On the surface, he looked unremarkable. He was somewhere around thirty, and he wore a hooded leather jacket, dusty jeans, and steel-toed boots. Leather gloves covered both hands, and the cigarette smoldered in his left hand as he took a draw from it. His head was bowed as if he was exhausted, and I saw that he had close-cropped dark hair, his face pale beneath black stubble.
He looked like a drunk, or maybe a drug addict. The kind of guy who would demand that two women hand over their purses. Though if he tried to mug us, he would be in for possibly the worst surprise of his life. And maybe the last surprise of his life, depending on how Della felt about the matter.
“Come,” said Della, glancing at the smoking man. She didn’t seem to regard him as a threat. “We shall speak more inside.”
We kept going down the sidewalk, drawing closer to the warehouse doors and the smoking man. He didn’t look at us, and his gaze was fixed on the sidewalk between his boots. Yet I had the feeling that he was aware of us, that he knew exactly where we were standing. I made a surreptitious gesture and worked the spell to sense the presence of magic. At once I felt the powerful aura radiating from Della and the weaker aura around the aetherometer in my backpack.
Nothing came from the smoking man. Maybe he really had just wanted to sit there and have a cigarette break. I glanced at the roof of the warehouse, wondering if anyone was up there, but I saw nothing.
The man took one last draw on his cigarette and flicked it aside, still staring at the sidewalk. I wondered if Della would chew him out for littering on her late uncle’s property, but she seemed to have decided that the man was not worth her attention. But something about him still alarmed my instincts. I wondered if I was being paranoid. Then I decided that after getting killed something like fifty-eight thousand times, I had the goddamn right to be paranoid, so I watched him from the corner of my eye.
That meant I saw it when his gaze snapped up to fix on Della. His eyes were a cold hard blue, and something about them reminded me of Nicholas Connor.
The man surged to his feet in the space of a single heartbeat, his left hand going into his coat. It came out holding a peculiar-looking gun, something that looked like an automatic pistol with an extended magazine but much boxier, and he brought the weapon sweeping towards an oblivious Della…
“Watch out!” I shouted, and I shoved Della to the side even as I cast the Shield spell. I keyed the Shield spell to block kinetic power, intending to deflect the gunman’s bullets. I didn’t recognize his pistol, but it looked like he could hold down the trigger and use it to spray and pray. Since we were standing twenty feet from him, that would be lethally effective.
My surprise was absolute when the gun spat a bolt of glowing fire, not a bullet.
It looked like a bolt of glowing fire, anyway. I didn’t know what it was. It moved slower than a bullet because I could track its movement with my eyes, but it still was blisteringly fast. And whatever it was, it didn’t use kinetic force.
It sailed right through my Shield spell without slowing.
I had shoved Della to the side, which saved her life. The bolt that would have burned through her chest instead clipped her left shoulder. It seared through the sleeve of her expensive hoodie and charred the arm beneath it, and the sudden scent of burned flesh flooded my nostrils. Della screamed in pain and fell to one knee, and behind her, a fist-sized chunk of asphalt exploded into smoking ash when the bolt struck it.
The gunman shifted his weapon towards Della’s head, and I recast my Shield spell. This time my Shield glowed yellow-orange as I set it to absorb attacks of fire, and the gunman squeezed the trigger of that strange gun twice more. Two more fire bolts burst from the weapon and slammed into my Shield. I staggered a little, the strain crackling through my mind. The bolts from that gun hit hard, but I held my Shield against his fire.
I had enough concentration left to cast another spell as I held the Shield, and I hurled a volley of five lightning globes at the gunman. They snarled and sparked as they hurtled towards him, and I had put enough power into the spell to fry his nervous system and burst his heart inside his ribs.
He shifted position, swinging his right arm to face me, and a peculiar thrumming noise rose from the arm. A disk of harsh blue light about the size of a car wheel appeared over his right arm, and my lightning struck it. The globes flashed and disappeared, and the gunman stumbled, but my lightning didn’t touch him. I cursed and worked the spell to sense magical forces, hoping to pin down what kind of defense he had used to block my attack.
