Patrick slammed his hands on the hood of the still-moving vehicle, twisting his body into the vault and swinging his legs over the front of the car. The driver finally hit the brakes when Patrick crossed his vision. The sudden lurch to stillness jerked his body as he slid across the hood with a grunt. Patrick didn’t stick the landing on the other side, not wanting to risk breaking an ankle. He used his momentum to pitch himself forward, stumbling back into a speedy run.
“Federal agent! Stop where you are!” Patrick yelled. The order went ignored, not like he thought the guy would listen.
In the grand scheme of things, Patrick had done his legal duty with that warning.
The sorcerer was still running, and there were too many people between them for Patrick to safely use his magic. Patrick kept his eyes locked on the man and didn’t miss when he took a sharp turn into a café where elderly Chinese men were reading theSing Tao, drinking hot tea, and watching a taped singing show on the old television set bolted to the wall.
Patrick glimpsed it all in a flash as he ran through the front area of the café before slamming through the employee door in the back. It led to a cramped kitchen where one cook was helping another to her feet, having been knocked down by the man Patrick was chasing.
He went through the door that led to a dirty alley with his shields up and a mageglobe in hand, the strike spell burning at his fingertips. The narrow space was filled with black plastic bags of garbage spilling out of a nearby dumpster. The mouth of the alley was empty, but the fire escape rattled from quick footsteps. Patrick looked up right as the door went flying off its hinges from Jono’s shove and crashed to the ground.
“You couldn’t bloodywait?” Jono snarled.
Patrick pointed at the fire escape, magic burning across his skin. “Hold that thought.”
He spun up a binding ward in his mageglobe and sent it careening upward through the gaps in the metal fire escape. The sorcerer tried to defend against it, but his magic dealt with illusions, and it couldn’t hold up against a military grade spell. It technically wasn’t legal to use against a civilian, but Patrickhadtold him to stop.
When Patrick’s mageglobe crashed against the man’s chest, bright ropes of magic wrapped around his body like webbing. He crashed down onto the stairs of the fire escape with a pained shout, down but not out.
“I need to get up there,” Patrick said.
Jono shook his head before making a looping turn in the small space. He ran at the wall, kicking one foot out to hit the side of the dirty building and propel himself upward with preternatural strength. Jono grabbed the railing of the first landing one full story above them and easily hauled himself over. It took him less than thirty seconds to extend the ladder down to the ground so Patrick could climb up.
They ascended the zigzagging staircases together, with Patrick taking point. Three landings later they reached the suspect. The man was sprawled against the fire escape steps, bleeding from a deep cut on his jaw where he’d hit his face on a sharp edge when he fell. The binding ward held his magic in check along with his body. Patrick could feel the sorcerer fighting it, and the struggle was giving him a headache.
Patrick grabbed the guy by the collar of his shirt and belt, hauling him off the stairs. “When I say stop, I mean fuckingstop, asshole.”
“Fuck you!” the guy spit out.
“Want me to carry him down?” Jono asked.
“Nah, I got this.”
Patrick shoved the sorcerer up against the railing, letting him dangle halfway over, head pointed at the ground. He could see tattoos on both arms rippling across the man’s skin but unable to form any illusions.
“You want to explain what you were doing back there?” Patrick demanded.
The man was of Chinese descent, and while his full-sleeve tattoos were done in the traditional style, his accent was all New York. “Fuckyou!”
“Not the answer I was looking for.”
With a bit of help from his magic, Patrick shoved the guy over the edge and let gravity do its thing. Jono, for all his quick reflexes, didn’t react fast enough, his hand coming down on empty air as the sorcerer fell with a high-pitched scream before being caught by Patrick’s magic halfway to the ground.
“Are youmental?” Jono yelled at him in disbelief.
Patrick shrugged. “I’m gonna plead the Fifth on that.”
Jono stared at him for a few more seconds before looking over the side of the railing at where the sorcerer hovered in the air, still screaming his fool head off.
“I want my lawyer, you crazy fuck!” the sorcerer yelled.
“I hate when they lawyer up.”
“Absolutely mental,” Jono decided before he started back down the fire escape.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Patrick called after him.
They made it back down to the ground, and Patrick gestured sharply with one hand, magic sparking at his fingertips as he called the sorcerer back down to earth. Patrick wrinkled his nose at the smell of urine coming off the guy; he’d pissed his pants sometime during the free fall. He was in the process of adjusting the binding ward so the guy could walk when two uniformed officers approached the mouth of the alley.
