Blood Heir

by Ilona Andrews

  The handler whimpered, fragments of incoherent words slipping out between his sobs.

  “Fuck you,” the shooter muttered from my right. “Fuck you, bitch, fuck you…”

  That’s right. Come closer.

  “I’ll fucking find you. I’ll blow your head off.”

  A boot came into view.

  “I’ll shoot you in both eyes and—”

  He gurgled as Dakkan’s blade slid though his neck. His remaining eye bulged, his mouth opened… He tried to say something, but blood was gushing from his throat, staining his skin bright red.

  A dark shape swung off the roof and dropped on top of me. There was no time to free the spear. I dodged left, desperately trying to get clear. A boot landed on my thigh. Pain exploded all the way to the bone. The glancing blow tossed me into the air like a ragdoll. I flew, curling into a ball, straight into the soft embrace of a brick pile, and landed on my side. Ow.

  The world swam. I clawed through the fog of blurry vision. The giant was stomping toward me, brandishing his club. If I had been a touch slower, he would have broken my femur. I couldn’t afford to be hit again.

  I jumped to my feet. The giant bore down on me, swinging the club, eyes cold. I shied left, then right, the club whistling inches from my face. He was between me and my spear, pushing me against the brick heap. If even a single blow connected, I was dead.

  He struck again and again. Left, right, left…

  I ducked, avoiding a blow, grabbed a brick off the pile, and hurled it at his face. It hit him square between the eyes and bounced off. He roared, the red brick dust raining off his forehead.

  Fuck.

  He swept the club right to left. I dropped under his swing and ran right, the only way I could, leaping over refuse toward a side street. My leg screamed in protest. Every step hammered a hot spike of pain into my thigh.

  I reached the side street and glanced back.

  He hung the club back on his hip. Slowly, casually, the giant leaned forward onto his arms. Something in his pelvis shifted with a crack. The line of his spine realigned. He sprinted toward me on all fours.

  What the hell…

  He loped toward me in a familiar disjointed gait, the kind of stride that the human body wasn’t made for but was unnaturally fast. In a fraction of a second my mind crunched the numbers. He would catch me. I couldn’t outrun him even if my leg wasn’t on fire with pain. He gave me a head start because he knew it.

  He ran like a vampire.

  I would treat him like one. I pulled a knife from the sheath on my belt. My uncle’s voice echoed in my head. Wait for it. Breathe.

  Twenty yards.

  Fifteen.

  Eight.

  Three.

  Now, Hugh’s voice commanded.

  I sidestepped. The giant’s momentum carried him past and I swung my knife, straight down on the back of his neck. The blade bit into his vertebrae, slicing deep into cartilage. He rolled forward, blood drenching his shoulders and back, came up into a crouch, and leaped at me.

  Son of a bitch. He should have dropped like a stone. He should have been paralyzed.

  I dodged but not far enough. A huge arm swept me into a bear hug. I jerked my right arm up to keep it clear. He reared, yanking me off the ground, his arms crushing me. My ribs screeched with agony. The world turned black and fuzzy at the edges.

  I sank my knife into his eye. He howled, and I stabbed him in the ear. He flung me aside like a feral cat. I rolled clear and came onto my feet. Suddenly there was air. My lungs hurt with every breath.

  The giant rushed at me, flailing wildly, kicking, swinging, a bloody hole where his eye used to be. His neck gushed blood. I backed away toward the main street. He chased me, but his movements grew sluggish. Dodging him now was child’s play. I walked him all the way to where the boy still lay on the pavement.

  The giant was breathing heavily now, each exhale a tortured gasp.

  I crouched by Larry’s body and came up with his machete.

  A sudden realization flared in the giant’s remaining eye. He turned.

  “No,” I told him.

  The giant stumbled away on shaking legs. I let him take two steps and sliced the back of his knees. Good machete. Sharp.

  The giant toppled like a felled tree.

