by TR Cameron
“No. Absolutely not. Yes, the first one was me, and yes, the Empress told me to deepen our relationship. But I’d decided not to. I didn’t intend to contact you again until you reached out. At first, I thought you were merely another noble playing the game. When I finally learned that you weren’t, I couldn’t be a part of any actions against you. So, no, it’s not me.”
She sighed and looked past him toward the end of the block. “That’s too bad. That means those scary looking people probably intend to kill us for real.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
While the group of people she’d seen approached them, Cali walked slowly into the middle of the traffic-free street. The new arrivals had spaced themselves like bowling pins and carried a palpable menace that increased with each step. Unlike the mostly pretend ambush Wymarc had set up—and she wasn’t convinced that the mercenaries hadn’t planned a double-cross in that situation to eliminate her for real—no sense of restraint was present there.
These people had come to kill her and by accident or design, the patriarch of House Jehenel. “I see ten,” she sent to Fyre.
“Agreed. Although they look smart enough to have some in reserve.”
She motioned for her dinner companion to stay where he was on the sidewalk so one attack couldn’t easily target them both and asked the Draksa, “Do you think you can lock the back rank down before they realize you’re there?”
“Probably. And if not, I’ll distract whoever isn’t hit.”
“Okay. That’s Plan A.”
A flicker of amusement registered from him, mostly hidden by the overwhelming concern they exchanged through the channel. “What’s Plan B?”
“Improvisation.” She shook her head and raised her voice to shout across the ten feet or so that remained between her and the enemy. “That’s far enough unless you want me to kick this fight off for you. I presume since you haven’t attacked already that you wish to inflict some kind of clever speech on me.”
Nothing obvious connected the newcomers—no uniforms, no identification patches, and not even a common body type. They weren’t mercenaries, she was sure of that. The leader was a tall, thin man who looked like he spent far more time pursuing mental activities than physical ones.
“Nothing clever, he called in response. “I merely felt the need to offer the proper respect to the head of a noble house.” He turned his head to Wymarc. “Patriarch Jehenel, this matter doesn’t concern you. If you walk away now, you will live.”
That banishes any doubt that they’re from New Atlantis. And since they don’t want to tick Jehenel off, they’re either Malniets, their allies, or Styrris’ hirelings.
“Gloves off, buddy,” she sent. His mental reply was an aggressive growl, the kind that would make any intelligent person who heard it run for safety.
Wymarc gave the man a slight nod. “And here is my counteroffer. If you all walk away, you and whoever sent you will remain untouched by Jehenel. But if you don’t, my house will ensure that every last one of you is tracked down, interrogated, and left to spend the rest of your miserable life missing important body parts.”
Damn. He sounded serious about the threat and she honestly had no idea if he or his family was capable of making good on it. The enemy clearly didn’t think so or perhaps didn’t care.
“What will be, will be,” the thin man replied, jerked his hands up, and unleashed a cone of fire at her ally.
Her instinct was to protect him, but she knew that was exactly what they’d expect. I need to get close so they can’t all blast me. She charged the leader and summoned a full body shield to defend her advance. Her hastily crafted barrier activated barely in time and took the impact of fire, lightning, and shadow. In her peripheral vision, Wymarc withstood the attack on him behind his wall of force.
Fyre rippled into visibility as he dove at the back rank and discharged his frost breath across them in a line. Three were caught fully and transformed into statues locked in ice, while the one who ran forward fell with his feet trapped. The Draksa screeched and several of the enemies cringed and stared at him.
His actions took the attention off her. Cali dropped her shield and used a sweeping wave of force at ankle height to hurl two of the attackers, a man and a woman, off their feet. A little voice inside her brain criticized her for not aiming the blow at throat level, but the adventure with the agents had only reinforced her desire to be nonlethal as often as she could. The numbers made the likelihood that everyone would survive the fight low, though.
And if it has to be someone, it won’t be us. She channeled all her momentum into a knee strike and hopped at the last minute to target the thin man’s solar plexus. He crumpled with an explosive exhale, and she grinned momentarily at the panic on his face. Serves you right, jerk.
She paid for her switch to offense when a force bolt drove into the side of her chest and thrust her off balance. Instinctively, she dove in the direction in which she stumbled and shoulder-rolled on the pavement to avoid the follow-up attack, a burst of flame that detonated behind her.
Damn it. Get close and stay close, stupid. She rose as her sticks flowed into her hands and used one to launch a fireball into the air that arced toward the center of the group.
The purpose of the attack was distraction and confusion, and it did its job well. Those enemies who were still mobile scattered in all directions. The man with his feet locked in ice had the presence of mind to throw a ball of fire to intercept hers. When the two met, they shattered into countless falling stars of flame.
She dodged those closest to her and trusted that her allies did the same. Belatedly, she also hoped the nearby buildings wouldn’t catch alight but couldn’t spare the time to check. She had found her way into the middle of the remaining four assailants and hammered her sticks into whatever body parts were available while she dodged their flailed attacks.
