Cursed (15 page)

M
eredith wanted to go back to her flat, having been away for more than a day, and I went with her. Apart from anything else, the Dark cabal might be planning to take another shot at her, and if they were, her home was the natural place to set an ambush.

Meredith’s flat was in Kensington and Chelsea, a little west of Cadogan Square. It’s expensive even by London standards and I don’t go there much. As we turned into the street, I saw that it was lined with old white-pillared terraced houses. Once upon a time, sixty or seventy years ago, those would have been used by the gentry and their servants and families; these days they’d been converted into flats for rich professionals. Some things change, some stay the same. The sides of the road were tightly packed with lines of well-polished sedans and sports cars. I stopped on the patio of Meredith’s house, my instincts warning me to check the area before going in. The sun had set during our journey and as I looked from west to east I could see the colour of the sky fading from a deep yellow sunset to midnight blue. There was a scattering of people but the street was quiet with the coming evening and nothing set off my alarms. I followed Meredith inside.

Meredith’s flat was the top one of four, the stairs thickly carpeted. “I really need to change,” Meredith said. “Could you wait a few minutes?”

If there was anything messy about her appearance, it was more than I could tell. “No hurry.” Meredith disappeared into the bedroom. I knew what “a few minutes” meant in girl talk and settled down to wait. A moment later I heard a shower start up from somewhere past the bedroom and I added another quarter hour onto my guess.

Meredith’s living room was decorated in pale green, with tables and chairs of light wood, and a carpet lined the floor. A bookcase stood by one wall—the shelves were less than half full and most of what was there seemed to be boxes or CDs. There was a TV and stereo system, both new looking, the remote controls on the table next to a bowl of dried flowers. Two soft-looking white sofas were piled with cushions and the wall held a piece of artwork made of curves of black metal. The room looked nice but somehow I didn’t feel particularly comfortable. It was a room for receiving visitors, not a place where you could put your feet up and relax. I sat on the sofa and found it was as soft as it looked.

“Where are we going?” Meredith called. I could make out her voice clearly, which meant the bathroom door was probably open … and I stopped that line of thought before it went any further.

“It’s a surprise,” I called back. Actually I hadn’t thought ahead that far. I tried to think of somewhere to take Meredith and came up blank. There are a lot of things I’m really good at but entertaining women isn’t one of them.

“So what should I wear?” Meredith called over the sound of the shower.

“Meredith, I think you’re going to look good whatever you wear.”

Meredith laughed; she sounded pleased and for some reason that put me in a good mood. The sound of the shower stopped, replaced a moment later by the whirr of a hair dryer. I got up and wandered over to the bookshelves. There wasn’t much there; it seemed Meredith was more into music than reading.

“Alex?”

I turned to see Meredith standing in the doorway wearing nothing but a small towel and a couple of hair clips. My brain kind of shorted out at that point and I didn’t notice much else. Gradually I realised that she’d just asked me a question. “Sorry?”

“Which one do you like better?”

I managed to tear my eyes off Meredith long enough to see that she was holding up a couple of dresses on hangers in front of her. “That one,” I said.

“Which, this?” Meredith let one of the dresses she’d been holding in front of herself fall to her side, giving a very interesting view for half a second before she draped the other one over the front of her body. “Do you think?”

“Yeah,” I said. Honestly, I was having trouble even noticing what colour it was. Meredith was looking down at the fall of the dress, apparently completely absorbed, thin tanned arms bare all the way to her shoulder blades. “Go with that.”

Meredith disappeared back into her bedroom and I let out my breath, only then realising that I’d been holding it. This was getting dangerous.

I still didn’t know what to do about Meredith. I knew she’d been recruited by Belthas and I knew she had a very different set of priorities than he did. I was tempted to think of her as a partner … except for that nagging voice of paranoia wondering what her real motives were. Was Meredith staying close to me because she wanted to? Or because she’d been told to? Or for some other reason I couldn’t guess?

