I screamed, a full-throated sound, a terrified sound.
The Hound raised his masked face to regard whoever was behind me. “Just like last time,” he said. “No need to shove. We have all night. Leave room for seconds.”
“NO!” I screamed. Not again, not again, it couldn’t happen, it couldn’t happen–couldn’t—it couldn’t happen ag—
“You did miss us, didn’t you?” the Hound said. He squatted in front of me and looked up into my eyes. Another pair of hands came at me from behind and dug into the waistband of my jeans. The button popped. The hands grasped the seat of the jeans and tugged them off my ass.
“NO! FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU!!”
Memories fell on me like broken glass. I remembered how the blood would drip down my leg, how they would use it as lubricant, how they’d use knives on me, how they wouldn’t stop, they didn’t stop—they didn’t stop for hours and hours and hours—
I frantically tried to concentrate, to feel the silver band on my finger, the sigil where I stored Exodus. I’d do it, I’d activate it, I would—I’d reduce this entire clearing to atoms, myself included, oh gods oh gods oh gods, I would, because in the darkest corner of my heart I knew this was why I’d created Exodus in the first place. I’d let the flames sing out and destroy me. I’d rather die than let this happen again, than be this helpless, than be this abased.
Hands squeezed the fleshy part of my ass and pulled at the cheeks. I screamed again and tried to press my thumb over the top of the silver ring.
Addam strode out of the shadows.
He wore glowing chain mail and wielded a giant sword. He strode forward as holy light, the power of his Atlantean Aspect, poured along the edge of his blade. The light cast razor-sharp shadows along an expression of righteous fury.
Addam swung the sword at the Hound. The Hound burst apart into clumps of dirt, dry leaves, and withered plant stems.
Whatever force held me in place vanished. I crawled off the tree trunk and collapsed into the snow. I reached for my pants only to find they were still on me, buttoned at the waist.
I grabbed the tree trunk and pulled myself up. Rurik stalked into view. Addam and he had engaged. Shimmering black gemstone ran up and down Rurik’s cloak sleeves. He used it like a sword breaker, blocking Addam’s swings. Each contact sent a shower of sparks into the darkness.
Addam circled to stand between Rurik and me. He swung at Rurik, but Rurik clamped the blade between his encrusted arms. I stepped toward Addam, thinking I’d release my Bless-fire and add it to the light on his blade. But my legs were still trembling, and I tripped. In the most amateurish move possible, I collapsed into Addam’s back.
As my fingers touched him, power exploded between us.
Light—sunlight—washed outward in fast ripples. It covered Rurik, and orange flames tore from their touch.
Rurik gave a pained scream and teleported away.
I released my grip on Addam. The light vanished with a strobe-like flicker. I dropped to my knees. Addam was staring at me with an expression somewhere between astonishment and . . .
Joy?
The light faded from his sword. It fell from his limp hand. He crouched down and touched my cheek, staring at the point of contact as if expecting something. When nothing happened, he reached up with his other hand and cupped my other cheek.
“I think you’re my . . .” he began to say, and then blinked. “Are you hurt?”
“Yes.” I was close to tears. “I mean no. I’m not. Not hurt.” Too much had just happened. I didn’t know what it meant. That light; Rurik; the illusion of the Hound. Oh, gods, I almost unleashed Exodus. I almost gave up.
Ten seconds. Ten seconds was all it had taken to strip bare the realities of my present, and turn me back into the teenager who hadn’t fought back as nine men burned his childhood to ash.
Addam said, “You’re shaking.”
Because I almost gave up. On me, on Brand, on everything. “I-I’ll be fine,” I stuttered.
He leaned in and hugged me. I didn’t pull away.
After a bit, I said, “Rurik will come back. We should go. And the snow is getting worse. We need to find shelter.”
“There’s a house in the woods ahead. I saw it when I ran that way.”
“A house?”
“In the woods. I didn’t see any lights on.”
“I see. And this doesn’t worry you? Did it have gumdrops in its roof?”
He laughed. “We’ll be very cautious.”
