Agent of Magic Box Set

by Melissa Hawke

  Ewan threw his hands into the air, like a kid who’d had all his fun ruined.

  “Aww hell, Valdez. What’d you do that for?”

  I stared at Ewan incredulously. “I just saved your unlife, you undead pain in the ass.”

  Then I realized my mistake. Of course, Ewan was looking for a way to die. I’d unintentionally bit the big one in the desert of the obsidian winds, and he was looking for a way to even the score.

  “It’s only fair,” he pouted, as Dom clucked his tongue, urging Molly to the front of the raft. She and the shades didn’t seem to interest the crocodiles popping up all around us. I regretted Findlay’s death now more than ever. We could have used his abilities on this river. Without blood sacrifice, his power was usually limited, but I’d have let him drink a pint of me in order to make sure we made it across the river unmolested.

  “How is any of this fair, Ewan?” I hissed.

  He crossed his arms over his chest, still acting like a petulant child.

  “Ya gotta admit, being eaten by a croc would be a helluva way to die,” he remarked, leaning forward eagerly as more creatures started swimming toward us. The nearest rammed our boat, sending me careening sideways in my seat. I raised myself into a half crouched position, jabbing my spear at the animal until it swam away. I’d already died once today. I wasn’t doing it again.

  “You sit your ass down and don’t move until we reach the edge of the river,” I warned.

  But I may as well not have spoken. Ewan stood in his seat, blew me a kiss, then performed a graceful swan dive off the side of our raft into the crocodile-infested river.

  “Son of a fucking bitch!” I swore before standing and diving in after him.

  It was jarring to relive such a similar experience in a vastly different circumstances. At least this water was fairly clear. I could see to the bottom of the river and exactly where I had to point my body in order to save the suicidal psychopath. I didn’t know if it made better or worse to see just how many giant reptiles I was facing.

  I kicked hard at the nearest, sending it into its fellows. Air bubbled from the creature’s nostrils as it careened away. About a half dozen of the enormous beasts converged on Ewan. It was hard to tell through the water that bubbled past but I thought he wore a smirk as the first latched onto his arm. I reached him seconds later and wrapped the croc’s thick, armored neck in a headlock, squeezing until I felt something snap. For good measure, I hit the thing in its middle until it released Ewan.

  I groped in the water until I got a grip on the thick material of the woven armor and yanked him to me. Ewan tried to wrestle free of my grip, but I kicked hard and fast, rocketing through the water even as the tide attempted to sweep us away. Despite my strength, it was all I could do to continue in a straight line. I was unable to see much through the foam and it was an exercise in futility to avoid every rock.

  Air exploded from my lungs with every impact and it was a struggle not to inhale the water every time. Ewan struggled hard but I refused to release him until I hauled both of us coughing and spluttering to shore.

  Ewan staggered to his feet before I could and delivered a swift and brutal kick to my stomach. I doubled over in agony, clutching my middle as the water I swallowed made a scalding reappearance. I coughed weakly, turning my head so I wouldn’t throw up the stuff all over my armor.

  His hair fell in pale bedraggled sheets around his face, just as waterlogged as I was, but somehow moving faster. His expression was set in an ugly mask of rage.

  “You stupid bitch,” he snarled. “Why can’t you leave well enough alone?”

  I searched his face, a helpless pang of grief seizing me for the man I thought I’d known. My mind kept trying to grapple with the fact that he’d been a fake, a construct meant to sucker me in. And even though I knew all of that logically, I couldn’t help but mourn the friendship I thought I had. Perhaps that was why Ewan was able to kick me twice more and grab me by the hair, before I seized his ankle, flipping him over my head and further ashore.

  Ewan didn’t have time to brace for the impact. He fell face-first on the sodden river bank, face sliding half into the muck. He leaped to his feet in a move that was hard to track with the human eye and turned to face me with a guttural snarl. I couldn’t help my instinctive reaction to go for my gun. Even as my hand curled around the grip, I hesitated. I knew what Ewan wanted, and I couldn’t indulge him.

