Monsters, Book Two: Hour of the Dragon

by Heather Killough-Walden

  This location, so close to Sixth Street, had been chosen for a number of reasons. One, it was usually a safe bet that people expected you to take your stolen prize and run as fast and as far away as you could at the first opportunity. So remaining nearby was often unexpected. And two, right outside the door of the abandoned building where they were being held, half a dozen transients tried to carve out some form of existence for themselves using shopping carts, trash cans, thrown away leftovers, and lots of plastic bags.

  Sometimes it was good to have broken people nearby. They were easy to control, and they made good puppets.

  Piper Maddox heard the transport magic erupt in the room, and her head snapped up as he solidified beside the chairs. Price had re-gagged the girls before he’d left to claim his prize at the dimensional decoy area, so she couldn’t distract him with her pointless yelling or screaming or name-calling as Victor closed his eyes and allowed his mind to reach out into the alley.

  Once there, he moved through and around the bodies either sitting or laying on the sidewalk around the trashcan fire. Most were young, no older than forty or fifty, though they appeared as old as seventy due to exposure to the elements. One had been a realtor once upon a time. Another had literally been a hedge fund manager. But the other four were not so varied in their fortune.

  Of the four, there were three men and one woman. All three men were insane. Their weak minds would have made easy pickings, and he was pressed for time. But all three of them were also tainted. Having them do what he needed them to do would not produce the energy he desperately required.

  Two of the three had been involved with the rape of a runaway teenager.

  It was almost a given that if you were female and you were on the streets, the prospect of rape would eventually force itself into your lap. The third of the three males was guilty of raping another male.

  Apparently the prospect of sexual assault could fall into your homeless lap either way.

  But the woman was interesting. And fortune smiled on him that she happened to have a pocket knife in one of her many jackets.

  She had neither been involved with anything like sexual assault, nor had she been sexually assaulted. In fact… her mind was quite sound, and her heart seemed genuinely pure. Sure, she’d used drugs – as a homeless person, she’d be stupid not to. They were the only thing that could keep the pain, cold, loneliness and despair at bay. And she’d definitely “stolen” things out of people’s trash. Once, she’d even walked right into a Starbucks, picked up the nearest waiting drink someone had ordered, and walked right back out with it. She’d had a headache at the time and was simply desperate for caffeine.

  It still made her feel guilty, though, which was why it was a surface thought and easy for Victor to pick through.

  She never wanted people to hurt. He could sense that so deeply ingrained in her person that it not only resided subconsciously, it was part of her conscious existence too. It was simply a part of her altogether.

  In fact… she’d recently aided the police in an investigation. And that investigation felt familiar to Victor. He wondered if it involved Price.

  But Victor didn’t try to dig deeper and garner any further information on the matter because he didn’t want to waste a single ounce of the magic he currently had remaining. He’d used too much setting up the dimensional decoy for Price. He needed a hard flush of it right away if he was to have any hope of escaping the wardens breathing down his neck.

  While he would most likely have enjoyed delving more deeply into the woman’s past, for now it was enough to know that she would serve his purposes.

  “Come to me,” he whispered, sending the command into her mind. He experienced the briefest push-back, as if she had at some point had some kind of shield over her thoughts, and its remnants yet remained. But that was surely impossible. And after a moment, the command slipped into her consciousness.

  Outside in the alley, the homeless woman opened her eyes.

  Very pretty, Victor thought unexpectedly. He experienced a moment of surprise at the randomness of the thought – and then he experienced surprise that he was surprised by something random. Being the chaos god and all.

  But he brushed it all off and concentrated on the woman. She looked like she might have been in her late thirties, by far the youngest of the group. And underneath all of that grime, he even imagined she might be attractive. It was just that she was so filthy, he couldn’t even tell what color her hair was.

  But he was right about her being strong. Her brow furrowed as if she questioned whether she’d heard his call or imagined it, and she exercised a good deal of will by not getting up and coming to him as he’d told her to.

