Blood Magic (Dragon Born Alexandria Book 2) (23 page)

“There were too many of—”

“By now, you know my reputation. You’ve seen my file. And you’ve been watching me,” Logan said calmly. “I could have killed them. And I could have killed that boy. I was trying to spare an innocent.” His jaw tightened. “A mercy I’m currently regretting.”

“Mercy?” Shadowstalker laughed. “You don’t even know the meaning of the word. Well, neither do I. Not anymore. You should have killed me that day, Slayer, because now I’m going to make you pay. I might not be able to kill you, but I can make you hurt. I’m going to take the person you love away from you. Just like you did to me.”

Logan reached for his knives, cringing from the pain in his chest. He was still too wounded. He couldn’t fight Shadowstalker.

The other assassin sneered. In a single, practiced motion, he reached into one of his pouches and tossed a tiny vial at them. Alex stomped her foot hard against the ground, and flames erupted out of the pavement, swallowing the vial whole. Shadowstalker wasn’t giving up so easily, though. He tossed several more vials in quick succession. Alex’s barrier raged hotter. The vials dissolved upon impact.

“You’re going to have to do better than that,” she told Shadowstalker.

Between his fingers, he held a vial that contained swirling green smoke. “Oh, I’m just getting started. Do you know what this is? It’s called the Witch’s Curse. Very rare. Very expensive. Once the vial is broken, the smoke will lock onto the nearest mage. It will melt your skin from the inside out. It cannot be outrun. And it cannot be dissolved by your feeble elemental magic tricks.”

“Who are you calling feeble?” she demanded.

Smirking, Shadowstalker threw the vial at her. Alex stepped back, concentrating on the smoke inside, breaking down the magic that bound the spell together. Glass shattered against the ground. She scraped the sole of her boot over a residue of white powder, all that was left of the vile green smoke.

Shadowstalker gaped. “But…how?”

“You obviously haven’t done your research. I break magic.”

He launched another vial of the Witch’s Curse at her, and she broke that one too.

“You won’t take me down with bottled magic.”

He threw two knives at her. She dodged one. The other graced her arm, but she hardly felt it. Thanks to her dragon’s magic, she was still numb. There would be hell to pay when she finally got the feeling back in her body.

“How did you know about me and Logan?” she asked. After all that had happened over the past couple days, the possibility of a traitor in their midst was too real.

He sneered. “Did you really think you two were so discreet?”

Ok, maybe not. In fact, they’d had terrible trouble keeping their hands to themselves, especially recently. Making out on the streets, in the Black Castle, in front of the Convictionite architect…ok, pretty much everywhere and every time. In retrospect, maybe that hadn’t been such a bright idea. Not that they’d been thinking with their heads.

“But I still might never have learned about Slayer’s affection for you if he hadn’t started digging around in Nightshade’s disappearance,” Shadowstalker told her. “We assassins don’t often gossip about our love lives. But we do gossip about work. Deathstalker is considerably more discreet than you two, but even he cannot stop all leaks. Rumors spread that Slayer was looking into the death of Nightshade—and that it had something to do with a woman. That’s when the assassins started talking about how the great and mighty Slayer had finally found his match, a smart-mouthed mercenary they call the Paranormal Vigilante. Or the Black Plague.” He gave Logan a disparaging smile. “By falling for her, you signed her death sentence. She is going to die because of you.”

Logan grimaced, guilt gushing off of him. He looked like that hurt even more than getting shot had.

“I’m not dying, Logan,” she told him, then smiled at Shadowstalker. “He’s just shooting his mouth off to get under your skin.”

Shadowstalker looked right past her, meeting Logan’s eyes. “She will die because of you. If not by my hand, then by yours.”

Logan stared down at his hands as though they were drenched in her blood.

“Don’t listen to him,” she said.

The assassin was practically cackling now. “How many times have you attacked her already?” His hands slid slowly down toward his guns. “When will it happen next?”

“So this whole thing is about revenge, not money.” Alex watched every twitch of his fingers. He looked like a fast draw, and she had no intention of having her head blown off. If she’d known she would be thrown into a good old Western showdown, she’d have brought along her cowboy hat.

