by Rachel Aaron
I reacted before I could think, grabbing magic out of the air, which hurt like crap. The pain was so bad, I actually had to stop and breathe, which was a damn good thing, because the woman wasn’t attacking Nik. She was hugging him, squeezing him around the neck while squealing, “Nikki!”
“Hey, Maggie,” Nik said far less enthusiastically.
“It’s been forever, man!” she cried, finally releasing her stranglehold so she could look him over. “When did you get back?”
“I’m not back,” he replied, pointedly not looking my direction. “Just passing through.”
“Ohhhhh, I see,” Maggie said, turning to leer at me despite Nik’s attempts. “Your new girl looks nice and expensive. How’d you afford a piece like that? I heard you were a Cleaner or some shit now.”
I blinked, too shocked by the word barrage to be offended. Now that she was focused on me, I could see that Maggie was younger than I’d initially assumed. I’d pegged her in the mid-thirties, but she actually looked my age, maybe even younger. It was hard to tell with someone so strung out. Her skin was pale as a cave fish’s scales, as if she’d never seen the sun, and her twiggy arms were dotted with needle marks from vending-machine upper packs. Her makeup was surprisingly on point, if a bit overdone on the red lipstick, but her dark-lined eyes were dilated and twitchy, and her hair didn’t look like it had been washed in, well, ever. Her T-shirt and tight jeans were similarly filthy, the fabric stiff and reeking from too many days of wear. They weren’t bad quality, though. All in all, she looked like your classic high-functioning DFZ druggie, but she was hanging on Nik like they were childhood friends. Or former lovers.
“Say,” Maggie said, dilated eyes flashing as she whipped back around to smile at Nik. “You looking for a job? ’Cause I got work coming out my ears, and these new idiots can’t handle it. I could really use my old Mad Dog back. Just got something in that’s right up your alley too. Classic chop-and-bag job, super easy. So what you say? Wanna make some money?”
My ears perked up at the word “money,” but Nik’s glare hardened. “Thanks but no thanks,” he said, prying Maggie’s hands off his shirt. “I’ve already got a job.”
“Aww, come on, Nikki, don’t be like that,” she pleaded, snaking her fingers out of his grasp to reattach at his shoulders. “Ain’t no one left in this hole who can do what you did. Once word gets around Mad Dog’s back, jobs’ll be flying at our faces. We’ll both be high rollin’! How can you turn that down? You’re the one who says he’s always for sale, right?”
“Not this time,” Nik said stiffly, removing her hands from him yet again. “I’m not working for you, Maggie. Stop asking.”
For a moment, she looked truly hurt by his rejection. Then her smile snapped back, and she put up her hands. “Sure, man, sure,” she said, backing away. “You don’t want to be rich, that’s your call. I’m just happy to see you doing well for yourself. You know how to find me if you change your mind. Until then, have a nice life.”
She walked off after that, vanishing back into the crowd as suddenly as she’d appeared. I was still trying to figure out how she’d done it when Nik grabbed my hand and started marching toward the exit so fast he was practically running.
“Whoa,” I said, scrambling to keep up. “What’s wrong?”
“We need to get out of here,” Nik said, his gray eyes flicking in every direction as he dragged me out of the market and back onto the bridge.
“Why?” I asked, looking over my shoulder at where Maggie had been. “Wasn’t she your friend?”
“There are no friends here,” Nik said darkly. “Maggie’s a fixer.”
“Like Kauffman?”
“Yeah, but she has a lower level of client.” He steered us to the middle of the road, plunging straight into the middle of a tourist group as if he were using their souvenir T-shirts and cargo-short-covered bodies as cover. “She was acting nice because she wanted to make money with me. Now that I’ve turned her down, she’ll be angling to make money off me by selling our location, which means we need to leave.”
That struck me as ridiculous. “Who’d pay money for your location?”
“Plenty of people,” Nik said, glaring over his shoulder. “There’s a lot of folks in Rentfree who don’t like me. Why do you think I didn’t want to come?”
“You could have told me that earlier,” I grumbled, focusing on my feet to keep my pointy heels from getting stuck in any of the hundreds of cracks as Nik pushed us down the road.
