Authors: Ilona Andrews
He grinned. “But no, seriously. Something happened? Or is it just because Katya was there?”
“Katya?”
“Kate. Your friend.”
“Oh. No, it’s not her.” I shrugged. “I spent a long time locking up a part of myself. I thought it was best that I suppress my animal side. You know, the bad part.”
He nodded.
“But it wasn’t bad. Turned out I had been smothering something essential inside myself. Maimed it. I hobbled myself like a prisoner in leg irons and then heroically limped through life. When I think about all of the fun I could’ve had, all the chances I could’ve taken, it makes me a little sick. But now I’m free. Maybe a little too free, but I’m enjoying it.”
“Enjoying is good,” he said.
“You understand about letting go, don’t you?” I asked. He probably didn’t get to let himself off the chain that often either.
His face turned grim. “I let go, lives end. People like me have many names. Volhv,
kudesnik
, which means ‘magician,’
charodei
, which means ‘enchanter,’ but the most common term in history was
mudrets
. A wise man. People say that wisdom is bought with experience, which is just a polite way of saying that you’ll fuck up a lot, people will get hurt, and your guilt will gnaw on you in your dreams. Well, I’ve earned
my wisdom, every drop of it. Let’s talk of something else. Let’s talk of how when we get to your office, you will offer me a cup of tea. You drink tea, right?”
I nodded. Maybe I would offer him a cup of tea. Why not?
“What kind of tea?”
“Earl Grey, if I can get it.”
“You put sugar in it?”
“No.”
He stopped, a shocked expression on his face. “No sugar?”
“No.”
“You have to have sugar. And lemon.”
The night breeze swirled about me and I caught a weak hint of jasmine, followed by the exact same layered scent I’d smelled in Gloria’s office. I notched an arrow and spun, scanning the ruins.
“What is it?”
“We’re about to get jumped.”
“By whom?”
“Venomous people with snake fangs in their heads.”
The ruins lay deserted, no movement. A least half a mile separated us from the street and another mile or two of the bridge remained.
Roman pulled the bird staff out of its leather holder. “Where are they coming from?”
“I don’t know.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
Behind us, something clanked against the wood. I whirled. A woman climbed over the edge and rolled onto the bridge coming to a crouch, holding a tactical combat blade. A man pulled himself up behind her.
No physical strain. No fighting, no running…Well, I was screwed.
A dry pop, like glass cracking, punched my eardrums. A cloud of black smoke exploded on the other side of the bridge, cutting us off.
“Teleportation, huh. Okay. I got this,” Roman muttered and dug in the pouches on his belt.
The woman hissed at me, baring fangs.
Okay. Enough of that.
I fired. The bowstring twanged and the arrow sprouted from the woman’s left eye.
The man charged at me.
Arrow, sight, draw, fire, all in the space of a second.
The second shaft sliced through the man’s throat, ripping a satisfying scream. He faltered, stumbled, and pitched over the side.
The black smoke coalesced into a bald man. He wore a strange pleated robe of brick-red fabric and an odd-looking apron. He held a short staff in his hand. Several small clay spheres hung from the staff, suspended by a string like a bunch of grapes. Another wizard. Great.
Roman yanked a pouch off his belt and hurled reddish powder into the air. The tiny dust granules hung, unmoving, shook, turning black, and sprouted wings. A swarm of black flies streamed toward the man.
More people scrambled onto the bridge.
Arrow—fire. Arrow—fire.
Two fell but they kept coming.
Fire, fire, fire.
The man howled a single word. Magic slapped me, nearly ripping the bow from my fingers. The flies rained down in a cloud of ash.
The man waved his staff around, tore a small pot off of it, and hurled it at the ground. The bridge shivered and white scorpions skittered over the boards, heading for us.
I sent another man flying off the bridge with my arrow in his chest. Two more crawled up to take his place. Were they cloning these guys under the bridge?
“It’s like that, then? Okay.” Roman barked out something vicious and drew a line with his staff, and spat. The scorpions reached the line and melted into boiling goo.
The man let loose a string of unfamiliar syllables and pulled out a strange-looking knife. The moonlight gleamed off the roughly hewn blade and the man sliced himself across his chest. Blood poured. He ripped the entire bunch of spheres off his staff and smashed them on the ground.
