by Ella Summers
“Kai,” she said, glancing up at him.
He met her eyes, the look in them making her heart race.
“I thought you were dead.” She brushed the back of her hand across his jaw. She wanted to kiss him so badly it hurt. “You said earlier that I don’t trust you. Maybe I didn’t. But I do now. I want to tell you…” She took a deep breath. “…everything.”
He watched her, his magic crackling against her, growing hungrier by the second. He snapped it down. “Sorry. When you stayed in the pit so long, I grew concerned. My magic is still tense.”
She fiddled with the collar of his shirt. “I like it.”
Magic pulsed in his eyes, temptation battling reason. He reached toward her face—then dropped his hand. It seemed reason had won.
“You’ve just been through a lot, Sera. As much as I want to believe this is you speaking, I suspect it’s the Fairy Dust.” His chest sighed against hers. “Fairy magic is quite potent. It muddles the mind like nothing else.”
“Stop it.” She frowned at him. “You’re ruining my revelation. I am not high on Fairy Dust. I’m just tired of not trusting anyone. Some people are worth trusting.” She leaned into him, teasing his lips with hers.
“Sera,” he said, his growl buzzing against her neck. “Don’t tempt me.”
“Why not?”
“Blackbrooke.”
The name was like a glacial shower. Her shoulders slumped, and she took a step back.
“He has spies everywhere. And if they find out about us, Blackbrooke will remove you as my coach.”
“Yes,” he said, his eyes following the pair of guards who were coming down the hall. One of them was the helpful fellow who had refused to heal her yesterday. His comrade looked equally friendly.
Sera leaned back against the wall behind her, feigning casual and relaxed. Kai stood opposite her, his arms folded over his chest, his magic rumbling like he meant business. The two guards passed between them on their way to the pit. They shot her and Kai suspicious glowers but didn’t say anything.
When they were gone, Kai spoke again. “I don’t want to fight you in the pit.”
“Of course not.” She shot him a playful wink. “You wouldn’t want to lose in front of all those people.”
The corner of his lip quirked up. “Your snark appears to have recovered.”
“It never left me.”
“Hmm.”
“It takes more than a few fairies to muddle my mind.”
“It’s not just the fairies, Sera. Right now, your magic is all over the place.” He lifted his hand, freezing the protest on her lips. “Don’t even try to deny it. I can feel the erratic beat of your magic. You usually do a better job of containing it. It’s the strain of the Magic Games, Finn, and the armies of vampires. Once that is all over—once we’re back home and you’ve had at least one night of decent sleep—if you still want to share your secrets with me, I’ll be there.”
“Are you always this stubborn?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s a dragon thing. Deal with it.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I know just how to deal with dragons.”
“Yes.” His magic smoldered. “You do.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake! I meant with my sword.”
“I didn’t.”
She threw her hands up in the air. This conversation wasn’t going anywhere.
“Come on,” Kai said, setting his hand on her back. “Let’s get you some lunch. You need to replenish your magic before your next match.”
“Pizza?” she asked hopefully.
“I was thinking we could try something different.”
“Different as in other-than-pizza different?”
“Yes.”
Hmm. “Why?”
“Because you can’t always eat pizza,” he said.
“Sure you can. There are more than enough kinds of pizza to keep even the biggest glutton busy for months. Thick crust, thin crust, square, circle, mini pizzas, pizza bagels, pizza cookie—”
“Pizza cookie?”
“It’s a thing,” she assured him. “A type of dessert.”
“It sounds awful.”
“Yum.” She grinned. “Now, where was I? Ah, yes. Red sauce, white sauce, cheese, extra cheese, red tomatoes, yellow tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes. Mmmm. Pepperoni, mushrooms, peppers, corn, pineapple—”
“Bananas?”
“No.” She pretended to retch. “That’s just gross. Then there’s New York Style, Chicago Style, Italian Style, California Style, and, best of all, Wizard House Pizza Style. Pizza is versatile. It’s practically its own food group.”
“Except that it’s not,” he said.
“Merely a technicality. When I’m elected Empress of the Universe, that will all change.”
“Empress of the Universe?” he asked as they set off down the hall.
“Yes. Right now my platform hinges on the pizza referendum, but I’m sure I’ll come up with a few more gems. I figure I’ve got the 18 to 25 demographic in the bag.”
He glanced over at her, the expression of complete and utter bewilderment a welcome change to his usual hard and confident dragon face. “You are a very peculiar woman.”
“Of course.” She nudged her shoulder against his arm. “I thought you knew that already.”
“I’m beginning to know it in new and unexpected ways.”
They walked a few more steps in silence, then Sera said, “Kai? I’m worried about my upcoming match. That last fight was intense. The fairies went straight for the jugular. It’s like they knew exactly what they needed to show me to get under my skin. And the mage…well, let’s just say the fight seemed engineered to force me to use my particular abilities.”
“The whole Magic Games are engineered. You heard Blackbrooke earlier. He’s figured out your abilities. Now he wants to test them to see how deep your magic runs. With each match, he’s learning from your responses.”
“To make harder tests?”
“Yes.”
“This is all going downhill fast.”
