He was dragging the unconscious barker from the wing of the stage, and he’d not gone easy on him. Dropping the bloodied man, he peered up and froze. On the balcony levels, uniformed men were spreading toward the railings. The ushers may have been willing sluggers, but the museum’s hired security were armed with revolvers.
“Step away from the mermaid!” one of them ordered, aiming his weapon.
With an uttered Word, I shaped a defensive wall across the front of the stage. In the distance, alarm bells clanged throughout the museum. I thought about Caroline, reassuring myself that she could blend in with the crowds and escape. But Bree-yark and I were three floors up with more security en route.
“There’s a back way.”
Gorgantha was standing now, water dripping from her talons. She’d wiped the hair from her face so both eyes were visible again. Though they still lacked recognition, they appeared to hold more trust.
She cocked her head. “Over there.”
“Lead the way,” I said.
She took off toward the side of the stage, webbed feet slapping wood. Gunfire began popping behind us. I winced from the impacts against my shield, but it held until we were out of range. We raced past a line of stage props, including Mimi’s and Biggs’s chairs, and through a set of double doors, which I sealed behind us.
We were in a large gaslit room where the water tank must have been stored. There was a second, much smaller tank near the far wall, and I shuddered to think it had held Gorgantha when she wasn’t performing. Just looking at it made me claustrophobic. A crane with a pile of netting stood near some long-handled brushes and shelves of bottled chemicals that leaked a stringent stench.
Gorgantha pointed out a door to our right. “Jokers who fed me came in and out through there. The fish were always spoiled,” she added in a mutter.
“I’ll check it out,” I said, anticipating a stairway down to a back alley or loading area.
A thunk sounded, and a knife appeared above the door handle. I yanked my arm back and spun. The next blade punctured my billowing coat below the armpit and implanted itself beside the first knife. I darted for cover, but my pinned coat jerked me back against the door, and my cane clattered to the floor.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
When I stretched for my cane, a third knife punched through the other side of my coat, and my cane rolled out of reach.
“Pretty ballsy trying to steal off with the main attraction,” the knife juggler said. He had entered from a back door partially blocked from view by the small tank. Another knife was flexed above his supple wrist while eight or nine more flickered in the light of the gas lamps from a belt around his waist.
“She’s a friend,” I growled.
“She fills seats,” he countered.
His twin emerged from behind him, his knife cocked at Bree-yark. “Yeah, puts bacon on our tables.”
“Then maybe you should make nice with the local butcher,” Bree-yark snarled, “’cause she’s coming with us.” His goblin blade was drawn, but at his distance, he would absorb a dozen knives before he got within striking range. The jugglers apparently had the same read, because they smirked in response.
“Put that away, kid,” one of them said, “before you hurt yourself.”
“Oh, I’ll put it somewhere all right,” Bree-yark promised, but stayed put.
A lanky sword swallower with a shock of blond hair stepped between the jugglers, wielding a blade almost as long as he was tall. His grin was cold-blooded. With Bree-yark and me covered, he circled Gorgantha.
“All right, lovely,” he said, slapping her thigh with the flat of his sword. “Fun and games are over. Back into the tank.”
24
I looked over the preposterous scene—we were being schooled by the opening act, for crissakes—but the danger was real. The jugglers could release their blades in the time it took to blink, and with lethal accuracy. And I didn’t like the sadistic grin on the sword swallower’s face. But while they’d been talking, I’d been gathering energy, rehearsing the invocations I would need to cast in rapid succession.
When Bree-yark glanced over at me, I returned a nod.
In the next moment, my cane rattled over the floor and leapt into my outstretched hand. “Protezione!” I shouted.
The juggler’s arriving knife broke through the still-forming shield, but the invocation was enough to alter the knife’s spin and trajectory. The handle struck my shoulder and bounced to the floor.
Bree-yark used the distraction to put the small tank between himself and the other juggler. A knife spun past him. The twins rearmed, blades flashing from belts, but I’d already formed the next invocation in my mind. I allowed the barest moment for energy, breath, and intention to align before releasing the Word.
