Thunder shook the tower as the purple lighting leapt off the walls and started to dance—and by dance, I mean formal, structured movements. I think it was some kind of folk dance. White rain sheeted down from the high ceiling but it wasn’t wet. It skittered down my skin, a hot and biting dryness. Fog boiled out of the floor, silver and black shot with lavender. The violin screamed above the thunder and the dry rain became sharp splinters of ice. I couldn’t see my own feet and when I took a step, I stepped on something both slippery and crunchy.
I caught my balance, still hauling Amber after me, and fumbled for where the door had been. It was gone now, nothing but a drift of shattered wooden shards. Crimson flames wreathed the empty space where the door had stood, clinging to the frame without consuming it. I brought my hand close to one, felt the heat and pulled it back again.
But it wasn’t spreading. The violin’s triumphant song changed, became urgent. The wind howled in response and the flames became agonized faces.
Amber shrieked and stomped her feet. “Get away from me, you awful things.” I didn’t look back, just yanked her after me as I plunged through the doorway of burning souls. But the corridor beyond was no better. A hellish light illuminated the space beyond without providing any visibility through the ludicrous fog. I felt, rather than saw, the wall to my left collapse.
The Wild Hunt was laughing. It was the staccato beat under the thunder and the moan of the wind and the taunting of the violin. I wondered if this happened a lot. They were the Wild Hunt; maybe this was just their idea of applause for a great musical performance.
“How do we get out?” Amber shouted. “Can’t see a thing.”
I inhaled and closed my eyes. “I don’t need to see.”
It took a moment through the strange dry smell of the fog and the ozone tang of the storm and the really unexpected scent of apple pie. Maybe they were trying to cover up my friends’ scents. But they were too close. No mere fog was going to keep me from them.
I led Amber through the broken wall and up a flight of stairs and down again. At one point I think we went back outside. I heard Amber’s gasp, but I didn’t want to open my eyes, see whatever she saw, and lose my concentration entirely. She didn’t stop me, nothing stopped me, and we went back inside the tower again, and—
“AT!” Brynn called. “You found us. You have it? We have to go. This place is falling apart!”
I opened my eyes as Brynn appeared out of the fog, running over to me. Yejun loitered at the front door, hands in his pockets. The Fiddler was nowhere to be seen, but I could still hear his frenzied, distant music. It was no longer anything familiar, but it made me want to kick doors down and demand what was mine.
Instead, I said, “Is he going to be okay? If they catch him again, that’s kind of a waste.”
Yejun shrugged. “He didn’t seem worried.” His eyes widened as he looked over my shoulder. “What the hell did you bring with you? Never mind, let’s get out of here.” And he did kick the door open and hold it that way. “Out!”
Brynn ran past him and Amber followed her, still holding the bag with the Horn. I made the mistake of looking over my shoulder, though.
Ion stood behind us. The grin he’d had the first time I saw him was gone. He didn’t even have the belligerence he’d shown when arguing with his fellow Huntsmen. He was calm, expressionless, and in his eyes, a hundred thousand souls screamed. A corona of crimson fire burned around him.
I could still hear the rest of the Wild Hunt laughing somewhere, amidst the thunder and the violin and the howling wind. My friends and I had been all but shouting to talk to each other. But Ion barely spoke above a whisper when he said, “What are you waiting for? Run.”
I heard him. I saw the tendrils of crimson fire reach out skeletal fingers for me. And I ran, pushing Yejun out the door ahead of me. Then I hooked it closed and raced to the alley. Brynn huddled there, waiting for us.
“Where’s Amber?” I demanded.
Brynn jerked her thumb upward and I looked up. There she was, half-hanging off the roof. “Look at it!” she exclaimed, laughing in delight. “The tower is actually falling apart. Do you think it’s because I stole the Horn?”
“If it is, let’s get it even farther away so it falls apart more. They’re still in there, Blondie,” snapped Yejun. “And they’re going to come after us. That is what they do.”
“Fine, fine,” said Amber, and dropped down to land lightly on her feet.
“AT, any chance you can get us out of the Backworld the same way we got in?”
