Firewall (Magic Born) (21 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Hayes ducked another volley of rubber bullets, he and Nate covering Lizzie as the three huddled at a corner three blocks from City Hall. Rubber bullets could still do significant damage, even kill, but it was a small step in the right direction from the live ammo fired on the night of the last protest. Groups of people had splintered off at the highway and made their way through Midtown in small numbers, on side streets and back alleys. Hayes, Nate and Lizzie did their best to keep to a direct route, but as more and more police filled the streets and shut down the highway, they’d had no choice but to alter their plan.

Lizzie’s glamour was still intact, sunlight glinting off the mirrorball helmet to shine painfully in his eyes. She hadn’t spoken in a while and he’d chalked it up to the hard run through chaotic streets, but now that he had time to stop and think for a second, he was worried. What was all this energy in the streets doing to her?

“You holding up okay, Lizzie?”

She raised a hand then dropped it.

Hayes and Nate exchanged a worried glance. Nate said, “Let’s get under cover somewhere.”

“Lead the way.” Hayes didn’t know the city near as well.

A dozen or more people ran past their position, several moving backward so they could throw rocks at the police giving chase. A surveillance drone flew overhead, diving low between the canyons of the high rises of Central City.

Hayes tapped the screen of his watch. “Halif, they’re using drones. Can you do anything about the footage being sent back?”

“Investigating now,” came the terse reply.

Nate pointed to the left. “There’s a parking garage half a block that way. It’s as good a place as any.” He glanced at Lizzie. She was huddled into herself and rocking slightly. “She doesn’t need to see it, just feel it.”

Hayes pitched his voice low so she wouldn’t hear. “Pick her up and carry her if necessary.”

Nate nodded and helped Lizzie up. Hayes reached into his pack, debating what to use. He had a gun he hoped he wouldn’t need, a shock baton and a handful of witchlight charms. He grabbed the baton and a charm then closed the pack and replaced it on his back. “Let’s go.”

The two men flanked Lizzie, Nate slightly in the lead, Hayes trying to look everywhere at once as they ran up the street. Another drone maneuvered overhead, or perhaps the same one. Small, black and insectlike in appearance, it cruised at moderate speed, the lens of its camera a glossy dark eye.

“Halif, we’ve got a drone pacing us. Can you do anything?”

“I’m trying but I’m having to fight to hold the circle intact and do anything else.”

Damn. “Guess I’ll just have to do this the old-fashioned way.” He motioned to Nate. “Head up the block and circle back if this works.”

“What are you going to do?”

Hayes didn’t answer, instead switching the baton for the gun. Nate hesitated for a moment, then led Lizzie farther up the block.

Hayes stepped out into the middle of the street, gun held close to his side, and waved at the drone. It detected the motion and directed its camera at him. He gave it his best smile. In seconds, the drone’s facial recognition software identified him as a wanted fugitive, and it flew lower, until it hovered three feet from his head.

A loud, robotic voice issued from the drone. “Suspect. Remain in position until officers arrive. You are under arrest.”

Its programming was designed to follow an identified suspect, especially one with charges against him like Hayes. It had recorded footage of Nate and Lizzie, faces obscured by the mirrorball glamours, leaving the immediate area. Not a surefire solution, but hopefully with everything else going on the police would assume he’d left as well.

“Yeah, sure thing.” He waved again, lowering all but his middle finger as he grinned at the camera. Then he raised the gun and emptied the clip into the drone’s cyclops eye.

Surveillance drones were designed to withstand rough weather and a moderate level of attack. The average person didn’t know enough about their vulnerabilities to know where to strike, but Hayes did. The camera was the key: everything important required to keep the drone functioning was housed in a small cube directly behind the lens. Bullets from several feet away fired by an expert marksman were more than enough to bring the drone crashing to the street.

Smoke curled up from a small fire blazing in the heart of the electronics. Pieces littered the asphalt. Hayes kicked at a broken, jagged bit of wing. He switched out the empty clip for a full one and tucked the gun into the built-in holster inside his jacket.

