Sapphire Flames

by Ilona Andrews

  Chapter 15

  I sat on the opulent sofa in Linus’ Houston mansion and watched him scrutinize my video testimony.

  After the opera, Linus and I drove here. He reviewed the recording of Cristal, told me I did well, then interrogated me about it. I wanted to run and find Alessandro. I wanted to kill Benedict. I wanted to search for Cristal’s lab so I could rescue Halle. Instead, I had to patiently recount everything that happened, several times over. Once I was done answering questions, Linus instructed me to write an account of what happened, which he then spent half an hour editing, then he had me recite the statement in front of the camera. He wasn’t satisfied with my first try, so I’d had to do it again. And again. He was reviewing attempt number three now.

  “What happens now?” I asked.

  “We wait for authorization. Once granted, we will dismantle House Ferrer until someone tells us where the lab is.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Does he mean so much to you?” Linus asked.

  He was asking about Alessandro. “It’s not just him. Halle’s life is on the line.”

  Linus pivoted to me in his chair. “That’s not what I asked.”

  “He means something.”

  “Why him instead of all the others?”

  “What others?”

  “You’ve had opportunities, Catalina. I’ve watched you come in contact with several young men in the past three years. Four months ago, at the Mercier Exhibit, Justin Pine followed you around like a tail for the entire hour you were there. He is also handsome, wealthy, and a Prime.”

  I’d barely noticed. I only attended because Arrosa wanted someone to go with her and Nevada couldn’t disentangle herself.

  “Alessandro Sagredo is dangerous. You could do better. Is it a teenager crush?”

  Linus waited.

  “I like him,” I said. It seemed completely inadequate to describe what I felt. “He’s immune to me.”

  Linus leaned forward, his face serious. “When I was asked to witness the birth of your House, I researched your talent.”

  How exactly had he done that? I was the only siren in existence. There was another family somewhere in Greece, but they claimed to have lost the magic generations ago.

  “Have you ever wondered why your family is immune?”

  “They already love me.”

  “Exactly. Your talent is a survival mechanism, like all magic. It seeks to keep you alive. It activates when it senses someone is a threat. Think back to your childhood. Some adults succumbed to your magic, but others didn’t. Do you understand me? Any man who truly falls in love with you and is invested in your survival will be immune. Alessandro isn’t your only chance at happiness.”

  “Even if that’s true, I still like him.”

  “Why?”

  I spread my arms. “I don’t know. Half of the time I’m with him, he makes me grind my teeth. But I know that if I were in danger, he wouldn’t stop until I was safe. He looks at me like I’m beautiful. And he makes me laugh.”

  Linus put his hand over his face. “God help us all.”

  What did I say now?

  He waved his hand. “Go. Go save Halle and help that young idiot. I’ll have the car ready for you.”

  The little dog stirred on my bed and let out a quiet woof. I opened my eyes. My bedroom was dark, gloom pooling in the corners. The clock on my nightstand said 3:21 a.m. All was quiet.

  When I’d gotten home, everyone had swarmed me. I’d kept the explanation short, omitting anything to do with the Osiris serum. I’d told them that Cristal was doing illegal research to make super assassins for Diatheke. They’d bought it, probably because it was mostly true. I told them about Benedict. We made plans for tonight with Heart. We had to get the location of that lab no matter the cost. Every minute we delayed, Halle was in danger.

  Alessandro hadn’t responded to my text messages. I asked Bug to track him down, but he couldn’t find him. I scoured Cristal’s background and her family, looking for any scrap of information about the location of the lab until the words on the screen blurred. Finally, I went up to my room and collapsed. That was two hours ago.

  Shadow looked at the window. Woof.

  Woof.

  An intruder was coming.

  I sat up, scooped Shadow into my arms, and carried her to the bathroom. I set her on the floor and shut the door. I didn’t want her to get hurt.

  A long-clawed hand hooked my window and slid it up.

  I leaned against the wall in the corner.

