Retrievers - Burning Bridges Part 27

*we've been played, * she told it. *there's not a single person out here who has a clue about anything other than kill the monsters and their turncoat human allies.*

*you're certain?*

*absolute. whoever's pulling the strings, they didn't come out to play.*

*we're going to have to up the stakes, * the Quad-mind said grimly, then broke off contact.

"Up them how?" Wren asked the empty air, then used some of Sergei's better Russian swearwords as she saw what was coming toward the bridge on the Manhattan side.

"Please G.o.d, don't n.o.body swing at a cop...."

"This is the New York Po-" The loudspeaker squawked and then died as current hit it. The truck rolling into the fray came to a stop at the start of the bridge, unable to move forward as the fight continued to rage. There had been a lot of frustration building over the past year, and the mere appearance of a dozen cops in riot gear wasn't going to slow that down.

Tear gas, though, did the trick. Within minutes, cops in gas masks had a dozen or more of the human population face down on the pavement, most of them handcuffed to the railings. The smaller fatae slipped away, the cops either not noticing them or choosing-for whatever reason-to let them go.

Some of the force probably still remembered working with a partner who seemed more than a little...off, or unusual. The rest just didn't want to deal with the ha.s.sle of trying to book an illegal immigrant, no matter where they might have emigrated from. And at least one cop, when brought up face-to-face with a tall figure with a six-point rack of antlers growing from its head, made a shallow bow and then went on with his job.

Trusting her no-see-me, Wren slipped closer, then was driven back by the remaining fumes. Without a gas mask, going any closer in would end up with her flat on the ground, as well, and still invisible.

This was not how it was supposed to go, she thought grimly. d.a.m.n it, what are you guys planning? She had to believe that they still had a plan, that their "higher stakes" hadn't involved the pulling up of, and b.u.g.g.e.ring out.

*Valere!*

A cry for help, a warning, a hard slap between the shoulder blades; the ping was all that and a visual of a spear incoming, crackling with current-fire.

"What the he-"

The heavy thwap-sound of wings was the only warning she got before a great heavy shadow fell over her, and a griffin grabbed her, none too gently, in its talons. They were up off the bridge before Wren had the chance to draw breath. By the time she'd recovered from that shock, and could breathe again, the griffin swooped down in a dizzying dive, and dropped her. The landing, palms and knees on hard pavement, knocked the next breath out of her lungs, and she collapsed as though someone had landed a kidney-punch.

The blow of current did hit her in the kidneys, and sent her sprawling facedown onto the pavement. She rolled more from instinct than thought, her body moving when she would have sworn it couldn't.

"Wren, get up!" A voice-Rick's voice, urgent.

She got up, moving low and back on her heels, pivoting and scanning for the threat.

She hadn't faced off against another Talent since...since Max almost killed her, when she tried to prod the old wizzart into helping her. Not like this, not in a pure contest of current.

She pulled double handfuls of current up and formed a s.h.i.+eld with it; trying to buy herself time to figure out what the h.e.l.l that d.a.m.ned griffin had dropped her into the middle of.

The bridge loomed to their right, the possible escape of sidewalks and buildings blocked by a tall metal fence. She could maybe make it over, maybe not. Escape wasn't the point.

"You okay?" Rick asked.

"Stupid question, " she said, feeling him take her back. They were surrounded by half a dozen...kids, was all Wren could think, although some of them probably weren't much younger than she was. Behind her, the biker-Talent's bulk wasn't as comforting as it should have been; the blood splattering on the ground wasn't hers, and it didn't seem to belong to their attackers.

"What the h.e.l.l..."Keep moving, Valere, keep moving...

"I think we've found the ones who killed that angel."

"I think you're right."

They were under the bridge now, the pale red brick arching overhead, turning every sound into an echo. The ground underneath was bare; it was a gift, that no snow had been plowed into the alcove, or worse, allowed to melt and freeze into ice.

