Cast Into Darkness (24 page)

He had no choice but to deal with Dmitri later. Time to start his end of the operation. His instructions to the Hamiltons, delivered via an envelope Dmitri had left where he’d taken Kate, had been simple: Have Grayson bring the stone to neutral territory, Trafalgar Square, London. Come alone. Take a seat on the third bench in front of the eastern fountain, facing the National Gallery, and wait for his call. Any attempt to use a spell and Kate would die.

The Hamiltons knew better than to play any games.

This entire mission went against the Rules. Kidnapping a Null. Trading her for a proscribed magical artifact. But then, the Hamiltons weren’t exactly squeaky-clean themselves. They were the ones who’d dug up the artifact to begin with.

So far, the Hamiltons had kept to the terms Kristof had set—at least, as much as he’d expected. Scanning the crowd, he spotted three of Hamilton’s operatives through their illusion spells—he assumed there were more, with better disguises. For the London part of the operation, the Makris team of casters consisted of him. Only him. With his father watching his every move via the silver owl talisman pinned to his T-shirt.

Grayson Hamilton sat on the bench, as instructed. Kristof pulled out his burner phone and dialed.

“Yes?” Hamilton said.

“Open the bag. Hold it up.”

Hamilton obeyed. Kristof focused in on the bag. They’d brought the genuine item all right—that smooth disk nestled in a cocoon of blue silk couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. It glowed in his magesight like a solar eclipse.

“Leave the bag. Get up and walk—”

“No. I need proof of life first.” Hamilton zipped the laptop bag shut.

Shit. Dmitri had better have a good explanation for being incommunicado. Still, Kristof could improvise.

“Look up,” he said. “She’s at the entrance to the Gallery. You’ll get her back when we get the stone.”

Hamilton’s head snapped toward the Gallery’s wide columns.

Kristof gave Hamilton an instant to see the image of Kate, her eyes wide, body shaking, her arm held by a hulking, suit-jacketed figure, then backed the two forms into the doorway, removing them from direct view. He didn’t want to push his luck.

He had designed a complex illusion, crafting a false image and throwing impressions of Kate into the recipe. He’d brought to mind the way she looked when he walked her home from a late-night study session a few weeks ago, wearing a short cotton shirt and her favorite jeans, and mixed with it the fear that seized her one night when they escaped getting hit by a drunk driver crossing Dryden Avenue. He’d added to the image one of his father’s less memorable goons, cloaked the spell, and had thrown the illusion at the entrance of the National Gallery, just within Grayson’s range of vision.

Maybe it’s enough to fool the old man’s sharp magesight.

“Now do what I tell you. Set the bag down. Get up.” He waited until Grayson complied. “Turn around, toward Nelson’s statue, and go down to the Strand. Keep walking until I tell you otherwise.”

As Grayson obeyed, Kristof set his people in motion. Kristof’s father might not have given him any casters for the mission other than Dmitri, but he hadn’t told him he couldn’t use Normals. His pawns did what Kristof paid them to do.

Thirty men dressed in jeans and orange T-shirts identical to Kristof’s, with laptop bags exactly like Grayson’s, flooded the square. The first guy to reach Grayson’s bench, a second or two after the man had left, picked up the bag and dropped his own. Silver flashed in the operative’s hand as it closed around the strap of Grayson’s bag.

Kristof hoped he was the only one who’d seen it. Before the guy strode more than a few steps, he swapped Grayson’s bag with an identically dressed friend. All around them, duplicates were exchanging bags. Kristof designed the trade-off to look like one big marketing ploy, which was exactly what the many bystanders, stopping at the spectacle, assumed as they pointed and stared at the men’s T-shirts, boldly printed with the logo of a laptop computer company.

A Hamilton operative struggled to get through the crowd while another ran up the steps to the Gallery, toward the door where the illusion of Kate had been. Grayson Hamilton still walked toward the Strand, cell phone in hand.

So far, so good.

After a quick twist of his ring, Kristof’s features changed—olive skin turning deep brown, eyes darkening, wavy hair morphing into dreads. Then he picked a spot right on the edge of the crowd, across from St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and used his teleportation talisman, concealed in his pocket with two other talismans. At least his father had given him a few tools for this mission. It would keep the backlash down to a dull roar.

