But something told me he wouldn’t give a shit.
“Well, then what comes next should make you happy,” Jacob replied. He went back to his chair and fetched a vial out of his jacket. The liquid inside was a deep burgundy. I tensed, expecting him to throw it.
But instead he drank it.
And that’s when the real fight started.
Chapter 42
Jacob fell to his knees immediately after swallowing the liquid from the vial. In moments, his flesh began to writhe. Between his small gasps of pain, he looked up at me, his face—the face Jenny must have seen before he’d taken her to the mat—contorted into something ugly and hateful as the skin tightened over his skull. Lines, like wrinkles but deeper, were carved into it, and his lips had peeled back so far that nothing remained besides gums and teeth.
His limbs began to spasm, twitching at odd angles. I noticed his injured limb had recovered. Either that or Jacob no longer cared how much it hurt to move it. He stilled, and then his eyes—so distended I thought they might pop out at any moment—settled on me.
When he finally rose, I was glad to see that he hadn’t sprouted horns or wings or anything, but somehow the end result seemed worse, if only because it looked so wrong; his tongue flapped loose in his mouth like a dog’s after a long walk in the summer, teeth exposed like a desiccated corpse. He rolled his shoulders, and that’s when I noticed that his chest and shoulders had gotten broader, his arms significantly thicker. Veins pulsed beneath his skin, coursing down his arms like rivers after a heavy rain.
“Well that’s a new one,” I said. “What are ye supposed to be?”
“It’s still me,” Jacob replied, although his speech had an eerie, garbled quality to it, since he had a hard time using his lips to articulate. “Same body, same engine, better oil.”
Sure, because that explained things.
“And what is that supposed to mean, ye ugly bastard?”
But Jacob didn’t feel like talking.
Instead, he rushed forward, going for my legs the same way he had with Jenny’s, only this time he was faster. A lot faster. And stronger; I hit the ground hard and the wind got knocked out of me before I could so much as blink. Jacob was mounted over my hips a moment later, one hand on my throat. My eyes fluttered as I tried, desperately, to think. To react. But he was so strong. Inhumanly strong.
Which made no sense.
In the past, whenever any magical creature—vampire, werewolf, skinwalker, whatever—had gotten this close, they’d lost control of their abilities. Their magic fled, and, in an instant, a claw became a hand, a deadly fang little more than your basic incisor, and so on.
That’s why Serge had been unable to keep his form when I took hold of his tail, and why vampires like Mike and his band had found themselves outmatched by a girl with a water gun; I wasn’t invincible, but I did have an advantage. An advantage I routinely used to exploit that moment of confusion, of indecision, and turn the tables on beings that were inarguably stronger and deadlier than I was. And yet, here I was, pinned and being strangled by a grip as strong as any Freak I’d come up against.
And yet, I could tell he wasn’t using magic.
But still, I refused to panic. Panicking would get me killed that much faster. Instead, I tried to break his hold by slamming my balled fist into his wounded elbow. His grip only tightened. I dug my nails into the flesh of his forearm. I kicked and squirmed. Nothing worked.
I was going to die.
Then, without warning, Jacob let go.
The edges of the room dimmed as tunnel vision settled in, but I could hear Jacob scrambling away, crying out in pain. I curled into the fetal position, coughing and dry heaving. Every breath was agony, but I managed.
“I told you,” Gladstone said, “I need her alive. Now get her up and bring her on back. I got the briefcase open.”
I sensed Jacob edging towards me, but I didn’t want to waste the energy to turn my head. I felt him work his arms beneath me, cradling my head and legs as if planning to carry me over the threshold. If I’d been a man, he’d probably have slid me across the floor by my arm. But I was a woman, and I was hurt, and so he picked me up, instead.
Idiot.
I took the knife I’d fetched from my back pocket during my coughing fit and stabbed him in the throat.
Chapter 43
I missed Jacob’s jugular, clipping his clavicle with enough force to draw a deep gouge in his skin, but it was mostly superficial damage; I hadn’t been strong or precise enough to do more than that. He dropped me, and I landed hard.
