Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The SWAT van finally came into view, surrounded by a phalanx of cop cars. Mark clearly already knew we were here, but if he hadn’t, the sirens would have given us away. Leftover sand from the storm I’d pulled together flew up as the vehicles stopped.
I raised my eyebrows when Zahide stepped out of the car, her coat long and stitched with circles. She had already activated a few, and looked around, like she was ready to do some damage.
“Vamps?” she called out.
“Gone.” Nick pointed at the corpses on the ground. “We’ll need someone to come out for the bodies, though.”
“I’ll call it in,” she said, ducking back into the car.
The SWAT team leader swung down from the van, and he and Nick had a rapid-fire conversation about the specifics of the raid. I squinted at the air, trying to feel anything over towards the building, but it all felt dampened. I couldn’t feel anything, no water, no plants. It was creepy.
A cop sidled up to me, his dark blue uniform marking him as a beat cop rather than a member of the SWAT team or the Paranormal Crimes squad with their suits and Kevlar vests. I squinted at him and took a deep breath.
“Thistle,” I muttered. “What’re you doing here?”
“Lots of action, these police,” he hissed. He looked as human as I’d ever seen, his beauty sanded down to near plainness. If I didn’t recognize his eyes, he might have fooled me.
As though to show off, he blinked and even those were now plain brown. Zahide looked over at us and I moved so my body blocked her view of him. Tucking my hand into my pocket, I said, “I’m looking for her daughter, so go back and tell your mistress I’ll let her know as soon as I find her.”
“That isn’t my sole concern,” Thistle said. “The Summer Queen grows weak.”
“What?” Shaking my head, I looked up towards where the sun was setting, orange painting the blue sky. “It’s almost solstice. She should be at her most powerful.”
“Should be, yes,” Thistle said. “She’s locked herself away, surrounded by only her most trusted guards. She is so weak that even a member of the crèche could kill her.”
“What’s causing it?” I did the math in my head, but the calculus of court politics was beyond me at the moment. Looking at him, I wondered if Thistle had thought of murdering her, of using her weakness the same way she’d used her predecessor’s.
“If it was known, don’t you think it would have been dealt with before this moment?” Thistle asked.
“So, why are you here if she didn’t send you?” I asked.
“You are going to rescue Acacia, no? I am here to help.” Thistle made a chittering sound and said, “I bring a lot of power, Windrose.”
He was trying to convince me. This whole getup with the plain face and the forgettable eyes was all to tempt me into letting him help. Shrugging, I said, "Okay. Don’t kill any humans, and if I hear you put anyone under an obligation, I’ll nullify it myself.”
“That would be unjust.” Thistle’s eyes narrowed. “The Windrose is just.”
“Well, don’t try me,” I said. “My justice needs to be calibrated.”
With a nod, he blended back into the crowd. Zahide was still watching him, but Nick and the SWAT leader called her attention, and when she looked back for Thistle, it was clear from her frown she couldn’t find him.
Nick came up beside me and I squinted at him. “You gave up on spell work and went for your gun pretty quickly.”
“I’m fine,” he said.
“You’re exhausted.” With his back to the cops, I was pretty sure no one could see me. I reached out and brushed a finger up his wrist.
Reflexively, he twitched a smile. “Yeah, but I can keep going. You should stay behind.”
“After that display of fae magic? I don’t think so,” I said.
“They were all under obligation?” Nick’s eyes darted to one of the felled bodies, and I could see a dark guilt in his gaze.
“The face-slap thing,” I agreed, trying to get him to smile.
“You aren’t ever going to let me live that down,” he muttered. “Are you?”
“Since I bet you can quote every regulation in the book, but fumbled on the word ‘obligation’? Yeah,” I said. “You’re in for some ribbing.”
There was a soft smile on Nick’s face as my teasing eased some of the tension he felt.
“We’re going to go in behind the SWAT team,” Nick said. “Stay close to me and be ready. The only reason you’re even here is because you’re the fae expert and I convinced my captain the spell was ancient fae.”
“Close to true,” I agreed. “I’ll be good.”
