Veiled Magic

by Deborah Blake

  Besides, she hated to give up her gun. If they were vastly outnumbered, it probably wouldn’t help much, but having it gave her a sense of security, albeit probably a false one. She cast a longing look over her shoulder to where her holster lay atop her neatly folded clothing. Glancing down the hallway, she saw no sign of Magnus and Peter, and after a second’s hesitation, she grabbed the gun and put it out of sight behind her back. It wasn’t in the plan, exactly, but it made her feel better. Hopefully Magnus was right about the naked-woman distraction and the guys on guard duty wouldn’t notice that they couldn’t see one hand.

  A slim beam of light clicked on and off across the way, so fast, she almost missed it. That was her cue. Showtime. Great.

  She took a huge gulp of air and then sauntered around the corner and down the hallway, trying to look like she had every right to be there.

  One of the guards happened to look her way, then did a double take and nudged his pal. They both turned and took a couple of steps in her direction, eyes wide and dilated. The scruffy one on the right dropped his jaw open in admiration, and the one on the left actually crossed himself.

  “Thank you, Jesus,” he said in a gruff voice. “I don’t fuckin’ believe it.”

  “Hey, girl,” his partner said, slightly warier. “Whatcha doin’ here? Ain’t nobody supposed to be on this level.”

  Donata smiled at them as if they weren’t both ugly and a little scary looking. “Hi, boys. Is this where the party is supposed to be?” She wiggled her hips invitingly.

  The men stared at each other and then back at her. Scruffy said, “What party?” right before a large fist came out of the hallway behind him and smashed him on the neck. He dropped like a stone. The other guard gaped in amazement as he found himself gazing down the business end of Donata’s service revolver.

  She smiled again, this time sincerely. “This party, honey,” she said, and coldcocked him with the butt end of the gun. “Are we having fun yet?”

  * * *

  She rejoined the guys a couple of minutes later, after skinning back into her clothes in record time. Her gun was back in its shoulder holster under her black leather jacket where it belonged. In the brief time she’d been gone, Magnus had tied up the unconscious guards with the plastic zip ties he’d brought along for the purpose, and gagged them just in case they awoke ahead of schedule.

  Peter had one arm around a silently weeping woman who must have been his mother. Donata could see a slight resemblance, but the half-closed black eye and the multicolored bruise on her cheekbone made it tougher than it usually would have been. She could hear Peter making that peculiar low growling noise again, and she patted him on the arm as she entered the room.

  “Coast is still clear,” she said to Magnus. “Can we get the hell out of here now?”

  Magnus nodded in agreement and jerked his head toward Peter and his mother. “Grab them and let’s get going while the going is good,” he said, moving toward the door.

  They headed down the hallway and back toward a darkened area of the space before climbing down a ladder to the first floor. Magnus had declared the stairs too risky and had Peter go down first, followed by his mother, then Donata, bringing up the rear himself. Donata was about midway down and Peter and his mother were waiting below when suddenly a shout rang out above them.

  “Hey!” a male voice yelled, causing an echo to bounce off the walls. “The broad’s gone! Jimmy and Connor are down! Hey!”

  Crap on toast! Donata had time to think, and then the room below her abruptly filled with men—at least six or seven of them, with more running in from the corridor across the way. From over her head, Magnus launched himself through the air with a giant, impossible leap, landing with a thud on two of the thugs below. Peter shoved his mother behind him and picked up a two-by-four that some long-ago workman had left leaning against the wall. He roared with fury and waded into the fray, swinging the huge piece of wood as if were a child’s toy.

  Donata hit the floor running, but one of the men was on her before she could pull her gun. She avoided a roundhouse blow aimed at her head and ducked under her assailant’s arm. Once she was behind him, she kicked at the back of his kneecap and winced as she heard it snap.

  Before she could catch her breath, a thick arm snaked around her neck, choking her. Her vision started to dim as she ran out of air. She threw one elbow back in desperation, and her attacker let out a great oof as she connected with his midsection. Grabbing the arm around her throat with her left hand on the wrist and her right on the elbow, she pushed the elbow up while pulling down on the wrist, simultaneously scooting down, under, and behind.

  Suddenly, the man found himself on the other end of the assault, with his arm drawn up painfully behind his back. He let out a bellow that was equal parts alarm, surprise, and pain, right before Donata shoved him face-first into the wall with all her might. He crumpled to the floor and didn’t get up.

  By the time she’d whirled around to face the rest of the fight, the situation looked grim. Peter had taken out a couple of their attackers while she’d dealt with her two, and Magnus had obviously gotten the better of a few more, but they were still outnumbered three to one and more men continued to pour into the room like rats arriving late to a feast.

  Peter was bleeding from a wound on one shoulder, and two men with large knives had him cornered. He couldn’t go far without exposing his mother. His impromptu wooden stave smoked under his tight grip as he cast an anxious look over his shoulder at the cowering woman behind him.

  Magnus had his own problems. A dozen men had encircled him, all with either knives or clubs in their hands. He had gashes or cuts on more parts of his body than Donata could count, although it didn’t seem to be slowing him down any. But his eyes had a feverish gleam that alarmed her more than any amount of blood. She’d never seen it before, but she had a bad feeling she knew what it meant.

