by SA Magnusson
Aron started to slow, but we weren’t even near the end of the driveway. I glanced over at him, frowning.
“What is it?”
“It’s probably nothing,” he said.
“But it might be something?”
“It’s possible,” he said.
“What?”
“There has been a car following us.”
“For how long?”
“Long enough that I noticed it,” he said.
I swiveled in the seat and turned to look behind us, but I didn’t see the car that he claimed had been following us. “Where? I don’t see anything.”
“You won’t. It’s masked.”
“Masked? As in someone used magic to hide a car?”
“That’s what it would appear,” he said.
I pulled on my magic, reaching within myself, wanting to see if I could detect whatever spell had been used to hide the car, but there was nothing there. No chill worked along my spine, and the more that I pulled on my magic, I still didn’t detect anything.
“Are you sure?”
“Quite,” he said.
“I don’t detect anything.”
“The spell was already placed, so you might not.”
“Why do you think they’re there? Is the council trying to protect the archives?”
“Unlikely. The archives are protected by the knights.”
I didn’t detect any spell coming from one of the knights, either, so they must not have been aware that someone was following us.
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to find out who they are and what they’re after,” Aron said.
“But?”
“But you are with me.”
“You know that I can handle myself. We have been through a few things together, and I’ve come through them just fine.” I almost wanted to remind him that I was the reason we had defeated the Great One, but Aron didn’t need that reminder—or he shouldn’t.
“I know that you can, but here—so close to the council—makes me less inclined to allow you to reveal yourself.”
“Allow me? Aron, this would be my choice.”
He pulled off to the side. In the distance, the building loomed in front of us. Only a few lights illuminated the entire structure, though most of them were on the outside. There had to be some sort of protective spells built around it if it were archives for the council, but much like with the car, I felt no sense of it.
Aron turned to face me. “Let me see what this is about.”
“I’m not leaving you. At least let me put the barrier up around you.” When he arched a brow, I shrugged. “If it comes down to fighting, you can use whatever spell you need to fend them off and you won’t have to worry about them striking you.”
I appreciated that he nodded, not that I would let him forbid me from participating.
As we got out of the car, I noticed that he’d flipped off the interior lights so they didn’t turn on. He left the car idling, but the fact that we pulled over would draw attention to us, so that whoever was following us would know they were seen. It might not even matter. If they weren’t concerned about following us all the way here, they probably wouldn’t be too concerned about us realizing they were there.
I slipped the barrier spell around Aron and me. It took very little effort these days. The more often that I used it, the easier it became for me to place, and I no longer had to think much as I held onto it. It swirled around us, creating something of a cage, not wanting to be surprised by someone creeping up behind us. On these grounds, a place that should be protected by the mage council, no one should be able to sneak up on us, but if I was going to be the one holding the barrier, at least I would do as good a job as I could.
Magic built from Aron and I glanced over. His hands took on a soft glow and electricity coursed along his arms.
I’d seen that spell before and knew that he only had a few shots with it before he got too tired. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“It’s nothing.”
We continued forward, though Aron wasn’t doing so at a rapid pace. Whatever it was that concerned him made him cautious, more than he usually was. And the spell he held onto was far more powerful than what I thought was necessary, given the situation. It was the kind of spell I’d seen him use on demons, along with the Great One. It had barely been useful against the Great One, but I’d seen it do significant damage to demons.
“You’re holding onto your demon destroyer spell, so I know it’s not nothing.”
“I’m concerned about the fact that you detect nothing,” he whispered.
“You don’t have to whisper. I’ve soundproofed the barrier. Do you think this could be demons?”
“I don’t know, and the fact that I don’t know is what bothers me.”
We continued to move forward. As we did, I finally caught sight of the car. Why was it not clear before now?
It shouldn’t be hidden from me, not so easily, and yet it wasn’t until we were nearly upon it that I managed to make it out.
The car sat, idling.
“Should we mask ourselves?” I asked.
“No. I want them to know we’re coming.”
“Great, because I wanted to get into a—”
Power slammed into me.
My barrier held, but I looked over at Aron, concerned.
I’d felt nothing.
7
As I took a minute to fortify my barrier, another blast slammed into me. It came from the same side and the force of it nearly sent me toppling over to my left. I struggled to maintain my footing, planting my feet a little bit wider so that I could hold onto the barrier. Had I not been doing it, we might have been thrown to the ground, though I suspect Aron had enough strength that he would be able to withstand the force of whatever spell it was that struck me.
“I don’t detect anything from them,” I said.
“Nothing?”
I shook my head. “There’s nothing. No sense of magic.”
The electricity working along his arms retreated and he shifted his spell, though I couldn’t exactly tell what he was doing. All I could determine was that the magic changed, and when he held it, he did so in such a way that it swept out. It stretched away, drifting in a circle around us.
