Ignite the Fire: Incendiary by Karen Chance

 

Chapter Twenty

 

 

We zipped down the corridors so fast that, if Mircea hadn’t been leading me, I’d have been utterly lost. There were no signs down here; no guideposts of any kind. I didn’t know how the people who used this place navigated, but it wasn’t in the usual ways.

Of course, we weren’t doing that, either. Mircea was using the ongoing, horrible wail as a guide, although how he was, I didn’t know. It echoed confusingly, a long, continuous cry of anguish that reminded me of an air raid siren, a spine-tingling sound on its own that also activated warning signals in the brain.

And so did that, I thought, as we spilled out of the latest tunnel into a much larger space. A cavernous one with a high ceiling and maybe a football field’s worth of floor space. Only it wasn’t rectangular, but vaguely round, although it was hard to tell with all the liquid-filled tanks in front of the walls.

Big tanks, with big things in them.

“Mircea—”

“One moment.” He let go of my hand and moved closer to the nearest tank. It was ceiling height and as big around as a tanker truck stood on end. It contained a few inground pool’s worth of bluish liquid, or maybe it was the light that was blue, spilling upward from some source at the bottom to highlight the contents and splash the rough brown walls.

It contained something else, too.

“Mircea—” I could hear the fear in my voice and didn’t care. Wanted out of here; wanted out now.

Because the tank had an occupant, suspended from the top in what looked like a cocoon or a giant womb. It was semi-transparent with a whitish skin and pulsing blue veins. Inside, something huge was moving around, only no, that wasn’t right. Something was writhing, and flailing and kicking with its undefined limbs, while every once in a while, a huge eye pressed against the membrane, as if attempting to see out.

It wasn’t alone. There had to be . . . I didn’t even know. I looked around the room, trying to count the tanks, most of which were smaller than this one, some only about my size. But that didn’t really help much with the creepy.

“Mircea, let’s go.”

“In a moment—”

“No! Not in a moment. Now!”

And then the strange, alarm-like cry abruptly cut out.

The absence of sound was almost worse than its presence, which I’d started to become used to. Now, past the dying echoes, I could hear everything: my heart beating loudly in my ears; Mircea’s footsteps crunching on the pebble-strewn soil as he approached the big tank; the thrum, thrum, thrum of some kind of engine in the background, maybe the one powering the lights, although why mages would need such a thing, I didn’t know. Like I didn’t know what we were still doing here!

But we weren’t leaving. Instead, Mircea was doing a Spock impression, with his fingers splayed on the side of the tank and his forehead touching the glass, or whatever it was. I assumed he was trying to communicate with the thing inside, why I had no idea.

I was too busy freaking out.

And I wasn’t the only one. Because the rabbit/goat thing suddenly reappeared, emerging from behind a tank and looking more than a little crazed. I couldn’t read its expression, but then, I didn’t need to. Because not only was it bloody and dirty, with its once nice, if old fashioned, suit in tatters, it was also holding a machine gun.

I blinked at it for a second, because Alice in Wonderland meets Rambo isn’t something you see every day. Then I threw myself at Mircea. He’d been so deep in whatever he was doing, that I guess he hadn’t noticed the new addition.

I think my screaming got the idea across, however.

Or maybe that was the gunfire. It was loud and sustained and accompanied by a lot of angry, high-pitched bleating from the goat. Say hello to my little friend, I thought wildly, as Mircea and I threw ourselves behind the big tank.

That probably wasn’t the wisest move, since the goat appeared to be targeting it, not that the hail of bullets was making much of an impression. Or any at all. They were pinging off to fly wildly around the room, because the surface was a ward, the magical version of a forcefield, instead of glass.

Wards that Pritkin didn’t have right now, I realized, about the time that I spied him over by the door, where Mircea had dumped him when we came in.

And then things got worse.

The mages I’d almost forgotten about had been drawn by the screaming or maybe the gunfire, or perhaps this was a new group. But either way, what had to be a hundred of them were suddenly pouring through several doorways that had been hiding among the rocks. They were behind a quartet who were holding onto the leash of something huge and hairy and wolf-like, if wolves had massive hunch backs and were the size of buffalo.