  But I didn’t think he was going to give me much of a choice. Ewan cupped his hands in front of his chest, summoning forth a spinning ball of heated wind. His eyes fixed on a point far in the distance as he wound up, a triumphant glint in his eye. I followed his gaze and saw what he had zeroed in on. A red dot floated on top of the white, foaming spray of the river. Dom steered the raft, standing on the prow like some kind of Aztec explorer.

  “Shoot me,” he hissed. “Shoot me or I swear I’m going to kill him.”

  My guts withered inside me and my undead heart tried vainly to clench in panic. So many factors could send that magical missile off-target. But with my luck, did I want to take the chance? I’d fought so hard to keep Dom alive. Almost every member of our party had managed to die horribly due to my failures.

  “Shoot me, Nat,” Ewan hissed. “Or I’ll turn your boyfriend into toast.”

  I stared at him, memorizing every plane of this new, unpleasant face. This was who Ewan really was. The monster that lay beneath the mask of geniality. It had taken a week in hell to reveal it. This was the face of the man who’d stolen everything from me. My sister. My badge, my fiancé, my friends, and ultimately, my life. And I hated him for it.

  Woodenly I drew my weapon from its holster, strapped just beneath the shield and spear I’d been gifted. Ewan’s smile widened.

  “That’s a good girl,” he purred. “Now do it.”

  “Drop the steaming magical missile,” I said in a calm, monotone that sounded nothing like me.

  If Ewan noticed the change in my demeanor, he didn’t comment on it. He unclenched his cupped hand and tossed the steaming air into the sky like he was releasing a dove. The steam dissipated into a harmless cloud.

  I raised the Beretta into firing position, sighted my target, and fired. I was only standing a few feet away from him, and there was no way I could miss.

  Ewan’s right kneecap shattered as the bullet found its mark. His knee went twisting the wrong direction with a sickening crack. I stepped forward, sighted my next target and took out the other knee with one quick, perfunctory shot. Ewan went down at once, falling into a broken bloody pile only a foot away. He writhed in agony and his screams could have woken all of the dead in Mictlan. He shouted obscenities at me as I approached, which I ignored. He was trying to summon a fireball into his hand when I stepped onto his right arm, grinding his wrist beneath my heel until I heard another snap. Another piteous sound wrenched its way from Ewan’s throat.

  The rage that pulsed white-hot within my chest frightened me. Because it was not the primordial urge to destroy that possessed Valerius. It was mine. Purely human rage for the life he’d stolen from me.

  “You crazy bitch,” Ewan wheezed.

  “You told me to shoot you,” I countered. “You didn’t say where.”

  My mind raced through all the horrific tortures that Valerius had seen inflicted over the centuries. He knew exactly where to begin peeling so the skin came off in one sheet, even as the prey struggled and screamed for mercy. I swallowed thickly, battling the revulsion that came with the image. I wanted Ewan to suffer, but I wasn’t going that far. I wouldn’t flay him alive. There were some lines I couldn’t cross. I’d broken my moral compass years ago, if I ever had one, but I wasn’t ready to give up my soul—not for a monster like this.

  “Your sister screamed you know,” he taunted, spitting sand out of his mouth. “I dropped by to borrow a cup of sugar, as it were. Shoot the shit. Put some ketamine in her tea. She didn’t even see the knife until her wrists were slit.�
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  I knew he was goading me, but I didn’t care anymore. I placed one booted foot on his chest, savoring the sound of his labored breath. He didn’t need it any longer, but old habits died hard. Besides, he needed the air to scream. Agony clouded his pale eyes. I stared down at him in pitiless wonder, and at that moment I was not afraid. The rest could wait until later when the doubt painted the perfect moment of retribution in shades of remorse and revulsion.

  I pressed the muzzle of the Beretta to his forehead and spoke again.

  “This changes nothing you know,” I said. “You will never be my equal Ewan. And in a few days, I’m going to kill you.”

  I gave him a small, chilly smile, let him drag in one last breath, and then pulled the trigger.

  chapter

  18

  I LUGGED EWAN’S BROKEN BODY towards the main gates, where found the rest of my party waiting for me.

