Twenty Palaces (22 page)

"And now," he said, "I'll deal with this annoying little object."

I tried to twist the ghost knife to cut his hand or wrist, but he grabbed it too quickly, pinning it between his thumb and forefinger. Once he had it, he had control of it. I couldn't pull it free or push it at him,
 

Callin pulled on the ghost knife, but it wouldn't come free. His brows furrowed and he pulled harder, but Irena's glove held on. I knew he had the strength to pull my hand off at the wrist, but just as the magic in the glove blocked Annalise's momentum, it blocked his strength, too.
 

He twisted my hand to look at the sigil on the palm of the glove. From that new position, I was able to bend the back end of the ghost knife just enough to slide the corner into the heel of his palm.

He gasped. His grip on my wrist softened enough for me to pull my hand free. I saw a momentary flicker of apology cross his expression, then it became vague again. I slashed the spell across the chest, cutting deep into his ribcage and bursting several of the designs on his waistcoat.

Callin toppled backwards onto the floor. I dropped to my knees beside him and plunged the ghost knife into his belly. Sigils burst apart. Jets of black steam shot past my face. I leaned away from them and stabbed the ghost knife into Callin's head. His eyes rolled back in his head.

My voice was harsh and low. "You are at a crossroads in your life."

But I was letting myself get clever. There wasn't enough space between winning and dying for me to gloat, and while I was distracted, Callin swung his fist at me, blindly. I rolled away, falling onto my back as the floor shattered under me.

Callin rolled the other way, away from me. What was it going to take to bring this guy down? Then I saw two green ribbons land on his body.

"NO!" It was already too late. I scrambled back as the green fire suddenly expanded around Callin's body. The flames billowed toward me like a sheet blown by the wind, but I just barely managed to retreat beyond it.
 

Then it did what I feared: it curled up and began to stream toward the flaring sigil on Callin's back.
 

He was up on one elbow, his back toward me. The green fire stretched like taffy as it streamed over his shoulder and into the sigil. Without thinking, I whipped my hand at him, throwing the ghost knife.
 

Like a miracle, it passed just above the streaming green fire and cut through the flaring sigil.
 

There was a sudden concussion, like a small bomb going off, and I nearly fell over. Then Callin screamed, and the stream of fire shot through him like a spike, erupting from his chest like water from a firehose.
 

It burned a hole through the bed, then through the wall beyond. Callin collapsed onto his back; the fire blasting from his chest scorched a deep gouge into the plaster wall and then punched through the ceiling into the room upstairs.
 

The flames suddenly grew dark and the harsh sound it made became hollow and echoing, I thought I heard voices inside it, whispering.

The beam of fire sputtered and went out, leaving Callin on the middle of the floor, his left arm and head hanging through a burned hole in the unsupported carpet.
 

Annalise took a set of shackles from Irena's bag and, after dragging Callin to an unbroken part of floor, began to clamp them around his wrists and ankles. The chains seemed too flimsy to contain a man who had smashed that harpoon into toothpicks with a single blow, but I knew it would be the sigils painted on it that would hold him, not the metal.

I got to my feet, feeling raw and exhausted. We had won, and that meant that Jon had won. Maybe now, finally, my debt would be repaid.

The only light came from the daylight streaming through the huge hole in the wall where the balcony door had once been and from the flames of the burning bed. The thick black smoke billowed through the hole in the ceiling like a smoke hole in a tent.
 

It was time to get out of here. I could have thrown water on the bed or something, maybe checked the room upstairs for injured people, but my instincts told me that it was long past time we got out of the building. A hotel was a trap; once the cops arrived they'd have very few exits to cover and we'd have no way to slip out unseen.

Maybe that didn't matter to Annalise. Maybe she had another grey ribbon for me to use.

I closed my eyes and
reached
out with my mind. The ghost knife flew into my hand. I looked it over, glad it hadn't been burned by the beam of fire, then slipped it into my pocket. My spell. My power.

The floor beneath me cracked and shifted slightly. I moved closer to the wall where the footing should have been more secure, and that brought me closer to Callin.

