Idols and Enemies (Amplifier 4)

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  Or get a piece of him.

  Still. Eight years ago, it had taken the combined efforts of Silver Pine, Chenda the so-called Mystic of the Golden Peninsula, and Isa to entrap Kader Azar. I had no doubt that since that incident, he would have made it nearly impossible to penetrate the protections that were sure to surround every estate he owned.

  All of which would seem to make the sorcerer Azar’s claim that Cerise was killing him absurd.

  Kader hadn’t answered Aiden’s question. He sipped his iced tea with a relaxed watchfulness. Waiting.

  “Or do you mean an accusation from me?” Aiden asked in disbelief, reinterpreting Kader’s last statement differently than I had. “You think the Convocation would take a complaint from me seriously? And why would I even be inclined to speak on your behalf?”

  “I’m not suggesting that you would inform on your own mother.” Kader sipped his iced tea. He hadn’t touched the cookies. “But I would think that after verifying that the spell is Cerise’s work, you might perhaps want to clear her name. I assume you’d try to speak to her first, before …” He waved his free hand. “Before consequences occur.”

  He didn’t elaborate on what those consequences might be. But the sorcerer’s tone made it clear that he wasn’t speaking of his own death.

  Aiden’s voice was cold. “You want me to intervene? To try to prevent your self-proclaimed pending murder? Or else what?”

  Kader speared his son with a sharp-eyed gaze. “Or else when I die, I will reach back through the binding Cerise has forced upon me. And with my last breath, I will wipe every last drop of Myers blood from the face of the earth.”

  Energy skittered down my spine at his utterly cold, completely dispassionate statement. It was an irrational reaction, and one that I —

  Aiden shook his shoulders, as if feeling the same thing I was.

  Magic.

  Kader Azar had just unleashed a spell to prove he was telling the truth. It felt exceedingly similar to a binding spell. Now that I recognized it, the magic slowly dissipated across my skin.

  Aiden snarled, power bright in his eyes. “Haven’t you done enough?”

  Kader arched an eyebrow. “In what sense?”

  The dark-haired sorcerer stood abruptly, pivoting and walking away. He paused at the far end of the patio, looking toward the gardens. Still clutching his iced tea in one hand.

  The elder sorcerer flinched, then quickly blanked his expression. Picking up a cookie, along with the napkin, he took a bite.

  “It’s more than that,” I said. Not wanting to intervene, but knowing that Aiden was only a breath away from exploding.

  “Yes.” Kader settled back in his chair.

  Aiden glanced over his shoulder. At me, not his father.

  “We’ve already replaced the French-paned doors once,” I said teasingly, though it came out stilted.

  Aiden huffed, playing along. “You could drain him enough to incapacitate him. Without me having to break anything.”

  “True,” I said, taking a sip of my iced tea as if talking about murdering Aiden’s father was as normal as discussing what to eat for dinner — even with him sitting right beside me. “Then we could keep him unconscious until whatever is killing him finishes him off. Not allowing him to utter another word, let alone a death curse.” I looked at Kader coolly. “A death curse isn’t something you can send by proxy or attach to one of your letters, is it?”

  Kader smiled smugly. “No. I can do a lot of damage by proxy, as you call it. But you are correct. I would need to utter the curse at the moment of my death.”

  I looked at Aiden, shrugging. “Your call.”

  Kader laughed, quietly delighted.

  I ignored him, but he was becoming seriously irksome. I loathed it when Adepts weren’t at least wary around me. It demanded so much extra effort on my part to keep them in line.

  “You were saying, Emma?” Aiden leaned back against the railing, ceding the conversation to me. “There’s more to it …?”

  I glanced at Kader. “You think that Aiden can break the spell, if it’s of Cerise’s construction.” Kader’s hasty and demonstrably reckless use of a teleportation spell only hours after Aiden had opened the letter told me that the elder sorcerer was desperate. He’d had no idea what else he might find when he found Aiden. That was incredibly risky. “Because he and Cerise are blood tied.”

  Kader nodded. Looking at Aiden, not me. “To both of us.”

