Idols and Enemies
Amplifier 4
Meghan Ciana Doidge
Old Man in the CrossWalk Productions
Contents
Author’s note: Amplifier Series
Author’s Note: Adept Universe
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
The Music Box (Amplifier 4.5)
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Meghan Ciana Doidge
The Adept Universe by MCD
Author’s note: Amplifier Series
Idols and Enemies is the fourth book in the Amplifier series, which is set in the same universe as the Dowser, Oracle, Reconstructionist, and Misfits of the Adept Universe series.
* * *
The Amplifier Protocol (Amplifier 0)
Close to Home (Amplifier 0.5)
Demons and DNA (Amplifier 1)
Bonds and Broken Dreams (Amplifier 2)
Mystics and Mental Blocks (Amplifier 3)
Idols and Enemies (Amplifier 4)
The Music Box (Amplifier 4.5)
Author’s Note: Adept Universe
Idols and Enemies is the fourth book in the Amplifier series, which is set in the same universe as the Dowser, Oracle, Reconstructionist, and Misfits of the Adept Universe series. While it is not necessary to read all four series, in order to avoid spoilers the ideal reading order of the Adept Universe is as follows:
* * *
Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Dowser 1)
Trinkets, Treasures, and Other Bloody Magic (Dowser 2)
Treasures, Demons, and Other Black Magic (Dowser 3)
I See Me (Oracle 1)
Shadows, Maps, and Other Ancient Magic (Dowser 4)
Maps, Artifacts, and Other Arcane Magic (Dowser 5)
I See You (Oracle 2)
Artifacts, Dragons, and Other Lethal Magic (Dowser 6)
I See Us (Oracle 3)
Catching Echoes (Reconstructionist 1)
Tangled Echoes (Reconstructionist 2)
Unleashing Echoes (Reconstructionist 3)
Champagne, Misfits, and Other Shady Magic (Dowser 7)
Misfits, Gemstones, and Other Shattered Magic (Dowser 8)
Graveyards, Visions, and Other Things that Byte (Dowser 8.5)
Gemstones, Elves, and Other Insidious Magic (Dowser 9)
The Amplifier Protocol (Amplifier 0)
Demons and DNA (Amplifier 1)
Bonds and Broken Dreams (Amplifier 2)
Mystics and Mental Blocks (Amplifier 3)
Idols and Enemies (Amplifier 4)
Misplaced Souls (Misfits 1)
* * *
More books in the Amplifier and Misfits series to follow.
* * *
More information can be found at www.madebymeghan.ca/novels
Introduction
I knew that opening the letter from the sorcerer Azar would have deadly consequences.
So we had prepared.
We’d planned.
We knew we might have to defend ourselves, our freedom. And that I might finally get a chance to exact the revenge I kept telling myself I wasn’t interested in exacting.
What we didn’t know was that we’d find ourselves hosting a dysfunctional family reunion — the kind where everyone tries to kill someone at least once over dinner.
Sorcerers and witches.
With me in the middle.
Mediating.
I could wipe a small city from the face of the earth. I could vanquish a horde of demons with only two shortswords. I could infiltrate a magically fortified compound without detection, stand against black witches, and defy even those capable of manipulating minds.
What I couldn’t do was mediate a family squabble that stretched back decades, replete with kidnapping, magical coercion, and rape.
Or I couldn’t mediate with words, at least. Thankfully, though, draining everyone of their magic was always an option.
Chapter 1
A dark-haired, dreadfully sexy sorcerer sat in the copper-edged pentagram inset into the white-painted wood-slat flooring of the barn loft. Aiden had been fortifying the rune-etched, five-pointed star for the last three months, starting by adding smaller pentagrams at each point. At the beginning of May, he had embedded a black gemstone — obsidian — in the heart of each smaller star, then conducted tests for two more weeks. It had taken most of those first months to source the volcanic rock in a size and quality that satisfied the sorcerer. More glyphs had been carved into the stones themselves.
Dark-blue magic gleamed from the runes inked across Aiden’s bare chest, shoulders, back, arms, and legs. I’d been exceedingly helpful with the hard-to-reach areas. Then — again, terribly helpfully — I had powered up the sorcerer until he’d groaned and panted under the onslaught of my touch. My magic.
Crouched an arm’s length away with my blades at the ready, I grinned at the remembrance. The lingering pleasure still warmed my own limbs.
Aiden laughed at me huskily, flashing a toothy grin. His bright-blue eyes blazed with power. He was holding an envelope sealed with dark-blue wax in both hands. His long, dexterous fingers were each tipped in sparkly pink nail polish.
The manicure was a remnant of our most recent visit from Opal. The young witch had insisted she needed to practice casting during a break from the Academy, and Aiden was perpetually obliging when it came to the dream walker’s wants and needs. My own fingers and toes were currently bright green. And I’d been completely — irrationally — upset when I noted upon waking that morning that two of my fingernails had been chipped.
No matter how much I adored my life in general, Opal’s absence always left me feeling a little hollow.