“Vigore!”
The force split from my cane and into each juggler’s chest. I hadn’t bothered calibrating—there wasn’t time. The result was a pair of cannonballs. The forces plowed the jugglers into the wall with bone-fracturing force and dropped them among their spilled blades. One groaned weakly while the other kicked the floor in agony.
The sword swallower looked from his downed companions back to Gorgantha—just as her fist arrived. The blow collapsed his grin into his neck and sent his feet out from under him. He landed on his back, gurgling for air. Gorgantha wasn’t done. She grabbed him under an arm and began dragging him.
“All right, lovely,” she said, mimicking him from earlier. “Fun and games are over.”
He was still clutching the long sword, but he couldn’t even raise it. The blade rattled across the floor impotently. At the tank, Gorgantha hooked her other arm between his legs and dropped him into the water, sword and all. She slammed the lid closed and locked it with a lever. The swallower ended up in a hunch, lips pulling at the few inches of air beneath the lid, one hand clawing the glass.
“Bitch,” Gorgantha muttered.
Clearly impressed with the mer’s work, Bree-yark sheathed his blade and followed her from the tank at a trot. Meanwhile, I slipped out of my coat, pried the daggers free, and was pushing my arms back through the sleeves when fire burst from the back door.
“Really?” I complained.
Drawing his coat over his head, Bree-yark lunged in front of Gorgantha to absorb the brunt of the attack. As the flames petered out, four men with shaved heads and missing eyebrows emerged. The frigging firebreathers. And judging by Bree-yark’s charred coat, they were breathing some heavy-duty shit. Gorgantha, with her sensitive skin, backed from their flickering torches and jugs of fuel.
“Not so tough now, eh?” one of them jeered.
Before I could force-blast the firebreathers into next month, Bree-yark charged. Legs churning, he went in low, coat still shielding his head. Eruptions of flames broke against him, but he didn’t slow.
“You wanna see tough?” he roared.
Three of the firebreathers were smart enough to backpedal through the doorway, but the one who’d spoken tried to get off another blast. Bree-yark reached him first. Seizing his arm, the goblin rotated several times, his large feet pirouetting over the floor, and released the airborne man into the doorway.
The firebreather’s jug smashed against the frame, and his torch landed in the spilled fuel. Flames burst over the sides of the door and up the plank wall. Bree-yark shuffled back and shed his smoking coat. Dragged by the legs, the downed firebreather disappeared beyond the spreading flames.
“You all right?” Bree-yark asked Gorgantha.
“Yeah, just a little dried out. Those were some dope moves.”
Bree-yark blushed. “Well, I could say the same about yours.”
The double doors we’d entered through began to shake.
“Don’t worry,” I said, looking over. “I locked it with magic.”
No sooner had the words left my mouth than the frame separated from the wall, and the whole doorway collapsed into the room. Biggs the ogre ducked through the wave of dust and faced us. He’d shed his jacket, and
his unshouldered suspenders were dangling from his beltline like a ship’s rigging. He must have ditched his back brace too, because he was stooped, knuckles nearly scraping the floor.
Just keeps getting better.
His dull eyes roved from one of us to the other. He looked strong enough to, well, bust down a magically sealed door, but I wasn’t going to expend power on him. Not when we could outrun the cumbersome brute.
“Let’s go,” I called to my teammates.
I opened the backdoor onto a staircase just as Mimi zipped in behind Biggs, her beating wings trailing purple-silver light. She smacked the ogre in the back of the head as she passed him. “Why are you just standing there? Stop them!”
“Ungh?” Biggs asked.
Sighing, Mimi fired off a bolt. Though the dusty burst of light above my hand looked tiny, the force jerked the door from my grasp and slammed it shut again. I yanked on the door, but fae magic sealed it now. I glanced over at the fingers of flames spreading across the wall. Were we ever going to get out of here?
“Well, if it isn’t Miss Sell Out,” Bree-yark said.
Oh, not now, I thought, digging furiously for my cold iron amulet.
