Agents of Order

by T. R. Cameron

  Dreven strode forward from the shadows where they’d concealed themselves, heading toward the prize he most craved. Sarah walked a step behind him to the left and six of her best wizards and witches trailed them. He grinned in anticipation of seeing the look on the Drow’s face when her worst nightmare knocked on the door. It had been a long time, but he dearly hoped she’d remember him. If all continued to go according to plan, he’d be the last thing she’d remember. Ever.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Diana was unable to shake the idea that she was being played. It wasn’t a sense like her magical warnings of danger and it wasn’t intellect telling her so. But somewhere deep inside, beneath even the ever-taunting mental voice, the certainty that she was doing what the enemy wanted poked at her. Okay, if the explosions aren’t the real thing they’re after, what is? She couldn’t get her head around it and turned to Rath. “What do you think is going on here, buddy?”

  He frowned. “Idiots. Clever idiots. Distracting. Where aren’t they distracting?”

  “Good question and I can only think of one way to find out. I’ll be right back.” She concentrated, then used a continuous blast of force to push herself upward toward the purple stones far above. When she was high enough to see most of the cavern arrayed below her, she swallowed her fear and combined her magics to turn in place, looking at all the sections of the kemana. There were explosions all over the lower part of Stonesreach, save one area. The street that serviced Nylotte’s shop was free of fire, as notably quiet as the unaware houses arranged in tiers around the city. Dammit, is that where they’re headed?

  She decreased the power feeding the force magic and descended quickly. A final blast buffered her landing, and she only stumbled a little as she transitioned from air to ground. Rath had moved away from their initial position and swung his batons at someone farther down the main road. She dashed to his side, but he finished the street soldier with a baton to the knee followed by another to the head in the moment before she arrived. As always, she was impressed with his skill and the way he used his size as a benefit rather than a liability.

  “I think they’re after Nylotte’s shop.”

  She raced toward the cross-street as fast as she could with the troll a few steps behind. With each second that passed, she was more convinced she was right.

  Cara’s viewpoint had narrowed to one thing—the half-robot-half-man ahead of her. She’d had enough of their seemingly endless courtship and was determined that this would be its culmination. The Daggers’ enthusiasm for the prospect suffused her with confidence. Dimly, as if from a distance, she noticed the others behind him but they were shadows and virtually irrelevant. She spread her hands wide and launched a volley of fire darts into the mass while she attacked him, an almost automatic reflex since she’d more or less dismissed them from her mind. Fortunately, she retained sufficient perspective not to shoot toward Sloan, however.

  Marcus moved forward to meet her, a poor strategic decision given that he’d brought so many in support but she understood completely. It was one-on-one, regardless of the actual numbers surrounding them. She slipped her daggers from their sheaths and swung them in a curved flourish as she continued. The range was twenty feet when she noticed the wizard’s lips move and his wand twitch. Without any conscious intention to do it, she hurled Angel at him in an underhand throw. The blade spiraled rather than tumbled on its path to embed itself in the mage’s throat. He fell, and she had only a moment of concern over discarding a weapon before the dagger rocketed back at her. She raised her hand, and it smacked perfectly into her palm.

  She skidded to a stop a dozen feet away from Marcus. By some unspoken agreement, they’d both moved toward a relatively empty section of the thoroughfare where their conflict wouldn’t be hindered by the rubble created by the plethora of explosions. He shook his head, and there was a little respect mixed with the sneer he wore. “You’re such an irrelevant part of all this. Why are you so vexing?”

  Cara grinned. “It’s the ones who fly under the radar you have to watch out for. Not everyone can be a terminator with training wheels.”

  It took him a second to process the insult, and he responded with the language they both understood best. He reached into an opening on his left arm, clutched something, and a string of metal spheres suddenly arced toward her. She remembered them from the stadium and knew better than to ignore their threat. An effort of will summoned a curve of fire that redirected the explosives back toward the people he’d brought with him. Her worry sparked for a moment along with the fear that she’d sent them at Sloan or Hank, but it vanished beneath her desire to end her nemesis. They struck and rolled but failed to detonate. That’s handy.

  She grinned. “I surely hope you can do better than that.” She tossed Angel in the air and gestured with her empty hand to dispatch darts of fire at his face.

  Hank had been enjoying himself an inappropriate amount, right up to the moment that the tiny metal balls clattered on the ground at his feet. When they failed to detonate, his good humor reasserted itself. When Cara had charged the leader, he had crossed behind her and headed for the side of the enemy contingent farthest from their undercover ally. Hopefully, he’ll extract himself before I get there. I’d hate to have to smack him merely to maintain his story. The criminal on the end was a big bald brute, fat with muscle the way NFL linemen were, and carried a fireman’s ax over one shoulder. As Hank arrived in range, the man burst into motion and hacked at him with the weapon without altering the bored-looking expression that covered his face.

