Biting Cold

chapter SIX

SWORDPLAY

The world was quiet again.

“Where did she go?” Todd asked. His hat was dirty and rumpled, and his clothes were torn and filthy. He’d had a hard night.

“I’m not entirely sure.” I glanced around, momentarily panicked that I wasn’t sure where Ethan had gone. He was rising from the ground at the edge of the trees, a couple of gnomes assisting him. But he still winced at the apparent pain, and his steps were labored as he joined us.

“Are you all right?”

“Headache,” he said. “And still dizzy.”

“Is she still nearby?”

He closed his eyes and nodded.

“So you’re definitely connected to her?”

He opened his eyes again. “Emotionally, I think. I feel her anger, her stress. Her addiction.” He looked at me with apology in his eyes. “Her frustrations.”

I think he meant to apologize for grabbing me, but we could have that conversation later. “If she’s still here, where is she?”

“She didn’t make it through the trees,” Todd said. “So she couldn’t have gotten into the silo.”

“And Paige?” Ethan wondered. “Where is she?”

“And how did she miss the fight?” I quietly wondered.

But that question answered itself as soon as I’d asked it. I closed my eyes…and smelled the faint aromas of lemon and sugar.

“What is it, Sentinel?”

“Tate is here.” My heart began to pound in anticipation.

“How do you know?”

“He has a scent—lemon and sugar.” I felt stupid suggesting it—what supernatural creature smelled like sugar cookies?—but there was no denying the scent, or whom it signaled.

Ethan didn’t seem to think it strange. “If he’s here, and you already know it, why doesn’t Paige?”

“I think we need to get back to the house,” I said, and I started running, with Ethan following me.

We’d gone far enough in exploring the property that we’d ended up on the other side of the house and silo, and I nearly tripped crossing uneven ground that wasn’t familiar. I vaulted two fences, my heart pounding, before the back of the house appeared on the horizon again. I ran around to the front door, which stood wide open, the foyer floor littered with books, their pages open and fluttering gently in the breeze.

Ethan stepped behind me and swore softly.

“Paige?” I called out, treading carefully down the hallway. The living room was empty and dark, as was the kitchen. I kept walking, then peeked into the room I assumed was the master bedroom. It was empty, the bed neatly made, the light off.

“Paige!” I called out again, but the house was silent, and there wasn’t even a hint of magic in the air. Nothing but the lingering, cloying scent of lemon and sugar.

“She isn’t here,” I said.

“I don’t suppose we need to ask where she’s gone,” he said.

I didn’t think so, either. “The silo,” I said. “They want the Maleficium, and that’s where it is.” And I feared that wasn’t the worst of it. Mallory had disappeared just before I caught Tate’s signature scent on the wind—but she’d been nowhere near the silo or the Maleficium. And we’d been so busy handling her that we hadn’t had time to think about Paige or Tate…or the entrance to the silo.

Could Mallory and Tate have been working together?

I looked at Ethan. “I think Mallory may have been a distraction.”

“A distraction?”

“Tate and Mallory both want the book. Mallory knows it’s in the silo, and a little Internet research would have shown her where the door was. If finding it was that easy, why did she pop up so far away from it?”

“She was a distraction,” Ethan said. “She was there to draw us away while Tate found Paige and forced her to show them where in the silo the book was. But why would Tate and Mallory work together? How would they even have found each other?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But why not work together? Mallory wants the book, they both want the evil to be released, and there are more of us than there are of them. They both have magic, but so does Paige, and they couldn’t have known what kind of security would be waiting for them.”

I walked back to the front door and glanced outside, but there was no other sign anything was amiss. The farm looked like a farm at the edge of winter, waiting for snow to fall, and snow to clear, and seed to be planted again.

“The silo?” he asked.

I nodded. “Let’s go.”

We walked quietly to the field that held the missile silo, eyes peeled for any sign of them. As we neared it, the scents grew stronger, like a cookie factory had opened up shop down the road.

The concrete box looked the same as it had when we’d left it. The door was closed, and there weren’t any supernatural lights or sounds that suggested Tate and Mallory were throwing evil around.

Hope blossomed; maybe we weren’t too late.

“They’re here.”

We turned and found Todd behind us, a new patch of crimson on his shoulder.

“Are you all right?”

“I’ll heal,” he said. “They went in. I took an orb to the shoulder.”

“Paige?” I asked.

“Paige, the other witch, and the dark one.”

Tate, with his head of dark hair, must have been the dark one.

