Shadow City (28 page)

“No doubt, exactly what it sounds like,” Niko said. “The bastard didn’t show any of us his real self. Likely he’s a web-making rhino or something.”

The others laughed at the prospect and then slowly sobered. “She’s alive. That’s something. Have you told Giselle?” Niko asked.

Alexander shook his head. “Not yet. I thought you should be the first.”

“Thanks, boss,” Niko said, sipping coffee. “You know Giselle isn’t going to like that Max went to you and not her.”

“Too bad.”

“If Max isn’t bound,” Thor started to say slowly, and then stopped as the other three men looked at him.

“What?” Tyler demanded, his Blade rising dangerously. He spun his fork in his fingers. At any moment, he could drive it into Thor’s eye, and the other man would never get out of the way in time.

“If she isn’t bound to Giselle and Horngate, will she come back to stay or will she leave?”

It was theoretically a possibility, and the fact that Niko and Tyler clearly feared it was almost laughable. Alexander looked at them in disbelief. “You actually think she
could
ever leave any of you? Do you know her at all?”

Niko looked away, playing with his food. “She’s always wanted out of here. She hates Giselle.”

“And she loves you,” Alexander said. “Not to mention her family and everybody else here. The only way she is leaving here is dead.” He shook his head. “You are the ones who were so sure she could not have died. You would have faith in her return but not in her staying?”

Tyler had the grace to flush. He stabbed the point of the fork into the table top. It stuck straight up, the tines planted deep in the wood. “Did you tell her about the Fury?” he asked.

“No. She could not stay to help, and I did not want her to be distracted. We will handle it.” Alexander hoped to hell he was right. He stood. “I will go let Giselle know. How do you feel?” he asked Niko.

The other Blade stretched, his joints cracking. “Like I had a bad case of the flu. Made me feel almost human again,” he said with a dark look at Beyul, who was sitting beside Alexander, his broad, shaggy head well above the level of the table. “Thanks for that, you stupid dog.”

The Grim tipped his head and then nosed Alexander’s arm. He scratched behind the big animal’s ears, caught by the bizarre contradictions of the beast. Beyul was an incredibly powerful being, with abilities Alexander could not imagine. Yet it was hard to remember that when he acted so much like an ordinary dog. It seemed almost insulting to pet him, and yet the Grim leaned heavily against his hand, making a moaning whine of pleasure.

The other three Blades watched the interaction in disbelief. “What
is
that thing?” Thor asked finally. “He acts like a chicken in the feed when you’re petting him, then he nearly kills Niko.”

“Killed,” Alexander corrected. “Niko was dead.”

There was a moment of silence. “Niko does seem to have a buzzard’s luck, don’t he?” Thor said after a moment.

Tyler slanted a look at him. “What the hell does that mean?”

Thor look startled, then grinned. “Means he’s been diggin’ up more snakes than he can kill.”

Tyler looked at Alexander. “Is he even speaking English?”

“Niko has bad luck,” Alexander translated.

Tyler looked at Thor. “You couldn’t just say that?”

“I did, son, but you just can’t seem to spot a goat in a flock of sheep.”

Tyler scowled. “I’m pretty sure that was an insult.”

“Only because it was,” Niko said.

“How the hell am I supposed to get all self-righteous and pissed if I can’t understand what the idiot is saying?” He glared at Thor. “I know that down-home Texas crap isn’t natural. You don’t talk like that all the time.”

Alexander chuckled dryly. “It comes naturally, though he has learned to tone it down here and there.”

“Anyhow, back to the dog. What are you going to do with him?” Niko asked.

“Do with him? I do not think I have any choice in the matter. He will do what he likes. He has made that clear enough.” He frowned at Tyler, memory stirring. “I thought one followed after you, too.”

Tyler lifted his shoulder. “I got lucky. It must have changed its mind. At any rate, it stayed back with the others.”

“Take it a bone,” Thor suggested.

“Now, why would I do that?

“Figure you might want someone warm to sleep with.” Thor’s lips curved in a grin. “I noticed you haven’t been finding any lady company lately.”

“That’s because I’m not a tasteless whore like Niko. I have standards.”

