Mind Magic (55 page)

Mr. Smith slapped her. Hard. “Shut up. Just shut your stupid mouth, you stupid little slut. You won’t be testifying for—”

“Don’t,” Nicky said. His voice sounded flat. Like a synthesized voice. Like no one was really speaking at all.

Mr. Smith seemed to try to gather himself together. He was breathing hard. “Nick, she’s hysterical. I had to slap her to—”

“That’s Demi,” Nicky said in that no-one’s-home voice.

Someone screamed out back.

The front door boomed. Wood cracked and splintered and the front door fell all cattywampus, two of the hinges having pulled loose along with the lock, but not the third, so that it dangled from that one anchoring point. Mike came barreling in and a gun went off once, twice—and just as Demi realized no one was holding her anymore, Mr. Smith grabbed her.

He was almost her height and nowhere near as strong as the other man. She fought him. She might have gotten loose, but something hit her hard on the side of her head.

The bright, ringing pain stunned her. Not for long, but long enough. By the time she could pay attention again, Mr. Smith had one arm around her waist, holding her tightly against him. His other hand held a gun to her head. The muzzle pressed right where he’d hit her. It hurt. “Stay back!” he screamed.

He had to scream because of all the noise out back—people screaming and guns firing. The hard-faced man lay on the floor. He wasn’t moving. Mike and Ruben were both inside now. Mike was sort of crouched, as if he was about to spring. Ruben was on the other side of the door, and he looked ready to attack someone, too. But neither he nor Mike moved.

Demi bit her lip. The noise out back told her that Ruben had signaled for the other part of his plan to begin—the part they’d hoped not to use. Two of the Wythe clansmen were now wolves, racing around stirring everyone up. That was to create a distraction. The other two would have stayed men and they’d come help as soon as they could.

But the other mercenaries inside the house got there first—two men who came racing down the stairs and a third man—Demi didn’t see where he came from—who stopped beside Mr. Smith. They all had their guns out and looked angry and ready to shoot.

“I need to be extracted,” Mr. Smith told them. “You two—Brooks and whoever you are. Get on the floor. Flat on the floor. Now,” he cried when they didn’t move. “Do as I say, dammit, or I’ll shoot her. I swear I—”

Nicky interrupted. “But that’s Demi.” A thread of emotion had crept into his dead voice. He sounded . . . puzzled.

“Nick.” Mr. Smith still sounded angry. He took a deep breath, and when he spoke again, his voice was persuasive, almost caressing. “You trust me, don’t you?”

“I trust you.” The words were rote, mechanical.

“You need to go with one of these men. Our nation’s enemies have caught up with us, and we have to retreat. But he’ll take care of you, and I’ll join you shortly.”

“Nicky,” Demi pleaded. “He’s lying to you. He’s a liar.”

Nicky’s face didn’t change. His arms still hung limp at his sides. But he turned to face Mr. Smith. “You hit Demi. You hurt her. You promised you wouldn’t hurt her.”

“I didn’t have a choice, Nick. You can see that.”

“You lied to me.”

“No, of course not. She’s misguided, Nick, confused. You can’t—”

He stopped talking and screamed. Something warm and wet splashed on her shoulder and her head. The arm around her waist went loose and the gun barrel was suddenly gone and she dropped to the floor and rolled, getting away. Shots rang out and they were loud, so loud she couldn’t stand it, and she huddled in on herself, her head down, her hands over her ears, and she was screaming, too, like the people out back, but she couldn’t get away from the deafening sound.

All of a sudden it stopped. All of it. The shots and the screams—even hers, because her voice shut itself off as if surprised by the silence.

Someone came up to her. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her head buried in her arms, so she didn’t see him. But she knew who it was.

He rested a hand on her back. “You’re okay,” he informed her.

“Mike.” That’s all she could say. “Mike.”

“I’m going to do your thinking for you now. You said I could. Keep your eyes shut.” He didn’t wait for an answer, lifting her easily to her feet and holding her the way Rule had done a couple times. He pressed her head to his chest with one big hand. “You don’t want to look yet.”

