bullyxtreme Book II. Chapter 78 -
Book II. Chapter 78 -
Chapter 78Ardan’s first instinct was to cast a spell that would be able to manifest despite the limitations imposed on him by the apartment’s stationary shield—but he had no idea if Milar’s alchemy would allow the captain to see through that magical fog. The last thing Ardan wanted was to end up in a blind shootout with his own partner.
So, after a split-second’s hesitation, as both sides recovered and the first shots rang out, Ardan did as Milar had told him to: he cast a shield. With only three red rays to work with, he couldn’t afford anything fancy. All the young mage managed was to summon, one after another, two modified whose entire purpose was to absorb kinetic energy.
The first bullets smacked into the steel-colored, translucent barrier and fell to the floor in a tinkling lead rain. Milar had already cocked and fired his revolver twice, and now he yanked Ardan hard, dragging the youth down behind the sofa—as if wooden framing and soft upholstery could really save them from those steel cones buzzing like angry bumblebees.
Nevertheless, once both of them hit the floor, the captain shoved them sideways, pulling Ardan along with him. In moments like these, there was no time to think—instinct ruled on both sides. The unknown assailants kept emptying their revolvers into the spot where the two partners had just been.
Bullets riddled the sofa, turning the fine upholstery to tatters and filling the air with stuffing. Beams of yellow lamplight knifed in through the newly-perforated sofa back, illuminating empty space—Ardan and Milar were no longer there.
The captain deftly emptied his spent rounds and snapped a fresh “moon” into place, completing his reload in less than a heartbeat. He glanced at Ardan. Not a single word was needed; in that instant, they both understood exactly what to do next.
Nodding once, they sprang up from behind cover in unison. Ardan slammed the butt of his staff against the floor, and another modified flared to life to protect them.
Their foes—there was no doubt that they were at least gangsters, if not worse—had nearly ceased firing. With their few remaining shots, they emptied the rest of their rounds into the new shield. As before, it absorbed only a handful of impacts before dissolving into a dense haze. But while the gunmen were occupied, Milar took full advantage of the reprieve, leveling his revolver and emptying its cylinder in return.
The barrel of his revolver bucked like a disgruntled horse when he squeezed the trigger, spitting fire and lead. Despite that, Milar’s shot found its mark with unerring precision.
Still, the men who had barged into Shpritz’s apartment were clearly not common thugs. As soon as the first one—a stocky, broad-shouldered brute—crumpled onto his back, arms flung wide, bone splinters and brain matter scattering from his shattered skull, the remaining gangsters scattered like roaches exposed to the light. Milar kept firing to pressure them.
One dove aside, slipping on the polished parquet and tumbling over a rug, scrambling behind the jutting wall that separated the kitchen counter from the entryway. The second one, almost imitating what Ardan and Milar had done moments ago, upended furniture behind him as he fled, taking cover behind an overturned pair of armchairs and a side table.
The last one, finding nothing else handy, moved behind the unremarkable door of a closet that stood between the kitchen and the sleeping area.
Shpritz’s apartment was a long, rectangular shoebox, and now it had become a shooting gallery.
Somewhere far below, sirens began to wail. With each heartbeat, their shrill keen climbed higher and closer. Ardan felt a faint vibration through the stationary shields of the building—perhaps the enchantments woven into them were scanning for large fires, gas leaks, or even structural collapses. For all their monstrous energy consumption and complex design, these building-wide shields could do nothing against bullets or small-scale magic—too much area to cover, too many variables to account for.
“Minus one,” Milar remarked with a dark thrill as he dropped back behind the bullet-riddled sofa. He thumbed fresh rounds into his revolver’s cylinder.
“Who the hell are you people?!” A raspy shout demanded from behind the wall that was by the kitchen. “Hammers? The Dandy’s men? Eord’s crew?” The voice rattled off the names of half the gangs in the city. Its owner—whom Milar had dubbed “Consumption” due to his consumptive wheeze—left out only three: the Telkarts, the Jackets, and the scattered remnants of the Crimson Lady’s organization who were barely surviving while the other gangs tore them apart.
Even in the gloom of the darkened living room, despite the extinguished globes of light, the gangsters had surely realized that they weren’t facing orcs, so the Jackets could be ruled out. And the Crimson Lady’s remaining goons never left the Tend district and its warehouses.
Which meant that…
“Damn it, Magister, how are the Telkarts tied up with Shpritz?” Milar hissed, giving voice to the thought that struck them both.
These thugs were none other than the “muscle” of the capital’s biggest smugglers. That was far removed from Shpritz’s original fears. The Telkarts had nothing at all to do with the Anomaly Hunters’ Guild.
“I haven’t the faintest clue…” Ardan murmured, equally baffled.