  Victor’s jaw clenched. It was an interesting sensation to be angry in a human body. It felt like the birth of chaos. But again, he had no time to explore. “Come to me now,” he repeated, this time with more influence.

  Down below, the woman’s pretty eyes glazed over. She rose, turned to the building’s main entrance and made her way toward it. One of her companions called out to her from behind her, but she ignored him and no one was willing to get un-bundled to go after her.

  Hurry, he told the woman. Run.

  Down below, the homeless woman rounded the corner and broke into a run. She was spry, despite the layers and layers of ragged, grimy clothing she wore. He watched her in his mind’s eye as she pushed open the door, headed directly for the stairs, and took them two at a time.

  Impressive, he thought. Then he opened his eyes as she ran through the door at the opposite end of the room. All of this had only taken a few seconds. Nonetheless, he was out of time.

  He could feel the wardens stepping into range as they exited transport tunnels in the street below.

  “Take your pocket knife and slit both of these women’s throats,” he told the homeless woman.

  She blinked, her expression deeply troubled. He swore vehemently, strode over to her, jostled her small body until he found the Swiss Army tool he wanted, and placed it firmly in her hand, largest blade out.

  Then he leaned over and looked directly into her light brown, gold-ringed eyes. Using a sliver of magic on her will, he delved deep. “Do it,” he commanded in his most vicious human tone. “Or I will disembowel them both and they will die in unimaginable agony.”

  She paled under the promise. He could hear her heart hammering away and feel her hand shaking where he held the knife so firmly in it. “Kill them,” he told her one last time. “Right now.”

  Chapter Thirty-seven – Decoy Dimension

  He had gotten rid of the gun and taken off his jacket, pulling things from its inner pockets as he laid it down beside him. He placed the items on top of the jacket, laying them out in an orderly fashion. She couldn’t be sure through the blur, but she was pretty sure one item was a flask, another was maybe a white bottle or perhaps a roll of bandages – something white and cylindrical. There was a pile of gauze… and a tube of something. Then there was a small black box, about seven by seven inches and an inch deep. It was closed.

  “Annaleia, I want you to drink this.” Randall knelt in front of her again and grabbed the flask.

  No way, she thought. But it lacked the vehemence she really needed it to have.

  “Angel, I swear it will help,” he told her, unscrewing the cap and leaning in to slide his hand behind her neck. He was gentle; she had to give him that. His entire essence seemed at contrast to the man who had carved up women in various Great Lakes cities.

  She tried to shake her head, but it only made her woozier. He stopped lifting the bottle anyway and cocked his head to the side. “I understand,” he said. “You’re afraid. But there’s no poison in this, my love. Nothing that will harm you. In fact, it has a vitamin mix powder, electrolytes, soluble protein, and it’s laced with a safe but effective dose of morphine, carefully measured for your body weight and metabolism.”

  Okay, she was impressed with the drink. She wanted a bunch of that. Bottles of it.
For later.

  Randall Price smiled at her. It was a charming smile, despite his white eye, which now really looked more very, very light green than white. Had it changed?

  “Now then, what say you? Let me help you? Once the pain medicine kicks in, I can tend to your wound.” His expression darkened, and his eyes took on a look of something like – hesitance. “I believe Vyra struck your bone when she shot you. There’s no exit wound. I need to examine your leg and attempt to extract the bullet.”

  He took a deep breath and slid his hands around her leg at the ankle and under her thigh. She hissed sharply when he very gently turned her leg outward, presumably to get a better look at it. Anna had taken the round in the thigh, but she could swear the damn thing had not only hit her bone but gone straight into the bone and was now swimming through her marrow like a barracuda on speed to inflict pain on her entire skeleton.

  She didn’t feel right inside. Not at all.

  “That’s what I thought,” he said, slowly lowering her leg. “The bone stopped the bullet, and that’s not the kind of round you want in your body anyway.” She couldn’t pay attention to his words any longer. Absently, she noticed that her other leg had been locked in place with a cuff at the ankle. When had he done that? She was losing bits of time…. But he had kept her injured leg free, no doubt so he could work on it.

