Burned (37 page)

‘Now,’ Caldera said. She was breathing hard, eyes blazing, fury underlining each word. ‘You are coming back with me. You can choose whether you come walking, or beaten to crap and in handcuffs. But you do not get to choose anything else. Because I am
sick
of your shit. Understand?’

I pulled myself to my feet as another car zoomed by. My body hurt in a dozen places, muscle and bone aching. It had been a long time since I’d been hit that hard. I’ve seen Caldera’s strength in action, but it’s another thing to feel it. ‘I always knew you were holding back,’ I said. ‘So was I.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Just not the way you think.’ I braced myself against the wall. ‘Want to know how I beat mages who are stronger than me?’

As Caldera started to answer, I lunged, kicking off the stone. She didn’t have her guard up, and I hit her with an open-palm strike right in the centre of the face. Against any normal person, it would have broken their nose. It didn’t break Caldera’s, but I knew it would hurt like hell.

Caldera lost her temper completely.

A swinging punch came at me with enough force to shatter my skull. I ducked underneath and dashed out across the road. Caldera charged after me in a blind rage.

The container lorry was a twelve-wheeler, painted white and orange with the Sainsbury’s logo on the side, and it came around the curve of the roundabout moving fast. The driver saw us as soon as we ran out in front of him and stomped on the brake pedal. Tyres met brakes with a horrible scream, but it takes a lot of energy to stop a vehicle that big. The front cab missed me by a few feet and hit Caldera square on.

It was all over very fast. There was a noise somewhere between a thud and a crunch, mixed with the screech of brakes, followed by the sound of a rolling body. I came to a halt and looked around to see Caldera about fifty feet away, rolling over and over before coming to a stop. She stirred, groggy, as the lorry bore down on her; it finally scraped to a halt about ten feet away from running her over. After all the noise, there was a sudden silence.

‘I cheat,’ I said quietly into the vacuum. ‘Sorry.’ There was a sign for a garage off to the right, along with a side road that I knew would have stairs leading up. By the time Caldera had recovered enough to lift her head, I was out of sight.

I gated to the park in Camden Town, then pulled out my phone and started walking. I’d visited this place with Caldera enough times for her to know that it was one of my regular staging points, meaning that there was a good chance she’d be following me. I headed down the nearest street, looking through the futures.

Luna wasn’t going to answer her phone. I hadn’t really expected her to. More worrying was that Anne and Variam weren’t answering either. Odds were that at least one of them were in Keeper custody by now. That meant that the Keepers would have their phones, which meant that they could pull off the number of the one I was using now. How long before they traced it?
Probably not long.
Landis wasn’t going to answer if I called, but Lyle was.

I dialled Lyle’s number. It rang a few times and then there was the click as Lyle picked up. ‘Oh, hello, Alex. It’s you, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ I kept my voice as calm as I could. ‘It’s me.’

‘I’m afraid I haven’t heard back from Undaaris just yet.’

‘Don’t bother,’ I said. ‘I just got his answer.’

‘Everything work out okay?’

I was silent for a second. ‘You really don’t know, do you?’

‘Know what?’

‘I can’t believe I actually believed that this might work,’ I said. ‘I mean, how many times has this happened now? The Council
always
screws me. Every time I think that things might actually work out, something like this happens to make me realise just how dumb I was.’

‘I … don’t understand.’

‘You know the really hilarious part?’ I said. ‘We’re in exactly the same place we were back then. Twelve years and not a thing’s changed. Me standing out there, banging to be let in, and you on the inside.’ I laughed slightly. It sounded odd, unbalanced. ‘Right back where we started.’

‘Alex?’ Lyle sounded worried. ‘Is something—?’

‘Shut up!’ I snarled. ‘Just…’ I wanted to shout at Lyle, wanted to scream at him, but all of a sudden I couldn’t think of anything to say. What was the point? ‘Just…’ My energy drained away. ‘Forget it.’ I didn’t want to talk any more. ‘Fuck you, Lyle. You and the Council.’ I felt weary, and bitter, and very old. ‘I hope Morden and the rest of the Dark mages tear you apart. You deserve it.’

