Russell? Why the hell would they come after Russell? How did they even know Russell was here?
The most probable explanation was that they were here for Rusk or Jill. Kidnapping a relative to serve as leverage was one of Nicholas’s favorite tricks. Maybe he wanted to use Rusk as a spy for some reason.
Right now, though, that didn’t matter. I could figure it out later.
A shiver went through me, and suddenly I was back in the Eternity Crucible, my mind choked with rage and hatred as the anthrophages came for me. I didn’t want to kill humans, but anthrophages and orcish mercenaries, well…
Kill them all.
I felt my face spread in a joyless rictus of a grin.
“Get behind me,” I said, my voice soft and dead.
“What?” said Robert.
I stepped forward, magic flooding through me, and cast a spell. I used the telekinetic grip spell that Arvalaeon had taught me, and I hurled a telekinetic shove into the front door. It was a steel frame door with a glass pane in the middle.
I blasted it off the hinges, the glass exploding into glittering shards. The door clipped an anthrophage on the head with enough force to crack its skull, and the anthrophage flopped in a boneless mass to the ground. The door landed in the windshield of a parked car, shattering it, and the car’s alarm started to warble.
The orcs and the anthrophages froze for a half-second, guns swinging towards me, but that was all I needed to draw together power for a second spell. A fireball blazed to life above my right palm, and I thrust my hand forward. The sphere of fire leaped from my fingers and landed amid the enemy.
It was one of my better explosions, I have to admit.
My will had shaped the blast so it expanded outward in a cone, away from the front of the clinic. I think it killed six or seven of the anthrophages outright, and it hurled the rest of them screaming into the air, flames wreathing their bodies. The explosion also flipped over a parked car onto its roof, the glass of its windows shattering.
Whatever the rest of the orcs and the anthrophages had expected, that hadn't been it. They froze, and like experienced soldiers ought to do, they scattered and started taking cover, ducking behind their vans, the parked cars, and even the curb itself.
That wouldn’t save them.
I summoned magic and started killing.
Another sphere of fire leaped from my fingers and shot across the parking lot. It blasted through an anthrophage’s skull, turning the top half of its head to smoking charcoal. I gestured, and the sphere kept going. It drilled through the heads of four more anthrophages and three orcs before its power drained away. A group of anthrophages popped up over a parked car, AK-47s in hand. Before they fired, I cast another spell. Five lightning globes whirled into existence around me, sparking and sputtering with harsh blue-white light, and they shot across the parking lot. They slammed into the anthrophages and threw the creatures backward, lightning crawling up and down their bodies. Next to the vans, I glimpsed an orcish soldier bringing up the black tube of a rocket launcher.
Goddamn it! I was so tired of people shooting rockets at me.
I dealt with that frustration by hurling another fireball that consumed the orc.
And as I did, I caught sight of two figures near the right side of the vans blocking the street, and my blood went cold.
I didn’t recognize the first man. He was tall, over seven feet, and he wore a peculiar combination of clothes – combat boots, black jeans, a long gray trench coat, and a baggy red sweatshirt with the hood pulled up. Over the hood he wore a green baseball cap with the brim pulled low and heavy sunglasses, making it impossible to get a good look at his face. It was way too hot to be wearing that many layers. Unless you’re me, of course, and you’re cold most of the time.
The second man was Victor Lorenz.
He was wearing the sort of combat fatigues that the Rebels favored, and he made them look good. Lorenz had a strikingly handsome face. He was so good-looking, in fact, that he had played a leading role in a long-running Mexican soap opera for years. But he had forced himself on nearly all his female co-stars, one of whom had been only fourteen years old, and at last the Mexican police had come after him.
He had run into the waiting arms of the Dark Ones cultists and the Rebels. Lorenz had become a powerful wizard, with a Dark One inside his head to fuel his magic. He was one of Nicholas’s Gatekeepers, and he had tried his best to get me killed a couple of times.
