Shadows, Maps, and Other Ancient Magic (24 page)

Warner swore something German-sounding under his breath as he stepped forward, but then paused as if unsure if he should interfere.

“Jesus,” Kandy whispered as she stepped up to my right.

The girl was oddly strong for a four-year-old. But then, by the sooty taste of her magic and the gold that had rolled over her eyes, I could tell she was a fledgling dragon.

“Hey!” I said, unsure of what else to say to the half-starved dragon toddler before me. I’d always been terrible with kids. I usually just ended up feeding them too many cookies, but cookies were something I obviously had no current ability to make.

The girl, who was half-hanging off the altar and half-hanging off the box, chomped down on my wrist. And drew blood.

I shrieked and snapped my wrist to shake her off. The girl tumbled back onto the altar, then sat on her haunches and licked her lips.

“Enough,” Warner said. The dust on the altar rippled from the power of his rebuke, but the girl simply grinned at him.

“Jesus,” Kandy repeated. “What the hell?”

Yeah, the supposedly powerful adults just stood there staring like idiots at the four-year-old on the stone altar. The bite on my wrist had already healed, but it continued to sting as if it was infected.

“She’s dressed like, what?” I whispered. “Eighteen hundreds?”

“Sixteen hundreds,” Warner said. He sounded terribly grim.

“Jesus,” Kandy repeated.

“What’s a four-year-old from your century doing here?” I asked Warner.

The kid started messing with her clothes, yanking the bodice and skirt off, tearing through the fabric until she was free of it. She then tied one side of her chemise in a knot. Her feet were bare. If I looked on the other side of the altar, I’d probably find her too-big shoes abandoned there.

And yes, we were still just standing there staring at her.

“Look closer at her magic,” Warner said.

The child smiled at me. The expression stretched her thin face further, and a pang of pain went through my heart. She was just a little girl —
 

“Hail, sister,” she said. “I like your blood. Spicy sweet.”

“Dragons don’t consume each other’s blood,” Warner said, instantly going all big brother on the kid.

The child cackled. All the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I finally saw what Warner had picked up before me.

“Her magic is diminished,” he said. “Locked away.”

“Contained.”

“In the form of a toddler.”

“Preschooler,” Kandy corrected. Like that made a difference.

“Hail, sister,” the kid tried again.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t play the sister card,” I said. “I don’t have a great track record with siblings.” I couldn’t figure out if I felt sorry for her or if she scared the crap out of me.

I cracked open my ruined satchel — willfully ignoring the bits of its vegan ‘leather’ that were now crumbling off it — and started to try to wedge the box into it. Frustratingly, it didn’t seem to fit.

Warner thrust his hand past mine to yank out the sacrificial knife, which was still bundled in my wet T-shirt and the tea towel. He ripped the T-shirt and towel off the knife, then shoved them back in the satchel. I stumbled against him as the force of him doing so pulled down on my right shoulder.

I would have sworn the knife started purring contentedly in his hand the second he unwrapped it. You know, if I believed that magical objects could have moods.

“Hey!” I cried.

Shadow demons rose out of the ground all around the top stair of the dais.

The child clapped her hands, which shifted her firmly into the scared-the-crap-out-of-me category. God, I hated that clapping-while-diabolically-pleased thing. Sienna used to do that all the time.

In a blur of motion, Warner spun around and slashed the shadow demon nearest to us in half. No ripping necessary. The sacrificial knife, which was deadly enough to kill an ancient vampire, sliced through the creature like butter.

“What is it?” Kandy screamed. She couldn’t see or scent the enemy right in front of her.

“Shadows have come to play, wolf,” the child answered.

“Stay right beside me,” I said to Kandy as Warner slashed through a second shadow. Then he pressed his back to mine. The remainder of the shadow demons stayed back from us, as if waiting for some signal.

“Come,” I said to the kid, who was still perched on the altar like a malevolent vulture. “We’ll get you out of here, get you to the guardians. They’ll figure out what’s wrong with your magic.” I held my hand out to her.

She glowered at me. “I don’t need the help of a half-blood.”

“Well, there goes the sister bond I was so hoping for.”

“Give me the garrote vil.”

“What?”

 
“The instrument of assassination. Now!”

