A bright white glow appeared in front of him, momentarily taking the vague shape of a skeletal woman, and then the mass of light shot forward, forcing its way into Nathan’s mouth and down his throat. He staggered backward with a choking cough, water gurgling from his lips as he sputtered. Every attempt at a breath only pumped more water from him, until his shirtfront was soaked and his skin turned pale. He was drowning.
“Nathan!” Cora shouted as he fell to the floor, immediately snatching up her bag from near the sofa and skidding to her knees on the rug beside him. The barrier she’d set broke when her attention did. Elton stood between her and the Chasers, but his spells weren’t going to keep them away very long. The younger one had already freed them from his trap, and Chris had used the opening to force his way into the room to face Elton directly.
Nathan’s fingers clawed at the floor as he struggled for air and found only water in his mouth and lungs. There had to be something she could do, some antidote she could—
Before she even had her kit open, a resounding pulse knocked her backward onto her rear, and Nathan twisted onto his hands and knees, vomiting up lungful after lungful of dark water. With the last droplets falling from his mouth and his breath coming in ragged pants, he turned to look over his shoulder at the boy and wiped his chin with the back of one hand. He had managed a counterspell—somehow—but Cora could see the strain in his arms as he supported himself. She knew the black look in his eyes and the tight scowl on his lips, too. This was about to get bad. She pushed to her feet and hastily reset the barrier just in time to stop a woman in a silk house dress from wandering too close.
Nathan pulled to his feet and rushed the young Chaser, his hand fastening onto the front of the boy’s shirt with his palm against his chest as he snarled the word, “San.”
Blood seeped into the fabric of the boy’s shirt at his shoulder, but before it could spread, he gripped Nathan by the wrist and whispered, “Возмездие.”
Nathan jerked and let out a short grunt of surprise at the jolt of pain that shot across his chest, matching the wound he’d dealt, and he wrenched his hand free of the other man’s hold to stop the spell and stumbled backward with blood oozing from his skin. “You’re a nasty one,” he hissed, already raising his hands and feeling his bracelet warm against his wrist. At his gesture, the door frame gave an aching creak and snapped toward the hallway, splintering as though something much too large was trying to force its way through.
“Korshunov!” Chris called in a warning tone, but he was prevented from interfering by Elton’s quick incantation. The blond’s slip of red-marked paper stuck firm as he slapped it onto Chris’s shoulder, immediately burning a hole through his shirt. The Chaser clawed at the talisman and got out a few attempted counterspells, but none of them could move the paper from where it plastered itself to his skin. The flesh around it began to turn red, then black, the burn spreading swiftly down his arm and across his chest. Cora almost covered her ears, his screams were so terrible, but it took all her attention to keep the barrier up in the hallway. The boy barely seemed to notice his partner’s cries. There were more people outside the barrier now—mundanes shouting and panicking, some clearly on the phone with emergency services.
The floor shook from the pressure of Nathan’s spell, and sharp splinters of wood shot from the doorframe, most barely missing the Chaser on their way to bury themselves in the opposite wall. One did lodge itself in the boy’s arm, another in his cheek, and he hissed as his head snapped to the side. Without bothering to even try to remove it, he reached both hands out to his side and shattered the barrier with a word. The deadly points that had been harmlessly bouncing off of the protective spell now flew into the gathered crowd, causing even more shouts of alarm and pain. At least two of the bystanders cried out and dropped to the floor.
“Nathan!” Cora shouted, grabbing him by the elbow with both hands and shaking him into paying attention. “Nathan, stop! The people!”
He glared at the frightened mundanes as though they were interfering, but when Cora called to him again and he saw the fear on her face, he growled out a swear of frustration and finally halted the onslaught of his spell.
The boy took advantage of the hesitation and called out to his partner, “По моей воле, Полевому.” A pale green light flew from his open hand and washed over Chris, and the paper stuck to his shoulder crinkled and drifted away like ash, putting a stop to his pained cries.
