Ties That Bind: a New Adult Fantasy Novel (The Spire Chronicles Book 2) (23 page)

Wright lived in a surprisingly modest home; guess selling parts of innocent people wasn’t as profitable when you had to split the money six ways. Still, it was a sizable space for a single man. Did Wright even have a family? “Know thy enemy” was probably the most important thing a hunter had to remember. I’m a rebel.

His home was an old fashioned, two-story colonial with a dead garden in the front and a handful of basic protections scattered all over the building. They were the kind you put up to make yourself feel better but that didn’t really stop more than Hell’s slowest kindergarten class. I really needed to speak with the Council about making advanced protections mandatory, even in Order cities.

The sky was lightening up into a murky dawn. People would be up soon, so I had to act fast before they looked out their window and saw the dirty, savage-looking girl sneaking around. This wasn’t the greatest of ideas, but a pissed off mind rarely made good decisions. Besides, it’s not like this was the first crap idea I’ve had since arriving here. This whole trip has been a mess of bad ideas, bad feelings, and bad fights. Why break pattern now?

I stared at the dark red wood of Wright’s front door before kneeling down and pressing my hand flat against the pavement. I sent out a thick burst of magic into the ground, forming a web in my mind and creating it along the floor inside. This wasn’t a spell I used often. Most of the time, the things I hunted could sense me – or my magic – a mile away. That, or the place they were hiding out in was too big for me to cover at my current level of power.

I thought of Fake-Corrigan and frowned; he was definitely the strongest magic user I’d ever met, though I had no idea how far his power truly went. Binding a Duke of Hell was no easy task, but he said he’d repurposed a basic spell. Maybe he wasn’t so much powerful as really smart. Then again, how smart was someone who decided to serve some super bad…thing. What the hell were the things locked up in the Spire? All I had ever been told was that they were, well, super bad. Ugh, I didn’t have time for this. With a quick reminder that being crazy didn’t necessarily mean you were stupid – just look at me – I shoved the thought of Fake-Corrigan aside as hard as I’d like to literally shove him off a cliff.

I was using a life detection spell. With it, I could pick up how many people were inside the targeted location and what their positions were. The second part wasn’t as useful without knowing the layout of the place, but it would help me judge how many people were closest to my entry point. Ignoring the much too familiar ache tightening into a death grip around my skull, I raised the mental web up to where I estimated the second floor started. My head felt like it would explode when I realized that, joy of joys, this place might have a basement. According to my excruciatingly extended scan, it didn’t – or at least there wasn’t anyone down there; the spell revealed people, not rooms.

“Stupid spells that require actual focus and don’t blow people up,” I muttered under my breath.

Rubbing my temples, I tried to formulate a plan. There were at least four guards on the ground floor and two on the second, along with one other person I assumed was Wright. Seven total, likely all human – hunters. Most hunters weren’t arcane experts, but they could dodge an ice spear and fire a gun just fine, so I couldn’t go in hands blazing. They were moving, meaning that Alex wasn’t the only one who had a fetish for healthy living. Seriously, why does daytime even exist?

An invisibility spell was a veritable scientific mind fuck. It wasn’t the whole chameleon thing where I adjusted my body to imitate the patterns around me. If it was, my head would have exploded after two seconds. No, it was more trying to make my skin and clothes see-through. Which meant trying to physically affect the properties of my skin. Which meant I would be praying for someone to invent brain lube for the mental gangbang I was about to go through.

I crept around to the back of the house, smirking at the sight of a back door. It was locked when I tried it, but that’s what lockpicks were for. Yes, lockpicks, not magic. They were like guns; sometimes it was easier to go old school. Like all sneaking activities, every movement I made felt like I may as well have tap danced in there, shaking maracas. Once the door was unlocked, I sat down with my back against it and kicked as much dirt off my boots as I could. There was nothing I could do about my smell, though. I took a whiff, wrinkling my nose at the stench of sweat, dirt, alcohol, and a thin cloud of Eau de Hospital. Well, beggars can’t be choosers.

