Magic Binds (22 page)

Sugar touched down on the stone.

“A pegasi!” Dali pushed her glasses back on her face and reached out to Sugar.

Jim grabbed her and yanked her back. “What's wrong with you?”

She pushed out of his arms and gently patted Sugar. The pegasi lowered her head.

“See? She can sense my magic.” Dali rubbed the mare's neck. “You are so beautiful.”

“I don't want to dismount,” I told them. “I don't know if she'll let me back on.”

Teddy Jo picked up two big sacks sitting next to Doolittle, slowly approached us, and handed them to me. I hooked them up to my saddle.

“Blood is in the left, bones are in the right,” Doolittle said. “The bones are vacuum packed. The blood has been chilled and is split into three different thermoses.”

“Thank you,” I told him.

Dali raised her arms. I bent down and hugged her.

“You can do it,” the white weretiger said. “You will kick ass.”

If only I had her confidence.

“Do you have your food and water?” Teddy Jo asked.

“Yes.” He'd already asked me that this morning.

“And your compass?”

“Yes.”

“And you brought the ski mask?”

“Yes. It's not cold, though, even up above.”

“It's not for the cold. The pegasi like to chase birds. Birds don't like to be chased.”

“Okay.” Whatever that meant.

Jim picked up Doolittle, wheelchair and all, and raised him up. I hugged the Pack's medmage.

“Good luck,” he told me.

“Thank you.” I would need every drop.

“Remember, try to bond with the pegasi.” Teddy Jo said. “Treat her as a friend, not a horse.”

“I would try to be friends with her but she's too busy being a smartass.”

“Now you know how the rest of us feel,” Jim said. “Who the hell is that?”

I glanced in the direction he was pointing, where a man rode the air currents on blood-red wings. “That's Christopher.”

“Who?” Jim looked like he was about to have a heart attack.

“Christopher. He remembered how to fly.”

Dali laughed.

Jim stared at me. I had to go before he suffered an apoplexy and the rest of the Pack, with Dali at the head, came after me. “Bye!”

Sugar galloped off the edge of the tower and then we were flying again, the remains of my aunt secure in my
saddlebags.

CHAPTER

B
IRDS WERE ASSHOLES.
I pulled the ski mask off the nice warm spot in the ruins of a high-rise, where I had laid it out to dry after washing it in a nearby stream, and packed it back into my backpack. Sugar enjoyed flying back and forth through the bird flocks, and they retaliated by diving at me and doing their best to claw and peck the skin off my face and scalp. It took some serious scrubbing against a convenient rock in the stream to get the bird poop off the wool before the mask could go back on my head for the trip back. I'd have to thank Teddy Jo if I made it home. I should've brought one of those antique motorcycle helmets.

When my father had cobbled Mishmar together out of the remnants of Omaha, he'd moved high-rises one at a time, fusing them into a monstrous building. The one I waited in now must've failed to make the cut, because Dad had left it lying on its side atop a low hill fully two miles from Mishmar. From my vantage point, I could see the prison, towering like some citadel of legend over the plain, massive, wrapped in a ring of walls.

The magic was down, but I could feel it, still. Somewhere deep within its walls my grandmother's bones waited. Her bones and her wraith. Or was it wrath? Probably wrath.

My grandmother longed for the banks of the rivers, where the sun shone and vivid flowers bloomed, shifting softly in the breeze. Instead my father had stuffed her into a concrete tomb and used the magic she emanated to power up Mishmar. She hated it.

Sugar clopped over and nudged me with her nose. I patted her and offered her a carrot.

The winged horse neighed.

“Too much sugar is bad for your teeth.”

She took the carrot, but her snort made it plain she wasn't grateful. She was probably bored.

Curran and I had agreed on a simple plan: I would wait until the magic hit and go in just after sunset. If I tried to break in while technology was on the upswing, my father might not feel it or he might decide to stay where he was, since without magic he had no way of getting here fast enough.

Sugar and I had landed at the ruined skyscraper twenty-four hours ago, but the first night tech held the whole time. It was the second night now, and the big red ball of the sun was merrily rolling toward the horizon, so unless the magic decided to reassert itself in the next hour or so, I would be spending another night curled up next to the winged horse. Right now, that didn't seem like a terrible thing. Being away from Atlanta cleared my head. It felt liberating.

