Magic Breaks

The moon broke through the clouds, its light illuminating the abomination. The creature’s white flesh glowed, translucent, and within it I saw its pale lungs and pink stomach, and, in the middle of this mess, cradled in the cage of its ribs, a darker, humanlike shape, as if the beast had swallowed a person whole and the corpse became its heart.

Goose pimples ran up my arms. I had seen one before in photographs but never in real life.

Ascanio shivered and shifted shape, so fast he was a blur.

“A wendigo,” Robert whispered next to me.

“Run!” I sprinted. “Ruuuun!”

We charged down the street. My cracked ribs set my side on fire. Speed was our best chance. There was no place to hide on Garbage Road. We didn’t have the numbers or the means to kill it, and every second we spent fighting would cost us time we didn’t have.

Legends said that wendigos haunted the winters on the Atlantic seaboard in the States and Canada, feeding on the Algonquian tribes. According to the Native American myths, those who reverted to cannibalism eventually transformed into a wendigo, doomed to a never-ending hunger for human flesh. I had never fought one, but I’d talked to a man who had. The wendigo couldn’t be reasoned with. Their hunger overrode all else. They would devour their prey even as they themselves were being cut apart, and the only way to kill one was to dismember it and burn the pieces. If you didn’t, it would regenerate in minutes, knitted together by magic.

A wendigo wouldn’t just show up in Atlanta on its own. We were too far south, and even if it had somehow arrived, once it turned, it would have gone on long eating sprees. We would’ve heard about it. This was Hugh’s import. A special present just for the Pack.

“Faster, faster!” Robert snarled.

I couldn’t go any faster. I glanced over my shoulder. The wendigo was closing the gap.

Ahead Cuddles stopped and brayed.

Ascanio dashed forward and whipped around. “It’s blocked!”

A massive industrial Dumpster lay on its side, blocking the path. At least eighteen feet long and filled to the brim with bricks and concrete. One of the Warren’s gangs must’ve set it here to trap passersby so it would be easier to rob them. We had to go around.

The wendigo opened its jaws and let out another scream. It was barely two hundred yards away.

I grabbed Cuddles’s reins and pulled her, trying to get her up the trash slope. Cuddles brayed and stopped dead.

Robert grabbed the reins next to me and pulled. “Come on.”

Derek slid off the saddle and screamed, “Stop, you moron!”

I whipped around.

Ascanio was running toward the wendigo, his knives out.

No, no, no, you stupid idiot!

My body had moved before my mind realized I was running after him.

The wendigo paused, scooped something from the trash, and shoveled it into its mouth. The huge teeth scissored and a piece of a wooden beam fell from its mouth, sheared clean.

Ascanio leaped and carved at the wendigo’s legs, his knives a whirlwind. The creature howled.

I sprinted so fast, I was almost flying.

Ascanio whirled around the wendigo’s legs like a dervish, slicing and cutting. Pink blood sprayed the trash piles. The wendigo’s left ankle gave out and he dropped to one knee.

Run faster, damn it, I had to run faster.

Ascanio backed up toward me to avoid being crushed. The wendigo’s hand snapped, shockingly fast, and closed about the boy. He jerked him up and smashed the bouda against the ground.

Oh no.

Robert shot past me and leaped onto the wendigo’s face, his claws slicing.

The wendigo jerked Ascanio up, oblivious to the wererat clawing its face, and smashed him against the ground again. Bone crunched. The wendigo raised its hand. It was blood-red. The claws raked Ascanio’s prone body. If I didn’t stop it now, it would kill him.

I stopped to inhale some air.

The creature bent down . . .

“Aarh!” Stop.

The power word tore from me in a rush of agony. The wendigo froze. Robert froze too, the claws of his left hand buried in the wendigo’s face, his right arm raised to claw at the creature’s human eye.

Four seconds. That was how long the spell would hold them.

A furry shape leaped from the right above me, sailing through the air, arms raised, a tomahawk in his right hand. Derek landed on the wendigo’s face and carved at its neck with his axe.

I shot forward and sliced the tendons on both hind legs.

Desandra swept Ascanio up and staggered back, stumbling.

The wendigo shook. Derek chopped into it again and again, casting off a pink mist of blood.

