Magic Breaks

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 clouds, 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.

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.”