by Kim Harrison
“You treacherous demon bitch!” Landon screamed, and I gasped as Trent stood, dumping me in his effort to get between me and Landon.
“You will not!” Trent shouted as he stood over me, gesturing.
Landon howled, red faced, as he did the same. But nothing happened. Blinking, he looked at his hands.
Trent became white faced, and Al laughed. “You broke the lines, little man,” the demon said, and Landon backed up as Al strode forward, white-gloved hand reaching. “Guess what? I’m bigger than you.”
The lines were dead. Jenks . . . Where’s Jenks?
Landon made a dash for the door, robes unfurling as his soft slippers scuffed.
“Excuse me,” Al said, striding out after him.
“Jenks!” I called, sitting up in panic, and then opened my fist, remembering that I’d been holding him. “Oh God! Are you okay?” I asked, seeing him peering up at me with his wings hardly glowing and his narrow face pinched.
“I don’t feel so good,” the pixy said as he rubbed his shoulder. “Did we win?”
The lines were dead. The ever-after was going to vanish. But the demons would not go with it. “I don’t know,” I whispered, beginning to shake.
Trent sat down beside me, exhausted. “The hospitals are going to be full. I’m taking you home to get that leg looked at.”
My attention darted to my thigh. It was throbbing like the devil, but at least the bleeding had stopped. “Where’s Ivy? Nina?”
“About five minutes ahead of us,” Trent said as he looked at Jenks sitting on my palm, trembling from the cold and shock.
“Lucy?” I asked as he stood.
“With Ellasbeth,” he said shortly as he lifted me to my feet.
The blood rushed from my head and I stood for a moment, wavering. I could hear noise in the street. The lines were gone. Magic was dead. We’d be lucky to get out of Cincinnati before midnight. “You think giving her to Ellasbeth was a good idea?”
Trent tucked a shoulder under mine. “I think you were right about her and I was wrong. Can you walk?”
Jaw clenched, I took a hobbling step to the door. “I might have broke something.”
“I think so, too. We should get out of here.”
Nauseated and holding Jenks close, I limped to the door. The demons were safe, but I’d killed the source of magic to do it. That probably wasn’t going to go over very well.
Chapter 27
I leaned hard against Trent as the elevator lurched and settled. My leg throbbed, and I cupped a depressed pixy tight to me. I knew Jenks was thinking about his kids, scattered over the city, and Jumoke and Izzy at Trent’s estate. If he couldn’t fly, then they couldn’t either. There were no predators in Trent’s gardens, but that wasn’t what Jenks would be worried about. It was the natural magic from free-ranging mystics that gave pixies flight, and there wasn’t enough of them around anymore. The Goddess was pissed, having gathered her untold thousands of eyes to her and gone brooding somewhere, plotting to kill me.
Or at least most of them, I thought as a tingle passed between Trent and me as the ornate doors slid apart. Noise spilled in, and what little zest I had left for the day vanished as I saw the FIB hats and I.S. vests in the lobby. “What happened?” I asked as Jenks perked up, a faint dust hazing him.
“Looks like someone made a call.” Trent scooped me up and carried me out when I balked. There were too many people, and I was sure more than one of them wanted to talk to me in ugly, accusing voices. My bleeding leg was obvious, and Trent started for the front desk. Both an I.S. and an FIB cop were interviewing a tearful hotel employee, and the restaurant to the left was full of sullen Weres. One of them caught sight of me, jiggling his buddy’s elbow before grinning and giving me a bunny-eared kiss-kiss.
Heads began to turn, and I felt sick. “There’s Edden,” I said as I looked over Trent’s shoulder to the bar. Immediately Trent did a one-eighty, making me dizzy. “Do you see Nina or Ivy?”
Trent shifted his grip on me before taking the shallow stairs up, his jolting pace making my leg throb even more. “No. I think they got out before all this.”
“I can’t see fairy farts,” Jenks complained. “Rache, it’s my wings that don’t work, not my brain. Put me on your shoulder, will you?”
Someone pointed us out to Edden and he grimaced before turning away again. It wasn’t a promising start. “You sure you can hold on?”
