A Bone to Pick, page 21
A second pain burst out—a sudden ache that crumbled into fear and tried to straighten itself into arrogance, pure Ian.
Of course they’re hurting him. I rose up on my haunches and looked down at the paths below.
Another figure stood against a far wall, cupping the glow of a cigarette. That put him right in place to see Mrs. Weems’s door, and also the wall below me, and he gave off the same hardened grudge as the other man.
Sure, the neighbors harassed me for being a strange face, but they missed this whole surveillance operation? And none of them were on Ian’s side.
I turned and moved to the roof’s other side, looked around—this way looked, felt, clear from watchful eyes.
Climbing down went too fast. My hands and knees slid down the wall, then yanked to a stop when the magic clamped them on. I swarmed down with arms and legs aching, but I reached the ground.
Still no trace of Maya around, and that thug was still watching out front.
Pain flared from Ian again.
I strode around the building, trying not to think of that sentry, or the chance that Mrs. Weems’s door would simply be locked—
The knob turned at my touch. I stepped inside.
Sure enough, Sybil was waiting, with a gun raised and her other hand ready to fling something worse. Willard and Dom stood around Mrs. Weems, and she lay slumped and silent in her chair.
Ian looked around at me. “What...” There was pain in his voice, something unsteady in how he stood.
Hesitation is danger now. I pulled the door shut against the outside, and announced “Maya sent me.”
Willard gave a rough laugh. “She thinks you can keep an eye on us?”
I said “We spotted Mob spies outside, two separate ones—”
“Please...” Mrs. Weems’s word crumbled in a weak cough. Then she looked around at us, all of us, and said “Just, stop...” The word faded.
“She’s slipping away!” Dom said. “Help her.”
He shoved Ian toward her. Ian tottered, got his feet and stepped into the motion to rush over and kneel down by her chair. “Of course. This time it’ll work.”
I went still. My gaze stayed on Ian and his patient, but the corners of my eyes tracked the three Duvals, and which of them would be how many steps away from my fear-touch if they hurt Ian again. Maya had to be back soon.
Ian laid his left hand on Mrs. Weems, the one with the ring for nerves and pain. Her eyes were half-closed now, and the Pulse felt her sinking toward unconsciousness, and Ian’s rising need to steady her, to bring her back.
He strained, eyes closed tighter than hers. I waited, tracking the tension and poised to step in or fight back.
Her consciousness only sank further away. And something in Ian broke, from stubbornness into fear.
Ian said “She, she wants to say something.”
Willard stepped over, spinning inside with fear as he leaned in.
Ian twisted around and grabbed up at him.
It was a clumsy, unbalanced move, and Willard had all the warning he needed to swat Ian’s grasp away. “What are you—”
Then his own hand swung up to ready a blast.
“No! You need him!” I gasped, but that wouldn’t stop Willard—I leaped at him.
Dom slammed into my side. I stumbled across the room and caught my balance, saw him and Sybil closing in around me.
“You need a better reason,” Willard told Ian. His hand slammed down around the healer’s wrist.
Meat hissed and burned, and the sound was lost in Ian’s scream.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: HAND OVER HAND
Skin turned harsh red, blisters rising, in a trail up Ian’s arm as Willard ran his hand along it. The sleeve smoldered and sparked where he pushed it back.
I lunged around Dom and Sybil—
But Willard stepped back, leaving Ian crumpling at his feet. “There’s your motivation.” He folded his arms, the arms that had spread searing pain a moment ago. “Now, heal that!”
I dragged myself to a halt, forced my words down to a low hiss and prayed someone could still listen. “Are you crazy? You just—did you even think, how’s that going to help anyone work? Sybil?”
The Duval leader pocketed her gun. “Settle down, Willard.”
“But...” The big man’s voice ended in a strangled sound.
Ian growled “I, I can do this—”
He brought his right hand, his wound-healing ring, across to his arm and brushed it just above the burn, and even that made him jerk it back. With a hiss of pain he yanked the nerve ring off of that hand and brought them both down on the blistered flesh.
I locked my will around the Pulse and streamed it across the room to him—the pain!—but I held on and sent him what peace and calmness I could, never mind if I helped him concentrate or dulled it.
The vicious red marks didn’t shrink, didn’t lighten.
“Is the Mob really out there?” Sybil’s voice, guarded concern, jabbed at the edge of our focus.
“Hell yes they’re out there!” I snapped. “And with the screaming and all, they have to know we’re here.”
“Like you running in the door,” Dom said.
I twisted toward him, guilt and desperation caught in my throat.
Then Willard laughed “So it’s rings!” And he ripped one ring from Ian’s grasp and pulled the other off his finger, shoved him away, and turned toward Mrs. Weems in her chair.
I jumped toward his side, but he was already right in front of her. I flung the last words I had at him, the last things that could stop this short of a hopeless fight. “You think that’s safe? You trying to kill her yourself?”
The other Duvals stood close around me.
Willard turned a vicious glare back at me. “At least I’ll know the healer isn’t faking it.”
“How... dare you...” Ian hauled himself up to his knees, keeping his burned arm clear. “Don’t you ever say I’d—”
Willard’s gaze never left me. “Back off, now!”