At least I had stopped worrying about Sugar flying off and leaving me to fend for myself. She seemed to find me amusing and stuck around. I'd learned to sneak off before taking a bathroom break, however, because she decided that pawing at me with a hoof after I found a secluded spot to pee was the funniest thing ever.

The one good thing about the wait was that it gave me time to think of what I would say. Even if it worked . . . I wasn't even sure my grandmother could understand me. If I failed, there was no Plan B.

“No Plan B, Sugar,” I told her. “If I screw this up, Curran dies. The city burns. All my friends will be dead.”

Sugar flicked her ears at me.

“It's occurred to me that this would all be much easier if I were evil. I would have serenity of purpose and none of these pesky problems.”

Sugar didn't seem impressed.

The light turned red as the sun rolled toward the horizon.

The world's pulse skipped a beat. Magic flooded in.

“Yes.” I grinned and grabbed the blanket. “Onward, my noble steed. To our inevitable doom and gory death.”

Thirty seconds later we took to the air. The tower of Mishmar grew closer, the different textures of its parts flowing into each other as if melted together. Red brick became gray granite transforming into slabs of natural stone, then into gray brick. The amount of magic necessary to pull this off boggled the mind.

Winged shapes rose from the crevices at the top of the tower and bounced up and down on the air currents.

“You're going to drop me off in the courtyard,” I told her. “On the bridge. We'll have to do it quickly. Don't go and play with those flying things. They aren't birds. They have long beaks studded with sharp teeth and their wings are leather. They're not nice and cuddly like that flock of geese that tried to take my head off when you flew through it. They will hurt you if you get too close, and I don't want that to happen. I like you.”

Sugar snorted.

“If I manage to make it out, I'll release the moth I showed you before. Don't come looking for me unless you see it, and if I'm not back in a day or two, I'm dead and you need to go back to the herd.”

Was any of this getting through to her or was I talking to myself? I hoped she understood me, because if she didn't, I'd have a really awkward family reunion when my dad arrived with lightning and furious thunder or whatever other theatrics he would bring to bear.

The wall loomed before us. We cleared it and Sugar swooped down, flying low. Mishmar was a deep pit surrounded by a wall, with the tower rising from the center. A stone bridge stretched from the gates to the tower. Sugar landed straight into a gallop, carrying me toward the enormous door, the hoofbeats of her steps scattering echoes through the vast empty courtyard. She stopped, and I jumped off her back and pulled the saddlebags free.

“Go.”

Above us the monster birds shrieked.

“Go!”

She reared, pawing the air, then ran back along the bridge and took flight. I turned toward the massive door. The last time I saw it, we were running out of it, after Curran, Andrea, and the rest came to rescue me. Never thought I would be going through it again.

The memory of me dying slowly of exposure in lukewarm water shot through me.
Thanks, brain. Just what I needed.

A new bar secured the door, a thick strip of steel controlled by a wheel with eight handles protruding from it. Things moved inside the tower, crawling through the walls, their half-atrophied brains feeling like painful pinpricks of red light in mine. Vampires. Loose and driven near mad by bloodlust. They killed the weak that Roland imprisoned in Mishmar, wore down the strong, and without prey, they fed on each other.

My knees shook. I didn't want to go in. I would do almost anything not to go in.

“Lovely place,” I said to hear my own voice. The stone echoes made it sound puny.

Curran was counting on me. I was counting on me. I didn't have time for post-traumatic stress.

I could feel the memory of water on my skin, leeching my will to live. I could hear Ghastek's labored breathing next to me. I could almost see him nodding, his mouth too close to the water as he hung suspended from the metal grate that prevented us from climbing out.

Come on, weakling. Open the fucking door. How hard can it be?

I could turn around and leave. Walk away, keep walking, and never come back.

Open. The. Door.

The wheel looked impossibly large now and I knew somewhere deep in the core of my being that if I touched it, horrible things would happen.

Open the door.

