Page 16 of Dragon’s Rogue

The strange perspective made her dizzy. She didn’t move, but the mouth of the tunnel seemed to hurtle toward her, growing until it took up all her vision, and yet somehow it didn’t block out Jack’s body. Rebel’s stomach heaved from her brain’s inability to make sense of what she was seeing.

The hooded figure came closer and closer, until it was standing in the room.

Her visual perspective snapped back into place. A dark figure stood between her and Jack, the hood of his robe obscuring most of his face. Only the white gleam of his teeth showed, and his eyes. Deep and dark, almost invisible except for the faint flashes of red that showed every now and then when he moved his head.

The boss. She’d only met him once, and his face had been equally obscured. She had no clue what he really looked like.

Jack stood hunched over behind him, looking as if half his chest cavity was missing. Like this man had stolen away some of his substance and created his own body out of it.

Fuuuuck. She should never, ever have agreed to this job.

“Where is the artifact?” the sorcerer boomed.

His voice was deep, almost too deep to be human. Like something else was speaking through his mouth.

Hell, maybe it was.

Was he really here? Or was it a projection? Could he cast spells through it? She hoped not.

“There were problems,” Rebel said, keeping her voice steady. “The intel was faulty.”

She couldn’t see his expression, but she could tell it wasn’t pleasant. He was angry. And… something else.

Desperate, maybe. Like Jack.

Of course, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to kill her anyway. Desperate people were the most dangerous.

“We had an agreement,” he said. “You have failed. I was promised you were the one who would not fail.”

She couldn’t let him blame her. That would be deadly. First rule of survival in the jungle: the only way to deal with someone trying to intimidate you was to stand up to them.

He was a powerful sorcerer; even if he was a projection, there was a fifty-fifty chance he could squash her like a bug. Her job was to make him forget that.

Rebel walked right up to him, getting in his face. “Yeah, we had a deal,” she said. “You would provide the intel. I would provide the expertise. You didn’t tell me the damn thing was magically protected. And, you didn’t tell me that someone else was after it.”

She saw his dark eyes flash red, his body language growing taut and angry. She could almost feel the storm in the air; the hair on the back of her neck stood up.

“Someone else? Who?” His voice was suddenly avid.

“I have no fucking idea. He got there just after I did and cornered me in the vault. He attacked me and made me drop the box. It set off some kind of an alarm.”

“You allowed someone to follow you there?” The sorcerer’s voice was low and dangerous. Behind him, Jack’s body twisted, and he let out an animal-like whimper.

It took all Rebel’s courage not to flinch.

She deliberately rolled her eyes. “Since I spent two hours waiting on the roof before I entered, and he wasn’t sitting next to me sharing his smokes, I would say no, he didn’t follow me. He got there on his own. He had a partner keeping a lookout, and they went in a completely different entrance. So what I want to know is, who leaked the job on your end? Because I sure as hell didn’t tell anyone.”

Not quite true. Her sister knew; Rebel had no secrets from Tempest. But she wasn’t drawing this psycho’s attention to her sister.

Instead, she went on, “I beat them to the vault. I had the box in my hand. The guy tried to grab me and knocked the box to the floor. The alarm went off, security doors started slamming shut, I ran.”

“Without the item?” He was looming over her now. She reached out her hand, fingers stiff, to poke him in the chest and make him back the hell off.

Her fingers sank into his chest and disappeared. Rebel pulled her hand back quickly and dropped it to her side, clenching her fist to make sure her fingers were still there.

At least she knew now. He was only a projection. That was a little comfort. Even if he could project spells through this manifestation, he wouldn’t have his full power. But that didn’t mean she was out of the woods yet.

Time to go on the offensive.