Smoke and Mirrors (39 page)

After the shock passed, she rushed over, picking up the limp ball of blood-matted fur. Monster gave a weak growl, one paw swatting at her face and leaving a red streak on her cheek.

“Stupid cat,” she mumbled, voice thick. “What happened to you? What the heck are you doing out here, huh?”

She carried him the rest of the way, then came to a dead stop at her door, going pale.

A message had been burned into the peeling white paint.

I HAVE YOUR MOTHER.

YOU KNOW WHERE TO FIND ME.

V

Kimberly sank to her knees, gaping up at the message, too shocked to make a sound. Cormac stopped behind her. His knuckles cracked as he clenched his fists, a low growl rumbling in his throat.

She took a hitching breath. Another. Monster made a low sound of protest when her grip on him tightened.

“He’ll kill her, Cormac. He’ll kill her as soon as he realizes I already have a familiar. Oh, god.”

Cormac knelt down beside her, one hand on her shoulder as he bowed his head. “Don’t panic. Give me a moment to think.”

She stared up at the door, tears trickling down her cheeks as she squeezed Monster to her chest.

“Don’t. It’s my mom he took. My life he’s screwing up. I’ll get him for this. I’ll make it right.”

“He’s too strong for you, love. I’ll fix this for you.”

“No,” she said, and he turned a sharp gaze on her for the fierceness of her tone. “I’m not going to hide behind you. He’ll just find a way to come back and do something else to hurt me or my mom if I don’t face him myself. Even if he doesn’t, anyone else who hears about it will think I’m a pushover and take advantage of me. This is my fight. I could really use your help, but you can fight him with me, not instead of me.”

A slight smile twitched at the corner of his lips. “As you wish. Have I told you yet that your bravery is one of the things I admire most about you?”

She rolled her eyes heavenward, then turned her head and swiped at the wet trail on her cheek with her shoulder. Monster made a protesting sound at being jarred. She couldn’t help but cough out a short, tear-choked laugh. “Could you pick a worse time to say things like that? There’s nothing brave about this. I’m scared half to death, but I have to do something.”

He reached for the cat, who growled at him and flattened his ears, then leaned in to kiss her temple. They went into the apartment together, Monster growling the entire time. As soon as they reached the living room, he squirmed his way out of Cormac’s arms and rushed off to hide in the bedroom.

Cormac turned back to face Kimberly, who was pacing back and forth in front of the couch.

“You are braver than you know. You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for.”

She shook her head and continued pacing, her shoulders hunched and eyes glued to the carpet. The fingers of her right hand absently rubbed at the cool metal oval stamped with Blackhollow’s symbol, tracing the circular ouroboros. So much for being whole and protected.

“Being brave doesn’t mean I’m being smart. I need to think. I don’t know how much Viper knows about me, if he can see through my illusions, anything. If you have any super secret wyvern handshakes I should know about, now is the time to tell me.”

He snorted, then reached out to snag her arm and pull her against him. She was wound tight as a wire, even in his arms. Placing a kiss on top of her bowed head, he held her close.

“I won’t pretty the situation with lies. Viper is both vicious and cunning. He has reason to want to hurt you after what I did to him. If he sees me with you, there’s no telling how he’ll lash out but he’ll still expect me to be with you.”

What little color was left in her face trickled away. He put a finger under her chin to tilt her head up.

“I am going to tell you some things about how sorcery works. Tricks you can use against him. Things they would never teach you at Blackhollow.”

She swallowed hard a few times before managing to get out a few words. “You, you’re not talking about black enchants, are you?”

“No, of course not. There isn’t going to be much time for you to practice, but there are things you can do that he and I cannot. I know the theory because, like him, I have a limited grasp of sorcery as well as magecraft. If you’re willing, and if you can concentrate enough to focus on what I have to teach you, it’s possible, not likely, but possible, that we can get your mother back without bloodshed.”

She nodded, then whispered in reply. “I will… I’ll try.”

