“Yes. Powerful, but not very precise. I don’t think he has a lot of experience, because he freaked out when I grabbed his mind. He threw spikes.”
“What kind of spikes?”
“About two feet long, metal, with a ring on the dull end.”
Connor’s face snapped into a flat mask. He raised his hand. Something crunched inside the motor pool of his HQ. A bright spark streaked out of the open bay doors. A metal spike landed in his hand.
“Yes,” I said. “Exactly like that.”
“Was the inside of the ring smooth or did it have ridges?”
“I didn’t look that closely. I was running away.” I thought back to the spike protruding from the guard’s neck. “No, wait, it was ridged. Why is that important?”
“Most telekinetics throw spikes that look like giant nails or crossbow bolts. This is a modified marlin spike. I’ve never known anyone to use it outside of our family.”
Connor only had one family member on the American side, his mother, Arrosa. On the Spanish side, he had a whole boatload of relatives, but none of them were powerful enough, with the exception of Mia Rosa, who was eight years old.
“He was a Prime, Connor. I’m sure of it.”
I could tell by the look on his face that he didn’t like it.
Alessandro drove his fist into Albert’s solar plexus. Albert stumbled back and fell clumsily, landing on his ass. Blood dripped from his mouth. His eyes teared, his face swollen and bloody. Alessandro crouched by him. He was unmarked. His hair wasn’t even messed up.
“This isn’t a fair fight,” Alessandro said. “Go home.”
Albert tried to rise, his eyes full of rage.
Alessandro hammered a quick punch to his chin. Albert’s eyes rolled back in his head. He collapsed.
“You could have done that in the beginning,” I told him.
“Yes, but then he would think I sucker punched him and that he’d have a chance if he tried again. Now he knows.”
Nevada walked out of the bay doors. She was carrying a green bag with tiny dinosaurs on it. She didn’t give Albert a second glance.
“Hey, honey,” she said. Her voice sounded clipped.
“Hey,” Connor said, moving toward her.
“I need you to cancel your plans for today and find someone else to handle whatever this is,” she said. “My water just broke.”
Oh God. Oh God. What do we do? We needed a car. We needed to get Nevada to the hospital.
“Stay right here!” Connor ordered in his officer voice. “Don’t move.”
He sprinted to the bay.
Nevada looked after him and very deliberately took two steps forward.
My phone rang. A moment later Alessandro’s phone went off as well. I answered without looking. “Yes?”
“It took Marat into the Pit,” Stephen barked. “They’re fighting it now and losing. Tatyana’s on her way. Can you get there?”
I stared, mute, torn between two vital things.
Nevada waved at me. “Go to the Pit. I’ll be fine. Get to the hospital when you can.”
“On my way.” I spun around, ran into the house, and found Arabella in her bathroom, putting on lipstick.
“Nevada’s in labor.”
Arabella dropped her lipstick into the sink.
“The thing in the Pit grabbed one of the Primes and is attacking the work site. I have to go. Yesterday, Victoria threatened Nevada and the baby. Go with her and don’t let her out of your sight. If it all goes to shit, I don’t care if you are in the middle of that damn building, you transform, and you get her out of there.”
Arabella took off running.
I charged out of the bathroom and ran back downstairs to get my sword.
I took a turn too fast. Rhino’s overpowered engine roared as I accelerated out of the turn. Alessandro grabbed the door handle to steady himself.
We’d had a choice of the Spider or Rhino and we both picked armor over speed. Rhino would plow through anything in our way and get us there. If I didn’t kill us first.
“What the hell was he doing back on-site?” I growled.
“Probably getting all the equipment out. They are expensive machines.” Alessandro shook his head, his eyes sharp and focused. “Damn idiot didn’t listen to me. I told him to get his people out of there.”
“I did too.”
“I warned him.” Alessandro bared his teeth. “I said, don’t think about leaving, don’t make any preparations. Just walk off at the end of the day like normal, leave the equipment where it is, and once everyone is out, pull the guards back to the outer perimeter. The fool went back for the assets.”
