Chapter 18

Kade was the buyer. What a surprise. Who else would the Consilium send to pick up their apocalyptic artifact? Who else could possibly play the role of glorified deliveryman? Apparently, that bald bastard didn't have enough on his plate with trying to kidnap me.

While I swore like a sailor with a stubbed toe, Lienna dragged me back around the corner of the hangar as though that might shield us from his clairsentience.

"Are we far enough away?" she asked urgently. "Do you think he can sense us from here? Will he recognize us with all the other people around?"

I answered with an unhelpful curse. My actual answers, if I'd been coherent enough to share them, would've been, "Probably not," "Probably yes," "Definitely yes," and to the final question she hadn't yet voiced, "Absolutely yes, we are so fucked."

Did we have a Plan C? Because if it somehow involved taking that asshole on a ride up to thirty thousand feet in his own plane, then sending him ground side without a parachute, I'd happily volunteer for the job of Primary Pusher.

Teeth gritted, I poked my head around the corner. Kade had joined the group surrounding Visser, and he was speaking to her with almost deferential body language—which put me that much more on edge. How tough was Visser that even Kade didn't want to tick her off?

Kade wasn't looking our way. Could I assume we were outside the radius of his clairsentient powers? Regardless, the moment we got any closer, he'd know we were here and why.

I tapped my earpiece. "Darius, where are you? We found the buyer, and it's Kade."

"Kade?" Darius repeated after a brief pause. "Where are you?"

"Near side of the hangar. Front corner."

"I'll be there in three minutes. Wait for me."

Three minutes wasn't long, but it felt like an eternity. I leaned out to take another quick peek. Visser was now holding the black case with the artifact. Kade extended his hand to take it.

Shiiiiit.

"Darius," I muttered, "they aren't wasting any time. We don't have three minutes."

His voice didn't pop into my ears. Had he run into trouble?

"We can't wait," I told Lienna. "Kade could get on that plane any second now. We have to move."

Her eyes were wide with trepidation. "But how? Kade will sense us."

"I don't need to get that close." I waved my hand. "I'm a telekinetic. I can yank the case away from him, Blythe-style."

One more glance around the corner—the case was in Kade's hand.

It was now or never.

"Cover me," I said, then rushed into the hangar.

Cursing, Lienna stepped out behind me as I made a beeline for the group of mythics, invisible to everyone but Kade. He was handing something to Visser and didn't so much as glance my way.

I narrowed my focus to the black case in his other hand, imagining my psychic grip wrapping around it. Faint pressure pulled at the muscles in my arms.

"Ori gravitatis maximum inicio globum!" Lienna chanted, somewhere behind me.

I yanked as hard as I could with my telekinetic powers.

Three things happened at once: the case wrenched from Kade's hand, he and Visser both turned sharply toward me, and a giant, fizzy orange star soared over my head.

Lienna's spell looked like the Roman-candle sparkler barrage she'd used on Kade's goons, the one that had erupted into mini black holes. Except this spell emitted a single shot—a Hulk-sized, hopped-up-on-steroids shot.

Sparkling brightly, the scintillating spell flew in a beautiful arc, reaching its peak halfway between me and its targets, its trajectory perfectly aimed to land smack-dab in the middle of the goon convention. The Pelican case flew through the air just above the ground in the opposite direction, racing toward me.

Visser threw her hand up. A volley of monstrous ice shards carried on a howling gust of wind hurtled into Lienna's magical projectile.

The moment the ice touched it, Lienna's spell flashed blindingly bright, then erupted into a swirling black orb. Everything nearby was sucked toward it—including the artifact case I was zooming toward my waiting hands.

It was wrenched from my telekinetic grip with cosmic force, flying into the air along with a few unfortunate mythics and their various belongings. Its gravitational pull dragged me several feet toward it, but I was far enough away to resist its supercharged yank.

Unfortunately, so were Kade, Visser, and most of the Fire and Ice rogues.

Staggering against the pull of the spell, I reinforced my invisi-bomb and tried to spot the black case amidst the swirling black gravity orb the size of a smart car. The spell waned, and several men fell out of it, landing with thuds on the concrete floor of the hangar.

A blast of icy wind hit me hard. Lienna grabbed my arm as we both stumbled, slipping on the suddenly slick floor. Ice was spreading across it, and the wind gusted harder as the air hazed.

Standing beside Kade, Visser had her arm outstretched toward me and Lienna. Invisible me and Lienna.

Belatedly, I noticed the new piece of jewelry around her wrist—the item Kade had given her. A leather bracelet just like his anti-Psychica one.

