The click of the door latch sounded unbearably loud to her ears, and she crept out into the hallway, her wards dampened as far as possible, the faintest shimmer in the first world, not wanting to alert the intruder before she had to.
Another pause, sending her senses out for a quick check of the building, the shape of it familiar, and she found the intruder in the workspace.
Her boots made almost no sound as she made her way along the short corridor, past the open door to the kitchen, its space silent and empty, past the opening of the equally dark hallway to the building’s front door, and towards the doorway to the workspace. The door was almost fully closed. She had left it wide open, she was quite certain.
She gathered a much-needed breath, tried to slow her heart. That did not work. Her wards were fizzing against her skin, held down by her will alone. She shaped the words for a hold spell, not daring to speak it, the spell forming with brilliant silver lines in the palm of her hand.
Something must have given her presence away. There was a low sound, alarm or discovery, inside the room, the scrape of a boot against the concrete floor.
She pushed the door open with her free hand and flicked the light switch in the same movement, looking for her target. The sight spell adapted her sight automatically as the electric lights came on.
There. By the shelves. A dark-clad figure with a hand raised against the sudden light. The hand was gloved and covered in a sticky spell of some kind.
Arrow did not pause, flinging the hold spell across the space, the silver growing in size and intensity.
It struck its target, a bright web cascading over the figure, tangling arms and legs, the intruder toppling to the ground in their struggle to escape.
Behind the door something moved. Another figure. A second intruder.
Arrow ducked, rolled on the hard concrete, and came to her feet, lips moving, another hold spell forming in her hand.
The second figure was more cautious than the first, stepping quickly away from the silver net as she threw it. The spell fizzed, fading to nothing on the floor.
Humans, Arrow realised, watching the movement.
The first was still tangled in the net, using a silver blade to try and cut the strands of her spell. The second was moving again, something in one gloved hand. Spell or weapon, Arrow was not sure. She did not wait to find out, ducking under one of the workbenches, drawing her kri-syang and making a slender cut at the fleshy base of her thumb, the spell for mage fire coming easily. Less easy to bind it to do no permanent harm.
The delay to add the binding was dangerous.
The workbench above her jolted, the searing heat of mage fire lifting her hair. The second had cast mage fire. With no bindings.
Anger lit, replacing the fear. This was her space. She rose behind the burning surface and flung her own mage fire back. The figure’s wards flared. Well-crafted but weak. Her mage fire spread, clinging to the magic, burning. The figure screamed, rolling on to the ground, trying to put the fire out.
Arrow straightened slightly, another hold spell ready, waiting until the other’s wards were gone before calling back her fire, sending the hold spell in its place. The figure lay still, charred clothing smoking slightly, smell of melting plastic making her nose wrinkle.
There was a slight sound behind her and she ducked again, rolling onto the cold concrete in a move becoming familiar with practice. A move Kallish had taught her, the Erith warrior an uncompromising teacher. Arrow wished Kallish was here now. With her cadre. There was a reason war mages worked with warriors around them. Forming spells required concentration, which was hard to find when dodging attacks.
Above her head, the workbench, still burning with mage fire, shattered as something struck its surface. Bits of burning wood, splinters of the bench, coated with mage fire, soared through the air in a lethal cloud that fizzed against her wards.
She got to her feet, dense ball of mage fire in one hand, flinging it across the room. The other staggered back, wards barely holding. The first intruder. Surprised by her hold spell, he had still managed to escape. More powerful than the other. He held a long, metal-tipped staff she had not noticed before. He swung it in a practised move, power gathering along its length, and she ducked again. Mage fire cascaded down its length, scorching a path across the concrete floor. The air clouded with smoke. Burning concrete. Smouldering wood. The static crackle of lethal magic.
The floor was melting under her feet, mage fire burrowing through the whole surface. She moved back towards the door, nearly tripped on the untied boot laces flapping around her feet, wards flaring, brilliant even in the first world, protecting her from another bolt of fire from the intruder’s staff.
