Scorched

Chapter 18

Lore had given Mac directions to Atreus’s chambers. Mac peered around the corner into a big square hall. He was still hoping for a polite Q and A, but didn’t have high hopes. He’d left the sword at home—if Atreus was unbalanced, showing up armed could cause more problems than it solved—but he wasn’t about to wander into the lion’s den completely helpless. He had a well-hidden boot knife, and he’d worn the flannel shirt like a jacket to cover his gun.

He’d come alone. He wasn’t going to risk Connie. Not with so much chance of ugliness.

Mac slipped into the room, concealing himself behind one of the massive, fluted pillars dotting the room. He did a quick visual sweep. It was a huge space with upward-thrusting stone ribs, and he found his gaze drawn higher and higher. Banners hung from the vaulted ceiling like falling leaves, the jagged, rotting edges of the bright silk trailing cobwebs fringed with dust. A breeze made them stir, like they were eerily alive.

He circled the pillar to the right, trying to get a better view of the room itself. There wasn’t much furniture. Chests and chairs, mostly. In the middle of the hall was a carved wooden throne. It was empty.

He was about to give up when he heard a noise, the bar est shudder of an indrawn breath. Instinct made him draw the Sig Sauer and cock it, the harsh sound echoing like a bouncing ball. He paused, wondering whom it would alert.

Nothing stirred. Had he imagined that breath?

The noise had come from the far corner, behind the throne. Mac crouched and glided with demon silence to the next pillar, getting closer. And waited.

Nothing.

He straightened and turned, holding his weapon lightly, focusing on everything and nothing, every sense peeled. In an instant, he found what he was looking for. There was a tall man standing with his back to Mac, so still that it would have been easy to mistake him for part of the room.

Mac barely got an impression of blue robes and dark hair before his attention swerved to the thing the man seemed to be staring at: Ashe Carver, in all her biker-leather glory, hanging on the wall like a weird modern sculpture.

Holy crap! A jolt of adrenaline thumped his pulse into high gear. Mac stared for a long moment, not sure if she was even alive. Arms spread above her head, legs dangling, she was utterly still. There was no blood, no weapon poking out of her. What was keeping her up there?

Then her eyes slowly moved to meet his. Cold filled him from the bottom up, rising like a foul tide. He could see her breathing now, short, shallow pants, sucking in mere mouthfuls of air. She was choking to death.

Her bright green eyes glittered with knife-edged terror.

“You,” Mac barked, raising the gun. “Back away from her.”

The robed man took a step backward, turning just enough that Mac could see his face. Not an old guy with a big white beard and magic wand, but a much younger-looking man—hooked nose, high cheekbones, and long raven hair. The man held one hand up, fingers spread, like he was holding an invisible sheet of paper against an invisible wall.

He had to be holding Ashe by magic. The sorcerer. “Identify yourself.”

The man looked mildly surprised. “I am Atreus of Muria, of course.”

That figured. This so wasn’t the way Mac had wanted this conversation to go. He needed information from this guy. He couldn’t just blow his head off. What had Ashe done to put this disaster into action?

Still, he couldn’t let Atreus squish her to death. He’d made a promise to Holly.

“Let her go.”

The man dropped his arm. Ashe fell to the floor with an unceremonious thud, rolling once to land on her side. Mac let his eyes flicker away from Atreus for only a second. How am I going to get her out of here?

“She’s very rude,” Atreus said. “She tried to poke me with a stick.”

So you tried to stake a sorcerer. Good job, Ashe. “That is rude.”

“I assume that’s a weapon you’re holding.”

“Yup.”

“That’s also rude.”

Before Mac could react, the semi slipped from his hand and sailed across the room, landing at Atreus’s feet. It spun, miring itself in the hem of the sorcerer’s robes. Atreus bent and picked it up, studying it with obvious curiosity. “Such toys humans invent.”

He closed his hand around the gun, fondling the smooth finish a moment before a twitch of his fingers crushed it to dust. There was no muttering of spells, no flash of spectral light. This was sorcery so smooth it was damn near invisible.

Mac felt his jaw fall open, surprise clearing a path for fear.

The sorcerer’s black gaze speared him. “You’re like her, demon. You lack respect.”