I hesitated, feeling the fabric of the world. “I don’t think so.” I tried anyhow, reaching out to tear the Curtain apart. Nothing happened. It was like trying to rip open a steel door with my bare hands.
Yejun shook his head. “Knew that would be too easy. Let’s run instead. Maybe the Fiddler can make up for slowing us down by slowing them down as well.”
“Why did he run off?” I demanded as I ran.
“So we could meet you and get the Horn out of here,” Yejun panted.
“AT, didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s not nice to show off to the mortals?” Amber chided, jogging backward. “They don’t talk and run very well.”
I muttered and kept running. We quickly left the exaggerated region around the scar behind and emerged onto the nameless city streets. I didn’t recognize where we were, but I could smell that we’d been here before, and that was good enough. If we kept moving, we could get through the city quickly, and then we’d end up—well, I wasn’t quite sure. Right then, “not here” was good enough.
“That stupid bird is following us,” announced Amber. I craned my head and saw the big dark shape of Alastor’s bird form above us.
“It’s pursuit. He’s scouting for them,” I growled.
“Inside again?” Yejun managed between long breaths.
I glanced at the buildings to each side. They were tall, thin townhouses, just like the ones that had clustered around when the Wild Hunt had stolen my dogs. “Not this time.”
“He’s gone now,” Amber said. “Maybe he missed us.”
I skidded to a halt. “I don’t believe that.” Changing direction, I scrambled up the side of one of the houses. “Keep running, I’ll catch up!”
When I reached the roof of the townhouse, I rose to my knees and shaded my eyes. A storm still raged over the region we’d fled from, but the sky was otherwise empty. Alastor had vanished. Even more worrying was the utter lack of any pursuit. I glanced down. Yejun and Brynn were still moving away, but they’d dropped to a fast walk, Brynn holding a stitch in her side. Amber had stopped moving entirely. She held the bag with the Horn out in front of her, as if she was trying to get a good look at it.
A clap of thunder loud enough to shake my perch rolled across the city and something left the city. The stormclouds over the city’s scar fuzzed into a mist of rain. At the same time, Amber screamed and thrust the sack containing the Horn away from her. The Horn tumbled out of the bag and as it landed on the pavement, it struck like a bell. A deep, sonorous note rang out, growing and echoing. The brassy surface of the Horn rippled.
Then Amber scooped it up again, muffling it against her chest. The long, low note faded away and the surface of the Horn stilled.
I skittered down the side of the building as fast as I could without simply jumping down four floors. “What just happened?”
“It bit me,” said Amber angrily. “It’s smug now. Look at it, can’t you see how smug it is?”
And you know what? I could. The shine of the bronze was oily. The curve of the Horn’s neck was like the smarmy grins of my father’s pack. It was ridiculously, horrifyingly smug.
Brynn and Yejun jogged back to us. I said slowly, “It’s not smug about biting you.” I looked around, but I couldn’t see the city’s clocktower. I hadn’t heard it chime, but I thought about how the Hunt had been waiting around the Horn, and about the lack of pursuit—
“Remember what you said about the Wild Hunt
being on Toronto time, Yejun?”
“It was just a joke,” he said quickly.
I shook my head, trying to come to terms with the awful realization. “It wasn’t. You had a good point. Time zones are a thing. The Wild Hunt isn’t a local magic.”
“What are you babbling about?” snapped Amber, her eyes wide and glinting red as she stared at me.
I sigh and leaned back against the townhouse to close my eyes. “It’s dawn on November First somewhere, even if it’s not in Seattle or Toronto. We’ve failed. The Wild Hunt is free.”
-twenty three-
The silence that followed my explanation made the smugness of the Horn even worse. Then Amber said, “But I have the Horn right here. How can they—?”
“Stealing the Horn was only the first step,” muttered Yejun. “Stealing the Horn was never enough to stop them from getting free. It does its thing, binding and powering them, no matter where it is.”