“Or maybe you’re lawmen?” The wheezing voice of “Consumption” called out again, unwilling to let the silence linger. “How about we save each other some bullets and nerves, eh? You’ve already taken out old Caleb and Matais! How about we call it a night—you go your way, we go ours. No need to send any more husbands home in coffins or widows off with pensions, right?”
Milar’s breathing was growing labored. Barely fifteen seconds had passed since the firefight had begun, and yet his alchemical boost was already fading. In under a minute, it would drain from his system completely.
Ley Alchemy wasn’t some fairy-tale magic from a children’s storybook. The stronger its effects on the body, the steeper the price one paid afterwards. And Milar, for all his skill and grit, was an ordinary human. Anything stronger than the dose he’d already taken could cause irreparable harm—worse by far than even a bullet wound.
Ardan opened his mouth to reply, but Milar thumped him on the shoulder with the butt of his revolver.
“No Cloaks can be left alive to bear witness,” the captain hissed. “We’ve seen their faces.”
Ardan nodded in grim understanding.
Taking a deep breath, he bellowed from behind the sofa, “Guard Corps!” He tried to inject as much authority into his voice as possible. “We’re from the Suppression of Unlawful Privacy Invasions Department! We’re investigating the crimes of Miss Shpritz!”
“Consumption” fell silent for a moment, letting the growing wail of sirens fill the pause. Through the windows, the first crimson strobes of patrol car lights streaked across the night, gathering along the avenue. No doubt some of the well-heeled neighbors in this upscale building had recognized the sound of gunfire and sounded the alarm.
“Nice try, nonhuman!” Consumption barked back, voice sharp with scorn. “As if the Guards have battlemages… You’re from the Narikhman, aren’t you?”
Ardan and Milar exchanged glances. The gang leader’s next guess would inevitably be the Second Chancery—either way, negotiations were at a dead end. And there was no way they could stall long enough for Alexander and Din to arrive.
“Let’s do this,” Milar growled—voicing exactly what Ardan was already thinking.
This time, Ardan took the lead. Conjuring two dense shields shimmering with steel before them, he shattered his last red accumulator to fuel the magic. a distant corner of his mind noted. Imitating the technique of Madam Spree, he struck his staff against the floor several times in rapid succession—so fast the individual blows blurred into one staccato of wood on wood.
Each time the oak staff cracked against the lacquered pine parquet, a brilliant scarlet seal burst to life under Ardan’s feet. Above the staff’s crystal tip, a tiny ember of flame flickered into being—almost like the flame above a candle, if the candle were much too large. The little fire twisted in orange spirals, stretching itself into a long, pointed sliver before shooting off.
The first several burned through the furniture the enemy was using as cover. The final one found a living target, landing on a gangster with a hideous sizzle. The thug shrieked in unholy agony as the spell burned him literally to the bone, searing through his legs and torso. Exposed ribs crumbled, shedding flakes of charred, blackened flesh. The man’s body convulsed and collapsed, twitching, as black, powdery ash drifted from him to the floor. His blood frothed into pink foam, boiling away to vapor in a matter of moments.
“Holy shit, Corporal!” Milar blurted, unable to hold back.
“Cloaks!” Consumption roared in fury at the sight.
For a moment, Ardan found himself unable to tear his eyes away from the horrific result of his magic. He so rarely found himself fighting ordinary humans that he had almost forgotten the destructive power of even the simplest battle magic.
He stared, transfixed, at the charred corpse writhing in its final death throes. He only did so for a split second… but a split second was still too long on the battlefield.
When the next hail of bullets came raining down on them, Ardan threw up another shield. But he was an instant slower than he should have been. And due to his lapse, only the most basic, reflexive shield appeared, the one hammered so deeply into his subconscious that it sprang forth without thought. A plain, ancient () shimmered into being around the young mage, looking like a transparent film of ice. A bullet that should have punched clean through his center of mass instead slammed into his left forearm, which went numb as the bone snapped and his arm fell limp at his side like a useless flail.
Despite the blinding flash of pain—a white-hot spike thrust into his mind—Ardan conjured a second shield. Or rather, he tried to do so. The Red Star blazing in his mind had only a single ray left, and the modified required two.
Ardan could already see the second bullet tearing through his gut… but at that same moment, an explosion of light flared next to his wounded arm, nearly knocking him out. Milar, launching himself off the floor, had body-slammed Ardan’s shoulder and sent the young man sprawling onto his back.
A deep cry tore itself free from Ardan’s throat, rising into a raw, feral growl. But it died as swiftly as it came. Ardan felt something wet dripping onto his face.
“We’re pulling out!” Consumption shouted from the other room. Together with the gangster who’d been hiding in the closet, he bolted for the corridor.
