by Janet Tait
He looked down at the table. “I don’t know.” His gaze flicked to Kate. “Your uncle certainly has the knowledge to have put together the pieces the way I did.”
Yes. He does. So why had Grayson told her that Brian had used a different counterspell? Why didn’t he tell anyone about the Pandora Stone? Grayson had never led her astray. Sure, he might be playing his own game, but that’s what casters did. The pills seemed to be working—the paranoia wasn’t affecting him in any major way. So why should she believe this guy she just met, over Grayson?
She got up and slung her purse over her shoulder. “Time to get back. I’ve ditched my training long enough.” She’d have to figure the stone out later. The sun was going down, its rays shining through the big picture window. She hoped she hadn’t been missed.
Dylan closed his notebook, got up and took her cup and his to the trashcan. The tiniest flicker of purple caught her eye. Inside her purse, Kris’ conch shell key fob glowed with power.
“Dylan—” she said.
The air behind Dylan rippled. An unseen force slammed into him. He flew across the cafe, smashing into the wall with a sickening thud. Sliding to the ground, his head hit the floor and he lay still.
A trickle of blood ran down Dylan’s face. His eyes were closed. Shit, oh shit, is he… But his chest rose and fell.
He’s okay, he’s… Damn, where’s whoever hit him? She looked around, hair whipping around her. No one in sight. Victor, she needed Victor right now. Why had she been so stupid as to leave without telling him? Oh yeah, because they were in the Hamilton DC offices. Where they were completely safe.
She pulled out her cell phone. Frantic, she stabbed the emergency button. Nothing. She hit it again. Shit, why wouldn’t it work?
A strong hand grabbed her arm. She spun around, dropping her purse. A young man stood silhouetted against the dying sun, striped shirt half tucked into his tight jeans, an insolent grin on his unshaven face.
He slammed her hand against a nearby table. She sucked in her breath, the pain hitting her like a blossom of fire through her hand. The phone skittered a few feet away.
“You won’t need that where we’re going.” He twisted her arm behind her back into a painful hold, and yanked her close to his chest. She winced. If she moved, she would break something. She squirmed a little anyway.
“Please fight me.” He loomed over her. “I like it much better when they fight.” She flinched away. He kept up the pressure on her as he reached into his pocket with his free hand and tossed a small envelope toward Dylan.
She tried to think of a spell and cast it. The few she’d learned—fire, shield, stun, all went through her mind. But she couldn’t focus enough to bring up the symbol for any of them.
Dylan’s eyes remained closed. Then she noticed his fingers—one or two were twitching, in a methodical, familiar way. She needed to buy him some time.
Footsteps sounded from down the hall. Help arriving. All she needed was a minute.
“Who the hell are you?” She craned her head around to look the man straight in his arrogant eyes.
He grinned. “That would be telling you more than you need to know.” He ran his hand up her arm, hard enough to leave marks.
She winced. “I’m a Null. I’m not a part of the Game. It’s against the Rules for you to—”
“I don’t play by the Rules.” His head went back, his eyelashes flickered and his body went tight against hers. She felt the familiar jolt of dislocation, and they were gone.
Kate stumbled as they materialized someplace hot, humid, crowded, and noisy, the smell of human waste competing with broiled vegetables and animal sweat for predominance. No sooner had her feet landed on the hard, clay ground than they were gone again, blinking out as quickly as they had blinked in. The sickeningly sweet odor of caramel hit her next, amid the sounds of machinery, as a blast of hot air blew strands of hair across her face. She barely had time to realize they’d landed in some sort of candy factory when she felt her captor cast another spell and they were gone.
She lost count of how many times they flickered in and out of existence. Four times? Six? Her head spun by the time they finally stopped, in a place so hot that the sweat was dripping off her face the moment they materialized in the center of a stark wooden shack.
