Cursed (27 page)

The Council, needless to say, was a washout. First they gave Sonder the runaround, and when he persisted they hinted strongly that he’d be better off minding his own business. Instead of giving up, Sonder looked at the situation logically and decided that since the Light mages weren’t being helpful, he might as well try the Dark ones. Cinder had been sort-of-allies with me before, and once again he and I seemed to have a common enemy. So Sonder rang Cinder, and as luck would have it, Cinder answered. Looking back on it, I wonder if I’m setting the kid a bad example.

Sonder skated over the exact details of the conversation, which I have to admit I was morbidly curious about. Once they’d gotten past their mutual mistrust, though, it didn’t take them long to strike a deal. Cinder wanted to find Deleo, Sonder wanted to find me and Luna, and there was only one place to start looking. Sonder led Cinder to Arachne’s lair and the rest was history.

“There was another guard outside,” I remembered.

“Yeah,” Sonder said. He looked uncomfortable, and I noticed he was carefully avoiding looking at the bodies. “Cinder … dealt with him.”

“Well.” I looked at Cinder. “I guess I’m not who you were hoping to find, but thanks anyway.”

“Where’s Del?” Cinder rumbled.

“Belthas has her.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.” I looked at Cinder. “We team up until Belthas is dealt with or either of us quits. No hostilities until twenty-four hours after that. Deal?”

Cinder nodded. “Deal. How do we find Del?”

“By finding Belthas.”

“Is Luna back there?” Sonder asked.

I sighed. “No.” I hated having to admit it: Even though there was nothing else I could have done, knowing that I’d left her behind hurt. “Belthas took her.” Sonder’s face fell.

“So where is he?” Cinder said.

It occurred to me that Cinder was going to be difficult to deal with. He was brutally straightforward and would remain steady only as long as he could see what to do. Now that Belthas’s men were dead Cinder had no obvious direction, and if things stayed that way he was going to get frustrated quickly. “They worked for Belthas,” I said, looking at the remains. “Maybe they’ll have something that’ll show us where to go.”

Cinder thought about it for a few seconds. “Fine,” he said grudgingly. “I’ll loot the bodies for you.”

Sonder looked at the smoking scorched things that had been Belthas’s men and flinched visibly. “You mean …”

“Relax, Light-boy,” Cinder said, already turning away. “Don’t have to get your hands dirty.”

“Sonder, I need you to look back at what happened,” I said. “Belthas was here, along with Luna and Martin. Find out what they talked about and see if you can track them.”

Sonder nodded and turned away, his eyes unfocusing. Reluctantly, I turned towards Arachne. I needed to figure out how to help her before Cinder’s patience ran out.

O
dds are you’ve never tried to give a giant spider a medical checkup. In case you’re wondering, it’s really hard. It’s not like you can take their pulse, and dealing with the fact that they have their skeleton on the
outside
of their bodies is weird enough on its own. After ten minutes’ examination, I’d managed to conclude that Arachne was alive, which I’d known already.

Figuring out what Belthas had done was easier. There was a short rod embedded at the back of Arachne’s body in her … neck? Back? Thorax? Whatever it’s called. The thing was about twelve inches long and made out of some iridescent purple metal that caught the light. It was a powerful focus with an active spell working through it. As far as I could tell, it was linked to something else, probably an identical focus with a similarity effect joining them. At the moment the spell was stable. It wasn’t draining Arachne’s magic or life force but she wasn’t getting any better either.

I ran my hand along Arachne’s back, feeling the stiff hairs brush against my fingers. There was something terribly depressing about seeing her like this. Ever since I first met her, Arachne’s always been one of the few stable points in my world, wise and strong. Having her still and lifeless felt wrong, and I couldn’t help wondering if this was my fault. If I’d dealt with Luna better, figured it out earlier …

“Hey,” Cinder called. I turned to see something flying towards me and caught it one-handed. I’d been standing on a battered sofa to get a better look and had to sway to keep my balance. I took a look and saw that it was a touch-screen phone. “What’s up?”

“Password.”

The phone had a password lock. I took thirty seconds and cracked it, then skimmed through the call and message history. The phone had belonged to Mick, aka Michael, and
had apparently survived the blast that had killed its owner. I put it in my pocket.

“So?” Cinder said.

“Belthas took my phone. I need a new one.”

Cinder gave me a look.

“There’s nothing there,” I said. “Any luck?”

Cinder gestured at the pile of guns at his feet. The five men had been carrying enough weapons to stock an armoury: submachine guns, pistols, grenades, clips and boxes of ammunition, knives, radios, coils of wire, and what looked like plastic explosive. It was enough to fight a small war—unfortunately, at the moment, it was also completely useless.

I looked at the iridescent metal rod. “Know what this is?”

Cinder walked forward and squinted. “Yeah,” he said after a moment.

“You and Deleo got them from that mage, didn’t you?” I said. “Jadan or whatever his name was. The guy who came up with this bloody ritual.”

“Yeah.”

“How do they work?”

“Dunno.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Got his materials. Didn’t know how to use them.”

I sighed. “It’s just like last time, isn’t it? You guys never understand what you’re messing with but you do it anyway.”

“Would have been fine if you’d let us kill that enchantress.”

“Yeah, well, maybe if you and Deleo had done a bit less collateral damage I wouldn’t have gotten involved.”

“No.”

“No what?”

“Wasn’t why you were helping her.”

I looked at him. “How would you know?”

“She acted sexy and vulnerable and made you feel good,” Cinder said. “So you trusted her. Right?”

I was silent.

Cinder shook his head contemptuously. “Idiot.”