While he picked up his sword, I found my sabre in the remains of the shattered tree. We took off in the direction of a gabled mansion.
THE MANOR
The bizarre wintry weather followed us across a snow-covered expanse—either a field or a lawn—and up to the front doors of a marble manor. The manor was in good condition, but there were signs of a homeowner’s absence: overgrown ivy along the overhead portico, a debris-covered doorstop.
“This place . . .” Addam said. “Can you feel it?”
“Yeah.” There were strong protective wards surrounding the property. That would have made me nervous if not for the fact that they hadn’t identified us as a threat. “Someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to keep this place safe but social. I wonder if it’s an Arcana property.”
There was a heavy brass knocker on the door. In the absence of a better idea, I banged it a few times. The metal had been cooled by the snowstorm.
“Let me try,” Addam said after no one answered.
“Sure. Someone else pushing the button always makes the elevator come faster.” I smiled at him. “With all these wards, I don’t know how safe it would be to break in. The wards may decide we’re a threat after all.”
“Perhaps not,” Addam said, smiling back at me. Then he faced the door and said, with clear enunciation, “I am a scion of Atlantis and mean you no harm. Will you shelter me?”
The heavy wood door swung open on creaking hinges.
“Oh, the hell,” I said.
“There’s a lot you never learned, if you haven’t spent time in the Westlands.”
Dumbfounded, I limped ahead while holding my hand behind me in a “wait here” gesture. Addam snorted and followed, his abs, strikingly defined even through his shirt, deliberately pressed into my palm.
A bare stone foyer lead to a main hall that was dim with stormy daylight. Immense canvas tarps covered most of the furniture. There was little dust. I took a deep breath and caught the aroma of citrus-scented domestic wards.
Addam murmured a cantrip. Butterscotch light pushed at the gloom, revealing glimpses of color. The floor under us was a striking peach marble threaded with gold veins. The wood paneling was a warm cherry-mahogany. A staircase snaked along painted yellow walls and vanished into the upper stories.
I said, “Are you telling me you can go up to any house in the Westlands and get in by asking nicely?”
“The Westlands follows old rules—like Atlantis did. Atlantis had an entire etiquette built around travelers and guest privileges. It’s biased toward the landed class, but I suppose that’s worked in our favor.”
“So it wouldn’t work for bad guys?”
“It wouldn’t work for anyone meaning the owner, or the owner’s guests, harm. And I suppose it wouldn’t work if the owner had anything to hide from unexpected guests.”
“Like the bones of children in his oven?”
“Such a suspicious imagination,” Addam tsked.
“Still . . . Rurik was able to smash apart the Magician’s wards on the pathway. We don’t know if he’ll have any trouble getting in here.”
“Do you think that’s what happened to us?” Addam asked in a subdued voice.
“I don’t know. Maybe the wards weren’t broken. Rurik teleported us off the paths—he didn’t attack us on them.”
“Should we make a run for the Moral Certainty compound?”
I thought about it. Rejected it. “We have no idea where we are in relation to it. And we have no i
dea where the nearest path is. Let’s wait out the storm and reassess. I think we hurt Rurik, at least. Last time I hurt him, he took a while until he came after me again.”
Addam untied his belt holster. Melted sigils had fused around the leather thongs that had once held them. Addam gave the ruined devices an exasperated look, which reminded me, again, that he’d lived all his life behind velvet ropes. Because if that had been me? With all my sigils bent into slag? It would have meant the end of everything. It would have meant the end of my ability to make a living; to protect my household; to keep myself off the pointy end of a bad death. For Addam, it just meant a trek back to the family armory.
He said, “I’m sorry. I should have been quicker.”
“It’s kind of hard to dodge the impossible. How were we supposed to know he could destroy sigils? If Rurik can pull this sort of trick now, I don’t want to see what he grows up into.”
Addam tapped one of the melted sigils, quickly, in case it was still hot. When nothing happened, he balled the belt up and shoved it into his backpack’s side pocket. “I’ll be a liability to you now.”
