by Ella M. Lee
“Fiona…” he said tentatively.
“Fi,” Daniel said from behind me, his tone very firm.
He took a step toward me, but I backed away. He then turned his dark eyes on Mark.
“We’re here to help you,” Daniel said warningly. “Do not antagonize Fiona, or you will quickly find that none of us have a problem leaving you to die. You have already hurt her enough. I wouldn’t mind breaking your nose in a few places before heading home.”
Mark smiled. “Try me.”
Nicolas closed his eyes in annoyance as he brought out one of Ryan’s fancy magical scanners. “We’re almost done. No one is killing anyone today.”
He studied Mark through both red-tinted glasses and blue-tinted glasses and took a few notes. After that, he ran a spectrometer over Mark to understand his magic’s strengths and weaknesses. Finally, he snapped what appeared to be instant photos of Mark with a boxy device, making adjustments every couple of seconds.
Finally, Nicolas put all the equipment away and stood up, dusting off his pants. “That’s all we need.”
“Do you think it’s possible to fix me?” Mark asked as Evie helped him stand.
Nicolas watched him impassively. “Anything is possible. I am going to try. I expect to have more information for you in twelve hours.”
Mark shoved his hands back into his pockets, looking unhappy. He turned his eyes on me. “Be sure not to distract him. My life is hanging in the balance.”
“Get fucked, Mark,” I said.
“Aw, Fi, come on,” he said.
He took a couple of steps toward me, but Daniel planted himself between us. “Leave her alone,” he said, his tone deadly.
Mark took a step toward Dan, so close that they were nearly touching. “I like you,” Mark said to him. “You’re powerful, and you take care of Fiona. That makes it worse that I have to do this.”
So fast that I barely saw it, Mark pulled his hand from his pocket and swung at Daniel. Dan had great reaction time, and he blocked quickly, but the nature of the attack wasn’t to hurt Dan. It was to sink a needle—concealed in Mark’s fist—into the muscle of Dan’s upper arm.
Mark let go immediately and stepped back. “Sorry,” he said as Daniel studied the needle with narrowed eyes.
Nicolas was on his feet again. With speed I had practically never seen from him, he pulled the needle from Dan’s arm and threw it to the ground, his eyes wide. He spun to face Mark, his magic poised around him like a storm, growing scarier by the second.
“A little incentive for you to fix me,” Mark said, shrugging. “Because now it’s not just me. It’s him, too, and you love him a lot more.”
No, no, no.
That virus would kill Dan in hours—it was designed to destroy Water magic. My vision blurred, red creeping into the edges as bile rose in my throat.
I ran at Mark, crashing into him and knocking him to the hard ground with a huff. I rammed my fist into his face once, then twice, then three times. He pulled a shield up, but I rolled my Water magic into fire and burned it away. Distantly, Nicolas was saying my name. Mark’s hands clamped around my wrists, so I shifted and kneed him in the rib cage. He groaned and threw me off of him.
Nicolas said my name several more times, but I didn’t care. I scrambled back toward Mark. I would murder him. It was only when Nicolas shifted to saying Dan’s name that I paused.
Nicolas was looking at Dan. So were Mark and Evie. Dan put his hands to his head, swaying. He was blinking, his dark eyes confused.
He took a shaky step toward Mark. “Fuck you. I am going to fucking kill—”
He stumbled and fell face first onto the ground. With a pop and a hiss, like live electrical wires hitting water, his skin let off a puff of dark smoke.
“Dan!” I yelled, rushing to him.
Mark and Evie were frozen, both poised with dark magenta shields up, but Nicolas had flown to Dan’s side as well. He flipped Daniel over, studying his face. Hastily, he reached for his bag and pulled out a device that looked like a set of wire hoops. He ran the hoops in sweeping motions up and down Dan’s body.
Nicolas snapped his fingers. “Mark, Fiona, settle down,” he said as I eyed Mark with hatred, his tone more even than I could have ever imagined.
He put on the red-tinted glasses and studied Daniel. He then took his pulse and checked the pupils under Dan’s closed eyelids.
