The Protection of Ren Crown (7 page)

In a blink of the eye, bolts of blue flew forward over my shoulder as Olivia attacked in the wake of my failure.

The blasts hit two of the men, sending them sprawling across the lot, but as the leader dove to the side, he spiraled an arm toward his injured comrades. The downed men sprang back to their feet, revitalized and battling once more. The five men separated in a move that bespoke long hours of practice drills—like Christian's football plays of coordinated attack and defense—and bolts of magic flew everywhere.

I pulled myself upright and tried to regain my equilibrium. My new cuff issued a threatening shock to my wrist against using magic again. But Olivia and Constantine were outnumbered five to two.

I'd done magic in the First Layer before, and there had been the unspoken communication a few moments prior between Olivia and Constantine that implied I was capable of doing it again. Something had to get through the cuff if I just tried hard enough.

What was the point of being the monster under the bed, if I couldn't use the monster's power?

Pulling my trusty mental pyramid into rotation, I separated the tip into five points, and let the spiked lines dance wildly around each of the five assailants, trying to lock into position like a fighter jet locking onto its target. Slippery and hard to control, two spikes nonetheless locked on and another one pulled tighter circles—nearly there.

Before I could fire, I was roughly pushed to the ground and my targeting mechanism broke.

Olivia and Constantine each dove to opposite sides of view. On my knees, I tried to shoot magic in the general vicinity of the outspread enemies, regardless of aim.

Nothing
. I reflexively gripped my cuff, which was now strangling my wrist and cutting off circulation, and tried to rip it free. I gathered magic and targeted my cuff instead of targeting outward.

My body slammed flat into the ground, shattering my concentration. Silken threads snaked over me, binding me to the pavement, as firmly as any spider wrapping a fly. The parking lot lit with magic—electrified jolts illuminating the industrial buildings around the lot like the set of a horror movie.

A horrific nightmare trapping me.

The leader crouched next to me—the battle raging around us in a rippled, bolting chaos. His asymmetrical eyes were narrowed. He looked at the top of my head again, and his expression lost the last edge of confusion and turned straight to fury as his eyes flashed again.

“
Verisetti
.” Anger and disgust didn't completely hide the fear in his voice as he said the name. “Playing his own game? I'll dissect you myself for the answers.”

Two blasts thrust him backward. Constantine was suddenly at my side, launching into battle with the man. Any panic-stricken thoughts of the man mentioning Raphael Verisetti were firmly pushed aside by terror for my friends as full on warfare ensued. Olivia crouched, holding the edges of a shield to deflect their attacks, then raising the shield at intervals to send out beams of her own. One of her beams connected and thrust a man twenty feet through the air. His body bounced off the dome and joined another downed enemy at the edge.

Olivia was a powerful mage, but the kind of reflexes and quick lateral strategy that combat mages needed in battle weren't Olivia's strengths. She was a precise, exacting mage who deliberated extensively before she cast. Her magic was always perfect, but her methods took time. If her shield went down, she was toast.

And the men were expending huge amounts of magic without any sign of lessening their siege. With their coordinated movements, they easily revived their downed companions. Like Alexander Dare and his team of combat mages, this group moved together cohesively—almost as if they were synced.

Why wasn't anyone running in to arrest us?
Members of the Department, Marsgrove,
anyone
?

Painstakingly, I tried to peel the edge of the net from the ground, but it held firm. Any magic I tried to channel sparked fruitlessly, like a gas stove unable to light.

Constantine, like Olivia, was also under attack, but he casually deflected anything aimed his way without bothering to return fire. His smirk was lazy, but his gaze was sharp and kept track of me, his defensive movements never taking him far.

Neither Constantine nor Olivia attempted to fight together or pool resources. Both would run out of container magic soon.

I watched, helpless against the ground.

Olivia's shield flickered suddenly and a penetrating wave of buttercup yellow hit her, making her lurch to the right. Her shield pulsed.

