“It’s fine,” Chase said when he’d cleaned up the supplies he’d used to dress my wounds. “Let’s get out of here.”
We left the room by the only door, then climbed the stairs up to the main floor. I was nearly knocked backwards when Chase suddenly stepped down again before reaching the top landing. His movement just barely preceded the whoosh and crack of a silenced bullet smashing into the doorframe. This was followed by three more soft pops and three more little puffs of wood and drywall exploding at the top of the stairwell. Heavy footfalls hurried towards us as we backtracked down the stairs. We only just managed to duck back into the basement room when another round of bullets pinged off the bottom floor’s stone walls.
Chase slammed the heavy wooden door shut, quickly slotting home a long iron bolt to secure it in place. No normal person would be able to break through that any time soon, but something told me we weren’t going to be so lucky.
“There’s got to be another way out of here,” I told Chase. “Look for anything that could be a secret mechanism to open an emergency access. Coven safe houses always have more than one way in or out.”
While Chase began pulling books and objects off bookshelves in the hopes that one of them might reveal a hidden doorway, I scanned the room with my sight. The faint glimmer on the wall farthest from the door was so slight I didn’t even notice it at first. It was only after I reverted to regular sight that I saw how cleverly it had been concealed behind a tapestry woven with a metallic thread patterned to mask the telltale signature of magic pulsing within the stone.
“Found it,” I said to Chase.
“You should probably open it quick then,” he said, turning towards the door.
A circle of burning embers about the size of a dinner plate had appeared near the hinges, glowing red hot as the thick wood of the door smoldered and charred. Not wanting to waste time waiting for whatever was on the other side to break through, I set to work trying to activate the secret doorway. While magic is magic, there were as many different ways of manifesting as there were languages in the history of humanity. Simply having the ability to speak wasn’t nearly enough to understand more than a single language, even if that language was only slightly different from the one you already knew. So it was with magic. Some mages could weave spells I could never hope to comprehend, and the style of magic worked by most witches was as foreign to me as trying to read Arabic or Cyrillic script.
Unlike language, however, magic could be finessed in a significantly shorter period of time. The spell securing this passageway required a very specific pressure that would either move the stone blocks or cause them to disappear completely, and all I had to do was figure out how to apply that pressure without triggering any of the likely safeguards that could incinerate everything in the room.
All that is to say I had no idea how to open the hidden door without killing us in the process.
“Alex,” Chase said urgently. “Little help here?”
I turned just in time to see the ashen circle in the door crumble to reveal a perfect cylindrical hole cut through the wood. The barrel of a gun emerged a half second later, a light brown finger squeezing the trigger to fire several blindly aimed bullets into the room.
Still weak from the previous night’s exertion, I barely managed to use a thin tether of energy to pull one of the tall bookshelves downward. It scraped along the wall, catching the edge of the gun as it came crashing to the ground. A deep guttural growl of pain sounded from the other side of the door, and the whole thing began to smoke and smolder, giving off enough heat to be felt even as far back as we stood.
“Mr. Trang is not pleased with your decision to move against his agents,” the man on other side of the door said. “I am to bring you in so you may answer for your transgression, but it was made clear that I would not be at fault should I only be able to retrieve your lifeless corpses.”
“Quan,” I said under my breath. Then to Chase, “See if he dropped the gun when the bookshelf came down. Stay clear of the hole just in case. I’m going to need to drop into a bit of a trance now, so I won’t hear you if there’s a problem.”
I didn’t wait for Chase to acknowledge my orders before settling down to a crosslegged position behind the heavy stone table. Even if my reserves hadn’t been so depleted, I doubted I’d be able to brute force the concealment spell. As it was, I would hardly need to use any energy at all if I could figure out the right application. Sending out a few probing threads of magic required about as much energy as sitting in front of a lock with a pick and torsion wrench, but it did call for serious concentration. Letting myself get distracted by Quan’s rapid burning of the door wouldn’t help any, so using a technique I’d learned to calm myself through the frequent panic attacks in my early teens, I dropped into a deep meditative state in the span of only a few short breaths.
Trying my best to think like a witch, I approached the spell in front of me as though I would have to access it without being able to draw on inherent power. I considered that a charm or artifact might be required to unlock it, but dismissed that approach quickly since a coven member in dire need may have needed to access the exit without having such a thing on hand in an emergency situation. The key had to be tied to some form of physical action or spoken incantation. It would be something that could be performed quickly and without the elaborate ritual that usually accompanied witchcraft.
The spellwork was like a bear trap, sitting in wait for someone to either release the hidden catch, or to step on the activation plate sending two steel jaws crashing towards each other with enough force to snap bones. Moving as quickly as I dared, I prodded and tugged each little thread of the spell, trying to glean some sense of the final result in order to reverse engineer the sequence required to activate it.
As deep as my meditative state had been, it wasn’t deep enough to keep me from being jolted out of it at the stinging slap of Chase’s hand across my cheek.
“You can be pissed at me later,” he said, huddling beside me with the stone table as cover. “I couldn’t find the gun, and we’re out of time.”
