by John Corwin
"In town for supplies," Bella said.
"How very vexing," Stacey said, standing with a hand on her curved hip. "I would enjoy teaching those Arcanes some manners." She growled like a cat, an accurate description, given she was a felycan and could turn into various feline forms.
"We need to treat these wounds," Elyssa said, eyes softening as she inspected each cut and burn.
The next thing I knew, three women were doting over me while the other two men stood idly by in the den. Elyssa pulled out a chair and grabbed wet cloths to wash my wounds while Bella applied one of Meghan's healing salves. Stacey cooed, seeming to enjoy the exercise.
Within minutes, I was bandaged up and feeling much better, especially since the salves assisted my supernatural healing. I made a mental note to avoid magical damage in the future, if at all possible.
Fat chance of that.
"We're devising a plan to raid the Darkwater facilities," Stacey said. "Ah, it reminds me of the fun Bella and I used to have."
"What do you want us to do?" I asked, indicating myself and the other guys.
"This is our mission," Elyssa said. "No boys allowed."
"It will be quick and covert," Stacey added with a smug grin. "Not loud and messy like you lot."
"Not our fault," Shelton said, enjoying some attention from Bella as she looked at his bruises.
"You're still going to need some hacking tools to break into their systems," Adam said. "Just so happens I can help with that." He glanced at me. "I'll need all the specifics you're looking for."
"Information about the arch control rooms and the Alabaster Arch is important," I said. "But the most important thing is finding out where my Mom is being held."
"You think Darkwater has access to that information?" Adam said.
"It's a long shot, but if the Conroys own them, it makes sense they'd use them for containing powerful people."
"They're most likely keeping her close," Elyssa said.
Meaning Mom and Ivy were probably both in the last place any sane person would want to invade. "Yeah. At the Conroy residence."
Chapter 10
"What?" Shelton said, eyes wide. "You want to charge into the lion's den? We don't have the power to fight Jeremiah Conroy, much less your sister."
"I hope we won't have to fight Ivy," I said. "If anything, I hope she'll help us free my mother." Meeting Elyssa's eyes, I said, "There's a slim chance Darkwater knows where the Conroys live. But I happen to know a person who's found plenty of people who didn't want to be found." At this, I turned my gaze to Shelton. "So, how about we use those mad skills of yours to find the Conroys?"
Shelton worked his jaw for a moment, as if chewing a particularly rancid mouthful of tough beef. "Well, it would be a challenge. If nothing else, we could find them, maybe home in on your mom."
"My primary concern is how, exactly, one goes about breaking a person out of an astral prison," Bella said. "I have never encountered one."
"How exactly does an astral prison work?" I asked.
"Traps a person in between here and another reality," Shelton said.
"Do they still have to eat?"
He gave a slow nod. "But you don't pop someone as powerful as your mom in and out of the astral prison just to feed her." He chuckled. "There ain't no food slot. I'd bet good money they put her under a sleeping spell to slow her metabolism so she doesn't have to eat often. I'd also wager they haven't fed her much soul essence to keep her weak."
I hated to think of Mom slowly wasting away, caught between the walls of two dimensions.
Meghan walked in carrying bags. Adam crossed the room and relieved her burden. "Thanks," she said, and locked eyes on my bandaged form. "What in the world happened?"
We brought her up to speed while she checked the handiwork of Elyssa and the others. My wounds were mostly healed, pink skin already replacing the cuts and burns.
"To answer your question about a preservation spell, a person could go months without sustenance if the spell is powerful." She chewed on her lower lip. "If Daelissa had a hand in it, there's no telling. Plus, angel physiology is very hardy. Your mother might go even longer."
"We need to figure out how to crack the prison," I said. "Ivy might be able to help."
"Your sister might have played nice the last time we saw her," Shelton said, "but that's no guarantee she'll be happy to help you with this."
I shrugged. "Couldn't hurt to ask."
Shelton barked a laugh. "I disagree. It could hurt a lot."
Everyone started speaking at once, mostly about just how stable my little sister was after years of brainwashing by the Conroys.