“And what are you supposed to be?” Mimi squealed, dispersing his glamour with the wave of a hand.
Bree-yark drew himself up. “Someone with more self-respect in his pinky finger than you have in your whole body.” That her whole body was only slightly larger than the finger in question stole some of the line’s zing.
“Ha! Self-respect and goblin don’t even belong in the same room.”
“I’m not the one whoring myself out for laughs,” Bree-yark shot back.
“Like you could whore yourself out for anything. Look at you!”
Bigg’s deep-set eyes rolled from side to side, as if following a ping pong match. Behind me, Gorgantha had begun tugging on the rear door. If I could feel the fire’s growing heat, she was suffering it fourfold. I needed to find the damned amulet, blast Mimi into Never Never Land, and unseal the door.
The amulet’s still in Bree-yark’s pouch, I realized.
I looked up as he swiped his blade at the pixie, her last remark apparently having struck a nerve. Mimi easily darted out of the way. I expected her to respond with a blast, but she only upped the taunting.
“What do a flower and a goblin have in common?” she asked. “A flower is pretty and a goblin is pretty ugly.”
For the period, that wasn’t bad.
“Bree-yark?” I called. “Mind tossing me your pouch?”
But he was swearing now and jumping up and down, blade whistling through the air.
“What do you call a wart on a goblin?” Mimi continued, zipping deftly around his futile strikes. “‘Poor thing.’”
Absorbed in their petty contest, the two were behaving as if half the freaking room wasn’t on fire. I was preparing to snag Bree-yark’s pouch with a force invocation when Biggs lumbered forward, arm swinging. I stumbled over my words as I tried to redirect the invocation, but the ogre wasn’t aiming for Bree-yark.
“You’re mean,” he rumbled.
“Hey!” Mimi cried, casting a protective sphere the instant before the ogre’s hand closed around her. Bursts of fae light flashed between his clenched fingers, but he was apparently immune to her magic as well as her screaming threats. Beyond him, an army of footsteps stampeded across the theater stage.
“Go,” he said. “I’ll stop ’em.”
I gave him a salute. “Thanks a lot, Biggs.”
“Yeah, thanks, big guy,” Bree-yark said. “And I’m sorry about, you know, what I said.”
Though his insults had been directed at Mimi, they’d included Biggs by association. In the same waving gesture, the ogre told him it was all right and to get going. With Mimi’s energies diverted to freeing herself, Gorgantha overcame the sealing enchantment. When the door broke open, I took the lead down the stairs.
Finally, I thought, blowing out my breath.
Gorgantha followed me, and Bree-yark moved in behind her. At each floor, I cast a locking spell on the door to the stairwell to avoid further encounters. Above us, bodies thumped and rolled. Several shots sounded, but unless the security were wielding iron rounds—which I doubted—Biggs would be fine. I was more worried about the upbraiding he was going to get from Mimi when he released her.
At least she’ll be able to put out the fire.
I was thinking of the pixie’s powerful enchantments, which would include frost, when a series of explosions sounded, rocking the stairwell. I’d forgotten all about the building’s gas line. I imagined the pipe-fed lanterns throughout the museum erupting and spewing flames over wood and drapery.
“Keep going!” I shouted at Bree-yark, who had paused to peer up.
At the ground floor, I flung a door open onto a large loading area. The space was clear, workers apparently having heeded the alarm still clanging away inside. I led the way down a short flight of wooden steps to a cobbled lane.
Panting, I waited for Gorgantha and Bree-yark to catch up. Blown-out glass littered the narrow street, while smoke gushed from the top-floor windows.
The museum had already begun evacuating when I shattered Gorgantha’s tank. If Caroline had exited with the crowds, she and Arnaud would be on Broadway by now. But the three of us couldn’t very well circle the building to meet her: a marked man, a goblin, and a six-and-a-half-foot mermaid. There was also the matter of retrieving the locket for Hellcat Maggie, but not without getting Gorgantha somewhere safe first.
I was considering where that might be when a shout went up. At the other end of the street, a group of men in navy blue caps and frock coats turned the corner and stampeded toward us.