Was he here to kill me? That made sense, but it was implausible. I moved around a lot, and how the hell had Lorenz known I would be in Milwaukee at this strip mall? That was impossible…
Then the realization hit me, and the bottom dropped out of my stomach.
He wasn’t here for me.
Lorenz was here for Russell.
Victor Lorenz had tried to kill me, and the reason he had tried to kill me was that he was smart enough to realize that I was a serious threat to the Rebels’ plans. Ever since I had started fulfilling Morvilind’s deal with the Forerunner, I had taken every opportunity to harass and slow down the Rebels without breaking the deal. But the instant I stole the final item for Nicholas, the minute the deal was complete, I was going to war. I would call the Inquisition (anonymously, of course), and give them every single bit of information that I had gathered about Nicholas and his inner circle.
And if it was within my power, I was going to kill Nicholas Connor and Victor Lorenz and Hailey Adams and Martin Corbisher myself.
Nicholas knew that, and he was confident he could deal with me when the time came. But Lorenz knew that just as well, and he was less confident, so he had tried to arrange my death.
That had failed.
But if he couldn’t kill me…maybe he could control me.
Like I’ve said, the Rebels’ favorite trick for coercing unwilling targets was to kidnap family members. I had been so careful, but somehow Lorenz had worked out who I really was and that I had a brother. And if he got his hands on Russell, I wouldn’t have any choice but to cooperate.
Rage howled through me.
Lorenz was clever, but that wasn’t going to save his life.
I cast a fireball hot enough to melt steel and flung it at Lorenz and the tall man in the trench coat. It should have exploded at their feet and killed them both in an instant, burning the flesh on their bones to greasy char. Lorenz’s Dark One could heal a great deal of damage, but not a catastrophic injury like that.
Except the tall man gestured first.
Sickly green light shone from his fingers, and the aura of his power brushed against my magical senses. A dome of pale green light appeared before him and Lorenz, and my fireball struck that dome and went out. I got a sense of the power behind that spell as it did. I had been wielding magical force for so long that I sometimes could sense it the way that I felt the wind on my face.
I realized two things.
First, the tall man in the coat and the ball cap wasn’t human. He was an Elf.
Second, there was something…wrong with his magic.
It felt twisted, diseased, corrupted somehow. It wasn’t the same sort of corruption I felt when Nicholas or one of the other Gatekeepers drew on their Dark Ones. This was a different sort of dark magic.
Lorenz shouted instructions, and the orcs and the anthrophages regrouped. I had torn a big hole in their numbers, and the ferocity of my attack had thrown them off balance. But Lorenz was nothing if not adaptable. He had come here to kidnap Russell, but the whole point of kidnapping Russell was to control me. If Lorenz couldn’t control me, then he would settle for killing me.
And the most logical tactic for the orcs and the anthrophages to employ now was to spray the front of the clinic with bullets.
I cast another spell, sweeping my hand before me, my fingers hooked into claws. A curtain of white mist sprang up from the ground, and it hardened into a curved wall of ice eight feet high and two feet thick. About a heartbeat later the orcs and the anthrophages opened up, and I he
ard the roar of dozens of automatic weapons throwing bullets into the ice. The ice would shatter under that impact, but it should hold them off for a little while.
I took a step back, breathing hard, my head ringing a little from expending so much magical force.
Robert and Russell stared at me in astonishment, and Robert looked as if he wasn’t sure if he wanted to point his gun at the orcs or at me. What the hell was his problem? Then I remembered that while Murdo had seen me cut loose with my magic before, Russell and Robert never had.
“Was that Lorenz by the vans?” said Murdo.
“Yeah,” I said. “We need to get the hell out of here right now.”
“That’s going to be a problem,” said Robert. “Those damn vans are blocking the driveway. We won’t be able to get to our vehicles out of here.”
“Could we drive over the curb, sir?” said Russell.