“Money doesn’t bring back the people you love.” He grinned at her. “Unfortunately, for you. You sure are a pretty woman. It’s a shame I have to kill you.”

“Don’t you find it the least bit ironic that you became an assassin to take revenge upon an assassin? You have become what you profess to hate.”

“That’s not irony. It’s pragmatism.”

“It’s hypocrisy,” she said. “Just like the Convictionites.”

“Maybe so,” the assassin admitted. “But love is not rational. Do you think your lover will care about hypocrisy or rationality as he watches you breathe out your final breaths before death takes you from him?”

Can we kill this guy already?
her dragon asked impatiently.

I thought you liked dark poetry.

Yeah, but his silly lines have just gotten on my last nerve.

Shadowstalker’s fingers danced across his leather holsters. Magic buzzed beneath Alex’s skin, ready to erupt. They stared at each other, a heavy silence hanging between them. A crooked smile crocked up one side of his mouth. She shot him a cool glare in response.

Then, before she could blink, he drew his guns and fired. Magic ignited inside of Alex, blasting out of her hands in a fiery wave that dissolved the bullet in the air and burned Shadowstalker to ashes. She made a gun with her hand, blowing steam off her index finger.

“Faster,” she told the pile of ashes.

Logan’s arms closed around her. He didn’t even spare a look for the dead assassin.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Are
you
all right?” she countered. “I’m not the one who was shot in the chest.”

His hand brushed softly down her arm. “You’ve taken your share of damage tonight.”

“Nothing that Marek’s healing sprays won’t fix,” she said brightly. “Now let’s get back to the hotel before anyone else tries to kill us.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Bloodbath

THE LIVING ROOM of their hotel suite was packed with recovering hybrids. Naomi and Marek had managed to dig up some new clothes for them—and an extra table. The vampire hybrids looked the best, thanks to their rapid healing. A group of them sat around one of the tables, playing a very enthusiastic game of Monopoly while slurping down bottled blood. At the neighboring table sat a group of rosy-cheeked fairy-mage hybrids. They munched on sugar cookies and sipped magic nectar. From the look of their equally-enthusiastic games of strip poker, they must have been feeling better too.

A few hybrids were napping on the various sofas. Empty pizza boxes lay all over the floor. The scents of cheese, tomatoes, and freshly-baked crust assaulted Alex’s nose. Her stomach roared.

“I miss pizza night at home,” she sighed to Naomi.

“We saved one for you.” Her friend handed her a box that was two shades of awesomeness. Firstly, it was still warm. And secondly, it was Wizard House Pizza. Double score.

“Thanks.” Alex flipped the lid open and pulled out a slice dripping with cheese.

Naomi took another box from the counter and shoved it into Logan’s hands as he passed by. “We saved one for you too.”

He dipped his chin in acknowledgement, then continued walking toward his bedroom. Alex followed him.

“Close the door,” he said as she entered the room behind him.

She did as he asked. When she turned back around, he was sitting on the bed, peeling bands of knives from his body. Most of the knives were by now missing. When he was done, he pulled off his ruined shirt and tossed it into the corner.

“Come here, Alex.”

His words jerked her out of her trance. She tore her eyes from his naked torso, trying to calm her racing pulse as she stepped toward the bed.

“Your heart is pounding so hard.” He set his hand on her chest. “You’re nervous.”

“I…” She stopped, laughing when he dropped his hand to pop open his pizza box and grab a slice. Of course he wasn’t in the mood for amorous activities. He’d probably removed his shirt because he didn’t want to smell blood while eating his dinner. “I’m just silly,” she finished and took a slice for herself.

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Logan watched her the whole time, as though he were afraid she’d spontaneously disappear if he looked away for even a second. A shrill ring shattered the silence. Alex licked the sauce and oil from her fingertips, glanced over the screen of her phone, then answered.

“Hi, Gaelyn.”

“Alexandria,” his calm voice replied, lulling like the gentle lapping of ocean waves on tropical sands. “I am relieved you are all right. After I saw the news, I feared the worst.”

“News?”