Fortunately, adrenaline kicked in at the last second, and I scrambled away just as Jacob’s foot slammed into the hardwood where I’d fallen. Gladstone was cursing in the background, telling Jacob to back off so he could bind me and be done with it. But Jacob wasn’t in the listening mood. A kick to my side sent me sliding across the floor.
I watched him stalk towards me, too broken to crawl away.
Jacob had bled through his mangled shirt, which I’d torn open when I stabbed him. I stared at the red stain as it spread; it’s easy to forget how much damage a knife can do, how messy a wound it can cause. So much blood.
I blinked a few times. Shock. I was in shock. I cursed myself and tried to move, but between being strangled, dropped, and having my liver obliterated by Jacob’s boot, I didn’t have much fight left in me. I had one shot, if I was lucky. I rolled onto my back and brought my legs up, prepared to kick him once he got close enough.
Jacob grunted, but came at me anyway. He dodged my first half-hearted kick, then caught my second. If he’d been in his right mind, he’d probably have put me in a leg lock, or pushed past and grappled with me. Instead, he lashed out, trying to end it all with one solid haymaker to my head. I contracted my abs, using Jacob’s hold on my leg as an anchor, and rose to meet him, ducking the punch. This time my knife sank, hilt deep, in his gut.
He fell on top of me, but I shrugged him off with the last of my energy, hoping to avoid getting stabbed myself. Sharp objects were unpredictable in a fight like this, and I wanted distance.
Besides, blood was a real bitch to wash out.
I wobbled as I got to my feet. Gladstone stood in the hallway, looking remarkably put out. Jacob lay on the floor groaning—his face had returned to normal. Well, sort of. He was beyond pale, and not just from pain and blood loss; his pitifully thin veins were visible all over his body—blue and sprawling, swarming his face, neck, and arms like the roots of a tree.
“Serves you right, you tosser,” Gladstone remarked. “I told you there was a limit to how much your body could take.” He sighed. “Good help is hard to find these days. I don’t suppose you want a job?”
It took me a second to realize he was talking to me. I grunted, then groaned a little. My throat still hurt. A lot. “Not unless you’re plannin’ to pay me to kill ye,” I rasped.
His lips pursed, then he flung out a hand, sending a wave of flames at me in an arc. I shielded my eyes and watched as they collided with an invisible wall, puttered, and died. Gladstone frowned and pointed directly at me. This time a tiny cone of jet blue fire, like the tip of a blowtorch, leapt from his finger like a bullet. It fizzled with a puff of smoke a mere foot from me.
“I’ll take that as a no,” I said, “but don’t ye worry, I was plannin’ on doin’ that pro bono, anyway.”
“Well that’s a right neat trick, love. How’re you doing that?” Gladstone asked, though his interest seemed mostly academic, like he’d just seen a monkey paint a mural. “You know what? Nevermind. Things to do and people to see.” Gladstone waved a hand and Jacob soared through the air, squealing in pain, until he lay at Gladstone’s feet. “One life is as good as another, ain’t that right?”
Gladstone walked back down the hallway, Jacob trailing behind him, still screaming, the knife inside him digging and tearing. I’d love to say I relished in his pain, but—no matter how close the bastard had been to killing me or what he’d done to my aunt�
�the tortured sounds he was making made me feel a little queasy.
That, or I was still nauseous from the beating I’d taken.
Probably the latter, I decided.
“Hey!” I called. “I’m not done with ye!” I followed, fully intending to fetch my knife from Jacob’s stomach and use it to slice the wizard from groin to gullet. But, by the time I stumbled down the hallway and made it to the back room, I found that Gladstone had already retrieved my knife…and used it to cut his partner’s throat.
Chapter 44
A wet gurgle was all Jacob managed before his blood—what remained of it anyway—splashed into a bowl Gladstone held. The open briefcase lay against a wall painted liberally from baseboards to ceiling in shades of red. I didn’t recognize the markings, but simply looking at them made my skin crawl. They were neat, uniform—running from one wall to the next with painstaking precision. It must have taken Gladstone hours…maybe even days.
