He disengaged his hand from mine, and I realized I had held on too long. “Strong grip you have there,” he said.
I flushed, glad that I was still in the shadows. It had been a while since desire had flashed up so suddenly and strongly within me. Perhaps denying my lust when I’d challenged Sistine had left me on edge.
“Are you here to punish the hood mages?” I glanced back down into the classroom. We had kept our voices down well enough that no one had noticed us.
“Hardly hood mages. Mostly they are just dumb kids.” Lionel made a face. “Listen to their attempts—dogs howling at the moon would have more chance at success.”
“What about Val Beaugard? The teacher.”
Lionel nodded. “She’s a problem. I haven’t decided what to do about her. For the others, though, I have a plan.” He rose out of the corner and moved toward the railing, taking his pendant into hand. He shut his eyes in concentration.
I wasn’t an expert on mages and magic, but the advantage of a long life meant I knew more than most. Pendants such as Lionel wore had no power, but mages prepared spells in advance and stored them on metal objects, usually items of importance to the mage or his family. Each spell required life force and time to cast, and they faded away over the course of a day or two, so mages tended to have a suite of simple spells to prepare each morning, ones useful in an emergency, then adding additional spells as required. By storing the spells, they were able to cast them rapidly. The alternative, incanting all the words, took longer and sometimes failed at a crucial moment.
Lionel had clearly planned his spell in advance. He opened his eyes, flung his hand outward, and a giant being of swirling fire jumped to life, landing down in the far corner of the room. High-pitched screams rang out as the students leaped to their feet. The fire monster flailed forward, arms of flame stretching toward the ceiling.
The illusion appeared paper-thin to me, though I knew each person would be having a different reaction to it. Rather than creating something physical, the magic of mages often tricked the mind, and vampires had a natural resistance to such tricks.
Val leaped to her feet, and it wasn’t fear that distorted her face, but rage. “The monster has arrived,” she shouted. “Mortissa has come for me.” Val’s gaze focused beyond Lionel, piercing the shadows where I hid. Despite the distance between us, our gazes locked, and as they did, I realized that Val was deranged. Underscoring that impression, she laughed manically. “You’ll pay, vile creature of darkness. You’ll pay for what you’ve done.” Then she turned and disappeared through a curtain behind her.
Lionel flung out his arm, and his fire monster illusion jumped after Val. The students who had started after their teacher shied back. The monster sent a fiery arm though the curtain, and returned with a burning body in its grasp. Even I reacted to that, jerking forward, before realizing that the burning body was just another illusion.
A few of the students who’d been near the back had escaped. Horror and despair painted the features of those who still remained. One boy fell to his knees, tears running down his cheeks, as he stared into the roiling flames that made up the monster’s face. Another boy crouched over two girls, shielding them from the imagined heat. A girl hid under a desk, her lips moving silently—in prayer rather than in spellcraft.
Lionel pressed close to the railing, moving his hands left and right. The fire monster’s voice boomed out, “You dare to meddle in forces you do not understand? You all will burn for your pride.” Its fiery arms reached out to either side, and walls of flame shot upward.
Despite all the fire, a clear escape path through the door at the back of the room was available, and those who had their wits about them continued to slip away. Many, though, were transfixed in fear, sweat streaming down their faces from the blazing heat that their senses told them was very real.
“This way.” By the door, one girl’s shout rose above the screams, drawing the attention of many others. Several youths helped their more panicked friends. Just as the room had almost cleared, another illusion sprang to life, this one a creature made of snow, holding a giant ice sword in both hands. It strode forward to confront the fire monster.
Lionel looked confused, so I scanned the room until I spotted the source of the snow monster. The girl with rectangular glasses, the one who I’d suspected of being capable of magic, had hidden in a corner and was holding her spellbook open in front of her. She showed no evidence of panic, and her lips moved as she incanted magic.
A sword of fire appeared in the hands of Lionel’s monster, and it raised its weapon to block the sword of ice. I glanced across at Lionel, thinking about the pointlessness of a fight between illusions—the swords would just pass through each other.
