Audrey exhaled slowly through her nose. A familiar calm settled over her. She forced herself to relax muscle by muscle until she simply stood next to Kaldar, as if the two of them were on a date, watching the beautiful mountain view.
The Hand’s agent turned, raising his arms, holding curved narrow knives in each fist. The flesh along his sides, right over his ribs, split.
The disgusting magic smoldered around her, threatening to burn her.
The skin over the man’s ribs rose in two flaps, like fins on a fish. Spongy red tissue lay underneath, moist and veined with blood vessels.
Jesus Christ.
The magic slammed into her like an avalanche, overwhelming her senses. It slid against her skin, scraping it like the edge of a sharp blade, burning, hotter and hotter. Nausea came. Her stomach twisted. Acid washed her throat.
Breathe easy. Audrey held completely still, concentrating on inhaling and exhaling. Her heart slowed down.
The man turned left, then right, slowly. The red flesh on the man’s sides fluttered like a fish’s gills. He was smelling the air, Audrey realized. She glanced at Kaldar. The bastard was smiling, watching the Hand’s monster like he was the biggest lollypop in a candy store.
All these people were crazy. The Hand, the Mirror, all of them.
The man took a step closer. Another.
Another.
They were face-to-face now, less than two feet from each other. She saw every detail of his face: wide overdeveloped jaw, large nose, and eyes so dark they were nearly black. Like staring into the beady button eyes of a shark: nothing but cold, merciless hunger.
The agent sucked the air into his lungs, his nostrils fluttering. He raised his foot. If he took another step, he would run right into them.
A pissed-off growl almost made her jerk. Audrey turned her head a fraction of an inch. To the right, two feet above them, Ling bared her small fangs on a tree branch.
The Hand’s freak stared at the raccoon with his dead eyes.
Ling coughed and snarled, biting off sharp chitters. Stupid, stupid raccoon.
The man turned and took a step toward Ling. If he touched her raccoon, she would charge right into him.
Kaldar gripped her hand tighter.
She couldn’t let him get Ling.
A long, piercing cry came from the right, behind the mountain.
The Hand’s agent spun toward it, the raccoon forgotten.
Kaldar jerked a black gun from inside his sweatshirt. The spell around them tore like wrapping paper. Kaldar stepped behind the freak and squeezed the trigger. The gun spat thunder. Blood and chunks of bone sprayed, splattering her with tiny drops of human gore.
Her brain refused to process it, as if it were happening to someone else.
The agent spun around, his eyes wide, somehow still alive. Kaldar fired again, straight into his face. The freak stumbled, veering toward her, a gaping red hole where his forehead used to be. As if on autopilot, Audrey leaned back and kicked him in the chest. The Hand’s agent tumbled over the edge and fell to the valley below. Her stomach lurched, and Audrey vomited into the grass and forced herself back upright. No time to waste.
The revolting magic still burned her. The Hand’s agent was dead, but his magic ate at her, fracturing into a thousand tiny jaws that gnawed on her skin, trying to chew their way inside. She rubbed her arms, trying to wipe them off, and failed.
Wild ululating howls rocked the forest. The Hand was coming.
The gunshot had been too loud. “They know where we are.”
Kaldar shook his head and glanced over the edge of the cliff. “It doesn’t matter.”
Audrey looked down, following his gaze, and every hair on the back of her neck stood on end. An enormous blue dragon circled the mountain, coming toward them, its massive wings held rigid as it glided. Huge, larger than a semi, it surfed the aerial current, majestic and unreal. A wicker cabin rested on its back. As she watched, its roof split in half. The two sides rose and opened, like the petals of an unfolding flower.
It was a wyvern, she realized. She’d only seen them twice, soaring high above in the clouds, on the rare excursions she’d made into the Weird.
There was no way it could land. There was no space . . .
Oh no. Kaldar expected them to jump.
The Hand’s magic had gotten inside her somehow and begun mincing her insides into mush. She could actually see it in her head, her heart and lungs turning to wet clumps of red sludge. I must be going insane . . .
