Dearest Mother of Mine (Overworld Chronicles) (12 page)

She said a word, and a zap of lightning struck me in the chest. I made a gurgling noise as my body went into spasms, and stumbled over backwards. My butt hit the floor, causing the breath to explode from me. As I sat there gibbering like a madman, sudden warmth spread from my chest, spreading to my left arm. I felt a tingle of power itch the palms. Ultraviolet light gathered in my hand. I aimed toward the low wall separating me from the target dummy and focused.

Fire!

A thin beam sputtered from my hand, crackling for an instant before dying in a shower of sparks.

The warmth in my chest faded back to the usual temperature. No matter how hard I tried to repeat the pitiful success, my palm remained woefully normal.

"It worked!" Elyssa said, eyes alight. She rummaged in her bag. "Maybe I have something more powerful—"

"Whoa, hold on," I said, gaining my feet, shaking the fuzz from my brain. "I don't think I want you hitting me with something more powerful. That hurt."

She laughed. "You looked funny."

I sighed. "Yeah, a real barrel of laughs."

"Now you sound like Shelton." She smirked. "If anything, we know how to trigger your power."

"Yeah, but I don't want to take blunt force trauma to the chest every time I need to defend myself," I said. "It seems a bit self-defeating."

She touched my chest, closing her eyes, and holding the palm of her hand there as if listening to my heart beat. I felt a wave of heat that had nothing to do with angel magic radiate from her touch. Elyssa raised an eyebrow, opening an eye to look at me.

"Don't you ever think about anything else?" she said, the tone of her voice indicating she didn't mind.

"Sorry, you have that effect on me."

She removed her hand, regarding me like a lab rat she wanted to experiment on. "Can you remember the feeling? Maybe reproduce it?"

I closed my eyes and focused on my heartbeat. I could hear it beating away, probably wondering what other horrible things I planned to do to it. I thought of the heat. Tried to will the furnace to light and spread to my limbs. Nothing happened. I idly wondered if I could shoot magic beams from my feet or other appendages, and decided aiming would be awkward.

"You've lost your train of thought, haven't you?" Elyssa asked, amusement in her voice.

"How do you know?" I asked, eyes still closed.

"Because your eyebrows start moving like a nerd trying to figure out an obscure physics problem."

I sighed and gave up, opening my eyes to give her a hopeless look. "Yeah. Can't get the feeling back." It sucked not having a teacher.

Elyssa offered to zap me again, but I declined, and decided to practice the normal magic I knew while she practiced her ninja moves on a combat dummy.

"You really should join me sometime," Elyssa said, wiping sweat from her forehead as she cleaned her weapons and packed her gear.

"Join you?" I asked with a quizzical look.

"Practice," she said, nodding her head toward the combat dummy. "Magic is a great tool, but knowing how to defend yourself with finesse would definitely increase your survivability."

"Vallaena kind of taught me a little," I said, referring to my aunt's penchant for physically attacking me in her succubus form, teaching me to defend myself and manifest my demonic side without spawning into full-out beast mode.

Elyssa blurred. I felt my feet fly from beneath me and my back smacked the ground. She held a wooden practice knife to my throat. "'Kind of' isn't the same thing, Justin." She gripped my forearm and pulled me to my feet. "You used to practice with me all the time. You've gotten rusty."

"You've been doing this all your life," I said, feeling foolish and unprepared. "Plus, that wasn't even fair. Why would I be on the defensive against you?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Challenge accepted."

"What challenge?" I asked, backing away.

"Best of three takedowns," she said, shoving her duffel bag out of the way with a foot.

The center of the gauntlet room resembled a circular arena. I threw up my hands. "Wait, I can't beat you hand-to-hand."

"Use magic then," she said. "Do whatever it takes to beat me."

"But I might hurt you," I said. The only offensive spells I knew involved fireballs.

She grinned. "I doubt it."

I gulped. "Fine." I took a defensive posture, the very same Elyssa had taught me a few months ago. "Let's do thi—"

She blurred. I dodged to the side. My feet left the ground, and a hand closed around my neck, pressing me to the ground.

"That's one," Elyssa said.