Lionel must have had the same thought, because he released his pendant and let his hands fall to his side. Just as the snow creature’s sword cut through the body of the fire monster, the fiery illusion disappeared, along with all the fire in the room.
The girl grinned, and her snow creature raised its sword above its head and did a twirl. I couldn’t help smiling at the sight of the giant snow creature doing a little dance even as I realized that the girl’s delight wouldn’t last long.
“I guess it’s not just the teacher I’ll have to deal with.” The scowl on Lionel’s face wasn’t caused by his fire monster losing a duel.
“You wanted to scare everyone out of ever using magic again,” I said.
“That seemed the least painful way to deal with a bunch of kids with no clue what they were getting into.”
“Less painful for them or for you?” I asked.
“For t—” He hesitated. “Both, I guess.”
Lionel moved past me on the platform and descended the stairs. I followed. Perhaps the Cressingtons’ reputation for being harsh was undeserved. He wanted the budding hood mages to get away with nothing but a scare—just a reminder not to try something similar in the future.
The snow creature disappeared, and the girl came out of her corner, greeting the two of us with a big grin. “Now that was real magic. The way that—” Her gaze fell upon Lionel’s pendant, and her smile faded. “I thought this was a test. Set by Val.” She looked to the door. “Maybe I should just follow the others. I don’t want any trouble.”
“It’s too late for that,” Lionel said. “Much too late. What’s your name?”
The girl wasn’t as young as I’d first thought—she was twenty, possibly twenty-two, with strawberry blonde hair. She wore a plain brown hoodie and faded denim jeans. “Danielle,” she said. “Listen, I really need to—”
“Sit down, Danielle,” Lionel said sharply.
She opened her mouth to object, then thought better of it and plopped herself down on the nearest chair. The chair fell sideways, spilling Danielle to the floor. She scrambled back to her feet, righted the chair, and sat again.
Danielle had only barely settled into place when Lionel grabbed the back of her chair, tilted it slightly, and dragged it a few paces forward. He then pulled a pair of handcuffs from one pocket, and cuffed the girl to the metal leg of a table.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Danielle rattled her cuffs. “I did nothing to deserve this. It’s not my fault your fire monster sucked.”
“Is that necessary?” I asked Lionel. “She’s hardly dangerous.”
“Any hood mage capable of what she just did is dangerous,” Lionel said. The friendliness with which he had treated me earlier was gone. “As for you, it’s best you leave.”
I shook my head. “Can’t. I have a job to do.”
“Danielle regrets she didn’t leave when she had the chance.”
“I’ve nothing to hide.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Stepping aside would be the wise thing to do, of course. I would be giving Lionel a chance to take care of Val by himself, possibly giving me an excuse for not killing her. Plus, Lionel wouldn’t get a chance to discover my true nature. But stepping back was the move of a plotter, o
f a spider. “I’m certain.”
“Stay behind me, then,” Lionel said. He went to the curtain through which Val had disappeared. “Val Beaugard,” he called out, “I need you to come with me. Let’s do this the easy way, okay?”
When he received no reply, he clutched his pendant in his left hand and used his right hand to brush the curtain aside. He stepped through, and I followed, passing into a small chamber created by a surrounding of mismatched curtains, their coloring mostly shades of blue and green, though one was yellow. I ran my fingers against the nearest, feeling the heaviness of cloth, and the texture, which was a strange combination of rough and smooth.
Lionel quickly checked behind various sections of curtain until he found a door. He pushed it open and exited. I didn’t follow. The curtained chamber wasn’t large, no bigger than two car spaces back to back. On one side was a desk with a chair on either side, several books and papers scattered across it. The books weren’t dogeared paperbacks, but rather leather tomes. I picked one up and found it to be written in a language I couldn’t decipher. I pulled a pile of parchments closer. The handwritten calligraphy on them, though beautifully rendered, was equally indecipherable. I moved away from the desk toward the only other furniture in the chamber: a full-length oval mirror with hungry gargoyle heads decorating a gilded border.
