“You’re goin’ the wrong way, moron!” Knox yells over the deep roar of the engines.
“It’s not me!” Hurley shouts back.
We’re in Brooklyn. I’ve got no memory of crossing the bridge or riding the streets that brought us here. I’ve been staring into space, tortured with visions of Nyx lying on the street in a pool of her own blood. Why didn’t I make her leave? She tried to cover her panic, but I should’ve seen just how scared she really was. The Gray Boys had it in for her. Her missing eye was her daily reminder of that. Facing them again shook her to the core. Fear is what got her killed.
I should’ve stayed with Pandora and Zulu to help figure out how to get Nyx’s body home, but decisions were made for me. I don’t know why I didn’t put up a fight. Guess it was shock or something.
Now all I feel is numb.
“Something’s wrong with the bike,” Hurley goes on. “The thing’s got a mind of its own all of a sudden. I tried hangin’ a left back there, but it turned right instead. Looks like we’re goin’ to Red Hook.”
“That’s Mech turf. Pull over,” Knox shouts.
My gaze drifts to a girl sitting behind him, her arms outstretched, catching the wind in her hands. Takes me a few seconds to realize it’s Sienna. Is she having fun? How can she be happy after what happened to Nyx?
Sienna catches me staring, drops her arms and looks away like I’m a big buzzkill.
“It won’t budge!” Hurley argues. “You try.”
Knox throttles down and strains to turn the front wheel, but the handlebars stay rigidly straight. He lets go of the bars. “Time to bail!” he yells. The words are no sooner out of his mouth, when the metallic veins covering the casing wrap around his and Sienna’s legs.
At the same time, the cold metal of the machine beneath Hurley and me coils around our legs, tight and painful. This should scare me. It doesn’t.
Hurley’s freaking out though, turning into Big Red as he struggles to break the iron grip on his legs. Knox too. He’s trying to melt his bonds and Sienna’s scratching at them with her spidery claws. Nobody’s making a dent.
A light bulb goes off in my head. “So that’s why he left the bikes with us,” I say quietly to myself. “All he had to do was wait.”
Hurley twists around to look at me, surprised I’ve rejoined the land of the living. “What’d you say?” he asks.
“Gort must’ve put something in the bikes that activates if they get close to Mech territory,” I say calmly as the demon bikes turn left in unison onto West 9th.
Hurley scowls at Knox. “Huh, I wonder what brainiac picked the road that goes right by the Brooklyn Mechs?”
“Who’s the genius who followed me?” Knox snarls back.
“Guys, keep your cool. Looks like we’re here,” I say, oddly curious as we ride alongside a nearly city block long wall of rusty-red, corrugated steel topped off with rows of coiled barbwire.
I’ve never actually seen Mech headquarters. We’ve always stayed well clear of Red Hook and let the Mechs have it. For that reason alone, we’ve never had any run-ins with them. But there’s no mistaking where we are. Spray painted across the gate is the Mech tag–an angry robot face.
Clanking loudly, the gate pushes open. The bikes cruise slowly through the entrance into a junkyard, which seems to stretch endlessly out in front of us and to either side. There are no Mechs in sight as we roll past smashed concrete tubes and pylons, tipped over like ancient ruins and spiked with twisted rebar. Steep mountains of scrap metal, dirt and debris rise behind concrete walls covered in graffiti. Rage Against the Machine’s grinding out angry riffs from somewhere inside the compound. The deeper we go, the less I can see of the surrounding city. It feels like we’ve entered a country unto itself. I heard the Mechs staked out a large piece of land, but being on the inside really drives home how massive the place is.
At last, we come to some sort of clearing. Broken pieces of concrete slabs form a semicircle of tiered levels like the arena of a coliseum. The bikes come to a complete stop at the center, their growling engines idling.
Knox, Hurley and Sienna thrash against their iron restraints. I’m numbed out, sitting still. I guess it took Nyx and too many others dying to knock the fight out of me. Or maybe I’m just tired of running. I think I’ve finally accepted there’s no outrunning your fears. At some point you have to turn around and face them. Even if it kills you.
Nyx didn’t run. She faced her greatest fear to save me. I can at least do the same for the remainder of my crew.
