Durian lifted a hand in Iskander’s direction and gave the signal to start. And then Iskander pulled. Hard. His eyes cycled from plain blue to cobalt. The tats down his face deepened in color. A wave of air solidified and shot straight at Gray.
She deflected the attack just in time. Considering who she was up against—there was a reason Nikodemus kept Iskander around—she acquitted herself well. Iskander needed fifteen minutes before he had her immobilized. When she was down, Durian found himself locked out of Iskander’s head. He did not, at first, think much of it. The practice bout was over.
Iskander’s hand gripped her throat, and the sound he made rippled through the air like something that had walked in straight off the savannah. The hint of cobalt in his hair shimmered until there was no mistaking the color for anything natural. He locked gazes with Gray and leaned over her. He released her throat, but still touched her. “You want an animal?” he said softly, his mouth just inches from her face. “Say the word and I’ll do you however you want it. Whatever he won’t.”
“Fuck you,” Gray whispered.
Iskander grinned happily. “That’s the idea.”
“Iskander.” Durian didn’t like the way they were looking at each other. “Behave please.”
“Why?” His hands were wandering. “That isn’t what she wants. Is it?”
She pushed him away, rolled to her feet and without looking at Durian, reset. “Again.” She stared at Iskander. “No link this time.”
The air took on an electricity that rippled along Durian’s skin. The stripes down Iskander’s body glowed. Gray’s eyes did that odd jitter, as her vision changed, but her focus was laser sharp.
They began.
Gray quickly slipped beside Iskander, but he whirled, blocked her as she came at him from the side. Iskander brought a hand down so fast she almost didn’t duck soon enough. Even Durian standing where he was felt the disturbance in the air as Iskander’s hand skimmed past the back of her neck.
Her best hope was getting in behind him; failing that, coming in dangerously close. Durian didn’t doubt that was her intention. Recklessness was a part of who she was now.
And then Iskander dampened his magic.
Durian lost all sense of him magically.
The air around Iskander shimmered, and he vanished.
Gray didn’t react in the slightest. He felt like he was watching his own personal performance. From watching her he could guess where Iskander was or what he might be doing. Twenty minutes later she was still untouched.
His student was brilliant.
Without warning, Gray stopped dead. At first, Durian suspected a ruse, but she didn’t move and that wasn’t like her. Her hands rose to her throat and her eyes opened wide. Her magic lost focus, and the whorls on her arm and temple went from green to cobalt blue.
Iskander, who could never really be trusted, had taken possession of Gray’s physical body, and she was panicking. His heart thudded against his ribs and without conscious thought his magic was at his fingertips.
“Iskander.”
The fiend reappeared. His tats glowed searing blue as he dropped to one knee, swept her feet beneath her and that was it. She went down hard.
Iskander touched her shoulder. “You’re dead, human.”
Gray lay on her back, panting. The traceries on her arm faded as she lost contact with her magic. Her eyes went blank.
“Enough,” Durian said.
Iskander put his face close to hers, his hair falling forward, and growled. But the sound wasn’t meant to intimidate as it had been before. She pushed him away, except Iskander didn’t budge. He kept his hand on her.
She glared up at him. “You going to kill me now?”
“I’d rather kill Durian.” He released her, though, and very deliberately snarled at Durian. She shot up like she was on fire. The next thing Durian knew, Iskander was on his back and Gray was straddling him, her hands pressed hard to his chest. Her upper arms trembled.
She leaned over him. “The hell you will, fiend.”
“It’s not Durian I want.” He smiled at her. “But remember, Gray,” he said softly. He cupped the side of her face. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead.”
“More practice then.” She remained straddling him, her breathing more normal. But now her magic was disorganized. Something had happened when Iskander took possession, and she hadn’t shaken it off yet. Still she looked over her shoulder at Durian. “Again?”
“No,” he said. He let go of his psychic blocks, though. Gray and Iskander resonated with magic. The connection between her and Iskander went deeper than the normal casual link, though.
