Without giving him time to think it over, I stepped out from behind the corner and unleashed a kinetic blast that caught half the furniture in the room and sent it flying at the two women. Most of it sailed right past them where it smashed to pieces against the wall, but I watched in satisfaction as a glass and metal coffee table clipped Karyn on the shoulder as it flew by. She staggered backwards a half step, swearing loudly as she dropped to her knee and reached for a thin silver chain at her neck. Before I could compose another spell, she tugged a small amulet from beneath her shirt. Eyes closed, she chanted an obvious incantation, mouth moving almost too quickly for human speech.
As this was happening, the first loud retort from Chase’s gun nearly deafened me. A painful dial tone squealed in my ears, and I had to waste precious energy casting another small sound blocking spell around the gun as Chase squeezed off a dozen rounds. Trying not to get to distracted from whatever it was Karyn was calling up, I watched in amazement as Montgomery did little more than frown at me while furniture and bullets smashed against an invisible barrier just inches away from her face. Splinters from the couch’s wooden frame exploded around her, and there was a series of soft thunk sounds as ricocheting bullets embedded themselves into the ceiling and walls around her.
Snapping back to my senses, I grabbed Chase’s arm and hauled him back around the corner. A torrent of broken coffee table glass hurtled past the space we’d just evacuated, punching through the wall as though it had been fired from a canon.
“Not smart, Alex,” Montgomery said.
A subtle pulse of energy rippled through me. Dizzy and queazy as I already was, it blurred my vision and disoriented me enough that I pitched forward. Chase caught me and pushed me back up against the wall, steadying me until I was able to focus again.
“What now?” Chase asked.
I risked a peek around the corner. Montgomery was nowhere to be seen. What furniture hadn’t been blown out the window during my initial attack was now embedded into the wall behind us. The living room was completely bare but for a twisted hunk of metal that was all that remained of the coffee table after being caught between my blast and Montgomery’s return volley.
“We have to find Karyn before she can get out of here,” I whispered. “I think Montgomery teleported out of here, but something tells me she didn’t take Karyn with her.”
“You don’t think she has a secret exit or something?” Chase asked. “Like back at the safe house?”
“We’re on the eleventh floor. Unless she’s got a zip-line crossbow or is wearing a harness under her dress, I think she’s in here somewhere.”
Another wave of nausea swept over me. My tongue felt thick and too large for my mouth, and I wondered if I was going into some sort of shock from my injuries. The high pitched whine in my right ear hadn’t faded, creating an imbalance of sound that made me feel even more disoriented. This was not a recipe for success in magical combat, but I couldn’t exactly let Chase take the lead.
“Can you do something about that gun to make it look less empty?” I asked.
The top of the handgun had slid back and stayed in that position, something I was pretty sure had to do with the fact that there were no more bullets to pull into the chamber. I didn’t know if Karyn knew any more about guns than I did, but if push came to shove, I wanted to be ready to fake her out.
Chase flicked a catch with his thumb, causing the top to slide back in place.
“I’ll go check the guard outside for another magazine,” he said. “Then I’ll watch the door.”
All I could do was nod in approval.
By this point, I could barely stand on my own. I didn’t have energy to maintain any sort of shield, so with hand braced against the wall for support, I moved down the hall as stealthily as possible. My mage sight revealed a misty haze of ambient magic filling the entire hallway. It was as though someone had sprinkled sparkly dust throughout the condo, obscuring any sign of distinct magic being used somewhere in one of the rooms ahead of me. It was exactly the kind of thing Karyn would do to throw me off my game; a sure sign she was lying in wait for me somewhere down this hallway.
Mage sight useless, I reverted to regular vision and pressed on.
Each step forward was a fumbling mess, leaden legs slow to respond to my brain’s requests to keep them moving. I reached a still open doorway, a glance inside revealing an empty bathroom. Breathing deeply in an effort to keep my head as clear as possible, I staggered across the hall and prepared myself to check the next room.
“Brinn!” Karyn hissed, blowing a dark cloud of fine powder into my face as I rounded the corner.
