White Hot

by Ilona Andrews

  Another chunk slid from the oak. They were chopping it down from two sides. Running to the house was out of the question. The closest place to hide would be the arched entrance to the De Trevinos’ house, which required a fifty-foot sprint. They would hit us. Making an arcane circle was right out too. We were on the grass.

  Rogan leaned out. Another thud. He swore, pulling back. All of his magic meant nothing unless he found a target. He could level the entire row of houses across the street, but there were families in those houses.

  I dropped down to my knees and peeked from behind the oak.

  A shadow moved on the roof of the mansion across from us. A crimson disk hurtled toward me. I threw myself behind the tree. It whistled past me, its magic singeing my shoulder.

  “One is on the roof directly across from us.”

  Rogan’s face was grim. “The other is at the next house on our left.”

  “They’re quick.”

  “I noticed that.”

  “You can’t collapse those roofs.”

  “Not planning on it.”

  “This is a family neighborhood. There could be children inside those homes.”

  He grabbed my hand and looked at me, his blue eyes calm and reassuring. “I know.”

  He wouldn’t hurt them. At least no other people would die because of us.

  Disks thudded into the wood, gouging the oak. The tree shuddered from the impact. The barrage mages were ducking and throwing, too fast for Rogan to lock on to.

  We had to move. We were running out of the tree.

  I leaned back, facing the tree, and turned my head. Nothing to my right. Only houses. Nothing to my left, except more house and a carpet of brown mulch that crawled toward us . . .

  Wait a minute.

  Not mulch. Ants.

  “Rogan, we’re about to have company.”

  He glanced to the left and swore.

  The carpet of the ants advanced in thin rivulets, the currents of insects pooling and changing directions as if momentarily confused, then realigning themselves. Whoever was controlling them didn’t have a good hold on the ant horde. He didn’t need to. We were in Texas, facing an insect mage, and that meant fire ants. They would flush us from behind the tree and the barrage mages would finish us.

  The tree shook continuously now. It wouldn’t last much longer.

  The ants marched on. On my right another street crossed ours and the ants poured around the corner. The insect mage had to be hiding there, out of our line of sight.

  The crimson disk sliced a hair from my thigh. I turned sideways, almost hugging Rogan.

  This is it flashed in my head. I could die right here on this lawn. One good shot from the barrage mages and I would never see my family again.

  “How’s your aim?” Rogan asked.

  I stomped the fear down. “It will have to be good enough.”

  He bared his teeth at me. “On three.”

  I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

  He held up one finger. Two.

  We lunged from behind the tree at the same time. My Mazda snapped in half with a tortured scream of torn metal. The pieces shot up into the air just as the two figures on the roofs ducked from their cover, launching their spinning circles of magic at us. I sighted the one directly across from us. It felt so impossibly slow.

  Kill or be killed. I squeezed the trigger. The gun spat thunder. The mage’s head jerked back. I turned, sighting the second barrage mage, and fired. The bullet punched into her chest. She slid down the roof and fell into the sea of ants.

  The remnants of my Mazda streaked through the air, blocking the course of the two disks. The magic missiles thudded into metal and fiberglass and exploded, hissing.

  Rogan grabbed my hand and pulled me into a run. We dashed across the street, through the arched entrance into someone’s yard and past their house. The brick fence exploded in front of us. Rogan turned left. He was going for the insect mage.

  Behind us a woman howled, “Brown! Get them off of me! Fuck!”

  “I’m trying!” a male growled from somewhere down the street.

  “There are ants in my fucking bullet wound! Get them off of me!”

  We sprinted to the corner of the street and stopped. I raised my gun and sliced the corner, clearing it. A large white van was parked by the curb. Four large metal drums sat on the ground next to it. A dark-haired man leaned around the next corner, his back to us.

  The woman screamed and choked, her cry suddenly cut off.

  “Serves you right, you stupid bitch,” the man muttered.

