Chasing Magic (38 page)

But what choice did she have? Her, or hundreds of people? Her, or hundreds of people who didn’t ask for what they’d gotten?

She’d had a choice. And she’d made it, three or four years before; she’d seen occasional use turning into chipping and from there turning into something more, and she’d agreed to let it have its way with her. These people might not have, not that way. And when it came down to her or them … who was the most worthless in that situation? Who deserved it the most? The people who
didn’t even know what was happening, the ones who’d probably never done anything to deserve it—never done anything truly bad—or her?

Not to mention … Terrible. And Lex. Another choice she’d already made. Some lives were just more important than hers. Some lives, she’d lose her own to save.

But he didn’t need to know that. At least not yet. “Listen, I can handle this. I can protect myself. I know how. I have to do this, because we don’t have time to do anything else. He’s going to know we were here. He’s going to know what I did to his little army, he’ll know we found this bag, because of the type of spell it is. He’s going to be looking for me. I have to find him first.”

Pause. Long pause. “Iffen you right an he knows we finding the bag, he ain’t waiting, aye? Whatany shit he planning, he start it now.”

“Yeah, I—”

“So you got that Lex’s man coming for me, aye? An iffen shit goes down tonight, ’swhen he do it. Tonight. In the middle of all else.”

She’d hoped that wasn’t going to be the case, but … “Yeah. I know.”

“Means I ain’t can be with you. When you do this.” He glanced at her; his eyes glittered in the half darkness. “You ain’t let me causen of the spell. An I ain’t wanting to be, causen I ain’t wanting to lead Lex’s man right at you. Aye?”

“No. I have to do it alone, you’re right. You can’t— It shouldn’t really affect you, but in case …”

He grabbed her, his strong hands on her upper arms, painfully tight. His mouth fell hard on hers, rough, his hand finding the back of her neck to fist in her hair and pull her even closer, forcing her to her tiptoes.

It hurt. She didn’t care. She kissed him back just as hard, digging her fingers into his shoulders, forgetting
everything else around her—around them—for that one long, sweet, painful moment.

They weren’t going to be together during the fight. They weren’t going to be accidentally separated as they had the month before, when Slobag’s witch had made his move and when Terrible had made it in time for the ending. This was different, would be different. Terrible would be fighting for his life against the only man who’d ever come close to matching him, and she’d be—well, she’d be somewhere, fighting her own battle.

Probably losing her own battle. She hoped she wouldn’t, but she knew she probably would; what the fuck else was going to happen? She could trace the magic back, she could destroy it, but whether or not she could survive it afterward … She’d barely managed to fight the magic on the ship, and this would be so much worse.

But as his arm wound around her waist, as she was filled with the smell of him, the taste of him, the feel of his body hot and hard against her, she didn’t care. Because right at that moment she had him, and right at that moment she could finally let herself rest, could stop worrying, could get past all of the things that scared her and let herself go.

Even there, in that strange room, on time borrowed from someone else. They’d have plans to make and things to do when they left; every minute that went by was a minute stolen from the night’s preparations—a minute they handed to Kyle Blake and his horde of zombie slaves.

It was worth it.

What wasn’t worth it, unfortunately, was the idea of having sex next to a corpse. So she forced herself to break the kiss and step away, pushing at him with reluctant hands. “We need to go.”

For a second she thought he was going to argue; then
he glanced over at Razor lying on the floor and nodded. “Aye. Right, then, let’s get us movin.”

Shaky again, her movements not quite as smooth as they should have been, she got the lid off the tub and held it in front of her like a serving platter. “Okay. Open the door.”

Blank faces jumped to angry life when the door swung aside; angry faces changed to dull acceptance when she got closer to them. It worked. Holy fuck, it worked. It deadened them out, stopped them from attacking.

Stopped them within a few feet, at least. She and Terrible exchanged glances; his arm went around her shoulders, pulling her close to his side, as they made their way through the crowd. Outside the few feet around them, the bespelled pushed and lifted weapons; a few of those close to her fell, beaten over the head or kicked or whatever else by those outside the spell tub’s sphere of influence.

It felt almost like walking down the aisle at a wedding, or what walking down the aisle looked like, anyway, since she’d never done it. Outside the protective circle, chaos reigned. Inside it, where she held Terrible close and he held her back, all was still and calm, the crowd parting so they could walk through it. She’d never experienced anything like it.

She hoped she never would again. Too bad that was as false a hope as—well, as just about any other hope, any other sweet lie people told themselves. She would have to experience it again, probably that very night, because what she’d told Terrible was true.

The sorcerer knew they were coming for him. And he was going to do whatever he could to get to them first.

Crawling down the rope ladder was even worse than crawling up it, even with Terrible below her steadying the thing as much as he could. The journey in the horrible little dinghy or whatever it was didn’t seem any better, either, especially not since the sun had lowered in the sky. She didn’t want to see the faint red streaks starting around it as ominous, but she couldn’t help it. A bloody sky over Downside … Well, hell, when wasn’t it, really?

But she couldn’t suppress the shiver that ran through her when she looked at it, when she thought of it.

Back into the tunnel, completely dark now from the setting sun and with the floor under about an inch of water—Terrible tossed his earlier captive into the dinghy—and back up into the taxidermist’s office. Shit, she just wanted to go home; she was so tired of trudging here and trudging there, of the whole mess— What the fuck?

Something flew at them; Terrible leapt forward and caught it. Again the sound of flesh against flesh, again Terrible fighting, and something thudded in her chest when she realized who he was fighting. Lex was there.
Lex and his assassin—Devil, or whatever the Cantonese word for that was. How the fuck did they get there?

