The Sorcerer Heir

Pulling his pistol out of his waistband, he flicked the safety off and eased forward.

  Across the room, he saw Madison propped against the wall, her skirts muddied with blood, eyes open, staring at him. No, staring beyond him. Her hand twitched, pointing.

  Without pausing to look, Jack leaped aside just as a body glanced off him, breaking his grip on the pistol so that it pinwheeled away. Moments later, he heard it hit the floor below. Jack rolled back to his feet, and found himself facing Jonah Kinlock.

  Jonah stood over Ellen’s body, looking like he, too, had been the guest of honor at a bloodbath. Jonah saw no visible weapon, only some sort of small device in his hand.

  “I don’t want to kill you, Jack,” Jonah said. “Not if I don’t have to.”

  “I may want to kill you,” Jack said. “I haven’t decided.” He recalled Emma’s words. They’ve done something to him. Please don’t kill him.

  Yet, grief squeezed him like a vise. Somebody had to pay for Ellen, for that massive hole in his heart.

  Jonah nudged Ellen gently with his foot. “She’s not dead, if that’s what you’re worried about. She’ll be good as new in an hour or so.”

  Jack broadened his stance. “And I should believe that because...?”

  “Because I have no reason to kill her. Or to kill you, for that matter. All I want is her.” Jonah tilted his head back toward Madison.

  “I’m sorry,” Jack said. “That’s not going to work for us.” He wondered what had happened to his metal bar. Had he dropped it somewhere?

  Jonah took a step back, and another, away from Ellen, and back toward Madison. “Here,” he said, gesturing toward Ellen. “Take her and go.”

  Jack took a step toward Ellen, then another.

  Jonah nodded encouragingly.

  Keeping his eyes on Jonah, Jack knelt next to Ellen. With a quick movement, he pulled Waymaker free and came back to his feet, pointing the blade at Jonah.

  Jonah sighed. “Seriously?” Taking three more steps back, he reached down and came up with his own sword, still blemished with blood from the earlier battle.

  Jack shrugged. “I’m a hero. What can I say?” He swept Waymaker back and forth a few times, testing the weight of it. “I don’t suppose you’d like to surrender?”

  “I can’t,” Jonah said, advancing on Jack.

  At first, it was a gentle dance. They were testing each other, identifying strengths and weaknesses, those bad habits that always betray a swordfighter in the end. Unfortunately, Jonah hadn’t lost any skills since the last time they’d met on the lists.

  Except. It might have been Jack’s imagination, but Jonah seemed less able to read him than he had in that last bout, to anticipate his moves. Unless Jack was getting better at hiding his intentions. His intentions were, of course, to drag this out as long as possible, since time was on his side. Sooner or later, the battle in the Keep would be over, and this fight would be interrupted.

  It was, of course, the kind of match Jack would have enjoyed in other circumstances. The warehouse was like a three-level Ninja Warrior obstacle course with hidden hazards such as unstable railings and charred staircases that might give way at any moment.

  Jack wasn’t sure if he could actually win with an unfamiliar sword, but he hoped he could keep Jonah occupied long enough for help to arrive.

  Leesha tried to fight down the waves of panic that washed over her as the fighting raged on, the flashbacks of the battle outside of Trinity, when Jason fell and died, and there was nothing she could do. At first, she crouched under the steps to the stage, her arms covering her head like a first grader during a tornado drill. Eventually, she forced herself to come out of cover. It was one of the hardest things she’d ever done.

  She discovered that Jonah was not the only one skilled at fighting the undead. The launchers didn’t work all that well against the hosted shades either, so Rudy and Alison eventually set them aside, producing swords and hatchets and other edged weapons from some other hiding place. Along with the three unfamiliar savants—Mike, Charlie, and Thérèse—they formed a perimeter around the stage, where the mainliners were huddled.

