“She’s a merc,” Red said.
He reached inside his shirt and pulled out a stack of papers, held together by a string. He dug in it with dirty fingers and deposited a small rectangle in my hand. My business card, stained with the brown whorls of a thumbprint. The print was mine; the blood belonged to Derek, my werewolf boy wonder.
Derek and I had been trying to drag ourselves home after a big fight that hadn’t gone too well. Unfortunately, Derek’s legs had been torn open and Lyc-V, the virus to which shapeshifters owed their existence, decided to shut Derek down so it could make repairs. When we met Red, I was trying unsuccessfully to load my bleeding, unconscious sidekick onto my horse. Red and his little band of shaman kids helped, and I had given Red my card and a promise of help if he should need it.
“You said you’d help. You owe me.”
Now was not a good time, but we didn’t often get to choose the time to repay our debts. “That’s true.”
“Guard Julie.” He turned to the girl. “Shadow her, sokay.” He darted to the side and out the door. I followed and saw him scrambling up the slope like a pack of wolves was snapping at his heels.
Chapter 4
“Bastard!” The girl yelled. “I hate you!”
“Any clue why he took off in a hurry?”
“No!” She sat down cross-legged on the crates, her face a picture of abject misery.
Alrighty then. “I take it you’re Julie.”
“You’re real smart. Did you figure it out all by yourself?”
I sighed. At least she had dropped out of street speak for my benefit.
“Just because my boyfriend thinks you’re all that, doesn’t mean I’m going to listen to you. How are you going to guard me? You don’t even have a gun.”
“I don’t need a gun.” A small hint of metallic sheen within the crates caught my eye. I approached the pile. “Any clue what I’m guarding you from?”
“Nope!”
I peered into the space between the crates. A broken bolt, stuck tight in a board. Blood-red shaft. The fletch was missing, but I bet it had three black feathers. My bowman had been here and had left his calling card.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Hunting.”
“Hunting what?”
I wandered to the ring of stones, crouched, and reached for the nearest rock. My fingers slipped through it. Whoever set this ward really didn’t want his hiding spot disturbed. But the trouble with wards was that sometimes they didn’t just hide. They also contained. And a ward of this caliber could contain something nasty. “Where are we?”
“What are you, retarded?”
I looked at her for a second. “I came through a tunnel from the Warren. I don’t know what neighborhood this is.”
“This is the Honeycomb Gap. Used to be Southside Park. It pulls metal to itself now. Gathers the iron from all over—Blair Village, Gilbert Heights, Plunket Town. Pulls it all into itself, the iron from all the factories, from the Ford Motor plant, cars from Joshua Junkyards…The Honeycomb’s right above us. Can’t you smell the stink?”
The Honeycomb. Of all the hellholes, it had to be the Honeycomb.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
She stuck her nose in the air. “I don’t have to tell you.”
“Suit yourself.”
I pulled Slayer from its sheath.
“Whoa.” Julie crawled forward on top of the crate tower and flopped on her stomach so she could get a better look.
I put my hand on Slayer’s blade. Magic nipped at my skin, piercing my flesh with sharp little needles. I fed a little of my magic into the metal, aimed the tip of the saber toward the stone, and pushed. Two inches from the rock a force clutched at Slayer’s tip. Thin tendrils of pale vapor curled from the sword and the magicked steel began to perspire. I gave it a little more of my power. Slayer gained another half inch and stopped.
“I’m looking for my mom,” Julie said. “She didn’t come home on Friday. She is a witch. In a coven.”
Probably not a professional coven. The daughters of professional witches had more meat on their bones and better clothes. No, most likely it was an amateur coven. Women from the poor side deluding themselves with visions of power and a better life.
“What’s the name of the coven?”
“The Sisters of the Crow.”
Definitely an amateur coven. No legitimate witch would name a coven something so generic. Mythology was full of crows. With magic, you made sure to cross all your t’s and dot your i’s. The more specific, the better.
“They met here,” Julie volunteered.
“Right here?” I fed a little more power to the sword. It didn’t bulge.
“Yeah.”
“Did you ask the other witches about where your mom might have gone?”
“Gee, I’d love to, except none of them came back.”
I paused. “None?”
“Nope.”
That wasn’t good. Entire covens didn’t just disappear into thin air.
“I’m going to break this ward. If something ugly comes out of there, run. Don’t talk to it, don’t look at it. Just run. You got me?”
“Sure.” Julie’s tone plainly pointed out that she’d have to be crazy to listen to some idiot woman who doesn’t even have a gun.
I dug my feet into the ground and pushed, putting all of my weight behind the hilt. The blade quivered under the strain. It was like trying to push a baseball into a wall of dense rubber, but giving the saber more power would leave me too drained to defend myself against a magic attack.
Sweat broke on my forehead. Oh, screw it.
I shot my power through the blade. With a sweet whisper, Slayer cleaved through the invisible barrier. Steel struck stone with a loud clang and the white rock slid an inch out of its place.
A shudder ran through the circle. The stones blinked into reality and I scrambled to my feet. Brilliant light rippled through the air above the broken ring, a silvery aurora borealis gone mad as the forces held captive in the ward flailed, unleashed. The glow flared and streamed to the ground in a torrent of pure white. The ward burst. The magic aftershock pulsed through the building and caught me in a dizzying whirlpool. My teeth chattered, my knees shook, and I clutched at Slayer’s hilt, trying to keep the saber from slipping from my trembling fingers. Julie cried out.
So much power…
Viscous drops slid from Slayer’s metal, evaporating in midfall. I felt it too, a fetid smear staining the building—the magic of undeath. There was enough of it to make a layman vomit. I turned to the circle. A dark hole gaped in the broken ring of the stones. I leaned over the edge and glanced into the black hole, grimacing at the reek of rotting flesh emanating from the moist earth.
Deep.
So deep I didn’t see the bottom.
The walls of the shaft were smooth and even, punctuated by roots severed cleanly at the edge. The hole stank of damp soil and moldering bodies. I picked up one of the stones and ran my thumb over its smooth surface. Rounded and pale, like a pebble from a river bed.
No mark, no glyph, no sign of a spell. Just a ring of white stones that no longer hid a bottomless hole in the earth. The Sisters must have let something into the world, something dark and evil and it claimed them for its
