Apparently, back to the hostages to do god knows what since he has started walking towards them. Eliana isn’t going to stand for that. A strong wind picks up in the apartment, causing alarm amongst the kidnappers. They look around wildly trying to find the source and it takes them a moment to realize that the tornado like wind is only affecting them, not Kallen or Agent Amman and his family. I give a questioning look to Eliana.
“My magic doesn’t affect the people I care about when I do something like this,” she explains. Nice. How do I get that clause written into my magical contract?
The wind has turned into a deafening roar that we can hear clearly from out here. Even the door across the hall opens a crack and one eye peeks out trying to figure out what the noise is. When the eye sees us, the door is immediately closed and we hear the sound of dead bolts engaging and the chain being slid into the locked position. Yeah, this is a seriously bad neighborhood.
Valiantly, the leader again tries to reach the hostages by battling the tornado like wind which is now ripping at the walls and tearing the furniture. The agent’s wife and daughter continue to be untouched by the wind as they watch him barely take a step before the wind sends him sailing backwards, landing hard on his back on the disgusting carpet. One of his cohorts tries to help him up, but the wind has him pressed securely to the ground. His ‘help’ almost dislocates the guy’s shoulder before he gives up.
The man still holding a gun towards Kallen and Agent Amman is having a hard time focusing on his job. The sole, already cracked window in the apartment has shattered and pieces of glass are flying everywhere, cutting at his face and hands. Finally, he decides it’s not worth it and drops the gun to the floor so he can cover his face and head trying to minimize the damage.
Kallen and Agent Amman are ready and as soon as the gun drops to the floor, they each have a hand wrapped around a guy’s throat. Kallen has the gunman who just gave up and using his strength instead of his magic, he punches the guy so hard it renders him unconscious. I smile despite the violence of the action. He had it coming.
Agent Amman subdues the other gunman in a similar manner. He may not have quite the same amount of strength as Kallen, but his methods are just as effective for rendering the man unconscious. Now, there’s only one left.
The man still being held to the floor by a magical gale force is struggling against its weight. He sees the agent coming for him and he feels around on the floor for the gun. Agent Amman gets to it first and kicks it from the man’s reach.
The cool, collected agent has become a husband and a father seeking revenge for his family. He is pounding on the man with both fists until he’s bloody and unconscious. I have to look away because my stomach is churning from the sight. Kallen has already unbound his wife and daughter and the woman is shielding her daughter’s eyes from the horror, as well.
When it becomes evident that he’s not planning to stop until the man’s dead, Kallen wraps his arms around the agent and pulls him off the man. Agent Amman struggles at first, and I’m convinced he’s going to take his need for a pound of flesh from Kallen until he looks over at his family. The fight leaves him instantly. When Kallen is sure he can trust him, he lets the agent go and Agent Amman rushes to pull his family into his arms. The room becomes quiet as the wind dies down to nothing. We did it. We saved Agent Amman’s family.
Twisting the doorknob, Josh opens the door and we’re inside. I wrap my arms around Kallen and he hugs me back. “I’m fine,” he whispers when he feels me shaking.
“I know,” I say. I don’t really know why I’m reacting like this. We’ve been in more danger than this, but I still feel this is somehow different.
“Thank you,” Agent Amman says to all of us. “Thank you for saving my family.”
“I do not understand,” Agent Amman’s wife says, “who are these young people?”
Agent Amman smiles down at her, love and relief streaming from his eyes and glowing on his face. “You and I will have a long discussion this evening about that.” He looks up at Eliana. “Assuming you are fine with that.”
Eliana returns his smile. “Of course.”
“I hate to be the harbinger here, but what of when these men regain their wits? What will stop them from coming for you again?” Kallen asks.
I look at Eliana. “I think we can come up with something to assure that never happens.” She nods and I suspect the determined gleam in her eye matches mine.
Kallen binds the three men with magical ropes and then I use magic to slap the unconscious men until they awaken. I don’t even feel badly that it takes several slaps for that to happen. Not even for the guy who Agent Amman beat. When their eyes open, they widen in shock as they try to escape their bindings.
“Uh uh,” I say and combine my magic with Kallen’s to tighten the bonds. “The more you struggle, the tighter they’ll get. With murder in their eyes, all three men stop struggling.
I kneel down in front of them not wanting to think about what could be crawling around in the carpet. “We’re going to make a deal with you,” I say now that I’m eye to eye with them. “You aren’t going to tell anybody we were here and we’re going to let you live.”
The main guy decides the appropriate response to that is to spit at me. I’m not close enough for it to actually hit me, but still, that’s disgusting. Kallen isn’t any happier about it than I am and he uses magic to bang the guy’s head against the wall. I’m afraid he’s going to lose consciousness again, but he doesn’t.
I stand up and put my hands on my hips. “You really don’t want to keep pissing us off,” I warn the guy.
