Magic Bleeds

by IIona Andrews

  I pointed to the door. “Age before beauty.”

  “Pearls before swine.” She strode out and I followed her. Pearls before swine. Blah-blah-blah.

  We headed out of the apartment and down the stairs. My side hurt like hell.

  We strode out into the snow-strewn parking lot. I swung my sword, warming up.

  “How’s your wound?” she asked. “Does it hurt?”

  I stretched my neck left, then right, popping it. “Every time I cut Solomon, he grunted in your voice like a stuck pig. It hurts you when the seven are wounded, doesn’t it? Oh, yes, I do apologize. Not seven. Five.”

  “Make your peace.” She waved me on.

  “Are we going to do this, or will you keep talking?”

  My aunt came across the snow, sword raised. Fast. Too fast. A woman that large should’ve been slower.

  Her blade thrust. Quick. I dodged and struck at her side. She parried. Our swords connected. Shock punched my arm. And strong like a bull.

  Erra sliced at my shoulder, I blocked, letting her blade slide off my saber, spun, and kicked at her. She leaped back. We broke apart.

  My aunt tossed her leather jacket into the snow and motioned to me with her fingers.

  “I’m sorry, am I supposed to bring it?”

  “What?”

  I charged and thrust. She parried, twisting. I hooked her leg with mine and sank the knuckles of my left hand into her ribs. Bone crunched. She rammed her elbow, aiming for my ribs. I turned with the blow and the jab barely grazed me. Pain ripped through my insides. We broke off again.

  Liquid heat drenched my side. She tore the wound open. Great.

  I saw the muscles on her legs tense and met her halfway. We clashed. Strike, strike, parry, strike, left, right, left, up. I danced across the snow, matching my movements to her rhythm and going faster, forcing her to follow mine. My side burned. Every small movement stabbed a white-hot needle into my liver. I clenched my teeth and fought through it. She was strong and inhumanly fast, but I was a hair faster.

  We dashed back and forth. She struck again and again. I dodged what I could and parried the rest. Blocking her was like trying to hold back a bear. She nicked my shoulder. I ducked under her reach, slashed her thigh, and withdrew.

  Erra raised her blade straight up. A drop of red slid down the blade. She touched it. “You know a lot of tricks.”

  “You don’t.” She was skilled, but all her attacks were straightforward. Then again, she didn’t have to rely on tricks. Not when she hit like a sledgehammer. “You learned to fight when magic was a certainty, so you rely on it to help you in a fight. I learned to fight when technology still had the upper hand and I rely on speed and technique. Without your spells and magic, you can’t beat me.”

  You aren’t better than me, nyah-nyah-nyah. Take the bait, Erra. Take the bait.

  “Clever, clever little squirrel. Fine. I’ll cut you to pieces by hand, without using my power. After all, you are family and one must make allowances for blood relatives.”

  We clashed again. Snow flew, steel flashed. I cut and diced, putting everything I had into my speed. She defended too well for a good body wound, so I went for her arms. If she couldn’t hold a sword, she couldn’t fight.

  Her knee caught me. The blow knocked me back. Pretty stars blocked my vision. I flew and hit the snow. Get up, get up, get up. I clawed on to consciousness and rolled to my feet, just in time to block her blade.

  Erra bled from a half-dozen cuts. Her sleeve dripped red into the snow. She pushed me back, grinding her blade against Slayer. My feet slid.

  “Where is your blood armor, little mongrel child? Where is your blood sword? I keep waiting for your power to show up, but it never does.”

  “I don’t need my blood to kill you.”

  “You’re bleeding.” She nodded at my side. My shirt stuck to my body, soaked with quickly cooling heat. I’d left a trail of red across the snow. “We both know how this will end. You’re better skilled, but you’re wounded. I’ll beat on you until the bleeding slows you down and then kill you.”

  Good plan. Right now it seemed very plausible.

  Erra nodded at the blood trail. “Use your blood while you still can so at least I’ll know you were worth something.”

  “I don’t need it.”

  “You can’t do it, can you? You don’t know how to work the blood. You foolish, foolish child. And you think you can beat me?”

