The Children and the Blood (24 page)

“But like before, things didn’t go too well.”

She shook her head. “Each side turned on one another. Vigilante Merlin attacked whatever Taliesin they found in vengeance for their king, and enraged Taliesin made the first Merlin they saw pay for five hundred years of their magic being bound. And lots of innocent people, just sitting in their homes trying to figure out what’d just happened, instantly became the victims of death squads from the opposing side.

“The regular humans blamed it on gas mains, or gang violence, or holiday decorations causing fires. After all, it was Christmas time, and there were plenty of normal people leaving out candles and then burning their houses down. And wizards are masters at covering stuff up or letting it be explained away. They’ve all got enough connections from life before everything went to hell that, if they have to step in, it’s not too hard to spread the misinformation around.”

Past her trembling, Ashley felt a hysterical laugh bubble up again. The stories the police told. Her diary. Boyfriend. Her plan to murder her family and sell her sister to a drug dealer.

Misinformation didn’t quite seem the right word.

And then there’d been the gas main at Christmas time.

Her thoughts shied away from the fragmented memory.

Spider sighed. “And so we have the war. Bunches of families went into hiding when it all started, just trying to keep their loved ones safe. Your family probably did the same. And meanwhile, the other wizards just keep fighting. They try to prevent the regular humans from knowing what’s going on, mostly because the first wizard who gets caught up by the press or goes to the cops just makes himself a lovely target for the other side. Hiding and stealth are their best weapons, and they’re using them to continue their five-hundred-year-old war.”

Ashley stared as she finished. Licking her dry lips, she drew a shaky breath. “And they haven’t,” she tested the word, “‘bound’ each other again? Or… whatever?”

“It’s been eight years. If either side knew how to do that anymore, they would have already.” Spider shook her head. “Whatever the hell Merlin pulled off, the continuation of the spell was tied to his family, but the ability to recreate that spell clearly wasn’t.”

Ashley nodded slowly, as though anything in the past few minutes, hours or days made sense. “And, um… how do you fit in?” she asked, trying to keep her voice calm.

“
We
, darling,” Bus called from the front. “Not us. We.”

She looked between them. Spider gave her a smile tinged with sympathy.

“They call people like you and the rest of us ‘cripples’,” the girl said. “Which is a lovely little word we’ve lately kind of adopted as our own. Makes it something of a joke that way, since depending on your point of view, we’re anything but. In translation, though, we’re the ones born into wizard families, just without any magic. They say we’ve got the genes or whatever, but…” she shrugged. “No magic. No distinction between those of us born Merlin or Taliesin either. Just nothing. We can see them, which puts us ahead of your average human, but not the way wizards do. They look like normal people to us, though they say we look like something is missing to them. Like something that should be there inside us, just isn’t.”

“Bunch of crap, if you ask me,” Bus added.

Spider’s mouth twitched in a grin at him, and then she turned back to Ashley. “We don’t see it that way,” she said dryly. “But it puts us at a big risk, because while we can see their existence, we can’t tell them – or even ourselves – apart from anyone else. Wizard or cripple, everybody just looks like regular folks to us. And you wouldn’t think that would be a serious problem, but then… you saw what happened to Shen.”

Anger rippled beneath Spider’s expression and with difficulty, the girl pushed it away. “There
is
one thing that sets us apart from normal humans, though, besides being able to see the wizards, magic be damned. We have something… something the bastards can take. It’s not magic, exactly. Wizard researchers used to say it’s a genetic abnormality. A defect where magic should have been, like somebody born without both kidneys or something. But whatever. Point is, if they hit us with their magic just right, well…”

Spider looked away. “We call the wizards who do that ‘ferals’. And they’ve killed a lot of our kind. They hunt us because when they kill us and take whatever it is we have… it makes them stronger. Boosts their power for a while, like they’re hopped up on steroids from hell or something. And it leaves us dead. Like Shen.”

Ashley’s gaze dropped to the ground, remembering the alleyway.