Ardan, however, only had eyes for Milar. The captain was gasping and wheezing for breath. A bullet had passed a hand’s breadth from his heart, seemingly doing little harm. That’s what Ardan might have thought if not for the time he’d spent studying Star Healing.
He saw pale, frothy bubbles in the blood soaking Milar’s torn, blood-drenched shirt. Perhaps the gunmen hadn’t realized they’d hit him. Or more likely—and more grimly—they didn’t care to suffer the same fate as their charred comrade.
“Ar…hhd…” Milar tried to suck in air, but the harder he struggled, the slower his heart thudded and the more ominously the blood in his wound frothed.
“Sleeping Spirits!” Ardan swore.
In one swift motion, he tore open Milar’s shirt and ripped away the captain’s belt. Next, Ardan yanked open his grimoire and drew his father’s knife from its sheath. Pressing the blade down with all his strength, he managed to saw out several pages of parchment. Who would have guessed that the expensive military grimoire he’d acquired a few months back would end up being used as an improvised bandage—waterproof and airtight?
Without ceremony, Ardan cut apart his partner’s clothing around the wound. Soaking the pages liberally in Milar’s blood, he slapped both Ley-parchments over his entry and exit wounds, then cinched the belt around Milar’s chest tight enough that it pressed directly over the makeshift patches.
He accomplished all of this one-handed, gritting his teeth against the stabbing pain from the shattered bone in his other arm.
“This is going to hurt,” he warned.
“Do ihh…” Milar wheezed.
Ardan pulled the belt taut with all his might, crushing the wound shut and forcing the enchanted pages into the bleeding holes. Milar screamed almost as loud as the still-smoldering gangster had moments before. His body jerked, and then the captain went limp, his head lolling onto Ardan’s shoulder. A few broken teeth tumbled out of his bloody mouth.
Ardan spat. He should have put something between Milar’s teeth for him to bite down on—but in his defense, he didn’t often have to save someone from a fatal wound without using his magic.
With only a single red ray left, none of Ardan’s healing spells were usable. Instead, he frantically began gathering up the potion vials strewn across the floor, popping their corks one after another, sniffing and then tossing them aside until a bitter, resinous smell with a hint of hot ash hit his nose. This was Fiery St. John’s Wort, a Ley-herb base for quick-acting, invigorating elixirs. In simple terms—it was a magical version of adrenaline.
Smearing himself with blood, Ardan pried Milar’s mouth open and poured the potion down his partner’s throat, then pinched Milar’s nose shut. The man’s body reflexively swallowed and the captain convulsed, suddenly arching as he gulped in air and bellowed.
“Shiith! Fuuuckah! Daammm… Milar screamed, blood bubbling through his broken teeth and mangling his words. “Wh…y th’ fuh… are yuh shtill… hhere?!”
“What?” Ardan was caught off guard.
“G-get aft’r them, f-fuckh!” Milar snarled, spitting through his blood and lisp.
“I-”
“Thash… ish an orrder!” Milar choked out, the words barely intelligible.
Ardan locked eyes with his partner. The captain was in no immediate danger of dying now, and Alexander and Din would be arriving soon. On the street outside, a voice amplified by a loudspeaker was already booming commands and the guards were cordoning off not just the “House of Dukes,” but the entire block in order to ensure that their military unit could move in and secure the building.
“Don’t you dare die on me here!” Ardan barked. He pressed Milar’s hands down over the wound, then snatched up his staff and dashed out into the corridor.
He could smell the fear oozing from behind some of the nearby apartment doors, but Ardan raced after the stench of gunpowder, cheap liquor and sweat—the odor that always clung to fleeing prey.
Forcing his claws and fangs to retract, Ardi skidded to a stop in front of the elevator. The doors yawned open to reveal only a gaping steel shaft plunging into darkness. The building’s safety systems—mechanical and Ley-driven both—had shut the lifts down to prevent anyone from plummeting into a burning, hungry maw in case of a fire.
The scent trail led Ardan the opposite way—toward the fire escape stairs. Ignoring the pain from his shattered arm, which flopped uselessly at his side, Ardan let the Matabar blood in his veins do its work while he sprinted for the stairwell. Each step sent a jolt of pain through his dangling limb, but thanks to Ardan’s paternal lineage, at least the bleeding had stopped and the wound had even closed by now; the bone, of course, would take longer. Likely a week at best…
Thoughts for tomorrow.
He kicked open the stairwell door and burst onto the concrete stairs. They spiraled both upward and downward, carpeted on the landings and divided by metal railings. From below came the clatter of the guards’ hobnailed boots on metal—and the smell he was tracking wound its way up.
The gangsters were running upstairs, away from the approaching lawmen. What was their plan? Ardan had no clue.
