My Wicked Enemy (11 page)

Several inches of the metal table extended past Durian’s head. The talisman sat on the edge of the table above his head. The carved figure pulled at her attention so hard she had to concentrate to look anywhere else.

Two men stood on the other side of the table. Rasmus was tall with pale skin and a narrow nose set in a gorgeous face. Blue eyes as gorgeous as the rest of him. Long white-blonde hair fell past his shoulders, thick and straight, to the middle of his back. He wore black pants and a black turtleneck.

Magellan stood beside him in a custom-made suit, English-tailored double-breasted gray wool. His chocolate eyes were set deep over a nose that bespoke an Aztec ancestor in his Brazilian-Portuguese heritage. Blood spatters made a diffuse arc across his coat, white shirt, and sky-blue tie.

Two fiends she recognized from home stepped forward, mouths tight, bodies tensed for action. Magellan raised a brilliant red hand to stop them, and they did. She’d never seen anyone disobey Álvaro Magellan. Xia stood just behind Rasmus, arms crossed over his chest, legs apart.

“
Boa noite,
Carson,” Magellan said. “What a pleasant surprise to see you again.”

“I wish I could say the same.”

“You left so suddenly.” His eyebrows drew together as he tried to pretend he was puzzled. “Without telling me what upset you.” His voice fell. “Oh, yes, we have missed you. Very much. But tonight, you will come back to us?
Sim?
”

She licked her lips. “I don’t think so,” she said.

Magellan’s gaze darkened. “We shall see. Regardless, you have arrived just in time.” He held a knife in his other hand—it wasn’t Xia’s knife—and lifted it slightly and at an angle to Durian’s throat, ready to plunge down the glinting blade. Durian twitched even though Carson couldn’t fathom how he could still be alive. Not when Magellan had sliced open his chest.

From the corner of her eye, she caught a flicker against the wall, sometimes there, other times not. Nikodemus. Her head told her it was him. Neither Magellan nor Rasmus gave any sign of noticing, and Xia might as well be a statue. But Xia’s gaze constantly tracked the room. Carson walked toward Rasmus and Magellan, away from Nikodemus.

Rasmus made a motion in the air. “Good evening, Ms. Philips.” His English was perfect. “Welcome to my home.” His voice was a honeyed bass, familiar and terrible in its beauty. Magellan had a voice like that. He smiled. “Álvaro has told me so much about you.”

Her chest went cold inside. Rasmus’s attention was on her, looking her up and down with such concentration she was convinced he didn’t know about Nikodemus. Magellan, too, watched her with a cold and scornful smile. The chill around her heart and the spark of heat in her head told her Nikodemus was drawing on her. Xia’s eyes narrowed. Rasmus frowned. “She is—I disapprove of this, Álvaro.”

“Her condition is not your concern.” Magellan gestured with his blood-covered hand. “Come here,” he said as if there were no doubt of her obeying him. Maybe there wasn’t, because she took a step closer, provoked by an inner compulsion to stare at the carved black figure on the table.

“Ah,” Rasmus said, seeing the direction of her stare. “You are drawn to this. Despite your—alteration.” He picked it up with a graceful movement, ignoring Magellan’s scowl. He balanced the figurine on his palm. “As am I. Lovely, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I told Magellan that’s why you took it.”

“She can feel nothing, Rasmus.”

“Perhaps she cannot touch her magic, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there, acting on her. Or even on her environment.” He looked like he’d swallowed something rotten. “On the subject of what you have done to her, Álvaro, you and I must agree to disagree.”

If she were to stretch out her hand, she could touch Durian’s chest. And if she dared, she could lean a little farther and snatch the black figurine off Rasmus’s palm before he could prevent her. Her fingers itched to touch the carved surface again. Instead, she touched Durian’s neck. The frost around her bones deepened. His pulse beat against the pads of her fingers, weak and thready, but there. His eyes fluttered open, pain-filled, and yet there was also a flame of hatred. “This is wrong,” she said. “It’s evil and wrong.”

“You are ignorant,” Magellan said. “He will destroy some human if he’s not controlled. It is his nature.”