“You’re far from a liability, even without sigils. You got us out of that trap, Addam. Thank you. You . . . I’ve never seen your Aspect before. I didn’t even know you had one. It was . . .” Magnificent. You were magnificent. “Um, efficient. And tall.”
“Is that what you think happened?”
I blinked.
“Is that what you think stopped him?” Addam asked. “My Aspect? That light, when we touched—that was not me. I think it was . . .” His voice trailed off. His eyes never left my face.
I didn’t want to have this conversation now. I don’t know why I didn’t—I couldn’t even explain it to myself—but I didn’t. “Whatever it was, it stopped Rurik for the moment. Let’s look around and try to figure out where we are.”
I took a few deep breaths of the clean, unheated air while Addam wandered to an old-fashioned light plate. He pressed a button. Nothing happened except for a click that echoed across the hard floors.
He said, “Ah well. Too much to hope for. Maybe they have a generator? We should see if the water is turned on, too. You have many scratches on your face, Hero.”
“The thorns didn’t exactly bounce off you, either,” I said. “Come here. I’m going to use a healing spell.”
Instead of touching the gold chain around my ankle, I concentrated. In a moment, the spell released, and I felt the just-bearable warmth of healing energy. Before the precious spell could dissipate, I healed the scrapes on my face, my twisted ankle, and the puncture wounds on my back. I gestured to the red, raw hash marks on Addam’s cheeks and, when he leaned in, touched him. He had the softest beard stubble I’d ever felt.
We stood there for a second, staring at each other. His breath was hotter than the air, damp against my cheek.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“You’re welcome.”
Hesitancy wrinkled his forehead. “Rurik was . . . doing something to you. Wasn’t he? Tricking you with illusions. You were very upset.”
I broke our gaze. “They were just illusions.”
My arms dimpled with gooseflesh as the healing spell dissipated. I rubbed at them while turning in a circle. “Come on. Let’s check this place out. I want to make sure we’re really alone.”
Addam sucked at searching.
He kept forgetting to be cautious or stealthy. He picked up anything that caught his eye, like a crow dive-bombing shiny coins.
Meanwhile, I went along as if something was about to jump at us from every corner. I cleared each room and hallway as we passed it, and walked on the balls of my heels to minimize noise. The first time Addam watched me fling open a door for a 180-degree pivot, sabre outstretched, he applauded silently. I got miffed and explained that slicing the pie was better than a button hook for possible hostile room entry. He added a deep bow to the applause.
“I’m not making fun of you, Hero,” he insisted, catching the look on my face. “It is very impressive.”
“Brand is better at it,” I admitted. “This sort of thing is more his job. I’m just the firepower.”
“Your Companion is also your business partner? Is that right?”
“Depends on how bossy he’s feeling when you ask him.”
Addam’s gaze dropped. He peered down at the molding along the border of the floor. “You were very brave to go after him outside my godfather’s building. Many scions wouldn’t have compromised their safety like that. He obviously means a great deal to you.”
It took me half a beat to read between the lines. I raised my eyebrows. “Are we doing this again? Are you trying to find out if I’m sleeping with Brand, too? I’m not good at these games, Addam.”
“Perhaps my unsubtlety is, in fact, a clever and subtle tactic to introduce my interest.”
“Let’s try that hallway over there,” I said, changing the subject and trying not to smile.
If I had any doubts that we’d stumbled on the compound of an Arcana, they were resolved when we entered the room at the back of the first floor.
It was a largish chamber, half a basketball court in length. The floor was hard stone scattered with pennyroyal rushes, and the walls were broken into alcoves filled with man-sized clay statuary. The statues, though old and worn, were a strange mix of soldiers, jugglers, musicians, and mounted cavalry.
I said, “Motherfucker.”
Addam raised his eyebrows at me.
On a hunch, I went through an archway at the far end. The adjoining room was a cluttered maze of equipment and tables. Aside from a few safe paths, the ground was studded with spikes of volcanic glass. So were the tables, and desks, and cabinets. Next to the doorway were wicker baskets filled with oversized boots and mittens, all of them sewn with a lining of obsidian thorns. It looked like a pod of serial killers had gotten together to throw a yard sale.