“Your standards knock boots with what most people call hard up. You’re so dry your ducks don’t know how to swim.”

“I’ve heard about enough,” Magpie said, pushing in from the kitchen with a couple of quiches. She set one in front of Alexander and the other in the middle of the table. “You need to quit flapping your lips and start eating. Tyler, take your fork out of my table.”

He hurried to comply, looking guilty and more than a little worried. Upsetting Magpie meant oversalted and burned food for however long she was annoyed.

“You going to tell her?” Niko asked Alexander.

Magpie stopped, hands on her hips. “Tell me what?”

“Max was here,” Alexander told her.

The stripe-haired witch froze, then her eyes closed. “Thank the elements.” Her eyes sprang open, her black eyes drilling through him. “Was?”

“She left.”

Magpie’s lip curled, and Alexander knew he was in danger of eating garbage for the next year. He relented. There was no point. It was his anticipation of what was to come later, trying to contain the Fury, that was driving him to act like an ass.

“She said she was not done with Scooter’s business. She came to let us know that she was still alive.”

“Have you told Giselle?” Then she waved her hand. “Never mind. Of course not. She’s preparing herself to battle the Fury. And I am supposed to make sure all of you calorie-load so you’re at full strength. So eat.” She cast one last dark look at Alexander before retreating to the kitchen.

He dug into the quiche, while the others ate obediently. Magpie bustled in and out of the kitchen with an array of high-calorie and high-protein foods. Ordinarily, Shadowblades and Sunspears needed around twenty thousand calories a day to keep themselves running. The various spells that went into their creation drew a lot of energy. If there were not enough calories to supply them, the spells would eat flesh and bone, eventually killing the Blade or Spear. Battles and healing drove the calorie requirements up exponentially.

Alexander kept eating long past the point where he was stuffed. So did the others, despite groans of pain.

“Think she’d notice if we just ran for our lives?” Tyler whispered, staring balefully at a steaming plate of sausages and eggs.

“I think she’ll make you pay dearly if you do,” said Niko as he took a bite of bacon from the several dozen strips on his plate. “I used to love bacon. After today, I may never eat it again.”

“Yes, you will,” Magpie said as she swept Thor’s plate away and put another in its place. He stared at the three-decker hamburger with a look of horror. “You’ll eat it, and you’ll like it. Understand?”

Niko wilted. “I’ve never had such good bacon before,” he said, and stuffed it into his mouth with false eagerness. He made sounds of delight and gave Magpie a sickly smile.

She grinned and patted his shoulder. “Very good.” She bustled back to the kitchen.

Niko put his head in his hands and moaned. “I hate it when we know shit is going to come down and I have to go into battle feeling like a Thanksgiving turkey.”

With a fatalistic sigh, Thor picked up the hamburger. “I never thought I had a mouth
this
big,” he said before biting into it.

Alexander was doing his best to eat the rest of the steak and the Everest-sized mound of mashed potatoes and gravy on his plate. He was almost happy to see Holt stride into the dining commons.

“Come look at this,” the mage demanded, stabbing a finger at Alexander. He was carrying a sheaf of papers, which he laid out on an empty dining table.

All four Shadowblades crowded around to see.

“This isn’t going to work,” Holt said, looking down at the plans they had made earlier.

Foreboding clenched Alexander in a tight grip. “Why not?”

“The first problem is the outer iron circle. There’s not enough room to get the iron in there. I’d thought we’d use cars and such, but now that I’ve seen it, it can’t work. We won’t have time to tear them down to fit them into the space we have.”

“There’s a railroad that runs close,” Niko said. “We could pry up the rails. They’d fit. Plus, pull off what we can of the cars and such. Might do the trick.”

“It’s going to take a lot of iron to even get her attention,” Holt said. “She’s a primal being. And she’s going to be a newborn, which means she’s not going to be in control of her power, even if she wants to be. If only we could have found a way to bleed some of that power away before . . .” He shook his head, glaring down at the papers. “Getting the rails is a start. We need to do more. This isn’t going to be enough. Her power is just too big.”

“What are you suggesting?” Alexander asked as Niko turned away to call Oz and get the Spears started on the train rails.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re a mage,” Tyler said quietly. “You’ve got to have
some
idea what we can do.”

