"You're wrong, Zayn," said Vin.
Skylar sighed. "You're grasping for straws. We should go."
"Before you go," he said, "think about this one thing. You came to the Hundred Halls and specifically the Academy of the Subtle Arts to be the best. While it hasn't worked out this year, there's still time to recover. Help me take down these Alpha dealers, figure out where it's coming from. I promise you it'll make up for everything that's happened. Put us right back at the top."
Vin stood up. "And you back in the Hall. This isn't about us. This is about you and a last desperate attempt to stay in the Academy."
Skylar and Portia followed him out of the booth.
"Bye, Zayn," said Portia. "It was nice to meet you. I'm sorry it didn't work out. And I'm sorry about Katie, she seemed very nice."
Vin and Skylar noised their condolences, but in the end, the three of them walked out of the coffee shop.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Tenth Ward, April 2014
Not rushing into danger for once
Zayn had given the others a few days to change their mind, but when no one contacted him, he knew they'd made their decision, which meant he had to follow through with his crazy plan by himself.
He wished he had more time, but Instructor Allgood could show back up at the hotel room any day, and his chance at stopping the drug would be over.
What he'd learned since scouting the park from a nearby café was that Patchy and his fellow gang members made their deals in the quiet places between the trees, passing drugs and money in a not-so-cleverly disguised handshake. But what confused Zayn was that he never saw them dropping off their money or picking up new drugs. In fact, one of the lesser members got pinched by the cops on patrol. Zayn watched as they patted him down, emptying out his pockets, finding nothing but a ratty wallet and a hard comb. This was a surprise to Zayn, as the guy had just completed three deals right in a row, which was probably how the cops had spotted him.
It wasn't until the third day that he finally learned how they were moving the drugs and money around without getting caught. Zayn had given up watching the gang members, since it was clear he wouldn't learn anything more from them. And he knew they weren't clever enough for sleight of hand since their deals were so obvious.
Zayn was watching the older lady with the cat on a leash when he noticed that she crouched down to pet the long-haired cat frequently. This by itself was not that abnormal until he spied the cat handing over a wad of bills to the older lady, who slyly slipped the money into a pocket as she stood. Had he not encountered the callolo at the bodega he might have dismissed what his eyes had seen—a cat with small monkey hands. She owned a callolo just like the one he'd befriended.
Once he understood how the drugs and money were being passed around, everything else became clear. The gang members dropped the money on the ground while the lady came up behind them to collect, using the clever callolo to obfuscate the transfer. He never did detect how they were hiding the drugs, but once he knew she was the lynchpin, he decided to make his move.
The simplest plans were the best plans. Zayn followed the old lady with the callolo cat when she left the park that evening. He had ear buds in—not connected to anything—and nodded his head as if he were listening to music.
He stayed a block back, watching her transform her movements. In the park, she'd hobbled like a pensioner killing time. On the street, she took long powerful strides like a queen making her way towards a regiment of saluting soldiers.
A few times, his shoulder blades itched as if he were being followed as well, but each time he checked, he didn't see anyone.
He expected the old lady to turn into the three-story shotgun-style housing near the park. She seemed like the kind of elderly rich widow who would live in one, but against his expectations, she kept going, into the seedier part of the ward, on the edge of the ninth, where Katie had lived with her flatmates.
When she pulled out a jingling ring of keys and opened a metal door on a large warehouse, Zayn hung back at the corner until she went in. Then he went down the alleyway to the back of the warehouse, since it was likely that the front was being watched.
The warehouse wasn't like the others in the area. It didn't take much investigation to see that it was built like a bunker. The windows had bars and sheets of metal behind them. The building had strong bones and had been reinforced.
He saw signs of warding—runes etched into the door frame—on the back entrance. Thankfully, one of the first things the Academy taught was how to bypass door protections, since you couldn't be much of a spy or assassin if you couldn't get in the room.