“Not all wizards do it,” Spider allowed, a touch grudgingly. “Maybe not even most. Before the war, killing a cripple for power was considered akin to rape or child molesting. But war’s funny like that. Suddenly, the wizards found their lives in danger, their whole society was tumbling down, and dealing with a bunch of ferals just wasn’t quite as important anymore. I mean, some still frown on it. Some probably even try to stop it. But you’ve also got to take into account the ones who say it’s despicable, and then look the other way. The ferals are strong, after all.” Sarcasm dripped from her tone. “And they make
great
fighters.”

Up ahead, Ashley could see Bus’ hands flexing, as though strangling the steering wheel.

Slowly, Spider drew a breath. “Which brings us to… well, us. Wizards mockingly dubbed our little group the ‘Hunters’, and the ferals who’ve survived run-ins with us kind of picked the name up.” She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. It’s as good a name as any. We got it from the Merlin, after Carter walked out on them eight years ago. Before the war, he was the cripple ambassador to their council. Kind of a representative making sure our right not to be killed or whatever was respected. But then everything went sideways, some of the Merlin began turning a blind eye while the ferals tore our people to pieces, and well…”

She shook her head, and Carter shifted slightly, as though uncomfortable with the turn the history lesson was taking.

“So now we hunt the ferals,” Spider said, returning to her original subject. “The four of us, and some others around the country too. We move our people around, help them hide, get them connected with others of our kind for protection, and take out any ferals we can. It’s not easy, as you saw today. If they’re ready for you, there’s not a whole lot you can do. Wizards’ll block bullets as easily as anything, and blow you up besides. But if they’re not ready for you…” She grinned darkly. “Gun’ll kill a wizard if they don’t know the shot’s coming. Like that guy inside the hotel. We’d been hunting him for a while, tracking him after he took out two of our own a few weeks ago. Let him get enough of a glimpse at us to know there were cripples in the area, and then waited for him to come looking. Didn’t expect you to be there, though. Thankfully, he was a cocky enough bastard to drop the magic around himself like he was making some damn point, which gave Carter and Sam the chance to take him out.”

Ashley blanched, swallowing hard at the memory. “And you knew when he did? Even if you couldn’t… see it… or whatever?”

“Your head wanted to split open from being near him,” Bus called back. “Am I right?”

She looked between them.

“Give you the headache from hell when a wizard’s doing magic near you,” Spider explained. “Doesn’t matter what it is. Fighting, healing, pretty much anything short of actually using their magic to
protect
you, and it’ll make your brain feel like it’s getting sucked out your ears. That thing about us – the lack of magic or whatever – it doesn’t like being near wizards using their power. So yeah, while you can’t
see
what they’re doing, per se, you sure as all hell can feel it.”

Barely breathing and not taking her eyes from the other girl, Ashley crushed the fires inside herself till they nearly disappeared. “Right,” she said hoarsely.

“Any time you got a sudden headache around your dad or whoever,” Spider said. “I’d bet you money they were doing magic and not telling you. Some families who hid with their cripple relatives were like that, especially if they were Taliesin and started out without magic anyway. Rather than hold up what they could do and their relatives couldn’t, the family went on as though their magic wasn’t real, trying to hang onto what’d been normal before the world went to hell.

“And it works,” the girl continued, glancing at her with sympathy again. “Till that world comes banging down your door.”

Ashley looked away, aching from the words and still trying to wrap her mind around yet more things that couldn’t possibly be real.

Like the fire. And the forest. And Malden.

Her father, a wizard. The men who came after them, wizards too.

“So they… the others…”

She didn’t know how to say what she was asking, but Spider seemed to understand anyway.

“Some or all,” Spider answered. “Yeah. Probably.”

Ashley shook her head, uncomprehending. “And I’m a…”

Wizard, she answered for herself. The word was wizard. And it made no sense in any rational view of the world.

The litany of impossible things from the past forty-eight hours ran through her head, but she shoved them away, struggling to keep calm in the face of four people with guns who apparently didn’t realize she was one of their enemies.

“A cripple,” Spider said.

Ashley hesitated. “But you… I mean… there’s nothing you see…”

Humor flickered in Spider’s eyes. “You think the dogs are just for show?”

