“What do I do?” I asked.
Asa’s face was white as moonlight, and his entire body was trembling. “No magic no magic no magic,” he whispered, his eyes rolling. “I-I don’t . . . don’t . . .”
I ignored him and pushed the bottom of his shorts up, revealing the hole straight through his inner thigh, still burbling blood like a little fountain. Praying I was doing the right thing, I pressed the relic right over one of the wounds and focused on how much I wanted Asa to be okay. He cried out and arched, every muscle spasming. Terrified that I was damaging him, I pulled my hand away and looked down at the wound.
Even after only a few seconds, it was smaller, and the bleeding had slowed to a trickle. I gritted my teeth and held the now-bloody relic to his skin again, this time against the exit wound on the other side of his leg. Asa’s thigh was like cold iron in my grip as he writhed, and my fingers were slick with his blood. The strangest sensation crept up my arm, slithering up my neck and into my head. Suddenly, I was keenly aware of a slice of Strikon magic lying a few feet away on the muddy bank of the ditch, and the powerful throb of Sensilo magic beneath me and behind me. It felt like a million tiny insect feet pattering along the inside of my skull, and paired with the stab of pain and the pulse of ecstasy in my palm, it was almost unbearable, too much stimulation at once. I shuddered, not sure if I needed to throw up or scream or moan with pleasure, or maybe all three at the same time. My skin tingled as a cold sweat broke out across my forehead and chest and neck.
“Take it off me,” Asa said between ragged breaths, weakly trying to pry my hands from his thigh. “No more . . .”
I twisted away from Asa as I felt a surge of magic at my back and rose to my knees as Daeng barreled into me. The relic fell from my grasp as Daeng’s fingers locked around my throat. His face was twisted into a hideous grimace, and his eyes were bulging. My world turned crimson and spotty as I slapped my bloody hands onto his face, trying to get him off me.
The effect was instantaneous. Daeng released his choke hold and screamed, staggering backward with his arms thrashing. I looked down at my hands.
“The blood,” I whispered. Surface magic, Asa had called it. Asa’s blood was saturated with his Sensilo magic, and I had it all over me. So did Daeng.
The only difference was that Daeng was already full to the brim with the same kind of sensing magic. I’d just given him an overdose. As he landed on his back and scrambled up again, his hands clawed and reaching for me, the most terrible guttural sounds rolling from his throat, I grabbed a handful of wet, bloody earth from between Asa’s legs and lunged for Daeng. Short-circuited by the sensations buzzing inside my brain and along my limbs, rage devouring me, I landed on Daeng’s chest and clamped my hand over his face, forcing the magic-soaked mud into his mouth. Daeng arched and thrashed, struggling like an animal in a trap, but I was relentless and savage. He’d shot Asa. He might have killed him. He had wanted to watch him die.
“How does it feel now?” I asked, baring my teeth as tears streamed from Daeng’s eyes.
Hands looped beneath my arms and pulled me backward. “It’s okay. Let him go,” Asa said.
I struggled to get away from him, but he locked his hands around my chest and wrenched me off Daeng, who had begun to shake all over. I stared at him for a second, reddish mud smeared all over his face, his fingers twitching and flexing as Asa dragged me over to the ditch and pushed me onto my stomach, grabbing my wrists and plunging our hands into the brown rancid water. He lay on top of me as I fought him, overwhelmed and panicking at the unyielding wall of sensing magic crushing me to the ground. He rubbed my hands together underwater and then drew them up, dripping but no longer bloody. The hard tingling feeling inside my skull faded. The feeling of insects crawling on me lifted.
Panting, Asa rolled off me, and my thoughts clicked back on like a lightbulb. I turned to him, realization pounding in my veins. “You’re not dying. The relic worked.”
“For better or worse, you’re still stuck with me.” He was ghastly pale, though, and looked unsteady as he rose from the ground. Sticky blood was crusted all over his shorts and down his leg. He glanced at Daeng, who was flopping in the grass about ten feet away, then toward the motel. “We have to run.”
