House of Fire (Parallel Magic Book 2)

by Emma L. Adams

  A lich barred my path to the stairs, but Miles’s hand shot straight through it and it crumpled into nothingness on the spot. Liv ran past and hopped onto the lowest stair, calling over her shoulder, “The transporter links up to wherever they’re keeping the sprites. Not sure which citadel it is, but it definitely isn’t Elysium.”

  Then where? I’d never been anywhere outside of Elysium and Arcadia. That meant treading on unfamiliar territory, but it was too late to turn back now.

  Liv reached the top of the stairs first, opening the door and disappearing into the room above, while Ryan followed on her heels. Dex flew overhead, showering sparks onto the remaining liches. I sent a fireball at another, then I ran for the stairs with Miles on my heels.

  Part of me expected to find the Family waiting on the other side of the door, but by the time we reached the top, Liv and the others had taken care of the liches and left the path to the transporter clear. The bank of machinery covering the back wall looked as pristine as ever, though it was Elysium’s transporter that I’d blown to pieces a few weeks ago.

  Liv hopped onto the platform, while Miles and I moved in to join her. The surface looked silvery in the light, but up close, it was pale gold. The image of the huge chunk of golden metal at the Family’s mine appeared in my head, sending a shiver through my bones. Then light flared up, carrying us away to another near-identical room.

  More liches met us on the other side, and I gladly unleashed my flames on them. Why hadn’t anyone stronger come here to block our path? It seemed suspicious to me, but I wasn’t one to let a stroke of luck go by without taking advantage. I shot a ball of fire across the room and turned two of the liches to ashes at once. Dex and his fellow sprites from the castle surrounded another, Ryan’s air magic pushing the flames into the liches like a wildfire fanned by a breeze.

  Despite the fire ripping through the room, the machinery remained untouched, pristine. Only an inferno cantrip could destroy them, but I’d have to wait until the path was clear to use mine.

  The light of the transporter spun across the gleaming grey walls as Liv cut a path through to a door at the back, the only part of the room which differentiated it from the other citadels. She kicked the door open, revealing a smaller room dominated by a large cage. Wires passed through a series of holes in the wall, connecting the cage to the machine on the other side… and inside the cage were countless sprites.

  The sprites’ transparent bodies were pressed against one another, their eyes looking piteously up at us. Fire and water, earth and air, trapped in a cage barred from the outside. One look at the complex mechanism told me no unlocking spell would work on it.

  I pulled an inferno cantrip out, at the ready. “Okay. I’m gonna blow the doors off that thing. Stand back!”

  “Hang on!” Liv backed through the door into the main room, and I heard the transporter light up again. I waited to make sure the others were out of range, then I took aim and hit the switch on the inferno cantrip.

  Miles grabbed my arm and we ran out of the back room, an instant before the inferno cantrip exploded. We slammed the door on the roar of noise, and its metal surface trembled under the impact of the blast. As we reached the transporter’s light, the door shuddered open, revealing orange flames filling the room and the lights of a thousand triumphant sprites as they flew away to freedom.

  That was when I realised my mistake. In destroying the cage, I’d wiped out the transporter in the process. The machinery resembled a pile of lifeless metal, its lights extinguished. Smoke poured out from the platform in the room’s centre.

  “Oops. Might’ve overdone it.”

  “You think?” said Miles, with an eye-roll.

  “Dammit,” Liv said, glaring at me.

  Only five of us had been left behind: Miles, Shelley, Ryan, Liv… and me. Even the Death King had been left on the other side.

  “The Death King’s going to kill me for this, isn’t he?” I murmured to Miles.

  “Probably,” he said. “On the plus side, the sprites might come to your defence.”

  The sprites themselves had almost dispersed by now, a flood of bright colour fleeing the back room. I walked to the doorway and saw the cage was in ruins, without a single sprite left inside it. Wires hung loose, sending sparks dancing across the floor. How on earth had Hawker and his allies captured so many sprites?

