Illumination

by M. V. Freeman

  “Did your beautiful Nicki tell you Mina is missing?”

  “How did you know?” Laurie pulled back, startled. She kept forgetting Mikhail had connections and ties to people she couldn’t even fathom. Sometimes she wondered if this was his weird super-power. Perhaps giving him all of her power was not the smartest thing to consider.

  “The witch Ava Sullivan. I told her to scry for Mina.”

  “You did what?” Laurie’s warm feelings toward Mikhail grew chilled. She didn’t like when he used Rachel’s mother; it distressed her friend. “I thought…”

  “Laurie, they are obligated to me, to us. If they want protection, they will do as I tell them.” His tone was cool, and she knew he was irritated at her questioning. Laurie debated pursuing this point. Considering the strong emotions he wrestled with, she’d let it slide. Now was not the time to bring up the past and how Rachel and her mother ended up in debt to him.

  Sure, she had all the power, but she didn’t want it to be a battle of wills. There would be time in the future to stand up to him. Right now she needed to find Mina and break this tie…before it broke the both of them.

  “Does she have any idea where she is?” Laurie stepped out of his embrace. She needed to pace and expend some energy. Her skin began to itch from the pressure of the elements. Without thinking, she naturally threaded them into the atmosphere, changing the pressure, and clouds formed, covering the sliver of a moon.

  “Nyet.” He pulled out a cigar from his pocket and lifted it up in her direction, cocking an eyebrow in question. She almost shook her head; instead she nodded. Why not? Sometimes she wished she smoked; it might calm her nerves. She ignored the fact he only asked her out of courtesy. She knew he’d planned on smoking it anyway.

  “She is with a Mage and hard to track.” He pulled out a small box of matches. The odor of sulfur mingled with the new paint, sending a wave of nausea through her. Putting a hand on her mouth, she held up the other one.

  “Please, no, I’m going to…”

  Mikhail had one tiny flaw. He couldn’t handle or deal with vomit. Something she discovered when she first met him. It worked in her favor—he didn’t hesitate. He blew out the match and pocketed the cigar. He led her to the sectional to sit.

  “Do I need to send for a healer?” He looked at her closely. She could feel the warmth of his concern and worry. She knew he’d bolt if she started to gag. The earlier rage, no longer a living thing, was shoved under layers of self-control.

  “I’m fine.” Laurie’s head cleared. “About Mina, she’s with a Mage. Is she all right?”

  “You have been feeling sick for some time.” Mikhail chose to ignore her question. “What is going on?”

  “I don’t know. I think it’s dealing with all of the elements,” Laurie confessed, rubbing her arms, queasiness making her skin clammy and cold. “Sometimes I feel like I’m going to burst.”

  “You are doing better than I expected. You haven’t caused too many storms.” He sat next to her, and she appreciated his closeness and the rare compliment. Usually he gave her orders or suggestions on how to control herself. She grabbed his hand and looked up at him.

  “Thank you for helping me today. For getting this house at such short notice.” His lips twisted in a half-smile. “I know it has something to do with the real estate investments you have, but still, this…”

  He stopped her by stroking the back of his hand across her cheek, the simple gesture stilling and calming her.

  “You wish we were in a hotel?” he teased her. “Nyet, not for my Laurie.” His tone became serious. “We have much work to do. This attack…” The rage began to simmer again, causing his accent to thicken. She squeezed his hand to let him know she felt it. “It has changed my plans,” he said with a shrug. “But I have many, so there are no worries.”

  “I thought it was to find Mina. You said she was with a Mage. Can you tell me more?”

  He may have side-stepped the earlier question, but she wasn’t going to let him off the hook. His eyes began to slowly rotate—dark blue, light green, silver—only to slide back into the darkest brown.

  He shook his head. His changing eye color halted and become solid, reminding her of the sudden stop of a slot machine. “Mage magic is tricky even for me, but I have decided to bring Cazacul to me. We will find her that way.”

  “How? He strikes me as a man who doesn’t come when called,” Laurie told him. “A lot like another man I know.” She smiled up at him. His anger made her uneasy. Mikhail was unpredictable at the best of times, but in this mood, he was dangerous even without his elements.