She made another cut with the kri-syang, needing more power, and poured it into another hold spell, one that would stick to the intruder’s wards. Even as she flung it across the space, she realised she was too late. The intruder had decided to leave. Staff now dull, the intruder was running away, heading for the open door at the back of the building.
Arrow let the magician go. The fool humans had unleashed unfettered battle magic into a confined space, and if it was not contained, the whole building would fall. The fire would not stop until it had run out of fuel.
She set aside the first world, diving into the second to unpick the spells that kept the fire burning. The human’s spell work was unimaginative. Effective, but nothing beyond the basic lines of the required spellwork. He was the most powerful human magician she had encountered, and she would know him again. Easily.
Even unimaginative spell work took time to unravel. Her lungs were burning with smoke, nose coated with the stench of it, and she was covered in sweat when she came back to the first world. The fire was out. The smoke was leaving through the open doorway at the back and the cracks in the skylights above, glass warped with heat.
The clearer air made it easy to see the damage. An involuntary sound left her throat as she looked around. Dismay. Pain.
Her workspace had been destroyed. The concrete floor was warped into ripples, scorched and melted, damage spreading across most of the surface. One workbench was entirely gone, in bits and pieces of ash. The other was spread with soot, a great crack running along its length. The cabinets and shelves that had been full of her work, pre-prepared potions and spells, her notes from experiments, ingredients for spell work, a few, precious, books, were all but gone. Partly burned, partly broken. Glass shards sparkled on the warped concrete amid a sticky pool of co-mingled liquid spells.
Arrow’s chest hurt. Weeks of work. The joy of spell crafting. The painstaking recording of spell variants. Gone.
Even the vehicle parked at the other end of the space had not escaped. The side she could see was buckled. Perhaps with the heat. Its tyres were flat, at least one window cracked.
She turned quickly. There were a few objects in here that could, truly, not be replaced. There, at the bottom of one of the cabinets. A safe box. Still intact. Her chest eased.
Before she could do more a shrill sound hurt her ears and she whirled, bringing her hands up, mage fire active, only to realise it was coming from the messenger bag she had carefully hung by the door, ready for use in the morning. The mobile phone.
She spared a quick glance for the second intruder, still lying still inside her hold spell, miraculously unharmed despite his colleague’s careless use of lethal magic, before making her way over to the bag and pulling out the phone.
“Yes?” The voice did not sound like hers, throat dry with smoke.
“Are you alright?” Zachary’s voice was tense. “One of the muster reported a hell of a flare over your building.” Zachary Farraway. Prime of the shifkin nation. She had not realised he was in the city. If Kallish was not available, Zachary would have been a more than adequate back-up in the fight.
“Intruders,” Arrow answered, her knees suddenly not wanting to hold her up. She leant against the wall, the cold seeping through her clothes. “One got away.”
&nb
sp; “Are you safe?”
“I think so. The other is contained.”
“We’ll be there in a few moments.”
“The back is open.”
“Alright. Don’t shoot us.”
She pressed the button to end the call and saw that she had several missed calls from the same number. Zachary must have been calling her while she was putting out the mage fire.
She put the phone back into the bag and spared a moment to put her hand on the leather surface. It was undamaged. The hurt in her chest eased a fraction more. Kester’s gift, it had replaced her first bag and the thought of losing it hurt more deeply than the potions and spells she had crafted. Hurt more, even, than the thought of losing the contents of the safe box.
Satisfied that the most precious items were safe, she turned back to look at the room again. Nearly impossible to tell what the intruders had been looking for. Nearly. The cabinet doors had been open, though. She remembered that from when she had come into the room. And the scattering of glass and papers suggested that some, at least, had been out on the surface of the nearby bench.
And the safe box, however intact, had been moved out of its position tucked away at the back of the cabinet.