Fyre dove past her, his claws outstretched, and clutched one of them. He flew with the man toward a cafe across the street and flung him into the wall on the second story between two windows that might have allowed him to rejoin the battle. The stone surface he impacted with wasn’t as accommodating, and neither was the sidewalk at the end of his fall.
Wymarc’s shouted, “Duck,” made her fall reflexively to the side and roll and a bolt of lightning surged into the person she’d faced. When she stood, she discovered that the man whose feet had been trapped had freed himself and melted his comrades enough out of their cocoons that they could take care of the rest. The part of her mind in charge of monitoring battle strategy revised the number of active opponents from five to eight again.
Damn it. Right. Gloves off.
Cali lashed out with her sticks at those closest to her. Where before, she’d aimed at elbows and knees, she now targeted heads and necks. In a flurry of strikes, she eliminated two of her adversaries, and a quick breeze followed by a scream that cut off suddenly told her Fyre had removed another from the fight.
Back to five. She spun and raised her sticks in an X to block a cone of fire as she channeled magic through them to reinforce the weapons’ defensive ability. She also drew in some of the incoming power and used it to replenish her own as Nylotte had taught her.
Wymarc blasted the woman who attacked her with a jolt of force magic that hurled the enemy through the window to the Rum House, where the customers had already turned the tables on their sides to create cover to shelter behind.
At least she wasn’t on fire. That’s something, right? A blazing pain seared through her skull and suddenly, she was on the ground with no memory of how she’d gotten there. “Roll,” Fyre screamed in her mind, and she complied but almost lost consciousness when agony ripped through her, starting from her head and radiating into her body. She raised a hand reflexively, and it came back bloody.
She heard a noise and realized the Draksa was speaking to her telepathically. He repeated one word over and over, and it took her a moment to identify it and another to realize what it meant. Instinc
t took control and she yanked out the metal vial with her healing potion and tore the cap off.
As she lifted it to her lips, the thin man she’d thought she’d eliminated from the fight stepped into view and grinned at her. His face looked pale and skeletal, his smile that of a skull. His foot intercepted the container on its way to her mouth and kicked it out of her hand, and her arm fell aside. Her eyelids fluttered, and she fought to maintain consciousness as he shook his head.
“Pathetic. House Malniet bids you farewell, Matriarch.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The man who loomed over her raised his hand and flames gathered in it. Cali was sure she was about to die when a force blast pounded into his face, snapped his bones, and catapulted him away. Her ally—no, friend, after this—knelt behind her and tipped a healing potion to her lips. Fyre screamed and swooped as she coughed on the liquid and she knew he was protecting them both. Finally, she swallowed enough that she could drink properly and drained the vial.
Wymarc helped her to stand and she fumbled in her pocket for the other flask. She popped the top, drank half of it, and offered the rest of the energy potion to him. He nodded and drained it. She stretched her hands forward and her sticks flew into them from different directions. They landed with a solidly reassuring smack into her palms. Her ally darted to her right, intercepted an incoming attack, and countered it.
She turned in search of an adversary and found one a few feet away who streaked lightning blasts at Fyre. She stepped forward, drew her right arm back, and drove her stick into the base of his skull with all the anger and fury she held within her. He collapsed onto his face without making a sound.
Her expression grim but satisfied, she nodded and sought her next target. Only three still stood and she realized the Draksa must have dealt with several while she was down. “Thanks, buddy,” she sent.
His mental reply was full of relief. “Don’t you ever do that to me again.”
Despite the situation, she laughed. “So, it’s all about you, is it?”
Amusement colored the anger and concern that comprised most of his emotions. “Always.”
She threw her left stick at a woman who was summoning a fireball, and her opponent flinched and lost the spell. She punched with the other weapon to deliver a fist of force into the woman’s solar plexus and her adversary backpedaled in shock and pain. Cali added power to her muscles and hurled her remaining stick in a tumbling line at her adversary’s forehead. The attack effectively disabled the last of their enemies. She turned in a circle and grinned at Wymarc.
“Well, that wasn’t so bad.”
He shook his head. “It’s not over yet. Turn around.”
Fyre was filling her in over their mental connection before she saw the reinforcements with her own eyes. Another four had appeared, harder-looking than their previous opponents. They’d sent the weaker ones in first, not trusting the element of surprise, and instead, hoped to wear them down. It had almost worked.
If Wymarc hadn’t stayed, it would have. She retrieved her sticks magically and adopted a fighting stance with her allies on either side of her. “So, you’re all Malniets, aren’t you?” she called.
The man on the far right grinned. “Maybe, maybe not. It won’t matter in the end.”
“Did you hear what I told your friends? It still stands,” Wymarc stated coldly.
The woman at the other end of the enemy line shrugged. “You’ll have to survive to make that happen and that’s not in the cards for you, I’m afraid. You should have left when you had the chance, Jehenel.”
The man beside her scoffed. “And once your house falls, I’m sure we’ll find someone far more useful to replace you.”
