“Here,” she said to Kato, handing him the bag. “Is Sotiris going to start up again?”
“Any minute.”
“Okay, okay. You and Grace get ready, and as soon as he does, you go, okay?”
Kato’s eyes narrowed. “You’re going with us,” he ordered.
Maeve leaned close enough to whisper and said, “Lili won’t go, and I won’t leave her alone. Please, get that thing out of here.”
His mouth tightened into a flat line of disapproval, but finally he jerked his head in agreement and started giving more orders. “I’ve opened the weapons cabinet in the main room, and filled multiple magazines for the weapons you’ll need to use. They’re straightforward point and pull the trigger. Safety is built into the trigger mechanism, so you don’t need to worry about that, but be aware of it, too. Don’t point at anyone you don’t want to shoot.” He turned and started walking down the hall, with Maeve trying to keep up next to him. “Pick a hiding place and take multiple guns for each of you. Take all the magazines you can carry. You need my help with that?”
She shook her head, hoping she was right. Hoping she’d remember everything she’d been taught what seemed like a hundred years ago.
Sotiris chose that moment to renew his attack, even more horrifying than before as screams filled the air, victims of war and sorcery, endless cries of people dying, suffering, calling out to their gods, their leaders . . . their parents. And that was the most awful of all, the high-pitched cries from tiny throats—frightened and confused, not knowing why they’d been abandoned to the nightmare that was death by Sotiris’s cruel brand of magic.
“I’m staying until—” Kato spun to stare at the door and the wall near it. “Impossible,” he whispered, then seemed to go away for a moment, his eyes going blank and completely dark, no pupil, no light, no life.
“Grace?” Maeve said in a small voice.
“Magic,” she said tightly. “He’s—”
Before she could say what he’d been doing, Kato was back, his gaze deadly serious and determined when it swung to Maeve. “He’s nearly through the final ward. Please, come with us, Mae. I’ll carry Lili, if I have to. There’s no point—”
“Go,” Maeve pleaded.
Giving her a grim look, he twisted the neck of the plastic bag around one fist and said, “Dragan’s on his way, but Nico might not get here in time,” he said, and Maeve’s heart sank. “Don’t be a hero. Hide inside and don’t be afraid to shoot whatever comes through that door. And Mae,” he said, stopping to give her a hard look. “Shoot to kill. This is war. Remember that.”
She nodded jerkily, then jumped when Grace stepped up to give her a tight hug. “Be safe,” she whispered. “Lock yourself in that stupid vault if you have to.”
An inappropriate laugh bubbled out of her throat, making her cough when she tried to stop it. “Dragan’s on his way,” she told the other woman confidently. “We’ll be okay.” She believed with all her heart that he would come, and he’d be in time. He had to be, because it would crush him if he failed.
She covered her ears against the unrelenting noise, as Kato and Grace disappeared down the dark hallway, the same one Dragan and the others had taken earlier, while laughing and joking about which of them was the best marksman.
She gave up and dropped her hands from her ears. It didn’t help. The noise wasn’t coming from outside her head. Or maybe it was, but it was more than that. The bastard was attacking their minds, trying to drive them to a desperation that would end in surrender.
“Guns, Lili,” she said, dropping her hands. “We need to get in place .”
SOTIRIS EYED THE elegant house that his enemy called home. It was almost a shame to destroy it. The property value alone was worth trying to keep it standing. After all, once he got rid of Nicodemus Katsaros and his merry band for good, he could sell the thing. Use the fucking money to repair the damage they’d done to his property in Manhattan.
A flash of light and a curtain moved in an upstairs room. It was gone before he could look, but his mind played it back for him to see, and he smiled in satisfaction. Just as he’d thought, the girl was here. Maybe he wouldn’t kill her right away. Maybe he’d make her suffer first, for betraying his trust and stealing not only the hexagon, but the warrior she’d freed when she’d disobeyed his rules.
