by DB Reynolds
“What do we do with these bodies?”
Damian gazed around at the bloody mess. “We’ll leave them for the vultures. There’s nothing to tie any of us to this scene yet, and if we get out of here before dawn, there won’t be.”
“He’s right,” Grace said, suddenly all business as she straightened away from him. “We need to muddy up our license plates, just in case they have cameras on the gates, but it’ll be hours before anyone stumbles on this scene. Most likely the scavenger birds will attract attention, but by then, they and the other local predators will have eaten or dragged away much of the evidence.”
“I’ve already talked to Lili,” Casey said, walking into the firelight. “She’s found a website for these nut jobs.” She gestured at the fallen acolytes. “They’re big fans of the Dark Witch, but not so much of you,” she added, nodding in Kato’s direction.
“Yeah, I got that. They wanted to use me as a sacrifice to bring her back. It wouldn’t have worked, even if I’d gone along with it. You can’t gift the Dark Witch that which she already owns. She’s selfish that way.”
“She’s a twisted bitch is what she is. And she doesn’t own you,” Grace muttered, then grimaced in disgust. “Ugh, that’s disgusting.”
Kato glanced over to where she was looking and saw a dog-like animal ripping away at one of the corpses.
“Coyote,” Casey provided. “There’ll be more and worse before long. Can we please leave now?”
“Yes, let’s,” Grace agreed, tugging Kato away from the blood and gore, and down the road to her vehicle. “We’re going back to the beach house. If you want to come . . .”
“Good idea. We’ll bring—” Damian began walking alongside them, but Casey interrupted.
“We’ll go back to the hotel,” she said firmly, giving him a meaningful look. “I’m sure Grace and Kato would like to sleep. And we’ll need to drive Nick’s car back, too.”
“Yes!” Damian agreed enthusiastically. “It’s my turn to drive!”
“Not a chance. You might be a god—”
“I am a god.”
“But you can’t drive for shit. You’re lucky I’m letting you drive my truck. We’ll call you later,” she added, looking at Grace. “After Nick resurfaces, which he always does, more’s the pity.”
Grace laughed, thinking she and Casey had a lot in common. She waited until Kato was buckled into the passenger seat, then slid behind the wheel of her dad’s SUV and started the ignition with a roar of the powerful engine.
Stretching out one long arm and wrapping his fingers around the back of her neck, Kato asked, “So we need to sleep, huh?”
She gave him her best version of a lecherous leer. “And other things,” she said, then spun the SUV into a rocking U-turn and started back up the dusty road. “Are you ready for all of this?”
“Ready? I’ve waited lifetimes for this. Let’s go home, Grace.”
NICK RACED DOWN the wormhole that Sotiris had created for his escape. He hated these fucking things, hated the distortion of time and space. There was no up or down, no ground or sky. It was disorienting and just plain irritating. But it was also Sotiris’s favorite trick, and so Nick had studied everything he could find on the damn things. He tormented himself sometimes, wondering if he could have stopped the curses that Sotiris had laid on his warriors. If he could have hauled them back from the time distortions that catapulted them so far and wide that after thousands of years, he was still searching.
Logic forced him to recognize that even if he’d been a master of spatial distortions, he couldn’t have followed all four of his warriors at once. And then whom would he have chosen to save?
A sudden lightning strike of magic dragged his attention back to the present and the very real threat of Sotiris as he tried to do what he did best . . . run away. Nick raised a shield almost without thought, his battle instincts hardened into muscle memory, especially when it came to his eternal enemy. Sotiris launched a blistering attack, lighting up the twisted environment like a kaleidoscope, color and lights forming fantastic images and shapes meant to lure the unwary into forgetting where they were and why. But Nick was no novice magic user to be distracted by a fucking light show.
Focusing his power, he shaped a bolt of magic, like an enormous steel shaft aimed at Sotiris’s back as the coward fled ahead of the magical distortion. The bolt flew through the wormhole with a high-pitched whine, like that of an airplane coming in for a barely-controlled descent, about to crash.
