Magic Edge (20 page)

“Yes,” they said together, still glaring at each other.

“Good. This is your last warning. The next time you two start fighting, I’ll tie you together and leave you.”

“The Convictionites’ ship is packed with armed extremists,” Logan said calmly. “Going alone would be reckless.”

“When is she not reckless?”

“True.”

She glared at them. “Are you done?”

They nodded.

“Ok, let’s go.”

They let go of the railing and dropped. Cold water crashed against Alex’s face as she hit the lake, but she was warm inside her wetsuit. She pushed up, breathing in the night air as she broke the water’s surface.

They began swimming toward the boat. A few sea creatures slithered by, but none of them looked hungry. Or at least not hungry enough to fight for their dinner. Thank goodness. Video games made fighting monsters in water look a whole lot easier than it actually was in real life.

Alex tried to keep her strokes smooth and soft, but to her ears their approach sounded like a fight to the death between two opposing sea lion gangs. Drunk sea lions. Wielding high-pressure water cannons.

They reached the ship without getting eaten—or shot. Brushing her fingers across the hull, Alex looked up at the smooth wall looming over them. The deck felt miles away.

“How are we going to get all the way up there?” she whispered.

“Maybe I can make a small hole—” Marek began, tapping his finger against the hull.

“You can think up ways to sink the ship after we get the Orbs back,” Logan said.

He pointed at the anchor chain Alex had missed. Man, she was slipping. She really needed to catch a good night’s sleep. Or at least a nice, long nap.

Logan was already climbing up the chain, moving like one of those Chinese circus acrobats, like he did this sort of thing every day. He probably did. Breaking and entering enemy strongholds was his specialty. Marek gave the chain a dubious look, then pulled himself up. Alex waited half a minute, then followed.

Particles of rusted metal crusted off the chain as she climbed, sprinkling down into the water like shredded snow. The Convictionites needed to spend less money killing supernaturals and more money on property maintenance.

She reached the top, and slid over the rails, lowering into a crouch beside Logan and Marek. Nearby, two men were chatting, the moonlight lighting up their bright white uniforms. Well, at least the guards on the ship would be easy to spot. What kind of guard wore a white uniform anyway?

Logan tapped a sign on the wall with the White Knight logo on it. Maybe the guards had come with the security package.

Then he pointed at a door that seemed to lead below deck. Right now, they were still in the shadows, but to get to that door, they’d have to pass beneath a well-lit patch of the deck. Someone would have to distract the guards.

As though he’d read her mind, Marek blasted a group of passing eels with a jolt of electrical energy. His spell rolled over them, and they began to circle the ship. Magic sparked and sizzled in the water.

“Hey, have a look at this,” one guard told the other, pointing down.

As soon as their backs were turned, Logan ran for the door, his strides as silent as gently falling snow. Alex and Marek followed him, their steps far less stealthy. But it didn’t matter at this point. The ship rocked and thumped as the eels bombarded it with electrical magic.

Once Alex and Marek were at the bottom, Logan pulled them under the staircase. A moment later, a dozen guards in pasty-white uniforms stormed up the steps over their heads, rushing toward the deck.

“That is not what we discussed,” Logan cut out in a harsh whisper, his cold eyes trained on Marek.

“I diverted their attention.”

“You’ve created a scene. How are we supposed to find the Orbs with the ship on high alert?”

“High alert over a few eels,” said Marek.

“Irrelevant. The guards are running around looking for signs of trouble.”

“No, they’re distracted.”

“Stop,” Alex cut in. “What’s done is done. Let’s just find those Orbs and get out of here.”

“They’re probably on the lowest level,” Marek said, peering down the hall. “Villains always keep their stolen plunder on the lowest level. We need to find some stairs leading down.”

Logan looked at Alex behind his back. She shook her head and pointed at the floor. The Orbs were on this level. Marek was a first tier mage with some of the most destructive spells she’d ever seen, but he didn’t have a nose for magic. He couldn’t sniff it out like she could.

“Let’s do a pass of this level first,” Logan said.

Marek arched a pierced brow at him. “Assassin’s intuition?”

“Something like that.”