A few hundred Mechs file out, filling the multileveled platforms of the crude stadium. I’ve only ever seen male Mechs, so it’s a shocker to see females in their midst. They’re every bit as cold and mean looking as the guys. Although I do see a few Seven of Nines in the mix–sexy bots with well-placed machined parts fitted over generous curves and Barbie-doll eyes flashing bright-blue pixels.
Never expected such huge numbers inside the compound. Bottom line? It’ll be a miracle if we get out of here alive.
Something moves on the highest peak of the surrounding junk piles. It’s Anguish. Strangely enough, the angel’s presence seems fitting. With a face that gloomy, my so-called guardian is probably more qualified to be my grim reaper. Raising my arm, I give the angel a wave.
The dark angel pauses for a second, then waves back stiffly.
“Have you lost it? Why are you wavin’ at these metal heads?” Knox says, sweaty and still stubbornly blasting flames at the casing around his legs.
“Thought I’d say hey to the neighborhood welcome wagon,” I say, winking at Sienna since she’s the only other one who knows about Anguish.
She shoots me a puzzled frown.
I flap my hands like a bird and point at Anguish.
She shakes her head at me like I’m nuts and goes back to clawing at the steel clamped over her legs.
A whispery voice speaks in my head. “She can’t see me. The Grand Foe has cast his dark veil over her eyes.”
Twisting at the waist to look behind me, I rear back, startled to see Anguish towering over me. “What the–?”
“I’ve sat alone, waiting for the gates to open, that I may speak to you.” An awkward smile forms on the angel’s face. “Heaven looks down and smiles now that I’ve been given the key at long last.”
Forgetting the immediate danger we’re in, I stare up at the angel, wondering why I’m able to hear its voice all of a sudden.
“Fear once deafened you, but now you are free,” Anguish answers.
Can’t argue with that. Fear’s had a lock on me for as long as I can remember. It’s just too bad I only get to enjoy this sense of fearlessness and clear line with my angel for the last few minutes of what’s left of my life.
Two Mechs jump down to ground level, stirring up a cloud of dust as they march over. One of them is Gort. The other dude looks normal enough from the waist up. He doesn’t have the usual metal drilled into his head. It’s a different story below the belt. Down under, he’s all hardware, a bionic tour de force of tubes, cylinders, hydraulics and glowing fuel cells. I wouldn’t be surprised if he could leap a building in a single bound with his souped-up legs.
Usually there’s a whole lot of posturing between gangs when they face off–puffed up chests, flexed arms and threatening stares–but not with the Mechs. They don’t have to try for intimidation. They already have the advantage. Reanimating cadavers with artificial enhancements infused with magic isn’t exactly the work of dummies. Think Spock, Iron Man and Dr. Strange rolled up in one. Only without the humanity. A toaster has more warmth than a Mech.
They stop in front of us and Gort reaches for the bike Hurley and I are on. He’s in better shape than the last time I saw him. His damaged chest plate’s been welded closed and he’s got a new mechanized monocle.
“Hey, Gort. Good to see you’re all patched up,” I say.
“Don’t waste my time trying to make nice,” he says in that modulated voice. “I’m still pissed about be
ing forced to be that freak’s brown-noser. Doesn’t exactly go down well when you’re the prez.”
Christ, Justice really knew how to pick ‘em.
An electrical cable slithers from Gort’s mechanical arm and he plugs the oily tentacle into the pulsating core of the demon bike.
“I get where you’re comin’ from. But we did fight side by side,” I remind him. “We saved you. You saved us. That’s gotta count for something. Can’t we be frenemies?”
Gort stares at me while he finishes siphoning off the oily black magic ooze he injected into the motorcycle earlier. The living organs of the beast reform and harden into the original shapes of the bike’s working parts and the bindings around our legs retract.
This as a good sign.
Withdrawing the cable, Gort steps back from the bike. “Hmm, let me think about that,” he says, tapping a robotic finger on this chin. “Yeah, uh…no.”
“Screw these clankers!” Hurley growls as he lurches at the guy with the super charged legs.