He popped into the fringe of the growing mob. No one seemed confused by the presence of one more guy in an orange T-shirt. He traded his laptop bag with the nearest duplicate and worked his way toward the center of the exchange.

Kristof concentrated on Kate, attuning his magical senses to the rose scent of her perfume, the way the summer sun turned her hair into a blazing corona around her face, how her eyes wrinkled in the corners when she laughed. The feel of her led him to Grayson’s bag, held by one of his men several feet ahead of him in the crowd.

He almost chuckled at the irony of the charm he’d worked up. Wind a strand of Kate’s hair—acquired from her pillow in her college apartment—around a simple silver-and-amber charm that even a combat mage like him could make, and bind a locator spell into it. Have his hired hand attach it to Grayson’s briefcase when he made the first swap and
bam
! Instant locator charm.

He worked his way through the crowd, positioning himself ahead of the bag’s path. Kristof grabbed the bag with his free hand as another duplicate walked by, handing off his own in turn. His fingers touched the silver charm, and he felt a brief brush of Kate’s presence in his mind. He picked up his pace, hurrying out of the square to get far away from Hamilton’s people before teleporting out. A quick look at his phone showed no texts.

Still silence from Dmitri. Had Victor caught up to him, or was Dmitri distracted by Kate?

If he’s hurt her, I’ll—

“The deal was Kate for the stone, young man.” Grayson Hamilton stood on the sidewalk by one of London’s ubiquitous Starbucks, blocking his way. “Illusions can’t fool me. Where is she?”

Kristof covered his surprise with a smirk. “You’ll get her back. Now get out of my way, if you want to see her again.”

Grayson didn’t budge. “How do I know she’s all right? You’ve already broken the rules by kidnapping a Null. Why should I trust a Makris?”

So much for plausible deniability.
“Your magesight’s pretty good, old man, to see through my illusion.”

“Kristof, I’ve been playing the Game a lot longer than you. Give me some credit, would you? Now hand the stone over and give me Kate.”

Kristof glanced at the reflections in the coffee shop window, bright from the nighttime streetlights: Hamilton’s operatives were on the street behind him, weaving in and out of the crowd of Normals. He noted their positions, calculated what it would take to disable them, and readied the spells in his mind, one by one.

“The only way you’ll get Kate is if you back off and let me go. If I don’t arrive at my destination safely, with the stone, you know what will happen to her.” The street emptied of Normals behind him, leaving only Hamilton’s operatives. The result of a subtle spell undoubtedly cast by one of Hamilton’s people.

Another of my instructions ignored. It doesn’t matter now.

“How do I know I’ll get her back unharmed if I let you go?”

“Because that’s the way it works. On my word. The way it’s worked between the families for generations. My mother had to trust you in Moscow in ninety-eight. I’m told you eventually gave her back her diamond talisman.”

Grayson’s eyes flared. “Ha! All right, go then. But you had better be damn sure you keep your word.” His eyes flicked beyond Kristof, and he gave a quick, dismissive nod to the operatives.

Kristof didn’t hesitate. A swift glance to make sure Grayson’s men had backed off, then he hurried down the narrow confines of John Adam Street, putting a block’s worth of narrow townhouses and trendy restaurants between him and Kate’s uncle.

His hand went to the owl talisman pinned to his T-shirt. His father had seen the entire exchange.
Good
. His father’s knowledge of Grayson Hamilton’s interception should prime him for the story Kristof would need to sell him later.

He was close now. There, on the next block, where the shadows of empty garages melted into a quiet alley bereft of traffic. He ducked down the alley and skirted a pair of overflowing trash cans outside the back entrance to a pub. As soon as the mission was over, he’d have to find out what happened to Kate. Grayson would never have let Kristof walk away if Victor had gotten Kate back. Something else must have gone wrong.

I shouldn’t have let Dmitri anywhere near her. Kate has to be okay. If not—

He tried to put thoughts of her from his mind. The next part of his mission—securing the stone for himself—had to be completed before he could deal with Kate.

A few more steps. The back door of the dry cleaner—the location they’d agreed upon. He braced himself.
I really needed to come up with a better way to do this—

A blue sizzle shot straight for him, a lightning bolt striking him square on. A burn formed across his chest, the agony shooting through him. Sparks flared as his father’s talisman overloaded. He dropped to the ground, groaning. The laptop bag stayed in his clenched fist.

