Edge Of Danger

by Cherry Adair

  MacBain gave an affronted sniff and closed the door with a pissy little snap.

  “Drink?” Gabriel asked, rising to cross to the drinks table.

  “I’ll pass.” Duncan strolled into the middle of the room. He glanced at the crossed blades above the fireplace. “Still playing with swords, big brother?”

  Gabriel shrugged, lifting the glass to his mouth, watching the other man over the rim. “When I have time.”

  “Now’s good,” Duncan said softly, and Gabriel found himself holding his claymore.

  Thank God. Duncan was here to support Gabriel. Eden watched as a long sword appeared in each man’s hand. Magic was a wonderful thing.

  One-handed, they each easily held the weight of the four-foot-long swords, unlike her struggle when she’d tried to lop off Jason’s smarmy head. This was good. Really, really good, she thought, relief washing through her.

  Surely with the two of them…Her brain froze.

  Hadn’t MacBain told her that if the brothers were together it canceled out most of their powers? Oh, my God.Duncan! Get lost. Go. Get out of here! Shit. Shit. Shit. If Jason showed up now, Gabriel and Duncan will be screwed.

  She considered that for a moment. One of them had just used magic to arm them with those swords. Was that considered a basic power? Or—

  Oh, God! NotDuncan.

  Jason.

  Gabriel set his glass down on a nearby table. “One round.” He toed off his shoes, peeled off his socks, and tossed them aside, hefting the familiar weight of his favorite sword in his hand. “I’m expecting company.”

  Verdine, posing as Duncan, grinned. “Best of three?”

  “I am. Yes.” Gabriel sent the man a shark smile as he raised his sword and advanced. So his opponent wanted to toy with him for a while, did he? He executed the proper salute, holding the other wizard’s black eyes. “Let’s do it.” Verdine brought his sword down in a blurringly-fast strike, expertly using pressure against the flat of Gabriel’s blade. Gabriel choked up on the leather hilt; he’d foolishly given the other wizard the flat of his sword. Instead of the edge. He frowned, feeling the tremendous strain of the pressure the other blade was exerting on his. He couldn’t resist, and let his point drop. Giving Verdine the score.

  The man’s eyes glittered. “Manage to neutralize the other robot? Yellowstone, wasn’t it?”

  “I did, yes,” Gabriel lied, fighting against Verdine’s mental suggestions, knowing,knowing, damn it, that it was demonstrably impossible to block a cut with the flat of his sword. But he felt powerless to change what he was doing.Fuck. Get the hell out of my head, dickhead!

  “But not before over three hundred innocents died,” Gabriel finished, sweat beading his forehead as he corrected, by using intense concentration, the angle of his sword against the next blow.

  A glittering shower of sparks fell around the two men as their swords connected, slid, caught, as their feet moved across the stone floor. This time Gabriel managed to deflect the blow the right way. And felt the tooth-rattling jar all the way up his arm into his collarbone to prove just how fucking close it had been to the wrong way.

  A cardinal principal of defense was to be where the attack wasn’t. But Verdine had employed mind control to use him as a puppet. Gabriel didn’t spare a nanosecond to glance at the portrait of Eden. But she was there.

  She was not going to see him die.

  Not today.

  Hands traversing up and across to direct Verdine’s blade vertical and over, Gabriel directed his point under the incoming blade, and sliced upward using the cutting-through motion, simultaneously sidestepping with the deflection. Even though he knew this man wasn’t his brother, it was disconcerting to be determined to kill someone who wore Duncan’s face.

  “Actually,” Verdine said smugly, “it was closer to four hundred. But who’s counting. Fuck them if they can’t take a joke.” He morphed back into himself as he backed up. “Nobody’s innocent anymore.”

  Gabriel halted his opponent’s backward motion by sliding his blade down to Verdine’s crossguard, jerking the other man in close, bringing them eye to eye. Yeah. This was much better, seeing his enemy’s real face. He was going to enjoy killing him. “Children died.”

