Illusion (4 page)

“What’s with the sword?” She nodded to the hilt.

He shrugged. “Where I come from gunpowder and energy weapons don’t always work. Something to do with the crystal compounds in the soil.” He fondled the hilt. “Along with magic, this is all I need.”

She shuddered, drawing back.
Whatever works for you, buddy.
The features exposed by the dim light were too harsh to be called handsome. His hardness was faintly repellent, as if a ball of emptiness lived inside. The cold tone contrasted with the meticulous way he’d handled her wounds. He packed a lot of heat in that big body. She could feel the warmth expanding across the seat. The nearness of him seeped into her back and opened up inside like a shot of liquor. She shuffled a few inches away.

They stared at one another for a moment.

“You’ll need to move inside before the rain comes.” He inclined his head toward her apartment. She looked up in surprise at her crumbling building, wondering when they’d arrived.

“We need to talk. Will you invite me in?” In his eyes, something glinted. He reached out, grasping her hand, and his heat slid into her palm, hurried up her arm. The plain words held something complex beneath. She tugged free, turned, and shrugged the coat off her shoulders.

“Don’t think so. I’ve had a bad night.”

What was the guy playing at? She couldn’t get involved with anyone right now. A hot bath and a glass of bourbon would help drive the whole nightmare out of her head. Maybe she’d be better off hiding in an alley, hoping neither Anu nor Horus would find her. Except she was sick of running away—had spent a lifetime doing it.

He didn’t argue. “Take the unguent with you and rub it into areas of pain. It will help heal any internal bruising or strain.” The finality in his voice sounded like a command.

She bristled, but he leaned forward and touched the neck of the pod driver, whispering something in his ear.

The butterfly door lifted, and she almost fell out in front of her bluestone building. Even if she happened to be interested, which she wasn’t, this mage was unusual. Right now he seemed to be doing something to the driver. She looked away. Trust her to find the oddest mage in a small population of complete bastards.

Something cawed. Above her head, in the bare branches of a silver ash tree, perched two large birds, a foot high. Their shiny black wings glistened off the streetlight. One leaned forward as if to take a closer look. Maya shivered. She didn’t like birds. Something about those beady eyes and sharp beaks gave her the creeps. Like they knew what was going on in her head and secretly laughed at the contents.

A fork of lightning carved across the dark sky, discharging radiant light between violet gray thunderclouds, echoing her anxious mood.

She spread her fingers over her chest and checked her heartbeat. Today lurked precariously close to the edge of a colossal free fall. She didn’t need precognition to know she was in deep trouble.

The magi would do what they pleased; the parliamentary restrictions imposed on Earth’s races wouldn’t protect her. She imagined walking into Horus and lodging a formal complaint about Jhara and Oxyhiayal, all the superior magi gawping at her like she’d lost her marbles. Maybe she had, because for a while back there, she’d been certain a demon stared at her from inside that damn mirror.

The visions were becoming harder to control, even with the increased dosage. It had to mean she was finally unraveling and losing her mind.

Broken Wards

Resheph leaned forward, blowing into the driver’s ear. The power word buffeted the vehicle with a high wind. The driver lolled back in his seat and released a series of sighs that exuded garlic and spices. He tossed a semiprecious stone into the driver’s lap as payment for the ride and the human shuddered as if a gargoyle had pissed on his tombstone.

As soon as he stepped from the bedraggled craft, it sped off, spraying water and banking around a corner.

Earth was a perverted bitch. It was just like the Carthaginian succubus he’d once hunted who’d liked to rip off a warlock’s testes before eating him. His body dragged, the flow of electrical charge leaking from his feet into the earth in a reversal of what should happen.

He clenched his fists as a current of power flashed from tendon and bone. As air sucked into his lungs, he caught the scent of cat urine, human waste, and overripe fruit. The mission could only get worse, especially when the sweetest-smelling female had an assassin’s target on the back of her head.

