My Wicked Enemy (24 page)

Two women ahead of them in line got an eyeful of Nikodemus and kept turning back to look at him. Long, lingering looks. One of them broke off from her friends to shove a card into his hands. “Just in case,” the woman said with a look at Carson. “You might get bored.”

Nikodemus didn’t return her smile. “I don’t think so,” he said.

The others got their IDs inspected and walked into the bar. Nikodemus handed the bouncer his license. He was already nodding to the music. Carson’s mouth went dry. She grabbed Nikodemus’s wrist to stop him and went up on tip-toe to whisper, “I don’t have any ID.”

“No problem,” Nikodemus said in a low voice. He turned and came in close to her until they were chest to chest, with his emotions hammering at her. He put his palm on her back, on the bare skin between the top of her jeans and the bottom of her shirt. When he got his ID back, he handed it to her and put a hand on the wall, leaning over the bouncer. Cold air rippled down Carson’s arms as if the door was open, even though it wasn’t. Hand shaking, Carson handed over Nikodemus’s ID.

The bouncer compared the picture on the ID to her. Carson smiled at him. “Enjoy,” he said as he gave it back.

Nikodemus took his ID and they walked inside. Carson’s pulse bumped another ten beats per minute. Kodiak Jack’s was wall-to-wall people. She had trouble distinguishing one person from another. Colors were too bright for the level of darkness, and much of what she saw refused to form anything but incoherent blobs of color. She blinked hard, but the only result was that she was dizzy when she opened her eyes again.

Nikodemus took her hand, and slowly, her vision cleared and the blobs of color formed tables and chairs and people. The floor was dark planking and messy with bits of paper, napkins, and just plain dirt. The live music was excellent.
Ryan Huston,
said the posters tacked up on the walls. Huston was singing something slow and a little sultry. Swaying couples jammed the dance floor.

There wasn’t any open space. And people were staring at them. Women drooled at Nikodemus. Understandable. His hair was loose, long enough to reach well past his shoulders. He looked more than a little dangerous, actually. A chill rolled across her shoulders, and when she turned to Nikodemus, he had a look of concentration. He was pulling magic, proofing the place, as he called it, so he’d feel the disturbance if any of the magekind came in.

At the bar, he ordered something that sounded to Carson like
la frog
. His twenty-dollar bill vanished into the bartender’s hand. “You, Carson?”

She shook her head. Men were checking her out, and that kept her from concentrating the way she should have been. She wished she were wearing anything but her new clothes. Her pink and green polka-dotted shirt didn’t reach the top of her low-rider jeans, and she didn’t like the exposed feeling. She tugged on her shirt, but there was no hope of covering her navel.

The bartender gave Nikodemus a glass of something, and he drank it down in one swallow. Nikodemus eyed her. “You look fine,” he said. He hooked a finger in the waist of her jeans and pulled her toward him. With the way her vision had been acting up lately, Nikodemus’s eyes looked backlit with silver light. “Wanna dance?”

“I thought we were supposed to be doing recon.”

He looked around, then looked her up and down. “There are no free fiends in here besides you and me.”

“I’m not a fiend.”

Nikodemus smiled. He still had his finger hooked in her jeans. “Yes, you are.” He shook his hair back behind his shoulders. “There are also no mages here besides you.” His smile disappeared, and he tugged her closer. “So, mage, do you want to dance with the big bad fiend?”

“I don’t know how.”

“It’s a cinch, Carson. And I’d love to dance with you.”

Nerves made her misinterpret the first tingle down her spine. All these people unsettled her. The second time, she recognized the sensation for what it was. Carson’s heart felt like someone was squeezing it. Nikodemus stiffened at the same time. “There’s a mageheld here somewhere,” she said. She faced the crowded interior, scanning the people for the source of her uneasiness. “Not far.”

Nikodemus leaned a forearm on the bar and tapped his fingers on the surface with a speculative expression. The bartender came back. “Bottle of Laphroaig,” Nikodemus said. He threw down a hundred dollars. “Wait,” he murmured. “Whoever it is will feel your magic pretty soon. Let him find us.”

Carson turned around and there was Fen, fifty feet from them, her red hair pulled back into a long ponytail rather then her usual braid. She hadn’t yet seen them. She couldn’t tell if Fen was mageheld. If she was, why the still-long hair? She didn’t like the anomaly. Too much was at stake. Carson tapped Nikodemus’s hand and inclined her head.

“Guess it’s our lucky night,” he said when he saw her. “You get a chance, you sever her, okay?”

“Okay.”

Fen noticed them, Carson first. The color drained from her cheeks when she saw Nikodemus. She walked toward them, eyes jittering. Nikodemus moved too fast for Carson to see. By the time Carson realized he’d moved, he had Fen’s arm in a firm grip. The air chilled another two degrees.

