Murder by Magic (22 page)

“Right. This way.”

“This way” ended up being a long hallway without a single door off it until they came to a T-intersection. Sergei looked decidedly unhappy, his gun now out and ready in his hand. Wren barely spared it a glance, too busy listening to the hum of current throughout the building. It was alert now, singing in activity. The building was locking down, tucking itself up tight. “No, down here,” she said suddenly, grabbing his free hand and tugging him to the left, concentrating on the patterns. Down the hall, through a heavy fire door, a pause on the landing to determine up or down, then up to another fire door and into a hallway that was the exact replica of the one they’d left behind. They took a corner at a full-out run and stopped.

“Oh hell.”

Wren stared at the blank wall. She could smell the sweat on her skin, Sergei’s. She could feel the thrum of blood racing in her veins. Panic bubbled just below the surface. But Sergei’s voice, next to her, was calm.

“Get us out of here.”

She knew what he was asking.

I can’t!

We’re dead either way. Or worse . . .

She reached, grabbing every available strand of current, draining every power source in the building, siphoning off Sergei until he staggered. Filled and overflowing, practically sparking and glowing from within, she grabbed her partner in a bear hug and
threw
—

There was no transition. Her chin to the ground, palms abraded by macadam, vomit pouring from her mouth. Her body ached and quivered, and she was drenched in cold, sticky sweat.

When the torrent finally released her, she fell to her side, panic filling her brain.

“Serg?”

“Da.”

Utter relief filled her at the sound of his voice, faint and worn-out, somewhere behind her. “I told you I was no good at this,” she said, wiping her face with her filthy sleeve. There was a scrape of flesh against pavement, then a slow stream of curses in Russian.

“You ’kay?”

She managed to find the energy to roll over and watched as Sergei fussed with his cell phone. Throwing it down in disgust, he reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out his PDA. He glared at it, then her, then threw the equally useless device next to the cell phone.

“Oops?” she offered.

He closed his eyes, picked up the gun from where it had fallen when they translocated. It seemed to click and spin in all the right places, and some of the lines on his face eased as well. He replaced it in the holster, then leaned forward and took her hand, pulling her up with him as he stood.

They leaned against each other for a few moments, listening to the sound of their still-beating hearts. In the near distance, a car hit the brakes too hard, squealed away. Farther away, the hum of engines, horns, sirens wailing—all the normal sounds of the city at night.

“You got it?”

She nodded, touching her pocket. “Got it.”

“Then let’s get the hell home.” He paused. “You have any idea where we are?”

Wren tried to laugh, couldn’t find the energy. “Not a clue.”

They came to the end of the alley and paused to get their bearings. “Wow. I managed to toss us farther than I thought.”

“In the wrong direction.”

“Bitch, bitch, bitch.” She paused, her head coming up like a dog catching a scent. “Sergei?”

A strangled scream answered her, and they whirled: bodies, exhausted or not, tensing for a fight. A figure staggered toward them, its skin crackling with fire like St. Vitus’ dance, blue and green sparks popping and dancing along his skin. He jittered like a marionette, jinking first to the left, then right, forward and back, moaning and tearing at himself all the while.

“Oh God . . .” Wren went to her knees, her already depleted body unable to withstand the barrage of current coming off the man in front of her. “Oh God, Sergei . . .”

The burning figure lurched forward again, and Sergei reacted instinctively. A sudden loud
crack
cut across the buzzing of the current in Wren’s ears. The figure jerked backward, his eyes meeting Sergei’s with an expression of relief, gratitude, in an instant before he pitched forward and fell to the ground.

The lights disappeared, and Wren heard a faint
whoosh,
as though all the current were suddenly sucked back inside his skin.

Sergei went to the body before she could warn him not to, flipping it onto its back. Long fingers tipped the man’s head back, and then Sergei nodded once, grimly, and released him, getting back to his feet and putting the pistol away.

Wren looked at what her partner had been looking at: a pale blue tattoo under the dead man’s chin. “A Mage.”

“That the same thing that killed the other stiff?”

