by Devon Monk
I fought the pull of the Binding, leaned back against it. Yelled as the hook shifted to catch at my lungs. I couldn’t leave Pike, couldn’t leave him dying behind me.
I still had the dagger. By damn, I was going to use it. I forced my hands up, trembled as I turned the knife to my chest, aiming for the hook. I had to use both hands to hold it steady, to press it against my chest. The tip slipped through the thin fabric of my shirt, nipped gently at my skin.
I took another step, heard the deadweight thunk as Pike fell the rest of the way to the ground. I couldn’t turn to look at him. I pressed the dagger harder, broke the skin over my breastbone.
Wait. Something was wrong with this. Magic dagger or not, if I shoved a knife through my heart, I wouldn’t be around long enough to do anything else.
Holy hells.
Think, Allie.
The glyph. The Binding on my thigh. I could cut the bastard’s magic out of me.
I took another step and shifted the grip on the blade. Before Trager could make me take another step, I slid the tip—okay, more than just the tip, the whole damn length of the blade—across my thigh.
The knife sliced effortlessly through the heavy denim of my jeans. It sank into my thigh like heated glass. I yelled. Felt like barfing. Instead I jerked the blade out of my leg. I tugged at the hole in my jeans, ripping it open. I blinked sweat out of my eyes and looked down at the glyph.
What I saw was blood, my blood, pouring down the pus green venous ridges of the Binding glyph. I had to pull the magic out of it. Zayvion had said that. Pull the magic out.
But I needed magic to do that. Needed magic to see what I was doing.
Fuck it all.
I tried to calm my mind. I whispered a mantra over and over: Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black . . . I set a Disbursement—I was so done with having a headache and fever and went for a nice head cold this time. I jerkily traced the glyph for Reveal over my thigh and drew magic up out of my body to pour into it.
Magic responded strangely. It skittered beneath my skin like a rock over a pond instead of flowing smoothly. It took all the concentration I had to guide the magic into the spell I’d cast.
And doing that made everything hurt.
Trager yanked on the hook in my chest.
But my leg wasn’t working so good. I stumbled forward and fell.
It is amazing how it doesn’t matter how much pain I’m in, I can always feel one more thing. I hit the ground hard, banged my elbow, my hip, scraped the side of my face. Managed not to hit my head, break my hold on the Reveal spell, or impale myself on the knife.
Go, me.
I curled inward, fetal position, and wished I could stay there forever. Then pushed up to a sitting position. Made it too.
The Reveal I cast showed me the Binding’s true nature. The glyph on my thigh glowed pus green and oozed black. I’d never seen anything like it. One part of my mind—the part I was trying very hard not to listen to—was screaming. The other part was getting pissed off.
Calm, Allie. Stay calm.
Pike rattled out a long, thin breath.
I inhaled, scented the rotten flesh stench of the Veiled, who undoubtedly had invited themselves to my little private hell. I didn’t take time to search for them. I knew they were there, around me, on their slow march.
Fast. I needed to work fast.
I opened my mouth, leaned toward my thigh, and inhaled the scent and signature of the spell. I knew Trager had cast it, but my Hounding senses sorted through the spell’s subtleties. And, most important, let me trace the actual manner in which the spell had been cast.
With the knife in my right hand, I pressed my right fingers at the top of the glyph and traced it, dragging my fingers through the blood, drawing a new layer of pain along its twisted route.
Ow, ow, ow. Someone was whining like a kicked puppy. That someone was me.
My fingers probed at the spell, pushed at it.
There. Where the thinnest tendril of the glyph stretched out to connect to the knotted lump in the center. The Binding originated there.
Keeping my right fingers on the point of origin, I brushed my left fingers more lightly out from there, followed the twists and knots until my fingertip rested on the exit point of the spell—the last line drawn before the spell had been stabbed into me. That point was deep in the gash I’d made with the knife.
Good news, I told myself. I didn’t have to make a second cut.
I gritted my teeth and stuck my fingers into the wound. Holy shit, that hurt. My fingers slipped across a very thin, glasslike thread in my flesh. That was the Binding, cast in blood magic, which had somehow turned solid beneath my skin. Or maybe blood magic always turned to glass. I didn’t know. And I didn’t care.
I pinched at the slippery thread, caught it between my thumb and fingernails. Then I tugged. The Binding slithered beneath my skin, unwinding with barbed pain along the path of its design.
Good, but not good enough.
I tugged harder, groaned. The glyph unwound some more. I could see the solid glass thread as it exited my skin, but as soon as it hit the air, it dissolved into ashy black smoke. And of course the harder I pulled, the more it hurt.
Pike was dying. The Veiled were closing in. I didn’t have time to be subtle. I clenched my teeth and yanked. Fire scraped across my thigh, up my belly, shocked across my nerves. Pain gouged my chest and stabbed my heart and lungs. I yelled and yelled. Stars burst at the edges of my vision.
But I didn’t stop pulling.