  I walked in front of him. He was trying to crawl forward. I grabbed his hair and spun him around so he could see Dougie. The effort sent a blinding flash of pain through me, but I didn’t care.

  I gripped the giant’s hair and forced his head up. “Tell me who hired you and the pain will end.”

  He growled. There was nothing human in the sound. His face was a mask of rage, but there was no power in it. His mouth drooped, his eye stared, unfocused.

  “Tell me who hired you.”

  “Fuck you.”

  I wouldn’t get anything from him.

  Dougie was looking at us with one eye.

  “Look at the boy,” I told the giant.

  His hands were trembling. I yanked his head up, forcing him to look. Their stares connected.

  I brought the machete down on the giant’s neck. This time the blade cut clean through the flesh and bone. The giant’s head rolled clear. His eye was still blinking. His mouth moved trying to shape words, but without lungs, nothing came out.

  I whistled for Tulip and scooped the boy off the ground. He was so light and limp.

  “I didn’t tell them,” he whispered. “I didn’t tell about you and Marten.”

  “I know.”

  “It hurts.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve got you.”

  “Don’t let them hurt me anymore,” he whispered.

  “They’re all dead. I’ve got you.”

  Tulip ran over. I draped him over her saddle on his stomach. It was the least jostling position. He moaned softly.

  “Stay with me, Douglas.”

  He shivered.

  “Stay with me.”

  “Okay…”

  I grabbed the giant’s head, shoved it into the saddlebag, ran to get my spear, and patted Tulip’s cheek. “Smooth.”

  Tulip started off. Most people were aware of four horse gaits, walk, trot, canter, and gallop. Those more familiar with horses knew about pace and amble, a four-beat intermediate gait between a walk and a canter. Tulip had her own amble, fast and smooth as silk. I had ridden dozens of horses, and none of them could match her.

  “Stay with me, Douglas.”

  I ran next to her, trying to block out the pain and failing. The jolts of pain became a tortured cadence to my run. I sank into it, into a weird place where the hurt was background to the thing I had to do. Getting back to St. Luke’s was the only thing that mattered, and when the church finally loomed in front of me, I was almost surprised.

  I pulled Dougie off the saddle and carried him up the steps to the doors. People came running out. Someone waved me to the right. “This way.”

  I followed them thought the church, through the garden, to the hospital, where people in scrubs took the boy out of my arms and carried him off.

  I waited on the bench by the reception area. Minutes ticked by.

  Bishop Chao came rushing through the doors past me and down the hall. A woman in scrubs came out to talk to her. A moment later a door opened and a tall black man in scrubs walked out into the hallway. He and the bishop approached me.

  “He’s alive,” the doctor said. “A broken leg, two broken arms, internal injuries. We will know more once we run the scans.”

  “Will he survive?”

  “There are no guarantees. If we get a magic wave in the next few hours, his chances will improve.”

  “I will pay all the charges, whatever he needs.”

  “No need,” the bishop said.

  The doctor turned and hurried away.

  Bishop Chao sat next to me. “What happened?”

  “A crew out of the Honeycomb.” Only Honeycombers had iron hounds. “They were after me specifically. Yesterday I talked to some stre
et kids that witnessed Pastor Haywood leaving his church in a car to identify the artifact. The boy was one of them. Kind of their leader. They beat him, chained him, and dragged him around the city, trying to find me.”

  They must’ve used the hound to track me to the church and then either made a good guess as to which road I’d take out of it or saw me leave and got ahead of me.

  Bishop Chao closed her eyes for a long moment. “We will do everything we can.”

  “Thank you. And if anyone comes asking, call the Order. Please.”

  “You look like you might need to be checked out.”

  I rose. “Thank you again, but I have somewhere to be.”

  I started toward the doors. He didn’t tell them about Marten, but that didn’t mean they were the only people looking for her. I had to find her.

  “Ms. Ryder,” she called after me. “Do be careful.”

  7

  I walked into the Order’s chapter carrying my saddlebag.