What if she wasn’t fast enough to snatch the figurine? Magellan turned his head to her, and she brought her hand to rest on the metal edge of the table. He took the carving from Rasmus. Behind him, Xia drew his knife and started flipping the blade, hilt to tip, catching it each time between thumb and forefinger. She was close enough to see the carved details. “It’s exquisite work,” she said to Rasmus. Was she fast enough to snatch it from Magellan? Close enough? “Nineveh, I think. First millennium.”

Rasmus’s upper lip twitched. “May I call you Carson?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “We are very close to unlocking the power this lovely object keeps hidden inside.”

“It’s only stone.” It wasn’t, though. A pulse of awareness came from the object, pulling at her in an oddly familiar manner. To her right the light rippled, and she couldn’t stop herself from looking. Her lack of restraint betrayed them. Xia came to attention. “Stone,” she said in a clipped tone. “That’s all it is. A bit of stone carved by someone thousands of years dead.”

“If you wish to believe so, you may.” Rasmus looked at Magellan. “Now that your witch is here, Magellan, I presume you no longer need my assistance.”

The figurine was still between Magellan’s thumb and index finger. She could reach it. Years and years of obedient fear of crossing Magellan blocked her off from the resolve she needed. By the time her hand shot out, it was too late. The talisman was locked behind Magellan’s closed fist.

“I can use her,
sim
.” Magellan’s eyes blazed. “But I may need you to restrain her for me. She has not been taking her prescriptions.” He scowled. “This will be the last time ever she is useful to me. You needn’t be careful.”

“Of course.” Rasmus began to mutter under his breath. “Come, Carson,” he said. Pain flashed over her, and she saw through streaks of color.

She stumbled back, clutching her head between her hands, and then the pain stopped. It broke apart. Her vision returned to normal.

“Forgive me, Álvaro,” Rasmus said. His mouth twisted. “I don’t know what happened.” Rasmus’s magic worked around her again but didn’t touch her. Her gaze involuntarily went to the shimmering air that marked Nikodemus’s position.

Magellan’s head whipped around. “What are you looking at?”

She clapped her hands to her head again, but the pretense came too late. Magellan glared at Rasmus. “Treachery of yours, Rasmus?”

“I assure you not,” Rasmus said in a voice that was no longer pleasant. “Xia? Is the witch looking at something we should know about?”

The fiend’s eyes bored a hole in her. Right through her. Like he’d already settled on how best to kill her and all that remained was to do the deed.His mouth pulled down at one corner. “She did not come here alone. There’s no way.”

“Is that true? Have you brought a guest, Carson?” Rasmus asked.

Magellan set the figure on the table by Durian’s hip, far from her reach. His attention shifted to his left, squinting hard. He pushed the knife into Durian’s chin. “Draw even an atom more of power, fiend,” he said out loud, but not to the precise place Nikodemus was standing, “and this one will be irredeemably lost.”

Something eased up in her head. A pop sounded in her middle ear. Nikodemus releasing his power. He came into her view. Xia caught his knife by the hilt this time and let it settle into his hand. A muscle in Magellan’s cheek twitched. He hadn’t realized Nikodemus had gotten so close. He covered the reaction well. Carson watched Magellan’s eyes go wide. “Nikodemus?”

“Fuck off, mage.” Nikodemus sank to a half crouch, his irises solid silver flecked with black.

“Do nothing as of yet, Rasmus.” He lifted a hand toward the other mage, but his attention was riveted on Nikodemus. “There is no limit to what I could accomplish with Nikodemus himself at my command.”

“You don’t own me yet, mage.”

With the tip of his knife, Magellan drew a line in the air, downward along Durian’s chest, stopping above where his heart would be. The frost in her turned to ice. “What did I tell you, fiend?” Magellan held the point of the knife to the gaping wound in Durian’s chest.

“That was hardly magic,” Nikodemus said. His voice was bereft of silk or warmth. He was himself turned to stone inside to speak with a voice like that. Carson knew what he was going to say before he spoke. “Do what you will, mage. There’s nothing left to save of this one.”

Magellan’s hand shot out and grabbed Carson by the hair, yanking hard enough to lift her off her feet. She bit back a cry as she landed on the bare metal end of the table. “And her?” His grip on her hair brought tears to her eyes. “Is she in your control? Answer me, or your servant dies right now.”

