Heart Strings (Black Magic Outlaw Book 3) (11 page)

 

 

 

 

Eager to avoid the ballroom but get back inside the hotel, I rushed along the center of the courtyard toward double doors that connected to the lobby. A flashlight beam flicked on and I fell backward, skidding on my feet and falling into the darkness.

My spellcraft would fizzle if the beam shone directly on me, but the police weren't looking for slithers in shadows.

When the light went away, I broke out into a run. Damn. The doors were locked. Through the glass, I saw Connor heading toward the elevators. I cursed and checked for another door. The courtyard was set between two ballrooms. Both were in use, but only one of them had police officers with weapons.

I entered door number two. A white wedding, and not a large enough affair for my intrusion to be inconspicuous. I crawled over the dessert table, apologizing profusely, and bolted for the doors to the lobby. I turned the corner and made for the elevators.

The back of Connor's suit disappeared as the doors slid closed.

"Damn it."

I watched the elevator light go up. Second floor. Third. And going. At least he was staying in the hotel. I scrambled to the stairway and up to the fourth floor, opening the door just enough to check the elevator. A couple of people were waiting for a car but all the doors were closed.

I returned to the steps and checked the fifth floor. Nobody. By the sixth, I was out of breath. When I pushed into the hallway, the elevator Connor had gotten in had just closed. I looked up and down the hall but didn't see him.

I ran toward an intersection in the hall and immediately ducked back. Connor was making his way down to the back of the building. I'd found him.

I took a deep breath and slipped out of the oversized jacket and pants. I didn't need the cover anymore and couldn't afford to be weighed down. Despite being down to the tank top, things were still claustrophobic.

Something was weird here. This was an older, less renovated part of the hotel. My brain was tight, like it was being squeezed. Strange things had been happening ever since I found the Horn of Subjugation. Things I didn't like. I shook it off.

After another second I peeked. Connor moved at a leisurely pace, only about halfway down the long hallway now. Instead of chancing exposure, I waited for him to choose a door.

The ding of the elevator announced another arrival. Sergeant Ronaldo Garcia stepped out with another officer in BDUs.

"Hands up!" he shouted.

I didn't have time for this.

I drew a tentacle of shadow from the wall and wrapped it around the approaching officer in tactical gear. The wrap squeezed his gun to his body so he couldn't fire. Then I slammed him into the wall and he dropped to the floor.

Garcia didn't hesitate. His pistol barked at me. Blue energy sprouted from the tattoo on my palm. I had to force the Intrinsics to obey me more than usual—the black mark covering my hand was interfering with the tattoo—but the sergeant wasn't packing special bullets.

Lead bounced away in sparks as Garcia emptied his magazine. I charged. The sergeant backed away, but I caught him just as he finished reloading. I swiped the gun from his hand and butted it into the side of his head. KO-ed him in one hit. I dropped the gun beside him in irritation. After that gunfire, I'd just lost the element of surprise.

I hauled ass around the corner just in time to see the last door on the left closing. That was Connor. I had him, but we wouldn't be alone for long. I pushed myself down the hall, shutting out the claustrophobic presence. I passed a shadow, swiped my sawed-off from the depths, and held it ready as I kicked open the door to the hotel room.

Empty. The fucking room was empty.

That couldn't be right. I'd seen him come in here. Damn the DROP team. Getting the DROP on Cisco Suarez. That joke gets old fast.

Connor was gone, but something remained. A faint charge in the air.

My green eyes filled with black, and I scanned the room for signs of spellcraft. The place was clean, but I could detect evidence of spirits. Not here, exactly, but close. Were they what clawed at my brain?

I withdrew my mirror and searched the room in its reflection, knowing there wasn't enough light to use it as a weapon. Useless. The mirror reflected the same things I saw without it. The bed. The window. The painting.

Wait a minute.

There was a painting hanging above the bed in the mirror, but it wasn't there when I looked straight at it. I furrowed my brow, wondering why I couldn't detect the abnormality with my shadow sight.

I took cautious steps forward, red alligator boots scuffing carpet, until I kicked open a hole in the world with a tear that sounded like paper.

