House of Fire (Parallel Magic Book 2)

by Emma L. Adams

  “You fell for the ruse,” she said.

  “What?” I said, uncomprehending. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know you’re being set up to take the fall, don’t you?” she said. “When I escaped, I hoped you’d come chasing after me instead of coming here with the others. The enemy knows you’re here. They’re counting on it.”

  I took a step towards Tay. “Where else was I supposed to go? The House of Fire locked me up in your place. They blamed me for your escape.”

  “I knew that as soon as you inevitably found the Family’s location, they’d come for you again,” she said, not acknowledging my comment about the House. “They would have taken the House of Fire much sooner if I hadn’t stopped them.”

  So I’d had it right. She’d killed Zade in order to stall the Family’s plan, but in the end, it hadn’t been enough to keep them out of the Houses.

  “Are you on their side or not?” I could see Miles signalling to me from beside the bodies of the assassins. We had to get them out of here before we drew too much attention, but something was wrong with Tay. Her eyes were wide, as though she was trying to signal something she couldn’t say aloud.

  “Just believe me when I say there’s nothing I can do to help you,” she said. “Except warn you to stay out of Elysium. You have no idea what they’re doing over there.”

  “Nothing you can do?” I echoed. “Why can’t you tell me?”

  “Because—” An explosion drowned out her words. The fiery blast of an inferno cantrip ripped through the hotel’s entryway, engulfing the front of the building in flames.

  Shit. The enemy was in there all along.

  A second blast came from the direction of the hotel, echoing through the night. Tay cringed, backing away towards the node. Her words were muffled by the ringing aftermath of the blast. “Get rid of that cantrip. Kick it through the node, bury it if you have to, but don’t touch it.”

  “Wait!” But she was gone, vanishing into the torrent of light.

  Miles ran to my side. “Did she do that?”

  “No, she was trying to warn me.” I backed up to the node. “The Family, they still have a hold over her somehow. We need to run before we’re blamed for that blast—and get those cantrips out of here. The bodies, too.”

  “Guys, we have to get those bodies out of here!” Miles ran to help the others pick up the fallen assassins and haul them through the node.

  When the last body of a fallen assassin disappeared through the node, I kicked one of the cantrips after him. “Don’t touch those things. We need to get them out of here, too.”

  “On it.” Miles pulled on a pair of gloves, and picked up two of the cantrips, tossing them through the node to the other side. Panic had erupted around the hotel, and the sound of sirens interspersed with the panicking, fleeing guests. The possibility hit me that Liv and the Death King had been caught in the blast, too, but there was nothing any of us could do. Besides, the infernos weren’t the only threat. Who knew how many of those lethal cantrips were already loose in the city?

  “Done.” Miles ran back to my side. “Let’s move.”

  We stepped through the node and landed on the outskirts of Elysium, down the road from the Spirit Agents’ base. A barrier of earth still cut off the centre of the city, while our lack of allies couldn’t be more obvious. What if the Death King was caught in the blast? What if our small group was all that remained of the forces standing against the might of the rogue spirit mages and the Family?

  Miles and the Spirit Agents set about kicking mud over the cantrips and burying them beside the bodies of the fallen assassins. Not ideal, but it was that or carry them with us and risk falling victim to their lethal magic. Shelley carried the body of the Spirit Agent who’d touched the cantrip, a bleak expression on her face. “Who the fuck created a cantrip which can kill at a touch?”

  “Same person who created the infernos.” I scanned the rooftops, spotting movement above. “The assassins in London came from here. We need to find shelter before more of them come back.”

  The ground trembled underfoot, and a sudden piercing pillar of light appeared in the corner of my eye. I rotated on my heel and saw the citadel light up from top to bottom as though plugged into a live wire.

  “What the hell is that?” I said.

  “Let’s find out.” Miles took a step closer, shielding his eyes. From here, the citadel looked like a giant node in its own right, the obsidian exterior smothered in vibrant whiteness. That’s new.

