My Wicked Enemy (25 page)

The cycles of the witch’s magic were more severe than ever, set off, he guessed, by the number of fiends around her. He didn’t like it much, either, though for different reasons. They were heading someplace dark and lonely, and he was worried about what she might do. Durian was newly held, still adjusting to being fucked for the rest of his life, and though he had no choice but to follow whatever orders Rasmus gave him, the fact was, Durian belonged to Magellan. If Durian broke with Rasmus, no great tragedy, and that meant Xia would be an idiot to rely on Durian. He didn’t like this at all.

In the narrow corridor, Xia turned around and brought the entire group to a halt. He slammed Nikodemus against the wall and grabbed a handful of his hair. The warlord’s eyes glowed, and if Xia weren’t mageheld, he had the feeling he’d be frying. The only thing saving him now was the fact that they were still in the bar, surrounded by humans. Otherwise, he had no doubt the warlord would kill him.

Xia pulled out his knife and held it to the handful of his hair. “I don’t know why she’s letting you keep this. Maybe I should shave you for her. What do you think, fiend?” Nikodemus’s eyes burned silver-black. Xia leaned closer. “You think I don’t know you’re up to something?” He shot a glance at Carson. “Try anything, witch, and he’s dead. Durian!” Durian stepped up. “Hold him. If the witch does anything, break his neck.”

Durian pulled. Xia felt the echo across his skin. That should keep the witch from trying anything. Durian put Nikodemus in a headlock, but that lasted all of ten seconds. The warlord broke free. Fuck. Xia started walking again. Faster now. Durian had the sense to keep close to the warlord while they continued. After a detour through a storage room filled with mostly unopened cases of liquor, they reached a narrow door, bolted shut. Xia raised a leg and kicked the door hard. It popped open onto a short path, past the employee smoking area to a set of wooden stairs leading to the darkened parking lot below. With Durian, Nikodemus, and two of the lesser fiends in front, down they went. A few humans in the parking lot looked up and then away. Fucking losers.

They headed for a chain-link fence enclosing a storage facility. Xia pulled out his knife and sliced through the metal like it was warm butter. No one would see them take down Nikodemus here. No way. But it was going to take four plus Durian to manage it, and even then, unless Rasmus got his ass here fast, the warlord might just fry them all. The poor fucks. Looked like the new mageheld’s slavery was going to be short-lived. Some guys had all the luck.

Willow trees overhung three sides of the enclosure, and the side Xia had cut through was blocked by a construction Dumpster. Behind them, cold air blew off the river. His skin crawled as every mageheld fiend present pulled magic. In his chest, Xia felt the witch’s magic burn out of control. His magehelds maintained their box, though, and headed across the compound to the river, where a rotting footbridge spanned this narrower section of the waterway.

He tapped his headset. “Ready,” Xia said when the connection came on. “Durian will take care of him until you get here.” He listened to Rasmus’s instructions. He could hear Fen in the background, saying something about killing the witch. As if Rasmus would kill a mage. The mage sure as hell wasn’t going to kill Magellan’s witch. Not when Magellan wanted to do it himself. He grabbed Carson by the upper arm and jerked her so hard her feet left the ground. His arm went tight around her neck as he gave Durian his final instructions. “Take care of the warlord.” He hesitated while the mage yapped in his head. The warlord’s eyes glowed an unearthly silver. Time to stop listening to stupid instructions. “He gets out of hand, Durian, you kill him, got that? Rasmus will just have to deal.”

“Of course,” Durian said.

Carson flailed her legs, but it didn’t do her any good. In the dark, the warlord’s eyes flashed to black. “You know what to do, Carson,” he said. “So find a way.”

“Which is nothing,” Xia said. He slid his arm tight around Carson’s waist, wrist cocked so the tip of his knife touched her side, holding her so the warlord could see how easily his little witch could be dead. Xia headed for the footbridge. Carson twisted in his grip.

“Nikodemus!”