I waved them off. "Hold on, people. Let's find my mother and Ivy first, and figure out the prison problem afterward." I looked at Shelton. "You with me?"
He groaned. "Fine. I'll track them down. But no promises on the jailbreak."
"That's all I ask," I said.
"You ask an awful lot," he said, scrunching his forehead.
"I'm in," Adam said. "I've studied spell decryption in my spare time, so maybe we could use the same kind of scanning spell we used to open a hole in the shield around the Cyrinthian Rune. It's at least worth a shot."
"Maybe," Shelton said.
"Justin, I don't like the idea of you approaching your sister." Concern filled Elyssa's eyes. "I have a terrible feeling about it."
Truth was, I didn't know what to expect. Ivy seemed to have come around, saving my life and Nightliss's, but it didn't make this a slam-dunk. Jeremiah Conroy had his hooks in her impressionable mind, and I knew I couldn't change that overnight.
Stacey clapped her hands gleefully. "I've missed your adventures, Justin. This will be so much fun."
Nobody else seemed to share her enthusiasm.
After dinner, Elyssa and I went through the cellar, past the arch room, and into the dungeons beneath Arcane University. An abandoned gauntlet room, formerly used by Arcanes to practice their skills, seemed a good place to attempt a replication of my earlier feat against the Darkwater battle mages.
"It felt like my chest caught fire," I explained as we stood before a target practice range.
"Tell me what happened leading up to it," Elyssa said.
I thought for a moment. "I got hit by magical damage, and then it was like my body reacted to it. Maybe it was a defense mechanism?"
"Hmm," she said, tapping a finger against her chin. "Most of the hits you took were centered on your chest. Maybe it had something to do with that."
"Or else, it was pure instinct, like what happens with my demonic side." I pursed my lips, trying to recall the exact feeling. "I felt powerful. Like nothing could stop me."
Elyssa rummaged through a satchel she'd brought along with her practice swords, among other interesting-looking knick-knacks. She slapped my hand away as I tried to grab a silvery sphere and removed a scroll. "This is a low level spell intended to stun supers that are immune to Lancers," she explained. "It's not too strong, just enough to knock someone on their butt."
I raised an eyebrow. "And what do you intend to do with it?"
She smiled. "Hit you with it."
I backed away. "Hang on. I've been hit with magic before, not to mention shrapnel, and a bunch of other bad stuff. Why would this do anything?"
"I don't know," she said with a shrug. "Maybe it'll just knock you senseless."
I knew Elyssa would never do anything intentionally to harm me, so I sighed, steeling myself. "Will it hurt?"
"A little." She pecked my cheek. "Think my big boy can handle it?"
"I guess." I walked a few feet away from her. "Ready when—"
She said a word, and a zap of lightning struck me in the chest. I made a gurgling noise as my body went into spasms, and stumbled over backwards. My butt hit the floor, causing the breath to explode from me. As I sat there gibbering like a madman, sudden warmth spread from my chest, spreading to my left arm. I felt a tingle of power itch the palms. Ultraviolet light gathered in my hand. I aim
ed toward the low wall separating me from the target dummy and focused.
Fire!
A thin beam sputtered from my hand, crackling for an instant before dying in a shower of sparks.
The warmth in my chest faded back to the usual temperature. No matter how hard I tried to repeat the pitiful success, my palm remained woefully normal.
"It worked!" Elyssa said, eyes alight. She rummaged in her bag. "Maybe I have something more powerful—"
"Whoa, hold on," I said, gaining my feet, shaking the fuzz from my brain. "I don't think I want you hitting me with something more powerful. That hurt."
She laughed. "You looked funny."
I sighed. "Yeah, a real barrel of laughs."
"Now you sound like Shelton." She smirked. "If anything, we know how to trigger your power."
"Yeah, but I don't want to take blunt force trauma to the chest every time I need to defend myself," I said. "It seems a bit self-defeating."
She touched my chest, closing her eyes, and holding the palm of her hand there as if listening to my heart beat. I felt a wave of heat that had nothing to do with angel magic radiate from her touch. Elyssa raised an eyebrow, opening an eye to look at me.