After another thirty seconds, he turned his cold expression on Mark once again. “You are incredibly lucky. Dan will be fine, and so will you.”
“What?” I asked, searching Nicolas’s face.
He sighed and looked between the three of us. “Daniel’s magic burned the virus completely out of him. I don’t see any traces of it. He is unconscious because his magic reacted autonomously to save him, and it overextended past his body’s limits. He’s not sick—he’s merely displaying all the normal signs of magical overuse. He doesn’t have any magic left, but he’ll be fine once he’s had some rest. Dan’s magic is special. It’s more capable of handling itself than other magics.
“And as for you,” Nicolas said, eyeing Mark, “we can likely use Daniel’s immunity to fix you.”
I gathered Daniel into my arms, my eyes wide. He did seem a lot like he was overextended. I had done this myself during my first transmutation. Dan was unconscious, his pulse was 175, and his skin was cold and clammy. He wasn’t responding to my touch or to me calling his name, but his pupils were responsive to light.
Mark took a step forward. I flared my magic out, hugging Dan closer.
“Come any closer and I will kill you,” I said. “Now you’ve hurt two of the most important people in my life, and I don’t give a fuck whether you live or die.”
Nicolas put out a placating hand, angling himself slightly between us. “Fiona, take Daniel back to the portal rendezvous.”
I picked Dan up in my arms, cradling him to me, backing up slowly with my eyes on Mark. Nicolas took a deep breath and picked up his bag.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said, his eyes going between Mark and Evie.
“You’re still going to fix me?” Mark asked, incredulous.
“I said I would,” Nicolas said.
“I can’t believe—”
With a colossal bang, the metal cargo door behind him exploded into pieces.
I gasped as a huge spike of metal impaled Mark, the force of the impact causing him to stumble forward. He looked down at the jagged steel shard blooming out of his chest and attempted to speak, but all that poured from his mouth was blood.
Chapter 15
Nicolas reacted instantly. Evie had been about to cross the couple of steps between herself and Mark, but Nicolas fixed her with a hard glare and shouted, “Back!”
He swept his arm in front of himself, and a static shield curled in an arc around the three of them just before another rain of metal fell and clattered off Nicolas’s icy magic.
The door exploding had filled the warehouse with more light, blinding all of us. I was still stumbling back with Dan in my arms. I made it to the center of the warehouse and dropped him, reaching for my phone. Just as I grabbed it, another crash filled the warehouse, followed by a boom.
A wave of Meteor magic rushed toward me. It flowed like water around the borders of Nicolas’s shield, and I barely managed to get my own magic up in time before it hit me. It was so strong that the power rang in my bones, making me light-headed.
My phone was burning hot and dead in my hands, victim to Meteor’s ability to move and reconfigure metal. I dropped it with a yelp.
Evie stumbled back to where I was, and I took up a defensive stance, eyeing her warily.
“We didn’t betray you,” she shouted, falling to her knees at my feet, her shield dying. “I swear!”
If that was true, it begged the question: Who had?
I looked toward Nicolas. He had pulled the huge shard of metal from Mark, and he was pumping him full of Water magic to stop the bleeding. Nicolas wasn’t an amazing he
aler like Irina or Ryan, but vein and tissue damage were within his purview. Vital organs, though? I had no idea.
“Nicolas!” I shouted in warning.
A figure appeared in the wide-open space of the cargo door, silhouetted against the bright light beyond. I squinted, recognizing that particular sweep of hair, the squaring of the shoulders.
Derek.
Derek has been clanned to Meteor, if you didn’t know, Mark had said.
And it appeared he was good with the magic.
Nicolas swept Mark up into his arms and sprinted to us. He dropped Mark at Evie’s feet and tossed the trigger at me.
“Shield, now!” he said, before turning on his heel back toward Derek.
“Can you heal him?” I asked Evie as I hauled up a shield in front of us.
Pure Water magic would be stronger against Meteor than my transmuted fire, so I put the shield in place and then settled one hand on it, feeding it more of my power. With my other hand, I fed power into the trigger. It was supposed to glow, but nothing happened. I had no way of knowing if our family had received my call for help.
