Whisper of Shadows (The Diamond City Magic Novels) (23 page)

We went down two flights and reached a closed fire door. I leaned against the wall as Price heaved a pile of rubble out of the way. Finally, he managed to open it about eighteen inches. I eased through, and he followed. The emergency lights that had been activated after I nulled the building’s spells down illuminated the darkness.

On the other side of the fire door were more steps going down, and another closed doorway leading out into the building. There was relatively little damage here, except that the doors had been sealed shut. It looked to be the work of Jamie and Leo. Beyond, someone hammered against the steel door. There were no windows to see how many people were trapped or who they were, but I was glad to hear signs of life. Price was too. He closed his eyes, and his lips moved in something that looked like a prayer.

We continued down, following the trace. Price kept our pace slow. His feet were a bloody mess. They left a trail of red prints behind us. Each landing was alike, insomuch as the door into the building was sealed shut and voices and hammering sounded behind each. I couldn’t help grinning each time as relief jetted through me. On the fourth level down, which was apparently level six, the door was gone, and the trace trail led through it. It wasn’t until that moment that I remembered Price’s mom.

I spun around and caught his upper arms, ignoring the throbbing pain of the movement. “Your mother.”

The look on his face was utter heartbreak. Abruptly, he jerked away, his muscles tightening into steel cables. His expression hardened. “What about her?”

What about her? She’d come here to help the FBI destroy him, and all he could say was “What about her?” I led with the obvious. “She tried to shoot you.”

“She did shoot me.”

I blinked at that. Then my stomach flip-flopped. Despite the fact that he had no reason to lie to me and it was ridiculous to think so, I denied it. “No. You’d be bleeding more. I was inside you. I’d have known.” But of course, I hadn’t known. It hadn’t occurred to me to look. “Where?”

Price shrugged and then thought the better of putting me off. “Thigh.”

To see it I’d have to strip him mostly naked, thanks to the jumpsuit. I crouched to see the wound for myself. He let go of my wrists. The hole was practically invisible beneath the thick dust. The bullet had gone into the interior of his right thigh. Close to the femoral artery. But no, if he’d been hit there, he’d be dead now. I made myself let go of my sudden panic and gave him a crooked smile.

“At least it wasn’t too serious. It didn’t bleed much.”

He grimaced. “I’m holding it closed.”

Of course he was. It was going to take awhile to work my brain around his potential. “Neat trick,” I said, straightening up. His mother’s shot must have been what released his magic, his instinctive need to preserve his life. “Handy.”

I kept my face expressionless. When he stopped being able to hold the wound closed, what then? If his femoral was hit, then he’d die in a matter of seconds. Maybe he’d have a minute. We could tie a tight bandage, but I had no idea how long that would hold, especially since it was going to take awhile to get out of here.

Unfortunately, Price could read me like a book.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Did your mom take parenting lessons from Lizzie Borden?” I turned and started walking. Time was more my enemy now than it had been before.

“Lizzie Borden killed her parents with an ax. Not quite the same thing.”

“It’s the best I can do. I’m not up on famous murderous moms. Maybe if I read more Stephen King.” That won a flicker of a smile. It vanished as quickly as it had arrived. “Maybe we should make a New Year’s resolution. Give up near-death experiences. It would make life easier for each other.”

“It’s March,” he pointed out. “A little late. Or early.”

“Never too late to make positive life changes.” I slid my hand into his. His fingers clenched around mine as if he clung to a lifeline. I welcomed the pain.

“All right. I so resolve,” he said.

“Amen, brother.”

“How do you do at keeping your New Year’s resolutions?” he asked after a moment.

“As of this instant, I just started nailing them a hundred percent.”

We fell silent. I knew we were close to our destination when we reached wreckage again. It was like a bomb had gone off. Emergency lighting illuminated the destruction. Shattered furniture and computers mounded together, piled against rubble and stumps of walls. Holes gaped in the ceiling where the tiles hung down or had disappeared altogether.

I picked my way across. We’d been underground when Price went off. How had he ended up on the surface without collapsing the entire underground of the building?

