The anger worked. I stalked toward him, growling furiously. He smiled and aimed his wand at me.
“Face it, TS,” he said, “you’re outmatched. But I am glad to see you’re alive, that must mean Thomas is still wandering around someplace, hm? I suppose I’ll have to go find him...”
I knew he was trying to goad me into attacking, but it was almost enough to work.
Then, a burning chunk of debris flew by me and landed at Fletcher’s feet. He glared at it for a moment, then looked back at me. It burst into flames, quickly catching his pants.
Fletcher cried out in alarm and staggered backward, trying to pat out the fire climbing his legs.
It would probably burn me as well, but I didn’t care. I jumped and crashed into his chest, easily bringing the murderous traitor to the ground. His head hit the stone floor with a crack and he blinked, dazed. I spared a thought for Delilah, then closed my jaws around his neck and shook him, for quite a bit longer than necessary.
At last, I stepped back, head still swimming a bit from the lack of air, but wholly satisfied. The feeling was quickly lost as I turned and saw Charlie had sagged to his knees.
“Char!” I cried, hurrying over. I cursed as I reached him, his veins were swollen and black with blood magic.
“I’m okay,” he said weakly.
I licked his cheek, then licked it again even though his skin burned my tongue. He reached up and scratched me behind one ear. I nosed my way under his arm and stood, slowly pulling him to his feet. He let out a shuddering breath and I whined in sympathy; I knew how excruciating the pain from blood magic was.
“Have they reached the labyrinth?” he asked.
I hadn’t gotten the signal from Thomas yet, but then I had been a bit distracted. I focused on our bond. Bloody hell.
“No,” I said, deciding against telling him what I had sensed. “Let’s go.”
He nodded in agreement and leaned heavily on me as we tried to find a safer path to the doorway. I glanced back over my shoulder at Fletcher’s body, taking comfort that, if nothing else, at least the bastard was dead.
I tried to seem calm and focus on the danger all around us, but inside I was trying not to panic – we weren’t the only ones who had ended up in a fight…
Chapter Eight
Dani
The top of the stairway was in sight when Thomas stopped so suddenly I nearly crashed into him. His head whipped around and he stared down the steps behind us with wide eyes.
“What’s wrong?!” I demanded.
Maybe, maybe, he heard something interesting, but deep down I knew he was sensing something from TS and it wasn’t good.
“Tom,” I urged. “What…”
I decided that I didn’t want to know; there was nothing we could do to help them. If Charlie and TS were in trouble we’d never get through the rubble or find another way to get to them before it was too late. We’d probably just get ourselves killed trying and someone had to reach the labyrinth doorway alive… of course it was much easier to agree to that when we were all together and safe.
“We have to get to the doorway,” I reminded him.
“Yeah…” He heaved a sigh, then reluctantly turned and started back up the stairs.
I raced after him, trying really hard to not think about what was happening behind us. They’d be okay, I told myself; at least, I could try and believe that long enough to reach the doorway. If they met us there, that was that. If not… well, if not I could get a message to Jon and then deal with it; probably not very well.
We cleared the stairs and found ourselves in the huge foyer that led to most of the castle.
“Well, shit,” I said, looking around.
Tom choked and clapped a hand over his nose; I swear his face actually turned green. Before I could ask what was wrong the putrid stench of blood magic hit me and I gagged too.
I was hoping the fight hadn’t quite made its way out of the arena yet; I was very, very wrong. Everywhere we looked were people, both alive and dead, all splattered with a dozen different colors of blood. Some were marred by blackened veins from blood magic. Every single person was fighting; some in large groups, some in small, others locked in dire one-on-one duels. The air was filled with screams of pain and people shouting spells and a deafening roar of countless shifters.
Tom and I exchanged a look of alarm. Then, he nodded toward a stairway on the far side of the room.
“That leads to the doorway,” he said.
“So, does that hallway,” I said, pointing.