  “Yeah? Whatever.” Verdine’s black eyes glittered as he tried to push away, and found he couldn’t. “What did you do with the Rx793?”

  Gabriel shoved him away with all his power. The other man flew thirty feet across the room to slam into the antique mahogany paneling with a loud thud. “You didn’t think I’d let you keep it did you, Verdine?” Gabriel braced himself for the loss of weight as he teleported both swords back to the wall with a loud clang.

  Across the room the master wizard staggered to his feet. “How did you know it was me?” Like the separating tectonic plates in an earthquake, the floor beneath Gabriel’s feet shifted and buckled, and it was his turn to stagger and stumble, trying to find his balance as Verdine opened a fissure in the stone floor between them.

  Shooting flames and foul-smelling black smoke spewed from the gash separating them, obscuring the other wizard from view.

  But Gabriel knew the son of a bitch was still there. He felt his malevolence pulsing through the vast room like a living thing. He extinguished the flames and slammed the fissure closed with a force that rocked the room, shaking the pictures on the walls.

  Jesus, MacBain was going to have his head for the mess, Gabriel thought absently as he watched Verdine’s eyes for his next move.

  “My brothers and I cancel each other’s powers when we’re together, and somehow I feel stronger with you around. Go figure.” As he spoke, Gabriel shot a bolt of jagged, ice-green lightning between them.

  Verdine shimmered behind him and the bolt hit the far wall in a shower of rock fragments and arcing balls of white flame.

  Gabriel turned on a dime, blasting the man with an even more powerful bolt. The air crackled and jumped, smelling strongly of singed hair and sulfur.

  “Go figure,” Verdine snarled, levitating over Gabriel’s head. He did something that made Gabriel feel as though his body were being eaten by fucking fire ants. The pain was intense enough to make his eyes water, although he could see there wasn’t a damn thing on him.

  He didn’t have the power right then to conjure a nest of fire ants, but one black adder should do it. Teeth clenched against the intense burning pain spreading over his skin, Gabriel wound the length of the snake around Verdine’s neck. The snake’s yellow mouth opened wide, inches from the other wizard’s jugular, its fangs dripping venom—

  Verdine cast it against the wall, where it dropped, lifeless. He drifted down from the ceiling to hover several feet over the ash-blackened carpet. Filled with various colors of smoke and falling ash, the room smelled of fire and smoke and unimaginable evil. “Rex can’t be destroyed, Edge, so where’s my robot? I’ll make your life a living hell until you return him to me.”

  “Go for it, asshole.” Sweat ran freely into Gabriel’s eyes while the pain of the fire ants swarmed over his body, eating him alive. “Ain’t gonna happen.” He brought the ten-foot-wide, thousand-pound, wrought-iron chandelier crashing down on top of the other man in a blur of black and a screech of metal.

  This time, Verdine wasn’t quick enough to move out of the way. He screamed as the sharp curlicues impaled him, pinning him to the blackened carpet. Blood spurted dramatically, and for a moment Verdine went limp.

  Suddenly Eden appeared in a heap between them. Gabriel had just released a deadly energy ball in Verdine’s direction. He had to draw back the killing power surge he was sending to Verdine before it struck her. It bounced around the room, ricocheting off the walls, and forced Gabriel to sidestep his own life-ending energy ball as it boomeranged back at him.

  “Jesus—Eden—” Breath snagged and heart manic, fire ants forgotten, he raced forward to help her to her feet. She was naked and bloody, her hands and feet tied brutally tight by old-fashioned hemp rope that had already cut into her slender
wrists and ankles. She was sobbing brokenly, her eyes swollen shut, her face bruised and bleeding. Her lip was cut. Bleeding—God.

  “Gabriel.” Her bound hands reached out to him, her nails torn at the quick. “Help me, please. Don’t let him hurt me anymore. Oh, God, Gabriel. Please.” She was sobbing as she stared up at him with helpless, hopeless eyes.

