“He wants us to flank them,” Allyn said. “Come on.”
Allyn took the lead, moving down the hall away from the central corridor, then cut into a separate hallway that emptied into the mansion’s main-floor living space—a great room with a full kitchen, living room, and informal dining rooms.
Staying low, the foursome moved into the space, using the kitchen counters as cover. The central corridor split the back wing of the house in half, and using the wall for cover, Allyn risked a peek around its corner. The central staircase obstructed his view, but he heard movement above.
“They’re on the stairs,” Allyn whispered then waved Nolan and Nyla toward the other wall. Once in position, he motioned the entire squad down the central corridor, moving in pairs down either side toward the front entrance. They kept their eyes trained above, searching for the enemy force.
Jaxon emerged from his hall, peering in Allyn’s direction, and a split second later, a barrage of gunfire hammered his location. The older magi ducked back behind the wall, narrowly avoiding the salvo.
Allyn froze, holding up a fist, silently ordering his squad to stop. The carpeted stair creaked. Someone shuffled. A magazine was removed and replaced, a fresh round chambered as a Knight reloaded.
They’re advancing, Allyn mouthed to his squad.
The stairs creaked again as a boot appeared on the stairs inches above his head. The single boot was quickly replaced by more as a squad of eight Knights advanced.
Allyn kept his fist up as his squad remained in position behind the stairwell, obscured from the Knights’ view. He held his breath, fearing his heart, thundering in his chest, would be loud enough to alert the Knights to their presence. But still they advanced, guns trained on where the other squad of magi hid.
Allyn continued to wait. He had to be sure there weren’t more above, but by the time the Knights were halfway down the corridor and closing in on Jaxon’s position, Allyn couldn’t wait anymore. He ordered the attack.
A fireball and an energy blast streaked down the corridor, taking two unsuspecting Knights in the back. The remaining Knights, thrown by the explosion and the following shockwave, crashed into walls and hallway furniture at unnatural angles.
Nolan sent two more blasts into the corridor, ensuring the fallen Knights wouldn’t rise again, while Allyn and Rory spun on the stairs, their attention focused on the landing above. Two guns blazed as Allyn spotted the two remaining Knights positioned atop the stairs. Allyn and Rory’s attacks crisscrossed, striking opposite attackers, and the corridor went silent.
“Clear!” Allyn shouted.
“Clear!” Rory repeated.
At the far end of the corridor, Jaxon emerged tentatively then, when he wasn’t fired upon, stepped fully into the corridor. The rest of his squad followed his lead.
Allyn and Rory bounded up the stairs and surveyed the landing above. After a quick search didn’t uncover any remaining Knights, they hurried back downstairs, rejoining the magi force, which had repositioned itself at the front of the mansion, where they could see the work being finalized outside.
By the time Allyn and Rory joined the squad, the two remaining functional BearCats rumbled out of view, moving around the corners of the mansion.
“Where are they going?” Nolan asked.
“Retreating?” Allyn suggested.
“Then why not go back out the way they came in?”
“Because they’re not retreating.” Jaxon spun and raced down the central corridor to the back wing of the house where Allyn and his squad had been only moments before.
They arrived in time to see the BearCats round the corner of the house, moving parallel with the back of the mansion, tearing through hedges and colorful gardens. As they came to a rest, a squad of Knights, led by the helmetless Knight Commander Sedric Lang himself, sprinted from a separate entrance to the house, rushing across the grounds. He jumped onto the side of the BearCat, taking hold of one of the various handholds, keeping his other hand on his assault rifle.
Sedric laid down a barrage of cover fire as a mass of new bodies followed in his path. Most had guns and were firing at an unseen magi force, but others didn’t and seemed to be putting up some sort of resistance.
“Are those…?” Nolan’s voice trailed off.
“Oh my God,” Allyn said. “They’re prisoners. They’re taking prisoners! Come on!”
Allyn was sprinting from the back of the house before he knew it. Someone shouted after him, but he ignored them, pushing for the pair of BearCats. Their rear hatches were open now, the magi being herded inside. Wielding, he thought about sending a series of static charges in their direction but couldn’t risk hitting one of their own.
The BearCats started forward when Allyn was still at least twenty feet away, and quickly, the distance grew between them. Sedric remained on the side of the vehicle, his rifle under his right arm, pumping more rounds into the mansion. He rode without fear, barely even flinching as ice blasts and fireballs shattered and exploded against the vehicle’s armor. Allyn’s movement must have caught his eye, because he turned and, seeing Allyn sprinting after them, smiled.
He waved as the BearCat disappeared from view.
Chapter 4
Sunset arrived at the Friedl Mansion before the arch mage. By then, the remaining Friedl Family members, aided by the Blackburn and McCollum forces, had thoroughly searched the grounds for remaining Knights and carefully laid the fallen magi in the gardens, where their loved ones could mourn.
Seventeen magi were dead. It was an unthinkable number that included one fifth of the Friedl Family and a good number of the Blackburn and McCollum advanced forces. The twenty-three dead Knights gave the survivors a tiny semblance of satisfaction, but for most, it wasn’t enough. The battle had been the bloodiest to date—for both sides—and if the overwhelming sense of dread in Allyn’s gut was any indication, it was only the beginning.