  That was a question for another day, because if the Family found us here, we’d left most of our army behind. Though from the expression on Liv’s face, she was more likely to kill me than the alternative. I still had my own transporter spell concealed in my pendant, but if a node lay at the heart of the citadel, I couldn’t sense it now.

  I’d blown up our only way out.

  15

  I half expected Liv to punch me in the face. Instead, she said, “Let’s have a look outside. Might as well see what we’re up against.”

  “Did you go over this plan with the Death King first?” Ryan asked. “Because he’ll be pissed with you if you gave him no warning before stranding us in the middle of Elements-know-where.”

  I wasn’t a hundred percent sure whether they were talking to me or to Liv, to be honest. After all, if not for Liv, we never would have been here in the first place.

  “Keep your hair on,” I said. “I bet we’re close to the city. The spirit mages didn’t build their citadels in the middle of nowhere.”

  “And you’d know?” Ryan said.

  “Okay, there’s no need for the attitude,” I said. “You told me to blow the bloody thing up. Not my fault we were on the wrong side of the transporter.”

  Miles grinned. Shelley poked him in the arm. Hard. “This isn’t funny.”

  “Absolutely not,” Miles said in solemn tones. “Terrible mistake coming here. Terrible.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Miles,” said Shelley. “Where are we?”

  I looked for Liv, only to find she’d disappeared through the door leading out of the room. I walked over, confirming another staircase led down into the lower level, the same as the other citadels. The grey walls and floor were covered with faint runes, dimly lit by the dawn light filtering through from somewhere outside.

  I descended the stairs and found Liv had opened the front door, revealing an expanse of wasteland that extended in all directions. A wasteland that looked awfully familiar. We couldn’t be near the Family’s house, could we? There were no visible signs of life within sight, and the five of us spread out, surveying our odd surroundings.

  “What’re the odds that we run into Hawker’s evil lair out here?” said Liv. “Actually, it kinda looks like the other end of the Court of the Dead, but his territory goes on for miles.”

  “I can look for signs of civilisation,” I said. “I’m probably the fastest, unless any of you are up for astral projecting.”

  In truth, I’d quite like to get away from their accusing stares, but if we were within sight of the Family’s house, I needed to track down a node, asap. I’d worry about the consequences of showing off my super-speed in front of witnesses later, so I walked across the barren ground and picked up speed, leaving the others in the dust.

  “How are you doing that?” Liv called after me.

  “Bria has skills,” I heard Miles say to her. “I could technically astral project, but I don’t quite trust you not to murder me while I’m standing here unprotected.”

  “Me?” Liv said. “If I’m pissed off, it’s because I literally have less than a day to live. I don’t have time for a goddamned sleepover in the arse-end of nowhere.”

  Less than a day to live? No wonder Liv had dragged us on a rescue mission straight after her confrontation with Hawker. I’d need to ask her about that later, once we’d reached safety. I scanned the wasteland, seeing no signs of anyone living among the carcasses of wrecked buildings, shattered piles of stone and brick and metal. Maybe it’d been a town once, but the sole landmark was the citadel, its dark spire piercing the otherwise unbroken horizon.

  A sudden
flare of white light flashed behind me. I spun around on the spot, seeing the Death King appear out of thin air next to the citadel. He then walked up to Liv, and the pair of them vanished in a second flash of light.

  “Did he just ditch us?” Miles said incredulously.

  Looked that way to me. I continued on through the ruins of the town. The horizon was low enough that I would have been able to see any nearby nodes, but I didn’t see a single bright torrent of energy in sight. The ground between the ruins was trampled earth, with shards of glass and metal sticking out at intervals. The flat horizon revealed no sign of the cliffs behind the Family’s house.

  They aren’t here. It’s safe. Or as safe as an abandoned wasteland in the Parallel, at any rate. I strode back to the citadel, where Ryan and Shelley both watched me with their eyes wide.

  “Are you secretly an air mage?” asked Shelley.

  “No,” Ryan and I said at the same time.

  “Hey, I’m not trying to steal your spotlight,” I said to Ryan. “There’s nothing or nobody alive out there.”

