Magic Burns Read online

  “What’s with the cute shoelace on your head?”

  “What this?” He flicked the end of the cord with his finger.

  “Yeah. Rambo called, he wants his bandana back.”

  “This Rambo, he a friend of yours?”

  “Who’s Rambo?” Julie asked.

  If a cultural reference flies over a man’s head, does it make a sound if nobody else gets it? I had never managed to watch the whole movie—magic always interfered, but I had read the book. Maybe after the flare cut out and tech reasserted its dominance for a few weeks, I’d dig the minidisc out and watch the darn thing from start to finish.

  The bowman took a step, and I pointed Slayer’s business end in his direction. “No closer.”

  He took another baby step forward. “Sorry, my foot slipped.” Another step. “Sorry, just can’t keep the bloody buggers under control.”

  “Next one will be your last.”

  He rocked forward and I almost lunged.

  “Uh-uh-uh.” He shook his head in mock disappointment. “I didn’t actually step, see.”

  Julie snickered.

  He raised his hand in a peaceful gesture. “You need to relax a bit, dove. Like Mouse over there. You trust me, don’t you, Mouse?”

  “Nope!”

  “Ahhh, I’m hurt. Nobody likes me.”

  I knew he’d move a fraction of a breath before he started. Those eyes gave him away. He lunged, missed, and found Slayer’s tip at his back.

  “Move, and I’ll cut your liver in half.”

  He spun toward me, and my saber glanced off metal. Chain mail under the jacket. Crap. Steel fingers clamped my sword hand, keeping it pinned. He turned and stabbed the rigid fingers of his right hand under my breastbone. I shied away from the stab to lessen the impact—it still hurt like hell—and grabbed his right wrist, jerking him toward me. For a second all of his weight rested on his left leg and I kicked it out from under him. He crashed to the floor and dragged me down with him, his fist locked on my sword hand. I hit the ground, letting go of Slayer. My hand slipped between his fingers and I rolled into the clear.

  Half a breath later we were both on our feet.

  “Pretty sword,” he said, twisting Slayer to catch a sun ray. The light danced on the opaque blade and sank into the black chain-mail shirt now showing below his jacket. “Why no guard?”

  “Don’t need one.”

  “Is it any good?”

  I kicked a strip of leather I’d sliced off. “You tell me.”

  His hand went back to check his chain shirt, and I kicked him, aiming for the throat. He caught my foot with a grunt, and dumped me on the floor. His knee pressed on my neck. He’d set a trap and I’d walked right into it. The light was shrinking. I could barely breathe.

  “You kick like a mule.” He grimaced and ground his knee harder. I wasn’t getting enough air. He had my right hand pinned, but not my left. I bent my left hand, and a cold sliver of the silver needle slid into my palm from the leather wristband. “But I’ve been at this a lot longer…”

  I drove the silver needle into his thigh.

  His thigh muscle contracted. He grunted and fell off me. I leaped to my feet and kicked him in the face. It was a solid kick and it connected. He sprawled on his back, blood running from his nose. I dropped next to him, slid my leg under his arm, and clenched it with my other leg, bending the arm backward in a classic shoulder lock. He growled. All I had to do was scissor my legs, and I’d dislocate his arm, and I still had both hands free.

  I zipped his jacket open, looking for the maps.

  “Wrong zipper,” he gasped. “Try lower.”

  “In your dreams.” I reached into the inner pocket and pulled a plastic pack free. The maps. “Stealing’s a crime. Thank you for returning the Pack’s property. Your cooperation has been noted.”

  He looked me straight in the face, smiled, and vanished.

  I scrambled to my feet. The red bolt punctured the dirt between my feet, catching me on the way up. I straightened very slowly.

  He stood a few feet away, pointing the crossbow at me. It was loaded. The hand-sharpened bolt head stared me in the eye. I couldn’t dodge a crossbow bolt from nine feet away. Not even on my best day.

  “Hands where I can see them,” he ordered. I showed him my palms, the Pack maps still securely clutched in my right hand.