  “Just tell him what he wants to kn—” Her words ended on a high agonized shriek as Verdine materialized a long thin leather whip out of nowhere and slashed it down over her creamy shoulders. Her skin split; bright red blood seeped at an alarming rate onto the carpet beneath her.

  “If somedoppelganger me touched you,” Eden had demanded crossly, after Verdine had tried to kill her a second time, “wouldn’tyou be able to tell the difference?”

  At his feet, Eden curled into the fetal position, covered her head with her arms. Her frantic whimpers tore out his heart, hurting worse than an army of fire ants.

  There’s nothing in front of you! Do you hear me,Gabriel Edge? There. Is. Nothing. On. The. Floor. In. Front. Of. You.

  The voice in his head was hysterical, but there was no doubting that the sweet voice was Eden’s.

  Shove Grandma Rose’s freaking lucky ring on your pinkie, and kick butt. Now. Do it now!

  Forcing himself to drag his attention off the apparition of Eden, Gabriel jammed his fingers into his front pocket, pushing his pinkie through the ring. It clung to the tip of his finger.

  Instantly a ripple of sensation, emanating from his hand, spiraled up his arm. Heat and energy buzzed through tissue, muscle and bone, the phenomenon increasing in intensity as it passed through his body.

  What the hell?

  Suddenly colors appeared brighter. His eyesight seemed sharper. His hearing more acute.

  “Trust me,” Verdine told him, his voice booming in the room like thunder. “Iwill kill her.” He snaked back the thin, black leather whip. It whined as it whirled through the air. “Produce the bot. Now!” The leather screamed an inhuman shriek over his head, then snapped forward over Eden’s bowed head.

  Gabriel knew how fast that whip was descending, yet to his eyes it moved in slo-mo. Somehow his powers were supercharged. On the downward swing he snatched the whip from the air. In a blindingly fast move he wrapped the leather around Verdine’s throat. Over. Around. And over. And around again. Each rotation stripping the thong of Verdine’s power, and replacing it with his own.

  Their magic battled in little bursts of electricity that buzzed and hummed and danced like fireflies along the length of the whip.

  Verdine’s hands shot up to grasp the thin cord as he attempted to pull it free of his neck. He tried to suck in air, his eyes wild as his face went red. Then white. Then quite blue.

  Eyes bulging, the wizard dropped to his knees, frantically attempting to curl his fingers beneath the coils tightening inextricably around his throat. In an instant he morphed into Gabriel’s mother, Cait.

  Seeing her beloved face, even though Gabriel knew thiswasn’t his mother, gave him a jolt. She stretched out her hands, fiery hair trapped against her neck by the black cord. “Gabriel, darling,don’t, ” she sobbed. “Help me. Please, sweetheart, help me.”

  Silently Gabriel continued tightening the garrote, grateful when the other wizard morphed back into himself.

  “You can’t kill me, Edge.” Wheezing, he fought for breath, mouth opening and closing frantically, even as he clawed at his throat. “Impossible—you know it. I’m stronger—more—powerful than you—could—ever hope to—be.”

  “I’ll put that on your tombstone.” Sweat poured into Gabriel’s eyes as he tightened the noose in small increments. Not because he didn’t want to get the job done, but because Verdine’s magic was fighting him for control every inch of the way.

  He knew to the second when Verdine’s life force started winking out. The small electrical charges became fewer and fewer as the wizard’s power weakened. The fire ants left Gabriel’s body so suddenly, he staggered.

  Eden’s apparition vanished.

  Shaken by just how damn close this fight had been, Gabriel walked over to where Verdine had fallen. As he approached he continued to wind the whip around and around his hand, keeping it taut. And watched the life seep out of those evil black eyes.

  Holding the garrote in one hand, he held out the other hand, palm up. His sword materialized, and he felt the comfortable weight of it across his palm. He raised it high, then brought it down across Verdine’s neck.

  The blade made a high-pitched whine as the cold steel severed Verdine’s head from his shoulders as cleanly as a hot knife through butter.

