“You should reconsider. Just some friendly advice.”
“I don’t think so.”
Hugh leaned forward, his eyes amused, and looked me over, slowly, head to toe. “You look good.”
Spare me. “Nice touch letting Dorie go. If I don’t turn her over, you’ll start a bloodbath and I and the alphas will be blamed for it. If we do turn her over, we look weak and our own people will lose confidence in our leadership. Either way the Pack is destabilized and I’m the bad guy.”
“You’re beginning to catch on to how the game is played,” Hugh said.
“There’s a third possibility. I could kill Dorie and dump her dead body on your lap.”
“I don’t think so.”
He said it with absolute surety. Not a moment’s hesitation. Note to self: bluffing—learn to do it better.
“Why not?”
“Because it sends the wrong message. If you kill Dorie, every shapeshifter who has ever broken the law will wonder if they’re next on your hit list. If you go that route, nobody will follow you. I’m a bastard but even I don’t kill my own people, unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“No, you just put them in cages and let them slowly starve to death.”
He rolled his eyes. “Of course, there is a fourth option.”
“And what’s that?”
“You come with me now,” he said. “And this whole ugly mess goes away.”
“I don’t believe you.” The words had come out almost on their own. But a look into his eyes told me he wasn’t lying. Shit. He really had come here for me. I was the sole reason Mulradin was dead and the Pack was now evacuating. Well, that was one mystery solved.
I didn’t need that kind of pressure. I had plenty to drag me down as it was.
Hugh shifted his weight, reached over, and drew a doodle on my ward. The magic nipped at his finger. It must’ve hurt. “I meant what I told you before. Their lives don’t matter to me. If I have to crush the coal to get to the diamond, I’ll do it.”
“Aha. And I’m the diamond?”
“You cut like one.”
Ha! “Flattery, really? Subtle like a hammer.”
He shrugged. “Why not? Do the shapeshifters take time to flatter you? Do they tell you how grateful they are for you sticking your neck out for their sake?” He touched the blood ward again. “Do they beg your forgiveness every time this precious blood is spilled?”
No, they generally didn’t. They mostly complained at me, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. “The answer is no.”
“No, they don’t flatter you?”
“No, I’m not leaving with you.”
“I suppose I’ll have to come and get you then.”
“Knock yourself out. I’ve got a sword I’m dying to introduce to your blood.” Wait. Knock yourself out. Funny I said that. An idea began to form in my head.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Robert leaning into the hallway. He was watching. He’d probably heard every word. Great. I could look forward to more questions I didn’t want to answer.
“Come with me,” Hugh said. “Let me show you the kind of power you’re missing. Nobody else has to die. He’s waiting for you.”
Every nerve in me came to attention. “Don’t see how he has the time for me, preparing for the claiming and all.”
Hugh’s eyebrows rose a quarter-inch.
I laughed quietly. “I see he doesn’t tell you everything. I think I’ll stay right here.”
He shook his head. “Seriously, what the fuck are you doing, Kate? Running around the frozen city in the night like some filthy bottom-feeder playing queen of the shapeshifters? Come to me. I’ll give you the city on a silver platter. A gift.”
“If I wanted the city, I would’ve taken it.”
“I love that snarl in your voice,” he said. “Sexy.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I like that, too,” he said.
“Just out of curiosity,” I asked. “Last time I checked, the cops frowned on the random murder of civilians. Do you think Atlanta’s Paranormal Activity Division will just let you blunder about hunting shapeshifters?”
Hugh pretended to ponder it for a long moment. “Let me think. Yes.”
Jim was right. He had made an arrangement with someone high in the police food chain. “Aren’t you smug?”
“That’s what happens when you play in the big leagues.”
“Big leagues, huh?”
“That’s right.” He winked at me. “Stick around, I’ll show you how we do it.”
“No need. I’ve already had the proper instructions from my aunt.” Big leagues, I’ll show you the big leagues. It was a gamble, but if it worked, it would buy us enough time to get the hell out of here. “Curran broke Erra’s ward, by the way.”