My vision narrowed. The only sound I could hear was the pounding of my blood. My world reduced to two things: pain and sheer determination not to stop pulling on the spell.
The Binding shattered, rising in the air like wisps of smoke from a sudden fire. I broke out in a heavy sweat, like a bad fever breaking. I was still sitting, my left hand pulled as far from my body as it could reach, the final ashes of the spell drifting away on the sweet-cherry-scented breeze.
Without knowing it, I’d pressed the dagger deep into my thigh again. Holy hells, that was going to scar. So much for wearing miniskirts.
Somehow I had managed to hold on to the Reveal spell. I blinked, looked up. The watercolor people—the Veiled, dead magic users—rushed me. Empty black eyes, mouths open, hands reaching, hungry for my magic.
I scrambled backward, turned my face away from their onslaught, and let go of the Reveal spell. The stink of dead flesh rushed past me, borne on an unnatural wind. And nothing more. No fingers, no eyes, no mouths.
I shuddered, gagged. Took a couple hard breaths. Then I dragged my ass back to where Pike lay.
Trager would now know the Binding was broken. He would now know I was not his little toy. And it pissed me off that I had just destroyed the evidence I had against him—evidence that would have thrown him in chains.
But when I made it to Pike, I didn’t care.
Pike was curled up on his bloodiest left side—Hounding instincts to keep the most vulnerable side of yourself hidden, protected. It meant his good eye—the eye he still had—was toward me.
I brushed my fingers over his neck, searching for a pulse. A sluggish throb sent a slow gush of blood over my fingers.
Deep blood. Lifeblood. Pouring down to the icy street.
Even though I didn’t remember doing it, Nola had told me I healed Zayvion with magic when the storm of wild magic raged over the city. Paying the price for that had thrown me in a coma and erased weeks of my life. It could have killed me.
But if I could do it once, I could do it again.
I calmed my mind, sang my little song, and shoved the panic to the side.
“Pike,” I said. “It’s Allie. I’m here. You’re going to be okay.” I ran my fumbling hands over his chest, his belly, looking for the deepest wound. His entire torso felt like ground beef—wet and pulpy everywhere. Someone had beat him physically and magically. I didn’t even know where to begin.
I took a deep breath and,
still holding the knife in one hand, pulled the magic up through my body. It responded better this time, spooling out through me like warm water over burned skin. I didn’t know any glyphs for healing—no one healed with magic. The price was too high. Even doctors used magic only as a tool to assist in healing, not as a means to the end.
I closed my eyes and directed the magic through my fingers and into Pike’s body.
Heal, I thought, putting my will and intent behind the magic. I held an image of him whole and well in my mind, and told the magic to make that happen, make him alive, breathing, healed.
Magic poured into Pike’s wounds, and there were a lot of them. Magic poured through me fast, faster. But instead of wrapping around his bones, spreading through his muscle and veins, mending and healing, the magic poured through him and then sank, useless, into the ground.
I couldn’t make it spread through him, couldn’t make it catch up the pieces of him and knit him back together. It was like he was made of sand, and all the magic I pumped into him drained into the earth without touching him.
No, no, no. What was I doing wrong?
I smelled the fetid rot of flesh again, opened my eyes. The Veiled shuffled slowly toward me. I did not stop pouring magic into Pike.
Pike’s eyelid flickered open. His eye roamed the flat, dark sky and then rolled down and focused on me.
“Al,” he rasped. “Trag used”—he inhaled, a short rattling breath that made his body stiffen—“my blood. To kidnap girls. Trag used Ant to cast like me. . . .” He inhaled again, his one eye wide, as if there were more words trapped behind his broken lungs, as if there were more words trapped in his broken body.
“Doctor,” he wheezed. “Has blood. Yours. Girls.”
My blood? What doctor? What girls? The kidnapped girls?
“Don’t let Trager free—” The painful inhale again.
“Easy, Pike,” I said. “It’s okay. I won’t let Trager free. I’ll take care of everything. You just hold on. Hold on, okay?”
A spasm wracked his body. His hand jerked out, gripped the blade that was still in my right hand. His blood mixed with mine, caught in the finely wrought runnels of the blade and slid down the liquid glyphs, turning the glowing symbols into a dull fire before dripping onto his chest.
“Not Ant’s fault. I . . . failed . . . him. Look after”—the painful inhale again—“the kid. The Hounds. They’re family. Mine. Yours.”
“Hey, now. Don’t get all soft on me. You and I can look after the Hounds together, okay? I promise.” I poured magic into him—more, faster.
“Worth it,” he exhaled.
Pike’s one eye stared at me. I did not look away from him. Did not look away from him as the Veiled rushed me and shoved greedy fingers into my skin, burning, hurting, eating the magic out of my flesh. Did not look away from him as the last spark of life drained from his eye. Did not look away from him as he became unnaturally still, vacant, empty. Dead.
Only then did I let go of the magic pouring into him. Only then did I look away from my friend.