Flaring his nostrils wide, he gave chase. Three steps at a time, again and again, he bounded upward, all while trying not to lose the scent trail of acrid gunpowder (in case the thugs decided to exit onto one of the floors) and at the same time, he did his best not to unleash the full instincts of the hunter within him. Precious little quickened the blood like frightened prey on the run, promising his claws and fangs hot, spurting blood and a hearty feast.
Ardan squeezed his eyes shut and, recalling the soothing smell of spring blossoms by a babbling brook, banished those feral memories from his childhood.
When he opened his eyes again, he found himself at a door that led out to the roof. What did the desperate, exhausted gangsters think they would find on the roof of a forty-story building?
Slamming his good shoulder into the metal door and ripping off the padlock that had secured it (no human muscles should have been capable of that, but Ardan’s certainly were), he barreled through, staff raised to strike… and immediately felt the tingle of the building’s stationary shield, its very edge brushing against him.
Ardan thought bitterly, cursing under his breath.
The engineers who’d erected the shield had apparently decided to extend its boundary over the roof as well. Both logic and regulations said that the outermost layer of the shield’s structure should have been the top floor’s ceiling! As a result, the “House of Dukes” was spending at least a couple hundred extra red rays a month on wasteful coverage.
These detached musings on Star Engineering—like the memory of Tess’ scent—helped Ardan keep his fangs and claws in check. The thrill of the chase, the smell of blood, the throbbing pain in his arm… all of it urged the beast in him to surface. He refused to let it.
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Skirting around vents, lightning rods, the ribbed coils of wind turbines, and all manner of rooftop machinery, Ardan nearly reached the building’s edge—nearly, because a flurry of bullets struck a ventilation duct in front of him, spraying golden sparks everywhere. He ducked back behind it.
In that split-second glimpse, he managed to spot the two gangsters on the parapet. They had white vapor pouring off their faces and hands. “Consumption” and “Board” stood on the ledge, peering down at the dizzying drop.
“Drop your weapons!” Ardan shouted from behind cover. “Prison is still better than whatever gravity and the asphalt will do to you!”
His only answer was two strangled screams that rapidly faded away.
“No… it can’t be…” Ardan whispered, darting out from behind cover.
He skidded to a halt at the very edge of the skyscraper, recoiling for a moment as a fierce, lashing updraft struck him. If not for the years he’d spent atop the peaks of the Alcade, the sight might have made his head spin: a hundred meters straight down, instead of distant village lights, he saw the myriad sparks of a city that never slept. At the building’s entrance far below, fire trucks and guard vehicles were clustered, and rubberneckers were being driven back by orders barked over the loudspeaker and the menacing brandishing of batons.
The evergreen forests at the foot of the Alcade’s slopes were replaced here by the flat roofs of the neighboring skyscrapers. With few exceptions, they rose lower than the roof upon which Ardan now stood.
Obviously, the gangsters hadn’t leaped to their deaths right in front of the assembled guards and firemen. The pair of them were now lying sprawled in awkward poses on the roof of the next building over. A narrow alley of maybe ten meters separated the two buildings, and there was an almost forty-meter difference in height due to the disparate floor counts.
No normal human could’ve made a jump like that. And even if some daredevil had managed to overcome the horizontal distance, gravity would have pulverized their spine—such a leap would be a one-way ticket to meet the Eternal Angels.
And yet, as one heartbeat followed another, impossibly, the white vapor wreathing the gangsters’ bodies suddenly sucked back into their skin. A moment later, both men arched their backs and sprang to their feet—completely whole and unharmed.
“Sleeping Spirits!” Ardan exhaled, trying to fathom what kind of alchemy could yield such results.
The one called Board even raised his revolver, training it in Ardan’s direction, but Consumption barked at him, likely saying that he’d never hit anything at that range and telling him not to waste the ammunition. Both gangsters bolted for the roof’s stairwell door instead.
Ardan ground his teeth. He hesitated for only a moment before making up his mind. In the blink of an eye, he found himself ten meters back from the roof’s edge. Gripping his staff until his knuckles went white, he toed off his boots, hunched forward, and let his claws and fangs slide back out into the open air.
Ardan thought and, coiling his muscles, he sprinted headlong toward the precipice.
At the very edge of the roof, the young man bunched the muscles in his legs and back. Like an uncoiled spring, he launched himself into the night sky.
At nearly a hundred and fifty meters above the ground, the city beneath him blurred into a shimmering haze.
The lights of the ever-roaring streets stretched out into chains of glittering sparks suspended in the mist of twilight. Sounds that were usually booming turned into a distant crinkling, like the rustle of crumpled paper—unable to cut through the roar of the wind battering his face and the thunder of his heart in his ears. The heavy, granite clouds, usually so distant and dour, suddenly seemed so close that, if he went just a little higher, the black velvet expanse of true night would reveal itself beyond them and Ardan would see the stars once more.