He sat on the edge of the fountain, watching as magi worked into the night on their first attempts to rebuild. He should have been helping. He should have swept, mopped, mended, or consoled, but he just couldn’t bring himself to move. He wasn’t exhausted; he was exhausted of being exhausted, of feeling the same damn emptiness again and again. So he stayed out of the way and watched.
Sometime later, Nyla sat beside him on the edge of the fountain. She laid a hand on his bare arm, white light illuminating at their contact as she began to probe his condition.
He pulled away, breaking her touch. “Don’t.”
“I want to make sure you’re not injured.”
“I’m fine.”
Nyla sighed but didn’t press the issue. She sat there, listening to the soft trickle of water and the cries of the mourning mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters.
“What the hell happened today, Nyla? Since when do the Knights take prisoners?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know any more than you do.”
“And then we just stood there. We didn’t even go after them.”
“We’ll get them back, Allyn.”
“Are you sure?” he asked sharply. “I don’t know how. We don’t even know where to look.”
“I…” She sighed, pursing her lips, apparently rethinking what she was going to say. “I choose to believe we’ll find them, because it beats the alternative.”
Allyn shook his head. It wasn’t that he disagreed with her; he didn’t know how he felt. His feelings were a jumble of contradictions.
“What happened to me, Nyla?”
“What do you mean?”
“I just witnessed… no, I just took part in the death of forty people, and all I can think about are the few that were taken alive. Everything else is just…” He held up his empty hands.
“I don’t have to be an empath like your sister to k
now that’s not true, Allyn.”
“It is,” he said defiantly. “There’s this… emptiness inside me. A void where I should feel something. Anything.” He looked at his feet and rolled a rock under the sole of his shoe. “What’s wrong me with? You should feel something when forty people die. When five children were just murdered.”
“You do,” Nyla said. “You’re angry.”
“You’re damn right I’m angry! I’m angry I don’t feel more.”
“Our bodies have a way of protecting us, Allyn. Of shielding us when the horrors are too great. What you’re feeling now, what you’re not feeling, says more about what just happened than it does who you are.”
“It’s getting worse.” He rubbed his hands together as if trying to wash away the blood. “The war. The battles. All of it.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know if I can do this.”
“I don’t know if I can do it, either.”
Allyn looked up, really seeing Nyla for the first time. Her silver hair glowed softly in the moonlight, and blood streaked her soft heart-shaped face. It was an odd contradiction—someone so beautiful stained by violence.
Nyla avoided his gaze, taking her turn to be timid. “We’ve seen more than anyone ought to see. And it takes a toll. It definitely takes a toll.”
“Nyla, I…” He didn’t know what to say. He’d felt so alone for so long that he had never given any thought to how the violence was affecting the others—especially Nyla and the other clerics. She’d been stalwart, a figure of unshakeable certainty, and the magi had asked more of her than any of the others. When the battles were over and Allyn had the luxury of watching the aftermath from a distance, Nyla had been on the front lines, healing the injured, taking on the burden of their wounds and pain.
She met his eye, giving him a fragile smile that said more than words ever could. She knew. And she knew that he knew as well.
“We’ll be okay,” she said.
“And if we aren’t?”
“Then we’ll be there to pick each other up.”
Darkness had completely fallen by the time the arch mage arrived, and by then, most of the magi had turned in. Unable to sleep, Allyn was on watch, using the quiet as a time of reflection. The emptiness he’d felt before had evolved into something else. Not anger, exactly, but a form of it. It was like anger, confusion, and the sense of being overwhelmed all rolled into a tight ball that was constantly at the forefront his mind. He picked at it as if it were a scab, irritated by it but, at the same time, taking comfort in its existence. In the fact that he felt something. That his body was trying to mend itself.
Shortly after graduating from high school, his best friend, Grant, had joined the army. They’d said their goodbyes but stayed in contact, and Allyn had even visited him on base, but with every visit he’d noticed small, nearly imperceptible changes within his friend. First, it was small things: liking different music and watching different movies. Then, after a while, his taste in girls and the things he did for fun began to change too. Worse, Grant’s mood began to change, and he became much quicker to anger.
By the time Grant had been granted a medical discharge, he was a completely different person. He and Allyn were still friends, of course. They still had their shared childhood experiences and could laugh about those times, but little by little, they drifted away. Grant wasn’t the same person, and Allyn had changed too, but in a different way. Finally, the differences became too great to overcome. Hanging out weekly turned into monthly then bi-annually on each other’s birthdays, and at some point, even those excuses weren’t good enough.
Am I changing like that too? Who am I drifting away from?
He hated to think about it, hated to admit it, but knew deep down that no one could experience the horrors he had without changing in some way. Thoughts like those and memories of distant friends still plagued Allyn when the lights of a motorcade appeared like two glowing white orbs weaving through the trees that circled the mansion grounds.