‘Alex—’

I hung up, pulled out the phone’s SIM card, and snapped it in half. Then I dropped the phone to the paving stones and stamped on it. I took my foot away to see that the screen was cracked. I stamped on it a second time, then again and again, slowly ramping up, putting more and more power into each kick, feeling the jolt of each impact go up into my leg. I realised I was snarling, my lips pulled back from my teeth as the phone broke under the rain of blows.

When I was done, the phone was a pile of shattered metal and plastic. As I looked up, I realised I had an audience. I’d been on a residential street, and several people had slowed to watch me. The nearest ones were a young couple, a man and a woman, and I turned my head to stare at them. I don’t know what I must have looked like, but they flinched and averted their eyes, the man moving hurriedly to lead the woman away. The ones watching from the other side of the street backed off too.

I scooped up the pieces of the phone, threw them into the nearest bin, then walked away.

I did what I could to shake pursuit. I was having a hard time thinking – too much had gone wrong too fast – and instead I lost myself in the work of making sure I wasn’t followed. I went through the underground and did some basic evasion routines, then used an anuller to foul up any tracking spells. Once that was done I gated to a staging point, then gated again to my safe house in Wales, then looked ahead to confirm that the next few hours were clear.

I’d picked up a clean prepaid phone, but I didn’t want to use it unless I had to. From now on I had to assume that any calls I made would be logged and traced. I could still look into the futures in which I called everyone without actually doing it, but a quick check confirmed that Anne and Variam’s numbers weren’t going to get any results. Luna’s was … specifically, it would be answered by some guy I didn’t recognise. It was a safe bet that he wasn’t someone I wanted to talk to, and the fact that he was holding Luna’s phone was bad news.

In fact, all the news was bad. I couldn’t contact Luna, Anne or Variam without risking making things worse. I could try to call Landis, but I already knew that he was doing what he could to help Anne and Variam. Having me call his mobile wouldn’t help.

I paced up and down the farmhouse kitchen, my feet tapping on the tiles. I wanted to run, to fight, but I didn’t know how. If I went charging in to help Anne or Luna or Vari, I’d just make things worse. I’d barely managed to escape myself; the last thing I was qualified to do was some sort of insane rescue …

I took a deep breath, grabbed a fistful of hair in one hand and squeezed, trying to let the pain focus me.
Think. I have to think.
What should I do?

Okay, Variam is probably all right.
Or maybe more accurate to say that out of the four of us, he was currently in the
least
bad situation. If that transfer had gone through, then he should be under Landis’s sponsorship, free and clear. There was still the possibility of him having lost it and attacked some Keepers, but he had a couple of years as a Light apprentice going for him. Even if the worst had happened, with Landis batting for him, he should have a chance.

Luna was on a knife edge. She’d been in the middle of that test, in the heart of Canary Wharf, surrounded by Council mages. There was no way she could have escaped. The one slim hope that I was clinging to was that the Keepers had been too busy chasing me to go after Luna as well. Caldera hadn’t said that she was there for Luna, right? Maybe she hadn’t been on their list? But they’d gone after Anne …

Anne.
Had Variam made it in time? I rummaged through my pockets and pulled out my gate stone to Anne’s flat, holding on to the little focus and concentrating. I couldn’t risk going there, but if I looked through the futures in which I did …
Gate failure, gate failure.
I took a breath and concentrated, forcing myself to stay calm.
I’m too agitated.
Once my heartbeat was steady, I tried again.

More failures. I searched through the futures, and …
Wait. That can’t be right.
In
every
possible future in which I tried that gate stone, the gate failed to open.
That doesn’t make sense.
Maybe there was a space mage there, projecting a gate ward? But even then, I should be able to sense something, unless—

Unless Anne’s flat had changed enough that the gate stone wasn’t keyed to it any more.

My heart sank. I didn’t want to believe it, but it was the most likely explanation. I felt so utterly helpless. I can see dangers ahead of me, but I’m damn near useless when it comes to stopping something in progress. If Anne’s flat was burning to the ground right now, there was nothing I could do to stop it. Or worse, if she and Luna were already—

No. Don’t think about that.
I tried to think constructively. Assuming the worst hadn’t happened, and that Luna, Anne and Variam were still okay, what would they do? Variam would probably meet up with Landis. Luna’s first reaction would be to contact me. Anne … I didn’t know. Okay, so what would Luna do? First she’d try my phone, and when that didn’t work … then she’d probably look for me here. I’d made sure that she had a gate stone for the place.