“What does that spell do?”
“I’m trying to see if I can detect the presence of magic,” he said.
“And can you?”
He shook his head. “There’s nothing.”
“Is that common for you?”
“The spell isn’t infallible,” he said.
“Well, I haven’t experienced an inability to detect magic before, so this is new for me,” I said.
Another blast struck me. This one came from in front of us. I motioned to Aron, letting him know where the attack was coming from, and he frowned, preparing another spell. Blue electricity raced along his arms, streaming to his hands. I didn’t have any experience with how much energy he could throw through a spell, but it had to be significant.
As we pushed our way forward, continuing to hold on to the barrier, I tried thinking about what might allow our unseen foes to use magic in a way that I couldn’t detect. So far, I had the ability to detect both mage council and Dark Council magic, along with that of shifters and even the fae. Even when I had been working with the gunshot victim, whatever magic there had been out in the waiting room had alerted me, so the rune magic wasn’t beyond my ability to detect it, either.
There was one type of magic I didn’t have experience with.
Vampires.
There might be others, but had I detected vampire magic when they’d helped prevent the demon king from escaping? I didn’t remember. There had been enough other magic around me that I wasn’t entirely sure.
“What’s the nature of vampire magic?”
We were getting close to the car, but not so close that I could see anything inside it. What if it was filled with vampires? Could they be the ones attacki
ng us?
“Vampires wouldn’t attack the council grounds. They wouldn’t risk the council—or the Veil,” Aron said. He crouched down and pushed his hands outward, sending a blast of the blue lightning streaking across the ground.
I followed the tracing of it, but it disappeared too quickly for me to be able to keep track of where it went.
“Did you hit them?”
“I don’t know,” Aron said.
His voice was strained, and I knew from my experience with Aron that when he got like this, he was more concerned than he was letting on.
And without any ability to detect the source of magic, I was without my natural defense. Could they know I could detect magic and had found a way to hide from me? If so, would there be anything I could do to overpower them?
I might be able to use my barrier spell to push outward. I wasn’t sure how much I could push, not without overextending myself, and not without the demon sword I once carried that had granted me much greater ability to draw upon power. Without that, I was lessened somehow.
Several blasts struck my barrier.
“Are you having any difficulty holding it?” Aron asked.
“It’s not like when the Great One attacked. It’s not necessarily easy, but it’s also not hard. There is some power here, but not so much that I can’t withstand it.”
He nodded and we continued crawling forward. The next step would be reaching the car, but the farther we went, the less likely I thought it would be for us to find anything when we reached it. More likely, the car would be empty, and whoever attacked us would have spread around us, flanking on all sides. And they likely wouldn’t have any difficulty disappearing into the night, especially as we weren’t able to detect them.
Movement flashed in front of us.
It was the first time I had seen anything of our attackers. Even then, I wasn’t able to make out all that much. Could I shift my barrier and reveal them?
If I could do that, maybe we could get in ahead of them and I’d be able to figure out what they were after.
I pushed out with the barrier, and it slammed into something. It wasn’t magic, at least not that I could tell, and somewhere out in the night came a grunt.
Aron raised his hands and light began to crackle between them. His lips moved as he murmured whatever spell he used to summon the lightning.
Only… It wasn’t the lightning. He called upon light. His hands began to glow, creating a bright white light that pushed back the night.
Our attackers were revealed.
My breath caught.
One of them was the gangbanger who had shot Mr. Jimenez. He was still supposed to be in jail, so how did he manage to escape? There were three others with him, two men and a dark-haired woman, and in the growing brightness that Aron cast, I could see the tattoos on their arms. All of them had the runes marked on their skin.
Somehow we weren’t able to detect that rune magic, though I had been able to detect it before.
“These are the gang members I was telling you about,” I said to Aron.
“And I thought you said you could detect their magic.”
“I could when they came into the hospital.”
“Unless they are using some sort of shielding,” he said.
If that’s what they were doing, were they doing it with one of the runes, or did they have some other way of preventing us from determining how they were using magic?
The shooter raised his hand and I realized why it was that I hadn’t felt any magic.
They had been shooting at us.
Actual guns.
Though I’d seen enough gunshot wounds in my days, I’d never even shot a gun, let alone been shot at. How had I not seen the brief muzzle flash with each shot?
Thankfully, my barrier held, but what if it hadn’t? I had never tested it against such conventional weapons, not even trying to test it against the sword, and I had much more experience combating people carrying swords than I did with them carrying guns.
Another blast struck my barrier.
I didn’t even hear anything, and it took me a moment to realize why.
The barrier not only muted sound from us, but it must have muted the other side, too.
