Change of Heart (The Potentate of Atlanta Book 3) Page 23

  Baying rang out all around us, the pack at work keeping the roaches on the straight and narrow. I caught glimpses of Midas here and there. He was keeping an eye on me, and yeah, it made me all warm and gooey inside like caramel brownies fresh from the oven to know he was there if I needed him, but I tried not to read more into it than that.

  No more surprise visits from Remys let me hope that meant the coven situation was under control. They might require more time to mobilize than we first thought. Or maybe they were too confused by the bug parade to figure out how to counter it before we nuked their supply chain. A girl can hope, right?

  We made it two-thirds through our route without incident, and I started feeling, dare I say it, confident.

  Big mistake.

  Huge.

  That tiny spurt of optimism was all the encouragement required for doom to settle across the land.

  As we exited the city, bound for the “refuge,” a yelp set my heart pounding.

  “How much farther?” I leaned over Bishop’s shoulder. “Can we go any faster?”

  “About three miles.” He coaxed a blip of speed out of the truck. “This is all I got.”

  “Any faster,” Smythe worried, “and we’ll lose some.”

  Another outcry caused my sweaty palms to slip off the seat. “We’ve got company moving in fast.”

  No Remy magically appeared with an update, and One wasn’t answering her phone.

  That couldn’t be good.

  “There,” Bishop announced. “That’s where we’re headed.”

  I’m not sure how I expected a roach sanctuary to look, let alone a fake one, but this was a gaping hole in the earth. Literally. It was a pit with a thick reddish-brown ring crusting the upper edge.

  “What is that for?” Smythe wondered. “It’s rather large to be left open like that.”

  “Time to unload.” Bishop slammed on the brakes. “Smythe, take your gear to the far side of the hole.”

  I helped load him up, and he trotted off with Eustice at his heels. Bishop waited until the music picked up on Smythe’s end to kill the sound in the truck. I plopped down into the passenger seat and waited for Bishop’s grand plan to unfurl while Ambrose went to investigate the ring around the pit.

  “Smythe lures them to him, they fall in the hole, and then we trap them in a circle and blow it sky high.”

  As Bishop spelled it out, Ambrose relayed his surprise over discovering crystalized necromancer blood.

  Linus was forever tinkering, as the modified pen burning a hole in my pocket attested to, but this was next level genius if it worked. Dangerous as hell if it fell into the wrong hands, depending on the power of the necromancer who donated the blood—in this case, likely him—but still an extremely cool example of the inner workings of his mind.

  The crystals could prove invaluable for setting quick and dirty circles when relying on the modified pen or a brush and pot of ink would take too long. Dry granules would also work on uneven surfaces better than a wet medium. Assuming the desiccated form held as much power as the liquid.

  “How do we get them in the hole?” I rubbed my forehead. “There’s nothing to stop them from just walking around the edge.”

  “Hmm.” He drummed his fingers on the wheel. “I hadn’t gotten that far.”

  “This was your whole plan?”

  “Yes, this is my hole plan, and it’s a great plan,” he protested. “It’s not like I had long to improvise.”

  We climbed out as the first roach rustled past, and I threw up in my mouth a little. The way they ignored us, and the truck, inspired me to attempt what might save or damn Bishop’s half-cocked idea.

  “Smythe,” I called. “Throw your speakers into the pit.”

  The little man blustered and clutched them to his chest, but he got with the program when a golden gwyllgi padded out of the woods with a snarl on his lips. Eustice took great offense to Midas, but he cowered once Ford and Ares flanked their beta.

  “There.” He threw the equipment into the pit. “Are you satisfied?”

  The music stuttered and then stopped, and so did my heart. The fall had not been kind to the speakers. I had no clue how deep the pit was, but Bishop didn’t do things by half. I should have thought of that, but I was squicked out and panicking.

  About to suggest we fire up the truck and push it into the pit too, I sagged with relief when thin strains of music filtered into the night air, ensnaring the roaches.

  “Get ready.” Bishop pointed me toward the circle. “You’re going to power that beauty.”