Hugh’s eyes narrowed. “It’s adorable when you try to manipulate me. I find it charming.”
“I’m not manipulating you. I’m stating a fact. The man I’m sleeping with broke Erra’s blood ward.” I indicated the ward. “Mine is still standing.”
In the bedroom Robert leaned out for a second to catch my eye. Yes, yes, I know what I’m doing.
“I’ve been waiting for you to break mine. I have to say, your technique is really different. Curran hammered at the spell until it broke. You just talk. Help me out here, what’s the strategy? Are you hoping the ward will get tired and kill itself so it won’t have to listen to you anymore?”
Hugh’s eyes turned dark.
I yawned. “I don’t know about the ward, but I’m done talking. I’m going to go and take a nap.”
“Last chance,” Hugh said. His voice lost all of its amusement. “Come with me, and I’ll spare your precious Pack. All your pets will go to bed safe and won’t have to worry about fighting for their lives in the morning. Or they can wake up to a slaughter and blame you when their kids and lovers start dying.”
I slid Slayer into its sheath on my back and crossed my arms. “Time for talking is over. Come on, Preceptor. The man I sleep with broke the City Eater’s ward. You just have to break one of mine. Do it, Hugh. Show me something.”
“Remember, you wanted this,” he warned.
I dug into my memory and pulled out the worst rebuke Voron ever used. He said it to me and he had said it to Hugh, because Hugh threw it in my face the last time we met.
“If you’re too scared to try, just say you’re scared, Hugh.”
Nothing was worse than not being brave enough to try.
Hugh pulled a knife out, sliced his forearm, and dropped the blade on the floor. Show-off. Why not use the knife?
He squeezed his forearm. Blood swelled, bright sharp crimson. Slowly he rubbed it all over his hands. His stare locked on me. Wow. Hugh was pissed.
I raised my eyebrow at him.
He leaned forward, his feet shoulder width apart, his arms bent at the elbows, fingers apart, pointing up. His whole body tensed, gathering together as if before a great jump. Muscles bulged on his legs. His biceps strained the sleeves of his sweater. His abdomen hardened. Thin streaks of blue vapor slithered from him, growing stronger and stronger, until pale blue smoke emanated from his whole body. I’d seen it before when he pulled Doolittle from the brink of death. The ward blocked me from feeling it, but I remembered the magnitude of that power.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
On the stairs Nick crouched. Uath gripped the guardrail. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Robert, standing in plain view in a hallway.
Hugh’s eyes turned bright electric blue. Indigo radiance coated his hands.
“Today,” I called out.
He lunged forward with both hands. His fingers pierced the ward like talons.
The blood ward flashed with brilliant red light, the magic crackling like thunder. Hugh flew back ten feet and hit the stairway leading to the upper floor. The back of his head bounced off the steps. He slid down and didn’t move.
Ha! Serves you right!
Behind me Robert sai
d, his voice completely deadpan, “Oh my.”
A wall of translucent red pulsed in the doorway and turned transparent. My spell was still up. I laughed.
Nick and Uath charged up the stairs to Hugh’s prone body. I turned around and hurried to the bedroom.
A hole gaped in the ceiling next to the bed. Derek waited by it. Ascanio swung down out of the hole and offered me his hand. I grabbed it and he pulled me up until I could grasp onto some wooden beams. Ascanio let go and climbed up, and I crawled up after him. My cracked rib was screaming. Derek followed me into the ceiling structure. Beams, broken brick, insulation, and more beams.
A cold drop fell on my head. I looked up and saw Ascanio’s feet disappear, replaced by the night sky. My fingers caught cold metal and I pulled myself outside onto the roof. Frozen rain sifted from the gray sky. In the distance Desandra in a warrior form crouched on the edge of the roof, like a sleek monstrous gargoyle.
“Did you know that would happen?” Robert emerged from the hole.
“I hoped it would.”
“And if he broke through?”
“Then we’d have to run away very fast.” Well, we still had to run away really fast. Hugh’s people wouldn’t move until he came to, but that head was really hard. He’d bounce back soon.
