Dead Beat

I got a cold feeling in my chest.

This man could kill me.

"The book, boy," Cowl said. "Now."

What rose up in me then wasn’t outrage or terror. It wasn’t righteous wrath. It wasn’t confidence, or surety, or determination to protect a loved one. It was 100 percent pure, contrary stubbornness. Chicago was my town. I didn’t care who this joker was; he wasn’t going to come gliding down the streets of my town and push in my teeth for my milk money.

I don’t get pushed around by anyone.

Cowl was strong, but his magic wasn’t inhuman. It was huge, and it was different from what I worked with, but it didn’t have that nauseating, greasy, somehow empty feel that I’d come to associate with the worst black magic. No, that wasn’t entirely true. There was a lingering sense of black magic involved in his power. Then again, there’s a little of it in mine, too.

The point being that Cowl wasn’t some kind of demon. He was a wizard. Human.

And, behind the magic, just as fragile as me.

I poured power down my arm, whirled my staff, pointed it at the car on the street beside him, and snarled, "Forzare!"

The sigils on the staff burst into sudden, hellish scarlet light, as bright as the blaze of my shield, and shimmering waves of force flowed out from me. They flooded out over the sidewalk, under the Toyota parked on the street nearest Cowl. I snarled with effort, and the Hellfire force abruptly lashed up, underneath the street side of the car. The car flipped up as lightly and quickly as a man overturning a kitchen chair. Cowl was under it.

There was a crash, and Hell’s bells, it was loud. Glass shattered everywhere, and sparks flew out in every direction. The car’s alarm went off, warbling drunkenly, and alarms started going off all up and down the street. In apartment windows, lights started blinking on.

I fell to one knee, suddenly exhausted, the light from staff and shield both dwindling to nothing and vanishing. I had never moved that much mass before, that quickly, with nothing but raw kinetic energy, and I could hardly find enough energy to focus my eyes. If I hadn’t had the staff to lean on, I’d have been hugging the sidewalk.

There was the sound of metal grating on concrete.

"Oh, come on," I said panting.

The car shuddered, then slid a few inches to one side. Cowl straightened slowly. He’d gotten back to the very rear of the car’s impact area somehow, and he must have been able to shield himself from the partial impact. As he straightened he wavered, then braced himself against a streetlight with one black-gloved hand. I felt a surge of satisfaction. Take that, jerk.

A low growling sound came warbling out of the black hood. "The book."

"Bite," I panted, "me."

But he hadn’t been talking to me. Kumori stepped out of the shadows of a doorway and gestured with a whispered word.

I felt a sudden, strong tug at my duster’s pocket. The flap covering it flew up, and the slender book in its paper bag started sliding out.

"Ack," I managed, which was all the repartee I was up for at the moment. I rolled and trapped the book between my body and the ground.

Kumori extended her hand again, and more forcefully. I slid two feet over the concrete, until I braced a boot against an uneven joint in the sidewalk and saw movement behind the two figures. "Game over," I said. "Stop it."

"Or what?" Cowl demanded.

"Ever see Wolfen?" I spat.

Wolves appeared, just freaking appeared out of the Chicago night. Big wolves, refugees from a previous epoch, huge, strong-looking beasts with white fangs and savage eyes. One was crouched on the wrecked Buick, within an easy leap of Cowl, bright eyes fastened on him. Another had appeared behind Kumori, and a third leapt lightly down from a fire escape, landing in a soundless crouch in front of her. One appeared on either side of me, and snarls bubbled out of the night.

More lights were coming on. A siren wailed in the night.

"What big teeth they have," I said. "You want to keep going until the cops show up? I’m game."

There wasn’t even a pause for the two cloaked figures to look significantly at each other. Kumori glided to Cowl’s side. Cowl gave me a look that I felt, even if I couldn’t see his face, and he growled, "This isn’t-"

"Oh, shut up," I said. "You lost. Go."

Cowl’s fingers formed into a rigid claw and he snarled a word I couldn’t quite hear, slashing at the air.

There was a surge of power, darker this time, somehow more nebulous. The air around them blurred, there was the sudden scent of mildew and lightless waters, a sighing sound, and as quickly as that, they were simply gone.

"Billy," I said a second later, angry. "What the hell are you doing? Those people could have killed you."

The wolf crouching on the wrecked car looked at me, and dropped its mouth open into a lolling grin. It leapt over the broken glass to land beside me, shimmered, and a second later the wolf was gone, replaced by a naked man crouching beside me. Billy was a little shorter than average, and had more muscle than a Bowflex commercial. Medium brown hair, matching eyes, and he wore a short beard now that made him look a lot older than when I’d met him years ago.

Of course, he was older than when I’d met him years ago.

"This is my neighborhood," he said quietly. "Can’t afford to let anyone make me look bad here." He moved with quick efficiency, getting a shoulder under one of mine and hauling me to my feet by main strength. "How bad are you hurt?"

"Bruises," I said. The world spun a little as he hauled me up, and I wasn’t sure I could have stood on my own. "Little wobbly. Out of breath."

"Cops will be here in about seventy seconds," he said, like someone who knew. "Come on. Georgia ‘s in the car at the other end of this alley."

"No," I said. "Look, just get me to my car. I can’t be…" I couldn’t be seen with him. If Mavra was watching me, or having me tailed, it might mean that she would release the dirt she had on Murphy. But I damn sure couldn’t just explain everything to him. Billy wasn’t the sort to stand by when he saw a friend in trouble.

And I was damned lucky he wasn’t. I hadn’t had much left in me but some hot air when Cowl had stood up again.

"No time," Billy said. "Look, we’ll get you back here after things calm down later. Christ, Harry, you crushed that car like a beer can. I didn’t know you were that strong."

"Me neither," I said. I couldn’t get to my car on my own. I couldn’t afford to be seen with Billy and the Alphas. But I couldn’t allow myself to get detained or thrown into jail, either. Never mind that if Cowl and his sidekick had found me, there might be other interested parties after me, too. If I kept showing my face on the streets, someone would tear it off for me.