“Hell yes,” the pixy grumbled, and I carefully shifted him. “I’m not going to yell at Edden from your hand.”
“I know how you feel,” I said, glancing at Trent. “Ah, I appreciate this, but—”
“You will sit where I put you and not move,” he said as he pushed his way through the milling uniforms and into the informal bar area. “’Scuse me. Pardon!” he said loudly, finally setting me on one of the bar stools. It was about the right height, but I almost lost my breakfast at the pain when Trent moved someone’s satchel off the adjacent stool and lifted my leg onto it.
“Edden,” I called, and the man’s ears went red. “Edden!” I called louder, and his shoulders hunched. I debated sliding down and hobbling over, but Trent gestured for me to stay, needing to turn sideways to slip through the crowd to reach him.
“This sucks,” Jenks complained from my shoulder, and I waved at Edden when he looked at me after Trent shook his hand. The officers he was talking to broke up, and the short, graying, and overworked FIB captain reluctantly came over, hands in his pockets.
“Edden, did you see Ivy and Nina?” I asked even before he got close.
Edden glanced at the big glass doors, clearly worried. “I saw them into the ambulance myself,” he said, then sent his gaze over my bleeding leg, Jenks sitting on my shoulder, and then Trent. “Al said you were going to try and stop Landon.” He pulled himself straighter, looking over the crowd. “Paramedic! I’ve got a non-life-threatening GSW!”
“Gee, thanks,” I said, trying to smile. Al, eh? Interesting . . .
“The slug is still in her leg.” Trent hovered close to keep people from knocking into me. “Can you get her to emergency or should I take her home?”
Edden scratched his shoulder, his expression creased in worry. “It will take an hour to get an ambulance out here. How fast is your copter?”
“An hour!” I exclaimed, and Jenks’s wings clattered when Edden took my chin and peered at me.
“You aren’t dying,” he said distantly, evaluating my pain by the look in my eyes. “The roads are clogged.” He let go of my chin and straightened. “This is worse than last time.”
An unusually small woman with a Red Cross tackle box was trying to push her way through the taller people. I heard a grunt and the man blocking her way jumped. “Oh, I’m sorry!” She beamed up at him, worming her way closer and shoving people to make a space around me. “My God, you would think they were afraid to go outside,” she muttered, eyeing me for signs of shock. “Why are there so many Weres here?”
“They cleared the hotel out for me,” I said, and Edden started edging backward and beckoning someone closer. She was poking at my leg, so I looked away, trying not to pass out. If I passed out, I’d never make it to the next fight, and there was going to be another. The vampires’ souls were gone. I’d felt them being pulled back to the ever-after, trapped in a universe that would soon shrink to nothing and die. Cormel was going to be pissed.
I looked past Trent—now on the phone with a finger in his open ear—to the night-gloomed street. Traffic was stopped, and the flashes of red and blue lights on the buildings were ominous. “I can’t believe you hired Al,” I said to get my mind off my leg, and Edden’s entire demeanor shifted to a pleased wickedness. “Seriously? Where is he, anyway?”
“Chasing down Landon.” Edden almost swaggered, so pleased was he. “He’s the one who called us in. We got here before the I.S. Ah, if it’s any consolation, Cormel agrees that the elves were trying to kill the undead.”
“No, that doesn’t help,” I said so
urly, then jerked, pain stabbing me. “Ow?”
The paramedic looked at Edden, not me. “It’s still in there.”
“I know it’s still in there!” I exclaimed, and Trent smiled as he put a hand over his phone.
“Edden, the surface demons are gone, correct?” he asked, and Edden nodded.
“You need to get that leg looked at,” Edden said.
“I am,” I said snarkily, gesturing at the woman wrapping a temporary bandage around my leg so it wasn’t so awful looking.
“I mean,” Edden said, leaning in close, “by someone who can do something about it.”
I smiled hopefully at the paramedic, and she shook her head.
“No. This goes to emergency. I don’t have the forms to file for taking out a bullet.”