  A dark figure slipped through the open window and into my room. Tall and gangly, he wore a black bodysuit painted with swirls of grey. It clung to him like second skin, highlighting every imperfection of his odd, disjointed body. His shoulders and thighs were too short, while his forearms and shins ran disproportionately long, ending in huge clawed hands and feet. His neck, long and flexible, supported a round head, and as he crawled through my window, he swiveled it like an owl to glance back at the street.

  He stepped on the floor and straightened, a bogeyman born from childhood nightmares.

  I held very still.

  He turned, scanning the room, and the moonlight caught his eyes, big and white, reflecting the light with an eerie green glow.

  In the bathroom, Shadow broke down into a cacophony of barks and snarls, digging at the door.

  He pivoted to the bathroom door. Step. Another step.

  Another.

  Far enough. I stepped into the soap circle on the floor and sank my magic into it. The arcane lines ignited with sapphire flames in a complex, dazzling array. The assassin froze, startled, his face clear in the glow of the glyphs. Bald, with thick glossy skin mottled with a patina of green, brown, and orange, like the carapace of some strange beetle, he didn’t look even remotely human. The typical contours of a man’s face, the cheekbones, the nose ridge, the brow, were thickened, as if someone had injected fat under his skin in all the wrong places. The nose had no tip, reduced to a broad, flattened bulge. His chin receded, almost delicate by comparison. The eyes, unnaturally large, stretched toward his ears. Only the mouth was somewhat normal.

  Revulsion slithered through me. The urge to flee was so strong, I almost took a step back. I couldn’t even tell if it was his magic or just intense xenophobia, triggered by encountering a thing humanlike but not human enough.

  Benedict had sent his butcher. He must’ve given up on taking me alive.

  The lines around the assassin pulsed with yellow. The feedback jolted me. He’d struck at me and the circle dispersed it. A wave of emotion washed over me, disgust, hate, and anger, and underneath it all, a sucking vortex of bloodlust. The circle had lobbed his feelings at me. There was no way around this feedback.

  The assassin leaped to the side. The circle pulsed in response, and he landed back where he started.

  I had designed the circle by modifying an Acubens Exemplar spell to incapacitate an intruder, no matter what brand of magic he or she wielded. It was an all-purpose trap created to contain and interrogate. From above it looked like a large circle filled with a maze of lines and glyphs, with a double circle inside it at one end. Five smaller circles, each filled with progressively smaller rings, touched the outer rim of the main circle.

  I stood within the smaller double circle, while the assassin was trapped in the larger ring. The complex pattern around the butcher imprisoned him. He couldn’t attack me. He couldn’t leave the circle either. His own magic interacting with the boundary held him back. However, he could still attempt to strike at the circle itself, and when he did, his magic would surge through the lines and run off into the five smaller magic sinks.

  The assassin crouched on all fours, looking around. The circle fluoresced brighter under his feet. His big, misshapen eyes found me. “Die.”

  A bright yellow flash exploded from him and ran through the lines of the circle. The five magic sinks spun, absorbing it and became still.

  “Die. Die, die, die.”

>   Each burst sent a fresh spike of fury and hate through me. I waited until the sinks stopped spinning. I had all the time in the world.

  The assassin stared at me. “Release me.”

  “Tell me your name.”

  “Release me or I’ll eat your family.”

  That’s what I liked about warped assassins. They were reasonable, pleasant people. Such deep thinkers.

  “Tell me your name.”

  “I’ll kill you and eat your guts while you scream.”

  “Not in that order, you won’t.”

  He charged my circle, clawing at it, his mouth gaping, his small, sharp teeth trying to scrape at the wall of magic. We were barely six inches apart, yet we might as well have been on different continents.

  Outside, the emergency streetlamps came on.

  The assassin had worn himself out and crouched on the floor again.

  “You’re here because I let you come here,” I told him. “I told the soldiers outside to stay out of your way. I knew Benedict would send you or someone like you. I hoped he would come himself, but he doesn’t like to get his hands dirty, does he?”