As if that weren’t enough, there was Meredith’s ability to manipulate emotions. I still didn’t have a clue just how much of what I felt towards her was my own feelings. She could be nudging me for her own ends … and then again she might not be, and the hell of it was I didn’t have any idea how to find out. So I hesitated, and the longer I hesitated the more I found myself thinking about her. The sounds from the bedroom suddenly went quiet and I turned to see that Meredith had returned.

Even prepared, it was hard not to stare. Meredith had changed into a black dress trimmed with gold. A deep V-neck showed off her cleavage and the lines of the dress followed the curves of her body closely from the waist down
to the knees. She’d somehow found the time to restyle her hair and it hung loose around her shoulders with a slight wave. “Well,” I said at last. “I feel underdressed.”

Meredith smiled and walked forward, running her hand down the lapel of my shirt. “I think you look nice.”

“You’re about the only one.” Stupid thing to say.

Meredith didn’t take her hand away and I found myself staring down into her eyes. Her touch was soft and I couldn’t help thinking how nice it felt. It had been a really long time since I’d had a pretty woman do that. “Maybe we should …” I began, and tailed off.

“Mmm?” It was a wordless sound, rising inquisitively, and my heart beat faster. I looked down at Meredith and wondered what would happen if I were to—

The doorbell was loud, an electronic shrill, and it cut right through my head, making me jump. Meredith started as well and looked towards the door with annoyance. After only a few seconds it shrilled again, and Meredith sighed. “I’ll get rid of them.” She walked out into the hall. “Who’s calling this late … ?”

I stared after her, standing and feeling out of place. Something was nagging at the back of my mind but my thoughts were moving slowly. Meredith picked up the receiver just as the bell shrilled again. “Hello?” she said over the sound of the bell.

Suddenly my head cleared and I saw what was about to happen. “Meredith!” I shouted. As Meredith turned in surprise I grabbed her around the waist, dragging her back into the living room as the handset clattered against the wall.

Just as I did so, a column of searing flame tore through the door. The hallway of Meredith’s flat became an roaring inferno, red fires tinged with black. The walls crisped and ignited and the handset Meredith had been holding melted, the plastic liquefying and evaporating as the air heated to a furnace.

Then just as suddenly, the torrent of flame cut off. The
hallway was left burning fiercely, flames licking up the walls and reaching eagerly into the living room. Over the crackle of flames, I heard footsteps. Heavy boots kicked the burning remnants of the door aside and stepped into the flat.

I
t was a good ambush. Anybody caught by that blast would have been turned into a living torch, writhing and screaming in horrible pain for the few seconds it would have taken for the fire mage to finish them off (and yes, I saw that in more detail than I wanted to). The fight would have been over before it began, which was of course the point. There’s a duelling code under mage law for resolving formal challenges. The code is impartial, requires mages to give their opponent fair warning, and is completely ignored by almost everyone. Any mage with the tiniest bit of sense knows that combat is dangerous and that the best way to survive it is to finish the battle as quickly as possible. If you’re a diviner, like me, that means running away. For a fire mage, like the guy who’d just kicked down the door, it means killing your enemy with the first strike.

Of course, for the same reason, mages who are easily ambushed tend not to live very long. I’d pulled Meredith far enough back that the first blast had done nothing but dry
our skin, but in only a couple of seconds the fire mage would be in view, and I dug through my pockets for something to hold him back.

But I’d underestimated Meredith. I hadn’t expected her to be any use in a fight, and to be fair, she hadn’t given me much reason to think otherwise: in the battle with the construct, the best that could be said was that she hadn’t gotten in my way. But it hadn’t occurred to me that the reason she’d been so scared was because she’d been facing something her magic couldn’t touch. The fire mage was deadly and powerful but he was still human, and even caught by surprise, Meredith didn’t waste more than a startled breath. She turned to face the door and my senses tingled as she sent
something
into the hallway.

Over the crackle of flames, I heard the sound of staggering footsteps as the mage fell back. He recovered fast, though, and I saw the attack coming in time to snap “Down!” and pull Meredith to the floor.

