Chapter 23

On our YVR to JFK plane ride, while Darius had been telling Blythe the unabridged story about the Consilium and why he'd murdered half the Supreme Judiciary Council in cold blood, one question had dominated my mind: how the hell could he have kept all this from her? If he'd included her from the start, she wouldn't have loathed every fiber of his being for the past twenty years.

But as Druthers paraded Lienna toward the waiting helicopter like a marionette on a string, I understood perfectly. Darius had done what I couldn't. He'd shouldered the burden alone to protect the person he loved most in the world, even though it had stamped out every single burning ember of their relationship.

Unlike him, I'd gone and involved Lienna. Now Kade and Druthers were weaponizing my feelings for her, using her as a hostage to control me. When they no longer needed her, they would kill her.

Striding beside me, Kade glanced at the nearest agent standing guard over Blythe, Vinny, and Tim. "Load those three next."

Did the Consilium want to question them? Was that why they were still alive? Or did Kade and Druthers want a more discreet location than a New York City rooftop to execute and dispose of my teammates?

Hopelessness suffocated me. Once they got us on that helicopter, we were doomed. I couldn't let that happen.

But how could I stop it? At the dullest inkling of telepathy or telekinesis inside my brain, Kade would know—and Lienna would shove that knife straight through her own throat.

As we passed the other three, my gaze skipped across them, their hands behind their heads and anti-magic cuffs glinting around their wrists. Vinny's expression was stark with fear, while Tim had his jaw set, anger and desperation etched into his face, blood streaking one cheek.

My gaze swung back to Druthers and Lienna, then flicked to Kade. He smirked at me, enjoying my obedience. Sadistic confidence oozed from his pores.

I'd bested Tim, an MPD-trained telepath with direct access to my thoughts, to win my agent title. Was I really incapable of outmaneuvering a clairsentient who could only vaguely grasp my intent?

We were nearing the helicopter. The side door was open, revealing a dozen seats with straps. More than enough room for five prisoners and their captors.

I glanced at the four agents guarding the whirlybird, my gaze stopping on the holstered potion gun of the one closest to Druthers.

I looked away again. Kade was waiting for me to "gather my focus," as he'd put it.

But the thing was, I'd been warping since I was a grade-school foster kid. I'd made so many Split Kits that I didn't need to focus. Conscious thought was not a requirement.

Right as we were about to step up onto the helipad, I targeted the agent with the potion gun and created a Split Kit that charged at him with a bloodcurdling shout. The agent yanked his weapon from its holster.

At the same time, invisible me slammed my shoulder into Kade's. Halfway through stepping onto the helipad, he staggered heavily.

The agent opened fire at Fake Kit, whom I'd positioned in front of Druthers. The potion balls flew right through the warp and hammered into Druthers's upper chest.

A swift telekinetic pull yanked Lienna backward into my arms. I grabbed her wrist and tore the dagger from her fingers. It tumbled to the concrete as I hauled her away.

Kade pivoted to face me, as did Druthers, who appeared utterly unruffled by the yellow potion liberally splattered across his torso. The four chopper-guarding agents were now aiming potion guns and other fun magical weapons at me and Lienna, while the six guards circling my friends had also drawn their weapons.

Twelve against one, and two of them were warp-proof.

"Lienna," I hissed, arms wrapped around her as I retreated step by step. I shook her gently. "Can you hear me?"

She didn't respond to my words or my touch.

Kade pulled a silver artifact from a pouch on his combat belt. "So you want to do this the hard way after all."

"I figured why not," I said blithely. "Seeing as you were so kind as to not block my magic."

Kade smirked. "Do you think you can warp your way out of this, Kit?"

"Enough!" Druthers barked, directing the word at Kade and the agents. "Incapacitate him now."

Magic exploded in a bright flash—but not from the direction I was expecting.

At the other end of the rooftop, a distinguished gentleman had appeared—Girard. Like some kind of mythic Wyatt Earp transported to modern Manhattan, he was firing purplish Arcana darts from two six-shooters, each magical slug bursting into crackling electricity against its target.

Three of the six agents guarding the prisoners went down, and the other three retreated, two aiming artifacts and a hydromage summoning a blob of water.

Kade jerked his attention back to me. "Ori vinciaris!"