And once the Abyss saw its food and brain supply leaving, it reacted violently. It required metal and humans to expand. Without a continuous supply of either, it would have to leave the relative safety of the Pit to procure it. Every time it sent its nodes out of the mire, it ended badly.
We tore past the dealership where we’d fought the constructs.
“I don’t have a plan,” I told Alessandro. “I don’t know how to kill it. It’s impossible to destroy every node, and as long as one survives, the Abyss will rebuild itself.”
“We’ll deal with that gap once we’ve jumped it.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“You worry too much.”
“A sentient self-repairing construct the size of ten city blocks is on a rampage, and you’re telling me not to worry.”
“It will be fine. You’ll see.”
It wouldn’t be fine. “Call Linus.”
My phone dialed the number and the beeps echoed through the cabin. No answer. Just like the first two times I’d called him since we left the house. Linus always took my calls. I didn’t even want to think about why he wasn’t picking up. That was a bottomless rabbit hole of anxiety and speculation, and we had bigger problems on our hands.
We shot onto the final bridge. The Pit Reclamation island was on fire. Flames tore out from its shore, colliding with a forest of tentacles flailing in the water.
A hunter construct leaped out of the water and into our path. I rammed it. The impact knocked it aside and we sped past it. All around us the Pit churned.
The island wasn’t on fire. Rather the fire circled it, a wall of living flame twenty feet tall. Here and there the Abyss’ constructs, hulking forms melded from vegetation and bone, emerged from the water to storm the shore and fell apart, consumed by the inferno. The water at the island’s edge boiled. Plumes of steam rose, hissing. The temperature inside the car jumped.
Alessandro grabbed his phone and dialed a number. “We’re coming in.” He hung up. “Keep going.”
The fire wall towered in front of us. I drove straight at it. The flames parted. We shot through the gap and I mashed the brakes. Rhino skidded and slid to a stop.
In the middle of the parking lot in front of the HQ building, Tatyana Pierce stood in an arcane circle of dazzling complexity. Her eyes were pure fire. Workers huddled around her, clutching weapons and sweating. A young man in a suit, one of the secretaries I had seen in the House Pierce building, stood by with an impassive expression on his face, holding a cell phone.
I rolled the window down.
“Welcome to the party.” Tatyana grinned.
“Have you found Marat?”
“Jiang is looking for him. Go down the street directly behind me. I’d go with you, but I’m a little busy on the grill.” She laughed, her eyes sparkling.
I stepped on the gas and steered Rhino around her and down the street. Ruined buildings in various stages of repair slid behind us, and through the gaps Tatyana’s flames glowed like a magical aurora borealis. I couldn’t even begin to calculate the kind of power required to maintain a wall of that size.
We passed an abandoned Burger King, a convenience store, a deli with dusty windows . . . Ahead the street and the island ended, the swamp beyond it blocked by fire. Where the hell was Stephen?
“Up there.” Alessandro po
inted to the right, at a four-story building jutting out of the rubble. I squinted. A man in a suit stood on the roof. Found him.
I parked and grabbed Linus’ sword. Alessandro leaped from the vehicle, carrying the prototype of the prototype Linus had given him.
The building’s automatic door stood ajar, stuck permanently open. We passed through it. The inside was dark like a cave. A musty stench filled the air, like hundreds of waterlogged books were drying in it. Alessandro turned left. I followed him and we came to a door leading up the stairs. He sprinted and I did my best to chase him.
One flight, two, three, four . . .
Alessandro had disappeared into the gloom above.
I picked up speed, sprinting.
Above me a door banged, probably Alessandro emerging onto the roof. Another flight of stairs. A door loomed ahead. Finally.
I stumbled through it into the sunlight, gasping for breath. The roof was paved and square. Stephen stood at the far edge, looking out into the Pit. Alessandro was next to him. I ran to them. Heat washed over me. Tatyana’s wall ended about twenty feet below us.
A clump of vegetation protruded from the mire about fifty yards away. The long green stems, striated with metal, shifted against each other, braided into a fist.