Nick narrowed his eyes, and I put up both hands, aiming for sweetness. Shaking his head, he gestured for me to get into the car. I slid into the passenger seat, picking up my satchel and putting it on my lap. If I was going to be getting into more fights, I’d need to restock my supplies.
Nick started the car, and we followed behind the SWAT van as it pulled out, driving right up to the building they’d identified as Mark’s hideout.
I’d packed lightly, thinking we’d only be dealing with booby traps like the ones he’d set for us so far.
After those vampires, though, I had a feeling we were in for a much rougher ride.
The SWAT team flew out of their truck, a synchronized unit of black on black and gear designed for a battle field.
As soon as they hit the sidewalk in front of the building, a blue light exploded, crackling.
It was a barrier, similar to the one Nick had used to protect us from the explosion at Woolworth’s house.
Nick swore, as three of the ten men went flying. He jerked open his door and he and Zahide were both running for the barrier, calling off the SWAT team members with sharp commands.
Zahide yelled, “It’s a Torino Barrier.”
Shaking his head, Nick said, “No markers!”
As they discussed, I got out of the car. Whatever was causing the barrier to be so solid had muted all the spirits I could wake with my magic. They were on the other side, and whatever made up the barrier meant I couldn’t reach them.
Looking down, I wondered how far down the barrier went. It couldn’t go all the way to the core of the earth. I felt down deep and winced when I heard a familiar voice wake.
Parker Ferro, you have survived.
Hi, yeah, good to hear from you. I’m actually looking for something—
Have you forgotten what you owe me?
No, no, of course not. But can you make your claim some other time?
Yes. I will. Your obligation to me must be fulfilled. For now, remember the rules of human magic do not govern your kind.
The voice disappeared. It was an odd use of the word obligation. It didn’t feel like a fae obligation, a compulsion, but rather an older, more formal way of saying debt.
Okay, great. So now I’d woken the thing I owed, and it didn’t even help us. Then the ground trembled. I recognized it as similar to the earthquake that had helped me with Dieter.
The barrier flickered. The tremors disrupted whatever was keeping it intact, and Zahide’s words came back to me.
A circle was self-contained. It shouldn’t lose magic or drain it off.
But what if the circle was broken the way it had been at Woolworth’s house?
I’d been able to take all the magic from that circle.
Approaching the barrier, I found a crack and shoved my hand into it. The magic screamed at me, a roar like a tornado. Reaching out for the first bit I could get my hands on, I pulled, spinning it on the mental spindle I’d created.
It wasn’t the same as at the house, where the iron had helped feed me the magic.
Instead of accepting, I was yanking, ripping apart a woven fabric and trying to wind the individual threads around my fingers.
At first, the magic resisted, but then, like water finding an easier route, it trickled into me.
I was ready for it this time, and let it fill my reserves, then when it overflowed, sent it down into the greedy spirit beneath my feet.
A ripple of satisfaction reached me as the voice drank and drank and drank.
A hand clutched my shoulder, but I didn’t want to look away in case I lost the slight edge of control I had.
If that happened, I was as good as gone, ripped apart by the magic I was trying to sap.
The spell began to feel different, and I could sense more than see Nick’s green alchemy spellcasting.
He was trying to rip up the anchor points of the spell, but they were inside the boundary.
A solid shake of the ground gave him a millimeter of access and his magic shot towards the nearest anchor point.
Unlike the spell at Woolworth’s house, which had been designed to do damage as it collapsed, this one simply ceased to exist. With the anchor point gone, the magic just whispered out of existence. My ears were still ringing when Nick raced towards me, shaking my shoulders.
He was yelling, but it took a moment to make sense of the words.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah, fine. Filled up the tank, at least.”
He shoved me back, and dragged his teeth over his bottom lip, before saying, “Don’t do anything that stupid again. That could have killed you.”
Still feeling the flow of magic coursing through me, like a leaf which had just barely survived river rapids, I followed him as he and Zahide trailed the remaining SWAT team members towards the building.
Someone pushed through the door, and the SWAT team leader yelled for him to get on the ground, but the man kept coming, stumbling towards us, getting faster as he approached.
