The Order.
This was nuts. But then beggars couldn’t be choosers.
“Robert, can you carry him?
“Yes. Where are we going?” Robert asked.
“The Order.”
“But they hate us,” Desandra forced through her teeth.
“The Order has a medmage on staff and the kind of wards it would take an army to breach. They’ll help anyone in need. We’re in need. They hate Hugh d’Ambray more than they hate us.”
At least I hoped they did. As much as Ted Moynohan despised me, he was still a knight-protector. He wouldn’t let my people die on the street in front of his chapter. And I was betting three lives on that.
• • •
THE ULULATING HOWLS of the Iron Dogs floated behind us, constant now, like an eerie, bone-chilling din. As soon as one ended, another started. How they could run and howl at the same time was beyond me. They had to be riding and they were getting closer. We had lost two precious minutes coaxing Cuddles to climb the trash around the Dumpster and we weren’t moving fast.
Desandra held Derek in the saddle in front of her. He’d gone completely limp. Her eyes were wild and she shivered as she rode. She wouldn’t last much longer. Next to me Robert ran silently, carrying Ascanio in his arms.
The streets crawled by, painfully slow. My side hurt so much now, I didn’t even anticipate the pain anymore. I just kept going.
A familiar storefront slid by. We had to be in range now.
I strained, trying to send a focused thought out into the world. “Maxine?”
The Order’s telepathic secretary didn’t answer.
“Maxine!” I whispered. Vocalizing helped sometimes. “Maxine!”
A familiar dry voice sounded in my head. “Hello, Kate.”
“I’m on New Peachtree, being pursued by supernatural creatures. I request protection for five people.”
Maxine paused. “Kate, the Order isn’t the safest place for you. Moynohan doesn’t view you as an upstanding citizen.”
Moynohan can bite me. “I have two injured teenagers, and one is dying. Tell Ted I’m running from Hugh d’Ambray.”
“Please stand by.”
We made a sharp left. The howls chased us, louder and louder. The street rolled out in front of us, completely empty. Ten more blocks to the Order. To my knowledge the Order’s wards had been breached only once and it took my aunt to do it. We had to make it behind those wards.
Hoofbeats. I turned.
Hugh rounded the corner. He was riding a huge black horse. A dozen men and women rode with him.
“Protection granted,” Maxine said in my head. “Please proceed to the Order chapterhouse.”
We wouldn’t make it. I stopped and turned to face the Iron Dogs, unsheathing my sword. Hugh wanted me. Hugh would get me. Be careful what you wish for.
“Down!” Mauro boomed behind me.
I dropped to the ground. The air whined as half a dozen arrows flew above my head and bit into the asphalt, falling feet short of Hugh’s horse.
The bolts pulsed once with bright blue. The night exploded. I caught a glimpse of Hugh’s giant black horse rearing.
I jumped to my feet and turned. Four knights of the Order walked toward us: Mauro, Richter, another man I didn’t know, and a redheaded woman with a buzz cut. They carried crossbows. Hello, cavalry. Behind them Robert was running full speed to the Order.
“Go, Kate!” Mauro waved at me.
The knights were reloading. I ran to the chapter.
The Order’s nondescript building loomed before me. Robert ducked through the doors. I squeezed one last burst of speed, dashed through the doors, and almost ran into two knights pointing loaded crossbows at me.
“Give me your sword,” the taller one said.
“I don’t think so.”
“I would do what he says, dear,” Maxine said in my head. “They’re under orders to shoot you if you don’t.”
9
THE ORDER HAD remodeled the Vault after my aunt scorched the place. The massive door was gone. Shields and weapons still hung on three walls, but the fourth was now lined with loup cages, the bars made of silver and steel alloy two inches thick. The Order had spared no expense and I was getting a lovely view of the bars from the wrong side.
I paced back and forth, while Robert lay next to me, stretched out on the floor of the cage, resting to let his body heal. If he overextended himself, the Lyc-V would shut him down for repairs and he wanted to stay conscious.
My side still hurt, and my ribs reminded me once in a while that they were there.
To the right, separated from my and Robert’s cell by bars, Derek and Desandra sprawled in their own cage asleep under blankets. The Order’s medmage, a tall man with a long braid of brown hair who went by Steinlein, had examined them and declared there was nothing he could do. The toxin was working its way through their systems and they would bounce back or they wouldn’t. He seemed to think they would, because once they had turned human, their wounds had closed, which was a good sign.
Through the bars, I could see Ascanio. He lay limp on a table in the open. They had chained his ankles and his wrists. The chains weren’t silver, but they were thick enough to hold him. Steinlein chanted over him, rocking back and forth. I couldn’t tell if his chanting was doing anything. The boy didn’t look any better.
I felt so hollow, as if someone had gutted me. I didn’t know about whom to worry more, Ascanio dying or Derek and Desandra barely breathing.
The redheaded female knight with the buzz cut—Steinlein had called her Diana—watched us. Next to her a lean, muscular knight in his late twenties was giving me his version of a hard stare. He was carrying a tactical sword. A long scar crossed his face from his short blond hair to his chin. They both seemed convinced that if one of them looked away for a second, I’d escape from the locked cage and explode the Order.
“You keep staring, you’ll set me on fire,” I told them.
Neither of them answered. Great.
Mauro stepped into the vault.
“Did you call the Pack?” I asked him
“The phones are out,” he said.
Can I just fucking catch a break?
“But I sent a courier to Atlanta Medical, asking for assistance,” Mauro said. “They’ve got a new satellite office about four miles from here.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“It won’t help,” Steinlein said. “His chest and everything inside it is crushed. If he were weaker, he would be dead already. I’m only delaying the inevitable.”