Lionel returned through the door, shutting it behind him. “Looks like she had a car parked out there. Any ideas where she might have gone?”
“What do you make of this?” I asked, touching one of the gargoyle faces.
He shrugged. “It’s a mirror.” He ran his fingers along the books on the desk before selecting one.
“This isn’t a dressing room,” I said, stepping closer. “It’s a place set aside for magic. Why would it hold a mirror?”
“Books like these should be kept under lock and key in the libraries of mage families.” Lionel flicked through it, obviously understanding what was inside better than I did. He picked up another. “I’ve no idea how one hood mage came into possession of so many.”
“This isn’t actually a mirror,” I said, surprised. The pane of glass was a deep black; it ate the light rather than reflecting it.
Lionel put the book down and came to stand beside me. “The glass looks like that of tinted windows. Except who would use that on a mirror?” He reached out to touch the surface, and my hand snaked out to grab his wrist.
He gave me a strange look, and I held my breath. Had I moved my hand with supernatural speed? What would happen if he learned what I was? Would I be forced to fight, perhaps even to kill him?
“What do you fear will happen?” Lionel turned his attention back to the mirror. “The old woman is just a hood mage.”
“You didn’t expect what that girl out there could do, did you?”
Lionel nodded. “Good point. If a student of hers can do that, what is she capable of?”
“Lionel you said your name was, right? Would that be the Lionel who is the son of Christian Cressington?” Christian was the patriarch of the family. “That Lionel?” I raised my eyebrows. “Also head of security for the family?”
“You are well informed.”
“My investigations lean toward the magical world as opposed to the mundane.”
“Tell me what you know about Val Beaugard. What are you investigating her for?” Lionel asked. “For her illicit magical activities? Or something else?”
While I was trying to figure out how to answer that, something stirred in the center of the mirror. Inside the black glass, a deeper blackness swirled. “Look. Something’s happening.” I stepped back.
A flash of red appeared, coalescing into two red dots. “We should get out of here,” I said, realizing that they weren’t dots; they were eyes, crimson eyes. The eyes blinked once, then a second time, then disappeared back into the mirror.
“What just happened?” Lionel asked.
I had seen eyes like that once before. “Nothing good. Those were the eyes of a demon from the underworld.”
“A real demon? Couldn’t be.” Lionel had an incredulous look on his face. “Perhaps it was an illusion. Or maybe a video screen. Bet that’s what it is.” He stepped forward. “Did you check for wires?”
Just as Lionel got close to it, the surface of the mirror bulged outward, and Lionel skidded back to stand by me. “Maybe not.”
The bulge expanded until an amorphous black shape separated from the mirror; the shape hovered in the air, stretching itself out, growing arms and legs and a head. The surface of the mirror bulged again, spitting out another shape.
“What in the name of all that is holy is going on?” Lionel grabbed for his pendant.
“I have no freaking clue.” I wasn’t sure whether we should run, or stay and figure out what was going on. I drew my katana from the inside of my jacket, and as I did, an even stranger thing happened. The shape opposite me also drew a katana. And the second shape, still growing limbs, held one arm to its neck, mimicking Lionel holding his pendant.
“They are us,” Lionel said.
I had seen enough. “I want to know if they can die.” I slashed across the first shadow with my katana. To my surprise, the shadow separated into two. The black head looked downward at where its legs had been parted from its body, then it faded out of existence. I cut through the second shadow before its legs had fully formed; it also disappeared.
The mirror had returned to a placid surface. It was still black, but it held no sign of any demon eyes or any other shadows emerging from it. “Val must be a necromancer as well as a hood mage,” I said. “Was the mirror left here as a trap?”
“A trap for whom? She didn’t know I was arriving. She did mention a name, though, before she fled. Did you notice that? Mortissa. I know of only one person by that name, though she’s not really a person.”