  “I think,” I said, “the enemy just announced where they’re hiding.”

  With the nodes switched off and barriers blocking the middle of the city, we had no way in. Except… “If we used one of the other transporters, we might be able to get into the citadel.”

  “Why would you want to get in?” Shelley said.

  “Because I bet that’s where the enemy is hiding,” I said. “And I don’t know about you, but I’m not so sure the Death King will be coming to help us.”

  The Family, though? They were gleefully watching from afar as their cantrips wrought havoc in two cities, and the Houses fought to the death. Someone had to bring them crashing down.

  “The other Elemental Soldiers are back at the castle, right?” said Miles.

  “Yeah, good point.” I backed up to the node again, which looked like a pale imitation of the giant pillar of light emanating from the citadel. “I bet if we go into Arcadia’s citadel, their transporter will still be working. We can get in that way.”

  “Right.” Miles eyed the others. “Anyone coming with us?”

  “Shit, why not,” said Shelley. “If the Houses are falling to bits, it’s only a matter of time before the fight reaches our base.”

  “Precisely my thinking.” I didn’t see Tay anywhere, but she must have transported herself elsewhere. She didn’t seem to have any intention of helping, but she hadn’t stopped us either. At this point, that was the best we’d get.

  “We’ll take the body back to our base,” Tate told his sister, indicating the dead Spirit Agent. “The Death King…”

  “He was in the hotel when the blast went off,” said Shelley. “I don’t know about you, but I think we’re on our own.”

  “He’s pretty much indestructible, though, right?” said Tate.

  “Let’s hope so,” Miles said. “Come on.”

  A small group of us made for the node, where we stepped into its light and reappeared in the swampland. There, we found Ryan pacing in front of the castle gates. They zeroed in on me immediately. “Problems?”

  “You might say that,” I said. “The Family’s assassins attacked the meeting in London, and we had to run back to Elysium before we were blamed.”

  “Where’s the Death King?”

  “Presumably still in London,” said Miles, rightly thinking that now was not the time to insinuate that the King of the Dead had perished in the blast. Besides, he had a few remaining tricks up his sleeve, I had no doubt. “Elysium is fucked, though. I think the enemy is using the citadel as a base and they turned on the transporter again.”

  “While the middle of the city is cut off and the Houses are warring with one another,” I added. “Oh, and those contagious cantrips are everywhere. If you want to come with us, we’re going to Arcadia’s citadel. If their transporter is still working, then we can get into Elysium that way and find out what the hell is going on over there.”

  If I blew up their transporter again, it would at least slow them down, but that wouldn’t take care of the fact that the enemy had staged an open attack on Earth of all places. Not to mention the fact that they’d shut down half of Elysium’s nodes and turned the middle of the city into a death trap. I might not live there anymore, but Elysium had been the first home I’d had after leaving the Family’s house. I wasn’t about to let them trample it flat.

  “All right,” said Ryan. “I’ll come with you to Arcadia, but we might have a hard time getting into the citadel without the Death King.
”

  “I can help.” Harper glided over to us, still wearing her human face. “I can get us into the citadel, no problem.”

  “Thanks,” I said, relief sweeping over me. “Okay, let’s move.”

  Miles led the way through the node, and this time we landed in the street near Arcadia’s citadel. The city was deceptively quiet, but tension sat heavy on my shoulders, along with the memory of the chaos we’d left behind.

  Harper approached the citadel first, and the door opened at her touch. The room within was empty, the spiralling staircase bare of any foes. Harper glided into the lead up the stairs, and we followed close behind her. In the upstairs room, the machinery was as pristine as ever, not at all as though I’d blown it up a few weeks prior.

  “Careful,” I murmured to the others. “We don’t know what we’ll find on the other side.”

  “Bring it,” said Ryan.

  Harper floated over to the machinery and its buttons lit up in response to her spirit magic, while the rest of us climbed onto the platform in the room’s centre. I hadn’t known Harper had become so comfortable with the machinery, but she didn’t need to be able to touch it for her spirit magic to activate the transporter.

