People had come outside their houses to view the commotion. Now they raced back inside, only to have the monsters follow them, smashing windows and bashing down doors. The creatures flew through the air carrying lit torches, chattering as they set fire to building after building. Familiars snatched people from the ground. A woman in a nightdress rushed past us just as a raven swooped down, gripped her, and soared up into the air. The beast’s talons ripped through the flimsy cloth, and the woman fell thirty feet. Her end was horrible.
Saving Rook had been just, but these people were dying because of what I’d done. I hated myself. I hated Palehook for engineering this hideous situation. In a small, guilty part of my soul, I hated Mickelmas, too.
“Get ready to run,” Magnus said, clapping Rook on the shoulder as he coughed. There was no sign of the others. We had no time to search for them. “Don’t look back.” We pushed forward on our own.
Sorcerers descended out of thin air in a flurry of black silk. Some staggered about, still drunk from the ball. They made formations and created a wall of wind that drove the Familiars back.
Flames licked up the sides of walls; smoke poured out of windows. People collapsed into the street and were butchered. We stopped to send streams of water toward the fire, but the job was beyond us.
“This is my fault,” I whispered. Magnus grabbed my hand and squeezed it tight.
We hadn’t gotten far from St. Paul’s when Gwen descended out of the air before us and leaped from her mount. She rolled back her smoke hood and slithered toward us on a carpet of fog.
“He wants you,” she said, focusing her sewn eyes upon me. “It is the greatest honor. He has chosen you specifically.”
“Stay back,” Magnus grunted. Rook groaned and fell to his knees. The rider gestured to her stag.
“You’re to come with me.”
Now that I knew who she was, I couldn’t attack her. I held up my hand, and she stilled.
“I know your name,” I said. “Please, I don’t want to fight you.” I brought Porridge down slowly. Her nostrils flared. “You can turn away from all this.”
“Um, Howel?” Magnus said, pulling Rook to his feet. “What are you doing?”
Gwen kept listening. Desperate, I pushed on.
“It’s so lonely for me, being the only one,” I said. She tilted her head to the side. She appeared to understand what I meant. “Maybe it was that way for you, too. We’re alike. I can help you, if you’ll let me. We can help each other.”
She licked her lips. It was a slow, thoughtful movement. Finally, she said, her voice low and normal, “We can be alike.” She held out her hand, smiling. “You must come with me before the bloody king. He will make us alike.”
There was no hope. I blasted at her with the wind, knocking her down. When I tried to rush by, she leaped to her feet.
“Little lady sorcerer,” she rasped, snaking toward me. “He wants you alive. He said alive, not intact.” She swung at me. I dodged and called fire into my stave, slashing it through the air. Snarling, she leaped toward me with a raised dagger.
A blast of wind caught her off balance. Master Agrippa strode into view, his stave held out before him.
“Let her go.” He stopped a few feet from the Familiar, his face broken in sadness. “Gwen, just let them go.”
“Gwen?” Magnus said, eyes wide. “Gwendolyn Agrippa?”
“Run, all of you,” Agrippa said as he blocked his daughter’s thrust and forced her backward. Gwendolyn mounted her stag, hissing. “Gwen, please stop. Even now, it may not be too late,” Agrippa cried. “You remember me. I know that you do. Please, my love. Don’t leave me again.”
She relaxed her dagger and murmured, “Father?”
Crying out in joy, Agrippa walked toward his child. In a move as fast and deadly as a snake striking, Gwendolyn grabbed for Agrippa’s arm. He stumbled to the ground, breaking her grip. Undeterred, she dug her long fingernails into his leg, rising with her mount into the air.
“Stop!” I shouted, grabbing on to Agrippa, firing at Gwendolyn as she rose higher into the sky. Agrippa’s hand began to slip from mine. “Hold on,” I said as Magnus tried to ward him out of her grasp. Despite our efforts, we were losing.
“Henrietta, let go,” Agrippa said.
“No.” Frantic, I placed Porridge at our joined hands and murmured a quick spell I’d learned from Mickelmas. Our grip fused; it would be near impossible to break now.
“Why?” he shouted, bewildered. “Why help me?”
Because despite his betrayal, I could never really turn my back on him. My heels lifted off the ground. I struggled not to panic.
Agrippa shut his eyes and created a warded blade. “Please forgive me,” he cried. I realized what he was about to do.
“No!” I screamed. He brought the blade down and was gone, moaning as Gwendolyn flew away with him. I fell to the ground, landing on my back. He’d cut himself off at the wrist, the quickest way he could see to relinquish me.
I broke the spell, dropped his hand, and stood as Magnus stared into the sky. “We could have saved him,” he said, looking pale and sick. “Why would he do that?”
“To protect us.” Agrippa was gone. He was my betrayer, the man who’d saved my life, who’d conspired with Palehook to discredit me, who’d played chess with me before the fire. My last real words to him had been hateful ones, and my vision blurred with tears. Please forgive me, he’d said. Why hadn’t I done it?
“Howel!” Lambe and Wolff ran out of the fog. Swallowing my grief, we gathered by the side of a building and warded ourselves. Lambe inspected Rook, who was still falling in and out of consciousness. “He’s not going to last much longer. Palehook took too much of his energy.”
“What can we do?”
“Fenswick’s at the house. Go there.” Three of the ravens came out of the sky and dove for us. They slammed against the warded walls and screeched as they flew back up.
“I’ve never seen an attack like this. There aren’t enough sorcerers in the city for the Familiars and Korozoth. Wolff, can you get the ward back up?” Magnus said.
“Impossible. Palehook is dead. We don’t know the spell he used to consume Rook’s life force, and even if we had it, we probably couldn’t use it. And even if we could, we wouldn’t,” Wolff muttered. “The only thing I can think of at this point is to kill Korozoth.” We waited for Magnus to stop laughing. “Most of the Familiars are his. Without him, they’d be like a colony of ants without a queen.”
“It’s impossible,” Magnus said.
I had an idea, a wild and stupid one. “There might be a way to destroy him. Get the rest of the boys and find us. Do you know where Korozoth is?”
“He’s coming from the west,” Wolff said. “He should be leaving the river by now.”
“First we need to deliver Rook to Fenswick back at the house. Then we’ll all go off to face him together.”
“Yes, but what will we do?” Lambe said.
“Something you’ve tried before. It failed, but with me it might work.”
“You should leave,” Magnus said as Lambe and Wolff ran to get the others. He placed his hand on my back. “This is the perfect time to escape.”
“I can’t leave, not now.” Ahead of us, we spied an empty wagon with a horse harnessed in, the beast struggling to loose itself from the post where it had been tied. Magnus freed the creature while Rook and I settled into the back. Magnus jumped into the driver’s seat and took the reins, and we were off, fighting our way through the chaos. We continued into a cleared area, away from the attacks.
But people started running in the opposite direction from where we were headed. To the left of us, the streetlamps all guttered out. The blackness and silence became oppressive….