Blood and Iron (2 page)

But the right-hand one was closer, and carried the blood-sharp sweetness he had expected. Besides, whatever was hunting the waterfront was too old and too deep for one lone Mage to face. He dug his cell phone from his pocket as he moved, and called it in.

Then he picked up the trail of the Faerie huntress just off Broadway and followed her toward Times Square. She moved quickly, erratically, as obviously on a scent as Matthew himself—and, as obviously, she had not yet noticed
him
. He kept to the shadows, running when he had to, his hands balled into fists around the ice in his palms.

She flitted from shadow to shadow, but he finally caught sight of her silhouetted against the lights in the eye-shattering cacophony of Times Square. She was big-boned, too thin for her frame, in a green peacoat and blue jeans, her dark hair falling loose except for a few seemingly random braids swinging among the uncut tresses. Her nose was a stubborn, Grecian edifice, her chin notched as if by a thumb. She walked quickly, boots clicking, glancing up now and then at the buildings arrayed like broken teeth against the sky.

Only tourists look up in New York City,
he thought, and noticed that she too drew her large long-fingered hands from the pockets of her peacoat to rub them as if they hurt. She wore no iron rings; the city itself pained her.

Slime splashed Matthew's boots as he followed. His quarry prowled past a pack of lean young men on a street corner, and one grabbed at her shoulder. She didn't turn, but Matthew—trotting to catch up—saw the shadows writhe around the man who reached, and saw him recoil, staring at his own hand.

Glamourie,
Matthew diagnosed, before ice jabbed his palms, and he ran faster.
Don't touch that, boy. You don't know where it's been.

...
and so am I.

A blur, another chill on the air, made Matthew turn. The cold of Faerie magic pierced the warmth of the night; the Seeker's will cast a shadow as she paused under a streetlight, again chafing her hands. He drew his own awareness tight as the coiled life inside an acorn, slowing to a trot as he sidestepped through crowds, hoping the magecraft in his rings would hide him from her
otherwise
senses—what the uninitiated might call
second sight
.

She raised her chin like a hound scenting the wind and turned on the ball of one booted foot. Matthew forced himself to keep walking, moving steadily, watching his quarry from the corner of his eye as she raised a hand and stepped from the light into a shadow—

—gone.

Her reappearance, three blocks distant, sent a twinge of cold through his bones.
Oh, no, you don't, my lady. Whatever you're after is
mine.

Matthew ran.

Seeker hated stepping out of the shadows almost as much as she hated the cold ache of the iron city in her bones. Shattered images taunted her: an inkblot silhouette settling on Liberty's torch; a gaunt and curious willow following a jogger through Central Park; demonlings leaping among the flashing LEDs of Times Square; a unicorn bowing its cold and final beauty to a savage, cage-eyed panther in the Central Park Zoo.
She
could not lay a hand on that cold silver neck without taking back a charred obscenity— could not have stroked that purity without leaving a smear of tarnish in her wake.

Seeker moved in a place of Names and glamours, of knotted hairs and deadly magics. Reaching into a silent blankness among the images that surrounded her, she found a Mage, dark-eyed and golden-haired and as human as she once was, wearing a jacket of army camouflage he'd no doubt chosen for symbolism over fashion, slipping along a filth-encrusted alleyway. He snarled into the shadows without stopping—
I see you too.
Sorceries hung around him on threads of cold iron and brass.

His glance was assured, mocking. The mortal Magi had a long and unpleasant rivalry with the Fair Folk. She riffled shadows faster: long ripples curled white foam and black against the wharves; that unicorn turned away, flickering silver through the night; the whole
otherwise
reality, magical and unseen by mortals, except a lucky—or unlucky— few. Seeker tossed her hair, braids moving among the strands. A man with a blade lashed out at a huddled girl. His image shuddered, a reflection split by a stone. His victim emerged brightly from the ripples.

Seeker stepped forward, shadow between shadow again and then out. She waited while the man noticed her and glanced from his prey. His gaze traveled up Seeker's boots and raked her face, tension becoming dismissal when he glimpsed dark, straight hair and her angular jaw.
Just a woman,
she read on his face.

