Street Magic Part 22

The driver turned his head slightly. "What destination, please?" His voice was smooth and bell-like, more suited to an angelic choir than a slightly threadbare cab. It gave Pete a warm feeling in the pit of her stomach.

A gas streetlamp caught the driver's eyes, and they shone silver.

Jack grunted softly and held his forehead. "Fae," he said through clenched teeth.

"Driving a cab?" Pete raised an eyebrow.

"Fae love human devices," Jack muttered. "Plays h.e.l.l on the sight, let me tell you." To the driver he said, "Whitechapel, Mile End Road, number forty-six."

"Right away, sir," purred the Fae. His teeth, silver like his eyes, were a row of needles.

The sorcerer moaned, his eyes flicking weakly between Pete and Jack. "Where are you taking me?"

Jack thumped him on the crown of his head. "Shut it. No questions from you."

"What are are we going to do with him?" Pete whispered. "Can't very well leave him on the street to be picked over." we going to do with him?" Pete whispered. "Can't very well leave him on the street to be picked over."

"Who says I can't?" Jack muttered. "t.o.s.s.e.r tried to kill me. But no, I've got something in mind."

After a time the cab glided to a stop in front of Jack's flat and he jumped out quickly, leaving Pete to drag the sorcerer onto the curb. She banged the man's broken leg against the running board and he screamed.

"Sorry, mate," Pete apologized. "But you did rather bring it on yourself." She leaned back into the cab. "How much do I owe you?"

Jack grabbed her by the collar and yanked her back out. Pete struggled furiously, and reared back to slap him. He caught her hand, fingers squeezing her wrist bones together. "Don't you know better than to make deals with the Fae?"

"He's a b.l.o.o.d.y cab driver!" Pete protested as the taxi disappeared at the end of the street, taillights winking when it rounded the corner.

"Never offer to repay a Fae," Jack said tightly. "And offer to repay a Fae," Jack said tightly. "And never never allow them to strike a bargain with you. The cab is on my account. I'll pay up when they decide my debt is due and not a moment before." allow them to strike a bargain with you. The cab is on my account. I'll pay up when they decide my debt is due and not a moment before."

"I'm truly sorry. I didn't know," Pete said. "Now let go of me before I fetch you a smack."

Jack heaved a sigh and pushed his hair every which way with his fingers. "You wanted to learn the Black, and how to survive in it& consider that lesson the first." He dropped her wrist. "Sorry if I hurt you."

" 'S all right," Pete muttered. Her skin was slightly pink where Jack had touched her.

The sorcerer managed to haul himself onto his elbows, attempting to crawl away down the street. "Will you look at this git," Jack exclaimed. He pointed a finger at the sorcerer and muttered, "Sioctha" The sorcerer jerked, all of his limbs going rigid. Pete put her face in her hands. The sorcerer jerked, all of his limbs going rigid. Pete put her face in her hands.

"Did you explode this one's heart, too?"

"Nope," Jack said triumphantly. "Just stiff. A little magic rigor mortis until he tells me what I want to know. Get his other arm."

Together they dragged the sorcerer up the creaking fire escape to the flat, and once inside Jack rolled the man onto his back and put a boot in the center of his chest.

"Get the frying pan, or a phone directorysomething heavy to bash him in the good kneecap if he gets smart," he said to Pete. "Right," he addressed the sorcerer. "You know who I am, and what I can do, and I'm going to let you go now with the provision that if you try any tricks, what's left of you will fit inside a syringe. Got it?"

The sorcerer tried to speak, huffed breath through his nose and his immobile lips, eyes going wide.

"Good," Jack said conversationally. "Bi scaoilte." The sorcerer shuddered and relaxed. Jack pressed down harder with his boot. "Who are you b.l.o.o.d.y working for?"

"Roast in h.e.l.l, Winter, you doped-up has-been!" the sorcerer shouted.

"Oi," Pete said. She picked up a heavy bookend from Jack's shelf. "What's your name?"

"Roddy," the sorcerer spat. "Roddy Post."

"Well, Roddy Post," said Pete. "Are you going to answer my friend's questions?"

"Go b.u.g.g.e.r yourself!" Roddy moaned. His face was pale, twin stains of crimson in the hollows of his cheeks.