“Come on, Holt. You are telling me you have no ideas at all? That must really hurt your pride,” Alexander goaded.

The mage scowled and bit his lower lip, making it bleed. The look he leveled at Alexander was murderous. “Someone could try to reason with her like Giselle planned,” he said finally. “Let her have her revenge on her father, and then, while she is sated, step in and talk to her. If you’re lucky, you can break through her mad lust for revenge and persuade her to control herself. Here’s what you’re up against: she’ll be driven by a desperate compulsion to bring justice and vengeance. There’s a lot of betrayal in the world, and because she was a child when she was killed and because her father is the one who did it, I’m guessing she’s going to hear all the horrors not only of women but of children, too. The clamor from all over the world is going to hit her like a dozen freight trains mowing down a mouse. It probably already is. It’s going to drive her insane. To reason with her, you’re going to have to break through her madness. The thing is, nothing in any legend I’ve heard of says that a Fury is anything more than a mindless drive for revenge. There’s not the smallest suggestion that they have any capacity for reason.

“But suppose you
could
talk to her—and as a man, I’m not thinking
you
actually could—the next problem is that just the fact of her birth is going to release a burst of power that is going to be on the level of a small nuclear bomb. I’m not convinced she has the power to stop that. So even if you could convince her not to kill everything in sight, it still might make not a difference.”

“There has to be something we can do,” Alexander said, unwilling to admit defeat.

“If we had more time and resources, maybe we could funnel the power somewhere,” Holt said, tapping his fingers on the table as he scowled at the papers. “If we could create some sort of trap for the power to absorb it . . .”

“We could,” Valery said.

She was leaning in the doorway. Alexander had not even noticed her arrival. It was obvious by his start that Holt had not, either. He turned jerkily around.

“You’re supposed to be gone.”

“I hadn’t said good-bye to Alexander yet,” she said as she walked in. “Besides, it sounds like you could use my help.”

“No. We’ll figure it out without you.” Holt thrust out his jaw, his legs splayed. Blue magic made the exposed hex marks on his hands and arms glow.

“From the sounds of it, you need all the help you can get,” she said. “You didn’t think I’d just leave Alexander here to die if there was any chance I could stop that, did you?”

“I told you, leave, or I will,” Holt said, his face darkening with fury.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “You aren’t thinking real clearly, are you? I know the real reason you want me gone. I’m the only one who knows where I stashed those tablets you want back so badly. If I stay, you risk losing all that precious information. So you have to stay if I do, if only to keep that information alive.” Her smile was taunting.

Holt stepped close to her, his body rigid with what Alexander suspected was the effort to keep himself from putting his hands around her throat. Or kissing her. Either was just as likely. “Right now, I don’t give a shit about those tablets. I. Want. You. Safe,” he said slowly.

“Then you’d better work with me. I’m not leaving,” she said, not backing down in the slightest.

Holt knew he was over a barrel. He looked sick, and Alexander could almost feel sorry for him. Whatever was going on between the two of them, Holt and Valery still had a deep emotional connection. Hell, Alexander knew for a fact that Valery was still in love with her ex. He was beginning to doubt that the only reason Holt wanted her back was to retrieve the tablets she’d stolen. Alexander could smell the rage and desperate fear on the mage.

“If I work with you?” he spat out at last. “If I we build some sort of trap for the magic, you’ll go to safety when she breaks out? You’ll promise me?”

She gave him a long, steady look, then slowly shook her head. “I can’t. You know that. I’m not abandoning my brother.” She flicked a hard glance at Alexander. “And don’t you start in on me, either. Just shut up and accept it.” Her gaze returned to Holt. “I don’t belong to you anymore. I get to make my own choices.”

His hand flashed out, and he grabbed her bicep, pulling her against him. “You will always belong to me. I don’t care if you took back the marriage marks. You’ll be mine until you die.”

She jerked away. “You can’t hold smoke. Haven’t you learned that yet? Anyhow, we both know you’re more interested in those tablets than you ever were in me. Now, can we quit arguing and get to work? We don’t have a lot of time.”

His nostrils flared white, and his eyes closed to slits. “We are not done with this conversation. Not by a long shot.”