She’d probably find out—at least, she hoped she would. Terrible’s fist snapped Devil’s head back. Devil’s foot swept sideways, slamming into Terrible’s leg just below the knee. Their anger, their violence, filled the room; she could feel them, beating against her skin, assaulting her, and fear crawled up her stomach to lodge in her throat.

It didn’t last that long, even though every second of it felt like hours to her. Terrible hooked his foot around Devil’s ankle, punched him in the face; Devil stumbled, bent over.

When Devil came up, he had something in his hand, something that gleamed dull in the low light. A gun.

Chess started to shout; before she finished drawing breath for it, Terrible’s hand moved again, pulling his own gun. They stood there, glaring at each other. A standoff.

She acted without thinking. Not that it mattered; she’d have done the same thing if she had thought about it, if she’d stopped and considered all of her options.

But there wasn’t time, because Devil and Terrible were glaring at each other, their hatred filling the dusty room, and she yanked the gun Terrible had given her from the pocket in her bag, pulled back the slide to cock it in the same movement, and aimed it.

At Lex. “Tell him to drop it.”

Lex might have looked surprised. Then again, he might not have. He almost looked as if he was smiling. “Why?”

“What?”

He shook his head. “You ain’t shoot me, Tulip.”

“You want to bet on that?”

No. He’d better not want to bet on it, because she wasn’t so sure herself. Not after what happened in his
bedroom. Not when his fucking paid killer stood there only a few feet away from her.

She’d made a choice. She’d made it months ago. She hadn’t realized—well, she’d realized, but not completely, if she was honest—how seriously she took that choice until that moment. Did she want to make it? No. Did she want to shoot Lex? Fuck, no.

But she would, and she knew it, and she let him see it in her eyes before she gave him an out. “We need to talk to you about what we found today and what’s coming. Probably coming tonight. You need to know, because it affects you.”

That solved the problem of how to suggest to Terrible that they might want Lex’s involvement with what would likely happen later. But she was right about that. She knew she was. The drugs, the murders, had been on Lex’s side of town, too, and just because they were all headquartered on the
Agneta Katina
didn’t mean Lex’s side of town wasn’t going to have a problem.

“They’re planning to take over Downside. All of Downside. That means you, too, Lex. And you can’t stop them without me.”

Nobody moved for a long moment. Chess’s arms started to ache, but she couldn’t let them falter. Couldn’t let them move even the tiniest bit, because if they did, it would look like she was wavering, and Lex would see that as weakness.

Finally he sighed. “Aye, fine, then. Oughta all drop the guns, we should. Let’s have us a chatter.”

They stood inside the abandoned taxidermist’s; well, where the hell else would they go? Wasn’t like any of them wanted to be seen talking to one another on the street. Frankly, Chess was surprised Lex had shown up at the docks at all, but then she figured he’d heard how empty they were through one of his spies—or just
through the rumor mill—and figured he’d be safe. Which he clearly was, since she half-expected tumbleweeds to roll down the streets.

Somehow that emptiness didn’t make her feel any safer, though. Maybe it was the knowledge of what was inside the
Agneta Katina
, or the knowledge that the person or persons responsible—Blake and his sorcerer, Blake and his gang—could be watching from any one of the blank-faced buildings lining the streets.

Or maybe it was that Devil watched Terrible like a beast about to pounce, and Terrible watched both Lex and Devil in exactly the same way, and she thought she might very well drown in the sea of furious testosterone and repressed violence filling the space in which they stood.

But they were standing, and Terrible caught her eye, gave her an almost imperceptible nod that sent relief flooding through her system. Good. At least he knew why she was doing what she was doing. Why she was telling Lex what they’d found, which she did in the quickest way she could, concluding with, “So Blake knows we’re after him, he’s going to know we were on the ship, and I think—we think—he’s not going to wait anymore. He’s going to do whatever it is—set them all out killing each other, killing whoever they can—tonight. And they’re not going to stop at Forty-third.”

“Shit. Tried buyin me out, too, he did. Made me the offer maybe five, six weeks past, just after—when I take over, dig.” Lex paused, shifted his weight. “Ain’t gave it much thought, what with street men being killed an all.”

The last line was spoken with a suspicious half glare at Terrible, who returned it with the kind of blankness Chess knew all too well. Hmm. Not that it was her business—it decidedly was not, and she didn’t want to know about it, not really—but still. Hmm.

She cut into the heavy silence. “So, we need a plan for tonight. They’re going to know we were on the boat. They’re going to know we’re expecting something, that we know what’s going on. Hell, they’re going to know there’s a witch involved. But they might not know where we are, where we’re planning on coming from.”

For the first time, Lex and Terrible
looked
at each other instead of glaring. The silence stretched between them, broken by a rat or something rustling in the piles of garbage and old bones lining the walls. Chess didn’t turn to see.

“Guessing I could send some down here,” Lex said finally. “We get them streets all filled up though, aye? Set watches, what you thinking, Terrible?”

Oh, how Terrible was hating this. She knew it from the look on his face, the set of his shoulders, the prickly feeling of his energy. But he nodded finally, glaring at Devil. “Aye.”

Pause, while they all absorbed that. Yeah, Lex and Terrible had worked together before, but that had been off the books, as it were. To save her, and to save the City and the Church. This was different.

“Okay.” She shifted her feet, ignoring the sound of some fragile bone breaking under her shoe. “Okay, then. So tonight—I think, I bet—they’ll come out of here, the bespelled people, because they have to move fast. We—”

“Why we ain’t set the fucker on fire, Tulip? Them bodies burn up right, aye?”

Was he serious? “We can’t.”

“Why come?”

Her mouth opened; it took her a second to answer him. “Those are— They’re people, Lex. Actual people, bespelled people. They’re innocent. We can’t just kill them.”