One Thousand Kisses (22 page)

“I wanna see their faces first,” Horace said. “Five seconds. That’s all I ask.”

Embor’s communication globe buzzed sharply, stinging his hip. A Torval was on the move.

Might be nothing. Might be something. Either way, Embor had to act.

Horace was right. He owed himself the shock on the Torval’s faces when they realized he’d won. He’d hardly allow the moment to escalate to an accident. So he opened the door and went inside.

His eyes didn’t adjust fast enough from sunlight to shadows. A spell hit him in the face before he could inspect the bar’s interior.

Something scratched the front door, and Ani jumped three feet off the couch.

“Who’s there?”

“Miaow!”

Ani dashed to the front door and yanked it open. The black feline sat on the porch, tail wrapped around his paws. Beside him crouched a lean, orange-red tabby. The angle of the sun, this close to sunset, beamed straight into the house. “Hello, Master Fey. Where have you been?”

Without responding, he strolled through the door. The tabby followed.

“Who’s your friend?”

“Mew,” said the red tabby in a tiny voice. Her pupils were slits, her whiskers long. “Mew mew mew.”

“I’m Anisette.” Ani couldn’t tell if the cat was Fey, but it was best to assume she was. “Welcome.”

The cats sniffed around. The tabby chattered the whole time, which Ani found amusing.

“I needed company,” she told them. “Embor has been gone a long time.”

He’d said an hour, and it had been two. The communication globe hadn’t gotten a response. Why couldn’t the stubborn mule contact her with an update? She’d found a trove of globes upstairs and zipped them into plastic baggies. They now resided in what she assumed was one of Skythia’s purses—yellow leather and almost as big as a cat carrier.

She headed for the kitchen. The cats wouldn’t want peanut butter, but maybe they’d like meat soup. She’d searched the house from top to bottom for anything that might give her a clue about what Embor intended, who his assets were and how she could help.

Besides stay safe like a good little fairy princess.

“Are you hungry?” she asked the cats.

“Mew mew mew,” said the tabby.

Master Fey trotted to the repository and hopped onto the knobby surface beside the potted plant.
We’ve already eaten.

“You’re talking.” Ani glanced at the tabby and back at Master Fey. “Is it the stone?”

He licked his paw several times, rubbing it behind his ears.
There’s a problem.

Metallic liquid entered his mouth. Embor spat.

It wasn’t a spell. It was beer.

“Embor Fiertag!” cackled a voice he knew all too well. Milshadred Torval, bane of his nightmares. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Alcohol stung his eyes, blurred his vision. To Hades with this foolish moment of triumph. He lifted the control globe.

Somebody smacked it out of his hand.

He unsnapped his bag, scrambled for another. The door clouted him with the force of several Drakhmores. He hurtled across the room into a table. Globes scattered out of his pack. Glassware shattered, and Embor rolled off the table to the floor.

“Hando, look out!” somebody yelled.

He barely got his hands in front of his face in time. Another beer stein glanced off his arm, splashing his flak vest with alcohol.

“Who are you people?” he heard Horace growl.

Tiny magics burst around Embor like fireworks as the Drakhmores retaliated. Cries of agony, splashes of freeze.

“Why does he have a crew?” accused a male voice. “You said he’d be alone.”

Milshadred responded. “Hell if I know. Quit bitching and do your job.”

“Don’t pressure me, I get nervous.”

Embor leapt up, vision adjusted. He mopped his wet face with his wetter sleeve. The bar was sparsely populated but not empty. In his peripheral vision, he glimpsed Ulster Torval attacking Horace, Horace defending.

“’Ware the humans,” he called automatically.

“No humans in here.” Gret nabbed his arm, pulled him around. “Look around you.”

Embor squinted.

Near the bar—Euridyce Torval with a pistol. She’d aged. Significantly.

Whacking Burly with a bat—Milshadred Torval. Egging her on, a chubby young man Embor had never seen before. He held a globe at least a foot in diameter.

