My Wicked Enemy (26 page)

Siddique pointed at Xia with her knife. The air around him flickered. Goose bumps rolled down the backs of Nikodemus’s arms. Everybody was jacked up now. Xia leaned forward, middle finger raised to Siddique. Couldn’t fault the fiend for his nerve. There weren’t many of the kin who’d chance making an enemy of a warlord.

“Fuck off,” Xia said to Siddique. “I’m not your creature.”

“I would be nice to you if you were,” Siddique said. “Very kind.” She pulled her legs up and underneath her, holding her knife sideways with both hands, tip between two fingers, hilt between thumb and forefinger of her other hand. She looked at Xia from over the blade. “Just whose creature are you, I wonder?”

“I can feel you. You can feel me.” Xia looked at Carson, and Nikodemus didn’t think he imagined that Xia paled. “I guess that makes me freelance.” He glared at Siddique. “I’m not looking to join up anywhere.”

Siddique lowered her hand. Behind him, Nikodemus felt Harsh, pulling magic just enough to make sure the warlords understood Nikodemus had support. “How . . . disappointing.”

Nikodemus smiled and draped an arm around Carson, bringing her in close. “Maybe you should go home, Siddique. I’ll deal with the others.”

Siddique turned her attention to Nikodemus. Her lovely, pointed-chinned face was curious but edged with the malice so typical of her. “Is the mage under your control, Warlord?”

Mir, the warlord with dreadlocks, sat next to Siddique and took her hand in his, raising it to his lips for a kiss. “There is a great deal for us to learn from one another. For this reason, I’m glad for the opportunity for us to speak to Nikodemus.”

Nikodemus rolled his eyes. He would say that. Mir wasn’t as mean as Siddique, and the fiends sworn to him were half the number Siddique had. Nevertheless, Mir had a habit of prevailing against poor odds. He looked around, settled his attention on Carson, and smiled.

“If only we were in private, I’m sure we would hear a most fascinating story.” Mir’s gaze shifted off Carson to Nikodemus. He let Mir probe. The inquiry was delicate, razor sharp, without more energy than was necessary. “Your newest companion, if I’m not mistaken,” he said, “is Magellan’s witch.”

“If I was her mageheld, you wouldn’t feel me as kin,” Nikodemus said.

“She’s still a witch,” the third warlord, Huijan, said. Always the quiet one. He had a reputation for striking first. Wherever he thought he’d do the most damage.

“You sure about that?” Nikodemus said. He looked around the room. “You don’t feel her as kin at all?”

“She should be killed,” Huijan said. “You should have killed her.”

Nikodemus leaned against Carson. “I won’t say I didn’t have the same thought when we met. But did any of you feel Xia when she was on her way here?” He looked around the room and saw varying expressions of distrust. “I’d say the answer is no. You felt her. But not Xia. And now, Xia is kin. You saw her sever him. She did the same for Harsh here. I don’t know of many mages who go around releasing the kin from their slavery. Do you?”

Siddique spread her arm across the black leather sofa. “Why don’t you prove you’re free of her influence, Nikodemus, and kill her?”

Mir and Huijan exchanged a look, but they didn’t demur. Their silence was assent to Siddique’s suggestion. Warlords could be a bloodthirsty lot. Which was part of the problem.

“I can’t.” Nikodemus kept his arm around Carson. Siddique hissed, and out came her dagger again. He raised his other hand in an apologetic gesture. “She swore fealty to me.”

“Fealty?” said Mir. His eyebrows drew together.

Nikodemus returned Siddique’s poisonous glare. Warlords understood power first, battle second, and politics last. “She’s under my protection, warlords. Harm her, and I will crush you and everyone you love into the ground. Harm me, and she’ll protect me with her life. You might be proof against most fiends, but are you proof against a mage?”

That last was a calculated risk, since he figured the warlords didn’t know about Carson’s limitations as a mage. One of Huijan’s black-as-night eyebrows lifted. “How did this happen?”

“I found her, and we worked things out from there.”

