“Are you the girl he seeks? The heir?”
The cold hand of dread wrapped around me. “Nope. The only thrones I know of are made of porcelain. Who’s your master?”
“I will take that as a…maybe.” His smile could curdle milk. “Come with me. We will see if I get a big prize.”
He grabbed something invisible in front of him. Air condensed around my body before lifting me partway off the ground. Huh. The demon had given him the power to move things with his mind.
“This is bad,” I mumbled, reaching for my fire to break out of the air grip. It was hampered, though, overcome by that block of ice swelling within my middle and pumping out through my limbs.
“Say, listen,” I said as he pulled me through the air toward him. My toes scraped the rug. “That power you feel right now, did the demon show you how to use it?”
“It is my life’s blood. It is my soul. Using it is my given right.”
“That didn’t answer my question. What does it feel like? Is it cold? I’m just trying to compare notes, you understand.”
“It feels like worlds colliding. Almighty. All-powerful. Eternal.”
“Wow. No, there is no way you are getting out of this alive. I hate to break it to you, but that demon hung a gullible sign around your neck.” I stopped directly in front of the guy, a forty-something with slightly mussed brown hair, a decent complexion, and crazed eyes. He’d probably been normal once. That ship had sailed.
The man stared at me as if waiting for me to do something.
“What?” I asked, relaxing. Nothing good came of panicking, especially in horrible situations that you had no idea how to escape.
“You are coming without a fight?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I can’t really get a reading on you. Your former magic was nothing special, if what I’m sensing was yours, which I’m inclined to believe it was, but now you have this enormous power seeping out of you. How’d that happen? I mean, hell’s bells, man, this kinetic magic has really thrown me for a loop. This is a first for me, and that doesn’t happen very often. I’m just soaking it in for the moment. I’ll tell you one thing, though. There is no way that demon is a four. No way. Fours can’t impart, or even harness, this type of magic. Not any fours I’ve ever heard about, anyway.”
“Come. I will take you to my—”
“Leader? Please say leader.”
A blur of movement made me flinch. Darius appeared beside me and immediately raked the air with his already extended vampire claws. Magic crackled and sparked when his claws came into contact with it. He ripped me out of the sky and tossed me behind him. I tumbled to the ground.
He slashed at the mage. More magic sparked and fizzled, Darius’s vampire magic in the form of claws, and probably fangs, able to counteract the mage’s kinetic magic.
Thank heavens.
The man jerked away, back-pedaling until he hit the wall. He lifted his arms to block his face, throw a spell, or use his newfound kinetic magic.
“Keep his arms down!” I hollered, jumping to my feet. “He has to move them through the air to direct his magic.”
“Stay back,” Darius growled at me, pinning the mage’s arms to his sides.
“Yeah, right.” I stepped to the side of Darius and cocked back my fist, intending to deliver a blow to knock the man out.
The punch didn’t land.
Despite Darius’s vampire strength, the mage somehow managed to rip his arms up and shove his hands through the air.
Darius flew back, cracking into the wall. He rose and hissed before his body erupted into the swamp thing (a.k.a. his monster form)—faster, stronger, and more lethal. That would help, but I wondered if it would be enough. This guy had gotten a powerful gift from a mighty demon.
I felt the push of air closing around me. The man was ready to haul me away, and judging by his shifty-eyed glance in Darius’s direction and his hop-steps toward the door, he wanted to do it fast so as not to battle an elder in monster form. I didn’t blame him, but I also didn’t intend to be taken.
I ripped my sword up. Sparks erupted from the edge of the blade, as if I’d struck it against stone, but it made it through the nearly solid air, unraveling the effect much like it would a spell. The man growled, a truly demonic sound, and jerked forward to grab me.
I dodged the grab and sliced up with my sword, intent on cutting through any newly solid air. Instead, my blade caught his wrist. His severed hand went flying across the room.
Oops.
He howled, clutched his wrist, and broke for the door.
“Don’t play with air, and I won’t lop off body parts,” I said by way of a half-felt apology, and lurched after him.
We ran out into the night. That cold power throbbed within me again, begging to be used. I didn’t know how, though. Not without focused concentration, which was impossible, given the circumstances.
Darius zipped by me, way faster in a race, and stopped further up the sidewalk, still in his ghastly form, waiting for the mage to run into him. The mage flung his hands up—or arm and hand, at any rate—and cut right, into the street. Headlights washed across his body and brakes squealed.
“No, no, no!” I yelled at the car.
The mage stopped, staring at the headlights, frozen in place.
“Run, you moron! Darius—”
Darius flashed after the man, grabbing him and shoving him to the side of the road before he could become the car’s new hood ornament. I ran after them. The car had finally come to a stop, directly in my path, so I leapt up and ran across the hood. It was mighty cool.
“Let’s get him out of here,” I said before an invisible hand swatted me.
This time I went flying across the hood of the car, face first, and fell off the other side. That wasn’t as cool.
Air closed around me like a big fist. I reached for my sword, which had fallen to the ground two feet from me, but couldn’t get it before I was lifted into the sky.
The cold force within me throbbed harder, almost painful. I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes, trying to connect with it. Trying to figure out a way to lift a rock and beam that danged mage in the side of the head.
A scream rent the night. I fell, landing awkwardly and crumpling to the sidewalk. Disorientated, I dazedly grabbed my sword and climbed to my feet. Someone gasped as I shook off the pain and started forward yet again.
Darius stood in human form in the street, naked, holding the now-limp mage by the back of his shirt. Before I got there, the shirt ripped at the neck and shoulder, making the mage drop a little lower in the air. The girls from the car that had nearly mowed him down gasped again.
“Tell me you merely knocked him out,” I said to Darius, limping as I worked around the hood of the car. My ankle was a little out of sorts from my haphazard landing. “Tell me he’ll wake up and give us information.”