Chasing Magic (42 page)

Did she? She felt it, that was for sure, but she didn’t feel as if she was part of the spell yet, didn’t— Oh shit. Of course.

The inert plastic tub was still in her bag, the tub containing the spell they’d found earlier. She’d taken it apart but hadn’t salted it or separated the pieces under running water or anything else, so it should work, and the magic in the speed needed the walnuts to set it off, right?

Right. She dug out the tub and handed it to Lex. “When we get down there, like around them all, we’ll need this. You’ll need to open the tub and hold it. It’ll neutralize the spell on them. Only on the ones close by, but it should be enough to get us through the crowd.”

“Gonna fix you up? Make you lose the magic?”

“Yeah, it will, and I don’t know how much. So—go over there and stay until I call you, okay? Don’t get too close to me until I say.”

If she was going to be able to say, that was. She had no idea if she’d need to be away from the thing in Lex’s hands in order to trace the magic back, no idea if she’d need to be near it in order to speak. “Um, actually, if I start moving without saying anything, go ahead and bring it over to me. Okay?”

He nodded.

Now the walnut. She could just carry it, yeah, but the nut was just a container, not an actual part of it, and she needed to get as deep inside as she could. So she grabbed one of those and opened it, had the presence of mind to brace herself before she stuck her finger into the mess of blood and parts inside.

Numbness. That same icy shocking numbness, tearing through her, making her body disappear. Kicking her out of her body, to be more specific; she couldn’t feel it anymore, couldn’t see, couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t hear. Was Lex still there? Was she still there, was
there
still there, was she anywhere? Fuck, where was she, what was happening?

The magic inside her, around her, didn’t soothe anymore. It trapped her, entangled her like seaweed at the bottom of the cold deep ocean, and she was drowning. She struggled against it, fought against it, but it only held on tighter.

Shit, that was it. What little conscious mind she still possessed knew what was happening: She’d completed the spell, she was inside it now. She’d chased it and, instead of catching it, it had caught her. It held her in vicious steel arms that wouldn’t let her go; it had stolen her and she belonged to it. Maybe she shouldn’t have done so much of that speed, maybe that last bump
had been too much, she’d gone too far into it and she couldn’t escape—

No. Fuck, no. She was the one in control; she was the one who’d made the decision and she would get herself out of this. She’d get them all out of this, all of them who’d bought a little speed and suddenly found themselves under someone else’s control. This was magic, and she could do magic; if there was one thing she could fucking do that was it. She wasn’t just a junkie, she was a motherfucking Churchwitch.

Somewhere in the distance, she thought she heard Lex calling her name. She tried to answer. “Give me a minute.”

Had he heard that? She didn’t know, still couldn’t see or hear. Had no idea if she was on the roof or what; her body remained inaccessible to her. The only way she knew for sure she wasn’t dead was that she wasn’t being picked up, wasn’t in the City.

And yeah, the night might very well end with her there, but not this way. No fucking way was she going to give up so easy; if Terrible wasn’t going to let her be alone down there, she sure as fuck wasn’t going to make him join her because she’d lost without putting up a fight. It wasn’t just her own life that depended on her, wasn’t just the army of nameless blank faces on the streets below. Terrible’s life depended on her staying alive, and she was going to do it.

So she pushed. Pushed as hard as she could, pushed with all the anger and determination a lifetime of shit had given her. She’d faced worse than this and she’d survived, and she’d be damned if she’d let this beat her.

Somehow she found a thread of … something. Something in the magic, something she could grab hold of. Yes! The heart of the spell, the line that connected it to its caster.

This wasn’t something she’d done very often. The
Black Squad had training on this, but since her work usually involved nonmagical crimes—or at least it was supposed to—she’d had only the basic classes on it. But she found it. That was the important thing. And she could follow it—or she could if she could get hold of her own increasingly fuzzy mind, find some way to lessen the magic’s grip.

Almost immediately upon thinking it, the weight on her lifted. Her eyes were hers again, her body in her control. Not entirely, no; the magic was still there, oh it sure as fuck was, that deep-down pull on her wanting her to—to walk, to go, to pick up something and start hitting with it. It wanted her to— No, it wasn’t clear enough, not yet.

Not until she went back under. Because at that moment she felt her feet again, her arms and hands; felt one of them held in a tight grip she knew without thinking was Lex’s. That fucking sucked, because what she didn’t feel was that thin line of magic, the line she could trace. It was gone, and she wouldn’t find it again until she was back under. All the way.

“You was takin youself a walk,” he said. “Guessing you got it pretty strong, aye?”

“Where are we?”

“Still onna roof. Ready get off, head on down?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Go ahead of me, okay? I’ll follow you.”

He gave her a look—warning? Concern? She couldn’t tell—and started walking. He made it about four steps before the magic slid over her again.

The magic and the craving. Fuck, she wanted another bump, a whole line. Her body screamed for it, so loud she could almost hear it. One more bump. She needed to bring the magic back up, needed to make herself feel better. Shit, she needed that so damn bad.

“On the street,” she thought she heard Lex say. “Followin you now.”

So she had been moving. She had been going somewhere; she’d been following the magic. She hoped, anyway, that she’d been chasing it and not obeying it.

Haze covered her eyes, as if she saw everything through cloudy film. Bodies moved, fighting all around her; she heard shouts as if they were miles away. She wanted to join them. It was a need almost as bad as the need for another bump, another line, that need pulling at her like a beast with its prey, trying to rip her flesh off her bones and devour it. So overpowering, it was so fucking strong, so desperate. How long was she going to be able to fight it? How long would she be able to remember what she was supposed to do, why she was under?

