Whiskey and Water (43 page)

It got him," Lily said, into her
hands. Her voice was suddenly calm and level, frictionless as ice. She shoved
her shoulders at the wall as if she meant to melt through it, and it wasn't
cooperating. The thing got him."

And it's going to come back, as soon as it
understands it didn't get what it was aiming for," Kit said, his hands
stroking Matthew's hair and shoulders, checking for other injuries. "We
must retire the street. Matthew, can you stand?"

I can't do anything with these damned
cuffs on." He glared at Don, who patted his pockets one-handed, without
looking away from the sky or loosening his grip on his gun.

"I dropped the key when I fell. Can
your friend — "

"Kit."

" — Kit help you up?"

In answer, Kit glanced over his shoulder,
checked the sky, and stepped away from the wall long enough to grab Matthew
under the armpits and haul.

"The shopwindow that
broke"—Matthew blew blood off his lips — "we can get inside
there." "Across the s
treet?"

"Do you have a better idea?"
Matthew clinked the handcuffs at Don petulantly. His nose had swollen shut and
gore was still running down his face, into his mouth, staining his shirt. He
turned his head and spat blood, hair escaping from his ponytail and adhering to
his bloodstained cheek. He wasn't going to think about Geoff. He wasn't going
to think about Lily's face, so white under the night-dark violet of her hair.

He took a breath and stared straight
ahead. "Can you run?"

"You bet your ass I can," Lily
snapped back, icy fear and a shocked emptiness too fresh to really count as
grief both shattered by a bolt of annoyance. It never occurred to her that
Matthew might be speaking to anyone else. Of course not: it would be aimed at
her, because she was a girl. And then she saw the corner of Matthew's mouth
twitch as he cocked his head back and studied the sky, and she almost slapped
him.

"Shopwindow," he said. "You
first."

"Then you," Don said. "It
wanted you. You need cover."

Matthew thought about arguing, and nodded
instead, half deaf with the cacophony ruling the narrow street. He reached out
with a thought and silenced the machines. He melted electronics and left fused plastic
behind where he meant only to break a connection. Lousy. No finesse. Too much
power. "Whatever."

"Can't you nail it with a lightning
bolt or something?"

"Not in the iron world." Not in New York City, even more so. Not even in a Mage's tower, not even if Matthew had Jane
Andraste's power. Four or five hundred years of Promethean wreaking had gone into
binding magic away, a labyrinth of iron roads girdling the land and the sea,
and this was the heart of the spell. The power was concentrated here. It ran
violent and deep, like a river chained by canyon walls. And it was not the sort
of thing that was amenable to flashy pyrotechnics; those were—with the exception
of the Merlin's tricks—reserved for Faerie, even since the Dragon's return.

Matthew looked at Kit. "You?"

"I could hex it from the sky"
—he spread his hands, a helpless gesture— "and so could Lily, if she knew
the trick of it. But you know whose power it would take."

Matthew nodded. "Not unless there's
no other way."

"Well," Don said, and chambered
a round. "I guess that means me. Lily,
go
!"

She was right. Even in heels, she could
run.

Bent over, smart enough to hustle on a
zigzag, head down, she darted across the street like a chipmunk fleeing a hawk.
Her breath echoed from the stones, her footsteps thumping. Don held
his
breath,
watched the skies, and Matthew leaned after her like a yearning lover, pulling
at the steel that bound his hands.

Not that he had any power to fight for her
if the monster returned. For a moment, he allowed himself to hate his unicorn.

And then Lily was halfway safe, or at
least shadowed by the buildings opposite, and it was Matthew's turn.

There's a knack to running with your hands
tied behind your back. Matthew didn't have it. He stumbled, caught himself,
twisted his ankle, went down hard on one leg. His jeans shredded on asphalt, and
his skin went with them. Raw heat, a childhood pain: skinned knee. Shocking how
much it hurt, enough that the sharp strike of his wristbones against the cuffs
was but a grace note.

