Things Fall Apart
21
Willi pushed to his feet, but Bernie lay motionless. Emily screamed, panic all but choking the sound off, as Kincaid touched down a few yards from her friends.
“You killed my Anna!” Willi pummeled Kincaid with spells, all sparking harmlessly off the wizard’s armor. “You killed her!”
Hartgrave, rushing up to her, looked as alarmed as she felt about this new disaster.
“Help them!” she insisted.
A brief pause and he shimmered away, calling out something in German as he came out the other side of the jump. She scrambled painfully to her feet, grateful Shaw’s attention had also been caught by the commotion, and risked another glance at Bernie. Still no sign of life .
When she looked back, Shaw was gone.
She didn’t even have time to think oh no before the wizard reappeared just above her, coming down feet first. Emily hit the floor yet again and could manage nothing in the way of resistance as Shaw sat on her, pinning her arms with muscular thighs.
“I’m removing the teleportation barrier,” Shaw said, putting one hand to the job. “Can you guess where I’m taking you?”
No one was going anywhere as long as the door remained closed, but even the attempt would be catastrophic. Emily was sure she had never produced so much anti-magic as she was pumping out now. No way could she calm down enough to ensure their safety.
Fate worse than death.
“Stop!” She thrashed to no effect. “It’s dangerous —”
“Shut it,” the wizard snapped. “We’re going home, farm girl, and until Alex gets the program running again, I’m killing one Daggett per hour.”
In desperation, Emily contorted herself and just managed to catch the wizard’s ankle with the tips of her fingers.
Shaw jerked her leg away. “Oi!”
In that moment of confusion, Emily yanked an arm free and grabbed the wizard’s throat.
Worse than Crawford. Even worse. Pain, pain ...
Shaw wrenched backward and fell to the floor. Emily forced herself to go for the throat again, this time with both hands. The wizard grabbed at her fingers but got nothing for it except increased contact .
Emily heard shouting from the others, sizzling magic, a gunshot , but she couldn’t look away.
Then Shaw let go and gestured toward the table.
No no no . The hunting knife. It flew into the wizard’s open palm, handle first, and in one fluid movement Shaw thrust straight at her.
Blood. Everywhere. Her shirt. Her pants. Her neck. She was too numb to scream, too numb even to feel the knife. Shock, she had to be in shock—except why couldn’t she see the knife?
Shaw lifted her hand and stared, mouth open, at the blood spurting from it. Emily turned her head in time to catch a blur of silver—the weapon whizzing away from them.
She hadn’t been stabbed at all. Shaw must have sliced her palm open trying to force a blade that would not go—thanks to Hartgrave.
“Alex!” Shaw jumped to her feet, face twisted in rage.
Emily had to finish what she’d started—quickly—but she couldn’t get up from her shaking hands and knees. She watched, transfixed with horror, as the knife now in Hartgrave’s left hand went berserk. Shaw, trying to stab him from across the room. And with his right hand, he was locked in a tug of war over the gun, which hovered in the air between him and Kincaid.
She glanced away just long enough to see that Willi was crouched on the ground with Bernie prone beside him. Kincaid attacked the shield around them with spells from his free hand—casually, his eyes on the gun.
“Verity,” Kincaid called out, the mildest note of warning there. “Please control yourself. ”
Shaw controlled her wound—stanching the blood with a spell—but if she’d heard his order, she ignored it. She shot a sparking, buzzing line of energy at Hartgrave that looked like a horizontal lightning bolt.
Emily finally struggled to her feet as Hartgrave ducked, the bolt missing him by inches and gouging a fist-sized chunk from the wall. She stumbled toward the woman. She had to stop her. Had to.
“I’ll kill you!” Shaw yelled.
“Verity ,” Kincaid snapped, no longer calm.
Emily grabbed Shaw’s injured hand, pain searing down her arm, the wizard’s wound reopening.
