Magic Edge (16 page)

“Yes, it is,”
Ben said smugly. “The best security money can buy. I’d wager even you couldn’t break it, Slayer.”

Logan gave him a cool smile. “A dangerous wager given my reputation.”

Alex’s scan came up blank. She couldn’t sense the Orbs anywhere in the building. She did feel…interference? Is that what it was? It felt like something was jamming her ability to find magic. She should have at least been able to sense Logan’s unusual aura. And her magic. She didn’t even feel that. Something weird was going on.

“Yes, your reputation,”
Ben told Logan.
“I was thinking about just that. You’ve been an assassin for, what, ten years?”

“Something like that.”

“And in all that time, you’ve never once taken a job for us. You have taken jobs against us, however.”

Logan shrugged. “Such is business. I don’t pick my causes. I pick my paychecks.”

“You follow the money?”

“Yes.”

Alex felt that weird something. It was somewhere in the building. There was no magic to follow, so her mind followed the silence. The quietest spot in the vicinity—the one most devoid of magic—that was the source of the interference. It had to be. She trailed it through floors and ceilings, up to the peak of the building. It was a device, or maybe an artifact. She couldn’t say without seeing it. Slowly, she began to poke at it, looking for a weak spot that she could pull back.

“So you will always take the job with the higher payout?”
Ben asked.

“It depends,” said Logan.

“On what?”

“I won’t take anything I believe has an abnormally high chance of getting me killed.”

Ben opened the door at the end of the corridor. It led into the basement. His minions had all gone off to perform other undoubtably sinister tasks, but even so, Alex wasn’t going to follow him into the basement. Who knew what was down there. Besides the weapons, of course. She was now certain that there were weapons in the basement—just as she was certain that they should not, under any circumstance, go down there.

Alex pulled furiously at the anti-magic field. The crack of splitting fabric sounded in her mind, and the field ripped open. All the magic in the building snapped and flooded into her. Logan caught her arm before she could slam into the wall.

“Where are you taking us?” he asked the
Convictionite.

“To speak to the base leader.”

“And his office is in the basement?”

Ben smiled. “He’s looking over our latest delivery. Something otherworldy.”

Now that the field was down, Alex was acutely aware of every molecule of magic in the building. The Orbs weren’t there, but there was something else down there… Vile magic. She didn’t know what it was, but she wasn’t going anywhere near it.

The Orbs aren’t here. It’s a trap,
Alex tried to project into Logan’s head. She’d never been able to project her thoughts before, but she had to try. The
Convictionite was too close for her to whisper the warning.

“We’ll wait here until he’s done,” Logan told
Ben, proving that his
reputation was well-earned.

A savage smile slid across
Ben’s lips.
“You will go where I say, assassin,” he said as the hallway filled with armed
Convictionites. “Did you honestly expect me to believe that someone who’d spent years going out of his way to take on jobs to thwart our order suddenly decided he wanted to make a deal? Whoever hired you to steal those accursed magic orbs from us will be sorely disappointed. They aren’t here.”

“We already know that,” Alex said.

“Oh, so she can use that tongue for more than playing with Slayer!”
Ben
sneered at her.

“You won’t be using your tongue for anything soon,” she said.

Logan caught her hand as it dropped to the knife at her thigh.

“And what a smart mouth!” Ben chuckled. “I can see why you keep her quiet, Slayer.”

Alex tried to knock Logan’s hand away, but he held on. She shot him a cold glare.

“A woman like that needs a good beating once in a while to keep her in her place.” His eyes gleamed with sick delight. “She probably even enjoys it.”

Logan released her hand and looked at her. “Do you want to kill him, or should I?”

Alex drew her sword. “I’ll do it. You can have his minions.”

“Just promise not to kill him too quickly.”

“Oh, I won’t.” She warmed up her sword arm. “I’m going to give him a good beating first. He’ll probably even enjoy it.”

Ben took a step back. He didn’t seem to like the demented smile she was shining his way.

“We have you outnumbered,” he said. “Don’t move a muscle, or my people will shoot you.”

