For all the moments he wanted to be reunited with his brother and make amends for past wrongs, all Taylor could think about now was ripping Atticus’s heart out and shoving it down Idi’s throat.
On the streets below,
pop-pops
of gunfire echoed through the city.
Taylor howled, unable to stop any of it.
Idi grabbed a fistful of Taylor’s hair and pulled him back. He wouldn’t let him look away from Atticus.
“What’s happened to you?” Taylor asked, desperate and shivering from the cold and fear. “What happened?”
Atticus shrugged, as if Taylor had told him a terrible joke. “Eh. You know. Time in an Enchant institution changes you. Makes you see things as they really are,” he said, as if he were merely talking about his workday.
“How?” Taylor couldn’t stop trembling in Idi’s grip. “Atticus, you’re sick.”
Atticus stubbornly set his jaw and arched a brow like a petulant child. “Is this the part where you expect me to rattle off on something like, ‘They say it’s I who am mad, but I am a genius’?” He turned up his nose. “Seriously, Tay. I’m in no way as smart as you.”
Cracks and more screams echoed outside.
Idi’s grip in Taylor’s hair eased.
“But Ray? Zane? Lacey? The Skinners?” Taylor asked. “How? Why?”
“How why what?” Atticus shook his head. He didn’t seem to follow. “Seriously. You get people desperate and pissed off enough to want to take a chunk out of Corentin, and the rest is pretty easy.” He smiled. “Isn’t that so? You were so desperate and pissed off to save yourself from our family, and then desperate to protect Corentin. Well. How’s that working out now?”
Idi’s fingers slipped from Taylor’s hair, and he adjusted his grip on his arm.
Taylor glanced at Idi out of the corner of his eye, but Idi seemed more focused on Atticus, following him like a blind lover. He was getting sloppy. Idi never got sloppy.
“You destroyed New Orleans for this?” Taylor’s anger rose as he nudged against Idi, slowly testing his grip. He realized he had learned to rely on magic too much in recent years. Now, he had to do it the old-fashioned way.
Atticus looked out the window and tapped his chin.
Idi tapped a finger on Taylor’s arm. Was Idi trying to get his attention?
Taylor ventured a glance up at Idi and found him watching him. Idi glanced at Atticus and back to Taylor and then back again. Taylor arched a brow, not understanding. Idi tapped on Taylor’s arm again and pointedly glanced to Atticus.
What?
Atticus puffed up his chest, all too proud of himself. “Yup. That just about covers it.”
Taylor jerked against Idi, breaking free from his loosened grip. He charged toward Atticus, and Atticus hesitated.
The pleasing crunch of Atticus’s jaw against Taylor’s fist was a hollow victory.
Idi was at Taylor in seconds and yanked him back. “Don’t fight it,” Idi murmured to Taylor. “Atticus is gone.”
Taylor screeched and kicked against Idi, but to no avail. “You did this to him!” Taylor thrashed, and Idi stumbled, trying to keep his grip. “This is your fault!” Taylor screamed with hot tears streaking down his dirty face. “I want my brother back. I want
my brother back
!”
“Oh,” Atticus said softly as he dabbed the blood from his nose. “It’s going to be like that.”
He turned to Taylor and extended his hand. Icicles gathered at Atticus’s fingertips, and he flexed his hand as the icicles grew together, creeping and crackling into a thick shaft of ice and flowering into a broad axe. He rolled the weapon in his wrist as easily as a majorette baton.
“I’m sorry, Tay,” Atticus said with a smile. “I was only kidding when I said I was going to kill you and Honeysuckle. It’s too bad I have to follow through now.” He pulled back, bracing to take a swing. “Now smile. You’re lunchmeat!”
The ice blade sailed, and Taylor hit the floor with a crackling thump.
He coughed and clutched his head. No gaping wound. He was alive? How?
“You need to run, Taylor,” Idi said.
Taylor looked up and found Idi crouched over him, the axe embedded in his right arm. Idi gritted his teeth from the creeping frostbite.
“Run, Taylor!” Idi commanded him.
Taylor didn’t understand. He scrambled back on his rear in wide-eyed terror.
Atticus yanked the axe out of Idi’s arm and reeled back for another blow. Idi spun around, then scooped up Taylor.
“What are you doing?” Taylor squirmed against his grasp.