  “This time it is his daughter who is at risk. He wanted to make me pay for one of his Darks. This time, he will pay for his.”

  “This isn’t Mina’s fault.” Laurie tried to defend her friend. “If I got hurt, she must’ve been torn up…”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, dismissing her comment. “Her pain caused yours. That is my concern. She doesn’t help; she interferes. There is a price, and if she doesn’t pay it, I will make sure Cazacul does.”

  “How?” Laurie’s temper surfaced, an internal pressure making her eyes narrow and her tender feelings shift into something more confrontational. She managed to keep her own frustration in check, not wanting to fight.

  It wasn’t like he was dealing with a banker. The Dark leader made her nervous, maybe because he looked at everyone as a future meal.

  “I am bringing Thomas Voda across the Boundary. He wants to negotiate a deal with Cazacul. I plan to give them both the opportunity.” Mikhail’s tone promised there was more to this little scenario, but before she could ask, she was silenced by the electronic ring of a cell phone in his coat pocket.

  He quickly answered it, standing up from the couch and moving away. She still couldn’t understand Russian, but she did comprehend his anger. The simmering rage he’d managed to control ignited. Laurie gasped, unable to stop the elements she held from reacting. The house creaked as the push of wind and thunder exploded, rattling the windows as hail pelted the glass like small angry rocks from her psyche.

  When he disconnected, Mikhail bit out a few harsh words she knew were profane by the sound of them…

  “What happened?” She stood, and he turned, his eyes glowing white.

  “Voda. He came to the Boundary with a Tri he siphoned from.” His voice snapped with the effort to control his outrage. “The man has balls.”

  “The boy is all right?” Laurie’s only concern was the young Tri. She knew what the Mages did to them, and it sickened her.

  “He will be,” Mikhail assured her. “I am allowing Voda to cross.”

  “What? After he…” Laurie couldn’t believe this.

  The audacity of the Mage shocked her. A rock settled somewhere in her stomach, the weight of it making her knees shake. The war the Elementals managed to avoid was now on their doorstep—packaged as a high-ranking Mage official.

  “I’m having him drained. To help the boy and keep him weak.” Mikhail’s smile turned shark-like. “His stay will be on my terms.”

  Laurie sighed. Soon Cazacul would come, and she’d be smack in the middle of opposing forces. She rubbed her aching head. “Do you have any Vodka?”

  Chapter Twelve

  “DO YOUR ANSWERS INVOLVE skulking here in the corner?” Xander murmured as Mina pushed him back, his spine finding the sharp points of the rough stone wall. “I can’t blend into the rock.”

  “Stop being silly,” Mina huffed out in response. “We need to stay out of sight.”

  “And such a fine job we’re doing.” He was equal parts amused and annoyed at her attempt to protect him. He still couldn’t understand why he allowed Mina to manipulate him into following her. The rational, sane part knew he was being a fucking idiot. The other part of him, the romantic, artistic side he’d tried so hard to stamp out, found the Darkling an addictive drug. He’d used more of his reserves than he’d intended assisting Mina to slip through the protections surrou
nding this Dark realm. Finding the weak spot in the fortifications of the wards had cost them both in power and energy.

  Straining, Xander sought to see into the gloom, but Mina kept the shadows around them, hiding them from view and blinding him from seeing what surrounded them. He determined they were in a large cavern, taking refuge in a small niche.

  “What are you doing here?” a roughened voice growled to their left. “This is no place for you.”

  On instinct, Xander jerked Mina behind him, knowing he was putting himself at risk. Honor toward a Dark was a weakness, one he couldn’t seem to shake. He began pulling at his flagging energy to call up a spell he wasn’t sure he had the strength for.

  “Casper, what’s going on?” Mina slipped out from behind Xander, her fingers brushing his arm in reassurance. The scrape of something heavy on stone indicated a large being moved nearby. Mina’s voice held a note of anxiety he’d never heard before. Instinctively, his hand closed around hers with his own brand of support.

  “This is civil war, princess.” The soft huff of a breath in Xander’s ear made his skin prickle as if ants marched over it with their tiny feet. “Elspeth is making a bid for the throne, the lower cavern beasts are moving up, and Cazacul has ordered us to stop them. You’ve arrived at the wrong time.”