Nightshade dealers had all kinds of interesting toys. The jacket had been an especially nice item to pick up. He used another from them, a witchlight charm that would simulate an explosion and fire when triggered. Placed in the drone wreckage just so, it would hopefully slow down any police who tried to retrieve it.

Nate waved as he and Lizzie ducked into the parking garage. Hayes jogged to meet them.

The other man hurriedly removed his glamour, then Lizzie’s. He said, “We have a problem.”

Lizzie was ghostly pale, her eyes half-closed and unfocused. Her body slumped to the ground, held up only by Nate’s grip on her arm.

Hayes said, “She doesn’t look so good.”

“That’s not the half of it,” Nate said. “Get ready to catch her.”

“Don’t let her go if—”

Nate released his hold on Lizzie. Her feet left the ground, limbs floating around her as if she was underwater. As if she was flying. Hayes stared in shock, speechless. She rose quickly. Her foot was just above his head when his brain finally started working again and he grabbed her ankle.

Lizzie tore the air with a scream. “Vadya!” Magic fractured a line in a nearby concrete pillar and blew out the LED traffic signs at the entrance.

Hayes pulled her down carefully and wrapped his arms around her. Electric shocks bit into his flesh, the degree increasing with alarming rapidity. “You need to focus, Lizzie. Come on, you can do this.” He hoped. She didn’t have the training for this and they all knew it.

“It’s too much, too much.” She bent sideways and stomped her feet. Cracks broke open underneath them.

A vicious shock nearly sent Hayes to the ground. He lost his grip on her for a split second. The brief surcease of pain was such a blessed relief that he didn’t want to touch her again. Would have given just about anything to not have to touch her again. He gritted his teeth and grabbed her.

“You have to control it, Lizzie. Focus. Shape it, bend it to your will.”

She fought him, screaming and flailing. An elbow to his stomach sent a charge of energy into him that felt like a stun-gun blast. This time he did hit the ground, hard, his body jackknifing as the magic continued to tear through him.

Through slitted eyes he saw Lizzie in the air again.

* * *

Something was happening with the magical energy of New Corinth, something so strong every witch in the city must have felt it. Fluctuations in power buffeted Tuyet in cyberspace. Lines of neon light, stark against the deep black of the void, undulated in the uncertain currents of magic. Tuyet fought to stay in trance and to keep from being blown to some far corner of cyberspace. The ripples continued for long moments—she wasn’t sure how long. Finally during a lull, she was able to send a message back to the chat room.

“Does anybody know what’s going on?”

Jason answered. “Stuff’s going haywire all over the city, but it seems to be focused downtown.”

“Where the protesters are.” That had to mean things were getting out of control. “Has anybody been able to contact Hayes?”

“No,” snapped Vadim. “And I don’t like that one bit.”

Tuyet said, “Our patch to link him to the chat room may have been fried by the energy spikes. It doesn’t mean they’re in trouble.” She left out the obvious point that now they had no way of knowing.

Calla said, “How long do we wait?”

The energy fluctuations were too intense. They wouldn’t be able to safely draw on the city’s magic if it continued. They needed Lizzie’s stabilizing empathy, but if the connection to Hayes was out, they had no way to find out if she’d be able to help, or when.

They had no good options.

Tuyet made the decision quickly, before she could think of a thousand reasons to change her mind. “We do it now. Let’s call the quarters.”

She went first, in the east position. “I call on the spark and the signals that travel through the air.” With every part of her magical being, she reached outward then pulled, drawing power to their circle. A yellow flame erupted in cyberspace. It smoothed into a clean, solid line of energy that followed the boundary of the circle.

It was easy for Tuyet to imagine the others in their arranged positions as one by one they invoked an element.

Calla, in the south. “Neon to light the night, I call on thee!” This time the flame was red, vibrant and strong as it settled into place.

Vadim, in the west, with the trickiest element. “Rhythm and passion and the never-ending flow of emotion, I call on you.” His voice was strained. A shade of electric blue that she knew to be his favorite color flared into being. It spun into fractals of thin lines and patterns before coalescing into a mostly stable part of the circle.

Jason in the north was last. “I call on concrete and steel and all that is foundational.” A dot of green grew quickly into a wide band that added palpable strength to the circle.

