Without warning, Peter clutched his chest and collapsed to his knees, screaming out in pain as somewhere in the bowels of the building, his last ghoul died.
If I could have moved my face, I would have smiled. Instead, I felt the surge of energy, as my magic rushed back into me like a tsunami. My body immediately started to heal itself, but I remained motionless as I searched for a spirit to absorb using the technique that Sky had taught me. It wouldn't be long before Sky and Olivia reached me, I only had to hold Peter off for a few minutes.
I have no idea how long I remained like that, trying to find a spirit. A lot of people had died here today, so I knew they were there. I could almost sense them, but that was all I could do. I tried so hard to absorb one like I had when I'd fought Randal, but I couldn't get it to work.
And then something happened. I'd tried searching further outside the top floor, desperate to find anything that could help, when I felt it. The spirit was angry, hurt and full of pain and grief. I could feel its emotions as a coldness started inside my stomach and soon filled me entirely. I was just beginning to accept what was happening, when I realised that it wasn't one spirit filling me, it was two. The two agents I'd found on the stairway, their names were Margret and Lee. I knew that with a hundred percent clarity, although I had no idea how.
As the coldness travelled through me, I activated my blood magic, using my own blood as a source, and grunted as the bones in my hand started to heal. I felt my body healing itself at a rate I'd never known before, my face and hands returning to their original state within seconds. Once I'd healed myself and deactivated my blood magic, I felt part of the coldness leave with it. I stood and rested momentarily against the wall behind me.
"Got your magic back?" Peter asked with a chuckle as he walked toward me. "You heal pretty damn fast, even for a sorcerer. But it won't help."
When I didn't reply, he punched me in the stomach, doubling me over, and slammed the back of my head into the wall. I dropped to the floor in a seated position. Peter grasped me around the throat and picked me off the ground, holding me against the wall as he squeezed my throat.
"No fight left in you?" he asked with a sickening grin.
"Can't fight," I wheezed. "Concentrating."
"On what?"
As Peter had kept his eyes on me, I'd created two spheres of air, much like the one I'd used on Randal, one in the palm of each hand, spinning them faster and faster with my fingers, until they were a blur.
"On this." I plunged both spheres into Peter's chest as white-hot rage exploded inside me. At first all I heard was Peter's laughter as the magic touched him and he squeezed tighter on my throat. And then the laughter was abruptly replaced with screams as the spheres tore into the flesh of his chest. He released his grip and staggered back, but I stayed with him as his screams were lost in the maelstrom of sound that the spheres created. Right up until the moment I released the magic.
The magic, needing to go somewhere, rushed into Peter like a tank hitting a wall. Peter was lifted from his feet and thrown across the room, through the wall behind him and into Olivia's office where he crashed against her desk.
I took a step forward to go after him and immediately saw Kasey. My rage was extinguished and I dropped to Kasey's side. "Hey," I said softly as she stirred.
"My arm hurts," she said, as she opened her eyes.
I called more blood magic and placed my hand on the arm she had cradled against her.
"That better?" I asked.
"I had to stay still when he threw me. I'm so sorry I didn't fight more."
I helped her back to her feet and made sure she was steady. "You stood up to a lich, Kasey. You are now officially the bravest person I know, but I've got it from here. Your dad is in the room at the end. He's hurt, but should be okay. You need to get him down the stairs and out of this building. No matter how badly he's hurt, you have to get him away from here."
Kasey walked toward the door. "Please stay safe," she said.
"I'll be fine," I told her. "Go see to your dad."
I watched Kasey leave the room and run off in Tommy's direction before I stalked toward the hole in the wall. I climbed through and continued into Olivia's office, which until a few minutes ago had been beautifully decorated. I allowed the cold rage inside me to come back, powered by the energy I'd absorbed from the two dead agents.
Peter was making a whimpering noise as he dragged himself out of the remains of Olivia's once large desk.
I waved my hand and fire leapt from it, striking Peter's legs and igniting the jeans he wore. Peter started to yell once more as the magic hurt him.
