Magic Breaks

  I grabbed Cuddles’s reins and pulled her, trying to get her up the trash slope. Cuddles brayed and stopped dead.

  Robert grabbed the reins next to me and pulled. “Come on.”

  Derek slid off the saddle and screamed, “Stop, you moron!”

  I whipped around.

  Ascanio was running toward the wendigo, his knives out.

  No, no, no, you stupid idiot!

  My body had moved before my mind realized I was running after him.

  The wendigo paused, scooped something from the trash, and shoveled it into its mouth. The huge teeth scissored and a piece of a wooden beam fell from its mouth, sheared clean.

  Ascanio leaped and carved at the wendigo’s legs, his knives a whirlwind. The creature howled.

  I sprinted so fast, I was almost flying.

  Ascanio whirled around the wendigo’s legs like a dervish, slicing and cutting. Pink blood sprayed the trash piles. The wendigo’s left ankle gave out and he dropped to one knee.

  Run faster, damn it, I had to run faster.

  Ascanio backed up toward me to avoid being crushed. The wendigo’s hand snapped, shockingly fast, and closed about the boy. He jerked him up and smashed the bouda against the ground.

  Oh no.

  Robert shot past me and leaped onto the wendigo’s face, his claws slicing.

  The wendigo jerked Ascanio up, oblivious to the wererat clawing its face, and smashed him against the ground again. Bone crunched. The wendigo raised its hand. It was blood-red. The claws raked Ascanio’s prone body. If I didn’t stop it now, it would kill him.

  I stopped to inhale some air.

  The creature bent down . . .

  “Aarh!” Stop.

  The power word tore from me in a rush of agony. The wendigo froze. Robert froze too, the claws of his left hand buried in the wendigo’s face, his right arm raised to claw at the creature’s human eye.

  Four seconds. That was how long the spell would hold them.

  A furry shape leaped from the right above me, sailing through the air, arms raised, a tomahawk in his right hand. Derek landed on the wendigo’s face and carved at its neck with his axe.

  I shot forward and sliced the tendons on both hind legs.

  Desandra swept Ascanio up and staggered back, stumbling.

  The wendigo shook. Derek chopped into it again and again, casting off a pink mist of blood.

  The spell broke. The wendigo crashed down and I carved its side open, thrusting through the ribs into the spongy lungs within. Regenerate that, you sonovabitch. Slayer thrust through thick muscle, and a wet pop announced the stomach rupturing. The reek of acid and sulfur washed over me. Blood wet my hands, gushing down the wendigo’s side.

  The massive creature shuddered, trying to rise.

  Robert cut and gouged his way to the wendigo’s back. Bright human blood stained his fur. The alpha of the wererats sliced the translucent flesh, planted his feet, bent down, locked his fingers on an exposed rib, and pulled. Bone broke. He tossed the rib out, shoved his hand into the hole, pulled a handful of organ tissue out, and hurled it into the night.

  I scrambled the wendigo’s human-looking heart with my blade. I minced its liver. I hacked its lungs into bloody paste. I severed its arteries. Pink, almost transparent blood sprayed me again and again, its taste burning on my lips. Above me Robert threw intestines onto garbage. I caught a glimpse of Desandra ripping into the wendigo’s body next to me.

  Suddenly the massive horrifying head sagged over, hanging from the stump of the neck by a thin thread of flesh. With one final blow, Derek sliced through it, and the head fell to the ground. Derek landed next to it, kicked the skull, sending it rolling down the trash-choked street, and fell like a chopped-down tree.

  His body shivered and shrank back to human.

  A few yards away Ascanio cried out on the ground, naked, human, and bloody. Everything inside me went cold. Their injuries were so bad, the Lyc-V had shifted them back to human as it strained to heal them.

  I knelt by Derek and pulled his head up. He was out, but he was breathing. The wounds on his hands had stopped bleeding and I couldn’t tell if it was good or bad.

  “Kate!” Desandra called, her voice shaking.

  I ran to her.

  Long gashes carved Ascanio’s chest and stomach. Wet intestines gaped through the gashes, weeping blood. His skin split where shards of broken ribs had punctured it. His face was bloody. He breathed in short sharp gasps. Oh God.

