“Alexander’s on the move. I told him you'd be alerting him momentarily with a location.”
“There’s no need.” I could just pop in, grab the emerging mage, and pop back out. I just had to hurry.
I stepped forward, palm out.
“If you think I’m letting you go, you have underestimated things,” Constantine said, magic twining around his fingers; his expression savage.
One of the threads connected to my chest gave a painful squeeze. I fought it for a moment, watching Constantine’s face grow darker. An even more painful twist squeezed. Disappointment.
I licked my lips. “I could go anyway.”
“You could.” Magic coursed through the connections streaming in and out of him and to me—a bright ultramarine and deep brown surging through the others.
I sagged, my hand falling like a shoulder muscle had been cut. “Tattletale.”
“I've lost the ability to be evil in the truly great ways. You've reduced me to this existence.”
“Fine. Fine. Even though—”
“As soon as—”
“I've got it. You are worse than Olivia.” I growled and turned.
His hand slipped down my forearm. “I don't think so.” When I looked at him, he was encased in his fitted cloak again as well.
“You aren't coming.” This wasn’t like painting while knowing he was protected.
“We will simply appear, then leave again just as quickly.” His expression was calm, his fury abruptly, carefully tucked away. He rolled magic around two fingers in an unending loop. “Unless you have other plans?”
What if Axer’s team couldn't handle the Department? What if the praetorians came anyway? What if—
“If you don’t take me with you, I will simply port to Times Square and stand on the sidewalk,” Constantine said. “Waiting to see who comes for me first.”
He would, too. He was just that kind of asshole. I swore and grabbed his arm. “That's blackmail.”
“Far better than tattling. I appreciate your assistance.”
I growled at him again, swiped a hand through the air to make a paint-spattered page fall to the ground, and folded us through the fibers. There was nothing quite like painting to make the layers open before me. It was the constant portent of doom I could live without.
I concentrated on the feeling of the Awakening, rifling through the data to ascertain the exact location, and requested the paper spit us out twenty feet from it. Real-time data bloomed, and I could feel Constantine's immediate push.
I gnashed my teeth and forced my mind to send Axer every detail of the location and all the minute pieces of data my senses were spewing.
Even the odd data points, like how strange the ground felt—like it was full of my magic. Miles of it. A girl on the sidewalk stared at her glowing green hands in wonder and fear. Three black cats with glowing eyes slunk under a car, tails curling around the back bumper. Eleven black clad figures stealthily moved through the shadows, around the sides of the buildings in the distance. Magic spiked from the devices on their cloaks.
I moved automatically, raising my arms to blast the forms.
“No,” Constantine hissed and stepped in front of me, gripping my wrists with just enough container magic to halt my movement. The ground vibrated beneath us, reacting to the start of my channeling.
I clenched my teeth as I watched the sinister figures moving closer and the girl glowing brighter. Constantine could use my magic, but he’d never be able to match me in the First Layer, if I chose to push.
“I don't need to,” he said, squeezing my wrists and reading my thoughts. “You have given me other far more potent weapons—emotional weapons. You said you would leave,” he bit out. “You promised Price.”
You promised me.
But could I live with the girl being taken?
Before I could make a conscious decision, a dark figure swooped in overwhelming one of the hunters then another, breaking one neck then the next. The motions were as soundless as they were lethal.
I sagged against Constantine.
The cloaked figure had taken out six of the eleven figures before the others finally noticed. “Shivit, shivit, shivit! Watch ou—”
A gurgle replaced the end of the word. Then two additional cloaked figures —Ramirez and Greene, identifiable in the connected, shared spells woven in the fibers of all our cloaks—appeared and took out the remaining four. Their faces were hidden to everyone except those of us who wore garments linked through the identity spell.
“Where are they?” Axer demanded in the low, harsh voice that always accompanied him in battle mode, as he pivoted and quickly scanned under the car and around the area.
Dark brown hair shaded deep blue eyes as he visually swept the area and narrowed in first on the girl and hunters, then moved toward us. My magic stuttered a beat as his intense too-blue gaze landed on me.
Axer assessed our body posture, Constantine's grip on my wrists, the way he was positioned in front of me, then he turned and pulled with both hands, tearing rising black clad figures from their feet and new ones from their perches.
The Awakening mage looked up, the sound of falling bodies breaking through her wonder, and I could see the moment fear overtook everything else. Greene moved with careful steps toward the shell-shocked girl, speaking reassuring words to the shaking Awakening mage as he slipped a control cuff around her wrist. I knew intimately and intellectually that the cuff would protect her, but not naturally, not emotionally, not anymore. Why couldn't they let her work it all out in a containment unit like the Third Layer?
My torso pushed toward her, but Constantine forced me back, unsettling my feet and making me stumble.
“Where are the cats?” Axer demanded again.
“Cats?” Constantine's emotions plunged to dread as he said it.
Thick, black wisps drifted from the shadows, as if forced from hiding, and flew straight at us. The cats. Praetorian scouts. Constantine and Axer whirled to face them, feeling from me where the threat was emanating. I raised my hand automatically and power ripped from my fingers—
—then stuttered an inch away from the tips, hovering there painfully—
Two shadows converged on Axer.
One headed straight for Constantine.
I threw more power into the magic and blinding pain crippled me from my toes clear up to my fingertips as the magic was sucked violently back inside me.
Constantine’s jab glanced off the diving shadow. The shadow laughed and veered into a tight circle for another pass. I could hear Greene yell something in the background as he pushed the girl behind a car.
Shockwaves of pain vibrated through my body as the magic I'd been channeling shot down to my toes and the earth reached up to secure it—turning it into tempered steel around my feet.
All magic ceased within me. Like a flame that had been abruptly doused.