“I wouldn’t come much further if I was you,” Gladstone remarked. He held Jacob’s head back by pulling back on the dead man’s forehead, catching as much blood in the worn wooden bowl as possible. Then, apparently finished, he tossed Jacob’s body aside with as much force as he could muster. Jacob’s eyes were still open, staring at nothing. In the dim florescence, he looked ghoulish and inhuman. I fought back another wave of nausea.
“Why?” I asked, finally.
“Because then you’ll get caught up in the Gateway,” Gladstone explained. He held up a metal sphere, like a marble, only larger. The outside swirled in Milky-Way patterns. “That briefcase took a bit of doing, but isn’t she beautiful?” He let the ball roll around in his palm.
“No, I meant why d’ye kill him?”
“Oh, that moron? Who cares? Now step back.” Gladstone set the sphere on the ground and crushed it beneath his heel, then hurriedly stepped away. I felt a tug at my back as the air in the room ended up sucked into a single point. Then, with a brutal tearing sound and a flash of light, a portal opened—a rift between this room and somewhere else. Darkness poured out of it like night was trying to invade.
Gladstone stepped nimbly over Jacob’s body and through, unfazed by the sounds of insects or the darkness on the other side. I could only watch as he disappeared; even without his magic, Gladstone seemed fit. If I was fresh, I could probably take him without breaking a sweat, but at this rate he might be able to overpower me. I probed my throat and winced. I’d have some classy domestic violence bruises before long.
As I wavered between whether or not to go after him, I studied the portal, which stood a little taller than me and twice as wide. I couldn’t believe I’d been carrying around something like this the whole time. What had Othello planned to do with something like this? I sighed, realizing I might never find out.
Because I’d decided to go after Gladstone, after all.
In case you were wondering, you should know I wasn’t the heroic type; I sold scary, dangerous shit to scary, dangerous people, and I avoided asking stupid questions, questions like “what are you going to do with this?” or “where did you get that from?”
The truth was, I wasn’t going after Gladstone because he needed to be stopped, or because he was the type of guy who could slit his partner’s throat without blinking—people die every day, and Jacob hadn’t exactly been a saint. No, I was going after him because Gladstone didn’t play by the rules. My rules. Rules that involved paying for services owed. Rules that involved not targeting innocent people. And that’s why, without trying to think too hard about the physics of what was about to happen, I stepped through the portal.
Directly into a trap.
Chapter 45
I felt the rope before I saw it, binding my arms to my sides and jerking me sideways. In the murky gloom, I could barely make out Gladstone on the other end, tying it around a pillar with his magic, weaving his arms in the air. I tried to pull away, but he secured the knot with a flick of his wrist, then stepped well out of reach.
“Took you long enough,” Gladstone said. “Felt like I was standing there for ages waiting for you to follow me through.”
“Seriously?” I asked, tugging with my whole body. “Where did ye even get the rope?”
Gladstone grunted and waved his hand around. I realized we were surrounded by ropes. And stone. The light was dim, but the longer I looked, the more I could make out: massive stone pillars reaching high into the air only to be swallowed up by a canopy of foliage. Lichen dangled from the ropes, which ran from one pillar to the next, haphazardly. I couldn’t see any walls, but I sensed we weren’t outside. The whole place felt contained, somehow. The lack of wind, maybe?
“Where the fuck are we?” I muttered.
Gladstone ignored me and walked towards a slab of stone some twenty feet away, untouched by the plant life that had strangled everything else. He set the bowl of blood he’d collected on the slab, which reminded me of something I’d seen often in my life: an altar.
“Is this some sort of temple?” I asked.
Gladstone flinched, repositioned the bowl, and then strolled back to sidle up against a pillar. “Now we wait.”
