Trickster (16 page)

And it wouldn’t matter, because this was the end of everything, everyone dying in thirty seconds of unbelievable, incomprehensible carnage. An invisible engine tearing every living thing in the world to pieces. Soaking them for blood to feed the
biludha,
to make the old bat immortal. People. Kids. Kittens. Fucking
lice—
everything—dead.

And I saw Claire bleeding out, twisting and screaming, the mummy in the office getting younger, coming to life as she died. When I imagined it, I kept confusing Claire for the kid in the sneakers, Hiram’s hired whore, all those years ago. Most likely dead. They kept switching back and forth, bleeding out as one, mixed together. She would be Claire’s age now.

Or dead. Dead. I hadn’t touched her. Hadn’t bled her. I hadn’t done—

Anything.

When I thought of that long-past girl dead, a leaden sadness filled me. Weighed me down. I couldn’t imagine what had driven her to that point in her life. And I didn’t want to imagine what wild hopes she might have held, deep inside. That someone would save her. That someone would help her. I’d done nothing to her. I’d left no mark. She was exactly the same after having met me, and for a while I’d been proud of that.

But I wasn’t proud anymore. I’d left no mark. I’d done nothing. I was not good people. But what was my option now? To kill Claire? Save the world, make Renar howl in rage, be a fucking
hero
by killing her? A girl who’d done nothing, besides look a certain way and get herself snatched by the Skinny Fuck.

I thought,
There have to be more options.

Slowly, I moved my arm away from Claire, preparing to make my move. Blood flowed from the Bleeder’s arm in a slow, steady stream, disappearing into the air as Amir spoke. I balanced myself on the balls of my feet. I gathered myself for a charge. There was the
window in the kitchen; if I could barrel into them, my partner coming after me with the automatic loyalty that only someone as stupid as Pitr Mags could manage, we might buy Claire enough time to make an escape, shimmy down the fire escape, hit the street.

The Bleeder convulsed.

He staggered a little, recovered, and then went down to his knees. Convulsed again, and blood shot out of his mouth while Amir continued to recite, the syllables rolling out of him with practiced ease as he watched his Bleeder hemorrhage in front of him. I was frozen, watching. The fat man on the floor was panting wetly, struggling to breathe, and lifted one heavy arm up to Amir, reaching for his master. One glance at Amir told me this wasn’t his doing. He looked appalled. Surprised. But not scared.

The mage took a single step backward, staying out of reach, not skipping a word. The second Bleeder stared on with popped-out, unhappy eyes, but didn’t make a move to save his friend. They’d both made their deal: They bled for an easy life, everything a powerful
saganustari
like Amir could offer them, and there was always the chance they’d be consumed entirely one day.

Amir was startled, spinning around and trying to figure things out, when Hiram stepped into the hall. I could see straight down the line to the older man. He’d rolled up his sleeves and he was speaking a spell, too, using the Bleeder’s blood to cast—an old, dirty trick. Frowned upon, using someone else’s gas. Under normal circumstances it earned you censure, it got you
sneered at. But Hiram knew Amir would be justified in killing us, as thieves. He was saving our lives. Or, more likely, he was saving his own life in a way I hadn’t figured out yet.

As he walked down the hall, Hiram’s voice got louder as he recited something quick and dirty. He had always had a talent for hacking spells down to the bare necessities, getting rid of any decoration. It was a War Talent, really—if you had nothing but time, you could devise a wicked spell, but in the heat of battle it wasn’t always the most elegant spell that won the day. It was usually the fastest one that still had some punch. Hiram cast quick and dirty better than anyone I knew.

Tricksters, we fought dirty. For all their power,
enustari
didn’t understand that.

He finished his spell before he’d even hit the living room, before Amir had finished
his,
and as the Bleeder finally passed out cold, slumping to the floor, Hiram’s hands erupted into flames.

“Fuck!” Mags whispered next to me.