She took a step forward, wanting to check the box. By Erith standards, it contained the single most precious item she owned.
Movement at the back door had her turning in that direction instead, hand raised instinctively, wards flaring around her.
Zachary Farraway came into the space, gun in one hand, expression tense until he saw Arrow standing unharmed. His eyes travelled around the room, taking in the extent of the scorch marks from the mage fire, the ruined concrete, the damaged vehicle, the splintered bench, and the still-smouldering, prone figure on the floor. He did not blink. Zachary had been Prime of the ‘kin nation a long time, longer than Arrow had been alive. Very little truly startled him.
“Good work,” he said, tilting his head to the bound intruder. It sounded like a sincere compliment. She felt heat in her face. It had been luck more than anything else. But she would have to remember to thank Kallish at the next opportunity. The warrior had been teaching Arrow some basic drills that even the most junior White Guard cadet would know. It had seemed, to Arrow, to mostly consist of falling over and gathering more bruises. But, faced with two armed intruders, being able to fall and get up quickly had been invaluable.
The Prime gestured behind him and a quartet of ‘kin followed him into the space, dressed in the close-fitting black that she was used to seeing the Prime’s son, Matthias, wearing. They took stock of the room with quick, comprehensive glances.
“Have you checked the rest of the building?” Zachary asked her.
“Not yet. This was the only place I sensed anyone.”
“Con. Will.”
The Prime’s command sent two shifkin to the corridor, weapons out, moving with co-ordinated, fluid grace. They had done this before.
“Can you remove the spell?”
Zachary had moved to stand beside the prone figure. Arrow spared a quick glance for her safe box. It seemed intact.
She moved reluctantly towards the figure and called her spell back.
As soon as the figure was free of the hold, the other two ‘kin were there, producing rope and quickly binding hands and feet. One of the ‘kin pulled off the black knitted hood the intruder had been wearing. The human male was not familiar to Arrow, tight-lipped and pale with fury, eyes darting about the room, looking for an escape.
“Human,” Zachary said, thoughtful tone catching Arrow’s attention.
“Magic users,” she told him.
“You didn’t burn the bench yourself? Do all this?” He waved a hand around the room. She shook her head.
“No. I was hiding under the bench.” Only temporarily, but the confession brought more heat into her face. She was sure none of the ‘kin had hidden from anything, and certainly not under a bench.
“He’s armed,” one of the ‘kin commented. She quickly patted the human down, removing a quite startling number of weapons. Zachary took charge of the weapons, laying them out on the other bench, the cracked surface still serviceable. Arrow’s stomach twisted. She counted at least two guns and a pair of knives before she made herself look away.
“He’s smoking, too,” the other said, nose wrinkling. Whatever outer clothing the human was wearing had a high proportion of plastic, the stench catching even in Arrow’s nose. It would be far worse for the ‘kin with their superior senses.
Arrow recognised both ‘kin from the Lix muster, the tips of her ears burning as the second spared a glance at her. Rose and Paul, she remembered. A mated pair. Apart from Matthias and Tamara, the only pair she was aware of who worked together. To her shock, Paul winked.
“Nice job,” he said.
“Yep,” Rose agreed, hauling the human the short distance to the wall, bumping him over the uneven concrete, and propping him up in a sitting position. “Time for questions, Zach?”
“Not yet.” Zachary’s tone, full of regret, caught Arrow’s attention again. “Tony is on her way. Along with the local police.”
“Really? We can’t deal with this ourselves?” Rose was not challenging, her posture relaxed, body language far more important among the ‘kin than it was among humans, or Erith. But she was surprised.
“Human magic users came through a set of building wards with Erith magic built in, and tried to kill Arrow with battle magic. And it’s a shifkin building.” Zachary sighed, shoving his hands into his pockets in a gesture Arrow was familiar with. He was keeping himself deliberately still. “We need the human authorities to get to the one who escaped.”
