Blood Magic (Dragon Born Alexandria Book 2) (18 page)

“Well, their plan with the nymphs and elves failed.”

“They didn’t count on you bringing reason to them,” Naomi replied, grinning. “But I have a feeling they haven’t given up.”

“You’re right. The Convictionites possess the sort of singleminded stubbornness you only see in geniuses and psychopaths. Once they’ve decided on a course of action, they just keep testing it until it works as they want. Like their testing of the Blood Orb.” Alex threw a look backward, but the guys were at least a block away. What were they doing back there? “And according to the Evil Queen, dozens of babies died before they figured out how to infuse one with magic.”

“Logan.”

“Yes.”

“I have to admit, Alex. I’m starting to miss the days of simple slash-and-burn jobs.”

“So am I.”

They’d reached the blocked entrance that led down to the old underground station. Before they could move toward it, however, two men stepped into their path. They were dressed well—with designer jeans, leather boots, and elegant dress shirts in neutral tones that had just the right splash of color without being gaudy—but the effect was ruined by the stench of stale smoke and way too much alcohol coming off of them.

“Hiya,” said the one with the blue splashes in his shirt. Leaning his hand against the red brick wall, he gave Alex a friendly grin.

She exchanged wary glances with Naomi. “Hello.”

“You have some nice steel there. You kill monsters?”

“Among other things.” Hint, hint.

Regrettably, he didn’t get the hint. “Jack here and I know a thing or two about monsters. We killed a giant cockroach the other day.”

Jack nodded. “It was enormous. As big as a horse.” He spread his hands wide apart to demonstrate.

Alex looked at Naomi, who rolled her eyes. So they were agreed. These two guys were idiots. Not only was there no such thing as a giant cockroach, mentioning a nasty critter like that wasn’t exactly a suave way to pick up women. Assuming that was what they were trying to do. With statements like that, she really had to wonder.

“I know a nice spot by the river. Very private.” He gave her what was probably supposed to be a sexy smolder, but it just made him look constipated.

“I’m not going to have sex with you by the river,” Alex told him calmly.

“Oh?” He looked confused. “Why not?”

“She has a boyfriend,” Naomi told him.

“I’m sure he won’t mind sharing.”

“Then you’re an idiot,” Alex told him, her patience completely spent. “Sharing is not his strong point.”

He pounded his fist to his palm. “Jack and I will show him how.”

“Let me just stop you right there, Casanova. This won’t work out like you think.”

“Sure it will, love.”

“I think she likes you, Charlie.”

“Of course she does.”

Alex sighed. It was hopeless.

“How about you, darling?” Jack asked Naomi.

“No.” She waved her hand in front of her nose. “I don’t have sex with stinky men. Go take a shower, change your clothes, and come back. If we’re still here when that’s done, I might let you buy me a drink.”

The two men looked at each other, grinned, then fire erupted from their hands.

“Are we supposed to be impressed by that second-rate magic trick?” Naomi asked Alex.

“You’re being too kind. Those two are weak fourth tier mages at best. Look at how the flames are wavering.”

“Oh, right. Good call.”

Alex pointed at Jack. “That one is a weak elemental with some minor telekinetic power, maybe enough to lift a toothpick.” She pointed at the other. “He’s an even weaker elemental with a specialty in magical chemistry.”

“How…” Jack began.

“I can read your magic, and you’re not a threat to anyone but yourselves. Now put out those fires before you pass out. Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to drink and do magic? Here’s a refresher course: alcohol burns. Honestly, I’d expect a chemist to understand that better than a dumb mercenary like me. If your magic were actually significant, you could have set yourselves on fire. As it is, you’re going to singe the cuffs of your fancy shirts. Now let me put this in no uncertain terms: I’m not interested. Run along before I have to pull out my sword.”

“It’s her.” Charlie smacked his friend’s shoulder. “The Paranormal Vigilante. They say she can sense magic.” His gaze shifted to her sword. “And carries a sword.”

Jack’s eyes widened. “Just wait until you tell everyone you bonked the Paranormal Vigilante.”

“No one is
bonking
anyone here,” Alex ground out through clenched teeth. She was allowed to take out public supernatural nuisances. Too bad that didn’t extend to private nuisances.

