Hands of Flame n-3

by C. E. Mutphy

  Ir rah shun al, whispered the back of her mind. She sprinted ahead of it, trying to run faster than thought. It leapt ahead of her, taunting: if she failed Janx, his hands would be freed. Daisani losing everything seemed a fair trade for Tony’s life. The vampire, after all, could start again. Tony wouldn’t have a second chance.

  Someday, she would be able to look back and pinpoint the moment at which she ceased recognizing herself. Maybe it had been when she’d gone with instinct and admitted to Alban that she trusted him. Maybe it had been later than that; maybe it had been when Ausra had died and Margrit had passed beyond normal human law into being part judge, jury and executioner herself. Maybe all of it had simply crept up, weighting her with incremental changes until she was suddenly, simply, no longer as she had been.

  The woman she’d been wouldn’t have seriously considered how to ruin vast financial holdings, much less found herself grimly intending to do so.

  Fresh humor, more of the bitter stuff that had followed her lately rather than the previous night’s joyfulness of being alive, surged through her. The truth was the woman she’d been before the Old Races could never have encountered the questions and problems that were now part and parcel of her life. In the same extraordinary circumstances, faced with what she now faced, the woman she’d been would make the same decisions. Had to make them, for the sake of people she loved. Daisani could start again, and at the end of the day, his welfare wasn’t as important to her as Tony’s.

  Margrit wondered if that made her more human, or less, than she’d once been.

  The thought cleared her mind, leaving her room to simply run. She cut across streets against the lights, making her way uptown with the vague idea of going home, or to the park. It didn’t matter, as long as she ran. For the first time in two weeks, nightmares didn’t haunt her steps, and she felt as though the exercise was helping to replenish the blood she’d lost the night before. She still needed more to drink, but what Tony’d brought had given her strength.

  She came to a halt, panting, outside an apartment building, and flipped her ponytail upside down, hands on her thighs as she panted for air. The dizziness felt good: normal, and she was beginning to forget what normal was like. Anything that reminded her was welcome.

  “Ms. Knight?” A voice spoke from a few yards away. Margrit righted herself, hands on her hips while she continued to heave for air, and blinked at the doorman, whose expression split into a smile. “Are you here to see Mr. Daisani?”

  Margrit rolled back on her heels, still breathing hard, and looked up toward the penthouse apartment Daisani lived in. She’d had no conscious intention to visit the vampire, and reversed her gaze to eye her feet accusingly, as though they’d developed a mind of their own. Then she smiled at the doorman. “Yeah, I am. It’s Diego, right? Gosh, thanks. I didn’t know if anybody would recognize me, with me turning up all sweaty and out of breath.”

  Diego grinned. “It’s my job.” He held the door for her and Margrit went inside, waiting till she was well past him to raise a mocking eyebrow at herself: gosh? It was the sort of thing the flighty, frantic persona she’d put on a few days ago in an attempt to rescue Alban would have said.

  The elevator doors slid open and Margrit stepped in, heel of one hand pressed against her eye as she tried to count back and remember how many days had passed since then. It was late Saturday afternoon now, and that had been Wednesday morning. She’d had far too little sleep in the interim, but felt astonishingly good for all of that.

  An almost unnoticeable lurch warned her she’d reached the penthouse level just before the bell rang. Expecting a hallway, Margrit stepped out and then, astonished, glanced around a gorgeously lit, sunken living room. After the warm, rich Victorian colors of his office lobby, Margrit had expected Daisani’s home to be similar. Instead everything glowed in whites and creams, making the room a bastion of light.

  Daisani himself came out of an enormous kitchen off to the elevator’s right, followed by the scent of garlic. “Miss Knight. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  Margrit, her intended topic entirely forgotten, blurted, “The elevator opens in your living room? Isn’t that dangerous?”

  Daisani arched an eyebrow. “Not especially. And, of course, I assure you the elevator only opens so indiscreetly when I know who’s arriving. Its back doors open on the hallway, which is how most visitors are admitted. Margrit, whatever are you doing here? I understand there was quite a kerfuffle last night.”

