Pride had gotten me here. I was proud to have contacted my Neshamah and attained power, and proud enough to ignore his advice. I’d been proud enough to resort to homelessness instead of finding someone to ask for help. I fought pride as I struggled with my words, trying to frame the question I wanted to ask of Angkor.
“What?” He spoke first. “You look like you’re about to choke on something.”
“You… mentioned something before,” I said, finally. “Something about a HookWyrm.”
Angkor didn’t look up from his rifle. “Yeah.”
“I don’t know anything about it except that it chokes my magic.” I had to force each word out. This was not how I wanted anyone to find out about my magical emasculation. “I haven’t been able to work the Art since the start of September.”
“I know what they are, but I only know one way to get rid of them without killing you. You need Gift Horse blood.” Angkor grimaced, shaking his head. He didn’t look up at me, focusing on the gun. “You said it was put into your body by an old vampire?”
I paused in my work as nausea panged deep in my belly. “Yes.”
“Okay. There’s a kind of creature that is commonly known as a Wrath’ree.” Angkor rubbed his face, leaning back against the wall. “They’re basically GOD’s white blood cells, okay? Their purpose is to eat Morphorde, and they’re really good at it. They seek out and consume corruption. Evil magic or anything that’s made of dirty Phi.”
“Right.”
Angkor gestured with a hand. “Feeders have a special relationship with Wrath’ree. That’s way too much to try and describe right now, but the short version is that some really old, really powerful vampires can enslave a Wrath’ree and turn them into things they use to fuck up your day with. That’s what this little guy is. He’s an enslaved Wrath’ree, and his native Phi-eating ability has been turned into a kind of magical trap that blocks you from the rest of GOD.”
“So that’s it? We can’t get rid of it without a Gift Horse?” I had no earthly idea where to find one. The only one I’d met was dead, and I couldn’t even remember her face properly.
Angkor sighed, and tipped his head back against the wall. It was a gesture that bared the long brown line of his throat and the depression at the base of his sternum. “Pulling it out will kill you both. The Wrath’ree doesn’t want to die, and they don’t really know how to… de-escalate a conflict or listen to reason under the best of circumstances. I’m sorry.”
I turned my face, So, that was it. Three tries, and the best I’d been able to do was unwrap the lousy thing from my organs. Until we had the resources, I wasn’t a mage. I wasn’t anything.
No. That was sissy-talk. Even without magic, I was still something. I had beaten my way through a GOD-damned wall. I’d survived the Tigers’ Den. I’d pulled Angkor out of the fire. Zane and Talya were out there, waiting for me.
I drew a deep breath, clapped my hands to my knees, and stood. “Then that is how it is. You did your best. If we can find a Gift Horse, we can remove it?”
His head snapped up, eyes dark and fierce. “If we can find my Horse, I’ll do it in a heartbeat. But the Feeder who did this – Sergei? – must be extremely old to be able to create one of these. If it’s anything, I know for a fact that this Wrath’ree isn’t any happier about this than you are.”
“I find it hard to have sympathy for something that’s cutting me off from my soul.” I tested my limbs, rolled my shoulders, cracked my neck. Everything worked, though I was still achy. My body was probably at about seventy-five percent. It would have to be enough.
“The HookWyrm is cut off from its hive mind, which is basically the soul of its kind.” Angkor shrugged. “Neither of you are in a great place right now.”
“My heart bleeds,” I said. “How do you know all this, anyway? I never found it in grimoires, and not for lack of trying.”
“That’s because it can’t be written down. It gets taught orally, person to person,” Angkor replied. “How do you feel?”
“A bit better,” I grunted. “I still hurt, but I hurt less now.”
“Healing is never comfortable.” Angkor leaned in towards me, his eyes hooding to dark crescent-shaped slits. He had very thick lashes. Before I knew it, he was close enough to kiss. “Anyone who pretends healing doesn’t hurt has never had to heal anything, right?”
The skin of my chest prickled with gooseflesh. “For a pretty-boy, you certainly do talk like an old man.”
“Funny you say that. I’m older than I look.” He licked his top lip with a short, sultry laugh, and sat back with a smile. I cleared my throat and stood.