Amber growled and smashed the Horn into the side of the building, hard enough that brick crumbled away. I opened my eyes, hopeful that maybe at least the Horn’s oily finish had been marred. But it just shimmered even more. Little rainbows danced over the surface. I sympathized enormously with Amber’s urge to smash it.
Brynn gave a tiny little gasp, and then another one, like she was hyperventilating. Her knees collapsed under her and she sat down between them, her eyes glazed over. Then her whole body jerked forward, like something invisible was yanking her around.
“Oh, hell,” said Amber and pushed the Horn at me before sitting down next to Brynn and taking both her hands. “This happened before, while you two were off running through the city. That was when all these marks appeared.” She squeezed Brynn’s hands, then stroked her hair and tried to make her lie down. But her entire body was taut, too taut to unbend without hurting her.
I shoved the Horn back into its bag and went to Brynn’s other side. “Is it a sickness?”
“How should I know? Do you want me to drink her blood and do some kind of taste test?” Amber asked acidly, her voice at odds with the light touch of her hands on Brynn’s shoulders.
“Catch them, catch them,” Brynn muttered.
“Something’s happening with the magic Tia gave her,” Yejun said.
“Can you stop it?” I demanded.
He raised his gaze from Brynn to meet my own and spread his hands. “Maybe. It wouldn’t be pretty, though. Should I stop it?”
I ground my teeth, but before I could make a decision, he shook his head. “Actually, I’m not going to. Tia was a professional, and I don’t know a thing. I’d probably hurt her.”
Frustrated, I shook my own head. As I did, something caught my eye. I swooped down and picked up Brynn’s arm, turning her hand palm up. “What’s this?”
The marks on her skin were spreading. Tiny, unfamiliar characters faded into sight across her inner arm near her elbow, filling in the space between the long dark curves previously present.
“It’s like writing,” said Amber, peering at it closely.
“It’s okay,” breathed Brynn. Her eyes in the mask of marks on her face were closed, but her body relaxed until she was crumpled in on herself. “It’s okay.”
“Brynn? What’s going on?”
“Still figuring that out,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “Give me a few minutes.”
“I don’t know if we have the time,” said Amber nervously, glancing up and down the street.
“Of course we do,” I said bitterly. “We’ve failed. They’re out there now.” I sat down and hugged my legs tightly. “Maybe if you hadn’t wasted time chasing me down, you would have made it.”
Her voice strained, Amber said, “If you run off to sulk again, I swear by all that is holy I will hunt you down myself and kick your pathetic ass. Just... stay there for a minute while we think about this.”
I pressed my face into my knees and waited for them to think about it. I wouldn’t have imagined it was possible, but the whole city felt emptier now. I wondered what my father had planned for Halloween, and then I wondered if anybody else would try to stop the Wild Hunt. Somebody else had saved the people I’d failed to save before.
My mother was right. Fighting back just made it hurt more when you were beaten.
But even she hadn’t been consistent there, had she? The stories she’d whispered to me as a ghost ran around my mind. Persephone, yes, but also Jane Eyre and Fanny Price, resisting all the pressures of love and scorn to maintain their integrity. My mother had died, but she’d done what she had to in order to stay with me. She hated him and she loved me, and she’d poured both of those into me.
“I’m feeling better,” said Brynn. Her voice was still soft, but it was steadier. “I’ve been looking at the marks, and I think—”
“No,” whispered Amber, and started humming. The song started out pulse-like, throbbing. As she scrambled to her feet, it became frantic. “I’m not here, love. Go back to sleep, darling.”
Her eyes were wide and catlike, focused on something faraway, and she shook her head in tiny, insistent negations. “No, I’m sorry, please don’t—”
My heart pounding, I looked around wildly. I knew what, who she was talking to, I knew he was probably far away, but if I could have found him, her nameless master, I would have thrown myself at him with teeth and claws. And I knew that even that wouldn’t have helped, not at all.
“I’m sorry,” said Amber again, her voice louder. I looked back and she was talking to us, her face twisted into a horrible wry grin. With a little shrug, she said, “I tried to fix what I screwed up. I wish I could have known you better.”
