I darted toward the back exit, already planning my next move. There would be sanguimancers, and maybe Guild members now waiting for me out there. If I didn’t need to draw mandalas, what better time to give that possibility a try?
Gripping tighter to the boxcutter, I called up an image of a mandala in my head—a cutting spell I’d just seen Isaac carve into the air. I willed magic to my fingers, to the image in my head, and shoved open the door.
Strong, dark arms reached for me. I kicked, and the mow hawked woman staggered back, doubling over. She shot out a hand, her tattooed palm some intricate, evil looking mandala. I swung the box cutter, forgetting the spell as reflexes kicked in.
The blade sliced through her tattoo, but not before she sent off the spell. I jerked to the side to avoid it and she seized the opportunity. She kicked my legs out and, in a second, she was on me, sliced hand on my face, knees pinning my arms.
In her free hand, a switchblade appeared, and the tip angled beneath my eye.
“We got business, bitch,” she growled. “And the boss didn’t say you had to come home pretty.” I wasn’t bleeding out this time and twisting sent her off balance. I earned only a slice beneath the eye for my struggles. It burned, but I didn’t care. Her blood was making my face slick.
Blood. Iron. Mars. Martin. My grandparent, or theirs, or theirs had changed our name from silver to iron. Maybe the name wasn’t the only thing that changed when they disappeared.
Deepti had said they didn’t know how my gifts would translate into Sanguimancy. There was power here, all over my face. However evil the Guild thought using someone else’s blood was, it seemed stupid not to. Especially since the bitch now threatening to lobotomize me through the eyeball wouldn’t expect it.
I called up the mandala in my mind, imagined tethers of lightning from the slice in her hand, the same tethers I’d felt when Gwydian had used my power to cast.
The woman squeezed my face, pressed the knife in until I felt it breaking skin under my eye.
“I’m carving you up pretty,” she said. “For Matt.”
“Not if I carve you first,” I growled, and let the spell fly.
At first, all I saw was turquoise mandala, shot through with veins of red. Then slashes of light opened out like a fan and the Sorcereress rocketed back in a mist of dark liquid. She landed hard and didn't rise.
I rolled to my knees. The boxcutter in my hand was slick. I didn't want to go over to the woman, but I forced myself to do it anyway. Her face was no longer a face. Magic had slashed her open in a tight web, crisscrossing her face and chest. I'd cut her throat, right across the carotid artery. Bright blood still pulsed from the wound.
I'd seen it a thousand times before. I'd done it with a knife in my hands. This was different. This time, it wasn't an innocent. This time, I'd done it with my mind.
I rooted through her jacket and found a cell phone, shakily pressed her finger to the unlock ID, and staggered toward the nearby cars. Deepti had been right. I could cast magic without even drawing a mandala.
And that meant I couldn't let her have me. Or Gwydian. Or anyone. I had to run.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The last time I'd been this cold, I'd been in a frozen-over lake. Now, wind streaked past the cracked window of my battered, stolen Toyota as I peeled down unfamiliar roads packed high with snow.
The headlights behind me had vanished, but I didn't trust it. The moon was high and bright, and I couldn't hear anything past the judder of wind through the windows. They could still be behind me, headlights cut.
The auto repair shop had been out of town, and now I'd escaped, who knew where the hell I was. The bounty hunter's GPS got no signal, and there was nothing but straight, long, unlabeled roads. All I could do was hope it was the right way.
I risked a glance in the rearview, saw nothing but snow caked two feet high.
The gas gauge pointed toward the red. Who the car belonged to, I didn't know. In the clash of Sorcerers and bounty hunters, I'd grabbed the first thing I thought I could hot wire. Thirty-five minutes later, I was in the middle of flat nowhere with only the broken stalks of harvested corn to offer me protection.
I could feel the bounty hunters. The grip of sixth sense on my nape told me to keep going, no matter what. I wasn't safe now. I wouldn't be safe until I could get away from the hunters. The Sorcerers. Everything. With the Guild after me for my power, Gwydian after me for my bloodline and eidetic memory, I might never be safe again.
The engine gave an ominous clunk. All at once, the steering column seized up, and the break grew resistant to the pressure of my bare foot.
