Magic Burns

by Ilona Andrews

  I pulled my saber out and ducked into the tunnel.

  BEING UNDERGROUND WAS NEVER ON MY “THINGS to do for fun” list. Being underground in the dark for what seemed like an hour, with dirt crumbling onto my head, walls rubbing my shoulders, and a sniper possibly waiting on the other side ranked right up there with getting a face full of giant toad vomit. I had only gone up against a giant toad once, and the nightmares still made me gag.

  The tunnel turned. I squeezed around the bend and saw light. Finally. I stood still, listening. No metallic click of a safety being released. No voices.

  I approached the light and froze. A huge chasm carved the ground before me. At least a mile wide and close to a quarter mile deep, it started a couple of yards from my feet and stretched forth for a good two miles, veering left, its end lost behind the bend. Piles of metal refuse lay in heaps along its bottom, giving slope to sheer walls. Here and there clusters of thick metal spikes punctured the trash. Razor sharp and shiny, they curved upright like the claws of some enormous buried bear, rising to three times my height. Above this baby Grand Canyon, two tall storklike birds surfed the air currents, circling the gorge as if they rode an invisible aerial calliope.

  Where the hell was I?

  Below, at the very bottom of the chasm, a large metal structure slumped among the iron debris. From this angle, it looked like some giant with a sweet tooth had gotten ahold of a metal hangar and squeezed its sides to see if there was cream filling inside. If I needed a place to hide, I’d be in that hangar.

  One of the birds swooped in my direction. A bright spark broke from its orange wings and plummeted down, slicing into the ground a few feet below with a heavy metallic clang. I negotiated the knot of crooked rusty pipes and climbed over to where it had fallen. A feather. A perfectly shaped bird feather, red at the root and tinted with emerald green at the edge. I flicked my fingers at the shaft. It chimed. Holy crap. Solid metal, shaped like a knife and sharp like a scalpel. A feather of a Stymphalean bird.

  I pulled my knife out of its sheath on my belt and pried the feather out, managing not to cut myself. A bird straight out of Greek mythos. At least it wasn’t a harpy. I stuck the knife into a spare loop on my belt, slid the feather into the sheath, and started down the slope. Mythological creatures tended to occur in bunches: if there was a Russian leshii in the forest, in the nearest pond you’d likely find a Russian vodyanoi. If there was a Greek bird in the air, some Greek critter would surely jump me in a moment. If my luck held, it wouldn’t be a handsome Greek demigod looking for the love of his life or at least his love of a couple of hours. No, it would be something nasty, like Cerberus or a Gorgona Medusa. I gave the hangar a suspicious glance. For all I knew it was crammed full of people growing snakes instead of hair.

  Midway down the slope, the Universe treated me to another magic wave. The wind brought a whiff of an acrid, bitter stench. In the distance something thumped like a sledgehammer hitting a drum with mind-numbing regularity: whoom, whoom, whoom.

  Five minutes later, sweaty and covered in rust stains, I reached the hangar. Soft voices filtered through the metal walls. I couldn’t make out the words, but someone was inside.

  I put my ear against the wall.

  “What ’bout my mom?” A thin, high-pitched voice. A young girl, probably an adolescent.

  “I gotta split.” Slightly deeper, male. Heard it somewhere before.

  “You promised!”

  “The magic’s cresting, okay? Gotta split.”

  Young voices. A boy and a girl, talking street.

  The only available door hung crooked and would make noise when I tried to open it.

  I kicked the door in and walked inside.

  The hangar was empty, save for a huge heap of broken wooden crates. Sunlight punched into the building through the holes in the roof. The hangar had no floor, its dented metal frame resting on packed dirt. In the very center of the dirt sat a perfect ring of barely visible white stones. The stones shimmered weakly, wanting very much to be invisible, trying to slide out of sight into nothing.

  An environmental ward. A good one, too.

  “Anybody home?”