“You never know what could happen,” Eliana says and a line of fire begins to dance its way towards the three men. It splits off into three sections and closes in on each of them. I have to take their voices away to stop their screaming. Well, their screaming doesn’t really stop, but we can’t hear it now and neither can the neighbors.
The fire stops just short of the men. If they move at all, their clothes will likely catch on fire. “It’s funny how fire can just pop up anywhere,” Josh says with an amused glint in his eye. “Especially when you least expect it.”
“There are worse things than prison or death,” I add to the threat. Then I give them their voices back. I want to know how seriously they’re taking this. They seem a little irrational at the moment and may not be paying attention like they should.
To prove my point, the main guy starts ranting something in Arabic. I turn to Kallen with a questioning look. He translates, but I don’t think he tells me everything the guy is saying. “He is threatening revenge, eye for an eye, and wishing us all into the deepest level of Jahannam.” I’m assuming that’s hell in his religion.
My brow crinkles and I turn back to the man who Agent Amman assured us earlier understands English. “An eye for an eye? You really think you could do something like this?” I sweep my arm out indicating the fire. “Or this?” I ask and then I let a little bit of my magic trickle into him. I am oh so careful not to let too much go.
The man begins to writhe around, oblivious now to the dangers of the fire threatening to consume him. My magic is burning inside him, boiling his blood and turning his mind to mush. I have to take his voice away again so no one outside of the room is aware of his torture. After a moment, Kallen puts his hand on my shoulder. “Careful,” he says quietly.
I nod and pull back my magic. “I’m pretty sure you can’t do that,” I tell the man as he struggles to recover from the shock and pain of my attack. Eliana has carefully kept the fire from him but it’s right back where it was now.
All the fight seems to have left him. The man is lying in a heap, almost in a fetal position. I think he got the message; I don’t think he’s going to hurt anyone anymore.
Why do I always underestimate evil? Seriously, you’d think I’d learn. The reason the man has curled into a fetal position is that he has a gun tucked into his socks. Which he pulls out and points at me. Now, that’s just
rude.
And now he has the audacity to fire the trigger. Fine, he wants eye for eye? I’ll give it to him. I stop the bullet mid-air and I turn it around. It rushes towards the man’s heart and buries itself in his skin, prying his ribs apart, just touching his heart. Then I stop it.
I kneel down in front of him again. “You can’t win this. You can’t harm us. You can’t harm Agent Amman or his family. You can’t even save yourself if we want you dead. You are completely at our mercy and right now; I can’t think of any reason at all to have mercy on you.”
Eliana kneels down next to me. Raising the flames higher, she says, “Mercy is for the repentant. I see no one here that matches that description.” She lets the flame touch their clothes and their screams are deafening as they lick their skin beneath. After a couple of seconds, Eliana draws the fire back. I notice Josh has a hand on her shoulder. I’m assuming for the same reason Kallen does that to me when I’m starting to lose control.
The men’s voices quiet as the flames retreat. I don’t even have to take their voices away this time. But I’m still not convinced that they get it. I’m sure this is their first experience with the supernatural; they probably think this is all smoke and mirrors kind of tricks. I have to prove to them that they’re not. But how do I do that without actually killing them, because that’s becoming more and more reasonable in my mind.
As if reading my mind, Kallen says to me quietly, “Perhaps this situation warrants your charming sense of humor.” Oh, nice tactic on his part. Instead of trying to calm me down because I’m sure he can feel my magic growing as my anger does, he’s trying to redirect it by giving me a different path to follow. I guess we’re both growing in this relationship.
After a few deep breaths, I nod. “Maybe you’re right.” I stand up and take a few more deep breaths. Eliana follows suit, but I can tell she has no idea what Kallen and I are talking about.
Looking down at the men, I say, “Maybe you don’t understand the power that we have. These aren’t tricks.” I move the bullet in the man’s chest the tiniest bit and he cries out. “We hold your lives in our hands right now and if you ever do anything to harm our friends again, there will be nothing in this realm that stops us from tracking you down and doing things way worse than death.” My magic is rising again, beginning to boil, and Kallen does the hand on the shoulder thing to try to ground me.
Taking yet another deep breath, I say, “I’m going to give you an example of how we can control things.” Ask quickly as I put it there, I rip the bullet from his chest, making him cry out again, and pull it towards me until it sits in the middle between us. “As you have already seen, we can shield ourselves and others from your poor excuses for weapons. But, perhaps that isn’t impressive enough for you. So, I’ll show you how I can manipulate metal like it’s dough.”
Kallen suggested humor so here goes. Little arms and legs poke out of the bullet. Putting itself upright, it begins to dance disco style in front of the men. For added affect, I create a little strobe light flashing to the beat of the only disco song I know, the hustle. The men rub their eyes and look again. Yep, the bullet is disco dancing. I hear a laugh covered by a cough coming from the direction of Josh.