They were both on the far side of the room, but the fastest way to the stairs looked a bit less crowded.
“Stairs?” I suggested.
“Let’s go!”
We stuck close to the wall, moving as fast as we dared without drawing attention to ourselves. It worked. We rounded the last corner and were almost to the stairs.
Tom paused suddenly and glanced behind him, then sighed in relief. “They’re safe,” he announced.
“We’re not!” I said, throwing myself backward as a body came hurtling toward us. Tom dove forward and spun to look back.
A blood wizard slammed into the wall hard, then gingerly stood and looked around. He saw me first and raised his wand threateningly. Unfortunately for him, he was standing well within reach; I kicked before he even had time to utter a spell and felt a satisfying crack as my foot connected with his wrist, sending his wand flying.
A werelion hurtled out of nowhere with a ferocious roar, crashing into the wizard and adding to the growing chaos around us. A spell exploded into a wall right where Tom had been standing, driving him farther away from me. It seemed the blood wizard and werelion had been part of a larger fight; in moments we were enveloped in the fight and surrounded by a dozen different kinds of magics. I ducked a spell and shoved the offending blood caster into the path of a pissed off looking air elemental, before dodging around them in an effort to get back to Tom.
I spotted him on the other side of the fray and could see things looked calm enough between him and the stairway.
“Thomas, get to the doorway!” I yelled. I couldn’t hear his response amid all the shouting, but he looked like he was arguing. “I’ll be fine, go!”
He grimaced, then spun and sprinted away. Someone screamed and a strong wind so powerful it hurt whipped up around me; skata, the air elemental was squalling. My feet skidded on the floor as the vortex began dragging me, and a dozen people – all of them probably happy to kill me personally – toward him.
My feet started lifting off the ground as I struggled to escape the pull. I tried to drop low to get under it, but instead found a strong gust of wind and went wildly tumbling across the floor. Before I could even try to regain my balance there was a thunderous whoosh and a gust of wind hit me like a brick wall, then hurled me away. All around me people were crashing into the ground from the force.
I staggered to my feet and found to my pleasant surprise that I was right near the stairway. To hell with this nonsense. Hoping that Tom had gotten through and taken the stairs as well, I raced up them.
I rounded a landing and was almost up to a second when a familiar figure appeared at the top of the stairs. His face twisted with rage when he saw me and I stopped short.
“Let’s talk?” I suggested.
“We have nothing to talk about, Delta. If that is your name,” said Flint.
“In that case…” I stepped to the side and leaned against the wall, gesturing for him to go by me. “I’ll just get out of your way…”
He took a couple of steps back, but before I could hope he was actually going to take me up on it, lunged forward and hurled himself down the stairs.
I whirled and raced back down, knowing I couldn’t possibly outrun him. My only chance was getting around the landing and hoping he would just bounce off the wall instead of turning.
Just as I got to the landing, he caught up to me. Three-hundred-some pounds of stone elemental crashed into me like a boulder and hurled me
against the wall. Something cracked and I couldn’t tell if it was the wall itself or my bones. It hurt like hell either way.
Flint stood, unharmed, and sneered down at me as I staggered to my feet, trying not to show just how much I was feeling the effects of being smashed between a rock and a jackass. I drew one of my knives – cursing as it occurred to me I was down to two, thanks to Alaria’s lightshow – and tried to surreptitiously catch my breath.
“That little butter knife isn’t going to help you,” Flint said.
“I’ll make it work. Or we could still go our separate ways…”
He rolled his shoulders, then swung at me. He was easy enough to dodge, but no less intimidating as his fist sank into the wall.
“I know we got off on the wrong foot with the whole MES thing,” I said, dodging another punch. I grimaced as I realized he was trying to corner me on the landing; the narrow staircase took away the advantage being faster and more agile gave me.
“I don’t care if you’re with MES,” he snorted.
“Um…”
His fist buried itself in the wall very close to my head, so close some of the debris it knocked loose hit me.