A quick movement of Nathan’s hand lifted Chris’s writhing body from the floor, and he threw him into the other Chaser with a flick of his wrist, sending them both crashing against the far wall. Nathan snatched up Cora’s hand and caught Elton by the arm, then clasped their hands together and shoved them both away from him with a ragged shout.
“Achòxa!”
Cora flinched away from the blinding light that burst in front of her, and the next thing she knew, she was outside, holding Elton’s hand and landing heavily on top of him as they tumbled onto the sidewalk. A second later, Nathan appeared behind them in another bright flash, their suitcases tumbling into a pile behind him.
“Quickly,” he said, his voice sounding hoarse as he struggled for breath. Elton and Cora hurried to stand, and with their bags over their shoulders or under their arms, Nathan took both of his companions by the hand and called out the same word, “achòxa.” When they stumbled to a stop again, they were on an entirely different street. Cora couldn’t tell how far they’d gone, but she couldn’t even see the tall hotel over the top of the buildings that now surrounded them.
Nathan wavered, and he would have hit the street if not for Elton’s supporting arm around his waist.
“Easy,” the blond said, hooking the other man’s arm around his shoulders while Cora flagged down a passing taxi.
She was able to hide their disheveled and bloody appearance with a glamour—at least, she did well enough that the driver didn’t comment—and Elton asked the man to take them to a cheap hotel near the docks. Cora held onto Nathan’s hand with both of hers while they rode, but he didn’t return her squeezes. He was awake, but his breath came in rasping gasps, and he leaned heavily against Elton’s side.
When the car stopped, Elton helped Nathan out of the backseat while Cora grabbed their bags from the trunk. Cora left them in the parking lot, Elton holding Nathan up beside him, just long enough to hurry into the lobby and book them a room. They definitely needed to get somewhere hidden fast. She trotted back out with their keys in her hand and found Nathan on the ground, leaning against a handicapped parking sign while Elton scowled out at the road with his arms folded.
“What happened?” she asked, rushing to Nathan’s side. “Are you okay?”
“He grabbed my ass,” Elton snorted. “He can support himself.”
“You’re so cruel, darling,” Nathan croaked, but he had a sleepy smile on his face.
“Seriously?” Cora sighed and helped Nathan to his feet, passing the card keys off to Elton as they made their way to their room. They had to take an elevator with a metal gate up to the second floor, and the paint on the hallway walls was peeling, but the room itself seemed reasonably clean. Cora let Nathan down on the bed, where he promptly curled up on his side with a pillow held to his chest. The space was austere, if Cora was being polite. Two beds sat against the wall with mostly clean-looking white sheets and a simple nightstand between them, and a print of a woman on the beach hung on the wall where the television might have been, if there had been one. It was definitely a far cry from the suite they had left. Cora and Elton put up all the wards they could, and then the girl sat on the bed beside Nathan with her suitcase open in front of her and began to take out various vials and packets of herbs.
Elton pulled his new phone from his bag as soon as the room was as secure as they could make it. He dialed Jocelyn’s phone number and did his best not to pace while he waited for her to pick up.
“Hello?”
He couldn’t help the breath of
relief that left him at the sound of her voice. “Jo,” he said, “it’s me.”
“Elton, good grief,” the woman answered. “What is going on?”
“Has anyone come to talk to you? From the Magistrate?”
“A couple of days ago, yeah. They said it might be dangerous for me right now; they sent a couple of Chasers to watch the apartment.”
Elton swore under his breath and turned his back on his companions. “Jo, listen to me. You need to disappear for a while.”
“Disappear? Are you crazy? Why?”
“A Chaser came after me today. He threatened to kill you if I didn’t turn myself in.”
“Kill me?” Jocelyn echoed in a softer voice. “They can’t kill me, Elton. It’s the Magistrate. They don’t just kill people.”
“Whether they can or not, I don’t want to risk you. Call Keung dai lo; tell him what’s happening. He’ll take care of you.”
“Elton, this is crazy. They said that Moore is loose again, and that you’re working with him? Is that true?”
“It’s...it’s complicated, Jo. I can’t really talk about it. It’s really better the less you know. Just call dai lo. Promise me?”