“While we were fighting Mallory,” Ethan said, “Tate was nabbing Paige and waiting for Mallory to finish us off.”

Maybe Paige had been right. With every action she took, Mallory was sliding closer to friendship in the past tense.

“Thank you for your diligence,” I told Todd. “And thank you for your help earlier.”

He nodded. “We are done with this fight for now. We’ll go to ground. We’ll regroup. It’s the way of our people.”

When he looked up again, he looked pissed. “End this tonight.”

“That’s our every intention,” Ethan promised, holding out a hand. “My apologies again for my behavior earlier. My comments were shortsighted and naive. We are better for having met you, and we are honored that we shared a field of battle.”

Todd hesitated for a moment, then took Ethan’s hand. “Good luck,” he said, then disappeared across the field. The night was quiet again, stars speeding by overhead.

“I’d feel a lot better if they were going down there with us,” I said.

It took Ethan long enough to answer that I looked over at him. His eyes were squeezed closed, his forehead pinched.

I put a hand on his arm. “Where is she?”

“Nearby,” he said, rubbing his temples. “I can feel her fretting. But this is different from earlier.”

“She’s probably preparing to use dark magic again—the real deal. Are you going to be okay?”

“I’ll be fine. Let’s get this over with.”

The snap in his voice convinced me not to push the issue. He was a big boy. If he wanted help from me, he could ask for it.

Carefully, swords drawn, we opened the door to the silo. It was dark even in comparison to the black night outside, and my eyes hadn’t yet adjusted. I walked carefully forward.

But not carefully enough.

“Stop!” Ethan called out, wrapping an arm around me before I vaulted into the darkness below.

The elevator was gone.

Ethan wrenched me back just as the momentum would have taken me over the edge. An uncontrolled fall into the depths wouldn’t have ended comfortably.

“Jesus,” Ethan said, settling me back from the edge, his hands shaking with nerves.

“I guess they took the lift,” I said, glancing down over the edge. “How are we going to get down there?”

“It’s thirty feet,” Ethan said. “I can jump it, but you don’t have the experience.”

“That’s not entirely true.”

Ethan slowly looked at me.

“While you were gone, I learned how to jump. Well, how to fall, anyway. Jonah taught me.”

“Ah” was all Ethan said. But he looked at me for a moment, an expression of mild curiosity on his face.

“He helped me while you were…gone,” I explained, not that he’d asked for an explanation.

“I’m not jealous, Sentinel.”

“Okay.”

“I have no need of jealousy.”

I was equally amused and aroused by the bravado. This was Ethan in the fast lane, hugging the curves instead of constantly riding the political brakes.

“Back to the point,” I recommended. “Whoever goes first could send the platform back up?”

“Too noisy. We’ll need to be quiet once we’re down there. Between them, they probably already know we’re on our way, but there’s no sense in announcing it.” He looked at me. “You’re sure you can do it?”

I wouldn’t deny that this jump, as all others, scared me, but I didn’t think he needed to hear that now, and my fear certainly wasn’t a very good reason not to do it. If I avoided everything I was afraid of, I’d never leave the House.

“I’ll go first,” he said, and before I could agree, he’d disappeared, leaving a whoosh of air in his wake. Two seconds later, I heard his feet hit the ground.

My eyes were finally accustomed to the darkness, and I glanced over the edge. Ethan signaled a thumbs-up. When he’d cleared the way for me, I resheathed my sword, took a breath, and took a step.

The worst part about jumping as a vampire—and really the only bad part—was that first step. It was as unpleasant for vampires as it was for humans—that sickening lurch of the stomach, the sudden sensation of falling, and the fear you wouldn’t survive the jump.

But then everything changed.

The world slowed down as if to keep up with you. Dozens of feet became a single graceful step, and as long as you kept your knees soft, the landing didn’t pose a problem at all.

I landed in a superheroine crouch, one leg bent, the other extended, a hand on the ground and the other on the pommel of my sword. I looked up at Ethan through my bangs.

His eyes blazed fiercely with pride.

“You can do it,” he whispered.

I stood up and adjusted the belt of my katana and the hem of my jacket. “Did you doubt me?”

“I didn’t doubt,” he said. “I…had reserved judgment.”

I humphed but let it go. God willing, there’d be plenty of time for me to harass him later.

We peeked into the hallway that led away from the elevator shaft. The lights were on, and there was no sign of Tate, Mallory, or Paige.

I glanced over at Ethan, my vampire-proximity alarm. He was wincing against what I assumed was another Mallory-spawned headache, but he was still on his feet.

