Sapphire Flames

by Ilona Andrews

  Moody looked just like the headshot on his website: broad-shouldered, not exactly fat, but thick through the chest and middle, the way football players sometimes got thick in the offseason. He was probably strong, but he wouldn’t be fast, and if he had to chase me, he would be slow to build up speed. His desk matched him, massive and solid. The pinewood had been cut against the grain and stained with waxed tobacco to imitate a rustic Old West look. The rest of the decor in the office went along with the desk; a Texas star on the wall, a huge map of Texas, cowhide rug on the floor, the client chairs upholstered in dark leather. Good Old Texas, reliable and trustworthy. The desktop was the only modern touch.

  “You’re not Runa Etterson,” Moody observed.

  “Clearly, I’m not,” Alessandro said.

  “Not you. Her.” Moody pointed at me.

  I let him see a glimpse of my feathers. “That’s okay.” My magic surged through my words, stretching for him. “Runa is a very good friend of mine. You can tell me whatever you wanted to tell her.”

  My power wrapped around him, twisting like a magical grapevine spiraling over his body. I could apply it delicately, light as gossamer. I could do it so subtly that after I was done asking my questions, Moody wouldn’t even remember the conversation. But Moody didn’t seem like a man who had a gun to his head. His posture showed no tension or nervousness, his eyes didn’t betray any apprehension. He sat behind his desk, completely at ease except for being annoyed that Runa hadn’t come herself. A man whose life depended on Runa’s presence would have panicked.

  There was no need to be gentle with him. He was in this up to his eyeballs.

  I sank more magic into my voice. “I’ll be sure to let Runa know everything you tell me.”

  Moody smiled at me and sat up straighter in his chair. “Well, I guess that’s okay, then. Please have a seat.”

  I sat down. Alessandro remained standing right behind me.

  “Why did you call Runa?” I asked.

  “I have these papers.”

  My magic was all around him now. He was breathing it in, it seeped through his pores, and I shook my feathers at him one more time.

  “Are these papers important?”

  Moody’s smile widened. “Nah, they’re some bullshit I cooked up. You’re a really nice girl, you know that?”

  “Thank you, Mr. Moody. Why did you cook up bullshit papers?”

  “I got a call from Diatheke and they asked me to do it. I mean, it’s a small thing, and they pay me enough, by God.”

  And there it was. “How long have you worked for Diatheke?”

  “About four years. They called me right after Sigourney hired me. What was I supposed to do, turn down easy money?”

  You greedy asshole. “And what did Diatheke require from you in return for that easy money?”

  He chuckled. “Not much. I was supposed to tell them if she made sudden large deposits.”

  Benedict wanted to know if Sigourney started doing jobs on her own.

  “And of course, now they called me to get Runa out here.”

  “What do they want with Runa?”

  He shrugged. “Hell if I know. Who cares about Runa, anyway? Let’s talk about you.”

  Let’s not. “Do you know who killed Sigourney?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Don’t know, don’t wanna know, don’t need to know. She must have pissed off some powerful people and it ain’t my business.”

  The more we talked, the more the polish of education wore off. He sounded more Texas country with every word. I needed to wrap this up, or he would chase after me, and Alessandro would shoot him. He deserved it, but I didn’t want to murder anyone we didn’t have to kill. Besides, there were better ways to punish.

  “Do you know what happened to Halle?”

  “Burned up with her momma.”

  “Are we done?” I asked Alessandro.

  “Ask him who his contact was at Diatheke.”

  “Who did you talk to at Diatheke?” I asked.

  “Some lady named Jocelyn.”

  “I’m done,” Alessandro said.

  I yanked my magic back. Moody gasped, throwing himself back against his chair, his spine rigid, his eyes glassy.

  I got up, turning around. Alessandro had this cold look in his eyes, as if Moody wasn’t a human, but some centipede that had slithered out of the drain and needed to be stepped on.

  “We have to go,” I told him.

  He didn’t move. “Wait for me in the front office. I’ll catch up with you.”

  “Alessandro, please.”

  He sighed and turned to the door. “If that’s what you want.”