Her captor threw her down to the bare plank floor. Throwing her hand up, she broke her fall, catching some splinters on her arm from the rough boards. He stalked over to the far side of the room, ripping the tattered curtains from the window to look outside. A thousand different shades of green spilled into view as an overwhelming variety of leaves crowded out the sky. The sound of birds whooping and crying cut through a low hum of insects.
“Not safe, not safe,” the young man muttered. “I should be running this op, not him. We should be doing this my way.” He paced from the window to a cast iron stove, caked solid with dirt, a frying pan standing solitary on one of its burners.
That many teleports would make anyone mega-twitchy. Wonderful.
Sunlight streamed through a hole in the ceiling, leading to a sink half filled with stagnant rainwater. The hole looked too small for her to climb out, although the large lizard climbing in seemed to like it fine. Then Kate’s eyes found the wooden door against the far wall, bolted closed.
Keeping a watch on the guy, she slowly got to her feet, the sweat pouring off her. Dizziness hit her as she stood, and she was barely able to put one leg before the other.
Worst teleport lag ever. Have to ignore it.
She inched toward the door, skirting around a narrow bed, its steel springs visible underneath the stained mattress. He hadn’t made a move toward her; his eyes were fixated out to whatever lay beyond this shack.
She ran through her options. A spell? Maybe, but she didn’t know a spell powerful enough to take him out in one shot. Better to run. As her heart thudded in her veins, she stumbled to the door. Flicking the bolt back, she threw it open and—
Kate grabbed the doorframe, jerking to a stop. Beyond the door, there was nothing but cool air blowing on her face. Below the door, there was nothing but rain forest. She couldn’t see the ground. Her head started to spin, and she pulled her head back before vertigo overtook her. If she fell, she would keep falling for two hundred feet or more, unless a tree branch broke her fall.
And her body.
She wavered on the doorjamb, her momentum threatening to push her over. Digging in her heels, she threw herself backward into the shack. She stood shaking. There were no stairs, no zip line. Nothing leading down. Only the remains of a rope ladder, cut off a few feet from the top. Only one way in or out—the way they’d come.
She was stuck here. With him. Teleporting was one of the many spells she hadn’t learned yet.
“Long way down, isn’t it?” His voice sounded behind her, right in her ear.
Kate spun to face her captor, braced against the doorjamb. “You’d better let me go. My security will track you down and take you out. I don’t care who you are—”
“I’m better than your security.” A sneer made his too-handsome face turn ugly as he reached past her to shut the door and lock it. He leaned against the door, confining her with his arms.
His sneer turned to a smirk. “By the time your guards figure out what happened, they won’t be able to trace my teleport.” A twitch started in his eye.
“What do you want with me? I’m a Null,” she said, praying he couldn’t see past the spells embedded in her earrings. “I don’t have anything you want.”
He ran a finger down the side of her face. “But you do. You have something I want very much.”
She flinched away from him. “What?”
“A small thing, in exchange for your freedom. Something your father has. If he trades it for you, I’ll let you go.”
She closed her eyes.
“You know exactly what it is, I can tell. Well, I’m sure your father likes you so much more than a stupid little stone, so all we have to do is wait until
he carries out the instructions I left with your friend.”
“Dad won’t give it to you.”
“You’d better hope he does,” he said. “And soon. I can think of so many things for us to do until I get what I want.” He ran a finger along the lapel of her poet’s shirt. She tried to squirm out of his way, but he moved with her, his body pressing up against hers, pinning her to the wooden door. There was nothing on the other side but several hundred feet of air. That was strange, she thought, because she couldn’t find air to fill her lungs anywhere.
“Let go of me.”
“Why?”
He ripped her shirt open, popping the small pearl buttons off until they dropped one by one onto the wooden floor.
She screamed and hit at his arms, his face, anything she could reach. He took the blows and regarded her with a cold, bored stare. Then he slapped her, hard.
“Are you done now?” He smiled again, that nasty smirk that made her feel like an ant underneath his magnifying glass.
The hit woke her up. She didn’t care if she was stuck here. She didn’t care if he learned she could cast. She only cared that he get away from her, now.