  A kid stepped out from behind the crates, dangling a dead rat by its tail. He was short, starved, and filthy. Ragged clothes, patched, torn, and patched again, hung off his skinny adolescent frame. His brown hair stuck out in all directions like the needles on a hysterical hedgehog. He raised his right hand, fingering a knotted hemp cord, from which dangled a dozen bones, feathers and beads. His shoulders were bony, his arms thin, yet he stared at me with unmistakable defiance. It took me less than a second to recall that stare.

  “Red,” I said. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  The recognition crept into his eyes. He lowered his hand. “Sokay,” he called. “I know her.”

  A dirty head poked above the tower of crates and a thin girl climbed into view. Ten, maybe eleven, she had the waifish sort of look that had little to do with her petite frame and everything to do with being underfed. A wispy cloud of grimy hair framed her narrow face, making the deep circles around her eyes seem even deeper. She looked tainted with adult skepticism, but not beaten yet. Life had abused her and now she bit all hands first and looked to see if they offered food later. Her hand clutched a large knife and her eyes told me she would be willing to use it.

  “Who are you?” she asked me.

  “She’s a merc,” Red said.

  He reached inside his shirt and pulled out a stack of papers, held together by a string. He dug in it with dirty fingers and deposited a small rectangle in my hand. My business card, stained with the brown whorls of a thumbprint. The print was mine; the blood belonged to Derek, my werewolf boy wonder.

  Derek and I had been trying to drag ourselves home after a big fight that hadn’t gone too well. Unfortunately, Derek’s legs had been torn open and Lyc-V, the virus to which shapeshifters owed their existence, decided to shut Derek down so it could make repairs. When we met Red, I was trying unsuccessfully to load my bleeding, unconscious sidekick onto my horse. Red and his little band of shaman kids helped, and I had given Red my card and a promise of help if he should need it.

  “You said you’d help. You owe me.”

  Now was not a good time, but we didn’t often get to choose the time to repay our debts. “That’s true.”

  “Guard Julie.” He turned to the girl. “Shadow her, sokay.” He darted to the side and out the door. I followed and saw him scrambling up the slope like a pack of wolves was snapping at his heels.

  CHAPTER 4

  “BASTARD!” THE GIRL YELLED. “I HATE YOU!”

  “Any clue why he took off in a hurry?”

  “No!” She sat down cross-legged on the crates, her face a picture of abject misery.

  Alrighty then. “I take it you’re Julie.”

  “You’re real smart. Did you figure it out all by yourself?”

  I sighed. At least she had dropped out of street speak for my benefit.

  “Just because my boyfriend thinks you’re all that, doesn’t mean I’m going to listen to you. How are you going to guard me? You don’t even have a gun.”

  “I don’t need a gun.” A small hint of metallic sheen within the crates caught my eye. I approached the pile. “Any clue what I’m guarding you from?”

  “Nope!”

  I peered into the space between the crates. A broken bolt, stuck tight in a board. Blood-red shaft. The fletch was missing, but I bet it had three black feathers. My bowman had been here and had left his calling card.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Hunting.”

  “Hunting what?”

  I wandered to the ring of stones, crouched, and reached for the nearest rock. My fingers slipped through it. Whoever set this ward really didn’t want his hiding spot disturbed. But the trouble with wards was that sometimes they didn’t just hide. They also contained. And a ward of this caliber could contain something nasty. “Where are we?”

  �
��What are you, retarded?”

  I looked at her for a second. “I came through a tunnel from the Warren. I don’t know what neighborhood this is.”

  “This is the Honeycomb Gap. Used to be Southside Park. It pulls metal to itself now. Gathers the iron from all over—Blair Village, Gilbert Heights, Plunket Town. Pulls it all into itself, the iron from all the factories, from the Ford Motor plant, cars from Joshua Junkyards…The Honeycomb’s right above us. Can’t you smell the stink?”

  The Honeycomb. Of all the hellholes, it had to be the Honeycomb.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  She stuck her nose in the air. “I don’t have to tell you.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  I pulled Slayer from its sheath.

  “Whoa.” Julie crawled forward on top of the crate tower and flopped on her stomach so she could get a better look.

