Enchanted Twist: An Urban Fantasy Action Adventure (Scions of Magic Book 7)

by TR Cameron

  A loud thumping and clanging noise seemed to materialize from everywhere at once. She looked around involuntarily and wondered what was going on, but the echoing sounds had no apparent source. “What the hell?” she repeated.

  “You’re very good with words today.” The Draksa snorted. “I think the ones you’re looking for are ‘hull’ and ‘breaking.’”

  “So the not-zombies are trying to put holes in the ship. The one they’re currently on.”

  “Either that or they want to attack us from the sides.”

  “I dislike both those options.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Okay. Let’s go get them.” She sprinted out of the hallway and turned left while her sticks formed in her hand as the material from her bracelets flowed down her arms. One enemy stood in front of her. He had a sheen of ice in his hair and looked all the angrier for having been momentarily immobilized. Her main concern was getting past him to find those who were trying to damage the boat, so she blasted him with a full power surge of force magic from the tips of her weapons. The man catapulted away like he’d been kicked in the chest, knocked one of his comrades over, and cleared the path to the next intersection.

  “I’ll go left,” she yelled and when she did so, another immediately stood in her path. She had no time to summon magic, only enough to thrust her left stick to block his swinging arm and drive the other one into his chest to hurl him back as he tried to bite her. He caught his balance and attacked again to prevent her from gaining enough distance to cast.

  Fine, you want to do it the fun way? Let’s dance. She snapped her right stick at his head and when he raised his arm to block, she spun and lashed her left stick backhanded into his ribs. They broke with a resounding crack.

  Where a normal assailant would have been at least slowed by the damage, he seemed to not care. He swung his fists at her skull and she deflected one but not the other. The impact blurred her vision and made her ears ring. With an outraged snarl, she dropped her right stick, launched a punch, and wrapped her fist in force magic as it arced toward him. The blow broke his jaw, and the kick she followed it with careened him into the crypt at the end of the hallway. It looked exactly like the one she’d seen earlier, except for the beings that now pounded on the bulkhead with shards of stone they’d apparently broken off the sarcophagus.

  Cali filled the room with fire. To her surprise, the figures neither fled nor ran but continued their attempts to savage the hull as if they could break through in time to save themselves. They continued their assault upon the unyielding metal until they fell one by one. Nothing had flowed over her mental channel with Fyre to alarm her subconscious so she was sure he was okay but went to check anyway. The Draksa stood in the center of another burial chamber with bodies frozen in place around him. Those, too, had been dealt with while they attempted to breach the walls.

  She tried to recall the original numbers and how many they had incapacitated when a voice issued from the main corridor. “Thieves. Trespassers. How dare you?” She spun as one of the uniformed women stepped into the intersection, her expression haughty above folded arms and a wide-legged stance. “Oh, it’s you. The Leblanc girl. Of course it is.”

  Cali squeezed her sticks, ready for what might come next. When the pause stretched into a longer silence, she decided the woman was waiting for a response. “Matriarch Leblanc to you, whoever or whatever you are.”

  The laugh uttered by the other woman seemed somehow reluctant.

  “She’s like a puppet,” Fyre sent. “Not quite in sync.” Cali nodded. That’s exactly what she’s like. Maybe those collars are some kind of control device and the person I’m talking to is hidden around here somewhere?

  Her thoughts were interrupted when the figure shook her head. “For the moment. Until the noble House Leblanc falls and is swallowed by time, never to be heard from or thought of again.”

  “Over my dead body.” Internally, she groaned. Great one, Cali. Smooth. Way to set her up.

  The other woman grinned. “What an excellent plan. Goodbye, Matriarch.” She turned and sprinted toward the back of the boat. Shortly thereafter, the sound of metal slamming echoed all around her, followed by the gush of water.

  “That’s not good. Let’s find the pommel and get the hell out of here.” They managed to clear the first room before the liquid began to seep in above the level of the grate at their feet.