We’d not gone far before we found ourselves facing a wall of rubble. I could feel frigid air brushing down over the top of it. My breath unfurled white from my lips. The trace trails we followed went through the rubble.

“We’ve got to climb over. They’re on the other side.” I said it, but I didn’t know how we were going to manage it.

“It’ll kill us. That stuff is loose. One thing gives way and we go down under an avalanche. Besides, with your injuries, you wouldn’t get three feet up.”

He was right on both counts. “What other choice do we have?”

He let go of my hand and rubbed both hands over his face. I felt magic gathering.

“Can you do this?” I asked. He was past exhausted, and holding on to control with his fingernails. Using his magic had to feel like pushing shattered glass through his veins.

“I will. You showed me how.”

I’d shown him how, but I hadn’t given him superhero strength.

His jaw hardened into stone. His body tightened, his muscles bulging with effort. Despite the cold, sweat beaded on his forehead. Rock grated and rumbled. I resisted the urge to step back, setting my hand on his lower back to remind him I was there.

The grating sounds increased and turned to rolling thunder. Dust swirled into the air, and bits of wood, metal, stone, and other debris crumbled down the side of the mounded wall, bouncing across the floor. Several things pelted me in the legs, and one hit hard enough to bruise. I hissed through my teeth, but otherwise kept quiet. I didn’t want to distract Price.

Slowly a hole opened up in front of us. It started small and pushed up and outward until it was about four feet across. Tons of debris sat above it. Nothing fell from it. A layer of thick air held it tight from falling. The inner edges of the tunnel fluttered loosely, grating and rumbling, but it held steady.

“Go!” Price said hoarsely. “I can’t hold it long.”

Sweat had mixed with the dust on his face and turned to rivulets of mud. His eyes gleamed pearl white and his mouth twisted into a grimace of effort. He looked like he wore a devil mask.

“What about you?”

He shook his head, his face screwing tight. “I’m sorry. I can’t—Go.” The last word dripped despair. At himself, for not being stronger, at me, for having to go alone without him, without help. He was running on fumes. He probably wouldn’t be able to hold the tunnel long enough for me to come back. Which meant he also wasn’t going to be able to hold the cocoons either. Once they evaporated, everybody he was protecting in there under the rubble might be crushed. Neither was he going to be able to hold his wound closed.

“Go,” he said again.

“Your wound.” I protested.

“I’ll manage. Go. I can’t hold the opening.”

I hesitated in an agony of indecision. Then I turned and started toward the hole. They needed help now, and Price and I were the only ones who could give it.

I slipped and slid over the tumbles of building wreckage. My ribs screamed as my foot skidded over a loose piece of stone. I twisted, falling to one knee and catching myself on my hands. Blackness clouded my vision as steel teeth chewed through my chest. Behind me, Price drew in ragged breaths, panting faster as the strain on him grew.

I struggled to my feet and staggered onward in an Oscar-worthy impression of a shambling zombie after a plague apocalypse. I’m sure I looked like one, too. I tried not to think about what I was about to do. Even though the tunnel wasn’t that long—maybe ten feet across—it pegged my claustrophobia meter into the red. In fact, I’m pretty sure the dial was just spinning, I was so crazy scared. It’s one thing to crawl through a pipe that you imagine could cave in on you; it’s another thing to go through one that is actually fighting to collapse. Worse, it was on its way to the winner’s circle. I just had to get through before it lost cohesion. Before Price ran out of juice.

Even so, once I stood in front of the hole, I couldn’t move. The whole thing shifted and scraped, chuckling with demonic voices, promising to crush me, smash me into spaghetti sauce, and devour me.

I told myself to just rush through. Like I was capable of rushing. At this point it was all I could do to stay upright. I eyed the fluttering, shifting tube. I wanted to get through. God only knows how much I wanted to. I couldn’t.

Then I didn’t have a choice. Something scooped me up and rocketed me through. I had this image of me sitting in a barber chair and suddenly zooming down a moving sidewalk. Very George Jetson. It swept me through to the other side before I had a chance to even think.

