Strange Brew (18 page)

“I’m sorry,” I told him, reaching into my bag.

“For what?” he panted, sprawled bonelessly on the bed.

I dropped a quick kiss on his mouth, which was surprisingly soft, even edged with late-evening beard bristle. “For this,” I said, and with a swift uppercut, knocked him out.

I’d have much preferred to use a potion, but Weres are really resistant. Of course, they are to socks to the jaw, too, meaning that I had maybe a minute before Cyrus came around. My hands shook slightly as I fitted magical restraints around his wrists, binding them to the frame of the bed. It wouldn’t hold him for long, but I needed only moments to get away.

He was going to be pissed when he woke up, but better that than dead.

The Corps had assassins who were given special training for assignments like these. But as Simons had noted, none would be impervious to a powerful illusion. Unlike Jason, they would probably recognize it and try to disperse it, but in the meantime, they would be vulnerable. And while illusions wouldn’t bother or probably even register on Cyrus and his wolves, other magic certainly would.

I was the only one who had a chance of surviving both. So this was my fight. If Cyrus brought in the wolves, someone would bleed and maybe die because I’d waited for help I wasn’t supposed to need. And I really thought enough innocent people had died because of me today.

I touched the door and felt a tingle at the back of my neck. It told me that the outer edges of my body’s energy field had brushed up against something they didn’t like. I hadn’t tripped the ward yet, but it was already ruffled and it wouldn’t take much more. I withdrew my hand and it calmed down, but I was left with the impression that the heavy old door was glowering at me.

Served me right for trying the front entrance. I looked around, but the building that housed Colafranceschi’s loft was well-warded, with every other entrance just as impenetrable. But the place had four stories and a lot of windows, and wards like that were expensive. I was betting that the ones guarding the upper floors weren’t so high-end.

The building next door was almost as tall and was close enough to make doing a Spider-Man impression at least feasible. And as a bonus, it was open to the public, containing a very loud bar on the first floor. I decided I needed a drink.

It was not a slick tourist trap. My sleeve stuck to the sticky bar top, there was a tear in the pleather cover of my stool, and the place looked like its last cleaning had been about the time Dean Martin signed the faded photo behind the bar. But Jim Beam would probably kill any germs on the glasses, so I ordered a double.

Simons was a little overconfident about my ability to shrug off illusions. Mother’s blood helped, but I was half human, too, and therefore not entirely immune. Powerful illusions could still play games with me, assuming I was clearheaded enough. Luckily, alcohol seriously messes up concentration, sense perception, and memory, all of which are needed for a good illusion to work.

It’s impossible for any mage to fake the thousands of bits of sensory info needed to make even a simple false impression seem real. The trick to getting someone to mistake a fantasy for reality was to plant a few powerful suggestions, then let the person’s own imagination take over. It worked surprisingly well, unless said imagination was too preoccupied with its own pink elephants to notice yours.

I tossed back the whiskey about the time a shaft of angry, bloodred light stabbed into the bar. A glance toward the street showed me a couple of large guys in biker gear headed in the door and, when they moved toward a table, an equally tall woman behind them. A woman with familiar almond-shaped eyes and close-cropped silver hair.

My choking fit won me a condescending look from the bartender and a disinterested glance from the woman. Then she did a double take, her eyes widened, and she threw out a hand. A wave of disorientation hit me—so sharp, it was almost a physical pain; then the guys who had come in ahead of her drew a couple of SIG 552s out from under their table and started blasting everything in sight.

I hit the dirty floor, wondering how the hell they’d smuggled two commando subcarbines in without my seeing them, while the mirror over the bar detonated in a storm of gunfire that rained glass over everything. It took me a second to notice that the people at the other tables not only hadn’t ducked for cover, but were staring at me like I’d lost my mind. I shook my head, blinked a couple of times, and looked up to find the bartender scowling at me.

“I’m cutting you off,” he said while the scene in front of me shattered and re-formed—like the mirror that wasn’t broken and the guns that didn’t exist, except for the one in my hand.

Shit!