Wren touched the rapidly cooling skin just to make sure, but it was a meaningless gesture. “Yeah,” she said with certainty.

“Right. We’re out of here.” He put one large palm between her shoulder blades and steered her toward the sounds of traffic and cabs. Neither of them looked back.

Wren was still nursing her first cup of coffee when Sergei arrived at their usual meeting place the next morning, sliding into the booth across the table from her. The waitress brought over a carafe of hot water, tea bags, and a mug without being asked, and Wren watched him as he went through the ritual of testing the water, then stirring in the right amount of milk. She couldn’t stand the stuff herself, but she liked watching him make it.

Finally, he took a sip, then looked at her.

“His name was Raymond Pietro,” she told him. “Twelve years with the Council. Specialized in research, which is their way of saying he was an interrogator. Truth-scrying, that sort of thing. Only the past tense isn’t just because he’s dead. Rumor has it he went over the edge last month.”

“Over the edge” was a gentler way of saying he had wizzed. That the chaotic surges of current had warped his brain so much that he couldn’t hold on to reality any longer. But that didn’t explain his death. Wizzing made you crazy, dangerous, but your ability to handle current actually got better the more you gave yourself over to it. That was why wizzarts were dangerous. That, and the raving psycho loony part.

“They dumped him?” It might have seemed like a logical explanation to Sergei, but Wren shook her head.

“Council takes care of its own. They have a house; really well warded, totally low-tech, so he wouldn’t be distracted by electricity. He disappeared from the house two days ago. Council was freaking—the guy I talked to actually thanked me for bringing news, even though it was bad.

“They also said Pietro wasn’t the first of their wizzarts to go missing. They never found the others.”

Her partner’s face, not exactly readable at the best of times, shut down even more. She finished her coffee, putting the mug down firmly on the table in front of her. “One might have been an accident, or a particularly crude suicide, but not half a dozen. Someone’s killing wizzarts, Serg. Pietro, our stiff, the others. Who knows how many others? Council thinks—and I think they’re right—we’ve got somebody fine-tuning a weapon. Goes right through the nulls, but fries Talent.”

“And they’re testing it on the wizzed population?”

“Nothing else makes sense. Nobody cares about the ones who’ve wizzed. You can’t, not really. They’re as good as not there anymore. So they’re easy victims.”

She was rather proud of how steady her voice was until she made the mistake of meeting her partner’s eyes. The quiet sympathy she saw there destroyed any idea she might have had of remaining calm.

Oh, Neezer . . .

John Ebenezer. Two short years her mentor. Five years now since he started to wiz. Since he walked out of her life rather than risk endangering her.

Are you out there, Neezer? Are you still alive?

“And if he—she, that—are?” His voice matched his face: stone. “From everything you’ve told me, what I’ve seen, wizzarts are wild cards, dangerous, to themselves and others. And quality of life isn’t exactly an issue.”

Wren bit back on her immediate reply. He wasn’t trying to goad her; it was, to his mind, a valid question. And she had to give him the respect of an equally valid answer. “Because that could be me someday. Council might poke around, but they don’t care about lonejackers. If they discover anything, they might not even do anything so long as they can cut a deal to protect their own.” She hated asking him for anything, but they had to take this job. She would do it alone—but their partnership had been founded on the knowledge that their skills complemented each other; she didn’t want to handicap herself by working solo if she didn’t have to.

A long moment passed. Finally, Sergei sighed. “It’s not as though the Council will ever admit they owe us anything, least of all payment,” he groused, signaling to the waitress for a refill of Wren’s coffee. “First things first—is there any way to keep track of wizzarts in the area?”

“Already ahead of you,” she said, her hodgepodge memory turning up what they needed. “It’s not pretty, but once I have them in sight, I can tag them; monitor their internal current pool. If anything—anyone—tries to mess with them, I’ll know.”

Sergei looked like he had a bad taste in his mouth. “How much risk is there to you in this?”

“Negligible,” she said, lying through her teeth.