Pete knelt, lifted the bookend, and brought it down on Roddy's right hand. He howled. Jack raised his eyebrows.

"You've got issues, luv."

"Fine&" Roddy sobbed. "Fine, I'll sodding tell you whatever you want."

"Like a cheap notebook, you are," Jack said. "Folding when she only tapped you with that thing."

"Don't be too hard on him," Pete said, giving Roddy a thin smile. "You'd be amazed at what a couple of broken knuckles will do for a bloke's outlook."

Jack's expression went from amused to something darker, deeper, as if he were taking Pete's measure. "All for the sake of the child, eh?" he asked her.

Pete looked at Roddy, his pale drawn face. "Of course," she murmured, and set the bookend down because it was suddenly very heavy.

"Now, then," said Jack. He went into the kitchen and brought back a chair. "Pete, help the bloke to sit up."

Pete heaved Roddy into the seat and Jack stood in front of him. "Talk. Who's trying to kill me and why?"

Roddy's ragged breathing smoothed. "I can't tell you."

"b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l&" Jack muttered, raising his palm and opening his mouth to speak another word of magic.

"I can show you," Roddy said sullenly. Jack c.o.c.ked his head, as if weighing Roddy's sins to decide if he lived or died.

"Well, all right then," he finally said with his old grin. "Pete, let's bear up poor Roddy's leg and let him lead the way."

Chapter Thirty-eight

They drove through stone canyons, the old parts of the city, strongholds of visiting royalty, reclaimed as hotels and bars, neon hidden in crevices between the hand-hewn rock walls.

"Here," Roddy muttered. "Pull over here."

Pete eased the Mini to the curb on Ironmonger Lane and looked up at the stone edifice. "What's here?"

Roddy looked at his feet. "The Arkanum."

Jack choked. "You're not serious serious." He craned out the window to look up at the building. "Incredible."

"What's the Arkanum?" Pete asked Roddy.

"The Arkanum is the collective of darkness, the society of secret and shadow. We see and do what you only dream of, and we pull the strings of the bright, living world." Roddy muttered all of this, his voice blurry with pain and resignation.

Jack rolled his eyes and popped the door open. "A eighteenth-century collective of sorcerers wiped out by witchfinders and who never got the b.l.o.o.d.y hint." He leaned back in. "How many in there, Roddy?"

"None," Roddy said miserably. "There's not many of us these days and you've killed near half. The rest are out looking for you."

Jack checked the street and then motioned Pete out. "We take him with us."

In the lift, Roddy's pungent sweat made Pete's nose crinkle. "So you people just hang around thinking of ways to kill Jack? Seems silly. Completely."

"Thought he was was dead," Roddy muttered. "Only in the last couple of weeks, the Black started to talk about seeing him again." dead," Roddy muttered. "Only in the last couple of weeks, the Black started to talk about seeing him again."

"But why?" said Pete. "He didn't do anything to you."

"Right here," said Jack as the digital numbers ticked by. "Not b.l.o.o.d.y deaf, either."

"Do you have any idea what it would mean to be the sorcerer who killed the crow-mage?" Roddy demanded, and his face sparked back to life. "You would be legend in your own time, with more power than any before. Feared, hated, and respectedthe tenets of the Arkanum."

"Why do you people call him 'crow-mage'?" Pete asked. The lift came to a stop. do you people call him 'crow-mage'?" Pete asked. The lift came to a stop.

"Don't answer that, Roddy, 'less you want it to be the last coherent thing you ever say," Jack said, throwing a glare over his shoulder as he stepped into a narrow hallway, lit with bra.s.s sconces. One door stood at the far end.

Roddy limped after him at Pete's prodding. "Just through there," he said, slouching against the wall opposite the lift. "Everything you want is in there."

"Good man," said Jack. He shoved Roddy aside and put his hand on the door, jiggling it. "It's locked."

"I haven't a key," said Roddy with a thrust of his chin, before Jack could turn on him. "The High Sorcerers control the access."

"No matter," said Jack. "Pete, you got a hairpin or a bra wire or something?"

"Do I look like I have a hairpin, Jack?"

