Trace of Magic (27 page)

“I’m here, Josh. I’m here. You can escape. You just have to follow my voice.”

I kept talking to him, blindly following Touray.

“This way,” he said after a while, breaking my concentration.

I hadn’t noticed the arched doorway cut into the left-hand wall. Touray went up the steps. Josh followed, but struggled with his shackles.

“This isn’t going to work,” I said, my heart aching for him. His hands clenched and unclenched. His head hung, swinging ponderously from side to side. I wondered what demons he faced inside his head.

Touray turned and unfastened the leg bindings. Instantly Josh fisted his hands together and lifted them. Instinctively I grabbed him, pushing him sideways against the wall and holding his arms in place.

“Josh! He’s a—” I couldn’t say “friend.” I didn’t believe it myself. If Josh heard the lie, there’s no way he’d contain himself. “He’s not the enemy right now,” I said more softly, trying to catch his gaze with mine. “He’s helping us. I promise. I’m going to get you home and safe.” I didn’t care who I had to kill or sacrifice to get him safely back to Taylor. Whatever it was, I’d do it.

Josh seemed to hear me. The glassy look in his eyes faded for a second. His face twisted, and tears rolled down his face. “Riley?” He dropped his arms around me and clamped me in a desperate hug. I hugged him back just as hard. His forehead rested on my shoulder.

“Don’t let them take me,” he whispered raggedly. “Kill me.
Please
. Just kill me.”

My throat closed, and I dug my fingers into his back. “You’re going home to Taylor,” I promised fervently.

“Come on,” Touray urged.

I ducked out from beneath his arms and pressed my palm to his cheek. I hoped to see a flicker that he’d understood what I said, but he’d sunk inward again, his eyes darting back and forth, seeing things I couldn’t begin to imagine.

Touray unfastened Josh’s cuffs, and I got behind him and put a hand on his back just to let him know I was there. Hopefully he didn’t think I was some sort of zombie or a monster out to eat his liver.

The steps went up and up. The ceiling was low enough that I began to feel claustrophobic. Lights lit one by one ahead and faded to black behind us. The doorway had disappeared behind a slow curve.

We spiraled upward for who knows how long. My leg muscles burned and my feet—I can’t even begin to say how much they hurt. If it had just been me, I would have sat down and waited for whoever to come kill me and get it over with. But I wasn’t going to let Josh down, so I kept pushing. I didn’t even think after a while. I couldn’t. Every ounce of my being was devoted to taking the next step. Getting shot hadn’t hurt this bad.

I don’t know how long it was before we reached level ground. Touray didn’t pause to let us rest. Probably a good thing. I’d have fallen down, and I wouldn’t have been able to get up.
I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!
Like the old lady in the commercial.

I was sweating, and my hair clung to my head and neck. I wiped the moisture away from my eyes. After the tear gas, I didn’t need to add salt to the mix. My eyes still felt like they were twice as big as they should be and full of chunks of rock.

“Not far now. There’s an equipment storage area and freight elevator up ahead. We’ll take it up to the main staging level and grab an SUV,” Touray said.

“Then what?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“Then we find a dreamer to free Josh’s mind.”

That was all well and good, but what then? Just because Touray had promised to keep me safe for Price didn’t mean he wouldn’t lock me up.

For Price. That was irritating. Like I was a prize horse or something. Touray would know better than to use nulls next time he put me in a cage. Plus he wanted to pick Josh’s brains. Possibly literally. No, I needed us to get away before he could keep us
safe
.

Easy peasy. Tiny obstacles like the fact that a second massive blizzard in as many days was raging outside, the roads were buried, and Josh was crazier than the Mad Hatter, not to mention that I was barely capable of walking—none of that could stop me. I swallowed. I couldn’t let them stop me, anyway. I had to figure out a way.

The storage area was the size of an airplane hangar. Columns of stacked crates and iron bins filled various quadrants of the space, along with forklifts, pallet jacks, and other massive pieces of mining machinery. Lights bloomed along the ceiling, lighting the place up with bright morning light. I squinted and blinked in the sudden glare.

The elevator was more like a massive fenced platform. An enormous shaft was cut up through the mountain to give it passage upward. A breeze swirled down, carrying the scents of snow and diesel fuel. It cooled the sweat on my forehead.

Touray clicked back the latch on one of the gates. Josh followed him aboard, and I came in last. I wrapped both hands around the rail. I hated elevators. Josh prowled back and forth, head bobbing. He was making little gibbering sounds. Touray pulled the gate shut and touched the controls. Instantly we began to rise in the air, magic humming across my skin.