"Apparently, I'm not so helpless anymore," I said and kicked him in the ribs so hard that I felt them buckle under the blow.
Peter sucked in air and rolled onto his back, showing me the two large red holes in his chest. They’d stopped oozing his black, tar-like blood, but still showed raw muscle beneath the tattered remains of his shirt.
I dragged the battered lich to his feet and punched him in the jaw with everything I had. He dropped to one knee and I unleashed a flurry of kicks and punches, my hands and feet wrapped in dense air to do more damage as I drove Peter to the floor. I used the anger, the fear and hatred at what Peter and his friends had done to people I cared about to continue my assault until the lich’s face was a ruined mess of blood and flesh.
I dragged him to his feet and pushed him up against the desk, continuing the barrage of blows until my hands hurt. Only then did I allow Peter's limp body to drop back to the floor.
He spat blood onto the carpet as he got back to his knees. "Can't kill me."
I drove a blade of flame into his chest and he screamed out in anguish once more. At the same time he wrapped his hands around my wrist and twisted his body, dragging me sharply to one side. He released his grip just as I lost my footing and I flew over the ruined table, crashing onto the floor just beyond.
"Looks like you've lost whatever let you hurt me," Peter said as he got back to his feet, his face already healing at a rapid pace.
As much as I wanted to tear the smug grin off Peter's face for a second time, I knew he was right. I had very little left in reserve. Whatever I'd taken from the two dead agents had been all but used, leaving me with a very powerful lich problem to deal with.
My options were limited, and I had no idea how much longer it was going to take Olivia and Sky to reach me, but I certainly didn't have time to spare. I took the only course of action I could. I ran at Peter with a sphere of wind in my right hand, using up whatever necromancy power remained inside me.
I'd hoped to use the sphere to knock Peter back, through the window and down a few hundred feet, through the glass roof of the smaller building below and then to the ground. Even he wouldn't have been able to shake off a near four-hundred foot drop before someone got to him.
The sphere was an inch from his chest when he moved, pushing my hand to the side, causing me to loose balance, and then punching me in the jaw with enough force to almost spin me in place.
Instead of trying to hit Peter again, I let the momentum carry me around until my back was toward him and then I released the magic. But instead of releasing it in front of me, I released it back toward Peter. The blast of air did no damage to me, you can't be hurt by your own magic, but it whipped around me with fearsome intensity, slamming into Peter, lifting him off his feet and shoving him toward the window. He grabbed hold of the sword holster on my back and dragged me with him as we were thrown through the glass and into the void beyond with an almighty crash.
It was all I could do to use my air magic to slow my decent as Peter grabbed hold of me, forcing us to spin rapidly toward the glass dome that approached at speed as we closed the four-hundred-foot gap.
Peter snarled against my ear so I snapped my head back, slamming his nose and causing him to release his grip slightly. I used the leeway to blast air at him, but he held onto me and I couldn't get any real distance between us. The blast of air magic had the side-effect of spinning me around him so I was against his back. I hooked my arms under his arms and around his neck in a full-nelson, pinning his own arms behind him as we crashed through the dome. And my magic vanished.
At first I thought that something had gone wrong with the security system, but then I saw the sorcerer's band on my wrist. Peter must have slipped it on while we fell.
Falling four-hundred feet and smashing into a marble floor is not the kind of thing you walk away from, even if you use someone else's body as a giant cushion. The shockwaves rode up through Peter's body and into my own, shattering the bones in my right arm, along my wrist, clavicle and several ribs. I'd broken enough bones in my life to recognise what those injuries felt like.
I somehow rolled off the squashed form of Peter and onto the floor, as pain wracked my body in nauseating waves. My vision darkened and I coughed blood all over the floor, apparently I'd punctured a lung. The lack of magic meant that it was entirely possible that I was going to die if I didn't get medical attention, and soon.