  Gods, just kill me, she thought with a small whimper. More nausea moved through her.

  “Drink, Annaleia.”

  Anna opened her eyes. She hadn’t realized they were closed. Randall was closer, the flask was at her lips, and his tone had hardened into a command. Anna parted her lips, and Randall placed it further on her tongue, tilting it slightly.

  She closed her eyes again, swallowing. Surprisingly, it was not the bitter-salty-sweet-disgusting mish-mash she’d expected it to be. It tasted like grape soda. An errant thought floated through her head. Why do potions always taste like grape soda?

  Wait. Potions?

  “Good girl. Almost done. Finish it off, angel.”

  That wasn’t going to be a problem. The liquid was cold and sweet and refreshing, and she was very thirsty. When she finished and the bottle was empty, she honestly wanted some more.

  Randall chuckled softly. “Don’t worry, I’ll make more for you. Once I get you home, I’ll be able to get you whatever you need and tend to you properly. But we have to remove that bullet first.” He recapped the flask and laid it out on his jacket. Then he lifted the black box.

  It struck her that he was orderly, fastidious in everything he did. What was a man like him doing with mayhem embodied? “Annnn… you’re a librarian too,” she thought, unknowingly out loud. “Always with the shhhhhh and no talking! And it’s all alphapsghetti… alphabeti…” She blew a raspberry. “It’s so not chaos.” She shook her head, maybe a little too much. Her hair flew out all around her, obscuring her view some more.

  Randall smiled. “And there it is,” he said. “That’s my cue.”

  Anna closed her eyes and let her head drop back on the chair while Randall worked.

  “I’ll admit, there was a little more than just morphine in the flask,” he told her pleasantly. “But I had to be certain you wouldn’t put up a fight while I took care of you.”

  “You do you, boo!” she told him, blowing a lock of hair off her face as if it were a feather that had landed on her. She failed the first time and tried again.

  Down in front of her, Randall Price chuckled softly to himself. She knew he was literally fishing around inside her leg, but for some reason she just didn’t care. There was no pain any longer. Not in her legs or her ribs or her cheek or even her ghost scars. In fact, Annaleia felt pretty good.

  “Okay, that’s that. All done,” he was suddenly saying.

  Anna blinked. She was staring up at the ceiling. Her mouth was dry and her neck was a little stiff. What… When had this happened?

  There was a dull ache in her right leg and a sharper but milder pain around her wrists. She pulled at them to find they’d been handcuffed behind her back. She winced when she tried to move her leg next and fresh, new aggravated pain shot through it all the way down to the bone. “Oh god,” she gasped, waking up a lot more now.

  No, she thought. No, where am I? What… what did he do to me?

  “I know, angel. Try not to move.” Randall stood. “It’ll be sore until we can heal it,” he told her as he bent down and slid his arms under her. “It had to be done the hard way. Damn Hunters’ rounds. You don’t carry a weapon, so I have no idea how that gun wound up in this room.”

  He shook his head, lifting her from the wooden chair as if she weighed nothing. “But it did, and based on the reading Maze has provided me, I recognized the bullets.” He turned away from the chair with her in his arms. “The rounds negate all magic. They were made to keep supernatural creatures from using their abilities. On the one hand, they allowed me to kill Vyra, but on the other, it turns out they even negate transport magic. We couldn’t leave here while it was in your leg.” He seemed genuinely regretful when he said, “There was nothing I could do but drug you as much as was safe and pry the bullet out. I’m afraid extracting something from bone is always a painful prospect.”

  No wonder I couldn’t think straight before, she thought. The bullet had been negating the protection of the little black pearl Cain had given her, and Victor Maze’s magic had run riot through her head, scrambling her thoughts.

  She looked down at her leg. The wound was expertly bandaged around the thigh. He’d been unexpectedly reverent; he hadn’t even removed her clothing. The wrappings had been placed over the jeans, and only the tiniest spot of blood was visible on them.

