Blood from Stone (27 page)

There was still a job to be done, though. Do it, get out, go home. Never come back here again, not ever. The litany went through her head until it filled the echoes a little. The footsteps still echoed too much, though.

Slipping off her shoes and socks, she went barefoot. The coolness of the tile against her skin was a shock, and helped bring her back to herself. The malice she
felt was from things long dead and gone, their rage coming from the fact that they were trapped and helpless. And they were…less angry than downstairs. Less abandoned, less ignored. That helped her to breathe a little more easily, when a shadow fell over her brain, and a heavy step sounded behind her.

“Give it to me.”

Wren blinked, and turned to stare at the guard. There was blood on the edge of his forehead where she had conked him, and his uniform jacket was off, revealing a white shirt that wasn’t as bleach-clean as it should have been stretched over a paunch the size of a small keg, the sleeves rolled up to show beefy forearms.

“What you took. Give it to me.”

The guard’s voice was flat now, the accent odd, as though he were deaf and speaking for the first time. He wiped the blood off his face where it was running into his eyes, not seeming to care about it otherwise, and stared at her. He wasn’t menacing, or angry. In fact, his body language was as flat as his voice. It was unnerving as hell, and Wren took an involuntary step backward. She had faced angry ghosts out for revenge, evil, soul-eating manuscripts, bigoted humans with guns, and an animated stuffed horse that predicted misfortune, and none of them had made her feel quite as heebie-jeebied as this guy did. Something had changed. Something…bad. Something worse than what was downstairs.

Because he wasn’t there. Something else was working his brain.

Oh, merciful God.
The nasty sensation she’d felt, when she hit him. Old magic. Bad magic. Worst magic.
The old world mages, the ones after P.B., they hadn’t sent in another thief. They had stolen one already on-site. They’d controlled him enough to get him off-rounds, sent him after the book, the rest of the exhibit, and when she had interrupted things…They had gone deeper. They’d
eaten
him.
Oh, sweet Jesus, I know I’ve been bad but I promise to be good, I will, I will, I will….

Wren swallowed hard, turned, and ran like hell down the hallway, the mage-ridden guard, with his much longer legs, barely three yards behind and gaining fast.

There was a coffee cart setting up shop on the corner, a middle-aged man and his teenage son, dreadlocked and sullen, working with smooth, practiced moves inside the close confines of the traditional metal box. There was one on every corner, farther downtown, where they multiplied in accordance with the number of office buildings, but in this neighborhood, filled with high-end apartments and higher-end doctor’s offices, the cart was a welcome oasis on a cold morning. Sergei bought a cup of lousy coffee and a surprisingly good muffin, and sat on the bench on the corner, sipping and grimacing. A squirrel came to rest on the back of the bench, chittering at him. Sergei looked over his shoulder, expecting to see a piskie, as well, but the beast was alone.

Squirrels and piskies all looked alike to him, anyway. Except for the fur. And wings. And the intelligence in the face of the squirrel. He gave the animal a bit of the muffin, anyway.

An early-morning jogger went by, the woman giving Sergei and the squirrel a curious glance, and he raised his coffee cup to her in salute. He supposed he looked like a surprisingly well-dressed homeless man, in his wool coat and dress shoes, sitting in the predawn light sharing his breakfast with a tree-rat. He should have picked up a newspaper on his way over, to pass the time. He didn’t handle waiting well, not under these circumstances.

There was a reason he preferred to work behind the scenes and before the game actually started. And it wasn’t, despite what Wren claimed, because he was afraid to muss one of his suits getting down and dirty. He was, at heart, a thinker and a worrier. And when a thinker started to worry, there was no end to the number of gone-bad scenarios he could produce during the length of time it took to, oh, drink a cup of coffee.

Sergei put the coffee down and took his cell phone out of his coat’s pocket, hitting a newly updated #3 on the speed dial.

The phone rang, and rang. Nobody answered, not even an answering machine.

“Damn it.” He closed the phone, cutting it off midring, and put it back in his pocket. Three times he had called P.B. this morning, and three times the phone had merely rung. He was supposed to be staying put, Wren had said, playing possum to draw off at least one of their hounds.

So where the hell was the demon? Why wasn’t he answering the phone? Why did he even care? It wasn’t as though the demon couldn’t take care of himself. Had, in fact, been doing exactly that for at least fifty years—and probably closer to a hundred—before he, Sergei, was even born.

That was then. This was now. Now, the demon had obligations beyond his own furry self. If something happened to the demon…

Sergei checked his watch again. Still an hour before they expected the second thief, if Wren was correct in her assumptions. She might be wrong. She might have run into trouble inside, already.