A beam of fire slashed through the doorway and sawed sideways through the wall, slicing through wood and plaster and sweeping the living room at waist height. I covered Meredith with one arm and tried to burrow into the carpet. A flash of terrible heat rolled over my back and I felt the hair on the back of my head crisp, then in an instant it was gone and I looked up just in time to see the beam cut through the shelves. The shelving and everything on it literally vapor-ised in the instant before the beam cut out, leaving the burning upper half of the shelves to crash to the floor.

The beam had left a neat one-foot gash in the wall and past the red-hot edges I could see the upper body of the fire mage silhouetted against the flames. He’d only have to bend his head slightly to see us too, so before he had the chance to realise that I pulled what looked like a marble from my pocket and hurled it. I’ve picked up a few unusual ways to use my divination magic over the years and one of them is a way of accurately throwing small objects. All in all it’s
probably one of my more useless skills, but it does occasionally come in handy. The projectile flew neatly through the centre of the gap, past the fire mage, and shattered against the opposite wall.

The object I’d thrown was a sphere of glass with a fingernail-sized bit of mist swirling inside it. The mage who makes them calls them condensers but I think of them more as instant cover. A cloud of fog rushed out, enveloping the hall, the flames, the fire mage, Meredith, and me, cutting out all vision beyond a few feet. The mist was totally harmless, but the fire mage fell back reflexively, probably wondering if the thing was mind-fog or poison or worse. I felt the surge of a protective spell as Meredith rolled over and sent another strike at her would-be killer, making him stagger again.

The fire mage seemed on the back foot but I didn’t expect that to last, so I pulled Meredith to her feet and hurried back to the bedroom, my magic picking the path that my eyes couldn’t see. As we made it through the doorway there was a roar and another red flash, but this time the blast didn’t come near us and I slammed the door.

My heart was racing as though we’d fought a full-length battle, though looking back on it the whole thing couldn’t have taken more than ten seconds. I dug through my pockets, vaguely taking in the look of Meredith’s bedroom: fluffy pillows, dresses tossed carelessly on the bed, a big window. “Can you hold him off?”

Meredith shook her head. “He’s too strong!”

The floor juddered and there was a
boom
from the other room. I pulled out a pair of gold discs and dropped them on either side of the door, saying a command word. There was a faint
thrum
as an invisible vertical barrier sprung up, barring the door and reaching almost to the edge of the room. Meredith looked at it in surprise. “What did you do?”

“Forcewall.” It wouldn’t last long but it would buy us time. I pulled the window open. Already the air inside the
bedroom had heated to uncomfortable levels; hot air rushed out as cooler air was drawn in. I pulled out my glass rod, channelling a thread of magic through it. “Starbreeze.” The focus tingled, carrying my words away into the night. “I need help. Please come here, and hurry!” Starbreeze could pull us out but there was no guarantee she’d arrive in time. “There’s—”

We must have been speaking too loud. Meredith ducked as another searing beam slammed into the wall separating the bedroom and living room. It looked like fire but cut like a razor; I didn’t want to know what it would do to living flesh. The beam sawed left to right and the wall melted into flames, but the force barrier behind it held. Through the red-hot gash I could see mist and smoke. The temperature shot up.

“Alex!” Meredith called, and I turned to catch something glittering as it flew towards me. It was cold against my palm. “Ice crystal!”

I pulled open the door to the bathroom. “Anything that’ll get us out of here?”

Meredith shook her head. She was rummaging through a bag that had been under her bed and as I watched she slung it over her shoulder, hurrying past me to the bathroom. As she crossed the threshold the fire mage hit my forcewall with a wide-angle blast, setting what was left of the wall behind it alight.

The bathroom was tiled in green, with a spacious bath, and would have smelt nice but for the smoke. So far we’d survived by giving ground, but we were quickly running out of places to run, and as I stuck my head out the window my heart sank. The back of the building was a sheer wall, opening into a doughnut block of enclosed gardens, and we were on the fourth floor. “Tell me there’s another way out.”

Meredith shook her head with a cough. “Gate stone?”

“He’d rip the building apart before we got halfway.”