Mikhal—drinking liquor straight out of a bottle.

Tangling with the Drakhmores spell for spell—humans Embor didn’t recognize. But were they human? They were using globes.

Who were they? Agents? Renegades? They looked young and healthy. He had no idea what Fey Milshadred had recruited or how she’d done it from humanspace.

Worse, he had no idea if this was a trap or coincidence. Had he been betrayed after all?

The building rumbled and creaked. Embor recognized the sensation of a transport spell. His stomach flopped. The building slammed into the ground, bursting most of the glasses hanging above the bar as well as the front windows.

Around him, people screamed and cursed. Embor ducked away from a plummeting light fixture. The lamps and neon signs on the walls crackled and popped out, so the only illumination in the bar was the sunshine streaming in the windows and a few cracks in the ceiling.

Hells, what had just happened? How could one of the brain-dead Torvals have relocated an entire building? Was it the boy? Such magic shouldn’t even be possible in humanspace, and it violated the Policy of Discretion so much that Embor—violating it himself at this particular moment—was aghast.

But the building transport was secondary. Right now he needed to neutralize the Torvals and find out which Drakhmore he was going to sevendust for sedition.

“Embor, cast a control spell before somebody else gets hurt.” Blood streamed down Gret’s face from a cut in her forehead. She didn’t resemble a double agent whose plan was coming together. She looked furious, inclined to torch the room. She’d inherited a touch of fire from her father.

Embor groped the bag at his hip, ready to put an end to this farce.

It was empty. “Balls!”

“Balls?”

“Don’t have any,” he said with a snarl.

Gret laughed, which didn’t mesh with the current situation. “I coulda told you that a long time ago.”

What in the Realm was she talking about?

“The pack’s empty. Find one on the floor,” he told her. He palmed the communication globe in his pocket to see whether the Drakhmores guarding the doors were still there.

They were gone, which worked in his favor. They’d be doing everything in their power to cover up the disappearance of the Drunken Flamingo.

“Excuse me, sir. Are you looking for this?”

Embor squinted through the gloom and dust. A man with a receding hairline held up a bronze globe.

The man was two-thirds his size. Embor flipped a freeze globe out of a pocket.

“It’s quite mushy,” the man said in accented English. “They’ve never demonstrated one like this. What’s in it?”

“I’ll show you how it works.” Embor reached for it and…

A prod of metal jabbed his back. “I’ve got you, my pretty.”

Euridyce. Clearly, she still had her gun.

The healing globes in Embor’s vest would cure most ills, but the inconvenience of a gunshot wound would distract him from his mission. He allowed Euridyce to force him away from the man.

Gret advanced, but the agent swung the gun to cover them both. Broken glass glistened in Euridyce’s white hair. “Oh, look. You have a little dog too.”

“This the Torvals’ focal?” Gret cracked her knuckles.

“No.” Embor felt the hatred he’d contained all day surge as he stared into Euridyce’s wrinkled face. What she’d done to him had been different than the others but no less excruciating.

“Doesn’t matter.” Gret glared at Euridyce, fierce despite her skimpy attire. “I hear you’re a murderer, lady. I’m about to be one too.”

Without a word, Embor flung the freeze globe at Euridyce. She fired the gun before the spell knocked her over.

The bullet struck Gret in the shoulder. “Fack it!”

Embor kicked the gun away from Euridyce, who should have been frozen but was crawling jerkily toward the weapon. Defective spell? He pelted her with a second globe, agony this time.

She collapsed into a snarling heap. He yanked out a medical globe and thrust it into Gret’s hand.

“Tend yourself,” he told her. He had to grab that control spell. Then he’d restrain Euridyce.

But the little man was gone. Embor scanned the floor. Thin bars of light, deep shadows. Glass. Pieces of furniture.

“I thought I said no damned guns?” Milshadred yelled. Embor spotted her and the same youth from before.

