Текст книги "Irregulars "

Автор книги: Astrid Amara

Соавторы: Nicole Kimberling,Ginn Hale,Josh lanyon
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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 32 страниц)

Chapter Eleven

In the basement of the Sanatorio Espanol hospital, Dr. Ramos from the NIAD medical team admitted he lacked experience with invisible, floating, city-wide circulatory systems.

“I’m not severing the artery,” Dr. Ramos told August. “The likelihood of you bleeding to death is too great.”

“Why would I bleed to death in a hospital?” August complained. “You sever arteries all the time.” He looked healthier than he had that morning. After his examination they’d let him shower the blood from his hair and skin and given him fluids to rehydrate. His black eye and damp curls lent him a defeated appearance, but his expression was defiant as he glowered at the doctor.

Dr. Ramos scoffed. “We don’t go around chopping off aortas.”

“What about heart surgery?”

“I don’t do heart surgery,” Dr. Ramos insisted. “Besides, we don’t even know how this blood vessel is formed. It could connect to multiple systems. Unless absolutely necessary, I can’t in good conscience recommend amputating it until we understand it better.”

August’s mouth curled in an angry sneer. But the fight seemed to abandon him. He slumped against the exam table and limply took his projector back, along with pain tablets and anemia pills, without further argument.

The medical office was deep in the bowels of the hospital, sandwiched between the laundry room and several storage areas, so they had to navigate a labyrinth of squeaky-clean hallways to make their way back up to the hospital proper and outside.

The dry air and sunshine left Deven aching for the darkness of Aztaw, but it seemed to put August in a better mood.

“At least it’s a beautiful day,” he commented. He pulled on his glasses and frowned down at the blood vessel that floated through the air from his chest.

Deven still wore the sunglasses, finding them not only helpful in seeing Night Axe’s realm but also in coping with the agonizing brightness of the city.

They were in a much nicer neighborhood than Beatriz Rodriguez’s home, with a grass median separating lanes of traffic and well-tended, tree-shaded sidewalks lining the curb. The multi-storied houses had elegant, decorative wooden garage doors.

They both followed the line August’s artery formed as it floated down the center of the street and turned a corner up ahead.

“We could follow it, see where it leads,” Deven suggested.

August shoved his hands in his pockets and started walking. “We can’t confront him until we have a method of defeating him.” As they walked, August’s artery retreated into his body, shrinking as he closed the distance between him and his parasitic attachment, lengthening as he walked the other way. It floated through the heads of a cheerful-looking young couple they passed on the street, and for a moment it looked as though August would be sick.

He ripped his glasses off and shoved them in his pocket, wincing at the sunlight.

“Don’t you want to see?” Deven asked. He couldn’t imagine voluntarily giving up an advantage.

August grimaced. “You have them on. Give me a heads up if you see someone walking around with a shin bone for a foot.”

“But—”

“Deven, I can’t look at it right now.” August looked queasy. “Feeling it is bad enough.”

“You sure you want to walk?” Deven asked. He almost placed his hand on August’s back in support, but it seemed too intimate a gesture. He kept his hands rigidly at his sides.

August nodded. “The safe house is only a mile up the road and I’m sick of Klakow’s company.”

Once the director of the Mexico field office had discovered August had been injured the same way Carlos had, she’d ordered him to a division safe house for the duration of the investigation into Rodriguez’s murder.

“What makes this house so secure?” Deven asked.

“I haven’t stayed in Mexico’s, but the safe house in San Francisco has wards and masking locks, as well as top-of-the-line digital security systems. There’s one official entry and it’s guar-ded by trained personnel twenty-four hours a day.”

Deven slammed to a halt.

In front of him, August’s artery branched off in two distinct directions.

August tensed beside him. “What is it?”

“Put your glasses on,” Deven said.

August pulled them out of his pocket and put them on.

“Following this to Night Axe may not be as easy as we thought,” Deven said.

August clenched and unclenched his jaw but continued forward. A block later it happened again; another Y in the circulatory system led in opposing directions, but this time they saw where the blood vessel terminated.

