That left one more illusionist and the angry warlock.
This was mad. Totally and utterly mad. Or maybe I was the mad person for thinking it would be anything different. We were assaulting a contingent of the Cruze Gang’s illusionists.
But there was no going back, was there?
I pushed to my feet, all the time concentrating on the remaining illusionist. He was holding back, keeping to the safety of the general warlock. The general warlock wasn’t attacking, either. He stood there, his hands curled, his head held down, his eyes blazing with green power.
I wanted to ask why they weren’t attacking, considering they’d been frenzied until now, but I could tell why not. They’d obviously figured out that I was the finder their entire gang was after, and they were holding back to regroup.
Frank didn’t let them do that, though. He leaned toward me just as he formed a fist. I could practically hear his fingers curling in. The sound of them crunching was like listening to trees being crushed by a meteorite. “Tell me what to attack.”
There was a difference between me finding an object – whether it be a testing officer or a safe path – and me being able to figure out what the best angle of attack was. Or at least, there should be a difference between the two. But right now my ability to reason – and most importantly, my ability to doubt myself – had been completely shut down. Fear and the knowledge I had to get through this were the only two emotions controlling me. Before I knew what I was doing, I pointed up.
To the ceiling.
So Frank attacked. Again, he didn’t question me. I fancied I could tell him to kill himself, and he probably would – that was just how far his trust went for me.
But I hadn’t told him to kill himself, and as Frank’s magic sailed toward the ceiling, my plan paid off.
I could find the illusionists when they split themselves off, because I was looking for them. One limitation of my power was I couldn’t find what I wasn’t looking for.
There would be no serendipity around me. And yet, that’s precisely what happened as Frank’s magic sailed upward. It didn’t end up striking the ceiling and rather slammed against some invisible object held against it.
Sparks and flames spewed out in every direction, sailing down and crackling through the air until it was like we’d walked into a bonfire.
I jerked my head up just in time to see what the object was.
A hidden case of weapons.
Frank’s spell hadn’t just been enough to disrupt the invisibility charm – it’d been enough to dislodge whatever was attaching them to the ceiling.
They started to hail down all around us.
The general warlock attacked.
No more holding back, obviously.
The illusionist sprinted forward, too – splitting off into two men as he cast his real body under an invisibility spell.
With weapons hailing down all around me – some of them live – it was almost too much for me to follow. And I imagined that was precisely what the illusionist was going for. But just at the last moment when the illusionist’s real form came perilously close to me, it was my turn to throw out a punch. It connected with the guy’s jaw, but almost immediately, he brought up his hand and grabbed hold of my wrist.
Alarm spiked through me. Frank was busy with the general warlock as he threw spell after spell at him.
So, in other words, there was no one to save me.
But I didn’t need anyone to save me.
Just at the right moment, I opened my hand, and a freaking gun fell into it.
I twisted around and fired just as the illusionist tried to wrap a hand around my throat.
The gun was no ordinary gun – it was magical. And though I didn’t know that much about magical weaponry, Josh had forced me to brush up ever since, you know, I’d joined him as a bounty hunter. After all, he always emphasized that the creeps we brought in had no trouble getting their hands on illegal magical weaponry, and even less trouble using it.
So I knew what the gun was as I twisted around and fired at the illusionist. It was something called a bubble gun. Sounds cute, right? Sounds like the kind of thing you would buy your kid so they could enjoy the whole day blowing bubbles around the park.
Yeah, not that kind of gun. A blistering blue bolt of light erupted from the muzzle. As soon as it hit the illusionist, he became visible. Massive cascading jets of sparks blasted around him. It sounded like I’d just walked in on a parade. The guy jerked back, and the next thing he knew, he was lifted off his feet and into the air. The magic that was spinning around him started to form a bubble. His body dropped and became limp as that bubble rose toward the ceiling.
It wouldn’t kill him. It wasn’t designed to kill him. It was the kind of weapon you used to incapacitate your enemies for hours at a time.
Frank was still fighting the general warlock. I spun around. I didn’t shoot him with a bubble gun. I wasn’t that stupid. It wasn’t just that the bubble gun had its own magic and could react to the generalized magic the warlock was casting – it was that the sense inside me that kept looking for opportunities told me not to bother.
So rather than shoot the warlock, my eyes chanced upon another gun several feet away. Before I could question what was going on in my head, I shifted forward and kicked it toward Frank.
Possibly it was a stupid move. After all, what was to stop the general warlock from dashing forward and grabbing the gun?
It paid off.
Frank seemed to be waiting for it. He shifted to the floor, dropped to a knee, rolled, grabbed up the gun, and fired.
I didn’t know what kind of gun it was. Unlike the bubble gun – I’d never brushed up on it.
I got my answer, however, when a wave of silence shot through the room. You’d think silence couldn’t shoot anywhere, but you’d be wrong. It absorbed all sound as it blasted out. I went from listening to the crackling residual sparks of the bubble spell above me, to hearing nothing, not even an echoing or ringing in my head.