  He smacked the descending attack aside with a perfectly timed strike of his right palm against the flat side of the head. A quick pivot and sideways shuffle put him safely inside the ax’s range. He caught the guy in the mouth with a back fist, then whipped the arm in a semicircle to hammer at his groin. The first blow didn’t affect him much, but the second did, driving the breath from him in a whoosh despite the guard he wore. The agent stepped away slightly to clear the path, then crouched and exploded upward in an uppercut. It blasted through the hasty block the man tried to impose and connected with his chin with a crack of breaking bone. He fell limply to the ground.

  The punches had built his magic pool, which he could use to increase the intensity of his own strikes or to heal himself. Both abilities were limited solely to him, a fact that had filled him with angst as he watched one of his Air Force buddies bleed out from a shoulder-mounted rocket that struck their chopper during his final tour. None of the experts he found was able to identify a way for him to apply his healing power externally. He also played fair and didn’t employ it during practice fights, although it would activate on its own if he was critically injured as it had after the explosion a few minutes before.

  He used a portion of it to increase the strength of the skipping sidekick he delivered into the torso of a marauder who thought he was far enough away to be safe. The man careened six feet before he landed and skidded on the stones for a few more. Hank’s enjoyment vanished again when he turned in time to meet four of Marcus’s followers who targeted him with a coordinated assault.

  Rath pounded along at Diana’s heels as they cleared the path connecting the streets and rounded the corner toward the Drow’s shop. A body shattered the glass windows and the cross-frame that held them and catapulted through to land on the street, groaning. It was a witch, to judge by the wand that hung on a safety cord from her wrist so she wouldn’t lose it. If, you know, she wound up taking an unexpected flight or something. He felt Gwen’s absence when he realized there was no one to hear him if he made a wisecrack and frowned deeper. Stupid Remembrance. The fact that the question of who was following the Griffins remained unanswered nudged him as he advanced on the woman, who struggled unsteadily to her feet but hadn’t yet noticed him. He’d almost reached baton range when she launched an attack into the building that required her to turn slightly and she saw him. Diana had already vanished into the shop’s interior.

  The witch’s sc
ream as he leapt at her was amusing, but she reacted quickly and raised a barrier of shadows between them. He struck it and was as surprised as she was when he plowed through it without slowing. The deflectors on his vest imploded with a single loud snap. She lurched to the side to avoid him, but the baton he whipped out as he descended caught her in the arm. She yelped, retreated, and raised the wand with a snarl.

  Drat. No more magic absorption. He took four steps to the right—enough to look like he was committed to advancing in that direction—then reversed course. The thin cone of shadow struck the building behind him with no effect that he could see in the instant he was facing that way, but his gaze shifted to the witch again, who now tracked the wand toward him. He dove to the side in a shoulder roll, dropped his batons, and found his feet with his throwing knives held lightly in his fingers, exactly as Chan had taught him. He visualized the future trajectory of the witch’s arm, which seemed now to be moving in slow motion, and hurled the one in his left hand, then followed it with the one in his right.

  Both blades struck but neither flew true. The first transfixed the woman’s wrist, several inches away from the wand-holding palm he had actually aimed for. The second, which he had aimed at her upper arm in case he missed with the previous throw, stabbed into her shoulder. The limb fell limply and she looked at him in disbelief for an instant before the pain arrived and she staggered aside. Tears streamed from her eyes as quickly as the curses passed through her lips. Before she could put together the idea of using her unharmed hand to attack, he scooped his up batons and charged, broke her off-hand elbow, and vaulted up to finish her with a spinning blow to the temple. She went down in a heap, and he landed facing the building, which was now aflame.

  Nylotte had moved from irritated to annoyed to outraged in moments as the barriers around her shop—which should have easily blocked anyone trying to enter—had fallen one layer after another. She’d delayed the attacking witches and wizards with illusory enemies as they swept inside in an effort to get a picture of the strength she faced. Six entered, and she had blasted the only one with the temerity to try to descend the basement stairs with a fierce ball of force. The sounds that had followed suggested that the witch had broken her windows on the way out.

  She’d done a fair amount of renovation after she’d purchased the shop, including using her magic to enlarge the underground portion. Lady Alayne was unaware of that, she was reasonable sure—not that the “ruler” of the kemana would have involved herself in any case. Still, one likes to keep one’s secrets. She had laid a number of well-concealed traps and charms throughout the space that were inert until she powered them, a step she'd taken when her first external barrier fell. Several went off as she made quick trips away from looking up the stairs for enemies in order to snag things lying around the basement and throw them through the open portal to Diana’s bunker on Oriceran.

  There had been more than enough time to prepare for battle in the interval between the initial indication that the city was under attack and the direct assaults on her establishment. She had treated the invasion as a dire threat aimed personally at her from the first instant, paranoia having served her well in many similar instances before. And on this particular occasion, it seems like it might be completely true. Memories of her flight from her home planet, hounded by enemies seeking her blood, surfaced only to be instantly banished back to the box she kept them in. She’d had decades to master her own mind and was unwilling to let it weaken her.