Alex turned to Logan. “Are you worried?” she asked casually.

“No. If they were going to shoot us, they would have done so already. Obviously, their orders are to take us alive.”

“There are many places I can shoot you without killing you. Or your lady companion,” Ben said, pointing his gun at her.

“Did he just call me your ‘lady companion’?” Alex asked Logan.

“He did.”

“Bastard.”

She rushed the Convictionite. She knocked the gun from his hand, then swung her arm back around to punch him in the gut. As her fist hit him, magic burst out of her. A layer of frost spread out from the impact point, washing across his whole body. He let out a weak gasp, then fell flat on his back like a stiff, blue popsicle. Well, that was unexpected.

“The Black Plague!” a Convictionite called out. “She’s got magic!”

“Kill the monster!” another shouted.

“Kill the monster!” the rest of them echoed.

Alex looked around for cover, but the only way out of there was down into the basement, where they’d be trapped. And there were probably more of them down there. It’s not like they had much of a choice, though. Logan was giving the open door to the basement a wary look. The Convictionites raised their guns in sync.

“Hold your fire!” a voice echoed through the building.

The Convictionites parted, pressing their backs to the walls to make space for the man coming down the corridor. This must have been the base leader Ben had mentioned.

The man moved in crisp strides. He wore a navy-blue business suit, but Alex had a feeling he was ex-military. She’d run into her fair share of them. Mayhem employed a few, men and women who couldn’t adjust to normal life. So they silenced their nightmares by killing monsters.

The man walking down the corridor wasn’t like them. He was a killer. But he didn’t kill to silence his nightmares. He didn’t kill for profit. He didn’t even kill to make humans safe. He killed because he liked it. Alex could see it in his eyes, and she could feel the cold hatred seeping off of him, a perfume of sweat and death.

The man turned his calculating gaze on Logan. He looked like a patient killer, the sort of person who would give up the quick kill now to strike the bigger blow later.

“It’s not too late to redeem yourself,” he said, stopping in front of Alex and Logan. “Swear your loyalty to the Convictionites, and all will be forgiven.”

“We’d never join your cult,” she told him.

“You know nothing,” he said, his smile smooth and cruel. “Not even your allies.”

Alex looked at Logan, but he was evading her eyes.

“The assassin is not just one of the Convictionites,” the man said. “He
is
the Convictionites. Our esteemed leaders’ only son. Heir to their legacy.”

Then he pressed a gun to her chest and pulled the trigger.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Iron Cage

WHEN ALEX OPENED her eyes, she wasn’t dead. She didn’t have a bullet hole through her chest. She wasn’t even bleeding. Whatever the base leader had shot her with, it wasn’t fatal. But it was nasty. She had a hell of a headache.

She sat on the cold, stone floor. Moisture, thick and stale, hung in the air. The room she was in was hardly larger than a closet. It smelled like squishy green things and—more subtly—of reused rags that had soaked too long in a pail of dirty water.

She pushed herself up. A burst of dizziness exploded inside her head, and she swayed sideways, knocking over an old mop. She caught it before it hit the ground, then set it against the wall. Its handle was cracked, but it was the closest thing to a weapon she had at the moment. Her sword and knives were gone. They’d taken her chain whip too.

The walls were buzzing softly with a deep, magical bass. Her magic. Whatever was in those walls was bouncing her own magic right back at her. It was probably iron, the biggest magic reflector. It was used heavily in mage prisons. There wasn’t enough in this room to incapacitate her, but it had slowed her down. She wouldn’t last more than five seconds in a fight, weapons or not.

Alex stumbled toward the cell door, fighting to keep down the acid churning in her stomach. She peered through the bars that covered the slender window cut into the metal door. Outside her cell, splotches of sickly yellow light protruded from the ceiling at regular intervals, doing little to illuminate the dark and dreary hallway.