  “You cheated!” Julie’s outraged voice rang from above. “Leave her alone!”

  His nose no longer looked broken. No blood, either. Wonderful. Not only could he teleport, but he also regenerated while he did it. If he started spitting fire, we’d be all set.

  Keeping his crossbow leveled, he reached down to his thigh and pulled my needle out with a wince. “That hurt.”

  “Serves you right,” Julie yelled.

  “I suppose you’re rooting for her?”

  Julie’s eyebrows rose in trademark adolescent scorn. “Duuuuuuuh.”

  “Don’t make me come up there.” Steel vibrated in his voice and Julie ducked behind the crates.

  “Leave the kid alone,” I told him.

  “Jealous? Want me all to yourself?” He jerked the crossbow right a little. “Turn around.”

  I turned my back to him, expecting the bite of a steel bolt head between my shoulder blades any moment. “Very nice,” he said. “Turn around again.”

  I turned around to see him frowning. “I can’t decide if I like the back view or the front one best.”

  “How about a view of my sword up very close?”

  “That’s my line, dove.”

  His leer left no doubt as to the meaning of his “line.”

  “Turn around again. That’s a good girl.”

  I heard him walk toward me. That’s right, come closer. I’m very helpless. With my hands held up and everything.

  “Nothing funny,” his voice warned in my ear. “Or next time I pop in, I’ll pin your lass to those crates.”

  I clenched my teeth and stood still.

  “You broke my ward. I’m put out—those bitches are hard to pin down and now I’ll have to do it again. I should put a bolt through your neck.” His fingers brushed the back of my neck, sending shivers down my spine. “But I’m a nice guy. I’ll give you a piece of advice instead: gather your kid and go home. I’ll even let you take the maps back to the furries, since you fought so hard for them. Stay out of my way from now on. This isn’t your fight and you’re in over your head.”

  “What fight? With whom? Who are you?”

  “I’m Bran. The hero.”

  “The hero? Humility is a virtue.”

  “So is patience. And if you’re patient and lucky, you might just be the girl I bed on my last night in town.”

  His hand squeezed my ass. I spun about, intending to punch him in the nose. The hangar lay empty, except for the gossamer trail of mist. It lingered for a long breath and then dissipated into the breeze.

  I battled a very strong urge to kick something.

  Julie stared at me from the crates. “He went poof.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “He likes you. He grabbed your butt.”

  “Next time I see him, I’ll cut his arm off. We’ll see if he can grow it back.”

  I glanced to where the skeleton once hung. The bolts were missing. How the hell did he manage that?

  All my precious evidence was gone. I didn’t even have a chance to m-scan the scene to get a fix on what kind of magic was used. All in all, this had not gone very well. I didn’t have a clue as to what was going on, and I’d just had a conversation with the guy who could explain everything and learned absolutely nothing. Except for the fact that I had a shapely ass. Healthy self-esteem is a good thing. If I didn’t have any, I’d be beating my own stupid head against the first available hard surface.

  “Are you leaving now?” Julie asked from the crates.

  Hell no. Nothing that involved several women missing, a bottomless pit ringed in blood, and an inhuman skeleton could possibly amount to so
mething benign. And Mr. Grab-ass apparently wanted to keep me as far away from it as possible. I wondered why.

  “You want to find your mom?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you want my help?”

  “Sure.”

  “You know who was the head witch in the coven?”

  “Esmeralda.”

  Esmeralda. Oh boy. “Where does she live?”

  “The Honeycomb.”

  This just got better and better. “Climb down. We’re going to pay her a visit.”

  CHAPTER 5

  WE CLIMBED UP THE SCRAP-METAL EVEREST, WITH me leading the way and Julie slightly behind. Her breath was coming in ragged gasps. Too little food. Julie wasn’t much stronger than a mosquito. In fact, if a big one rammed her, she might fall over. She didn’t complain, though.

  About halfway up the slope she finally gave in. “How far?”

  “Keep climbing.”

  “I just want to know how far!”

  “Don’t make me turn this car around, missy.”

