Examining the contract, Xander frowned. If they agreed to this, it would impoverish many of their Mages, a majority who relied solely on the profits of businesses for their income. The lower ranking and weaker were even more dependent.
“Impossible.” Xander slid the pages back to the Dark Leader. “I can agree to some businesses, but this is ridiculous. It will destroy the ones who need this the most.”
“Like you destroyed our children?” Cazacul countered angrily. “Darks are a violent, bloody lot, but we don’t have half the corruption you do. We treasure our offspring. Your kind experiment on them.”
A roll of energy hit the room as if someone had thrown in an incendiary bomb. The chairs were flung back, and the pressure in Mina’s ears changed, even as she grappled to not fall backwards in a heap, her treasured snacks in her hands.
The door flew open, and the Mage version of a chameleon, Rousseau, walked through. Mina despised him. As head of security for the Chairman, his ability to blend in naturally to all his surroundings made him dangerous. Everything about him was colorless and non-descript, and when mixed with magic, deadly. Even his emotions were flat and tasteless.
“Good, just in time,” Rousseau commented with a smile she knew was false.
Beside her, Xander reached down to help up Thomas Voda, who’d sprawled on the ground in a heap. Voda’s emotions were a mixture of fear and resignation. Not at all appetizing, and she’d hoped to get some sustenance. Her father was on his feet, towering over the smaller man, exuding the desire to snap his neck. She probably wouldn’t stop him. She popped a cheese puff into her mouth and chewed. At the end of the table to her right, Mikhail stood, his expression tight, mouth thinned, and not a hair out of place. He was alarmed and righteously pissed; now that would be tasty if she had a beer.
“You always do know how to ruin things,” Xander told the man, who gave him a sneer in response. Interesting. Rousseau was uneasy around her lover—oh, how she liked thinking of this word. This wormy little man had similar uneasiness the last time they were in the same room together. She hoped it wouldn’t get as ugly.
The sensation of bloated power, oily and wrong, made Mina gasp. It was as if ants crawled over her skin in the presence of this distorted magic, and when the broad form of the Chairman entered the room, she swallowed.
What’s wrong with him?
Leonid Tepes strolled in. Behind him was Xander’s father, Stieg Fjordson. The lines on his face were pronounced, shoulders stooped, but his sky-blue eyes, so like his son’s, were bright with warning as he glanced at her and then Xander.
Guilt, rancid and thick, was as strong as the off-putting magic her uncle was filled with. It was wrapped around Stieg, and her desire to consume any emotion evaporated. There was only so much wrongness she could deal with before it made her sick.
“Having a meeting without me? How inconsiderate,” Leonid said, his voice rolling across the room, an effect he amplified.
She wondered if he realized he copied her father when he did this; she didn’t think he’d appreciate it if she pointed it out. When those same black eyes focused on her, she couldn’t miss the maniacal glint. He was bat-shit crazy.
A shift of movement and Xander’s broad back moved to keep him between her and the insane Mage leader. Her heart swelled. He was worried, angry, and protective—now that last one was tasty, but she wasn’t going to touch his emotions. She’d promised him she wouldn’t.
Not sure what to do, Mina did the only thing she could think of. Holding up the bowl of her favorite snacks, she said in her cheeriest voice, “Cheese puff?”
Her uncle laughed in his overly loud I-am-not-amused tone. “Oh, no, but you do have something you can give me.”
Great. The sliver of malice and covetousness caused a shiver to ripple down her back. For the first time in her life, she wished, instead being able to sense emotions, she was psychic, like her father was at times. No such luck. Her eyes slid to her parent, and she wondered if he picked up on the threat.
The Chairman nodded toward Misha. “And shame you didn’t invite me, Petrov.”
“I’m firing my security and starting over,” Mikhail returned in a wry tone. “They are getting lax if they let you through.”
This is why she liked him. Mina knew Misha was deeply uneasy. Fear was something he didn’t indulge in, but a healthy sense of knowing when things were not in his favor saved him more often than not. Maybe he would like a cheese puff. Probably not, she decided.