“She’s prettier than I thought,” Charlie commented.

“And shorter.”

“Naomi, what do you say we use this opportunity to test out that idea you and Marek had earlier?” she said, backing up as the two mages continued to list off her attributes like some kind of warped grocery list.

Backing up too, Naomi’s pink lips curled up into a smirk. “Oh, yes.”

Naomi shot a cloud of silver-pink Fairy Dust into the air. Then Alex summoned a gust of wind, slamming it into the sparkling cloud. That shot it straight into the faces of the two drunk mages. They fell instantly to the ground, unconscious. Alex and Naomi dusted off their hands in satisfaction.

Logan and Marek took that moment to rejoin them. Marek looked down at the sleeping mages, then to Alex and Naomi.

“Are you all right?” he asked them.

“Fine,” replied Naomi. “We just had to deal with some jerks. How long were you two standing back and watching us?”

“A couple minutes. It was good fun. Too bad I forgot the popcorn.”

Logan gave the sleeping mages a cursory glance, then leaned in to whisper into Alex’s ear. “Just for the record, no, I don’t share well with others.”

“See? I know you so well already.” She looked at Marek. “The Fairy Dust and wind combo works,” Alex told him.

“Good to know.” Marek squatted down to take a closer look at the mages. “I know these two. They work at the Drachenburg Industries London office.”

“Sera’s boyfriend’s company,” Naomi said to Alex. She pulled out her phone and snapped a photo of them.

“What are you doing?” Marek asked her.

Naomi typed a few sentences. “Sending Kai a message and this photo. I hear he doesn’t take kindly to incompetence. These guys were incompetent. They should have known better than to annoy two armed women.”

“You have Kai Drachenburg in your address book?” Marek asked.

“Sure.” Naomi shrugged. “I stole his info from Sera. You never know when having it might be useful.”

“Like right now.” Alex snatched her phone and added another line after Naomi’s message: ‘Tell Sera that I decided to show Logan my underwear. Alex’.

Naomi chuckled when she read it.

“Too much?” Alex asked her.

“Absolutely not.” Naomi hit the send button, then put her phone away.

“Are you two quite finished now?” Logan asked them.

“Sure,” Alex said. “Let’s kill ourselves a few evil henchmen.”

* * *

Logan didn’t have any trouble bypassing the barricaded entrance. From the looks of it, somebody had snuck down into the old underground station recently. Hopefully, that ‘somebody’ didn’t include Convictionites.

They followed the tracks, heading toward the sealed tunnel entrance. Or at least where Logan’s blueprints indicated they’d find the sealed tunnel entrance. He and Alex were carrying enough weapons between them to launch an all-out assault on a Convictionite base—so they should be more than adequately equipped, even if this stealth operation went haywire. Not that it would. Everything would go to plan.

Yeah, like that ever happened.

Naomi was carrying her own sword and a few knives. She’d decided that a flamethrower might be a tad impractical for trekking through tunnels and other confined spaces. Her Fairy Dust magic was what they were counting on to subdue the guards anyway. Marek was wearing his magic like a cloak. He didn’t believe in carrying steel. He’d once joked that it clashed with his magic. Or had that really been a joke? You never could tell with first tier mages.

Alex and Marek were walking side-by-side. Logan and Naomi were a few paces behind them, discussing what had happened above. From his monosyllabic half of the conversation, Logan didn’t sound amused by the drunk mages’ advances. His aura was pretty agitated too. Then again, they were all agitated right now. They were about to penetrate a heavily-guarded Convictionite base, and they were doing it with only four people.

Not that they had any choice anyway. The Magic Council was too weighed down by bureaucracy to move fast, which was exactly what was necessary to save the hybrids and recover the Blood Orb. For the last month, the Convictionites had moved the Orb every few days to a new location. Tonight might be the last chance to get it before it was moved again.

“Alex,” Marek said. “May I ask you something?”

“Sure,” she replied.

Marek liked to play the punk. It was probably his way of rebelling against his strict family—without outright rebelling. He came from one of the old magic dynasties. A strict one where duty and regulations and magical bloodlines were expected to be upheld. Every so often, though, he dropped the punk act and was serious. And when he did, Alex made sure to listen. This was one of those times.

