The Left-Hand Path: Runaway

by Barnett,T. S.

  The pounding sound echoed again in the quiet hall. Cora and Thomas went in opposite directions, carefully checking each door along the wall.

  One cell toward the end of the hall swung open at Cora’s touch, and she got a look inside the cramped room just in time to see Elton push a man away from him, the Controller giving a pained grunt as his chest hit the concrete wall. Elton was on him in an instant, swinging his bound hands over the other man’s head and tugging him tightly back against his own body by his neck. The Controller fought for air, alternating between tugging at the rope around his throat and clawing wildly at Elton’s unmoving shoulders.

  Cora watched numbly until the man twisted enough to elbow Elton in the gut, and when Elton stumbled, she stepped forward and put the Controller to sleep with a shouted word. She puffed out a brief sigh. This was quickly becoming a lot of magic for such a short period of time, and she still felt woozy from her fever. At least the sleeping spells would wear off on their own after a time, so she didn’t have to actively maintain them. She would probably pass out before they got out of the building otherwise. Nathan had chosen her spells carefully.

  Elton let the man drop to the floor as he fought to catch his breath. His bottom lip was bloody, and the tiny cell was littered with pale yellow strips of paper.

  “He found my talismans,” the former Chaser said simply as Cora rushed to untie the herb-woven rope binding his wrists.

  “Some rescuer you are,” she muttered, but she gave him a teasing smile.

  “Where’s Thomas?”

  “Here,” he answered for himself from the doorway. His eyes went immediately to the blood oozing from Elton’s lip. “Some habits die hard, I see.”

  “I’m glad you both feel confident enough to take jabs.” Elton gathered up the scattered talismans and quickly glanced through them. “Since we’re about to have to make our way through an entire station’s worth of Chasers. Where the hell is Hao? Nathan should have sent him to help after breaking the wards.”

  “Sent him?” Thomas echoed. “Why is he helping us at all now?”

  “He’s...a zombi,” Elton said. “We didn’t have many options,” he added in his own defense, anticipating the look of revulsion on Thomas’s face.

  “Holy shit,” Cora laughed. “That’s so cool.”

  “It’s not cool,” Elton corrected her with a sigh. “We need a plan. I can handle a few if I get the drop on them. Thomas, how many can you bind?”

  “Three or four? More if you feel like carrying me out.”

  Cora worried the bracelet on her wrist, its thrumming heat tingling her skin. Nathan wanted her to use this spell. He had done something to the charms to let her use it. She could read the word he’d scratched into it thanks to her lessons, but that didn’t mean she knew what it did. She was willing to guess it wasn’t going to be anything pretty for the Chasers. But if it got them out safely, and she got to show the Magistrate that they couldn’t just do whatever they wanted with no consequences, then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad for something not-so-pretty to happen to them.

  “I can get us out,” she said, drawing the attention of the two men. “Nathan gave me a way.”

  Elton lifted an eyebrow skeptically. “A way that doesn’t include killing everyone, I hope.”

  “I mean, I think so. I don’t recognize the spell, but even Nathan wouldn’t make me accidentally murder people.”

  “One can hope.” He hesitated, watching her face and the determined jut of her chin. “This spell—you’re sure you can cast it.”

  “Nathan believes I can,” she answered plainly, and Elton nodded.

  “We’ll be right behind you if something goes wrong.”

  Cora took a quick breath, fidgeting with her bracelet and rolling the stones between her fingers as she led the way back to the waiting elevator.

  21

  The elevator ride took half a lifetime. Cora’s heart couldn’t seem to decide if it should stop completely or leap out of her mouth and run away. She tried to swallow it down as the light above the door pinged to indicate they’d reached the ground floor. She couldn’t be afraid. If she wavered, if she lost her nerve, then the spell would definitely fail, and they’d all be thrown back into that basement before they could blink. Nathan thought she could do this. Nathan had trusted her to do this. She had to remember what was at stake—not just their own lives, but the lives of every man, woman, and child Thomas had helped escape from the Magistrate’s gaze.