“Good. Don’t give up yet.” He gave her a fierce grin, eyes lit with blue fire. “We’ll do the unexpected. I have a plan…”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

The sun was dipping toward the horizon by the time Kimberly arrived at Central Park. It was too warm for a jacket, but she was still wearing one. The same jacket Viper had curled his lip at when she had asked for his help. She clutched the edges of it tight around herself as she trudged along the path that led to Sheep’s Meadow.

At this time of day, there were few people gathered on the open field. A small group of joggers cutting across the grass, a handful of kids playing a late game of Frisbee, and Viper, out of place in his trench coat, standing with his hands pocketed in his jeans as he squinted toward the sun. Kimberly didn’t see her mother anywhere, and a light touch to the ley lines told her nothing; Viper was distorting the flow of energy so badly she couldn’t tell what he’d done. There were traps laid, and not just for her.

The area where Cormac and Viper had torn up the green had since been filled in, and fresh sod laid down. It was greener than the rest, easier to tell when she passed it by, sending a shiver rolling up her spine. There were still some white patches on the grass where some plaster had been left behind, probably from police or zoological casts taken of the dragon and wyvern prints. Viper turned when she stopped a few yards from where he waited.

Kimberly suppressed a flinch at the sight of thick scars, still raw and healing, ringing his neck. Consider how badly Cormac had torn him up in the fight, she could only imagine what the rest of him looked like under the trench coat and jeans.

“All alone, ducks? Thought you’d have that bleedin’ killjoy with you again,” he said, eyes glinting with a feral golden light.

“Don’t play games with me. Where’s my mom? What did you do with her?”

“Nothing that can’t be undone. Here’s the rub. You have something I need, and I’m not going away until I get it. If you come along, no fuss, it’ll stay that way.”

Kimberly glared at the wyvern, squaring her shoulders and tilting her chin up. “Here’s the deal, you big snake. You give me back my mom and I’ll let you go. I’m not playing around this time.”

Viper threw his head back and laughed, an unabashed guffaw that had the few other pedestrians wandering nearby looking their way. It took a few moments for him to get his breath back enough to speak again.

“Oh, you are a love,” he said, “but enough taking the piss. You know what happens when you say no, but never let it be said I don’t give you a choice. What’ll it be?”

Kimberly shrugged, then tossed her nearly empty baggie of table salt at his head, closing the circle she’d drawn around him while the illusion of herself that had been keeping him preoccupied disappeared. He whirled with a snarl and slammed his fists against the invisible wall of power that confined him.

“You conniving, lippy little cow! Let me out!”

She shook her head, folding her arms and rocking back on her heels. “Not the way to win the way to a girl’s heart. I didn’t expect you to be this easy to fool, Viper. Are you going to tell me where to find my mom, or am I going to have to dig it out of your skull along with however many other dirty secrets are hiding in there?”

He scoffed and stepped back, throwing a punch that sent shockwaves through the circle and made her jump. “Rieva teaching you her tricks, is she? Never you fear, pet. I’m going to teach you a few of my own as soon as I get out of here.”

Kimberly tapped her foot. “The sooner you tell me where I can find my mom, the sooner you can come out.”

“Oh, no,” he purred, yellow eyes locked intently on her own. “Night’s falling. This place belongs to the werewolves at night. Doubt they’ll be pleased to find a spark on their turf.”

“Funny thing about that,” she replied. “Turns out they like doing business with Cormac, and continuing to do so hinges on them letting me hang around as long as I need to in order to get some answers out of you. We have all night. Then you get to explain to the Moonwalkers why you’re messing around with the ley lines on their turf. Some nasty spells you were cooking up for Cormac there, by the way. You have a permit for those black enchants?”

He snarled a litany of things that made Kimberly blush. With a growl, he put his hand on the circle wall and shut his eyes.

“Enough of these games,” he said. Kimberly skittered back with a gasp as he shoved his hand through her circle. “I’m going to burn the spark right out of you for that, you little bitch.”