Lienna's hand flew up. "Ori repercutio!"

With a shimmer of distorted air, her new rebound ring sent the blaze of red power from Kade's artifact whooshing back at him, and it barely missed his left shoulder.

Undaunted, he grabbed for another artifact from his pouch o' death—then whipped sideways, arms thrown up to shield his face.

Blood sprayed from his forearm, and a flicker of light momentarily revealed Darius, his dagger slashing past Kade. The anti-telethesian potion was doing its job, making it harder for Kade to sense Darius.

Snarling, Kade produced another artifact and took aim, but not at Darius, me, or Lienna. He pointed it at our handcuffed and helpless allies—at Blythe.

"Ori caedo!"

Darius appeared again, ramming Kade's arm down and sideways as the spell went off. A band of magenta magic launched into the concrete six inches from my right leg and shattered it like a giant axe. Debris exploded in every direction.

I recognized the spell as the one that had sliced S?ze's head clean off his body five months ago. Kade wasn't screwing around with nonlethal tactics anymore.

With his opponent visible again, Kade grabbed Darius's wrists and shoved him backward—toward Druthers.

If Druthers touched him, if the mentalist took control of Darius, his lumina magic, and his knives, we were royally screwed.

I grabbed Darius with my telekinetic fingers and hauled him sideways. The sudden change of direction broke Kade's hold, and as Darius backpedaled away from both father and son, I shot past Lienna and bodychecked Kade, knocking him into his pop like ricocheting billiard balls.

"Darius, help the others!" I yelled. "I'll handle these two."

His gray eyes snapped to mine. Then he blinked out of sight.

"Kit!" Lienna called. "Ori dormias!"

I half turned as she flung a stun marble. The cold wind blew it off course instantly, but that was expected; that's why she'd gotten my attention.

I caught it with my telekinesis and was about to whip it into Kade's fiendish face when I spotted another agent—a pyromage—lighting up a fireball, a split second away from cooking up some Kit flambé.

With a wild gesture, I redirected the marble. It smacked into the pyromage's noggin and his fire snuffed out as he went down.

Kade threw his brawny body into mine, crushing me to the ground. He drew his fist back, and Lienna's foot swung into my field of view. Her leather loafer—which from my prone point of view complemented her pantsuit perfectly—snapped into the side of his head. I heaved his dazed mass off me, then reeled in the opposite direction as yet another agent pointed an artifact at my face.

A flash of sizzling purple shot over me and hit him in the chest—Girard Earp and his six-shooter spells to the rescue. The agent flopped limply to the ground like a nameless Western movie stuntman.

From my peripheral vision, I glimpsed Blythe, sans handcuffs, working to free Vinny while simultaneously deflecting potion ball shots with her telekinesis.

On the other side of the rooftop, the helicopter's twin turboshaft engines started up, its mechanical whine quickly ascending to a deafening decibel level. The rotors spun faster and faster, buffeting the mythic combatants on both sides with a manufactured gale.

Leaping past my partially kneeling form, Lienna launched herself at Kade. My partner was a five-and-a-half-foot lightweight, and he was a six-foot-plus heavyweight. On paper, this was a David vs Goliath showdown.

But that paper didn't account for the fact that, while she was an abjuration prodigy, Agent Shen was also an exceptional fighter. And she was vicious.

Her fists flew, connecting in a flurry just below the protection of Kade's vest, and then she spun, leg arcing in a high kick that cracked against his jaw. Now on the receiving end of two Shen-shots to the chrome dome, he stumbled, weaving slightly.

I rolled onto my feet and hit the still-conscious chopper guards with Blackout warps. As they flailed and collapsed, a cracking wall of ice sprang up on my left, blocking the remaining pair of agents who'd been sprinting straight for me.

Kade caught one of Lienna's flying fists. He threw her over his shoulder, dumping her heavily onto the concrete.

"Lienna!" I shouted, my voice whipped into extinction by the helicopter's unnatural wind.

She rolled away before Kade could stomp on her, and I rushed him.

All the agents are down,Tim barked in my brain. But those two guys in front of the chopper are still conscious. Vinny, can you?—

I lost track of Tim's psychic voice as Kade's lips split into a nasty grin. The clairsentient's eyes met mine, and I knew instantly I'd made a mistake—but I couldn't stop fast enough. He twisted sideways, grabbed my shoulder, and swung me past him using my own momentum.

