chapter TWENTY
By the time the long roll of thunder faded I was on my feet, scooping up the gun. The touch flared inside my head, and in the flickering blue-white glow from the muted television I sensed more than saw the brushed-metal doorknob jiggling.
The touch spilled free of my skull, but told me nothing much. There was something weird—interference. Odd static fuzzed over the TV screen, swallowing the black-and-white movie that had been watching me while I slept. The white noise filled my skull, bouncing around like a pinball.
What the hell? I pulled back, shaking my head.
I ghosted to the wall partitioning bedroom space off from hall-and-bathroom space, gun held low and fingers locked outside the trigger guard. Thunder boomed again, filling the sky, and the thin blue lines of warding in the walls shivered. They were reacting to whoever was outside the door. And not in a good way—whoever-it-was smelled like cloves and sand, and their mental fingers picked at the wards like a kid undoing a sneaker lace.
My mouth tingled, the faint taste of oranges filling my throat and a chill sliding down my spine. I knew that chill.
Brace yourself, Dru. Shit’s about to get weird.
There was the gun. Was I actually going to shoot whoever was coming in?
Fine time to be doubting that, Dru.
The warding sparked, resisting. I almost thought of grabbing hold of it from my side and giving whoever it was a snap, like popping a rubber band hard against their mental fingers. If you hit someone just right like that you can give them a helluva headache. Maybe even knock them out.
But if they could unravel wards like that, they were probably more skilled, and I’d be the one with the headache. My best bet was keeping the touch inside my head and using the damn gun.
Better be ready. Do it like Dad taught you.
The door opened, silently. The wards unraveled, whispering off into nothing like smoke. Soft regular thudding; my ears picked it out. Two of them, and I was hearing their heartbeats.
Well, isn’t that useful. My own heart was in my mouth, warring with the ghost of citrus and the tooth-aching cold. Why just two of them, if they could spring a trap with a rocket launcher on top of a building a couple states away? An advance team? More coming in the windows or watching the hotel?
Now, Dru. It was Dad’s voice, or I might have moved too late. They’re walking right into your angle.
At the last second, the gun jerked down. I got lucky—the first one folded when the bullet shattered his knee. A one-in-a-million shot, and Dad would’ve yelled at me for not taking the body shot. Don’t point that thing if you ain’t prepared to kill somethin’!
The roar of the gunshot was lost in a thumprattle of thunder, lightning lit up the room, and the television screen flashed. The second guy—tall, dark-haired, gold glittering in his ears and at his throat—pitched forward, his hands flying out and the hex sparking red and blue like a firework.
There’s a few different sorts of thrown hexes; this was one of the flat fizzing Frisbee types that make a zshhhhht! noise and go whirling.
My left hand flashed out. In a hex battle, you’re either quick or you’re toast. Dad and I had run across several practitioners over the years, and once or twice it’d been Gran’s careful training that saved both our bacon.
So it was Gran’s owl, now, filling itself in with swift streaks, that burst into being as the hex singed my fingers. The owl hit the second guy in the face with a crunch, and the red and blue hex spun as I caught it like a nail-studded baseball, sharp edges biting my skin.
As long as I wasn’t going head-on, I had a good chance of bending the hex around. Like t’ai chi—stepping aside from the force of the punch and deflecting it, instead of meeting it with equal strength.
I may not be brawny, but I’m fast.
My left arm came back, I whipped it forward as if I was tossing the Frisbee back at him, and the guy lost his hold. Which was another miracle, because generally it’s harder to wrest control away from someone who’s taken the time to build such a pretty, malevolent piece of work as a really good hex.
And this one was a lulu. But I guess the guy was having a hard time focusing with his face full of talons and feathers. The owl exploded, a rain of white down popping out of existence just before his bleeding face came up—
—and his own hex crunched squarely into his lean midriff.
He folded up just like a spider flicked into a candle flame and was actually flung back into the hall, golden electric light shining off a spatter of blood that hung in his wake right before there was another photoflash of lightning and the power failed. Darkness like a wet bandage pressed against my eyes, and in the aftermath of another huge roll of thunder I heard ragged breathing and someone muttering cusswords.
“Bitch!” A boy’s voice, breaking. “You shot my knee!”
He sounded fifteen, tops. Where were the adults who were supposed to handle this thing? Did they even exist? Was he old, too, and trapped in a young-sounding body?
You’re goddamn lucky it wasn’t your head. I said nothing. The emergency lights came up, a dull orange glow, and the hex in the hall was still sparkling and digging into a prone form. Hot acid boiled up inside my throat. He wasn’t looking to leave me a Christmas card. Get moving!
The guy on the floor kept cussing while I stepped into my jeans and boots. I buckled my malaika harness—a trick to do one-handed while you’re covering a squirming guy on the floor. He could have had a gun too, but if he hadn’t shot me by now, I didn’t think he would.
Duffel in one hand, gun in the other, I made it to the wall near the window. Let out a long, shaky breath.
“What did you do?” The boy on the floor had stopped cussing. I wasn’t sure I liked it. He was sounding mighty sharp and focused for someone who’d been shot. “How can you do that? How can you use the jaadu?”
I’m not going to hang around and chat with you, you know. The touch slid free of my skull, little invisible fingers questing for danger. He choked, but I didn’t have time to worry about it. No rain against the windows—it was heat lightning; no wonder everything was all staticky.
Three-floor drop. You can make it easy. I didn’t want to get trapped inside the rest of the hotel, and I didn’t know if these guys had backup. Maybe they were expecting me to go out the window; I didn’t know.
But I also wouldn’t have gone out into that hall, and stepped past that body and the crackling, nasty hex, if you paid me.
“Wait.” The boy on the floor was moving, rolling around. “Rajkumari, wait. For God’s sake, wait—”
Too late. Glass shattered, the stifling hot night full of ozone, wet heat, and the smell of Gulf rot closed around me, and I was gone.
Thank God I hadn’t been stupid enough to park the Jeep in the hotel lot. I still had a couple of bad moments getting to the side street I’d left it on. I kept jumping at shadows. Can you blame me?
The rain started just after I threw the duffel in, hard quartersized drops thudding into dirt and concrete. More lightning played in the billowing clouds like huge veined hands.
I was getting awful tired of thunder. But at least there was nothing unnatural about this storm. My left hand hurt like hell—I wrapped it up in a chunk of fast-food napkins. I didn’t smell blood, but it was weeping, and it burned like I’d held it in boiling water for a while.
And I’d only touched that hex for less than a second. What would it have done if it hit me? For a couple seconds I braced my forehead on the steering wheel while my ribs heaved with deep ragged gasps.
But Dad’s voice inside my head was pitiless. Move it along, honey. You ain’t out of the woods yet.
I flipped the wipers on and got out of there. Seven and a half hours later I was in Houston. But by then things had already gone even further to hell.