I took a breath, let it out. “Go.”
Fire magic flared behind the house. The walls around flashed red and I felt the vibration as the spell went off with an echoing boom. I counted one heartbeat, two, four, then there was the scuffle of footsteps and I heard movement from inside and I covered one ear with my gun, pushed the other down into my shoulder, closed my eyes, and pressed the button.
There was a roaring whoom that seemed to go all the way through my body. Something bounced off my shoulder; the door was still attached to the hinges but there was a ragged hole where the middle had been and I clambered through. There was smoke everywhere and my ears were ringing, but my divination told me where the stairs were and I ran for them, taking them two at a time. My foot had just hit the first-floor landing when a door opened and Zilean came out.
I’d seen him coming and I was already bringing my gun up, but everything seemed to be going very slowly and I had what felt like all the time in the world to study the Crusader mage. I saw his hair, brown and combed back but with a few strands out of place—that stuck in my mind for some reason—and the downward lines to either side of his mouth, and I saw his eyes widen as he recognised me, and then something made me glance down and I saw that he was holding a surgical knife in one hand, and the blade was red, and then everything else I might have noticed vanished in a rush of fury and I fired.
Zilean was quick, but not quite quick enough. He twisted and a wall of crackling energy came up between us, but the shot had been on target and I heard a gasp. I steadied on the landing and kept firing; I couldn’t see through the barrier and so I spaced the shots out to cover the hallway, but as I did I felt the surge of another spell and there was a blinding flash, then the wall was gone and the hallway was empty.
I could hear the whoompf of fire magic down below, and racing footsteps from above. Bright spots were dancing before my eyes, but there was red blood on the plaster and I knew at least one of my shots had found its mark. I sprinted upwards.
I didn’t think about going down to help Variam and Luna, and I didn’t give any thought for a possible ambush. I could say that I was counting on my precognition to keep me safe, and maybe it would have; I could say that I thought that Variam and Luna could handle themselves, and maybe that was true too. But the truth is, none of those things made it into my mind at all. The one glimpse I’d had of that knife had filled me with bloodlust and I wanted Zilean dead. Zilean could have turned on me and maybe it would have gone badly if he had, but my instincts told me that Zilean was afraid. I chased him up to the attic; the door was locked, but I ran at it without breaking stride and kicked with all of the strength that my training with Anne had given me, and the wood splintered and broke.
Zilean was at the far end of the room. He’d managed to get the window open and stood clutching his shoulder with his other hand and he looked back at me in panic and I sighted on him, but as I fired he cast his spell and his body seemed to turn white and distort, and with a flash he turned into a bolt of lightning that zipped through the window and out into the night and my shot kicked splinters from the window frame.
I swore and darted to the window, but as I reached it I saw the flash as Zilean cast his lightning jump again, and as my vision returned I saw nothing but rooftops. Another flash reflected from the next street over, and I knew that the Crusader was gone.
I realised that I couldn’t sense any more spells below. “Vari, come in,” I said, turning and heading back down the stairs. “Report.”
“He’s gone!” Variam shouted back at me.
“Who?”
“The other mage, Lightbringer, whatever his name is. There’s a gate portal, he’s gone through!”
I ran down the stairs. “It’s still open?”
“Yeah, but it’s masked. You want us to chase?”
I hesitated, but for only an instant. “No. Burn it.”
I saw the red flash from all the way up the stairwell and felt a surge of gate magic as the spell in the portal collapsed. “Clear,” Variam said.
“Ground floor is clear,” Luna said. “We’re moving up.”
It was only much later that I got the full story from Luna and Variam, about how they’d run into Lightbringer down in the kitchen. There had been a brief, furious battle, Variam’s orange fire and the trailing mist of Luna’s curse meeting Lightbringer’s flashing blades, and now that I think back on it, I cringe at the risk we took. Zilean and Lightbringer were both individually stronger than us, and they had God only knows how many reinforcements just a phone call away, but they’d been caught by surprise and in the end that had been enough. I think if they’d realised that there were only three of us, they would have stood and fought, but the speed and fury of the attack had caught them off guard and they never had the chance to learn just how few of us there were.
But all that was still in the future; for now, the house was ours and we went through the rooms one by one looking for Anne. It took only seconds to figure out where we needed to go. The room that Zilean had come out of had a metal door, with a complicated lock which had sealed when the door had swung shut behind him. Variam melted it to slag. Rivulets of molten metal trickled down, burning black streaks into the door frame and floor, and Variam shoved the door open with the palm of his hand.
I don’t have a very visual memory, at least not for most things. It’s not that my memory’s bad; it just works best on connections and patterns. If I spend an hour with a group of people, then I’ll remember what they talked about, who was in charge and who interacted with whom, but ask me what one of them was wearing or what colour their hair was and I’ll come up blank. My mind just doesn’t work that way; I can remember things that happened, but not exactly what they looked like.
But every now and again you see a sight which burns into your memory and never goes away.
The inside of the room was thickly lined with brown padding. A small wheeled trolley was pushed up against the wall, and on it were two trays holding what looked like surgical instruments: forceps and hooks and scalpels. The centre of the room was dominated by a long, wide table, and on it was something that was hard to identify. For a second my eyes told me that I was looking at some kind of crude doll, coloured red with scraps hanging off, then I noticed that it was the size and shape of a person, then the doll took a breath and with a sense of dawning nightmare I realised that it was a person; my eyes just hadn’t made the connection because I’d never seen someone without their skin before.
My stomach clenched and I wanted to vomit. It would have been horrible enough if it were a stranger; that it was Anne made it a thousand times worse. Luna stared, her face going pale, then she clapped a hand over her mouth and stumbled back out onto the landing. Variam didn’t quite join her, but I could see the muscles in his jaw working. I felt bile rising up in my throat and choked it back. One by one I was noticing all the things that I’d missed, and each one made me desperately wish that I could stop thinking about what they meant. Small metal scaffolds were set up on the table, with thin wires running down to where they were attached to flaps of skin. Around the chest someone had started to cut through the muscle, revealing bone, and the torn flesh pulsed rhythmically. A soldering iron was resting on the table, a tiny wisp of smoke rising up from its tip.
“What . . .” Variam paused, swallowed. “What do we do?”
I tried to think of something to say and failed. I felt paralysed.
Luna came back in, wiping her mouth. “Oh, God,” she said, staring at Anne. “How do we help her?”
I tried to figure out how to go about curing Anne or stabilising her, and just the thought of it overwhelmed me. I was out of my depth, but both Luna and Variam were looking at me, and I grasped at straws. “We have to get her out of here.”