One hand still on Iskander’s chest, she dipped her head to her other arm to wipe sweat off her forehead. “He’s right. I’m still not ready.”
“Babycakes,” Iskander said, “was that as good for you as it was for me?”
“Shut up.”
Even with Durian’s superficial link with her, her response to Iskander was unmistakably normal for the kin. Perhaps not lust but not nothing, either. Iskander had relaxed enough that Durian was aware of his state of arousal, too, and that was lust.
Gray set her palms on Iskander’s chest. “You’re a freak, you know that, don’t you?”
“Oh, yeah.”
They were all three of them on edge, and the three-way connection was back, flowing between them. Durian considered dropping out of the link, but found he did not wish to cede anything to Iskander. Doing so was the same as telling Iskander he felt no claim on her but that of her oath.
“Do you do social media?” Iskander said. He put a palm on the middle of her back, turned his hand and slid his fingers down the back of her workout pants. “What’s your Twitter id? We’ll follow each other and I’ll DM you my home address so you can come over. Whenever you want. You can do whatever you want to me.” His hand delved and he waggled his eyebrows. “Tonight?”
Durian clenched his teeth. The asshole was coming on to her.
“Perv.” But she was laughing.
“Oh, yeah, Gray.” Iskander’s voice fell a notch. “Oh, yeah.”
Durian, willing or not, was pulled along with the two of them. Iskander was sparking off her humanity—and he could not blame the fiend for it.
She got off him and extended a hand. He took it and she helped him up. He straightened his shirt and adjusted his jeans while she turned around to face Durian.
From behind her, Iskander’s fingers tightened on her shoulder, and then he dropped his chin to her shoulder. She closed her eyes, and Durian was pulled along. He let it happen even though he knew it was foolish.
The heat between the three of them racheted up. Iskander circled an arm around Gray and with a swipe of a now taloned fingertip, opened a cut along the side of her throat. He drew in a deep breath. “Sweet,” he whispered.
Durian took her hand in his and from nowhere, Iskander’s fingers wrapped around their joined hands. The three of them might well have ended up on the damn floor, except that the magic turned ugly on them.
An explosion from downstairs shook the floor and rattled the windows.
They didn’t make it two steps toward the stairs when something screeched like a dying beast. They shoved on their shoes and raced down the stairs with the smell of ozone wafting toward them.
Magic burned around them when they reached the center of the magic. They were under attack from a mage.
Durian watched the entire bank of windows along the far wall bow inward and shatter.
Shards of glass flew through the air.
CHAPTER 19
Durian reached the living room ahead of Iskander and Gray. Within seconds magehelds swarmed through the broken window frames on the left side of the room. The sound of breaking wood and glass falling to the floor filled the air, along with the grunts and shouts of the invaders fighting for entry. Kynan was already here, having come down from another part of the house. He was fighting magehelds near a bank of windows by a
n entrance that led to a back hallway.
Information clicked into Durian’s mind, flowing in from Kynan, Iskander, and Gray. These magehelds were mindless brutes, just like the ones who’d attacked Gray and him at Muir Woods. Time slowed. So much happened all at once, stimuli hit all his senses; sight, smell, sound, touch, taste, and magic. Iskander moved past him to take on the magehelds flooding in at the windows. Kynan continued his battle. Gray tucked in beside him, a welcome presence.
A mass of squirming, seething bodies pressed against the broken windows, the individuals behind so frantic to get in they crushed the ones in front. What kept them out so far was the remnants of the proofing, and that had to be near to breaking point. The faces contained in the medallions along the molding contorted in silent screams of rage. Above the shattered windows, the medallions were charred black.
The proofing around the windows near Kynan gave way with a nerve-shivering buzz. A single mageheld vaulted in as the other two windows gave out. He died as the forces constrained in the medallions broke free. Behind him, more magehelds came.
