“I wouldn’t have had to if not for you!”
“—and now you’re out of Relics and desperate enough—”
“Stop using that word!”
“—to bring me here, and see me alone, when you know what I can do—”
“Yes, you can die!”It was savage.“Alongside your mate if you don’t give me what I want!”
I should have had more of a reaction, been shocked, intimidated, even fearful, because he finally looked like he belonged on the Black Circle’s ruling council.But I felt weird, as if I was watching him through someone else’s eyes, someone who was not impressed.Maybe because I was.
My counterpart had been listening this whole time, and while she didn’t understand much of what was being said, she understood something.Something that was making her antsy, but not in a bad way.She was excited, and considering what usually excited her, that worried me more than the mage.
We can’t fight them all.Stop it!I told her, and received only a weird yipping laugh in return.At least, I hoped that was a laugh.
“Look,” I said, pushing ahead faster than I wanted, because I was running out of time.“We’re fighting the same enemy.You said we could work together—how about now?We can help each other—”
“Yes, you can help me by stopping the bullshit!”he said, his eyes looking more than a little crazed.
But not with temper.I’d seen a lot of cornered perps, which is what he was acting like despite having the upper hand.And this looked a lot like fear.Not greed, not the lust for power, not anything other motivation.
Fear.
But not of me.
“You need my help,” I pointed out.“That thing you raised gave you added power, you and your men.You don’t have the potion Jenkins made, or anything like it, or you wouldn’t have been so desperate to obtain it.So something else was lending you strength, and is now threatening you.But together, we could—”
“See this?”The mage pulled out the mirror and held it up.“One word from me, and he dies.Take a good, long look and decide if you still want to play games!”
He glared at me, and I gave him a decent poker face back.I’d worked for years to make it seamless, but today, I didn’t need the help.Today, I was too distracted with whatever my counterpart was doing to give the mage my full attention.
We were sitting, but it felt like she was on all fours.The wood of the platform was rough underneath our hands, and hot from the sunlight that had been beating down on it until a few moments ago, as only half was in the shade.But she wasn’t focused on that.
She plunged ephemeral fingers through it, into the rock of the column supporting it, and down into the sand of the desert below, searching for something I didn’t understand.And I still didn’t when she encountered what felt like the roots of a young plant.It was slightly unpleasant: the slick surface, the tentative way they brushed our skin, the moment when a few of them began to wrap lightly around our digits as if growing inches in seconds.
And then contracted, latching tight, while more followed, and then more and more—
“Stop stalling and give me what I want!”The mage shrieked.
But neither of us got what we wanted.
“Get down!”Someone yelled as the dark sphere overtop of us rippled, slinging purple light everywhere.And off to one side, the same one where we’d come in, a magenta sun boiled against the shield, bright as flame, as warning klaxons blared everywhere.Right before—
“What the—” I yelled, and then the mage tackled me, forcing us to the floor, and cursing up a storm into his lapel, none of which I could hear because—
“Holy shit,” I saw him mouth, his eyes tinted red in the magical blast that tore through the shield, screamed through the air, and—
And then nobody heard anything, possibly not for miles, because that was a god-killer, it simply had to be.
They were a new weapons group the Corps had developed to fight the supernatural entities behind this war.And which seemed to do just as well fighting dark mages, I thought, staring at the huge, blackened hole where a group of them had been standing a second ago.And at the remains which were now flying, along with those of a dozen RVs, the pieces burning as they exploded through the air in a firework of flesh and blood and metal.
Even my counterpart paused for a second, because yeah.
Didn’t see that every day.
Or at all, as the god-killers were top secret, to the point that I hadn’t even seen one yet, which meant—
“Yeah!”I screamed, back on my feet.“Yeah!”I had no idea how the Corps had found us, but right now, I’d take it.I’d take it all day long!