She remembered the symbol for fire, then, the one that rose up out of her that night she blasted her father. She tried to focus on the symbol, bring it to the forefront of her mind, the way she had done just this morning in the Sanctum.
His hand snaked inside her blouse, and the sick feel of him touching her made her lose all focus. The fire symbol fled her mind, chased away by revulsion. Frantically, she tried to get it back, to focus on this morning’s training session when it had been so easy, so clear-cut. But the vision faded, overwhelmed by the garlic smell of this creep’s breath on her neck, the pressure of his body against hers. She shook as he undid the top button of her jeans.
No. This is not going to happen. She shuffled through the spells she’d learned. None of them were any more effective or any easier to cast than the fire spell. She tried anyway. But every time she started to focus on one of the symbols, it slipped away. She choked back a sob.
“That’s it, baby, that’s what I like. Show me how much it hurts.” He shoved his hand down her jeans, his mouth nuzzling her neck.
No, no, no. Her legs shook. She hit his back, her fists bouncing off his muscle. There had to be a way to stop him.
Then she remembered what she had done back at the catalpa grove.
It didn’t require a symbol. It didn’t require a build-up of energy. Just the opposite. She gasped in a breath. Closed her eyes. Rushed down the stairway in her mind. Threw open the door that led to the vast sea of blackness.
It roiled before her, limitless and welcoming. She touched the dark power that lay beneath its surface. The fear that rippled through her when she sank her mind into its depths was nothing compared to the despair this jerk’s hands on her inspired.
Burn, she willed.
And he did.
Her eyes flew open. He screamed, staring down at his flaming arms. Backing away from her, he stumbled around the shack, almost tripping over a large lizard lying dead on the floor, until he came to the sink. He plunged his arms into the basin, steam rising from the stagnant water as the flames went out. His screaming turned into a wail.
Shaking, she pulled her shirt closed. There were no buttons, she realized, they were all over the floor. She let the shirt fall open over her lace bra.
The flames hadn’t touched her. She took a few steps forward into the center of the room, then glanced at her captor. He looked different now after the shock of her attack ripped away his illusion spell—his brown hair hung longer, his figure almost wiry as he slumped over the sink. There was something familiar about his sharp face, his hazel eyes.
Before Brian’s funeral, when Grayson had gone over the profiles of the most prominent casters, this creep’s face had been in the photos she’d reviewed. Dmitri Makris. The Makris family’s most brutal operative.
Stomach heaving, she looked back to the door. No exit. Shit.
She blinked, engaging her magesight. Purple strands of light swirled on the floor, the remains of his teleportation spell from when they had arrived—she took a breath—how long ago? It seemed like hours. The remnants of the spell still endured. Maybe she could she activate it somehow, get back out the same way they came in. She had no idea. All she could do was try.
Dmitri was still dunking his hands in the basin of water. He muttered to himself. Casting a healing spell? She was running out of time. Closing her eyes, she tried to will herself away.
Home, she thought as hard as she could. Nothing happened. She needed to touch the power—that was it. She did the ritual again, descending into the dark basement of her soul, and tapped the ocean of raw energy that lived inside her. This time it felt like something might be moving, flowing from her and connecting with a larger something outside of her.
Home, she willed. She saw the remnants of the spell grow brighter, flicker with new life.
Then pain exploded in her head like a thousand white-hot needles boring straight through her skin and into her skull. She fell to the ground. Dmitri stood over her, a trail of magic from his reddened hands. Screaming, she lost the fragile connection with the old teleport spell as her magesight shut down, her eyes unable to focus on anything. Above her, she dimly heard Dmitri moving, his booted feet loud on the wooden boards as he loomed over her.
“Bitch, you bitch, what did you do?”
Her rib cage cracked as his boot struck her in the side once, then twice. Pain flared up, competing with the ache in her head. She curled up, wrapping her arms around her sides, her stomach. God, she just wanted this to end.
His face contorted with a twisted grin. He raised a hand. Oh God, what was he going to do?