“Do you think Paige led them directly to the book?” I wondered.

“Depends on the state she left in. And we won’t know that until we see her.”

“Strategy?”

Ethan looked around. “If they want the book, they’ll have to get to the bottom of the silo. But I want a look before we attack them head-on. Let’s check the launch room. We can check the hole and figure out where they are. Radio silence from here on out. You remember your signals?”

I nodded. Luc had taught the Cadogan House guards a series of hand gestures we could use to signal one another during missions. They’d come in handy before and would definitely be handy now, when we were trying to hide our presence from a former mayor and testy witch. Assuming they didn’t already know we were coming, which seemed unlikely.

Swords drawn, we moved down the hallway. Ethan skirted the right side, and I skirted the left a bit behind him. We listened at each door we passed, trying to detect sound, but there was no sign of it, even with vampire senses in full operation.

It probably didn’t help that the place was loaded with concrete to protect the missile from attack. I wasn’t really sure how that would affect the loosing of an ancient evil, but I had a sense we’d soon be finding out.

We’d nearly reached the giant sliding door to the silo room when I spotted a glistening drop of crimson on the floor. The droplet was small, but the smell of fresh blood was undeniably pungent.

I crouched down and dabbed it with a fingertip, then sniffed it delicately. Definitely blood, and spicy with magic. Whether Paige or Mallory I couldn’t tell, but that really wasn’t important. One of our sorceresses had shed blood.

I stood up again and wiped my hand on my pants, then gestured toward the sliding door. Ethan pointed me toward the handle, then took point at the door, sword at the ready. When he nodded, I pulled.

The door slid open, and Ethan slid inside. I followed. The room was empty and mostly dark. But the silo glowed from below, the spot where the Maleficium had been located.

Ethan motioned me forward. Swallowing down a burst of fear that tightened my chest, I crept to the silo and peeked down.

For the second time in a matter of weeks, the Maleficium was gone.

But the drama had only just started. The building suddenly shook with a pulse of magic that screamed through the building. If we weren’t too late already, we were going to be in a minute.

I didn’t waste any time.

“Merit!” Ethan yelled, but I was already in the air and on my way into the missile shaft. I landed in a crouch on the pedestal the Maleficium had once rested on.

In front of me, in a large circular room, were the enemies I’d sought. Mallory was hunched over the Maleficium, which was open on the ground. Tate stood between me and Mallory, and Paige lay injured on the ground beside him, bloody and unconscious. She wasn’t wearing her jacket or cap; Tate must have conned—or dragged—her out of the house.

“Hello, Ballerina,” Tate said.

Tonight he wore a dark suit over a dark shirt and tie. Death in a beautiful package, except that he, too, looked exhausted—worn out and gaunt, and not any better than Mallory did. Perhaps he wasn’t immune to the effects of black magic, either.

“I suppose I could say I’m pleased you survived your trip, although that would probably sound hypocritical.”

I heard footfalls behind me and knew Ethan had landed in the shaft.

“And him as well,” Tate flatly said. “But that would just be dishonest.”

“Move away from the book,” I told them, crouching a bit and readying for action.

“You know I’m not going to do that.”

Another pulse of magic lit through the room, the book its obvious origin point. The floor and walls shook with it.

I’d be damned if I was going to end up crushed beneath the concrete and steel of a forty-year-old missile silo in Nebraska.

“Ethan,” I said, “I’m going low.”

“Then I’ve got high,” he said, stepping forward, sword outstretched.

I stepped back, then ran full speed toward Tate. His eyes widened as I moved, but Ethan distracted him with a slash of his sword.

I dropped to my knees and let the momentum push me along the slick, painted concrete floor to Mallory’s spot on the other side of the room.

I popped back up again, leaving Ethan to deal with Tate, and pointed my sword at her.

“This is the last time I will tell you this, witch. Back off!”

She looked up from the Maleficium, her fingers bloody and hovering over the text, nothing but pain in her eyes.

I might have been able to talk her out of anger or fear or exhaustion, but pain was its own kind of demon, and I wasn’t sure talking would have any effect.

I heard the crack of flesh and bone and glanced back at Ethan. He’d gone the old-fashioned route and attempted to give Tate another right hook across the jaw, probably as a thank-you for the damage to his Mercedes.

But this time, Tate knew the shot was coming, and he was fast enough to avoid it. He’d put out a hand to catch Ethan’s fist, and held him there for a moment, Ethan’s eyes wild.

“I’d have thought my prior warnings would have had some effect.”

“I’m a slow learner.”