"Don't you ever think about anything else?" she said, the tone of her voice indicating she didn't mind.
"Sorry, you have that effect on me."
She removed her hand, regarding me like a lab rat she wanted to experiment on. "Can you remember the feeling? Maybe reproduce it?"
I closed my eyes and focused on my heartbeat. I could hear it beating away, probably wondering what other horrible things I planned to do to it. I thought of the heat. Tried to will the furnace to light and spread to my limbs. Nothing happened. I idly wondered if I could shoot magic beams from my feet or other appendages, and decided aiming would be awkward.
"You've lost your train of thought, haven't you?" Elyssa asked, amusement in her voice.
"How do you know?" I asked, eyes still closed.
"Because your eyebrows start moving like a nerd trying to figure out an obscure physics problem."
I sighed and gave up, opening my eyes to give her a hopeless look. "Yeah. Can't get the feeling back." It sucked not having a teacher.
Elyssa offered to zap me again, but I declined, and decided to practice the normal magic I knew while she practiced her ninja moves on a combat dummy.
"You really should join me sometime," Elyssa said, wiping sweat from her forehead as she cleaned her weapons and packed her gear.
"Join you?" I asked with a quizzical look.
"Practice," she said, nodding her head toward the combat dummy. "Magic is a great tool, but knowing how to defend yourself with finesse would definitely increase your survivability."
"Vallaena kind of taught me a little," I said, referring to my aunt's penchant for physically attacking me in her succubus form, teaching me to defend myself and manifest my demonic side without spawning into full-out beast mode.
Elyssa blurred. I felt my feet fly from beneath me and my back smacked the ground. She held a wooden practice knife to my throat. "'Kind of' isn't the same thing, Justin." She gripped my forearm and pulled me to my feet. "You used to practice with me all the time. You've gotten rusty."
"You've been doing this all your life," I said, feeling foolish and unprepared. "Plus, that wasn't even fair. Why would I be on the defensive against you?"
She raised an eyebrow. "Challenge accepted."
"What challenge?" I asked, backing away.
"Best of three takedowns," she said, shoving her duffel bag out of the way with a foot.
The center of the gauntlet room resembled a circular arena. I threw up my hands. "Wait, I can't beat you hand-to-hand."
"Use magic then," she said. "Do whatever it takes to beat me."
"But I might hurt you," I said. The only offensive spells I knew involved fireballs.
She grinned. "I doubt it."
I gulped. "Fine." I took a defensive posture, the very same Elyssa had taught me a few months ago. "Let's do thi—"
She blurred. I dodged to the side. My feet left the ground, and a hand closed around my neck, pressing me to the ground.
"That's one," Elyssa said.
I growled. Jumped up. Fine. If she wanted to prove something, I'd make her work for it.
We backed to opposite sides of the circle again. This time, I charged Elyssa, flashing toward her. She moved at the last instant, her leg sweeping low. I'd anticipated another leg sweep, and leapt over it, planning to drop behind her, and put her in a hold. Her arm jutted out and clothes-lined me in mid-air. I whumped to the ground and felt the breath fly from me.
"Two," she said, pulling me to my feet. "I win."
"Best of five," I muttered, feeling anger boiling in my stomach.
"Is someone getting angry?" she asked, batting her eyelashes innocently.
I didn't answer as I stalked to the other side of the ring. When I turned, I switched to incubus sight, enabling me to see the aether floating in the air around us. I drew it in through the thin tendrils of my incubus senses, which I typically used to feed from humans. Focusing my will, I assumed my defensive stance. Elyssa recognized my positioning instantly and came for me. This time, I threw out my hands, as if to ward her off, but instead yelled, "Shoryuken!"
Strands of webbed energy shot from my hands, wrapping around Elyssa's legs and tripping her. I jerked the strands, flipped her on her back, and straddled her.
"Two to one," I said, dismissing the spell and standing.
"Well played, babe," she said with a wink. "I like to see you think on your toes."