  I put my hand on Slayer’s blade. Magic nipped at my skin, piercing my flesh with sharp little needles. I fed a little of my magic into the metal, aimed the tip of the saber toward the stone, and pushed. Two inches from the rock a force clutched at Slayer’s tip. Thin tendrils of pale vapor curled from the sword and the magicked steel began to perspire. I gave it a little more of my power. Slayer gained another half inch and stopped.

  “I’m looking for my mom,” Julie said. “She didn’t come home on Friday. She is a witch. In a coven.”

  Probably not a professional coven. The daughters of professional witches had more meat on their bones and better clothes. No, most likely it was an amateur coven. Women from the poor side deluding themselves with visions of power and a better life.

  “What’s the name of the coven?”

  “The Sisters of the Crow.”

  Definitely an amateur coven. No legitimate witch would name a coven something so generic. Mythology was full of crows. With magic, you made sure to cross all your t’s and dot your i’s. The more specific, the better.

  “They met here,” Julie volunteered.

  “Right here?” I fed a little more power to the sword. It didn’t bulge.

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you ask the other witches about where your mom might have gone?”

  “Gee, I’d love to, except none of them came back.”

  I paused. “None?”

  “Nope.”

  That wasn’t good. Entire covens didn’t just disappear into thin air.

  “I’m going to break this ward. If something ugly comes out of there, run. Don’t talk to it, don’t look at it. Just run. You got me?”

  “Sure.” Julie’s tone plainly pointed out that she’d have to be crazy to listen to some idiot woman who doesn’t even have a gun.

  I dug my feet into the ground and pushed, putting all of my weight behind the hilt. The blade quivered under the strain. It was like trying to push a baseball into a wall of dense rubber, but giving the saber more power would leave me too drained to defend myself against a magic attack.

  Sweat broke on my forehead. Oh, screw it.

  I shot my power through the blade. With a sweet whisper, Slayer cleaved through the invisible barrier. Steel struck stone with a loud clang and the white rock slid an inch out of its place.

  A shudder ran through the circle. The stones blinked into reality and I scrambled to my feet. Brilliant light rippled through the air above the broken ring, a silvery aurora borealis gone mad as the forces held captive in the ward flailed, unleashed. The glow flared and streamed to the ground in a torrent of pure white. The ward burst. The magic aftershock pulsed through the building and caught me in a dizzying whirlpool. My teeth chattered, my knees shook, and I clutched at Slayer’s hilt, trying to keep the saber from slipping from my trembling fingers. Julie cried out.

  So much power…

  Viscous drops slid from Slayer’s metal, evaporating in midfall. I felt it too, a fetid smear staining the building—the magic of undeath. There was enough of it to make a layman vomit. I turned to the circle. A dark hole gaped in the broken ring of the stones. I leaned over the edge and glanced into the black hole, grimacing at the reek of rotting flesh emanating from the moist earth.

  Deep.

  So deep I didn’t see the bottom.

  The walls of the shaft were smooth and even, punctuated by roots severed cleanly at the edge. The hole stank of damp soil and moldering bodies. I picked up one of the stones and ran my thumb over its smooth surface. Rounded and pale, like a pebble from a river bed.

  No mark, no glyph, no sign of a spell. Just a ring of white stones that no longer hid a bottomless hole in the earth. The Sisters must have let something into the world, something dark and evil and it claimed them for its own.

  Julie sucked in her breath. A corona of dark spills appeared around the hole. With a faint buzz, a fly landed on the nearest stain, closely followed by another. Blood. Impossible to say how much—the ground had soaked up most of it. As I looked at the blood circle, I noticed three impressions in the ground, each a small, roughly square hole in the dirt. I connected them in my head and got an equilateral triangle with the pit smack in the middle. Three staffs arranged in a triangle to summon something? If so, where did they go?

  The heap of crates behind the hole shivered, as if about to melt with Julie on top of it. With a faint magic tremor, a skeleton materialized right below the kid, nailed to the crates by four crossbow bolts.

  “Freaky,” Julie said.

