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Pippa limps through what used to be the outer edge of Queens. She has half a clip of ammo left. Then it's down to knives. The familiar heavy buzz of too much paradox sits behind her eyes, the whole inside of her head knocking hollow, her tattoos lines of aching emptiness. Her ribs throb, bruised or maybe broken from the slam of a cinderblock; left ankle's sprained at best, but her boot's bracing it well enough for now. Sweat sticks her shirt to her back and drips down her forehead, and the faint dull breeze off the river only carries the stink of burning. She has no idea what time it is; her watch is busted and there's no change in the sky, just the same dull red glow of reflected lights from the mortal military perimeter and the fire smoldering over in Manhattan against the lumpy underbelly of the clouds. Dawn could be in hours or ten minutes. She'll have to find Roke first.
He went down when the buildings on the other end of this block did. A mortar from one of the mortal military battalions--at least she thinks so; so many people gate-crashed this party it's impossible to say for sure who fired what--took out the side on its way to its target.
Fighting's done, for now. The soldiers all pulled back, no more fire and lightning and ordinance in the sky, the huge heap of suppurating flesh retreated down into the subway tunnels to lick its wounds.
That thing. God.
The devil of her childhood. Asakku. Worse than she was ever told, because the stories couldn't show her, couldn't make her see, not the way she saw tonight, not the spreading deep-down rot in every cell, the thousand infected cuts it slashes on the skin of reality every time it thinks or moves or eats or exists. The insult of its presence. The--the fucking abscess of it.
It's all true. It's all happening, the waking ancients and the red star, happening right now--and she should be happy, shouldn't she, because it means there was a point to her childhood, that what happened to her and Roke and all the others wasn't for nothing. They were offered up on the altar of a noble cause after all.
But then where the fuck is everyone, the great and glorious army she was trained to fight in? So much smoke and ash and rubble. Gone on the night wind. Stray cells and lone operatives, a handful of half-trained half-feral teenagers they practically had to nail to the floor to keep off the front lines. And where are the ancients who were supposed to wake up and pat them all on the head for being such good children and lead them to a perfect shining victory? Gone, because none of it ever meant a damn thing to them; they never cared about a pack of bloodsuckers squatting in the corpse of their city. All but one, and she came to Pippa (your hand, your eye, o beloved) and not any of the rest of them, and that says something, doesn't it?
Well, doesn't it?
Pippa clambers over a drift of fallen trees and street signs. Her ankle twangs when she lands and she grits her teeth and ignores it. A toppled building scummed over with sickly orange that looks like it's moving in the faint flickers of light blocks her way. Shit. Right's a bashed-in corner store she doesn't trust not to fall in on her or have more of that stuff on it, or hostiles inside; she doesn't have the time to spend backtracking. Left it'll have to be.
Left takes her into a maze of jammed-together cars and some fallen billboards. By the looks of it, the drivers must've gotten out and tried to run on foot when traffic gridlocked. It's a trap waiting to happen--too good as cover for something to jump out at her from--but she likes the idea of going inside any of these buildings even less. Cautiously, she threads her way between a crumpled blue hatchback and the open door of a taxi, trying to stick to the edge of the street so she at least has a wall at her back sometimes, every sense dialed high as she can and straining and still not sharp enough. Every candy wrapper pushed along by the breeze and stray t-shirt flapping from a busted-open suitcase winds her tighter and tighter. If it wasn't so dark--well, if wishes were fishes nobody'd ever starve, it is that dark, she'll live with it.
With a dull distant boom, the ground shakes, dislodging dust and rubble and knocking the last support out of a leaning building in a scatter of meat-stained fake brick. Pippa dodges by a hair. Car alarms start wailing, an out-of-sync chorus. Another boom. Smoke smudges faintly against the clouds. Maybe they're dynamiting the subway entrances. Maybe it's not too late for that to help.
Pippa comes out of the jam, not one goddamned second too soon. The street here's more open, probably because of the city bus it looks like got swept clear across the intersection before it ended jammed nose-down into a subway entrance. One streetlight is, somehow, still on, flickering weakly. An arm with too many joints lies palm-up on the asphalt, little teeth in the mouth by its thumb gnashing weakly. The mass it come from sprawls in a heap of split trash bags, too many legs, mismatched feet and calves, muscles piled on muscles.
A foot kicks.
