Queen's Gambit

by Karen Chance

  Onto the unicorn’s broad back.

  It.

  Was.

  Pissed.

  Fortunately, I’d expected that, and held on like a limpet, burying my arms up to the shoulders in the huge, sparkly white mane.

  I stared at the pink, cartoon flowers while the beast bucked like a bronco on steroids. And then took off down the street, slamming itself into parked cars and, when that didn’t work, running onto sidewalks, trying to scrape me off on the sides of buildings. That was fun.

  But it didn’t work, either, although less because of any great ability on my part and more because sheer terror had locked my hands in that mane. I didn’t think I could have let go if I’d wanted to, and I didn’t want to. Did I mention that it was a very large unicorn? It stood the height of a Clydesdale if not taller, and was built like a brick shit-house.

  I was not going to tire this thing out, I realized. I was going to have to put the damned blindfold on. Of course, that would be easier without the kibitzing.

  “I’m coming out.” That was Louis-Cesare, in his stubborn voice.

  “Do not come out.”

  “We talked about this!”

  “Yes, we did. We agreed that I was smaller and less likely to be noticed—”

  “I think it has noticed!”

  “Do not come out,” I said, through gritted teeth. “I’ve got this.”

  “I’m coming out!”

  Shit.

  But the conversation did give me the impetus to finish the job, edging up and throwing Jason’s hoodie over the beast’s face.

  For a moment, nothing happened, unless you counted a wildly whipping head as the creature tried to sling off what I was determinedly holding in place. But when that didn’t work, it started to slow down, not liking the idea of pelting forward without being able to see. Finally, it stopped altogether.

  For a moment, both of us just stayed there, breathing hard. Or, at least, I was. Slowly, slowly, slowly, I crawled forward, stretched out an arm with the windshield wiper, and snared the final purse handle—

  And pushed it off the horn.

  It landed in a gutter, splashing Louis-Cesare’s jeans when he suddenly appeared beside it. I hopped off the unicorn’s back, dragging the hoodie along with me, and preparing for a fight. But it bolted instead, glittering off into the night, the gilded hooves galloping down the road in what sounded like relief.

  Or maybe that was me. I sagged back against my hubby, whose arms went around me. “You make me crazy,” he whispered, and kissed the top of my head.

  “Next one’s on you,” I promised, shakily.

  “Yes, it is.” It was grim.

  And then our brief moment of privacy was over, and we were standing in a crowd. One by one, the other members of our team appeared, scattered around the street and sidewalk. Only, they weren’t our team.

  Not even close.

  I guessed that was what everyone had been discussing while I was busy.

  “Well, I’m staying with them.” That, surprisingly, came from Ranbir.

  “What the hell?” Sarah demanded.

  He took the charm from her and activated it again. He had been right: now that we were stationary, the map was a lot easier to read. There was also a new feature, or one I hadn’t noticed before.

  The streets were demarcated with a 3-D outline, but also featured dots—some large, some small, some huge—moving along them. I was pretty sure that I knew what the dots were, which was not good news. There were a crap ton of them.

  “This is us,” Ranbir confirmed, pointing at a small group of dots. “This,” he pointed at an area way the hell off to the side, “is the closest point outside the fog. In between, you’ll notice that there are fifteen streets?”

  “Streets filled with monsters,” Ev added helpfully.

  “We’ll take a rickshaw,” Sarah said stubbornly. “There has to be one around here somewhere.”

  “Yes, I’m sure there is,” Ranbir agreed. “I am also certain that it will eat your face.”

  “Why . . . why eat?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “For the same reason that the monster in the ring went after Tomas. These creatures need magic the way we need food. Any magic they come across, they will try to absorb—including us. And the stronger you are, the tastier.”

  He looked pointedly at the two vampires.

  “I’ll take my chances,” Tomas snarled, and started off.

  Ranbir shrugged, and went back to scrutinizing the map.

  “Wait,” the girl said. And ran after Tomas.

  “You can’t tell me that every magical device in this area has been . . . affected,” Louis-Cesare said, his brow knitting, probably because he couldn’t find the right word.

  “Monsterfied,” I offered, and the mage suddenly laughed.

  “Monsterfied; I like that,” he said, rolling it around on his tongue. “And, yes, you’re absolutely right. Many of them aren’t a problem anymore. They’ve already been cannibalized.”

  “How do you know that?” I challenged. “You just said, you’ve never been in here.”

  “I haven’t. But I’ve talked to those who have, to get details to make our story believable. What they told me convinced me that I never wanted to find out for myself.”

  “Yet you seem in an awfully good mood.”

  “I’m just thinking about the reward Zheng is going to cough up, once we hand him Eternity’s ass. That is the plan, yes?” he tilted his head.

  “That’s the plan,” I agreed.

  “And if you two are who I think you are, you have no need for money, yes?”

  “You can keep the reward, if there is one,” I said. “But there’s reason to think that my sister may be in there. We get her out alive. That’s job one.”

  “And what does she look like?”

  “Me. We’re twins.”

  He nodded, as if making a mental note. He didn’t have any hair on his face, even eyebrows, but a patch of skin in the appropriate spot went up. “And since we’re helping you, I assume there’s no question of mentioning our little ruse to the senator?”