As soon as I let go of the spell, the Veiled faded. I stung from head to foot. Felt like my skin had been scraped raw by frozen sandpaper. My thigh throbbed; my chest throbbed. Every breath caught and burned, and, damn it, tears poured down my face.
But I was raging inside, seething. And way past caring about my own pain.
I was angry as hell. Trager was going to pay. Fuck the law. I was going to kill him with my own hands. I pushed up onto my feet, turned a slow circle. I couldn’t smell Trager, but I could feel him like a dirty echo in my bones. He was here. Near. I followed my gut and my rage and walked toward the corner building. The wind picked up again, pulling ice off the skin of the river and slapping me in the face with it.
I felt alive. Focused. If this was the last thing I ever did, it would be worth it.
I strode along the building until I found a door that was partially open. The smell of blood came from that room—Trager’s blood. I tightened my hold on the dagger and calmed my mind. I didn’t hear anyone moving behind the door.
I pushed it the rest of the way open. Two rooms were divided by a wide arch in the center: an office. A large solid desk held down the back wall. Both rooms nicely furnished. Modern. Tasteful.
Except for the dead man with a slit throat on the floor. Lon Trager’s goon. There was a trail of dead people, actually, and if I had to guess how they got that way, I’d bet on Pike. I walked past them all, noting their fatal wounds with satisfied detachment. Slit throat, bullet hole in the head, bullets in the chest, a knife still lodged in the carotid artery. The man with half a head missing, his buddy sporting a matching wound—probably from the big-ass gun in the river of blood on the floor. Six of Trager’s men. The same six that had been on the bus with me.
Fuck, I thought. What a mess. Even though I was not accustomed to being this close to dead people, the numb rage that filled me let me note that I was going to have nightmares about this but also let me not care. All that was important right now was that Trager was not among the corpses. How could Pike have missed him?
Maybe another room, another office. I turned to leave. Heard someone struggling to stand behind me. I turned back around. Lon Trager stood behind the desk. Blood covered one side of his face, turned his crisp white business shirt red.
Looked like he and Pike had both gotten their hits in.
Trager white-knuckled the edge of the desk to stay standing. He held a gun in his other hand, leveled at my chest.
“Bye-bye, Beckstrom.”
I threw myself to one side, yelled at the fresh tear of pain in my thigh. The bullet grazed my left shoulder, and my vision went black for a moment.
Trager fell back in the chair behind the desk, breathing hard. He wasn’t moving. The gun clattered to the floor.
I pulled myself together and strode across the room, boots slapping in the blood of dead men. I walked around the desk and stopped in front of Trager. He watched me but did nothing more than breathe hard and hold still.
“You killed Pike,” I said.
Trager, the bastard, smiled. “Won’t be my last.”
With a strength I didn’t think he had, he lunged at me, a wicked knife in his hand.
Oh, hells, no. He wasn’t the only person with a knife in the room.
I gripped the dagger in both hands and thrust all my weight behind it.
Pain rattled through me again. Trager had aimed low, stabbing my thigh.
I, however, hadn’t. The dagger sank into his belly, catching against a scrape of rib on the way in. Trager went limp, heavy, his body dead weight against me, until all that held him up was my grip on the dagger in his gut.
“Yes,” I said, “it will.”
He gurgled and stank. I stepped back, pulling the dagger out as hard as I could. Then I watched him fall to the floor and move no more.
I was covered in blood. My blood, Trager’s blood, Pike’s blood.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was still screaming and screaming. This was a nightmare, and I wanted out. There was a dead man on my shoes. A man I had killed.
Killed.
But in the front of my mind, I was too furious to care.
I pulled my feet out from beneath Trager’s dead weight and then knelt and shoved him over so I could see his face. The dagger wound added to the blood already on his shirt. I was no expert, but it looked like Pike’s bullets, which had left three clean holes through his shirt directly over his heart, had done just as much damage—maybe more—as my knife in his gut.
I swore. Killing Trager, feeling him die in my hands, hadn’t changed my anger. And it hadn’t done a damn thing to bring Pike back. I stood and stared down at Trager, trying to make sense of it all. Pike had come to kill Trager, who had been waiting for him. Pike said Anthony had Pike’s blood—probably sold it to Trager in exchange for blood magic and drugs.
But Pike had said something else. The girls and a doctor. A doctor had my blood. I didn’t kno
w which doctor. But I knew how to Hound. And I sure as hell knew what my own blood smelled like. All I had to do was track it—track the magic in it—and I’d have the last piece in this puzzle.
“Jesus Christ,” a voice said behind me.
I swung around, dagger at the ready.
Davy Silvers, the hangover kid, stood in the doorway.
His eyes and nose were red, his cheeks splotchy. He’d been crying. He smelled faintly of alcohol and puke. He’d obviously been following me.
“You’re up early,” I said.
“Not early enough. Lon Trager?”
“Dead.”
