Glass shattered just outside the door, and it snapped her out of her trance. The gunshots and screams outside stopped other than a few muffled, whimpered cries that seemed to be coming from other hotel occupants further down the hall.
“Just stay here a second,” Zach told her. “You’re the one they’re after.”
“They killed my mother,” she said, biting down on her lip. “It’s time they were scared of me.”
Eve leapt past him and thrust open the door even as he tried to hold her back. She half-expected a swarm of Dusty goons to be standing out here waiting for her, and she was prepared to lash out with every ounce of power she could muster.
Instead she walked into the middle of an inferno. The carpet and walls were bathed in flames, and the smoke was already getting so thick she could barely see. She coughed and dropped to a knee, then clamped a hand over her mouth. The window to their left was shattered opened, and she didn’t see any other possible escape.
Thankfully, they wouldn’t need one. She forced herself to relax and concentrate on all the lessons about energy and heat she’d learned in her first two years. She might not have fully mastered the art of conjuring fire yet, but perhaps she could still quench it. She could almost feel the flames as they feasted on the fiber and wood. It was like a beast trying to sate its hunger, and all she needed to do was take its dish away.
Suddenly the Fane was coursing through her again, and a vortex of flame and ash was swirling around her body, wildly tussling her hair and gown. The air was hot on her face—she could feel the sweat already dripping from her forehead—but she refused to let it distract her. She continued to siphon the pyre’s fuel, and the flames roared as if in protest…
Her eyes opened, and the fire was gone. Instinctively she released her hold on the Fane, and an odd rumble echoed down the hallway before finally dissipating a few seconds later. She blinked away the haze clouding her vision and peered past the scorched walls and floor to the pair of blackened corpses lying in the center of the hallway. They were barely even recognizable as people anymore, and a sudden wave of nausea washed over her—
And then there was pain. Eve yelped as she collapsed to her knees and clutched onto her arms. They throbbed uncontrollably; it was like every muscle was pulsating at the same time. She was dimly aware of Zach trying to comfort her, but she didn’t know how long it was before the pain subsided into a dull ache and her senses returned.
“What’s wrong?” Zach was saying. “Are you burned?”
“No,” she said hoarsely, wetting her lips and trying to swallow. “No, it’s…it must be the Flensing.”
Her mother had tried to describe what it was like to experience the Flensing many times before, and her professors had prattled on endlessly about its dangers. But none of those lessons had prepared her for the intensity of the pain. It felt like every nerve in her body was pinching at once, and she couldn’t even find the strength to breathe…
It took her a long moment to even realize what she had done. She’d never learned a spell to control flames like that. She had just…woven it. And in the process, she had invoked the Flensing for the first time.
It was impossible. This wasn’t one of the spells in Maltus’s book, and no krata was supposed to be able to weave that much power on her own. Magic didn’t just
happen
. It took years of study and practice, along with very specific formulae and understanding of the Fane…
And yet here she was, enduring an agony that only true magi were supposed to confront.
“Impressive,” a calm, male voice said from down the hallway. A second later Danev’s bodyguard, Aram, pivoted around the corner.
Zach immediately raised his gun and pointed it at the other man. “What are you doing here?”
Aram cocked an eyebrow as he glanced down at the weapon. “My job. Or I would have been, but someone beat me to it.”
“What…?” Zach trailed off as he turned to the bodies.
“Chaval made his move,” the man explained. “Not long after you left, we found one of our attendants unconscious. Someone was spying on us, and I knew they would eventually come here. I was waiting for them.”
Eve swallowed heavily. Her throat was still dry, but at least the pain had reached bearable levels. “But you didn’t kill them.”
“No,” Aram said, shifting his eyes to the wall. “And we have a new problem.”
Eve followed his gaze over to the unblemished section of the hallway. There, dripping from the wall, was a viscous blue liquid that almost seemed to be glowing…
Zach drew in a deep breath. Eve wasn’t far behind.
“Impossible,” Zach murmured, his head shaking. He lowered his pistol.
“It would seem you have a Vakari watching over you,” Aram said, his voice still as calm as if he were reading off a menu. “The question is why.”
“Goddess be merciful,” Eve breathed as she slumped backwards. First assassins were trying to kill them, and now one of those…
monsters
had stepped in to protect them? How was that even possible? It made no sense at all…
“We need to leave,” Aram told them firmly. “Now.”
Zach shook his head. “We’re not going anywhere until we know what’s going on.”
“The police will be here soon, and you don’t want to deal with them,” Aram said. “We aren’t going to learn anything else here.”
“So where do we go?” Eve asked, her head still shaking. “What do we do?”
“First, you come with me,” the bodyguard said, extending his hand. “Then we get some answers.”
***
The Vakari dragged herself slowly along the alley wall and scowled at the trail of glowing blue blood she had left behind her. She hadn’t expected a few bullets to ache this much, and she certainly hadn’t expected it to take this long for the wounds to close. It had been a long time since she had stepped foot in this part of the country, and she didn’t have fond memories of the last trip, either. But this erosion of her powers was new, and now that she was actually here, the source was obvious.
