His hand tightened on hers. For a moment they just stared at each other, and she felt like the horror was farther away, that it had settled deeper inside her again.
They ate Sibyl’s chicken in silence, all of them transparently relieved when Sloane took her last bite. Mox and Sloane busied themselves in the kitchen scooping potatoes into containers for the refrigerator, scrubbing plates and pots. Sibyl let them take over and went out to the back steps to smoke a cigarette—“My afternoon indulgence,” she had called it, not that Mox or Sloane had said anything. Then she started up the engine of the old Toyota and drove them to the train station, wearing thick glasses with green tortoiseshell frames.
As they drove past the rows of low brick buildings and empty lots that patched the land between Sibyl’s house and the station, Sloane marveled at how barren everything looked without the magic-influenced architecture that defined Chicago. She had gotten used to it, even in the short time she had been on Genetrix. The most interesting buildings in St. Louis were churches, which seemed to have gotten more plain in the absence of Unrealist or Bygoneist architects—flat, white buildings with sharp corners that reminded her of minimalist structures on Earth, but with glass-block windows arranged in the shape of crosses.
Sibyl gave Mox a hard look when they pulled up to the curb next to the station and said, “Keep your eyes open.”
He leaned in and kissed her cheek, even though she looked just as stern and irritable as she had since they arrived. “Thanks.”
Sloane got out without saying goodbye. She was distracted by a buzzing sensation on the surface of her skin, like a purring cat. They had to be closer to the limits of the magic-canceling siphon’s power here. When Mox shut his door and the Toyota pulled away, she turned to him and asked, “How did you meet her, anyway? I never got to meet the prophet on Earth.”
“I did a lot of poking around at the Camel,” he said, tipping his head back to look at the sky. It was cloudy, the sun covered with a pale haze. “They could never keep me out of any room for long. Something’s off—do you feel that?” He wiggled his fingers. “All bright and shiny for me. Magic’s back.”
“Why would they turn off the dampening?”
“I can think of only one reason,” he said. “Because they know I can use magic whether the dampener is functional or not, and they want to be able to use it too.”
“Well,” Sloane said, “let’s get our siphons before they find us, then.”
Mox led the way to the row of lockers where they had stored the siphons. When he entered their combination and opened the door, it was with a sigh of relief. The siphons were there, side by side. He put the green one on his hand and flexed his fingers, then took the tooth attachment from its little pouch and stuck it in place over a canine. Sloane put on her siphon grudgingly, hating the coldness of it against her hand, and the weight, and the way it pinched her wrist.
Mox watched her fumbling with the clasp for a few seconds, then reached across her to take her wrist in his hands. He tucked a finger under the band to test its tightness, then pushed the clasp in place with a flick of his wrist. She felt heat where his fingertip had been against her skin. And she knew what that heat meant and where it might lead, if she let it, but it felt like another betrayal.
She shut the locker door and turned back to the Grand Hall. In Chicago, most of the people she saw wore the dramatic clothing that, she had learned, was a trademark of the magical elite. But in St. Louis, a haven city, there were no sweeping fabrics designed to display throat siphons or wrist siphons, no elaborate updos dotted with round gold clips that accentuated ear siphons, no modern mimicries of wizard garb. In fact, the fashion seemed to have gone in another direction, as a reaction: a woman in a collar so high it cradled her jaw rushed past them, tiny buttons drawing a line from throat to bellybutton; a man in a startlingly bright pink and orange shirt had fabric around his wrists and his upper arms, but between them was mesh showing bare skin, untouched by magical technology; a sullen-looking child wore a gray shift that looked like a monk’s robe. The child eyed Sloane’s wrist, then scowled at her. Sloane scowled back.
Then a quick movement caught her eye—someone darting behind a pillar. She reached behind her and slapped Mox’s stomach a little too hard.
“Ouch,” he said. “What—”
Sloane raised her siphon hand and pointed it at a Flickering soldier, approaching under the shadowed awning that framed the room.
Mox stiffened and turned too, facing the other direction, so they were almost back to back.
“Sloane.”
