“You’ll thank me later. It’s good for you, the pent up sexual frustration and not getting a release. I read in a book that MMA fighters do it all the time before matches so they’re forced to channel all that testosterone into their fighting,” MaLeila pointed out, making sure to focus on looking at Devdan’s face and not his obvious hard-on.
“What the fuck are you doing here anyway?” Devdan grumbled resignedly.
MaLeila took note that Adina didn’t look so forgiving, but was following the man’s lead. If Devdan wasn’t going to put her out, then she wasn’t going to try to either.
“I’m with you for the mission.”
“I though Tsubame had you with her on setting the mood.”
“Tsubame only said that so that you wouldn’t argue with me about it. Now you have no choice,” MaLeila said with a shrug.
Devdan crossed the room, obviously not embarrassed by the state MaLeila had walked in on him on. Frankly, MaLeila mused, it probably wasn’t the worst state she had seen him in over the years.
When Devdan reach her, he grabbed MaLeila’s arm and tried to pull her out the room as he said, “The fuck I don’t. I’ve got Adina as a backup. I don’t need your help.”
MaLeila stood her ground. “I know you’ve got Adina.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because unlike Adina, I don’t need to use magic to be in sync with you.”
Admittedly it was a jab at Adina, whose eyes widened at the revelation that MaLeila was aware of her power. MaLeila had instantly noticed the odd way emotions seemed to amplify around the woman. It had been subtle and MaLeila wouldn’t have noticed it at all if it weren’t for the way Devdan’s emotions had been fluctuating to different extremes and back again that first night, as though he was knowingly resisting someone else’s manipulation. And when she went to see him later that night, she felt the sensation, best described as feeling like someone was playing soothing music but there was no music to be heard. MaLeila resisted the manipulation then too. She may not be an empath like Adina, but even a child sorceress could sense fluctuations in emotions. Most people simply weren’t in tune enough or emotionally stable enough to sense the difference between unnatural fluctuations or compulsions and natural ones.
But not only was it a jab at Adina, it was a truth that even Devdan couldn’t deny, because he loosened his grip on her arm and stopped trying to pull her toward the door.
The times that Devdan risked his life for her, the times he protected her, were just the times that stood out to MaLeila; mostly because every time they had an opponent she was usually the target. But they were also a damn near unstoppable team, so in sync that they knew what the other would do before they did it. For a while, MaLeila thought it was Claude’s bind, but with distance, with time to figure out what had been real and what had been fabricated—not as much as MaLeila had originally thought—MaLeila figured that she should have had the same kind of sync with Bastet but they never did, not like she and Devdan naturally synced. Much of it had been proximity because usually they were both together when an opponent appeared during school hours or afterwards on the way home. A look across the classroom or the cafeteria or the gymnasium and they knew where and when to meet or, if there was no time for that, what to do to draw attention away from them or deter an opponent from acting with others around. But even before that, when they didn’t trust each other, when he was still somewhere between wanting to kill her and too curious to act out on it, they fell into a natural rhythm. And that was the kind of sync Devdan was going to need if they were going to successfully make him a leader.
MaLeila guessed Devdan was thinking the same thing she was, because he let go of her arm and grumbled, “Fine. You can stay.”
MaLeila didn’t feel particularly smug that she had proven him right. If anything, she was bemused at the fact that they couldn’t seem to realize how in sync they were before when they spent nearly every waking moment with each other.
He didn’t talk to her anymore after that leaving her and Dominik to do little more than wait for both Adina and Devdan to come back decent. When they were back, Devdan looked like the Devdan she had known for years before, the black jeans, the white crewneck tank and his denim black jacket, his normally untamed thick black wavy pulled into a ponytail.
She met his eyes and MaLeila knew it was time, but there was something else in the man’s eyes, something that made MaLeila turn her gaze to Adina as she stood.
“You’re helping Tsubame. Away from most of the fighting,” Devdan said to her.