Once inside, he crept down a long hallway with numerous doors on either side. Looking through the windows he saw offices on the left and laboratory equipment on the right, though he could tell that most of it hadn't been used yet. It looked like they were about to take their operation to a bigger scale.
He paused at the inner door leading into the warehouse. He wasn't sure he'd learned enough to convince Priyanka Sai that he should stay in the Academy. It was possible he might have learned enough, but he had to be sure.
Zayn slipped through the door into darkness. He sensed a vast open space and squeezed his eyes shut so he might reduce their blindness. He wished he had an imbuement that would help him see in the dark.
After a minute, he could make out the edges of large shelves with boxes packed tightly. It was too dark to make out the labels. He crept forward until he reached a wider space. The hairs on the back of his neck were at attention. Zayn turned his head to listen, when the lights flashed on, blinding him temporarily.
When he could see again, he found himself surrounded by Patchy and his friends. The old lady was standing across from him with her arms crossed. The cat, without the leash, was crouched at her heels, holding a small, but deadly looking knife.
"I'm afraid, young man," she said, shaking her head, "that you are in a world of trouble."
Chapter Thirty-Six
Tenth Ward, April 2014
Neck deep in trouble
There were a lot of things Zayn felt at that point: fear, anxiety, the lizard-brain need to flee, a spike of adrenaline for that final and inevitable battle to the death. But none of those were useful. The brain, evolved over millions of years, had not yet learned to cope with the subtleties of human behavior, which was why it took every bit of Zayn's self-control to project not the raging cocktail of useless emotions coursing through his veins, but the confidence of a prized rooster strolling into a chicken coop.
"That would be one way to look at this," said Zayn, spreading his hands as if he were the ringleader at the circus, "but it would be a narrow, short-termed viewpoint at this moment of time, rather than the enormous opportunity that it is. It might almost be life-saving as well."
The guy with the patchy beard bared his teeth ferally. He and his friends seemed different in the warehouse, changed. His patchy beard—no, fur—was thicker, and it appeared he was wearing a bushy cloak.
"For you, you stupid piece of shit. You're the asshole I robbed at the bodega."
"Tried to rob," said Zayn, a secret smile on his lips. "How did that work out?"
"Hush now, Levi," said the old lady. "While it's likely that he's just stalling, we are running a business, so it would behoove us to listen, perchance that he has something of value to offer."
"Screw the offer, Sandy. Let me throw him off the building and see if he can fly," said Levi.
Sandy turned an icy glare on him. "Need I remind you that you work for me and I don't give a damn if he pricked your sniveling pride. You can go back to living under bridges and picking through garbage cans like you were before I found you if you'd like."
The rebuke crumpled his shoulders as if they were mere paper. Cowed, Levi hissed at Zayn again.
"You may proceed," she said. "Though I warn you my tolerance for chicanery is quite low."
"I understand your caution," said Zayn. "You've got a world-shak
ing product and you want your grand launch to be glorious." At the mention of the grand launch, Sandy grimaced, so Zayn continued, "Ahh...I see your product is still having issues. Having your customers explode really cuts in to your repeat business."
"The whole thing is worthless unless those issues can be resolved." Her brief congenial air turned hard. "But you've been talking a lot and not saying much. You spoke of short-term views and opportunities, but you haven't said anything about either. Get to the point or I'll let Levi teach you to fly."
At the second mention of flying, Zayn pieced together what had been bothering him about Levi and his friends. He should have known from the moment he saw the callolo at the old lady's side.
"Glaucos Sixers," said Zayn, feeling a little stupid for not seeing it before. "Glaucomys. Flying squirrels. You're were-squirrels. She must have found you with the callolo. That's how you survived jumping off that building."
When Levi's head twitched to the right, Zayn knew he'd made a mistake.
"Jumping off that building? You're the guy who chased me after I killed that thief," growled Levi.
"You killed my friend," Zayn barked back.