“Maybe,” Evie said.
There were tears in her eyes, but she wasn’t hysterical. Meteor magic had healing capabilities, but they were strange. Like Water, it relied on blood in the body, and it often relied on having or forming a bond between the magicians.
“Get going,” I said to her. She put her hands on Mark, thrusting Meteor magic into him.
I checked Dan’s watch. We’d been here for only twenty minutes. If we couldn’t reach our backup, we had another forty minutes before they would open the portal. That was far too long—either Nicolas or Derek was likely to be dead by then.
And I really hoped it was Derek.
I shook Daniel. He was dead to the world, all of his magic in shambles, barely there. He was alive and breathing, but he would be of no help at all.
Stupid fucking Mark. He had taken out our most versatile fighter, and we were screwed because of it.
Evie’s eyes were closed, her hands pressed against Mark, her lips moving slightly without sound. Even if she were a fighter—and I was pretty sure she wasn’t—it was unlikely I could get her to focus on anything except Mark while he was in critical condition. And although Nicolas must believe Mark and Evie were innocent of betrayal—he wouldn’t have told me to shield us all if he didn’t—I was disinclined to put too much trust in her without more information.
I couldn’t fight Derek. I’d risk absorbing Meteor magic via transference, and I’d likely die if anything went wrong. That would, among other terrible results, leave the helpless people I was protecting alone.
I could do nothing except sit and watch Nicolas fight.
No, no, no, I thought, my chest tightening in alarm.
I had seen them fight before. Nicolas was powerful and fast, but so was Derek. Derek had been a commander and council member in Water for years. I may have hated him, but that wasn’t an excuse to underestimate him. Even with new Meteor magic, he was likely to be deadly.
“I was wondering when you’d show up,” Nicolas called, his tone cold and crisp.
He was planted squarely in the path between us and Derek, his hands spread in front of himself. He had a blazing shield up, and his body was tight and poised, ready to move. He was a deadly predator right now, his training and power showing through in how casual and natural he made this stance appear.
My eyes had adjusted, and I could make out Derek more clearly. Same mane of blond hair, same wide-set light eyes. His left cheek seemed discolored, dark and blotchy, and I realized it was from the burns I had inflicted on him months ago. He, too, had the natural and easy stance of a fighter. My heart sank, worried.
“Finally decided that the only way to get an assassination done right is to do it yourself?” Nicolas asked.
Nicolas was goading Derek, trying to get a reaction. Nicolas was the calmest person I knew, and he often relied on being able to rattle his opponents. Derek wasn’t engaging, though. In fact, he was standing rather still and composed, and that frightened me.
“Evie,” I whispered, “will Mark live?”
She glanced up at me. “I don’t know yet, but I’m trying.”
Her hands were still pressed into Mark, and a trickle of her magic was running through him. She was keeping him stable and alive, but she couldn’t do much more. Most Meteor magicians weren’t trained in healing because of how difficult it was.
Her eyes were on Nicolas and Derek.
Nicolas’s head was tilted. His back was to me, but I could imagine his expression—relaxed, amused, fascinated, displaying the air of not giving a single fuck about this really massive problem.
“Come now,” Nicolas said. “Let’s have a chat. What did I ever do to you? Why all this effort? You could have given up at any point. I’m more forgiving these days. I may have chosen to forget about the whole thing.”
But now I’m going to tear you to shreds, was what his tone implied. I shivered.
“You always do this,” Derek said. “Talk and talk. Water is frustratingly slow when it comes to everything.”
“Yes, we all know your new clan murders first and asks questions after,” Nicolas agreed.
“My new clan gets shit done,” Derek said, his tone harsh.
“Do they?” Nicolas asked. “Strange that you think you belong there, then.”
“Fuck you,” Derek spat.
He took a step forward, drawing a knife. Nicolas tensed, but he didn’t reach for his own weapon. That likely meant he knew something I didn’t.
Nicolas can read minds, I told myself calmly. He has a million advantages in this fight. Stop worrying and focus.