There weren’t any more guards in the hallway, so Logan slid quietly from the shadows. Alex followed, stepping into line beside him.

“Which door?” he whispered.

“Sixth one on the right,” she said, shivering. “But there’s something more behind that door. Vile magic.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. Another magical artifact the Convictionites stole? I felt it at their base this morning, but it was gone when I woke up in the basement. Whatever it is, they must have moved it here.”

Marek slid between them. “You look like you know where you’re going,” he said to Logan, his words dripping with suspicion.

“I heard the guards talking.”

Logan’s lie was so smooth that even Alex almost believed it. And she knew he was covering for her. She made a mental note never to play poker with him.

They passed through the sixth door, entering a room of shadows. Four orbs, each about the size of a tennis ball, sat on four pedestals at the center of the room, glowing like Christmas lights. Red, blue, gold, and silver—tendrils of magic fire swayed and hummed across the Orbs of Essence.

Behind each of the Orbs stood an iron cage. Gunner, the vampire gang leader from the tournament yesterday, sat motionless inside one of them, his hands covering his head. Blood trickled down his arms, the steady drip of it hitting the floor echoing dully in the hollow chamber.

The champion of the tournament’s fairy division, the golden-haired beauty the admiring crowds had heralded as their ‘Fairy Princess’, sat in the second cage and wept. Her hair was matted and dirty, her clothes were tattered and torn, and her wings were in shreds.

In the third cage, the ghost of a young girl swirled in stuttered loops, every few seconds throwing herself against the glittery bars. Rather than pass right through, the ghost bounced off and hit the opposite side of the cage. She ricocheted a few more times, then rose up to repeat the sequence again. There was magic in those bars. And that magic, whatever it was, was powerful enough to hold in a non-corporeal being. Alex had only ever once gone ghost hunting. They were hard to catch and damn near impossible to keep trapped.

“White Knight again,” Logan said, pointing at the sign attached to the ghost’s cage.

“I’m getting sick of seeing that stupid white knight,” she replied. “When this is all over and done with, we’re going to pay their headquarters a little visit to educate the management on the hazards of selling to radical hate groups.”

Marek looked at her. “By hazards, you mean…”

“The hazard of the pointy end of my sword.”

“Hold that thought,” Logan said. “Someone is coming.”

That someone turned out to be a guard. He strode over to the fourth cage—the only one that was empty—and swung the door open. It appeared the Convictionites were ready to return their fourth supernatural victim to his cage, probably after torturing him.

“A mage,” she whispered to Logan and Marek. “That’s who goes in there. The vampire, the fairy, and the otherworldly are already in their cages.”

“Four orbs, four supernaturals. One of each kind,” Marek said. “The Convictionites are going to do something to those supernaturals. We need to stop it. Now.”

The dull undercurrent of vile magic flared up, and the three caged supernaturals began to scream in agony. Marek screamed too and fell to the ground, his head bouncing off the floor panels with a hollow thump. The stench of acid and decomposing bodies flooded Alex’s nose. She pressed her hands over her mouth, willing herself not to throw up.

Marek’s limp body began to slide across the floor, as though he were being pulled by an invisible tentacle. Alex grabbed for him, but she was too slow. The invisible tentacle yanked him into the fourth cage and slammed the door shut.

“Marek is the fourth supernatural,” she realized.

“Which means we were lured here. I hear five guards in this room and more coming. We need to get out. Now.”

“Marek’s trapped in that cage. I’m not leaving him. We can’t leave the others either. Whatever the Convictionites have planned for them, it’s not kisses and cuddles.”

“We’re outnumbered, Alex,” he said with strained patience. “And if we don’t go now, we won’t be able to at all. We’ll be completely pinned in.”

“Can’t you talk to them?” she asked.

“And what would I say?”

“Command them to stop?”

“That trick won’t work a second time,” he said. “It only worked before because of the base leader’s unchecked ambition.”

“Then we fight,” she stated.

“All of them?”

She drew her sword. “Yes.”

“This is foolish,” he said, but drew a pair of knives anyway.

“I’m going to make a run for those cages and see if I can get them open,” she told him.

“The guards will shoot you.”

