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

“This is Mindy.” McKnight wrapped his arm around Alex. “I’m going to show her my sword collection.”

“Ah.” Muscles grunted again, then swiped his card in front of a sensor. The red door clicked open. “Just go easy on the girl. The place was a wreck after the last girl you brought back there. And this one looks…” He licked his lips at Alex. “…fragile.”

Fragile, my ass.
Alex tucked her fist behind her back, where it would be less likely to spontaneously spring out and punch Muscles in the face. It probably wouldn’t do to punch McKnight either. Yet.

Muscles swung the door the rest of the way open and stepped back to let them pass. McKnight lowered his hand to the small of her back, nudging her forward. They’d only made it a few steps down the hall when she heard a surprised grunt. As McKnight turned to look back, Alex stumbled in her high heels. His head snapped to her, and he tightened his hands around her waist, catching her faux fall.

“Are you all right?” he asked, meeting her eyes.

“Oh, yes.” She leaned over to slip the shoes off her feet, catching a glimpse of Logan dragging Muscles through the door and into the first room. His super-strength sure came in handy sometimes. “But heels and cocktails don’t mix.”

He smiled knowingly. Thank goodness he hadn’t noticed that she’d left her drink untouched.

“So, about those swords.” Alex hooked her shoes over her index finger.

“Oh, yes.” He could hardly keep the excitement out of his voice. “This way.”

She followed him to the door at the end of the hall, and they entered into a room—no, a shrine of swords. Every wall was covered with blades in every imaginable shape and size, arranged like they were works of art. They sparkled silver in the bright white light that beamed down from metal strips of big bulbs. The blades hummed, deep and low, a symphony of magical notes, singing to her from every direction. Their song washed across her skin, saturating her pores. Every single weapon in this room was enchanted with magic. Wonderful, delightful magic. And they were calling to her.

“Wow,” Alex said. There was no need to fake her amazement this time. The collection of magical swords and daggers here was simply beautiful. Too bad that beauty was being corrupted for evil.

“They are magnificent,” McKnight agreed as he stepped up behind her. He set his hands on her shoulders, turning her around to face him. “Beautiful.” His hand traced her jaw. “Enchanting.” He leaned in to kiss—

Alex sidestepped, pulling him toward a set of Dragon blades. “What are these ones called?”

Annoyance flared up in his eyes, but he looked where she was pointing. Behind them, Logan crept toward the adjacent room, his steps silent. If it hadn’t been for his powerhouse aura, she wouldn’t even have known he was there.

“Those are Dragon blades. They work against all supernaturals,” McKnight said, grabbing her butt.

Alex gritted her teeth.
They work against humans too.

Can we kill this guy already?
her dragon asked.

We need to buy Logan some time to get the files about the Blood Orb off their computer,
Alex told her.

Killing him will buy the assassin plenty of time.

Not if one of his buddies comes in and finds him dead,
Alex replied, though her dragon did have a point. She didn’t know how much longer she could keep McKnight at bay. He’d already progressed to tugging at the hem of her skirt. Maybe if she just gave him a teensy nudge toward that wall of sharp and pointy blades…

“Adan, have you seen—”

McKnight turned toward the man who’d just lumbered into the room; his hands didn’t leave Alex’s hips, though. “What do you want? Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“Well, you’ll just have to un-busy yourself.”

The man seemed familiar. She’d seen him before. Somewhere. The realization hit her like a ton of bricks. He’d been in Zurich last month, inside the base she and Logan had infiltrated. Which meant he’d seen her face. And thanks to their explosive exit, it was unlikely he’d forgotten it.

“Hark is missing,” the man told McKnight as Alex played with her hair. Maybe he wouldn’t recognize her behind the big blonde wig.

“What?”

“He is not at his post.”

McKnight shrugged. “He probably wandered off to take a piss.”

“You know the rules. No pissing while on the job.” As he nodded toward Alex, she willed him not to recognize her. “No anything else either.”

“I’m not on the job,” McKnight practically growled.

“We need to find Hark.”

McKnight let out a melodramatic sigh.

“You think this is funny?” his fellow Convictionite said. “If
she
finds out you’ve been using this base to assuage your carnal desires, it will be your head.”

