Wings of Fire (The Obsidian Order Book 4)

by Katerina Martinez

  “No,” Draven said, “She’s going to kill you.”

  I grinned at him and extended my hand. “Now, be a good boy and give me back my dagger.”

  “You… what?”

  “You heard me. I want my dagger back. Give it to me.”

  Dick swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. He reached for the handle and pulled as hard as he could until, finally, he managed to release the dagger. Slowly, carefully, he walked it over to me, handle first, and set it into my hand. I started at him, letting him know only with my eyes that I was capable of killing him if I needed to.

  Dick got the picture.

  “Fine,” he said, throwing his hands up, “But if any of you ever show your face around here again—”

  I waved a finger at him. “—I’ll be coming in to check on my girl, Kandi, from time to time, so you will be seeing me again.”

  His aggression deflated like a balloon that was slowly being rid of its air. I glanced at Draven, nodded at him, and then the three of us were heading out of the alley, leaving Dick to his own devices. He’d called out after us, something about having his magic bindings removed, but Mercutio didn’t reply.

  By the time we were clear of the alley, the rain had started coming down hard enough it forced us to run to the next train platform. I hurried up the stairs, quick to find a little shelter, and waited for the others to arrive.

  “That was probably the most interesting trip to a strip club I’ve ever had,” Draven said.

  “Probably? You been to many in your time?” I asked.

  Draven stared at me, eyebrow cocked and probably a little sheepishly. “No…”

  I grinned at him.

  “Did you get much to go on?” Mercutio asked, “Or did we put the hurt on someone for nothing?”

  I pulled the piece of paper Kandi had given me out from my back pocket and handed it over. “Darkshard is there,” I said, “Romeo is with him, and probably others, too.”

  Mercutio’s eyes widened. “I know this place…”

  “You know it?”

  He looked at me. “I know of it. They call it the Arena.”

  “The Arena?” Draven asked. “Sounds ominous.”

  Mercutio shook his head. “I’ve never been there, I’ve only heard stories of what goes on down there. Mostly from Romeo.” He shook his head. “Romeo would never go to this place on his own.”

  I was starting to remember something Romeo had told me, but Draven gave the same thought a voice before it could manifest in my head. “Fight club…”

  “Oh shit…”

  The memory came back at me, now. Romeo had told us, the first time we met, about a place where supernaturals go to fight each other, underground-style. Many of the fighters were the kinds of people who liked getting into brawls with other people, others were completely unwitting participants who were being coerced into fighting with magic.

  Others were… us, our kind, the ones who fell through the rifts and woke up with no memory of anything at all. Scared, alone, they would be forced to fight not because they were being made to with magic, but simply because of their instinct for self-preservation. It was one thing to hear Romeo tell us that kind of thing happened. You could almost push it to the back of your mind, hide it behind a thin veil of disbelief.

  Now we had an address, and we were going to be heading there. Who the hell knew what we were going to find?

  “It’s dangerous there,” Mercutio said, “That entire hood is crawling with supers, and none of them want to have their business intruded on by outsiders. If we’re spotted, they won’t ask questions. They’ll come at us hard and try to kill us, or worse, turn us into fighters.”

  “We have to go over there,” Draven said, “It’s not just about Romeo anymore, it’s about everyone that’s being exploited. We have to do something. Do you have friends you could call?”

  “Wait a second, are you thinking about mounting a whole-ass rescue? Tearing the place up and saving innocents? We’re never gonna pull that off, not even with an army.”

  “What about two armies?” I asked.

  “You don’t get it. No one will go. I don’t know one man, even in my crew, who will go near the Arena. They say there are spells all around it that’ll turn you insane well before you even get to the pits. By the time you reach it, your brain is so fried, the guys in charge don’t have to try very hard to turn you into puppets.”

  “We have people we could call,” Draven said, “I’ll get them out here right now.”

  Mercutio shook his head. “You aren’t listening. This isn’t something you can throw a brick at, man. If you want any chance of pulling this off, we need to be subtle.”

  “So, no backup,” I said, “We go in, just the three of us. Do you think you could protect us from the spells around the place?”

  “I don’t know… I’ve never tried.”

  “I’m trusting you. We both are.”

  “This is fucking crazy…”

  “It’s this, or leave Romeo to his fate,” Draven said. “You decide.”

  Mercutio hesitated for a long moment, clearly weighing things out in his head. He had a lot of loyalty to his friend, and I didn’t think he was hovering on the line of, do it or don’t. It was more a case of, do I do it right now or do I try somehow to find a little help? In an ideal world, we’d bring a whole gang of mages and Aevians to mount a rescue mission, but I was always one to prefer subtlety.

  “I think I can do it,” Mercutio said, “No promises, though.”

  I nodded. “That’s good enough for me.”

  The train we needed pulled up only after a few minutes of waiting for it. Lucky, really, since I wanted to get to the Arena as quickly as possible. Romeo was there, and he had the stuff I needed to unlock the rest of my memories in a hurry. But that wasn’t all. Darkshard was there, and I was itching to wipe his face off the map once and for all.