Xia left the sofa and walked the perimeter of the apartment. He had his knife out, and he was flipping the weapon end over end, first catching it by the handle, then by the tip of the blade. Over and over. Unerringly. And quite the unusual weapon it was. Nikodemus hadn’t seen anything like it in years. Not one blade but dozens, winding over each other in a mind-bending pattern of mercilessly sharp edges. It took years of magic to make a blade like that.

Siddique watched Xia prowl and, after a bit, lifted her dagger and balanced the length of the blade on her index finger. “I can do tricks with knives, too, fiend.”

Still flipping the knife, Xia ignored Siddique and continued his walk of the room. He spent a lot of time looking at the framed photographs on the wall on either side of the windows. Scenes of the town from a hundred and fifty years ago, mostly. A few country panoramas, the occasional shot of livestock.

Mir’s gaze held Nikodemus’s. Of the three warlords, he had the least strength, but his subtlety of understanding made up for the lack. He rarely misstepped. “I feel it now. She is, indeed, your creature.”

“Like I said.”

Siddique stopped playing with her dagger to take Mir’s hand. He brought her fingers to his mouth for a brief kiss. “There is something different about the mage’s magic.” Nikodemus felt the warlord probing at Carson. Gently, but an inquiry nonetheless. He didn’t get far. Nobody did with Carson. “I have heard of this happening. Only once, but I am certain there have been other cases in which a fiend has transferred permanently into a human. In that case, however, the fiend was in possession and stayed so until his unwilling host perished.”

Carson kept her cool.

“In your case,” Mir said to Carson, “the fiend does not control you. You have assimilated, fiend and mage.” He frowned. “I wonder if it is accurate to say you are still human?” His mouth curved, but somehow it wasn’t a smile. “I’m curious, Nikodemus. When you are in possession of her, how does her magic affect you?”

Nikodemus smiled back, and his wasn’t a smile, either. “She’s a fucking head rush, Mir. Like you wouldn’t believe.”

Mir started to pull his magic again, and Nikodemus didn’t like it one bit. Siddique was back to playing with her dagger, partially unsheathing it and drawing a finger along the edge. She put her bloodied finger in her mouth. Nikodemus tucked Carson closer to his side. “She’s had a long day, and I’m worried she’s going to get cranky if we don’t wrap this up soon. Is there a deal or not? Or are you going to stick to your old ways and watch as more and more of our kin fall to the mages until there are none of us left?”

He was offering them what fiends lived for—battle against an enemy. For centuries the magekind had been the greater threat to fiends than their infighting. They clung to the old ways, staying separate, fighting between themselves, and dividing and fatally weakening the strength of all fiends.

“This requires thought,” Huijan said. “Discussion.”

“A waste of time,” Nikodemus said. “You’re in or you’re not, and if you’re not, you might as well march out there and give yourselves up to the nearest available mage.”

Xia faced the window and parted the blinds with the tip of his knife, peering into the darkness. He flipped his knife into the air and caught it by the tip. “There’s a limo outside.” He looked at Nikodemus. “A nice shiny stretch limo.” He cocked his head. “If you ask me,” he said, “it looks like it came here all the way from Tiburon.”

Beside him, Carson stiffened. “Magellan,” she whispered.

The flicker of magic around Siddique flashed into white heat and condensed to nothing. Nikodemus felt it heading for Carson, malignant and gathering force. Xia had his knife extended and he was laughing, but the sound was bereft of mirth. Nikodemus pulled his own magic, and Carson opened herself to him so he could pull even more. She didn’t know shit about fiends, but there was nothing wrong with her instincts. Sometimes a good improviser beat a great tactician. Nikodemus struck, and Siddique’s magic crashed into a wall of granite. Even Xia reeled under the impact.

Carson shot to her feet and shouted, “Windows!”

Magic came through the glass, ugly and perverted, and if Nikodemus hadn’t been warned by Carson’s shout he’d have been too late to do anything at all. Magellan’s attack was silent and deadly. All three of the warlords jumped to their feet as their connection to their sworn fiends vanished. Magellan’s attack was a cover while the other mages took the warlords’ fiends. Nikodemus still had Harsh, though, and suddenly his odds against the warlords didn’t look bad at all.

The
shingg o
f Siddique’s dagger being freed to the air was nearly lost in the sound of her rolling off the sofa. Blade in her hand, she headed straight for Carson. Mir and Huijan pulled, too. The room threatened to combust as Siddique attacked.