  I dropped my guard and twisted to the side. She took a tiny step forward, off balance, and I knocked her left arm up and thrust. Erra jerked back. Slayer slid into her left armpit, quick as the kiss of a snake, and withdrew. She screamed. Blood streamed, but not fast. Not deep enough. Damn. I backed away.

  She laughed, baring her teeth, her hair falling about her face. Her lips moved, whispering. A healing chant. Fine, two could play that game. I murmured the incantation under my breath, chanting my side into regeneration.

  “I like you. You’re dumb but brave. If you run now, I’ll give you a head start,” she said. “Two days. Maybe three.”

  “You’d use the time to murder everyone I ever knew and then rub it in my face.”

  “Ha! You must be my child.”

  I bared my teeth. “If I was your child, I would’ve strangled myself in the womb with the cord.”

  She laughed. “I’ll kill your pretty lion and wear his skull as a hat when I return to your father.”

  “Don’t bring the lion into this. It’s about you and me.”

  She attacked. I parried, and she drove me back across the snow.

  Hit.

  Hit.

  Hit.

  My arm was going numb.

  She backhanded me. The apartment building jerked, dancing around me. The force of the blow spun me about. I staggered back, tasting blood in my mouth, and spat red into the snow.

  Erra growled. Her left arm hung limp. Finally bled out enough to cause some damage.

  “Pain is a bitch, huh?” I laughed. “That’s the trouble with being on top too long—you lose your tolerance.” The world teetered around me. My head rang. I couldn’t take much more. She was wearing me down and I bled like there was no tomorrow.

  Might as well use it. I swayed and let Slayer slip a bit in my fingers. Given that a pint of my blood decorated the snow in a pretty red pattern, swaying didn’t prove hard.

  Erra raised her sword. “Shake it off and take your last look around.”

  Anyone can kill anyone, as long as you don’t care if you live or die. Erra cared very much if she lived. I did, too, but pain didn’t scare me the way it scared her. I was better. If I timed it right, I might even live through it. I just needed to get a good strike and conserve my strength enough to deliver it. Let her do most of the work.

  “Talk, talk, talk. You prattle on and on, like a senile old woman. Are you slipping into your dotage?”

  She charged me. I saw her crystal clear, running through the snow, eyes wild, sword raised for the kill. Drop down, thrust up under the ribs. The way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach. If I sliced through her heart, she wouldn’t shake it off. She might be my aunt, but she was mortal, damn it.

  The world shrank to my aunt and the point of my sword.

  Curran, I wish we had more time.

  Julie, I love you.

  She came at me. The sword arm was too high. If I lunged under that first strike, she was mine.

  Something hit me from the left. Breath left my lungs in a single painful burst. I gasped, trying to inhale, and saw the ground vanish down below. Something clamped me in a steel grip and dragged me up the building.

  A bellow of pure rage chased us. “Come back here!”

  I managed to suck some air in my lungs.

  The arm that clenched me had scales on it.

  I twisted my neck. Red eyes stared at me with slit pupils. Below the eyes enormous jaws protruded, long and studded with triangular teeth. Olive scales fractured the skin. A shapeshifter? Shapeshifters didn’t cha
nge into reptiles. My arms were clamped. I couldn’t even cough.

  “What the hell are you doing? I had her!”

  The jaws gaped open. A deep female voice growled at me. “No. You can’t fight her.”

  “Drop me!”

  “No.”

  “Who are you?”

  The roof rushed at us. The edge loomed, and then we were airborne. We hit the next roof and she dashed across it.

  “Put me down.”

  “Soon enough.”

  The creature leaped again. The ruined city streamed by.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “It’s my job. He tasked me to protect you.”

  “Who? Who told you to protect me?”

  A familiar building swung into my view—Jim’s safe house.

  Jim had put a babysitter on me. I would kill him.

  We landed on a roof with a thud. A man lunged at us. She rammed him, knocking him off the roof, and drove her clawed hand into the shingles. Wood screeched. She tossed a piece of the roof aside and dropped into the hole. We fell and landed on the dining table, knocking the dishes aside. Faces stared at me: Jim, Dali, other people I didn’t know . . .

  The creature let go of me. A deep roar rolled from her mouth. “Take care of her.”

