Magic on the Hunt (2 page)

“A technicality. Jingo is working for your father. Carrying out what I admit is a very comprehensive plan to hold Sedra hostage and use her as sacrifice to bring Mikhail back into power. I don’t know what Daniel intends to get out of that. And I don’t care. Tell me where she is.”

“I don’t know. Dad never told me his plans.”

“Oh, he told you. You may not remember it.” He paced toward me. “Daniel was paranoid about how much information any one person should be allowed to access. But not you. He told everything to you. You just don’t remember.”

He stopped. Not close enough for me to make a grab for his gun, but close enough that I could smell the old-vitamin stink of him. One sniff and a wash of fear rolled through me. I remembered that smell. That smell meant pain. Even though I was furious, a whimper filled my throat.

“The information, your father’s information, is in your head,” he said with a tight smile. “All I have to do is pull it out of you.”

The men behind me were moving. I couldn’t hear them, but I felt their footsteps vibrating beneath my bare feet, coming closer.

“Your father Closed you many times. Used you. He’s been taking your memories away since the accident when you were five years old.”

A high ringing started in my ears; my heartbeat thrummed behind it. I was breathing too fast. I didn’t know if I was angry, panicked, or about to be sick. I didn’t remember an accident. I didn’t remember my dad Closing me.

That didn’t mean those things hadn’t happened.

He had to be lying. He had to be trying to knock me off my footing, to break me down so he could get me to tell him where Sedra was.

I didn’t want to believe the bastard, but I knew, somehow I knew, every word was the truth.

His eyebrows lifted. “You didn’t know, did you?” He shook his head. “He never even trusted you with that much. Isn’t that sad? And now he’s in there, isn’t he? Filling up the holes in you he’s been making for himself all these years. Taking up the room he’s carved out in you.”

“I told you I don’t know where Sedra is,” I said. “We’re all looking for her. If you’d been here the past few weeks, you’d know that. Where have you been? Why haven’t you been helping us look for her?”

“I know who my allies are,” he snapped. He lifted the gun slightly, aiming at my head. Then, in a voice clipped with anger: “Tell your father I want to talk to him.”

“He doesn’t listen to me.” Still buying time. Did his men have a gun to Zay’s head? If I tried magic, would they just shoot us both? It might be worth a bullet to take Dane and his men down. But no matter how good the doctors in the Authority were, a bullet to the brain was a bad day that couldn’t be undone.

Dane knew I carried magic inside me. Dane knew I could use it. Dane might even know that I’d given away my small magic in death in trade for Zayvion’s soul.

What Dane did not know was what I’d gotten out of that deal. I had a mark of death on my hand. I carried a piece of death in my palm. That piece of death was a mark Pike said the dead were drawn to like a beacon.

Maybe it was time I used the dead to my advantage.

“I never admired your father, Allison,” Dane said. “But I appreciated his approach to problem solving. He and I are in agreement there. Use, discard, destroy. Then there are no errors, no mistakes, no tracks to cover. Once he realizes what I’m willing to do to you, to get to him, he’ll answer me.”

“He doesn’t care,” I said. “He’s never cared if I was hurt.”

He shook his head again. Smiled. “Ask him if he had a plan in place for this. For me killing you today.” He lowered the gun, level with my chest.

I held my breath, waiting for the explosion. Sweat trickled down my spine and between my breasts. Even though I was shaking cold, my mind finally went hard, crystal clear.

I was not getting out of this alive.

Fine. Then neither was he.

“Daniel. Where. Is. Sedra?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

He flicked the gun to my left. The crack of an explosion was swallowed by the Mute spell.

I screamed—my voice whisked away by the Mute spell his men were holding—and stumbled backward, catching at my arm. Ice and pain and heat coursed up my left arm, puncturing my heart with metal hooks. My arm was on fire. Blood gushed and ran hot down my skin, dripped to the floor. He’d shot me. Not my shoulder, but the outside of my biceps. I wanted to scream again, instead used my breath to inhale.

“That is to let you know I am serious about this, Daniel. Next will be her stomach. Then I’ll put a bullet through her brain and be rid of you both. If you want your daughter to survive, tell me. Where. Is. Sedra?”