Carson grabbed the bottle and Nikodemus’s glass, and the three of them walked from the bar to a table that was, what a coincidence, emptied of patrons as they approached. He brought Fen along—she was holding a beer in one hand—while moving in close to her and keeping a tight grip on her.

Carson put down the bottle and glass and extended her hand to Fen, palm up. “You stole the warlord’s car,” she said. “If you’re smart, you’ll give up the keys so he doesn’t decide he needs to take care of you himself.”

“Drop dead, witch.”

“Give it up,” Nikodemus said. “Or I’ll take them from you. And you won’t like how that happens, I promise you.”

Fen glared but dug in her pocket for the keys, which she dropped onto Nikodemus’s outstretched palm. He put them in his pocket. “Thank you.”

They sat. Fen next to Nikodemus, Carson across from them, but he pulled Carson’s chair close to his. His magic was crazy hot, seething with his reaction to Fen. He broke the seal on the Laphroaig and poured himself half a glass. “When is Rasmus coming, Fen?”

“Who?” She crossed her slender legs. “Never heard of him.”

“Liar.” He took a drink. The back of Carson’s throat burned like she’d swallowed the stuff herself. “When are you meeting him?”

“What are you talking about? I’m not meeting anyone.”

“You aren’t very convincing.” Carson leaned across the table and grabbed Fen’s arm. She’d been hoping to sense what she had to do to sever Fen, but she got nothing. “What mage has you, Fen? Rasmus or Magellan?”

“You’re crazy,” Fen said. “I came here to get away from her.” She jerked free of Carson. “Thought I’d find a human to spend a few hours with.”

Nikodemus leaned over Carson, his front overlapping her back, and placed his finger across Fen’s mouth, caressing, a man admiring his lover’s lips. He draped his other arm around Carson’s shoulder. “That is a lie.”

Fen glared at Nikodemus’s arm. “Why are you touching the witch like that, Warlord? Maybe you’re the one who’s mageheld.”

Nikodemus’s head shot up. “There is a mage here.”

“Yeah. The warlord and me.”

“Not just you two. Magehelds.” The skin along Carson’s arms and over the back of her neck prickled unmistakably. “At least six more.” Did that mean this was working? Did Rasmus and Magellan think the meeting was going to be here? What were Iskander and Harsh doing now? Had the warlords been warned, or were they too late?

“Magehelds?” Fen made a show of looking around. “I see humans.” She leaned in and addressed Carson, her eyes jittering. She was just as psycho as her brother. “Prey. For kin. But no fiends. You don’t know what you’re feeling, witch.”

On the stage, Huston finished his song. When the applause and wooting finally died down, he set aside his guitar and left the stage for a break. There was a moment of excruciating silence during which nobody spoke. Carson didn’t get anything from Fen other than her sense of what Fen was: a fiend who was not free.

Nikodemus found the darkened spot at the very top of Carson’s nape where the talisman had condensed, and brushed a fingertip over the sensitive skin there. He leaned in. “Can you sever her?” he whispered.

She reached for her magic, but without even an atom of longing to take Fen, nothing happened. She was, in a curious way, as cut off from Fen as the mageheld were cut off from the kin. She wanted to jump up and do something, anything but sit here feeling like a failure.

Fen jumped as if she’d been goosed. “Leave me alone, witch.”

“There’s nothing,” she said. “Just . . . nothing.” The fiend still had long hair. That had to mean Fen wasn’t mageheld, didn’t it? And yet, like her brother had been, she wasn’t free. Not mageheld, but all the same Carson knew Fen had ties to a mage. She just didn’t understand yet what those ties were.

Music came over the bar’s sound system: Keith Urban singing about a woman taking back her cat. Nikodemus kept one hand wrapped around his glass and the other on the back of Carson’s neck while Fen put out a hand and reached for him. The tats on her arms put off a faint glow. Nikodemus leaned his chair back, glass in hand, just out of her range. A furrow appeared between Fen’s eyebrows. Her crystalline blue eyes just couldn’t stay still.

“What’s the matter?” she said. “You afraid to let a fiend touch you?”

“You’re a psycho,” Nikodemus replied evenly. “You think I’m going to let some mageheld psycho used-to-be-a-blood-twin touch me without permission? If you do, you’re fucking deluded.”

Fen touched her hair, smoothing down the already smooth sweep of red over her head. “Is Iskander still alive, or did your witch kill him?”

“He’s back among the kin,” Nikodemus said.

“How?”

“Carson.” His expression didn’t change, but his fingers tightened on his glass. Fen raised a trembling hand to Nikodemus’s cheek, but just when she would have touched him, he averted his face. Her hand remained suspended for a heartbeat, then dropped. “You can touch me like that after you’re sworn to me, Fen.” He shook his head. “Not before.”