“This?” I held up the box. “It’s braided threads. They aren’t murdering anyone.”

The kid snarled at me.

“Rabid,” Kandy said.

“Being stripped of magic would make anyone crazy,” I said. “Who’s your mother?”

“Mother?” the child echoed.

“I’m laying money on Suanmi. You’ve got that instant-hate-for-me thing in common.”

“Who’s my mother?” the kid repeated, obviously confused.

I sighed. “Come on. Warner, can you cut us a path?”

“If we move quickly.”

I held my hand out to the kid again. “Don’t bite me,” I said. Then I wiggled my fingers at her like she was a pretty kitty.

She grabbed my hand, yanked me forward, and kicked me in the side of the head.

Yeah, a four-year-old kicked me in the head. I stumbled sideways and knocked Kandy off the dais for the second time.

The shadow demons swarmed the green-haired werewolf. Kandy might not have been able to see them, but by her terrified screams she could feel them.

I shook off the kick to the head — freaking dragon kids — then cradled the box in my left hand as I willed my knife into my right. I spun, stepping out of the kid’s path as she leaped for me from the altar. Then I made a beeline for Kandy.

Warner got to the werewolf before I did. Even as they swarmed and attached themselves to him, he slashed the shadows away from Kandy. I could actually see them sucking the shapeshifter magic out of my friend, like leeches.

Warner freed Kandy and shoved her behind him. Her arms, neck, and face were covered with red hickey-like marks as she pivoted, spotted something behind me, and lunged forward.

I felt the child make a second attempt to jump on my back. Kandy threw a punch over my shoulder and knocked her off.

“Fuck!” Kandy screamed, shaking her fist. “The kid has a hard head.”

I spun to see the kid fly back and tumble down the stairs of the dais. The crazy child was cackling with some sort of evil glee. I lost sight of her in the midst of the shadow leech swarm.

“Jesus, Kandy,” I said. “She’s a preschooler.”

“She kicked you in the head first.”

“Go now!” Warner yelled. The shadows were pressing him as he continued to slash them away. His arm and the sacrificial knife were a blur of motion, the magic of the knife flashing and humming as it cut through the leeches. Cutting through magic was what the knife seemed to be made for, but it was insane that I felt like this made it happy. That was way too far down the crazy road, even for me.

“Behind me,” I said to Kandy as I pressed the wooden box with the five-stranded braids into her hands. She couldn’t see the shadows, so she couldn’t hope to fight them. And I needed my hands free.

I sprinted for the entrance, but got only three stairs down before the shadow leeches pressed against us. Warner shifted along the edge of their mass and moved to block them from me. I thrust my knife into what looked like the head of the nearest leech and felt its magic grab hold of the magic in my blade.

“Not for you,” I muttered as I sent a pulse of my power through the knife. The shadow leech exploded.

The others nearby backed off.

“What the hell are they?” Kandy asked. I could feel her frantically looking around behind me.

“Magical leeches of some kind,” I answered as I flew down three more steps. “Sentient, though. They’re scared of my knife.”

“Yeah,” Kandy snarked. “I think it’s the warrior’s daughter who really freaks them out.”

From out of the shadows, the kid appeared before me and kicked out the side of my right knee in the same instant. Bone crunched, fiery pain exploded in my knee, and I stumbled. Then the kid leaped by me and tackled Kandy.

The shadow leeches swarmed over all of us, sucking at any hint of magic they could find. Kandy shrieked, but in frustration rather than fear. She couldn’t get the kid and the leeches off her at the same time, but the kid couldn’t get the box away from the werewolf either.

As I stumbled around, still half upright but with a useless right leg, the leeches tried to attach themselves to me. I pulled magic from my necklace and knife to create a personal shield between them and me. It didn’t stop them from constantly trying to suck on me though, which was seriously creepy.

Warner stepped between Kandy and me. He was attempting to wrestle the kid off the werewolf, even as he kept fighting the leeches. I managed to grab the kid’s legs and half-yank her off Kandy.

The green-haired werewolf tore the box from the kid’s loosened grasp. Then she proceeded to smash it into the tiny, crazy dragon’s face. The wooden box splintered into pieces.