  Ambrose, who couldn’t care less about our roach rodeo, shook his head firmly.

  “You don’t get a vote,” I warned him under my breath. “We need you.”

  The shadow was not impressed, but he didn’t push back, and I saw why soon enough.

  A blonde with crimson highlights and lipstick to match picked her way across the rough terrain.

  Even without a heads-up from Remy, I pegged her as coven.

  Ambrose all but licked his lips, game to be helpful all of a sudden.

  He must think I was an idiot. Granted, I had summoned him and bonded to him, so he had good reason to question my mental faculties, but come on. He wanted to spend every last drop of magic in him so he could replenish himself off her. That alone told me she wasn’t a person I wanted to tangle with if I could avoid it.

  “That’s the last roach.” Bishop shoved me. “Go set the circle.”

  The gwyllgi were closing in, one loner caught between them, but it leapt into the pit as I watched.

  “I’ll hold off the witchborn as long as I can.” He shoved me again. “Move it.”

  I broke into a run and yanked on Ambrose’s mental leash until he awarded me his full attention.

  “Salivate later.” I held my hand over the circle. “Power up now.”

  Crystalized blood wasn’t a medium I had ever worked with, but I assumed if Bishop had signed off on it, he had every confidence it would work.

  “Any time now,” I growled at Ambrose. “We need these bugs contained.”

  With great reluctance, he pushed magic into the circle. It snapped closed around the bugs, trapping them under a dome. I really hoped Bishop had thought to line the sides and bottom, or they could dig out before we got to the raging-inferno portion of his plan.

  Wobbling as I stood, I shook my head to clear it. Ambrose hadn’t been playing. He supercharged the circle, which was good for us, given the coven situation, but I tingled with the effects of his magical offload.

  Midas bounded up to me and leaned his bulk against my thigh. I scratched his ears while my balance returned. I was no good to anyone if I fell over and had to be rescued. Or worse, if I gave the coven a hostage.

  Bishop stood three feet from the blonde, and her eyes said she could have eaten him up with a spoon.

  “I owe you a boon.” She wet her lips. “Lucas was skimming, and the coven frowns upon that. We had eyes on his partner, but we couldn’t locate him. He was too careful. You solved that problem for us. Let us solve this problem for you.”

  “Problem?” He squinted at her. “Are you offering to solve yourself?”

  I had caught the tail end of their conversation, and it sounded like more recruitment garbage. They must not know Bishop at all if they thought they could sway him to the dark side so easily. Screw cookies. Weapons of mass destruction were his delight.

  “You’re wasting your talent,” she chided. “Why pretend you’re less when you’re so much more?”

  “Lady, you can take a flying leap into whatever hole you crawled from, or you can use ours. I’m not picky.”

  Eyes downcast, she pushed regret into her tone. “Have it your way.”

  Magic sizzled through the air, and she morphed into a massive bird of prey the size of a frakking giraffe. I had two brothers. I knew my dinosaurs. This resembled a Quetzalcoatlus. A storklike avian dinosaur with a thirty-something-foot wingspan that weighed over five hundred pounds. Except that
wasn’t terrifying enough. The reddish-orange scales striped down its front shimmered with heat, and sparks dripped from its feathered tail. This was more a prehistoric phoenix than mere dinosaur, and why not? I had already been exploded and hauled Mendelsohn from a bonfire. Why not roast my goose flying lizard style too?

  Smythe, despite having aquariums full of lizards at his facility, fainted dead away. I couldn’t tell if he was that overcome, or if he’d had a stroke. I was just glad he had climbed back into the ice cream truck first.

  A rumble of interest came from the gwyllgi, and a few licked their chops. I hadn’t seen them clearly until now, but there must be close to three dozen in all. Midas threw back his head and sang a hunting song. The others lifted his voice, and more furry shapes emerged from the woods in the opposite direction.

  Wargs.

  They traveled in two distinct groups, one much larger than the other. A female led the smaller pack, and a male with silver in his fur kept the rest in line.