Kate tried to focus on a spell, but the pain made it hopeless. Her body tightened as she waited for Dmitri’s spell to finish.
Air rushed past her, and Dmitri flew upwards, shirt flapping free. He crashed into a small table by the stove. It broke with a loud bang. The agony in her head lightened as soon as Dmitri’s body hit the floor.
“Kate! Are you all right?”
Her head still sore and her ribs tender, she tried to prop herself up and turn around, to see who had saved her. Gentle hands reached down to help her.
Dylan. Blood still dripped from his head, but he looked to be in better shape than Kate. A faint blue glow surrounded him—a shield spell.
Damn. She hadn’t even thought… She probably could have put a shield spell up.
“Thanks.” Kate’s heart finally slowed to something close to normal. “I didn’t think I…”
“No time.” Dylan’s head snapped over to look at Dmitri, lying in the wreckage of the table. Dmitri groaned and got up, shaking his head. “We need to leave. Now.”
She winced as Dylan helped her to her feet. He gave her a quick glance, reaching into his jacket and touching a bird’s wing talisman—one for teleportation, she assumed. She glanced down at her blouse then, face red, and held it closed with one hand.
Dmitri pulled a talisman out of his jeans pocket. A silver horse. He rubbed a finger over it, his eyes lidded.
Dylan’s eyes twitched behind his glasses, then opened. “Bloody hell, he’s got a block set up.” He stepped in front of Kate. “We can’t teleport out.”
Dmitri got to his feet. “Next time I hit you, Pearce, you better stay down.” He threw out his hand, muttering a spell. A greenish mist spun out from his fingers to permeate the whole room.
Within seconds, the tree house began to shake. The stove rattled on its stumpy legs. Kate backed up. Then, as the bed behind them swayed, realized she had no place to go. A piece of broken table flew from the floor and hit Dylan. A flash of blue light shone for a moment where it struck him, then disappeared. The blue glow around him dimmed.
The trembling continued. The bed flew toward them, straight at Kate. Dylan grabbed her, pulling her out of its path. It smashed into the wall, bouncing off it and rebounding
onto the floor. Pieces of wood shot toward them, first one, then another, then many of them all at once. Dylan kept Kate behind him, taking the hits on his shield. Its glow diminished a bit more.
“Can you cast a shield spell?” he asked.
“Um, maybe?” She tried to focus on the symbol for the spell. It’s so much harder when someone’s throwing furniture at you. The pain in her head and side didn’t make it any easier, either.
The table reared up, sliding slowly toward them. The shaking and rattling got worse, the noise drowning out everything else. Dmitri was bent over in concentration, either maintaining the spell or preparing an even worse one.
“How long can you keep shielding us?” she yelled in Dylan’s ear.
“Not much longer. Is there another way out of here?”
“The door, but it’s a sheer drop.” She pointed at it. “We’re hundreds of feet up. No way out except teleporting. Can you break the block?”
“It’ll take too long. We need another plan.”
His gaze focused on Dmitri’s silver talisman, his eyes squinting in concentration. Then his eyes slid over to the door. A grin lit his face—the first she’d seen. “Brilliant. I’ve got just the trick.”
The sink broke away from the wall with a bang and hit Dylan’s shield, smashing into a thousand splinters of wet wood. Kate screamed, more in surprise than in terror, as his shield kept her safe. Dylan staggered back a step, the light of his shield wavering a pale blue.
The stove tore itself loose from the side of the shack with a groaning sound. It slid toward them, picking up speed as it went.
Dylan grabbed her arm and ran toward the wall, Kate following. He stopped short of the wooden door. The stove tracked them like a bloodhound. It accelerated, screeching across the floorboards as it hurled toward them. Across the room, Dmitri’s laughter rang out.
Dylan stood in front of the door, as if daring the stove to hit him. It took the dare, heading straight for them. He pushed Kate further from him, then danced out of the way as the stove shot past him and hit the wooden door.