Sergei tapped a finger on the space bar, studying the screen in front of him, skimming the list of John Does brought into the local hospitals for unexplained expirations. Of the seven names, two had cause of death listed as lightning strikes. One more had internal damage consistent with lightning, but the cause of death was liver failure—apparently, he had been a long-term alcoholic.

None of the men matched the description of John Ebenezer. His lips thinned as he entered another search, widening the area to include Connecticut and New Jersey. Assuming Neezer stuck around. Sergei wouldn’t put any of his money on that.

Behind him, Wren made a sound of disgust, changing the channel of the motel room’s TV without using the remote. They had spent two days driving through the area, walking into homeless shelters and into run-down apartment buildings until she could See the wizzarts scattered there, siphoning the faintest trace off their auras until she could weave a leash from them to her. She had found seven, but had only managed to create three leashes before collapsing from exhaustion. Just the memory of her shaking, sweating body made him angry all over again.

“Drink more of the juice,” he told her, not looking over his shoulder to make sure she obeyed him.

The screen displayed a refreshed list of names. Nothing.

“Serg?”

He was at her side before he consciously realized he’d heard her voice. The juice lay splattered on the carpet, the glass rolling off to one side, unbroken. He determined that there was no physical danger and cupped her face in his hands, all in the space of heartbeats.

“I’m here, lapushka,” he told her. The pulse at her neck was thready, and her eyes were glazed, pain lines forming around them. He waited, cursing whatever idiotic impulse had ever led him to agree to this, as she struggled to maintain the connection.

“Got him!”

They had lost the first one that morning, the leash snapping before Wren could do more than be aware of the attack. She had cried then, silent tears that left her eyes red-rimmed and her nose runny. She had never been able to cry gracefully. His fingers tightened on her chin. “Easy, Wren. Hold him. Hold him . . .”

It was dangerous touching her. The overrush of current could easily jump to him, and he’d have no protection, no way to ground himself. But he wouldn’t abandon her to do it alone.

Sweat was rising from her skin now, dampening her hair against her face and neck. But she felt cool, almost clammy, tiny flicks of electricity coursing off the dampness, sparking in the air.

“Ah—yes, that’s it, come on, lean on me . . . lean on me, dammit!” She was chanting instructions to the wizzart, trying to reach into his current-crazed mind. Trust wasn’t high on a wizzart’s list, though, especially for voices they heard inside their own heads.

A bolt rumbled through her, almost knocking them to the side. Sergei planted himself more firmly, his grip keeping her upright. She’d have bruises on her face when they were done. He’d have them, too, on the inside: lightning burns, internal scarring. Pain ached through his nerve endings. This was insane. For some literal burnouts they’d never have anything to do with . . .

For John Ebenezer, he reminded himself. For Genevieve.

The air got heavy, and he could almost smell the singeing of hair and flesh, of carpet fibers cracking underneath his knees, the fusing of the wiring in the walls, the phone, his computer. A lightbulb popped, but all he could focus on was her labored breathing, the voice crooning encouragement to someone miles away.

Her eyes, which had been squinted half-shut, opened wide, and she stared into his eyes endlessly. He felt as though he were falling, tumbling straight into an electric maw with nothing to stop his fall. He
was
her, was him, was the current flowing between them. He Saw through her eyes the wizzart let go, felt the current being pounded into him, flowing into her, and being grounded. He understood, finally, for that endless second the elegant simplicity of grounding, and reveled in the surge of power filling the matter of his existence.

The wizzart slumped, fell unconscious in a puddle of his own urine.
Get him,
Sergei urged into her open mind.
Find whoever did this.

He felt her stretch back into the wizzart’s self, backtracking the current that had been pumped into him, striking out like the lightning it rode in. A shudder of anger, hatred, disgust slamming into hard walls, confusion, and time stretched and snapped back, knocking him clear across the room and headfirst into the wall.

When he came to, the room was dark. He didn’t bother to turn on the lights—they’d blown, each and every one of them. Crawling forward, he reached out, finding the top of Wren’s head. She was curled into a ball, silently shaking.

“I screwed up,” she said. “I couldn’t get them. It was too far away. I couldn’t reach the bastards . . .”