I rested the back of my head against the cool floor and cradled my broken arm against my chest, taking some of the pain away so long as I remained completely still. I turned my head slightly as a noise caught my attention and saw Peter back climbing back on his feet, his broken bones and lacerations healing themselves before my eyes.
I wanted nothing more than to go to sleep. To just lie on the cool floor and let someone else deal with him, but I couldn't do that. I wouldn't let him hurt anyone else.
"What part of
you can't kill me
, do you not understand?" he asked. The bones in his neck cracked when he moved his head. "How's all the broken bones? I'm assuming you're in a lot of pain right now. Once I knew there was a sorcerer after me, I thought that band might come in handy.” He glanced up out of the large windows nearby. "I'm going to go help the remains of my barren kill your friends. And there's nothing you can do to stop me." He started walking to the door, his movements stiff and awkward. His body still not completely healed from the impact.
I couldn't let him get away. I had to stop to him. But my pain was so great that I could barely move.
Get up.
Something inside of me said.
Get on your damn feet, Nathan.
For a moment I thought it was the nightmare inside me coming back to the fore, but I couldn't be certain.
I forced myself to a kneeling position as the sound of screams filled my ears. My screams. I leaned against the nearest wall and used it to get myself back to my feet.
Peter turned back toward me. "You're a tenacious little fucker, aren't you?"
He took a step in my direction as shots rang out from behind me, each one slamming into Peter, driving him back toward the wall. He wasn't yet recovered enough to withstand the bullets as he normally might have, but he still wasn't going to let bullets stop him.
"Doesn't anyone know that you can't kill me with gravity, or magic, or goddamn bullets? I'll spell it out for you. You. Can't. Kill. Me."
Sky ran from the side and slammed her spirit dagger into Peter's chest and twisted. "I can," she said.
Peter screamed in agony as Sky pushed her translucent blue dagger deeper into his chest until her hand disappeared into Peter's body. She twisted her arm and snatched it free, holding something in her clenched fist. The thing oozed blackness through her fingers like tar, as she squeezed it tightly until it vanished.
Sky staggered back and placed one hand against a nearby column. "Now you
can
kill him," she said.
Olivia walked past me and emptied a clip into Peter's chest, one shot for each step she took, closer and closer, until she was inches away from him. And then, she placed one hand against his chest, and a dozen, foot long spikes of ice shot out of her fingers to impale Peter, throwing him back with so much force that it shook the wall when he careered into it, the spikes pinning him in place.
"No one fucks with my family," she snarled and decapitated him with a blade of razor-sharp ice.
I coughed again and crashed back to the floor, the pain overwhelming me. Sky ran over and dropped down next to me. She was shouting, but I couldn't hear her words as the darkness closed in and I succumbed to its gentle comfort.
Chapter 43
I opened my eyes to the glare of florescent lighting. If by some miracle, I'd gone to heaven, it certainly wasn't how the brochure had described it.
"Ouch," I said as I moved my stiff neck, which cracked loudly.
"Ah, I was wondering when you'd rejoin us."
I followed the voice, and found Doctor Grayson sat on the chair next to me, a clipboard in his hand.
"Hey, Doc, glad to see you're okay," I said.
"Ah, I can take care of myself, Nathan, don't you worry about that. I've been around long enough to know what to do."
I studied him for a second. He wasn't a large man and certainly didn't appear to be muscular. "So what are you, Doc? Because you don't use magic."
Doc Grayson smiled. "Another time maybe. I just came down here to check on you."
"We still at the LOA building?"
"No. No one wanted to hang around there for very long after the wolves had finished tearing the barren into small stains on the grass outside. The LOA lost forty-two good men and women to those undead creatures. I had no desire to stay and observe the clean-up, so I came here with you. This is Tommy's building, and his facility is quite amazing."
"Yeah, Tommy doesn't believe in doing things half way. How is he?"
"Tommy is fine. It's been all I could do to stop him sitting next to you round-the-clock since you arrived. Kasey, too. Along with Olivia, they've been inseparable. They'll be keen to come say hello."