Pippa whips her pistol up, adrenaline jolting, dropping back into a firing stance--and a rat, nothing wrong with it but a back leg dragging, wiggles out, making a different foot flop sideways, and disappears under a car. Just a rat. Christ. Letting out a slow breath, she eases her finger back out of the trigger guard and keeps going. Around here is the place, by the faux-brick rectangle of a building with a hole through it. The bottom half of a billboard smiles at her from what's left of the wall, something wet gleaming on the once-white too-large teeth.
And below it, wink of light off metal. Pale flash of skin. Her eye assembles the jumble of shadowy shapes into a body--calf, knee, thigh, and relief so strong it's almost physical rushes through her. There. There. She barely feels the stab up her shin as she takes those last few yards at a run.
Roke lies jackknifed in a spray of rubble, rebar jutting from just under his collarbone. Blood, black in the half-light, trickles from the corner of his withered mouth. His neck sits almost at a right angle to his shoulders.
But he's too fresh a corpse to be dead for keeps. She knows that much.
Pippa braces a foot against his chest, and, gritting her teeth against the way her ribs grind (definitely broken, not bruised, but that's a problem for later), yanks the spar of rebar free. It's long enough to be useful, so she plants one end in the dirt and leans on it while she lowers herself to her knees. She slides her gun back into its holster.
It's not often she really regrets being chosen to keep the gift granted her rather than the gift of the Blood. But right now, it would sure be fucking useful to have a little more context on what to do here. He could be out for years, and Pippa doesn't have that kind of time. Not as in, she's the mortal one, but as in, the sun is coming and it's not going to stay quiet out here and she can't carry him and handle anything that comes at them. Feeding him alone won't do it, if pulling the rebar out didn't, she knows that much.
But she understands a thing or two about death and its border marches--and besides, any mage knows, deep down at the bottom, that any rule can be broken if you just do it right.
He needs blood. That's for sure. The rest, she'll do by feel.
First she casts around for cover and drags him into the lee of what remains of a wall and a van tipped on its side that it looks like someone tried to use as a battering ram. Something to put her back against. She'd like real protections to actually keep anything from sneaking up on them, or at least warn her first, but she's got so little left. Nothing for it but to work fast. At least no one's watching right now, or nobody who can make it harder with the weight of their knowledge. Small favors.
Pippa draws her dagger and holds her lighter to its edge, centering herself in the white heart of the little flame before it snicks out. When her mind is quiet, and there's only the edge left, she draws the blade down the midline of her tongue (crook of her elbow would be easier, but easy's not the name of the game right now, she was out of time before she started and she needs that hammer-hit of resonance). It stings; she registers it, takes it, uses it, another brick laid down, fuel in the fire of the work. And with the sure conviction that it's hers to draw on, because she's loyal or because she's fucking owed it--in the end because she can take it--she reaches for a familiar well of power, and plunges the fist of her will deep into its red, red heart.
Arikel, Arikel, Arikel, precious as gold, sweet as honey, pure as milk. Author of bliss, the rose unblown, bull-dancer, I invoke you. Here lies your son, wake him as you woke him from his first death, stir your blood inside him, for the love you bear your brood (for the love I bear him wake him for me)--
(or I'll take everything you've got and do it myself)--
Quickly, before she swallows the blood welling up from her tongue or too much escapes down her chin, she works his jaw open and bends down to kiss him, spilling it from her mouth to his.
Roke's mouth opens wider, eagerly, hungrily, lips soft and full again and crushing against hers so the scab on her lower lip splits open, and his hands come up and slide through her hair, fingers winding tight in her braid--and those fingers clamp vise-tight as he makes a low feral starveling noise of need.
Oh shit, she was hoping this wouldn't happen, here goes the hard part.
She doesn't even try to struggle. Waste of time, waste of focus.
Instead, in the split second before his fangs pierce her tongue, she reaches. Scraping, desperate, fast. No incantation this time, just a statement of what she wants and what she's going to fucking get: Fight it, control it, get a goddamn leash on it, I know you can, do it now, Roke!
Her blood's in his mouth and his teeth are in her flesh and her will's inside him already, and when the hot riptide of ecstasy knocks her thoughts over it's already done. Cards counted. Dice weighted
Roke tears his fangs free and yanks her head away from his so hard he rips hanks of her hair away at the root, and pushes her clear of him.