Trent snapped his phone closed. He looked pleased with himself and I swear I felt a tingle as his hand touched my shoulder. “My med copter is coming. I’ll take care of Rachel. Where did they take Ivy?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Can you find out?” Jenks piped up, and Edden’s “I have things to do” expression softened at the worry in the pixy’s voice.
“I’ll ask.” Edden gave my other shoulder a squeeze. He headed out into the mess, shouting a request to get a name and contact number from the Weres and get them out of here. I thought it sweet that Trent was going to take me to the same facility where Ivy and Nina were. Or maybe he knew I’d never stay at the hospital unless I could hobble down the hallway to make sure Ivy was okay.
The paramedic pushed some pills into my hand and curled my fingers over them. “Pain amulets aren’t working. Find some water and take these. You have four hours to get that bullet removed and sutured, or they’re going to make it heal open and ugly. Got it?”
“Got it,” I whispered as she snapped her tackle box closed and went to tend to someone’s crushed finger. I opened my hand and looked at the little packet of pills. I suppose it was better than nothing, and I took the glass of water Trent had reached over the bar for.
“Thanks,” I said, words garbled as I juggled the pills around on my tongue. “You know there are a lot of people who need a medical copter more than me.” God, they tasted awful, and I swallowed them down and made a face.
“I’m sure there are,” Trent said as he kissed my forehead.
“Tink loves a duck,” Jenks complained. “You’re not going to sift your dust together right here, are you? Take me over to Edden. He’s warm.”
Edden was stuck in the middle of the floor, and I didn’t like the way he kept looking back at me or the shade of red his neck was turning. The Weres were beginning to leave, and Jenks’s wings tickled my neck as we both realized that every single one of them was running in the same direction the instant they hit the pavement. “What is going on?” I asked.
Jenks sifted a thin, frustrated dust and Trent fidgeted, his expression wary as we watched three more Weres run down the street. “Ah . . . I’ll be right back,” he said when Jenks began making a weird whine, Trent jiggling on his feet before lurching into motion and striding to Edden. The floor was clearing out—and it made me even more nervous than the crowded one.
“I don’t care if it’s the devil himself they got pinned down, you get your ass over there now and stop it!” Edden was shouting.
Jenks’s wings clattered, the barest hint of silver slipping down my front. “You just going to sit here?”
My leg was bandaged, and I held it as I moved it off the stool, teeth clenched as I tried not to use my leg muscles at all. My stomach lurched, and I almost lost those lame pills. I hesitated, the bar hard under my hand as I planned my way over, noting every handrail, every chair.
“Come on, Rache!” Jenks urged. “They’re almost done!”
I painfully hobbled forward, every step hurting. Trent caught sight of me, his expression shifting to annoyance, and he slid an arm around my back to hold me up as I made the last few steps to lean on the decorative side table. “What’s up?” I asked.
Clearly upset, Edden pointed at five more men, and they trooped out. Six more released Weres jostled around them and ran up the street in the same direction.
“Rachel, I’m sorry,” the captain said. “Get up to the roof and wait for Trent’s copter. I have to go. There’s a mob at Fountain Square, and without magic, we can’t stop it.”
“That’s like half a block from here,” Jenks said, and my eyes flicked to the door and the new night beyond.
“Which is why you are going to go to the roof until Trent can get you out.”
Get me out? Suspicious, I put a hand on Edden’s arm and stopped him cold. “Why?”
“Get her out!” Edden exclaimed, his eyes hard on Trent as he pried my fingers off.
Trent’s hold on me strengthened as he began to pull me toward the elevators. “Let’s go, Rachel,” he said, but his worry tripped all my warning flags and I dug my heels in—so to speak.
“Trent, what don’t you want me to see?”
Edden’s expression became almost panicked, and I squinted mistrustfully at Trent as he soothed me with a calm “It’s nothing you can do anything about.”
Nothing I can do anything about?
Jenks’s wings fluttered and he tugged on my ear. “Rache, they’ve got a demon pinned down in the square. My wings are broken, not my ears.”
“Jenks!” Edden exclaimed, and Trent, too, winced.
“At the square?” I looked at the doors, remembering the Weres running that way. Panic slid through me at the thought of what a human, what anyone, might do if they found a demon unable to do magic. My God. Al.
