I slid the knife between my sock and boot and the small roll of hundreds into my bra. Morgan’s fingers found my shoulder, probing at the edge of the wound.
“When did they heal you?” he asked.
Startled, I glanced down, looking where he’d pulled up the sleeve of my shirt. I’d imagined a fresh bullet wound, but instead, there was a dark scab over a messy matrix of bright pink tissue. It looked several days old.
I tensed, shaking my head even as my brain reeled back through the past few hours, grasping for explanation. “I don’t know, I…” He looked down at me, eyes cool as ever.
“You have magic too,” he said. “It might've been instinct.”
I shuddered, wishing he hadn’t reminded me of the unpleasant fact that, in some ways, I was like the Guild.
I needed to move. If they knew about the yacht, they'd come to take control of the pack soon. I touched my wounded shoulder. At least the bullet destroyed the tattoo. They could never control me now.
I accepted a black windbreaker, slung my mom’s backpack over my good shoulder, and walked to one of the warehouse’s two doors. Morgan strode to the other.
Then we slipped from the warehouse, into cooling sea wind, and vanished into the night.
Chapter Five
I leaned the bike into a hard swerve. A streak of crimson slashed past my boots, blistering the asphalt to the left with a molten red mandala. An instant later, and that would have been my tires.
I forced out a breath and burned past the pothole, shifting my weight left and right. The bike growled and jerked beneath me, raging against my exhaustion. When the Guild Sorcerer said they wouldn’t let us go, I’d thought they’d just enslave us again. But they didn’t seem interested in taking prisoners.
They did, however, want the book intact. That was the only thing keeping me safe from a body shot or a spelled bullet.
An acid green mandala slammed the asphalt ahead of me and burst, sending a shower of sparks into my face. I ducked behind my arm, felt angry cinders sear my crown and knuckles. Panic lifted in my gut, but I forced it down. It was just pain. Just collateral sparks. They needed a direct hit to do real damage.
Think, Helena. The spell had come from above, which meant they were on top of the warehouses. A perimeter. That might work in my favor—they wouldn’t be fast. I could lose them. It also meant they’d be ready to intercept my scattering pack, who didn’t have a priceless book on their backs and 989 CCs of angry crotch rocket growling beneath them.
I locked down that worry. Now was the time to focus. If they’d set up a perimeter, they’d set up someone to—
Headlights flicked on ahead, followed by the low, juddering start of high-horsepower engines. I roared past, just as the driver slammed his foot on the pedal and launched the vehicle out of the alley.
A fresh wave of electricity crackled up my spine and I ducked low behind the windscreen. High beams cut past me, throwing my shadow out ahead. I felt the roar of a pursuing vehicle—a truck or a hummer, there wasn’t time to study it. It was gunning forward, a tiger on my heels.
The time for maneuvering was over. I opened the throttle.
The warehouses sat low and long, broken up by the occasional side roads or streetlamp. I had to get back to populated areas, where their own code of secrecy would force the Sorcerers to stop firing spells. I needed to go west. West and north, to the suburbs.
Someone shouted behind me. A quick glance in my mirror revealed shadows, leaning out beyond the glare of headlights. I zipped right, clawing for a strategy. I couldn’t lay this thing down like Morgan, and I was going way too fast to turn in such a narrow chute.
That was it. I clenched my teeth and moved to the right, swerving like I had before, losing speed. The vehicle—a shiny black Hummer rendered inconspicuous in this party-mad city—moved up next to me, revealing a man with a heavy black gun, training on my head.
I dropped off the throttle. The hummer raged past me, and I didn’t stop to see how long it would take them to slow down, realize they couldn’t turn around. I pulled a dangerously fast U-turn, scraping my knee on the road, and took off back the way I’d come. The crack of a gunshot followed, then the spark of a ricochet off a steel post.
In seconds, I was out of gun range, hurtling back toward the perimeter. A side road opened on my right, and I skidded into it. I zipped through the night, ears open for the hummer, cutting west every few streets and doubling back until I was certain the Sorcerers were off my tail.
