Emerald Blaze

Arabella dropped her lipstick into the sink.

“The thing in the Pit grabbed one of the Primes and is attacking the work site. I have to go. Yesterday, Victoria threatened Nevada and the baby. Go with her and don’t let her out of your sight. If it all goes to shit, I don’t care if you are in the middle of that damn building, you transform, and you get her out of there.”

Arabella took off running.

I charged out of the bathroom and ran back downstairs to get my sword.

I took a turn too fast. Rhino’s overpowered engine roared as I accelerated out of the turn. Alessandro grabbed the door handle to steady himself.

We’d had a choice of the Spider or Rhino and we both picked armor over speed. Rhino would plow through anything in our way and get us there. If I didn’t kill us first.

“What the hell was he doing back on-site?” I growled.

“Probably getting all the equipment out. They are expensive machines.” Alessandro shook his head, his eyes sharp and focused. “Damn idiot didn’t listen to me. I told him to get his people out of there.”

“I did too.”

“I warned him.” Alessandro bared his teeth. “I said, don’t think about leaving, don’t make any preparations. Just walk off at the end of the day like normal, leave the equipment where it is, and once everyone is out, pull the guards back to the outer perimeter. The fool went back for the assets.”

And once the Abyss saw its food and brain supply leaving, it reacted violently. It required metal and humans to expand. Without a continuous supply of either, it would have to leave the relative safety of the Pit to procure it. Every time it sent its nodes out of the mire, it ended badly.

We tore past the dealership where we’d fought the constructs.

“I don’t have a plan,” I told Alessandro. “I don’t know how to kill it. It’s impossible to destroy every node, and as long as one survives, the Abyss will rebuild itself.”

“We’ll deal with that gap once we’ve jumped it.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“You worry too much.”

“A sentient self-repairing construct the size of ten city blocks is on a rampage, and you’re telling me not to worry.”

“It will be fine. You’ll see.”

It wouldn’t be fine. “Call Linus.”

My phone dialed the number and the beeps echoed through the cabin. No answer. Just like the first two times I’d called him since we left the house. Linus always took my calls. I didn’t even want to think about why he wasn’t picking up. That was a bottomless rabbit hole of anxiety and speculation, and we had bigger problems on our hands.

We shot onto the final bridge. The Pit Reclamation island was on fire. Flames tore out from its shore, colliding with a forest of tentacles flailing in the water.

A hunter construct leaped out of the water and into our path. I rammed it. The impact knocked it aside and we sped past it. All around us the Pit churned.

The island wasn’t on fire. Rather the fire circled it, a wall of living flame twenty feet tall. Here and there the Abyss’ constructs, hulking forms melded from vegetation and bone, emerged from the water to storm the shore and fell apart, consumed by the inferno. The water at the island’s edge boiled. Plumes of steam rose, hissing. The temperature inside the car jumped.

Alessandro grabbed his phone and dialed a number. “We’re coming in.” He hung up. “Keep going.”

The fire wall towered in front of us. I drove straight at it. The flames parted. We shot through the gap and I mashed the brakes. Rhino skidded and slid to a stop.

In the middle of the parking lot in front of the HQ building, Tatyana Pierce stood in an arcane circle of dazzling complexity. Her eyes were pure fire. Workers huddled around her, clutching weapons and sweating. A young man in a suit, one of the secretaries I had seen in the House Pierce building, stood by with an impassive expression on his face, holding a cell phone.

I rolled the window down.

“Welcome to the party.” Tatyana grinned.

“Have you found Marat?”

“Jiang is looking for him. Go down the street directly behind me. I’d go with you, but I’m a little busy on the grill.” She laughed, her eyes sparkling.

I stepped on the gas and steered Rhino around her and down the street. Ruined buildings in various stages of repair slid behind us, and through the gaps Tatyana’s flames glowed like a magical aurora borealis. I couldn’t even begin to calculate the kind of power required to maintain a wall of that size.

We passed an abandoned Burger King, a convenience store, a deli with dusty windows . . . Ahead the street and the island ended, the swamp beyond it blocked by fire. Where the hell was Stephen?

