by Kim Harrison
“Who guards the guardians?” Trent said as Zack spun the knob again, and this time, the latch engaged. “Someone has a sense of humor.”
“Go.” Nash pressed his lips as he turned to the loud voices approaching. “I’ll lead them to the other side of the compound.”
“Rache, come on!” Jenks prompted.
Zack was already halfway down another one of those cramped stairs lit by lights hanging from exposed wire, and I hesitated, taking Nash’s hand for a moment. “Thank you,” I said, and then Trent tugged me away. “If you ever need a job . . . ,” I said as he pulled me down the stairs.
“If this gets out, I will,” Nash said, and then the door shut.
“Wait,” I insisted as I tugged from Trent, hesitating until I heard Nash’s muffled shout and the sound of them fading. I exhaled, trusting the man I’d known for all of five minutes.
“If you ever need a job?” Jenks said pointedly as he landed on my shoulder.
Trent had gone ahead, and I felt myself warm as I began to follow. “With Ivy gone, we could use some muscle. Besides, if I don’t grab him, Trent will.”
The air began to smell musty—and sort of metallic. A thick rug spread where the stairs ended. The light was brighter, too, but I hustled forward when Jenks took off, stopping just inside what I assumed was a larger room.
“And demon makes three,” Landon said when I came blinking out of the darker tunnel.
Trent took my arm, tugging me closer as I looked across the brightly lit, almost claustrophobically low-ceilinged room. It glittered with gold and jewels arranged in glass cases and narrow shelves. But it was Landon and the eight men and women who held my attention.
“There’s four of us, moss wipe,” Jenks said as he hovered beside Zack.
Trent twitched, and the eight security guards lifted their weapons in threat.
Guns? I thought, realizing how badly elven magic wasn’t working.
Landon smirked. Somewhere between punching me in the gut and now, he’d put his ceremonial robe on over his slacks and white shirt, and the purple and green reminded me of what demons dressed their favorite familiars in. A purple sash was draped around his neck, and he even had on the flat-topped cylindrical hat. I wondered if he was trying to curry favor with the Goddess. If his security was using mundane weapons, it wasn’t working.
And then my chin lifted when I realized it was Hodin’s ring that he was setting on a display rack with the rest. Everything he’d taken from me was in a bowl beside him, and my lips parted when he plucked the baby bottle out from between Trent’s and my phones and dropped it in his robe’s expansive pocket.
“From one dead-end hole to another,” Jenks muttered as a pounding began on the door at the top of the stairs. “Don’t you elves ever make escape routes?”
Trent shrugged, and Jenks dropped to the floor to look for one.
“I never did like you, Zack, even before you died,” Landon said, grimacing at Jenks’s fading dust trail. “You made my childhood miserable. Which will make this almost a pleasure.”
Expression ugly, he backed to the wall and motioned for the guards to shoot us.
My eyes widened as they readied their weapons. Surprise flashed through me, and Zack made a sound of disbelief. Heart pounding, I yanked on the ley line, pulling in energy to blow them backward and into the tapestry-covered walls. “Fire in the hole!” I shouted to Jenks, then inhaled to invoke the spell with the force of my leaving breath.
“Celero inanio!” Zack shouted at the top of his lungs, and I turned to look at him in horror. It would burst the cartridges right in their weapons!
“Rhombus!” I exclaimed instead, simultaneously imagining a circle to encompass all of us. Trent’s energy poured into me, his power supplementing mine through Hodin’s curse. Our thicker barrier flashed up, closing above our heads as a thunderous boom shook the air: scores of bullets exploding at once.
I ducked, looking up at the unexpectedly muffled sound. The barrier dimpled with gunfire, and I squinted past it, a hand going to my mouth as men cried out in half-heard pain and fell to the floor in the sudden firestorm.
Bullets embedded themselves in the wall. Glass shelves shattered to spill priceless elven artifacts in a mix of jewels, glass shards, and wood splinters. And then it was over and all I could hear were Trent’s and Zack’s harsh breaths. The cries of the downed men were muted and the air was getting stuffy. Under the influence of Hodin’s curse, a circle would hold the baku. If I cared to catch it.
