The Inquisitor's Mark (19 page)

JAX PELTED TOWARD ANGUS
Balin's cell. Above him, the ceiling shook violently, and the lights flickered.
That's it. The building's coming down.
He covered his head as he ran, like he could hold off twenty stories with his arms. But all that happened was the ceiling lights on the far end of the corridor exploded into glass shards, and footsteps pounded overhead.

Something was going on upstairs. Maybe the brownies were taking their revenge one story at a time, and after dropping off a wyvern in the basement, they'd delivered Big Foot to the ground floor. Jax thrust a key into the lock on Balin's door, shoved his way in, and found Balin standing in the middle of his cell, looking just as menacing and hostile as ever.

Jax didn't waste words. “There's a wyvern in the basement. You gotta help me.”

“You're kidding,” Balin said in a flat tone.

“Do I look like I'm kidding?” At that moment, the wyvern let loose its magical cry again, and even with solid walls between them, Jax whirled around to look in its direction. Balin frowned, his forehead hunching into ridges.

“You swore an oath you'd help me get my friends out of here if I could get you out too,” Jax reminded him. “And there's a
wyvern
in the way!” Riley couldn't reach Billy with that monster blocking the corridor, and Evangeline wouldn't leave without Riley. He needed the wyvern neutralized and Balin's muscle to get his friends out of here before the Dulac security force arrived and captured them all.

Balin turned back, into the cell. For a moment Jax thought he was going to say he preferred to stay a prisoner. But Balin overturned the mattress on his cot, revealing a wooden crossbar that had been wrenched from the bed frame and broken into two jagged pieces. Balin took up one in each hand. Jax realized that if anyone besides him had opened this door, they might've received a splintery surprise.

Balin glanced longingly at the stairs at the end of the hall but stalked left instead. Jax started to follow, then paused. Between him and the stairs, a red wooden box hung on the wall. Jax dashed over and threw open its glass door. The coiled fire hose didn't interest him, but the fire extinguisher did. When he pulled out the canister, he
found a small axe hanging behind it.
Aha!
With a decent weapon in each hand, Jax sprinted to catch up with Balin.

Back in the other corridor, Evangeline stood on a pile of rubble, peering anxiously into the laboratory. Jax guessed from her worried expression and the wyvern's repeated head butts into the ruined lab that Riley was tucked into a corner where the beast couldn't reach him. Jax couldn't see Billy or Dorian anywhere, and Uncle Finn was gone too.

“Evangeline!” Jax called. She jerked in his direction, and when she spotted Balin, she gasped. “It's okay!” Jax assured her. “He's on our side!”
Sort of.

Balin stared in disbelief at the creature. Half its body was in the lab, and its deadly tail waved wildly in the corridor. He grimaced at Jax. “Only you could cause me this much trouble.”

The wyvern keened again. Evangeline threw both hands over her eyes and yelled at the top of her lungs, “Don't look, Riley! Don't look!”

Jax, meanwhile, stared helplessly at the beast even though he wasn't its chosen prey. He didn't know if the wyvern was ridiculously strong or if he was just weak, but Jax couldn't fight the compulsion to look at it.

The tail whipped around, and Balin ducked it emotionlessly. “Has it got magic in its call?” he wanted to know, like a deaf man asking about music.

“Yes, and if you look in its eyes, it hypnotizes you.”

Balin snorted, unimpressed. “And it's completely armored?”

“Not the head.”

“Then I need to get to the head.” Balin surveyed the beast, looking for the least dangerous way to reach its vulnerable spot.

“Riley?” Evangeline called out worriedly.

“Still here!” he hollered from somewhere inside the lab. “Why are
you
? I told you, Evangeline,
get out!
”

The voice of command made Jax want to bolt for an exit even though it wasn't directed at him. But Evangeline braced herself against the wall. “Stop making me waste my strength fighting you!” she shouted. “I'm not leaving!”

The wyvern's tail whipped around again, reminding Jax of a very irritated cat. He ducked underneath it and ran toward Evangeline. “What's Riley doing in there?”

“He tried to lure it back into the hole it came from. But either it can't leave that way—or it won't—or he couldn't find the right place.” She whispered her magic words under her breath again, clenching and unclenching her hands. But her face was streaked with sweat from the effort. Producing the fireballs was exhausting her, and they weren't very effective anyway. Riley was right. She ought to get out of here.

“Where are Billy and Dorian?” he asked.