Drawing my attention back to the present, Aiden muttered an arcane word in that unique language he used. Magic snapped into place, sealing him within the main copper pentagram. The sorcerer quietly voiced another command, and the black stones in the five outer pentagrams flared with power.
Opal was safely at the Academy. Christopher and Paisley had left two days previously to join Samantha in Budapest. The telekinetic had been tracking Bee — aka Amanda Smith, aka one of the Five — across Eastern Europe for weeks now, but the path was cold, and the telepath was still missing. Daniel had surfaced long enough to check in, confirm that he didn’t know where Bee was either, and then go dark again. He was on his own separate mission.
In the end, Christopher had wanted to help make certain that Bee was okay, and I wasn’t his keeper. Paisley seemed amenable to doing some tracking, and I trusted that she would listen to the clairvoyant. So other than the chickens and the cows, the sorcerer and I were the only ones remaining on the property.
Which was good. Because it was time to deal with Kader Azar.
Aiden’s father, and a key member of the former Collective — aka one of my creators.
Aiden had invested three months into fortifying the pentagram just so he could open the letter that his brother, Isa Azar, had hand delivered last February.
“Ready or not,” the sorcerer said. Then he winked at me.
A flicker of warmth — desire mixing with a gleeful anticipation — flitted through my stomach. My magically sharpened, black-coated steel blades sat by my knees on the wood-slat flooring. The open loft was at my back, with the barn doors thrown wide open below. Aiden’s SUV was still parked beside the barn, but I’d moved the Mus
tang out, parking it by the house. It was likely that a ton of magic was about to be tossed around, and Lani Zachery would not be pleased if we ruined the car’s paint, which was still the original clearwater aqua. Or the aqua vinyl seating, for that matter.
Each time Lani caught me driving around with Paisley, I could tell that the full-time mechanic, part-time intuitive had a difficult time not losing her mind. Lani’s latent witch magic manifested in an innate sense of when something needed to be fixed and how to fix it. More so since I’d amplified her.
Aiden held the envelope forward, his attention riveted to the rune-embossed wax seal. He murmured quietly under his breath, repeating a short phrase that stirred the magic within the pentagram. Power I could see but not feel.
I had another chance to wish that Aiden had agreed to have me in the pentagram with him, amplifying him at the same time as he opened the missive from his father.
We had fought over it.
Concern had sharpened my words, but experience tempered Aiden’s response. In the end, experience won, and I’d agreed to the sequence of events we were about to execute.
Aiden snapped the wax seal. It sounded like the explosive concussion of a high-caliber gun, discharging close enough that I expected to be winged by a bullet.
Nothing else happened.
Aiden laughed, quietly relieved.
Then a dark, shadowy pulse of power reached out from the broken seal, striking Aiden’s chest.
He grunted, pained. Magic flared through the runes inked across every bare section of his body.
My blades suddenly appeared in my hands. I wrapped my fingers around the hilts on instinct, though I hadn’t consciously reached for them. Damn it. I must have inadvertently triggered the intricate retrieval spell that Aiden had fixed in one of the three raw-diamond gemstones embedded in each of the hilts, wasting the energy it had taken him to cast it in my momentary rush of panic.
The shadowed spell expanded across Aiden’s chest. He snarled, dropping the envelope to reach for the magic. The malicious shadow stretched, expanding until it looked suspiciously like a hand with five digits. A hand trying to grab the sorcerer?
All at once, the obsidian stones in the outer, smaller pentagrams flared, becoming brighter and brighter until I had to narrow my eyes against their intense blue glow.
The black stone nearest Aiden’s right knee cracked.
Then another stone. And another.
Five loud, sharp pops.
The magic died within each obsidian gem.
“Fuck!” Aiden snarled. Shuddering with the effort, he cupped his hands before him, fingers spread wide as he began muttering a melodic phrase over and over. The ink-etched runes on his upper chest and shoulders shifted, as if they were being pulled into or siphoned by the shadow hand.
No.
Not siphoned.
Aiden was somehow using the inked runes to feed the spell trying to grab hold of him. More symbols slid up and over the sorcerer’s shoulders and arms, leaving the deeply tanned skin of first his wrists, then his forearms bare.
Sweat broke out on his forehead.
I shifted, bringing my blades forward.
“No, Emma,” Aiden grunted. “I’m handling it.”
I stilled, trusting his expertise. Trusting him.
Even I could learn. It was just that the lessons involving Aiden, involving any of those I cared about, took longer to absorb.
My heart hammered annoyingly in my chest. But as I watched, the shadow hand was drawn from Aiden’s chest. It coalesced into a dark, seething ball of power suspended between the sorcerer’s outstretched fingers. More runes were quickly stripped from Aiden’s legs, abdomen, and lower rib cage, running up to his shoulders and then down his arms as he continued to feed the spell. The sphere darkened, simmering between Aiden’s hands but no longer touching his skin. I could see lightning strikes of power coursing within it, emanating from Aiden’s fingertips.