Dark wavy lines formed upon the bridge boards and coalesced into snakes. Hundreds of snakes.
Not again.
“I can command snakes, too,” Roman yelled. “This won’t help you.”
“We’ll see!” the man yelled back.
The snakes slithered to us.
“Imenem Chernoboga!”
Roman thrust his staff into the boards and planted his legs, gripping the staff directly in front of him with both hands. The bridge quaked. The staff opened its beak and screeched. Wind spun around Roman, stirring his robe. The snakes halted, unsure.
The other wizard shook his staff. The snakes attempted their best to slither forward, but hit an invisible wall of Roman’s magic.
The black volhv clenched his teeth. The muscles of his face shook from the strain. Sweat broke out at his hairline.
The snakes reversed their course but made it only a few feet before slamming into the other wizard’s magic. The reptiles began piling onto each other. Heads reared, and the snakes bit each other in a frenzy.
I had five arrows left.
Four.
The swarm built on itself. The injured snakes split in half, growing extra heads and tails and multiplying with shocking speed.
Roman shoved the three-foot-tall knot of snakes back at the other wizard.
The wizard ripped the wound on his chest and flung his blood at the swarm, pushing it back.
Two arrows.
“You will not pass!” Roman thundered.
Great. Now he had decided he was Gandalf.
The five-foot snake swarm teetered toward the wizard. They just kept shoving the snakes back and forth with their magic, and meanwhile the swarm was growing bigger and bigger. It was a tower now, a boiling, slithering tower of reptile flesh.
“I’ll eat your guts!” the wizard yelled. The snake tower careened back toward Roman.
Last arrow. I had to make it count.
“If I tell you that yours is bigger, will you kill him?” I snarled.
“I’m trying,” Roman squeezed the words out through clenched teeth. Blood poured from his nose.
I spun to the heap of dripping snakes, ran to the side of the bridge, and leaped onto the wooden rail, balancing on my toes. The snake tower rocked this way and that and through the gap I glimpsed the wizard’s strained face.
I fired.
The arrow punched through the left half of his chest. He gasped, clamping his fingers to the arrow’s shaft.
Roman groaned and the snake tower spilled over, burying the wizard.
I turned around. There were seven people on the bridge and they had stopped advancing, gaping at the writhing knot of reptilian bodies.
The knot showed no signs of getting smaller. In fact it was growing bigger, expanding like a snake tornado.
“Uh-oh,” Roman said.
“What do you mean, ‘Uh-oh’?”
He glanced at me. “Run!” And then he turned and sprinted down the length of the bridge, leading his horse by the reins.
It’s never a good thing when the black volhv says “Uh-oh” and then runs for his life. I dashed after him, ignoring the black specks fluttering before my eyes and the pain returning to my muscles.
We ran past our attackers. A moment later, they saw the writing on the wall and followed us. We pounded down the bridge. Behind me something roared. I didn’t look back.
The air turned to fire in my lungs. My stomach lurched. Nausea came, followed by vertigo.
We cleared the bridge. Roman dropped to one knee, breathing like there was an anvil on his chest. I turned around.
A thirty-foot tower of snakes rose behind us. It swayed, rocking back and forth, dripping wriggling snake bodies, and exploded. Reptiles rained onto the ruins, revealing a single creature. Its long serpentine body was coiled into a tight spring. Brilliant gold and amber feathers flanked its triangular snake head. I had seen winged snakes before. They were tiny. Three feet was considered to be a large specimen.
The serpent raised its fanged maw to the skies. Scarlet
wings snapped open along its chest. It sprung up, uncoiling its ten-foot-long body, and took to the sky.
“Well, that’s not good,” a woman said behind me.
“Did Martinez turn into this, or did they eat him?” a man asked.
“How am I supposed to know? He was the priest.”
I spun around. The nine of us looked at each other. Roman pushed off the ground.
No arrows, I felt half-dead, and my volhv was all used up. There was only one thing I could do.