“You have openings. They’re all dead. Rousseau is very effective.” The Chairman smiled—which was an awful expression on him.
Mina only saw him smile once or twice at Isabelle before she died, and those were small tilts of the lips. This one was a strange, broad smile.
Misha cursed in his native tongue; this caused him pain. He didn’t like it when his people were killed.
With careful movements, she placed the bowl on the table. The flicker of the projections caught her eye. Every one of the Mages was watching with varying degrees of grimness. Since they weren’t physically present, she couldn’t pick out what they were feeling. Xander motioned for her to get behind him again.
“Glad you’re here.” Her father’s rough voice brought her attention back to him. “Now we can really get this solved.”
“Oh, yes,” her uncle agreed with his weird cheerfulness. “We’ll deal.” With a wave of his hand as if dismissing them, he uttered a roll of syllables.
No!
The effect was immediate; bindings enveloped all of them. The coiled smoothness of the spell wrapped around her, and immediately she relaxed. Fighting a binding spell would cause it to tighten until it rendered one unconscious.
Her father roared, his power exploding and ripping through the bindings, which reformed as quickly as they broke.
A low murmur from Xander and the threads of the magic slowly unraveled, but the same thing happened; they’d reform. Thomas Voda kept still, a sense of resignation rolling over him, even as anger spiked in Misha to match her father’s rage.
“Now we’ll deal.” Her uncle beamed his walk-to-the-dark-side smile. Nodding toward the projected Mage visages, all were outraged…except one—the blond-haired woman with the pinched face. She tried to hide a satisfied smirk. “Thank you, Jeanine. I’ll remember your help. The rest of you, your services are no longer needed here. I’ll take care of this.” The images disappeared, the magic link broken by a nod from him.
Oh, this wasn’t good.
The room darkened as her father called the shadows. This was going to get bloody. She moved closer to Xander. She wasn’t leaving him.
“What the fuck, Leonid,” her father snarled. “Do you want total destruction of your people? This shit you’re pulling will ensure it.”
Wrinkling her nose, she tried not to say anything. Her father didn’t have to be so happy about the possible elimination of the Mage race, even if he didn’t show it.
“Oh, I have no intention of killing you, if that’s your fear.” Her uncle pulled out a chair and sat down. “Please sit, everyone.” A flick of his fingers and the bindings grew, traveling down their legs forcing everyone’s compliance.
Where had he gotten all of this power? Mina looked closely at him, noting the puffiness of his face. The look reminded her of when she’d encountered Thomas Voda after he’d siphoned too much energy from the young Tri. But he didn’t have the flavor of one…
“You’ve been draining the life force out of Darks and Elementals.” The words breathed out of her mouth. Just as before, when she’d told Misha his cousin murdered Elspeth, this pronouncement was met with a tense silence. “That’s…sacrilege.” Killing others to gain power brought on madness. Oh, didn’t he know he’d be destroyed from the inside out?
“I doubt you know what that means.” Her uncle didn’t deny this accusation. “But, there are advantages to my choices as well as disadvantages. You are going to pay the final price so I won’t have to rely on others.”
“No,�
� Xander broke in, his tone low and menacing. Out of the corner of her eye, she was sure the bindings slowly snapped, one by one.
“You destroy children. This is the sign of a monster, not a leader,” Mikhail spat, his horror, fury, and helplessness at this situation overwhelming her senses. Those emotions were not tasty.
Her uncle ignored Mikhail. He had no power; he wasn’t important to him. He fixed his basilisk gaze on Xander. The Chairman disregarded the tell-tale signs of the blackness forming in the corners. Her father wasn’t talking anymore; he was gathering his forces.
“You have a choice now, Xander. Your father assures me you are a good Mage and you support your people, but you’ve thrown in your lot with a Dark.” Those reptilian eyes rested on Mina, and she wanted to wash off her skin where his gaze rested, but she couldn’t move. She knew if she said anything, he’d silence her. She was a strong magic-user, but not up against this monster.