  Fyre snorted. “As if water could harm us.”

  Cali wrenched the door to the next crypt open. “It could if the ship falls and we’re trapped. Well, maybe not you, but I can only use power as a substitute for oxygen for so long.” She threaded magic into her body to allow her to gather more air in case she wasn’t able to escape quickly.

  By the time they found the room where the pommel was located, the water was waist-deep. The object of their search rested on top of the stone coffin, held upright in the hands of the chiseled figure which, unlike those they’d seen before, was carved with meticulous detail. She grasped it but it refused to slide from the hold of its long-dead guardian. With a growl, she blasted the sarcophagus with force magic, shattered the stone, and pulled her prize free.

  Her power activated a ward she hadn’t detected. Two things happened almost simultaneously and overlapped in her senses, even though the one preceded the other by a scant second. A cage of magic slammed down around her to trap the interior of the room in a translucent cube only slightly smaller than the chamber itself. Fyre had stood outside its boundaries, which left her alone in the arcane prison. An instant later, the world lurched down and sideways and metal shrieked and groaned as the ship dropped from its moorings toward the chasm below.

  Cali’s feet lost purchase, and she slid to her left and impacted into the magical barrier hard enough to jar her brain out of its confused stasis. She searched her memory for the preparations they’d made before the initial swim to New Atlantis, and the process finally returned to her a little sluggishly. It took several moments for her to create the shield around her, extend it outward to trap the most air, and to use her magic to change the way her body used the oxygen. This time, it seemed more effective than before and she pushed the anxiety of suffocation out of her head for the moment.

  The sounds of metal under strain increased, and a new worry emerged. Being crushed by the increasing pressure of the water would be no better than expiring from lack of air. She called to Fyre. “Are you okay, buddy?”

  His telepathic response was reassuring. He sounded annoyed rather than worried. “Fine. Outside the boat. It’s breaking up in places.”

  “Well, that’s a positive but I bet this cage won’t float. See if you can ice the part of the ship I’m in. Maybe we’ll be able to find a weak place to break through.”

  “On it.”

  She had to grin at the way his speech patterns became more like hers the longer they communicated mentally. They were definitely closer partners than they had ever been before. Not that it’s a huge help now. She sifted through her escape options in quick sequence. Fire, no. Lightning, hell no. Force, probably not. But what if I combined them?

  The idea blossomed within. She wedged herself into a corner of the cage, thankful that whoever had designed the trap hadn’t made the surfaces painful. They doubtless assumed drowning or being crushed was adequate. Well, I’ll explain their error to them—in detail and over a long period of time.

  With a deep breath, she banished all nonessential thoughts to their alcoves in her mind and bound them in place with crime-scene tape. She imagined a cylinder of force that extended from her to the part of the room that currently faced up and ended where it made contact with the cage. Power pulsed into it to reinforce the boundaries. When it was solid, she pulled at all the magic inside her and summoned lightning. Cautiously, she channeled it through the confined path she’d created and hoped she had it corralled it properly so it wouldn’t spread and electrocute her.

  The electricity surged free and attacked the structure that impri
soned her. Against an enemy who was present and could rebalance their defenses, it would have been futile. But she was able to drill through the ward, which had been placed who knew how long before. With extreme focus, she cut a hole in the barrier by directing her combined magics in a circle large enough to wiggle out of. When she had finished, she allowed the rest of the world into her senses and could almost feel the ship buckle around her.

  “Are you ready, Fyre?”

  “It’s iced.”

  “Okay, then. Here goes.” She blasted fire through the opening she’d created. The stressed metal, caught between cold and hot and under immense pressure, gave at the seams and a large piece fell away to reveal the ocean beyond. She waited while the room filled, safe in her personal cocoon, then swam out and up with the Draksa at her side.

  When they finally resurfaced at the dock, she clambered onto the wooden platform and lay motionless for a moment, exhausted. Her companion stared at her from above and dripped water into her face. “Knock it off, long, wet, and scaly.”