“Up there.” Alessandro pointed to the right, at a four-story building jutting out of the rubble. I squinted. A man in a suit stood on the roof. Found him.

I parked and grabbed Linus’ sword. Alessandro leaped from the vehicle, carrying the prototype of the prototype Linus had given him.

The building’s automatic door stood ajar, stuck permanently open. We passed through it. The inside was dark like a cave. A musty stench filled the air, like hundreds of waterlogged books were drying in it. Alessandro turned left. I followed him and we came to a door leading up the stairs. He sprinted and I did my best to chase him.

One flight, two, three, four . . .

Alessandro had disappeared into the gloom above.

I picked up speed, sprinting.

Above me a door banged, probably Alessandro emerging onto the roof. Another flight of stairs. A door loomed ahead. Finally.

I stumbled through it into the sunlight, gasping for breath. The roof was paved and square. Stephen stood at the far edge, looking out into the Pit. Alessandro was next to him. I ran to them. Heat washed over me. Tatyana’s wall ended about twenty feet below us.

A clump of vegetation protruded from the mire about fifty yards away. The long green stems, striated with metal, shifted against each other, braided into a fist.

“Is Marat in there?” Stephen asked me. “Can you feel his mind?”

I reached out. My magic grew, spiraling, and found a mind, glowing with purple.

“He’s in there.”

“Is he alive?”

“Yes.” Marat was emanating a lot of magic. “He’s fighting.”

Stephen took a deep breath and said something in Mandarin. It sounded like a curse.

“Can you open a path to him through the water?” I asked.

Stephen backed up, all the way to the door. “That won’t be necessary.”

He leaned forward. “I told him to leave the damn bulldozers. The man never listens.”

Everyone had told Marat to leave the damn bulldozers. If I ever did business with House Kazarian, the contract I offered Marat would have to be a mile long to account for every harebrained idea he came up with.

Stephen sprinted. He tore past me, pushed off the ledge into a leap, and for a moment he flew through the air, over the wall of flames, arms raised like wings.

Breath caught in my throat.

Stephen plunged down. He landed on the water as if it were solid ground. Waves pulsed from the impact. He thrust his arm out. Water flowed into his hand, forming a long transparent shaft with a blade on the end. He’d made a guandao. Oh, wow.

Stephen spun the watery glaive and dashed across the swamp to the clump of plants. A tentacle emerged, snapping at him like a whip. Stephen spun the guandao without breaking stride. A fan of water struck from the blade, severing the tentacle like a giant razor.

Arabella would die.

Stephen attacked the green wall, slicing, cutting, spinning, and stabbing, flawless and graceful like a genius dancer.

“Catalina,” Alessandro called.

“Are you seeing this? This is insane.”

“Listen to me very carefully. I need you to draw a circle that can generate a null space. A really good one.”

I turned around. Alessandro was staring in the opposite direction, at the bridge leading to the island. I raised my head and froze.

Constructs marched through the mire. Huge, industrial monstrosities, gleaming in the sun with metal and magic. I had seen them before. My brain supplied the right names. Climber XV. Crawler XI. Breaker VI. Others I couldn’t name. People with weapons rode atop them. And at the head of it all, on top of a colossal Digger XII, sat Cheryl Castellano.

I couldn’t see Cheryl’s face from this distance, but I knew it was her. My brain feverishly assessed and calculated. Nine huge constructs. At least thirty people.

Cheryl didn’t have a private army. She had House security, but she wouldn’t use them for this. One look at the forest of tentacles and constructs and even the dimmest person could tell that this wasn’t normal magic. House security didn’t have the kind of discipline to keep their mouths shut about what they saw. If the Assembly called on them, they would testify.

No. She wouldn’t deploy House security. That meant Arkan’s people were riding on the constructs. And that meant . . .

“She’s going to kill all of us,” I said.

“Yes,” Alessandro said.

She knew she couldn’t destroy the Abyss, so she’d settled for the next best thing. She would kill everyone who knew about it. Tatyana, Stephen, Marat, all the workers, and the two of us would die in the Pit. What a great tragedy. She would bravely carry on the work of her fallen partners, free of oversight. Free to interact with her creation at her leisure. Maybe a part of her still thought she could control him.