A slow, lazy snail of a thought crept through his mind, drunken on the brief bliss of flight.
Ardan slammed down onto cold, wet concrete with bone-shattering force. He felt the bones in his legs snap, and a few ribs, cracked by the impact, speared through his flesh from the inside.
A wet gurgle slipped from his lips. Struggling to keep his consciousness from sliding into the inviting, quiet darkness, the young man flipped open his grimoire. With the blood-soaked fingers of the same hand that was still clutching his staff, he fumbled through the pages.
Thank the Sleeping Spirits that the shield specialists who’d warded this neighboring skyscraper had followed all the standards: the roof’s surface acted as a natural barrier against any stray Ley, so the shield did not extend above it.
That was all Ardan needed. He drained his green accumulator almost entirely. With great effort and taking care not to suffer a Broken Seal effect, the young man formed several healing spells, barely choking back the snarl clawing its way out of his throat.
In such a dire situation, with so few options, he couldn’t spare any extra rays for an anesthetic component. Grunting and mooing like some poor bovine beast, he endured the agonizing effect of his own magic as best he could.
Bones ground and cracked as they knit themselves back together, tearing through muscle and grazing nerves. Blood, boiling and bubbling, formed crusts that were like old scabs over his wounds as their edges pulled together. His left arm juddered like a loose sail in a storm, twisting unnaturally a few times and then falling still, whole once more. Ardan found that he could clench his fist again.
After his last rooftop battle—against a Star-born werewolf, no less—Ardan had made sure that his arsenal—not all of it was memorized, but he’d at least recorded it in his grimoire—contained plenty of healing magic that drew exclusively on the Green Star.
The green accumulator in his ring disintegrated into sparkling dust, and Ardan’s own Star was left with only a few rays.
Ardan took several deep, ragged breaths, then focused his mind inward to each of his limbs in turn. As Ergar had taught him, he wiggled his toes and fingers, bent and flexed his knees and elbows, and filled his lungs with a slow, deep breath, drawing air all the way into his belly, then exhaling fully.
He certainly didn’t feel good as new—quite the opposite, in fact. He felt exactly how one would expect someone to feel after plummeting almost fifty meters… even if that someone wasn’t human, but a Matabar. Perhaps if, like the gangsters, he had been pumped to the gills with alchemical brews, he could’ve also immediately leaped up and dashed off. But he wasn’t that lucky.
The jump and the healing had taken no more than half a minute, and he spent another half a minute catching his breath and checking that his body would obey him.
Edward would likely have been proud that—broken, exhausted and blood-soaked—Ardan had managed not only to make use of his limited offensive arsenal, but also, like a proper battlemage, heal himself afterward as well.
Leaning heavily on his staff, Ardan got to his feet.
“What a… pleasant… evening…” He rasped through clenched teeth.
At first, he hobbled. Then, with each passing moment, as his mind grew accustomed to enduring the pain, Ardan’s hobble turned into a walk, and then a loping run.
By the time he reached the rooftop stairwell, his jaw set tighter than his grip on his staff, the gangsters’ scent had already slipped back into the building. The guards had encircled not just the “House of Dukes,” but an entire block, so escape wouldn’t be easy for the smugglers’ henchmen.
Both Ardan and the gangsters understood that. They wouldn’t be stupid enough to flee out into the open from this second building—at least not immediately. The prey needed to hide in its thicket now by nestling into the leaves and grass. Any further flight could deliver it straight into the claws of another predator. The outcome of such a thing would be the same in the end.
This simple fact negated the time Ardan had lost during the chase. It also transformed the chase itself into a game of hide-and-seek. A bloody, perilous game that reeked of gunpowder—but hide-and-seek nonetheless.
Ardan eased the stairwell door open and, passing the building’s mechanical floor, descended to the first—or rather, the top—residential floor. The scent—lingering on the railings, hanging on the steps, clinging to dust-caked corners—drew him downward. Barefoot, silent as a ghost, Ardi crept ever lower.
Floor by floor, past hazy, frosted windows, he followed the trail. Down and down it led him until, like a playful marten, it darted through a door marked for the tenth floor. Ardi halted by the wooden door and pressed his ear to the crack between the door and jamb.
Closing his eyes, the hunter honed in on his hearing and smell. They painted blurry, indistinct pictures—it was as if someone had tried to paint in watercolors thinned out far beyond any useful pigment instead of using rich oils on canvas. They were so thin and diluted that no clear details could be made out.
But hazy impressions were still plenty for a hunter.
In a large living room, a middle-aged woman drenched in perfume stood with her back to a heater, clutching children of various ages in her arms.