“Is she worth it? Is she worth losing your family, your people, everything for her?” His gravelly voice, so similar to her father’s, but filled with even scarier things, made Mina shiver, and the binding spell tightened. He didn’t wait for Xander to respond, but continued in the same slick tone, friendly and threatening.
“Your mother will lose all her stature, her home, your father, a son…and if the mood strikes me, they’ll be publically executed. So, tell me, Xander Fjordson, which do you chose? Because it is a choice. Your life, where you will be groomed to be my replacement to lead the Mages as I’ve intended and your family will live, or embrace being shunned, an outcast with a bounty on your head, living with the filth of those who can’t see day. Which will it be?”
Mina waited. Xander would choose her; he wouldn’t let her down. Why was he confused? She stared at his back.
He said nothing.
“I’ll take that as an answer…”
“Xander…” His name left her mouth as the slamming of magic hit and the room disappeared.
He’d said nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“CAN’T WE DO ANYTHING?” Laurie yelled at Gregori. “Don’t we have allies, people who owe us, favors we can call in? The damn Chairman is there! He’ll kill them all.”
“No. They won’t risk the ire of the Mages right now or the Darks. We are on our own.” His grim face made her blood go cold. Without thinking, she began to direct the elements there.
“Why the hell did he do this without back up?” Laurie cried.
“You’re the back up.”
They were all screwed.
“No!” Xander shouted as he whirled around in time to see Mina disappear with a pop. “What the hell have you done with her?” Panic roiled up in him. The last expression he saw on her face was the raw pain and betrayal from him.
Why the fuck did he hesitate? Why did he not stand up for her?
Because when the Chairman talked, he stared at his father standing silent, head bowed, a graphic example of what he’d leave his parents with. The once proud man and his mother, both who loved him, cared for him, raised him, and pushed him to be who he was, would be at the mercy of a madman. It was all on him.
His throat closed up.
Then the Chairman, the unholy bastard, used the opportunity to take her.
Take his Mina.
“Oh, she’ll be fine, my boy,” Leonid assured him in that fake voice of his. “For now.” He stood. “And don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing, Stefan. If you call up your shadows, I’ll kill everyone in this room—and it will be your fault.”
“I knew you’d go mad one day,” Cazacul growled. “You did this shit when we were children, and you haven’t changed. You just have bigger toys now.”
“Oh, I have changed, Stefan.” Leonid drew out his brother’s name in a mocking tone, telling everyone he didn’t give a hot damn.
Xander didn’t care; he wanted them to talk. He concentrated on his spell, feeling the Aramaic words like pebbles on his tongue. He didn’t have to utter them, just see them. It was an old incantation, similar to the one Mina almost died in with her friend Nicki at the beginning of this war. This one wouldn’t take out a city block, but it would rip the top part of this hotel off.
“You asked why I’m doing this.” Leonid leaned on the table. “I want you to lose everything you love—and still live.” He glanced down the table at Mikhail. “How does that feel, Petrov? A good lesson, don’t you think?”
The Russian said nothing. What could he say? It had been the Chairman who’d made sure everyone of his family had died one-by-one in order to control him. Xander had been there, watched his former friend as he faced these horrors, and it shaped him, carving out pieces of him internally. He used to think the Elemental deserved death.
No, Mikhail deserved vengeance.
“Is this about pay back?” Cazacul spat out. “Her death didn’t just hurt you. We both paid, but she killed herself because of you.”
“You are never to speak of her,” the Chairman screamed, rattling the windows. “Isabelle loved me, not you.”
It clicked.
Xander’s breath hitched, but he couldn’t afford to stop now, he had to get the spell formed. Once it was whole, he could hold it. He could contain it indefinitely before releasing it.
Isabelle, the dark-haired woman with the same large eyes, was Mina’s mother. The Chairman’s wife. There had been rumors he couldn’t have children, and the pregnancy had been a surprise. Xander had heard his mother whispering about it with her friends. He hadn’t paid attention; gossip was rampant in their circles.