It ended in the body of a middle-aged woman, who was tending a narrow strip of garden behind a black wrought-iron fence in front of a large, showy house. As she knelt on her lawn she wheezed and it was clear by her ashen complexion and the weak pulses of blood through the blood vessel that her health was frail. August looked at the woman with a stricken expression.

The woman eyed the two of them suspiciously. They started walking again.

“I have to help her,” August said quietly.

“We will. Killing Night Axe will free her.”

“You don’t know that. What if killing Night Axe kills all his sacrifices?” August clenched his jaw. “We have to find out how many there are. Are we talking six people? Six hundred? We need to monitor them when we confront Night Axe.” Suddenly August changed direction, following the thick branch of his artery east.

Deven hurried to follow. “What about checking in at the safe house?”

“That can wait. Come on!”

They spent the rest of the afternoon following trail after trail of blood vessels, connecting one sacrifice to the next. Sometimes it was difficult; the arteries traversed direct routes, which often led through structures. They had to circle buildings until they found the exit point and could continue their hunt. Other times they couldn’t tell one branch of the circulatory system from another. Sometimes it thickened, wide as a football and branching off half a dozen times; some were thin ribbons of rubbery cord, linked to sickly bodies. The vessels stretched for miles, claiming victims all over the massive city.

There didn’t seem to be any pattern to the sacrifices. They saw several young men; then they’d turn a corner to find an artery terminate in the soft side of an infant. Some victims were out of sight, as the vessel led into locked apartment complexes or behind closed office doors. But it was unavoidably apparent that Carlos and Beatriz had not been Night Axe’s first or last victims.

“Why do you think Night Axe had Carlos and Beatriz killed?” Deven asked. They’d stopped for lunch and to rest their legs, having walked all over the city. August had his glasses perched up on his head, held in place by his thick black hair.

August attacked his eggs ferociously. As he ate, the color of the blood in his artery seemed to enrich, as if Night Axe was sucking the nutrients straight from his body. Deven didn’t relay this to August.

“I think once Carlos realized they both shared the same strange mark, he decided to investigate,” August said. “Unlike the rest of these citizens, Carlos had the tools to research it, and Bea knew the vision serpent spell.”

“So Night Axe must have realized they were getting too close and sent his tzimimi after them.”

August nodded. Despite eating, he remained pale. Deven didn’t think it was a good idea for him to continue wandering the city on foot.

“You should return to the safe house and rest,” he told August. “As long as we give the local agents the jade disk they can use a projector to follow Night Axe’s circulatory network, yes?”

“But it isn’t their investigation. It’s mine.”

“And you look ready to fall over.” Deven feared he’d have to argue further, but to his relief August nodded, slumping against the back of his seat, his eyes heavy.

“Yeah, I’m beat.” August wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “If we could just rest for an hour or so—”

“Not me.”

“What?”

“I need to return to El Angel Hotel.”

“Bad idea. Remember the watchbirds? You’d be a fool to go back. Besides, all our stuff’s already moved to the safe house.”

“There’s someone there I need to speak with,” Deven said.

“Who?”

“An Aztaw soldier standing guard at the entrance.”

“What?”

“I think I know who it is and he may help us find a way to beat Night Axe. Even if he doesn’t know himself, he’s still well-connected in Aztaw.”

“And why do you think he’s going to help you?”

Deven grinned. “Because if he doesn’t, I’m going to kill him.”

“This is a stupid idea, Deven.”

“You have a better one?”

August ground his teeth. “The safe house is for both of us. Don’t forget it’s your little pen the bastard is after, not just my blood.”

“I won’t stick around long enough for Night Axe to discover me. I need to talk to the soldier.”

August’s expression remained dark.

“Look, I’m being paid to help you, right?” Deven laid his fingers on August’s hand. August’s skin was colder than Deven’s, but it still felt marvelous, just that little human contact, so much more comforting than the ossified touch of an Aztaw. “I can’t help you tucked up in the safe house. But I can use my connections and get some answers.”

“Your ‘connections’ want you dead.” August stared out the restaurant’s open window. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“I can take care of myself.” Deven smiled. “Besides, if it really is the soldier I’m expecting, he’s more afraid of me than I am of him.”