  They’d been preoccupied with opening the massive stone doors that led into the keep, each framed with a hundred-foot tall Aztec warrior in garb not dissimilar to what Dom was now wearing. His hair was still bleached-blonde after our fiasco of a heist in Greece, but otherwise it suited him. He looked very nearly like a proud warrior, returning to Mictlan after a fierce battle. Far more so than the ghosts of Findlay or Sienna, still dressed in the modern clothes they’d been wearing when they died, or even myself for that matter.

  Upon seeing me with a very dead, very bloody Ewan slung over my shoulder like roadkill deer, they turned to stare at me.

  “What happened?” Dom demanded. “You two disappeared over the side and we lost track of you. Is Ewan—?”

  “Dead,” I confirmed.

  “Crocodile?” Sienna asked.

  “Me, actually. Don’t ask, it’s not a pretty story.”

  The icy chill of the execution hadn’t left me. For the first time, I wondered if this was what it felt like to be a psychopath. I’d never felt like this in all of my years working for Landon. A kill was something necessary, done in the heat of heart-stopping danger, meant to preserve the lives of many others. It wasn’t done on a whim and with a smile on my face. I’d had enemies that I relished killing—Algerone Lamonia sprung immediately to mind—but I’d never had anyone who I’d so viciously taken apart with my bare hands without Valerius guiding my actions.

  I dumped Ewan’s body at the foot of the gates and craned my neck to see to the top of them. The walls that surrounded the keep were composed of smooth obsidian and glittered darkly in the last rays of the setting sun. There were no handholds that we could use to scale it. So we’d have to find a way through this gate. Behind us, a few dozen shades drifted listlessly along the riverbank.

  “Got any clue how to get in?” I asked Dom.

  He ran his fingers idly over the large panels at the base of the statues, carved with antique symbols and scripts that were as illegible to me as hieroglyphs. “It says that Mictlantecuhtli will receive the worthy dead upon their arrival to his realm. We’d just arrived when you strolled up.”

  I pressed my hands to the gates, expecting them to swing open beneath my palms. Even with a good portion of my strength behind it, the doors didn’t budge.

  “Well, we’re here, and I’m dead,” I said with a scowl. “Why aren’t the gates opening?”

  Findlay cleared his throat softly and flinched when I whipped around to face him.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “Well, you’re not technically dead, Natalia,” he said, trying to phrase it as gently as possible. Findlay seemed to grasp what Dom hadn’t yet. Something had changed while I was dealing with Ewan and I was a ticking time bomb of emotion. “You’re only undead.”

  “What’s the fucking difference?” I grumbled. “My heart doesn’t beat, none of my autonomic functions are necessary any longer. How much deader can I get?”

  “You’re not merely a soul,” Sienna jumped in, nodding along with Findlay’s line of reasoning. The castle gates will likely only open for a being made of pure energy. You’re too corporeal.”

  “You’re telling me that there’s discrimination even in the afterlife?” I spat, kicking the door in frustration. I only succeeded in injuring my big toe. I hopped on one foot, spitting mad for a few seconds.

  “That’s complete and utter bullshit!”

  There was a great shuffling and grinding from the pile of blood and bones that was Ewan. I watched in disgust as his body reassembled itself in fast-motion, like one of those claymation films that show something being built. A shimmering black ideogram joined the others on his bicep and sank into his skin like a tattoo. With a great shuddering gasp, Ewan rose from the ground, pulled upright in a disquieting motion, as if he were being pulled by invisible strings. I couldn’t tell if this was a difference between Bryne and Valerius, or if Ewan was being theatrical.

  “Guh,” he groaned. “Stop having a bitch fit, Valdez. My head aches.”

  An inhuman grunt of frustration escaped my throat. Great. We’d finally reached our destination, the doors wouldn’t open, and Ewan was back in record time. If we’d come all this way for nothing, I was going to shoot someone. Again.

  “Why don’t one of you try? Sienna? Findlay?” Dom asked, glancing back at the trio of shades. It was sometimes easy to forget they were traveling alongside us. They made little sound and it was easy to ignore a person when you could sometimes stare right through them.