  Rogan marched past me, murder on his face. The insect mage turned. Rogan grabbed his shoulder and sank a vicious punch into the man’s stomach. The insect mage doubled over, sinking. Rogan drove his knee into the man’s face. Something crunched. The mage crumpled to the ground.

  “Stop,” I called out.

  Rogan moved toward the fallen man.

  “Stop, stop, stop.”

  He glanced at me.

  “Everyone else is dead, Rogan. We can’t question him if you kill him.”

  He bent down, grabbed the mage by his throat, hauled him upright, and smashed him against the stone fence. The mage gurgled, struggling to breathe. Blood dripped from his broken nose. His eyes watered. I stepped close and searched him. No gun. I pulled out his wallet. Driver’s license for Ray Cannon. I took out my cell and took a picture of it.

  “Is there anyone else?” Rogan asked, his voice cold and precise.

  “No,” the man gasped.

  Rogan squeezed, crushing his throat.

  “True,” I confirmed.

  Rogan loosened his hold. The man drew a hoarse breath and looked at me, his eyes pleading. “Help . . .”

  Rogan shook him and slammed him back against the fence. “Don’t look at her. Look at me. Who pays your bills?”

  “Forsberg.”

  Damn it. I was hoping we’d get a lead on whoever was behind the attack. Instead we’d circled right back to Forsberg.

  “Talk,” Rogan ordered.

  “They told us you killed his old man, Matthias. There are two teams hunting you. We were closer. It was me, Kowaski, and his sister. We came in two cars—the Ford parked down the street and my van. We set up and waited for you to come out.”

  “How did you know where we would be?” I asked.

  “De Trevino called it in.”

  That cockroach.

  The look on Rogan’s face sent icy shivers down my spine.

  “Rogan, can I please have him?”

  All color went out of the mage’s face. He realized whom he’d cornered.

  Rogan squeezed his neck again.

  I reached out and touched his arm. “Please?”

  “Fine.” He let go. The mage slid to the ground.

  “You’re going to put the ants back into the drums,” I said. “If I see a single fire ant on this street after we’re done with De Trevino, I’ll ask him to find you.” I pointed at Rogan. “You do know who he is, right?”

  The mage nodded quickly.

  “Gather your ants and go. The next time I see you, I’ll put a bullet in your head.” There. That sounded dramatic enough.

  Rogan ignored the mage and marched on to De Trevino’s house. I followed.

  He hit the door with the palm of his hand. His magic smashed into the wood. Every window in the house exploded outward. He strode into the house, his face dark.

  Antonio stood in the living room, his face white as a sheet.

  “I’m a little irritated.” The furniture slid out of Rogan’s way. “So I’ll ask only once: why did you call Forsberg?”

  “I was worried you might impede their investigation . . .” Antonio squeezed out.

  “Lie,” I said.

  “I just wanted to get information . . .”

  “Another lie.”

  The house shook.

  This was taking too long and if I didn’t do something, Rogan would bring the entire building down. “Look at
me,” I said, gathering my magic. “Look into my eyes.”

  Antonio glanced at me. My magic shot out and clamped him. He shook, straining under the pressure. My powers were will-based, and with everything that had happened today, my will had a lot of fuel behind it.

  My voice dropped into a low, inhuman register. “Why did you call Forsberg?”

  The look on Rogan’s face was priceless. That’s right. No circle to help me this time. Somebody leveled up while you were away.

  “Money!” Antonio cried out. “If Forsberg confirms Elena’s death happened on the job, her life insurance pays double. House Forsberg promised to not impede my insurance claim if I came forward with any information related to anyone looking into her death.”

  I released him. “That’s true,” I told Rogan.

  Antonio drew a long, shuddering breath.

  Rogan kicked the glass table. It shattered. The shards rose into the air.

  Antonio froze, petrified.

  A boy burst into the room from the right doorway. He ran across and thrust himself in front of Antonio.

  “Don’t kill my dad!’

