“You’re to report to us at all times. Do I make myself clear? You will answer to the Mage Council, and a replacement will be sent as soon as possible.”
Levi said nothing. With that final warning hanging in the air, Imogene strode away. Her heels clacked past our hiding spot, but she didn’t see us. She likely had enough on her mind. The rest of the Mage Council filed past behind her, ducklings following their mother. Remington had his head down.
With the hallway now empty, we crept out of our hiding spot. Levi still stood in the doorway, but he wasn’t looking in our direction. He was staring at the floor. Probably contemplating the giant mess he’d made and the things he was going to lose because of it. His freedom, for one. Imogene and the others would be watching his every move, from now on. How do you like them apples, Levi? The tables had been turned. The watcher had become the watched.
Dylan set us down so we could walk toward Levi together. I was ready to take my first shaky step when a dark shadow whizzed past from the opposite hallway. I saw black smoke and a blur, and that was it. Maybe a flash of red, but that could’ve been my mind seeing what it wanted to see. The blur slammed into Levi and knocked him into the room beyond. The door thudded shut behind them. And the rasp of a key turning echoed out. Raffe, or rather, Kadar, had locked them in.
“Man, that’s not good. Not good at all.” Dylan stared at the door.
You think? Levi was in so much trouble right now.
With all the energy I had left, I sprinted for the door. Dylan got there first and yanked on the handle. It wasn’t just locked, it was charmed shut. Normally, he could’ve ripped the damn thing off its hinges if he’d wanted. But Kadar had done some djinn trickery on this door. Dylan kept trying, but it kept pushing him back. He kicked it and almost went flying up the corridor.
Tatyana stepped up, and a funny look came over her. Her eyes flashed white and her body lit up. She was clearly talking to some spirit about what she needed. I watched her intently, hoping she could sort this out. However, she blinked, and the light faded a moment later.
“There’s nothing they can do,” she said. “The spirits can’t get past whatever he’s done to the door.”
“That djinn is one powerful son of a bitch.” Dylan ran a hand through his hair. He didn’t seem to like things that could counteract his Herculean ability. Helplessness wasn’t his natural state. I smiled secretly to myself. Dylan couldn’t do anything, but I could.
“Hang on.” I gathered Chaos into my palms and swallowed the pain still hammering in my temples. This had to work. I just hoped we wouldn’t end up halfway across the world. But this was a risk I had to take if we wanted to stop the djinn. There was no time to walk there; otherwise, we might be too late. My mind was still all over the place and my head was throbbing, but I forced myself to focus. With a powerful push, I tore open a portal. It crackled violently, the edges shaky, but it held. Hopefully, it would lead us right into Levi’s office. I leapt through first, with the others following.
I stepped back out into Levi’s office, but I almost ran right back into the portal at what I saw. Kadar had Levi pinned against the obnoxiously big desk, one hand wrapped around Levi’s throat, the other gripping Levi’s skull. By the looks of it, Kadar hadn’t been lying. He was really going to crush Levi’s head like a coconut and tear it right off his neck. From the sound Levi was making, it seemed like he was already starting with the coconut part. The howl was like nothing I’d ever heard. It was the sound of a man in the worst agony of his life. And it was getting louder, turning into a piercing, bloodcurdling scream.
Trickles of red ran down Levi’s cheeks. I almost threw up as I realized the blood was coming out of his eyes. It was seeping out of him like tears. And his eyeballs were already a dark, stomach-churning scarlet, as the pressure built inside his skull, with nowhere to go.
“Stop!” Tatyana lifted her hands. Water spiraled out of the nearby jug on Levi’s desk. It twisted through the air and slithered around Raffe’s neck. She sent a pulse of spirit energy toward the water, the icy-cold essence of the spirits turning the ring of water to ice.
Dylan sprinted for the desk. The ring of ice was already melting against Raffe’s searing red skin, but it had caused enough of a distraction to give Dylan the shot he needed. He tackled Raffe to the ground and put himself between the djinn and Levi.
“Raffe, if you can hear me, you need to take control,” Dylan said. Kadar kept coming at Dylan, darting around to try and get past him. But Dylan was fast, too. Kadar almost managed it, only for Dylan to snatch at his arm and swing him away. He hit the wall with a thud but got right back up again, his eyes flashing with fury.