Sotiris sensed the attack at the last moment and spun around to challenge Nick. Gone was the urbane museum patron who’d manipulated that poor fuck Gabler. Sotiris had dropped all pretense and was showing his true face—a sorcerer of tremendous power, thousands of years old. Ordinary humans meant nothing to him, their short lives barely registering on his reality, except in the ways they could serve his needs.
He raised his arms and his power surged, whipping around his clothing, raking his hair into a dark crown above eyes gone blood-red with anger. His lips pulled back from his teeth in a grimace as he began to chant in a language that Nick recognized too well. Dark magic. The son of a bitch had done it. He bit back his dismay. Those fools back in the desert might have been dabbling in dark arts they didn’t understand, but not Sotiris. He’d known exactly what he was reaching for and how to get it. The world should be grateful that the bastard hadn’t succeeded in stealing Kato’s power as well, that the Fates had intervened to send Grace to make sure of Kato’s survival. Not even those bitches wanted Sotiris to gain that much power.
As it was, Sotiris now confronted Nick with more dark magic than he’d ever faced before. His dismay must have shown, because Sotiris laughed. His head thrown back, his expression was one of almost religious fervor as the magic of the Dark Witch sped through his veins.
“You always were an ass, Katsaros,” Sotiris taunted him. “Too good to make use of the weapon right in front of you. The witch’s son would have laid down his blade for you, would have poured his magic into your soul like water into a desert. But you were too fucking noble to take it. Too terrified of risking his life. Fool,” he spat. “The stupid bastard was born to be sucked dry, to give up every ounce of magic and more in the service of the Dark Witch. To die serving someone who knew how to use what he offered,” he added slyly, and then grinned. “I did him a favor. I fulfilled his destiny at last.” He laughed again, amused by his own twisted sense of balance in the world.
But as his cackles sent sharp spikes of yellow energy crashing through the distorted environment, Nick had a flash of realization that sent a smug grin across his face. Sotiris thought Kato was dead, that he alone now held the power of the Dark Witch, heir to her bitter legacy.
“There’s just one problem,” Nick drawled, surrounding himself in colorful waves of power that disguised the hardened strength of his shields. “Kato’s still alive, asshole, and you’re nothing compared to him. You never will be.”
Sotiris’s face twisted into a furious grimace, his words spitting with fury. “He should have been mine. Without me, he’d still be a doorstop in that fucking museum.”
Nick laughed, ignoring Sotiris’s rage. “He would never have been yours. None of them will be.” He tossed a scattering of power bombs at Sotiris’s feet, each of them exploding into a hundred sharp edges that cut into the sorcerer’s skin and sliced his clothing. The ploy was more a nuisance than anything else, a way of mocking Sotiris, toying with him as if he represented no threat.
“They’re coming back, Sotiris,” Nick growled, deadly serious once more. “My warriors are breaking free of your damnable curses. One by one, they’re finding their way back to me, to their brothers.” He launched a thundering ball of pure energy through the distorted air. There would be no more playing. No more taunts. But even as he attacked, he felt the power shift, felt Sotiris’s magic swell, bolstered by the dark magic he’d managed to steal, and he knew the bastard was going to run.
He roared out a spell, sending
tendrils of power to wrap around Sotiris and trap him in place, but the dark magic ate through everything he tried, the threads of Nick’s power snapping like rubber bands, whipping the whirling walls of the wormhole until it was nothing more than a blur of color.
Sotiris laughed again, in victory this time, and turned to run. Nick started after him, but, in an instant, he was gone, leaving nothing to follow. All trace of him had disappeared, no scent of his magic, no trailing spells to defend his retreat. Just gone.
“Bastard,” Nick muttered, but he wasn’t sure if he was cursing Sotiris or himself, for being unable to defeat his longtime enemy. He lingered for one long moment in the distorted reality of the wormhole, and then reached for his own escape.
In an instant, he was back in the world. His world. He looked around, trying to figure out exactly where he was. He had the time right. No question of that. But where the hell was he?
