Chapter 22

"Kit Morris." Faustus smiled his three-point smile. "You are indeed a rare and fascinating mythic—and soon to be a dead one." He waved at his goons. "Kill him!"

A dozen mythics of varying classes, power, viciousness, and greasiness turned on Lienna and me. They unleashed their magic.

I made myself disappear. As Lienna gasped in shock, I yanked her behind the pillar, which fizzled back into view as my concentration went in a different direction—the "not dying" direction.

A maelstrom of magic and flying weapons blasted past the spot where we'd been standing. Sorcery, magery, and who knew what else hit the wall and exploded in a rainbow of sparks and debris.

I dropped the invisibility hallucination. Lienna goggled at me.

"You didn't explain your power very well last time, did you?" she growled, pressed against the pillar.

"I did explain." I stuck my head around the steel barrier keeping us from being barbequed, and with a second's concentration, made the debris-strewn floor turn into an amusement park's best funhouse room—bold, foot-high ripples of shiny black plastic. The advancing horde of mythics stumbled, staggered, and fell as they either tripped over the invisible debris or tried to step on waves that weren't there.

"I can make people see hallucinations," I added, breathless with brain-numbing focus. "Not my fault you lack imagination and assumed changing paint color was all I could do."

"Not ‘hallucinations.' Warps."

"Huh?"

"Your magic—it's a rare ability called psycho warping." She gave me an eye roll that didn't seem appropriate considering Faustus's death squad was headed our way. "I looked it up after you used your magic to escape."

My jaw hung open. No way. My powers had a name?

Not flimsy hallucinations after all. I was warping minds, and that wasa hundred times cooler. I wasn't a freak or the weird foster kid or that KCQ intern who did some kind of illusion magic. I was a psycho warper—

"It's all an illusion!" Faustus shouted. "Ignore it!"

—who'd forgotten what he was supposed to be doing.

Swearing, I peeked around the pillar. Faustus and his men had spread out on both sides of the room and were closing in on us. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. And I didn't think my hallucinations—my warps—would distract them again.

I glanced at Lienna. I knew her at least as well as Vera. I could probably make her invisible—but it had taken hours for Vera to adjust to losing half her senses. No way could I do that to Lienna in the middle of a fight.

Warning pinged through my brain, and I realized the air had gone misty. Clouds formed at the ceiling. The air sizzled.

I grabbed Lienna around the middle and vaulted away from the metal pillar.

Three bolts of lightning leaped from the clouds and struck the pillar. The current sizzled down the steel and into the floor, buzzing across my nerves as Lienna and I hit the ground.

Mythics charged in from every direction. Fire, glowing artifacts, swords, and blades—they all pointed our way, attacks about to rip us apart.

Lienna thrust her Rubik's Cube into the air. "Ori te formo cupolam!"

A watery blue dome expanded from the cube, encasing us, and the volley of magical assaults slammed into the barrier. It rippled wildly.

Standing behind his men, Faustus raised his hand. The clouds above Lienna's dome condensed, darkening to an angry gray. Light flickered in their depths—another round of lightning about to strike. On our left, Chucky the pyromage built an inferno on his palms. Another man raised his sword. A sorcerer pointed a wand at us.

I clamped my arms around Lienna, knowing their combined attacks would shatter the barrier—and our bodies.

A sharp wolf whistle rang through the room.

"Heyo!" With a crunch of footsteps, a woman skipped down the stairs from the building's barely standing upper level. She hopped the last few steps, landed with a thump a few feet behind Faustus, and swung a huge bastard sword up onto her shoulder like a baseball bat.

I blinked confusedly at the petite woman's pink-streaked blond hair and leather corset crisscrossed with the straps of her baldric. I'd never seen her before.

She flashed a grin. "Take a look at this bunch. We've got some ugly ones."

A second woman descended the steps behind the first. Early fifties, iron-gray hair, the sort of mouth that never smiled. In her wake came a tall Black woman with her long hair braided and tied into a high ponytail. Last but not least, a woman with vaguely Slavic features stopped several steps above the other three, her imperious stare sweeping the room.

"Agent Shen?" she called calmly.

Lienna, crouched on the floor with my arms wrapped protectively around her, a shield glowing over us, and surrounded by a horde of goons about to rain down hell, cleared her throat. "That's me."

"Tabitha Boden, second officer, Crow and Hammer. We're here to assist."

I blinked a few more times. A guild team? Here to assist?

The memory of Lienna typing rapidly on her phone popped into my head. Oh. She'd called for backup after seeing it wouldn't be two-on-two but two-on-twelve. Nice of her to share that little detail.

Though that explained why the team was here, it didn't explain how they'd gotten onto the upper level to make their approach right into the rogues' midst—until I spotted a flicker of movement. Peeking from behind Tabitha was a ruffled mustache.

Eggert?He'd led them to the upper level?

Sneering, Faustus waved dismissively at the heavily armed woman a step away from him. "Another foolish illusion," he barked. "Break that shield and kill them!"

His men pulled themselves together, ignoring the quartet of combat mythics only steps away. For a moment, the women looked utterly bewildered. Probably not a reaction they'd ever gotten before.

"Begin," Tabitha ordered.

The oldest woman flung half a dozen metal sticks at the men and each one burst into a tangle of red lines that ensnared their limbs. The tall woman with braids pointed her quarterstaff. Water coalesced out of nothing and a wave splashed across the floor. As it rushed over the mythics' feet, Tabitha spun a pair of billy clubs.