“Step aside, Dylan. I could tear you to shreds, but I know Raffe would be upset to have your blood on his dainty hands.” Kadar crouched, preparing to spring again. “I will put your head on a pike if you continue to annoy me, and I will wear your skin as a coat and make your pretty girlfriend watch. She is likely due an upgrade. And I’d be only too happy to oblige.”
“Raffe, buddy, if you’re in there, we really need you to get control!”
Kadar sprang through the air and swiped at his head. Dylan shoved Kadar right back. I watched with my jaw wide open.
Kadar crouched back down, his mouth twisted in a grimace. “Leonidas must be punished. He must be made to pay for the torment he laid at Raffe’s door. I am doing your friend a favor—something he is not brave enough to do by himself. I am serving him in the most delicious way. He will never have to fear his father’s oppression again, once he sees me lift this man’s head from his shoulders and suck his brains through his eye sockets. Have you ever tasted fresh brains, Dylan? You look like you’re a fan of protein. Or steroids.”
“You’re not killing him, Kadar.” Tatyana stood beside Dylan, her eyes white. Her voice came out all weird and echoey. Little silvery spots danced in the air around her. If I’d thought she looked like an angel before…
The djinn paused at the sound of his name. He stared at her, seemingly surprised. Names held power. I guessed he hadn’t expected his own to be used against him.
“You want to save him?” Kadar asked after a beat. “After everything he’s done?” His voice intensified, the menace returning to his features. “Did you know he used to lock Raffe up in a cell when he was a child, denying him food so he could try and starve me out? He bought handcuffs and collars from charlatan peddlers who claimed they could destroy me without destroying Raffe. The pain that Raffe went through when Levi forced those restraints on him. I can still hear him screaming for mercy. But do you think Levi offered him any? No, he did not. So why should I? Raffe cried alone in his room when Levi turned around and said that he, an innocent child, was responsible for the death of his mother, and I was the only one to comfort him. You think you know what is best for him? You have not lived within him his entire life. I know Raffe better than any of you imposters. I know what he truly desires, and that is Levi’s death. The ultimate freedom.”
Damn. I’d known things were bad between Raffe and his dad, but I’d never expected that. That was the sort of stuff you heard on true crime podcasts. I already hated Levi. This made me hate him even more. But not enough to watch Kadar literally rip the man’s head off.
Dylan flexed his muscles. “Still, that’s not your call. You don’t get to kill someone just because you want to.”
“Oh, but I do.” Kadar grinned. “Have you forgotten how Levi has treated that exquisite slice of Mexican caramel? How he threw her in a cell? He has put you all at risk, time and time again, and you would see him walk out of this room tonight? Perhaps it is your brains that require some rearranging. And I am only too happy to crack open every skull I have to, to avenge Raffe.”
Louella and I snuck forward to protect Levi, while Kadar paced. He was getting more aggressive by the second, and Dylan was flagging. With every smoky dart, Dylan used every scrap of his strength to force Kadar back. And it was taking a lot out of him, even with his Herculean stuff.
Dylan couldn’t fight him forever.
“Follow my lead,” I whispered to Louella.
She nodded.
I kept my hands down and gathered Chaos into them. With one big push, I created a portal right beside the desk. It made a huge mess of Levi’s things, but that didn’t matter. Kadar’s head snapped up, but Dylan stood between him and me. With Louella’s help, I dragged Levi off the desk and into the portal. I heard Kadar roar.
“Get him to Santana!” I yelled. The last thing I saw was Dylan slamming into him and white light surging at him from Tatyana as the portal snapped shut behind us. Santana was the only hope Raffe had. She was the only one who could subdue the beast.
Thirty-Two
Jacob
I portaled us right into the infirmary, giving a sleeping Krieger the fright of his life. He sat bolt upright, rubbing his eyes before leaping to his feet and running toward us. He really couldn’t catch a break these days.
“What happened?” he gasped. Levi hung limply between Louella and me. His eyes had rolled back into his head, and there was blood pretty much everywhere. It was running out of his mouth, nose, eyes, and ears. I didn’t need a doctor to tell me that it really didn’t look good.