He pulled himself up. That hurt a bit more than necessary. Struggling to his knees, his eyes scanned the deserted alley.

A slim figure, face hooded by a windbreaker, ran to him and reached down to grab the laptop case. Kristof knew the plan. With the talisman shorted out, his father would not be able to see who had taken the stone. Arrange an “ambush,” blame it on the Hamiltons, and use the stone himself when his father’s guard was down. A good plan, notwithstanding the lightning bolt.

But as his partner’s hand closed on his to take the stone and reached up to touch a talisman whose spell would render him unconscious for hours, he realized his scheme’s fatal flaw.

Dmitri has Kate. God knows what he’s doing to her. I’m the only one who knows where they are, the only one who can save her.

I’ll deal with the stone, and my father, later.

He touched the teleport talisman in his pocket, visualizing the tree house in Costa Rica he and Dmitri had secured for the mission. Bastard better not have moved her.

The last thing he saw as he vanished in a shimmer of light, the laptop case containing the stone in his hand, was Melina’s face underneath the windbreaker, raw with the rage of betrayal.

Kate fell fast,
and only the feel of Dylan’s arm tight around hers kept her from utter panic. Something struck her too fast for her to see, and a sharp pain shot up her shoulder. The wind rippled across the bare skin of her torso as trees sped by so quick she hardly registered them. Her shirt whipped around her head and shoulders, leaving only her white lace bra to contain her pounding heart.

Oh my God, I’m going to die. Painfully, horribly, smashed to pieces on the ground below
.

How could she have been so stupid? A word or two came to her across the wind—Dylan’s voice, chanting. The ground was rushing at her. Fast, brown, and looking very, very hard. Then everything disappeared.

Kristof materialized in
the center of the shack where Dmitri was supposed to be holding Kate, deep in the Montverde rain forest of Costa Rica. It was deserted, but the place looked trashed—remains of furniture strewed everywhere, the door leading to the rain forest beyond completely destroyed.

He slumped against the ramshackle wall, applying a quick healing spell to the burns on his chest. His skin was its usual olive again; his disguise spell had been blown away by the impact of the lightning bolt. Not much point in spending the energy to bring it back.

His father’s monitor talisman hung from his T-shirt, cracked to pieces, the spell it held inoperative. Good.

A luminescent glint caught his eye. He bent down and picked up a pearl button, then another, then the rest. They were from Kate’s favorite shirt, the one with the lace collar. Blood roared in his ears, his fist clenching Kate’s button tight in his grip.

Whoever had caused all this destruction was gone. With Kate missing, it would take too long to do a forensic spell and piece together what had happened. A teleport trace would find her faster. Casting the spell, he saw just enough magical residue to tell him that someone had teleported out a few minutes ago. He snapped his shield up, touched his teleportation talisman, and vanished.

Kate popped back
into existence amid a thunderous rush of falling water. Still in free fall, her descent paced the waterfall’s flow, and her stomach outpaced the rest of her. In an instant, her clothes were drenched by the spray that surrounded her. Dylan, his form faint in the mist, fell beside her, his arm holding hers. Through the water drops, the pale-blue glow of a shield spell enveloped them both.

Dylan yelled over the sound of pounding water, “Feet first, arms up straight behind you! Swim up—”

She barely got a breath in before they hit.

The force of the impact wrenched her away from Dylan. She plunged straight down, deep into a churning, watery abyss. A flash of cold shocked her system, still sweating from the tropical heat, then the blue glow around her flickered and the cold moderated into a pleasant coolness. As the roiling water pulled her down further she reached an arm out, searching for Dylan.

She found only water.

The pressure in her lungs began to build. She could see nothing but darkness, hear nothing but an oppressive silence. She spun, searching. Still nothing.

Wait, above her…
Bubbles
.

She followed the wash of the bubbles, using the strong kicks she’d learned in swim class. She swam, stroke after stroke, her arms cutting through the water. It felt like it had been hours and still she hadn’t reached the surface. Air escaped her lungs, bleeding out through her lips as carbon dioxide built up in her system.