August turned his hand over, so Deven’s fingers rested in his palm. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“Because I killed all four of his sons.”

August shook his head. “I told you. Assassins are the worst.” But his fingers closed on Deven’s, holding his hand.

He didn’t let go, even when the check arrived.

Chapter Twelve

Outside El Angel Hotel, Deven paid his taxi driver with the cash August had shoved in his pocket before they had parted ways at the safe house. As the taxi pulled away, Deven glanced around. Few watchbirds remained, and those on the street were scattered apart, scratching at a trail that had gone cold.

Deven scanned the environment for any signs of Night Axe’s presence, but the glasses revealed nothing that wasn’t visible in the natural world. The flickering Aztaw he’d seen beside the revolving door had apparently gone.

Deven leaned against the opposite wall. He wished he could twirl a knife through his fingers, something to occupy his hands, but that would make him look even more conspicuous. Luckily, a large group of American tourists exited the building, standing on the sidewalk as they debated dinner options. Deven maneuvered himself into their midst.

Moments later, the Aztaw soldier appeared from thin air. He stood by the entrance of the hotel and spun around, taking in his surroundings. He wasn’t dressed in formal combat garb and he’d removed his large traditional headdress in lieu of a mismatch of human clothing. He wore an oversized dark blue sweatshirt with the hood pulled tightly over his paper-thin flesh, hiding his glowing skull. From the depths of the hoodie, however, his eyeballs rolled fiercely and his hands ended in skeletal joints. He gripped a knife in each hand.

His trousers were odd, a faded brown corduroy that belonged in another century. The color was atrocious in the harsh sunlight of the city.

None of the pedestrians seemed to notice the soldier’s sudden appearance, ugly attire, or skeletal form. Deven removed his glasses, but he could still see the soldier, which meant the other people could if they bothered to look.

But those around him avoided looking at that corner entirely, and Deven realized the Aztaw must be wearing an icon enchanted with an anonymity spell, something used by soldiers that didn’t make them invisible, only unremarkable. Nothing about the soldier’s appearance attracted attention—rather his presence was completely unremarkable, something the human eye instinctively glanced over and disregarded.

And before anyone could remark on the soldier, he was gone, vanishing once more into thin air.

Deven threaded through the tourists to stand closer, smiling to himself. He’d recognize the movements of his greatest adversaries anywhere, regardless of their chosen disguise.

He pulled the pen from behind his ear and hunched over in the crowd to scribble on his open palm. The calendars closest to this point were interesting; the soldier was in one of the fastest cycles he’d ever seen. Clearly the calendar had been chosen for location, not for convenience, because days flew by there, realigning every thirty seconds for a period of five seconds before moving to the next day. Deven had only a few more seconds before the realms would once again align and the soldier would breach through.

The soldier flickered back into existence. Deven gripped him by the sweatshirt and hurled him into the street. Cars honked and several drivers swore at the soldier, who rushed to the opposite side of the road in terror. He’d dropped one of his knives in the middle of the road.

Stupid, Deven thought.

Deven waited for a gap in the traffic before crossing after the Aztaw. As he closed in, the soldier’s eyes widened and he raised his knife.

“Hello, Fight Arm,” Deven said in Aztawi. He held his own knife close to his body. Unlike the soldier, Deven had no distraction spell to encase him. “Shall we go for a stroll?”

“Human Jaguar.” Fight Arm’s mouth curled into a snarl. “I’m not surprised this was your work.”

Deven didn’t know what he was talking about, but he wasn’t about to admit that. “Tell Lord Knife I said hi. I can’t decide if I’m more surprised you’re still alive or that you’ve been demoted to the position of a spy.”

Fight Arm growled and moved closer. Deven dropped his hand onto his blade and closed the distance.

At once, Fight Arm put his knife into a hilt at his belt and held up his empty hands. “I did not come to fight, only to observe.”

“That’s why you’re armed?”

“I wasn’t sure who I’d find.”

“You found me.” Several people had stopped to watch them. One gawked, open-mouthed, at the gaping dark hole where Fight Arm’s face was supposed to be. Deven’s conversation with Fight Arm damaged his illusion. “We must walk.” He turned and strode toward the nearby park.