  Miles caught my eye, and I wondered if he knew I was implying that we weren’t near the Family’s house. The slight problem was that I didn’t know where we were, and it didn’t look like the Death King had the slightest intention of coming back for the rest of us.

  “I have a portable transporter spell but no way to use it without a node,” I admitted. “Also, it only works on one person at a time.”

  “What use is that, then?” Shelley grumbled. “If we all get eaten by phantoms, I’m blaming you, Miles.”

  “Hey!” he said indignantly. “It wasn’t my idea. Pretty sure it was Liv’s.”

  “You opted to go along with it,” she said. “More because of Bria than anyone, but still.”

  I cleared my throat before they started arguing. “What was Liv talking about then when she said she had a day to live?”

  “A cursed cantrip, apparently,” Miles said, glancing at Ryan.

  “Don’t look at me,” said the Air Element. “Hawker used it against her when she refused to join him. That’s why she had to run.”

  “Wait, there are cantrips in there?” I walked towards the tower again. I hadn’t looked, but it was worth seeing if Hawker had left anything behind. Like a way of fixing the transporter and getting the hell out of here.

  Only Miles followed me into the tower, our feet echoing on the polished floor.

  “Am I in trouble with your second-in-command?” I asked. “Or is there a chance the Death King might swoop in to save the rest of us?”

  “No.” He walked behind me as we climbed the spiralling staircase to the upper floor. “He took Liv back because she’d have died otherwise. The rest of us are cannon fodder.”

  “It’s nice to be appreciated.” I opened the door to the upper room and skirted the inert platform towards the bank of machinery.

  “I appreciate you,” he said from behind my shoulder. His words brought a shiver to my skin, but a moment later, a tell-tale glint caught my eye.

  I crouched down. Sure enough, a handful of blank cantrips lay beneath the machine’s hunk of ruined metal. I gingerly turned one over with my foot, but no mark covered the back. Not the Family’s…

  Miles picked up one of the cantrips. “Not sure we’ll find any kind of transporter which’ll work without a node, to tell you the truth.”

  “That’s not what I’m looking for,” I said. “These aren’t the Family’s. I thought for a moment we might be near their house, but there’s nothing out there. Hell of a weird place to build a citadel.”

  I picked up another cantrip, then it hit me that I should probably take my own advice and leave them alone in case they turned out to be laced with the virus. I gave the machine another scan instead, eyeing a cantrip-shaped slot in the side. “What’s that?”

  Miles’s expression darkened. “That’s how the transporter works. A portable transporter cantrip was inside the machine itself. All you need is a battery. Like those sprites.”

  “Living batteries.” I tasted bile at the back of my throat. “Wait, could you put a different cantrip in there and use it the same way?”

  “I’d wager that’s exactly what it’s intended for,” Miles said. “As for why they picked somewhere so remote, this is probably why.”

  “It didn’t used to be.” The town had once been intact, and the sight of it stirred a sense of familiarity within me despite my best efforts. “The transporter is out for the count. I can run, but I’d have to carry you if I wanted to get us both out of there at once.”

  He raised a brow. “You, carry me?”

  “Why not?” I said. “I’m stronger than I look.”

  “Uh-huh.” He gave a knowing smile. “Want to demonstrate?”

  “You asked for it.” I grabbed him around the middle and lifted him into the air. Unfortunately, I hadn’t accounted for the wires underfoot, and when I tripped against the machine’s side, I overbalanced and crash-landed on top of him. The breath fled my lungs as he looked up into my eyes, my knees on either side of his waist.

  “Gotcha,” he said softly. “Now I have you where I want you.”

  A voice in the back of my head told me to get up and stop screwing around. Flirting was one thing, but heavy contact was a no-go in my line of work. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d let anyone get that close. What was I doing?

  His fingers caught my wrist, tugged gently. “Hey. Let me into your thoughts.”

  My thoughts were a whirling dervish, flitting past like hummingbirds. In the end, all I said was, “Are you sure my weird elf powers don’t freak you out?”

  “Are you kidding me?” His fingers teased my wrist, and warmth pooled inside me. “I’ve seen weirder.”

