New Blood (49 page)

“It's magic. The witch is getting through to him.” Someone else spoke. “Send him deeper.”

The scent of herbs rose, became almost overpowering, and Jax's dream began to crumble around her.
Never alone,
she cried before it was gone and she was inside her own head. But Jax's presence rested near her heart. She wasn't alone, nor was he.

“Well?” Harry demanded.

“He's unconscious.” Unable to remain still any longer, Amanusa popped out of her chair. “They're using some kind of wizard magic to render him unconscious, but he's not hurt. We have to find him.”

“I agree, but 'ow?” Harry caught and stopped her before she started pacing again.

“Call Vaillon.” Amanusa's mind spun, grasping and discarding plans and possibilities. “He likes me. He'll help.”

“The conclave will help as well,” Grey said. “Some of them, anyway. Gathmann will. It's illegal to interfere between a magician and his—or her—familiar. Whatever form that familiar might take.”

“Does that blood bond o' yours tell us where we might begin this hunt?” Harry asked.

“Not in St. Germaine. He's farther away.” Amanusa bit her lip, nerves and worry getting the best of her. “I might be able to tell which direction to search if I try a few directions, see if any feels more right.”

“Do it. I'll send word to Vaillon an' Gathmann—”

Grey interrupted Harry. “Let me or your apprentice write the messages. Your handwriting is so execrable, they might think you were confessing to some crime.”

“All right. Elinor, you write. I'll organize messengers. Amanusa, you see if you can pick a direction. Grey, go wif 'er. Best she not be alone, I think.”

Grey raised an eyebrow. “You trust me to accompany her?”

Harry raised one back. “You try anything out o' line with that one an' you'll be wearin' your balls as watch fobs.”

“Likely.” Grey gave a delicate, ostentatious shudder, then held his elbow out to Amanusa. “Shall we, madame?”

She barely took time to lay her hand on his arm before starting for the door. She needed to find Jax.
Now.

O
UTSIDE ON THE
street, Amanusa called up her sense of
Jax.
Was it stronger than before, or weaker? The hotel faced east on a bustling street with spindly saplings in the boxes along the paving. Amanusa walked straight ahead, toward the street, without sensing any real change. She turned left, north, away from Grey, and walked a few paces. The sense of Jax grew stronger. Maybe. She wasn't sure.

Amanusa turned on her heel and walked south, back toward Grey, and her Jax-sense faded. “North,” she said, spinning to face that direction. “Maybe as far as the other side of the river.”

She started walking. This time Grey caught her arm and stopped her. She barely refrained from striking out.

Grey didn't flinch. “Wait until Vaillon and Gathmann come, or send envoys. We'll call out the progressives to search as well. We'll find him for you.”

He dragged her back inside the hotel just as messengers hurried out the door. Elinor made her go into the café and eat the breakfast they'd missed with all
the early morning excitement. Amanusa ate to fuel the magic, the buttery croissants tasting exactly like the awful food in the outlaw camp due to the same kind of fear.

Fear for someone else, not herself. Someone who meant as much to her as her mother and her brother had meant to the child she'd been. She did love him.

Vaillon arrived in person. Gathmann sent the captain of the Massilean Guard. Grey and Harry explained the situation and the officers agreed to send their men out in pairs, one policeman and one Massilean together, beginning with the area north of the hotel. The Massilean would use his magic to search and the policeman would lend authority.

Amanusa refused to stay in the hotel and wait, so Vaillon and Harry accompanied her. Elinor did as well, to return to the hotel with Amanusa in case she collapsed.

She wouldn't collapse. They didn't know her. She had already survived the worst the world could throw at her. She would survive this, and she would find Jax.

Clinging to her sense of him, she led the searchers to the Pont Royal crossing the river from Faubourg St. Germaine to the Tuileries Palace. The squared-off dome centered on the vast palace of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte—Emperor Napoleon III—shone copper-green in the afternoon sun, sneering at her. Halfway across the bridge, she stumbled. Something was wrong.

Pain ripped through her from the center out, and she fell, screaming. It didn't last long, no more than a
few seconds. It felt as if someone had tried to rip out her heart. Harry was there, helping when she fought to stand, the pain ebbing quickly. Save for her throat. She'd screamed it raw.