After a moment’s hesitation, Fight Arm followed. Deven’s back crawled with the sensation of having his enemy behind him, but they both knew who would win a knife fight, and Fight Arm, despite his animosity, seemed unwilling to die to prove Deven right.

“Where did you find that portal?” Deven asked.

“Dark corner of reeds where Lord Black Dog once had his house.”

“Lord Black Dog is dead?” Deven asked, surprised. He thought he’d be one who’d survive until the end.

Fight Arm inclined his head briefly in response, but his expression was still one of rage. There was too much bad blood between them to engage in idle conversation, no matter how events had changed their roles.

There was a remarkable stink to Fight Arm’s human clothing, suggesting endless hours of being lived in. What had been one day in the natural world would have taken weeks of Fight Arm’s life.

“Lingering in that gate was a waste of your talents,” Deven commented, and he meant it. Lord Knife had other, lesser vassals —why send one of his best fighters?

“Not all of us have the power to choose when and where we appear.” Fight Arm eyed Deven’s pen almost hungrily.

Deven resisted the urge to pocket it. “I’ve a message for your lord.”

“My lord wants to hear nothing about you other than you’re dead.”

The walk up Paseo de la Reforma led to a large expanse of parkland in the center of the city. They passed by the Museum of Modern Art and Deven steered toward a park bench, where he sat down, keeping Fight Arm in his peripheral vision.

After a moment’s hesitation, Fight Arm sat beside him on the bench. “Lord Knife sent me to discover your intentions in Aztaw.”

“I have no intentions. I left.”

“Then why did you kill Lord Knife’s watchbirds?”

Deven suddenly understood why Fight Arm had been summoned. “You think it was me that did that?”

“They are trained to follow lords. Only you have a house power here.”

“Not only me. Night Axe has returned.”

Fight Arm jerked back. “Who says this?”

“I say it. I’ve seen him. Lord Knife’s birds have seen him too, which is why they’re dead.”

Fight Arm sat silently as he processed this. The park was busy, but few paid them notice. Deven noticed something streaming out of the corner of his eye and watched as a teenage girl entered the museum, a thin ribbon of artery trailing out her back. Deven thought how she was consequently connected to August; if the purpose and effect hadn’t been so nefarious, the concept was almost poetic.

“The birds would not follow him,” Fight Arm said slowly, as if unwilling to believe his own words. “Night Axe is only legend to the birds.”

“They were not following me,” Deven repeated. “You need to return home and warn your lord of Night Axe’s impending arrival. I’m the least of your concerns.”

But Fight Arm snarled. “Give us your house power and I’ll believe it.”

“No. You know what’ll happen if you bring it back down there.”

“We can’t win this war without the house powers.”

“You’ve lost the war already. I’m surprised any lords are left.” Deven shook his head. “And all of Aztaw is like an unprotected child now that the Lord of Hurricanes is at your door. He’s fueling himself on live sacrifices—people walking around, living and breathing, feeding him blood directly from their own bodies. He’s coming for Aztaw next. And with only half a dozen lords alive and fewer house powers, you’ll all be destroyed.”

Fight Arm said nothing. Deven knew he was considering his words and he found himself grateful Lord Knife had sent him rather than one of his other vassals. Fight Arm could be trusted to think for himself.

At last Fight Arm spoke. “How did Night Axe escape his prison in the realm of light?”

“I don’t know,” Deven admitted.

“Only Lord Jaguar could have done that,” Fight Arm said. “Lord Jaguar or his pathetic human vassal.”

“It wasn’t me, and Lord Jaguar is dead,” Deven replied. “I need to know what the lords used to weaken Night Axe.”

“Why? What is your role in this?”

“I came to help. I can track and kill Night Axe before he reaches Aztaw.”

“You will fail.”

“Better I try here, where he’s weaker, than in Aztaw, where he’ll have his full strength.”

“Why would you help us, revolting human?”

“Aztaw’s still my home.” Deven swallowed, feeling a wave of nostalgia crest over him. “I don’t want to see it destroyed. I fled only to keep my promise to my lord.”