Panicking just a little, I swallowed a knot of fear and sent what I hoped was the missing surge of energy that would complete the spell embedded into the heavy stonework. Instead of sliding back and away as I’d first guessed, the stone simply crumbled to sand, spilling away to reveal a passage behind. It was an emergency exit in the truest sense. Now that it was open, it would have to be rebuilt from scratch. Serving its purpose just fine if members of the coven needed to escape in a hurry, but doing little to help us slow down Quan now that he’d just about burned through the doorway.
Chase was on his feet immediately, hauling me up behind him before turning to scramble over the pile of sand that choked the entrance to the hidden tunnel. I tried to think of a way to build the sand back up into another barrier of some sort, but I’d never been great with that kind of magic. The best I’d be able to do would be a desperate gout of mage fire that would do little more than turn the pile of sand into a pile of polished glass that wouldn’t even slow Quan down.
Although, there was plenty to burn in the room itself. As much as it cost me to do so, I conjured a spray of magic napalm that immediately set anything it touched aflame. Fire blazed everywhere, even spreading across the rough stone floor and walls. Heat poured from the tunnel opening, tongues of supernatural flame licking out into the darkness. Mage fire would burn for hours even without the fuel a normal fire would need to stay lit. The room had become an inferno that only another mage could quell.
I turned and hobbled down the tunnel, following the bobbing blue light of the LED flashlight on Chase’s phone. Praying there was no similarly difficult to decipher spell protecting the exit from the tunnel, I moved as quickly as I could, hands pushing off the damp and mildewy sides of the tunnel to keep myself upright after once again burning too deep into my reserves.
Deep and chilling laughter echoed from behind me. I heard Chase cry out in surprise, a
nd I turned to see a burning figure stalk out of the makeshift incinerator I’d left behind us.
“Nice try,” shouted Quan, flames clinging to his skin, burning away his clothing. “But you’ll have to do better than that.”
He raised his hand to shoot, and I braced myself for the impact of a bullet that never came. Instead, there was a loud bang from Quan’s end of the tunnel. He whipped his hand to the side, cursing as his now useless gun clattered to the stone in front of him. Either the barrel had warped enough from the heat to cause the gun to explode in his hand, or the mage fire had somehow penetrated the metal casing, causing the bullets to ignite inside the magazine. Either way, the distraction was all I needed to catch up to Chase.
Although most likely much more difficult to access from the outside, this end of the escape tunnel was secured with a simple lever. Chase yanked it downwards, triggering a reaction that caused the dead-end section of wall in front of us to slide sideways. This dumped us into a low-ceilinged culvert with sunlight streaming in at both ends. Chase slipped an arm around my waist to support my weight as we splashed through ankle-deep water, racing to the culvert’s exit before Quan could catch up to us.
Once out of the tunnel, we scrambled up a dirt embankment. We emerged onto a gravel laneway behind a stretch of suburban houses. The sound of splashing water coming from within the culvert meant Quan wasn’t far behind. We had to get someplace safe, and we had to do it fast.
“We’re not far from the car,” said Chase, pulling me alongside him as fast as my legs could manage. “Can you do anything to hold Quan off?”
All I could do was shake my head. I could either talk or run, and right now I was barely even managing to put one foot in front of the other.
Chase glanced over his shoulder.
“Shit,” he said. “Sorry about this, Alex.”
Before I knew it, Chase had me up over his shoulder like a sack of flour. The gash in my side burned like fire with each pounding step, my shoulder screaming with agony as I fought to hold onto his shirt to keep from being bounced around too much. Chase’s breathing came fast and heavy, grunting like an ox as he turned the corner with surprising speed.
I caught a glimpse of Quan cresting the embankment. Although every scrap of clothing on him had been burned away by the mage fire, he appeared completely unscathed. His muscled body tensed as he dropped into a defensive crouch, seeming to hesitate while he debated the risk of exposure from running through the neighborhood stark naked.
It only took a minute for Chase to get me to the car, and this time he deposited me on my feet next to the passenger side door instead of jamming me into the back. I yanked the door open quickly, craning my neck to watch through the back window for any sign of Quan.
“Hit the gas!” I yelled at Chase as he fumbled to get his key in the ignition. “Don’t look, just gun it!”
The car roared to life. Chase slammed the shifter into reverse and put his foot to the floor. There was a squeal of tires on pavement as the car spun in place for a half second before finally lurching backwards where it collided with a solid object. The car bounced upwards, grinding awkwardly before slipping free of the mass pinned beneath it.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” groaned Chase. He shifted into first, cranking the wheel hard to the side as he accelerated past the inert form of Quan’s naked body.
“Don’t worry,” I told Chase as we sped away. “I doubt you did much more than annoy him.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” he shot back before blowing through a stop sign at an empty intersection. “Now he’s going to be doubly pissed when he eventually tracks us down again. Speaking of which, how the hell did he even find us in the first place? Shouldn’t there have been magical wards or something to protect us there?”
“Wards are only as good as their makers,” I explained. “Karyn’s an extremely talented witch, but I don’t know if she was prepared for whatever Quan is. That guy walked through a mage fire inferno like it was nothing. That’s not normal.”