The wall of ice shuddered. I saw chips of ice flying over the top as the orcs and the anthrophages poured on the gunfire.
“Can’t,” said Robert. “They’ll mow us down before we get two steps off the sidewalk.”
“Wait,” I said to Murdo. “Our cars. We parked at the gas station. I don’t think Lorenz saw us.”
“Lorenz?” said Robert.
“The asshole in charge out there,” I said. “We can trade stories later. Does this place have a back door?”
“Yeah,” said Robert. “Alley out back.”
“That alley should lead right to the gas station,” said Murdo.
The wall of ice shuddered, cracks spreading across its surface, and a harsh yellow-orange glare shone behind it. Lorenz had just hit it with a fireball. Another blast like that, and he would melt right through it. And now that he knew I was here, he might not bother taking Russell alive. He might decide to cut his losses by blowing up the building and killing us all.
I yanked out my van keys and tossed them to Murdo, who snatched them out of the air. “Robert, Rory, get our vehicles and get them to the back door. Russell, help Rusk get Jill moving. She doesn’t look like she’s in great shape.”
Murdo nodded, as did Robert, but Russell stared at me.
“Nadia…” he started.
“Goddamn it!” I said. “Do you want to die here? Move!”
He didn’t. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to delay them until you get everyone loaded up,” I said. “I’m not going to sacrifice myself or anything. Go!”
“Come on, son,” said Robert, and Russell nodded. The three of them ran for the door to the back room, and I whirled back to face the shattered door and my ice wall. It extended in a half-circle out from the sidewalk, but I had left about a foot of space between the ice and the front of the building.
I Cloaked myself, and I ran outside, darting through the gap. I saw that the orcs and the anthrophages had spread out, weapons leveled at the ice wall. Lorenz and the hooded Elf still stood by the van, surrounded by a shimmering dome of sickly green light. More elemental fire danced around Lorenz’s fingers as he gestured, pulling together another fireball. Even with his Dark One, he couldn’t summon magical force as fast as I could, but he could still hit plenty hard.
I couldn’t cast any other spells while Cloaked, but that was all right. I stooped and grabbed an AK-47 from the burned corpse of a dead orcish mercenary. The weapon still felt hot from the explosion, and it reeked of burned flesh. I took cover behind a car, aimed the weapon over the hood, and squeezed the trigger.
Lorenz wasn’t getting away this time.
I sent two shots at him, but I saw a flash as the bullets rebounded off that dome of green light. The ward, whatever it was, was powerful enough to deflect both elemental fire and kinetic attacks like bullets. Lorenz whirled, trying to find me, and I got up and ran to the left, circling around the car.
And while I did, I started shooting orcs.
As I had found out earlier, shooting enemies is easy when they can’t see you to shoot back. I really can’t recommend it enough. The orcish mercenaries were good soldiers, and they ducked for cover, sweeping back and forth as they tried to find their attacker. Others laid down suppressing fire, while the anthrophages shot in all directions. A few of the smarter ones dropped to the ground and started sniffing, but between the flames and the gun smoke, there was no way they could track down my scent.
And while they did that, I methodically shot orc after orc and anthrophage after anthrophage.
I had killed about eleven or twelve of them when Lorenz figured out what was happening. He began a new spell, and this time harsh blue light glared from his fingers. The Elf in the coat started a spell, more of that sickly green light pouring from his hands. Lorenz finished his spell first, and a massive symbol written in lines of blue-white light spread across the parking lot. From above, I knew, it would look like a giant circle filled with magical sigils.
It was a Seal of Unmasking, designed to block any illusion spells, and my Cloak spell collapsed. In the same instant, the Elf cast his spell, and a hazy pulse of green light washed out from him and rolled across the parking lot. I ducked behind a damaged SUV, but the green light passed through the car and touched me.
It didn’t do anything.
Nonetheless, the touch of the light made goosebumps erupt across my skin. It felt wrong and twisted and corrupt, and terribly cold.
