Blightborn (21 page)

Adrian moves fast. Pain burns across her cheek. Her jawline feels suddenly wet. Her collar. All she can see is white. She cries out.

Balastair hurries back through the tunnels, a thousand worries clustering in his heart like an orgy of snakes—he expects that the addict boy will emerge from the shadows with another knife of glass. Or maybe the peregrine’s man will know a shortcut—the Wolf’s Lair pretends to be uncharted territory away from the prying eyes of the Empyrean administration, but everyone knows that the Lupercal exists only because it is
allowed
to exist. Will they find the girl in the Engine Layer? Is she already dead? Could she have fallen?

Will she escape?

Will
he
?

Erasmus senses the energy. Chirping and squawking.

“Go go go!” Erasmus clucks.

“I
am
going,” Balastair snaps at the bird, though he doesn’t mean to.

There. The way out and up. Back to Palace Hill. Crooked stone steps lead to a rusted metal ladder bolted into the wall. And above it, the trapdoor to the outside. He hurries up and up and up—hand on the door.

The sunlight of the afternoon is no longer above. Evening is coming on, casting longer, leaner shadows. He hurries back down Black Sliver Alley toward the street—

He emerges, heart pounding. Looks left, looks right. Sees an older couple out walking their ocelot, a few teenage girls standing on a porch behind some columns, passing around a visidex and laughing, pointing, sneering. He hears the wind. The distant creaking of the flotilla.

No agents. No Frumentarii.
We’re safe
.

Back to the elevator then. Then onward to . . .

Well, he doesn’t know where. Somewhere. To hide.

He knows a number of crannies, crypts, and cubicles. He’s had to hide before. As a child. When his mother—

A black shape out of bright sky.

Headed right for him.

He cries out—

Sees the shape of a hooked beak, the curve of talons thrusting forward, the sweep of wings out, then back—

A white-and-gray falcon flies over his shoulder.

Erasmus squawks—

Purple feathers fly. Dots of something wet fleck Balastair’s cheek.

“No!” he screams, spinning as the falcon—a peregrine falcon, he sees that now, small yellow beak, empty black eyes—pins Erasmus to the ground. The falcon begins to peck at the smaller bird as it thrashes—Balastair sees the splash of blood, and already the falcon is yanking its head back, bird guts in its beak like so much red yarn—

He roars and tries to kick at the falcon—

The shrill sound cuts the air.

Something like a giant fist hits him at the base of his spine. His hips go cockeyed, and one foot goes out from under him. His body crashes to the white cobblestones. Shoulder and head hit hard—
crack
. His vision goes double, but then he sees two Erasmuses pull away from two peregrines, four dark little wings flapping, his friend starting to catch flight.

The world goes from two to three and swims back to one.

Go, Erasmus. Fly!

The falcon hops. Talons catch the smaller bird.

Again pinning the caviling grackle to the earth.

One talon plunges through Erasmus’s eye.

The little bird lies suddenly still.

Balastair cries out, but his scream is lost in his throat, swallowed by a surge of vomit. He rolls over on his belly and pukes—the hot acid of herbal gin leaving his throat a seared channel. In the back of his mind he knows he’s been hit by a sonic blast, but in the front of his mind the world is lit up with memories of the little bird—eyedropping little vitamin mixes into the baby bird’s beak, Erasmus’s first word (“ ’Rasmus!”), the
time the grackle spilled all that seed in the kitchen and rolled around in it like a child playing.

Balastair crawls over his own spew, swiping at the falcon that’s now ripping the body of the little bird to bits and swallowing gobbets of grackle meat. The falcon grabs Erasmus’s carcass and takes flight.

Balastair weeps.

Then—across the street:

The peregrine himself.

A sonic rifle slung over his back. Descending from the roof of a dark house on a rope. He lands and takes long strides toward Balastair.

Balastair tries to stand, but his limbs go rubbery. He can’t manage.