  When the doors opened, and she found herself looking out into the bustling booking room of the Magistrate headquarters, the Chasers’ eyes seemed to turn toward the elevator in slow motion. The stones around her wrist shuddered with heat as he lifted her hand, and she felt the pulsing tension in her chest as she shouted out the spell burning its way through her groundings. “Ehšitaraha!”

  The men and women in front of her were blown off of their feet by a sudden force, their bodies flung from an invisible shockwave at the elevator door. Their shouts of surprise were cut short as they slammed into the walls or the nearby desks. Desks scraped across the floor with a groaning of metal as the spell pushed the people outwards despite the barriers, pinning them against the furniture when the desks and chairs finally hit the walls. Cora looked around the room with her hand still outstretched, too shaken to move. The Chasers, the staff—everyone in the room except for her and her two companions lay pressed to whatever surface they had landed on, immobile but awake. They struggled for each panicked inhalation, the spell forcing the breath from their lungs with every exhale as though they were caught in a constrictor’s grip. They didn’t have the air left to cry out.

  “Keep moving,” Elton said, his hand a gentle push between her shoulderblades that urged her to take the first step into the room.

  She led, and the men followed, weaving their way between the scattered office furniture. As they moved through the building, the remaining Chasers approached them, ready to bind or wound them, but every one of them flew backwards before they could draw near, pinned to the walls like flies in a crushing web. Cora’s knees threatened to give out under her from the strain, but Elton kept a steadying hand on her back as they moved forward.

  “Willis!” Stark’s sharp voice called out from ahead of them. Her shoulders hunched against the weight of the barrier she struggled to maintain around her. “What the hell are you doing?!”

  “Leaving,” he answered blandly. Cora swayed on her feet, and Elton held her by the shoulder to keep her upright.

  “Where’s Moore?”

  “He wasn’t at the park?”

  Stark’s face twisted into a scowl at Elton’s cavalier tone. “You’ll have the entire Magistrate coming for you after this,” she warned. “All of you.”

  Cora reached up to grip his sleeve. She didn’t have the strength to speak, but she glared at him as if to promise her unending disappointment if he turned back now. Even Thomas let out a short sigh and gave a small nod when Elton glanced at him.

  “Then I guess that’s how it’s going to be,” Elton said.

  Stark pushed her barrier outwards with a furious shout, letting three of the pinned Chasers free as the spell grew to contain them. Cora stumbled backward against Elton’s chest at the sudden retaliation, and Thomas moved in front of them to draw a hasty symbol in the air.

  “Rogo cíngite nōs,” he said in a rush, just in time to counter the binding spells thrown at them by the newly-standing Chasers.

  “Take it easy,” Elton murmured, easing Cora to lean against the nearest intact desk. She put a hand out to support herself and watched Elton slap a talisman against Stark’s barrier, the yellow paper hanging in mid-air until a pulse of iridescent blue shattered the invisible barricade and left the talisman to flutter back to the floor. Her vision blurred, but she could hear voices shouting all around her. This spell holding the other Chasers back wasn’t going to last long. She wasn’t going to last long. She gripped the edge of the desk as her legs trembled, her stomach rolling
and threatening to revolt. She had to focus.

  She almost let herself slide down to the floor and hope that the men would in fact protect her, but she paused when she spotted Chris peeking out at her from beyond the chaos. Without thinking, she edged herself along the desk toward him, just outside the Chasers’ notice. He reached out a hand for her, and when she took it, a sudden pounding forced its way from her chest, and her stomach calmed. The room went deadly silent as Stark and the others were thrown back against the walls. She grew steady and rejuvenated by the touch, though she could still feel the sweat rolling down her temples. Chris smiled at her. It looked strange on him; it didn’t really seem like his smile. But it was a smile she knew.

  “Well done, my love,” he said.

  Behind her, Elton and Thomas were panting for breath.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Elton snapped. He knew better than to wait for an answer. “Get them out of here,” he said, ignoring Cora calling after him as he ducked into Stark’s office. He pulled open the drawers of her desk until he found the dark green file folder she’d shown him. If Stark had a list of people who regularly slipped the noose, he wanted to give it a good, long read. He tucked the file under his arm and rushed to catch up to the others.