Rentfree being Rentfree, the streets had moved while we’d been shopping, putting us several blocks further to the north and west of the gate than we’d been originally. The longer walk combined with the fast pace was murder on my poor toes, but I knew better than to complain when Nik looked like he did now. I did breathe a sigh of relief when we passed through the metal gate that marked our reentry into the normal DFZ, though.
“Not there yet,” Nik warned me, but he did slow down, offering his arm again to help me hobble across the street into the brightly lit parking deck where we’d left his car.
At least it wasn’t crowded. Rentfree was still kicking behind us, but most of the tourists had already gone back to their hotels, leaving the deck blissfully quiet and empty. Nik’s car was the only one left when we reached the top level, gleaming like a black jewel under the security floodlights. I was already imagining flopping into the seat and yanking off my shoes when Nik suddenly stopped.
When I snapped my head up to see why, a huge guy stepped out from behind the thick metal lamppost next to Nik’s car. A second later, he was joined by three other dudes who’d been squatting out of sight by the safety railing that kept people from walking off the edge. None of the newcomers were as big as the first guy, but they still looked salty as hell, and they were all cybered. Not in the subtle, classy way Nik was, either. These guys were your stereotypical chromeheads with giant metal muscles bulging out of their tank tops. I saw that tacky, hyper-masculine foolishness every day in the Underground, but I’d never had four giant examples of the form glaring straight at me before, and I had to admit, it was pretty intimidating.
“Hey, Mad Dog,” the biggest guy said, stepping forward to put one giant boot on the coupe’s rear bumper. “This your car?”
I saw Nik’s jaw tic when the idiot pushed down hard enough to make the car wobble, but he kept his cool. “Who’s asking?”
The big guy lifted his lip in a sneer to reveal a mouth full of shiny, sharpened silver teeth. “You killed my brother.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Nik replied calmly. “You’ll have to be more specif—”
Big-and-Ugly jerked his arm up, yanking a cannon of a pistol out of his waistband. His buddies did the same, but none of them actually managed to get their arms up before Nik grabbed me and lurched to the side, cramming us both behind the cement base of the giant security floodlight directly to our left.
I yelped as bullets pinged off the metal lamppost above me. Being mostly metal, Nik was less concerned but way more pissed off.
“Who are those guys?” I hissed, hunkering down behind the cement anchor.
“Don’t know, don’t care,” he snarled, pulling his own gun out of its holster under his arm. “Stay there. I’ll be right back.”
I nodded, sliding the bulletproof coat he’d loaned me up to protect my head.
As the armored cloth came up around my face, it suddenly occurred to me that Nik was going to kill those men. I mean, I was totally cool with that since they were the ones who’d jumped us and started shooting for no damn reason, but it was still a shocking thing to realize. Recent history aside, this sort of thing didn’t normally happen to me. I’d grown up in a dragon’s household, so I was no stranger to conflict, but my dad had always been careful to keep the actual violence far away from us. I’d never even been shot at before the incident at Dr. Lyle’s old house. Now I was caught in my second gunfight in so many weeks, and it just felt like a bridge too far.
Thankf
ully, Nik didn’t seem to share my anxiety. He stepped out from behind the lamppost smooth as silk, lifting his gun like he’d already done this a thousand times to calmly peg the closest attacker in the knee. I didn’t know how he knew the guy wasn’t cybered there—if it was just a lucky shot or if Nik could read more from the fit of the man’s tight jeans than I could—but the dude went down screaming. Nik had already moved on in any case, ignoring the bullets pinging off his metal chest as he turned and shot the next thug in the foot. That one, too, went down screaming, and I breathed a sigh of relief. It was starting to look as if the fight was already over when the big guy dropped his gun and charged, body-slamming Nik so hard they both went down with a clang that shook the pavement.
Swearing under my breath, I scrambled around the pole to get out of the way. A few feet from where I’d been hiding, Nik and the leader were rolling around on the pavement, but while Nik was clearly the superior opponent, the big guy was big. I didn’t know if he had leg implants or what, but he was a good foot taller than Nik and at least a hundred pounds heavier. All that extra bulk made him pretty slow, but every punch Nik dodged came down hard enough to crater the parking deck’s stained cement. One miss and it would all be over.