Deciding it was better not to know what we were waiting for, I struggled to free myself from the rope once more. Unfortunately, I was still exhausted, and the rope was uncommonly thick; it might as well have been a boa constrictor, wound so tight it made it hard to breath. “So,” I said, drawing closer to the pillar where Gladstone had tied the knot, hoping the slack would provide some relief, “ye won’t tell me where we are. How about ye tell me what Jacob took? What was in that vial?”
He ignored me.
I grunted. “Unless ye plan on comin’ over here to kill me, ye may as well answer me questions. I promise ye I can annoy ye to death, if ye let me.”
Gladstone sighed. “Alchemy.”
Oh, sure. Alchemy.
“Wait, what?” I asked.
Gladstone used one of the pillars as a support and lowered himself to the ground. His eyes never wavered from the altar. “Alchemy. It’s like chemistry, but without the limitations. Never really caught on in a big way. Regulars lacked the imagination to make sense of it. But some of us wizards thought it might be worth checking out. Mind you, they’re all dead now. But I’m still here, and I know a trick or two. Like how to redirect blood flow.”
“So you’re what, some kind of pharmacist?” I taunted.
Gladstone turned his attention to me and raised an eyebrow. “You know, you really are a mouthy broad. I don’t know if it’s a charm or an enchantment or what, but just because my magic don’t work on you doesn’t mean you’re safe from what’s coming.”
“And what’s that?” I asked, leaning against the pillar. In truth, it was the only thing holding me up; but Gladstone didn’t need to know that. So long as he thought I was a threat, he’d stay on his side of the temple. Maybe long enough to let me catch my breath, if I was lucky.
Or at least I hoped so.
Gladstone rolled his eyes and returned his attention to the altar. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, love. When I’m done here, the Academy will be thanking me.”
“I thought ye said the Academy were like the police? Ye sounded scared of ‘em.”
“I wasn’t scared,” Gladstone snarled. “I didn’t want them sticking their noses in where they didn’t belong, that’s all. The Academy used to be a proper bunch, back when I was a member. We sorted out the riffraff and all that. Punished the buggers who went off on their own to cause mayhem. There were loads of perks. It was a right fun job, it was.”
Gladstone froze, his head cocked. I whirled toward the altar, but saw nothing. The wizard shrugged and continued, “These days, though, things ain’t what they used to be. Turns out most of my friends in the Academy were spies, working for a different group. But then they went and died before I could find out why or who they was working for. Got ourselves in a right mess after that, a bloody war. Rest of my friends died, then. A couple of us old folks are
still mucking about, of course, and remember the good ol’ days, but ain’t a one I could get a proper drink with.”
Gladstone fetched a flask from his pocket. “I’d offer you some, love, but I know better than to get too close after what you did to my man.” He took a swig. “Anyway, as I was saying, it’s just me now, and the Academy ain’t nuffin like it was. Letting an outsider tell us what to do, push us around. So, I gets to thinking, ‘how come?’ How come we’s got to put up with that?”
The sound of a tree branch snapping brought us both around. I couldn’t make out where it had come from. Gladstone seemed pleased.
“Where are we?” I asked, again, fighting off a heavy sense of dread.
“I’m getting to that part, dearie, be patient,” Gladstone insisted. “So, as I said, I ask myself that question and I do a little research and, come to find out, there’s a whole black market out there for entrepreneurs like me. Like you, too, am I right?” He tipped his flask and took another swig.
“But then I catch wind of something real special,” he went on, “a piece of merchandise that’ll take you places ain’t nobody supposed to go. Places that ain’t supposed to exist. And don’t it just make sense that it belongs to the tosser who started everyfin—the shakeup and the war and everyfin else.”
I thought I heard something from the portal behind me, like the slamming of a door, but Gladstone didn’t seem to notice anything. I frowned. “Ye still haven’t told me where we are,” I said.
“You’re right. But see, I’m still trying to figure that out, love. Let me ask you sumfin, have you ever met a god?”
“A god?”
“See, I think that portal there is special. Tell me, if you was to talk to a god, how would you do it?”
Whiskey Ginger Page 14