“She killed herself because you killed one of her children, one of mine.” Cazacul’s voice was controlled, deadly, a direct contrast to the hysteria of the Chairman.
Xander was near the end of his spell, but he knew he wasn’t the only one who gathered their power. The Dark lord knew his words agitated his brother. He was keeping him talking even if it caused him pain.
“Your daughter’s death ensured Mina’s life and gave us the clue to how Mages can survive.” Leonid’s eyes were wild, like a rabid animal. “Xander was the first success. All it cost us was his twin brother, like Mina lost her twin sister. But she turned to your filth, the magic tainted.”
Xander gagged and almost lost the spell. He swallowed the last word, and it formed, heavy inside him, waiting for release. His eyes caught his father’s steady gaze.
“I had a brother,” he breathed even as the Chairman and Cazacul still carried on their acrimonious words. “How could you…” Stieg was too far away to answer. Something deep in his psyche broke open, and images rolled through him.
A boy like him.
They’d been five. He didn’t even remember his name, only his face as he lay next to him, shivering on the cold metal gurney, unable to move. The room so bright it hurt his eyes. He cried out for his brother, who looked at him and smiled.
His brother’s expression froze, agony rippled across those features, and he felt it on his own, the burning fullness of too much power.
No. No! My brother. It’s my job to watch out for him. My job. I failed. His own childish words ratcheted about inside his head, resonating throughout him. Where those words fell, the bite of grief followed.
His brother’s face crumbled to dust, and he’d screamed…and didn’t stop until they’d put a spell on him. The last bit of loyalty to the Mage race disintegrated, like sand scattered in the wind, excoriating him.
His father held up a hand, his mouth moved, but Xander didn’t hear. He turned his head. He was done.
Mina never left him. She’d stayed with him to the bitter end. Letting her own brother pay the penalty for helping them escape. He’d followed her against his own judgment to the Dark dwelling because, deep down, she’d never betrayed him. His torture wasn’t her fault, but his. A price paid decades after his own failure to save his brother. It didn’t matter if he was a child. The responsibility was there. And Mina paid the same tax. Her own sister killed for her to live, destroying he
r mother slowly with regret.
How rich that she’d gone Dark. The Chairman, a cuckolded husband, willing to overlook the indiscretion to obtain his prize Mage, having his triumph ripped from his hands. Both he and Mina failed by their parents.
“I will kill all of your children. Maybe then you’ll know the extent of my pain.” Leonid’s voice was no longer manic, but eerily calm. “Mina will serve her purpose by giving me the ability Xander has—no more siphoning to survive, but only to gain power. She’s the reminder of my failure and will be the instrument of my success.”
“You’re experimenting on children without consent from the parents,” Thomas Voda’s voice broke through, filled with horror. “We have protocols.”
He didn’t even care if the children were being used up. Xander found any bit of his respect gone. The man was aghast because the parents didn’t know.
“Fuck the protocols.” The Chairman sneered. Ancient Greek fell out of his mouth, and the incantation whipped out of him like a lash.
Voda gasped, his eyes bugging outward, his own power drained. He couldn’t fight the magic, and his body folded in on itself, until all that was left was a pile of clothes and the disintegrating binding spell.
“Best I’ve seen him in years. And you…” Leonid pointed to Mikhail. Another spell, this one old German, shot out of him, hitting Mikhail, who fell back with a grunt, unable to fight.
“Misha!” Laurie screamed.
She heard her friends echo her horror. The sounds came from a long distance.
They’d watched the events unfold as if they were in some bad dream. At one point, she’d gotten on the cell phone herself, calling every damn Elemental she knew, but no one picked up. Damn traitors, looking out for their own skin.
Sharp jabbing pain, like tiny knives slipping through her skin, a faint resonance of what Mikhail suffered as he took the brunt of the spell. His cry was the final hammer on her heart.
Laurie opened up the bond she fought so hard against, not even conscious she did so, knowing only her desire to be with him, to help him. His heart beat was faint; he was slipping from her.
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