“Leave her,” Seeker said. “She's mine now.”

He snarled, and lifted the knife.

“You are out of your depth. I warn you twice.” She smiled at him, a very little smile that hurt the corners of her mouth.

He swiped. She stepped aside, her shadow lashing a tail on the concrete. As he overreached, her left hand stroked one of the braids binding thin sections of her hair.

She spoke a word.

A Name.

“Gharne!”

Casual with the blade as a butcher, the pimp slashed for Seeker's face—a feint at her vanity. She leaned away, fearless as the cat whose shadow she wore. Wingbeats sounded over her shoulder; her assailant's eyes widened. He threw up arms to protect his own pretty face.

In Faerie, you are granted three chances only. Never, never more. A winged black silhouette like an inkstain with teeth took him high on the chest. He sprawled across the girl still crying on the pavement. Seeker clawed after the shadow of that Mage, for safety's sake, and didn't find him.

Beak bloody, the inky thing gouged for the pimp's heart. The girl dragged herself away, his blood like a sash across her chest. Seeker's familiar demon hunkered over dying bubbles, hell-lit eyes focused on his mistress.

“Good hunting,” he said.

She squatted and laid a gentling hand on his neck. “Enjoy your meal, Gharne. Thank you.”

“Don't mention it.” His beak dipped as she turned to collect the girl.

The girl, who had vanished into warrenlike alleys as if she had never been. Sure.
Now
she ran.

Seeker's footsteps followed comfortably; the scent of her quarry hung on the reeking air. The shadow that paced her was that of a running doe, four footsteps meeting Seeker's two.

“Seeker!” A voice like the crack of a whip. She stopped, made a midmotion spin on cat's-paws.

The human Mage grinned at her. “I know your Name,” he said.

“Much good may it do you. It's claimed.”

“Ah,” he said. “What if it wasn't?” He stepped forward, extending his hand.

“Since when do Magi have any power over bindings?”

“We don't.” His hair was a slick yellow ponytail revealing iron rings spiraling his ear. He wore round spectacles that hid his eyes in reflected twinkle.

“Then why ask? You exist to destroy Faerie, Magus, and I exist to defend it.”

“That's
not
what we want.”

“Don't lie to me, Magus,” she snapped. “Trust me, I see no wrong in destroying Faerie. But you—
you
should know it's not safe to talk to fey things. This isn't a fucking fairy tale.”

“Really?” That extended hand came down on her wrist. Something burned, searing her flesh. Cold iron rings on his fingers. “My name's Matthew. Szczegielniak. I'll give you that for free, not that it will help you; I'm a mortal man. And this looks like a fairy tale to me. What are you hunting tonight?”

She swore and jerked back.
“Seeker,”
she reminded him. “It takes more than blood and iron to wound me.”

He shrugged. “It was worth a try. I have other allies.” His hand slid under his jacket.
He has a knife,
she thought.
A gun.

Before he could pull the weapon, Seeker crouched and leapt, over his head and away. “Look me up!” he yelled after her. “Szczegielniak! I'm in the book! We can help!”

Matthew watched her rise, his cell phone warm, winking in the palm of his hand. The number was on speed dial, even if he didn't have it memorized, and he was out of time—he could dial, or he could follow her up the fire escape and, as likely as not, he could lose her on the rooftops.

He pressed the button with his thumb. It rang one time.

“Matthew?”

“I lost her, Jane,” he said, as the chill in his hands ebbed and eased. “I'm sorry.”

“Yes. Elaine.”

“Damn—” A pause, a whisper of breath he could picture, Jane's silver-black hair blown from her eyes. “That's the closest in some time. Did you speak to her, at least?”

“I gave her my name,” Matthew said, unzipping his jacket one-handed as he walked out of the alley and toward the lights. “There's always the hope that she'll call.”

“She can't,” the transmitted voice of his archmage answered. “She would if she could. She's forbidden.”

