A Bone to Pick, page 6
The wind caught the flames. The cart next to it began burning.
Back across the square, I made out Ian in his simple brown jacket moving away from the wrecked car. Then another figure between us spun around to look straight toward him—I dove through the wind-tossed smoke to close on his back. So much for leading them away from Ian.
The tall man shoved a woman aside.
His hand drew out a gun.
My palm slammed into his shoulder and the Pulse made him shriek. I ripped the gun from him and flung it away, and heard the woman scream too.
More screams, shouts, spread through the air like the flames in the wind. I raced on across and closed in on the car where Ian and Jason had been.
They were both still there. Jason crouched behind the shattered vehicle, his body and his eyes frozen in shock. Ian tugged at him, shook him, tried to break him out of it. I must have missed Ian turning back to help him.
As I reached their sides, Jason’s eyes cleared. “You’re—you’re here... where’s Lucy?” He stared around me.
“Somewhere back...” I waved back at the square behind me.
A gunshot blasted over the turmoil.
Then the sound was ended and a dozen screams closed over its wake, as the square erupted into panicking figures trying to scatter. But the shot hadn’t been from behind us—
A car stood just across the street, men pouring out of it, and I thought I saw one tucking a gun away. Another car screeched up to stop at the corner of the square. No escape that way.
“Come on!” Jason snapped. He grabbed Ian’s arm and dashed away, back into the thick of the square’s confusion.
We charged into it, into the people screaming and calling for each other, in among the wild tide of bodies rushing away from the street toward the square’s far end. I could glimpse these reinforcements were spreading out to cover the sides, and they might have more on the other ends too—who the hell were they?
But we were running together now. Jason’s instinctive choice let us dash and weave into the thick of it.
And Lucy slid into view as well. She wove through the crowd and joined us, one less thing to worry about.
“This way!” Jason said. We dashed toward the smoldering food carts—and great billows of smoke, that were collecting in a lull in the wind.
A head turned to follow us, but then we plunged into the smoke and the bitter eye-stinging smell. A figure loomed ahead, and we twisted around and let him stumble away.
Bang!
Fresh screams erupted—are those shots herding us—
The man in the smoke toppled.
Through the clouds I saw his face, stiff with surprise and the start of pain, a hand clutching at his side.
Stumbling, clumsy steps carried me away in the wake of the others. He got hit for being near us... I tried to speak.
Another shot blasted out. None of us fell, and I lost sight of the victim. He’s still alive, he’s still alive.
The thought thundered in my head and let me surge ahead of Jason and the rest. A stocky man stood on our way, reaching for a gun.
He hesitated. I crashed into him, forearm first, ready to use terror to keep him down when I broke away again—but he went right down and let me bounce up and race on.
Then we stood at the front edge of the square, and the street looked blessedly clear. We dashed across onto the next block, and along past the row of brick apartments as the shouting began to fall away behind us.
Up the street and out of sight... he’s alive, he’s alive, but who are they all, what are the Duvals doing... he’s still alive, he was... Through the tangle of thoughts I heard Lucy and Ian gasping for breath. Our footsteps echoed—we’d made it to a narrower, side street. With nobody behind us.
Ian doubled over, wheezing. We slumped to a stop, and I leaned against cold masonry and felt exhaustion wedged in my lungs. Pure reflex let me grab at the Pulse and search around us, and find nothing that felt hostile nearby. Only a deep well of shame, from Jason.
His gasps were fading, and a mumbling broke through them. “I froze. I froze, and they shot that man—”
“Shot?” Ian croaked.
I said “He’s still alive, still alive... I think...”
Ian stumbled forward. Into a walk, then a panting trot forward, not looking back.
“Hold on—” Lucy said, but he staggered right past her. I’d never seen him ignore her before. His eyes were fixed on the street ahead, and the turn that would lead back toward the square.
I fought for breath and scrambled after him, then ahead of him. I searched for enemy emotions, peeked around the corner, as the others gathered around Ian.