  “The Clairmonts and the Loups?” I wondered out loud. “They’re the only packs in the area.”

  Their numbers made it unlikely they were hosts, but then again, we hadn’t known there were so many roaches infesting the city. With the wargs shifted, we had no way to communicate. The change would take too long, and it would leave the alphas vulnerable. They would never allow that, certainly not on a battlefield, and that’s exactly what they had walked onto.

  All we could do was wait and see which side they fell in on when the action started.

  And pray.

  That was probably as good an idea as any.

  “I hate to say this,” Bishop exhaled. “They’ve got us pinned between a pit and a hot place.”

  The Quetz was alone, and the coven traveled in pairs from what I had seen. There must be one more out here, but the wargs’ appearance worried me more. The size of the coven had yet to be determined. For all I knew, they were all hosts of one kind or another. We couldn’t put our backs to them until we knew, and we had run out of time to second-guess ourselves.

  The Quetz shot into the air, its wings igniting. It flew circles around the clearing, gliding lower and lower, until its sparks ignited the trees. They caught fire in a rush, and soon we were trapped in a ring of fire that spread too quickly and burned too hot to be anything but pure magic.

  Suddenly, I had an inkling of where they got the inspiration for the bomb they sent me.

  “What is with all the fire lately?” I flexed my newly healed fingers. “I’m not a fan.”

  “This might not be the best time to mention it,” Bishop hedged, “but dybbuks are vulnerable to fire.”

  “What?”

  “The exact reason is too complicated to get into right now, but it boils down to banishing shadow with light. Purification of evil through cleansing flame.”

  Unable to formulate a response, I spewed incoherent noises at him.

  “I researched it, after the bomb. The attack was so random. There had to be a reason for them to use an incendiary spell. They couldn’t have honestly believed you were stupid enough to keep the heart with you. And then Mendelsohn. He was crazed enough to dismember his pack but sat calmly in the fire until you pulled him out. The coven was controlling him through a charm or maybe the drug itself, so I get the how, but the why bugged me.” He flicked a glance at the pit. “No pun intended.”

  “This would have been great to know yesterday.”

  Granted, there wasn’t much accurate information on dybbuks. Since they had the nasty habit of going on killing sprees, they were put down as soon as they were identified. I ranked among the longest-lived ones, and it was all thanks to powerful friends sticking their necks out for me, believing that I would beat the odds.

  I had done nothing to deserve a second chance. That’s why I worked so hard to earn it.

  “Elemental fire can’t harm you.” He rubbed the base of his neck. “It has to be—”

  “—magical.”

  “Primal,” he corrected. “Say, from a prehistoric lizard bird of undetermined mythological origin.”

  “This ought to be fun then.”

  Without Ambrose, I was a plain Jane Low Society necromancer without a drop of power to my name. He was the jet fuel rocketing me toward the position of potentate, which I never could have held on my own. I wasn’t sure I could beat one coven member without him, let alone the others. This bird needed to go dredge itself in flour then jump into a hot fryer before we discovered if it meant true death for my shadow and me.

  If I killed the woman wearing the feathers now, the same creature could pop up in another coven member later. That’s how their magic worked. They were, for the most part, skinwalkers. Except all coven members could borrow from the same closet of victims. This look had to get yanked off the rack permanently.

  There would be no handy circle to protect me if I failed to escape the Quetz’s fire. That was a sobering thought. Worse was the realization I couldn’t protect my friends, or Midas, from what was coming.

  “I’ve got your back. So does the pack. We got this.” Bishop clamped his hands on my shoulders. “We got you.”

  The gwyllgi angled into a hunting formation, but they were at a disadvantage with the Quetz in the sky. All it had to do was wait, and the fire would take us out for it. It wouldn’t have to lose a single feather to end us.

  As I was thinking that, a smallish lizard with winglike flaps of membranous skin in mottled shades of orange and brown attached to either of its sides glided over the fire and landed before us. It expanded in a prickling wave of magic into the twisted form of an elderly man.

  And like magic, the second coven member appeared to us.

  “Give us the girl,” he warbled, “and we’ll let you live.”