He grunted, ducked his head, and heaved
himself up. The air he gasped burned his lungs. It all tasted of iron, and pain
seared the inside of his leg with a white phosphorous fire. He'd sprained his
ankle, maybe broken something. By force of will he made it bear his weight. He
staggered one step. Another.

If racehorses could run on broken legs, so
could he. the first he knew of Orfeo's descent was the measured hammering of
Donall's gun.

Lily saw it all.

The shopwindow had shivered into
nonexistence, and she crouched behind the low wall that was left, shatterproof
glass crunching under her boots. She saw Matthew stumble, saw the mighty wings catch
the streetlight and become limned, frozen in it like the wings of a fly in
amber, trapped for endless moments before they folded and fell. She stuffed her
fists against her mouth and pressed her back into the corner, and could not
drop her gaze as Matthew strove to his feet.

She bit her fingers and she prayed. And
for a moment, the pounding of the detective's gun seemed like an answer. Flame
licked from the barrel, lashing out like a serpent's angry tongue, and the
monster folded its wings even tighter and twisted, somersaulting in midair,
tumbling end over end, jerking from the impacts. And Lily dared to hope.

A breath too soon.

The slugs were steel-jacketed. It helped;
lead would have glided through Orfeo, and done no harm at all.
These
bullets
tore into his breast and wings and he cried out, the skin-creeping scream of an
executed man. His shadow spread human arms and legs upon the pavement as his
wings snapped wide, antlered head thrown back, the arch of his long neck
sustaining the shriek. His own antlers brushed his back, and he flapped madly,
trying to slow his descent until he realized that the target was still
directly beneath.

Donall exhausted his clip, stroked the
release, fumbled a spare magazine from the carrier before the empty hit the
ground. He wasn't fast enough. He couldn't be.

Orfeo didn't have the force of his stoop
behind him. Instead he reached out, relying on the forthright strength of
talons, and clutched at the Mage's head. But Matthew had turned. Unable to
throw his hand up, he ducked his head behind a hunched shoulder, and flinched
back and to the side as Orfeo's claws scored his shoulder and neck.

It wouldn't have helped, if a second
spatter of bullets had not caught Orfeo across the breast just then, tumbling
him from the air. He hit the asphalt on his back, spread-eagled.
Sable, a
peyton vert, displayed.

Don pinched his palm smashing the magazine
home. He didn't turn to see who had his back; he'd counted nine shots, and the
other guy was likely reloading. The enemy of my enemy—

Don worked the slide and fired. Measured
shots, two and wait, aim for the head. Six more where those came from. One more
clip in his belt.

The thing had already soaked up an awful
lot of lead.

It flopped, twisted, lay still. He
couldn't tell if the breast was rising and falling, under the feathers. Don heard
footsteps, a clip sliding home, a round being chambered. Whoever it was kept a
good spread on him, eight or nine feet, centered on the green-winged creature.
Matthew was down, curled on his side between Don and the monster, ear pressed
to his shoulder. Donall couldn't see how bad he was bleeding, or if he was
conscious. Probably, and definitely breathing; he wasn't limp.

"Don?"

"Fuck, Ernie," Don said,
light-headed with adrenaline. "Are you one of the bad ones;

"Are you? What the fuck is that
thing?" Ernie edged one more step forward, and Don could see him now, his
semiautomatic in a two-fisted grip, low ready before his heaving chest, trigger
finger registered along the frame. Ernie wasn't about to shoot anybody who
didn't have it coming.

"Fae." Kit stepped away from the
wall, regretting his rapier bitterly. He kept his eyes on Matthew, palms
itching with helplessness. "Unseelie. Shoot you it again."

Ernie never turned his eyes from the thing
on the ground. "Did you call backup?"

"Did you?"

Now that you mention it —" Ernie
shrugged, and slid his finger inside the trigger guard.

One second." Don edged forward,
trying to get a better angle on the antlered bird. He couldn't see if it was breathing,
but he couldn't see it bleeding, either. "It might be dead."

It wasn't.

