The blood sacrifice jacked him in; he stuck the knife in his belt and felt the barrier connection flare through him, starting in his bones and radiating outward, buzzing in his skull.
“Don’t do it,” Iago warned.
Rabbit would’ve told him to go fuck himself, but he couldn’t find the words amidst the sudden spinning in his brain. Something was happening to him. A crazy pressure was crawling inside his skull, rooting around and taking him over, and then sudden rage poured through him, hot, angry joy, and the thrill of power. Burn them, something said deep inside him. Burn them all. He fought the impulse, but it quickly became a compulsion, an overwhelming need to destroy.
Blood riding high even as a small piece of him screamed, Stop! Rabbit clapped his palms together, dropped his head back, and shouted, “Kaak!”
The ancient word called the fire, called the gods, called a detonation that blasted through the room, laying waste to everything in its path. The front of the pizza joint blew outward in a hail of glass and superheated air. Flames lunged from Rabbit to the walls and ceiling.
Alarms wailed and people out on the street started screaming, shrill calls of, “Fire!” and, “Call nine-one-one!” and, “Hey, somebody’s in there!”
At the center of the conflagration, completely untouched by the fire, Iago held out a hand, baring his crimson-marked forearm. “Give me the knife.”
The order grabbed onto Rabbit, dug into him. Give me the knife. The words twined around his soul, twisting and caressing and making him want to do exactly that. The knife, his instincts said, the knife, give him the knife. Just as he hadn’t wanted to call the fire, not really, he didn’t want to give up the knife. But to his horror, he saw his bloody hand stretch out, saw his fingers open to offer up the bloodstained blade.
He’s a mind-bender, he screamed inside his own skull. Fight it, fight! But he couldn’t. He could only stand there while Iago grabbed the knife, gave him a middle-fingered salute, and disappeared, taking Mistress Truth with him.
Then there was nothing but the fire, and the screaming inside Rabbit’s head as the world went dark, and he collapsed.
The door to the tea shop hung open. Nate was about to jump out of the cab, a really bad feeling knotting the pit of his stomach, when he smelled the smoke. That decided it for him. Lunging back into the taxi, he slammed the door and snapped, “We need to be where the fire is.”
“Will do!” the cabbie shouted, and floored it, lost in some sort of James Bond fantasy and unaware that the reality was so much worse.
Alexis’s expression tightened when a siren split the air, starting low and mournful and climbing to a shriek. “Damn it.”
“Call Strike,” Nate said. “We’re going to need a quick exit. And have him bring Patience.”
He took it as a bad sign that she didn’t argue the need for the emergency evac ’port, or for Patience’s talent of invisibility. Worse was the sight he caught when they rounded the next corner: glass blown out into the street, and most of a block aflame. “Shit.”
He was out of the cab before it stopped moving. Aware that Alexis was right behind him he spun and snapped, “Stay here, and this time I fucking mean it!”
She called his name as he turned away, but he didn’t look back. He headed straight into the flames, shouting, “Rabbit? Rabbit, goddamn it, answer me!”
There was no answer but the roar of fire. He sucked in another breath to try again, and pain seared his lungs, the foulness of smoky air grabbing on and doubling him over in a fit of coughing. He staggered onward, though, passing tables and chairs that had already burned to skeletons, as though they’d been liberally dosed with napalm.
Goddamn it, he was going to be seriously pissed if he died saving the kid’s punk ass from fire he’d created himself and didn’t have the chops to control. “Rabbit!” he shouted, his voice breaking.
And thank the freaking gods he got an answer, more a groan than any words, but it’d do. Staying low and holding what was left of his shirt across his mouth, Nate headed that way, not bothering to test the floor or worry about the flaming timbers overhead, because if he didn’t move fast they were dead anyway.
“Keep talking!” he ordered, and heard another groan. Two more steps and his foot snagged on something and he went to his knees, kneeling atop a semiconscious Rabbit. “Got you,” Nate said, voice cracking on smoke. “I’ve got you.”
But who has me? he thought as he grabbed onto Rabbit’s hoodie and jeans and started dragging the kid in what he thought was the direction of the door. The answer was, Nobody. He’d have to make it on his own, like always. But the room was spinning and the floor was pitching beneath his feet as he staggered onward, dragging Rabbit’s limp body. He missed his next step and went down to his knees, then fell forward. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t even feel the fire anymore. The flames were cool, licking across his skin like a lover.
He saw her face in the flames, saw her reach through the madness to touch him. But instead of the soft love she had in her eyes when he imagined her time and again—Hera, Alexis, one and the same—
she looked terrified, resolute. And as she reached for him, someone else hurried past her and bent down to grab Rabbit. Then Nate felt the fantasy actually touch him, felt the jolt of contact, and he knew it wasn’t a dream at all. Alexis had come after him.
And there was a damn good chance she was going to die right along with him.
Fuck! He grabbed onto her wrist, used it as a lifeline, and pulled himself partway up. He was aware of Strike slinging Rabbit over his shoulder. Then the king turned back and went for Nate’s other side, so they were braced one against another, and it was all or nothing: Either all four of them made it out, or they died together, taking a quarter of the Nightkeepers’ strength with them. And destiny or not, Nate wasn’t letting that happen, wasn’t letting Alexis lose herself trying to save him, not ever.
Together the Nightkeepers struggled from the burning building.
They made it out—barely. Just when they got clear of the door the whole place came down with a crash and a skyscraper-high gout of flame. Then Patience was there, grabbing onto the king and invoking her talent, and all five of them went invisible.
There were a few startled cries from bystanders who thought they’d seen what they couldn’t possibly have seen, but the invisibility trick was quickly lost amidst the chaos of a four-plus-alarm blaze. Then golden magic flared, and the buzz of a teleport surrounded them. Nate barely had time to brace himself before he was jerked sideways and went flying into the gray-green nothingness of the king’s ’port magic.
Nate held on to Alexis on his left side, Strike on his right. It hurt to breathe, to blink, to think, so he just hung there for a second in the gray-green nothingness of the barrier and let himself be dragged along. Then, with a bang of displaced air, Skywatch’s great room materialized around them.
They zapped in maybe a foot off the floor and hovered for a second before gravity took over. In that second Nate realized his skin was burning and his lungs were seized with smoke. Instead of landing on his feet he hit the floor and curled up, hacking for all he was worth, trying to breathe. He fought back a scream and it came out as a groan.