The wyvern was coming in too low. They would have a drop of at least twenty feet. Audrey glanced down. The treetops below were so far, the haze that clung to them looked blue from here. If they missed, they would fall for several seconds. She would know she was about to die.
Kaldar gripped her shoulders. “Audrey! Look at me. We can make it!”
The howls sounded closer. Another moment, and the dragon would be right under them. They had mere seconds.
“Ling!” she yelled.
The raccoon launched herself into the air. Audrey caught her and hugged Ling to her chest. She yanked a hair band out of her hair. “I bet you this hair band we can’t land safely on the wyvern. Bet me.”
Kaldar grinned an insane grin.
The first of the Hand’s people broke into the open. She was tall with a long ponytail of blond hair and piercing light eyes that seemed to glow. Behind her, a dark-haired man charged out, broad, powerful, muscled like a bull. Black tattoos twisted around his throat.
Kaldar swiped the hair band from her fingers and gripped her hand. “It’s a bet!”
Dear God, please don’t let us die.
“Jump!” Kaldar barked.
Audrey sailed off the cliff, gripping his hand as tightly as she could. They plummeted through the air, weightless, then, suddenly, the cabin was there, and Audrey crashed down onto a pile of wicker boxes, Ling still clutched to her chest with her other arm. Kaldar fell next to her and rolled to his feet.
Up above, the blond woman thrust her hands out. A phantom wind stirred her hair, lifting her ponytail.
“Dive!” Kaldar screamed. “Dive now!”
The wyvern dropped, and Audrey’s stomach dropped with it.
Magic shot from the woman in a whip of a blinding white lightning. It snaked toward them. Audrey hunched, shielding Ling with her arms.
The magic singed the air mere feet away and melted harmlessly into nothing.
Audrey exhaled.
The wyvern beat its wings, rising. Audrey let go of the raccoon. They were in the clear.
“The guy with white hair! I know him!” a voice said in a guttural snarl from the front cabin.
Audrey turned and saw a giant man next to the blond blueblood woman up on the cliff. He towered over her, his mane of white hair shifting in the wind.
“I see him,” Kaldar said. “Karmash, Spider’s lieutenant. I thought we killed the sonovabitch the last time.”
“I’ll fix that,” the guttural voice barked.
“Not now, you won’t. Steer, Gaston.”
The dark-haired tattooed man next to the blueblood woman heaved something with his right arm. Huge muscles flexed as he hurled it at them. The dark object flew through the air, right at Audrey. She caught it by pure reflex and fell to her knees.
Bloodstained and slick with gore, Gnome’s decapitated head stared at her with dead eyes.
HELENA watched the wyvern soar into the endless sky. They truly were beautiful creatures. If the sky could dream, it would dream of dragons.
A shot popped, like a firecracker. Magic whipped from her, her flash snapping into a glowing white barrier, shielding her and her team. A spark flared to the left—the bullet disintegrating, bitten in half by the flash shield. If not for her magic, it would’ve hit Sebastian in the face.
Helena held the barrier for a few seconds, but no more shots came. She let the magic die. She could resurrect the shield at any moment without pausing for conscious effort. Her bloodline stretched back o
ver a thousand years. Magic was so deeply ingrained in her, its use was as instinctive as breathing.
“They are gone,” Sebastian said next to her, his voice a deep, guttural growl.
And they had murdered her tracker, too. It would be a loss keenly felt. Sobat could find a drop of blood in a gallon of water. Taken down by surprise by a gun. How appallingly stupid. Sobat was more than capable of a low-grade flash shield, which would disrupt the flight of a bullet. Now they had to rely on Emily, and her talents were, while not bad per se, not on par with Sobat’s. Inside, Helena grimaced. She hated to rely on second-best.
“No matter.” Helena shrugged. “The book?”
Sebastian waved a clawed finger. Suzanne appeared, carrying the dead man’s book.
“Emily.”
The thin, petite tracker stepped forward. Wiry and always nervous, with reddish hair that looked odd with her bronze skin and hazel eyes, Emily reminded Helena of a skittish ermine. It had to be the combination of large wide eyes, always looking surprised, and round ears slightly protruding from her head.
“M’lady?”
“Find the page with the most recent scent signature on it.”
