Part 22 (2/2)
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.
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