“No … it would be one of those ‘nice things’ I keep telling you about.” I gave him a reassuring smile, concealing the quiet but unignorable ache in my chest. “It’s okay, Zylas. Don’t worry about it.”
He canted his head, frowning, almost … bewildered.
“Thank you,” I added, “for getting me back into fighting shape.”
Puzzlement written all over his face, he returned his attention to the healing spell. A new wave of cold washed over me, building up in my back muscles, then flared into scorching agony. A whimper scraped my throat, my limbs locked as I endured it.
As the pain and magic faded, I slumped into the floor, breathing hard. Zylas finally lifted his hand from my chest—and his thumb brushed across my cheek. He smudged away a tear that had escaped despite my efforts.
Then he was on his feet and walking away, his husky voice calling back to me, “Hurry up, drādah. It is time to go.”
* * *
It was a quarter after eleven by the time I opened the door to the Arcana Atrium on the Crow and Hammer’s third level. As Amalia followed me inside, she let out an appreciative whistle.
“Starting small, eh?” she remarked.
Embarrassed but pleased, I grinned. “It should be charged and ready to go. I just have to complete the last stage.”
I grabbed the textbook off the worktable, and after reviewing the next steps, I prepared the final quantities of sulfur and iron powder. Positioning myself in front of the array, I took a deep, calming breath.
“Remember,” Amalia said, perching on the stool to wait, “if you fumble a single word, the spell will fail and you’ll have to start all over again.”
I shot her a glare, then focused on the incantation. Eighteen phrases in Latin, and I couldn’t stumble, stutter, or mispronounce a single syllable. I could, however, take it slowly. No need to rush. Arcana was a patient magic.
“Terra, terrae ferrum, tua vi dona circulum,” I began in a slow, measured rhythm.
The pile of iron powder fizzed and blackened. I chanted the next line, and the copper blackened too. As I continued, the salt burned and the oil bubbled. Lastly, the sulfur burst into flame.
As the spell’s ingredients were consumed, a faint glow imbued the white lines. I paused, as instructed by the text, and sprinkled my new measurement of sulfur across the rectangle of iron that would form the artifact. The powder puffed black and evaporated.
Standing, I chanted the next two lines. Heat waves rose from the array. A rainbow of colors rippled over the circle—yellow and gray where the sulfur and iron had rested, white and brown where the salt and copper had been consumed, and a shimmering swirl of pink and green where the oil had evaporated.
I flung the iron powder across the circle. It sizzled in the air and the colors brightened. I triple-checked the last line, then declared, “Haec vis signetur, surgat vis haec iussu: eruptum impello.”
The glowing magic and shimmering light rippled, then sucked down into the open triangle that directed the power into the artifact. The runes on the iron rectangle lit up and swirled with all the colors of the array. The spell circle darkened until only the artifact glowed brightly.
Then all the light and magic snuffed out like a candle flame in the wind.
I checked the book. Aside from a warning that the spell wouldn’t affect any people or objects the caster was touching, it had no further instructions. The last line of text was the artifact’s short “trigger incantation,” which would activate the spell it now contained—assuming I’d done everything right.
Amalia leaned forward. “Did it work?”
“I’m not sure.” I lifted the iron rectangle and weighed it on my palm. The runes I’d drawn on it were now etched lightly into its face. “I’ll have to test it.”
She waited a moment. “Then test it.”
“Um.” I glanced around the room. “Maybe not here. If it works, it might damage something.”
Pulling my infernus off, I unclasped the chain and fed it through the hole at the top of the artifact. It settled beside the silver pendant like an oversized dog tag.
Amalia helped me clean up the room, then we hurried out of the guild and onto the downtown streets. Though we could’ve caught a bus, the wait would have taken almost as long as walking, so we set out at a quick pace—or rather, Amalia walked at a comfortable pace and I half-jogged on my much shorter legs.