  At least the arrival of the Black Rose wizards provided a new and welcome distraction for the remaining hosted shades, who saw an opportunity to collect blood magic on the spot. The wizards, for their part, couldn’t seem to grasp that neither conjury nor gunfire was all that effective against hosted shades. Even direct magic had its limitations when used against creatures who don’t mind getting a little charred. Some of the would-be assassins fled through the theater doors, but it sounded like there was more fighting going on outside in the lobby.

  Leesha knew the breather wouldn’t last long—when they’d finished off the Black Rose wizards, they would again focus on the mainliners in the middle. And there weren’t that many of them. She headed backstage, looking for a possible exit. But shades encircled the building on all sides, filling the alley outside the stage door. She did find a ladder that led up to a catwalk for the lighting techs. That looked defensible, anyway.

  She ran back to the front of the stage, just in time to see the lobby door open, and four more people burst into the room: Hudson, Morrison, Blaise Highbourne, and Fitch. Two wizards, a seer, and a Harvard sophomore. They hesitated just inside the door, staring at the carnage, then began to fight their way forward.

  “No!” Leesha screamed, waving them back. “Run! Get out! Go!”

  But it was too late. They were swarmed by shades. She saw Blaise go down, and then she couldn’t see any of them.

  “Blaise!” Leesha cried. She leaped off the stage and ran toward the place they’d disappeared. They were easy to locate: Hudson and Morrison were spewing flames in all direction, and Leesha all but got fried before she made it to where the newcomers were huddled.

  “I guess that’s what they mean by friendly fire,” Fitch said, batting out sparks on his sleeve.

  Leesha looked around. “Where’s Blaise?”

  “He—he’s gone,” Fitch said, shuddering. “He went down.”

  Leesha found herself wishing she could flame someone. So she yelled at Fitch instead. “Harvard! What don’t you understand about ‘stay away’?” she demanded. Still, she grabbed his hand and held on tight.

  By now there was no chance of getting back out of the theater—there were too many shades between them and the door. More seemed to be coming in from outside, to replace the ones that left with Lilith.

  “All right, everyone, head back to the stage,” Leesha said. She turned to the two wizards. “You two! Keep the shades off our rear, but don’t flame anything until you see what you’re aiming at.”

  To her surprise, they obeyed. Well, she always was good at giving orders.

  She would have said it was impossible, and yet somehow they made it to the edge of the stage, with Morrison and Hudson covering the rear, Alison, Rudy and the others keeping zombies off their flanks. Fitch climbed up first, then reached down to lift Leesha back onto the stage.

  “Leesha!” Hudson called out a warning.

  Leesha looked up to see a large blade descending, glittering in the stage lights. It was just like everybody said. Time slowed down, so she had time to regret the fact that she’d only kissed Fitch a few times, and now she’d never get to go to the ashram, but truth be told, she’d rather go to Belize, but who goes to Belize anymore anyway? She wondered where the shade had come from, how he’d got through to her. Her life didn’t pass before her eyes, because she had no interest in revisiting most of it.

  She had time to think all that, and then Fitch covered her with his body and she breathed in his scent, his hair was tickling her neck, smelling of that bargain shampoo he used, and she could hear the hiss of his breath, close to her ear, and she was crying, “No! No! No!” and then something slammed into them, hard, pitching them off the stage and onto the floor and blood spattered over her, it
was everywhere in her mouth, her eyes and she was sobbing, and yelling, “Harvard! Harvard! I told you not to come!” and then somebody pulled her in close, pressing her face into a wool peacoat that stank of wet sheep and blood, and he held her tightly, and stroked her hair and murmured, “It’s all right, it’s all right, Leesha. We’re both okay.”

  And it was Fitch.

  She looked up at him, and his glasses were smashed and splattered with blood and dangling from one ear, but he was alive. He was alive and she thought she just might die of happiness.

  But then she turned to look, and it was Alison there on the floor, limp as a rag doll, nearly cut in two where she’d intercepted the blade. The shade lay nearby, broken and still. And kneeling next to Alison, Sylvia Morrison, weeping.

  As Leesha watched, she saw something rising from Alison’s body, like a vapor. Or an angel. It lingered there a moment, like a spiderweb that catches the sunlight. Morrison reached her hand out toward it, eyes wide with wonder, but it rose higher and higher until Leesha couldn’t see it anymore.

