Pop pop pop pop!
Yellow potion burst everywhere—except on the terramage. All my shots had caught on the tangle of wussy little sapling branches between us.
“Goddamn it!” I snarled, my grip tightening on the gun. I had nothing else to fight with. The paintball gun was the only offensive weapon I had left!
Orange light flared across the crumbling walls. A fiery orb the size of a beach ball expanded on the tip of Aaron’s sword, and it blasted toward the terramage.
A whirl of that staff and another shielding wall of dirt rose in front of the mage, catching the fireball. As the barrier crumbled, I reached for a smoke bomb. My fingers curled around the cool glass orb, but I hesitated. A smoke shield would hide us from the terramage, but it would also hide him from us and maybe I shouldn’t—
The terramage whirled his staff in a new pattern and slapped it down.
The concrete beneath me and Aaron shattered, and we both fell. The soil around me heaved up in a bowl shape with me in the center, and a load of loose earth was dumped on my lap, burying my legs.
Another swing of that staff and the earth bucked under Aaron, throwing him back down to his knees as he tried to stand.
The terramage’s staff blurred as he spun it. He slammed it down one more time and another narrow column of rock launched at Aaron—this one shooting toward his skull.
I had one second to realize Aaron was about to take a possibly fatal blow to the head, and it was my fault for hesitating.
Aaron reeled back—and the earth went still, the rocky end of the column inches from his face.
The terramage pitched forward with his arms and legs vibrating. Two shiny wires ran from his back to the taser gun in the hand of another man, who was crouched in the rubble five feet behind the mage.
I stared, my mouth hanging open and my brain fizzing worse than the electrical current immobilizing the terramage. For a long, agonizing moment, I couldn’t speak. Then my voice returned—in a full-volume bellow of furious disbelief.
“Justin?”
“I hate fighting terramages,” Aaron growled, brushing at the grit clinging to his jacket.
I shot him a glare. He was barely smudged, whereas the terramage had straight-up buried the lower half of my body. I had dirt in my underwear.
In. My. Underwear. Aaron had nothing to complain about.
My glower skimmed across the terramage, now unconscious with yellow sleep potion splattered over the side of his neck. While he’d been down from Justin’s taser, I’d wrenched myself out of the dirt and made it over in time to shoot him.
“A terramage,” Justin muttered, arms crossed and feet set wide in a cliché policeman stance. He was dressed in civvies, with a blue toque and warm leather gloves.
My furious glare veered in his direction, but I forced it back to Aaron. If I spoke to my brother now, I’d end up screaming like a lunatic.
“What’s wrong with terramages?” I asked Aaron.
“Nothing wrong with them,” he admitted begrudgingly. “They’re just hard to beat, especially when they’re as good as this guy. It’s the most defensive order of Elementaria.
“Yeah, kinda hard to kick his ass when we couldn’t get near him.”
“That’s usually the terramage strategy.”
My temper cooled as curiosity took over. “What’s the counter strategy?”
“Exhaust them,” Aaron answered, flashing a tight grin. “Which I was working on. Terramages don’t have great endurance.”
“Ah.” I nodded in understanding. That explained why Aaron hadn’t tried any of his flashier moves. He’d been conserving strength while wasting the terramage’s. A good plan—except for the part where he’d almost gotten brained by a pillar of stone. Maybe he’d been counting on me to pull my weight as his combat partner.
Which I’d completely failed to do. My gaze flicked to the splatters of sleeping potion everywhere. Some help I’d been.
Aaron seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because he grimaced at the downed mage. “I should’ve roasted him with discorporate ignition, I guess, but I didn’t want to use that kind of force when he didn’t seem to be trying to kill us.”
Discorporate ignition—the technique of igniting magic away from the mage’s body. Aaron was very, very good at it. And so was the terramage, seeing as how everything he’d done probably fell under the same label.
“Who attacked who first?” Justin asked.