  One of the men fighting Magnus started toward her and she reached for her gun. But before she could pull it out, a large fist connected with her jaw, rocking her back on her heels. Son of a bitch, that hurt! The taste of her own blood filled her mouth with the flavor of defeat.

  Across the floor, Magnus let out an inhuman roar that filled the empty spaces of the room. For a moment, everything seemed to stop. Donata saw her attacker hesitate, rocked by the primal sound. He looked over his shoulder toward Magnus and saw what she saw: something impossible, and awesome, and frightening.

  Magnus was already a large man, well over six feet tall. But the shadow he threw suddenly seemed much larger, hunched and bearlike, with upraised claws and teeth bared in a grimace. He roared again and jumped at the two men nearest to him, carrying them down to the floor in a rush. When he arose, his shape was even larger, and three more men went down in a flurry of fists and yelling.

  Donata took advantage of her assailant’s momentary lapse of attention and kicked him in the balls. Hard. He collapsed in a whimpering heap. She turned to go to Peter’s aid just in time to see the man in front of him aim a gun at point-blank range.

  Her heart skipped a beat; there didn’t seem to be any way the man could miss. Peter’s mother let out a piercing scream.

  Donata heard a sound like a cough and suddenly Peter’s attacker was on fire.

  The man let out a yell and dropped his gun, beating at the flames on his chest. In desperation, he ripped off his shirt and threw it away from him, but it was too late; his hair and eyebrows were already ablaze. The carelessly flung shirt came to rest against one of the piles of disintegrating fabric, and in the blink of an eye, the warehouse started to fill with smoke and flames.

  Peter looked aghast, and his mother’s face was a comic mixture of horror and pride. But neither of them was moving. Donata covered the space between them at a run and shoved Peter in the direction they’d originally entered from.

  “Take your mother and get her out of here!”
she yelled over the sounds of the crackling fire and men’s high-pitched screaming. “Go, go, go!”

  Peter hesitated for a moment, then dropped the smoldering two-by-four at his feet. “What about Magnus?” He pointed to the chaos behind her.

  “I’ll take care of Magnus,” she answered, hoping it was true. “Get your mother out before this whole building goes up!” She’d seen these old places catch fire before; they were like kindling waiting for a match. Already, the smoke was getting thick enough to make breathing a struggle. “There’s no point in all of us going up in flames!”

  She shoved him again, and this time he grabbed his mother and ran for the back door. He gave her an anguished look as he went. But at least he went.

  Donata waded into the ash-filled air. It felt like she was walking through a wall of heat and smoke. Through the murky red light, she spotted Magnus standing over a fallen foe. For a moment, she saw Bear. Then she blinked and he was Magnus again. But a Magnus so enraged and aroused that she hardly recognized him.

  The man at his feet stared up at him in shock, fear dragging his features into an imbecilic blankness. One hand was lifted up as if to ward off the next blow, although he clearly had no hope of doing so.

  Donata took a deep breath, coughing at the smoky air that flowed into her lungs. Summoning her inner power, she struggled to call up a center of calm in the midst of the flickering inferno. She reached out and touched Magnus, sending that sense of calmness and peace flowing from her own energy field into his.

  “Magnus.” She said his name firmly. “Magnus. Let it go. We’re okay. Let it go.” Waves of serenity blanketed his aura, urging Bear back down into his hiding place. “Let it go, Magnus. Come back to me.”

  With a shudder, humanity returned to Magnus’s blue eyes. He blinked at her.

  “Hey,” he said. “Thanks.” He looked around at the flames as if seeing them for the first time. “Where did the fire come from?”

  They staggered toward the back of the room together, occasionally tripping over the body of a downed attacker as they went.

  “Peter,” she said, coughing. “Apparently he discovered his inner Dragon.”

  Magnus’s eyes widened. “Seriously? I thought half-breed Dragon children couldn’t produce fire.”

  He ducked as a beam crashed down into the hallway behind them, and Donata heard the sound of sirens in the distance, closing fast. Thankfully, the door was in front of them, with precious clearer air on the other side.

  “Don’t know,” she said shortly. “Maybe none of them have ever been put under enough pressure to bring it out.” After all, most half-Dragon children were pampered and spoiled, not subjected to armed battles and threats against their mothers. She didn’t know why Peter had manifested a supposedly impossible trait, nor did she care, right at this moment.

  Mostly she was just happy to see him waiting safely on the other side of the doorway, his mother tucked up under one arm.

  “Thank god!” he breathed when he saw her and Magnus. “I was starting to think you two weren’t going to make it out.”

  Magnus gave him a bleak look. “I probably wouldn’t have, if ’Nata hadn’t come after me. I was on the verge of full berserker mode.”

  Donata wiped smoke out of her eyes with one grimy hand. “It was crazy in there. None of us would have made it if it hadn’t been for you.” She gave him a hug with one arm, moving him forward with the same motion. “Can we please get going before the whole building falls in and the place is swarming with cops and firefighters?”