“You beat me in our first fight here,” he growled. His knee came up and I spun away, sparing myself several cracked ribs.
“Are you kidding?!” I cried. Freaking stone elementals and their grudges.
I swung my knife and it bounced right off his skin; he wasn’t wrong when he called it a butter knife. My miserable failure to even scratch him left me exposed and his next punch connected like a cinderblock. I wasn’t sure what hurt more, his fist or the subsequent stone floor. I blinked, trying to clear the stars swimming in front of me and registered just enough movement to roll to the side. Flint’s hand smashed the step where my head was into pebbles.
He cocked his arm back for another shot; I rolled up and kicked him in the face, probably shattering the bone in my foot in the process, at least it felt like it. Flint roared in fury and punched both walls at the same time, sending down a shower of tiny rocks. I caught sight of his eyes and swallowed nervously; he was typhooning or whatever the hell stone elementals called it; the term didn’t matter because he was going to crush me either way.
I made a desperate scramble up the stairs and probably would have made it, but instead of grabbing my leg like I was prepared for, he smashed his fist into the step instead; it crumbled beneath my foot and I slipped back before I had fully gotten my balance to begin with. Then he grabbed me by the ankle and yanked me back, up over his shoulder, then hurled me forward up the stairs and thundered after me. I hit the far wall of the hallway, then fell heavily to the floor with a hiss of pain.
Before I could recover or be thankful I had escaped the deathtrap of the staircase, he grabbed me by the neck and yanked me up off the ground. So much for the advantage of being in the open hallway.
It took several desperate attempts, but I buried the knife up the hilt in his arm. He only tightened his grip. I might as well have been kicking a fucking wall for all the good it did. Every strike jarred my legs and rattled my bones, but Flint didn’t even twitch.
My head started spinning and my lungs burned as I struggled to free myself. I blamed it on lack of air, but I suddenly realized something quite vulnerable was well within my reach. I yanked my knife out of his arm and flipped it around in my hand, ready to plunge it into his eye.
Just before I could, an arm wrapped around his neck from behind and he gagged in surprise and dropped me. I hit the ground hard and frantically sucked in some much-needed air, losing most of it in a coughing fit.
Flint thudded motionless to the stones next to me, dead.
With one last deep breath, I clutched my knife and stood to face my rescuer.
“Is this the part where I thank you?” I asked, trying to keep the fatigue out of my voice. “Or are you just such an asshole that you’ll kill someone for a shot at me?”
Victor flashed me a smile and his fangs. “The latter, I’m afraid. Although I must say I’m disappointed Flint was giving you so much trouble, I was hoping you’d make it fun.”
“Well, I’ll do my best.”
“You forgot your accent.”
I shrugged. “No reason for it now. Figure you’d like to hear what I actually sound like before I kill you.” I tightened my grip on my knife and braced myself.
He threw back his head and laughed. “I always did like you. I confess, I was surprised you’re a MES agent. You handle yourself quite ruthlessly in the arena.”
“I have this weird thing where I fight back when people are trying to kill me.”
“I suppose your reputation is well earned then. Both here and at MES.” He fixed me with a dark smile. “Your friend Morgan Fletcher told me all about you.”
I wondered if he was trying to get into my head and put me off guard. The thought actually made me feel a little more confident; if Victor wanted me unsettled before we fought, then he wasn’t quite as sure of himself as he seemed.
“Seems like he left out the part where he’s not my friend. Guess he wasn’t very thorough.”
Victor chuckled. “He told me you’re ex-Legion.”
“Technically.”
“I hear you never go out on a MES job without a gun… you must feel quite ah, out of your element, without it,” he went on.
If he was trying to make me feel uncomfortable, he was failing. “I think I’ve been doing pretty well,” I pointed out. “But if you’re talking about my gun with Fletcher, please remind him he owes me a new one.”
The joke made Victor laugh again. He may have been unsuccessful in rattling me, but I couldn’t tell if my attempt to turn it around and frustrate him by not rising to the bait was working.