She motioned for Logan to turn on the television. The screen flickered on, the sound muted. It wasn’t necessary. The bloody montage of images told the story clearly enough. Savage fighting on the streets. Knives, guns, sticks, bare hands. Red-eyed vampires in a rage, tearing humans apart limb by limb, feasting on their blood. Cars slamming full-speed into vampires, the force of the impact tossing them high into the air. Vampires on fire. Buildings and cars on fire. Humans on fire, the flames melting the skin from their bones. Streets slick with blood and gasoline. Dirty, mutilated humans being led out of sewage drains. Shackled vampires being led into big black vans.

Alex looked away. Watching that was turning her stomach. “What happened, Gaelyn? Why were those vampires in the underground rivers? The Vampire Covenant was supposed to clear them out.”

“The Vampire Covenant was too busy fighting amongst themselves over jurisdiction. There were three types of vampires down in those river tunnels. No one in that meeting wanted to claim responsibility for the pirates, particularly after all the vampire attacks over the past month.”

“And so they just left them alone,” she growled.

“Such is the way of things, Alexandria. The supernatural councils are centuries old. That is centuries of history, centuries of court proceedings, centuries of crimes and punishments. In other words, a whole lot of bureaucracy.”

“A whole lot of bullshit, you mean. Because of the Vampire Covenant’s infighting, a lot of people died tonight, Gaelyn. The supernatural communities need to pull themselves together, or the Convictionites will tear them apart. The Convictionites struck a heavy blow tonight. They planned this whole thing. They strung up the Blood Orb as bait and like idiots, we charged in and took it. Then we led that rigged Orb right past the army of vampires tracking us. The Orb’s magic made them go berserk and kill everyone. And I couldn’t stop it.”

“You cannot blame yourself.”

“I blame the Vampire Covenant, the Magic Council, the Convictionites, the whole lot of them. But, yeah, I also blame myself. I should have known it wouldn’t be so easy. I should have known the Convictionites were leading us into a trap.”

“After months of chasing the Blood Orb, we were too desperate to get it back. We made a mistake,” Logan told her.

“Let me speak to Logan,” Gaelyn said.

Alex leaned back and handed him her phone.

“Yes,” he said. “We believe there may be a spy on one of the supernatural councils. This catastrophe was plotted down to the last detail. They knew what we were going to do before we did it. They wouldn’t have been able to pull it off so seamlessly without inside help. I would start with the Vampire Covenant. Perhaps one of them made an extra effort to hold up the proceedings to remove the pirates from their underground rivers.” He paused. “Oh, really? That’s troubling.”

“What?” Alex asked.

“The Vampire Covenant is still arguing over what to do about the pirates,” he told her. “The Magic Council had to step in and take care of the problem.”

She sighed.

“Yes,” Logan said to Gaelyn. He looked at Alex. “I know she blames herself. No, I don’t think she’ll do anything rash.” He sighed. “I’ll talk to her.” He handed the phone back to her.

“Gaelyn?”

“You will be relieved to know that the Magic Council’s team arrived in time to save the prisoners being held in the river tunnels from being massacred,” he said. “Unfortunately, as you saw, the media managed to capture coverage of them being led above ground. A few of the human prisoners have already been interviewed.”

“What did they say?”

“As usual, only the more vocal ones were shown on camera.”

“Deriding supernaturals as demon spawn?”

“Basically, yes,” he said. “The Magic Council’s team stopped the fighting on the streets between vampires and humans, but the death tolls on both sides were quite high. Especially, on the human side. Over one thousand people are confirmed dead.”

Alex was shocked the humans had managed to kill any vampires at all. Vampires were difficult to fight and even harder to kill, especially without the aid of magic or swords. Humans didn’t possess the former, and very few of them carried around the latter. That would probably change now.

“The media’s coverage of tonight is extensive, but that’s nothing compared to the pictures and videos from human witnesses. Covering up massacres like this was a lot easier before everyone carried around a smartphone,” Gaelyn said, sounding almost wistful.

“How many massacres have there been like this?”

“A few. We covered up most of them. That’s impossible this time. The evidence is already all over the internet.”

“In other words, it’s a complete disaster,” she said.

“It is not ideal.”

As always, Gaelyn’s talent for understatement was shining through.

“The Magic Council is working on it,” he continued. “Time will tell if they can salvage our many years of peaceful coexistence with the humans. Which brings me to the other matter I wished to discuss with you, Alexandria.”