Pale Demon. Kim Harrison

or just sulfur. He was kneeling and looked haggard as our eyes met, seeming almost scholarly with that hat and ribbon, but he seemed okay.

      “Rachel! Some help here!” Ivy yelled, and I gave him a look telling him to stay put and ran. The glow of Jenks’s dust lit a dark corner, and I winced at a loud clang. Crap, if that had been Ivy’s head …

      I barreled into another puddle of light, scrambling to catch the arm of the man she had flung. It was the short guy, and using his own momentum, I threw him into a rusty ceiling support. He hit with a thud, grasping weakly at it as he slid to the dirt-caked floor. With a dull crack, the beam he’d hit broke from the ceiling, falling right on him. A splattering of ceiling dust slipped over him, patterning him with rust. I wedged a toe under him and flipped him over to see his pained expression. “Surprise,” I said, and his eyes widened.

      “Duck!” Jenks yelled, and I dropped, feeling the rush of metal over my head.

      “Son of a bastard!” I whispered as I rolled away, finding my feet when I hit a piece of machinery the size of my car. I scrambled up, the lethal-magic detection charm on the strap of my bag clinking. The guy with the long hair was in front of me with a metal rod the size of a baseball bat. Damn it, is Ivy down?

      I couldn’t see her, and I backed up as he came forward, swinging his pole in some lame-ass elf move as if it were a sword. My hands were empty. I had Jack’s splat gun in my shoulder bag, but there were no charms in the hopper. Licking my lips, I tapped the ley line that St. Louis was built on. If he started singing, I was going to fry him, black charm or not.

      Energy tasting of dead fish and electric lights slammed into me, and my eyes widened. It was as if it hit every square inch of my skin all at once, and I sucked in my breath, exhilarated. Crap, I think we’re right under the ley line!

      The guy I’d slammed into the pole was moving, and his buddy took a moment to help him up. “Ivy!” I called out, worried, and she coughed from the darkness.

      “She’s okay,” Jenks said, darting in circles around my head.

      The two men stood, a ribbon of blood seeping from a scalp wound the short one had. Grinning, ponytail guy pointed at me, then Ivy, and I cringed when someone pulled hard on the ley line humming somewhere above us. Their heads shot up as if surprised, and I dove for the shadows.

      “Grab some air, Jenks!” I shouted, my heavy-magic detection amulet flashing red as I found Ivy, upright but holding her head. I never got a circle up as the tingle of wild magic hit me. Too late, I thought, doubled over in pain as a surge of energy swamped me. It was as if they had found a way to dump the entire line through me, forcing me to hold it. I screamed, trying to channel the entire ley line or spindle it—anything to get atop the massive force burning me.

      Gasping, I managed to ride the wave of cresting energy, and with a triumphant cry, I shoved the spindled energy back out of me and into them, breaking my connection with the ley line entirely before they fried my synapses. It wasn’t wild magic, and this I could handle. Son of a bitch … what demon had taught them that? And how much had it cost?

      I looked up from my half kneel, not remembering having fallen. Ivy was standing beside me, and I peered through my watering eyes to see the two elves picking themselves up off the floor. I would have felt pretty good if my mind wasn’t aching from the pain.

      “You okay?” Ivy said, her grip on my arm hurting as she pulled me up. My skin felt as if someone had forced sand through my pores. She let go when I winced, but she didn’t look much better than I felt, her cheek swelling and dirt caked on her entire right side.

      “Great. How about you?” I snatched my bag up from the grimy floor and faced the two assassins.

      “I’ll live,” she said darkly. “Which is more than I can say for them.”

      Yeah. I felt the same way, and I stifled a groan as I stepped forward with Ivy, ready to take them on if they wouldn’t just go away. Somehow, looking at them, I didn’t think they would. I took a breath to let them have it, hesitating when the faint sound of rumbling echoed up through our feet. A soft pattering of dust sifted down, and the two elves looked up. The one who’d hit the support looked terrified. Pointing up, he turned and ran the way we’d come in.

      “Hey! Come back here!” I shouted as the other one bolted after him.

      Jenks darted up, his face scared. “Out!” he shrilled, the sound of rumbling growing louder. “Run!”

      “What?” was all I had time for, and then the earth moved. My balance left me, and I reached out for something, anything, to keep from falling. Chunks of concrete dropped where the elves had been. Ivy danced, somehow staying on her feet as I clung to another rusty ceiling pole.

      “It’s falling!” Jenks screamed, the only thing not moving in the suddenly choking air.

      Wobbling, Ivy grabbed my arm, and we staggered to the door. The ground quit moving, and we broke into a run.

      “Earthquake?” I guessed as we found Trent, dazed and numb in the middle of his fallen circle, that hat of his slipping off and my chalk loose in his grip.

      “We’re on a thousand-year-old swamp,” Ivy said. “No fault lines here.”

      “Run!” Jenks shouted. “It’s not over yet!”

      I grabbed Trent’s suitcase, and we all ran for the brown-painted door, getting three steps before a wave of dusty dirt rolled over us, clogging our lungs and making our eyes tear. The lights went out, and the earth shook again. Choking, I felt my way forward, squinting past Trent and following Ivy as she threw stuff out of our way.

      “There!” she shouted, and the dim light of the sun spilled in.

      The ground gave a hiccup, and noise crashed down, making me cower. Hand on Trent’s arm, I yanked him forward as he hunched over and coughed. We spilled out of the earth in a cloud of dust, running several feet before stopping to turn and stare at the opening. Damn, maybe I shouldn’t have swung that guy into the support pole.

      “They’re getting away,” I said, hands on my knees as I pointed to the dusty elves, a short distance up the walk. Seeing us, they turned and ran. Chicken.

      “Let them go,” Ivy said, and I turned to her, trying to ignore Trent throwing up in the nearby bushes.

      “I owe them some hurt!” I said, tugging my shoulder bag back up where it belonged. “Damn it, Trent!” I shouted, pulling him up from where he was wiping his mouth with the red ribbon he’d pulled from his shoulders. “I told you to find Ivy, not go hide in a hole in the ground! I can’t keep you alive if you don’t listen to me!”

      “Leave him alone,” Ivy said, tugging my arm off Trent, her eyes on the sky and her lips parted.

      I was bleeding, and I looked at my hand in horror, flexing my fingers until I realized that it wasn’t my blood staining my fingers but Trent’s. His right bicep was soaked where I had been yanking him forward. His ears, too, had blood leaking from them, and his hand was red when he wiped his mouth. It only made me angrier. Damn it, he was hurt.

      “You are my responsibility!” I shouted, ticked. “If you ever do something like that again, I’ll kill you myself. Do you hear me!”

      Trent glared at me as he wiped his mouth with that ribbon, then let it fall. “You’re not my keeper,” he said, his green eyes vivid, reminding me of the elf who had almost killed me, lulled me to my death.

      “Right now I am!” I shouted, getting in his face. “Deal with it!”

      “Rachel, will you shut up!” Jenks exclaimed. “We have a bigger problem.”

      I suddenly realized Trent had gone white faced, and like both Jenks and Ivy, was now staring at the river. Turning, I felt my mouth drop open.

      “Oh,” I said, the sound of the approaching sirens taking on new meaning. I didn’t think I needed to worry about having left the scene of an accident. The cops, both the I.S. and