Out of the corner of her eye, Wren saw a figure move; part of her brain recognized it as Michaela even as a blast of current took the woman square in the chest, and she went down. The gypsy representative rolled onto her side, and didn't move again.

"Don't look, " she said quickly, even as Rick started to react. "Don't look, don't think. Right now, it's just us here, us against them, and worrying about anyone else is going to get you-and me-killed. Do you have any defensive training at all?"

His snort was better than she'd expected. "Good. You do your bit, I'll do mine."

She could have disappeared. But that would have meant leaving him the only available target. Escape isn't the point.

Oh the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l it's not!

He lunged away from her side, his arm and leg sweeping out in a move she vaguely recognized as some kind of kung fu judo-thing. It didn't take his opponent down, but it moved him past them, forcing three of the five to turn and deal with him, while the sixth was kneeling over Michaela, preparing to...

A shock ran through Wren's system, and she felt her gorge rise. Oh Christ be merciful. The boy was sucking her core.

It was anathema, like eating human flesh-worse than eating human flesh. Like consuming a person's soul, raping the essence of what they were, taking their power and their sense of self away, and feeding it into his own core...

Anathema not only for the harm it did to the victim, but for what it did to the taker, as well. Current was touched by the signature of the user; the longer the current was in contact, the stronger the signature. The core, the storage of all the power a Talent kept within herself constantly? It had a signature like John Hanc.o.c.k's. Taking that inside you, you ran the risk of losing your own self, if the person you ate was stronger.

Even as the shock was traveling through Wren's system, she was peeling off a strip of her s.h.i.+eld and fas.h.i.+oning it into a weapon. The two remaining...whatever-they-weres, she couldn't call them Talent, not after what she'd seen them doing-moved toward her, and she shuddered at the expressions on their faces; blank, not angry or aggressive or happy or mad...not even hungry. Not even alive.

Stoking up the bright neon hum of her core, Wren dived into the solid ma.s.s of current, let herself be swallowed up in it, and came out the other side.

"Back off, b.i.t.c.hes, " she said to the nearest opponent, and slammed the woman with everything she had.

It wasn't enough.

"Sergei Didier."

Sergei had only met Duncan a handful of times, but he had heard about him from his very first day within the Silence. Duncan was the head of R&D, the memory and money of the Silence. He was fast, smart, ruthless, and above all loyal: rumor said that he was the handpicked successor of the original founders, the man chosen to hold the organization together on the daily level, while the top levels went about looking after longer-term goals.

Somewhere along the line, Duncan became the source of inspiration-and awe. He ran his department with a gloved hand that nonetheless could feel the pulse of every creature held inside it, from the newest, rawest recruit all the way up to the top floors where Andre worked.

n.o.body feared him, exactly. But everyone was wary of him. And n.o.body crossed him.

Sergei had recognized KimAnn for what she was, because he had seen it in its final stages, in Duncan.

"You're far from your master, Poul, " Sergei said to Duncan's companion.

Poul Jorgenmunder had the same training Sergei'd had; he didn't let the comment do more than roll off his back.

"Ah. I see." And Sergei did. Andre had been stripped of his right-hand man, at a time when he was trying to rally his team against the forces working against him. Forces, clearly, that Duncan led. Sergei wondered if the old man knew. And if he knew how futile his struggles would-inevitably-be.

When Sergei had still been with the Silence, Duncan had been a power to reckon with. A decade later, he had clearly gained even more control over the organization.

Sergei risked a glance down the street; the bridge was engulfed in what looked like fireworks. Current, he knew, and knew as well that there would be more than his purely human eyes could see. Sirens flashed and wailed in the morning light, and he had to look away, not be distracted.

"You've set all this in motion. Why?"

Duncan simply stood there, coolly watching him, but Poul was more than willing to respond. "You said it yourself." He recited, clearly quoting: "'Strange beasts, a variety of species. Considered an undercla.s.s of the Cosa , the Council does not deal with them, and most of the lonejacks interact only spa.r.s.ely.'"