Through her haze of pain, she saw Shaw’s last bolt take Hartgrave down, smoke rising from his scorched coat.
“No!” she screamed—just as Kincaid got the gun back. With his other hand, he caught her around the stomach with a rope-like spell and dragged her toward him.
When she broke the enchantment, he aimed his gun at her knees.
No time to react. She heard the shots the instant she saw his hand—the one holding the weapon—jerk away. Bullets whizzed by, missing her. Hartgrave was still on the ground but alive, alive , one hand stretched toward Kincaid.
The room went silent. Then: “Sh-shite ,” Shaw said, voice wavering.
Blood blossomed on the woman’s shirt, a stain that did not come from her damaged hand. Shaw stared at her horrible new injury, mouth open, and slumped to her knees.
Emily retched uselessly, nothing left to bring up. Anyone who thought death was no big deal as long as it happened to enemies had clearly never seen it in person.
And still there was Kincaid. With his gun.
She looked up to see Hartgrave, back on his feet, casting in her direction. Magic crackled around her, forming a protective bubble like Willi’s.
“Don’t touch it!” Hartgrave said.
She almost argued. His arms shook; his face shone with sweat. But she had to give him a chance to get the gun.
“Sir,” Shaw croaked. “Help—help me ...”
Kincaid didn’t even look at her. He turned to Hartgrave, and only the grim press of the wizard’s lips suggested the situation was not to his liking.
“We’re long overdue for a rational conversation, don’t you think?” Kincaid said.
“Go to hell,” Hartgrave said, the words rasping.
Kincaid made a casual gesture toward the bubble around Willi and Bernie. His spell ate a hole right through it, sending Willi sprawling in an effort to avoid a similar fate. Bernie, still flat on his back, didn’t react.
She swallowed with effort, throat dry, body overheated, and refused to consider what Bernie’s lack of movement probably meant.
“No, not this again,” Kincaid said, and she jerked around in time to see the gun—hovering in the air—leap back into his hand. There it stayed, though Hartgrave’s outstretched hands spoke to his continued efforts to spellcast it away.
He was so tired, and Kincaid was not.
“You always were a challenge,” the wizard said. He sounded almost paternal. Emily shuddered.
“Were you always a sociopath?” Hartgrave inquired.
“Alexander .”
“Oh? You have a different definition of someone who kills people solely because they realize they can use magic?”
Kincaid holstered his gun and clasped his hands behind his back, which showed how confident he was in his armor. Even after what had happened to Crawford and Shaw, he had no fear.
“That’s shortsighted thinking and you know it,” Kincaid said pleasantly.
“Shortsighted? Shortsighted?”
“The die was cast once someone foolishly introduced magic into computer chips. I’ve only ever tried to manage it in a way that allows the world to continue in the manner to which it has become accustomed, while preventing the total anarchy magic would otherwise cause. How could governments handle a citizenry that cannot be incarcerated? How would authorities prevent warring in the streets?”
It was a twisted version of Hartgrave’s argument the night before. It sounded as if Kincaid genuinely believed what he was saying.
“I’m saving lives,” he said. “Billions of them. If a few must be ended to make that possible, I really have no choice, don’t you see? ”
Willi reacted with an inhuman sound of grief and rage. The phrase struck her like a physical blow as well. No choice . That was what she’d thought about her own situation. That was why she’d resolved to kill these three wizards, why two were dead or dying already.
Hartgrave gave a bitter laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous. What about a magical crisis-response team rather than a den of assassins?”
“This is the only reliable method. You know that.”
“There’s always a choice,” Hartgrave insisted. “You chose evil.”
“I chose you, if you’ll recall—”
“Oh, I do recall.” Hartgrave curled his fingers into fists. “I recall that every day. What did you see in me that shouted ‘Organization material’? I was a selfish, angry little sod, was that it?”
Emily clenched her own hands to restrain herself from barreling through and throwing herself in front of him. Was he trying to provoke the man?