I slowly stood. Trent had never ducked, never flinched, ramrod straight with his eyes fixed on Landon across the dusty room. The leader of the dewar had put himself in a circle, too, but his men were dead or dying.
“Let me out,” Zack said, his face ashen. “I never meant to hurt anyone.” He turned to Trent, his young face pinched in agony. “I never meant to hurt anyone!”
My throat filled with a hard lump as I remembered realizing I could kill someone by just being stupid. “It happens,” I said, not knowing what else to say. “Go fix it.”
Trent touched the bubble, and it dropped. My gut twisted at the louder groans and pants of Landon’s security. As if in a war zone, the wounded dragged themselves to the dying, their own pain ignored as they tried to save one another’s lives.
Landon stayed where he was, safe in his circle.
Zack lurched to the first, his bandaged hand outstretched. Jenks was already flitting from huddle to huddle, dusting the bleeding to help stanch the flow.
“You know who I am,” Trent said to the one officer who had escaped with nothing more than a shoulder wound, and the man looked up from the person he was trying to save, pain in his eyes. “This is between me and the former head of the dewar. I’m speaking now for the current head of the dewar, Zachariah Oborna. Agree to cease your actions against us, and there will be no repercussions. We’ll get you medical attention as soon as we can.”
But Zack was already among them, tears spilling from him as he murmured powerful word after powerful word. Landon watched in jealous disgust as his underling healed and mended with a skill and finesse that was so smooth and sure, it had to be from a lifetime of experience, a lifetime that Zack hadn’t lived, but his predecessor had.
I stood straighter as Jenks came back to me, weary but satisfied. By his confident nod, I knew they would all live. Better, Zack would likely never act out of fear again. Pride filled me when Zack stood, slim and untidy in his jeans and T-shirt, his hands bloodied and a smear of red under his eye where he had wiped his youth away and become a man.
“What say you?” Trent said, his voice holding an unfamiliar formal cadence as Zack stood heartsick at what he had done.
One by one, the men looked among themselves. One by one, they set their weapons down. And one by one, they all inclined their heads to the new leader of the dewar.
Landon shook with anger as he hid in his circle. “I am the dewar! Me! She’s a demon whore who tricked the strength of the Sa’han from him and destroyed his name. Bankrupted him! She will do the same to us. To you!”
“Why does everyone think I don’t have any money?” Trent muttered, annoyed.
“Take them, or I swear your names will be struck from the rolls and you will be shunned!”
I coughed at the settling dust, then squinted up the stairway. The pounding had stopped, but I doubted the guards had given up. “We can’t walk out of here and leave him,” I said, and Trent sighed, clearly agreeing though it would have been easier. “Sure, these guys like Zack, but there’s an entire building of angry elves up there.”
“Fine,” Trent almost grumped. “Try not to knock him unconscious.”
“I got just the thing.” I could still feel Trent’s strength in me through Hodin’s curse. I took my time, pacing forward as I readied a spell that Al had tormented me with for months until I figured out how to block it. It was a
lmost a joke curse—unless you didn’t know how to break it. Taking down the circle Landon was hiding in would be easy, seeing as the Goddess wasn’t speaking to her so-called favorite children at the moment.
“Corrumpo,” I said, whispering so I wouldn’t blow a hole in the wall. Power was a warming blip through me, and I smiled. I was getting the hang of this double-energy stuff.
“You can’t!” Landon cried out when his faltering protection vanished. His fear was heavy on him, and I steeled myself against it. Pity had always gotten me in trouble.
He made as if to run, and my prey drive kicked in.
“Stabils,” I shouted, physically throwing the glowing curse at Landon—then scrambled to pull half the energy flowing through me back again. My palms itched as I funneled it into the earth, and what was left hit Landon squarely.
The man froze, my will racing over him like a spiderweb and soaking in. His momentum carried him several feet before he half fell, half slid to an undignified sprawl facedown on the glass-and-artifact-strewn rug. The watching security tensed, then relaxed when Landon began to swear, his muffled protest growing louder. Unfortunately the curse didn’t affect the vocal cords. I think Al designed it that way because he enjoyed hearing people rail helplessly at him.
