Irregulars: Stories by Nicole Kimberling, Josh Lanyon, Ginn Hale and Astrid Amara (49 page)

Deven started swimming toward August, but hesitated as Night Axe thrashed, gurgling water.

This was his one chance to end Night Axe. But he wanted to be beside August. August motioned toward the Aztaw weakly, and Deven didn’t need a second request. He pulled the last of his knives from his back pocket and forced his injured body into movement.

It was difficult, holding his knife in his left hand. Night Axe resisted him, even as his body trembled with affliction. Deven wrenched his pen free of the creature’s grasp, put it back behind his ear, and sawed his blade deeply into Night Axe’s neck. Rage filled him. August couldn’t reach his antidote and would die in this fetid well. Deven chopped inelegantly with his left hand. Blood burst from the engorged Aztaw and stained the water. He cut until Night Axe’s vertebrae were visible. He severed Night Axe’s spine and wrenched the bastard’s head clear off. Only then did he fall back, exhaustion and pain making it impossible to continue.

Deven crawled up the bank of the well. He dropped his blade and climbed over August’s writhing body. “You idiot!” He grabbed August’s sodden lapels with his left hand. “Why would you do that!”

August wheezed in response. Sharp shudders wracked his body as if he were jerked by marionette strings. Blood oozed from his chest.

Deven’s throat tightened. “You said you wanted to die old in your bed!” Tears burned his eyes. “Old in your bed, not here!”

August smiled weakly, his eyes closed. “Don’t always get what we want,” he whispered. “I wanted you to slowly make love to me this morning. That didn’t happen either.”

Deven leaned down and kissed August. It hurt his bruised and bleeding mouth, and August gasped for air as his body shook, but Deven didn’t care. Regret overpowered everything. He’d lost more than his chance with August—he’d ended up killing him with his terrible plan.

Deven broke the kiss and August struggled to intake air, his body convulsing rapidly. His eyes rolled back in his head and Deven realized he had to stop this, at any cost.

To keep the poison from killing August, he had to suspend him in a time trap, just like Lord Jaguar had done to him all those years ago.

He scored the tip of his pen into August’s neck, writing clumsily with his left hand. Time traps were different than locks, and he struggled to remember the subtle differences in the glyphs. He finished the time trap and rolled off. August froze mid-gasp, fingers rigid as claws, back arched mid-spasm. He didn’t move, frozen in the suspended animation of the trap.

Time traps sapped power unlike anything else and Deven lay alongside August’s frozen body, utterly spent. The pen lay limp in his grasp, bone white and ice cold. Only a small amount of inky color remained at the very tip.

Deven weakly tapped August’s frozen side. “Help is coming,” he whispered. He glanced up at the sealed well, wondering how long it would take the agents to defeat Night Axe’s soldiers, find a way out of the sunken temple, locate a ward pruner, and lift them out.

Now that he had a moment to pause, he realized how badly he was injured. His face felt pummeled; his broken wrist and fingers hurt unlike anything he could remember. The cut down his ribs was shallow, but it oozed blood. The only thing staving off the worst of the pain was his numbness, the cold water evaporating off him as he lay, bare chested, on the hard ledge of the well floor.

He closed his eyes. Maybe he could rest a bit until the Irregulars came to rescue them. There was, of course, a part of him that was near panic; the badges had failed him before. What indicated he could trust they’d save him now?

Something trembled in his trouser pocket.

Deven held his breath in the dark, senses coming back to full alert. He moved his left hand slowly, feeling in the remains of his overalls. He pulled out the sodden scrap of jaguar skin.

It writhed in his hand, alive.

No
, Deven thought, slowly sitting up. He dropped the jaguar skin on the rocky surface and watched it writhe into the water.

He glanced up, past the floating remains of Night Axe. He saw nothing but the wet contours of the cavern.

A faint glow moved into the cavern from the narrow well passageway. Water lapped against the rock.

Deven carefully replaced the pen behind his ear.

Lord Jaguar entered the cavern. He’d been hiding in the wells for some time—his luxuriant jaguar skin skirt and gold breastplate were drenched with moisture. Lord Jaguar’s black dotted face paint had streaked in the water. His headdress was simplified— instead of the magnificent jaguar skull with obsidian jaws and long tail of human finger bones, he wore a gold and jade feathered crown spiked with jaguar teeth. Carved human knee bones clanked together around his neck.

“
My lord
!”
Deven knelt on instinct, breathing fast. His entire body shook from adrenaline and cold.

“
I see you’ve kept my house power safe in your own stupid way
.” With his bony fingers Lord Jaguar snatched the pen from behind Deven’s ear. Panic seized Deven as the pen left his possession. Lord Jaguar’s touch sent a shiver of repulsion through Deven’s body.

“
I thought you were dead, my lord.
” Deven gripped the hilt of the knife beside him. There was only one way Lord Jaguar would be able to refuel his pen and use it.

“
No, not dead. I traveled undetected to the realm of light to free the Trickster.
”

“
But why
?”
Deven stared at Lord Jaguar, the creature he had been willing to die for, over and over. Nothing but fear filled him now.

“
No force left in Aztaw can defeat the rebels. It takes a lord of a different caliber to bring order to such disloyal chaos. The Lord of Hurricanes and I could have easily defeated the rebels. Now you have ruined all of that.
”

“
You should have confided in me
,” Deven cried.

Lord Jaguar reached forward and cradled Deven’s chin in his skeletal fingers. Deven’s flesh crawled. “
To make my death appear to be real, you, more than anyone else, had to believe it
.”

Deven didn’t know why he continued to kneel, face in his lord’s bony grasp. Years of instinct kept him obedient, despite everything.