The spell broke. The wendigo crashed down and I carved its side open, thrusting through the ribs into the spongy lungs within. Regenerate that, you sonovabitch. Slayer thrust through thick muscle, and a wet pop announced the stomach rupturing. The reek of acid and sulfur washed over me. Blood wet my hands, gushing down the wendigo’s side.

The massive creature shuddered, trying to rise.

Robert cut and gouged his way to the wendigo’s back. Bright human blood stained his fur. The alpha of the wererats sliced the translucent flesh, planted his feet, bent down, locked his fingers on an exposed rib, and pulled. Bone broke. He tossed the rib out, shoved his hand into the hole, pulled a handful of organ tissue out, and hurled it into the night.

I scrambled the wendigo’s human-looking heart with my blade. I minced its liver. I hacked its lungs into bloody paste. I severed its arteries. Pink, almost transparent blood sprayed me again and again, its taste burning on my lips. Above me Robert threw intestines onto garbage. I caught a glimpse of Desandra ripping into the wendigo’s body next to me.

Suddenly the massive horrifying head sagged over, hanging from the stump of the neck by a thin thread of flesh. With one final blow, Derek sliced through it, and the head fell to the ground. Derek landed next to it, kicked the skull, sending it rolling down the trash-choked street, and fell like a chopped-down tree.

His body shivered and shrank back to human.

A few yards away Ascanio cried out on the ground, na**d, human, and bloody. Everything inside me went cold. Their injuries were so bad, the Lyc-V had shifted them back to human as it strained to heal them.

I knelt by Derek and pulled his head up. He was out, but he was breathing. The wounds on his hands had stopped bleeding and I couldn’t tell if it was good or bad.

“Kate!” Desandra called, her voice shaking.

I ran to her.

Long gashes carved Ascanio’s chest and stomach. Wet intestines gaped through the gashes, weeping blood. His skin split where shards of broken ribs had punctured it. His face was bloody. He breathed in short sharp gasps. Oh God.

“Fix him!” Desandra looked at me.

I couldn’t. He was gone too far. We had to get a medmage. We had to get one now.

Ascanio’s gaze fastened on me. “So . . . sorry.”

“Don’t talk now.” We couldn’t load him onto the donkey. There was no room.

“I . . .” Ascanio swallowed and coughed out blood. He looked so young. “I don’t . . . Want to die. Please.”

“You’re not going to die.” I was getting much better at lying.

“Sorry,” Ascanio whispered. “Sorry.”

“Yes, you are. When we get to the Keep, you’ll be even sorrier. What the f**k were you thinking?”

He tried to smile, his teeth bloody. “. . . buy Broody . . . some time.”

Oh, you young fool.

A loud howl came from behind the wendigo, a wild human shriek. Hugh’s Iron Dogs were hunting us down.

Desandra vomited again.

My guts turned into a cold twisted clump. Three people down. I couldn’t let them die. They had come to protect me. I had to find a medmage even if I had to conjure one out of thin air. Derek would not die on my watch. Ascanio and Desandra would not die. I wouldn’t stand before Aunt B’s grave and tell her I let one of her bouda kids throw his life away. I wouldn’t tell Curran that I got the boy wonder killed.

I pictured the area in my head. I knew this part of the city well. I’d covered just about every square inch of it during my tenure with the Order.

The Order.

This was nuts. But then beggars couldn’t be choosers.

“Robert, can you carry him?

“Yes. Where are we going?” Robert asked.

“The Order.”

“But they hate us,” Desandra forced through her teeth.

“The Order has a medmage on staff and the kind of wards it would take an army to breach. They’ll help anyone in need. We’re in need. They hate Hugh d’Ambray more than they hate us.”

At least I hoped they did. As much as Ted Moynohan despised me, he was still a knight-protector. He wouldn’t let my people die on the street in front of his chapter. And I was betting three lives on that.

• • •

THE ULULATING HOWLS of the Iron Dogs floated behind us, constant now, like an eerie, bone-chilling din. As soon as one ended, another started. How they could run and howl at the same time was beyond me. They had to be riding and they were getting closer. We had lost two precious minutes coaxing Cuddles to climb the trash around the Dumpster and we weren’t moving fast.

