“Get off,” Hartgrave bellowed, “and let me at him!”
But he couldn’t know Kincaid’s armor remained intact. Dodging Kincaid’s attempt to seize her arms, she grabbed his wrists and squeezed the protective magic around them. She just needed to hold on and this nightmare would end.
“You,” the wizard said, “arereallytrying my patience.”
He broke her grip, flipped their bodies and dragged her upright with the strength of a much younger man. From the corner of her eye she saw a spell zip from Hartgrave’s hands and bounce away two feet shy of them, the air shimmering where it had hit.
Kincaid hoisted her off the ground, threw her over his shoulder and marched toward the door.
“Let’s try that again outside, shall we? Rebuild the tracking program for me,” he said to Hartgrave, “and wait for my call.”
She had her face, hands and arms pressed against his back, but his armor still held—he had to be reinforcing it. Hartgrave, sounding as panicked as she felt, shouted: “Daggett! He’s put a barrier across the room—we can’t get through!”
She didn’t know how Kincaid figured out that the room and not her anti-magic had kept them there, but if he opened that door, all was lost. More time, she needed more time. She struggled. Tugged at his arms. Kicked his thighs with her bare feet.
He stopped just shy of the door, rearranging her, cursing under his breath.
She kicked through his armor the next instant and got him right in the groin.
He let go with a shout. She twisted to avoid hitting her head and took her full weight on her left elbow. The audible snap was nearly as awful as the immediate pain. Nearly.
She struggled to her feet and staggered toward the barrier Hartgrave and Willi were trying to break, fear for her parents propelling her forward. Kincaid could be out the door in a second and to her family’s farm the next. She had to give Hartgrave a shot before it was too late.
A second before she would have reached the barrier, Kincaid grabbed her by her broken elbow—ohGod, the pain—and summoned something into his other hand.
Shaw’s knife, slick with Shaw’s blood.
He put it to her throat.
“Stop attacking my spell,” he rasped.
Hartgrave lowered his hands, wide eyes trained on the blade. Willi went even farther—dropping to one knee, palms flat in rubble from the pulverized stone.
“I shall call you,” Kincaid said. “Be prepared to put this right.”
And when he had what he wanted, he’d kill her and Hartgrave and her parents. He’d go back to executing autodidacts. It would be even worse than the status quo before she’d so foolishly tried to help.
“Walk backward, Dr. Daggett.” He pressed on the knife, stealing the breath from her lungs.
Better to die here, stopping him.
She kicked her bare foot at the barrier.
Time slowed for an instant. Something in her foot cracked. The spell disintegrated. Kincaid’s hand and the knife clutched in it jerked from her throat, pulled back by the magic flowing from Hartgrave’s outstretched palm. And Willi, still on one knee, threw rubble with the spellcast force of a shotgun blast straight into Kincaid’s face.
Emily and what remained of the most dangerous wizard in the world fell backward to the floor.
She tried to get up, to get far away, but could barely manage a sitting position. The room expanded and contracted. She burned as hot as an oven from either her injuries or her anti-magic, pain zinging from her elbow to her foot to her back.
Hartgrave pressed in, wrapping trembling arms around her.
“O mein Gott, I thought you were dead, I thought I’d lost you ...” He gasped.“No!”
How was it that the pain in her back was worse than her elbow and foot combined? She moaned, the world narrowing to the blood on the floor by Kincaid’s body.
“Willi—she fell on the knife!”
“Dead.” Willi’s voice, heavy with disbelief. “He is dead.”