For that matter, how long were Bump’s men going to hold on? All those people, all those bodies—their faces looked smudged and artificial to her, like golems—a swarm of them, endless like the clouds, all of them fixated on one thing. No one could last against that kind of determination. Nothing could last against it. They were running out of time. Not that they’d had much to begin with.

She needed to find the spell. She needed to step away from Lex. Fine, but how the hell to do that and not give in to the magic?

Maybe she didn’t have a voice; she probably didn’t. But she’d try it, anyway.
“Arketa restikah, arketa restikah. Baruel, baruel, matasae matasae. Arketa restikah …”

Was it her imagination or did she feel the bonds around her start to loosen? Could she see a little?

The
Arketa
was one of the weakest chants in the Church arsenal, but she didn’t want a strong one. She couldn’t overpower the magic totally or chance having
it disappear, because she had to follow it, but she needed to think, to see. To access her body and voice, and her power.

Should she ask Lex for iron? There were filings in her bag, of course, but he could— No. She didn’t want him digging around in there, for one thing, and for another that might be too much, too strong.

So she kept going with the
Arketa
. At the fourth repetition she came back enough to see, to feel her feet and the ground beneath them; at the sixth she found her hands again. And … yes, she still had the line, she could still trace the magic. Shit, yes, just what she needed. She knew it, she knew the Church would have an answer.

What she didn’t know was where she’d been going, what she’d planned to do, or why she’d headed— Of course. The ship. She was heading for the ship.

She hadn’t found the master spell when they were on board earlier, but then she and Terrible hadn’t gone everywhere, had they? There were still a few floors she hadn’t even been on, and they’d only entered the captain’s room; there were plenty of others. She’d be willing to put money down that what she needed was there.

“The
Agneta Katina
,” she said, stopping her chant and letting it stay stopped. “We need to go there, that’s where we need to be.”

Magic flowed through her again, her grip on the end of it tight enough to make her insides ache. She needed another bump. It wouldn’t ease the pain, no—speed didn’t do shit for pain—but it would make it easier, make her feel better, cheer her up. Like speed always did. It would help her forget everything else, and this particular speed was especially good at that, wasn’t it?

Even in her blitzed and blissful state, though, she knew taking another hit would be a bad idea in that crowd. How much were they craving, how badly did they need more?

Well, shit, how badly did she need more, and it had been only, what, ten minutes? So, yeah. Not going to take it out on the street. Follow the line, get somewhere private. Hell, follow the line and get onto the boat; she needed the tunnel for that, so she needed to get into the taxidermist’s.

The magic line grew thicker, stronger, as she made her slow careful way along it. Very careful. If she could feel him, it was only a matter of time before he felt her, and once he felt her he could—well, he could do any number of things, none of them good.

Speed up, then, no pun intended. The line of magic vibrated gently, the line with so many offshoots, so many people connected to it. Like a thousand voices screaming across a great distance, screaming in fear and pain and frustration. And one of those voices was hers.

Shivers of bright sharp energy zipped through her body at odd intervals, little shocks that came out of nowhere. She must have been bumping into more speed-zombies. They hadn’t been that far from the docks, why was it taking so long, what was happening?

She hadn’t found the sorcerer in the magic yet. Didn’t want to find him until they got closer—hell, didn’t want to find him at all, unless they couldn’t find the master spell. That was what she needed to be working on. Finding that spell, finding the other walnuts. All of those little threads, tributaries in the river of horror—they were people, yes, but they were spells. Slipped into pockets, tucked under couch cushions or beds. Tied—she felt them, saw them in her head—to rafters in abandoned buildings, stuck under chairs in bars and diners, hidden in cars. They littered Downside; they were everywhere.

She started the chant again and found herself still clutching Lex’s hand, surrounded by total darkness. “Where are—”

“That dead-animal place.” He was smoking; red light
illuminated his face for a second as he took a drag. “Figured on takin us offen the street, I did, take that tunnel you come up out before. Them zombies gave me the callypunch, dig?”

“Yeah.” Her fingers shook as she dug out the speed and bumped up again; her body’s screams were too loud, too much to ignore any longer. Of course, when that death-and-old-asparagus taste hit her throat, she wished she had ignored it, but wasn’t that just fucking typical of her: to want something so badly, and then to instantly regret getting it.

“Got he yet?”

“Almost. I— The spell, there’s so many of them, but it feels really close, it feels like the master spell is really close, so— Fuck!”

Her body caught fire. Not literally, at least she sure as fuck hoped not. She couldn’t see it. Couldn’t see anything as the magic inside her swelled and shrieked. Something had just— What the hell had he done?

Through the pain she felt her knees hit the floor, the disgusting floor coated with slime and bacteria. In her speed-and-magic-crazed mind she pictured them, millions of them, germs like maggots with evil grins full of teeth, swarming up her legs, biting her, eating her.

She screamed—she thought she screamed, who the fuck knew if her voice actually came out or not—and swatted at them. Tried to swat at them, at least, because she didn’t know if her arms were working, either.

He’d found her. The sorcerer had found her; he knew she was coming for him, and he was fighting back.

He knew what scared her, too. The magic gave him access to her mind; those sharp-toothed bacteria, those malevolent germs, grew bigger, stronger, grew long spindly arms to wrap around her and human faces straight out of her darkest memories. They howled and screamed at her. They sank their needle-teeth into her flesh and disappeared into her bloodstream.

She stopped reciting the
Arketa
in her head, and white washed over her vision again. It didn’t block out the foulness crawling all over her body, the things that had lived in her right palm when she’d cut it on the Dreamthief’s amulet, insects and worms, roaches and flies. All of those she could still see through the mist.