Cali’s ability to cope with the nonsense suddenly evaporated. She growled with quiet fury. “The two in the middle are mine. Fyre, the woman is yours. Wymarc, deal with the first idiot.” She let her left stick flow into a bracelet again, summoned a full body shield, and bulldozed forward behind it. The Draksa flew past on her left and dipped and dodged through the gouts of fire two of the enemies directed at him. Her other ally looped to the right to force the one on that side to engage him or risk being flanked.
She lost sight of her teammates as her focus narrowed to the two opponents in front of her. Both were strongly built men and possessed faces that conveyed fighting experience in scars, lines, and intensity. They separated enough to avoid presenting a single target and battered her defenses with every type of magic they had in search of a way through as she closed. By the time she reached them, she’d come to the conclusion that while she might be stronger than either of them individually, they had more power together than she did. Okay, so I’ll have to be smart about it.
When she leaned out from behind her shield and blasted one with force, he deflected it easily. Her attempted attack on the other accomplished the same result. She growled and shrank her shield to a typical buckler size, threw lightning at the one on her left, and willed it to strike him and link to the other one like a chain. He caught it on his shield, backed away a few steps, and responded with fire that she deflected with her protective barrier. She fell away from him and to the side and rolled to avoid his comrade’s shadow blast. Using her momentum, she found her feet in the perfect position to deliver a powerful sidekick to the man’s ribs. He managed to lower an elbow to diminish the intensity of the strike and countered with his own, and his longer leg caught her as she retreated.
Cali twisted awkwardly and let herself fall again. When she rolled up, lightning crackled around her body. They both blasted her with force but she poured energy into her magic and it acted as a shield. For the first time, she understood why Nylotte had wanted to teach her to drain others’ attacks. Maintaining the intensity of the flow that circled her body made her feel like the effort was draining her. She maintained the shield and willed part of the energy to flow into her hands and spill onto the ground to form whips.
Her enemies tried each of their forms of magic again—fire, force, shadow, ice, and lightning—in an attempt to pierce her defense. She snapped the line of electricity at the man on her right and twined it around his neck. He raised his hands to grasp it, and his power began to flow along the channel that connected them. She frowned, focused, and directed more of her magic down the rope to hold him in check.
The other one had tried to circle, but she lashed the left-hand whip at him before he moved out of range. He called a shield, but she twirled the weapon in the air, evaded the block, and wound her line around his arm. He immediately sent offensive magic down the channel and she blocked it. She felt no pain, only weakness from maintaining her magic.
Their contorted expressions told her that wasn’t true for them, and she increased her efforts and pressed harder. They endured and pushed back where they could, apparently having realized the same thing she did. Eventually, she would weaken, and one or both of them would be free to kill her.
She hoped it wouldn’t happen until Fyre or Wymarc was ready to help her, but she was so deep in her head that she had no idea what transpired in the larger battle. When she let her senses expand, she detected the interplay of magic from her right, which signified that the Jehenel patriarch was still engaged. She felt Fyre swoop and dart above and sent, “We need to finish this. Can you hit my targets?”
“I’ll try,” he replied but as soon as he altered direction toward them, he cursed in her mind. “No. If I do, the woman will attack you. I have to keep her running.”
Cali gritted her teeth and pushed more magic at her enemies. She tried to layer the technique Nylotte had taught her to steal some of their power over and above what she was already doing but felt her control of the lightning waver and stopped instantly. She shouted the activation word for her shield charm and it sprang into life, only to immediately fizzle under the barrage from her foes. Their eyes were squeezed closed so her other magical pendant couldn’t help.
“Damn it. I’m out of ideas, buddy, and I don’t think I can hold th
ese two much longer.”
She felt a wave of decision from the Draksa and turned to locate him. He flashed into her line of sight and dove directly into the cone of fire his opponent streaked at him. He waggled from side to side as he approached, but she kept the magic targeted on his body. Cali sensed his pain and his determination and winced when his scales began to scorch. The damage was taking a toll and forced his charge to slow, but the final result was never in doubt. His enemy realized his goal at the last possible moment and threw a shield up to take the impact, but he plowed through it and crushed her into the asphalt, then tumbled and slid until his momentum ended.
“Fyre,” she screamed, both out loud and in her mind, and sent another surge down her lines, desperate to break free and check on the Draksa. Her opponents resisted, and tears seeped from her eyes. His consciousness flickered into a dim awareness. “Get up, buddy,” she told him. “Come on. You can do it.”
His dark telepathic chuckle was filled with pain. “Legs and wings broken. Will take too long to repair. But I can do this.” She sensed it when he summoned his strength and it flowed into her through their mental connection and filled her with power. Rather than hold it, she simply opened a channel from the magical creature to her lightning lines. Her opponents screamed and writhed as the magic shattered their defenses, washed over them, and fell away. In that moment, she couldn’t bring herself to care if they were alive or dead.
Cali turned and wrapped the remaining attacker with both lines at the same time and sent a surge through to disable him fast and hard. This one was better controlled and she cut the flow off as soon as he was incapacitated. Satisfied that he would offer no further attacks, she ran to Fyre, knelt beside him, and put her ear on his side to be sure he still breathed and that his heart still beat.