  Chris led Cora to the front of the building, past the struggling Chasers, and when they stepped out onto the street, she spotted Nathan at the corner, one hand in the pocket of his jeans and the other plucking a cigarette from his lips. She almost ran to him, but he held up a hand to stop her and tapped his palm, indicating that she shouldn’t let go of the now blank-faced Chaser beside her. Chris was growing pale, and a sheen of sweat had formed on his brow. She got the feeling she wasn’t going to feel great as soon as they broke apart. He was clearly taking the load of maintaining the spell for her.

  “What are you doing just standing there?” Elton sighed. “We need a car.”

  “Not yet,” Nathan answered without taking his eyes from Cora’s face. He offered her a thick shard of flint wrapped in thin leather strips. A smooth circle of agate dangled from the stray end of the cord like a keychain, and it felt hot against Cora’s palm when she accepted it. The opalescent colors of the stone shifted in the light, but she could still make out the carvings, the tiny crevices of the carefully etched marks filled in with dried blood.

  “Do you know that word?” Nathan asked her, and she shook her head.

  “Aneyanti,” he said. He turned the stone in her hand with one finger. “One little word, my love, and you can make all of this go away. The Chasers, the corruption—the threat to Mr. Proctor’s charges. One word. And the city will be free.”

  “What are you talking about?” Elton interrupted. “What will it do?”

  “It’ll blow the building up, of course. What do you think our Chaser friend spent all this time doing? These little beauties are tucked around everywhere.”

  “Blow the building up?” Cora echoed, looking up at him with a furrowed brow. “You mean just kill all of those people?”

  “Chasers,” he reminded her. “Hardly people. No offense intended, darling,” he added as an afterthought when Elton scowled at him.

  Cora clutched the stone tightly in her fist. It wouldn’t solve everything. It wouldn’t mean that bad things wouldn’t still happen. But these were the Chasers who had let a killer go free just because of his important parent. They had tortured her. Tortured Thomas. They would have tortured Elton and shipped him back to Vancouver to be locked away forever. They messed with peoples brains, stripped them of memories and magic and left them not even knowing why.

  Everywhere she had looked in this city, she’d seen cover-ups, bribes, and cruelty. Maybe if they were an example, the rest of the Magistrate would take notice.

  “Cora, you aren’t considering this,” Elton said, startling her. “Give it to me.” He held out a hand for the stone, but she held it protectively to her chest.

  “Maybe I am.”

  “Are you insane? You think every person in there deserves to die, just because they work for the Magistrate? You can’t just kill a whole building’s worth of people because Nathan tells you to.”

  “It’s my decision,” she argued. She looked up at Nathan, a hesitant frown on her lips. “Isn’t it?”

  “Always,” he answered with uncommon sincerity.

  Cora looked down at the wrapped stone and back at the building. Inside, the Chasers and the Magistrate staff were still pinned to the walls like insects in a shadow box, helpless to fight against her spell. Nathan’s spell. If she used this charm, if she activated the hidden traps Chris has planted throughout the building—would they die quickly? Or would they suffer the way they’d made innocent witches suffer?

  “Cora, give it to me,” Elton said again. “You can’t do this.”

  “But they deserve it!” she snapped back, and she paused with her breath caught in her throat as she realized that she believed it. They did deserve it. They deserved whatever they got. Her grip tightened, the sharp flint biting into the skin of her fingers.

  “He can’t tell you what to do, my love.” Nathan tilted his head and tapped the ash from his cigarette. “Every Chaser in there has killed or worse, and you know it. They’ll do it again. They’ll keep doing it until the end of time unless someone speaks up. The whole of the Western world hides under their blankets at the thought of being targeted by the Magistrate.”

  “Then why don’t you do it?” she asked, her voice slightly shakier than she liked. “Why ask me?”