Curran would've begun moving his people in by now. He was en route. If I didn't open the door, my father wouldn't leave for Mishmar.

I grabbed the wheel and spun it. Metal squeaked and clanged, invisible gears turned, and the bar slid aside.

I exhaled and pulled the door open.

Darkness.

I stood in the doorway, letting my eyes adjust. A dark stone foyer, cavernous, its roof supported by two rows of columns. Probably used to belong to some hotel or bank. There had to be an exit that would lead deeper into Mishmar, because we had crossed this lobby the last time I was here, but I couldn't see it.

I moved to the side, away from the sunset light, and waited with my back against the wall.

The vampires stayed away. They had to have heard the bar slide aside and the creak of the gate. They should've come running, but instead their minds hovered above me and to the sides. That meant only one thing. Something lived in this foyer, something so dangerous that the awareness of it penetrated even the bloodthirsty, crazed minds of the bloodsuckers.

I waited, breathing quiet and slow. There was a trick to staying invisible: stop thinking. I cleared my head and simply waited, one with the darkness and the cold wall of stone touching my back.

Moments ticked by. I watched the foot-wide line of daylight cross the stones of the floor as the sunshine slipped through the gap between the two halves of the door. The chamber was roughly rectangular, the columns running along the two longer sides. Most of them had survived, but at least three had fallen, breaking into pieces. The walls weren't perfectly smooth. A shelflike decorative molding ran along the perimeter of the lobby at about twenty feet high. Above it, at even intervals, large reliefs interrupted the stone, depicting modern buildings and people. The floor was polished marble, now dusted with dirt and grime, but still slick. I would have to be careful running.

I stayed completely still.

The attack came from above, fast and silent. I felt it a fraction of a second before the javelin hit, and I dodged right. The short spear clattered on the floor. I jumped back—two shurikens whistled through the space where I was a moment ago—and leapt left behind a column. The column was four feet across and left me two choices: left or right. Not much of a cover.

Open lobby to my left, sliced in half by the narrow light streaming
through the gap in the door, a wall to my right. Down wasn't an option; up wasn't either. The vampires squirming above me were too far. Concentrating on drawing them close would split my attention too much.

A shuriken clattered against the column from the left. Judging by the angle, the attacker had to be either twenty feet tall or above ground.

Shuriken were nuisance weapons, meant to distract and panic. Even if dipped in poison, they rarely killed. The attacker was trying to herd me toward the wall.

I lunged right, but instead of running to the wall, I dashed around the column and sprinted into the open space in the center of the chamber.

Shurikens hurtled at me from the darkness, from the spot in front of me and slightly to the left, coming from above. I dodged the first one, drew Sarrat in a single fast move, and knocked the second aside.

The darkness waited. So did I.

Done? Let's see what else you've got.

The beam of light coming through the door painted the floor behind me, not really illuminating the gloom, but diluting it enough to see movement. The angle of the shurikens pointed to a spot on the wall near the column. If someone had jumped up and perched on the molding, it would be about right. The twilight was too thick to see clearly, and the wall didn't look any different.

All was quiet. Nothing moved in the direction from which the shurikens came.

I breathed in even deep breaths, Sarrat raised. If the attacker used magic, I couldn't sense it.

Come closer. You know you want to. Come see me. Say hello. I'm friendly.

The texture of the wall by the column changed in a single sharp moment. Something was there, then disappeared.

I spun on pure instinct, swinging. Sarrat connected with the blade of a long knife aimed at my ribs, batting it aside, left to right. For half a second, the attacker was wide open, a tall figure in a gray cloak, his right arm thrown to his left by the force of my blow. I lunged into the opening and grabbed the cloak, yanking him toward me.

The fabric came free with no resistance, light and silk-thin under my fingers. The attacker vanished.

Movement, right side.

I jumped back. The knife sliced the air two inches from my throat. The attacker lunged, slashing at my neck with insane speed. “He” had breasts. A woman. I thrust Sarrat's blade up, blocking the dagger. She reversed the strike, and stabbed at my ribs. I danced out of the way.

Stab. Dodge.

Stab. Dodge. She had crazy reach.

Stab. Dodge. Her blade fanned my face.