  I snorted. “It’s always about blood ties with you.”

  The elder sorcerer flicked his dark-eyed gaze my way, amused. “You can thank me later.”

  Anger flushed through me, but it felt utterly cold. I leaned forward, abruptly dropping any attempt to mediate the situation. I might not want Aiden to have to live with killing his own father, but I wasn’t going to play games or make nice.

  “For the power that runs through my veins, you mean?” I asked darkly. “For the ties that bind me to the Five? For everything you did to me, to us, without our permission?” I was whispering now, watching a range of faint expressions flit across the elder sorcerer’s face. “And how would you have me thank you, Kader Azar?”

  My words fell heavily between us, dissipating into another lengthy silence as we sat there, staring at each other, poised on the edge of violence. Even Aiden was barely breathing, his magic held in a tight coil. My own power was leaking out, writhing around me, licking toward Kader as if it could grab him, drain him, without my even touching the sorcerer.

  It couldn’t, of course. Not even if I unleashed it fully. My abilities — innate and latent — required skin-to-skin contact.

  Kader just looked at me, a glass of iced tea in one hand and a cookie in the other. The elder sorcerer didn’t need his hands to attack me. He barely needed words or runes.

  So I looked him straight in the eye, and I dared him. I silently urged him to make a move.

  He didn’t.

  Instead, he cleared his throat, blinking three times. “I misspoke,” he said simply.

  My anger guttered, swallowed by disappointment.

  “I would think,” Kader continued, addressing Aiden, “that you’d prefer your mother to not be a murderer.”

  “My pentagram is in the loft of the barn,” Aiden said, his tone clipped. “I’ll need about thirty minutes to reverse some of the damage done to it by quelling the teleportation spell embedded into your letter.”

  Kader nodded. “Indeed. Masterfully done. As I’m sure you understand, it would have been far easier to have brought you to me.”

  Aiden ignored the change of subject. “After I verify that the spell you believe is slowly killing you is of Myers witch origin, I will then consider whether or not I’ll attempt to thwart it.”

  “Completely understandable. And expected. I’m delighted to find you in the … possession of such resources and a newly honed ability to thwart a spell of your father’s making.” Kader side-eyed me. “Blood ties and all. That bodes well.”

  He was inferring that Aiden wouldn’t have been powerful enough to negate the teleportation spell without being amplified by me.

  The secondary inference was that I was valuable only for my magic.

  That was an old wound. A recently buried concern that the elder sorcerer had no ability to reopen or dig up — at least for me. Aiden, however, clenched his hands into fists, readying some retort that I was fairly certain was going to contain more magic than words.

  “I do really like these glasses,” I said, setting down my iced tea.

  Aiden’s gaze flicked to me. Reluctantly. As if he was having trouble reining himself in. Then he nodded, just once. “Right. He’s not worth breaking them.”

  “Or the stoneware,” I added, keeping my tone light. So light that I felt almost out-of-body as I uttered the words. Again, I wasn’t reacting in character. As I would have reacted if Kader Azar had shown up at my gate before I’d met Aiden … before I’d loved Aiden …

  I shoved the thought away, focus
ing on the present because that was where I’d chosen to be. Not fretting about the past.

  The elder sorcerer glanced between me and Aiden, though we were just staring at each other, not speaking. He set down his glass and stood. “Perhaps I can be of some assistance with the pentagram.”

  Aiden nodded, still looking steadily at me. And I realized he was doing the same thing that I was. He was using me to anchor himself, moment by moment, just as I was using him.

  Ignored by both of us, Kader stepped around me. He crossed into the house and toward the front door, and his shoes.

  I smiled. A genuine, joyful smile.

  An answering smile spread across Aiden’s face. He swiftly closed the space between us, leaning over and whispering in my ear, “I love you.”

  “I know it.” I brushed my lips against his cheek. “I love you.”

  He held his hand out. “Will you join us?”

  “I will.” I placed my hand in his, standing.

  Aiden’s eyes glimmered with power. His grin sharpened, edged in dark anticipation.