He drew a long breath through his nose, eyes closed. He could almost smell the all-important artifact, though it was his other senses that confirmed it was in there. The little thief might as well have brought it directly to his hand, as hand it over to Katsaros. Did she really think, did Katsaros think, that he’d stand by and let it be stolen? A powerful artifact that was kin to his own body, his own blood? One that should never have been created, much less placed in the hand of his enemy. Did they think him so weak that he would stand by and do nothing? His lips drew back in a snarl, teeth bared in fury as power filled him, burning like the hottest flame in the darkest hell, just waiting for his command.
He eyed the wall standing between him and his prize. He’d stripped away the futile plates of human metal, as if those could ever stop him. A delaying tactic, no more. Useful when Katsaros himself was here to defend his lair, but not tonight, with the holy Nico off fighting another battle of Sotiris’s making. And how very convenient that the two events had coincided. It was as if the fates were telling him he was on the right track at last.
He would rule this world before the end. They’d never seen a power such as he was. Katsaros had power, too. But it was wasted on a man like that, one who lacked the guts to wield such a gift the way it deserved.
Sight shifting to a different spectrum than the one ordinary humans lived by, he opened the flood of his power and released it from the dam it had been gathering behind while waiting for his final blow. A single overwhelming strike against the pitifully weakened wards, and he’d have the hexagon back where it belonged.
Shaping his power into a pulsing, missile-shaped weapon, and driving it with his will, he slammed it forward . . . crushing the wall, turning the door to ash, and breaking through the last of the weakling’s wards. Laughing, he stepped into the breach . . . and met a volley of gunfire.
MAEVE CROUCHED next to Lili, behind the barricade of furniture they’d constructed, guns laid out on the floor, piles of magazines between them. She no longer heard the nightmare screams, had grown numb to the pulsing beat of shredded limbs and broken bones. She was horrified to think such a response was even possible, but it was the only way she could think past the crippling dread that seemed to mutter in her ear with every beat. “Death,” it whispered. “Pain. Horrible, horrible pain and death.”
She knew it was Sotiris, trying to terrorize them, make them unable to fight back. And if the circumstances had been different, if hers had been the only life on the line, it might have worked. It was only the fact that Lili would die next to her, the knowledge that Dragan was coming, and that it would kill him if he found her dead, that kept her brain functioning, no matter how much her hands shook.
With shocking suddenness, the noise stopped again . . . only to be replaced a second later by a ballistic scream like the ones that accompanied bombs falling from the sky in movies. And then the door, the whole fucking wall, was gone. And in the smoke and dust, she saw Sotiris. Teeth bared like some feral creature, laughter booming from his chest—all the more terrifying for being utterly wrong—he stepped through the ragged gap in the wall and focused his malevolent gaze on her.
Ironically, it was Lili who shot first, the sound of her weapon firing round after round finally breaking the hypnotic hold he had on Maeve and jerking her into action. Raising her own weapon, holding it in both hands, she fired until the clip was empty, then reached for the next gun and emptied that one, too.
And all the time, Sotiris just kept laughing, mocking their efforts, the shots they fired bouncing like multicolored fir
eworks off his magic-shielded body, while he followed the scent of the hexagon down the hall and into Nico’s office, where they’d “hidden” the empty box in the credenza behind the desk. He reappeared a moment later, still laughing, triumphant with the purple box in hand. He paused long enough to give Maeve a mocking bow, as he opened the box to reveal his prize . . . and howled in rage. His stare landed on Maeve from across the room, open flames where his eyes should have been, promising such depths of agony that the world had never seen. And then he started toward her, shoving furniture aside, as if it weighed nothing, no longer bothering to laugh at the pointless bullets she kept firing at him. Until he reached her side and grabbed her by the hair, twisting it around and around his fist until she thought he’d pull it out of her scalp.
“You better hope he values your life more than I do, you thieving little whore, or I promise you’ll beg for death by the time I’m finished with you.” And then he strode for the door, dragging her with him, ignoring her struggles, her pathetic fists pummeling his arm.
And Maeve knew she was going to die.