Already nearly bloodless, Ashley felt the last traces of color drain from her face. Her gaze dropped to Tala and Mischa, lying curled and snoring between the seats.

“Dogs, birds, cats, you name it… they all hate wizards,” Spider said. “Can’t stand being near them. Carter had Tala check you out the moment he saw you.”

The memory of the dog approaching over the length of the room came back to her. Only after Tala licked Ashley’s cheek had the two men holstered their guns.

At Ashley’s expression, the girl grinned. “If you were a wizard, that wouldn’t have gone quite the same way. Plus, Carter heard the feral talking about cripple hunting. From the sound of it, the bastard thought he’d found himself an easy kill at the end of a long, disappointing day.

“Poor baby,” she finished scathingly.

Ashley looked away, feeling nauseated.

“Hey,” Spider said, dropping the sarcasm instantly. “Breathe.”

She nodded jerkily. In the driver’s seat, Bus glanced back, clearly still concerned that she might throw up in his van.

Swallowing hard, her gaze returned to Tala and Mischa. “But they can always tell,” she said, her tone inching toward a question.

“Yeah,” Spider said seriously. “Against wizards anyway. They act as a defense if we get caught by surprise. But it’s not easy. We’ve lost more than one that way.”

Barely registering the last words, Ashley watched the two massive animals sleeping at her feet. Tala had rushed at the men in the alley without hesitation, and it was some kind of miracle she hadn’t been killed by the blow that knocked her away.

The dog shifted around, rolling slightly to cover Ashley’s feet. They’d lain there the whole time, drowsing like puppies, and never once giving a sign anything was wrong.

But she…

The fires wanted to flicker and twist inside her, to rise and explode as though to show they were real. Trembling, she closed her eyes, trying to restrain the barely restrainable and not blow up everyone in the van just to prove the impossible.

To prove she wasn’t crazy. Or they weren’t crazy. Or both.

Wizards. It was stupid. Everything was stupid. She shouldn’t be having this conversation. Rose was a farmwife, for pity’s sake. She’d worked every day in the fields with palms callused to impermeability and skin tanned to leather. Jonathan had been the same. They’d been farmers. Not magical, mystical beings who could wave their hands and make flowers grow and birds sing.

Not that there’d been any birds, really. Lily had never succeeded in attracting a single one, no matter how many birdhouses she made. And Thelma’s cats had hated the couple more than anything. Then there was the lack of farm animals. Or the way mice never came into the house, though she’d always been grateful for that. But she couldn’t even remember seeing an insect when Jonathan or Rose were around.

She drew a shaky breath, trying to stop the torrent of thoughts tumbling through her mind. Tala and Mischa liked her. She was a fantasy creature whose only skill was murder and destruction through uncontrollable flames, but the dogs seemed to think she was okay. And from what Spider said, that may have been the only reason she was alive.

Nausea turned her stomach and she struggled to just keep breathing.

“There
is
one last thing you need to know,” Spider said carefully.

Warily, Ashley’s gaze slid back to her.

“There’s a third group,” the girl said. “The one wizards don’t believe exists.”

At Ashley’s unblinking stare, Spider continued. “You probably saw him outside the hotel. The glowing guy. He’s part of the third group. The ones you kill on the first shot or you don’t get away.”

Shifting around in her chair, Spider sighed. “They call themselves the Blood, that much we’ve learned. They cropped up around the time the war started, glowing like blazes and more powerful than any wizard we’d seen. As for what side they’re on,” she scoffed. “Nobody else’s, that’s for sure. And though they look practically covered in fairy dust to you and me, they just look like a regular, everyday human to the Merlin and Taliesin.

“And neither side believes they exist.

“When the war first started, before ferals became as widespread and it still seemed like the Merlin might listen, Carter tried to convince them the Blood were real. But cripples don’t have magic, remember? So how could we possibly see something the über-powerful wizards couldn’t perceive?”

She rolled her eyes darkly. “They refused to believe him. Taliesin had a new weapon, they said. Or the war left Carter unhinged. No matter the explanation,
they
were the wizards, and so what help could a cripple offer? We’re the defective ones, remember? Not them.”