Mircea’s monster, I thought, as it let out a bellow that made my skin want to turn inside out. It was the same one I’d heard in the tunnels, where the creature had been tracking him down. And had now found him, lunging for us so hard that it dragged its mage handlers right off their feet.

They let go of its leash a second later, whether on purpose or not, and it bounded straight at—

“Pritkin!” I yelled at Mircea, who stopped looking wildly at the fey version of a bloodhound, and started looked wildly at the door, instead.

“Futu-i!” he swore, and dove after Pritkin, and was strafed by bullets along the way. Because the goat had noticed that we had company, too, and had slung the gun around to target the nearest group of mages, but had hit Mircea instead. Fortunately, it hit the monster, too, which didn’t seem to have a master vamp’s healing abilities, and went down.

“Get out, get out, get out, get out!” I yelled at Mircea, who for once didn’t argue. He grabbed Pritkin by the scruff of his neck—and then fell back this way. Maybe because there were mages racing in that door now, too, and slip sliding on the same water that was suddenly rushing all around us, because the crazed goat had managed to crack one of the larger tanks, I wasn’t sure how.

Oh, that’s how, I thought, as I turned around and saw him shouldering something a little more hardcore than a gun.

“Rocket launcher,” Mircea said.

“You think?”

And then the world whited out.

“Lady! Lady!” Somebody was shaking me.

I opened my eyes—my real eyes—and there she was: Grace Kelley, or at least her Edwardian counterpart. She was standing on a lower stair, bending over me with a candle highlighting her features, and looking concerned. Because my consciousness had joined my body back at Gertie’s, and I couldn’t afford that right now.

“I will go and get help,” the foolish woman said.

“I don’t need help—”

“But you’re ill! You fainted—”

“I didn’t faint! I got shot at by a bazooka!”

“What?”

And then Mircea pulled me back in.

Things had not improved. The goat thing had been successful in breaking the wards around a dozen or so tanks, leaving the room temporarily flooded and gross, with squishy things floating in the water. That included the large tank that Mircea had been communing with, the womb of which had broken open to reveal—

“Oh. Oh, dear me,” someone said, and I jerked my eyes away from the bloated, half formed thing with the giant squid eyes emerging from a bloody, pus-filled sack, and turned around.

And saw Grace in her pretty lace gown and pearls, which she looked like she’d be clutching right about now, only they were in her ears.

Goddamnit!

“What is she doing here?” Mircea asked, while reaching for the squid thing.

“How should I know? And what are you doing?”

“Attempting to talk to it,” he said, and actually touched the whitish skin.

“Oh, dear,” Grace said again faintly.

I smacked his hand away. “Don’t touch that!”

“It helps my mental abilities—”

“You don’t know what it is! It could be anything!”

“—and we need its help—”

“Its help? Its help?” I was beyond furious. “You could have been out of here by now! The goat thing is distracting the mages. You could get by—”

“I can’t leave our prisoner behind—”

“It’s surrounded by a hundred mages,” I yelled. “It’s getting left behind!”

And then Pritkin woke up.

I’ll admit that abruptly regaining consciousness while huddled behind a baby squid the size of a whale, and coated in its goo, would be unpleasant. And that having spell-fire and bullets strafe a cave filled with dark mages on the other side of the body, would probably be a shock. But that kind of language didn’t help.

“You’re freaking out Grace,” I told him.

Pritkin stopped cursing long enough to stare at me. “Who the hell is Grace?”

I hiked a thumb.

“That is not my name,” the girl whose name I couldn’t currently remember said.

“What the hell is going on?”

I started to answer, although how to sum this up in a sentence or two was beyond me. Until I noticed that Mircea had two hands on the squid now, and one of the giant eyes had just popped open. Well, fuck.

“Well, fuck,” I said.

Pritkin cocked an eyebrow at me. “Language.”

“Well, fuck!” Grace yelled, scrambling back, her pretty gown still pristine despite being ankle deep in afterbirth. Because we weren’t really here, but the guys were, and they were about to be dead.

“Talk to Mircea,” I told Pritkin urgently. “Tell him he needs to get out of here!”