“
Get. The. Fuck,
” Hiram shouted, holding his hands up in front of him like a boxer, “
out of my house!
” A ball of flame, liquid and roiling, began to bloat between his hands.

Amir suddenly stopped reciting.

Mags and I both ducked over Claire.

The pent-up energy of Amir’s spell tore through the room, ripping the table and chairs up from the floor and smashing them against the opposite wall.

“This is our property, old man!” Amir shouted back,
unaffected by the heat and gesturing behind himself at his second Bleeder. “That spell you are gnawing at will bring a lot of attention to us—do you forget our traditions? Our
ways
? And you would anger Mika Renar? Cal Amir? You would anger
us
?”

Amir still didn’t understand. He was confused at Hiram’s reaction. We should have expected to survive if it was just the
udug
. We should have been meek and begged for forgiveness, or fallen out and betrayed each other. Groveled a little. Fireballs from Hiram Bosch had Amir’s head spinning.

The second Bleeder, his face set in a mask of sweaty horror, nonetheless peeled off his coat immediately, dropping it unceremoniously on the floor, and began rolling up his sleeve. Taking his time. No doubt hoping something happened to save him from having to bleed out like his friend.

Hiram seemed to have grown six inches, filling his own hallway like a giant. “You are on
my
property!” he bellowed, the ball of flame growing larger. “You have three seconds to leave!”

“You stupid old—”

I couldn’t swear it was three seconds. Hiram pushed his hands forward suddenly and the ball of flame swelled up to the size of an adult person and rocketed toward us. The air around me became superheated, and as Amir and his Bleeder dove for the floor I could smell the artificial fibers of my coat starting to burn. Flames exploded into the room, the ball collapsing into a sheet that splashed against everything like
water. The windows shattered, glass tinkling around us. I shut my eyes and threw my hands over my face, but the flames disappeared the second they touched anything, and in a moment the room was empty and dark and cold, wind blowing in from the outside.

I turned to urge Claire up, but she was moving past me already, springing for the window. I turned to pull Mags along with me and we leaped to follow. I hesitated for one moment, letting Mags move past me as I stared down the corridor. Hiram was gone. Amir was getting up. Not looking in our direction, looking mussed and dirty for the first time since I’d met him. It cheered me.

And then Amir turned and looked right at us. His eyes on me. They narrowed. Then they flicked to Claire and widened for a moment.

I spun for the window and followed Mags’s ass out onto the rusting fire escape. I bent over the railing and saw Claire a floor below, climbing like a monkey for the alleyway. Mags and I started down, the rungs of the ladders leaving our hands a curious red-brown color. Halfway down, there was an explosion behind us. The whole building shuddered, and the fire escape rattled and shook beneath us like it had been leaned against the wall a few years ago and never attached. The last bits of glass still clinging to the frames came raining down and I jumped the last six feet and hit the asphalt hard, head spinning, legs weak.

Claire was already running for the street, and I staggered after her. She wouldn’t be safe. She didn’t
understand. Amir and Renar would find her. Runes or no runes, they would find a way. It was
magic
. Anything was possible. She couldn’t understand that from watching Mags cast the firebird once.

I almost caught up with her. Then a car roared into the alley, an unmarked Crown Victoria, lights flashing. Cops. Cops I knew, I found out a moment later, when Holloway emerged from the passenger’s-side door, badge in one hand, gun in the other.

Claire stopped on a dime, stumbling back into me. She pinged off me like I’d goosed her, spinning around. Her eyes were shining, her face red. She was fucking terrified.

“Mother-
fucker
!” she shouted.

I felt a presence. Mags was hiding behind me, as he sometimes did when people yelled.

“Evening, Mr. Vonnegan,” Holloway said with a grin that held no humor. “Looks like you know our girl after all, huh?”

I stared, mind racing, and then there was a second explosion up above us. The ground shook. Something heavy landed in the alley with a cracking noise and I felt a sudden stabbing ache in my belly.

It flashed through me, turning cold as it reached the extremities, passing out of me with a physical sensation. Like outgassing. I started shivering.