Anyone else would’ve been thrown to the ground by the sheer weight and force of an Oni demon pouncing on him, but this dude’s solidly planted. He jumps straight up about thirty feet in the air with Hurley digging into him. Then he lands. Hard. Gravity does the rest of the work for him, knocking Hurley loose, slamming him to the ground. The Mech brings a massive, robotic foot down on his chest. Straining to throw him off, Hurley howls in pain, but the Mech has leverage on his side. I can tell he’s going to shove his foot clean through Hurley’s ribcage.
With an angry roar, Knox lets loose with a stream of fire aimed at the Mech. Raising his arm, the Mech turns slightly away from the flames, his skin reddening and blistering. But none of this budges him off Hurley. I suppose you can do that when you’ve got plenty of spare parts lying around.
Gort charges at Knox with a mess of black cables snaking from the shiny new metal casing welded into his midsection. They coil around Knox, pinning his arms to his sides.
Still stuck on the bike with Knox, Sienna recoils from Gort’s tentacles and throws me a poisonous look. “Do something,” she hisses.
“What do you expect him to do?” Knox grumbles. “Throw kittens at ‘em? He’s all faery and no Djinn.”
“I’ve got way more game than that,” I tell him.
“Lay it on me,” Knox says sarcastically.
He doesn’t know what I’m capable of, and he’s obviously got a problem with me being Seelie when he’s Unseelie, but this isn’t the time or place to lock horns. Turning my back to him, I climb off the bike and face Gort. “I call parley.”
“That’s your game?” Knox yells as both Mechs pause to look at me. “Why don’t you threaten them with a paper cut while you’re at it, and then you can–”
“Put a plug in it already,” I say. “They’ll deal, because I have something they want.”
“I’ll bite,” Gort says. “What is it you think we want?”
“Me.”
“Got ourselves a real Einstein here,” he says to his second in command. The rotating lens of his monocle clicks as his gaze shifts back to me. “Do I really need to state the obvious? We already have you, numb nuts.”
“Huh, I thought Mechs were smarter than that. Did you get yourselves a bad batch of used noggins?” I ask, thumping my temple. “Or maybe you forgot to upgrade the old software? Hmm, look who has to state the obvious now. Let me spell it out for you. Have you bothered to ask yourselves why the warlocks are paying so much for me? How much is it, by the way?”
“Five hundred G’s for you. Alive,” he says as though that’s a nuisance. “And ten large for every dead Forsaken after that.”
“Holy shit.” My mind goes blank for a second. I had no idea the reward was that steep. “That’s…way too low.” I shake my head at them, while I work on getting my brain back in the game. “You guys are gettin’ screwed. Good news is, I’ve got someone who’ll pay twice that for me. But only if you let my crew go.”
A bead of sweat drips off my forehead.
Gort watches the drop splat in the dirt. “Not too slick with the lies, are you?”
Damn. “It’s a scorcher tonight. We don’t all have built-in AC like you guys.”
“Right,” Gort says impatiently.
“Okay, you got me. Not sure if you’ll get twice the amount. But I do know this. I’m more valuable than you’re being paid.”
“Let me crush this one,” Gort’s second says, grinding his hardware down onto Hurley’s chest even harder.
“Whoa, ease up!” I say as Hurley snarls and struggles under the machine. “You’re lookin’ at King Newyddilyn’s son.”
Gort signals the guy to quit squishing Hurley.
“Newyddilyn knows about me,” I add. “He sent someone to bring me to his kingdom.”
Gort turns back to me. “Can you get him to bring the money now?”
“Uh… probably not this very second, but by tomorrow for sure.”
“No good.” Raising his mechanical arm, Gort lashes a tangle of cables at me. They coil around me, fast and tight.
At the same time the other Mech boots Hurley so hard in the face, blood and fangs fly from his mouth. Hurley goes limp and his hulking form shrinks back to his normal, scrawny size. I don’t even want to think about the force behind that kick. I’m just hoping the dense bones of the Oni demon protected him.
Gort reels in the cables holding Knox. Leaving him locked on the bike, Gort hauls me out of the arena.
I dig my heels in, making him stop a minute. “Wait. I can open a portal to Newyddilyn’s kingdom. I’ll get the money for you right now.”