  “So complimentary.” Ah, fuck it. I leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. He lifted his head in response, his lips soft on mine, his hands releasing my wrists and cupping my head to pull me onto him.

  Footsteps hammered on the stairs. I jerked back and hit my knee hard on the floor. A series of curses escaped me. “Owww.”

  Behind us, the door slammed against the wall. Shelley walked in and gave us both a look of utter disgust. “I swear, if you two start boning next, I’m leaving you in here.”

  Miles grinned. “That wouldn’t be comfortable, would it?”

  “Gotta love that apocalyptic decor.” I pushed to my feet, wincing. “Ouch. Yeah. Bad choice of make-out spot.”

  “Not the worst.” His words were a murmur in my ear as we walked to the door.

  Shelley shook her head at us when we caught her up at the foot of the stairs. “I can see something over there that might be a node. Find anything in the tower?”

  “Just a few abandoned cantrips,” I told her. “Nothing useful.”

  Shelley pushed open the door. Darkness shrouded the ruins as the sun’s rays withdrew beyond the horizon. It’d been a hell of a long day, and it seemed we’d have a longer night ahead if we didn’t find civilisation soon. All kinds of beasts came out at night, and while vampires wouldn’t be seen dead in a place like this—relatively speaking—phantoms and revenants would have no shortage of hiding places.

  I absently rubbed my sore knee, fighting the sinking feeling in my chest as I looked at the ruined city. Glass crunched underfoot, and shadows stretched spidery fingers towards us.

  Ryan strode back into view. “Finished slacking off?”

  “We weren’t slacking off,” I protested. “We figured out the machinery in there can be used as a battery to power up any cantrip, not just transporters.”

  “Looks like you were more interested in finding alternative uses for the floor,” Shelley said.

  “Seriously, though,” Miles said, “the sprites have gone, but something linked up the citadel with the others, didn’t it? I’m not sure the sprites were the only battery source.”

  “Does that mean there are power sources… living ones… in every citadel?” said Shelley.

  “I didn’t see any c
ages in Elysium, did you?” I reminded them both.

  “Liv implied that this was the place where they brought the liches back to life,” Ryan said. “They hooked up a cantrip to the machine and used it to turn a lich into a living mage again. I reckon they needed a stronger power source to pull that off.”

  My throat went dry. “You’re joking.”

  “I probably should have asked her to confirm it before she took off,” said Ryan. “I’m starting to think she and the Death King ran into trouble.”

  “Nah, they ditched us,” said Miles. “They ran off, and we should do the same before we get eaten.”

  “I agree,” said Shelley. “Pity we can’t apply an inferno cantrip to the whole tower.”

  “Nah, it’s impervious to damage,” I said. “What’s it made out of?”

  “No clue,” said Miles. “The spirit mages who founded the place would know, but they’re dead.”

  Yeah. They were, and yet the citadel alone had survived whatever disaster had destroyed the rest of the town. “The spirit mages built the tower, but I guess they left it here when they abandoned the place.”

  Had the spirit mages ever had dealings with the Family? I’d thought not, but they seemed to believe they supported the winning side despite the fact that the spirit mages had been the undisputed losers of the last war.

  “Look,” Shelley said, pointing. “I see a node over there.”

  I squinted at the horizon, where the sun’s rays dazzle the eyes. “Are you sure it’s a node?”

  “Either that or a really big bonfire,” said Miles.

  Shelley shook her head at him. “It’s a node. Trust me.”

  “Better get there before we find out who really lives here,” Miles said. “Remember the incident with the ogre’s nest.”

  “Miles!”

  The pair of them launched into an argument, while I strode ahead and scanned the route ahead in search of hidden enemies. Lex’s words rang through my head, much as I tried to shut them out. She was right in that I hadn’t always been part of the Family. I’d been born elsewhere… somewhere which didn’t exist any longer. Somewhere she assumed I didn’t remember. And I didn’t, not really, but sometimes when I closed my eyes at night, I saw the town in my dreams. A town dominated by a pillar-like structure, obsidian in colour, the only landmark which wasn’t burning in magical fire.