Victor smiled.
It was then I noticed that Flint was watching Victor instead of me. It was now or never. I adjusted my grip on my knife and sprinted as fast as I could toward the stone elemental. Luckily, their reflexes were slow and with Victor distracting him I was able to catch him almost completely off guard.
Just before I got to Flint he saw me; probably something to do with the way the crowd had started screaming and cheering. He raised his arm in defense but I was already bringing my knife around. What should have been a good stab was deflected and instead I ended up with a shallow slash along his arm.
He swung the club at me; my instinct was to flip out of the way, but instead I hurled myself rather clumsily to the ground and let it sail over me. He brought down a foot and I rolled out of the way. As he raised the club for another blow I jumped to my feet and scrambled out of his reach. I wasn't holding back, technically, but I felt like it would work in my favor in future fights, assuming there were any, if people underestimated me. That was an advantage I usually had as a water elemental anyway, one I didn't like to give up if I didn’t have to.
Clearly Flint wasn't in the mood to wait anymore, he lunged at me over and over with his club. I jumped and stumbled and even tripped a couple of times to get out of his way. It was admittedly a little bit harder to pretend I couldn't fight than I expected. It would have been much easier had my opponent not been actively trying to injure me. A mostly exaggerated trip turned into a real one, thanks to an unexpected divot in the dirt and I was too slow to get out of the way. I managed to roll onto my side, taking the blow more on my arm and shoulder than across the chest, but it still hurt like hell and knocked the wind out of me.
The crowd roared and cheered as Flint swung around his club, raising it to strike again. As I started to roll to dodge I could tell that my arm was either fractured or broken, or both, in more than one place. It kind of felt like he might have even cracked a rib or two. Malakas.
I knew Flint thought I was dazed and was expecting to strike the second blow; it threw him off balance as his club hit the ground instead of me. I took advantage of his position to thrust my knife up and into the softer skin of his armpit. I could have missed his lung, but I didn’t; he’d be fine and this fight didn’t need to drag out any longer.
The stubborn stone elemental switched his club to his other hand and swung it toward me again. Oh, for fuck’s sake. I jumped back and let him swing it a couple more times. Flint paused after the third swing, breathing hard. I lunged again and drove my knife into his abdomen. Painful as hell – I knew all too well – but not fatal if you knew where to aim, especially considering how quickly even stone elementals healed. Flint dropped to his knees gasping and stayed down.
“That’s enough,” Victor said reluctantly.
Like Tom and Olivia, we were escorted out of the arena to the sound of cheering, and a few scattered boos, and into the tunnel. To my surprise, the passage out of the arena led to a sort of recovery room with something for every type of magic. I was directed to an amazingly comfortable saltwater jacuzzi. As I sat there, letting my injured arm and sore side feel better, I could hear Kiana fighting with someone else back in the arena. Judging from the howls they had found her a werewolf as her opponent.
After a few minutes I was feeling well enough to get out; I easily could have taken longer, but as nice as the tub was I still wanted to get back to Thomas and make sure he was okay. I also felt a lot more comfortable recovering in the relative safety of his room, instead of here, ten feet from Flint who was still glaring at me.
Just as I was leaving, an injured tiger and a wolf walked in with their escorts. I couldn’t tell which one of them won, but frankly didn’t care enough to ask. Judging from the wolf’s limp, however, he hadn’t fared well against Kiana.
I started working my way through the obnoxious maze of stairways and corridors, rolling my eyes at the number of times I had to go down before I could get to another stairway to go up. At least, after seven days in this hellhole, I could get from place to place without taking too many wrong turns.
“Hello, Delta.”
Victor’s voice stopped me in my tracks. I took a deep breath and turned, forcing a smile.
“Evening, Victor.”
He strode toward me, fixing me with his unsettling smile. I put a hand on my hip, trying to look casual, while sliding a thumb into my pocket, resting it against one of my misappropriated knives.
“Congratulations on your win,” he said, coming to a stop much too close to me for comfort. “That was quite a fight.”
“Thank you.”
Movement!
I barely had time to register the attack, let alone dodge. I hit the ground, vision blurring with a mix of instant tears and dancing dark spots, blood gushing from my nose.
There was no chance to recover or even fully register being slugged in the face and then Victor was on me.
For one brief moment I was fucking useless. My mind went back to a very different vampire, in a very different place, and my entire body seized up as I stared at the fangs bared in my face, without really seeing them.
Pure instinct – something deep, deep inside me that honestly had saved my ass more than once – drove my elbow up into his throat.
Victor gagged and reared back in surprise.
I shook myself out of it, slammed my knee into his stomach hard enough to get him mostly off of me, then kicked my legs over my head and flipped back away from him. It would have worked well enough, if the sudden inversion of my head hadn’t caused a throbbing rush of pain and wave of nausea from my broken nose.
Just when I thought I couldn’t possibly do anything stupider, I caught myself on my good arm and turned my injured one toward Victor. I swear, it was a miracle a vampire hadn’t killed me yet, considering I was so good at completely losing my grip on myself around them. Maybe it had finally caught up to me.