“Do you want me to call the cops?” Sibyl whispered in my ear.
I snorted. “This close to Rentfree? Only if you’ve got bribes to spare.”
“We have to do something,” my AI said frantically. “Mr. Kos’s brains are going to get splattered all over the pavement!”
I actually thought Nik was doing pretty well. He was dodging the big man’s blows as if he could see them coming a mile away, all the while working his body around his opponent’s for a hold. It was still terrifying to watch, of course, but I’d seen Nik take down an entire professional merc team on his own before. This guy was huge and augmented to the gills, but he was amateur hour when it came to things you couldn’t buy, like skill. Nik almost had him in a chokehold already. I was getting ready to make a dash for the car the moment Nik gave the signal when a huge, hairy arm wrapped around my waist from behind.
“Gotcha!”
I gasped in surprise as the arm yanked upward, lifting me bodily off the ground. My next instinct was to scream, but I didn’t want to distract Nik and get him killed, so I bit it back, craning my neck back to see the grinning, gap-toothed face of the one thug Nik hadn’t shot and I’d totally forgotten to keep track of.
“Easy, girly,” the man said, pressing his gun into my back when I started to kick. I froze at the feeling of a muzzle poking my kidney, and the man grinned wider, leaning out from behind the lamppost to shout something at his boss.
I didn’t hear what. I was too busy swearing up a storm in my head as Nik and the big guy both turned to see me strung up like a snared chicken. How had I been so stupid? How hadn’t I seen this coming? I was going to get Nik killed. He’d already released his chokehold and put up his hands. The big guy responded by elbowing him in the face. Nik moved enough to avoid a broken nose, but he still got knocked onto his back, which was where I lost it.
“Opal!” Sibyl said sharply into my earpiece. “Don’t be rash!”
“Screw that!” I yelled back. This was my fault. We’d been doing great, and then I’d let myself get grabbed like an idiot. But like hell was I going to be the mistake that got Nik killed. Like hell was I putting up with any of this. I’d just figured out how to make money despite my curse. I was closer to winning my freedom than I’d ever been, and these assholes thought they could come in here and grab me like I was actually some hapless rich girl? Screw that! I was a mage! I was a dragon’s daughter! And I was not going to be defeated by something this stupid!
With that, I threw my magic as wide as it would go. It hurt even worse than when I’d instinctively tried to grab power after Maggie surprised me, but this time I didn’t care. I was sick of this shit. Sick of feeling helpless, sick of always being the weakest link. Sick enough to ignore the dire warnings my body was giving me and grab the magic anyway.
I barely got any on my first try. The pain made me clumsy, and the whole spell fell apart before I could even begin it. My second try went a bit better, but again, I couldn’t hold on.
Ironically, it wasn’t because of the hurt. I could grit through that. My problem was with the part of me that actually grabbed the magic, the bit I thought of as my mental “hand.” No matter how hard I pushed, it simply refused to work. I could feel the magic just fine, but handling it felt like trying to scoop sand with broken fingers. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t get it together, and that made me furious.
By this point, the guy holding me had already carried me over to his boss. At our feet, Nik had been forced onto his knees while the big guy put a gun—not even his gun, Nik’s gun, which the boss had grabbed off the ground—to his head. He was delivering some big speech about payback and dying like a dog, but I was too mad to pay actual attention. Nik didn’t seem to be listening, either. He was looking at me, his eyes flicking pointedly between my face and the guy holding me like he was trying to give me a signal, but I didn’t know what it meant. All I knew was that I was failing, and if I didn’t quit it, I was going to get us all killed. I was going to get Nik killed, specifically, which was absolutely unforgivable. He hadn’t even wanted to come here tonight. He’d only done it to help me, and I’d be damned if I let him get shot in the head for that because I was a garbage mage who couldn’t cast a proper spell even when she had a gun jabbed into her back.