I scrambled to my feet and ran into the street, but she was gone. A map charm showed me seven people within a block radius, and only one of them was alone and heading away at a fast clip. I took off in pursuit, hoping I’d guessed correctly, and in less than a minute caught a glimpse of her trying to spell open the lock on a shop’s door.

Why she didn’t head home, where she had not only powerful wards but presumably a host of newly minted Assassins as well, I didn’t know. Maybe she assumed I’d have backup, although considering how powerful that off-the-cuff illusion had been, I was really glad I didn’t. Someone that good might be able to convince my allies that I was the enemy, at least long enough for me to get dead.

That kind of power warranted caution, so I hit her with a locator spell in case I lost her again. She felt it, of course, and went dark and furious, giving up on the door in favor of throwing something back at me. A disorienting sphere exploded onto the concrete as I leapt behind a mailbox, but my shields were up and absorbed the shock before it could send me into a dead faint.

I looked up in time to see her image wink out of existence. I kept my eyes on the spot where she’d disappeared, since cloaking spells don’t tend to cover movement very well. I’d probably be able to pick her out as soon as she made a break for it, unless she did so very slowly.

My leg was throbbing again, but I scuttled across the street pretty fast anyway, not knowing what other nasty surprises she might be carrying. My shields weren’t even close to 100 percent at the moment, and there were things that would get past them. I headed for a Dumpster near her last position, wanting to be as close as possible when I fired. She was an assassin, not a war mage, so her shields likely wouldn’t hold up for long.

Assuming I could find her.

And assuming she didn’t take me out first.

Another spell hit the ground when I was almost there, this time a disruptor with the punch of about twenty human grenades. It picked me up and threw me into the side of the nearest building. If I hadn’t been shielded, I’d have broken every bone in my body when I landed. As it was, I bounced off bricks, slammed into concrete, and rolled back to my feet in time to see a vague ripple streak into a side street. Dammit!

I followed, gun up, and activated the tattoo on my left arm. It was a small horned owl that Father had given me when I joined the Corps. I didn’t use it unless absolutely necessary, because, while it fed partially off the world’s natural energy like a talisman, it also drained my own reserves somewhat. But in this case, I thought it might be worth the power loss.

Immediately, my vision grew ultrasharp and clear, better than I could see in daylight. And like the predator on my arm, I was also more prone to notice any flicker of movement now. Not that there appeared to be any.

Everything was suddenly deathly quiet, as though I was wearing sound-muffling headphones from the shooting range. An icy shimmer of fear flashed up my spine, and for a moment I thought seriously about casting a cloaking spell on myself. I was supposed to be the hunter, not the prey, but for some reason it didn’t feel that way. But I had only so much energy to go around, and those spells use a lot. I decided against it.

I’d always prided myself on my sixth sense. Like an itch at the back of my brain, it fills my head with wary alertness. I was usually almost glad when the moment finally came and things went bad.

I wasn’t feeling so much that way right now.

To my surprise, I made it to the corner without incident. For about the hundredth time, I wished I’d inherited at least some of my mother’s ultrasharp senses, but no such luck. And to human ears, nothing moved along the whole street, nothing breathed.

Then a door opened and a couple came out, the man obviously inebriated, the woman amused. The corner of my eye caught a shadow running down the side of the buildings, using the couple’s laughter as a distraction, and I took off after it. As soon as I did, the streetlights began flickering overhead and a chorus of mad growls echoed down the street. The couple glanced at me as I ran past, but they didn’t turn to see what might be chasing me.

Another illusion, then.

I picked up speed, and so did the harsh panting on my heels. I told myself that the sounds were imaginary, but my nerves weren’t buying it. I put my head down and ran faster, ignoring my leg, which had stopped throbbing and started screaming.

My focus narrowed to the thin tug of the spell, ignoring outside distractions, until a stream of bullets smashed into my shields. For a moment, I didn’t know if they were real or not, until one took out a streetlight overhead. I lunged into an alley for cover, the faint smell of electrical smoke drifting down around me. Nothing else entered, yet the snarls were still right behind me. That settled it—they weren’t real, just illusions designed to herd me into a trap. A trap that the four mages running down the street had just sprung.