Orfeo waited. Five mortals now, two of
them armed. The bullets
hurt,
but couldn't hurt him, not really. Not for
long. He was already dead, dead three thousand years, and so he waited while
the bullets worked out of his flesh and lay, hard lumps pressed between his
plumage and the road.

He'd have to kill the men with the guns.
Not that he minded the blood, but it was extra work. Extra complications. Only
the Mage had needed to die.

Humans.

They
would
thrash, and make
everything harder.

Beside the wounded Mage, the pale-skinned
warrior went down on one knee. He mumbled something, and the dark first one
grunted agreement, without taking his eyes off Orfeo. There was a click, the metal
restraints being removed. The first warrior rolled the Mage onto his back and,
with the assistance of the small bearded Mage, began doing something to his
wounds. That crunch had to be the woman's boots on the broken glass. In the
near distance, Orfeo heard sirens.

The second warrior adjusted some mechanism
on his pistol, and slipped it into its carrier. He spread his hands wide,
angled down, and murmured a prayer.

A vast, calm, martial presence suffused
the narrow road, a holy peace, the susurrus of settling wings. "Ernie,
what are you doing?" Donall asked.

"Whatever I can," Peese
answered, and laid his hands on the wounded Mage, praying for a miracle. In a
movement as fluid as thought, Orfeo lofted into the air, balanced on a
murderous curve.

And was met.

Not by the bullets he had expected, the
sharp-toothed rejoinder of the first warrior's pistol—but by a white-shouldered
tsunami.

The sound of gunfire had drawn Whiskey to
close the distance between Donall and himself. The water-horse had arrived just
as Peese changed magazines, and paused to assess the conflict. If there was no
need to show himself, he could linger in the shadows, soft-shoed and
inconspicuous.

Conversely, if there
was
a need —

He was waiting for it. And when Orfeo
snapped himself off the ground with a sinewy flex of wings and a flick of
antlers, Whiskey leaped. It was a spring no mortal man could have matched, and
few mortal horses — clearing the parked automobiles that Matthew had ruined
with his ill-contained magic, clearing the heads of the crouched and cringing
men, hurling himself into the air like the spray of a white wave smashing
exultant against a cliff: head up, mane bannering, ears pricked, bugling
challenge, and changing as he flew.

He struck the peryton chest-to-chest, and
smashed him from the air.

Great wings buffeted Whiskey's head,
blinding, deafening. Gnarled talons scored his shoulders and his broad black
breast. His hooves rang on the road a mere foot from Matthew's supine form,
cracking asphalt, water glittering about him when he whirled. Orfeo struck
again, sharp yellow teeth slashing Whiskey's cheek, missing his white-rimmed
eye. The stallion screamed and reared, hooves connecting, forelegs scraped by
Orfeo's claws.

Orfeo's cries, harsh as a raptor's,
carried a far more human tone. The peryton screamed like a peacock, a tattered,
bloodcurdling sound. He lashed out with teeth and talons, fighting for
distance, needing to win free of Whiskey's weight and momentum so he could
bring his antlers to bear. Whiskey drove him with the force of a rising tide,
the speed of falling water.

Blood scattered the peryton's plumage as
Whiskey tried for a wing and spat out only a mouthful of feathers. The teeth of
a son of Manannan could manage what bullets could not. Orfeo's talons connected
with Whiskey's muzzle, slicing nostrils. He kicked off, wings pumping
furiously, and sailed over Whiskey's head as Whiskey lunged into the air, his
hind hooves leaving earth, his thick neck twisted as he stretched after the
enemy. He missed, and landed heavily, collecting his hooves under him and taking
the impact in his shoulders and haunches rather than risking a careless hoof on
the fragile humans just behind.

The peryton flailed higher, air scalding
the raw flesh of his wounded wing, bruised muscle in his breast complaining.
Whiskey's teeth had torn the soft hide of Orfeo's throat, and blood trickled
hot through hair and plumage and tickled as it dripped and dried down his inner
thigh.