Now I had a plan. I looked into the future again, and this time, instead of looking for danger, I looked for friendly arrivals. Almost immediately, I saw a future of an opening gate. It was close, less than ten minutes away … not guaranteed yet, but it was becoming more likely with each passing minute. I started pacing again, staring at the spot that the gate stone was keyed to, willing the time to pass more quickly.

Nine minutes and thirty seconds later, the air shimmered. An oval of green light, the colour of new leaves, appeared in mid-air at the spot keyed to the gate stone, becoming opaque. A foot came down on the tiles, then another, and Anne stepped out as the gate winked out, turning to face me.

The two of us looked at each other. Anne looked exhausted and battered. Her T-shirt was singed down one side, and her arm was reddened and burned. But she was alive, and she didn’t look seriously hurt. ‘Are you okay?’ I said.

In answer Anne took two steps forward and put her arms around me, resting her head on my shoulder. I hesitated, then awkwardly reached up to her, not sure what to do. Anne sighed and I could feel the tension gradually go out of her as we stood there.

‘So Vari warned you in time?’ I asked.

Anne nodded. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed with a blanket wrapped around her, a mug of tea clasped in her long fingers with a wisp of steam rising upwards. ‘But not in time to get out. By the time I tried to gate they were too close.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘I fought,’ Anne said. ‘I didn’t want to, but … I’ve had a long time to think about this, and I decided I wasn’t going to let myself be executed. Even if it meant fighting Keepers.’

‘How many of them were there?’

‘Keepers? Three or four, I think. The rest were auxiliaries.’

I looked at Anne with raised eyebrows. ‘You got away from three or four Keepers on your own?’

‘Vari showed up midway through,’ Anne said. ‘By then two of them were down, so they pulled back to try and deal with him. So I gated.’

‘What happened to Vari?’

Anne looked down at the blanket. ‘I don’t know,’ she said quietly. ‘I left him behind.’ There was a moment’s silence, then she looked up again. ‘After that, I was on my own.’ Anne looked up again. ‘I knew they’d be tracing me, and I didn’t have any way of getting in touch with you or Luna, so I came here hoping I’d find you.’

‘About that,’ I said. Like me, Anne can’t use gate magic; she has to rely on gate stones. ‘How
did
you get here?’

‘Luna gave me a copy of the gate stone to here last year. I kept it cached.’

‘That was good preparation.’

Anne gave me a half-smile. ‘You gave me the idea.’

There was a beep from the table. I looked over, then got up off the bed and walked over to pick up one of the two phones lying there. ‘Finally,’ I said.

‘Who is it?’

‘I’ve got an emergency line to Talisid. Looks like he’s ready to make the call.’

‘Is that safe?’

‘Not really.’

Anne was silent. I sat back down on the bed, sent a text and put it down on the bed between us. After a minute’s wait the phone rang. I answered and pressed the button to put it on speaker. ‘Talisid.’

‘Verus.’ Talisid’s voice was slightly distorted through the phone’s tiny speaker system. ‘Where are you?’

‘Somewhere safe.’

‘This line’s secure.’

‘Given what’s just happened, I hope you’ll understand if I’m not too keen on broadcasting my location,’ I said. ‘All right?’

‘All right,’ Talisid said. ‘Undaaris voted against you.’

It was what I’d expected to hear, but it was still a blow. Four against two. Even if we could get the seventh vote, it wouldn’t matter now. ‘I see.’ I kept my voice steady. ‘Why?’

‘I haven’t been able to confirm the details,’ Talisid said. ‘But one can put two and two together. Levistus’s faction has been pressuring Undaaris over the Birkstead appointment. I’ve just heard that Levistus has agreed to support Undaaris’s candidate.’

‘And in exchange, Undaaris gives Levistus his vote,’ I said. ‘Favour for favour.’

‘It seems that way.’ Talisid paused. ‘If I’d known—’

‘What’s happened to Variam and Luna?’

‘Variam is currently in custody,’ Talisid said. ‘No charges yet. I believe Landis is trying to get him released.’

‘And Luna?’ I could feel my stomach tightening up.