Lord Jaguar’s glance flickered to Agent August’s frozen body. “
You nearly destroyed my power saving that worthless human. I think it is only fitting that his blood will be the first to fill my pen
.”

“
Don’t touch him,
” Deven growled. He’d never spoken a command to his lord. But he’d also never had anyone he wanted to protect more than Lord Jaguar himself.

He jerked free of Lord Jaguar’s grasp.

“
You will not take him.
” Deven took a shaky breath.
“
And you will not return to Aztaw. Things have changed there. They no longer need you
.”

Lord Jaguar stared, stunned. “
You order me
?” His mouth contorted in rage. “
Shut your mouth and bow down
!”

Years of training made it hard to disobey Lord Jaguar’s commands. Instead he reached into the shredded remains of his overalls and clutched Fight Arm’s distraction-enchanted beads.

Deven kicked Lord Jaguar’s knee. The thin skin broke as the glowing bone underneath bent awkwardly. Deven dashed out of the way and threw the beads over his neck.

Lord Jaguar spun, searching for him. Deven’s heart raced in terror. He felt too tired to fight, but he reminded himself that Lord Jaguar was Aztaw, and therefore slow. He waited until Lord Jaguar turned completely in a circle, trying to locate Deven in the obscurity spell.

Once Lord Jaguar’s back was to him, Deven rushed forward and snatched the pen back. He darted to the edge of the pool and Lord Jaguar splashed through the water after him.

Something heavy clunked against Deven’s thigh and he remembered his own shard pistol. He unlocked the safety and fired. The powerful recoil slammed him backward as it sprayed metal into his lord. Lord Jaguar howled in agony and ducked under the water.

Deven had only seconds. He started to write, his left hand scratching the glyphs imperfectly, drawing figures in the water. The water turned to steam in the shapes of the symbols.
Seven, gold, fox, clove…
He scrambled to surround Lord Jaguar.

Lord Jaguar resurfaced, his bones shimmering with fragments of silver. Deven knew he wasn’t invisible, just unnoticeable, so he kept moving. But Lord Jaguar could see the glyphs steaming and knew what Deven was doing.

He growled a curse and shoved his hand over the surface of the water, dispelling one of the glyphs and breaking the pattern. Deven kept writing.

“
Faithless human
!” Lord Jaguar roared.

Deven shot him in the mouth with the pistol. Lord Jaguar fell back, moaning and clasping his jaw with his hand.

The pen was a feeble thing in Deven’s hand, drained from writing the time trap. Guilt and regret flooded him, even as he kept writing. Such a beautiful thing, really. The last of the house powers. The last of the age of magic in Aztaw and he was killing it.

It needs killing,
Deven told himself.

“
Deven...
”
cried Lord Jaguar. His hand clutched his ripped jaw. “
You swore an oath to protect me. An oath
!”

Exhaustion brought tears to Deven’s eyes as he drew. Every symbol took more from his body, made it harder to keep his eyes open. Deven tried to write faster, but he physically couldn’t. As it was, he crawled, half in water, half out, body shaking with the effort. The pen was so thin and brittle part of its tip crumbled and broke in his hands. He kept writing.

The pen splintered further. He drew with the pieces, scorching glyphs into the water, making substance of liquid and shooting light through the deep, chilly darkness.

With the last fragment of his pen, he finished the circle and rolled out of the way as the wall of light encased Lord Jaguar and dropped him out of time forever. The light flare receded; only a crumbled fragment of the pen remained, cold and lifeless in his palm.

But the darkness didn’t continue.

Sudden sparks burst from above. A flare burned brightly as the ward sealing them beneath the world was dismantled. The Irregulars were breaking through. They were going to be rescued after all.

“Thank you,” Deven muttered, realizing how grateful he was to see light shining down, piercing the darkness.

Chapter Eighteen

Deven wasn’t the first to be discharged from the NIAD ward of the Sanitorio Espanol hospital. The younger, healthier sacrifices who had been administered the cyanide antidote on time and had their connections surgically removed had left before him.

The rest of the sacrifices were discharged later, after being fully cleared of any lingering effects of the poisoning. They lost one person in the exercise, an older woman who had suffered cardiac arrest when Night Axe had died.

Deven saw them leave the hospital. But he still waited, because the last one to leave was the person he wanted to see most of all.

As it was, he almost missed Agent August completely.

Deven had been sitting outside the doors of Sanitorio Espanol hospital for hours, scanning the crowd of admissions and discharges for sight of the agent. But when August finally emerged, Deven barely recognized him.

He looked like a new man.

His dark, thick hair was cut short, probably to lessen the appearance of the shaved patch and stitches behind his left ear. His hair was less curly when short, more tamed, lending him a rakish, movie-star appearance.

But more noticeable was the rosy pink hue to his cheeks and the sparkle in his blue eyes. He looked rested and healthy, healthier than he had before becoming Night Axe’s sacrifice. He moved with energized urgency, as if late for something. He walked right past Deven, who’d been sitting on the pavement near the door.

“Agent August!” Deven cried, standing up quickly.

August turned in surprise. For a second Deven worried he’d made a mistake in hanging around for August to finally be well enough to leave.

But August’s mouth curled up into an inviting smile and his eyebrows lifted.

“Deven.”

“After they released me, I wasn’t allowed back in your ward since I’m not a relative or an agent,” Deven explained, rushing his words in his nervousness. He felt his cheeks flush. “So I thought I’d just wait and—”

August gripped Deven by the shoulder, pulled him close, and kissed him. Deven opened his mouth and August’s tongue surged inside, filling him. Warm heat pooled in Deven’s groin and spread through his body. He pressed himself against August’s lean body, feeling a matching hardness that promised more than mere words ever could.