Kimberly scrambled back as Viper clawed his way out of the impromptu salt circle. His glowing eyes never left her as he stalked her, each stride slow and deliberate, moving with serpentine grace around the various hidden magical traps he’d laid for both Kimberly and Cormac.

Reaching into her jacket, she pulled out a handful of the enchanted stone runes her mother had dumped out of her purse and into the kitchen junk drawer. She only slowed down long enough to use her Sight to make sure she wasn’t about to stumble into one of the traps Viper had laid for her. Scattering the runes in her path, everything from walls of flame, to blocks of ice, to thick tendrils of creeping vines writhing in search of limbs to wrap around, erupted all around her. Distant screams from startled pedestrians were drowned out by the roar of flames and crack of ice.

The ones that really scared her were the ones with no such visible reaction to the re-enchanted runes she’d keyed to trigger any spells designed to seek her out. Thanks to Cormac’s help, she’d figured out how to adapt a runic enchantment to match her aura so that any spells Viper had designed to seek hers in particular would zero in on the stones, tricked into thinking it was her.

Viper had laid an impressive number of traps. If she wasn’t running for her life, she might have been flattered he thought he needed to lay such a labyrinth of pitfalls for her.

Then she didn’t have time to think of anything, except for how much it hurt to have your ankle yanked out from under you mid-step.

She threw out her hands to catch herself. A yelp of pain escaped her as the thorny vine cut into her skin and dragged her along a sheet of ice, bringing her to a skidding stop inches from Viper’s feet.

He set a thick-soled, steel-toed combat boot on her stomach, pinning her in place, and gave her a razor smile. “Well, that was a lovely bit of distraction. Let’s get down to business, shall we?”

She opened her mouth, but his boot dug in, driving the air out of her lungs. He knelt down, putting his weight into her until her ribs squeaked and she gave a breathy cry of pain.

“If only,” he said, voice a low purr, “you weren’t such a handful. The last one wasn’t like you. Grateful, she was, to be safe. To have purpose.”

He leaned in, his fingers curling around her throat, choking off what little breath she was able to gasp in around the pressure on her ribs. His eyes glinted in the light of the setting sun with avaricious intent as blood trickled from the pricks left in her skin by his talon-like fingernails, unmoved by her thrashing as she struggled for air.

“When I’m done with you,” he whispered, “you’ll wonder why you ever fought. You’ll hurt first, of course. No getting around that. But I’ll see what makes you tick this time.”

As her flailing weakened, her eyes glazing with impending unconsciousness, his grip on her throat lessened and he eased his weight back to his knee instead of leaning on her stomach. His fingertips brushed over the blood, smearing crimson lines over her windpipe as she panted, chest heaving and fingers twitching as her arms fell limp at her sides.

“No escaping it, I promise that.”

After sucking in a few lungfuls of air, she mouthed something inaudible. Viper placed a bloody finger on her cheek, turning her head to face him so he could look into her eyes.

“Speak up, ducks. Let’s hear it. Begging for mercy, is it? It won’t save you, but I don’t mind hearing it. Go on.”

Kimberly tried again, her voice little more than a throaty whisper. “You talk too much.”

He grinned, humorless, showing his teeth all the way to the gums. “What can I say? I like the sound of my own voice. We’ll have more time for that later. Breathe deep, lovely. Don’t want you passing out on me mid-flight.”

Kimberly glared up at him, both hands wrapping around his leg—to keep him from pulling away. “We’re not going anywhere. My turn, asshole.”

She took the darkest, most painful memories she had been able to pluck from him in the short time he’d been stuck in her circle and shoved them to the forefront of his mind. There were some things hidden by mental “walls” he’d erected. She didn’t know how to get around those. But there were enough recent memories near the surface for her to work with. Moments of terror, such as his first, awkward, painful flight, when he was forced into the air by dragon hunters before his wings had fully developed. Moments of agony, like Cormac’s talons rending his wings into tatters. Muscles burning, skin pierced, scales ripped from his skin—any memory of fear or pain she could find she made him relive, over and over again, holding him tight so he couldn’t writhe out of her grasp.