Straight into Druthers.

The mentalist seized my arm, and his power crashed down over my brain like a dump truck of sand, burying me under it. The tension left my limbs as I was filled with an all-consuming desire to cooperate with Druthers.

"Kill the others!" Druthers shouted at his son as he pulled me with him. "We'll take this one and go."

Kade flashed his bloody teeth in a sick smile. Using me as a shield, Druthers hastened toward the helicopter, and I went with him, drowning in the false eagerness to follow his lead that he was pouring into my neurons.

Pulling another artifact from his belt, Kade aimed it at Lienna, still dazed after he'd thrown her to the ground.

He was going to kill her now that she was no longer a useful hostage. I was under Druthers's control and completely helpless, just like when Xanthe, the last mentalist to get their filthy psychic death grip on my brain, had made me attack Blythe.

Except, it wasn't like that at all.

Xanthe's power had subsumed my whole psyche—I hadn't known I was being controlled—but I knew I was being controlled this time. Part of me was very much aware that I did not want to obey Druthers, and the desire I felt to do exactly that wasn't real.

Either Xanthe had outclassed Druthers by several orders of magnitude, or my own psychic fortitude had grown immeasurably. Hadn't I spent the past five months building my skills as fast as psychically possible so I'd be ready if or when we went up against the Consilium directly? I'd been honing my psycho warper craft, building my stamina, and constantly increasing the precision and complexity of my warps for over a year now. Even my newfound Psychica tricks all combined didn't hold a candle to my OG ability in terms of the sheer mental fortitude required.

Was there really a world in which some two-bit mentalist could best me in psychic strength?

The short answer: not a snowball's chance in hell.

With that realization, the weight of Druthers's power evaporated, and the "obey me" commands he was pumping into my brain flipped from an obsessive need to an annoying intrusive thought I was only too happy to ignore.

I snapped my head back, my skull crunching against Druthers's nose. He staggered, his mentalist fingers slipping uselessly across my psyche, and I added an elbow to his ribs, breaking his hold on me entirely—but I'd taken a few seconds too long. Kade was speaking the incantation for his spell, his mouth moving with words I couldn't hear over the thundering rotors and gusting wind.

As I grabbed for his artifact with my telekinesis, magic flashed off it—the magenta bloom of his decapitation spell.

Ice erupted in the spell's path as Vinny dove for Lienna. The spell hit his barrier, ice shattered, and Vinny and Lienna landed on the pavement with a gory spray of blood.

Panic ripped through me. I leaped off the helipad toward them—and an invisible presence brushed past me.

Darius and Kade clashed at the edge of the helipad as I ran for Lienna and Vinny. Kade roared something, his words obliterated by the chopper's screaming engines.

DUCK!

Tim's telepathically shouted command barreled into my brain, and I threw myself flat onto the concrete.

A wide band of greenish-yellow magic hurtled from another goddamn artifact in Kade's hand. It streaked across the rooftop at chest height, hitting the raised section where the stairwell door hung open, and steel and concrete exploded like a cannonball through a gingerbread house.

I rose into a crouch, my gaze sweeping the rooftop. Girard, Blythe, and Tim clustered together near Vinny's first ice wall. Downed agents sprawled across the ground. Darius was crouched, bloody daggers in his hands, partway between me and Kade.

Lienna and Vinny were still heaped among the remains of the kryomage's hastily constructed ice shield.

Kade's destructive spell had bought him and his dickhead dad enough time to retreat to the helicopter's open doors. Druthers clambered inside, blood streaking from his busted nose.

As Darius rushed Kade, I sprinted toward Lienna and Vinny. Blythe and Tim had reached the downed pair, blocking my view of who was injured—and who was still alive.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kade pull a knife from a sheath on his thigh and hurl it with deadly force at the oncoming Darius, who deflected it with his own dagger. That slight delay was enough. Kade hopped in beside his father, and the chopper rose off the platform.

Wind blasted across the roof as the helicopter tilted away from the building, flinging grit into my eyes and forcing me to shield my face.

Through the flurry of dust, I watched once again as Kade disappeared into the darkening night.