Ilona Andrews - White Hot

Rogan’s radio came on. “SWAT is en route,” Bug reported. “Three vehicles.”

Lenora Jordan must’ve gotten tired of waiting. I turned to Rogan and kept my voice low. “We have to find Olivia now. SWAT can’t see Arabella. They will try to kill her.”

“She’s here,” Cornelius said.

He was standing by a wall. Rogan and I moved to stand by him.

“Are you sure?” Rogan asked.

“Yes,” Cornelius nodded, his eyes clouded. “She’s here.”

Rogan looked at the wall. It trembled.

Colin, a short dark-haired man, snapped his gun up. Rivera gripped him in a headlock, before Olivia forced him to do anything else.

I faced the wall, gathered my magic, and struck at the mind behind it.

Power punched me, gripping my mind in a steel vise and wrapping me in pain. All I could do was hold it at bay.

Colin stopped struggling and clamped his head.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Rogan on the floor by my feet. He was taking off my left boot, then my right.

“Sir?” Rivera said. “You could break the wall, sir?”

“Never disturb two mental mages locked in a duel,” Augustine said. “If you kill one, the other might end up with no mind.”

The vise squeezed my mind, red hot.

I just had to hold. As long as she held on to me, she couldn’t get to anyone else.

My bare feet touched the floor. Rogan moved around me, drawing.

She was crushing my mind like a nut.

Magic snapped into life under me. It was like landing on the surface of a pond, but instead of water, its surface was pure power. Rogan had drawn an amplification circle. I sent my magic into it, surrendering a little more of myself to the pain, and it bounced back into me, making me stronger. Magic coursed through my veins. I bounced again, and again, and again. Five. Any more and I’d expend too much.

I snapped the vise. It shot back and clamped my mind again, turning into shackles.

The room vanished. I stood in a vast dark cavern. Light pooled in a circle around my feet. My hands were glowing, a pale almost white light with a faint touch of yellow. To my side, I saw other shapes: a pale gold that felt like Cornelius, a brilliant blue beacon that had to be Rogan, and a conflicting clash of pale white and grey that must have been Augustine. Before me another humanoid shape stood in a similar circle, her light pulsing with violet. Beyond us in the distance, two more shapes waited, one pale and light yellow, like me, and one knitted of pure furious red. Catalina and Arabella.

What is this? Where am I?

The enemy magic squeezed me, trying to crush me.

I snapped the shackles. The violet presence recoiled and struck again, wrapping invisible chains around me, trying to tether me. I reached deep inside me and let the magic explode. It tore out of me, a powerful flood of light.

My body shook under the strain. She was wrapping her will around me. I felt myself unraveling, retreating further and further into the center of myself.

The light of my sisters waned.

I had to win. I would win. I had to know who the invisible puppeteer was, pulling all of the strings behind the scenes. I had to meet Caesar, because if I failed, he would keep sending people after my family. I had to know.

More chains spun out of the darkness, trying to contain me.

No. You won’t bind me. You can’t control my mind. I’ll be free.

I pushed. I had to win.

The first chain snapped, breaking. Then another and another.

Nobody controls me except me.

The chains broke. The other glowing figure screamed. My magic reached out and gulped her in a single swallow. The cavern exploded around us, shattering.

I opened my mouth and let my magic speak. “How do I open this door?”

“There is a panel on the left side,” Olivia Charles’ wooden voice replied from some hidden speaker. “The code is 31BC.”

The year the Roman Empire was born.

Rogan opened the panel and entered the code. Something clanged within the wall. It slid aside a couple of inches and stopped.

“Why didn’t the door open?” A low gnawing ache began within me. My magic still wasn’t at one hundred percent after I had drained myself down to nothing shocking David Howling. I was about to run out of power.

“I’ve disabled the mechanism from the inside.”

“We’re out of time.” Rogan raised his hand. “Are you clear?”

I let go, pulling my magic back to me. “Yes.”

The section of the wall trembled. Hairline cracks split it with a thunderous snap. The separate chunks of the wall shivered and streaked between us in a controlled starburst, revealing a small room. Inside it within an amplification circle stood Olivia Charles. Her gaze fastened on me. “You!”

“Me.”

Her gaze shifted to Rogan. “Enjoy your pitiful triumph. It won’t last.”

I reached out and looked into her mind. Crap.

“She’s been hexed,” I said. “She has what we need, but it will take a lot of time to pull it out.”

“How much time?” Rogan asked.

“Days.” It would take me that long to regenerate enough magic to take her hex apart.

“No,” Cornelius said in his eerie voice, his word suffused with emotion. “She murdered my wife.”

Conflict churned in Rogan’s eyes. We needed Olivia. We needed her badly.

The muscles on his jaw locked.

He’d promised.

Rogan opened his mouth. “I stand by my word. She is yours.”

“Let her go,” Cornelius told me.

I released her. Another moment and I would’ve lost my hold.

Cornelius looked at Olivia, his face pale. “You took Nari’s life away from her. You took my wife away from me. You took the mother from my child.”

Olivia sneered at him. “What will you do, you pathetic little man? You’re not even a Prime. Will you summon a litter of puppies to lick me to death? Go on. Show me.”

“When my grandfather came to this country,” Cornelius said, “he took a new name, one that would be familiar to his new countrymen.”

Olivia crossed her arms on her chest.

“Our real last name isn’t Harrison. It’s Hamelin.”

A low sound like the noise of a waterfall came from behind us, insistent and oddly disturbing.

“We’re not named for the place where we were born. We’re named for the place where years before Osiris serum was discovered our ancestor became infamous for his magic.”

Cornelius opened his mouth and sang a long wordless note. A black wave burst into the room. It shifted and moved, charging forward, not uniform, but made of thousands of tiny bodies.

Olivia Charles screamed, terror raw in her voice.

Cornelius’ voice rose, commanding and beautiful. It reached right into your chest, took your heart into a cold fist, and held it still. The wave surged between us and swarmed Olivia, burying her body. She shrieked and flailed, but the rats kept coming, thousands and thousands of them, until she became a swirling mound of fur. There was nothing I could do but stand there and listen to her being eaten alive while the Pied Piper of Houston sang like an angel, mourning the love of his life.

I sat in my office and watched the correspondents on Eyewitness News lose all cool over a still shot of Olivia Charles’ skeletal remains. How they had gotten it, I had no idea. Houston PD had that scene wrapped up tighter than a straitjacket. By the time we exited the building, my sisters were gone and the majority of the fortress guards with them. SWAT found them later, wandering through the brush, weeping, and telling stories of the girl and a thing that stole her. Nobody could adequately describe the thing, only that it was huge and monstrous, which was just as well. We’d dodged the bullet.