I didn't answer, trying to hold onto the anger that seemed to help me focus when it came to magic and demonic abilities. I had one more trick up my sleeve, but I wasn't sure I wanted to ruin my clothes to use it.
"I guess one win isn't too bad," she said, assuming her position. "Against a girl."
Suddenly, I didn't care about my T-shirt and cargo pants. I let the anger teeter on the edge of the cliff as Elyssa approached, her stance warier than before. I flung strands of energy at her, but she seemed to sense them even if she couldn't see them, and flashed out of the way.
"Not gonna work twice, hon," she said with a confident grin. She lunged.
I let the anger fall off the cliff and opened the door to my inner beast. My body swelled, muscles coiling like serpents beneath my skin, hands and feet expanding, and horns curling up from my forehead. A tail sprouted from my backside, whipping back and forth. I'd felt the pain of manifestation so many times, it hardly made me flinch anymore. Vallaena had taught me how to do it within seconds. Elyssa's hands met my huge hands. Her sweep kick couldn't dislodge my wide feet. I gripped her hands and pinned them together.
Her face went red with the effort to break free. Her foot smashed against my head, but I caught it on a horn, used my other hand to bind her feet together. She was strong and slippery as an eel, but I managed to lay her down flat on her back. I grinned, feeling my sharpened teeth against the insides of my lips.
"I win."
She slapped the ground with the palm of her hand when I let her go, growling, eyes blazing. "I'm happy you can actually defend yourself," she said, her expression clearly anything but happy. "But now you're pissing me off."
I laughed, low and guttural. "Looks like we're tied two-two."
"Not for long." She sprang to her feet, looking me up and down as she walked back to her side of the ring.
I had a sneaking suspicion she had a dozen ways to take me down in this form, but decided I could use the extra strength and stability it afforded me. As we prepared for the last round, I heard running footsteps in the hallway outside. Shelton rounded the corner, huffing and puffing.
"I just found out something really bad," he said, leaning over to catch his breath. "We've got a more serious situation than I thought."
Chapter 11
I let my demon form slip away, melting back to my usual size. "What is it?"
"Ad
am and I were talking about the battle mages we fought earlier." He drew in a deep breath and continued. "Remember the guy who was walking up the aisle near the end?"
"The one who looked like he owned the place?" I said, thinking it would be hard to forget a bald man who wielded dual staffs and had bizarre eye tattoos. "What about him?"
"He ain't no ordinary battle mage," Shelton said, motioning us to follow him. We went upstairs and found Adam looking at the three-dimensional image of the man as it hovered above his arctablet. Stacey and Bella stood behind him.
"Meet Maulin Kassus," Adam said without preamble. "Head honcho of the Black Robe Brotherhood."
"No girls allowed?" Elyssa said, narrowing her eyes at him.
"They have female members," Adam said. "But they never changed their name like the Assassins Guild."
"These people are the Arcane mafia," Shelton said. "They don't play by the rules."
"Okay, so he's dangerous," I said. "It's not like we haven't faced scary supers before. Why the rush to tell me about him?"
Shelton exchanged a glance with Adam. Looked back to me. "Because they will find out who we are. They will watch us for an opportune moment. And then they will kill us."
"Still nothing new," I said.
"I disagree," Elyssa said. "This is completely new. We usually have to hunt down our targets. These people are hunting us."
"And we'll never see them coming," Shelton said.
"So let's find them first," I said.
Shelton gave me a crazy look. "How do you propose we do that?"
"Don't they work for Darkwater?"
"Well, yeah—"
"And you know where they're headquartered," I said. "Now we have one more reason to go after them."
"You ain't ready to go up against Kassus's level of badassery yet, kid." Shelton stared at the man's image. "You remember when I told you there were very few battle mages who'd mastered all the Arcane attack forms?"
I nodded.
"Yeah, well he's one of them."
My confidence crumbled like a dry biscuit. "Maybe we should ward the perimeter and build a really tall wall."
"Another thing," Shelton said. "I used to train under Kassus. He knows who I am."
