I knew what was waiting on the other side. I looked down, taking inventory. Cube, dreamstone, shoes and socks, tattered trousers, shredded T-shirt, a set of armour too badly injured to use. None would be of use in the coming fight.
The bubble’s collapse was drawing near. I let the futures settle into one with ten seconds remaining, then stepped through the gate and back to Earth.
chapter 12
I came down onto a stone floor. Behind me, the gate winked out, and an instant later I felt something shift and tear. The statue didn’t break or shatter, but the life seemed to go out of it. No one was going to be using it as a gateway anymore.
“Well, well,” a voice said. “Look who’s here.”
I was back in the mansion storeroom. I turned and saw Onyx.
And Pyre.
And half a dozen other guys standing around them.
And even more standing around them.
The storeroom was packed, Onyx’s gang filling it to standing room only. They formed a semicircle around me, the closest no more than ten feet away. They ranged from teens to as old as their thirties, some showing tattoos and jewellery, hairstyles ranging from dreadlocks to shaven. They carried an assortment of weapons from handguns to knives to AK-47s to a hand grenade; one held a steel chain and another a sawn-off shotgun. Those with no visible weapons radiated magic instead: one had claws growing from his hands, and another was juggling a fireball. The looks on their faces were hungry, predators eyeing a meal.
“Surprised?” Onyx said. The Dark mage was slender and whip-quick, dressed in black with gold flashes. He wore an unpleasant smile, and his eyes were cold. “We put in a sink ward. Guess you’re staying.”
I finished my count. Seven adepts with one type or another of combat magic: four elemental, two living, and an illusionist. Seventeen normals, sensitives, or noncombat adepts, all armed. Onyx and Pyre. And one more. Pyre had Selene at his feet, one hand tangled in her hair.
Pyre met my gaze and smiled. He was good-looking, with blue eyes and messy blond hair. “Hey, Verus.” He yanked on Selene’s hair, pulling her head back; she flinched but didn’t make a sound. “Found your little helper.”
“Give me the fateweaver,” Onyx told me.
I looked back at him silently.
“I’m tired of your shit, Verus,” Onyx said. “Every time this happens you run away. Well, this time you’re in a room that’s warded and sealed. You aren’t gating and your elemental isn’t getting through the doors. So I’m only going to ask one more time. Give me that fateweaver.”
“Don’t kill him yet,” Pyre said. “I want him to call Cinder’s boy. I knew he’d—”
“Shut up,” Onyx said clearly, and Pyre did. Onyx didn’t take his eyes off me. “You’ve got five seconds.”
I looked around and addressed the crowd. “Lay down your weapons and you can leave.”
The room burst into laughter. The adepts and normals jeered, shouted insults. It was apparently the best joke they’d heard in a long time. Pyre was laughing too. Only three people stayed silent. Onyx, Selene, and me.
As the laughter died away, Pyre’s eyes fell on my arm. “Hey, look at his hand. That’s it, isn’t it?”
Onyx didn’t take his eyes off me. “Cut it off.”
“Wait!” someone called, and one of the boys stepped out. It was Trey. His ear was bloody, and his expression as he looked at me was ugly. “I owe him.” He pulled out a machete, the blade nearly a foot and a half, gleaming in the light.
I crouched and laid my armour down on the floor, folding it neatly and setting the cube on top of it. Trey stalked towards me. “You ripped out my rings, you piece of shit,” he told me. I could see the bloody marks on his right ear, and his fingers were bandaged where I’d bitten him. He bared his teeth, lifting the machete for a downward strike.
I blocked, hit the weapon openhanded on the hilt. It flew out of Trey’s grip, making two complete circles before I caught it and turned the motion into a spin. Trey was still staring up when I slashed open his throat.
“Kill him!” Pyre shouted.
The room erupted, shouts and gunfire echoing in the confined space. I was already moving, darting away from the dying Trey and into the middle of the people surrounding me. The first one made the mistake of trying to stand and fire. I slashed his hand and kept moving.
Relying on divination for fights is dangerous. You can look ahead, see immediate threats, but it’s chaotic: everything is changing and you can’t reliably see more than a few seconds ahead. With the fateweaver, everything was different. I could pick out a reasonably probable future and decide that this was what would happen. I didn’t need to keep checking to see what my opponents would do: I could choose what they’d do and pick a counter at my leisure.
Three of Onyx’s gang surrounded me, two wielding a switchblade and a combat chain, and an adept using force-enhanced punches. The knifer came in for a grab, and I chose an angle of attack that would expose his arm, then pivoted into a cut that half severed his hand. He went down screaming; the adept tried for a blow that would have broken my spine, and I twisted away and stabbed on the reverse. My back was to him but I’d already decided exactly where he was going to be. The machete went through his stomach and he collapsed, pulling the weapon out of my hand as he fell.
The guy with the combat chain advanced, links whirring in an arc. He was joined by another adept, this one bare-handed with death magic at his fingers. Behind I could see half a dozen more levelling guns and spells, but they were blocked by their allies. I analysed the incoming attack pattern in a fraction of a second, identified the point of greatest vulnerability, and manipulated the futures to ensure I’d be in a position to exploit it. The first two swings of the chain missed; I caught the third, pivoted to kick the death adept’s centre mass. He slammed against the statue, and I tangled the chain wielder with his own weapon, then tripped him to let him fall against me with the chain taut around his neck. Trey’s body was near my feet and I used the chain wielder as a shield while pulling Trey’s handgun from its holster. The death adept was just getting back to his feet when I shot him through the chest.
“Shoot him!” Pyre shouted.
The chain wielder thrashed frantically, reaching out towards the people aiming guns and trying to say something that could have been “no.” A couple hesitated; most didn’t. I let go and spun behind the statue as the chain wielder died under a hail of gunfire.
The chatter of automatic weapon fire filled the room, bullets sparking off the statue and whining past my ears. I checked Trey’s pistol calmly as the bullets flew past. Two rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber. Six gun users: four on the left, two on the right. The one on the far left was firing wildly, and I noted his ammo expenditure. Three, two, one, go.
The rifle clicked on an empty chamber, and I was already stepping out from behind the statue, taking a marksman’s stance. The guy with the rifle was looking down at his weapon when my shot exploded his head. Fire tracked in on me; I selected a future where the shots missed, and aimed carefully as the bullets whined past. Headshot the second guy, reacquire, track, headshot the third. The fourth scrambled for cover as I stepped back behind the statue.
Magic surged from the other side of the room: Pyre and the fire adept were bracketing me with flame blasts. I twisted the futures, broke into a sprint, heat washing over my back as I burst into the open. Pyre and the adept tried to track my movements; I threw the empty gun at Pyre, rolled and snatched up a knife, threw that too. Pyre threw up a shield that deflected the gun. The adept couldn’t shield and the knife took him in the eye. He twisted as he felclass="underline" fire gouted from his hands and turned the gunman next to him into a blazing torch.