The four- and five-story businesses surrounding the Crow and Hammer were swiftly replaced by thirty-story skyscrapers. Vehicles zoomed past as we walked along the sidewalk, the noon rush hour translating to increased foot traffic as well. It was the Friday before Christmas, and what seemed like half the downtown populace was taking advantage of a rare day without rain to escape their offices for lunch. I dodged people every twenty steps, but Amalia blazed straight ahead, forcing other pedestrians to leap out of her way. If I tried that, I’d get trampled. More short people problems.
We crossed a busy intersection and headed down an attractive street with trees along the boulevard. Ahead, the office tower loomed, slightly less intimidating in the daylight. As before, construction barriers were arranged in front, and the window I’d broken gaped accusingly.
“This is it?” Amalia asked.
I nodded, blinking against my dry contacts. “That’s it. The alley goes around to the back where we can get inside.”
My heart thrummed unhappily at the prospect of entering the building again, but at least I had a flashlight this time. I was getting the hang of this “combat mythic” thing. All I needed now was a fancy vest like the—
We rounded a corner and stopped dead.
—like the Crow and Hammer team standing around the very entrance Zylas and I had broken into last night. The doors of the guild’s big black van hung open, and the mythics were unbuckling weapons and tossing them into the back. I spotted Drew, Cameron, and Darren, plus three other guild members whose names I couldn’t remember.
“Robin?” Zora stepped around the van. “What are you doing here?”
My stomach dropped sickeningly. In the aftermath of my “infiltration” last night, I’d completely forgotten that Zora and her team had planned to investigate the building this morning. If I’d remembered, I would’ve warned Zora not to go. Even her experienced team was no match for this nest.
She approached Amalia and me, and two men broke away from the group to follow her.
“Um,” I mumbled as the three mythics drew closer. “Hi Zora, and … uh …”
The older guy, with brown hair, fine laugh lines around his eyes, and a fatherly sort of look, held out his hand. “I’m Andrew.”
I shook his offered hand, then shook hands with the other man, early thirties with short black hair and teak skin, who introduced himself as Taye in a pleasantly deep voice with a South African accent.
“I’m Robin. This is Amalia.” I forced a smile for Zora. “We were just swinging by to see how things went.”
She folded her arms and cocked a hip, her huge sword strapped to her back. “A total bust. They were definitely here, possibly right up until last night, but they’ve jumped ship. The place is abandoned.”
I almost wilted with relief. Thank goodness everyone was safe.
“We found destroyed documents and a burnt computer,” she continued. “It looks like this is where the contents of that summoner’s townhouse ended up, but an explosion of some kind ruined everything.”
“An explosion?” I repeated with innocent disbelief.
“We checked the entire building. Nothing. Andrew is taking the rest of the team back. Taye and I will give it one more thorough check for any hints on where they’ve gone, but …” She shook her head.
“How long will that take?” Amalia asked.
“A few hours, I expect.”
“Damn, well, that sucks,” Amalia said brusquely. “Guess we’ll leave you to it. Come on, Robin.”
My mouth was still hanging open when she grabbed my arm and hauled me back down
the alley to the street.
“Amalia, that was rude,” I hissed.
“What, did you want to stay and discuss the weather?” She dropped my arm and glared around at the busy street. “If they’re going to be in there for hours yet, we’ll have to wait to check it out.”
“I was about to suggest we help them search the building.”
She scowled. “Well, why didn’t you say so?”
“You didn’t give me a chance!” I huffed. “I’m pretty sure there’s nothing to find inside. Zylas blew the room to smithereens. We need to know where the vampires are now.”
“If we can get our hands on one, we can question them,” Amalia agreed. “Find out what they’re up to and what they know about my dad and the grimoire.”
I wasn’t as confident in our interrogation skills. “But how will we find them?”
We exchanged helpless looks as we strolled past the tower, feigning nonchalance. Pedestrians buffeted us as we passed a décor shop and a pizza joint.
“We need a way to track them,” I muttered. “Zora’s artifacts only work on nearby vampires. We need a spell that works like a bloodhound …”
“Or we need an actual bloodhound.”
