“You wouldn’t dare.”
Kai met her stare, his merciless eyes unblinking. A few seconds before the fire tornado would have collided into Olivia, she jumped aside.
“You son of a dragon’s whore!” she screamed at him, raising her hands. Broken shards of brick rose into the air.
“Time to fight, boss?” Dal asked Kai as he and the other two commandos came up behind him.
The brick shards were humming softly. The countdown to their explosions into micro splinters had begun. This was going to hurt.
“There is no point in fighting,” a voice echoed.
A gust of magic swept across the hollow husk of a room, putting out Kai’s fire and grounding Olivia’s bricks. Sera squinted her eyes, struggling to see past the smoke and shadows. A man stepped out of the darkness, flipping down his hood. It was Finn Drachenburg, and he was holding the Priming Bangles.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
An Ancient Purpose
KAI STOOD VERY still, his eyes frozen over with cold fury. And those eyes stalked his cousin as he crossed the room. Finn took his place between Harrison and Olivia, handing each of them one pair of the Priming Bangles. Then he turned a smug smile on Kai.
“I thought you had people watching him,” Sera whispered.
“I did.”
“They decided to take a little nap,” Finn told him, his smile growing wider.
“What do you think you’re doing here, helping these miscreants?” the dragon demanded. His voice was low, his words oozing venom.
“Helping them?” A demented laugh burst from Finn’s mouth. “No, no. You are mistaken. I’m not helping them.” He stood taller. “I’m leading them.”
Kai’s face went blank, but his eyes were boiling over with volcanic vengeance. “Explain yourself.”
“You’re not in charge here, Kai. I am. In this room, I am king, and you are nothing. Your position is irrelevant. Your magic is irrelevant. Except in how it can serve us.” Finn smirked at him. “And you
will
be helping us.”
Kai folded his arms across his chest. “No. I will not. Unlike all of you, my mind is not weak. I can fight the mind control you could not.”
“You misunderstand. Everything.”
“I’m still waiting for you to start making sense.”
“I’m not controlling them,” Finn said. “They’re acting of their own free will.”
“The madness in their eyes indicates otherwise.”
“That is not madness. It is magic unfettered, broken from the bonds that have held us back for far too long.”
Sera looked into his eyes. That spark—it was not magic intoxication like she’d thought; it was the spark of a fanatic. “You lied to us.”
And her magic hadn’t picked it up. Neither had Kai’s. Finn was dabbling in some seriously strong magic.
Mock shock washed across the fanatic’s face. “Did I? Oh, dear.”
“There’s no magic apocalypse coming, is there?”
“A revolution, yes. An apocalypse, no. I might have played up the death and destruction a bit.” He shrugged. “But how else could I lure Kai out of his protective perch in that ugly office building?”
“You were in control of your own body that day I fought you at Magical Research Laboratories.”
Finn dipped his chin. “And what a glorious fight it was. You shattered my wind barrier with a single touch. A Magic Breaker. It’s a rare skill, and their magic tends to be too weak to break any spell of consequence. You broke a first tier spell.” He stepped forward. “I’ve never seen anything like you before.”
Kai moved between them, his eyes screaming murder. The dragon was dangerously close to the surface. “Stay away from her.”
“We’ll chat later,” Finn promised Sera, then turned his gaze to Kai. “You don’t understand. You think we are the enemy. We’re not. We’re the solution the supernatural world has been craving. We want a better future. And soon all of the other supernaturals will realize they do too. This is all for the greater good.”
“Save the speeches,” Kai snapped at him. “You’re not going to convert me to your cult.”
Finn let out a long, melodramatic sigh, one he’d clearly been practicing for a long time to get just right. “I knew you wouldn’t see things our way. You never were a visionary, Kai.” His voice dropped, and he added darkly, “So I wasn’t planning on recruiting you to the cause. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be useful.”
He motioned the Sage siblings forward. Harrison and Olivia each set one pair of the Priming Bangles into Finn’s hands.
“Don’t make me laugh.” Steam simmered off of Kai’s breath. “Am I supposed to be afraid of a few children’s toys?”
“Oh, but the bangles are so much more than that. They have an ancient history. An ancient purpose. And you will help them fulfill it.”
A ring of fire blazed up, trapping them inside with Finn and his lunatic army. Kai’s eyes panned across the barrier, the crackling flames reflecting in them. He lifted his hand. Snowflakes began to fall.