  “You put us into the middle of a battle?” Xander ground out. His irritation overrode his concern at being within arm’s reach of something that could rip him to shreds in his weakened state. A low, vibrating growl from the unseen Dark sounded in his ear. Death seemed determined to find him.

  “You have a Mage here?” The rough voice from the unseen Dark addressing Mina changed to something chilling and hard. Was it Xander’s imagination or did he just feel the sharp edge of a claw along his skin?

  “Is there a problem?” he responded, keeping his voice level. The rush of antagonism unfolded within, and the thrill of it made him smile into the darkness. He hoped the creature saw it.

  “Let me assist you…” Mina interrupted, her words tumbling out in quick succession. She tightened her grip on his hand in an effort to keep him from speaking. Like that would work. “I’m bringing him to my father.”

  “Oh, yes, let’s go meet the man who is about to go into battle. He’ll welcome us with open arms.” Xander was unable to focus on Mina, but he felt her lithe body lean into him.

  “Be quiet,” she hissed at him.

  What was she up to? Turning him in? She wouldn’t.

  “Let me take care of this problem,” snarled the voice next to him as the shadows began to dissipate around them. “One less Mage to worry about, and Cazacul will reward me well.”

  “No!” Mina cried out in a fierce voice, putting a hand out in a gesture to stop. It took Xander a second to realize he could see the movement and was no longer blinded. “Stay away from him. We’ll find someplace to hide until we can talk to my father.”

  A rumble of sound vibrated the floor, erupting from countless throats. The rustle and electrical sensation of many beings moving pervaded the underground area. The innate ferocity thickened the musty air, tightening nerve endings to a fine-tuned fever pitch.

  “Too late,” the unseen Casper rasped. The shadows fell completely away from around them, revealing in the dim light a room filled with Darks, some heavy and squat, others tall and lean, beautiful and horrifying. “It is already beginning. Your father is on the far side. If you mean to deal with him, you’ll have to fight your way through. There is no other way out.”

  With a rough shove, Xander found himself thrust into the middle of the confusion.

  “Let’s see what this Mage is made of.” The Dark gave a low, grating laugh. “If he survives this, then maybe we’ll spare him.”

  Violence surrounded them. Xander staggered; his knees were weak, unstable, but he refused to go down. He was dangerously low on energy, but he felt the warmth in his chest as his innate power kicked in—his survival instinct. Around him were flickering figures with too many limbs, sharp teeth dripping dark liquid as serrated claws ripped into soft flesh, sounding like the tearing of wet cloth. The low vibration of growls and shrieks of fury blended with those of pain, fear, and the dying.

  “This way,” Mina commanded. “Run!”

  Her hand slipped from his, and he sought it automatically. His eyes and ears couldn’t process everything around him. Adrenaline roared through him with a thunderous rush as reflex took over. Spells, half-forgotten, flowed into him and out as a living conduit. A leering mouth froze as he petrified the skin to stone. His eyes tracked the darting figure of Mina as she slipped and twirled between the combatants like a dancer in the macabre sea of bloodshed.

  “Mina.” He wasn’t sure if he whispered or shouted the name as he followed her. Half-remembered moves from past training kept the monsters from mutilating him. He ducked, wrestled, and deflected creatures from nightmares: humanoids with lizard skin and no nose, others with irregular-shaped limbs reminiscent of crustaceans scuttling about like man-sized crabs, model-beautiful women with clawed hands who laughed as they shredded through the flesh of weaker beings.

  He’d heard of battles like this, but in his lifetime, combat was held in a civilized fashion—murder or assassination. This warfare was raw, brutal, with no rule of law to bind it. The deepest, darkest part of him relished it.

  Am I a monster too?

  Something grabbed his ankle—a clawed hand attached to a squat creature with sharp bristled hair, too many eyes, and a mouth too big for its small head. He kicked the bulbous orbs, his foot sliding on a thick jelly as they ruptured, blinding the thing. It let go. He didn’t check to see if it pursued him but followed after the elusive Darkling. He knew where she went by some instinct, a knowing that directed his every footsteps and actions.