I stopped. A businessman shouldered past me, muttering angrily, and I shuffled closer to a shop window.
“Zylas can track them,” I exclaimed in a whisper, amazed I hadn’t thought of him immediately. “He can follow the blood scent.”
Amalia’s face brightened hopefully, then her scowl reappeared. She waved at the bustle around us. “It’ll be the dead of night before these streets are empty enough for you to walk a demon around in the open.”
The window beside me reflected my frustrated expression. I peered into the shop’s interior, then swung to face Amalia, my pulse racing.
“I have an idea.”
Chapter Twenty
“Okay.” I stepped back, hands on my hips as I surveyed my work. “Amalia, what do you think?”
Beside me, she folded her arms and pursed her lips. In front of us, the narrow alley ended in a brick wall and a row of dumpsters, and beneath the heavy gray clouds, the shadows were dense—the perfect concealment for our task.
My demon stood in front of the dumpsters, but he didn’t look very demony anymore.
A baggy black sweater featuring a blue sports logo with a killer whale covered his torso, and the hood hid his horns and shadowed his face. Equally baggy sweatpants covered his legs, pulled on over his armor. A pair of reflective sunglasses completed his disguise.
“Well,” Amalia drawled, “he sure looks like a slob. Where’s his tail?”
“He’s got it looped around his waist under the hoodie.”
Zylas tilted his head as though testing whether the sunglasses would fall off his face, then lifted his arms, the sleeves hanging to his fingertips. I’d bought an extra-large to ensure it would fit over his armor. He’d still had to unbuckle the shoulder piece, which was hanging against his side.
“Will this fool the hh’ainun?” he asked dubiously.
I tapped a finger against my lower lip. His skin was unusual—that reddish undertone to the warm brown—but nothing that would attract stares with only his lower face visible. The oddest thing about his appearance were his feet, bare except for the dark fabric wrapped around the arches and over the tops. He’d refused to put on the Crocs I’d bought.
Supposed I couldn’t blame him for that. I wouldn’t want to wear Crocs either.
“I think it’ll work,” I declared, tossing the bag from the sportswear shop into the nearest dumpster. “Let’s give it a try.”
Eyebrows raised skeptically, Amalia led the way out of the alley. I waved Zylas to my side and together we walked into the lunch-hour foot traffic. My pulse skipped in my throat but no one so much as glanced at us. Amalia did her “get out of my way” power walk, and Zylas and I strode in her wake.
I glanced at the demon to reassess his disguise and saw his wide grin. As unsuspecting humans walked right past him, he snickered quietly. Well, at least his disguise was working well enough to—
A passing woman did a double take, her brow furrowed and gaze locked on his mouth. Grabbing his sleeve, I hauled him past the lady.
“Stop grinning,” I warned him. “People are noticing your teeth.”
He pressed his lips together, hiding his pointed canines, but couldn’t fully suppress his amusement. Someone sure found the obliviousness of the human race funny.
Not wanting to risk a run-in with any Crow and Hammer mythics—they wouldn’t be as easy to fool—we wandered past the office tower’s front entrance. I followed Amalia with half my attention on our surroundings and half on Zylas. The hood shadowed his features and his sunglasses reflected my face.
“Can you pick up anything?” I whispered.
His nostrils flared. “I can smell them but it is old. Circle the building and I will find the newest scent.”
I passed that instruction on to Amalia and she angled toward an alley.
“Drādah.” His amused grin flashed as a group of young women in pencil skirts and high heels walked past us. “I have wondered … what are those?”
He flicked his fingers toward the street where traffic was slowing to a stop at a red light.
“Those are cars,” I supplied, his question catching me off guard. Sometimes I forgot how foreign this world must be to him. “Or, ‘vehicles’ I guess is the better term.”
“They are not alive,” he mused. “But they are not vīsh. How do they move?”
“Uh, it’s difficult to explain. They don’t move on their own. Humans steer them. They have engines that you start with a key, and you have to put fuel in them. Lots of people own one and drive it from place to place every day.”