“What happened?” Elinor asked.

Amanusa shook her head, shook Harry off. “Pain. Not mine. It wasn't an attack on me. They attacked Jax. They hurt him, and I felt it.”

“I didn't know you could do that,” Harry said.

“You should go back.” Elinor took her hand, tried to lead her back toward the hotel.

Amanusa planted her feet. “They're hurting him. I have to find him.”

“But . . . M. Vaillon, surely you agree this is no place for a woman.” Elinor appealed to the police captain.

“I might agree perhaps, if she were any other woman. But I have seen how strong she is. If she wishes to come, I will not stop her.”

Amanusa continued across the bridge to the Quai de Tuileries. Crows gathered in the trees and along the wharf, along the roof of the Tuileries to either side of the dome. Was their Crow among them? Did he gather reinforcements? Could he do anything here?

If Crow could help, he should hurry up and do it. If not, he didn't matter. Only finding Jax did.

 

J
AX GROANED AS
he woke again, this time in a dingy, windowless garret room. Hadn't he been in a comfortable parlor the last time he woke? Or had that been some sort of drug-and-magic-induced dream? He shut his eyes again as he probed inside himself
for Amanusa. Yes. There. She was still with him. The blood bond was safe. She was safe.

“You might as well open your eyes, friend,” an unfamiliar voice said in an unfamiliar accent. “I know you are awake.”

Jax did as the voice suggested and saw a well-dressed man with black hair brilliantined flat to his skull and an enormous waxed and curled mustache. He sat in a wooden chair across from the narrow iron-framed bed where Jax lay. A battered three-drawer chest was the only other furnishing. An oil lamp on the chest provided light. Jax turned over to face the man, feeling at a disadvantage in his shirt-sleeves. Where was his jacket?

“Over the years,” Jax said, “I've found it best to spend a few moments taking stock of a situation when one wakes up in an unfamiliar place, particularly after one has been kidnapped and bespelled.”

“Just so, the caged bird wishes to return to its cage. You may think you have been kidnapped, my friend, but in the end, you will be free.”

“I am not your friend.” Jax sat up, holding the other man's gaze. “Nor are you mine.”

The other man shrugged. “I do not doubt you believe this. But when we are done, you will thank us. I am Yuri Mikoyan, and you are Jax Greyson.”

Jax didn't bother answering. Silence often brought information. Besides, his head was pounding from whatever they'd done to him. He didn't feel much like talking. He leaned his head against the wall behind him and waited.

“You will be asking yourself, ‘What do they want with me? What are they going to do?' ” Mikoyan
went on when Jax was so disobliging as to fail to ask the questions. “We—myself and other like-minded magicians—will be freeing you from your slavery to the witch.”

“I am not her slave. I am her husband.” He had been Yvaine's slave, but Amanusa wasn't Yvaine. Amanusa had tasted his blood. She had given him the ability to choose. A man who could choose was no slave.

Mikoyan shook his head sadly. “You see how she has twisted your mind? Until you believe that captivity is freedom. It is against nature for a man to be subordinate to a woman.”

“I am not subordinate. We are partners. Equals.”

“She claims you as her familiar!” Mikoyan slammed his hand on the top of the chest beside him, making the lamp rattle, the flame shudder. “A familiar is a thing, a tool. It is always subordinate.”

“How would you know? You're an alchemist. Alchemists don't have familiars. A wizard can only have an animal familiar, which does not have a human mind and is, of course, subordinate. Conjurer's familiars are spirits. I have heard conjurers speak of their familiars as if they were more powerful than the magician, not less. If a magician is afraid of his familiar—if he must force it to do his will—then he will of course enslave it and make it subordinate. My sorceress does not fear me. I choose to assist in my wife's magic. There is no coercion. We are equals.”

Mikoyan's sad head-shaking returned, and it infuriated Jax. Why wouldn't the man listen?

“Your mind is so filled with lies,” the alchemist
said, “you cannot know the truth. We had hoped you would be willing to tell us how to break the spell binding you to the witch. Our first attempt caused you considerable pain. But I see you are too blind to her evil to help yourself.”