I growled. Jumped up. Fine. If she wanted to prove something, I'd make her work for it.

We backed to opposite sides of the circle again. This time, I charged Elyssa, flashing toward her. She moved at the last instant, her leg sweeping low. I'd anticipated another leg sweep, and leapt over it, planning to drop behind her, and put her in a hold. Her arm jutted out and clothes-lined me in mid-air. I whumped to the ground and felt the breath fly from me.

"Two," she said, pulling me to my feet. "I win."

"Best of five," I muttered, feeling anger boiling in my stomach.

"Is someone getting angry?" she asked, batting her eyelashes innocently.

I didn't answer as I stalked to the other side of the ring. When I turned, I switched to incubus sight, enabling me to see the aether floating in the air around us. I drew it in through the thin tendrils of my incubus senses, which I typically used to feed from humans. Focusing my will, I assumed my defensive stance. Elyssa recognized my positioning instantly and came for me. This time, I threw out my hands, as if to ward her off, but instead yelled, "
Shoryuken
!"

Strands of webbed energy shot from my hands, wrapping around Elyssa's legs and tripping her. I jerked the strands, flipped her on her back, and straddled her.

"Two to one," I said, dismissing the spell and standing.

"Well played, babe," she said with a wink. "I like to see you think on your toes."

I didn't answer, trying to hold onto the anger that seemed to help me focus when it came to magic and demonic abilities. I had one more trick up my sleeve, but I wasn't sure I wanted to ruin my clothes to use it.

"I guess one win isn't too bad," she said, assuming her position. "Against a girl."

Suddenly, I didn't care about my T-shirt and cargo pants. I let the anger teeter on the edge of the cliff as Elyssa approached, her stance warier than before. I flung strands of energy at her, but she seemed to sense them even if she couldn't see them, and flashed out of the way.

"Not gonna work twice, hon," she said with a confident grin. She lunged.

I let the anger fall off the cliff and opened the door to my inner beast. My body swelled, muscles coiling like serpents beneath my skin, hands and feet expanding, and horns curling up from my forehead. A tail sprouted from my backside, whipping back and forth. I'd felt the pain of manifestation so many times, it hardly made me flinch anymore. Vallaena had taught me how to do it within seconds. Elyssa's hands met my huge hands. Her sweep kick couldn't dislodge my wide feet. I gripped her hands and pinned them together.

Her face went red with the effort to break free. Her foot smashed against my head, but I caught it on a horn, used my other hand to bind her feet together. She was strong and slippery as an eel, but I managed to lay her down flat on her back. I grinned, feeling my sharpened teeth against the insides of my lips.

"I win."

She slapped the ground with the palm of her hand when I let her go, growling, eyes blazing. "I'm happy you can actually defend yourself," she said, her expression clearly anything but happy. "But now you're pissing me off."

I laughed, low and guttural. "Looks like we're tied two-two."

"Not for long." She sprang to her feet, looking me up and down as she walked back to her side of the ring.

I had a sneaking suspicion she had a dozen ways to take me down in this form, but decided I could use the extra strength and stability it afforded me. As we prepared for the last round, I heard running footsteps in the hallway outside. Shelton rounded the corner, huffing and puffing.

"I just found out something really bad," he said, leaning over to catch his breath. "We've got a more serious situation than I thought."

Chapter 11

I let my demon form slip away, melting back to my usual size. "What is it?"

"Adam and I were talking about the battle mages we fought earlier." He drew in a deep breath and continued. "Remember the guy who was walking up the aisle near the end?"

"The one who looked like he owned the place?" I said, thinking it would be hard to forget a bald man who wielded dual staffs and had bizarre eye tattoos. "What about him?"

"He ain't no ordinary battle mage," Shelton said, motioning us to follow him. We went upstairs and found Adam looking at the three-dimensional image of the man as it hovered above his arctablet. Stacey and Bella stood behind him.

"Meet Maulin Kassus," Adam said without preamble. "Head honcho of the Black Robe Brotherhood."

"No girls allowed?" Elyssa said, narrowing her eyes at him.

"They have female members," Adam said. "But they never changed their name like the Assassins Guild."