  “As long as you do help.”

  He smiled broadly, showing a lot of misshapen and yellowed teeth. “I believe you have a team, Miss—”

  “Dory. Just Dory.”

  “She does not have a team!” That, of course, was Tomas, striding back over from where he and Sarah had been talking. I was starting to find him less pretty.

  Ranbir turned to look at him. “I thought you’d left.”

  “You aren’t coming?” Tomas demanded.

  “No, I believe I mentioned that.”

  “I, too, am staying,” Ev said staunchly.

  Tomas looked at him like he was crazy. “She kidnapped you, put you in chains, and dragged you into the dead zones! Why on earth would you help her?”

  Ev looked at him placidly. “She gave me beer.”

  Tomas threw up his hands.

  “And Ranbir is right. This will make us lots of money.”

  “If you survive!”

  “I will survive. And I like money.”

  “It’s closer than the way out,” Sarah said, biting her lip. “And we have better odds with a group—”

  “Until you arrive at your destination,” Tomas snapped. “And the unknown number of triad members who await you! Has everyone suddenly gone mad?”

  “Perhaps they are simply not cowards,” Louis-Cesare commented.

  “Are they always like this?” Sarah asked, as Tomas launched himself at my husband, and the two rolled into the street, kicking and fighting.

  I sighed.

  It was starting to look like it.

  “You’ve got a hell of a storehouse down there,” Jason said, emerging from the portal.

  I hadn’t seen him go back inside, but he must have, and not just to look. The kid believed in being loaded for bear, and was practically bristling with weapons, most of them mine. If we had to haul ass, he was going to have a problem in al
l of that hardware.

  “I hope this was okay,” he added, noticing my expression. “But we don’t know what we’ll find here, and I like to be prepared.”

  “Doesn’t hurt,” I agreed, as a screech echoed through the air.

  We looked up to see a flock of birds overhead, which I couldn’t see too well because of the fog. But their shadows rippled over the street, human-sized and oddly pointy, with strange angles. I looked for a parting of the clouds, to get a better view.

  Only it seemed that something wanted a better view of me, too.

  I had a split-second impression of something mottled yellow with a triangular head, appearing out of the fog, and then I was hitting the dirt. And so was everyone else—with one exception. Jason opened up with a brief explosion of machine gun fire, whether intentional or as a reflex, I didn’t know. But it was enough.

  The creature cried out, a haunting, almost human sound, and the next moment, the entire flock was diving.

  “Get under cover!” That was Louis-Cesare.

  “No magic!” Ranbir yelled. “No magic!”

  I dove behind what was left of the minibus, not understanding what he meant. But I pulled a .44 instead of anything magical, because he was a mage. He was supposed to know this kind of stuff.

  But bullets simply bounced off these things, whatever they were, and that’s when you could hit one at all. I could barely track them, and my eyesight is considerably better than human average. To Jason and his sister, they must have been just orange streaks in the night, which was probably why they panicked.

  It all happened in a second: one of the things dove at Louis-Cesare, who dodged with liquid speed, so the creature grabbed Jason instead. It sank talons deep in his shoulders and back, causing Sarah to scream and throw something. I didn’t see what it was, but Ranbir obviously did.

  “No! Get away! Get away now!”

  But Jason couldn’t get away, and then I understood everything the mage had been saying, all at once. Because the creature was suddenly enveloped in a mass of blue smoke: a standard knock-out potion, very similar to what I’d hit Jason with. It should have been safe, and it should have dropped both man and beast.

  But this was the magical Twilight Zone, and nothing was safe here.

  Instead of dropping the creature, it fed it, and when these things were fed, they got bigger. Ranbir yelled something I didn’t hear, because I didn’t need to. The creature that had started life as some kind of origami crane and been maybe six feet long from tip to tail, was now double that and growing.

  And while it had been able to hurt its prey before, now it could do worse.

  Sarah screamed as the massive bird flapped its greatly expanded wings, sending trash spiraling and my remaining hair whipping, as it prepared to escape—and take Jason along with it.

  There was a burst of gunfire, but as I’d already discovered, that didn’t work on these things. Tomas leapt for it, but three more of the flock targeted him, and the remainder were dive bombing the rest of us. One slamming into the already weakened top of the minivan and burst through to the inside, which trapped it and also pissed it off. It started thrashing, the minivan started rocking, throwing out broken glass and metal all over the street.

  I retreated under an awning, while Louis-Cesare grabbed two of the creatures, one under each arm. He broke their necks, only to have five more jump him in what looked like a feeding frenzy. He roared in outrage, but I knew him; he’d be all right.

  Jason was another story.

  I saw Ranbir grab Sarah and jerk her physically off the road, and into a shop. I saw Ev open up with a machine gun in each hand and rattle enough sheer brute force off of one creature’s hide to send it screeching away. I saw Tomas get up from savaging his three, bloody and furious, and promptly get piled on by four more. Ranbir had been right: they were targeting the vamps, as they were the strongest magically among us.

  And for that same reason, nobody was targeting me.