He strapped his sword to his side before changing his blood so light passed through his cells. Despite the covenant between realms, Maya was marked to die. It needed to be done quickly because if the magi captured him, Balkaith would have a dimensional incident on their hands. He’d be furious if he had to answer to the Tribune on this crazy scheme.

Neutralize the danger. Find out what she can do and bring the body back for postmortem.

He’d expected a dead-eyed witch and discovered a nimble-witted blonde who used her spellbox like a prop and surprised him with her vehemence for survival.

“Release,” Resheph said.

The black tattoos on his arm pulsed and popped. The ravens lifted their heads and tugged, springing from his skin. He winced as they clawed out of his body, leaving tiny beads of blood and a burning sensation on his forearm. Their wings unfurled and they cawed, flapping to a tree outside Maya’s house.

“Scout.”

Black shadows tumbled under the light before they flew off on separate courses.

He stared up at Maya’s building. The woman was an unholy mess, her magic in disharmony and so disorganized he couldn’t be sure of her racial signature.

The first sight of her had brought a quickening: a thundering of the blood, shocking in its intensity. Earlier, outside the factory, her eyes had been wide in terror. At the sight of her everything had become still. Streetlamps had cast soft strokes across her face, highlighting the sensitive place between shoulder and neck.

He invoked a spell to ward himself against enchantress magic. The rune glowed in the air like molten rock before it sprayed, sinking into his skin and leaving the bitter taste of chemical compounds. He cleared his throat to rid himself of the foul taste.

There was one way to kill a ritual witch, and that was decapitation. He hated witches. They were the foulest of supernatural creatures, dragging reanimated bodies back from the afterlife and eating their dead, after they’d sacrificed small animals to commune with their ancestors.

This one looked like a diminutive pixie and stepped about on high heels as if the world owed her a favor—sarcastic and guarded—swallowing charms like water. He’d caught her at a time when she was down on her luck, and her expression told him she’d rather claw off her face than be seen as vulnerable. Pretending to be a human was a peculiar strategy, but the mage in the factory had underestimated her, so it must work in her favor. He wouldn’t make the same mistake.

Her carelessness surprised him. It showed in her reckless exploration of space and time, her quick smiles, and the way she pretended he wasn’t a threat even when he clearly made her uncomfortable.

Her tenement rose up into the black sky, crowded on one side by a partially collapsed building frame, the steel struts protruding through masonry. He loped through muddy potholes, watching her building. Lights appeared in a dust-grimed window high above and her silhouette moved behind the curtain.

All that contained wildness was going through the motions of readying for bed. Her small, straight nose, white skin, and Phoenician heritage revealed by the high cheekbones called to him. Appealingly, lavishly pretty in a way that went beyond simple words of “beautiful” or “elegant.” He imaged her blonde hair swinging and her body weaving like one of the temple
Ishtarites
back home.

Images built in his mind, improper ones involving mouth and tongue and teeth. She’d have a cool, light touch, her caresses hasty and impatient, her fine-grained skin flushed, her eyes wide with pure joy. His hand running over her stomach would have her twitching beneath him.

Touch me.

His cock jumped and he shifted to make room in his pants.

He couldn’t be attracted to a witch, the worst of the arcane folk. And to be distracted during an assignment was unforgiveable. It was the grossest violation of his warrior code. Yet even out here in the street he could feel the current of her, his warlock testes rising slightly, luxuriating in her proximity. Despite her lineage and his assignment, he wanted to see her again. He was stunned at the intensity of it.

The wildness was unfamiliar, his mind focused on her dainty frame so different from the women back home. Perhaps it was her difference that attracted him. Or this unnatural planet agitated his common sense and affected his higher-level thinking.

He had to get off this dank world. Despite the ash-covered sky he sensed a high moon—a moon that convulsively held on to its powers, refused to wash away the defilement of the planet.

He cast a further spell, one to purify the mind, and regrouped, tore his mind away from thoughts of her body, bright eyes, chest moving in and out in convulsive breaths. Bliss.

He reeled his mind in.
You have a job to do. Stop thinking with your cock.

