Dragon Knight (The Collegium Book 3)

by Schwartz, Jenny

  “You’re a vulnerability that could be used against President Bennett,” the young guardian said earnestly.

  “You could trust Lewis and me to determine my own protection.”

  The guy raised a skeptical eyebrow. He wasn’t impressed. After all, he’d kidnapped her easily.

  Gina shrugged and subtly tightened her grip on the boat. What mattered was to reach the Collegium, Fay and other allies, and find Lewis.

  The black speedboat shot out from the marina and closed the distance between them at race-winning speed.

  The guardian looked around at the noise, flung a spell, had it deflected into a whirlpool of water, and the next instant, was fully occupied trying to control his small boat as it spun.

  Gina frowned, picked up the bailing bucket, and used her house witchery to hit the guardian in the head with it. He slumped, the whirlpool stopped, and Gina’s second cousin Mitchell pulled alongside.

  “Got yourself kidnapped, then, Gina?”

  “Is everything okay?” People called from distant boats.

  “Freak whirlpool.” Another of Gina’s cousins, Ingrid, had accompanied Mitchell. She shouted reassurance. “I hope you filmed it and the flying bailing bucket.” Ingrid stepped nimbly from the speedboat to the small one, nudging the unconscious guardian aside.

  Gina grimaced at the reminder that they were in public, and stepped into the speedboat.

  Mitchell shot off for the marina.

  “Thanks,” Gina shouted.

  He waited till their speed slowed to approach the pier. “You know the family keeps watch over the island.”

  She did. Others didn’t. It wasn’t a fact the Sidhe family advertised, but for all their world-wide string of hotels, home remained Cape Cod. If you were in trouble, that’s where you went, and the family helped. Gina had helped others plenty. Now, she was grateful in turn.

  As she scrambled up the ladder to the pier, she reminded Mitchell that the young guardian would be cross when he woke up. This was the second time he’d been overpowered on Cape Cod.

  Mitchell just grinned. “He won’t wake up till he’s at Emmaline’s portal, and she’ll insist on good manners.”

  That she would.

  Gina jogged through the town to Emmaline’s house on the outskirts.

  Emmaline met her at the door. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine. Thank you.” A quick hug. “I need to get to New York.”

  “Riaz is waiting at the portal.”

  She ran downstairs to endure a longer, bone-crushing hug from Riaz.

  “That guardian’s not going to enjoy his travel back to New York,” he vowed, before shouting into the portal. “Paul?”

  “What now?” Paul O’Halloran sounded cranky.

  “I’m sending Gina through.”

  Gina stepped into the portal, gripped Paul’s sweaty hand and released Riaz’s reassuring clasp. “Thanks,” she said briefly to the New York porter before running up the basement stairs and into Shawn Johnson. “Uh huh.” She backed up a step.

  “What’s with you?” Lewis’s PA and bodyguard demanded.

  “If you try to kidnap me, I’ll be cross.”

  “Kidnap you?” Shawn scowled.

  “Kora ordered one of you lot to detain me when I left my home. Apparently, I can be used against Lewis.”

  “Damn. What an idiotic—no, I’m not here to kidnap you. Lewis is going to tear strips off Kora. Chad phoned me. We figured it was better for you to have an escort to the Collegium.”

  “Okay. Well, I’m going to the Collegium.” Gina watched him warily, unsure what she’d do here with a grumpy porter who was definitely not on her side and a guardian far more skilled than the junior version who’d kidnapped her. “You can come with me.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  They walked fast through the streets. Gina acknowledged, if only to herself, that she did feel safer with Shawn beside her. They reached the Collegium in silence, and in silence, caught the elevator up to Lewis’s office.

  If Lewis had been found, someone would have phoned Shawn.

  Gina was braced to see Lewis’s office empty, but in fact, it was filled with people. Just not him.

  They were shouting and swearing. A complete loss of decorum, and most of those present seemed to have a preferred target: either Kora, or Chad and Haskell, Lewis’s PA/bodyguards.