Chapter Fourteen
Pompano Beach, Florida
NICK STORMED INTO his house, riding a fine rage that surrounded him in an aura of meanness and aggression. Fucking Sotiris. He was so good at running away that Nick was convinced the bastard had spent more time on that than any other spell for all these thousands of years. He must have known this day would come, that eventually Nick’s warriors would break free of their prisons and join forces to come after him. And he had to know their revenge would be endless. There’d be no quick death for him. Pain would be the least of what the bastard would endure. And he would suffer for millennia, just as Nick’s warriors had.
Nick entertained himself for a moment with fantasies of what he’d do once he caught up to the coward. He and his warriors would take turns.
“Hey, boss!” Lili was practically chirping, she was so damn cheerful.
Nick wasn’t feeling it. He was tired, dirty, and he wanted to know where the fuck his car was. He gave Lili a wordless glare, which only made her laugh. Obviously he needed to work on his glares.
“Casey and Damian brought your car back,” she said absently, her attention having been grabbed by something flashing across her ever-present computer screens.
“Damian?” He felt a spike of true fear for his red metal baby.
Lili laughed without turning. “Casey drove it to the airport. The jet brought it home. You’d know that if you’d bothered to check your email.”
“I haven’t exactly been connected. And I didn’t have the jet. I had to charter a flight home from Nebraska.”
“Nebraska? Heavens, what’s Sotiris doing up there? I don’t have reports of any activity in that area.”
Nick’s only response was a wordless grunt. He hated admitting that he’d lost his prey. “Where’s the jet now?” he asked.
“Back home in Fort Lauderdale where it belongs.”
“And the Ferrari?”
“Casey figured you wouldn’t mind if she used it to run around town—” She glanced up at his strangled gasp and laughed. Again. Well, wasn’t she just having her jollies at his expense this morning? “It’s in the garage, boss. Already washed and detailed with Ernesto’s loving care.”
“You could have led with that,” he growled.
“I could have,” she agreed breezily, then leaned forward as one of her screens abruptly filled with what looked like search results, and not of the Google variety, either. He doubted the good people at Google knew Lili’s sort of searches were even possible.
She was studying the latest results intently, clicking keys and frowning at whatever she was finding. Feeling dismissed, he headed down the hall to his own office and closed the door. He was tempted to sink into the leather softness of his chair and do nothing but watch the beautiful boats sliding by on the Intracoastal Waterway right outside his windows. Maybe even drift off to sleep in the sunshine.
But he had something to do first.
Crossing his office to a wall of built-in bookshelves, he slid his hand to the back of one shelf and pushed gently. The wall popped open to reveal a biometric lock. He pressed his left thumb to the scanner, and a second, nearby bookcase popped open to reveal a door. Pushing it open, he stepped into his inner sanctum, a place very few others had ever seen or knew existed. He took a moment to breathe in the clean air, purified through a filtration system that had two redundant backups. Not for his own safety, but for the safety of the things he kept in here. Safety from each other as well as outside forces. There were magical devices in this vault that could destroy cities if not properly handled. Devices that were designed for that very purpose.
But even those weren’t the main reason for his care.
He walked past the beautiful and the dangerous, the jewel-encrusted and the poorest tin, not stopping until he reached the far corner where a soft light shone on a single shelf set back into an alcove. That light—never dimmed, never turned off—illuminated what once had been four crudely made statues. Two of those were now piles of sand, and Nick’s black heart swelled at the sight. Damian and Kato, freed at last.
His gaze shifted to the remaining statues. Urban Gabriel Halldor, a huge bear of a warrior, a berserker driven by demons that few who knew him understood. And Dragan Fiachna, descended from Irish kings, a beautiful man with more than a little of the beast inside him. Where were they? His private belief was that Damian’s release had triggered a magical cascade of sorts, weakening Sotiris’s original curse and accelerating the release of all his warriors. But that didn’t mean he’d find them in his own back yard. He’d been lucky with Damian and Kato, finding them both on the same continent that he called home. But if anything, that good luck made it less likely the remaining two would be found here. His jaw tightened as he considered the possibilities. He had spies everywhere, on every continent, but it was impossible to cover every corner of the planet.