  “What does that even mean?” She mumbled something else under her breath but kept moving.

  The edge of the Gap crept closer. The rhythmic whoom, whoom, whoom grew louder. Had to be a beacon of some sort. I climbed onto the narrow ledge and reached for Julie. “Give me your hand.”

  She stretched a matchstick arm. I grabbed her wrist and raised her over the jagged remains of the refrigerator onto the ledge next to me. She weighed next to nothing. “We’ll take a little break.”

  “I can keep going.”

  “I’m sure you can. But Honeycomb isn’t a nice place. By now someone probably knows we’re here and they have a welcoming committee prepared.”

  “Oh boy! They’ll throw us a party!” She sat in the dirt.

  Heh. I sat next to her. “You’re not from there, by any chance?”

  She shook her head. “No. I’m from White Street.”

  White Street got its name during the snowfall of ’14, which refused to melt for three and a half years. When a street can hold three inches of powder despite the hundred degree heat, you know it’s packing some serious magic. Anybody who could afford to move did.

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirteen. I’m only two years behind Red.”

  Looking at her, I would’ve guessed eleven tops. “How old is your mother? What does she look like?”

  “She is thirty-five and she looks like me only grown up. I have a picture at home.”

  “So what do you know about the coven? Who did they worship? What sort of rituals did they do?”

  Julie shrugged. In front of us the gorge stretched into the distance, bristling with spikes and rusty iron. Thin tendrils of mist clung to the steep slope. A deep threatening growl echoed from the walls, too far to be a threat. The Stymphalean birds answered it with their screeches.

  “Did you know the birds are metal?” Julie said.

  I nodded. “They’re Greek. You know who Hercules was?”

  “Yeah. The strongest man.”

  “When he was young, he had to go through twelve challenges…”

  “Why?”

  “His dad’s wife made him temporarily insane. He killed his family and had to atone by serving a king. The king very much wanted to kill him so he kept thinking up more and more difficult challenges for Hercules. Anyway, the Stymphalean birds were one of the challenges. He had to drive them away from a certain lake. Their feathers are like arrows and their beaks are supposed to pierce the strongest armor.”

  She looked at me. “How did he do it?”

  “The gods made him some loud clapper things. He wrapped himself in the skin of an invulnerable lion and made noise until the birds flew away.”

  “Why is it in those stories that the gods always pull your butt out of trouble?”

  I got up. “It helps if the king of the gods is your dad. Come on. We’ve got to climb and I’m pretty sure your dad isn’t a god, is he?”

  “He died,” she said.

  “I’m sorry. My dad is dead, too. Now climb, young grasshopper, so your kung fu won’t be weak.”

  She braved a crumpled barrel. “You are so weird.”

  You have no idea.

  TWENTY FEET BELOW THE LIP OF THE GAP, I FELT THE Honeycomb. Above us magic twisted and streamed, boiling in a chaotic frenzy, its intensity spiking hot enough to scald. The magic field felt me and spilled over the edge, sending thin currents toward me like invisible lassos. They licked me and fell short. That’s right. No touching.

  The magic waited, almost as if it were aware. Up top, where it boiled, I would create one hell of a resonance and that was never a good thing. The Honeycomb couldn’t touch me, but it didn’t like me and it would keep trying. The sooner I got out of there, the better.

  I climbed over a water heater, twisted and crushed like an aluminum can, and pulled myself over the edge. Before me the bloated trailers, contorted and rippling with strange metallic bumps, clung to one another. Some had merged into hives, some three trailers high, and a couple joined ones looked identical, like two cells caught in the middle of mitosis. A few sat on top of each other, hanging at precarious angles yet apparently steady. Long clotheslines ran between the trailers and freshly washed garments flapped in the breeze.

  I pulled Julie up. She winced as the magic smashed against her body. The currents wound about her…and calmed. It was as if she suddenly wasn’t there. Interesting kid.

  “You been here before?”

  She shook her head. “Not this deep.”

  “Walk where I walk. Stay away from the walls. Especially if you see them get fuzzy.”