The sound of footsteps made us look up to see Sonder emerge from the tunnel out onto the Heath. Cinder walked away. “Sorry,” Sonder said as he approached. “He made a gate but I couldn’t see through the shroud.”

I nodded. “And in here?”

“They left three hours ago,” Sonder said. “Belthas, twelve men, Martin, and that woman. They had Luna.” He didn’t look happy. “Martin was dragging her.”

I thought about Luna and how she must be feeling. She’d trusted Martin and thought him a friend, probably in the hope he’d become a lot more, and he’d betrayed her in the worst way possible. Then there was the question of what Belthas would do with her or if she was even still— I shook my head and pushed the thought away. I needed to focus.

“Can you take it out?” Sonder asked.

I looked up to see that Sonder was pointing at the rod in Arachne’s back. “Not without killing her,” I said. “And even if I could, I don’t have the first clue how to fix whatever Belthas did.”

“I think it was a paralysis spell,” Sonder said. “I only saw bits of it but …”

I nodded. Ice mages are good at that sort of thing. Sonder looked at Arachne’s motionless body. “Could we get someone to heal her?”

“Maybe,” I said doubtfully. I stuck my hands into my pockets. “We’d have to—”

I stopped. There was something in my pocket and I drew it out. It was the fang of some enormous creature, made of some kind of grey stone, heavy and warm and eight inches from base to tip. It was a magical item and a powerful one. I’d never seen it before. I’d checked my pockets just after escaping Belthas and they’d been empty. How had it … ?

“Wow,” Sonder said. He was staring wide-eyed. “What
is
that?”

“A gate,” I said. I realised I knew the command word. And it would take me to … “Holy crap,” I said quietly. “It was
real
.”

“Where does it lead?”

“To someone who
could
fix her.” I looked to see what would happen if I used it and saw that the fang would cut through the gate wards easily. For a one-shot item, it was incredibly powerful. “It’s designed to take two people,” I said. “User and one other … Crap.” As I looked at the consequences, my heart sank. The spell on Arachne was tied into her life force. Gating her would break the spell and sabotage Belthas’s ritual—but it would be fatal for Arachne.

Sonder looked at Arachne. “Can you—?”

I shook my head. “Moving her while that thing’s active will kill her.” As I thought about it, though, my spirits rose a little. “But now we’ve got a way to help her. Just got to figure out how.”

“Why’s it alive?” Cinder said from behind me.

I didn’t take my eyes off the fang. “She’s not an ‘it.’”

“Why’s
she
alive?”

“Because Belthas wants to use her for your damn ritual.”

“So why’s she alive?”

“Because—” I said, then stopped as I realised what Cinder was getting at. The ritual killed its target—I knew that already. So why had Belthas left Arachne here?

Because she couldn’t be moved. The spell stopped me from moving her but it would stop Belthas from moving her too. The obvious thing for Belthas to do would have been to have completed the ritual here, already. But he hadn’t, which must mean he wasn’t ready. Maybe Garrick hadn’t been there to stop me from escaping. Maybe Belthas had stationed him there to make sure nobody touched Arachne.

“He’s going to do the ritual somewhere else,” I said. I turned to Cinder. “Deleo knew bits of it, didn’t she?”

Cinder shrugged. “Bits.”

I nodded to myself. “That was why Belthas needed her alive. He won’t try the ritual until he’s absolutely sure it’ll work.”

Cinder looked at me sharply. “So he still needs Del.”

“Yeah. And he’ll probably keep hold of Luna too.” I saw Sonder perk up.

Cinder nodded. “Okay. We kill it.”

“What?”

“Ritual needs a live target.” Cinder gestured to Arachne. “Kill it, he has to find another. Gives us more time.”

I stepped between Arachne and Cinder, glaring at him.
“No.
”

“Going to be dead anyway,” Cinder pointed out.

“We are not touching her.” I stared Cinder in the eye. “You want Deleo. Fine. I’ll help. But you don’t touch any of my friends.”

Cinder met my gaze. There was a considering look in his eyes and I knew what he was thinking. I’m no match for Cinder. If he decided to kill Arachne, I wouldn’t be able to stop him.

Then Cinder shrugged. “Got a plan?”

I thought quickly. “Belthas doesn’t know what’s happened yet. We track him down and take him by surprise while he’s got his hands full with the ritual. Shut it down from the other end. We take Luna and come back here to transport Arachne. You take Deleo and go wherever you like.”

Cinder thought about it for a little while. “How long?” he said at last.

“Until what?”

Cinder gestured to Arachne. “Look and see.”

It’s easy to make the mistake of thinking Cinder’s stupid. He’s slow and deliberate but he’d seen the obvious point I’d missed: by looking into the future to see when Arachne was going to die, we could learn when Belthas was going to finish the ritual. I looked forward and saw the point at which
energy would crackle over Arachne, drawing away her magic and with it her life. I looked away quickly. “Five hours.”

Cinder nodded. “You’ve got four and a half. Then I kill her before he does.”

W
e left Arachne’s lair so Cinder could gate us back. I felt better as soon as I was out in the fresh air, and I saw Sonder taking deep breaths, the colour returning to his face. Burnt flesh has a horrible smell, like charred beef but with a nauseating sweetness, thick and putrid and rich. It smells like nothing on earth and you never forget it. Cinder hadn’t shown any reaction. I guess he’s used to it.

Cinder gated us to the park near my home and we walked the rest of the way. It was the early hours of the morning, and Camden was as quiet as it ever got. My new phone told me it was two
A.M.
; it had been seven hours since I’d gotten Sonder’s call. It felt like more.