“No, they won’t,” she said, setting her hand on his. “Because you’re going to keep them busy.”

“If we survive this, you agree to sit down with me to discuss your recklessness.”

“Ok, it’s a date. I’ll even let you buy me dinner.”

“You are a peculiar woman.” He kissed her forehead. “But you certainly do know how to motivate a man.”

“If I promise to wear the lacy pink lingerie you seemed to like, will that motivate you even more?”

“Yes.” He stared at her for a few seconds, his green eyes beautiful and deadly. Shaking his head slowly, he waved her away. “Now let’s do this.”

Alex waited until he jumped out of the shadows to engage the guards, then she sprinted for the cages. She’d made it halfway there when a mass of lightning, fire, ice, and earth magic exploded on her back. Lights danced across her vision, her feet slipped, and she smacked hard against the ground. Her sword slid across the floor.

Her ears ringing with the aftershocks of the elemental explosion, she peeled her face off the wooden floor to stare down her attacker. But it wasn’t a mage the Convictionites had tortured into submission. It was a neat line of a dozen guards, sparkling magic steaming off the barrels of their guns. And every single one of those guns was pointed at her.

Logan lay at their feet, heaving out stuttered breaths. A magical web of silver strands crisscrossed his body, pinning him to the floor.

The guards’ line parted, and a woman in a blue business suit stepped forward, her gold heels clicking and echoing off the walls. She looked down at Logan with cool detachment. When her eyes turned toward Alex, though, rage burned away the ice.

“Who are you, and what are you doing here with my son?” she demanded.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Magic Edge

LOGAN’S MOTHER BORE herself with the stately grace of a queen. Her suit was custom-fit, her hands smooth, and her makeup perfect. There wasn’t a hair out of place in her blonde bob. As soon as she walked into a room, she owned it. She had a kind of unspoken charisma that just drew people to her, sucking them into the black hole of her soul.

Alex pushed herself up, her back pulsing with pain. She ignored it. She had no intention of confronting the enemy with her face to the floor.

“You should be dead, mage,” Logan’s mother said, disgust dripping from every word. Her aura smelled like citric acid in a bloody wound.

“Yes, I’m familiar with your little hate group’s motto.”

She turned her nose up at Alex. Obviously, evil queens didn’t appreciate the wit of snarky mercenaries.

“Twelve of my guards shot you,” said the Evil Queen. “You got up again. Explain.”

Her command was crisp and certain. She was clearly accustomed to people doing whatever she said. Well, Alex was about to disappoint her.

She looked across the line of guards and their guns. Suddenly, the magic artifact she’d found at the tournament made a lot of sense. The Convictionites were a bunch of hypocrites. Go figure.

“You have magic-enchanted weapons,” she said. “Explain yourself.”

The Evil Queen’s pretty little nostrils flared at the order. “How dare you.”

“You claim to hate magic.”

“Magic is a plague upon this earth,” said the Evil Queen, pressing a button on the peculiar device in her hand. “Its taint must be purged.”

The vile magic flared up again, stronger than ever. Alex staggered sideways, her head pounding under the pressure. A thick, shimmery film of magic slid over each of the cages. The tentacle that had grabbed Marek had slapped him unconscious; the magic now sizzling across the cages knocked out the other three.

“You’re using magic. One of your minions used it at the tournament yesterday. And you’re using it now.” Alex pointed to the four tendrils of magic—red, blue, gold, and silver—slinking out from the Orbs, licking at the bars of the cages. “Don’t you think that’s a tad hypocritical?”

“No.”

Logan pushed against the magic net pinning him to the ground. It groaned, the strands of silver light blinking faster and faster until they finally snapped. He rose to his feet and turned to stare down his mother.

“Alex is right,” he told her.

“You didn’t know?” Alex asked.

“No.”

The Evil Queen sighed. “Sometimes you need to fight fire with fire, Logan. When all the magic beasts have been purged from the earth, we will destroy the weapons.”

“The scary thing is you actually believe that,” he said. “But there will always be another battle. Another enemy. I’m remembering now very clearly why I left. Your morality has always been flexible.”

“You have no morals, dear. You are an assassin,” she said calmly. “An assassin who will take on any client for the right price.”