Chapter 29 #2
Max fumbled with the Forge die, turning it over in his hand. I slipped my own around them both, pressing my thumb where the rune for fire rested against his palm. “Ready?” he asked me, pulling the hood of my coat over my profile.
My pulse was uneven, unsure, but I nodded as Andre pulled up to the checkpoint, where, through the tinted glass, four enforcers with their engineered suits were checking the cars that came and went in anticipation of the citywide shutdown.
We stopped in the center of the group. One tapped the driver’s window, while another did the same on the passenger side. Max and I both rolled down our windows as Elli and Andre did the same.
“Turn back around. No one enters until—” The enforcer at Andre’s window was cut short as he checked the back bench. “What in hell?”
My Siphon pulled from the artifact, and the enforcer recognized me at the same moment—right as the metal of his suit began to smoke.
“What in hell…” he barked, twitching. His counterparts were struggling as well, evident by the rolling of their shoulders, the clinking of their armor as they tried to shake off the heat. I stared at the enforcer, making sure he knew who was doing this, who was burning him alive.
Heat swarmed the two enforcers as Max worked the pair on the other side. The cars behind us hit the gas as the guards struggled. Distracted, the enforcers had no time to lift their steaming arms and shoot at them before the cars smashed into them.
Brakes screeched, and we piled out of the vehicles, guns in hand, to ambush them as they lay prone in the street.
Cursed surrounded the downed enforcers, pistols drawn, teeth bared, while Max left me to turn up the heat on the entire group. I focused my Siphon, sought every piece of metal before me, and the warmth hanging in the spring morning. A chilling breeze cooled the sweat forming on my brow.
The enforcers screamed, pulling at their helmets to throw them off. One landed in a puddle at the edge of the street with a hiss. They started to peel off their armor next, but I didn’t relent.
As they crawled out of the suits with angry burns all over their exposed skin, our men were on them in an instant.
“Stay on your fucking knees!” Max shouted at the group. “You’re coming with us.”
“Crown Killer,” one of them spat at me, hands bound behind his back. He stared into my eyes like I was the source of every suffering and hell in the world. “Cursed bitch!”
Max put a gun to his head and shot only once.
I looked at Max, then to the man sprawled across the cobblestones with a hole in his skull. “You didn’t have to—”
“No one talks to you like that. No one calls you those names and lives.” He gestured to the other three with his gun. “Move!”
The enforcers were stiff in their movements, flinching at the touches to their fresh burns as the men tied each one up and shoved them into cars. Each one sped off down a different street to a different location.
All that was left was the dead man and four engineered suits. Max snapped at the lingering Cursed. “Get the armor back to Ronny’s. The rest of you, follow through to the docks.”
We loaded back in the car—all of us except Andre. Elli thrust her head out the window to yell at him. “What are you doing? Let’s go!”
He stood in front of the car, wearing a metal sleeve taken from the enforcer’s armor. The contraption was like a gauntlet over his shoulder and wrapped the rest of his arm. He opened and shut the iron fists, marveling at how it worked.
A gun protruded from Andre’s forearm, shooting into the brick wall edging the district and exploding the masonry. He stepped back in surprise. “Brilliant.”
“Put that down before you kill someone on our side! You can mess with it when we get inside the docks,” Elli shouted at him. She picked up a piece of wood that had splintered from the archway without explanation and, before Andre could protest, slid into the driver’s seat herself.
“Hold on. I’ve driven with Elli before, and she doesn’t know where the brake is,” Max muttered as he grabbed my thigh, bridging us together.
“Heard that.”
Andre finally slid next to Elli in the passenger seat, flexing his new upgrades. “I can’t believe anyone can control one of these. I thought they used an Archetype. You know their guns are engineered to never miss a mark?”
Max smiled. “That’s good. You might hit something for once.”
“Is this coming from a man who uses magic dice?”
“Both of you, shut up. We need to get to the docks before anyone tells them we’re coming.” Elli slammed on the gas and threw us all back in our seats. Tires squealed across the cobblestones, and we went barreling down a two-way street through the heart of the city.
I braced myself against the car door as she took a hard right. Andre cursed, falling into her as we all slid a few inches down the leather benches.
My stomach churned with the motion, worsened by the slamming pulse in my ears and the anxiety in my throat. I thought I might be sick all over the car.
Our back end swerved.
Elli cursed as she struggled to regain control but kept her foot heavy on the gas. “Hold on! Almost there.”
“Enforcers, straight ahead,” Elli hissed as the wall to the docks came into sight. We were approaching the largest gate, and there was a considerable force gathered around it. “Andre, hand me that board.”
“Why?”
“Just do it! And be prepared to jump.”
Andre made a face of horror as he handed it to her while she kept her eyes on the road ahead. “Elli, you wouldn’t!”
“Sorry about this, Andre.” She shoved the board beneath her foot, pinning the gas pedal down. She shoved her brother toward the passenger door, yelling, “Go!”
As she did, the car was sprayed with bullets.
Max shoved the door open, fighting against the wind rushing by, beckoning me to jump first. Elli leapt out with little hesitation, gracefully landing in a rolling dive. Andre followed. There was no way in hell I was copying that maneuver.
Max snatched me by the waist and threw us both out of the car, tucking me into his chest to take the brunt of the impact when we collided with the sidewalk.
He was on his feet a second later, pulling me up with one hand, his dice in the other. While we quickly hid behind a building, Max pressed flat against the brick, head peering around the corner.
“What are you doing?” I asked, tugging his arm. The car was still rolling toward the enforcers—and the gateway—ahead.
My Siphon sensed a flare of magic. Ice coated the brick, crawling like ivy along the mortar as he pulled a massive amount of heat from the world and directed it elsewhere.
There was a loud explosion.
The cobblestones trembled as a blinding blaze shot above the mercantile building and plumed black smoke. Behind me, Andre whimpered. “Damnit, Maxence… I just paid that car off.”
“We’ll get you another. Move!”
We ran on foot the rest of the way to the gate.
All around it, enforcers lay dead or wounded by the explosion.
Behind us, cars pulled to a halt and Cursed rushed out to attack.
Our army wasn’t trained, but they were organized, pushing behind the enforcers and constables while the next wave hit from the hole we’d made in the wall.
“Max, it’s time to split,” Elli said behind us. “Are you sure you don’t need us?”
The man beside me shook his head quickly. “I need you to keep them away from the dry docks. If that’s where Dupont is hiding, then we need to draw the city guard and the enforcers away from the ship keeping Nina’s mother.”
She nodded, pulling a gun from her waistband. “Please, be safe. Both of you.”
Elli sprinted to the gate, her figure a blur that blended with the shadows. Andre followed her with the enforcer arm still strapped to his right shoulder, his gleaming blades wrapping the sheath on his opposite thigh.
Max pulled me away from the smoke and the return of gunfire as guards swarmed the area.
We navigated through piles of shipping stock until the dry docks appeared through the mist. Scaffolding surrounded three black exhaust stacks that looked to me like the ribs of a huge, drowned beast. They belonged to the huge ocean liner that I had seen before, on my return to the city.
“Max…” I nudged him, pointing to the stern of the ship where the name of the vessel was written in regal lettering. “Look!”
Sanctuary.
The rumors had been true all along. There was a Sanctuary. Perhaps this ship had been supposed to head to the Freelands long ago.
He grinned. “You found it, Ace.”
I had, but in the place I least expected. My hand found his and squeezed. “I know.”