He considered that. “They do this because hh’ainun are slow?”
“Yes,” I said with a laugh. “Humans are slow and our cities are big, so we use vehicles to get around. Once we’re finished searching for vampires, I’ll take you on a bus ride.” I pointed at a big gray bus rolling past. “One of those. You can see what it’s like.”
Stopping, he lifted the sunglasses above his eyes to peer at the bus. A middle-aged man in a custodian uniform stopped dead, staring at the demon’s face, then hurried past us, looking over his shoulder with each step as though doubting what he’d seen.
I swatted Zylas’s arm. “Sunglasses down!”
He resettled them on his nose, smirking. I rolled my eyes and tugged him into motion again.
We did a wide circle around the building, crossing as many streets and alleys as possible. Zylas chose what he thought was the most recent trail, which headed northwest toward the Coal Harbor neighborhood. He tracked the blood scent down an alley and onto another street. The vampires must’ve gone straight across but I had to steer Zylas to an intersection so we could cross the busy road at a traffic light, which required explaining why humans had created such an “annoying” system.
Needless to say, Zylas found the idea of humans running over other humans with their vehicles far too amusing. I was never letting him anywhere near the driver’s seat of a car.
We safely crossed the road and found the trail. Amalia powered ahead of us, her bold attitude drawing attention away from Zylas’s baggy, barefoot oddness. He tracked the scent for another half a block, then slowed. His hooded face turned to an alley too narrow for anything but a small car.
He rounded the corner and started down the alley. As Amalia looked back, I waved at her to wait and hastened after the demon. The light dimmed, blocked by the towering skyscrapers on either side, and the lunch-hour commotion grew muffled.
“Zylas,” I whispered, “are they here?”
His steps shifted into a prowl, and his tail swept out from beneath his sweater. “The scent is strong.”
I crept behind him, gripping the infernus and my new artifact through my sweater. A cold wind whipped down the alley, blowing in our faces as we ventured farther from the safety of the street.
Zylas reached back to push on my hip—his unspoken “wait” command. I halted and he continued forward, head swiveling. Wrapping my arms around myself, I peered into the shadows. Dumpsters and bins lined the strip of pavement, creating plenty of dark corners for a vampire or six to hide in.
As Zylas prowled past a row of blue recycling bins, something clattered behind me.
I whirled toward the sound. Ten paces away, a dumpster stood against the concrete wall. Grabbing my artifact again, I inched back a step. My skin prickled as I kept my gaze fixed on the shadows behind the dumpster. What had made that noise? Was it a vampire?
A warm hand curled around my throat. Hot breath brushed across my cheek and a husky voice whispered in my ear, “And now you are dead, drādah.”
Gasping in fright, I tore free. Zylas stood behind me, his sunglasses reflecting my frightened face. “Zylas! What did you scare me for?”
“You are staring at one spot.”
“Yes, because I heard a noise.” I pointed at the dumpster. “I think there’s—”
The wind gusted and a half-empty bottle of water rolled away from the dumpster—the noise I’d heard. I flushed in embarrassment.
“Be smarter, drādah.”
My blush deepened. I started to turn away, but he caught my shoulder and pulled me in front of him, my back to his chest.
“When you hear a sound, do not stare in one spot. It is easy to ambush you.”
I blinked, confused. I’d expected an insulting observation about my inability to detect an actual threat.
“You must always be looking everywhere. Side and side, up and down. Always move your eyes. Quick looks. Do not fixate.”
With one hand gripping my shoulder, he turned me in a quarter circle and gestured across the alley. “Look for safe ground and dangerous ground. Look now so if you must run later, you know which way is best.”
He pulled me in a sideways step. “Do not stand and wait for the hunter to attack. Look and search and move.”
My heart thudded unsteadily as I moved my legs in the same pattern as his, our steps matching and his hands guiding me. We shifted down the alley, backs to the wall, and I understood what he was showing me—how to scan for danger while moving away from it at the same time.
Slaying Monsters for the Feeble: The Guild Codex: Demonized / Two Page 18