Desandra held Derek in the saddle in front of her. He’d gone completely limp. Her eyes were wild and she shivered as she rode. She wouldn’t last much longer. Next to me Robert ran silently, carrying Ascanio in his arms.

The streets crawled by, painfully slow. My side hurt so much now, I didn’t even anticipate the pain anymore. I just kept going.

A familiar storefront slid by. We had to be in range now.

I strained, trying to send a focused thought out into the world. “Maxine?”

The Order’s telepathic secretary didn’t answer.

“Maxine!” I whispered. Vocalizing helped sometimes. “Maxine!”

A familiar dry voice sounded in my head. “Hello, Kate.”

“I’m on New Peachtree, being pursued by supernatural creatures. I request protection for five people.”

Maxine paused. “Kate, the Order isn’t the safest place for you. Moynohan doesn’t view you as an upstanding citizen.”

Moynohan can bite me. “I have two injured teenagers, and one is dying. Tell Ted I’m running from Hugh d’Ambray.”

“Please stand by.”

We made a sharp left. The howls chased us, louder and louder. The street rolled out in front of us, completely empty. Ten more blocks to the Order. To my knowledge the Order’s wards had been breached only once and it took my aunt to do it. We had to make it behind those wards.

Hoofbeats. I turned.

Hugh rounded the corner. He was riding a huge black horse. A dozen men and women rode with him.

“Protection granted,” Maxine said in my head. “Please proceed to the Order chapterhouse.”

We wouldn’t make it. I stopped and turned to face the Iron Dogs, unsheathing my sword. Hugh wanted me. Hugh would get me. Be careful what you wish for.

“Down!” Mauro boomed behind me.

I dropped to the ground. The air whined as half a dozen arrows flew above my head and bit into the asphalt, falling feet short of Hugh’s horse.

The bolts pulsed once with bright blue. The night exploded. I caught a glimpse of Hugh’s giant black horse rearing.

I jumped to my feet and turned. Four knights of the Order walked toward us: Mauro, Richter, another man I didn’t know, and a redheaded woman with a buzz cut. They carried crossbows. Hello, cavalry. Behind them Robert was running full speed to the Order.

“Go, Kate!” Mauro waved at me.

The knights were reloading. I ran to the chapter.

The Order’s nondescript building loomed before me. Robert ducked through the doors. I squeezed one last burst of speed, dashed through the doors, and almost ran into two knights pointing loaded crossbows at me.

“Give me your sword,” the taller one said.

“I don’t think so.”

“I would do what he says, dear,” Maxine said in my head. “They’re under orders to shoot you if you don’t.”

9

THE ORDER HAD remodeled the Vault after my aunt scorched the place. The massive door was gone. Shields and weapons still hung on three walls, but the fourth was now lined with loup cages, the bars made of silver and steel alloy two inches thick. The Order had spared no expense and I was getting a lovely view of the bars from the wrong side.

I paced back and forth, while Robert lay next to me, stretched out on the floor of the cage, resting to let his body heal. If he overextended himself, the Lyc-V would shut him down for repairs and he wanted to stay conscious.

My side still hurt, and my ribs reminded me once in a while that they were there.

To the right, separated from my and Robert’s cell by bars, Derek and Desandra sprawled in their own cage asleep under blankets. The Order’s medmage, a tall man with a long braid of brown hair who went by Steinlein, had examined them and declared there was nothing he could do. The toxin was working its way through their systems and they would bounce back or they wouldn’t. He seemed to think they would, because once they had turned human, their wounds had closed, which was a good sign.

Through the bars, I could see Ascanio. He lay limp on a table in the open. They had chained his ankles and his wrists. The chains weren’t silver, but they were thick enough to hold him. Steinlein chanted over him, rocking back and forth. I couldn’t tell if his chanting was doing anything. The boy didn’t look any better.

I felt so hollow, as if someone had gutted me. I didn’t know about whom to worry more, Ascanio dying or Derek and Desandra barely breathing.

The redheaded female knight with the buzz cut—Steinlein had called her Diana—watched us. Next to her a lean, muscular knight in his late twenties was giving me his version of a hard stare. He was carrying a tactical sword. A long scar crossed his face from his short blond hair to his chin. They both seemed convinced that if one of them looked away for a second, I’d escape from the locked cage and explode the Order.