“Hello, Balastair,” Percy says. “You know, it was really very rude to leave me there in your home like that. Here I thought we were friends.”

“I’ll kill you,” Balastair says with a gasp, the words coming out soggy and mush mouthed, containing little of the venom he intended.

“Yes, yes, I’m sure you will.” He looks up to a lamppost where the falcon now feeds.
Erasmus . . .
“I see Horus has found a meal. Ugly little birds, grackles. You did know we raised falcons in the Peregrine Guard?”

“Kill. You.”

“So you’ve said.” The peregrine kneels down next to Balastair. “I’m going to take you away now. Somewhere we can get to know each other for a good long while—away from all the distractions this place has to offer. The Lupercal, for instance. I never pegged
you as the type. Oh, but you used to live here, didn’t you?” He suddenly snaps his fingers. “Right, right, I knew there was something I wanted to tell you. It relates to our
last
discussion—the girl. Remember her? The one you were left to monitor and control? Turns out she escaped. She found her way to the Engine Layer, of all places, which is really quite an impressive feat. I’m not sure anyone’s ever tried that one before. Just the same, I want you to find comfort in the fact that she has indeed been found. I have my best men keeping her safe.”

The peregrine stands.

Balastair gags. Pushes himself up on his wobbly arms.

“I swear,” he gurgles. “I will
kill
—”

Percy smashes him in the back of the head with the sonic rifle.

His last sight before darkness is a lone purple feather blowing across the cobblestones. Painting in bird’s blood.

Adrian speaks over her mewls and whimpers.

“Just marking you,” he says, grunting a little as he carves into Gwennie’s cheek with the straight razor. “The symbol of the peregrine. To show the world to whom you belong. That you are a
kept
girl.”

She wrenches her head back, tries to pull away from the blade—

He grabs the back of her head and pulls her forward.

“Please,” she cries out. “Don’t do this—”

But she sees something.

Above his head. Between two long, looping pipes.

A grate. A metal grate. Slowly sliding backward.

The pain brightens again—more blood flows.

“And so, since we have you here, we can do whatever we wish to you. Adriana and myself; we could share you. There’s a room down here for that sort of thing. We can go there next as long as—”

Again she pulls her head back and cries out.

The metal grating has moved all the way back.

Something is descending. Something thin.

With a loop on the end of it.

The Peregrine Guard sneers and rolls his eyes before once more wrenching her head forward.

His face brightens in glee.

“Ah-ha-ha! Finished.” He wipes her wounded cheek with the back of his hand and beholds his handiwork. “I am a failed artist, or so I thought. Perhaps I should reconsider my vocation—”

The looped cord from above suddenly drops over his head.

A look of surprise flashes across his face.

Then the cord tightens.
Vvvviiiiip
.

His eyes bulge.

He tries to cry out, but the only sound that comes is a whispery gurgle. His neck darkens. His cheeks redden.

And suddenly he’s yanked upward.

Just high enough so that his feet are off the ground.

They kick. Furiously. One foot catches Gwennie in the chest, and the chair suddenly lurches backward, falling.
Boom
. The air blasts out of her lungs as Adrian thrashes in midair, hands desperately fumbling at the cord around his throat—but his fingers can find no purchase.

His arms drape by his sides.

His legs quit kicking.

Capillaries burst and bloom behind his freckled cheeks.

Blood runs from where the cord bites into his neck.

Then the cord goes slack, and his body drops.

Fwuddump
.

From the darkness between those two pipes, Gwennie sees two faces peering down. One is the face of a girl, younger than Gwennie by at least five years, her cheeks greasy with oil, white-blond hair matted with filth. She grins and drops through the hole as easily as a drop of water plopping from a leaky faucet.

The other is a man’s face. Long, crooked, beak-like nose. Dark eyes beneath shaded brows. The stubble on his face matching the stubble on his head almost perfectly. He drops down, too.

He rubs the little girl’s head, tousling her hair.

“Good work, Squirrel,” he says.