‘She’ was probably referring to the Convictionite leader, Logan’s psychopathic mother. The woman who wanted to wipe every supernatural off the face of the earth. She and Logan didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye.

“She’ll sick her pet on you, she will. The Sultan.”

McKnight turned a bit green. “Fine, I’m coming,” he groused.

The Zurich Convictionite didn’t react. He was too busy watching Alex closely, like he was trying to place her face. Not good. Not good at all.

“Brett?”

The Zurich Convictionite—Brett—continued to stare at Alex. She saw the spark of recognition the second he placed her face. He reached down for the gun at his belt.

Alex was faster.

Before he could lift his gun, she pushed out her hands. Wind magic erupted from her fingertips. A soft echo whistled across the room, trailing the shockwave of silver-blue magic. The blast slammed hard against his chest. It hurled him against the wall of swords behind him, skewering him on the blades. The Convictionite twitched, then went limp.

Spinning around, Alex pulled two knives off the wall and slammed them against McKnight, stapling him to his desk. McKnight gawked at her, his eyes frozen wide open. An alarm roared to life, its ear-piercing screech flooding the corridor and every room. Beneath that horrible noise, the coordinated rumble of Convictionite boots was little more than a whisper.

“Uh, Logan?” Alex called into the study. “I hope you’re done in there because we’ve got company.”

CHAPTER TWO

Magic Conduit

ALEX STRAPPED ON her shoes—and as many blades from the wall as she could fit on her body. As she fastened the final band of Witch Slayers around her arm, Logan stalked out of the study.

“Did you get anything that could help us?” she asked.

He grabbed a few weapons for himself. “Perhaps.”

Convictionite guards streamed into the room, guns raised. Before they could shoot, Alex lunged forward to unleash a storm of steel. A second swarm of knives from Logan shot over her head, trailing hers. Silver blades and Convictionites collided. The blades won.

“How can you not know if you’ve found anything to help us?” Alex asked Logan as they stepped over the guards’ bodies to enter the hallway.

“Because secret evil organizations don’t spell out where everything is. They use code names. I found some references to something that sounds like the Blood Orb, but the locations are all in code too. I copied the files.”

A cold chill trickled down the back of Alex’s neck. A moment later, magic rippled down the empty corridor, snapping and hissing. And then it was silent. Someone—no, something—had sucked all the magic out of the area. Alex knew that feeling. She’d felt it before, back in the Convictionite base in Zurich. They’d put up an anti-magic field. The sparks on her fingertips fizzled out.

“They’ve activated some sort of device. I can’t blast them with magic,” Alex told Logan, even as she reached out with her mind, searching for the source. Unlike her elemental abilities, her ability to sniff out magic was not impaired.

Just like last time, there was no magical trail to follow, so she had to follow the silence. The quietest spot in the building—the center of the void—that’s where she’d find the device.

Convictionite guards flooded the corridor, and Logan turned to her, grinning. “You don’t need magic, love. You prefer the brute force way anyway.”

Alex launched a knife at a guard about to shoot. It tore through his hand, stapling it to the chest of the man behind him.

“True,” she agreed as both men fell.

Logan dashed forward, moving so fast that she could hardly track him. He zipped around the guards like a tornado, and when the tornado stopped spinning, they were all dead.

“More are coming,” Logan said, turning his ear toward the end of the hallway.

“How many?” Alex didn’t have super-hearing like he did, and her ability to sense people with no magic had a pretty limited range.

“Too many. The club is full of them.”

“How long do we have?”

His face was grim. “Not long.”

There were no windows in this part of the building, no exit but one: the red door at the end of the hallway, the one with a small army behind it. In short, they were trapped. Alex reached out with her mind again, following the trail of silence through floors and ceilings. She had to break that anti-magic field. She might not need magic to fight, but she could use it to blow a new exit in the side of the building.

“Where are you?” she muttered.

“You can’t find the device?”

“No.” She tore at the bubble, trying to pop it. But she was too far from the source, a source she still couldn’t locate. “I think they’ve shielded it. Sneaky bastards.”