Clink.

She turned her head in the direction of the noise and saw the figurine had fallen over. Durian’s fingertip stretched toward it. Pressure built behind her eyes. Xia’s face and upper torso were at the periphery of her vision. He was waiting. Lying in wait, and Nikodemus was drawing hard on her. She was ice inside. Solid ice. She pushed everything out of her head. Everything except the carved black stone and Durian’s reaching fingers.

Something happened. She didn’t know what, but Magellan said, “I make no idle threats, fiend.” The knife was at her throat now.

“Go to hell,” Carson said. She reached for his arm, trying to block him.

His arm plunged toward Carson’s chest. She was stone, too. Just like Nikodemus. Time focused for her, each second a life of time in which to choose. She angled the heel of her palm at Magellan’s wrist.

Her ears exploded in sound. Streaks of vivid crimson and midnight blue saturated her vision. The only reason she knew she’d connected with Magellan was the clang when the knife point slammed onto the table. He yanked on her again, pulling her across Durian’s lower torso. The smell of blood sickened her. Her hands flailed, slipping in blood. Through a veil of shifting colors, she watched Durian’s fingers reach for the figurine. She shut out everything. Xia. Magellan. Rasmus. Durian. Even Nikodemus. Durian shoved the figurine at her. She closed her hand around it. Her palm sizzled with heat, and an electric charge shot up her arm.

Time returned to breakneck speed.

Magellan captured her wrist in a grip that made her clench her jaws to keep back a scream. No way was she going to give Magellan the satisfaction. No way. Nikodemus was in her head, his emotions huge, overwhelming her.

“Xia,” said Rasmus, “subdue the fiend Nikodemus.”

Magellan’s gaze slid back to Carson. “It is of no use to you,” Magellan said, twisting her wrist to a point beyond pain. Both her arms went numb from the elbows down. He pressed the knife to the side of her throat. “Release it.” His voice was metallic to her ears. “You can do nothing with it. You don’t have the ability.”

She glared at him with eyes of cold hatred. She didn’t care if he killed her. All she wanted was to destroy Magellan. His grip on her wrist bent her in an awkward position with no leverage. One swipe of his knife would spill her lifeblood, dark and red, to join Durian’s on the floor. She felt the air move as his knife descended, as if the blade were heavier than it ought to be, with a weight that pushed air before it. She jerked back in the nick of time. The knife sliced the air centimeters from her throat. Magellan pulled hard on her wrist. The shock boomeranged to her shoulder and back down. She expected to feel the knife next but felt nothing. Maybe dying didn’t hurt. Maybe the shock of a mortal injury kept you from feeling anything.

Wham.
Something heavy hit the wall hard and shook the room. Nikodemus had managed to throw Xia, and the big fiend was picking himself up off the floor.

“One move,” Magellan said, “pull any magic at all, fiend, and I’ll kill her right now.” Carson, on her back, saw Nikodemus poised to leap for Xia. The stream of awareness flowing between them stopped.

“Don’t listen to him,” she said, ignoring Magellan’s knife and his grip on her. A wave of anger overtook her. Her entire life up to now had been a lie. A lie. Nikodemus was the one to show her the truth. She didn’t care if Nikodemus used her up, as long as Magellan didn’t get what he wanted. “I’ll never forgive you if you do. Never.”

The mage twisted her arm until her shoulder joint pressed unbearably against the socket. The tip of his blade sliced across her wrist. But she kept her hand clenched tight around the little figurine. “Let go,” he snarled. “Or I’ll cut off your hand. You—” He indicated one of his fiends. “Kill Nikodemus.”

A fiend let out a keening cry and rushed across the room.

“No!” With a massive rush of adrenaline rocketing through her, Carson hurled herself toward Magellan, catching him unprepared and somersaulting over Durian’s body. The mage didn’t let go of her wrist, but he stumbled back, and Carson’s momentum brought her the rest of the way over the table. She crashed onto her back and only just kept her head from cracking on the floor. The numbness in her arms spread. Magellan must have cut her badly. The corner of her mind that wasn’t terrified knew she was going into shock.