The phone rang. Julie picked it up. “Yes?”
She held it out to me. “Ghastek.”
I took the phone with one hand, keeping my other one on Curran. “Please tell me you have something.”
“I do,” Ghastek said.
“I’ll be right there.” I hung up and turned to Julie. “The anchor is the eye of his dragon throne. It’s the ruby the size of a grapefruit located in the first room you enter once you cross the drawbridge. He is an arrogant ass. He doesn’t think he has to hide it. No heroics, Julie. Get in, get out, bring me the anchor, and I will restrain it.”
* * *
• • •
GHASTEK DIDN’T WANT to risk bringing outsiders into the vampire stables. Instead they had moved the yeddimur into one of the side rooms. It sat in a loup cage, staring at us with its owlish eyes. At one point it had been a human baby. Atlanta had a lot of babies.
Ghastek, Luther, Saiman, and Phillip had arranged themselves around a table strewn with notes. Some notes had coffee rings on them.
Curran sniffed the air. His lips stretched, baring the edge of his teeth. The yeddimur stench. I squeezed Curran’s hand. He was still here with me. So far, the tech had failed to steal him from me.
Behind me Hugh grimaced at the yeddimur. He had insisted on coming. We had dropped Elara at the Covens. Now we were facing the yeddimur, Luther, Ghastek, Phillip, and Saiman. The four experts looked rather smug.
“We figured out how it was made,” Phillip said, excited.
“Venom,” Saiman told me.
“Dragon venom,” Luther corrected. “Applied very shortly after birth, probably inhaled.”
“That remains to be determined,” Phillip said.
“Concentrate,” I told them, before they launched into another bickering session.
“It’s a dog,” Ghastek said. “For all intents and purposes, it acts as one. A dog has to be able to discern commands.”
“However, according to all of d’Ambray’s notes, the warriors never make any gestures,” Luther said.
“We theorized that the commands are subvocal,” Saiman said. “They have extremely efficient ears, sensitive enough to catch a whisper.”
“I could’ve told you that,” Hugh said.
“How does any of this help us?” I asked.
“Wait.” Ghastek pushed a key on the phone. “Bring in subject B.”
The double doors in the wall opened and two journeymen pushed a second cage in, also containing a yeddimur.
“Where did you get the second one?” Curran asked.
“Beau Clayton,” Saiman said. “His deputies caught one.”
The journeymen connected the two cages, locking them together. They gripped a steel handle, pushed it to the side, and the gate between the cages fell open. The yeddimur on the left scuttled over and sat on its haunches next to the yeddimur on the right.
“They’re us and we are social animals,” Luther said.
“They are quite happy sharing the cage,” Phillip said. “They sleep together and eat together.”
“We had to ask ourselves, if they are controlled by subvocal commands, then what would be the exact opposite of that?” Saiman said.
Ghastek turned to Luther. “If you please.”
Luther nodded, reached behind the desk, and produced a set of bagpipes.
“You play bagpipes?” I asked.
“No, but it was determined via experimentation that of the four of us, I produce the worst sound.” Luther stuck a pipe into his mouth and blew on it. A piercing note screamed through the room.
The yeddimur screeched.
Luther blew on the pipes. A cacophony of sounds filled the space. Curran clamped his hands over his ears. The yeddimur snarled and ripped at each other. Fur and blood flew.
Luther stopped.
The yeddimur took a few more swipes at each other and broke apart, each skulking to its own corner of the joined cages.
“We’ve tried over fifty different sounds,” Ghastek said. “Bagpipes are the most efficient. We’ve attempted them fifteen times and every single time we’ve gotten the same response.”
Suddenly the bagpipes on the druid stone made total sense.
“The sound drives them mad,” Luther said.
“It drives me mad,” Curran said, his eyes shining with gold.
I looked at him and Hugh. “Can we use it?”
“We could,” Hugh said.
“If we could make the sound loud enough,” Curran said.
Ghastek looked at Phillip. The mage smiled. “The Mage College offers thirty-seven specialties. One of them is sound and light amplification. As long as you find bagpipers, we will amp their sound loud enough to wake the gods.”
“That’s amazing,” I told them, and meant it.
All we had to do now was pull the city together and cobble an army to face Neig. We had three days in which to do it. It had to be enough.
Atlanta would come together. We weren’t just one thing. We were many: shapeshifters, necromancers, witches, mages, mercenaries . . . We came in all shapes and sizes, in every age, in every human color, in every variation of magic, and from that we drew our strength. We were surprising and unexpected, and we were united.
Atlanta would hold its own. It always did.
* * *
• • •
“BABY,” CURRAN WHISPERED into my ear.
I opened my eyes. I was so warm and comfortable, wrapped in him. As long as we stayed in bed like this, under the sheets, nothing could go wrong.
The magic was up. It was day five. We’d caught a lucky break, finally, and after a short magic wave on the first day of our three-day timeline, the tech held for three days and four nights. The shift happened while we were awake, and Curran remained solid this time. The tech, like magic, flooded the world with various intensities. A strong tech wave could rip him away from me. I lived these days in a state of constant paranoia.