My temper flared white-hot in an instant. “Butt the hell out, Justin. Also, it’s who attacked whom.” I jabbed him in the shoulder with a stiff finger. “I don’t want to hear a single word from you until I’m ready to discuss how you followed me across an international border and two states!”
Yeah, I was angry. Stalking was not cool, especially when it was your overprotective, extra-judgmental big brother.
“Let’s deal with rocks-for-brains first,” I told Aaron, pointing at the terramage. “Ready to wake him up?”
Nodding, Aaron helped me heave the terramage up and lean him back against a cinderblock wall. Justin had obligingly handcuffed the mage, so we only had to kick his staff out of reach before I dug out a small vial of Wake The Hell Up potion from my belt.
That wasn’t what it was actually called, but that’s what it did, so I was sticking with the name.
I dribbled a few drops on the man’s face and recapped the bottle.
He woke with a groggy snort. Dark mahogany eyes cracked open, and he tipped his head back to take in the three people standing over him—one of them holding a big-ass sword and the other longingly caressing the paintball gun on her belt. Did I mention there was dirt in my undies?
His gaze flicked across us, then he grimaced. “Well, shit.”
My eyebrows rose.
“That about sums it up,” Aaron agreed flatly. “Wanna explain why you attacked us?”
“Sure,” the terramage replied in a deep voice. “But if you’d rather leave now, you can probably get away before my team arrives.”
“What team?”
The terramage tilted his head, his hair flopping over his forehead. “My Keys of Solomon team. Heard of them? They’re always happy to tag a few rogue scumbags.”
Aaron and I exchanged frowning looks.
“Dude,” I said. “We aren’t rogues.”
“Sure.”
I rolled my eyes. “No, seriously. We’re here on an investigation.”
He leaned back against the wall. “You’re eight years too late for an investigation. I know why you’re really here—for the same reasons as everyone else who shows up.”
Aaron threw me another confused glance, and I had to agree. I had no idea what this guy was going on about.
Stepping closer to the terramage, Aaron crouched. “Got any ID on you?”
The mage’s eyes narrowed.
“Look, man. Either you tell me which pocket your wallet is in, or I have to grope around all of them.”
“Inner jacket, left side.”
Aaron stuffed a hand down the mage’s jacket and pulled out a wallet. He flipped it open.
“‘Blake Cogan,’” he read as he pulled out his phone and hit a speed-dial number, then put the cell to his ear. “Hey Felix. Can you pull up a mythic profile for me? ID number 85-02-554309.”
Blake blinked at Aaron in surprise as we waited.
A faint voice emitted from the phone, and Aaron nodded. “Okay. Yep. Got it. Thanks.” He pocketed his phone and said to me, “He is a Keys of Solomon member.”
“No way.” I glanced at Blake. “I thought you were the rogue—though as a Keys member, you’re one in everything but name, in my unbiased opinion.”
Blake snorted. “You must not have met many rogues, then.”
“I have, actually. And most of them would never murder families and children like the Keys did here eight years ago.”
The terramage gazed up at me with an unreadable expression. “Is that what you’re here to investigate?”
“No, we …” I hesitated. Not having expected to encounter a single soul in or around Enright, I hadn’t prepared a cover story to explain our presence. “We believe the summoner who created the Enright demon mages is still alive.”
Liiiiar, I sang in my head. But hey, it was a good excuse to excavate the area in search of a summoning grimoire.
“Unlikely,” Blake said. “There are questions about how the people here died, but who died isn’t a mystery.”
“What questions?” My voice sharpened with rising anger. “The Keys slaughtered everyone.”
“Not even close.” He arched his eyebrows. “Uncuff me and I’ll give you an exclusive tour of Enright’s mysterious and extremely disturbing demon mage cult.”
Chapter Eight
“We knew what we’d be facing,” Blake revealed as he strode out of the community center’s wreckage—now significantly more wrecked by our battle. His long gait had an odd hitch, his left step shorter than the right.