This wasn't a hole in the world.

I put the mirror away and used my hands to rip the air ahead of me. A huge sheet of paper spanned the room from wall to wall, dividing it in half. But I didn't see the paper. I saw a facsimile of what was behind it, what I was supposed to see: an empty room.

When I ripped the enchanted paper, it fell away and the illusion flickered out. There I saw the painting that was really there, the one the illusion had failed to account for. But it wasn't the only anomaly.

There was an open door leading to the adjoining room where Connor had fled to.

And there was Kita Mariko, the paper mage, standing between us, covering the man's exit.

 

 

 

 

Kita slammed the door closed and we glared at each other. She was in a defensive stance, ready for my attack.

I ignored the paper mage and made for the door. She thrust her arm in the air and a flood of papers spilled from her sleeve like a deck of playing cards. The scraps each took on a life of their own and swerved toward me in a flock.

I shifted into the lowlight shadow and the attack whiffed through me. The projectiles spattered against the door Connor had escaped through. The papers crumpled and filled the gaps between the door and the frame, creating a quick-and-dirty seal.

I solidified and put a solid boot to the handle, but the door didn't budge. Connor was running, and Kita was helping him. I could deal with her, but he was aware of the threat now. I needed to find him fast.

I spun to the door I'd entered by. It had already closed itself, and before I could reach the handle, Kita waved her other arm, launching another assault from her sleeve. This time, I didn't bother entering the shadow. I sidestepped the swarm and watched it seal the last exit.

The paper mage smiled. "I can't let you at him," she said sternly.

"I'm not asking permission."

She narrowed her eyes and remained silent.

I raised the shotgun to her. "Open it."

"I can't," she said.

It wasn't beyond belief. Simple acts can have lasting consequences, not always easily undone. A lot of things in life work that way. I tried the handle, but it was stuck.

Kita didn't stay still. She reached into the fold of her jacket and threw down a folded paper, origami in the shape of a dog. It flashed yellow and grew in size, taking on animal form. Only this was no mutt. Her spellcraft had conjured an illusory four-legged dragon the size of a Great Dane. It growled at me, and I knew the regular birdshot I had loaded wouldn't slow it down.

I pulled the trigger.

The discharge was loud in the enclosed space. The pellets hit the wooden door in a small spread, punching a hole a few inches wide but otherwise leaving it intact. Kita snickered.

"I don't know what you're smiling about," I said. Then I phased into the shadow, becoming massless, shooting right through the small opening and solidifying on the other side of the door.

"Well, sh—" said Kita before I darted away from the sealed door.

The door to the adjoining room snapped shut. Connor raced down the hall. I left Kita behind, trapped by her own spellcraft.

At the end of the hall, instead of turning toward the elevators, Connor went the opposite way. The drug lord was making a run for something.

I followed around the corner, bending my shotgun in half and reaching for one of my special loads. Fireshot. I had a feeling Connor was more than human, and the voodoo fire had been effective against supernatural baddies before.

Ahead, Connor banged open a door to the access hall. A snapping sound followed. When I followed him in, I saw another door half open. This one heavier. It had been locked with a heavy chain. Now both ends dangled to the floor, their metal links molten orange.

I pushed the door in with my sawed-off. Steps led up and down in darkness. A separate stairwell.

Except Connor was going up, away from the exit.

I followed the echo of his steps. We were in the iconic tower of the famous hotel, styled after the Tower of Seville. But I saw it in a different light.

The architecture was old. Narrow stairway, steep steps, with the stink of neglect. Deeper in the shadows, in a place only I could feel, I realized where the scratching at my brain was coming from.

The sensation wasn't pleasant, like the pressure a deep-sea diver feels. The darkness in the tower smothered my skin. There was resistance in the air here, and the higher I climbed, the thicker it got.

I phased forward through the shadow. Once. Twice. Rinse. Repeat. Any little gain to close the distance between us. I caught sight of the back of Connor's jacket as he rounded the next flight. I slid in the darkness, up and around, and materialized, holding my sawed-off ready.