  He couldn’t be older than ten.

  “John,” Antonio said, his voice breaking. “Go see to your sister.”

  “Don’t kill my dad!” The boy stared at Rogan, his face defiant.

  Rogan stared back.

  The shards flew through the air and shattered harmlessly against a wall.

  “We all choose a side,” Rogan told Antonio. “You chose badly.”

  He turned and walked out.

  The street outside of Antonio’s house was empty, the river of ants speeding around the corner, probably back into the insect mage’s drums. Sirens howled in the distance. Someone had called the cops.

  Rogan’s magic roiled around him, an enraged tornado.

  “Thank you for not killing him in front of his son,” I said.

  “Adults can make a choice to become my enemy or my ally, or to remain as noncombatants. Children are just children, Nevada. That child lost his mother. I wouldn’t take his father from him.” He checked his phone. “This way.”

  We began walking to the right, away from the retreating ant army.

  “Enemies, allies, or civilians, huh?” I asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “And if someone helps the enemy, like Antonio?”

  “Then he becomes an enemy himself.”

  “And enemies have to be eliminated?” I asked.

  “If they present a danger, yes.” Rogan’s face was merciless.

  The light dawned in my head. I knew what this was. I had gone through it before. “That’s true in a war. We’re not in a war, Rogan.”

  “Of course we’re at war.”

  “No. We’re in a civilian world. Things are not black and white. They have shades of grey. There are degrees of punishment, depending on the severity of the crime.”

  He faced me, his blue eyes hard and clear, without a shadow of doubt. “This isn’t about punishment. This is survival.”

  What the hell happened to you in the war, Rogan? What did they do to you to cause this much damage?

  “So if someone, let’s say a young woman, is helping one of your enemies, she’s also an enemy. It’s okay to kidnap her off the street, chain her in your basement, and interrogate her by any means necessary.”

  His face told me he really didn’t like where I was going.

  “Tell me, how close did I come to being murdered?”

  “You were never close to being murdered. At the time, I didn’t feel you presented a threat. I just wanted information and if I had obtained it, I would’ve let you go just as I did. I probably wouldn’t have driven you home myself, but asked one of my people to do it.”

  I tried again. “You can’t live like this, Rogan. The war is over.”

  He stopped and pivoted back, where two bodies lay prone on the ground. “What does that look like to you? Because it looks like combat to me.”

  We resumed walking.

  And he liked combat. Combat was simple. It was familiar. He knew who his enemies were because they were trying to kill him, and he knew what his mission was: to survive by eliminating every threat he saw. You didn’t fire warning shots in war. You aimed to kill.

  But the civilian life was frustrating and complicated. If Rogan went into a bar and a drunk tried to pick a fight with him, they would expect completely different outcomes. The drunk would expect some insults, then some pushing, then possibly a punch or two, followed by grabbing each other’s clothes and tussling on a street until the alcoholic temper tantrum wore off. The drunk would expect to go home afterward. Because that was his normal, the civilian world’s normal. He had no idea that the moment he designated himself as a threat, a mental switch flipped in Rogan’s brain. If the drunk were lucky, Rogan would incapacitate him by choking him out. If he were unlucky or he tried to pull a knife, Rogan would cripple him or even kill him.

  He’d been out of the military for years. He’d probably never sought treatment. He probably didn’t know anything was wrong with him.

  “How are you sleeping?” I asked him.

  “Like a baby,” he said.

  “Nightmares?”

  “I came to your house to ask you to be with me. You turned me down . . .”

  Way to change the subject. “Right now isn’t the best time for this conversation.”

  “It’s the perfect time. I asked you on a date. You said no. I waited. There was no counterproposal.”

  “A date?” That wasn’t how I remembered it. I waited for the buzz telling me he’d lied, but none came. “Oh please. That’s not what you were offering and you know it!”

  “That’s exactly what I was offering.”

  True. How was he dodging me on this . . . “Are you telling me that you weren’t offering a sexual relationship?”