“You were here?” I asked in surprise, following the terramage. He looked about thirty-five to me. Eight years ago, he would’ve been on the young side for an elite bounty hunter, but no younger than Aaron was now.
The pyromage was walking at my side, while Justin trailed after us, listening intently. I disliked that this would be my brother’s first major exposure to mythic crime and justice, but short of shooting him with a sleep potion, I couldn’t make him stay behind.
My hand drifted toward my paintball gun. That was kind of tempting …
“A team had already captured a cultist in Portland and interrogated him,” Blake continued, facing the center path that led to the temple ruins. “When they found out what was going on in Enright, they called in the entire guild. Teams rushed in from across the continent, and eighty demon hunters assembled in Portland.”
“Eighty?” I repeated, appalled. “Against sixty-eight non-combat mythics?”
“Against eleven demon mages.” His face hardened. “And I’ll tell you now: only sixty-three Keys made it home. My team was among the seventeen who died.”
His voice deepened hoarsely on the final words, and I almost felt bad for him—except he was a Keys hunter and had helped slaughter families victimized by a cult.
“If all eleven demon mages had teamed up against us, our casualties would’ve been catastrophic.” Putting his back to the mountainside, Blake faced the overgrown road. “We spread out in a half circle, coming through the forest. The terrain was a nightmare, but the demon mages were forced to split up to meet our advance on the commune.”
His gaze swept the winter woods. “We killed five in the forest, but the others didn’t come for us. We assembled here, and by then, all the houses were empty. The families had gathered in the temple.”
Turning toward the hillside, he pointed. “Five of the remaining six demon mages were lined up in front of the community building, waiting for us. If you didn’t already know how screwed up this place was, three of them were teenagers.”
My gaze skidded across the faded destruction. A slight twist of fate and Ezra could’ve been one of those five.
In his uneven gait, Blake headed up the hill. “It was the ugliest battle I’ve ever seen. The pure destructive power of demon magic—it was worse than I could’ve imagined.”
We passed the first row of houses.
“We killed two, and the other three were giving ground. We could see they’d gone all demon—nothing human left. The demons were fighting for their survival, and they’re more brutal than any human.”
We passed the second row of houses.
“My teammates were already dead, and I was down. I never made it past this point. The remaining teams went for the fifth one. That demon was the most powerful—his magic seemed endless.”
We passed the last row of houses.
“It took five contractors sacrificing their demons to kill him.” Blake approached the temple ruins, steps slowing. “There was only one demon mage left, and the teams suspected he was hiding among the cultists in the temple.”
The terramage stopped a few yards from the temple.
“The teams approached with caution, and the cultists just stood there. Men, women, some children. Maybe they thought they were safe in the temple. They didn’t even try to run, and then …”
Blake gazed at the destruction before turning toward us, his face like stone. “And then the temple lit up with red light, and a blast of demon magic more powerful than anything we’d witnessed yet obliterated the entire cult.”
Lightheadedness swept through me. “What … what do you mean?”
“The last demon mage killed everyone in the temple, including himself. I don’t know if it was the man or the demon who did it.” He looked from me to Aaron. “We assume the last demon mage was also the cult leader. It’s happened before—the leader killing everyone when a cult is threatened—but we’ll never know for sure why he did it.”
I swallowed against the sickness in the back of my throat. “You found the bodies of all eleven demon mages?”
“Only the ten we killed. The bodies in the temple were …” He shook his head. “The MPD cleanup crew did a body count, though. All cultists were accounted for. Every single one dead.”
“What about the original cultist?” Aaron asked. “The one interrogated in Portland?”
Blake grimaced. “That one is my guild’s fault. They were holding him at headquarters, and supervision wasn’t sufficient. He hanged himself.”
Holy shit. Ezra really was the only survivor of Enright.
“So,” Blake concluded, “there’s nothing to investigate. The cult leader is dead, along with everyone else who was involved.”
“Then why are you here?” Aaron asked bluntly.