Warehouses transitioned to gas-stations, motels, and surf shops. Crumbling asphalt shifted to something better maintained, though still radiating tarry fumes of absorbed heat. Industry gave way to low-slung suburbia, where moonlight glowed off sandy yards and turned every clump of pampas grass into a treacherous silhouette. When I emerged onto NW 37th St., I opened her up, heedless of speed limits and lack of helmet.
When at last the tracks appeared ahead, I let my muscles relax their iron grip on my spine. The glowing sign of Miami Amtrak shone like a beacon ahead.
In the parking lot, I climbed off the bike with heavy, shaken limbs, and gave the hot console a pat of gratitude. It was a nimble escape vehicle, but it wouldn’t keep me anonymous. The Guild would have the plates. I could take those off or switch them, but it wouldn’t take long for the police to stop me, especially once I crossed state lines.
I considered the tracks. Mom and I had planned to continue down them on foot, hop the scheduled freight train north. Fog threatened at the corners of my brain and my body ached, pains both dull and sharp prodding at every limb.
I gave the station entrance a long look. It would be such a relief to sit, to let the train’s sway and the clack of the rails lull me to sleep. I had money—enough for a sleeper.
I swallowed, took a step toward the doors. A train headed to Fort Lauderdale in twenty minutes. One glance at the timetables posted online had been enough for me to memorize the schedules. I didn’t have that kind of memory for everything, but patterns and pictures stuck with me. Dad had been the same way, and it proved itself damn useful in situations like this. Mom did the talking, I memorized the details.
I deserved rest and privacy. A chance to process all this shit. My hand fell on the ticketing office door, but I paused, the black memory of Mom’s face, with its dark little bullet hole, rose in my mind.
Even with fake IDs, the Guild will track us. They’ll see the bike. They’ll be at every station.
The words echoed in her voice. Even burned to bones, sinking in the wreck of a yacht in Miami bay, she was still helping me.
I drew a shaky breath and, keeping my face turned down, glanced at the ceiling on my right and found the security camera.
“Shit.” My voice sounded surprising over the groan of traffic in the distance—too human in this night-world of asphalt and machines. I drew my hand from the door handle, checked the time on my phone, then squinted at the jumble of tracks in the distance. That train to Ft. Lauderdale would board in twenty minutes.
Weeks of researching escape plans had turned up an interesting discovery: Amtrak's rails were mostly owned by freight companies, which rented out their use to passenger trains. We chose this spot because it was the easiest way to find the right track, but I hadn’t considered its usefulness in misdirection. An idea gathered in my head, and before it fully formed, I pulled open the station door.
Thirty minutes later, I collapsed under the roaring overpass of highway 924, a ticket to Rhode Island going sweaty in my palm. I’d jogged perhaps a mile down the tracks, passing the loading yard of the freight company that owned this stretch of rail. It was a convenient hiding spot—far enough from the Amtrak station that I didn’t think the Sorcerers’ Guild would look for me, yet close enough to the freight station that any trains pulling out would still be slow, navigating the track’s joins and splits.
I shredded the ticket in shaking fingers. With any luck, the Guild would spread out down the route to Rhode Island, waiting to pounce at every s
top.
I leaned back on the scummy concrete and shivered, though the darkened air was still in the seventies. I wished I could get a glimpse of the stars, but I shut down that possibility. They'd only remind me of Dad, and then of Mom. I’d been channeling my feelings into fighting, into running. I couldn’t let myself give into them yet.
A cool tide was working its way into my core, waves of numbness creeping ever higher. I still didn't feel it. Images of Mom flashed behind my eyes every time I blinked, but I didn't feel the life-cracking horror you should feel when your parents died. Now, it was just a low-grade nausea. Hadn't I loved her? Why wasn't I screaming and raging and sobbing like the world was ending?
I stared at my hands. Dirty fingers intertwined, they looked like foreign things—they looked like they belonged to someone else. I pulled the backpack up into my lap and shoved aside the book, still in its waterproof bag. I dug out my burner phone and tapped out a text to Morgan and Eamon, hoping it would get through to both: SAFE.