  He took a second. “No.”

  Ha! Got him. To him a date—whatever he meant by it—was a prelude to sex. In his head he did offer me “a date,” so technically he wasn’t lying. I’d have to be cleverer with my questions.

  “I’m not a stalker, Nevada,” he said. “I understood no.”

  “I didn’t want you to stalk me, Rogan.”

  “What did you want?”

  “I wanted you to give me a chance to decide if I wanted a relationship with you. You wanted sex. If you’re really hard up for some uncomplicated sex, I hear Harper is single.”

  He made a grunt that might have been no, but it was hard to tell with that much disgust saturating it.

  My legs shook. I kept moving. If I told him that the stress was getting to me, he’d probably try to do something ridiculous like carry me. I wouldn’t be carried by Mad Rogan, especially not in public.

  “I didn’t say I just wanted sex.”

  “Let me quote: ‘Do you want seduction, dinners, and gifts? Seduction is a game, and if you pay enough in flattery, money, or attention, you get what you want. I thought you were above the game.’ Did you not say that to me a week before you strolled into my garage to invite me on ‘a date’?”

  “Yes. I wanted to skip the bullshit.”

  “So what happened? You changed your mind and now you want the bullshit?”

  Rogan’s phone chimed. “Yes, I want your bullshit.”

  “Well, you don’t get to have any of my bullshit. I’m keeping it.” Okay, and that didn’t sound childish. Not at all.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you call it bullshit.”

  A silver Range Rover slid around the curve of the road and came to a stop in front of us, Troy behind the wheel. I got into the back before Rogan or I said anything else. I really didn’t want to continue this conversation in front of Troy.

  Rogan took the front passenger seat. “Home.”

  Troy drove out.

  “I’m not sure I fully understand the concept of bullshit,” Rogan said, his voice quiet. “Would you care to discuss it, over dinner perhaps? I’d be happy t
o listen to an explanation of how I erred. A place of your choice.”

  No. If I went to dinner with him, I wouldn’t be able to resist reaching out. I would kiss him. I would probably do other things . . . More intimate things . . . I wouldn’t be able to help myself, and I didn’t want to open that door now.

  “I would like to go home.”

  “Would spending an evening with me be such a terrible thing?” he asked.

  The sincerity in his voice stopped me in my tracks. The witty replies died.

  “No.”

  “Are you afraid of me?” he asked.

  No, I realized. He would never hurt me. I didn’t even know where that belief came from, yet I was absolutely sure that he wouldn’t. His power terrified me, but it was a deep-seated, instinctual kind of fear. I wasn’t afraid of Mad Rogan. I was probably the only person in Houston who wasn’t.

  “It’s not that.”

  “I realize that the way I act is disturbing to you,” he said. “I’ll do almost anything to make you feel at ease, but if you want me to be conflicted about eliminating someone who is a threat, I don’t think I can. I don’t believe I’m capable of it anymore.”

  This conversation had gone deep really fast. His facade had cracked and the man behind it was looking at me.

  “I just killed two people,” I said. My voice came out small. “I’m trying to not deal with it, because if I do, I might lose it. Today was a long day. I need to go home and hug my family, so I know they are still okay.”

  “Of course,” he said, his voice carefully controlled.

  I saw him close himself off. One moment Connor was there, and the next Mad Rogan reasserted himself.

  We’d witnessed so much grief today. So much pain. Cornelius, Jeremy, the faces of Rogan’s soldiers . . . Forsberg. Two bodies on the street behind us. Dreams, futures, lives severed abruptly. I didn’t even know how to process it all. It had to have an effect on him—he wouldn’t be human otherwise—and I saw an imprint of today on his face: fatigue, grief, and grim determination in his eyes. He looked older; not worn, but rough, like he hadn’t slept for ages. He was still sharp, still deadly, but it was the dangerous edge of a predator backed into a corner after a long chase.