The top of the tower. A cramped, open-air platform with four archways in four walls. Nowhere left to run. Nowhere to hide.

Except Connor Hatch was gone.

No gates or glass prevented access outside. Once you moved through a window arch, your only option was a thirty-foot drop. I leaned out each cardinal direction, searching the roof and ground beneath, but there was no sign of Connor.

"How does he do that?" I muttered.

My eye ticked. A slight pain pressed the back of my head. It was foul up here. Whispering and scratching. I could practically hear the telepathic cries of the spirits. And they were coming on stronger.

I released my shotgun back to the shadow and found a piece of red chalk in my pouch. I traced a pentacle on the ground. A star, five points. Then I lit a birthday candle, dropped hot wax onto the middle of my mirror and glued the candle to it, and set it in the middle of the star. The voodoo knife came out next, but I hesitated. I'd cut myself with it countless times. This was different.

You don't pick up a five-hundred-year-old necromantic artifact and not learn a few things. I've mentioned that my senses have changed since finding the Horn, but really my abilities had always been changing. The Horn found me for a reason.

Even though I'd been hesitant to assume the power of the Horn, I had an ally in the Spaniard. He was a powerful necromancer in his own right (and likely an evil scourge to boot). But we were bound by a pact now, and the partnership came with perks. The wraith had taught me a trick or two.

This one creeped me the fuck out.

I sliced open the tip of my middle finger and squeezed till it suspended a healthy drop of blood. I brought that drop over the candle. The flame roared as my blood sizzled. My finger burned but I squeezed it more, coloring the mirror with blood. When the fifth drop landed on the glass surface, the entire room went crimson in a shockwave.

I wasn't alone. In fact, it was kind of cramped up here.

As kids, we used to point from the street, blocks away, and tell stories about this place. It was haunted. A World War II hospital that handled victims from the front lines. A dark and horrifying place, where depressed soldiers climbed the steps of this grand tower and welcomed oblivion with a jump.

I was surrounded by men—some missing limbs, some with disfigured faces. There was even a nurse, a ratchety woman with a bun so tight it pulled her face taut. I stared at the faces, trying not to show fear, not fully understanding how these ghosts stood before me.

Was this what the wraith meant by having one foot in the Murk?

"The red-haired man," I said. "Where is he?"

Below me, heels clacked against concrete steps.

"Where is he?" I demanded, leaving no room for insubordination.

The nurse raised her arm, her bony finger pointing out the north window. A blind man followed suit, but he signaled south. A soldier missing his nose, and another covered with burns, pointed east, and others west. One by one, each of the ghosts answered my query. If they were to be believed, Connor didn't go in
one
direction, he went in
all
of them.

"How's that possible?"

The racket from the stairwell echoed louder. The hard stares of the ghosts shifted. Kita Mariko turned the corner of the last platform before the top. The serpentine dragon made of paper was at her feet.

The attack dog charged up the steps. No longer armed with regular birdshot, I scooped up my shotgun and blasted it. A cone of fire disintegrated its face and shredded its body. The magical flames jumped along the paper surfaces. Even as the creature tried to split itself apart and save pieces, it was consumed by the fire. Within seconds, nothing but ash and smoke remained, drifting to the floor.

Kita's sharp eyebrows slanted into icy death. Still a flight below me, she reached to the small of her back and withdrew a bamboo stick, which she snapped open into a ruffled paper fan.

Shit. I'd faced her weapon before and it was sharper than anything I'd ever seen. It had even cut through my armored Nordic tattoo.

"What is he?" I asked. "Where'd he go?"

Kita chuckled. She drew several paper balls from her jacket and tossed them on the ground. I flinched, but they just tumbled like dice. Then, slowly, each inflated with air, grew a few inches wide, and began to glow.

They were paper lights, getting brighter and brighter by the second. They twitched and hopped into the air, drifting on an invisible current and filling the tower with a brilliant light.

I blinked my shadow sight away before it blinded me. The ghosts and the redness of the room faded. Kita had probably never seen that anyway. But that wasn't her purpose. She was eliminating the ambient shadow, limiting my tool set, and making sure I couldn't shift behind her.

No place left to run.