  Somehow, Leesha resisted the urge to just sit there in Fitch’s embrace. Somehow, she got back on her feet and nagged and cajoled the others onto the stage. She herded them back to the ladder and pointed. “Climb.”

  “Where does that go?” Hudson asked, peering up into darkness.

  “Away from zombies,” Fitch said. Hudson climbed.

  On the way to the warehouse, Emma stopped and fetched the SG from the car. She felt kind of foolish, but she respected Kenzie’s wisdom, especially where his brother was concerned. Anyway, she had a feeling that the outcome with Jonah would depend on something other than firepower.

  She found the building with no trouble. The door stood ajar, and bodies sprawled just inside the doorway. Farther in, she realized that the building had come under attack by shades, and somebody had fought back big-time. It was a major battlefield, with dismembered corpses scattered all around. She found nobody alive on the first floor, but every once in a while, a flicker of movement told her there were free shades around. She did her best to ignore them.

  The old freight elevator had been thoroughly trashed. The staircase wasn’t much better—it was charred, like somebody had set it on fire but it had burned itself out. It was littered with more bodies.

  Is it all over? she wondered. Am I too late? Then she heard faint sounds from upstairs.

  She began to climb, testing each step with her foot before committing herself, one hand on the railing, the other hanging on to her guitar. As she climbed higher, the noises overhead grew louder: the thud of feet on the wooden floors, the hammer of steel on steel, breath rasping in and out.

  The sound of fighting.

  Flinging caution away, Emma flew up the stairs, her feet barely touching the treads, her guitar swinging away from her body as she made the turns.

  When she reached the third floor, she saw them: Jack and Jonah, circling like gangsters in a knife fight, their swords bright flames in the fading light. Feinting, thrusting, jabbing at each other, each looking for the opening that would end the fight and break Emma’s heart.

  It seemed they’d been at it for some time. Sweat dripped from their bodies, staining the floor, and the walls around them were scorched here and there where jets of flame had hit. Both of them were bleeding, though neither seemed badly injured.

  She saw no sign of Ellen or Madison.

  Jonah’s back was to Emma, so she couldn’t read his expression. Jack was facing her, though. His cheeks were flushed, and he looked like he was just about done in. When he spotted Emma, standing frozen at the top of the steps, he looked up at the ceiling, then back at her, up at the ceiling again.

  Emma got the message. Maddie was upstairs.

  Leaving Jack and Jonah fighting was really hard, but she still did it. As she scrambled up the stairs, Jack howled a challenge and lunged forward, hard, driving Jonah away from the foot of the stairs and toward the back of the building.

  As Emma turned the corner onto the next flight, she looked down and saw Jack dodge sideways just in time to avoid Jonah’s questing blade.

  Whatever I do, I’m too late, she thought.

  Crossing the landing at the stop of the steps, she saw Ellen lying facedown on the floor. Madison was slumped against the wall nearby, her skirts and the floor around her smeared with blood.

  For one terrible moment, Emma thought that they were both dead. But Madison, at least, was alive. Her blue eyes were fixed on Emma’s face, and she was taking quick, shallow breaths.

  Was there any way Emma could get her downstairs, past Jonah and Jack, to safety?

  No. There was no way.

  So Emma looked around, hoping for a hiding place, a back stairwell, something.

  Nothing. Only a bunch of old barrels, a liquor crate, and some furniture pads.

  At least she could make it a little harder for Jonah to find her, and buy a little precious time.

  Placing a furniture pad next to Madison, she rolled Madison over onto it. Maddie moaned in pain, but Emma could tell she was trying to cooperate. Taking hold of the edge of the pad, she dragged her back into a corner, and covered her with more furniture pads. Then she rolled barrels into the opposite corner, making a little barricade, and piled pads behind it. She carried over her guitar case, unlatched the catches, and lifted it out. Sitting down on the crate, she settled the SG onto her lap and waited.