“Is Marat in there?” Stephen asked me. “Can you feel his mind?”
I reached out. My magic grew, spiraling, and found a mind, glowing with purple.
“He’s in there.”
“Is he alive?”
“Yes.” Marat was emanating a lot of magic. “He’s fighting.”
Stephen took a deep breath and said something in Mandarin. It sounded like a curse.
“Can you open a path to him through the water?” I asked.
Stephen backed up, all the way to the door. “That won’t be necessary.”
He leaned forward. “I told him to leave the damn bulldozers. The man never listens.”
Everyone had told Marat to leave the damn bulldozers. If I ever did business with House Kazarian, the contract I offered Marat would have to be a mile long to account for every harebrained idea he came up with.
Stephen sprinted. He tore past me, pushed off the ledge into a leap, and for a moment he flew through the air, over the wall of flames, arms raised like wings.
Breath caught in my throat.
Stephen plunged down. He landed on the water as if it were solid ground. Waves pulsed from the impact. He thrust his arm out. Water flowed into his hand, forming a long transparent shaft with a blade on the end. He’d made a guandao. Oh, wow.
Stephen spun the watery glaive and dashed across the swamp to the clump of plants. A tentacle emerged, snapping at him like a whip. Stephen spun the guandao without breaking stride. A fan of water struck from the blade, severing the tentacle like a giant razor.
Arabella would die.
Stephen attacked the green wall, slicing, cutting, spinning, and stabbing, flawless and graceful like a genius dancer.
“Catalina,” Alessandro called.
“Are you seeing this? This is insane.”
“Listen to me very carefully. I need you to draw a circle that can generate a null space. A really good one.”
I turned around. Alessandro was staring in the opposite direction, at the bridge leading to the island. I raised my head and froze.
Constructs marched through the mire. Huge, industrial monstrosities, gleaming in the sun with metal and magic. I had seen them before. My brain supplied the right names. Climber XV. Crawler XI. Breaker VI. Others I couldn’t name. People with weapons rode atop them. And at the head of it all, on top of a colossal Digger XII, sat Cheryl Castellano.
I couldn’t see Cheryl’s face from this distance, but I knew it was her. My brain feverishly assessed and calculated. Nine huge constructs. At least thirty people.
Cheryl didn’t have a private army. She had House security, but she wouldn’t use them for this. One look at the forest of tentacles and constructs and even the dimmest person could tell that this wasn’t normal magic. House security didn’t have the kind of discipline to keep their mouths shut about what they saw. If the Assembly called on them, they would testify.
No. She wouldn’t deploy House security. That meant Arkan’s people were riding on the constructs. And that meant . . .
“She’s going to kill all of us,” I said.
“Yes,” Alessandro said.
She knew she couldn’t destroy the Abyss, so she’d settled for the next best thing. She would kill everyone who knew about it. Tatyana, Stephen, Marat, all the workers, and the two of us would die in the Pit. What a great tragedy. She would bravely carry on the work of her fallen partners, free of oversight. Free to interact with her creation at her leisure. Maybe a part of her still thought she could control him.
“Do you need chalk?” Alessandro asked.
I pulled chalk out of my pocket.
“Good.”
He walked to the edge of the roof facing Cheryl’s armada, crouched, and drew a perfect circle with a practiced swipe of his hand. Another circle, a line of glyphs . . . So House Sagredo had a House spell of its own after all.
The constructs drew closer. One crawled along the bridge. The rest stomped their way through the mire. Tentacles slapped against the spidery metal legs of Climber XV. Buzz saws slid out of the construct’s legs, chewing the plant and metal to pieces.
There were too many. Even with Tatyana and Stephen, there were too many constructs for us to overcome, not to mention the trained killers they carried. We were stuck between the Abyss and Cheryl’s army.
“Trust me,” Alessandro said.
Even if I used all of my power and beguiled their minds, the most I could do was throw them at the Abyss. United, they would injure it, but not destroy it. It would return. The longer people I beguiled stayed under my power, the more they loved me. Those who survived this fight would tear me apart, consumed by the need to possess a piece of me. There would be no winners here.