But I felt nothing.
No magic radiated from the gunman. However his weapon and shield worked, they didn’t use magic.
He caught his balance, the blocky pistol swinging to target me once more. I didn’t know if that thing could fire on full auto or not, but if it could, he could hammer right through my Shield spell. I shifted tactics, casting the ice spike spell, and I flung a lance of granite-hard ice six feet long at him. The gunman shifted, his right arm coming up, and that thrumming shield of blue light appeared again. The ice spike hit the shield and shattered, but the force of the impact knocked the gunman over the curb and into the street.
I pulled together power for another spell and struck at once, this time hitting the gunman with a shove of telekinetic force aimed at his chest. The burst hit him in the chest and flipped him head over heels, throwing him almost to the other side of the road. That should have been enough to stun him, maybe even kill him if he landed wrong.
Instead, his right arm shot out, and he pushed off the asphalt, did a backflip, and landed on his feet with his back to the guard rail atop the sea wall.
The sight was so astonishing that I froze for a half-second. It would take an incredible amount of physical power and control to do something like that. Hell, striking the asphalt like that should have broken every bone in his right hand. I had seen Riordan and the other Shadow Hunters fight, and when they drew on their Shadowmorphs, they were far faster and stronger than humanly possible.
But I had never seen any of them do anything like that.
The gunman brought up his weapon and started firing again, and I snarled and shifted my Shield to intercept the bolts. The fiery blasts hammered into my Shield, and I pulled together power for a Splinter Mask spell, hoping to distract the gunman long enough to get in a killing blow…
Then Della screamed and flung out her hands.
I felt the surge of magical power, raw and unfocused, and she hit the gunman with a burst of telekinetic force. It wasn’t terribly accurate, but it was strong, and that was enough. The gunman flew backward, hit the steel guard rail with enough force to dent it, and vanished from sight. It was a forty-foot drop to the stony beach below, and that should be enough to cripple or kill him.
Maybe. Probably.
“You okay?” I said to Della.
She staggered to her feet, wincing. A few wisps of smoke rose from her burned shoulder. “Christ of the humans, that hurts. I…where did he go?”
An alarming realization came to me. Della was a century and a half old, physically strong and powerful with magic, but this might have been the first serious fight she had faced. Or the first battle with an adversary capable of killing her. I might have more experience of violence than she did.
Hell, who was I kidding? I had spent a century and a half killing and getting killed every day. I had more experience of violence than freaking everybody.
“You threw him over the rail,” I said, risking a quick look around. I was hoping there weren’t more men with fire guns lurking on the rooftops. “You’re hurt. We need to get you to a doctor.” Maybe Dr. Morgan would get a chance to work on a real live dragon instead of a dead one.
“A minor burn,” said Della. She sounded dazed. “It will regenerate in a few hours.”
“Call Helen,” I said. “Call Helen right now and tell her to get the SUV over here. We need to move. We’re sitting ducks here.” She blinked at me. “Right goddamn now, Lady Delaxsicoria.”
“No,” I said, staring at the bent guard rail. Just as well there was no traffic this time of day. Explaining things would have been difficult, and any bystanders would probably have gotten hurt. “I’m going to have a look at his body. And that weird-ass gun of his…”
“Blaster,” said Della, and she followed me as I stepped off the curb.
“What?” I said. “What the hell’s a blaster?”
“The xortami had them on Bel-Thunezad,” said Della. “A product of their science. It fires supercharged particles along a projected ionization beam.” She shook her head and winced when the tail of her hair brushed her burned shoulder. “At least that’s how I think it works. I am a musician, not an engineer.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “Point, squeeze the trigger, blast. Boom, a blaster.” It sounded unlikely, but I had just seen the gunman burn a small pothole in the road with his weapon. Couldn’t do that with a handgun. “But we need to make sure he’s dead. And we need that gun. Some sort of freaky particle gun isn’t the kind of thing we can leave sitting around on the street.”