“You bitch!” Landon shouted. “You used a demon curse on me. A demon curse! Your soul is black, and you will die for this, you stinking demon!”
But I’d heard it too many times to let it bother me. Much. Still, I had to fight to keep from giving his ribs a swift kick as I went to get my things out of the bowl and his former security picked themselves up. “You owe me a purse,” I said as I searched his pockets to find that baby bottle.
“This isn’t over,” Landon raved as Trent gathered the scattered rings one by one. “The Order wants you, not me. All I have to do is wait for you to go to sleep so it can find you.”
A flash of fear lit through me and died. “All I have to do is stay awake,” I said. “It almost has you, Landon . . . ,” I crooned as Jenks came to sit on my shoulder. “It’s only Trent being alive that keeps it from taking you. But I’m not killing him, and when it figures that out, it will take you anyway. You will be a zombie. Forever.”
Landon went ashen. In his silence I heard his knowledge that he was likely going to lose, not only his dewar position, but his life. The baku was so close now, I could pretend to see it lifting off his skin like heat. The bottle in my pocket was obvious, and guilt pinched me. I could save him. If I cared to. Damn it all to the Turn and back, Rachel. Just let evil priests die.
I turned away. The pounding on the door had returned, and I shifted to make room for Trent as he came closer, a pile of rings in his hands. We were still stuck down here, but at least no one was shooting at us. “Which one is Hodin’s?” Trent asked as I gave him his phone back, and then I flicked through the rings in his cupped hands until I found the dented thing.
“Thanks,” I said as I put it on, my eyebrows rising when Trent pocketed the rest.
“You common thief, you,” Jenks said, laughing, and Trent stepped back, insulted.
“They don’t belong to the dewar. They’re demon. I’m going to return them. Goodwill gesture.” Trent looked at the stairwell at the sound of an ax. “We should leave.”
“There’s only one way out,” Landon spat. “Your lives are mine!”
“He’s right,” Zack said as he helped the last of the guards rise to his shaky feet. “There’s only one door.”
I took a breath and steadied myself. If Landon was right about anything, it was that I was a stinking demon. “We don’t need a door,” I said as I looked at Trent’s stubble, wanting to run my hand across it.
Trent put his phone away, never having gotten any further than his address book. “Bis?” he guessed, and I nodded. It was dark. Bis would be awake. I was a demon, even if I didn’t have a spelling lab like Al, or a job, like Dali. But I did have friends.
“He can jump us out one by one,” I said. The noise of breaking wood was getting louder, and Zack began organizing the guards, directing them to move a large wardrobe in front of the opening to the stairs. A feeling of urgency took me, and my focus blurred as I strengthened my hold on the ley line and sort of melded my mind with it.
“Goddess spit,” Trent whispered, staggering as he reached for a bullet-torn chair.
My eyes flicked to his, and I gave him a weak smile. It was the curse. He’d probably never swum in a ley line like this before. Bis? I threw out into the ether, my smile brightening when I got an almost immediate response.
Where are you? Underground? Again? came Bis’s response.
And then he was here, startling the guards and delighting Zack as he landed with a wide-eyed stare on the back of the probably once-priceless wingback chair.
“Cool.” Bis gave Jenks a tiny fist bump, and the pixy went to Zack to help him direct the guards. “Where are we? The Monastery’s undercroft? The Basilica has one, too, but it only has rats.” He frowned at the broken shelves and scattered artifacts. “Is everything okay?”
“Sort of?” I said, then started when Hodin popped in as well, the demon appearing in the center of the room with his head nearly brushing the low ceiling. The men positioning the wardrobe against the archway cried out, and Landon, almost forgotten, began to struggle in earnest.
Jenks rose up high, a piercing whistle from his wings getting their attention. “You all just calm down, or I’m going to pix you into an itching frenzy,” he said, hands on his hips as he hovered between them and Hodin. “This here is Rachel’s friend, and he ain’t going to abduct you.” He turned to Hodin. “Right?”