She recognized the voice; it belonged to Edda, who had been with her and the others during the Drain. Edda stepped around the red faux-velvet furniture on Sloane’s left, her hand up and gleaming black. A spark danced across her palm, her siphon ready to launch its working.
“Hey there,” Sloane said, her gaze shifting from Edda to the other soldier, a small, spry woman with a crown of curly black hair. She wore a siphon over her eye, a half-mask of smooth chrome fitted to her eye socket and cheekbone. “You’re kind of harshing the vibe of my St. Louis vacation, Edda.”
“Sloane, he’s used some kind of working on you,” Edda said steadily. “Some kind of mind manipulation.”
All the civilians around her had already ducked behind tables and chairs, huddled together in the corners, or fled out the doors. The little girl in the monk garb was crouched near Edda’s feet, shivering.
“Nope,” Sloane said. “Next theory.”
“I don’t have any other theories,” Edda said.
“Here’s one: you’ve been lied to,” Sloane said. She was just delaying, scanning the room for emergency exits. There was a solid wall of lockers on her right, but beyond it, she remembered the red glow of the sign. If she could get Mox to blast the lockers out of the way, they could make a run for it.
“Not possible.” Edda was shaking her head. Sloane leaned back slightly to feel the press of Mox’s shoulder against hers.
“I mean,” Sloane said, “it’s always possible that you’ve been lied to.” She was nudging Mox with her elbow, the one facing the lockers. Gently, she tapped the locker door with her knuckles.
“Lieutenant, she’s—” The soldier in front of Sloane started to say something, but Mox slammed a hand against the locker bank and let out a sharp sound almost too high to process. There was a deafening crunch as the lockers crumpled like a ball of aluminum, and Sloane began climbing over them the second she could get a foothold. She grabbed Mox by the shirt so she wouldn’t lose him. The lockers collapsed while she heaved herself over them, throwing her off balance. She stumbled and dropped to her knees on the tile.
The masked soldier was singing a pure, clear note, and Edda joined her in harmony. The combination of voices made a weight settle on Sloane’s shoulders and press, so she couldn’t help but fall forward on her elbows. She screamed into her teeth and tried to crawl, but the weight was only growing heavier, crushing her, squeezing the air from her lungs—
Mox’s palm flattened on the ground, and the whistle in his mouth sounded guttural, as deep as a lion’s roar. The ground shook beneath just him at first, then rippled out, shuddering under Sloane’s body, then rattling the remains of the lockers, then jolting, violent, launching her up and slamming her back down onto the tile. Mox reached for her and hooked his free arm around hers as he changed the pitch, sliding it up, up—
A sharp crack sounded, and Mox screamed, his concentration broken by a metal rod slamming into his back. It seemed to have sprouted from Edda’s palm. Mox collapsed onto the tile. The masked soldier was just a few strides away from Sloane. Sloane knew that if the woman got a hand on her, they were both lost, captives of Nero.
So she did the only thing she could think of: She raised her hand, and whistled at what she hoped was exactly 170 MHz, to perform the magical breath. She focused on what Sibyl had said to her before they left, that Sloane wanted everything, that she was a bottomless pit, a creature of craving
that stank of magic. Fire charged through her, burning in every limb. Still she whistled. Air rushed past her, roaring, and beneath that deafening sound was fabric tearing, glass shattering, screaming.
She watched Edda topple, her heels going over her head. The masked soldier was thrown against a pillar behind her. The locker bank, now a heap of twisted metal, creaked on the supports that bolted it to the ground, about to fly loose.
Mox’s arm, solid as a girder, wrapped around her waist. He dragged her to the emergency exit and shoved the door open with his shoulder. Only when she saw the orange light of sunset did Sloane let herself stop whistling, her throat raw despite how brief the sound had been. She leaned into him, certain that she would collapse, but not yet, not yet.
Mox ran out into traffic, making one car veer and the other screech as the driver slammed on the brakes. He let go of Sloane and ripped the car door open.
“Get out,” he said through gritted teeth, holding up his siphon.