“Go check!” She was repeating loudly, though not yet screaming. “What’s going on out there, Ganymede? Go see! Aren’t you a man?”
“Oh, shut up already,” a man muttered from the open window. “What if it’s the terrorists again…”
Ardan left that anxious family behind and mentally “ran” farther. Another scene took shape: accompanied by rhythmic, labored grunts, an older man and a girl only just old enough for her identity papers were entwined beneath stale bedding, utterly oblivious to the world around them.
Ardi grimaced and continued his spectral search. In the blurred outlines of that watery vision, he saw all manner of people. Some, clutching loved ones in fear, crouched away from windows and doors. Others were retrieving firearms hidden so deep and for so long that it was obvious they had never been used—and likely never would be.
Occasionally, he passed an empty apartment, or one occupied by those too young or too foolish to be concerned with trifling matters like sirens wailing and squads of armed men swarming one of the two main avenues of the Empire.
He kept “running” and “running” until, at last, he found what he was looking for.
A hazy silhouette—drawn more from memory than the sensory impressions of scent and sound—loomed behind a woman who was greeting the twilight of her… womanhood. Very soon, she would no longer be able to bear a child.
“Don’t move, old woman,” Consumption hissed. “Not a muscle, unless you want someone else to get hurt.”
Board, shuffling his feet, swore foully at the fresh blood on the floor.
“Damn fool of an old man… Who asked you to play hero…” He growled. A viscous pool crept around his boots, and the wet gurgle of an old man’s dying breaths could be heard.
Farther back, in a corner where two walls met, a woman in her middle years cowered. She was sobbing quietly and holding—no, shielding with her own body—a cluster of crying children. Two of them? Three?
“Tell them to shut their mouths!” Consumption snarled in a strangled voice.
No—four of them. Yes. Four. Three girls and, judging by one sharp odor, one very small boy. He was perhaps five years old. He had lost control of himself and was now shivering while trying desperately to cover the shameful, wet stain spreading across his nightshirt with his hands.
“Eternal Angels!” Board’s voice rang out as his wooden-heeled boots cracked across the old, creaking parquet. He grabbed something, likely a vase with flowers (they tumbled to the floor, leaving a faint, wilted scent in their wake), and flung its water at the little boy, who screamed more in terror than from the cold.
The child’s mother—the daughter of the elderly couple—clapped a hand over her son’s mouth. She pleaded with him to hush, while the boy’s large tears fell onto her fingers that were numb from cold and dread. His sisters were whimpering softly.
Ardan opened his eyes and returned to himself. He could still smell them all, and, somewhere on the very edge of his hearing, he caught the scuffle of movement. But the watercolor visions no longer painted foreign images before his mind’s eye. His other senses reasserted themselves, banishing the hunter’s haze.
“Sleeping Spirits,” Ardan whispered.
If he’d had any red rays left, he could have burst through the apartment’s slightly-ajar front door—the one Board was now vigilantly watching from the corridor—and taken them by surprise. If not for the stationary shield and the sheer amount of dead Ley saturating the area, Ardan might have attempted to use the art of the Aean'Hane.
He had already activated his signal medallion, but that would hardly change things now. Din and Alexander were still too far away to help in time.
Far too much could happen in even five minutes, let alone ten. And as much as Ardan tried to deny it, he truly didn’t want any civilians in that corner apartment by the elevators to die. The loss of the one from whose dead fingers the gangsters had pried an old revolver—a relic from the Mercenaries’ War—stung.
Ardan couldn’t go in through the door; if he did, the gangsters would riddle him with holes not intended by nature. The remaining four rays of his Green Star were useless, blocked by the stationary shield. So…
Shrugging off his pants and shirt—stripping down to just his jacket, underpants and undershirt—Ardan tied a clever knot around the middle of his staff. Then he slung his staff over his back and cinched a second knot across his chest to hold it in place.
What a sight he must have made with his blood-soaked, tattered shirt and pants knotted together to secure his staff to his back.
Clamping the hilt of his father’s knife between his teeth and feeling his grimoire thumping against his bare thigh, Ardan climbed one flight up. He slid a window open, stepped onto the sill, and within seconds, he had pressed himself flat against the building’s outer brick façade.
He could only pray that the layer of brick facing over the drab concrete wasn’t going to break away under his weight and send him plummeting thirty meters straight down onto the pavement. As Ergar had taught him to do, Ardan pressed his hips as close to the wall as possible and shifted as much weight as he could to his legs.
The nails of his toes had elongated into sharp claws, and they now found purchase on the tiniest of cracks and protrusions. His fingers, sensitive to even the slightest of roughness, clung so fiercely to the wall that the tendons in his wrists stood out like taut strings.