“Euri did it,” Mikhal crowed. “Hit one of ’em too.”

“Hurry up, Freddie,” Milshadred said.

“Moving the building nearly wiped me,” complained the boy. He no longer had the giant globe. “I didn’t prep for a group thing.”

Milshadred cursed. “Have you even tried?”

The boy’s forehead wrinkled, and the air began to whine. Copper tainted the back of Embor’s tongue. The scuffle halted as everyone clapped their hands to their ears.

What in the Realm was the boy doing? Embor’s headache jabbed his eyes.

Milshadred smacked Freddie in the back of the head. “From the stone, you idiot, not the fabric. Do you wanna rip a hole? Christ on a cracker, I shoulda stayed in retirement.”

Shaking off the ringing in his ears, Embor punched a man about to attack Gret, dropping him like a stone. She panted in the afterwash of the healing spell. The rest of the Drakhmores recovered from the head-splitting noise. They fought hard and dirty.

The Torvals had lured him into another trap, but it wasn’t going to be enough to save them. Not this time. It seemed there had been an accident.

Embor’s fury was usually hot and propulsive, but chilly rage enveloped him like a snowbank. It calmed the fire in his brain so he could focus.

The bronze globe had disappeared. He didn’t need a control globe to handle an old woman and a fat boy. He kicked a table out of his way and pulled out two freeze globes. Agony would come later. Control later still.

He wouldn’t kill Milshadred, though she might wish he had—as she and her sibs had made him wish.

“I can’t do what they told me to do,” the young man said to Milshadred.

Neither noticed Embor’s advance through the bar. He backhanded another man who got in his way, not bothering with a globe. Glass crunched under his shoes. Shouts and curses echoed close by, but he ignored it all.

Milshadred menaced the boy. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what they want. You take your orders from me here. Improvise.”

“If I mess up, they’ll take away my power.”

“Fucking A, Freddie, stop whining. This is why they never let you talk.” Milshadred lit a cigarette. A bottle flew toward her. She ducked, and it crashed into the wall. “If you’re too lame to drive ’em all crazy, just do the one. You know what Rae Ann said before she split. He’s all that matters.”

Freddie’s shoe bonked one of the control globes. When it rolled to a stop near Embor’s feet, he laughed out loud.

Milshadred’s eyes widened when she saw him. “Start now, Freddie.”

The boy backed up two steps. “That’s the president? The…the Hand of Fire?”

“Do it,” Milshadred said.

The boy’s expression blanked, and pain sliced through Embor’s head. Blast this migraine. Gritting his teeth, he pulled out a third freeze globe. If Freddie could move a building, he was too dangerous to be left conscious.

“I can’t latch on.” The young man cast a panicked glance at Milshadred. “He’s like you. There’s nothing inside. How can there be nothing inside him?”

“How the shit should I know?” Milshadred grabbed Freddie’s arm and shoved him toward Embor. “Hit them all with a bender. Alcohol poisoning will slow them down.”

“He looks pissed.” Freddie’s hands trembled. “Dude. He looks like a pissed-off Conan.”

Embor took careful aim. Freezing them was going to feel so, so good.

“I will fry your stupid, inbred brain if you don’t pull the stone right now,” Milshadred screeched at the boy.

Two globes hit her but missed the kid. She crumpled. Embor went for the control spell.

Freddie closed his eyes. The floor dropped out from under Embor and magic exploded in his brain.

“What kind of problem?” Ani asked the cat.

Master Fey sniffed one of the protrusions on the stone.

“Look here, cat.” Ani stomped to the repository and rested her hand on the tingly surface. “I’ve had enough. Is there a problem with Embor? Is there a problem in the Realm? Is there a problem with a hairball?”

He can’t tell you. Silly male got himself trapped. Ground bound. Hogtied. Hoisted by his own petard. Whiskers were too wide for the jelly jar, weren’t they, handsome?