The wave of water froze solid, encasing half the men's feet. With a sharp grin, the petite one with the huge sword launched for the disoriented men, her blade's deadly edge shining.

And all hell broke loose.

Light flashed, magic exploded, and the air crackled with competing powers. Lienna shoved her cube at me and whipped out a handful of her stun marbles. The attacking guild team had successfully distracted over half of Faustus's men, but the rest were keen on delivering me some painful payback.

The monstrous telekinetic raised his arm and a charred desk rose into the air. With a wave, he flung it at our shield—and Lienna threw a stun marble.

"Ori dormias!" she yelled.

The marble hit him at the same time his desk hit our shield. The barrier shattered and I yanked Lienna clear of the falling furniture. It crashed down with a bang so loud it momentarily drowned out the cacophony filling the room. The telekinetic keeled over backward.

Out of the haze, a guy I'd whacked with a cast-iron skillet charged us, a glowing baseball bat in his hands. I lunged to meet him, ducking an instant before he could Babe Ruth my skull. My shoulder slammed into his chest, and as he staggered, I yanked the back of his shirt over his head and slammed a punch into his face through the fabric.

For a second time in one day, he went down from a blow I'd delivered. Nice.

Unfortunately, my knuckles weren't as hard as a frying pan, and the still-conscious mythic thrust his bat into the pit of my stomach. All the air disappeared from my lungs and I stumbled back, clutching my gut.

"Ori dormias!"

A flying marble accompanied Lienna's shout. It smacked the mythic in the chest and he went limp—but I didn't have a moment to feel relief as heat washed over my back.

Lienna and I whirled around as Chucky the pyromage bore down on us, his entire body covered in flames. Glee lit his ugly face as white-hot fireballs filled his palms. Lienna threw her last marble at him, but it missed.

The mage's left leg buckled. As he dropped to one knee, Eggert appeared behind him, his baton swinging again. The metal pole cracked against the pyromage's skull.

Lienna popped up beside me and swung our previous opponent's bat. It hit Chuck's head on the opposite side. His fire puffed out, and he collapsed.

Eggert scurried over to me, his baton still aimed at the pyromage. "Got him! Was that a demon?"

I could only half hear him over the noisy battle all around us. "Not exactly."

"Is it the faustus?"

"Nope." I looked around for the actual Faustus but couldn't see him through the haze and chaos. "Where—"

"Tabitha!" Lienna shouted so suddenly I jumped.

A woman shot out from said chaos, ice crystals sparkling on her billy clubs. "Agent Shen?"

"We need to get to that pillar." Lienna pointed at the metal structure, which was somehow across the room—I hadn't realized the fight had driven us so far away. "There's something else happening here that we need to stop."

"We can clear a path," Tabitha replied immediately. "Team!"

Somehow—were these women enhanced super-soldiers or something?—the other three mythics from the Crow and Hammer appeared around her. I looked across them as the hydromage spun her staff, the sorceress selected a new handful of artifacts, and the pocket-sized barbarian hefted her sword. Eggert watched with feverish excitement, gripping his baton in readiness.

Fantastic. My allies now consisted of an MPD agent who wanted to imprison me, a security guard who'd just learned that magic existed, and four members of the guild that had killed my boss.

Tabitha had turned to confer briefly with her team—which allowed the remaining five goons to regain their bearings. Before they could form a strategy, I casually dropped a warp on them: redecorating a tall, skinny dude into a replica of Tabitha. It wouldn't have worked under normal circumstances, but with the air hazed and their adrenaline pumping, the other four didn't notice the weirdness of the hallucination.

With furious bellows, they charged their pal.

"What on earth—" Tabitha began in a gasp.

"Ignore that," I cut in, waving a hand. "You ready?"

In answer, she lifted her hands to shoulder height. Her hydromage comrade jabbed her staff in a strange gesture, and water coalesced out of nothing—raindrops, except they floated in the air. Tabitha's face tightened with concentration, and with a flick of one hand, she froze each droplet into a pointed shard.

With another flick, the Ice Queen hurled her chilled shards across the room. Men howled as icy needles peppered their exposed skin. The four mythics launched for the five goons—and Lienna and I bolted for the pillar.

We skidded to a stop beside it, and Lienna slapped her hand to the rune. "Ori aperio—"

Electricity blasted down the metal. She flew backward and crashed to the floor—and I realized the haze was more cloud than dust. Dark clouds swirled across the ceiling, electricity crackling through them.

Faustus stepped around the pillar, his pointy smile firmly in place and his hands stretched out, palms facing upward. "You will pay for this, Kit. You cannot defeat Faustus Trivium!"

Whoa buddy, that's a little melodramatic.

But Faustus backed up his evil-villain rhetoric with a blast of grape-sized hail. Wind, rain, and lightning-laden clouds billowed toward me, and I shielded my face with my arms, completely helpless against his weather barrage.

Or that would have been the extremely sad result… had that really been me.

While Split Kit impersonated a feeble psychic with zero resistance to bad weather, I grabbed the bat Lienna had dropped and swung. It struck Faustus's head with a sickening thump. His eyes went soft and he keeled over.

Oh, sweet revenge, thou art best served with a baseball bat to the skull.

"Kit!"

I whirled around. Lienna stood beside the open doorway in the pillar, darkness yawning. With a frantic glance back at the four-women team pummeling the shit out of Faustus's remaining men while Eggert skulked among the fallen, ensuring they stayed down, I dove inside and slammed the door behind me.