  “Because you’re young, strong, and bloody-minded,” he chuckled. “It falls to people like you to pull the trigger when no one else will. That’s just the way of things.”

  Cora set her jaw and squeezed Chris’s hand, ready to turn back toward the building, but the soft sound of Thomas calling her name made her pause. She looked back at him as he stepped closer to her.

  “You shouldn’t,” he said simply.

  “How can you say that? After what they did to you! After what they did to Claire!” Her chest tightened with guilt as she spoke the name, and Elton visibly flinched, but Thomas’s eyes on her were steady. “They’ll come after the people you helped, you know. They’ll hunt them down like animals, and they’ll punish their children.”

  “Maybe so.” Thomas frowned at her with a faint wrinkle in his brow. “But if you kill them, then you’re no better than they are. You can’t become the villain that you want to fight.”

  “But—if I don’t do it, everything will just stay the same. Nothing will get better.”

  “There’s always another way,” he said. “You don’t have to compromise yourself to make changes. And you definitely don’t have to make them right about dangerous witches,” he added with a sidelong glance at Nathan, who offered no defense except a small shrug.

  Cora hesitated, looking between the three of them. She could feel Chris’s hand growing clammy in her grip. If she didn’t decide soon, there would be at least one death on her conscience regardless.

  “Let’s...let’s just get out of here.” She looked to Nathan and reached out to return the stone to him, fighting the stinging of tears behind her eyes. She wasn’t sure if she felt guilty for even considering it, or ashamed at not having the stomach. “We did what we meant to do.”

  Nathan’s shoulders slumped as she dropped the charm into his waiting hand, and he gave a dramatic sigh. “After all the trouble I went to,” he muttered. “You lot owe me a grand explosion later.”

  “Now maybe we should get off the street, since three of us are clearly escapees of some kind?” Elton offered. They were already drawing the attention of passing pedestrians, who seemed to be giving them a wide berth.

  Nathan gestured grandly to a waiting SUV parked across the street, where they finally noticed Adelina with her elbow resting in the open driver’s seat window. He tossed his cigarette and helped Cora into the back, and as soon as Chris released her hand, Nathan took the seat beside her and let her collapse against his shoulder. Elt
on scrambled to catch Chris’s crumpling body before his head hit the street.

  “What do we do with him?” he asked, and Nathan looked up from lightly brushing Cora’s hair away from her damp forehead.

  “Bring him here.” Nathan reached out a hand as Elton slumped the Chaser heavily against the side of the car, and he kissed his own knuckles before touching them to Chris’s forehead and lips. “Mwen lage ou,” he muttered, and when he pressed his palm briefly against Chris’s chest, the Chaser seemed to collapse all over again. Elton had to hold him under the armpits to keep him from sinking to the road.

  “What was that?”

  “I released him, as promised. Now leave him. He’ll wake up in a bit. Unless you’d rather get him out of the way while he’s out,” he shrugged.

  Elton paused, momentarily considering the option. He already regretted one mercy. But Chris was just a Chaser. He wasn’t any more of a villain than Elton himself had been. He glanced around the SUV toward the sidewalk, and when he spotted a gap in attentive passersby, he heaved the Chaser with him and let him down on the bench of a nearby bus stop. He distanced himself quickly and helped himself to the front seat of the car. He’d already buckled himself in before he realized that Thomas was still standing hesitantly by the open back door.

  “They’ll come for you too, Thomas,” Elton said. “At least let us help you get somewhere safe.”

  Thomas seemed more than a little reluctant to climb into the back seat, and he kept a wary eye on Nathan as he closed the door behind him.

  “I won’t bite,” Nathan said with a low chuckle, and Cora stirred drowsily against his shoulder.

  “Don’t tease him.”

  “Hush, my love. You were spectacular. Sleep now.”

  The girl gave a soft sound of acknowledgment and shut her eyes as Adelina put the car into gear and drove from the scene as fast as the traffic would allow.

  “Are you all right?” Elton asked once they were underway, and Adelina spared a brief glance at him. “Chasers showed up at the park, didn’t they?