“Building’s clear,” Con reported, coming back into the room, the other ‘kin at his back.
“There was one who got away. See if you can track him. Call me with the results.”
“Keep it quiet?” Con asked, eyes filling with ‘kin power, his other side coming to the fore at the prospect of a hunt.
“Very. Not a word to anyone else yet.”
“Understood. Arrow,” Con caught her attention, “where was the other one?”
“Next to the shelves.” Arrow pointed. “He got out of the hold spell. Used a mage’s blade, I think. He left by the back door.”
Con nodded, acknowledging the information, and went over to the spot with the other ‘kin. Will, Arrow remembered. They conferred for a few moments before Will pulled a lightweight, collapsible bag from one of his pockets and started stripping off his weaponry then clothing. Arrow turned away quickly. The ‘kin did not always need to strip before they shifted. It was easier, though, Tamara had told her. The ‘kin were perfectly comfortable within their skin, whichever form they wore. The Erith were less so.
She felt the ripple of magic through the space as Will changed into his animal form and turned to find Con strapping the bag with Will’s belongings onto his own back, a compact, chestnut-hued four-legged animal beside him, nose to the ground. Larger than a wolf, a ‘kin in their animal form was unmistakable, at least to Arrow’s eyes. Will made a low, satisfied sound a moment later, and the pair left, Con easily keeping pace with his four-footed companion.
“The human authorities.” Arrow’s ears and brain finally caught up with each other. “Is that necessary?” A fine tremor took her over. Zachary had said that the humans had tried to kill her. It was oddly unsettling.
“Very.” The new voice made her jump and turn back towards the door. Someone else had got into the building without her noticing. Another shifkin. A petite female who was immaculately dressed even at the early hour in a dark grey skirt suit, high heels tapping an even rhythm on the uneven, hard floor as she stepped inside, an expensive looking briefcase in one hand. She took a long, careful look around the scene before continuing towards the Prime. “Is this the only disturbance?”
“Yes,” Zachary answered. “Arrow, meet Tony. She’s our lawyer.”
“Lawyer?” Arrow’s voice rose, wondering just how muc
h trouble she was in.
“Arrow. It’s good to finally meet you. I’ve seen your name a time or two, of course.”
“You dealt with my papers.” Arrow realised, accepting the hand held out to her. The clasp was warm and firm, strength carefully judged.
“Indeed.” The woman’s pale eyes sparkled, smile taking over her whole face. “I do like a challenge.” She sobered as she turned back to Zachary. “Have you called the police?”
Before Zachary could answer there was a loud, insistent knock at the front door. Arrow jumped, and felt more warmth in her face as none of the ‘kin reacted.
“The wards are still down,” Arrow realised. She should have been able to sense the newcomer before they knocked on the door.
“I noticed,” Zachary told her. “Rose, will you let them in?”
Rose nodded once and left the room with quick strides, heading to the front door without hesitation, flipping a light switch in the hallway as she passed. Very familiar with the building, Arrow thought, eyes narrowing.
“This building has been used by the muster a time or two,” Zachary told her, making her wonder just what was on her face. The building was not hers. She should not be surprised the ‘kin had used it before.
She blew out a breath and tried to assume some outward calm at least, only to realise, as Rose came back into the workspace with what looked like nearly a full cadre of armed humans, that she was still wearing her night clothes under the thigh-length sweater. She resisted the urge to shuffle out of the way and hide again. The bright red and pink pyjamas with fanciful dancing animals on them had seemed like something fun to have, a private indulgence that no one else would see. She had rarely worn colours in her life and found herself drawn to them, giving into what had seemed a harmless temptation at the time. Now she was in full view of grim-faced humans and ‘kin, she wished she had chosen the plain, dull grey set instead.
“Prime.” The leader of the humans spoke, inclining his head in respect. “Thank you for your call. There’s been trouble?”
Taellaneth Complete Series Box Set Page 86