The driver was a teenage boy with a cluster of pimples on his chin. He stared at Mox, unblinking. Sloane was already getting in the passenger’s side and sinking gratefully into the seat.
“Now!” Mox roared, and fire danced over his fingertips, curled around his wrist, and crept toward his elbow. The boy scrambled to unbuckle his seat belt, grabbed his backpack, and bolted from the car. Mox got in and put his foot on the accelerator. The car lurched forward, and he jerked the wheel, almost sending them onto the sidewalk.
“Do you know how to drive?” Sloane demanded.
“No,” Mox replied tersely.
“Gas right, brakes left,” Sloane said. “Slow down! They don’t know we took this car yet. You’re just making it more obvious.” She was feeling woozy. She slammed her hand into the dashboard to wake herself up. “Shit,” she said. “Get to a highway as quickly as you can, then find a place to stop. Somewhere shitty—a motel, or . . .” She blinked; everything was shifting like the air had turned to molasses. “I’m going to pass out now.”
“Sloane!” was the last thing she heard before collapsing back into the seat.
36
SLOANE WOKE to the jerk of the brakes. The car—which smelled powerfully of the teenage boy’s deodorant layered on top of cigarette smoke—was lurching into a parking spot off a narrow road. Across a stretch of tangled grass was a sign that read MOTEL, with the L losing its luster by the second. It was exactly the kind of place Sloane would have chosen if she had been awake.
“Good job,” she said, her voice sounding strained. She watched Mox fiddle with the gearshift for a second, then reached over and put the car in park for him.
“The highway almost killed us both,” Mox said. “You’re not allowed to pass out again.”
“Sorry, was that inconvenient for you?”
Mox was smiling as he opened the car door. He climbed out stiffly, likely sore from the metal rod Edda had hit him with. Sloane followed him. She felt tired but no longer dizzy.
Mox passed her a handful of coins, and she went to the main office to get them a room while he searched out a vending machine. It wouldn’t be safe to stay long with the car parked in plain sight, but they could get a few hours’ rest before leaving. She waited outside until Mox showed up with two bottles of water and a pile of snacks cradled against his stomach, and together they walked along the row of rooms to the one on the end.
The room was dark, thanks to few windows and the wood paneling on the walls, ceiling, and floor that made her feel like she was inside her own coffin. The bed was wide, with a dip in the middle. Sloane grimaced, went to the bed, and ripped the floral coverlet off. She stuffed it in the corner. Mox raised an eyebrow at her. Beneath the coverlet were white sheets that looked reassuringly starched.
“What?” she said. “They never wash the comforter, it’s disgusting. Don’t walk around barefoot either. Oh! And the phone—don’t touch the phone.”
He laughed. “I live in a warehouse and sleep on a pile of old blankets, remember?”
“Right,” she said. “Speaking of which. Why don’t you just . . . leave Chicago? Leave the country entirely?”
Mox dumped the food in a pile on the little table in the corner and drew the curtains closed. A whistle had all the lights in the room aglow.
“Before I learned to raise the army,” he said, opening one of the water bottles and taking a long drink from it, “I tried to leave. He followed me. And everyone I had spoken to—everyone who helped me—” He made a strangled noise and stopped talking.
“Oh.” Sloane crossed the room and set a hand, lightly, between his shoulder blades. “Is your back all right?”
“Don’t know,” he said.
She knew the smart thing would be to pull away. To refuse to play nurse, as she had in the beginning—unsuccessfully. But she couldn’t bear it. Her hands dropped to the hem of his shirt and she smoothed it up, exposing an expanse of pale skin, the bumps of his spine, the faint lines of his musculature. Very solid, she thought again.
“I should tell you—” he started, and then she saw it, the metal plates stark against his fair skin and climbing up his back. Their color was warm, something between copper and gold. It was a siphon.
Her cheeks were hot, and she was glad he couldn’t see them. She tried to focus. Nero had told her something about spine siphons. That people didn’t use them. She didn’t remember why, but she didn’t want to ask Mox to explain it—
“He placed it there. Nero,” Mox said, his voice low. “It means that when I’m near him, he has control over my magic. And only he can remove it.”