  No kidding. For one, the skeleton had too many ribs, but only five pairs attached to the sternum. For another, not a shred of tissue remained on the yellowed bones. If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve said it had weathered a year or two in the open somewhere. I leaned closer to examine the arms. Shallow bone sockets. I was no expert, but I’d guess this thing could have bent its elbows backward. At the same time, I’d probably dislocate its hips with one kick.

  “Your mom ever mention anything like this?”

  “No.”

  The bolts anchoring the skeleton were red and fletched with black feathers. One punctured the skeleton through the left eye socket, two went through the ribs on the left, where the heart would be if it was human, and one between the legs. Precision shooting at its best. Just to make sure the odd humanoid aberration doesn’t get away, always pin it through the nuts.

  I grabbed a crate from the pile, planted it in front of the skeleton, and climbed atop it to get a better look. Fewer of the neck vertebrae fused than normal, which provided for a greater flexibility of the neck, but made it fragile. No incisors, no canines, either. Instead I saw three rows of teeth, long, conical, sharp, used to puncture something struggling and keep it in the mouth.

  The crate snapped under me with a loud pop. I dropped with all the grace of a potato sack, grabbing at the skeleton on the way down. My fingers passed through the bone and snagged a bolt. I landed on my ass in a pile of shards, the shaft in my hand and light powder on my fingers.

  A hole gaped in the skeleton’s left side, between the third and fourth rib. It held for a second, grew, melting, and then the entire skeleton imploded into dust. The dust outline lingered in the air for a moment, taunting me, before melting into the breeze. “Shit!” There goes my evidence. Smooth, Kate, real smooth.

  “Was this supposed to happen?” Julie asked.

  “No,” I growled.

  A round of enthusiastic applause echoed behind me. I jumped to my feet. A man stood leaning against the wall. He wore a leather jacket that wanted very much to be leather armor. The business end of a crossbow protruded over his left shoulder.

  Hello, Mr. Bowman.

  “Good form!” he said, clapping. “And a lovely landing!”

  “Julie,” I said, keeping my voice level, “stay put.”

  “No need to worry,” Bowman said. “I wouldn’t hurt the little lass. Not unless I had to. And maybe if I was really hungry and there was nothing else to eat. But then she’s so thin, I’d be picking out bones from between my teeth all day. Hardly worth the trouble.”

  I c
ouldn’t tell if he was kidding. “You want something?”

  “Just came to see who troubled my bolts. And what do I find? A mouse.” He winked at Julie. “And a woman.”

  He said “woman” in the same way I’d say “Mmmmm, yummy chocolate” after waking up from hunger pains and finding a Hershey bar in an empty refrigerator. I flicked my sword and backed away a bit so the hole would be to my right. If he knocked me into it, it would take me a long time to climb out.

  The man approached. He stood tall, at least six three, maybe six four. Broad shoulders. Long legs in black pants. His black hair fell in a tangled mess on his shoulders. It looked like he might’ve cut it himself with a knife and then tied a leather cord across his forehead to keep it somewhat pinned. I looked at his face. Handsome bastard. Defined jaw, chiseled cheekbones, full lips. Eyes like black fire. The kind of eyes that jumped from a woman’s dreams right into her morning and made trouble in the marriage bed.

  He gave me a feral grin. “Like what you see, dove?”

  “Nope.” I hadn’t had sex in eighteen months. Pardon me while I struggle with my hormone overload.

  Shave that jaw, brush the hair, tone down the crazy in the eyes, and he would have to fight women off with that crossbow. As it was he looked like he prowled in dark places where the wild things were and they all ran away when they smelled him coming. Any woman with a drop of sense would grab her knife and cross the street when she saw him.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you,” he promised, circling me.

  “I’m not worried.” I began to circle, too.

  “You should be.”

  “First you say I should, then you say I shouldn’t. Make up your mind.”

  Drops of water slid down his jacket. Judging by the light stabbing through the holes in the roof, the sky was clear. No hint of moisture in the air. Suppose Derek’s intel was right. Suppose he did teleport. How would I keep him from disappearing?

  The man spread his arms. I didn’t like the way he moved, either, light on his feet.