“He’s still alive,” Ruben said.

“Mr. Smith?” she asked in a wavery voice.

“No,” Mike said. “Your friend. Your friend killed Smith and Smith’s men shot him. They’re dead now. Ruben and I didn’t have time to stop them without killing them.”

“I need to see him. Mike, I need to see Nicky.”

After a moment he nodded and took her to see her friend. She tried not to look at anything—anyone—else, but couldn’t quite manage it. There were a lot of bodies.

Ruben knelt beside Nicky. He stood when Mike and Demi got there and gave a nod of his head, then started telling people what to do. His men were there, she realized. The ones who hadn’t turned into wolves.

She paid no attention. Her legs kind of gave out and she sat suddenly. “Nicky.”

So much blood. His whole front was bloody. Blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth when he looked up at her. He was very badly injured. Maybe he was dying. But his eyes . . . they were blurry, unfocused, yet his eyes looked like him again. “Nicky,” she said again. “It’s Demi. I tried to rescue you. I tried really hard. I’m sorry I couldn’t do it.”

Slowly his eyes came into focus. “You’re okay?”

She nodded, then realized he might not be seeing very well. “Yes. You’re not.”

His mouth twitched as if he wanted to smile. “Are you crying?”

“Of course I am.”

His eyes closed. “I tried not to believe him. At first I didn’t, but after a while . . .”

“That’s his Gift. His charisma Gift. You couldn’t help it.”

She wasn’t sure he heard her. “Amanda. Don’t let her near you.”

“She’s scary.”

“Evil. She’s evil. Cerberus . . . takes over. And the drug. The drug made me bad. I did terrible things. I thought . . . he said they were enemies . . .”

“The drug is really a potion. It’s magic, too. It wasn’t your fault, Nicky. None of it was your fault.”

His eyes opened again. This time he did smile. His lips moved just a little as if he was trying to say something, but no words came out. He lay there smiling up at her until his body jerked and his breathing stopped. A little more blood came out of his mouth. And his eyes died.

FORTY-SEVEN

RULE
ran. Every footfall sent a bolt of pain through his head. He ignored that. The small body in his arms was so limp. Limp and bloody.

He’d been running from one squad when he ran into another one. They’d been doing that awhile, he and the others with weapons—spraying a few bullets to get the soldiers’ attention, then running away. Luring them away from the lair. It wouldn’t have worked if the brownies hadn’t stolen a lot of their personal radios—and twice disabled the CO’s comm unit.

They hadn’t yet resorted to shooting at the soldiers, but it was only a matter of time. They’d failed entirely to find Nicky.

At last he reached the village green. There—there she was, the little brownie healer. Shisti. She was bent over another patient.

“It was shrapnel, I think,” he gasped as he reached her and dropped to his knees, laying his small burden in front of her. “Not a bullet. It hit him in the back.” And Rule hadn’t realized it. He’d been creased by a bullet himself. He’d gotten away, dizzy but knowing he’d been lucky. He’d run, unaware of the small life bleeding on his back until he stopped.

“Ah,” she said sadly, and stroked Dilly’s ashy cheek. “Bend down more. I have to touch your head to help it.”

“I’m fine. Help Dilly.”

Big green eyes blinked once. “Rule, I can’t. He’s dead.”

Dead? No. He couldn’t be dead. Rule had run so fast, tried so hard—and Dilly had died in his arms, his passing unnoticed. Dimly he was aware of having closed his eyes. Some stupid, instinctive effort to hide the way they’d filled with tears.

“Rule!” someone called.

Jason. That was Jason. He forced the tears back, swallowed the grief, and became Rho once more. “Here.” He stood.

Jason was hurrying to him, talking on a phone. He sounded excited. “No, I found him. Here. You tell him.” He held the phone out to Rule. “It’s Ruben Brooks. He called on the only number he could find for the brownies—the reservation hotline.”

“Ruben? This is Rule.”

“Good. I request strongly that you cease all attacks and harassment immediately. The Army should begin retreating at any moment.”