I was shaking. I should eat and drink a bottle of water. My pulse was invading my skull.
I crammed donuts in my mouth whole, chewing and swallowing until I inhaled powdered sugar and forced myself to slow down. After surviving fourteen years as a slave to Gwydian, choking on a powdered donut would be a stupid fucking way to die.
When I'd eaten most of the bag, my two-way radio crackled and emitted a string of train-yard lingo. These past two weeks, I'd done my homework, sneaking around the freight yard in the evenings, finding out which hobos and yard workers would drop information, learning to beware the rolling cars. I didn’t know most of the coded terms, but I recognized enough. The train was coming.
I crumpled the bag around the remaining donuts and shoved them back in my backpack. A headlight broke through the palms. It was a straight line down the tracks—not much curve to account for, except the distortion of distance. It was big. I hadn’t thought about how big it would be until just now—thousands of tons of steel and inertia. I stepped back into the fronds of an elephant-ear plant.
It closed in. Arteries in my neck throbbing, I dug in my toes and prepped to run.
The engine thundered past. I squinted into the wind, looking down the line for a likely car.
We’d practiced this. Mom’s hand pushing me forward, up to speed. Grab on and don’t let go—pick up your feet.
I saw the inverted rhombus of a grainer car and broke from my hiding spot. I ran. Fear quickened my veins, sharpened my vision. I saw the porch-like grate, the handle, the step. I lurched toward it and grabbed hold. A few paces more and I pushed off the ground. My injured shoulder screamed. I sensed the ground rushing below me, the train’s deadly forward motion. With a last burst of effort, I drew my knees up and got a foot on the step.
I hauled myself to safety, collapsing on the cross-hatched metal stoop just as the northbound freight picked up speed. I tucked myself into the car’s yawning chute, stowing the backpack inside.
Moments later, the tracks broke free of the trees and snaked into a jungle of concrete and metal. It all flew past me: sprawling stucco neighborhoods, the shimmer of residual heat rising off the asphalt, the smell of cocoa butter, cigarettes, and tar.
I’d have sworn I hated Miami. It hadn’t been a kind home, or a safe one. But it was what I knew—all beach and crumbled asphalt, palms and snakes and everglades, and the smell of trash heating in the oven of summer. I didn’t know if I’d miss the oiled bodies and oiled guns, but at least I knew how to stay on the right side of them.
This train hauled me toward places I’d never seen. My future was unclear as the light-polluted sky. I took a breath, memorized the teeth of Miami’s skyline. My mother’s resting place.
Maybe someday I'd tell them both a proper goodbye.
Chapter Six
I changed trains in Manassas, and the second freight took me all the way to Chicago, where I discovered that northern autumns don’t fuck around. The wind froze the metal grainer car, so I shed my clothing and transformed into a hound. My shaggy fur made for welcome insulation in the frigid Illinois dawn.
We flashed through suburbs until skyscrapers pushed above the low-slung shops, highlighted by the rising sun. Buildings grew larger and more uniform, corporate blocks of concrete and glass dripping with condensation. I spotted few glyphs among the graffiti tags. Maybe the Guild’s Chicago branch wasn’t as organized as Miami’s. I could only hope.
The train pulled into an enormous freight yard. I wrestled the zipper on my backpack shut and leapt onto the tracks with the top handle in my mouth. If any yard workers saw me, they didn’t pursue.
The rail-side gravel was cold and sharp on the pads of my feet. The tracks rode low on the city’s landscape, bordered by a river on one side and a large embankment on the other. The built-up roads atop the embankment rumbled with the pulse of city life. It was weird to see a city on so many levels—I was so used to Miami’s flatness. Before now, a city with an underground infrastructure had only existed in theory.
I found a parking deck with a lower level that butted up against the gravel. It was empty but for service vehicles, so I hopped the concrete barrier, ducked behind a white security van, and transformed. Goosebumps crept down my arms. Crouching on damp concrete, I hauled on clothes, but they were worthless in the morning chill.
I needed to get above ground, find a place to buy food and warmer gear.