Levi turned towards Sandy. "He's not here for business, he's here for revenge."
Zayn was already moving before Levi finished his sentence, but Sandy was faster. When he saw her fingers move in complex shapes and heard the words from her lips, he knew that he'd underestimated her by an order of magnitude. He didn't make it two steps before the air in his lungs vanished.
His chest heaved, trying to pull in more oxygen, but it was as if she'd vented his chest into space. No matter how he sucked in, there was nothing.
Zayn tried to launch a force bolt at her, but the effort of making magic while having your chest caved in was impossible. Levi and his gang circled him as spots in his vision formed, slowly connecting.
When he was on his knees, the only clue that something had changed was that Sandy, Levi, and the others were no longer looking at him. They were staring at something behind him.
A pair of knives flew over Zayn's head. One hit Sandy in the shoulder, breaking the spell she had on him.
Air flooded back into his lungs, a glorious rush of oxygen. He barely recovered before Levi tackled him. Using the techniques he'd learned with Instructor Allgood, Zayn shifted his weight, throwing Levi into a pile of boxes.
When Zayn saw his rescuers, he was overwhelmed with joy. Standing near the entrance where Zayn had come in were his teammates. Portia had a pair of wicked blades, Vin held his fists before him like hammers, and Skylar crouched against the wall, holding shadows around her like a cloak. And last, and most unexpectedly, was an orange tabby cat with tiny hands. It was the callolo that had been stealing from the bodega. He knew in an instant that it'd been following him for weeks. It must have led the others to the warehouse.
Zayn winked at his teammates. "Did you guys get lost on the way here?"
His quip landed without response as doors opened from other parts of the warehouse, and the rest of the Glaucos Sixers flooded in, leaving them horribly outnumbered.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Tenth Ward, April 2014
All you ever need is your team at your back
The only fight Zayn had ever gotten into was with the Clovis brothers. It'd been three against two and they'd come out with the worse end of the deal. The odds in his current situation were dramatically worse.
Zayn didn't know who threw the first spell, but in moments the warehouse exploded with force bolts, wind darts, rock smashers, flame jets, and water bombs. He threw himself into a shelf of boxes to avoid the crossfire, hoping they weren't filled with bricks.
The boxes flew out the other side, the crash of glass clear above the cacophony of battle. Zayn climbed over the crumpled cardboard, the fragile glass containers inside crackling to pieces, leaking a bitter smelling yellowish liquid that seemed vaguely familiar.
Two gang members caught him as he climbed to his feet. Zayn tapped into his imbuement, filling himself with strength and speed. He kneed the first attacker while ducking under a fist, flipping the second attacker over his shoulder on the follow-through. Two quick strikes to the neck left them both unable to continue the fight.
Zayn moved on, firing force bolts when the gang members were at a distance, striking with his fists and feet when they were up close.
To his left, Vin brought devastating blows against his opponents, taking them down with his fists. Even naturally, he was built like a forge, but the imbuement made his strikes one-hit knockouts.
Skylar floated through the warehouse, appearing like a moray eel, snatching gang members into the darkness, spitting them out like bones. Before long, they were looking over their shoulders in fear, expecting her to come for them next.
Portia was the opposite of the silent Skylar. Blades flew from her hands as she screamed obscenities in at least a dozen languages, following with more knives until the gang members were running away, only to find knives in their backs.
Finally, the little orange tabby callolo was locked in hand-to-hand combat with its opposite number. They leapt across the shelves and boxes, bouncing and slashing with claws and steel.
And while the gang members had been taking Alpha and using elemental magic, they were untrained, mostly hitting friends rather than the Academy students.
Zayn thought the battle would be short and sweet until a concussive boom shook the warehouse. Standing at the center, surrounded by runes in a circle, Sandy threw her hands high, chatting in a tongue-splitting language. As she spoke, a mist appeared from the edge of the circle, billowing outward.