The roof, slicked by frost, sloped down at a sharp angle. The ground looked very far down below.
Ascanio ran across the slippery roof toward the wererat. My head swam. The roof teetered before me.
Don’t think about it. Just do it. I sprinted. My stomach lurched. Tiny black dots swam in front of my eyes. Okay, running might have been too ambitious.
The roof ended. A twenty-foot gap separated us from the next building. Far below, hard pavement promised a painful landing.
Robert leaped across the gap and scurried on.
Twenty feet was so beyond me, it wasn’t even funny. Well rested, on solid ground, and with some training, I could possibly come close, but right now, on a slippery roof, it might as well have been a hundred feet. I had to get off the roof. When Hugh finally managed to deal with my ward, the backlash would be a bitch. I needed distance, but I was stuck.
“Kate.” Derek grabbed me and leaped. The ground yawned at me and then we landed on the other roof.
Robert cleared the roof and jumped down, right over the edge. I followed and nearly slid off the icy shingles. A fire escape, ten feet below.
I jumped down, landed with a thud, and slid down the fire escape, trying not to trip over my own clumsy feet. Wind whistled around me and then we were on the ground and next to Robert, who held Cuddles’s reins.
I swung into the saddle and gave her a squeeze. We had to hurry.
Cuddles didn’t move.
“Come on!” I kicked her sides. “Now isn’t the time to be an ass!”
Cuddles planted herself. Not now, you stupid donkey.
Ascanio snarled and smacked her butt. Cuddles shot into a gallop, thudding down the street.
8
THE WARREN FLEW by. We made another right and burst onto Garbage Road. Trash and refuse lay piled in huge heaps against the walls of abandoned buildings, forming a twenty-foot-deep canyon of garbage. If we made it through, we’d reach White Street.
Cuddles began to slow. I let her drop to a canter. A mile of gallop over rough terrain was all I could ask, even with Hugh behind us. It was that or, in another mile, she’d quit on me.
Small scavenger beasts with long tails scampered back and forth on the hills of trash, their eyes pinpoints of yellow against the darkness. The shapeshifters ran on both sides of me, leaping over hazards on the garbage slopes. Garbage Road had come about because of the Phantom River. It flowed through the Warren, invisible to the eye, picked up trash and loose refuse, and dragged it here, to Garbage Road. The Phantom River terminated when it reached White Street, which had its own brand of screwed-up magic. People said that the river’s “waters” pooled here, held back by White Street like a dam, before they deposited all of its stolen treasures and disappeared.
The road widened and we emerged into what must’ve been a roundabout at some point. Now with the side streets choked by debris, it was just a trash bottleneck: one way in, one way out.
Ahead Derek stumbled.
I pulled on the reins, trying to get Cuddles to stop.
Derek tried to keep running, but he stumbled again and rolled down the garbage slope right under the donkey. Cuddles’s hoof missed his head by a hair. She finally stopped, and I jumped to the ground.
Derek rolled up clumsily to all fours and vomited a torrent of gray on the ground. A putrid sour reek hit me. It smelled like someone had sliced open a cow carcass that had been baking in the sun for days. I gagged and knelt by him. The vomit was filled with dark gray slime, streaked with black and red.
Ascanio and Robert dropped down next to me. Desandra landed next to us, shivered, and vomited to the side, the same torrent of slime and blood. Something was horribly wrong with them.
“I’m okay.” Derek coughed.
“Are you still bleeding?”
He didn’t answer.
I grabbed his hand. Blisters bulged on his skin where the thorns had punctured it. The wounds still wept gray blood. The toxins from Nick’s magic were eating them from the inside out.
Desandra turned to me. Open gashes weeping gray blood marked her furry arms.
Behind us something screeched. The long ululating cry rose above the rooftops and hung somewhere between the sky and the city, braided from hunger, predatory glee, and mourning, as if the thing that made it knew exactly how horrible it was. Only a human being could be so self-aware. It chilled every bone in my body.
Ascanio whipped around. “What the hell is that?”
That was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.