None of the free kin could sense a mageheld’s magic, and fighting magic you couldn’t feel was dangerous. It wasn’t easy to defend against what you didn’t know was coming at you. Not when you were used to the advantage of knowing.
Durian had enough time to realize that the frenzy and the number of magehelds trying to get in had probably saved their lives. They fought each other for ingress rather than attacking. Had the magehelds been more coordinated, Kynan would have been overwhelmed before they made it down from the do-jang. Enough low-ranking fiends could take down even a warlord. More magehelds made it inside, many with wounds from the broken glass and wood. With Gray at his side, Durian prepared to meet the ones who made it past Iskander and Kynan.
As he and Gray moved to intercept the first wave, he knew this didn’t make sense. Magehelds were compelled to do as ordered, but they were rarely stupid about it. A mageheld fiend was a cunning and dangerous creature, and none of these monsters demonstrated the slightest awareness of their surroundings. As far as Durian could tell there was no leader. No one coordinating and directing the attack. No mageheld leader anyway.
Now that they’d lost the edge the ambush had given them, they weren’t retreating. No regrouping. There was just this mindless press for destruction of whatever stood in their way.
Durian pulled more magic than was safe. Iskander and Kynan were already doing the same. So was Gray. He opened himself to her, locking in on her, and she flowed along his senses. They worked well together. They gave each other opportunities and created openings.
Kynan’s magic flashed through the room and the vanguard swarming from the windows fell to the ground before they got a quarter of the way inside. Those who didn’t die were either fully or partially immobilized. Few of the survivors maintained their human forms. More pushed through the windows, stepping on the bodies of their fallen comrades, tripping, stumbling forward without apparent thought or plan.
Perhaps a minute had passed since they’d come downstairs, but it felt like forever. His sense of wrongness increased. Driven by compulsion and whatever else was wrong with them, the creatures who’d been outside the limits of Kynan’s magic and thus survived his attack, swarmed forward, crawling until they could lurch upright. They paid no heed to the glass that sliced into them. Blood dripped from their gaping cuts yet they kept coming on. Kynan let loose with a cry that echoed off the walls. He showed no mercy. As was fit.
Despite the disparity in numbers, the magehelds were so disorganized and bunched up that from time to time Iskander shoved a knot of them to the ground and moments later a red mist danced around them. By the time the mist cleared, the magehelds were dead.
Durian killed the first three magehelds to come within his reach. Quickly. Without reflection or preparation. His chest ached and before long he was sure his ribs would crack apart. He didn’t stop. This was about survival, not the elegance of his kill.
On the far side of the room, Kynan shifted to one of his alternate forms. The warlord planted himself between the magehelds and the side of the room where Iskander had more magehelds backed up against the wall. The two of them trapped the magehelds behind a magical wall. Passing through that barrier ought to have been too painful to bear, but they were trying, and it was a horrific sight. A grinning Kynan killed the ones who came through alive.
Durian and Gray had their hands full with the interior of the room. She plucked a leg from the ruins of a table and used it as a cudgel. She was faster than a normal human, but not faster than a mageheld. She was stronger, too, but he didn’t know if, like other kin, Gray would heal from wounds that would kill a vanilla human. There wasn’t time to think about what was going on with her because there were more magehelds to deal with. She was capable of keeping herself alive. Chances were high that her oath would keep her near him.
The first time magehelds ended up between them, he killed them and any others who’d made it past Iskander and Kynan. The second time, he understood the magehelds were trying to separate them. The one and only glimmer of intelligence from them. Durian circled back to her but was cut off again. Once more he regained her side and twice more magehelds separated them.
Again, they were after Gray.
The moment he had an opening he shot toward her. He came at her sideways, in low and from her left, taking down as many of the magehelds around her as he could touch.
She clubbed one and it reeled back, tripping another one, which fell face down on Durian. The thing clawed at Durian’s belly with extended talons. Before he could shatter the mageheld’s heart, though, Gray killed it with a two-handed swing of the table leg and followed up with magic to ensure it was dead. She shoved the body away with her foot. She whirled to face another mageheld and dispatched it, too.