Idi slammed Taylor to the plate glass window overlooking the mundane mobs of New Orleans below. Idi coughed against the cold, and frost gathered around his lips. He rested a hand on Taylor’s chest. “Do you trust me?”
“Like fuck I do!” Taylor cursed him.
“You will.” Idi slammed a burst of green crackling energy into Taylor’s chest. The window shattered. “I said,
run
!”
Taylor fell into the icy open air.
May 10
The Destruction of Ideas
THE PUNGENT
stench of singed hair and melted nylon mingled with the pleasantries of fresh-baked sugar cookies.
Corentin choked for air and jerked upright, clutching his pounding head. The pain shot across his face from his own touch, and his fingers came away slicked with blood.
Idea lay in ruins around him. Temple columns had toppled and crushed rows of cars. In the back rows, vehicles leaked gasoline and then sparked into blistering explosions.
Corentin shielded his eyes from the multicolored flashes, from fire, to ice, to greenery, to lightning. Lacey’s vest had been composed of several different potions, all interacting with one another and creating the perfect method for obliteration.
Lacey’s scorched hand sat across his lap, her rings and bracelets all aglow in the firelight. Her wraparound fern tattoo was partly visible. But the rest of Lacey had gone missing.
Corentin staggered to his feet, but then doubled over as he hacked up a gob of blackened blood. His dark magic had saved his life, but keeping him upright for one more day would shave another day off his lifespan.
His ears rang with a single shrill note as he stumbled through the vertigo.
Idea crumbled around him. A temple column fell as easy as a flower stalk and crushed a row of cars under its ancient weight.
A dull boom shook the floor and threw Corentin to the left. Instinct took over, and he caught himself on a chunk of bejeweled rubble.
A hand slapped on his shoulder, startling him.
Aliss ducked back, anticipating Corentin would strike. Her lips moved and sounds echoed in his mind. She pointed and still tried to communicate.
What?
He assumed he asked.
What?
Corentin shook his head.
Aliss screamed in his ear. The drowned-out warble became clear. “We need to go! Idea is collapsing!”
I know!
Corentin tried to say. “I know!” he managed to verbalize and hear his own voice. “We need to find Gabrielle!”
Aliss gripped his shoulder, refusing to release him. “I said we have to go, Devereaux.”
Corentin jerked away. “Not without my sister.”
Idea rumbled like a night terror about to break.
Corentin climbed through the debris, over the ancient stones formed from the Storytellers’ imaginations and now dismissed like acceptable casualties. He shoved his way through ivy-coated columns, under frozen timbers, and over hunks of bubbles encased in ruined cars. “Gabrielle!” he called. “Gabrielle!”
Fear gripped him and sank in with burning teeth.
Corentin had lost Taylor; he wasn’t going to lose his only family. She knew so much, and he had infinite questions neither would live long enough to answer. She was his key to finding himself, and with her, he could regain his confidence with Taylor. He’d finally understand what it was like to do anything.
“Gabrielle!” he hollered as he navigated a bubbling splatter of lava.
Briar vines crept over the walls and mingled with the flaming stones. Support beams slithered and reared up like angry cobras, snapping their fearsome jaws and splinter fangs.
Aliss followed. “Dammit, Devereaux. Leave her. She’s gone!”
Corentin growled back. His mind was beyond making words, his eyes wild and burning bright with desperation.
Aliss hesitated and seemed to understand his point.
“
…Revo ereh….
”
Corentin perked at the sound of Gabrielle’s ragged call.
“
Revo ereh!
”
“Gabrielle!” Corentin found her pinned by her arm between Aliss’s red Hummer and a Chevy Silverado. He leaped over the mangled cars, and his fingers slipped on the metals transformed into water and stuck to the other metals turned to ice.
He was getting fucking tired of ice.
Gabrielle tugged at her arm and pointed. “
Mra! Ym mra!
” she cried, so scared she couldn’t form English.
“It’s okay.” Corentin hid his uncertainty behind a smile.
Aliss pulled him aside. “Let me.”
With a roll of the wrist, Aliss summoned her great cleaver into existence. She braced herself between the Hummer and the truck and wedged the cleaver close to Gabrielle. Aliss furrowed her blonde brows and pulled back, prying the cars apart.
Gabrielle pulled, but her arm wouldn’t move. “
Pleh!
” she cried out. “
Pleh!