  Lights spun around us as we vanished and reappeared in a room nearly identical to the one which we’d just left, containing a bank of metal and buttons hooked up to the wall and another platform in the centre. The machinery was almost the same, but with one key difference. A cage stood at its side, connected to the machinery by wires, but instead of sprites, it contained a dead body. The man lay sprawled on the floor of the cage. I didn’t know who he was, thankfully, but the living man standing in front of us could only be Hawker, the elusive traitor lich.

  Or rather, a lich no longer. His hair hung to shoulder length, his face was faintly lined with wrinkles, and he showed zero signs of ever having been dead.

  Facing off against him were the Death King and Liv.

  18

  I knew they survived. How Liv and the Death King had got here from London, I had no idea, but relief crossed Liv’s face when she set eyes on our group.

  Hawker turned his gaze on us. “You weren’t supposed to be able to get in.”

  “You didn’t account for all of the Death King’s spies,” said Harper. “Some of us figured out how to operate the transporter.”

  “Damn right,” I said.

  Hawker scanned our group. “I have to admit, I hoped to minimise casualties.”

  Liv stepped in, her hands igniting with spirit magic. “You massacred a roomful of people, you sick bastard. You deserve everything you get.”

  Magic blasted from her palms. Hawker dodged her attack, but Ryan’s air magic sent him crashing into the bank of machinery. Recovering, Hawker slammed a button and the transporter ignited.

  The platform spun with light, carrying a new group of strangers into the room. Humans, hands aglow with the same white light as the transporter itself. Spirit mages. Ryan ran to help the Death King intercept the new arrivals, Liv on their heels.

  “I thought you were supposed to be back at the castle,” she said.

  “Like I’d leave you two to deal with this alone,” Ryan responded. “What happened in here?”

  “A new node links this place directly to London,” Liv explained. “Not only that, it also links to all the other citadels with a working transporter, and anyone who uses it can get out onto Earth. We have to shut it off.”

  Shit. It links directly to London?

  I threw a fireball at the spirit mages, which hit one of them in the back. Liv moved to fight alongside the Death King, while the rest of us jumped into the fray. Lights flew back and forth and mingled with the brightness around the edges of the room, a reminder of the pillar of light surrounding the citadel from the outside. Can people on Earth see this, too? The ordinary people, unaware of the magical world, might well think the apocalypse was nigh.

  The only way to turn off a transporter, as far as I was aware, was to use an inferno cantrip, but there was no way I’d risk it in a crowded room like this.

  “We need to shut that thing off.” I caught up to Miles, fighting spirit mages off with fireballs as I did so. “Can we do it from Arcadia?”

  “We can try.” He shoved his fist into a spirit mage’s chest, and the mage collapsed into a heap. Vaulting the body, he made for the platform, while I threw fireballs left and right to clear our path.

  Reaching the platform, Miles caught my arm, pulling me up alongside him. Then the pair of us vanished in a flash of light and reappeared in the near-empty room of Arcadia’s citadel.

  “Where’s the power source in here?” I looked around the room. “There’s no sprites…”

  “There doesn’t need to be.” Miles hopped off the platform. “The machine has its own battery inside it already. Hawker was trying to do something specific in the other citadel, Liv said, something he needed a shit-ton of energy for. The sprites were there to give it a boost.”

  “That’s sick.” The humming machine seemed downright quiet compared to the chaos we’d left behind, but my heart continued to pound with nerves. “Was he trying to turn the citadel into a node, like he did in Elysium? He was using… using the sprites’ life force as a battery, right?”

  “Yeah.” He looked pale. “Thing is, it didn’t have to be sprites. Those cantrips he used… the infernos… when he killed those people in London, he used their life force to fuel the node linking it up to Elysium.”

  Nausea flooded me. “There’s gotta be a way to turn it off.”

  But if he’d used those people’s lives like a giant battery and the spirit energy was still flowing back and forth between the two realms… I was in way over my head here. I was no spirit mage. Yet from the disgusted look on Miles’s face, he would never have considered the possibility of using spirit magic in such a way before.