  He grinned and shook to drench her again. “Okay. Your wish is my command, Matriarch.” His imitation of the strange woman they’d spoken to on board was perfect.

  Cali sighed. “We have more questions than answers after this trip. But we also have this.” She held the hilt of her family’s heirloom sword up. “And that makes all the effort worthwhile.” Satisfied, she laid back and closed her eyes. “And when I find whoever stole it and hid it in there, I’ll give them a close, personal look at the weapon they tried to keep from me.”

  Chapter Three

  Shenni swept down from the throne after a drudgery-filled afternoon of dealing with issues among her citizens. Gwyn was careful to ensure that only the problems that required her attention reached her and those with a complaint understood that the Empress’s word was law. Despite the appropriate levels of fear and groveling the process produced, interacting with anyone under the level of the nobility simply no longer interested her. Too much was in motion too close to her position to focus beyond that.

  She strode into her chambers and barely noticed the guards present at intervals along her path, other than to recognize that there seemed to be more of them than usual. So Gwyn feels the strain too. The city seemed to hold its breath, aware that a crisis was brewing, even though it hadn’t yet broken out publicly. Well, except for the ill-advised attack on Leblanc and Wymarc. She shook her head. He’s pleasant to look at but sometimes, he’s as stupid as he is beautiful. While she’d thought it a good ploy at the time, in retrospect, it was more weight on the end of the scale that dipped toward chaos.

  One by one, she stripped her garments off and dropped them on her way to the shower. Once there, she let the hot water beat down on her and tipped her head back so it could flow through her hair. The magical tentacles rocked gently under the spray, a sensation that never failed to calm her nerves. She stood under the stream for as long as she could until a knock on the door signaled the end of her free time.

  With a sigh, she wrapped herself in towels and stepped out to where her seneschal and a servant waited. Gwyn smiled at her. “Do you feel better, Empress?”

  Shenni snorted softly. “About as well as can be expected, given what lies ahead.” The formal dinner was necessary but she didn’t look forward to it. The situation had required her to ally with Styrris Malniet, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. Or him. I feel sorry for Matriarch Cormier. Tonight, she’d have to deliver on commitments thus far only hinted at, alluded to, and otherwise specifically not committed herself to bringing to fruition.

  Damn him for putting me in this position. Damn Caliste Leblanc for her role. Damn them all.

  As she allowed the other women to dress her, she mused on her situation. The report that the Rivette mausoleum had sunk was troubling and the reason behind it doubly so. First, a significant amount of family history had been lost with the sinking of the ship that had contained the remains of her ancestors. They had survived the destruction of Old Atlantis, only for their remains to be lost as well because of the actions of a child. And second, the child had stumbled upon her little experiment. Hopefully, she hadn’t completely understood what she’d seen.

  The need for fully dependable underlings had driven the project from the start. It had begun immediately after she’d taken the throne and on the first day she realized that beyond Gwyn, anyone might act against her at any moment. The use of magic to influence others’ minds had a long history. Her family’s experiments had been to find a way to achieve full mastery with minimal effort. The collars acted to suppress the wearer’s magic, which made them more vulnerable to control.

  How I’d love to get one of those around Caliste’s neck—and maybe Styrris’s as well. The family member who had controlled the subjects reported only success, despite the loss of the entire project. It was only a matter of time before they created more collars and found more subjects, willing or unwilling. Then I’ll have a force I can trust completely and I’ll be able to avoid nights like tonight.

  Gwyn stepped back and nodded. “You look perfect, Empress.”

  Shenni turned to face the mirror and had to admit that her closest confidant was correct. She was in a base dress of deep blue with a sleeved cape that reached almost to the floor. Elegant high heels in black were visible when she swayed and sent the material of dress and cape into motion. Her hair was piled perfectly on her head, and the minimal makeup the servant had added made her look subtly menacing, which was exactly how she felt. Minus the subtle part.

