Mercenary Magic (2 page)

A roar of pure fury erupted from the mage’s mouth. He’d fallen back to the rear side of the building, which blocked out most of their eager audience’s view. Most, but not all. Sera caught a glimpse of Naomi, held in place by a fiery tentacle wrapped around her ankle. The mage was almost done summoning the dragon. And a whole dragon was a hell of a lot worse than a wayward tail. Sera had run out of time.

She darted forward, aiming straight for the stormy barrier. She reached out with her senses, trying to get a feel for its magic. Every type of magic sang a unique tune, a magical musical fingerprint. This barrier sang of arctic winds and scorching fire. It sang of forgotten days and ancient beasts. The song was powerful. It rumbled and roared through Sera’s ears. It burned her nose and froze her tongue.

A cool soothing film slid over Sera’s skin, invisible but potent. And when she slammed into the barrier, the mage’s spells snapped, their magic pouring across her. His eyes wide with shock, it took the mage a moment to lift his hands up once more. It was a moment too long. Sera punched him hard in the head, and he went down, his magic dissolving into thin air. The fire and wind were gone. The dragon too.

“How did you do that?” Naomi asked, kicking off the last lingering remnants of the fiery tentacle.

“There was a hole in the barrier. I snuck through.”

Naomi’s slender brows lifted, but she said nothing. For that, Sera was grateful. Naomi wasn’t just her partner; she was her friend. And Sera didn’t like lying to her friends. She would and did—every day of her lie of a life, in fact. She just didn’t like it. But it was either lie or risk exposure. If the Magic Council found out about her, she’d be sentenced to death for the crime of being born. They’d kill her sister too. If they happened to be feeling particularly self-righteous that day, they might even kill her brother. So, yes, she was going to keep on lying and living.

Sera swung the dozing mage over her shoulder and followed Naomi around the side of the building. Down below, a blanket of fog rolled out from the city, smothering the bridge in layers of ethereal mist. The excitement finally over, most of their audience had returned to taking photos of the scenic view. A few of them, though, had their cameras aimed at her and Naomi. As Sera dumped the mage in the back seat of Naomi’s car, she sighed. Hiding her magic would have been a whole lot simpler in a world without cameras and the internet.

CHAPTER TWO

Magical Might

SERA TRUDGED DOWN the sidewalk toward home. The small house she shared with her sister and brother was in Richmond, the San Francisco district wedged between the Presidio to the north and Golden Gate Park to the south. That put her smack dab in the middle of most of the city’s magical chaos.

Ever since her battle with the mage near Battery Spencer, it had been one thing after another. Later that night, it had been drunk vampires starting bar fights all across downtown. Yesterday, it had been two warring herds of centaurs that had decided it would be a swell idea to turn Golden Gate Park into the battleground for their bloody dispute. And today it had been caterpillars. Lots and lots of monstrous, moody, gigantic wolf-sized caterpillars. Sera was bruised, sore, and her boots were pasted with oozing clumps of mucous-colored caterpillar guts.

She just wanted to take a long, hot shower to wash away the grime and soothe her aching muscles. And after that, eat. Tonight was Friday, which meant pizza. Sera loved pizza. It was the perfect remedy to a perfectly horrendous week.

She stepped into her bedroom just long enough to hang up her sword, then headed for the bathroom. As she washed magic caterpillar goo off of her hands, she glanced at the unicorn clock over the bathtub. Riley wouldn’t be back from school for another ten minutes, just enough time for her to hop into the shower.

But before she could soothe her aching muscles in hot steam, the front door thumped open, and the sound of voices trickled down the hall. Riley and someone else, a man whose voice she didn’t recognize. They were laughing. Sera turned off the sink and headed back to the entryway.

Riley sat on the bench by the door, his back bent over as he took off his shoes. His school backpack lay at his feet, the words ‘Department of Magical Sciences’ printed across the front pouch. He looked up at her, his green eyes half-amused, half-apologetic. Sera knew that look. It was Riley’s guilty look.

“You’re early,” she told her brother.

“So I am.” The look in his eyes persisted.

“Where’s the pizza?”