"Never mind," he said, digging a skeleton key out of his pocket and working it into the lock. He leaned against the keyhole and breathed, "Go n-iompai an iarann agus go ligfeadh lean ar aghaidh," in a whisper meant for a lover. Pete heard ancient tumblers groaning.

"Racking up felonies by the minute, I see," she said. Jack gave her a wide grin.

"Not breaking in if you have a key."

"You think you can enter our sanctum with such a crude tool?" Roddy muttered.

The lock clicked and the door popped open. Jack rolled his eyes. "Apparently I can, sonny boy. What about it?"

"Don't be waiting, then," Roddy said sullenly. "Burst in and save the day, Winter."

"All right, keep your shorts on," said Jack. He put his hand on the k.n.o.b, but before it turned, pain like she'd just smacked into a ledge hit Pete. The Black rushed up at her, magic that was barren and unforgiving, nothing like the dancing fire of Jack's talent or the icy slickness of her dream. She gasped as she touched it, and Jack stopped and turned to look at her.

"What's wrong, luv?"

"I&" The pain intensified, the magic crouching, leaping, digging teeth into her brain. "I&" She couldn't speak, just felt the magic pressing down on her. Her Black-fueled intution rocketed through the pain and she grabbed for Jack's hand on the door, trying to make him stop, turn back, before he became broken and b.l.o.o.d.y and still again.

"Sweet Lilith&" Roddy cursed. "They know! They" He was cut off as Jack spun around and grabbed him by the neck.

"What have you done, you slimy little c.u.n.t?"

Roddy began to smile, and then to laugh. "It was so easy," he said. "I'd heard so many stories about how good you were, Winter, how quicksilver and clever. And look, a broken leg and a sob story was all it took for you to swallow it."

"Jack," Pete ground out. She tried pus.h.i.+ng against the feedback from the Black, and the pain lessened, though not by much.

Roddy grinned at both of them unpleasantly. "You came in here obedient as dogs."

Demonstrating far more strength than Pete would have guessed a man of Jack's size to have, Jack lifted Roddy onto his tiptoes. "What did you and your s.h.i.+t-sucking Arkanum mates do? Tell me before I break you in half and jam you together backward."

Roddy laughed, shaking his head. "It doesn't matter now, Winter. I did my job. I'll be seeing you on the other side& and her& and all the rest." And Roddy fell forward against Jack, and shoved them back together, through the door into the Arkanum's sanctum.

The spell hovering over the flat snapped into place and Pete could move again without the feeling of ice picks being driven through her eye sockets. She was up and moving for Jack and Roddy before her mind caught up. She could see see the spell, a thicket of thorns and prehensile vines that wrapped themselves around both men with blood-hungry quickness. the spell, a thicket of thorns and prehensile vines that wrapped themselves around both men with blood-hungry quickness.

"Jack!" she screamed, as a shadow lashed his face and caused a line of blood droplets to erupt. "Jack, tell me how to stop it!"

"Get this f.u.c.king fat t.o.s.s.e.r off of me, to start!" Jack bellowed, shoving at Roddy, who fought just as wildly to hold him in place. The shadows, thick as they lay on Jack, fell twice as heavy on him, wrapping Roddy up in a hungry cascade of magic and malice. The sorcerer's clothes began to disintegrate, and the skin beneath, flaking off like ash from a dead fire. Roddy's face went stone, grimhe would die to keep Jack from escaping the spell's embrace.

Pete reached for Jack, between the twisting vines of magic, and felt a lash like a thousand thorns on her skin.

Blood erupted everywhere the shadows touched, and she drew back, cursing.

Jack punched Roddy in the face, ineffectually. "Get& off& me& c.u.n.t!"

From an archway deeper in the flat two more sorcerers appeared, and two morefour figures all burning the poisoned purple witchfire in their palms.

"Hold him, Roddy!" one shouted. "We'll take care of the b.i.t.c.h."

Jack's clothing began to flake away, like Roddy's skin-a patch of his jacket, a chunk of his pantleg, the sole of his jackboot. "Pete, watch it!" he yelled as one of the sorcerers came for her, a telescoping police baton upraised.

"You think I'm not worth your magic?" Pete c.o.c.ked her head.