  “Fix him!” Desandra looked at me.

  I couldn’t. He was gone too far. We had to get a medmage. We had to get one now.

  Ascanio’s gaze fastened on me. “So . . . sorry.”

  “Don’t talk now.” We couldn’t load him onto the donkey. There was no room.

  “I . . .” Ascanio swallowed and coughed out blood. He looked so young. “I don’t . . . Want to die. Please.”

  “You’re not going to die.” I was getting much better at lying.

  “Sorry,” Ascanio whispered. “Sorry.”

  “Yes, you are. When we get to the Keep, you’ll be even sorrier. What the fuck were you thinking?”

  He tried to smile, his teeth bloody. “. . . buy Broody . . . some time.”

  Oh, you young fool.

  A loud howl came from behind the wendigo, a wild human shriek. Hugh’s Iron Dogs were hunting us down.

  Desandra vomited again.

  My guts turned into a cold twisted clump. Three people down. I couldn’t let them die. They had come to protect me. I had to find a medmage even if I had to conjure one out of thin air. Derek would not die on my watch. Ascanio and Desandra would not die. I wouldn’t stand before Aunt B’s grave and tell her I let one of her bouda kids throw his life away. I wouldn’t tell Curran that I got the boy wonder killed.

  I pictured the area in my head. I knew this part of the city well. I’d covered just about every square inch of it during my tenure with the Order.

  The Order.

  This was nuts. But then beggars couldn’t be choosers.

  “Robert, can you carry him?

  “Yes. Where are we going?” Robert asked.

  “The Order.”

  “But they hate us,” Desandra forced through her teeth.

  “The Order has a medmage on staff and the kind of wards it would take an army to breach. They’ll help anyone in need. We’re in need. They hate Hugh d’Ambray more than they hate us.”

  At least I hoped they did. As much as Ted Moynohan despised me, he was still a knight-protector. He wouldn’t let my people die on the street in front of his chapter. And I was betting three lives on that.

  • • •

  THE ULULATING HOWLS of the Iron Dogs floated behind us, constant now, like an eerie, bone-chilling din. As soon as one ended, another started. How they could run and howl at the same time was beyond me. They had to be riding and they were getting closer. We had lost two precious minutes coaxing Cuddles to climb the trash around the Dumpster and we weren’t moving fast.

  Desandra held Derek in the saddle in front of her. He’d gone completely limp. Her eyes were wild and she shivered as she rode. She wouldn’t last much longer. Next to me Robert ran silently, carrying Ascanio in his arms.

  The streets crawled by, painfully slow. My side hurt so much now, I didn’t even anticipate the pain anymore. I just kept going.

  A familiar storefront slid by. We had to be in range now.

  I strained, trying to send a focused thought out into the world. “Maxine?”

  The Order’s telepathic secretary didn’t answer.

  “Maxine!” I whispered. Vocalizing helped sometimes. “Maxine!”

  A familiar dry voice sounded in my head. “Hello, Kate.”

  “I’m on New Peachtree, being pursued by supernatural creatures. I request protection for five people.”

  Maxine paused. “Kate, the Order isn’t the safest place for you. Moynohan doesn’t view you as an upstanding citizen.”

  Moynohan can bite me. ?
??I have two injured teenagers, and one is dying. Tell Ted I’m running from Hugh d’Ambray.”

  “Please stand by.”

  We made a sharp left. The howls chased us, louder and louder. The street rolled out in front of us, completely empty. Ten more blocks to the Order. To my knowledge the Order’s wards had been breached only once and it took my aunt to do it. We had to make it behind those wards.

  Hoofbeats. I turned.

  Hugh rounded the corner. He was riding a huge black horse. A dozen men and women rode with him.

  “Protection granted,” Maxine said in my head. “Please proceed to the Order chapterhouse.”

  We wouldn’t make it. I stopped and turned to face the Iron Dogs, unsheathing my sword. Hugh wanted me. Hugh would get me. Be careful what you wish for.

  “Down!” Mauro boomed behind me.

  I dropped to the ground. The air whined as half a dozen arrows flew above my head and bit into the asphalt, falling feet short of Hugh’s horse.