“Well, Sera, it’s like this.” He stood, his feet shuffling softly across the floor as he walked toward her. “There’s this cafe right along the way home from campus. It’s supposed to be really good. Or so all the reviews say.” His eyes sheepish, he handed her a paper bag. It was still warm. “We got you a gourmet chicken sandwich.”

Sera didn’t want a stupid gourmet chicken sandwich. She wanted a pizza. A big, cheesy, glorious pizza. She’d been looking forward to it all day, since even before the caterpillar fiasco.

“Who’s ‘we’?” she asked, checking her tone.

“Kai and I. He’s the one who told me about the cafe.”

Sera unlocked her jaw and folded her hands together. “And just who is Kai?” Clearly, someone who was a bad element. Only a bad element would have the audacity to mess with pizza night.

“A friend from my running club.” He looked over his shoulder. “Come on in, Kai.”

A dark-haired man stepped inside, carrying a paper bag in each hand. He wore dark jeans with a hint of silver undertone, and a fitted ink-black t-shirt that hugged the smooth muscles of his chest, leaving nothing to the imagination. He might as well have printed ‘I crack walnuts with my biceps’ across the front. Riley said he’d met Kai at his running club, but his new friend looked like he’d be more at home lifting weights in the gym than hitting the trails. Though there was a certain suppleness to his movements. Like a fighter. A damn strong fighter who hit hard and didn’t miss.

But that wasn’t what made Sera’s adrenaline pump into overdrive. It was Kai’s eyes. They shimmered like blue glass and burned with raw power. Magic, ancient and dangerous, wound across his body, draping him from head to toe. It ignited the air around them, burning Sera’s lungs. It snapped and cracked and promised of punishments cruel and painful. This is what it must have felt like to stand before a dragon—a
real
dragon, back when they’d still roamed the earth. Those fiery beasts that mages summoned were mere shadows of the real thing.

Sera looked at Riley. Surely, he felt it. Kai was an aura of magical might. Never before had she met someone so saturated with power.

But her brother gave no indication that he felt anything of the sort. He was giving her an odd sort of look, though.

“Is something wrong, Sera?”

Yes, they needed to get out of there. Now. “No,” she said.

“I’m Kai,” said the magic lightning rod, amusement dancing across his lip. He extended his hand.

Every instinct in her body was screaming for her to run, to escape the predator Riley had invited into their home. Instead, she took his hand and shook it. A spark shot up her arm—magical, dangerous…and a bit exciting. She dropped his hand and backed up a step.

“Please excuse us for a second, Kai.” Her words slushed out as a hurried mush.

She grabbed hold of Riley’s hand and pulled him into the kitchen, closing the door behind them. Then she spun around to stare him down.

“What have you done?” she said in a hissed whisper.

Riley leaned against the edge of the small table they’d stuffed into the corner of the kitchen. He pressed his crossed arms to his chest and glared on back at her. “I don’t know what you mean. Am I now not allowed to have friends or something?”

“Sure, have all the friends you want. Just not
that
friend.”

“You’ve known him for all of two seconds, and already you’re judging him. Is this about the pizza?”

“No.”

He gave her a hard look.

“Ok, maybe it’s just a little about the pizza. That was really uncool, by the way. You can’t just go changing pizza night. Fantasizing about pizza was all that kept me going when I was up to my waist in demonic jumbo caterpillars.”

Riley rolled his eyes. “You’re being melodramatic.”

“Forget the pizza.” Sera dropped her voice back to a whisper. “Your
friend
is dangerous.”

“How?”

“His magic.”

“Magic?”

“Really? You don’t feel it?” She spread her arms. “That pulsing beacon of primeval power.”

He snorted. “Have you been reading those naughty books again?”

“Please take this seriously, Riley.”

“Sorry.” He coughed. “Ok.
Seriously
, Kai doesn’t have any magic.”

“He does.”

“I may not be a magic detector like you are, Sera. But I can sense when someone’s magical. Kai is not.”

It was as though they were talking about a completely different person. Unless…

“He’s masking his aura,” she said.

It was the only explanation. Of all the magical beings, only mages could do it—and only a handful of them at that. It took more power and control than most of them had. There was also the pesky little problem that the more magic you had, the more disciplined you needed to be to cover it up. Kai was gushing magic out of his pores. To mask that from everyone, his self-control must have been absolutely mind-boggling. And dangerous. Very, very dangerous.