  Something deep within me responded, recognizing exactly what the two of us could accomplish together. As long as we were willing to cross every line, destroy everyone and anyone in our path.

  No one could stand against us, not even Kader Azar.

  I brushed a kiss across Aiden’s lips. Tender and full of promise. Not a promise of wanton destruction in the accumulation of power, but a promise of the life we’d chosen together.

  Aiden sighed softly. “Yes,” he murmured. Then he firmed his tone. “Yes.”

  He stepped away, quickly collecting the glasses and plates onto the tray, then carrying everything into the kitchen. I snagged a second cookie, following him into our home.

  Setting his satchel just inside the door to the loft suite, Kader slowly paced a circle around the tarnished copper pentagram set into the white-painted wood-slat floor.

  “The obsidian was an excellent choice,” he murmured to Aiden. “I’m surprised it didn’t hold.”

  Aiden crouched by one of the five smaller pentagrams, prying the cracked obsidian gemstone from its center. He held it up to the weak sunlight filtering in through the upper windows of the barn.

  Kader held his hand out to his son, silently requesting the stone. Magic flickered in Aiden’s eyes as he quashed whatever violence that gesture triggered within himself. Then he dropped the chunk of obsidian into his father’s open palm.

  Peering at the stone, Kader rolled it between his fingers. “The rune?”

  “Of my own construction,” Aiden said gruffly, moving to and prying another cracked gemstone free from the next smaller pentagram. He glanced over at me, magic simmering in his eyes.

  I met his gaze without reaction, holding myself in check. Steady. Despite his threat of wiping the entire Myers bloodline from the face of the earth with his dying breath, I understood that Kader saw Aiden as some sort of salvation, so keeping myself centered was coming more easily.

  I didn’t, however, underestimate the elder sorcerer’s ability to shift his plans when something didn’t go his way. I didn’t underestimate what my presence — and therefore a possible reconnection to the Five — might mean to a dying sorcerer. One who had most likely already exhausted his considerable magical resources trying to undo the magic that was killing him.

  I was exceedingly glad that Christopher wasn’t even on the continent. I didn’t want the clairvoyant anywhere near this situation. Chenda, aka the Mystic of the Golden Peninsula, had already done enough psychological damage. No matter how powerful the Collective made us, they hadn’t made us impervious to nonmagical mental manipulation.

  I also didn’t want Kader anywhere near Daniel or Samantha — who would most likely try to kill him on sight. As I would have done, had I actually been the sociopath the Collective had tried to make me. I would have slaughtered Kader Azar by the roadside.

  But instead, I’d invited him into my home. Because I cared for Aiden.

  The fourth gemstone Aiden removed broke into three pieces in his hand. The fifth shattered to countless shards. He swore, resting back on his heels. “I was hoping to salvage them,” he muttered, offering me a twisted smile.

  “No matter,” Kader said from the doorway. “Though it was a solid first choice, the obsidian isn’t the right stone.” He tucked the gemstone he held in the pocket of his suit pants. Even I knew he was more interested in the rune etched into it than the stone itself.

  “It’s attuned to me.” Aiden leaned forward, brushing his fingers along the copper that outlined the main pentagram. Power swept along the star, removing the tarnish. The runes etched into the metal flared, then faded.

  “The pentagram is impressive,” Kader said, not stepping any closer. “An acknowledgement of your witch and sorcerer roots. A strong anchor for your unique power signature.”

  “Which only benefits you,” Aiden snapped, straightening. He deliberately stepped between two of the pentagram’s points.

  Kader inclined his head. “Consider your birthstone next time.”

  Aiden frowned. “Carnelian? For what? Good luck?”

  “A stabilizing agent. Controlling the flow of energy.”

  “The obsidian is more receptive to my magic.”

  Kader smiled. That thin, possessive, pride-filled twist of his lips. Then he settled his gaze on me. “I believe you will discover that you took too much power with you into the pentagram.”

  As he processed his father’s implication, Aiden’s jaw tensed, eyes narrowing. Then he carefully blanked his expression.

  “Too much power for the obsidian,” Kader said smoothly.

