by TR Cameron
They broke apart laughing after almost a minute of struggling. She rolled onto her back, panting. “You had me. There was no way.”
He lowered himself to the ground beside her, his face beside hers. “Probably. But it was a good move and if you were using magic instead of sticks, you could have ended it easily.”
She nodded. “I may lack the killer instinct when it comes right down to it.”
“I have enough for both of us.”
“Really? But you seem so sweet.” Her tone was an odd mixture of sincerity and sarcasm. He was sweet—to her and her friends—but she had little doubt he could turn vicious toward threats.
“Only until I need to not be.”
Her leg hurt when she stood, and she realized she’d twisted her knee. “Damn. Hey, you can’t do that healing thing on others, can you?”
His snout swung from side to side. “Nope. I seem to remember that magical healers exist, but I don’t think they’re Draksa.”
Interesting. That’s good to know. She sighed as a realization surfaced. It probably means that jerk I fought in the abandoned building will be up and around much sooner than he has any right to be. “Is your veil still up?”
“Of course.”
“Excellent.” She drew the magical circle in the air that connected here to there, in this case, the entry hallway in her new apartment. They stepped through and she removed her shoes and set them on the mat positioned there for that purpose. “Hey, lizard face. Get back here and wipe your feet. Paws. Whatever.” He ignored her and tracked mud down the hallway. She looked at her phone and groaned, then called after him. “You’re lucky I don’t have time to deal with your complete lack of consideration right now. But you’ll get yours.”
The snort from deeper in the apartment showed exactly how concerned he was. She muttered, “Oh, you’ll pay. You’ll all pay. Just you wait.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
After spending a large portion of the day in bed recovering from the encounter, Tanyith had dropped off the item he’d collected from Crain with Dray the night before. In return, he’d received a promise of further contact and a useful piece of information about the missing man. He didn’t technically need to report to Sienna, but it was an opportunity to visit her again that he wasn’t able to resist.
It hadn’t taken her long to answer his text and agree to get together. She’d passed on his suggestion of coffee and invited him to her place, and he did his best not to read anything into that choice—or into the fact that she wanted to see him again. It’s totally about the missing dude. Positively. Well, almost surely. Probably.
He halted the unproductive train of thought as he steered his bike to a stop in front of her house. Maybe I lost my mind in prison and all this is merely a hallucination. That would explain everything really well. He shook his head, removed his helmet, and raked a hand through his hair to push it into some semblance of a style. As he no longer knew the neighborhood, he carried the headwear with him to the porch. The door was opened before he arrived, and an eager-looking Sienna closed it after he entered.
Her excitement was palpable in the way she bounced as she walked and jumped onto the same couch she’d chosen last time. He took the expected seat across from her, and she poured him more of the same infused bourbon as before. Tanyith sipped it, satisfying her obligations as a host, then set it on the table before him. His face twisted in a smile tinged with the acknowledgment that her enthusiasm wasn’t for him. “Hi, Sienna. How have you been?”
She laughed. “Fine. Don’t be like that. Tell me.”
Damn. I’ve always been about as impenetrable as a children’s book to her. He shook his head. “It’s nothing concrete. I texted you that.”
The woman nodded, and her long blonde hair flopped into her face. She pushed it away in annoyance. “I know. I’m not expecting anything. But if you don’t quit delaying, I’ll start throwing things at you.” She hurled a small pillow beside her by way of illustration, and he stilled his reflexes. It caught him in the face and made her laugh. “The next one will be much more painful.”
He pulled his brain out of wherever it had gone wandering and chuckled. “All right, you’ve scared me into obedience. Please, oh please, no more wicked pillow tosses.” He reached for the glass and took one more sip, and then was out of ways to delay the process. “Okay, so, while you knew him as Aiden Walsh, the people at the Stallion knew him as Adam Harlen. Does that name mean anything to you?”
She frowned but didn’t reply and focused on her hands. He watched quietly, not sure if she was processing the information or searching through her memory. Finally, she shrugged and returned her gaze to his. “No. I’ve never heard it before. Whenever we were around other people, they called him Aiden, Walsh, or Harry. I never understood that last one, but maybe it has something to do with Harlan?”
Tanyith nodded. “It could have. I thought maybe you wouldn’t know about the second name. It’s not necessarily a bad sign. You know that many people in our…uh, line of work used aliases.”
A little of the darkness that had swept over her left her expression and she nodded. “Right. That’s right.” She picked her glass up, tipped a fair amount past her lips, and poured a little more in. He waited while she swirled the ice and took a deep breath. “Okay, continue.”
“Why do I feel like a bad student and you’re the teacher?” He laughed.
She joined in with a chuckle. “Because you have a natural dislike of authority. Now, get back to saying useful things.”
He steeled himself to deliver news that would probably hurt her. “My contact tells me he still visited the bar sometimes for a month or two after he vanished from your life.”
She frowned, the expression filled with sadness. Her voice came out in a choked whisper. “What was he doing?” Seeing her so vulnerable made his stomach clench painfully.