“I wouldn’t,” Finn warned. “I’ve instructed my mages to start killing your comrades if you interfere. Good as you are, Kai, there are a lot more of us than there are of you. And you can’t block all of our magic. Stand down if you want those four to live.”
Kai’s eyes narrowed to angry slivers as he met his cousin’s stare. But he lowered his hand. The snowflakes hissed, dissolving into steam.
“Good,” said Finn. “As I was saying, the Priming Bangles have an ancient history. Our family has an ancient history too. And you’re the first of us in generations with the power of the dragon. You’re as close to pure, undiluted magic that I’m going to find.”
He waved four of the mages forward. Kai watched them surround him. He didn’t move, but the look in his eyes froze them in their tracks.
“He won’t bite. Kai is actually a very simple person, driven by a few very simple instincts. One of the strongest of these is the instinct to protect.” Finn clinked the bangles at him. “It must conflict horribly with the bloodlust. Dragons are such moody creatures.”
Taunt strings of lightning slid up Kai’s arms.
“See what I mean?” Finn told his captive audience of madmen. “Once you understand how his simple mind works, you can control him. He won’t fight us. He knows his friends will die, and he couldn’t stand the guilt of letting that happen
again
.”
The lightning fizzled out, and Kai’s arms dropped to his sides. The dragon—the powerhouse mage, the confident and cocky man—he looked totally and completely defeated.
Finn gave his shoulder a patronizing pat. “Vampires draw their power by drinking the blood of others. The Priming Bangles are like that for magic: a conduit. Our family has been using them to allow experienced mages to boost our novices’ magic until they learned to draw on their own. A waste of the bangles’ true power! With a bit of old, forgotten magic, I can use them to drain your power. I’ve tested them out, and they work.”
Euphoria drenched Finn’s magic, crazed and insatiable. It broke through the false facade he’d managed to build up around himself—the clueless and underpowered cousin that had fooled not only her but Kai too. Right now, his magic was strong. Not Kai strong, but definitely first tier. He’d mentioned testing the bangles. Maybe he’d played vampire and snacked on a few mages’ magic before making his grand entrance. And now he wanted to use those magic-leaching bracelets on Kai.
“Why?” Sera’s voice was thick with anger, so thick that she could hardly speak.
Finn’s magic snapped out at her, looking for holes in her defenses. She knew this game. She’d been playing it since the day she was born. She made her wall go invisible and her magic blank.
“I don’t feel any magic from you.” He frowned. “And I can’t feel you blocking me. How did you do that?”
She glared at him. So even after gorging on magic, he wasn’t as strong as his cousin. Her trick had never worked on Kai. “You are a poser,” she told Finn. “A fraud.”
“Some are born with powerful magic. The rest of us have to earn it.” He shrugged. “I figured you of all people would appreciate the plight of the disenfranchised. After all, don’t you have to deal with the insufferable behavior of the magic dynasties every day?”
Sera decided not to mention that he and at least two key players in his revolution were members of those magic dynasties. It would have gone right over their heads. So she kept her comments to herself, but she did step in front of him when he tried to slap the bangles onto Kai’s wrists.
“Find another power source for your revolution.”
“It’s not so simple,” Finn said, and he almost looked sorry. But he wasn’t. She knew his type. He’d only fooled himself into thinking he was sorry because that fit his image of what a leader had to be: a martyr who would give up anything, even his own family, for the greater good. “I need a lot of power to boost all these mages, and Kai is the purest source of magic. I can do it without the bangles and without Kai—I’ve done it before, as you can see here—but the results vary.”
So that’s how all those mages had gotten more powerful. They’d leeched magic. That also explained the possessed look in their eyes and why they occasionally seemed more lucid than other times. They’d be most batty right after a magic gorge, and once it started to wear off, their minds settled a bit. Settled, not were sane. Sera hated the Magic Council with the force of a thousand exploding suns, but Finn’s magic-sucking free-for-all was a million times worse. Every single one of his mages was out of their mind.
“The bangles help channel the magic, especially from a powerful mage,” Finn said. “If we tried to drain Kai’s magic without them, we’d likely make the whole island explode. That’s what happened with Aiden in New York, and that overload took a chunk out of the city. Kai is many times stronger than Aiden.”