“They dragged the wounded man into the room at the end of the hall.”

With the wyvern's attention on Riley in the lab, Jax could reach Billy and get him out of here, but he'd have to abandon Dorian with his poisoned, possibly dying father. Jax felt a twinge of guilt at the thought. He couldn't. “That man's my uncle. Can you help him?”

Evangeline spared Jax a glance of regret. “I'm not a healer.”

Running away without all his friends was not an option. Jax considered the situation. Balin needed to reach the wyvern's head, but it would be easier if they could entice the creature out of the lab. Jax scanned the corridor and spotted something he could use.

“Stand back,” he told Evangeline. He shoved the axe through the belt of his dagger sheath, ripped out the safety tab on the fire extinguisher, and fired at a plastic smoke alarm in the ceiling. The device registered the foam as smoke and went off with an ear-piercing shriek.

The wyvern began to back up and turn around. Jax pushed Evangeline out of its path but couldn't dodge a body blow from the wyvern's wing. The breath left his chest in a
whoosh
, and the next thing he knew, he was lying flat on his back, gasping for air.

The wyvern smashed its head against the ceiling, silencing the alarm and cracking the concrete all around. A fissure ran into the room where Uncle Finn had hidden the Dulacs. Sloane screamed, and the beast drove its head toward the sound, caving in the door.

If Sloane screams again, she's dead,
Jax thought, climbing to his feet. But she didn't. Either she'd finally realized her voice was attracting the wyvern, or Aunt Ursula had muffled her into silence. The wyvern drew back its head and surveyed the corridor with first one eye and then the other, looking for suitable prey.

And there stood Balin, staring up at the beast unafraid. The wyvern dropped its head, bringing its right eye and hypnotic gaze level with the man. Its tail arched for a strike.

Balin slammed a stake into the wyvern's eye.

The creature screamed and wrenched its head up. The tail thrashed from side to side. Jax crouched, watching it pass overhead. It was segmented, just like a scorpion's tail.

While the beast was wailing and shaking its injured head, Sloane peeked out and apparently decided this was a good time for an escape. “Now, Grandmother!” She shot across the corridor into what was left of the laboratory, pulling Ursula by the hand.

The wyvern broke off screeching and attempted its siren call. Jax clenched his teeth but couldn't stop himself from looking up. The punctured eye was bleeding, its hypnotic power gone. The head whipped around, seeking prey with the functioning left eye.

Every muscle in Jax's body seized up. His mind raced, but he couldn't so much as twitch a finger. The eye, as large as his whole head, fixed on him with rage and pain,
its pupil a black bottomless hole for Jax to fall into.

Then a meaty hand covered his face and shoved him backward.

“Sing all you like,” Balin shouted at the wyvern. “Doesn't bother me!”

Jax's muscles went limp like cooked spaghetti.

“Jax, you idiot! Get out of the way!” Riley yelled, emerging from the lab. When he saw Balin, he recoiled, swearing loudly.

“I feel the same way about you.” Balin tossed his second wooden stake to Riley. “Trade you for the cattle prod. You beat off the tail and leave the head for me.”

Riley threw Balin the electric prod. The wyvern snapped at Balin, who whacked its snout and snatched up the other stake from the floor. The monster retreated a few paces. “Smell the blood on it, do you?” Balin taunted. “C'mon, bring that other eye down here!”

Instead, the tail snaked around, passing through the space where the laboratory wall had been and coming at Balin sideways. Riley batted it away with the stake. Instantly, the wyvern swept a wing back, knocking Riley into the air and six feet across the lab. He landed on his back among the wreckage of broken tables and smashed glass.

Across the room, Sloane was investigating the hole made by the wyvern when it burst through the brownie hole and into the lab. “The entrance to the tunnel's gone,
but we can still get out this way.” She climbed through the wall and into the adjacent furnace room. “Grandmother, hurry!” But Ursula was watching the battle with calculating eyes and didn't seem as interested in escaping the mayhem as her granddaughter.

Jax wasn't happy about the idea of Sloane getting away to fetch reinforcements, but he didn't see how he could stop her, and he still had no intention of abandoning Billy and Dorian. He removed the axe from his belt. If the monster's tail came by him again, he had an idea.

Balin held up the cattle prod and whistled through his teeth, calling the wyvern. But the beast was learning. Feinting with its head, it turned sideways at the last second, bashing Balin with a wing. It swung its head into the lab just as Riley rose to his feet, weaponless.