“Ever heard that saying, a bird in the hand?” he asks.
A sick feeling comes over me.
“Move,” Gort says, shoving me onto the ramp leading up to the higher tiers of the stadium.
Gort’s second bounds over to us. “We good to go?” he asks.
Gort nods.
The Mech leaps up beside us and orders the legion standing behind us to take aim.
Hundreds of guns cock in unison. The noise drills into my brain, pushing me into blind terror. I turn stiffly, staring up into the barrels of machine guns, shotguns and pistols, built into every Mech’s armor. Some of the bigger guns pivot on their shoulders, while most are melded into their arms and hands.
This isn’t how it’s supposed to play out. I should be down there, facing the end with my brothers. With Sienna. My breath comes in short bursts. The crystal pulses hot. High voltage power surges through me, arcing from my chest, shooting down my arms. Gort goes rigid, shuddering as the cables he’s bound me with absorb the charge.
It would be so easy to give into the power, let it rampage on every Mech here the way I did with the Black Widows. But Nyx’s last words shout in my head. Promise me you’ll go find your father after all this is over. There’s nothing for you here. You’re better than all this.
I have to honor her dying wish, but this hatred is seductive. I want to use it to slice them down. Would destroying the Mechs really condemn me? They’re not even alive. They’re phantom sorcerers living inside stolen corpses.
Sounds like good reasoning, but I can’t shake this nagging feeling it’s not about who or what I kill. It’s what killing does to me.
The rustle of feathers stir behind me and Anguish’s whispery voice cuts through the turmoil. “Resist the Serpent’s call. Embrace the Light. Let the hatred go. Let the Power take over.”
“No,” I say, barely able to speak through my clenched jaw, “it’s too strong. I have to hold it in, control it.”
“Thinking you can control the Power is what the Prince of Hell wants. This is his greatest lie,” Anguish insists. “Let go. Allow the Power to direct the Light.”
Fiery bolts of lightning arc off me, searing my insides as I clamp down on the building energy. “I can’t!” I yell. “It’ll kill like before. And then I’ll be lost. Just like you!”
Anguish moves in front of me. The sharp bones of its
face jut beneath thin skin draped in an expression of grief. “No one knows better than me, the Sins of Control. Long ago, I tried to control the beliefs of others by razing the landscape with a ruinous blaze and turning the world into a massive funeral pyre–a transgression that closed the gates of Heaven to me. Let my lesson serve you. Trust me when I say, thinking and forcing will not save you. The mind is Goliath. The heart is David.”
I can’t hold the energy anymore. Deadly red strobes of lightning burst from my skin, encasing Gort in an electrical storm. His second rears back from us and shouts, “Fire!”
The explosive bang of guns jolts me, throwing me out of time. The moment stretches agonizingly slow. Bullets stream overhead, slicing through the air toward Knox, Sienna and Hurley.
I turn to Anguish. Can I trust the angel’s advice? I look down at my friends. This is too big, too immediate. As soon as time kicks back in, those bullets will mow them down.
Who do I choose? Them or the future Nyx made me promise to go after?
Indecision rips me in two. My mind breaks. I can’t think straight. Maybe Anguish is right. Thinking is what’s screwing with me.
A peaceful expression comes over Anguish and, with a sweep of its giant wings, the angel flies high above the slow-motion scene. “Good choice,” I hear the angel say.
I give in and let go. The power erupts from my mouth in a silvery flash and a deafening roar. Blazing bolts snarl upward into the air like a wide net, catching the bullets, melting them into molten lead. They hover for the longest moment before blasting back at the Mechs. The barrage plows into them with the force of a fiery meteor shower. Red-hot slugs chew into them, grinding through metal, smashing through flesh and bone.
I had no idea what the power would do, but based on what it did with the Cholos’ weapons, I thought it might be something like changing the bullets into paint balls. This is brutal. I’ve never seen this kind of wholesale destruction before. Wiped out like some giant machine gun opened up on them.
But I like it. They literally got back what they dished out.
Shaken and surprised, Gort loosens the cables around me. Before he reels them back in, I catch hold of the snaky cords. “You’re not trying to sneak off are you?”
Magic Brew Page 18