With careful motions, Derek slid the knife across his left forearm. A red line of his blood appeared. With fast steps, he walked among the shattered metal ruins of the huge door and shook his blood onto it.
Evie gasped, her eyes going wide. “Kynda.”
I blinked. Kynda, the root word of “kindle.” Derek was creating a creature he could control.
“Nicolas,” Evie yelled. “Get back! He’s animating the metal!”
Derek stepped back and put his hands out, his fingers splayed. The metal creaked and groaned and quickly spun itself together. Nicolas danced three jumps backward. Before him stood the likeness of a lion: a feline head with huge jaws, dinner-plate-sized paws with sharp claws, and a long, lithe body. The lion’s back was covered in spikes, and its tail was extra long, ending in a crude spiked club. It stood several hands taller than the average lion, its eyes glowing with magenta magic, the slate-gray metal covered in Derek’s blood like war paint. It waited, poised to pounce.
The good news: This wasn’t true life. This creature didn’t have a brain or any sort of autonomy. It was being controlled by Derek, which meant that he couldn’t do much else at the same time, especially since he was new to Meteor magic.
Which meant he must believe that creature was better in a fight against Nicolas than he was.
And he might be right.
Nicolas was still as death, tense, appraising his new opponent.
The metal of the lion’s shoulders rippled, and then it pounced, fast as lightning. I thought Nicolas would dodge left or right, but he ducked. The lion soared over him and spun clumsily, swatting at him with a huge paw. Nicolas smashed his fist into the paw, and the metal imploded at his touch, ripped apart by Nicolas’s magic. He danced around the lion, trying to get closer to Derek.
A basic rule of kynda: disable the magician, disable the creation.
Derek knew that, and he was using the lion defensively. The creature spun and knocked its huge head into Nicolas, who was just barely within reach. He went flying and smashed into the ground a few feet away.
I gasped, flinching, but Nicolas sprang lightly to his feet. His shield was still up, and it had absorbed most of the impact.
Don’t get injured, I thought frantically at him. Don’t bleed.
A Meteor magician could use
your blood against you. The last thing I needed was Nicolas under Derek’s control in any way. Nicolas had a very strong will, but much like everything else in magic, the way things affected you could be rather random. Nicolas might be able to use his will to overcome Derek’s magic, or he might not.
Nicolas had never allowed me to use my blood magic against him while conscious, and he likely didn’t know from experience how to deflect it. It would be best to keep him away from that situation entirely.
Nicolas tried to slide around the lion, but it smacked him with its paw. He got a shield up, pumping magic into it, and it flared with light as the lion hit it once, twice, three times. Nicolas flinched, gritting his teeth.
This was bad. Nicolas’s magic was strong, but the environment here was a weakness for him. There was no pure water around for him to play with, no rain or ice or plumbing pipes he could burst. There was water in the humid atmosphere, but there wasn’t a lot of it, and he wasn’t an elementalist. He didn’t have the training to pull water that was so spread out together with finesse.
Derek, on the other hand, had the shattered ruins of the warehouse doors to play with, along with some other useful metal pieces within the structure. He was thankfully new to Meteor. If he were experienced, he might be able to make and control two or three lions. As it was, I could see him struggling to hold his one creation and also keep his shield so that Nicolas couldn’t attempt a direct attack on him.
Nicolas was trying to wait him out, hoping Derek would get tired or slip up. He was being annoying and distracting to the lion, making sure he kept Derek’s focus on him and away from me, Evie, and the disabled Mark and Daniel.
He tried to edge around the lion again, but it smacked him back. Nicolas spun, disoriented. It didn’t matter how strong you were—when a huge hunk of metal hit your head, you felt it.
There had to be a way I could help. I had something Nicolas didn’t: fire. But I wasn’t as powerful as him. I couldn’t heat or melt the metal from afar. I would have to get close to do that, but I couldn’t leave the others here undefended, and I couldn’t risk getting near Meteor magic with my transference still untested and untrained. There had to be something I could use within reach.