The street looked clear. The gunmen’s cars were gone—the square sounded like it had settled from panic to the creeping awareness that the danger had passed them by after all. The food carts lay overturned in the fountain with the last of their flames fading out.
We moved toward where the victim lay. A thin crowd had gathered around him, holding back where they could keep an anxious, safe distance from his fate.
Ian dropped down to his knees and scooped up a fold of the man’s sweater to press down on his bleeding side.
He held that pressure, fingers splayed wide, trying to hold the blood in the wound, as the awareness flickered on the man’s face. Such an ordinary face, no unusual features or scars or anything... or else the personality in them was slipping away with the rest of him. Only the darting of his eyes showed he was awake, and that grew slower.
“You’ll be okay.” Ian’s eyes were closed as he strained at his magic.
Lucy eased the victim back along the pavement and kneeled over him. Her weight and her stiffened arms pressed down, again, again, the precious few inches on his chest that might keep his heart going. I yanked off my new coat and rolled it up for a thick pad under his legs, to elevate them and keep more blood in his chest.
Behind us someone was moaning “He got shot, really shot!”
“You’ll be okay. You will be,” Ian said. Strain poured over his face, but the man’s eyes only slowed. “You’ll. Be. Okay.” Desperation crowded his voice.
I brushed the victim’s foot and reached for his emotions. Pain spiked through me—I could try to soften that, but it was all fading.
Instead I splashed fear at him to hold his attention. Then I tried sweet honeyed need, glittering curiosity, anything... all worthless with his strength slipping away.
“You will... you will...” Ian chanted. There was no hope in his voice.
Enough. I scooted over to his elbow and leaned in close.
“We’ve got no time!” I whispered. “Let me try the damn rings, or whatever it is.”
A strangled sound—Lucy’s eyes were pure, pale shock.
Shifting footsteps behind us said Jason had heard me too.
The crowd only kept murmuring, babbling, helpless. And Ian never looked up.
The victim’s breathing slowed, stopped, with Lucy fighting on to keep his heart beating. Her face was ashen white.
“You will, will, will...” Ian sobbed.
I reached for his hand. When I touched it he swatted my grasp aside.
“Wake up, wake up...”
A figure in white pushed in at our elbows. Then a second EMT’s voice rang out, calm and firm, and she dug out a syringe from her gear.
Ian clung onto the victim. Those weakened lips were still stirring, as if some kind of breath moved through them.
“Wake up, I can still wake him up—”
One of the EMTs murmured for him to step aside. Ian shouldered him away, scrabbling for a better grip on the victim.
“Stop it!” Lucy said. “You’ve done enough.”
“Sir, please—” The EMT slid his hands expertly in to cover the wound. Ian pushed back and grabbed for another hold, jarring the bleeding body.
Lucy’s hands seized Ian’s and wrenched him back.
Ian came away like a crusted bandage, sudden and clumsy and almost tumbling backward. He gaped at her, as she pulled clear of him with outrage in her eyes, and he shriveled where he crouched.
A third paramedic, older, closed in on him. “Will you please let us take it from here?” His voice stirred a ripple from the people around us, voices just starting to respond to what they’d seen.
“Sorry,” I tried. “We were trying to help—someone had to...”
Out of the crowd someone shrieked “They were chasing him!” A tiny woman stood near the front, waving at us. “Chasing all of them, I saw it!”
Faces swung toward her and back to us. Some of those people moved, too, taking a step back to separate from the four of us.
I saw no sign of the thugs among them now, or the Duvals. Two uniformed cops were pushing through the other side of the ring, and other cops moved at the edges of the square.
Two older men’s heads were tracking us—then another woman looked over, and I caught a whisper that might have been “He did this?”
Ian shrank away. I stepped over, and Jason and I led him back from the center of that attention to the edge of the ragged crowd.