A chime sounded from his office outside the vault, and Lili called his name. She’d know where he was. He always came here after a hunt.
With a final glance at the occupants of his alcove, he crossed back to the main room and closed the door behind him, making sure it was locked and the entrance concealed and secure, before sitting behind his desk at last. He touched a button on his desk phone.
“What is it, Lili?”
“You should come back here, boss. You’re going to want to see this. Something big is happening in Japan.”
Epilogue
Nagano, Japan
HANA WOKE WHEN the first explosion rocked the compound. Fire painted her room’s pale walls with dancing orange shadows as, hard on the first explosion, there was a second, bigger than the first, rattling the ground beneath her feet. And then the sharp rat-a-tat of automatic weapons, the shouts of the guards, the screams of the injured and dying. And all before she’d drawn a single shocked breath.
She reached for her weapons, strapping them on and stepping into her boots, as she checked the readiness of her guns one at a time, then pulled on her jacket with its pockets stuffed full of extra magazines. She raced to the door, taking a moment to listen before sliding it open and creeping down the hall. The enemy was in the compound. She had to get to her grandfather. He was still powerful in mind, but his body was frail. He would need. . . . She froze as her grandfather’s voice suddenly filled her head.
“It’s time, my Hana-chan. You must go to Gabriel now, to safety.”
Everything in her rebelled at the command. Go to Gabriel? She knew what that meant, but she was a trained warrior, not a child. To run from the fight, to abandon her grandfather, went against every instinct she possessed. And yet . . . even stronger than the instinct to defend was the one to obey.
“Sofu,” she said, letting him hear her submission to his will, but also her torment. He was her grandfather, revered and respected, but he was also her Baachan, the man who’d raised her, who’d told her stories and taught her the forbidden ways of magic and sorcery. The only member of her family who had ever truly loved her. How could she leave him to his enemies?
“Hana-chan.” His thoughts carried the same bu
rden of love and duty as her own. But there was something more, something she’d never heard from her strong, indomitable grandfather. Fear. Not for himself, but for her. “It’s not me they want, child. Run!”
Hana’s feet were moving without conscious thought, carrying her away from the flames, away from the sounds of battle. She knew now who the enemy was, who’d dared to invade the compound of one of the most dangerous men in Japan. And she knew what they wanted from her.
She ran, flying down narrow paths, tears filling her eyes, nearly blinding her to the elegant gardens, so beautifully tended by her grandfather and his fleet of helpers. Her own fingers had dug in this dirt often enough, with her grandfather’s scratchy voice teaching, always teaching. Telling her how working the soil would root her to the earth, to the planet that had birthed her and given her the gift.
Gift. It seemed more of a curse than a gift, especially now, as she ran for her life at the cost of so many others. Was any gift worth such a price?
But still she ran. Because that’s what he wanted, what he’d trained her to do. Obey. Learn. Conquer. In the end, she would triumph. It was the only thing that kept her going. Belief in her grandfather’s wisdom, in the knowledge that in the end, his death would be avenged when their enemy lay dead at her feet.
She slowed her headlong rush, taking time again to listen before whispering the words of magic that let her walk through the seemingly impenetrable hedge and enter their secret place. She hesitated there, staring up at the warrior whose statue stood in the very center of this private garden. Life-sized, her grandfather had told her. But, if so, he was a very big man.
His name was Urban Gabriel Halldor. And he was hers. Her Gabriel. Her angel. Her stupid brothers had mocked her for calling him that. They’d looked at his fierce expression and sharp fangs, and seen only a monster. And they’d been banished forever, their thoughts wiped, found wanting by this secret place. But she’d looked up at the giant warrior and seen Gabriel. He might appear more demon than angel, but she knew his heart.