Atreus’s gesture seemed to fold the air around Mac, hard pressure forcing him to his knees. “Bow before me!”

Mac was flattened until his forehead bumped the cold, gritty floor. He bit his tongue, the sudden tangy taste of blood filling his mouth.

Mac turned his head just enough to see Ashe’s face. She was deathly pale, eyes closed, her skin shining with sweat. She was still breathing in quick, sharp pants. Ashe needed doctors and an ambulance. She wasn’t going to get that here.

Mac couldn’t dust out and leave her. He couldn’t move, period. Claustrophobia prowled through him, almost exotic in its intensity.

Atreus was pacing the room in long strides. His robes followed him like something alive, twisting and flowing with Cecil B. DeMille dramatics. He picked up a long staff, adding to the effect. “My territories stretched through entire city-states. This was all my land. You have all forgotten the nine that made this place.”

Keep it together, Mac. One breath at a time.

“Were you one of the nine?” Mac asked. He was in so much trouble, asking a question wasn’t likely to make it any worse.

“I was. I put the sun in this sky.”

And had he noticed it was missing? “When was that?”

Atreus took three long strides and thumped the staff down on Mac’s back, pushing the end hard between his shoulder blades. “Before the light went from the world, you fool. And now the world itself falls away. The Castle has crumbled for sixteen years.”

An electric, tingling flood spewed from the staff, shooting through Mac’s nerves in white-hot jolts. Pain. Pain. Pain.

And then blessed numbness. Mac collapsed like melting rubber; Gumby left too long in the sun. Atreus wandered away, taking the staff with him.

“All my subjects turned on me. All they cared for was my power.”

Connie was right. The guy was a few quarts short of a cauldron. Mac tried to move his hand, but couldn’t. Ashe was starting to turn fish-belly white, but her eyes were flickering open.

C’mon, demon, let’s get a move on. Help me out.

But he was talking to himself. There wasn’t a separate being inside anymore. He was it. All there was. The realization startled him, but he shoved it aside. He could think about that later.

He could feel his skin burning, demon heat washing over his limbs. The smell of hot fabric hovered, like his clothes were going to ignite. That could be embarrassing and painful.

Finally, movement. His finger twitched. You’re going to have to do better than that.

Atreus was ranting. “First Viktor turned on me, retreating to his beast form. Then Josef stole away. Even my little girl has left me.”

Mac’s mind raced. Okay. Back to saving the hostage. If he went to his demon form holding an object, it traveled with him. Would that work with another living creature? Or would it go horribly wrong?

Atreus thumped him in the back again. “What did you come to steal from me? What?”

Mac stayed in his facedown position, doing his best to look cowed and helpless. He had come seeking his humanity. Now his priority was saving Ashe. Still, he might grab something from this fiasco. He moved a foot and an arm. The paralysis was wearing off. Thank God.

“I came to ask questions.”

Atreus’s zigzagging path stopped in front of Mac, mere inches from his face. Mac could see the sorcerer’s embroidered shoes, the threadbare toes padded and curled upward to gentle points. There were stray threads on both points, as if some of the glass beads that dotted the design had fallen off.

“What did you come here to ask?” Atreus demanded. “I will only grant one question. I am busy with matters of state.”

One question. There were so many, and they all led back to the Castle.

“Who was the Avatar?”

Atreus went utterly still. “She was the mother of my child. I made her from the sun and the rain, and then I killed her. “The regret in his voice was gray and cold as the winter ocean. Huh?

Was that madness, metaphor, or domestic homicide?

Atreus turned and walked to the throne, and mounted it. He settled, spreading the skirts of his robes over his knees so that the folds hung perfectly. He rested his hands on the heavily carved arms of the throne, and looked down on the room as if it were crowded with his subjects begging for favors. He nodded, gesturing graciously to people who weren’t there.

“Alas,” he mumbled. “Only real life makes more life. My creations can but hold the limited strength of my sorcery.”

A forensic psychologist would have a field day with this one. If Atreus hadn’t been so bloody dangerous, Mac would have felt pity.

There wasn’t time for that. Ashe’s breathing was getting raspy. Mac tried to estimate if he and Ashe were in the sorcerer’s peripheral vision. He couldn’t tell. He would have to gamble. His skin prickled with heat as he gathered strength.