Dad shifted in my mind. I pushed against him. If he got control and started swapping secrets with Dane, I’d be used, discarded, dead.

The pain throbbed with my heartbeat. My bathrobe sleeve was soggy with blood.

Allison.
Dad sounded angry. Yeah, well, join the club.
Let me unlock the mark in your hand.

I didn’t want an unlocking. I wanted a gun.

“Still aren’t sure?” Dane said. “Let us jog your memory.”

One of his buddies slammed a fist into my left kidney. Pain gushed across my nerves, my spine, stabbing up into my brain. I yelled, and my knees hit the floor, sending out another wave of pain.

“Enough!” Dad and I said at the same time.

I was in too much pain to know which of us was speaking. My anger and his anger formed a hot, rolling power gathering inside me. My hatred and his hatred were the same.

For perhaps the first time in my life, my dad and I were on the exact same page.

Options washed through my mind. I don’t know if I sorted them or if he did. It was instant, clear, easy.

Death magic. He wouldn’t know I had a mark, a seal, a seed of Death magic planted in my left palm.

“I’ll tell you where Sedra is,” we said.

Dane didn’t move, didn’t offer me a hand up. Smart.

I pushed myself up with my right hand, my left hanging at my side. I wavered a little on my feet, shock and pain sucking at my bones—could be loss of blood too, come to think of it, but still, I stood. I glanced at Zay. Dane’s men did not have their guns drawn.

How very stupid of them.

Can you move your left hand?
Dad asked.

No.

This will hurt.
It almost sounded like an apology.

I don’t give a damn.

“Jingo has her,” we said. “He hasn’t contacted me. If I hadn’t been delayed fighting the Veiled, I would have seen to him, and Sedra, by now.”

“I don’t believe you.” Dane aimed the gun at my stomach.

Dad and I said one word that made my lips sting. He, I, we, hauled magic up through the network lines around the apartment. So much, so fast, the lights dimmed.

The world became very, very slow.

Black flame covered my left hand, cool, slick, soft as silk. I threw the fire at him—holy hells, that hurt—while we drew another spell with my right hand. It was a type of Hold or Freeze, something I’d never used before, but Dad’s steel-hard confidence guided my fingers through the glyph.

We spoke another word and unleashed the spell. It wrapped around the other men in the room. I didn’t take the time to look at them but knew, as my father knew, that the men dropped unconscious to the floor, their air cut off by the spell.

Dane was our problem. Dane was our target. Dane was going to die. That made both my father and me very, very pleased.

His eyes were wide. He squeezed the trigger. I was already moving.

The bullet would hit me in the chest. I threw myself to the right, no time to cast another spell as I tucked. The bullet hit my left hip, and pain poured screaming hot through me.

Dad, however, kept his focus clear. He was already casting another spell.

Dane didn’t have a chance to get off the next shot.

The Shield he’d been tracing shattered under Dad’s Impact spell. Lightning crackled across the ceiling, burned paint and plaster, arced, and struck him in the chest.

Dane yelled. The Mute spell was gone. I figured they heard that yell three blocks down.

Son of a bitch
, Dad said.
He has a disk—

Light exploded. Dane and his men were gone.

Black ashes, as glossy as raven feathers, fell in a circle around me, making a mess of my carpet.

Everything snapped back to real time. I dropped my hands, the spells gone, broken. My heartbeat still hammered as I gasped for air. I hurt from head to toe and at the same time was numb and trembling. My pulse thudded hard, heavy, slow beats, while the ringing in my ears seemed to be coming from a thousand miles away.

I turned toward Zay and shuffled across the room. I wasn’t thinking very straight. I sat next to him, hissing at the pain in my hip, and stared at the handcuffs, wondering how I was going to get those off him.

I stood, which hurt, and looked for something to help.

Cell phone
, Dad said.

I didn’t know how that would help with the handcuffs, but right now any idea was better than wandering around like a zombie. What was wrong with me?

My cell was by my computer, in the other corner of the room. I walked until I got there, picked up the phone, and stared at it.

Somehow my fingers hit the speed dial. Somehow my hand put the phone to my ear.

Then there was a voice on the other end. Victor’s voice.