“I have no idea what I’m looking at,” Addam breathed from behind me.
“It’s a training ground for a very, very rare type of summoned construct. Those,” I said, and pointed back through the archway, “are from China. They’re part of the Terracotta Army—statues from about two thousand years ago that were buried for the first emperor of China, so that he’d have an army in the afterlife. I have no freaking idea how they got here—I can’t even imagine how priceless they are. And if you know the activation codes, they come alive.”
“Like the Tower’s golems?”
“This is on a whole other scale. The clay army is nearly indestructible, but obsidian and coral can slow it. They’re strong as hell, too. They can glamor themselves to appear human, and they’ve got the mental aptitude of an eight-year old—which is more than you can say for most constructs. That’s why they have this room.”
“I still don’t know what I’m looking at. What is this room?”
I stepped—carefully—along one of the paths to a cluster of tailor dummies. The cloth torsos were barbed with small spikes of obsidian. “You can’t turn them loose in public without training. Otherwise they’d be tearing off people’s arms during a handshake, or driving rib cages into lungs when they’re just trying to haul their owner out of danger. They train the soldiers in rooms like this, forcing them to pay attention to every single move they make.”
Addam marveled at it. “Which Arcana lives here, do you think?”
“The Hierophant. I’d bet money on it. He’s the best summoner on the planet, and he’s got an Asian fetish. Damn, I wonder what else is in the manor.”
We went back to the room with the clay soldiers. Addam pulled off his backpack and settled it by a wall, then slid down to the ground. “Your Queenie packed us sandwiches. Are you hungry?”
“Maybe later. I wouldn’t mind sitting for a while. Are you going to think less of me if I have a cigarette?”
“I may even join you.”
I rifled through my backpack. The only thing that remained of the cigarettes were broken filters. Since
I’d snuck them in there just before leaving the Tower’s, I wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or irritated with Brand.
I sighed. “Did I mention he was bossy? It’s not even worth arguing the point with him, either. It’ll be all blah-blah lung capacity, blah-blah fighting for your life.”
Addam rolled his head along the wall and gave me a wry smile. “When Quinn was younger, he’d smash up onions with a hammer, and take pictures of his eyes watering. He would paste the pictures to my cigarette packs.”
My laughter filled the air with puffs of frost. Addam laughed along with me, until the humor dropped off his face like a rockslide.
I said, “He’ll be okay, Addam.”
“He has to,” Addam said. “If you’re right . . . if Ella is involved . . . then she’s responsible for hurting Quinn. I’m having a very hard time accepting that. As would Quinn. He would be so distraught.”
“I didn’t think he and Ella got along.”
“They don’t. Ella treats him with indifference, at best. It’s a very sore point between us. But for her to—” His voice shook. “Quinn is sensitive to how others view him. If he thinks his own sister is capable of hurting him, he’ll take it hard.” Addam closed his eyes. His light cantrip bobbed and flickered. “I know I didn’t cause this—I know. But if it’s true, if Ella is involved, then I’ll still be a man whose own family turned on him. I’ll still be a man who’s lived his life in such a way that such a thing was possible. Does that make sense?”
“It does, but you’re stupid.”
Addam opened his eyes and stared at me.
“You are,” I said. “Trust me. I’m pretty well versed in the shitty things people are capable of doing. In some families you can see why things turned wrong—the people who hire me are just as bad as the people I’m being hired to stop or investigate. But I’ve met Quinn, and I’ve met you, and you’re not shitty. Addam . . . I’m really sorry I wasn’t able to help Quinn more. I’m sorry I left him behind.”
“As you tell it, you had little choice. In a strange way I’m . . . glad? No. Reassured. Relieved, maybe, that you took his warnings so seriously. Some people disregard Quinn and his gifts. Many are afraid of him. It’s why it was so difficult to leave him when I was stationed in Russia.” Addam smiled. “Not that it quite turned out that way. I’m not sure if it’s because he’s a seer, or because he’s a Quinn, but he has a remarkable tendency to get his way.”
The Last Sun Page 23