  The transporter lit up, lights spinning across its surface. I tensed, conjuring fire to my hands as a lich appeared on the platform.

  “It’s only me,” Harper said. “We’re in trouble. Hawker grabbed Liv and took her through the transporter somewhere else.”

  “What?” I said. “Why would he take her?”

  “Because he wants her to help him,” said Harper. “The Death King went after them, but Hawker used some kind of spell to paralyse everyone else in the room. It didn’t affect me, so I had to run. There was no other way out except the transporter.”

  “Because they turned off the other nodes in Elysium,” I said. “Shame we can’t do the same to the transporter.”

  Or… could we?

  Miles caught my gaze. “What is it? You look like you just had an idea.”

  “It’s a long shot,” I admitted, “but didn’t Liv have a cantrip which can turn off a node? If the citadel in Elysium is basically a giant node, too, wouldn’t it work on that one as well?”

  “You mean the same way they shut down the nodes in Elysium?” Miles said. “Might be something there.”

  “What would happen if we put one of those cantrips inside the transporter, then?” I jerked my head towards the machine. “Didn’t you say that thing’s like a giant battery? If we put the cantrip into the machine in Elysium, would we be able to cut off the link to Earth?”

  His eyes widened. “Crap. You’re right. That might just work.”

  “But Liv and the Death King are gone,” said Harper. “I don’t know where you’d find another of those cantrips… unless Devon has one.”

  “She’s our resident cantrip expert,” I said. “We have to go back to the castle and find her.”

  Miles nodded, and we ran down the stairs and out into the streets of Arcadia. From there, we ran to the node off the square, vanished in a flash of light, and reappeared outside the castle. I hit the ground running towards the gates—until Tay blocked my path. Her expression was bleak, yet her countenance was resolute.

  “Not the time, Tay,” I warned. “Might’ve escaped your attention, but we’re dealing with a s
erious shit storm here.”

  “I told you to leave,” she said. “Not go back to Elysium.”

  “I’m trying to get into the castle, Tay. It’s my home, technically. Let me through.”

  “Nowhere is safe, not even here,” she insisted. “Those cantrips… they’ll spread outside Elysium before long.”

  Crap. What with the chaos in the citadels, I’d pushed the Family to the back of my mind, but they could spread the infected cantrips a lot quicker with a huge node which linked the city of Elysium to London on the other side.

  “Then we have to shut off their transporter, and to do that, we need to get into the castle.” I tried to walk past her, but she barred my path again. Her eyes were wide, her movements stiff and reluctant… and then it hit me. “You’re still under Adair’s control, aren’t you?”

  She nodded, biting her lip. “I can resist up to a point, but… I can’t let you into the castle.”

  “Can’t let me in, or the others?” I stepped aside, seeing Harper’s shadowy form moving closer, followed by Miles. “You’re not disobeying orders if you stay here, are you?”

  She shook her head lightly, and the pair of us moved to the left of the gates, leaving the path open for my allies to get inside. Adair’s powers might be unyielding, but there was always a gap if you thought hard enough. I had to trust the others would be able to find the right cantrip to stop that transporter, because Tay wasn’t budging an inch.

  “I can speak to my brother,” I said to her. “I’ll convince him to let you go.”

  “That won’t work,” she said. “He’ll order me to kill you just to watch us fight it out.”

  Ugh. He would, too. Anything to stop me from standing in the Family’s way. But they were the ones who’d unleashed the cantrips on the city, and they alone knew how to stop them.

  “All right.” I gave no warning before I leapt forward and tackled Tay around the middle. We crashed into a heap on the muddy ground, and her expression turned to shock before she fired magic at me. Electricity numbed my arms and I bit back a scream, fighting through the pain as I wrestled Tay’s hands behind her back. Once I had her secure, I sprang to my feet and shoved her in front of me towards the gates. Two liches moved to intercept me, but I didn’t stop walking.