Instantly the invisible chair dissolved. I crumpled to the ground. I may have screamed. I know I started swearing, and my eyes were leaking unceasingly. I refused to call it crying. I wasn’t crying, dammit. I was exhausted, stretched to my limits, hungry, hurting, and terrified, but I absolutely was not crying.

I took my bearings. Two walls of the cell still stood. I tried to remember the layout of the space. I thought those walls had been behind Price when he blew. If so—I turned. Where had I been standing? My stomach lurched. About six feet under a pile of rubble, if I was right. A lighter layer covered the floor, though I had to guess it was still two feet thick at least. Too much for just what he’d knocked down locally.

I looked up, following the current of cold that poured down from overhead. A massive hole punched through the levels above. I could see stars glimmering through the slowly settling murk. A weirdly calm voice in my head noted that Price must have escaped to the surface that way, lifted on his wind.

I considered what was left of his cell and the room beyond. Price still held the tunnel open. Given the wreckage, I didn’t think we’d have a quick escape. Much of the covering layer of debris had come from Price’s escape hole. Everything else had been pushed into the encircling wall. I had no idea how deep the floor’s layer of rubble went. Two feet, maybe more. Enough to crush someone to death.

I staggered to my feet, searching for Leo’s and Jamie’s traces. Their metal talents would help rescue everyone else and stabilize the escape tunnel.

I found Leo first. I clambered across to the point where his trace emerged from the wreckage and started to dig. Every moment was pure pain. I bent and lifted a bit of masonry and dropped it behind me, then did it again. My chest screamed. My muscles shook with strain. My vision narrowed to small points, and my hearing turned muffled. My head filled with the overwhelming thud of my blood pounding through my heart.

I knew I hadn’t any time, so I didn’t stop. I was moving too slowly. I couldn’t make myself speed up. I’d reached my limit. An angry sound burst out when I lifted a chunk of masonry only to cause more rubble to tumble down into the hole I’d made. I wanted to pause to catch my breath, catch my balance. Instead, I bent again to my task.

I uncovered Leo’s cocoon. Not just a cocoon. Thin steel mesh traced under the inside, following the contours of the air bubble. It would support the rock when the cocoon collapsed. I would have cried with relief if I wasn’t out of tears. At some point the waterworks had shut off. Given that I felt like dried-up leather, I expect I ran out of spare liquid.

The surface of the cocoon felt like roughened plastic, and I had to remind myself that it was only air. I rubbed away at the dust on the surface and found myself looking at cloth through the holes in the mesh. I needed to find Leo’s head. I stepped down on top of him and dug more.

For once I had good luck and soon found his neck, then his chin, then his entire head. I bent over him, rubbing away the grime from his cocoon. He looked okay. He had a couple bruises on his chin and forehead, and blood trickled from his swollen nose. He’d broken it. He lay on his back, one arm across his chest, the other arm up around his head. His eyes fixed on me, flaring with emotion.

“Can you hear me?” I croaked, then coughed, because I wasn’t hurting nearly enough. When I caught my breath and straightened back up from my curling crouch, I looked down at him again. “Can you hear me?”

He gave the barest nod and then made a sound that could have been a yes. His air prison was too tight to allow him to speak.

“The air cocoons are going to go away. Price is almost done. You’ll have to hurry to help me dig out the others when it goes. I’m going to look for Jamie.”

I didn’t wait for a response. I climbed out of the hole, scrabbling up over the uncertain pile of wreckage. I tore my pants as my leg skidded down. Distant pain flared in my knees. I clambered to the top and found where Jamie lay, about fifteen feet from Leo. If anything, the rubble seemed deeper here. I didn’t let myself think about it. Urgency clawed at me.

I’d been expecting the tunnel collapse, so I shouldn’t have startled when it finally crashed down. It gave with a tremendous grinding noise that sounded like thunder. I jumped and staggered, bending to catch myself with my hands as the ground beneath me shook and settled. Dust billowed, and I pulled my shirt up over my mouth. It was sticky with sweat and filth, but it kept me from coughing.