From out in the hall I heard someone pounding on the door to the room. Had it been going on for a while? It was possible that I'd missed it in the rush of adrenaline, but I wasn't worried about it. If Annalise and Irena were right, hotel security and the police wouldn't be able to open Callin's door; it was when the pounding stopped and they started peering down through the smoke hole that I'd get nervous.
 

Callin was still breathing. I stood over him, thinking I should feel triumphant, but instead I was just impatient. He didn't look so tough--had never looked tough--and it annoyed me that he'd made it so hard to get what I needed.

I knelt beside him. His face was pale but otherwise unmarked and his waistcoat had been reduced to scorched threads. There was an untouched sigil on his belt, but I left it alone. I didn't want to kill the guy, I just wanted answers.

I moved his tattered clothes away from his chest and belly. He didn't have a mark on him, not from Irena's harpoons, not even from the gigantic blow torch that had cut through him. What the hell were these people made of, anyway?
 

Personally, I was ready to start the interrogation, or at least carry him out of here, but Annalise was digging through Irena's bag again. Did she need more chains?

She made a small grunt that suggested she'd found what she was looking for, then took a small clear Tupperware tub from the bag. It was filled with sloshing red liquid and small dark chunks.

Annalise turned to Irena, who stirred, slowing coming back to consciousness. Annalise cradled the older woman's head in her lap, popped the Tupperware lid and slipped a tiny chunk of raw, bloody meat between Irena's lips.

"Slowly," Annalise said. Her voice was gentle. "Take it easy."

I shut my eyes. It was beef--steak tartar. It was raw tuna or pork or dog or
something
,
anything
other than human flesh. It had to be. I didn't want to think about what it would mean if these people were cannibals, too.

But I had to know. "What are you feeding her?" Annalise ignored me. I was only a wooden man, whatever that meant, but I had to have an answer. "Okay, then.
Who
are you feeding her?"

Annalise glared at me with contempt, then returned to her friend. I took a deep breath. She wouldn't have looked at me with such scorn if she was really feeding human flesh to her friend. I hoped.

The pounding continued. Several people worked at the door now and from the sound of it, they were becoming desperate. Which was too bad for them. I had something important to do.

Callin's eyes were open. "Raymond," he said, as casually as if we were old buddies who'd bumped into each other at a coffee shop. "A ghost knife, eh?"

I didn't answer. Annalise had said her society killed people who stole spells, and I have never been the kind of guy who felt better after a confession.
 

"On a piece of paper," Callin continued, and shook his head. He looked tired. The fight had gone out of him, just as it had gone out of Jon when I'd used the ghost knife on him. "The spell's name is 'ghost knife,' so naturally I laid it on knives and the occasional saber. Quite effective, as I'm sure you can imagine. Such things are out of fashion now--and they make travel difficult--so I dropped that spell from my arsenal years ago. But putting it on a piece of paper... I should have thought of that myself."

The pounding from the other room had gotten heavier and more insistent. But that didn't matter. "We aren't going to have a friendly conversation," I told him. "Where's the book?"

"Is that why you came here? To steal my book? Again?"

Annalise walked across the shattered floor toward us. "Cut the bullshit. I want to see it. Where have you hidden it?"

Callin glanced at his desk. It was the barest flicker of his eyes, but I didn't miss the significance.

"There?" I asked, pointing. "In that desk?"

Without waiting for clarification, Annalise brought her forearm down on it, shattering it.
 

Callin groaned. "That was a Wooton."

Annalise shifted the wood aside and drew out a heavy book. She carried it to Irena, who had found the strength to sit up. Looking more alert than she had before she'd eaten, she wiped her hands on her coat and accepted the book from Annalise. Whatever had been wrong with her, eating meat had healed her.
 

"Are you certain?" Callin said, softly. "This attack could be forgiven. It could be brushed off as bad intelligence or enemy duplicity. There would be consequences, yes, but they'd be manageable. But if you
take my spell book
--"
 

Irena opened the book. She barely glanced at each page before flipping to the next. She didn't even seem to focus on the page. "Annalise, how can she--"

Annalise glared at me. "Shut up."