Flames engulfed me. Angry blue and orange fingers of searing heat flickered out from my chest, racing down my shoulders and arms. The acrid stench of burning hair and skin filled my nostrils. I waved my hands frantically, trying to beat back the spreading conflagration as it surged down my torso towards my legs. The fire rippled like a flag in a maelstrom, guttering only slightly before redoubling in intensity. Fighting frantically to think of some spell I could cast to snuff it out, I dropped to the floor and rolled back and forth, hugging my arms and closing my eyes against the rising heat. It was too late for any kind of shield spell, and I had no idea how to direct a kinetic blast towards myself. Muffling the sound would do nothing to stop the flames melting my skin like wax off a candle.
My skin. I opened my eyes and forced myself to look at my arms. The skin beneath the gouts of flame was red from where I’d rubbed it trying to put out the fire, but it was otherwise unscathed. Blistered and charred skin should have been hanging off me in messy strips by now. In contradiction to the agonizing scalding sensation attacking my entire body, I appeared to be unharmed by the fire.
Before Karyn could step over me to get into the hallway, I reached out and lunged for her ankle. Hand still alight with mysterious flame, I seized her leg and pulled. Karyn tumbled forward with a yelp of surprise, catching the impact of her fall with a shoulder on the far wall of the hallway. Before she could regain her feet, I scrambled upright. Clinging to the hem of her dress like it was the only thing keeping me from falling off the edge of a cliff, I hauled myself upwards and latched onto the fabric of her neckline. A dim part of my brain noted that none of the fire transferred to her, reinforcing belief that it was nothing more than an incredibly powerful illusion.
Karyn’s lips started moving, harsh Germanic syllables pouring out of her mouth at a frantic pace. Before she could finish the incantation, I balled my free hand into a fist and slammed it into her face with all the strength I could muster. Her head snapped sideways, the force of my punch effectively knocking the final words of her spell right out of her mouth. No longer able to support the weight of both of us, her legs buckled and she sank to her ass with me lying atop her, still burning away like some kind of fiery hell spawn.
With no idea what kind of tricks Karyn still had up her figurative sleeve, I pushed myself off her and rolled a few feet away. Inky black tendrils of darkness roiled at the edge of my vision. Overloaded with unrelenting pain signals, my brain had numbed somewhat. My skin throbbed and stung like hot shower water on a sunburn, but the searing agony of it had faded to a tolerable level. Standing up required more energy than I had to spare, so I pushed myself up to a sitting position and leaned back against the hallway wall. I tried to call up a kinetic shield, but the energy just fizzled into nothingness instead of shaping itself into a protective barrier. There were still a few gas vapors in the tank, but my head was too fuzzy to form the energy into anything of worth. My tongue had swollen considerably, blocking enough of my throat to make even breathing a labored exercise.
Karyn sat in a similar position across the hall, looking disheveled from her fall. I caught a flash of her underwear before she scowled and tugged the hem of her dress downwards, folding her knees beneath her to stop it from riding back up again. Thin rivulets of blood trailed down around the edges of her mouth, giving her the sinister appearance of a vampire after a
feeding frenzy. Large red blotches stained the once pristine white fabric of her dress. She prodded delicately at the bridge of her nose, wincing in pain from what was hopefully a disfiguring fracture.
“You broke my fucking nose,” she said, nose coming out as node.
“You set me on fire,” I rasped back at her.
Absurdly enough, the flames still danced around my body. The pain had become so intense it had transcended my brain’s ability to react to it. Incongruous runnels of sweat dripped from my brow and armpits, negating the illusion even further. My skin burned with feverish intensity, interrupted periodically by icy chills that made me shiver and clench my teeth. I don’t even think I could have activated my mage sight had I wanted to, let alone protect myself from Karyn’s next attack. By that point, I was fighting just to stay conscious.
Of course, I couldn’t let Karyn know that. I heard the crunch of footsteps on glass in the living room, and I put my hand up, fingers pointed menacingly at Karyn while I began muttering nonsense in latin just to buy myself a bit of time.
Karyn put her hand out, palm facing me as though attempting to placate a rabid dog. “Whatever you think you heard back there, I promise you have no idea what’s going on.”