Blake folded his arms over his broad chest. “I live on a bordering property, and I have cameras set up everywhere. I saw you drive in.”
“Okay, that explains why you’re here right now.” I cocked an eyebrow. “Doesn’t explain why you’d want to live next door to a former cult where so many people died.”
“I’m here because rogues are lazy idiots.” He waved at the temple ruins, the three summoning circles cleared of snow. “Why build your own summoning circle when you can borrow an even better one? Rogue summoners think this place is abandoned, and my guild makes sure those rumors keep circulating, even this many years later.”
Aaron blinked, then laughed with a note of grudging appreciation. “That’s why no one destroyed it. It’s a honeytrap for rogues.”
“I tag a dozen or more a year. When I get sick of the deal, I’ll destroy the circles before I go. Until then …” He shrugged. “It works for me. I like living out here, and I don’t have to chase down my tags.”
Just when I thought he wasn’t twisted enough to be a Keys member, he admitted to liking it out here? Yeah, he was crazy.
Blake started back down the slope, and Aaron fell into step beside him, the fit pyromage looking a tad scrawny next to the heavyweight terramage. Their quiet conversation trickled back to me as I followed a dozen paces behind, but I wasn’t paying attention. My gaze slid across the destroyed houses as I absorbed Blake’s story.
While the terramage limped into the community hall ruins to get his quarterstaff, Aaron, Justin, and I reconvened at the car. Pointedly ignoring my brother, I leaned close to Aaron.
“The Keys killed ten demon mages,” I whispered, “and claim the eleventh slaughtered the cultist families. But”—I dropped my voice even lower—“we know the eleventh demon mage wasn’t there.”
“Then who killed the cultists? Was it demon magic, or is that a cover story?”
I tapped my chin thoughtfully. “Honestly, I’m inclined to believe Blake—at least in that a demon mage killed everyone. Maybe it was an unaccounted-for one. Could the summoner have created a new demon mage in four weeks?”
My mistrust of the Keys aside, the terramage’s story seemed sound. It didn’t make sense for the Keys to murder unresisting families. I me
an, yeah, a Keys of Solomon team had tried to kill me, Aaron, and Kai, but we’d deliberately and obnoxiously put ourselves between them and Ezra. Different situation entirely. Even a shithead like Burke would’ve thought twice about butchering families, right?
But if a cultist had committed the crime, the big question was … why?
Uneven footfalls, accompanied by the thud of a staff hitting the ground with each step, announced Blake’s return. He gave us an assessing once-over.
“You don’t seem to be packing up.”
“Because we aren’t,” I said brusquely. “We didn’t drive all the way out here to turn right around and go home. We’re going to poke around for a bit. You can head on back, though. Tell your team or whatever to head back too.”
“I was bluffing. I never called my team.”
“Oh, well, you can just go, then, can’t you?”
His eyes narrowed stubbornly, and I sighed in annoyance.
Our unwelcome supervisor waited as we opened the hatch. Surprise flicked over his features when Aaron pulled out a pair of shovels and a pickaxe, purchased in one of the towns along the way. With Eterran’s tip about an underground lair, we’d come prepared to excavate the ruins.
I was so excited to dig holes in the half-frozen ground.
“You aren’t planning to exhume bodies, are you?” Blake asked as Aaron handed me the equipment. “Because there aren’t any here.”
“Good.” Turning, I dumped the shovels into Justin’s unprepared arms. “I don’t want to dig up any graves, on purpose or by accident. Since you’re butting in,” I added to my brother, “you can make yourself useful.”
Scowling, he opened his mouth, then glanced at the terramage and said nothing.
With Aaron, Justin, and I carrying the gear between us, we headed back up the slope. Blake trailed after us, slowed by his gimpy leg. At the temple ruins, I rammed my shovel into the hard ground and surveyed the area, trying not to think about all the people who’d died in this very spot—including Ezra’s parents.
Lost Talismans and a Tequila (The Guild Codex: Spellbound Book 7) Page 7