“There!” shouted Lorenz, pointing. “She is there! Take her now!”
I shot one more orc, threw aside my emptied AK-47, and ducked for cover behind the SUV as its side exploded from multiple volleys of gunfire. Once I got to the sidewalk, I would cast another ice wall, and use that to cover my retreat into the clinic. How much time had passed since I had started killing? It felt like an eternity (and believe me, I know what eternity feels like), but it couldn’t have been more than a minute or two.
The bullets had torn apart the SUV’s windows, so I flung a fireball through the ruined vehicle and into the attacking orcs. There was another explosion, and I had my chance as the orcs scrambled for cover. I straightened up, calling magic to myself, and I started to run for the clinic door.
And then something bad happened.
I’ve seen a lot of bad things over the one hundred and eighty years of my life, but I had never seen this before.
Because the orcs I’d killed were starting to move again.
It looked almost as if someone had jabbed invisible fishhooks into their flesh, and was using them to jerk their limbs up. The green light that the hooded Elf had summoned had pooled in their eyes, and the dead orcs were rising.
The horrified realization flashed through my mind.
The Elf in the coat was a necromancer, and he had just animated the orcs I’d killed as undead. I had never seen undead raised before, but I had fought them in Chicago. They could run like champion sprinters, jump like grasshoppers, and punch like world heavyweight champions. And Lorenz and his Elf buddy would send them after us.
I had never seen an Elf use necromancy before, not even an Archon, and the shock of it froze me for a half-second.
Which, as it turns out, was stupid.
One of the surviving anthrophages twisted towards me and fired. I saw it coming at the last second and dodged, and the creature’s stream of fire missed me. The bullets struck the curb instead, ricocheting off the pavement, and one of the tumbling rounds clipped me on the outside of my left calf, tearing through my jeans and my skin and the top layer of muscle.
That really hurt.
It didn’t stop me from blasting off the anthrophage’s head with a fire sphere.
Thanks to my time in the Eternity Crucible, I have a weird relationship with pain. After dying in agony fifty thousand or so times, my perception of pain had altered. I don’t like it, and I don’t seek it out, but I can ignore staggering amounts of it. Truth be told, I can ignore pain right up to the point where my body becomes too damaged to function or injured to the point where no amount of willpower can overcome anything.
Li
ke the time I got shot four times in Washington DC.
And if I didn’t want to repeat that delightful experience, I had to get moving.
I jumped back, ignoring the pain in my left leg and the feeling of blood trickling down the inside of my jeans leg, and cast the ice wall spell. Again white mist rose up before me, hardening into another wall that sealed off the sidewalk and the clinic’s front door from the parking lot. The surviving anthrophages and orcs opened fire at it, and I was pretty sure the necromancer Elf’s undead could punch their way through the ice, but I had a few seconds.
I hoped Murdo and Robert had gotten the vehicles.
I ran back into the waiting room just as Russell burst through the door behind the receptionist’s desk.
“Nadia,” he said. “They’re…you’re hurt!”
“Looks worse than it is,” I said, gesturing towards the door to the ward room. “Go! Did they get the vehicles?”
“Yeah, I saw them coming,” said Russell.
“Then move it,” I said. A sudden inspiration occurred to me, and I whirled and cast another spell. More white mist rolled up from the floor, and I called another ice wall, sealing off the front door and the shattered windows. Then I followed Russell into the next room, and I saw Rusk and Vander helping Jill along. The girl had gotten dressed in a T-shirt, sweatpants, and plastic sandals, and she looked drawn and pale as if the effort of moving was a monumental effort.
Given that she had been shot in the head, it probably was.
I cast another spell, and Vander’s head snapped around to look at me. More white mist rolled up, and hardened into yet another ice wall, sealing off the door from the waiting room to the ward room. Lorenz could blast through them in short order, but hopefully, the walls would slow him and his goons and his Elf necromancer’s pet undead long enough for us to escape.
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