There was no point in subtlety—they knew where I was. And the longer we played around, the more time Colafranceschi would have to get away. And that wasn’t in the game plan.

The mages had guns up, not shields, making it clear that they didn’t intend to talk before blowing me away. My own shields wouldn’t hold for long against four opponents, not as drained as they already were. So I threw a vial onto the concrete that sent a dense white cloud boiling up around us and dropped my defenses, too.

My tattoo allowed me to see through the smoke, but it looked like my attackers didn’t have that advantage. One slammed full speed into the metal side of a trash can, and another pulled up right before he hit a wall, tripping over the first guy in the process. But the third and fourth mages were a little savvier, and one of them must have had a tattoo to increase hearing, because he stepped around the corner and fired straight at me.

The bullets went over my head because I had gone into a crouch as soon as the fog hid me. I fired at point-blank range, my bullets biting deep into his chest even as I turned, shoved the barrel underneath his buddy’s chin, and pulled the trigger. He jerked violently and went down. I went with him to avoid the splatter of bullets from one of their friends, who had recovered enough to zero in on the direction of my shots.

I shoved the mage to the side once we hit concrete and rolled across the alley, crawling through the trash from the mangled can toward the entrance. Mage number two passed me in the process, firing as he moved in. I could have taken him, but I didn’t know where his friend was. I opted to go for the street instead, exiting the alley carefully, looking for mage number one. And found him pressed flat against the brick wall outside, waiting for me.

He grabbed me before I could shoot, and this one knew how to use his body, wrapping his legs around mine and twisting my gun arm nearly to the breaking point. Not to mention that he wasn’t above hair-pulling, which considering his crew cut gave him a really unfair advantage. He somehow got behind me, his hand closing over my wrists as he snarled a spell into my ear. And the world went white behind my eyes.

I fought blindly, tuning out the pain of my overtaxed muscles and slamming him back against the wall behind us. The force of the blow made him grunt, but he didn’t let go, or call off the swarm of enchanted knives that were buzzing about, scraping bricks as they tried to zero in on me. He didn’t have to kill me, I realized, as the searing pain of a blade tore through my shoulder. All he had to do was keep me immobilized long enough for his weapons to hunt me down.

I sent my own arsenal into the air, hoping it would hold them off for a few seconds, and heard the clash of steel on steel as I twisted my gun enough to fire. It only hit him in the arm, but he yelled and jerked back, bashing his own head against the brick. His hold loosened and I tore out of his grasp, spinning to fire into his still-open mouth.

My feet were clumsy as I staggered away, gritting my teeth on a scream, blood welling up between my fingers as they clutched my shredded shoulder. I hadn’t heard anything from mage number two, which probably meant he was sneaking up on me, but he wasn’t my problem—the witch was. I felt around with my senses, and surprisingly, the tug of the locator spell was very nearby; she must have wanted to watch her boys take me apart. I got a fix on her position and started to run.

I didn’t get far. I’d taken maybe half a dozen steps when my feet became clumsy, like I was trying to walk through molasses. It’s just another damn illusion, I told my body, but it didn’t seem to be listening. There was a low-level buzz of energy vibrating through the air, plucking at my awareness, and suddenly a giant face appeared in the air above me, peering down like the Great and Powerful Oz.

“Impressive,” Colafranceschi said as I struggled against my legs’ stubborn belief that they were dragging hundred-pound weights. “How much are you being paid?”

Not nearly enough
, I thought, forcing myself to concentrate on the fire escape two buildings down. My eyes told me that there was no one there, but the spell said differently. “Why do you want to know?”

“Because whatever it is, I’ll double it,” she offered. “I could use someone like you. Good help is hard to find, as you must have noticed.”

“Doesn’t sound like you’re mourning your men too much,” I noted, trying to concentrate on the conversation while also listening for approaching footsteps and keeping a read on the locator charm.