  We started through the labyrinth of trailers. A long time ago the Honeycomb was a mobile park retirement community called Happy Trails or some such. It sat just under the Brown Mills Golf Course, across the Jonesboro Road. At first it had survived the magic waves pretty well, and when the cheap project apartments east of it crumbled and split, a slow but steady trickle of homeless refugees filled the mobile park. They pitched tents on the manicured lawns, bathed in the communal pool, and cooked on the outdoor grills. The cops chased out the squatters, but they just kept coming.

  Then one night the magic hit especially hard, and the manufactured homes warped. Some expanded like glass bubbles, some twisted, others stuck together merging into hives. More yet divided and grew additions, and when the dust finally settled, a fifth of the inhabitants had vanished into the walls. To the Outside. Nobody could ever figure out what the Outside was, but it was definitely not anywhere in the normal world. The retirees fled, but the refugees had nowhere to go. They moved into the trailers and stayed put. Once in a while somebody would disappear, as each new magic tide twisted the Honeycomb a little more. A fun place to live if you were into that sort of thing.

  “How can we find out where Esmeralda lives?” Julie puffed behind me. “I only know she lives in the Honeycomb. I don’t know where exactly.”

  “You hear that whooming? The Honeycomb changes all the time so they have to have some sort of beacon. It’s probably at the entrance, which should be guarded by somebody. We’re going to go there and ask nicely where Esmeralda lived.”

  “What makes you think they’ll tell us?”

  “Because I’ll pay them.”

  “Oh.”

  And because if they don’t tell me, I will pull out my Order ID and my saber and make myself very hard to ignore.

  I wasn’t wild about heading into the Honeycomb with a little girl in tow, but considering the neighborhood, she was safer with me than without me. I wondered how she got down there in the first place…

  “How did you get down into the Gap?”

  “We hiked from the Warren. There’s a trail.” A little light went off in her eyes. “But I probably can’t find it now. So if you send me back, I’ll just wander around without any water or food.”

  Why me?

  The street turned slightly, bringing us into view of wide-open chain-link gates. Just in front of th
em a man in faded jeans and a leather vest worn over his bare chest sat on an overturned oil drum. An unlit cigarette drooped from his lips. To the left of him sat an old military truck, its back end pointing toward the gate. Despite rust stains and dents, the truck’s tires and canvas top looked to be in good condition. The canvas probably hid some heavy-duty hardware, a Gatling gun or a small siege engine.

  On the other side of the man sat a huge rectangular tank. Soft emerald-green algae stained the glass walls, obscuring the murky water within. A long section of metal pipe stretched from the tank and disappeared beneath the twisted remains of a trailer.

  The man on the drum leveled a crossbow at me. The crossbow looked a lot like a good old-fashioned, flat-sided Flemish arbalest. The prong gleamed with the bluish-gray shade particular to steel, not the brighter, pale aluminum of cheaper bows, meaning the bow’s draw weight probably ranged to two hundred pounds. He could put a bolt into me from seventy-five yards away and he wanted me to know that.

  Whoom. Whoom.

  An arbalest was a decent weapon, but slow on reload.

  The man eyed me. “You want something?” The cigarette remained stuck to his lower lip, moving as he spoke.

  “I’m an agent of the Order investigating the disappearance of witches belonging to the Sisters of the Crow coven. I was told the head witch lived in the Honeycomb.”

  “And who is that?” He pointed to Julie behind me.

  “Daughter of a witch in Esmeralda’s coven. Her mom’s missing. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  “No. You got an ID on you?”

  I reached for the leather wallet I carried on a cord around my neck and took out my Order ID. He motioned me closer. I approached and passed it to him. He turned it over. The small rectangle of silver in the lower right corner of the card gleamed, catching a stray ray of the sun.

  “Is that real silver?” he asked. The cigarette drew an elaborate pattern in the air.

  “Yes.” Silver took enchantment better than most metals.

  The man gave me a quick glance and rubbed at the silver through the clear plastic coating. “How much is it worth?”

  Here we go. “You’re asking the wrong question.”