The director nodded sharply and strode into another area.
“Ugh, I hate it when people on the other side sound reasonable,” Trick said.
Three of the console workers resumed working, but the two minions who had spoken exchanged looks above the others' heads. Unease prickled along my shoulders. I disengaged the recording I had started when the director started speaking.
“Something’s not right,” I murmured.
“Agreed.”
I looked up to see magic seep down from the ceiling. No one else in the room seemed to have noticed it yet, but I surreptitiously watched it, knowing that Axer was on the other end. The magic split and seeped into the corners of the cell, under the green edges. I immediately sent my runes onto the path he was creating—slipping them inside the cell.
I looked to the console to make certain no one had noticed and did a double take. My breath caught. A painted woman stared at me from the wall beyond the console, watching. I'd know that style anywhere.
The woman’s head tilted, gaze never leaving mine as if she’d been waiting for me to notice her. She reached for a pocket of paint, bringing a piece of paper to life.
A starred symbol twinkled on the paper. The woman slowly waved me forward with the fingers not holding the paper, gaze intense and glimmering with the faintest bit of hope. I stepped forward.
A hand clamped my wrist.
Constantine looked at me in warning, following my gaze with a pinched frown as he pulled me back. “What are you doing?” His demand curled through my thoughts. “Have you both gone mad?”
“Is everything okay?” one of the technicians asked out loud, following my gaze, frowning at the way one of us was holding the other back. It was one of the two techs who had acted the most suspiciously.
“Very. Thank you,” Constantine said aloud with just the right amount of obsequiousness. “She’s had a grueling day. Shift’s over in ten, thank magic.”
Constantine pinched me, and I tried to shift my eyes away from the painted woman who was urging me forward with more force.
“Don’t let him touch that button!” Dagfinn yelled.
I ripped my gaze away from the Kinsky portrait to see the technician’s fingers inching toward an alarm button.
The technician next to him suddenly surged forward, knocking the man’s hand away as hers moved quickly over controls and magic. “We have unidentified—”
“Sir, there is something strange moving—”
“You’re going to have to take them out,” Olivia said grimly, as the console lit up with activity.
Constantine had already dropped my arm and any false servility from his face. Magic was darkly dripping into his palm.
“Personnel! All personnel!” A voice blared magically, echoing through the room. “Red Alert. Repeat, Red Alert!”
Chapter Nineteen: Assault on Crelussa
The technician jerked as holograms bloomed all over the console area. Alarms blasted and the mages taking notes scrambled to collapse their devices and run toward the console.
“Sanitarium breach from the tunnels,” one of them shouted, fingers flying with magic. “The wards have been tripped. Three sets, now four. All targeting and repressive spells have been deactivated. We can’t obtain magical signatures.”
The Bandits were swearing in mass, scrambling to get eyes on the rest of the sanitarium. “Son of a... Where's Dare? What's he doing? The sneak is over. Exit point A has been closed. Exit B is closing. We are in deep sh—”
The alert technician threw a spell net toward us, which Constantine absorbed in one of the papers I had given him. Constantine smiled darkly as the man’s eyes widened.
“Emergency functions at the Sanitarium have been activated, 01,” Dagfinn said tightly, using codenames. “That means immediate removal of—”
I didn’t wait, moving swiftly toward the cell and pulling out the rest of the spells from the container that we had pre-prepared. Lightning and chaos sparked inside, and I hurriedly threw everything we needed for the plan to work. The sneak was dead, but we could still achieve our aim.
The console technicians were shouting over each other, drowning out the single technician who was trying to alert the others to our presence. Constantine prowled slowly toward him through the madness, container magic in his palm.
“They—” Another technician’s arm collided with the first man’s as he tried to push a button.
“Hands on magic, Gormly! They are right outside. Defensive magic engaged. All signatures inside locked for defenses.”
“No! They are right h—”
“Hostiles gaining entry.”
The magic on the door to the chamber burst, shaking the room.
Still working the spells, I spared a glance for the intruders and looked directly into the eyes of Vincent Godfrey's son. A savage look entered his twenty-five-year-old gaze as magic filtered through his pupils and he pointed at me. “Grab her!”
I dove at Constantine, who opened his arms and spun both of us behind the console.
In the mayhem, two of the console technicians spared me a confused gaze, but the terrorists were already streaming toward our position, and since we were dressed as technicians, they rapidly turned their attention away from us and toward the intruders.
Wards and defensive magics began illuminating the room as more bodies streamed in over the top of their quickly falling comrades.
One blast targeted our putty, identifying it as dangerous and blasting it through an airlock.
“The terrorists are trying to free the feral! Remove the cell now! Now! It doesn’t matter if all the permissions aren’t in place, go!”
I would have smiled at that excellent assessment, if Vincent Godfrey Jr. hadn’t tucked his dive, sliding around the console and into view.
One of the technicians went down at our side, then another.
I heard Delia swear, distantly, in my head.
Godfrey’s gaze affixed on Constantine, raw and bloodthirsty, and without any doubt that he could see though the enchantments we had hidden ourselves beneath, since the enchantments only worked on people already spelled into the system here.
“You,” he said to Constantine, raising his hands. “Will die slowly.”
I was already scrambling to push us both around the console’s corner. Now was probably not the time to point out that Raphael had been the one to murder Vincent’s father permanently—Constantine had only temporarily killed him.
Killing magic released from Godfrey’s hands, and I threw myself in front of Constantine, pulling a shield up from my shoe to eat the incoming blast. Constantine’s defensive blast curved around me. Still hampered by the cuffs we hadn't removed, Constantine’s strike was easily batted aside, and though the shield worked, it was destroyed by the hit and Godfrey had already sent another.
A ceiling beam dropped into the path of Godfrey’s killing strike, and Axer dropped from the ceiling, magic swirling around him, blanketing the room as he spun, and taking out everyone standing.