“Not without my prize!” Mircea snapped.

“What prize?” Pritkin demanded.

“The prisoner we liberated at such cost. She,” Mircea nodded at me, “wants to leave it behind.”

“Fuck that.”

“What?” I looked at Pritkin in disbelief. “You agree with him?”

“Where is it?” Pritkin demanded, getting into a crouch beside Mircea.

“Just there,” Mircea pulled him a little farther around the squid, which was staring at me sightlessly. At least, I hoped it was sightless. “Right there.”

“It has fangs,” Grace said softly.

“It’s not a normal goat,” I told her.

“No,” she pointed at the squid. “There. Among the tentacles.”

And damned if she wasn’t right. The squid’s huge, whitish tentacles had what looked like suckers on them. But if you looked a little closer, the suckers hid mouths ringed in sharp, pointy teeth that would have done a vampire proud.

“Fuck that!” I said, my voice a little high.

“How are the bastard’s shields holding?” Pritkin asked Mircea. “It should have been dead by now.”

“It’s going to be in a moment if we don’t act,” Mircea pointed out.

“What’s the plan?”

“There is no plan!” I said, inserting myself between the two lunatics. “You’re getting out of here!”

“What the—why did my hand just go through you?” Pritkin demanded. He’d been reaching for my arm, but of course, it wasn’t really there.

“I’m not really here—”

“Projection,” Mircea said, his voice clipped. “I couldn’t wake you, and I needed help. But now that you’re conscious—”

I felt a sudden, dizzying push, like someone shoving on the inside of my skull. It was a new and very unpleasant experience, and the next time I knew anything, I was back on Gertie’s stairs. Goddamnit!

“You’re not going back there,” Grace said, because she was back, too.

She had a hand on my arm that I hadn’t noticed, which was probably how she’d ended up getting pulled in with me. Mircea had said it himself: touch heightened his abilities. I pried it off.

“If I don’t, they’ll get themselves killed,” I said, gripping onto the quickly dissipating thread of Mircea’s consciousness. It was trying to unravel as I held onto it, but no, I thought savagely. No, you don’t! Because right now, I have your abilities, too, don’t I?

I mentally tightened my fist, looped the thread around it a couple of times for good measure, and jerked.

And suddenly I was back in the cave again, just in time to see the giant squid go crazy.

“I thought you said you could control it!” Pritkin was yelling, as the thing flopped and gurgled and writhed across the floor.

“Did I say that?” Mircea asked, his eyes a little wide.

“You damned well did!”

“I said I would provide a distraction. They are distracted,” Mircea pointed out, as the spells that had been aimed at the goat were now turned on the squid—and us.

“Auggghhh!” Grace screamed.

I turned to find her right behind me, with her hand on my shoulder, just as several spell bolts tore through our bodies. They did no damage that I could see, however. Just felt a little tingly.

So, okay then, I thought, that’s good. Right about the time that I saw Pritkin make a run for the goat. Shit!

He’d grabbed two handfuls of potion bombs out of the inner pockets of his greatcoat, and now he threw them ahead of him. They must have been every one he had, because they totally obscured the scene, in bursts of red, dark blue and black smoke. And left me glad that I wasn’t actually there when the mages started choking and hacking and throwing up.

A few with more presence of mind began wind spells, trying to disperse the smoke, which worked pretty well, since there was a high ceiling for it to flow into. But I still couldn’t see anything. And then I did, as the clouds began to thin, and really wished I didn’t.

“Pritkin!”

He was surrounded by at least thirty mages, who were pounding on his shields with spells and, in a few cases, fists. Meanwhile, the damned goat was making a run for it—at least somebody had some sense—and Mircea was chasing him, so was not available to help with said pounding. Pritkin’s shields were the strongest I’d ever seen, but they wouldn’t hold up to this much longer.

Damn it, why didn’t anybody ever listen?

“Here, Lady,” Grace said from behind me.

“Shut up! You’re not even supposed to be . . .” I began, but stopped short at the sight of her. Because she wasn’t looking so ladylike, anymore. She wasn’t even looking human. She was . . . “What the hell?”