I lunged forward, clutching her hand between both of mine, as if I could hold her together when her master pulled her apart. It was useless, I knew it was useless, fighting wouldn’t do anything at all, but I had all this magic I’d inherited from my father and what was it good for? I wrapped my magic around her as I’d wrapped it around a dying dog, like I could save her like I’d saved them. But she wasn’t free, she was just a memory pattern imprinted on somebody else’s magic and even her sad farewell was just an illusion.
Right?
Brynn seized Amber’s other hand, bringing it to her cheek, muttering something under her breath. The marks on her skin intensified. But how could it matter? What could we do?
Amber blinked at us rapidly, like her dry eyes stung, shook her head fondly as if we were being fools. Her long fingers curled around mine. There was a chill as her flesh faded and my fingers sank into her substance. She was thinning. It was much, much slower than how my father’s wolves went when he took back what he’d given them, but fast or slow didn’t matter. She’d be gone either way.
Then Yejun said, “Oh, hell,” in a tone of utter disgust. He stepped between Brynn and me, elbowing us aside as he took Amber’s head between his hands. Leaning in toward her, he looked down into her startled face. For a heartbeat I wondered if he was going to kiss her.
Instead, he pressed his head against hers and magic exploded off him, shoving Brynn and me backwards. I’d never felt anything like it before. It was closest to being in the center of an active ritual circle, but that was barely a point of comparison. Even without the Sight activated, I could sense massive strands of the Geometry twisting around Yejun and Amber, and it seemed like many, many nodes were being filled and emptied, all at once. More than Yejun stealing the moon in a fairy tale forest, more than him ripping through layers of the Backworld, this made me understand why the wizards who had seen him were so afraid of him. It was a titanic piece of magic, being worked spontaneously, without a circle, without components, without even the basic magical toolkit wizards carried in their palm nodes.
I waited, my heart in my throat, until Yejun’s hands dropped away from Amber’s head and his shoulders loosened up and Amber didn’t vanish. Then I brought up my Sight and looked to see if I could discover what he’d done.
His tree of nodes had changed. Many of them—far more than seven
—had stabilized, with long Geometric lines running from them to Amber’s form. But even as I watched, one of the stable nodes disintegrated and the Geometric line it had held lashed around until a newly budded node caught it.
Amber’s own form had changed as well. She had no nodes as humans and nephilim had them, but the Geometry lines that anchored in Yejun formed a sort of Amber-shaped cage around a single unattached node filled with a twilight glow.
“What was that?” asked Brynn incredulously. “Did you save her?” Amber sat down all of a sudden and put her face in her hands, and Brynn knelt beside her.
Yejun glanced at me from the corner of his eye. “I think so. For now. I thought that your dogs were kind of like she is, and the Wild Hunt stole your dogs. So I stole her.” He transferred his gaze to Brynn. “What Tia did to you gave me some ideas, too.”
Amber glanced up, met Yejun’s eyes, then looked away, at the townhouse beside us. For a long moment she didn’t say anything, although her throat moved convulsively. Then, with obvious effort, she said, “Thank you.”
He shrugged and stuck his hands in his pockets again. “It’s not going to last forever. But maybe Cat’ll have some suggestions on how to really free you. I think he used to be like you, anyhow.”
Amber shuddered, still looking at the wall. “That would be great. I’d rather not go on like this any longer than I have to.”
Yejun’s voice sharpened. “Hey, it’s no treat for me, either, Blondie. You’re heavy.”
“I didn’t mean—” She looked back at him, then narrowed her eyes. Standing up, she brushed herself off carefully. “We’re agreed, then. This can’t end too soon. But have you ever considered weightlifting?”
I boggled at the two of them. Yejun had given Amber a miracle, a miracle that was warping his entire Geometric frame, yet they were sniping at each other like Homecoming Queen rivals. “I can’t believe—” I began. They turned to look at me together, the movement so synchronized that I stopped in confusion. I thought about how I used to be able to speak to my dogs without words, and wondered what the harsh words covered up, or if their new connection even stretched that far. “That was amazing,” I finished, lamely.
Wolf Interval (Senyaza Series Book 3) Page 23