A large, blond woman jerked her sword up and charged me. I met her halfway, changing shape as I moved. My claws sliced into her stomach, cutting through the fragile muscle. Her slippery entrails slid against my fingers. I grasped a handful of intestines, ripped the sodden mass out, and flung it at the rest of her crew. A blood-curdling hyena cackle broke free from my fanged, black-lipped mouth. I charged.
A man stepped in my way. His blade cut my side, but I didn’t care. I gripped his right arm, wrenched it out of the socket, and tore it off.
The mist of blood lingered in the area like an exotic, entrancing perfume. I danced through it, drunk, but crystal clear, maiming, killing, carving the pliant flesh into hot, juicy morsels. They fell before me and I loved it. Rage sang through my veins, fuel to my internal inferno. Inside me a distant small voice squeaked a warning—I was using up the last of my fragile reserves—but it felt so good and I didn’t want to stop.
Another man stepped in front of me. I backhanded him out of the way. He flew and fell. Fun! I chased him and pinned him to the ground. My teeth snapped a hair from his throat.
Hello, prey!
A familiar scent zinged through my nose. I knew this scent. I puzzled over it, holding the man down.
A name floated up to the surface of my memory:
Roman.
Reality slammed into me, sudden and hard. I pulled myself back from the brink. My mind registered the strained expression on Roman’s face and my claws puncturing his shoulders.
Oh God.
I rocked back, releasing him, slipped on something slick, and slumped against a ruined building. The street was filled
with bodies. Blood pooled in the recesses of the uneven pavement, its scent like the cut of a razor on my tongue. A thing that used to be a woman lay only a few feet away. Half of her stomach was missing and her skull was a mess of crushed bone. I had done that.
“You okay?” I asked softly. My voice was hoarse.
“Yeah.” Roman slowly rolled up. “What the fuck was that?”
“Bouda rage. It happens sometimes when we’re at our limit. We get a few minutes of berserker rage.” It was the last-ditch defensive mechanism of a body out of options. “I was bitten by a viper earlier. The Pack medmage pumped me full of antivenom. It made me weak, so when I turned, my body reacted. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Roman brushed his robe and got up. “No worries. Black doesn’t show blood at all.”
“I’m sorry.” He had no idea how close I had come to killing him.
“No worries. Look.” He raised his arms, indicating the scene with the dismembered bodies, blood, and his black horse at the beginning of the bridge. “All our enemies are dead, we survived, the horse survived, the staff survived. I even get to say the best line from my favorite book. All is well.”
I pushed away from the building. Roman opened his mouth to say something and didn’t close it.
“What is it?”
“Breasts.”
“Oh for the love of God!”
Roman squeezed his eyes shut and turned away from me. “I have a cloak in my bag.”
“I’m comfortable with my body the way it is,” I growled.
He turned toward me a little and opened one eye, then turned and looked at me. Or rather at my chest.
“Don’t stare.”
“You said you were comfortable.”
Comfortable was one thing. Being on the receiving end of a very male stare was another.
“How about we find some gauze and bandage your shoulders,” I suggested.
“It really isn’t that bad.”
We walked toward the horse.
“What were you doing in front of me anyway?” I asked.
“You had that dark-haired bitch by the throat and kept beating her head against the wall for almost three minutes,” he said. “I became concerned…”
A red and gold silhouette plummeted from the sky. It dived at the horse, bit the Bone Staff, ripping it from the leather, and shot up to the clouds.
Holy shit.
Roman fell to his knees. He opened his mouth and let out a wordless scream of pure rage. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”
“It will be okay,” I told him.
“I had it! It was in my hands!” He showed me his hands, as if expecting the staff to materialize in his fingers. “In my hands! Eight hundred years!”
“I know,” I told him. “I know.”
He slumped forward. “I had it and I lost it. I lost it!”
“Come on,” I told him. “Let’s get ourselves home before we both pass out.”
We climbed the stairs to my apartment. I had collapsed on the street, my body finally giving out, and we had ended up riding Roman’s horse after all. Roman moved like a zombie. Despondent didn’t even begin to describe him. If despair was liquid, he’d be dripping buckets of it with every step.
“I had it in my hands,” he told me mournfully, halfway up the stairs.
“I’m sure I have some honey in my pantry,” I told him. “And lemon juice. We can have a nice cup of hot tea.”