Victor grabbed my arm and viciously twisted it behind me, rebreaking everything that had healed and then some. I forced in a deep breath, fighting to not pass out from the pain and keep the flashbacks at bay. Since the arm was already a loss, I twisted myself around farther. The sacrifice caught Victor completely by surprise, giving me a chance to sink my throwing knife into his throat.
Or try to.
What should have been an incapacitating strike was stopped by a black blur as Victor’s familiar snatched the knife, along with a good amount of flesh, from my hand with his talons and flung it aside. Before I could even consider my next move, a hand wrapped around my wrist, yanking it painfully away from Victor, effectively immobilizing me. I risked a glance to the side to see Anthony had showed up.
A mix of foul language and despair flashed thought my head as I frantically tried to think of anything I could do against a vampire, a raven, and a dhampir with a slew of broken bones, a blinding headache, and a tenuous grip on myself.
“I thought so,” Victor laughed. He released my arm, which fell limp and useless at my side, then grabbed me by the neck and forced me to face him. “I have seen thousands of fights, I know when someone is holding back,” he snarled. “It is clear that you can fight when you want to. I told you there would be consequences.” He paused and I forced myself to hold his gaze and tried to keep from shaking, knowing he’d enjoy it. “That said, this is your first fight. I think I will let you go with just a warning. I like you,” he added with a dark chuckle. “I’m confident you will go far in our fights, after all, you were able to scratch me.”
He nodded to Anthony, who released my wrist and moved out of my immediate reach.
“Have a good evening,” Victor said, as if we had simply passed each other in the hall. His familiar changed seamlessly from a falcon back into a raven as he landed on Victor’s shoulder
My knees gave out and I sat down hard as I watched them stride away with Anthony. A few yards away, Victor paused and my heart skipped a beat. His raven sailed off his shoulder, grabbed something off the ground, then flap
ped back and dropped it next to me. The throwing knife.
I managed to find my voice. “Are you… giving that back?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not pissed I took it?”
Victor chuckled. “In truth, I would be disappointed had you not. It is wise to arm yourself here, especially seeing as you are only a water elemental.”
It wasn’t a serious insult; he may have just meant that I was out of water and thus at a disadvantage, but I chose to let it get to me. I watched him walk away, wishing for once that I could set things on fire. I clutched the knife so tightly it dug painfully into my palm as I silently swore that someday this water elemental would make him regret giving it back to me.
I sat there seething, long after he was out of sight, because I knew that if I let myself feel anything other than rage, I’d end up curled into a sobbing ball on the floor, something I would much rather do in the shower in the safety of a private room. Preferably mine, but it would be smarter to stick together tonight. So, I forced myself to my feet and headed to Tom’s room, holding on to how much I wanted to wipe Victor’s smug grin off his fucking face. The plan was to keep it together just long enough to make sure Tom was okay after his fight, then I’d hit the shower and treat myself to a little freak-out, and after that hopefully I would be tired enough to sleep soundly for a couple of hours.
On the bright side, I would have had the bastard if not for his familiar and some help from a dhampir. Maybe he wasn’t as badass as he thought. With that in mind, I heaved a sigh and knocked on Tom’s door.
Chapter Four
Jen
It was a full house but it felt absolutely empty without Thomas and Dani. The TV was on, even though nobody was paying attention to it; it was more just for background noise, since none of us were interested in talking. Aside from the TV and the distant sound of clanging metal, it was eerily quiet.
Charlie was sitting at what had become his usual post by the phone, waiting in case someone decided to call the landline instead of his cell phone. TS was on one of the couches, sitting silently with his head slightly tilted, as he tried unsuccessfully to get a good sense of where Thomas was. Shannon was next to him, offering what comfort a soul-pack mate could while another was missing. She was reading a book, but I didn't think I had seen her turn any pages in the last hour or so. In fact, I was quite confident of that because everyone was so still that even the slightest movement drew my attention.
Mariana and I were on the other couch. She had her laptop open and was quietly going through accounting records, trying to find any charges from CVLR that could possibly give us any sort of new lead. I was going over Ember’s latest stack of printouts, with updated missing persons, so we could look for links to the blood casters but honestly, right now, finding Alaria was the last thing on my mind. Even though our fruitless search over the last month hadn't turned up anything for how to find Thomas and Dani and we didn't know where else to go from here, I still felt like any energy not spent finding them was wasted time. Rak was curled up on my lap, ignoring the fact that I kept putting some of my papers down on top of him.
Something was different… it took me a moment to realize the sound of Ember hammering had stopped. A moment later she started up again. The little blacksmith shed on the edge of the property was where she was spending most of her time; deciding it was more constructive to hit things and build stuff instead of just setting them on fire.
Tomorrow it would start all over again. We’d go to work and act like everything was normal; as far as everyone at MES was concerned Thomas and Dani were just taking a vacation. We were confident that whoever was involved in CVLR had people inside MES, so we couldn't risk anyone finding out where they had really gone and alerting the people who had taken them. Of course, we couldn't be certain that they hadn't already been discovered and that was why they weren't back.