  The female knight who had originally escorted me walked out of the nearest office. A slow smile stretched her lips.

  “What truck ran you over?”

  “Did a child come here looking for me?”

  The female knight nodded. “Follow me.”

  I followed her into her office. Marten sat in a chair, munching away on chocolate chip cookies and drinking from a large mug. She saw me and grinned, presenting me with chocolate-stained teeth.

  I slumped against the doorway. It had taken me almost thirty minutes to get to the chapter, and the entire time I was picturing Marten’s broken body discarded like garbage in some ruin.

  “Your bag is dripping,” the female knight observed.

  I held the bloody bag up. She reached to the side, pulled a metal pan from a drawer, and placed it on her desk. I set the bloody bag into it. She sat behind the desk. The plaque on it said “Stella Davis.”

  I leaned against the wall and looked at Marten. “What happened?”

  She swallowed. “I went to get cookies.” She gave Stella a suspicious side-eye. “In that place you told me about.”

  Clearly the knight of the Order couldn’t be trusted with sensitive information like the location of the cookie stash. Stella rolled her eyes.

  “I ate a cookie, and I hid the rest. Then I went back to the Mouse House. There were two scary guys there and a taker there. They had a dog with iron fur.”

  The taker meant the highest level of danger, someone to run away from, someone who took the kids and they would never be seen again.

  “What were the scary people doing?”

  “Talking to Dougie.” Marten took another small bite from her cookie.

  Talking to this kid was like pulling teeth. “Could you hear what they were saying?”

  She nodded.

  Stella growled. “What did you hear?”

  “They were asking about the Order woman. Dougie lied and said he would show them where you went. And then he went the wrong way and they followed him.”

  “What did you do next?”

  “I went to the secret place, got the cookies, and came here. Like you told me to.”

  Stella glanced at me. “She showed up here about two hours ago. She’s eaten three giant cookies and drank almost a quart of milk.” She looked at Marten. “Where is it all going?”

  “In my tummy.” Marten rubbed her bloated stomach and smiled. Then her smile fell. “Is Dougie okay?”

  “Dougie got hurt,” I told her. “He is in the hospital now.”

  “Can I see him?”

  I shook my head. “I will take you later, when he is feeling better.”

  Nick Feldman loomed in the doorway. “What’s going on here? Who is this child?”

  “She’s a material witness,” I said.

  Nick pointed at my bag. “And what is this?”

  “Evidence.”

  He squinted at the bag. “Well now I feel bad. I didn’t get you anything. Why is your evidence bleeding all over Knight Davis’ desk?”

  I stepped to the desk, opened the bag, and pulled it down. The two knights and Marten stared at the Honeycomber’s head.

  “The taker!” Marten said.

  All humor evaporated from Nick’s face. “Pick that up and bring it into my office.”

  He turned and marched down the hallway.

  Stella leaned forward and whispered, “Oooh, you’re in trouble.”

  Marten made big eyes. “Oooh.”

  I picked up the tray and followed the Knight-Protector.

  “Close the door,” Nick ordered, sitting down behind his desk.

  I shut the door and put the tray in front of him.

  “Explain.”

  I brought him up to speed.

  Nick pondered the head, thinking.

  I tapped the greasy head in front of me. “Who is he?”

  “Jasper. No last name. Rapist, kidnapper, slaver. Do you know about Honeycomb?”

  “I know they don’t like outsiders.”

  “It used to be a trailer park for retirees. Now it’s a place that scrambles reality.”

  Honeycomb sat deep inside Honeycomb Gap, a fissure that cleaved the southeast of Atlanta. According to the city archives, before the Shift, it was a nice place with pretty, white mobile homes and manicured landscaping. I had only seen it after the Shift when it turned into a nightmare. Magic warped the trailer homes and splintered reality into pieces. The double- and single-wides multiplied, growing on top of each other like grapes in a bunch. Outsiders never went into the Honeycomb without a guide. It was a place where people accidentally walked through walls and never came out. One wrong step, and you were gone forever.