This sort of thing would take a lot of maintenance. He had to have quite an army of talents working for him. I thought about having a regular job. Magic and technology mixed heavily in Diamond City, and a lot of companies and cities paid a ridiculous wage to lure magic users to work for them. If I had a regular job, I’d make a lot more than what I made as a hack tracer. But then again, I’d have to clock in and out at specific times and I’d have a boss breathing down my neck. No, thanks. I liked my life.

My old life. It was over now. If I managed to get away, I was going to have to do a cockroach and hide in the cracks until I could find another place to live and another identity to hide under. I’d have to leave behind all my friends and my family. I sucked in a soft breath. That was a gut punch. I touched the place where Price had tabbed me. It was still working, but only barely. Tearing apart the cage had sucked most of it dry. Amazing it had any juice left at all. Price must have learned his lesson and hit me with a much stronger tab than the first two. Part of me wanted to fry it. Another insane part wanted to leave it alone so that he could find me.

The elevator shaft closed around us. Lights lit on the rails and in vertical strips on the walls. I watched Josh. There was no danger of him jumping over the edge. There was no room. He prowled, pausing here and there to fight with invisible monsters. As we reached the top of the shaft, he let out a long, low moan and dropped to his knees, covering his head with his hands.

I knelt beside him and pulled him into my arms. He buried his head against my stomach and sobbed. I didn’t know what to say or how to soothe him. I just held on for dear life.

“I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” I repeated over and over, smoothing my hands over his head and back.

Touray paced back and forth. Finally he stopped beside to me. “We have to go.” Urgency colored his voice.

I looked at him. “What’s wrong?”

He shook his head. “Nothing I can put a finger on. But we should get out of here before . . .”

“Before what?”

“Before we can’t leave.”

Something in the set of his face and the hard shine of his eyes told me he was truly worried. If he was worried, then I should be flat-out panicked.

I pushed Josh upright and helped him to his feet. He clung to my hand as I turned to nod at Touray.

“Let’s go.”

We stepped out into a bigger space than before. A parking lot of vehicles stretched out on the right, jammed with everything from big dump trucks for hauling dirt and rock, to little golf-cart sized vehicles for driving in the tunnels. On the left was a big open area with massive gas, diesel, and propane tanks. Behind them was more storage. I couldn’t see beyond that.

As we stepped off the platform, I expected the lights to come on. They didn’t. Instead the lights on the elevator winked out. We were in absolute darkness.

I clutched Josh’s hand tighter. He’d gone silent and now stood stiff and straight. He quivered with tension.

“What’s going on? Is this normal?” I asked even though my stomach was turning cartwheels. I was really hoping he’d say yes, this happened all the time. “Maybe the storm knocked out the power?”

“It wouldn’t knock out magic,” Touray said. “More than the FBI is involved in this raid,” he muttered. I don’t think he meant for me to hear. Then he said, “What aren’t we supposed to see?”

I put my hand in my pocket and wrapped my fingers around the quarter. The tire iron was a comforting weight in the small of my back. Touray had a gun, but Josh didn’t have a weapon. I needed to find him one and hope he remembered what to do with it.

“We can’t stay here,” I pointed out in a whisper.

“I’m going to turn the lights on in one of the vehicles,” he said.

“Maybe we should just work our way to the doors in the dark,” I said. “If we turn the lights on, they’ll know exactly where we are.” Whoever
they
were. “Better yet, why don’t we just find a vehicle, load up, and get the fuck out of here?”

“We can’t. Nothing will roll without shutting down the security field.”

I would have complained that doing so was paranoid overkill, but given our situation, it obviously wasn’t. “Lead the way,” I said. As if I could see and follow him.

He fumbled for my hand. I hesitated and then slipped the quarter into my mouth. I know, germs and gross and all that, but I could still activate it in my mouth, but I couldn’t in my pocket. I tucked it between my teeth and cheek and gripped Touray’s hand, not letting go of Josh. Touray tugged me after him.

We crossed an open space, and he turned. I bumped into the front fender of a cart before I realized it was there. Josh shuffled after me. He was silent as a gravestone, and his vise-grip on my fingers hurt.

I kept expecting Touray to turn on some lights, but he didn’t. Apparently I’d made sense when I said he shouldn’t. There should have been a flashlight somewhere, though. Who has an underground warehouse and parking garage without some backup lighting? I started to ask, but thought the better of making noise. My skin itched with the feeling that we weren’t alone. I could have been wrong. I mean, I’ve been wrong a lot in my life. All the same, I really wanted to get the hell out of there. At least in the storm I could lose pursuers, even hauling along Josh. Maybe I could lose Touray, too. And Price?