“Why would he cover it up?” Riley asked. “That doesn’t make sense. You’re being paranoid. He probably just handled a magic mushroom or winged cat or something at work today.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s a vet.”

Right. Like there was any way a man with
that
body spent his days patching up wounded animals. Working security maybe. Or wrestling vampires naked. Yeah, she could totally picture that.

A low chuckle drew her out of her own mind. “If you like him that much, I could arrange to be somewhere else tonight.”

“Huh?”

“You know, so you could take a closer look at ‘that body’.”

Dear God, she hadn’t actually said that out loud, had she?

“Though I have to admit that I’m kind of grossed out at the thought of you fantasizing about my friend naked.”

Oh, yes, she had said it aloud. Sera swallowed hard, her cheeks burning.

“But I suppose it’s better than tossing him out. Which is what you’re planning on doing, isn’t it?”

She took a deep breath. “Do you remember the assassin who came for me and Alex eight years ago?”

All life drained from Riley’s face, leaving him pale as a ghost. “Of course, I remember.” He cleared his throat. “The bastard killed Dad.”

“That assassin was a first tier mage. Not only that, he was the most powerful first tier mage I’d ever met.” She shifted her gaze to the closed door. “Until today.”

Riley didn’t say a thing. He just stared at the door.

“You know I can sense these things. So trust me when I say that no magic mushroom or winged cat could make anyone’s magic feel like that. His magic is ancient and powerful, and he’s deadly. Most people are not killers. Sure, they may puff out their chests, throw up their arms, and make melodramatic threats to kill random strangers who bump their bar stool. But it’s all talk. You can see that when you look into their eyes.

“When I look into Kai’s eyes, I see someone who wouldn’t hesitate to kill a person he felt deserved it. He’s cold and he’s calculating. And based on how effectively he’s masked his aura, he’s very likely the most disciplined person I’ve ever met. All of that together spells danger—and lots of it. We need to stay well away from him.”

Sera angled toward the door. “Stay here. I’ll ask him to leave. If we’re lucky, he hasn’t yet figured out what I am.”

What she didn’t tell Riley was that she didn’t hold out much hope for that possibility. Anyone that powerful would have felt her weird magic instantly, even though she was masking it too. But maybe he didn’t care. Or maybe she’d have to fight him. If that turned out to be the case, she preferred to do it without Riley in the room. She was a brutal fighter, and her little brother didn’t need to see that.

Sera stepped into the living room, brushing the door shut behind her. Kai stood beside the coffee table, his cool blue eyes holding her gaze, tracking her progress across the room. She was nearly to him when the front door swung open. Proving that every bad day was just waiting to get worse, three vampires flooded inside, their red eyes gleaming with rage.

CHAPTER THREE

Vampires and Dragons

THEY WERE COMMON vampires, not shapeshifters or demon-powered. Thank goodness for small favors. But they didn’t need powerful magic to tear her to bits. Vampires—even common ones—were no joke. They moved fast, hit hard, and could take a beating. The vampire elite liked to use these monsters as foot soldiers. They dealt a lot of damage and were completely expendable, at least as far as the vampire elite was concerned.

From the red gleam in these vampires’ eyes, they were caught up in blood rage, which meant they’d be even tougher than usual. They lumbered forward, their muscular bodies clashing with their sickly, sallow skin. Glistening threads of beaded saliva dangled from their fangs, and their eyes screamed hunger. Every single one of those eyes was fixed on Sera.

Her sword was in her room, too far away. They’d be on her before she could get to it. She drew the knife strapped to her thigh. It wasn’t designed to decapitate, but there was more than one way to kill a vampire.

“Stay in the kitchen, Riley!” she shouted over the beastly grunts.

She heard the kitchen door slide shut again.

The vampires charged through the apartment, toppling a side table and scattering chairs in their mad rush to get to her. Sera launched the knife. It hit a vampire square in the forehead. He went down so fast that the other two stumbled over his body. Wet snarls rattled their teeth. They came at her, swinging their clawed fists around with skull-shattering force. She ducked, and the vampires smashed each other in the head. Bone crunched. Sera darted past their falling bodies, retrieved her knife, and quickly stabbed them each in the heart, just to be safe.