“No! You could kill her—think, think!”
My warning only made his face lock tight. Mrs. Weems sat unmoving just behind him, Dom and Sybil loomed on all sides of me. I braced for the move that would set it all off.
Sure enough, Willard lashed out with a broad, wide sweep of his arm to cuff me away. My feet stepped back to draw him a fraction from her chair, my arms blocked the strike, the Bones poured terror into him.
With a broken wail he stumbled back, tried to pull from my grip—
I had a whole instant to see Dom closing in on my side.
A flash of light. Spinning away, crumpling and rolling to my feet, something ringing—
The dimness pulled back, to show one giant blocking me and the other by the old woman’s chair. Willard shook himself, trying to throw off my fear, and he touched the rings to her hand.
Her face twisted in pain.
“Sorry! I’m sorry!” Willard’s voice ached with regret.
Sybil’s tone was gentle. “Willard... let me try—”
“No!” he snarled at his cousin, the woman he’d followed through everything, and Sybil fell back a step.
He set his hand on the old woman’s forehead.
I sent the Pulse across to them—calmness only hissed off Willard’s hot desperation like drops of water on a pan. Her own dim, distorted presence stretched, frayed. Dom was still in my way.
Ian moaned “Stop it!” He staggered to his feet, left arm still a savage red, but more rings glittered on his other hand.
Sybil moved to Willard’s side. “You’ve tried enough—”
Willard gasped. The old woman’s eyes had fluttered open.
He breathed “Here, it’s alright—”
Her eyes closed again. What I felt in her was weak, mired in whatever condition gripped her, but she wasn’t crumbling yet.
Ian pushed at Willard’s side, a wounded puppy against a bear. “I can do this!”
I said “Slow down!” and my voice cracked. “Don’t hurt her, she still feels stable—”
Ian spun toward me. “What, you got your medical degree when? Was it a whole day ago? She needs me!”
Too fierce, too desperate—I couldn’t use fear on them all. I had to step back and reach the Pulse around me, trying to recenter me and find someone who’d listen.
It was worse than I thought, like standing huddled between jets of angry flame and trying to guess which would burst next. But another, more focused rage glowed out beyond the room, and another...
“The Mob. They’re closing in—”
“More tricks,” Willard snorted. “We save her now, and torch anyone who gets in the way.”
“Just listen to me!” I spun around to Sybil. “They’re out there. Think, if they catch you here—”
“Nobody’s leaving yet.” Sybil’s gaze dipped toward the floor, and I caught a trace of doomed regret in her.
“Quiet!” Ian said. “I’m getting it, I can help her.”
No good, none of them were listening—Ian was as crazy-worked-up as the Duvals. I heaved out a sigh, and stepped back and around to the front door. At least my new magic could seal it closed and give us some kind of shelter.
Footsteps. Running, closing in outside.
As I reached the door, Detective Poe flung it open. I stumbled back as his broad face stared at us even wider, gaping at the six of us. Then the moment passed, and his gun swung up.
“Show me your hands—all of you! Now! And back away from the old woman, do it!”
Sybil warned “We’re trying to save—”
Ian said “I just need to—”
“Quiet!”
With that one harsh word, Poe stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him. I drew back, and a wave of his gun herded Sybil and Dom away to clear a path toward the others. And the two Duvals did step back, startled caution in them beginning to harden into grim amusement.
Poe only looked at Ian and the patient he held his grip on. “There’s no time. You’re all getting out of here.”
“I can help her!”
“Come on.” He waved his gun at Willard, grabbed at Ian’s arm.
“No!”
And Ian’s fingers clamped around the detective’s wrist.
Poe’s face burst into silent agony, so raw and real I could have been sharing it with the Pulse... but it was simple looking at how his features twisted, his body spasmed and slumped and crashed over into a strange broken position that was part muted scream and partly the crumpling of a body that had forgotten if it would ever move again. His gun clattered to the ground beside him.
But his mind—I grabbed at the Pulse and felt a twisted-up life still within him.
The next voice to speak was Sybil’s, to Ian. “So you’ve got some balls.”
Ian’s eyes never left the crumpled figure. “I can fix him—”
Willard loomed behind him. “You stay on her.”
He was alive, they were all alive, so far... I shook off the shock of it and twisted around to Sybil. “Just listen! He’s right about the Mob—”
“No.” She swung around to face the closed door to the outside. “No, we heal her right now.”
A slim figure stood by the corner’s bookshelves.
Sybil went on “We Duvals stay with our own kind. We don’t leave them, and we make it work—”
“That’s enough.”
Somehow Maya’s voice had the force to brush Sybil’s speech aside. She took one look around the crowded room, and her gaze locked onto me.
“How many? How many of them are close?”
The Pulse swept out beyond the room. “Too many—oh God—”
That vengeful anger rising outside, all hungry anticipation spiking toward one moment—
“Down!”
I dropped to the carpet as the word ripped out of me, too late, too damn late. But I saw Maya fling herself down, and the Duvals start to move too. And...
Nothing. I lay still on the floor, sensing the edge of destruction I felt outside and sure I’d read it wrong...