“What has the witch done to Iskander, Warlord? I can’t feel him. Not even a little.”

He lifted his Laphroaig to his lips and emptied his glass. “I told you. He’s free now. And sworn to me. You want him back, you know what to do.”

Fen’s mouth twisted, and she turned her attention to Carson. Her gaze skittered across Carson’s face. No love there. None at all. “As free as your mage allows him to be, you mean?”

“He’s free. Like Harsh is free now.” He dropped his arm to Carson’s shoulder, and Carson settled against his side. “Of you.” He scanned Fen, and Carson felt him push magic at her. Nothing happened.

“Right.” Fen held her empty beer bottle by the neck and suspended it over the table. “It starts out that way.”
Clunk.
The bottle hit the table. She picked it back up. “You think you’re free, that the mage would never do anything to restrict or control you.”
Clunk.
She shook her head, eyes jittering madly. “But it’s never that way.” She reached for Nikodemus again and, again, he moved just out of her reach.

“I said no touching,” he said in a low voice. “You want contact, you have to swear fealty to me.”

“You’re a fool if you think your witch is going to let you stay free. Sooner or later, she’ll betray you.”

Nikodemus set his empty glass on the table. With lightning speed, he leaned forward and wrapped his fingers around Fen’s wrist, not a caress, but an iron grip that trapped the fiend’s arm in the air between them. “The way you betrayed your brother tonight?”

The air around them turned hot. Carson squeezed Nikodemus’s thigh. “She’s pulling magic.”

“Shut up, witch.” Light flashed on Fen’s silver bracelets. “This has nothing to do with you.”

Nikodemus shook off Fen’s attack. “You ought to know better than to pull in a room full of humans. But why would I expect better from the fiend who betrayed all of us.” Fen tried to free her arm, but his fingers tightened. Her tats glowed copper-red wherever his hand didn’t cover the bands. “You betrayed Iskander, Fen. Your blood-twin. You left him high and dry.” Nikodemus took a deep breath. “To be a mage’s servant?”

“I’m no one’s servant.”

He let go of Fen’s arm like it made him sick to touch her. “What have you told your mage about us?”

“I didn’t have to tell him anything.” Carson saw the emotion in Fen’s eyes, and she understood at last why she didn’t resonate like other magehelds. Fen had willingly gone to the mage. “He already knew.”

Carson’s nerves came shuddering to attention again. Even the backs of her knees tingled. Fen tensed, and Carson felt her pull again. Her magic jittered, unstable, like her eyes. Nikodemus registered it through Carson, and that’s why he was prepared when Fen let loose at him. His head snapped back. The humans behind him shouted, and one of them fell off his chair.

A pulse of recognition had Carson looking at the entrance, where six men had just come in and were making their way through to the interior of the bar. Fen looked, too. Mageheld fiends, every one of them. Nikodemus couldn’t feel them except through Carson, but Fen did all on her own, or she would never have looked. And that meant she must have some connection to the mage who held them.

Four of the fiends wore Desert Storm camo. They looked like army grunts, with black boots and bloused pant legs, short hair half an inch shy of a buzz. What they looked like was muscle. Xia walked at the front, with a sixth keeping to shadows so dark not even Carson’s improved vision could make out his features. He was tall, though. And he had the kind of power that gave her gooseflesh. Question answered. Fen’s bond was with the Danish mage Rasmus.

She tried not to stare at Xia with his please-come-close-so-I-can-kill-you smile.His leather pants fit smooth over legs that did total justice to the material. His boots were scuffed, well worn, and metal-toed. His long-sleeved shirt fit snug to his torso and belly. He looked mean. He looked like he could eat nails for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And enjoy it. A gorgeous man if you didn’t mind the attitude. He scanned the room, and Carson got a wide-open dose of what he was. Her entire body quivered as her power came to life.

The sixth fiend came out of the shadows. Like Xia, he wore leather. His face was turned from her, but as he scanned the bar, eventually, inevitably, she saw him. Her heart thumped hard against her ribs, because the sixth mageheld was Durian. Nikodemus heard her intake of breath and touched her arm, calming her. Fen’s bracelets jingled, and Carson looked at her in time to see her copper tats glowing again.

The six got within ten feet of her, and the feeling she’d had at the mall hit full blast. Xia and Durian set off her reaction the way Fen hadn’t. Because, she thought, Fen was not held against her will. Carson didn’t take her eyes off Xia. A lot of heads turned to watch their progress. Despite Durian, Xia was primary in the group, that was obvious. He was the fiend the others deferred to, even Durian. Xia was the one she ached to sever.