  She whipped about. A heavy tail swung over me, and she leaped, vanishing through the hole in the roof.

  CHAPTER 22

  JIM STARED AT ME. “WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?”

  “You tell me.” I rolled off the table, shook the stars out of my head, and staggered toward the doorway, where a hallway promised access to the door. I had to get out of there.

  “She’s bleeding,” someone barked.

  Green rolled over Jim’s eyes. “Dali, get Doolittle.”

  Dali dashed out.

  Jim clamped his hand on my shoulder. “Who was she?”

  The building swayed around me. “I don’t know.”

  Jim pointed past me. “You, you, and you—quarter-mile perimeter. You don’t know them, they don’t get in. You—roof, find Carlos. Brenna, Kate doesn’t leave. Sit on her if you have to. If I’m not back in half an hour, evacuate to the Southeast office.”

  He tensed and leaped up and to the right, bounced off the wall through the hole onto the roof. A blink and he was gone.

  A woman gripped me in a bear hug. I peered at her face, trying to bring it into focus. Short hair cut in a bob, reddish brown hair, green eyes, freckles . . . Brenna. One of the wolves working for Jim as a tracker. Last time we met, I’d put a silver needle into her throat and she bit my leg. She held my right arm and some blond woman I didn’t know held my left.

  I fixed my stare on Brenna. Her face was smudged. “Let go.”

  “I can’t do that.” She shook her head.

  “Brenna, take your hands off me or I’ll hurt you.” If only the room stopped spinning, I’d be all set.

  “That’s fine, Kate. I think I can take it.”

  Everybody was a smart-ass.

  Dali ran into the room. A black man in his fifties followed, wiping his hands with a towel. Doolittle.

  “And what have you done to yourself now?”

  His face crawled sideways. My stomach clenched into a tight ball and I vomited on the floor.

  “Let her go,” Doolittle snarled.

  The wolves released me. That’s right. Never piss off a werebadger.

  Doolittle leaned over me. “Dizzy?”

  I nodded. Pain rolled inside my head like a lead ball.

  He touched my face and I jerked back.

  “Easy, easy now.” Doolittle’s fingers pressed on my skin, holding my left eye open. “Uneven dilation. Blurred vision?”

  I knew the signs. I had a concussion, but it didn’t seem important. Slowly it sank in: Erra was gone. I’d lost my shot at her. “I almost had her. I could’ve taken her.”

  “Lay her down on her back, gently. Gently now.”

  Hands clamped me and lowered me to the floor.

  “I almost had her,” I told Doolittle.

  “I know you did, child. I know.”

  I wanted to get up, but I wasn’t sure which way up was and something told me I wouldn’t figure it out anytime soon either. “I have a concussion.”

  “Yes, you do.” Doolittle cut through my sweatshirt. “Brenna, put your hands on her head and keep her from moving.”

  “I almost had her. I could’ve taken her.”

  Someone, probably Brenna, pressed her hands on the sides of my face. “Why does she keep saying that?”

  “That’s just a little perseveration. People with head injuries do that. Nothing to worry about.” Doolittle peeled my T-shirt from my body. Draft chilled my skin.

  “That’s your reassuring voice,” I told him. “That means I’m seriously fucked up.”

  “No foul language now. Who patched you up?”

  “A rabbi at the Temple.”

  “He did a good job.”

  “I almost had her. Did I tell you that?”

  “Yes, you did. Hush now.” Doolittle began to chant. Magic stirred in me, slow and thick. He kept whispering, pouring power into the words. Slowly, like melting wax, magic grew liquid and warm and spread through me, flowing out from my chest all the way into my skull and toes.

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “He said to hush.” Brenna’s hand brushed my lips.

  “I almost—”

  “—had her, we know,” Brenna murmured. “You have to be quiet, Kate. Shhhh.”

  I closed my eyes. It felt like floating in a warm sea. Tiny hot needles stabbed my wound and danced inside my scalp. My side itched.

  “I need to talk to her,” Jim’s voice said through Doolittle’s chant.

  A sharp screech, halfway between roar and chatter, cut him off. It sounded either like a giant pissed-off squirrel or a small but equally pissed-off bear. The hair on the back of my arms rose. There was a word for that . . .