He dusted, re-forming almost on top of her. Ashe’s eyes were huge, staring into his with blind panic. She was trying to push him off, but all the strength had left her limbs. “What happened to you? You’re burning hot!”

“Why, thank you.”

“You’re a demon!”

“And a Sagittarius. It’s your lucky day.”

Atreus was wheeling out of his throne, arms raised like Zeus about to chuck a thunderbolt. Mac wrapped his arms around Ashe, and willed them both to dust.

It was a weirdly intimate sensation. He felt them dissolve, felt the crack of force as power snapped against the stones where they’d been. Just in time.

Mac slithered ponderously through the Castle, mere inches from the ground. It was hard to carry another per son, achingly difficult. Mac didn’t bother with following any proper path. He cut through floors and walls in a beeline for the door.

Once outside, he let his passenger materialize first, carefully re-forming all things that were Ashe into Ashe before he solidified himself. The last thing he wanted was to end up as Mashe.

They were sitting on the cedar-block surface of the alley, Ashe’s back against the old, stained bricks of the wall. Mac was kneeling, facing her, his jeans soaking up moisture from the ragged grass poking through the blocks. It had rained while they were inside.

“Oh, Goddess.” Ashe clutched her side, her face pulling into a rictus of pain.

The hellhounds were back and crowding around, one talking on his cell.

“Call an ambulance,” Mac ordered the one with the phone. Mac grabbed Ashe’s shoulders. She was slowly falling over, slumping to the ground. He helped her down, cushioning her head on his hand until one of the hounds offered his jacket as a pillow.

Ashe watched him with pain-hazed eyes. “You saved my ass in there,” she said.

“Please tell me I didn’t waste my time,” he replied.

“You gonna lecture me now?”

“Your sister would like me to.” He didn’t really have the energy.

Ashe pulled her mouth in what might have been a grin. “Holly doesn’t get a vote. She’s in bed with a monster.”

Mac sighed wearily. “So who likes their brother-in-law? Get over it.”

“She’s my baby sister,” Ashe whispered.

He could already hear sirens. Help was on the way.

Mac gently turned Ashe’s chin so he could look into her eyes. She was fading in and out of consciousness, but he had to get his point across. “Let me tell you about Alessandro Caravelli. He gave up everything—his queen, his job, his rank—to be with her. He nearly gave his life to rescue her. He’s a special guy. Holly’s a special woman. Don’t mess with them.”

Ashe closed her eyes.

“Just think about this,” Mac said more gently. “I don’t have a problem with you being a hunter and taking out the real villains, but don’t turn into the thing you hate.”

“Or you’ll kick my ass.”

“Damned straight.”

The ambulance pulled up at the mouth of the alley, the doors flinging open. The hellhounds were just as rapidly making themselves scarce. Great. Leave me with the mess.

Two paramedics were pounding down the alley, a tall blond man in the front. “What happened?” the leader asked.

Mac’s mind went blank for an instant. “Uh—she was hit by a motorcycle.”

He heard a small noise from Ashe. He fixed her with a glare. “A Ducati. Came whizzing right down the alley. Could’ve killed her.”

Standing back, he let the ambulance guys do their thing. One started back to the ambulance almost immediately, calling for the stretcher.

“Sir, are you a relative?” asked the other.

“No. You tell me where you’re taking her and I’ll call her family. They’ll meet you there.”

“Are you sure it was a motorcycle accident?”

“Yeah,” muttered Ashe, her voice gone thready. “Didn’t catch the license.”

The stretcher was rattling down the alley on wheels, pushed by the second attendant. She’d be gone soon, taken away and patched up to fight another day. That was the problem.

Mac knelt beside her one last time. “Ashe. Behave yourself. Don’t come back here.”

The paramedic gave him a curious look. Ashe took in a couple of short breaths, saving up enough air to speak. She grabbed Mac’s hand.

“Thank you,” she said. “I won’t forget it.”

Mac got out of the way while they loaded Ashe onto the stretcher. He watched them go as he took out his phone to call Holly. All he could see of Ashe now were the soles of her boots.

She was brave. He had to give her that.

Unfortunately, now his slim hope of learning anything from Atreus was lost.