  Bastet had already managed to take Corax out of the fight. If I could get to Darkshard, I could cut off Valoel’s most powerful magical ally, and that would be another blow to his forces. Then what would Valoel do? I had no idea, but with the Wrath stone in his possession, he’d probably lash out in a fit of rage; and an angry opponent makes mistakes.

  New York quieted around us as the train took us nearer to the Arena. It was like we’d left the city behind, like the city itself had said I’m not going in there with you. I couldn’t blame it. We hadn’t even pulled up to the platform and already I’d seen a bunch of guys jacking a car in the middle of the street—a car stopped at a red-light. Its owner lay on the floor with his hands splayed out, trying to deflect the boots angrily striking at his body.

  Alleys that should’ve been dark glowed with the light being cast up by barrel fires. Around them, entire groups of homeless people huddled together for warmth and safety. I had to wonder if their numbers actually did anything to stop criminals from harassing them, because I was sure as shit it wouldn’t stop supernaturals from preying on them.

  I didn’t want to be here, but I had to push deeper, I had to find Romeo.

  With Mercutio walking alongside us, whatever natural stealth our kind had against humans was gone. Even if I couldn’t see them all, I could feel hundreds of pairs of eyes on me, watching me from the shadows and dark crevices. I wasn’t exactly difficult to miss, what with my white hair and blue eyes.

  Draven threw a couple of hard glances at people who walked a little too closely to him, and they scurried away, giving him plenty of space. All he had to do was look at them and they’d move out of his path. It wasn’t even magic, either. Draven just had that aura about him; he gave off that don’t fuck with me vibe, and humans, at least, responded to it.

  Mercutio wasn’t spooked by this place, either. He was a big guy, taller than Draven which made him way bigger than me. He also had magic at his disposal, magic I didn’t really know the extent of. But it wasn’t the magic that made him seem almost comfortable here. He walked like he knew this neig
hborhood, even if he said he’d never been here before.

  He stuck his hand out at a street corner, inches before crossing the road. I stopped, Draven did, too.

  “There’s magic here,” he said.

  “What kind?” Draven asked.

  Mercutio stared at the floor and seemed to follow an invisible line with his eyes. “A boundary. If we cross it, whoever put it here will know a bunch of non-humans had tripped it.”

  “Can you do something about it?” I asked.

  “Sure as shit gonna try. I’ll see if I can make it ignore us. If I fuck up, though…”

  He didn’t have to say it. If he screwed the spell up, then the person who put it there wouldn’t just know his boundary had been crossed—he’d know it had been tampered with, and that was way worse.

  “Don’t fuck up,” Draven said.

  Mercutio frowned. Clearly, he wasn’t too impressed by Draven’s suggestion that fucking up was a choice. Breathing deeply and slowly, the mage seemed to concentrate, elevating his hands a little so they were parallel to the ground. Inside of me I felt a rumble; a faint, vibration like an earthquake miles away.

  Strange runes I had no hope of recognizing appeared around his fingertips. They floated and danced around his hands, pulsing and throbbing with inner light like fairies. Whatever he was doing, it was all over in a manner of seconds. He lowered his hands, then crossed over the invisible line, gesturing for us to follow.

  I went ahead and followed him, watching the ground for signs of that line but not finding any.

  “Did it work?” I asked.

  “Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know how good the mage that cast it was, but if I did my job right, the magic didn’t recognize us.”

  “How did you manage that?” Draven asked.

  “I made it think we were rats. Rats don’t usually trigger alarms.”

  Nodding, I followed Mercutio across the street. From here, we’d only have to walk a few minutes before reaching the Arena. Already I could smell the East River, I could hear water lapping against a stone wall, and I could see the lights coming from inside a ruined drydock. That was where we had to go.

  There, we’d find the Arena.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “What do you know about the Arena?” Draven asked.

  We were keeping to the side streets and alleys to mask our approach. Mercutio had detected two more boundaries like the one we’d crossed earlier, and I’d watched him work his magic on them like he had the first. I could only hope whatever he’d done was working, and we weren’t being lulled into a false sense of security.

  “Not much,” he said, “I’ve heard stories, rumors.”

  “Any that keep coming back?” I asked.

  “Only one. Far as I can tell, the Arena has a strict rule—all challenges must be accepted. They aren’t. They aren’t picky about who fights, but nobody wants to see someone turn down an opponent. The rule is enforced by the magic of the Arena.”

  “That’s brutal,” I said. “Why would Darkshard run to a place like that?”

  “Because he’s someone who craves power,” Draven said, “What better place to feel powerful than in an Arena where everyone else is either mind-controlled to do your bidding or fighting it out like barbarians? I think Darkshard has had a change of priorities since the last time we saw him. Maybe there’s something here for him.”

  “People gamble on these fights. Romeo told me.”

  “He must be making money, then.”

  “We’d better hurry. Romeo was alive when he sent that voicemail, but something could’ve happened to him since.”

  Draven insisted we move to the rooftops to better scout the Arena, but we had Mercutio with us, and he didn’t have wings. Neither did I, but I could at least hop from building to building without too much effort. So, we stuck to the streets, arriving finally at the edge of the old dockyard only to find ourselves facing a tall concrete wall topped with barbs and spikes.