  They started toward the back of the parking lot as fire trucks pulled up out front, sirens wailing their warning into the flame-lit night. Down the alley that separated the back lot from the street, Donata saw a cop car with two officers just climbing out to secure the area.

  One of them was the Chief.

  He looked up, and their eyes met across the empty space. He didn’t look happy.

  As they ran down a back road that connected to the street where they’d left Magnus’s van, it occurred to Donata that they’d actually succeeded at their mission. But somehow, it didn’t feel like much of a victory.

  Yes, they’d gotten Peter’s mother back safely. And without having to hand the painting over to anyone—at least not yet.

  But Magnus was a psychological mess, Peter was alarmed and confused, and as for her . . . she was up to her ass in alligators. And she had no idea how she was going to fix any of it.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  They dropped Peter and his mother off a couple of blocks from the penthouse, and Donata drove Magnus back to his place to patch him up and pick up the motorcycle she’d left there. It was an indication of how badly he was hurting that he barely even argued about letting her drive.

  After a few moments of listening to the road hissing under the tires, Donata broke the silence with an observation.

  “You’re bleeding all over your leather seats, you know,” she said. “That’s going to cost a fortune to get cleaned.”

  “Scotchgard.” Magnus’s terse answer came through gritted teeth. “Not my first go-round, ’Nata.” He shifted in the passenger seat, trying to get as comfortable as possible under the circumstances.

  “Still coming home from jobs leaking bodily fluids, eh?” She tried to keep her voice light, but they both knew that his predilection for work that put him in harm’s way was one of the things that had split them up. Of course, she couldn’t exactly complain this time, seeing as how she had been the one to pull him into it.

  At the point when they’d dated, about three years before, Magnus had been striving to find a balance between his innate strength and abilities and his desire to lead a nonviolent life. In the end, he’d given up trying to be a pacifist, reluctantly coming to accept what his family had been trying to tell him—that Ulfhednar simply weren’t built that way. But he’d refused to go home, saying that it was one thing to choose his own fights on occasion and another thing entirely to embrace being a berserker, trained to kill in battle.

  Mostly, he still tried to stay away from violence, hiring on as a bodyguard, where his size usually acted as intimidation enough, and working various jobs to protect the weaker members of society from those who would harm them. Unfortunately for his and Donata’s relationship, Magnus didn’t always approach his work in a way that stayed within the letter of the law; to him, if it satisfied his own moral code, that was good enough.

  Their mutual attraction and shared dysfunctional family relationships had brought them together, but their different ideas of right and wrong eventually pulled them apart after a tumultuous, albeit extremely passionate, six months. They’d stayed friends, though, and Donata still considered Magnus one of her favorite people. She just wished he’d been able to find a different way.

  He grunted and tightened the makeshift bandage he’d slapped on the worst of his wounds. The once-white cloth showed red in the occasional light of a streetlamp. Donata discreetly put her foot down a little harder on the accelerator.

  “I am what I am, Donata,” Magnus said. “I do my best to stay away from violence, but I’ve only got a certain skill set to use to make a living. And that skill set tends to land me in tricky situations.”

  Donata bit her tongue to keep from making a comment about his “skill set.” They’d had that argument too many times before, and it had never gotten them anywhere. And honestly, hadn’t she called him when she was in trouble just because of the very talents she’d given him so much grief about? Some friend she was.

  “I’m sorry, Magnus. I shouldn’t have asked you to help,” she said. “I should have known better than to drag you into this.”

  They turned a corner a little too fast and he grabbed the dashboard with a gasp of pain.

  “Try not to finish the job the bad guys started, okay?” he said with a chuckle. “I’d never live it down if I survived the fight only to get m
angled in a car crash on the way home.”

  Donata glared at him, but slowed down a little. They were almost there anyway.

  “Besides,” he continued, “you didn’t drag me. I came willingly.” He gave her a reluctant smile. “You know I’ll always come if you need me.”

  Donata blinked back unexpected moisture and tried to concentrate on looking for the turnoff to the street Magnus lived on. They’d never talked about how they felt about each other—just acknowledged that the relationship couldn’t work, and moved on. This was no time for either of them to finally decide to let down their tough-as-rocks façades.

  She pulled into the driveway of his small undistinguished home in a crowded middle-class development right at the edge of the city proper. She remembered the first time he’d brought her here, her surprise at his choice to live in the midst of a noisy, kid-filled neighborhood, instead of someplace quieter and more private. Once she’d gotten to know him better, it made sense, of course.

  It was as close as he could come to reproducing the kind of close community that Ulfhednar usually lived in; sprawling enclaves made up of huge extended clans. (There were tiny rural towns all over the country with only a few predominant families and hardly any strangers—Ulfhednar territory, most of them.) He couldn’t go home, so he’d found himself a place that mimicked it as nearly as possible, at least on the surface.

  But the illusion didn’t satisfy the deep-seated longing he had for his family and his rightful place in the grand scheme of things. She’d always thought that in some ways, it actually made his loneliness worse. But she wasn’t in much of a position to talk. One of the things they’d had in common was their inability to fit into the roles they’d been born to—two outsiders seeking to find some kind of peace in a society that wouldn’t accept them the way they were.