  “I assume by girl,” Bishop clarified, “you mean Hadley.”

  “Just so.” He leaned heavily on a walking stick that materialized from thin air. “You all need not die.” He smiled at me, kind and grandfatherly. “You are far more powerful than we ever imagined, a true rarity of your kind. Your sacrifice for those you love will be remembered.”

  A meteor rocketed to the Earth and smashed into my skull. Okay, so it didn’t, but that’s how the dawning horror of my realization struck me. “You want my skin so you can rule Atlanta legitimately.”

  And they had brought the one thing guaranteed to annihilate me as their Plan B.

  “A near-bloodless coup,” he agreed, inclining his head. “Your cooperation would save many.”

  Near-bloodless coup, as if they hadn’t slaughtered dozens of Atlantans to reach this point.

  “Linus would know.” They could take my skin and my powers, but they couldn’t take Ambrose. Linus would know in a heartbeat I was not myself. “And he would not be happy.”

  The old man considered this. “Reparations could be made.”

  “You can’t afford to let all these people live knowing I’ve been hung in the coven’s coat closet.”

  “I could wipe their minds,” he offered casually. “They wouldn’t have to remember a thing.”

  “You think we’re going to let you in our heads?” Bishop barked out a laugh. “You could crush our minds with that kind of access.” He slashed a hand through the air. “Forget it.”

  The old man turned the walking stick in his hands. “You would prefer certain death?”

  “That’s all you’ve offered so far,” Bishop said. “You’ll have to do better.”

  “Her life is worth so much to you?” A line bisected his brow. “She’s a creature of darkness.”

  “We all have our dark sides,” Bishop countered. “She’s a good person.”

  “Good is subjective.” He sought my gaze. “You would let them die in your stead?”

  I had kept my mouth shut up to this point in the hopes Bishop could wiggle out of this with the others. Right now, it wasn’t sounding likely. The coven were a bunch of liars and murderers. We couldn’t trust them.

  “I would give my life for t
heirs in a heartbeat,” I said, and I meant it.

  “You were the right choice.” The old man nodded approval. “Your selflessness unifies others to your cause.” He stabbed his staff into the ground. “Your facsimile will rally them to ours nicely.”

  A calculating expression took hold on Bishop’s face, and his cunning shone through in chilling clarity. I had no idea what he had just realized, but it was vital to put that sparkle in his eyes.

  “Facsimile,” I echoed. “That’s classier than calling it what it is for sure.”

  “You’ve made your choice.” He bowed to me. “May your end come on swift wings.”

  Dark magic burned my sinuses, and he shifted to his winged lizard form. Lashing his tail, he leapt into the sky and flew to safety.

  That must have been the signal. The Quetz hadn’t attacked since spewing its initial flame, but now that peace talks had ground to a halt, it was back.

  A ballooning sense of dread trickled into me from Ambrose. “How do we knock it out of the sky?”

  “No clue.” Bishop’s lips hitched up on one side. “I’m flying by the seat of my pants here.”

  “Spoiler alert,” I interrupted him. “Your pants are on fire.”

  Midas strode into view, on two legs, his eyes on the sky. “What’s our play?”

  “I thought it was your turn to pack the plan. Don’t tell me you left it at home.”

  A smile touched his mouth, but it didn’t stick.

  “The Clairmont and Loup packs are here,” he said, “but I don’t know how much good they’ll do us.”

  “Can you tell if they’re clean?” I eyed them warily. “I didn’t tip them off, but that’s not saying much.”

  The phone tree had been activated in order to bring this many of my allies together. I couldn’t bank on the wargs until I knew if they were simply late to the party or if they were crashing via coven invitation.

  “They’re keeping downwind.” He watched them too. “I wouldn’t turn my back on them yet.”

  The Quetz swooped, opened its massive beak, and regurgitated flames that caught the brush on fire and blinded in their intensity. The line of smoldering heat bisected the pit, and all our worries about the pack’s allegiance got chucked out the window. They were now on the wrong side to help us either way.