“I suppose wisdom doesn’t come with age, eh?” With barely a brush of Tate’s hand, Ethan flew across the room and landed against a steel support column.

The column buckled and Ethan hit the ground.

“Ethan!” My heart skipped a beat in the split second before he looked up at Tate. Blood ran down the side of his face from a gash on his head, and it took him much longer than usual to stand up again, but he did stand up.

I started forward to go to him, but his eyes widened.

“Behind you!” he called out.

I looked back. Mallory had gathered together a ball of magic that now glowed between her hands. The bluish light reflected unflatteringly up and across her face, like a flashlight held beneath the chin of a schoolchild. And then, as if I were a stranger—a threat instead of a longtime friend—she pitched that magic directly at me.

My first instinct was to duck. After all, I’d taken an orb or two and the sparks from a dozen others when I hadn’t been fast enough in training. I assumed those had contained only low-grade magic, but they still hurt, leaving ugly burns that took a few days to fade, even on a quick-healing vampire.

Honestly, that instinct kicked in pretty quickly, and I dodged and wove around two or three orbs that shattered against the walls behind me.

But as I dodged, I also wondered…

Catcher hadn’t let me use my sword during magical dodgeball. I’d assumed he hadn’t wanted to risk damaging my antique katana. But what if the issue wasn’t damage to the sword—but damage to the orb?

That possibility was, I thought, worth a little experiment. And so, instead of continuing to avoid Mallory’s magic, I decided to stare it down.

I gripped the handle of my sword in both hands and raised the sword in front of me…just like a bat.

Going, I thought to myself.

Mallory slung the orb into the air like a major league pitch, its flight straight and true and aimed for my heart. I wiggled my fingers around the handle…and when the moment was right, I swung.

Going.

The vibration of pure magic and magical steel—steel I had tempered with my own vampiric blood all those moons ago—nearly wrenched off my arm. But I kept my fingers tight around the leather and ray-skin handle…and watched the orb shatter into a million blue sparks.

“Gone,” I murmured, watching the fireworks until the sparks dissipated, then sliding my gaze back to Mallory, eyebrow arched in a perfect imitation of Ethan. “Got anything else?”

She apparently took my sarcasm as a challenge. One orb after another flew in my direction, each one spicier—more magically potent—than the last. She worked with the effort—teeth gritted, forehead damp even in the November chill.

And she made me work, too. I pulled out every move and maneuver I’d ever practiced, or seen Catcher or Ethan execute, or watched on Wrigley Field. I slashed forward, backward, and from both sides. I flipped backward to avoid a pale blue orb, then flew to the floor to avoid a shot aimed at my head.

It missed me by more than it should have. Mallory was getting tired.

Normally, she’d have been smart enough to think through her actions, to plan a couple of steps ahead. But tonight, if she was already tired, maybe I could bait her one more time.

I stood up again and crooked a finger in her direction, as Ethan had done so many times for me. “You want me? Come and get me.”

She bared her teeth, then began to spin her fingers and pull together another ball of magic from the ether.

I opened my arms. “You think you can hit me, witch? Right in the chest?”

She wound up and threw her pitch.

I let every vampire sensibility loose—sight, sound, taste, smell. The world exploded into sensations, but events around me seemed to slow down because of it. I watched the orb of blue light inch toward me; in slow motion, its surface was a pitted swirl of energy, and it sought out a landing spot, a home.

I fully intended to give it one.

Before she could reload or move out of the way, I pulled up my sword—not to bat the orb into a thousand pieces…but to reflect it. I held the katana directly in front of me, the cutting edge to the side, and the mirrorlike steel toward Mallory.

The orb hit the blade with enough force to rattle the steel. But tempered and honed, it did its job. The orb bounced right off and flew back toward Mallory. Slower on the return trip, but its direction true. It hit her square in the chest and sent her flying across the room. She hit the wall and then the floor, thudding down with a bounce that probably broke a few of her ribs, too.

At least she couldn’t hurt anyone else, or herself, for a little while. One bad guy down…Now back to the other one.

And the other one was engaged in his own fierce battle. Tate, who could manipulate a car right off the road with magic, had apparently wanted a different kind of challenge. He’d produced a sword of his own, a gigantic two-handed blade with complicated engravings that caught the light as it shifted. A katana was intended to slice; this thing looked like it was intended to pummel.