  “Quite a…You could say that. I’m only alive because of you. Thanks.” Her eyebrows shot up. “I thought you said I’d still have to sleep, by the way. I’ve been up for most of four days and I feel fine.”

  “Really. How extraordinary. I sleep very little, of course, but my blood doesn’t impart that gift to humans. It’s a more dragonly trait. Won’t you come in? Have some wine?”

  “Water, please.” Margrit followed him into the kitchen, squinting. “Wait. Something happens if dragons give a human their blood, too?”

  “I have no idea. They’re not, as far as I know, in the habit of it. Especially since your alchemists and wizards used to hunt them down for the so-called magical properties in their blood. I wouldn’t be inclined to share, either.” Smiling, Daisani poured a crystal glass of water and offered it to her.

  Margrit took it and drank automatically, then, childlike, held it out for a refill when she’d finished. Looking amused, he poured a second glass, and Margrit did the same thing again without realizing it. When he handed it back a third time, she accepted, then turned one palm up, searching for a cut that wasn’t there.

  But her own mind, sharpened with gargoyle clarity, showed her what she sought: a memory of Janx’s bloody scale, torn from his body by Alban’s strength. Margrit had pressed her hands against the deadly edge, watching her own skin part and meld again.

  Melding, perhaps, with dragon blood.

  “Margrit?”

  She jolted, looking up from her hand, then drew a sharp breath. “Sorry. I was thinking.” Water glass set aside, she pulled her ponytail out, then twisted it back into place. “You want to know why I’m here.”

  “Very much.” Daisani’s smile all but sparkled with curiosity. “After what I’ve heard about last night, anything that brings you here must be momentous indeed.”

  “It is.” Margrit swallowed, then turned her hands up, as if pleading. “Here’s the thing. I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. Janx wants you destroyed, and my promise to do that is the only thing keeping Tony alive. But for some reason it really gets under my skin to sneak around and backstab you, so I’m telling you that this is what I have to do. I have to try. I don’t much want to, but I can’t stop Janx any other way.”

  Daisani blinked, the slowest, most deliberate expression she’d ever seen from him. “That…is momentous, indeed. You are certainly full of surprises, Miss Knight. Do you throw gauntlets at all your rivals with such clear and forthright intent?”

  Margrit blinked back, then twitched her eyebrows in a shrug. “Well, yeah, pretty much. This is what lawyers do. Meet in neutral territory, proclaim their intentions, bargain if it’s possible, then step back to do battle in the courtroom.”

  “And is a bargain possible?” Daisani asked the question as if it were academic; as if he knew already what the final answer was, but was curious to hear her response.

  “Let’s assume for a moment that you were willing to relinquish all your holdings and walk away from the corporation. I don’t think Janx would qualify that as you being destroyed, which is what he wants. He probably also wants it to be a surprise, but I can’t help thinking that if I pull it off, you’re going to be plenty surprised whether you’ve been forewarned or not. So, no, I don’t think it is possible. I wish it was. I wish it could be that easy. But you’re not going to make it that easy, are you?”

  “What fun would that be? I do see a critical flaw in your plan, though, Margrit.” He waited the fraction of a moment for Margrit to look inq
uisitive, then said, “What’s to prevent me from killing you right now and ending the entire question?”

  Margrit dragged in a breath, held it, then expelled it on a crooked smile. “What fun would that be?”

  CHAPTER 31

  She could almost hear Alban’s voice, dismayed and resigned, saying, “That was a bad idea.”

  The phrase was so inadequate as to be laughable, but that was part of the delight in hearing him say it. She had pursued so many bad ideas in the months since the Old Races came into her life that more extravagant words fell by the wayside of that one hopelessly understated comment.

  Daisani had laughed aloud and gestured her back toward the elevator. Grateful, Margrit had taken the out she was offered, heart pushing thick blood with such enthusiasm that it sent a cramp through her chest when the elevator doors closed without Daisani darting inside them. He could catch her anywhere, instantaneously, but allowing her to escape the building without reminding her of that seemed like an agreement to the game.