Getting into the spirit of things, Eliana pulls water from the rusty old pipes in the building. A stream comes through the wall and dumps onto the men. And it stays there. Just on them. Not seeping through the floor or spreading through the department; it covers the men who are starting to panic as it fills their lungs. Not wanting them to drown, at least not at the moment, Eliana pulls the water from them, leaving them trying to refill their lungs oxygen as they try to expel the water.
The water is hanging suspended in the air now. Feeling that my little dancing bullet needs company, she turns the water into little disco dancers. I love her.
Unplanned, we let our magic go at the same moment when we hear sirens in the distance. The bullet drops to the floor and the water returns to the pipes. The men have seen enough of what we can do if we want. Back to the threats now.
I make eye contact with the main guy. “We can snap your bones like they’re nothing more than twigs.” Eliana grabs his ankle and crushes it with her bare hands. Wow, she is strong. Not having that much physical strength, I break his wrist with my magic. “We can set you on fire, drown you at will, make your blood boil inside of you until your skin melts from the inside out. We can strangle you from a distance,” I wrap magical hands around their necks and start to choke them before pulling my magic back. “We can get to you no matter where you are; there is no where you would be safe.”
Wanting to prove my point, I reach out and touch both Eliana and the main guy, teleporting us out of the room. Actually, teleporting us thousands of miles away to cracked gray ground.
I thought the man was scared before. Now he’s petrified as he looks around trying to figure out where he is and how he got here. Eliana is a little disconcerted, but she quickly hides that.
“Where am I,” the man asks, using English in our presence for the first time.
“Hawaii,” I say. “On an active volcano.” I teleported us near the top, but was careful this time not to put us on the very edge.
“How did I get here?” he asks.
I smile. “Magic. Now, I’m going to show you a little bit more magic.” I tie a magical rope to his ankle that isn’t broken and flip him upside down so he’s dangling. Then, I move him over the lip of the volcano. “How are you with lava?” I ask Eliana.
She shrugs. “Earth, water, and fire. I bet I’m pretty good with it. Let’s see.”
The temperature on the volcano rises quickly as molten lava splashes around inside of it as it rises towards the surface. Wow. It’s getting really hot. Maybe this wasn’t the best plan. But Eliana’s having fun proving that even lava will do her bidding. The man hanging upside down watching it rise towards him is not. His screams become so deafening again, I have to take his voice away.
“It’s getting pretty hot, want to head back?” I ask Eliana.
“Sure,” she says, but I can tell she would love to play with the lava more.
“I’ll bring you back here another time,” I promise and she smiles.
In an instant, we’re back in the grungy apartment in Cairo. I drop the man still dangling from my magical rope and he immediately scooches away from me until he hits the wall. I look down at him and give him my best evil smile, “As you can see, there is no place you can go; nowhere you can hide from us. We can track you like bloodhounds just like we found you today. If you ever leave prison again and go after anyone, or if you ever tell anyone about us, you will find yourself nothing but a sack of bones lying in the street. Maybe I’ll even put you straight into hell, where you really belong.”
Leaning in closer to the now terrified men, I say in a low voice, “I’ve reducedan Archangel to a sack of bones; I would have no problem doing it to a mere human.” Okay, I’m not comfortable with the fact I said that last part, but it definitely gets my point across.
The sirens are getting closer and I think there’s actually some relief on the men’s faces. Funny how they’re now eager to be taken back into custody. All three men are rambling on in Arabic and I don’t need Kallen to translate. They are begging for their lives.
Agent Amman’s wife looks up at him. “Yes, we will be having a long conversation this evening and you will explain to me exactly what just happened here.”
Chapter 27
“I need to call this in,” Agent Amman says pointedly, still holding his wife and daughter close.
“Which means we need to make ourselves scarce,” Josh says and the agent nods.
“How would you prefer us to leave?” Kallen asks. Meaning on foot or by magic.
Sirens getting closer confirm how we’re going to need to leave. Surprisingly, someone in the building must have called the police. “You should go back to your home. I will arrange to have your vehicle delivered to you later,” Agent Amman says in a voice that
says leave sooner as opposed to later. I guess magic it is then.
“Okay, let’s get outta here,” I say to the other three. They gather around me and I make sure I’m touching all of them. Looking at Agent Amman and his family, I say, “It was nice to meet you.” For some reason, my politeness is followed by a round of chuckles. Even from the agent himself. Rolling my eyes, I imagine us back in the foyer of the house and we’re there.
Shaking his head, Josh says, “I don’t know that I’d ever get used to that.”
“Sure you would,” I say and add with a grin, “It becomes addictive. Soon, I’ll never walk anywhere.”
Kallen wraps his arms around me. “Then we will have to think of other ways for you to get exercise.”
“Too much information. Get a room you guys,” Eliana laughs and my cheeks turn pink.
Walking through the living room towards the kitchen, Josh says over his shoulder, “If you guys are hungry, I thought I’d make some pasta. But we’ll understand if you’d rather turn in.” He gives us a wink and my cheeks turn a brighter red.
Blood of Egypt (Witch Fairy Book 8) Page 12