  The bolts pulsed once with bright blue. The night exploded. I caught a glimpse of Hugh’s giant black horse rearing.

  I jumped to my feet and turned. Four knights of the Order walked toward us: Mauro, Richter, another man I didn’t know, and a redheaded woman with a buzz cut. They carried crossbows. Hello, cavalry. Behind them Robert was running full speed to the Order.

  “Go, Kate!” Mauro waved at me.

  The knights were reloading. I ran to the chapter.

  The Order’s nondescript building loomed before me. Robert ducked through the doors. I squeezed one last burst of speed, dashed through the doors, and almost ran into two knights pointing loaded crossbows at me.

  “Give me your sword,” the taller one said.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I would do what he says, dear,” Maxine said in my head. “They’re under orders to shoot you if you don’t.”

  9

  THE ORDER HAD remodeled the Vault after my aunt scorched the place. The massive door was gone. Shields and weapons still hung on three walls, but the fourth was now lined with loup cages, the bars made of silver and steel alloy two inches thick. The Order had spared no expense and I was getting a lovely view of the bars from the wrong side.

  I paced back and forth, while Robert lay next to me, stretched out on the floor of the cage, resting to let his body heal. If he overextended himself, the Lyc-V would shut him down for repairs and he wanted to stay conscious.

  My side still hurt, and my ribs reminded me once in a while that they were there.

  To the right, separated from my and Robert’s cell by bars, Derek and Desandra sprawled in their own cage asleep under blankets. The Order’s medmage, a tall man with a long braid of brown hair who went by Steinlein, had examined them and declared there was nothing he could do. The toxin was working its way through their systems and they would bounce back or they wouldn’t. He seemed to think they would, because once they had turned human, their wounds had closed, which was a good sign.

  Through the bars, I could see Ascanio. He lay limp on a table in the open. They had chained his ankles and his wrists. The chains weren’t silver, but they were thick enough to hold him. Steinlein chanted over him, rocking back and forth. I couldn’t tell if his chanting was doing anything. The boy didn’t look any better.

  I felt so hollow, as if someone had gutted me. I didn’t know about whom to worry more, Ascanio dying or Derek and Desandra barely breathing.

  The redheaded female knight with the buzz cut—Steinlein had called her Diana—watched us. Next to her a lean, muscular knight in his late twenties was giving me his version of a hard stare. He was carrying a tactical sword. A long scar crossed his face from his short blond hair to his chin. They both seemed convinced that if one of them looked away for a second, I’d escape from the locked cage and explode the Order.

  “You keep staring, you’ll set me on fire,” I told them.

  Neither of them answered. Great.

  Mauro stepped into the vault.

  “Did you call the Pack?” I asked him

  “The phones are out,” he said.

  Can I just fucking catch a break?

  “But I sent a courier to Atlanta Medical, asking for assistance,” Mauro said. “They’ve got a new satellite office about four miles from here.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “It won’t help,” Steinlein said. “His chest and everything inside it is crushed. If he were weaker, he would be dead already. I’m only delaying the inevitable.”

  Ascanio trusted me. He trusted me and I had let him come with me. He had no fear, because he was young and he thought he was immortal and because he counted on me keeping him alive. I couldn’t lose him. “If you’re done, chain me next to him, and I’ll keep chanting.”

  The medmage turned to me. “I didn’t say I was giving up. I’m just telling you that there’s no light at the end of this tunnel. You have a couple of hours to come to terms with it.”

  Doolittle would’ve ripped a new hole somewhere in him for his bedside manner. If he hadn’t been holding Ascanio’s life in his hands, I’d have told him exactly what I thought about it.

  “We don’t have a couple of hours,” Robert said, his eyes still closed. “D’Ambray is coming.”

  And soon, too. We’d been inside the chapterhouse for about fifteen minutes. Everything I had read about the wendigo said they regenerated in anywhere from five minutes to half an hour, depending on the magnitude of the magic wave. We hadn’t had the time to cut it into little pieces and then burn them. As soon as his wendigo got on its feet, Hugh would come. I had taunted him, and my ward had kicked his ass. He wouldn’t let it go.

  “D’Ambray would be an idiot to attack the Order,” Diana said.