  The assassin bared his teeth. “Whore.”

  “Answer my questions and it will hurt less.”

  The assassin grinned. “You sound like him.”

  “But I’m not him. I didn’t look for you. I didn’t force you into the circle. You came here to kill me, my friends, and my family. You are a murderer.”

  “Self-righteous bitch.”

  He had retained more IQ points than Lawrence. He had a good vocabulary, and his reasoning ran deeper than the summoner’s “Kill that bitch because my bugs are hungry.” Explained why this one didn’t have a handler.

  I raised my arms and concentrated. The circle around me began to spin, sending hair-thin chalk lines spiraling through the larger ring. The lines collided with the pattern around the warped, forming a new design in the circle’s matrix.

  The assassin swiveled his head side to side, trying to keep track.

  I sank a burst of power into the circle. The magic shot through the new lines like a spark running down a detonation cord. The assassin’s mind flared before me, a bright hot target. I zeroed in on it and struck.

  With the right circle, even a weak mental mage could put pressure onto the target’s mind, and I was not weak.

  The assassin shrieked. I gripped his consciousness with my power and squeezed.

  To be beguiled, a person had to be capable of love, and no matter how deep that spark was buried, my magic would coax it into a bonfire. This inhuman creature was knitted from deep-seated hatred, and rage, and contempt for humans. For all of his regression, Lawrence had loved his swarm. The butcher loved nothing. Guilt, fear, or doubt never troubled him, and regret wasn’t a concept he understood. I couldn’t wrench him open by pulling one of the usual levers present in a human mind. He had none. His will was an impenetrable shell and his inhumanity gave him an extra layer of protection.

  I wasn’t at my strongest. I was tired, but I didn’t need to beguile him. I just had to squeeze his mind open. The circle would do most of the work and it didn’t ask for anything complicated. It required raw power, so I reached deep inside myself and found some.

  In the ring, the killer raged. Yellow radiance drenched the lines, saturating them. The magic sinks spun, siphoning it off. He had an insane reservoir of magic. His loathing battered me, wave after wave, relentless, his mind churning with rage. Wading through it was like trying to swim through waves carrying razor-sharp rocks. My emotional defenses shook. I gritted my teeth and squeezed him harder.

  The two sinks closest to the butcher turned yellow, then orange, saturated to the brink. A normal mage would have stopped out of sheer self-preservation. Spending too much magic too quickly taxed the body, and if a mage exhausted all of their reserves, they lost consciousness. Some never woke up. But he had no capacity for self-preservation. He pounded and pounded against the circle, trying to shatter it, driven by pure rage.

  The tide of psychic hatred drowned me. I could no longer keep my head above the water. His emotions coursed through me, threatening to tear me apart. My own reserves were running dry.

  A faint crack appeared in the assassin’s will. Fear of being trapped and helpless. Finally.

  Another magic sink turned orange and stopped spinning.

  I gripped at the edges of the crack with my will and pushed.

  The fourth sink froze. We were down to one.

  He howled, throwing all of his power against the circle in a frenzied barrage.

  The final magic sink stopped, saturated. The tide of his emotions swallowed me whole and I hung suspended, no longer sure where I ended and his fury began.

  I couldn’t quit now. Runa deserved answers. Her brother deserved answers. Halle deserved a life. I would give them that.

  The first two sinks collapsed. Magic tore out in twin geysers. My room cracked like a broken mirror. Chunks of wall and window hung motionless for a tortured moment and exploded outward. The roof vanished and the stars stared down at us, cold and indifferent. The entire wall facing the street collapsed. I glimpsed people running below.

  The crack in the butcher’s mind widened. I could almost sense the creature beneath, a hateful, evil ball of spite.

  The third sink burst. The floor under us fell apart. We hung in mid-air, held up by the power of the circle alone. In the bathroom, still safe behind the door, Shadow howled.