“Well, let’s go and get Jenner and the others. We have to make our plan of action.” I caught up my shoulder holster and slung it on, settling it in place while I went to the closet. I pulled a clip on tie, hooked it over my collar, and straightened it until it looked tied and not clipped on. Angkor got to his feet, slung the rifle strap over his shoulder, and turned to his own preparations.
“Thank you, by the way,” I said. “For helping me.”
“My pleasure.” He winked at me sidelong, arched his eyebrows, and wound sinuously out of the room. “Come on, grasshopper. Let’s go kill some monsters.”
I snorted, shook my head, and followed him out. Pretty as he was, Angkor’s posture, his confidence and steady hands and gaze all spoke of the same thing. He was a ruthless killer with a side of chutzpah. As Jenner had said of me, I could say of him – I liked him despite myself, but I couldn’t trust him.
Chapter 38
We tore up the nearly-empty highway from Brooklyn to Ossining, chewing up forty miles in under an hour. We quickly passed the city, leaving Manhattan far behind as we entered the wealthy forest suburbs north of Yonkers. The cabin of the car was tense and mostly silent, everyone preparing in their own way for what we might find at John Spotted Elk’s country home. Angkor was meditating over his rifle-and-ax combination in the front passenger seat; Zane was intent on the road, mouth grim whenever he looked into the rearview mirror and I glanced his face. Talya chewed her nails, popping the already short ends of them under her teeth.
I studied the map for half that time. The aging Tappan-Zee Bridge was the starting point for one of the major trucking routes from New York to Illinois. The house was at the end of a private lane off a narrow, winding forest road. We got onto the Taconic State Parkway, the road I normally took to get to Bozya Akra, and gunned north along the abandoned highway at twenty miles over the limit until we merged onto Saw Mill River Road.
“It’s the next left, Zane.” Talya’s voice was high and nervous. She had the radio, thumbing the trigger nervously. “Then take the second right, then follow the road to Marian Place. The house is the one right at the end of the cul-de-sac.”
“Roger that,” Zane replied, barely slowing as he took the hard corner and rumbled over the uneven asphalt. “Everyone ready to go?”
“As ready as I can be.” Angkor unwrapped his rifle and loaded a round, then wound his window down. We all did the same thing. Behind us, the motorcycle escort slowed at the entry to Inningwood Road, one of the two ‘mouths’ that opened up onto the highway. Looking back, I saw Jenner give us the thumbs-up.
From my position behind Zane, I could get the best view of the road outside. As we took the road deeper into the woods, flying at sixty in a thirty zone, I leaned out to get a look at what was coming up around the curve.
Three cars roared out of Marian Place just was we were coming up on it. They screeched as they swung around on the turn and rushed us headlong in both lanes.
Zane wrenched the handbrake and threw the wheel to drift us as the first car clipped our bumper and flew by, followed by the zip-zip of the other two as they passed at high speed. I was flung back into my seat by centrifuge as the Lincoln about-faced, coming to a smoking standstill as a semi-trailer clawed up the shallow hill like a dinosaur and thundered off down the road. There was a shipping container on the back of the truck.
/> “Bravo! Echo!” Talya shouted into the radio.
“Damn this fucking- HOLD ON!” Zane slammed the accelerator, starting off in a cloud of burned rubber and swinging us in right behind the truck.
Angkor chambered a round into his rifle. “Get in closer! I can shoot out the tires.”
“You get in closer, asshole!” Zane snapped back.
We gained on the semi when it had to turn. I leaned out again, further this time, and aimed the Glock at the rear wheels of the truck just ahead of us. I exhaled, focused, and then nearly flew out of the car and onto the road as an unseen vehicle slammed into us from behind.
Zane held on as the car wobbled and threatened to twist and spin, but the suspension and his strength kept us moving forward. The car that had rammed us pulled up alongside, a black Jeep with Duke at the wheel. His formerly handsome face was barely recognizable as human: his cheekbones had been shattered, his face slashed from side to side. His skull was deformed, dented and shot through with razor shards of glass from every wound. He had a pistol leveled at Talya’s head.