”
“I’m trying!” Aliss growled low and guttural as her face reddened with the pull.
Corentin grabbed the hilt of Aliss’s cleaver and assisted in the effort. The Hummer and the truck squealed in a creaking bend of metal on metal.
Gabrielle wiggled, trying to work herself loose. She jerked free with a scream and collapsed against Corentin.
He held her tight and kept his expression even at the deep gash down to her shoulder joint. Both of them could withstand much on their dark magic, but Corentin took note of Aliss’s pointed glance at Gabrielle’s wound. Instead of giving the obvious answer—she’d probably lose her arm—Corentin smiled brightly to Gabrielle. “You’re going to be okay,” he said and locked gazes with her, making sure she could understand. “
Yako? Yako?
”
She nodded and shivered against him.
“She’s going into shock,” he said to Aliss, and Gabrielle looked between them and tried to parse the words.
Explosions thundered behind them, the force flinging the trio against the crumpled Hummer and truck.
Gabrielle shrieked from the pain, and Corentin held her tighter.
Idea rippled like a terrible wave on an ancient shore. Brick by brick, the temple of cars collapsed in a slow shower of rubble.
Aliss grabbed Corentin by the wrist and led him along with Gabrielle in tow. “The Valley!” she yelled over the roar of destruction. “We’ll be safe there!”
But Aliss’s hope was cruelly dashed when their only chance of safety burned to the ground. Pixies dropped from the sky in charred husks, and the flowers screamed for the salve of water.
Where were the Storytellers? Why weren’t they writing repairs?
Corentin didn’t need to say anything. Aliss could read it on his heart.
She ripped her page of
Through the Looking Glass
from her pocket and concentrated on the words. Weaving tendrils of red swirled from the paper. “I don’t know where we’ll end up,” she warned them.
Corentin didn’t point out the uncertainty under her authoritative tone. He wouldn’t mention his foolish hope to be with Taylor. He closed his eyes, and the three of them fell into Aliss’s light.
CORENTIN COLLIDED
with the frozen steps. His elbow popped out of joint, sending a buckshot of pain from the crown of his head to his toes. His knee cracked on the edge of a step, and his entire body tensed from the agony. Corentin’s world went hazy as his dark magic took control against his will. His elbow steadied itself just enough to exert movement, and his knee throbbed as the fissures of the larger fractures fused together under the skin.
He found Aliss nearby, crumpled to the sidewalk in a lifeless heap. Her cleaver slowly dissolved in lazy red sparks, dying in the night.
“Aliss?” Corentin asked as he fought to get his footing. He slipped on the icy sidewalk and crashed to his hip next to her. A sharp gasp tore from Corentin’s throat at the same time as Aliss hacked up her first breath.
She rolled to her stomach and spit up traces of vomit. Aliss rubbed her temples, her blonde hair a disaster of dirt, blood, and ice. “Where did we end up?” she mumbled, then broke into gagging heaves again.
Corentin found the broken wooden sign jutting out of the bushes. “New Orleans Public Library. Cita Dennis Hubble branch,” he read, then straightened. “We’re in Algiers. The city proper is across the river.” He politely turned away as Aliss retched again.
Sharp, gasping chirps of birds rustled through the bushes. Corentin listened for the direction of the sound, narrowing his eyes in concentration.
Gabrielle’s bloody, ashen hand twitched through the icy underbrush.
Corentin slapped a hand over his mouth. “No. No, no. Nononono…,” he cried and scrambled to her on his hands and knees. “Gabrielle….”
Cracking through the frozen shrubs was like cracking concrete with only bare hands. Corentin put his weight into it, snapping away branches that shattered like glass on the sidewalk.
There she lay. Gabrielle’s wide-eyed terrified gaze said it all. Her breath whistled as she forced in shallow gasps for air. The frozen branch jutted cruelly from her chest. Her black Cronespawn blood ran in inky rivulets over the ice, freezing on contact.
“Corentin…,” she said, her voice cracking.
He latched on to her hand. The ash and soot of her skin mingled with her blood and turned it into sludge.
“
Hold on
,” he told her in Curse Word. “
Hold on. You’ll be burning soon. You’ll be fine. You’re going to be fine. Okay?
”
Tears streamed from her ash-speckled face as her voice whistled. “Corentin….” She flailed to cup his cheek, and her fingers smeared his skin with dirty streaks. “Corentin….”