“Way to go, Jenks,” Trent grumbled.
“You said she couldn’t do anything about it!” Jenks shouted, hurting my ear. “Well, she’s not dead, is she?”
“And I want to keep it that way!” Trent argued.
I pushed up from the table, telling myself that my leg didn’t hurt that much now that I’d swallowed those pills. “Is it Al?” I asked, and Trent lifted his shoulders, unhappy. “You don’t know!”
Edden put a hand on my shoulder and I shrugged it off. “You didn’t think this wasn’t going to happen, did you?” he said, brown eyes sad as he looked past Trent to the dark street. “Demons have preyed upon humans and Inderlanders for thousands of years, and now that they’re helpless, what did you expect? That we’d take them to our bosoms and make cocoa?”
“Something a little better than this.” Teeth clenched, I shoved past Trent and headed for the door. It was only half a block. I could hear the noise from here.
“Damn it, Jenks!” Trent swore. “This was exactly what I was trying to avoid.”
“Rachel!” Edden called, following me. “You’re not in any shape—”
I took a step down, pain widening my eyes. Breathless, I leaned against the stairway railing. God help me, I had two more to go. “I just busted my ass getting them to reality. I’m not going to let a mob kill them! Now either get me over there or get out of my way!”
Both men were silent as they looked at me, both with regret.
“Well?” I snapped, pain making my words sharper than I wanted. “Just how serious are you about this, or is it all only if it’s convenient?”
“That’s not fair,” Trent said, and then I gasped when he scooped me up.
“Trent! Put me down!” I shouted. “You son of a bastard, put me down!”
But Jenks was laughing. “Relax, Rache. Look at his ears. He’s taking you to the square.”
“You are?” Blinking fast, I put my arm around Trent’s neck to distribute my weight more evenly. Sure enough, Trent’s ears were red with irritation and his jaw was set. “I knew I loved you,” I said, almost crying. “Oh God. Thank you.”
Trent’s gaze was fixed on the door as Edden dropped back in frustrated defeat. “I hope you still do by sunrise,” he said dryly. “This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Kalamack, she can’t even walk!” Edden protested as I used my good
foot to shove the glass door open.
The smell of the concrete night rose up around us, gritty on my tongue with the flashing lights and the sounds of an angry crowd. “You sure?” Trent asked.
The sound of gunfire popped. I thought of Al. I had no magic, no safety net, and I couldn’t walk well. “Yes.” I had to, even if fear had me so tense I felt sick.
Trent began to walk, his steps usually so graceful now jarring.
“Okay,” I said more to myself than anyone else. “We’ll finish this, find out where Ivy and Nina are, and then go to Trent’s to check on Lucy. I’m sure they’re fine. Trent, I’m sure she got Lucy out of here before the sun went down.”
“She did,” Trent said as we turned the corner. “I already . . . called. My God . . .”
He stopped dead on the sidewalk as the wall of sound hit us. My mouth dropped as I stared, heart hammering. The square was packed with screaming people, angry, with their fists in the air. The lights were bright and the big TV showed a frightened newscaster, the captions spelling tragedy and fear as the sun went down across the U.S. On the stage in a bright spotlight was a man with a handgun. He was pointing it at a kneeling figure before him, bloodied and beaten. Bound and held from behind by two more men was an androgynous figure with big bony feet showing from under a shapeless robe. Newt.
“No!” I screamed, wiggling until I hit the ground. Trent pulled me up, and I reached out.
“Stop!” I screamed as the man on the stage shouted something. The crowd howled, and then I almost passed out as the flash of the gun and the sound of a shot shocked through me.
A wave of sound echoed between the buildings as the mob cried out. I could not breathe, could not believe it as the bound figure fell, dead, on the stage. I. Could. Not. Believe. This.
“At least it smells better than the French revolution,” Al said at my elbow.
I spun, almost falling until Trent propped me up. “My God,” I said, touching Al in his new suit and lingering on his red, goat-slitted eyes. “Go,” I said, shoving him back toward the hotel. “Go! Get out of here! Trent has a copter coming. Go!”