If, if, if. If she had, there was nothing he could do, not out here. He was no thief to sneak in, no acrobat to get in through a high window, no Talent to Translocate inside thick walls. Until the doors opened and he could walk through, unless someone raised a fuss outside those walls, there was nothing he could do save sit and wait. And worry.

And drink crap coffee.

He hated coffee. He’d give anything for a decent cup of tea, but these carts used crap water that always tasted of coffee anyway.

He reached for the phone again, and stopped.

If the demon could have answered, he would have.

Something was wrong.

He cast a worried look over his shoulder at the museum. Five stories tall, from the street the facade of the building still looked like the two original townhouses it had once been, back in the days when it was an exclusive address rather than merely being oh, dear God, expensive.

The building was still and quiet, no light showing in any of the windows save the red emergency lights that glowed 24-7. There was no sign of anything, good or ill, happening inside.

P.B. was essential to Wren’s continued well-being.
More…Sergei was fond of the furry little freak. And, thick-skulled musculature or no, there were things even a demon couldn’t deflect. Like a high-powered rifle. Or a kidnapping attempt.

Decision half made, he was already shoving the remains of the muffin into his other pocket and rising up off the bench, making the squirrel jump off the back of the bench and flee into the landscaping of the building behind him. Sergei brushed the remaining crumbs off his coat front, striding down the street toward the corner. At this hour of the morning, a cab would be faster than waiting for a subway train to come.

Forgive me, Zhenchenka. But he took care of you when I couldn’t. He watched over you when I wasn’t there. I owe him. I owe him this.

A turn and a skid down the overpolished stairs, grabbing for the handrail even as the soles of her feet slipped on a step, only her excellent reflexes keeping her from slamming down on her ass. She had lost track of what floor she was on, the twists and turns of the building confusing her, the unquiet stares of the exhibits, even those without eyes, making it even worse. The weight might be reduced here, maybe because so many people trooped past every week, but it wasn’t gone entirely. She was wobbly in the brain, unsure of what was real and what was delusion, and what was a true illusion.

No wonder nobody in the
Cosa
robs this place. Nobody could stay sane long enough to do the job.

The guard—or whatever was riding him—seemed unaware of the pressure she felt, running at a steady
lope she hadn’t expected from his overweight form. A Null, then, although she had pretty well figured that out from the whole possession thing.

How the hell are they doing that? Old magic, has to be, there’s nothing…vodoun?
It was the only thing that made sense, as much as anything made sense, but even in a global economy the thought of Dutch mages using African magic…

Duh. Afrikaaners.
She had looked up the Boer War, since she was doing research anyway. Late nineteenth century, English versus Dutch over land and mines in South Africa. Nasty stuff, but the important thing was that P.B.’s creator had been there for a couple more years by then, before he reportedly died there during the war.

Plenty of chances to learn the local traditions—even the ones white men weren’t supposed to poke around in.

Old Zee had been the type to be up to his elbows in all sorts of old magics, most of them bad, why would it surprise her that his would-be heirs were cut from the same cloth?

Idiots.
There were reasons Talent moved away from the old magics. Blood and sex-magics ate more of you than current, and if you were stupid enough to invoke the oldest ones to help, you had to pay them. And they usually weren’t the type to take AmEx….

Sergei was right. These guys were so ego-ridden, they didn’t think past their own wants.

She was moving now through a series of small rooms filled with pottery shards. Useful bits, shattered and useless now. Regret and hopelessness, but all things built to be used are built to be abandoned, as well. The
pressure was less here, knowing that, and she took a deep breath before plunging through the next display.

Weapons. Bow and arrows and stone knives and they were plunged into Wren’s heart all at once, stabbing sharp and sudden. If she hadn’t known it wasn’t real, she would have died, then and there.

The power of the attack was too much: this wasn’t just the snarls of history, pissed off at being passed by. They were using the exhibits, knowingly or not, to attack her. Bastards. That was what they did; they used things lesser than themselves, like tools, and never mind what it did to those tools.

The tube was chafing against her slicks, the material having to work overtime wicking sweat off her skin, the book clutched to her side. It would be easier to have current carry them both but she was afraid to let them go, afraid the guard would try to grab them, would get his hands on them.

“Let it go.”

A whisper in her ear, a coaxing lure, twitching like a hook in the water, glinting like gold. “You’re so tired, so scared. Let it go, and you can rest, you’ll be safe, he won’t be interested in you anymore.”

Wren’s eyes widened, her skin prickling under the sweat. Air caught in her throat and she hiccupped painfully. The nearest exhibit, a display of Native garb, swayed forward ominously—or was it her imagination?