And I knew, as the bond between us was violently severed, that Hiram Bosch was dead.

I
hated cars. They reminded me of my father, of being picked up at random moments and driven for hours, stopping at bars, starving, bored, angry. And then the ride home with Mom, eventually. Her silent chain-smoking, somehow convinced it was my fault, that I was arranging things with Dad. That my idea of a good time was being imprisoned in a drunk’s car as he drove around the fucking desert, absorbing all the fucking Bushmills in a given area.

“I don’t know anything good,” Mags whispered intently. “You
do
. You gotta let me bleed, Lem.”

I shook my head. We were in the backseat of a squad car, lights still flashing around us. It was dark and cold. Just Mags and me; Holloway and Marichal had put Claire into their own unmarked car and disappeared into Hiram’s building for some time but now were standing around talking to each other, looking at us every now and then.

“I don’t cast on anyone’s blood but mine,” I said. “You fucking
know
that, Magsie.”

“I’m
offering,
Lem,” he said quietly. “I’m fucking
volunteering
.”

I could imagine the roar of Pitr Mags filling me up. The man was like three men compressed and mashed down into one more or less normal-sized human. I imagined touching his blood would just fry me up, make me explode. My hands clenched with the desire to feel that energy. I was so tired. My stomach flipped.

“Shut up.”

The driver’s-side door of the patrol car opened, and a uniformed cop slipped into the driver’s seat. Holloway and Marichal climbed into their own car, and a moment later we were moving.

“
Lem,
” Mags hissed in my ear.

We followed the detectives. I thought about Claire. She’d tried to run. She’d given Holloway the slip, skipping past him without much trouble. But then Marichal had popped out of the car and taken hold of Claire by the arm. She’d spun, spitting and kicking.

Spirit. The girl had spirit. It didn’t do her any good this time, but I liked watching her fight and twist. She knew cops, you could tell; she was neither awed nor afraid, and she knew that once they got the cuffs on you, or you were stuffed into their backseats, you were halfway to jail. They weren’t arresting her. They thought they were rescuing her, even though they were really slitting her throat.

I shut my eyes for a moment. Mine, too.

Even a Trickster like me was due some courtesy, and so Renar hadn’t treated me roughly, up until now. That was done. We’d stolen from Renar, we’d attacked Amir.

Amir wouldn’t hesitate to kill me next time. I had no doubt Amir had survived.

I didn’t let my mind touch on the fact of Hiram’s death. I hadn’t seen Hiram often over the last few years. We’d avoided each other, and usually fell into the same old argument when we did run into each other, like a deep, sad groove. But he’d been there, in the background. Omnipresent in his way, if only through the deep magical bond between us.

For a moment I probed the empty sense of sudden freedom that had replaced that bond. I couldn’t imagine living without constantly feeling Hiram there, part of me.

I looked at the cop driving the car. Just one cop, without a partner. Or maybe the partner was still back at the apartment. Which was still kind of strange. He was a young guy, blond, slim. I looked at the rearview mirror for a few seconds, but he never glanced at it. He just stared at the car in front of him.

My eyes moved to his hands. He was wearing black gloves. Good, expensive leather ones. I stared at them for a moment, and then closed my eyes again. I’d seen a pair just like them just half an hour before.

My heart began pounding in my chest, a crazy, irregular beat. If you’re trying to appear to be someone else, after all, it was easier and more effective to dress
in their clothes and concentrate on their face when painting yourself with a Glamour.

You gotta let me bleed.
The idea of using Mags’s blood to gas my spell left a yellow ball in my stomach. I tried to think my way around that, but Mags didn’t know anything useful here. A Charm . . . maybe. You could Charm anyone, even the most powerful
enustari,
but people like us knew the feeling. We could taste it, the gas in the air, the feeling creeping over us. Amir was on alert. It would take some gentle prodding, subtlety, to put him under my thumb. I didn’t have that kind of time.