I looked over my shoulder. A small group of men had emerged from the hotel and were congregating in the parking lot. Asa looped his arm around my waist and pulled me backward just as one of them raised his head and squinted at the tree line.
A shout went up as he spotted us—or maybe Daeng’s thrashing body. Asa plunged into the brush, and I was right behind him. He cursed and stumbled as we wove our way around thick trunks of banana trees, their low leafy fronds thwacking our faces. Behind us, I could hear yelling and pounding footsteps. Ahead of us, though, was the glimmer of passing headlights. We were nearing the road.
Asa went down with a grunt, his chest heaving. He struggled to push himself from the ground. I grabbed his sides and yanked, helping him to rise again. In the darkness, his skin was so pale it was almost glowing. It was cold to the touch, slick with sweat. The relic had healed him, but he’d still lost so much blood, and a horde of naturals was approaching quickly. Now I knew what he must be feeling, the hard tingling, the crawling sensation along his skin. Protectiveness welled up inside me as I coiled my arm around his waist and moved with him, propelling us forward.
A sharp crack made both of us flinch. “Are they shooting at us?” I whispered as I pulled at Asa, who seemed to be having trouble lifting his feet more than a few inches off the ground.
“Yep,” he said with a huff as we reached asphalt. “I’d say it’s time to catch our flight out of here.”
I glanced up the little side street we’d emerged onto. Maybe ten yards ahead, there was a guy parking his car right next to a shabby building that might have been a bar or a convenience store, its sign lit up despite the fact that it must have been around five or six in the morning. With our pursuers still crashing through the thick woods behind us, I let go of Asa and sprinted forward, waving my arms.
The guy who’d just gotten out of his car looked at me with wide eyes as I raced toward him, blood smeared all over my shirt, my hair wild. “I need a ride!” I said, pointing to his car. “To the airport!” I jabbed my finger toward the distant sound of an airplane.
The man looked over my shoulder, and whatever he saw—probably Asa—made him scream and raise his arms up in the air. His keys dangled from one of his fingers, and in my desperation, I thrust my arms out. He yelped and threw the keys at me. They hit my chest and bounced to the ground just as Asa reached my side, looking like a blood-drenched zombie, his movements lurching and unsteady.
“Get in the car,” I shrieked. The man who’d thrown his keys had run into the shabby building, and I could hear yelling inside. And our pursuers were only a few yards from the edge of the trees. I swung the back door open and shoved Asa inside, pushing his long legs as he landed on the backseat in an awkward sprawl. My heart in my throat, I dove into the front.
“Where the hell is the steering wheel?” I screamed. Then I looked over at the passenger seat, and voila. I scooted over, shoved the key in the ignition, and twisted it just as a bullet punctured the windshield.
I slammed the car into reverse and shot backward, yanking the wheel around and sending up a cloud of smoke as the car spun. Then I punched it into drive and sped forward, hunching down and expecting my world to go dark at any moment. I could hear the cracks of gunshots, could feel the hiss of bullets through the car. My breath was bursting from me in little squeaks as I reached the wide road we’d traveled to get to the hotel. I took a quick right turn and screamed again as I saw several sets of headlights streaking toward me.
“They drive on the left,” Asa shouted from the back as I swerved.
“I knew that!” I cranked the wheel and looped around, forcing several oncoming cars to slam on their brakes. Then I stomped on the gas again, and the tires squealed just before we shot forward. A sharp
snap made me flinch, and I cast a quick sidelong glance at the new bullet hole in the passenger window as we roared past the side street.
I was weaving in and out, streaking by cars and trucks like they were standing still. I knew the airport was to the right but had no idea how to get over there. “Why are there no freaking street signs?” I wailed, cutting in front of a taxi, whose driver laid on the horn a second later.
I wrenched the wheel to the right and pulled a U-turn under an overpass, then darted across the road toward a little sign with an airplane on it, barely avoiding a collision with a delivery truck. As more horns sounded off, along with a few sirens, I glanced behind me to see Asa lying on the backseat, a bloody phone to his ear. “Got it,” he said. “We’re coming in hot, so be ready.”