And Ursula, seeing her chance, strode forward and kicked Riley in the small of his back, catching him unawares and sending him to his knees. His hands smacked the floor, and when he looked up—he faced the unblinking eye of the wyvern.

The tail curled into strike position, out of Jax's reach. “Riley!” Jax yelled. Evangeline hurled a fireball at the wyvern's head. She might as well have thrown the cinderblock dust.

Riley couldn't move, but out of the ground, a stream of brown fur erupted like a geyser. Two dozen brownies enveloped Ursula Dulac, swarming up her body and
shrieking like a teakettle on full boil. The wyvern's head snapped toward the sound, breaking eye contact with Riley. The tail reoriented and lashed forward. Just before the barb struck home, the brownies leaped off Ursula, leaving her to take the blow alone.

It cut straight through her abdomen.

“Grandmother!” Sloane screamed, running back into the lab as Ursula fell. The wyvern's tail whipped backward out of the dying woman, slapping the concrete wall next to Jax's head and launching forward again toward its new noisy target.

Riley was too dazed to make it completely off the ground, but he dived forward and hit Sloane in the knees. She fell, butt first, and the barb sliced the air over her head.

The tail whipped backward again, and this time Jax was ready when it hit the wall in the same spot. His axe caught the tail between two segments, severing the barb. Jax didn't think the wyvern felt the blow. It struck again, trying to pin Riley and Sloane to the floor, but it had nothing to hit them with except a stump.

Balin leaped onto the wyvern's back and ran down its snake-like neck. He raised the bloody stake and jammed it into the base of the wyvern's skull where the armor ended and the feathers began. The beast collapsed but kept snapping at its prey. Sloane scooted backward while Riley kicked its snout away from them. Balin leaned on the stake
with all his weight. The debarbed tail hit the ground next to Jax, and the massive body slumped to the floor.

Jax looked across the monster at Evangeline, who covered her mouth with her hand and gave a shuddering sigh of relief.

Balin jumped off the corpse and, before anybody could react, grabbed Sloane and Riley by their shirts and hauled them off the ground. “Dulac and Pendragon,” he snarled. “Lucky me. Neither of you is covered in my oath to Aubrey.” He shifted his grip to their throats and slammed their heads against the wall beneath the cracked warding symbol.

Jax's mouth fell open. He hadn't thought to include Riley in his deal with Balin.

SLOANE'S KNEES GAVE WAY,
and her eyes rolled up into her head. Riley tried to peel Balin's hand away from his throat. He still seemed dazed from the wyvern's stare—or maybe the head blow.

“Stop it, Balin!” Jax yelled, climbing over the wyvern's body. “I didn't expect him to be here, but he's covered in the oath!”

“No, he's not,” growled Balin.

“Let him go!” Evangeline, too, was trying to clamber over the wyvern blockage.

“Count yourself lucky, Emrys,” Balin said between clenched teeth. “I swore not to harm anyone in Aubrey's clan—otherwise you'd be next.”

Evangeline started muttering and clenching her fists, and Jax knew she was working on her fireball spell again, despite how exhausted she looked. “Wait!” he said, holding
up a hand to signal her to stop. He didn't want her threatening Balin.

In spite of his menacing tone, Balin hadn't done anything to Riley except knock him around, and if he'd really meant to harm him, he could have. Jax remembered Mrs. Crandall saying that an oath demanded obedience in ways one didn't always expect. “You're bluffing, Balin,” Jax guessed. “He's my guardian by law and magic; that makes him part of my clan, and you know it.”

With a sneer, Balin shoved Riley away from him. “She's not, though.” He held Sloane pinned to the wall. “Maybe I'll snap her neck, just to make up for missing out on Pendragon.”

Sloane's eyelids fluttered. She licked her lips, leaving a smear of blood. “Safe passage,” she murmured.

“What's that?” Balin pulled her closer, cocking an ear.

“I can grant you safe passage out of here,” Sloane said in a hoarse voice. “Otherwise my clansmen will kill you before you can get out of this building.”

When it looked as if Balin was going to let her go, Jax called out, “Wait a minute, Balin. Hang on to her.” He took a step closer and asked Sloane, “What about
my
friends? Do they get safe passage?”

Sloane glared at Jax through narrowed eyes, Balin's hand still around her throat. “If your friends leave today without any hostile action against my clan, they have safe
passage.” She placed her right hand over her heart, tightening her hand on the fabric of her suede jacket where they could see the shape of her dagger. “I swear it on my bloodline, as leader of the Dulacs.”