Visser was immune to my warps.

Had Kade bought a whole goddamn six-pack of those things at the flea market?

Dark, angry clouds roiled across the ceiling, spinning ominously as the spiraling wind picked up in velocity. It whipped sharp pellets of ice into my face, half blinding me. Lienna ducked behind me, frantically spinning her cube.

"Ori te formo cupolam!" she cried.

Her blue shield shimmered into being around us a moment before three white-hot streaks of lightning blasted down from a vortex of clouds, hitting the watery dome with ear-splitting cracks of thunder. The shrieking wind whipped into a tight maelstrom that closed around us—a tornado.

Visser had called down a tornado. For a split second, all I felt was jilted fury at yet another way Faustus Trivium had screwed with me: his pathetic example of tempe magic had given me a wholly inadequate idea of what Visser could do. Faustus was an incompetent cretin on every possible level.

Visser's weather-from-hell battered Lienna's shield, and it rippled wildly under the onslaught. I couldn't see anything outside it but wind, clouds, and ice.

Thunder rumbled directly overhead. Another lightning bolt slammed down onto the shield, and it burst apart.

The weathery assault crashed into us—ice and dirt whipping into our faces, the wind almost shoving us off our feet. Eyes scrunched, I grabbed Lienna and threw us down, trying to protect her with my body, my arms over my head.

The battering wind died to an ominously cyclonic breeze. I shoved up into a crouch, took a look around—and went still, my pulse hammering in my throat. Beside me, Lienna had pushed onto her hands and knees, but she didn't make a move either.

We were trapped.

Visser stood fifteen feet away, a hand raised casually toward us. She'd pulled out her switch at some point—a nasty-looking stiletto dagger with a curved cross guard. Her sunken, hooded eyes watched us with zero mercy.

Arrayed behind her was her personal guard of muscle-headed mythics, and completing the semi-circle that cut off our exit and hemmed us in against the hangar wall were a solid twenty Fire and Ice mages.

For a petrified moment, I wondered if my psycho warping powers were working at all. I was still invisi-bombing the shit out of every mind here to make me and Lienna undetectable, yet everyone was looking our way.

I glanced at my partner out of the side of my eye and realized my mistake. Visser's arctic storm had left frost and bits of ice clinging to us—and I hadn't incorporated that into my warp.

Visser could see us, thanks to the artifact Kade had given her, and she'd passed that gift on to everyone else with her polar assault.

Speaking of Kade, the billiard-headed bastard was lingering a few steps behind Visser, watching with mild curiosity as two dozen mages prepared to obliterate me and Lienna. The black artifact case was safely back in his hand.

Shit.

"Tell me who you work for," Visser ordered, her accented voice rough like a chain-smoker's.

Double, triple, quadruple shit.

Kade arched his eyebrows as if asking what I intended to do now.

Visser waited a moment longer, then twirled her blade. "Then you can just die. Kill them!"

Not waiting for the inevitable onslaught of the rogue guild's eponymous magic, I dropped a Funhouse halluci-bomb over the entire hangar. Everyone—save Visser and Kade—reeled, but it wasn't enough to stop them. Fire, ice, wind, water, and weather launched at us from every angle.

"Ori elementa diffundo!" Lienna shouted.

A shimmering orb, almost transparent, billowed out from one of Lienna's new necklaces. As it expanded around us, the incoming elemental missiles met the shimmering barrier and fizzled. Instead of electric bolts and fireballs, we were lightly dusted with sparks and ash. Even Visser's wind-propelled ice blades had diffused into snowflakes.

It was one of the craziest abjuration spells I'd ever seen from my partner, but it was already fading—and the mages had lots of juice left.

I fractured everyone's perceptions by several more degrees, straining to make it complex enough to mess with a bunch of brains at once. I pulled my potion gun and fired indiscriminately at the surrounding enemies, dropping a couple of them before they could launch a second attack.

It wasn't enough—there were too many of them and Visser was ramping up for another wave of tempestuous weather, totally unperturbed by my warps.

This was the end of the road.

A voice crackled through my ear. "Going dark."

Darius's warning came an instant before his magic struck.

My vision went black.

Not merely dark. It was a total absence of any illumination whatsoever, more encompassing than the deepest moonless night, more impenetrable than a sealed subterranean cave.

Lienna's gasp and the sudden eruption of alarmed shouts from the enemy mythics told me I wasn't the only one who'd gone blind. Darius must've blanketed the entire hangar in this absolute eclipse.