They were the primary attack force, sent to blend in among the humans because they would be invisible to the warlords and any fiends the warlords brought with them. Xia and Durian made a formidable pair, between them capable of holding a warlord long enough for Rasmus to act. And if you added Kynan into the mix? Why bother with any other backup?

She watched Xia scan the crowd, eyes moving, pausing, assessing, moving on. Carson tried to center herself, find her magic, and have it ready. She knew she was trying too hard but didn’t know how to make herself relax under pressure. She couldn’t fail. Her oath to Nikodemus wouldn’t tolerate failure. Taking Xia away from Rasmus would cripple the mage. She had to find a way.

And then, Xia saw her. Or came close enough to feel her magic. Whichever it was, his eyes found her and locked with hers. Everything else faded into the background. Xia kept his electric blue eyes on her as he approached with Durian and the lesser fiends. The last time she’d seen him, she was certain there was no way he could come back from the horrific injury Magellan had done him. The last time she’d seen him, she hadn’t been able to feel his magic. Now she could, and it frightened her almost as much as Xia’s. How was she going to deal with two fiends like that?

The fiends stopped, Xia in front, Durian just behind, the other four at the rear. Xia’s mouth twitched. He looked Fen up and down. “Rasmus said we would find you here.” A Bluetooth headset curled around his ear. “I have her,” he said. His eyes unfocused a bit, and he nodded at whatever was being said to him. “As you said. The warlord, too.” When his eyes focused again, a spark of energy jumped from him to Carson, but it didn’t offer her a way in yet.

“Glad to see you survived, Durian,” Nikodemus said. Durian didn’t reply.

“He wants you.” Xia used his chin to indicate Fen. “Outside.” He listened to something again. He blinked, and his eyes went from electric blue to black and then returned to blue. Too blue. A painful blue. Carson shuddered. “On her way.”

Fen nodded and, with a lingering look at Nikodemus that the other fiend ignored, left. When she was gone, Xia smiled at Nikodemus. “Warlord.” He kept his arms crossed over his formidable chest. Nikodemus got up. He wasn’t as big as Xia, but somehow he radiated power that Xia couldn’t hope to match. “I bring you in, Warlord,” Xia said to Nikodemus, “and Rasmus might decide it’s time to reward me.” He laughed. “Maybe with the witch.”

One of the camo-clad fiends moved forward, but Durian lifted a hand and the fiend stopped. Like Xia, Durian topped the other fiends by an inch or more. “Not here,” Durian said. He grabbed the other fiend by the shirt and pushed him back. “You know this can’t happen here. Among humans.”

Carson’s magic flared again, and she reached for it before she lost it. She could see the shape of his magic. The way in which Xia was bound to Rasmus was there for her to see. Just when she thought she had it controlled, her magic cut off so hard and fast it hurt.

Another slow smile appeared on Xia’s mouth. All the fiends felt her magic. They knew when she was building up. She just hoped only Nikodemus knew she was spiraling out of control. “Fucking witch,” Xia said.

Carson left the table and took the three steps needed to stand in front of him. Adrenaline shot through her. Oh, yes. His magic called to her. In her chest a familiar burning sensation started a streak of pain through her head. She crossed her arms, too. “Witch?” she said. “As in rhymes with?”

“Carson,” Nikodemus said. “Not here. We’re drawing attention.”

She ignored the curious looks from the people in the bar. She could do anything she wanted. As long as Xia and the other magehelds were dealing with her, they weren’t after the other warlords, and that was the entire goal of this encounter.

Xia mouthed another word at her. His eyes were pools of black. Not blue. Black. Big dilated pupils surrounding black irises. She wanted to dive into them and go swimming in all that magic until she found the part Rasmus had put there. And then she’d destroy it.

“If I were,” she said, “what does that make you?” She opened up to instinct the way she had with Iskander. “A thieving mageheld bastard?”

Xia tracked her from her chin down, lingering on her hips. “You’re too little to be pissing me off like this,” he said. “I could break you with one hand.”

Carson was so focused on Xia she hardly had space in her head to think about the fact that she and Nikodemus were outnumbered. For her, right now, with Xia keeping just out of her reach, with her magic surging and waning, that didn’t matter to her. “You’re not released.” She leaned in, reveling in the buzz of his magic and waiting for the next wave to catch her so she could touch him and sever him. “You can’t touch me.”

Xia stepped forward until his chest was inches from her. “Fuck off.”

Her head swam, so hot with magic she could barely stand. She had the wave and rode it hard. Nikodemus grabbed her arm and her concentration shattered. “Not here.” Nikodemus said. “We can’t. Not around humans.”

“Time to go,” Durian said. The mageheld fiends formed a box around her and Nikodemus, and in a clump, they headed for the back of the crowded bar.

Xia leaned toward Carson on their way out. He whispered, “If I were free, witch, you’d be dead.”