Generally, the best way to work with new or difficult magic was to find a way to anchor it into something you already knew – like Fake-Corrigan repurposing Satanica Potestas to bind Ipos. Or for a less gross example, the whole ice spear/javelin thing. Sometimes it was more complicated, like making your body disappear.

For me, it was all visualization. Wild, offensive magic was just a natural outburst, but with other spells or rituals, I would imagine shapes – like the web – or objects or whatever else was necessary. In this case, I was going to imagine myself fading away into nothingness.

Wow, that sounded creepy.

My hand was even paler than usual when I stared at it, though with the last two days – God, had it really only been two days? – I shouldn’t be surprised. As I focused on the limb, trying to will it to fade out of sight, my stomach rumbled like a disgruntled bear, and I realized that I hadn’t eaten anything beyond the few meager pieces of bacon at breakfast yesterday. With that realization, all my energy seemed to evaporate.
Damn it, Morgan, sack up.
You’ve done this kind of stuff plenty of times. What’s a day or five running on low?

The apparent third voice in my head reminded me how much I paid for those “plenty of times.” I shushed it.

It took time and cold determination, but eventually my fingers began to flicker out of sight. I was ready to drink a country’s worth of coffee spiked with Red Bull by the time I managed to get my entire body invisible all at once, and I was cursing my mother for ever giving me magic in the first place by the time I successfully kept myself see-through – no flickering back into sight at all. The cursing didn’t stop, though, since I had to keep my concentration up the entire time I was in there.

The door opened quietly, allowing me to slip inside undetected. The smell of whiskey wafted around, making me even more nauseous on my empty stomach. At least my odor wouldn’t be as obvious as I thought it would. I took a minute to ponder, considering my habit of running off and doing stupid things whenever I got pissed – which was apparently all the time – exactly how I managed to stay alive this long.

As I thanked whatever idiot thought not placing guards
around
the house or near the back door was a good idea, one of the men appeared right in front of me. I froze, letting out a soft exhale as he came an inch away from bumping into me. My footsteps were silent, despite how loud they felt, against the wooden floors as I shuffled away from him, keeping a careful eye out for any other hunks of hired muscle I may bump into.

Normally, it wouldn’t be too hard to shock them into unconsciousness, but normally, I wasn’t channeling all my energy into an invisibility spell. My heart pounded against my chest like it was channeling Rocky with each step I took. It was impossible to think. In a way, it reminded me of walking around with a tracking spell on: everything was in a haze, the guards blurring into amorphous forms as I snuck past them. Except this time, it wasn’t the spell edging away the unnecessary parts of reality, it was my mind unable to process much more than the spell.

Concern gnawed at me as I continued on. In this state, I couldn’t tell much about the guards other than gender. They all had standard issue Order handguns, so I had to look out for that, but it wouldn’t be a huge issue unless they shot me in the head. Actually, I had no idea if that would kill me. It was possible I could heal up, albeit slowly. Would my regeneration abilities still work if my brain was damaged? They seemed to work fine when my head got slammed in, but that wasn’t the same as a literal hole through my skull. I wasn’t in a hurry to find out, either way.

One of the steps creaked as I slowly but surely made my way up the stairs. I stopped mid-step as one of the men looked straight at me, averting my gaze so he wouldn’t feel like he was being watched. It took forty torturous seconds (yes, I counted), but he finally relaxed and looked away.

The house appeared spacious from the outside, but creeping around inside felt like skulking through a damned palace. I finally came to a pair of white double-doors with a guard standing in front of them. That was either an office or Wright’s bedroom. From what I remembered, there were two people on one side of the second floor – one stationary, one not. Wright was probably in there, then, which meant I should save that room for later.

If I was Wright, I wouldn’t want to let my guards near the evil objects that could possibly corrupt whoever wielded them. So, it was either in the room he was in or one that was unoccupied. There was still another guard to account for, likely on patrol. I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes, trying to remember what my web picked up while enjoying a chance to rest.

Still using the wall as support, I moved in the opposite direction of the double doors. Every once in a while I looked down at my body, making sure I couldn’t see anything but the floor. It didn’t take long to find another guard, female, leaning against a door. She wasn’t patrolling, and based on the way she yawned and closed her eyes, I didn’t think she planned on doing so anytime soon. How the hell was I going to move her?