“Shut the fuck up!” He turned and saw one of the weaker fiends go flying and hit the ground with a thump. Bunch of fucking loser fiends. Durian wasn’t completely healed, and Xia thought it likely Nikodemus would decimate the losers before Durian was forced to give up and kill him. Xia hauled Carson around. Time to distract the witch. “Rasmus and Magellan know where the warlords are meeting.” He laughed. “He’s probably shaving them right now.” He brought his head closer to hers. “Let’s go watch.”

That got to her, all right. Her magic hit the sky, a total turn-on to him in any state. Their hips touched, and all the while they walked, darts of her magic raised goose bumps on his skin. He smelled her body, warm and dark and soft. He copped a feel, and she elbowed him hard in the kidney. He kept walking, sure-footed despite the rotting wood. They made it across and, once up the stairs on the bank, took a sharp left to a one-way street with a warehouse on one side and a garish yellow gingerbread Victorian next door. The warlord’s Mercedes was parked in front, where Fen had left it when she first drove in to Olompali with the news that the witch had taken her brother.

A side entrance got them into the Victorian. The stairwell was narrow, with one landing and a turn, so he couldn’t see straight to the top. Xia put a hand in the middle of her back and pushed. “Up,” he said.

Her foot hit the middle of a step.

“I said, up.” He wanted this over, he wanted his part in the treachery of his kin to be done. The warlords upstairs wouldn’t feel him, but they were going to feel the witch pretty soon. Start a little panic there before he arrived to serve the evening’s capper. They’d all be too distracted to do anything when Rasmus and Magellan attacked.

“I can’t see.”

Oh, boo-hoo. If she could use her magic like every other mage, she would have been able to see, and he wouldn’t be here with her, all alone in the dark. Xia slipped an arm around her throat and tucked her hard against his pelvis and torso. “Up,” he growled. She grabbed his arm with both hands and tugged down to get a breath. Magic seeped under his skin, dark and wild and barely under control. That got him going. Her magic was fucking amazing. His dick got hard fast. He pressed himself against her so she couldn’t miss his condition. Maybe she’d want him to do her. His grip against her throat relaxed just the tiniest bit. His other arm stayed around her waist as he walked her upward into the darkness.

“Let go,” she said.

“I belong to the mage Rasmus,” Xia told her. “Not the mage Carson. I don’t have to do what you say. So shut the fuck up.” The point of his knife sliced through her sleeve and nicked her skin. He smelled blood, and damned if he didn’t get a sense of excitement from her, too. The part of her that felt like kin surged through him. “Back it down.”

“I can’t. I don’t know how.”

“Bullshit,” he said. His arms tightened around her.

“Let go of me, you freak.” She bucked hard and managed to unbalance him enough that he stumbled back. But he didn’t let go of her.

“I could do you right here,” he said, his mouth up close and tight against her ear. One of his hands slipped under her shirt. She was soft. Rasmus almost never let him have sex. How long had it been? Years and years. But the witch was different. He needed the witch worked up for maximum effect when they got within range of the warlords, and if that meant letting a fiend have at her, Rasmus was willing.

He touched her bare skin, palm flat, hips rolling against her. He slid his other hand up and down her side, from her thigh to her belly. “He’s letting me do this. He likes it when they’re afraid of me.” His breath hit warm against her throat, cold on the inhale, like he was breathing in her power. “Are you afraid of me, witch?”

“Yes.” Her voice was too matter-of-fact for him to believe her. “But if you want to be free of Rasmus, Xia, stop trying to scare the pants off me.”

“Like this?” He thumbed the top fastening of her jeans. He felt the button pop open, and his dick got harder. The more he touched her, the more Carson felt like kin. She opened herself to him, no walls or barriers, and it was, for a moment, as if he’d never been taken.

“Let it happen, Xia,” she whispered. And it was freaky the way she felt like kin. “I freed Iskander. That’s two. You need to be three.”