The rest of it was a whirlwind of negotiating, explaining, demonstrating, pulling the alliance together. Between Curran and me, we’d probably gotten about twelve hours of sleep in the last seventy-two, but last night, after the bulldozers finally rolled off the field and the last of the preparations had been made, we finally went to bed, in a tent, on the outskirts of the battlefield. Martha and Mahon took Conlan, so we could rest. We were alone.
Neig was coming.
I reached for Curran. He kissed me. We shared a breath. I kissed him back, and then again and again, his lips, his stubbled jaw, his face. His hair had grown overnight into a tangled mane, and I threaded my fingers through it.
He pulled me closer to him, our bodies sliding together with ease and practice. He kissed my neck and my lips. For three days, I’d been Sharratum, because I’d had to be. I’d met with the mayor and the governor, as part of the Conclave’s delegation. I’d called in favors. I’d promised the sky and the moon for assistance. But right now, I was Kate, and I kissed him with desperate need. He responded as if I’d set him on fire and he couldn’t wait to burn.
“This won’t be the last time,” he said.
“Not if I can help it,” I told him.
“I promise you,” he said, his voice low, almost a snarl. “This won’t be the last time. Do you trust me?”
“With everything.”
“It won’t be the last time,” he swore.
We made love, hot and wild. Then we got up, cleaned up, got dressed, and stepped out of the tent.
In front of us and behind us, tents lined the fields cleared on both sides of the road. A sea of tents. The sun had barely risen above the horizon, and in the young light, the world seemed fresh. I took Sarrat and the other saber I carried and walked east, to the apex of the low hill that stretched north to south. Erra was already there, staring at the battlefield.
It stretched before us, rolling into the distance. My father had cleared it two years back, because he’d planned to build the Water Gardens there, a place of his favorite childhood memories. Normally the vegetation would’ve reclaimed it by now, but when my father wanted something to stay clear, it did. It was a wide rectangular field, two miles wide and six miles long. The jagged remnants of a stone tower, still black from soot, stuck out in the middle of it, all that remained of my father’s castle. We’d left it on the field. According to Andrea, it made a handy marker for her ballistae.
I glanced to the right, where the battery was positioned. She was already there, pointing at something and arguing with MSDU’s colonel. The military had joined us. The National Guard came first. The guardsmen weren’t full-time soldiers. Most of the time, they were mechanics, teachers, police officers, office workers. As we pulled the city together for battle, a lot of them got swept up in it. On the second day, Lt. General Myers, a fit black woman in her late fifties, walked into our headquarters in the Guild. I was trying to read through the convoluted document the Druids had drawn up, outlining the terms of their cooperation, and I finally threw it into Drest’s face and told him that either he fought with us or he could deal with Neig on his own after he burned Atlanta to the ground, but I didn’t have time for his machinations. He swore and stormed out, and then she was there. We looked at each other for a long moment, and then she said, “What do you need?”
No conditions. No bargaining. Just “What do you need?” I told her, and she made it happen.
We needed everything. We had everything there was to be had now: the MSDU, the National Guard, the human volunteers, the mercs, the Red Guard, the Pack, the People, the Order, the mages, the Covens, the volhvs, and the other pagans. We even got the Druids, which was why if I squinted hard enough, I could see small white stones sitting on both sides of the field.
We were as ready as we were going to be.
It wouldn’t be enough unless my father showed up. He’d come to visit during that short magic wave on the first day to discuss strategy. He sat at our kitchen table while Hugh, Curran, and Erra tried to explain things to him in two languages. At one point he declared that we were making it too complicated, and then Hugh drew stick figures on pieces of paper, trying to explain it. My father had gotten the strategy by the end, but whether he would stick to it was anyone’s guess.
“Do you think Father will show up?” I asked her.
“He will,” she said.
Martha joined us, followed by George, carrying Conlan. I took him from her and hugged my son. I’d thought about trying to send him out of the city, to hide him somewhere, but it would be no use. My son shone too bright. Either my father or Neig would find him, and if not them, someone else. For Conlan to survive, we had to triumph.
Everything was on the line.
Clan Wolf began to form up in front of the hill, just inside the boundary of my territory. Most of our forces were strategically positioned already, but Clan Wolf was the front and center, backed by Clan Jackal, the Guild’s mercs, and the National Guard. I could see Curran’s blond mane down there, as he moved among the ranks. The shapeshifters looked at him with awe. He was their god come to life.
The mages were arranging themselves on the hill to the left. A good number of them looked really young. Phillip had brought students.
The witches waited in the rear, flanked by Hugh’s Iron Dogs.
Andrea strode up the hill. “Hey, you.”
“Hey.”
“Are you and I cool? Or are you going to hold this Hugh thing over my head?”
“We’re cool.” I didn’t even care about Hugh anymore. “Knock them dead.”
“You still owe me a lunch.”
“Oh for the love of . . . Fine. When and where?”
“You know where.”
“Fine. Parthenon it is, two weeks from now.”
“Deal.”
She raised her fist. I bumped it with mine. She went back down to her battery.