He rolled to his feet. So much was happening at the same time: Kynan Aijan fighting, Iskander’s defense, Durian’s own trajectory toward Gray, and her deliberate stride toward the door. More of them worked their way toward her.
Durian’s heart banged against his ribs when he saw her surrounded. She maintained a bent-kneed posture, gripping her weapon with white-knuckled hands. The stance was not a defensive one, and outnumbered as she was, it should be. He didn’t know how long Kynan and Iskander would be able to continue with magic that struck so broadly. It was draining and dangerous. A miscalculation might easily injure or kill any one of them by mistake.
He opened himself to Kynan and Iskander, bringing them into his link with Gray, knowing it was dangerous but risking it just the same. Kynan was a warlord, Iskander practically so. They could deal with unblocked exposure to Durian’s magic. Psychically, all four of them locked in on each other. If they didn’t work together they weren’t going to come out of this alive.
Durian bulled his way through to Gray, touching magehelds when he could—they had no instinct for self-preservation. The challenge lay in the frenzy that made them fast and unpredictable. The smell of bodies and magic choked the air. Somewhere out there, a mage was controlling this.
He watched her swing her table leg at three magehelds. The first went down, the other two lunged, and she got her touch, one, two. Then others went down. She was using the edge her ability to sense magehelds gave her, anticipating where they would be before she struck.
More magehelds swarmed through the side door like they were going over a hurdle. One peeled off and went for him, clawed hands outstretched. Durian killed it with a touch and as the others passed him, he spun and more died. While he was engaged, she killed two more. One of the bodies bounced unnaturally as it landed and hit Gray a glancing blow to her side that knocked her on her back.
This level of carnage and sustained attack was insanity, yet the surviving magehelds were trying harder. All of them worked toward Gray. She moved faster than he anticipated given the limitations of her physical form. So quick on her feet. He was seeing—because he recognized it—a near perfect imitation of his tech
nique augmented by the magic she had taken from Christophe.
God, he could love a woman like her, he really could. She caught his eye for a moment and he grinned at her. She smiled back, and they both went back to work.
A hole appeared in the space between the double main door and the jamb. The wood collapsed against itself as if it were being squeezed by an invisible hand. And she kept moving toward whatever was on the other side. The living room door disintegrated from its midpoint outward.
“Get down, get down!” Durian threw himself at her, covering her with his body as the sound of the door vaporizing boomed in his ears. Her table leg went flying. She fought to crawl from underneath him and nearly did. He tightened his hold and pushed her head to the floor. The disintegration of the proofing that protected the house from magical intruders carried a lethal blowback. By design. “Head down, fiend.”
Uttered like that, she had no choice. He’d given her a command both verbal and psychic. The last of the proofing gave way. His ears popped and then, every mageheld he could see between here and the door died. When it was over, he rolled off her, keeping low to the ground as he cast about for status.
The room fell silent. For a moment, Gray was utterly still in a position that reminded him more than a little of himself. She looked at him with eyes that did not focus as they ought. “Is it over?”
Durian looked around and saw Kynan Aijan at the far side of the room and Iskander, who, as Durian watched, released the mageheld he’d just killed. Blood dripped from his other hand. The body tumbled to the floor.
Iskander shook his arms; they were bloody up to his elbows. Crimson droplets flew through the air. He backed away from the dead around him, stepping over bodies as necessary. He looked as sick as Durian felt. “There’s nothing there,” he said. His eyes were wide, his pupils black discs amid the surrounding blue. “Not for any of them.” He touched a finger to his temple. “Gone.”
Kynan made an inhuman sound. His eyes blazed gold. His fingernails were too sharp to be normal. Though he was human in appearance, he was not human in fact. The warlord teetered at the edge of his control. Gray shivered in reaction to the warlord’s magical state. Durian saw the ripple of goose bumps down her arms. He held his breath. If Kynan lost control, they were all in trouble.
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