“The djinn,” I replied. “He tried to kill Levi.”
Krieger flipped into business mode. “Help him over to the bed.”
Struggling under Levi’s weight, Louella and I carried him to the closest bed and laid him down. We stepped back as Krieger took over, sprinting toward a cart that he then pulled up to the bedside. He took a vial and a syringe from one of the drawers and filled it halfway. The liquid glowed, letting me know this was no ordinary medicine. Squirting away the excess, Krieger pushed the needle into Levi’s arm and pressed down on the plunger. A bright pulse shot up Levi’s arm, following the path of his veins and flowing around his body.
“What was that?” Louella asked.
“A stabilizer,” Krieger replied rapidly. He took out two more vials, one filled with a blood-red liquid, the other tinged with purple. I turned away as he injected the purple one directly into Levi’s neck. As for the blood-red fluid, he tipped a large quantity of it onto some gauze and wrapped it tight around Levi’s injuries—his throat, his skull, his temples. Bruises had formed beneath his skin, and I could still see the deep claw marks where Kadar had tried to gouge out chunks of him.
All the while, Levi lay still. He groaned from time to time, muttering the same thing over and over: “Don’t let him out… Don’t let him out…” But he gradually grew quiet and was out for the count. I didn’t know if that was Kadar’s doing or Krieger’s. The glow from the first vial had faded slightly, but it had given his skin a waxy sheen. I thought it made him look worse, like he was close to death, but Krieger knew what he was doing. As for Levi’s mutterings, I guessed he meant Raffe, but we’d have to wait and see how he was first, before we did any locking up. If he could get Kadar back under control, maybe we wouldn’t need to.
“Is he going to make it?” I asked.
Krieger sighed. “You got him to me quickly, which should work in our favor. That stabilizer is only useful if I receive a patient within a short time of their injury. We’ll have to wait and see just how deep the damage is. There’s a great deal of blood pooling in certain areas of his skull, which is applying pressure to his brain, but that ointment I applied should work toward absorbing it out of his head. It’s an organic magnet of sorts, designed to draw blood away from places it shouldn’t be.”
I frowned. I hadn’t seen him do any tests. “How do you know where the blood is pooling?”
Krieger glanced at me. “I’m an Organa, Jacob. It’s part of the reason I became a physician. You’ll find that most magical physicians are gifted with healing or sensory abilities.”
Louella smiled. “And that means he can sense trauma in organic matter.”
“Like a human X-ray?” I asked.
Krieger shook his head. “Not quite. I can only get a sense of what’s wrong. I can’t actually see it. In that way, it’s rather like your Sensate ability. There is no visual aspect.”
“Well, you kept that one quiet, Krieger,” I muttered.
“No, I simply choose not to mention it unless I’m asked,” he replied. “My predecessor had the same ability, if the files are correct. It’s very common in medical professionals like Adley and myself. You find Sanguines, Squelettes, Epiderms, and Healers in this profession, too.”
“Who?” I stared at him in confusion.
He smiled wearily as he wrapped more bandages around Levi’s wounds. “Sanguines have blood abilities, Squelettes have skeletal-based abilities, Epiderms can perform healing magic of the flesh, and Healers have a more generalized ability to fix people. Not all of them can use their Chaos on others, but some can, and most end up as physicians, for obvious reasons.”
“When will we know if Levi’s going to pull through?” Louella glanced down at him. She looked worried. Even he didn’t deserve this.
Krieger shook his head. “Hours, days, weeks… it’s hard to tell with head injuries. They’re more fragile than others. One moment, it can seem as though everything is fine with someone who’s suffered a head injury. The next, they’re dead on the floor, having had an aneurysm that we couldn’t pick up on.”
We fell into silence as Krieger continued with what he was doing. He hurried back and forth, bringing machines that he hooked Levi up to. Soon, the only sound that filled the infirmary was the steady beep of Levi’s heartrate, flashing on the monitor. Any moment, that line, which peaked and troughed, could go flat. And, no matter what Levi had done, I didn’t want him to die.