“How about I do you right here? With Rasmus taking it all in. Because he’s here. Close enough to be in my goddamned head. He wants to know everything that happens between us.” His hand moved again, lower, over her belly. He bumped her hips to give him access. “I promise you, witch, he won’t let me feel a thing.”

“What do you want, fiend?” she asked. She faced him down like she was twice his size. He got a blast of her mage-magic, enough to roil his stomach. “Sex or freedom? You decide. ’Cause I’m telling you right now, you can’t have both.”

“You already failed with me.” He fisted the knife against her shoulder, and she flinched. There was no flat side to his blade. Edges bit into her skin, tearing her shirt, abrading her skin until the scent of her blood rose up. He let go of her and she turned, keeping her back against the wall.

“Let me try.”

The stairwell was dark, but he saw just fine. Her eyes were big and wide open. While he watched, she touched her abraded shoulder. Her fingers came away with blood clinging to her skin. She didn’t wipe her hand off on her pants or anything human like that. No, she licked off the blood, and her eyes closed like she was savoring the taste.

“Is this what you want?” he asked. He touched his blade to the inside of his elbow. A light touch, feather light, but his blood welled up.

The witch breathed in, and at that moment, he would have sworn she was kin. He extended his arm to her. And she took a step toward him. Her mouth settled on his skin, hot and damp, tongue sliding along the cut he’d made. She groaned, and a taste of copper danced in his mouth, echoing her reaction. He arched against her, frantic to touch her, frantic to touch her magic. But she pushed him away, and he took a step back, hands up. She shuddered, and her magic flared up. He hissed and jerked like he’d been bitten. Her eyes were wide and killingly green.

“Don’t move,” she said. “Don’t.” She put out a hand and spread her fingers over his chest, and it was like someone touched two electrified wires. A circuit closed. Pain roared through him. He couldn’t get enough breath. No air. He didn’t have air to breathe. Rasmus was there, in his head, shrieking, so that it felt like his eardrums were bleeding. Xia clapped his hands over his ears. His knees buckled.

The witch sucked in a breath, and he could breathe again. His lungs emptied on her exhale. She came to life in his head, fully alive because her magic was there. His heart beat erratically, in time with hers, then off, then back to him. Shit. What the fuck was that?

“You moved,” she said. She was plenty pissed off, and wasn’t that just like a mage, to get pissed off like that. “You ruined everything.”

The only mage in his head now was Rasmus, and he wanted the witch in range of the warlords five minutes ago. The compulsion to obey jacked him up. He turned her around and pushed her up the stairs again. “Shut up. Just shut the fuck up.”

At the top of the stairs, the back of his neck flashed cold as ice, as if he were connecting with the kin again. He wasn’t. He couldn’t be. The witch’s feet stopped moving. Xia pushed her toward the door. She put a hand on the wall to balance herself. He didn’t feel anybody in the room, even though he knew there were four warlords. Four more to betray.

“Carson?” Iskander stood in the opening, hands on his hips, one foot keeping the door open.

“It’s a trap,” she said.

Xia grabbed her hair and pulled back, the blade of his knife across her throat. “Shut up, witch. Let us in, fiend, or she dies here. Right now.”

Iskander stood aside, and Xia stepped out of the stairwell and into the room. The stairs opened into an apartment that, if she had to guess, she’d say took up the entire floor. From behind her, Xia shot home the deadbolt on the door. He looked around the room. “Take my advice, why don’t you, and get the hell out of here while you can.” He tapped his headset. “In,” he said.

The other warlords, two men and a woman, jumped up from their chairs. Harsh was here, too, on his feet like the others. The level of magic in the room shot sky-high, and Carson was the only one able to feel all of it.

“You all right, Carson?” Harsh leaned in to grab her arm, pulling her against his side.

“You shouldn’t have let us in. Rasmus’s after Nikodemus. Iskander, you have to go after him. Go!” The words tumbled out of her throat, tripping and wrapped in cotton. Her chest burned hotter. Breath caught in her lungs because she was still timed to Xia’s respirations. She struggled to get enough air. God, her head felt like it was going to explode. To the upper right of her field of vision, the air streaked deep purple. Her eyes recovered from the light enough that she could make out Harsh’s expression even with the streaking colors across her eyes.