  The receptionist waved at us as we passed her. “Y’all drive safe now.”

  We were out of the hallway and going down the stairs when I heard the scream.

  Alessandro paused midway on the stairs.

  “He won’t come after us,” I told him.

  “I wasn’t worried. What did you do to him?”

  “He’s been to Sigourney’s home. He’s met her children. She invited him to holiday parties. The entire time he was spying on her. And after she died, he tried to lure her daughter here knowing that nothing good would come from it. I can remove my magic gently or I can do it the way I did it to Moody. I’m told it feels like the love of your life has died in front of you. I wanted him to feel grief. It’s all he can feel right now, and it will take him a long time to heal.”

  “So, he’s suffering?”

  “Yes.”

  Alessandro gave me a narrow smile. Just a hint of fangs. “I like your way better.”

  We exited the stairs into the lobby hallway and kept walking. This was too easy. Why get us all the way out here and not do anything about it? Maybe once they realized that Runa hadn’t shown up, they dropped the whole thing and went to the warehouse to get her.

  “We could be cutting Moody apart with a bone saw right now, and Diatheke wouldn’t give a crap, would they?”

  Alessandro shook his head. “Sigourney’s dead. They have no further use for him. He’s a loose end. We didn’t cut it, but they will.”

  “Who’s Jocelyn?” I asked.

  “A psionic. Upper-range Significant. Experienced. Strong. Dangerous.”

  We rounded the corner. A person stood in front of glass doors, blocking our escape. Tall, wrapped in a black coat, deep hood hiding his face. More a dark shadow than a human, a smudge of night in the lobby flooded with electric light.

  Hello.

  The hooded figure thrust its hands to the sides, palms up. The mage pose. A knot of black smoke burst into life above him and surged open, spiraling out like a blossoming flower, a deep indigo darkness shot through with blue lightning at its center.

  A summoning portal.

  Alessandro raised his arms, a gun in each hand, and fired.

  Before the first shot rang out, the portal flared with blinding white and a swarm of flying creatures tore out of it. Bright psychotic green splashed with blotches of yellow and crimson, they swirled in front of the summoner, hiding him from view, each beast the size of a turkey vulture and shaped like a bloated tick with beetle wings and six long segmented legs. The swarm churned, chaotic, contracting and expanding like a flock of monstrous birds, the creatures zipping back and forth.

  I pulled my Beretta out and fired into the mass of whiplike tails and big mouths lined with serrated teeth. The gun spat thunder and I counted the shots.

  One, two, three . . .

  A few bodies dropped, leaking nacre-colored ichor, but more kept coming, spilling out of the portal. This was beyond any summoner Prime on record without a complex, House-grade arcane circle to help them. There was no circle under the summoner’s feet.

  Four, five . . .

  They kept coming and coming. Too many. We had to get out of the lobby.

  We backed up in unison, moving toward the stairs.

  Six. Seven.

  The swarm built on itself, so big it filled the lobby like a storm cl
oud come to life.

  In a single smooth move, Alessandro lowered his arms, letting the two guns clatter to the floor, and raised them again without a pause, a new firearm in each hand. He squeezed the triggers, and bullets punched into the beasts. How?

  Metal clanged behind me, the exit door swinging open. Pressure smashed into my mind, searing hot, trying to crush my will. I lunged to the side to cover Alessandro’s back and snapped my wings open, taking the brunt of the mental attack on my feathers.

  The pressure battered my defenses. A psionic. At least a Significant, maybe higher.

  Alessandro whipped around, looked over my shoulder, and fired a rapid burst down the hallway. Boom, boom, boom.

  “Stay behind me,” I ground out.

  If I turned around, I’d have to engage the psionic full-on. Once two mental mages locked in combat on a mental plane, there was no moving. I couldn’t fight a mental duel with flying scorpion ticks trying to rip us apart.

  The first wave of creatures dived at us, screeching. Alessandro shot, quick, barely bothering to aim, the steady gunfire mixing with the shrieks of the summoned beasts into a deafening cacophony. The scorpion ticks rained on the floor. Every bullet he sent hit and killed a target.