  My power, the elder sorcerer meant.

  My amplification of Aiden was what had blown the obsidian out. And now Aiden was clearly feeling like an undereducated idiot in front of his uber-powerful father. A father he loathed — but who somehow, somewhere deep inside, he still idolized.

  I didn’t know that feeling. I couldn’t empathize. But I could see it etched in every tense muscle of Aiden’s body, and in the spike of his magic.

  “I’ll run some tests,” he said, his tone remarkably neutral.

  “Of course.” Kader waved a hand toward the newly shiny pentagram. “Shall I?”

  “Please.”

  The elder sorcerer’s gaze flicked to me.

  A smile curled Aiden’s lips. “If Emma was going to kill you outright, she would have done so already.”

  “Yes.” Kader set his dark-eyed gaze on his son as he stepped into the center of the pentagram. “I know the amplifier far better than you.”

  Aiden laughed quietly. “No. You simply think you know what you had a hand in creating. You have no idea of the person she’s become.”

  “That any of us became,” I said quietly, pointedly speaking to Aiden.

  He nodded, but I didn’t think he caught my full implication — that he had been the product of his father’s predilection for magical genetic experiments as surely as I was. I hated having to couch my words, to mitigate my reactions. I had grown accustomed to being who I wanted to be with Aiden in a very short period of time.

  Kader didn’t respond, settling down in the pentagram with his legs crossed and his hands set on either knee, palms facing up.

  Paisley chose that moment to trundle up the interior stairs. About half of her mane of tentacles writhed around her neck, but she was otherwise in her larger blue-nosed pit bull aspect. She was holding her bovine bone, an egg she must have purloined from the chicken coop, and a book in three of the tentacles.

  The book was smudged with dirt. As if she’d dug it up after having buried it somewhere in the yard or garden.

  Paisley shouldered past me, leaning in the way she did when she wanted to be petted. I tried to oblige, but she moved steadily out of my reach, angling for Aiden.

  Aiden sealed the pentagram around Kader with a whispered command. Blue-tinged power rippled across the inlaid copper bars, sparking each of the runes.

  Th
e demon dog paused, blinking at the elder sorcerer with red eyes that had been deep brown a moment before. Kader kept his gaze on his son.

  “I’ve been looking for that,” Aiden muttered, reaching for the dirt-smudged book as Paisley flicked it toward him. The demon dog yanked the book just out of Aiden’s reach, demanding his full attention. She flipped through the pages, opening the book to what appeared to be the beginning of a spell.

  She tapped the selected page with the bone, blinking up at Aiden.

  The dark-haired sorcerer peered down at the book, reading. Then he flashed her a smile. “Is that what the egg is for?”

  Paisley dropped her massive maw open, displaying a double row of sharp teeth and a lolling blue tongue.

  “All right. Later?”

  Paisley chortled darkly, apparently pleased. Then she settled down next to Aiden to watch him work.

  Kader’s gaze was now riveted to the demon dog. “Remarkable. It can read?”

  No one answered him.

  Aiden held his hands forward, palms facing out, gaze remote. The same pose as when he had tried to assess the block on Samantha’s magic. “Yes, I see it.”

  “It’s rather obvious,” Kader said dryly. “I’m surprised you needed the pentagram.”

  Aiden ignored his father, but Paisley tapped the edge of the pentagram with her bone, narrowing her eyes at the elder sorcerer.

  Kader smirked at her. “Included my son in your programming, have you?”

  Something in me snapped. I assessed the space between me and the elder sorcerer. I visualized clearing the distance in a single stride, easily reaching through the magic that sealed him within the pentagram, and tearing his head off his shoulders.

  It would be messy, bloody. But properly harnessed, the magic in his father’s blood would feed Aiden’s pentagram for decades.

  “Emma …”

  Aiden’s gentle tone pulled my attention away from Kader. I realized I’d called my blade into my right hand, most likely draining the last of the retrieval spell.

  The elder sorcerer had raised his hands, palms turned to me. Pulses of blue magic, so dark that they appeared almost black, simmered between his outstretched fingers.