Outside the house, a mage moved in, near enough that Carson felt his magic. Dark and foul, the sensation set her teeth on edge. Magellan or Rasmus? She didn’t know which. If she didn’t sever Xia soon, she might never, and Rasmus would have Nikodemus. She faced Xia and centered herself despite her whirling emotions. Her body didn’t move, but the sensation of forward motion made her knees wobbly and her head spin. She couldn’t let Nikodemus down. She wouldn’t. This time the magic coursing through her wasn’t alien and out of control. Not entirely, anyway. Heat boiled in her chest and flashed along her arms and into her palms. A roar of inchoate rage from Xia deafened her.

The backwash caromed off the walls like a crazed bird in a cage. Xia lunged for her, knife hand outstretched. Time slowed. His knife scraped along her skin, raising a thin red welt that supernovaed in her body. Through the pain, her focus remained on Xia. She flexed her wrist, and the knife turned aside. Xia’s shock was etched into his face, and when she shifted her weight, her palms landed on his chest and his expression froze.

Yes
.

Xia blossomed inside her. She fell into a labyrinth of hatred and power. Her magic bloomed, too, taking control, directing her, showing her how to take Xia away from Rasmus. She forgot who and what she was. Her magic rushed out, white-hot. She tried to rein back and couldn’t. The inside of her head reverberated. Colors bounced off her closed eyes. Her palms burned.

Flick.

The world blinked, and in the crazy upside-down moment, Xia burned through her. The magic that bound Xia to the mage Rasmus pulsed angry orange, bitter to scent, acrid to taste, a chancre in his body that seared inside him and formed the seat of his overweening hatred.

Xia stared at her with wild eyes. His irises and pupils were the same inky black, two deep, open, infinite wells of hatred. His strength was exactly what Nikodemus needed. She pushed inside, back toward Rasmus’s hook into him, the magic that held Xia bound to Rasmus. She touched the mass, and it was a foul and rancid thing to know. The part of her that was inside Xia surrounded the acid stain Rasmus had used to bind Xia to his will and separate him from the kin.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Xia grabbed her wrist and squeezed. But he didn’t push her away.

She surrounded the sickness that robbed Xia of his freedom. The fiend yelped and thrust his hands into the space between her arms. With an upward and outward motion, he broke their physical contact. The world ripped apart, and she went tripping head over heels. She blinked and looked down at a woman with pale skin and dark hair. Her eyes shimmered in the light.

“Fuck you, witch,” Xia whispered. But he was speaking inside himself. Not to the woman in front of him.

She fell out of Xia’s eyes, momentarily blind. She howled in rage because she hadn’t done what she was supposed to. Her body quivered. Heat bubbled up again, burning white-hot in her belly and chest. She stared fiercely at his eyes, but try as she might, she couldn’t fall inside them again. She bared her teeth at him. He backed into the room, a wide, open living room, and kept going until he hit a wall, just missing a gilt-framed photograph.

“Do it,” he said. He brought up his knife, red with her blood. He sounded fierce, but he was shaken. She felt it in her bones, the quaver in his voice broke over her. “Do it this time.”

On nothing but raw emotion, Carson reached inside Xia for the knotted magic that tied him to the mage Rasmus. Fast. No wasting time. Xia was too big and too strong for her to have even a moment’s hesitation. She knew where to strike now. Heat burned in her hot as fire, scouring her, but she grabbed hold and let the flames take her. She sent all that heat out of her body and into the knot of magic inside Xia.

Xia threw his hands up in the air. His arms slapped against the wall. A framed picture crashed to the floor. Glass shattered. His eyes opened wide, staring at her through a grimace of pain.

