by K. Gorman
She stared at the soldiers on the screen. “So, we’re stuck here, with no way to get out, and they’re probably going to imprison you inside that box?”
The box looked a little bit small for him—only about a foot squared, if she had to guess—but he had mentioned a pocket dimension.
“Yeah… Sorry, this was designed like a panic room.” Aiden glanced around the dim, concrete walls. “It’s times like these that I wish I were an Earth Mage.”
She ignored him, still focused on the screen. “Can they get in?”
“Eventually, if they brought explosives. Faster if they’ve got some old-world Lürian shit.”
“You can’t, I dunno, burn a hole in the floor or something?”
“Solid steel, and a lot of concrete and dirt after that. They’d get in first. But…” He leaned over the engine, stooping to type in a few commands. “Since I won’t need a shield much longer, we can redirect some energy. Did I mention that this engine was made from one of the ships?”
She raised her eyebrows, watching him. “I… think so?”
“So was the door.” He shot her a grin over her shoulder. “And all Lürian ships are armed.”
He clicked another key, and the screen lit up.
A beam of light shot from somewhere below the camera, splitting apart midway and striking five men—including the box carrier.
Four soldiers fell.
The box, however, absorbed the light beam before it could hit its wielder, making it curve away and vanish into its black siding.
“Cheater,” Aiden said.
She stared at the screen. On the floor, the soldiers who had fallen weren’t moving.
Holy shit, this is actually happening.
A second later, the box carrier dropped down the last stair to the landing and lunged toward the door, growing larger in the camera feed. A heavy clunk came from behind her.
The video feed blanked out.
Aiden’s chair scuttled back as he spun around, and she took a step away. Without the feed, the room had dimmed. A large part of her mind had begun to spiral, ribbons of panic unraveling in her stomach. Her breaths seemed loud and fast to her ears, the quiet between them too long.
His hand found her shoulder and gave her a little nudge. “Go stand by the wall. In the corner.”
Another clunk smacked against the door, and she flinched. His grip tightened, then let go.
As a series of scratches sounded—along with what she guessed were drill bits—he stepped forward, putting himself between them and her.
With a jolt, she hurried to obey. A brief surge of Fire energy climbed through their link as she stumbled back, then it dropped off. Light fluctuated behind her. When she glanced back, orange, fire-touched symbols had crawled to life on his bare skin, jittering into loose groups on his forearms, waiting to be used—and something clicked into place for her.
That was how Mages fought. Not by pitting raw Elemental power against each other, but with spells. Symbols built on symbols until the right or wrong sentence was created.
As her reaching hand bumped into the back wall, Aiden went still.
The scratching had stopped.
He cocked his head. “Explosives, I think. Watch—”
Crack!
The wall shuddered beneath her hand, and she yelped as the sound of the explosion concussed through the room—for half a second, it felt like it was inside her, reverberating through her bones and muscle, thrumming on the inside of her head. Dust rained down from the ceiling, some of it landing on her hair and arm.
“Out,” Aiden finished. He coughed, and a snap of fire flicked over his hand as he reached up to rub part of his jawline. After a few seconds, he glanced over his shoulder to her, the symbols on his hand lighting his face in a fiery glow and reflecting in his eyes.
“I don’t think I can win against that thing,” he said with another cough. “If you get through this, go find Roger. He’ll be the easiest to locate. Then get your dad and get out of the city.”
A bang hit the door. She jerked against the wall, heart hammering in her ribcage. Closing her eyes, she drew a slow, ragged breath through her lips, trying to ignore the shaking in her body. “Are they going to kill me?”
“It’s a possibility, but I think it’s unlikely. Since you possess magic, they’re probably going to want you alive.”
Alive for what?
She gave a hard swallow, then gave up on her efforts to control her shakes. As she opened her eyes, the steady orange glow of the engine screen caught her attention, and she glanced toward it. The video feed was gone, but data still scrolled down its windows.
They’re going to dismantle the shield. That is their goal. They’re going to come in here, remove the crystal, kill the engine, and the shield will be gone.
And, after they’d done that, there’d only be one crystal left for them to take.
The Phoenix.
The scratching at the door stopped. She froze, holding her breath. Ahead of her, Aiden raised his hands, symbols blazing on his skin.
Crack!
Chunks exploded into the room, her short yelp lost amid the resounding boom that shook through the space. She flung her arms up as the shockwave hit her, pushing smoke and dust at her face. Light streamed in, cutting through the dim in a violent upheaval of rebar and concrete. Beyond, the shadows of soldiers moved outside the door.
In the next instant, heat pressed against her skin. With an inhuman hush, fire blossomed into a flood of burning light at the front end of the room, the symbols on Aiden’s arms jittering together and releasing forward into the air. It began to roar, rushing through the gap and into the people beyond.
Someone screamed—painful, raw, and ugly. Others yelled. She heard gunshots, and two bullets cracked into the air a meter from Aiden, his shield burning them up like impurities in an ore fire.
Through their link, she could feel the fire’s energy surging through him. The spells felt like the gears of a typewriter clicking into use. He sent off another three, and the fire shifted. It bent, funneling the rest of its body toward the door as if it were some sentient creature lumbering in the dark.