Thinking the Knights were returning to finish the job, Allyn felt his heart skip a beat. Just as he was about to sound the alarm, he noticed the rumble of the engine lacked the throaty sound of the BearCats, and the lights were too low to the ground to have been from one of the tactical vehicles.
It’s the arch mage, Allyn realized bitterly. He finally showed up.
Allyn alerted the others on patrol, and by the time the arch mage’s car and two more filled with prominent members of his Elemental Guard had parked, the Friedl Mansion was once again bustling with activity.
There was no pomp or formal greeting. Arch Mage Westarra didn’t wait for it, and it wasn’t the right occasion. Instead, he nodded to Allyn and the rest of the guard while entering the mansion in a rush.
Allyn was called to the meeting twenty minutes later. Inside a large formal sitting room, he found Jaxon and Leira with Arch Mage Westarra, six members of his Elemental Guard, Grand Mage Curtis Friedl, and Konrad Blackburn of the Blackburn Family.
“Allyn,” Arch Mage Westarra said, “thank you for coming.”
“My apologies for being late,” Allyn said tightly, wondering what he had missed in the minutes it had taken the others to assemble.
Westarra waved away the apology. “Sit, please, all of you.”
Allyn found a seat next to Jaxon and Leira in an oversized armchair near the fire. It was helpful to have a unified front when addressing the arch mage, and Allyn suspected they would need it.
“Jaxon and Konrad have already debriefed me, so we don’t need to dwell on the details of the battle,” Westarra said. “But clearly this was a… setback.”
“A setback, Your Grace?” The words were out of Allyn’s mouth before he knew it. After everything he’d been through—the emptiness, the anger, the confusion—Arch Mage Westarra’s feeble words were too much. They finally gave him something to latch on to, something to channel his ball of conflicting emotions into. “Seventeen magi are dead, Your Grace. That’s more than a setback.”
Jaxon opened his mouth, but Arch Mage Westarra held up a hand, cutting him off. “It’s fine, Jaxon. I was only trying to be polite. You’re right, Allyn. I apologize. This was a massive defeat—the worst massacre we have suffered since the beginning of the war. And clearly, our strategy needs to reflect this new reality.”
Westarra’s gaze lingered on Allyn for several moments. Allyn couldn’t tell if the arch mage was looking for his approval to proceed or asserting his own authority, but he nodded anyway. He was relieved the arch mage was willing to revisit his strategy. Their current one wasn’t working. It was too defensive. If they were to stand a chance, they had to take the fight to the Knights.
“How long after the attack began did it take us to respond?” Arch Mage Westarra asked.
Us? Allyn wanted to ask. There had only been two Families who had come to the Friedls’ aid, and no support at all from the arch mage or his Elemental Guard.
“We arrived thirty-two minutes after we received the call, Your Grace,” Konrad said.
“And we were just over an hour, Your Grace,” Jaxon said.
“And by your own admission,” Westarra said, looking at Konrad, “the enemy was already within the mansion walls.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Then, clearly, your response time was too slow.”
“Our response time, Your Grace?” Jaxon asked slowly, his voice tight. Either Jaxon wasn’t as good at hiding his emotions as he had once been, or Allyn had grown to know the man well enough to see when he was fighting to control himself.
“Yes,” Westarra said simply. “Had either of your two Families arrived sooner and prevented the Knights from entering the mansion, the number of casualties would have been greatly lowered. Do you disagree?”
Jaxon locked his jaw, and Konrad shifte
d uncomfortably in his seat.
“My apologies, Your Grace,” Allyn said, laying the formalities on thick, “but it sounds to me like you’re blaming this on us. The McCollum Family is three thousand miles away, and there are two Families closer to the Friedls than the Blackburns. Maybe a more appropriate conversation would be why the fuck nobody else showed up.”
Westarra blinked, looking as though he’d been slapped, and Allyn immediately regretted cursing at the arch mage. Kendyl had once asked him why someone who had practiced law and was trained to keep cool under intense pressure struggled to hold his tongue in front of the magi leader. The only answer he’d been able to come up with was that he’d never had to confront a judge after being shot at.
“You may not have grown up within this Order, Allyn,” Arch Mage Westarra said coolly. “But you are still a respected member and a representative of the McCollum Family. I expect you to act like it.”
“Of course, Your Grace,” Allyn said. “I apologize. It’s no excuse, but it’s been a long night. It won’t happen again.”
“See that it doesn’t.” Westarra turned to the others. “You are here because of your unique set of abilities. Had Canary not been here, we wouldn’t have had the lead time we had, and the Knights’ ambush would have been more successful. She was the difference—you were the difference between a narrow victory and complete and utter defeat. I recognize that. I really do. Why no other Family offered aid is another problem, which I’ll see to personally.”
“Thank you, Your Grace,” Jaxon said.
Irritated, Allyn shifted, his gaze going from Jaxon to Konrad to Westarra. They were still dancing around the real issue.
“What is it, Allyn?” Westarra asked. “You’re squirming in your seat like you’re sitting on a hot coal.”
“Uh…” Allyn’s face grew hot under the weight of everyone’s gaze. “It’s just that—”
Capture (The Machinists Book 4) Page 3