  I ran through the hail of glass by the minibus and back into my arsenal, grabbing the only thing I could think of that might work. When I emerged, it was almost too late, as the now giant bird was taking off, headed this way and dragging Jason kicking and screaming into the air along with it. Ev caught hold of the boy, but all that resulted in was him getting dragged down the road, while Jason screamed at the added weight.

  I put on a burst of speed, jumped out in front of them and lit a flare.

  It wasn’t magical and it wasn’t a weapon. But it glowed a bright crimson in the murky air, shedding a red and orange banner of sparks behind me. And that was enough.

  All along the street, the birds looked up, the light glinting redly in their eyes. And then they took off after me. Not one of them; all of them, because magic in Hong Kong was bright and colorful and moved a lot.

  And I was suddenly the tastiest looking thing in sight.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Louis-Cesare demanded, running up beside me.

  “I saw this in Jurassic Park.”

  “Your strategy is based on a movie?”

  “You have a better idea?”

  He picked up a concrete shard left over from the battle and lobbed it at one of the birds— which caught it in a foot-long beak and bit it in two.

  “No. But what happens now?”

  “This,” I said, and threw the flare down an alley. The flock, which had almost caught up with us, followed it, all except for the huge one. It tried, not seeming to realize that it was bigger now, and slammed into the bricks on both sides. Which was when the shit hit the fan.

  Louis-Cesare and Tomas jumped it, ripping off the great wings in a sound like tearing metal. Ev opened up on the ones at the end of the alley, giving them both barrels past the thrashing body of the big bird, and then pulling out the rocket launcher. That didn’t help much except to blow up the building at the end of the street, raining bricks and smoke everywhere and confusing the issue, but I didn’t have time to complain.

  Because they were on us.

  There had to be ten or twelve of them left, maybe more. It was hard to tell as they were all about six feet tall and moving like lightning. All I saw was flapping, geometric shapes and stabbing, pointed beaks, and five-inch claws trying to shred.

  They were doing a pretty good job of it.

  They looked like paper, but felt more like steel, and when I reached for my purse and the lethal devices it contained, a long, savage beak plucked it away and flung it into the night, leaving me almost defenseless. So, the next bird head that slashed down at me got grabbed, twisted around, and its beak used like a dagger to stab at its fellows.

  It didn’t like that. I didn’t like that I was already bleeding in half a dozen places and that my brand-new leather jacket was a couture rag. Louis-Cesare apparently felt the same way, judging by the amount of cursing and flailing and various bird parts that were flying from his direction.

  In a minute or so, it was all over, leaving me panting and bleeding and plastered with fake feathers, but still on my feet. Louis-Cesare cracked the last long neck, then did one better and ripped the head clean off. At least they didn’t bleed, I thought, as nothing spirted from the hole besides a little paper confetti.

  Ranbir was back, along with Sarah, who ran past me to where her brother was lying on the sidewalk. He was bleeding profusely, but judging by the amount of swearing he was doing, he was going to be all right. Sarah seemed to realize this as well, and looked up at me, her face tear streaked and her hair everywhere, but her eyes shining.

  “Whoever you are; whatever you’re doing,” she said shakily. “You’ve got yourself a team.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Dorina, Faerie

  Clump, drag, clump, drag, clump, drag.

  I awoke to the feeling of being pulled over wet stone, but I could not seem to gather the strength to open my eyes and see for myself. A cave, I thought, but it was a vague notion. I was aware of where I was only by the echoes that sounded back from far away,
and the smells. The familiar scents of mineralized water, ammonia, and guano reached my nose, but the last two were distant, almost undetectable.

  This cave was all about water.

  Clump, drag, clump, drag, clump, drag.

  We finally stopped, and I was left alone for a while. The strange sounds departed and faded away, and for a time there was only the faint drip, drip, drip of water over limestone. I drifted in and out of consciousness, but made no attempts to call anyone or anything to my aid. I did not have the strength, and, strangely, I did not feel the need.

  This place was strangely peaceful.

  Clump, drag, clump, drag, clump, drag.

  Someone was coming back. I tried to raise my head, but did not succeed. I did manage to flutter my eyelashes, however, and found that there was not much difference to be had. The light was merely a few, watery reflections on cave walls, a dim, bluish gray against the darker eigengrau of the stone.

  It almost felt like I hadn’t opened my eyes at all.

  Until I saw the creature that limped this way.

  She was carrying a lantern, with a single candle dancing inside polished horn sides. But after the almost complete absence of other light, it was blinding. I didn’t realize that I had raised a hand to shield my eyes, until I heard a cackle.

  “Not dead, then. No, no. Not yet.”

  My eyes adjusted, and the creature became more visible. She was coming closer, and dragging something. I couldn’t see what it was, but I started to be able to see her, little by little: a wild tangle of hair, half dark, half gray; a bent body, although that might have been from pulling a weight; a leg that dragged almost uselessly behind her, and was responsible for her shambling gait; a walking stick, which also supported the lantern in its wavy crook, and explained the clumping sound. She looked very old, and very witchy.

  She also looked familiar.

  I must have lost too much blood, I thought, as she bent over me.