The chalk felt clammy in my fingers. An odd kind of calm washed over me, clearing my fear. This was my job. I would do it and I would fight to the bitter end.
I dialed Tatyana’s number. The male secretary answered. “Yes?”
“Tell Tatyana that Cheryl is not the cavalry. The thing in the swamp is her doing. She’s coming to kill us.”
“We know,” he said and hung up.
Cheryl was a threat to us. But the Abyss would end our world if we let it. If I let it.
I put Linus’ sword down and crouched. I could draw a dozen circles with a null boundary, but none of them fit. Half of them would cut me off from the environment. I would be safe in the circle, but magically deaf and blind, able only to expel magic by relying on my eyes and ears. The other half would allow me to use my mind but wouldn’t give me the power I required to project my magic.
I would need power and range. Lots and lots of power. I needed my senses too. The Abyss would try to reach me once he realized I was here. I had to know what he was thinking.
The half-finished designs in my head coalesced. My incomplete House Key arcane circle merged with the Aldrin projection design, augmented by the Tremaine targeting band. Yes, that would do it. It would give me the null space and the power I required and it would unchain my mind.
The circle glowed in my mind. I just had to replicate it.
I drew faster than I ever thought I could.
A drone plunged from the sky and hovered near me.
“Do not shoot this down, you shit weasel!” Bug yelled.
Alessandro and I kept drawing, crawling around on our hands and knees.
“Is Nevada okay?” My voice came out dull. I was trying to hold on to the pattern in my head.
“She’s fine. There is a fucking construct army marching here.”
“I know,” I told him.
“What do you need?”
“Record her. Record everything that happens.” If we died, Cheryl would not get away with it.
“I have si
x drones on it.”
The constructs were almost on us. I had no idea how long Tatyana could hold out.
“Shit,” Bug cursed.
I chanced a glance over my shoulder. Stephen had hacked the wall of tentacles into chunks. He stood on the island of vegetation, his face impassive. Marat slumped next to him on one knee. Three hunters rose from the swamp, each with two hounds. They ringed the two men. There was nothing I could do for them right now.
I went back to drawing. Glyphs, more glyphs. If this didn’t work . . . It had to work.
Tatyana’s voice came out of the drone. I spared half a second to glance up. A small digital screen on the drone showed Tatyana in her circle and Cheryl atop the Digger just beyond the wall of flames. I was right. She’d ridden on the leading construct.
“Hi there.” Tatyana sounded upbeat.
“We’ve come to reinforce you,” Cheryl announced.
“Oh, is that what you’re here to do?”
“Let us in, please.”
“I had a really interesting conversation with Stephen last night,” Tatyana said. “Is there anything you want to share?”
“I have no idea what he told you. Marat is out there, dying. You’re under assault. Let me help you.”
“We wouldn’t be under assault if your fake ass hadn’t made an abomination and unleashed it into the Pit. What were you thinking, Cheryl? Jesus! Were you dropped on your head as a baby? Did your parents not hug you enough? Or are you just greedy and stupid?”
Cheryl recoiled as if slapped. “How dare you!”
“How many people have you killed? Felix is dead because of you. We may all die because of you. Is this the sort of shit you think my family needs right now? I swear to God, Cheryl, as soon as I’m done with this, I’m going to burn your House to the fucking ground. Scorched earth, Cheryl. You will learn the meaning of those words.”
A vicious grimace twisted Cheryl’s face. “You were always a fat, stupid bitch. Your brother is a fucking arsonist, and all the money in the world won’t change that. You’re trash, your family is trash, and you will die in this fucking swamp. Bring me her head!”
“Holy shitballs,” Bug muttered.
I glanced at the screen. On Cheryl’s left, the towering thirty-foot Breaker resembling a rhino on six massive legs started toward the flame wall. The four people on its carapace readied themselves. One of them snapped into a mage pose, arms bent at the elbow, palms up, fingers cradling invisible spheres.
Emerald Blaze Page 32