"These people are the Arcane mafia," Shelton said. "They don't play by the rules."

"Okay, so he's dangerous," I said. "It's not like we haven't faced scary supers before. Why the rush to tell me about him?"

Shelton exchanged a glance with Adam. Looked back to me. "Because they will find out who we are. They will watch us for an opportune moment. And then they will kill us."

"Still nothing new," I said.

"I disagree," Elyssa said. "This is completely new. We usually have to hunt down our targets. These people are hunting us."

"And we'll never see them coming," Shelton said.

"So let's find them first," I said.

Shelton gave me a crazy look. "How do you propose we do that?"

"Don't they work for Darkwater?"

"Well, yeah—"

"And you know where they're headquartered," I said. "Now we have one more reason to go after them."

"You ain't ready to go up against Kassus's level of badassery yet, kid." Shelton stared at the man's image. "You remember when I told you there were very few battle mages who'd mastered all the Arcane attack forms?"

I nodded.

"Yeah, well he's one of them."

My confidence crumbled like a dry biscuit. "Maybe we should ward the perimeter and build a really tall wall."

"Another thing," Shelton said. "I used to train under Kassus. He knows who I am."

That sent a shock of apprehension through me. "Did he see you?"

"I don't think so," Shelton said, rubbing his jaw. "Adam and I were behind the column when he appeared, and he was focused on you when I attacked with the meteor."

"It's not like they know our names then," I said. "Not a lot of people know about us being here."

"Lornicus sure did," Adam said. "If he does, who else might?"

"I'll put up some ASE sentries," Elyssa said, rummaging through her duffel bag. "I have access to a number of other defensive devices that should be helpful."

"I've had a lot of practice at hiding," Adam said. "I'll put down some diversion wards around the perimeter. Unless they know for sure we're here, those ought to fend off anyone cruising the area."

"Let's not forget we have an arch that can take us anywhere and an underground tunnel to the school," Elyssa said. "We don't have to use the front door all the time."

"Excellent point," Adam said, grabbing his staff. "I'll get started with warding."

"Me too," Elyssa said, following him out.

Shelton gave me a knowing look. "How do you do it?" he asked.

My eyebrows pinched. "Do what?"

"Take us from zero to 'we're all gonna die' in less than a week?"

I sighed. "I dunno. Practice, I guess." My phone chimed with an unknown number. I excused myself and walked into another room to take it. My heart constricted with dread. Had Kassus already found me? Should I answer? Hoping for once it might actually be a telemarketer, I answered.

"Hello, Mr. Slade," said the nasal voice of Lornicus. "I hope you found the visit to El Dorado worth the effort."

"What makes you think I went?" I asked.

"Your desire to save your mother and simply curiosity." He paused. "Did you find the trip enlightening?"

The golem sounded awfully sure of himself. Was he going entirely off calculations about my personality, or did he have another means of knowing I'd been? He'd also couched his words in generalities. I had to assume he didn't know anything and try to give away nothing.

"Why did you want me to go in the first place?" I asked, deciding to neither confirm nor deny his allegations.

"You saw them, didn't you?" he replied, seeming to ignore my statement.

"What, the stress pimples on my nose?" I asked. "I get those when an army of gray men chases me from my own house."

The golem sighed. "You're being obstinate."

"You're manipulating me, and I'm not falling for it," I said, feeling a tiny bit smug.

"Of course I am," he said. "But it is for your benefit and the greater good."

His admission caught me off guard. "Then you'll understand if I don't tell you anything. For all I know, you're waiting for me to give something away."

"Understandable. Very well, I will give you information in return."

"The location of my mother?"

"Unfortunately, I still do not possess such information." The golem cleared his throat. "This information is, nonetheless, quite valuable." He seemed to pause for dramatic effect. "My master has created other golems who look as alive as I do. They blend into crowds and spy for him. This was how I found your residence."

A wave of cold shivered down my spine. "Are they as convincing as you?" I asked.

"They do not have personalities, no," he said. "They can talk and mimic very specific behaviors, if necessary, but they are nothing like me. I feel this information is quite valuable, Mr. Slade. Do you agree?"