The temperature in the room plummeted. Ice exploded across the floor, catching two of the dark mages mid-stride and freezing them to the knees. Evander followed up with twin lances of compressed air that slammed them into unconsciousness before they could react.
“Everyone, drop to the floor!” Evander barked. “Now!”
Viggo obeyed, along with the others.
Evander raised a torrent of flames and obliterated the shadow creatures in one fell swoop, his hair and clothes moving violently in the magic storm around him.
Their attackers cursed.
Viggo smiled savagely, jumped to his feet, and waded back into the fray.
He caught a dark mage by the collar and hurled him bodily into another, sending both crashing through what remained of a wooden cabinet. A third tried to flank him, shadows coiling around his fingers. Viggo spun and drove his elbow into the man’s solar plexus before finishing him with a devastating uppercut.
For a moment, it seemed like they were winning.
Then one of the dark mages—the one Viggo had knocked into the bookcase—staggered to his feet and removed a black and red gemstone from inside his coat.
Dark magic surged from it and wrapped the man in inky billows before shooting toward his accomplices. Their bodies unravelled into tendrils of darkness that rapidly merged with the shadows pooling in the corners of the study.
“No!”
Viggo lunged for the nearest one. His hands closed on nothing but cold air, the mage’s shadow manipulation too fast even for his reflexes.
The men were gone in a heartbeat, their physical forms swallowed by darkness like they had never existed at all.
Viggo stood in the centre of the wrecked study, chest heaving and fists clenched at his sides.
“Cowards,” Solomon spat.
“Tactically sound cowards,” Fairbridge corrected, though his voice was tight with his own frustration.
Evander lowered his hands, the magic storm around him abating.
Viggo forced himself to unclench his fists and turned to where Shaw was helping Simek sit up against the overturned desk.
The occult researcher was a wiry man in his sixties, with unkempt hair and a haggard face. Bruises were already forming around his throat where the dark mage had tried to strangle him and a cut on his forehead leaked blood down the side of his face.
“Herr Simek,” Evander said, crouching beside him. “Are you alright?”
CHAPTER 32
Simek shrank backand stared at them with wide, frightened eyes.
“Who—who are you? How did you find me?!” he stammered in heavily-accented English.
“My name is Evander Ravenwood. I’m a Special Arcane Investigator with the London Metropolitan Police.” Even though tension still coiled through him, Evander maintained a calm, soothing tone as he addressed the scared man. “We’ve been investigating a conspiracy involving dark mages and something called the Crimson Codex. Your name came up in our research.”
Simek paled at the mention of the Codex.
“The Codex,” he whispered, his expression growing even more haggard. “So they’ve finally come for me.”
“Those men weren’t trying to interrogate you,” Viggo stated bluntly. “They were trying to kill you.”
Simek blinked at him before letting out a bark of laughter, the sound bitter and edged with hysteria. “Of course they were. They don’t need to interrogate me. They already know everything I know—probably more.” He shook his head. “I’m just a loose end to them. Someone who might talk to the wrong people.”
Evander exchanged an anxious glance with the others.
“What do you mean, they already know everything?” he asked carefully.