I thought of Suri, still hiding in the quarantine room. She’d probably be wondering what the heck was going on, but I couldn’t go to her now. I’d explain everything once things were more settled here. In fact, part of me hoped she was asleep or something, so she’d missed all of this chaos. She hadn’t shown that much fear since being here, but hearing about an attack like this might change things. And I didn’t want her to be scared.
I was about to say something to break the uncomfortable silence, when my phone went off. Picking it up, I saw Tatyana’s name flashing on the screen. A short while ago, I’d have given anything to get a call from her. But I knew she wasn’t calling just to chat. Swiping the answer button, I pressed the phone to my ear.
“Hello?”
“We’ve got the djinn, and we’re taking him down to Santana,” Tatyana said, sounding like she’d been breathing hard. “It took a very complex spell, but Dylan and I got him under control. We’ll let you know more once Santana has seen to him.”
I nodded. “Thanks for letting us know.”
“How is Levi?”
“He’s stable, for now. Krieger’s still working on him, but he’s alive. So… there’s that.” I looked at Levi’s motionless body, taking comfort in the beep of his heartrate monitor.
“Okay, let me know if anything changes,” Tatyana said.
“Yeah, I will.”
“Talk soon.”
I smiled, even though it was totally inappropriate. “Yeah, talk soon.”
Putting the phone down, I heaved out a sigh of faint relief. Levi was safe. Raffe would soon be back with us. And, somehow, we’d completely averted disaster.
* * *
Half an hour had passed, and there’d been no change in Levi. Krieger had added another vial, to put him in a magical coma while his body recovered, and the other potions kept on with their work. Almost having your head caved in took some time to heal, apparently. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get the memory out of my head—the blood trickling out of his eyes. Yeesh. Louella had gone to check on things with Raffe and Santana, though I got the feeling she just didn’t want to be around this mess.
“The djinn didn’t take kindly to Levi’s actions, I see,” Imogene said, sitting at Levi’s bedside. Her empathy surprised me, for some reason. She didn’t have to sit with him, after everything he’d done to the Mage Council,
but she was. I’d called her right after Krieger had set to work on fixing Levi. I figured she needed to know.
Isadora nodded. “Yeah, he did quite the number on him.” I’d called her, too, though she wasn’t being quite as forgiving. “Raffe must’ve been in a heck of a state to let things get this bad.”
“It’s hard to associate the two of them, isn’t it?” Imogene said softly. “Raffe is such a sweet, intelligent young man. It hardly seems fair that he should have to suffer for the behavior of something he has no control over.”
Fear hit me. “Please don’t do anything to Raffe.” I’d told her everything that had happened in the office. But this was the first time I’d heard her actually mention Raffe. She’d been more concerned about Levi pulling through. “He’s got Kadar under control, I swear he does. It’s just that, what Levi did, it… it made him so angry. If Santana wasn’t in a cell, it might not have gotten that far. She helps him control the djinn stuff. Right now, Raffe is back to being himself because he’s downstairs with Santana and the others. And he feels awful. Like, sick to his stomach awful.”
Imogene glanced at me with sad eyes. “I know you share a personal bond with Raffe, as we all do, in our own way, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea to allow Raffe his freedom. I don’t deny that he has a certain level of control, but… he attempted to murder his own father tonight. That can’t be ignored.”
“The djinn did. Not Raffe,” I insisted.
“But the djinn is part of him, Jacob. And we can’t gauge what the djinn will do, and that’s the trouble. Raffe may feel as though he’s in control of the situation, but he likely thought he was earlier, before all of this occurred, and you have the awful proof of how that has turned out.”
Krieger slammed his fist into a medical cart, making me jump out of my skin. “I have had just about enough of all this tiptoeing around, walking on eggshells, always-by-the-book nonsense!” He’d clearly lost it, speaking to Imogene like that. Though, her expression hadn’t changed. “I have been working like a maniac, trying to prepare the magical detector for use. Everyone in this room, and on the Rag Team, has been working tirelessly to stop Katherine. Meanwhile, Leonidas Levi has done nothing but hamper everybody’s efforts and punish those who are actually taking action. All so he could satisfy some selfish longing to be the Großer Käse and make up for his shortcomings as a youth.”
Harley Merlin 7: Harley Merlin and the Detector Fix Page 26