  Finally, she heard someone trudging slowly up the stairs. Jack or Jonah? The question was answered when Jonah’s head and shoulders appeared at the top. His hair was in disarray, and a long scratch slanted across his cheekbone. He carried his sword in one hand, a steel bar in the other. His gloves were on.

  His gloves were on. That was a good sign, wasn’t it?

  Odd that he hadn’t noticed her before now. Ordinarily, he was impossible to sneak up on.

  What should she say? Emma was not the kind of person they’d send to talk somebody out of jumping off a ledge.

  It doesn’t really matter, she thought. Ellen was dead, and Jack, and Maddie maybe dying. Jonah had already leaped from the ledge and was hurtling toward the ground. There was no way she could save him. Which meant there was no way she could save herself.

  But, ironwood spine and all that, she had to try.

  “Hey, Jonah,” Emma said.

  Jonah stopped in his tracks, showing no flicker of emotion, recognition, nothing. His eyes had always been a mingling of guilt and pain and hope and humor and history—an abstract painting of the blues. Now they were flat, impenetrable, like a painted-over window or an opaque finish on an exotic wood. Now she knew exactly what Kenzie had meant.

  “You need to leave now, Emma,” he said finally. “I thought you’d gone away.”

  So he did recognize her. That was a start.

  “I did go away,” Emma said. “I went all the way to Memphis. But I came back for you.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t have.”

  “Did you really have to kill Jack and Ellen?” Emma said. “They seemed to be good people, and that’s something we need more of.”

  For a long moment, he just stared at her, that awful blank look on his face. “They’re not dead,” he said finally. “I want to keep casualties to a minimum. Which is why you need to leave.”

  Hope thrilled through her. Maybe it’s not too late if I can keep him talking, and buy some time. But she had no gift for persuasion.

  “Um...didn’t you worry that they might win?”

  Jonah shrugged. “I cheated,” he said. “They really are better than me.”

  “Kenzie’s worried about you.”

  “He should be worrying about himself. Maybe now I can finally do something to help him.” He looked past Emma, scanning the room, looking for Madison.

  “You should at least have asked him first. I’ll tell you right now, he’s not willing
to make that trade.”

  “Well, I am.” A muscle worked in Jonah’s jaw. “He’ll get over it.”

  “I don’t think he will,” Emma said. “And I don’t think you will either.”

  Jonah lifted his sword high, so that the light penetrated all the way to the corners. “When did you talk to Kenzie?”

  “Just an hour ago. He says you’re not yourself—that it’s like they took out your heart.”

  “What they did was set me free. They did me a favor.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Empathy. I’ve been an empath all my life. As you can imagine, that’s a major handicap for a killer. So they disabled it.” Scraping back his sleeve, he displayed his forearm. A second tattoo of a rendered heart had joined the familiar Nightshade flower. He snapped his fingers. “Like magic. My guilty conscience. Gone.”

  “It’s still there,” she said, trying to act confident. “Anyway, you are not a killer.”

  Jonah laughed, the sound a harsh clanging in Emma’s ears. “Go home, Emma,” he said, like she was a child. “It’s not like I have a choice. Since I’m hardwired for this. I might as well embrace it.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “You don’t know anything about me, and you sure don’t know anything about killing.”

  “Is that so?” Emma said. “Well, if anybody is a natural-born killer, it’s me.”

  “Would you just go so I can get this done?”

  “Nobody’s stopping you,” Emma said.

  “Fine,” he said. Striding over to Emma’s barricade, he set down his weapons and began to dismantle it, lifting the barrels like they weighed nothing and tossing them aside. One of them cracked open, splattering the contents all over the floor, filling the air with the stink of petroleum.

  Well, Emma thought, begging isn’t working. And so, heart thudding, she began to play, running through a new improvised bridge for “You’re Gonna Miss Me.”

  As she played, she talked. “See, you know how we thought the mainline guilds were behind what happened at Thorn Hill? I found out that the wells were poisoned, but not by them. It was my father, Tyler. He was mad because my mother was cheating on him with Gabriel.”