Dear God, I wasn’t looking forward to explaining this to Tarlia. She had sent me to find Max Sarkany’s murderer, and instead, I had found a man who could do backflips and was armed with some sort of bizarre energy gun. I could just imagine her reaction…
A sudden dark thought occurred to me.
Bullets didn’t work on Elves. The actual explanation was long-winded, but it boiled down to the innate magic of the Elves protecting them from any weapon without innate magic of its own. But that didn’t apply to every kind of weapon. Enough kinetic force could kill anyone, even an Elf. A nuclear blast would do it, as a lot of Archon Elves had found out the hard way with the Sky Hammer.
I was willing to bet that dragons were even more innately magical than Elves…and if I hadn’t pushed Della out of the way, the gunman’s weapon would have burned a hole through her skull.
Would a blaster work on an Elf?
That was a staggering thought. One of the reasons the High Queen and the Elves ruled Earth was that bullets didn’t work on them. A lone nut with a rifle and good aim could assassinate any human politician he wanted, but he couldn’t do the same thing with an Elven noble.
But if that lone nut had a charged particle weapon?
Oh, boy, Tarlia wasn’t going to like this.
I had definitely better find that blaster for her.
I paused a few yards from the dented steel safety rail and the sea wall. I cast the Shield spell again, shaping it to block attacks of elemental fire, which had proven effective against charged ions or whatever the hell a blaster fired. I summoned more magical power, and after a second’s thought, shaped it for another telekinetic shove. The fall should have killed or disabled the gunman.
Probably. I wasn’t risking my life on probably.
I took a deep breath and stepped to the edge of the sea wall, my shoes brushing the posts of the steel rail.
Below stretched an ugly little gray beach, mostly stones, mud, and litter. I spotted a few rats slithering through the mud, searching for dinner in discarded food containers.
There was no trace of the gunman.
I frowned and looked around. Had he landed in the water? No, Della hadn’t hit him quite hard enough to throw him out to sea. Maybe he had run for it, decided to try an attack for another angle? Or perhaps there was a storm sewer beneath the seawall he could use to retreat. I peered over the steel railing, looking for the access grate of a storm sewer.
Then I saw the gunman.
He hung from the edge of the seawall, grasping the concrete with the gloved fingers of his right hand. His left hung at his side, still holding the blaster. My eyes locked with his, and I just had time to think that he looked tired, almost exhausted.
But exhausted or not, he still moved fast as lightning.
The gunman heaved himself up and soared over our heads. I shifted my Shield to block his weapon and hurled a shove of telekinetic force, but he was too fast. The gunman landed behind us as we turned, and he swept the barrel of his blaster towards Della’s face. She snarled and punched out, and she was strong enough that she deflected his aim. The blaster shot that had been aimed at her instead tore out a molten chunk from the steel guard rail.
Instead, the gunman punched his right hand at her face.
His arm moved fast, so fast it became a black-clad blur. Della tried to dodge, and the blow that had been aimed at the center of her face instead clipped the side of her jaw. It struck her hard enough that she spun around, golden blood flying from the gash the edge of his fist tore in her skin, and she fell stunned, the back of her head bouncing off the road.
The gunman drew back his right fist to strike.
I reacted on instinct, seizing Della in a telekinetic grip and sliding her to the side a yard or so.
I did it just in time.
The gunman’s fist hammered down, and he punched through the asphalt with enough force that his arm sank to the elbow into the ground. It was like his arm was a pile-driver, and it left a perfect fist-shaped hole in the ground.
Like the hole that had been in the back of Malthraxivorn’s head.
Suddenly I knew just who had killed Max Sarkany.
I cast a spell and threw a sphere of fire, intending to burn off the top of the gunman’s skull. He might have been able to survive getting thrown off the seawall, but I doubted he could survive having my spell incinerate the inside of his head.