As I shoved the book deeper into my backpack, my hand knocked against the burner phone. I clicked it on. Eamon had responded! Relief rushed through me as I walked to the parking lot’s elevator.
RDVZ at Lola’s hometown. Will send message on arrival.
I stepped into the elevator and hit the button for ground level, my eyes burning. If Eamon was okay, the rest of my pack probably was. The Sorcerers hadn’t caught them.
And the rendezvous point made sense. Mom had grown up in a small college town in Minnesota, where her grandparents had raised her and her twin brother—Morgan’s dad—until they moved to Florida for University. As far as I knew, those great grandparents were dead.
At least the Guild wouldn’t trace connections or have anyone’s wellbeing to hold over my head, but that was small comfort.
I strode from the parking garage onto a busy thoroughfare. It was still a mile or two from the larger skyscrapers, but South Canal Street clearly serviced a good number of families. Everywhere I looked, people strolled in fast-paced herds, hunched against the wind while carrying Whole Foods bags and chatting on cell phones at the cross-walk. Children too small to be in school waddled along in bright parkas and bobble hats, clinging to their parents’ hands.
I pulled out my prepaid phone again. Eamon hadn’t skimped on the model—this one was a Samsung that could piggy-back off any nearby WiFi connection. Most of the pack’s burner phones weren’t this nice. Eamon had probably given me this one to up my chances of survival. With the freight yard so close, there would be an Amtrak station nearby. I didn't think the Guild would look at train stations this far West, and with a scarf, hat, and jacket, I could fool a security camera.
A quick search confirmed Union Station, less than a mile away, with a train for Minnesota leaving at two.
An hour and $400 worth of cold-weather gear later, I slipped into a family bathroom at Union Station and threw the lock. The backpack slid from my shoulders, and I heaved the shiny gray duffel bag onto the sink. It still had its tags, and the insides bulged with clothes that smelled like store.
I was just about to unzip it when I caught sight of my reflection and recoiled.
My hair was stiff with sweat and dried saltwater, and so oily the whisky-gold color had gone dull brown. Grime streaked my face, and I suspected the funny looks I’d gotten from cashiers had been more about the livid red cut on my cheek than my cagey behavior.
But that wasn’t what startled me. Once, the girlhood softness of my cheeks had rounded off those features Mom passed down, and though I knew we had passing family resemblance, I never thou
ght I looked like her. Only now, with stress and grief melting away the last of my childishness, did I see my mother’s face in mine.
Then the thing I’d been pushing down welled up, rising from the depths like a body cut loose from its weighted block.
Mom was dead, and it couldn’t be taken back.
Heat rushed into my cheeks. I watched my eyes shimmer and overflow, tears carving through the grime on my face. They made dark splotches on the shiny gray bag.
My legs gave. I caught my good shoulder against the wall and rolled my back to the tile. My lungs clenched, stomach hiccuping so hard I couldn't breathe. This was like panic, only worse.
Mom was gone, and all I wanted right now was for her to hold me, to make me feel safe the way she always had. Until this moment, I’d operated under the delusion it somehow wasn’t real. But in my mind I saw the image of that tiny hole in her cheekbone, felt her heat escaping beneath my hands. It was real. Relentless and cruel and real.
Part of me wanted to blame her, or myself. We had counted on change—fought for the possibility that our lives could be different. And in the worst possible way, we’d won.
I don’t know how long I cried—long enough for two people to knock, wait, and give up on the family restroom. Some subconscious part of my brain forced me to get up, to wash my face and hair in the sink. I stuck my head under the hand-dryer until my hair puffed out like a lion’s mane, then tamed the unruly waves into a braid down my back. I didn’t look in the mirror again.
The most valuable things went into the backpack—my mom’s jewelry, the photograph of my parents, the money I hadn’t shoved either into my boot or sports-bra—but my hand paused on the book.
I could just shove it in a locker here in Union Station. Leave it for time to forget. No one would find it, not for a long time, and the likelihood it would fall into the Sorcerers’ Guild’s hands….
Unleash (Spellhounds Book 1) Page 4