  “Lucky for you, I have a very large medical section in my library. Or… had. Anyway, it’ll leave a small scar,” he told her apologetically. “But perhaps we can see about finding a spell to remove it later.” He started across the room toward the door – and toward what Anna could now see was an open, waiting portal beyond it. “I’ve had a whole new world of options opened up to me of late. It will serve us well.”

  “No,” she said, the realization that he meant to leave with her chilling her to the core. “No, please – please put me down.” Her voice was so soft, dry and cracking. She was so thirsty, and fear was making that thirst so much worse. But she was prepared to fight again despite the pain if she had to.

  “You know I can’t do that,” he told her softly.

  “Please let me go.”

  “Certainly not that,” he told her, a little more ardently. “Not ever.” He picked up his pace.

  Anna knew she could not leave with him. What if the transport were untraceable? What if they vanished for good?

  If Randall wound up getting her alone some place where Ares couldn’t find her, Anna knew exactly what the man would do with her. He was fascinated with her scars. There would be nothing to stop him from killing people again and again, requiring her to resurrect innocents left and right until she was nothing but lines from head to toe. And he might get greedy and kill too many people at once – what then? What if she couldn’t bring them all back? What if she failed? And she wound up leaving someone behind?

  How many people had to die because of these stupid, stupid, stupid scars?!

  “No!” she yelled directly in his ear. He flinched, coming to a halt and turning his head away. Anna began struggling wildly. She had no leverage or balance with her hands cuffed behind her back, which was no doubt why he’d done it. But if she had to fall and break her hands or her arms in order to free herself, so be it.

  Anything was better than going with him. Because if he made it with her through that portal, she knew in her heart she would die. One way or another, she would make sure of it.

  I don’t want to kill, she thought. And I don’t want to die.

  Randall’s grip on her tightened and he gritted his teeth. “Please stop fighting me!” he hissed, trying to maneuver them into the portal’s entrance as she fought. “I’m not you
r enemy, Annaleia!”

  Just then, at the opposite end of the room a second portal opened up, its edges composed of blue-black lightning, furious and imposing. Randall glanced over his shoulder at the spectacle as almost half a dozen men in black leather jackets stepped out of the new transport spell – and one of them began running toward him at breakneck speed.

  I don’t want to kill, I don’t want to die, Anna thought when she felt the static of the exit portal close enough to raise the hairs on her arms. I want to live forever with that man right there.

  I really don’t want to die.

  Die… Oh my God, my sentinel!

  That had been another unfortunate effect of that damn bullet. It had kept her from calling for her sentinel. Either its anti-magic effect had caused the entire sentinel-calling choice to be deleted from her memory due to its basis in magic, or it had simply allowed her mind to be so mucked up from Maze’s magic, she couldn’t remember that was ever an option – maybe both!

  She hoped this counted as a life or death situation to Magnus as Anna drew in a fast breath and screamed her sentinel’s name. At the exact same time, Antares Mace called her sentinel’s name as well. He didn’t call his – he called hers. She was sure it didn’t work that way, but then again, sometimes wardens were incapacitated. Maybe he felt it was worth a try.

  “Magnus!” they bellowed together.

  Absolutely zero time passed between their tandem cries for help and the appearance of Annaleia’s statuesque guardian. It was as if he’d been anxiously waiting. Anna watched breathlessly as Magnus then instantly shifted into motion.

  The first thing she saw him do was gesture with one hand at the exit portal, and it must have been some kind of wordless negation spell because the portal promptly dissolved. In the next blink, Anna felt her body being ripped from Randall’s grip and passed from one strong set of arms to another.

  She had just enough time to recognize the second set of arms as belonging to Ares before Randall Price was on the ground and bleeding from both his nose and lip. Magnus strode forward to grab Price by the collar, lifting him up off the ground. Price’s hands wrapped desperately around the sentinel’s thick wrist.