Reckoning

they coalesced, and the shape gathered strength. Long and low, a lean muzzle and four slim legs, a gleam of eyes as smoke appeared too, filling in the spaces between the sparks. The knots resolved too, complex threads catching and holding fast.

It would have probably been awesome if I could just stay still and watch how it was being built. You always want to pick up new stuff where you can.

For a few precious seconds I froze, staring at the thing. I’ve seen extra-weird in plenty of flavors all over the US, but this was . . . Jesus. To do something like this at a distance—was it even at a distance? I didn’t smell any Maharaj around.

Would I know it if they were sneaking up on me, though? The aura—the wax-citrus taste that used to tell me when something was off—had deserted me. Probably because I’d bloomed. I’d have to find other ways of staying alert.

The blisters on my left hand ran with hot prickling painful tingles. The sense of force building was familiar, my eyes hot and dry and my solar plexus tightening. Get up a head of steam and hit that thang before it gets solid, Dru-girl.

My right hand flashed up, touched a malaika hilt. Hawthorn wood, good against lots of things in Gran’s universe. My left jabbed forward, and the touch flared. If you can grab the point at which something unphysical is coming through to build itself in the tangled, snarled fabric of the real, you can disrupt it. I’d done it before, most recently with a big red tentacled thing in the girls’ locker room at the Schola Prima.

Now that had been a doozy.

The hex-dog snarled, crouching as it solidified. Well, maybe solid wasn’t the word, because it was built of smoke and knots of hexwork. But its teeth were chips of obsidian, glittering as its insubstantial lip lifted, and the snarl rippled through it. The knots were tying themselves together with quick jerks, and I didn’t have much time.

My left-hand fingers cramped together, weirdly twisted like I had the rheumatiz. The touch grabbed, slipped, grabbed hold again, and I flung myself backward as the hex dog finished its crouch and sprang. Another ripping sound, this one like wet meat shredded in iron claws, and the thing let out an agonized howl that scraped along every nerve ending I had. My back hit the rooftop, my head bouncing, and the dog exploded in a rain of smoke and icy flashing pellets of something that stung as it showered down.

I couldn’t even feel good about that. Because another sucker hunting-cry lifted, spearing the muggy night, and it was so close I scrambled up, shaking the little bits of almost-ice away. The raw blistering pain in my hand eased a little.

A burst of cloves and incense belled out from the hex-dog’s vibrating, fading “fingerprint” on the snarled tangle of the fleshly world, the smoke shredding. I grabbed the duffel, slinging the longest strap diagonally across my body.

I was not losing my gear again, dammit.

I took off across the roof, sneakers whispering. The smoke wanted to cling to me, but when Gran’s owl hooted softly and arrowed over my shoulder, its wings snapping down and almost brushing my hair, it shredded the vapor away. My body moved smoothly, the world slowing down, encased in the hard clear plastic of supernatural speed as I gathered myself and leapt, flying over the street below and landing soft as a whisper on the top of a gas station’s roof. A short hop, getting some height as my feet touched the hood of a vent, and I was airborne again.

It was like flying. It used to be I’d have to strain every muscle to keep up with Gran’s owl. Now it was the world turning under my feet doing all the work, my sneaker soles touching down to propel me in different directions. Like running with the wulfen through Central Park’s leafdapple shade, feeling like a complex part of a speeding machine. That was the difference, I guess, between running now and running with them: with the wulfen, for a few minutes as we ran, I felt like I belonged.

Now I just wanted to get away.

The owl, glowing white, veered sharply to the left and dove. I followed, hitting the pavement a little harder than I liked and taking off. Behind me, like infection pushing up against the surface of a wound, I felt them.

Suckers. My breath came fast and light, sudden knowledge blooming inside me. I didn’t have the taste of danger candy to warn me, I just had intuition now.

Great.

Gran’s owl let out a soft who, who? Wings snapping, it braked, hard. I skidded to a stop, and the bird turned in a tight circle over me. Part of me was on the ground, ribs flaring and squeezing down as I breathed, and before I knew it I’d reached up and the warm satin hilts of the malaika were in my hands. The duffel was going to weigh me down, but I didn’t have time to drop it.

Because the black-paper cutouts of suckers boiled out of the darkness.

There were so many of them. Two females closing in fast, their irises turning black as the hunting-aura closed over them in a blot of cold fire, both wearing dark jumpsuits, one blonde and one dark-haired but both with ponytails that bounced smartly as they pulled up short. The rest were males.

None of them looked a day over sixteen, but the hate on their young-old faces twisted them up like dripping, nasty tubers. I dropped into first-guard, the aspect rising over me like a cobra’s hood.

I was fully-bloomed and deadly to them. But they had numbers. Which meant I had to think fast. But my thinker was busted. There was just nothing left to do, nowhere to go, and nothing to depend on to save me.

If I’m going down, I’m going down fighting. I swallowed, hard, and then did either the stupidest or smartest thing I could.

I gathered myself, took a deep breath, and screamed as I launched myself at the ones in front of me. If I could break through their ring I could lead them on a chase, and when it came down to that I’d rather be running full speed when the nasty hits me.

I almost made it, too.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

For a long time there was a whining sound, a bumping and buffeting. I drifted in and out of consciousness inside something cold and metallic. I couldn’t move—my wrists were held down, and my ankles.

Restraints, I realized through a fog. My left hand burned dully through a chemical haze, like I was drugged or something. And I’m in a box.

My eyelids fluttered shut. Thank God I don’t have to pee, I thought hazily, before the dark swallowed me again. After a long while I was vaguely aware of a bump and a screech, and I figured out I was on a plane. That was all I knew. Then the dream came out of nowhere, and this time I was tied down and I had to watch.

The concrete hallway stretched into infinity. I saw him, walking in his particular way, each boot landing softly as he edged along, and the scream caught in my throat. Because it was my father, and he was moving toward that door covered in chipped paint under the glare of the fluorescents, and he was going to die. I knew this and I couldn’t warn him, static fuzzing through the image and my teeth tingling as my jaw changed, crackling—

—and Christophe grabbed my father’s shoulder and dragged him back, away from the slowly opening door. The sound went through me, a hollow boom as the door hit the wall and concrete dust puffed out.

BANG.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Christophe hissed, his eyes burning blue. “Are you mad, or simply an