“Okay,” said Jax, and Balin released her. She steadied herself with a hand against the wall. Her eyes swept the room, and her face crumpled when she saw her grandmother's body shoved out of the way like a piece of garbage.

Riley rubbed the back of his head, eyeing Balin resentfully, but he spoke to Sloane. “Where was your useless clan when we had a wyvern to fight?”

She wiped her eyes. “I don't know. Grandmother couldn't raise anyone on her radio.”

A voice spoke behind them all. “Is it dead?”

They turned. Dorian stood in the corridor, looking small and pale.

“Yes,” said Evangeline. “It's okay. You can come out.”

Dorian blinked at them. “Can—somebody help my dad—please?”

He led them into a large room with a trash compacter and a huge stinking bin of garbage. Finn Ambrose lay on the floor, shaking uncontrollably.

Billy sat beside him, looking every bit as pale as Dorian and shaking almost as much as Uncle Finn. “I thought a tourniquet might help, and then I opened the wound with Dorian's knife, to let the poison out as much as I could.
But I only read about this in books. I don't know if it was the right thing to do.” He stared up at them with worried eyes.

Jax saw that Billy had removed Uncle Finn's belt and buckled it tightly around the injured arm. And yes, from all the blood on the floor, it was obvious Billy had opened the wound.

Evangeline was the first to react. “You did the right thing. Maybe saved his life.” She swooped in and pulled him to his feet and away from the gore. “You're Billy, right? I'm Evangeline.”

Billy looked at her, and his eyes got big. He leaned into her arm with a goofy smile.

“My mom's a healer,” Dorian said. “We have to get him to Mom. Will you help?” He turned to Riley as if he were half scared to hear the answer.
“Please?”

“For you, Dorian, yeah.” Riley bent over and slung Uncle Finn's uninjured arm around his shoulder. “C'mon, Ambrose.”

Uncle Finn couldn't stand, and it didn't look like Balin was going to offer any assistance, so Jax stepped in on the other side, even though that was the messy side.

“Bring him to the elevator,” said Sloane. “You have to go up with me, or you're liable to be shot on sight.”

Riley half dragged Uncle Finn out of the garbage room. “Did you thank the kid for saving your life, Ambrose?” he asked in the quiet tone he used when he was really angry.
“You know. The kid you were going to shoot.”

What?
Jax looked up at his uncle.

Uncle Finn could barely hold his eyes open, but he managed a resentful glare at Riley. “You have no idea how hard I was
resisting
being manipulated into shooting him.”

Once they'd carried Finn over the dead wyvern's tail, Evangeline looked at Jax expectantly. “Jax?”

Of course! “Dorian, can you get your dad? I have to help Evangeline.”

Dorian nodded and took Jax's place. “Are you—back to yourself?” he whispered.

Jax grinned. “Yes, I am.” He grabbed Evangeline's hand and helped her climb over the bulk of the monster's corpse and into the laboratory.

Jax didn't realize Billy was tagging along until he said, “Is it damsel-in-distress time?”

“Yup.”

“Can I go in first? Maybe she'll say,
Aren't you a little short to be a stormtrooper?
That would be so cool.”

“I doubt she's seen the movie, Billy.”

Addie was being held in a room adjacent to the laboratory. That symbol painted on the wall, the one cracked by the wyvern, had been a ward on the outside of her room, not on the inside of the lab, Jax realized.

Jax led Evangeline through the hole in the wall to the furnace room. As Sloane had said, there was no longer a way to get into the brownie tunnel from here. Jax guessed
the tunnel itself still existed, but this particular entrance had been destroyed along with the laboratory wall.

They exited from the furnace room into the opposite corridor, just across from Balin's open cell door. Jax rifled through the ring of keys, and by the time they turned the final corner, he was sure he had the right one. He stuck it into the lock as soon as they reached the door with the warding symbol above it. “Uh . . .” He looked at Evangeline. “Can she do the fireball thing too?”

Evangeline pounded on the door. “Addie? It's Evangeline! Addie?”

Jax turned the key and opened the door.

Through a haze of dust, Jax had an impression of pink and black. The hair on his arms rose with the tickle of lingering static electricity. He looked around the room—and then straight up.

Addie's cell was empty, and there was a hole blasted right through the ceiling.