“I think we’ve heard enough to know where you stand,” said Chase as he entered the hallway. He stopped short a few paces away from us, muzzle pointed at Karyn’s temple. “You alright Alex?”
My hand had fallen limp and useless by my side. No longer able to hold myself upright, my chin dipped down to my chest as I slumped further down the wall. I tried to call out to Chase for help, but all that came out was a foaming mass of spittle and drool. The feverish shivering had become a full on convulsion, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep myself from moaning and thrashing about on the floor. Pain surged in my gut. My insides felt like they were melting. Warmth seeped into my shorts and I realized with abject horror that my bowels had let go completely. Thin bile trickled from my mouth, burning my esophagus as it seeped up from my stomach.
“What’s happening to her?” I heard Chase shouting. “What the fuck did you do to her?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Karyn said with genuine surprise. “But if I’m right, she brought it on herself and only I can save her.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mind now almost fully detached from my body, I sensed rather than felt hands lifting me by my arms. The ichorous blackness obscuring my vision lightened dramatically. I floated down the hallway as though drifting along on a lazy current. I felt no pain. In fact, I felt nothing at all. There was only the absence of sensation leaving in its wake a pleasant numbness. I’ve never been in one of those sensory deprivation tanks, but I imagined that it must feel a lot like what I was experiencing while my body was being manhandled down the hall.
For a time, I thought I was dead. I was quite certain that if I loosened my grip on the last tenuous threads anchoring me to life, I would simply float on upwards out of the empty meat shell that had once been my earthly vessel. With no physical sensation to distract me, I could sort through every emotion and thought at once, categorizing them and filing them away for future use. Anger, frustration, hate, and sorrow were of no use to me; so I laid them aside for the time being. Without these negative emotions, little of anything else remained. I’d been operating in survival mode for so long I barely remembered what other emotions a normal person might enjoy if they weren’t so burdened with self-pity and loathing.
Snatches of happiness emerged when I thought to look for them. I knew one of the sets of arms dragging my body through the condo belonged to Chase. There was no denying that if anyone had been a shining light in the shadows I clung to, it had been him. Despite everything he’d learned about me in recent months, he’d stuck by me, showing his support at every opportunity. It remained to be seen whether or not he’d still feel that way if he knew the full extent of my past transgressions. Given how the situation was looking, however, he’d probably be saved from having to find out what sort of horrors I had hidden in my past.
There were other beacons, twinkling like the few determined stars able to penetrate the smog blanketing a city sky at night. Viktor. Jessica. Hell, even Lorelai in her own fucked up way. Though I’d done my best to turn it away at every opportunity, there had been people who’d shown me love in one form or another. Some who’d known full well the darkness I carried, and who’d offered their friendship anyway.
And hadn’t I done my best to do good in the world? At what point did those unselfish deeds outweigh the horror I’d wrought? I hadn’t had much of a chance to try, but surely the work I’d done over the last few years had at least been enough to show that I wanted to be a better person. I didn’t know what waited for me on the other side of this life, but on the chance I would face judgement of some kind, wouldn’t I at least nudge the scale back in the right direction?
I was saved from having to find out by someone hoisting me into a bathtub full of ice cold water. The shock of it sent my eyelids fluttering open. My heart lurched in my chest before settling into the wild and primal drum beat of survival mode. I gasped loudly, throat aching from the strain. My vision was too blurry to make out what exactly was happening, but I shut my mouth and fought to scoot back in the tub away from the looming human form trying to push something past my firmly clenched lips.
As weak as I was, I lashed out as the figure climbed into the tub with me. My vision had resolved enough for me to make out Karyn’s blonde hair and white dress as her weight settled on top of me. She muttered something about it being for my own good as she pinched my jaw, jabbing thumb and middle fingers into the muscles with enough force to work my jaw open against my will.
“Are you sure this’ll work?” I heard Chase ask as something bitter and mushy was pressed under my tongue.
Satisfied she’d gotten enough of the foul-tasting gak into my mouth, Karyn pulled her fingers free of my teeth and cupped my chin to push my jaw shut. Saliva pooling around the substance beneath my tongue, dissolving it and carrying it down my throat.