Hodin shrugged.
Suspicion thickened in me, and I eyed the demon in his black jeans and T-shirt. Clearly he’d been with Bis. Again. “I didn’t call you,” I said. “What are you doing with my gargoyle?”
Bis’s eyes widened, and he made a hopping jump to my shoulder, his tail wrapping securely around my back. “We were just flying,” he said.
I eyed Hodin, who smiled insincerely. I didn’t like this. Bis was his own person, but Hodin had what it took to keep up with the kid and I clearly didn’t. Maybe I should rectify that, I thought, stifling a surge of jealousy.
I spun at a loud thump to see the guards shove the wardrobe back into place. Zach was standing by it, looking ill.
“Busy evening?” Hodin looked around, eyebrows rising as he tracked Trent ambling about the destruction, picking things up and setting them down as if he were shopping.
Feeling my gaze, Trent turned. “We should leave before they break the back off that wardrobe.”
It was solid mahogany, but they did have an ax.
“Where to?” Bis said, brightening.
“The church,” I said softly. Not the boat or Piscary’s, where Ivy was. Not Trent’s, where the girls were. The church. My church. They could find me there if they wanted to.
Hodin brought his attention up from Landon. “I’m here because I want it,” he said flatly.
“Want what?” I said, eyeing Trent’s stuffed pockets. Good God. Jenks is right. He’s a common thief.
“The baku,” Hodin said, and Trent started, his green eyes sharp in warning. “I think you have an excellent chance of containing it.” He looked at Landon, and the man went ashen. “And I want it,” he finished softly.
“No, I’m last!” Zack said, but Bis had landed on his shoulder, and the two winked out.
“Well, maybe I want to leave him here to turn into a zombie,” I said, though I didn’t, and beside me, Trent sidled close, clearing his throat in a gentle rebuke to consider the future. “He tried to kill Jenks. If he got his way, he would make me kill you,” I said.
“But he didn’t,” Trent reminded me.
Bis popped back in a flurry of leather-snapping wings, pinwheeling to snatch Jenks right out of the air. “Next!” he shouted m
errily, and the two were gone to leave only Jenks’s swearing to fade with his dust.
At the archway, the ax was biting through the back of the wardrobe, four men holding it firm. We had only moments.
“I want it because it tormented me for six agonizing years as they perfected it,” Hodin said, his long face hard in remembered anger.
“Not to hold it over your kin as a threat?” Trent suggested, and Hodin’s anger shifted into an evil-looking smile that made me stifle a shiver.
“That, too,” he said.
Behind me, the guards cried a warning and moved a chair into position. My gaze dropped to Landon, silent as he waited to see how fate would fall. Maybe if I put my curses where my mouth was, the Order would take me seriously. If the baku was in a bottle, Landon might be the leader of the dewar, or he might be in prison for attempted murder. Probably not, I decided. He was an entitled bastard. They’d quietly demote him to where he would fester like a thorn in my foot.
But what really bothered me was the thought of having to live with myself when I knew I could have stopped it. “How long before this curse expires?” I said, taking a step back when the head of an ax bit into the chair and got stuck.
Hodin sniffed, totally uncaring. “Three hours.”
Three hours. “Why do I always cut these things so damn close?” I whispered, my gaze finding Bis when he popped back in. I looked at Trent, and the kid nodded.
“Rachel first,” Trent demanded, backing up. “I said, Rachel first!”
But it was too late, and they were gone.
Hodin glanced at the sudden uproar at the archway, then at me, his eyebrows high in question. Arms were snaking in, forcing hips and legs to follow.
“Change of plans, Landon,” I said as I inched back to him. “You’re coming with us.” I looked at Hodin, pulse fast. God, I hope I’m not making a mistake. “I’ll do this, and then I’ll give the baku to you after you teach me a way to fly with Bis.”
Hodin’s lips parted in surprise. “You could have anything, and you choose this?”
“But I want to make one thing perfectly clear.” I leaned to poke him in the chest. “If you ever let that thing out with the intent to do harm, I’ll bring everything I have down on you. Got it?”