With his body now completely stripped of the magical protections we’d spent hours putting in place and powering up, Aiden began condensing the spell he now held firmly, compressing it between his palms. Then, his chest heaving with the effort, he folded the spell in on itself.
The now-tiny black sphere dissolved with an audible snap.
I waited, blades still poised to slash and rend. All my senses were on alert, reaching through the stillness of the loft, of the upper suite behind Aiden, and of the barn around us. Waiting for the next assault.
Nothing else happened.
Aiden raised his head, grimacing. Power brought forth by his anger blazed in his eyes. Tension was etched through his stubbled jaw. He locked me in place with a soul-searing gaze.
Sometimes he was so breathtakingly beautiful that my heart actually stuttered at the sight of him. Not that I would ever voice such an outrageously idiotic thought out loud.
“Well …” Aiden’s voice was husky, as if he had torn his throat raw while dealing with the magic, even though he’d barely spoken. “He knows where I am.”
I couldn’t help the smile that etched itself across my face. Anticipating facing Kader Azar shouldn’t have filled me with such deadly glee. I didn’t bother tamping down on my reaction, though. That wasn’t how Aiden and I were together. We kept nothing hidden between us. Nothing important in the here and now, at least.
“We knew that was a possibility,” I said.
Aiden bared his teeth, snarling through whatever residual pain he was still fighting. “Powerful bastard.”
“We knew that too, Aiden.”
He huffed, shaking his head. “Powerful enough to embed a forced-recall teleportation spell in a fucking wax seal?”
I shrugged. “Probably took him months to cast. And you thwarted it in less than a minute.”
Aiden laughed darkly, wiping his brow with a shaky hand. “Months? I would have thought a spell of that magnitude was impossible.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t like dealing in impossibilities — because I often proved certain impossible things wholly possible just by existing.
“Sorry. Forgot.” Aiden’s words were blunt, but he wasn’t angry at me. He shook his head as if clearing it. “And that felt like a lifetime, not just a minute or two.”
I set one of my blades down, shifting forward until I could tease my fingers against the barrier of magic that still simmered between us, still sealing Aiden within the main pentagram. “Look how powerful you are, sorcerer,” I purred. “How magnificent.”
A lazy smile overtook the sharpness that had been etched into Aiden’s features by pain and anger. His shoulders relaxed slightly. “Oh, yes, amplifier?” he murmured. “Liked that, did you?”
I just grinned back at him. I wasn’t a skilled flirt, but I could try. For Aiden.
Laughing, he retrieved the envelope from the floor, opening it and extracting a folded single-page note from within.
The smile slipped from his face as he read the letter.
Magic flared through the rune-etched copper pentagram again. Magic involuntarily triggered by the sorcerer’s reaction to whatever his father had written, I guessed.
The obsidian stones continued to smolder at the five points of the pentagram. The inlaid copper surrounding those stones had also darkened, as if tarnished or discolored by heat.
Aiden finally looked up. His expression was hard. Unreadable. Not the usual carefully blank countenance that meant he was working through a problem in his head. It looked now as if something was hidden under his skin, ready to seethe, to roil.
He read the missive a second time, then crumpled it. Then he just stared at it clenched in his fist. Seemingly lost in his thoughts.
The sorcerer stood. Still not looking at me, or filling me in. And suddenly, the feeling in my stomach wasn’t at all gleeful. The emotion that had collected there felt much, much closer to a churning maw of … something. Concern, maybe. But more as though I was already somehow on the losing side of this pending conflict, without even having gotten
a chance to fight.
I straightened as well, still playing my fingers across the barrier of power that stood between us. I kept the blade clenched in my other hand lowered.
Aiden stepped from the pentagram, effortlessly extinguishing the magic that sealed it. My hand fell without the barrier to support it, hanging uselessly in the narrow space that stood between us, our shoulders almost brushing but not quite.
I tilted my head, trying to read Aiden’s expression, but his gaze was fixed somewhere ahead of him. Or perhaps he wasn’t looking at anything at all. Then he inhaled deeply. Exhaling harshly, he pressed the envelope and the crumpled letter into my hand and turned away from me.
I closed my fingers around the envelope and the letter, not picking up any of the magic the wax seal had so obviously contained. That spell had been wholly extinguished by Aiden.
The dark-haired sorcerer hesitated just before loosening his grip on the envelope we now both held, as if remembering something. He angled his shoulders toward me just enough to brush a light kiss across my lips. His magic was dim, but not completely drained. Fighting off his father’s attempted teleportation had cost him. The obsidian stones and all the magic he’d invested in the extra fortifications would have to be replaced and duplicated as well. Three months of work. Three months of living with me, amplified passively while we slept together or had sex, and of being actively amplified when casting together.
Kader Azar was far too powerful.
Aiden walked away wordlessly, crossing around the dormant pentagram through the open door that led to the studio suite.
Idols and Enemies (Amplifier 4) Page 1
