Ash to Embers (Courting Shadows) (37 page)

"Wizards," Tian spat, slamming her fist sideways into the wall and tearing him out of the immobile glaze of introspection.

She turned to climb past him. Her skin, exposed under the newly shredded thigh of her jeans, brushed his hand as she passed. She would have avoided the contact if he hadn't lifted his knuckles to meet her movement and it dawned on him that he'd completely given in to the compulsion to touch her. It was natural, like breathing. He was in it one hundred percent, which made him a glutton for punishment. The only surprise was how unflinchingly comfortable he was with that. Tian froze, waves of fire radiating from the small patch of skin in contact with his hand.

"There is not much time to leave this place if it is still your desire to do so," Baba Yaga said.

The crone was scuttling up the steps using some bizarre form of backward crab walk. The flames consuming her dress dimmed and flickered wildly as if they were about to snuff out. A chill slid down Sio's spine, settling into the spaces between his organs as he watched. He followed with only a quick backward glance to where the shadows still called to him. Fuck that shit. He was all about reprieve. He rearranged the persistent hard on he'd acquired through Tian's brief contact, trapping the head behind the waistband of his jeans. Then he moved his ass.

It took less time than he'd expected to reach the room they'd come from and the three of them spilled out onto the water slicked golden floor. The flames that had been struggling along the lines of Baba Yaga's dress died as she passed through the low burning fire that had reconnected at the outer edges of the room.

"Forgive me," Baba said, staring past them. "Forgive me. I had not thought to see salvation again after so many years forsaken."

The crone's opalescent gaze was brimming with a wealth of complicated emotion and Sio had to wonder when it'd gone back to normal. "The darkness does not often react in such a manner," she said.

No shit.

"Any forgiveness that you could require, you earned when you hauled us out of the water, but given the recent information that's come to light we have to leave. Now," Tian said.

Baba Yaga's attention flicked over to Tian. "Lost items are not so easily obtained, while others are only lost in name. Such is the nature of all things."

Beautiful, they were back to speaking in riddles.

"More's the pity," Tian said. Her tone implied she'd only narrowly avoided dropping a steady stream of expletives. And, while Sio was inclined to agree with her, she seemed more agitated than warranted under the circumstances.

"Baba," Sio began. The crone turned to him, hitting him with a dazzling hundred watt smile. Her teeth were small, moon bright white, and very blunt. They had a pleasing symmetry, narrow gap between the front two notwithstanding. He was taken aback, but stumbled on not knowing how to react to her sudden change in demeanor. "We need to get to the surface where we came in."

Baba Yaga's grin slipped, her expression turning distant and thoughtful. It returned impossibly brighter than before. "You do indeed. Perhaps a ladder to the frozen land is precisely what you need."

She ripped a fragment of ribbon off of her dress with her teeth. It was amazing there was still enough available to keep her modest.

"It was raining when we left," Tian said.

"Of course it was, and yet winter is the time to dream of new beginnings. Is it not? May the road rise to meet you both."

The ribbon shard floated from the crone's fingers, bobbing lazily through the air, dipping low enough to set itself alight with a bright pink flame.

"May the wind be ever at your back," Tian responded mechanically.

Baba Yaga gave a satisfied nod before turning from them, her pale curls trailed through the water as she sloshed to the center of the room and settled herself on the bench at the piano. The plastic slip cover rustled loudly as she repositioned.

"The light dims," the crone said as she began to play.

Tian's expression softened as if she had something she wanted to say, but with a shake of her head decided against it. She turned and took off after the shoddy half burnt strip of floating ribbon and Sio took off after her. It was back to business as usual. Only business as usual didn't normally come prepackaged with so much blatant agitation. Tian didn't say anything, but he could see her fury manifesting in the crispness of her movements.

"So, were you planning to tell me why you're so worked up, or were you expecting me to guess?" He hadn't realized that he was irritated, too, until he'd opened his mouth.

"The Guardians already have the marker," Tian said. "They knew that little bitch was a psycho before she got to you. You're the scapegoat."