The wind lashed at his back and tangled in his hair, howling like invisible wolves in his ears. The damp brick etched with endless whorls thanks to the erosion of unceasing rains and snows scraped his chest like sandpaper. Even if he’d been in peak physical condition, the route between the windows of this high-rise would have been far from easy to traverse.
And in his current state, with each movement, each new gust of wind, each strained wheeze forcing itself from his chest, Ardan felt certain that he would slip and fall to his death. And yet every time, skin scraping, knuckles cracking, flesh peeling from his fingers and claws threatening to snap, Ardi held on to the wall.
From far below him, more and more frequently, faint flashes strobed against the back of his head—camera flashes, he realized distantly. Then came a few abrupt, unmistakable whistle blasts, and those white flares mercifully ceased.
Ardan swore silently. He was almost at the right window when he was forced to stop, clinging motionless to the wall. Peeking past the window’s edge, he glanced inside. Fortunately, the gangsters hadn’t drawn back the curtains, and the lacework pattern of the thin drapes was just ornate enough that he could make out Board moving away from the door and creeping up to the very same window Ardan was dangling beside.
Standing off to the side of the window, Board peered down. Ardan quickly jerked his head back and out of sight. The whistles and those brief camera flashes must have drawn the men’s attention. Hopefully, it wouldn’t occur to the gangsters that someone might be climbing along the side of the building toward them.
Seconds stretched one after another like a rubber band, ready to snap back and inflict pain at any moment. Ardan’s fingers trembled harder and harder; his shoulders felt laden with lead; an ache like sand filled his thighs. When he risked another look, he saw that Board had retreated back into the living room.
Shifting his hips slightly away from the wall, Ardi swung his whole body and, straightening his legs, leaped toward the window. Grabbing the frame with his fingers, he hauled his knees up and flung himself bodily through the glass. Shards of broken windowpane sliced into his flesh, but by now, the young mage was past caring about another dose of searing pain.
He landed on the balls of his feet, crouching like a cat ready to pounce. In one fluid motion, he snatched his father’s knife from between his teeth and sprang forward. Consumption managed one shot, but his bullet embedded itself harmlessly in the floorboards—the spot where Ardan had been a split second before.
A dark shadow streaked along the walls. The blade of Ardan’s knife, leaving a wide, crimson arc in its wake, split Board’s neck open. The thug never even realized what had just happened. A mask of astonishment mingled with disbelief was forever frozen on his face. His head, which had been knocked back so far that its top touched his upper back, hung by a flap of skin at the nape of his neck.
A fountain of thick, copper-scented blood sprayed the ceiling. Using the gangster’s convulsing body as a shield, Ardan waited until Consumption—screaming with horror and shock—had emptied the rest of his revolver’s cylinder.
Those bullets went wild—smashing into the floor, the walls, the twitching corpse of Board—they hit everything but Ardan. And for that, he was nothing if not grateful.
When the revolver’s hammer clicked on empty metal, Ardi slid out from behind his grisly “cover.”
“I’ll cut her!” Consumption was shrieking while pressing a knife to the grandmother’s throat. “I’ll cut her, you fucking Cloak!”
Ardan recalled that Milar wanted Consumption taken in alive. Without his testimony, they’d never be able to track down Taisia Shpritz somewhere in the sprawling warren of the Tend’s warehouses. You could search for years there and find nothing but endless crates, barrels, sacks… all the sundry goods usually stashed under tin roofs.
“Don’t move, you bastard!” Consumption spat, dragging the old woman backward toward the door. A solitary tear rolled down her cheek.
Perhaps it was Ardan’s sharpened hunter’s senses, or perhaps the heightened state of his mind—alive with the ringing shards of Names swirling around him—but he saw a reflection in that solitary drop.
In the corner behind him, the mother was clutching the little boy’s shoulders. She was holding him and sobbing quietly.
The gangster’s bullets had hit everything but Ardan.
And one of those rounds had found its mark in the little boy’s chest. His tiny arms flung wide, eyes still wet with tears, the child stared sightlessly up at the ceiling. He was so very small…
Ardan looked up and met Consumption’s crazed eyes. The stench of fear filled the room—a cloying, sweetly-rotting reek of terror from prey that understood its days were numbered. No matter what happened, no matter what it tried—its life was over. Even if it fled to the ends of the earth, that would only prolong its agony.
Ard unleashed his Witch’s Gaze. This time, his Stars couldn’t reinforce his Aean’Hane art against the crushing grip of the dead Ley, but Ardan did not care.
Feeling blood trickle down his own face, feeling his body begin to quake, he stormed into Consumption’s mind. All at once, the pain he had been holding at bay came crashing into Ardan’s consciousness like an avalanche, but he had no intention of fighting that surge; he did not rush to seal the breach in his mental defenses.
