“He’s fine.” Noah let his hand slide to rest on Lindsay’s throat, so he could feel the pulse skittering under Lindsay’s soft skin. Fast, but steady. Yes, he was fine. “You?”
“Piece of trash hit me.” Kristan pressed her sleeve to her cheek.
“Least it was a fair fight.” Noah couldn’t resist, even in the chaos.
“Fuck off and light me a cigarette,” she snapped. “And focus. I saw smoke back three blocks behind you.”
Focus. Right. Noah dug out his cigarettes while his mind wandered back, looking for the fire. This rearguard action was going to kill him, with the waiting and the not knowing and having to trust Cyrus and Dane. But this was his place. He cut another fire off at the roots and the flames blew away in the wind. It was better than he could have hoped for.
Dane hated driving the van. It was remarkably like the time he’d tried to ride a cow, and he wasn’t thinking about how many decades ago that had happened. Having Ylli in the van didn’t improve his temper. No matter how much he loved Vivian, her charges got on his nerves and had since he could remember. Ylli was a bright young man, but shy and withdrawn. There wasn’t anything he’d done to earn Dane’s animosity, it was just there.
In many ways, there wasn’t much difference between Ylli and Lindsay. The ways they were different, though, drove Dane half-mad. Dane’s pet name for Lindsay didn’t reflect Lindsay’s fierce nature and knack for self-preservation. Ylli was prey, and it distracted the hell out of Dane. Every feathery flutter and anxious twitch from the back of the van made Dane’s fingers itch as his claws threatened to come out.
“By the sea.” Cyrus reached out and locked his thin hand around Dane’s wrist. The last year had aged him so much that it made Dane want to howl some days. He kept telling himself he’d seen mages older and more wizened who were still going strong, but it didn’t keep the distress at bay. Every time he was close enough—and more and more he found ways to be close now that Lindsay had Noah—he soothed himself by listening to the sound of Cyrus’s heart.
“Everything here is by the sea, Cyrus.” Still, that did help him pick an exit.
“A long path, by the sea,” Cyrus hissed. The wind coming in the half-open window blew his long, silvered hair around like a cloud.
“There are some trails.” The constant clatter of Ylli’s fingers on the keys of his computer and the soft whistle of his breath were out of sync with the rush and wash of Cyrus’s blood. The world of Dane’s senses was rattled by the lack of harmony. He and Cyrus and Vivian had always been closely attuned, their every move and breath had become an instrument playing a constant symphony of living.
“No trails.” Cyrus let go of Dane’s wrist and leaned forward, glaring through the windshield. “The wheel.”
“I know where it is.” Dane pre-empted any offer of directions from Ylli. A Ferris wheel stood out against the sky, down by the boardwalk. “Put that thing away once you tell Vivian where we are.”
Despite working out where they needed to go, Cyrus looked angry as he sagged back in his seat. Dane didn’t want to ask. He didn’t want to know.
“What’s wrong?” he asked anyway, taking advantage of a lull in traffic to dig behind the seat until he came up with a bottle of water. “Here, have a drink.” It wasn’t cold, but it was spring water.
“Feh. Plastic.”
“You should have died sooner if you didn’t want to drink out of plastic. You knew it was coming.
You bought stocks in it.” Dane worked the cap off and shoved the bottle into Cyrus’s hand. “What’s wrong?”
“Things are too clear.” Cyrus scowled but drank.
Dane clenched both hands on the wheel and breathed slowly. He put his foot down on the gas, and they rocketed through an intersection with wildly blinking traffic lights. He could smell smoke and electricity and melted rubber.
“Clear is good,” he told Cyrus. “Don’t worry about it.”
Cyrus put the water down half-finished. “I can’t see her. We cannot have lost her already.”
Dane turned the wrong way down a one-way street behind the boardwalk and pushed the van to go as fast as he dared. There was a public parking lot, a little above the beach, and if they got out there, they could see most of the boardwalk.
“Something’s definitely happening,” Ylli chimed in from the backseat. He had a tiny phone that was all picture screen cradled in his hands. “People are talking about some kind of terrorist attack.”
“The truth would only distress them more,” Cyrus said dryly. He huddled in his seat, eyes narrowed, mouth set in a thin white line.
“We’ll get out in the confusion. Lindsay will make sure we don’t stand out for what we are.”
“Are you sure?” Ylli’s question was nearly lost in the nervous rustle of his wings.
They took a corner, almost on two wheels, and Dane cut off a Jeep headed for the parking lot. It looked like the power was out, someone had lifted the gates leading in and out of the parking lots and left them up. Better and better.
“Ask me that again and I’ll pluck you.” Dane took them all the way to the chain-link fence at the far edge of the lot. He could hear the cries and chaos already.
They ignored the chaos and made their way up a long ramp between sections of the boardwalk. The path to the pier on the far side of the boardwalk was cluttered with tourists and yellow trams that droned,
“Watch the tram car, please,” in a prerecorded nasal tone over and over, even though they were all stopped
on their cement paths. Past the carousel and the roller coasters, a Ferris wheel stood tall and still against the sky, riders screaming down from their unmoving baskets.
Aside from stopped rides and flickering lights, nothing here looked out of place, but the air told a different story. It was thick with panic and static and the unique scents of war. Aircraft fuel, gun oil, the sweat of soldiers and worse, all pricked at Dane’s senses. At the end of the pier, he could see the source.
In the distance, a long, sleek black limousine was parked askew on the boardwalk itself, and ATVs each bearing a driver and a passenger with an automatic rifle were prowling the sands like sharks below the helicopter pad at the end of the boardwalk. Dane grabbed Ylli by the wrist, planting his hand on Cyrus’s arm.
“Don’t let go of him. Don’t let anyone touch him.”
Another gust of wind brought more information. The acrid tang of it made him gag, not from what it was but from what it meant. Hounds. Moore was here. Cyrus had said the young mage couldn’t fall into the wrong hands, and Moore’s were the wrong hands, for certain. But he couldn’t smell Jonas, and that he didn’t understand. He’d have to wait for another day to get a shot at his oldest enemy.
“I won’t.” Ylli barely came up past Cyrus’s shoulder, but he had feral strength and endurance, even if he was prey.
A fountain of sparks went up as an empty ride spun down to its base and kept going, metal scraping against metal. Finally, it ground to a halt with a squeal of protest. Whatever was causing the disturbance was growing stronger. The mage Cyrus wanted found was afraid.
“They have her,” Cyrus said faintly. “And they know we have come.”
“Stay out of sight.” Dane pointed Ylli to where several families were clustered in the doorway of an ice cream parlor. The mixed scents might help hide them from the black-clad men loping their way. Men on the exterior, Dane reminded himself. On the outside only.
There was screaming from up ahead, and Dane had a glimpse of a young woman in a blue dress being half-carried onto the boardwalk. The new mage Cyrus had been talking about. She was young, younger than Lindsay from the look of her.
Dane wasn’t sure he could ever forgive Cyrus for picking this fight, the whole of it, but he didn’t have any choice but to stay the course now. He hoped like hell that—somehow—Lindsay was drawing attention from the action down here. The wind picked up, throwing a toppled tram across the boardwalk and smearing three of the Hounds as they bore down.