The gang members disengaged from their individual battles and climbed the shelves, leaping upward in short soaring bursts, like crickets dumped from a glass jar.
Vin was the closest. He backed away, but not fast enough. As the mist touched him, his knees buckled and he fell to the concrete in an awkward jack-knife maneuver.
"We have to get out," said Zayn, but when he looked to the door, it was gone. Either Sandy had hid it with illusion or completely removed it through other means. The runes and the missing door suggested she'd expected him.
"We have to get Vin," said Skylar, edging towards the mist. "What if it's killing him?"
"She'd be killing the others if that was true," said Zayn, "but if we're all asleep, we're as good as dead, so start climbing."
As Zayn reached up to grab the next level of shelves, a force bolt came flying down from above, slamming him in the shoulder and knocking him to the ground. The mist was near his face.
Zayn skittered backwards on his hands and feet like a crab as more elemental blasts rained down. He jumped onto the steel structure, using the shelves to protect himself as he climbed.
Skylar and Portia had found other locations to climb, but they were drawing more fire and the gang members had the upper ground, which was giving them an advantage. Portia paused to throw a pair of knives, but an exploding ball of earth knocked her from the third shelf to be swallowed by the mist.
"Just climb!" yelled Zayn, scurrying up the outer steel structure as force bolts blasted the cardboard boxes into shreds.
Zayn saw the orange callolo bounding up a shelf, leaping and climbing as if its tail were on fire. He didn't see its opposite number, which suggested he'd won his battle. Zayn was glad to know the creature wasn't injured.
He reached the top before Skylar, ending up in a place not far from the under-structure of the roof. He took position and returned fire at the gang members who were trying to knock Skylar off, giving her a chance to make it to the top.
While the battle turned to a stalemate, the mist rose higher. Before long, the lower half of the warehouse was filled. A gang member who tried to jump across from one row to another caught an updraft of mist and went immediately limp, bouncing off the cardboard boxes and falling into whiteness.
"We have to get to the old lady before the mist reaches us," said Skylar, ducking an errant blast.
<
br /> "Can you see her?" asked Zayn, craning his neck, only to yank it back when shattered glass sprayed across him when a cardboard box was annihilated.
Skylar fired force bolts into the mist. "I don't know where she's at."
They had fewer elemental blasts to avoid as the gang members slipped out a hatch in the ceiling. An ocean of mist swirled two levels beneath him. Zayn leapt across the gap to the next shelves over to get a better shot at the old sorceress.
When he saw Patchy at the hatch, rage grew in him. He ran across the top of the shelf towards the exit.
"Don't leave, Zayn!" cried Skylar. "If we leave they're going to die!"
"I have to stop him," said Zayn, jumping the gaps between the shelves until he reached the hatch, which closed the moment he arrived.
Zayn pushed on the trapdoor in the ceiling, but they'd latched it, or pushed something heavy over top. Summoning reserves of faez he didn't know he had, Zayn thrust upward, knocking the hunks of concrete from the door.
"Don't leave me!" cried Skylar from across the warehouse.
"He killed Katie," replied Zayn as he leapt through the hole and broke into a full sprint. Patchy must have thought he couldn't get out, because he was strolling towards the edge of the building, but once he saw Zayn, he took off, leaping from a fifty-foot edge and spreading his arms, soaring across the gap to another building at least forty feet away.
As he approached the gap, Zayn realized the distance was similar to when he'd fallen during his training with Inspector Allgood. But he was determined not to fall this time. He pushed himself towards the edge, harder than he'd ever pushed himself. He would get his revenge on Katie's killer.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Tenth Ward, April 2014
There's no "I" in Team, but there is a "Me"
As the gap approached with frightening speed, Zayn heard Skylar's faint cries from inside the warehouse. He told himself that she would be fine and the mist would only knock her out until he could return afterwards.
The Reluctant Assassin Boxset Page 20