“It’s an illusion. I was always good at them in school,” she said, which sounded really weird coming out of a horse’s mouth. Only, that wasn’t a horse, was it? That was . . .

God, I was losing my mind.

“Climb on!” she whinnied.

I climbed on. Why the hell not? If I was going crazy, might as well go all the way.

And then we were off, charging into the fray and—yeah. Pritkin’s eyes went wide. See what you made me do? I thought. I’m crazy because of you.

Then we left the ground, with the great, white feathered wings of every little girl’s favorite horse beating heavily enough to have knocked a few mages over, had we really been there. Since we weren’t nothing happened, but I guess the wind spells hid the fact that they felt nothing from our passage. Because, once again, the barrage they were throwing found a new target.

And, okay, maybe the bolts were doing a little damage, after all.

A sizzling burst of red exploded against one of Pegasus’ wings as we banked and turned, ready to come around for another pass. It didn’t leave a mark exactly, but part of the wing became hazy when the spell hit it. And after the bolt passed through, to impact against a tank on the other side of the room, the feathers stayed that way, as if an eraser had been briefly applied to a pencil drawing, smudging it.

“The attack is doing something,” Grace said, echoing my thoughts. “I can feel myself slipping away.”

“Then let’s make a dramatic exit,” I said, pointing. “Over there!”

Over there was a cluster of five large tanks, still full of whatever was being cooked up in those things. They were pristine, having not been touched by the fight. And, together, they probably had three, maybe four times as much liquid as the squid tank.

That was important, since Mircea had run through a door on that side of the room, chasing his prize, and Pritkin was now making for the same one. But that wouldn’t do them much good if they were followed by a hundred or so pissed off mages. So, let’s bar the door, I thought, and kicked in my heels.

I guess Grace felt that, because she sped up, flying and then banking right in front of the tanks. And, predictably, the spell bolts followed our path. I saw Pritkin look up as we passed overhead, his eyes wild, and couldn’t tell if he understood or not. But considering how fast he was moving, I kind of thought so.

“One more pass,” I breathed, bending low over Grace’s neck, and holding on with my arms in her mane, because my legs had just vanished along with a big part of her side.

There was no blood splatter, no trailing entrails, no anything where the bolts had hit, but I suddenly understood what she meant about feeling woozy. The attack was weakening the link between mine and Mircea’s consciousness. We didn’t have much time.

But there was a lot of smoke up this high, as well as a lot of dark, and I didn’t think the mages noticed our predicament. The light came from below the creatures in the tanks, and this far into the air, not much penetrated. That plus our speed probably explained why they thought they’d just missed, and increased the barrage.

“Almost there,” I muttered, watching cracks form in the wards behind us, which were taking the brunt of the attack. “Almost there—”

When it came, it came all at once, a rushing torrent that burst out of the sides of the now ruined tanks like a dam breaking. The mages that had been running this way were suddenly skidding to a halt, were turning around, were running the other way instead, but it was too late. Their buddies behind them were in better shape, with a decent head start—or they would have been, except that the body of the giant squid was now blocking the only door on that side of the room.

I had half a second to see them start firing off spells, trying to carve a path through the creature, and the squid predictably enough grabbing them with its fanged tentacles in retaliation. And then the tide hit, throwing them off their feet and doing something to us as well, although that didn’t make sense as it was below us. Or maybe we’d just been hit one too many times.

Either way, I felt a wave of disorientation slam into me, and the next thing I knew, I was rolling painfully down a set of hard, uncarpeted stairs at Gertie’s, screaming along with the acolyte who I was currently straddling.

Doors opened, lights came on, and people in robes and frilly nightcaps came out of bedrooms to peer over the stairwell. And then to mutter things under their breaths at the sight of us and go back to bed, some slamming their doors behind them. I lay there, panting and confused, while the room spun around me. And while the ladylike acolyte beside me laughed and laughed and laughed.

“That was wonderful,” she finally gasped out. “Wonderful! Do you do these kinds of things all the time?”

“Feels that way,” I said, dragging myself up, and mentally adding another bruise to my collection.

And then I went back to bed.