“You can do it, Sera. And I’ll help you. The good news is you only have to get through one more fight, and then you’ve completed all the required matches.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
He scrolled past a few things on his phone. “We’ll discuss strategy over lunch. I have your final opponents here: the Summoning Sisters.”
Sera abandoned her despair long enough to snicker. “Another stellar name. It’s like we’re trapped inside the world of professional wrestling.”
“It does often feel like that,” he agreed, though without the snicker.
“And Blackbrooke is staging it all. This whole thing with him being attacked by vampires…”
“Yes?”
“Attacked by vampires when I just happened to be there. Twice,” she continued. “I wonder if that was all staged too. He must have known I was hiding my magic, right? What if he set up the vampire attacks so he could test my abilities in ways he couldn’t within the rules of the Magic Games—at least not until he could hone in on my flavor of magic and design challenges with a better chance of breaking me? The first time was a bust, and when I got through the first day of the Games without using magic, he decided he had to do something. So he went bigger in round two. More vampires. And someone cast a spell to make them immune to fire. Only a mage could have done that, not some magic hate group of humans. What if that mage was one of Blackbrooke’s people?”
“Interesting theory. There are just two problems with it.”
“Oh?”
“Ego and cowardice. Blackbrooke is too self-absorbed to lower himself by serving as vampire bait, and he’s too much of a coward too.”
“It all depends on how much he wants to break me,” said Sera.
They’d reached the door to the lobby. As they passed through, Sera’s phone dinged. The cursed thing was practically on a timer. She glanced at it just long enough to see that she’d gotten another message fro
m Finn. It was a picture of her from her match against Weather Wizard. The delay between taking the photo and sending her the photo was shrinking every time. What had started as hours, was now down to minutes. Like a countdown. But a countdown to what?
“Sera?” Kai asked, looking back.
She’d stopped just past the door but rushed to catch up to him. “Promise not to flip out.”
“About what?” he asked, his face cool, cautious.
“And not to blow up my phone.”
His aura went from cool and cautious to fire and brimstone. “Finn sent you another message, didn’t he?” He held out his hand. “Let me see.”
Sera handed him her one-hour-old phone, hoping she wasn’t signing its death sentence by doing so. But Kai just mailed himself and the commandos a copy of the message, then handed it back to her. A few seconds later, his own phone rang.
“Dal, you get the photo?” he said. “Good. I want you three to figure out where in the arena it was taken from.” Then he hung up.
“You could have at least said pl—” She stopped, a pitiful groan escaping her lips. “Shit.”
An army of vampires had just burst into the lobby, moving with quick, fluid ease. A web of magic coated each vampire’s body, as taut as the leash on a rabid dog. Led by an unseen master, they moved to surround a cluster of mages.
“Members of the Magic Council,” Kai said. “Every single one of them.”
“We just can’t catch a break, can we?” she sighed.
He shook out his hands, warming up his magic. As his eyes locked on his targets, a deadly smile slid across his lips. “What would be the fun in that?”
22
Dying Blood
“At least the Council members have bodyguards,” Sera said—then, remembering Kai’s phone conversation she’d overheard earlier, added, “Though I suppose you didn’t give them much of a choice.”
“No.” He packed enough explosive force behind that single word to take down a mountain.
“You’re really scary sometimes, you know.”
Fire slid down his arms, licking at his fingers. “Good.”
One of the vampires spontaneously combusted.
“Ok, now you’re just showing off,” she told him, drawing two of her knives. “But at least we know that these vampires aren’t fireproof.”
He glanced at the knives in her hands, then met her eyes again. “How do you want to play this?”
“You’re asking me?” She almost choked on the words. “You, Mr. Bossy Pants?”
“I prefer dragon breath,” he replied, amusement tugging at his lower lip. “But, yes, I’m asking you. We’re a team.”
She grinned at him. “And I’m in charge?”
“Let’s not push it, Sera.”
“Ok.” She snickered. The lobby was full of vampires, but she just couldn’t help herself. “There are too many vampires. How about you shift into a dragon, and I herd them over to you so that you can step on them?”
“A fantastic plan.”
“I knew you’d like it.”
Kai’s magic exploded in a flash of light, and then the man was gone. A dragon stood in his place, towering over the mages and vampires. It was a good thing the lobby had a high ceiling, or his shift would have taken down the roof. Obsidian-black with a dark blue-green sheen to his scales and wings, Kai was stunning—a deadly firestorm of magical might, yes, but stunning just the same. His eyes, blue as an electric storm, locked on his first targets: two vampires trying to fight their way past the bodyguards protecting a female mage with jaw-length scarlet curls.
“Try not to step on the good guys,” she reminded him.
Kai snorted, and flames shot out of his enormous dragon nostrils, pouring down over the vampires. The scents of burning timber and cinnamon filled the air, spicy and sweet. His eyes panned across the lobby in search of new targets. He settled on a nearby trio of vampires. As he raised his enormous foot, Sera dashed off to find some targets of her own. Sure, the plan had been her idea, but that didn’t mean she needed to see him crunch vampires. Or hear it. She cringed, even as she reminded herself that blowing up vampires wasn’t any less messy than stepping on them.