  “We’ve got backup coming in,” Mauro said. “I’ve talked to the knight-protector. Ted reached out to the Paranormal Activity Division and the National Guard.”

  Neither the PAD nor the National Guard would get here in time.

  “We’ve fought one of them before,” Mauro said. “It was me, Kate, and Nash, and we all lived through it.”

  We had lived through it, because I was one of “them.” Pointing that out wasn’t in my best interests. “Let me out. I’ll fight with you.”

  “Sorry, Kate.” Mauro grimaced. “Orders are orders.”

  “Kate,” Maxine’s voice said in my head.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m being evacuated out of the office. I’m instructed to stay within my range so I can make a full report of what happens.”

  Ted was expecting trouble.

  “Thank you for your help,” I whispered. “I truly appreciate it.”

  “I know, dear. I’m very sorry you left. It hasn’t been the same without you and Andrea.”

  Heavy steps came down the stairs and Ted Moynohan walked into the room. The knight-protector had aged since I last saw him. He’d been in his early fifties when we met. Now he seemed closer to sixty. He was built thick and had gotten thicker. The layer of fat was deceiving—there was hard, powerful muscle underneath—and Ted didn’t look soft. He looked like a heavyweight fighter who had let himself go a bit. He wore blue jeans, a gray shirt, cowboy boots, and a belt with a buckle that had illusions of grandeur. A black cowboy hat sat on his head, and if it got real hot, he could shelter a gaggle of street orphans in its shade.

  Ted stopped by my cage and peered at me, his square jaw locked. I looked back. He would do me no favors and I expected none.

  “Here you are in a cage, Daniels. I always knew you’d end up in one.”

  I didn’t answer. If he got it all off his chest, I’d have a better chance of making him understand what was coming.

  “You put the Consort of the Pack in a cage,” Robert said.

  “I don’t see a consort. I see the same smart-mouthed merc with a sharp sword, except she’s dressed better now. Mercs have no loyalty and this one has no brains. She’ll get you killed just like that kid over there. You should’ve found yourself
someone smarter to follow.”

  “D’Ambray is coming,” I said. “He has a detachment of Iron Dogs and at least one wendigo with him. He also has access to the entirety of the People’s stable of vampires. He wants to bring down the Pack and he has decided that killing me is the way to do it.” It wasn’t the complete truth, but close enough. “He’s pissed off. If you let me go, d’Ambray will follow me.”

  “Mm-hm,” Ted said.

  “He has superior numbers and he’s very determined. You don’t have the manpower to oppose him. Let me out.” I just needed them to keep Ascanio, Derek, and Desandra safe. That’s all. Robert and I could go and draw Hugh off with us.

  Ted shook his head. “No. This is a human fight and you’ve picked the wrong side. Live with your choices.”

  Stubborn bastard. “You have no authority to detain me.”

  “Yes, I do. When you petitioned the Order for protection, they gave us sweeping power to guard you in the way we see fit. Enjoy being guarded, Daniels.”

  Argh. Listen to me, you dense asshole. “They will breach your defenses. You’re throwing your people away. Hugh isn’t some Joe Blow off the street, he’s the preceptor of the Order of Iron Dogs. He has Uath with him. She likes to skin people alive.”

  Ted smiled.

  He wanted it.

  The crazy sonovabitch actually wanted a shot at Hugh d’Ambray. As long as the Order held us, there was a chance that Hugh would pick a fight, and everything I had just said only confirmed Ted’s decision to keep us here. My mind wrestled with it and I clamped my mouth shut.

  Why? What could he possibly gain by this? My aunt had left this building a smoking wreck, and she hadn’t even done it in person. She’d used a flesh golem to do it. Ted was a bigot, but he wasn’t an idiot. He had to know there was a chance Hugh would break through the Order’s defenses. The Iron Dogs were the elite of the elite, and according to Mauro, his knights, who’d be outnumbered two to one, weren’t exactly the Order’s cream of the crop.

  Why risk his people? Was it some sort of last-minute attempt at some glory before he died?

  I had to change my strategy and fast. I scraped my brain for the contents of the Order’s Charter. I learned slowly, but once I managed to chisel information into my brain, it stayed there.