then.
“Good,” Madoc said. “Because if you do, I’ll find you again and drag you back by the scruff of your neck.”
Tension plucked the air between them. Last time Madoc had said something like that, Took had banned him from the hospital. The time before that, he’d asked West to move in with him.
This time Madoc didn’t give Took a chance to ruin it. He reached up to his collar—a good faith tap of his fingers to St. Michael—and smashed out the window with his elbow. The hot glass exploded out with a pop, a starburst of fragments with the fire reflected in each of them, and he went out through the charred frame. Flames licked around him as he dropped to the ground, charred lines etched into his sleeves and over his thighs.
Hesitation caught Took for a second. He didn’t have his Biter’s uniform. All he had was an expensive ruined suit and good boots. It wouldn’t be enough to protect him from the fire. The scars under his shirt flared with the dull, hot memory of pain. Sunlight made them burn, but this would be worse.
Contempt stung more. He’d live. Or not die anymore. His place had always been on Madoc’s heels, and then he’d only been human. If he couldn’t do it now, with all the undying advantages of the undead, maybe he was as broken as West thought.
He tightened his grip on the gun—not that he thought his scorched tendons could let go right now—and vaulted out the window.
The fire hurt about as much as he expected. Took had found out early on that death shut off the brain’s gateway control. There was no switch to cut off the feedback from blistered skin, and the nerves gamely regenerated, like it or not.
Took’s hit the ground, tucked, and… for a second his brain went blank. What way had Kit gone when he hit the ground in Michigan? Left or right. Fuck, if he picked wrong, he’d end up und
er Madoc’s feet and screw them both.
He went left. No one tripped over him.
There were ashes in his eyes, hot and gritty under his lids, and his ears rang with chatter from scorched eardrums. As he got his feet back under him, Took scrubbed his fist over his eyes enough to give him a scratch-blurred field of vision.
His ears were fine, he realized. The pulsed chatter that echoed in the bones of his head came from the Hunter’s assault rifle as he trained it on Madoc. Despite the protection of reinforced leather over Madoc’s vital organs, the bullets chipped bone and shredded flesh. Madoc had his arms up to protect his head from a kill shot, but he couldn’t fight the percussion of impact that drove him, reluctant step by step, back into the fire.
Even through the mask, Took could make out the sneer that curdled the Hunter’s face and the hot glitter in his eyes. The satisfaction of the sadist—it made them stupid.
“If they’d told me I’d get to kill the likes of you,” the man laughed over the rattle of gunfire, “I’d have done this for free.”
Took took aim at his head first. The curve of skull made a good target under the streetlights, but the hood would be armored. A bullet wouldn’t kill him. It would just rattle his brain and put anyone else in the street at risk from a stray shot. Took dropped his arm to below the knee and fired.
The bullet ripped through the Hunter’s boot and punched out the other side. Blood and scraps of leather sprayed over the pavement. The Hunter screamed in pain and fumbled his gun as his leg went from under him. One bullet went wild and blew out the windscreen of a parked Porsche. The persistent drone of a car alarm joined the cacophony.
Took staggered to his feet and braced his gun with both hands. This time he aimed at the head.
“Drop the gun,” he rasped out. His voice sounded like someone else’s. It was rough and cracked, raw from the smoke. “Or I drop you. Tell whoever’s in the car to get out.”