  A beast dove at me, flying low. I raised my gun and fired. The creature crashed to the floor by my feet, splitting open. Ichor spilled onto the polished floor. An acrid, salty stench washed over me. I gagged.

  The pressure turned into pain, the dull battering ram of the psionic’s magic splitting into sharp spikes trying to rend my defenses. Claws tore at my side, slicing across my thigh in an ice-cold burn. I fired to the side on instinct, without turning to look. A shriek answered and died.

  The swarm flailed around us. I couldn’t even see the walls. Claws cut my left arm, then my right.

  Alessandro dropped the guns. A machete appeared in his right hand.

  “Elevators!” he barked.

  I had to save my bullets. I thrust the gun into its holster and pulled my gladius out. We sliced at the swarm, carving a way through it. Alessandro cut a path ahead of me, slicing, chopping, cutting in a controlled frenzy. A step. Another step. The battering ram of the psionic’s magic hammered against my will. If my defenses broke, the psionic would flood my mind with fear, rage, or any of the other primal emotions, smothering all conscious thought.

  I stumbled after Alessandro, hacking with my gladius on pure instinct, almost collided with the wall, and frantically pushed the call button.

  A creature smacked into the wall on my right. Ichor splattered my face. Oh, gross. I pushed the button again. Come on. Come on!

  The elevator chimed. The doors took forever to open.

  “Get in!” Alessandro shouted and hurled his gun into the swarm.

  I dove in, grabbed his jacket, and pulled him back into the elevator. A scorpion tick thrust in behind him, trying to claw at Alessandro’s arms with its segmented legs. Alessandro chopped at it with the machete. The beast screeched, ichor and severed legs flying everywhere. I punched the panel, lighting up all floors, and mashed the close doors button.

  The doors started closing, ever so slowly, the swarm surging toward us like a tsunami through a shrinking gap.

  Close, close, close!

  The doors shut. The cabin slid up. The pressure on my mind vanished and I exhaled.

  Alessandro raised his hands, flexing his fingers. I ejected the magazine out of my Beretta and slid the full one in. I still had eight bullets left, but I might need fifteen bullets fast.

  The digital display counted off the floors: 2, 3, 4 . . . I had pressed all of them. The elevator should have stopped.

  “They’re taking us to the roof,” I guessed. On the roof there would be nowhere to hide.

  “Yes.” His face was grim. “Stay close to me.”

  “What is your Antistasi range?”

  “Not far,” he said.

  When he’d used it on me, he’d been within touching distance. During the trials, when he was defending himself, he was about fifteen feet away. That was probably the extent of his range. He would have to get close to either mage to negate their magic, and neither the summoner nor the psionic would let him do that.

  A summoner and a psionic. A far easier plan would have been to snipe us as we exited the building. Benedict had tried a strike team, and when that hadn’t worked, he sent two magic users perfectly paired to pin down and capture a Prime. Benedict wanted me alive.

  The elevator door slid open and delivered us into a small room. On the left was a metal door marked stairs. On the right an open doorway gaped, leading to the roof, its door missing.

  Alessandro tried the stairs door, then rammed it with his shoulder. It held.

  “Barred from the other side.”

  The elevator slid down.

  A soft thud sounded from the other side of the stairs door, then another, followed by a shriek. The scorpion ticks had flooded the stairway. In a few moments they would be in the elevator shaft too.

  I needed to get an arcane circle going fast. Most commercial buildings had flat concrete roofs.

  I sprinted for the doorway and into the night.

  A rectangular roof stretched in front of me, lit up by orange lights along its perimeter and perfectly flat except for the stubby row of AC units to the far right. Gravel crunched under my feet. A tar and gravel roof. It wasn’t smooth enough for a circle. The gravel would break the lines. Damn it.

  Behind me Alessandro marched out of the utility room.

  A whirlwind of green spiraled up over the building’s edge, directly opposite us, smashed into the roof, breaking into individual creatures, and vomited the summoner onto the gravel. He landed on his side, awkward, and staggered to his feet, his movements jerky and disjointed. The scorpion ticks circled him, whipping about. I could see glimpses of him, but I had no shot. Pumping bullets into the swarm was futile. I might as well just toss the gun over the side of the building.