“Down!” I was already headed for the floor.
Talya dropped, arms over her head, as one bullet zinged overhead and the second hit with an explosion that took a huge chunk out of the edge of the doorframe. I smelled phosphorus. Incendiary rounds.
Zane steered us away as the side of the car took several more bullets, and then ran our low-slung car into the taller Jeep broadside, trying to destabilize it and knock it off the road. Angkor braced against the passenger-side door and set the rifle against his shoulder, holding steady through the shoving match.
“Cover your ears!” He called out, and fired.
His first bullet took the driver’s side door, denting the Jeep and forcing it away; the second shot took out Duke’s front tire. His car lurched towards us as he fought for control, and he slammed into the Lincoln broadside, his front window level with Talya’s. He snarled, his face a bestial mask, his teeth stained black, and lunged through the pair of open windows.
“Duke, come on! Look what they’ve done to you!” Talya slashed at him with the machete as he groped and clawed for her. She hit his face with her machete, lashing the back of the driver’s seat with dark blood. Duke howled, the sound choking off as the cut sealed over with Yen and his eyeballs burst. Needles of glass forced themselves out of his sockets, crowding them.
Talya screamed and dropped the knife. I pushed her back against the seat and shot him twice in the neck and chest, point-blank. I’d hoped the force of it would knock him back, but the impacts didn’t even slow him. Zane hauled the wheel to pull us away, Duke lunged through the window, clawing at Talya with hands that were already half leopard.
“Miss me, babe?” He snarled, voice too deep and thick to be human, and then ruptured into animal form.
I shouted, Angkor shouted. Talya was shrieking high, panicked screams as Duke wrapped her in his forelegs and pulled her through the broken window, kicking and cursing and crying. The Jeep was out of control, and veered to the side away from us. Duke was scrabbling to remain in the cabin; Talya slammed into the outside of the door, Duke’s fangs buried in her throat, his paw wrapped around her chest.
The girl gnashed her teeth and shouted with rage and pain as she tore herself away from him, ripping open her own neck in the process. Talya tumbled messily to the ground and out of sight on the dark road behind us.
“Talya!” Zane cried out.
Angkor and I both opened on Duke. He took the bullets, roaring, and then tore the door off the Jeep and leapt out onto the road at breakneck speed as the car swayed to the side, flipped the barrier at the edge of the road, and careened into the trees.
“God fucking dammit!” Zane snarled, steering us in towards the truck. “Is she going to get that glass disease from this, or what?”
“Weeders can’t transmit Yen to other Weeders through bites. Sex, StainedGlass weapons or the insertion of an infectious payload… that’s it,” Angkor said, reloading his rifle. “Proper StainedGlass is the only reliable vector. Besides that, Talya’s the Weeder equivalent of The Hulk.”
Even Talya’s slight weight had slowed the Lincoln, and we gained on the truck as the entire caravan rounded the sharp corner onto Inningwood. Jenner was waiting for us on the highway. We just had to keep on them until they reached the straight and we could open up.
“We need to drop the back tires!” Angkor threw his rifle into the back of the car, rolled over the seat, and took the other rear position. “If the truck rolls, the kids are going to be mashed inside that thing.”
“Someone has to get in the cab,” Zane said.
Angkor turned to me, eyes flashing in the orange gloom. “I can’t drive, and I’m too weak to hold on up there at high speed. Can you do it?”
“I’ve taken twelve hits in as many hours,” I replied, loading a new magazine into the Glock and holstering it. “I’ll try, but I can’t promise I’m any stronger than you right now.”
“I’ve got enough in me to help you overclock.” Angkor reached out and clapped my face between his hands before I could protest. I jumped, startled, and then relaxed as his eyes bore into mine. They were normally a dark, iron gray, but in the darkness of the cabin, I saw them shine with a subtle, luminous green. Deep inside them was a glimpse of his Neshamah, an elusive ghostly thing as visceral and unnerving as he was. For a shocked moment, I thought he was going to kiss me.
My body flushed with a wave of sudden energy. I felt my muscles swell and warm. My heartrate picked up, and my senses sharpened to a finely honed edge. Colors were brighter. I began to sweat in the cold wind.