Kincaid sighed. “I thought you had the intelligence to appreciate the need for this work.”
“Intelligence! You counted on stupidity!”
Maybe Hartgrave thought he could summon the gun if Kincaid was too angry to think clearly.
Or maybe Hartgrave was the one too angry to think clearly.
“I wanted you to be my successor,” Kincaid said in evident exasperation. “It’s not too late, Alexander. Come back.”
She gasped at the audacity.
Hartgrave fell back a step. “Never . ”
A sound behind her warned that someone needed to pay attention to Shaw, as awful as watching her would be. However long she clung to life, she’d be dangerous.
Emily turned, bracing herself, and looked at the spot where the wizard had fallen.
Nothing there but blood on the floor.
She cast about for Shaw, frantic, and found her crawling to Crawford. Crawford, still lying flat on her back but now hammering with both hands on the shimmering air above her.
Not dead. Trapped. And probably just revived after passing out.
She wouldn’t have thought it possible to be both relieved and horrified, but it was a day full of surprises. What should she do? Cut through the bubble and make sure Shaw had no magic to free Crawford—giving Kincaid another opportunity to shoot?
She turned back to the men, hoping for a sign.
“—and I would eventually find someone else to recreate your work,” Kincaid said. “It’s in your own interest to come back. Yours and your friends.”
“And if I don’t?” Hartgrave’s voice went up several decibels. “What then? You’ll kill them?”
“What you do—and therefore what I do—is entirely up to you.”
She couldn’t look away. Something was about to happen, something bad. The men stared at each other, Hartgrave trembling with what she feared was unfeigned panic.
“There’s only one good way out of this mess you’ve made,” Kincaid said .
“Yes.” All the anger drained away. “No need to kill them. Just kill me.”
“No!” she shouted, thoughts of Crawford and Shaw driven from her mind. “Hartgrave, no!”
“I’m not going back,” he said to the stone-silent Kincaid. “If you’re so utterly confident you’re right and I’m not, kill me.”
“Really, now—”
“I realize I might be slightly more important to you than the average person you murder, so let me make this easy,” Hartgrave said, his flat tone as chilling as the words themselves.
He turned, exposing his back, leaving himself wholly vulnerable. He looked at her as she gasped and made an almost imperceptible motion with his head. A shake. No .
No, what? Don’t do anything, I’ve got this? She glanced at Kincaid, his expression turning grim, and back at Hartgrave, whose own face had gone so dull and deathlike that his shake of the head now seemed like goodbye.
Kincaid raised a hand toward Hartgrave. The gun wasn’t in it. He was going to use magic. Damning the consequences, she thrust herself against the bubble protecting her and burst through, intending to throw herself between them and trust her black aura to do its job well.
She was only partway there when Kincaid pulled the weapon from his holster and pointed it at her chest, wearing the faint smile of a man who’d just been given exactly what he wanted .
With his other hand, Kincaid put an imprisoning spell around Hartgrave. “I trust I have your cooperation now, Alexander?”
Three yards separated her from Kincaid, if that. Nowhere to run. Unless she ran at him and hoped he wouldn’t shoot before she could get her hands on him, but every single muscle in her body had seized up.
Kincaid cleared his throat. “I expect an immediate promise of help, or—”
She thought of her parents and rushed him, unable to look anywhere but down the barrel pointed at her. Suddenly the air between them blurred, Kincaid’s gun wavered and the barrel folded in on itself—melting shut.
She caught a hint of Hartgrave’s aftershave as she skidded to a halt.
Kincaid goggled. “What the—”
A glance over her shoulder—“Hartgrave” still standing with his back to the action—confirmed it: The clever man made an illusory decoy and turned himself invisible.
Kincaid figured it out, too, aiming a spell at the shimmering outline that marked where the actual Hartgrave stood, barely missing him as Hartgrave dodged.