  Suddenly, the room exploded into brilliant white shooting lights more intense than a lifetime of Chinese New Year fireworks displays. The floor shook and rocked beneath Gabriel’s bare feet, until he couldn’t keep his balance and staggered before falling to his knees. His heart kicked in like a sledgehammer, and his eyes and nose burned as the pure white light danced around him, and then poured through his body hard enough to knock him back on his ass.

  Several minutes, or hours, later he opened his eyes to see Duncan, Tremayne, and Stone surrounding him.

  “I should kick your lazy ass for napping on the job,” Alex Stone said with a grin, giving Gabriel a hand up. “Jesus. You look like hell.”

  “You should see the other guy,” Duncan muttered. His eyes met Gabriel’s. “Scared the crap out of me when nobody could get into the room. You okay?”

  “It was an…interesting experience. Is he dead?”

  “Hell yes,” Tremayne assured him. “Simon went off to do some hocus-pocus with the bastard’s head. Lark and Upton took the body off for some kind of wizardly cremation.”

  So it was done then.

  Duncan grabbed his arm as he lurched. “You okay?”

  Gabriel gave a negligent half shrug. Okay was relative. He felt…different.Lighter. Heavier. Hell. He didn’t know. Just…different. He could hear the faint burble of muted voices in his mind, and realized that he was hearing Verdine’s past. Jesus. As if he didn’t have enough crap going on right now.

  Duncan released his arm, but he gave Gabriel a lift of his eyebrow, a look that demanded explanations. Details. A look most people found hard to resist. Gabriel knew, because he’d taught that look to both of his brothers himself.

  He gave a slight not-now shake of his head. Explanations would have to wait.

  “I don’t know how the hell you pulled that off, big brother,” Duncan acknowledged the delay nonverbally, but he was studying him like a bug under a microscope. “The odds were stacked against you. Big time.” He gave Gabriel a sharp, penetrating look. “How do you account for that?”

  Good question. This was a fight he shouldn’t have been able to win. Verdine had been far too strong, his powers considerably more potent than Gabriel’s.

  Until that last minute when the balance of power had somehow changed.

  “He was twice as strong as I was. I shouldn’t have been able to get anywhere near the son of a bitch.” Eden’s ring glinted on his hand as he indicated the room. He narrowed his eyes. The ring…? Nah. Gabriel rubbed the back of his neck as he glanced around the chaos of the dining room. “Shouldn’t have been able to best him. Yet here I am.”

  “You’ve been holding out on me, bro.” Duncan gave him a measured glance.

  Gabriel scrubbed a hand over his face. He’d rather face fifty Verdine’s than do what he was about to do. “I’m sending her away.”

  “NotEden, ” Duncan said impatiently. “Your powers.”

  He gave his brother a startled look. “What I felt wasvisible ?”

  “Hell, yeah. You moved faster than the human eye could see. Not your everyday invisible, mind you. Almost faster than the speed of light. Damn cool. That’s something new, isn’t it?”

  Gabriel nodded. “I was…supercharged.”

  “Really?” Intrigued, Duncan’s eyes lit up. “Why? How?”

  “You were right outside the door
for most of it. Maybe our powersaren’t canceled o—”

  “Nope. Not it. Leave it for now. You can give me details later. But weare going to have to analyze this business with Verdine. I’ve never encountered that much power from a wizard before. Where the hell did he come from? Where’d he gethis powers?”

  “There’s someone higher than Verdine,” Gabriel’s blood ran cold as Verdine’s memories flooded through his mind in a toxic wash. He’d never felt anything as evil. “A whole fucking lot higher, and more powerful.”

  “You sure—Yeah. I see that you are. Who is it?”

  “Don’t know his name, but I’d know him if I saw him.”

  “You read Verdine’s mind?”

  “Unfortunately.” A vortex of darkness that had almost sucked Gabriel in. As it was he was going to have a few fucking sleepless nights coming to terms with Verdine’s recollections of his life.