Nikodemus flexed his body and sent heat into the dagger as the backwash hit hard. All the air went out of his lungs in one tremendous whoosh. As he fell, he didn’t know if he’d managed to change the warlord’s trajectory at all. Magellan’s strike clouded everything. He saw stars, and while his eyes refused to cooperate, he heard Xia’s knife cut through the air. A body fell boneless to the ground. Nikodemus smelled blood. Mir and Huijan pulled at the same time, raising a counter to Magellan’s attack. Harsh added his power to the effort.

Magellan’s power slowly dissipated. For the moment, thanks to Carson’s warning, the combined magic of the warlords had repelled Magellan’s sortie. But it was only a sortie. Things were bound to get much, much worse.

The blood belonged to Siddique. She lay on the floor, the hilt of Xia’s knife protruding from her throat. Already her eyes were glazed over. Nasty little fucker, that blade. Xia said something, and the knife was back in his hand.

Mir had his hands pressed to Siddique’s throat, but blood was done spilling and there was no point. Nothing was left of Siddique’s dagger but the handle, still gripped in the warlord’s hand. “You’re dead, fiend,” Mir said. He pointed at Xia. “Dead.”

Xia’s eyes went from black to blue. “Go ahead,” he said in a voice that shook with rage. “Give it your best shot.” His eyes glittered. “We’ll see which one of us is dead after you try.”

“If you want an alliance between us, Nikodemus,” Mir said, “then give me the fiend.”

Jesus H. Christ! Didn’t they ever learn? Nikodemus said, “He’s not mine to give. But even if he were, I’d have to decline. Siddique attacked us.” Anger welled up. Fury. “I warned her, and still she attacked. When she went after Carson, she went after me. I would have killed her myself for her attack on any kin who have sworn fealty to me. Xia saved me the trouble of killing her myself.”

“Believe it or not,” Harsh said. He was at the window, looking out from the side in order to keep himself a smaller target. “We have bigger problems right now.”

Nikodemus went to the window, watching the street below, where a gray-haired man stood by a limo. He focused himself and made goddamned sure of his facts. The anticipation of battle rose in him. “Looks like Magellan brought a few of his friends to play.”

Carson came alive in his head. Her exhilaration was back, thrumming through them both. A hunter, that’s what she was. His pulse sped up as he realized what that meant. Get Carson within ten feet of a powerful fiend, and she went feral. And, of course, recent events had her in full bodyguard mode, too.

“Who is it?” Nikodemus asked her.

She sat up straight, pale, but eyes green as anything. “Kynan.”

The windows flexed.

“And Rasmus,” Xia said.

Nikodemus risked a longer glance out the window. “How many fiends did Rasmus bring with him tonight?”

Xia sheathed his knife. “Including Durian and me, twelve.”

Nikodemus didn’t have time to think about that. Until Carson got her hands on him, Durian was one of the enemy. “Any apprentices?”

“One of them’s talented.”

“Three mages, then.” Xia nodded agreement. “Carson, how many fiends do you feel?”

“How can she tell if they are mageheld fiends?” Huijan asked.

Nikodemus put his back flat to the wall. This was the future. Fiends working together against the mages. Let it be so. “She’s a mage, Warlord. She feels us whether we are kin or mageheld. How many, Carson?”

“I need to be closer to be sure.” She closed her eyes. “Fifteen? Maybe.”

“Fifteen, then,” said Nikodemus. “Durian and Kynan are the only two we need to worry about.” He met Carson’s gaze. “Any chance one of them is Iskander?”

“I don’t think so.” She touched her chest. “I still feel him.” She gave a tight shake of her head. “But there’s no way to be sure.”

Mir and Huijan stayed at attention. He hoped they saw what Carson brought to them. “Any others that get you going besides Durian and Kynan?”

Carson shook her head. She paced a tight circle, hands on her hips. “Get me out, and I’ll take care of them.”

“How?” Nikodemus said. He’d been in tighter spots than this, but not by much. The windows flexed again. Magellan had taken care of the warlords’ fiends and now he was after them. A jagged crack shot across the middle window.