She lunged at Kincaid, but the wizard dematerialized before she could touch him, reappearing on the other side of Hartgrave and hemming him in with a prison spell.
“Stop! Stop!”
Crawford. Emily whipped around and saw her, free once more, on her knees beside the prone and motionless Shaw .
“You shot her.” Crawford stared at Kincaid. “You killed her.”
“A very unfortunate accident,” he said. “Alexander disrupted my aim.”
Crawford jumped to her feet. “You left her to die! I’d always thought if something happened to us, you’d make an effort to help!”
“This is not the time—”
“And Alex, who should have killed me, spared my life.” Crawford sprinted for them. “I think I’m on the wrong fucking side.”
Crawford enveloped her fists in glowing magic and landed a punch on Kincaid’s jaw. It seemed to hurt her more than him—perhaps she’d never tested his armor before—but the distraction offered an opportunity to take that protection out. Right after freeing Hartgrave.
He was almost back to normal, the invisibility spell worn off to the point that he just looked faded, but the prison around him showed no sign of giving way under his attack. She ran at it, put her anti-magic to work and turned, trying to brace herself for Kincaid, to flush out fear with anger. Heroic, time to be heroic.
The next moment, Crawford flew across the room, thrown backward with explosive force. She hit the ground and didn’t move, her neck at a horrible, fatal angle.
“Gwen!” Hartgrave yelled.
Emily, too shocked to scream, stared at the woman who’d been alive seconds before. Then—what else could she do?—she leapt on Kincaid’s back and grabbed his neck, heart pumping so fast that she had to shut her eyes to keep the room from spinning around her. Let this work. Please let this be over.
The magic protecting him tingled. It did not give way.
He shrugged her off and grabbed her above the elbows, preventing her from getting bare skin on him. (Why didn’t she take her shirt off when she had the chance, for pity’s sake?)
“I think you’ll find my protections a bit more functional than my associates’ were,” he said—and if he didn’t sound exactly calm, he was still far too close to it for someone who had just killed both those associates, the latter on purpose.
Hartgrave ran at them, a murderous look in his eyes.
“Goodbye, Alexander,” Kincaid said.
She realized with horror what he meant before he did it, but only just. On came the familiar sensation of magical transport, that indescribable feeling of ceasing to fully exist. Then, nothing. A new sort of nothing.
She had just enough consciousness for a stream of disjointed thoughts (stuck , oh God , infinite, always, forever) and enough time to come up with the silver lining (parents safe, Hartgrave safe, autodidacts safe) before she realized their molecules had merely been moving at a snail’s pace.
The proof of this was the nothingness coming to an abrupt end as she and Kincaid rebounded, bodies re-forming in the room he thought he’d escaped.
He hit the ground first, partially cushioning her fall, but she could see now why Crawford had been so keen to avoid a blocked jump. Every inch of her body ached, including the roughly one-quarter that hadn’t already been hurt.
“But ... but the teleportation barrier is gone,” Kincaid muttered, a plaintive, confused tinge to the words.
Now or never.
She rolled over, pressed her knees to his sides and wrapped her hands around his neck. Still nothing. But the spell he shot off point-blank did nothing to her , and neither did the next one or the one after that. It was like being invincible.
“Get off,” Hartgrave bellowed, “and let me at him!”
But he couldn’t know Kincaid’s armor remained intact. Dodging Kincaid’s attempt to seize her arms, she grabbed his wrists and squeezed the protective magic around them. She just needed to hold on and this nightmare would end.
“You,” the wizard said, “are really trying my patience.”
He broke her grip, flipped their bodies and dragged her upright with the strength of a much younger man. From the corner of her eye she saw a spell zip from Hartgrave’s hands and bounce away two feet shy of them, the air shimmering where it had hit.
Kincaid hoisted her off the ground, threw her over his shoulder and marched toward the door.
“Let’s try that again outside, shall we? Rebuild the tracking program for me,” he said to Hartgrave, “and wait for my call.”