“So scared, poor thing…” The voice was back, trying to pry open her scalp and climb inside her brain, painted fingernails and perfect teeth the image of concerned comfort and safety, if only she, Wren, would turn to her, give up, give in.

Wren almost laughed, and the deerskin outfit swayed back away from the sound. Idiots. They thought that she was scared? She was
pissed.
They threatened her demon, were fiddling about with her damned livelihood for their own damn egos, and using piss-stupid old magics they probably had no clue about, hurting this poor schlub who was going to have a heart attack from all the running they were making him do, and then they tried to mindfuck her into just giving up because she was, oh, poor little her,
scared?

Old magics had been abandoned because they were unpredictable, unreliable. Not weaker—stronger in some ways, especially if you weren’t picky about the price you paid. Blood magic, sex magic, the exchange of power for power. That was what these bastards were doing.

Current was cleaner. It asked more of
you,
but the eventual price was less. And nobody else had to pay for what you took.

Wren had used old magics before, too, and had them used on her. She could play that game, if that was the game these bastards wanted to play. But she would take precautions, negotiate the price to be paid ahead of time. She just had to figure out how. And fast.

Take blood from stone. Give blood. Stone.
Bedrock for strength, but more…what was it that she wasn’t remembering?

She spun on her heel, the book dropping to the ground in front of her, and waited. The guard blew through the doorway, clearly expecting her to still be running, and almost plowed into her.

The conflict was clear on his face: the man, his training, said to grab the intruder, to arrest the thief.
Whoever was riding him, meanwhile, was demanding that he grab the book. But to do so would require him to go down low in front of her, opening himself to attack, and he was a smart enough man, normally, not to do that willingly.

In the seconds it took for man and rider to wage a war of wills, Wren acted. Not outwardly, but inward, burrowing down deep into herself, into the core, through her core and into the bedrock of her life.

She didn’t need old magics. She had something better.

There was no sense of doorways or windows, no sideways slip from one awareness to the other, but a layering of the two-into-one, like layers of onion skin: thin and crackling, but malleable at the same time.

*Valere?* A sense of—not surprise, but distraction.

She apologized for the intrusion, even as she was laying hold of the solid grounding that he represented. *Just need to take a bit.*

She felt him brace for a blast of current, but instead she gathered double fistfuls of current inside her, the darker, tarry strength, the cobras of current, poison in their fangs and venom in their motions, and shoved them into him, cutting furrows in the bone, etching her own signature into his solid, stolid self. Stone, current running like blood, the poison leeching out in the stone of his psyche, coming out clean and strong, still dark but smoother, less poisoned.

Less wizzed.

Blood not from stone, but
into
stone.

This was what demons were for. This was his gift to her; her gift to him, to trust him with herself, utterly and entirely, everything inside, the shameful as well as the
pleasing, the illness as well as the health. The hatred, as well as the love. Into stone, and stone would purify.

Understanding brought a deeper connection, and through that connection she saw, for an instant, through his eyes.

Sergei, his normally sleekly tidy hair a mess, knocked into a corner of P.B.’s apartment, his face bleeding and bruised, his eyes closed, lids heavy-shadowed and brow furrowed as though in pain. Another man stood over him, thick arms and heavy fists, reaching down as though to pick him up to administer another beating. Thick white-furred arms, holding—a chair? Part of a chair, at least, the ladderback of a former chair, bringing it down on the stranger’s head.

*Bit busy right now.*

His thought came without alarm; annoyance, yes, and disgust, and a bit of fierce amusement.

*So I see,* she thought back at him.

Sergei’s eyes opened, and the pale brown of them bypassed the attacker and went directly to her—no, to P.B., but she felt the impact, as well, the fierce delight of an all-out brawl. His internal energy surged almost like current, and half a city away her system responded, taking the almost-tangible crackle out of the air and bundling it up as though it was a live wire, channeling it—the demon acting as safe-conductor between them—and running it back down into her core, bright and alive, clean and sparking. In that instant, the three of them were one, complete and delighted.

Then the chair came down on the back of the stranger’s head, and as the man doubled over, Sergei
gut-punched him with obvious, malicious relish in the act.

Boys,
she thought, and left them to it.

Back in the museum, barely a second had passed, but it was long enough for the rider to have regained control of the guard and worked out some kind of compromise, controlling mind and ridden body. He scuttled sideways around her, kicking the book out of her range and then, rather than diving for it the way she expected, lunged toward her.

Current surged in reaction, the purified current carrying her outrage without rage, her disgust and horror under control but no less powerful for that. It twined, ribbons of color and dark forming one giant serpent so strong the guard saw it with physical eyes, forcing him back a half step in shock before his rider sent him forward again, clearly against his own wishes.