Still no sign of our enemies, but I’d missed a few of those thugs in the crowd before. I drew on the Pulse and felt the pressure of several dozen people’s worry and excitement and confusion... too thick to go picking out threats when I still didn’t know what drove them.
I let the magic fade, leaving the people sounding hushed, hollow. They burbled softly, seeing the danger had passed and now afraid to show what anxieties it had stirred up in them. The two cops seemed to be taking charge as the EMTs gathered up the victim.
At least they’d lost interest in us.
I turned to the still-dazed Ian. “It sounded like he’s going to live—”
“We might not,” Lucy said. “Those crazies found us again, and they could have... come on.” She set off at a quick stride toward the police.
Ian rushed in front of her, shock suddenly gone. “What are you doing? We talked about this—”
“Talked? About your ‘talent,’ or a bunch of rings?”
The word was a knife stab, low and ruthless, and Ian recoiled at the blow.
“Oh, that’s what you didn’t mention,” she added, in the same softly savage voice. “All this time I thought we were studying how you made this work. And every word of it was a lie.”
Ian stared. His hand moved, reaching slowly, blindly up toward her—then he pulled back and staggered away a step.
Jason moved up beside her. “He’s stubborn, you know he—”
“Stubborn?” She spun toward him. “That’s all you can say?”
Jason’s brows lowered, his face tightened. “Alright, he tricked us, yes. Is that what you want? He...”
His voice trailed off, leaving his mouth half-open, empty of words.
Ian stumbled back another step. I looked around him, around us, for anyone who might be watching us.
A child’s high voice came through the crowd: “Is he going to be alright?” Ian shot a glance toward the victim on the stretcher, then back across to Lucy.
Lucy slumped where she stood, so low that for once it left her shorter than us. Her whisper was so low I almost missed it.
“The hell of it is, I thought I was using him. Right after a class, he simply comes up to me, says he saw my migraines, and he starts doing miracles. Suddenly I’m the partner in his secret...” His eyes clenched shut. “All because he liked me. He was never my type, but a smile and a lot of work were getting me a front seat at how he’s changing history. Except, it turns out it was never a real experiment, none of it was real, just him using me all along.”
“Sorry,” I said. “None of this has been easy—”
“You were hiding it too!” She spun around to face me. “How long have you known?”
I sighed. Nothing I said could scour away the guilt at helping Ian lie to his friends, but... “I was trying to work on him—”
Motion caught my eye. One sudden whirl of movement as Ian spun away and dashed into the crowd.
In that instant I saw Lucy glare after him, heard Jason break into a run beside me as the two of us raced after him.
A murmur of reaction spilled from the people around us. From the corner of my eye I saw the two police spinning toward us. We dodged, sidestepped and twisted through the currents of people, as they gasped and some—but only some—shrank back from our path. Ian was already at the crowd’s far end.
“You stop there! Stop!” one of the cops bellowed.
Ian only dashed on, running headlong past the crowd. Jason and I twisted on after him—one pivot gave me a glimpse back at Lucy halting, uncertain, and one cop stopping with her while the other charged after us.
Ian reached the street, now closed off and empty enough to let him run right across it. My lungs burned in me as I followed; how was he still running?
No sign of the thugs, or the Duvals, on the street. But Ian was already turning off the square’s edge and up a narrower side street—just racing off on his own, now? The cop came lumbering behind us, a big man with his face red as if he hated running.
We had to get this under control, fast. I darted up Ian’s street with Jason beside me, eyes on Ian up ahead, and felt these shops’ one-lane narrowness and the lack of people around them closing in on us. Gasping, I dragged up the strength to search the Pulse.
Harsh, hard menace punching out from the alley up ahead—
I twisted toward the alley to fend it off. Jason kept beside me, I had one glimpse of Ian looking back to see us turn, before we cleared the corner.
A cluster of men lurked there—with guns already coming up toward us. I staggered, slammed to a halt on the pavement. Those were three, four men all aiming pistols right at Jason and me. I froze.