“Shit,” I hissed, wrenching on the wheel. But without power steering, it was me against the weight of the entire car. The old Toyota fishtailed, hit a pothole, and careened into the field.
Stalks smashed across the windshield, coughing up snow. My head jerked forward, and a split second later the seatbelt hurled me back into my seat.
The engine hissed. The surrounding metal creaked and shuddered. Every light on the dashboard was a brilliant glyph of vehicular death.
I shoved open my door, crushing yet more stalks, and stepped out into the snow-packed field. A few kicking steps and I gained the road.
I stared at the car, arms wrapped around myself. Of all the cars at the shop, I had to choose the one twenty miles of farmland away from throwing a rod.
I shifted from foot to foot, unable to keep either on the snow for long. Part of me wanted to get back in the car, just to conserve warmth. I already knew I wouldn’t, though. If I would die, I’d rather it be from exposure than at the hands of Guild or bounty hunters.
There had to be magic for this. The only heat spell I knew was straight up fire, though, and if my experience burning the book was any sign, that flaming column would shoot into the sky, alerting every Sorcerer, bounty hunter, and concerned citizen five miles in any direction.
My shivers were fading. I swallowed, a thrill of fear shooting up my spine as I realized what that meant—my body was conserving energy. Hypothermia was setting in, and soon everything cold would feel hot.
I crouched, rubbing my calves with hands that felt like half-thawed meat.
Maybe alerting the Sorcerers would be worth it if I could just get warm again.
Above, stars hung like chips of ice. If only I knew what direction I needed to go, I could navigate. Polaris was right above me, bright as the ring on Sanadzi's finger. The last time I'd seen the sky this clear, it had been my birthday. Jaesung and Krista had been with me, wrapped up in sleeping bags and sipping spiked hot chocolate.
I started. Without the snow, this farm land looked like where we’d driven. I turned in a circle. At the far reaches of my vision stood a farm house, flanked by two silos and a grain elevator. I'd passed others, miles back, but maybe….
My first steps were painful and grew more so as I skulked over slush and into banks of snow. I could barely walk but I did it anyway, headed for the dark juts of silo in the distance. If nothing else, I could at least hot-wire another vehicle. Maybe a truck. I put a hand to my chest, confirmed the box-cutter and phone making hard shapes in the tight bodice of my borrowed dress.
I might have been sweating. My ears were throbbing, breath coming sharp in my lungs, when I noticed the headlights. I didn't even bother to look, just pitched myself sideways into the field. Sharp stalks sliced my feet and legs as I fell to my knees, but I ignored the pain, prostrating myself behind the chaotic fringe of vegetation. Snow crunched cold and glasslike under me.
The car crept down the road. I squinted as it passed. Now that headlights didn't blind me to the passengers, it was clear who they were—hunters. I recognized the one Krista had maced, and three more, glaring out into the frosted night. They couldn't have been going this speed the whole time—they had to have slowed down after finding the car. Or maybe they had a way of tracking their friend's phone.
It was several minutes of shivering on the ground before I could no longer see
the tail lights. Even then, my arms didn't want to push me up. I wouldn't make it past the farm house. I needed to get warm. I needed to call-
God. I hadn’t even thought about Jaesung. And Krista and Sanadzi and all the others. I closed my eyes, tempted to sit down again. I'd wanted so much not to let my angst interrupt Sanadzi and Eugene's wedding. Now, I imagined them, sitting on the couch at Ruff Patch, surrounded by luggage, talking to police officers while the Hawaii-bound plane took off without them.
Or maybe, and I knew the hope was thin, but still—maybe Jaesung and Krista had concealed my absence from the newlyweds, sent them off to white sand and indigo seas none the wiser.
I forced myself to walk. No lights glowed in the farmhouse ahead, but it was past midnight. The owners could just be asleep. I could knock on the door. Find out where I was and maybe warm up enough to call Jaesung and let him know I was okay.
Which would be a lie. My skin burned with cold, and it felt like a few more breaths might freeze the moisture in my mouth.
It wasn't a familiar farmhouse. That would have been too much of a coincidence, but I passed a ramshackle mailbox that claimed it to be number eighty-four. I opened the box, and my spirits falling as I saw the stack of unopened letters. No one was home. I’d have to break in.