He reacted with inhuman speed, his right arm ripping free from the ground and flashing with blue light. I heard his jacket sleeve tear as the thrumming sound started, and my fire sphere stuck his shield of blue light. The gunman rocked back, and I hit him again before he could recover, throwing an ice spike at him. I aimed for his legs, hoping to cripple him, but he ducked and caught the spell on his shield. He stumbled again, and his left hand snapped up, squeezing the trigger of his gun. The blaster spat more fire, but I still had my Shield up, and I deflected the attacks.
“All right, blaster boy,” I said. “Let’s…”
I fell silent as I saw his right arm.
The sleeve of his jacket and his glove had torn away when he had punched the road, and his arm was made of metal.
My first thought was that he had some sort of close-fitting dull gray metal armor over his right arm, but it was too snug for that. His arm was physically made of metal. I saw the articulated plates moving as he flexed his fingers, saw some sort of mechanism shifting in his elbow. A double helix of cords about the width of my pinky finger wound their way up his metal limb, and they glowed with a sullen blue light. I suspected they were the source of the shield that deflected my spells.
Did he have a golem arm grafted to his shoulder? But golems, all types of golems, radiated magic. That metal arm wasn’t magic, it was a machine. Technology. Just as that blaster was a fancy machine.
Just what the hell had Malthraxivorn dug up in Russia?
“Bet you’re not so tough when you can’t sneak up on people,” I said. “You want a fight, asshole, I’ll give you a fight.”
Those weary blue eyes met mine.
“I am sorry,” said the gunman. His voice sounded vaguely British and was toneless, dead. “I don’t want to do this.”
But he did it anyway. He clenched his left arm, and that thrumming shield appeared over it. He leveled the blaster and started shooting, advancing on me one step and one shot at a time. The fiery bolts hammered against my Shield spell, straining my concentration. I threw another volley of lightning globes at him, but he caught them on his own shield. Blaster Boy’s plan was clear – he would advance close enough, then kill me with that metal arm of his.
I wasn’t going to let him get close enough to do that.
More magic burned
through my mind, and I cast the Splinter Mask spell.
It was a strain to hold both the Shield and the Splinter Mask spells at the same time, but it’s amazing what impending death can do to focus your attention. Silver light flashed and shivered around me, and I created nine illusionary duplicates of myself, each perfect in every detail. All of them had my features, the same motorcycle jacket and black jeans, the same backpack.
And the same pissed-off expression.
Man, when I got angry, I looked the part.
The duplicates surged forward, some of them casting spells, others raising guns. Blaster Boy came to a sudden stop. Whatever machine parts he had embedded in his body didn’t let him see through illusion spells. He twisted, trying to keep all the duplicates in sight at once, and opened fire. His blaster bolts tore through three of them, shattering the illusions into shards of glittering silver light.
But while he did that, the angle of his thrumming shield changed, and I attacked. I threw a volley of lightning globes at him. The gunman managed to turn, catching three of them on his shield, but two of them struck his chest. He rocked back in pain, sparks shooting from his limbs. I had hoped the lightning globes would fry the machinery in his arm, but he shrugged off the attack and shifted his shield to interpose it between us. He fired twice more, and both bolts struck my Shield. I had to strain to hold it against the weight of the attacks, and the illusions vanished as I turned my will from them.
Blaster Boy wobbled a little, the fatigue finally starting to set in, and I gritted my teeth and tried to hold my Shield in place. I had used too much magical power over too short of a time, and it was starting to wear on me. For that matter, the Shield spell sucked down a lot of power and working other spells while holding it in place was an effort.
But that didn’t matter. I was going to have to kill the gunman, and I was going to have to do it right now. If this battle went on for much longer, I wasn’t sure my stamina would hold out.
I started to pull together power for another spell, Blaster Boy shifted his aim, and then the gunfire rang out.
Cloak of Dragons Page 18