  Gina looked for someone sensible—Zhou, for instance—but he was absent, and even his ally, the chief demonologist, Gilda, had lost her cool and was shouting at Kora, who appeared ready to shout back. Or strike back.

  “He can’t possibly be gone.” Haskell stood to the side, staring at the center of the arrangement of armchairs in Lewis’s inner office. There was no reason for Haskell to stare at that space. The raging, elderly mage standing there wasn’t worth a second glance (his magenta and peach wasp-waisted jacket not attracting attention in current circumstances). So the most likely reason for Haskell staring at the coffee table space was that it was where she’d last seen Lewis.

  Gina just had time to work that out when Chad crossed the room to her, thereby drawing everyone’s attention to her arrival.

  “How sure are you that a demon has Lewis?” he demanded.

  Gilda, the chief demonologist, raced after him. “No demon has been here. I’ve told you. It’s impossible. Keeping demons out of the Collegium is all my team has worked on this past month. It’s impossible that one stole Lewis from this warded office. Someone must have got past you.”

  “No one went into Lewis’s office,” Chad gritted. “He never even closed the door. He was in there, and then—” A frustrated, empty gesture. “Gone”.

  Translocation! The others didn’t know that Lewis could translocate. Where would he have travelled to? He hadn’t gone to Morag’s den or Gina would have met him there.

  Her gaze snagged on the television screen on the wall. The news still rolled, but someone had muted the sound. Gina fumbled for her phone, almost dropping it in her haste. “Chad, what was on the news just before Lewis vanished?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Haskell?” Gina didn’t look up from her phone, scrolling through breaking news reports, working her way back to what Lewis might have seen.

  Earlier he hadn’t hesitated to translocate and save that little girl from the fire and rubble of Izmir. What if he’d seen something else that required his attention?

  Her brain seemed to split in half. Part of her scanned the news feed. The other part analyzed Lewis’s likely actions. At a time like this, one so threatening to the Collegium’s existence, what would make him translocate and stay away an hour without letting anyone know his whereabouts? Obviously, if he’d translocated and the demon caught him alone and unprotected, he’d have no choice but to stay away. But she wouldn’t jump to the worst conclusion…

  Her fingers froze. The images on the screen of her phone stilled.

  “What does a demon want?” she said aloud.

  “To cause trouble,” Gilda snapped. “And it’s succeeding.”

  “To bring despair to the world.” Fay’s cool voice. “To feast on horror and grief, to revel in violence and the worst of human nature.”

  The chaotic, emotional room calmed. It was as if Fay’s mere entrance reminded the other mages of their behavior. Or perhaps, in the absence of Lewis, an effective leader had just entered.

  The chief demonologist’s fingers uncurled and the high color in her face faded. “Fay is correct. Hotspots of demon activity are characterized by violence and despair. If a demon summoned to our world breaks free of its summoner, its rampage is horrific. The sly, insidious activity of the one who slid into the Collegium, infecting us, was an aberration.”

  That demon had been in daily contact with Fay’s father and the reason for her challenging and dismissing him as president of the Collegium. Fay, however, was all business as she added to Gilda’s explanation. “What that demon showed us was that although most demons treat themselves to a rampag
e when they’re freed in our world, they are capable of more devious, long-term planning. That would fit the profile of the fifth group member.”

  Steve prowled in. “I can’t smell the stench of a demon.” He looked around the crowded office. “Don’t you people have jobs to do?”

  Expressions of outrage bloomed on the faces of the mages. How dare this were criticize and order them about?

  “They ought to,” Kora said dryly. “But they seem to feel they should tell me my job first.”

  Gina rolled her eyes, barely biting back her own sharp comment. Now, was so not the time for political bickering. “I think I may know where Lewis has gone.”

  Silence. Apparently the mages were capable of focusing on essentials. They all focused on her.