(His eyes--she only gets a half-second glimpse, but that's enough--he's not looking at her, itis, the thing down at the bottom of his soul where death left its scar, and it hungers, rabid and slavering and forever, wants to drink her dry, crack her for marrow and keep going, and all she can see of Roke is the naked savage desperation of holding it back.)
She throws herself sideways, hits the ground with a stabbing thud that knocks the wind out of her. Her vision blanks out and for a second--only a second but a second too long--she can't move, can only try to breathe through the spike in her chest, and if he comes at her--
But he doesn't. He crouches on all fours, head bowed, like an exhausted animal--someone who still needed to breathe would be panting, but he's completely still. In control again. At least for now, but then it's always for now, so she won't count that against the win.
Pippa swallows an iron-tang gulp of blood, coughs, runs her fingers along the back of her neck, checking her spine for damage. Finds everything more or less where it's supposed to be. Nothing new broken, nothing bulging out or smashed in, nothing pulled too bad, busted ribs not stabbed through anything soft, just, ow. That's what she gets for not being twenty anymore. Carefully, she sits up.
"Pip," he rasps, raising his head.
Talking seems like a bad idea right now. That doesn't need an answer, anyway. She digs around in her coat for something to press against the wounds on her tongue, comes up with a bandanna. His eyes flit over her and around--still intelligent, still his--and she relaxes the slightest bit, stops listening so hard. Now there are two of them and they can watch each other's backs, at least. There's that.
"What did you do?"
She waves a hand in the general area of her mouth as if to say, what do you think? and after a second his face arranges itself into an expression that means, you don't seriously expect me to buy that was all. But what he actually says out loud is, "Let me lick that shut." And, when she raises her eyebrows at him: "Sooner you stop bleeding the better."
He knows what he's doing. Also, he's right, if she keeps bleeding it'll only get worse for both of them; at least right now they've still got a little time before her thumb comes off the scale. Pippa nods.
Roke comes over to her, still on all fours, which should look awkward but doesn't, and takes her head in his hands. It's not really a kiss, what he does, the angle awkward and straining the front of her neck, his nose squashing hers to the side so she can only breathe through one nostril. Nobody's tongue has ever gone in her mouth in a less sexy way. He's being very, very careful, she can feel it in the tension of his fingers on her skull, the shaky press of his thumbs at the hinges of her jaw. She holds still and keeps her breathing shallow and even and gets ready to pull on one last scrap of her power, just in case. She'd have to hit him this time and knock him right back the fuck out, which, if anybody smiles on them don't let her have to hit him. Please, please. Please.
She doesn't have to hit him. After a minute he pulls away, rustles up a crooked grin. Only the fact he stands up and backs out of arm's reach betrays how much trouble he must've been having not biting down again. Another boom. Bigger this time. Closer. A helicopter thwups by overhead, invisible in the smoke. Pippa coughs again and winces. Her chin and jaw are slimy with blood and spit. She scrubs at her face with the bandanna, which does fuck all but spread the mess around, and gives up.
"Did we win?"
"Didn't lose yet. It went back underground." Talking feels a little like gargling with needles, but her tongue doesn't tear back open.
Neither of them tries to clear up which we they're talking about. Pippa's not sure, if she's being honest. She came in with the remnants of the Hand-Without-Sun's northeast operations, sure as shit didn't leave with them, doesn't know who's running things above the cell commander. If anybody is. The Council has to have people on the ground, but she doesn't know where; the Union too, almost definitely embedded with the army and National Guard, and she just hopes they don't think a mystic is worth shooting on sight at the moment. It's a shame she's too old to really convince herself things will shake out to it versus everybody who's not it like one big happy family. Well, she can live in hope. That's free.
"Everybody else evac'd?"
Not really a question. Pippa nods anyway. Best she could tell; they're gone, anyway. It's not a surprise. If nobody could get to him in time to make the extraction, they wouldn't've tried. They knew she was here, so she can at least give them credit for trusting her to do exactly what she's doing right now. Or she could, anyway.
She gets up, and halfway through the motion the world spins sideways and her knees give out. Roke catches her. Arm all the way out, locked at the elbow--keeping his face away from hers. Slowly, he levers them both standing. Pippa leans on him til she can mostly see again, and then backs up and leans on the van instead. Just another couple seconds.
Roke eyes the clouds. "We should be able to make the perimeter." He doesn't ask if she can walk. She has to. Can doesn't enter into it.
How safe it is on the other side--they'll find out when they get there.