Silver Wheels lapped the fully charged circle. “Enchantress of Numbers, we call on you. Madman of the Wires, we call on you.”

Tuyet prepared herself for the first blast of magic to be directed at the firewall. In her time with the Rangers, she’d refined her natural talent at trancehacking into a fine blade, performing delicate spellwork under the most difficult conditions. This operation called for raw strength, the blunt force of a punch to the head. With all of the energy swirling around them and through them, for the first time she felt confident, truly confident, about their odds of success.

She gathered their collective might and fused it together, weaving the lines of energy into a single cone of power designed to cut through the firewall hard and fast. Virus at the ready, she approached the massive wall of code and spellwork, her consciousness swelling with intention. If she could have seen her own lotus avatar, she knew it would have been several times its normal size and blazing like a star.

Too late, she realized what was happening on the other side of that wall. Her mind pieced it together faster than she could act on it. The magical energy spikes in New Corinth were being monitored by more than just Tuyet and her group. Her earlier instinct that the firewall was under active guard was proven true as a defensive hex hit her from all sides.

The cone of energy flickered as excruciating pain ripped through her head.

* * *

Hayes stared in a daze as Nate lunged for Lizzie, barely catching her before she was too high to reach. Blues lines of energy arced like lightning from her body. Nate shouted but held on, pulling her back to the ground where she huddled on her hands and knees. Hayes managed to get on all fours and crawled to her side. Her skin burned when he rested a hand on her arm.

“Who’s closest, Jason?” Hayes met Nate’s eyes, not sure when the other man had lost his glamour.

“Yeah. The patch quit working?”

Hayes pulled himself into a sitting position, every part of his body aching. He withdrew the tiny comm unit from his ear and tossed it. “Get to Jason as fast as you can. He’ll be able to tell them this isn’t going to work.”

A guttural sound tore from Lizzie’s throat and she slapped the ground. A chunk of concrete several inches wider than her hand crumbled into dust at the impact, leaving a gaping hole and a cloud of particles. “Help me,” she ground out. “I can.” She paused for a ragged inhale of breath. “If you help me.”

Hayes squeezed his eyes shut against the knife twisting in his gut. There had to be another way.

Nate said, “What is she talking about?”

“She wants me to hit her,” Hayes said. He opened his eyes. Lizzie sat hunched over and shaking. Bolts of lightning of varying sizes erupted from the power soaking her body. He grabbed her chin and lifted her face, forcing her to meet his eyes. “She wants me to hit her and give her the pain she needs to focus, so she can control her magic.
Because she can’t do it herself
.”

No mercy in his last words, no kindness or sympathy. “She has a gift but not the will to use it and we are going to fail because of her. We are going to fail because she can’t pull herself together. Vadim’s going to have to go home and tell Dani that her mother is one lousy, pathetic excuse for a witch.”

Memories of every asshole drill instructor he’d ever come across filled his head. “So you just lie on the ground and twitch like a God damn fish out of water instead of doing something that could make her life better. You just lie there and be—”

She lashed out so quickly, he was on his ass before he realized she’d hit him. The side of his face stung and the sharp edge of something on the ground bit into his shoulder.

But there was no shock of uncontrolled magic. “Lizzie, are—”

“You made your point,” she said through gritted teeth. She wrenched her arm from Nate’s grasp and smoothed back the red streamers of hair that had long since come out of their braid. “Be ready.”

“For what?”

Her eyes glowed with magic. “Anything.”

Lizzie spread her arms wide and exhaled. She held the position for a moment, her gaze skittering from Hayes to Nate and back. Apparently satisfied they seemed ready for whatever came next, she nodded once. Then she inhaled deeply and drew her arms close to her body as if for an embrace, rising to her feet at the same time. And rising, and rising, until she hovered as far above them as the ceiling of the parking garage would allow. A column of energy surrounded her, translucent but still suggestive of immeasurable strength.

Hayes rushed to his feet and backed away, indicating to Nate to do the same. Getting tangled with that column didn’t seem like a smart idea.

Nate wiped sweat and grit from his face. “Did they cover this in the briefing? I don’t think they covered this in the briefing.”