  To the left of me, Alessandro strode forward, putting himself into the path of the swarm. I moved to my right to get a clear shot.

  The summoner focused on Alessandro, his swarm thickening to counter an attack from his direction. His coat hung open, revealing a thin body and a face that was no longer human. His skin had a sickly bluish tint, stretched too tightly over his features. His forehead protruded over his temples and the corners of his jaw were too far apart, as if someone had grafted extra bones onto a human skull.

  Revulsion squirmed through me. The mix of human and insect felt wrong on a deep, primal level.

  The summoner opened his mouth and hissed.

  He was warped, and he was using magic. And doing a damn good job.

  I reached out with my magic, trying to sense his mind. It was there, a weak, pale glow to my mind’s eye. The scorpion ticks streamed over him, each a faint greenish dot of primitive sentience. They buzzed around him like bees. On their own, they wouldn’t deter me, but collectively, they formed a mental veil that wrapped around him, all parts of it communicating, connected, and one.

  I was looking at an alien hive mind.

  This was so far out of my frame of reference, I didn’t know how to go about attacking it. I couldn’t even tell if he was human enough for my siren call to work.

  Alessandro pulled a nail gun out of thin air, dropped it, lifted up a shovel, threw it, and came up with a tennis racket–shaped bug zapper. He hurled it at the swarm. It sparked, and one of the scorpion ticks went into a swan dive, landed a few feet from me, and lay on the ground twitching.

  I can’t even . . .

  A small flock of scorpion ticks tore out of the utility room behind our backs and swallowed us. The creatures washed over me, scratching, biting, stinging, tearing my clothes and skin. One clamped onto my leg. I shot it. It stopped chewing on me, but hung from my jeans, dead. A scorpion tick tore at my hair. I grabbed it by its tail, yanked it off, and slammed it onto the gravel. They were shredding us. I wouldn’t last much longer.

  Ales
sandro barked a short “Ha!”

  A stream of fire arched over my head and seared the swarm. Bodies plunged down, burning. The air around me was suddenly clear and I spun left. He had a small black flamethrower in each hand, the fire pouring from them in twin orange jets. A maniacal grin twisted his face, lit up by the flames. His eyes glinted. I had never seen him so happy.

  The summoner screamed, an odd, guttural sound.

  All around me scorpion ticks dropped out of the night sky, fell to the roof, and kept burning. The stench of chemicals, fire, and singed hair filled the air. Thick black smoke poured from the flames. It looked like a medieval painting of hell come to life, and Alessandro Sagredo was its devil.

  The flamethrowers sputtered and died.

  “Ma porca puttana,” Alessandro swore, his voice ice-cold. “Ne andasse dritta una!”

  A second swarm coiled over the edge of the building to our right, broke apart, and deposited a middle-aged black woman onto the roof. The receptionist from Diatheke. She still wore the same dark suit with a string of pearls, except now it was torn from dozens of scorpion tick claws.

  Alessandro was right. Everything had gone wrong today.

  I snapped my wings open and hit her with a stream of my magic. My power crashed against the solid wall of her will.

  “Thank you, Lawrence,” the psionic ground out.

  Her defenses wrapped around her mind in layers. She’d had them up before she ever set foot on this roof and they were entrenched, their pattern old. She must have maintained them for decades and now activating them would come effortlessly to her.

  Her magic was combat grade, mine wasn’t. She relied on direct assault, while I beguiled and used subterfuge until my magic gained hold. If I had surprised her or if I had the time and opportunity to draw a circle, it would be a different story. I had her pinned with the blunt press of my power, but that was as much as I could do. If we had been swordsmen, I would be a large strong fighter beating my blade on the shield of a more skilled, more experienced opponent. She made no effort to parry me. She knew that once she engaged me on the mental plane, only one of us would be left standing, and I was a Prime of unknown power. She refused to commit. Instead she sat behind her shell like a turtle and bided her time.