He sat up and looked around, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the airport in front of us. “The hangar’s on the southwest—” He grabbed the back of the seat as I swerved around a line of cars, one of the wheels going up on the curb.
“Which way is southwest?” I yelled.
“That way!” He pointed to my left, and I lurched onto a narrow lane, scraping the side of a building as I pulled around a slow-moving airport shuttle.
Behind us, sirens were screaming, and red and white lights were twinkling in my rearview mirror. “Oh God,” I said in a choked voice, clinging to the wheel. “When did my life become a Fast and the Furious movie?”
“Up there! Up there!” Asa made a frantic wave toward a line of hangars up ahead. A sleek jet was taxiing out of the one on the very end. “That’s them!” He cursed and ducked as another bullet dinged into the metal of the car.
The gas pedal was on the freaking floor as I raced toward the jet. I was terrified to slow down for fear our pursuers would catch up, but I knew I had to stop. Those two thoughts warred in my panicked brain until Asa roared my name, and I slammed on the brakes. The wheels locked and the car skidded across the concrete, barreling toward the jet. We jerked to a stop less than twenty feet away. The plane’s door opened, and a set of steps flopped down. Asa had to shout at me to throw the car into park before I got out. The air was filled with the whine of airplane engines and the scream of sirens as Asa and I staggered toward the jet, clawing our way up the steps and throwing ourselves inside.
I had the faintest impression of someone pulling up the stairs and calling to the pilot to get going, but it barely reached my consciousness. I tripped over Asa’s feet and landed on top of him in the aisle. His arms wrapped around me and pulled me against him. His heart was hammering against my chest, and both of us were shaking. As I felt the plane accelerate and glimpsed the outside streaking by, as my stomach swooped with our rise into the sky, I buried my face against his throat and burst into tears.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
After a short flight, most of which I spent in the bathroom trying to clean myself up and pull myself together, we changed planes in Taipei, boarding a larger jet with two pilots, a flight attendant, and a security guard. Asa stared at the flight attendant as she approached him with a beautiful smile on her face. There was an eerie sort of hunger in his eyes. But then he stepped back from her abruptly as she reached out to touch his arm.
“Stay the fuck away from me,” he snarled.
She blinked at him. “But-but Mr. Brindle wanted me to help you feel more comf—”
Asa turned to the security guard, who was pulling up the stairs. “Get her off this plane. She goes or I do.”
I touched his arm. “Asa—”
“I will not fly across the Pacific in a tiny tin can with a fucking Ekstazo,” he shouted, his voice cracking. He was still covered in crusted blood, pale as a ghost, his short hair sticking up in places. His hands were trembling in that way that made my stomach hurt.
After a terse phone call with someone in charge, the security guard hustled the flight attendant off the plane, and we were off. Asa sank into one of the couches that ran along the length of the plane and folded his arm over his eyes. His lips were gray, his face drawn. I knelt next to him. “You need to eat something. And rehydrate. Can you do that? What sounds good?”
Asa lifted his arm and peeked at me. His gaze slipped over my throat, where the collar had been until I’d quietly removed it on our flight to Taipei. “See what they have?” he asked weakly. “You know what I need.”
“Got it.” I walked up to the front of the cabin and smiled at the security guard, a guy about my age with sandy blond hair who looked like he might have played football in college. “Can I?” I gestured to the small galley.
“Be my guest,” he said, eyeing Asa. “You guys had a rough time of it, huh?”
“Yeah. Airport traffic was brutal.” I began to open each cabinet, skipping over the reheatable meals and pulling out a few bottles of water and juice, a few salads, and several packages of nuts and trail mix. With the guard’s help, I carried them back to Asa. I waved the guard away, nodding toward Asa and trying to communicate that he was in a mood. Then I touched Asa’s arm. “Hey. Can you sit up?”
Asa pushed himself up on an elbow, but it took some effort. I offered juice but he pushed it away. “It really might help,” I said. “Get your blood sugar up.”
“Or put me into a goddamn coma. I can’t drink that stuff.” He reached for the water and gave me a bemused half smile as I twisted off the cap for him. I watched the drops collect at the corner of his mouth and streak down his chin as he gulped at it.