No.
He grabbed that pain, holding it in his hand like a potter would hold clay. He breathed his will into it and sent it flowing across the bridge he’d built between his mind and Consumption’s.
The gangster shuddered, trying to resist. His mind was young and strong, his will powerful and firm. But Consumption stood frozen in place, and Ardan advanced. With each step that closed the distance between them, Ardan’s strength grew. With each step, Consumption’s will cracked further and withered.
The blood vessels in the thug’s eyes burst, flooding his whites—and then his cheeks—with red. His tongue swelled, livid and blue, lolling out of his mouth. The old woman wrenched free of his weakening grasp and fled, rushing to her daughter and grandchildren.
At last, Ardan stood face to face with his prey, the weight of his will pinning the man to the ground. Consumption collapsed to his knees. The knife fell from his fingers, his hands now grotesquely contorted. The gangster rasped and struggled to breathe, but even a task as simple as drawing breath had become a battle against another’s will.
A will that, in his mind’s eye, looked nothing like a tall, half-naked, blood-drenched young man.
***
Nazrat didn’t understand what was happening. He didn’t know how he’d been transported from that high-rise apartment to here. He didn’t even know where was.
All he could see was an endless, white expanse of lifeless ice biting into him. It was gnawing at his body like a starving rat, each nibble stealing a bit more of his warm flesh and blood. In the distance, black as night, jagged stones rose from the snowy waste. Mountains? Was he in the mountains somewhere?
Nazrat didn’t know. He tried to inhale, but it was as if the very air… lacked air.
And yet, even that lifeless, frozen desert and the howling blizzard swirling around him did not scare him as much as the silhouette standing before him. Was it a man? Or a wolf? Or something in between—something nature hadn’t decided to shape into a beast or a human yet.
growled a voice like thunder.
Nazrat’s gaze dropped. His own knife lay in the snow at his feet. He couldn’t understand why, but he tried to resist that voice. He didn’t understand why, but he knew that if he surrendered to it, he would never escape this blizzard-bound prison.
He tried to fight it. He tried with all his might. But his body, as though it no longer wished to obey its owner, answered not to Nazrat at all, but to that snarling, predatory voice.
Watching as his hands moved against his will, Nazrat saw his fingers wrap around that all-too-familiar hilt. He remembered how he’d planned to give it a new coat of lacquer and wrap a leather strap around it so it wouldn’t slip from his grip.
Right.
Yes.
He still had so many things to do.
What was this nonsense about… dying? He couldn’t die now. He’d even bought the strap already!
the growling voice commanded.
Nazrat strained to force his right hand back. He even grasped its wrist with his left, trying to yank it away, but he didn’t have the strength.
No, no. This was absurd. He’d only just been bragging to that brazen journalist that he would use her scalp as a strap if she didn’t shut up. She had annoyed them with her empty threats while they’d been driving to the warehouse. Nazrat even remembered the route.
What death?
He had tickets for the cinema tomorrow.
Feeling the knife’s blade slice into his own cheek and notch his ear, Nazrat screamed as loud as he could. He tried to flee this icy trap, but he kept slamming into the silhouette of the wolf… Or was it a man…
the voice rumbled.
***
Consumption’s body jerked and collapsed to the floor. His own knife jutted from his right ear, buried to the hilt in the gangster’s skull—driven into it by his own hand.
Ardan swayed and caught himself against the wall with one hand and his staff with the other, even though he had no memory of when he’d freed his staff from its improvised sling.
His vision swam. Every other breath caught in his throat. Somehow, he managed to stumble over the dead gangster’s body and—rather than open the apartment door—he simply fell against it with his full weight. The door flew open under his heft, and he hurtled headlong across the hall and into the opposite wall.
The young wizard felt like a bug that a cruel child had trapped in a jar and shaken violently. He was tossed this way and that until finally, he found a moment’s respite.
Sliding down to sit on the floor, his back against the cold wall, Ardan watched as the elevator doors opened almost at the same time as the stairwell door.
The corridor swarmed with guards in red greatcoats and army troopers with black patches on their sleeves. Rifles were leveled at Ardan’s face and chest, their gleaming bayonets fixed.
It seemed like someone was yelling something, but all Ardan could do was slowly lift his hands in a gesture of surrender.
Ah…
Right.
He was still holding his staff.
That was probably not the smartest idea—raising a mage’s staff while surrounded by armed men. Especially not when the air was all but crackling with nerves and fear.
Ardan had just enough time to glimpse a rifle butt hurtling toward his face with all the zeal, vigor and overenthusiasm of someone eager to impress their superiors.
Yes.
Exactly.
A bad idea.
he groaned.