  “This place looks like a prison,” I said.

  “It’s not meant to keep people inside,” Mercutio said, “The people on the other side of this wall would breeze over it in a heartbeat. It’s to discourage humans from wandering inside.”

  “Humans don’t fight?” Draven asked.

  Mercutio scoffed. “Like a human would last three seconds against a werewolf.”

  Vampires, werewolves, mages… there was a time when we others called Earth the human world. I was starting to learn that the truth was far from it. There were more dark creatures that stalked the nights of this planet than was probably safe from the humans that lived in it.

  On our world, Aevians weren’t the only race. We had the Naga, the Trolls, the Spriggan, Elementals, and the Merfolk, to name a few. We, however, at least had magic, and wings to defend ourselves with. What could humans use as protection when a hungry vampire came rushing for them from out of a dark alley?

  I thought about these beings now because it was entirely possible I was about to run into one or two of them, and very soon. I had no idea who or what was on the other side of that wall. I couldn’t even say with any certainty whether Romeo and Darkshard would definitely be over there. This trip could turn out to have been for nothing.

  “There’s the gate,” Mercutio said, “That one’s probably protected by magic, the kind I probably don’t have a chance in hell of tricking.”

  “I should do a little reconnaissance,” Draven said, “Take to the skies and circle around the area.”

  “We don’t know what kind of capabilities these people have,” I said, “For all we know, you’ll be detected as soon as you cross over the wall.”

  “Yes, but we’re going to be found out the moment we cross through that gate—if we can even get it open. We may as well get a little information while we still have the element of surprise.”

  “And what are we supposed to do?” Mercutio asked.

  “Find a dark spot and hide. I won’t be long.”

  Draven stepped back, turned around, and bid his massive, black wings to unfurl from out of his back. He rolled his shoulders, shaking his wings out, and then he took to the night sky, becoming one with the darkness almost instantly. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get eyes on him. Good. I could only hope that would at least mean everyone else was going to have trouble, too.

  Mercutio and I found a quiet nook in the side of the building nearest to the wall, and hid inside it. I kept my eyes around the corner of the building, watching the gate for movement, but nothing happened for as long as I was looking. The entire neighborhood was silent, save for the sound of the water lapping against stone.

  “How is it so quiet out here?” I asked.

  “Quiet?”

  “The rest of the city is always so… loud.”

  “Were you expecting gunshots and screams?”

  “No, but I wasn’t expecting to find a perfect oasis of silence out here. Do you know how fucking annoying the constant noise can get?”

  Mercutio’s eyebrows rose. “Uh… yeah. I live here… lived here my whole life.”

  I shrugged. “I guess I thought you were gonna tell me there was some kind of magic in place to keep the sounds of the fighting away from the people out here.”

  “Oh, nah, there’s magic stopping sound from getting out. I know there is, I can feel it. I don’t know what that place sounds like inside the bubble, but it’s not gonna be pleasant.”

  A shadow passed overhead, blotting out the light from streetlamps nearby. Mercutio and I both tucked ourselves more closely against the wall of the nook we were standing in. I held my breath and waited for an instant, then another. I had no idea what had caused that sudden dip, but it hadn’t been Draven.

  He wouldn’t have done that. He would’ve shown up by now, or announced himself to us somehow. This was something else. Someone else. My hackles went up, my skin prickling all over. It had only been minutes since Draven took to the skies. Had he already been seen?

  Dammit. I had to do
something, but staying put was probably safer, especially if that shadow was more of a coincidence than something sinister.

  “Did you get anything from that?” I asked.

  “Get anything?” Mercutio asked.

  “Any magic reading. I don’t know how your kind works.”

  “It was going too fast for me to get a good look.”

  I peeked out from around the corner of the nook we were in and scanned the alley. Quiet, deathly quiet. At the mouth of the alley, the tall, grey, barbed wall loomed; warm, orange light dancing behind it.

  “I need to get over that wall… right now,” I said.

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea… we should wait for Draven.”

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed Draven’s number, but the call went straight to voicemail. Dammit, dammit. I had no way of reaching him with magic, no way of reaching him at all unless I decided to climb to the top of the building and start waving my arms at the sky.

  Not exactly the sneakiest of approaches.

  “Can you do anything to put yourself over the wall?” I asked.

  “You mean, can I fly?” Mercutio asked. “Nah. I can’t get over that thing. I could put a hole in it and go through it, though, but that’ll draw too much attention we don’t want.”

  “I need to get inside. Do you think you could go through the gate?”

  “If you wanna go ahead and do this suicide run, sure, I’ll go in through the front gate. But I’ll go in hot—spells armed and packing heat.” He reached into his jacket and pulled a Glock out from inside. He cocked the pistol back, examined the bullet in the chamber, and as he did so, the bullet started to glow with eerie, blue light.

  “That’s a nice gun. What… did you do to the bullet?” I asked.

  “This thing will put a hole in whatever I shoot at—mage, vampire, even werewolf. Give me your dagger.”