  “Demons feast on despair. This one must want to terrify and traumatize us. It’s in its nature.” She looked at Fay, who nodded encouragement. Gina took a deep breath. “The worst is always when it affects children. To willfully hurt a child is an incomprehensible horror. It is a…”

  “Violation of what it means to be human,” Kora finished the sentence. “Lewis would respond to such a threat. We all would. But he wouldn’t, couldn’t, leave without us knowing.”

  “For now, say that he could,” Gina said. “On the news an hour ago was an update on the Children’s Conference.”

  “No.” A breath of horror from Fay.

  “Guardians down to Mexico, now!” Kora ordered.

  Haskell ran out of the room with the command.

  “Why this? How can you be sure?” the questions came from every direction. “How would Lewis get there?”

  “I don’t know how, but Lewis is in Mexico,” Zhou said from the doorway. “Three of my top dowsers have confirmed his location. He’s in Mérida, the site of the Children’s Conference.”

  “As for why.” Gina looked around the crowded room. “Haven’t you read the reports on the Group of 5’s activities?”

  “Mexican drug lords.” Steve got there first. Evidently, Fay and he had been given copies of the report. “There was that drama in the beginning. It was what caught Lewis’s attention. Mercenaries and mages, killings and an amulet.”

  “Amulets and demons,” Fay said slowly. “They go together. I’ve carried demons in amulets the Collegium fashioned.”

  “More fool us,” Gilda broke in. “Demons should be banished. If this is one, it hasn’t gone on a rampage. It has been almost circumspect and its activities have circled back to Mexico.”

  “Do you think someone controls the demon? That it hasn’t killed its summoner and gained freedom? A demonologist rather than a demon in control of the Group of 5?” That was Zhou, curious even when his face sagged with exhaustion and he shoved his hands into his pockets to hide how they shook.

  But they were all missing the point. Talking instead of doing. “Doesn’t matter.” Gina hauled them back on track. “We need to get a message to Lewis that he’s dealing with a demon in some form and that his new power won’t,” she hesitated at the curiosity around her. “Mightn’t work against it.”

  “How precisely can you locate him?” Neville asked Zhou.

  “Within thirty meters.”

  “Snake piss. Not close enough to translocate a message to him.”

  “And the nearest portal is in Belize or Cuba. However he got to Mérida—” Kora stared at Gina—“We’re not going to get there within an hour.”

  Portal travel to Mexico City and a helicopter flight from there. Gina’s family background in hotel-keeping around the world gave her a good grasp on geographical realities. “Someone must be closer than that.”

  “I have some friends.” Steve stepped out of the room, pulling his phone from a pocket.

  “What good will weres do?” Neville sneered.

  Fay stared at the senior geomage. “Mexico has active volcanoes, earthquakes.”

  Neville paled. Then he pushed roughly through a knot of three people and out the door.

  About half the room stared then followed him, hopefully alerted to their own responsibilities. They were far from powerless, if they acted now.

  “For anyone wondering what help weres can be,” Fay raised her voice. “Steve has fought demons. He can’t banish them and nor can his friends, but they can and will fight to give the children a chance to escape.”

  Shawn, standing quietly beside Gina, swore under his breath. “I hope they get there fast.”

  Gina glanced at him, then followed his gaze to the television screen. So did others. The volume went up fast as the scene imprinted on them.

  Mérida’s main plaza. In the late afternoon heat it should have been mostly empty. Instead, the young people from the conference had spilled into it, ignoring the wilting heat to create a map of the world from the millions of paper flowers that children from everywhere had made and sent in. Children like Gina’s young cousins. Each flower held a wish. Color-massed, they created continents and seas. It had been an undertaking promoted months in advance. Schools around the globe had collected recycled paper for the effort.

  And now…

  “That’s not a demon,” Kora said. Her tone was stunned.

  “The fifth group member hires mundanes as well as mages,” Gina said. Fear, the devastating wrongness of what she saw, and her sheer helplessness froze her with a piercing emotional cold. “I’d say the demon hired terrorists.”

  News crews braving the afternoon heat to record the growth of the paper world turned their cameras on the horrifying centerpiece.