“This is Daniel,” I said. Well, he said. “Allie’s been shot; Zayvion is unconscious. Dane Lanister was behind it. We are at her apartment and could use Dr. Fisher’s assistance.”

Not a pause, not a doubt. “We’ll be right there.”

My thumb turned the phone off, and, with Dad’s help, I sat down by Zayvion again, but mostly on my uninjured hip, and this time holding my good hand over the wound on my arm.

I have you
, Dad said.
Rest.

And hell, who was I to argue with the man?

I rested. I might have blacked out, but I heard the sounds of traffic outside my window and was acutely aware of Zayvion’s breathing. When my front door opened, I was very much awake.

Victor, who looked like a corporate exec who’d been interrupted in the middle of an important meeting, strode through the doorway. Behind him was Dr. Fisher, wearing her usual casual sweater, slacks, and sensible shoes, her hair in one braid down her back. Shame and Terric were there too, Shame in black from head to toe, Terric wearing a blue Seahawks T-shirt and jeans. They didn’t look happy.

I smiled. “ ’Bout time you got here.”

Victor cast a very nice cleansing spell, something to negate any lingering magic and trip any spell traps; then Dr. Fisher was across the room before I could blink.

“Handcuffs,” she said.

Shame pulled out his key chain, and then he was right next to me, unlocking the cuffs and gently pulling Zay’s hands off the radiator.

“I’m, um, sh-shot,” I stuttered. Great. That sounded tough.

Dr. Fisher smiled. “Leave you alone for a few days and you take on a gunman? Allie, what am I going to do with you?”

She tugged my robe off my shoulder to better see my arm, which hurt and made me whine.

Victor reappeared from down the hallway. Terric handed the doctor a wet towel and Shame a blanket, which he then wrapped around me. I was glad they all seemed to know what they were doing, because everything was a little fuzzy around the edges.

Shame still looked like he’d taken the three-day cruise to hell and back. But his eyes, which had once been green and then so dark they were almost black, seemed a little more normal. They were greenish around his pupils and fanned out into ebony toward the edges.

“I let you out of my sight for one lousy minute and you come back covered in bruises. What happened to us all getting a little rest?”

“Hey, this wasn’t my idea. Zay okay?” I asked. Or at least I think I did.

Shame was holding my right hand while Dr. Fisher did painful things to my left arm, then had me roll even more onto my right hip so she could inspect my left. Everything went away while I dealt with the pain.

In the distance I finally heard Shame say, “He’s not shot. You, on the other hand, are on the way to a new record. This is what, three times you’ve survived a gun pointed at you in one year? Who was it?”

“Dane,” I said, because someone needed to tell them what happened. “And five men.”

“Did you recognize the men?” Victor asked.

“No.”

“We’ll have you look through some photos later. Terric, would you come with me, please?”

Terric hesitated, looking between me and Zay. From the expression on his face, I didn’t think Zay and I were in very good shape.

“I got them,” Shame said.

Terric nodded and followed Victor, who was already out the door.

“This is going to sting a little,” Dr. Fisher said. “But it will help with the pain.”

She gave me a shot that stung like a fifty-foot wasp nailed my arm. Then the pain was gone, and even though I was a little shaky, I felt like myself again.

“Rest for a little bit, okay?” she said. “Shame, why don’t you make her some tea?”

“Do you own tea?”

“Maybe. Check under the coffee.”

I looked over at Zay. Dr. Fisher gave him a shot too and called his name. He woke up, groggy. Then angry. He pushed into a sitting position and hissed, wrapping one arm over his ribs.

“Allie?”

“Right here.”

Those brown eyes were flecked with gold. I didn’t have to touch him to know he was furious.

“No one left to kill,” I said. “Victor and Terric are looking, I think.”

“What happened?”

Well, that was a switch. Usually I was the one who couldn’t remember.

“Dane and five other men came into the house, waved around guns and crowbars and magic and stuff. Wanted to know where Sedra is. Dad didn’t say, but he did help me knock them all out. Except for Dane. He had a disk.”

“Disappeared?” Zay asked.

I nodded. “And now I have to drink tea.”

“Get to drink tea,” Dr. Fisher said, trying to help Zayvion out of his shirt so she could assess the damage.

“Yes. That.”