“The po-po,” Gorgantha muttered.
Sure enough, the copper stars pinned to their chests marked them as Vega’s distant predecessors, early NYPD. But even in official attire, the crew looked rough-and-tumble, more likely to billy-club the peace into a crippled heap than preserve it. Lips snarled under broken noses and from jagged teeth.
“Here we go again,” Gorgantha said, drawing her webbed hands into reluctant fists.
In the light of day, I could see the toll that captivity had taken on her. Her muscles lacked solidity, and her turquoise color had dulled to a depressed grayish blue. And then there were the nasty burns.
Another police unit appeared at the opposite end of the street, bringing their numbers to a healthy dozen. Bree-yark, still hot from his melee with Mimi, drew his blade and growled, “Their funeral.”
“Be ready to run, guys,” I said.
“Run?” Bree-yark echoed indignantly.
But the question remained, run where? We were at the beating heart of a mega city. We needed to find refuge, and I didn’t know 1861 New York well enough. The immediate issue, though, was the cops. With a whispered Word, I hardened the air into shields on either side of us. Could I summon enough force to scatter the officers senseless? After my recent string of casting, the thought alone exhausted me. If Thelonious hadn’t suspended our agreement, the depraved incubus would have been knocking about now.
A door across the street opened and a little girl’s face appeared. “Come.”
It took a moment for the dull eyes to register. One of Maggie’s blood slaves.
I waved Gorgantha and Bree-yark toward the door. “Go!”
I had to give Bree-yark a shove to get him moving. By the time we arrived at the door, the first cops were colliding into the shields. The rest pulled up. While some pawed the invisible barrier, mouths gaping, others glowered as if the shield were a perversion and began beating it with their clubs.
That’ll keep them busy.
Passing through the doorway behind my teammates, I slammed the door and locked it with magic. Bree-yark pulled Dropsy from his pouch, her eager glow illuminating a flight of steps that dropped us into a basement crowded with crates. Ahead of our sphere of light, the girl’s dust-colored ponytail flipped back and forth.
We
broke from the building, crossed a wide street—pedestrians and carriage drivers too transfixed on the smoke and clamoring of a major fire to notice us—and descended into the basement of a second building. The girl navigated the subterranean corridors like she’d done it a hundred times.
At the next building, she led us through a side door but upstairs this time. After several floors, the girl slowed and walked us into an empty room, the scent of stone dust suggesting recent construction.
I was startled to find Hellcat Maggie sitting in a large window opposite us, one leg perched on the sill, her prosthetic leg swinging below her skirt. Her eyes lingered for an extra beat on Gorgantha before moving to me. Maybe I’d overestimated her fear of Grandpa’s ring. Extending an arm, she unfurled her long nails.
“The locket.”
“We, um, didn’t get that far,” I said.
“It’s still in there?” When she turned toward the arched window, I inched forward. The window gave us a vantage over Barnum’s Museum. Red flames lashed through the smoke that was pouring out from all sides now.
“Holy thunder,” Bree-yark breathed, coming up beside me.
An enormous crowd had gathered around the museum, but now they were screaming and beating it the other way as animals from the live collection began spilling out. The albino tiger bolted down Broadway, a gaggle of men in pursuit, while the two-headed monkey scaled a building across the street in a shrill duet of chattering.
I glanced back to find Gorgantha peering past our heads, her lips set in a grim line. West of the museum, I spotted Biggs the ogre. He was holding the reins of an African elephant as if it were a pony, leading it to safety. Giraffes galloped past. My eyes cut back to the museum just as the rear section sagged.
“It’s still in there?” Maggie repeated, heat rising in her throat.
“Where’s Caroline?” I demanded. “The woman who was with us?”
Maggie would have had blood slaves watching the front door too.
“She never came out,” the vampire replied in a scorched whisper.
I staggered back with a wheeze as the chill energy of the vampiric bond gathered around my neck and squeezed.
Night Rune (Prof Croft Book 8) Page 17