  Sienna shook her head.

  “Findlay and I aren’t meant for this afterlife. The Lord and Lady of Mictlan will not welcome us.”

  “But they will welcome Dante,” I said, realization cutting through my anger like a knife. I turned back to my grandfather, who hovered near the shore, staring at the gates with apprehension in his eyes.

  “Abuelo?”

  My grandfather shook his head slowly.

  “I lied, earlier,” he said. “The truth is, I was too scared, too scared to make it this far on my own. Through the deserts, past the river. There are worst things than the shifting mountains for a shade here. I wasn’t always a good man,” he said, hanging his head. “Judgement awaits me through those gates. While Mictlan offers peace for those who deserve it, the punishment may not be worth the risk of reward.”

  “I know you, Abuelo,” I said, holding his icy cheek against my hot palm. “You taught me to ride a bike. You sang at my quinceañera. If you don’t deserve a little peace in the afterlife, nobody does.”

  “There are things about my past, when I was younger, things you don’t know.”

  “The measure of a soul isn’t the things they’ve done,” Sienna said. “It’s what they learn from them.”

  “Please?” I begged.

  There was only one way into the keep that I could see, short of being catapulted in. I’d already exhausted a good portion of my body’s supply of blood crafting the raft. This was the easiest way.

  My grandfather hesitated for another minute, his body flickering out of sight and then reappearing a few feet away, back and forth like he was pacing.

  “I’m not ready to go in,” he decided. “But I will attempt to open the doors, for you, mi nieta.”

  I threw my arms around him in a hug. It was a cold wash of sensation, but I grit my teeth through it. “Thank you, Abuelo. I won’t ever forget this.”

  His arms closed around me in a chilly embrace and for just a second, I let myself enjoy the improbable reunion. Pressing a kiss to the ghostly plane of his cheek, I stepped back from him and cleared his path to the door.

  Dante approached the door warily, hesitating just a moment before pressing his palm to the seam of the gates. The doors swung open wide the second my grandfather touched them, as if he’d kicked the damn things in like Chuck Norris. He was left blinking in shock, hand still held high.

  “Maybe you belong here more than you thought,” I muttered as we passed him, stepping through the now opened gates.

  He still didn’t follow us. I made a note to make my
grandfather’s eternal rest part of the bargain, when I had the chance to speak with the guy in charge. Surely it was the least he could do if I managed to slay Ewan and Bryne permanently? I took my boots off, which were still squishy from the river, and tied them to my pack for them to dry.

  “What are you doing?” Dom asked.

  “Walking barefoot through the gates of hell,” I smirked.

  Dom rolled his eyes at me.

  “Trust me, some day when we’re reading our kids a bedtime story, this is going to sound so much more awesome.”

  He held my hand as we entered together, but slowed to a stop just a few paces in, his eyes widening at the view.

  I gasped for breath as the landscape fell away before us, into a massive canyon. Far below, the water rippled, glowing a vibrant red that almost looked like lava. A single, zig-zagging, narrow bridge was carved straight into the bedrock, giving access to the city set into the spiky, black mountains ahead. The steam curled up into great purple and blue clouds that shrouded the pointed Aztec pyramids. Spikes of rock jutted out of the abyss like nails, connected with swaying rope bridges.

  I knew somehow we were underground, though with nearly 4,000 miles between us and the earth’s surface, there was plenty of space to hide something this magnificent. There were no handrails, so we crossed the narrow, sloping pathway slowly. Something was churning below the water. I thought they were fish at first, like in an oriental carp pond. I took out my enchanted glasses to look closer.

  “Souls of the damned,” Sienna nodded. “And all those who didn’t make the journey; eventually their bodies are swept down here by the wind and river.”

  “I’m beginning to see your grandpa’s reluctance,” Dom said, turning his nose at the writhing figures below. “If I knew this was a possibility, I wouldn’t be so eager to risk my soul either.”

  Every mile or so we passed between massive statues, showing some kind of horned demon, guarding the long bridge over the moat of burning souls.