  Four children, ranging from about twelve to seventeen, filled the screen. Gina’s language skills failed at Arabic and Chinese, but the other mages could read the notes written large and pinned over the children’s shirts. Over the bombs strapped to them. The same message in Spanish, English, Arabic and Chinese.

  “We are living bombs. We will blow your world apart.”

  Fay and Kora ran out of the room. Kora was on the phone. Fay grabbed Steve’s arm.

  “I saw,” he said.

  Gina ran with them to the elevator. Its doors opened, closed.

  “We should have built the Collegium headquarters over a portal.” Kora bounced on her toes, eyes on the numbers as the elevator descended.

  They exited out a side door where a car waited, engine running.

  “Streets cleared?” Kora snapped the question at the driver.

  “Yes.”

  A second car arrived, and guardians and Gilda climbed into it.

  “Go!”

  “Should you be with us?” Fay asked Gina, squashed between her and Steve in the backseat.

  Gina nodded. As much as she loved Lewis, this was about more than him. “Everyone underestimates a house witch, but I can help.” At a minimum, her magic could tidy the chaos of the square. At a maximum…if only she could translocate. Explosives were just chemistry, and at its heart, so was cooking. Her house witchery could disable the explosives, but time was against her. “What about healers?”

  Kora answered from the front seat. “Standard response to terrorism. The Mexican healers embedded in the medical system will be mobilizing.”

  And Lewis? What was Lewis doing?

  Lewis crouched on the balcony of one of the grand colonial buildings that framed Mérida’s main square. The heat was intense, the hot tropical sun baking his back and head, while the tiled balcony radiated up reflected heat. Below him the children’s hours of effort showed in a global map composed of flowers. The children chatted, laughed, shouted and walked around their work, beginning to fill in the last narrow paths between colorful continents and blue oceans. They worked out from the center, intermittently interrupted by pockets of adult activity: television news crews and knots of parents fussing about hats, sunscreen and drinking water.

  The happy buzz silenced in a spreading wave as four children walked into the square from four different directions. They walked stiffly, unnaturally.

  Lewis recognized the explosives strapped to their young bodies before one girl
came close enough to the balcony for him to read the cruel sign taped to her back.

  “We are living bombs. We will blow your world apart.”

  His muscles tensed for a second before he controlled his response. He had anticipated an attack here, the pieces of the puzzle locking in his mind an hour ago. He could have alerted the Collegium, but that would have given the unidentified fifth member of the Group of 5 a warning. Lewis doubted that the fifth group member had allies within the Collegium, but monitoring the Collegium’s activities could reveal almost as much.

  Guardians decamping for Mexico would have revealed that they’d anticipated the next attack. But that might have simply pushed up the timetable of events. In acting, the Collegium could have precipitated tragedy.

  He’d made a split second decision to keep silent, and then, had nearly an hour to second guess it.

  Guardian training and experience had taught him how to slip into that zone where you waited on high alert, yet passively. The result could be an unexpected clarity of thought, with random data connecting, disconnecting, and reforming into a meaningful picture.

  He’d let his gaze slide into clarity of sight. Over the hour, the silver energy had shimmered and shifted. The guardian-trained part of Lewis had noted the movement of children and adults in the plaza, alert to anything out of the ordinary. The other part of him, the part that had experienced the otherness of the Deeper Path, concentrated on something else.

  It started as a shimmer, as if the hot Mexican sunlight kissed the silver energy. But as Lewis directed a degree more attention to it, he peeled away a layer of the silver and there, at that precariously balanced point, he saw an energy unlike both the golden threads of magic and the silver sheen of the Deeper Path.

  This energy was mother of pearl. It was the light of dawn through a white mist. And it flowed into the square like a river.

  It came, Lewis realized, from the wishes written on the paper flowers sent by hundreds of thousands of children around the world. The old plaza in front of him filled like an ethereal swimming pool with that pearlescent energy, and in some form, the children sensed it. Their laughter rang with a poignant hopefulness. It underscored their enthusiasm. It literally charged the air.