I snagged what looked like a credit card offer and memorized the address. It wasn't familiar, and it wasn't in Henard, but the zip-code was only two digits off.
I knew I should search the perimeter—make sure that car wasn't parked somewhere around the back, or under the grain elevator, but I was too cold to care. I pulled out the box-cutter, clicked out the blade, and jimmied it under one of the front door's windowpanes. My hands shook.
I didn't know I was slumping toward the door until my forehead struck wood. Sucking in a breath, I grimaced and righted myself. The boxcutter dropped from the pane, which still sat connected in its frame.
Cursing, I crouched and grabbed the tool.
A second later, the porch exploded under me. I was in the air, soaring backwards. I tucked, but I'd break something no matter how I landed. Before I hit ground, I got my legs under me. Heels first, I tried to make the impact gradual, but I was going too fast. I rolled backwards, protecting my head until I skidded to a halt, face-down on the frigid earth, dress scraped up to my waist.
I took several seconds too many to process the pain. Scraped thighs, arms, hip. No telling what else. I choked, just the twitch of a finger sending a rage of pain through me.
Footsteps crunched through the snow, heading straight for me. There were at least three. I closed my eyes, playing dead. Somehow, the boxcutter had stayed in my hand, but I was too broken to hope for fighting them physically. How much injury had they taken at Isaac and Deepti's hands?
Rough, gloved fingers gripped my arms and hauled me onto my knees. Under the pretext of pulling down the hem of my dress, I shoved the boxcutter down the tight shreds of my panty-hose.
"Bitch thought you got lucky, didn't you?" said a gruff voice. The back of a fist cracked into me, popping sparks behind my eyes. Blood welled into my mouth. I choked, felt it bubble over my lip. "Think you got away?"
Fuck. I cracked my eyes open, shocked at how much of an effort it took. The man gripping my arms was behind me. The talker—the one who'd hit me—stood in front. He was a rangy beast, bared teeth gleaming in the moonlight, hair shaggy and lank. He wore wool from head to toe, but tattoos marked the left side of his jaw.
I thought of Jaesung's constellation, remembered the taste of the skin below his ear. Stupid. This was not the time to think about that.
"Ain't no Guild to help you now," said Rangy. He grinned, but it looked forced. Like he wanted me to think he was happier about having me here than he was.
Blood filled my mouth, and I kept my lips shut. I could use that.
He hit me again, another backhand that ripped the already loosened tooth free of its roots. It clicked around in my mouth, sharp on my tongue. Gasping, I choked on the blood. The tooth lodged in my throat. Everything left me in a rush—hot bile and blood streaming onto the frost. It burned my toes.
The Sorcerer cursed. "Get her to the car," he said, seizing one of my arms.
I let them drag me, all pain and mad thoughts—the car would have heat blasting. Morgan might be at the end of this ride. Or, maybe, I could fire a spell into the engine block and blow us up. Deepti wouldn't have to worry then.
Fuck her. Fuck them all.
My feet dragged, ragged bricks of flesh across the ground. I kept one eye squinted, watching the outline of the battered Honda until I could see through the windows. A fair-haired woman sat in the driver's seat, clenching and unclenching her fingers on the steering wheel. In the back, the guy Krista had maced slumped against the window, asleep or unconscious.
At the sight of us, the woman got out of the car and limped around it. A roll of duct tape glinted in her fingers.
That did it. A memory washed up in me, vivid with the curse of my eidetic memory. Mom, her wrists bound in duct tape, suspended from the boom of my Dad's sailboat. Her toes dragged the deck. Her flower-print bikini was spattered with blood, and she'd twisted the tape into crinkled ropes.
And me. Tiny and harmless, tucked in Gwydian's arms. I clung to him, not out of trust, but because he'd threatened to drop me off the back, drag me behind on a rope until I drowned.
And Dad. The bullet-hole in his shoulder. His blood on the deck. Held between a pair of Russians too big to be Sorcerers. He'd walked into that magic circle and surrendered his freedom. Gwydian—who could barely have been older than I was now—stroked my salt-stiff hair.
Like everything else in me now, rage was cold. No one would use me. Not Gwydian. Not the Guild.