Irena reached the end of the book. "Nothing," she said.

"No," I said, the conviction in my voice surprising me. "No, you didn't look carefully enough."
 

Irena held the book close to her chest. "There are no summoning spells in this book."

"That
can't
be right!" I turned to Callin. "Where's the spell you cast on Jon? I know it was you. I saw the blue page. How do I undo what happened to my friend?"

Annalise shook her head. "Shit."

The pounding at the door stopped.

I turned back to Irena. "It must be a different book! He must have switched them." But I could see where I'd sliced the cover, and I could see the metal plate beneath. "Then he must have a second book around here somewhere." Which didn't make any sense, but I was getting desperate. I stood over Callin. "Listen, you son of a bitch, I know what you did to my friend, and I want you to show me how to undo it. Tell me where that spell is, or--"

Callin laughed. "Please. You wouldn't know how to kill someone like me."

"Boss." I turned to Annalise. I knew I was losing them and I absolutely had to bring her around to my side again. "I showed you the blue page the summoning spell was on. The only place it could have come from was his book."

"Shut up," she said to me. "There's something else that doesn't make sense, Callin: If you haven't gone renegade, why did you try to kill me with that damn envelope?"

"Envelope?" Callin asked, genuinely surprised. "Are you referring to the envelope I gave to him?"

Annalise, Irena and Callin all turned toward me.
 

I had gambled and lost; I'd failed to save Jon. I would have liked to apologize to him for it, but I wasn't going to get the chance.

Something crashed in the other room. We all turned toward the doorway just as Jon charged screaming through the doorway, an aluminum baseball bat over his head.

Echo, Payton and Macy were right behind him.
 

Jon crossed the room faster than I could blink. Annalise didn't even have time to raise her arm before Jon began bashing her with it. She fell onto her side just as Payton brought a sledgehammer down onto Irena.

Then with the suddenness of a bad dream, Echo was right in front of me, grinning like a lunatic. She lifted a hatchet and, with terrifying speed, swung for my neck.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Hot pain flared beneath my jaw. Just as I was thinking that she'd cut my head off, I saw her hand rebound away from my neck. The hatchet hadn't cut through.
 

Echo was startled. She seized a handful of my shirt, making ready for a second swing, and I grabbed her wrist so I could hold onto her long enough to use my ghost knife. The spell on Irena's glove caught hold of her, and Echo
changed.

Like a picture coming into focus, ghostly shapes appeared around Echo's face, protruding from her mouth, nose, tear ducts, skin, hair. They were like branches, or stick lightning--slender and thinner than pencils, but splitting apart in irregular angles and ending in needle-sharp tips. They shivered as though under the force of a hurricane, and at the same moment Echo threw back her head and screamed. Her knees buckled, but she still had hold of my shirt. I slashed through her wrist with the ghost knife and it passed through her as if she were made of smoke.
 

Her hand spasmed and she lost her grip on me. I released her and let her fall to the floor at the same moment I remembered Annalise's voice:
Predators like to be summoned, but hate to be held in place
. The ghostly branches vanished as soon as I released her.

Callin moved toward me. Macy stood beside him, an axe high over her head, but she didn't swing it. A glance at her expression told me that she would never swing it.

I had no choice but to take on Callin again, but alone this time. I stabbed at him with my ghost knife and he leaned back, sweeping both of his arms upward. The chain around his wrists struck the ghost knife and a burst of light filled the room. The links of the shackle flew apart.

Broken links of chain pelted my face and chest. Macy tossed aside the axe. The phantom shapes around Echo's face faded. She looked at me; she wasn't grinning anymore.

Callin's spell book leaped into his hand as he stepped toward the broken edge of the balcony. At the same time, Echo rolled cautiously to her feet, hatchet in hand. At the other end of the room, Jon and Payton were unleashing a furious attack against Annalise and Irena, their blows coming as fast as a drum beat.