“That wasn’t part of the plan,” Adina said simply.
“I know it wasn’t. But you told me yourself that you aren’t a very powerful sorceress. You’d be better help to Tsubame.”
Adina didn’t argue, didn’t even scowl in disagreement on displeasure at the arrangement. Instead she nodded her head and left the room.
When she was gone, Dominik smirked and joked, “Must be some good dick. She didn’t even look like she wanted to argue with you.”
MaLeila shoved Dominik in the arm at the same time Devdan shot the man a glare. Then Devdan went out to the balcony. MaLeila followed, finding the man leaning against the railing with both hands looking out into the distance, ponytail blowing slightly in the wind. The way he was standing, the beautiful view of the city in the distance; it would be romantic if not for the forces surrounding the hotel and marring the view.
MaLeila stood next to Devdan, feeling the shift in distance and space as he undid the loop around the hotel. No sooner than he had undone the loop did the loose cloud settled just above the hotel and the surrounding area of a three or four mile radius suddenly begin drop even lower, slowly covering the area with a thick fog. As the fog was falling, Devdan jumped from the second story balcony, right in front of the forces, but rather than landing on the ground, he disappeared in the shadow of the balcony taking all the forces off guard, so off guard that when they moved forward past the point where the loop had previously kept them from advancing it was too late. Devdan was already among them… and all hell broke loose.
The sound of firearms rang through the grounds, now covered by fog which added to the confusion. Rather than using her physical eyes, because with the fog and confusion, she may as well have been blind, MaLeila tapped into her ethereal sight and jumped off the balcony, tucking into herself so that she rolled when she landed, until she was crouched on her feet, at which point she sprang into the chaos with Tsubame’s staff in hand. She found Devdan easily enough, his aura, as dark and calm as it was, a shining beacon in her magical sight. And just as easily she fell into the sync that she had reminded him of to persuade him to let her stay, and though Dominik didn’t fall into sync as easily, didn’t quite match their rhythm, he turned out to be an asset with his dark magic, one of the powers of which included draining away a person’s life force, a power that temporarily gave him access to their skillset which in the case of sorcerers included their magical skillset. Dominik hadn’t disclosed that power to MaLeila and she probably wouldn’t have noticed it at all if not for her ethereal sight. She mentally filed it away for later use.
To be honest, it wasn’t much of a battle as much as it was causing the forces to kill each in the chaos and confusion of trying to find their enemy, their rifles—made for long range attacks, killing or shooting three, four, and five people at one time—always missing their intended target. No. It wasn’t bullets and guns that MaLeila, Devdan, and Dominik had to worry about. It was the few powerful sorcerers and sorceresses sprinkled in the forces. Most of them weren’t used to close combat attacks though, being heavily reliant on their magic which could defeat their enemies before they even got close enough to attack them. Devdan appearing amongst them had thrown them off guard and almost immediately, he singled them out and began to start taking them out. That wasn’t to say that sorcerers were physically weak. Magic took a toll on the physical body and most sorcerers were more than capable of taking a multiple hard hits befo
re it began to affect their performance. But with Devdan’s skill in both magic and close combat, combined with his sheer physical might and mental determination, most of their opponents stood no chance. It was like watch a master dancer and MaLeila had to force herself to focus on the fight and not watch Devdan in sheer awe, even though she’d seen him fight like this, beautiful and graceful while ruthless and dangerous, multiple times before.
A few sorcerers tried to use the same long range magic that they would have if they were far away, flamethrowers, explosions, mini earthquakes that made the ground crumble beneath them, but without the distance to avoid the recoil and debris the attacks inevitably caused more accidental damage to their allies than it did to MaLeila, Devdan, or Dominik.
And then suddenly the chaos around them, which had begun to lessen as they took down their opponents, was no more. The battlefield was silent.