After another warning, the team opened fire, and I put hands to my ears, the echoing sound of rapid gunfire reverberating in my chest. The man kept advancing, and one of the SWAT team yelped, “Zombie!”
Zahide was already in motion, her hand slapping against a circle inscribed on her coat. It lit up deep red, and she motioned with the same hand. The spell sliced out, taking the zombie’s head clean off. Her jacket was smoking, the spell burning itself out.
Then five more burst through the doors. They came rushing at us, and the SWAT team fired wildly as two members retreated back to the van for swords. I came up on Nick, fishing in my bag for something useful.
“I thought no one taught alchemists how to raise zombies,” I said. “Isn’t it dark magic?”
“There’s some necromancer cults still around,” Nick said, pulling out his slender silver knife. He held it ready, but the SWAT team and Zahide seemed to have the zombies under control.
“Still, if Woolworth wanted to be the best alchemist in the world, where did he learn how to raise the dead? Or how to throw fae magic around?” My fingers wrapped around a rough piece of rope in my satchel, and I pulled it out. The fibers spoke to me, and I smiled. This was going to come in useful.
“Maybe he studied it for work?” Nick asked. “Necromancy is a field of magical studies because of its ties to old-world magic.”
I hummed, and followed Nick and three SWAT team members as they continued forward, leaving behind the rest of the team and Zahide to deal with the zombies.
When we entered the warehouse, we almost tripped.
Woolworth had shoved the remaining detritus from when the unit had been used to store construction supplies to the outer edges of the room, leaving a clean center for circles and other spellwork.
He’d converted the whole space to his own personal alchemy studio.
Which was probably why Mark Woolworth felt confident standing in the center of the room, surrounded by circle upon circle, the magic so complicated the spells were rotating. I’d never seen anything that complex outside of a movie theater. Beside me, Nick paled.
“This is only something a team of alchemists could do,” he said. “We’re going to need to call in every magic user we have.”
He gestured and one of the SWAT team requested reinforcements on his radio while the other two circled Mark, checking for weak spots in his spell.
I traced the massive outer circle with my eyes, unable to read the twisting words.
My eyes caught on the two bodies at Mark’s feet.
One was struggling to sit up, and I saw it was Theo King, the man whose mess we were now cleaning up.
I couldn’t see the other one’s face, but the hair looked familiar. Acacia.
Someone at my elbow made a hissing sound. I glanced over, unsurprised to see Thistle, blood on his mouth. Hopefully no one had seen him rip out the zombie’s throat with his teeth. He pounded his fist against the outer circle, getting a burn for his trouble.
Then there was a low scraping sound. I looked up, and saw something nightmares were made of.
It looked like the larger, angrier mother of the creature Nick and I had killed at Tim’s apartment.
Easily twice as long as Torres when she was in her dragon form, the demon was clinging to the ceiling with its claws, a reptilian tongue darting out from between its lips.
“Nick,” I said. “He summoned another one.”
The creature dropped down, burning itself on the outer circle, and it leapt onto the SWAT team.
Nick tapped a hand to his arm and threw a spell, tripping the creature and allowing the cops to get a few shots off into its underbelly.
That seemed to work; it was bleeding, but it spun, lashing out with sharp claws and a sweep of its bat-like wing.
“Can you do your circle again—the one that burned the other one?” I asked.
Nick gave me an incredulous look. “Can you keep this one still long enough for me to do it?” he asked.
I shook my head no. The rope was still in my hand, and I let it unwind, the fibers each moving on their own across the floor.
It took only a thought to reinforce them and then they were winding up every limb of the demon, wrapping tighter and tighter, a hair knotted around a finger.
It wouldn’t do much damage, but it would annoy the demon while we came up with a better idea.
I could see the demon whipping around in a circle, yowling like a cat as it tried to get the threads off of its body.
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
The question was impossible to hear over the noise of ripping metal, a screech of sound as the roof opened up like someone had taken a can opener to it. A very familiar dragon head poked through, her eyes locking on Woolworth.