The Fane was dying.
She could still feel it pulsing meekly from the strands of weeds between the beaten cobblestone path and from the vermin scattered around the alley, but that was barely an echo of its full power. Out east, large urban centers like this teemed with life, and the Fane roared with all the fury of a mighty river. Here it was like the feeble trickle of a dying stream.
Eventually, perhaps even within the next decade, the Fane would have completely receded from this place. She didn’t know what would happen then. The Edehan church claimed that life could not exist at all without the touch of their Goddess’s Fane, but they had lied before. All she knew for certain was that once the Fane was gone, she would quickly follow. And perhaps that wasn’t such a terrible thing.
She coughed and collapsed into a pile of refuse at the edge of the alley. In her weakened state she’d lost the Talami woman, which meant that soon Chaval would know a Vakari was on his trail. Most men, especially those who knew how the Enclave worked, would have been appropriately terrified into submission at such a prospect. Chaval would not. Instead he would probably just send a larger force next time, but that did have its own benefits. More bodies meant more food, after all, and as the eternal hunger throbbed inside her, the Vakari decided that perhaps this failure was for the best.
Leaning against the wall, she rolled the ends of her tattered jacket down her wrist then tapped the small blue crystal inset into her golden bracelet. The stone hummed for a moment before lifting up and hovering about a centimeter in the air.
“What happened?” a male voice asked from the stone. She could hear the tension in the man’s voice despite the stone’s distortion and his best efforts to conceal it.
“Chaval’s thugs tried again,” she told him.
“What about Eve?”
“The children are alive and safe under Danev’s protection. Unfortunately, Chaval’s
yohisha
escaped.”
She could almost visualize the groomed and proper Glenn Maltus pacing back and forth as he considered her words. Sometimes she thought it was a shame he hadn’t given her a more powerful sending stone. A part of her would have loved to be able to at least see his face through a ghostly projection, if not his entire body. But such stones were ludicrously expensive and rarely portable, and at least she didn’t have to rely on one of those screlling telegraphs like a pathetic torbo.
“I expected more from you,” Maltus said after a moment of silence. “That’s twice now you’ve disappointed me.”
She grunted. “I can barely heal here, you realize. This place is dying.”
“That has nothing to do with it,” he said flatly. “You were sloppy. Again.”
“I’m not a spy, and you know that,” she reminded him. “I can’t learn anything with my hands tied like this. You should let me make direct contact.”
“No, not yet,” Maltus insisted. “Your job is to keep them safe and observe from a distance, nothing more.”
She grumbled in annoyance. “If you want to test her power, let me attack her, see what she does.”
His sigh was perfectly audible even through the distortion of the stone. “Stay close, Shaedra. Soon you’ll have a chance to act and hopefully get that journal back for us.”
“So you say,” she muttered. “I’ll keep you apprised.”
She tapped the stone again, and it sank back into its holder. Once again she was alone in the alleyway with the vermin and trash. Her wounds had healed but her clothes were ruined. Fortunately, her quarry wasn’t likely to go anywhere else tonight, and that gave her some time.
Shaedra dragged herself to her feet. She needed to find a tailor’s shop to rob. If she was lucky, maybe she’d even find some Dusties nearby. She was hungry, after all.
She was always hungry.
Chapter Seven
“It was foolish to send them away,” Gregori Danev lamented as he idly twirled the cane in his hand. “I should have known better.”
“You did know better,” Aram reminded him. “That’s why you sent them to the
Calio
.”
A lot of good that did them
, Danev scolded himself. The kids had been in his town for all of a few hours and already people were shooting at them. Any doubts he’d been harboring about how serious this was had been neatly washed away. Tara had been killed for a reason, and now her daughter was in mortal danger.
The question was whether or not he—or anyone else—could protect her.
“They’re secure; you don’t need to worry about that,” Aram said as if reading his thoughts. “I’d wager they’ll be asleep soon enough.”
“Less than an hour after being shot at?” Danev snorted. “When I was there age I’d have soiled my trousers.”
The bodyguard shrugged. “You learn a lot about a person when you see them under pressure. The boy has seen combat before and can handle himself. The girl…she’s a fighter.”
Danev cocked a curious eyebrow. “Meaning?”
“Most people who hear gunshots panic or run and hide—and with good reason. Others channel that fear into rage and fight back. She’s one of those.”
“Well, she is a DeShane,” Danev murmured. “I’m not sure there’s an ounce of sensibility in her blood.”
Aram remained silent, but he’d spoken his piece. Danev always appreciated the man’s input, terse as it often was. It was rare enough to find someone willing to take a bullet for you, and it was rarer still to find one who was able to think on his feet. But then, the Crimson Eclipse wasn’t in the business of training simple bodyguards. For almost three hundred years they’d been producing an elite breed of warrior-magi, men and women trained in both martial and magical combat. They were meant to serve as both advisors and protectors to the magi-caste.