I shoved my tongue into the open gap where my tooth had been, probed it. More blood. I opened up my magic, the turquoise flame leaping into my brain, catching up the image I held in my head.
The ripping sound of duct tape being pulled off the roll split the air. I opened my eyes, met the fair-haired woman's narrowed ones, and launched the fire spell into the Honda's engine block.
The front end of the car exploded. The shock wave knocked the fair-haired Sorcerer into me and blasted aside the men holding my arms. We hit ground, the woman twitching in that way only nerve damage made a person. I went to shove her off and felt hot blood. Shrapnel. Twisted plastic had cut straight into her spine. I locked down the horror. I'd killed before. I'd killed worse, just an hour ago.
I shoved the blond woman aside and rolled to my knees. The slicing spell glowed in my mind. Rangy gave a horrible gurgle and jerked back.
The rack of a pistol slide registered just in time. I threw myself onto the dead Sorcereress. The bullet caught my hair as it shot overhead. A hand found my calf. The Sorcerer clutched at my ankle, trying to immobilize me. I kicked backwards, heel meeting flesh. Then he was on me, pinning me over the dying woman, and shoving a gun against my head.
"I don't give a fuck what Gwydian-"
He never finished his sentence because there was a boxcutter in his throat. I knocked the gun aside with my elbow and slung my leg around his hip, forcing him off me even as he pawed at the weapon in his windpipe.
I staggered up. That was all of them. I snagged shoes off the dead woman's feet and a brown wool coat from Rangy's stiffening body.
There was a phone in it. A wide, shiny Samsung, now with a cracked casing. I shoved rigid feet into boots burning with body warmth, hating that the fire at my back felt so good.
Boxcutter wheezed, gurgled over the crackling flames. Black smoke wafted against my back, replacing the smell of blood with gasoline and burning plastic. It caught up my hair, pushing it forward across my sticky face.
For a flash, I thought of what I must look like—a battered girl in a blood-soaked dress, surrounded by smoke and flame and dead Sorcerers. Around me, an idyllic farmhouse and snowy fields. Destruction. Complete and utter destruction. I’d blown up a car, killed four people. It had barely taken m
e a full minute.
Worse, was the burn of power through my veins, the thrum of blood and adrenaline, and the strange desire to laugh.
I was a valkyrie. A goddess of death. Mars, driving in on a chariot of carnage.
For just a moment, I breathed it in, let the blood magic run its course in me, easing the pain in my body and the bone deep chill of hypothermia. Then I swallowed, tasted iron, and began to shake.
Maybe Deepti was right. This power was too dangerous to be unchecked—like a nuke in some distant, secret warehouse. If I could destroy so much so easily, did I really have the right to be free?
Fuck, it was too much to answer. First, I needed to get my bearings. Get home.
I paused with my hand on the phone. Home. I pulled up the GPS and pointed myself toward Henard.
The last sanguimancer was dead, his hand stretched toward the glock. I shambled past the fallen gun and did not pick it up. I wouldn’t need it.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Henard was fifteen miles down the long dirt road. I made it three before spotting a familiar triangulation of evergreens, farmhouse, and grain elevator. I couldn't be certain it was the right place, but I didn't care anymore. The boots and coat did only so much, and I could feel bones grinding in my ribs each time I took too deep a breath.
Fire trucks and police cars tore past at intervals, all heading back the way I'd come. Each time, I hunkered down among the plowed rows, pulling the brown woolen coat over my head. If anyone saw me, they didn't stop. There was an ominous glow in the distance that suggested the fire still burned. Had it caught the house? There was too much snow for that. Too much distance between the house and the burning car. No, more likely the flames were persistent, magic-induced as they'd been.
Would water even work?
I turned down the driveway, feet dragging, and dialed the Ruff Patch number for the third time. No answer.
I hated that I didn't know Jaesung or Krista's phone numbers. They'd both entered them into my phone themselves, and I'd never thought to glance at the actual digits. Now my phone was so many pieces in the bottom of a trash can. Saliva stuck in my cold throat. I could feel my face swelling around the missing tooth—my gums already crowded out my tongue on that side, but I was too cold to pack snow against my cheek.
Unleash (Spellhounds Book 1) Page 25