I shied from thinking about him. It had been dangerous to be involved with him before I knew he was Touray’s half-brother. Now it was downright suicidal. I said before I don’t like to be stupid, and getting involved with him was about as stupid as I could get. But even so, the idea of not seeing Price again was crushing. Just the thought of it made it hard to breathe.

“Better not think about it then,” I whispered to myself. Not quiet enough.

“What?” Touray whispered back.

I didn’t have time to answer. Lights blazed, and I was blinded. A null field buzzed up around us. Josh made a screaming sound and dropped my hand to press both palms to his ears. Touray let go of my other hand and drew his gun from his waistband.

I blinked and stood there like an idiot, trying to get my eyes to come back into focus. When they did, the first thing I saw was Price. He lay on his side on the floor fifteen feet away, blood dribbling sideways over his face. More dampened his jeans. A ragged hole revealed red flesh. I couldn’t tell if he was still breathing.

Chapter 22

“GOOD EVENING, Gregg. Do drop the gun, if you please.” A woman’s voice broke sharp through the silence.

I heard her words in the fuzzy distance. My entire body turned to graveyard ice. I couldn’t take my eyes off Price. All my attention telescoped down to him. Nothing else existed.

Was he alive?

Seconds ticked past as he lay still as stone and something inside me started to crumble.

His chest heaved as if he struggled against a great weight, then slowly deflated.

I nearly melted to the floor. The world around me tilted out of control. I tipped forward, leaning my hands on my knees as I tried to steady myself. The surge of relief
hurt
. Tears filled my eyes.

In that moment between moments, realizations slammed me like bullets. The first burned right through my heart: I was crazy stupid in love with this difficult, dangerous man, who’d made his much more dangerous brother promise to keep me safe. He’d made his brother choose me. Made his brother choose, because Price had chosen. In that instant, I knew that I didn’t care about the secrets he’d been keeping, the fact that he’d locked me in Touray’s cage, or that we had no future together. What mattered was him. Alive and whole. A few hours ago, I’d thought what I felt for him meant heartache and jealousy, stomach butterflies and amazing sex. High school stuff. Seeing him unmoving on the floor with a gunshot in his leg and blood streaming across his face, I knew it meant something else altogether, something primal and vicious. At the moment, I’d burn down the world to save his life.

The second realization was that his well-being meant more to me than my own life. How the hell that had happened, I didn’t know. I didn’t care. It was a cold, hard fact.

Way back in my mind, I heard the echoes of my dad warning me to be careful. I had to protect myself; I had to keep
them
from finding me, from killing me like they’d killed my mother.

My earliest memories were of my dad telling me to keep my head down and not to let anyone know what I could do. He was fanatical. He taught me to fight and to fight dirty. I knew how to shoot a gun by the time I was five. I wondered what he’d think of what I was about to do. Dad never talked about my mom, but when I asked about her, he got this look of such unbearable agony that it looked like even his skin hurt.

Looking down at Price now, I knew that pain. Just like I knew that I was going to use all the skills my dad had taught me and all the magic I had to get him out of there alive. Whatever it took, I was going to do it.

I think my father would have understood. I think everything he’d done had been to prepare me for this day.

I straightened, brushing the echoes away like clinging ghost hands. I wasn’t going to play the run-away-and-fight-again-another-day game anymore. Today was fight day. Today was the day I kicked up my own shitstorm and let everybody else go hide for a change.

Time snapped back into focus, and I came back to the present. Josh, Touray, and I stood inside a circle of null-infused steel blocks. The circle was only about twenty feet across, with Price laying just within opposite to us. A short woman with a shiny cap of blond hair stood just outside the circle pointing a gun down at his head. I knew her instantly. Her face graced the masthead of the
Diamond City Journal
, as well as billboards, magazines, and too many other places to name. She was Savannah Morrell, socialite and billionaire. The weapon looked clunky and large in her pale, soft hands, but I had no doubts that she knew what she was doing.

“I mean it Gregg,” she said. “Put it down. You don’t want your brother to die today, do you?”

If he hadn’t bent and set the gun down at his feet just then, I’d have dropped him like a sack of onions.

“Kick it away.”

He swiped it forward. It skidded over the stone floor but remained inside the circle.