  He would not win. He crawled into innocent people’s houses in the night and he murdered and took them from their beds. He would not take anyone else. He would not kill another mother, another daughter or sister. I would not let him.

  I tore myself open and fed the last of my magic into the circle. His will cracked open like a walnut. Darkness clutched at the corners of my eyes. I fought it off and stared at the assassin cowering in the middle of the circle.

  “Tell me your name.”

  “Louie Graham.”

  “Did you kill Sigourney Etterson?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Benedict De Lacy ordered it.”

  “Did you kidnap Halle Etterson?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you take her?”

  “To Diatheke.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where is the lab where Cristal made you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Damn it. He truly didn’t know.

  This was why I had let him in. That was all I wanted, and I wouldn’t get it. Damn it!

  “Do you know that what you did was wrong?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you keep doing it? Did you ever think about leaving? Running away?”

  He raised his head to look at me. “Why? Benedict doesn’t force me to do things. He lets me do things. I like to kill. I like to feed. I would kill you if I could and I would enjoy it.”

  That was it. There was nothing more to ask. I pulled my power out of the circle. The last remaining sink—the fourth one must have shattered while I interrogated him—vomited magic to the sky. The circle faded slowly, collapsing. We fell to the ground, softly at first, then faster. I landed in a blanket stretched under me. The people who held it gently lowered me to the ground.

  Louie crashed on the hard pavement ten yards from me. A ring of people surrounded us, Heart’s soldiers, Mom, Grandma Frida, Arabella . . . The familiar faces were turning fuzzy. I’d overextended.

  Someone pushed through the crowd and walked over to Louie. Red hair—Runa.

  “You killed my mother,” she told him.

  Louie bared his teeth at her. Magic lashed from him, but the butcher had nothing left. His strike cut Runa’s cheek. She touched the cut, looked at the red staining her fingers, and smiled.

  I would remember that smile till the day I died.

  Deep green magic flared like a glowing ribbon between Runa’s bloody fingers. It snaked
out and kissed Louie’s cheek.

  The assassin screamed.

  I sat on the curb, wrapped in a blanket and drinking a cup of hot tea, Shadow curled by my feet chewing on a stick. Arabella had found my phone among the rubble and brought it to me. A big crack split the screen, but miraculously the phone still worked. Alessandro still hadn’t replied to any of my messages.

  The warehouse was wrecked. The entire corner where my room used to be and everything under it was gone, as if a giant had looked at the warehouse from above, decided it was cake, and carved himself out a piece. I could see straight into our house. Heart’s soldiers had declared it unsafe and made us stay back fifty feet.

  To the right, across the street, Bern stood with a despondent look on his face gazing at the collapsed floor between him and the Hut of Evil inside. We had no idea if any of our servers survived. On his left, Bug tentatively touched his shoulder, the way you would do to comfort someone at a funeral. On his right Runa was talking. I couldn’t make it out, but I understood her expression. It’s not that bad. I’m sure it will be fine, you’ll see.

  It would not be fine. Before all of our modifications and insulation, the warehouse was a single steel building. The integrity of the structure was likely compromised. The electric wires, the pipes, and the walls themselves looked neatly cut. A stream had formed on our street, where water had fountained out of the severed pipes before someone shut it off.

  Our water bill is going to be huge.

  I didn’t know why, but that thought almost pushed me over the edge. If I had any strength left, I would have cried, Head of the House or no, but I was too tired.

  Where would we find the money to repair this? Where would we live? Theoretically, we could split up and move into other buildings we owned, but the warehouse had been our home and now it was gone.

  A chunk of the roof the size of a garage moaned with a metallic screech and plunged to the street.

  I couldn’t even. I wasn’t sure I could ever even again.

  On the bright side, we had no insurance to pay for any of this.

  I had gambled everything on finding Halle and I lost. I was so sure that Benedict would send another warped assassin after me and it seemed so logical that they would know where they had been altered. I was wrong.