His skin was already discoloring where Edda’s metal rod had struck him high across his shoulders. But it hadn’t broken the skin. Sloane laid her hand on top of the siphon, the set of interlocking plates that imitated the shape and curvature of his vertebrae. They were flat, almost flush with his back, so they would be undetectable under clothing. The metal was warmed by his skin, and now hers.
“I was young. Barely more than a child,” Mox went on. “It can’t be placed without consent. But he told me it would help me—like a set of training wheels for my magic, to make it less overwhelming until I was ready for it—”
“I’m going to kill him,” she said evenly, and she stepped back, letting his shirt fall.
Mox looked over his shoulder at her. Her entire body was hot now, and burning, like acid was eating away at her chest. For Mox, this was when magic would come and level the little motel room even if he didn’t want it to. But Sloane had not felt this way in a long time, had always subsumed anger into some other emotion because the anger itself was too much to handle. She breathed in through her nose.
“I,” she said, “hate him.”
Mox hesitated, just for a moment, before touching her cheek. She found something stable in the cool lines of his fingers, the utter stillness in his eyes.
“I know,” he said. “I know.”
They stood there for what felt like a long time, his hands on her, their faces close together. At first, Sloane told herself she would just stay there until the rage receded again. But then she couldn’t bear to move. His breath smelled like chocolate—he had probably eaten some on the way back from the vending machine. His cheek was rough with five o’clock shadow. She brought her hands up to his wrists, not moving him, just holding him there.
“Kiss me,” she said in a low voice. “Now.”
He obeyed, gentle hands turned strict, buried in her hair. She backed him up against a wall and pressed into him, their hips and stomachs and chests warm against each other. It felt like the burn and tingle of magic but without the destruction, just the warmth and the intent. But magic was there too—and no wonder; Mox was drowning in it, suffused with it. Electricity danced over his fingers, and it was bright against her eyelids. She stopped to watch the lights play over his knuckles and laughed.
“Sorry,” he said with a small smile. He looked smug.
“No, you’re not, you ass,” she said, and she kissed him again.<
br />
She thought of Matt only briefly, when she realized she didn’t know the choreography anymore, didn’t know how it worked when you were kissing someone so much bigger than you were, someone who wasn’t so careful of you, who had just watched you send a dry gale through a train station that bowled over grown men and knew that you had murder in your heart because he had it in his too. Mox’s arm wrapped around her back, and he lifted her clear off the ground. She laughed as he dropped her on the mattress and stood back to take off his shirt and his shoes without a trace of self-consciousness.
Sloane felt like the air was pressing in on her from all sides, and she wasn’t sure if it was magic or just how it felt when you were with someone and you had stopped pretending.
She pulled him to her, and there was so much that he wasn’t—wasn’t shy about touching her, wasn’t delicate as he slid her pants down over her ankles and tossed them aside, wasn’t apologetic as he traced a new path up her body, wasn’t put out when she laughed and tugged his hair to offer a suggestion. And God, his hair, tangled around her fingers; his teeth, teasing at her fingertips as he removed the siphon from her hand; his eyes, fixed on hers with unwavering focus as they discovered how to move together.
Sloane wanted everything, and then she had it—fire and gale and laughter; rage and warmth and comprehension.
She had just enough presence of mind to notice when all the objects in the room—pad of paper, bottle of water, bags of pretzels, grimy remote, ancient TV set, dusty soap wrapped in lavender paper—jerked up into the air and slammed back down again. She wasn’t even sure if that had been his doing or her own.
When Sloane woke, it was dark outside, and Mox was asleep on his stomach with his hands folded under his head. His hair was rumpled, but one curl trailed over his forehead, making her grin.
The spine siphon caught her attention, and she leaned over Mox’s shifting shoulders to get a closer look. Its structure was essentially the same as any other siphon, with a sturdier plate at the top of Mox’s spine that, she assumed, held all the mechanics of the thing, and the line of plates trailing down to the middle of his back. She was sure they served their own function—greater skin contact might provide a power source—from thermal energy, perhaps? Or it gave the device added stability?
Chosen Ones Page 33