“Elton—”
“Please,” he said, lowering his voice and continuing in Cantonese to keep the others from at least this private bit of conversation. “Don’t make me worry about you.”
Jocelyn hesitated, and then she sighed. “Okay,” she agreed at last. “I promise. I’ll call him.”
“Thank you. Take care of yourself, Jo. I hope I don’t have to talk to you again.”
“Be careful, whatever you’ve gotten yourself into. Bye, Elton.”
Elton hung up the phone and dropped it onto the bed with a quiet sigh. He became aware that the others were watching him—Cora from behind her stack of ingredients and Nathan with his chin tucked into the pillow hugged to his chest.
“You never speak so sweetly to me, darling.”
“Shut up.” He pulled off his jacket, sat down on the opposite bed, and tried to rub the soreness out of his hands. He’d exerted himself trying to keep Chris in check, and the stiffness of his joints was his reward. “I don’t like this,” he said. “That kid is going to be a problem. Who the hell is he? What makes him think he can just violate the Concordat?”
“It wouldn’t be an unheard-of thing,” Nathan answered. He sat up, wincing and putting one hand to the cut on his chest. He was clearly trying not to show it, but Elton and Cora could both tell he was struggling to stay awake. “Back in my day, Chasers were occasionally given carte blanche to catch me if I’d been especially naughty lately. And murdering a Magister’s son is exceptionally naughty, Elton.”
“Even if he had permission,” Cora spoke up, “how could he just not care if those people got hurt? Not even that—he broke my barrier on purpose so they’d be in danger.”
“He knew we would care if they got hurt,” Elton said. “He was using them to distract us.”
“What an awful person. Are there any nice Chasers?”
Nathan pushed himself from the bed, brushing away Cora’s attempts to help him, and took a few unsteady steps into the bathroom.
“The Magistrate must consider it a worthwhile risk, if it means bringing Nathan in. Me too, I guess,” Elton added, leaning his weight back on his sore hands. Cora frowned but didn’t answer him. He’d known, logically, that his decision would mean he’d be wanted, but the full weight of what it really meant to be on the run hadn’t occurred to him. He would be more careful from now on.
A loud hacking interrupted the brief quiet, and they looked up to see Nathan bent over the sink, heaving as he coughed out a few more mouthfuls of water. He supported himself on the grungy counter until he caught his breath, and he glanced at the folded hand towel with skepticism before deciding to wipe his mouth on the hem of his shirt instead.
“I, for one, don’t like this boy very much at all,” he said.
“Come here,” Cora said, patting the hard mattress. “You’re bleeding.”
Nathan obeyed, tugging his shirt up over his head and abandoning it on the floor on his way back to the bed. He laid down on his back at her urging and dozed off before she’d even finished mixing her poultice. She took some of the paste on her fingertips and gently ran it along the cut down Nathan’s chest. It probably wouldn’t even leave a scar, but the way the red line ran straight down his sternum made her shiver. If he hadn’t stopped it—she pressed her lips together and focused on her task. It didn’t help anyone for her to scare herself imagining Nathan’s chest opening like it had an alien in it.
When she finished, she crawled slowly to the edge of the bed, careful not to touch her sticky hands to the sheets, and took the single step across to where Elton sat.
“You too,” she said quietly, nodding toward the deep cut still seeping blood into his cuff. “When did that even happen?”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “Hao was really out to get me.”
Cora tucked one leg under her and sat beside him as he rolled up his sleeve. She touched a bit of the mixture to the open wound, bent down to peer at it, then frowned as though unsatisfied with the results. She pushed the small jar off on Elton and reached back into her bag for her book, flipping pages with her clean hand until she found the recipe she wanted.
“Oh, alfalfa,” she muttered. “Shit; I’ll have to put it on Nathan again, too.” She moved across the room and opened Nathan’s apothecary case, helping herself to the little jar of sprouts once she spotted it. She tucked them into her mouth and spat the chewed mass back into her jar with a softly spoken phrase as she took her seat again. This time, when she smeared a glob of the paste on Elton’s exposed forearm, he flinched slightly at the soft hiss his skin gave. As she applied more, the wound stopped bleeding entirely and seemed to be less red, but she couldn’t quite get the skin to close completely.