“Mortissa Colescu,” I said. Since I had already demonstrated knowledge of the mage families, it made sense that I’d know about vampires, too.
Lionel nodded. “Leader of an all-female vampire clan, the Colescus, a family more vicious than any other in the city.”
“I’m not sure they are the most vicious,” I said, then I hurried to clarify, not wanting to be caught defending vampires. “There are some pretty nasty vampire families in city.”
“You’re not...” Lionel’s eyes narrowed as he studied me. My throat went dry and my fingers tightened on the hilt of the katana. “You’re not employed by the Colescus.”
“Employed by vampires.” I laughed, and the laugh came out too harshly and too loudly. “Of course not. Do I look like evil to you?”
“You don’t,” Lionel admitted. He turned his attention back on the mirror. “Getting rid of those shadows was surprisingly easy. Maybe we should get out of here before the mirror does anything else.”
I nodded, returning my katana to its sheath. I took one last look at the dark surface of the mirror, then I followed Lionel through the curtain. Demons were powerful creatures, and defeating those avatars had been much too easy.
And that worried me.
Chapter 5
Back in the main chamber, Danielle was not where we had left her. She was still cuffed to the desk, but she had dragged it across the room. Using her feet, she was trying to lift a book off the ground.
Lionel rushed over and took the spellbook away from her.
Danielle scowled at him. “Release me.”
Lionel shook his head. “After what you’ve shown you can do, I can’t help you.”
“I don’t need you to help me,” Danielle said. “Just release me.”
“Do you know how much trouble you are in? You have been caught performing hood magic.”
“I don’t want to be a hood mage,” Danielle said. “I just want to be allowed to practice magic in peace. Let me join your family.”
“You can’t just join a family,” Lionel said. “That’s not how it works.”
“Maybe it should work like that. Why should...?” Her eyes focused on som
ething beyond Lionel’s shoulder. “What’s that?”
I looked over my shoulder. A mirror hung on the wall behind us, a normal one this time, showing the reflection of Lionel, Danielle, and myself. But there was nothing normal about the way Lionel’s reflection was climbing out of the mirror. This time, it wasn’t just Lionel’s shadow, but a full-color copy of him.
“What the hell!” Lionel charged forward, picking up a nearby chair and bringing it crashing down on top of his reflection. It disappeared. My reflection was next to step out of the mirror; Lionel swiped at that with the legs of the chair, and it too disappeared. Just before the chair struck home, though, my reflection gave me a little smile and a wink.
Although the reflections had been dismissed as easily as before, they had been much more detailed and alive. And the way my reflection had winked at me indicated that it knew how much trouble I was in, even if I didn’t. Whatever the demon had done, its curse continued. “We need to find Val fast, and get her to undo whatever she did,” I said.
“What should I do about the hood mage?” Lionel asked.
“Leave me,” Danielle said. “Save yourselves.”
“Danielle, do you know where to find your teacher?” I asked.
“No clue,” Danielle said.
I shot Lionel a glance, raising my eyebrows, expressing my doubts that Danielle knew nothing.
“You’re right. We need to bring her with us.” Lionel moved to Danielle’s side and unlocked the cuffs. He removed them from around the leg of the desk, then relocked them, keeping Danielle’s arms cuffed behind her back. “Don’t cause any trouble,” he warned.
“My spellbook,” Danielle said, nodding at where it had fallen on the floor when Lionel had picked up a chair.
“I’ll get it.” I bent to pick it up, then followed Lionel and Danielle out the door.
We left the Pink Palace without incident. The bouncer at the door didn’t make any remarks; he was clearly used to seeing strange things and keeping his mouth shut.
Lionel held Danielle by the upper arm, forcing her to stay close to him, giving her a jerk every few paces because Danielle’s short legs struggled to keep up. I trailed behind. My initial attraction to Lionel had been substantially dimmed by how roughly he treated the hood mage. We were linked, though, by Val’s curse; we’d need to work together to save ourselves from it.
The Demon Mirror (Dragongods Saga, #0) Page 3