DRAGAN SOARED, catching one updraft after another, as he flew through the night, zooming past creeping lines of automobiles, and above twisting, unfamiliar streets. He didn’t need a map, didn’t need to know what lay below him, he could sense the massive use of magic, feel the concussive power as it struck its target, until finally he heard the one sound that could bring a chill to his soul—Sotiris’s howl of victory, the sound of a madman scenting the blood of his victim.
Folding his wings until he was a missile in the night, he dropped like the predator he was, arrowing toward his enemy with no sound but the rush of wind to announce his coming. He took in the scene as he dropped—the shredded bits of metal that had been Nico’s physical shields, the light spilling unnaturally from a gaping hole where a wall used to be. And finally, Maeve’s enraged screams as Sotiris dragged her over the broken pavement, one hand fisted in her hair and the other raised in preparation for casting a spell that would rip open reality itself and provide an escape for him and torture for his captive.
Waiting until he was feet away from his quarry, pulling his sword as he dropped, Dragan snapped his wings open with a clap of thunder to land on his feet, and in a storm of fury, drew back his blade and jammed it into Sotiris’s kidney.
The sorcerer shouted in stunned agony, dropping Maeve to the ground as he spun around in a flurry of blood, hands lifted and ready to blast his enemy with magic. But Dragan had already drawn back his weapon for the next attack, and now whipped it forward, carving open Sotiris’s gut, slicing through flesh and bone like a heated edge through butter. Sotiris roared and slammed a desperate blow of lethal magic at his attacker, recognition flaring in his eyes when he recognized his enemy at last.
Knowing his magic would be futile against this monster of the goddess’s creation, he shifted his attack, whipping his power out and grabbing a nearby car, shoving it toward Dragan with murderous force.
But Dragan’s unique vision saved his life yet again, catching the car’s momentum as it barreled toward him. Leaping on top of the car, he gripped his blade in both hands and stabbed downward into Sotiris’s shoulder severing tendons and destroying muscle, leaving his arm limp and useless.
With blood pouring from his shoulder and back, draining down his leg from what was probably a severed kidney, while intestines bulged pink and glistening from his gut, Sotiris sucked his remaining magic into a tight protective shield, and then dropping to the ground, he opened a warp in reality and rolled into it.
An instant later, he was gone, as if he’d never been there. All that remained was his blood spotting the courtyard.
NICK EMERGED FROM a warp of his own with a crack of displaced air, just in time to see Sotiris escape yet again. He immediately strode over to the blood stains that marked his enemy’s disappearance, trying every trick he knew to trace the bastard, knowing the other sorcerer was seriously wounded and would never be more vulnerable to an attack than he was at that moment. But it was too late.
“Fuck.” He spat the word as he rose to his feet, cursing himself for not improving his ability to track through the kind of reality warps that made Sotiris’s escapes so effective. A woman’s cry interrupted his self-loathing, however, and he spun just in time to see Maeve’s petite figure all but swallowed by Dragan’s embrace, his warrior’s back as torn and bloodied as it always was after using those damn wings.
Striding toward the massive blast hole in his house, he ignored the destruction, stepped over jagged chunks of stone and wood, and walked in, immediately starting down what should have been the hallway to Lili’s office, but that now resembled a war zone.
“Nick.”
He turned at the softly voiced call, his anxious gaze passing over the tossed furniture, the weapons scattered on the floor, the empty magazines lying wherever they’d been thrown. Until finally he saw Lili’s slender form rising from behind a table, one pale hand gripping the chair back as if afraid she’d fall over.
“Lili,” he cried, half relief, half worry, though he could see no blood, no wounds. But Lili wasn’t . . . human, though few people knew that. She was smart and loyal, but life had taught her it was better hide than to fight. This battle must have been terrifying for her.
“I’m all right,” she said, placing her hand on his arm. “Maeve . . .” She coughed dryly. “It’s so dusty here.”
He immediately guided her to the kitchen, which had been sheltered from most of the destruction, settled her on a chair, and twisted open a bottle of cold water from the fridge. “This will help.”
She took a few sips, nodding in gratitude. “I just want to sleep,” she said faintly. “I need to be alone.”
“I know. Come on, I’ll take you there.”