  “Nobody goes into Honeycomb, and the Honeycombers venture out into the city only when they need money,” Nick continued. “They’re not picky. They’ll do any shitty job that will pay cash. We don’t even know how many of them are in there. Could be ten, could be a hundred.”

  “What about Jasper?”

  “Until this morning Jasper ran it.” Nick leaned back. “Congratulations. You killed the king of Honeycomb.”

  “Think he will be missed?”

  “I doubt it. But I can’t discount the possibility that you’ve just made yourself a target for revenge by a gang of deranged assholes. Low profile isn’t really your thing, Ms. Ryder, is it?”

  “Jasper didn’t just happen to meet me, Knight-Protector. He tracked me down. Nobody knows me in the city, which means someone hired him to either look into the Haywood murder or make sure I didn’t.”

  Nick grimaced. “Probably the second. He was cunning in a way, but he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.”

  He also wasn’t fully human in the strict definition of that word. “Do you know who usually hires him?”

  “He was what you might call an independent contractor. I’ll tell Knight Davis to get you the list of known associates. Don’t get your hopes up.”

  Nick fixed me with his stare again. “Do not go into Honeycomb. That’s an order. You won’t find any witnesses, and you won’t get any information. Nobody will talk to you. They will walk you into a wall and you’ll disappear.”

  On that we agreed. Going into the Honeycomb was pointless. I was much better off trying to find out who hired Jasper. I didn’t know what his employer’s goal was, but I had a long bill to settle for Dougie’s broken bones.

  I realized Nick was waiting for confirmation.

  “I promise to not enter the Honeycomb. But if I were to hire someone from the Honeycomb, how would I go about it?”

  Nick sighed. “Which part of not going into the Honeycomb was unclear?”

  “I said I wouldn’t. But they must hire them somehow. Do they just stand at the edge of Honeycomb Gap and scream at the top of their lungs?”

  Nick shook his head. “There is a phone line.”

  “Into the Honeycomb? How?”

  “Nobody knows. Rumor says it works, and if you know the number, you can dial it, and someone will pick up.”


  I stared at him.

  Nick shrugged. “You asked.”

  “Do you know the number?”

  “No. And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

  A faint idea began to form in my head.

  “Whatever you’re thinking, I don’t approve,” he said.

  “Do you ever approve of anything?”

  “Yes. Right now, I approve of you getting the hell out of my office. I will handle the Jasper fallout if any occurs. Do what you need to do and don’t get killed.”

  And here I was, planning to die a gruesome death. “You’ve said that to me before.”

  “I want you to really listen to me this time.” He dug into the drawer of his desk, took out a plastic jar, and shook two pills out onto his palm. “Here.”

  I held my hand out, and he dropped the pills into it.

  “Take this and get out.”

  I walked out. Nick Feldman had just gifted me prescription-strength ibuprofen. In post-Shift world, the stuff was worth its weight in silver. Aww. I swallowed the pills and walked back to Stella’s office.

  Marten crouched on the chair, crestfallen.

  “What is it?”

  “She’s eaten all the cookies,” Stella said dryly. “Now she has a tummy ache.”

  “The Knight-Protector told me to ask you for a list of Jasper’s known associates.”

  Stella heaved a sigh and got up. “Wait here. Don’t touch anything.”

  She left. I looked at Marten. She looked back at me.

  “Do you have a mom?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “A dad?”

  “No.”

  “Aunt, uncle, cousins? Any living relatives?”

  She shook her head.

  I had to keep her safe and off the streets. What was I going to do with her? I needed to find a secure place with someone who would watch her twenty-four-seven, because left to her own devices, she would take off. Someone strong enough to protect her from another Jasper.

  Stella returned with a single piece of paper. I glanced at it. Four names. An impressive file. A veritable cornucopia of information.

  I kept my voice casual. “Thanks. Also, the phone line into the Honeycomb, is it more on the east or the west side of the Gap?”