She ran between two vampires, striking out with her knives as she passed. As the blades sank into them, she poured fire magic into the wounds. The vampires burst into flames, then fell to the floor, dead. Sera pulled on the fiery magic crackling atop the two monsters, twisting and molding the flames together to form a protective barrier that separated the mages from the vampires. Three vampires made a run for the mages as the barrier was going up. The fire barbecued one of them. The other two got through, but she trusted that the half dozen bodyguards could deal with two measly vampires. The other—Sera counted—twenty-three vampires she and Kai could handle. Maybe.
She ran toward the next group. She’d promised to herd vampires, so that’s what she was going to do. And fast. Before the vampires’ master wisened up and realized that he had her and Kai outnumbered over ten to one. If they all charged her at once, she wouldn’t be able to stop them. Luckily, vampires weren’t too bright. Or, apparently, evil vampire masters. And, besides, they were too busy trying to get at the mages.
Taking a trick from Kai’s arsenal, Sera blasted the vampires with a wave of wind magic. Despite how easy he’d made it look, a wave of wind was a hell of a lot trickier to control than a ball of wind. Hers didn’t shoot as straight as she would have liked. Vampires flew into the air like scattered leaves on the breeze. Half of them ended up at Kai’s feet. The dragon grunted in appreciation, then lifted his foot for the stomp.
Sera was already running back toward the barrier. Some genius vampires had decided that if they couldn’t go through the fire, they’d just go over it. They were tossing each other up in the air. Two had already made it. Another three were on their way over. Sera wound up a ball of wind between her hands and let loose. It smashed against the barrier, igniting it. Flames shot up into the air and bathed the vampires in fire. She blasted the remaining ones, smacking them into the fiery wall.
“Good,” Kai said from behind her. There was a smudge of ash against his cheek, but otherwise he looked as human as a dragon shifter possibly could. “There’s something very beautiful about the way that you fight.” He lifted his hand in the air, and her wall of flames turned to smoke. The mages on the other side looked relieved—and sweaty. “You have more control over your magic than you give yourself credit for.”
“Thanks, I—” Something was tugging at her magic like a fish on a hook.
“What is it?”
She stared down at the nearest vampire. His hand was twitching, a final protest before death took him. The magical web—the power of the spell binding him—was unraveling, but it hadn’t vanished completely.
“The trail of magic controlling the vampires. I can follow it,” she told Kai, running off after the unraveling threads. “This will take us to the vampires’ master.” If she could get there before the magic completely disintegrated.
“I’m coming with you,” Kai said, running up beside her.
“And the Council members?”
“They’re all fine. The commandos are with them. Where are we headed?”
“Down.” She sucked in a deep breath. “Red line.”
Penn Station sat below Madison Square Garden, and that’s where their criminal mastermind was. Or had been. The trail was fading fast. She’d have to be faster. She sped up, zigzagging between bustling passengers.
“That way!” she said and ran for a train, trusting him to follow.
He did better than that. He cleared the way. One look at him, and the unflappable New Yorkers scrambled out of the way. Sera and Kai squeezed onto the train as the doors were closing.
“Where is this vampire master?” he asked.
Sera reached out with her magic, trying to get a bite on the unraveling thread. She slouched in defeat when she found it.
“He’s not on this train. He caught the one befo
re us. We’ll never catch him now.”
“We will.”
That was all Kai said before he took off down the aisle, heading for the front of the train. It was harder for the passengers in here to scramble out of the way, but they made a solid effort. Kai’s magic was pounding off the walls, echoing like the beat of a great dragon’s wings. It was so loud that it dwarfed the pitiful thump of Sera’s heart.
“Can you tell where he is?” Kai asked her, breaking through the door to the driver’s cabin.
“He just got off at Central Park,” she said over the driver’s stuttering protests.
“You’re running late,” Kai told the man. He plopped a stack of money onto the dashboard. “Skip every station until Central Park.”
The driver’s eyes darted from Kai to the bundle of bills. His indecision died a spectacular death in the face of avarice. He went on the intercom to rattle off some bullshit excuse to the passengers, then sped them along their way to Central Park.
The train had barely stopped when Sera and Kai sprinted out. They took the stairs in running bounds.
“There,” Sera told him as they ran down the tree-lined path. She pointed at the hooded figure framed against the watery backdrop. He was running too. But he was slower.
“Are you sure?” Kai asked her.
“Yes, he reeks of vampire.”
Kai sniffed the air, then nodded. Apparently, that was good enough for him. “What kind of mage are we up against? I can’t get a fix on his magic.”
“Neither can I. The stench of vampire and all the magic being kicked up by the artifact he’s carrying is putting up too much interference.”
“The Blood Orb.”
“You can feel it too?”
Tendrils of elastic lightning sizzled up his arms. “Yes.”
The mage threw something against the pavement. Glass smashed and magic exploded. A web of purple glyphs appeared on the path ahead, then a portal swirled to life. The mage reached into his pocket and pulled out a red glass orb roughly the size of a tennis ball. The Blood Orb. He tossed it through the portal.