“Thank you, Papa.” The girl beams.

Together they both step over the body and toward Gwennie.

She thrashes in her bonds. “Get away from me. Please.”

The man offers a lean, callused finger pressed against his lips, and then hers. “Shhhh. Don’t get the wrong idea. We’re not here to hurt you. We’re here to rescue you, dummy.”

The little girl giggles.

CIRCLE OF DOGS

CAEL BOLTS THROUGH
the corn, the stalks recoiling from him.

Even Hiram’s Golden Prolific fears what he is. Or worse, what he is
becoming
.

It’s enough to distract him from forming any proper plan, so that when he finally emerges back into the open ground at the fore of the depot, he does nothing to prepare himself for what might be waiting.

And what’s waiting are the Sleeping Dogs.

A dozen of them, easy. Behind them, red smoke dissipates from the open mouth of the front depot gate like demon’s breath.

All the men wear canine masks. Some metal, others wood. A few have manes like the one he saw on the raider inside. The bearded one whose nose he broke is here, too, holding a ratty handkerchief to his busted face.

They have Lane and Rigo.

Lane kneels, black tape across his mouth and a long-barreled sonic shooter pressed to his temple by a man Cael thinks isn’t much older than the three of them—the young man’s mask is pulled up over his head, revealing dark eyes, a cheeky grin, a few wisps of facial hair on his chin and cheeks.

Rigo sits slumped against the depot wall. Chin to his chest. He’s breathing. But he’s not conscious.

Cael lifts the rifle and aims it at the man with the pistol against Lane’s head. He stares down the iron sights and places the raider between them.

“Ahoy,” the man calls, giving a little wave with his free hand. “Nice of you to join the party.” His eyes widen, and he whistles. “Looks like quite the shooter you’ve got there.”

“So do you.”

“This? It’s all right. Sonic. I’ve got it dialed up so if I pull the trigger—”

“You’ll kill my friend.”

“I’ll empty his pretty head like I’m gutting a pumpkin.”

“You kill him, then I kill you.”

“Yeah, see, that’d be just awful, wouldn’t it? Thing is, friend—”

“I’m not your friend.”

“
Thing is
, you kill me, I’ve got men all around me here and men on the boats beyond. One of them will kill you. And your friend with the bum leg—who, if I’m being perfectly honest?
Does not look good
.”

Cael’s weapon wavers. Just slightly.

“So, what, then?” Cael asks. “I put down my gun, you put down yours, and we all go our separate ways?”

“Can’t have that. You’ve seen us. Don’t want you running to your skybastard masters and giving us up.”

“I figure they pretty much know who you are by now, wouldn’t you say?”

The raider captain shrugs. “Eh. What’s the verse? ‘You shall not suffer a traitor to live.’ ”

Cael takes a tender step forward, gun still up. “That ain’t the verse. It’s ‘You shall not suffer a witch to live.’ ”

The raider shrugs. “I’m not much of a reader these days.”

“And we’re not traitors. We’re no Empyrean fools. We’re Heartlanders. Like you.”

The raider grins and winks. “Hardly like
me
.”

“Let my friends go or I’m throwin’ a bullet right between your eyes.”

The other raiders prickle at that. They begin to move in toward him. One slow step at a time, the circle closes, the corn at his back.

“I think instead I’d prefer you to come with us.”

“To what aim? We’re no good to you raiders.”

“We’ll find a use for you. If only to find out what you know.”

“We don’t know shit.”

“Everybody knows something. Put down the gun.”

Cael hugs the rifle tight against his shoulder. Bracing for the recoil. “Let. My friend.
Go
.”

The raider, with his pistol still against Lane’s temple, pulls another pistol from the back of his pants. He—slowly, cautiously, no fast moves—levels the gun at Cael. Cael thinks:
Shoot him, godsdamnit, shoot this cocky prick right godsdamn now
, and his finger
hovers over the trigger, feeling the cold steel underneath, one squeeze, one pull. . . .