Ethan had his sword, and there was no denying he was good at wielding it. But Tate was a man with an agenda, and he wouldn’t be deterred. The smile on his face reminded me of a cat playing with a mouse just before the final snap of its jaws. Tate had every intention of finishing the fight—and finishing Ethan—but wanted to play with his food a bit first. Ethan’s jacket was ripped from several cuts already.

“Ow.”

I glanced at the other side of the room. Paige was sitting up, a hand to her bleeding head.

I rushed to her, hoping she could find a way to stop all of this, and went down on my knees beside her. “Are you okay?”

“He made me follow him out, then made me tell him where the book was.” Her lip trembled, tears hovering at the edge of her lashes.

“It’s okay. We all knew this was coming. He and Ethan are fighting. Is there anything you can do? Can you knock Tate out or something?”

She shook her head, tears falling down her cheeks, an ugly bruise beginning to surface on one. “He did something to me. I couldn’t stop him from coming here or making me tell him where it was.”

It sounded like a violation by magic, a kind of psychic extortion used by Tate to get to the book. As if he needed any more reasons for me to detest him.

Chunks of concrete flew past us as Tate’s sword nipped a bit of the wall. Mallory was out, Tate was occupied, and Paige was injured. If she couldn’t use her magic, maybe I could at least get her out of the room to keep her out of any more danger—or to keep Tate from using her for anything else.

“Do you think you can walk?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

I put an arm beneath her and helped her to her feet. But that plan didn’t last long.

“Merit!” Paige said. “Mallory! The book!”

I looked back. Mallory had awoken and was stretched full out on the floor of the vault, one hand stretched over the book, her lips moving as she continued her incantation.

The sounds of the scuffle stopped as Tate turned toward the sound of the ancient words. Ethan took advantage of the distraction and thrust his katana down.

The strike should have sliced Tate open from throat to stomach, but Tate put up a hand, and Ethan flew back against the wall again.

My heart nearly stopped again, but Ethan groaned and rolled over. Unfortunately, my relief was dwarfed by my shock at Tate’s power and the violence he threw around so casually. What was he?

Undeterred by the violence around her, Mallory continued her chanting, words that were chunky and rhythmic like Latin, but with thicker consonants and a twist that sounded almost Russian.

With Ethan handled, Tate vaulted a table and reached out to grab the book.

“Mallory, stop!” I called out, but I was too late.

Tate stretched for the book, and just as his fingers made contact with its red leather cover, Mallory screamed out an incantation. “Adnum malentium!”

A thunderous clap split the air, the energy pushing Mallory back…but not Tate.

The Maleficium exploded into a burst of bright blue light that wrapped around Tate’s hand, still on the book, and up his arm like a snaking vine. Within seconds he was enveloped in light. Mallory had done something, finished something, and the Maleficium was reacting.

The light glowed around him like a visible aura, and for a moment he smiled, as if he’d achieved some part of his plan.

But his elation didn’t last long. The light around him began to shake, and the outline of his body along with it. He wobbled and quivered inside the cloud of light, and his expression grew pained. He opened his mouth to scream out, but no sound escaped the light, just the dull throbbing of the magic.

Within seconds, his vibrating form began to lurch up and down, and then his body began to widen. It didn’t grow bigger—it stretched horizontally as he howled out his displeasure.

The shield of magic grew as he did, and I scampered back to avoid the edge of it.

Suddenly, like a string of DNA dividing, double-wide Tate began to cleave in two. The split started at his head, and in sputtering stops and starts. Flashes lit the room like a sun-powered strobe, and then it was over.

A loud crack of magic crossed the room, and the lights in the silo flickered once, then twice.

When the room was calm again, Seth Tate stood in the middle of the room, sweating and rumpled.

And beside him stood another Seth Tate.

It took seconds for my mind to actually start working again—and even then I hadn’t managed to wrap my mind around what I’d seen.

Seth Tate, former mayor of Chicago, had become two Seth Tates.

The Tates looked at their hands and then each other, and then both pushed out their chests. They screamed out—a sound wholly inhuman and ear-burstingly loud.

I hit the concrete on my knees, covering my ears against the sound. The entire structure vibrated, and I’d have sworn the concrete and steel warped from the energy they put out.

For a moment, there was silence.

And then they both shot upward, straight up the shaft of the missile silo. I ran beneath the opening and watched them ascend—twenty feet, forty feet, sixty feet, eighty feet—and then the metal doors of the missile bay burst open, sending a shower of dirt and roots and cornstalks into the silo. The Tates disappeared through the opening and into the night, supernatural missiles of unknown proportions.

The dirt cleared, and lights shone down through the hole in the sky. And all was quiet again on the midwestern front.