“Lord Jaguar was a worthy adversary,” Fight Arm said quietly. Deven didn’t miss the insult in his own name’s omission, but he didn’t feel it. He was suddenly too grateful to be sitting with someone who knew Lord Jaguar, even if it was in the role of antagonist.

Deven’s heart hurt as he realized he had more in common with the opponent he’d been at war with since his childhood than any of the passersby in the park. Loneliness and regret filled him.

“The more you tell me how to defeat Night Axe, the more likely my chances I’ll succeed,” Deven said.

Fight Arm hesitated.

Deven sighed. “I’m your enemy, offering to risk my life to defeat a greater threat. Helping me helps you. How did the lords defeat Night Axe and send him to the realm of light?”

“They poisoned him,” Fight Arm said.

“How?”

“Night Axe needs sacrificial human blood to fuel his manipulations. Without it he can no longer transform. If you poison the blood he uses, he will weaken enough that you can destroy him.”

“What kind of poison?”

“It was a concoction Lord Crane  created. That is all I know.”

Deven felt a surge of hope. NIAD’s advanced technology had to be able to recreate whatever concoction the lords had created thousands of years ago.

“I’ll find out what I can about the poison and how they administered it and report back to you. In exchange for your house power.”

Deven shook his head. “I give it to you, the rebels will have it within weeks, and it will be broken, just like your lord’s staff.”

“These destructions are terrible crimes.” Fight Arm made a fist. “We have lost time, our history. There is nothing of meaning in Aztaw anymore.”

Deven felt a strange bond to Fight Arm. They were both soldiers of an older war, a time forgotten by the fighters of newer battles. They were remnants of a culture that no longer existed.

“Lord Jaguar’s palace...” Deven hesitated. “Is it still standing?”

“Yes. Despite the war, your lord’s house is still intact.”

Relief flooded Deven as well as a sudden, aching desire to return. But then he noted the dark look in his enemy’s eyes.

“And Lord Knife’s palace?” Deven asked.

“Destroyed, like the others,” Fight Arm said. “Curious, isn’t it?”

Not really, Deven thought. The rebels only had interest in lords that were still alive. Lord Jaguar’s palace was a mausoleum now, an empty shell harboring the memories of a dead lord and a missing house power.

“I miss the old war,” Fight Arm said, echoing Deven’s earlier sentiment.

Deven nodded. “But there’s no point dwelling on the past. If we can’t stop Night Axe, Aztaw has a very ugly future.”

Fight Arm glanced around. “He’s more powerful in darkness and will detect my presence. I’ll meet you at the fast gate tomorrow at dawn and tell you what I’ve learned.”

“Thank you.”

Fight Arm grimaced. “Don’t thank me, repulsive human. As soon as Night Axe is gone, you’re next.”

“Of course.” Deven smiled, however, knowing the chances of Fight Arm outwitting him, especially here, were slim.

Deven watched Fight Arm attempt and fail to orient himself in the strange day-lit city. He looked for the hotel but seemed unwilling to admit being lost to his foe.

Deven moved to the paved sidewalk and started drawing with his pen. Weakness shuddered through him as he wrote each glyph, and the pen lightened and grew colder. Several passing pedestrians gathered to watch, as if he were an artist, but moved on once they had dismissed his simplistic, scrawled imagery.

He finished all but the last icon of the gate. Fight Arm stepped inside. He tilted his head slightly.

“You could write me anywhere.”

“Yes.” Deven had his pen poised to draw the last image. “But I need your help, almost as much as you need mine.”

“I’ll return at dawn, at the fast gate.” Fight Arm hesitated for a moment, then jutted out his jawbone in a soldier’s salute. It looked oddly informal when gestured by someone in a hoodie and corduroys, but its implication was still powerful. Despite years of animosity, the damage Deven had done to Fight Arm’s family, or the four-inch scar on Deven’s back from Fight Arm’s blade, there was a temporary peace between them.

“Age well,” Deven said. He drew the last symbol, a spear. Light seared upwards from the ground. A couple walking by gasped and stared, but then Fight Arm was gone, dropping in his ancient form into the underworld from which he came.