According to TS, from what he could sense, they were okay, but whatever was interfering with his bond made it harder. Occasionally he got stronger, but still vague, emotions from Thomas like anger or fear; there were a couple times where TS was sure that Thomas was fighting someone. But that was all he could get. With no way for TS to tell where, or even how far away, Thomas was the weakened emotions were all we had.
After work we'd come back here, to Dani and Charlie's house, and go over whatever new leads we had. Not that we ever had any. We were mainly just reviewing everything we had already gone over hundreds of times, looking desperately for any connection and coming up with a big fat nothing. Jon didn't like it, but we were still dropping in on Cavaliers now and again, hoping we would see or hear something that could lead us to Thomas and Dani. But it was as if everything at Cavalier’s was normal and innocent, now that the strange meeting Thomas and Dani had gone to – and never come back from – was over. Charlie, unable to contain himself, had asked once if Victor was around and was told that if he had any interest in speaking to Victor, he would have to come back in a few months.
The idea that we would have to wait months to find them was horrifying. Unthinkable. Yet, here we were, an entire freaking month since their disappearance and nothing to show for it.
Jon, while careful not to arouse the suspicions of anyone at MES, was working tirelessly to track them down as well, but was failing as miserably as we were.
The only change in the case we uncovered was the grim discovery that a couple more of the statuses for people who went to Cavaliers had been updated to deceased. Every day, sometimes more than once, Ember pulled up the fake records for Dani and Thomas to make sure those still listed them as active. I wasn’t sure if the obsessive status checking was adding to the stress or relieving it. Someone connected with the whole thing had gone in through the backend and deleted the feeding record in Thomas’ fake profile, but nothing else had been changed.
As to where they were and what they were doing, it was a horribly frustrating mystery – I still couldn't believe how quickly it had all gone to hell. Thomas and Dani had been at Cavaliers for several hours with absolutely no problem. We were all waiting in a hotel nearby just in case things took a turn for the worse. For the bulk of the evening, according to TS, Thomas was just bored.
We knew the moment that Victor or somebody had arrived, based on the way TS said Thomas’ mood had changed. But then his emotions rapidly changed from uncomfortable, to nervous, to a mixture of nervousness and curiosity, and then suddenly they were on the move.
We all jumped in the car, rushing in the direction that TS could sense them moving in. All the while he said that even though Thomas was a little bit worried, it didn't seem like anything serious was happening. Then all at once TS cried out that Thomas felt panicked. Then he lost consciousness.
I shifted my weight uncomfortably on the couch and glanced over at TS, remembering with a chill the moment he abruptly passed out in the car, leaving us without a way to track Thomas and Dani or to know if they were still alive.
When TS awoke a couple of hours later he reported with alarm that he couldn't sense Thomas clearly. He said everything about the bond felt normal, but somewhat muted, like Thomas was trying to block him, but when he tried to actually focus on their bond, things seemed to become fainter instead of clearer. TS said he had lost all shared physical sensations, even biting his tongue or scratching his palm – both of which were always a surefire way to get a response from Thomas – did nothing. It was something he had tried repeatedly over the first few weeks and still did on occasion, but there was never an answer.
Even though TS hadn't said anything in front of Charlie and Ember, he privately confided to me and Shannon that his bond with Thomas was so distorted he wasn't confident he'd be able to sense whether or not Dani was still okay. The uncertainty and the weakened bond made an already stressful situation unbearable.
I kept telling myself any time now we would surely have a breakthrough. Something would happen. At the same time, I felt sure that if we couldn't find anything, then Thomas and Dani would co
ntact us somehow. They were the two best agents in our field office and were supposed to be some of the best ones in the entire region. If they couldn't find a way to contact us… well, I didn’t like to think about that implication.
~~~***~~~
And then it was almost September and I was sitting on the same couch, looking at the same files, feeling even more hopeless and desperate than I had two months ago. Even though we were all increasingly panicked about whatever had happened to them, there had been no change for the worse either.
TS was still getting the same information, or more accurately lack of information, from his bond and their false MES accounts were unchanged. There was nothing that seemed like Thomas and Dani were trying to get a message to us either. Everything we looked at was a big fat dead end. We were forced to stop frequenting Cavaliers as often, so that they wouldn't start recognizing us and get suspicious – not that our visits there had been leading anywhere anyway. Ember checked regularly for more altered files, but nothing that seemed related to Cavaliers had come up.
I honestly would have felt a little better if there had been a development in the search for Alaria, but that was at a standstill too. It turned out Greyson Turner's official address was being rented by a non-magic family, who had absolutely no information for us about the guy they rented from. The non-magic rental agency that they wrote their checks to wouldn’t provide any information about the person collecting them. Not that it mattered, since that person's name wasn't Greyson Turner anyway. If it was him using a fake name, it didn't turn up anywhere in the MES database.
We reluctantly went out to the park sometimes to check on things, but the labyrinth doorway was gone. On the bright side, no other magics had vanished ever since we destroyed the island. According to Mariana, the minotaur could not set new labyrinth doorway locations without closing the existing labyrinth completely, which meant either there were still a few left somewhere or there were seven brand new doorways we had yet to discover.
Rise of the Arcanist Series: Books 1 - 6 Page 45
