Four Roads Cross (Craft Sequence #5)(13)

Cat caught Apron by the collar, dragged him up onto the counter, pulled the key from his pocket, and ran to the wall. The door opened, and revealed the stairs.

Behind her, in his last flailing seconds of consciousness, Sideburns made his smartest move. He couldn’t break the Suit’s grip, couldn’t save himself, but he could kick over the kitchen rack. It fell, struck the sink, rained bowls and platters and tongs and boxes onto tile.

From up the stairs she heard a voice. “Stevie?”

Two Suits had followed the first through the rear window. They ran past her now, a blur of silver and steel, rapid footsteps. Upstairs she heard a crossbow twang, a scream. Moonlight called her, the hungry pit at the back of her mind yawning deep as voices issued from it in ecstatic chorus—

Breaching window—

Blast rods at the door—

Go go go—

Kitchen secure—

She has a rod—

A fist the size of a carriage struck the ceiling over Cat’s head. Roof timbers strained, cracks spiderwebbed across plaster, dust fell. She knew the layout of the dealers’ second-floor apartment: large kitchen in back where they packed the product, living room–turned–guard post in front, sitting room in between, locked bedroom door. Targets swarming, five in the kitchen lit red in her mind’s vision, four in the front, two in the middle, and one asleep or tripping in the bedroom. Maura Varg stood in the sitting room, smoking blast rod in her hand, charge expelled. Varg’s skin flushed as systems inside her spun up, gave her strength and speed. She struck the locked door with the palm of her hand so hard its wood split up the center—

Cat swore. The Suit in the kitchen was busy, binding Apron and Sideburns amid the mess of fallen pots and pans.

If Cat donned her Suit, she could be outside in a second, bursting through the plate glass window to the street. Instead she ran out the front door, turned the corner so tight her shoes slipped on concrete and she almost fell, caught herself on the ground with one hand—

Glass shattered above as Maura Varg dove out the bedroom window, shard-misted, forearms crossed to shield her face, farther than a running jump should have taken her, and arced headfirst toward the pavement.

Cat sprinted across the street toward her, arms pistoning. If she could catch Varg before she came upright—

A cry from her left, and too late she heard the triple-beat of a horse at gallop. Should have closed the street—she looked left and saw wide black equine eyes and rearing hooves and a rider’s moon-shaped face beneath an absurd tricornered hat as the hooves came down. She dodged through molasses, the horse eighteen hands at least and plunging, and she knew what those hooves could do to human flesh—

She fell into the silver void, into the ice-melt lake that waited at her brain stem’s root, and leapt clear of the hooves, which could not hurt her anymore, because she wasn’t human anymore exactly.

Nor was she, exactly, Cat.

But she didn’t want to hurt the horse.

Hooves fell, slow as a ballerina’s lofted leg descending. Somewhere a butterfly’s wing beat. On North Shore, a wave rolled onto the beach and did not roll back.

She stood in the road, a statue of fluid silver. Behind her, other Blacksuits secured the apartment safe house, which she saw in flashes: dreamglass piled on the kitchen counter, broken bones and windows, captives splayed on the floor. Safe. In front of her, Maura Varg fled into an alley. Cat followed her. She closed with Varg, not fast enough—the woman’s glyphwork must be pushing her to the edge of sanity, to outrun a Suit. Alley shadows fell slick on Cat’s skin, and far below the world she heard the sunken moon’s song.

A carriage pulled up at the far end of the alley, door open. She saw it, and through silver the other Suits saw it, too, and Justice activated plainclothes officers nearby for pursuit. Varg would make the carriage before Cat could catch her. Normal horses couldn’t outrun a Blacksuit, but not all horses were normal.

A black, burning blur fell on Varg from the rooftops. She struck pavement and then the alley wall, skidded, found her feet in a tussle with a smoking human figure. Not a Blacksuit—and really burning, skin licked by flame, charcoal flakes falling as he moved. Fangs flashed bone white within the fire.

Raz.

Varg jumped on him. He hit her three times; the fourth time she caught his wrist. Glyphs shone noon bright on her arms. She spun him around and caught his neck in the crook of her arm. Her blade steadied against his throat.

Cat stopped.

They stood opposed in the alley.

“That’s right,” Varg said. “Don’t move.”

Varg backed toward the carriage. Cat took two steps forward.

Raz’s fires died, leaving scales of char like a snake’s dried skin about to shed.

“I’ll kill him.”

Cat had seen Raz survive a broken neck. But she didn’t know his limits, and did not want to test them now.

Seize her, the silver sang. Hold her. Bring her to Justice.

She forced the Suit aside, and fell from heaven’s gates. Silver seeped away and she was only Cat again.

The knife pressed into his skin.

She held out her hand—pink, weak, shaking with aftershocks of ecstasy. Varg could break her now, if she wanted. “Let him go. You can’t run.”

“I can run forever,” Maura Varg said.

Her glyphs guttered like 3:00 A.M. coals.