IT WAS SEVERAL minutes before Nick got back to the disaster of his living room and stepped through what was left of his front wall. Gabriel and Hana had arrived, and having already been given the short version of what had transpired, spun on Nick, wanting to know if he and Casey had succeeded, and if everyone was still alive back at the stadium.
“We did it. Casey and Damian are guarding the damn box for now. I took a short cut here, hoping to catch Sotiris in the act. Failed again.” He ignored the murmurs of encouragement, telling him it wasn’t his fault. He knew it was. But he’d no sooner had that thought that an even worse possibility occurred to him.
Swinging around, he strode over to where Dragan was sitting inside one of the cars, Maeve more than halfway on his lap as he dabbed at the blood flecking her cheeks and forehead, a more serious injury on her upper arm having already been wrapped in gauze. They both looked up when he crouched in front of the open door and addressed Maeve.
“Did he get it?” he asked quietly. He wasn’t accusing her of anything, especially not given everything she and Lili had been through, but he needed to know. “Did he get it, Maeve?”
His heart sank when she only gave him an exhausted stare, but then she shook her head. “No, Kato has it.” Her voice was so low, so rough, that he had to lean forward to hear as she continued. “He and Grace went out the back, to the boat. Sotiris never realized. It’s really over,” she breathed, then buried her face against Dragan’s chest, as his arms came around her.
“Thank you, Maeve,” he said, placing a gentle hand on her back. “Thank you for protecting Lili, and for outsmarting that evil son of a bitch. You’ve saved more lives than you know.”
She nodded her head without looking at him, Dragan’s arms tightening even more before he lifted his eyes to meet Nick’s, the look in them saying what they both knew. This wouldn’t be over until Sotiris was dead. “We’re all here, Nico,” he murmured. “It’s time.”
“Past time,” Nick agreed, making a vow to his warrior, before he stood and studied the house with a long, exhausted breath. “We can’t stay here tonight,” he mutt
ered, then turned at the sound of a boat’s engine idling to a stop at the dock behind the house. Everyone tensed, weapons up and ready until Kato’s familiar voice called, “Friend, not foe,” a moment before he and Grace emerged from the shadows on the side of the house, and walked up to where Nick waited.
“Please tell me they both made it out alive,” Kato said somberly.
“They did. Lili’s fine, already asleep. Maeve has some cuts, nothing too serious.”
Kato’s eyes closed in relief. “This is yours, I believe.” He handed over a clear plastic garbage bag, filled with crumpled paper and . . .
The weight hit him the minute it touched his palm. The hexagon, in a trash bag. Perfect. “Thank you.”
But Kato shook his head. “Don’t thank me. Thank Maeve and Lili. They’re the ones who stayed behind to face Sotiris.”
“Can you get someone in tonight to secure this place?” Grace asked, eyeing the destruction.
“I guess I’ll have to. I have people I can call.”
“You can’t stay here,” she protested.
“I can’t leave Lili. I’ll get a team in to block it off and I’ll set some new wards. The bedrooms are all upstairs. They should be fine. Fine enough, anyway. We’ll be all right.”
IN THE END, THEY all stayed, too worried about reprisals from Sotiris to trust the security of the hotel, or even the makeshift repair on Nick’s house. He was as good as his word, calling in a team of security and construction experts, who specialized in making the unlivable, livable—temporarily anyway—until the proper repairs could be made. It was one of the benefits of living in Florida, with its annual hurricane disasters, he considered as he drove back to the stadium to pick up Damian and Casey, and to collect his enemy’s nasty little woodshop project. He could examine it in more detail, now that it had been drained of its magical juice by a combination of Nick’s power, and Casey’s innovative use of a safety pin to dig a miniscule hole around the tiny valve which Sotiris had used to input the power he’d stolen. The solution had been Casey’s idea. If she couldn’t slam an ax into the box to destroy it, she decided, then a slow leak might work instead. Nick hadn’t been certain, hence the containment field he’d erected, which wouldn’t have saved everyone in the stadium, but would have saved most.
The Stone Warriors: Dragan Page 30