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I took a step toward the ruins. A figure dashed from behind the wall with preternatural speed, veered left, and jumped. It sailed through the air, clearing the six-foot-tall wall with a couple of feet to spare, and vanished from view.
Alrighty, then.
I jogged to the spot where the person had been hiding, comparing the memory to the wall. Whoever it was, he or she wasn’t very tall, near five feet. Swaddled in some sort of drab garment. Not much to go on. Chasing the person through the ruins wasn’t an option. I’d never catch up, not with that kind of speed.
Who would want to keep tabs on me? No way to know. I’d pissed off a lot of people. For all I knew, it could be one of the Steel Mary’s flunkies. Assuming he had flunkies.
I headed back to my apartment, dog in tow. “If this person is following me, he or she will continue to do so. Sooner or later, I’ll snag them,” I told him. “If you’re really good, I’ll let you bite them first.”
The attack poodle wagged his tail.
“What we need now is something to eat and a nice shower.”
More adoring wagging. Well, at least one creature in this Universe thought my plans were genius.
I heard the phone ringing when I unlocked the door. Phones were funny things: sometimes magic took them out, and sometimes it didn’t. When I desperately needed it, the damn thing failed, but when I didn’t want to be bothered, it worked like a charm. I got inside and picked it up. “Kate Daniels.”
“Kate!” The frantic note in the Clerk’s voice knocked the sleep right out of me. “We’ve been hit!”
CHAPTER 5
I DROPPED THE PHONE AND DASHED DOWN THE stairs, slapping the door shut in the poodle’s face. I cleared six flights of stairs in seconds, sprinted across the parking lot, unlocked my garage, got Marigold out, mounted, and we thundered out of the parking lot.
We turned up the street, nearly plowing into a cart. Marigold thudded up the wooden ramp onto the highway. The ruined city dashed by me, a long smudge of wrecked buildings and overcast sky.
The Mercenary Guild occupied a converted Sheraton Hotel on the edge of Buckhead. I brought Marigold to a halt before the thick iron gates, jumped down, grabbing a canteen of kerosene I used to obliterate my blood, and took off, praying that whatever disease the magic hit man induced wouldn’t go active.
I dashed through the gates into the lobby and nearly collided with the Clerk. A huge red welt marked his face and his left eye was rapidly swelling shut. “Inner hall!” he yelled.
“Did you call Biohazard?”
“Yes!”
The inner door hung crooked on its hinges. I ran through the doorway and into the inner hall.
The Sheraton was built as a hollow tower. In its other life, the inner hall housed an on-the-premises restaurant, a coffee shop, and a happy hour area, raised on a platform above the main floor, and a gift shop. The old photographs showed a small stream winding through it all, flanked by carefully selected plants, its waters sheltering huge surly koi. At the far wall, an elevator shaft of transparent plastic rose up to the fourth floor.
The happy hour platform now held the job board, the gift shop contained one of the numerous armories, and the restaurant had been converted into a mess hall, where tired mercs filled their stomachs between jobs. The elevator no longer worked, the plants, stream, and koi had vanished years ago, and the main floor lay bare.
The first thing I saw was the body of Solomon Red, pinned to the elevator shaft by a spear through his throat.
Three mercs rapidly drew a chalk warding semicircle around the body. Another dozen hugged the walls. I grabbed the first warm body. “Where is he?”
“Gone,” the merc woman told me. “About five minutes ago.”
Damn. I was too late.
Solomon’s body swelled, expanding.
“Back up!” I barked, in tune with two other voices.
The mercs scattered.
A flood of blood and feces drenched the clear plastic, gushing to the floor to form a wide puddle. The stench hit us. People gagged.
The body shriveled, drying up right before my eyes like some sort of mummy. I didn’t need Patrice to diagnose that for me. I’ve seen that before. It had the same name in English, Spanish, and Russian—cholera. Only this one was on magic steroids.
The foul puddle turned black. A shiver ran along the surface. The liquid slithered, testing the chalk edge of the ward circle, and rolled right over it, heading right. I glanced in that direction and saw an old drain in the floor, a remnant of the koi brook. Cholera spread through water.
“It’s going for the drain!” I sprinted before it, pouring kerosene across the tile. Behind me, Bob Carver struck a match, setting the fuel stream on fire.
The puddle reached the flame, recoiled, and rolled to the left.
Ivera, a tall, large woman, folded her hands together, let out a piercing screech, and jerked her hands apart, palms outward. Magic snapped. Twin jets of flame rolled from Ivera’s hands and licked the puddle. It shrank back, to the half-moon of burning kerosene. I poured more, trying to corral it.
Ivera’s arms shuddered. She gasped. The flame vanished and she stumbled back, her nose bleeding.
The puddle oozed out of the flaming trap.
I took a deep breath, bracing myself for the pain of a power word. I didn’t know if a power word would stop it, but I was out of options.
A chant rose from behind the mercs, a low soft voice murmuring Chinese words in a practiced singsong melody. A long scaled ribbon slipped past the mercs—a snake. The snake tasted the air with her tongue and stopped, swaying slightly in tune with the chant. Ronnie Ma emerged into the open. His real name was Ma Rui Ning, but everyone called him Ronnie. Ancient, wizened, Ronnie was one of those rare and endangered mercs who’d managed to reach retirement. He’d done his twenty years and got his pension. His house was only a minute away and he spent most of his time hanging out in the Guild, sipping tea and nodding at the crowd with a small smile.
He circled the puddle, carrying several small sacks, the chant rolling from his lips.
The puddle made a beeline for the drain. Somehow Ronnie got there first, reached into his sack, and lowered something to the floor. A scorpion. The arachnid danced in place, curling its tail. The puddle shrank away.
Ronnie dropped the sack on the floor and moved on. A few more steps, and he reached into another sack, and deposited a large toad.
Flanked on three sides by animals, the puddle reversed its course and almost ran into the fourth creature, a long twisting millipede, just as Ronnie dropped her on the ground. A few more steps, and the old man emptied the last sack on the floor, revealing a large spider.