With our imminent deaths marginally averted, one thought dominated my brain: get to Kade.

But where in all this utter pandemonium was he?

I concentrated. It only took me a moment to find Kade's mind among all the strangers—he'd given me a real clear picture of the psychotic slimeball he was, so I knew which gross, glutinous brain to feel for. The moment I locked onto him, I realized he was moving away from me.

"Lienna!" I yelled, reaching blindly for her. "Kade's this way!"

Our hands connected in the darkness, and I pulled her forward—right as the darkness popped. Light poured into my unprepared pupils, revealing Visser and two muscle heads mere steps away from us.

"Kit, go!" Lienna raised her hand as Visser swiped her dagger through the air. "Ori repercutio!"

The gold ring on Lienna's hand flashed faintly as an ice-shard-laden gust erupted from Visser's dagger. The elemental attack met the shimmering glow of Lienna's ring and rebounded, blasting Visser and her minions.

Half impressed by yet another new spell and half panicking at the thought of leaving Lienna alone in this hellish magic brawl, I invisi-warped myself and ran toward the open hangar door.

I sped past a cluster of enraged, confused mages—mages who appeared to be blind. As shouts rang out, I glimpsed a flicker of a certain silver fox as he slit a man's throat and vanished. The rogues were going down fast, unable to defend against the assassin in all the chaos.

Breaking free of the melee, I sprinted onto the tarmac outside the hangar. Ahead of me, Kade was all alone, striding toward the ramp into the plane's cargo bay. Its engines were starting up, their roar growing louder and louder.

I couldn't warp his mind. I couldn't sneak up on him. So I would charge that bastard down and use my fists instead.

Kade glanced back over his shoulder then broke into a run.

I pumped my arms, pushing my muscles for more speed. Concentrating hard, I locked my telekinetic grip around the black case and wrenched it toward me.

Kade lurched, almost losing his grip. At the foot of the ramp, he whirled around to face me. His grin was sharp and taunting.

"Want this?" he called, holding up the case.

I gave it another telekinetic yank, throwing everything into it. The sudden weight on all my muscles made me stumble, and I almost fell.

Kade still held the case. Telekinetic strength was limited by physical strength, and Kade, with his linebacker build, was stronger than me. This was a tug o' war I would lose.

So, I let go. The sudden release of tension caused Kade to recoil and fall backward.

I reached him as he jumped to his feet. He lifted the case, and my swinging fist crashed into it instead of his solar plexus. Pain splintered through my knuckles.

Kade backed up the ramp as I lunged for him, slamming into his middle. He went down, and I drove my fist into his kidney before he threw me off. I rolled away, afraid he'd try to pin me.

As I leaped up, unsteady on the steep ramp, Kade tossed the case into the cargo hold, where the blond Thor-esque minion caught it.

Baring my teeth, I hit the man with a Blackout warp—but he didn't go down. Damn the bald creep for arming all his underlings with anti-Kit artifacts.

A fistfight it would be.

I rushed Kade again, thankful that his "don't kill the psycho warper" orders prevented him from pulling a weapon on me. We came together with fists swinging, the slant of the ramp giving him an extra foot of height. He blocked my first hit, but I smashed his kneecap with my second. I tried to tackle him again, but he got a grip on my vest. With a grunt of effort, he hauled me up and flipped me over his shoulder.

I hit the metal floor with a gasp, my earpiece dislodging from its spot and skittering away. Damn, I should have remembered Obi-Wan's wisdom about the high ground.

Kade's foot hit my gut, the blow tempered by my bulletproof vest. I rolled sideways to get away from him.

"Go," Kade barked. Not at me, I assumed, since I wasn't going anywhere without that case.

I shoved up, ready to leap at Kade again, when the floor rumbled violently. A loud motor sound filled the back of the cargo bay, and the plane lurched forward.

The plane was moving?

Kade sneered at me, our positions reversed—I was inside the plane, facing the cargo bay ramp. Sickening fear rippled down my spine and weakened my legs.

Behind Kade, the cargo ramp was lifting. It was closing. The plane was picking up speed, moving away from the hangar—toward the runway.

My gaze jumped to Kade, who grinned like a shark smelling blood in the water and knowing his dinner was moments away.

Oh hell no. He was abducting me again, and I hadn't even realized it.

I looked back over my shoulder, where the blond minion had retreated with the case. Two more dark-clad goons waited. I was outnumbered and trapped, and pretty soon I'd be several thousand feet in the air.