Sergei's own words; taken from one of his very first reports after meeting the fatae, years before.

"You memorized my earlier works. How touching."

Poul's expression tightened, and he would have moved forward toward Sergei if Duncan hadn't stopped him with a simple hand gesture.

Heel, dog, Sergei thought.

The car door opened. Sergei braced himself, but didn't look. The tap-tap-tap of expensive shoes on the pavement came to him, and even before the third man came into his line of sight, Sergei knew who it was.

"Andre. So much for your attempts to help." He didn't even try to hide the bitterness in his voice: he had known that his former boss would try to use them, had accepted that. He hadn't thought the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d would lie to him. But then, why was he surprised? n.o.body trusted anyone, it seemed. And with good reason.

Andre met his gaze squarely. "I agreed that we needed to discover who was behind all of this. Now I know."

"And knowing is all that's important?'

"Knowing is power, boy. You know that."

Poul smiled, seemingly rea.s.sured by having both of his masters to heel behind, and continued quoting Sergei's own words back to him: "'This country has enough problems without having to worry about these...animals, in our midst, using our resources and not giving back anything in return.'"

Sergei felt claws rip inside his rib cage, hearing his own youthful, stupid, ignorant-bigoted-words said back to him in Poul's voice, carrying with them a ring of conviction even he, the original speaker, had never been able to manage. A True Believer, he'd thought once about Andre's newest protege. He hadn't known how true it was.

It was different now, for him. Those fatae had names, the species had characteristics and quirks attached to them. Piskies were prank-players. Griffins kept their young with them through young adulthood, and then sent them off to another herd to find mates. Nausunni could hiss even without sibilants. Demon were loyal. Rock dragons were not to be trifled with, for all that they were the size of Great Danes.

Some of the fatae weren't exactly brain surgeons. Some of them shouldn't be allowed to handle anything more advanced than a spoon. And some of them...

He thought of s.h.i.+g, the j.a.panese fatae he had met over the summer. The lizard like being was a shrewd businessman, with a wry sense of humor and excellent taste in artwork. He, and P.B. and Wren had spent an evening together during the summer, arguing about music, of all things, over dinner at Noodles. The little lizard had helped introduce Sergei to a number of influential dealers and artists in his native j.a.pan, smoothing the way for an eventual business deal, down the road.

s.h.i.+g. P.B. Rorani the dryad. The unknown breed that had saved them, when the vigilantes attacked the All-Moot. Beyl the griffin, and her gnome a.s.sistant whose name Sergei still didn't know. The piskies, flying pains in the posterior, but not animals, not if this...thing in front of him that looked and spoke like a man, was also not an animal.

They justified their actions on words...his words.

Sergei choked back the bile he felt rising, accepting the acidic burn in his chest as just payment for his once-ignorance.

Yes. Knowledge was power.

"You knew the truth once, " Duncan said. "I don't expect you to fall into line now. There has been too much water under that bridge. But you need not destroy yourself trying to prevent what must be, what you yourself saw, so many years ago. Andre has kept you and your partner from falling into this mora.s.s. She is not with them out there on that bridge. You are not with them. Turn around and go home, let us clean this up. And all will be well for you both. My word on it."

"Don't be an idiot!" And P.B. was there, snarling, the thick fur around his neck hackling like a dog's as he glared at Poul and Duncan. Sergei felt dizzy, disconnected. How had the demon found him? Why wasn't he out there, fighting with the rest of his kind? And where was Wren? Wren. That was his focus.

"They're using you as justification for what they wanted to do anyway, " P.B. said. "You're not part of them, not anymore. And neither is Wren."

"No..." The demon was right, Sergei knew he was right, but that didn't release him from his own guilt. Or his responsibility.

"You shouldn't be here, " he said to the fatae, never taking his eyes off the three humans before him.

"You looked like you needed help." And the demon flexed his thick black claws to ill.u.s.trate what he meant. "I can-"

"No, " Sergei said again. Beyond them, the battle raged, and he couldn't do anything about it. And Wren was there, he knew it. Could feel it, no matter what Duncan said. His spies and scans couldn't see her, but Sergei could. He always could. But he couldn't go to her, not with this weighing on his hands.