Kai had mentioned the incident involving another Drachenburg cousin in New York City. If Finn’s failed experiments were responsible for that much destruction, she’d hate to be there when he actually succeeded. He was the sort of person who’d destroy the world if it furthered his agenda.
“Why are you so casual about killing your own family?” she demanded. “Is that your vision of the future: every supernatural for themselves, only the strong survive, and screw all the humans?”
Finn’s sigh was exasperated—and just a touch offended. “I’m not going to kill Kai. I’m just going to drain him. Then the magic inside of him will refill, and I can do it again. And again.” He turned his greedy eyes on Kai. “As many times as I want. Unlimited renewable magic.”
Finn’s mages had clamped onto Kai, holding him still as their leader popped open the Priming Bangles. Sera tried to ram them, but three more mages split off from the main group and tackled her to the floor. She kicked and hit at them—and when that didn’t work, she dug her fingernails into them and zapped them with magic. But more and more mages kept coming. Behind her, the commandos were fighting the mages who had swarmed through the door.
Sera’s lip was bleeding and her head spinning as she crawled her way out from beneath the pile of dozing mages. At least she thought they were unconscious. Foam was frothing out of the mouth of that last one. She hoped he wasn’t dead. Not because he didn’t deserve it. She just didn’t want to be the instrument of his demise. There was a big difference between killing a monster and killing a person. She’d done it before and would likely have to do it again, but she didn’t particularly like it.
She danced around dive-bombing bricks and fireballs on her way to Kai. He wore one pair of the bangles around his wrists. Finn wore the other, his mouth spitting out chants. His words pulsed with dark, sinister magic. The echoes of it stung her skin. She felt dirty. A hundred showers wouldn’t be enough to wash the filth of that magic away. There was something very, very wrong about it.
“Yes. Yes. Perfect.” Finn grinned, high on magic. His bangles glowed brighter with every passing second.
And as his bangles grew brighter, Kai’s dulled. Finn was draining his magic, and from the look on Kai’s face, it hurt. A lot. His fists were clenched, his neck stiff.
Horrified, Sera watched them. She’d never seen anything like this before. The world held no shortage of horrors, but this was pure evil.
Kai began to roar out, the song of his torment beyond horrible. Beyond belief. Symbols drawn in magical light pulsed across his skin, smoke sizzling up from them. He looked like he was on fire.
Sera couldn’t think. She could only act. Not stopping to second guess herself, she rushed forward and planted one hand on Finn’s bangles, the other on Kai’s. Pain and magic ripped through her hands, frying every nerve in them. The burning river of magic shot down her arms, and liquified pain flooded into her chest, dripping down her ribs. As it pushed into her legs, her knees collapsed. Finn tried to throw her off. She couldn’t even stand, but she clenched her teeth and held on, trying to concentrate on disrupting the flow of magic. She had to stop it.
Finn kicked her, but next to the pain wracking her body, it hardly registered. She could smell her hands burning. The fact that she couldn’t feel them was very bad news, but she tried not to think about that. She had to break the magic draining Kai. She pushed against the tidal wave, willing it to shatter.
It laughed in her face.
She couldn’t see anything anymore. She could hardly hear. The tidal wave was drowning her, its salty waters burning her nose and suffocating her breath. She was slipping.
A soft growl, a shadow of its former self, buzzed in the air. Something about it was familiar, but her head was too water-logged to remember what. The growl came again. It said her name. Kai? Sera tried to open her eyes—to find him—but she saw only blackness.
“Sera,” Kai’s voice whispered in her ear.
“I’m lost,” she muttered, fear filling her. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Break the magic.”
“How?”
“Like before. Reverse it. Flip it inside out.”
“Will that really work? Will it shatter the spell?”
He didn’t answer. He was gone. She was alone again, alone inside the tidal wave. And if she didn’t break it, she would die inside here.
Sera stretched her tired, torn magic out once more. She hooked onto a piece of the evil magic. It took all her willpower not to let go the moment she made contact. Slippery, oily, icy, it tried to slither away. She held on tighter, wrapping her magic around it like a warm blanket. It squirmed and flopped like a fish caught on land. Encouraged by its fear, Sera flipped her magic inside out. The tidal waves stilled—then shattered. As millions of tiny crumbs dissolved into the air, she opened her eyes.