There weren’t any other guards on this floor, and it didn’t seem like patrols would be an issue. I snuck over and grabbed her, clamping a hand over her mouth and pressing the other against her temple, sending electricity through my fingers. Endorphins flooded through me as the invisibility spell wore off and my mind leapt for joy as the pressure screwed around it vanished.

The hunter’s body was slumped against mine as I picked the lock on the door. She would be fine when she woke up. These hunters could just be doing their jobs, unaware of what Wright has been up to, so I didn’t want to hurt them. Innocent until proven guilty and all that. The door opened with a soft click. I peered inside the room, sending out tendrils of magic to sniff out any traps. A sudden burst of dark magic knocked me on my ass, and I bit back a groan as my head conked against the other woman’s.

The magic the items exuded would leave remnants of their power even after they were removed, and the amount of magic around meant that, if they weren’t here, they hadn’t been gone long. There wasn’t anything dangerous I could sense, so I pushed the door open and quickly dragged Sleepy in with me.

The office reminded me of my father’s, a comparison that had me twisting my face up as thoughts of Tamlin and my mother barged in. There was a big desk in the center of the room with large bookshelves both behind it and along the side walls. I pulled the unconscious woman across the teal carpeted floor and hid her under the desk so no one would see her if they came around. I stood up, stretching my back and smiling at the satisfying crack the action produced.

Dark magic sucked. It was like this horrible swamp filled with bubbling sludge that pulled you in, seeping down your throat and choking you with bitter poison. At least, that’s what it felt like when I sensed it. The sensation slid over me, coupling with my fatigue, and I had to grab the desk to keep myself steady. I was going to need ten cheeseburgers and three weeks of sleep after all of this was over.

God, it felt like a million bugs were crawling over my body. The feeling was strongest behind his desk, so I began to move the books aside, revealing a safe. I sighed. If only there was a spell that let me phase through solid objects. There could be such a spell, for all I knew, but I wasn’t about to mess with physics more than I already had today – especially not when it could end with me losing a hand.

“Fuck,” I whispered as I looked over the lock. I wasn’t the most technical person, but even I knew a fingerprint lock when I saw one.

There was no way the magical stuff was going to be flammable, and I doubted Wright would mix his explosives in with his valuables, so it should be okay to use fire. Well, “okay” wasn’t the right word, something along the lines of “not blown up” would be more accurate. Who would’ve believed that less than twenty-four hours ago, I was actually trying to
avoid
having my hand melted off? I really needed to start carrying painkillers around with me.

I laid my palm flat against the safe, feeling the cool, smooth metal under my skin. It didn’t stay cool for long, though, burning up quickly as I melted through it. Unfortunately, the precision required to melt through the door without damaging its contents meant I had to be touching the surface, because life was a bitch when you studied how to fling giant fireballs and avoided learning anything that required accuracy. I made my bed, now I was burning in it. Much like the bars of my former cell, the molten metal burned my skin, but this time I was able to brace myself against the wall and limit my sounds of pain to heavy, labored breaths.

The second my fingers hit air, I wrenched my arm back. My traitorous stomach growled at the smell of burnt meat. Luckily, most of my hunger abated at the sight of my hand. The skin on top was mostly gone, leaving only bloodstained metacarpal bones surrounded by bubbling flesh. Tears blurred most of it, but I could still tell – and feel, Jesus fuck could I feel – how bad it was. I tried to look on the bright side by telling myself that I’d nab first place in any Halloween contest.

It didn’t help.

Time wasn’t on my side, but I figured I’d earned a breather after what I did to my hand. Leaning against the desk, I shed manly tears and waited for my hand to heal. There wasn’t any pain from the healing itself. It was more of a nauseating pressure, though it did nothing to abate the pain from my actual injury. I used to stare at my wounds with morbid fascination, just watching and feeling everything come back together; it was good to know that, if I ever saw a therapist, they’d have more to work with than just deep-seated family issues.