Another yelp of pain sounded above the roar.
Then, on the tail end of it, something skittered through the door, clacking and clunking as it tripped over the floor.
Even through the fire, the prison box’s sides were a wholly dead black—as if it absorbed all the energy between it and her.
As it came to rest, a single character glowed to life on its top side. Red-orange, just like the fire around it.
Her eyes went wide. She lunged forward. “Watch out!”
Too late. In a single instant, the fire had vanished, sucked into the box like some sonic-powered vacuum. The roar of the room went silent, interrupted only by the stomp of boots and shouts of commands from outside. Someone must have told them to stop firing. Gray smoke lingered in the space, mingling with the earlier dust to make a shallow haze.
Aiden’s gaze snapped to the box. He didn’t say anything, but the muscles in his jaw and neck tightened. Spell-symbols still burned tightly on his skin, illuminating him and the nearby floor in an orange-gold glow. To her right, the engine hummed, a quiet backdrop in the silence.
Then, the symbol at the top of the box pulsed once.
Aiden began to burn.
It started in his hands. The symbols gathering there slurred together, blurring into flames that sank down and spread to the rest of his body, following orange-gold lines that traveled up his skin like circuits on a computer.
She made a quick, high-pitched sound—half whimper, half squeak—as, flaming, he turned his hands around and watched them burn, then looked down as the rest of his body caught.
Within two seconds, he was gone. The place where he’d stood was empty, except for traces of smoke.
The transfer mark snuffed out on her hand.
The symbol on the box pulsed again, then shifted into a different one.
She st
ared at it, unable to breathe.
He’s not dead. He can’t be dead. It’s a prison box. That’s what he said. He’s just in there, perfectly fine and not dead.
The monitor on the engine dashboard flickered. A graph in the top left corner spiked, then dropped. She watched it edge toward the left, bit by bit.
Had the engine even noticed the fight, or was it too busy keeping the shield alive? Hadn’t Aiden deferred energy away from the shield for the door armament?
Light flickered at the door. She looked over in time to flinch as armed men rushed through the broken doorway, rifles aiming first to the box, then to the engine.
Then, to her.
“Oh, fuck.” She stumbled in her haste to flatten herself to the wall, hands snapping up in the universal sign of surrender as several of the men broke off to cover her.
But, in the few seconds it took for them to cross the distance, a new energy flickered at the edge of her consciousness. A speckle of orange highlighted the mark on her hand, warmth sliding into her bones like a comforting glove, and an image caught at her thoughts—a dragon, its scales a burnt copper color, tail curled around its lying form. The air around it hummed, vibrating across their connection, and, as its golden reptilian eyes caught hers, exhaustion folded over her brain like a cloak.
The connection tapered and blew thin, but the warmth lingered, keeping a slight glow to the transfer. As the soldiers came to surround her, the muzzles of their heavy guns pointed her way, a sense of stillness came over her, embedded in the heat that slipped through her bones and relaxed her muscles.
Her fear and panic didn’t go away, but they were suddenly not all-consuming.
If they haven’t shot me yet, they probably aren’t going to.
At least, that’s what she hoped. A scraping sound caught her attention. After searching the faces of the soldiers nearest to her, none of whom gave away any emotion, she directed her gaze past their shoulders and toward the center of the room. One of the men in the feed—the tall, muscular one with obvious military history—nudged the side of the prison box with his foot.
“This finished, then?”
Swarzgard and Westray spoke the same language, with only slightly different accents. His words tripped up her spine like cubes of stone.
“Yes.” The other man, the one who’d been holding the prison box to start with, stood just inside the doorway, his attention fixed to a slender black tablet, about the size and shape of her father’s TV remote. Her nerves gave a little jolt as it began emitting a familiar beep.
The man lifted his gaze, looking around the edges of the room until he came to her.
“Careful,” he said. “She’s magic.”
Suddenly, she had many more guns pointed at her.
“Oh?” The taller man gazed her way with a half-interested expression. “Why didn’t it take her with him?”
“It only holds one.”
“A pity.” He sneered. “Is she dangerous, Ramos?”
“It’s not telling me.”
Must be the same brand as Aiden’s. His magic-locator device couldn’t tell what I was, either. She stared at it, trying hard not to look at the guns around her.
In her peripheral vision, the taller man swung around. “What do you mean, it’s not telling you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fucking techs.” The taller man made a disgusted noise in his throat, then turned his attention to her.
She froze, meeting his gaze with wide eyes.
He made a gesture. “Ford, Nitil, seize her.”
She gritted her teeth as two of the men in front of her stepped forward. Aiden had wanted her to get away. How in the fuck was she supposed to do that? She flinched when they grabbed her, then staggered as they forced her from the wall and gripped her between them, each man twisting an arm up behind her back. Pain twinged in her shoulders, and she locked her jaws shut to stave off the gasp that threatened to escape.
The leader strode over, stopping less than a meter in front of her. He hadn’t pointed a gun at her, but he hadn’t needed to. Everyone else had.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
Nerves fluttered up from her stomach. It took a few tries to unwork the resistance in her jaws. “Meese.”