“Well fuck,” Devdan said panting as he leaned against a column that had fallen in the midst of the fight. “I’m almost insulted. I didn’t even have to really use my magic to take all of them down.”
“We know you always could have done that,” MaLeila said. “The point was to prove that to the rest of the world, remember?”
“You think they need help on the other side?” Dominik asked dusting debris off his shirt.
“I doubt it,” MaLeila said. If she, Devdan, and Dominik had easily destroyed their opponents, MaLeila was sure Nika and Marcel hadn’t broken a sweat on their side. She started to suggest they begin checking for survivors and moving bodies. MaLeila wasn’t heartless. Most of these people, except maybe the sorcerers that had been among them, had been following orders and got sent against the wrong group of people. But before she could suggest it, her body froze in sudden, inexplicable panic at something on the edge of her magic senses. She hardly had time to duck behind a large chunk of upended concrete before an explosion rocked the area.
She opened her eyes, ignoring the ringing in her ears and searched for Devdan. He had managed to jump behind the column, missing the brunt of the explosion. After finding Devdan, she looked for Dominik and not finding him in the immediate vicinity, she stood up, vision obscured by the black smoke that was now mixing with the white fog as she looked for Dominik.
“Dominik!” she called out. “Dominik!”
When he didn’t answer, MaLeila growled and said, “Fuck discretion,” before raising her staff in the air and causing the wind rotate in the air, collecting the smoke and fog together before making the wind push it up into the sky. Her vision cleared and she immediately found Dominik lying under a slab of concrete.
“Dominik!” she yelled as she dropped Tsubame’s staff and ran to where he was. She ignored the body parts, the blood, the smell of burning flesh, and was vaguely aware of the drone flying over them.
“Dominik,” MaLeila said when she was kneeling next to him, careful not to touch him unnecessarily in case it would disturb any injuries he may have had, at least not until she was sure he couldn’t hear her.
He didn’t answer her and when he didn’t answer when she called him again, she put her hands on his shoulders and shook him. First gently and then harder. And when that didn’t work she felt for a pulse. It wasn’t there.
“There are drones out here girl,” Devdan said grabbing her arm. “We don’t have the smoke to cover us anymore. They know we’re not dead and they’ll probably send another missile.”
“But we can’t leave Dominik,” MaLeila said, resisting Devdan as she reached for Dominik’s body.
“He’s dead,” Devdan said. MaLeila was certain it was harsher than he intended because he wasn’t that heartless, but adrenaline was flowing through both their veins. “And you blew away the smoke. They can see us. They’re going to shoot another missile at us and unless you plan on exposing the magical world, we can’t stop it.”
They shouldn’t stop it. But just because they shouldn’t didn’t mean MaLeila couldn’t. Nor did it mean she wouldn’t. With tears welling in her eyes and rage boiling in her aching heart, she jumped to her feet and spun on her heels, eyes locking on the missile headed toward them just as it was locked on them. She could have redirected it from the distance. She could have caused it to prematurely explode in midair so that it could be written off as a malfunction. But she wanted the world to see, wanted the world to know what she had done, wanted them to be hard pressed to explain to people that this was anything other than what they had seen.
“MaLeila,” Devdan growled, but he didn’t try to stop her, didn’t try to warn her against doing what he certainly knew she was about to do.
Just as the missile was about to hit, MaLeila tapped back into her ethereal sight to see both the material and immaterial world at the same time, manipulated the magic in the air to grab onto and slow down the missile’s projection, and then froze the missile in midair hardly ten feet from her face.
MaLeila fought what certainly would have looked like a deranged smile, imagining the shocked look on the council’s faces as they no doubt surveyed the situation, the shocked look the world would have when they saw her standing in front of a stopped missile, holding it in midair as though the air were her mittens. But MaLeila wasn’t done yet. While still holding the missile in place, she created a small loop, only visible to those who could use the ethereal sight to see the thin red jagged seams where she forced space and distance together in a way that was normally unnatural. Then she let go of the missile, allowing it to pass through the loop and vanish from visible sight. It reappeared in the sky behind the drone and collided with it.