Help her, not me!
I tried to yell at Constantine, but no sound emerged.

I pushed and pushed at the net strands, anxiety making my caged magic frenzied, but impotent. Nausea rose within me at my complete inability to move or act.

Then Olivia fell. A scream rose within me. The sound and feeling of it choked my silent throat. A net engulfed her and she too was forced motionless beneath it, her face turned away.

Concentration turned en masse to Constantine, who stood in front of me but slightly to the side.

A device in the leader's hand was aimed at Olivia’s head. “If you move,” the leader said to Constantine as the others prowled closer. “The Price girl dies.”

“Kill her then.” Constantine's voice, usually dripping with false charm, was ice cold.

My throat constricted with the sounds I tried to make.

One of the men holding a net device edged close enough to grab Constantine's arm. As soon as his fingers touched Constantine's skin, the assailant shrieked—a high-pitched animal noise—and fell to his knees, screaming in absolute agony. He clutched his hand, wildly shaking it as if attempting to dislodge acid.

A compatriot grabbed his collar and scrambled backward with him— away from Constantine—while he rapidly cast healing spells on the man's hand, a hand that looked like it was
crumbling.

Constantine smirked.

Sitting in his room making diabolical mixtures and practicing sex spells probably didn't engender a lot of tactical fighting savvy. Other than his blasts at the leader when he had knelt next to me, Constantine had been solely diverting magic aimed his way in the perennially bored manner he exuded outside of his workshop. But Constantine was Professor Stevens' protégé and a genius with materials. Whatever personal shields he wore obviously worked in the First Layer and had vicious defensive properties.

With his perpetual arrogance, though, Constantine was watching the pain he'd caused and missed the leader's asymmetrical features morphing in fury.

A huge wave of blackened purple flew from the man's hands and exploded against Constantine's face. Constantine stumbled, and magic peeled away like destroyed skin, eating away his shield set and exposing what lay beneath. A horrifying set of crisscrossing patterns twisted across Constantine’s face.

His head bent toward me and I could see every disfiguring violet bloom. His expression twisted into something violent and lethal and his fingers gripped a jagged metallic star on his belt then threw it. As it coursed through the air, the metal changed properties, becoming silver mist. It attached like a web to the asymmetrical man, who fell to his knees, holding his throat, gasping the last breaths of a gutted fish.

Active magic and sound ceased completely and the parking lot lights eerily illuminated the deadened space.

Constantine's fingers slipped under his own shirt to grip his stomach. The disfiguring violet marks turned nearly black then receded, leaving clear, unmarked skin behind. His expression promised death, but whatever he had done to heal himself had taken its toll. The hand lifting from his shirt shook.

The other was gripping a second metallic star.

Above his mocking smile, Constantine's deadly gaze pinned the remaining two men—promising to give one last death before he was put down. “Who will it be?”

The men looked at their leader and edged closer together—away from Constantine.

The leader's eyes didn't stray from the star in Constantine's hand as the man painfully pressed a button on the device at his waist. The metallic mist burst away from the leader's skin and fell to the concrete in droplets. Then the droplets gathered together and reconfigured to form a silver star once more.

Rasping, wet breaths became measured pants, and the leader rose with great difficulty. His finger maintained contact with the device at his waist. He still had magic, but I concluded, from the wary way everyone was reacting, that unrecoverable death was a possibility with another hit like that.

“Take the Price girl only,” the leader rasped at the man near Olivia, without turning his head. “Leave Leandred...and the other one.”

It was an order to his men and a deal for Constantine.

No.
No!
I sent a mental plea to Constantine. I knew he didn't care about Olivia. When he had said to kill her, he had
meant
it. He had never given me the impression that he cared about anything other than what directly interested him at any given moment, but please,
please
!

The leader began to back away from us, satisfied with whatever he read in Constantine's expression.

Constantine knelt next to me, his gaze finally meeting mine.

Help her! Anything, I'll do anything!

The light in his caramel eyes spiked and a smile grew, the whole effect making him look somewhat feverish.