Tian had given voice to the strangled inchoate whispers lurking like muggers in the hidden recesses of his brain. He was pissed, no doubt, but he wasn't blindsided. He had to wonder how long he'd actually known. Sio followed her, mulling over the unnatural response in silence until the princess pink spark on the floating ribbon hit a long vertical ladder in front of them. The dubious strength of the bolted hardware was pulled further into question as it went up in flames, burning up into the darkness like Barbie-flavored neon. Tian didn't break pace, she just grabbed a rung and started to climb.

The metal was cool to the touch under the illusion of light. Sio watched the flame as it flickered over the backs of his hands, all show and no substance. For some irrational reason the sight chaffed more than the news about the marker had.

"So if the Wizards already have the marker why bother pointing the finger at me?" he asked.

She grunted and Sio looked up trying to avoid staring at her ass.

"The council doesn't have it," she said. "One piece of shit politician on the council has it and he and the rest of his brood are falling all over themselves to ensure no one else knows that the bloodline's unstable."

"You saw all of that under the water?"

"I wasn't on a pleasure cruise."

Of course she wasn't. The image of her held down under the surface of the crystalline pool by writhing angry shadows flashed in his brain, sending his temper into overdrive.

"Don't give me that shit, T. It's not like I get off on being the only asshole around here with questions."

"Step up."

"What?" he snapped.

"The ledge."

Tian nodded towards a grate suspended in the wall five inches from where he clung to the ladder. He stepped over as she slid down to meet him. Tian crowded the ledge, sending him on a maddening, desperate scramble for restraint. Sio was agitated enough that some good old fashioned angry sex sounded like the best idea he'd had in ages. Only he knew it wasn't.

"I have a question for you," Tian said.

She leaned into him before he had a chance to respond, shoving them both linebacker style through the stone wall behind him. The blast of sandpaper and cement particles was jarring, but they were through before he'd had time to blink the film of grit out of his eyes. The ominous sense of suffocating pressure was back and coating the last near nonexistent rays of sunlight like sludge.

"What the fuck were you thinking wading in after me like that? You could have gotten yourself killed."

Sio's jaw dropped. He got right up in her grill. "I'm pretty sure I was thinking 'What the fuck is she doing wading in like that? She's going to get herself killed.' Sound familiar?"

"You've seen my life, Sio. I can't die remember?" She shook her head, turning her back on him, and started walking without waiting for a response. He started walking too, wondering if he was going to let that that last statement go. Nope, no way in hell.

"That doesn't mean I want to watch you keep trying."

He barely got the sentence out before a quiet shooshing sound preceded a searing pain that tore its way through his chest. He blinked trying to figure out what the hell had happened while Tian shoved him behind the monument, using the thing like a shield. Sio's breath rushed out in a hiss as his knees locked. He staggered, sagging against the stone, his bones suddenly feeling less substantial than they were supposed to. The whole world was syrup slow, surreal, and distant compared to the fucking road flare that had been set off in his torso.

It hurt. It hurt so much it was difficult to think around. He wanted to wonder if that was a normal response, but he couldn't drag his thoughts together enough to get the bastards to confer. Tian's eyes were wide with panic. He could see the whites around her irises as she ran her hands over the dark material of Avery's jacket. They came away shaking, covered in his blood. Riding an impressive wave of expletives she palmed a holstered gun while using her other hand to tear open the outer shell of his jacket.

Sio opened his mouth, intending to say something comforting. "It burns," was the only thing he got out.

It did burn too. The wild acid clawing spread through his system like a pollutant. Bile rose in his throat and he spat it, along with a sickly red mass of his own blood, onto the ground.

When he looked up again he realized that Tian had exchanged the firearm she'd pulled for a silver hunting knife the size of a machete and had it clenched in her teeth. Tian used both hands as she worked to strip him to the waist, pinning him upright to the monument with her lower body. The physical proximity would have been wonderfully distracting if hadn't been for the acrid taste poisoning his tongue. Sio rolled his lolling head to the side and spit out another charming mess of ruined pink fluid onto the ground. With moves like that it was a wonder she wasn't falling all over him.