My aunt spun to me, baring her teeth in a vicious grin. “He comes.”
A line of white light snapped across the horizon, at the other end of the field.
I hugged Conlan to me. “I love you. Mommy loves you so much.”
He clung to me, suddenly alarmed.
The light broke and spat a line of armored men onto the field. From this distance, they looked like toy soldiers.
Horns blared on our side. MSDU raised the Red, White, and Blue, the National Guard added Georgia’s flag, and then individual standards snapped up at different parts of the field: Pack gray, burgundy for the Red Guard, black for the Guild, and my own green In-Shinar banners among the People.
Another line stepped out of the light. Another. Another. They kept coming.
Javier ran up the hill, followed by two other journeymen, five freshly made undead at his side. Javier bowed his head. “In-Shinar.”
“It’s time,” my aunt said.
I didn’t want to let go of my son.
“Kate,” Erra said.
I kissed Conlan’s forehead and handed him back to his grandmother. Martha kissed him. “You be good for your auntie. Grandma has to go and slap some bad people on their heads.”
George took Conlan and smiled at him. “Wave bye to Grandma.”
The undead knelt before me. I cut my arm and raised Sarrat. The undead’s eyes blazed with red as the navigator bailed, releasing its mind. I swung my sword and opened the undead’s throat. My blood mixed with the undead’s, and the magic that gave both of us life sparked. I pulled the blood to me, shaping it, sliding it over my body.
The soldiers still kept coming.
To the left Barabas looked at Christopher, then at the lines of soldiers. Christopher’s face was calm, but the muscles on his bare arms were bunched up, tense.
“Will you marry me?” Barabas asked, still looking at the army flooding the field.
“Yes,” Christopher said.
Barabas turned to him. Christopher leaned in and they kissed.
Julie ran up, out of breath. She wore a reinforced chest plate, painted green and precisely fitted to her small frame. The design looked familiar, even though the color wasn’t. I’d seen it before on Iron Dogs. Hugh had had it made for her.
“Where have you been?” I asked her.
“Saying good-byes,” she said.
I opened the second vampire, mixed my blood with its blood, and continued. The final drop hardened on my skin. I stretched, testing the blood-red armor. Flexible enough.
“Good.” My aunt approved.
I opened the third vampire and let the blood coat Sarrat and the other saber, hardening both to a preternaturally sturdy but razor-sharp edge.
“Sword,” I told Julie.
She handed over her blade and her spear. I dipped both into the blood and sealed them with magic. I couldn’t make long-lasting weapons like my father. Not yet. But they would last through the entire magic wave, and it would have to be enough.
“You know where to be and what to do?” I asked.
She nodded.
“I love you,” I told her. “Be careful.”
She hugged me and took off down the hill, back toward the Iron Dogs. Today her place was with the witches and Elara.
Neig’s soldiers still kept coming. I couldn’t even estimate the numbers. Fifteen thousand? Twenty? Thirty? A dark mass swirled in front of them, streaking through the ranks to the vanguard of the army. The yeddimur.
Curran jumped, clearing the hill in three huge leaps. He kissed me.
“Happy hunting,” I told him.
“You, too.”
He went back down.
I glanced at the mages. Phillip had rounded up every bagpiper in Atlanta. They crowded behind the line of students. The rest of the mages had moved on farther to th
e left. Phillip caught my gaze and nodded.
I looked back to the battlefield and waited.
Nick marched up the hill and stopped next to me. “I take it back,” he said.
“Which part?”
“You didn’t exaggerate the threat.”
“Be still my heart. Does that mean you’re ready to believe there is a dragon?”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“You are such an asshole.”
“Takes one to know one. Try not to die, Daniels,” he said.
“You, too. Who would I fight with if you weren’t here?”
The light in the distance blazed bright red. The soldiers parted in two, allowing a chariot to pass between them. It was huge and ornate, and it glowed with pale gold.
“Look, a golden chariot and Dad isn’t here,” I told Erra.
She ignored me. Well, I thought it was funny.
The chariot came forward, drawn by four white horses. It pulled ahead of the line, past my father’s ruined tower. Neig’s voice rolled through the battlefield. We shouldn’t have heard it from that far away, but suddenly it was everywhere, filling the air, touching us.
“BEHOLD MY ARMY.”
The ranks of Atlanta’s defenders went still. We looked at lines and lines of soldiers, a sea of armor and weapons.
“WHAT IS YOUR ANSWER, DAUGHTER OF NIMROD?”
I pulled the magic of the land into me and answered, sending my voice down the battlefield.
“YOU WANT ATLANTA? COME AND TAKE IT IF YOU DARE.”
* * *
• • •
NEIG’S ARMY MOVED as one, rolling forward, past him, aiming at our lines. The yeddimur broke into a wild run, swarming like bees. He was running them at us, relying on pure numbers. I almost screamed in relief.
To the left, Phillip’s clear voice commanded, “Prepare amplification spheres.”
Magic shifted. The line of students raised their arms. A transparent sphere formed above each of them, three feet wide and shimmering like hot air rising from the pavement, and spinning.
Magic Triumphs Page 32
