Hugh’s eyes turned dark.
I yawned. “I don’t know about the ward, but I’m done talking. I’m going to go and take a nap.”
“Last chance,” Hugh said. His voice lost all of its amusement. “Come with me, and I’ll spare your precious Pack. All your pets will go to bed safe and won’t have to worry about fighting for their lives in the morning. Or they can wake up to a slaughter and blame you when their kids and lovers start dying.”
I slid Slayer into its sheath on my back and crossed my arms. “Time for talking is over. Come on, Preceptor. The man I sleep with broke the City Eater’s ward. You just have to break one of mine. Do it, Hugh. Show me something.”
“Remember, you wanted this,” he warned.
I dug into my memory and pulled out the worst rebuke Voron ever used. He said it to me and he had said it to Hugh, because Hugh threw it in my face the last time we met.
“If you’re too scared to try, just say you’re scared, Hugh.”
Nothing was worse than not being brave enough to try.
Hugh pulled a knife out, sliced his forearm, and dropped the blade on the floor. Show-off. Why not use the knife?
He squeezed his forearm. Blood swelled, bright sharp crimson. Slowly he rubbed it all over his hands. His stare locked on me. Wow. Hugh was pissed.
I raised my eyebrow at him.
He leaned forward, his feet shoulder width apart, his arms bent at the elbows, fingers apart, pointing up. His whole body tensed, gathering together as if before a great jump. Muscles bulged on his legs. His biceps strained the sleeves of his sweater. His abdomen hardened. Thin streaks of blue vapor slithered from him, growing stronger and stronger, until pale blue smoke emanated from his whole body. I’d seen it before when he pulled Doolittle from the brink of death. The ward blocked me from feeling it, but I remembered the magnitude of that power.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
On the stairs Nick crouched. Uath gripped the guardrail. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Robert, standing in plain view in a hallway.
Hugh’s eyes turned bright electric blue. Indigo radiance coated his hands.
“Today,” I called out.
He lunged forward with both hands. His fingers pierced the ward like talons.
The blood ward flashed with brilliant red light, the magic crackling like thunder. Hugh flew back ten feet and hit the stairway leading to the upper floor. The back of his head bounced off the steps. He slid down and didn’t move.
Ha! Serves you right!
Behind me Robert said, his voice completely deadpan, “Oh my.”
A wall of translucent red pulsed in the doorway and turned transparent. My spell was still up. I laughed.
Nick and Uath charged up the stairs to Hugh’s prone body. I turned around and hurried to the bedroom.
A hole gaped in the ceiling next to the bed. Derek waited by it. Ascanio swung down out of the hole and offered me his hand. I grabbed it and he pulled me up until I could grasp onto some wooden beams. Ascanio let go and climbed up, and I crawled up after him. My cracked rib was screaming. Derek followed me into the ceiling structure. Beams, broken brick, insulation, and more beams.
A cold drop fell on my head. I looked up and saw Ascanio’s feet disappear, replaced by the night sky. My fingers caught cold metal and I pulled myself outside onto the roof. Frozen rain sifted from the gray sky. In the distance Desandra in a warrior form crouched on the edge of the roof, like a sleek monstrous gargoyle.
“Did you know that would happen?” Robert emerged from the hole.
“I hoped it would.”
“And if he broke through?”
“Then we’d have to run away very fast.” Well, we still had to run away really fast. Hugh’s people wouldn’t move until he came to, but that head was really hard. He’d bounce back soon.
The roof, slicked by frost, sloped down at a sharp angle. The ground looked very far down below.
Ascanio ran across the slippery roof toward the wererat. My head swam. The roof teetered before me.
Don’t think about it. Just do it. I sprinted. My stomach lurched. Tiny black dots swam in front of my eyes. Okay, running might have been too ambitious.
The roof ended. A twenty-foot gap separated us from the next building. Far below, hard pavement promised a painful landing.
Robert leaped across the gap and scurried on.
Twenty feet was so beyond me, it wasn’t even funny. Well rested, on solid ground, and with some training, I could possibly come close, but right now, on a slippery roof, it might as well have been a hundred feet. I had to get off the roof. When Hugh finally managed to deal with my ward, the backlash would be a bitch. I needed distance, but I was stuck.
“Kate.” Derek grabbed me and leaped. The ground yawned at me and then we landed on the other roof.
Robert cleared the roof and jumped down, right over the edge. I followed and nearly slid off the icy shingles. A fire escape, ten feet below.
I jumped down, landed with a thud, and slid down the fire escape, trying not to trip over my own clumsy feet. Wind whistled around me and then we were on the ground and next to Robert, who held Cuddles’s reins.
I swung into the saddle and gave her a squeeze. We had to hurry.
Cuddles didn’t move.
“Come on!” I kicked her sides. “Now isn’t the time to be an ass!”
Cuddles planted herself. Not now, you stupid donkey.
Ascanio snarled and smacked her butt. Cuddles shot into a gallop, thudding down the street.
8
THE WARREN FLEW by. We made another right and burst onto Garbage Road. Trash and refuse lay piled in huge heaps against the walls of abandoned buildings, forming a twenty-foot-deep canyon of garbage. If we made it through, we’d reach White Street.
Cuddles began to slow. I let her drop to a canter. A mile of gallop over rough terrain was all I could ask, even with Hugh behind us. It was that or, in another mile, she’d quit on me.
Small scavenger beasts with long tails scampered back and forth on the hills of trash, their eyes pinpoints of yellow against the darkness. The shapeshifters ran on both sides of me, leaping over hazards on the garbage slopes. Garbage Road had come about because of the Phantom River. It flowed through the Warren, invisible to the eye, picked up trash and loose refuse, and dragged it here, to Garbage Road. The Phantom River terminated when it reached White Street, which had its own brand of screwed-up magic. People said that the river’s “waters” pooled here, held back by White Street like a dam, before they deposited all of its stolen treasures and disappeared.
The road widened and we emerged into what must’ve been a roundabout at some point. Now with the side streets choked by debris, it was just a trash bottleneck: one way in, one way out.
Ahead Derek stumbled.
I pulled on the reins, trying to get Cuddles to stop.
Derek tried to keep running, but he stumbled again and rolled down the garbage slope right under the donkey. Cuddles’s hoof missed his head by a hair. She finally stopped, and I jumped to the ground.
Derek rolled up clumsily to all fours and vomited a torrent of gray on the ground. A putrid sour reek hit me. It smelled like someone had sliced open a cow carcass that had been baking in the sun for days. I gagged and knelt by him. The vomit was filled with dark gray slime, streaked with black and red.
Ascanio and Robert dropped down next to me. Desandra landed next to us, shivered, and vomited to the side, the same torrent of slime and blood. Something was horribly wrong with them.
“I’m okay.” Derek coughed.