Emily motioned downward at Suzanne. The two women knelt. Emily opened the book and leaned close, inhaling. She turned the page, sniffed it, turned the next one.
This would take a while. Helena looked away, into the distance. The wyvern all but melted into the blue.
Karmash cleared his throat. “M’lady?”
Sebastian bared his teeth.
“Yes?” Helena said.
“I recognized the man, m’lady. He is a mud rat from the Mire.”
The Mire. The memory of Spider sitting in his wheelchair on the balcony flashed before her. That godforsaken clump of muddy water where mongrels dared to oppose the peers of the realm. They had cost the best agent the Hand ever had the use of his legs. Her emotions must’ve reflected on her face, because Karmash took a step back.
“Is he a Mar?” The name of the family left a foul taste on her tongue.
“He is. He killed the head of the second unit your uncle took to the swamp. His name is Kaldar.”
The name blazed in her head.
Helena dropped by Emily. The agent shrank back.
“I know that you are trying to hurry because you think that they are escaping and time is short,” Helena said. “I need you to slow down. Don’t rush. Take all the time you need.”
Emily blinked at her.
“Make sure there are no mistakes, even if it takes hours. Accuracy is more important. Do you understand?”
“Yes, m’lady.”
Helena rose and fixed Karmash with her demon stare. The giant swallowed.
“Tell me more,” Helena ordered. “Tell me everything.”
SEVEN
GNOME’S head lay in her hands. Audrey stared at it for one painful, horrified moment and dropped it on the floor of the cabin. Gnome’s head rolled and came to rest against a trunk.
They threw his head at me. Gnome is dead, and it’s my fault.
“Stubborn, greedy fool.” Kaldar picked up the head and deposited it in a wicker box.
A weapon. She needed a weapon. A crossbow hung on the wall of the cabin. Audrey lunged for it and saw a rifle. Even better.
“Audrey,” Kaldar said.
She ripped the rifle off the wall, flipped the safety off, chambered a round, took aim at the tattooed asshole standing on the cliff, and fired, all in the space of two breaths. The recoil punched her shoulder.
A screen of white lightning burst from the blond woman. The bullet exploded against it. The tattooed man grinned at her, muscles bulging on his frame like body armor.
“Damn it.”
Audrey chambered another round. If only the repulsive magic would leave her alone for one second, she would make this one count.
Kaldar’s hand clamped on the rifle. “You’re wasting your bullets. That’s a blueblood. She can stop a shell from a bazooka with her flash shield.”
Audrey let go of the rifle. Anger filled her so hot and intense, she had to scream, or she would’ve exploded. The Hand’s magic, still burrowing into her flesh, only made her fury hotter. “What kind of a sick fuck throws a severed head? What the hell are those people?”
“That’s what the Hand does.” Kaldar shrugged.
“And you! You don’t seem surprised by any of this!”
A man shouldered his way into the cabin, his hair a glossy black curtain. The man sat next to Jack and George in the corner, and she saw his face: powerful jaw, strong line, slightly slanted eyes of pale silvery gray. Slabbed with thick muscle, he looked strong enough to wrestle a bear, but the eyes were young. He couldn’t have been more than twenty. The man smiled, displaying serrated teeth. “This ought to be good.”
A small separate part of Audrey realized she ought to be shocked, but right now Kaldar was more important.
“I’ve told you, I’ve dealt with the Hand before,” Kaldar said.
“No, there is more to it than that. It’s like you knew that they would be coming. You even sent the kids to keep watch.” She pointed to where George and Jack sat. A new thought occurred to her. “You sent the kids to keep watch!”
“I think we’ve established that,” Kaldar said.
“You knew that the Hand was coming, the Hand who murders people, then throws their heads at their friends, and you sent children as lookouts right into their jaws?”
“Um.” Kaldar took a small step back.
“Are you insane? Did your mother drop you on your head when you were a baby? What were you thinking?”
“I think it’s a very reasonable question,” the black-haired man said. “What were you thinking, Uncle?”
Kaldar pointed at him. “You stay out of this.”