One of them, one of the faces I’d seen dodging around the square, waved us toward them. They crowded back through an open doorway... and I heard the heavy feet of the cop closing in on the street behind us. It had only been moments.
The Pulse felt no mercy in them. I walked toward them, slowly, feeling my shoes scuff on the asphalt, and Jason matched my pace. When the cop came in view of us we’d be caught between him and their guns, but we’d have some chance.
One of them gritted his teeth, knew I was stalling. The footsteps closed in.
Wait, I should yell a warning—but they’ll shoot—
The cop ran right past us and his steps drew away up the street.
I couldn’t move. Was he that locked onto chasing Ian, had he glanced right past these men in the doorway?
One of them waved us in. The same stocky man with the broken nose, that I’d tricked while the Duvals were escaping—his eyes were fixed on me now.
The lock on the door had been broken, I saw that as we stepped inside. The room beyond could have been the back of an office-supply shop, all closed up now and lined with cardboard boxes and dust.
“Don’t do something stupid now,” one of the men muttered—it could have been any of the four, the way they all surrounded us.
One of them pulled out a phone. “Got a pair of them,” he said into it. “They better be worth it.”
Jason was looking around at them, with small, tight motions and a trembling in his free hand that he couldn’t hold in. Watching him ate at my own control and started the question spinning: what will they do, with all those guns?
I grabbed at the Pulse. Besides Jason’s all-too-clear dread, I caught more hard purpose and petty meanness than immediate anger. But over them all hung a thin layer of fear.
And the fury from Broken-Nose as he stomped toward me. “Got you this time.”
“Watch the attitude,” said the one with the phone—tall, reed-thin. “We missed the bastards.”
Missed them? They were after the Duvals?
“Watch yourself. We got these two, we can get—” Broken-Nose cut off, and the fear tightened around him. Then he turned back to me with a smirk: “No more surprises from you.”
And he searched me. Rough, hard hands raked over my body with an expert touch while I fought to keep statue-still. He looked in my shoes, opened my wallet to announce “So, ‘Adrian Corbin,’ is it?” and took my phone and pocketknife.
And he pulled the Bones from my pocket.
His eyes widened when he held the four ivory dice. “Huh! What are these made of, ice?”
“It’s a hyperconductant, actually—” It was nonsense, an old cover story I’d toyed with more than a year ago. Now it came so easily to me, with just the right sound of a nervous voice diving into boring facts. “I had them made so they’d always be cold, to remind me not to start gambling again—”
“So what are they worth?”
“Ennh.”
My nondescript grunt had to bore him, he had to put them down before he felt his will reacting to their magic... he looked at me, I fought to clamp the cold dread deep, deep down in me and not let that fear call out to the Bones in his hand, not give his eyes a first widening reaction as he studied me...
He set them down, them and the rest of my things, on one of the dusty cardboard boxes around us.
“Hey, how ‘bout this!”
That was another of the thugs, the plainest-looking—he’d been searching Jason all this time, and I’d been lost in my own dangers.
Now he laughed “Looks like ‘Jason’ here has pepper spray, a big knife, bandages... and the big badass stuffs his shoes!” He held up one of his prisoner’s shoes and slid out a wooden wedge for the others to see.
Jason slumped in place, shorter and shrinking in as he tried to glare back at his captor. Laughs rang around the room—just laughs, when I had no way to read past them. I forced my gaze away from the Bones, shining on that box just a few steps away.
“Now, you hiding anything in here?” He stripped the nylon sling off of Jason. Under that, a metal brace lay along his arm—the bully’s fingers dug under that. Jason locked his mouth shut as the laughter grew.
Of course they went after him, like sharks on blood. I had to stand still with those laughs tearing at me, blind to whatever was really brewing inside them just when I needed the magic most. They couldn’t just be here for pure viciousness... but if that laughter didn’t die down, if it escalated, I’d have to try something, anything...