“Not at all,” Karyn grunted. “If she wasn’t so far gone, maybe she could tell us what she swallowed back at the safe house. As it stands, I can only make an educated guess. I gave her a mixture of a few herbs that should cover all the most common culprits.”
Slowly but surely, the pieces fell into place. My shoulder and side still ached, but the symptoms I’d been feeling over the last few hours had a lot less to do with my injuries, and a whole lot more to do with what was probably too large a dose of henbane. I still didn’t know why Karyn was going through all this effort to save me, given how she’d obviously been working for Montgomery the whole time.
Then again, maybe the gun Chase still held aimed at her had something to do with her change of heart.
Shivering violently from the intense cold in the bathtub, Karyn sat up and eased her grip on my chin. Her normally tanned skin had turned pale and bluish. Even after she seemed certain I wouldn’t need to be forced a second dose, she sat in the tub with me. She shook and shivered, chanting an invocation while pressing her palms into my stomach. In a matter of minutes, I felt almost completely relieved of my symptoms. The illusory flames had vanished sometime before I’d been heaved into the tub, my stomach felt considerably more settled. Every passing second returned a little more clarity to my thoughts.
“That’s all I can do,” Karyn mumbled as she crawled out of the tub.
Lower half of her body dripping water all over the floor, she pulled a thick towel off the rack and draped it around her shoulders before sitting down on the closed toilet seat lid. Her teeth chattered behind blue-tinted lips, and I couldn’t help but wonder how bad I looked in comparison. The water around me was a disgusting murky brown. If Karyn had voluntarily climbed in there with me, she must have been seriously motivated to save my life. I don’t know if I’d have been able to make the same decision had the tables been turned.
I fumbled beneath myself and yank
ed the plug out of the drain. My delirious state had kept me from feeling much of any physical discomfort, but as sensation came back to me, bone-chilling cold assaulted me with a vengeance. Soon, I too was shivering madly. I pawed uselessly at the tap, numb fingers unable to get a grip on the large round knob.
Chase leaned in and turned the temperature knob halfway between the hot and cold markings before pulling it out to activate the shower. I winced in pain as the first spray of lukewarm water hit me, burning my ice-cold skin wherever it landed. Still too exhausted to do more than sit there, I let the water spray into the rest of the bathroom as it warmed back to some semblance of body temperature.
“I’m going to use the shower in my bedroom,” Karyn said as she pulled on the edge of the sink to haul herself to her feet.
“Nuh uh,” said Chase. “You’re not leaving my sight.”
Karyn flashed him a wry grin. “Come watch then, you filthy perv. Just don’t think you’re getting more than a peep show out of the deal.”
Chase’s face flushed red. He stammered something about not meaning it that way until I spoke up and interrupted him.
“It’s fine,” I said, leaning forward out of the stream of water. “Karyn knows it’s in her best interest to stick around so we can sort this out. Right?”
Karyn sighed. “If that’s what it takes to get you idiots out of my home, then yes. I promise I won’t run out on you.”
“Fine,” Chase gestured towards Karyn with the gun. “I’m going to wait in the hallway then. If I even think I hear anything like a spell coming out of that bedroom, I’m going to shoot first and ask questions later.”
“You’re sexy when you’re angry,” Karyn purred. “Maybe you should join me in the shower after all.”
“Both of you get the fuck out of here,” I growled.
Once I had the bathroom to myself, I staggered to my feet and pulled the shower curtain across the tub. My clothes were soiled and already soaked, so I dropped them to the tub floor in a sopping heap. Bit by bit, I cranked the water hotter and hotter, until the bathroom had filled with a thick soup of steam. I lathered a blob of every kind of soap and shampoo I could find, scrubbing it vigorously across my skin and through my hair in an effort to cleanse myself of more than just the remnants of a full body evacuation. Once I was as clean I was going to get, I languished a moment longer, enjoying the seemingly bottomless hot water tank that serviced the entire building. The dressing on my shoulder had mostly peeled off. With only a bit of wincing and tearing up, I peeled it away and ran hot water over the still oozing bullet wound.
Black Market (Black Records Book 2) Page 22