"Sio." Tian's tense rasp was right in his ear. "Stay with me."

That was laughable. He couldn't leave her now even if he wanted to, and he didn't. Not fucking ever. He swiveled his skull towards the sound of her voice and watched with waning interest as she moved with surgical efficiency, using the dagger she'd palmed to slice open his chest. His blood welled out of the cut, bright red from the sudden exposure to oxygen. Tian sopped it up using what was left of the shirt Avery had lent him.

Shit, he was going to owe the guy an entirely new wardrobe by the time this was over. Tian pulled a rectangular strip of metal about two inches long from the side of one of the holsters. It had writing inscribed down the side in a language he didn't recognize.

"What is that?" he slurred.

Tian blinked up at him as if he'd surprised her.

"A magnet. I need to get the bullet out quick, but it'll hurt."

Bullet.

Sio shrugged lethargically, dizzy from blood loss even though the shot couldn't have happened more than a minute or two before. "Good," he answered. His tongue felt swollen and he was having a hell of a time forming the syllables he was working for. "Wouldn't want to change the status quo."

For a second she looked like she wanted to kiss him, but she only nodded before bringing the pain. Tian's touch was warm, soothing if electricity had that capability. She hadn't lied to him though. The extraction was excruciating to the point of being unbearable. He had to lock his jaw to keep from crying out. He took desperate shuddering inhalations through his nose. As his vision started to dim, signaling that he was on the verge of passing out, Tian pulled the object lodged in his torso free. He felt less toxic as the thing exited his body.

Tian turned the conical metal slug over in her fingertips. She was wearing the kind of expression he'd have expected to see if an alien had exploded from his torso. He didn't get the upset. She'd already known it was a bullet. Never the less, the look on her face said that some poor bastard had signed his own death warrant. Sio's head began to clear. His thoughts were sluggish though, his synapses no longer debating whether to end the strike or suspend the shit indefinitely.

"Better," he coughed. "It's better."

His voice was rough, and he still wasn't supporting himself, but he could deal. Tian stashed the slug in her pocket and the knife back in the holster he hadn't noticed on the inside of her boot. She did it all without unpinning him from the wall.

She ran the tips of her fingers down the skin around the wound on the far left side of his chest. The contact kicked off an unearthly shivering in his muscle tissue, followed by the kind of sparks that crystalized in his cells, spreading in lacy interlocking patterns like frost on a window pane. The hole in his left pectoral throbbed in alternating bouts of hot and cold that made him feel as if he were being torn in different directions. The pain was surprisingly cleansing, as if it were working to burn away the last vestiges of whatever was ruining him.

"Can you stand?" Tian asked.

The concern in her voice was definite cause for alarm, even as it caused his hormones to reconsider the lack of blood pressure in his body as an obstacle to erection. Sio let out a strangled self-deprecating noise that had been intended as a chuckle.

I'm not even good for a hard on right now, so no.

He shook his head, still too out of it to say much. An overwhelming fit of nausea hit him and he shoved Tian out of the way doubling over, dry heaves assaulting his system as another bullet pelted the stone he'd been propped against. Tian yanked him around the corner once, twice, scrambling as he stumbled after her.

Houston, we have a problem.

Too much movement had thrown off his cabin pressure. He lost traction and slid down the wall behind him. Tian had drawn down at some point when she was hauling his ass around. He hadn't noticed. He had noticed that she looked more panicked than he'd ever seen her.

She slid around behind him, wrapping her free arm around his damaged torso before flinging them back in the direction they'd come. She pitched them both head first towards the short wall that backed up to the street and further out, Saks Fifth Avenue. Bullets slammed into the pavement of the square around them like raindrops. The onset of night made it impossible to pinpoint where they were coming from. The deadly barrage stopped as they hit the wall, unable to alter angle enough to hit them. He was flat on his back as Tian swung around, keeping her head low as she straddled his hips.