“Go!” He said, pushing me. “You’ve got five to ten minutes before you wind down!”
“Five or ten?” I holstered my pistols, checked the knife, and knelt up ready. There was now so much tensile strength in my legs that I nearly hit my head on the ceiling.
“Expect five. Hope for ten.”
“Okay! Get ready!” Zane swung in to close the gap between us and the truck. We were almost at the final curve of the road, a thousand feet from the highway. He pulled up even with the rear of the cab. I flung the door open, easily able to hold my weight against the onrushing wind, and kicked off into a rushing void of empty space.
There was a moment where I was sure that momentum was just going to pull me back, that I was going to miss a handhold, slip, and tumble away like Talya had. I caught the corner of the shipping crate, slid down, and hung on the bottom of the cargo tray. My legs were swinging close to the churning tires below. I got a heel onto the tray and then half-pulled, half-pushed myself up, plastering myself against the side of the shipping container like a bat.
The Lincoln surged forward – I was second-heaviest after Zane – just as the truck swerved to the left and rammed into the side of the car, bouncing me off my feet. I clutched the bolt rail of the container through the piercing metallic screech; Zane managed the fishtail, but the car fell back.
The truck swung around the right turn hard enough that the shipping container jounced and leaned, pitching my back to the road for a breathless moment before it thumped back into place. Faint screams echoed from inside of it. The kids.
I inched around the edge of it, putting myself between the container and the back of the cab as Angkor’s rifle barked. The truck wheeled and screeched as he dropped one tire, and then braked, hard. Zane shot past us onto the parkway, and then the truck floored it, charging him down as he was forced to wheel and catch the turn. The Lincoln was already just up off the ground when the truck took it in the side like a charging rhino. The car went flying and bounced, barrel-rolling to a smoking stop on the other side of the parkway. I couldn’t see the men inside.
“Fucking… blyat, suka!” I lunged forward and grabbed the ladder leading to the top of the cab. I pulled myself up, hand over hand. At the top of the semi, I saw the three-car escort ahead of us. They were headed straight for an armada of motorcycles.
Harleys roared up and out
from their ambush positions on the side of the road, flinging mud and gravel as they charged. The first line of them held steady, firing on the escort cars. Shotguns went off like cannons; the truck braked again, squealing to a halt. It knocked my feet out from under me. I hit the top of the cab with my chin, biting my tongue, and fumbled to find a grip on the edge of the windshield.
Normally, I would have slid and then been thrown. Fueled on magic, I clawed my way to the front of the cab, swung down, and emptied half the clip into the driver’s side window. Blood exploded against the inside of the windshield, and the truck veered to the side, but it didn’t stop. I scrambled back up as someone returned fire from inside, and held on as they took the wheel, slammed the accelerator, and threw the cab to the side to shake me off.
The cars ahead tried to ram into the oncoming motorcycles, but they were too fast: they split around the vehicles trying to hit them, firing into the windows and at tires. The occupants had the same H&Ks they’d used at Strange Kitty, and even as I watched, one rider and gunner pair went down, jerking spasmodically and tumbling off the out of control bike. The Harley fell and skidded to the edge of the road in a tangle of flesh and metal.
The nearest car erupted with a forest of insectoid legs, and a peal of screams that quickly cut. Spiders the size of dogs crawled out, followed by three small shapes that ran up onto the trunk and onto the semi’s hood, just as it rammed up into the back of the vehicle ahead with a metallic crunch.
Panting, I let go and slid back to the edge of the roof until I caught the ladder. I held on until I had a steady moment, then leaped for the top of the shipping container. The metabolic boost made me stronger, but no more graceful. I hit the edge of it as the semi wobbled from side to side, winding myself, and had to scramble inelegantly to the top with the Glock in hand. We’d slowed down – sixty miles per hour instead of eighty – but we were all still running a fighting battle down the road. I had to take out the tires.
Stained Glass: An Alexi Sokolsky Supernatural Thriller (Alexi Sokolsky: Hound of Eden Book 2) Page 34