They felt the vibration ripple through the atmosphere even from the distance.
20
The atmosphere was tense in the lobby where everyone had gathered after the battle, not because any of them were nervous about being attacked again because as soon as everything was clear, MaLeila re-established the loop around the partially ruined hotel herself. They weren’t even necessarily tense because of the said sorceress’ open display earlier and the ramifications that would no doubt follow. They were tense because of the said sorceress herself. After removing Dominik’s body from the field, they took him upstairs to Tsubame, who wasn’t a doctor but was the most powerful sorceress in the hotel. After carefully inspecting the body, she confirmed what they already knew.
Dominik was dead.
She could bring him back.
“I can only do it in certain specific circumstances. There are rules and laws of the universe that even a god can’t break,” Tsubame clarified right before she brought Dominik back. “But as long as I can get to the body—mostly in tact mind you—within 24 hours of the death and the rigor mortis hasn’t set in and the body hasn’t transitioned to the decomposing stage, I can do it. I don’t broadcast this power though. Death is part of life. You can’t have one without the other. I’m only doing this for Ms. Samara’s sake.”
Dominik still had to heal from his injuries and he wouldn’t be awake for a while, days, months—it could even be years depending on his injuries, Tsubame had warned though she doubted it—but he wasn’t dead anymore. For some reason, that hadn’t quelled MaLeila like everyone thought it would. She didn’t break down in relief. Instead, she simply went downstairs to the lobby where some of the African magic family leaders had gathered for the evening with a large feast to celebrate their victory for the day. She grabbed a glass of wine and sat off to a corner by herself, face set in a scowl, eyebrows furrowed, her usually light aura pulsing darkly, the energy from it extending to the room and making everyone nervous.
“Why don’t you go tell Miss Samara to lighten up? She’s ruining the evening.”
Devdan didn’t look at Tsubame as she came to stand beside him without her glamour, but no one seemed to notice that MaLeila had a doppelganger. Maybe because her presence right now was so powerful in the room or maybe Devdan could simply see through the glamour because he knew there was one and what Tsubame really looked like.
“Knowing the two of us, I
’ll make it worse,” Devdan said bluntly. “We always seem to bring out the worst in each other.”
“Well you haven’t seemed to have done that this weekend. If anything, you’ve brought out the best in each other. So it won’t hurt to try. Now go over there. This is a feast and it’s hard to eat when she’s making everyone in the room nervous by flaring her aura out like that,” Tsubame said. When Devdan didn’t seem inclined to follow her suggestion, she nodded her head in MaLeila’s direction and said, “Go ahead.”
Devdan got the feeling that Tsubame wasn’t used to people not following her suggestions and orders. And though he hardly feared that the woman would do anything to him if he didn’t, she was right. MaLeila was making everyone nervous.
He went to where she was sitting on a couch by herself. There was plenty of room for others to sit, but everyone else was giving her wide breadth. Devdan didn’t feel the need to give her such space. He sat right next to her, their shoulders brushing against each other’s, and leaned back in the couch, waiting for her to acknowledge him.
“What?” she finally asked, taking a large gulp of the wine, her voice shallow and devoid of any emotion.
“You’re projecting your aura and scaring the shit out of everyone. Want to tone it down?”
“Not particularly,” MaLeila replied, but still withdrew her powerful aura anyway. It still continued to radiate, though not as strongly as before.
“I’d understand your mood if Dominik were dead. But Tsubame brought him back, so you’re going to have to explain your mood to me.”
“I thought of all people, you wouldn’t need me to explain my mood right now.”
“I don’t need you to,” Devdan said starting to get up. “Just thought you could use someone to talk to, but if that’s how you want to act, I don’t feel like fighting with you about it.”
The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Ascension Page 20