“And what if the kids didn’t get a chance to escape? That blond bitch would’ve cut them into tiny bite-sized pieces, and we would be picking up their heads now instead of Gnome’s.” Audrey shuddered. “I can still feel their magic. It’s crawling all over me. It feels like someone doused me in lighter fluid and set me on fire.”
Kaldar stepped toward her. “The Hand’s magic causes an allergic reaction. If you hold still—”
“I don’t want to hold still!” she barked. “Don’t touch me!”
Kaldar stepped back with his hands raised. “It will go away, Audrey. Everybody gets it the first time. You have to wait it out.”
“How did you know the Hand would be coming?”
“I didn’t know,” Kaldar said. “I suspected.”
Oh, please. “I don’t believe you. You lie all the time.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You kind of do,” George murmured.
She pointed at the boy. “See!”
Kaldar growled under his breath. “Now you listen to me. The Hand is following the same trail of crumbs I did. We can’t find your father, which leaves you or your brother as a target. The only way to make sure that the Hand didn’t get to you would have been to kill your brother. I could’ve done it, but I didn’t. I just gave him some drugs.”
“You gave an addict in rehab drugs, and you want credit for it?”
“Of course it sounds bad when you put it that way.”
“It sounds bad whichever way you put it. I know Alex. Drugs fried his brain, and he thinks the whole world owes him. He would’ve tried to bargain with the Hand.” She stopped. “My brother is dead, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Kaldar said.
Two people had been murdered because she had been too weak to say no to her dad. Alex had it coming. But Gnome was just a neighbor. He could be mean sometimes, and he was an ornery old bastard, but he had always helped her. Now his head, with glazed-over eyes, was sitting in a wicker trunk in the corner of the cabin. She shouldn’t have taken that job. She should’ve convinced Gnome to run with them when the Hand showed up. Should’ve, could’ve, would’ve . . .
The kids were looking at her, as quiet as two bir
ds.
“Audrey?” Kaldar asked.
Alex was dead. She had prepared herself for that possibility years ago, but now it finally hit home. She would never see him again. Deep down in the hidden recesses of her being lived a tiny hope that Alex would get better, that one day he would walk across her threshold, clean and sober, grin that handsome grin, and say, “I’m sorry, sis. I was an ass. Let me make it up to you.”
The Hand’s magic had burrowed so deep into her, it finally reached that hope, and Audrey felt it die. Something vital shattered at her very core. Her own magic, so familiar and easy, rebelled and bucked inside her like a runaway horse, fighting back in self-defense. The pain almost took her off her feet.
Audrey cried out. Her magic burst out of her body in a sweeping wave. Every bag and box in the cabin flew open. Jack jumped a foot in the air. George gasped.
“Leave!” Kaldar barked, and the three boys scurried out to the front.
“I killed Gnome, and I killed Alex.” Her voice came out dull and creaky. “And more people will die because I was selfish, hurt, and stupid. I was always so smart. How the hell could I be so stupid?”
“Happens to the best of us,” Kaldar said. “How the hell did I get stuck with the Marshal of the Southern Provinces’ teenage brothers-in-law and a woman who thinks I’m ugly?”
“You have to send them back,” she said. “They will be killed, Kaldar.”
“It’s too late now,” he said. “It was already too late by the time I found them because the Hand has their scent. To go home, they’d have had to fly over Louisiana territory, and Gaston doesn’t have a lot of experience with piloting wyverns and doesn’t know how to avoid detection. The Louisianans would track them down at the border, and without me, they would kill them or worse.”
“What could be worse?”
A grimace twisted his lips. “Like I said, their brother-in-law has unprecedented access to matters of Adrianglian security. The Hand would torture the boys to gain influence over him.”
This was just getting better and better. “Then put them on a plane in the Broken and have them cross into Adrianglia through the Edge at the eastern coast.”
Kaldar sighed. “Being in the Broken didn’t protect your brother. Besides, even if I bought tickets and made them go through security, they’d escape the moment our backs were turned. They’re here because they want to be here, and they are clever enough and well trained enough to be trouble. Trust me, I’ve spent two days thinking it over, trying to find some way to get out of this blasted screwup. The kids have to remain with me. That’s the safest option.”
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