Crap.
“Can you do anything about this?” I asked Aron.
“Not while holding this,” he said.
“Does it take a lot of power?”
“It’s not so much powerful as it is difficult to hold and divert my focus toward something else.”
Could I?
I’d already used both a barrier and an attack at the same time, so it wasn’t that I didn’t think I could do it. Focusing on the barrier, I drew off a slight amount of power and punched it forward. I struck one of the other men in the face and he went flying, almost as if taking an uppercut to the jaw, before dropping to the ground and not moving.
The shooter snapped off several more rounds. Each one struck the barrier, and now that I knew they were gunshots, I jerked back with each one. It might’ve been better for me not to know what we were facing. At least then I thought it was only some sort of magic I wasn’t able to detect.
The realization of that and the irony within it struck me at about the same time.
Here I was, someone who had feared my magic for all my life, and now I wished for something as simple as a magical attack.
But then, with magical attacks, I had a pretty good understanding of what I might be facing and the dangers in doing so. When it came to bullets, I simply didn’t trust my magic enough to want to rely upon it.
How many of them had guns?
I felt an attack from more than one side, so I had to believe that the shooter wasn’t the only one.
I held onto the barrier and then punched out again, pulsing out with a streamer of power that slammed into the shooter.
Much like when I had attacked him in the hospital, my attack bounced off a barrier.
At least now I understood how he was able to withstand my attack with only minimal magic. He had minimal magic, but he also had his rune, and from what I could tell, he didn’t need any connection to magic in order to enable it.
“How is it that he is still standing after your attack?” Aron asked. He continued to hold his hands over his head, the light glowing off them pushing away the night.
“He’s using a rune for protection.”
“He’s the one?”
“He’s the one who shot the other guy.”
“How are they here?” Aron asked.
“I wonder the same thing,” I said. How had they followed us?
The only thing I could come up with was that one of them was responsible for the magic I had detected throughout the day while at the hospital. I hadn’t done anything to conceal my magic when trying to save Mr. Jimenez, so it was possible they had detected my use of it.
And if that were the case, then it was my own fault that they were here.
I breathed out a frustrated sigh. The shooter targeted Aron, and my barrier continued to hold, but there might come a time when I wouldn’t be able to maintain it. The longer I went, the more strain I started to feel from the effort of holding onto it. It was easier than it once had been, but that didn’t mean that it was completely easy. It still required some effort to hold, and the longer I was forced to maintain this connection, the weaker it would get. I didn’t know how many rounds the shooter had in him, but it might be more than I had a barrier, at least unless we did something different.
There were still two others remaining. If I could remove them as a threat, it might not matter that only one guy remained. Aron could take care of him while I continued to hold onto the barrier.
Pushing out with another blast of power, I struck the woman. It caught her in the chest and she tumbled to the ground, moaning for a moment. I didn’t wait and slammed another blast of power into her.
As I did, the shooter fired off a couple rounds. Both struck the barrier, but I could feel them as they did. It was differ
ent, and it warned me that I needed to begin to work more quickly. If I didn’t, I would run the risk of one of those bullets managing to squeeze through. If it did, who would he target? Would it be Aron and his light, or would it be me and my barrier?
I focused on the other guy and pulsed out a blast of power that struck him in his belly. He grunted and I stepped toward him, swinging my hand out, streaking out a blast of power. He staggered off to the side and didn’t get up.
That left only the shooter.
At least, the only shooter that we knew of.
It was possible there were others out there in the night. With Aron holding onto the light, they would be drawn to us, and they would know that it was just the two of us.
Why wasn’t there any help? The council should have done something, sent someone, especially since we were so close to their headquarters. We were alone, and no one had come to help.
“Drop the gun and you can walk away from this,” I said.
Even as I did, I realized that it was not going to work. My barrier was soundproof. Had it not been, would we have even known about them? Maybe we would’ve heard them before now.
Light managed to get out, and I wondered if I could slowly lower part of the shielding, but I didn’t dare do so too quickly, not with the shooter at large.
And I didn’t know whether I could hold onto the barrier and attack him with any sort of security.
There was another possibility, but it risked exposing me.
Maybe it didn’t matter.
“Can your barrier withstand bullets?” I asked Aron.
“Why?”
“Because I have an idea, but I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
“Kate—”
I shook my head. “Don’t do that until you hear the idea. At least give me a chance for you not to like it.”
“Yes. My barrier would be able to withstand gunshots.”
That was good. “Turn off your nightlight and place a barrier. When you have done it, let me know.”
“You won’t feel it?”
“I’ll feel your magic, but I won’t know how you’re using it,” I said.
Aron grunted and with a brief flash, his light went out. Magic shifted and a different sort of tingling washed along my back.