“My contact didn’t know. All he could say was that Adam—well, Aiden—was definitely into something and seemed more stressed than usual about it.”
Sienna uttered a dark laugh. “Since virtually nothing bothered him, that must have been a sight to see.”
He nodded. “Then he vanished from there, too.”
“And?”
Tanyith shrugged. “And that’s where we’re at right now. I have a few leads. He was seen with a couple of other people whom I didn’t recognize from their descriptions, and D”—he coughed to cover the near revelation—“and this guy Raymond I talked to doesn’t have their names. So it’s another mystery to be solved.”
Sienna sighed. “I’m not sure what I expected but this isn’t it.”
He offered her a soft smile. “I hear you. I assumed there’d be some difficulty following a lead this old but so far, everything I’ve discovered has been a surprise.”
“It’s good that you found someone who knew something, though. After all this time, I was afraid you might not be able to.”
If only I could tell you how strangely that turned out. He’d made the decision not to reveal his source although he still wasn’t sure if he was trying to protect See, trying to keep Dray to himself until he discovered what the hell was going on, or some other reason entirely. After he’d spun it around in his head, he’d decided to shove the issue in a locked box in his brain and continue to move forward. “Agreed. I thought that part would be harder. Apparently, you’re lucky.”
She laughed, but her response was lost in the sound of loud simultaneous crashes from the front and the back of the house as all the windows in the room shattered.
Tanyith hurled himself reflexively across the space that separated him from Sienna, shoved her into the fortunately soft cushions, and covered her body with his own. He took several cuts to his head and neck before his force shield snapped into place to protect them. When the initial chaos faded, he stood quickly and pulled her to her feet. “Upstairs. Now.”
She didn’t argue and led the way to the house’s second level. Sounds from below were consistent with mu
ltiple people entering from different directions. When the two of them reached the top, she led him into her bedroom. Memories flooded him, the space exactly as it had been when they’d been together, and he pushed them aside. She scrabbled under the bed and withdrew a knotted rope while he moved to the window facing the side of the house. He threw the latch and opened it in time for her to toss the weighted end out. The actions were as efficient as all the times they’d practiced it before he was sent away.
He stuck his head out to ensure no one waited below. This window had been chosen because it led to the narrow side of the yard, the one least likely to be used by enemies since there were no ground floor entrances or windows. He nodded and she climbed over and out while he returned to the doorway. When the first intruder appeared, he pounded the man with a force blast that hurled him down the stairs into his friends. The ubiquitous hoodie and long hair told him it was the Atlantean gang. Curses raced through most of his mind while the remainder counted the seconds it would take Sienna to reach the ground.
When the allotted time had passed, he slammed the door closed and shoved a dresser in front of it. He crossed to the window and used the rope to descend, knowing that every ounce of magical energy he had might be needed to fight the attackers. She was crouched near a hedge and stood when he reached the ground. “Where to?” she whispered
Tanyith admired the fact that she didn’t waste time wondering who had broken in. Despite her free-spirited ways, she could be entirely practical when the situation called for it. He dug in his pocket and pressed his motorcycle key into her hand. “Wait until I create a distraction in the back. Then, you go out the front. I’ll watch in case but hopefully, it will draw them away. Head somewhere you haven’t been since I came back—all the way out of the state if you need to. These are not people to mess with.”
He’d expected an argument, but she simply nodded. She’s scared, and rightly so. He pulled her into a hug and whispered, “You’ve got this. But move fast.” He triggered a blast of force to launch himself up the three stories to the roof of her house. As he passed the window, he saw a face inside but didn’t have time to damage it. He landed and stumbled but quickly found purchase on the inclined surface. There was a wooden swing set in the back yard, an inheritance from the previous owners of the house that Sienna had kept and used often. He shook his head at the imminent loss and reached for fire.
The ball of roiling flame struck the target cleanly and set it ablaze with a deafening whoosh. He didn’t wait to see the reaction but turned and scuttled to the opposite side. Sienna’s dark form raced into view on a direct trajectory toward the bike. A shadow detached from the blackness on the other side of the front yard and raced to intercept her. Damn it. Competent enemies suck. He flung himself off the roof and used a blast of force to drive the enemy to the ground and control his landing beside him.
Sienna’s head whipped around and he yelled, “Go!”
The man at his feet tried to rise, and Tanyith kicked him in the ribs, then again in the skull. There’s no time for niceties. The bike roared to life and the tires screeched as it accelerated down the street, and shouts came from the house in response. The smart move would have been to throw fire into the structure, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. There’s too much history. Plus, it would hurt her. He growled with the guilt of having brought trouble to her doorstep. A shout indicated that another of the invaders had seen him and a second later, a blast of power rocketed into his chest and thrust him to the side.