But if it was bad for me, it was worse for the general warlock. He dropped down to his knees and clasped his hands over his ears as he screamed. Or at least, he tried to scream. No words appeared to come out of his mouth.
Frank put him out of his misery, shunting forward and punching the guy right across the jaw with the kind of blow that would work on a frigging elephant, let alone a warlock.
There was a thump as his body hit the ground, and that was over.
Frank turned to me as he took a heavy breath. Sweat lined his brow and dripped down his temples. His hair was messy, and his shirt was torn.
I didn’t even bother to look at myself. Who frigging cared what I looked like? I smiled. “I can’t believe we just did that. Do you think there are more illusionists?”
“I’d ask you that question, but it’s important for you to save your magic. Let’s go. The only way to find out if there’s more is to find out the good old hard way.”
I followed after Frank as he ran toward the door that had been blasted off its hinges.
As I followed, what he’d said struck me.
It was something I’d been playing with ever since I’d found out I was only the second finder in Madison City. Everybody kept telling me that I was almost endlessly powerful, but at the same time, I knew that magic cost. All magic cost. Even sorcerers couldn’t endlessly cast spells. If you thought of magic a little like a body process, it required energy. And when you ran out, the magic ran out.
So Frank was right. We were technically riding high right now, blasting through the illusionists, but I had to keep my finding magic in reserve.
What happened next happened smoothly. Between the two of us, we managed to clear out all of the illusionists and warlocks in the power station. Don’t frigging ask me how we managed it. Okay – do. It seemed that we were perfectly matched to work together. With my finding abilities and my skills at locating the illusionists, and Frank’s raw power, we were a match made in heaven. If your heaven i
ncluded the ability to clean the city of scum.
By the end of it, once Frank had done several sweeps through the power plant to ensure that no one was left, we stood in the main operating room.
The power plant itself seemed to be largely automated, and the Cruze Gang warlocks had obviously been smart enough not to meddle with those processes. Do that, and the local authorities would be alerted to the fact that somebody was messing around in one of their plants. Now we both stood in front of the old, blinking consoles.
I leaned against one, my arms crossed as I supported my body against the bench behind me. Though Frank had ostensibly been the one to do all the fighting, I was bone weary.
He was covered in marks, grime, sweat, and the occasional cut. And yet, he was standing as tall as ever. I fancied that while he was tired – that fight had given him something he’d needed for ages: revenge against the gang that had ruined his life.
He appeared to let me catch my breath, then he nodded hard. “I’ve marked the walls with the tags of the Xs. So I guess it’s time to go.” He looked at me without asking the obvious question.
It was time for me to figure out where to head next. To be honest, my mind was still reeling from the fact we’d managed to do this at all. I, the mild-mannered waitress, had managed to take on a frigging drug gang made up exclusively of ex-army warlocks.
It would probably take a few hours – if not years – for that fact to sink in.
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and tilted even further back onto the bench behind me. “I think we’re running out of time,” I said, not needing to access my powers to know that.
“You mean it’s time to go try to bust Josh and Max out? Should we do a little bit more damage to the gang before then?” Frank’s eyes flashed as if the prospect of doing more damage to the gang was one of the most welcome in his life.
I brought up a hand and pressed my fingers into my brow as if I was attempting to push all thoughts of weariness aside to get to the grain of magic still left within.
Again Frank didn’t push me. He stood there in the middle of the room, his arms crossed, his biceps bulging, and his mere presence reassuring.
Finally I started to pick up a few scant, scattering charges of magic within me. I followed them. They seemed to… lead me down. Though I hadn’t asked a specific question in my mind, I suddenly got a flash of the sewers.
I frowned.
“What is it? Are you picking something up?”
“Just a memory. I must be fixated on it since this morning. After all – I guess it was kind of traumatic.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Never mind. I’ll try to push past it.”
“I don’t recommend that. Like I’ve said a few times now, I don’t know how your power works, but from experience, you must follow in order to find.”
I blinked one eye open. It was a hell of a wise statement, after all.
Follow to find?
All right. I pushed myself into the images of the sewers that kept flickering through my mind.
They told me… that there was something down there. Something more. Something that would help the situation and enable me to save Max and Josh.
“Frank, how much do you know about the city sewers?”
“I take it this is a question relevant to our situation, and you’re not just randomly interested in the old architecture of Madison city?”
“They are old, aren’t they? And they go everywhere, don’t they?” I found my voice quickening.
It was Frank’s turn to frown as he obviously picked up on my excitement. “You’re right – they are old. And yeah, they do go everywhere. What’s your point?”
“Do you think… do you think they could connect to the City Hall? Do you think,” my voice dropped, “that they could give us an alternate entrance? One the gang might not know about?”
Frank didn’t answer. He looked right at me. “What do you think?”
I opened my mouth. I didn’t honestly know. I had a pulsing headache, and I was dead tired. But at Frank’s question, I sunk myself into the images still flickering through my mind. “I think I’m onto something. I think those sewers could help. I think… I think they’ll help us find an alternate entrance.”