“Since when are you a healer?” he asked softly.
“I’ve been doing some reading,” she said. “Neither of you guys are any good at it, and somehow I can see both of you getting hurt a lot on this little adventure. So I figured I ought to learn. Thanks for letting me practice so soon,” she added with a teasing grin.
Elton chuckled. “I can’t argue with that logic.” He smiled at her, and his expression was gentle, but she could see the distracted worry in his eyes.
She rubbed away some excess paste and wiped it off of her finger on the rim of the jar, peeking up at his pensive face. “Your wife is going to be okay, you know.”
“She’s my ex,” he clarified, sounding a little like he was reminding himself, too. “But I know. Yan-lung will make sure nothing happens to her.”
“Who is that? A relative?”
“You could say that. Remember I told you about Li Jie and his brother? Yan-lung is the big brother.”
“The Triad brother? You’re sending a gangster to protect your wife?”
“Ex-wife,” he answered with a sigh.
“Whatever, ex-wife. A gangster is the important thing here. A witch gangster.”
“I wouldn’t trust anyone else.”
“That’s so cool,” she laughed. “Will he show up in a black car and sunglasses all like, ‘come with me,’ and he hides her in the safe house at the back of some nightclub somewhere?”
“You watch too many movies.”
“So that’s a yes,” she said, leaning in close to peer at him.
“Yes,” he sighed, “it’ll probably be something like that.”
“Man, I don’t ever get cool gangster escorts anywhere.”
“Being able to claim one of the most notorious witches in history as your personal tutor isn’t enough for you?”
“Yeah,” she shrugged, “but the shine sort of comes off Nathan after you’ve had to see his naked butt a hundred times.”
“You two don’t know how to let a man sleep, do you?” Nathan called groggily from the other bed. He rolled onto his side with his cheek mushed against the pillow
and stared at them through lidded eyes. “I only teleported three people and a load of luggage this afternoon.”
“Which is supposed to be impossible, by the way,” Elton pointed out as Cora stepped back over to Nathan to reapply her improved poultice. “Arriens supposedly disproved the theory of teleportation in the 1500s.”
Nathan let out a quiet, tired laugh. “Arriens never met my little fox. I learned quite a few forgotten tricks from that spirit. Still, I don’t recommend it. I hope you’re on guard duty, darling, as I’m next to useless.”
“You need to get un-useless if we’re going to go get that couple from the medical examiner’s tonight.”
“Christ,” Nathan sighed. “Yes. Just—let me have a nap.” He brushed Cora’s hand aside, turned over with his back to them, and stuffed the spare pillow over his head. “And make sure there’s food when I wake up,” he added, muffled under the pillowcase.
“Glad he’s not too exhausted to make demands,” Cora muttered, not even trying to hide the smile on her face.
7
Korshunov left Chris on the floor of the hotel corridor without a care for the mundanes he shoved aside, racing down the hall to the emergency stairwell and leaping over the metal railing to drop down the center of the surrounding stairs. Story after story rushed by him in seconds, only slowing from the quick spell he cast as he drew close to the concrete floor. As soon as his feet touched the ground, he threw himself through the exit door and ran through the lobby. His narrow eyes scanned the street, his chest heaving and his cheek running red with blood. The willow token from his pocket was cold as he turned it in his fingertips, his murmured incantation stirring no warmth or vibration from the seeking spell.
“Gone,” he growled, the single word coming out like a curse. He squeezed the scrap of wood so tightly that it almost broke the skin of his palm, and he stalked back into the hotel. He took the elevator back up to where he was sure his partner would still be lying uselessly in the hallway, and with a slight flinch, he plucked Nathan’s thrown darts from where they had lodged themselves in his arm and cheek and dropped the stained splinters to the carpet. He ran his tongue over the small hole on the inside of his mouth with a snort of frustration as the elevator doors opened again.
The Left-Hand Path: Prodigy Page 8