  “Bloodcurdling.” I heard my own voice. It sounded slurred.

  “If something is coming for her, I need to know what it is,” Jim said.

  “Make it quick,” Doolittle said.

  Jim leaned over me, his face a fuzzy smudge. That’s right, get closer so I can give you a piece of my mind.

  “Who brought you here?” Jim asked.

  “I almost had her.”

  “Here we go again,” Brenna muttered.

  I grabbed his shirt and pulled myself up.

  “Shit!” Brenna clamped her fingers on my cheeks.

  “I almost had her,” I squeezed out through my teeth. “I was a second from a strike and your babysitter grabbed me and dragged me up a building. You cost me my kill. Now all of you are fucked.”

  “Damn it, Jim.” Doolittle grabbed my shoulders, pushing me down. “Keep her head stabilized.”

  Jim’s fingers clenched my fist. “She wasn’t mine.”

  “Bullshit. She was a shapeshifter and she brought me to your safe house.”

  “Did you tell her where the house was?”

  Jim squeezed my hand, but I was too pissed off.

  “I told her to drop me. She said it was her job to protect me. Who else would order a shapeshifter to guard me? How would she find your place? Did you put a sign above the door—SECRET PACK HOUSE HERE, STRANGE SHAPESHIFTERS BRING A HUMAN SNACK?”

  Doolittle pressed a point just below my wrist, cutting off the circulation to my hand. My fingers went numb.

  Jim pulled free. “We’re clearing out.”

  Doolittle pushed me back down. “She can’t be moved.”

  “An unknown shapeshifter punched a hole through the roof and took off before I could catch her. The house is compromised. How much time do you need to stabilize her?”

  “Ten minutes.”

  “You have them, then we move.”

  Doolittle bent over me and began to chant.

  Ten minutes later Doolittle clamped my neck into a brace and Brenna picked me up. She carried me down the stairs
like I was a child. The stairs were impossibly high and swirling, like a spiral. I squirmed, trying to get away, but Brenna only gripped me tighter. “Don’t worry, Kate. I won’t drop you.”

  She loaded me into a small sled. People from Jim’s crew moved around us. Doolittle strapped me to the sled, Brenna took the reins, and we were off.

  I LAY IN THE BED, STRIPPED DOWN TO MY BRA and underwear, and watched the bag of O-negative empty into my veins. My attempt to explain that my head had cleared and I didn’t need extra attention, and definitely not the extra blood, bounced from Doolittle like dried peas from the wall. He pointed out that he had pulled me from the brink of certain death three times, and he apparently had given me blood transfusions before and he might be just an ignorant doctor, but as far as he could tell, I was still breathing and it would make his day if we could save some time and assume that he knew what he was doing. His life would be much easier if suicidal hardcases would take that into account, thank you very much.

  My ribs still hurt, but instead of sharp stabbing jolts that made me growl, the pain fused into a solid heavy pressure.

  Doolittle walked around my bed. “You will be the death of me.”

  “I’m pretty sure I’ll die before you do, Doc.”

  “That I don’t doubt.”

  He picked up a mirror from the table and held it up to me. I looked.

  Most of me was pale and a bit green looking. A dark purple patina covered the corner of my jaw, promising to develop into a spectacular bruise. The second stain covered my midsection, where my aunt had kicked me. I’d flexed my stomach, so my innards didn’t turn into mush, and the abdominal muscles took the brunt of the punishment.

  “Green and purple, a stunning combination.”

  Doolittle shook his head, unplugged me from the empty blood bag, and handed me a glass filled with brown liquid, resembling iced tea. “You look like you’ve had an unfortunate encounter with one of the gangs from the Warren.”

  “You should see the other”—guy, no, wait, girl, woman—“person.” Somehow that didn’t quite deliver the snappy impact I had originally planned.

  Doolittle fixed me with a stare. “Bed rest for the next twenty-four hours.”

  “I can’t do that, Doc.” Knowing him, he’d try to sedate me. So far he hadn’t—I had watched my IV like a hawk. If I had things my way, I’d be up and running. Right now Erra was injured and at her weakest. It was a good time to hit her, but the chances of finding her, even armed with shapeshifters, were nil. My aunt was psychotic but not stupid.