Morrell scowled. She couldn’t cross the null line without deactivating it. “Don’t fuck with us, Gregg. We aren’t playing games. If you want to leave here alive, you’d better cooperate.”

He curled his lip. He looked like he wanted to rip her arms off. Given the chance, I was pretty sure he would. Violence coiled around him. My skin prickled. He was on my side, I reminded myself—for now, anyway. I just had to find a way to get Morrell’s gun off Price. Touray wouldn’t be able to use his magic, but he wasn’t going to need it. Brute strength and rage would be all the weapons he needed.

“Now who’s playing games?” he sneered. “You and I both know you’re not going to let me leave here alive, Savannah.”

She shrugged. She had that liquid dancer’s grace I’d always wished for. She was probably in her midforties, but looked a lot younger. The gun she pointed at Price’s head didn’t waver in the slightest.

“I’d like to work with you, Gregg. That’s what this intervention is about.” She waved the nose of the gun around at her companions before aiming back down at Price.

I twisted my head to see who else we were up against. Three men stood around the edges of the circle. Just like Morrell, I recognized them from newsstands and TV. Barry Ostrander was to the left of Savannah Morrell. He owned the glitzy hotel where Price had parked his car the night he’d hired me. A binder, Ostrander was a slight man with blond hair that looked artfully messed, and a long, tanned face. I remembered reading that he liked to rock climb and scuba dive. He wore a pair of silver-rimmed glasses. An affection, given that tinkers could fix just about any health problem, unless—

I narrowed my eyes at him. The glasses had to contain some sort of spell. What could he see that the rest of us couldn’t? Nothing, at the moment. The null field would block his vision.

Next was a tall, bullnecked man carrying a spare tire around his waist. His hair was shorn close to his domed head, and his face was ruddy. Something about him set my teeth on edge. Maybe it was the dead look in his gray eyes. That was Anderson Briandi. He was a plastic surgeon and a dreamer like Cass. I shuddered as a chill washed over me. I didn’t want him even looking at me, much less fucking around in my head.

The last man was dark skinned and entirely bald, with heavy jowls and a smiling face. His ears stuck out like cab doors, and he looked like he never passed a donut shop he didn’t visit. Jason Drummond. Despite his happy, doughy look, I knew he was as dangerous as the others. He was a tracer like me. A pretty good one, by all accounts, though I doubted he was as strong as me.

That left Savannah Morrell. She was a maker. A hell of a cast of bad guys, all united against Touray. Or rather, they’d come to bargain with him, Tyet-style. He’d do as they said or Price would die.

Assuming someone like me didn’t throw a monkey wrench into their plan.

A reckless smile ghosted over my lips and faded as my attention returned to Price. Blood had begun to pool on the floor beneath his knee. Was he in shock? My gaze flicked to the spreading bruise on this head. Did he have a brain injury? How long could he survive like that?

I glanced at Touray and then at Josh. The latter was mumbling and weaving drunkenly through the circle, his hands alternately waving in the air and slapping at his head. Would he be any help? I had the tire iron and Touray had strength. If Josh grabbed the gun—

He might shoot me. He’d already attacked me once. Or maybe he’d just keep wandering around like a drunk bumblebee. Either way, he’d help distract our captors.

I decided I’d better tune back into what Savannah Morrell was saying. I expected she had a lot more to say. She had the look of a woman who liked the spotlight. As I listened again, I teased the quarter in my cheek with the tip of my tongue. It tasted like blood, metal, and dirt.

“. . . want the Kensington artifacts and I want Mr. Reist. I’ll leave here today with those, no matter what. The rest is up to you. If you agree to cooperate with us, then you and your brother get to live. If not—” She gave a little shrug, her red lips pursing.

You’ll notice she didn’t mention me. Her gaze flicked to me and away. Dismissed. I was nobody.

It took me a second to register what Savannah Morrell had just said—she didn’t have the artifacts. Price must have hidden them before they attacked him. My mouth started moving before I could even think.

“Touray doesn’t know where they are,” I said. “Price hid them. If he dies, you won’t find them.”

“Is that true?” Morrell demanded, her voice a whip crack. She was talking to Touray.

He nodded, his head tipping back defiantly. “So now you’ve got a problem. Kill him and you can’t find the artifacts. Kill me and this disappears forever.”

He pulled the vial of blood out of his pocket, holding it between his thumb and his forefinger.

Morrell gasped and paled, if that was even possible for Miss Marble. “Is that—”

“Kensington’s blood?” Touray lifted it up to let the light shine on it better. He squinted at it, putting on a show. “That’s my guess.”