“Amanusa is not evil.” Jax rose from his cot as Mikoyan stood to depart. If he charged the Russian, perhaps he could knock him down, get out the door, and at least know how many he faced. He might even get away, if the plot had only a few coconspirators.

Mikoyan paused at the door to shake his head again. “Poor, blind fool.”

The door opened, Jax lunged. With a flick of his fingers and a single word, Mikoyan used the air to knock Jax flat.

“You will see,” Mikoyan said as the guard at the door let him out. “When you are free, you will thank me.”

The air sat on Jax's chest while the door was re-locked and footsteps thumped down the stairs. The spell released, perhaps when Mikoyan was too far away to maintain it, or perhaps when the man decided to let it go. Jax didn't know.

He sat back on the bed and held his pounding head in his hands. They hadn't been able to harm the spell binding him to Amanusa, but it had hurt like bloody, stinking hell when they tried. More pain was inevitable.

He and Amanusa were bound together by blood. As long as her blood flowed through his veins—and his through hers—the bond could not be broken. And the only way to get Amanusa's blood out of his bloodstream was for her to call it out. Their blood
was so thoroughly mixed together, even after so little time, these men would have to bleed him dry to rid him of hers.

His stomach hurt, like everything else, but it took time to realize some of the pangs were hunger. He'd missed breakfast, and hadn't eaten much supper last night. He'd been too focused on making sure Amanusa ate to replenish what the magic had taken from her. Who would do that now he'd been kidnapped?

Jax went to the door and rapped. “I'm hungry. Do you intend to starve me too?” He asked it again in French.

“Best if your stomach is empty.” The answering voice sounded young, sympathetic, and spoke English. An apprentice? Or journeyman, maybe.

“Can I at least have some water? My head's pounding and my mouth's gone to dust with the damned magic you've thrown at me.”

“I'll ask.” Footsteps clomped away again.

Jax tried the door. It didn't even rattle in the frame. Likely they'd added locks and bolts when they hatched their plot.

More footsteps returned than had left. Must mean he was getting the water. A young man, over twenty but not by much, opened the door and handed Jax a mug with perhaps an inch of water in the bottom. Another man stood behind him in the shadows.

“It's best if your stomach is empty,” the guard said again when Jax stared incredulously at the scant swallow of water. “Given how you reacted to the first attempt.”

“Did it occur to anyone that you might kill me, trying
to break the familiar's bond?” Jax held the water in his mouth a moment before swallowing it. He handed the cup back when the young man gestured for it. “What's your name?”

“Esteban.” The young man—a conjurer, according to Jax's borrowed magic sense—gave him a pitying look much like that of Mikoyan. “Wouldn't you rather be dead than a slave?”

“No, actually I wouldn't. Particularly since I'm—”

The door shut in the middle of Jax's protest, but he finished anyway.
“—not a slave!”

Damn and blast. They wouldn't hear anything he had to say. The next hours promised to be very bad.

His stomach was growling again when the door opened to admit Mikoyan, Esteban, and two other magicians, one blond, one dark like Esteban. Another man stood in the corridor outside, in the shadows where his face could not clearly be seen.

“Will you come peaceably, or must we carry you out?” the Russian asked.

Jax weighed his options. Four, or presumably five against one were not the best odds, especially since they were every one of them magicians. The two new faces were as young as Esteban, so might not have reached Mikoyan's master level, but he had no way of knowing. Why start the pain before absolutely necessary?

He stood. “I'll come.”

Then Esteban and the big blond man produced leather restraints.

No. Oh no. He'd been restrained before. He had never liked what happened after. Esteban reached
for his wrist and Jax exploded into motion, shoving one man into the next, fighting toward the door. He couldn't do it, couldn't be bound helpless like that. Mikoyan's air spell tripped him, knocked him flat.

“No!” he shouted, lost in the panic. “No—Amanusa!
Amanusa!
”

He continued to struggle, despite the weight bearing down on his chest, his arms. He couldn't let them do it, had to fight, even though the fight was hopeless. His vision went black, the weight crushing the air from his lungs—and she was there. Amanusa, warm and wonderful in his mind.