The shadow of an owl floated up the wall. Matthew was right. She should be put a stop to. Her footsteps fell light and level across the rooftop. She saw as the owl sees; she leapt the twenty feet from rooftop to rooftop as the doe leaps—until the cliff-edge of a warehouse brought her to a halt near the river.

Lifting her face, she sniffed the wind and sent her awareness
otherwise,
then leapt the roof-edge parapet into emptiness. The girl was below. Seeker smelled her. And another . . .
Damn that Mage for delaying me—

—which was worth a wry grin. The Mage was less likely damned than she. She spread the owl's soft wings and floated down beside brick. She touched pavement. Predatory tunnel vision leached the edges of her awareness. She ran until the companion shadow of her doe deserted her, exhausted, and the shade of the cat ran beside her: hunter, leaper, stalker of prey.

Someone else stalked the same prey. The shadows showed her his footsteps: long black feet, pearly bare toenails, water dripping from his tattered cuff. A slow puddle spread where he passed, wet prints following him across the pavement.

Seeker pelted toward him, and he paced toward his prey.

The girl huddled in a doorway. Seeker glimpsed as much
otherwise,
and past her quarry saw the stalking enemy. Black of skin and long of face, clad in the rags of white pants and a shirt of archaic cut—and the very shadows seemed to recoil from his presence. He strode past the doorway and the girl.

Seeker turned the corner in time to see his sure steps hesitate. He paused, turned back. Delight or something passing for it creased his face as he smiled with square white teeth. “Are you hurt, child? Can I help you?”

She hesitated, but took his hand. As he helped her up, Seeker dug in and
ran
. The black cat still paced her; the tall man had not heard her footsteps. He turned the girl away, an arm around her shoulder, and she whispered something too soft to hear through the shadows.

When he replied, his voice was low but clear. “You're a pretty one to be out so late alone.”

She glanced down and blushed: a child, vulnerable, whom the unicorn might once have adored. The dark man looked sideways at her, as if used to viewing life from only one eye at a time. White ringed his crystalline blue iris.

“Tell me, child,” the thin man asked the girl, “have you ever ridden a horse?”

The exhausted cat-shadow vanished like a wind on water. Seeker's footsteps echoed, and she faltered to a stop. She had only the owl left, who couldn't help her now. And Gharne, but
this
would eat her familiar in half a bite, yawning.

Shadows lay tangled on the ground behind man and girl, hers slight and mortal, his suddenly powerful, mane-tossing in fury.

“Kelpie!” Seeker shouted as he turned. A challenge, a demand.
Not his Name.
Kelpie came about to face her, his bare wet feet clattering on the stone.

He threw the girl down; she rolled and landed roughly, got her hands under her and started dragging herself away. Shadows twisted and writhed in Seeker's mind, slithering across her face. Kelpie relaxed, waiting.

“I charge you stay, child,” Kelpie whispered. He stepped forward, his haunches and shoulders bulging.

Seeker shifted her weight, crouched, braced.
I'm dead. Even if I guess right, I'm not strong enough to bind
that.

They faced one another across ten cracked feet of asphalt. Seeker drew a brackish breath. “The child is claimed.”

He snorted, vapor curling from nostrils grown broad and fierce. “Hardly by you, changeling. Or you should not leave your toys unattended, if she was.”

Her hands shook. And he was deeper by far. He came on.

“The child is mine,” Seeker repeated, “and the Mebd's.”

“Contest me.” Grotesquely swelling, and the girl's horror at last fixed on him. He towered. They stood in a shallow sea.

“By my hand and my heart,” she replied. “By the name of your soul ...” A gamble. A gamble, and maybe he would back down.

Hah.

You never knew.

The impact of Kelpie's hooves splattered Seeker's boots. His mane tossed froth-white. Pale hide shone under street-lights, wet and taut over muscle like bent and knotted ropes. He whinnied laughter, mane raining salt water, taste of the hurricane on his breath, as it was always meant to be.

He was glorious as he came to kill her, but Seeker remembered a teacher's voice in her ear. Calm. Maternal.
“Four things, if you forget all else, to be hoarded against need.”