She winced as the soldiers’ grip tightened on her. She wasn’t sure why she’d gone with Meese—it had just felt right. Like an act of defiance.
But that defiance was causing flutters of fear and horror to trip through her stomach.
The man’s smile grew a tiny bit.
“Meese, huh? My boy here says you have magic. But I think you would have used it by now, if you could have, don’t you?”
Though the transfer on her hand still glowed, she didn’t say anything. Didn’t move. With that many guns on her, she didn’t dare. She’d already found out how trigger-happy people could be when magic was mentioned. And this time, Aiden wouldn’t be there to burn the bullet.
“I don’t want to get shot,” she said.
He sneered. Sneering Man—that’s how she would call him.
“Ah. Your survival skills are intact, then.” He glanced to the men holding her and made a gesture with his thumb. “Take her to the car. We’ll transport her the traditional way, since our prison box is full. Ramos, I don’t think we need your illusion this time. He was the last one.”
In the back, she saw the telepath’s eyes narrow on her, but he gave a nod.
The men shoved Mieshka forward. As they passed the engine, she saw soldiers gathered around it. It didn’t seem as massive and mysterious now, with the light on it. The depthless glassy surface was covered with a gray layer of dust.
One soldier had opened part of it and was now bent over, reaching inside. Orange light shone over his face, matching the color on her hand. Mieshka heard a metallic clunk, and the screen went dark.
The link guttered out like a candle.
Ryarne was defenseless.
As they neared the detector in Ramos’ hand, the beeping straightened into one long, straight sound. She met his eyes briefly before the guards led her away.
Chapter 24
They led her outside, one soldier with his hand pressed firmly into the back of her neck. The silver SUV she’d seen Buck drive around still sat at the curb, standing out among the bevy of shiny black vehicles that had surrounded it. Water soaked the sparse boulevard, reflecting a mottled gray-and-blue sky, the dispersing clouds reflected in the windows of the neighborhood’s mid-range, boxy office buildings. As she felt the fresh air on her face, and doing her best to glance around without moving her head too much, her heart sank as they crossed the footpath and the rest of the empty street came into view.
Aiden’s office just happened to sit on one of those quiet, out-of-the-way places that no one really paid attention to. A pocket of silence in busy Uptown.
And, even if someone managed to see her, they probably wouldn’t help. These men were dressed as the Ryarnese Homeguard, and she, being led to a vehicle, a pair of cuffs cutting into her wrists behind her, looked like a criminal.
She should have been flattered that there were two men holding her, with a third to the side. But it just made escape even more impossible. She found herself, oddly, longing for the dark quiet of the tunnels.
She might have had a chance down there. Lots of places to hide, and allies who could help her out.
Bad guys should have been hanging down there, anyway. Not kidnapping girls in broad daylight.
The two men guiding her paused before the car long enough to open the door before they shoved her in. With her hands cuffed behind her back, she fell forward. Her head smacked on the seat, shins scrabbling against the running board.
“Hey, what the hell?”
A pair of hands stood her back up. This time, they let her climb in by herself. As she slid her butt along the seat, she shot her captors a narrow-eyed glare, but they didn’t seem chastened. One slid in after her, and the other got in on the other side, pushing up a
gainst her until the three of them sat shoulder to shoulder.
Yeah, she wasn’t going anywhere.
She wiggled, trying to find a spot where she wasn’t sitting on her hands.
Sneering Man sat beside the driver.
Shotgun, she thought.
“Well, Meese. Welcome to the beginning of the end.”
“The end of what?” she asked.
“This fucking war.”
The SUV jerked away from the curb. As they left, she saw a soldier take a knife to Buck’s tires. The silver SUV sagged. She felt something turn in her gut as she remembered the crystal.
But the dragon was gone, and so was Aiden. Swallowed up in a box, his great firepower snuffed out like a candle.
She was on her own. And the city was going to be invaded.
They were still in Upper Ryarne when the SUVs ducked into an underground parking lot—she didn’t recognize the buildings, but they hadn’t gone down the hill. Mieshka, who’d been looking out the other side of the car, caught a glimpse of a tall, dark, glass-lined building before the concrete and the height bar removed it from her sight.
That narrowed her location down, at least, but not enough for her to guess which place it was. Most of Upper Ryarne was tall, glass-lined buildings. Had they been in Terremain, she might’ve recognized it—but this was Ryarne. She’d only been here two months.
Her inner map was next to useless.
They went down three levels, stopping amidst a garage consisting entirely of shiny black vehicles, mostly SUVs and other souped-up types.
She frowned. That was a lot of cars. Enough for quite a few more people than had come to capture Aiden.
Once they’d parked, they weren’t as rough with her—only one hand on her shoulder as they led her into the building. Perhaps they had decided she wasn’t much of a threat. As they waited for the elevator to arrive, Sneering Man made a phone call.
“We got him, but there’s something else. There was a girl, and Ramos’ detector went off at her.”
He paused, glancing back at her.
“No, I don’t think so.”
Another pause.
“Yes, sir.”