“Your magic is strong. Your sister’s results in the Magic Games were impressive, and I have seen what you can do. Yet for years, you hid your magic. You pretended to be human,” he began ominously.

“Yes.”

“Naomi told me what happened to your father. How he was killed. How, in your anger, you and your sister lost control of your magic and killed the assassin.”

“We didn’t just kill him, Marek. We destroyed him piece by piece, disintegrating him with magic until there was nothing left of him.”

“So Naomi said. And then you hid your magic away and spent the rest of those years pretending to be human.”

“Something like that.”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. What about the sixteen years before you killed the assassin? Before you swore off your magic? Why is there no record of Alexandria and Serafina Dering in the mage birth register?”

Alex took a deep breath. “You’re thinking too hard, Marek.”

“You’re hiding something.” It was a statement, not a question. And the certainty in his eyes was unmistakable.

“Aren’t we all?”

“You are very powerful, even for a first tier mage. You created a magic tsunami in the underground tunnels. You took out power to the entire street by merely shooting magic into an electrical box.”

“You could have done those things.”

But Marek wasn’t done. “I’ve seen a lot of incredible magic, Alex, but the things I see you do are beyond incredible. And the stories about your sister are no less spectacular. She made several dozen vampires simultaneously explode. She’s the only mage to never break in the Magic Games. I broke in the Magic Games. Kai bloody Drachenburg broke in the Magic Games!”

“I’m not Sera.”

“You wouldn’t break either. I just know it,” he replied. “And yet despite all your magic, all your power, you two managed to fool the magic detectors.”

“I’m told that’s not uncommon among first tier mages.”

“Yes, we all try to fool them, just to prove what clever little gits we are. You and your sister fooled them so you could hide. But from what?”

Before Alex had a chance to respond—what was she even supposed to respond to that?—three teenagers came around the corner, carrying a few baskets of glowing bottled magic between them.

“Don’t drop it yet,” one of them said to the others. “Wait until we see someone first, then cackle like we practiced.”

“They’re carrying Magic Smoke,” Alex whispered to Marek.

“Kids often sneak down into these tunnels to play pranks,” Logan said, coming up behind them.

So far, the teenagers hadn’t seen any of them.

“To play pranks on one another?” Alex asked.

“On one another. Or on the ghost hunters who come down here.”

Alex waved her hand, and the bottles the kids were carrying shattered. Thick, green smoke billowed up.

“I said not yet!” a boy shouted from behind the smokescreen.

Naomi let out an ear-piercing cackle.

“Who was that?”

“Not me!” a few voices called out.

Naomi cackled again, this time turning the creepy up a notch.

“This place really is haunted!”

A stampede of heavy footsteps clinked against the metal tracks as the teens burst out of the cloud, so frightened that they didn’t even see Alex’s group. Marek summoned a gust of wind to push the green smoke after the fleeing pranksters.

“Well, that was certainly exciting,” Logan said with all the enthusiasm of a mountain. “Let’s move on.”

He fell into place beside Alex. Marek frowned, then joined Naomi in front of them.

“He’s digging,” Logan said quietly.

They slowed their pace to let Naomi and Marek get further ahead.

“I know.”

“Do you want to tell him?”

“I can’t. His mother is on the Magic Council, and she doesn’t sound like the type to challenge the rules, no matter how ridiculous they are. She made Marek break up with the woman he loves because she’s only half mage.”

“Marek is a grown man. He did that all by himself.”

“Now he realizes he allowed his family’s prejudice to influence him to make a pretty stupid decision,” said Alex. “I think he’s going to stick it to them about Eva. But the whole world is telling him my kind are abominations, not just his mother. The safe option is not to tell him.”

“And you always take the safe option.” Amusement tugged at his mouth. “In any case, I disagree that it’s the safe option. If Marek discovers it on his own, he could go straight to the Magic Council. But if you’re the one to tell him, we can gauge his response the moment he finds out. If we see that this will be a problem, we can deal with it.”

Alex gave him a hard look. “Marek is my friend. I’m not going to let you kill him.”

“Alex, you’re being obstinate.”

“Of course I am. It’s one of my more endearing qualities.”