"So nice of you to save me a trip back to Vancouver," Kade said, cruel humor weighing down his voice. "I'm afraid we'll have to make a quick pit stop in New York before I can hand you over to my superiors."

I faced him again, my heart hammering in the vicinity of my Adam's apple. I couldn't take them all, not without warps—but I couldn't leave the artifact.

Kade read the conflict on my face. "You'll be our property one way or another, Kit. It's up to you how much you want to suffer first."

The decision I had to make felt like a tearing pain in my chest. I let out a wordless shout, thrust out my arm, and made a hooking motion.

The back of Kade's shirt whipped up and pulled over his head, covering his eyes and restricting his arms. I charged straight into him, ramming my shoulder into his stomach. We slammed down and rolled onto the half-closed cargo ramp. It kept rising, tilting us back into the plane.

Kade pulled his shirt off his eyes and grabbed for me as I lunged toward the ramp. His fingers grazed my arm as I used telekinesis to shove myself away from him.

His laughter reached my ears as I rolled off the ramp. I dropped, arms clamped around my head, and hit the tarmac.

I'd seen a hundred versions of the "bail from a moving vehicle and roll across the pavement" move performed by stunt doubles and adrenaline-addicted action stars, but holy shit, I hadn't realized how much it hurt. Like getting body-slammed by a brick wall.

I rolled until my momentum flagged, then sprawled against the tarmac. The transport plane's engines thundered, painfully blasting my eardrums, and I lifted my head to see the aircraft accelerating down the runway, its cargo hatch fully closed. The nose lifted and the plane was away.

The weapon was gone.

Anger boiled through me—at Kade and at myself. But I didn't have time to marinate in self-pity. This wasn't over yet.

Shoving to my feet, I forced my aching body into a limping run. A couple hundred yards away, magic burst and flashed in the hangar. A pillar of terramage-shifted earth had sprouted from the tarmac like an ugly tree.

I pushed myself faster. I'd left Lienna and Darius alone to fight a horde of mages. If they were hurt—if they'd been killed?—

Another flash of fire, and then a sudden, earth-shaking boom blasted outward. The silhouetted figures in and around the hangar were knocked off their feet. A roiling fireball that looked way more like burning jet fuel than pyro magic exploded, belching smoke into the air.

What the hell had happened?

Cursing my lost earpiece, I kept running, closing in on the action. From out of the smoke, the tall, lanky form of Floris Visser appeared, backing away from something as she lashed her switch through the air, frosty wind spiraling around her like a shield.

Before whatever magic she'd been about to unleash could manifest, a barrage of black darts fired out of the smoke and peppered Visser. They went right through her, but they weren't harmless. She dropped to her knees, all signs of her weather magic dissipating.

Lienna charged out of the hangar, clutching her wooden cube, her hair tangled and her satchel bouncing at her side. Soot and blood streaked her face.

"Lienna!" I yelled, veering toward her.

One of Visser's bodyguards jumped between his boss and my partner, slamming his pike-shaped switch into the ground. A wall of earth erupted up through the tarmac around Visser, creating a circular barrier.

Lienna spotted me amidst the bedlam and ran toward me. "Kit!"

I caught her with both arms, holding her tightly. "Where's Darius?"

"Here."

In a blink, he appeared. He was sootier than Lienna, and his clothes were scorched on one side. I had a sudden idea of who'd been responsible for the huge-ass explosion—though I had no idea how.

I took a deep breath, settling my lungs and taking in the warzone around us. Through the ash, ice, and smoke, I could see at least ten rogue mages homing in on us, unwilling to give up the fight.

My jaw clenched. Keeping Lienna and Darius out of my halluci-bomb, I unleashed a Blackout that cascaded through the entire hangar. With a clarity I'd never experienced before, I felt every mind—every single one, dozens of them—buckle under the all-consuming emptiness. I could feel their emotions flash into terror as their senses vanished into the void.

The weight of the warp crushed my mind. Foggy, dizzy numbness rolled over me, but I would hold it until we were safe. Every mythic in sight collapsed, writhing on the ground, the air filling with screams and begging cries for help.

Only Visser stayed as she was, staring at us from behind her crumbled earthy shield, her magic wiped out by Lienna's spell.

"Time to go." Darius placed a hand on my shoulder. "I'll hide us."

Panting, I dropped the warp. Darius took my elbow with one hand and Lienna's with the other. He steered us away from the hangar as the screams stopped, leaving only the roar of the blazing fuel tanks. Visser kept staring at the spot where we'd disappeared, her face twisted with fury and fear.

Invisible and empty-handed, we left the burning hangar and vacant runway behind.