"This is for me to deal with, " he told the demon. "You have your own job to do. Go. Protect her. With your last breath, your dying body..."

P.B. looked hard at the human, his dark red eyes unblinking, then nodded once and slipped into the fire-lit dawn, leaving Sergei alone with the Silence members.

"So, " Andre said. "What now?"

"We finish the job, " Duncan said. "As we have always planned to do."

Maybe in the past, magic-users had fought glorious battles, throwing powerful thunderbolts around and laughing madly with a full accompaniment of flying monkeys or crazed warriors, or whatever it was they used to do.

Or maybe that was all Hollywood. If so, Wren was going to be witness for the prosecution that Hollywood didn't know s.h.i.+t.

Her jeans were torn in a dozen places, and her hair had been singed so much that she was surprised her ears weren't smoking. Blood and sweat kept running into her eyes, and her palms were abraded from falling down so often.

Her only consolation was that, if she looked like the tail end of a bad knife fight, her opponent looked just as bad.

No. It's not a consolation at all.

The woman facing her wasn't all that powerful. No more so than Rick had been, before he'd been taken out by another of the...what did you call them? Enemy seemed too overblown, even if that's what they were. Evil wizards? Unaffiliateds? That was what the Council used to call lonejacks; maybe it was time to pa.s.s the term on?

This woman facing Wren wasn't a match, on a basic power-level. None of them had been. But Wren had quickly learned that the empty expressions, the blank stares, were indicators that something-or someone-had driven these Talent to within a hair's breadth of wizzing, of overloading internally from current and going mad.

Once that happened, the Talent no longer has the sense G.o.d gave a gnat, and doesn't think to protect him or herself anymore. It created a pa.s.sive death wish-but also allowed them to channel an obscene amount of current, because there was nothing there, not even the instinct to survive, to slow it down anymore.

What it meant, on a practical level, was that even the weakest of Talent could do amazing things, channel awesome forces.

It also meant, practically, that Wren was getting her a.s.s kicked. The only reason that she was still standing was because-except for a few major blockages, like the one that kept her from being able to Translocate easily-she was almost as Pure as the woman facing her. And she'd had longer to learn how to use that much current.

But she also wanted to live, and in this particular knife fight, that was a distinct disadvantage.

Got to keep standing, she thought. So long as I keep standing...

The line of current running along her spine, protecting her limbs from physical a.s.sault, hissed and snapped like a downed wire, and she forced herself to strengthen it. But there was so little left to call on: current had to be controlled, and in order to maintain control you had to be firmly grounded. Manhattan bedrock was usually responsive, but the ground under her feet had too many lines already running into it, and every time she tried to reach for better grounding, her reach kept getting tangled in theirs. Too d.a.m.n much Talent in this city.

And disturbing someone else's grounding might mean dislodging the only thing that was keeping them alive, those bodies still and b.l.o.o.d.y around her.

The ones who had been taken off by the police, the ones who had stayed on the bridge, were the lucky ones. They would live to see tomorrow. Whatever tomorrow brought, in a city where Talent had been turned against their own kind. But there was no such refuge for her; whether by external interference or random chance, the police hadn't come to the side of the bridge, focusing only on the humans actively fighting in plain sight. This battle raged without interference.

Overhead, too far overhead, a griffin wheeled. She wished it safe, and away.

"Die, witch, " the woman hissed, and raised her arm to strike again. Current flashed from underneath her fingers, indigo and olive-green; muddy, ugly colors, but still d.a.m.ned powerful. Wren wasn't able to block all of it, this time, and only the sudden hard weight knocking into her ribs, pus.h.i.+ng her aside, kept her from going down for the count.

*ground in me*

An intrusion into her brain, the voice unfamiliar and yet immediately recognizable, alien and a part of her she accepted, reached for instinctively.