He stumbled but managed to regain his footing and summoned his own magical attacks to launch hardened spheres of force about the size of billiard balls at his barely visible assailant. A cry of pain was lost almost instantly in the shouts of the others who raced around the corner and into view. Tanyith’s eyes widened, and he turned and ran for his life.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The overhead lights were close enough to one another that he couldn’t use the street or the sidewalk if he wanted to have any chance to escape the eyes of those in pursuit. He sprinted across the lane, ran into the yard of the house on the opposite side, and vaulted a low hedge like a hurdler seeking Olympic gold. I bet they’d get a world record every time if there was someone trying to kill them. He zigged and zagged as much as he could without sacrificing his lead, and the maneuver ensured that attacks from behind landed on either side of him.
I can’t keep this up for long. Ahead was a house similar in size to Sienna’s and when he was close enough, he blasted the ground with force magic to lift himself to the roof. A magical attack splashed off the wall near him, followed by a strike to the back that sent him tumbling. The pain arrived a moment later as the flames set his clothes afire, and he threw himself into a roll down the opposite side of the roof. He was in midair before he could stop himself, and while the force blast he cast beneath him saved him from major injury, he impacted with enough speed that he couldn’t breathe for several precious seconds.
His failsafe plan was to portal out, but he didn’t want to lead them to his home or to the basement of the tavern, which were his only options at the moment. His brain shouted at his body to move, and he rolled and came up again into a run. He caught a bright flash out of the corner of his eye and snapped his head around. A trident raced toward him. A damned trident—what the hell? He let himself fall to avoid it, which was easy since he had already tripped, and cursed as the trail of light it left behind curved toward where it had come from.
Obviously, his plan to flee was invalid in the face of an enemy with one of the trademark weapons of the Atlantean warriors. There was no possibility that he’d have time to portal and no chance of running fast or far enough to evade him. His mind shifted to finding the optimal way to engage him while not being overrun by the rest. Clearly, it was a no-rules attack since none of the formal niceties of challenge and acceptance had been observed. Essentially, that meant he was free to do what he really wanted to do anyway. He raced down a natural funnel created by two driveways side by side, stopped, and spun.
While he waited for the enemy to appear, his gaze roamed in all directions to guard against the sudden appearance of the trident, but he was reasonably sure he’d put the houses between himself and the warrior. When the first attackers appeared in a concerted charge, he smiled. If they’d stopped to attack, his plan would have been much less effective. He had counted on them wanting to make it personal. When the space was full and his foes had almost reached him, he swept his arms wide and delivered a horizontal sheet of fire into the Atlanteans. They screamed, fell, and began to roll to extinguish the flames. He bulldozed through them, kicking those who tried to stop him, and repeated the attack on a few who hadn’t entered the funnel in time.
He’d bought himself a couple of minutes, which would hopefully be enough to lead the enemy leader away from his minions. Of course, if he wants to let me escape, that would be fine too. Tanyith laughed as his feet pounded the ground. My luck’s not that good.
As expected, his pursuer hadn’t given up during the weaving chase he had led him on. The man had only tried to throw the trident once more, and after the very near miss, he’d become smarter about avoiding straight routes. He’d done all he could to lose him—going over some buildings, through others, and around many more—but the Atlantean warrior refused to be shaken off. When the gang had spoken of the elite fighters of their homeland, it had always been with a mixture of reverence and fear. No one wanted to find themselves at the pointy end of the giant fork.
The location he had aimed for was directly ahead. An old middle school, damaged by floodwaters and since abandoned, stood alone in a large rectangle of grass and pavement. In his day, it had been a place to stage operations from and stash hot items in. He’d investigated it shortly after his return to the city and found it deserted. One of his caches had been buried nearby and fortunately, had been undisturbed when he retrieved it.
The doors were blocked with a chain and padlock. Once upon a time, he’d ha
d a key, but that was in the distant past. He threw a two-handed blast of force at them, ripped them from their rusted hinges, and hurled the metal rectangles into the building. They clanged as he pounded over them and past lockers on the right-hand side and the office area on the left. He turned barely in time to avoid the trident that would have caught him in the back if he’d gone straight and growled a curse. At the next turn, he darted into a hallway that ran parallel to the first. His objective was at the back corner and he arrived there a full ten seconds before his pursuer, which allowed him to catch a few breaths.
The Atlantean warrior sauntered into the cafeteria as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He probably thinks he doesn’t. Of course, he might be right. Tanyith shook his head. This situation was not something he’d ever even considered a possibility. His foe wore what seemed to be military trousers and boots, plus a black t-shirt. His muscles rippled under the apparel, and he walked like he knew the image he projected. Again, he probably did, given that he’d doubtless fought for position since childhood. His voice was deep and dismissive. “You should lie down. It would save us both trouble and lessen your pain.”
From his position across the room with rows of tables separating them, Tanyith shook his head. “And you could simply leave.”
The man shrugged. “I have my duty to perform.” Glowing translucent armor wrapped around his wrists, hands, and shins in the same shade as the electric blue of his trident. Tanyith concentrated and summoned force versions of his sai. He much preferred the actual metal daggers to the magical ones, as these required him to concentrate to maintain their solidity and a distraction at the wrong moment could easily get him killed.