“Can you walk?” Robert asked.
Derek staggered up and swayed on his feet.
I grabbed Cuddles’s reins and walked her over. “On the donkey.”
“I can walk.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Robert snapped.
“Get on the donkey. We don’t have the time for this shit.” I glared at Desandra. “You, too.”
Desandra vomited again. The stench hit me. My stomach tried its hardest to empty itself. I choked down the bile. “Obey me, damn it. Now!”
Desandra staggered to Cuddles and climbed into the saddle. Robert picked Derek up as if the seven-foot werewolf in warrior form weighed nothing and lifted him into the saddle like he was a child. Cuddles flicked her ears, unperturbed by two werewolves on her back.
Behind us, the howl rose again: heart-wrenching, hungry, filled with despair. Closer this time.
The trash on both sides of us moved. Dozens of small creatures dashed past us, their glowing eyes wide. Oh crap.
Cuddles brayed and dashed up the street, carrying the two werewolves with her. Robert, Ascanio, and I chased her. Pain stabbed my side with each step, as if my cracked ribs had turned into spikes and pierced my insides. I clenched my teeth. Fuck it. I’d beaten a lot of pain before; I would beat this one, too.
Behind us, a forlorn cry shook the night. I turned to look over my shoulder.
A colossal creature moved through the trash canyon. It towered even with the garbage walls: giant, white, with fringes of coarse pale hair along the back of its enormous arms. Its pelvis sat low to the ground, its arms disproportionately long and armed with long, garden-shears-sized claws. Its bones pushed against its skin, its stomach so sunken in that if I had seen it in the wild, I’d think it was sick and starving. Its head was round and pale, sitting on a short neck. Its face might have had a distinct bone structure at some point, but all of its bones seemed to have melted into the skull to make room for its wide mouth. Its lips were missing and the rows of long sharp teeth in its mouth jutted, exposed. Its nose was little more than a bump with two holes, but its eyes, three inches wide and sunken into their orbits, looked completely human.
The moon broke through the clou
ds, its light illuminating the abomination. The creature’s white flesh glowed, translucent, and within it I saw its pale lungs and pink stomach, and, in the middle of this mess, cradled in the cage of its ribs, a darker, humanlike shape, as if the beast had swallowed a person whole and the corpse became its heart.
Goose pimples ran up my arms. I had seen one before in photographs but never in real life.
Ascanio shivered and shifted shape, so fast he was a blur.
“A wendigo,” Robert whispered next to me.
“Run!” I sprinted. “Ruuuun!”
We charged down the street. My cracked ribs set my side on fire. Speed was our best chance. There was no place to hide on Garbage Road. We didn’t have the numbers or the means to kill it, and every second we spent fighting would cost us time we didn’t have.
Legends said that wendigos haunted the winters on the Atlantic seaboard in the States and Canada, feeding on the Algonquian tribes. According to the Native American myths, those who reverted to cannibalism eventually transformed into a wendigo, doomed to a never-ending hunger for human flesh. I had never fought one, but I’d talked to a man who had. The wendigo couldn’t be reasoned with. Their hunger overrode all else. They would devour their prey even as they themselves were being cut apart, and the only way to kill one was to dismember it and burn the pieces. If you didn’t, it would regenerate in minutes, knitted together by magic.
A wendigo wouldn’t just show up in Atlanta on its own. We were too far south, and even if it had somehow arrived, once it turned, it would have gone on long eating sprees. We would’ve heard about it. This was Hugh’s import. A special present just for the Pack.
“Faster, faster!” Robert snarled.
I couldn’t go any faster. I glanced over my shoulder. The wendigo was closing the gap.
Ahead Cuddles stopped and brayed.
Ascanio dashed forward and whipped around. “It’s blocked!”
A massive industrial Dumpster lay on its side, blocking the path. At least eighteen feet long and filled to the brim with bricks and concrete. One of the Warren’s gangs must’ve set it here to trap passersby so it would be easier to rob them. We had to go around.
The wendigo opened its jaws and let out another scream. It was barely two hundred yards away.