It was harder than expected to look away. The finality of it gave him the irrational belief he wouldn’t see her again. It was ridiculous. She wouldn’t seem so fine without a head. But that sent his mind in an entirely different direction, of small hands flung high to protect a blonde head in life’s primal reaction to threat.

He cursed and forced his mind back to task. Earth went on about its business, a filthy degenerate excuse for civilized society.

Small iron gratings were mounted to the outside of the stonework, connected by rickety stairs. The ladder to the lowest level was fixed high enough that a person couldn’t access the upper floors unless they could spring several body lengths to gain entry. A platform rested outside her window sash and he eyed it contemplatively, examining the building’s defenses.

He reached the corner and drew his sword, running a thumb over the edge. He should have killed her when he’d stepped from her portal. But the damned building had caught fire, and he needed her to draw another dimensional exit. She’d obviously offended the magi, or perhaps they’d finally discovered a witch lived in their midst. Despite the attraction, or maybe because of it, he’d befriend her—pretend to help her dodge those on her trail, give her the charms she seemed to enjoy. Then when she was separated from everyone, trusted him enough to reveal the source of her craft, he’d wield his sword, wiping the blade in her blood to stop her head from regrowing. In the meantime, he’d follow the Tribune’s unofficial request to gather tactical intelligence of mage powers.

“I’m calling in a favor,” Alexandr, the Tribune adept, had said. The easy smile didn’t soften the tight lines around his eyes.

“What could a witch do? From that distance,” Resheph had scoffed after he’d heard an Earth female’s pictures had breached dimensions. He unpinned his coat, sharing a look with a serving girl who was holding a tray and swaying through a rough crowd.

“Indira just sacked another village, five
legus
south of Tau,” Alexandr said. Indira controlled her bare-limbed Tau coven in the marshy wetlands, in the far west of the Enim Empire, where the sun lay down to rest at night. Balkaith was embedded in the stark black slopes of the Tyran mountain range in the east. Five
legus
was more than Resheph’s Order could march in eight days.
“
Alta alatis patent
,” Alexandr added. The sky is open to those who have wings.

The image of her bodiless head rocking on the pavement brought a little searing stab to his midsection. He rubbed his chest reflexively. Something was happening to him; an odd sensation was poking and prodding away at his normal detachment. The world was wrong, affecting his normal way of being, his focus askew.

A few folk bustled along the pitted bitumen under a sky blanketed with ash and violet-gray thunderclouds. Prostitutes milled on corners and in doorways, arching their backs and cocking their hips. Their skin was red from the bitter wind. Perhaps he could avail himself of one or two before leaving? But instead of raising his blood, the look of their bareness shriveled his cock. He issued a low sound of chagrin. What in the gods was going on?

The potholed road wound up a short incline before disappearing around a northwest corner. Maya’s window darkened and he frowned, then flung a tranquilizing charm at her window to keep her in place.

He left the possibility of sexual transaction behind and jogged in and out of the shadows of the multistoried buildings, selecting five cardinal points to surround the area. Pressing his hand on crumbling mortar, he marked a sigil and muttered a spell to invoke his raven familiars.

Corvus sub oculos non cadere
.

His arms tingled and the spell fell into place, creating an etheric boundary that shimmered like a heat wave. The ward encircled the property, recording activity within the area. He laid a short-range portal to the distant river in case of emergency.

All the while, something lurked on the edge of his consciousness.

The night felt strange, full of cold wind, roiling clouds, and intermittent lightning.

Low black clouds above the apartment alarmed him, the wrongness of it settling into his spine. He stopped, brushed his damp hair back from his face. Cold magic reached out, touched his body with wet fingers. His vision sharpened and he caught a glimpse of a black mass slithering in the shadows between two buildings. It smelled damp and rotten like a vat of pig entrails and congealed blood. Maleficium—the old craft. He frowned; there was no possibility of Maya breaching the circle—she didn’t wear the tattoos of a high level
wardsmith
, and by now she’d be deep in sleep. The sensation strengthened, agitated and chaotic.