Glass shattered. Something hammered into the wall opposite the window, too many impacts and too many breakings and tumblings as the bullets tore into the old woman’s neatly-stacked lifetime of possessions and sent pieces flying.
Then silence.
I twisted, stared around... Maya stirred where she crouched, Ian clung to Mrs. Weems—he and Willard had even pulled her down from the chair, and I saw no blood.
Small, disconnected sounds thumped and tinkled in the hush. Dom grunted as a pair of books dropped over him, while other noises, angry, shocked, broke out in the night beyond the shattered windows.
“Where are they?” Sybil made the words deadlier than a curse, and she looked right at me.
I drew on the Pulse—the Duvals were fire on water, all their murderous fury floating over sudden depths of fear—and reached past them, felt for the hardened rage I’d caught before. Three, five, presences outside edging closer, so slowly.
“They’re staying back.” It was almost true—anything to slow the madness down.
“Leave us alone...” Ian lay on the floor, hands wrapped around his head.
The front door was still unlocked. I shook my limbs to life and started crawling, hands clattering over a collage of pieces that had been part of a woman’s home.
“We go out and get them.” That hiss sounded like Dom. “It’s the only way!”
Then I slapped a hand on the door, and poured in the magic to seal it to the frame.
“That’ll hold for a while.” That weak, shocked voice couldn’t be mine... I looked at Maya. “Can you get us out?”
Maya winced, looked at the floor. But an instant later she looked up and rattled out a brisk “Two at a time. I’ll find a safe getaway.”
“Sybil and Mrs. Weems go first,” Willard said.
Maya glared at him, and he scowled right back
Then he stopped, pushed at the still-motionless old woman. “No—take her and the healer.” He turned a pleading look at Sybil. “Please, they have to, we can’t risk...”
“You owe her.” Sybil’s face settled into a rock-hard smile. “I can take care of myself.”
Ian groaned “Don’t... don’t talk about me like I'm not here,”
“We know you’re still here,” I told him. “When you could be gone, and the rest of us next, if we just get moving.”
Maya crawled toward them, in a low, limber scuttle that swung wide around a shattered window and its glass. She could have crossed the room with a thought—how much was this magic going to take out of her?
Then she reached Ian and Mrs. Weems, and the three vanished. Just seeing that drew a deep sigh of relief out of me.
Except I was alone with the three Duvals and an unconscious cop, and the smattering of frightened sounds and ominous silence from outside...
Willard pulled himself up to lean back on the wall. “And she better come back—”
“Come back?”
The words tore out of me.
“It was your idea to scare some old secrets out of Beltram that started all this.” That and rumors about Ian—but I kept my gaze and my whisper straight on Willard. “And she’s why you’re free at all, and her loyalty to Sybil is still the only difference between getting us away and her just staying away. So, how about we stop trying to blame each other?”
“You want to talk about backstabbing? You tried to leave us in jail—”
Something smacked into the wall, with a shrill metallic cough out in the darkness. Silencer.
I searched the emotions outside, knowing I should have tracked them all along. “They’re not rushing us... feels more like they want us scared—”
Willard rumbled “You said they were staying back.”
Maya reappeared.
I swallowed my retort, and watched the instants it took the Duvals to notice she was back. She crawled straight to the unconscious Detective Poe, scurrying past the others as if all their thoughts were sidetracks she had no time for.
She grabbed Poe, then held out her other hand to Willard beside him. “Come on.”
Him next because he was closest, or because he was the loose cannon here? But Willard took her hand, and they were gone.
Sybil let out a heavy breath, and swung around to peep up at the shattered window. She drew out the gun she’d waved before, the threat that people would recognize.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
She fired, four booming shots into the dark outside. I could feel splashes of fear, and the angriest, most contained ones drawing back from us. When her weapon fell silent, a chorus of frightened sounds flickered outside.
“Slowing them down,” she said, and she ducked back from the window.
“Alright!” Fear cut into Dom’s voice, fear for her. “You’ve done enough—”
Something hurtled in the window. Just a clumsy blur of motion, but then it struck with the crash of a bursting bottle—and bright flames spread up from the pool it spilled. An alarm screamed.
The Pulse caught a flash of dark amusement outside, for what had to be the idea of fighting arsonists with fire.
Sybil’s amusement flared brighter. “It’s not that easy,” and she flicked a hand at the flames. Her magic herded them together, reversed their spread and held them as a single orange fountain rising for the ceiling.
So our attackers would still see the firelight and think they had us, I guessed. But I felt that hatred drawing closer outside.
“Now, spot them for us.” Sybil’s voice rose a notch as if she spoke over fire alarms every day.
Before I could answer, Maya was back.
She took a moment to look at the leashed fire, and laughed “I guess they had to try it. Now, all together.” And she reached out a hand for Sybil and Dom, and another for me.
As she said it, a rush of what had to be fear rolled inside her.
Fear, for carrying us.
The door was sealed, and our enemies still had some distance to cross.
If we just didn’t stop and argue—
“You’ve never carried three, have you?” The words surged out on their own, running ahead of me. “Look, I’ll be on the roof, you jump back there when you can.”