  Now, after the fact, warning him what she intended felt supremely stupid. She stopped a few yards down the block, arms folded over her ribs as she tried to hold back stomach-churning nausea. Feeble intellect proclaimed that challenging the vampire openly had been the right thing to do, and she’d been confident enough in that rightness to walk into his lair without fear. Now that the moment was past, though, she wasn’t certain she had strength left to get home, much less draw together the resources necessary to bring about his downfall.

  “Mind over matter, Grit.” She spoke the words softly, trying to encourage herself, then nodded a couple of times and pushed herself upright, leaning against the wall. “One step at a time. Um.” Unable to think of another platitude, she managed a smile at herself and dug for the cell phone she’d pocketed when she’d put on her running gear. She’d set the autodial in motion and brought it to her ear before she fully noticed the screen was a pixelated mess. “Oh, goddammit!”

  “Sorry?” A startled man—not a local, from both his response and from the T-shirt reading Oklahoma Is OK!—edged out of her way as she clenched the useless phone in her fist to stop herself from dashing it against the sidewalk in frustration. She’d ended up hurt and without a cell phone both times a djinn had snatched her. For one overblown moment, the loss of the phones seemed vastly more debilitating than the physical injuries. The fact that Janx wouldn’t be replacing this phone only added insult.

  Margrit channeled destructive tendencies into running and left weariness behind in the rush of endorphins. Even so, by the time she arrived home, she was gasping, thirsty and vividly aware that she hadn’t eaten since lunch the previous day.

  There were no leftovers in the fridge, more disappointing than the discovery warranted. She took out a cup of yogurt and stirred it into a bowl full of granola, then left both on the counter as she searched for a pint of ice cream from the freezer. Two bites told her she needed real food first, and she shoveled the granola yogurt into her mouth while she called for Chinese delivery. With a promise of Mongolian beef and cashew chicken in twenty minutes, she sank down in front of the phone to finish eating her snack.

  A key in the front door warranted looking, but not getting up. Margrit’s stomach clenched around the food, the anticipation of another confrontation with Cole too much to face, but it was Cameron who stepped in, gym bag slung over her shoulder and long legs shown off beneath a short, white tennis skirt.

  “I thought you didn’t play tennis.”

  Cam yelped, startled, and swung around to regard Margrit’s position on the floor in front of the telephone table. “Normal people say hello first!”

  Margrit smiled. “Hello. I thought you didn’t play tennis.”

  Cameron pointed a toe to flex lean muscle. “I took it up so Cole’d buy me a diamond tennis bracelet. You like the look?”

  “You look gorgeous,” Margrit assured her. “Is it working?”

  “Not unless he gets a substantial raise, but I don’t really need a tennis bracelet.” Cam smiled back and threw her gym bag into the room she and Cole shared before coming back to straighten up a kitchen Cole never left messy. “You left the party early last night, and you’ve got ice cream melting on the counter. Are you okay?”

  “The ice cream didn’t taste good. I needed real food first.”

  Cameron put out a hand and Margrit put her empty bowl into it for inspection. “So you ate cereal and yogurt?”

  “I’ve ordered Chinese.”

  “Cole will never forgive you if you stink up his fridge with leftover Chinese.”

  “I’ll eat it all. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

  “That’s not good.” Cameron frowned down at her. “What’s up with that?”

  “I’ve been…it’s been…”

  “Ah. That, huh?” Cam sat down beside Margrit, looping her arms around her knees. “Is that why you bailed on the party?”

  “Yeah, I had some things to do.”

  Cam gave her a sly look and Margrit laughed. “No. Not those kinds of things, or that kind of doing. It was sort of business.”

  “So…” Cameron hesitated, then sighed. “I don’t know how much of this I’m going to be able to ask when Cole’s around, so I’m asking now. I understand how you got involved. I even understand why you’re staying involved. I just don’t think I get…how deep you are. Because it’s deep, isn’t it? How did that happen?”

  “I couldn’t mind my own business.” Margrit offered a faint smile, then scrambled to her feet as the doorbell rang. “Fastest delivery in the city. Oh, God, I’m hungry.” She ran to pay, then returned to sit on the floor and start eating out of the cartons. Cameron stole a spring roll and waited, eyebrows lifted, for Margrit to continue.