“Wouldn’t an Ekstazo have only made you feel better?” I asked quietly as he started to eat one of the salads. “Why wouldn’t you let her fly with us?”
“It’s already bad enough . . .” He looked away.
“No, what is it?”
“The relic,” he said. “It was powerful Ekstazo magic. And when that stuff hits my system, it’s like a line of cocaine. It fires me up, and then I’m caught all over again.” He kept his eyes on his food, tossing a handful of nuts into his mouth. “So now I have the deal with the shakes along with everything else.”
I thought back to the moments he’d been bleeding to death. Instead of begging me to help, he’d been muttering “no magic” over and over again. “You didn’t want me to save you?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t want to die. But I didn’t want to be addicted again, either. I can’t get trapped in it, Mattie. I can’t do it. And it would be so easy.”
My heart ached for him. “I feel like I should be apologizing to you, for forcing it on you.”
“Don’t. You were . . .” He sighed. “Fucking amazing.” His eyes met mine briefly before he focused on his food again. “No one’s ever fought for me like that,” he murmured.
I sat on the couch across from him, swallowing the lump in my throat. “You saved me first.”
This time he actually smiled.
“Asa, what’s going to happen when we get back?” I asked quietly.
Asa cut a sidelong glance at the guard as he finished the salad. The guy was lounging against the wall at the front of the cabin, facing us. Asa put his dish down and stretched out on the couch, his long legs bent slightly to allow him to fit. “Come here, baby,” he said, waggling his eyebrows at me. “Keep me warm.”
Despite his bedraggled appearance, the timbre of his voice was authoritative, and the sound thrummed inside me, forcing me to suppress a shiver. I edged across the aisle and lay down next to him on the narrow couch. He folded me into his arms, chest to chest, and I inhaled the scent of sweat and blood, intense and earthy and dangerous. His fingertips traced up my spine, and even though I knew he was putting on an act, it made my heart pound. I couldn’t help but recall what he’d done to Rose, and the memory filled my head with the dueling needs to push him away and to move closer. He wove his fingers into my curls and pulled my face close until our lips almost touched. I held my breath. Then he tilted his head, glanced up at the guard, and smiled. I looked behind me—the guy had discreetly sat down with his back to us.
Asa’s hands stilled, and he looked
into my eyes. “They’re going to take us back to Mistika and pull that magic out of you,” he whispered, holding me tight as I flinched at the thought of all that pain, all over again.
For the first time, I thought of what would happen next. “And then we’re going to give this incredible weapon to an incredibly evil man. He could do so much damage, and we’ll be responsible.”
Asa sighed. “Brindle operates underground, and under the radar. It’s not like he’s going to walk into a mall and unleash it on innocent people. He’ll use it as a threat, to get his way. And probably to destroy other incredibly evil men—like Zhong.”
“Are you just saying that to make this easier for me?”
“It’s the truth, but I’m okay with making it easier.” He nudged my nose with his. “You’ve got enough to worry about.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be at the transaction to make sure everything’s good and proper. Then you and Ben are going to go straight to the airport and buy tickets home, and you’re not going to look back.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
His smile turned sad. “I’m going to take care of me.”
I touched his stubbly, blood-streaked jaw. “Brindle said it was just one job.”
Asa’s brown eyes were somber. “He’s not going to let me go that easy, Mattie. Not once he has me. And I’m not exactly at my strongest at the moment.”
“Are they going to hurt you?”
“The opposite. That’s why that Ekstazo was put on the flight. If I’d let her, she’d have had me amped up and under her spell long before we touched down in Vegas.”
“Why?”
His fingers tightened in my hair. “So the Knedas they’ll have waiting for us can do his thing without me resisting. That’s how they do it to us, Mattie. That’s how they catch us and keep us.”
“Magic sniffers, you mean?”
“Yeah. We can’t work for the bosses, surrounded by all that juice day in and day out, and not go insane. So the master makes sure you’re always flying high just to keep you going for as long as possible. Remember Tao? Zhong Lei’s sensor? He’s on his last legs.”