She had her face, hands and arms pressed against his back, but his armor still held—he had to be reinforcing it. Hartgrave, sounding as panicked as she felt, shouted: “ Daggett! He’s put a barrier across the room—we can’t get through!”
She didn’t know how Kincaid figured out that the room and not her anti-magic had kept them there, but if he opened that door, all was lost. More time, she needed more time. She struggled. Tugged at his arms. Kicked his thighs with her bare feet.
He stopped just shy of the door, rearranging her, cursing under his breath.
She kicked through his armor the next instant and got him right in the groin.
He let go with a shout. She twisted to avoid hitting her head and took her full weight on her left elbow. The audible snap was nearly as awful as the immediate pain. Nearly.
She struggled to her feet and staggered toward the barrier Hartgrave and Willi were trying to break, fear for her parents propelling her forward. Kincaid could be out the door in a second and to her family’s farm the next. She had to give Hartgrave a shot before it was too late.
A second before she would have reached the barrier, Kincaid grabbed her by her broken elbow—oh God , the pain—and summoned something into his other hand.
Shaw’s knife, slick with Shaw’s blood.
He put it to her throat.
“Stop attacking my spell,” he rasped.
Hartgrave lowered his hands, wide eyes trained on the blade. Willi went even farther—dropping to one knee, palms flat in rubble from the pulverized stone .
“I shall call you,” Kincaid said. “Be prepared to put this right.”
And when he had what he wanted, he’d kill her and Hartgrave and her parents. He’d go back to executing autodidacts. It would be even worse than the status quo before she’d so foolishly tried to help.
“Walk backward, Dr. Daggett.” He pressed on the knife, stealing the breath from her lungs.
Better to die here, stopping him.
She kicked her bare foot at the barrier.
Time slowed for an instant. Something in her foot cracked. The spell disintegrated. Kincaid’s hand and the knife clutched in it jerked from her throat, pulled back by the magic flowing from Hartgrave’s outstretched palm. And Willi, still on one knee, threw rubble with the spellcast force of a shotgun blast straight into Kincaid’s face.
Emily and what remained of the most dangerous wizard in the world fell backward to the floor.
She tried to get up, to get far away, but could barely manage a sitting position. The room expanded and contracted. She burned as hot as an oven from either her injuries or her anti-magic, pain zinging from her elbow to her foot to her back.
Hartgrave pressed in, wrapping trembling arms around her.
“O mein Gott , I thought you were dead, I thought I’d lost you ...” He gasped. “No!”
How was it that the pain in her back was worse than her elbow and foot combined? She moaned, the world narrowing to the blood on the floor by Kincaid’s body .
“Willi—she fell on the knife!”
“Dead.” Willi’s voice, heavy with disbelief. “He is dead.”
“Forget him and help me! God, there’s so much blood!”
She heard the words, but they slid away without making an impression. Breathing was agony.
Hartgrave gripped her shoulders. “Daggett, you must calm down. I need to get you out of here. Daggett, can you understand me?”
She moaned. “Hurts .”
“I know, love.” His voice quavered. “I know. I can’t get you to hospital with all this anti-magic. Help me? Please?”
She tried to piece together the meaning of this. Then he took one of her hands in his. It didn’t seem possible the pain could get worse, but it did. She shrieked.
He jerked back, eyes welling with tears. “Willi, what can I do? Tell me what I can do! I don’t think she’ll survive a teleport in this state—not if her molecules are fighting against me—”
“We must call 911.” Willi sounded oddly flat.
“There’s not enough time for that! Is this what you wanted? Is this how I make it up to you?”
She closed her eyes.
“Oh God.” Hartgrave’s voice slid to a whisper. “Please, Daggett, please , I need you to live. Daggett!”
She felt so dreadful. What a relief it would be not to feel anything.
When oblivion came like a rushing flood, she went willingly.