  Styrris Malniet was waiting when she arrived in the smaller of her formal dining rooms. He rose and bowed but did not come to kiss her hand as protocol demanded. Of course, he would point to the rules of Old Atlantis, which did not require such deference toward the monarch. Which is probably why it fell.

  She rewarded him with a frosty smile, lowered herself into her chair, and gestured for him to take his own. If he was intimidated by the guards at each corner of the room with their shining armor and tall tridents—or the knowledge he surely possessed that crossbows were aimed at him from behind the walls—it didn’t show. He was a match to her elegance, dressed in a long green tunic with the stylized hook that was his family’s symbol stitched into each cuff and over his heart in silver thread. His short dark hair and sharp features made him look like something trapped midway between a statesman and a cadaver.

  Gwyn approached and poured wine for them, a deep red that looked like blood in the dim light thrown by the chandelier above. It was capable of more illumination, but she knew the Malniet Patriarch’s eyes were diminished by age and it amused her to exploit that fact. She took a long sip, rolled the liquid in her mouth to appreciate the flavors, and swallowed with a smile. “So, Styrris. It is a pleasure to see you, as always.”

  His oily, self-satisfied smirk made her want to smack him. If I didn’t need you, you feckless sardine, you’d be a pincushion. She visualized the man with crossbow bolts protruding from him everywhere and immediately felt better.

  As always, his voice was as smooth as his expression. “I appreciate the invitation, Empress, as always.” She read the mockery in his tone easily and wondered if he’d ever fooled anyone or if he’d merely been so powerful that it didn’t matter. Careful. That could be the image he tries to project.

  The first course, a seafood soup in a clear broth, arrived immediately. They tasted it but neither ate more, both clearly focused on issues of greater import. She considered being oblique but discovered she lacked the energy for it. Instead, she asked, “What is your plan for getting rid of the girl?”

  He shrugged. “I have one. However, it will remain inactive until such a time as we have agreements between us.”

  “You are bold.”

  A small laugh escaped him. “Some might see it so. My perspective is that it is simply an exchange where each party must bring equal value.”

  Shenni shook her head. “So what you’re saying is that I’ll have to pay to see your cards.
” He nodded. “Fine, then. To the matter at hand. I support your request to wed the matriarch of House Cormier.” Although I can’t for the life of me understand why she’d want to attach herself to you. “With the provision that the house itself continues in the hands of a relative until the current matriarch produces an heir.”

  The corners of his mouth turned down. “There are many worthy leaders among the members of my house.”

  “No. They have no bloodline connection except by your marriage, which is inadequate. We will not diminish the historical purity of the noble houses in such a way.” She cared nothing for the details of her argument and only wished to be sure he was not able to put a lackey in place to lead Cormier.

  His smile showed that he’d expected that outcome. Which means he and the matriarch have something in mind. Well, naturally they do. “Very well, Empress. I agree to those terms. However, that is not the entirety of my request.”

  She laughed and waited until the soup had been taken away and the entrée delivered to answer. “Of course it isn’t. Please, tell me what else you require in order to do your duty and serve your city and your Empress as a noble should.”

  Amused at the sudden stillness in her dining partner, she lifted her utensils and sliced the thick slab of swordfish in front of her. So you have at least a little sense of responsibility left in you. That is good to know.

  After a moment, he gathered himself with a nod of acknowledgment in her words. “Indeed, the tasks one is sometimes given require more effort than an ordinary subject could offer and thus should inspire more reward as well.” He took a mouthful of his fish and chewed slowly before he swallowed. “I’ve noticed you do not have an heir, Empress.”

  Shenni pretended shock, but in her strategy sessions with Gwyn, they had envisioned this being an angle he might pursue. “Indeed, that is so. I’m still young, however, and have no lack of suitors wishing to supply me with one. Until your request to wed Cormier, I had wondered if you would eventually be among them.” She continued to eat, content to let the silence stretch for as long as he could endure it.