He tossed it and caught it again. Morrell made a squeaking noise, and the others grunted and gasped and swore.

“What are you doing?” Morrell shrieked.

“Reminding you that killing me or my brother isn’t going to serve you,” Touray said coldly. “If push comes to shove, I will shatter this on the floor and you will never find Kensington’s hidden chamber. Is that a risk you want to take?”

“Don’t be a fool,” Morrell said.

Touray looked at Briandi, Ostrander, and Drummond. “I mean it. If I don’t walk out of here with my brother, then I
will
break it. I’ve got nothing to lose.”

Notice how Josh and I weren’t included in his equation? That just gave me the warm fuzzies all over. I guess Touray’s promise to keep me safe came with an expiration date, and losing Josh was acceptable. Fortunately, I didn’t plan to rely on Touray. Much.

“You wouldn’t,” Briandi said, his voice deep and rumbling. “You want to find that chamber as much as we do.”

“More,” said Touray. “But I won’t find it if I’m dead, so why let you have it?”

“Drop it then,” Ostrander said. “Jason is good. He’ll trace it.”

“He
is
good, isn’t he?” Touray said. “But is he good
enough
? You’ll only get one shot on the trace. If he can’t do it, there’s no way you’ll ever find it. Kensington’s been dead a very long time”

I have to admit, I was getting really curious about what was hidden in Kensington’s chamber. It sounded like Drummond could pick up dead trace. That was news to me. I thought I was the only one. Every year, hell, every minute older that trace got, the harder it was to pick up and follow.

“What do we do?” Drummond asked his companions in his feminine voice. “I’m not sure I can pick up trace that old.”

“Walk away,” Touray suggested. Ordered, really. He had balls. “Now. Walk away and prepare for when I come to kill you.”

“Not exactly a reason to let you go,” Ostrander commented, but I could tell he was worried. He couldn’t stop looking at the vial of blood any more than the rest of them.

“No? Well I’m not inclined to sugarcoat it. You invaded my house, you shot my brother, and you took me prisoner. What did you expect me to do? Send you flowers and chocolates? You get a chance. Maybe you can run far enough and dig a whole deep enough that I don’t find you. Or maybe you can raise a big enough army to fight me off. Be warned—if Clay dies, I will make you pay with your pain. I will make you suffer more than you can possibly imagine.”

I believed him. I’d heard more than I wanted to about the kinds of things he was capable of. For a second I thought they might fall for it. But then—

“No,” Savannah declared. “If you want your brother to survive, then you’ll give us that vial and behave. The longer he lies there bleeding, the closer he gets to dying. We’ll stay here and watch him breathe his last breath, if you like. If you really love him, you’ll save him.”

I saw Touray swallowing jerkily and felt the furious swirl of his thoughts. Time for me to step up.

“If you didn’t have this null wall, you wouldn’t be so cocky,” I said. It was all the hint I could give Touray.

His head jerked toward me, but I didn’t look at him. He’d seen me take down the nulls on the cage. He had to know I was ready to do
something
.

I didn’t wait for a reply. Surprise was our best chance. I clamped the quarter null between my teeth and activated it, hoping it would work the way I’d planned. Testing it hadn’t been possible. I meant for it to suck up all the magic in a localized area, then maintain the circumference even on the move. There was no way to deactivate it once set in motion. Absorbing so much magic would burn it out pretty quick, depending on how much work it had to do. It was a good idea in theory. I underestimated reality.

Imagine one of those big parties where they’ve hung a net up at the ceiling to hold a billion balloons. Suddenly the net vanishes and all the balloons fall on the audience. Now imagine that the balloons are really lead weights and they are all funneling down to one point at ten thousand miles per hour. That’s what this was like. All the spells holding magic in the near vicinity simply vanished. The unbound magic sluiced into me. It pounded me in sticky, smothering waves, then pushed inside me, through me, into the null inside my mouth. My body felt like it was being pried apart, tendons and ligaments stretching, muscles separating, bones splintering. I found myself sprawled flat on my back, unable to move and unaware how I’d got there. As I lay there, the quarter continued to drink down the magic as fast as it came.

The lights flickered overhead, and I heard noises echoing from the cavern as magic tore away. More flowed through me than I imagined the quarter could hold. It wasn’t long before the flow slowed. I forced myself up. The surprise of my attack wouldn’t last long. I had to move.

I yanked the tire iron out of my back pocket and lunged at Savannah. I picked her because she was pointing the gun at Price. I needed her threat to be gone.