She uncoiled her magic, slipping it between the iron bars. She slid it down the hall, looking for something—anything—that could help her. She found only cell after cell of iron. The vile magic she’d felt earlier was gone. She scented something familiar and followed the trail, her stomach growing uneasier with every doorway that she passed. Her magic slithered under the door at the end of the hall…then snapped back to her so hard that she hit the wall of her cell.

The taste of his familiar aura still lingered in her mouth, its rich scent like poison on her tongue. She’d been trying really hard not to think about him. If the base leader had spoken the truth…no, he was a liar. He was trying to turn her and Logan against each other.

If only she really believed that.

Metal creaked as one of the doors in the hallway opened. Who was she fooling? It wasn’t just any of the doors. It was the door at the end of the hall, the only one that didn’t bounce magic. Three pairs of footsteps walked down the hall: two heavy, one light. Light like an assassin.

Maybe none of it was true. Maybe he wasn’t a Convictionite. Maybe he hadn’t betrayed her. They might have been questioning him. And now they were returning him to his cell.

That pitiful hope died when the footsteps stopped in front of her cell, and Logan stepped inside.

“Leave us,” he told the two guards, giving them a dismissive wave.

They looked at each other, then left the cell, leaving it open a crack. Alex didn’t hear them walk away. They must have been keeping watch outside.

“They don’t trust you,” she laughed. Or coughed. Laugh-coughed. Her head was spinning too much to think clearly.

Logan crouched down in front of her. “Alex,” he whispered, brushing his hand down her cheek. “Your skin is burning.”

She gave his hand a sloppy shove. “Don’t touch me.”

“The iron is affecting you. We have to get you out of here.”

She snorted. “Why don’t you just tell your new friends to let me go? Or should I say old friends?”

“They are no friends of mine.”

“Family then.”

“My family disowned me years ago,” he said. “I told you that.”

“You didn’t tell me that they were the ones leading the band of psychopaths trying to exterminate the world’s supernatural population.”

“I didn’t think it was relevant.”

She laughed, and acid burned her throat. “You didn’t think it was relevant? Really? Because I think it’s pretty damn relevant. Especially to someone you’re in a relationship with.”

“Relationship?” A smile touched his lips. “Are we in a relationship, Alex?”

“A business relationship, you crazy assassin.” Talking to him made her head hurt almost as much as being slapped by her own magic. “And if you’re not one of them, why are you walking around free out there while I’m trapped in here?”

“My parents and I had a falling out over my lack of discrimination when it came to choosing clients. They didn’t like that I took jobs working for supernaturals since that went against their core principle. Nothing has changed. As far as they’re concerned, I’m no longer their son.”

“Then why did the Convictionites let you out?” she asked.

“Not the Convictionites. Sarth. That’s the base leader.”

“Soldier boy?”

“Yes. He thought if he could convince me to swear off my wicked ways and return to my parents’ loving embrace—in other words, kill for them—then he’d be looking at a promotion. He made the mistake of announcing who I was to the entire base.”

“Mistake because…”

“Because as soon as he took me out of my cell and brought me into the room at the end of the hall to talk, I killed him and his two guards,” he said. “Then I told the guards standing outside that Sarth had instructed me to interrogate the prisoner for information on the Orbs.”

“The prisoner? You mean me?”

“You’re welcome.”

“I’m not thanking you,” she growled.

“Of course not, sweetheart. You can do that later. After we get out of here.”

“I woke up in a cell,” she reminded him. “An iron cage.”

“Which is wreaking havoc with your magic.”

“Yes.” She glared at him. “No.”

“I saw you turn a man into a human popsicle by punching him, hun. I think it’s safe to say the cat’s out of the bag.”

“There is no cat.”

“Of course not. And she can’t dissolve metal chains either.”

“Are you really going to—”

“Or shatter magic barriers.”

“I’m not talking about this.”

She tried to stand—but her legs refused to cooperate. Her head felt like it was splitting apart from the inside. Logan took her hands, pulling her to her feet.

“I don’t trust you,” she said, leaning on him as they walked slowly toward the door. The whole room was spinning in a whirl of yellow and green lights. “You’ve been keeping important things from me.”