Slowing his speed to within the limit in order to keep from being pulled over by the police, Chase took a convoluted series of unnecessary turns to keep from being followed.
“Could Karyn be working for Trang?” he asked as he merged onto the highway.
“That’s a good question.” I rooted through the glove compartment in search one of my boxes of candy and a plastic bottle of ibuprofen. “I guess there’s a chance Karyn could be working for Trang, but it doesn’t seem like her style.”
As we drove, I recognized a few road names that told me were still a good half hour drive from home. After what had just happened, I wondered if home was even a safe place to go. My injuries hurt like hell, and I had very little gas left in the old magic tank. What I needed as another meal and twenty or thirty hours of sleep. If I were Quan, the first thing I’d do would be to get to our place as quickly as possible. He’d never presented as fae when I’d checked him out under my mage sight, but if what he’d shown of his abilities at the safe house was any indication, he was capable of hiding that fairly easily. The only glimmer of hope was that if he was anywhere near as powerful as his boss, he’d have taken the basement door out in the blink of an eye. That didn’t rule out some form of drake or other fire spirit. As impressive as his powers had been, they’d appeared to have been limited to physical contact. He hadn’t shifted form to chase us down, and he’d used a gun to attack at range.
But he did have Trang’s financial resources backing him. For all I knew, he’d arrived at the safe house by helicopter and was now already landing in the park only a few blocks away from our house.
“I don’t think we should go home,” said Chase, as though he’d been listening in on my thoughts.
“Take us to Viktor’s house,” I said. “We’ll be safe there.”
Chase checked his blind spot, then slid over into the fast lane. The car rumbled and shook as he pushed it for all it was worth, barely keeping up with the moderately faster flow of traffic. He glanced nervously at the mirror several times, then, in a move that solicited an angry honk from the truck just behind us in the middle lane, cut hard across all three lanes to just make it onto an off-ramp. Paying more attention to his rearview mirror than the road in front of us, he turned left at the first intersection, weaving in and out of traffic before making a dangerous U-turn that took us back the way we’d come.
I twisted in the seat to look out the back just as a black SUV with impenetrable window tints attempted to make the same U-turn. Chase had timed his maneuver perfectly, slipping in just before the light changed. Any remaining confusion over how Quan had caught up to us so quickly was cleared up after watching him muscle his vehicle through the choked up intersection by forcing other cars to choose between hitting the brakes and slamming into the imposing SUV.
“I’m not going to be able to out-race him,” Chase said as he turned back onto the highway. “Any ideas?”
“All out, I’m afraid.”
I pulled Viktor’s address up on my phone. With traffic, we were still fifteen minutes away. Plenty of time for Quan to make a move. Judging by the way he’d followed us through that U-turn, it was a good guess he was no longer concerned with keeping a low profile. He wouldn’t hesitate to take any opportunity that presented itself. His words about Trang not caring if he brought us back dead or alive echoed in my head as I tried to think of a way to keep that distance between us.
Traffic slowed to below the limit, heavy congestion clogging the road despite rush hour still being hours away. After a few miles of crawling along in bumper to bumper traffic, the orange cones and flashing yellow lights of a construction project came into view. Not having much reason to come down this way, I’d completely forgotten about the repaving of the stretch of highway that crossed the Fraser River before entering Vancouver city limits. With no way of backtracking or cutting onto the shoulder, we were trapped until we cleared the bridge.
“I n
ever thought I’d be thankful for Vancouver drivers, but no one’s letting him change lanes in order to get ahead,” Chase said as we were forced to merge from three lanes down to one. “We’re screwed once we open up on the other side of the lane restriction though.”
Try as I might, I could not catch sight of anything behind the tint of the SUV’s front window. It was only three car lengths behind us, yet I couldn’t even make out a silhouette of a driver behind the smoky glass. Since Trey was working for Mr. Trang now, I supposed he and his crew could be sitting in wait. As competent as Quan likely was, it was only smart strategy to keep a team in reserve. Quan could still be waiting for us up ahead somewhere.
Or maybe it was Quan in the SUV, relaying our location so Trey and his boys could slam into us at the next intersection.
“You sure you don’t have any ideas, Alex?”
“Unless this rust bucket can fly, I think we might be screwed.”
I considered the odds of Quan sparing our lives if we pulled over and went willingly to take our chances with Mr. Trang. Maybe I could talk him into sparing Chase at least. Or maybe he’d just take pleasure in roasting us alive before chomping us to pieces. Neither of those felt like particularly attractive options, but I’d do what I had to do if it meant saving Chase’s life.
Chase looked me in the eyes. “So you’d be okay with me trying something desperate?”
“Something stupid?” I asked even though I already knew the answer.
“Stick to your strengths, right?”
I swear I saw Chase grin as he stepped on the gas and jerked the wheel to the right. We slammed into an orange traffic cone, sending it flipping up over the hood of the car where it landed somewhere behind us. A crew of workers dove out of the way as Chase veered onto the stretch of unfinished highway, tar coated gravel spewing up behind us as we made a beeline through the construction zone. The torn up road pushed the car’s suspension to its limits, every rut and bump like a baseball bat into the tailbone.
Black Market (Black Records Book 2) Page 20