Down the stairs in a rush, her wet boots smacking, Cami hit the bottom and went over the frayed red velvet rope with a leap that would have made the gym teacher, Sister Frances Grace-Abiding, very proud. Landed, skipping aside as a faust crashed to the floor right in front of her, for a moment she couldn’t understand why everyone was screaming . . .
. . . then one of the steel-toothed dogs leapt, foam splashing from its muzzle and its fawn-colored hindquarters heaving. It crunched into the fallen faust, chewing as the dæmon inside the flesh let out a shattering wail. Bone splintered, and the faust curled up, throwing the dog aside with a snapped charm that sparked red in the gloomy interior. The charmlights had mostly failed; the bleeding neon glow was barely enough to see by, and the crowd pressed for the doors as the dogs bristled, leaping at will.
A lean half-familiar figure in a tan trench coat stood in the middle of the dance floor’s writhing mass, dogs flowing around him in a stream—brindle, black, splashed with white, big and small, all of them with the same mad gleam in their white-ringed eyes, crunching and howling as their steel-laced teeth champed. Cami skidded to a stop, nailed to the floor as the hounds set up a belling, braying cry that punched through the feedback squeal and swallowed it whole.
The door. But it was choked with fleeing Twists and jacks, a melee breaking out as they panicked and elbowed for room. The fight was going to spread; she’d seen enough of Nico going crazy to know that.
If things go sparky, babygirl, look for the back door.
It was something he always said when he took her into Lou’s on a particularly nasty-tempered day, or to the dives and bars he could prowl with relative immunity as one of the Seven’s boys. She heard it now as if he was right next to her, his lips skinned back in the most dangerously amused of his smiles, the good-natured one that said he didn’t much care who he hurt next.
There. It was to the right of the bar, a fading exit sign that guttered and went out just as the feedback died and the only sound was the dogs’ crunching and yapping, howling and snarling. She bolted for it, her boots squishing, and the shimmersilk in her hands turned treacherous again, its fringes somehow lengthening, waving wildly and jabbing at her eyes, scraping at her wrists, tearing at the cashmere coat.
She hit the door hard, and it opened—thank Mithrus Christ—spilling her out into a cold close darkness. The latch clicked as she shoved it shut, and she gulped in a reeking mouthful of frozen outside. It was sweeter than the fug of breath and smoke and terror inside.
The howling behind her ratcheted up a notch, and she didn’t have to be told they had seen her.
It was the man. The wooden man Nico had thrown out of Lou’s.
She ate the heeeeeeeeart!
But Cami’s heart was pumping in her chest, knocking like it wanted to break out through her ribs and escape the crunching of dogs piling into the jammed-shut door behind her. Her breathing came in quick hard white puffs, and she found herself in a trash-choked, narrow alley, the door behind her shuddering as more dogs hit it, and the sound of sirens lifting in the distance as someone noticed there was a riot starting on the edge of Simmerside, too close to the core for comfort.
This kind of spreading chaos so close to the blight could even trigger a minotaur.
Shimmersilk bit at her hands, its fringe turned to claws as it struggled, a live thing in her grasp. It was trying to eat her face, for God’s sake. She struggled free with a despairing little cry, every inch of skin crawling with revulsion, and flung it to the cobbled floor of the alley.
It rebounded, alive with charm and spitting peacock-colored sparks, nipping at her knees. The edge of Cami’s Potential flashed, a colorless ripple; she skipped aside, banging into a metal dustbin. Fine snow sifted across the alley, icicles festooning the walls wherever heat leaked out of the buildings arching overhead, and her breath came harsh and tearing in her throat.
“NO!” she screamed, and tore away from the shimmersilk. It bit through her leggings, opening bloody stripes and scratches all the way up to her knees, but she managed to kick it loose just as the metal door groaned, buckling.
The dogs might not be able to open it, but the wooden huntsman could—and if enough of the beasts crashed into it, even a fire door wouldn’t hold. Sooner or later one of them would hurl itself against the bar that freed the latch.
Cami let out a sob, her cheeks slick with hot wetness, and gave one last kick. The shimmersilk went flying, hissing in frustration. Sirens howled—the cops had arrived, thinking there was a riot starting. Maybe there was.
She put her head down, and ran.
The holding tank wasn’t that bad. Well, sure, it reeked of cigarette smoke and stale vomit, and it was full of a crowd of jacks, some of them bloody and bruised from the scramble inside the nightclub. Still, it was brightly lit—and there were no dogs.
Her wrists throbbed with pain, and so did her shoulder—one of the cops had bent her arm back, savagely, snapping charmed cuffs on her. Cami hadn’t resisted. She was sobbing too hard, anyway, and besides, she wanted them to take her away from the thin stick of the huntsman and the leaping, yapping, barking, steel-toothed—
She shuddered, pushed her back more firmly into the concrete wall. The benches were for the people who would fight for them, so she had just picked a corner and retreated into herself. A few catcalls and pokes, but as soon as they figured out she wasn’t going to respond they left her alone.
It was kind of like school. Except they didn’t throw burning cigarettes at her there.
The holding cells were jammed. The Twists were on the other side, behind bars crawling with vicious bright golden charmwork; the charms on the jack cages were dull red. She had no idea why they’d put her in with the jacks; maybe they thought she was one, even though she had no mutation? Or maybe there hadn’t been any mere-humans left? Or charmers? She hadn’t seen any but the bartender, maybe he . . .
Just don’t think about it.
She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut, couldn’t afford to. The harsh buzzing light was her friend, it kept the shadows away. And if she closed her eyes one of the jacks in here might think she was sleeping, and try to do something to her.
Clash of keys, screams and a rising mutter.
“You! Girl, in the back!”
She raised her head, strings of damp black hair falling in her face, free of her braid and tangled into knots.
It was a heavyset jack cop, his skin scaled in rough patches and the low ragged edge of his Potential sparking against the bars. He jingled the keys again, his yellow fur-hair smoothed down under the uniform cap; his brass badge held a mellow gleam. “Yes, you. Come on.”
She hauled herself to her feet. The jacks quieted, bright-eyed with interest. The hallway pulsed with noise, burrowing into her head. It was preferable to the other sounds, the ones she wasn’t sure were actually physical.
Like the chanting, and the dripping. Plink-plink, water against stone.
The jacks edged away, and she made it to the barred iron door.
“Back up!” the cop snapped. “No, not you, kid. You’re coming out.”
“She got bail. Lucky charmer girl.” This from a gawky male teen, bone spurs on his cheekbones slicing out through peeling skin, the wounds suppurating freely and by all appearances perpetual. He was one of the loudest inmates, and the others in the holding tank mostly did what he said. Behind him, two other jacks—his friends, maybe, since they wore the same multicolored jacket he did—grinned and mouthed nasty words.