“Easy enough, Ren, love.” His gaze switched back to the men, watching them for movement.

He carefully worked the metal button from the outside of his leather bag with one hand while in the other he continued to hold the silver star in a position where he could throw it, if threatened.

He avoided touching the net covering me as he slipped the button between the strands and against the inside of my elbow. I felt the magic in the net reaching for him—spreading and stretching silken fingers.

“Give permission to the magic of this device.” Darkness and excitement permeated his barely audible voice. “And we will stop them from taking your friend.”

The man next to Olivia put a gloved hand on her netted back and her frozen body turned, her face and empty expression rotating toward us.

I thrust permission to the button pressed against my skin. Magic flew into the device at my elbow and zipped past the cuff on my wrist, as if no restriction existed.

One thread of the net around me snapped, then a second, and a third. The crackling sound continued down the silken veins, then burst free.

Something else, a second coating of something I couldn't instantly identify and that I hadn't known had been there, broke free as well.

Magic jumped to my will, and I could
feel
Constantine's exhilaration and fervency so clearly that it felt like my own. My constantly rotating pyramid was ripped from me, abruptly and shockingly. The sky groaned and magic shot through my body, out of my control, down into the ground, erupting and shooting outward in a torrent of rage.

The blast sent everyone except the two of us sprawling. I frantically tried to regain control of my magic, but it ran free and unchecked...to Constantine. Everything in me, including my will to move, flowed into him in a pattern of choices and options that he controlled. His magic told me to stay still at his side, and I did.

Horrified, all I could do was watch as he crouched next to me, fingers touching the metal against my skin, and eyes fiendishly watched the flashes of magic flying from me—my magic completely under his control.

The green dome thickened to a few shades lighter than black and patterns formed and started to swirl in smoked circles of greenish black.

Olivia rolled with the blast that freed her.

The man near her stumbled upright, fury in his eyes as he glared at me. His intent was clearly malevolent as his arms rose.

A violent pull of my magic lit the interior of the dome and sent the man hurtling to the ground, his head cracking hard on the pavement. An echo of the earlier unearthly groan sounded—eerily similar to the sound of the magic from Raphael's box. And the circles...
I knew those circles
.

Another pull of magic stripped a nearby tree, entwining the branches over the man, pressing him against the ground, and securing him in a vicious parody of the magic net that had encompassed me.

I frantically tried to gather back my magic.
Dear God.

Constantine's expression was one of perfect, deadly satisfaction as his eyes narrowed on the places where each new blast hit.

Grabbing, breathing, holding... I visualized pyramids, squares, diamonds... Nothing was working. I was locked in a mental box while my magic spilled free and unchecked.

The leader of the men grabbed a device at his waist and thrust it outward as he lunged toward the curved wall of the dome.

Constantine ripped magic from me so hard that I lost consciousness for a moment as he threw it toward the device. When the smoke cleared from my vision, five unmoving bodies were splayed on the concrete. The dome still pulsed overhead, but now it was swirling with hunger.

I felt another pull of magic. There was black death in the taste of it as it slithered over my tongue and through my pores. My magic was about to be used to kill someone.

Olivia lunged toward us, her arm moving as she sent a spell that ripped Constantine's hand and the metal button away from me. The button clattered to the ground and Constantine was pushed a few feet backward—leaving a furrow in the concrete, as if a bulldozer had forced the movement.

My magic abruptly went dormant and my cheek hit the ground as I tried to catch my breath. As I lay there panting, white stars drifted everywhere around me.

“Now, Price. That wasn't very nice.” At Constantine's tone, a rush of adrenaline pumped through me, clearing my vision completely. Constantine's hands started to glow with power, and his expression was the same as when he'd thrown the silver star—he was about to do something especially cruel. I could
feel
it, as if we were still connected. He raised a hand toward Olivia.

I scrambled to my knees and threw myself at him, grasping his arm instinctively. “
No
.”