“Then that’s good enough for me,” Frank said as he nodded hard.
“But what if I’m wrong?”
“What if you’re wrong?” he said as he chuckled hard. He also shrugged behind him, indicating the power plant as a whole. “You’re the only finder I’ve ever fought with, but after your display back there, I realize why your powers are legendary. I trust you, Bethany. So let’s do it. Let’s head to the sewers.”
“Don’t we need more of a plan?” I protested as if I hadn’t been the one who’d suggested this in the first place.
“You are our plan. Plus, hopefully we’ve done enough damage to the Cruze Gang to get something rolling here.” He shrugged behind and indicated one of the numerous Xs tags he’d painted on the walls of the power station. “My guess is it will take five minutes or so until the rest of the Cruzes realize something’s up. Speaking of which – we should probably leave,” he commented.
“But you think you’ve done enough damage?” I asked, repeating his question. I probably sounded pathetic and nothing at all like a powerful finder who was meant to be in control.
Frank looked thoughtful this time as he cast his gaze up and to the left. “We went through about 25 illusionists and warlocks there – more than I thought would be stashed here. That’s a hell of a chunk of the Cruze Gang’s illusionist contingent. And considering the illusionists are what make the Cruze Gang so capable of hiding their tracks and bringing in shipments under the police’s noses – then yeah, we’ve done them considerable damage. It’ll be enough to do what we need, anyway – to offer one hell of a distraction while we go in and save Josh and Max.”
My shoulders dropped. “I guess you’re right.”
“You don’t guess – you know,” he said with some authority. “Now,” he brought his hands up, slapped them together, and started rubbing them back and forth, “I don’t have enough magic to waste transporting us into the sewers beneath the City Hall – but I can get us vaguely close. That being said – it’s not a good idea to transport into the sewers. I’m unfamiliar with them, and if I get the location of the exit spell wrong—”
He didn’t have to finish. I made a face.
“Yeah, you understand. So okay, let’s do this.” He got down on his knee and started tracing patterns onto the concrete floor with his fingers. I stood and watched as he muttered spells under his breath. Magic began to fill the room, crackling and buzzing as if we’d walked into a static storm. The next thing I knew, marks appeared underneath Frank’s tracing fingers – enduring little crackles of flame that sank into the concrete.
A circle appeared and began to charge with flame. Frank took a step back and waved me forward.
“Dump your guns,” he said as he nodded at my bubble gun. “They’ll be trackable. The Cruze Gang always use magical biomarkers on all of their stuff, even if it is stolen in the first place.”
I threw my gun to the side.
He brought a hand up and started to count down on his fingers.
He pointed forward.
We both jumped in.
Another chapter was over, and another was about to begin.
Chapter 7
“I can’t believe I’m going back down here,” I muttered under my breath as I climbed down the ladder.
“Fond of the sewers?” Frank asked as he thumped down onto the concrete, the sound reverberating through the enclosed space.
“I’m not sure if fond is the right word. But it’s the second time today,” I managed as I too jumped down. I patted down my jacket and frowned, turning up my nose at the awful stench.
“What were you doing here last time?”
“Tracking down a bounty.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sure whoever h
e was, he’ll pale in comparison to the head of the Cruze Gang. If you can get him,” Frank whistled, the sharp sound reverberating off the walls, “Josh will be able to pay off his every debt.”
It was clearly a throwaway comment, and yet it was another glimpse of something about Josh I didn’t know. I frowned. “Sorry, debt?”
Frank looked over his shoulder at me as he navigated down the small path. “Josh had to pay a hefty sum to Peter in order to cancel his contract.”
This one floored me. “Isn’t that illegal?”
“Yes and no. It depends on what you sign when you start working for someone. And before you pale too much,” Frank said as he nodded my way, “I really doubt that the government made you sign away a hefty retainer when they employed you. It’s different for private enterprise, though,” as he said that, his voice dropped.
“Do you have one of these retainers?”
Frank snorted. “I wasn’t nearly as high up Peter’s pecking order as Josh was. Plus, we don’t have the same bad blood.”
We were talking and walking, and yet, even though I was vaguely focusing my attention on finding the alternative entrance to the city hall, I was also completely absorbed by this conversation. “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned this. And I saw how Josh reacted around Peter. What exactly happened to those two?”
“You mean beyond the fact that Josh up and left and started working for Max?”
I nodded.
“Josh’s sister got murdered,” he said.
I hadn’t been expecting that. Honestly, anything but a bombshell that big. I’d expected Josh to be a gambler – someone who’d courted debt.
But this?
I swallowed hard, my heart thumping in my throat as regret welled through me. “Oh my God, that’s horrible. How?”
“They still don’t know. Josh went mad trying to find out, though. That’s how he got himself into debt. Or at least, that’s what got him into debt the first time. And that,” Frank said as he brushed a hand over his face, “made Josh stupid enough to sign that kind of contract with Peter in the first place.”
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