Rule almost dropped the phone. “What? How did you—”

“Smith is dead, killed when I went to arrest him. Several of his people were at his house at the time. One of them fell apart quite nicely and confessed. With that on record, I was able to get through to the president. She’s still angry with me for having become lupus without her permission,” he said dryly, “but at least she was willing to listen. She’s ordered the troops withdrawn.”

“It’s over.” He spoke with more disbelief than relief.

“Your end is. Things will be messy at this end for some time yet.”

“And Danny—Demi—is she okay? Mike?”

“Mike’s fine. Demi got knocked around a bit, but nothing serious. She’s grieving, though. Her friend was killed.”

“Nicky?” Rule’s voice was sharp. “Why would he be there instead of here?”

“Apparently he was supposed to provide emergency security. That didn’t work out the way Smith intended. When Smith threatened Demi, it shattered the man’s hold on Nicky. He killed Smith, but Smith’s men shot him.” Ruben sighed. “He was in rough shape. Very rough. Whatever they’d been doing to him . . . and we still don’t know where the other children are. The man who confessed—Charles Bradley, goes by Chuck—didn’t know much about that end of things, and the others have lawyered up. Oh, you should know that two of the conspirators are unaccounted for—a woman named Sharon Plummer, who acted as houseparent and headed up the research staff. Also a man named Tom Weng whom Chuck says supplied the potion.”

Weng? Rule thought of Lily’s theory. “Is he a sorcerer?”

“We’ll ask, but Chuck may not be aware of distinctions of that sort. For people who’ve invested heavily in magic, they don’t seem to know much about it. I . . .” His voice moved away from the phone as he told someone he’d be right there. “I have to go. Lots of mess to deal with still.”

Ruben disconnected before Rule could ask more questions, and he had several. He needed to know what had happened with some of his men. With José. But maybe Ruben didn’t know, either. Not yet.

They’d find out soon. Rule looked at Jason. The younger man was grinning. Slowly Rule nodded. It wasn’t in him to smile. Dilly was still dead. Barring extreme ill luck or outrageous stupidity, though, he’d be the last to die. It was over—except for the messy parts, such as whether he’d be arrested for today’s actions or jailed for having escaped his earlier arrest. But no Dragmageddon.

“We need to get the word out,” he said. “Jason, call Luke and Manny. I’ll borrow a phone and call Codger and see that he—” He cut himself off, listening.

Hellfire. Another bloody helicopter—not directly overhead. Not yet anyway. “Someone get up a tree and find out where that damn copter’s going!”

*   *   *

“XĪN,”
Lily said. New. Which was true of all babies, but struck her as particularly apt for this fresh, shiny mind. The now-familiar pulse of magic traveled from Mika to the baby along her mindsense, and the baby’s mind absorbed his new name. A moment later, he thrust up on wobbly legs and took his first step.

Little Xıˉn had taken his time about hatching. Lily had wanted to help him, but Mika had been adamant that the babies must break through the shells by themselves. Lily didn’t know whether custom or reason lay behind that dictate. Maybe the act of breaking through the shell triggered important physiological changes in the hatchling. Maybe it triggered something magically that was equally important to a being built as much from magic as from flesh.

Or maybe dragons had simply always done it that way, she thought, and stretched without removing her hand from Mika’s tail.

She didn’t think she’d be too drained. It had dawned on her after the fourth hatchling emerged that when she touched Mika, the dragon’s magic buoyed her, soaking in through her skin much faster than she could absorb magic normally. So although she’d given her mindsense a workout, she shouldn’t be totally depleted. But she was not ready for the headache that would hit the moment the link was broken. Those had gotten worse each time, so this one was apt to be a doozy. She wished Mika weren’t quite so distracted by motherhood. She’d asked the dragon twice why—

The volcano her mind was linked with went suddenly calm. Still.

The change jolted her. Her hand fell away from Mika’s tail and she moaned as she doubled up, hit by the headache to end all headaches.

It felt like getting shot. Not that she’d ever been shot in the head, but she’d taken a bullet elsewhere, and this white-hot pain was way too much like that. Finally agony began fading into mere pain—still mind-dulling, but not strong enough to wipe out everything else.