  “It was mostly that I was trying to help Alban clear himself of the murder charges. It just turned out that doing that kept digging me deeper and deeper into their world. Once I knew about all of them, I became an obvious choice to be a go-between.”

  “Obvious. Sure.”

  “Well, it was obvious to them. And I…thought I could do some good.”

  “Could you? Can you?”

  Margrit shrugged and scooped up a ball of sticky rice. “I’ve affected a lot of change, anyway. Whether that’s good or not, not even I’m sure anymore. But there’s no going back on any of it, so I have to keep going forward.”

  Cam balanced the spring roll on her fingertips, blowing steam away from it. “Are you ever going to tell me more than generalized statements?”

  Guilt twisted around the food Margrit had eaten. “Maybe, but maybe not, too. This is dangerous, Cam. They depend on secrets.”

  “Yeah, I know. That’s one of the things Cole hates.”

  Margrit ducked her head. “Just one, huh?”

  “He’s genuinely freaked out.” Cameron got up to pour a glass of milk and gestured with the carton to ask Margrit if she wanted some. At Margrit’s nod, she brought a second glass, then returned the carton to the fridge and leaned on the broad orange door. “It’s not just that you’re sleeping with a gargoyle. It’s that they exist at all. You won’t take it wrong if I say you’re about all we’ve been talking about the last couple days, right?”

  “Heh. No. I’m not surprised. I’m sorry, Cam. It wasn’t supposed to go this way.”

  “I know, Grit, but the more we go around about it, the less sure I am any other way would have made much difference. I don’t think it’d be easier for Cole, and that means it wouldn’t be easier for us.”

  “Us you and me or us you and him?”

  “Any of us. The worst part is I can feel myself siding with him. I mean, I’m not angry like he is, but…”

  “Cam, he’s your fiancé. You’re supposed to side with him. It’s okay. You don’t have to make apologies. He spelled it out last night at the party. ‘I love you but I can’t watch you do this,’ though not in those exact words. It’s okay.” Margrit sighed. “The sad thing is I thought he’d be the one to understand. I mea
n, out of him and Tony. The men in my life.”

  “Wait, Tony knows? I thought he didn’t.”

  “He found out last night. After the party. He saw…not just Alban, but a lot of them.” And he’d watched Margrit herself come back from the dead, a gift which might well have tempered him toward accepting the Old Races. The juxtaposition of truths made Margrit’s bones ache. She knew as well as Tony did that if it weren’t for her involvement with the inhuman races, she wouldn’t have been so badly injured in the first place. On the other hand, that involvement taken as rote, she’d survived through their gifts. Nothing could be taken for granted, and nothing was made easy. She looked down at her food and shook her head. “Maybe if Cole talks to him…”

  “That could help a lot.” Cam spoke quietly. “They’re friends. If Tony’s okay, maybe it’ll help smooth things over.” She offered a hopeful smile. “Next thing you know, they’ll all be going out for beer and football.”

  Margrit laughed and got up to hug her housemate. “What a horrible idea.”

  “Isn’t it? Sit back down,” Cam ordered. “You’ve got a lot of food to get through before Cole gets home.”

  “I’ve got a lot of other things to get through before…” Before when? she wondered. Janx hadn’t demanded a time frame, though clearly the dragonlord expected results sooner rather than later. For a moment the idea of putting him off indefinitely with promises of Daisani’s financial ruin at any moment struck her as amusing, but the humor faded. He might allow that to go on for a little while, but he would no doubt remain in New York, threatening both Tony and Grace O’Malley’s under-city charity operation until Margrit came through on her end of the deal. Time was of the essence, not for her own sake, but for the sake of the lives she’d managed to disrupt.

  She shook herself and collected the food cartons from the floor, heading into the living room with them. “I’ll finish eating before anything else. And then can I borrow your cell phone for a couple of days? Mine got ruined last night.”

  “You can have mine if you buy me a spiffy new one!”