  He couldn’t quite reach her; she was always dancing out of reach. Why did he follow her? He kept asking himself this question in a litany of self-recrimination. He should just transport, but the battle around him brought out the damned protective streak he had for her. What if one of these things touched her? Slashed her? The thought pushed him forward, never faltering, after Mina. He didn’t want to think of the other reason he stayed—the battle itself.

  A roar. A sound, bestial and triumphant.

  For a moment, he glimpsed the powerful form of Cazacul as shadows undulated around him—a living cloak. The darkness rippled as it encircled the two combatants. The monster was a head taller, but he didn’t care about the leader of the Darks, only Mina. She was small; she couldn’t fight these creatures.

  “There you are.” The Darkling was at his side. “We’re almost there…” She pointed toward her father, fighting. Grinning, Cazacul tore the larger beast’s muscled arm from its shoulder socket. The sucking pop and resulting scream could be heard through the din. The Dark leader didn’t stop; he ripped the monster limb from limb—a graphic example for all others.

  The bass sound of a canine’s growl jerked Xander’s attention back to Mina. He reached out, grasping her slender and firmly muscled arm, jerking the Darkling behind him as a wolf lunged forward and flipped through the air. A wiry, gray-skinned man wielding an iron-and-wood staff as leverage kept the creature off balance. With a deft move, the scrawny Dark flipped the four-legged shifter over.

  Without waiting, Mina tugged Xander’s hand and pulled him between the fighters. How did she find the pathway? He ducked once—something round, quite possibly a head, sailed over them. He should be horrified, frozen at the horror around him. No. Instead he found it invigorating. Here there were no pretenses; you met the enemy and either won or died. His primal self, the side he kept under strict control with stringent rules and codes, wanted out, to be part of this, to show them and himself his dominance. He wanted to drink their blood.

  “Come on. Hurry,” Mina said, her impatience tangible. She halted abruptly and stumbled back into him with a squeak. A sound lost in the cacophony around them. Xander’s breath left in an oomph.

  Before them, stan
ding shoulder-to-shoulder, swayed three bone-thin creatures with skeletal arms. Their long beak-mouths were reminiscent of death masks but longer, pointier, and functional. Something wiggled along their limbs, across their collarbones, weaving thin sticky threads. They blocked out the fighting around them. The sharp edge of stone dug into Xander’s back for the second time, and once again there was nowhere to go.

  “Bone eaters.” Mina pressed into him as the three horrors leaned forward as one, their sharp beaks sniffing.

  Bile burned the back of his throat; the scuttling movement along their bald heads and narrow shoulders were spiders. The size of the scurrying bodies varied; some were as small as his fingernail, the largest the width of his palm. The largest one crawled over the head of the middle bone eater, waving its spindling legs in salute.

  Ugly bastards.

  A long black tongue darted out and touched Mina’s cheek. Her eyes flew wide, and she twisted and turned from its reach.

  Shocked at her reaction—he’d never seen her totally lose it—Xander hugged her close as spiders flowed down the beak of the tallest creature toward her. He didn’t think. Words burned the back of his throat, and he released a spell—one specifically Mage-magic-based. Its energy reacted to Darks and their strange power.

  It rolled outward, lighting up the bone eaters and their parasitic mates. High-pitched screaming, like fingers dragging down dozens of chalkboards, erupted from the spiders. The sound blended with the larger noise of the battle. The skeletal creatures writhed, not moving fast enough, but it wouldn’t have mattered. This magic was targeted at them and designed for them and would’ve followed. Thick ropes of the spell wrapped their limbs, consuming them—turning their flesh to ash.

  The world, already half-lit, grayed. The stability of the ground under his feet became questionable.

  “Xander,” Mina said, her urgent voice loud in his ear. “Don’t fall. They’ll eat you.” Her cool fingers stroked his cheek. He blinked, trying to bring her into focus. He didn’t want to know who “they” were. He could only guess. The brief surge of energy he’d managed to harness upon entering this battleground left him in a rush, the power used to perform the spell to protect her consuming any residual energy he may have stored.