The knot resisted, pushed back at her, but she refused, refused to let go. She wanted Xia free of Rasmus. He must be free. What Rasmus had done to him was anathema, and it had to be ended. Sound rang in her ears, vibrating until she couldn’t hear anything else. She examined what was happening to her and discovered she could focus the heat if she thought about it. So she focused it on that ashen, vibrating morass. She severed him.

When it was over, Xia’s back was to the wall and his eyes were on her, big and round and black as pitch. Sweat dripped down his face. His clothes were untouched, but his chest heaved, ribs bellowing, mouth open. His eyes glowed. Carson’s stomach heaved, but there was nothing to come up. Time came back to normal, and she realized only a few seconds had passed. Enough time for the warlords to pull enough magic to fry her into ashes. The only thing stopping them was Iskander, standing near her, crackling with power.

Xia’s knife fell, spinning away in a blur of blue-gray. The fiend touched his chest. His legs trembled, and she could see him pressing hard against the wall to remain upright. One foot slipped from under him, slid in the glass on the floor, but he caught his balance again. “What did you do?” His voice came out in a croak. His legs splayed. “What have you done to me?”

His eyes rolled up in his head, and then he hit the floor with a thud.

The kitchen window screeched open, and everyone in the room turned to see Nikodemus drop lightly onto the floor. “Good evening, warlords,” he said. He brushed some dust off his chest. “Sorry I’m late.”

Nikodemus walked over to Xia’s knife, and then back to the unmoving fiend. He shoved the knife into the sheath at Xia’s waist. “Goddamn, Carson,” he said. “I had no fucking idea you could do something like that. I felt that all the way on the other side of the river.”

One of the warlords crouched, hand extended. Nikodemus rolled his eyes. “Cut the drama, Mir. You aren’t pulling rank here, and you know it. Iskander,” he said. “I need you to do a little cleanup for me. Across the river, back behind the Dumpster. You can’t miss it. Better take the window, though. There’s mages out front.”

“Warlord.” Iskander bowed.

Carson’s head was clearer now. The burning in her chest was subsiding. She stepped toward Xia. He looked dead. But inside, she still resonated with his magic, and she felt him. The way she did Harsh and Iskander. From where she was, he didn’t look like he was breathing. Like one of those cases of excited delirium, when a perp dies while the cops are trying to restrain him. Her heart pounded hard against her ribs. He lay so still she was afraid he was dead despite her connection to him.

“You all right?” Nikodemus asked. He slid a hand under her forearm, steadying her. His ruby earring glittered as he turned his head to address one the warlords.

“Sure,” she said. She wasn’t, but she didn’t think it was a good idea to let the warlords think anything different.

Another of the warlords stood in the middle of the room, arms crossed over his chest. Both the males were typical fiends. Athletic bodies, muscled, with hair past their shoulders. One of them wore his hair in dreadlocks, the other had his straight hair tied back. The female warlord, tall and long-legged with a dagger at her hip, stood apart from the males, her long hair corkscrew curly. She slid her dagger free and crossed to a black leather sofa, where she sat, legs tucked underneath her.

Harsh picked Xia up out of the glass as if the fiend weighed nothing at all. His head hung over Harsh’s shoulder, his body limp as Harsh carried him to a smaller sofa, away from the warlords. His headset fell off his ear and dropped to the floor. Nikodemus walked over and crushed it until it was nothing but bits of plastic and broken electronics underfoot.

The dreadlocked warlord looked Carson up and down and said, “Well, Carson Philips, that was an impressive trick.”

Carson didn’t like the way everyone seemed so jumpy and on edge. Even Nikodemus felt tense to her. He hadn’t let go of any of his magic.

“Nikodemus,” said the woman. She drew her dagger. “It is one thing to have your mage outside. Dangerous play, but if she’s only your plaything—” She shrugged. “I commend you for gaining control of her. A lesson for us all, to be sure. But Nikodemus, it is quite another for you to let a mage into this room. On this night.” She ran a finger along the flat of her knife. “Betrayal will get you and your plaything killed.”