Another sinister smile crossed his face. “Although I didn’t expect to hear you were in the Legion. I didn’t know they accept people with your… proclivity.”
I clenched my jaw and fought the urge to react to his new approach. “I have a knack for being where I’m not welcome,” I said, trying to sound casual. I was not going to let this bastard get to me. “Here, for example.”
“Oh, you’re mistaken. We care about your affiliations, not your preferences. Had you renounced MES, you would have been welcome here.”
“That’s quite a sales pitch. Did you study marketing?”
His smile faltered and for a moment his brows furrowed in aggravation. Then, his smile returned, somehow wider and more sinister. “Tell me, where is your fire elemental friend? You haven’t introduced us.”
I bit my tongue so hard I tasted blood as I tried to keep my expression neutral. Not that it would matter, I could almost feel the tell-tale blacks rippling into my eyes. But if he thought the threat would make me less dangerous he was sorely mistaken. As long as I didn’t fully typhoon, trying to make me angry was a bad move.
“Are you going to talk me to death or did Fletcher’s glowing review of me scare you off?” I snarled.
“Are you so eager to die?” he countered. “You realize I’ve beaten you twice.”
“You’ve caught me off-guard twice,” I corrected. “Don’t expect this time to go the same way.”
He laughed darkly, then adjusted his stance like he was ready to rush me. As he did, his eyes flicked up and behind me; he was looking at something.
I spun to face the threat, choosing my footing very carefully. Victor launched himself toward me as I turned to meet the attack that wasn’t coming. He had never given away the location of his familiar and I didn’t expect him to start now. The only reason he had for blatantly looking behind me was to redirect my attention; knowing that I was ready for his damn raven again.
I gave him a moment to close the distance, then dropped under the attack and whirled around to meet him with a knee to the stomach. Victor gagged and staggered backward. I didn’t give him a chance to recover, I launched a flurry of kicks and punches, connecting more often than not.
The trick with vampires is that most are u
sed to being the attacker, wailing on someone trying to defend themselves. If you can keep them off balance by being on the offensive, you have a good shot of winning… assuming you had the stamina to keep ahead of them long enough for a good hit. Thanks to Flint, I did not have as much in me as I would have liked.
Just when I was starting to think I might have had this after all, Victor’s familiar did strike. But, like I warned Victor, I wasn’t going to be caught off guard a third time. I whirled and dove to the side, kicking out as I did. I caught the damn bird dead on and kicked the feathered bastard straight into the closest wall.
Victor cried out in pain as his familiar crashed; to his credit he didn’t lose consciousness too, but I didn’t give him a chance to recover. I threw myself at him, nailing him in the chest with my knife. He barely managed to dodge but succeeded in ensuring I missed his hearts. I yanked the knife back out with a curse– not fast enough. His hand shot out and he caught me by the shirt before I could get out of reach.
There went my advantage.
Victor yanked me back toward him with a snarl, reaching for my knife with his other hand. I twisted away and stomped sideways on his ankle. His grip loosened enough for me to dive away, but he was right behind me.
For a moment it was just a game of frantic dodging. I blocked a strike, but he twisted his hand around and locked it around my wrist with a grip so hard my hand started instantly going numb, he dove forward into me and brought us both to the ground. The knife flew from my hand and the back of my head cracked into the stones, sending a shot of pain and nausea through me and black spots dancing across my vision.
I slammed both knees into his stomach and he gasped, releasing my wrist.
There was no time to even consider trying to get to my feet, I just desperately scrambled backward as he lunged again and again, snapping his fangs terrifyingly close to me. With each near miss, he got a little closer. I could actually feel my third knife, right fucking there, in my back pocket – poking me just a bit as it scraped across the floor – but I couldn’t spare the seconds it would take me to reach it, not from this position.
Rise of the Arcanist Series: Books 1 - 6 Page 71