  She wore the black chain top and leather straps that always comprised her base armor. Knowing there wouldn’t be much travel involved, she’d chosen a heavy pair of boots with dull metal points on the soles and blades following the lines of the toes and heels. Her gloves ended in talons as well, except for her thumbs and ring fingers, which she might need to open the healing or energy potions she carried in a belt around her waist. The cinch also held a vial filled with sand and another with ball bearings. Finally, she strapped on large bracers to cover her outer forearms, dotted with tiny anti-magic deflectors. The trick to making the deflectors work against enemy magic but not limit one’s own had been a secret that took long and arduous research to reveal and required priming the crystals to be used for that purpose in a particular way. Since she’d connected with Diana, there had been further opportunities to test the arrangement as the agents used them and had now devised varieties that could use chips instead of full crystals, but at a far smaller range.

  As a backup, she wore a pendant with another deflector in case she missed a block. Finally, she’d strapped on the thigh sheaths that carried her blades. They were strictly for stabbing and blocking, with large curved ornamental guards for catching opponents’ weapons. She heard the flames before she saw the telltale flickering, and sighed at the loss of her bedroom, which had held the most explosive trap. Deactivating the basement wards once she retreated down the stairs was unfortunate but necessary, as she didn’t want to be caught in them if the invaders activated them.

  Her time for contemplation ended as her foes solved the question of how to descend without getting killed by hurling a fireball into the staircase, which reduced it to splinters. She summoned shields to avoid the shrapnel, but when it had finished flying, there were four other figures in the basement. One of them was in an ornate set of armor, a hallmark of ages before in Oriceran’s history. It was leather and chain, like hers, but made of interlocking sections that required assistance—or detailed magic power—to don. The pieces were black with golden trim, and the wearer radiated smugness from beneath the helmet that covered half his face. As she lowered her shields for a better look, he spoke and she snarled in fury at the realization of who stood before her.

  Dreven’s arrogance was fully audible in his tone. “Hello, Nylotte. It’s been a long time.”

  The Drow was balanced on the knife’s edge between her desire to rip him and his accomplices to shreds and her need to remain focused so they couldn’t distract her and liberate any of the powerful items she stored in the basement. Even one would give the enemies above a significant enhancement in their ability to wreak havoc on the city.

  His next words tipped the balance. “I’ve missed you, wife.”

  She screamed as she gave in to the rage and committed to ensuring that one of them didn’t leave this room alive.

  Diana had sprinted up to the second floor of the shop immediately upon entry and discovered an enemy waiting for her. The wizard crouched in a corner as she ran into the bedroom and fired a force bolt at her feet as she entered. She calculated the angles and realized it wouldn’t hit her, and she slid to a stop and turned to him at the same moment that the ward he’d triggered with the shot exploded.

  The detonation and resulting flames hurled her into the far wall above the bed, and while the anti-magic deflectors on her vest consumed the flames themselves, they did little to mitigate the effects of the explosion. She landed on the soft mattress and rolled toward her adversary, who had already fired bolts of shadow at her. A quickly summoned force shield protected her while she regained her feet within striking distance, and she whipped a kick at his head. He curtailed his attack and tapped her foot with the wand, and she spun away as if he’d struck it with a hammer. She set it down and discovered it would bear her weight, but barely. Damn. That sucked.

  He looked quizzically at her, then brightened. “It’s you.”

  With a growl, she launched darts of flame from her fingertips at the wizard, but he intercepted them with a swipe of his wand and deflected them in every direction to add to the smoke and fire surrounding them. I don’t have time for a magic battle with this guy. She snatched the extra Bowie knife from her belt and flung it at him in one continuous motion, and he brought the wand up to deflect it. In the interim, she pushed forward and rammed his midsection with a knee as she carried him into the wall behind him. He folded, and she raised her hand for a punch. She never had the chance to complete it as he grabbed onto her and bowled them both through the room�
�s window into the street below.

  Diana landed hard but she’d used her telekinesis as they fell to ensure he would be beneath her, so she avoided damage. She rolled off, a little dazed, and her magic sense kicked into gear. The world slowed as she rolled again and scrambled to her feet, already seeking her enemy.

  She found her standing a few yards away with a wizard by her side. Sarah grinned. “Finally, you’re here. It’s time to die, bitch.” Shadow tentacles were already stretching toward her from the witch’s arm as both her opponents lifted their wands.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Whatever dislike Sarah might feel for her, Diana’s loathing for the Remembrance witch far exceeded it. She shouted in rage and summoned her force sword as she whirled to slice the tentacles as they reached for her. The wizard broke away to put distance between her two enemies and rendered the fan of fire she planned to send useless. Instead, she snatched his wand with her telekinesis. It spun out of his hand but a shadow bolt sent it off in a different direction before she could catch it.

  Diana rolled without looking at her opponent, confident that more of the coherent darkness would be headed her way. She came up next to the shop and summoned two bucklers of fire, then focused on Sarah's attacks. Torn between attacking the defenseless wizard or focusing on her nemesis, she chose the latter when she saw Rath approach the fallen wand at a run. She stalked toward the witch, but while she could easily handle the incoming shadow bolts with the shields, the tentacles proved her strategy flawed. The bucklers failed to block them, and she wound up with the appendages wound around her wrist. She scowled and tried to break free, but they remained tight.