The Serpent's Curse by Lisa Maxwell (read an ebook week .TXT) 📕

Esta looked to Harte, whose teeth were gritted, like he was struggling against himself.

“Those flames are doing something to the Quellant,” he told her, confirming her fears. “It feels like it’s being drained away.”

Everett had startled from the sudden silence of the world, but now he looked at her with curiosity and interest. Esta wondered if she’d made a miscalculation in revealing the truth of her affinity to him, but North already knew anyway. And she didn’t really have a choice, unless she was willing to leave North and his son behind to face the masked attackers alone.

Whoever the masked men were, it was clear that the attack was strategic and well organized. From the way they’d positioned themselves to cut the warehouse in two—and had immediately started herding the patrons like sheep—these men knew the market. The flames coming from their weapons burned with a cold energy that spoke of the type of ritualized magic used by the Brotherhoods. With their dark coats and masked faces, they looked like something out of an old sci-fi movie, but Esta knew that the creeping energy already vining itself up her arm was maybe even more of a threat. If the flames were eating away at the Quellant, she needed to get the four of them out of the Nitemarket now, before Seshat could do any real damage.

“We need to go,” she told North and Everett. “Now. Whatever you do, don’t let go.”

“But the others,” Everett argued. His expression was every bit as stubborn and mulish as North’s had ever been, but it also bore the trace of Maggie’s keen intelligence. And her kindness.

“We don’t have time,” Esta told him.

Everett was shaking his head, starting to pull away from her. “If we leave them here, they’ll die.”

Esta gripped him tighter, but she could already see darkness forming in the corner of her vision, and the ground was beginning to vibrate beneath them. She spoke to North, knowing he would understand without the explanation Everett seemed to require. “I won’t be able to hold this much longer if we don’t go now.”

North’s jaw went tight, and she knew he understood. “Let’s go, son,” he said, giving Everett a stern look.

“But, Pa—”

“It’s not up for debate. You can’t really expect me to explain to your mother what happened if you get hurt, can you? You know exactly what losing you would do to her.” North’s expression was stern, but his voice came out as barely a whisper.

“But all these people,” Everett said, clearly torn.

“We can’t save everyone,” North told him, laying his free hand on his son’s shoulder. “We never could.”

Everett clearly didn’t agree, but apparently he didn’t have it in him to argue with his father—or maybe he didn’t have it in him to break his mother’s heart. He came, reluctantly, but he came.

The exit was still there, unmarked and seemingly undisturbed, but they all hesitated together before they went through.

“Do you think there’s trouble waiting for us on the other side?” Everett asked.

“We’d be foolish not to expect it,” North told him.

“It doesn’t matter,” Esta said, forming the words around clenched teeth. She could feel Seshat’s power building, and already darkness was beginning to bleed into the world. Already she could feel the ground beneath her feet beginning to tremble. They had to go—now.

As they launched themselves through the doorway that led back to the shack in Cicero, Esta felt the same strange pressure of the passage, and as soon as they were through the doorway, she felt the fabric of time tearing from her fingers and from itself. She did the only thing she could do—she let go. Of Harte and the other two. Of time. Of everything. Together they tumbled through the doorway, into the dark dankness of the run-down shack.

And into the sights of three men with guns drawn.

The second Esta shook herself free of Harte, Seshat’s darkness drained away. Immediately, she pulled the seconds slow again at the same instant that the waiting men fired at them. Time went still once more, but the bullet was already out of the gun and careening toward Everett. She pushed North’s son out of the way, pulling him into the net of time with her only long enough for him to gasp in surprise before he hit the floor. Then Esta got back to her feet and ripped the guns from the men. When they were disarmed, she leveled the two pistols at the men and released time.

North had his own gun drawn a second later.

In the distance, sirens screamed. So many sirens. Something was happening, and from the sound of things even this far out from the city, it was something big.

“Who are you?” she demanded, shoving the dark nose of the pistol toward the men. “Who sent you?”

They weren’t masked. They were maybe in their early twenties, dough-faced men who were barely more than boys, and they had the bland, pasty sameness of the midlevel businessmen who flooded the subways in New York twice a day in her own time. Esta doubted she would have been able to pick any one of them out of a lineup. The only thing remarkable about them at all was the silvery medallion that each wore on their lapel, medallions that were glowing a familiar eerie blue.

“We don’t answer to maggots,” the one on the left sneered. “And it’s too late for you anyway. There’s no stopping what the Brotherhoods have already set into motion.” He gave her a cold smile, exposing a small black capsule held between his teeth. When he bit down, Esta heard a crackling snap, and blackness flooded the man’s pupils.

Before she realized what was happening, there were two more snaps, as the others broke whatever they were holding between their teeth and joined the first. North moved for the men, but Harte pulled him back. It took only a few seconds for the darkness in their pupils to begin transforming the men, pulling them inward