With that final enraged thought, I shoved my magic as hard as I could. It hurt so bad I blacked out a little, but I didn’t let up. I just kept pushing, forcing that damned broken hand to spread wider and wider, because if I was going to die here, I was taking these bastards with me. I grabbed more magic than I’d ever grabbed before, more than I’d known I could, and still I kept going. I didn’t know what I was going to do with all that magic yet, but I knew for certain I could only do it once. I had to make it count, so I shoved the instincts screaming at me to step out of the way and pushed, sucking magic out of the air until even the chromeheads noticed. Pulled until the air itself felt thin and my skin felt tight from holding it all inside me.
Through the haze of pain and power, I could dimly see the big thug gesturing wildly between his guy and me. His big chromed mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear anything over the roar of magic in my ears. A few moments later, even the hurt went away. Magic was all I could feel now, all I could taste and smell and see. I hadn’t even realized humans could see magic until it was dancing across my vision like the Northern Lights. There was no way I could put so much magic into a spell, especially since I hadn’t even drawn a circle yet, but it had to go somewhere. It certainly couldn’t stay in me. I could already feel the overwhelming power dissolving me from the inside out. If I didn’t send it somewhere fast, it would eat me alive. So I did the only thing I could do at this point. The only move I had left.
I let it go.
I’m not entirely sure what happened after that. There was a flash of light and a wave of heat, and then I was lying on my back ten feet away wondering what the hell had just happened.
Oddly, the first thing I noticed was the smell of something burning. That struck me as important, so I feebly lifted my head, but it still took several seconds for my eyes to focus enough to see that all my clothes were scorched. Not burned—my silk tank top and skirt were still in one piece—but the fabric was blackened as if it had been baked under a broiler.
Wincing at the waste, I reached up to rub my throbbing head only to discover that my face was wet with blood. Really, though, that was to be expected. That was the biggest discharge I’d ever had. It was only natural something would break.
Since my shirt was ruined anyway, I used it to wipe my face clean. My nose and ears were tender enough to make me wince when I touched them, but weirdly, my magic didn’t hurt nearly as bad as I’d expected. After a blast like that, I’d have thought I’d be blacking out from the ag
ony, but my magic actually hurt less than it had all day. Curious, I reached out a tentative finger to prod the swirls of agitated magic left over from the power I’d dumped. At least, that was the plan. When I issued the mental command to move, though, nothing responded.
Trying not to panic, I did it again, but the result was the same. The signal was going out. There was just no answer at the other end. It felt like I was trying to move a limb that was no longer there, like the part of me that grabbed magic was simply…gone.
Now I started to panic. I sat up in a rush, closing my eyes as I moved through each step of the proper casting pattern my tutors had drilled into me since I was a kid. I even imagined a line of kabocha pumpkins to help myself along, but it didn’t change a thing. This was even worse than when moving magic had felt like trying to force a sprained muscle. At least the pain had been something, but now there was no feedback at all. If I concentrated hard enough, I could actually feel the part of my soul that reached out for magic hanging loose inside me like a broken stick, and it was freaking me out. I’d never had a panic attack before, but I was pretty sure I was on the verge of one when I heard Nik groan.
The plaintive sound slapped me out of my downward spiral. I scrambled to my feet, looking around in a rush to see that everyone else in the lot was down. The guy who’d grabbed me had actually been blown all the way to the opposite side of the top deck, while Nik and the big dude were both lying on their backs in a shower of broken glass under the now-dark floodlight. They all looked horrible, their faces bloody just like mine. That should have freaked me out even more, but it was actually a relief. The emergency let me focus on something other than the existential terror of what I’d done to my magic, and I jumped on it with both feet.
“Nik!” I hissed frantically, kicking the broken glass out of the way so I could kneel beside him. “Nik!”
He groaned again, eyelids fluttering open, and I sagged in relief. “Are you okay?”
His unfocused gaze slid over me, completely uncomprehending, and I swore. Dude was backlashed to hell. To be expected, really, considering the shock wave I’d unleashed, but it was finally starting to hit me just how stupidly reckless I’d been. I’d been so focused on my own anger that I hadn’t even considered what a blast like that would do to everyone else. My habit of doing stupid crap like this meant that I was inured to the worst of my magic’s effects, but backlash always hit nonmages way harder since they had no ability to protect themselves. I could have blown Nik to bits or baked his brain.