The kid cackled gleefully again. Though I still had her legs pinned, she grabbed for the braided threads as they fell free from the box. She snagged two, but then immediately shrieked when she touched them. I got my arm around her waist, clumsily yanked her off Kandy, and threw her down the remainder of the stairs for the second time. The shadows swarmed her, swallowing her so completely that I couldn’t taste her magic anymore.

My right leg was still a fiery column of pain as I stood to scoop up the three five-stranded braids off Kandy’s chest. They didn’t burn, or hurt me in whatever way they’d hurt the kid. But I’d already put two and two together before I touched them. Though they felt benign to me, they — along with the magic of the fortress — were obviously dragon-kryptonite somehow.

Warner stepped almost rhythmically around us, slicing through leeches, though I wasn’t sure he was actually vanquishing any. He might have been weakening them, but he wasn’t reducing their numbers.

Kandy scrambled to her feet, gave me her shoulder, and started half-dragging me down the stairs toward the entrance. She was limping herself, and her other arm — her bad one — didn’t seem to be fully functioning.

“The kid!” I cried.

“Screw the kid,” Kandy snarled.

My right leg was definitely not happy about the quick pace. As we moved, I twisted the three braids together, then knotted them around my left wrist. Their sorcerer-alchemist magic prickled against my skin, but didn’t seem to affect me adversely in any other way.

We stepped off the stairs and the earthquake hit.

The ground suddenly cracked open before Kandy and me. We dove in opposite directions to avoid falling into the fissure that appeared in front of us.

Warner, slightly behind us, tumbled out of my sight. Despite the rolling ground, I could see Kandy gaining her feet to my left. She was close to the exit.

I tried to stand. The ground underneath me continued to roll and crack. The leeches had all disappeared.

“Remember Indiana Jones?” Kandy shouted from the relatively safe entrance archway, which had held against the earthquake so far. She was still having way too much fun.

I laughed. Even with my leg hurting and Warner currently missing in action, I couldn’t help it. “I’ll race you out,” I called.

Kandy lost the smile. “Jade!” she screamed as she pointed up over my head.

I looked up, even as I saw Kandy dive through the stone-framed entranceway.

I had a split second to hope she made it out of the fortress safely. Then the high-vaulted ceiling crashed down over my head.

I ducked, hunkering down next to a portion of the ground that had swelled upward from the earthquake. I wasn’t sure that would offer any protection, but I also wasn’t sure what else I could do at the moment.

I was, however, sure that half-dragon/half-witches didn’t survive being crushed by thousands of pounds of stone.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Someone was calling my name. Screaming it, actually. But I couldn’t open my eyes … or my mouth, for that matter. All the bones in my face felt like I’d run into a concrete wall nose first. Yeah, unfortunately, I knew what that felt like.

“Jade!”

Kandy … Kandy was screaming for me. She sounded terrified, and that just wasn’t right. My vibrant, brash, best friend should never sound that way, especially not when calling my name.

I opened my eyes. I still couldn’t see anything. It felt like some sort of liquid was screening my sight.

Blood. My eyes were flooded with blood.

I lifted my arm to wipe my face. I could feel the bones knitting together as I moved. It hurt. Enough to wake me up a bit more.

My hand came away bloody, but at least I could see again.

“ … not much longer,” Kandy screamed.

I lifted my head. I was lying on my side, so I rolled over onto my back. Kandy was standing over me. She appeared to be carrying a boulder large enough to obliterate the sky above her.

Sky … that didn’t make sense. Rock … the fortress ceiling had collapsed on me. Though the earthquake had apparently abated.

“Move your ass, dowser!” Kandy shrieked. She was shaking with the effort of holding the boulder off me.

My survival instincts kicked in. I rolled. The rock slammed down exactly where I’d been lying.

I sat up to see Kandy collapse. She fell, first to her knees, then all the way over onto her side and a craggy pile of massive chunks of granite.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “I couldn’t hold it.”

Then she stopped talking.

I crawled to her. My hands and arms were the only part of me that seemed to be working, so it was slow going. I left bloody handprints in my wake. I got halfway to her before the bones in my left leg had knit together enough that I thought they might be able to help. My right leg was still useless, though. The one the dragon kid kicked.