“I’m not affected.”

She paused in her search to look at him. “What?”

“The anti-magic field,” he said. “It doesn’t affect me.”

His parents must have built it into his magic-infused genetics. They’d created him to be the perfect supernatural-fighting soldier, so of course they’d want him to be functional while the Convictionites were suppressing the magic of the supernaturals he was fighting.

“In fact, I think my body is neutralizing the anti-magic field in the immediate space around me,” Logan said.

“How immediate?”

He touched her hand, and a wave of her own magic crackled beneath her skin, warm and sweet. It flooded her mouth with the taste of chocolate and raspberries. Yum. He withdrew his hand, and the magic winked out, leaving her cold. And hungry.

“Real immediate then.” She pressed her back to his, and her magic returned. When she tried to blast a hole in the wall, however, nothing happened. Her magic bubbled beneath the surface, but it couldn’t break past her skin. She sighed. “Well, that was anti-climatic.”

“Maybe we can use this to our advantage.”

“How?” she asked. “I already tried. The effect is restricted to you. Your body. And you can’t cast magic.”

Logan grabbed her hand, pulling them both into the nearest room as the guards ran through the red door and opened fire. Bullets shot down the hall, pelleting the walls.

“No, I can’t cast magic.” He set her hands on his chest. “But you can.”

Alex pulled away. “You want me to shoot magic
through
you?” she gasped.

“Yes.”

“But you want me to shoot magic
through
you,” she repeated.

“I think it will work.”

“Maybe. Possibly.” She took a deep breath. The thought of shooting him sent her to the brink of panic. “But, Logan, it’s completely insane.”

“My body neutralizes the anti-magic field,” he said calmly, as though the thought of being fried by magic didn’t bother him at all. “If you shoot magic into me, I think I can force it out again and direct it toward the guards.”

“You want me to use you as a conduit,” she said drily.

“Essentially, yes.”

“How can you be so calm?” Anger flooded her. She pounded her fist against his chest. “What you’re asking is insane. I’ll fry your body.”

“I don’t believe so. I’m very resistant to magic. I only need to control the flow of it outward. Besides,” he said, giving her a half-smile. “It’s not like we have much of a choice. Unless you have a better idea?”

She didn’t. The guards were marching down the hall, a hellfire of bullets in front of them. Alex still couldn’t find the device blocking her magic. The Convictionites had definitely done something to it.

“Ok,” she agreed.

He set her hands on his chest again. “Shoot a blast of lightning into me, then shove me out the door. I’ll hold the magic in until I’m in the hallway. Then I’ll blast those bastards straight to hell.”

“Insane,” she muttered but prepped her magic anyway.

Her fingertips hummed against his chest, the magic screaming to be unleashed. She coiled it up tightly inside of her, letting it build to the breaking point. Hot lightning scorched her veins, pulsing through her blood as her dragon poured her own magic into the mix. Then, in a release that felt almost as good as it hurt, lightning tore out of her. As it slammed through Logan’s chest, Alex gave him a hard push into the hall. Tendrils of green-gold magic lashed out of his rattling hands, dissolving the Convictionites’ bullets like they were made of paper, not metal. The magic crashed into the guards. Suspended in the air, they convulsed for a few beats, then dropped to the floor. The electric nets holding their bodies sizzled out.

Alex stepped out into the hall, stopping beside Logan. “Are you all right?”

“That was…intense.” Threads of magic—her magic—still crackled in slithering patterns across his body.

Alex inhaled deeply, the scents of her magic and Logan’s warm amber spice dancing in dizzying swirls in her nose.

“Ready to get out of here?” he asked her, taking her hand. A delightful shock buzzed across her skin when their hands met.

“More than ready.”

“Then let’s get going.”

Hand-in-hand, they stepped through the red door. Inside the club, the music had died down. The lights were no longer spinning. People stood in shocked silence, their eyes wide. They watched Alex and Logan cross the room toward the exit. No one tried to stop them. There weren’t any guards left.

“What did you do with Muscles?” she whispered to him.

The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Muscles?”

“The big guy who was guarding the red door.”

“Oh, him.” Logan paused. “Don’t worry about him.”